Es wird wenigstens unterhaltsam;
Joe Biden ist dabei.

Zitat von Landegaard im Beitrag #6200

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Zitat von Maga-neu im Beitrag #6198

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Zitat von Willie im Beitrag #6195

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How a bizarre doomsday cult from the 1950s explains the magical shifting Russia story that Trumpworld is now spewing
This classic study, which laid the groundwork for the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance, can go a long way to explaining the ever-changing story that Donald Trump and his supporters have offered to explain away the Russian conspiracy to interfere with the American election by illegally stealing private emails from Democratic officials. The rationalizations Trump offers have morphed over the past two years, but what remains steady is the fierce conviction of his most loyal supporters that they were never wrong to vote for him and their refusal to accept that he is a corrupt person unfit to hold even a dogcatcher’s office, much less the presidency of the United States.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/how-a-b...wh6TwzYzc4TevQM

Lesenswert. Natuerlich nur fuer solche mit dem notwendigen Bildungslevel, Realitaetsverstaendnis und erwachsen sein.

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Okay, dann nichts für mich. :-)

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Als nächstes wird dann die Spaltung der Gesellschaft beklagt. ;)

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Zitat von nahal im Beitrag #6201

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Es wird wenigstens unterhaltsam;
Joe Biden ist dabei.

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Neoliberalism: the deep story that lies beneath Donald Trump’s triumph
How a ruthless network of super-rich ideologues killed choice and destroyed people’s faith in politics

The events that led to Donald Trump’s election started in England in 1975. At a meeting a few months after Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative party, one of her colleagues, or so the story goes, was explaining what he saw as the core beliefs of conservatism. She snapped open her handbag, pulled out a dog-eared book, and slammed it on the table. “This is what we believe,” she said. A political revolution that would sweep the world had begun.

The book was The Constitution of Liberty by Frederick Hayek. Its publication, in 1960, marked the transition from an honest, if extreme, philosophy to an outright racket. The philosophy was called neoliberalism. It saw competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. The market would discover a natural hierarchy of winners and losers, creating a more efficient system than could ever be devised through planning or by design. Anything that impeded this process, such as significant tax, regulation, trade union activity or state provision, was counter-productive. Unrestricted entrepreneurs would create the wealth that would trickle down to everyone. ....

.... By the time Thatcher slammed his book on the table, a lively network of thinktanks, lobbyists and academics promoting Hayek’s doctrines had been established on both sides of the Atlantic, abundantly financed by some of the world’s richest people and businesses, including DuPont, General Electric, the Coors brewing company, Charles Koch, Richard Mellon Scaife, Lawrence Fertig, the William Volker Fund and the Earhart Foundation. Using psychology and linguistics to brilliant effect, the thinkers these people sponsored found the words and arguments required to turn Hayek’s anthem to the elite into a plausible political programme.

Thatcherism and Reaganism were not ideologies in their own right: they were just two faces of neoliberalism. Their massive tax cuts for the rich, crushing of trade unions, reduction in public housing, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services were all proposed by Hayek and his disciples. But the real triumph of this network was not its capture of the right, but its colonisation of parties that once stood for everything Hayek detested. ...

... The paradoxical result is that the backlash against neoliberalism’s crushing of political choice has elevated just the kind of man that Hayek worshipped. Trump, who has no coherent politics, is not a classic neoliberal. But he is the perfect representation of Hayek’s “independent”; the beneficiary of inherited wealth, unconstrained by common morality, whose gross predilections strike a new path that others may follow. The neoliberal thinktankers are now swarming round this hollow man, this empty vessel waiting to be filled by those who know what they want. The likely result is the demolition of our remaining decencies, beginning with the agreement to limit global warming. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...-george-monbiot

Auch wieder ein exzellenter Beitrag von Monbiot. Natuerlich nur fuer jene, die das dargelegte auch erfassen koennen.

HHS nearing plan to roll back transgender protections
The Trump administration is preparing to roll back protections for transgender patients while empowering health care workers to refuse care based on religious objections, according to three officials with knowledge of the pending regulations.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/2...000&nlid=630318


Franklin Graham Calls for Pete Buttigieg to Repent for Being Gay
Franklin Graham, one of the country’s most influential evangelical Christians, has called on Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg to “repent” for being gay. Graham, the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, called homosexuality “something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized,” in a tweet Wednesday.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/franklin-g...t-for-being-gay

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D4_6gb6UYAAC91J.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D49ykN7UcAANXr_.jpg

Trump’s high-stakes subpoena battle with House Democrats, explained
Trump and Democrats are barreling toward a constitutional showdown on oversight.

