Donald J Trump – January, 2017

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Fred Stiening

Your open thread to discuss the new President

This entry was posted in American Politics, Trump 2017. Bookmark the permalink.

63 Responses to Donald J Trump – January, 2017

  2. Linda S. says:
    January 2, 2017 at 1:24 pm

    I am praying that he will be better than we all think. Maybe, if he blesses Israel, God will bless the USA. Gen.12:3
    Happy New Year, everyone!

  4. Fred Stiening says:
    January 2, 2017 at 7:44 pm

    Funny thing going on in NYC subways

    https://viewing.nyc/thousands-of-trump-head-stickers-embellish-mta-stick-figures-on-the-subway-with-hilarious-results/

    Trump should propose renaming the Second Avenue Subway to the Second Amendment Subway as a condition for further funding

  5. Fred Stiening says:
    January 3, 2017 at 9:24 am

    So remember as a child when you were hopping in the car (or Greyhound bus) to begin a long trip, and how exciting it was for the first hour?

  6. Fred Stiening says:
    January 3, 2017 at 11:09 am

    Donald Trump has announced he is unhappy with the House dissolving its ethics panel

    The House backed down. Trump 1, Congress 0

  7. Fred Stiening says:
    January 3, 2017 at 3:01 pm

    Robert Lighthizer, a former Reagan administration official and longtime international trade attorney, will be he US trade representative

  8. Fred Stiening says:
    January 4, 2017 at 12:20 pm

    One of the header items just added was an image getting a “server not found” error when accessing the Drudge Report last night.

    I’m also noticing with some regularity, I’m getting annoying “you are the lucky winner today” pop ups you can’t close after visiting Drudge. Drudge currently does not use https:// to encrypt the transmission of the web pages, which makes him susceptible to “man in the middle” attacks where a government agency (or others) could redirect your request to a fake IP address which then fetches the real page, and takes the HTML output and inserts “bonus” code into the response, like changing the ads you see, or something like targeting malware to install root kits on Republican owned computers. Encrypting the response prevents that unless the meddler has the secret encryption key to decrypt the response, insert the code and re-encrypt the response so it appears to be intact. There are 1,000 ways the NSA and others could disrupt things if given the order by a rogue president.

  9. Fred Stiening says:
    January 4, 2017 at 12:48 pm

    Paul Ryan seems “on board” with the narrative that Julian Assange is a puppet of the Russian government. If Alex Jones is right, Wikileaks is sitting on material 1000 times more damaging that may be released soon. Of course, this is Alex Jones, but if proof comes out that he was right about the 9/11 attack, all hell will break loose. There are lots of reasons to believe Trump doesn’t believe the official story. Maybe we will finally learn what really happened in Area 51 and who killed JFK

    • Fred Stiening says:
      January 4, 2017 at 2:09 pm

      Assange reports that Podesta’s password was “password”

      • Parrott says:
        January 5, 2017 at 10:32 pm

        L_O_L I heard that on Lars Larson too , that Jon Podesta didn’t do much of anything to protect his email account.
        I know I saw that guy in Hungary on 60minutes interviewed where he sent Podesta a email message saying that all the email accounts have been compromised. So change password
        ‘Click here’ button which of course Podesta did and gave him his password. What a maroon.
        The Russians had nothing to do with it.
        Doesn’t the U.S. have any good counter espionage on the algore super highway ?
        Geesh, they should be doing something to block these hacks instead of whining.
        McKaine = dufus. Of course Lindsy wants war over a dumass like podesta and his email account. That makes no sense.
        He wouldn’t be fighting, Lyndsie would go into his ‘butter ‘ room and hide.
        Those two senator have to be the most _______. fill in the blank. That’s a new poll. I am working on that .
        parrott

        • Fred Stiening says:
          January 11, 2017 at 8:29 pm

          Back in the days of stupid AOL users, there were several social engineering tricks we would see all of the time. It’s hard to know what was going on in private chats.

