Yea, I don’t know much about it. I might have used it to pay for a hamburder or cofeve once. I really don’t know.
Top Democrat on Oversight panel calls for Trump conflict-of-interest investigation
Rep. Gerry Connolly (Virginia), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, is asking its Republican chairman, Rep. James Comer (Kentucky), to help investigate “grave conflicts of interest” surrounding President Donald Trump.
Connolly made the request to Comer in a letter Tuesday that repeatedly invokes the presidential ethics reforms that Comer pushed for under the previous president, Democrat Joe Biden. The letter was shared exclusively with The Washington Post. Comer previously led an impeachment investigation into Biden and his family that sputtered out last year amid a lack of evidence.
“Ethical governance is not a partisan goal — it is a shared responsibility,” Connolly wrote to Comer. “I urge you to demonstrate the Committee’s commitment to ethical governance and to ensure that no administration, no matter how powerful, is above the law.”
Connolly pointed to a few examples of what he said were conflicts of interest in the new administration that are “proliferating wildly.” The examples included the multiple cryptocurrency ventures that bear Trump’s name, including the lucrative token that he launched three days before taking office.
Trump seemed to shrug off concerns about the coin during a news conference Tuesday at the White House. Asked if he would continue selling products that personally enrich him as president, Trump said he did not “know much about [the coin] other than I launched it” and that he heard it was “very successful.”
Does this remind you of anyone? Anyone at all? Particularly the first full quote in the first full paragraph? I’ll spot you the first letter of the acronym as I refer to the piece of shit I’m thinking of, “C”. Also, think of the descriptions in the third paragraph, second full sentence. Who does that remind you of? Anyone? Now connect the dots between this post and my post in the Russia thread. 2013 was 12 years ago, another dot.
Fuck civilians, right? Taking a page out of Putin on the ritz’s and Bibi’s book. This will definitely help us to win friends and influence people. Way to go, tough guy.
Trump moves to close Pentagon office focused on curbing civilian deaths
Officials are drafting a proposal to defund and potentially “disestablish” the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, though Congress would have to approve doing so.
The Trump administration is moving to abolish a Pentagon office responsible for promoting civilian safety in battlefield operations, suggesting that incoming Defense Department leaders may attempt to loosen restrictions on U.S. military operations worldwide.
In the days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, his transition team provided Pentagon officials with a set of orders outlining early priorities for his second term, including a desire to review and potentially abolish the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, said a U.S. defense official. The office, housed within the Department of the Army, helps the military to limit unintended civilian deaths.
As a result of that order, the Army has begun drafting a proposal to defund and potentially “disestablish” the office, according to five people familiar with the discussions and an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the nascent plan. The document, issued Monday and signed by Army staff director Lt. Gen. Laura A. Potter, requires senior Army leader review no later than Feb. 21.
Shuttering the office, which was established under a 2023 law, would require congressional approval. It was not immediately clear whether the Trump administration would seek to reallocate some of the center’s functions elsewhere.
As is routine in a new administration, the [Defense Department] Agency Review Team tasked the Army to review its programs and responsibilities,” an Army spokeswoman, Cynthia O. Smith, said in a statement. “The Army continues to fund and support the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence” as the Pentagon department tasked with hosting it.
Spokespeople for Trump’s acting defense secretary, Robert G. Salesses, could not be reached immediately for comment.
The early moves suggest the Trump Pentagon may distance itself from a host of measures established under President Joe Biden to prioritize the safety of noncombatants in conflict zones. Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who has promised to make the U.S. military more lethal, has complained about overly restrictive rules of engagement and said that service members “fight lawyers as much as we fight bad guys.”
Hegseth, a former National Guard soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, used his perch as a Fox News host to advocate during Trump’s first presidential term for lenient treatment of troops accused in war crimes cases. Trump pardoned two of those soldiers and intervened on behalf of a Navy SEAL. He also suggested shortly before being tapped for the Pentagon role in November that he had told troops under his command in Iraq they could ignore rules of engagement communicated to them.
People familiar with the effort the shut down the office said that even if Congress blocks its closure, military and administration officials could act to zero out its budget, fire or reassign personnel, or take other steps to render the office functional on paper but practically inert.
The center’s roots lie in the thousands of civilian deaths that occurred in decades of U.S. counterinsurgent operations following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. During Trump’s first presidency, as civilian deaths surged during the air war against the Islamic State, chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. oversaw a review of the military’s handling of civilian protection, setting in motion a process that led to the center’s establishment.
Under a follow-on plan established during the Biden administration, the Pentagon assigned specialists to military operations centers worldwide to advise commanders, incorporate civilian harm reduction into training exercises, refine data collection and improve the military’s response when deaths occur.
The Center of Excellence, staffed by about 30 people with backgrounds in targeting, intelligence, civil affairs or humanitarian organizations, was established to share best practices across the military and assist commanders and battlefield personnel in integrating new information into their battle plans. It has an annual budget of $7 million.
