Category: Elections

Timelines and subthreads (part 1: Trump Jr emails and meetings)

On By Hitting BregmaIn 2016 Election, Donald Trump, How I see the world, politics, World events3 Comments

Steven Harper has assembled a very useful and impressive timeline of all the connections between Trump and Russia. It’s posted here, and updated regularly. As impressive as I find it, the problem with it is that it’s a series of overlapping timelines, rather than one single timeline. A way to sort it by a specific topic would be helpful, and certainly possible electronically. I hope they will do this in the future. For now, there are a couple of subthreads that I found particularly interesting to follow, and worth putting together here. I’m sure more will be added to these in the future. If I’m moved to update, I’ll do it in a separate post to preserve the sense of what we know now. I’m also going to keep the subthreads in separate posts so they don’t get buried under each other. Some text is copied and pasted directly from the timeline, other text is paraphrased.

The Trump Jr email/meeting timeline is below, and others will follow:

Subthread 2: Trump campaign and the GOP platform position on Russia and Ukraine.

Subthread 3: all about Manafort

Subthread 4: who is Felix Sater?

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“It’s all about trust”

On By Hitting BregmaIn 2016 Election, Barack Obama, Crime, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, How I see the world, Obama, politics, Terrorism, World events2 Comments

My wife has some strong opinions about things, and some of them she raises over and over again. One (of the many) with which I agree is that trust plays a fundamental role in how we feel about our leaders. We trust some leaders, and we don’t trust others. If we trust a leader, we assume that some action is legitimately justified. If we don’t trust a leader, that same action can be nefarious or a sign of incompetence. I’ll come back to something more contemporary in a minute, but let’s start with Obama and Bush.

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Putting on a show

On By Hitting BregmaIn 2016 Election, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Economy, Hillary Clinton, How I see the world, politics, societyLeave a comment

I don’t know why, but I’m still trying to view the Trump administration through rational eyes. Perhaps there are several versions of rational. There really shouldn’t be, but maybe what I think is rational isn’t actually rational. I am saddened by what I see as missed opportunities (see here and here), but I’m starting to accept the fact that it’s never going to happen. I’m starting to accept the fact that we all have things that motivate us, and I think what motivates Trump has more to do with celebrity than anything else. That’s not inconsistent with doing good things for the country, but I’m not convinced that it’s what drives him. I can imagine that he can convince himself that it’s driving him, but I think deep down the things that he embraces are things that feed his celebrity status. I should be clear that I’m not saying that there’s no concern for others in that. I think he enjoys entertaining people. I think he likes it when they’re excited to see him. I think he thrives on that. There’s a level of admirable selflessness in that. Like the comic who stands on stage making fun of himself to make you laugh. On the other hand, it leads to some pretty strange moments when the President of the United States acts that way.

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When two things aren’t simultaneously possible…in Trump’s America

On By Hitting BregmaIn 2016 Election, How I see the world, politics, World eventsLeave a comment

I’ve been relatively quiet lately. I’ve had some pretty horrifying things going on in my life that have captured my attention (an old friend with a daughter who has been missing for more than three weeks). Between that and some actual work I’ve needed to do at work, it’s been hard to find time for this. I also started this to write about the things I think are important, and my comfortable place was always defending things that Obama, Clinton, or some other democrat was fighting for. Now we’re in a bit of  different world, and I’m on a less solid foundation. On the one hand, almost everything I’m hearing terrifies me, but I’m also aware of how silly folks on the right looked when they talked about the radical changes that Obama was making to the country. So, just to keep from getting too stale, here’s something that caught my eye today. A perfect case of illogical thinking, that is supposed to be the antithesis of this project. And it all comes from a tweet from President Donald Trump.

