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| Porn Users Forum » WHY DOESN'T POTUS ARREST BILL CLINTON, HILARY CLINTON, AND OBAMA? |
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| 01-15-18 02:15pm - 2490 days | #101 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User  Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Donald Trump, the greatest President the United States ever had, celebrates MLK day at his golf course. Trump knows he does not have to waste his precious time playing nice to MLK memories. Instead, he re-charges his batteries, so he can work to help all the American people. Note: Trump has criticized Obama, the black president who wasted time on the golf course while Obama was president. But Trump is different: Trump uses his time on the golf course to become a better, more powerful leader. And that's part of the difference in the two men: Trump is a leader of men. Obama was a loser, who became President with a fake birth certificate. Go, Trump. You are the man! === === Past Presidents Volunteered On MLK Day. Donald Trump Is Spending It At His Golf Club. HuffPost Hayley Miller,HuffPost 5 hours ago President Donald Trump is spending Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday meant to honor the United States’ most iconic civil rights leader, at his golf club in Florida. Trump arrived at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach around 9 a.m. Monday, the White House press pool reported. His next public event was scheduled for 4:20 p.m., when he and first lady Melania Trump would depart Palm Beach International Airport for Washington. A White House spokeswoman confirmed Trump was not participating in any public events related to MLK Day, but did not return requests for comment about why. Monday is the 95th day Trump has spent at one of his golf clubs since becoming president, according to CNN’s Manu Raju. Trump has been deeply critical of the time former President Barack Obama spent hitting the links during his presidency. Trump’s seemingly wide-open schedule offered a stark contrast with past presidents, such as Obama and George W. Bush, who spent MLK Day volunteering or visiting memorials in the civil rights leader’s honor during their respective presidencies. Despite his proclivity for firing off tweets, Trump’s Twitter account remained noticeably silent on King Jr.’s legacy until late Monday morning. A few hours after using his platform to rail against Democrats, Trump retweeted a video posted to the White House’s official Twitter account, which featured his weekly address. “On this cherished day, we honor the memory of Reverend King,” Trump said in the video. “And we rededicate ourselves to a glorious future, where every American from every walk of life can live free from fear, liberated from hatred and uplifted by boundless love for their fellow citizens.” Trump’s apparent decision not to partake in any MLK-related events comes amid rising tensions over his reported remarks calling Haiti and other African nations “shithole countries.” Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a civil rights activist who marched in Selma, Alabama, alongside King Jr. in 1965, called Trump “a racist” in response to the comments. “It’s unreal,” Lewis said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “It makes me sad. It makes me cry. As a nation and as a people, we’ve come so far. We’ve made so much progress. And I think this man, this president, is taking us back to another place.” On Monday, Lewis called on Americans to give back to their communities instead of using the holiday to relax. “The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is a day on, not a day off,” Lewis tweeted. “It is a day of service to our communities, to our brothers and sisters.” Last week, Trump signed into law an act that redesignates a historic site honoring MLK in Georgia as a national park. He also signed a proclamation declaring Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Still, his seeming day of relaxation did not go unnoticed on Twitter: | |
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| 01-15-18 02:35pm - 2490 days | #102 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump denies he is a racist. Evil Democrats (the party from Hell that is opposed to our righteous Republican party of good, God-fearing politicians) have lied and said Trump said African countries are shitholes. Trump has admitted he used strong language, trying to broker a deal on immigration. And has admitted that he would prefer immigrants from a country like Norway (which has mainly white people). But evil Democrats are causing problems for all immigrants. Trump loves all people (maybe even blacks, rapists, and people from Mexico). Trump is the man. ==== ==== The Washington Post PowerPost Follow @powerpost Get The Daily 202 Newsletter PowerPost Trump says that he is ‘not a racist,’ denies souring chances for immigration overhaul by using vulgarity Trump: 'I am not a racist' President Trump on Jan. 14, said "I am not a racist" and blamed Democrats for the delay in passing deal on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. (The Washington Post) By Mike DeBonis and Anne Gearan January 14 at 10:13 PM President Trump said Sunday that he is “not a racist” and denied that he had spoiled chances for an immigration overhaul in Congress by using a vulgarity to describe poor countries. His remarks came as relations between key GOP and Democratic lawmakers turned poisonous as they debated whether Trump had referred to “shithole countries” in an Oval Office meeting last week with the fate of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children hanging in the balance. Trump blamed Democrats for fouling chances for a deal and, in an extraordinary statement, called himself “the least racist person.” Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.), who attended the meeting Thursday at which Trump reportedly used the vulgar term, had previously said they could not recall whether Trump said it, but on Sunday they denied outright that he had. They suggested that a Democrat who publicly confirmed the remarks, Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), could not be trusted. “This is a gross misrepresentation. It’s not the first time Senator Durbin has done it, and it is not productive to solving the problem we’re having,” Perdue said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” The accusations prompted Democrats to blast the GOP senators for impugning a colleague’s integrity, while also slamming Trump and his remarks as unabashedly racist. 2:01 Lawmakers refute accounts of Trump's “shithole” comments Some lawmakers denied President Trump called Haiti, El Salvador and African nations "shithole countries" in a bipartisan meeting on Jan. 11. (Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post) The only administration official to speak publicly this weekend about the meeting was Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who attended the session. She said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday” that she did not “recall him using that exact phrase” but acknowledged that Trump “did use and will continue to use strong language.” Vacationing in Florida, Trump spoke to reporters before a dinner in West Palm Beach at his Trump International Golf Club with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif). The question of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was on the agenda, Trump said. He denied making the “shithole countries” remark and said he is not a racist. “Nah, I’m not a racist,” he said. “I’m the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you.” Trump accused Democrats of spoiling chances for a deal on immigration legislation and DACA. “Honestly, I don’t think the Democrats want to make a deal,” he said. “I think they talk about DACA, but they don’t want to help the DACA people.” Asked what was standing in the way of a deal, Trump again blamed Democrats. McCarthy said nothing. “I think we have a lot of sticking points, but they are all Democrat sticking points,” Trump said. “Because we are ready, willing and able to make a deal, but they don’t want to. They don’t want security at the border, there are people pouring in. They don’t want security at the border, they don’t want to stop the drugs. And they want to take money away from our military, which we will not do.” The White House did not dispute Trump’s use of the vulgarity when The Washington Post first reported it Thursday. Trump offered a vague denial in a tweet Friday, and not until Cotton and Perdue spoke Sunday did another participant challenge whether Trump had used the word “shithole.” Scenes from Trump’s second six months in office View Photos A look at the second half, so far, of the president’s first year in the White House. International reaction to Trump’s comments was strong, and U.S. diplomats in Haiti and other nations have been called to host government offices to hear the complaints directly. “One of the great things about being president is that you can say whatever you want,” Undersecretary of State Steven Goldstein said in an interview. “We have advised our ambassadors . . . to indicate that our commitment to those countries remains strong.” The developments together stand to undermine bipartisan talks aimed at shielding from deportation immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, including the roughly 800,000 who secured work permits under the DACA program, created under President Barack Obama. Democrats have suggested that they could force a government shutdown Saturday unless an agreement protecting those “dreamers” is reached. “I don’t know if there will be a shutdown,” Trump said Sunday. “There shouldn’t be, because if there is our military gets hurt very badly. We cannot let our military be hurt.” Conservative hard-liners who want tighter immigration policies and the pro-immigrant and business groups opposing them have long mistrusted one another, but the sniping in recent days has been unusually fierce. “Both sides now are destroying the setting in which anything meaningful can happen,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a conservative, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” A tentative deal worked out Thursday by a small bipartisan group of senators crumbled in an Oval Office meeting in which, according to multiple people involved, an angry Trump asked why the United States should accept immigrants from “shithole countries” such as Haiti, El Salvador and African nations over those from European countries such as Norway. [Trump, condemned for ‘shithole’ countries remark, denies comment but acknowledges ‘tough’ language] In a Sunday morning tweet, Trump declared the immigration talks to be failing: “DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it, they just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our Military.” Democrats have tied the immigration talks to spending negotiations being held ahead of a shutdown deadline at midnight Friday. Republicans are seeking a military spending increase; Democrats want a DACA deal and a matching increase in nondefense funding. Durbin, the sole Democrat to attend the Oval Office meeting, told reporters Friday that Trump had used the vulgar word “not just once but repeatedly.” A Republican attendee, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), issued a statement that did not specifically confirm the words used but backed up Durbin’s account. Cotton and Perdue issued a joint statement Friday saying that they did “not recall the President saying these comments specifically.” But Perdue told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos definitively Sunday that Trump did not refer to “shithole” countries: “I’m telling you he did not use that word, George,” he said on “This Week.” Cotton said much the same in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation”: “I didn’t hear it, and I was sitting no further away from Donald Trump than Dick Durbin was.” Both senators pointed to a statement Durbin had made in 2013 about comments allegedly made by an unnamed GOP leader during a private White House meeting that were later denied by an Obama administration spokesman. “Senator Durbin has a history of misrepresenting what happens in White House meetings,” Cotton said. Ben Marter, a Durbin spokesman, tweeted a rebuke early Sunday: “Credibility is something that’s built by being consistently honest over time,” he said. “Senator Durbin has it. Senator Perdue does not. Ask anyone who’s dealt with both.” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) forcefully backed Durbin, who has written a bill to grant young illegal immigrants a citizenship path and is the leading Democratic negotiator on the DACA issue. “To impugn [Durbin’s] integrity is disgraceful,” Schumer said on Twitter. Accounts of the meeting have not fallen neatly along party lines. Besides Graham’s endorsement of Durbin’s account, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said Sunday on “This Week” that he had spoken to meeting participants immediately afterward — before The Post reported Trump’s use of the vulgar term. “They said those words were used before those words went public,” Flake said. Nielsen is scheduled to testify under oath Tuesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing. Both Durbin and Graham sit on the panel and could press her for details of the Oval Office session. The “shithole countries” remark has vexed Republicans, compelling many to make statements critical of Trump. “I can’t defend the indefensible,” Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah), whose parents are Haitian immigrants, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Democrats see the comment as evidence of malicious intent in Trump’s policymaking. “I think he is a racist,” Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said on “This Week.” “We have to stand out; we have to speak up and not try to sweep it under the rug.” | |
