Nikki Haley is all out of f*cks to give. Update!

Fuck this job.

Courtesy of CNN:

A consensus emerged Tuesday at the White House and Mar-a-Lago about how to clean up the administration's suddenly muddled plans to crack down on Russia: Blame Nikki Haley. 

Several administration officials said the US ambassador to the United Nations got ahead of President Donald Trump's decision-making when she hit the Sunday talk show circuit and said the US would level new sanctions the next day targeting Russian companies that facilitated the Syrian regime's chemical weapons program. The sanctions have yet to come. 

"She got ahead of the curve," National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow told reporters on Tuesday near the President's Florida estate, a day after a report claiming Trump "put the brakes" on plans for new Russia sanctions. "She's done a great job, she's a very effective ambassador. There might have been some momentary confusion about that." 

Haley struck back with a stunning statement later in the day that opened a new rift in the administration and raised questions about the White House's explanation of her comments. 

"With all due respect, I don't get confused," she said in a statement obtained by CNN's Jake Tapper. 

A White House official said Kudlow apologized to Haley for saying that she might have been confused.

Damn! You go girl!

I am not traditionally a Nikki Haley fan, but girlfriend can clap back with he best of them.

Keep in mind that all Nikki Haley was doing was to announce the implementation of the sanctions that were agreed on by the Congress and which Trump signed off on. And the minute she did it Trump pulled the rug right out from under her.

I mean shit, no wonder she's pissed.

Speaking of pissed, apparently Trump is almost constantly irritated at Haley for essentially doing her job.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Ms. Haley has been perhaps the most hawkish voice on Russia on a team headed by a president who has emphasized his fervent desire for friendship with President Vladimir V. Putin. 

At times, that serves the president’s interests because she can say what he will not. But at other times, he has grown exasperated by her outspokenness. 

At one point recently, he saw Ms. Haley on television sharply criticizing Russia over its intervention in Ukraine. “Who wrote that for her?” Mr. Trump yelled angrily at the screen, according to people briefed on the moment. “Who wrote that for her?”

Trump has also grown suspicious of Haley's ambition, and thinks she might be angling for his job.

There is also talk that she has a secret liaison with Mike Pence, which is certain to feed into Donald Trump's insecurities.

In other words we can probably predict that Nikki Haley will either quit her job as Ambassador to the UN, accompanied by broken furniture and screamed obscenities, or that she is going to be fired in some early morning tweet which will probably occur while she is on a plane flying out to meet with a foreign dignitary.

You know, as usual.

Update: Apparently Nikki Haley was left out of the loop on this.

Senior admin official confirms to CNN that the Trump Admin informed the Russian embassy on Sunday that there would not be another round of sanctions for now.

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) April 18, 2018

I would love for some conservative to try and make the case, with a straight face, that Donald Trump is NOT Vladimir Putin's bitch.

Donald Trump hits the brakes on implementing those new Russia sanctions.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

President Trump on Monday put the brakes on a preliminary plan to impose additional economic sanctions on Russia, walking back a Sunday announcement by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley that the Kremlin had swiftly denounced as “international economic raiding.” 

Preparations to punish Russia anew for its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government over the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria caused consternation at the White House. Haley had said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” that sanctions on Russian companies behind the equipment related to Assad’s alleged chemical weapons attack would be announced Monday by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. 

But Trump conferred with his national security advisers later Sunday and told them he was upset the sanctions were being officially rolled out because he was not yet comfortable executing them, according to several people familiar with the plan.

Aw, is Trumpy wumpy a worried that the sanctions will anger his buddy Pooty Wooty, and they can't be best buddies anymore?

It was also reported that Trump threw a giant tantrum after learning that we had kicked out more Russians than the Europeans kicked out.

Also courtesy of WaPo:

President Trump seemed distracted in March as his aides briefed him at his Mar-a-Lago resort on the administration’s plan to expel 60 Russian diplomats and suspected spies. 

The United States, they explained, would be ousting roughly the same number of Russians as its European allies — part of a coordinated move to punish Moscow for the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter on British soil. 

“We’ll match their numbers,” Trump instructed, according to a senior administration official. “We’re not taking the lead. We’re matching.” 

The next day, when the expulsions were announced publicly, Trump erupted, officials said. To his shock and dismay, France and Germany were each expelling only four Russian officials — far fewer than the 60 his administration had decided on. 

The president, who seemed to believe that other individual countries would largely equal the United States, was furious that his administration was being portrayed in the media as taking by far the toughest stance on Russia.

Remember how those folks were saying that Trump's aggressive tweets at Vladimir Putin over Syria, and his administrations new tougher stance, all proved that Trump was not actually Pootie's butt boy?

Yeah, they might have wanted to wait a beat or two before saying that. 

Looks to me as if Putin still has a pretty tight grip on Trump's ball sack.

"Why did you wait?" Donald Trump seemed confused by CIA's desire not to kill family members of terrorists.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

President Trump’s pronouncement that he would be pulling troops out of Syria “very soon” has laid bare a major source of tension between the president and his generals. 

