National Security in the Trump Era: Business as Usual?
G. Murphy Donovan
Donald Trump has only been in office for a couple of months. Any performance evaluation to date is probably premature. Nonetheless, early on, there are some good and bad omens. The good news is domestic. President Trump seems to be focused on health care reform, the economy, employment, border security, and immigration/alien control.
In contrast, national security and foreign policy initiatives are off to a hoary start.
One national security advisor has already been sacked and President Trump has been horse-collared as a Moscow puppet or stooge. No matter the evidence, insinuations that Russians played a role in the 2016 election is a smear now morphing into a political zombie, a Beltway specter with tenure.
By throwing, General Mike Flynn, erstwhile national security advisor, under the bus, Trump has forfeited the first game of “gotcha” to hostile Democrats and a partisan media. Beyond hasty judgement, the Flynn affair also suggests that team Trump folds at first fright.
President Trump flinched again by allowing his new Attorney General to recuse himself from the Russophobia probe. Flynn and Sessions are just blood in the water now. Trump opponents are circling like sharks.
The Flynn/Sessions casualties confirm what critics already believe about a Putin/Trump “bromance.” The Putin proxy is now tar and feathers to be used by a neo-conservative/ liberal establishment who believe that globalist experiments like the EU, military alliances like NATO, and regime change stunts in Ukraine and elsewhere are beyond reproach or reform.
President Trump may have thus handcuffed himself to “business as usual” on the world stage. Just before the 2016 election, the Obama White House and DOD deployed NATO and American tanks to the Baltics and Poland. New anti-missile missile deployments to Eastern Europe are now part of that mix too.
Yes, German tanks are again in Poland and the Baltics. Clearly designed to annoy the Kremlin, these “symbolic” NATO encroachments are now Trump baggage.
We say symbolic because, NATO sabre rattling on Russian borders is more than a bit of a strategic mime. Putin says that he could be in Kiev in two weeks, should the need arise. The Russian president is probably correct.
Why would anyone believe West Europeans, who will not pay for NATO, would fight Russians today any more successfully than they fought the Wehrmacht in the last continental war?
Trump’s original campaign instincts were correct. NATO is an expensive Cold War artifact, not unlike the defunct Warsaw Pact. The need to defend defense budgets today is more important than any hedge against real Russian aggression. The long war against the Muslim jihad, still unresolved after 50 years, provides a similar rational for Intelligence spending.
The deep state has deep roots.
Appeasing Muslims, demonizing Israelis and Russians, and fiscal incontinence at home seem to be the three defaults, or inherited, legs of American national security policy and strategy.
NATO is next to useless when it comes to active shooters in a half dozen Muslim small wars. In fact, Schengen Zone vulnerabilities, and Berlin oblivion, are facilitating an ever expanding Islamist threat within Europe itself.
Take Angela Merkel’s “open borders” policy and subsequent Muslim migrant blitz. No head of state in Europe has done more for terror, fear, appeasement, jihad, Islamic religious fascism, and continental instability than the German chancellor. If Brexit is followed by a “Frexit,” Mrs. Merkel can take a bow.
If the EU is going the way of the Holy Roman Empire, no single individual is more culpable than “Angela.” Indeed, if common sense and culture is at risk in Europe, the angel of death again rides again on a Berlin broomstick.
Muslim admission to Europe now seems to come at the price of another Jewish exit. You would think a German chancellor who walks under the shadow of the Holocaust would know better.
In a real world, a stable and prosperous future for Europe is a function of American and Russian forbearance and cooperation. Unfortunately, posturing or histrionics in Brussels and Washington is now more about business and appeasement than a stable European future.
Besides automobiles, the only manufacturing of any consequence left in the West is the defense industry. If the business of national security is now business, it’s a booming business.
The Middle East and Africa are awash with weapons, war, and instability because NATO nations are willing to sponsor sedition and sell the wherewithal to friends and foes alike.
US military exports grew by 54 percent in the Obama era and are expected to rise faster under Trump. America now accounts for 36 percent of world arms exports compared to 12 percent for Russia.
Unfortunately, taking on the American military/industrial establishment at this point might be a bridge too far as it seems to be one of a few manufacturing games left in America. Whilst Defense and Intelligence industries experience explosive growth, the private sector languishes in the doldrums.
Throwing money at bombs and bullets is hardly new policy in Washington. America already spends more on its military than the next seven countries combined, including China and Russia. The Pentagon spends seven times ($680 billion versus $94 billion) more on defense than does the Kremlin.
Possible explanations for such disparities include waste, fraud, abuse, and incompetence. The truth is probably the Eisenhower prophesy actualized. The military/industrial complex seems to be more about profit than patriotism.
Alas, big spending never meant more capability. The profligate USAF F-35 fighter program alone is illustrative, possibly the biggest budget boondoggle ($1.5 trillion) in all of military history.
If America needs a next-generation fighter that is affordable and operational, the Pentagon might think about giving the next contract to the Kremlin. Russian rockets now shuttle American astronauts in and out of orbit, a dependency that doesn’t get much visibility in national security estimates.
Government debt in the US now stands at 24 trillion dollars, ten times larger than Russian debt. National sovereignty isn’t a virtue if the price is moral bankruptcy or national insolvency. .
President Trump Needs a Dog
Obama era national security acolytes, now serving under Trump, are not doing much to help with or clarify American foreign policy or national security futures.
The Ummah provides the best example.
Just days after the Trump inauguration, the newly minted CIA director, Michael Pompeo, flew off to Saudi Arabia to present Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, with a medal for “counterterrorism” efforts (sic). Saudi Arabia is America’s most generous arms customer, indeed the largest buyer worldwide.
CIA and the Crown Prince
The ties that bind America to Arabia are first pecuniary and then political.
Yes, the same Saudi Arabia that produced the 9/11 terrorists, the same House of Saud that finances and arms global Sunni jihad and terror in the Levant and North Africa, and the same Arabia that exports the worst kind of Islamic irredentist theology to the rest of the world gets another azimuth kiss from an American Intelligence nabob.
Irony here is beyond satire. The medal in question is named after George Tenet. Tenet is the CIA director who, with Colin Powell’s help, fabricated the fake intelligence that gave America the ongoing 30 year religious war in Iraq; a war we might add, that reversed the sectarian power poles in Iraq from Sunni to Shia.
A White House that claims that America is not at war with Isalm, now doubles down with Saudi Sunnis against Shia Yeminis in another proxy religious war in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia has long denied complicity with Islamism, Sunni terrorism, or wars motivated by a 1400 year old religious schism. Now Riyadh has a CIA medal provided by team Trump to prove it.
Meanwhile over at the National Security Council, newly christened director, H.R McMaster, is apparently laying down a companion party line about Islam with White House staff. General McMaster cautions that terms like “radical Islamic terror” are not helpful. According to the General, “terror is not Islamic.”
Like many millennial era flags, the new national security advisor seems to have succumbed to the Obama thought police. Surely not all Islamists are terrorists, but virtually all terrorists these days are Muslims, Mohammedans who kill in the name of their god, their prophet, and Islam - the “religion of peace.”
“Allah hu akbar” is what an Islamist chants at a beheading, bombing, and other sanguinary rituals. Links between terror and Islam are more real than any links between US Army generals and analytical theology.