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| 01-17-18 08:33am - 2488 days | #103 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Director James Gunn Offers $100,000 If Trump Will Step On A Scale HuffPost Ed Mazza,HuffPost 6 hours ago James Gunn, director of the two “Guardians of the Galaxy” films, is offering $100,000 if President Donald Trump will step on a scale. Gunn’s unusual proposition came hours after White House doctor Ronny Jackson said on Tuesday that the president was 6′3″ and weighed 239 pounds, or one pound shy of the level that would be considered obese. The filmmaker and other Trump critics didn’t buy it. Mocking Trump’s involvement in the debunked “birther” conspiracy theory that claimed President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, Twitter users created the #Girther hashtag to question Jackson’s claims. Some even demanded to see Trump’s #GirthCertificate. Gunn’s bounty echoed Trump’s 2012 offer of $5 million to charity if Obama would release his college transcripts. When asked what charity Trump might pick, Gunn replied: "I would be afraid that it's the Ku Klux Klan but there's no way in hell he's 239 pounds, so I don't have to worry about it." Gunn made it clear that his offer wasn’t about body-shaming the president: Not surprisingly, the #Girther hashtag began to trend on Twitter: This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 01-17-18 06:22pm - 2488 days | #104 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump officials are experts at smearing the reputations of anyone they don't like. Most often, the smear is based on false allegations. But that doesn't stop them (or President Trump) from smearing. In the instance below, members who resigned from a board on national parks (because they were being ignored by the leaders they were supposed to advise), are called quitters and sexually and morally ambivalent. ---- ---- Interior official blasts resignation of parks advisory board Associated Press DAN JOLING,Associated Press 1 hour 6 minutes ago ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A U.S. Interior Department official on Wednesday blasted the resignation of most members of a board that advises it on national parks, suggesting the move was politically motivated and their work was flawed. Todd Willens, associate deputy secretary of the department, brought up investigations that uncovered sexual harassment at national parks such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone and an internal investigative report of a guidebook written by former National Park Service leader Jonathan Jarvis. "We welcome their resignations and would expect nothing less than quitting from members who found it convenient to turn a blind eye to women being sexually harassed at national parks and praise a man as 'inspiring' who had been blasted by the inspector general for ethics and management failures," Willens said. Nine members of the 12-member National Park System Advisory Board, including chairman Tony Knowles, a Democratic former Alaska governor, resigned Monday in a letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, saying their requests to meet were ignored. The Washington Post, which first reported the resignations, said a 10th member stepped down Wednesday. It's the latest hit to committees that advise the Trump administration. Half the expert members of a board that advises the Environmental Protection Agency on the integrity of its science were not reappointed last May. At the same time, the Interior Department said it launched a wide-ranging review of more than 200 boards and advisory committees, including some that had not met in years. The congressionally authorized National Park System Advisory Board must meet twice per year by law but has not been called into session by the Interior Department since President Donald Trump took office. "Our requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new department team are clearly not part of its agenda," Knowles wrote in the letter. Willens said that was "patently false" and that department officials were working to renew the board's charter, schedule a meeting and fill vacancies as recently as last week. "Their hollow and dishonest political stunt should be a clear indicator of the intention of the group," he said. Knowles, the board chairman, said no one at the department contacted him or other board members this month about future meetings. The idea of a political statement by board members, made up of national experts in natural resources, financial management, geography and other fields, was disingenuous, he said. Most of the board had worked together for seven years. "We're all a bunch of wonks," Knowles said. "There's absolutely nothing political about any person on it. We have a lot of different backgrounds and were all brought together because we want to do something really important for the national park system of America and build it for the 21st century." The board has collected comment from more than 100 experts, including Nobel Prize winners, to offer advice on challenges the system faces, including climate change, attracting more diverse visitors and employees, and protecting natural diversity of wildlife. As for sexual harassment within the parks, Knowles said, "We had complete confidence that Jon Jarvis, a person of integrity and strong control of the park system, was taking care of it." Jarvis is now executive director of the Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity at the University of California, Berkeley. He said by email he had no comment. Knowles said he had no knowledge of a report on Jarvis by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General. It investigated a guidebook that Jarvis wrote without consulting the department's ethics office. The book was published by a nonprofit group that operates stores and sells merchandise in national parks. The report determined that Jarvis worked on the book outside office hours and directed royalties to the National Park Foundation, which raises money for the National Park Service. | |
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| 01-19-18 07:01pm - 2486 days | #105 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Russia helping the GOP to examine possible wrong-doing by the Obama administration. That's what friends are for: to help us against our enemies. And Trump frequently labels ex-President Obama (and Hilary Clinton) as enemies. However, what the article below makes clear: Republicans are men of high moral stature. Devin Nunes, a respected Republican, who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, called unmaskings "violations of Americans' civil liberties." (Unmasking is revealing the actual name of a source or person under investigation) This was days after Nunes, who would have had to sign off on any committee requests to reveal the identities of US persons mentioned in intelligence reports, made at least five unmasking requests to US spy agencies related to Russia's election meddling between June 2016 and January 2017, The Washington Post reported last year. So if a Republican makes an unmasking request, it's OK. But if a Democrat makes an unmasking request, it's a violation of America's civil liberties. Politics as usual. ---- ---- Russia-linked Twitter accounts are working overtime to help Devin Nunes and WikiLeaks Business Insider Natasha Bertrand Business Insider 19 hours ago Russia-linked Twitter accounts are working overtime to help Devin Nunes and WikiLeaks Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations have begun promoting the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo. It's a reference to a document written by Rep. Devin Nunes that purports to show abuse by the Obama administration of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The frequency with which the accounts have been promoting the hashtag has spiked by 233,000% over the past 48 hours, according to an analysis. The most-shared URL has been a link to WikiLeaks' "submit" page. Republican lawmakers are pushing for the House Intelligence Committee to release a memo written by the panel's chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, that outlines purported surveillance against then President-elect Donald Trump by former President Barack Obama's administration during the transition period. And Russia-linked Twitter bots have jumped on the bandwagon. #ReleaseTheMemo is the top-trending hashtag among Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations, according to Hamilton 68, a website launched last yearthat claims to track Russian propaganda in near-real time. The frequency with which the accounts have been promoting the hashtag has spiked by 233,000% over the past 48 hours, according to the site. The accounts' references to the "memo," meanwhile, have increased by 68,000%. The most-shared domain among the accounts has been WikiLeaks, and the most-shared URL has been a link to WikiLeaks' "submit" page. WikiLeaks said on Thursday that it would reward anyone with access to the "FISA abuse memo" who chooses to submit it to the site. The Russia-linked accounts have evidently been sharing the submit page in an effort to push the memo's release. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/954...?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Hamilton 68 has been working to expose trolls - as well as automated bots and human accounts - whose main use for Twitter appears to be an amplification of pro-Russia themes. The site's mission is to monitor and illustrate the themes that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Americans to be thinking and talking about, including "the failure of democratic governance in the United States." Mueller's top critics want the memo out. Several GOP congressmen - many of whom have been highly critical of special counsel Robert Mueller, the FBI, and its investigation into Trump's Russia ties - have released statements calling on the House Intelligence Committee to declassify and release Nunes' four-page memo. The executive branch would have to review the document before it was released to the public, but "this could happen real quick," GOP Rep. Jim Jordan told Fox News on Thursday. "Chairman Nunes is committed to getting this information to the public." The document purportedly describes classified information Nunes obtained from the FBI and DOJ as part of his investigation into whether the Obama administration misused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Trump and his associates during the transition period. "The House must immediately make public the memo prepared by the Intelligence Committee regarding the FBI and the Department of Justice," said Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who has called on Mueller to resign. "The facts contained in this memo are jaw-dropping and demand full transparency. There is no higher priority than the release of this information to preserve our democracy." Rep. Ron DeSantis, who has introduced legislation that would curtail Mueller's mandate and budget, said on Thursday that "the classified report compiled by the House Intelligence is deeply troubling and raises serious questions about the upper echelon of the Obama DOJ and Comey FBI as it relates to the so-called collusion investigation." 'A profoundly misleading set of talking points' Democrats, meanwhile, have called the Nunes memo grossly exaggerated and "misleading." "The Majority voted today on a party-line basis to grant House Members access to a profoundly misleading set of talking points drafted by Republican staff attacking the FBI and its handling of the investigation," Rep. Adam Schiff, the panel's top Democrat, said in a statement on Thursday. "Rife with factual inaccuracies and referencing highly classified materials that most of Republican Intelligence Committee members were forced to acknowledge they had never read, this is meant only to give Republican House members a distorted view of the FBI," Schiff continued. A source with knowledge of the memo told Business Insider that the memo is "a level of irresponsible stupidity that I cannot fathom. Purposefully misconstrues facts and leaves out important details." Schiff said the document "mayhelp carry White House water, but it is a deep disservice to our law enforcement professionals." Nunes, who chairs the intelligence committee, began investigating the "Obama DOJ and Comey FBI" after he travelled to the White House to view classified information in March 2017, without telling his committee colleagues. There, he viewed classified information that he said showed FISA abuse by Obama administration officials. When asked whether he had gotten his information from the White House, Nunes would neither confirm nor deny. "We have to keep our sources and methods here very, very quiet," he told reporters at the time. He told Bloomberg later that the information had come from a "network of whistleblowers." Nunes briefed Trump on the intelligence, which he said showed the president and his advisers may have had their communications "incidentally collected" - and their identities "unmasked" in intelligence reports - by the intelligence community after the election. A source of concern has been why some of Trump's associates who had been caught up in the surveillance and later unmasked, such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, had their names leaked to the press. But Republican and Democratic congressional aides told reporters in early April - after being briefed on the classified reports - that Obama administration officials did not act inappropriately. Indeed, the committee under Nunes' leadership made at least five unmasking requests to US spy agencies related to Russia's election meddling between June 2016 and January 2017, The Washington Post reported last year. The report came days after Nunes, who would have had to sign off on any committee requests to reveal the identities of US persons mentioned in intelligence reports, called unmaskings "violations of Americans' civil liberties." | |
