OFFICIAL: Donald Trump thread.

[AddiX]

Do you still believe that ****

Not only do I believe it but I think trump may have already cut a deal.

That's why bannon is getting the boot.

That's why trump is all of a sudden, "i love china! I love NATO! I hate Assad and Russia!

That's why trump lifted the gov't hiring freeze this week.

That's why all this new information is coming out, trump snitched on all these guys, wikileaks, stone, Manafort. And in return he will be the establishments puppet.

It's either that or he knows indictments are coming and he's trying to show hes willing to be their puppet of they don't indict him.

Why else all these changes within one week?

[Build That Wall]

Not only do I believe it but I think trump may have already cut a deal.

That's why bannon is getting the boot.

That's why trump is all of a sudden, "i love china! I love NATO! I hate Assad and Russia!

That's why trump lifted the gov't hiring freeze this week.

That's why all this new information is coming out, trump snitched on all these guys, wikileaks, stone, Manafort. And in return he will be the establishments puppet.

It's either that or he knows indictments are coming and he's trying to show hes willing to be their puppet of they don't indict him.

Why else all these changes within one week?

He likes China because they are buying our coal now as opposed to North Koreas coal and they are uniting with us against north Korea

[siablo14]

I dont think you understand what is going on in the world right now. We are on the verge of World War 3.

What Assad did was way wayyy out of line

kim closing the distance on the development of a nuclear warhead that can hit Seattle (Obama administration pleaded to incoming Trump administration that NK is seriously close to having nukes and bar none the single biggest world crisis that must be dealt with fast)

Imperialist Chinese taking control over the south china sea

Iran, the furnace of ambition for armageddon

Russia playing the space cadet like "oh man Trump, idk what to tell ya, sorry we're about to checkmate U.S...wasnt our idea, swear"...Get the picture?

It doesnt matter whether Trump said this or he wouldnt do that as POTUS. The game changer is Trump is refusing to let them set the tone using his weakness as a non interventionist America first president to eradicate collective global ethics standards. Its a slippery slope but I full well believe that dropping Sarin, as duplicitous and illegal it was, was just the first step. They were testing the waters last week and read Trump completely wrong. Clearly, they didnt think in their wildest dreams Trump would retroactively respond with full bore imperialism in such a grandios way. They were, like I said, testing the waters. Shooting feints to see how it effects his rhetoric and internal strife within the ununited western world, they expected Trump to stay complacent keeping "world peace". From there, they would further dissolve the U.S. as a super power with our alleys full fledged support dwindling with worsening dissaray over Trump tearing up foreign deals and relationships for a pure protectionist agenda.
All of which you lay out as "promises" and how you think this is a betrayal because theyre sidelined are all completely inconsiquential to the seismic shift of whats going on with our foes. I mean its not even a put down, and its funny you think it is. Obama failed miserably, because he is a hyper partisan hack, running from our problems overseas and letting CROOKED Hillary Clinton develop foreign policy strategy in the State Department. I'm not even going to get into how she didnt even know the capital letter "C" meant classified. Obama backed this country into a ****ing corner and now we are going to have to clean this mess up before we're sent back to the stone age.

Oh yea. You do realize that **** healthcare bill and pulling it before it could be voted on was a ploy to tie the imploding Obamacare anchor around the obstructionist regressive Democratic party, right?

Sideline you say. Wasn't it obvious that America was too tied up in world politics to back out?
I am just pointing that out to the ignorant folks that believed America could stay out of world conflicts. People act like America interfered in conflicts on the other side of the world because America was just kind and wanted to do the right thing but it was obvious that America got involved in those conflicts to protect theirs and their allies interest.
How long do you think before Obamacare implodes?

[siablo14]

Why does everyone keep crying about world War 3?

Like that's possible?

A war between Russia and nato? Sure

China vs japan or north Korea vs. South Korea? Sure

BUT that's not a world war.

Tell creekrat that.

[siablo14]

"Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told.

GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.

Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said.

The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included Germany, Estonia and Poland. Australia, a member of the “Five Eyes” spying alliance that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, also relayed material, one source said.

