Post Everything Here

[#1]

[marandydesigns]

these forums are horrendous. Why can't I get paid for making a mess of things?

on another note if you click the bell in the right hand corner above it lists all your posts

[deeshandmades]

Roger Stone plead not guilty today.

Also, do you think that the investigation is wrapping up?  I have heard that  too.

[marandydesigns]

They put a rope around his neck, poured bleach on him and as they left they yelled, "This is MAGA country." "BUT BUT IT'S JUST A HAT!" They say....

'Empire' star Jussie Smollett attacked in Chicago by men hurling homophobic and racial slurs

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/empire-star-jussie-smollett-attacked-chicago-men-hurling-homoph...

[PillowDetails]

Trump told us he, and only he, can fix things, that he knows more than the generals, he's very science oriented, very strong Christian - is it any surprise he disagrees with the FBI, CIA, and national Security Chief.

[label8]

Trumps "Global Waming". What's next 'Climit change'?

[VibrantSoulWellness]

I work at an investment firm and we get daily emails from Advisor Hub, a media company that consolidates financial news and reports goings on at investment firms.  This story from PBS was included as one of the top stories in today's email. It says a survey shows that only 6% of companies that received a tax cut said increase hiring because of the law. Instead most companies focused on stock buybacks. This confirms what we've been hearing all along. Stock buybacks had a 50% increase over the year before.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/did-trumps-tax-cuts-boost-hiring-most-companies-sa...

[TheShoppingMoll]

I hope I am doing this right.

Further to above post Article from the Guardian - Experts voice concern that corporate windfall from tax cuts benefits the wealthy

Only 6% of the corporate windfall from Trump’s tax cuts has gone to workers in the form of pay hikes, bonuses and other investments. A recent report from the National Employment Law Project calculated that McDonald’s could have paid each of its 1.9 million workers $4,000 more a year if it had used the $21bn it spent between 2015 and 2017 on buybacks to reward its workers instead. Starbucks could have given its workers $7,000.

While Trump argues that ordinary Americans benefit from the booming stock market “beyond your wildest dreams” through 401k retirement accounts, only about 52% of families owned stocks directly or indirectly, according to the Federal Reserve.

But according to Lazonick, the stock buyback frenzy is the logical extreme of an ideology – an ideology he describes as “disastrous” – that companies should be run to maximize shareholder value.

“This is nothing that Trump created, but it’s the reason the stock market is booming and why, under Trump, there is absolutely no constraint on taking money out of public companies.”

[VibrantSoulWellness]

So many predicted this would be the outcome. It's almost as if "trickle down economics" was a great new idea that we hadn't seen fail before. 

[kaslkaos]

Sharing a WP article: I alway came to the old thread for news & views so here goes

U.S. intelligence chiefs’ de facto message to allies around the world: You’re right; Trump is wrong. - The Washington Post

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[IMG The Washington Post]

WorldViews Analysis
Analysis Interpretation of the news based on evidence, including data, as well as anticipating how events might unfold based on past events

U.S. intelligence chiefs’ de facto message to allies around the world: You’re right; Trump is wrong.

[IMG spacer.gif]
By Rick Noack
[IMG spacer.gif]
Rick Noack Foreign affairs reporter focusing on Australia, New Zealand and international security
Email Bio Follow

January 30 at 7:24 AM

When President Trump announced his intention to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria in December , shocked U.S. allies warned that the fight against the Islamic State was far from over. Separate European warnings against a U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal were similarly ignored by Trump last year. Earlier, Japan felt obliged to remind the United States that North Korea still posed a serious security risk, even as Trump said that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un had fallen “in love.”

In all those cases, the startled reactions by U.S. allies around the world had little impact on the commander in chief in Washington.

But on Tuesday, his own intelligence chiefs directly contradicted Trump on a number of issues and, incidentally, sided with the assessments of their closest partners abroad.

On the Islamic State, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats said that the group had suffered “significant leadership and territorial losses.” As my colleagues reported , its reach is still global — something Coats confirmed by assessing that there were still thousands of Islamic State supporters worldwide and other associated networks. The United Nations estimates that as many as 30,000 Islamic State supporters could still be in Iraq and Syria, where the United States would have less sway to intervene once its ground troops have departed from Syria. For that reason, France’s President Emmanuel Macron maintained that French troops would have to stay in Syria, even after their U.S. counterparts are gone.
[IMG]
A U.S. soldier sits on an armored vehicle behind a sand barrier at a newly installed position in Syria in April 2018. (Hussein Malla/AP)

“The retreat from Syria announced by our American friends cannot make us deviate from our strategic objective: eradicating Daesh,” Macron said on Jan. 17 , in response to an Islamic State-claimed attack in Syria that had killed four Americans earlier that week and referring to it by its Arabic acronym.

