LFRAgain comments

OR they can take the initiative to change their laws and social economic status and how to uplift their people, provide better jobs, living conditions, better opportunities and build a better social net instead of shrugging their shoulders and telling people if they have hardships, go North.

Ahhh! So THAT'S the secret! Just change things. Just make them better. If only we had YOU in the brain trust that attempted to rebuild Iraq. My god, it's just so SIMPLE!

(end sarcasm...)

OR Mexico could do precisely what it's suggesting by refusing to play along with the whinging irrational paranoia and ignorance of "red-blooded" 'Muricans whose immediate go-to when they can't face up to their own inadequacies and failures in life is to lay blame on darker-skinned immigrants. In yet another example of the hypocrisy that riddles conservative thought in America like a cancer is this sudden inability to pull themselves up by the very same bootstraps they insisted poor Americans do since the 80s.

Trump is effectively threatening the livelihood of all Mexicans with a trade war that no one can win. Mexico can and absolutely SHOULD push back at Trump's shakedown tactics and stop interdiction activities at the border, stop El Salvadoran gang members from using Mexico as a transit route for their activities, and make no effort whatsoever to serve as the physical buffer it has been for America for the better part of a century from much of the political chaos that is Central America, chaos created largely by the United States, BTW.

Trump praises America's enemies and makes war on its friends -- yet another example of how utterly unfit be is to lead this country. He's only a few short press conferences and tweets from treason. It's only a matter of time.

Sovereignty in modern times means some level of control as to who is entering the country.

Please. Save your nationalistic Team America™ pap for a crowd more easily duped. America suffers no loss of sovereignty with an influx of immigrants, legal or otherwise. Your vision of "sovereignty" is a noxious concoction of one part misinformed machisimo and five parts wetting-your-big-boy-pants-because-the-world-around-you-is-so-complicated fear.

FYI, illegal immigration has been on a steady decline in the US for well over a decade. Oh, snap! Didn't know that? Hmph... I'm not the least bit surprised.

Get educated. Learn a bit about how complex systems work and how distilling the immigration "issue" (coff! coff!) into something so trite and infantile as a "sovereignty" issue really makes very little sense against the backdrop of how much immigrants actually drive our economy.

.

There is nothing to resist. The election was held, and the left lost.

And that's where YOU just do get it (to borrow a common refrain from Trump supporters). You keep treating the election like it was simply a football game and that we can all just get back to the office on Monday morning, but at the end of the day -- at the end of every day that narcicistic man-occupies the Oval Office, Donald J. Trump is a man who likes to grab unconsenting women by the "pussy" because he believes his wealth allows it.

He's a contemptible piece of s#$t. I know it. You know it. And most of America knows it as well.

We aren't going away, sparky.

And this guy is a diplomat?

He's not exactly a diplomat. As the article points out, he's the deputy director general of the Department of Intellectual Property in Thailand.

The hotel could have just added the paintings to the ministers hotel bill.

Your suggestion of an "international incident " being reason enough to avoid reporting the man feeds into the horrific idea that elected officials are somehow above the rest of us, and therefore held to different rules. Not so. Theft is still theft

This is just like arresting old people for theft The candy bar or whatever knick knack can be written off. Instead the old senile person is put through the wringer. and jailed....

When the article used the phrase "senior official," it wasn't to suggest the man was elderly. He's a "senior" official as in "high ranking." And therefor most certainly under greater scrutiny than a person shoplifting a candy bar. Besides, I don't know of any 15,000 yen candy bars.

As for simply "writing off" the theft, you don't own a business, nor have you ever managed one, have you? The cost of theft inevitably gets passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. I'm not okay with that.

Yes the minister was wrong and he will have to pay.....

Just as he should with a criminal conviction. He's not special, nor should he be treated as such for such a flagrant and brazen act of theft.

Fair points about windows aside, I think perhaps some of you are confusing net zero energy, i.e., energy self-sufficiency, with zero carbon fooprint. While not exclusively independent of one another, the thrust of Sekisui House's ZEH condo isn't about reducing CO2 emissions. It's about lowering overall electricity bills and reliance on the traditional power grid.

This was Mike Pence's doing, absolutely. Trump hasn't an original thought in his muddled orange head.

“What it shows is we have a liberal press that is continuing to play into the Democrat playbook, which is in this case anything they can do to delegitimize the election of this presidency and try to put a damper on those of us who are ecstatic at his election,” said Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y.

No, what it does, you amoral, opportunistic piece of waste, is delegitimize the free press, the bedrock of our republic, and mainstream the kind of corrosive political propaganda machine one would expect from a totalitarian regime, right alongside nationalist, racist bile.