          The most obvious was somebody would say “AOL blocks your chat if you type your password in the chat”. The hoped for response would be
          “no, I had typed 123456 in chat and nothing happened – you’re wrong and stupid”

          The ironic next step of AOL stupidity was because this trick was so successful, they actually did implement a chat block if you typed your own password in public. Parents who let their seven year old children [yes, some were that young] use their accounts or know their passwords could find themselves short a very large amount of money from hackers in Russia if the AOL account was compromised because their unsupervised child fell for a trick. Children younger than 13 were not supposed to use AOL but all the child had to do was know to lie to the question “are you younger than 13?” during the set up process.

          Having implemented something actually confirmed the trick, that set up the situation of people repeating incorrect information. Because there were so many attempts to steal credit card information, I got in a confrontation with a volunteer “guide”. The guide overstated the situation, and said that AOL Billing would never send you an email. I explained that I had received a legitimate email from AOL billing about something with my account that was correct and authentic and that he was mistaken. AOL would never ask for information in an email, but they certainly did send out emails. That is when I decided to quit AOL and went on a five-year campaign to assist people to leave AOL .

          Bob Pittman was running AOL. He now runs clear channel/Iheart

  10. Fred Stiening says:
    January 5, 2017 at 1:06 pm

    The cure for peanut allergies is to eat peanuts.

    The cure for asthma is dirty air.

  11. Parrott says:
    January 5, 2017 at 10:35 pm

    Oh yeah WSM Nashville. That’s a substantial building.
    Looks like U.S. Army Command center .
    I hate I shot WWVA down by nominating it the same day as WOWO. : )
    Best
    parrott

  12. Parrott says:
    January 5, 2017 at 10:37 pm

    Fred: How about WBAP ?

    ‘only one ping Vacilli ! ‘

    parrott

    • Fred Stiening says:
      January 6, 2017 at 2:26 am

      WBAP is owned by Cumulus. The tower is not very visible or interesting, the station appears to be in rented office space. These days, hosts do their shows from home, so the need for a big production facility goes way down. With clustering, 5 or 6 stations may share the same receptionist, and the sales guy is in India

      • Parrott says:
        January 7, 2017 at 8:34 pm

        >”WBAP is owned by Cumulus.”<

        Man, they ruin a lot of good stations.

        parrott

        • Fred Stiening says:
          January 7, 2017 at 9:35 pm

          There are four main pieces inside Cumulus – the original company put together by the Dickey brothers in Atlanta; Cumulus Media Partners which had a group of major Market FM stations that were held by Susquehanna Broadcasting; the original Citadel Broadcasting which was put together by a guy named Larry Wilson of several hundred close to worthless small market AM stations; and the big enchilada – the former ABC radio AM blowtorches.

          Larry Wilson went back for a second try at the apple, starting Alpha Media. As he was busy buying up inexpensive failing stations to bundle up for a future IPO, the lenders got cold feet

  13. Fred Stiening says:
    January 6, 2017 at 7:22 pm

    Trump was going to an “off the record” meeting today with writers from Conde Naste. I hope the purpose was to dump some “exclusive” story on them about government misconduct putting them between Iraq and a hard place

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/president-elect-trump-cordial-meeting-conde-nast-editors-article-1.2937917

  14. Fred Stiening says:
    January 7, 2017 at 10:54 am

    Senator Dan Coats (R-Indiana) for Director of National Intelligence (DNI)

    Pulling Republican Senators out of the Senate with seniority will open up those seats for possible challenge down the road when the newby replacements run for reelection.

  15. Fred Stiening says:
    January 7, 2017 at 9:42 pm

    The Radio Biz has quite a New Year’s hangover – even though the message was pretty clear from recent years that radio was being abandoned for political ads, nobody expected Trump to spend almost nothing on media, and that carried through to down ticket races as well. The revenue numbers were so bad, people really don’t want to talk about it. This was also the year that big department stores died. Amazon doesn’t do radio ads.

  16. Fred Stiening says:
    January 11, 2017 at 4:47 am

    John McCain officially launched the torpedo to sink the USS Trump, which is completely consistant with my predictions since the RNC Convention. McCain has brought forward allegations of misconduct while Trump was in Russia.

    It is clearly a coordinated attack from McCain, the Democratic Party, the NY Times, the Washington Post, the CIA, the NSA, the Guardian (which probably implies British Intelligence) and the #nevertrump Republicans. Time is running out to push Donald Trump Aside. Today is showdown day. If Trump survives, McCain will be irreperablely damaged. How the US Senate works with Trump and McCain as adversaries is hard to predict. There are two obvious paths – Trump realigns himself with the Democrats in the Senate or he resigns and Mike Pence takes office in 9 days.

