Former British chief spy suggests Trump is compromised by ‘Russian money’ keeping his business afloat
Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of the British spy agency MI6, suggested recently that President Donald Trump may still be haunted by loans linked to Russia that were made after U.S. creditors refused to lend to him.

In what The Sun called a “bombshell accusation”, Dearlove told Prospect magazine that Trump may be under the thumb of Russians due to loans made to keep his business afloat following the 2008 financial collapse.
“What lingers for Trump may be what deals — on what terms — he did after the financial crisis of 2008 to borrow Russian money when others in the west apparently would not lend to him,” Dearlove, who headed MI6 from 1999 through 2004, said.

The former spy also weighed in on recent White House claims that President Barack Obama used the British eavesdropping agency GCHQ to spy on Trump’s campaign, which he called “deeply embarrassing.”
“For Trump and the administration, that is,” Dearlove added. “The only possible explanation is that Trump started tweeting without understanding how the NSA-GCHQ relationship actually works.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/former-b...usiness-afloat/

Zitat von mbockstette im Beitrag #675

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Zitat von Maga-neu im Beitrag #673

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Zitat von mbockstette im Beitrag #672

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Zitat von Maga-neu im Beitrag #670

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Zitat von mbockstette im Beitrag #669

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Zitat von Maga-neu im Beitrag #667

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Zitat von Nante im Beitrag #664

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Merkel hat sich nach oben intrigiert.
Wagenknecht setze auf offensive Offenheit.
KGE ist den Funktionärsweg gegangen.

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Zwei von ihnen verabscheue ich, eine schätze ich - du darfst raten wen. :-)

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Dazu braucht man nicht raten, denn man riecht den roten Braten.

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Nö, darum geht es nicht. Es geht um eine schwarze Heuchlerin, eine grüne Superheuchlerin - und eine Frau, deren Ansichten ich nicht unbedingt teile, die aber mit offenem Visier kämpft.

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Es handelt sich um Sahra Wagenknecht, das galt es zu erraten - nicht mehr und nicht weniger. Und was Dich an der Frau so fasziniert, das hat weniger mit Heuchelei, Superheuchelei und Visieren zu tun, sondern mehr mit Libido. Woher ich das weiß? Mehr geht es da nicht anders.

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Das ist zu einfach: Sahra sieht natürlich viel besser aus als die beiden anderen, es sind aber auch ihre Bildung, ihr klares und gutes Deutsch (im Gegensatz zur verschwurbelten Kanzlerin und zu dem grünen Phrasendresch von KGE) und ihre m. E. höhere Intelligenz (dies insbesondere im Vergleich zur Dünnbrettbohrerin KGE). Also ein Bündel von Faktoren.

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Frau Merkel macht Geschichte und die anderen beiden Damen sorgen für Geshicht´chen. Frau Merkel, - mag Sie Dir noch so ein protestantisch-nuschelnder Dorn im Auge sein, - ist die bedeutendste, einflussreichste und mächtigste Frau der Welt, nur, unfehlbar ist sie deshalb nicht, Unfehlbarkeit ist eine Kategorie der Katholischen Kirche, aber nicht des politischen Miteinanders. Genau so fehl am Platze sind im Bezug auf Frau Merkel die Begriffe Heuchelei und Abscheu. Man gewinnt nicht an moralischer Größe, in dem man leichtfertig andere herabsetzt. Das hast Du schon bei Deinen Äußerungen über Obama bis zum Überdruss getan.

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Google Searches For ‘World War 3’ And ‘Trump War’ Hit All Time High
Online searches for “going to war” are also spiking.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/goog...kushpmg00000009

Is Trump Actually in Charge? Or Is It Worse Than We Feared?
I haven't felt this shaky about the world in half a century.

I have resisted the temptation to speculate on the mental state of our president* because I've always been leery of long-distance psychiatric diagnoses, and because I am not Charles Krauthammer, who regularly has used his professional credentials to define any politics to the left of a drillbit as some sort of cognitive deficiency. However, the events of the last week have required me to rethink this policy.

For example, there's his interview with Maria Bartiomo of the Fox Business Channel. (This is the one that will go down in history as The Wonderful Chocolate Cake Interview, and that's scary enough.) The FBC is the safest possible media venue for this president*. The FBC makes the Fox News Channel look like Nick, Jr. Bartiromo certainly wasn't out to ambush the president*. He managed to ambush himself and to do so in such a way as to appear to be groping his way toward plain English in a truly unnerving way.