“If we want to protect our troops, we should continue to focus on these efforts rather than unwind them. Protecting civilians in conflict is both a moral and national security imperative,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado), an Army veteran who was involved in legislation that established the center, said in a statement. “I am ready to talk and work with anyone about why these efforts are important for national security and the safety of our troops.”
A former Pentagon official who worked closely with the center was surprised to hear about the effort to shutter the office, which they said, had been welcomed by commands and Army leadership.
Officials who have worked in the Center of Excellence and on other aspects of the Pentagon’s system for improving its record on civilian harm have sought to counter the perception that it imposes constraints on military commanders as they target adversaries or establishes punitive measures for personnel carrying out such missions.
Rather, they described the system, which includes more than 150 people across Defense Department offices and combatant commands, as a tool that provides commanders more information as they conduct operations, informing targeters or military planners about patterns of life in a particular area, identifying cultural sites and averting unintended deaths before they occur.
“This certainly doesn’t prevent you from ‘taking the gloves off,’” a senior defense official said. “But what it means is, when you ‘put the gloves on’ … you’ll hit what you want to hit, and not what you don’t.”
Officials who work on civilian harm issues said in the lead-up to Trump’s inauguration that they were hopeful the system would find support under the new administration.
“This is an additional capability that we give to the force,” the senior defense official said. “This is all about avoiding unintended effects, and winning wars.”
The Defense Department’s focus on reducing civilian harm also prioritizes rooting out what the military calls “confirmation bias,” or favoring information that aligns with existing beliefs.
Military officials said confirmation bias contributed to a botched 2021 strike in Kabul that killed 10 civilians as U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan. The incident fueled lawmakers’ demands for corrective measures to prevent such tragedies. The department concluded that confirmation bias also played a role in the death of a civilian in a separate strike in Syria in 2023.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
0
F Me In The Brain
this knows everybody from other commets Posts: 31,525
The first two impeachments have had their own threads, why would it be different for the third?
Because the top 3 threads are currently all trump. I think we have enough option to discuss him without adding new threads. People get snotty when someone opens a second thread on a topic with posts like this"use the search function next time." But 15 threads on trump is good. Just seems a little much to me, that's all. As you can see I prefer not to follow multiple threads on the same subject.
The top 3 threads on AMT being about Trump, especially with the number of fans being based in USA, should be no shocker. Top 10 could be about the One Clown to Rule Them All. Top 20.
He is the lightning rod in politics right now. Juat put back into power and working to undo much of what the last 4 years were based on.
The first two impeachments have had their own threads, why would it be different for the third?
Because the top 3 threads are currently all trump. I think we have enough option to discuss him without adding new threads. People get snotty when someone opens a second thread on a topic with posts like this"use the search function next time." But 15 threads on trump is good. Just seems a little much to me, that's all. As you can see I prefer not to follow multiple threads on the same subject.
The top 3 threads on AMT being about Trump, especially with the number of fans being based in USA, should be no shocker. Top 10 could be about the One Clown to Rule Them All. Top 20.
He is the lightning rod in politics right now. Juat put back into power and working to undo much of what the last 4 years were based on.
I just wish we had threads be topical, rather than about a specific person. A Trump thread just invites the vitriol back and forth between democrats and republicans, and always ends with memes and gifs and insults. Maybe if it was, say, “Trump’s deportation attempts”, or “Trump tariffs”, we’d get at least a little bit beyond that.
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
Stupid won. Astoundingly stupid won. Brilliant, brilliance in all its brilliancy of astoundingly stupid won. And we’re only three days in.
Trump returns — and so does his astounding ignorance
If you feel off-kilter, you’re in good company. The president seems downright bewildered.
“I think we’re going to do things that people would be shocked at,” President Donald Trump declared on his second day in office. It was one of the few true things he said all week.
The crush of vindictive, cruel, unconstitutional and just plain bonkers orders and actions coming from the restored Trump administration in its first week makes even the worst-case predictions look conservative. But if you’re feeling knocked off-kilter by the fire hose of bad policies, well, you’re in good company. Trump himself seems downright bewildered.
In the weeks before he became commander in chief, Trump aimed his fire at the traditional enemies of the United States: Canada, Denmark and Panama. But upon taking the oath of office, he launched verbal hostilities against a new foe: the Kingdom of Spain.
On his first evening back in office, Trump invited reporters into the Oval Office, where he discussed his new decree that NATO members must spend 5 percent of their nation’s wealth on their militaries. (He perhaps is unaware that the United States spends only about 3 percent and would have to come up with another $500 billion annually to fulfill his edict.) Complaining about the “very low” military spending of Spain, Trump told his questioners: “They’re a BRICS nation, Spain. You know what a BRICS nation is? You’ll figure it out.” The 47th president then said that he would “put at least 100 percent tariff on the business they do with the United States.”
Spain, part of the European Union, is not a member of the “BRICS” bloc, short for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (but which, curiously, also includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates). But this, apparently, is news to our belligerent president. The United States might not have been in a conflict with Spain since 1898, but Trump is not one to let bygones be bygones. Remember the Maine! “I don’t know if the affirmation made by President Trump was the result of a mix-up or not,” said a spokeswoman for the unnerved Spanish government.
