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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
This is from an NY times story about Bolton.
edited 23rd Mar '18 5:03:13 AM by megaeliz
This is just how Narcissists work.
Remember when a bunch of people were fired last year like Bannon and Gorka?
It's Trump gets frustrated with his failures, blames the people around him, and lashes out by replacing them with a entirely new cast of people. Repeat ad nausium.
A functional person would be capable of insight and reflection. They’d be capable of learning. They’d take social cues. They’d adapt. They’d grow.
Again, back to the caveman bit, Trump is incapable of any of that. The only primitive tools Trump has in his Neanderthal toolbox are anger, blame and lying.
Whenever he feels the weight of his own failure, he pulls out a combo of those three clubs and beats on someone.
Sometimes the media. Sometimes someone around him.
The net result - and it is always this way with severe NP Ds - is that there is endless chaos in their inner circle. It only briefly calms when they’ve turned over the entire cast - because they briefly think the new cast buys the shtick.
Trump is going through the automatic destruction cycle of an ordinary narcissist. The narc I know well went through it every two years. I could set my watch to it. Entire circle burned to the ground and replaced...
Trump isn’t done yet. He will fire and replace numerous others. He will purge multiple others he sees as disloyal...
...but he will leave a few people who merely hide their disdain and put on a better act.
Those people will carry the tribal knowledge of Trump’s failings to the newest members. They’ll poison the new cast, and within weeks, we will be hearing rumblings of the next purge wave coming.
While the replacement of a Tillerson with a Pompeo stokes the fear that an authoritarian is building a regime, in reality, Trump is a deeply, deeply dysfunctional man utterly incapable of keeping from burning down his own house.
Trump is a destroyer of his own circle.
edited 23rd Mar '18 5:24:27 AM by megaeliz
edited 23rd Mar '18 5:42:26 AM by megaeliz
Well, the House Republicans' version of the investigation was most certainly a sham. House Democrats were taking it seriously, but have no real power in the matter.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Kansas militia members wanted to kill Muslims -prosecutor
WICHITA, Kan. (Reuters) - Three men charged with plotting to bomb an apartment complex in western Kansas, where Muslim immigrants from Somalia lived and had a mosque, wanted to kill as many as possible and send a message they were not welcome in the United States, a prosecutor said on Thursday.
So when will Trump use the words right wing terrorism?
Inter arma enim silent legesedited 23rd Mar '18 6:48:04 AM by Lightysnake
Trump has no one to blame but himself on both instances; not only did he try to end DACA (illegally/illegitimately according to the Courts), but he could have had both back in February and he killed off all those chances.
I do agree that it sucks he is holding Dreamers hostage for his terrible wall, but it is literally all his fault he didn't get either of those.
If he does veto the bill, it will absolutely crush Republicans come November. I can't see how they come back. Heck, combined with the new Chinese Tariffs, he might cause a literal recession.
And we have confirmation on the 10:00 DOJ announcement.
If you look at the lineup
, Jeff Sessions is not mentioned, which may or may not be significant.
It's an Indictment against 9 Iranian hackers.
edited 23rd Mar '18 7:26:06 AM by megaeliz
Trump is threatening
to veto the Omnibus spending bill, because it doesn't have enough funding for his wall. It also contains several measures intended to increase election security.
Kudos to Congress for Taking Election Security Seriously
Lost in the shuffle, however, has been an equally important concern – the apparently frequent but unsuccessful efforts by malicious Russian actors to penetrate the security of the American electoral infrastructure. In broad strokes, the election system begins with voter registration, and that registration is then maintained in a data base which forms the basis for precinct level voter lists (known typically as “voting books”). Individuals who are in a local voting book are then authorized to cast a ballot on election day (or, alternatively, by mail prior to election day). These ballots are tallied in a tabulation that sums the individual voting preferences to identify a winner. Finally, sometimes, though not always, that final tabulation is subject to a post-election review, whether through statistical analysis or a recount. Each step along the way involves the collection, storage and transformation of data – data that, in the end, is potentially subject to cyber intrusion through degradation, disruption, denial or destruction.
Happily Congress has begun to react to the potential for disruption. The House version of the Omnibus spending bill includes $380 million for Election Assistance Commission grants to states “to improve the administration of elections for Federal office, including to enhance election technology and make election security improvements.”
While that broad mandate has yet to be defined, one can easily imagine the funding being used for a host of security improvements. For example, this funding might go to assist in the purchase of electronic voting machines that maintain physical paper voting records. In an understandable reaction to the “hanging chad” problems of the 2000 election, America moved to electronic voting systems. But without a paper back up record an audit of the vote is not feasible. As one analyst put it: "With paper, you can recount or audit that paper and carefully check the performance of the voting system, ensuring that the electronic result would match what a full hand count would show. . . Without a paper audit trail, any recount is just like hitting enter on the keyboard over and over again: You get the same answer and you have no clue if that answer is correct.”
The money can also help fund States to adopt other relatively simple, standard protective measures. Not all will be feasible for every election system, of course, but all State and local election boards should be encouraged to implement as many of them as feasible. For example, log-ins to critical databases should require two-factor authentication to reduce the possibility of malicious access; where feasible election records should be encrypted; and where feasible remote access to election systems via virtual private networks (VP Ns) should be restricted or eliminated altogether. These are not novel ideas – they simply are ones which have not been on the radar screen for most election agencies and whose implementation will require time and money. With this funding bill, Congress has promised the money.
In addition, the spending bill also moves toward effort to give greater capability to law enforcement to counter the Russian efforts directly. It increases funding for the FBI, with some money to be used for “the counterintelligence and cyber-related investments necessary to help respond to foreign actors, including those seeking to compromise democratic institutions and processes.”
The Department of Homeland Security title also specifies funding “to support the new Election Infrastructure Security Initiative (EISI).”
Often Congress is derided for failing to act. That’s perfectly fair. But we should, likewise, recognize when it has done the right thing. These steps to protect American elections are just the beginning – but it is important to recognize that they are steps in the right direction. [1]
edited 23rd Mar '18 8:10:24 AM by megaeliz
For those preferring context before they click:
John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and undersecretary of state for international security, will replace Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as national security adviser. The panel discusses the implications.
edited 23rd Mar '18 8:40:47 AM by sgamer82

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And that list is already out of date.
It doesn't have Mc Master on it.
Disgusted, but not surprised