BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

Here is a little from the Wikipedia page for Admiral Lyons:

Duly noted, but with an impressive 36 year military career in the Navy, I am willing to give him some latitude and discretion. He is definitely within conservative circles but if has intelligence to share, I welcome it.

Here are all of his op-ed pieces (he is very prolific):

See http://lionllc.com/op-ed-s.html

I would go one better - I don't care if the president knows more about Qatar than I as long as he is willing to acknowledge his ignorance and seek advice and counsel from people who do know about Qatar and then follows that advice.

What is truly dangerous is someone who believes he knows instinctively all that he needs to know, for example that Fender makes a great electric Qatar - they say so on InfoWars.

Honestly, I am not the one defending a Former President who went on camera and lied to the nation unapologetically about a trifling tryst. He then told us in a grand jury hearing that the term "sexual relations" includes sexual intercourse but does not include the act of f311atio! Oh really?

And to add insult to injury, he gets a yellow backhoe and digs an even deeper hole for himself and suggests that the truth depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is. Seriously?

We got our own Humpty Dumpty creating his own reality and lexicon under oath, mind you, and that doesn't disturb you? I guess we should just dismiss his compelling need to hide this affair and assume that it can't be exploited by others for political gain?

I don't care about his sexual exploits in the White House. However, his alarming display of character afterwards and the unnecessary cover-up makes him a liability and breaches the public's faith in the integrity of the Office he assumes. He is compromised, biases be damned.

No one here supports what Bill Clinton did or his attempt to obfuscate his behavior. To continue to harp about Clinton or Obama or whomever is an attempt at playing the whatabout card: it is distraction from the focus of the thread. Donald Trump, who happens to be the current president.

Very true; Bill Clinton left office 16 years ago. How is anything that he did relevant now?

No one here supports what Bill Clinton did or his attempt to obfuscate his behavior. To continue to harp about Clinton or Obama or whomever is an attempt at playing the whatabout card: it is distraction from the focus of the thread. Donald Trump, who happens to be the current president.

And what if it was a mistake from the start? The Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, the creation of the United States of America—what if all this was a terrible idea, and what if the injustices and madness of American life since then have occurred not in spite of the virtues of the Founding Fathers but because of them?

The authoritarian reformers—the empire, in other words—have something to be said for them; and what is to be said for them is, well, Canada. Our northern neighbor’s relative lack of violence, its peaceful continuity, its ability to allow double and triple identities and to build a country successfully out of two languages and radically different national pasts: all these Canadian virtues are, counterintuitively, far more the legacy of those eighteenth-century authoritarian reformers than of the radical Whigs. This is literally the case; the United Empire Loyalists, as they were called, the “Tories” who fled from the States, did much to make Canada. More than that, Canada is the model liberal country because it did not have an American-style revolution, accepting instead the reformers’ values of a strong centralized, if symbolic, monarchy (the Queen is still there, aging, on the Canadian twenty-dollar bill); a largely faceless political class; a cautiously parliamentary tradition; a professionalized and noncharismatic military; a governing élite—an establishment.

The Canadian experience was not free of sin—as the indefensible treatment of the First Nations demonstrates—and was, as well, not free of the “colonial cringe” that bedevils so many countries overattached to the motherland. (London and Paris, in this view, meant too much for too long to too many ambitious Canadians.) Still, there is something to be said, however small, for government by an efficient elected élite devoted to compromise. The logic of Whig radicalism, in whatever form it takes, always allows charismatic figures undue play; there’s a reason that the big Whigs remain known today while the authoritarian reformers mostly sink into specialists’ memories of committees and cabinets.

Very true; Bill Clinton left office 16 years ago. How is anything that he did relevant now?

Someone suggested that Trump needs to go because he is a piece of slime and a liar. I just presented Exhibit A--a Former President who committed a series of slimy acts in the White House and lied under oath and to the American people about it, yet he remained in office.

But to be fair, that's a different kind of lying and a different kind of slimy, right? Darn that seductive charisma.

One of the sidebars of this investigation is that Congress needs to try to find a way to insulate further the FBI and Justice Department from political influences. Whether Loretta Lynch telling Comey to call the Hillary investigation a "matter" and meeting on an airplane with Bill Clinton during Hillary's investigation or whether it's the president saying in private conversation "I hope you can let Flynn go," this kind of political pressure is antithesis to independent investigations.

One of the sidebars of this investigation is that Congress needs to try to find a way to insulate further the FBI and Justice Department from political influences. Whether Loretta Lynch telling Comey to call the Hillary investigation a "matter" and meeting on an airplane with Bill Clinton during Hillary's investigation or whether it's the president saying in private conversation "I hope you can let Flynn go," this kind of political pressure is antithesis to independent investigations.

Agreed.

However, the problem is the rule of law appears to apply less and less the higher the defendant is on the federal tax bracket.

Hacking is a lot simpler to do, in practice, than organizing global conspiracies and arranging with reptilian forces to take over the earth fwiw. But of course, hacking feels like fake news, much better to believe that a few select wide-open-minded people are capable of recognizing the "true" truth despite the crooked mainstream media, scientific communities, doctors, national security intelligence. Takes a special kind of vision to see through all that net of lies and conspiracies.

Must be....we have ANOTHER hack at a Qatari news agency ... Al-Jazeera...so let's add that to that long list of hacks I made yesterday.

https://www.theguard...-crisis-deepens

And with respect to whom is hacking Al-Jazeera....there is too much plausible deniability between Russia and UAE and Saudi Arabia. Something doesn't seem right. This is way too coordinated for a "diplomatic" attack. The Middle East Gulf parties block air, land, and sea ports for Qatar. Then just by coincidence an alleged 3rd party coincidentally tries to hack the news broadcaster who can keep the world posted on the latest developments of this crisis? Come on!

I have no idea what you are trying to say. Of course the hacking isn't accidental. What makes you think it's some 3rd party though?

“The Trump administration has yet to understand how the campaign investigation is likely to be the gateway to the inner workings of the Trump empire,” writes Democratic wise man Doug Sosnik, who was a senior adviser to Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000. “My lesson from those days: Trump and his advisers are in way over their heads and unprepared for what awaits them. … During the campaign and transition, the world of Trump remained a spider web of dealmakers whose mission was to expand the family’s fortune, and perhaps their own. Anyone who played in this environment is now legally vulnerable. … The Comey hearing presents the next big test for Trump. His response will either accelerate the downward spiral or signal the administration’s effort to reboot and increase its odds of survival.”

I draw the parallels so people can see that they let their biases mitigate (color) their overall evaluation of people. It appears unfathomable almost conspiratorial that a compromised Former President may surrender to blackmail offers to maintain a closely guarded secret about his sexual peccadilloes. But fear, shame, and a strong desire to keep appearances can make us do a crazy number of unimaginable things.

So yes Trump is a liar as well. He just doesn't have that charisma, wit, disarming smile, handsome sense or humor, or an uncanny ability to play a saxophone that makes him appear more authentic, relatable, and forgivable.