The worm will turn, spineless GOP. Mark my words.

Americans who feel that they've been let down by the system have a very legitimate complaint. But it was ubndantly clear over a year ago to well over half of America that Trump was most certainly not the man to bring that relief. After all, how useful are economic gains built on a mountain of racism, bigotry, religious intolerance, and flagrant misogyny? What kind of America are we when we've sold our souls for temporary gain?

You may have chosen to forget that Trump likes to grab unwilling women by the pussy because his power and celebrity supposedly protects him, but I haven't forgotten. Nor will I stop reminding his supporters. It would seem, based on the number of protests against his obnoxious existence, that I'm not alone in that thinking.

APA says it stands by its owner’s views.

This is by far the most disturbing part. I accept that there will forever be head-in-the-sand asshats who continue to deny, obfuscate, and otherwise lie about Japan's culpability in the Greater East Asia war., but for an entire corporation to stand behind it? That's frightening.

The company I'm with used to use APA for business lodgings. Not anymore.

Vote with your wallets, folks. Vote with your wallets.

“I think it’s incredibly disappointing and I think it’s irresponsible for people like himself to question the legitimacy of the next United States president,” incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said

Of course you'd say that, Reince. After all, it's the difference between you having a job or not, which is particularly poignant since you sold out everything you are and everything the US democratic process should be in order to stay on Trump's good side. Repugnant is too nice a term for Reince "cover my own a$$" Priebus.

Bass (et al)

Fall? We have already been in the canyon for a long time, after the 20th, we will be thrown a rope and a lifeline

Serious questions:

1) What precisely would a "great" America look like to you personally? In other words, what criteria would America have to meet to be considered "rising," as opposed to "falling"?

2) In your opinion, when exactly was America last "great"?

Again, serious questions that I don't think I've ever really asked you before. I'm honestly not trying to be my usual snarky self here.

BTW, these questions are open to anyone here who feels America has somehow diminished, necessitating someone like Trump to fix things. I'm genuinely trying to understand where your impression of our country and my impression (which is that it's still a pretty damned amazing thing, politically, socially, and culturally) so starkly diverge.

Trump expects the "GOP" or "Congress" to come up with a replacement plan? What happened, his 'beautiful', 'so good' plan is too good for us, so it has to be held back, under wraps?

Yeah, I was of the understanding he'd have a plan.

"It will be repealed and replaced. And we'll know. And it'll be great health care for much less money. So it'll be better health care, much better, for less money. Not a bad combination."

-- Interview with Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes, Nov 13th, 2016

Turbostat,

The video of Trump spasmodically jerking and stuttering with his right hand clenched up to his chest in an impersonation of Washington Post reporter Serge Kovaleski's congenital condition arthrogryposis ismwidely available and committed to eternity on the Internet.

This intentional and grotesque mockery of Mr. Kovaleski was in direct response to the reporter calling Trump out on his completely bulls$!# claim that "thousands" of people were cheering the fall of the World Trade Center on 9|11 from New Jersey. Kovaleski wrote the article Trump used to support this imbecilic claim, a claim that more than a few imbeciles here still believe. Kovaleski wrote'the article the Trump inaccurately cited to defend his comments, FFS.

How dare you sit there and try to pretend it never happened or recharacterize the incident as something it very clearly was not.

You and Trump may have an aversion to the truth, but the rest of us do not. Elected or not, Trump will never be able to casually walk away from the vulgar piece of fecal matter that he was through the primaries and well into this week. Never.

Deflection and obfuscation are the pavlovian go-to defenses for Bass, Serrano, Turbostat, and many of the other less prolific but no less intransigent bit players of the so-called Libertarian/conservative bent here at JT.

Their support of Trump is irreconcilable with how truly horrific a human being he actually is and they physically and mentally are just unable to formulate a coherent response to valid criticism because they've gone all in and see no way to save face as Trump,goes back on campaign promise after promise after promise. You can be sure buyer's remorse is in full effect, but their utter shock and embarrassment won't let them acknowledge much less give voice to it. So they tell themselves again and again how great Trump is -- or will be, once he starts meeting some of his campaign pledges.

Which he won't.

Thank god, Buddha, Allah, Shiva, Amaterasu, or whatever deity you hold dear.

Meanwhile, the tweets, the "backlash" against Streep, the nonsense here: all classic examples of the kind of lashing out one would expect from someone called out for bad behavior that can't possibly be defended or justified. It's a defense mechanism and it's obvious. Its also no accident that it's behavior usually reserved for children.