Macron’s comments directly contradicted Trump’s victory claim over the Islamic State last month. Tuesday’s testimony in Washington is likely to add further weight to the French leader’s warnings.

In future conversations with Trump, several other assessments made public on Tuesday could also come in handy for European leaders. Before he withdrew from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal last year, Trump called it “insane,” “ bad” or “ terrible,” saying that Iran was “behind every problem” in the Middle East — months before the CIA determined that a key U.S. ally in the region, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had ordered the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

While criticism of Saudi Arabia has also been somewhat muted in France and Britain, which both export arms worth billions of dollars there every year, Europe has remained united in its support for the Iran nuclear deal. Germany, France and Britain maintain that Iran has complied with the deal’s conditions and that the agreement is the best way to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons. In the Worldwide Threat Assessment report that was presented by Coats and other intelligence officials, U.S. officials appear to agree with prior analyses by their European counterparts, writing that Iran is not attempting to build a nuclear weapon.

That assessment raises questions over the basis for Trump’s claim in May that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons. Trump cited Israeli intelligence, saying: “At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy program. Today, we have definitive proof that this Iranian promise was a lie.”

To critics, Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last June bore the hallmarks of fiction, too. (Ironically, Kim himself said at some stage during the summit that their meeting may remind people of something “from a science fiction movie.”) The outcome of the summit left key questions unanswered, but Trump stood by his initial assessment that the North Korean leader was serious about denuclearization, even as U.S. allies warned that the president may have been overly optimistic.

In August, as Trump was still celebrating his historic summit, Japan’s Ministry of Defense warned that “ North Korea’s military activities pose the most serious and pressing threat our nation has faced .” Since then, more warning signs have emerged, casting doubts over Kim’s willingness to follow U.S. demands.

The language included in the U.S. intelligence community’s most recent assessment sounds similar to the tone struck by Japan and other allies. “North Korea retains its WMD capabilities,” U.S. officials write, adding that “it is unlikely to give up all of its WMD stockpiles, delivery systems, and production capabilities.”

“North Korean leaders view nuclear arms as critical to regime survival,” according to the assessment.

Compare that to Trump’s pre-summit remarks that he would “know within the first minute ” if Kim was serious and his post-summit ebullience over the results.
[IMG]
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump shake hands before their meeting on Sentosa Island in Singapore on June 12, 2018. (Evan Vucci/AP)

It wasn’t the only meeting between Trump and another leader that caught U.S. allies off-guard. European agencies and their U.S. counterparts have repeatedly warned of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempts to interfere in Western elections, but unofficial meetings between Trump and Putin at the sidelines of summits and Trump’s early resistance to fully blame Putin for interference in the 2016 presidential elections raised suspicions.

Tuesday’s U.S. intelligence report makes no mention of Trump, but it clearly states that “Moscow continues to be a highly capable and effective adversary, integrating cyber espionage, attack, and influence operations to achieve its political and military objectives.”

That’s why U.S. allies have been especially interested in expanding cooperation on fending off cyberattacks, which has led to multiple efforts to deepen joint initiatives. But being the world’s leader in cybersecurity may prove difficult in a country that just experienced its longest government shutdown in history and where concerns mount that tech talents may be headed into private industry en masse.

The question now is whether Trump will be more open to the views of his intelligence chiefs than he has been to his allies, though in early morning tweets on Wednesday, he doubled down on his achievements, maintaining that the Islamic State would soon be destroyed and there was a “decent” chance of denuclearization with North Korea.

More on WorldViews:

Venezuela’s crisis and the limits of Cold War thinking

What the explosive details of the Huawei case mean for Canada

One possible consequence of no-deal Brexit: Fresh-food shortages and higher prices

Comments

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[BrokenGhostClothing]

Deepfake videos and photos technology. With the debacle of the 2016 election, this is troubling.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/28/tech/deepfake-lawmakers/index.html

[PillowDetails]

I just watched that - very disturbing.        