Who is McMaster to pontificate on what is or is not Islamic? The national security advisor is not an imam, ayatollah, prophet, priest, or religious scholar. Based on recent sermons, he’s not much of a historian either.
Over at the Department of Defense, another scholarly warrior seems to be confused about real threats too. The new Secretary of Defense, like Obama era staff officers, shoots from the hip at the “Russian” chimera and personalizes the assessment with trash talk about Vladimir Putin.
At confirmation, General James Mattis rose to every leading question from John McCain, the Senate’s most notorious Kremlin baiter. Mattis swallowed McCain’s practiced political demagoguery hook, line, and sinker.
Mattis also failed to distinguish between a threat that actually kills Americans today and a threat that might. Worse still, General Mattis’ sweeping indictments of “Russians” fails to distinguish between a proud nation and a regime that doesn’t fit the globalist EU/imperial NATO business plan.
NATO began as an allied mutual security pact and the EU began as a modest economic condominium. Both institutions have strayed far from original designs and the world is not safer place because of it. Brussels is now populated by political autocrats and imperial janissaries. Hat tip to a Turk or Ottoman model.
If sweeping vile assessments of Muslims are unacceptable, why is sweeping slander about Israelis or Russians allowed? Is selective bigotry at the Pentagon now a military virtue?
Indeed, after leaving the military, Mattis claimed that Israeli “settlements” and “apartheid” made his job at CENTCOM more difficult. The general’s also says that there was “a price to be paid” for backing Israel, a sneer that is vintage David Petraeus.
General Mattis claims that “Russia needs to prove itself.” In contrast, apparently, no Islamic country, especially Arabian, need to prove anything to America, the world, or the new Secretary of Defense.
The sad truth of the European Union today is a tragic combination official Islamic tolerance and official indifference to parallel anti-Semitism. The western migration of fascist Islam comes again at the expense of European Jews.
Mattis also gave the Senate a truncated Russian history tutorial as a closer to his testimony. The self- described student of military history failed to mention the last world war where, without Russian sacrifice, the battle with secular fascism would not have been won. The United States lost less than half a million casualties in WWII. Russia lost more than 20 million souls.
Now that Europe and America are confronted with fascism again, this time religious, General Mattis and other Obama holdovers are still confused or mute about who is a genuine threat in the 21st century.
The best guarantors of civil and human rights are independent, democratic nation states with common cultural and civic values. Monoculture anywhere has always been the enemy of liberty and true diversity everywhere.
All globalist or utopian schemes, now including the EU, have been failures. General Mattis is wrong about NATO too. Sort of nuclear Armageddon, NATO provides little stability for the Mideast, Africa, or anyplace beyond Europe for that matter.
Mattis seems to have misread the Brexit and Frexit graffiti now defacing the walls of the European Union.
Candidate Trump ran on a tougher line with Islamists and a softer line with the Kremlin. Such policies are heresy for the establishment, right and left, in Washington. Any diminution of the Russian threat is a clear and present danger to the DOD budget and legions of Intelligence and defense industry federal contractors.
No big Russian threat, no big funding.
Obama era rear echelon warriors have yet to get the message from Trump or appreciate the angst of “deplorables” in the heartland. Maybe the new commander-in-chief needs to speak louder - or carry a bigger stick
President Trump has few friends in the media, few friends among Obama holdovers, and fewer friends or loyalists midst permanent or deep state government bureaucrats inside the Beltway. Washington D.C. and the surrounding suburbs voted for Hillary Clinton by a margin of nine to one. Those votes, like California, were votes for a deep state where change is “progressive” - or anathema.
And those who claim that establishment apparatchiks, including the Pentagon, are “non-partisan” are delusional. The only currency in the nation’s capital is politics. The most lucrative politics are found now in the defense and Intelligence bowels of the permanent state.
Obama era military relics are no exceptions to partisanship. Outsiders, critics, and reformers are not welcome in Washington. National security and Intelligence Community leaks now underwrite the anti-democratic, anti-Trump resistance on a daily basis.
Donald Trump is trying to reform or change a federal autocracy that is populated with Clinton and Obama loyalists. For a permanent political elite, weaned by a nanny state, reform is just a turd in the punchbowl.
Willingness to serve in government should never be confused with loyalty, especially inside the Beltway. Harry Truman said it best. If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.
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Maybe this is what triggered the crazy Trump surrogate accusations about microwaves......
Washington's Spy Paranoia
Who did the Russian ambassador meet in D.C.? Welcome to America’s capital city, where everyday encounters may not be what they seem.
James Lawler Duggan / Reuters
Mar 13, 2017
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/city-of-spies/5193…
BUT the best city to spy in is Vienna...laid back...lax and friendly as long as you do not spy on Austria you are fine and safe....
How's that Trump internal national security thingy called "draining the swap" going????
Day after he was made Trump adviser, Icahn made $510,000,000 on the stock market–more than anyone else on the planet, added $100M 2 days ago
Wow...now that is really supporting the common middle class unemployed Rust Belt Trump voter....
AND oh that coal mining caused Black Lung coverage under the ACA...cancelled under the Trump healthcare plan.....
AND all those coal mining jobs he promised...nothing as of yet on the horizon....
While everyone was in a panic over the CIA hacking tools AND the Trump surrogate claims of spying microwave ovens....I have been constantly ringing the alarm bells over the "Internet of Things IoT" that are far more dangerous than anything the CIA or Trump surrogates can come up with...
NOW if Trump and his merry band of surrogates wanted to be truly helpful on internet security then they need to point to the IoT problem and not some microwave oven thingy....
Last time I checked the US internet backbone was not knocked out for hours by microwave ovens but it was by a 350,000 IoT bot DDoS attack....
NOTICE a bulk of the affected devices come from China and why is that????
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/03/...ge/#more-38363
Dahua, Hikvision IoT Devices Under Siege
Quote:
Dahua, the world’s second-largest maker of “Internet of Things” devices like security cameras and digital video recorders (DVRs), has shipped a software update that closes a gaping security hole in a broad swath of its products. The vulnerability allows anyone to bypass the login process for these devices and gain remote, direct control over vulnerable systems. Adding urgency to the situation, there is now code available online that allows anyone to exploit this bug and commandeer a large number of#IoT devices.
On March 5, a security researcher named Bashis posted to the Full Disclosure security mailing list exploit code for an embarrassingly simple flaw in the way many Dahua security cameras and DVRs handle authentication. These devices are designed to be controlled by a local Web server that#is accessible via a Web browser.
That server requires the user to enter a username and password, but Bashis found he could force all affected devices to cough up their usernames and a simple hashed value of the password. Armed with this information, he could effectively “pass the hash” and the corresponding username right back to the Web server and be admitted access to the device settings page. From there, he could add users and install or modify the device’s software. From Full Disclosure:
“This is so simple as:
1. Remotely download the full user database with all credentials and permissions
2. Choose whatever admin user, copy the login names and password hashes
3. Use them as source to remotely login to the Dahua devices
“This is like a damn Hollywood hack, click on one button and you are in…”
Bashis said he was so appalled at the discovery that he labeled it an#apparent “backdoor” — an undocumented means of accessing an electronic device that often only the vendor#knows about. Enraged, Bashis decided to publish his exploit code without first notifying Dahua. Later, Bashis said he changed his mind after being contacted by the company and agreed#to remove his code from the online posting.
