Tuesday Open Thread | The Traitor in the White House

Posted on November 28, 2017 by rikyrah

From the beginning, my thoughts on why 2016 was different have been this:
It’s the TREASON.
We have all lived through Presidents that we didn’t agree with. Presidents whose policies were antithetical to our own.

But, what we have on Dolt45, is a President, and a cabal around him, who willing slept with a hostile foreign power to undermine American Sovereignty.

There is a reason why the IC has reacted the way that they have, and it’s because, for the first time, The Intelligence Community believes that the President of the United States and those around him, are assets of a hostile foreign power.
They believe that they are TRAITORS to this country.

Because of this, you don’t just have our IC that is on this, and feeding the press news about the gang in the White House, you have the INTERNATIONAL IC doing so, because they understand the danger that Dol45 and his cabal mean to not just the United States, but to the world.

Hat tip-Balloon Juice for this article:

From Vanity Fair:

Exclusive: What Trump Really Told Kislyak After Comey Was Canned

During a May 10 meeting in the Oval Office, the president betrayed his intelligence community by leaking the content of a classified, and highly sensitive, Israeli intelligence operation to two high-ranking Russian envoys, Sergey Kislyak and Sergey Lavrov. This is what he told them—and the ramifications.
by Howard Blum
November 22, 2017 2:27 pm

On a dark night at the tail end of last winter, just a month after the inauguration of the new American president, an evening when only a sickle moon hung in the Levantine sky, two Israeli Sikorsky CH-53 helicopters flew low across Jordan and then, staying under the radar, veered north toward the twisting ribbon of shadows that was the Euphrates River. On board, waiting with a professional stillness as they headed into the hostile heart of Syria, were Sayeret Matkal commandos, the Jewish state’s elite counterterrorism force, along with members of the technological unit of the Mossad, its foreign-espionage agency. Their target: an ISIS cell that was racing to get a deadly new weapon thought to have been devised by Ibrahim al-Asiri, the Saudi national who was al-Qaeda’s master bombmaker in Yemen.

It was a covert mission whose details were reconstructed for Vanity Fair by two experts on Israeli intelligence operations. It would lead to the unnerving discovery that ISIS terrorists were working on transforming laptop computers into bombs that could pass undetected through airport security. U.S. Homeland Security officials—quickly followed by British authorities—banned passengers traveling from an accusatory list of Muslim-majority countries from carrying laptops and other portable electronic devices larger than a cell phone on arriving planes. It would not be until four tense months later, as foreign airports began to comply with new, stringent American security directives, that the ban would be lifted on an airport-by-airport basis.

In the secretive corridors of the American espionage community, the Israeli mission was praised by knowledgeable officials as a casebook example of a valued ally’s hard-won field intelligence being put to good, arguably even lifesaving, use.

Yet this triumph would be overshadowed by an astonishing conversation in the Oval Office in May, when an intemperate President Trump revealed details about the classified mission to Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, and Sergey I. Kislyak, then Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Along with the tempest of far-reaching geopolitical consequences that raged as a result of the president’s disclosure, fresh blood was spilled in his long-running combative relationship with the nation’s clandestine services. Israel—as well as America’s other allies—would rethink its willingness to share raw intelligence, and pretty much the entire Free World was left shaking its collective head in bewilderment as it wondered, not for the first time, what was going on with Trump and Russia. (In fact, Trump’s disturbing choice to hand over highly sensitive intelligence to the Russians is now a focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s relationship with Russia, both before and after the election.) In the hand-wringing aftermath, the entire event became, as is so often the case with spy stories, a tale about trust and betrayal.

And yet, the Israelis cannot say they weren’t warned.

……………………………………….

“Trump betrayed us,” said a senior Israeli military official bluntly, his voice stern with reproach. “And if we can’t trust him, then we’re going to have to do what is necessary on our own if our back is up against the wall with Iran.” Yet while appalled governments are now forced to rethink their tactics in future dealings with a wayward president, there is also the dismaying possibility that a more tangible, and more lethal, consequence has already occurred. “The Russians will undoubtedly try to figure out the source or the method of this information to make sure that it is not also collecting on their activities in Syria—and in trying to do that they could well disrupt the source,” said Michael Morell.

What, then, was the fate of Israel’s agent in Syria? Was the operative exfiltrated to safety? Has he gone to ground in enemy territory? Or was he hunted down and killed? One former Mossad officer with knowledge of the operation and its aftermath will not say. Except to add pointedly, “Whatever happened to him, it’s a hell of price to pay for a president’s mistake.”