Maybe he’ll “figure it out.”
During that same session in the Oval Office, a reporter asked Trump whether his executive order governing “unlawful disclosure by federal officials” was related to Hunter Biden.
“No, I think it’s just more general than that. It’s not Hunter Biden,” came Trump’s breezy reply. The actual text of the order Trump signed says otherwise: It strips security clearances from former officials who issued “a letter discrediting the reporting that President Joseph R. Biden’s son had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair business.”
The next evening brought more astounding ignorance from the chief executive. This time, he brought reporters into the Roosevelt Room to unveil a supposed $500 billion joint venture regarding artificial intelligence. But the ruse was exposed by none other than Trump sidekick Elon Musk, who proclaimed: “They don’t have the money.”
At the event, NBC News’s Peter Alexander asked Trump about why he had just pardoned D.J. Rodriguez, who shocked a police officer with a stun gun at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and later boasted that he “tazzzzed the f--- out of the blue.” The judge who sentenced Rodriguez to more than 12 years called him a “one-man army of hate, attacking police.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Trump replied. “Was it a pardon?”
Alexander reiterated that it was.
“Okay. Well, we’ll take a look at everything,” Trump said, though his pardons of this and other cop-beaters are irrevocable.
Trump soon moved on to demanding that California “turn the valve” to allow more water to reach Los Angeles, where, he said, residents of Beverly Hills have been limited to 38 gallons of water per day. “When you’re a rich person, you like to take a shower. Thirty-eight gallons doesn’t last very long.”
There is no such “valve,” and no such water restrictions in Beverly Hills. But Trump skipped merrily from that error to another: Addressing a controversy that has split his staff members, he explained that he supports the H1-B visa program because it allows his properties to hire “maître d’s, wine experts, even waiters.” Thus did he apparently confuse the H1-B visa, covering those with technical expertise, with the H2-B, covering temporary workers.
Trump continued on, scolding the Biden administration for failing to negotiate a release of the hostages from Gaza “a year and a half, two years ago.” Good point! Biden should have secured the hostages’ freedom before they were taken captive on Oct. 7, 2023.
By Wednesday night, when Trump appeared from the Oval Office on Fox News with Sean Hannity, the president was reviving his first-term canard about raking the forest to prevent fires. “You have to clean the floors of the forest,” he explained.
And by Thursday afternoon, the perplexed president seemed unaware that his administration was preparing to send around 10,000 troops to the southern border, as described in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection briefing document obtained by The Post.
“The southern border?” Trump replied when a reporter asked him about the plan. He then repeated an unrelated fiction he had offered earlier about offering 10,000 troops to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
It’s going to be a long four years.
The evidence that Donald Trump was truly, madly and deeply confused was worrisome when he was a candidate. It’s all the more so now that he is wielding the mighty apparatus of the U.S. government to pursue his fantasies. This is a classic case of garbage in, garbage out — but now he is making the country a landfill for his nonsensical policies.
Those 10,000 troops are being sent to the southern border to resolve a self-proclaimed “emergency,” even though illegal border crossings are lower now than when he left officein 2021. His administration has ordered personnel repurposed from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces to support the same fabricated emergency, needlessly raising the danger of a terrorist attack. He declared another “national emergency” because of the “precariously inadequate” energy supply — even though domestic crude-oil production hit record highs under Biden and is still climbing. He’s refusing to implement a law banning TikTok, ignoring the threat to national security because “We won the young vote. I think I won it through TikTok.” (He lost among young voters, but never mind.)
Most ominous of all is that Trump is already back to making life-and-death decisions based on his whims. He had said he would pardon those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, on a “case by case” basis, and Vice President JD Vance had said that “if you committed violence that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” Yet Trump issued a blanket pardon, including to many of those who assaulted police. Why? A Trump adviser told Axios that, as Trump’s team was debating the issue, “Trump just said: ‘F--- it: Release ’em all.’”
MAGA diehards love the chaos. Others who voted for Trump might feel, not for the last time, that they were sold a bill of goods. They wanted law and order and instead got a president blessing violence against police. They wanted a crackdown on illegal immigration and instead got a president turning away law-abiding migrants who waited in line for a chance to claim asylum. They believed Trump’s promises that he would bring peace to Gaza and end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. But now, he says that he’s “not confident” about the Gaza ceasefire (“It’s not our war”), and admits that “I don’t know” whether Russian leader Vladimir Putin wants to resolve the Ukraine conflict.
Above all, Trump supporters voted for a president who would remember the “forgotten man and woman” of the working class. Instead, they elected one who seated the oligarchs — Musk, Jeff Bezos (who owns The Post), Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook and TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew — at his inauguration in front of his own Cabinet nominees. The next day, Trump, joined at the White House by three more billionaires, extolled the corrupt era of the robber barons, “when our country was at its richest.” (It wasn’t.) The forgotten man can also forget about disaster relief: Trump suggested to Hannity on Wednesday night that “FEMA is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly, because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems.”
Oh, and as for Trump’s promise to reduce prices for Americans? He issued a vague and meaningless executive order proclaiming that agencies should “deliver emergency price relief.” Problem solved!
