dino, why respond to the worst trolls on this site? The thread starts to look like the comments section at Yahoo! when you do that. Please block these dopes and be done with them.

Interesting read here, New Yorker editor David Remnick interviewing Al Franken.

remnick: When you talk with your Republican colleagues about President Trump, and the White House staff, and the rhetoric that we hear both on Twitter and from the lectern and all the rest, from the Trump White House, what do they say? Not what they say in press conferences, in the hallways, with microphones in their faces. Are they in despair?

franken: There’s various emotions. My friends on the Republican side are scared of the Trump Administration, I would say. And I would say they’re put in a terrible bind, because most of—a large percentage of—Trump’s base has stuck with him, and that’s their base, to a great extent. And so, if they say in public the things they say to me, they would worry about being primaried. They obviously don’t say publicly what some of them think privately.

remnick: What are their red lines—in terms of policy, in terms of behavior? At what point do they say, you know what, I don’t care if I get reëlected again—I have to stand up?

franken: Well, that’s a really good question, because there’s a good chance we’re going to see that. I mean, if he fires Sessions, or moves him over to Homeland Security, then, you know—and, obviously, this idea of a recess appointment, and if the recess appointment fires [Robert] Mueller—I think that would be the line. It would be interesting to see if that’s the line, and for how many of them it’s the line.

remnick: Do you think it would be the line for the Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell?

franken: I think he would count.

remnick: Meaning, he would assess the room before he took his position.

franken: Yep.

remnick: So, not a profile in courage.

remnick: Clearly, Donald Trump, on some level, has talent, performative talent, at the microphone. He appeals to people in a way that reaches their gut and their funny bone, even, whether you like it or not. And as somebody who’s spent so much time in comedy, and in front of the camera, and writing for “Saturday Night Live,” does he remind you of anybody? Is he an Andrew Dice Clay figure? How would you assess his comedic talent?

franken: I don’t personally think that he’s—I kind of thought he had a sense of humor at one point, early on. And, you know, during the campaign, I actually talked to Huma [Abedin] and Hillary at one stop, and they said when he’s on they watch him, because it makes them laugh. But I’m not sure that was the kind of laugh that he was going for. I guess he makes his audience laugh. But I’ve noticed something, and I still haven’t seen it happen—I’ve never seen him laugh.

remnick: Certainly not at himself.

franken: Well, just, never seen him laugh.

remnick: Period.

franken: Yeah. He’s like some fairly tale, you know, where if someone can get the king to laugh, they’ll get half the fortune and the daughter, or something.

remnick: [Laughs.]

franken: I mean, I’ve not. Seen. Him. Laugh.

I can see why pets bring no joy to him either. His heart and soul are cold and dead.

He buys a lot of gold-plated stuff, bathroom fixtures and airplane seatbelts and the like. It's tacky and stupid but I guess it brings him joy.

Why Is Donald Trump Still So Horribly Witless About the World?

Max Boot, a lifelong conservative who advised three Republican Presidential candidates on foreign policy, keeps a folder labelled “Trump Stupidity File” on his computer. It’s next to his “Trump Lies” file. “Not sure which is larger at this point,” he told me this week. “It’s neck-and-neck.”

Six months into the Trump era, foreign-policy officials from eight past Administrations told me they are aghast that the President is still so witless about the world. “He seems as clueless today as he was on January 20th,” Boot, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said. Trump’s painful public gaffes, they warn, indicate that he’s not reading, retaining, or listening to his Presidential briefings. And the newbie excuse no longer flies.

“Trump has an appalling ignorance of the current world, of history, of previous American engagement, of what former Presidents thought and did,” Geoffrey Kemp, who worked at the Pentagon during the Ford Administration and at the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration, reflected. “He has an almost studious rejection of the type of in-depth knowledge that virtually all of his predecessors eventually gained or had views on.”

I asked top Republican and intelligence officials from eight Administrations what they thought was the one thing the President needs to grasp to succeed on the world stage. Their various replies: embrace the fact that the Russians are not America’s friends. Don’t further alienate the Europeans, who are our friends. Encourage human rights—a founding principle of American identity—and don’t make priority visits to governments that curtail them, such as Poland and Saudi Arabia. Understand that North Korea’s nuclear program can’t be outsourced to China, which can’t or won’t singlehandedly fix the problem anyway, and realize that military options are limited. Pulling out of innovative trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, will boost China’s economy and secure its global influence—to America’s disadvantage. Stop bullying his counterparts. And put the Russia case behind him by coöperating with the investigation rather than trying to discredit it.