President Donald Trump, while portraying himself as the victim in a political war, is foiling an aggressive House Democratic majority’s investigations with historic fervor by refusing to comply with many subpoenas and other oversight requests.

On one level, this is nothing new. Prior Congresses and White Houses have certainly found themselves at odds over how much information to disclose. But the blanket defiance of the Trump administration has reached a new level of obstruction in recent days.
“That’s about as blatant an obstruction of the lawful processes of a coequal branch of government as I’ve ever seen,” Laurence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional scholar, told the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin on Wednesday. ...

Trump has defied the conventional norms of transparency that we expect from our presidents since before his election. In this latest escalation, he’s been willing to entertain a constitutional crisis to continue withholding information from Democratic lawmakers. ...

As former House counsel Stanley Brand put it on the Lawfare podcast, the full extent of Congress’s ability to subpoena and solicit information from the executive branch has never been defined, certainly not by the Supreme Court. Trump’s stubbornness has brought that question to the forefront of US politics again.

This fledging constitutional showdown might ultimately have to decide how much oversight the legislative branch is allowed to exercise over the president and his administration.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/...gahn-carl-kline

Es wird darauf hinauslaufen ob die Gerichte einen Wahnsinnigen, der gerne Hitler, Putin, oder Kim Jong Un waere, fuer die USA zulassen wollen oder nicht.
Either way: Es wird nicht gut enden. Nicht gut fuer die USA und nicht gut fuer Trumpski. Nur Putin, der hat fuer sich das bestmoegliche gemacht.

"If you're not terrified, you're not paying attention."
Paul Krugman

Words for today:
The Real@Book_Dude
Arguing logic with a Trump supporter is like arguing physics with a stick.
7:54 AM - 24 Apr 2019

Karen Droms@KarenDroms
I teach physics. Trust me, arguing with a Trump supporter is worse.
9:05 AM - 24 Apr 2019

Thiru Sollamuthu‏@tksollamuthu
We need Schrödinger's wave equation to figure out some of Trump's "It happened, but it didn't really happen ..." 😂
12:24 PM - 24 Apr 2019

Mit Kultisten, mit Gehirn gewaschenen, mit Phobien und Komplexen besessenen, mit Fanatikern, mit sich dem Hasser ergebenen, mit Leuten in Panik, mit Luegnern, mit Propagandisten, mit sich willendlicher Ignoranz bedienenden, mit niedriger Intelligenz behafteten und dergleichen mehr, kann man mit Logik nicht argumentieren.
You have to keep it simple. Very, very simple. Trumpski level simple.

The reality of being Trumpski:
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
I didn’t call Bob Costa of the Washington Post, he called me (Returned his call)! Just more Fake News.
7:09 AM - 24 Apr 2019

BrooklynDad_Defiant!‏@mmpadellan
Desperately seeking a new level of petty rarely seen, Orange Twitler clutched the phone in his tiny, sweaty hands and told the world that he did NOT call Bob Costa.
More than healthcare, or taxes, or income, he was CERTAIN they cared.
NARRATOR: They did not.😢
7:33 AM - 24 Apr 2019

Mueller report shows Trump campaign left itself wide open to Russians, officials say
"The Russians found a group of people who were not intelligence savvy" and didn't listen to U.S. intel officials, said a CIA veteran.

The Mueller report's narrative of secret meetings between members of Donald Trump's orbit and Russian operatives — contacts that occurred both before and after the 2016 election — portrays a political campaign that left itself open to a covert Russian influence operation, former intelligence officials and other experts say.

While finding no criminal conspiracy, the report shows that Trump associates met with Russians after the intelligence community said in October 2016 that Russia was interfering in the presidential election, and even after the Obama administration announced a set of post-election sanctions to punish Russia for that behavior.
The 448-page report, written as a prosecutorial document, was not meant to assess, and does not say, whether U.S. national security was put at risk through those contacts. But former FBI and CIA officials and people who study Russian intelligence say the report describes a counterintelligence minefield — senior members of a presidential campaign and transition holding secret talks with a sophisticated foreign adversary, without the benefit of State Department and intelligence community counsel.

"The Russians came up against a group of people who were not intelligence savvy and who were predisposed not to listen to the intelligence and counterintelligence community," said Luis Rueda, who spent 27 years as a CIA operations officer. "The Russians made a very bold and aggressive attempt to take advantage of that — to try to compromise people, to try to leverage their access."