As Trump went on and on Wednesday night about his lust for retribution against Biden, Hannity tried to interrupt: “Let me get to the economy. I’m running out of time.”
“I don’t care,” Trump replied. “This is more important.”
No one should be surprised that Trump is pulling out of the Paris climate accord, kicking career civil servants to the curb, threatening to impose 25 percent tariffs against Canada and Mexico (but only 10 percent against China), halting civil-rights litigation, dismantling privacy safeguards, attacking anything that has to do with transgender people or racial diversity, muzzling public health agencies, ripping up environmental protections (“I’d like to see federal lands opened up for data centers”), and generally proceeding through the Project 2025 playbook. He signaled this clearly during the campaign.
But the brazen lawlessness is another matter: declaring the 14th Amendment to the Constitution null and void by executive fiat; disparaging the Reagan-appointed judge who blocked Trump’s “blatantly unconstitutional” order; proclaiming that another executive order gives him “the right” to ignore the TikTok ban, duly enacted and upheld by the Supreme Court; asserting that his unilateral declaration of a national energy emergency “means you can do whatever you have to do”; authorizing immigration raids in churches and other houses of worship; revealing the nation’s secrets to people who haven’t been vetted; and, of course, the blanket pardoning and commutations of sentences for people who attacked police officers on Jan. 6, 2021, and orchestrated the sacking of the Capitol.
Dashed already are any vain hopes that Trump might temper the worst excesses of his first term. He’s teasing a revenge prosecution of Biden and proposing his political opponents go “through four years of hell” as he supposedly did. Executive orders titled “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government” and “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” are road maps for retribution, dubbed “remedial actions,” for agencies’ official conduct “over the last four years.” Petty vindictiveness has begun. The Pentagon removed the official portrait of Gen. Mark A. Milley, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Trump critic. Trump stripped the security clearance of another critic, his former national security adviser John Bolton, explaining that Bolton is “a very dumb person” and “a warmonger.” He eliminated security details for Bolton and other former aides who face ongoing assassination threats from Iran.
The megalomania is back. “I was saved by God to make America great again,” Trump said during his inaugural address, after Franklin Graham, in his invocation, attributed Trump’s victory to “what God has done.” So is the infighting. Musk this week forced out Vivek Ramaswamy, his co-leader of the ersatz “Department of Government Efficiency.” Trump loyalist Steve Bannon renewed his feud with Musk, calling on White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to “sit him down.” (In the unlikely event she succeeds at that, she might ask Musk to cease greeting Trump supporters with the extended-arm salute he offered them on Monday.)
Returned, as well, is the dark talk (“vicious, violent … radical and corrupt … stumbling … catastrophic … horrible betrayals”) and the gratuitous insults, some now delivered from behind the Resolute Desk. Liz Cheney is a “crying lunatic.” Adam Schiff is “scum.” Jack Smith is “deranged.” Nancy Pelosi is “guilty as hell” for Jan. 6. After the Episcopal bishop of Washington, the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, had the temerity at the National Prayer Service to urge Trump to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” Trump lashed out at the “so-called Bishop” who is “a Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” not to mention “nasty” and “boring.”
Trump’s tired claims, about the “rigged” 2020 election and the FBI’s purported culpability for Jan. 6, have come with him back to Washington, as have his self-enrichment schemes. Asked about the several billion dollars he has amassed in recent days for the cryptocurrency “meme coins” he released, Trump, flanked by moguls Larry Ellison, Sam Altman and Masayoshi Son, responded: “Several billion? That’s peanuts for these guys.”
And all of this is being normalized, far faster than during Trump’s first term. Stunned Democrats have yet to find their collective voice. And Republicans are bowing and scraping before Trump. On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson labeled as “disgusting” Biden’s preemptive pardons protecting likely targets of Trump’s prosecution vendettas. But as for Trump’s pardoning of cop beaters, Johnson replied: “The president’s made his decision. I don’t second-guess those.”
The most unwelcome feature of Trump’s return this week, more than any individual action, is his abiding ignorance, even after all these years. This is what allows unscrupulous figures such as Stephen Miller to run amok. It’s also the source of the constant chaos that is Trump’s trademark.
Continued from previous post, the fucking astoundingly stupid won.
This week alone, Trump botched — either out of ignorance or mendacity — claims about World Health Organization funding, the trade deficit, opioid deaths, inflation, birthright citizenship, Biden’s pardons, illegal immigration, the Jan. 6 committee and more. In a typical pronouncement, Trump alleged that no president imposed tariffs on China “until I came along.” George Washington would beg to differ.
With such faulty inputs, it’s no wonder the outputs are defective. “With my actions today,” Trump said on Monday, “we will end the Green New Deal and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate” — neither of which actually exists. The same order promises to “safeguard” Americans’ access to inefficient appliances and plumbing fixtures.He justified his threats to retake the Panama Canal, possibly by force, by saying 38,000 Americans died building it and that “China is operating the Panama Canal.” Fewer than 6,000 Americans were believed to have died, and China does not operate the canal. The White House, justifying its order requiring full-time, in-person work by federal employees, claimed that “only 6 percent of employees currently work in person.” But the Office of Management and Budget found that half of federal workers don’t even qualify to work remotely, and the rest average three days a week in the office.