Look just at the language.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/pol...rump-in-charge/

'I’m speechless': Anderson Cooper dumbfounded by Trump just now realizing diplomacy is 'not so easy'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvMhN6wgblg

Met Police face 'monster' security operation as Donald Trump insists on golden carriage procession during visit
Donald Trump has demanded he is transported in the Queen’s gold carriage on his state visit to the UK – leaving security chiefs with a ‘monster’ operation to plan.

The White House has reportedly made it clear that the President expects the traditional state welcome of a carriage procession down the Mall with Her Majesty.
But security officials in London have warned that it would prove difficult to secure the area and will require an operation far greater than any other recent state visit.

According to a report in The Times, President Trump is adamant that he want the procession to be a part of his State visit – due to take place in October – despite his predecessor opting for a less traditional vehicle.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/me...g-a3515746.html

Impeachable Incompetence As Jared Kushner Found Trump’s China Adviser By Surfing Amazon
The Trump White House is so incompetent that they found a Trump adviser not by interviewing experts, but by having Jared Kushner search Amazon.

At one point during the campaign, when Trump wanted to speak more substantively about China, he gave Kushner a summary of his views and then asked him to do some research. Kushner simply went on Amazon, where he was struck by the title of one book, Death by China, co-authored by Peter Navarro. He cold-called Navarro, a well-known trade-deficit hawk, who agreed to join the team as an economic adviser. (When he joined, Navarro was in fact the campaign’s only economic adviser.) Kushner operated in much the same way when it came to crafting Trump’s tax plan—calling up someone for help out of the blue. Given the initial absence of pros who could do the job properly, he also tried his hand at writing speeches. Responding to criticism from the boss (“Jared, this is terrible!”), Kushner said, according to a person familiar with the episode, “I’m not a fucking speechwriter. I am a real-estate guy.”
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/04/15/i...ing-amazon.html

Donald Trump Wants to ‘Ride Like Vladimir’ in Queen Elizabeth’s Golden Carriage
Trump wants to be like his hero, Vladimir Putin, who rode in the royal carriage when he visited in 2003, or President Xi, who rode it in 2015
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/04/15/d...n-carriage.html

Trump Reportedly Congratulates Turkish President On Referendum That Vastly Expands His Power
The changes could keep Recep Tayyip Erdogan in office until 2029.

Other countries to offer their congratulations to Erdogan included Qatar, Azerbeijan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, Turkish state media said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trum...kushpmg00000009

'Like a slow death': families fear pesticide poisoning after Trump reverses ban
The administration’s rejection of the science on chlorpyrifos, widely used in California’s Central Valley, means its use will continue – and Latino residents are worried their children’s health issues will worsen along with it.

A white cloud of pesticides had drifted into Fidelia Morales’s back yard, coating her children’s swing set.
The 40-year-old mother of five gestured toward the citrus groves that surround her house in California’s Central Valley as she recounted when an air blast sprayer sent chemicals floating onto her property last year – landing on her family’s red and blue jungle gym.
“We know this is dangerous for the kids, but what are we supposed to do?” she said on a recent afternoon, speaking in Spanish through a translator. Morales said she fears that these kinds of drifts, as well as long-term exposure to a variety of chemicals in the air, have hurt her children, ages 9 to 20, who have struggled to focus in school and have suffered from bronchitis, asthma and other chronic illnesses.

Under Barack Obama, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed an agricultural ban on chlorpyrifos, one pesticide widely used in her region, based on the growing body of research documenting the risks for farm workers and communities, including links to brain damage in children.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017...al-valley-trump

Es lohnt sich, ihm mal zu zuhoeren:

https://www.facebook.com/curiositydotcom...30971483597329/

Trump Is Making the GOP Heinously Unpopular Again

The Republican Party has almost nothing to offer the average voter. Large majorities of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in most cases; taxes on the rich should not be cut; undocumented immigrants should be given a path to legalization; the environment should be prioritized over energy production; and the government should spend more money on Medicaid.

But most Americans also think their government is corrupt and untrustworthy — and don’t get them started about those clowns in Congress.

For as long as the GOP was in the opposition, this latter fact provided cover for the former one. Congressional Republicans could perform conservative purity for their base, while offering vague promises of “change” to the broader, dissatisfied public. And since Paul Ryan and company couldn’t actually pass their most heinously unpopular ideas into law, delivering for the tea-party crowd didn’t preclude appealing beyond it: In their fight against Obamacare, Republicans could equate Medicaid expansion with Stalinism to everyone on their email lists — while attacking the law for cutting Medicare and failing to provide truly universal coverage to the general public.