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| 01-19-18 07:14pm - 2486 days | #106 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Trump is a man of high moral stature. He's willing to pay for services rendered. Witness his $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. What a man. What a philanthropist. === === Tabloid held porn star's 2011 interview after Trump threat Associated Press JAKE PEARSON, Associated Press 4 hours ago FILE - In this Feb. 11, 2007 file photo, Stormy Daniels arrives for the 49th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. A tabloid magazine held back from publishing an adult film star’s 2011 account of an alleged affair with Donald Trump after the future president’s personal lawyer threatened to sue, four former employees of tabloid’s publisher told The Associated Press. In Touch magazine published its 5,000-word interview with the pornographic actor Stormy Daniels on Friday. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles) NEW YORK (AP) — A tabloid magazine held back from publishing an adult film star's 2011 account of an alleged affair with Donald Trump after the future president's personal lawyer threatened to sue, four former employees of the tabloid's publisher told The Associated Press. In Touch magazine published its 5,000-word interview with the pornographic actor Stormy Daniels on Friday — more than six years after Trump's long-time attorney, Michael Cohen, sent an email to In Touch's general counsel saying Trump would aggressively pursue legal action if the story was printed, according to emails described to the AP by the former employees. At the time, Trump was a reality TV star on the NBC show "The Apprentice." The ex-employees spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to discuss their former employer's editorial policies. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, signed a source contract with the magazine, which said a friend and Clifford's ex-husband corroborated her account of a 2006 tryst. She also passed a lie detector test, the magazine said. In the interview, Daniels claims she and Trump had a sexual encounter after meeting at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, a year after Trump's marriage to his third wife, Melania. Cohen has denied Trump had any relationship with Clifford. He didn't immediately return a message seeking comment Friday. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen brokered a $130,000 payment to Daniels in October 2016 to prohibit her from publicly discussing the alleged affair before the presidential election. Other news organizations have since reported Clifford was in discussions with them about telling her story. Cohen hasn't addressed his role negotiating the supposed payment, but provided the Journal a statement from "Stormy Daniels" in which she denied receiving any "hush money" from Trump. A lawyer for Clifford, Keith Davidson, didn't return an email message seeking comment. In the statement provided by Cohen, Clifford called allegations of a sexual relationship with Trump "completely false." It wasn't immediately clear why the magazine didn't publish its interview during the 2016 presidential campaign despite reminders from former employees that the transcript was still available in the company's networks, two former employees said. A spokeswoman for In Touch, which is published by Bauer Media Group, claimed it only learned of its earlier interview after the Journal's report last week. She wouldn't comment on the magazine's decision not to publish in 2011. Despite Clifford's first-person details on Trump, former employees said the decision not to run the story in 2011 was a justifiable business decision because at the time because Trump didn't have the same star appeal as more famous celebrities. Cohen emailed In Touch's general counsel, Greg Welch, threatening to sue over the story in October 2011 — the same day Clifford's attorney sent a similar letter to Los Angeles-based blogger Nik Richie, who first posted Clifford's allegations to his website, The Dirty, according to emails provided by Richie. Associated Press reporter Jeff Horwitz contributed to this story from Washington. | |
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| 01-19-18 07:23pm - 2486 days | #107 | |
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Onyx (0)
In-Activated by Staff Posts: 149 Registered: Nov 28, '17 |
Edited on Mar 20, 2018, 10:17pm | |
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| 01-20-18 01:15am - 2486 days | #108 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Pentagon strategy drops climate change as a security threat AFP AFP 15 hours ago Washington (AFP) - Climate change and the impact it has on national and international security was not included in the US national defense strategy, unveiled by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Friday. The move is perhaps not surprising given that President Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax, and last June announced that he would pull the United States out of the historic Paris climate pact unless there were changes to the US side of the deal. In 2016 President Barack Obama labeled climate change a threat to national security, and for years experts and scientists have pointed to the impacts of natural disasters, famines and rising sea levels as prompting refugee flows that threaten global stability. After his confirmation hearing almost a year ago, Mattis had said climate change can drive instability and threaten US military bases around the world. "The effects of a changing climate -- such as increased maritime access to the Arctic, rising sea levels, desertification, among others -- impact our security situation," Mattis told senators in written testimony after a January 2017 confirmation hearing, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. Mattis's deputy, Patrick Shanahan, last month told Pentagon reporters that the exclusion of climate change from the national defense strategy does not necessarily mean the Pentagon does not see it as a threat. "It doesn't mean that it is not a priority or that it is a priority. What it says is in the national defense strategy, we don't address it," Shanahan said. | |
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| 01-20-18 01:22am - 2486 days | #109 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Trump demands that babies not be born in the ninth month. Will he pass laws denying those babies US citizenship? Will he force those babies to emigrate to another country? Stay tuned, for further developments. ==== ==== Health Trump Demands Babies Not Be Born After Nine Months: No, Really, He Said This The Wrap Tim Molloy,The Wrap 13 hours ago Trump Demands Babies Not Be Born After Nine Months: No, Really, He Said This President Trump made one of his more confusing slips on Friday, appearing to defy the laws of nature by insisting: “Right now, in a number of states, the laws allow a baby to be born from his or her mother’s womb in the ninth month. It is wrong. It has to change.” What he meant to say, apparently, was that the laws in a number of states allow a baby to be aborted in the ninth month. He’s wrong about that, too. Trump spoke at an anti-abortion rally, and his words quickly ricocheted around social media. We can assume he meant to say that several states allow babies to be aborted in the ninth month because he’s said that before. During an Oct. 19, 2016, presidential debate, he said of his opponent, Hillary Clinton: “If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby … Now, you can say that that’s OK and Hillary can say that that’s OK. But it’s not OK with me, because based on what she’s saying, and based on where she’s going, and where she’s been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day. And that’s not acceptable.” Clinton replied: “Well, that is not what happens in these cases. And using that kind of scare rhetoric is just terribly unfortunate.” Doctors interviewed by The New York Times after the debate said Trump was inventing things. “That is not happening in the United States,” said Dr. Aaron B. Caughey, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University. “It is, of course, such an absurd thing to say.” If you want to take a deep dive on the subject, San Francisco obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Jen Gunter wrote a lengthy blog post on the matter. As the Times reported, “Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case legalizing abortion, essentially established abortion as legal up until a fetus would be viable outside the womb (about 24 weeks into pregnancy) but also said later abortion is permissible under certain conditions, including to protect the life or health of the mother.” But don’t worry: As of now, the Supreme Court still allows babies to be born after nine months. It is not wrong and doesn’t have to change. | |
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| 01-20-18 01:34am - 2486 days | #110 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Thank God the US government is shutting down. There's no funding for the goverment to operate. So, if they can't pay their bills, they are shutting down. This means the US government won't be piling up bills we can't pay. Trump, the greatest President we ever had. "If the shutdown were to continue, scores of federal agencies across the country would be unable to continue operating, and hundreds of thousands of "non-essential" federal workers would be put on temporary unpaid leave." My solution: fire the "non-essential" workers. Convert the temporary unpaid leave to firing those workers who are draining the US government of moneys needed to build the Great Wall to keep out the unwashed masses threatening our great country. My country tis of thee. Go, Trump! --- --- U.S. government shuts down as Senate short of votes for spending bill Thomson Reuters Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell Jan 20th 2018 12:28AM WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government shut down on Friday night at midnight after the Senate failed to come up with the votes needed to approve a bill to keep the federal government running, although high-level negotiations continued. In a dramatic late-night session, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell left voting open despite appearing to fall well short of the 60 votes needed to keep alive a stopgap bill that would fund the government through Feb. 16. As the clock ticked toward midnight, McConnell and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer huddled in negotiations in a room just off the Senate floor, with an early vote Saturday morning on the table. But the two sides could not come to an agreement before the government technically ran out of money at midnight on the first anniversary of President Donald Trump's inauguration. If the shutdown were to continue, scores of federal agencies across the country would be unable to continue operating, and hundreds of thousands of "non-essential" federal workers would be put on temporary unpaid leave. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a stopgap funding measure on Thursday. But Republicans then needed the support of at least 10 Democrats to pass the bill in the Senate. Democratic leaders demanded that the measure include protections for hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants known as "Dreamers" who arrived in the United States as children with their parents. Republicans refused and neither side has been willing to back down. Trump last week rejected a bipartisan proposal, saying he wanted to include any deal for Dreamers in a bigger legislative package that also boosts funding for a border wall and tighter security at the U.S. border with Mexico. In a shutdown, "essential" employees who deal with public safety and national security would keep working. That includes more than 1.3 million people on active duty in the military who would be required to work and would not be paid until funding is renewed. Although past government shutdowns have done little lasting damage to the U.S. economy, they can rattle financial markets. A political battle between Democrats and Republicans over who is to blame immediately ensued with the White House releasing a statement calling Dems "obstructionist losers" just moments after the clock struck midnight. This week's showdown follows a months-long struggle in Congress to agree on government funding levels and the immigration issue. Democrats have demanded the bill include protections from deportation for about 700,000 Dreamers, who are predominantly from Mexico and Central America and were given temporary legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program started by former President Barack Obama. In September, Trump announced he was ending the program and giving Congress until March 5 to come up with a legislative replacement. Democrats say the search for a deal has been hurt by Trump sending contradictory messages about what kind of bipartisan immigration proposal he would accept. (Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton and Jim Oliphant; Editing by Kieran Murray and Leslie Adler) From Our Partners | |