Another source suggested the Dutch and the French spy agency, the General Directorate for External Security or DGSE, were contributors.

It is understood that GCHQ was at no point carrying out a targeted operation against Trump or his team or proactively seeking information. The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets. Over several months, different agencies targeting the same people began to see a pattern of connections that were flagged to intelligence officials in the US.

The issue of GCHQ’s role in the FBI’s ongoing investigation into possible cooperation between the Trump campaign and Moscow is highly sensitive. In March Trump tweeted that Barack Obama had illegally “wiretapped” him in Trump Tower.

The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, claimed the “British spying agency” GCHQ had carried out the bugging. Spicer cited an unsubstantiated report on Fox News. Fox later distanced itself from the report.

The claims prompted an extremely unusual rebuke from GCHQ, which generally refrains from commenting on all intelligence matters. The agency described the allegations first made by a former judge turned media commentator, Andrew Napolitano, as “nonsense”.

“They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored,” a spokesperson for GCHQ said.

Instead both US and UK intelligence sources acknowledge that GCHQ played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, which began in late July 2016.

One source called the British eavesdropping agency the “principal whistleblower”.

The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump’s team and Moscow ahead of the US election. This was in part due to US law that prohibits US agencies from examining the private communications of American citizens without warrants. “They are trained not to do this,” the source stressed.

“It looks like the [US] agencies were asleep,” the source added. “They [the European agencies] were saying: ‘There are contacts going on between people close to Mr Trump and people we believe are Russian intelligence agents. You should be wary of this.’

According to one account, GCHQ’s then head, Robert Hannigan, passed material in summer 2016 to the CIA chief, John Brennan. The matter was deemed so sensitive it was handled at “director level”. After an initially slow start, Brennan used GCHQ information and intelligence from other partners to launch a major inter-agency investigation.

In late August and September Brennan gave a series of classified briefings to the Gang of Eight, the top-ranking Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate. He told them the agency had evidence the Kremlin might be trying to help Trump to win the presidency, the New York Times reported.

One person familiar with the matter said Brennan did not reveal sources but made reference to the fact that America’s intelligence allies had provided information. Trump subsequently learned of GCHQ’s role, the person said.

The person described US intelligence as being “very late to the game”. The FBI’s director, James Comey, altered his position after the election and Trump’s victory, becoming “more affirmative” and with a “higher level of concern”.

Comey’s apparent shift may have followed a mid-October decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) court to approve a secret surveillance order. The order gave permission for the Department of Justice to investigate two banks suspected of being part of the Kremlin’s undercover influence operation.
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According to the BBC, the justice department’s request came after a tipoff from an intelligence agency in one of the Baltic states. This is believed to be Estonia.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the same order covered Carter Page, one of Trump’s associates. It allowed the FBI and the justice department to monitor Page’s communications. Page, a former foreign policy aide, was suspected of being an agent of influence working for Russia, the paper said, citing US officials.

The application covered contacts Page allegedly had in 2013 with a Russian foreign intelligence agent, and other undisclosed meetings with Russian operatives, the Post said. Page denies wrongdoing and complained of “unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance”.

Late last year Comey threw more FBI resources into what became a far-reaching counter-intelligence investigation. In March he confirmed before the House intelligence committee that the agency was examining possible cooperation between Moscow and members of the Trump campaign to sway the US election.

Comey and the NSA director, Admiral Michael Rogers, said there was no basis for the president’s claim that he was a victim of Obama “wiretapping”. Trump had likened the unproved allegation to “McCarthyism”.

Britain’s MI6 spy agency played a part in intelligence sharing with the US, one source said. MI6 declined to comment. Its former chief Sir Richard Dearlove described Trump’s wiretapping claim on Thursday as “simply deeply embarrassing for Trump and the administration”.

“The only possible explanation is that Trump started tweeting without understanding how the NSA-GCHQ relationship actually works,” Dearlove told Prospect magazine.

A GCHQ spokesperson said: “It is longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters”.

