I'm pretty sure he and the editorial board has completely lost their freaking minds. NY Times is a bigger threat to our country right now than Russia in my mind.

Russia plays games with us constantly they get dangerously close to our Air Force pilots, they release dirt to embarrass us, and try to directly and indirectly to influence our congressmen and laws. They are making us look fools and laughing their asses off right now all the while playing the media like a fiddle to try and embarrass the country and administration.

If anyone for one second doesn't the the Trump administration is currently and actively planning on some out of sight seemingly unrelated revenge of some sort, then they are kidding themselves. If anything they have to admit he's a patriot and takes pride in being an American. He will seek even if unknown to us some payback for giving America a black eye.

Publishing crap like what follows below is only advancing Russian objectives to sow political discord throughout our great country. Russia and our media are partners in the endeavor.

#####


Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now

By Thomas L. Friedman



Feb. 18, 2018
Our democracy is in serious danger.

President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of Trump’s own C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. chiefs.

In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.

Up to now, Trump has been flouting the norms of the presidency. Now Trump’s behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution. Here’s an imperfect but close analogy: It’s as if George W. Bush had said after 9/11: “No big deal. I am going golfing over the weekend in Florida and blogging about how it’s all the Democrats’ fault — no need to hold a National Security Council meeting.”

At a time when the special prosecutor Robert Mueller — leveraging several years of intelligence gathering by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. — has brought indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups — all linked in some way to the Kremlin — for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections, America needs a president who will lead our nation’s defense against this attack on the integrity of our electoral democracy.

What would that look like? He would educate the public on the scale of the problem; he would bring together all the stakeholders — state and local election authorities, the federal government, both parties and all the owners of social networks that the Russians used to carry out their interference — to mount an effective defense; and he would bring together our intelligence and military experts to mount an effective offense against Putin — the best defense of all.

What we have instead is a president vulgarly tweeting that the Russians are “laughing their asses off in Moscow” for how we’ve been investigating their interventions — and exploiting the terrible school shooting in Florida — and the failure of the F.B.I. to properly forward to its Miami field office a tip on the killer — to throw the entire F.B.I. under the bus and create a new excuse to shut down the Mueller investigation.

Think for a moment how demented was Trump’s Saturday night tweet: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”

To the contrary. Our F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., working with the special counsel, have done us amazingly proud. They’ve uncovered a Russian program to divide Americans and tilt our last election toward Trump — i.e., to undermine the very core of our democracy — and Trump is telling them to get back to important things like tracking would-be school shooters. Yes, the F.B.I. made a mistake in Florida. But it acted heroically on Russia. What is more basic than protecting American democracy?

It is so obvious what Trump is up to: Again, he is either a total sucker for Putin or, more likely, he is hiding something that he knows the Russians have on him, and he knows that the longer Mueller’s investigation goes on, the more likely he will be to find and expose it.

Donald, if you are so innocent, why do you go to such extraordinary lengths to try to shut Mueller down? And if you are really the president — not still head of the Trump Organization, who moonlights as president, which is how you so often behave — why don’t you actually lead — lead not only a proper cyberdefense of our elections, but also an offense against Putin.

Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin — just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real president would be doing right now.


My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. It’s something about his financial ties to business elites tied to the Kremlin. They may own a big stake in him. Who can forget that quote from his son Donald Trump Jr. from back in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.” They may own our president.

But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.

To the contrary. Our F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., working with the special counsel, have done us amazingly proud. They’ve uncovered a Russian program to divide Americans and tilt our last election toward Trump — i.e., to undermine the very core of our democracy — and Trump is telling them to get back to important things like tracking would-be school shooters. Yes, the F.B.I. made a mistake in Florida. But it acted heroically on Russia. What is more basic than protecting American democracy?

It is so obvious what Trump is up to: Again, he is either a total sucker for Putin or, more likely, he is hiding something that he knows the Russians have on him, and he knows that the longer Mueller’s investigation goes on, the more likely he will be to find and expose it.

Donald, if you are so innocent, why do you go to such extraordinary lengths to try to shut Mueller down? And if you are really the president — not still head of the Trump Organization, who moonlights as president, which is how you so often behave — why don’t you actually lead — lead not only a proper cyberdefense of our elections, but also an offense against Putin.

Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin — just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real president would be doing right now.


My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. It’s something about his financial ties to business elites tied to the Kremlin. They may own a big stake in him. Who can forget that quote from his son Donald Trump Jr. from back in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.” They may own our president.

But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.

My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. It’s something about his financial ties to business elites tied to the Kremlin. They may own a big stake in him. Who can forget that quote from his son Donald Trump Jr. from back in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.” They may own our president.

But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.

quote:

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.

Does this mean they're going to get their guns and bring it to the streets?

I recognized the name as soon as I scrolled down a little. Tom Friedman is and has been right about politics like Paul Krugman about economics. In other words, never. .

So you're saying that Friedman is the Krugman of politics!

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
I recognized the name as soon as I scrolled down a little. Tom Friedman is and has been right about politics like Paul Krugman about economics. In other words, never. .