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Inauguration Day, farewell President Obama

On By Hitting BregmaIn 2016 Election, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, How I see the world, Obama, politics, World events1 Comment

The day is here. President-Elect Trump will become President Trump, and President Obama’s time in office will end. I honestly do not know which makes me more sad. The Obama administration has not been perfect, but they’ve done a pretty great job with lots of things. Perhaps one of their biggest failures was not being able to garner the recognition for many of the things they did. The rise of the right-leaning blogs, and websites like World Net Daily and Breitbart didn’t make that task any easier, but irrespective of the reasons, it was undoubtedly a problem.

The Obama administration oversaw some amazing things, many of them cultural, and it seems clear that the election of Trump was a push back against that. So, as much as I am sad to see Obama leave office, I am equally sad that voters pushed back against all he has accomplished. But, as much as this day is about that push back, for me it’s a whole lot of nostalgia for a president who I deeply adored, perhaps more than I will adore any other president in my lifetime.

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Changing how we elect our presidents

On By Hitting BregmaIn 2016 Election, Hillary Clinton, How I see the world, politicsLeave a comment

Elections like this, and like the election in 2000, when the popular vote winner is not the same as the electoral vote winner, make people stop and think about the system we have. I have had quite a few discussions about this over the past month, and I am moved by the arguments in favor of the electoral college. Some say it’s antiquated, and that it was a system designed to give more power to states with high slave populations, but without giving slaves the right to vote. True or not, I accept the premise of why the electoral college is important today: it gives a voice to the small states, and helps make sure they are heard. This has been spun as a benefit to republicans, but the evidence supporting that isn’t very strong.

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On winning

On By Hitting BregmaIn 2016 Election, Hillary Clinton, How I see the world, politicsLeave a comment

Trump won the election. I do not question that (although I can’t say I would be sad to learn that we were mistaken, and Trump didn’t actually win, but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen). That comes with an important logical conclusion: The campaign is over.

We all know there is a difference between campaigning and governing, and we all recognize that the current landscape means that campaigning gets mixed with governing. But the target of that campaign changes, at least should change, after the election. Hillary Clinton was not elected president, but it seems like Trump’s surrogates don’t seem to realize that. Kellyanne Conway, for instance, was interviewed by Chris Wallace not to long ago, and when asked a question about Trump, she instantly pivoted to negative comments about Clinton.

Not only is she still in campaign mode, but she’s as combative as ever.

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And now we mourn

On By Hitting BregmaIn 2016 Election, Donald Trump, Famous quotes, How I see the world, politicsLeave a comment

I figured “and now we mourn” was a fitting title to follow my last entry, “and now we wait.”  I am truly emotionally devastated by the election results. I am still struggling to decide what I am thinking of as the “ratio of my devastation,” meaning, how much of my devastation is because I am saddened by the outcome, and how much is because it was not at all what I expected. I think it’s about half and half, but both are quite upsetting to me. If you know me, you know that the unpredictable makes me uncomfortable and I strive to understand the world and wish it were fair, and I am shaken when the fundamental understanding of things comes into question. The latter seems to come with unpredictable responses from me (which is unsettling). I am often really excited when what we thought was true isn’t, but apparently in some cases, this terrifies me. I am clearly a mixed bag.

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And now we wait

On By Hitting BregmaIn 2016 Election, How I see the world, politics3 Comments

I’ve tried to keep this as unemotional as possible, attempting to make it as rational a place as possible. It’s a bit hard for me to be non-emotional today. This election has taxed us all, in different ways. For some, it’s been awful because of a hatred for both candidates, for folks like me, it’s been awful to watch bullying in action. To see an amazingly talented, smart, qualified candidate be torn down by baseless accusations and innuendo. At this point though, I have to say that I am full of emotion, and, as a facebook friend said, I feel like it’s Christmas Eve, and I’m just waiting for Santa to come. I felt this way last night, consumed by an eagerness to vote in the morning, and now I feel it again, consumed by an eagerness to get the results. Of course, that feeling is almost entirely based on my expectation that Clinton will become the president-elect sometime, hopefully early, tonight.

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