President Trump: A MennoNet Poll

Events occurring and how they relate/affect Anabaptist faith and culture.

POLL: What do you think about the Trump presidency so far?

 
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Bootstrap
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Re: President Trump: A MennoNet Poll

Post by Bootstrap »

haithabu wrote:You ask whether you should trust your elected representatives who have been given oversight over the intelligence community as against the intelligence community itself?

In a democracy there is only one proper answer to that question.
Yes, but how? By leaking to the media had doing the investigation there? And should someone who served on the Trump transition team, working closely with the people who are now being investigated, be in charge of the House Intelligence Committee in the first place?

The people in Congress who have the security clearance to do this should definitely be investigating the claims of the Nunez memo. Only two people on that particular committee are able to look at the documents to see if those claims are true, and one of them says they are not.

Richard Burr, a Republican who is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is one of these people. Nunez refused to share the memo with him before making it public. The same thing happened last July.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) pointed to his House counterpart Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) for the narrative that former national security adviser Susan Rice improperly "unmasked" or revealed the identities of Americans swept up in intelligence reports.

"The unmasking thing was all created by Devin Nunes, and I'll wait to go through our full evaluation to see if there was anything improper that happened," Burr told CNN in comments reported after his committee interviewed Rice in a closed session on Friday.

"But clearly there were individuals unmasked. Some of that became public which it's not supposed to, and our business is to understand that, and explain it."
So the chair of the Senate committee responsible for overseeing this process said that Nunez made this stuff up a year ago said that he was making things up - and that he recklessly revealed the identities of Americans mentioned in intelligence reports. And here's what happened next.
It was later revealed that two White House officials helped provide Nunes with the intelligence reports, which he viewed on White House property.

Nunes recused himself in April from his committee's ongoing investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
And people on the House Intelligence Committee did not know that Nunez was working with White House officials at the time.

This year, the Senate Intelligence Chairman, Republican Richard Burr, tells us that Nunez refused to share the memo with him before sending it to the president. The only other member of the House Intelligence Committee who can actually read the underlying intelligence says that the memo is misleading, and that it is leaking intelligence for purely partisan gain. John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says this:
John McCain wrote:In 2016, the Russian government engaged in an elaborate plot to interfere in an American election and undermine our democracy. Russia employed the same tactics it has used to influence elections around the world, from France and Germany to Ukraine, Montenegro, and beyond. Putin’s regime launched cyberattacks and spread disinformation with the goal of sowing chaos and weakening faith in our institutions. And while we have no evidence that these efforts affected the outcome of our election, I fear they succeeded in fueling political discord and dividing us from one another.

The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s. The American people deserve to know all of the facts surrounding Russia’s ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation must proceed unimpeded. Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.
So yes, congressional oversight of the process is essential, but if the president is being investigated, not oversight by someone from the president's transition team who was publicly reprimanded by the people who do congressional oversight a year ago.
haithabu wrote:As I said earlier, we need much more disclosure and transparency in this whole matter. The FBI has not impressed me with its active opposition to the process.
I don't think the FBI has been resisting congressional oversight. The memo that Nunez released will be evaluated, just as the one he released a year ago was evaluated. The general public does not have access to the FISA filings and has no way of knowing whether the claims in the memo are true. The people responsible for congressional oversight do.
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temporal1
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Re: President Trump: A MennoNet Poll

Post by temporal1 »

Wayne in Maine wrote:There's nothing like a discussion of global warming or Donald Trump (and formerly, Barak Obama) to find out where someone gets their talking points from and where one's heart really is.

Just saying...
correct. and, correct.
“WASHINGTON—Stressing that such an action would be highly reckless, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Thursday that releasing the “Nunes Memo” could potentially undermine faith in the massive, unaccountable government secret agencies of the United States.” .. ..

https://politics.theonion.com/fbi-warns ... 1822639681
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with even modest attempt at presenting balanced facts from the start.


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Re: President Trump: A MennoNet Poll

Post by MaxPC »

Wayne in Maine wrote:There's nothing like a discussion of global warming or Donald Trump (and formerly, Barak Obama) to find out where someone gets their talking points from and where one's heart really is.

Just saying...
Amen and amen.
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Re: President Trump: A MennoNet Poll

Post by Szdfan »

temporal1 wrote:Just saying
“WASHINGTON—Stressing that such an action would be highly reckless, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Thursday that releasing the “Nunes Memo” could potentially undermine faith in the massive, unaccountable government secret agencies of the United States.” .. ..

https://politics.theonion.com/fbi-warns ... 1822639681
The Onion is satire. ;)
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temporal1
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Re: President Trump: A MennoNet Poll

Post by temporal1 »

Szdfan wrote:
temporal1 wrote:Just saying
“WASHINGTON—Stressing that such an action would be highly reckless, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Thursday that releasing the “Nunes Memo” could potentially undermine faith in the massive, unaccountable government secret agencies of the United States.” .. ..

https://politics.theonion.com/fbi-warns ... 1822639681
The Onion is satire. ;)
no kidding. glad you caught that. :mrgreen:
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temporal1
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Re: President Trump: A MennoNet Poll

Post by temporal1 »

From Page 9 (then, 11, regarding snow plows) -
temporal1 wrote:
Bootstrap wrote: .. I suspect we would have gotten that under any Republican president, and I think there were better candidates .. :?
There were lots of other candidates in the Primary. none came close to Trump in winning the Primary. (i believe) it’s important not to overlook how that unfolded. Several of these represent the Republican “deep bench” to draw on, that the DNC lacks (or, so, i read.)

