Given: That Donald Trump Is mentally Ill # 2
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1margd
Australia’s Prime Minister Slowly Realizes Trump Is a Complete Idiot
Jonathan Chait | Aug 3, 2017
The transcript of Donald Trump’s discussion with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull obtained by the Washington Post reveals many things, but the most significant may be that Trump in his private negotiations is every bit as mentally limited as he appears to be in public.
At issue in the conversation is a deal to settle 1,250 refugees who have been detained by Australia in the United States. I did not pay any attention to the details of this agreement before reading the transcript. By the time I was halfway through it, my brain could not stop screaming at Trump for his failure to understand what Turnbull was telling him.
...Trump...calls the refugees “prisoners,” and repeatedly brings up the Cuban boatlift (in which Castro dumped criminals onto Florida). He is unable to absorb Turnbull’s explanation that they are economic refugees, not from conflict zones, and that the United States has the ability to turn away any of them it deems dangerous.
Turnbull tries to explain to Trump that refugees have not been detained because they pose a danger to Australian society, but in order to deter ship-based smuggling
...Trump...also fails to understand the number of refugees in the agreement
...Turnbull very patiently tries to explain again... (and again and again)
...the call ends in brusque fashion, and Turnbull presumably begins drinking heavily.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/australias-pm-slowly-realizes-trump...
Jonathan Chait | Aug 3, 2017
The transcript of Donald Trump’s discussion with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull obtained by the Washington Post reveals many things, but the most significant may be that Trump in his private negotiations is every bit as mentally limited as he appears to be in public.
At issue in the conversation is a deal to settle 1,250 refugees who have been detained by Australia in the United States. I did not pay any attention to the details of this agreement before reading the transcript. By the time I was halfway through it, my brain could not stop screaming at Trump for his failure to understand what Turnbull was telling him.
...Trump...calls the refugees “prisoners,” and repeatedly brings up the Cuban boatlift (in which Castro dumped criminals onto Florida). He is unable to absorb Turnbull’s explanation that they are economic refugees, not from conflict zones, and that the United States has the ability to turn away any of them it deems dangerous.
Turnbull tries to explain to Trump that refugees have not been detained because they pose a danger to Australian society, but in order to deter ship-based smuggling
...Trump...also fails to understand the number of refugees in the agreement
...Turnbull very patiently tries to explain again... (and again and again)
...the call ends in brusque fashion, and Turnbull presumably begins drinking heavily.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/australias-pm-slowly-realizes-trump...
2Limelite
The wrong man is taking a 17-day "working" golf resort vacay, I believe. However, the world may have a chance to muddle through the next two weeks peacefully, if McMaster can stop the twitching (and prickling) of Agent Orange's thumbs.
Everyone needs a break from his incoherent rants and attacks. Especially his own staff and Republicans.
Everyone needs a break from his incoherent rants and attacks. Especially his own staff and Republicans.
3barney67
>2 Limelite: This sounds like an incoherent rant.
4barney67 
This message has been flagged by multiple users and is no longer displayed (show)
Let's take a look at the other finger-pointers.
There are frequent posters who aren't even American citizens and don't live in America, and yet presume to know about matters they don't know firsthand. There's one who can't write a sentence without dropping the F bomb, and yet claims the female sex is superior. There's one who called me "it" recently, and only a real psycho would do that. Perhaps he thinks people are objects to be disposed of. He and the fascists have much in common. Only a real psycho would repeatedly call the president Agent Orange when it doesn't even make sense. There's one who becomes so enraged that his posts deteriorate into a series of exclamation points.
And this is while -- now try to follow this -- claiming to be tolerant, compassionate, open-minded, peace-loving, welcoming, generous, easygoing, democratic, heart of gold liberals. These same people unleash every kind of profanity and insult against me, using all kinds of diabolical techniques, often breaking the TOS. Not to mention seriously (I guess) calling into question the sanity of the president and anyone who agrees with him.
I don't know if everyone here is a shut-in, disabled, ignoring work, insane, sick, stupid, or what. But when it comes to mental illness I don't think anyone here should be pointing the finger.
And how is it that proximity has been accused of turning this forum into his own personal blog, but margd hasn't? At least his meaningless rants were his own. Hers are stolen from other people. Does she even read these articles? I doubt it. Where does she get the time to read all those articles and post them here every day? What's the point? It's more than a little OCD, isn't it? Which means mental illness. She seems to think she is an aggregator like Matt Drudge. But he does it for a living. Is she in love with Matt Drudge?
And now back to Marge's blog.
There are frequent posters who aren't even American citizens and don't live in America, and yet presume to know about matters they don't know firsthand. There's one who can't write a sentence without dropping the F bomb, and yet claims the female sex is superior. There's one who called me "it" recently, and only a real psycho would do that. Perhaps he thinks people are objects to be disposed of. He and the fascists have much in common. Only a real psycho would repeatedly call the president Agent Orange when it doesn't even make sense. There's one who becomes so enraged that his posts deteriorate into a series of exclamation points.
And this is while -- now try to follow this -- claiming to be tolerant, compassionate, open-minded, peace-loving, welcoming, generous, easygoing, democratic, heart of gold liberals. These same people unleash every kind of profanity and insult against me, using all kinds of diabolical techniques, often breaking the TOS. Not to mention seriously (I guess) calling into question the sanity of the president and anyone who agrees with him.
I don't know if everyone here is a shut-in, disabled, ignoring work, insane, sick, stupid, or what. But when it comes to mental illness I don't think anyone here should be pointing the finger.
And how is it that proximity has been accused of turning this forum into his own personal blog, but margd hasn't? At least his meaningless rants were his own. Hers are stolen from other people. Does she even read these articles? I doubt it. Where does she get the time to read all those articles and post them here every day? What's the point? It's more than a little OCD, isn't it? Which means mental illness. She seems to think she is an aggregator like Matt Drudge. But he does it for a living. Is she in love with Matt Drudge?
And now back to Marge's blog.
5RickHarsch
>4 barney67: I counter-flagged because it's an interesting take on one person's reception of others we all engage with.
...until it gets to margd, which is unflaggable in my view in the same way that people in other situations are not held responsible for their actions. The fellow genuinely doesn't understand what margd is doing, doesn't see the value of it, the generosity of it, and the independence of mind behind it. Sure, towards the end he crosses the line by mentioning mental illness, but it is so off base that it cannot be taken seriously. And I think the follow up reference to Drudge supports my point. This cannot be taken seriously.
One interesting thing, Barney: mentioning what you refer to as the 'F bomb', I immediately thought of a certain male before your hint that you were speaking of a female. And I also use fucking and the fuck frequently. And the fucktalker I refer to as well as myself disagree with you as much as any female fucktalker here, so why does the female stand out do you think?
I'm sorry someone called you 'it', that's quite strange. You come across to me as fully human.
...until it gets to margd, which is unflaggable in my view in the same way that people in other situations are not held responsible for their actions. The fellow genuinely doesn't understand what margd is doing, doesn't see the value of it, the generosity of it, and the independence of mind behind it. Sure, towards the end he crosses the line by mentioning mental illness, but it is so off base that it cannot be taken seriously. And I think the follow up reference to Drudge supports my point. This cannot be taken seriously.
One interesting thing, Barney: mentioning what you refer to as the 'F bomb', I immediately thought of a certain male before your hint that you were speaking of a female. And I also use fucking and the fuck frequently. And the fucktalker I refer to as well as myself disagree with you as much as any female fucktalker here, so why does the female stand out do you think?
I'm sorry someone called you 'it', that's quite strange. You come across to me as fully human.
8btuckertx
>4 barney67: {{Yawn}}
9librorumamans
>4 barney67: Well that is quite the most amusing post I've read in some time! Amusing, and revealing.
10Limelite
After Agent Orange's presser in front of a bank of elevators this afternoon, I ask. . .IS THERE ANY DOUBT HE'S SICK?
Well, it's inarguable that he's the stupidest occupant of the White House! He doesn't even know that Washington and Jefferson, neither of whom were traitors who devoted themselves to the cause of destroying America from within, will never be the factual equivalents of Jeff Davis and Stonewall Jackson, or even Lee (who was not the moral equivalent of those two "heroes" of the Confederacy).
Now we know Agent Orange is both a lackey of an ex-KGB officer and a Nazi sympathizer. Talk about your rara avis!
Well, it's inarguable that he's the stupidest occupant of the White House! He doesn't even know that Washington and Jefferson, neither of whom were traitors who devoted themselves to the cause of destroying America from within, will never be the factual equivalents of Jeff Davis and Stonewall Jackson, or even Lee (who was not the moral equivalent of those two "heroes" of the Confederacy).
Now we know Agent Orange is both a lackey of an ex-KGB officer and a Nazi sympathizer. Talk about your rara avis!
13Limelite
>11 barney67: Awww, gee. You have to be told? Don't think I will. The smell of barney67 stew isn't that bad.
>12 barney67: Me.
To please you, next time I'll use the more accurate term to describe when Trump opens his oral sphincter. "Blither."
>12 barney67: Me.
To please you, next time I'll use the more accurate term to describe when Trump opens his oral sphincter. "Blither."
142wonderY
CNN interviewed historian Tim Naftali today
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/16/politics/trump-history-q-and-a/index.html
Finish this sentence: "When the history books about Trump's presidency are written, the Charlottesville episode will be _________."
"... given the trend lines today, the Charlottesville episode is likely to be viewed by later historians as a pivotal moment in President Trump's political collapse and a defining moment in the history of the Republican Party. If it isn't viewed in those ways, then future historians may well be writing about a very different America."
I was interested enough to add to his author page here and came across an interview with him back in November, where he talks about containing a bad president (Nixon, in this article.)
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/16/politics/trump-history-q-and-a/index.html
Finish this sentence: "When the history books about Trump's presidency are written, the Charlottesville episode will be _________."
"... given the trend lines today, the Charlottesville episode is likely to be viewed by later historians as a pivotal moment in President Trump's political collapse and a defining moment in the history of the Republican Party. If it isn't viewed in those ways, then future historians may well be writing about a very different America."
I was interested enough to add to his author page here and came across an interview with him back in November, where he talks about containing a bad president (Nixon, in this article.)
15margd
My meeting with Donald Trump: A damaged, pathetic personality — whose obvious impairment has only gotten worse
Bill Curry | Saturday, Aug 12, 2017 07:00 AM EST
...Trump embodies that old therapists’ saw “perception is projection.” You can use this handy tool to locate the truth, exactly opposite from whatever he just said. He has a weight management problem, so women are “fat pigs.” He can’t stop fibbing, so his primary opponent becomes “Lyin’ Ted Cruz.” His career is rife with fraud so the former secretary of state becomes “Crooked Hillary.” He is terrified of ridicule, so Barack Obama is a “laughingstock.” When he says America’s a wasteland but he’ll make it great again, we know his secret fear...
http://www.salon.com/2017/08/12/my-meeting-with-donald-trump-a-damaged-pathetic-...
Bill Curry | Saturday, Aug 12, 2017 07:00 AM EST
...Trump embodies that old therapists’ saw “perception is projection.” You can use this handy tool to locate the truth, exactly opposite from whatever he just said. He has a weight management problem, so women are “fat pigs.” He can’t stop fibbing, so his primary opponent becomes “Lyin’ Ted Cruz.” His career is rife with fraud so the former secretary of state becomes “Crooked Hillary.” He is terrified of ridicule, so Barack Obama is a “laughingstock.” When he says America’s a wasteland but he’ll make it great again, we know his secret fear...
http://www.salon.com/2017/08/12/my-meeting-with-donald-trump-a-damaged-pathetic-...
16margd
Former national intelligence director, who has served both Republicans and Democrats, worries about Trump access to nuclear codes. Senate majority leader doubts Trump can save presidency, wonders whether Trump will be in a position to lead GOP in 2018 elections and beyond... (DO SOMETHING, MITCH!!)
James Clapper questions Trump’s fitness, worries about his access to nuclear codes
Rachel Chason | August 23
James R. Clapper Jr., former national intelligence director, questioned President Trump’s fitness for office following his freewheeling speech in Phoenix Tuesday night, which Clapper labeled “downright scary and disturbing.”
“I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office,” Clapper told CNN’s Don Lemon early Wednesday morning. “I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it — maybe he is looking for a way out.”
In Trump’s remarks, delivered without a teleprompter, the president threatened to shut down the government over funding for the border wall he promised, opined that North American Free Trade Agreement will likely be terminated and hinted he might pardon former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, convicted last month of criminal contempt.
Clapper said watching Trump’s speech, he worried about the president’s access to nuclear codes.
“In a fit of pique he decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there’s actually very little to stop him,” Clapper said, referencing North Korea’s leader. “The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there’s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.”
...a statement about a president by a lifelong military and intelligence professional — who has served at the highest levels of government under Republicans and Democrats alike — is extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/23/james-clapper-ques...
______________________________________________
McConnell, in Private, Doubts if Trump Can Save Presidency
ALEXANDER BURNS and JONATHAN MARTIN | AUG. 22, 2017
...What was once an uneasy governing alliance has curdled into a feud of mutual resentment and sometimes outright hostility, complicated by the position of Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine L. Chao, in Mr. Trump’s cabinet, according to more than a dozen people briefed on their imperiled partnership. Angry phone calls and private badmouthing have devolved into open conflict, with the president threatening to oppose Republican senators who cross him, and Mr. McConnell mobilizing to their defense.
...In a series of tweets this month, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. McConnell publicly, and berated him in a phone call that quickly devolved into a profane shouting match.
...Mr. McConnell has fumed over Mr. Trump’s regular threats against fellow Republicans and criticism of Senate rules, and questioned Mr. Trump’s understanding of the presidency in a public speech. Mr. McConnell has made sharper comments in private, describing Mr. Trump as entirely unwilling to learn the basics of governing.
In offhand remarks, Mr. McConnell has expressed a sense of bewilderment about where Mr. Trump’s presidency may be headed, and has mused about whether Mr. Trump will be in a position to lead the Republican Party into next year’s elections and beyond, according to people who have spoken to him directly.
While maintaining a pose of public reserve, Mr. McConnell expressed horror to advisers last week after Mr. Trump’s comments equating white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., with protesters who rallied against them. Mr. Trump’s most explosive remarks came at a news conference in Manhattan, where he stood beside Ms. Chao, the transportation secretary. (Ms. Chao, deflecting a question about the tensions between her husband and the president she serves, told reporters, “I stand by my man — both of them.”)...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/us/politics/mitch-mcconnell-trump.html
James Clapper questions Trump’s fitness, worries about his access to nuclear codes
Rachel Chason | August 23
James R. Clapper Jr., former national intelligence director, questioned President Trump’s fitness for office following his freewheeling speech in Phoenix Tuesday night, which Clapper labeled “downright scary and disturbing.”
“I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office,” Clapper told CNN’s Don Lemon early Wednesday morning. “I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it — maybe he is looking for a way out.”
In Trump’s remarks, delivered without a teleprompter, the president threatened to shut down the government over funding for the border wall he promised, opined that North American Free Trade Agreement will likely be terminated and hinted he might pardon former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, convicted last month of criminal contempt.
Clapper said watching Trump’s speech, he worried about the president’s access to nuclear codes.
“In a fit of pique he decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there’s actually very little to stop him,” Clapper said, referencing North Korea’s leader. “The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there’s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.”
...a statement about a president by a lifelong military and intelligence professional — who has served at the highest levels of government under Republicans and Democrats alike — is extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/23/james-clapper-ques...
______________________________________________
McConnell, in Private, Doubts if Trump Can Save Presidency
ALEXANDER BURNS and JONATHAN MARTIN | AUG. 22, 2017
...What was once an uneasy governing alliance has curdled into a feud of mutual resentment and sometimes outright hostility, complicated by the position of Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine L. Chao, in Mr. Trump’s cabinet, according to more than a dozen people briefed on their imperiled partnership. Angry phone calls and private badmouthing have devolved into open conflict, with the president threatening to oppose Republican senators who cross him, and Mr. McConnell mobilizing to their defense.
...In a series of tweets this month, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. McConnell publicly, and berated him in a phone call that quickly devolved into a profane shouting match.
...Mr. McConnell has fumed over Mr. Trump’s regular threats against fellow Republicans and criticism of Senate rules, and questioned Mr. Trump’s understanding of the presidency in a public speech. Mr. McConnell has made sharper comments in private, describing Mr. Trump as entirely unwilling to learn the basics of governing.
In offhand remarks, Mr. McConnell has expressed a sense of bewilderment about where Mr. Trump’s presidency may be headed, and has mused about whether Mr. Trump will be in a position to lead the Republican Party into next year’s elections and beyond, according to people who have spoken to him directly.
While maintaining a pose of public reserve, Mr. McConnell expressed horror to advisers last week after Mr. Trump’s comments equating white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., with protesters who rallied against them. Mr. Trump’s most explosive remarks came at a news conference in Manhattan, where he stood beside Ms. Chao, the transportation secretary. (Ms. Chao, deflecting a question about the tensions between her husband and the president she serves, told reporters, “I stand by my man — both of them.”)...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/us/politics/mitch-mcconnell-trump.html
17theoria
Re the Phoenix speech: out there with these natives, there must be a temptation to be God.
18barney67
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cnns-big-secret-1503434389
CNN’s Big Secret
BREAKING: Host reveals that journalists don’t like Trump.
By James Freeman
Aug. 22, 2017
Now it can be told. A CNN host named Brian Stelter confided to his audience this week about conversations occurring off-camera and off the record across the media landscape. According to Mr. Stelter:
President Trump’s actions and inactions in the wake of Charlottesville are provoking some uncomfortable conversations, mostly off the air if we’re being honest. In discussions among friends and family, and debates on social media, people are questioning the president’s fitness. But these conversations are happening in news rooms and TV studios as well.
Usually after the microphones are off, or after the stories are filed, after the paper has been put to bed, people’s concerns, and fears and questions come out. Questions that feel out of bounds, off limits, too hot for TV. Questions like these: Is the president of the United States a racist? Is he suffering from some kind of illness? Is he fit for office? And if he’s unfit, then what?
These are upsetting, polarizing questions. They’re uncomfortable to ask.
It’s not clear why Mr. Stelter wanted to raise the question of whether he and his colleagues are being honest. But there is certainly a question of just how uncomfortable CNN has been about raising issues related to President Trump’s health and character. “My impression is that since President Trump’s inauguration, there’s been a lot of tiptoeing going on,” added Mr. Stelter.
Perhaps he was referring to the program he hosted a month into the Trump presidency. Mr. Stelter called Mr. Trump’s words “a verbal form of poison” and said the President instills “fear in many people.” Then, appearing above a CNN headline saying, “TRUMP’S NIXON-ESQUE PRESS BASHING,” Mr. Stelter invited Carl Bernstein to tiptoe into the story. The former Washington Post reporter pronounced that Mr. Trump’s attacks on the press “are more treacherous than Richard Nixon’s ” and proceeded to reference Stalin and Hitler.
Mr. Bernstein has had plenty more to say on Mr. Stelter’s program, even before the inauguration. Here’s a transcript from a CNN appearance by Mr. Bernstein in March of last year:
STELTER: Carl, I want to come to you. You’re in Los Angeles this morning. You’ve been talking about this, talking about Trump for months as a neo-fascist. I want you to tell me why and how you view this current moment.
BERNSTEIN: Well, it’s a difficult term and the word “neo” meaning “new”, has a lot to do with it, a new kind of fascist in our culture, dealing with an authoritarian, demagogic point of view, nativist, anti-immigrant, racism, bigotry that he appeals to, and I think we need to look at the past. And I’m not talking about Hitlerism and genocide, and I’m not making a direct parallel to Mussolini -- but a kind of American fascism that we haven’t seen before, different than George Wallace who was merely a racist. This goes to authoritarianism. It goes to despotism. The desire for a strong man who doesn’t trust the institutions of democracy and government. And my point is that we now need on cable news to have a debate, a historical debate about what fascism was and is and how Donald Trump fits into that picture, because it is something very foreign to our political culture in terms of a major presidential candidate in the 20th, or 21st century. And that debate is going on in print, online, but it is not part of our debate on cable.
Perhaps Messrs. Bernstein and Stelter were unaware that their microphones were on and that they were appearing on cable. But the watchdogs at the Media Research Center point out another occasion last year when Mr. Bernstein described Mr. Trump on CNN as a “neo-fascist sociopath.”
In this week’s report on how journalists have allegedly been reluctant to raise uncomfortable questions about the President, Mr. Stelter invited comment from panelists including Mr. Bernstein and Douglas Brinkley. Regular CNN viewers may recall that Mr. Brinkley has previously appeared on the network to declare Mr. Trump “unfit for command” and to opine that the President has “low moral standards.” This time the historian decided to offer a free medical diagnosis of the President, according to the transcript:
BRINKLEY: I mean, on the medical front, look, we all know he is a neon billboard for, you know, overt narcissism, malignant self-love. We’ve all known that. And now, we’re seeing that we’re getting the ramifications as a nation of what having a sick man in the White House means. I think the Senate might need to move --
STELTER: A sick man in the White House.
BRINKLEY: We -- he is. He’s not mentally stable. And we need a -- perhaps the Senate needs to do a censure coming up here.
Alice Stewart was also a panelist this week and tried to politely steer the various non-doctors on the program toward making political, rather than medical, judgments. Based on a similar segment from May of this year, it appears that CNN likes to call Ms. Stewart for more balanced commentary when the network wants to raise “uncomfortable” questions about Mr. Trump’s mental health that may be “too hot for TV”—but appear on CNN anyway.
In any case, the crescendo of this week’s show came with the following exchange:
BRINKLEY: I think we’re at that state now when the five generals of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have to go out and enter politics and say, we want nothing to do with what the president is saying. It is a crisis going on in the White House and it’s about Donald Trump’s fitness for command.
STELTER: Alice, all this talk about military leaders, some foreign correspondents writing about the United States from other countries would bring up the word coup, a soft coup, with all this talk of military leaders intervening.
A soft coup? “It was apocalypse now on Brian Stelter’s CNN show,” observes Mark Finkelstein at Legal Insurrection.
This column can hardly imagine what these guys talk about when they really are off-camera.
CNN’s Big Secret
BREAKING: Host reveals that journalists don’t like Trump.
By James Freeman
Aug. 22, 2017
Now it can be told. A CNN host named Brian Stelter confided to his audience this week about conversations occurring off-camera and off the record across the media landscape. According to Mr. Stelter:
President Trump’s actions and inactions in the wake of Charlottesville are provoking some uncomfortable conversations, mostly off the air if we’re being honest. In discussions among friends and family, and debates on social media, people are questioning the president’s fitness. But these conversations are happening in news rooms and TV studios as well.
Usually after the microphones are off, or after the stories are filed, after the paper has been put to bed, people’s concerns, and fears and questions come out. Questions that feel out of bounds, off limits, too hot for TV. Questions like these: Is the president of the United States a racist? Is he suffering from some kind of illness? Is he fit for office? And if he’s unfit, then what?
These are upsetting, polarizing questions. They’re uncomfortable to ask.
It’s not clear why Mr. Stelter wanted to raise the question of whether he and his colleagues are being honest. But there is certainly a question of just how uncomfortable CNN has been about raising issues related to President Trump’s health and character. “My impression is that since President Trump’s inauguration, there’s been a lot of tiptoeing going on,” added Mr. Stelter.
Perhaps he was referring to the program he hosted a month into the Trump presidency. Mr. Stelter called Mr. Trump’s words “a verbal form of poison” and said the President instills “fear in many people.” Then, appearing above a CNN headline saying, “TRUMP’S NIXON-ESQUE PRESS BASHING,” Mr. Stelter invited Carl Bernstein to tiptoe into the story. The former Washington Post reporter pronounced that Mr. Trump’s attacks on the press “are more treacherous than Richard Nixon’s ” and proceeded to reference Stalin and Hitler.
Mr. Bernstein has had plenty more to say on Mr. Stelter’s program, even before the inauguration. Here’s a transcript from a CNN appearance by Mr. Bernstein in March of last year:
STELTER: Carl, I want to come to you. You’re in Los Angeles this morning. You’ve been talking about this, talking about Trump for months as a neo-fascist. I want you to tell me why and how you view this current moment.
BERNSTEIN: Well, it’s a difficult term and the word “neo” meaning “new”, has a lot to do with it, a new kind of fascist in our culture, dealing with an authoritarian, demagogic point of view, nativist, anti-immigrant, racism, bigotry that he appeals to, and I think we need to look at the past. And I’m not talking about Hitlerism and genocide, and I’m not making a direct parallel to Mussolini -- but a kind of American fascism that we haven’t seen before, different than George Wallace who was merely a racist. This goes to authoritarianism. It goes to despotism. The desire for a strong man who doesn’t trust the institutions of democracy and government. And my point is that we now need on cable news to have a debate, a historical debate about what fascism was and is and how Donald Trump fits into that picture, because it is something very foreign to our political culture in terms of a major presidential candidate in the 20th, or 21st century. And that debate is going on in print, online, but it is not part of our debate on cable.
Perhaps Messrs. Bernstein and Stelter were unaware that their microphones were on and that they were appearing on cable. But the watchdogs at the Media Research Center point out another occasion last year when Mr. Bernstein described Mr. Trump on CNN as a “neo-fascist sociopath.”
In this week’s report on how journalists have allegedly been reluctant to raise uncomfortable questions about the President, Mr. Stelter invited comment from panelists including Mr. Bernstein and Douglas Brinkley. Regular CNN viewers may recall that Mr. Brinkley has previously appeared on the network to declare Mr. Trump “unfit for command” and to opine that the President has “low moral standards.” This time the historian decided to offer a free medical diagnosis of the President, according to the transcript:
BRINKLEY: I mean, on the medical front, look, we all know he is a neon billboard for, you know, overt narcissism, malignant self-love. We’ve all known that. And now, we’re seeing that we’re getting the ramifications as a nation of what having a sick man in the White House means. I think the Senate might need to move --
STELTER: A sick man in the White House.
BRINKLEY: We -- he is. He’s not mentally stable. And we need a -- perhaps the Senate needs to do a censure coming up here.
Alice Stewart was also a panelist this week and tried to politely steer the various non-doctors on the program toward making political, rather than medical, judgments. Based on a similar segment from May of this year, it appears that CNN likes to call Ms. Stewart for more balanced commentary when the network wants to raise “uncomfortable” questions about Mr. Trump’s mental health that may be “too hot for TV”—but appear on CNN anyway.
In any case, the crescendo of this week’s show came with the following exchange:
BRINKLEY: I think we’re at that state now when the five generals of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have to go out and enter politics and say, we want nothing to do with what the president is saying. It is a crisis going on in the White House and it’s about Donald Trump’s fitness for command.
STELTER: Alice, all this talk about military leaders, some foreign correspondents writing about the United States from other countries would bring up the word coup, a soft coup, with all this talk of military leaders intervening.
A soft coup? “It was apocalypse now on Brian Stelter’s CNN show,” observes Mark Finkelstein at Legal Insurrection.
This column can hardly imagine what these guys talk about when they really are off-camera.
19St._Troy
No individual incident pertaining to President Trump will be allowed to take on "turning point" significance, because every week we're provided with more of what we are told are equally significant and disturbing incidents - the future scripts will overwrite the current and previous scripts. (Note to the likes of CNN, MSNBC et al: minimize use of distinctive words such as "unhinged" - while they make you feel good, they also are a pretty clear tipoff that the same voice is speaking through multiple outlets.)
20lriley
#19--Unhinged works for me. Look---people walking around with Nazi swastikas and in Klan outfits carrying confederate flags--you don't need CNN or MSNBC or Fox or any other major media source to tell you they're unhinged--it goes without them even saying so. You can keep all of whatever perceptions about the media you previously had but still the knuckleheads with the flags--there is something majorly wrong with them and there's something majorly wrong with the nation's so called leader when he doesn't recognize that. Trump is fucked up--plain and simple. And personally I don't know what a mainstream conservative's objection to getting rid of him is apart from it will make everyone else the world over a lot happier and less on edge. Trump never really was a member of the conservative club in the first place--at least not in respect to say his vice president Mr. Pence who I would think practically 98% of elected republicans would prefer anyway.
21margd
Amid mounting bipartisan concerns, debate over Trump's mental health takes off
Jayne O'Donnell | Aug. 23, 2017
...Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a former constitutional law professor at American University, sponsored legislation in April that would set up an independent commission to determine if any president no longer has the physical or mental capacity to perform the duties of the office. The 25th Amendment to the constitution was ratified 50 years ago and calls for such a body but it was never set up.
The bill now has 28 co-sponsors and while more can't be added until Congress goes back into session Sept. 5, Raskin says there's been "a sudden spike after every acute episode" involving Trump's behavior.
...Raskin notes the commission would also be in place if future presidents can no longer serve, but former New Hampshire Republican Sen. Gordon Humphrey urged the New Hampshire congressional delegation this month to support it because Trump is "impaired by a seriously sick psyche."...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/08/23/amid-mounting-concerns-p...
Jayne O'Donnell | Aug. 23, 2017
...Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a former constitutional law professor at American University, sponsored legislation in April that would set up an independent commission to determine if any president no longer has the physical or mental capacity to perform the duties of the office. The 25th Amendment to the constitution was ratified 50 years ago and calls for such a body but it was never set up.
The bill now has 28 co-sponsors and while more can't be added until Congress goes back into session Sept. 5, Raskin says there's been "a sudden spike after every acute episode" involving Trump's behavior.
...Raskin notes the commission would also be in place if future presidents can no longer serve, but former New Hampshire Republican Sen. Gordon Humphrey urged the New Hampshire congressional delegation this month to support it because Trump is "impaired by a seriously sick psyche."...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/08/23/amid-mounting-concerns-p...
22margd
‘Trump betrays everyone’: The president has a long record as an unpredictable ally
Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker | September 9, 2017
...how to fund the government, raise the debt ceiling and provide Hurricane Harvey relief...cutting a deal with Democratic lawmakers...
...The president was an unpredictable — and, some would say, untrustworthy — negotiating partner with not only congressional Republicans but also with his Cabinet members and top aides. Trump saw a deal that he thought was good for him — and he seized it.
The move should come as no surprise to students of Trump’s long history of broken alliances and agreements. In business, his personal life, his campaign and now his presidency, Trump has sprung surprises on his allies with gusto. His dealings are frequently defined by freewheeling spontaneity, impulsive decisions and a desire to keep everyone guessing — especially those who assume they can control him.
He also repeatedly demonstrates that, while he demands absolutely loyalty from others, he is ultimately loyal to no one but himself.
...Democrats remain skeptical about just how long their newfound working relationship with Trump will last. But for Republicans, the turnabout was yet another reminder of what many of them have long known but refused to openly admit: Trump is a fickle ally and partner, liable to turn on them much in the same way he has turned on his business associates and foreign allies...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-betrays-everyone-the-president-has...