    • TheChairman says:
      January 11, 2017 at 2:04 pm

      McCain is exhibiting senility. We’re not sure how he keeps getting reelected…

      On another note: either your new plug-in deleted my last post (regarding radios) after I made a few changes, or else the website ‘editor’ removed it. Any idea??

      • Fred Stiening says:
        January 11, 2017 at 3:13 pm

        I had mentioned somewhere else that if you use the edit comment function, it dumps the comment into the review queue for manual review. For instance, putting links in an original comment will hold it for review, so because a person might add a link duringbthe edit, it pushes it back at me to doubke check. I was sleeping 😉

        Here is one of the links about this.

        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4108960/How-Trump-s-nemesis-John-McCain-kicked-Kremlin-memo-scandal-handing-dossier-FBI-sending-emissary-abroad-collect-it.html

        In a perfect world Trump would publicly kick McCains ass and demand that he resign. Is the governor of Arizona a Republican?

        • TheChairman says:
          January 11, 2017 at 5:16 pm

          The AZ governor is about as ‘republican’ as McCain. It’s debatable: he ran as a republican, talks like one, but…

          I like Savage’s suggestion for a motion to (at very least) censure McCain. Let’s see if Paul Ryan has any ethics.

          Frankly, I see grounds for a full-blown investigation of McCain (i.e. turn the tables) since he was on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and is on other DOD committees which conflict with his dubious behavior.

          Yes, I saw the caveat about editing, thanks for clarifying.

          • TheChairman says:
            January 11, 2017 at 5:46 pm

            My bad: I keep forgetting P. Ryan is in the House.

            • countess robini says:
              January 11, 2017 at 8:08 pm

              chairman: we ALL keep forgetting he’s in the house. and he seems to be fine with that, most of the time.

          • Fred Stiening says:
            January 11, 2017 at 7:52 pm

            I may do a blurb about removal of a senator from office, trying to get some details pinned down.

            Less drastic sanction would be to have him removed as Committee Chairman of the armed services committee and revoke his security clearances. I think that only requires a majority vote of the Senate, but I am not sure. McCain can be put in charge of the free milk program for school children, and maybe handing out the towels in the Senate sauna.

            Needless to say the DoD would violently object to that. That’s the point at which we have the NSA track everybody who as much as smiles at John McCain and punish those who continue to leak classified information to him. Trump is going to have to deal with this, the sooner the better – but probably not before the inauguration.

            If this was on the up and up, his response should have been to tell the source – you need to report this to the FBI and national security office, not me. I am a legislator, not a member of the executive branch or the judicial branch. Legislators do not do “investigating”, we make and improve laws. The intelligence and law-enforcement agencies can vet out the information and then report the results to me if they are important to legislation. Now get the hell out of my office.

            • TheChairman says:
              January 12, 2017 at 12:06 am

              Censure requires 51 yea votes and would remove him from committees, etc.

              Expulsion requires 2/3 of the Senate in the affirmative… highly improbable.

              Treason, on the other hand, only requires two witnesses to the same act. THAT is the hot potato to toss at McCain and Co. Hell, McCain himself confesses he passed seditious material to the FBI!!

            • Fred Stiening says:
              January 12, 2017 at 12:55 am

              I think if McCain was stripped of his chairmanship, people would stop returning his phone calls and he would retire. The risk would be if his replacement was a Democrat or agreed to vote with the Democrats. States have different rules about replacing a vacancy in the U.S. Senate. Some call a special election ASAP, some choose a replacement at the next biennial election cycle, some let the replacement serve out the entire remainder of term. In a special election, the Democrats will flood the race with money to try to take the seat away, so a lame duck can be more useful than risking losing the seat.

    • Fred Stiening says:
      January 11, 2017 at 3:18 pm

      So it appears that the information McCain passed on to the FBI from British intelligence – being the responsible citizen that he is – was completely bogus with no supporting evidence. McCain’s daughter still has a radio show, which undoubtedly will defend her father even though he’s a total ass. Even if he was a prisoner of war.