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| 01-20-18 01:48am - 2486 days | #111 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Is Trump merely human, or is he the greatest President we've ever had? Sexwise, he seems to prefer plain vanilla. At least, according to Stormy Daniels. ----- ----- All the dirty details of Trump’s alleged porn star affair By Natalie Musumeci January 19, 2018 | 10:12am | Updated Modal Trigger Donald Trump gloated about how good he looked on the cover of a magazine before having unprotected sex with porn star Stormy Daniels — who mocked his famed mane before doing the deed with the future president, according to the much-anticipated full interview about the alleged encounter. Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — claimed to In Touch, which published the full transcript of the explosive 2011 interview Friday, how she and Trump had “textbook generic” sex followed by Trump calling her from a blocked number “about every 10 days” after their alleged 2006 tryst. After the buxom blonde met the then 60-year-old real-estate mogul at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada in July 2006 – while Trump was married to Melania and when their son Barron was three-months-old – he invited her to the penthouse room where he was staying at Harrah’s hotel, Daniels dished to the mag. “I went in and I was all dressed up because I had just assumed that we were going to go to dinner, but he meant to have dinner in his room. Like he wasn’t dressed to go out at all, just lounging,” she told In Touch reporter Jordi Lippe-McGraw. Daniels said she remembered “taking a jab at him,” because Trump was “all sprawled out on the couch, watching television or something. He was wearing pajama pants. And I was like, ‘Ha, does Mr. Hefner know that you stole his outfit?’” Trump and Daniels chatted for hours over dinner in his hotel room, where he bragged about himself and how he could get Daniels on his NBC television series, “The Apprentice,” before he asked her to sit on the bed with him, she claimed. “He kept showing me he was on the cover of a magazine that had just come out and it was some sort of money magazine,” she said. “[H]e had it in the room and he kept showing it to me and I was like, ‘Dude, I know who you are.’” “[H]e was very full of himself, like he was trying to impress me or something. But I do remember he just kept talking about this magazine that he was on the cover of, like, ‘Look at this magazine, don’t I look great on the cover?’” Daniels told In Touch. During the conversation, Daniels said, she teased Trump about his hair. “I was like, ‘Dude, what’s up with that?’ and he laughed and he said, ‘You know, everybody wants to give me a makeover and I’ve been offered all this money and all these free treatments.’” She added: “And I was like, ‘What is the deal? Don’t you want to upgrade that? Come on, man.’ He said that he thought that if he cut his hair or changed it, that he would lose his power and his wealth. And I laughed hysterically at him.” During the encounter, Daniels said she briefly mentioned Melania and Trump replied, “Oh, don’t worry about her,” she said. At one point, Daniels said, she went to the bathroom and when she came out, Trump was sitting on the bed. “[He] was like, ‘Come here.’ And I was like, ‘Ugh, here we go.’ And we started kissing. I actually don’t even know why I did it but I do remember while we were having sex, I was like, ‘Please don’t try to pay me.’ And then I remember thinking, ‘But I bet if he did, it would be a lot.’” The porn star said the “sex was nothing crazy.” “He wasn’t like, chain me to the bed or anything. It was one position. I can definitely describe his junk perfectly, if I ever have to. He definitely seemed smitten after that. He was like, ‘I wanna see you again, when can I see you again?’” she said. Daniels, who revealed that the two did not use a condom when asked by Lippe-McGraw, said, “It was textbook generic. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my God, I love you.’ He wasn’t like Fabio or anything. He wasn’t trying to have, like, porn sex.” The next night, Daniels said, Trump had Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger walk her to her hotel room after she hung out with them both during a party. “It was in the downstairs of the hotel I was in and he [Trump] was hanging out with Ben Roethlisberger. When I got there, he [Trump] was already with him,” Daniels told the magazine. She said Trump had his bodyguard, “Keith,” call her and ask whether she was coming to the party. “When I got there, I called Keith and he told me where he was sitting and he brought me over. And he was hanging out with Ben for a long time,” she said. “A couple other people around, nobody famous. Mostly people trying to hang on to them. Ben had just won the Super Bowl that year. Donald excused himself.” She added that when Trump left, “he made Ben promise to take care of me. I stayed another 15-20 minutes and Ben Roethlisberger actually walked me up to my room that night because Donald told him to. Yeah, he walked me all the way to my hotel room.” Daniels said that after she slept with Trump, he called her from a blocked number “about every 10 days,” asking when he could see her again, according to the interview. “He never was like, ‘Let’s f–k.’ But come on,” Daniels said. Following the tryst, Trump proceeded to call Daniels repeatedly from a blocked number, asking when he could see her again, she said. During another encounter with Daniels, she said in the interview, Trump commented on her looks, saying she was beautiful and “I love your little nose, it’s like a beet.” “I go, ‘Did you say a beet? Like, what the f—?’ I started giving him a hard time about it. And he goes, ‘No, no, no, no! It’s majestic. It’s a very smart nose, like an eagle.’ I was like, ‘Just keep digging, dude. Keep digging that hole,’” Daniels told the outlet. Daniels admitted to the magazine that she had remorse following her affair with the married Trump. “At the time, I didn’t think that much about it. But now that I have a baby that’s the same age that his was at the time, I’m like, ‘Wow, what a d—.’” She added: “[I]f I was his wife and I found out that my husband stuck his d— in a hundred girls, I would be less mad about that than the fact that he went to dinner and had like this ongoing relationship.” The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump’s lawyer paid Daniels $130,000 weeks before the presidential election to keep quiet about the 2006 affair. Both Daniels and Trump have denied the tryst. | |
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| 01-20-18 07:46am - 2485 days | #112 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Why has President Trump let criminals like Crooked Hilary and Fake Obama (who does not possess a valid US birth certificate) stay out of jail? Throw the criminals in jail for their crimes. Is there collusion between Trump and the Clinton and Obama families? Shame on Trump, for not draining Washington of the Clinton-Obama swamp of lies and deceits, as Trump promised repeatedly during his campaign for President. On a side note, Jared Kushner has had "suspicious transactions" at Deutsche Bank. No one is above the law. Throw Jared Kushner in jail NOw!!! What if Kushner is blackmailing President Trump, so Kushner can take the President's daughter to bed and do all kinds of dirty things to her? Free Ivanka Trump, an angel from heaven, from the clutches of that suspicious figure Jared Kushner. ------- ------- Politics Deutsche Bank Willing To Report Jared Kushner’s ‘Suspicious Transactions’ To Robert Mueller: Report Newsweek Jessica Kwong,Newsweek 15 hours ago A German bank reportedly has evidence of “suspicious transactions” related to Jared Kushner’s family accounts and is willing to hand the information over to Russia probe special counsel Robert Mueller. The board chairman of the banking giant Deutsche Bank, Paul Achleitner, called for an internal investigation and found troubling results, German business magazine Manager Magazin reported in its print edition released on Friday. Deutsche Bank—a major lender to President Donald Trump and his son-in-law and senior White House advisor Kushner, according to Mother Jones—provided the results to the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, which is Germany’s bank regulatory agency and referred to as BaFin. Trending: Tourists Warned Not to Leave Resorts in Jamaica After Murder Spike 01_19_18_KushnerBank U.S. president's senior advisor Jared Kushner is seen during a welcome ceremony at the presidential palace in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on May 23, 2017. THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images “Achleitner’s internal detectives were embarrassed to deliver their interim report regarding real estate tycoon Kushner to the financial regulator BaFin,” states the Manager Magazin story translated from German to English. “Their finding: There are indications that Donald Trump’s son-in-law or persons or companies close to him could have channeled suspicious monies through Deutsche Bank as part of their business dealings.” No details on the suspicious money transfer were reported. The bank is worried about what the results will mean for its image, according to Manager Magazin. Don't miss: Is the President Making Money Off the White House? Trump Properties Made $1.2 Million From Political Groups Last Year “What BaFin will do about [the bank’s findings] is not the bank’s greatest concern,” the German magazine reported. “Rather, it’s the noise that U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller … will make in his pursuit of Trump. For he will likely obtain this information—a giant risk to [the bank’s] reputation.” | |
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| 01-20-18 08:49am - 2485 days | #113 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Now is the time to attack China and Russia and North Korea. Before our military advantage erodes, and we start to live in fear of our foreign enemies. Nuke them NOW! Before it's too late. Trump-fan, for a stronger and greater America. ----- ----- China rebukes U.S. military for alleged close encounter in South China Sea By Sam Howard | Jan. 20, 2018 at 8:44 AM China says the USS Hopper, center in this 2009 file photo, was involved in a close encounter near a Chinese island in the South China Sea this week. File photo by Michael A. Lantron/U.S. Navy/UPI | License Photo Jan. 20 (UPI) -- The Chinese Ministry of Defense said the United States violated their nation's sovereignty when the USS Hopper reportedly maneuvered near a Chinese island in the South China Sea this week. While speaking Saturday, ministry spokesman Wu Qian warned the U.S. against causing "trouble out of nothing." Wu said a Chinese missile destroyer had to drive off the USS Hopper, a U.S. guided missile destroyer, after the ship ventured near Huangyan Island, which is near the western coast of the Philippines. The South China Morning Post reported another ministry spokesman said the Hopper was within 12 nautical miles of the island on Wednesday. "China is strongly dissatisfied with the [U.S. action] and will take necessary measures to firmly safeguard its sovereignty," the second spokesman, Lu Kang, said. A Southeast Asia affairs specialist at the Chinese Academy of Social Science told the Post that the encounter this week would mark the closest a U.S. destroyer has ever sailed to Chinese-claimed islands in the South China Sea. "The South China Sea will be the ground on which the two powers will wrestle for military power," Zhang Jie said. "It has become a long-term conflict." This week, the U.S. Defense Department issued a new National Defense Strategy, which maintained that the U.S. military advantage over China is "eroding." | |
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| 01-20-18 09:21am - 2485 days | #114 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Celebrity Guns N' Roses' Axl Rose Gets Woke Over Devin Nunes; Twitter Roars HuffPost Mary Papenfuss,HuffPost 9 hours ago Guns N’ Roses’ frontman Axl Rose had an incredibly pithy take Friday on Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and his role in the latest assault on special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. “Fuck Nunes,” he tweeted. And Twitter exploded. Fans were beside themselves that their man finally got woke. There were lots of “welcome to the jungles” in honor of the Guns N’ Roses hit song. All it took for Axl’s tweet was a story floated by the Republicans that the Obama administration spied on Donald Trump’s campaign team by allegedly abusing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It’s all there in a secret four-page memo viewed by members of Congress. The problem? It’s written by Republicans, orchestrated by Nunes and, Democrats complain, designed to try to cut Mueller’s probe off at the knees. Whatever it takes to get Axl going. One of his fans even managed to unearth an ancient photo of the congressman long before he was head of the House Intelligence Committee. To be fair, the singer has been plenty woke for a while about current political events. He has slammed Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the “disgraceful” White House. Back in October he criticized Mike Pence for his estimated $200,000 trip to an Indianapolis Colts game just so the vice president could storm out when some members of the visiting San Francisco 49ers predictably took a knee in protest of racial injustice. In 2016, Rose invited fans to the stage at a Mexico City concert to beat a pinata that looked like Trump. Many of his 1.2 million followers on Twitter seem to want the musician speak up more often. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 01-20-18 07:52pm - 2485 days | #115 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump states Democrats are complicit in murders committed by illegal immigrants. Will he put all Democrats in jail? Will he have to execute these enemies of the US? Stay tuned, for further developments, as Trump explains how he will cleanse America of illegal immigrants and complicit Democrats. Will Trump allow Democrats to hold lawful US citizens hostage, while he is fighting to clean our political system of traitors and bigots and criminals. Paid for by the committee to re-elect Donald Trump, the greatest American since Abraham Lincoln. ---- ---- Thomson Reuters Jan 20th 2018 7:18PM WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's presidential campaign on Saturday issued a new video ad calling Democrats "complicit" in murders committed by illegal immigrants, during a government shutdown partly triggered by an impasse over immigration. The Trump campaign released the ad, titled "Complicit," on the anniversary of the Republican president's inauguration. It focuses on an undocumented immigrant, Luis Bracamontes, charged in the 2014 killings of two police officers in Sacramento, California. The man's lawyers had questioned his sanity but a judge found him mentally competent to stand trial, according to a report last week in the Sacramento Bee. "Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants," the ad says. The new ad is likely to anger Democrats and immigration advocates and could inflame tensions over the issue on Capitol Hill, where Democrats and Republicans were working through the weekend to reach an agreement that would reopen the government. A news release announcing the ad blamed Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer for the shutdown, accusing him and Democrats of "holding lawful citizens hostage over their demands for amnesty for illegal immigrants." Schumer's spokesman said in an email, "This is a shameless attempt by the president to distract from the Trump shutdown. Rather than campaigning, he should do his job and negotiate a deal to open the government address the needs of the American people." "It's a campaign ad, which tend to be extreme, but this is completely divorced from reality and full of fear and hate," said Melanie Nezer, vice president of the refugee agency HIAS. Trump filed for re-election the day he took office, an unusual move that has allowed him to begin campaigning long before the November 2020 election. Historically, incumbent presidents have waited two years, until after the midterm elections, to file formally. On Friday, most Senate Democrats opposed a bill that would have avoided the shutdown, because their efforts to include protections for hundreds of thousands of mostly young immigrants, known as Dreamers, were rejected by Trump and Republican leaders. The Dreamers were brought illegally into the United States as children, and given temporary legal status under a program started by former President Barack Obama. (Reporting by Ginger Gibson and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Alistair Bell) More from Aol.com: | |