And then there was the executive order titled “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.”
Restoring names? The order proposes to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” — even though it has been called the Gulf of Mexico since Spanish explorers mapped it — in 1519.
Their hostile act was a grave insult to the future United States. And that is why, 506 years later, Trump is finally taking Spain for the mortal enemy it is.
The first two impeachments have had their own threads, why would it be different for the third?
Because the top 3 threads are currently all trump. I think we have enough option to discuss him without adding new threads. People get snotty when someone opens a second thread on a topic with posts like this"use the search function next time." But 15 threads on trump is good. Just seems a little much to me, that's all. As you can see I prefer not to follow multiple threads on the same subject.
The top 3 threads on AMT being about Trump, especially with the number of fans being based in USA, should be no shocker. Top 10 could be about the One Clown to Rule Them All. Top 20.
He is the lightning rod in politics right now. Juat put back into power and working to undo much of what the last 4 years were based on.
I just wish we had threads be topical, rather than about a specific person. A Trump thread just invites the vitriol back and forth between democrats and republicans, and always ends with memes and gifs and insults. Maybe if it was, say, “Trump’s deportation attempts”, or “Trump tariffs”, we’d get at least a little bit beyond that.
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018) The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville 2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2
Comments
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DElKFBgSRY2/?igsh=MTR2eXp2dHdoNndncQ==
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Yea, I don’t know much about it. I might have used it to pay for a hamburder or cofeve once. I really don’t know.
Top Democrat on Oversight panel calls for Trump conflict-of-interest investigation
Connolly made the request to Comer in a letter Tuesday that repeatedly invokes the presidential ethics reforms that Comer pushed for under the previous president, Democrat Joe Biden. The letter was shared exclusively with The Washington Post. Comer previously led an impeachment investigation into Biden and his family that sputtered out last year amid a lack of evidence.
“Ethical governance is not a partisan goal — it is a shared responsibility,” Connolly wrote to Comer. “I urge you to demonstrate the Committee’s commitment to ethical governance and to ensure that no administration, no matter how powerful, is above the law.”
Connolly pointed to a few examples of what he said were conflicts of interest in the new administration that are “proliferating wildly.” The examples included the multiple cryptocurrency ventures that bear Trump’s name, including the lucrative token that he launched three days before taking office.
Trump seemed to shrug off concerns about the coin during a news conference Tuesday at the White House. Asked if he would continue selling products that personally enrich him as president, Trump said he did not “know much about [the coin] other than I launched it” and that he heard it was “very successful.”
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Trump moves to close Pentagon office focused on curbing civilian deaths
Officials are drafting a proposal to defund and potentially “disestablish” the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, though Congress would have to approve doing so.
The Trump administration is moving to abolish a Pentagon office responsible for promoting civilian safety in battlefield operations, suggesting that incoming Defense Department leaders may attempt to loosen restrictions on U.S. military operations worldwide.
In the days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, his transition team provided Pentagon officials with a set of orders outlining early priorities for his second term, including a desire to review and potentially abolish the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, said a U.S. defense official. The office, housed within the Department of the Army, helps the military to limit unintended civilian deaths.
As a result of that order, the Army has begun drafting a proposal to defund and potentially “disestablish” the office, according to five people familiar with the discussions and an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the nascent plan. The document, issued Monday and signed by Army staff director Lt. Gen. Laura A. Potter, requires senior Army leader review no later than Feb. 21.
Shuttering the office, which was established under a 2023 law, would require congressional approval. It was not immediately clear whether the Trump administration would seek to reallocate some of the center’s functions elsewhere.
As is routine in a new administration, the [Defense Department] Agency Review Team tasked the Army to review its programs and responsibilities,” an Army spokeswoman, Cynthia O. Smith, said in a statement. “The Army continues to fund and support the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence” as the Pentagon department tasked with hosting it.
Spokespeople for Trump’s acting defense secretary, Robert G. Salesses, could not be reached immediately for comment.
The early moves suggest the Trump Pentagon may distance itself from a host of measures established under President Joe Biden to prioritize the safety of noncombatants in conflict zones. Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who has promised to make the U.S. military more lethal, has complained about overly restrictive rules of engagement and said that service members “fight lawyers as much as we fight bad guys.”
Hegseth, a former National Guard soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, used his perch as a Fox News host to advocate during Trump’s first presidential term for lenient treatment of troops accused in war crimes cases. Trump pardoned two of those soldiers and intervened on behalf of a Navy SEAL. He also suggested shortly before being tapped for the Pentagon role in November that he had told troops under his command in Iraq they could ignore rules of engagement communicated to them.
People familiar with the effort the shut down the office said that even if Congress blocks its closure, military and administration officials could act to zero out its budget, fire or reassign personnel, or take other steps to render the office functional on paper but practically inert.
