Trump!

Post Reply New Topic

Darn right. All security clearances should expire automatically upon termination of employment, especially for political appointees.

Rand Paul: Trump Should Keep Revoking Ex-Obama Officials’ Security Clearances

Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) is hailing President Donald Trump’s decision to strip former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance. But the Kentucky Republican doesn’t think the president should stop with Brennan.

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders accused Brennan, who led the CIA for most of former President Barack Obama’s second term, of “lying.” Brennan’s “recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary,” Sanders said, “is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation’s most closely held secrets.”

Sanders’ remarks echoed the sentiments of Paul, who has spent weeks calling for Brennan, a harsh critic of Trump, to lose his clearance. Late last month, Paul wrote on Twitter that “Brennan and other partisans” should be stripped of their security clearances. He suggested Brennan has leveraged his clearance into gigs as a cable news talking head.

So it came as no surprise that Paul lauded Trump for taking away Brennan’s security clearance. “I urged the President to do this. I filibustered Brennan’s nomination to head the CIA in 2013, and his behavior in government and out of it demonstrate why he should not be allowed near classified information,” Paul said in a statement. “He participated in a shredding of constitutional rights, lied to Congress, and has been monetizing and making partisan political use of his clearance since his departure.”

http://reason.com/blog/2018/08/17/rand- ... evoking-ex

Smart move.

rand paul does NOT believe the 1st amendment applies to anybody not a trumpioid. he is the rankest kind of randian hypocrite, even worse than his horrible randian father.

Elaborate and back with primary sources if you can. That's a pretty bold statement that I find quite intriguing.

in his opposition to Brennan speaking the truth about trump, that is obvious hypocrisy itself, because he doesn't oppose the speech of trump supporters. if that is NOT hypocrisy, then NOTHING is.

Is he calling for the government to take action against Brennan speaking?

yes, endorsing the revocation of his security clearance.

Now, answer this: how is that a violation of the first amendment? He can still speak and isn't being censored. People lose security clearances all the time in civil service work, and we don't hear them whining about losing first amendment rights. Just curious.

because it is clearly meant to PUNISH him [under cover of authority] for exercising his first amendment rights to call out the malfeasance of the present white house occupant. that is an unprecedented abuse of power. it is ultimately meant to undercut Mueller's authority to investigate il trumpo's crimes.

He can still speak and testify, and didn't need to flee the country and seek asylum elsewhere like Snowden (an example of not really being able to speak). Comey was able to testify after being fired -- which of course means security clearance revoked too. Rather, what you seem to be worried about is more of transparency and not first amendment, which I get, the government definitely needs to be more transparent.

Not really preventing Brennan from speaking out but he's definitely put a precedent on anyone in the Natsec sector who wishes to speak against him- oppressing speech

LOL, if it weren't for double standards, they'd have no standards at all.

OMG, Trump is a total white supremacist racist KKK Nazi!! !! !! !! !

LOL.

SURVEY FINDS BLACK BUSINESS OWNERSHIP IN THE U.S. JUMPED 400% IN ONE YEAR

African American business owners are on the rise. According to the Minority 2018 Small Business Trends survey, the number of black-owned small businesses in the U.S. increased by a staggering 400% in a year-over-year time period from 2017 to 2018.

The new survey, which was conducted by Guidant Financial and LendingClub, interviewed more than 2,600 business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. It found that 45% of all small business in the country were owned by minority ethnic groups in 2018. This is a dramatic uptick from 2015 when the total percentage of minority business owners was 15%. The largest minority group of respondents were African American at 19%, followed by Hispanic at 14%, Asian at 8%, and Native American at 4%.

Of the African American small business owners surveyed, 63% identified as men and 38% as women. Most fell between the ages of 40 to 49 with 28%, while 25% were between 50 and 59 years old, and 22% are 30 to 39. The research also showed that the highest volume of African American entrepreneurs lives in Texas, followed by Georgia, California, Florida, and North Carolina.

http://www.blackenterprise.com/black-bu ... -400-year/

I found this news story very enlightening and it combines all of the real data in one place.

THE FULL STORY OF TRUMP'S ECONOMIC TURNAROUND

(CNN)President Trump claimed credit for the strong economic growth numbers released on Friday morning, attributing them to his administration's actions on taxes, trade, and regulations.

The economy did grow at a 4.1% annual pace in the second quarter, the best in four years. But most of the statistics that Trump cited as evidence of "an economic turnaround of historic proportions" require context to be fully understood.
For example, economic growth has topped 4% in four other quarters since 2009. And Trump's claim that "we're going to go a lot higher than these numbers" conflicts with the predictions of most bank and Federal Reserve economists, who forecast that growth will slow in 2019 and 2020.

