DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
How Jared Kushner And The Trump Admin Traded U.S. Foreign Policy For $2 Billion
Examples of GOP Leadership
- Thread starter injinji
- Start date
Budzbuddha
Well-Known Member
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
This is yuuuge.
Budzbuddha
Well-Known Member
printer
Well-Known Member
BS. He did not get $2B. It even says, the managment fees were way too high. So he only got a cut od $2B. But when Trump was in office and son in law getting to be the head of so many files, we knew it was not because he was the most qualified person for the job. We knew he was there for the money.
printer
Well-Known Member
"It was only one time they ransacked the Capital. It is not like it was that big a deal."
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
you guys don't look at past posts very much, do you? this whole page was pretty much posted yesterday...
DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
They is tak'en over! 
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www.theatlantic.com
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Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
It’s not just a phase.
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
a huge difference could be made by musk and bezos, simply by removing the retweet and like/dislike buttons from social media platforms...that would end at least half of the problems social media causes the world in a matter of months.They is tak'en over!
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Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
It’s not just a phase.
of course, it would probably cut their income from those platforms by about half, so you can forget that, they want more money, even though both of them have so much money now they won't be able to spend it on anything normal in this lifetime. ever wonder why musk is so interested in space? because he's running out of things to spend money on on earth
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/11/opinions/mitch-mcconell-scotus-williams/index.html
time to reign in that turkey wattled fuck. i say make the supreme court a 50 member body, with one justice from each state, and one justice from d.c. to break votes...like to see that fucking vulture manipulate that
time to reign in that turkey wattled fuck. i say make the supreme court a 50 member body, with one justice from each state, and one justice from d.c. to break votes...like to see that fucking vulture manipulate that
DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
If Musk wants to go to Mars, I have no issue as long as he is on the first ship out. I figure by the time they get there they should be pretty well cooked with radiation and if they have covid aboard, they should be drooling idiots by the time they get there and the computer will have to land the ship on their graveyard. Ya might as well spend the same amount of time camping in the radioactive Red forest.
DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
One reason Donald is still running around loose. He is screwing republican candidates left and right and if he's on trial on TV in Georgia being humiliated by republicans testifying against him on TV, he will surely flip out completely.
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Are Republicans about to blow a Senate seat?
It should be easy to elect a Republican in Missouri, but former governor and now Senate candidate Eric Greitens is throwing a wrench in things. In today’s episode of The Point, CNN’s Chris Cillizza explains why Greitens’ controversial past may help a Democrat win.
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Are Republicans about to blow a Senate seat?
It should be easy to elect a Republican in Missouri, but former governor and now Senate candidate Eric Greitens is throwing a wrench in things. In today’s episode of The Point, CNN’s Chris Cillizza explains why Greitens’ controversial past may help a Democrat win.
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cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
In the last two centuries, the great fortunes of the day, at least in North America, were to be had by expanding and then controlling a frontier. Think rail and oil.
Musk has designs on the final frontier. It could make him a legitimate trillionaire with a solid talon in the high ground. And possibly the autocrat of the first national entity off-planet. Big dreams.
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
when i think of musk in space, i think of Vilos Cohaagen from total recall, a ruthless tyrant who controls the very air citizens breath...which is why i have been, am, and probably always will be against public involvement in the space program. no one with enough money to make it happen is trustworthy in my opinion. musk can't run his own company with out multiple, still recurring problems with sexism and racism...he certainly isn't stable enough to administer a colony of real people on earth, mars, the moon, or anywhere he can likely get to
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
I think that cat is out of the bag. Public space is happening hand over fist. Should Elon go full Colhaagen, there’s always Space Force. And (shades of the Caribbean) I would not be surprised if national entities discreetly field privateers.
That said, I don’t like Starship much. It can barely haul its fat ass into low earth orbit, and would need perhaps a dozen tanker runs to go to cislunar or deep space. A big problem is that Super Heavy is estimated to quit at about 2.7 km/s realized in order to have recovery propellant, which puts a 5.3 km/s burden on Starship (plus maybe 150 tons payload) to achieve LEO. To go anywhere rom there, there is a “multiple Starship tanker runs” need to replace Starship’s propellant. That should give it enough propellant to do the Moon and Mars.
For Mars, mission planners would be wise to launch two Starships and tie their noses together with a mile of tether and spin them. The “gravity” will make for a healthier happier crew. No more two hours a day strapped to a treadmill.
Unclebaldrick
Well-Known Member
‘This Was Trump Pulling a Putin’
Amid the current crisis, Fiona Hill and other former advisers are connecting President Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine to Jan. 6. And they’re ready to talk.
"This Was Trump Pulling a Putin"
Fiona Hill vividly recalls the first time she stepped into the Oval Office to discuss the thorny subject of Ukraine with the president. It was February of 2008, the last year of George W. Bush’s administration. Hill, then the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia for the National Intelligence Council, was summoned for a strategy session on the upcoming NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania. Among the matters up for discussion was the possibility of Ukraine and another former Soviet state, Georgia, beginning the process of obtaining NATO membership.
