It's a bloodbath at the State Department.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is cleaning house at the State Department, according to a report.

Staffers in the offices of deputy secretary of state for management and resources as well as counselor were shown the door Thursday, according to CBS News.

Many of those let go were on the building’s seventh floor — top-floor bigs — a symbolically important sign to the rest of the diplomatic corps that their new boss has different priorities than the last one.

The staffing changes came as Tillerson was on his first foreign trip — attending a G-20 meeting in Bonn, Germany.

“As part of the transition from one administration to the next, we continue to build out our team. The State Department is supported by a very talented group of individuals, both Republicans and Democrats,” State Department spokesman RC Hammond told CBS.

“We are appreciative to any American who dedicates their talents to public,” he added.

This week’s round of firings marks the second time State Department personnel have been cleared out since President Trump took office last month.

Four top officials were cleared out of the building at the end of January.

“As is standard with every transition, the outgoing administration, in coordination with the incoming one, requested all politically appointed officers submit letters of resignation,” a State Department spokesman said at the time.

http://nypost.com/2017/02/17/r...at-state-department/

quote:

Originally posted by bozman:
Ferreting out the mole maybe? Circulate a memo among a group of people and see if it gets out.

If I were Trump, I would be concocting all sorts of crazy shit to weed out the traitors.

The technique is called The Canary Trap and has been around a long time.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
http://www.breitbart.com/video...e-facts-they-report/

“The 11th Hour,” anchor Brian Williams argued President Trump’s criticisms of the media were

“Because when you reduce the media enough in prestige, they — when they do report facts, those facts are diminished.”

************************
what ? Brian Williams preaching about reducing media prestige ?

What a clown. First, the media lost its 'prestige' because they sacrificed their credibility, objectivity, and responsibility, on the alter of their liberal/progressive owners. They did it to themselves and are now whining about Trump pointing out to everyone what they really are.

Second, 'facts'? Really Brian? The media long ago relinquished all interest in reporting the news in favor of becoming the media arm of the DNC. The voters had eight years of that reality and voted totally against it last November.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
People, THIS is why Trump is blasting this corrupt, deceitful scum mainstream media right now.

For 8 fucking years, you never heard a GODDAMN PEEP from these assholes when Obama was spending tens, no hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars going on extravagant extended vacations and trips with the family or playing golf 300+ days of his presidency.


Trump family's elaborate lifestyle comes at taxpayer expense

Infuriating. The man isn't even taking a paycheck. He's not gaining a thing by being our President. He's actually had to sacrifice immensely. Screw these duplicitous bastards.

So AP was under fire for not publishing the memo about nationalizing the National Guard. They finally caved and published it.

Turns out the memo doesn't even specify 100K national guard, does not say they would be used to round up illegals - all it does is extend existing order 287(g). Remember when W used the guard to augment ICE in the early 2000's?

They totally made up the whole 100K call up, using them to round up illegals, etc.

However, despite the memo now being out there for anyone to read and the administration on the record as it being categorically false, the AP is still pushing the story, unchanged.

Perfect illustration of why the media is swirling the toilet bowl. They have been totally exposed.

You can read this feed for these points - too many to copy/paste:
https://twitter.com/gabrielmalor/with_replies

quote:

Originally posted by olfuzzy:

Many of those let go were on the building’s seventh floor — top-floor bigs — a symbolically important sign to the rest of the diplomatic corps that their new boss has different priorities than the last one.

The staffing changes came as Tillerson was on his first foreign trip — attending a G-20 meeting in Bonn, Germany.

This is the big league version of fumigating your house for bugs while you're away on vacation.

quote:

Originally posted by olfuzzy:
It's a bloodbath at the State Department.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is cleaning house at the State Department, according to a report.

Staffers in the offices of deputy secretary of state for management and resources as well as counselor were shown the door Thursday, according to CBS News.