What makes Trump so irredeemably obscene is how he got to where he is. Everything he is and everything he says is one-hundred percent theater and pretense. He's a conman, a fake, a pedestrian snake oil salesman with the requisite flashy suit and car. He is a complete facade from top to bottom, front to back.

But that's not what makes him so horrific. The worst part about Trump is that he looked at all the possible types of candidate he could be for the "little guy" and chose the littlest guy he could be. The racism, misogyny, mockery of Muslims, veterans, and the disabled that were mainstays of his rallies -- all of this was a conscious choice, roles taken on intentionally and methodically in order to garner the support and approval of a very specific subset of Americans. Well, maybe not the woman-objectifying misogynist part. That facet is genuine, I think. But he actively and knowingly chose to be the other things that deep down, he probably is not, and that deep down he knows are offensive to the core of any mature, informed, decent human being. Knowing how wrong they were, he chose to become this populist monstrosity anyway.

And why? To score a win. That's it. That's all there is to it. There's no special message, no profound connection or empathy or understanding with disenfranchised Americans, no late night epiphany that brought him to a Zen-like oneness with Joe the Plumber. Rather, Trump intentionally adopted as obscene a political persona as one can imagine for the sole purpose of stoking enough fear and loathing among the general populace to propel him "bigly" towards the greatest ego trip he could imagine, the presidency.

And he probably really does think the Russians had no hand in tipping the election his way. To do so would be an admission of not being the best, and his tremendous but fragile ego couldn't possibly handle that. So he remains in denial, along with his supporters who suffer from that same debilitating fears that have locked Trump into a job I doubt sincerely he ever really even wanted.

Ladies and gentle, the next president of the United States, Donald "The Fragile Fraud" Trump.

Really wish this concert was coming to Japan... Sigh...

You know what, Blacklabel? I actually agree with you entirely about how far off the mark Streep was with the football/MMA comment. It was snobbish, arrogant, and dismissive of huge swaths of the American public, liberal and conservative alike. Comments like those in particular don't help the conversation.

“For the 100th time, I never ‘mocked’ a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him ‘groveling’ when he totally changed a 16-year-old story that he had written in order to make me look bad,” Trump said in a series of tweets.

Liar. Trump is a bald-faced liar without a shred of integrity.

I didn't like Streeps comment about football, and I know a number of very well-educated, successful folks who enjoy MMA, although it's not my bag. But everything else she said. Spot on.

Trump's very first instinct in the face of dissenting opinion is to insult, belittle, and humiliate. Not to counter argue, mind you. The very first instinct is to attack. This is the lesson our children are learning from a man who used this kind of immature behavior to ostensibly win the highest political office in the land *(with no small amount of help from nebulous, unnamed parties whose names might possibly rhyme with Tootin').

Disrespect does invite disrespect.

Violence does incite violence

And when the powerful use their position to bully others, nothing good can come from it.

Note that Trump choose not to use his 144 characters to address these points, but rather chose to validate her concerns by staying true to character: Insults, bullying, puerile attempts at humiliation.

We will soon have a man-child for president.

Sadly, the nepotism laws are about financial gain, not political gain or influence.

Actually, not quite. The anti-nepotism laws were also created to prevent what was seen as an unfair abuse of power by Robert Kennedy as U.S. Attorney General during JFK's administration. Robert, presumably taking cues from a Jack who was very pissed off with U.S. Steel executives, unleashed some pretty destructive chaos on the steel industry to force them to walk back a price increase they had proposed after promising the president they would avoid doing just that. People took notice and decided (quite wisely), "Maybe relatives shouldn't be working together in positions of power."

Not that it matters since Trump is apparently going to effectively ignore the law.

And the GOP is going to effectively do nothing about it.

Welcome to the new normal.

You still haven't justified the '17' in the statement:

I don't have to. James Clapper justified their involvment when he stated before a Senate subcommittee that the intelligence community -- not just the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA -- the intelligence community stands more resolutely than ever behind their assessment that Russia tampered with American democracy.

From the same report where you seem to be obsessed with the semantics of the FBI, CIA, and NSA's explicit involvement in the investigation, it is laid out very clearly:

"Many of the key judgments in this assessment rely on a body of reporting from multiple sources that are consistent with our understanding of Russian behavior. Insights into Russian efforts—including specific cyber operations—and Russian views of key US players derive from multiple corroborating sources." -- Page i, subsection "Sourcing"

It's clear you intend to hide behind semantics and equivocation rather than own up to your shameless hypocrisy. So I guess it's a long shot to expect you to just be honest and say, "I don't care if the Russians hacked us. My guy won, and that's all that matters." That would at least contain a kernel of truth from you, even if it were the most petty, vulgar bastardization of the democratic process one can imagine, as if this were a football game or something.