The FBI, as part of its counterintelligence mission, is continuing to investigate Russian attempts to influence the Trump administration and assess the national security damage from Russia's 2016 effort, current and former U.S. officials tell NBC News.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nationa...ussians-n997716

Sen. Warner: Trump and Russia threatened our democracy. What are we going to do about it?
Trump and his allies shamelessly tried to benefit from Russian espionage. Now they're practically inviting foreign adversaries to interfere in 2020.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report paints a disturbing picture of a foreign adversary’s attack on our democratic process: a campaign of cyberattacks, leaks and misinformation that the special counsel, like the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, has concluded was designed to hurt Hillary Clinton and help elect Donald Trump.

It also portrays a presidential campaign, and a candidate, who saw these attacks not as a challenge to our democracy, but as a welcome political opportunity. And, when the Department of Justice launched an investigation to get to the bottom of what happened, President Trump and his allies mounted a two-year campaign to conceal the truth from the American people.

The special counsel’s investigation now confronts us with an important choice. We can overlook the president’s morally outrageous behavior; we can ignore the deep deficiencies in our laws and our defenses against foreign interference; or we can do everything in our power to make sure that what happened in 2016 can never happen again.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2...umn/3565171002/

Trump agreed to pay $2 million ransom to North Korea for American hostage
Trump ignored longstanding U.S. policy to not pay ransom for hostages when he agreed to pay a $2 million bill to North Korea for the medical care of Otto Warmbier.

Trump has taken many victory laps since 2017, touting the return of comatose American student Otto Warmbier from North Korea as a major diplomatic achievement.
However, new reporting from the Washington Post shows that the return of Warmbier, who died shortly after returning to U.S. soil, wasn't quite the diplomatic feat Trump claimed.
Rather, Trump ignored the United States' longstanding "no-concessions" policy and agreed to pay $2 million for what was essentially a ransom fee to North Korea for Warbier's return.
https://shareblue.com/trump-agreed-2-mil...-otto-warmbier/

Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America
Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectiv...Q2fl2Ld6VOaXaVg

Another gem worthwhile reading.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
The Mueller Report, despite being written by Angry Democrats and Trump Haters, and with unlimited money behind it ($35,000,000), didn’t lay a glove on me. I DID NOTHING WRONG. If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only......
5:10 AM - 24 Apr 2019

"...didn't lay a glove on me..." is Mafia gangster speak pure. Das ist das typische Lingo eines Strassenkriminellen -nicht die Sprache eines zivilisierten, eines richtigen Presidenten.

Why Won’t Twitter Treat White Supremacy Like ISIS? Because It Would Mean Banning Some Republican Politicians Too.
A Twitter employee who works on machine learning believes that a proactive, algorithmic solution to white supremacy would also catch Republican politicians.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/artic...politicians-too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4Ht_PUtemI

"I think he (Trump) acts on Russia's behalf and I challenge him to show me otherwise." (3:14) Haha, that uncharming guy must be the most stupid of all Democratic competitors. He speaks like a robot programmed in stupidity. :-)

Franklin Graham and the High Cost of the Lost Evangelical Witness
Graham’s willingness to abandon Christian principles when it’s politically expedient has cost the church dearly.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/f...elical-witness/

IRS Commissioner charged with releasing Trump Tax Returns profits from Trump-branded Property
President Trump’s hand-picked IRS Commissioner, Charles Rettig, earns as much as $1 million in rental income from the Trump-branded properties he co-owns while facing demands from Congress to release Trump’s tax returns. The IRS has already missed more than one deadline set by the House Ways and Means Committee to turn over Trump’s tax returns. (Rettig has stated that he will decide whether or not to release the tax returns, under the supervision of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.)

When Trump nominated Rettig to lead the IRS in February 2018, Rettig initially failed to disclose that the Hawaii real estate he owned was at a Trump-branded property. He bought a 50 percent interest in two units at Trump International Waikiki in 2006 ahead of the building’s completion in 2009. It is likely that Trump profited off of his future-IRS commissioner’s purchase; although the Trump Organization does not own the Waikiki property, its branding deal gave it a 10 percent share of total pre-sales. ...