ETA______________________________________________________
The Trump administration: Where your pride goes to die
Aaron Blake | July 28, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/28/the-trump-administrati...
Trump tortured Spicer and Priebus. Now they get to tell investigators about Trump.
Aaron Blake | September 8, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/08/trump-tortured-spicer-...
Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker | September 9, 2017
...how to fund the government, raise the debt ceiling and provide Hurricane Harvey relief...cutting a deal with Democratic lawmakers...
...The president was an unpredictable — and, some would say, untrustworthy — negotiating partner with not only congressional Republicans but also with his Cabinet members and top aides. Trump saw a deal that he thought was good for him — and he seized it.
The move should come as no surprise to students of Trump’s long history of broken alliances and agreements. In business, his personal life, his campaign and now his presidency, Trump has sprung surprises on his allies with gusto. His dealings are frequently defined by freewheeling spontaneity, impulsive decisions and a desire to keep everyone guessing — especially those who assume they can control him.
He also repeatedly demonstrates that, while he demands absolutely loyalty from others, he is ultimately loyal to no one but himself.
...Democrats remain skeptical about just how long their newfound working relationship with Trump will last. But for Republicans, the turnabout was yet another reminder of what many of them have long known but refused to openly admit: Trump is a fickle ally and partner, liable to turn on them much in the same way he has turned on his business associates and foreign allies...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-betrays-everyone-the-president-has...
ETA______________________________________________________
The Trump administration: Where your pride goes to die
Aaron Blake | July 28, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/28/the-trump-administrati...
Trump tortured Spicer and Priebus. Now they get to tell investigators about Trump.
Aaron Blake | September 8, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/08/trump-tortured-spicer-...
23margd
Trump Says 'Melania Really Wanted to Be With' Irma First Responders—While She's Standing Right There
Meredith Clark | September 22, 2017
...At a visit to Fort Myers, Florida, last week to survey the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, Trump sent his regards on behalf of his absent wife—while she was standing right next to him.
"I just want to thank everybody, the first responders, on behalf of myself, our Vice President—Melania really wanted to be with us," Trump said, somehow forgetting that the Slovenian former model was standing directly to his left in a green shirt and white baseball cap. What?
...the First Lady remained stone-faced...
https://www.glamour.com/story/trump-says-melania-wanted-to-be-with-irma-first-re...
Meredith Clark | September 22, 2017
...At a visit to Fort Myers, Florida, last week to survey the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, Trump sent his regards on behalf of his absent wife—while she was standing right next to him.
"I just want to thank everybody, the first responders, on behalf of myself, our Vice President—Melania really wanted to be with us," Trump said, somehow forgetting that the Slovenian former model was standing directly to his left in a green shirt and white baseball cap. What?
...the First Lady remained stone-faced...
https://www.glamour.com/story/trump-says-melania-wanted-to-be-with-irma-first-re...
24margd
Fallout of mental illness / temperamental unsuitability:
The Daily 202: Bob Corker tirade encapsulates five reasons why Trump has failed at governing
James Hohmann | October 9, 2017
1) Trump is unserious about passing legislation.
2) Trump has alienated several Senate Republicans that he needs more than they need him.
3) Trump cares more about showmanship than statesmanship.
4) Trump still does not understand how government works.
5) The president’s credibility is shot in Washington.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/10/09/daily-...
_____________________________________________
Trump goes rogue, even by his standards
Stephen Collinson | October 9, 2017
...No one, not his estranged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, his chief of staff John Kelly, European leaders, North Korean dictators, Democrats or despairing GOP senators can temper his shock and awe leadership style.
In a torrent of angry tweets, a TV interview with former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and a back-and-forth with reporters, Trump poked and jabbed, in another mind-scrambling chapter of a reality-show presidency that is threatening to exhaust the nation.
But there was a method in what his critics see as madness: The President is making clear that he and only he is writing his script.
...Concerns about Trump's stability and intentions are already rising abroad, following his odd remark to reporters last week that a photo-op in which he was surrounded by generals was "the calm before the storm."
...Trump's bolt for independence is consistent with the character of a man who has had a lifetime of calling the shots, who in his hierarchical family business was the ultimate and uncompromising authority figure.
That model of leadership has been challenged during his time in Washington, a town where power is shared by constitutional fiat and where the President can't just get his way when he decides there is something he wants to do.
But it's also not clear that Trump's improvisational style is the path for long-term success. The possibility exists that Trump is painting himself into dangerous corners with his unrestrained approach...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/09/politics/donald-trump-politics-corker-north-korea-...
The Daily 202: Bob Corker tirade encapsulates five reasons why Trump has failed at governing
James Hohmann | October 9, 2017
1) Trump is unserious about passing legislation.
2) Trump has alienated several Senate Republicans that he needs more than they need him.
3) Trump cares more about showmanship than statesmanship.
4) Trump still does not understand how government works.
5) The president’s credibility is shot in Washington.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/10/09/daily-...
_____________________________________________
Trump goes rogue, even by his standards
Stephen Collinson | October 9, 2017
...No one, not his estranged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, his chief of staff John Kelly, European leaders, North Korean dictators, Democrats or despairing GOP senators can temper his shock and awe leadership style.
In a torrent of angry tweets, a TV interview with former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and a back-and-forth with reporters, Trump poked and jabbed, in another mind-scrambling chapter of a reality-show presidency that is threatening to exhaust the nation.
But there was a method in what his critics see as madness: The President is making clear that he and only he is writing his script.
...Concerns about Trump's stability and intentions are already rising abroad, following his odd remark to reporters last week that a photo-op in which he was surrounded by generals was "the calm before the storm."
...Trump's bolt for independence is consistent with the character of a man who has had a lifetime of calling the shots, who in his hierarchical family business was the ultimate and uncompromising authority figure.
That model of leadership has been challenged during his time in Washington, a town where power is shared by constitutional fiat and where the President can't just get his way when he decides there is something he wants to do.
But it's also not clear that Trump's improvisational style is the path for long-term success. The possibility exists that Trump is painting himself into dangerous corners with his unrestrained approach...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/09/politics/donald-trump-politics-corker-north-korea-...
25Limelite
Is Sen. Corker signaling that enough Republicans in the Senate and House are ready to impeach their Party Leader? Or is he talking to Rex Tillerson and John Kelly, urging them to Section 25 him before his little twittery fingers trigger nuclear war with North Korea?
26margd
“I Hate Everyone in the White House!”: Trump Seethes as Advisers Fear the President Is “Unraveling”
Gabriel Sherman | October 11, 2017
...(Bob Corker's NYT interview) brought into the open what several people close to the president have recently told me in private: that Trump is “unstable,” “losing a step,” and “unraveling.”...
...In recent days, I spoke with a half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers, and they all describe a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president who seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods. Trump’s ire is being fueled by his stalled legislative agenda and, to a surprising degree, by his decision last month to back the losing candidate Luther Strange in the Alabama Republican primary. “Alabama was a huge blow to his psyche,” a person close to Trump said. “He saw the cult of personality was broken.”
...Even before Corker’s remarks, some West Wing advisers were worried that Trump’s behavior could cause the Cabinet to take extraordinary Constitutional measures to remove him from office. Several months ago, according to two sources with knowledge of the conversation, former chief strategist Steve Bannon told Trump that the risk to his presidency wasn’t impeachment, but the 25th Amendment—the provision by which a majority of the Cabinet can vote to remove the president. When Bannon mentioned the 25th Amendment, Trump said, “What’s that?” According to a source, Bannon has told people he thinks Trump has only a 30 percent chance of making it the full term.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/donald-trump-is-unraveling-white-house-a...
ETA_________________________________________________________
Good luck with that! ;-)
Amid a Widening Rift, John Kelly Has a Mar-a-Lago Strategy to Contain Trump
“He doesn’t love this job,” says a person close to him. And it may get harder at the president’s winter White House. But Kelly has a plan.
Gabriel Sherman | October 9, 2017
...The next few weeks will surely test Trump and Kelly’s relationship. As Kelly seeks to revive Trump’s stalled tax plan, prevent the Iran nuclear deal from falling apart, and avoid war with North Korea, he’ll also face the challenge of having to manage Trump at Mar-a-Lago. According to two sources, Kelly has developed a Mar-a-Lago strategy to prevent Trump from soliciting advice from members and friends. (In February, Trump turned his dinner table into an open-air Situation Room when North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile.) Sources briefed on Kelly’s plans said he will attempt to keep Trump “out of the dining room.”
The plan looks sound on paper—but, to his staff, Trump can be a formidable adversary.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/john-kelly-donald-trump-rift
Gabriel Sherman | October 11, 2017
...(Bob Corker's NYT interview) brought into the open what several people close to the president have recently told me in private: that Trump is “unstable,” “losing a step,” and “unraveling.”...
...In recent days, I spoke with a half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers, and they all describe a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president who seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods. Trump’s ire is being fueled by his stalled legislative agenda and, to a surprising degree, by his decision last month to back the losing candidate Luther Strange in the Alabama Republican primary. “Alabama was a huge blow to his psyche,” a person close to Trump said. “He saw the cult of personality was broken.”
...Even before Corker’s remarks, some West Wing advisers were worried that Trump’s behavior could cause the Cabinet to take extraordinary Constitutional measures to remove him from office. Several months ago, according to two sources with knowledge of the conversation, former chief strategist Steve Bannon told Trump that the risk to his presidency wasn’t impeachment, but the 25th Amendment—the provision by which a majority of the Cabinet can vote to remove the president. When Bannon mentioned the 25th Amendment, Trump said, “What’s that?” According to a source, Bannon has told people he thinks Trump has only a 30 percent chance of making it the full term.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/donald-trump-is-unraveling-white-house-a...
ETA_________________________________________________________
Good luck with that! ;-)
Amid a Widening Rift, John Kelly Has a Mar-a-Lago Strategy to Contain Trump
“He doesn’t love this job,” says a person close to him. And it may get harder at the president’s winter White House. But Kelly has a plan.
Gabriel Sherman | October 9, 2017
...The next few weeks will surely test Trump and Kelly’s relationship. As Kelly seeks to revive Trump’s stalled tax plan, prevent the Iran nuclear deal from falling apart, and avoid war with North Korea, he’ll also face the challenge of having to manage Trump at Mar-a-Lago. According to two sources, Kelly has developed a Mar-a-Lago strategy to prevent Trump from soliciting advice from members and friends. (In February, Trump turned his dinner table into an open-air Situation Room when North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile.) Sources briefed on Kelly’s plans said he will attempt to keep Trump “out of the dining room.”
The plan looks sound on paper—but, to his staff, Trump can be a formidable adversary.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/john-kelly-donald-trump-rift
28Limelite
From tweet to speech, Trump said, “We are here today to discuss our vision for America’s economic revival, which has already started. It started on November 8.”
A miracle! BEFORE he was president and he STILL did it!
So, why did he need to become president if he could perform miracles like this in his civilian life? Especially when he hates everyone in the White House. His words.
A miracle! BEFORE he was president and he STILL did it!
So, why did he need to become president if he could perform miracles like this in his civilian life? Especially when he hates everyone in the White House. His words.
30margd
WATCH: Pence stops Trump from leaving executive order signing ceremony without signing the order — again
Brad Reed | 12 Oct 2017
...Pence was also on hand this past spring when Trump started to leave a signing ceremony for executive orders related to American trade policy.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/watch-pence-stops-trump-from-leaving-executive-...
Brad Reed | 12 Oct 2017
...Pence was also on hand this past spring when Trump started to leave a signing ceremony for executive orders related to American trade policy.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/watch-pence-stops-trump-from-leaving-executive-...
31margd
The Method To The Moron’s Madness
Howard Fineman | Oct 13, 2017
...Trump’s father...belittled him while repeatedly demanding that he grow up to be a “killer” and a “king”...he already thinks he is a king.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-method-madness_us_59e125d7e4b03a7be58...
Howard Fineman | Oct 13, 2017
...Trump’s father...belittled him while repeatedly demanding that he grow up to be a “killer” and a “king”...he already thinks he is a king.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-method-madness_us_59e125d7e4b03a7be58...
32barney67
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/13/opinions/harvey-weinstein-women-king-opinion/index...
CNN)Hotel rooms. Private meetings. Requests for massages or to watch him shower.
It's a script familiar to many women. And not just the ones on the receiving end of Harvey Weinstein's particularly odious brand of the Hollywood treatment.
But what's striking, other than just how long Weinstein seems to have gotten away with his myriad alleged crimes, are the similarities in the harrowing stories made by his multiple accusers, who now include such famous actresses as Gwyneth Paltrow, Heather Graham and Angelina Jolie.
As more and more women share their stories about Weinstein, and I believe there will be more, I hope that the chorus of their collective voices will highlight the importance of identifying and understanding the insidious language of abuse that is so often used to exploit, undermine and silence women.
CNN)Hotel rooms. Private meetings. Requests for massages or to watch him shower.
It's a script familiar to many women. And not just the ones on the receiving end of Harvey Weinstein's particularly odious brand of the Hollywood treatment.
But what's striking, other than just how long Weinstein seems to have gotten away with his myriad alleged crimes, are the similarities in the harrowing stories made by his multiple accusers, who now include such famous actresses as Gwyneth Paltrow, Heather Graham and Angelina Jolie.
As more and more women share their stories about Weinstein, and I believe there will be more, I hope that the chorus of their collective voices will highlight the importance of identifying and understanding the insidious language of abuse that is so often used to exploit, undermine and silence women.
33barney67
CNN's Erin Burnett: Clinton "Was One Of The Last" To Denounce Harvey Weinstein
CNN: Hillary Clinton has released a statement condemning Harvey Weinstein after allegations of rape, abuse, and other forms of sexual misconduct against him mount.
Burnett said Hillary Clinton was "happy" to talk about sexism and misogyny at a recent book tour stop (after the Weinstein allegations broke) but "completely ignored Weinstein."
"It's good Clinton broke her silence. Of course, it is too bad she was one of the last to do so," she said.
CNN: Hillary Clinton has released a statement condemning Harvey Weinstein after allegations of rape, abuse, and other forms of sexual misconduct against him mount.
Burnett said Hillary Clinton was "happy" to talk about sexism and misogyny at a recent book tour stop (after the Weinstein allegations broke) but "completely ignored Weinstein."
"It's good Clinton broke her silence. Of course, it is too bad she was one of the last to do so," she said.
34barney67
Clinton on Weinstein: "I Was Sick, I Was Shocked"; "Certainly" Didn't Know About His Sexual "Behavior"
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN: What was your reaction when you heard the news of Weinstein?
HILLARY CLINTON: I was sick. I was shocked, I was appalled. It was something that was just intolerable in every way. And, you know, like so many people who have come forward and spoken out, this was a different side of a person who I and many others had known in the past.
ZAKARIA: Would you have called him a friend?
CLINTON: Yes, I probably would have. And so would so many others. People in Democratic politics for a couple of decades appreciated his help and support. And I think these stories coming to light now, and people who never spoke out before having the courage to speak out, just clearly demonstrates that this behavior that he engaged him cannot be tolerated and cannot be overlooked. And I'm hoping that the --
ZAKARIA: Do you think it was tolerated because he was powerful --
CLINTON: I don't know.
ZAKARIA: People say people knew.
CLINTON: Well, I certainly didn't and I don't know who did.
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN: What was your reaction when you heard the news of Weinstein?
HILLARY CLINTON: I was sick. I was shocked, I was appalled. It was something that was just intolerable in every way. And, you know, like so many people who have come forward and spoken out, this was a different side of a person who I and many others had known in the past.
ZAKARIA: Would you have called him a friend?
CLINTON: Yes, I probably would have. And so would so many others. People in Democratic politics for a couple of decades appreciated his help and support. And I think these stories coming to light now, and people who never spoke out before having the courage to speak out, just clearly demonstrates that this behavior that he engaged him cannot be tolerated and cannot be overlooked. And I'm hoping that the --
ZAKARIA: Do you think it was tolerated because he was powerful --
CLINTON: I don't know.
ZAKARIA: People say people knew.
CLINTON: Well, I certainly didn't and I don't know who did.
35barney67
HILLARY CLINTON: I don’t think he really values democracy, Charlie.
CHARLIE ROSE: He doesn’t value democracy? Rose asked. "So he’s not a democrat, "little d?"
CLINTON: No, he’s not, he’s a top-down guy.
ROSE: He’s an authoritarian?
CLINTON: He has tendencies toward authoritarianism.
ROSE: So, he’s no different than Putin?
CLINTON: Well, hopefully he hasn’t ordered the killing of people and journalists and the like.
CHARLIE ROSE: He doesn’t value democracy? Rose asked. "So he’s not a democrat, "little d?"
CLINTON: No, he’s not, he’s a top-down guy.
ROSE: He’s an authoritarian?
CLINTON: He has tendencies toward authoritarianism.
ROSE: So, he’s no different than Putin?
CLINTON: Well, hopefully he hasn’t ordered the killing of people and journalists and the like.
36Limelite
If you believe 50 million Frenchmen CAN be wrong, you won't want to read this
On Saturday, the group Duty to Warn will host town halls in 13 cities, including New York, Washington DC, and Chicago. Each will feature multiple mental health experts, academics, and doctors, plucked from places such as Yale and the American Civil Liberties Union who will speak about the Trump-shaped elephant in the room. The speakers will also voice their support for a bill that would allow Congress to create a committee to assess a president's mental and physical health. The group's argument, also made in an accompanying book and in a documentary that will be screened at the events, is simple, if controversial: Donald Trump should be impeached by Congress under the 25th Amendment, which calls for removal if a president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."Read the book. See the movie.
37margd
The movie(!):
A Duty to Warn (34:17)
http://adutytowarn.org/
The book:
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President by Bandy X. Lee et al.
The concept:
A duty to warn is a concept that arises in the law of torts in a number of circumstances, indicating that a party will be held liable for injuries caused to another, where the party had the opportunity to warn the other of a hazard and failed to do so. (Wikipedia)
ETA__________________________________________________
Worried About Trump’s Mental Stability? The Worst Is Yet to Come.
Mehdi Hasan | October 7 2017
...In a new book published this week, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” a group of 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts warn that “anyone as mentally unstable as this man should not be entrusted with the life-and-death-powers of the presidency.” Seemingly in defiance of the American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater rule,” which states “it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion on a public figure unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement,” the various and very eminent contributors paint a picture of a president who has “proven himself unfit for duty.”
Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo — of the famous Stanford prison study — suggests the “unbalanced” Trump is a “specific personality type: an unbridled, or extreme, present hedonist” and “narcissist.” Psychiatrist Lance Dodes, a former Harvard Medical School professor, says Trump’s “sociopathic characteristics are undeniable” and his speech and behavior show signs of “significant mental derangement.” Clinical psychologist John Gartner, a 28-year veteran of Johns Hopkins University Medical School, argues that Trump is a “malignant narcissist” and “evinces the most destructive and dangerous collection of psychiatric symptoms possible for a leader.” For Gartner, the “catastrophe” of a Trump presidency “might have been avoided if we in the mental health community had told the public the truth, instead of allowing ourselves to be gagged by the Goldwater rule.”
“The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump” was conceived of and edited by Professor Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist on the faculty of Yale School of Medicine, who writes of her profession’s moral and civic “duty to warn” the American public about the threat posed by their volatile, erratic, and thin-skinned president.
...Bandy Lee: ...Mr. Trump in the office of the presidency is a danger to the public and the international community. We are not purporting to make a diagnosis. Assessing dangerousness is different from diagnosing someone for the purpose of treatment.
...Mental illness itself does not involve an incapacity to carry out a duty. It’s really the specific symptoms, the severity of the symptoms, and the particular combination of … impulsivity, recklessness, an inability to accept facts, rage reactions, an attraction to violence, a proneness to incite violence — all these things are signs of danger.
...The conjecture is that he shows signs of severe mental impairment. We are concerned enough that we are calling for an urgent assessment.
...Very few conditions are dangerous. Very few conditions would make one unfit for duty. In this particular situation, we are declaring a danger to the public and to international security. I can tell you as an expert on violence that he has shown many signs of dangerousness. The most obvious ones might be verbal aggressiveness, history of sexual assault, incitement of violence at his rallies, attraction to violence and powerful weapons, provoking hostile nations, and, more recently, an endorsement of violence, during the protests in Charlottesville, and sparring with another nuclear power that has an unstable leader. All these things are signs of dangerousness.
...we’re merely recommending that procedures be put in place to evaluate every presidential candidate and every president, in the same manner that every military officer and every civilian service person is put through. That the commander-in-chief is not put to the same test is a glaring omission. Currently we are advocating the setting up of an expert panel to advise a commission and we’re recommending that the panel consist of psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and neurologists.
MH: But you’re of the view that there is a case for removing Trump from office based on his mental state?
BL: There are many signs pointing in that direction and so we’re calling for an urgent evaluation.
MH: How worried should we be that Trump has access to the nuclear codes?
BL: Well, that is our critical concern: that his condition is actually probably far worse than people are detecting now; that his mental impairment goes deeper and is far more pervasive than people can understand when they are untrained in psychological matters. And that the worst is yet to come.
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/07/worried-about-trumps-mental-stability-the-wo...
A Duty to Warn (34:17)
http://adutytowarn.org/
The book:
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President by Bandy X. Lee et al.
The concept:
A duty to warn is a concept that arises in the law of torts in a number of circumstances, indicating that a party will be held liable for injuries caused to another, where the party had the opportunity to warn the other of a hazard and failed to do so. (Wikipedia)
ETA__________________________________________________
Worried About Trump’s Mental Stability? The Worst Is Yet to Come.
Mehdi Hasan | October 7 2017
...In a new book published this week, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” a group of 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts warn that “anyone as mentally unstable as this man should not be entrusted with the life-and-death-powers of the presidency.” Seemingly in defiance of the American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater rule,” which states “it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion on a public figure unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement,” the various and very eminent contributors paint a picture of a president who has “proven himself unfit for duty.”
Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo — of the famous Stanford prison study — suggests the “unbalanced” Trump is a “specific personality type: an unbridled, or extreme, present hedonist” and “narcissist.” Psychiatrist Lance Dodes, a former Harvard Medical School professor, says Trump’s “sociopathic characteristics are undeniable” and his speech and behavior show signs of “significant mental derangement.” Clinical psychologist John Gartner, a 28-year veteran of Johns Hopkins University Medical School, argues that Trump is a “malignant narcissist” and “evinces the most destructive and dangerous collection of psychiatric symptoms possible for a leader.” For Gartner, the “catastrophe” of a Trump presidency “might have been avoided if we in the mental health community had told the public the truth, instead of allowing ourselves to be gagged by the Goldwater rule.”
“The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump” was conceived of and edited by Professor Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist on the faculty of Yale School of Medicine, who writes of her profession’s moral and civic “duty to warn” the American public about the threat posed by their volatile, erratic, and thin-skinned president.
...Bandy Lee: ...Mr. Trump in the office of the presidency is a danger to the public and the international community. We are not purporting to make a diagnosis. Assessing dangerousness is different from diagnosing someone for the purpose of treatment.
...Mental illness itself does not involve an incapacity to carry out a duty. It’s really the specific symptoms, the severity of the symptoms, and the particular combination of … impulsivity, recklessness, an inability to accept facts, rage reactions, an attraction to violence, a proneness to incite violence — all these things are signs of danger.
...The conjecture is that he shows signs of severe mental impairment. We are concerned enough that we are calling for an urgent assessment.
...Very few conditions are dangerous. Very few conditions would make one unfit for duty. In this particular situation, we are declaring a danger to the public and to international security. I can tell you as an expert on violence that he has shown many signs of dangerousness. The most obvious ones might be verbal aggressiveness, history of sexual assault, incitement of violence at his rallies, attraction to violence and powerful weapons, provoking hostile nations, and, more recently, an endorsement of violence, during the protests in Charlottesville, and sparring with another nuclear power that has an unstable leader. All these things are signs of dangerousness.
...we’re merely recommending that procedures be put in place to evaluate every presidential candidate and every president, in the same manner that every military officer and every civilian service person is put through. That the commander-in-chief is not put to the same test is a glaring omission. Currently we are advocating the setting up of an expert panel to advise a commission and we’re recommending that the panel consist of psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and neurologists.
MH: But you’re of the view that there is a case for removing Trump from office based on his mental state?
BL: There are many signs pointing in that direction and so we’re calling for an urgent evaluation.
MH: How worried should we be that Trump has access to the nuclear codes?
BL: Well, that is our critical concern: that his condition is actually probably far worse than people are detecting now; that his mental impairment goes deeper and is far more pervasive than people can understand when they are untrained in psychological matters. And that the worst is yet to come.
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/07/worried-about-trumps-mental-stability-the-wo...
38margd
Opinion below is that psychiatrists who have lots to lose by speaking up can't save us from our election of a potentially dangerous person? Our lives are in hands of Mueller and Flynt providing impeachable case--and Congress acting on it; on Kelly and McMaster tackling a wouldbe Dr. Strangelove; on Pence and secretaries acting on the 25th amendment; (ETA) the inevitable outcome of steak/choco-cake/golfcarts/rage; 2020?!!?
Benjamin Franklin said about the newly minted Constitution, something like "I give it 300 years"...
Diagnosing Donald Trump, and His Voters
Masha Gessen | October 6, 2017
...Knowing what we know about Trump and what psychiatrists know about aggression, impulse control, and predictive behavior, we are all in mortal danger. He is the man with his finger on the nuclear button. Contributors to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” ask whether this creates a “duty to warn.” But the real question is, Should democracy allow a plurality of citizens to place the lives of an entire country in the hands of a madman? Crazy as this idea is, it’s not a question psychiatrists can answer.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/diagnosing-donald-trump
Benjamin Franklin said about the newly minted Constitution, something like "I give it 300 years"...
Diagnosing Donald Trump, and His Voters
Masha Gessen | October 6, 2017
...Knowing what we know about Trump and what psychiatrists know about aggression, impulse control, and predictive behavior, we are all in mortal danger. He is the man with his finger on the nuclear button. Contributors to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” ask whether this creates a “duty to warn.” But the real question is, Should democracy allow a plurality of citizens to place the lives of an entire country in the hands of a madman? Crazy as this idea is, it’s not a question psychiatrists can answer.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/diagnosing-donald-trump
39margd
Former Wharton Professor: "Donald Trump Was the Dumbest Goddam Student I Ever Had."
Frank DiPrima | Thursday Oct 12, 2017
Late Professor William T. Kelley taught Marketing at Wharton School of Business and Finance, University of Pennsylvania, for 31 years, ending with his retirement in 1982. Dr. Kelley, who also had vast experience as a business consultant, was the author of a then-widely used textbook called Marketing Intelligence -- The Management of Marketing Information (originally published by P. Staples, London, 1968). Dr. Kelley taught marketing management to both undergraduate and graduate students at Wharton. www.upenn.edu/… Dr. Bill was one of my closest friends for 47 years when we lost him at 94 about six years ago. Bill would have been 100 this year.
Donald J. Trump was an undergraduate student at Wharton for the latter two of his college years, having been graduated in 1968. www.thedp.com/…
Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades that “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.” I remember his emphasis and inflection — it went like this — “Donald Trump was the DUMBEST GODDAM student I EVER had.” Dr. Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity but long before he was considered a political figure. Dr. Kelley often referred to Trump’s arrogance when he told of this — that Trump came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything...
...Daily Pennsylvanian:
Another biographer, Gwenda Blair, wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer. The officer had known Trump’s older brother, Freddy.
Trump’s classmates doubt that the real estate mogul was an academic powerhouse.
“He was not in any kind of leadership. I certainly doubt he was the smartest guy in the class,” said Steve Perelman, a 1968 Wharton classmate and a former Daily Pennsylvanian news editor.
Some classmates speculated that Trump skipped class, others that he commuted to New York on weekends. . . .
* * *
1968 Wharton graduate Louis Calomaris recalled that “Don ... was loath to really study much.”
Calomaris said Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/12/1705902/-Former-Wharton-Professor-Do...
Frank DiPrima | Thursday Oct 12, 2017
Late Professor William T. Kelley taught Marketing at Wharton School of Business and Finance, University of Pennsylvania, for 31 years, ending with his retirement in 1982. Dr. Kelley, who also had vast experience as a business consultant, was the author of a then-widely used textbook called Marketing Intelligence -- The Management of Marketing Information (originally published by P. Staples, London, 1968). Dr. Kelley taught marketing management to both undergraduate and graduate students at Wharton. www.upenn.edu/… Dr. Bill was one of my closest friends for 47 years when we lost him at 94 about six years ago. Bill would have been 100 this year.
Donald J. Trump was an undergraduate student at Wharton for the latter two of his college years, having been graduated in 1968. www.thedp.com/…
Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades that “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.” I remember his emphasis and inflection — it went like this — “Donald Trump was the DUMBEST GODDAM student I EVER had.” Dr. Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity but long before he was considered a political figure. Dr. Kelley often referred to Trump’s arrogance when he told of this — that Trump came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything...
...Daily Pennsylvanian:
Another biographer, Gwenda Blair, wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer. The officer had known Trump’s older brother, Freddy.
Trump’s classmates doubt that the real estate mogul was an academic powerhouse.
“He was not in any kind of leadership. I certainly doubt he was the smartest guy in the class,” said Steve Perelman, a 1968 Wharton classmate and a former Daily Pennsylvanian news editor.
Some classmates speculated that Trump skipped class, others that he commuted to New York on weekends. . . .
* * *
1968 Wharton graduate Louis Calomaris recalled that “Don ... was loath to really study much.”
Calomaris said Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/12/1705902/-Former-Wharton-Professor-Do...
41barney67
wikipedia
The Goldwater rule is the informal name given to Section 7 in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Principles of Medical Ethics, which states it is unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion about public figures they have not examined in person, and from whom they have not obtained consent to discuss their mental health in public statement.
Section 7, which appeared in the first edition of the APA's Principles of Medical Ethics in 1973 and is still in effect as of 2017,8 says:
On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a stateme
The Goldwater rule is the informal name given to Section 7 in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Principles of Medical Ethics, which states it is unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion about public figures they have not examined in person, and from whom they have not obtained consent to discuss their mental health in public statement.
Section 7, which appeared in the first edition of the APA's Principles of Medical Ethics in 1973 and is still in effect as of 2017,8 says:
On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a stateme
42margd
Dogs (and children) don't like actively nasty, unhelpful, uncooperative people.
Trump family breaks with presidential pet tradition
Betsy Klein | October 21, 2017
...Trump lived with a poodle, Chappy, with his first wife, Ivana, who wrote in her memoir, "Raising Trump," that "Donald was not a dog fan."
...Chappy, she later said, "had an equal dislike of Donald." ...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/21/politics/donald-trump-presidential-pet/index.html
_________________________________________________________________
Why Does My Dog Like Some People and Not Others?
