Secretary of State Pompeo apparently doesn't always suffer fools gladly.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/578...8001/?#sp=show-clips

Wish I had something nice to say about Udall and his family but I'll keep quiet.

Well, well, well...will you look at this!



(From Zero Hedge)

North Korea Comes Crawling Back: Stresses "Desperate Need" For Summit "Whenever, However"

quote:

Originally posted by BMR:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Despite all the open celebration and jubilation going on at CNN and MSNBC today as they think Trump just "failed", I really do wonder if POTUS is actually putting an "Art Of The Deal" move on Fat Kim here?

It just goes to show that Trump isn’t going to put up with the little fat shit’s BS, whereas Obowma would hsve been apologizing for the US being the aggressor and starting the Korean war just to get a peace deal.

As my mama would say...CNN, MSNBHeeHaw (as the sage Larry Elder says), NBC, et. al., couldn't pour piss out of a boot with a handle on the heel and the directions on the bottom. President Trump is so far ahead of these idiots, they'll NEVER figure it out. He's playing these chuckle-heads like a Scott Joplin Rag. And I LOVE IT!!!

Banning Trump From Blocking People On Twitter Is Bad Law And Bad Politics

Federalist
Kyle Sammin

It sounds like a joke, but the laughter stopped when a federal judge ruled Wednesday that Trump’s actions violated the First Amendment and declared it must cease.

President Trump’s Twitter habits have been the subject of controversy since he became a candidate for president in 2015. He used the platform to communicate to the people without the intermediation of reporters, which create new opportunities to reach voters directly and at low cost. His free-wheeling style also gave rise to continual controversy as he tweeted (or retweeted) things that would have destroyed the electoral hopes of any normal candidate.

There have been a lot of complaints, but recently some people literally made a federal case out of it, suing Trump because he blocked them. It sounds like a joke, but the laughter stopped when a federal judge ruled Wednesday that Trump’s actions violated the First Amendment and declared that the practice must cease.

The order was written by Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Buchwald, a 1999 Clinton appointee who took senior status in 2012 blazed a new trail in First Amendment jurisprudence in her opinion (found here). Unfortunately, that trail is a dead end that only takes us farther from any ordinary understanding of what the freedom of speech is and whom it protects.

The plaintiffs, which include a public interest group and seven individuals the president has blocked, claimed that Twitter was a public forum, one from which the president has unilaterally excluded them based on their political beliefs (namely, their criticism of him). Already this requires some creativity no matter which way the ruling goes because most forums discussed in First Amendment terms are physical places. But the Constitution is one of broad principles, and analogies may be made. To call an online forum the equivalent of an actual forum, which was literally a public square in Roman times, is not so much of a stretch.

The mental acrobatics come in where the First Amendment applies to public forums because that Amendment, of course, does not restrict private limits on speech or assembly. It is not enough that Twitter be some kind of virtual gathering space, which it certainly is; it must be a public gathering space. In terms of the precedents relevant to this case, that means a place that is, in Judge Buchwald’s summation “owned or controlled by the government.”

There is a lot of weight resting on that word “or.” Clearly, Twitter is not owned by the government. There is hardly even a decent argument to say that the @realDonaldTrump account is owned by the government, any more than the President’s clothes, books, or other personal property is. All presidents own things in their individual capacity, and that ownership does not pass to the government for the four or eight years in which they are employed in Washington.

But is it controlled by the government? The three people with access to the account (Trump, Dan Scavino, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders) are all government employees. But not everything a federal government employee touches comes under the control of Uncle Sam. Federal employees drive to work in privately owned cars and live in privately owned houses. Even things they use at work, like the clothes they are wearing, do not pass into the public domain. Some government employees have even been known to keep work e-mails on a privately owned server. And even though Scavino and Sanders use the account as a part of their duties, that is little different from a presidential valet picking out the President’s clothes, or the Secret Service staying at a president or vice president’s private home.

This seems all the more obvious when the White House does have a publicly owned account, @POTUS, which passes from president to president. Personal accounts, like @realDonaldTrump or @BarackObama, stay with the person who owns them. Both of those accounts tweeted about things related to the government. And both, like all communications by a president, are subject to the Federal Records Act under the changes to that law passed in 2014, even though they are private accounts. If Trump’s private account was nationalized, it was probably news to him. Knowing Trump, he may ask for retroactive compensation.