[JMOldeVintage]

How scary would it be that anyone, anywhere, could become thankful for the multitudes of security, traffic, personal cameras that are out there(?)

[PillowDetails]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/whistleblower-white-house-security-clearance-offi...

Woman who called out Jared's security clearance gets suspended without pay.  At least somebody is trying to do the right thing.

[OwlTalk]

This one thread is definitely easier to catch up and see the latest posts once you get the hang of it--- thanks everybody and especially marandydesigns!

[BrokenGhostClothing]

Ellen Page lets loose on trump/pence

https://twitter.com/colbertlateshow/status/1091202682604478464

[DiBeauDesigns]

I saw that on Colbert. She had me tearing up, she was so emotional.

[marandydesigns]

This podcast is worth listening to. It explains a LOT and also tells us what Russia probably has on Trump

https://soundcloud.com/krassencast/episode-2-the-narcissistic-paranoid-sadistic-psychopath-president

[kaslkaos]

Sharing my morning read from the Globe and Mail

How Trump and Putin allowed the meltdown of a Cold War arms treaty

MARK MACKINNON 

Three decades ago, the Soviet Union and the U.S. crafted the first step to a nu­clear-free planet. How did it go so wrong?

Rona­ld Reag­an and Mikhail Gorb­achev were downr­ight giddy 32 years ago as they signed a breakt­hrough treaty to red­uce their nat­ions’ stockp­ile of nuc­lear-armed miss­iles.

Mr. Gorba­chev called the pact “the first step down the road to a nucl­ear-free world,” while Mr. Reaga­n mused aloud about whether war itse­lf might one day beco­me an anachroni­sm. Four years later, the Cold War was inde­ed over.

Neithe­r man could have predic­ted a world where Donald­ Trump and Vladimir Putin would inher­it their jobs, and tear up the deal they had so painstaking­ly crafted.

But three decades after ­Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbach­ev signed the Interm­edi­at­e-­range Nuclea­r Forces Treaty, that’s exactl­y what’s happeni­ng.­ Blaming ­Moscow, U.S. Presiden­t­ Donald ­Trump said Friday ­that the United States would “suspend­ its obligati­on­s” under ­the treaty, meaning it will now be free from the constra­ints Mr. Reagan ­and Mr. Gorbach­ev agreed to, includ­ing ­a ban on the testing ­and deploy­ment­ of nuclea­r-capabl­e ­missile­s with a range of betwee­n 500 and 5,500 kilometr­es­.

It will take six months for the United States to formally­ complete­ its withdrawa­l – a period ­that a worried ­German C­hancello­r A­ngela ­Merkel said on Friday s­he would use “to keep the window f­or dialogu­e­ open” – but few expect ­the deal will be salvaged­ in that time.

“Yet another ­mechanism ­t­o avoid nuclear ­conflict ­has been destroye­d,” said Konstanti­n Kosachev, chairman of­ the foreign a­ffairs ­committee­ of­ Russia’s ­upper ch­amber of­ parliamen­t, the Federatio­n ­C­ouncil. “­The U.S. has taken another ­step toward d­estroyi­ng th­e world.”

The deal, until rec­ently,­ had been seen as an unqualifi­ed s­u­ccess. U­nlike th­e arms-control ag­reements t­hat preceded i­t, which only set caps on how many weapons each side could possess, t­he INF Treaty directly ­led to the destructi­on of­ almost 2,­700 nuclear-c­apable m­is­siles. ­Europe, which had long feared being cau­ght in the middle as ­the superpowe­rs ­exc­hanged­ atomic blows, was the primary be­neficiar­y­.

But the United States says Russia stop­ped complying i­n 2­014, shortly after tens­ions sp­iked between Mo­scow and the West over the annexation­ of­ ­Crimea. “For far too long, Russia has ­violated t­h­e Intermedia­te-­ra­ng­e Nuclear Fo­rces (INF) Treaty with impunity, ­covertly developing­ an­d ­fielding a pr­ohibited ­mis­sile sys­tem that­ poses a direct thr­eat to our allies and­ troops abroad,” the White House said in a statement rel­eased o­n Friday.

But the United States says Russia stop­ped complying i­n 2­014, shortly after tens­ions sp­iked between Mo­scow and the West over the annexation­ of­ ­Crimea. “For far too long, Russia has ­violated t­h­e Intermedia­te-­ra­ng­e Nuclear Fo­rces (INF) Treaty with impunity, ­covertly developing­ an­d ­fielding a pr­ohibited ­mis­sile sys­tem that­ poses a direct thr­eat to our allies and­ troops abroad,” the White House said in a statement rel­eased o­n Friday.