"This is not sustainable," said KC Mathews, chief investment officer at Kansas City-based UMB Bank. "Maybe we get a soft landing. Growth will slow, but we may not have a recession. Growth could go back to about a 2% to 2.5% level."
To help put it all in perspective, here's the context on some of the other economic data points Trump cited.

ANNUAL GDP GROWTH
By Lydia DePillis

Trump has been touting that economic growth will continue to be strong throughout his presidency.
"We are on track to meet the highest annual growth rate in over 13 years. During each of the two previous administrations,
we averaged just over 1.8% GDP growth. By contrast, we are now on track to hit an average GDP annual growth of over 3%, and it could be substantially over 3%."

Related: How the US economy is doing now -- in four charts

The average of the annual real growth rates of the past two administrations was 1.9%. That included several years that covered the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. It is true that many economists are projecting the economy will grow by 3% in 2018. That would be the highest since 2005, when the economy grew by 3.5%.

UNEMPLOYMENT

By Lydia DePillis

Trump claimed that unemployment has reached record lows for black, Hispanic and Asian Americans and for Americans with disabilities. He also said that the unemployment rate for women is the lowest in 65 years, and that veteran unemployment is the lowest in 18 years.

Those numbers are all correct. But they have been falling fairly consistently since 2010. Also, there weren't many women out looking for jobs in 1953, the last time unemployment for women was 3.6%, as it was in May.

More broadly, unemployment and economic growth are not the only ways to measure the well-being of households. Another important element, worker pay, has been flat over the past year by some measures, such as real average hourly wages for rank-and-file workers. By others, such as Sentier Research's median household income index, which takes into account all forms of income such as dividends and Social Security payments, it has risen.

JOB CREATION
By Katie Lobosco

Trump touted the number of jobs created since he won the presidency.

"We have added 3.7 million new jobs since the election. A number that is unthinkable if you go back to the campaign. Nobody would have said it. Nobody would have even in an optimistic way projected it. We are in the midst of the longest positive job growth streak in history."

The economy has indeed added 3.7 million jobs since November 2016. June was the 93rd straight month of gains, which is the longest on record.

But the economy is cranking out jobs at a slower pace than it was before Trump was elected.

The United States added 2.7 million jobs in 2015 and 2.3 million in 2016. It added 2.2 million last year and is on pace for 2.6 million this year.

FOOD STAMP ENROLLMENT
By Tami Luhby

Trump touted that his economic turnaround has helped millions of people leave the food stamp program.

"More than 3.5 million Americans have been lifted off food stamps, something that you haven't seen in decades," Trump said, noting that before he took office, more than 10 million Americans had signed up. "That's because they are able to go out and get a job."

It's true that the food stamp program's numbers ballooned in the wake of the Great Recession. Enrollment peaked at 47.6 million in 2013, up from 28.2 million in 2008.

Since Trump's inauguration in January 2017, the rolls have shrunk by just over 3 million, according to US Department of Agriculture data. Some 39.6 million Americans received food stamps as of April, the latest figures available.

But the decline predated Trump's presidency. Enrollment dropped by 3.5 million between 2013 and 2016.

Certainly, the strong job market has helped more people become self-sufficient. But policy changes have also contributed.
Related: States aren't waiting for Washington to require poor residents to work

Adults ages 18 to 49 who aren't disabled and don't have dependent children can only receive food stamps for three months unless they work at least 20 hours a week. Many states waived this provision during the economic downturn, but started reimposing it in recent years as the job market improved.

This change may have forced up to 1 million people off the rolls in 2016, according to an estimate at the time by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning group. More states, including Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee, have reinstated the time limit in some or all of their counties since Trump took office.

THE STATE OF OBAMACARE
By Tami Luhby

Trump took the opportunity to blast Obamacare during his speech on the economy.

"We have also liberated millions of Americans from the crushing burdens of Obamacare," he said. "The cruel individual mandate penalty is gone ... And Obamacare is now on its last legs, fortunately."
Not quite.

Congress did eliminate the penalty associated with the individual mandate, which requires nearly all Americans to have health insurance, as part of its 2017 tax reform bill.

But that doesn't take effect until next year. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the number of uninsured will rise by 3 million in 2019 because of this provision.

Meanwhile, enrollment in Affordable Care Act plans has remained fairly steady. The number of people signing up for 2019 plans during open enrollment dipped 3.8% to nearly 11.8 million, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

But the number of people who actually enrolled -- meaning they paid their first month's premium -- rose by about 3% to 10.6 million, as of mid-March, the agency said.

Related: Insurers aren't running scared from Obamacare anymore

Also, Obamacare is enjoying a resurgence among insurers for 2019. Carriers are entering or returning to at least a dozen states, while others are expanding their presence in the states in which they operate.