Trump’s latest blunder was made during an appearance in the Rose Garden with Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, on July 25th. “Lebanon is on the front lines in the fight against isis, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah,” Trump pronounced. He got the basics really wrong. Hezbollah is actually part of the Lebanese government—and has been for a quarter century—with seats in parliament and Cabinet posts. Lebanon’s Christian President, Michel Aoun, has been allied with Hezbollah for a decade. As Trump spoke, Hezbollah’s militia and the Lebanese Army were fighting isis and an Al Qaeda affiliate occupying a chunk of eastern Lebanon along its border with Syria. They won.

The list of other Trump blunders is long. In March, he charged that Germany owed “vast sums” to the United States for nato. It doesn’t. No nato member pays the United States—and never has—so none is in arrears. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, in April, Trump claimed that Korea “actually used to be part of China.” Not true. After he arrived in Israel from Saudi Arabia, in May, Trump said that he had just come from the Middle East. (Did he even look at a map?) During his trip to France, in July, the President confused Napoleon Bonaparte, the diminutive emperor who invaded Russia and Egypt, with Napoleon III, who was France’s first popularly elected President, oversaw the design of modern Paris, and is still the longest-serving head of state since the French Revolution (albeit partly as an emperor, too). And that’s before delving into his demeaning tweets about other world leaders and flashpoints.

“The sheer scale of his lack of knowledge is what has astounded me—and I had low expectations to begin with,” David Gordon, the director of the State Department’s policy-planning staff under Condoleezza Rice, during the Bush Administration, told me.

Republican critics are divided on whether Trump can grow into the job. “Trump is completely irredeemable,” Eliot A. Cohen, who was counselor to Condoleezza Rice at the State Department, told me. “He has a feral instinct for self-survival, but he’s unteachable. The ban on Muslims coming into the country and building a wall, and having the Mexicans pay for it, that was all you needed to know about this guy on foreign affairs. This is a man who is idiotic and bigoted and ignorant of the law.” Cohen was a ringleader of an open letter warning, during the campaign, that Trump’s foreign policy was “wildly inconsistent and unmoored.”

But other Republicans from earlier Administrations still hold out hope. “Whenever Trump begins to learn about an issue—the Middle East conflict or North Korea—he expresses such surprise that it could be so complicated, after saying it wasn’t that difficult,” Gordon, from the Bush Administration, said. “The good news, when he says that, is it means he has a little bit of knowledge.” So far, however, the learning curve has been pitifully—and dangerously—slow.

Posted by crazystengel on 8/5/2017 12:30:00 PM (view original):
dino, why respond to the worst trolls on this site? The thread starts to look like the comments section at Yahoo! when you do that. Please block these dopes and be done with them.

Interesting read here, New Yorker editor David Remnick interviewing Al Franken.

remnick: When you talk with your Republican colleagues about President Trump, and the White House staff, and the rhetoric that we hear both on Twitter and from the lectern and all the rest, from the Trump White House, what do they say? Not what they say in press conferences, in the hallways, with microphones in their faces. Are they in despair?

franken: There’s various emotions. My friends on the Republican side are scared of the Trump Administration, I would say. And I would say they’re put in a terrible bind, because most of—a large percentage of—Trump’s base has stuck with him, and that’s their base, to a great extent. And so, if they say in public the things they say to me, they would worry about being primaried. They obviously don’t say publicly what some of them think privately.

remnick: What are their red lines—in terms of policy, in terms of behavior? At what point do they say, you know what, I don’t care if I get reëlected again—I have to stand up?

franken: Well, that’s a really good question, because there’s a good chance we’re going to see that. I mean, if he fires Sessions, or moves him over to Homeland Security, then, you know—and, obviously, this idea of a recess appointment, and if the recess appointment fires [Robert] Mueller—I think that would be the line. It would be interesting to see if that’s the line, and for how many of them it’s the line.

remnick: Do you think it would be the line for the Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell?

franken: I think he would count.

remnick: Meaning, he would assess the room before he took his position.

franken: Yep.

remnick: So, not a profile in courage.