Unfortunately, that ship may have already sailed. Bashis’s exploit code already has been copied in several other places online as of this publication.
Asked why he took down his exploit code, Bashis said in an interview with KrebsOnSecurity that “The hack is too simple, way too simple, and now I want Dahua’s users to get patched firmware’s before they will be victims to some botnet.”
In an advisory published March 6, Dahua said it has identified nearly a dozen of its products that are vulnerable, and that further review may reveal additional models also have this flaw. The company is urging users to download and install the newest firmware updates as soon as possible. Here are the models known to be affected so far:
DH-IPC-HDW23A0RN-ZS
DH-IPC-HDBW23A0RN-ZS
DH-IPC-HDBW13A0SN
DH-IPC-HDW13A0SN
DH-IPC-HFW13A0SN-W
DH-IPC-HDBW13A0SN
DH-IPC-HDW13A0SN
DH-IPC-HFW13A0SN-W
DHI-HCVR51A04HE-S3
DHI-HCVR51A08HE-S3
DHI-HCVR58A32S-S2
It’s not clear exactly how many devices worldwide may be vulnerable. Bashis says that’s a difficult question to answer, but that he “wouldn’t be surprised if 95 percent of Dahua’s product line has the same problem,” he said. “And also possible their OEM clones.”
Dahua has not yet responded to my questions or request for comment. I’ll update this post if things change on that front.
This is the second time in a week that a major Chinese IoT firm has urgently warned its customers to update the firmware on their devices. For weeks, experts have been warning that there are signs of attackers exploiting an unknown backdoor or equally serious vulnerability in cameras and DVR devices made by IoT giant Hikvision.
Writing for video surveillance publication IPVM, Brian Karas reported on March 2 that he was hearing from multiple Hikvision security camera and DVR users who suddenly were locked out of their devices and had new “system” user accounts added without their permission.
Karas said the devices in question all were set up to be remotely accessible over the Internet, and were running with the default credentials (12345). Karas noted that there don’t appear to be any Hikvision devices sought out by the Mirai worm — the now open-source malware#that is being used to enslave IoT devices in a botnet for launching crippling online attacks (in contrast, Dahua’s products are hugely represented in the list of systems being sought out by the Mirai worm.)
In addition, a programmer who has long written and distributed custom firmware for Hikvision devices claims he’s found a backdoor in “many popular Hikvision products that makes it possible to gain full admin access to the device,” wrote the user “Montecrypto” on the IoT forum IPcamtalk on Mar. 5. “Hikvision gets two weeks to come forward, acknowledge, and explain why the backdoor is there and when it is going to be removed. I sent them an email. If nothing changes, I will publish all details on March 20th, along with the firmware that disables the backdoor.”
According to IPVM’s Karas, Hikvision has not acknowledged an unpatched backdoor or any other equivalent weakness in its product. But on Mar. 2, the company issued a reminder to its integrator partners about the need to be updated to the latest firmware.
A special bulletin issued Mar. 2, 2017 by Hikvision. Image: IPVM
“Hikvision has determined that there is a scripted application specifically targeting Hikvision NVRs and DVRs that meet the following conditions: they have not been updated to the latest firmware; they are set to the default port, default user name, and default password,” the company’s statement reads. “Hikvision has required secure activation since May of 2015, making it impossible for our integrator partners to install equipment with default settings. However, it was possible, before that date, for integrators to install NVRs and DVRs with default settings. Hikvision strongly recommends that our dealer base review the security levels of equipment installed prior to June 2015 to ensure the use of complex passwords and upgraded firmware to best protect their customers.”
ANALYSIS
I don’t agree with Bashis’s conclusion that the Dahua flaw was intentional; It appears that the makers of these products simply did not invest much energy, time or money in building security into the software. Rather, security is clearly an afterthought that is bolted on afterwards with these devices, which is why nobody should trust them.
The truth is that the software that runs on a whole mess of these security cameras and DVRs is very poorly written, and probably full of more security holes just like the flaw Dahua users are dealing with right now. To hope or wish otherwise given what we know about the history of these cheap electronic devices seems sheer folly.
In December, KrebsOnSecurity warned that many Sony security cameras contained a backdoor that can only be erased by updating the firmware on the devices.
Some security experts maintain that these types of flaws can’t be easily exploited when the IoT device in question is behind a firewall. But that advice just doesn’t hold water for today’s IoT cameras and DVRs. For one thing, a great many security cameras and other IoT devices will punch a hole in your firewall straight away without your permission, using a technology called Universal Plug-and-Play (UPnP).
In other cases, IoT products are incorporating peer-to-peer (P2P) technology that cannot be turned off and exposes users to even greater threats. In that same December 2016 story referenced above, I cited research from security firm Cybereason, which found at least two previously unknown security flaws in dozens of IP camera families that are white-labeled under a number of different brands (and some without brands at all).
“Cybereason’s team found that they could easily exploit these devices even if they were set up behind a firewall,” that story noted. “That’s because all of these cameras ship with a factory-default peer-to-peer (P2P) communications capability that enables remote ‘cloud’ access to the devices via the manufacturer’s Web site — provided a customer visits the site and provides the unique camera ID stamped on the bottom of the devices.”
The story continued:
“Although it may seem that attackers would need physical access to the vulnerable devices in order to derive those unique camera IDs, Cybereason’s principal security researcher Amit Serper said the company figured out a simple way to enumerate all possible camera IDs using the manufacturer’s Web site.”
My advice? Avoid the P2P models like the plague. If you have security cameras or DVR devices that are connected to the Internet, make sure they are up to date with the latest firmware. Beyond that, consider completely blocking external network access to the devices and enabling a VPN if you truly need remote access to them.
Howtogeek.com has a decent tutorial on setting up your own VPN to enable remote access to your home or business network; on picking a decent router that supports VPNs; and installing custom firmware like DD-WRT on the router if available (because, as we can see, stock firmware usually is some horribly insecure and shoddy stuff).
Continued.....
NOTICE....now Trump and his merry band of surrogates do have it right when it comes to camera's BUT not from the CIA and or the former Obama Administration.....
Right now if one was to grade the current Trump "national security" many Americans might be surprised to see there is none..neither internally nor externally.
Externally..Trump has bashed NATO and called it obsolete regardless of how many "kind and supporting comments he makes he cannot rewind his bashing...
The same Trump bashing of EU and trade/Euro issues with the EU.
He is floundering in NK...and has no answer.
He is gutting the Depart of State and has filled virtually no Ambassador positions...and critical DoS positions.
He is gutting the Coast Guard...TSA and FEMA...all designed to support US citizens.
He has yet to truly engagement China on all the issues he has raised and pounded on China during the campaign.
He has alienated Mexico and Canada as well and verbally abused the Australian PM....
Internally..he has unleashed a wave of anti-Semitic activities with hos words and statements over the last 18 months...
He has not fulfilled a single promise he made on healthcare for all and no one would lose their healthcare and it would be better and cheaper...
He has allowed again the pollution of streams and rivers and cut EPA projects designed to better the environment...
He has deregulated banks allowing them to go back to the practices that almost destroyed the US in the last recession....
And the list goes on and on........
When judging anything Trump says and or tweets we need to fully understand the Russian Propaganda 6 Ds Principle....
Deflect...Dismay...Distort...Dismiss ALL designed to create Doubt and Distrust....