 

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41 Responses to Tuesday Open Thread | The Traitor in the White House

  1. Liza says:
    November 28, 2017 at 6:01 pm

    Yeah, some of these legislators need to step up for Puerto Rico before it’s too late.

    https://twitter.com/SenKamalaHarris/status/935558760269008896

    Reply
  3. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 1:17 pm

    President Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is doing business with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law, a bombshell new report revealed Tuesday.
    A large leak of financial documents called the Paradise Papers revealed several weeks ago that Russian billionaire Kirill Shamanov, the son of a close friend of Putin, does business with Ross — but until Tuesday, the exact connection between Shamanov and Putin was unclear.

    Reply
  4. SouthernGirl2 says:
    November 28, 2017 at 11:59 am

    @rikyrah

    Have you seen this thread? Twitter went in on Elon James White. They clowned him.

    https://twitter.com/LondonNMommy/status/935365058569297927

    Reply
  6. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 11:09 am

    Uh huh
    Uh huh

    A Turkish-Iranian gold trader linked to both Mike Flynn and Rudy Giuliani has agreed to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors.
    Reza Zarrab was scheduled to stand trial earlier this month in New York, where the U.S. attorney had filed charges in an international corruption case, but his lawyer confirmed an agreement to exchange his testimony, reported Bloomberg Politics.
    Lawyers said the gold trader will testify against a Turkish banker accused of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions.

    Reply
  11. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 10:12 am

    About the insults to the Native Americans yesterday, this just came to me:

    The insults were so overwhelming.
    He literally has no phucking home training.
    That damn picture of Andrew Jackson – I THOUGHT – was in the phucking Oval Office. So, someone HAD TO PHUCKING MOVE IT to the room where the ceremony was being held.
    It was THAT deliberate.

    Reply
  12. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 10:01 am

    Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to marry in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle – and are planning ceremony themselves
    By Hannah Furness, royal correspondent Olivia Rudgard, religious affairs correspondent
    28 NOVEMBER 2017 • 3:44PM

    Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are to marry in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle in May, it has been announced, as is it was revealed they are planning the wedding themselves.

    Ms Markle, a protestant who went to a Catholic high school, will be both baptised and confirmed ready for the religious ceremony. She also intends to become a British citizen.

    The Royal family will pay for the wedding – including the church service, the music, the flowers and the reception, Kensington Palace said. The couple want a “fun” wedding to make the public feel involved in a ceremony that is likely to be televised.

    Take a Tour of St. George’s Chapel:
    https://www.stgeorges-windsor.org/about-st-georges/experience-st-georges/360-virtual-tours/

    Reply
  13. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 9:41 am

    Prince Harry has already made himself the most popular man with 60% of the American population.
    https://www.nova-magazine.net/prince-harry-trump-not-welcome-wedding-meghan-markle/

    Reply
  14. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 9:33 am

    WHEN did Country Last shut up?
    I wanna know WHEN?

    Al Gore shut up…
    But, Country Last?

    WHEN did he shut up?

    McCain Tells Clinton To “Shut Up” Like He Did
    Newsweek
    Graham Lanktree

    Senator John McCain says Hillary Clinton should not have published her book so soon after losing the 2016 election because it makes her look like she’s still campaigning and has nothing else to do.

    “What’s the f—–g point? Keep the fight up? History will judge that campaign, and it’s always a period of time before they do,” McCain told Esquire magazine in a long interview Monday. “You’ve got to move on. This is Hillary’s problem right now: She doesn’t have anything to do.”

    McCain, 81, spoke with the magazine about his recent cancer diagnosis and the mutual animosity between him and President Donald Trump. But he had sharp criticism for Clinton as well, arguing that the defeated Democratic candidate should have taken a page from his 2008 presidential run as a Republican against Barack Obama.

    “One of the almost irresistible impulses you have when you lose is to somehow justify why you lost and how you were mistreated: ‘I did the right thing! I did!’” He said. “The hardest thing to do is to just shut up.”

    Reply
  16. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 9:27 am

    Children’s health program imperiled by Republican tactics
    11/28/17 08:00 AM
    By Steve Benen

    The Republican-led Congress was supposed to extend the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) by Oct. 1. As regular readers know, that was the day current funding for the program, which has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support, expired. The deadline passed, however, because GOP lawmakers were focused on trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

    Health care advocates initially hoped lawmakers would act soon after, and the missed deadline would be inconsequential. That was 59 days ago, and as of now, there is no solution and Republicans don’t appear to be working on one.
    ………………………..

    There’s long been a buffer built into the system, which is why no one panicked on Oct. 1. Everyone involved in the debate understood that states would move some money around until lawmakers got their act together. In fact, this wasn’t the first time federal policymakers missed a CHIP deadline.

    The point now, however, is that the GOP Congress’ indifference has gone on so long that buffer is starting to disappear. Colorado is warning affected families now, and the Washington Post reported last week that “nearly a dozen” states are preparing to do the same thing.

    The article added that five states may exhaust existing CHIP funding “in late December if lawmakers do not act.”