Much of Judge Buchwald’s decision hangs on that tenuous definition of control, but the precedents she cites are not exactly on point. In Cornelius v. NAACP (1985) and in Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights (1974), the forums to which plaintiffs sought access were, respectively, a charitable fundraising campaign in federal offices and advertising space on the side of city buses. These were both things to which the public at large had some access, but they were also located physically in government-owned and controlled spaces. The fundraising campaign in Cornelius was not a government project, but it was initiated by President Eisenhower through an executive order. The advertising on city buses may have been open to all market participants within certain guidelines, but it was physical space on government-owned vehicles.

Twitter is not that. Twitter is a private company, free of government ownership or control. It allows any user, even an anonymous user, to create an account, but it imposes its own rules. That is Twitter’s right because it owns the platform. Users who violate its rules and conditions may have their accounts locked or deleted. Twitter also makes certain tools available to its users, including the right to block other users from interacting with them. All of these things are the acts of a private company, not something taking place on government property.

As times and technology change, the Constitution must be interpreted to apply to the new facts. Just as the Fourth Amendment was held to prohibit warrantless searches of cell phones, the First Amendment applies to various segments of the internet. But the analogies have to make sense. A cell phone is a lot like personal papers: both are stores of private information. But is Twitter anything like an ad on a city bus or a charitable solicitation in a federal office building?

Maybe if Twitter had been started by the United States Postal Service, the analogy would ring true. Maybe, even, if social media platforms ever come to be regulated like electric and gas utilities, a quasi-governmental status might make sense. But neither of those things are the facts in this case. The closest analogy of a private Twitter account is not to a city bus or a federal building, but to a privately owned bulletin board. Forcing that square peg into the round hole makes the ruling hard to figure.

So why do it? This case is the latest in a line of many that involve lawsuits as politics by other means. By claiming that Trump is so very different, the plaintiffs in these cases imagine an “emergency” that clouds their judgment and convinces them to make arguments they would never have otherwise made. It sometimes convinces judges to agree with them.

Consider the travel ban cases, where Trump’s words on the campaign trail were held to impute some animus to a ban that changed it from constitutional to unconstitutional through the bizarre legal alchemy of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Or the Emoluments cases, where plaintiffs insist that if representatives of a foreign government rent a room in a Trump hotel, it somehow violates the Constitution. These are laughable legal theories, but when Trump is president, a lot of people pretend to take them seriously.

The Twitter case is less obviously wrong than those, but it is wrong for the same reason. Elites discomfited by the rise of Trump are using any arrow in their quiver, even dull projectiles like lawsuits against Twitter bans, to take a shot at the president. If Hillary Clinton were president and she blocked some Twitter troll who posted hateful words in reply to her post (and this happens on nearly everything she posts) no one would say a word. They would insist that Madam President had the right to not associate herself with such cretins and would likely scold Twitter itself for not blocking them preemptively.

If a normal president had done it, it would have been thought normal. But we do not live in normal times, politically, and when our abnormal president does anything, normal or now, the legal brickbats start flying. This is one more of the same, and will hopefully be deflected by the appeals courts before it tears a new hole in the Constitution.

Link

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:
President Trump is so far ahead of these idiots, they'll NEVER figure it out. He's playing these chuckle-heads like a Scott Joplin Rag. And I LOVE IT!!!

Trump just tweeted out this morning a direct shot at these Democrats, OUCH

quote:

Democrats are so obviously rooting against us in our negotiations with North Korea. Just like they are coming to the defense of MS 13 thugs, saying that they are individuals & must be nurtured, or asking to end your big Tax Cuts & raise your taxes instead. Dems have lost touch!

So what recourse does she have if President Trump completely ignores Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald?

She can pontificate til her little heart explodes, but she can't stop him from doing his tweets.

From The Conservative Treehouse:

The MSM is insufferable in their intentional disconnect of the dynamic behind the North Korean denuclearization talks. It was Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping who brought the DPRK to the table; and it was Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping who pushed North Korea away from the table in their manipulative efforts to extract trade concessions. Every other review of the geopolitical gamesmanship is chaff and countermeasures.