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| 01-21-18 04:30am - 2485 days | #116 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Republicans are the leaders of our moral country. Can a Republican attack another Republican, since both are automatically the good guys? Never. Republicans can only attack Democrats. Democrats are the cause of all evils in the US. So it's only right for Republicans to expose and attack Democrats. But here is a case where a Republican seems to question the moral authority of a fellow Republican. Is this right? Is this allowed? ----- ----- Congressman denies misconduct claim; ethics probe may follow Associated Press MARC LEVY,Associated Press 11 hours ago Rep. Patrick Meehan, R-Pa., leaves a meeting of the House Republican Conference in the Capitol on June 21, 2017. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images) HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — House Speaker Paul Ryan called for an Ethics Committee investigation Saturday after the New York Times reported that U.S. Rep. Patrick Meehan used taxpayer money to settle a complaint that stemmed from his hostility toward a former aide who rejected his romantic overtures. The story, published online Saturday, cited unnamed people who said the Republican Pennsylvania representative used thousands of dollars from his congressional office fund to settle the sexual harassment complaint the ex-aide filed last summer to the congressional Office of Compliance. In a statement, Ryan's spokeswoman said the allegations must be investigated "fully and immediately" by the House Ethics Committee and that Meehan would immediately submit himself to the committee's review. Meehan is being removed from his position on the committee, and Ryan told Meehan that he should repay any taxpayer funds that were used to settle the case, Ryan's spokeswoman said. The Times did not identify the accuser and said she did not speak to the newspaper. In a statement, the four-term congressman's office denied that Meehan sexually harassed or mistreated the ex-aide. It also said Meehan, the former U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, had asked congressional lawyers who handled the case to ask the ex-aide's lawyer to dissolve the settlement's confidentiality requirements "to ensure a full and open airing of all the facts." "Throughout his career he has always treated his colleagues, male and female, with the utmost respect and professionalism," Meehan's office said. The accuser's lawyer, Alexis Ronickher, called the allegations "well-grounded" and rejected the idea of doing away with confidentiality. Meehan is trying to victimize her client twice by revealing the woman's identity and litigating the case in the media, Ronickher said. Ronickher called it a "dirty political maneuver" by Meehan and an effort to save his political career by making it look like he's being transparent. "Mr. Meehan demanded confidentiality to resolve the matter, presumably so that the public would never know that he entered into a settlement of a serious sexual harassment claim," Ronickher said. Ronickher said the Ethics Committee investigation must include the fact that Meehan, in his Saturday statement responding to the Times article, "knowingly breached confidentiality in his agreement by discussing the case and the terms of any potential settlement agreement." Meehan's office did not respond to questions about whether he used taxpayer money to settle the case or whether he would submit to the Ethics Committee investigation. However, his office said Meehan would only act with advice of House lawyers and in line with House Ethics Committee guidance to resolve any allegation. "Every step of the process was handled ethically and appropriately," Meehan's office said. Meehan represents a closely divided district that Democrat Hillary Clinton narrowly won in the 2016 presidential election. Calls from Democrats for Meehan to resign were immediate, including one from Pennsylvania's Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, who said the U.S. House should investigate "how this matter was handled from top to bottom." | |
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| 01-21-18 05:30am - 2485 days | #117 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
You need to use the URL to see a photo of a Tump-loving woman dressed like Wonder Woman. This is what makes America great! To see Wonder Woman, supporting President Donald Trump, against the pussy feminists who are trying to destroy America. Edit: I enjoyed the recent Wonder Woman film. But if I had seen this photo first, I don't know if I would have enjoyed, or even seen, the movie. Because this woman is not my idea of Wonder Woman. LOL. ---- ---- https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/trump-lo...teful-013147198.html Trump-loving conservative women protest the Women's March: 'A feminist is someone who is kind of hateful' Yahoo Lifestyle Beth Greenfield,Yahoo Lifestyle 11 hours ago Laura Zulema of Sacramento, Calif. at the Conservative Women for America counter-protest in Las Vegas on Saturday. (Photo: RONDA CHURCHILL for YAHOO) With any major protest march come counter-protesters. And on Saturday Jan. 20, when hundreds of Women’s March anniversary events flooded the streets in cities and towns across the country, handfuls of dissenters were reportedly there to yell back, from Seattle and Los Angeles to Dallas and Boston (and in Knoxville, Tenn., where a women’s march event is slated for Sunday, a neo-Nazis group has promised to disrupt it). In Las Vegas, where the main national Women’s March event — a rally called Power to the Polls — is set for Sunday morning, a minor counter protest got a jump on the action. Conservative Women for America, an event mobilized through Facebook and hosted by the Make California Great PAC, brought a small but passionate bunch of about 100 Trump supporters (split about evenly between men and women, despite the name) to the grounds of the Grant Sawyer State Office Building on Saturday. Wayne Allyn Root, USA Radio Network host, takes the podium next to life-size cut-outs of Donald and Melania Trump. (Photo: RONDA CHURCHILL for YAHOO) Dubbed “a day of celebration, community, and hope,” it kicked off Friday night with a meet-and-greet on the Las Vegas Strip at Trump International Hotel, and continued with a four-hour lineup of speakers — Conservative radio hosts, bloggers, anti-abortion activists, and aspiring politicians among them. Those present came mostly from California and Nevada, but from as far away as Ohio and South Carolina. Some wore red Make America Great Again caps or “Fight Sanctuary State America” T-shirts, while a few waved large American flags. A life-size cardboard cutout of Donald and Melania Trump stood just next to the speakers’ podium, blowing over at one point in the afternoon’s fierce wind. Victoria Muñoz came from California on Saturday. (Photo: RONDA CHURCHILL for YAHOO) “This is to counter their narrative,” event co-organizer Lisa Collins told Yahoo Lifestyle, referring to the Women’s March activists. When fellow organizer Carrie Fleming learned of the Power to the Polls event in Las Vegas a month ago, Collins said, “It was offensive to her… To wear pussyhats on your head is really offensive. Plus they take a lot of liberty in saying they represent all women.” She, like many who voiced their opinions at the event, did not hesitate to denounce feminism. “I think being a feminist means pro-abortion, emasculating your men, and no room for any common ground or dialogue,” Collins, of Crestline, Calif., said. She praised Donald Trump for his stances on illegal immigration, terrorism, and the media. Laura Zulema had come from Sacramento for the counter-protest, and she brought plenty of spirit — wearing a Wonder Woman costume and waving a massive black-white-and-blue American flag (originally meant to symbolize the sacrifices of law enforcers but appearing en masse in August during the white supremacist protests in Charlottesville). A small Conservative Women for America counter-protest took place in Las Vegas ahead of the Women’s March event. (Photo: RONDA CHURCHILL for YAHOO) “I feel like Wonder Woman represents everyone, but she is now misconstrued as a feminist,” Zulema said. “And a feminist is someone who is kind of hateful — they make themselves into victims instead of strengthening themselves. They are extreme, and they talk down about men.” Still, Zulema said she also planned to attend the Power to the Polls event on Sunday, and had hope that it would be more “all-inclusive” than she felt it was last year. Victoria Muñoz of Northern California, who made the trip with a friend, agreed. “I’m not a feminist. Never have been,” she said. “I love Trump,” she added, because she wants “the wall,” and because “I pay too much taxes and I’m still poor.” Regarding Linda Sarsour, Muñoz said, referring to one the Women’s March co-chair, she gave a hearty thumbs-down signal. Lisa Collins, of Crestline, Calif., was a co-organizer of the Conservative Women for America rally in Las Vegas. (PHOTO: RONDA CHURCHILL for YAHOO) Sarsour, the hijab-wearing feminist who formerly headed the Arab American Association of New York, was a favorite target of criticism among many of the day’s speakers — although feminism (which one male speaker dubbed “a cancer”), pussyhats, pro-choice women, and sanctuary cities were also jabbed and booed. Jessica Martinez is running for office in California. (Photo: RONDA CHURCHILL for YAHOO) Jessica Martinez of La Habra, Calif., who is running for a seat in the state’s 57th Assembly District, said she made the trip on Saturday because she is “pro-life, pro- the Second Amendment, pro-jobs, and pro-working families.” Erin Sith, of San Francisco, addressed the Las Vegas counter-protestors on Saturday. (Photo: RONDA CHURCHILL for YAHOO) The Second Amendment held a particularly important place in the heart of another speaker, Erin Sith of San Francisco, who is rare in that she is an outspoken Conservative woman and gun enthusiast who is also transgender. “My opinions don’t fall within a narrow range,” she said, noting that she had also come to Las Vegas to attend the Shot Show later this week. And on Saturday, she appeared happy to be among like-minded individuals, noting, “As I like to say, it’s easier to come out as LGBT than it is to come out as Conservative.” | |
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| 01-21-18 10:07am - 2484 days | #118 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump is the man! Read the article below, and see how well Trump is doing as President.... === === Politics Trump's Biggest Con May Be The One He Has Played On American Workers HuffPost Jonathan Cohn,HuffPost Sat, Jan 20 5:00 AM PST The Donald Trump presidency is now one year old and in many respects ― the unhinged tweeting, the contempt for democratic norms, the potential collusion with a hostile foreign power ― it has been unlike any presidency in history. But there is one respect in which Trump’s tenure in office has been rather ordinary: his administration’s year-long effort to push familiar Republican initiatives that shift money and power towards corporations and the rich, and away from everybody else. No, this is not the kind of presidency that Trump promised. As a candidate, he portrayed himself as a different sort of Republican, one who would attack the financial industry, govern independently of wealthy special interests, and protect public programs on which poor and middle-class Americans depend. On Inauguration Day, speaking from the steps of the Capitol building, Trump reaffirmed those allegiances and priorities: “We are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington D.C., and giving it back to you, the people.” Of course, when Trump vowed to protect “the forgotten men and women of our country,” he likely had a specific subset of men and women in mind ― working-class Americans and, in particular, white working-class Americans. Stoking their racial resentment has been a theme of his presidency, just as it was a theme of his candidacy. In public, Trump has assailed African-American football players for protesting during the national anthem. In private, he has said he wants to stop letting in immigrants from “shithole” (or, in some versions, “shithouse”) countries. In that sense, he has been exactly the kind of president he promised to be. But the attacks on people of color, both abroad and home, look less and less like an effort to protect his supporters and more and