Though i haven't seen this as a heavy one add it to your list of Republican diversionary branches stretching wide from the tree of the Mueller trunk. Trump Accuses Former Clinton Aide of Failing to Follow Security Protocols - Huma Abedin https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/us/politics/trump-clinton-huma-abedin.html
The Republicans’ Fake Investigations By GLENN R. SIMPSON and PETER FRITSCH Glenn R. Simpson and Peter Fritsch, both former journalists, are the founders of the research firm Fusion GPS. A generation ago, Republicans sought to protect President Richard Nixon by urging the Senate Watergate committee to look at supposed wrongdoing by Democrats in previous elections. The committee chairman, Sam Ervin, a Democrat, said that would be “as foolish as the man who went bear hunting and stopped to chase rabbits.” Today, amid a growing criminal inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, congressional Republicans are again chasing rabbits. We know because we’re their favorite quarry. In the year since the publication of the so-called Steele dossier — the collection of intelligence reports we commissioned about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia — the president has repeatedly attacked us on Twitter. His allies in Congress have dug through our bank records and sought to tarnish our firm to punish us for highlighting his links to Russia. Conservative news outlets and even our former employer, The Wall Street Journal, have spun a succession of mendacious conspiracy theories about our motives and backers. We are happy to correct the record. In fact, we already have. Three congressional committees have heard over 21 hours of testimony from our firm, Fusion GPS. In those sessions, we toppled the far right’s conspiracy theories and explained how The Washington Free Beacon and the Clinton campaign — the Republican and Democratic funders of our Trump research — separately came to hire us in the first place. We walked investigators through our yearlong effort to decipher Mr. Trump’s complex business past, of which the Steele dossier is but one chapter. And we handed over our relevant bank records — while drawing the line at a fishing expedition for the records of companies we work for that have nothing to do with the Trump case. Republicans have refused to release full transcripts of our firm’s testimony, even as they selectively leak details to media outlets on the far right. It’s time to share what our company told investigators. We don’t believe the Steele dossier was the trigger for the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russian meddling. As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp. The intelligence committees have known for months that credible allegations of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia were pouring in from independent sources during the campaign. Yet lawmakers in the thrall of the president continue to wage a cynical campaign to portray us as the unwitting victims of Kremlin disinformation. We suggested investigators look into the bank records of Deutsche Bank and others that were funding Mr. Trump’s businesses. Congress appears uninterested in that tip: Reportedly, ours are the only bank records the House Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed. We told Congress that from Manhattan to Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., and from Toronto to Panama, we found widespread evidence that Mr. Trump and his organization had worked with a wide array of dubious Russians in arrangements that often raised questions about money laundering. Likewise, those deals don’t seem to interest Congress. We explained how, from our past journalistic work in Europe, we were deeply familiar with the political operative Paul Manafort’s coziness with Moscow and his financial ties to Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin. Finally, we debunked the biggest canard being pushed by the president’s men — the notion that we somehow knew of the June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower between some Russians and the Trump brain trust. We first learned of that meeting from news reports last year — and the committees know it. They also know that these Russians were unaware of the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s work for us and were not sources for his reports. Yes, we hired Mr. Steele, a highly respected Russia expert. But we did so without informing him whom we were working for and gave him no specific marching orders beyond this basic question: Why did Mr. Trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most serious investors shun? What came back shocked us. Mr. Steele’s sources in Russia (who were not paid) reported on an extensive — and now confirmed — effort by the Kremlin to help elect Mr. Trump president. Mr. Steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the F.B.I. We did not discuss that decision with our clients, or anyone else. Instead, we deferred to Mr. Steele, a trusted friend and intelligence professional with a long history of working with law enforcement. We did not speak to the F.B.I. and haven’t since. After the election, Mr. Steele decided to share his intelligence with Senator John McCain via an emissary. We helped him do that. The goal was to alert the United States national security community to an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power. We did not, however, share the dossier with BuzzFeed, which to our dismay published it last January. We’re extremely proud of our work to highlight Mr. Trump’s Russia ties. To have done so is our right under the First Amendment. It is time to stop chasing rabbits. The public still has much to learn about a man with the most troubling business past of any United States president. Congress should release transcripts of our firm’s testimony, so that the American people can learn the truth about our work and most important, what happened to our democracy. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/opinion/republicans-investigation-fusion-gps.html further to: How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt - excerpted at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=137313092 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/politics/how-fbi-russia-investigation-began-george-papadopoulos.html -- more: https://www.google.com/search?q=republicans%E2%80%99+fake+investigations