This is quite a turnaround from a year ago, when insurers were fleeing the Affordable Care Act exchanges, worried about the law's uncertain future with Republicans in control of the White House and Congress.

Related: Obamacare sign ups remain strong in 2018, but next year remains uncertain

NET WORTH
By Tami Luhby

The nation has gotten richer since Trump took office, a point he noted in his speech Friday.

"Since I was elected we've created approximately $7 trillion of new wealth," he said.

It's true the nation's net worth has grown by about that amount, according to the Federal Reserve. It rose to $101 trillion in the first quarter, up from $94 trillion in the same period a year earlier, when Trump took office.

(The gain shrinks to just under $5 trillion if you adjust the figures for inflation.)

However, the country was getting wealthier long before Trump's presidency. After taking a beating during the Great Recession, net worth rocketed back. It rose by nearly $40 trillion during the eight years of Barack Obama's presidency, or $31 trillion when adjusted for inflation.

Related: Millions of Americans can't feel the stock market boom

The booming stock market and rising real estate values contributed to the growth in wealth for both Obama's and Trump's presidencies.

Not everyone is sharing in the wealth boom, however. Only 54% of Americans have money invested in the stock market, according a Gallup survey from the spring of 2017.

BUSINESS INVESTMENT
By Lydia DePillis

Trump says it's booming.

"The year before I came into office, private business investment grew at only 1.8%. Last year it jumped to 6.3%. This year it's growing at 9.4%. That's a very tremendous increase. There hasn't been an increase like that in many many years, decades."
Trump appears to be referring to real private non-residential investment — the money that businesses spend on things like commercial construction, tools and machinery.

His advisers have called this a key goal of the tax cuts. When businesses upgrade their equipment, they say, they can raise worker productivity and justify paying more.

The White House's Council of Economic Advisers published a brief walking through the numbers. Weak investment in 2016 mostly had to do with an enormous drop in oil and gas drilling, and the rebound in 2017 came mostly because of that sector's recovery.

But you don't have to go back very far to get a similar growth rate. Real non-residential fixed investment grew by 9.5% in 2012 from the previous year.

THE REPUBLICAN TAX CUT
By Katie Lobosco

Trump praised Republicans in Congress for cutting taxes. As a result, he said, "six million Americans are now enjoying new bonuses, better jobs and far bigger paychecks."

Hundreds of companies cited the tax cuts when they announced bonuses, wage increases and new employee perks this year. Walmart, Bank of America, and American Airlines were among the companies that handed out bonuses.

Still, six million employees represents less than 5% of the private sector work force. And for most of those workers, the benefit will be short-lived because it came as a one-time bonus or additional contribution to 401(k) plans.

Shareholders have received a much bigger benefit from the new tax law. Companies have announced hundreds of billions of dollars in stock buybacks since their taxes were cut.

TRADE DEFICIT
By Tami Luhby

Trump boasted about the decline in the trade deficit in the most recent quarter.

"Perhaps one of the biggest wins in the report, and it is indeed a big one, is that the trade deficit -- very dear to my heart because we've been ripped off by the world -- has dropped by more than $50 billion. $52 billion to be exact," he said. "That's a tremendous drop. We haven't had a drop like that in a long time."

Yes, the trade deficit narrowed from $902 billion in the first quarter of 2018 to $850 billion in the second quarter. But the deficit in the first quarter was also the largest it's been since 2006, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Even now, the trade deficit remains slightly higher than it was when Trump took office. It came in at $845.5 billion in the first quarter of last year.

Additional reporting by Paul La Monica

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/27/politics/gdp-fact-check/index.html

Last edited by Spooky_Mulder on 21 Aug 2018, 11:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This one explains the meme that some Trump supporters use.

A CULT EXPERT FINDS FAMILIAR PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR IN TRUMP'S GOP

What do you call an organization where total loyalty to a charismatic but volatile leader is strictly enforced?
TOM JACOBSJUN 21, 2018

Last week, retiring Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) openly worried that his party was "becoming a cultish thing" marked by forced fidelity to its mercurial leader. While he's not the first to make the point, his insider perspective carried considerable weight.

But is his description hyperbole, or an accurate assessment? While cautioning that not everyone who voted for Donald Trump falls into the mindless-follower category, an expert on cults leans toward the latter.

"I think he has touched on something important," says scholar and author Janja Lalich, who has extensively studied the phenomenon. "I think there are plenty of similarities—enough to be concerned about."

She continues: "The people around Trump, and the Republicans in Washington, absolutely kowtow to him, either out of fear they're going to anger him, or out of adulation. That behavior is very typical of a cult."