more like a smokescreen for policies that will leave them ― along with most poor and middle-class Americans ― worse off than they were before. In a presidency that already has a reputation for dishonesty and graft, what Trump policies are doing to America’s workers may be the biggest con of all. Giving Big Tax Breaks For The Wealthy By far the clearest example of this is the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which the Republican Congress passed and Trump signed in December. The legislation showers the vast majority of its benefits on businesses, investors and the wealthy ― by permanently reducing taxes for corporations, the owners of “pass-through” businesses, and holders of large estates. And although it also lowers some taxes for lower- and middle-income households, those cuts are smaller and temporary. Ten years out, once the law takes full effect, more than half of all taxpayers will be paying more and most of the rest will see no change, according to analysis by the Tax Policy Center. (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) Trump and his allies say those numbers don’t matter, because the tax cut will mean higher wages and more jobs ― both of which will benefit American workers. And lately Trump has been touting news of one-time bonuses that companies are offering, supposedly because of the tax cut, as vindication of the GOP argument. But many of those same companies are laying off workers. And, in any event, the test of the tax cut’s impact will be what it mean over the long term. In a survey of 42 top economists by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, just one ― one! ― thought Republican tax cuts would significantly improve growth. The tax cut is Trump’s only major legislative accomplishment, but it wasn’t supposed to be. He and his congressional partners spent more of the year focusing on health care, as they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The effort fell short, in no small part because GOP repeal proposals looked nothing like what Trump had promised. Instead of providing better, cheaper health care to all Americans ― a vow Trump made repeatedly in his campaign, sometimes using it to distinguish himself from rival GOP candidates ― repeal would have meant millions of poor and middle-class Americans losing their coverage. Some younger and healthier people would have ended up saving money, but only because older, sicker people would have ended up spending more ― or going without insurance altogether. Stymied on the legislative front, Trump has carried on his war against “Obamacare” by using his executive authority. And here he has been more successful. He cut funding for advertising for HealthCare.gov and for the groups that assist people with enrollment. He cut off a key set of payments to insurers, prompting some to raise rates and others to abandon markets altogether. And he’s given states a green light to change their Medicaid programs in ways that will make it harder for poor people, especially those with chronic physical and mental health problems, to get and keep coverage. Undoing Rules To Protect Workers And Consumers Trump’s tax cut and health care efforts have gotten a ton of attention. But they by no means capture the full extent of his governing agenda ― or the different ways his policies break his promise to American workers. In March, Trump signed a Republican bill rescinding the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Act, an Obama-era law that required federal contractors to disclose and then address violations of labor law and worker safety regulations. In August, the Trump administration announced it was postponing implementation of the so-called fiduciary rule ― another Obama-era legacy ― that requires investment managers to act in the best interests of their clients. It’s widely understood that the administration is merely buying time for a more formal rewrite or outright repeal of the regulation. They’re just pandering to big corporations, They don’t care about family farms. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) on a Trump administration regulatory change In October, the Trump administration confirmed that it intended to rewrite Obama’s rewrite of overtime rules, which would have extended overtime pay to more than 12 million workers. The Trump administration intends to scale that back, although not completely. And just last week, the Trump administration announced it was putting the brakes on new regulations for payday lenders, designed to stop them from exploiting low-wage workers by loading them up with unpayable debts. Another major thrust of Trump’s agenda is protecting businesses from lawsuits, even when they act in ways that exploit or harm consumers ― helping to foster what Mike Konczal, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, has called a “Grifter Economy.” An example of this was the reversal of yet another Obama-era rule that, for the first time, exposed banks and credit card companies to class action lawsuits by consumers who believed they were victims of fraud. The Trump administration and its allies claimed this was an effort to help consumers, because class action lawsuits merely enrich trial lawyers. But, as consumer advocates point out, fear of class action suits and their potentially big awards are precisely what it takes to keep large financial institutions in line. Weakening Protections For Factory Workers And Farmers In some ways, though, the most revealing policy changes of Trump’s first year are the ones that affect the very groups he always claims to champion. Trump frequently talks about factory workers, and just this week he was in western Pennsylvania pledging to fight for them. But in the past year he has delayed implementation of rules designed to protect workers from inhaling toxic substances, including beryllium (a major hazard for steelworkers) and silica dust (a major hazard in construction). The plan, once again, is to scale back the rules in ways that expose many more workers to the hazards. Yet another group that Trump loves to champion is farmers. But Trump this year overturned a regulation that made it easier for independent farmers to sue food companies and large agricultural conglomerates. And now the Environmental Protection Agency is talking about rescinding regulations that prohibit underage workers from handling toxic pesticides. When defending the change in farmer lawsuits, Trump administration officials made the same basic argument they did for most of their regulatory changes: that they were merely reducing frivolous lawsuits and eliminating paperwork, so that businesses can create more jobs. The idea that regulation stifles the economy, ultimately hurting consumers or workers more than they help, is one that conservatives believe sincerely ― and that, in any given case, is a reasonable subject for debate. But on the rule change for farmers, even some of the president’s allies thought it was more about helping powerful friends. “They’re just pandering to big corporations,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said. “They don’t care about family farms.” In public, Trump always suggests otherwise. Whether he’s talking about rules for farmers or bankers, or changes to taxes or health care, he always says what he did at the Capitol a year ago ― that he’s fighting powerful interests and protecting the “forgotten American.” But in private, Trump has been known to present his accomplishments in a different light. In December, just hours after signing the tax cut, Trump was back in Florida at his exclusive Mar-o-Lago club, where initiation fees are $200,000. While dining with some friends and supporters, CBS News later reported, Trump told them what they probably knew already: “You all just got a lot richer.” | |
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| 01-22-18 05:30pm - 2483 days | #119 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump should declare martial law in Pennsylvania and make the Republican-authored Congressional Map legal. That would allow more Republicans to be elected to Congress, instead of criminal Democrats who would be opposed to Trump's leadership. End of statement. Trump is the man! ====== ====== Pennsylvania Supreme Court Strikes Down State's Congressional Map, Saying It Illegally Benefits GOP HuffPost Sam Levine,HuffPost 3 hours ago The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the state’s congressional map went so far to benefit Republicans that it violated the state constitution. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the state’s congressional map went so far to benefit Republicans that it “clearly, plainly and palpably” violated the state constitution. The court, where Democrats have a 5-2 majority, blocked the use of the map in the 2018 midterm elections, ordered state lawmakers to begin to draw a new map. The suit against the congressional map, which only challenged it under Pennsylvania’s state constitution, was one of the most watched voting rights cases in the country. The ruling could encourage groups to bring similar challenges against congressional gerrymandering cases in other states and bypass a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, which is currently considering two cases dealing with partisan gerrymandering. Pennsylvania has been described as one of the worst gerrymandered states in the country, and analyses have found the map is responsible for at least three additional GOP seats in Congress. Republicans controlled the redistricting process in 2010 and drew the map to give them a considerable advantage. In the 2012, 2014 and 2016 elections they won 13 of the state’s 18 congressional seats, despite just winning about 50 percent of the vote. The suit, brought by the League of Women Voters on behalf of 18 voters in each of the state’s congressional districts, said that GOP lawmakers had retaliated against Democratic voters for supporting Democratic candidates, violating the equal protection and free expression guarantees in the state constitution. The justices gave GOP lawmakers until Feb. 9 to submit a new map and gave Gov. Tom Wolf (D) until Feb. 15 to approve it. Should the parties fail to reach an agreement on the plan, the justices said the court would move quickly on its own to develop a constitutional congressional map. The court said the new map could be expected by Feb. 19. “Pennsylvania voters will finally be able to cast their ballots in districts that were fairly and constitutionally drawn,” David Gersch, one of the lawyers who argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs, said in a call with reporters on Monday. “This is a tremendous day for Pennsylvania, tremendous day for the voters and it’s also a tremendous step by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.The current map is the worst map in Pennsylvania’s history.” The justices indicated the state’s congressional primary on May 15 would proceed as scheduled. The court only issued an order on Monday and said a full opinion would follow. In a dissenting statement, the court’s two Republicans, Chief Justice Thomas Saylor and Sallie Updyke Mundy, said they would not have issued a ruling until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on its partisan gerrymandering cases. They agreed with a lower court’s finding, however, that the map raised “substantial concerns” about constitutional viability. In a separate dissenting opinion, Mundy expressed concern with the vagueness of the court’s order, arguing it had instructed the legislature to redraw the state’s congressional map without giving it any guidance on how to do so. Justice Max Baer (D) wrote an opinion joining the majority in part and dissenting in part. He said he would have held off on redrawing the congressional map until 2020 so it didn’t throw the state’s 2018 midterm elections into chaos and confusion. At oral arguments in Harrisburg last week, lawyers for House Speaker Michael Turzai (R) and Senate President Tempore Joseph Scarnati (R) defended the map, saying that courts had never articulated a standard for when partisan gerrymandering was so egregious that it could be unconstitutional. E. Mark Braden, a lawyer for Turzai, said it was inconceivable that a political body like a legislature, which is constitutionally tasked with drawing lines for Congress, would not take partisan considerations into account. Scarnati and Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman (R) criticized the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision on Monday, saying they intended to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block the order to redraw the map. “Today’s ruling by the State Supreme Court is a partisan action showing a distinct lack of respect for the Constitution and the legislative process. The PA Supreme Court has overstepped its legal authority and set up an impossible deadline that will only introduce chaos in the upcoming Congressional election. The Court had this case since Nov. 9, 2017 ― giving it over 10 weeks to reach this decision,” they said in a joint statement. “Yet, it has elected to give the legislature 19 days to redraw and adopt the Congressional Districts. With matters the Supreme Court found unconstitutional in the past, it afforded the General Assembly four months to make corrections.” The statement continued, saying: “It is clear that with this ruling the Court is attempting to bypass the Constitution and the legislative process and legislate themselves, directly from the bench.” R. Stanton Jones, another lawyer for the plaintiffs, told reporters that any appeal would be unsuccessful because the challenge to the congressional map was only brought under the state constitution, not the federal one. “It’s well established that the United States Supreme Court does not review decisions of state court that exclusively construe state law, which is the exact situation you have here,” Jones said. “When people talk about federalism, the concept of federalism, this is an important part of it. The United States Supreme Court doesn’t get to tell a state’s highest court what is state law, in this case Pennsylvania law.” Democrats praised the court’s verdict. “This ruling is one more example of the courts telling Republican legislatures that drawing district lines for partisan purposes violates our democratic principles,” said former Attorney General Eric Holder, now head of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, in a statement. “What the Republican party has been doing diminishes the voting power of Americans and contributes to the polarization of our political system. This year, Pennsylvania voters can finally look forward to casting ballots under a fair and legal congressional map.” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 01-22-18 05:48pm - 2483 days | #120 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The laws are different for US Congressmen and peons who are ordinary citizens. A dispute between two neighbors, one of whom is a US Senator, leads prosecutors to seek a 21-month prison sentence for the man. The federal charge against Boucher carries a punishment of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. This was not a fight to the death. This was a neighbor who was pissed off by a US Senator, because the first man thought the Senator was keeping a sloppy yard. But the man was charged with a federal crime. Everyone is equal under the law. Bullshit. Cops and politicians are given special laws and special treatment under the law. ========================== Prosecutors to seek 21-month sentence for Paul's neighbor Associated Press BRUCE SCHREINER,Associated Press 3 hours ago In this Sept. 25, 2017, file photo, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. Rene Boucher, the man accused of tackling U.S. Sen. Rand Paul in the Kentucky lawmaker's yard has been charged with assaulting a member of Congress as part of a federal plea agreement. And his lawyer confirmed what has long been suggested by neighbors: The attack stemmed from a dispute about yard maintenance. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File) FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Federal prosecutors will seek a 21-month prison sentence for the man accused of tackling U.S. Sen. Rand Paul in the Kentucky lawmaker's yard, according to a court document that says the man "had enough" when he saw the Republican stacking more brush onto an existing pile. The court document filed by federal prosecutors underscored that the motive behind the attack stemmed from a dispute about yard maintenance between the two Kentucky neighbors. In comments to police, neighbor Rene Boucher indicated the attack was not politically motivated, the court document said. Instead, it had to do with a property dispute that boiled over, it said. Boucher has been charged with assaulting a member of Congress as part of a federal plea agreement that surfaced last Friday. Boucher has signed the plea agreement but no date has been set for his guilty plea for the attack on the Republican senator, according to Josh J. Minkler, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Indiana. Paul suffered several broken ribs in the attack and later developed pneumonia. Paul has since said he's recovering well from the attack. Minkler has said the charge is one "we take very seriously. Those who choose to commit such an act will be held accountable." The audio of Paul's 911 call to report the attack was released Monday. In it, Paul said he had been assaulted by a neighbor while he was mowing his yard and requested that police come by to investigate. Paul's breathing seemed a bit labored but he otherwise sounded calm. While federal prosecutors will recommend a nearly two-year prison sentence, Boucher's attorney said Monday he will argue that his client should not serve any jail time. Attorney Matt Baker said his client is "a good and a decent person" who made a "big mistake." "Everyone needs to remember, first and foremost, that this is a dispute between two neighbors," Baker said in a phone interview. "It was not and has never been politically motivated. And if this very same incident had occurred between two private persons, neither of whom were a congressman or a senator, we wouldn't be in federal court." Boucher is "very meticulous" about how he maintains his yard, while Paul takes "a much different approach" to the upkeep of his property, Baker said last week. The federal charge against Boucher carries a punishment of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The plea deal also raises the prospect that Boucher — a retired anesthesiologist in his late 50s — will pay restitution to Paul. According to the court document, Boucher said he saw Paul stacking more brush onto an existing pile and had "had enough." Boucher made a "running tackle" of Paul in the lawmaker's yard, it said. The document said Paul "did not see the attack coming until the last second, and was unable to brace for the impact." Paul, a former presidential candidate, was attacked Nov. 3 while mowing his lawn at his home in Bowling Green. A close friend of Paul's said the senator had gotten off his riding lawn mower to remove a limb when he was tackled from behind. Paul has said he never saw the attacker because he was facing downhill and wearing ear protection from the noise of his lawn mower. In a statement given to Kentucky State Police, Boucher admitted running onto Paul's property and tackling him, the court document said. In a later interview with the FBI, Boucher again confessed to tackling Paul, the document said. Minkler's office was assigned the case after a U.S. attorney in Kentucky recused himself. The case was investigated by the FBI's Louisville office. Boucher also faces a misdemeanor assault charge in state court in Kentucky. He has pleaded not guilty to that charge. ___ Adam Beam contributed reporting. | |
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| 01-23-18 02:02pm - 2482 days | #121 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Trump respects the FBI and all hardworking Americans. But he wants to clean house at the FBI of all disloyal, treasonous traitors who want to investigate him. That sound fair. It's treason to investigate a Republican President. But it was right and proper to investigate Clinton, who was a poisonous Democrat. Because Democrats are scum. So why hasn't Trump put jailbait Hilary Clinton and non-USA-born fake President Obama in prison? Because the FBI is weak on crime. Unlike our beloved President, who has the balls and determination to keep out people from shithole countries, as well as all other undesirables. But let's be clear: President Trump is the least racist person you will ever meet. And he loves everyone. (Even the people from shithole countries, I assume.) ---- ---- Good Morning America Attorney General Jeff Sessions is pushing FBI director to clean house at top of agency Good Morning America PIERRE THOMAS AND MIKE LEVINE,Good Morning America 4 hours ago Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been pushing FBI Director Chris Wray to replace his deputy, Andrew McCabe, and install new leadership within the FBI, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The attorney general’s push comes as many Republicans, including President Donald Trump, continue to hammer McCabe and others at the FBI for what they allege is political bias in their law enforcement work. “The president has enormous respect for the thousands of rank-and-file FBI agents who make up the world’s most professional and talented law enforcement agency,” a White House spokesman said in a statement. “He believes politically motivated senior leaders … have tainted the agency’s reputation for unbiased pursuit of justice.” But Wray has made clear that – as long as he’s in the top job at the FBI – he is going to make personnel decisions on his own time, the sources told ABC News. And according to Axios, which first reported the pressure from Sessions, Wray even threatened to resign if McCabe was removed. Wray became director in August, after Trump fired James Comey, an ally of McCabe’s who rose through the FBI ranks to become Comey’s deputy. PHOTO: Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Christopher A. Wray speaks during an event at the Martin Luther King Memorial on the National Mall, Jan. 15, 2018, in Washington, DC. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images) Comey had come under fire for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, which ultimately exonerated Clinton of criminal wrongdoing. More recently, McCabe has been under fire himself for alleged conflicts of interest because his wife ran for state-wide office as a Democrat in 2015 while the Clinton email probe was underway. FBI director says Twitter is 'on my radar' after Trump criticism Senior FBI agent removed from Mueller's team repeatedly called Trump 'an idiot' However, emails and correspondence released by the FBI show McCabe recused himself from any public corruption cases ties to Virginia. According to the FBI documents, McCabe had no oversight of the Clinton matter until he became deputy director in February 2016, three months after his wife lost her election bid. Last month, Trump singled out McCabe in a tweet, writing, "How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin' James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife's campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?" PHOTO: In this May 11, 2017 file photo, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe listens on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP, FILE) Meanwhile, the FBI is under intense pressure as Republicans use a cache of text messages between two FBI employees to push allegations of political bias within the FBI and the sprawling probe by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking at whether Trump associates tried to help Russia influence last year's presidential election and whether White House officials may have sought to obstruct the investigation. Senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page had been part of Mueller’s team when, last summer, the Justice Department's inspector general, looking into an array of FBI actions tied to last year’s election, discovered the FBI officials' text messages and notified senior department officials. Mueller immediately removed Strzok, and by then Page had already left the team. Last month, the Justice Department released about 375 of the messages from last year, including repeated references to Trump as an “idiot.” Then on Monday, the department disclosed that five months’ worth of messages are missing. “The Inspector General discovered the FBI’s system failed to retain text messages for approximately 5 months between December 14, 2016 to May 17, 2017,” Sessions said in a statement. “We will leave no stone unturned to confirm with certainty why these text messages are not now available to be produced and will use every technology available to determine whether the missing messages are recoverable from another source.” In a tweet this morning, Trump called it “one of the biggest stories in a long time.” Last month, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein dismissed suggestions that Mueller or his probe were tainted, insisting there is nobody "better qualified for this job" and noting "political affiliation" is not the same as political "bias." "I've discussed this with Director Mueller and ... we recognize we have employees with political opinions. It's our responsibility to make sure those opinions do not influence their actions," Rosenstein told a House panel. "He is running that office appropriately, recognizing that people have political views but ensuring that those views are not in any way a factor in how they conduct themselves in office." Former FBI officials agree, with one agency veteran saying that those going after FBI officials “seem to have forgotten we are a free country, that you can have your own opinions and still uphold the Rule of Law.” “You should be able to support the candidates of your choice in an election without being called corrupt, or disloyal (to the Republic), or biased in your ability to live up to your oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Frank Montoya, who spent more than two decades with the FBI, recently told ABC News in an email. “In the Russia investigation—just like in the Clinton investigation that preceded it—investigators and prosecutors know that what they think or who they voted for doesn’t matter. What does is upholding the law. Period.” As for Wray, the White House spokesman said, “The president appointed Chris Wray because he is a man of true character and integrity, and the right choice to clean up the misconduct at the highest levels of the F.B.I. and give the rank and file confidence in their leadership.” ABC News' John Santucci contributed to this report. | |
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| 01-24-18 10:12pm - 2481 days | #122 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