However, to repeat, that bench (of 16-17) did not have a sure winner for the 2016 election.
After Romney’s defeat in 2012, the handwriting was on the wall. (many thought.)
Even obama quipped, post-election 2012, that Romney “should have won,” and he stated several reasons-why.

Nice guys are not going to win in present politics. This may be true in history.

This is part of why i think of Trump as a sort of snow-plow, clearing a path for others to follow (i hope.)
But, corrections were needed, too much was going off into the lib ditch.

Other countries are having similar problems, Canada, France, England, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Australia, who is escaping it? .. the U.S. is not actually leading the lib agenda, but, for whatever reason, there is a mentality in the U.S. that we “must be” leading. :shock: .. Developing countries are under pressure to change in ways they are not ready to, or, in ways they find abhorrent.

There is always a temptation to play “Monday morning quarterback,” but, what use is it?
Things unfolded as they did, for reasons that cannot be changed. Life goes on.

i do not want to sabotage your effort to avoid politics. :)
others may reply, or not. whatever will be, will be.
Robert added this video to another thread.
http://forum.mennonet.com/viewtopic.php ... 323#p29323
It reminded me of the snow plow imagery.
Trump has cleared a path for thinking. In this case, about Civics. i plan to view this again.
Robert wrote:[video][/video]
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Bootstrap
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Re: President Trump: A MennoNet Poll

Post by Bootstrap »

This was a really significant blunder, I thought. Once you say something is a constitutional right, you cannot take it away without first going through due process. After he said that, things fell apart.

What an odd rookie mistake for a president to make. Due process is the kind of thing you should learn about in high school civics class.
temporal1 wrote:Robert added this video to another thread.
It reminded me of the snow plow imagery.
Trump has cleared a path for thinking. In this case, about Civics. i plan to view this again.
Robert wrote:[video][/video]
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temporal1
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Re: President Trump: A MennoNet Poll

Post by temporal1 »

Bootstrap wrote:This was a really significant blunder, I thought. Once you say something is a constitutional right, you cannot take it away without first going through due process. After he said that, things fell apart.

What an odd rookie mistake for a president to make. Due process is the kind of thing you should learn about in high school civics class.
temporal1 wrote:Robert added this video to another thread.
It reminded me of the snow plow imagery.
Trump has cleared a path for thinking. In this case, about Civics. i plan to view this again.
Robert wrote:[video][/video]
i’m not fond of knee-jerk responses.
i’m glad for the dialogue that is following.
i’m also glad that Trump (seems) to listen to the citizenry, and, is willing to negotiate, rather than insisting his ideology must be accepted.
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temporal1
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Re: President Trump: A MennoNet Poll

Post by temporal1 »

Robert wrote: Sun Jan 21, 2018 10:42 pm My one post for the day.
I heard a Presidential Historical Scholar share this. Made me really think and chuckle a little too.

"A lot of good presidents have done some really bad things and a lot of bad presidents have done some really good things."

haithabu wrote: Tue Jan 23, 2018 10:48 pm Speaking as a Canadian...

During the primary I was against Trump purely based on what his words and deportment suggested about his character. Not because I believed the allegation that he was racist or any of the other slurs made against him. I am used to hearing that from Democrats or Canadian Liberals so I tune it out.

By the time of the election I was highly ambivalent and if I had been qualified to vote might just have held my nose and voted for Trump as better than the alternative. Or not voted at all.

Based on what has happened since the election, I am provisionally glad that Trump got in. My assessment of his character has not changed, except that he seems to exercise better judgment in practice than what his words suggest. There have been a lot of positive changes made in US government and policy, there are no signs of an incipient dictatorship

:arrow: and no one has pressed the nuclear button....yet.

Why that would be, I don't know. But it may be as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: the very rich are different from you and me. You don't get to be a billionaire without learning to delegate: finding and using good people to execute your plans and changing them out without remorse if they don't work out; knowing how to pay for, recognize and follow good advice. The gift of becoming that rich must lie in effectively using others' gifts rather than in relying on your own, and that may be the whole secret behind what has been an unexpectedly stable administration.

Anyway, it's as if there are two Trumps - the one who governs, and when he wants to, makes Presidential speeches, and the one who tweets and stirs things up. As long as the two don't cross their respective boundaries I think we'll be okay.
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Szdfan
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Re: President Trump: A MennoNet Poll

Post by Szdfan »

haithabu wrote: Tue Jan 23, 2018 10:48 pm Anyway, it's as if there are two Trumps - the one who governs, and when he wants to, makes Presidential speeches, and the one who tweets and stirs things up. As long as the two don't cross their respective boundaries I think we'll be okay.
The two Trumps did cross boundaries and January 6 was the result.
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