Example:
Donald J. Trump
Verified account
@realDonaldTrump 19h
19 hours ago
ObamaCare is imploding. It is a disaster and 2017 will be the worst year yet, by far! Republicans will come together and save the day.
AND
Donald J. Trump
Verified account
@realDonaldTrump Mar 11
We are making great progress with healthcare. ObamaCare is imploding and will only get worse. Republicans coming together to get job done!
NOW compare these tweets against the CBO analysis of his healthcare plan....
NOW which of the Russian Propaganda 6 Ds do you spot .....at least THREE are in play...
When one uses the Russian Propaganda 6 Ds you can actually understand just how Trump drives disinformation and blatant lies....
AND again the statement national security is comprised of 1) internal and 2) external elements...
What many do not understand is that things like employment..education and health care go to the heart of internal national security....
Research conducted shortly after the Trump election indicated that in the course of 18 months Trump had made and repeated the same promises with some small variances...the total made promises....159.....
Reference health care....Trump is slowly being seen and stamped as a total flip flopper especially on this set of promised that he is in fact recorded on.
So exactly how are foreign leaders going to view and act towards a US President who is being seen as not holding to what he states and states and states...
President Donald Trump rode to the White House making big promises on health care — pledges that he is now in serious danger of breaking. Let's look at how the president's words on the campaign trail stack up against what we know today.
In addition to Trump's comments on the stump, his administration has spent weeks raising expectations on its Obamacare replacement. Among the claims: The Republican plan would cover more people, reduce their premiums and costs, avoid cutting Medicaid, and leave no one worse off than under the former president's signature achievement.
So now that the House GOP's American Health Care Act (AHCA) is here, how do these pledges look?
Not good, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released on Monday. The report found the House plan — which the Trump administration has thrown its support behind — would cause millions to lose insurance and raise costs for vulnerable populations.
The White House pushed back against the report, claiming the findings were not accurate, but some independent analysts have made similar predictions. Here's a look at where we are:
COVERAGE
"We're going to have insurance for everybody"— Donald Trump, Washington Post interview, 01/15/2017
Trump was clear both as a candidate and as president: No one would be left behind under his health care plan.
"We're gonna come up with a new plan that's going to be better health care for more people at a lesser cost," Trump told ABC's David Muir in January. "Everybody's got to be covered," he said on CBS' "60 Minutes" in 2015.
In addition to Trump's comments, the House GOP website denies that people will lose coverage under the Republican bill and Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney told CBS News last week he believed the legislation "will cover more" people. "We don't want anyone who currently has insurance to not have insurance," White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" in January.
The House bill would fall far short of these promises, according to the CBO.
By the agency's estimate, 14 million fewer people would be insured in 2018 versus current law and a whopping 24 million fewer people would have insurance in 2026.
Some people would voluntarily drop their coverage because the bill repeals the individual mandate that requires people to buy insurance, but others "would forgo insurance in response to higher premiums."
The coverage losses would be "disproportionately larger among older people with lower income," according to the CBO, who would face higher premiums under the House GOP bill and less federal aid to pay for them.
COSTS
"I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially in the process that we're going through" — Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, NBC's "Meet The Press," 03/12/2017
Trump and his allies emphasized affordability, saying their Obamacare replacement would lower premiums and provide more help for out-of-pocket costs.
Trump, for example, told the Washington Post that Americans would see "much lower deductibles" in January and complained on Monday that under the current system "deductibles are so high you don't even get to use [insurance]." He promised "great health care for a fraction of the price" in a speech in Las Vegas last year.
The CBO news is mixed, but overall its estimates show these goals won't be met.
The analysis is especially harsh when it comes to Price's claim "nobody will be worse off financially." Instead, it finds some of the patients who need coverage the most would see their costs soar.
Related: White House says CBO has it wrong on health care
Health insurance premiums would initially rise 15% to 20% than they would under current law, but would eventually decrease, ending up 10% lower than Obamacare's projected prices by 2026.
But costs wouldn't go down for everyone and the worst hit by the GOP plan would be one of the most vulnerable groups: Older patients.
While CBO projects the average 21 year old could expect a 20-25% decrease in their premiums, a 64-year-old would see their premiums go up 20-25%. This is because of a change in the law that would allow insurers to charge older customers more than they can under Obamacare.
But it gets much worse for these patients: Most people who get individual insurance through Obamacare receive subsidies and older customers would get less help under the House GOP plan. The bill would give people a fixed amount of help while Obamacare's subsidies rise according to their income and the price of insurance.
For a 64-year-old making $26,500 a year, the effects would be devastating: They would pay, on average, $1,700 total for health insurance under Obamacare in 2026, but $14,600 under the House bill.
On the other end, some higher-income seniors and younger customers would pay less for insurance than they do now.
As for lowering costs and deductibles, the CBO projects that "individuals' cost-sharing payments, including deductibles, in the nongroup market would tend to be higher" under the House bill.
The bill reduces premiums by allowing insurers to offer plans that cover fewer expenses. But it runs directly afoul of Trump's personal pledge just two months ago to lower deductibles.
The White House argues it can bring premiums down further by loosening regulations on what insurers have to provide, but that could face legal challenges and it's not clear how far the administration can go without further legislation.
MEDICAID
"I'm not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid" — Donald Trump, Daily Signal interview, 05/21/2015
Trump said in his speech announcing his run for president that he would "save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts" and bragged on Twitter that he was the first Republican contender to make that pledge.
But the CBO found Trump would break his promise — by a mile.
Related: Trump voters would be hit hardest by healthcare changes
Obamacare expanded Medicaid to cover about 11 million more people, but the House bill would reduce Medicaid spending by $880 billion by 2026, at which point it would spend a full 25% less than under current law. This would leave many people without coverage: 14 million Medicaid patients would fall off the rolls, according to the CBO projection.
This could have repercussions for another Trump promise to "give people struggling with addiction access to the help they need" which he made in a speech on the topic last October.
A number of lawmakers, including key Republicans, have expressed concern that cuts and changes to Medicaid could affect patients who receive substance abuse treatment through the program.
REALLY....AFTER a twitter rage rant he now walks back his very own tweets...is he actually sane?????
Spicer: Trump didn't mean wiretapping when he tweeted about wiretapping
Spicer: Trump's "statements" can be "trusted" when he's not "joking"
By Jeremy Diamond, CNN
https://www.cnn.it/2mkk4wd
NOTE
.@POTUS deliberately made up wiretap charges, or more troubling, he believes it
HOW is that draining the swamp going for Trump..NOT well at all it seems..the family is raking it in..??
Kushners set to get $400 million from Anbang on Manhattan tower: Bloomberg http://reut.rs/2mknrUz
Here, the "leader of the free world" tells MSM being nice will guarantee them greater success than being critical.
Donald J. Trump
Verified account
@realDonaldTrump 2h
2 hours ago
It is amazing how rude much of the media is to my very hard working representatives. Be nice, you will do much better
This is the same exact person who has been bashing US MSM as failed..dishonest..lying...producing fake news.....AND now he tries to play nice....
Maybe the drumbeat of his own failures in the last seven weeks might be catching up with him and his surrogates....
Some warned Trump to not do two things...declare war on the MSM and war on the US IC.....
Over SIX MILLION of Trump's followers are fake. Paid-for Russian bots, perhaps?
https://www.twitteraudit.com/Realdonaldtrump
So again no Russian connections...??????