What makes a dog love or dislike you
Stanley Coren
...The process of watching individuals interact with each other is often referred to as “social eavesdropping.” People use it because it is a very useful means of gathering information about how others are likely to react without any real risk to the observer. This is helpful because it allows a person to “tune” their behavioural responses. The Japanese research team found that dogs eagerly watch people all of the time and use the information they gather to pick out which people are selfish and which are more generous...
...Fujita (Kyoto U)...one might also expect the dogs to prefer people who helped their owners over those who were neutral. The data, however, shows that they did not. Fujita attempted to explain this perplexing finding by suggesting that helping might be the standard expectation dogs have in social interactions. If this is the case then being helpful is what is considered “normal” by dogs and therefore helpful behaviour is nothing special. It is only when someone violates this standard of “doggie morality” that the dogs form a negative impression of that individual.
Interestingly, this very same thing is seen in human two- to three-year-old child. If you remember, the study referred to at the beginning of this article found that human children refused to help someone they saw acting in a nasty and uncooperative manner. However, there was another important finding in that study, namely that the children treated someone who acted helpfully the same way that they treated someone who acted in a neutral manner—just like the dogs.
It seems that both dogs and young children start out by believing that the world and the people who live in it are basically good, cooperative, and helpful. It is only when these expectations aren’t met that they change their attitudes toward specific people...
http://moderndogmagazine.com/articles/why-does-my-dog-some-people-and-not-others...
Trump family breaks with presidential pet tradition
Betsy Klein | October 21, 2017
...Trump lived with a poodle, Chappy, with his first wife, Ivana, who wrote in her memoir, "Raising Trump," that "Donald was not a dog fan."
...Chappy, she later said, "had an equal dislike of Donald." ...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/21/politics/donald-trump-presidential-pet/index.html
_________________________________________________________________
Why Does My Dog Like Some People and Not Others?
What makes a dog love or dislike you
Stanley Coren
...The process of watching individuals interact with each other is often referred to as “social eavesdropping.” People use it because it is a very useful means of gathering information about how others are likely to react without any real risk to the observer. This is helpful because it allows a person to “tune” their behavioural responses. The Japanese research team found that dogs eagerly watch people all of the time and use the information they gather to pick out which people are selfish and which are more generous...
...Fujita (Kyoto U)...one might also expect the dogs to prefer people who helped their owners over those who were neutral. The data, however, shows that they did not. Fujita attempted to explain this perplexing finding by suggesting that helping might be the standard expectation dogs have in social interactions. If this is the case then being helpful is what is considered “normal” by dogs and therefore helpful behaviour is nothing special. It is only when someone violates this standard of “doggie morality” that the dogs form a negative impression of that individual.
Interestingly, this very same thing is seen in human two- to three-year-old child. If you remember, the study referred to at the beginning of this article found that human children refused to help someone they saw acting in a nasty and uncooperative manner. However, there was another important finding in that study, namely that the children treated someone who acted helpfully the same way that they treated someone who acted in a neutral manner—just like the dogs.
It seems that both dogs and young children start out by believing that the world and the people who live in it are basically good, cooperative, and helpful. It is only when these expectations aren’t met that they change their attitudes toward specific people...
http://moderndogmagazine.com/articles/why-does-my-dog-some-people-and-not-others...
43margd
ETA: If nothing else, would that Republican and Democratic parties would commit to establish bipartisan panels of experts to certify physical & mental health and release of tax returns, before either entertains or supports a candidate in 2020 and beyond.
ETA________________________________________________________________________________
How Far Must Trump ‘Unravel’ Before the 25th Amendment Kicks In?
The constitutional amendment on presidential disabilities could pose a real threat to Trump. But that shouldn't give his opponents solace.
Matthew Kahn | October 23, 2017
...What makes the 25th Amendment of interest to Bannon — and a matter about which Trump should educate himself — is its remedy for presidential disability, especially Section 4, which creates a mechanism for forcibly removing a president who is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” but won’t admit it.
For anyone hoping for a panacean comment in the congressional record that would justify Trump’s removal, the actual history will disappoint.
The history of this provision does not give much by way of directive as to when a president is disabled enough to warrant the process it creates, much less the extent to which mental eccentricities rise to the level of a disability finding. Even less does it answer the question of whether such eccentricities are valid as disabilities when they were, as in Trump’s case, plainly evident at the time of election. But the history gives a great deal of insight into the scenarios of presidential deterioration that Congress feared and how those concerns led to the procedural instrument that Congress and the states ratified.
Most histories of the 25th Amendment begin in the moments after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, but concerns about presidential incapacity were evident more than a century before the shooting in Dallas.
President William Henry Harrison’s most notable legacy is his unfortunate death 41 days after taking the oath of office. His death precipitated the first crisis of presidential succession and disability. The constitutional provision then in effect left doubt about how and in what capacity the vice president took over for a dead president. Article 2, Section 1, Clause 6 (which the 25th Amendment later modified) said:
In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
That language does not make clear whether a president’s death caused the vice president to assume the presidency or merely take on the presidential powers in an acting capacity until a special election chose a successor. When Harrison died, Vice President John Tyler adopted the former interpretation and took the oath of office; to quell allegations that he’d usurped the presidency, Congress voted to back him shortly thereafter. The legislature agreed that the powers of the presidency are inextricable from the office of the president; under the Constitution, there could not be an acting president.
That understanding of succession worked when a president died, and it would have worked if a president was removed or resigned. But it was troublesome in the fourth scenario that Article II covered: disability. A 1964 House report captured the problem well: “The Tyler precedent … has served to cast doubt on the ability of an incapacitated president to resume the functions of his office” (Page 4). Tyler and the legislature did not have to consider the possibility that Harrison could be able to retake office. But that scenario arose less than half a century later.
President James Garfield spent 80 days severely ill from infection after being shot in July 1882. The president’s disability was reported in major newspapers. During that time, executive-branch functions ground to a halt. Herbert Brownell Jr. — attorney general to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and an important figure in the drafting of the 25th Amendment — would later testify to Congress that “the department heads transacted only such routine business as could be transacted without the President’s supervision, and it was claimed that important questions of public policy which could be decided only by the President were simply ignored” (Page 11). The vice president, Chester A. Arthur, refused to assume the powers of the presidency on his own during Garfield’s sickness — even though prominent academics argued at the time that the vice president had the sole discretion to declare a presidential disability. A congressional report later said that about 60 days into Garfield’s illness, his seven-member Cabinet thought it would be more prudent if Arthur acted as president. But four members firmly agreed that there was no way for Garfield to resume his office if Arthur took over. They agreed not to broach the subject further with Garfield or Arthur. The consequence for government was not lost on the media: The New York Times wrote on Aug. 15, 1881, that the paper thought the country urgently needed a mechanism for ensuring someone could exercise the presidential powers and believed “the lack of Congressional action in the past was a matter to be greatly deplored.” The president’s health declined for another month before he died on Sept. 19.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/23/how-far-must-trump-unravel-before-the-25th-a...
____________________________________________________________________
Impeachment Watch
An Idiot’s Guide to Running Trump Out of Office
Everyone is worried, to varying degrees, that the president is losing his marbles. But executing the 25th Amendment is even harder than impeachment. Buy-in from the family will be key.
T.A. Frank | Oct 18, 2017
...On the home front, Trump’s mental decline would be bad but not fatal, because the government would keep marching along. Abroad is where the trouble starts—that World War III business that Corker was mentioning...
...let’s assume that...moments of lucidity are the exception and that, behind the scenes, the president is losing his mind. Then even bigger challenges arise. Anything but a near-unanimous agreement that the president had to go would be wildly dangerous to the country. If Pence and a majority of Trump’s Cabinet were to set the palace coup in motion, Trump would surely fight it, requiring Congress to vote on the matter. Not only would a drawn-out struggle of this sort leave the United States vulnerable internationally; it would also divide the country as never before, perhaps to the point of armed conflict. The “deplorables” wouldn’t care what most of Trump’s Cabinet had to say, since only one of its members, Jeff Sessions, was ever seriously on board with Trumpist aims.
How, then, could the 25th Amendment be used in a way that even Trump’s supporters would accept? The answer lies in people as much as process. Since using the 25th Amendment against a conscious and semi-lucid president would require plotting and backstabbing, the betrayal would have to be blessed by those most loyal to Trump. That means family: Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Eric Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. Maybe even Tiffany. And it means loyal Trumpists: Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions (Miller’s former boss), and Steve Bannon.
Hey, perhaps that’s why Ivanka Trump hasn’t left town. Far from trying to take on a quiet role of mood stabilizer and shaper of family policy, she’s busy plotting a far-reaching conspiracy to oust the president. Jared, who is detested by Trumpists, will first leave town, to put some distance between himself and Ivanka. Then, during the months that follow, Ivanka will coordinate the dethroning. It happens just after the New Year.
...It’s probably better to pray for peace and focus on 2020.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/an-idiots-guide-to-running-trump-out-of-...
36-38 contd______________________________________________________________
Democrats Think Trump Is Mentally Ill and Are Contacting Psychologists to Help Remove Him From Office
Jason Le Miere | 10/24/17
...California Representative Jackie Speier, has contacted John Gartner, a former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins medical school and founder of Duty to Warn, her office confirmed to Newsweek Tuesday. A collection of mental health professionals, the political action committee has advocated for Trump’s removal under the 25th Amendment.
...Speier is not alone. Six Democrats, from both the House and Senate, have contacted Yale psychiatry professor Bandy Lee over recent months to discuss Trump’s mental state, BuzzFeed News reports. Lee is the editor of a book released this month titled The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. It features 27 psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health experts assessing the president’s state of mind.
They argue that the American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater Rule,” which prevents mental health professionals diagnosing public figures they have not examined, is superseded by a “moral and civic duty to warn” about a “dangerously madman.”...
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-mentally-ill-democrats-president-691927
ETA________________________________________________________________________________
How Far Must Trump ‘Unravel’ Before the 25th Amendment Kicks In?
The constitutional amendment on presidential disabilities could pose a real threat to Trump. But that shouldn't give his opponents solace.
Matthew Kahn | October 23, 2017
...What makes the 25th Amendment of interest to Bannon — and a matter about which Trump should educate himself — is its remedy for presidential disability, especially Section 4, which creates a mechanism for forcibly removing a president who is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” but won’t admit it.
For anyone hoping for a panacean comment in the congressional record that would justify Trump’s removal, the actual history will disappoint.
The history of this provision does not give much by way of directive as to when a president is disabled enough to warrant the process it creates, much less the extent to which mental eccentricities rise to the level of a disability finding. Even less does it answer the question of whether such eccentricities are valid as disabilities when they were, as in Trump’s case, plainly evident at the time of election. But the history gives a great deal of insight into the scenarios of presidential deterioration that Congress feared and how those concerns led to the procedural instrument that Congress and the states ratified.
Most histories of the 25th Amendment begin in the moments after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, but concerns about presidential incapacity were evident more than a century before the shooting in Dallas.
President William Henry Harrison’s most notable legacy is his unfortunate death 41 days after taking the oath of office. His death precipitated the first crisis of presidential succession and disability. The constitutional provision then in effect left doubt about how and in what capacity the vice president took over for a dead president. Article 2, Section 1, Clause 6 (which the 25th Amendment later modified) said:
In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
That language does not make clear whether a president’s death caused the vice president to assume the presidency or merely take on the presidential powers in an acting capacity until a special election chose a successor. When Harrison died, Vice President John Tyler adopted the former interpretation and took the oath of office; to quell allegations that he’d usurped the presidency, Congress voted to back him shortly thereafter. The legislature agreed that the powers of the presidency are inextricable from the office of the president; under the Constitution, there could not be an acting president.
That understanding of succession worked when a president died, and it would have worked if a president was removed or resigned. But it was troublesome in the fourth scenario that Article II covered: disability. A 1964 House report captured the problem well: “The Tyler precedent … has served to cast doubt on the ability of an incapacitated president to resume the functions of his office” (Page 4). Tyler and the legislature did not have to consider the possibility that Harrison could be able to retake office. But that scenario arose less than half a century later.
President James Garfield spent 80 days severely ill from infection after being shot in July 1882. The president’s disability was reported in major newspapers. During that time, executive-branch functions ground to a halt. Herbert Brownell Jr. — attorney general to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and an important figure in the drafting of the 25th Amendment — would later testify to Congress that “the department heads transacted only such routine business as could be transacted without the President’s supervision, and it was claimed that important questions of public policy which could be decided only by the President were simply ignored” (Page 11). The vice president, Chester A. Arthur, refused to assume the powers of the presidency on his own during Garfield’s sickness — even though prominent academics argued at the time that the vice president had the sole discretion to declare a presidential disability. A congressional report later said that about 60 days into Garfield’s illness, his seven-member Cabinet thought it would be more prudent if Arthur acted as president. But four members firmly agreed that there was no way for Garfield to resume his office if Arthur took over. They agreed not to broach the subject further with Garfield or Arthur. The consequence for government was not lost on the media: The New York Times wrote on Aug. 15, 1881, that the paper thought the country urgently needed a mechanism for ensuring someone could exercise the presidential powers and believed “the lack of Congressional action in the past was a matter to be greatly deplored.” The president’s health declined for another month before he died on Sept. 19.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/23/how-far-must-trump-unravel-before-the-25th-a...
____________________________________________________________________
Impeachment Watch
An Idiot’s Guide to Running Trump Out of Office
Everyone is worried, to varying degrees, that the president is losing his marbles. But executing the 25th Amendment is even harder than impeachment. Buy-in from the family will be key.
T.A. Frank | Oct 18, 2017
...On the home front, Trump’s mental decline would be bad but not fatal, because the government would keep marching along. Abroad is where the trouble starts—that World War III business that Corker was mentioning...
...let’s assume that...moments of lucidity are the exception and that, behind the scenes, the president is losing his mind. Then even bigger challenges arise. Anything but a near-unanimous agreement that the president had to go would be wildly dangerous to the country. If Pence and a majority of Trump’s Cabinet were to set the palace coup in motion, Trump would surely fight it, requiring Congress to vote on the matter. Not only would a drawn-out struggle of this sort leave the United States vulnerable internationally; it would also divide the country as never before, perhaps to the point of armed conflict. The “deplorables” wouldn’t care what most of Trump’s Cabinet had to say, since only one of its members, Jeff Sessions, was ever seriously on board with Trumpist aims.
How, then, could the 25th Amendment be used in a way that even Trump’s supporters would accept? The answer lies in people as much as process. Since using the 25th Amendment against a conscious and semi-lucid president would require plotting and backstabbing, the betrayal would have to be blessed by those most loyal to Trump. That means family: Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Eric Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. Maybe even Tiffany. And it means loyal Trumpists: Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions (Miller’s former boss), and Steve Bannon.
Hey, perhaps that’s why Ivanka Trump hasn’t left town. Far from trying to take on a quiet role of mood stabilizer and shaper of family policy, she’s busy plotting a far-reaching conspiracy to oust the president. Jared, who is detested by Trumpists, will first leave town, to put some distance between himself and Ivanka. Then, during the months that follow, Ivanka will coordinate the dethroning. It happens just after the New Year.
...It’s probably better to pray for peace and focus on 2020.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/an-idiots-guide-to-running-trump-out-of-...
36-38 contd______________________________________________________________
Democrats Think Trump Is Mentally Ill and Are Contacting Psychologists to Help Remove Him From Office
Jason Le Miere | 10/24/17
...California Representative Jackie Speier, has contacted John Gartner, a former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins medical school and founder of Duty to Warn, her office confirmed to Newsweek Tuesday. A collection of mental health professionals, the political action committee has advocated for Trump’s removal under the 25th Amendment.
...Speier is not alone. Six Democrats, from both the House and Senate, have contacted Yale psychiatry professor Bandy Lee over recent months to discuss Trump’s mental state, BuzzFeed News reports. Lee is the editor of a book released this month titled The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. It features 27 psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health experts assessing the president’s state of mind.
They argue that the American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater Rule,” which prevents mental health professionals diagnosing public figures they have not examined, is superseded by a “moral and civic duty to warn” about a “dangerously madman.”...
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-mentally-ill-democrats-president-691927
44margd
They always blame a 'remote' mother, eventually, for a child's misdeeds...
(This time is particularly and personally galling as Trump's mum is not only from same island in the Hebrides as some of my ancestors, she shares a surname with some of them. I and my horrified cousins trust that any common scrap of DNA has drifted away over subsequent generations!! Sounds like folks back in the Hebrides are similarly unenthused: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-tiny-scottish-village-that-spawned-trump/)
The mystery of Mary Trump
Donald Trump reveres his father but almost never talks about his mother. Why not?
Michael Kruse | 11/5/17
...Mary Trump, the Scottish-born mother of the US President who died in 2000, is reported to have been acutely embarrassed by the antics of her fourth child during the 1990s when his failing marriage and business were the subject of intense tabloid scrutiny.
...She and her husband had sent their fourth and most incorrigible child, who as a boy threw cake at kids at parties and erasers at his teachers at his private elementary school, first to Sunday morning Bible classes, like his siblings — and then, unlike his siblings, to a stringent military academy an hour and a half upstate shortly after he turned 13.
...Leonard Cruz is a psychiatrist in Asheville, North Carolina, and one of the editors of a recently published collection of essays, “A Clear and Present Danger: Narcissism in the Era of President Trump.” “From a child’s perspective,” he told me, “they’ve experienced the withdrawal of a mothering figure (Trump's mum nearly died after last pregnancy, was a a socialite). It might evoke ways of acting that are increasingly bombastic and attention-seeking. The child becomes almost exaggerated in the ways they try to court attention.” He paused. “I’m not speaking specifically about Donald Trump,” he said, “but boy … ”
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-the-mystery-of-mary-trump/
_____________________________________________________________________
Donald Trump's mother asked: 'What kind of son have I created?'
Caroline Mortimer, November 4, 2017
...Mr Trump is ... reluctant to talk about his mother.
Despite describing her as "fantastic" and “a homemaker" who "loved it" with a "great sense of pageantry", it is his father's picture which sits in the Oval Office – not hers.
Friends of the family have commented that Ms Trump always seem more distant from her family than her husband.
A childhood friend of Mr Trump recounted how Fred Trump "would be around and watch him play" but "his mom didn’t interact in that way".
A friend of Mr Trump’s older brother Fred Jr agreed that they "rarely" saw his mother but "did see a lot of the housekeeper".
Psychologists who are analysing the President behaviour have wondered whether his thin skin, need for praise and poor treatment of women – particularly those who stand up to him – stems from his relationship with his mother.
Prudence Gourguechon, from the American Psychoanalytic Association, told Politico: “I’m not talking specifically about any individual, including the president, or his mother”.
But she added that a solid relationship with an attentive mother builds up “the capacity to trust, a sense of security versus insecurity and knowing what’s real and what’s not real”.
She said: “Your mother helps you identify your feelings and develop a cognitive structure so you don’t have to act on them immediately. And I think it’s fair to say that the capacity for empathy develops through your maternal relationship.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-mother...
(This time is particularly and personally galling as Trump's mum is not only from same island in the Hebrides as some of my ancestors, she shares a surname with some of them. I and my horrified cousins trust that any common scrap of DNA has drifted away over subsequent generations!! Sounds like folks back in the Hebrides are similarly unenthused: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-tiny-scottish-village-that-spawned-trump/)
The mystery of Mary Trump
Donald Trump reveres his father but almost never talks about his mother. Why not?
Michael Kruse | 11/5/17
...Mary Trump, the Scottish-born mother of the US President who died in 2000, is reported to have been acutely embarrassed by the antics of her fourth child during the 1990s when his failing marriage and business were the subject of intense tabloid scrutiny.
...She and her husband had sent their fourth and most incorrigible child, who as a boy threw cake at kids at parties and erasers at his teachers at his private elementary school, first to Sunday morning Bible classes, like his siblings — and then, unlike his siblings, to a stringent military academy an hour and a half upstate shortly after he turned 13.
...Leonard Cruz is a psychiatrist in Asheville, North Carolina, and one of the editors of a recently published collection of essays, “A Clear and Present Danger: Narcissism in the Era of President Trump.” “From a child’s perspective,” he told me, “they’ve experienced the withdrawal of a mothering figure (Trump's mum nearly died after last pregnancy, was a a socialite). It might evoke ways of acting that are increasingly bombastic and attention-seeking. The child becomes almost exaggerated in the ways they try to court attention.” He paused. “I’m not speaking specifically about Donald Trump,” he said, “but boy … ”
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-the-mystery-of-mary-trump/
_____________________________________________________________________
Donald Trump's mother asked: 'What kind of son have I created?'
Caroline Mortimer, November 4, 2017
...Mr Trump is ... reluctant to talk about his mother.
Despite describing her as "fantastic" and “a homemaker" who "loved it" with a "great sense of pageantry", it is his father's picture which sits in the Oval Office – not hers.
Friends of the family have commented that Ms Trump always seem more distant from her family than her husband.
A childhood friend of Mr Trump recounted how Fred Trump "would be around and watch him play" but "his mom didn’t interact in that way".
A friend of Mr Trump’s older brother Fred Jr agreed that they "rarely" saw his mother but "did see a lot of the housekeeper".
Psychologists who are analysing the President behaviour have wondered whether his thin skin, need for praise and poor treatment of women – particularly those who stand up to him – stems from his relationship with his mother.
Prudence Gourguechon, from the American Psychoanalytic Association, told Politico: “I’m not talking specifically about any individual, including the president, or his mother”.
But she added that a solid relationship with an attentive mother builds up “the capacity to trust, a sense of security versus insecurity and knowing what’s real and what’s not real”.
She said: “Your mother helps you identify your feelings and develop a cognitive structure so you don’t have to act on them immediately. And I think it’s fair to say that the capacity for empathy develops through your maternal relationship.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-mother...
46margd
Santa Mueller, hurry down the chimney TONIGHT!!
Trump's behavior raises questions of competency
Stephen Collinson| November 29, 2017
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/29/politics/president-donald-trump-competency/index.h...
Trump's behavior raises questions of competency
Stephen Collinson| November 29, 2017
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/29/politics/president-donald-trump-competency/index.h...
47sturlington
>46 margd: This is the third news outlet I've seen directly raising the question of Trump's sanity today. It's certainly not helping my anxiety....
48sturlington
The self-destruction of American democracy: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/opinion/trump-putin-destruction-democracy.htm...
49margd
By headline I expected his face to droop! Didn't sound that bad to me--more like the exhaustion we've seen before. After all, at 71, he's had a busy week-- celebrating tax bonanza for rich guys, denying sex harassment, worrying about Russian investigations, decimating national monuments, and now sparking violence in Middle East... :(
Trump slurs his words in a public speech, sparking health concerns
Heather Timmons | December 06, 2017
...In the last 30 seconds of the speech, however, his pronunciation of some words seemed to slur. The last phrase was clearly mangled, as if he had a mouthful of marbles, or was maybe wearing a retainer...
https://qz.com/1149291/does-donald-trump-wear-dentures-slurs-in-a-public-speech-...
Trump slurs his words in a public speech, sparking health concerns
Heather Timmons | December 06, 2017
...In the last 30 seconds of the speech, however, his pronunciation of some words seemed to slur. The last phrase was clearly mangled, as if he had a mouthful of marbles, or was maybe wearing a retainer...
https://qz.com/1149291/does-donald-trump-wear-dentures-slurs-in-a-public-speech-...
50rastaphrog
>49 margd: To go along with that, there's this...
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/denturegate-dentist-says-trump-may-have-destroy...
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/denturegate-dentist-says-trump-may-have-destroy...
51Limelite
Words of considered warning and, IMO, a valid requirement that should be added to the president's annual physical. From now on. Legislative provisions will have to be passed addressing what recourse will be taken in the event that a president fails the MMSE (or equivalent) exam.
Until now, most of the focus has been on the president’s psychology. It’s now time to think of the president’s neurology — and the possibility of an organic brain disorder. -- Ford Vox, M.D., is a medical journalist and commentator who practices brain injury medicine in Atlanta.
52sturlington
USA Today: "A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/12/12/trump-lows-ever-hit-rock-botto...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/12/12/trump-lows-ever-hit-rock-botto...
53margd
Wow, someone's gonna lose invite to WH Christmas party!
Does make one wonder how country can survive next three years if no change...
Does make one wonder how country can survive next three years if no change...
54margd
Insecure, narcissistic, compromised(?), Prez leaves Russian threat unchecked:
Doubting the intelligence, Trump pursues Putin and leaves a Russian threat unchecked
Greg Miller, Greg Jaffe and Philip Rucker | Dec. 14, 2017
...the personal insecurities of the president — and his refusal to accept what even many in his administration regard as objective reality — have impaired the government’s response to a national security threat. The repercussions radiate across the government.
...(Trump's) daily intelligence update — known as the president’s daily brief, or PDB — is often structured to avoid upsetting him.
...others close to Trump explain his aversion to the intelligence findings in more psychological terms. The president, who burns with resentment over perceived disrespect from the Washington establishment, sees the Russia inquiry as a conspiracy to undermine his election accomplishment — “a witch hunt,” as he often calls it.
“If you say ‘Russian interference,’ to him it’s all about him,” said a senior Republican strategist who has discussed the matter with Trump’s confidants. “He judges everything as about him.”...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/donald-trum...
Doubting the intelligence, Trump pursues Putin and leaves a Russian threat unchecked
Greg Miller, Greg Jaffe and Philip Rucker | Dec. 14, 2017
...the personal insecurities of the president — and his refusal to accept what even many in his administration regard as objective reality — have impaired the government’s response to a national security threat. The repercussions radiate across the government.
...(Trump's) daily intelligence update — known as the president’s daily brief, or PDB — is often structured to avoid upsetting him.
...others close to Trump explain his aversion to the intelligence findings in more psychological terms. The president, who burns with resentment over perceived disrespect from the Washington establishment, sees the Russia inquiry as a conspiracy to undermine his election accomplishment — “a witch hunt,” as he often calls it.
“If you say ‘Russian interference,’ to him it’s all about him,” said a senior Republican strategist who has discussed the matter with Trump’s confidants. “He judges everything as about him.”...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/donald-trum...
55Limelite
Bombshell from Nicolle Wallace, former Republican politico, now MSNBC commentator has ". . .reported that her sources inside the White House tell her that Trump is increasingly delusional."
Wallace said that what she is hearing from inside the White House, “is that he increasingly projects a delusional version of himself to himself and his Twitter followers. . ."
SNIP
Eli Stokols of The Wall Street Journal added, “I’ve heard the word delusional from some folks as well.” Stokols added that there is no one in the administration to give the President a reality check, which means that the delusional president is running wild in the White House.
SNIP
Trump is increasingly making delusional statements about himself and his presidency in public. The President is not well, and it is past time for many in the media and the government to stop avoiding the discussion about Trump’s mental state and competency.
56RickHarsch
Without having read much in this thread for some time, reading that last thread I am inclined to say, but wasn't that precisely what was elected?
Perhaps some Bernie supporters voted for him knowing he could not last.
Perhaps some Bernie supporters voted for him knowing he could not last.
57Limelite
>56 RickHarsch: Perhaps some Bernie supporters were/are also delusional?
58RickHarsch
Not at first, probably, but that process was enough to make any idealist delusional.
59proximity1
>55 Limelite:
Big "news-flash"! LOL!
"Trump 'delusional.'" --unnamed insider Trump-associates, hearsay according to die-hard Trump opponents-- and, yes, these include Republicans and arch-"conservatives" in the MSM.
Somebody hold me! I think I may faint!
Sheesh!
Uhm. The Clintons were also delusional--both of them--and still are in ways that did and still do matter.
Same for the Obamas. The voters were consulted--it's called a "national presidential election" and they, for their various reasons, preferred Trump's delusions. That's their right and prerogative in a semi-functional kind-of sort-of democratically-based but corrupted electoral and political system; and there'll be another election in 2020. Use the time well!
60Limelite
When you pick yourself up off the floor, you'll realize that your biased view of the Clinton's in no way is comparable nor equates to the medical abnormality that Trump's WH sources are confirming is an increasingly alarming manifestation of their boss' psychological disintegration.
Or do you think this is just an anti-Trump conspiracy and "fake" news, propagated by some miraculous deception achieved by Democrats somehow insinuated into his staff -- the source of the reports? Riiiight.
Or perhaps, you're trying to defend your own vote by saying "they" preferred Trump's delusions over Clinton's qualifications for president. Sad. Trump received millions fewer votes than she did. Millions fewer. Millions. So, you lie. However, corrupt Republican gerrymandering of states led to the creation of many districts where it was and still is impossible for Democrats to prevail where once they held sway when districts weren't shaped like geckos. Through gerrymandering, Trump managed an Electoral College decision but never a popular vote win.
And yet -- in LA, VA and in AL, in OK and in GA, just to name a few Red state legislatures -- Democrats Resisted and persisted, electing, Sikhs, transgender women, black women where none had been elected before. Portentous?
Perhaps you're someone who denies the Russian interference in the elections engineered a Clinton defeat with the cooperation of Trump, his family, and his campaign officials? Perhaps you think Robert Mueller has nothing, that the indictments and guilty pleas and the many still sealed indictments just mean "There's no collusion!" like Trump believes? No. . .that would be delusional.
Consider this: A team of 100 inventive liars could not keep pace with Trump's individual lies, deceptions, propaganda fictions, self-aggrandizing claims, and repetition of CTs sourced from the lunatic fringe like Info-Wars and personalities on Fox TV.
Oh, and there's another election in 11 months that may effectively neuter the present Oval Office Occupant. Figuratively, of course.
Which would be worse -- that he's only "crazy" (vernacular, not medical terminology), or that he's thoroughly criminal? How about both?
Or do you think this is just an anti-Trump conspiracy and "fake" news, propagated by some miraculous deception achieved by Democrats somehow insinuated into his staff -- the source of the reports? Riiiight.
Or perhaps, you're trying to defend your own vote by saying "they" preferred Trump's delusions over Clinton's qualifications for president. Sad. Trump received millions fewer votes than she did. Millions fewer. Millions. So, you lie. However, corrupt Republican gerrymandering of states led to the creation of many districts where it was and still is impossible for Democrats to prevail where once they held sway when districts weren't shaped like geckos. Through gerrymandering, Trump managed an Electoral College decision but never a popular vote win.
And yet -- in LA, VA and in AL, in OK and in GA, just to name a few Red state legislatures -- Democrats Resisted and persisted, electing, Sikhs, transgender women, black women where none had been elected before. Portentous?
Perhaps you're someone who denies the Russian interference in the elections engineered a Clinton defeat with the cooperation of Trump, his family, and his campaign officials? Perhaps you think Robert Mueller has nothing, that the indictments and guilty pleas and the many still sealed indictments just mean "There's no collusion!" like Trump believes? No. . .that would be delusional.