In the Oval Office, Hill recalls, describing a scene that has not been previously reported, she told Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that offering a membership path to Ukraine and Georgia could be problematic. While Bush’s appetite for promoting the spread of democracy had not been dampened by the Iraq war, President Vladimir Putin of Russia viewed NATO with suspicion and was vehemently opposed to neighboring countries joining its ranks. He would regard it as a provocation, which was one reason the United States’ key NATO allies opposed the idea. Cheney took umbrage at Hill’s assessment. “So, you’re telling me you’re opposed to freedom and democracy,” she says he snapped. According to Hill, he abruptly gathered his materials and walked out of the Oval Office.
“He’s just yanking your chain,” she remembers Bush telling her. “Go on with what you were saying.” But the president seemed confident that he could win over the other NATO leaders, saying, “I like it when diplomacy is tough.” Ignoring the advice of Hill and the U.S. intelligence community, Bush announced in Bucharest that “NATO should welcome Georgia and Ukraine into the Membership Action Plan.” Hill’s prediction came true: Several other leaders at the summit objected to Bush’s recommendation. NATO ultimately issued a compromise declaration that would prove unsatisfying to nearly everyone, stating that the two countries “will become members” without specifying how and when they would do so — and still in defiance of Putin’s wishes. (They still have not become members.)
“It was the worst of all possible worlds,” Hill said to me in her austere English accent as she recalled the episode over lunch this March. As one of the foremost experts on Putin and a current unofficial adviser to the Biden administration on the Russia-Ukraine war, Hill, 56, has already made a specialty of issuing warnings about the Russian leader that have gone unheeded by American presidents. As she feared, the carrot dangled by Bush to two countries — each of which gained independence in the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and afterward espoused democratic ambitions — did not sit well with Putin. Four months after the 2008 NATO summit, Russian troops crossed the border and launched an attack on the South Ossetia region of Georgia. Though the war lasted only five days, a Russian military presence would continue in nearly 20 percent of Georgia’s territory. And after the West’s weak pushback against his aggression, Putin then set his sights on Ukraine — a sovereign nation that, Putin claimed to Bush at the Bucharest summit, “is not a country.”
Hill would stay on in the same role in the Obama administration for close to a year. Obama’s handling of Putin did not always strike her as judicious. When Chuck Todd of NBC asked Obama at a news conference in 2013 about his working relationship with Putin, Obama replied, “He’s got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom.” Hill told me that she “winced” when she heard his remark, and when Obama responded to Putin’s invasion and annexation of the Ukrainian region Crimea a year later by referring to Russia as “a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness,” she winced again. “We said openly, ‘Don’t dis the guy — he’s thin-skinned and quick to take insults,’” Hill said of this counsel to Obama about Putin. “He either didn’t understand the man or willfully ignored the advice.”
Hill was sharing these accounts at an Indian restaurant in Colorado, where she had selected some of the least spicy items on the menu, reminding me, “I’m still English,” though she is a naturalized U.S. citizen. The restaurant was a few blocks from the University of Denver campus, where Hill had just given a talk about Russia and Ukraine, one of several she would give that week.
Her descriptions of Russia’s president to her audience that morning — “living in his own bubble”; “a germaphobe”; “a shoot-the-messenger kind of person” — were both penetrating and eerily reminiscent of another domineering leader she came to know while serving as the National Security Council’s senior director of Russian and European affairs from April 2017 to July 2019. Though it stood to reason that a Putinologist of Fiona Hill’s renown would be much in demand after the invasion of Ukraine this February, it surprised me that her tenure in the Trump administration almost never came up in these discussions.
The Colorado events were part of a book tour that was scheduled long before the Russian attack. Her memoir, “There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century,” traces the journey of a literal coal miner’s daughter from working-class England to the White House. But it covers a period that can be understood as a prelude to the current conflict — Hill was present for the initial phase of Trump’s scheme to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who was elected in 2019, by withholding military aid in exchange for political favors. It is also an insider’s look at a chaotic, reckless and at times antidemocratic chief executive. (In response to queries for this article, Trump said of Hill: “She doesn’t know the first thing she’s talking about. If she didn’t have the accent she would be nothing.”)
Her assessment of the former president has new resonance in the current moment: “In the course of his presidency, indeed, Trump would come more to resemble Putin in political practice and predilection than he resembled any of his recent American presidential predecessors.”
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Continued...
Amid the current crisis, Fiona Hill and other former advisers are connecting President Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine to Jan. 6. And they’re ready to talk.
"This Was Trump Pulling a Putin"
Fiona Hill vividly recalls the first time she stepped into the Oval Office to discuss the thorny subject of Ukraine with the president. It was February of 2008, the last year of George W. Bush’s administration. Hill, then the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia for the National Intelligence Council, was summoned for a strategy session on the upcoming NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania. Among the matters up for discussion was the possibility of Ukraine and another former Soviet state, Georgia, beginning the process of obtaining NATO membership.