Trump has made winning on the battlefields of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan a central tenet of his foreign policy and tough-guy identity. But Trump and the military hold frequently opposing ideas about exactly what winning means. 

Those differences have played out in heated Situation Room ­debates over virtually every spot on the globe where U.S. troops are engaged in combat, said senior administration officials. And they contributed to the dismissal last month of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster who as national security adviser had pressed the president against his instincts to support an ­open-ended commitment of U.S. forces to Afghanistan. 

Trump’s words, both in public and private, describe a view that wars should be brutal and swift, waged with overwhelming firepower and, in some cases, with little regard for civilian casualties. Victory over America’s enemies for the president is often a matter of bombing “the s--- out of them,” as he said on the campaign trail.

Of course under President Obama the policy was to spare innocent civilians, and family members, and instead use precise targeting to take out the terrorist objective.

As we know that did not always work, and many innocent civilians were also killed.

However Trump does not seem at all bothered by that sort of collateral damage.

Trump came to office promising to give the Pentagon a free hand to unleash the full force of U.S. firepower. His impatience was evident on his first full day in office when he visited the CIA and was ushered up to the agency’s drone operations floor. 

There agency officials showed him a feed from Syria, where Obama-era rules limited the agency to surveillance flights — part of a broader push by the previous administration to return the CIA to its core espionage mission and shift the job of killing terrorists to the military. 

Trump urged the CIA to start arming its drones in Syria. “If you can do it in 10 days, get it done,” he said, according to two former officials familiar with the meeting. 

Later, when the agency’s head of drone operations explained that the CIA had developed special munitions to limit civilian casualties, the president seemed unimpressed. Watching a previously recorded strike in which the agency held off on firing until the target had wandered away from a house with his family inside, Trump asked, “Why did you wait?” one participant in the meeting recalled.

To be clear killing innocent people overseas is how you create more terrorists, not defeat terrorism.

Trump's inability to understand that, or to respect human life, will only ensure that not only does terrorism outlast his term, but that it increases exponentially.

Having said that I am going to tack on the report about those Russian sanctions right here, because I do not think they deserve a post of their own.

Some in the media are trying to give Trump credit for finally cracking down with some aggressive sanctions that will actually hurt the Russian oligarchs who support Putin, but they are fools.

Trump is NOT behind these sanctions. In fact he was clearly dragged kicking and screaming into supporting them, because he had NO choice.

If this were really something that Trump was behind, he would have tweeted the shit out of it, but there is not a peep about this on his account.

To sum up Donald Trump does not value human life, but he absolutely values his relationship with Vladimir Putin.

Here is Trump talking about doing away with Russian sanctions back in 2015.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:  

While researching the strange story of two Russian gun aficionados who cultivated Donald Trump’s presidential campaign via the National Rifle Association, we came across a little-noticed but noteworthy episode concerning Trump and US sanctions against Russia. Sanctions have been a source of extraordinary conflict between the president and Congress and a matter of clear significance to special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation. 

Just a month after Trump announced his campaign for the White House, he spoke directly to Maria Butina, the protégé of the powerful Russian banking official and Putin ally Alexander Torshin. During a public question and answer session at FreedomFest, a libertarian convention in Las Vegas in July 2015, Butina asked Trump what he would do as president about “damaging” US sanctions. Trump suggested he would get rid of them.

Trump does some riff about Putin and Obama, and then Butina asks her question:

“My question will be about foreign politics,” Butina continued. “If you will be elected as president, what will be your foreign politics especially in the relationships with my country? And do you want to continue the politics of sanctions that are damaging of both economy [sic]? Or you have any other ideas?” 

After going off on Obama and digressing into trade policy, Trump responded: “I know Putin, and I’ll tell you what, we get along with Putin… I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin, OK? And I mean, where we have the strength. I don’t think you’d need the sanctions. I think we would get along very, very well.”

Is it any wonder why Putin wanted this guy running America?

Clearly Trump has been Putin's bitch since the very beginning. 

It looks like Donald Trump is finally going to get his military parade.

Courtesy of Politico: 

President Donald Trump’s plans for a White House-backed military parade are beginning to take shape. 

The president has directed the Department of Defense to organize a parade that would take place on Nov. 11 – Veterans Day – according to an unclassified Feb. 20 memo written by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. 

The memo, which was summarized to POLITICO by a senior administration official, was sent from McMaster to Secretary of Defense James Mattis. It says that Trump wants Mattis to brief him on “concepts of operation for this event.” 

The memo also said that the parade route should begin at the White House and end at the Capitol. 

Trump, who revels in pageantry, first floated the idea of putting on a military parade after he witnessed France’s Bastille Day parade last summer as a guest of French president Emmanuel Macron.

Quick question, exactly how much brain damage much you have suffered to actually believe this parade has ANYTHING to do with the veterans?

No this is once again about Trump's overwhelming inferiority complex.

His must be bigger, longer, and more impressive.

And since we know it isn't, he is compelled to produce something that is.

And we know exactly who is is comparing his manhood against, don't we?