Consider this: A team of 100 inventive liars could not keep pace with Trump's individual lies, deceptions, propaganda fictions, self-aggrandizing claims, and repetition of CTs sourced from the lunatic fringe like Info-Wars and personalities on Fox TV.
Oh, and there's another election in 11 months that may effectively neuter the present Oval Office Occupant. Figuratively, of course.
Which would be worse -- that he's only "crazy" (vernacular, not medical terminology), or that he's thoroughly criminal? How about both?
61proximity1
>60 Limelite:
"Or perhaps, you're trying to defend your own vote by saying "they" preferred Trump's delusions over Clinton's qualifications for president. Sad. Trump received millions fewer votes than she did. Millions fewer. Millions. So, you lie. However, corrupt Republican gerrymandering of states led to the creation of many districts where it was and still is impossible for Democrats to prevail where once they held sway when districts weren't shaped like geckos. Through gerrymandering, Trump managed an Electoral College decision but never a popular vote win."
The presidential election is not, unfortunately, decided by a simple majority vote tallied nationally--werre it by such a design, all the Gerry-mandering in the world of Congressional districts' boundaries could not, by itself, provide an advantage to one party over another.
However, the EC gives each state electoral votes in a manner the defeats the principle of one voter, one equally-valued vote.
Clinton, however, knew this going in and did not then --OR EVER MAKE AN ISSUE OF IT. Why not? My view is that, as long as she delusionally saw herself as the "shoo-in" sure winner, she really didn't give a fuck about the inherent anti-democratic character of the electoral processes.
It's rather late in the day to complain that these circumstances helped Trump secure a non-democratic electoral victory over Clinton.
So-called liberal and leftists have undermined their case against such an unfair democratic electoral system when they demonstrate unambiguously that they do not really respect even the semi-democratic system's results that we have--preferring instead to see these viciously violated and overturned out of sheer losers' spite.
You should'a thought ahead. Instead, so-called liberal and leftists tried to game the system by presenting what they thought was a race so repugnant that no one could dare call their bluff and vote against Clinton. They were wrong about that.
Cry me fucking river.
RE:
"Perhaps you're someone who denies the Russian interference in the elections engineered a Clinton defeat with the cooperation of Trump, his family, and his campaign officials?"
Even the then-thoroughly-corrupt Obama "Justice" Dept. admitted that there was no basis for the belief that Russia--as a government--or Russians, acting alone or in concert, actually altered or influenced the election's outcome in any significant way. So, indeed, I, along with the Obama Justice Dept. do deny that, yes.
"Perhaps you think Robert Mueller has nothing, that the indictments and guilty pleas and the many still sealed indictments just mean "There's no collusion!" like Trump believes?
Right again. If Mueller were playing poker, his best move would be to fold--a good while back. He's hold bullshit for cards and the rest of the table knows it. Indeed, as for collusion, it was rampant---inthe Clinton primary and general election campaigns.
What, which "many sealed indictments"?
"Or perhaps, you're trying to defend your own vote by saying "they" preferred Trump's delusions over Clinton's qualifications for president. Sad. Trump received millions fewer votes than she did. Millions fewer. Millions. So, you lie. However, corrupt Republican gerrymandering of states led to the creation of many districts where it was and still is impossible for Democrats to prevail where once they held sway when districts weren't shaped like geckos. Through gerrymandering, Trump managed an Electoral College decision but never a popular vote win."
The presidential election is not, unfortunately, decided by a simple majority vote tallied nationally--werre it by such a design, all the Gerry-mandering in the world of Congressional districts' boundaries could not, by itself, provide an advantage to one party over another.
However, the EC gives each state electoral votes in a manner the defeats the principle of one voter, one equally-valued vote.
Clinton, however, knew this going in and did not then --OR EVER MAKE AN ISSUE OF IT. Why not? My view is that, as long as she delusionally saw herself as the "shoo-in" sure winner, she really didn't give a fuck about the inherent anti-democratic character of the electoral processes.
It's rather late in the day to complain that these circumstances helped Trump secure a non-democratic electoral victory over Clinton.
So-called liberal and leftists have undermined their case against such an unfair democratic electoral system when they demonstrate unambiguously that they do not really respect even the semi-democratic system's results that we have--preferring instead to see these viciously violated and overturned out of sheer losers' spite.
You should'a thought ahead. Instead, so-called liberal and leftists tried to game the system by presenting what they thought was a race so repugnant that no one could dare call their bluff and vote against Clinton. They were wrong about that.
Cry me fucking river.
RE:
"Perhaps you're someone who denies the Russian interference in the elections engineered a Clinton defeat with the cooperation of Trump, his family, and his campaign officials?"
Even the then-thoroughly-corrupt Obama "Justice" Dept. admitted that there was no basis for the belief that Russia--as a government--or Russians, acting alone or in concert, actually altered or influenced the election's outcome in any significant way. So, indeed, I, along with the Obama Justice Dept. do deny that, yes.
"Perhaps you think Robert Mueller has nothing, that the indictments and guilty pleas and the many still sealed indictments just mean "There's no collusion!" like Trump believes?
Right again. If Mueller were playing poker, his best move would be to fold--a good while back. He's hold bullshit for cards and the rest of the table knows it. Indeed, as for collusion, it was rampant---inthe Clinton primary and general election campaigns.
What, which "many sealed indictments"?
62Limelite
Indictments usually mean a lengthy investigation. The indication is Flynn's plea deal and the fact that Rrump tried so hard to shield him. Flynn did not get a plea deal based on any confession; he got the deal he got because he's spilled the goods and has agreed to testify: against Trump, his family, and the campaign operatives.
As a result, we know Jared Kushner & Trump, Jr., have lied to the FBI and colluded with Russia to undermine Clinton. We also know that the thoroughly uncorrupt Obama Justice Dept. did not know then what we know now regarding collusion; they did know and informed the newly elected Trump that Flynn was compromised, yet the thoroughly corrupt Trump justice Dept., headed by thoroughly corrupt Sessions lied to Congress (3 times) and (he, Flynn, Trump family members) lied to the FBI about knowledge of meetings with Russians in Trump Tower to get dirt illegally. We know this, and more, because of the Mueller Russia investigation.
And we know that -- and you forget -- that the contractor that produced the Steele dossier was initially hired by the Trump campaign to get Clinton oppo. We know that Hillary later utilized that contractor to LEGALLY get oppo on Trump. The Steele Dossier exists; so far, everything that it alleges that has been examined in Congressional investigation committees, has proven to be true. We know of Flynn's explicit promises to the Russians that the Trump administration would lift sanctions as quid pro quo for Clinton dirt. Big crime, that one. Fortunately, Republican controlled Congress cut the corrupt president off at the knees and passed legislation that prevented him from fulfilling that promi Just the tip of the iceberg of what we know about what Mueller knows, and he knows vastly more.
Spwaking of icebergs. . .We know about Manafort/Trump family (Kushner) money laundering. His bank fraud, his investors fraud, is being brought to light. Ivanka's diamond business (in the news today), Trump and dealings with drug cartel criminals, Trump and Kazakh and Ukranian oligarch real estate partners. Trump and Just do a Google search. Start here to see how far-reaching Mueller's and other FBI investigations are. Mueller isn't working in a vacuum.
Mueller has emails, computers, cell phones (BTW, all obtained legally), tax records, and financial records from Deutsche Bank the only major int'l. bank that still does business with the self-procalimed King of (BAD) Debt, in spite of Trump's corrupt lawyers who lied and said that hadn't happened. Deutsche bank had to. It was subpoenaed by Mueller.
That's the purpose of investigation -- to discover what crimes were committed that the criminals attempted to cover up. Unfortunately, stupidity is genetic and has been inherited in the Trump family. Apparently, it also rubs off, since so many in the campaign and administration have lied to the FBI. An aphorism to believe in: Lawyers don't ask witnesses questions they dont already know the answer to.
I know this is a lot of factual evidence, substantiated reporting, credibly sourced material, and outright testimony for you to digest. But no, Clinton is not a criminal. There are no conspiracies by Democrats who are "out to get" Trump. Sorry, Kellyanne Conway, Miss Hatch Act Violator of 2017. On the other hand, America has never had a president of the caliber of criminality and corruption that we already know this Administration is involved in and guilty of. Not even Nixon comes close.
As a result, we know Jared Kushner & Trump, Jr., have lied to the FBI and colluded with Russia to undermine Clinton. We also know that the thoroughly uncorrupt Obama Justice Dept. did not know then what we know now regarding collusion; they did know and informed the newly elected Trump that Flynn was compromised, yet the thoroughly corrupt Trump justice Dept., headed by thoroughly corrupt Sessions lied to Congress (3 times) and (he, Flynn, Trump family members) lied to the FBI about knowledge of meetings with Russians in Trump Tower to get dirt illegally. We know this, and more, because of the Mueller Russia investigation.
And we know that -- and you forget -- that the contractor that produced the Steele dossier was initially hired by the Trump campaign to get Clinton oppo. We know that Hillary later utilized that contractor to LEGALLY get oppo on Trump. The Steele Dossier exists; so far, everything that it alleges that has been examined in Congressional investigation committees, has proven to be true. We know of Flynn's explicit promises to the Russians that the Trump administration would lift sanctions as quid pro quo for Clinton dirt. Big crime, that one. Fortunately, Republican controlled Congress cut the corrupt president off at the knees and passed legislation that prevented him from fulfilling that promi Just the tip of the iceberg of what we know about what Mueller knows, and he knows vastly more.
Spwaking of icebergs. . .We know about Manafort/Trump family (Kushner) money laundering. His bank fraud, his investors fraud, is being brought to light. Ivanka's diamond business (in the news today), Trump and dealings with drug cartel criminals, Trump and Kazakh and Ukranian oligarch real estate partners. Trump and Just do a Google search. Start here to see how far-reaching Mueller's and other FBI investigations are. Mueller isn't working in a vacuum.
Mueller has emails, computers, cell phones (BTW, all obtained legally), tax records, and financial records from Deutsche Bank the only major int'l. bank that still does business with the self-procalimed King of (BAD) Debt, in spite of Trump's corrupt lawyers who lied and said that hadn't happened. Deutsche bank had to. It was subpoenaed by Mueller.
That's the purpose of investigation -- to discover what crimes were committed that the criminals attempted to cover up. Unfortunately, stupidity is genetic and has been inherited in the Trump family. Apparently, it also rubs off, since so many in the campaign and administration have lied to the FBI. An aphorism to believe in: Lawyers don't ask witnesses questions they dont already know the answer to.
I know this is a lot of factual evidence, substantiated reporting, credibly sourced material, and outright testimony for you to digest. But no, Clinton is not a criminal. There are no conspiracies by Democrats who are "out to get" Trump. Sorry, Kellyanne Conway, Miss Hatch Act Violator of 2017. On the other hand, America has never had a president of the caliber of criminality and corruption that we already know this Administration is involved in and guilty of. Not even Nixon comes close.
63margd
You're a mean one, Mr. Trump! (This level of mean must surely secure him diagnosis of 'mentally ill'.)
Facing multiple famines (some of which US contributes to), celebrating an estimated $11 million in personal tax cuts, Trump chooses Christmas Eve to announce a 16% cut in 2018 UNICEF's 2018 budget. (Also eliminated funding for UN climate change programs. Earlier reduced UN peacekeeping budget by $600 million.):
President Trump Cuts Funding To U.N. After Israel Vote
Nicole Goodkind | 12/25/17
Updated | The U.S. will cut its 2018 contribution to the United Nations by $285 million—nearly 25 percent—an announcement that comes days after more than 120 nations criticized the United States for its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
...President Trump's proposed 2018 spending budget would end funding for U.N. climate change programs and would cut funding to the United Nations Children’s Fund, also known as UNICEF, by 16 percent.
...All 193 members of the United Nations are required to make payments as a part of their membership, but amount each country must pay differs and is calculated by a formula that factors in population and gross national income. The U.S. currently funds about 22 percent of the UN’s $5.4 billion annual budget.
Members may also make voluntary contributions and programs like UNICEF and the World Food Program are funded entirely by this discretionary funding.
The State Department provides funding to the U.N. and, as such, follows the president's instructions. The federal departments of Agriculture, Energy, and Health and Human Services provide additional funding for specific U.N. programs with help from Congress.
The U.N. peacekeeping budget was reduced by $600 million earlier this year after Trump pressured cuts. The president and Haley also threatened to cut off funding to any country that voted in favor of a draft resolution that asked the United States to reverse its Jerusalem decision...
http://www.newsweek.com/united-nations-donald-trump-nikki-haley-jerusalem-fundin...
Facing multiple famines (some of which US contributes to), celebrating an estimated $11 million in personal tax cuts, Trump chooses Christmas Eve to announce a 16% cut in 2018 UNICEF's 2018 budget. (Also eliminated funding for UN climate change programs. Earlier reduced UN peacekeeping budget by $600 million.):
President Trump Cuts Funding To U.N. After Israel Vote
Nicole Goodkind | 12/25/17
Updated | The U.S. will cut its 2018 contribution to the United Nations by $285 million—nearly 25 percent—an announcement that comes days after more than 120 nations criticized the United States for its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
...President Trump's proposed 2018 spending budget would end funding for U.N. climate change programs and would cut funding to the United Nations Children’s Fund, also known as UNICEF, by 16 percent.
...All 193 members of the United Nations are required to make payments as a part of their membership, but amount each country must pay differs and is calculated by a formula that factors in population and gross national income. The U.S. currently funds about 22 percent of the UN’s $5.4 billion annual budget.
Members may also make voluntary contributions and programs like UNICEF and the World Food Program are funded entirely by this discretionary funding.
The State Department provides funding to the U.N. and, as such, follows the president's instructions. The federal departments of Agriculture, Energy, and Health and Human Services provide additional funding for specific U.N. programs with help from Congress.
The U.N. peacekeeping budget was reduced by $600 million earlier this year after Trump pressured cuts. The president and Haley also threatened to cut off funding to any country that voted in favor of a draft resolution that asked the United States to reverse its Jerusalem decision...
http://www.newsweek.com/united-nations-donald-trump-nikki-haley-jerusalem-fundin...
64margd
Can you imagine UK worrying about how Clinton, Bush, Obama or ANY OTHER US President might react under similar circumstances??
Prince Harry sidesteps wedding guest list controversy
Laura Smith Spark | December 27, 2017
...There has been speculation in the UK media that the White House might take offense if (Prince Harry and Meghan Markle) decide to invite Barack and Michelle Obama, with whom they are friends, but not President Donald Trump...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/27/europe/prince-harry-meghan-markle-wedding-guest-li...
Prince Harry sidesteps wedding guest list controversy
Laura Smith Spark | December 27, 2017
...There has been speculation in the UK media that the White House might take offense if (Prince Harry and Meghan Markle) decide to invite Barack and Michelle Obama, with whom they are friends, but not President Donald Trump...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/27/europe/prince-harry-meghan-markle-wedding-guest-li...
65margd
North Korea my-button-is-bigger brinkmanship again spotlights Trump’s fixation on size
James Hohmann | January 3, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/01/03/daily-...
66sturlington
>65 margd: It's hard to believe that we can still be shocked, but this shocked me.
“Eliot A. Cohen, who was counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice under President George W. Bush, said the tweet demonstrated an immaturity that is dangerous in a commander in chief. ‘Spoken like a petulant ten year old,’ Mr. Cohen wrote on Twitter. ‘But one with nuclear weapons—for real—at his disposal. How responsible people around him, or supporting him, can dismiss this or laugh it off is beyond me.’”
What is even scarier is that his supporters will continue to support him, and there are so many Congresspeople who seem willfully blind to the danger he presents.
“Eliot A. Cohen, who was counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice under President George W. Bush, said the tweet demonstrated an immaturity that is dangerous in a commander in chief. ‘Spoken like a petulant ten year old,’ Mr. Cohen wrote on Twitter. ‘But one with nuclear weapons—for real—at his disposal. How responsible people around him, or supporting him, can dismiss this or laugh it off is beyond me.’”
What is even scarier is that his supporters will continue to support him, and there are so many Congresspeople who seem willfully blind to the danger he presents.
67sturlington
Also CNN media reporter Brian Stelter wrote this morning in his newsletter: “There's a word for this. Madness. This is madness. Fresh off his holiday vacation, President Trump tweeted sixteen times on Tuesday, veering from complaints about the NYT to calls for the jailing of political opponents to threats of nuclear war. Several of his posts were pretty clearly provoked by cable news segments. As Jake Tapper said: ‘None of this normal, none of this acceptable, none of this frankly STABLE behavior.’ We're once again confronted by questions about the president's fitness. Questions about his health. It's uncomfortable. But it is incumbent on journalists to ask these questions and report out the answers.”
68Limelite
Joe Biden's vapid response to the tweet, "un-presidential," doesn't begin to describe it. Any cowboy would at least say that the last time Trump tapped himself on the forehead, it "knocked him dumber than normal."
Everything about being president is just a pissing contest to Trump.
Everything about being president is just a pissing contest to Trump.
69Limelite
If the article below is true, confirms mental derangement in the president.
Anonymous Tipster Sounds Like Trump
Anonymous Tipster Sounds Like Trump
70margd
With presidential candidates getting ever-older, it is time to screen for capability.
Maybe take a page from Vatican also, and not nominate a person who would turn (80?) within four-year term, e.g., Joe Biden, (Bernie Sanders?)
Is Something Neurologically Wrong With Donald Trump?
James Hamblin | Jan 3, 2018
...Today, even the country’s missileers—whose job is to sit in bunkers and await a signal—are tested three times per month on their ability to execute protocols. They are required to score at least 90 percent. Testing is not required for their commander in chief to be able to execute a protocol, much less testing to execute the sort of high-level decision that would set this process in motion.
...After Reagan’s diagnosis, former President Jimmy Carter sounded an alarm over the lack of a system to detect this sort of cognitive impairment earlier on. “Many people have called to my attention the continuing danger to our nation from the possibility of a U.S. president becoming disabled, particularly by a neurologic illness,” Carter wrote in 1994 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “The great weakness of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment is its provision for determining disability in the event that the president is unable or unwilling to certify to impairment or disability.”
...Carter called on “the medical community” to take leadership in creating an objective, minimally biased process—to “awaken the public and political leaders of our nation to the importance of this problem.”
More than two decades later, that has not happened. But questions and concern around Trump’s psychiatric status have spurred proposals anew. In December, also in the Journal of the American Medical Association, mental-health professionals proposed a seven-member expert panel “to evaluate presidential fitness.” Last April, representative Jamie Raskin introduced a bill that would create an 11-member “presidential capacity” commission...
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/trump-cog-decline/548759/
Maybe take a page from Vatican also, and not nominate a person who would turn (80?) within four-year term, e.g., Joe Biden, (Bernie Sanders?)
Is Something Neurologically Wrong With Donald Trump?
James Hamblin | Jan 3, 2018
...Today, even the country’s missileers—whose job is to sit in bunkers and await a signal—are tested three times per month on their ability to execute protocols. They are required to score at least 90 percent. Testing is not required for their commander in chief to be able to execute a protocol, much less testing to execute the sort of high-level decision that would set this process in motion.
...After Reagan’s diagnosis, former President Jimmy Carter sounded an alarm over the lack of a system to detect this sort of cognitive impairment earlier on. “Many people have called to my attention the continuing danger to our nation from the possibility of a U.S. president becoming disabled, particularly by a neurologic illness,” Carter wrote in 1994 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “The great weakness of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment is its provision for determining disability in the event that the president is unable or unwilling to certify to impairment or disability.”
...Carter called on “the medical community” to take leadership in creating an objective, minimally biased process—to “awaken the public and political leaders of our nation to the importance of this problem.”
More than two decades later, that has not happened. But questions and concern around Trump’s psychiatric status have spurred proposals anew. In December, also in the Journal of the American Medical Association, mental-health professionals proposed a seven-member expert panel “to evaluate presidential fitness.” Last April, representative Jamie Raskin introduced a bill that would create an 11-member “presidential capacity” commission...
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/trump-cog-decline/548759/
71proximity1
>69 Limelite:
And, that innuendo, if not true, if false--as so much of the ginned-up gossip by Trump agonistes is--then does it "confirm the mental derangement" in the lynch-mob bent on ousting Trump from office?
72margd
Yale psychiatrist briefed members of Congress on Trump's mental fitness
Sunlen Serfaty and Ryan Nobles | January 5, 2018
A dozen lawmakers from the House and Senate received a briefing from Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee on Capitol Hill in early December (5,6) about President Donald Trump's fitness to be president -- and Lee has been asked to speak with additional lawmakers, worried about the President's mental state, later this month.
"Lawmakers were saying they have been very concerned about this, the President's dangerousness, the dangers that his mental instability poses on the nation...They know the concern is universal among Democrats, but it really depends on Republicans, they said. Some knew of Republicans that were concerned, maybe equally concerned, but whether they would act on those concerns was their worry."
...the group was evenly mixed -- with House and Senate lawmakers. And included at least one Republican -- a senator, whom she would not name.
...Lee made it clear that she is not in a position to diagnose the President, or any public figure, from afar. But she said that it is incumbent on medical professionals to intervene in instances where there is a danger to an individual or the public. She argues that signs the President has exhibited have risen to that level of danger.
...Lee provided them a briefing based on her book on the subject. Dr. James Gilligan -- another psychiatrist -- an expert on studying and predicting violence, also made a presentation.
"Mr. Trump is showing signs of impairment that the average person could not see," Lee said. "He is becoming very unstable very quickly. There is a need for neuropsychiatric evaluation that would demonstrate his capacity to serve."
...Lee is scheduled to hold another briefing at the home of Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro later this month with lawmakers on the same topic and is also scheduled to speak at Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin's town hall in Maryland this month as well. Raskin has introduced a bill called the "Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity Act," which would use the 25th Amendment of the Constitution to create a "body" to determine whether the President is unable to execute the powers and duties of his office.
..."As he is unraveling he seems to be losing his grip on reality and reverting to conspiracy theories," (Lee) said. "There are signs that he is going into attack mode when he is under stress. That means he has the potential to become impulsive and very volatile."
Specifically, Lee pointed to Trump's verbal aggressiveness and his boasting about sexual assault on the Access Hollywood tape that was revealed during the campaign. She accused the President of inciting violence at his rallies, and having an "attraction" to powerful weapons. Lee said his threats to ramp up military action and the taunting an unstable leader in North Korean Leader Kim Jung Un are all signs of the President being on the verge of a psychotic breakdown.
..."I am uninterested in partisan politics, I have never registered for a political party," she said. "Ideology doesn't interest me."
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/04/politics/psychiatrist-congress-meeting-trump/index...
Sunlen Serfaty and Ryan Nobles | January 5, 2018
A dozen lawmakers from the House and Senate received a briefing from Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee on Capitol Hill in early December (5,6) about President Donald Trump's fitness to be president -- and Lee has been asked to speak with additional lawmakers, worried about the President's mental state, later this month.
"Lawmakers were saying they have been very concerned about this, the President's dangerousness, the dangers that his mental instability poses on the nation...They know the concern is universal among Democrats, but it really depends on Republicans, they said. Some knew of Republicans that were concerned, maybe equally concerned, but whether they would act on those concerns was their worry."
...the group was evenly mixed -- with House and Senate lawmakers. And included at least one Republican -- a senator, whom she would not name.
...Lee made it clear that she is not in a position to diagnose the President, or any public figure, from afar. But she said that it is incumbent on medical professionals to intervene in instances where there is a danger to an individual or the public. She argues that signs the President has exhibited have risen to that level of danger.
...Lee provided them a briefing based on her book on the subject. Dr. James Gilligan -- another psychiatrist -- an expert on studying and predicting violence, also made a presentation.
"Mr. Trump is showing signs of impairment that the average person could not see," Lee said. "He is becoming very unstable very quickly. There is a need for neuropsychiatric evaluation that would demonstrate his capacity to serve."
...Lee is scheduled to hold another briefing at the home of Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro later this month with lawmakers on the same topic and is also scheduled to speak at Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin's town hall in Maryland this month as well. Raskin has introduced a bill called the "Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity Act," which would use the 25th Amendment of the Constitution to create a "body" to determine whether the President is unable to execute the powers and duties of his office.
..."As he is unraveling he seems to be losing his grip on reality and reverting to conspiracy theories," (Lee) said. "There are signs that he is going into attack mode when he is under stress. That means he has the potential to become impulsive and very volatile."
Specifically, Lee pointed to Trump's verbal aggressiveness and his boasting about sexual assault on the Access Hollywood tape that was revealed during the campaign. She accused the President of inciting violence at his rallies, and having an "attraction" to powerful weapons. Lee said his threats to ramp up military action and the taunting an unstable leader in North Korean Leader Kim Jung Un are all signs of the President being on the verge of a psychotic breakdown.
..."I am uninterested in partisan politics, I have never registered for a political party," she said. "Ideology doesn't interest me."
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/04/politics/psychiatrist-congress-meeting-trump/index...
73RickHarsch
This is an excellent thread, yet in that it is devoted to finding objective support for what any honest, sane adult of medium intelligence knows to be true, it leaves itself open for a great deal of nonsense from those benighted, nay: lost, souls who are rapidly sliding into dementia by association. I take it to be a truism that one cannot, for example, continually champion a liar without becoming dishonest; cover for the corrupt without becoming corrupt; disguise madness without becoming mad.
74sturlington
Listening to Michael Wolff on NPR last night was terrifying. But it's also revealing (although perhaps not that surprising) that the Trumps didn't want to win nor did they expect to. So all of his sycophantic supporters rushing to the defense of the indefensible are doing so for a guy who never wanted to be their president.
75margd
If Dems do regain control of House and Senate, I wonder if a non-biased mechanism to evaluate capacity would be a priority? Any subsequent action under 25th Amendment would have to be initiated by VP and Trump-appointees, so wouldn't be a partisan act.
I don't like Pence one bit, but I don't doubt his mental stability. One mad king was enough for the US--it shouldn't have to risk lives for the next three years.
ETA____________________________________________________
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump:
Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.....
7:19 AM - Jan 6, 2018
....Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star.....
7:27 AM - Jan 6, 2018
.......to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!
7:30 AM - Jan 6, 2018
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-insists-he-very-stable-geniu...
ETA____________________________________________________
Washington's growing obsession: The 25th Amendment
Lawmakers concerned about Trump's mental health invited a Yale psychiatry professor to brief them in December.
ANNIE KARNI | 01/03/2018
...“The tendency was anti-alarmism among Republicans,” said Bill Kristol, editor at large of The Weekly Standard and one of Washington’s leading conservative voices.
That made Trump’s sudden fit of saber-rattling (button-size tweet) “more jolting,” according to Kristol — and it reopened the national conversation about the president’s mental stability. “I was focused on Iran, and talking to people in the administration about serious policy,” Kristol added, “and then to see in the middle of what might be a serious policymaking process, Trump’s just flipping out.”
On Wednesday, Kristol tweeted: “I trust @VP has asked his Counsel to prepare a draft document transferring power in accord with Sec. 4 of 25th Amendment in case it’s suddenly needed, & that he’s discussed this with COS Kelly.”
...Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, tweeted on Tuesday of the president’s comments about North Korea, “This Tweet alone is grounds for removal from office under the 25th Amendment. This man should not have nukes.”
...On Wednesday, (Yale University psychiatry professor Dr. Bandy X. Lee, editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” which includes testimonials from 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assessing the president’s level of “dangerousness”) and two other medical professionals released a statement following Trump’s late night Tweet baiting Kim Jung Un into a potential nuclear war. “We write as mental health professionals who have been deeply concerned about Donald Trump’s psychological aberrations,” the statement read.
“We believe that he is now further unraveling in ways that contribute to his belligerent nuclear threats. ... We urge that those around him, and our elected representatives in general, take urgent steps to restrain his behavior and head off the potential nuclear catastrophe that endangers not only Korea and the United States but all of humankind.” The statement, released on behalf of the National Coalition of Concerned Mental Health Experts, was signed by more than 100 medical professionals.
...Some Trump allies have begun to worry about the conversation gaining steam. After The New York Times reported last November that Trump was denying the veracity of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape — which he had previously acknowledged and apologized for — one former campaign aide called the story a “shot across the bow to invoke the 25th Amendment.”
Trump allies outside the administration also expressed concern that the president was left unstaffed during his Mar-a-Lago vacation last week — when he sat for an interview with The New York Times that was not planned for or cleared with his top aides. “Why was he there with no senior staff?” said one former aide. “It’s like he has nothing to do with running the government.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/03/trump-25th-amendment-mental-health-322...
ETA________________________________________________________________
Trump’s New York Times Interview Is a Portrait of a Man in Cognitive Decline
Charles P. Pierce | Dec 29, 2017
...I’m always moving. I’m moving in both directions. We have to get rid of chainlike immigration, we have to get rid of the chain. The chain is the last guy that killed. … Talking with guests. … The last guy that killed the eight people. … Inaudible. … So badly wounded people. … Twenty-two people came in through chain migration. Chain migration and the lottery system. They have a lottery in these countries. They take the worst people in the country, they put ‘em into the lottery, then they have a handful of bad, worse ones, and they put them out. ‘Oh, these are the people the United States. …” … We’re gonna get rid of the lottery, and by the way, the Democrats agree with me on that. On chain migration, they pretty much agree with me...
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14516912/donald-trump-new-york-ti...
I don't like Pence one bit, but I don't doubt his mental stability. One mad king was enough for the US--it shouldn't have to risk lives for the next three years.
ETA____________________________________________________
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump:
Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.....
7:19 AM - Jan 6, 2018
....Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star.....
7:27 AM - Jan 6, 2018
.......to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!
7:30 AM - Jan 6, 2018
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-insists-he-very-stable-geniu...
ETA____________________________________________________
Washington's growing obsession: The 25th Amendment
Lawmakers concerned about Trump's mental health invited a Yale psychiatry professor to brief them in December.
ANNIE KARNI | 01/03/2018
...“The tendency was anti-alarmism among Republicans,” said Bill Kristol, editor at large of The Weekly Standard and one of Washington’s leading conservative voices.
That made Trump’s sudden fit of saber-rattling (button-size tweet) “more jolting,” according to Kristol — and it reopened the national conversation about the president’s mental stability. “I was focused on Iran, and talking to people in the administration about serious policy,” Kristol added, “and then to see in the middle of what might be a serious policymaking process, Trump’s just flipping out.”
On Wednesday, Kristol tweeted: “I trust @VP has asked his Counsel to prepare a draft document transferring power in accord with Sec. 4 of 25th Amendment in case it’s suddenly needed, & that he’s discussed this with COS Kelly.”
...Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, tweeted on Tuesday of the president’s comments about North Korea, “This Tweet alone is grounds for removal from office under the 25th Amendment. This man should not have nukes.”