U.S. President Trump is holding massive steel and aluminum tariffs as an economic sword of Damocles over the head of Beijing during ongoing trade negotiations. Chairman Xi sought to increase his own leverage by pulling North Korea’s Chairman Kim Jong-un away from bilateral peace and denuclearization talks. However, POTUS Trump responded to the Beijing power-play by announcing a Section 232 trade review over the entire auto-industry; and then bolstered his counter-move by cancelling talks with Kim Jong-un.



Red Dragon didn’t expect President Trump to respond so effectively to the customary schemes notoriously famous in any Chinese negotiation encounter. I really believe Chairman Xi underestimates how adept POTUS Trump is at cutting through the obfuscation and obtuse moves.

President Trump simply doesn’t operate in the land of traditional diplomatic discomfort… he doesn’t have any inclination to play these insufferable games.

Within minutes of President Trump withdrawing from the June 12th summit, Beijing realized all of their trade leverage was just wiped out. Playing deceptive panda isn’t going to work this time.

(Via AP) – North Korea says it is still willing to sit down for talks with the United States “at any time, at any format” after President Donald Trump abruptly canceled his planned summit with Kim Jong Un.

Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan issued a statement Friday saying North Korea is “willing to give the U.S. time and opportunities” to reconsider talks.



Kim says North Korea’s “objective and resolve to do our best for the sake of peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and all humankind remain unchanged.”

Kim is calling Trump’s decision “unexpected” and “very regrettable,” and says the cancellation of the talks shows “how grave the status of historically deep-rooted hostile North Korea-U.S. relations is and how urgently a summit should be realized to improve ties.” (link)

South Korean Prime Minister Moon Jae-in is the Asian version of Barack Obama, and much like North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un essentially irrelevant in this geopolitical confrontation. Take a seat, or make a sandwich…. it matters not.

This is a battle, a massive economic battle, between U.S. President Trump and Chinese Chairman Xi. Period.

Whenever this geopolitical economic trade confrontation is resolved; that’s when Chairman Xi will instruct Chairman Kim to take the knee. Not a moment before.

Until the U.S. -vs- China economic confrontation is solved, Xi will continue to use the DPRK threat as his principle leverage in the negotiations.

Beijing thinks the wounded panda performance will play well amid the mindset behind the United Nations and the European union.

China counts on the traditional appeasement mindset of those who dislike confrontation.

However, they underestimate the willingness of President Trump to be the guy willing to punch you in the face. Trump simply doesn’t care about the external opinions of the audience – POTUS knows he’s fighting the Dragon behind the Panda mask; even if the witnessing audience is unwilling to accept it.

That’s the paradigm shift Beijing is attempting to navigate; while it simultaneously plays to an internal and external audience.

President Trump has waited three decades for the opportunity to step into the arena and take this righteous battle to America’s primary economic adversary and geopolitical threat. President Trump ain’t going to suddenly develop a propensity toward Marquess of Queensbury rules. He’s a Queens scrapper at heart. An uncouth predator willing to put a roll of quarters inside his Corinthian leather glove if that’s what it takes to smash the mouth of his opposition.

There is one objective in this dynamic, to win.

Though thankfully the the times are few, even in the short history of our Republic there have been times when survival of the U.S. required brutal men to stand the wall. President Trump is such a man; right now is such a time.

Vulgarian Trump will not back down from his position; the U.S. holds all of the leverage and the issue must be addressed. President Trump has waited three decades for this moment. This President and his team are entirely prepared for this.

We are finally confronting the geopolitical Red Dragon, China!



The Olive branch and arrows denote the power of peace and war. The symbol in any figure’s right hand has more significance than one in its left hand. Also important is the direction faced by the symbols central figure. The emphasis on the eagles stare signifies the preferred disposition. An eagle holding an arrow also symbolizes the war for freedom, and its use is commonly referred to the liberation fight of righteous people from abusive influence. The eagle on the original seal created for the Office of the President showed the gaze upon the arrows.

The Eagle and the Arrow – An Aesop’s Fable

An Eagle was soaring through the air. Suddenly it heard the whizz of an Arrow, and felt the dart pierce its breast. Slowly it fluttered down to earth. Its lifeblood pouring out. Looking at the Arrow with which it had been shot, the Eagle realized that the deadly shaft had been feathered with one of its own plumes.

Moral: We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction.