It is unclear which individuals were picked up by British surveillance.
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In a report last month the New York Times, citing three US intelligence officials, said warning signs had been building throughout last summer but were far from clear. As WikiLeaks published emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, US agencies began picking up conversations in which Russians were discussing contacts with Trump associates, the paper said.

European allies were supplying information about people close to Trump meeting with Russians in Britain, the Netherlands and in other countries, the Times said.

There are now multiple investigations going on in Washington into Trump campaign officials and Russia. They include the FBI-led counter-espionage investigation and probes by both the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House committee, has expressed an interest in hearing from Christopher Steele, the former MI6 officer whose dossier accuses the president of long-term cooperation with Vladimir Putin’s Moscow. Trump and Putin have both dismissed the dossier as fake.

One source suggested the official investigation was making progress. “They now have specific concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion,” the source said. “This is between people in the Trump campaign and agents of [Russian] influence relating to the use of hacked material.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...m-links-russia

hiding something trump is

mm-hmm

Interesting, quite.

I hope this is not one of those sweep-it-under-the rug in the best interest of the country kind of thing.

[ИATAS]

No problem, and thanks for your reply.

I'll have to address your post a little out of order. Sorry if that causes any confusion.



Not just that.

I'm thrilled with the regulation cuts, and the EOs on immigration, for starters. I'm also thrilled with his Cabinet, and more on that now.

I love seeing successful private sector people in Government. I truly feel that's what our Founders wanted, people who had been successful, who had seen the great of America, being put in positions where they make decisions. It's a hell of alot better than lifer politicians who have never held real jobs.

Really? You honestly think the founding fathers had in mind powerful rich bankers, CEOs worth hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars and military war hawks filling the cabinet, almost none of whom have any experience in their respected jobs? We're not talking about your average successful businessman or small business owner, we're talking Exxon CEO, Goldman Sachs and so on. Pretty sure this is the kind of stuff they opposed and warned against. “… of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.” — Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, #1. The Federalist papers have several references warning against the dangers of people like Trump.

I'm quite sure this Adminstration would have been thought of as such a very perverted form of what they originally envisioned for this country. If you're going to bring up our founding fathers have some actual substance to back up your claim at least.

Tillerson is being tested now with the Russia/Syria mess. Let's see how the man does before judging him.

Let's not judge the Exxon CEO or discuss all of his ties to Russia, the man who "has had more interactive time with Vladimir Putin than probably any other American, with the exception of Dr. Henry Kissinger." What is up with this blind support? I've noticed that is a trend with you (more on that later).

It's silly to suggest we should all sit back and see how things go while there is damming evidence right now. I mean Paul Manafort, would-be "idiot" spy Carter Page, Michael Flynn and so on, Trump's people have been nothing short of a disaster, regardless of time frame, not too mention how much leaks come from his own people. Never seen anything like this before in my life. I don't understand how anyone can act like everything is fine while more and more information comes out each day and none of it is pretty. But sure, I'm not getting in their way, we are just having a discussion and in a discussion regarding why or why not you're happy with the current Adminstration, "wait and see" is a bit of a copout.

DeVoss, I love her. It's about time we get someone PRO-CHOICE on education. Liberals are pro-choice on killing the unborn, gay marriage, bathroom use, etc, but not on school choice??? Why? Isn't that suspicious to you, as someone who brought up race and inequality in race?

Minority children would most be helped with school choice, as their public schools are the worst, by far. I've seen it firsthand, having been 'bussed' to a minority school.

Then I'm going on have to call you out on this one. This is absolutely blind support if you say you "love her", or you're lying to readers and/or lying to yourself. Because obviously she isn't qualified for the job. Hell, she has neither attended public schools nor sent her own children to them. But that's not what this is about is it? This isn't about fixing public schools or improving education, no this is about destroying it. Because when you say pro-choice you're talking about Betsy wanting the use of taxpayer dollars on private and religious schools. And of course Charter schools. That's what this is about. It's not about improving public education, that we know with the cuts to education, it's clear, but it's really about continuing the shift to Charter schools, which already started to really take off under the Obama regime, in other words creating more profits of the “education business industry". And like most everything else with the Trump Administration, it boils down to business.