...On Wednesday, (Yale University psychiatry professor Dr. Bandy X. Lee, editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” which includes testimonials from 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assessing the president’s level of “dangerousness”) and two other medical professionals released a statement following Trump’s late night Tweet baiting Kim Jung Un into a potential nuclear war. “We write as mental health professionals who have been deeply concerned about Donald Trump’s psychological aberrations,” the statement read.
“We believe that he is now further unraveling in ways that contribute to his belligerent nuclear threats. ... We urge that those around him, and our elected representatives in general, take urgent steps to restrain his behavior and head off the potential nuclear catastrophe that endangers not only Korea and the United States but all of humankind.” The statement, released on behalf of the National Coalition of Concerned Mental Health Experts, was signed by more than 100 medical professionals.
...Some Trump allies have begun to worry about the conversation gaining steam. After The New York Times reported last November that Trump was denying the veracity of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape — which he had previously acknowledged and apologized for — one former campaign aide called the story a “shot across the bow to invoke the 25th Amendment.”
Trump allies outside the administration also expressed concern that the president was left unstaffed during his Mar-a-Lago vacation last week — when he sat for an interview with The New York Times that was not planned for or cleared with his top aides. “Why was he there with no senior staff?” said one former aide. “It’s like he has nothing to do with running the government.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/03/trump-25th-amendment-mental-health-322...
ETA________________________________________________________________
Trump’s New York Times Interview Is a Portrait of a Man in Cognitive Decline
Charles P. Pierce | Dec 29, 2017
...I’m always moving. I’m moving in both directions. We have to get rid of chainlike immigration, we have to get rid of the chain. The chain is the last guy that killed. … Talking with guests. … The last guy that killed the eight people. … Inaudible. … So badly wounded people. … Twenty-two people came in through chain migration. Chain migration and the lottery system. They have a lottery in these countries. They take the worst people in the country, they put ‘em into the lottery, then they have a handful of bad, worse ones, and they put them out. ‘Oh, these are the people the United States. …” … We’re gonna get rid of the lottery, and by the way, the Democrats agree with me on that. On chain migration, they pretty much agree with me...
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14516912/donald-trump-new-york-ti...
76krolik
>73 RickHarsch: "I take it to be a truism that one cannot, for example, continually champion a liar without becoming dishonest; cover for the corrupt without becoming corrupt; disguise madness without becoming mad."
Yes...that.
Yes...that.
77Limelite
I am noting a turn in the public and political discourse away from a psychiatric diagnosis of the president's mental pathology toward the consideration of the danger his psychology presents to the fate of the nation.
Continuing to operate in the executive office as if all interactions are nothing more or less than pissing contests has brought us to nuclear war brinkmanship, destruction of democracy by subverting and twisting checks and balances, making overtures and cooperating with enemies of the state to the detriment of free and open elections, and engaging in outright financial crimes as if he is above the law.
What truly is our country's shame is that none in the Republican Party have a patriotic bone in their bodies. Not one of them has uttered what may be our saving grace, and said, "Trump must go."
Continuing to operate in the executive office as if all interactions are nothing more or less than pissing contests has brought us to nuclear war brinkmanship, destruction of democracy by subverting and twisting checks and balances, making overtures and cooperating with enemies of the state to the detriment of free and open elections, and engaging in outright financial crimes as if he is above the law.
What truly is our country's shame is that none in the Republican Party have a patriotic bone in their bodies. Not one of them has uttered what may be our saving grace, and said, "Trump must go."
79margd
At the very least, Republican-controlled Congress should assert that first use of nuclear weapons requires it to first declare war. That would give generals cover to ignore order to strike unless we were attacked first.
80theoria
Trump knows no order to launch pre-emptively will be carried out. So does his counterpart in Pyongyang.
81margd
Not good enough. He can keep firing until he finds a Dr Strangelove, who will comply, and Lord knows there's more than one of those in the military...
82proximity1
This message has been flagged by multiple users and is no longer displayed (show)
>77 Limelite:
Actually, no. Since you cannot read effectively or comprehend what you read, since you lack the judgment to understand what the hell has been going on, you fail to see there has been nothing of the sort. No "turn". The idiot get-Trump-Out-of-office-by-any-means-whatever-the-cost lynch-mob has, from the very first, taken and used their fantasies about his mental state, claiming that it presents a grave and immediate danger to the nation --or, as you have expressed it, displaying the rankest historicism in the process and showing us more--as though more were needed--of why you can't think worth shit, "the danger his (Trump's) psychology presents to the fate of the nation."
With so many people like you in evidence, we have more urgent and serious things to worry about for "the fate of the nation" (LOL!) than Trump's being mentally unhinged.
No. What's truly a shame is that you have no idea that you are embarked on a purely-partisan tirade. No idea at all.
Trump is par for the course--which is more than rather pathetic. Obama and the Clintons were, in their own ways, very often as bad as Trump, in certain very serious matters, much worse than Trump, and in some, only a little better.
Your reasoning skills are a joke, a shame. And you have no clue at all about that.
I am noting a turn in the public and political discourse away from a psychiatric diagnosis of the president's mental pathology toward the consideration of the danger his psychology presents to the fate of the nation.
Actually, no. Since you cannot read effectively or comprehend what you read, since you lack the judgment to understand what the hell has been going on, you fail to see there has been nothing of the sort. No "turn". The idiot get-Trump-Out-of-office-by-any-means-whatever-the-cost lynch-mob has, from the very first, taken and used their fantasies about his mental state, claiming that it presents a grave and immediate danger to the nation --or, as you have expressed it, displaying the rankest historicism in the process and showing us more--as though more were needed--of why you can't think worth shit, "the danger his (Trump's) psychology presents to the fate of the nation."
With so many people like you in evidence, we have more urgent and serious things to worry about for "the fate of the nation" (LOL!) than Trump's being mentally unhinged.
"What truly is our country's shame is that none in the Republican Party have a patriotic bone in their bodies. Not one of them has uttered what may be our saving grace, and said, "Trump must go."
No. What's truly a shame is that you have no idea that you are embarked on a purely-partisan tirade. No idea at all.
Trump is par for the course--which is more than rather pathetic. Obama and the Clintons were, in their own ways, very often as bad as Trump, in certain very serious matters, much worse than Trump, and in some, only a little better.
Your reasoning skills are a joke, a shame. And you have no clue at all about that.
83RickHarsch
>82 proximity1:
In the spirit of a new year, I am become a FLAGGER. Personal attacks will be flagged. This is not discourse:
'Since you cannot read effectively or comprehend what you read, since yu lack the judgment to understand what the hell has been going on, you fail to see there has been nothing of the sort.'
'Your reasoning skills are a joke, a shame. And you have no clue at all about that.'
ETA: Those are both quotes. Or is it that I am being flagged for flagging?
In the spirit of a new year, I am become a FLAGGER. Personal attacks will be flagged. This is not discourse:
'Since you cannot read effectively or comprehend what you read, since yu lack the judgment to understand what the hell has been going on, you fail to see there has been nothing of the sort.'
'Your reasoning skills are a joke, a shame. And you have no clue at all about that.'
ETA: Those are both quotes. Or is it that I am being flagged for flagging?
84margd
Book review: The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump by Bandy X Lee
Is Trump Certifiable?
Lisa Appignanesi | Jan 8, 2017
...In Trump’s case, the twenty-seven campaigners see the duty to warn of danger as overriding the Goldwater Rule. Each has a variety of diagnostic categories for Trump, but they don’t tell us much more than what savvy lay commentators have often repeated. We learn that Trump is “mentally unstable,” that he exhibits, according to psychologist Philip Zimbardo and counselor Rosemary Sword, “extreme present hedonism” and “lives in the present moment without much thought of any consequences of his actions or of the future.” He is impulsive, dehumanizes others and will do whatever it takes to bolster his ego. He also exhibits “malignant narcissism,” which includes antisocial behavior and aspects of paranoia; and “pathological narcissism,” which begins, according to Craig Malkin, “when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray, and even hurt those closest to them.”
Diane Jhueck, who works both in legal and mental health fields, stresses that “mental illness in a US president is not necessarily something that is dangerous for the citizenry he or she governs.” According to a study of the thirty-seven US presidents up to 1974, nearly half “met criteria that suggested psychiatric disorders.” Including personality disorders—beyond the older roll call of bipolar, anxiety and depressive states—would raise the figure to 50 percent or more. If one brings the study towards the present and adds Nixon’s alcoholism, Reagan’s dementia, Bush’s purported sadism, not all that many presidents altogether escape. When compared to Freud’s day or even that of the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1952, the number of available psychiatric diagnoses has risen so greatly that it would be pretty easy to find a fit for practically any member of the population.
What distinguishes Trump from the rest of the population, though, is the substantial effect of his personality. His “impulsive blame-shifting, claims of unearned superiority, and delusional levels of grandiosity,” his “unhinged response to court decisions, driven as they appear to be by paranoia, delusion, and a sense of entitlement are of grave concern,” writes Jhueck, and have already impacted on the lives of many. As Hillary Clinton remarked, “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
Sadly, the misuse of power is not a free-standing psychiatric category, though power seems to exacerbate a whole range of existing “craziness,” whether it is that of movie moguls or politicians.
Trump is more likely to be forced out of office by a loss in the next presidential election than he is by a congressional decision to institute, under Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, “an independent nonpartisan panel of mental health and medical experts to evaluate Mr. Trump’s capability to fulfill the responsibilities of the presidency,” as the book’s authors call for. For that first option, an electoral majority would have to agree that Trump was unsuitable for public office, whether because of his personality disorders or his acts, or both. But the manic qualities he displays—so common in celebrity culture and for so long the signals of Wall Street success—let alone his millions, all seem to be vote-gathering attributes. In the end, what will guard against the president’s excesses and remove him from office is more likely to be politics than the mind doctors—though their campaigning may nudge the politics...
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/01/08/is-trump-certifiable/
ETA_______________________________________________
When the CIA director feels it's necessary to defend Prez's mental abilities...
CIA director defends Trump's mental abilities
Eli Watkins | January 7, 2018
...part of Trump's preferred briefing method involves visual aids and "killer graphics."
... "This President reads...listens closely..."
..."We're keeping America safe, and President Trump is completely capable of working alongside of us..."
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/07/politics/cia-mike-pompeo-donald-trump/index.html
ETA______________________________________________
Shrinking schedule might not be a bad thing? (As long as he's not in his jammies tweeting uninformed, provocative policy...)
Scoop: Trump's secret, shrinking schedule
Jonathan Swan | Jan 7, 2018
President Trump is starting his official day much later than he did in the early days of his presidency, often around 11am, and holding far fewer meetings, according to copies of his private schedule shown to Axios. This is largely to meet Trump’s demands for more “Executive Time,” which almost always means TV and Twitter time alone in the residence, officials tell us...
https://www.axios.com/scoop-trumps-secret-shrinking-schedule-1515364904-ab76374a...
ETA______________________________________________
White House aide Stephen Miller escorted off Jake Tapper's CNN set after bashing Steve Bannon
Nicole Hensley and Terence Cullen | January 7, 2018
...“The segment was over and Mr. Miller was politely asked to leave the set multiple times — after refusing to leave, he was escorted out by security,” (the CNN source) said in an e-mail."...
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/stephen-miller-blasts-bannon-touts-trum...
..........
Tapper cuts off Trump adviser (Stephen Miller) interview: I've wasted enough of my viewers' time (12:34)
CNN | Jan 7, 2018
CNN's Jake Tapper abruptly ends his interview with White House adviser Stephen Miller after trying to ask Miller about a book that is highly critical of President Donald Trump and the role Steve Bannon had in the administration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU7v5A5P8BM
Is Trump Certifiable?
Lisa Appignanesi | Jan 8, 2017
...In Trump’s case, the twenty-seven campaigners see the duty to warn of danger as overriding the Goldwater Rule. Each has a variety of diagnostic categories for Trump, but they don’t tell us much more than what savvy lay commentators have often repeated. We learn that Trump is “mentally unstable,” that he exhibits, according to psychologist Philip Zimbardo and counselor Rosemary Sword, “extreme present hedonism” and “lives in the present moment without much thought of any consequences of his actions or of the future.” He is impulsive, dehumanizes others and will do whatever it takes to bolster his ego. He also exhibits “malignant narcissism,” which includes antisocial behavior and aspects of paranoia; and “pathological narcissism,” which begins, according to Craig Malkin, “when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray, and even hurt those closest to them.”
Diane Jhueck, who works both in legal and mental health fields, stresses that “mental illness in a US president is not necessarily something that is dangerous for the citizenry he or she governs.” According to a study of the thirty-seven US presidents up to 1974, nearly half “met criteria that suggested psychiatric disorders.” Including personality disorders—beyond the older roll call of bipolar, anxiety and depressive states—would raise the figure to 50 percent or more. If one brings the study towards the present and adds Nixon’s alcoholism, Reagan’s dementia, Bush’s purported sadism, not all that many presidents altogether escape. When compared to Freud’s day or even that of the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1952, the number of available psychiatric diagnoses has risen so greatly that it would be pretty easy to find a fit for practically any member of the population.
What distinguishes Trump from the rest of the population, though, is the substantial effect of his personality. His “impulsive blame-shifting, claims of unearned superiority, and delusional levels of grandiosity,” his “unhinged response to court decisions, driven as they appear to be by paranoia, delusion, and a sense of entitlement are of grave concern,” writes Jhueck, and have already impacted on the lives of many. As Hillary Clinton remarked, “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
Sadly, the misuse of power is not a free-standing psychiatric category, though power seems to exacerbate a whole range of existing “craziness,” whether it is that of movie moguls or politicians.
Trump is more likely to be forced out of office by a loss in the next presidential election than he is by a congressional decision to institute, under Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, “an independent nonpartisan panel of mental health and medical experts to evaluate Mr. Trump’s capability to fulfill the responsibilities of the presidency,” as the book’s authors call for. For that first option, an electoral majority would have to agree that Trump was unsuitable for public office, whether because of his personality disorders or his acts, or both. But the manic qualities he displays—so common in celebrity culture and for so long the signals of Wall Street success—let alone his millions, all seem to be vote-gathering attributes. In the end, what will guard against the president’s excesses and remove him from office is more likely to be politics than the mind doctors—though their campaigning may nudge the politics...
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/01/08/is-trump-certifiable/
ETA_______________________________________________
When the CIA director feels it's necessary to defend Prez's mental abilities...
CIA director defends Trump's mental abilities
Eli Watkins | January 7, 2018
...part of Trump's preferred briefing method involves visual aids and "killer graphics."
... "This President reads...listens closely..."
..."We're keeping America safe, and President Trump is completely capable of working alongside of us..."
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/07/politics/cia-mike-pompeo-donald-trump/index.html
ETA______________________________________________
Shrinking schedule might not be a bad thing? (As long as he's not in his jammies tweeting uninformed, provocative policy...)
Scoop: Trump's secret, shrinking schedule
Jonathan Swan | Jan 7, 2018
President Trump is starting his official day much later than he did in the early days of his presidency, often around 11am, and holding far fewer meetings, according to copies of his private schedule shown to Axios. This is largely to meet Trump’s demands for more “Executive Time,” which almost always means TV and Twitter time alone in the residence, officials tell us...
https://www.axios.com/scoop-trumps-secret-shrinking-schedule-1515364904-ab76374a...
ETA______________________________________________
White House aide Stephen Miller escorted off Jake Tapper's CNN set after bashing Steve Bannon
Nicole Hensley and Terence Cullen | January 7, 2018
...“The segment was over and Mr. Miller was politely asked to leave the set multiple times — after refusing to leave, he was escorted out by security,” (the CNN source) said in an e-mail."...
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/stephen-miller-blasts-bannon-touts-trum...
..........
Tapper cuts off Trump adviser (Stephen Miller) interview: I've wasted enough of my viewers' time (12:34)
CNN | Jan 7, 2018
CNN's Jake Tapper abruptly ends his interview with White House adviser Stephen Miller after trying to ask Miller about a book that is highly critical of President Donald Trump and the role Steve Bannon had in the administration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU7v5A5P8BM
85proximity1
paraphrasing Chuck Todd interviewing Michael Wolff:
So the headlines ought to read, one year on,
"Some White House staff, considering almost daily the applicability of the 25th Amendment, say, 'We're not at" (that level) .
You people are fucking hilarious.
MW: "It's not unreasonable to say this is '25th Amendment' kind of stuff."
CT: "Did anybody say that in the West wing to you?--
MW : All the time--
CT : "Twenty-fifth amendment--they (people in the White House West wing) would bring up the 25th Amendment?"
MW: "Yes. Actually they would say 'we're not---ble-uh-bluh-uh-wif sort of in the mid period--we're not at a 'Twenty-fifth amendment'-level yet."
So the headlines ought to read, one year on,
"Some White House staff, considering almost daily the applicability of the 25th Amendment, say, 'We're not at" (that level) .
You people are fucking hilarious.
86margd
"He cannot think his way out of a wet paper bag," says Carol Anderson, historian and author of "White Rage," a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/08/us/trump-affirmative-action-president/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/08/us/trump-affirmative-action-president/index.html
87theoria
Like the fictional Colonel Kurtz, Trump is out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And very obviously, he has gone insane.
88RickHarsch
This message has been deleted by its author.
89jjwilson61
>88 RickHarsch: The point of flagging is to hide the offending text unless you really want to see it. So quoting it in your post defeats that purpose.
90RickHarsch
This message has been deleted by its author.
91jjwilson61
>90 RickHarsch: Then why is the text hidden after it gets enough flags?
92RickHarsch
This message has been deleted by its author.
93jjwilson61
I'm just answering your question about why your post got flagged. I think that flagging was correct but it doesn't really bother me that much.
94proximity1
"Among those struggling to accept the fact that the American people elected Donald Trump in 2016, the 25th Amendment has been a go-to fantasy for a while, particularly among those who strongly dislike Trump’s less-interventionist foreign policy. Eliot Cohen reached for it(See: 1) in the very first week of the presidency.
Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker waited until February 10 to say(See: 2) that the cabinet should use that amendment’s provisions since Trump is “so incompetent — or not-quite-right” that he poses a threat. Perhaps most famously, New York Times‘ conservative columnist Ross Douthat went( See: 3) hard for the 25th Amendment solution to what ails him in mid-May."
http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/08/treat-mental-health-talk-against-trump-like-...
_____________________
(1) : https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/a-clarifying-moment-in-amer...
(2) : https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-two-year-presidency/2017/02/10/32...
(3) : https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/opinion/25th-amendment-trump.html?referer=...
>77 Limelite:
What "turn" ?
You people are fucking hilarious. Trump is fortunate to have the likes of you as his adversaries--and that really sucks for the rest of the country.
95margd
...Asked Monday by reporters whether Trump’s physical exam, scheduled for Friday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, would include a psychiatric component, deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley barely engaged the question. He replied, simply, “No.”...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-white-house-struggles-to-silence-tal...
I can't imagine that Trump will survive the next three years without a cardiovascular event and/or intervention.
He's heavy, puffy, droopy. Stressed, beef and diet-cola fed. Sleep-deprived?
At the very least, mini-strokes could affect mental ability.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-white-house-struggles-to-silence-tal...
I can't imagine that Trump will survive the next three years without a cardiovascular event and/or intervention.
He's heavy, puffy, droopy. Stressed, beef and diet-cola fed. Sleep-deprived?
At the very least, mini-strokes could affect mental ability.
96barney67
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/opinion/trump-mental-fitness.htmlTo the Editor:
As a psychiatrist, I deplore the idea that psychiatry itself may become a tool to get President Trump out of office. The American Psychiatric Association has issued clear guidelines that a psychiatrist cannot diagnose a person whom the psychiatrist has never personally assessed. So the news that Dr. Bandy X. Lee — who has not personally evaluated the president — may be telling members of Congress that the president could be delusional or narcissistic or incapacitated is highly disturbing to me.
The Trump administration currently faces several different allegations, any one of which — if proved — could lead to Mr. Trump’s impeachment. If one wants to remove Mr. Trump from office, one should do it by proving him guilty of an impeachable offense. With an eye toward my profession’s checkered history, our psychiatric expertise must remain completely apolitical as we continue to treat mental illness across this great country.
PAUL CAMPION, BRONX
As a psychiatrist, I deplore the idea that psychiatry itself may become a tool to get President Trump out of office. The American Psychiatric Association has issued clear guidelines that a psychiatrist cannot diagnose a person whom the psychiatrist has never personally assessed. So the news that Dr. Bandy X. Lee — who has not personally evaluated the president — may be telling members of Congress that the president could be delusional or narcissistic or incapacitated is highly disturbing to me.
The Trump administration currently faces several different allegations, any one of which — if proved — could lead to Mr. Trump’s impeachment. If one wants to remove Mr. Trump from office, one should do it by proving him guilty of an impeachable offense. With an eye toward my profession’s checkered history, our psychiatric expertise must remain completely apolitical as we continue to treat mental illness across this great country.
PAUL CAMPION, BRONX
97barney67
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-psychiatrists-trump-book-201...
Lieberman, for his part, remains unconvinced.
In a letter to the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, Lieberman says he believes Lee, Pouncey and the rest are “acting in good faith and are convinced they are fulfilling a moral obligation.” But the history of psychiatry is littered with examples of mental health professionals being “exploited” for political purposes, he wrote, citing doctors who gave cover to Nazi eugenics policies and those who helped confine dissidents to mental hospitals in the People’s Republic of China.
“Although moral and civic imperatives justify citizens’ speaking out against injustices of government and its leaders, that does not mean that psychiatrists can use their medical credentials to brand elected officials with neuropsychiatric diagnoses without sufficient evidence and appropriate circumstances,” he wrote. “To do so undermines the profession’s integrity and credibility.”
Lieberman, for his part, remains unconvinced.
In a letter to the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, Lieberman says he believes Lee, Pouncey and the rest are “acting in good faith and are convinced they are fulfilling a moral obligation.” But the history of psychiatry is littered with examples of mental health professionals being “exploited” for political purposes, he wrote, citing doctors who gave cover to Nazi eugenics policies and those who helped confine dissidents to mental hospitals in the People’s Republic of China.
“Although moral and civic imperatives justify citizens’ speaking out against injustices of government and its leaders, that does not mean that psychiatrists can use their medical credentials to brand elected officials with neuropsychiatric diagnoses without sufficient evidence and appropriate circumstances,” he wrote. “To do so undermines the profession’s integrity and credibility.”
98proximity1
>96 barney67: & >97 barney67:
Exac-pre-ciseT-ly!
They'd be shocked to discover in whose historical company they're placing themselves.
_________________________________________________________
Sample articles:
"Curbing psychiatry's political misuse"
Reddaway, Peter ; Bloch, Sidney
The Washington post, 15 November 1977, pp.A23
"Russia's political hospitals"
Ascherson, Neal
New Statesman, August 12, 1977, Vol.94, p.218(1) (Book review)
_________________________________________________________
the use by powerful people--and Trump's opponents include power, include powerful people, though the chattering Trump critics in these threads aren't (AFAWK) among them-- seeking to ruin Trump through allegations of his mental incapcity is essentially little or no different than Stalin's regime eliminating people it didn't like by declaring them insane, mentally unfit--these methods are nothing new. Now, we have so-called "liberals" defending tactics of Stalin--declare the opponent insane, send him away for psychiatric confinement and "rehabilitation."
DLC "Dems" aren't satisfied getting on the political highway to Hell. They want the speed-limit abolished and an open lane ahead of them.
__________________________________________________________
Other Related reading:
Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Purposes in the USSR: A Case-Study and Personal Account of the Efforts to Bring Them to an End
Robert Van Voren
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-90-481-8721-8_29
Part of the International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine book series (LIME, volume 45)
Exac-pre-ciseT-ly!
They'd be shocked to discover in whose historical company they're placing themselves.
_________________________________________________________
Sample articles:
"Curbing psychiatry's political misuse"
Reddaway, Peter ; Bloch, Sidney
The Washington post, 15 November 1977, pp.A23
"Russia's political hospitals"
Ascherson, Neal
New Statesman, August 12, 1977, Vol.94, p.218(1) (Book review)
_________________________________________________________
the use by powerful people--and Trump's opponents include power, include powerful people, though the chattering Trump critics in these threads aren't (AFAWK) among them-- seeking to ruin Trump through allegations of his mental incapcity is essentially little or no different than Stalin's regime eliminating people it didn't like by declaring them insane, mentally unfit--these methods are nothing new. Now, we have so-called "liberals" defending tactics of Stalin--declare the opponent insane, send him away for psychiatric confinement and "rehabilitation."
DLC "Dems" aren't satisfied getting on the political highway to Hell. They want the speed-limit abolished and an open lane ahead of them.
__________________________________________________________
Other Related reading:
Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Purposes in the USSR: A Case-Study and Personal Account of the Efforts to Bring Them to an End
Robert Van Voren
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-90-481-8721-8_29
Part of the International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine book series (LIME, volume 45)
99RickHarsch
>96 barney67: The letter quotes a psychiatrist stating that psychiatrists cannot diagnose someone they have never treated. Yet the knowledge purveyed by psychiatrists cannot be shared--i.e., taught--without addressing the psychiatric issues of non-patients. Second, psychiatrists DO treat patients who are referred to them. The situation as it currently stands is that Trump's behavior warrents such a referral. In fact, Trump is so clearly psychologically and/or psychiatrically ill that lay people cannot help but offer diagnoses.
The questions need to move on to a different level. For instance, when does, say, a narcissistic megalomaniac become unfit to run a nation? Do deep-seated insecurities necessarily lead to poor governance decisions, etc.
>98 proximity1: Given that articles are cited and not linked (a link popped up on >98 proximity1: as soon as I posted this, but that link takes us back to the arguments dismissed in my first paragraph I woud guess) I can only comment on the one by Neal Ascherson, who was a journalist who covered Poland's solidarity movement and wrote a book on it, and was probably to some degree an expert on Soviet history. I doubt Ascherson would understand how his article about Soviet abuse of psychiatry to destroy perceived opposition relates to the question of whether or not Donald Trump is mentally ill. Ascherson, in fact, likely would find the parallel between Trump and Stalin. So proximity1's example is self-defeating. I have no telling whether his mistake results from disingenuous or incompetent argument.
The questions need to move on to a different level. For instance, when does, say, a narcissistic megalomaniac become unfit to run a nation? Do deep-seated insecurities necessarily lead to poor governance decisions, etc.
>98 proximity1: Given that articles are cited and not linked (a link popped up on >98 proximity1: as soon as I posted this, but that link takes us back to the arguments dismissed in my first paragraph I woud guess) I can only comment on the one by Neal Ascherson, who was a journalist who covered Poland's solidarity movement and wrote a book on it, and was probably to some degree an expert on Soviet history. I doubt Ascherson would understand how his article about Soviet abuse of psychiatry to destroy perceived opposition relates to the question of whether or not Donald Trump is mentally ill. Ascherson, in fact, likely would find the parallel between Trump and Stalin. So proximity1's example is self-defeating. I have no telling whether his mistake results from disingenuous or incompetent argument.
1002wonderY
Michael Gerson opinion piece today:
More likely, Trump is exhibiting a set of compulsions and delusions that have characterized his entire adult life. You can’t have declining judgment that never existed. You can’t lose a grasp on reality you never possessed. What is most striking is not Trump’s disintegration but his utter consistency.
Rivals are not only to be defeated; they should be imprisoned. Critics are not to be refuted; they should be fired. Investigations are not to be answered; they should be shut down.
More likely, Trump is exhibiting a set of compulsions and delusions that have characterized his entire adult life. You can’t have declining judgment that never existed. You can’t lose a grasp on reality you never possessed. What is most striking is not Trump’s disintegration but his utter consistency.
Rivals are not only to be defeated; they should be imprisoned. Critics are not to be refuted; they should be fired. Investigations are not to be answered; they should be shut down.
101Limelite
>82 proximity1:
Statements like this, What's truly a shame is that you have no idea that you are embarked on a purely-partisan tirade. No idea at all. make me realize that Trump is not alone in being a non-reader and consumer, solely, of TV propaganda by our new State TV, Fox News.
Remember all the Republicans, their PACS, their appearances and theif efforts to get rid of Trump, stop him before he'd even been nominated, deny him like the Apostles when he became the nominee? Remember all the Republicans in Congress who repudiated him as not qualified?
Partisan Republicans, I presume.
Not only Republican politicians find him unfit to be president, so do GOP national security officials. And it's not Democrats who report these facts.
More Partisan Republicans, no doubt.
Republican Party lawyers searched for the means to dump Trump.
This probably warrants a label worse than "partisan," don't you think?
Way back when, Republican megadonors refused to fund his candidacy as we learn from them. Some were happy to state why they wouldn't, with such reasons as Trump is another Mussolini or Hitler; that his ideas are "absurd"; that he "didn't havve the character to be president"; that Trump had threatened them when they supported his opponents with funds; finally, Michael E Vlock, Republican mega-donor:
Republican Partisans who said they'd vote for Hillary Clinton, but never Trump.
I can understand someone resorting to forgetfulness, hyperbolic distemper, and even personal attack when they're refuted by reasoning and facts. I've come to understand how certain right-wingers, when not occupied with eating their own who dare say a word against Dear Leader, will attack anyone who mounts rational resistance to the most irrational idiot that they've visited on the rest of us by deliberately shutting their eyes and sticking their fingers in their ears while shouting, "NAH NAH NAH."
I call them Good Republicans.
The closer Mueller gets to the pathologically insidious president, his corruption, his crimes, the truth that controverts his lies, and his betrayal of America to the Russians, the more Republicans become like their Orange-Haired White God.
I call them Party over Country Republicans.
Look at what the Senators on the Judiciary Committee have been doing -- lying, deceiving the public, besmirching the character of a patriotic Englishman (for gawd's sake!) who tried to save our country when Republicans didn't and still won't, and branded him for a criminal in so doing. Exposed today when Senator Feinstein released the Simpson testimony.
I call them Perfidious Republicans.
But, Christopher Steele. . .partisan? What else would you call him?
Statements like this, What's truly a shame is that you have no idea that you are embarked on a purely-partisan tirade. No idea at all. make me realize that Trump is not alone in being a non-reader and consumer, solely, of TV propaganda by our new State TV, Fox News.
Remember all the Republicans, their PACS, their appearances and theif efforts to get rid of Trump, stop him before he'd even been nominated, deny him like the Apostles when he became the nominee? Remember all the Republicans in Congress who repudiated him as not qualified?
Partisan Republicans, I presume.
Not only Republican politicians find him unfit to be president, so do GOP national security officials. And it's not Democrats who report these facts.
More Partisan Republicans, no doubt.
Republican Party lawyers searched for the means to dump Trump.
This probably warrants a label worse than "partisan," don't you think?