Courtesy of the New York Times:

President Trump announced harsh new shipping sanctions against North Korea on Friday — a clear signal, near the end of an Olympic Games marked by a rapprochement on the Korean Peninsula, that his pressure campaign against Pyongyang will not let up. 

“Today, I am announcing that we are launching the largest-ever set of new sanctions on the North Korean regime,” Mr. Trump was set to say to the Conservative Political Action Conference, according to excerpts of his remarks released by the White House.

And then there's this just today:

Speaking at a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at the White House, Trump said that if the sanctions don’t work “we’ll have to go to phase two,” which he said “may be a very rough thing.” 

“We'll have to see,” Trump said. “I don't think I'm going to exactly play that card. But we'll have to see. If the sanctions don't work we'll have to go to phase two. Phase two may be a very rough thing. May be very, very unfortunate for the world.”

.@POTUS on North Korea: "If the sanctions don't work we'll have to go phase two and phase two may be a very rough thing. It may be very very unfortunate for the world." pic.twitter.com/PQf0ysED5O

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 23, 2018

“But hopefully the sanctions will work,” Trump added. “We have tremendous support all around the world for what they're doing. It really is a rogue nation. If they can make a deal it will be a great thing. If we can't, something will have to happen. So we'll see.”

"Very rough thing for the WORLD." Not just North Korea, but the world. Keep that in mind folks.

In the past American presidents KNEW that they had nothing to prove, and that they could walk softly because they had a giant stick.

Trump apparently does feel he has such a stick.

And based on his history, he never has.

Which makes him dangerous, very, very dangerous. 

Okay this is just insane.

I have been much tougher on Russia than Obama, just look at the facts. Total Fake News!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2018

President Obama pushed for sanctions against Russia, evicted a number of their diplomats, and made sure to protect the data needed for an investigation.

Donald Trump denied Russian interference until just recently, tried to set up a cyber security program WITH Russia, and refuses to implement the newest Russian sanctions that were overwhelmingly agreed upon by Congress.

This is the tweet of an insane person. 

Lawmakers blindsided by fact that Donald Trump refuses to enact sanctions against Russians.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Lawmakers were blindsided and outraged on Monday after the Trump administration said it would neither announce nor implement new sanctions against Russia. 

After briefing senators in a classified setting, the State Department announced that the sanctions regime currently in place was acting as a “deterrent” against Russian aggression and that, therefore, new measures will “not need to be imposed” as required under the law. 

The announcement caught lawmakers off guard, including those who co-authored the bipartisan Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) last year. That bill passed in large part to punish Russia for its efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election in 2016. That it was put on the backburner left some on Capitol Hill with the impression, once more, that the Trump administration felt indifferent toward the Kremlin’s influence campaign. 

“When the Congress voted for this, the whole point of it was to slap sanctions on these Russian companies that interfered with our election and are doing all kinds of other things,” Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Daily Beast in an interview. “The legislation itself is not a deterrent if you don’t put teeth behind it. And the teeth behind it are the sanctions.”

When will these folks realize that Donald Trump does not work for the American people?

Donald Trump works for this guy.  

And that fact is becoming more clear every single day.

Today is the deadline for Donald Trump to sign off on the Russia sanctions. Think he'll do it? Update!

Courtesy of Politico:

President Donald Trump’s willingness to crack down on Russia will be seriously tested come Monday. 

Trump faces a major deadline to use the Russia sanctions power that Congress overwhelmingly voted to give him — and it’s anybody’s guess as to whether he’ll comply on time after missing the last deadline. 

Scrutiny is high, amid lingering suspicion of Trump’s eagerness to mend fences with Russia and with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation still digging into election meddling by Moscow. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle remain keen to get tough on Vladimir Putin’s government. 

And they have reason to worry about whether the popular sanctions package Trump reluctantly signed in August will be implemented just as hesitantly. The Russia provisions of the bill were designed as a response to Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election, which the president himself has downplayed. 

Furthermore, the last time Trump’s administration confronted a deadline to set in motion penalties against Putin’s government, it took more than three weeks — and a nudge from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) — for Trump’s team to comply.

I have heard some pundits suggesting that there is no way that Trump will let this deadline pass without his signature, but I am not so sure.

So far there does not seem to have been a really serious consequence for his past hesitation, and clearly Trump is more focused on pleasing his Russian pullet master than he is the American people, so I could definitely see him refusing to put his John Hancock on this bill.

Besides the fact that he waited this long is a clear sign that he is far more concerned with angering Vladimir Putin than he is with protecting American democracy.

Update: Nope, he didn't do it.

The Trump admin has notified Congress that last year’s bipartisan Russia sanctions bill is serving as a “deterrent” and as such, specific sanctions aren’t needed at this time. From a State Dept spox: pic.twitter.com/rwkd6Vzh66

— Elana Schor (@eschor) January 29, 2018

Okay does anybody still believe this guy is not working for the Kremlin?

The Washington Post dives deep to explore Donald Trump's overwhelming desire to be Vladimir Putin's buddy and his skepticism concerning American intelligence.

The following is courtesy of WaPo.