This strategy worked well. Obamacare became deeply unpopular. And Republicans leveraged their base’s energy; Democrats’ complacency; white America’s rage at hearing instructions repeated in Spanish; and the public’s general appetite for change into full control of the federal government.

But now, Americans’ dissatisfaction with their government is no longer a crutch for the GOP, but a handicap. And fulfilling the party’s obligations to its base — while stringing along swing voters with sweet nothings about a “better way” — is much more difficult. Republicans tried to find a way to do both during the health-care-reform fight, and ended up alienating the party’s hard-liners and moderates alike. Americans finally discerned that the Republican alternative to Obamacare was a tax cut for the rich — and, for the first time, Obama’s signature law became popular.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...ular-again.html

https://www.facebook.com/actdottv/videos/472338102956761/

-

Zitat von Willie im Beitrag #684

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Trump Reportedly Congratulates Turkish President On Referendum That Vastly Expands His Power
The changes could keep Recep Tayyip Erdogan in office until 2029.

Other countries to offer their congratulations to Erdogan included Qatar, Azerbeijan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, Turkish state media said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trum...kushpmg00000009

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The American President of 2017 -Baron von Trumphausen- in den Augen von Uebersetzern:

Japanese Interpreter: Translating Trump Word For Word Makes Us ‘Sound Stupid’
Some things get lost in Trumpslation.

Donald Trump says things that can defy description—and that’s proving a challenge for translators around the globe.

Tokyo-based translator Chikako Tsuruta told the Japan Times that translating the president into Japanese is a challenge, what with the lack of logic or concern for facts.
“[Trump] rarely speaks logically, and he only emphasizes one side of things as if it were the absolute truth,” Tsuruta said. “There are lots of moments when I suspected his assertions were factually dubious.”

Tsuruta, who has worked for CNN, ABC and CBS, says Trump’s hyperbolic rhetorical style puts her and translators like her at risk of a kind of guilt by association.
“He is so overconfident and yet so logically unconvincing that my interpreter friends and I often joke that if we translated his words as they are, we would end up making ourselves sound stupid,” Tsuruta said.

Another challenge interpreters face: rendering Trump’s disjointed speech patterns.
Try to make sense of this word salad dished up by the president when he was campaigning last summer:

Here is a transcript:
"...Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT. Good genes, very good genes, OK? Very smart: the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart. You know, if you’re a conservative Republican—if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican, they try—oh, do they do a number. That’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune. You know, I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged. But you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me: it would have been so easy—and it’s not as important as these lives are. Nuclear is so powerful. My uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power—and that was 35 years ago—he would explain the power of what’s going to happen, and he was right. Who would have thought? But when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners— now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three. And even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger: “Fellas,”—and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so you know it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so ... And they, they just killed, they just killed us...."

As EuroNews.com points out, it’s enough to make frustrated interpreters throw up their hands and just write, “the Iranians talked rings around us at the negotiations.”

French interpreter Bérengère Viennot said Trump is not easy to translate because he seems “not to know quite where he’s going.”
“He seems to hang onto a word in the question, or to a word that pops into his mind, repeating it over and over again,” she told the Los Angeles Review of Books. Even if you understand his point, you still have to express it another language.
“You realize, at that moment, that you have written something very unpleasant to read. Trump’s vocabulary is limited, his syntax is broken; he repeats the same phrases over and over, forcing the translator to follow suit,” she said. “The translator has to translate the content and the style. So that is what I do, and reading Trump in French, which is a very structured and logical language, reveals the poor quality of his language and, consequently, of his thought.”

For all the challenges interpreters face in translating Trump into other languages, the fact remains that understanding him in English is no cakewalk either.
Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke recently came up with a cheat sheet to help Americans understand what certain key phrases favored by the president really mean:

Bad: Generally means “good,” particularly when applied to something good that Trump considers bad.
Good: Not good at all. Trumpglish synonyms of this word include “the best,” “the greatest,” “spectacular,” “amazing” and “so amazing.”
Fake news: Real news that makes Trump look bad.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tran...4b060480e078f19

Ready for another Government shutdown?