Way back when, Republican megadonors refused to fund his candidacy as we learn from them. Some were happy to state why they wouldn't, with such reasons as Trump is another Mussolini or Hitler; that his ideas are "absurd"; that he "didn't havve the character to be president"; that Trump had threatened them when they supported his opponents with funds; finally, Michael E Vlock, Republican mega-donor:
“He is too selfish, flawed and unpredictable to hold the power of the presidency,” he said.
Republican Partisans who said they'd vote for Hillary Clinton, but never Trump.
I can understand someone resorting to forgetfulness, hyperbolic distemper, and even personal attack when they're refuted by reasoning and facts. I've come to understand how certain right-wingers, when not occupied with eating their own who dare say a word against Dear Leader, will attack anyone who mounts rational resistance to the most irrational idiot that they've visited on the rest of us by deliberately shutting their eyes and sticking their fingers in their ears while shouting, "NAH NAH NAH."
I call them Good Republicans.
The closer Mueller gets to the pathologically insidious president, his corruption, his crimes, the truth that controverts his lies, and his betrayal of America to the Russians, the more Republicans become like their Orange-Haired White God.
I call them Party over Country Republicans.
Look at what the Senators on the Judiciary Committee have been doing -- lying, deceiving the public, besmirching the character of a patriotic Englishman (for gawd's sake!) who tried to save our country when Republicans didn't and still won't, and branded him for a criminal in so doing. Exposed today when Senator Feinstein released the Simpson testimony.
I call them Perfidious Republicans.
But, Christopher Steele. . .partisan? What else would you call him?
102proximity1
This message has been flagged by multiple users and is no longer displayed (show)
>101 Limelite:
for all you know about it, C. Wright Mills lived, worked, wrote for nothing.
I'd explain it to you but you've already demonstrated--far beyond my ability to better it--that you simply haven't the thinking-skills required for this understanding.
RE: "Trump is not alone in being a non-reader and consumer, solely, of TV propaganda by our new State TV, Fox News."
You have no idea what you're talking about. The above is another example among many.
Books we have in common in our libraries:
A Writer's Time: A Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision by Kenneth Atchity
A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose by B. R. Myers
Metroland by Julian Barnes (read review)
Democracy in America - Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy In America-Volume I by Alexis De Tocqueville
Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent: 1934-1941 by William Shirer
Joseph Andrews (Signet classics) by Henry Fielding
Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study Of The Years 1900-1925 by Vera Brittain
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes (read review)
A River Runs Through It, and Other Stories by Norman Maclean
The Emperor's New Mind : Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics by Roger Penrose
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett
Claudius the God: And His Wife Messalina by Robert Graves
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
The Song of Roland by Dorothy L Sayers (translated by)
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (The Hinges of History) by Thomas Cahill
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
'Tis: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific. . . by Dava Sobel
Lord Jim (Signet Classics) by Joseph Conrad
Scarlet and Black by Stendahl
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) by Richard P. Feynman
Empire Falls by Richard Russo (read review)
Jude, the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Wolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (P.S.) by Simon Winchester
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Robinson Crusoe - Junior Deluxe Editions by Daniel Defoe
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Karamazov Brothers by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by Edited by Blacks
The Riverside Shakespeare by Houghton Mifflin Co.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Great Gatsby (A Scribner Classic) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
1984 by George Orwell
When I review that list of writers and their work and then reflect (briefly) on the drivel you post here. I almost want to cry for these authors' efforts-- you even took on their books!--wasted on you-
103RickHarsch
In the spirit of jjwilson's remark, I will only say that I found the above eminently flagworthy.
In the spirit of C. Wright Mills, who is dead but at this very moment intent on becoming a character in a novel of mine, I believe he would be appalled at the way he is wielded in post #102.
In the spirit of C. Wright Mills, who is dead but at this very moment intent on becoming a character in a novel of mine, I believe he would be appalled at the way he is wielded in post #102.
104Limelite
>102 proximity1:
Amazing!
I was convinced that only Trump could be so thin-skinned that he always resorts to name-calling like a playground bully when confronted with reminders of how ignorant he is.
You know, I'm trained in science, and the mantra of this discipline (and what separates scientists from religious and other dogmatists) is "prove me wrong." Well, with your posts, you have.
Perhaps you want a bigger button?
Amazing!
I was convinced that only Trump could be so thin-skinned that he always resorts to name-calling like a playground bully when confronted with reminders of how ignorant he is.
You know, I'm trained in science, and the mantra of this discipline (and what separates scientists from religious and other dogmatists) is "prove me wrong." Well, with your posts, you have.
Perhaps you want a bigger button?
105proximity1
>104 Limelite:
Actually, Trump doesn't merely resort to name-calling. Roundly, viciously and relentlessly denounced as a fool, political idiot, know-nothing, asshole and moron, someone Hillary Clinton virtually wet her pants with glee at the prospect of having as her main presidential-election opponent, Trump didn't just call Clinton, "Crooked Hillary"--which she was and is-- he beat her in a contest about which the odds-makers gave Trump virtually no chance at all to win (until eleection-day drew near, and the polls began to indicate that Clinton's sure-thing might not, after all, be so sure).
RE: "Perhaps you want a bigger button?"
I don't even know what that is supposed to mean; though I gather that it's an insult--and coming from one "trained in science", the mantra of which (this(?)) discipline (and what (you erroneously suppose & inform us) "separates scientists from religious and other dogmatists) is" " 'prove me wrong'." !
You're "trained in science"-- I have to assume you post this as a reliable indication of your adequate intellectual capacities and, thus, intended to impress the reader but, you see... Oh, wait!-------- you don't.
Being "trained in science" might be nice or it might not be. In either case, this fact, by itself does not greatly impress me.
News flaish: being trained in science neither assures that one has any particularly notable intellectual capacity nor that one practices faithfully a moral and intellectual integrity based genuine honesty and fairness. The evidence here in these threads is not in your favor on either of those counts. In other words, that you'd make such an appeal to your having been "trained in science" suggests, again, that you don't reason well since "trained in science" does not assure by itself that one has good reasoning abilities.
So you again help me make my point.
Actually, Trump doesn't merely resort to name-calling. Roundly, viciously and relentlessly denounced as a fool, political idiot, know-nothing, asshole and moron, someone Hillary Clinton virtually wet her pants with glee at the prospect of having as her main presidential-election opponent, Trump didn't just call Clinton, "Crooked Hillary"--which she was and is-- he beat her in a contest about which the odds-makers gave Trump virtually no chance at all to win (until eleection-day drew near, and the polls began to indicate that Clinton's sure-thing might not, after all, be so sure).
RE: "Perhaps you want a bigger button?"
I don't even know what that is supposed to mean; though I gather that it's an insult--and coming from one "trained in science", the mantra of which (this(?)) discipline (and what (you erroneously suppose & inform us) "separates scientists from religious and other dogmatists) is" " 'prove me wrong'." !
You're "trained in science"-- I have to assume you post this as a reliable indication of your adequate intellectual capacities and, thus, intended to impress the reader but, you see... Oh, wait!-------- you don't.
Being "trained in science" might be nice or it might not be. In either case, this fact, by itself does not greatly impress me.
News flaish: being trained in science neither assures that one has any particularly notable intellectual capacity nor that one practices faithfully a moral and intellectual integrity based genuine honesty and fairness. The evidence here in these threads is not in your favor on either of those counts. In other words, that you'd make such an appeal to your having been "trained in science" suggests, again, that you don't reason well since "trained in science" does not assure by itself that one has good reasoning abilities.
So you again help me make my point.
106Limelite
There is a difference between accurate use of adjectives to describe something or someone and employing name calling to denigrate someone or something one is jealous of or fears. The examples you provide of accurate descriptors regarding Trump's behavior and character support the fact that he is unfit to be president due to demonstrable mental incapacity. Democrats, Republicans and the world's population in general have made such observations.
And yet, no formal legal inquiry into any so-called Clinton "crimes" has found sustainable evidence to support the falsehood which you advance. Do you deny this fact? Insisting Clinton is a criminal idespite no criminal convictions, much less prosecution, is an example of denying reality. That is a fault "science trained" people do not share with conspiracy theorists.
I'm sorry that having a debate opponent "trained in science," as I am, a term I employed for purposes of illustrating my insistence that you prove me wrong -- which you did (!) -- disturbs you so much. Your reaction to it reminds me of Kellyanne Conway and Donald Trump's verbal outbursts to the name 'Hillary Clinton.' And your own.
Isn't it a sorry state of affairs when your circular reasoning fallacy fails to convince the reader that my reasoning abilities are puny when compared to yours? Especially when everyone who bothers to read your responses to my posts can see for themselves that you never fail to avoid the issues, facts, and terms that I've raised, but just resort to ham-fisted attacks on the poster -- me. One might feel embarrassed for you.
Your difference of opinion to mine is that you disparage my reasoning but never dispute my points. My difference of opinion to yours is that you are unable to counter my points with factual evidence of your own, and have to resort to disparaging my reasoning. As your president would say, "Sad."
And yet, no formal legal inquiry into any so-called Clinton "crimes" has found sustainable evidence to support the falsehood which you advance. Do you deny this fact? Insisting Clinton is a criminal idespite no criminal convictions, much less prosecution, is an example of denying reality. That is a fault "science trained" people do not share with conspiracy theorists.
I'm sorry that having a debate opponent "trained in science," as I am, a term I employed for purposes of illustrating my insistence that you prove me wrong -- which you did (!) -- disturbs you so much. Your reaction to it reminds me of Kellyanne Conway and Donald Trump's verbal outbursts to the name 'Hillary Clinton.' And your own.
Isn't it a sorry state of affairs when your circular reasoning fallacy fails to convince the reader that my reasoning abilities are puny when compared to yours? Especially when everyone who bothers to read your responses to my posts can see for themselves that you never fail to avoid the issues, facts, and terms that I've raised, but just resort to ham-fisted attacks on the poster -- me. One might feel embarrassed for you.
Your difference of opinion to mine is that you disparage my reasoning but never dispute my points. My difference of opinion to yours is that you are unable to counter my points with factual evidence of your own, and have to resort to disparaging my reasoning. As your president would say, "Sad."
107mamzel
>106 Limelite: Well said.
108St._Troy
Many of you could benefit by taking this to heart:
https://nypost.com/2018/01/05/the-emptiness-of-impeachment-porn/
...and also reading/listening to Alan Dershowitz, who (alone?) doesn't allow his political opposition to Trump part him from reality.
https://nypost.com/2018/01/05/the-emptiness-of-impeachment-porn/
...and also reading/listening to Alan Dershowitz, who (alone?) doesn't allow his political opposition to Trump part him from reality.
109RickHarsch
>108 St._Troy: It's a shame that the two previous presidents weren't imprisoned for war crimes and it will be a shame that Trump won't be either. He's already guilty of knowingly abetting civilian slaughter in Yemen--multiple offenses--and wiping out a village in Yemen on one specific occasion.
As for the rest, he's simply a global embarrassment, cause for extensive mockery of the US. Europeans recognized Nixon--such men come to power in Europe as well. Reagan and Bush are less familiar, but there seemed a sort of tacit agreement to keep the mockery to a minimum as long as the two displayed some familiar leadership traits. But Trump is a dolt and a clown; those for whom this is not self evident are lost, probably beyond all hope for recovery.
As for the rest, he's simply a global embarrassment, cause for extensive mockery of the US. Europeans recognized Nixon--such men come to power in Europe as well. Reagan and Bush are less familiar, but there seemed a sort of tacit agreement to keep the mockery to a minimum as long as the two displayed some familiar leadership traits. But Trump is a dolt and a clown; those for whom this is not self evident are lost, probably beyond all hope for recovery.
110proximity1
>106 Limelite:
It's a tedious task to debate with someone, "trained in science" or not, who demonstrates again and again that he cannot think straight on the very sort of topics and issues with which the debate is concerned. You say you're trained in science. The trouble with this appeal has already been _amply_ pointed out to you and yet you ignore it--and perhaps, as is quite conceivable to me, you don't even really understand it. What is the point in yet another effort to explain such things to you?
You simply do not demonstrate any respectable use of your training in science when it comes to the issues concerned here. Rather, you are using mental short-cuts, reductivist and erroneous assumptions which are not clearly supported by fairly-evaluated factual evidence.
Virtually all of your posts criticizing Trump are, either directly or, at several removes, based on what, when examined, amounts to, "Trust me: numerous people whose opinions and general world-views I share have said that what I'm saying is true and correct." (as broadcast by CNN, MSNBC, etc.)
This very thread is entitled in a blatantly loaded manner : "Given: That Donald Trump Is mentally Ill." Yet this is by no means a "given". This apparently doesn't bother the trained scientist in you.
You've brought nothing scientifically-respectable in evidence that Trump is, mentally, either unable to preform his presidential duties or, on the evidence, that he is particularly and significantly inferior to, say, Barack Obama or to Hillary Clinton, in reasoning abilities. None of them, as I see it, are very admirable examples of clear thinkers. Instead, they're par for the course. And that is why the efforts directed at Trump are so much mob-justice. You, trained in science, have leapt into that with both feet.
Is it necessary for me to go through your comments above and cite example after example? I leave the fair-minded reader to read and judge for himself which of us is making the better case.
Here, by the way, is some useful and revealing reading. In some of it, you ought to recognize yourself.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/opinion/social-media-dumber-steven-pinker.htm...
Then this, by another thinker trained in science : https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2018/01/09/if-you-ever-doubted-that-stev...
________________________
Cogent critiques:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455369/american-life-expectancy-declined-a...
https://slate.com/health-and-science/2018/01/oprah-winfrey-helped-create-our-irr...
________________________
By the way--I'm in no way a "fan" of Steven Pinker or his work. I consider it moderately interesting and greatly overrated in importance. But Pinker is not the stinker he's been made out to be in this case.
It's a tedious task to debate with someone, "trained in science" or not, who demonstrates again and again that he cannot think straight on the very sort of topics and issues with which the debate is concerned. You say you're trained in science. The trouble with this appeal has already been _amply_ pointed out to you and yet you ignore it--and perhaps, as is quite conceivable to me, you don't even really understand it. What is the point in yet another effort to explain such things to you?
You simply do not demonstrate any respectable use of your training in science when it comes to the issues concerned here. Rather, you are using mental short-cuts, reductivist and erroneous assumptions which are not clearly supported by fairly-evaluated factual evidence.
Virtually all of your posts criticizing Trump are, either directly or, at several removes, based on what, when examined, amounts to, "Trust me: numerous people whose opinions and general world-views I share have said that what I'm saying is true and correct." (as broadcast by CNN, MSNBC, etc.)
This very thread is entitled in a blatantly loaded manner : "Given: That Donald Trump Is mentally Ill." Yet this is by no means a "given". This apparently doesn't bother the trained scientist in you.
You've brought nothing scientifically-respectable in evidence that Trump is, mentally, either unable to preform his presidential duties or, on the evidence, that he is particularly and significantly inferior to, say, Barack Obama or to Hillary Clinton, in reasoning abilities. None of them, as I see it, are very admirable examples of clear thinkers. Instead, they're par for the course. And that is why the efforts directed at Trump are so much mob-justice. You, trained in science, have leapt into that with both feet.
Is it necessary for me to go through your comments above and cite example after example? I leave the fair-minded reader to read and judge for himself which of us is making the better case.
Here, by the way, is some useful and revealing reading. In some of it, you ought to recognize yourself.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/opinion/social-media-dumber-steven-pinker.htm...
Then this, by another thinker trained in science : https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2018/01/09/if-you-ever-doubted-that-stev...
________________________
Cogent critiques:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455369/american-life-expectancy-declined-a...
https://slate.com/health-and-science/2018/01/oprah-winfrey-helped-create-our-irr...
________________________
By the way--I'm in no way a "fan" of Steven Pinker or his work. I consider it moderately interesting and greatly overrated in importance. But Pinker is not the stinker he's been made out to be in this case.
111Limelite
>108 St._Troy:
The last thing Alan Dershowitz may be is politically opposed to Donald Trump, except in the instance of claiming he is a Democrat while believing Trump is a Republican.
Mr. Dershowitz is probably best described by his own opinion of himself -- a provocateur who takes a position based not on his personal values, political or otherwise, as much as he takes it for the sake of defending the unpopular. He has been most dependably pro-Israel when it comes to determining what he stands for..
“But look, I have a very thick skin,” he said. “It’s upsetting my children. It’s upsetting my wife a little bit. For me, it’s energizing.” -- Alan Dershowitz WaPo Dec. 7, 2017
If you have been following his record, currently, he is not a fan of Mueller and the Russiagate investigation. Instead, he appears often on Fox News programs to defend Trump and attack the possibility that Trump's acts are afoul of the law.
The irony of his present alignment with the Trump camp has disturbed his lifelong friends and professional colleagues who find it ironic (at least) that he is championing the champion of neo-Nazis, skinheads, and racists while being a primary and so public friend of Israel.
And he's able to accuse Black Lives Matter of being ant-Semitic, but not Steve Bannon, who until last week was the Mercer's fair hair child, fully paid for, and the head of Breitbart, which doe not require me to characterize it. Above the Law
The last thing Alan Dershowitz may be is politically opposed to Donald Trump, except in the instance of claiming he is a Democrat while believing Trump is a Republican.
Mr. Dershowitz is probably best described by his own opinion of himself -- a provocateur who takes a position based not on his personal values, political or otherwise, as much as he takes it for the sake of defending the unpopular. He has been most dependably pro-Israel when it comes to determining what he stands for..
“But look, I have a very thick skin,” he said. “It’s upsetting my children. It’s upsetting my wife a little bit. For me, it’s energizing.” -- Alan Dershowitz WaPo Dec. 7, 2017
If you have been following his record, currently, he is not a fan of Mueller and the Russiagate investigation. Instead, he appears often on Fox News programs to defend Trump and attack the possibility that Trump's acts are afoul of the law.
The irony of his present alignment with the Trump camp has disturbed his lifelong friends and professional colleagues who find it ironic (at least) that he is championing the champion of neo-Nazis, skinheads, and racists while being a primary and so public friend of Israel.
And he's able to accuse Black Lives Matter of being ant-Semitic, but not Steve Bannon, who until last week was the Mercer's fair hair child, fully paid for, and the head of Breitbart, which doe not require me to characterize it. Above the Law
112Limelite
>110 proximity1:
Poor thing.
The title of this thread is standard debate format. You are apparently ignorant of that fact. And you are unable to argue against it as evidenced by your posts. So, in that state of mind you continue making personal attacks in an effort to hijack the thread, I presume, since there is no evidence that any readers are impressed with your efforts at what, for you, passes for debate.
Still sad.
Poor thing.
The title of this thread is standard debate format. You are apparently ignorant of that fact. And you are unable to argue against it as evidenced by your posts. So, in that state of mind you continue making personal attacks in an effort to hijack the thread, I presume, since there is no evidence that any readers are impressed with your efforts at what, for you, passes for debate.
Still sad.
113margd
TIME: early afternoon, Trump’s motorcade pulled into the medical facility in Bethesda, Maryland, outside Washington
CNN: 4:32pm, Trump boards Air Force One, bound for Mar-a-Lago
CNN: 5:47pm, WH doctor pronounces Trump in excellent health.
White House doctor says Trump is "in excellent health"
Meg Wagner, Amanda Wills, Brian Ries and Veronica Rocha, CNN | Updated 5:47 PM ET, Fri January 12, 2018
White House doctor Ronny Jackson said President Trump is “in excellent health” following his physical exam today.
"The President’s physical exam today at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center went exceptionally well," Jackson said in a brief statement. "The President is in excellent health and I look forward to briefing some of the details on Tuesday."
The White House later released photos of Trump posing and walking with doctors at the medical center.
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/12/politics/trump-latest/
____________________________________________________________
Who Is Trump’s Doctor, White House Physician Ronny Jackson?
Max Kutner | 1/12/18
When President Donald Trump heads to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for his first formal medical exam as commander-in-chief, Dr. Ronny Jackson will be the one overseeing the physical.
Jackson, a rear admiral in the Navy, holds the title of physician to the president. Physicians have provided care to presidents since George Washington was in office, and Congress created the formal title of White House physician in 1928. Now, the position is part of the White House Medical Unit, founded in 1945, which falls under the White House Military Office...In 2013, former President Barack Obama appointed him to the top role, and he remained when Trump took office....
...After Jackson last examined Obama, in February 2016, the memo he prepared included the president’s height, weight, body mass index, resting heart rate, blood pressure, pulse oximetry and body temperature. The memo also included laboratory results; past medical, surgical and social histories; medications and immunizations. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has said the physician will probably follow the model for Obama when examining Trump.
Jackson’s assessment of Trump will likely differ from that contained in a letter his presidential campaign released in 2015 from Harold Bornstein, his personal physician. “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Bornstein wrote. The doctor also said Trump had “only positive results,” which in the medical world typically confirms the presence of a condition—though the doctor did not intend it that way.
At 70, Trump was the oldest person elected to office. (He is now 71.) The president is known for his unhealthy eating habits, including a penchant for fast food from McDonald’s. In Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of His Rise to the Presidency, former campaign officials Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie wrote that the president’s order would include two Big Macs, two Filet-o-Fish sandwiches and a “chocolate malted.”
...Jackson could oversee a neurological examination of Trump, as he did for Obama. Critics of the president—along with some lawmakers and even medical professionals—have suggested the exam review his mental health. But Trump has tweeted, “Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.” He added that he is “a very stable genius.”
Jackson will provide information publicly following Friday’s exam.
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-white-house-doctor-physician-who-ronny-jackson-778...
CNN: 4:32pm, Trump boards Air Force One, bound for Mar-a-Lago
CNN: 5:47pm, WH doctor pronounces Trump in excellent health.
White House doctor says Trump is "in excellent health"
Meg Wagner, Amanda Wills, Brian Ries and Veronica Rocha, CNN | Updated 5:47 PM ET, Fri January 12, 2018
White House doctor Ronny Jackson said President Trump is “in excellent health” following his physical exam today.
"The President’s physical exam today at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center went exceptionally well," Jackson said in a brief statement. "The President is in excellent health and I look forward to briefing some of the details on Tuesday."
The White House later released photos of Trump posing and walking with doctors at the medical center.
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/12/politics/trump-latest/
____________________________________________________________
Who Is Trump’s Doctor, White House Physician Ronny Jackson?
Max Kutner | 1/12/18
When President Donald Trump heads to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for his first formal medical exam as commander-in-chief, Dr. Ronny Jackson will be the one overseeing the physical.
Jackson, a rear admiral in the Navy, holds the title of physician to the president. Physicians have provided care to presidents since George Washington was in office, and Congress created the formal title of White House physician in 1928. Now, the position is part of the White House Medical Unit, founded in 1945, which falls under the White House Military Office...In 2013, former President Barack Obama appointed him to the top role, and he remained when Trump took office....
...After Jackson last examined Obama, in February 2016, the memo he prepared included the president’s height, weight, body mass index, resting heart rate, blood pressure, pulse oximetry and body temperature. The memo also included laboratory results; past medical, surgical and social histories; medications and immunizations. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has said the physician will probably follow the model for Obama when examining Trump.
Jackson’s assessment of Trump will likely differ from that contained in a letter his presidential campaign released in 2015 from Harold Bornstein, his personal physician. “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Bornstein wrote. The doctor also said Trump had “only positive results,” which in the medical world typically confirms the presence of a condition—though the doctor did not intend it that way.
At 70, Trump was the oldest person elected to office. (He is now 71.) The president is known for his unhealthy eating habits, including a penchant for fast food from McDonald’s. In Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of His Rise to the Presidency, former campaign officials Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie wrote that the president’s order would include two Big Macs, two Filet-o-Fish sandwiches and a “chocolate malted.”
...Jackson could oversee a neurological examination of Trump, as he did for Obama. Critics of the president—along with some lawmakers and even medical professionals—have suggested the exam review his mental health. But Trump has tweeted, “Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.” He added that he is “a very stable genius.”
Jackson will provide information publicly following Friday’s exam.
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-white-house-doctor-physician-who-ronny-jackson-778...
114margd
40% of the last 15 presidents spoke at twice Trump's grade level (4.6).
"The gap between Trump and the next closest president ... is larger than any other gap..."
Speech complexity is not necessarily correlated with effectiveness or even intelligence--some of the presidents may be aiming for clarity?
In 1990s interviews, Trump's speech patterns were noticeably more complex than current...
Trump Speaks At Fourth-Grade Level, Lowest Of Last 15 U.S. Presidents, New Analysis Finds
Nina Burleigh | 1/8/18
President Donald Trump...communicates at the lowest grade level of the last 15 presidents...
...Factba.se has collected interviews, speeches and press conferences from previous presidents, using material publicly available from presidential libraries, and including the University of California, Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project, which contains presidential press conferences going back to Hoover in 1929.
The website excluded communiques issued by the last two presidents on social media and limited the study to unscripted words uttered at press conferences and other public appearances.
The words were run through a variety of lexicological analyses, besides the Flesch-Kincaid, and the results were the same. In every one, Trump came in dead last. Trump also uses the fewest "unique words" (2,605) of any president—Obama was the best at 4,869—and uses words with the fewest average syllables, with 1.33 per word, compared to positively multi-syllabic president Hoover at 1.57.
“By every metric and methodology tested, Donald Trump’s vocabulary and grammatical structure is significantly more simple, and less diverse, than any President since Herbert Hoover, when measuring “off-script” words, that is, words far less likely to have been written in advance for the speaker,” Factba.se CEO Bill Frischling wrote. “The gap between Trump and the next closest president ... is larger than any other gap using Flesch-Kincaid. Statistically speaking, there is a significant gap.”
..."It's worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns,” (National Economic Council chief Gary) Cohn wrote (e-mail). “Trump won't read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored. And his staff is no better.”...
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-fire-and-fury-smart-genius-obama-774169
"The gap between Trump and the next closest president ... is larger than any other gap..."
Speech complexity is not necessarily correlated with effectiveness or even intelligence--some of the presidents may be aiming for clarity?
In 1990s interviews, Trump's speech patterns were noticeably more complex than current...
Trump Speaks At Fourth-Grade Level, Lowest Of Last 15 U.S. Presidents, New Analysis Finds
Nina Burleigh | 1/8/18
President Donald Trump...communicates at the lowest grade level of the last 15 presidents...
...Factba.se has collected interviews, speeches and press conferences from previous presidents, using material publicly available from presidential libraries, and including the University of California, Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project, which contains presidential press conferences going back to Hoover in 1929.
The website excluded communiques issued by the last two presidents on social media and limited the study to unscripted words uttered at press conferences and other public appearances.
The words were run through a variety of lexicological analyses, besides the Flesch-Kincaid, and the results were the same. In every one, Trump came in dead last. Trump also uses the fewest "unique words" (2,605) of any president—Obama was the best at 4,869—and uses words with the fewest average syllables, with 1.33 per word, compared to positively multi-syllabic president Hoover at 1.57.
“By every metric and methodology tested, Donald Trump’s vocabulary and grammatical structure is significantly more simple, and less diverse, than any President since Herbert Hoover, when measuring “off-script” words, that is, words far less likely to have been written in advance for the speaker,” Factba.se CEO Bill Frischling wrote. “The gap between Trump and the next closest president ... is larger than any other gap using Flesch-Kincaid. Statistically speaking, there is a significant gap.”
..."It's worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns,” (National Economic Council chief Gary) Cohn wrote (e-mail). “Trump won't read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored. And his staff is no better.”...
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-fire-and-fury-smart-genius-obama-774169
115proximity1
>112 Limelite:
You are remarkably consistent in being factually wrong:
standard debate topics are of the format "resolved that..."
thus a resolution, a position, is proposed for debate.
By constrast, if something is in fact a "given," it is "given," stipulated as a fact---in which case there is nothing to be debated.
I keep hearing that Oprah is "well-read". It reminds me of how I once frequently heard about how Barack Obama was a "(U.S.) constitutional-law scholar--(read, "expert", "well-read," "very knowledgable about" the U.S. Constitution). But in fact, Obama's grasp of, understanding of, the U.S. Constitution is not, as it proved out, at all worthy of admiration. This is a president who kept open throughout his two-term tenure the flagrantly unconstitutional military "gulag"-prison at the U.S.'s naval base at Cuba's Guantánamo Bay. By my reckoning, Obama, as an exceptional, bright, astute person is a faker and a phony.
Like Obama's undeserved reputation as having a brilliant mind, or his being a Constitutional expert, Oprah's being well- or widely- read is simply laughable bullshit. Perhaps she's well-read if self-help fluff and feminist clap-trap is one's idea of the stuff of a well-read person's solid reading.
Note: of course, being an intellectual light-weight---as both Obama and Oprah are and have been is not-- I repeat, not-- (necessarily) a disqualification for serving in the office of president of the United States. This is a matter for the nation's electorate to determine.
Ultimately, too, if general standards of what is thought to be typical of an astute or a well-read person becomes or, rather, remains so debased that the vast majority of the public can not see it otherwise than to herald Obama or Oprah as wise and well-read then that, too, is something we assume at our peril.
Trump--intellectually--does not compare poorly to the over-rated light-weight Obama or to near-air-head mid-morning television hostess, Oprah-- the former of whom was president of the United States for a time to our general misfortune and the latter of whom of course one day might be.
That is up to voters to decide--as much as a certain strain of pseudo-liberal would have it otherwise.
You are remarkably consistent in being factually wrong:
standard debate topics are of the format "resolved that..."
thus a resolution, a position, is proposed for debate.
By constrast, if something is in fact a "given," it is "given," stipulated as a fact---in which case there is nothing to be debated.
I keep hearing that Oprah is "well-read". It reminds me of how I once frequently heard about how Barack Obama was a "(U.S.) constitutional-law scholar--(read, "expert", "well-read," "very knowledgable about" the U.S. Constitution). But in fact, Obama's grasp of, understanding of, the U.S. Constitution is not, as it proved out, at all worthy of admiration. This is a president who kept open throughout his two-term tenure the flagrantly unconstitutional military "gulag"-prison at the U.S.'s naval base at Cuba's Guantánamo Bay. By my reckoning, Obama, as an exceptional, bright, astute person is a faker and a phony.
Like Obama's undeserved reputation as having a brilliant mind, or his being a Constitutional expert, Oprah's being well- or widely- read is simply laughable bullshit. Perhaps she's well-read if self-help fluff and feminist clap-trap is one's idea of the stuff of a well-read person's solid reading.
Note: of course, being an intellectual light-weight---as both Obama and Oprah are and have been is not-- I repeat, not-- (necessarily) a disqualification for serving in the office of president of the United States. This is a matter for the nation's electorate to determine.
Ultimately, too, if general standards of what is thought to be typical of an astute or a well-read person becomes or, rather, remains so debased that the vast majority of the public can not see it otherwise than to herald Obama or Oprah as wise and well-read then that, too, is something we assume at our peril.