    Reply
  17. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 9:25 am

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 11/27/17
    Schiff: Flynn investigation at critical point
    Rep. Adam Schiff, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, talks with Rachel Maddow about what is means that Mike Flynn’s lawyers are no longer working with Donald Trump’s lawyers.

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 11/27/17
    Schiff to probe Sessions on Trump overstepping on Uranium One
    Rep. Adam Schiff, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, talks with Rachel Maddow about what he hopes to learn from Jeff Sessions when he testifies before the committee this week.

    Reply
  18. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 9:23 am

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 11/27/17
    Warren on Trump code talker ceremony disgrace: You had one job
    Senator Elizabeth Warren points out to Rachel Maddow that Donald Trump had the sole task of honoring heroic World War II veteran code talkers and instead used the occasion to attack Warren with a Native American slur and disgrace himself.

    Reply
  19. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 9:22 am

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 11/27/17
    Woolsey, Flynn witness, spotted talking with Trump at Mar-a-Lago
    Rachel Maddow looks at how Mike Flynn’s views on the Turkish coup changed completely once he was on Turkey’s payroll, and wonders whether investigators will be interested to know what former CIA director James Woolsey and Donald Trump were talking about at Mar-a-Lago over Thanksgiving break.

    Reply
  20. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 9:21 am

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 11/27/17
    Warren: This is Donald Trump bringing his chaos to the CFPB
    Senator Elizabeth Warren talks with Rachel Maddow about Donald Trump’s effort to bigfoot the leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with his own appointee instead of following the order of succession established by the law.

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 11/27/17
    Cordray: CFPB leadership ‘shouldn’t be decided by tweets’
    Richard Cordray, former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, talks with Rachel Maddow about Donald Trump’s effort to force a new director on the Bureau outside of the order of succession specified by the law.

    Reply
  21. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 9:06 am

    Kevonstage’s take on Prince Harry 😄😄😄

    https://youtu.be/e8JGJJa7o8A

    Reply
  22. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 9:06 am

    From WaPo:

    Why a historically conservative county in Virginia is making national Republicans nervous

    ……………………………………………….

    For the first time since 1961, Chesterfield County backed a Democrat for governor — and the driving forces in this Richmond suburb included women who defiantly trumpeted a political label their party has ducked for decades…

    Until Gov.-elect Ralph Northam (D) won Chesterfield County three weeks ago, the stretch of suburban and rural communities southwest of Richmond had been considered reliably Republican.

    Yet voters infuriated by Trump, many of them women and Hispanics who have migrated to the county in recent years, are redefining Chesterfield and alarming Virginia Republicans who have depended on the area to make up for the support the party lacks in urban areas.

    ………………………………….

    On the night Trump won the presidency, Kim Drew Wright became so infuriated that she took a Sharpie and, on poster board, compared the Republican mogul to a slang word for the male sex organ, and added: “And so are you if you voted for him.”

    She then duct-taped it over the “Hillary for President” sign in her front yard, and was pleased when a few neighbors emailed to thank her for sharing their sentiments (she took it down the next day, afraid that kids on school buses would see her invective). A week later, Wright posted on the Clinton-inspired website “Pantsuit Nation” an open invitation to women to meet at a local tavern to share their angst over Trump.

    Ninety people showed up.

    …………………………

    LWCC now has 3,000 followers on Facebook, with 13 neighborhood chapters that knocked on 50,000 doors prior to the election

    Reply
  23. Liza says:
    November 28, 2017 at 9:03 am

    This right here, the simple truth.

    https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/935246659373674496

    Reply
  25. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 8:39 am

    According to CBO, the Senate GOP tax bill is even worse than we thought.

    The Senate Republican tax plan gives substantial tax cuts and benefits to Americans earning more than $100,000 a year, while the nation’s poorest would be worse off, according to a report released Sunday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

    By 2019, Americans earning less than $30,000 a year would be worse off under the Senate bill, CBO found. By 2021, Americans earning $40,000 or less would be net losers, and by 2027, most people earning less than $75,000 a year would be worse off. On the flip side, millionaires and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 would be big beneficiaries, according to the CBO’s calculations.

    Reply
  26. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 8:38 am

    This morning in @CFPB

    —7:56 am Mulvaney spokesman tweets photo of him “hard at work”

    —7:57am, Leandra English sends staff a welcome back email signed “acting director”

    —Around 10am, Mulvaney sends staff a memo saying disregard instructions from English.

    —Lawsuit in progress.

    — Tom Namako (@TomNamako) November 27, 2017

    Reply
  27. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 8:33 am

    The long, slow death of white America
    by Liberal Librarian

    ……………………….

    In our own time, the fear which so much of white America feels is encapsulated in this video.