  17. Parrott says:
    January 11, 2017 at 12:48 pm

    L_O_L ‘Buzzfeed’ and CNN are ‘fake news’ Good Trump told them. Ha Ha
    They are as bad as ‘mother Jones’ and ‘msdnc’.
    the next four years are going to be a wild ride.
    Did Infowars have anyone there? I think alex has lost a lot of their reporters,

    parrott

  18. Fred Stiening says:
    January 11, 2017 at 8:09 pm

    Donald Trump has his own resources – security and intelligence gathering – that is what billionaires do. I have believed the reason he is so reluctant to hear the security briefing is he set them up several months ago by asking them to report on something he already knew the answer to, to see if they would lie to him to protect somebody or something within the current administration. After all Joe Biden and Harry Reid said to the American public that the intelligence agencies should lie to Trump and withholding important information from him.

    So today the news has broken that Trump deliberately did a sting on his intelligence briefers. He met with them and told not even his most trusted aide about the meeting or what was discussed, to see if the meeting was leaked to the press – it was. Trump is mad as hell and some heads are going to roll.

  19. Fred Stiening says:
    January 14, 2017 at 10:29 am

    Donald Trump just met with Robert Kennedy Junior. It’s a brilliant move. The subject is the connection (if any) between vaccination and autism. This is one of the recurring themes of Alex Jones, and repeated by Trump. Robert F Kennedy Jr and Oprah Winfrey have been the most visible critics of vaccination.

    https://theintercept.com/2017/01/10/trump-names-anti-vaccine-activist-robert-kennedy-jr-lead-panel-vaccine-safety/

    Trump has empowered Kennedy to do a formal investigation of the subject. I am very much an autism skeptic in general as the government has incentivized an increasingly vague definition of a disease.

    I tend to doubt there is any connection, but the nature of proper science is there is no such thing as “consensus” beyond which claims can no longer be challenged. If someone believes they have proven that vaccines cause autusm, they publish their hypothesis, the raw data, and the causation mechanism. Correlation alone is not enough. Al Gore, Oprah Winfrey, Alex Jones and Robert F Kennedy Jr have no formal training in science.

    So the science establishment has the job of taking on this “false” science and exposing the science denyers of the left. There are two main probable outcomes – the investigation will confirm there is a connection and investigate why this was covered up and tear the medical science establishment (CDC,NIH) wide open, or a strong case will be made that the autism connection is based on no credible science and is not true. Other possible outcomes would be a call for a bigger more careful study(likely) which may bring the entire definition of autism being bogus under close scutiny.

    My sense of Trump is that he will ask questions and if it turns out after a credible analysis that Trump’s beliefs are wrong, I think he will admit his belief was wrong. Time will tell, but coopting Kennedy is a win-win, and will distract people like Oprah for a few years.

  20. Fred Stiening says:
    January 15, 2017 at 11:28 pm

    Trump is putting the finishing touches on the Replace part of Repeal and Replace of Obamacare. He hopes to sign it January 20th

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-vows-insurance-for-everybody-in-obamacare-replacement-plan/2017/01/15/5f2b1e18-db5d-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html?utm_term=.d278396713f9

    The only significant detail is it involved universal insurance (but not single payer) and Medicare and Medicaid being allowed to negotiate drug prices. Look for pharmaceutical stocks to tank. Donald Trump should be able to cut the cost of Viagra by 95%. Congress doesn’t know the details yet – they will need to pass the bill first to find out when it says.

    This has similarity in tone to the 2009 Republican alternative which is to allow the uninsured to enroll in Medicare coverage without being 65. If that’s what it is, I’m happy. I would be glad to pay my premiums into Medicare rather than the Blue Cross monopoly. Shifting the uninsured into Medicare probably would get votes from Democrats. As hard as they have ramped up the “Trump is going to kill people”, it would be extremely hard to explain why Democrats would oppose people with health problems being picked up by Medicare. We can worry about the cost later.