Rettig’s financial interest at Trump-branded property raises serious ethics questions as the president continues to fight to keep his tax returns secret. The public has a strong interest in seeing the president’s tax returns to understand whether he is using the White House to further his own bottom line. The fact that Trump’s IRS Commissioner is entangled in the president’s business interests means we have to ask whether Rettig’s decision on releasing the president’s tax returns is based on the public interest or his own financial interests.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/irs-co...anded-property/

New texts between FBI’s Strzok, Page show Obama wanted updates on Clinton investigation

https://outline.com/U39rMA

“Executives are very worried Fox & Friends will be next:: After taking over Fox, Lachlan Murdoch is in a Trump Trap.
When advertisers rebelled at outrage anchors like Jeanine Pirro and Tucker Carlson, Trump called Lachlan’s daddy, Rupert Murdoch, to keep them on the air. Inside the battle for the future of the network.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/...trap?verso=true

Fox News' Judge Napolitano: Mueller report shows Trump obstructed justice
In a scathing op-ed and accompanying video published Thursday, Napolitano said that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election and Trump’s efforts to cover it up showed a clear pattern of criminal behavior.

“When the president asks his former adviser and my former colleague K.T. McFarland to write an untruthful letter to the file knowing the government would subpoena it, that’s obstruction of justice,” Napolitano said in his video.
“When the president asks Cory Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, to get Mueller fired, that’s obstruction of justice.
When the president asks his then White House counsel to get Mueller fired and then lie about it, that’s obstruction of justice.
When he asked Don McGahn to go back to the special counsel and then change his testimony, that’s obstruction of justice.
When he dangled the pardon in front of Michael Cohen in order to keep Cohen from testifying against him, that’s obstruction of justice.
Why not charge him?” ...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fox-news-...dDkkIDL4yrv2OJk

Simple answer: The GOP is complicit with the criminal. It itself become totally corrupt and criminal. It needs to be destroyed.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5CVt9MXsAIVO7x.jpg

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t...886&oe=5D334FD1

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
As has been incorrectly reported by the Fake News Media, I never told then White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller, even though I had the legal right to do so. If I wanted to fire Mueller, I didn’t need McGahn to do it, I could have done it myself. Nevertheless,....
4:47 AM - 25 Apr 2019

George Peterman@wsso113
You do realize the Media did not report this fact? The Mueller Report stated this. The media just reported what was in the Mueller Report, which by the way, has only been disputed by you. You are on an island sir when it comes to your opinion of the facts of this Report.
5:06 AM - 25 Apr 2019


Why is Trump trying to prevent this?:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5AV4lqUEAEbF7Z.png

Trumski is accusing McGahn of lying. Lying under oath. Another attempt at obstructing justice by this orange POS. That's why.

1. If McGahn lied under oath to Mueller he would have committed a crime himself and be going to jail. He could lose everything -his reputation, his career, his freedom- for such a lie.
1.1. What possibly could he have to gain by lying to Mueller?
1.2. Why would he lie in the first place?

2. Why is Trump lying about what he said to McGahn?
Answer: Because he obstructed justice and thus committed a crime.

3. Why not letting McGahn in front of the committee and answer tough questions -also by Trumski's defenders from his corrupt party?
Answer: Because millions would get to see that Trumski committed a crime. Even his semi comatose knuckledragger following would. That's why.

Jeff Tiedrich@itsJeffTiedrich
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
"I could have obstructed justice even more than I did" is such a brilliant legal strategy, it's a wonder that they're not teaching it at Harvard Law. did your manic, bug-eyed Free TV Lawyer™ come up with that one for you, Oh Orange One? because he's worth every penny you pay him
5:02 AM - 25 Apr 2019

Kyle Griffin@kylegriffin1
House Judiciary member David Cicilline: "Congress has the responsibility, and I would say the obligation, to hold individuals in contempt who do not comply with a lawful subpoena, who do not produce documents. And we ought to be prepared to imprison them."
4:30 AM - 26 Apr 2019

The field of Democratic presidential candidates who support late-term abortions, open borders, sanctuary cities, voting rights for non-citizens, rapers and terrorists, more taxes for people on average wages, impeachment against Trump (despite the Mueller report) resembles more and more (with possibly some exceptions like Joe Biden) the Horror Rocky Picture Show.

Der Wahnsinnige ueber sich heute Morgen -inklusive Typo:

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
“President Donald J. Trump is the greatest hostage negotiator that I know of in the history of the United States. 20 hostages, many in impossible circumstances, have been released in last two years. No money was paid.” Cheif Hostage Negotiator, USA!
4:32 AM - 26 Apr 2019

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5FC5wZWkAArNmT.jpg

😂

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=...&type=3&theater