Congress must pass legislation – and President Trump must sign it – by April 28 to appropriate money to fund government operations and agencies. That may be easier said than done.
The House of Representatives could simply pass a continuing resolution to fund the government at current levels, but that might not pass muster with the conservative House Freedom Caucus. In addition, any funding bill requires 60 votes to pass in the Senate. Inclusion of budget priorities favored by House Republicans and President Trump – increased defense spending, money to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, cuts in spending on social programs – that Democrats find unacceptable may cause the bill to die in the Senate. A failure to pass an appropriations bill will result in an official government shutdown on April 29, which is, coincidentally, President Trump’s 100th day in office.

https://www.oppenheimerfunds.com/advisor...5n47&mo=epid%21

Part One:
100 Days of Deconstruction
At CPAC, Steve Bannon declared that key members of Trump’s Cabinet were “selected for a reason.” In the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, that reason has become clear.

Donald Trump may be a racist, misogynist, sexual predator, liar and bully, but he is still president of the United States, and we underestimate him at the nation’s peril. Viewed in isolation, his policies seem idiosyncratic and incoherent. Viewed in context, they reveal a strategy to plunder the government of what is profitable to Trump’s family and minions and leave what remains smoldering in the ruins. This series — “100 Days of Deconsruction” — seeks to provide that context.

If Trump succeeds, little of what makes America great survives. But knowledge is power, so read these essays and keep fighting in this decisive battle for our country’s heart and soul. Their author, Steven J. Harper, produced our recent Trump/Russia Timeline. He is a former litigation partner at Kirkland & Ellis, adjunct professor at Northwestern University and the author of several books, including The Lawyer Bubble — A Profession in Crisis.
–Bill Moyers-

http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-100-da...deconstruction/

Zitat von Willie im Beitrag #691

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Ready for another Government shutdown?

A failure to pass an appropriations bill will result in an official government shutdown on April 29, which is, coincidentally, President Trump’s 100th day in office.

https://www.oppenheimerfunds.com/advisor...5n47&mo=epid%21

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Trumps Außenpolitik
Auf Konfusionskurs
Er provoziert, befiehlt, verwirrt: In der Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik zeigt sich Donald Trump unberechenbar. Welche Ziele verfolgt der US-Präsident in Krisenregionen - und hat er überhaupt eine Strategie?

Der mächtigste Mann der Welt hat keinen Plan, welche Rolle die USA im Ausland spielen sollen. Dieser Eindruck drängt sich auf, wenn man eine außenpolitische Bilanz der ersten Wochen Donald Trumps im Weißen Haus zieht. Statt Ordnung und Klarheit, wie Trump sie im Wahlkampf versprochen hatte, herrscht Verwirrung und Chaos.

Seit Trump ist die Lage noch verworrener. In den Bürgerkrieg von Syrien griff er als erster US-Präsident mit Militärschlägen direkt ein, seine Strategie bleibt diffus: Die Rede ist von weiteren US-Bodentruppen und einem "politischen" Ende des Machthabers Baschar al-Assad - dafür bräuchte man Russland. Auch im Konflikt zwischen Israel und den Palästinensern gibt es keine klare Linie: Anfangs stellte Trump die Zweistaatenlösung in Frage, dann widersprach er sich selbst und rügte Israels Siedlungspolitik. Er machte einen konservativen Hardliner zum Israel-Botschafter. Ein explosives Versprechen, die US-Botschaft nach Jerusalem zu verlegen, liegt nach einer Intervention des jordanischen Königs Abdullah II. aber auf Eis. Noch nebulöser ist die Iran-Politik: Im Wahlkampf schwor Trump, das Atomabkommen zu "zerreißen", Außenminister Rex Tillerson schwächte das auf "Überprüfung" ab. Als Iran im Januar einen Raketentest durchführte, warnte Trump Teheran zwar und verschärfte die Sanktionen. Er vermied aber, vom Bruch des Abkommens zu sprechen. ....

Im Wahlkampf beschimpfte er Peking als Währungsmanipulator und kritisierte seine Exportmacht, jetzt umgarnt er die Regierung. ....

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/do...-a-1143794.html

So sieht Nichtkoennen aus.

Zitat von Willie im Beitrag #694

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Trumps Außenpolitik
Auf Konfusionskurs
Er provoziert, befiehlt, verwirrt: In der Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik zeigt sich Donald Trump unberechenbar. Welche Ziele verfolgt der US-Präsident in Krisenregionen - und hat er überhaupt eine Strategie?

Der mächtigste Mann der Welt hat keinen Plan, welche Rolle die USA im Ausland spielen sollen. Dieser Eindruck drängt sich auf, wenn man eine außenpolitische Bilanz der ersten Wochen Donald Trumps im Weißen Haus zieht. Statt Ordnung und Klarheit, wie Trump sie im Wahlkampf versprochen hatte, herrscht Verwirrung und Chaos.