This one is particularly ugly, brittle, bully boy shit. Donald Trump’s Year of Living Dangerously It’s worse than you think. When President Donald Trump sat down for dinner on September 18 in New York with leaders of four Latin American countries on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly, anxieties were already running high. There was the matter of Mexico and his promise to build that “big, beautiful wall,” presumably to keep not just Mexicans but all of their citizens out of the United States too. And the threat to blow up the North American Free Trade Agreement. And then, a month earlier, seemingly out of nowhere, Trump had volunteered that he was considering a “military option” in Venezuela as that country’s last vestiges of democracy disappeared. Amid the international furor over his vow to rain down “fire and fury” on North Korea in the same golf-course press conference, the news that the president of the United States was apparently considering going to war with its third-largest oil supplier had gotten relatively little attention. But the leaders from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Panama invited to the dinner remembered it well. So, it turned out, did Trump. After the photo op was over and the cameras had left the room, Trump dominated the long table. His vice president, Mike Pence, was to his right; Pence had just spent nearly a week on a conciliatory, well-received tour of the region, the first by a high-ranking administration official since Trump’s inauguration. To Trump’s left was his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. “Rex tells me you don’t want me to use the military option in Venezuela,” the president told the gathered Latin American leaders, according to an account offered by an attendee soon after the dinner. “Is that right? Are you sure?” Everyone said they were sure. But they were rattled. War with Venezuela, as absurd as that seemed, was clearly still on Trump’s mind. By the time the dinner was over, the leaders were in shock, and not just over the idle talk of armed conflict. No matter how prepared they were, eight months into an American presidency like no other, this was somehow not what they expected. A former senior U.S. official with whom I spoke was briefed by ministers from three of the four countries that attended the dinner. “Without fail, they just had wide eyes about the entire engagement,” the former official told me. Even if few took his martial bluster about Venezuela seriously, Trump struck them as uninformed about their issues and dangerously unpredictable, asking them to expend political capital on behalf of a U.S. that no longer seemed a reliable partner. “The word they all used was: ‘This guy is insane.’” [...] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/02/donald-trump-foreign-policy-analysis-dangerous-216202 .. more: https://www.google.com/search?q=trump%27s+year+of+living+dangerously
By ISABEL KERSHNER, ANNE BARNARD and ERIC SCHMITTFEB. 10, 2018
Pieces of an Israeli F-16 that crashed in northern Israel on Saturday after coming under antiaircraft fire. The pilot ejected, according to a military spokesman. Credit Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
JERUSALEM — Israel clashed with Syrian and Iranian military forces on Saturday in a series of audacious cross-border strikes that could mark a dangerous new phase in Syria’s long civil war.
The confrontations, which threaten to draw Israel more directly into the conflict, began before dawn when Israel intercepted what it said was an Iranian drone that had penetrated its airspace from Syria. The Israeli military then attacked what it called the command-and-control center from which Iran had launched the drone, at a Syrian air base near Palmyra.
On its way back from the mission, one of Israel’s F-16 fighter jets crashed in northern Israel after coming under heavy Syrian antiaircraft fire. It is believed to be the first Israeli plane lost under enemy fire in decades.
That prompted a broad wave of Israeli strikes against a dozen Syrian and Iranian targets in Syrian territory. The Israeli military said it hit eight Syrian targets, including three aerial defense batteries, and four Iranian positions that it described as “part of Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria.”
The events, including Israel’s direct engagement with Iranian forces, threatened to intensify the crisis in Syria .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/world/middleeast/syria-war-idlib.html .. and showed the extent to which the country has become a battlefield between Israel and Iran, bitter foes in the region.
“This is indeed a dangerous escalation that raises the specter of direct conflict between Israel and Iran in Syria — a far more serious situation than the drawing of red lines and tit-for-tat exchanges that have occurred before,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Forces from Russia, Turkey and the United States are also on the ground in Syria in a war with multiple fronts and multiple factions, including the remnants of the Islamic State and other Islamist militant groups.
Israel has long warned about the risk of conflict as Iranian forces and their allies, including Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group militia, have dug in on Syrian territory and approached the boundary with the Israeli-held portion of the Golan Heights. Israel, which considers Iran its most potent enemy in the region, has been lobbying world powers to push these forces from the border areas.
Israel has carried out scores of strikes in Syria in recent years, largely targeting what it says are advanced weapons stores or convoys taking weapons to Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon. Israel has also reportedly hit Syrian government facilities involved in weapons development and an Iranian base .. http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Analysis-Airstrike-on-Iranian-base-in-Syria-raises-questions-515798 ,, under construction in Syria.