I have been drumbeating the use of Russian bot networks to amplify proTrump social media support....
And again I am not alone in seeing this Russian activity.....
Forbes
✔
@Forbes
Only 3 million of Trump's 20 million Twitter followers are active domestic users
http://on.forbes.com/60148r68O
So who is driving the remaining 17M Twitter followers....actually automated computer systems and humans in the pay of Russian companies and or the Russian Intelligence Services...simple actually...
Just many Trump voters do not want to really accept that small fact of life...
Both the House and Senae Intelligence committees have stated directly to the Trump WH..put up or shut up and or then if no evidence you must apologize....provide us by Monday the direct evidence that you claimed when you accused Obama of wire tapping....
BUT.....So far silence....
BUT WAIT...then Trump surrogates are off and running with a new "conspiracy theory"...
Kellyanne Conway suggests alleged surveillance of Trump went beyond phones
http://read.bi/2nflv4b
So if she really does know something as an American citizen she is then required to come forward with evidence instead of making these lame excuses to cover up for her boss...
This is a sudden and interesting comment coming out of Russian media...
Kremlin spokesman "tired" of statements about Trump's Russian connections.
https://ria.ru/politics/20170313/1489866812.html
For those that have been following my postings on the Ukraine thread...one has learned along the way to "decipher Moscowspeak"...
This statement simply means they are sick and tired of being accused for doing something they in fact did....
Second thing learned out of "Moscowspeak" from eastern Ukraine...WHEN Russia clearly states they did nothing then in fact they did it....called "mirroring the truth"...
REMEMBER when Trump honesty publicly and recorded on video ....stated in FIVE rallies that if he should be elected President "I will donate my salary back to the government" as I am worth billions...
WELL now we at going into the second full work month and Trump has not repaid the US government with his salary.
I have a publicly made video of Trump stating in 2002 that he was considering running for President and he though he could actually make money being President as the salary is far lower than he was making as his own boss....
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/after-pledging-donate-sala…
After Pledging to Donate Salary, Trump Declines to Release Proof
by Ari Melber
President Donald Trump pledged to forgo a presidential salary, but as his second payday approaches, the White House is declining to say if the president has donated any of his earnings yet.
During the campaign, Trump promised he would take "no salary" if elected — a pledge he reiterated after he won.
"I'm not going to the take the salary," he said on CBS' "60 Minutes" in November.
The Constitution, however, requires that the president receive a salary, and that it not be reduced during his term. Federal law mandates the president receive a $400,000 annual salary, paid out once a month.
Trump aides have previously said Trump would donate his salary to the Treasury Department or a charity.
MSNBC requested details and documentation about any salary donations from the White House, the Treasury Department and the Office of Personnel Management, which all declined to say whether Trump has donated any of his salary to date. (OPM referred questions to the White House.)
Last month, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the website Politifact that Trump "will be giving" his salary "back to Treasury or donating."
The site noted the White House "declined to answer several inquiries into whether Trump has gotten a paycheck already."
I keep going back to the idea tha national security has two elements....
1. internal and
2. external
Right now on the internal side we have seen a strong tendency of the Trump WH to draw in advisor from the White nationalist side with Miller and Bannon...Bannon sits in the NSC....and white nationalism is the vehicle used to project white supremacy......
This is a long read but well worth reading as it is well researched and goes to a serious question I have....
Just how is it possible that these large amounts of Russian controlled bots on the social media side WERE absolutely not detected by US tech giants??
WHY did it take European social media open source analysts and IT researchers to find what Twitter or FB or Instrgram should have seen first??
AND why has Twitter been so resistent in understanding the significance of these developments and downplays it at every opportunity....
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/silicon-valley-tech-alt-righ...
Meet Silicon Valley's Secretive Alt-Right Followers
I investigated the role of "alt-techies" in the extremist movement emboldened by Trump.
Josh HarkinsonMar. 10, 2017 7:00 AM
Readers of The Right Stuff long knew that founder "Mike Enoch" had two main interests: technology and white supremacy. Posts on the neo-Nazi site have included discussion of "a new blogging platform built on node.js," while other less techie content has alluded to the "chimpout" in Ferguson, putting Jews in ovens, and Trump's "top-tier troll" of Jews on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
In January, Enoch was outed as Mike Peinovich, a Manhattan-based software engineer. His unmasking highlighted a lingering question about the racist far-right movement that rose to prominence with Donald Trump's election: What support might the so-called alt-right have among techies?
Ever since I began investigating the extremist groups lining up behind Trump last spring, several of their leaders have made big claims to me about an alt-right following in Silicon Valley and across the broader tech industry. "The average alt-right-ist is probably a 28-year-old tech-savvy guy working in IT," white nationalist Richard Spencer insisted when I interviewed him a few weeks before the election. "I have seen so many people like that." Andrew Anglin, the publisher of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, told me he gets donations from Silicon Valley, and that Santa Clara County, home to Apple and Intel, is his site's largest traffic source.
Chuck Johnson, the publisher of the conspiracy-mongering site Got News, said he gets lots of page views from the San Francisco Bay Area.
"If you even try to posit that racism and sexism aren't why women and minorities aren't making it, that it's some combination of talent and values, people's heads just explode."
After Peinovich was outed, he also insisted to me that many techies secretly identify with the alt-right, which he attributed to a backlash against the "corporate feminist and diversity agenda" of tech companies. "The fact that speaking up about this virtually guarantees career and social suicide, as in my case, shows why so many white males in tech would be attracted to the alt-right."
None of these alt-right figures would provide any data to support their claims. As I've reported, some alt-right sites have wildly overstated their reach. Moreover, the tech industry is renowned for its globalist outlook: Public-opinion surveys conducted by a Stanford political economist have found that rank-and-file workers in Silicon Valley exhibit less racial resentment and more favorable views toward most forms of immigration than average Americans.
Nonetheless, "alt-techies," as Spencer and others call them, do appear to play a role in a movement that first incubated in the backwaters of the internet and eventually spread online with the rise of Trump. Some heroes of the far right are associated with tech: They include former Breitbart News "tech editor" Milo Yiannopoulos; the infamous neo-Nazi hacker Andrew Auernheimer (a.k.a. Weev); and the video gaming vlogger Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, whose "Pewdiepie" YouTube channel featuring Nazi-themed jokes has 54 million subscribers. (Last month Kjellberg apologized for the jokes and said he is not a Nazi.)
There are also successful figures in the tech industry who appeal to and have commingled with the alt-right: The DeploraBall, a gathering of far-right activists and conspiracy theorists during Trump's inauguration, was co-organized by software investor Jeff Giesea and attended by tech billionaire and Trump backer Peter Thiel.
San Francisco-based tech entrepreneur Curtis Yarvin is known for launching the pro-authoritarian "neoreactionary" movement and reportedly has been in contact with Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon. (Yarvin denies this.) Giesea and Yarvin, both of whom I interviewed, reject the "alt-right" label for its associations with white nationalism, yet they share the movement's disdain for the race and gender politics of the left. (Thiel's media representative did not respond to a request for comment from him.)
Continued...a long read.....
BLUF..while the Trump WH is adament that the threat against the US is terrorism using the name of religion...somehow the serious threat from the ultra right is completely ignored.....
Euorepans have often said over the years that the US was capable of "fascism with a smile"....how close are we now??