Link

Why It’s Ridiculous To Say FBI Spying Meant To Protect The Trump Campaign


The decision to use Stefan Halper as an informant instead of a messenger cannot possibly be considered a favor to the Trump campaign. It’s as insulting as it is ridiculous to assert.

Federalist
Jason Beale

An interesting thing happened last Friday: a bizarre confluence of events that left many of us wondering if we’d stepped into the Twilight Zone.

It began without much acclaim. Reps. Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy had been scheduled to meet with Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials to finally review the classified information to which they’d been denied access until Nunes threatened to subpoena the information and hold the officials in contempt.

But they decided not to attend the meeting. According to Nunes, after getting word that they wouldn’t be provided the unredacted information they sought, they declined the invitation.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Shortly after the meeting would have ended, The New York Times and Washington Post published articles describing the dispute between Nunes and the DOJ, in which the authors referenced the FBI informant whose actions before the initiation of a formal FBI investigation into the Trump campaign apparently provoked Nunes’ interest in having the information unredacted.

The Post and Times’ Reporting on Stefan Halper

The Post and Times had been writing about the suspected source, Stefan Halper, all week, but generally refrained from including information that could reveal his identity. That all changed Friday evening. Both papers did everything but provide his Social Security number and home address.

Their descriptions of his prior association with the FBI and CIA, his meetings with at least two of the Trump campaign members, and the timing of these meetings closely tracked Chuck Ross’s reporting in The Daily Caller two months ago, in which Ross named the informant as Stefan Halper.

The Times and Post declined to include Harper’s name in their otherwise-illuminating biographical profiles of him. They wrote that they withheld the name to protect him and others who may be placed in danger if his identity became public, while knowingly and effectively making his identity public.

As if that bizarre departure from reality wasn’t enough, they then blamed it all on Nunes, Gowdy, and President Trump. They said their own role in identifying the informant was a direct result of Republicans’ interest in viewing the unredacted FBI records initiating the investigation. They made us do it. We had no choice.

Nunes appeared on Fox News the next day and pointed out the curious timing of the revelatory reports. He wondered if the decision to reveal Halper’s identity (in all but name) was timed to follow his scheduled meeting, inviting speculation that Nunes, his colleagues, or someone in the Trump administration had leaked all that information on Halper to the press. Under the circumstances, he was right to wonder.

If The FBI Really Were Trying to Protect Team Trump

All of this, though, was incidental to the core issue of the raging debate following the revelation the FBI had employed Halper: Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign, and if so, what was the goal of their operation?

The answer, according to a parade of pundits, politicians, and former officials, was no, the FBI didn’t “spy” on the Trump campaign. They were simply employing standard tradecraft associated with any counterintelligence operation. They were using the “least intrusive method” to try to protect the Trump team from Russian spies attempting to gain access and leverage influence over the campaign officials. To suggest that they may have had other options to accomplish that mission was to betray ignorance.

But there are legitimate questions here. If the FBI was trying to use the least intrusive method to conduct their counterintelligence duty to protect the Trump campaign from Russian intelligence attempts to infiltrate, influence, entrap, compromise, or recruit Trump campaign officials, why didn’t they have the wily Halper deliver the appropriate warnings to Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Sam Clovis during his private meetings with them?

Halper had already gone through the trouble of setting up the meetings using his cover as an American professor with similar interests and affiliations as his targets, and he presumably employed all of the appropriate tradecraft he’d practiced over the years as a source for CIA and FBI in ensuring the meetings were adequately secure, private, and cover-consistent.

So why not take advantage of all of that tradecraft and deliver the message directly to them, instead of running a glorified, drawn out, hit-and-miss elicitation exercise on them? The people who are defending these engagements as completely appropriate are also telling us that the FBI did it this way to help defend these men from the Russian agents circling the block:

“The FBI couldn’t have called these guys in during an election! It would have actually hurt the Trump campaign if they did that. Imagine the uproar when it got out in the media that the FBI was talking to Trump campaign officials about Russian spies attempting to compromise them! They had no choice but to use the confidential informant. It was the least intrusive way of doing it.”

Bullsh-t.