But this was the first Israeli strike on a site where Iranian forces were present, analysts said .. https://twitter.com/YadlinAmos/status/962287016061915136 , and Israeli military officials said this was the first time an Iranian drone had penetrated Israeli airspace during the Syrian war. There was no immediate indication that the drone was armed.
Israeli military officials accused the Syrians and Iranians of “playing with fire,” but indicated that Israel wanted to contain the situation.
“We are ready to exact a very heavy price from whoever acts against us,” said .. https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/962242819162337280 .. Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, the chief spokesman of the Israeli military, “but we are not seeking an escalation.”
The jet crash represented a severe blow to Israel’s prestige and could mark a major change after years in which it acted against targets in Syria with relative impunity.
Hezbollah said on Saturday that the downing of the Israeli F-16 jet by the Syrian Army marked the “start of a new strategic phase,” which would limit Israeli exploitation of Syrian airspace. “Today’s developments mean the old equations have categorically ended,” the Lebanese Shiite group said in a statement.
In Syria, the day’s events were viewed as potential game-changers. Government supporters celebrated in the streets of Damascus, handing out sweets and hailing Mr. Assad and the army.
This is the first time the Syrian government appears to have made good on promises to shoot down Israeli aircraft, after years of threats against both Israel and the other international militaries that have flown sorties over Syria without permission.
“I am so happy,” said Haidar, 30, a government supporter, as he handed out sweets downtown. “It makes me proud to see a Syrian response, shooting down the Israeli F-16. For years we have been waiting for a Syrian reaction against the Israeli violations and airstrikes.”
But just as Syrian self-confidence appears to have grown, Israel also sent a strong message with its broad wave of strikes on Saturday, Israeli analysts said. They noted that this was the first time in recent years Israel had struck Syrian territory in broad daylight and said that Israel had inflicted serious damage on Syria’s air-defense system. Despite more Syrian antiaircraft fire, all Israeli jets returned to base safely from the second mission, after the first jet was lost, according to the Israeli military. Syria is believed to have fired at least a dozen antiaircraft missiles, with the wreckage of one landing in Lebanon.
It was not immediately clear if the Israeli F-16 was directly hit by the Syrian antiaircraft fire. Early assessments suggested that it was, said Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, another spokesman for the Israeli military, though he added that nothing had been officially confirmed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spent much of Saturday in consultations with his defense minister, the Israeli chief of staff and other military officials.
Russia, along with Iran, has been helping prop up the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling on “all sides involved to show restraint and avoid all acts that could lead to complicating the situation further.”
The ministry added: “It is absolutely unacceptable to create threats to the lives and security of Russian soldiers that are in the Syrian Arab Republic on the invitation of the legal government to assist in the fight against terrorism.”
After a meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow two weeks ago, Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement that Israel viewed with “utmost gravity” Iran’s efforts to establish a military presence in Syria, and said he had made clear to Mr. Putin that Israel would “act according to need.”
Mr. Netanyahu said he spoke with Mr. Putin on Saturday and agreed that security coordination between the two countries would continue. The Israeli prime minister also said he spoke with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson about Saturday’s confrontation.
“The United States is deeply concerned about today’s escalation of violence over Israel’s border,” Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Iran’s calculated escalation of threat, and its ambition to project its power and dominance, places all the people of the region — from Yemen to Lebanon — at risk.”
A Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Adrian J. Rankine-Galloway, said the United States military supported Israel’s right of self-defense. “We share the concerns of many throughout the region that Iran’s destabilizing activities threaten international peace and security, and we seek greater international resolve in countering Iran’s malign activities,” Major Rankine-Galloway said in a statement.
With so many foreign forces engaged in Syria, the risks of the conflict extending beyond its borders are real, but analysts said all sides have an interest in making sure Saturday’s events do not spiral into something larger.
“I think it will be contained for the moment,” said Steven Simon, a Middle East specialist at Amherst College who was a senior official on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council. “But the situation is highly volatile,” Mr. Simon said, adding, “this has been simmering for quite a while and things are coming to a boil.”
Mr. Simon said an important question is whether the White House is counseling restraint.
“The U.S. and Israel could be thinking of their respective operations in Syria as a hammer and anvil, with Iran and its proxy forces in the middle,” he said. “If true, fighting will escalate.”
Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence and now the executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said Syria, Iran and Russia would appear to have little interest now in getting into a full-blown conflict with Israel.
“Israel has the capability to destroy the Russian and Iranian project to save the Assad regime,” Mr. Yadlin said. “This is not the weak Syrian opposition. This is strong Israel.”
While Israel’s military strength is a significant factor in any response, the improving situation for the Assad government is also a consideration.