Trump angrily resisted having to admit that the Russians hacked the DNC:

But as aides persisted, Trump became agitated. He railed that the intelligence couldn’t be trusted and scoffed at the suggestion that his candidacy had been propelled by forces other than his own strategy, message and charisma.

Told that members of his incoming Cabinet had already publicly backed the intelligence report on Russia, Trump shot back, “So what?” Admitting that the Kremlin had hacked Democratic Party emails, he said, was a “trap.” 

As Trump addressed journalists on Jan. 11 in the lobby of Trump Tower, he came as close as he ever would to grudging acceptance. “As far as hacking, I think it was Russia,” he said, adding that “we also get hacked by other countries and other people.” 

As hedged as those words were, Trump regretted them almost immediately. “It’s not me,” he said to aides afterward. “It wasn’t right.”

This has left America essentially defenseless against further Russian cyber attacks:  

Nearly a year into his presidency, Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia waged an assault on a pillar of American democracy and supported his run for the White House. 

The result is without obvious parallel in U.S. history, a situation in which the personal insecurities of the president — and his refusal to accept what even many in his administration regard as objective reality — have impaired the government’s response to a national security threat. The repercussions radiate across the government. 

Rather than search for ways to deter Kremlin attacks or safeguard U.S. elections, Trump has waged his own campaign to discredit the case that Russia poses any threat and he has resisted or attempted to roll back efforts to hold Moscow to account.

In fact rather than look for ways to protect America and punish Russia for their interference, the Trump Administration has worked to  roll back some of the sanctions put in place by the Obama Administration and to resist the implementation of newer ones.

Trump also seems almost desperate to form an alliance with Putin and the Kremlin:  

Trump’s stance on the election is part of a broader entanglement with Moscow that has defined the first year of his presidency. He continues to pursue an elusive bond with Putin, which he sees as critical to dealing with North Korea, Iran and other issues. “Having Russia in a friendly posture,” he said last month, “is an asset to the world and an asset to our country.” 

His position has alienated close American allies and often undercut members of his Cabinet — all against the backdrop of a criminal probe into possible ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Overall the Kremlin is pleased with the results of their interference:   

Moscow has not achieved some its most narrow and immediate goals. The annexation of Crimea from Ukraine has not been recognized. Sanctions imposed for Russian intervention in Ukraine remain in place. Additional penalties have been mandated by Congress. And a wave of diplomatic retaliation has cost Russia access to additional diplomatic facilities, including its San Francisco consulate. 

But overall, U.S. officials said, the Kremlin believes it got a staggering return on an operation that by some estimates cost less than $500,000 to execute and was organized around two main objectives — destabilizing U.S. democracy and preventing Hillary Clinton, who is despised by Putin, from reaching the White House. 

The bottom line for Putin, said one U.S. official briefed on the stream of post-election intelligence, is that the operation was “more than worth the effort.”

“Putin has to believe this was the most successful intelligence operation in the history of Russian or Soviet intelligence,” said Andrew Weiss, a former adviser on Russia in the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It has driven the American political system into a crisis that will last years.”

Well gee, isn't that great?

When it came time to sign the new Russian sanctions bill that the Congress overwhelmingly approved, Trump almost could not bring himself to do it:

In the final days before passage, Trump watched MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program and stewed as hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski declared that the bill would be a slap in the face to the president. “He was raging,” one adviser said. 

“He was raging mad.” 

After final passage, Trump was “apoplectic,” the adviser recalled. It took four days for aides to persuade him to sign the bill, arguing that if he vetoed it and Congress overturned that veto, his standing would be permanently weakened. 

“Hey, here are the votes,” aides told the president, according to a second Trump adviser. “If you veto it, they’ll override you and then you’re f---ed and you look like you’re weak.” 

Trump signed but made his displeasure known. His signing statement asserted that the measure included “clearly unconstitutional provisions.” Trump had routinely made a show of bill signings, but in this case no media was allowed to attend.

After the sanctions bill passed into law the Russian Prime Minister taunted Trump on Facebook, and called him "impotent," which of course only further angered Trump.

There is a lot more to the article, and I urge you to read it.

Once you finish I am sure you will agree with me that we desperately need to find a way to remove this asshole from office as soon as possible.

Rep. Elijah Cummings has evidence that Michael Flynn told a friend that one of the Trump Administration's first tasks would be to "rip up" the Russians sanctions. Update!

CUMMINGS in letter to Trey Gowdy: Michael Flynn told a business associate Russia sanctions would be "ripped up" as one of administration's first acts, according to a whistleblower. Full letter: https://t.co/DuVxH4tVpW

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) December 6, 2017

Courtesy of the Baltimore Sun:

President Donald J. Trump’s former national security adviser told a business associate that U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia would be “ripped up” by the new administration, according to a whistleblower account made public Wednesday in a letter written by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings. 

Michael T. Flynn, who pleaded guilty last week to lying to the FBI, was communicating with former business associates “within minutes” of Trump’s inauguration, according to the letter — reassuring them Russian investments would soon be available as the Trump administration lifted sanctions. 