How can they privatise education further? Charter schools. Follow the money they say. Well, someone did and in a study known as the “Charter School Black Hole”, they discovered over $3.7 billion has essentially disappeared into the hands of charter schools with almost no accountability. The authors of the study were astonished at “how little is known” about the chain of responsibility from the federal government on down. “Basic questions about how taxes intended to teach kids are really being spent by charters each year remain unanswered even aside from serious questions raised about academic results,” they note.

This is a very damning indictment of both Democratic and Republican administrations which have promoted and protected the profits and the Trump administration will only further these trends. And this is just in regards to Charter schools. I can and will go on but it's important to note here that this didn't start under Trump and the Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans. It's important for me to make that clear in order to establish the why's the how's and what's to come, as well as once again make perfectly clear I oppose the Democrats just as much as I oppose the Republicans. I do not have blind support to any party or politician.

The billionaire DeVos family, let's not forget who this family is, Betsy DeVos and husband Dick, eldest scion of the pyramid sales dynasty Amway Corporation, have made the destruction of public education an ideological crusade. This isn't some rhetoric I'm saying here this is coming straight from Betsy. And not only are you OK with that you boast that you love it. Her advocacy of "social choice", she's stated, is aimed at displacing public schools from the center of communities, so that the Church can resume its "rightful role". These are her own words, you may or may not recall are from an audiotape of “The Gathering,” an annual conference of some of the country’s richest Christians. School choice, they say, leads to “greater Kingdom gain, God's Kingdom". This is who you want heading education?

Separation of Church and State need not apply here, apparently (now I do wonder what our Founding fathers would think of that, since you seem to be interested in them).

Some make a free-market argument because they are opposed to public schooling, so I could at least rationalize, at least partially, why some people like this choice. But others want to prop up sectarian teachings with taxpayer money and DeVos "has a foot in both camps." That certainly isn't a good sign for the future of public schooling in this country.

It is not only a repudiation of the Constitutional separation of church and state, but an explicit opposition to the Enlightenment concept of universal, high quality and secular education, an ideal I remind you animated the American Revolution and decades of struggles, including the civil rights movement. So if you want to bring up our founding fathers, then you can't be a hypocrite and pick and choose what ideas you think are right, such as wanting "successful people" in the cabinet, while ignoring everything else. You cannot logically justify DeVos while at the same time maintaining the principals and ideals of the founding fathers. This is something you're going to need to address.

I mentioned the DeVos family and it's worth mentioning more in order to understand the ideology and background of Betsy:

On the other side of Betsy DeVos’s family tree, her father-in-law Rich DeVos, Sr., was the co-founder of the Amway Corporation. He is largely credited with establishing “The New Right” in 1970s and funding it over decades. During this period, DeVos played leadership roles in a wide range of right-wing groups, including Focus on the Family (designated as a “hate-group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its “font of anti-gay propaganda”), the American Enterprise Institute, Alliance for School Choice, and FreedomWorks Foundation.

The elder DeVos notoriously served on Ronald Reagan’s first AIDS commission and blamed patients for their illness, saying, “You are responsible for your actions, too, you know. Conduct yourself properly, which is a pretty solid Christian principle.” He also denounced dying people for “requests for special treatment.”

Blackwater
DeVos’s sole sibling, younger brother Erik Prince, is the former CEO of the mercenary supplier and private military contractor Blackwater, which has played a major role in the criminal wars conducted by the CIA and US military from 1997. It has received highly lucrative contracts from the Clinton through Obama years.
This is of particular significance in that Erik Prince put into practice, in the military, the privatization and profiteering which Betsy has sought to do in education with her bottomless pit of political contributions. It is notable that Erik Prince was an early and generous supporter of Trump, substantially prior to his sister.