What Would Have Been Likely If That Narrative Is True

You had a guy sitting across the table from all three of them in private settings, exchanging collegial chatter over tea. What if Halper simply leaned across the table and said:

“Hey, George, listen, I’ve got to be honest about why I wanted to talk to you. Don’t be alarmed—it’s actually a very good reason. See, I’ve been asked by the FBI to meet with you to warn that they’ve got very valid reason to believe the Russians are sniffing around you with an eye towards finding a way to either trip you up or recruit you.

“I know, sounds wild, but you need to know that it’s happening, and that these people are very sophisticated in this kind of work. They’ll set you up in some way—maybe a girl, maybe someone offering you information, or maybe someone just trying to be your new best friend. If any of that rings a bell right now, then whatever you’re thinking was probably an attempt to compromise you in some way.

“The reason I’m talking to you about it now is simply to warn you that it’s either happening or will almost certainly happen before the election, and the FBI wants you to be prepared if and when it does. You’re not in any trouble. This isn’t a warning TO you, this is a warning FOR you.

If any of that rings a bell right now, then whatever you’re thinking was probably an attempt to compromise you in some way.

“My only caution to you is that you can’t, under any circumstances, tell anyone else on earth that we had this conversation. That will get you in trouble. The very reason I went through all of this trouble to get you here and meet with you is so that nobody else would know the FBI has eyes on what the Russians are doing. You revealing any part of this conversation with anyone else—I don’t care if it’s your wife, sister, mother, anyone—could blow back on the FBI in a negative way, particularly in their ability to monitor what the Russians are up to.

“You’re not under any type of surveillance, but I guarantee if the FBI finds out you told anyone else about this conversation, the next guy who talks to you about Russian attempts to compromise people will be doing it in a small room in DC, and he won’t be buying you dinner.

“Now, I’m happy to answer any questions you have that I can, but you should know up-front that all I know about this is what I just told you. I’m just a friend of the FBI they asked to deliver the message. You can also tell me if you can think of anyone who you think may have been doing what I talked about—sniffing around for information or throwing women at you or suddenly showing interest—anything that made you suspicious. If you can think of anything like that, I’ll pass it on.”

What could possibly be less intrusive than that? A quiet conversation in a private setting with a friendly warning that people with bad intentions are probably weaseling their way into his orbit? That would truly be to his benefit, as opposed to trying to craftily pull information out of him, then leaving him no less vulnerable to Russian overtures than when he sat down at the table.

What Would Be More Effective If That Were the Goal?

The FBI and intelligence experts on cable news shows are telling us that a conversation such as what I’ve posited above would find its way onto the front page of The New York Times within hours: “The FBI is interviewing Trump campaign officials and warning them of attempts by Russian spies to infiltrate the campaign.” That’s the prevailing defense—that everyone would find out about it and the FBI was simply trying to avoid any possibility of their interest in Russian influence operations on Trump campaign members becoming a news story.

If the FBI wasn’t more interested in investigating the targets than they were in interdicting the threat, they’d have just warned the targets.

But it wouldn’t get out—not unless someone in the FBI or the campaign official revealed the details of the meeting to a third party. If the warning made its way into Russian communications and was picked up by our intelligence, there would then be valid reason to throw whatever surveillance resources we have at that campaign official, to include secret warrants and all that comes with it.

But it didn’t happen that way. If you set aside your political or ideological biases and rely purely on reason and sensibility to assess the issue, you can honestly ask yourself (and answer) this question: “Under the circumstances known to us regarding Halper’s mission, would the Russian threat be more effectively interdicted through direct and discrete warnings to the targeted individuals, or by relying on Halper’s elicitation skills and hoping he could surreptitiously gather the information necessary to identify and shut down the threat?”

It is currently unknown whether Halper’s conversations with the three Trump campaign officials provided any substantive input into the FBI’s understanding of the identities, tactics, intentions, or effectiveness of the Russian attempt to infiltrate the Trump campaign with spies, or to compromise campaign officials in an attempt to set them up for blackmail. It’s fair to say, though, that it’s unlikely.

It’s also fair to say that the FBI didn’t expect to learn anything of the sort from Halper, and the reason it’s fair to say that is because the answer to the question I posed above is patently obvious. If the FBI wasn’t more interested in investigating the targets than they were in interdicting the threat, they’d have just warned the targets.