The allegation — which suggests the Trump administration was eager to lift sanctions imposed by President Barack Obama and that Flynn may have blurred his public and private roles during his brief run at the White House — was outlined in a letter Cummings sent to Rep. Trey Gowdy, the Republican chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. 

“I do not bring this whistleblower to your attention lightly,” Cummings, the Baltimore lawmaker and top Democrat on the committee wrote in the letter. 

“I have attempted to advance this investigation without exposing individuals to personal or professional risk. But the exceptionally troubling allegations in this case — combined with ongoing obstruction from the White House and others — have made this step necessary.”

D-damn! If this holds up it is proof positive that Flynn was trying to satisfy Putin's desire to get rid of those Russian sanctions, on day one!

You can read Cummings' letter here.

I imagine that Cummings has not only notified Gowdy but also Robert Mueller as well.

This just gets more interesting every single day.

Update: Trey "Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi" Gowdy has responded to the letter by Rep. Cummings.

While Democrats may want every Committee of Congress to investigate the same fact patterns, it isn’t a prudent use of resources – something they used to be mindful of. pic.twitter.com/LHkcP5jvIJ

— Trey Gowdy (@TGowdySC) December 6, 2017

You know it's like hypocrisy is the drug of choice for Republicans and they are addicted to that sweet sweet high.

In what should be no surprise to anyone the Trump Administration missed the deadline to implement those Russia sanctions and are only now starting to buckle to pressure from Congress.

Look I am doing the best I can, but they keep making me do my job.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

The Trump administration is belatedly working to implement the first part of Russia-related sanctions mandated by legislation President Trump signed almost three months ago. Having blown through the first deadline, the administration is now faced with a skeptical Congress preparing a range of action-forcing measures. 

One would think an administration besieged by what it claims are unfair Russia controversies would take pains to avoid being seen as failing to implement actions mandated by Congress against the regime of Vladimir Putin. But not the Trump administration. President Trump signed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act on Aug. 2. The deadline for implementing a host of Russia-related sanctions was Oct. 1. 

The State Department, where the bottleneck is, insists it is working as fast as possible. But Congress is not taking the administration’s word for it. A senior Democratic aide told me told me bipartisan discussions are now underway in the Senate to try and increase the pressure – through a possible letter with dozens of signatures, a press strategy to raise the volume and a possible Senate resolution chastising the administration for failing to meet the deadline.

As you may remember that the White House worked to soften the sanctions,  Trump then resisted signing the bill for the sanctions, and now we are learning they are almost a month late implementing the sanctions.

Gee, if only there were some evidence that the Trump Administration was colluding with Russia.

Actually according to TPM's Josh Marshall there is even clearer evidence that Trump is working with the Russians and assisting in their continued attack on our democracy:  

Most of us likely see Trump’s comments in the context of his endless nonsense and lying. But that’s not the important part. Russia may not be an enemy but it is an adversary state which has defined a strategic priority of destabilizing the US and the European Union. That includes information operations and likely actual vote tally tampering as well. This is all happening. It’s a direct attack on the country. It’s not something we need to overreact about. It’s not something we cannot combat through counter-intelligence operations and societal awareness. But it is a serious and on-going attack. If the President is out there publicly saying it’s not happening, saying it’s a hoax, he is actively and directly assisting the attack. There’s no other way to put it. He is charged by his oath with preserving the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. He pledged to defend against all attacks but he’s actively assisting one. That is just as much the case as it would be if he repeatedly denied an adversary power were moving conventional arms into positions which threatened the United States. 

He is actively and directly assisting the attack and the attack is on-going. Why he’s doing that is not really relevant. He’s doing it.

Excellent point, and one that the Democrats and the media need to start making every single day. 

Donald Trump missed the deadline to implement those Russian sanctions. Surprised?

Courtesy of the Washington Examiner:  

President Trump's team has missed a deadline for implementing new sanctions against Russia, and has ignored congressional requests for more information, according to a pair of leading senators. 

"They've had plenty of time to get their act together," Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., and Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Wednesday. 

McCain and Cardin spearheaded a congressional effort to impose far-reaching sanctions on Russia in response to President Vladimir Putin's aggression in a variety of arenas. The bill passed with near-unanimity in the Senate, and Trump opposed the bill but signed it. But the Trump team missed an October 1 deadline for implementing the sanctions, which target Russia's defense and intelligence sectors. 

"The delay calls into question the Trump administration's commitment to the sanctions bill which was signed into law more than two months ago, following months of public debate and negotiations in Congress," the senators said.

Yeah, like Trump was EVER going to bite that hand that helped get him elected.

Silly GOP Senators.

By the way it should be noted that the Washington Examiner is a Right Wing rag, so if they are reporting a story like this it means that Trump is now losing the conservative media. 

In escalating war of words leader of North Korea calls Donald Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”

Courtesy of New York Times:  

Responding directly for the first time to President Trump’s threat at the United Nations to destroy nuclear-armed North Korea, its leader called Mr. Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” on Friday and vowed the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history.” 

The rejoinder by the leader, Kim Jong-un, who is about half as old as Mr. Trump, 71, added to the lexicon of Mr. Kim’s choice of insults in the escalating bombast between the two. 