Comment is well taken but and there is always a BUT.....
National security is comprised of two elements...
1. internal and
2. external
Right now there is either and the rule of law..good governance and transparency the so called US "values" are nowhere to be seen...
I deal in IT security and my company works the dark net for governmental agencies and manufacturing corporations and regardless of what many in the US think.... both Trump supporters and or not...there is a true cyber war afoot and it is both brutal and direct..a deliberately kept one step below actual warfare.
When a US President with the power of 17 USG IC agencies behind him refuses to accept their best efforts and that they came to the same conclusion as to what I see virtually daily...then our national security as a whole is in danger....
When a US President stacks the his WH with known white nationalists and or white supremacists we are in serious trouble internally.
When we have Congressmen supporting verbally and directly anything that smacks of 300% taken straight from Russian propaganda and retweets white supremacist tweets we are in serious trouble internally..
When we have a US President who cannot tell the difference between a communist led PKK Kurd and local Syrians fighting to throw out a genocidal dictator we are in serious trouble...
When we have a US President who is so wrapped up in Russian connections because he still needs capital funding to just support his 650M USD business debt and never showed us his tax returns to exactly explain where he got the needed capital thus who is he beholden to we are in serious trouble.
When a US President is willing to cut massively the budgets for TSA...Coast Guard and FEMA in order to pump 54B into defense WHEN the Navy does not even have enough sailors to man the ships they currently have and not do 6-9 sea tours because of that shortage we are in serious trouble.
When a President does not understand the multicultural background of the US and he has white nationalists and white supremacists advising him we are in serious trouble...
When we have a US President who is willing to take millions of Americans off of what little health insurance coverage they had for the first time in US history then we have a serious problem...
When we have a US President demanding that DoS take a 37% budget cut and leaves unfilled literally all of the US Ambassador positions then we are in serious trouble...
When we have a US President who believes that turning inward when the entire world trades with the US and literally thousands of jobs are tied to that trade we are in serious trouble....
By the way I would argue that with absolutely over 600 unfilled critical government political positions deliberately not filled and Cabinet members selected for those agencies with the deep desire to dismantle those very agencies they...I would argue we have right now no democracy in the US as the very same democratic institutions you mention are in serious trouble...
Why... the guarantee of the rule of law has been openly and directly questioned by this President and he has not backed off of that critique has he?
Should I continue....?
G. Murphy Donovan, like many Americans (even those who loath Trump) clearly wants a shake up the status quo. Such turmoil can cough up opportunities, but only if we are honest, reflective and flexible.
The firing of Michael Flynn demonstrated that the new Trump administration was not about cronyism. The reason for his dismissal was one of several events that should have been cause enough. Now that we know he was a paid agent for Turkey, the previous reasons seem like smoke to a pretty bad fire. Good riddance.
Session's recuse was equally important. The American people must have faith in the rule of law, and any investigations of violations. Faith in congress is at an all time low, and as the American people are not privy to the confidential information necessary to settle this issue they need to be assured. Sessions did that.
Our strength is our democratic bodies and the people who keep them honest. The humility of those who represent us has been our greatest asset; we've seen how hubris has lead us to disaster after disaster. We need to be reflective and own our mistakes if a new order is going to be successful. I know it can be frustrating, and feel like weakness, but those steps back will create a bond that is unbreakable.
King just keeps on his racist and white supremacist rants...
Steve King: Blacks and Hispanics ‘Will Be Fighting Each Other’ Before Overtaking White Population
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) continued his totally-not-racist media blitz about his comments against a multicultural America by telling a local radio station that he predicts minorities will fight amongst each other before ever being able to cumulatively outnumber the white population in America. Claiming that critics of his recent comments about multiculturalism are simply celebrating the idea of a white-minority America, King told WOHO, “When you start accentuating [racial] differences, then you start ending up with people that are at each other’s throats. And [King critic Jorge Ramos] is adding up Hispanics and blacks into what he predicts will be in greater number than whites in America. I will predict that Hispanics and the blacks will be fighting each other before that happens.” Following the prediction, as first spotted by CNN, King added: “Their effort here is to be celebrating because the United States is moving towards becoming, the whites becoming a minority, a majority-minority within the country according to what their plan is.”
NOTE
He concluded by citing The Camp of the Saints—the notoriously racist, anti-immigrant French novel occasionally cited by top White House strategist Steve Bannon.
How can there be "national security" when a US Congressman basically openly supports white supremacy and Russian disinformation.
Russian TV-station offered youths in #Rinkeby #Sweden money to do some "action" in front of the camera.
This was on Feb 22, a few days after the statement about #Sweden by @realDonaldTrump and two days after the riots
http://www.radio24syv.dk/udvalgte-ny...lave-ballade/#
Swedish teenagers offered cash by Russian TV to riot. We are in an information war - time for Europe to fight back.
http://www.thelocal.se/20170306/rink...to-bribe-them#
Youths were offered 44 USDs each for their "actions"....
NOW we have Congressman King.......
Steve King
Verified account
@SteveKingIA
Steve King Retweeted Voice of Europe
I visited this "No-Go Zone" in Sweden and felt the hostility of the Muslims only Rinkeby area.
Voice of Europe
@V_of_Europe
Cameraman gets run over by a car in one of Sweden's 45 no-go zones. Even the police is afraid.
HAS Congressman King fully understood he was used and abused by Russian propaganda OR did HE openly choose to support that Russian propaganda effort....
The interesting thing about the King tweets using Wilders is the following....
In Holland if you do not use government funding for your election THEN you must report every single contribution that you and your party receive....WHICH Wilders has done....
WHAT is extremely interesting is that a majority of all his election campaign donations come from Americans out of the US NOT from citizens living and working inside Holland.....
What is equally interesting is that those Americans do not get to deduct their contributions from US taxes who then must truly identify with the aims..goals and statements that Wilders makes...and are using their money to push these aims and goals of Wilders.
REMEMBER in Europe Wilders is considered to be a ultra rightist bordering on being a neo Nazi ie a white supremacist....
So why is a US Congressman retweeting a white supremacist UNLESS he identifies with Wilders.....??????
One does have to wonder if the national security policy of the Trump WH is one built on white supremacy.....using white nationalism as the vehicle..
Which actually parallels the Russian use of political warfare....
NOTE:Does @SteveKingIA realize who else had a penchant for talking about the intersection of race, culture and destiny?
Steve King
Verified account
@SteveKingIA 2h
2 hours ago
Steve King Retweeted Voice of Europe
Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies.
Voice of Europe
@V_of_Europe
Hundreds of Islamists shouting "Allahu Akbar" in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Wilders is right for over 10 years. #turkijerel
Two months into the Trump administration, "not a single political appointee has joined" Mattis at the Pentagon
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/after-two-months-mattis-is-only-trump-pick-…
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has just arrested 3 Russian spies. Was that the reason for Trump/Sessions wanting to sack him?
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/russian-spies-nyc-charged-espionag…
…
AND the swamp just keeps on getting deeper and deeper and truly deep...
Likely Bharara replacement Marc Mukasey. His dad tied to defendant in a Russian money laundering case PB was trying:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/22/u-s-prosecutors-are-ou…
NOTICE again the Russian connections on the Russian mob side and then ask why he was fired after reading the above article...
