Another day, another leak from the White House. This time the leak featured transcripts from a discussion between Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest person”, Donald Trump.
Perhaps even more amusing was Trump’s conversation with the Mexican President where the wall was discussed. In what must have been a moment of hard realisation for the POTUS, he acknowledged to President Enrique Peña Nieto’s translator, “He speaks English better than me.”
The Washington Post would not say how it got its hands on the transcripts. It may have been sitting on them for months. The old simile ‘leaking like a sieve’ is no longer apt in the White House. Sieves don’t let everything through. At the moment the White House is hurling documents out the window, carefully collated with accurate page numbers and stapled in the left hand top corner in the appropriate fashion to any passing journalist.
Trump demands loyalty from everyone in his orbit. As the old saying goes, if you want loyalty in politics, get a dog.
So it is quite odd Trump doesn’t have one. The 45th President of the US doesn’t own a pet of any description. Forty two of the 43 US Presidents before him (I’m not miscounting as Grover Cleveland was both 25th and 27th POTUS) have been pet owners.
Full column here.
Jack 12.30, Simon T very generously awards a bottle of something for first place in EPL and the Champions League comps but as he scooped the win in CL he couldn’t go forking out for his own prize, not the done thing.
I will be coughing up what I hope is a rather nice bottle of red when he eventually gets back.
There’s good deals to be had at Aldi!
After this weeks GoT episode, a dragon is the way to go.
Eeek, don’t give us any spoilers Tracy – I don’t have Foxtel etc so have to wait for DVD release sometime in the next year or so 🙁
“If he just had the guts, the political will,” said a younger voter from Melbourne, reflecting a widely held view”, Mr Insider and with Parliament sitting again this week with, dare I echo that young voter, “gutless” Malcolm at the helm can we honestly expect anything to happen. In a nutshell, “NO”. Lets hope when the day comes and Turnbull “writes” his Memoirs they will contain many colourful pickies to make up for the total lack of real achievement. Although to be fair he did rededicate the Snowy Mountain Hydro Scheme in a moment of total tomfoolery! P.S. this same Sex Marriage issue may even knock him out in the next week!
http://tinyurl.com/y8rsjppr
You could be right there HB. The Coalition could bring themselves undone over the SSM issue. How absurd – how easy it would be to just do it. MT would earn some respect instead of scorn.
My gut feel is that the worm has turned amongst the majority of the general population and a plebiscite would give it the nod anyway. So if they re hoping a plebiscite will kill it they may be very mistaken.
He would tear the party apart if he did that. And he would no longer be PM. Which is an upside.
Last year MT gave a million dollars of his own money to keep the Liberal Party afloat with him at the helm. Now he’s spending $120 million of our money to do the same.
MT had to do that because a lot of folks like me deleted all the fund raising emails from Liberal HQ.
Just listened to Narev say that his “main concern is for CBA stakeholders”. Goodness. That’s always the issue – stakeholders.
No mention of the fact that they were actually funding terrorism or any concern for John Citizen.
Take it from me Boadicea, the CBA has never been known for having a shred of benevolence. Greed is everything.
Hi Boadicea, MtK,
Thanks for you replies to my previous rant.
Boadicea, I saw an article somewhere recently where interaction of toddlers with “oldies” in a so called “retirement home” decreased the effects of Alzheimers. I can believe it. I look forward to seeing the young lad, play with him and for me it is an absolute reliever of stress. I forget about what worries me (my other therapeutic activity is crewing on a yacht), and just want to make him happy, and thoroughly enjoy our interaction. And I have an excuse to revert to my childhood and play with the modern versions of Lego and Meccano which I grew up with! It makes me realise what is important in life, which is family.
And MtK – politics does drive me to drink!
Absolutely Trabby. And it’s great for the toddler too. Less “civilised” tribal systems still adhere to the total family living together and I have no doubt that they would have a far happier existence.
Thinking on it, our so-called civilised society may be returning to that way of life as housing becomes scarcer and unaffordable.
Another thing that pisses me off is the Gen Y and Z expecting the elderly to vacate their homes to make way for them. They are a generation of instant gratification. Sad and disturbing.
Started reading “Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D. Vance, very interesting read about the decline in the working class in America.
I think Vance has spent a bit too much time in the Ivy League. At times he treats his own people as if he was Margaret Mead. It was insightful, but I don’t think he reached his goal.
Thanks Dwight, I was just starting to get into it. No worries. After reading the introduction I remembered how some of your cousins speak of people who don’t wear the ring and it stayed in my mind while reading. Canadian drilling engineers are pretty much the same. “Don’t mean a thing if ya ain’t got that ring”.