What is known is that the FBI’s focus wasn’t on protecting the Trump campaign from the Russians. The FBI’s focus was to use any available resources to prove that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to illegally influence the election, as clearly laid out for them in a dossier provided by a man FBI director James Comey assured the Senate Intelligence Committee was a “reliable source.”

Pointing This Out Is Not Attacking the FBI

It’s not easy to write disparaging articles about the FBI. I’ve had the good fortune of working with them on occasion, and I’ve got nothing but respect and admiration for the agents I’ve worked with over the years. We often hear from Rep. Adam Schiff, Rep. Eric Swalwell, Rep. Ted Lieu, et al., that sentiments such as those I’ve expressed here are attacks on the institution of the FBI, designed to undermine the legitimacy and demean the good work of FBI agents who are simply doing their best to protect our country from a wide array of threats.

But they know as well as I do that none of this has anything to do with rank and file FBI agents, any more than a critique of President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq is a condemnation of the soldiers in the Third Mechanized Infantry Division. Imagine if every comment or criticism of the Iraq war met an immediate allegation that the critic was really attempting to demean and diminish of our armed forces. It’s a ridiculous argument, and anyone making it would be laughed out of the room.

Yet we allow Democratic politicians, pundits, and former intelligence officials to assign ulterior motive to valid criticism of the leadership of the FBI and the rest of U.S. intelligence, who’ve left us with more questions than answers regarding their actions during and immediately after the 2016 presidential campaign.

There are legitimate questions and concerns about the decisions they made, and the motivations that informed those decisions. The decision to use Halper as an informant instead of a messenger cannot possibly be considered a favor to the Trump campaign. It’s as insulting as it is ridiculous to assert as much.

This Only Makes Sense If the Target Was Trump

The only people who would have known that Halper delivered warnings to those campaign officials would be the FBI leadership, Halper, and the three who were warned. If those private conversations made their way into the press, it wouldn’t be difficult to determine where that information came from, and to take action against the leaker(s). If the actual goal was to identify and interdict Russian attempts to coopt members of the Trump campaign staff, there was no good reason, operationally, to do it the way they did.

If a campaign member was the target, keep him in the dark and try to get him to unwittingly implicate himself.

If the goal, however, was to elicit and assess information from an unwitting subject to determine that subject’s level of complicity in questionable, ongoing engagement with foreign agents, then using Halper as an informant was exactly what they should have done.

It’s simple: if the Russians were the target, inform and inoculate the campaign member. If a campaign member was the target, keep him in the dark and try to get him to unwittingly implicate himself. The fact that intelligence professionals with either a personal or ideological stake in this refuse to acknowledge the distinction between the two options is disturbing, and instructive. Playing dumb is generally not an indicator of confidence in one’s assertion.

Had the former intelligence leadership and FBI experts currently populating the cable news panels simply acknowledged that the campaign officials were under suspicion and considered targets at the time the decision was made to deploy Halper, we’d all be spared this foolish parsing and embarrassing displays of feigned ignorance. We wouldn’t have had to watch James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, tell the women of “The View” how uncomfortable he is with the word “spy.”

The ‘Spy’ Versus ‘Not Spy’ Debate Is a Sideshow

While we’re only at the initial stages of the information cycle on the Halper imbroglio, it’s already clear that both sides are digging in and preparing for battle. “He wasn’t spying on the Trump campaign, he was saving them from themselves” will become the default talking point across the media and left-wing political spectrum, and the Right will respond by quoting the definition of “spy.” None of it will be helpful.

Arguing the semantics of “spy” versus “Confidential Human Source” is a colossal waste of time and energy, and misses the point entirely, designedly so. At this point, as with much else in this year-long exposition of ideological combat disguised as “news,” the appropriate response to the “not a spy” talking point is also the only way any of these issues will ever be resolved: “Prove it.”

Link

I took all that heavy money in your wallet to make it easier for you to walk...I did you a favor.

You can thank me later.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Well, well, well...will you look at this!



(From Zero Hedge)

North Korea Comes Crawling Back: Stresses "Desperate Need" For Summit "Whenever, However"

It's hilarious watching the dems and the media attempting to spin this...

President Donald Trump gave a speech to the graduates of the Naval Academy Friday morning. Then, the president went a step further, offering to shake the hands of every single graduate — more than 1,000 midshipmen.