The center’s roots lie in the thousands of civilian deaths that occurred in decades of U.S. counterinsurgent operations following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. During Trump’s first presidency, as civilian deaths surged during the air war against the Islamic State, chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. oversaw a review of the military’s handling of civilian protection, setting in motion a process that led to the center’s establishment.
Under a follow-on plan established during the Biden administration, the Pentagon assigned specialists to military operations centers worldwide to advise commanders, incorporate civilian harm reduction into training exercises, refine data collection and improve the military’s response when deaths occur.
The Center of Excellence, staffed by about 30 people with backgrounds in targeting, intelligence, civil affairs or humanitarian organizations, was established to share best practices across the military and assist commanders and battlefield personnel in integrating new information into their battle plans. It has an annual budget of $7 million.
“If we want to protect our troops, we should continue to focus on these efforts rather than unwind them. Protecting civilians in conflict is both a moral and national security imperative,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado), an Army veteran who was involved in legislation that established the center, said in a statement. “I am ready to talk and work with anyone about why these efforts are important for national security and the safety of our troops.”
A former Pentagon official who worked closely with the center was surprised to hear about the effort to shutter the office, which they said, had been welcomed by commands and Army leadership.
Officials who have worked in the Center of Excellence and on other aspects of the Pentagon’s system for improving its record on civilian harm have sought to counter the perception that it imposes constraints on military commanders as they target adversaries or establishes punitive measures for personnel carrying out such missions.
Rather, they described the system, which includes more than 150 people across Defense Department offices and combatant commands, as a tool that provides commanders more information as they conduct operations, informing targeters or military planners about patterns of life in a particular area, identifying cultural sites and averting unintended deaths before they occur.
“This certainly doesn’t prevent you from ‘taking the gloves off,’” a senior defense official said. “But what it means is, when you ‘put the gloves on’ … you’ll hit what you want to hit, and not what you don’t.”
Officials who work on civilian harm issues said in the lead-up to Trump’s inauguration that they were hopeful the system would find support under the new administration.
“This is an additional capability that we give to the force,” the senior defense official said. “This is all about avoiding unintended effects, and winning wars.”
The Defense Department’s focus on reducing civilian harm also prioritizes rooting out what the military calls “confirmation bias,” or favoring information that aligns with existing beliefs.
Military officials said confirmation bias contributed to a botched 2021 strike in Kabul that killed 10 civilians as U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan. The incident fueled lawmakers’ demands for corrective measures to prevent such tragedies. The department concluded that confirmation bias also played a role in the death of a civilian in a separate strike in Syria in 2023.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/01/23/trump-pentagon-civilian-deaths/
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
-EV 8/14/93
apparently we do. I expect you made the same inquiry in shecky's thread?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Top 20.
He is the lightning rod in politics right now.
Juat put back into power and working to undo much of what the last 4 years were based on.
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
Trump returns — and so does his astounding ignorance
If you feel off-kilter, you’re in good company. The president seems downright bewildered.
“I think we’re going to do things that people would be shocked at,” President Donald Trump declared on his second day in office. It was one of the few true things he said all week.
The crush of vindictive, cruel, unconstitutional and just plain bonkers orders and actions coming from the restored Trump administration in its first week makes even the worst-case predictions look conservative. But if you’re feeling knocked off-kilter by the fire hose of bad policies, well, you’re in good company. Trump himself seems downright bewildered.
In the weeks before he became commander in chief, Trump aimed his fire at the traditional enemies of the United States: Canada, Denmark and Panama. But upon taking the oath of office, he launched verbal hostilities against a new foe: the Kingdom of Spain.
On his first evening back in office, Trump invited reporters into the Oval Office, where he discussed his new decree that NATO members must spend 5 percent of their nation’s wealth on their militaries. (He perhaps is unaware that the United States spends only about 3 percent and would have to come up with another $500 billion annually to fulfill his edict.) Complaining about the “very low” military spending of Spain, Trump told his questioners: “They’re a BRICS nation, Spain. You know what a BRICS nation is? You’ll figure it out.” The 47th president then said that he would “put at least 100 percent tariff on the business they do with the United States.”
Spain, part of the European Union, is not a member of the “BRICS” bloc, short for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (but which, curiously, also includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates). But this, apparently, is news to our belligerent president. The United States might not have been in a conflict with Spain since 1898, but Trump is not one to let bygones be bygones. Remember the Maine! “I don’t know if the affirmation made by President Trump was the result of a mix-up or not,” said a spokeswoman for the unnerved Spanish government.
Maybe he’ll “figure it out.”
During that same session in the Oval Office, a reporter asked Trump whether his executive order governing “unlawful disclosure by federal officials” was related to Hunter Biden.
“No, I think it’s just more general than that. It’s not Hunter Biden,” came Trump’s breezy reply. The actual text of the order Trump signed says otherwise: It strips security clearances from former officials who issued “a letter discrediting the reporting that President Joseph R. Biden’s son had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair business.”