Many of those let go were on the building’s seventh floor — top-floor bigs — a symbolically important sign to the rest of the diplomatic corps that their new boss has different priorities than the last one.

Those who work at the lower floors (the "permanent" government) refer to those on the seventh floor as "the Christmas help."

I'd like to see mass eliminations of these people. Thousands of entrenched government douche bags shown the door.

The only people who care about these fake stories are the ones posting them on Facebook for free therapy with other liberal idiots.

The latest from Scientific American magazine: Psychiatrists Weigh in on Trump's Mental Health:

In recent months a growing number of mental health experts and members of the media have offered opinions on Pres. Donald Trump’s psychiatric fitness.

On Tuesday 35 U.S. psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers signed a letter to the editor of The New York Times warning about Trump’s mental health.* Its signatories state—despite a self-imposed ethics rule forbidding psychiatrists from offering professional opinions about public figures they have not personally evaluated—they “believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president.” A number of petitions, including a Change.org petition started by psychologist John Gartner that has garnered more than 20,000 signatures, have called for the chief executive to be removed from office on the grounds he is mentally ill and unfit to perform the duties of president.

In response to these efforts, Allen Frances, an emeritus psychiatrist at Duke University School of Medicine who helped write the standard manual on psychiatric disorders, wrote a separate letter to the Times denouncing attempts to diagnose the president as mentally ill. He explains that Trump lacks the “distress and impairment required to diagnose a mental illness,” adding that bad behavior and mental illness are not synonymous. “Psychiatric name-calling is a misguided way of countering Mr. Trump’s attack on democracy,” Frances wrote. Nevertheless, “he can, and should, be appropriately denounced for his ignorance, incompetence, impulsivity and pursuit of dictatorial powers.”

Historically, psychiatrists have adhered to an ethics dictum known as the Goldwater rule, which appeared in the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s code of ethics in 1973. It evolved out of an incident involving presidential candidate Barry Goldwater: In 1964 Fact magazine polled 12,356 psychiatrists on Goldwater’s mental fitness to be president and published an article stating that 1,189 of the 2,417 who responded deemed him psychologically unfit for the job. (Goldwater later won a libel suit against the magazine.)

The mental health professionals writing in the Times, however, felt compelled to speak out: “We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer.” Susan Radant, a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist and director of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, says she was motivated to sign by her worries about Trump’s competence, including his emotional stability, integrity and honesty. “I am hoping this letter will inspire both citizens and, particularly, the Congress to do their jobs,” she wrote in an e-mail, “and step in before our country and the world are permanently damaged.”

Radant thinks it is time to get rid of the Goldwater rule. She says mental health professionals are well qualified to offer certain diagnoses from a distance, pointing out the press, sans training, freely makes such assessments.

Fellow signatory Alexandra Rolde, a psychiatrist affiliated with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Newton–Wellesley Hospital, both in Massachusetts, emphasizes the letter does not attempt to diagnose Trump but rather highlights personality traits she and her colleagues find concerning. She does not believe any mental health professional should make a diagnosis without seeing a patient, but thinks it can still be appropriate to comment on how a person’s mental health may affect other people and his or her ability to perform.

The APA continues to stand by the Goldwater rule, however. When asked for comment on the Times letter, the association pointed to a letter published by APA president Maria Oquendo in August 2016. “The unique atmosphere of [the 2016] election cycle may lead some to want to psychoanalyze the candidates,” she wrote at the time. “But to do so would not only be unethical, it would be irresponsible.”

Oquendo goes on to explain that although she understands the desire to get inside the mind of a presidential candidate, especially with the abundance of information about him or her available on the internet, experts must also consider how patients might be affected by seeing their mental health provider offer a medical opinion from a distance. “A patient who sees that might lose confidence in their doctor,” she wrote, “And would likely feel stigmatized by language painting a candidate with a mental disorder (real or perceived) as ‘unfit’ or ‘unworthy’ to assume the presidency.”

Link

Science!!!