In its most infamous action, the firm’s personnel opened fire with their automatic weapons on stopped traffic in Nisour Square, Baghdad in 2007, murdering 17 Iraqi civilians and injuring another 20. While running Blackwater, Prince was also using his personal wealth and expertise to recruit a worldwide network of spies to track al-Qaeda in “hard target” locations on behalf of the CIA.

Subsequent to his mild legal fallout from the Nisour Square case, Prince sold the lucrative company and was hired by the United Arab Emirates to establish a private army just prior to the eruption of the Arab Spring. He has a new firm, Frontier Services, another highly lucrative publicly-traded corporation involved in worldwide operations, with a specialty in Africa. He presently trains Somalis and is conducting operations in South Sudan.

Jeremy Scahill’s book Blackwater documents the close friendship (and financial support from) Prince and his family to some the country’s most militant Christian extremists, such as former Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson, a pioneer of faith-based prisons, and Gary Bauer of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, whose mission is defending “territories that the Crusaders had conquered from the Moslems.”

One of the reasons this background information is necessary in understanding Betsy, in similar fashion, Betsy DeVos’s “education revolution,” which she considers a mission “from God,” (her own words) is no doubt equally motivated by mammon, specifically the determination to crack wide open the $600 billion education business market. The blending of politics, religion and profits is a core aspect of Amway (Rich DeVos’s pyramid business).

So you can easily tie all this together. This new education business is about maximizing profits while promoting Christianity. I'm not going to get into the criminal elements of the DeVos family because I trust you are aware of the families history in crime and corruption, like defrauding the Canadian government of $22 million in custom duties, in which Rich DeVos was forced to plead guilty to a criminal scheme.

On Reaganomics, you didn't address that. You went off on the War on Drugs, but that's not Reaganomics. I was speaking about his fiscal/economics policies, and you meshed that with his War on Drugs.

My post was merely a reminder that we did have a discussion in a couple different threads regarding Reagan and I provided a snippet of one of my posts. I was saying how we fundamentally disagree on Reagan and Reaganomics, not that we went in-depth. But with that said, the war on drugs I brought up for a reason and that leads to...

You won't see me argue for that 'war'. I'm pro-drug legalization, and that's ALL drugs. It's our bodies, what we put in them should be our individual choice. And you also wont see me deny it affects minorities more, in terms of arrests/etc.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently said he’d like to bring back “the war on drugs” and that's brings me back to Reagan. If you hold these beliefs then surely you agree, at least in part, with my criticism of the failure that was the War on Drugs under Reagan (which I also pointed out was entirely racist by nature). Because of that, and numerous other reasons, the Marijuana industry is bracing for clash with the Trump administration. Now Trump hasn't really made a firm stance publicly that I'm aware of, other than making some statements such as he supports medical use of MJ and will leave it up to the states, but the recent comments by Sessions and others in his Adminstration are in sharp contrast, so I really don't know where this Adminstration is going. What I do know is they will go wherever the money is and while the MJ industry is booming in Washington, Colorado and other states now, the Pharmaceutical industry is a behemoth and has been actively fighting against Marijuana laws, so we'll see how it plays out.

To be continued.

[Sweet Pea 50]

Been slow on my news intake, but we dropped a fucking MOAB in Afghanistan?

[Left Hook Tua]

Been slow on my news intake, but we dropped a fucking MOAB in Afghanistan?

Natas dropped a m.o.a.b. too

Mother of all beeyotching

[siablo14]

Really? You honestly think the founding fathers had in mind powerful rich bankers, CEOs worth hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars and military war hawks filling the cabinet, almost none of whom have any experience in their respected jobs? We're not talking about your average successful businessman or small business owner, we're talking Exxon CEO, Goldman Sachs and so on. Pretty sure this is the kind of stuff they opposed and warned against. “… of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.” — Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, #1. The Federalist papers have several references warning against the dangers of people like Trump.

I'm quite sure this Adminstration would have been thought of as such a very perverted form of what they originally envisioned for this country. If you're going to bring up our founding fathers have some actual substance to back up your claim at least.