Trump--intellectually--does not compare poorly to the over-rated light-weight Obama or to near-air-head mid-morning television hostess, Oprah-- the former of whom was president of the United States for a time to our general misfortune and the latter of whom of course one day might be.
That is up to voters to decide--as much as a certain strain of pseudo-liberal would have it otherwise.
116RickHarsch
>114 margd: I'm gald to see something like that posted. I have difficulty expressing myself regarding the degree to which Trump is unfit. I haven't found any president during my lifetime fit, so it's difficult for me to make an argument against a particular one. For example, though Obama was clearly smart and an excellent speaker, he sent bombs against babies so often I find it difficult to argue that he was anything other than brutal...with an elegant facade. So Trump comes along and in some ways it is no great surprise that such a buffoon, such a clearly stupid, empty, amoral clown arises from the election process (still a surprise such a misogynist could win, even with an electoral college situation in his favor...still a surprise...). But how unbelievably less a human than even Baby Bush, who was so much less (in appearance) than even Reagan, who at the time seemed a joke of a candidate...So: 4th grade level. He must get a three grade boost from the occasional accidents of vocabulary.
117RickHarsch
>115 proximity1:
'I keep hearing that Oprah is "well-read". It reminds me of how I once frequently heard about how Barack Obama was a "(U.S.) constitutional-law scholar--(read, "expert", "well-read," "very knowledgable about" the U.S. Constitution). But in fact, Obama's grasp of, understanding of, the U.S. Constitution is not, as it proved out, at all worthy of admiration. This is a president who kept open throughout his two-term tenure the flagrantly unconstitutional military "gulag"-prison at the U.S.'s naval base at Cuba's Guantánamo Bay. By my reckoning, Obama, as an exceptional, bright, astute person is a faker and a phony.'
Obama's knowledge of the constitution cannot be judged by the circumstances of Guantanamo, but if you insist then you would have to give him high marks for recognizing the importance of closing it immediately upon taking office. His failure to do so had nothing to do with his IQ, but rather his position as the figurehead of the US oligarchy, a position which does not reward a modicum of courage. Great courage has yet to be tried, so we don't know about that. Obama hadn't the will to get Guantamo closed once he faced opposition. He certainly knew should have been closed. The likelihood is that Guantanamo will be remembered as representative of a cluster of some of the great war crimes of the first half of the 21st century...Imagine if Nazi Germany had been stopped but not defeated. Imagine Nazi Germany having to close down their own extermination camps. The world knows, but the world can do nothing. And once the US fully admits to what they have done, where are they? As it is they apparently hope the problem will simply dissipate...as if Guantanamo never existed.
'I keep hearing that Oprah is "well-read". It reminds me of how I once frequently heard about how Barack Obama was a "(U.S.) constitutional-law scholar--(read, "expert", "well-read," "very knowledgable about" the U.S. Constitution). But in fact, Obama's grasp of, understanding of, the U.S. Constitution is not, as it proved out, at all worthy of admiration. This is a president who kept open throughout his two-term tenure the flagrantly unconstitutional military "gulag"-prison at the U.S.'s naval base at Cuba's Guantánamo Bay. By my reckoning, Obama, as an exceptional, bright, astute person is a faker and a phony.'
Obama's knowledge of the constitution cannot be judged by the circumstances of Guantanamo, but if you insist then you would have to give him high marks for recognizing the importance of closing it immediately upon taking office. His failure to do so had nothing to do with his IQ, but rather his position as the figurehead of the US oligarchy, a position which does not reward a modicum of courage. Great courage has yet to be tried, so we don't know about that. Obama hadn't the will to get Guantamo closed once he faced opposition. He certainly knew should have been closed. The likelihood is that Guantanamo will be remembered as representative of a cluster of some of the great war crimes of the first half of the 21st century...Imagine if Nazi Germany had been stopped but not defeated. Imagine Nazi Germany having to close down their own extermination camps. The world knows, but the world can do nothing. And once the US fully admits to what they have done, where are they? As it is they apparently hope the problem will simply dissipate...as if Guantanamo never existed.
118Limelite
In praise of accuracy, I will point out, among several other factual errors you posted that you say "voters" when the correct term, as the entire country recognizes is "Russian election interference."
You describe Obama as an intellectual lightweight, when the only evidence you provide for that assessment is that you don't admire liberal thinking but prefer a stupid liar who knows less of the Constitution than any American adult I've ever known and that you choose to admit.
Obama's knowledge of the Constitution is judged by you as bogus because he operated within its limits to advance a liberal program, quite legally, unless the Supreme Court (a most right wing banque, contemporaneously) decided against him out of legal opinions filtered through strict constructionist blighted thought.
And your contention that Trump compares intellectually on par with Obama and Oprah, generally speaking, is just as "intellectually" on par with you saying so in the first place. Trump would describe it as, "Weak. Sad." Proof of the latter is written in your own words, while you can offer absolutely none to back up your poor opinion of two liberal public figures.
While you favor the idiot over the gifted -- nay the common ordinary -- for no apparent reason other than the lunatic fringe supports him, I ask of God Emperor Trump, "How stupid do you have to be to lie continually and habitually when evidence and fact belie you, when you get caught at it repeatedly and constantly, when you lie in mind-aboggling contraindication to your earlier lies?" Pretty damn stupid is the correct answer.
How stupid do you have to be to maintain racist opinions when all around you are examples of the people you despise for their color and non-Anglo origin, and yet they are smarter, more effective, and -- in fact -- superior to you, your parents, and your adult offspring, who believed and behave(d) just like you.
How stupid do you have to be to pander to the vilest among us? How stupid do you have to be to lap up flattery from your enemies? How stupid do you have to be to believe that accruing money by illegal means, by cheating, and by defrauding makes you smart? A person with your intelligence should not deceptively shade meaning. Don't pretend to imply "smart" where your reader recognizes you mean "evil."
Really, I don't need to intellectualize this debate with further argument and explication because the proof of my position is in the pudding-head himself.
The height of stupidity is in Trump's habitual behavior, it is what he does over all his other stupid faults -- he self-aggrandizes on the one hand and demeans everyone else on the other. Only the very stupid among us feel compelled to tout our own opinion of ourselves as being so much above the entirely accurate general opinion. If you need an example of what I mean, read you own posts.
You describe Obama as an intellectual lightweight, when the only evidence you provide for that assessment is that you don't admire liberal thinking but prefer a stupid liar who knows less of the Constitution than any American adult I've ever known and that you choose to admit.
Obama's knowledge of the Constitution is judged by you as bogus because he operated within its limits to advance a liberal program, quite legally, unless the Supreme Court (a most right wing banque, contemporaneously) decided against him out of legal opinions filtered through strict constructionist blighted thought.
And your contention that Trump compares intellectually on par with Obama and Oprah, generally speaking, is just as "intellectually" on par with you saying so in the first place. Trump would describe it as, "Weak. Sad." Proof of the latter is written in your own words, while you can offer absolutely none to back up your poor opinion of two liberal public figures.
While you favor the idiot over the gifted -- nay the common ordinary -- for no apparent reason other than the lunatic fringe supports him, I ask of God Emperor Trump, "How stupid do you have to be to lie continually and habitually when evidence and fact belie you, when you get caught at it repeatedly and constantly, when you lie in mind-aboggling contraindication to your earlier lies?" Pretty damn stupid is the correct answer.
How stupid do you have to be to maintain racist opinions when all around you are examples of the people you despise for their color and non-Anglo origin, and yet they are smarter, more effective, and -- in fact -- superior to you, your parents, and your adult offspring, who believed and behave(d) just like you.
How stupid do you have to be to pander to the vilest among us? How stupid do you have to be to lap up flattery from your enemies? How stupid do you have to be to believe that accruing money by illegal means, by cheating, and by defrauding makes you smart? A person with your intelligence should not deceptively shade meaning. Don't pretend to imply "smart" where your reader recognizes you mean "evil."
Really, I don't need to intellectualize this debate with further argument and explication because the proof of my position is in the pudding-head himself.
The height of stupidity is in Trump's habitual behavior, it is what he does over all his other stupid faults -- he self-aggrandizes on the one hand and demeans everyone else on the other. Only the very stupid among us feel compelled to tout our own opinion of ourselves as being so much above the entirely accurate general opinion. If you need an example of what I mean, read you own posts.
119barney67
Dershowitz has always been a liberal. Anyone who believes otherwise is dumb shit. One of the few times I agreed with him was when he was debating Noam Chomsky, one of the few people who can make Dershowitz look sensible.
120margd
>113 margd: TIME: early afternoon, Trump’s motorcade pulled into the medical facility in Bethesda, Maryland, outside Washington
CNN: 4:32pm, Trump boards Air Force One, bound for Mar-a-Lago
CNN: 5:47pm, WH doctor pronounces Trump in excellent health.
"four hours of physical and mental health testing on Friday"
http://time.com/5104183/donald-trump-health-ronny-jackson/
"a three-hour examination"
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42708826
___________________________________________
Trump is 71, has bad genes (Dad had Alzheimers), heart calcification (not in transcript, but on the radio), and bad habits (diet, sleep, weight, rage), yet:
"...Jackson said that there is no reason Trump wouldn't be able to complete his first term health-wise, in addition to a second term if re-elected..."
http://www.capradio.org/news/npr/story?storyid=578424523
CNN: 4:32pm, Trump boards Air Force One, bound for Mar-a-Lago
CNN: 5:47pm, WH doctor pronounces Trump in excellent health.
"four hours of physical and mental health testing on Friday"
http://time.com/5104183/donald-trump-health-ronny-jackson/
"a three-hour examination"
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42708826
___________________________________________
Trump is 71, has bad genes (Dad had Alzheimers), heart calcification (not in transcript, but on the radio), and bad habits (diet, sleep, weight, rage), yet:
"...Jackson said that there is no reason Trump wouldn't be able to complete his first term health-wise, in addition to a second term if re-elected..."
http://www.capradio.org/news/npr/story?storyid=578424523
121proximity1
from a news report:
"President Trump registered a perfect score on a cognitive screening test as part of his physical examination taken last week, the White House physician said Tuesday, adding that Trump requested the test to rebut accusations that his mental faculties are declining.
" 'There's no indication whatsoever that he has any cognitive issues,' Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, the chief White House doctor, whose tenure treating presidents began with George W. Bush, told reporters during a lengthy White House briefing. 'He's very sharp. He's very articulate when he speaks to me.'
'Absolutely, he's fit for duty,' Jackson said."
122margd
Check out the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) neuropsychological test--somewhat reassuring, but not much:
http://www.mocatest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/MoCA-New-Test-8.1-2017-04.pdf
_________________________________________________
Doctor credibility: did he go along with fictional height and weight?
The 'girthers' aren't buying Trump's official weight and height
...not everyone is buying Jackson's assessment that Trump is 6-foot-3 and weighs 239 pounds, giving him a barely sub-obesity body mass index (BMI) of 29.9
http://theweek.com/speedreads/749127/girthers-arent-buying-trumps-official-weigh...
http://www.mocatest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/MoCA-New-Test-8.1-2017-04.pdf
_________________________________________________
Doctor credibility: did he go along with fictional height and weight?
The 'girthers' aren't buying Trump's official weight and height
...not everyone is buying Jackson's assessment that Trump is 6-foot-3 and weighs 239 pounds, giving him a barely sub-obesity body mass index (BMI) of 29.9
http://theweek.com/speedreads/749127/girthers-arent-buying-trumps-official-weigh...
123margd
#120 Further on heart calcification I heard on NPR, but didn't see it on transcript:
Sanjay Gupta: By all standards, Trump has heart disease
Rebecca Savransky - 01/17/18
CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta...said dating back to 2009, President Trump started to have "these tests that are actually looking for the presence of calcium in the blood vessels that lead to the heart."
"Steadily, up until just this past week when he had it performed again, those numbers have gone up," he said.
"When they get to a certain range ... that means he has heart disease."
Gupta then talked about his interaction Tuesday with .
"It was interesting when I spoke to (President Trump's doctor, Navy Rear Adm. Dr. Ronny Jackson) at first, he said, he passed all the tests with flying colors," Gupta said. "When I asked him specifically about that test, did he then concede that, in fact, the president does have heart disease."
"They're going to be increasing the medications, including the cholesterol-lowering medications to try and combat that, but there's no question, by all standards, by all metrics, anyway a doctor or cardiologist will look at it, the president does have heart disease."
Gupta said it's controllable with medications, adding that Trump needs to have his diet under control.
"But he does have heart disease," he said...
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369287-sanjay-gupta-by-all-standards-...
Sanjay Gupta: By all standards, Trump has heart disease
Rebecca Savransky - 01/17/18
CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta...said dating back to 2009, President Trump started to have "these tests that are actually looking for the presence of calcium in the blood vessels that lead to the heart."
"Steadily, up until just this past week when he had it performed again, those numbers have gone up," he said.
"When they get to a certain range ... that means he has heart disease."
Gupta then talked about his interaction Tuesday with .
"It was interesting when I spoke to (President Trump's doctor, Navy Rear Adm. Dr. Ronny Jackson) at first, he said, he passed all the tests with flying colors," Gupta said. "When I asked him specifically about that test, did he then concede that, in fact, the president does have heart disease."
"They're going to be increasing the medications, including the cholesterol-lowering medications to try and combat that, but there's no question, by all standards, by all metrics, anyway a doctor or cardiologist will look at it, the president does have heart disease."
Gupta said it's controllable with medications, adding that Trump needs to have his diet under control.
"But he does have heart disease," he said...
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369287-sanjay-gupta-by-all-standards-...
125proximity1
So which is your greater concern? The president is nuts? Or the president is over-weight?
You people crack me up.
"I feel in excellent condition. I used to suffer from acidity of stomach, and I suppose that was due to overloading it." -- Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States
"He weighed 335-340 pounds when he left the White House" (Pringle, Henry F. The Life and Times of William Howard Taft: A Biography. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1939)
See, for the following, as well:
"Taft had severe sleep apnea throughout his Presidency." (Sotos, JG. Taft and Pickwick: sleep apnea in the White House. Chest. 2003;124:1133-1142. )
... had gout attacks in both feet. Dr. James Marsh Jackson found that Taft's systolic blood pressure was 210 mmHg in 1910 7o. At that time, Taft's weight was near its peak as was, presumably, the severity of his sleep apnea. By 1926 his blood pressure was 160-165/100 and his weight 60-70 pounds lower. ((Butt, Archibald W. Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt, Military Aide. Garden City, NY: Doubleday (1930). Volume 1: pages 1-432. Volume 2: pages 433-862. ; Ross, Ishbel. An American Family: The Tafts - 1678 to 1964. Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Co., 1964. )
Shortly before he died in 1930, it was disclosed that Taft had chronic cystitis." (Marx, Rudolph. The Health of the Presidents. New York: GP Putnam's Sons, 1960.)
127Limelite
>125 proximity1:
The screen for cognitive function that Trump underwent is a 15 minute instrument administered to patients so doctors can rule out incipient dementia. You can take the same test online. Google it. Trump's staff probably did and had him practice, just like you can, too. Remember, he's the one who insisted on undergoing it. Why wouldn't he make sure he would pass. I would.
It has nothing to do with examining a patient for psychiatric problems like personality disorder, pathological lying, narcissism, or paranoia, or absence of empathy. Much less, sociopathy. Trump's doctor stated flatly that Trump did not undergo any kind of psychological test beyond (probably) answering, when queried, what year it is and who the president might be.
But you knew that, didn't you?
Unless an individual can exhibit self-control, solid good judgment, empathy, and leadership in the sense of having values that are good for the country rather than special and self interests and getting people to buy into your vision, can keep and win allies, recognize and oppose enemies, be impervious to empty flattery, respect, evaluate, and accept the expertise of qualified career professionals, eschew conspiracies, have an attention span more extensive than a gnat and an intellectual hunger and capacity to be informed, bring integrity to the office, and extremely vet appointees for qualified status to the extent he would vet immigrants, that person is unfit to be president.
In short, the person is fit who can bear the burden of the chief executive. Trump behaves in a manner unfit for a president because his personality is unfit for the office. A president who bears the burden of the office does not scream and pitch rage fits when disagreed with; point fingers and growl, "Out!" because (s)he takes umbrage at being questioned by the press; blame others for everything that's his/her fault; lie habitually; be unable to make a decision based on merit and stick to it; carry on unceasing personal, bullying, inconsequential vendettas against those whom he fears; pander to the lunatic fringe; nor indemnify the innocent in broad brush condemnation.
Adml. Ronny Jackson, M.D., only pronounced the president physically and physiologically fit. He did not pronounce him mentally, psychologically, and emotionally fit. His medical ethics wouldn't allow him to.
The screen for cognitive function that Trump underwent is a 15 minute instrument administered to patients so doctors can rule out incipient dementia. You can take the same test online. Google it. Trump's staff probably did and had him practice, just like you can, too. Remember, he's the one who insisted on undergoing it. Why wouldn't he make sure he would pass. I would.
It has nothing to do with examining a patient for psychiatric problems like personality disorder, pathological lying, narcissism, or paranoia, or absence of empathy. Much less, sociopathy. Trump's doctor stated flatly that Trump did not undergo any kind of psychological test beyond (probably) answering, when queried, what year it is and who the president might be.
But you knew that, didn't you?
Unless an individual can exhibit self-control, solid good judgment, empathy, and leadership in the sense of having values that are good for the country rather than special and self interests and getting people to buy into your vision, can keep and win allies, recognize and oppose enemies, be impervious to empty flattery, respect, evaluate, and accept the expertise of qualified career professionals, eschew conspiracies, have an attention span more extensive than a gnat and an intellectual hunger and capacity to be informed, bring integrity to the office, and extremely vet appointees for qualified status to the extent he would vet immigrants, that person is unfit to be president.
In short, the person is fit who can bear the burden of the chief executive. Trump behaves in a manner unfit for a president because his personality is unfit for the office. A president who bears the burden of the office does not scream and pitch rage fits when disagreed with; point fingers and growl, "Out!" because (s)he takes umbrage at being questioned by the press; blame others for everything that's his/her fault; lie habitually; be unable to make a decision based on merit and stick to it; carry on unceasing personal, bullying, inconsequential vendettas against those whom he fears; pander to the lunatic fringe; nor indemnify the innocent in broad brush condemnation.
Adml. Ronny Jackson, M.D., only pronounced the president physically and physiologically fit. He did not pronounce him mentally, psychologically, and emotionally fit. His medical ethics wouldn't allow him to.
128RickHarsch
I agree entirely with Proximity1 on this one: too much attention to his mental fitness. He's mentally far too young, emotionally too young, intellectually too feeble to be president. So too much attention is being paid to this recent check-up as it is already clear he's unfit. Now let's see if we can get a look at his tax returns and his disclosure agreements and the NY police reports.
129Limelite
>128 RickHarsch:
I'd ask you to consider that the question of fitness for the office of president has little to do with his tax returns or with NDAs he may have with staff. But that the consideration of his mental fitness is at least as important as the consideration of judicial temperament is for a judge. That was once fashionable and vital, especially with Republicans, when Congress considered judicial appointments of Democratic presidents, particularly, SCOTUS appointments, in the 90s.
The ABA declares that judicial temperament means that a judge demonstrates "compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, sensitivity, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias and commitment to equal justice." It is probably the most important consideration in evaluating the quality of performance of a judge and for evaluating a judges ability to bear the burden of his office.
Temperament is such an important aspect of judicial performance that the legal profession devotes lots of scholarship on the subject (as Google shows), as do citizenship organizations such as DOAR. All agree that deep knowledge of the law is not enough to make a good judge. Likewise, excellent physical health is not enough to make a president fit. Here's the DOAR position.
Let's not be fooled into being distracted from paying attention to what is the most important reason to fire, remove, or impeach a public servant, be he aide, chairman, judge, or president. Unfitness for the job, and by that we mean mental unfitness. Confinement to a wheel chair does not make one unfit as FDR proved; deprivation of mental fitness during or after a stroke does.
I do not agree that too much attention is being paid to Trump's mental fitness. It is what forms and regulates his personality. That, in turn, determines how we behave in our roles as public servants. Presidential temperament is what we're discussing in this thread. And Trump demonstrates that he totally lacks the temperament to bear the burdens demanded of him in service to our country and Constitution. He is unfit to be president regardless of whether or not his LDL is riskily high, his arteries are occluding with plaque build-up, and he is, in fact, medically obese.
I conclude that he lacks presidential temperament, thus is fit only for removal from his current position.
Your mileage may vary.
I'd ask you to consider that the question of fitness for the office of president has little to do with his tax returns or with NDAs he may have with staff. But that the consideration of his mental fitness is at least as important as the consideration of judicial temperament is for a judge. That was once fashionable and vital, especially with Republicans, when Congress considered judicial appointments of Democratic presidents, particularly, SCOTUS appointments, in the 90s.
The ABA declares that judicial temperament means that a judge demonstrates "compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, sensitivity, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias and commitment to equal justice." It is probably the most important consideration in evaluating the quality of performance of a judge and for evaluating a judges ability to bear the burden of his office.
Temperament is such an important aspect of judicial performance that the legal profession devotes lots of scholarship on the subject (as Google shows), as do citizenship organizations such as DOAR. All agree that deep knowledge of the law is not enough to make a good judge. Likewise, excellent physical health is not enough to make a president fit. Here's the DOAR position.
Judicial temperament is surely a reflection of personality, but it is more than that. Every person is multi-faceted in ways that lead us to behave differently in our different roles. (SNIP)All of this quote describes what kind of mental fitness is requisite to be considered judicially fit.
Judicial temperament, at its best, is a form of restraint that appears as an even-handedness of vision, a thorough-going fairness that eschews anger in favor of reason and clings to respect of all parties as an essential ingredient for the operation of justice. And yet, it is notable that such civility is not ordinary. . .
Let's not be fooled into being distracted from paying attention to what is the most important reason to fire, remove, or impeach a public servant, be he aide, chairman, judge, or president. Unfitness for the job, and by that we mean mental unfitness. Confinement to a wheel chair does not make one unfit as FDR proved; deprivation of mental fitness during or after a stroke does.
I do not agree that too much attention is being paid to Trump's mental fitness. It is what forms and regulates his personality. That, in turn, determines how we behave in our roles as public servants. Presidential temperament is what we're discussing in this thread. And Trump demonstrates that he totally lacks the temperament to bear the burdens demanded of him in service to our country and Constitution. He is unfit to be president regardless of whether or not his LDL is riskily high, his arteries are occluding with plaque build-up, and he is, in fact, medically obese.
I conclude that he lacks presidential temperament, thus is fit only for removal from his current position.
Your mileage may vary.
130proximity1
>127 Limelite:
You have incredible nerve to write that and have an avowed preferance for Hillary Clinton as president over Trump. This is a gold-plated example of why so-called "liberals" or "left-wingers" have virtually no credibility left in the eys of a good half of the nation's public.
RE "Trump behaves in a manner unfit for a president because his personality is unfit for the office. A president who bears the burden of the office does not scream and pitch rage fits when disagreed with; point fingers and growl, "Out!"
Obama did virtually the same things. He was known and seen to slam his hand in rage against a wall--in the White House or aboard AF1. He was known to use a vocabulary among his aides and advisors which included terms like, "shit", "fuck", "damn" etc. as did his aides and advisors themselves when they were dealing with some of their own junior staff. And it is fair to suppose that these terms passed Obama's thoughts even more frequently that they passed his mouth.
_______________________________
'There's no indication whatsoever that he has any cognitive issues,'
'He's very sharp. He's very articulate when he speaks to me.'
'Absolutely, he's fit for duty,'
-- "Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, the chief White House doctor, whose tenure treating presidents began with George W. Bush,"
If you think the test is so easy, go and have a ball boning up on it. Practice it as much as you like.
Then submit to an exam by someone who isn't your fawning confederate and see how you do. I do not feel quite confident that my own score, even after numerous practice runs, would be fautless.
_________________________
RE:
"I conclude that he lacks presidential temperament"
Your conclusion doesn't get us anywhere. Trump is remaining in his office despite what you think about his lack of presidential temperament." And you and so many others just can't get over that fact.
Trump's temperament is, I daresay, very, very similar to the overwhelming majority of the men who've held that office--with the exception that, unlike them, Trump's behavior is retailed in the daily press, and made the greatly exaggerated object of Washington's longstanding gossip-mill. In the past, though extremely similar to Trump, presidents' Trump-like behavior wasn't divulged openly; but those who worked in the White House west wing were certainly aware of it.
____________________
"The ABA declares that judicial temperament means that a judge demonstrates 'compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, sensitivity, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias and commitment to equal justice.' "
LOL!
Yes, that's the theory, all right.
No doubt, pious lawyers, judges and law-school professors from Harvard's and Yale's law schools would have said the same throughout the 1890s and 1900s right on up to the 1954 SC decision*, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka et al , when at last it was ruled, with exquisite hair-splitting finesse, that, in certain respects, the Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) , had failed to achieve, in 1896, all that had become necessary, in 1954, in 'compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, sensitivity, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias and commitment to equal justice,' requiring them to produce a de facto overturning Plessy's nonsense holdings on "separate but equal" while mincing their words enough to say that, (as Wikipedia's page puts it) "even if segregated black and white schools were of equal quality in facilities and teachers, segregation by itself was harmful to black students and unconstitutional."
(See: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) )
_________________________
* --and after!--
"Unless an individual can exhibit self-control, solid good judgment, empathy, and leadership in the sense of having values that are good for the country rather than special and self interests and getting people to buy into your vision, can keep and win allies, recognize and oppose enemies, be impervious to empty flattery, respect, evaluate, and accept the expertise of qualified career professionals, eschew conspiracies, have an attention span more extensive than a gnat and an intellectual hunger and capacity to be informed, bring integrity to the office, and extremely vet appointees for qualified status to the extent he would vet immigrants, that person is unfit to be president."
You have incredible nerve to write that and have an avowed preferance for Hillary Clinton as president over Trump. This is a gold-plated example of why so-called "liberals" or "left-wingers" have virtually no credibility left in the eys of a good half of the nation's public.
RE "Trump behaves in a manner unfit for a president because his personality is unfit for the office. A president who bears the burden of the office does not scream and pitch rage fits when disagreed with; point fingers and growl, "Out!"
Obama did virtually the same things. He was known and seen to slam his hand in rage against a wall--in the White House or aboard AF1. He was known to use a vocabulary among his aides and advisors which included terms like, "shit", "fuck", "damn" etc. as did his aides and advisors themselves when they were dealing with some of their own junior staff. And it is fair to suppose that these terms passed Obama's thoughts even more frequently that they passed his mouth.
_______________________________
'There's no indication whatsoever that he has any cognitive issues,'
'He's very sharp. He's very articulate when he speaks to me.'
'Absolutely, he's fit for duty,'
-- "Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, the chief White House doctor, whose tenure treating presidents began with George W. Bush,"
If you think the test is so easy, go and have a ball boning up on it. Practice it as much as you like.
Then submit to an exam by someone who isn't your fawning confederate and see how you do. I do not feel quite confident that my own score, even after numerous practice runs, would be fautless.
_________________________
RE:
"I conclude that he lacks presidential temperament"
Your conclusion doesn't get us anywhere. Trump is remaining in his office despite what you think about his lack of presidential temperament." And you and so many others just can't get over that fact.
Trump's temperament is, I daresay, very, very similar to the overwhelming majority of the men who've held that office--with the exception that, unlike them, Trump's behavior is retailed in the daily press, and made the greatly exaggerated object of Washington's longstanding gossip-mill. In the past, though extremely similar to Trump, presidents' Trump-like behavior wasn't divulged openly; but those who worked in the White House west wing were certainly aware of it.
____________________
"The ABA declares that judicial temperament means that a judge demonstrates 'compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, sensitivity, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias and commitment to equal justice.' "
LOL!
Yes, that's the theory, all right.
No doubt, pious lawyers, judges and law-school professors from Harvard's and Yale's law schools would have said the same throughout the 1890s and 1900s right on up to the 1954 SC decision*, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka et al , when at last it was ruled, with exquisite hair-splitting finesse, that, in certain respects, the Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) , had failed to achieve, in 1896, all that had become necessary, in 1954, in 'compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, sensitivity, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias and commitment to equal justice,' requiring them to produce a de facto overturning Plessy's nonsense holdings on "separate but equal" while mincing their words enough to say that, (as Wikipedia's page puts it) "even if segregated black and white schools were of equal quality in facilities and teachers, segregation by itself was harmful to black students and unconstitutional."
(See: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) )
"We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does."
More on "judicial temperament" ---- LOL!
RE the heart of London's legal quarter in the mid-15th C.
"Just Another Day in Chancery Lane: Disorder and the Law in London's Legal Quarter in the Fifteenth Century", Law and History Review, Volume 35, Issue 4, November 2017 , pp. 1017-1047 by Hanne Kleineke and James Ross
"Scarcely any turbulence, quarrels or disturbance ever occur there, but delinquents are punished with no other punishment than expulsion from communion with their society, which is a penalty they fear more than criminals elsewhere fear imprisonment and fetters. For a man once expelled from one of these societies is never received into the fellowship of any other of those societies. Hence the peace is unbroken and the conversation of all of them is as the friendship of united folk."
"This was Sir John Fortescue's idealized account to the exiled prince of Wales, Edward of Lancaster, of the peace-loving nature of London's Inns of Court and Chancery in the mid-fifteenth century. Fortescue was not concerned with the reality, which, as he knew all too well, was different. He was concerned with impressing on his young pupil the perfection of the English law and the education of its practitioners, rather than the imperfections that existed in a society that the prince, as he explicitly told him, would never experience.
"Few who were familiar with the legal quarter that surrounded the Inns would have recognized the Arcadia that Fortescue described. Far from being the peaceful and well-ordered district that the former chief justice invoked, in the period when he wrote the area to the west of London's Temple Bar was a liminal space, populated by—among others—large numbers of young trainee lawyers, in whom the kind of unruly behaviour otherwise also associated with the early universities, not least the western suburb's Paris counterpart, the quartier latin to the south of the river Seine, was endemic. Among the most important factors that made it so was the very existence of the established, and to some extent tribal, all-male societies of the Inns of Court and of Chancery, at close quarters with the royal law courts and their heady mix of disputants and hired legal counsellors in permanent competition with each other."
_________________________
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0738248017000372
_________________________
* --and after!--
131RickHarsch
>129 Limelite: I was joking (I mean I was joking about his fitness, because it is self-evident that he is not fit. So semi-serious...I am not joking about the several other avenues available for determining that he should not be walking the streets a free man).
or you can just look at his lies: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html
or you can just look at his lies: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html
132margd
Dr Jackson's credibility, contd.
Is Trump’s doctor okay?
Dana Milbank | January 17, 2017
Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson was so effusive in extolling the totally amazing, surpassingly marvelous, superbly stupendous and extremely awesome health of the president that the doctor sounded almost Trumpian.