Go ahead and split hairs all you like, but in the end, your guy got a boost to the presidency by Vladamir Putin. I know it, you know it, Donald J. "I totally expected to lose" Trump sure as hell knows it, and now, so does America.

I don't see this blowing over in 10 days, champ.

Wow. So, now it's, "Homeland only contributed x-amount," and "Why would military intelligence possibly have any interest in a foreign adversary influencing American politics?" (gee... I wonder...) You've gone into full-blown denial mode here in your zeal to prop up Trump the Pretender as long as he isn't Clinton.

As the above poster accurately noted, if the shoe were on the other foot, you and the rest of the "DTS" brigade would be among the shrillness voices alleging treason. Again, that you would so willingly side with Russia on this is absolutely appalling. You're some American, aren't you?

In fact, what is most infuriating about all of this is how much you and other Trump sycophants bellowed and raged about Clinton's private email server. Remember that? Supposedly, her crime of simply allowing foreign adversaries potential access to America's secrets was tantamount to treason, not that there was ever evidence that they did access it, but that the possibility was there. My, how righteously indignant you were, invoking patriotism, mom, and apple pie as Trump led the battle cry to appoint an independent prosecutor who's sole duty was to see Clinton in prison for exposing America's secrets to our enemies.

Fast forward to today when the coalition of 17 separate intelligence agencies (yup, they still issued the report as a unified voice, no matter how much you wish it weren't so) stand behind a comprehensive investigation revealing how and to what degree Russia interfered with our election, what do we hear?

Certainly not that spirited, patriotic call to protect the integrity of our democracy, oh, no. Instead we get everything ranging from "Why does Russia have to be an adversary?" to "Russia did us a favor."

Absolutely fascinating that you can't see your own duplicity,

Hypocrites, hypocrites, two-faced, double-dealing, disingenuous, myiopic, intellectually and morally stunted hypocrites, the lot of you.

Again, how you sleep at night is beyond me.

Sooooo . . . You're convinced the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissence Agency, Navy Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Marine Corp Inteligence, and, oh, yeah, the Department of Homeland Security had nothing whatsoever with invstigating foreign attacks on our election process?

. . .

. . . Interesting, if ever there were a more apt occasion to use that word.

. . .

Here's a little something about the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:

The U.S. Intelligence Community is a coalition [emphasis added] of 17 agencies and organizations, including the ODNI, within the Executive Branch that work both independently and collaboratively to gather and analyze the intelligence necessary to conduct foreign relations and national security activities.

This is directly from the ODNI website. They're a team. They work together. And they reach a concensus. If the ODNI office is saying the intelligence community is behind the conclusion that Russia was meddling in our affairs, then you can be damned sure everyone had some input.

Speaking of teams, what's truly disturbing about how you're practically tripping over yourself to minimize the severity of demonstrated foreign meddling in the American election process -- not the Democratic process, not the Republican one -- the American process is that you, in your senseless, bile-driven disdain for Hillary Clinton, are willing to give Russia the benefit of the doubt over career professionals in the American -- not the Democratic, not the Republican, not the Liberal, not the Conservative -- the American intelligence community. You're putting party over country, 100%.

And you perportedly are an American.

How you sleep at night is beyond me.

The TSA agent and other police did nothing, diving under their desks or running away, because, as usual, police just form a perimeter and let the killing continue until someone runs out of ammo or an unarmed, courageous civilian stops the shooter. . . The police show up later to fill out paperwork and get their photos taken in full battle/swat gear for the press. The police do not protect, you have to protect yourself.

What claptrap. Maybe you had a bad run in with a cop one day, maybe a cop locked up your dear uncle, or maybe a cop whizzed in your Cherrios, I don't know. But you are way off the mark here.

Cops are no less courageous that that hypothetical civilian you wrote of. And just because a cop puts on a uniform, it doesn't mean they are expected to throw their lives away to satisfy some Hollywood-hyped macho image of cops going in guns a'blazing.

If lithium ion rechargeable batteries can be banned on flights, then why in the world can't ammo?

Oh, yeah. Never mind. I forgot. The answer is "the NRA."

Letting the carnage commence...

turbostat,

A lot of JT posters, and the White House spokesman (yesterday), are claiming '17 intelligence agencies say the Russians hacked the election'. I am doubting this claim.