Shannon Burns also has eulogised the working class, though I could not (after two careful readings) figure out what he was getting at. A willingness or capacity to endure hardship and like it doesn’t make sense to me at all, and it only increases my disrespect for them
Funny how a conjunction of words can leave a bad taste in the mouth, and lead to a sad reflection on the state of things. “Oral gonorrhea” does that. Where’s the Moral Majority when it’s needed?
Jack, do I get a commission from the ABC for Barrie Cassidy’s reproduction of my Friday night post here at your blog?
Cassidy totally missed the last point tho’.
I haven’t seen it yet I’ve been recording the finals sessions, Gatlin downs Bolt at the worlds……….what can I say👿
Tracy, this is up there with Sir Donald Bradman getting knocked over for a duck in his final innings.
Bolt was gracious in defeat, but the record will say he got knocked off by a twice convicted drug cheat.
Sad reflection on sport today – but that’s the first thought that crossed my mind too, Lou.
To authoritarians, the national interest is indistinguishable from their own political interests. Jeff Sessions’ recent outburst, threatening to lock up journalists who won’t rat on their sources, is a case in point.
There is a world of difference between a leak that threatens security, and a leak that is politically embarrassing. The latter type of leak is not only fair game, it is in the public interest and a vital part of democracy. This is something the ever-changing cast of the Trump freakshow doesn’t seem able to grasp.
There is a simple way to stop embarrassing leaks: don’t do embarrassing things.
Couldn’t agree more JOH. The difference is stark. Politics is fair game, if it wasn’t for good journalists doing their job over the years many shonky pollies would have retained power. Watergate and the Fitzgerald Inquiry are the first of many instances where brave journalism instigated significant change.
Too true, John.
The leakers are the true patriots, here.
Theoutsider. How is leaking the transcripts of Trumps conversations with the Mexican Pres. And Mal Trumble heroic?
Why is the Obama DOJ’s surveillance of AP journalists unremarkable?
Drain that swamp.
Patriotism and heroism ain’t necessarily the same thing, sport.
As far as I can see, the leaks didn’t compromise national security.
Leaking the transcripts exposes the hypocrisy of Trump’s action re refugees and and the wall, i.e., voters in the US should know what their POTUS really thinks about his “signature” policies.
It’s important to expose that all Trump cares about is the optics of who’s paying for the wall, rather than who actually pays? Similarly re taking refugees.
Don’t you think it’s important for US voters to understand the type of man they voted for?
I hadn’t heard about the Obama DoJ surveillance until now, but that seems wrong, too.
The Outsider, so leaking the transcripts wasn’t heroic then, just patriotic? Not sure I understand your answer.
My favourite leak thus far goes like this.
Comey develops Memos post meetings with Trump.
Comey gives memos to a mate with the intention that the mate leaks them to the media.
Comey says he wanted an investigation to be opened into Trump based on his memos.
Investigation opened run by Comey’s good friend Robert Mueller.
Mueller appoints multiple Democrat donors to investigate Trump.
Drain the swamp.
So nothing to be seen in Flynn as National Security Adviser advising Trump on IRAQ/Syria and US support for Turkish/Kurdish engagements in the region while taking money from a company that was a front for the Turkish government? Nothing to be seen in Kuchner meeting with a senior representative from a US sanctioned Russian bank? Nothing to be seen in Manafort receiving money from agents for foreign governments (pro Russian Ukraine groups) without declaring it? There is a high a probability federal offences have been committed in those instances. I strongly suspect there will be more. Mate, if anyone thinks Robert Mueller is little more than a Democrat lapdog, they don’t know much about Robert Mueller. He was appointed special counsel by the Dept of Justice after Comey had been fired as head of the FBI by Trump. By the way Comey is/was a registered Republican.
YIS,
Further to Jack’s response, did it conveniently escape your consciousness that Mueller was appointed by Rod Rosenstein (who’s a Republican), the guy whose advice Trump relied upon to sack Comey? A bit odd then that Rosenstein would go out of his way to appoint “Comey’s good friend” to head the Russia enquiry, don’t you think? You might want to momentarily remove that tinfoil hat you’re wearing and consider things rationally.
Furthermore, given all that’s happened so far (e.g. Trump Jr’s meeting with the Russian lawyer), do you really think that there’s no case for looking further into the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia during the election?
Maybe Mueller’s grand jury is just what’s needed to drain the swamp?