“A frightened dog barks louder,” Mr. Kim said in a statement, referring to Mr. Trump’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday in which he vowed to annihilate North Korea if the United States were forced to defend itself or its allies against it. 

“He is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician,” Mr. Kim said.

Damn I hate to agree with a deranged North Korean lunatic, but that is a fairly accurate description.

Of course the problem is that we expect this sort of name calling and childishness from the life size Weeble dominating the people of North Korea, but now we have our own man-child egging him on by flinging his own preschool level epithets, like Rocket man, in Jong-un's direction.

And all of this might simply be good theater, if it did not potentially devastating real life consequences.

Courtesy of US News: 

Hawaiian officials are reportedly preparing for the possibility of a nuclear attack, and they're doing it quietly. 

The Honolulu Civil Beat reported earlier this week that Hawaii lawmakers attended a closed-door briefing Tuesday by emergency officials on the topic of such an attack from North Korea. Officials reportedly viewed slides on the potential fallout from a nuclear attack that included information on where an attack might target and the fatalities that could result.

That's right we now have American citizens now terrified of being decimated by a nuclear bomb.

Only nine short months ago there was no such fear.

And there are no signs that the rhetoric will come to an end any time soon.

Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

In actuality Trump is simply increasing sanctions: 

President Trump ordered a widening of American sanctions on North Korea on Thursday to further choke off its trade with the outside world, in what some experts described as perhaps the most sweeping set of punitive economic measures enacted by the United States in many years. 

A new executive order signed by Mr. Trump aimed to cut North Korea out of the international banking system while targeting its major industries and shipping. The move suggested that for now, at least, the president was still committed to applying economic pressure rather than military action, despite his vow this week to “totally destroy North Korea” if the United States were forced to defend itself or its allies.

That may have some effect if others were not trying to remove themselves from the line of fire if this thing escalates any further.

Courtesy of CNBC: 

South Korea on Thursday approved $8 million worth of humanitarian aid for Pyongyang in a move likely to muddle international efforts aimed at isolating the nuclear-armed state. 

The package will include $4.5 million in nutritional products for children and pregnant women through the World Food Program in addition to $3.5 million worth of vaccines and medicinal treatments via UNICEF. The timing of the delivery has yet to be confirmed.

The news indicates South Korean President Moon Jae-In isn't backing down from direct engagement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un even as other major players in the long-simmering crisis push for a tougher approach.

Yeah, that is because South Korea realizes that the minute somebody decides to call the other's bluff it is their asses which get fried first.

There is a reason that voters are supposed to choose the most sober, experienced, and mentally stable candidate to the President of the United States.

Donald Trump finally, begrudgingly, signs Russia sanction bill into law.

Fine, I'll sign it. But I am not happy about it.

Courtesy of NPR:  

After being approved by overwhelming majorities in Congress, President Trump begrudgingly signed into law new sanctions against Russia on Wednesday. The move is in contrast with his frequently stated desire to improve relations with the country. The president also issued a signing statement where he declared that the legislation has a number of what he deems to be "unconstitutional provisions." 

The sanctions bill targets Russia's mining and oil industry, and aims to punish the country for interfering in the 2016 presidential election as well for its military aggression in Ukraine. In announcing that he'd signed the bill, Trump made his most definitive statement yet about Russia's interference in last U.S. presidential election. 

"I also support making clear that America will not tolerate interference in our democratic process, and that we will side with our allies and friends against Russian subversion and destabilization," he said. 

He also made clear however, that he has a number of qualms with the "seriously flawed" bill. Most notably, with the fact that it restricts his ability to ease sanctions without Congress' involvement. To waive sanctions, Trump has to send Congress a report explaining and justifying his decision, and lawmakers would then get 30 days to decide whether to allow the waiver. 

"The bill remains seriously flawed — particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate," Trump said, adding "The Framers of our Constitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the President. This bill will prove the wisdom of that choice."

Yes, well the framers may not have anticipated that there would someday be a president who was working as a double agent for an American adversary.

Perhaps the most important part of this bill is not the sanctions it places on Russia, but the sanctions that it places on Donald Trump's ability to undermine it.

That's right, the man living in the White House, "a real dump," has to be treated as a potential enemy of the state.

Apparently Trump was so upset about having to sign this bill that he would not even let the media cover it.

.@realDonaldTrump has signed Russia sanctions bill despite reservations given veto-proof majority had no choice no coverage permitted

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) August 2, 2017

Probably did not want them to catch him sobbing.

Jill Stein a Russian puppet? Yeah, probably.

Courtesy of Bustle:

Stein argued that South Korea and the U.S. were guilty of provoking North Korea, not the other way around. But she didn't acknowledge that, unlike North Korea, South Korea hasn't developed its own nuclear weapons, withdrawn from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or conducted intercontinental ballistics missile tests that violate United Nations resolutions.

Stein's claim that U.S. sanctions against Russia actually benefit the Russian government also raised eyebrows. She asserted that sanctions "play right into Russia's hand" — but all reporting suggests that the last round of sanctions have taken a serious toll on Russia's economy, specifically on state-run businesses.