...repeating “excellent” eight times
..“Incredible cardiac fitness,” ...“ incredible genes. . . . incredibly good genes, and it’s just the way God made him.”
Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN, making a rare house call to the White House briefing room, offered a second opinion. “He is taking a cholesterol-lowering medication, he has evidence of heart disease, and he’s borderline obese,” Gupta pointed out, citing Jackson’s own findings. “Can you characterize that as excellent health?”
...Bandy X. Lee, the Yale Medical School psychiatrist who compiled the controversial book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” ...said the (cognitive) screening test Jackson gave Trump “gives the public a false sense of reassurance.” ...
She said the test, though useful for detecting Alzheimer’s and the like, indicates little about “his high functioning, his frontal-lobe functioning, that we’re questioning.” To figure out what causes the worrisome traits President Trump exhibits — disordered decision-making, an insatiable need for affirmation, little impulse control, confusion about facts, difficulty foreseeing consequences — you’d need more extensive tests, a psychological exam and an MRI.
...Lee speculates, (chaos and volatility in the presidential brain) could explain powerful sycophancy that overcomes those who get close to Trump. “Those close to him are sensing this level of appeasement is necessary,” Lee speculated. They “feel they need to step in as a way to diminish his volatility and rage.”
The danger...is that Trump’s courtiers do this for too long and succumb to “shared psychosis,” in which they come to “share his view of the world and lose touch with reality.”
They might even come to believe that a sedentary 71-year-old with significant plaque in his coronary arteries, high cholesterol and borderline obesity is the very picture of health.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-trumps-doctor-okay/2018/01/17/0d887f5...
Is Trump’s doctor okay?
Dana Milbank | January 17, 2017
Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson was so effusive in extolling the totally amazing, surpassingly marvelous, superbly stupendous and extremely awesome health of the president that the doctor sounded almost Trumpian.
...repeating “excellent” eight times
..“Incredible cardiac fitness,” ...“ incredible genes. . . . incredibly good genes, and it’s just the way God made him.”
Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN, making a rare house call to the White House briefing room, offered a second opinion. “He is taking a cholesterol-lowering medication, he has evidence of heart disease, and he’s borderline obese,” Gupta pointed out, citing Jackson’s own findings. “Can you characterize that as excellent health?”
...Bandy X. Lee, the Yale Medical School psychiatrist who compiled the controversial book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” ...said the (cognitive) screening test Jackson gave Trump “gives the public a false sense of reassurance.” ...
She said the test, though useful for detecting Alzheimer’s and the like, indicates little about “his high functioning, his frontal-lobe functioning, that we’re questioning.” To figure out what causes the worrisome traits President Trump exhibits — disordered decision-making, an insatiable need for affirmation, little impulse control, confusion about facts, difficulty foreseeing consequences — you’d need more extensive tests, a psychological exam and an MRI.
...Lee speculates, (chaos and volatility in the presidential brain) could explain powerful sycophancy that overcomes those who get close to Trump. “Those close to him are sensing this level of appeasement is necessary,” Lee speculated. They “feel they need to step in as a way to diminish his volatility and rage.”
The danger...is that Trump’s courtiers do this for too long and succumb to “shared psychosis,” in which they come to “share his view of the world and lose touch with reality.”
They might even come to believe that a sedentary 71-year-old with significant plaque in his coronary arteries, high cholesterol and borderline obesity is the very picture of health.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-trumps-doctor-okay/2018/01/17/0d887f5...
133RickHarsch
There were many places to post this: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stephen-colbert-stormy-trump-spanking_us_5a...
134Limelite
Well who knew? Even Trump voters are calling Trump supporters a "cult." The first cultist-in-chief is Donald Trump himself. In his own words: "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters." -- Iowa rally 2016 The comment was part of a larger point Trump was making about the loyalty of his voting base.
Other cultists followed their leaders into Kool-Aid and fire, crazy as that seems to the rest of us.
Cultists see their leaders as God. The FDLS cult's leader sits in prison for sexual battery (rape) of underage girls in his charge. His believers still insist he's their prophet and conduit to heaven.
More recently, the chief GOP strategist held a focus group to celebrate Trump's one year anniversary. . .
Other cultists followed their leaders into Kool-Aid and fire, crazy as that seems to the rest of us.
“If Jesus Christ gets down off the cross and told me Trump is with Russia, I would tell him, ‘Hold on a second. I need to check with the president if it’s true,’” said Mark Lee, one of six Trump voters to appear on a CNN panel Monday morning. -- Nov. 2017
Cultists see their leaders as God. The FDLS cult's leader sits in prison for sexual battery (rape) of underage girls in his charge. His believers still insist he's their prophet and conduit to heaven.
More recently, the chief GOP strategist held a focus group to celebrate Trump's one year anniversary. . .
Frank Luntz asked the voters whether they would vote for Trump again if given the chance. While nearly all members. . .said they would happily back the president again in 2020, electrician Paul Allen Kroll said he would not.
Luntz then asked him why — and his response infuriated his fellow Trump voters.
“Because I’m not one of the cult members who thinks everything he does is wonderful,” he explained.
Ooops, someone lost his faith and has seen the truth. The Emperor has no clothes. That is not me embodied in him.
Cult followers can never admit the sins, transgressions, and crimes of the leader they have hitched their identities to. Why? For the very fact I just stated -- they see themselves embodied in their leader. To attack that figure with facts that clearly show he is a sinner, a transgressor, and a crimnal is to attack them with the same charges. So when that leader chooses to drink poison and commands them to follow him into death, they drink, too; or, to hole up in a burning building and refuse to come out, they self-immolate; or shoot someone on 5th Ave., that's fine with them.
We all agree that's crazy, right? Cult leaders' crazy becomes their followers' crazy. That identity thing.
Don't believe Trump supporters are cultists?Public Policy Polling put that claim to the test, and it mostly held up. Forty-five percent of Trump voters said they would approve of the president shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, while just 29 percent disapproved. Twenty-six percent, somehow, were unsure about their thoughts about whether it would be OK for Trump to shoot a random person on the street.
But here's how non-cultists answer the same question. ". . .90 percent of Hillary Clinton voters said they disapproved of the president shooting someone."
Think "most Americans" support Trump? Think "most Americans" voted for him so he must represent "the people"? Then you must be a crazy American who thinks most Americans are crazy. The fact is only about one-fourth of Americans eligible to vote actually voted for him.According to the US Elections Project’s count so far, only about 56.9 percent of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot on Election Day. That means 43.1 percent of people eligible to vote just didn’t.As we know, Clinton still garnered 2M more votes than did Trump, in spite of the overwhelming support Trump received from Vladimir Putin and Russian oligarchs. Good news for sane people.
And that's good news for America! We know now that the 71% of Americans who are OK with their president shooting a random person because he can are at most 71% of the 25% who voted for him, which is a mere 18% of Trump voters and a small percentage of the gen pub. Those are right wing nuts and Republican cultists. Fortunately, for the rest of us, that 18% is only a percentage of eligible voters who voted, not Americans in general. You can do the math for Clinton voters who are NOT OK with a president who is a random killer and be glad there are a LOT MORE sane people than crazy cultists in this country. Still.
Among the Americans who stayed home and didn't vote, we can be reassured that they're not crypto-cultists. They didn't drink the Kool-Aid. They didn't stay in a burning building. They don't believe a rapist will open the door to Heaven. They didn't vote for Trump.
135proximity1
>134 Limelite:
Those who belong squarely within the ranks of Trump agonistes are not well-placed to lecture others on the pitfalls of a cultish zealotry.
136RickHarsch
>135 proximity1: 'Trump Agonistes' comprise the vast majority of humanity, so they can hardly be called a cult. Even in the US, this 'category' includes the vast majority of US citizens, so, again, hardly a cult.
137Limelite
>135 proximity1: Beware cultists who pretend to Greek.
It's no struggle to be who I am. I am The Resistance.
We await your apology for being a poor Trump apologist.
It's no struggle to be who I am. I am The Resistance.
We await your apology for being a poor Trump apologist.
138proximity1
>137 Limelite:
"We await your apology for being a poor Trump apologist."
For that, you and your lot can go and wait at St. Gregory's well.
"We await your apology for being a poor Trump apologist."
For that, you and your lot can go and wait at St. Gregory's well.
139RickHarsch
>137 Limelite: A fine trap you set. A poor Trump apologist is indeed mired in a sort of poverty, but in that swamp apologies do not survive, and one wonders even whether lack of apology is a lifeline of sorts. In other words there are journeys of such intellectual peril that there is no return.
140barney67
>137 Limelite: What in the world is wrong with you?
141margd
>79 margd: contd. (Congress should assert its role in declaring war, first use of nukes.)
Breaking with tradition, Trump skips president’s written intelligence report and relies on oral briefings
Carol D. Leonnig, Shane Harris and Greg Jaffe | February 9, 2018
For much of the past year, President Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors: He rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world.
Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day...
The arrangement underscores Trump’s impatience with exhaustive classified documents that go to the commander in chief — material that he has said he prefers condensed as much as possible. But by not reading the daily briefing, the president could hamper his ability to respond to crises in the most effective manner, intelligence experts warned...
...The early briefing sessions had a more freewheeling quality, according to current and former administration officials. Five or more White House aides might join Trump for the briefing, in addition to his briefer and intelligence officials.
The meetings were often dominated by whatever topic most interested the president that day. Trump would discuss the news of the day or a tweet he sent about North Korea or the border wall — or anything else on his mind...
On such days, there would only be a few minutes left — and the briefers would have barely broached the topics they came to discuss...
...After he joined the administration in July, Chief of Staff John F. Kelly slashed the number of people who could attend the intelligence briefings in an effort to exert more discipline over how the president consumes information...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/breaking-with-tradition-trump-skips-pres...
Breaking with tradition, Trump skips president’s written intelligence report and relies on oral briefings
Carol D. Leonnig, Shane Harris and Greg Jaffe | February 9, 2018
For much of the past year, President Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors: He rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world.
Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day...
The arrangement underscores Trump’s impatience with exhaustive classified documents that go to the commander in chief — material that he has said he prefers condensed as much as possible. But by not reading the daily briefing, the president could hamper his ability to respond to crises in the most effective manner, intelligence experts warned...
...The early briefing sessions had a more freewheeling quality, according to current and former administration officials. Five or more White House aides might join Trump for the briefing, in addition to his briefer and intelligence officials.
The meetings were often dominated by whatever topic most interested the president that day. Trump would discuss the news of the day or a tweet he sent about North Korea or the border wall — or anything else on his mind...
On such days, there would only be a few minutes left — and the briefers would have barely broached the topics they came to discuss...
...After he joined the administration in July, Chief of Staff John F. Kelly slashed the number of people who could attend the intelligence briefings in an effort to exert more discipline over how the president consumes information...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/breaking-with-tradition-trump-skips-pres...
142Limelite
Bandy Lee MED ’94 DIV ’95, the Yale psychiatrist who informed Congress that President Donald Trump is a danger to society because of his mental health {spoke at Yale 2/14/18}. Lee stressed that she did not diagnose Trump when she spoke out about his mental state to congressmen; rather she assessed the danger he poses to the public. She noted that the president’s tendency to boast about sexual assault, taunt nuclear power and endorse violence in key public speeches can cause harm “because {he’s} laying the groundwork for the culture of violence.”https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/02/15/lee-questions-trumps-mental-health/
The night of the school massacre at MSD HS in Parkland, FL.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
And the day before. . .
The stress of Mueller’s intensifying investigation is “clearly driving him crazy,” psychologist John Gartner said of Trump during a panel of mental health and nuclear weapons experts convened by the "Need to Impeach" campaign Monday night in Washington, D.C.http://www.newsweek.com/mueller-investigation-pressuring-trump-toward-pushing-nu...
Another panelist, nuclear security specialist James Doyle, said it is undesirable for a president to be “impulsive, easily angered or frustrated, somebody who seeks confrontation, has a high sense of bravado, or is vindictive”—all characteristics that Trump has been linked to.
Trump has “no obvious logical thought process,” psychologist and lecturer David Reiss said, citing a tweet the president wrote with “falsehoods” on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
143margd
Stress from FBI investigation can't be helping, I think we can all agree.
Especially dangerous now that Trump's conflating his fortunes with that of the country...
Trump is making less sense than ever
Max Boot Columnist | April 11, 2018
...It is not just that Trump changes his mind often, although he does. It is also that when he speaks his mind, it is often impossible to figure out what he’s saying.
...Most presidents enter office knowing relatively little about foreign policy and learn a lot on the job. Trump knew less than any of his predecessors and has learned less than any of them. The perpetual fog that clouds his thinking has not lifted an inch; if anything, it is becoming ever more impenetrable.
This is what happens when you are functionally illiterate: Trump can read in theory but chooses not to, and therefore he is incapable of sustained learning
...He is trying to negotiate a nuclear deal with North Korea — but at the same time he is threatening to tear up the one with Iran. He has threatened a trade war against China — but at the same time he needs China’s help to coerce North Korea into making a deal. He is intent on withdrawing from the Iran nuclear accord because he is so worried about Iran — but at the same time he is handing Syria over to Iran on a silver platter. Or at least he was before the latest apparent chemical attack. Now he’s preparing to bomb Syria as a prelude to either greater engagement or disengagement.
...Trump prides himself on unpredictability, but...there is a price to be paid for leaving allies and enemies alike guessing about your intentions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-making-less-sense-than-ever/201...
Especially dangerous now that Trump's conflating his fortunes with that of the country...
Trump is making less sense than ever
Max Boot Columnist | April 11, 2018
...It is not just that Trump changes his mind often, although he does. It is also that when he speaks his mind, it is often impossible to figure out what he’s saying.
...Most presidents enter office knowing relatively little about foreign policy and learn a lot on the job. Trump knew less than any of his predecessors and has learned less than any of them. The perpetual fog that clouds his thinking has not lifted an inch; if anything, it is becoming ever more impenetrable.
This is what happens when you are functionally illiterate: Trump can read in theory but chooses not to, and therefore he is incapable of sustained learning
...He is trying to negotiate a nuclear deal with North Korea — but at the same time he is threatening to tear up the one with Iran. He has threatened a trade war against China — but at the same time he needs China’s help to coerce North Korea into making a deal. He is intent on withdrawing from the Iran nuclear accord because he is so worried about Iran — but at the same time he is handing Syria over to Iran on a silver platter. Or at least he was before the latest apparent chemical attack. Now he’s preparing to bomb Syria as a prelude to either greater engagement or disengagement.
...Trump prides himself on unpredictability, but...there is a price to be paid for leaving allies and enemies alike guessing about your intentions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-making-less-sense-than-ever/201...
144margd
Geez, do you suppose Kim Jong-Un has any material to set Trump off?
The President Is a Few Bulbs Short of a Chandelier
By Charles P. Pierce | Apr 26, 2018
Trump melts down—and is cut off by the hosts of—Fox & Friends.
...In no particular order, he threatened to bring the Justice Department under his personal control; praised his magnificent performance in office; defended his nominee to run the VA even though said nominee already had pulled his name from consideration; threw Michael Cohen overboard; admitted he had spent that fateful night in Moscow at the Miss Universe pageant; ranted about the crimes of James Comey, the perfidy of (Sen) Jon Tester, and the rank dishonesty of the media; and explained to the nation that Abraham Lincoln had been a Republican, which, “people don’t realize.”
And then (Fox co-host Brian) Kilmeade cut him off.
...(As the New York Herald once wrote about another president) "It is mortifying to see a man occupying the lofty position of President of the United States descend from that position and join issue with those who are dragging their garments in the muddy gutters of political vituperation."
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a20075774/trump-fox-and-friends-m...
The President Is a Few Bulbs Short of a Chandelier
By Charles P. Pierce | Apr 26, 2018
Trump melts down—and is cut off by the hosts of—Fox & Friends.
...In no particular order, he threatened to bring the Justice Department under his personal control; praised his magnificent performance in office; defended his nominee to run the VA even though said nominee already had pulled his name from consideration; threw Michael Cohen overboard; admitted he had spent that fateful night in Moscow at the Miss Universe pageant; ranted about the crimes of James Comey, the perfidy of (Sen) Jon Tester, and the rank dishonesty of the media; and explained to the nation that Abraham Lincoln had been a Republican, which, “people don’t realize.”
And then (Fox co-host Brian) Kilmeade cut him off.
...(As the New York Herald once wrote about another president) "It is mortifying to see a man occupying the lofty position of President of the United States descend from that position and join issue with those who are dragging their garments in the muddy gutters of political vituperation."
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a20075774/trump-fox-and-friends-m...
145rastaphrog
From what I heard listening to the news and what I've read, it would seem Trumps has...
Opened mouth, inserted foot
Stabbed himself in the back
Thrown a wrench AND ammunition into the various legal things going on.
As one article said, he's lucky it was his "buddies" at Fox he was talking to and that they cut him off before he could do too much more damage. Many of the other networks would have let him keep ranting and saying who knows what as long as he could keep going.
Opened mouth, inserted foot
Stabbed himself in the back
Thrown a wrench AND ammunition into the various legal things going on.
As one article said, he's lucky it was his "buddies" at Fox he was talking to and that they cut him off before he could do too much more damage. Many of the other networks would have let him keep ranting and saying who knows what as long as he could keep going.
146barney67
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Clueless cunts.
147pmackey
>146 barney67: No kidding, that's really offensive to me.
148mamzel
>144 margd: I wonder if MSNBC, CNN, or anyone else for that matter would have let him go on for as long as he did or if they would have had the brains/nerve to cut him off earlier.
149sturlington
>148 mamzel: They were talking about just that on 1-A this morning, and the consensus was that Fox did him a kindness by cutting him off. They said other journalists would have let him keep talking and see if he could hang himself with his own tongue.
150margd
>148 mamzel: I think rastaphrog is correct that other networks would have let Trump keep ranting and saying who knows what as long as he could keep going. The Fox-hosts faces in the last seven minutes... :D https://news.google.com/news/video/_lu_Hgw60Ns/dbhr4HTOZo4cGGMr2avq2gFNDxc9M?hl=...
Was it after this rant that Senate Judiciary Senate panel finally approved bipartisan bill to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from firing?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/26/senate-panel-blank-bipar...
Was it after this rant that Senate Judiciary Senate panel finally approved bipartisan bill to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from firing?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/26/senate-panel-blank-bipar...
151mamzel
>149 sturlington: You're probably right. My dad used to call that kind of rant "diarrhea of the mouth". Soooo descriptive.
152proximity1
>144 margd:
LOL!
"In no particular order, he (Trump) threatened to bring the Justice Department under his personal control;"
LOL! The Justice Dept.--just ask any former U.S. president, Barack Obama, for example--is a department under the Executive branch of government. It's chief, the A.G. is appointed by the president (with the advice and consent of the Senate). This latter is in the the Constitution, BTW.
"defended his nominee to run the VA"...
The nerve! -- a president defending his nominee? Well! I never!
..." threw Michael Cohen overboard;"
I guess by "threw ... overboard" you mean he fired/dismissed Cohen? Wow! I mean, like, can he even do that?!?
... "admitted he had spent that fateful night in Moscow at the Miss Universe pageant;"
If it was fate, shouldn't we hold them (i.e. the fates ( Clotho (Κλωθώ) , Lachesis (Λάχεσις) and Atropos (Ἄτροπος) ) responsible?
... "ranted about the crimes of James Comey,"
He's in good company there. Too bad "liberals" cannot seem to understand this and why it is so important. Reminds me of J. Edgar Hoover's knee-jerk defenders. They were incorrigible, too.
... "the perfidy of (Sen) Jon Tester, and the rank dishonesty of the media;"
The idea!
and explained to the nation that Abraham Lincoln had been a Republican, which, “people don’t realize.”
Finally! Someone ought to teach the public some American history. Obama, for example, had been allowed to suppose that he was expected to prostrate himself before the Saudi King of Arabia--and so he did just that.
Many Americans could well not know that Lincoln's party was called the Republican Party. Many can't name their own state's U.S. senators or the three branches of government. Some are surprised to learn that the president, for example, is the chief executive and has authority over the Attorney General--who he (the president) may appoint (with Senate majority approval) and dismiss from office at his own discretion.
LOL!
"In no particular order, he (Trump) threatened to bring the Justice Department under his personal control;"
LOL! The Justice Dept.--just ask any former U.S. president, Barack Obama, for example--is a department under the Executive branch of government. It's chief, the A.G. is appointed by the president (with the advice and consent of the Senate). This latter is in the the Constitution, BTW.
"defended his nominee to run the VA"...
The nerve! -- a president defending his nominee? Well! I never!
..." threw Michael Cohen overboard;"
I guess by "threw ... overboard" you mean he fired/dismissed Cohen? Wow! I mean, like, can he even do that?!?
... "admitted he had spent that fateful night in Moscow at the Miss Universe pageant;"
If it was fate, shouldn't we hold them (i.e. the fates ( Clotho (Κλωθώ) , Lachesis (Λάχεσις) and Atropos (Ἄτροπος) ) responsible?
... "ranted about the crimes of James Comey,"
He's in good company there. Too bad "liberals" cannot seem to understand this and why it is so important. Reminds me of J. Edgar Hoover's knee-jerk defenders. They were incorrigible, too.
... "the perfidy of (Sen) Jon Tester, and the rank dishonesty of the media;"
The idea!
and explained to the nation that Abraham Lincoln had been a Republican, which, “people don’t realize.”
Finally! Someone ought to teach the public some American history. Obama, for example, had been allowed to suppose that he was expected to prostrate himself before the Saudi King of Arabia--and so he did just that.
Many Americans could well not know that Lincoln's party was called the Republican Party. Many can't name their own state's U.S. senators or the three branches of government. Some are surprised to learn that the president, for example, is the chief executive and has authority over the Attorney General--who he (the president) may appoint (with Senate majority approval) and dismiss from office at his own discretion.
153margd
> 152 I don't even know where to begin. Perhaps, simply, WATCH the tape?
Sure hope there are no chandeliers in room where Trump meets Kim Jung-Un. To belabor the article's title, our boy might choose to swing from such a light fixture... :-(
Sure hope there are no chandeliers in room where Trump meets Kim Jung-Un. To belabor the article's title, our boy might choose to swing from such a light fixture... :-(
154barney67
>147 pmackey: Sorry, I thought you were a man based on your photo.
Why would I get flagged when I never mentioned anyone's name? It's interesting that some of you are assuming who might fit that description, but I didn't mention anyone. So I should not have been flagged. Will anyone ever flag correctly? And if you can't understand something so simple as that, how can you possibly grasp the complexity of the issues that come up in politics?
Why would I get flagged when I never mentioned anyone's name? It's interesting that some of you are assuming who might fit that description, but I didn't mention anyone. So I should not have been flagged. Will anyone ever flag correctly? And if you can't understand something so simple as that, how can you possibly grasp the complexity of the issues that come up in politics?
155pmackey
>154 barney67: Sorry, I thought you were a man based on your photo.
Yes, I'm a man by birth and, thanks to my parents, a gentleman as well.
The term you used as a pejorative is offensive to me. It denigrates women and therefore is unacceptable. It has nothing to do with my gender and everything to do with respect.
Yes, I'm a man by birth and, thanks to my parents, a gentleman as well.
The term you used as a pejorative is offensive to me. It denigrates women and therefore is unacceptable. It has nothing to do with my gender and everything to do with respect.
156barney67
This message has been flagged by multiple users and is no longer displayed (show)
>155 pmackey: So you're offended on behalf of an entire gender. Stupid. I still don't think you're a man.
157pmackey
>156 barney67: There's a story about Abraham Lincoln that may be apocryphal but it goes like this.
One day Lincoln was in the company of men and one man, wanting to tell a dirty joke, looked around and said, "Are there any ladies present?" Lincoln answered, "No, but there is a gentleman here."
You, sir, with your attitude may be male but you are not a man. For the sake of society, I hope you do it the courtesy of wearing the Scarlet M so they know a misogynist is present.
One day Lincoln was in the company of men and one man, wanting to tell a dirty joke, looked around and said, "Are there any ladies present?" Lincoln answered, "No, but there is a gentleman here."
You, sir, with your attitude may be male but you are not a man. For the sake of society, I hope you do it the courtesy of wearing the Scarlet M so they know a misogynist is present.
158barney67
>157 pmackey: No, I meant it literally. I don't think you are a man. I think you are a female pretending to be a man and using a fake picture.
159margd
>44 margd: Trump's mother immigrated from Scotland to care for children in NYC. Here's the story of his German grandfather.
Inside the wild Canadian past of the Trump family
Jason Markusoff | Oct 13, 2016
Before there was a Trump Tower, there was a gold-rush hotel in Bennett, Yukon, where the Trump family dynasty began
...grandson, Donald Trump, might not have been positioned to dazzle and sometimes terrify America with his boastful sales pitches were it not for Fred Trump and his plucky immigrant’s story, his tasty meals and other delicacies of the flesh, and the small fortune he made in the northern wilds of (Canada)
...Friedrich Trump was born in 1869 in Kallstadt, Germany, in the heart of a western winemaking region. Friedrich was...too frail to work the family vineyard... Friedrich’s father died when he was eight. His mother sent Friedrich, at 14, to become a barber’s apprentice. A couple of years later,... the 16-year-old Friedrich cobbled together enough deutschmarks to buy passage on a steamship to New York City.
...Friedrich got hired by a barbershop within hours of arriving in Manhattan. Six years on, ...Friedrich left his New York enclave of fellow Germans and took his savings across the land to Seattle, a booming resource and port city. He hung his shingle as Fred Trump at the Dairy Restaurant he’d opened in Seattle’s red-light district. In keeping with the local custom, the Dairy’s predecessor eatery advertised “private rooms for ladies”—1891-speak for prostitution
...(Yukon Gold Rush)...with a fellow traveller named Ernest Levin, Trump set up a tent restaurant along (Dead Horse Trail), likely serving up flash-frozen horsemeat...in May 1898, the German-American and his partner escaped the pass and reached the new town of Bennett, a collection of tents and men building Dawson-bound boats and awaiting the ice breakup. Trump and Levin bought lumber to erect a two-storey building on Main Street. The New Arctic would feed the thousands of travellers and stranded folks alike, boasting an array of fine and non-equine meats, “Every delicacy in the market,” “Fresh oysters in every style,” and yes, private rooms for ladies.
...In 1900, the Arctic Hotel moved to Whitehorse. A year later Trump split town; his partner was jailed after a hotel orgy and jewellery theft. (Provincial Archives of Alberta)
...A letter-writer in the Yukon Sun said single men would find at the New Arctic the best food in Bennett, but he warned “respectable women” away from staying there, “as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings and uttered, too, by the depraved of their own sex”...
https://www.macleans.ca/politics/inside-the-wild-canadian-past-of-the-trump-fami...
__________________________________________________________________
Canadian Gold rush brothel run by Trump's grandfather which sold food, booze and sex will be transformed into a tourist attraction
Timothyna Duncan | 23 June 2017
The president's grandfather Friedreich Trump started the hotel in Bennett Canada in 1897
Trump had immigrated from Germany at the age of 16 and was working as a barber in Manhattan, New York, before he became a businessman
Employed indigenous people to help build his hotel, which offered a 'private room for ladies'
President Trump says claims his family once run a brothel are 'totally false'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4632798/Brothel-ran-Trump-s-grandfather-...
___________________________________________________________________
Did Justin Trudeau just troll Donald Trump by presenting him with photo of his grandfather's Canadian hotel?
Great moment between @JustinTrudeau and @POTUS when he gave him picture of the President’s grandfather’s hotel in Canada.
Sarah Sanders @PressSec
5:29 PM - 8 Jun 2018
Inside the wild Canadian past of the Trump family
Jason Markusoff | Oct 13, 2016
Before there was a Trump Tower, there was a gold-rush hotel in Bennett, Yukon, where the Trump family dynasty began
...grandson, Donald Trump, might not have been positioned to dazzle and sometimes terrify America with his boastful sales pitches were it not for Fred Trump and his plucky immigrant’s story, his tasty meals and other delicacies of the flesh, and the small fortune he made in the northern wilds of (Canada)
...Friedrich Trump was born in 1869 in Kallstadt, Germany, in the heart of a western winemaking region. Friedrich was...too frail to work the family vineyard... Friedrich’s father died when he was eight. His mother sent Friedrich, at 14, to become a barber’s apprentice. A couple of years later,... the 16-year-old Friedrich cobbled together enough deutschmarks to buy passage on a steamship to New York City.
...Friedrich got hired by a barbershop within hours of arriving in Manhattan. Six years on, ...Friedrich left his New York enclave of fellow Germans and took his savings across the land to Seattle, a booming resource and port city. He hung his shingle as Fred Trump at the Dairy Restaurant he’d opened in Seattle’s red-light district. In keeping with the local custom, the Dairy’s predecessor eatery advertised “private rooms for ladies”—1891-speak for prostitution
...(Yukon Gold Rush)...with a fellow traveller named Ernest Levin, Trump set up a tent restaurant along (Dead Horse Trail), likely serving up flash-frozen horsemeat...in May 1898, the German-American and his partner escaped the pass and reached the new town of Bennett, a collection of tents and men building Dawson-bound boats and awaiting the ice breakup. Trump and Levin bought lumber to erect a two-storey building on Main Street. The New Arctic would feed the thousands of travellers and stranded folks alike, boasting an array of fine and non-equine meats, “Every delicacy in the market,” “Fresh oysters in every style,” and yes, private rooms for ladies.
...In 1900, the Arctic Hotel moved to Whitehorse. A year later Trump split town; his partner was jailed after a hotel orgy and jewellery theft. (Provincial Archives of Alberta)
...A letter-writer in the Yukon Sun said single men would find at the New Arctic the best food in Bennett, but he warned “respectable women” away from staying there, “as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings and uttered, too, by the depraved of their own sex”...
https://www.macleans.ca/politics/inside-the-wild-canadian-past-of-the-trump-fami...
__________________________________________________________________
Canadian Gold rush brothel run by Trump's grandfather which sold food, booze and sex will be transformed into a tourist attraction
Timothyna Duncan | 23 June 2017
The president's grandfather Friedreich Trump started the hotel in Bennett Canada in 1897
Trump had immigrated from Germany at the age of 16 and was working as a barber in Manhattan, New York, before he became a businessman
Employed indigenous people to help build his hotel, which offered a 'private room for ladies'
President Trump says claims his family once run a brothel are 'totally false'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4632798/Brothel-ran-Trump-s-grandfather-...
___________________________________________________________________
Did Justin Trudeau just troll Donald Trump by presenting him with photo of his grandfather's Canadian hotel?
Great moment between @JustinTrudeau and @POTUS when he gave him picture of the President’s grandfather’s hotel in Canada.
Sarah Sanders @PressSec
5:29 PM - 8 Jun 2018
This topic was continued by Given: That Donald Trump Is mentally Ill # 3.