“I was given an option. I could make this commencement address, which is a great honor for me, and immediately leave and wave goodbye. Or I could stay and shake hands with just the top 100,” Trump said, “Or I could stay for hours and shake hands with 1,100 and something. What should I do? What should I do?”

Trump then shouted, “Stay! Ok, I’ll stay.”


http://dailycaller.com/2018/05...ademy-graduate-hand/

Wow, never thought I would see this happen!

https://www.washingtontimes.co...tm_content=newsalert

Trump revamps civil service rules, makes it easier to fire bad federal employees

President Trump has ordered a crackdown on poor performance and misbehavior within the ranks of the federal workforce, senior administration officials said Friday.

Mr. Trump signed a trio of executive orders that reform civil service rules by expediting termination for cause, revamping union contracts and limiting taxpayer-funded union work at agencies, said a senior administration official.

“Today the president is fulfilling his promise to promote more efficient government by reforming civil service rules,” said Andrew P. Bremberg, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.

He said the president was instituting “merit system principles.”

“These executive order will make it easier for agencies to remove poor-performing employees and make sure taxpayer dollars are more efficiently used,” Mr. Bremberg said.

A senior administration official said the move will promote efficiency and save taxpayer dollars, as well as create a better work environment for “thousands of employees who come to work each day and do a great job.”

Complaints about deadwood in federal agencies are nothing new. And the administration offered statistics to highlight the need for reforms:

• Office of Personnel Management data shows federal employees are 44 times less likely to be fired than a private sector worker once they’ve completed a probationary period.

• A recent Government Accountability Office report showed that it takes between six months and a year to remove a federal employee for poor performance, followed by an eight-month appeals process.

It is unfathomable how many hands a President shakes, between campaigning, holding office, etc.

I read that Calvin Coolidge shook hands with 2360 people at one function at the WH, in an hour and five minutes, a personal record.

I guess if you don‘t talk much, you can really run ‘em through the line.

video of President Trump saying "I'll stay"

http://dailycaller.com/2018/05...hands-naval-academy/

With all of the classified, redactions, stonewalling and lies coming out of the DOJ/FBI...why doesn't Trump take matters into his own hands? Why doesn't he go over to the DOJ/FBI, sit-down and start reviewing the documents in question? If he can do it, he should do it and if he doesn't do it, he and his team should shut up about it and let the deep state have their way. I think he owes it to our Country. Maybe he can't do what I'm suggesting, and if he can't, will somebody please tell me why? I mean, we're not talking about a crime, we're talking about a fucking hoax/silent coup being perpetrated against a duly elected President.

quote:

Originally posted by P229 357SIG Man:
With all of the classified, redactions, stonewalling and lies coming out of the DOJ/FBI...why doesn't Trump take matters into his own hands? Why doesn't he go over to the DOJ/FBI, sit-down and start reviewing the documents in question? If he can do it, he should do it and if he doesn't do it, he and his team should shut up about it and let the deep state have their way. I think he owes it to our Country. Maybe he can't do what I'm suggesting, and if he can't, will somebody please tell me why? I mean, we're not talking about a crime, we're talking about a fucking hoax/silent coup being perpetrated against a duly elected President.

Some things a President is better off not knowing in detail. Plausible deniability and all that.

Moreover, it serves no purpose. He can’t tell the Congressmen whose duty it is to oversee this department, unless he is willing to declassify it.

That might be dangerous. What happens if the Congressmen are captured and tortured, by CNN, or WaPo, or other terrorists?

quote:

Originally posted by olfuzzy:
President Donald Trump gave a speech to the graduates of the Naval Academy Friday morning. Then, the president went a step further, offering to shake the hands of every single graduate — more than 1,000 midshipmen.

“I was given an option. I could make this commencement address, which is a great honor for me, and immediately leave and wave goodbye. Or I could stay and shake hands with just the top 100,” Trump said, “Or I could stay for hours and shake hands with 1,100 and something. What should I do? What should I do?”

Trump then shouted, “Stay! Ok, I’ll stay.”


http://dailycaller.com/2018/05...ademy-graduate-hand/

Pretty cool - Ronald Reagan did the same thing for my graduation at USNA 33 years ago. Having the President hand you your diploma and commission is something you never forget.

Trump is a bit of a germophobe and not a big handshaker type, so that makes what he did even more significant.