The sanctions "play right into Russia's hand?"

Has anybody told Vladimir Putin that, because he seems really pissed off by them.

I have believed that Stein was up to some shady shit since way before the election, and all this does is confirm to me that she was, and still is, a tool of the Kremlin.

Lest we forget, that is Jill Stein sitting only two seat away from Vladimir Putin during that famous dinner in Moscow celebrating Russia Today's 10th anniversary.

Remember that letter from Trump Junior claiming that his meeting with the Russian lawyer was all about adoptions? Yeah, The Donald wrote that.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

On the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Germany last month, President Trump’s advisers discussed how to respond to a new revelation that Trump’s oldest son had met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign — a disclosure the advisers knew carried political and potentially legal peril. 

The strategy, the advisers agreed, should be for Donald Trump Jr. to release a statement to get ahead of the story. They wanted to be truthful, so their account couldn’t be repudiated later if the full details emerged. 

But within hours, at the president’s direction, the plan changed. 

Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations. 

The statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared an article, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was “not a campaign issue at the time.” The claims were later shown to be misleading.

It should be pointed out that this was immediately after Trump took that meeting with Vladimir Putin, during which Putin apparently talked to Trump about "adoptions." 

In other words Trump used language provided by Putin to issue a false statement about a meeting that his son, and other campaign personnel, had with Russian operatives during the 2016 campaign.

And this was after he fired James Comey for refusing to halt an investigation into his campaign's ties to Russia.

Like I said before, the evidence for collusion can literally be found everywhere. 

Angry over Russian sanctions, Putin retaliates.

Courtesy of Vox:

Russia will force the US diplomatic mission in the country to eliminate hundreds of people from its workforce by September 1, President Vladimir Putin told state TV in an interview that aired on Sunday. 

"More than 1,000 workers — diplomats and support staff — were working and are still working in Russia; 755 must stop their activity in the Russian Federation," Putin said, per Reuters. This does not mean, as early news reports suggested, that 755 US diplomats will be expelled from the country entirely — but it is a serious cut to America’s diplomatic presence in Russia. 

The order is retaliation, plain and simple. On Thursday night, Congress overwhelmingly passed a new package of sanctions on Russia as punishment for the nation’s interference in the US election. Late on Friday, the Trump administration announced its intention to sign the sanctions bill into law. The diplomatic staffing order is Putin showing he hasn’t been cowed. 

This is very much not normal; countries do not generally force other countries to limit their diplomatic presence so sharply, absent a major crisis in relations. It suggests instead that the pro-Russian stance Trump has taken, at least rhetorically, is not paying off — and that US-Russia relations are likely to keep getting worse for the foreseeable future.

I don't know about anybody else but I think we should have pulled these diplomats and their staffs out on our own after what Russia did during our last election, and drastically curtailed travel to and from that country except for humanitarian reasons.

What Russia did is an act of war.

And we should deal with it accordingly.

Let's face it Russia needs us WAY more than we need them. And Putin knows it.

I say we call his bluff and bring these people home and start treating Russia as an enemy of the state just like we would any terrorist organization that had hacked our government computers or detonated an explosive that took American lives.

(Disclaimer: I, in no way, have any hard feelings against the Russian people. I have had Russians as friends various times in my life. My anger and resentment is only directed at Vladimir Putin and the oligarchs that support him.)

CEO William Browder explains why repealing the Magnitsky Act is so important to Vladimir Putin.

Courtesy of the Daily Kos:

Browder: Vladimir Putin, I believe him to be the richest person in the world, I believe him to be worth 200 billion dollars. That money is held in banks all over the world, in America and all over. The purpose of Putin’s regime has been to commit terrible crimes to get that money, and he doesn’t want to lose that money by having it frozen. So he personally is at risk of the Magnitsky Act. It’s a very personal, venal issue which is why, the first reason, he’s so upset. 

The second reason is that in order to get that $200 billion, he has had to instruct people working for him—let’s say ten thousand people working for him—to do terrible things: to arrest, kidnap, torture, and kill to take people's property away. And as a result, the only way to get people to do such terrible things, is to say, if you do them, there will be no consequence. You will enjoy absolute impunity. 

As a result of the Magnitsky Act, he can no longer guarantee absolute impunity, because all-of-a-sudden, we have created consequences in the West. I would not understate the value of the Magnitsky Act in terms of the consequences, because not only does it freeze the assets that are held in America, but the moment you get put on the Magnitsky List, you get put on the OFAC Sanctions List—which is a Treasury sanctions list. No bank in the world wants to be in violation of Treasury actions. And therefore, any bank, even if it is in South Korea or Dubai, if they see somebody on the Treasury sanctions list, [they] will close their account that day. And as a result, you basically become a financial pariah, and so it’s a real consequence. 

This may be the sole reason that Putin helped Trump win this election.

While he may have wanted ALL of the sanctions lifted, this is the one that impacted his ability to accumulate obscene amounts of money most directly.