REMEMBER the Trump casino empire before it crashed into bankruptcy was heavily fined by the US government for large scale money laundering...
Russia's state TV painstakingly rehashes the history of McCarthyism in America vis-à-vis current events.
This theme sounds eerily familiar!
Donald J. Trump
Verified account
@realDonaldTrump Mar 4
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
It is simply amazing just how close Russian propaganda is to what Trump tweets...many times the Russians lead and then sometimes Trump leads..but still they remain close in their narratives....
EITHER Russia is lying or the Trump WH has in fact lifted sanctions.....there are a number of other eastern European countries that can in fact repair MI-17s AND fly the same copter....
TASS: Chemezov: US forced to lift sanctions against Rosoboronexport for repairs Mi-17
http://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/4087644
WHERE Russian PMCs...private military companies...goes so goes the Russian FP...a very new saying and Trump and his merry band have totally failed to see this intertwining of Russian PMCs and Russian FP.....
Russia|n mercenaries are reported on the ground in #Libya:
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKB
N16H2DM
For an in depth look at all of the Russian PMCs and where are they are engaged...refer to the Syrian thread where it is all posted in one very understandable chart....
REMEMBER though... it is often very difficult to tell the difference between Russian PMC contractors and the Russian Military Intelligence GRU Spetsnaz (Russian SOF)...and that is deliberate...
If a GRU member is killed suddenly he is a contractor..if a contractor is killed suddenly he is declared by Moscow a military member....defends on which FP move they want to make...
Those pesky Russian trolls were hard at work before the US elections....
BT WAIT...Trump does not believe Russian hackers...Russian botnets...or Russian internet trolls....were ever hard at work in the US elections....
LinkedIn deleted American intelligence service veterans on the request of #Russian trolls long before #US elections
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-followed-reports-russian-trolls…
Trump's national security agenda and or his FP will never get off the ground until he finally and totally understands that those Russian pesky bot networks and Russian hackers are very real and a serious threat to the US and the entire West....and it is just not a threat against the Trump WH and government but to the entire US economic system....
We are currently in a full scale low grade cyber war regardless of what many in the US think...at least the Russians view it as a "war"...and then act accordingly.
British security services join French and Germans in recognizing Russian threat. Kremlin hybrid war comes to EU
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/12/british-democracy-at-ri…
Bernie supporters got played by Russia bots:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...shpmg00000004#
National security only exists if one governs within the limits set by the rule of law.....
Trump constantly beat the drumbeat rhetoric of "drain the swamp" and then protects the "swamp".
After filling his admin with Goldman Sachs alumni, Trump then fired "the man who terrifies Wall Street."
Populism hard at work it would appear....
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/09/the-man-who-terrifies-wall…?
Hassan Hassan حسن
Verified account
About Washington's growing tone-deafness in Syria http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/what-palmyra-tells-us-about-u…
Assad is a long way from victory in Syrian conflict
https://www.ft.com/content/608319f0-036c-11e7-ace0-1ce02ef0def9 …
Can it get any stranger on the part of former Trump advisors....
Roger Stone: Russian TV less censored than CNN, CIA always lies, Hillary wanted war for donors and the M-I complex.
https://youtu.be/0bk7zGdELpA
Roger Stone: I have had no connections with the Russian state for years.
Russia Today host: Well, except for us.
Roger Stone calls for "unit[ing] for peace again" with #Russia.
The prior time he refers to is WW2, which Moscow started with the Nazis.
People can now avoid "the crap being put out by CNN," says Roger Stone, and get "better investigative journalism" at Breitbart and InfoWars.
Roger Stone moves into a sprightly section with the RT host about "McCarthyism" and parallels between the current U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Another Trump NSC member is evidently committing a crime as well...lying seems to be getting a lot of people inside the Trump WH in a lot of trouble lately....
Looks as if Steve Bannon lied under oath to claim Florida residence, avoiding taxes, acc to great WashPost reporting
http://wapo.st/2naBDDW?tid=ss_tw
BTW..he was registered to vote in two States...REMEMBER when Trump stated that voting fraud was being committed by a number of people (3M) who were registered in multiple states...
There are estimates that between 37-39% of all proTrump tweets read on US social media came from a Russian owned Macedonian company....
I offered to show the author a current 350,000 botnet currently being used in Europe to magnify Russian disinformation and or propaganda .....BUT that is just the tip of the iceberg...
A whopping 48M Twitter accounts are actually bots, study reveals
http://cbsn.ws/2neLYvk
Just keeps on getting deeper and deeper and deeper.....
Trump confidant Roger Stone admits exchanging private Twitter messages with DNC hackers, says they were ‘innocuous’ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/10/roger-stone-trump-confi… …
BTW..social media tracked down yesterday the owner of the Guccifer 2.0 twitter account...and suddenly when confronted over it the entire account was deleted...
One option being considered by Trump Team: back #YPG to expel #IS from #Raqqa, then hand over to #Assad/#Russia |
Iran has tried to use #Syria to open a second front against #Israel, and US policy over #Raqqa might help them.
If I wanted to hand the rest of Syria to the artists formerly known as Al Qaeda now HTS, this would be my plan.
I like it when many individuals use the term "radical Islamic terrorists" AND truly fail to then cover the opposite side of Islam ...the Shia supported by Iran which drives on a concept called "revolutionary Islam"...
YET these individuals beat up on KSA..Qatar and other Sunni Arab nation states in the ME YET for supporting these so called "radical Islamic terrorists".....
BUT fighting right now inside Syria supported by Russia and Iran and totally Shia based are SEVENTY EIGTH (78)REPEAT 78 Shia militias who are just as "radical" as IS is in their religious fevor....BUT we hear nothing about them....
BY THE WAY the US is in fact supporting them with USAF CAS...US SOF direct support and artillery and now several hundred Rangers.....
AND that includes support to US named terror groups ..Hezbollah....Iraq Hezbollah.. Kurdish PKK and elements of the IRGC....
Call up the chart depicting the 78 Shia militias and then ask why we have not seen and or heard about them in the US MSM or from the Trump WH or the Trump SecDef of the Trump DoS....
FSA News#@FSAPlatform 3h
3 hours ago
#Infographic || #Syria
Complete updated list of militia groups fighting for the #Assad regime in Syria
https://twitter.com/FSAPlatform
ONE year ago it was a grand total of TWO....until Iran stepped in together with Russia and it jumped continuously to now 78.....
More on the Trump WH and DoD confusion on Syrian engagement...Trump critiques Obama constantly on the ME BUT this confusion from Trump is both dangerous and totally confusing and will not end well if this is not truly well thought out but when he tweeting and golfing and holding JSOC raid decisions on a dining table I suspect we are in for a rough ride in the next weeks.....he us going to get US troops killed or get the US into a war.....
Kyle Orton
Verified account
New for @HJS_Org on the mess on the way to #Raqqa: "Outcome Uncertain as American Involvement in Syria Deepens"
https://goo.gl/IRM65H
REMEMBER Trump first stated he supported our going into Iraq but then stated he was against it...AND now Syria..ARE we in or out....???
Notice the author forgot Ukraine and the Russian military annexation of Crimea and illegal invasion of eastern Ukraine in his article.......
Ukraine seeks probe of hacked Manafort texts @CNNPolitics
http://cnn.it/2mtU0AA
Literally hundreds of them have been released after an extortion attempt on Manafort...