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:

I'm pretty sure he and the editorial board has completely lost their freaking minds. NY Times is a bigger threat to our country right now than Russia in my mind. ...

That also applies to the Washington Post. I skim thru both on the www, but I do not believe much of their "news." And I do not waste my time looking at the the editorial pages.

Both do provide insight into liberal "thinking," which is all emotion and zero logic.

Oh nos, not Code Red, not that. It must be just awful bad to unleash the faux ReconRangerSealionDragonfish quasi pretend military jargon. Code Red AGHhhhhh run away. Simple fuck!

quote:

Originally posted by wishfull thinker:
Oh nos, not Code Red, not that. It must be just awful bad to unleash the faux ReconRangerSealionDragonfish quasi pretend military jargon. Code Red AGHhhhhh run away. Simple fuck!

Bullshit-to-English translator: 3rd Grade Edition

quote:

It is so obvious what Trump is up to: Again, he is either a total sucker for Putin or, more likely, he is hiding something that he knows the Russians have on him, and he knows that the longer Mueller’s investigation goes on, the more likely he will be to find and expose it.

"I have no clue about anything, but saying words like 'obvious' (with zero explanation) 'Putin' and 'Russia' tend to stir up my rabble. And Trump is a doody-head."

quote:

My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money.

"I still have no idea what's going on, because I'm a window-licking smooth brain, but Trump is rich, and rich people are doody-heads."

quote:

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.

"I blindly support the groups that plotted the largest conspiracy of modern times, and I did nothing as the deep state tried to rig elections, and Trump is a doody-head."

.....................................................................

This guy is clown shoes. He admits - more than once - that he has no ideas or clues, yet postulates on motives and mysterious goings on without any links.

This is garbage. I've seen better writing and more insight from high-school newspapers.

quote:

NY Times is a bigger threat to our country right now than Russia in my mind

Just a few minutes ago, I sent a friend an email and said that the media news manipulation might be an even bigger conspiracy than the one to take down President Trump.

I just started to build a list of reporters and their false or grossly exaggerated stories about the Russia collusion hoax.

Possibly Freidman is on the Russian payroll. He is doing his level best to continue to sow confusion and discord in our country. He is also a believer in totalitarianism; a kindred spirit to Putin.



.

Meanwhile, back on planet earth...

https://www.investors.com/poli...ss+%28Politic+RSS%29


------------------------

------------------------------

Mueller Indictments Reveal Russia's Real Goal … And Who's Been Helping Them

Scandal: For more than a year, Democrats have been pushing the story that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. But the evidence keeps piling up indicating that it was Democrats, wittingly or not, who've been helping Russia achieve its real meddling goals.

The latest comes from the indictments issued Friday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller against 13 Russians accused of illegally meddling in the U.S. political system. This has been taken by Trump critics as proof that Russia did, indeed, conspire to meddle in the election.

But if you read the indictments, look at the Facebook ads, the Trump "dossier" and other evidence, it becomes clear that the goal of this meddling wasn't to elect Trump, but to create anger, hostility, bitterness, and discord in the U.S.

Mueller Indictment

Consider what's quoted in the indictment as the goals of these Russians:
The Organization's stated goal was "spread(ing) distrust toward the candidates and the political system in general."
Specialists were directed to create "politician intensity through supporting radical groups, users dissatisfied with (the) social and economic situation and oppositional social movements."
The Organization controlled Facebook pages that "addressed a range of issues, including immigration (with group names including "Secured Borders"); the Black Lives Matter movement (with group names including "Blacktivist"); religion (with group names including "United Muslims of America" and "Army of Jesus"); and certain geographic regions.
In June 2016, the Russians used the Facebook group "United Muslims of America" to promote a rally called "Support Hillary. Save American Muslims."

Although not in the indictment itself, it's already been reported that in May 2016, two Russian-backed groups — "Heart of Texas" and "United Muslims of America" — organized both pro- and anti-Muslim rallies outside an Islamic center in Houston, where the two rallies squared off.

Notice what's missing here? Any mention of electing Trump president. Over and over again, the stated goal of these groups, according to Mueller's indictment, wasn't to get Trump elected, but to set Americans at each other's throats.

Facebook and Social Media

The indictment makes much of the ads these Russians bought on Facebook, and it suggests that these efforts were designed to disparage Clinton and support Trump.

But the Facebook VP of Ad Product Rob Goldman reviewed every ad in question, and noted in a series of tweets over the weekend that " I can say very definitively that swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal."

Most of the ads didn't mention the election or any candidate. A quarter of them weren't seen by anybody. And, as Goldman notes, "The majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election."

How does this point to a Russian effort to elect Trump? It doesn't. But as Goldman notes with apparent frustration, nobody wants to hear that.

"We shared that fact, but very few outlets have covered it because it doesn't align with the main media narrative of Tump (sic) and the election."

We noted in this space last October that other examples of Russia's "meddling" didn't support the Democrats claims, either. One campaign was called "Don't Shoot Us." Among other things, tried to encourage those playing the augmented reality game Pokémon Go to find and train Pokémon near locations where alleged incidents of police brutality had taken place, and name their Pokémon after the victims.