“There is no incentive for the Iranians, Syrians or Russians to draw the Israelis into a military situation that has been moving in their favor for some time,” said Stephen B. Slick, a former C.I.A. station chief in Israel who now directs the Intelligence Studies Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry denied the drone had strayed into Israeli airspace and rejected as “laughable” reports that Israel had intercepted a drone launched from Syria.
Syrian Army officials said the drone had been carrying out a routine mission against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, over Syrian airspace, according to the news site Al-Manar .. http://english.almanar.com.lb/443463 .
Colonel Conricus insisted that the drone was “on a specific Iranian mission,” and was shot down deep in Israeli territory.
Still, some Israeli analysts did not discount the possibility that the Iranian drone had crossed into Israel because of a malfunction.
“I fail to see the logic behind the Iranians sending a drone to Israel,” said Ehud Yaari, an Israeli television analyst of Arab affairs and an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They have other priorities right now in Syria.”
But once it had crossed into Israeli airspace, the Israelis had no choice but to respond, Mr. Yaari said.
He added, “The almost constant friction between the Iranian presence in Syria and the Israeli Army is taking its toll.”
------
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Nada Homsi from Beirut; Rod Nordland from Tal Abyad, Syria; Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran; Ivan Nechepurenko from Moscow; and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.
A version of this article appears in print on February 11, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Israel Loses Jet And Then Hits At Iran in Syria. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Duty To Warn Published on Oct 15, 2017 At D.C. Duty To Warn town hall Dr Justin Frank, author of upcoming Trump on the Couch, speak about the dangers associated with Trump's psychology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KaXOz-BcGk
The above is the 3rd of 3 videos down in the post i am replying to.
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Donald Trump, seen in June 2016, surrounded by the affirmation some experts say he craves. Photograph: Ross D Franklin/AP
Dr Justin Frank thinks the president has an erotic attachment to his daughter and a fixation with faeces and dirt
It all begins with the mother.
This is the opening line of Dr Justin Frank’s .. http://www.obamaonthecouch.com/about/ .. book, Trump on the Couch, “a deep dive into the psyche” of the 45th US president which argues that a distant mother and authoritarian father are key to understanding how Donald Trump became Donald Trump: infantile, impulsive and ill-suited for office.
“Yes, we should be scared,” Frank, a clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University, told the Guardian. “We have to accept that he is the president and we also have to accept that he’s never going to change because he can’t. Once we accept those things, we can then figure out what to do with our fears.”
Donald Trump with his sister and mother at Mar-a-Lago in 1995. Photograph: Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images
The otherwise garrulous president has said little about his mother. Notably, for his first few months in the Oval Office, the only photo behind his desk was of his father. His mother was added later. Yet, Frank points out, 72-year-old Trump’s gravity-defying hair is a very deliberate homage to his mum’s .. https://www.glamour.com/story/donald-trump-moms-hair-photos .
“The fact that he tries to get us to feel his anxiety and he externalises responsibility makes me feel that, as a young child, he did not feel contained or held by his mother or other caretakers,” he says. “He didn’t have a strong maternal force in his life.
“The one thing we do know biographically is that when he was two, the last child in the family was born, but when his mother went to the hospital she didn’t come home right away. She had a haemorrhage, she had four surgeries and came close to dying and there was virtually no talk about that in the family. His older siblings just went to school as if it were normal while they’re terribly worried about their mother.”
His mother’s frequent absences, Frank suggests, left Trump devoid of empathy.
“One of the things that you do when you’re feeling ignored and abandoned in some way,” he says, “is develop contempt for that part of yourself. You have the hatred of your own weakness and you then become a bully and make other people feel weak, or mock other people to make it clear that you’re the strong one and that you don’t have any needs.
“In fact, at one of his rallies recently somebody was complaining about something and he said, ‘Why don’t you go home to your mommy?’ I was struck that he must have been reading my book.”
Frank adds: “That’s why I think some of his relationships with women are not just based on sex. It had to do with a real contempt for women’s boundaries and autonomy because he’s so angry and so bereft and I think that’s so deeply unconscious.”
Fred Trump: ‘A kind of tyrant’
Trump on the Couch is the third in Frank’s series of psychoanalytic presidential profiles, following Bush on the Couch and Obama on the Couch. It draws on two years of study of Trump’s tweets, speeches, interviews and overall behaviour to conclude that he is “mentally unfit” and “psychologically unsuited” to the presidency. The approach represents a break from the “Goldwater rule” .. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/will-trump-be-the-death-of-the-goldwater-rule , the principle that bars psychiatrists from giving professional opinions about public figures without examining them in person.