Remember THIS was the topic of that meeting between Trump Junior and that Russian lawyer, that was also attended by Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner.

Even before Vladimir Putin put his puppet in place he started pulling his strings.

But sadly there is now interference in the master plan coming from these investigations, so of course Putin, Trump, and the Republicans want them to end.

Donald Trump relents, says he will sign Russia sanctions bill.

Here's the deal, I own you. I say jump, you say how high. Clear?

Courtesy of TPM: 

President Donald Trump will sign a package of stiff financial sanctions against Russia that passed Congress with overwhelming support, the White House said Friday. Moscow has already responded, ordering a reduction in the number of U.S. diplomats in Russia and closing the U.S. Embassy’s recreation retreat. 

Trump’s willingness to support the measure is a remarkable acknowledgement that he has yet to sell his party on his hopes for forging a warmer relationship with Moscow. His vow to extend a hand of cooperation to Russian President Vladimir Putin has been met with resistance as skeptical lawmakers look to limit the president’s leeway to go easy on Moscow over its meddling in the 2016 presidential election. 

The Senate passed the bill, 98-2, two days after the House pushed the measure through by an overwhelming margin, 419-3. Both were veto-proof numbers. 

The White House initially wavered on whether the president would sign the measure into law. But in a statement late Friday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump had “reviewed the final version and, based on its responsiveness to his negotiations, approves the bill and intends to sign it.”

This is only because Trump is boxed in and realizes that if he vetoes the bill that the Congress will just override it.

Which I'm sure is exactly what he is tearfully explaining to Vladimir Putin right now.

And the very fact that the White House wavered about the possibility that Trump would sign this is really all the evidence you need to assure you that Donnie is still Putin's little bitch.

Jared Kushner releases statement hoping to put an end to questions about Russian contacts. Fat chance.

The entire statement can be read here at CNN.

In it Kushner calls into question news reports of contacts he had with the Russian ambassador, which he claims he cannot remember and has no records of ever making.

Kushner also claims that of course he had multiple contacts with representatives of foreign governments during the campaign since that was the job assigned to him by his father-in-law: 

My father-in-law asked me to be a point of contact with these foreign countries. These were not contacts that I initiated, but, over the course of the campaign, I had incoming contacts with people from approximately 15 countries. To put these requests in context, I must have received thousands of calls, letters and emails from people looking to talk or meet on a variety of issues and topics, including hundreds from outside the United States. While I could not be responsive to everyone, I tried to be respectful of any foreign government contacts with whom it would be important to maintain an ongoing, productive working relationship were the candidate to prevail. To that end, I called on a variety of people with deep experience, such as Dr. Henry Kissinger, for advice on policy for the candidate, which countries/representatives with which the campaign should engage, and what messaging would resonate. In addition, it was typical for me to receive 200 or more emails a day during the campaign. I did not have the time to read every one, especially long emails from unknown senders or email chains to which I was added at some later point in the exchange.

Kushner also claims that when he submitted his initial paperwork for his security clearance that it was submitted prematurely by his assistant and did not include his contacts with ANYBODY from a foreign government, not just the Russians.

He further denies working to establish a back channel to communicate with the Russians, and claims that was a misrepresentation of a meeting he had with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. (At least this is one contact he admits to.)

As for that infamous meeting with Junior and the Russian attorney, this is how Kushner characterized it:

In June 2016, my brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr. asked if I was free to stop by a meeting on June 9 at 3:00 p.m. The campaign was headquartered in the same building as his office in Trump Tower, and it was common for each of us to swing by the other's meetings when requested. He eventually sent me his own email changing the time of the meeting to 4:00 p.m. That email was on top of a long back and forth that I did not read at the time. As I did with most emails when I was working remotely, I quickly reviewed on my iPhone the relevant message that the meeting would occur at 4:00 PM at his office. Documents confirm my memory that this was calendared as "Meeting: Don Jr.| Jared Kushner." No one else was mentioned.

So essentially Kushner's claim is that he and Junior invited each other to meetings all of the time, and that he did not know what this was about, and did not read the top of the email with said  "Russia-Clinton-private and confidential."

Uh huh.

Kushner then claims that the Russian attorney started talking about "adoptions," which we now know is code for "sanctions," and that he was uninterested and secretly emailed his secretary to call his cell phone in order to give him an excuse to leave the meeting early.

He then forgot all about this meeting until he was reminded about it by his attorneys.

One interesting side note is that Kushner claims that he received an email from someone referring to themselves as "Guccifer400" who claimed to have Trump's tax returns and tried to blackmail him into paying 52 bitcoins.

Kushner characterized this as a hoax. 

At the end of the statement Kushner writes:

I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government. I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing of my SF-86 form, above and beyond what is required. Hopefully, this puts these matters to rest. 

Actually I seriously doubt this puts anything to rest. And I would suggest that once the various investigative bodies get a look at some of this Kushner paperwork they will have even more questions for him to answer.

Also keep in mind that Mr. Transparent is refusing to testify to any of this under oath.

Even though doing so is typically how people with nothing to hide, prove they have nothing to hide.