Seit Trump ist die Lage noch verworrener. In den Bürgerkrieg von Syrien griff er als erster US-Präsident mit Militärschlägen direkt ein, seine Strategie bleibt diffus: Die Rede ist von weiteren US-Bodentruppen und einem "politischen" Ende des Machthabers Baschar al-Assad - dafür bräuchte man Russland. Auch im Konflikt zwischen Israel und den Palästinensern gibt es keine klare Linie: Anfangs stellte Trump die Zweistaatenlösung in Frage, dann widersprach er sich selbst und rügte Israels Siedlungspolitik. Er machte einen konservativen Hardliner zum Israel-Botschafter. Ein explosives Versprechen, die US-Botschaft nach Jerusalem zu verlegen, liegt nach einer Intervention des jordanischen Königs Abdullah II. aber auf Eis. Noch nebulöser ist die Iran-Politik: Im Wahlkampf schwor Trump, das Atomabkommen zu "zerreißen", Außenminister Rex Tillerson schwächte das auf "Überprüfung" ab. Als Iran im Januar einen Raketentest durchführte, warnte Trump Teheran zwar und verschärfte die Sanktionen. Er vermied aber, vom Bruch des Abkommens zu sprechen. ....

Im Wahlkampf beschimpfte er Peking als Währungsmanipulator und kritisierte seine Exportmacht, jetzt umgarnt er die Regierung. ....

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/do...-a-1143794.html

So sieht Nichtkoennen aus.

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Trump lawyer: ‘No right’ to protest at rallies
The president’s lawyers file a motion to derail a lawsuit brought by protesters

President Donald Trump’s lawyers argued in a Thursday court filing that protesters “have no right” to “express dissenting views” at his campaign rallies because such protests infringed on his First Amendment rights.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/20...ign=pubexchange

Kein Wunder dass er Erdogan zu seinem Verfassungsaenderungserfolg beglueckwuenscht.

Trump Is Even Less Popular Than United Airlines
But both are pretty unpopular right now.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/unit...kushpmg00000009

Government Stopgap Funding Talks Could Hit The (Mexican) Wall
White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney rattles negotiations by insisting the wall is a priority.

Mulvaney’s plan rattled ongoing negotiations between the parties to pass a stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown on April 28, when spending authorization ends. Talk of the wall hadn’t come up — until Mulvaney’s demand. Even Republicans had agreed that it should be addressed later, after the urgent stopgap spending issue, reported The Washington Post.

But the Trump administration is going full steam ahead — to the wall and beyond ― with a massive spending proposal in the fall.
“We’re certainly going to spend some money,” Mulvaney said Thursday at the Institute of International Finance, Bloomberg reported. “The president wants a trillion dollars worth of work on the ground, and we’re going to give it to him.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stop...kushpmg00000009

Naechste Woche wird mal wieder hochinteressant. Der naechste "Government shut down" steht an.:-))

Donald Trump Complains About Deadline He Set For Himself
His first 100 days are almost up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trum...kushpmg00000009

:-)

Report: CIA's Liaison To The NSC Fired After Clash With Controversial Aide
Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the White House staffer who reportedly helped funnel intelligence reports to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was at the heart of another, much more behind-the-scenes Trump administration drama, the Guardian reported Thursday.

A retired marine serving as the CIA’s liaison to the White House was summarily dismissed in mid-March, sources told the newspaper, after a clash with Cohen-Watnick, the 30-year-old intelligence director for the National Security Council.
“It was the most disrespectful thing they could have done,” an anonymous White House official aware of the incident told the Guardian, praising the professionalism of the former staffer, who has since returned to the CIA. “He’s a good man. What happened to him was fucked up.”

Cohen-Watnick, a protégé of ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn, was reportedly almost fired himself amid an internal struggle for control over national security policy in Trump’s White House. Once Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster replaced Flynn, he allegedly tried to fire the young intelligence official but was overruled after Chief White House Strategist Steve Bannon and senior adviser Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, intervened.

Cohen-Watnick was later reported to be one of the sources who played a role in getting Nunes to the White House to view classified intelligence reports that Nunes claimed show the identities of members of Trump’s campaign staff were inappropriately unmasked. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who later viewed those same intelligence reports say the documents indicate no improper surveillance, and are instead standard intercepts of conversations that involve individuals targeted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ez...cia-liaison-nsc