remnick: Clearly, Donald Trump, on some level, has talent, performative talent, at the microphone. He appeals to people in a way that reaches their gut and their funny bone, even, whether you like it or not. And as somebody who’s spent so much time in comedy, and in front of the camera, and writing for “Saturday Night Live,” does he remind you of anybody? Is he an Andrew Dice Clay figure? How would you assess his comedic talent?

franken: I don’t personally think that he’s—I kind of thought he had a sense of humor at one point, early on. And, you know, during the campaign, I actually talked to Huma [Abedin] and Hillary at one stop, and they said when he’s on they watch him, because it makes them laugh. But I’m not sure that was the kind of laugh that he was going for. I guess he makes his audience laugh. But I’ve noticed something, and I still haven’t seen it happen—I’ve never seen him laugh.

remnick: Certainly not at himself.

franken: Well, just, never seen him laugh.

remnick: Period.

franken: Yeah. He’s like some fairly tale, you know, where if someone can get the king to laugh, they’ll get half the fortune and the daughter, or something.

remnick: [Laughs.]

franken: I mean, I’ve not. Seen. Him. Laugh.

This thread sure has gone to hell. Look at this post. CRAZY.

Please click on the word HERE highlighted on the top of the page in blue lettering. You'll notice in the introduction to the Franken piece, a reference to his narrow victory in his senate election. More on that later.

We all remember Al Franken as one of the weakest members of the Saturday Night Live crew. Failure in his effort to start a progressive radio empire ending up in his stealing the Boy Scouts money and putting it in his own pocket. That was all before he stole the election for senate. But who is David Remnick?

He's a Princeton grad who got a job with the FAKE NEWS Washington Post. His job? Writing puff pieces for the metro and style sections. He also did some sports, and before you ask "how can a sports guy" do politics, let us not forget Keith Olbermann and MSNBC. In fact, ESPN is a repository of rejected liberal castoffs.

Today Remnick is the editor of the liberal FAKE NEWS New Yorker. What was his big break? EASY. Just print hate articles and lies about conservatives and Republicans. Works everytime it's tried.

This guy won a Pulitzer Prize for writing a book called LENINS TOMB....a book about the fall of the Soviet Union. Now you may ask yourself, "What was so great" about this book? Well...it was brilliant, in an evil sort of way, in that it was the first book to explain the demise of the Soviet Empire by ignoring Ronald Reagan and Conservative foreign policy. According to Remnick, it was the brilliance and liberalism and strength under fire of Mikhail Gorbachev, with a little help from the ignorant masses, that defeated communism.

Up to this point, it was well known and understood that it was Reagan and conservative policy that had brought the Soviets to their knees. TEAR DOWN THIS WALL. Anyways, Remnick gave the liberals their first excuse to ignore the truth and rewrite history. Again. You get rewarded for that in Liberalville.

As for the introduction to Franken and the 300 odd votes he "WON" the election by......you would do well to remember that was a recount. He stole the election. It didn't work for Gore, but the libs never give up. They will never stop stealing, cheating, lying and pretending.

I have much more to say about Remnick and his writings but choose to defer at this point. I would also like to point out the author of this post was clueless as to Mr. Remnicks history or qualifications. He posts what's agreeable to him. Nothing else is worthy or acceptable. And on that note, I will enter my lone agreement as to position with Mr. CRAZY.

He does help to make this thread look akin to the comments section at Yahoo. We can only hope for better efforts from him in the future.

Posted by crazystengel on 8/5/2017 1:04:00 PM (view original):
Why Is Donald Trump Still So Horribly Witless About the World?

Max Boot, a lifelong conservative who advised three Republican Presidential candidates on foreign policy, keeps a folder labelled “Trump Stupidity File” on his computer. It’s next to his “Trump Lies” file. “Not sure which is larger at this point,” he told me this week. “It’s neck-and-neck.”

Six months into the Trump era, foreign-policy officials from eight past Administrations told me they are aghast that the President is still so witless about the world. “He seems as clueless today as he was on January 20th,” Boot, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said. Trump’s painful public gaffes, they warn, indicate that he’s not reading, retaining, or listening to his Presidential briefings. And the newbie excuse no longer flies.

“Trump has an appalling ignorance of the current world, of history, of previous American engagement, of what former Presidents thought and did,” Geoffrey Kemp, who worked at the Pentagon during the Ford Administration and at the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration, reflected. “He has an almost studious rejection of the type of in-depth knowledge that virtually all of his predecessors eventually gained or had views on.”