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Shugart:
The latest from Scientific American magazine: Psychiatrists Weigh in on Trump's Mental Health:

Psychiatrists drive me crazy.

I handled a property dispute years ago involving a couple of psychiatrists, two of the most disturbed people I've ever dealt with.

quote:

Originally posted by BamaJeepster:
So AP was under fire for not publishing the memo about nationalizing the National Guard. They finally caved and published it.

Turns out the memo doesn't even specify 100K national guard, does not say they would be used to round up illegals - all it does is extend existing order 287(g). Remember when W used the guard to augment ICE in the early 2000's?

They totally made up the whole 100K call up, using them to round up illegals, etc.

However, despite the memo now being out there for anyone to read and the administration on the record as it being categorically false, the AP is still pushing the story, unchanged.

Perfect illustration of why the media is swirling the toilet bowl. They have been totally exposed.

You can read this feed for these points - too many to copy/paste:
https://twitter.com/gabrielmalor/with_replies

Trump keeps proving himself right all along daily.

They JUST DON'T GET IT!

quote:

“Psychiatric name-calling is a misguided way of countering Mr. Trump’s attack on democracy,” Frances wrote. Nevertheless, “he can, and should, be appropriately denounced for his ignorance, incompetence, impulsivity and pursuit of dictatorial powers.”

with this and other banalities about personal fears of the 'psychiatrists' themselves, we have a picture of snowflakes flailing the rest of We the People, because their little safe-place is somehow vulnerable....

Watching President Trump descend the plane stairs and give his snappy salute makes me smile. He walks like a man. Makes me proud.

Hannity was talking about this today. A week before Obama leaves office, he does this.

Long article:

WASHINGTON — In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.

The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches.

The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data. Essentially, the government is reducing the risk that the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency, but increasing the risk that officials will see private information about innocent people.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch signed the new rules, permitting the N.S.A. to disseminate “raw signals intelligence information,” on Jan. 3, after the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., signed them on Dec. 15, according to a 23-page, largely declassified copy of the procedures.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...-communications.html

quote:

Originally posted by cda926:
With all of the coverage of the press conference,this almost fell off everyone's RADAR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAvbPPf-NPI

PRESIDENT TRUMP IS THE MAN!!!! For the first time in decades, I'm proud to call the occupant of the White House MY president!!!

OK, I really need to ask a question on this one. Why is this a good thing? Dumping mining debris into rivers is a bad thing, and I don't see how preventing mining companies from doing so is a job killer. Can someone explain further?

quote:

Originally posted by BamaJeepster:
Science!!!

She blinded me!

quote:

Originally posted by dwd1985:
--------------
OK, I really need to ask a question on this one. Why is this a good thing? Dumping mining de rid into rivers is a bad thing, and I don't see how preventing mining companies from doing so is s job killer. Can someone explain further?

Removing mine tailings manually, but trucking them to a dump site would make jobs. Dumping toxic tailing into the river is a sure way of killing off fish and giving humans life long illnesses. If Trump allows this, that is many steps backwards and giving the democrats something legitimate to complain about.

If republicans want a super majority in 2 years, someone better talk some sense into Trump. Otherwise he is simply giving the democrats power.

quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:

quote:

Originally posted by dwd1985:
--------------
OK, I really need to ask a question on this one. Why is this a good thing? Dumping mining de rid into rivers is a bad thing, and I don't see how preventing mining companies from doing so is s job killer. Can someone explain further?

Removing mine tailings manually, but trucking them to a dump site would make jobs. Dumping toxic tailing into the river is a sure way of killing off fish and giving humans life long illnesses. If Trump allows this, that is many steps backwards and giving the democrats something legitimate to complain about.

If republicans want a super majority in 2 years, someone better talk some sense into Trump. Otherwise he is simply giving the democrats power.

I knew I wasnt the only one who thought this sounded wrong. Can any forum member offer a better explanation? This seems like bad policy we should NOT be celebrating.