BUT largely silence in the US MSM.....
So does Trump and his merry WH band still want to stand by their combined statements including Trump and Pence....THAT there was no previous knowledge that Flynn was a "foreign agent"?????
CONFIRMED: There were 2 calls btw Flynn's lawyers and WH team — the 1st during transition w Don McGahn; the 2nd during admin, w legal team.
So when will people wake up and smell the cover up and admit someone and Team Trump is in fact simply lying....
Heck I even knew that in JUN 2016 here in Berlin from Turkish sources....being reported in the local Turkish media...
This is an example of just why there is no Trump FP and why he is basically failing around .........."a massage therapist"....come on.
REMEMBER it was Bannon who claimed he was a Leninist intent on destroying the establishment and then changed that word to deconstruction....
Somehow many individuals seem to totally forget that Trump only won the electoral college on a 46.1% general popular vote count and lost the General popular vote by nearly 3M voters...so in reality he does not have a mandate in the name of the majority of Americans....
BTW...a large percentage of American voters simply did not vote this time around...
Energy Department parts company with Trump appointee who called Muslims ‘maggots’
By Darius Dixon 03/10/17 05:10 PM EST
President Donald Trump appointed a massage therapist from New Hampshire with no apparent relevant experience to work at the Energy Department, but parted company with the employee Friday after a series of anti-Muslim social media posts came to light, current and former DOE employees tell POLITICO.
Sid Bowdidge had received a nameplate and taken up residence this week in the director’s office of the agency’s Office of Technology Transitions, a career DOE employee said, but it was not clear precisely when he started or what his job would be. OTT specializes in shepherding research developed at the national labs into the private sector, an area in which Bowdidge didn't seem to have any experience.
Before joining DOE, Bowdidge worked for the Trump campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. An August 2015 NBC News report quoted Bowdidge attending a debate watch party in Trump’s New Hampshire campaign office, describing him as a “massage therapist from Bedford.”
DOE employees were unsettled by Bowdidge’s caustic Twitter account, on which he accused then-President Barack Obama of having terrorist "relatives" and spouted anti-Muslim views.
POLITICO took several screenshots of Bowdidge’s Twitter account Thursday night before it was made private sometime Friday.
In a tweet on Dec. 6, 2015, Bowdidge wrote that “Obama won’t use the term radical Islam because they’re his relatives!!!!” A day later, replying to a CNN tweet that included a picture of the suspected San Bernardino shooters, Bowdidge wrote, “Scum sucking maggots of the world. Exterminate them all.”
And during a dispute with someone on Twitter a week later, Bowdidge replied to the person "wouldn't say that if it was your wife, sister or family member that was murdered by some Muslim piece of shit."
DOE said Friday that Bowdidge is not with the agency anymore. Buzzfeed first reported the news. Greentech Media reported earlier in the day on his social media history and apparent lack of qualifications.
“Normally, we do not comment on personnel matters. In this case, we can confirm that Sid Bowdidge is no longer employed at the Department of Energy,” said Bob Haus, a DOE spokesperson.
Morning Energy
Bowdidge is not the first person to join the Trump administration despite a disconcerting social media presence. Several Trump appointees to the Education Department have also been found to have shared controversial views about women, African-Americans and transgender people, among others.
Bowdidge’s unfiltered opinions caught the attention of some DOE staff.
“Every time there’s a new political that comes in, we’re all ‘Who is this guy? What’s his background?’” the career staffer told POLITICO. OTT staff hadn’t received many details about Bowdidge’s official responsibilities, experience or position but their Google searches turned up some “colorful” information.
“This person’s in charge of, theoretically, overseeing the policy around commercializing billions of dollars of federal research,” the employee said. “This guy seems like he’s pretty far out, and we just don’t know. It looks like sort of a ridiculous appointment.”
Bowdidge could not be reached for comment.
Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz launched OTT in 2015 to help address longstanding bureaucratic hurdles involved with getting research from its 17 national labs into the marketplace. Rochelle Blaustein, the senior member of OTT’s career staff, has been serving as the office’s acting director.
Fox’s Chris Wallace tells Shep Smith it’s ‘Inconceivable’ Trump was unaware of Flynn’s Turkey lobbying
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/foxs-chris-wallace-tells-shep-smith-its…
REMEMBER now even FOX News is starting to doubt Team Trump.....and that means a lot....
AND just when you think the Trump Russian connection "thing" cannot get any weirder than it already is and due to mostly a ton of lying by everyone involved including Trump himself...to include his tweets...
Let's see we have the following Trump and Trump WH public statements....
1. Never had a single Russian contact in the last 10 years....
2. No one in the Trump campaign has had any contacts with Russians
3. I have not called any Russians nor has anyone on the Team Trump....
BUT then when all of the above cover stories fell apart and YES everyone seem to be talking to the US Russian Ambassador for all kinds of reasons including "Merry Christmas wishes".....
The cover story was ...well he is an Ambassador and it is OK to talk to Ambassadors.......as that is what they do...talk.....and meet and greet people....
So what is wrong with that........
BUT WAIT....now it gets really interesting after Trump..Flynn...Sessions..Page...Stone and Manafort ALL have admitted publicly in recent weeks meeting with the US Russian Ambassador....
NOW this turns up and how strange is then the US Russian ambassador's statement.....
Video of Russian ambassador's speech in October in Detroit. He denies ever having met Trump or officials.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/09/politics/kfile-russian-ambassador-october…
BUT WAIT...virtually all of Team Trump including Trump have stated they met the Ambassador....SO who is now lying and or are all sides lying to cover each other?
Appears so....what a heck of a cover up and it is interesting to see it fall apart...
Letter from Congress to WH Counsel dated 2 days ago. Nutshell: Trump, quit deleting tweets, you're breaking the law.
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2017-03-08-JEC-E… …
Confirms my comments above....
UPDATE WH says Trump didn't know Flynn was a foreign agent. Weird - that indicates a complete BG check failure as he was NatSec Advisor.
The author keeps sidestepping the Russian connection Trump problem but if he has held at any time a USG issued TS/SCI NOT a Contractor issued TS/SCI and higher clearance then he knows the following.....especially during the SSBI phase.....
1. any and all financial background is checked and if there are bankruptcies or loan defaults....or late payments or tax liens that cannot be accurately explained with solid reasons that alone is enough to deny a clearance
Trump has had seven bankruptcies and carries a debt load of 650M USDs with bank loans from Russian and China via the Deutsche Bank
Flynn did not disclose his 50K USD fee payment from Russia Today and or that he did not correctly inform DoD of his travels to Moscow and his speech there to the GRU....
NOR did Manafort..Stone...Page and others
2. ALL foreign travel and or foreign connections...MUST be fully revealed and explained
Trump does not have to do that since he is President and yet he holds a TS/SCI and higher with not a single background check
Flynn failed to fully explain his contacts with Russians and his travel to Moscow as did Manafort....Page...Stone and others.
3. any owned property and or investments outside the US..must be fully and completely explained
Now if the author went back and used these three security clearance requirements and asks were they answered by Manafort.....Carter Page....Stone....Flynn and even Trump himself....he might have a somewhat different world view.
As someone who has held that clearance and who had to answer all of the above every five years due to overseas property and friends and contacts I am amazed that more in the CI security community are not concerned....
BUT WAIT...they are concerned....and rightly so....