  21. Fred Stiening says:
    January 16, 2017 at 1:52 am

    Comedian and radio talkshow host Steve Harvey met with Donald Trump and is on board his team. Never misunderestimate Donald J Trump.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4118742/Comedian-host-Steve-Harvey-assist-Trump-bring-positive-change-inner-cities-quips-organizing-Family-Feud-episode-Trumps-v-Clintons.html

    Sitting in the on deck circle – Oprah Winfrey

    • Parrott says:
      January 16, 2017 at 2:39 pm

      That was a nice article. The stand-ins were very appropriate. Nice tall lady.

      Alex is going to report here at 2:30pm eastern time, about tactical nukes and the inauguration. ( whatever)

      One thing that bothers me, is this John Lewis guy running his mouth. Yes he was freedom rider 50 years ago. People change. He has obviously changed into another political hack that votes for himself and the demon-crat party.
      He was against NSA and patriot act when President Bush was in office. He was for NSA and renewal/expansion of patriot act during Obama administration.
      He also said President Trump was il-legit on the F. Chuck Todd show, because of Russian hacking email messages. The Russians didn’t write those messages, Lewis!
      Lewis and McClown should just go away, maybe to a nuring home where they can be abused by illegal alien workers,

      I plan to watch the inauguration, best I can from my bunker
      parrott

  23. Fred Stiening says:
    January 16, 2017 at 4:00 pm

    Monica Crowley just got shown the exit door from the Trump administration. While it is being framed as plagiarism, my money is on Trump not knowing she was a CFR member

    Her sister is married to radio/TV host Alan Colmes

    • Parrott says:
      January 16, 2017 at 5:56 pm

      Hate that about Monica. Didn’t know about here in the CFR.
      some more interesting :Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has introduced legislation to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms.
      Primarily known for abusing licensed Firearm dealers, Gun-running with the Holder justice dept. , going after Branch Davidians, sending Explosives to mexico ( allegedly), and killing people in Idaho. Also known as ATF or BATFE. According to his proposal, he thinks the ATF’s ‘duties’could be absorbed by the FBI and DEA. Which makes sense. What does the U.S Marshall’s do ?
      If the bill passes, then the ATF has six months to come up with a plan for how it’ll dissolve. I can live with that.
      parrott

      • TheChairman says:
        January 16, 2017 at 7:17 pm

        The Marshals are essentially the police for U.S. Federal courts, they also run the WitSec program (formerly Witness Protection).

      • Fred Stiening says:
        January 16, 2017 at 7:36 pm

        They keep the Marshall Islands from tipping over due to too many people living there.

      • Fred Stiening says:
        January 18, 2017 at 4:14 pm

        The explanation she gave on the radio probably a decade ago was something like it would allow her to keep track of what they were doing and influence them from the inside. I didn’t buy it then. She was very good lately defending Trump. Making a big splash by quitting the CFR would have been very interesting, but also thrown her off the “A” list of celebrities

  24. Fred Stiening says:
    January 18, 2017 at 4:19 am

    There is an interesting detail in the events for Friday. It might create an opportunity for improving the situation. It also answered a question I had in my own mind.

    Mike Pence will take the oath of office before noon. The question I have had is whether it is possible for the president elect to take the oath of office prior to noon on Friday. It appears that the answer is yes. All that matters is that the President elect says the oath, not when. By saying the oath early, at noon on Friday, Pence IS the vice president of the United States, even if The CIA takes everyone into custody and sends them to Guantánamo Bay or the CIA explodes a tactical nuke on DC as Alex Jones fears.

    If Trump took the oath of office today, and put the word out that it doesn’t matter what happens in Washington DC on Friday – that he will be the president, that will mitigate the incentives for people to try to disrupt the ceremony. In prior cases where there was a slight error in the process, the taking of the oath was repeated in a private ceremony just to make sure that nobody could ever assert that the oath had not been taken.