In the Oval Office, Hill recalls, describing a scene that has not been previously reported, she told Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that offering a membership path to Ukraine and Georgia could be problematic. While Bush’s appetite for promoting the spread of democracy had not been dampened by the Iraq war, President Vladimir Putin of Russia viewed NATO with suspicion and was vehemently opposed to neighboring countries joining its ranks. He would regard it as a provocation, which was one reason the United States’ key NATO allies opposed the idea. Cheney took umbrage at Hill’s assessment. “So, you’re telling me you’re opposed to freedom and democracy,” she says he snapped. According to Hill, he abruptly gathered his materials and walked out of the Oval Office.
“He’s just yanking your chain,” she remembers Bush telling her. “Go on with what you were saying.” But the president seemed confident that he could win over the other NATO leaders, saying, “I like it when diplomacy is tough.” Ignoring the advice of Hill and the U.S. intelligence community, Bush announced in Bucharest that “NATO should welcome Georgia and Ukraine into the Membership Action Plan.” Hill’s prediction came true: Several other leaders at the summit objected to Bush’s recommendation. NATO ultimately issued a compromise declaration that would prove unsatisfying to nearly everyone, stating that the two countries “will become members” without specifying how and when they would do so — and still in defiance of Putin’s wishes. (They still have not become members.)
“It was the worst of all possible worlds,” Hill said to me in her austere English accent as she recalled the episode over lunch this March. As one of the foremost experts on Putin and a current unofficial adviser to the Biden administration on the Russia-Ukraine war, Hill, 56, has already made a specialty of issuing warnings about the Russian leader that have gone unheeded by American presidents. As she feared, the carrot dangled by Bush to two countries — each of which gained independence in the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and afterward espoused democratic ambitions — did not sit well with Putin. Four months after the 2008 NATO summit, Russian troops crossed the border and launched an attack on the South Ossetia region of Georgia. Though the war lasted only five days, a Russian military presence would continue in nearly 20 percent of Georgia’s territory. And after the West’s weak pushback against his aggression, Putin then set his sights on Ukraine — a sovereign nation that, Putin claimed to Bush at the Bucharest summit, “is not a country.”
Hill would stay on in the same role in the Obama administration for close to a year. Obama’s handling of Putin did not always strike her as judicious. When Chuck Todd of NBC asked Obama at a news conference in 2013 about his working relationship with Putin, Obama replied, “He’s got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom.” Hill told me that she “winced” when she heard his remark, and when Obama responded to Putin’s invasion and annexation of the Ukrainian region Crimea a year later by referring to Russia as “a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness,” she winced again. “We said openly, ‘Don’t dis the guy — he’s thin-skinned and quick to take insults,’” Hill said of this counsel to Obama about Putin. “He either didn’t understand the man or willfully ignored the advice.”
Hill was sharing these accounts at an Indian restaurant in Colorado, where she had selected some of the least spicy items on the menu, reminding me, “I’m still English,” though she is a naturalized U.S. citizen. The restaurant was a few blocks from the University of Denver campus, where Hill had just given a talk about Russia and Ukraine, one of several she would give that week.
Her descriptions of Russia’s president to her audience that morning — “living in his own bubble”; “a germaphobe”; “a shoot-the-messenger kind of person” — were both penetrating and eerily reminiscent of another domineering leader she came to know while serving as the National Security Council’s senior director of Russian and European affairs from April 2017 to July 2019. Though it stood to reason that a Putinologist of Fiona Hill’s renown would be much in demand after the invasion of Ukraine this February, it surprised me that her tenure in the Trump administration almost never came up in these discussions.
The Colorado events were part of a book tour that was scheduled long before the Russian attack. Her memoir, “There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century,” traces the journey of a literal coal miner’s daughter from working-class England to the White House. But it covers a period that can be understood as a prelude to the current conflict — Hill was present for the initial phase of Trump’s scheme to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who was elected in 2019, by withholding military aid in exchange for political favors. It is also an insider’s look at a chaotic, reckless and at times antidemocratic chief executive. (In response to queries for this article, Trump said of Hill: “She doesn’t know the first thing she’s talking about. If she didn’t have the accent she would be nothing.”)
Her assessment of the former president has new resonance in the current moment: “In the course of his presidency, indeed, Trump would come more to resemble Putin in political practice and predilection than he resembled any of his recent American presidential predecessors.”
Image
Continued...
Unclebaldrick
Well-Known Member
Sorry, I got on the phone for a while.
Its a long article full of unbelievable Trumpisms. Read it if you can. It would take four or five posts to copy it here.
Its a long article full of unbelievable Trumpisms. Read it if you can. It would take four or five posts to copy it here.
Perhaps he should invest in the world we have instead of an adult Disney ride?..that goes for all- Bezos you can't even get your software to bill me correctly for Amazon Prime.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
Blue Origin has some innovative tech. They seem to be choosing elegance where Musk is building almost a steam locomotive. But Musk’s aggressive development program is yielding results. The first Starship stack is flight-ready, but the FAA is seriously dragging its heels on the site environmental assessment. Third delay to April 29, until the next delay that is.