Polling suggests the party has been shrinking, and its remaining members are solidly behind Trump, giving him a remarkable 87 percent support in a recent poll. Even the policy of separating immigrant parents and children, which directly contradicts the traditional conservative belief in the sanctity of the family, was supported by more than half of Republicans before Trump rescinded it under pressure on Wednesday.

Is that decision to support the leader, even if it means ignoring long-professed moral precepts, cult-like behavior? Pacific Standard asked Lalich, a professor emerita of sociology at California State University–Chico. She has written or co-authored a series of books about the cults, including the infamous Heaven's Gate sect that committed mass suicide in 1997.

You write that members of "totalistic" cults—those that consider their ideology the one true path—share four key characteristics. They 1) espouse an all-encompassing belief system; 2) exhibit excessive devotion to the leader; 3) avoid criticism of the group and its leader; and 4) feel disdain for non-members. That all sounds unnervingly familiar.

Doesn't it? Charisma is a social relationship. It's about how people respond to that person, and how that person takes advantage of that. There's a kind of charismatic leader who is an authoritarian bully who rules by coercion.

I think you have to look at the effect of Trump's behavior and language on his base. He readily ridicules and chastises people. He readily pushes people aside if they're not worshipping him. We've all seen the videos of his aides praising him to high heaven. That's the kind of adulation cult leaders expect and demand.

Are the big rallies he held during the campaign, and still conducts periodically, an important way for him to bond with his followers?

Yes. Cult leaders constantly need to rev up their people. That's one of the challenges of being a charismatic leader. You have to keep people enchanted with you. Him holding these rallies is both a recruitment technique and a way to keep his followers happy.

He's showing him in their presence—being there for them, talking to them, relating to them. All of that helps to solidify their cult membership, so to speak. It reinforces the idea that they're a special group of people following this very special man. With Trump, it's not a religion, but there's the same kind of fervor.

Political scientists point out that President Barack Obama was also a charismatic leader who arguably had a cult-like following. But for the most part, he was carrying out policies Democrats have long championed, while Trump's policies often defy traditional Republican doctrine. What happens when a cult leader's dictates clash with the convictions of his followers?

Trump is happily making these pronouncements and expecting everyone to go along with him, and he's not getting much flack. Most of his followers have bought into his fear-mongering, which creates an us vs. them mentality that is typical of a cult.

Is that emphasis on real or perceived enemies one way cult leaders keep control over their adherents?

Absolutely. It breeds fear and paranoia in his followers, which leads them to think, "I'd better stick with him to be safe." His constant criticism and ridiculing and attacking "the other" also makes people feel superior. This sets up extreme polarization, which is always how cults have survived.

Separating the cult from the rest of the world is pretty much what all cults do. That doesn't mean you have to live in a compound. It just means that, in your thinking, you're part of this special elite, separate from the unworthy.

And you close yourself off from any information that might conflict with that.

Exactly. Once you internalize that, you're done for.

Can cult leaders override members' fundamental sense of morality? I'm thinking of his policy of separating children from immigrant parents, which he has now rescinded following intense, widespread criticism.

Well, he's not breaking up white families. He's breaking up families of immigrants. He ran on that tough-on-immigrants line. He already planted the seeds for this. So while it looks harsh and cruel and extreme from many people's point of view, including mine, for his followers, he's carrying out what he said he was going to do. Other of his followers, who aren't as hard core, are following suit because of the sway that he has. Their minds are closed to anything that challenges what Trump wants them to do, say, or believe.

So how do you get out of a cult? What typically has to happen to break free?

On an individual level, it's generally family and friends who do an intervention. When we have something like this on a national scale, it's much more difficult. I know many people who have argued and argued with members of their family, and then given up. Rational conversations at this point aren't going to work.

Now, if Trump continues with this egregious, inhumane behavior, some of his people may actually wake up. Some of the churches that have been supportive of him have come out to say, "This is too much." When the cultic behavior is on a national scale, [breaking it up] is going to take a national movement.

At some point, the Trump era will end. What happens to a cult when its leader dies, or has to step down for whatever reason. Do they disband at that point? Do his followers emerge from their daze, or do they start looking around for a new leader?

For some people, that will jolt them into seeing the light and realizing how they have been taken advantage of. But some hard-core believers will stick with Trump no matter what. Warren Jeffs is in jail, but he still has thousands of followers who believe in him.

Often, splinter groups will form, as when Reverend [Sun Myung] Moon, the leader of the Moonie cult, died. His three sons now have splinter groups. The followers split up and followed the one they liked the best. That's potentially something we could see.

That conjures up a surreal image of some Republicans aligning with Don Jr., while others gravitate to Eric, and still others to Ivanka.

The best bet is to go with Barron.

https://psmag.com/news/a-sociologist-explains-the-similarities-between-cults-and-trumps-gop

Last edited by Spooky_Mulder on 21 Aug 2018, 11:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.