The next evening brought more astounding ignorance from the chief executive. This time, he brought reporters into the Roosevelt Room to unveil a supposed $500 billion joint venture regarding artificial intelligence. But the ruse was exposed by none other than Trump sidekick Elon Musk, who proclaimed: “They don’t have the money.”
At the event, NBC News’s Peter Alexander asked Trump about why he had just pardoned D.J. Rodriguez, who shocked a police officer with a stun gun at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and later boasted that he “tazzzzed the f--- out of the blue.” The judge who sentenced Rodriguez to more than 12 years called him a “one-man army of hate, attacking police.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Trump replied. “Was it a pardon?”
Alexander reiterated that it was.
“Okay. Well, we’ll take a look at everything,” Trump said, though his pardons of this and other cop-beaters are irrevocable.
Trump soon moved on to demanding that California “turn the valve” to allow more water to reach Los Angeles, where, he said, residents of Beverly Hills have been limited to 38 gallons of water per day. “When you’re a rich person, you like to take a shower. Thirty-eight gallons doesn’t last very long.”
There is no such “valve,” and no such water restrictions in Beverly Hills. But Trump skipped merrily from that error to another: Addressing a controversy that has split his staff members, he explained that he supports the H1-B visa program because it allows his properties to hire “maître d’s, wine experts, even waiters.” Thus did he apparently confuse the H1-B visa, covering those with technical expertise, with the H2-B, covering temporary workers.
Trump continued on, scolding the Biden administration for failing to negotiate a release of the hostages from Gaza “a year and a half, two years ago.” Good point! Biden should have secured the hostages’ freedom before they were taken captive on Oct. 7, 2023.
By Wednesday night, when Trump appeared from the Oval Office on Fox News with Sean Hannity, the president was reviving his first-term canard about raking the forest to prevent fires. “You have to clean the floors of the forest,” he explained.
And by Thursday afternoon, the perplexed president seemed unaware that his administration was preparing to send around 10,000 troops to the southern border, as described in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection briefing document obtained by The Post.
“The southern border?” Trump replied when a reporter asked him about the plan. He then repeated an unrelated fiction he had offered earlier about offering 10,000 troops to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
It’s going to be a long four years.
The evidence that Donald Trump was truly, madly and deeply confused was worrisome when he was a candidate. It’s all the more so now that he is wielding the mighty apparatus of the U.S. government to pursue his fantasies. This is a classic case of garbage in, garbage out — but now he is making the country a landfill for his nonsensical policies.
Those 10,000 troops are being sent to the southern border to resolve a self-proclaimed “emergency,” even though illegal border crossings are lower now than when he left officein 2021. His administration has ordered personnel repurposed from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces to support the same fabricated emergency, needlessly raising the danger of a terrorist attack. He declared another “national emergency” because of the “precariously inadequate” energy supply — even though domestic crude-oil production hit record highs under Biden and is still climbing. He’s refusing to implement a law banning TikTok, ignoring the threat to national security because “We won the young vote. I think I won it through TikTok.” (He lost among young voters, but never mind.)
Most ominous of all is that Trump is already back to making life-and-death decisions based on his whims. He had said he would pardon those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, on a “case by case” basis, and Vice President JD Vance had said that “if you committed violence that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” Yet Trump issued a blanket pardon, including to many of those who assaulted police. Why? A Trump adviser told Axios that, as Trump’s team was debating the issue, “Trump just said: ‘F--- it: Release ’em all.’”
MAGA diehards love the chaos. Others who voted for Trump might feel, not for the last time, that they were sold a bill of goods. They wanted law and order and instead got a president blessing violence against police. They wanted a crackdown on illegal immigration and instead got a president turning away law-abiding migrants who waited in line for a chance to claim asylum. They believed Trump’s promises that he would bring peace to Gaza and end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. But now, he says that he’s “not confident” about the Gaza ceasefire (“It’s not our war”), and admits that “I don’t know” whether Russian leader Vladimir Putin wants to resolve the Ukraine conflict.
Above all, Trump supporters voted for a president who would remember the “forgotten man and woman” of the working class. Instead, they elected one who seated the oligarchs — Musk, Jeff Bezos (who owns The Post), Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook and TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew — at his inauguration in front of his own Cabinet nominees. The next day, Trump, joined at the White House by three more billionaires, extolled the corrupt era of the robber barons, “when our country was at its richest.” (It wasn’t.) The forgotten man can also forget about disaster relief: Trump suggested to Hannity on Wednesday night that “FEMA is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly, because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems.”
Oh, and as for Trump’s promise to reduce prices for Americans? He issued a vague and meaningless executive order proclaiming that agencies should “deliver emergency price relief.” Problem solved!
As Trump went on and on Wednesday night about his lust for retribution against Biden, Hannity tried to interrupt: “Let me get to the economy. I’m running out of time.”
“I don’t care,” Trump replied. “This is more important.”
No one should be surprised that Trump is pulling out of the Paris climate accord, kicking career civil servants to the curb, threatening to impose 25 percent tariffs against Canada and Mexico (but only 10 percent against China), halting civil-rights litigation, dismantling privacy safeguards, attacking anything that has to do with transgender people or racial diversity, muzzling public health agencies, ripping up environmental protections (“I’d like to see federal lands opened up for data centers”), and generally proceeding through the Project 2025 playbook. He signaled this clearly during the campaign.