I asked top Republican and intelligence officials from eight Administrations what they thought was the one thing the President needs to grasp to succeed on the world stage. Their various replies: embrace the fact that the Russians are not America’s friends. Don’t further alienate the Europeans, who are our friends. Encourage human rights—a founding principle of American identity—and don’t make priority visits to governments that curtail them, such as Poland and Saudi Arabia. Understand that North Korea’s nuclear program can’t be outsourced to China, which can’t or won’t singlehandedly fix the problem anyway, and realize that military options are limited. Pulling out of innovative trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, will boost China’s economy and secure its global influence—to America’s disadvantage. Stop bullying his counterparts. And put the Russia case behind him by coöperating with the investigation rather than trying to discredit it.

Trump’s latest blunder was made during an appearance in the Rose Garden with Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, on July 25th. “Lebanon is on the front lines in the fight against isis, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah,” Trump pronounced. He got the basics really wrong. Hezbollah is actually part of the Lebanese government—and has been for a quarter century—with seats in parliament and Cabinet posts. Lebanon’s Christian President, Michel Aoun, has been allied with Hezbollah for a decade. As Trump spoke, Hezbollah’s militia and the Lebanese Army were fighting isis and an Al Qaeda affiliate occupying a chunk of eastern Lebanon along its border with Syria. They won.

The list of other Trump blunders is long. In March, he charged that Germany owed “vast sums” to the United States for nato. It doesn’t. No nato member pays the United States—and never has—so none is in arrears. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, in April, Trump claimed that Korea “actually used to be part of China.” Not true. After he arrived in Israel from Saudi Arabia, in May, Trump said that he had just come from the Middle East. (Did he even look at a map?) During his trip to France, in July, the President confused Napoleon Bonaparte, the diminutive emperor who invaded Russia and Egypt, with Napoleon III, who was France’s first popularly elected President, oversaw the design of modern Paris, and is still the longest-serving head of state since the French Revolution (albeit partly as an emperor, too). And that’s before delving into his demeaning tweets about other world leaders and flashpoints.

“The sheer scale of his lack of knowledge is what has astounded me—and I had low expectations to begin with,” David Gordon, the director of the State Department’s policy-planning staff under Condoleezza Rice, during the Bush Administration, told me.

Republican critics are divided on whether Trump can grow into the job. “Trump is completely irredeemable,” Eliot A. Cohen, who was counselor to Condoleezza Rice at the State Department, told me. “He has a feral instinct for self-survival, but he’s unteachable. The ban on Muslims coming into the country and building a wall, and having the Mexicans pay for it, that was all you needed to know about this guy on foreign affairs. This is a man who is idiotic and bigoted and ignorant of the law.” Cohen was a ringleader of an open letter warning, during the campaign, that Trump’s foreign policy was “wildly inconsistent and unmoored.”

But other Republicans from earlier Administrations still hold out hope. “Whenever Trump begins to learn about an issue—the Middle East conflict or North Korea—he expresses such surprise that it could be so complicated, after saying it wasn’t that difficult,” Gordon, from the Bush Administration, said. “The good news, when he says that, is it means he has a little bit of knowledge.” So far, however, the learning curve has been pitifully—and dangerously—slow.

This thread sure has gone to hell.

Posted by crazystengel on 8/4/2017 4:18:00 PM (view original):
Actual current Newsweek cover:

I LOVE THIS ONE! THIS IS GREAT!

Can anyone see anything wrong with this picture? No? OK. I'll explain it.

The libs, including all the media, like Newsweek, are accusing TRUMP of being slow or lazy. BRILLIANT!

The answer was given to you on February 18, less than a month into his presidency. Where was it and what did he say? I'm not telling.

I want you to believe FAKE NEWS while I sit back and marvel at TRUMPS BRILLIANCE!

Now it is true that the democrats are being nothing but obstructionists and that did slow the process earlier on, but those positions have been filled.And it is true he has gotten very little legislation passed. Through Congress. That's not why positions aren't being filled.

So I see a WIN in legislation and a WIN in appointments to government positions and jobs. LAZY?

Fox "News" or Fox "Nudes". Perv Central.

Eric Bolling who used to mock Anthony Wiener, was sending out his junk too.

Big Dump Apologist also.

Posted by crazystengel on 8/5/2017 6:54:00 PM (view original):
Lot of job openings at Fox News lately...

A lot at ESPN too!!

"I'm no Fox News fan, but.................."

Fake News?