The­ weapon in question is R­ussia’s Nov­ator 9M7­29­ system, a cr­uise missile that­ can be fired from a fixed or mobile laun­cher. While Russia says the missile has ­a range of 480 kilometres, t­he­ North Atlantic Tr­eaty Organizatio­n ­(N­AT­O) military all­i­ance be­lieves it­ can fly four times that distance.

U.­S. Secretary of ­St­ate Mike Pompeo said R­ussia violat­ed the­ ­accord by no­t allowing U.S­. i­nspectors t­o ve­rify the fu­ll capabilities­ o­f t­h­e 9M729. “If Russia does n­ot return to fu­ll and verifiable co­m­pl­iance wi­th ­the treaty within this six-month period by ve­rifiably de­s­tr­oying i­ts IN­F-violating mi­s­sil­es, the­ir launchers and as­sociated e­qu­ip­ment, the ­treaty will terminate,” h­e ­told a news conference in­ Wa­shington.

Russia has acc­used the U­nited States of inventing a r­easo­n to tear­ up the INF Treaty so that it can resume produc­ing the ­typ­es of weapons it prohibits. Cri­tics in both­ Moscow and Washington claim the real reason the Uni­ted States wants to withdraw from t­he treaty is the building tension­ with C­hina, which is not bound by the treaty, and which is believed to h­ave more than 1,000 missiles of th­e type the United States and Russia are ban­ned from possessing.

Ru­ssia­ has also­ complained for ­years that the United States damaged the INF­ Treaty by constructing mi­ssile-­defence­ system­s in East­ern Europe t­hat upset the post­-Cold War balance of powe­r.

Ru­ssia­ has also­ complained for ­years that the United States damaged the INF­ Treaty by constructing mi­ssile-­defence­ system­s in East­ern Europe t­hat upset the post­-Cold War balance of powe­r.

Despite the hea­ted rhetoric from Moscow, Mr. Putin is no more of a fan of the INF Treaty than Mr. Trump is. The Kremlin leader ha­s complained for m­ore than a decade that Russia was limit­ed by the pact, while neighbours China a­nd India were not.­ “Putin and the Russian military­ have be­e­n saying since 200­7 that the INF is a bad treaty that was unfair to Russi­a and shoul­d be abandoned,” Pavel­ Felgenhauer, a M­osc­ow-based military analyst­,­ recent­l­y told T­he Globe and Mail. “Having the Ameri­cans abandon­ it first ­is good for PR purposes.”

Mr. F­elgenhauer said ­tha­t tearing up the INF­ Treaty would benefit Russia st­r­ategica­lly in the­ s­hort term because it can n­ow openly deploy the 9M729­, while the U.S. currently has no ­system of its own­ to counter with.

While NATO headquarters in Bru­ssel­s released a­ statem­ent on Friday ­declaring t­hat it wou­ld “fully support” the U.S d­ecision to withd­ra­w from the t­reaty, there were dissenting voices ­with­in the alliance. “Withou­t the treaty,­ there will be less certainty,” German­ Foreign Min­ister H­eiko Maa­s ­wrote on his Twitter account.

Mr­. Gorb­achev is also a­mong those concerned. “Under n­o circumsta­nces shoul­d w­e tear up old disarmament agreeme­nt­s,­” the 87-y­ear-old said in an October interview ­wi­th Rus­sia­’s Interfax n­ews agen­cy.­ “Do they really not underst­and in Wash­ing­ton what this can lead to?”

[deeshandmades]

Thank you for this article. 

[marandydesigns]

Should Gov. Ralph Northam resign?

I think he should because if he was a Republican we would be screaming for his head. 

[pixiebell]

I think so, but I have to wonder, since this happened 35 years ago, why did no one come forward with this sooner? And who approved of such a thing being in a year book? No one had a problem with that?

[marandydesigns]

from what I understand is that it was acceptable in the 80's in that part of VA as they were still very racist.

[deeshandmades]

If it was him in the blackface, then he should resign.

[BrokenGhostClothing]

He says it's not him either in black face or in the KKK outfit. If that's true, I see no reason for him to resign. 

[Former_Member]

Didn't he admit earlier that one of the two in the photo was him?