Let's not judge the Exxon CEO or discuss all of his ties to Russia, the man who "has had more interactive time with Vladimir Putin than probably any other American, with the exception of Dr. Henry Kissinger." What is up with this blind support? I've noticed that is a trend with you (more on that later).

It's silly to suggest we should all sit back and see how things go while there is damming evidence right now. I mean Paul Manafort, would-be "idiot" spy Carter Page, Michael Flynn and so on, Trump's people have been nothing short of a disaster, regardless of time frame, not too mention how much leaks come from his own people. Never seen anything like this before in my life. I don't understand how anyone can act like everything is fine while more and more information comes out each day and none of it is pretty. But sure, I'm not getting in their way, we are just having a discussion and in a discussion regarding why or why not you're happy with the current Adminstration, "wait and see" is a bit of a copout.




Then I'm going on have to call you out on this one. This is absolutely blind support if you say you "love her", or you're lying to readers and/or lying to yourself. Because obviously she isn't qualified for the job. Hell, she has neither attended public schools nor sent her own children to them. But that's not what this is about is it? This isn't about fixing public schools or improving education, no this is about destroying it. Because when you say pro-choice you're talking about Betsy wanting the use of taxpayer dollars on private and religious schools. And of course Charter schools. That's what this is about. It's not about improving public education, that we know with the cuts to education, it's clear, but it's really about continuing the shift to Charter schools, which already started to really take off under the Obama regime, in other words creating more profits of the “education business industry". And like most everything else with the Trump Administration, it boils down to business.

How can they privatise education further? Charter schools. Follow the money they say. Well, someone did and in a study known as the “Charter School Black Hole”, they discovered over $3.7 billion has essentially disappeared into the hands of charter schools with almost no accountability. The authors of the study were astonished at “how little is known” about the chain of responsibility from the federal government on down. “Basic questions about how taxes intended to teach kids are really being spent by charters each year remain unanswered even aside from serious questions raised about academic results,” they note.

This is a very damning indictment of both Democratic and Republican administrations which have promoted and protected the profits and the Trump administration will only further these trends. And this is just in regards to Charter schools. I can and will go on but it's important to note here that this didn't start under Trump and the Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans. It's important for me to make that clear in order to establish the why's the how's and what's to come, as well as once again make perfectly clear I oppose the Democrats just as much as I oppose the Republicans. I do not have blind support to any party or politician.

The billionaire DeVos family, let's not forget who this family is, Betsy DeVos and husband Dick, eldest scion of the pyramid sales dynasty Amway Corporation, have made the destruction of public education an ideological crusade. This isn't some rhetoric I'm saying here this is coming straight from Betsy. And not only are you OK with that you boast that you love it. Her advocacy of "social choice", she's stated, is aimed at displacing public schools from the center of communities, so that the Church can resume its "rightful role". These are her own words, you may or may not recall are from an audiotape of “The Gathering,” an annual conference of some of the country’s richest Christians. School choice, they say, leads to “greater Kingdom gain, God's Kingdom". This is who you want heading education?

Separation of Church and State need not apply here, apparently (now I do wonder what our Founding fathers would think of that, since you seem to be interested in them).

Some make a free-market argument because they are opposed to public schooling, so I could at least rationalize, at least partially, why some people like this choice. But others want to prop up sectarian teachings with taxpayer money and DeVos "has a foot in both camps." That certainly isn't a good sign for the future of public schooling in this country.

It is not only a repudiation of the Constitutional separation of church and state, but an explicit opposition to the Enlightenment concept of universal, high quality and secular education, an ideal I remind you animated the American Revolution and decades of struggles, including the civil rights movement. So if you want to bring up our founding fathers, then you can't be a hypocrite and pick and choose what ideas you think are right, such as wanting "successful people" in the cabinet, while ignoring everything else. You cannot logically justify DeVos while at the same time maintaining the principals and ideals of the founding fathers. This is something you're going to need to address.