    Raw video: Man wearing Roy Moore sticker physically attacked a cameraman attempting to film Moore’s arrival outside campaign rally a few minutes ago here in Henagar, Alabama. Another man w/ Moore sticker verbally assaulted a second cameraman. pic.twitter.com/faJVV8YpE0

    — Connor Sheets (@ConnorASheets) November 28, 2017

    People calling themselves “Christian” support a man accused of vile acts. Why? Because he speaks to their fear, their smallness. Their smallness, but also their sense of self-importance, and that he will defend that self-importance.

    It’s what we see with Trump. Trumpism existed before Trump. Trump merely gave it voice, allowed it to be spoken aloud. Eight years of an intelligent, erudite, exceptional black man as President almost destroyed the myths of white supremacy on which so many white Americans have suckled since the Civil Rights movement. And people hold on to their myths. Their myths give them meaning. And when someone comes along to reify those myths, they will latch onto him, even if he as a person is a scurrilous scoundrel who flouts all of their beliefs.

    White America is the Centauri, living on past glories, on memories which have no utility in a modern world.

    “White America” has to die for America to fulfill its potential. The idea of a country founded as a refuge for the “white race” has to meet its deserved end. It’s doing so, as I indicate in the title to this piece. It’s a long, slow death. But it’s a death with the promise of rebirth. A rebirth into something new, something never seen before, in which the very Western constructs of race are upended, in which people of color advancing doesn’t mean white Americans regressing. A country which finally lives up to its founding creed: All people are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.

    It really is our only hope. White America has to pass for America to live.

    Reply
  28. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 8:29 am

    Changes to Senate GOP tax plan may benefit Trump
    BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY – 11/28/17 09:11 AM EST

    President Trump may benefit from changes to the Senate GOP’s tax plan, The Washington Post reports.

    A change being weighed by Republicans includes expanding a tax credit that lets certain entities decrease their taxable income. The change regards pass-through entities.

    Pass-throughs are companies such as sole proprietorships and partnerships that are taxed through the individual code. Most U.S. businesses, including many small businesses, are pass-through entities.

    Trump has investment stakes in about 500 entities that may be impacted by these potential changes, according to The Post.
    “You hold interests as the sole or principal owner in approximately 500 separate entities,” Morgan Lewis attorneys Sheri Dillon and William Nelson wrote in a letter released last year by the Trump campaign.

    Reply
  29. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 8:27 am

    Gutting net neutrality is a death knell for the resistance

    SARAH KENDZIOR
    SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

    From the moment he launched his campaign in June, 2015, Donald Trump’s every tweet, threat and conspiracy theory has been logged and scrutinized, championed by his propagandists and critiqued by his protesters, and transformed into memes and viral tracts.

    We Americans may be a captive audience to our reality-TV star who thinks he’s an authoritarian, but we are a chatty audience, and our loquaciousness has been our salvation. For nearly a year, we have exercised First Amendment rights like we were working a defibrillator on democracy’s damaged heart. We debunked lies, catalogued crimes, demanded justice and created a vast, informal movement dedicated to the pursuit of truth over alternative facts.

    But that may be about to end. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission announced it was planning a sweeping rollback of net neutrality, allowing corporations to decide what content is available online while pricing most citizens out of equal access to information.

    For nearly a year, America has stood at the crossroads of a damaged democracy and a burgeoning autocracy. If net neutrality is destroyed, we will cross firmly into the latter, and our return is unlikely.

    The threat to net neutrality highlights the reliance on social media and an independent press for political organizing in the digital age. Should net neutrality be eliminated, those avenues will likely become curtailed for much of the public or driven out of business due to loss of revenue. Without the means to freely communicate online, citizens will be far less able to challenge the administration. It doesn’t matter what cause someone prioritizes: The elimination of net neutrality will impede the ability to understand the cause, discuss it and organize around it.

    Reply
  30. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 8:21 am

    The problem with America is that Trump Supporters view Putin as an ally to them and to America because he helped put Trump in office. To them, Putin is a hero. To them, collusion isn’t a crime. To them, President Trump is their leader, their king, their dictator!

    It’s a CULT!

    — Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) November 28, 2017

    Reply
  31. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 8:18 am

    FreedomWatch sues to remove Mueller
    BY JONATHAN EASLEY – 11/27/17 04:36 PM EST

    A conservative group filed suit on Monday seeking to remove special counsel Robert Mueller from the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian meddling.

    Conservative lawyer Larry Klayman, the founder of the watchdog group FreedomWatch, filed a complaint in U.S. district court that seeks to force the Justice Department to investigate leaks from the special counsel, as well as “the obvious conflicts of interest among staff.”

    The complaint against Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI director Christopher Wray states that “it is a criminal offense to leak grand jury information” and seeks Mueller’s removal.

    Reply
  34. rikyrah says:
    November 28, 2017 at 5:23 am

    Good Morning, Everyone 😄😄😄

    Reply

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