Are you being serious here? Is this a joke with the punchline being, "I don't trust MSM, so I've completely avoided it in its entirety for the past year"?

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/12/29/joint-dhs-odni-fbi-statement-russian-malicious-cyber-activity

The statement points out unambiguously that the "intelligence community" supports the conclusion that Russia was behind the hacks. There is no mention of a dissenting opinion.

James Clapper, who oversees the entirety of the US intelligence apparatus has said that the intelligence community believes Russia is the culprit. Again, no mention of dissenting opinion.

So, my question to you is this: Why are you asking what the Coast Guard's role was in making the assessment? Do you place some sort of special weight or value on their determination that you wouldn't place on, say, the CIA, FBI, or NSA that, in the absence of thereof, lessens the weight of the other 16 agencies' conclusions?

I wasn't mocking the Coast Guard.

Weren't you though? You were dismissing their contributions to the intelligence efforts of a post-91-11 America by suggesting they would have little to do with cybercrime investigation.

Just as you would be dismissing the contributions the DEA makes towards national security on a regular basis if you were to ask, "I keep reading '17 U.S. government intelligence agencies', '17 U.S. government intelligence agencies' ... So what was the DEA's role?"

Educate yourself.

Link: https://www.ice.gov/cyber-crimes

Or don't and go ahead and lump the DEA's own website info into your ever-growing glob of "untrustworthy," "biased," "partisan" MSM conspirators.

Only a hardcore fringe group continue to fuss about it, but nobody else cares.

You only wish it would go away that easily. Where the Obama Birth Certificate was a flat-out lie perpetuated again and again and again by Trump in an effort to question his legitimacy as a presidential candidate, the Russian hacking is something that actually happened.

So what was the Coast Guard Intelligence agency's role?

Wow. Why am I not surprise to see you mocking the 43,000 active members of the US Coast Guard? Or is it because Trump has already set the tone for treating our armed service members like trash?

Besides protecting our coasts, the Coast Guard also serve as a major force in drug interdiction and deploys regularly around the world, including in Iraq and the Persian Gulf, to protect US assets near ports and waterways. These are people who have volunteered to protect the US and some of them have been wounded or killed doing so.

Coast Guard Intelligence has been a vital part of national security since 1915 and served a vital role in protecting Americans in World War II.

Educate yourself:

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coast_Guard_Intelligence

. . . Or don't and go ahead banging away with your hypocritical disdain for anyone who might dare question Trump's idiocy.

If the truck had really hit the bicycle, it would have been broken.

Are you suggesting the woman is lying here, even though the driver of the truck reportedly stopped and apologized?

Their disillusionment has blinded them to facts and reason.

The irony here is teeth-clenchingly bitter.

And now they have released what they based this "assessment" on, a bunch of IP addresses that anyone could have used, over 300 of which were just Tor exit nodes.

No, it's not based solely on "a bunch of IP addresses."

Here's a good article explaining why the intelligence community isn't coming forward with details on exactly how they know Russia was behind the hacks. While I'm confident some readers will dismiss it as all part of the "conspiracy" between 17 independent intelligence agencies, it's a reasonable assessment that makes sense to reasonable people.

Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/27/why-its-so-hard-to-prove-russia-was-behind-the-election-hacks/?utm_term=.da64715dc686

Something everyone seems to be ignoring is that Assange never says anything speaking to the original source of the content that made it's way to Wikileaks. Rather, he just says that the entity that gave the emails directly to Wikileaks was not a state actor. So, he can very well be telling the truth when he says that an alleged hacktivist, named, for example, FuzzyPuppy, who gave his organization the stolen emails is not a Russian government agent. But that's all he can say. He cannot -- and more importantly, did not speak to how those emails made their way to this hypothetical FuzzyPuppy. I'm fairly confident Wikileaks does not have either the resources or interest in tracking down the original sources of their content.

Meanwhile, since it was on the receiving end of a malicious hack, the US intelligence community most certainly could (and routinely does) backtrack hacks to their point of origin. This is partially what the NSA was created to do, and they do it well. Case in point, the 2014 hack of Sony Entertainment servers, which the FBI, with the help of the NSA, attributed to the DPRK, a conclusion that was bolstered by the independent assessment of no fewer than 10 major independent cybersecurity firms, including Kaspersky Lab, Symantec, and Trend Micro.

Occam's Razor was very aptly mentioned earlier by another poster. I'll take the assessment of 17 separate intelligence agencies over the opinion of Julian Assange and a conflicted PEOTUS who thinks his 10-year-old son has hacking "skillz" that are superior to those of professional analysts any day of the week.