But the brazen lawlessness is another matter: declaring the 14th Amendment to the Constitution null and void by executive fiat; disparaging the Reagan-appointed judge who blocked Trump’s “blatantly unconstitutional” order; proclaiming that another executive order gives him “the right” to ignore the TikTok ban, duly enacted and upheld by the Supreme Court; asserting that his unilateral declaration of a national energy emergency “means you can do whatever you have to do”; authorizing immigration raids in churches and other houses of worship; revealing the nation’s secrets to people who haven’t been vetted; and, of course, the blanket pardoning and commutations of sentences for people who attacked police officers on Jan. 6, 2021, and orchestrated the sacking of the Capitol.
Dashed already are any vain hopes that Trump might temper the worst excesses of his first term. He’s teasing a revenge prosecution of Biden and proposing his political opponents go “through four years of hell” as he supposedly did. Executive orders titled “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government” and “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” are road maps for retribution, dubbed “remedial actions,” for agencies’ official conduct “over the last four years.” Petty vindictiveness has begun. The Pentagon removed the official portrait of Gen. Mark A. Milley, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Trump critic. Trump stripped the security clearance of another critic, his former national security adviser John Bolton, explaining that Bolton is “a very dumb person” and “a warmonger.” He eliminated security details for Bolton and other former aides who face ongoing assassination threats from Iran.
The megalomania is back. “I was saved by God to make America great again,” Trump said during his inaugural address, after Franklin Graham, in his invocation, attributed Trump’s victory to “what God has done.” So is the infighting. Musk this week forced out Vivek Ramaswamy, his co-leader of the ersatz “Department of Government Efficiency.” Trump loyalist Steve Bannon renewed his feud with Musk, calling on White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to “sit him down.” (In the unlikely event she succeeds at that, she might ask Musk to cease greeting Trump supporters with the extended-arm salute he offered them on Monday.)
Returned, as well, is the dark talk (“vicious, violent … radical and corrupt … stumbling … catastrophic … horrible betrayals”) and the gratuitous insults, some now delivered from behind the Resolute Desk. Liz Cheney is a “crying lunatic.” Adam Schiff is “scum.” Jack Smith is “deranged.” Nancy Pelosi is “guilty as hell” for Jan. 6. After the Episcopal bishop of Washington, the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, had the temerity at the National Prayer Service to urge Trump to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” Trump lashed out at the “so-called Bishop” who is “a Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” not to mention “nasty” and “boring.”
Trump’s tired claims, about the “rigged” 2020 election and the FBI’s purported culpability for Jan. 6, have come with him back to Washington, as have his self-enrichment schemes. Asked about the several billion dollars he has amassed in recent days for the cryptocurrency “meme coins” he released, Trump, flanked by moguls Larry Ellison, Sam Altman and Masayoshi Son, responded: “Several billion? That’s peanuts for these guys.”
And all of this is being normalized, far faster than during Trump’s first term. Stunned Democrats have yet to find their collective voice. And Republicans are bowing and scraping before Trump. On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson labeled as “disgusting” Biden’s preemptive pardons protecting likely targets of Trump’s prosecution vendettas. But as for Trump’s pardoning of cop beaters, Johnson replied: “The president’s made his decision. I don’t second-guess those.”
The most unwelcome feature of Trump’s return this week, more than any individual action, is his abiding ignorance, even after all these years. This is what allows unscrupulous figures such as Stephen Miller to run amok. It’s also the source of the constant chaos that is Trump’s trademark.
The astoundingly stupid continues next post
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
This week alone, Trump botched — either out of ignorance or mendacity — claims about World Health Organization funding, the trade deficit, opioid deaths, inflation, birthright citizenship, Biden’s pardons, illegal immigration, the Jan. 6 committee and more. In a typical pronouncement, Trump alleged that no president imposed tariffs on China “until I came along.” George Washington would beg to differ.
With such faulty inputs, it’s no wonder the outputs are defective. “With my actions today,” Trump said on Monday, “we will end the Green New Deal and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate” — neither of which actually exists. The same order promises to “safeguard” Americans’ access to inefficient appliances and plumbing fixtures.He justified his threats to retake the Panama Canal, possibly by force, by saying 38,000 Americans died building it and that “China is operating the Panama Canal.” Fewer than 6,000 Americans were believed to have died, and China does not operate the canal. The White House, justifying its order requiring full-time, in-person work by federal employees, claimed that “only 6 percent of employees currently work in person.” But the Office of Management and Budget found that half of federal workers don’t even qualify to work remotely, and the rest average three days a week in the office.
And then there was the executive order titled “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.”
Restoring names? The order proposes to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” — even though it has been called the Gulf of Mexico since Spanish explorers mapped it — in 1519.
Their hostile act was a grave insult to the future United States. And that is why, 506 years later, Trump is finally taking Spain for the mortal enemy it is.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/24/trump-first-week-executive-orders-actions/
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©