    If you read Tom Clancy’s Book “debt of honor” and/or “Sum of all Fears”, you can appreciate why a few select people should be far away from DC during the inauguration. CIA director Brennan is no Jack Ryan

  25. Fred Stiening says:
    January 18, 2017 at 8:31 am

    George HW Bush was admitted to the hospital with shortness of breath. I hope he lives long enough to witness President Trump

  26. Fred Stiening says:
    January 18, 2017 at 10:23 am

    In response to the howls of protest by the Washington press corps about moving the location of the press room, Donald Trump has decided to leave the press room where it is, and take the power away from the correspondents association to pick who gets into the room

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-media-idUSKBN1521OD?il=0

    So expect Breitbart, Daily Caller, Milo, Alex Jones, and right side broadcasting to occupy the front row seats

  27. Fred Stiening says:
    January 19, 2017 at 10:15 am

    The Chinese puppet in North Korea is loading up two alleged ICBMs on launching platforms, and promising a surprise on inauguration day. In the most wildly outrageous scenario, North Korea does not have the capacity to launch a nuclear capable ICBM and reach Washington DC. A fishing boat slipping into a harbor in San Francisco – possibly.

    So I’m sure Donald Trump is having an interesting day. CNN is pretty open with rooting for his assassination

  28. Fred Stiening says:
    January 19, 2017 at 3:24 pm

    So Wednesday night, Trump pretended like he was heading back to New York City, then took a evasive action to break away from the press hoping to get the picture of him being assassinated and went temporarily to his hotel at the old post office building, which I wrote about several months ago, then he left for an unknown location. Things are getting highly irregular. I hope he is in the bunker in the basement of the vice president’s house and has taken the oath of office.

    This is pretty strong evidence that if the CIA or anyone else is trying to kill him, he believes the press will be involved. Remember that when Hinckley shot Reagan, he did so from within a group of reporters Who covered his actions. The people at the deploraball will understand.

  29. Fred Stiening says:
    January 19, 2017 at 4:02 pm

    Donald Trump landed at Andrews Air Force Base in a government jet – I suspect it was Air Force two, I’m not that familiar with the presidential airplanes. He apparently spent last night in New York City. The more people are not sure where he is, the better I feel

    He has gone to Arlington national cemetery Per the official schedule. 20 hours and counting

  30. Fred Stiening says:
    January 20, 2017 at 8:09 am

    Donald Trump is heading to the CIA headquarters tomorrow. That’s a very strong message.

    My translation – “if you want to kill me, here I am”

    I think there are a lot of good people in “the company” who totally understand what Donald Trump wants to do, and especially unhappy how the CIA has been used for the past eight years, and to some degree going back through the Bush years. It is probably best if the CIA cleans house quietly. I could completely understand the CIA and or the NSA being the source of the leaks to torpedo Hillary. I don’t think they wanted eight years of her ordering them to go overthrow governments and kill their leaders

  31. Fred Stiening says:
    January 20, 2017 at 8:21 am

    Inquiring minds want to know why “El Chapo” Guzman, leader of a Mexican Drug Cartel was suddenly extradicted to the United States yesterday.

    • Parrott says:
      January 20, 2017 at 12:22 pm

      yeah That is an excellent question. Saw that this morning. He looked a little scared, not that confident looked he had in Mexico, and they were displaying him.
      Parrott

    • TheChairman says:
      January 20, 2017 at 2:21 pm

      They had him in custody once before, and he ‘escaped.’ So maybe Trump said something along the lines of: “hand him over or we’ll militarize the border.”

      • Fred Stiening says:
        January 20, 2017 at 7:05 pm

        I had two theories. One was the Reagan “The plane has left Iranian air space” moment, with Trump saying there is a new sheriff in town, combined with the soft glove of “I’ll help you root out the drug issue”. A lot of people living in the US might return home to Mexico voluntarily if they believed it is safe.

        The more cynical version was that Obama was behind it and was motivated by some legal sleight of hand to pardon him. The Obamas need something to do for the rest of their lives.

  32. Fred Stiening says:
    January 21, 2017 at 8:41 am

    If any of you are standing by the baseball bat in Louisville Kentucky, it is safe to come out now

  33. Fred Stiening says:
    January 21, 2017 at 4:03 pm

    Donald Trump has met with the CIA and reassured him that he’s on their side

    He might be fudging the truth little bit, but I can understand that

    http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/article/The-Latest-Prayer-service-CIA-visit-on-tap-for-10873605.php

  34. Fred Stiening says:
    January 25, 2017 at 6:55 am

    The Trump team has sent two emissaries to the broadcast board of governors who will be sitting in the offices at voice of America. Look for the anti-Trump crap to come to a quick end

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