In case anyone has forgotten, police brutality and social justice reform were Democrat issues.

Anti-Trump Rallies

The Mueller indictment also points out that the Russians organized rallies in favor of Trump. But they also organized at least two anti-Trump rallies after the election.

The Russians "organized a rally in New York called 'Trump is NOT my President' held on or about November 12, 2016."

They "organized a rally entitled 'Charlotte Against Trump' in Charlotte, North Carolina, held on or about November 19, 2016."

It's worth noting that the New York rally received extensive coverage from the mainstream press, who were apparently uninterested in the rally's sponsorship.

Trump Dossier

Even the much-ballyhooed Trump dossier fails to support a claim that Russia was bent on getting Trump elected. If that were the case, why would top Russian officials have been feeding dirt to Christopher Steele, who then tried to peddle it to the press before the election?

"If any part of the Steele dossier is accurate, Russia was playing both sides of the fence," noted Real Clear Politics Washington bureau chief Carl Cannon.

Election Polls

The Mueller indictment does allege that these Russian operations were "primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump."

But think about this for a moment. No one in the U.S. or around the world thought Trump had any chance of winning the election. On the day of the election itself, the highly cited poll analysis group FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a 28.6% chance of winning the election.

When the Russian efforts were supposedly going on in earnest, FiveThirtyEight put Trump's odds in the teens. (In the end, the IBD/TIPP poll was one of the only national polls to show a Trump victory.)

It's more likely that those anti-Hillary efforts weren't designed to help defeat her, but to weaken her presidency after she got elected, just as the Russian-informed Trump "dossier" has weakened Trump's presidency.

The Real Co-Conspirators

So, to sum up: There's been no credible evidence presented so far — none — of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to sway the November election, despite more than a year-and-a-half of relentless FBI and media investigations.

But there is growing evidence that, as Facebook's Goldman put it:

"The main goal of the Russian propaganda and misinformation effort is to divide America by using our institutions, like free speech and social media, against us. It has stoked fear and hatred amongst Americans. It is working incredibly well. We are quite divided as a nation."

Indeed it has worked incredibly well.

The problem is that Democrats and the mainstream press will never admit any of this, because if they did, they'd also be admitting that they were co-conspirators in this nefarious Russian campaign to undermine America's democratic institutions.

During the Cold War, there was a label for Americans who unwittingly did Russia's bidding — "useful idiots."

Perhaps it's time to resurrect this label.

If the libs really believe what Thomas Friedman says is true, why talk about gun control now? They're gonna need them to address this "code red, threat to our democracy" now.

I'm sorry, I don't read the NYT but sort of assumed that to write for a paper of that type you had to be a liberal nut ball. Did I miss something? Is he more nutty than the typical writer?

quote:

Originally posted by btanchors:
If the libs really believe what Thomas Friedman says is true, why talk about gun control now? They're gonna need them to address this "code red, threat to our democracy" now.

Code Red!
If it gets any worse... he may have to put that in ALL CAPS!

No sane person believes their crap any more.

If you want a good list of news media to not trust, you should consider the group that Glenn Simpson (Fusion) and Christopher Steele briefed in September 2016 about the dossier.

New York Times
Washington Post
Yahoo News
the New Yorker
CNN


This isn't a complete list, but they would be at the top of my list.

We need Trump to be the lion... be the lion, Donald. Fire Mueller, fire them all in one massive bloodbath upheaval that will leave the media heads spinning for years. Fire so many of these worthless swamp dwellers that nobody will even know where to be outraged first.

Sorry, don't know how to embed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7Cbzrp6I5I

Friedman: Mr Putin, did you order the Code Red?

Judge Randolph: You don't have to answer that question!

Putin: I'll answer the question!

[to Friedman]

Putin: You want answers?

Friedman: I think I'm entitled to.

Putin: You want answers?

Friedman: I WANT THE TRUTH!

Putin: YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! - YOU ARE AN EFF'ING MORON!!!

Friedman: Did you order the code red?

Putin: I did the job I...

Friedman: [interrupts him] *Did you order the Code Red?*

Putin: Son, we live in a world that has borders, and those borders have to be guarded by men. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Mr Friedman? HHAHAHAHA... I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Hillary and you curse Trump. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not accepting what I know; that Hillary's defeat, while tragic for you and the rest of the media, saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, *saves lives*. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that border. You need me on that border. We use words like honor, code, loyalty while you and your friends have no comprehension of their meaning. You use them as a punch-line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket sucking his thumb in fear and wishing for his mommy. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a pen and write the truth instead of this dribble of non-acceptance. Either way, I don't give a *damn* what you think - you are an eff'ing moron!

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
No sane person believes their crap any more.

This, of course. And unfortunately for us - you cannot speak reason or facts to these Libs. They are convinced they've got the answers. I'm convinced that simply by being Liberal they've outed themselves as the ~50% of the Country that are complete and utter morons. Seriously, not rhetorically - morons. Stupid. Easily manipulated and controlled.

You can't convince them otherwise. Ipso-facto - they are the stupid that walk among us. And just as unfortunate - their vote counts just as much as ours does in that voting booth.