Trump talks to his father, real estate developer Fred C Trump, in the 1980s. Photograph: Bernard Gotfryd/Getty Images
“When his father was there,” Frank says, “he ran the house like a kind of a tyrant, where there were so many rules that everybody had to do what the father said. [Donald Trump] was, I think, frightened of his father. His father would take him aside and say, ‘You have to be strong. You have to be tough. Never apologise. Never complain. Never say you’re sorry. You have to learn to be a killer. You have to be a king.’ It’s over and over again, drilled into him.
“But it didn’t work when he went to school, and his father actually joined the school board because he thought maybe he could help control things – but he couldn’t. When he was about 10, 11, 12, Donny would sneak into New York in a delinquent way and go to shows with a friend of his. Then he saw West Side Story .. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/mar/15/martin-charnin-interview-annie-west-side-story .. and that got him very excited. He decided to start buying switchblades and developed a fairly elaborate collection of large ones and his father eventually found out and just read them the riot act and made arrangements to send him off to military school.”
“People unconsciously repeat inner conflicts that they’ve had that didn’t get resolved when they were younger,” he says. “Trump is re-enacting his teenage impeachment fears and is now doing it with [special counsel Robert] Mueller and all these people. He was going to do everything he could to sneak into Manhattan to undermine his father to do whatever he wanted, and now he’s doing it with Mueller. Instead of being thrown out of the Jamaica Estates, he’s afraid of being thrown out of the White House.”
Frank has more than 40 years of experience in psychoanalysis but he acknowledges that he has never encountered a subject like Trump.
“He is infantile. He’s dominated by impulses, by suspicion, by a need to always win, by a fantasy that he has to do everything himself, which is what you see in children when they say: ‘Don’t help me, mommy. I’m going tie my own shoes.’ Then you wait for 45 minutes for the shoes to get tied before you can get out of the house. He’s, like, anti-dependent.”
Does he think Trump is capable of feeling love? “No. He needed his first wife, Ivana, but once they got together he really needed her to be subservient to him, like many men do. So I don’t know about love or real, deep concern for her wellbeing. Love involves being able to have ruth, as opposed to being ruthless. Being able to feel concern and care, and I just don’t think he had that.
“I also don’t think he ever felt loved and I think that’s also partly why he tweets so much and has to say ‘I’m getting an A+ as president’ so often, because if he didn’t get love outside, he’s going to compensatorily love himself. ‘If don’t get love from you guys, I know I’m the best.’”
‘Unconscious incestuous fantasy’
Frank devotes a chapter to the psychology of sexism and misogyny. In it he notes that Trump reportedly told the model Karen McDougal and the porn star Stormy Daniels, with whom he is alleged to have had affairs, that they reminded him of his daughter Ivanka .. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/trump-allegedly-tell-stormy-daniels-karen-mcdougal-remind-daughter-163758867.html . The psychoanalyst suggests this enabled Trump to enact “an unconscious incestuous fantasy” and use the image of his daughter as “a kind of psychological Viagra”.
Ivanka Trump speaks, Donald Trump listens. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP
“I think that he does have an erotic attachment to her,” Frank says, “but he leads with his unconscious so he doesn’t have to be dominated by it. If he gets it out of his system by saying it and joking about it, he doesn’t have to live with it and sit with it. It’s like releasing a pressure cooker. He has the courage of his neurosis.”
“I think that most of the time he does believe the things he’s saying,” Frank says, “because, at his deepest level, he lies to himself. The purpose of lying is to hide yourself, first, from others, but then at a deeper level to hide yourself from yourself.
“He doesn’t want to look at who he is, so what he does over time is distort reality, and lying involves changing reality and making it into one’s own wish or fantasy. That’s where the term ‘fake news’ is so important, because he hates the fact that the news functions almost for him unconsciously like a Greek chorus. Part of his lying is also to deny rules and deny regulations, to deny laws, to deny limitations. It’s rejection of learning and thinking. Rules remind him of having to accept truth.”
“It’s a form of what I call the faecalisation of the environment. He is covering all of us with his productions, which I think unconsciously have a faecal quality. They’re smearing things in a playpen all over the place. It’s something that we see in young children who are both exuberant and angry at the same time.”
Frank muses: “He’s quite two-dimensional. I don’t think I could really ever engage with him. I would not find him a good patient or subject for a novel. He doesn’t have the depth and I think that, if he were not president, I would never think twice about him.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/29/trump-on-the-couch-justin-frank
I'm guessing that last sentence about says it all for virtually every one of us.
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