I mentioned the DeVos family and it's worth mentioning more in order to understand the ideology and background of Betsy:

On the other side of Betsy DeVos’s family tree, her father-in-law Rich DeVos, Sr., was the co-founder of the Amway Corporation. He is largely credited with establishing “The New Right” in 1970s and funding it over decades. During this period, DeVos played leadership roles in a wide range of right-wing groups, including Focus on the Family (designated as a “hate-group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its “font of anti-gay propaganda”), the American Enterprise Institute, Alliance for School Choice, and FreedomWorks Foundation.

The elder DeVos notoriously served on Ronald Reagan’s first AIDS commission and blamed patients for their illness, saying, “You are responsible for your actions, too, you know. Conduct yourself properly, which is a pretty solid Christian principle.” He also denounced dying people for “requests for special treatment.”

Blackwater
DeVos’s sole sibling, younger brother Erik Prince, is the former CEO of the mercenary supplier and private military contractor Blackwater, which has played a major role in the criminal wars conducted by the CIA and US military from 1997. It has received highly lucrative contracts from the Clinton through Obama years.
This is of particular significance in that Erik Prince put into practice, in the military, the privatization and profiteering which Betsy has sought to do in education with her bottomless pit of political contributions. It is notable that Erik Prince was an early and generous supporter of Trump, substantially prior to his sister.

In its most infamous action, the firm’s personnel opened fire with their automatic weapons on stopped traffic in Nisour Square, Baghdad in 2007, murdering 17 Iraqi civilians and injuring another 20. While running Blackwater, Prince was also using his personal wealth and expertise to recruit a worldwide network of spies to track al-Qaeda in “hard target” locations on behalf of the CIA.

Subsequent to his mild legal fallout from the Nisour Square case, Prince sold the lucrative company and was hired by the United Arab Emirates to establish a private army just prior to the eruption of the Arab Spring. He has a new firm, Frontier Services, another highly lucrative publicly-traded corporation involved in worldwide operations, with a specialty in Africa. He presently trains Somalis and is conducting operations in South Sudan.

Jeremy Scahill’s book Blackwater documents the close friendship (and financial support from) Prince and his family to some the country’s most militant Christian extremists, such as former Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson, a pioneer of faith-based prisons, and Gary Bauer of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, whose mission is defending “territories that the Crusaders had conquered from the Moslems.”

One of the reasons this background information is necessary in understanding Betsy, in similar fashion, Betsy DeVos’s “education revolution,” which she considers a mission “from God,” (her own words) is no doubt equally motivated by mammon, specifically the determination to crack wide open the $600 billion education business market. The blending of politics, religion and profits is a core aspect of Amway (Rich DeVos’s pyramid business).

So you can easily tie all this together. This new education business is about maximizing profits while promoting Christianity. I'm not going to get into the criminal elements of the DeVos family because I trust you are aware of the families history in crime and corruption, like defrauding the Canadian government of $22 million in custom duties, in which Rich DeVos was forced to plead guilty to a criminal scheme.



My post was merely a reminder that we did have a discussion in a couple different threads regarding Reagan and I provided a snippet of one of my posts. I was saying how we fundamentally disagree on Reagan and Reaganomics, not that we went in-depth. But with that said, the war on drugs I brought up for a reason and that leads to...



Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently said he’d like to bring back “the war on drugs” and that's brings me back to Reagan. If you hold these beliefs then surely you agree, at least in part, with my criticism of the failure that was the War on Drugs under Reagan (which I also pointed out was entirely racist by nature). Because of that, and numerous other reasons, the Marijuana industry is bracing for clash with the Trump administration. Now Trump hasn't really made a firm stance publicly that I'm aware of, other than making some statements such as he supports medical use of MJ and will leave it up to the states, but the recent comments by Sessions and others in his Adminstration are in sharp contrast, so I really don't know where this Adminstration is going. What I do know is they will go wherever the money is and while the MJ industry is booming in Washington, Colorado and other states now, the Pharmaceutical industry is a behemoth and has been actively fighting against Marijuana laws, so we'll see how it plays out.

To be continued.

Good read....

[AddiX]

Trump has spent 20% of his time as president on a golf course.

In one year he will spend more tax money on himself than Obama did in 8 years.