It's great we have a President who tweets what he thinks. Are we going to have to fight North Korea? Stay tuned, for further developments. I've read elsewhere that Trump predicts that he will become great friends with the leader of North Korea (after Trump calls North Korean's Kim Jong Un "Little Rocket Man". The way to make friends is to call them names. Trump is the man. He knows how to make friends and influence people. That's why the war of words between the two leads is a smokescreen. And that any tensions are only the start of a great friendship. In the meantime, Hawaii called a fake alert on a missile attack from North Korea. (A mistake.) And the US said we might not attend the Winter Olympics in South Korea. "We don't fear anything in our lives," the U.S. ambassador states. And that's why the US might not attend the Olympics in South Korea. (In case there's security concerns about a war or fighting breaking out with North Korea, which will soon be our friend, because Trump has a winning personality and can solve problems as no else can). On Dec 7, 2017 the US was warning it might not attend the Winter Olympics. On Jan 19, 2018, the US said Vice President Mike Pence and wife Karen Pence will attend the Opening Ceremonies. That will be great. If North Korea decides to bomb South Korea, Trump will then have a chance to select a new Vice President, one who can represent all the American people. Let's hope that Trump will prevail. That he can make America great again. ------ ------ U.S. athletes may not attend Olympics as threat of nuclear war with North Korea rises, Haley warns Aol.com Editors Dec 7th 2017 8:38AM Nikki Haley says it’s an “open question” whether the U.S. will participate in the Winter Olympics. “I think those are conversations we’re going to have to have. But what have we always said? We don’t ever fear anything. We live our lives," Haley, who serves as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview with FOX News on Wednesday. PyeongChang, in South Korea, is set to host the Winter Olympics in less than two months, but the city's location -- less than 50 miles from the border of North Korea -- has sparked some security fears, especially after the North Korean officials reported the successful launch of its largest and most powerful ballistic missile yet. Haley insisted that no final decision had been made, but noted that safety of American athletes would be a number one concern. “What we will do is we’ll make sure that we’re taking every precaution possible to make sure that they’re safe, and to know everything that’s going on around them," she said in an interview with FOX News. The comments came on the heels of North Korea warning that nuclear war had become inevitable -- a matter of when, not if -- thanks to U.S. rhetoric and joint drills with South Korea. "The remaining question now is: when will the war break out?" a spokesman for the North's foreign ministry said late on Wednesday in a statement carried by North Korea's official KCNA news agency. "We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it." When asked if Haley would send family to the area if they were going to compete she hesitated. “I think it depends on what’s going on at the time. We have to watch this closely and it’s changing by the day," she said. breaking-news logo Two American B-1B heavy bombers joined large-scale combat drills over South Korea on Thursday amid warnings from North Korea that the exercises and U.S. threats have made the outbreak of war "an established fact." | |
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| 01-24-18 10:31pm - 2481 days | #123 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump is the man. So what if he wants to play with whores? A man is a man. And Donald is The Man! ==== ==== 2018-01-24 In scandal's wake, Melania keeps her distance from Donald. Do we care? Lisa Belkin 9 hours ago Melania Trump is not in Davos today. She was planning to go — her office had already announced that she would be there to “support the president” as he hobnobs with the global elites at the World Economic Forum. But the first lady is staying in Washington for what her office opaquely calls “scheduling and logistical reasons.” What happened? Well, one thing that happened was the disclosure that Donald Trump’s lawyer arranged a $130,000 payment to a porn star, reportedly to keep quiet about her decade-ago affair with Trump. In the swirl of news over the last week, Melania’s defection — which was announced on the couple’s 13th wedding anniversary — didn’t get much public attention. (Yahoo News White House correspondent Hunter Walker asked the White House how the Trumps celebrated, but got no answer.) To the many rules that Mrs. Trump’s husband has rewritten in the past two years, add one more — that the public will always care how a politician’s wife reacts to news of his infidelities. Until Trump changed everything, the public was insatiably interested in what the wronged spouse thinks. When Bill Clinton was accused of Oval Office dalliances, for instance, Hillary Clinton at first became his fiercest defender, blaming the charges on a “vast right wing conspiracy.” She also became the subject of endless speculation about whether she would stay in the marriage or leave. The photo of the couple walking forlornly toward the presidential helicopter, with Chelsea between them holding each of their hands, ran with countless stories about the tense state of their marriage. When John Edwards was found to have fathered a child out of wedlock, attention also focused on his wife. Some publications were reluctant to cover the story at first, in part out of respect for Elizabeth Edwards, who was fighting cancer at the time. At first Elizabeth defended her husband, but then she announced she was separating from him. Ditto for Eliot Spitzer’s payments to prostitutes, when much of the coverage centered on why we expect wronged women, like his wife, Silda, to stand publicly — and clearly miserably — by their husband’s side. Or Anthony Weiner’s lewd texting, when as much ink and energy was dedicated to why his wife, Huma Abedin, stayed with him (eventually they divorced) and what price she would pay in her own career for his behavior. The meme of the wronged wife, and the public’s outrage on her behalf, became an entrenched part of popular culture. The TV show “The Good Wife” rode it for seven seasons. In the musical “Hamilton,” the title character’s admission that he had an affair leads to brief glee from his political opponents, which abruptly ends with the words “his poor wife.” That segues into a wrenching solo, and the rest of the show focuses more on her anger and eventual forgiveness than it does on the political price he paid. There has been, to be sure, much speculation about the Trump marriage: The way he left her behind when the couple arrived at the White House on Inauguration Day; how her smile turned to a frown during the ceremony; how she didn’t move to the White House for months, and swatted his hand away when he reached for hers on a tarmac; and, most recently, how the photo she chose to tweet on the first anniversary of his taking office was of herself not with her husband but with the military escort who accompanied her to her seat. Melania Trump posted this photo on the first anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, Jan. 20, 2018. (Photo: Melania Trump via Twitter) But the public reaction to the news that weeks before Election Day Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, set up a shell corporation to pay Daniels shows the fundamental rulebook for public reaction to sex scandals no longer applies. (Cohen has denied that Trump and Daniels had an affair but has not denied the payment nor said what it was for.) There was no “stand by your man” statement, no public display of support. While Melania did travel to Florida with her husband immediately after the allegations were first published in the Wall Street Journal, she did not attend any events with him there that weekend. The closest she came to signaling her feelings was canceling her trip to Davos, and while it appeared to speak volumes it was not accompanied by the headlines and speculation that would previously have been de rigueur in such circumstances. Perhaps it’s because this is the second time the Trumps have been through this particular type of news cycle. In October 2016, when the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced, Melania did a version of the traditional public wife walk, telling Anderson Cooper that Trump’s boasting about grabbing women was “boy talk, and he was led on — like, egged on — from the host to say dirty and bad stuff.” Or perhaps it’s because this first lady is so opaque, and those who might be inclined to speculate or empathize have been given no window into how she might be feeling. Other wives weathering scandals had friends who would dish. Articles about the Clinton and Weiner marriages, for instance, were filled with anonymous quotes from friends of the couple, who served as conduits for their pain. But Melania Trump’s public-facing world seems to be only herself, her parents and her son, Barron. Who are her close friends? Perhaps because the man who is accused of cheating on her does not seem to pay a political price for his actions and because his actions do not “stick” to him, the usual public embrace does not envelop her. Yes, polls show she is the most popular member of the Trump family, but still her approval numbers are lower than her disapproval numbers. And so, one of the many lessons of this presidency may be this: When every day brings an accusation or misstep that might have brought down a previous president, it leads to a numbing lack of surprise that translates into lack of sympathy for his wife. With a news cycle in hyperdrive, there is neither time nor inclination to wonder what Melania is thinking. | |
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| 01-24-18 10:39pm - 2481 days | #124 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Should the special prosecutors who are investigating the possible Russian ties of Donald Trump include Trump's sex life? President Clinton was investigated for his sex life. And was impeached while President. Of course, Clinton was a Democrat. And all Democrats are scum. Trump is a Republican. And the leader of our great nation. So it's not right that he should be investigated for any sex activities Trump might have had. Because Trump is the Man. And the Republicans control both houses of Congress. So you expect them to impeach their own President? Not likely. But maybe the special prosecutor could ask Trump about his sex life. As well as any connections to Russia. Get Trump on the record. So that would open Trump to perjury charges, unlike his public utterances and tweets and fake promises. | |
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| 01-24-18 11:16pm - 2481 days | #125 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump making small talk. Being friendly with the acting head of the FBI. Doesn't Trump have the right, as President of the United States, to know if an employee voted for Trump? And shouldn't Trump have right (and duty) to fire anyone disloyal to the President? In addition, in small talk, shouldn't the employee have the right, in small talk, to ask if Trump masturbates daily? To get the know the personal habits of the President? Also, the Republicans are smearing McCabe, because McCabe's wife ran as a Democrat for Virginia state Senate and she received political donations from a super PAC. The donations were investigated, no charges were filed, but Republicans consider it suspicious that McCabe's wife is a Democrat. So McCabe should be fired from the FBI, because that will weaken the probe into President Trump. Power to the people. Power to Trump, for making small talk. -------- -------- RNC Chair: Trump Was Just Making Small Talk When He Asked FBI Head How He Voted HuffPost Marina Fang,HuffPost 16 hours ago WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s defenders are brushing off reports that he asked his acting FBI director how he voted in the presidential election as simply Trump’s way of “getting to know people.” WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s defenders are brushing off reports that he asked his acting FBI director how he voted in the presidential election as simply Trump’s way of “getting to know people.” Trump, who has taken repeated steps to undermine the independence of the FBI, asked the bureau’s acting head, Andrew McCabe, whom he voted for in the 2016 election, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. The question, which Trump reportedly posed shortly after firing FBI Director James Comey in May, would put a non-political law enforcement leader in an awkward position. McCabe responded that he did not vote, the paper reported, citing unnamed current and former administration officials, and later said he found the conversation “disturbing.” Asked whether Trump acted inappropriately, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel on Wednesday dismissed the conversation as normal small talk that came up during an introductory meeting. “I think it is just a conversation. I don’t think it intends of, you know, all of these terrible things that people are trying to put forward,” McDaniel said on CNN’s “New Day.” “I ask people who they vote for sometimes. I think it’s trying to get to know somebody. This is a president who is just getting to know people, and that’s part of those conversations.” A White House official told The New York Times that Trump’s question “was in the context of first asking about Mr. McCabe’s family.” McCabe, who stepped into the FBI acting director job after Trump abruptly fired Comey amid the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, has long been a target of Republican attempts to undermine the probe. Trump and his allies have alleged McCabe is biased because in 2015, his wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, was a candidate for Virginia state Senate and received campaign donations from a super PAC of then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), a friend of Trump’s 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton. Jill McCabe, a Democrat, was defeated in the election. Andrew McCabe later faced scrutiny, as Comey’s deputy, for his role in the FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. He didn’t assume that position until well after his wife’s campaign had ended, and, under pressure, he recused himself from matters involving Clinton. Nevertheless, Trump has repeatedly attacked McCabe, who is now the FBI deputy director. In December, Trump falsely stated that McCabe was “given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation.” Trump has frequently blasted his FBI and Justice Department, and claims he has the “absolute right” to direct the Department of Justice as he sees fit. Comey testified to congressional investigators that Trump asked for his loyalty and requested that he end the FBI’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has since been indicted in the Russia probe. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 01-25-18 03:54pm - 2480 days | #126 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Happy news. Trump's war of words with North Korea leads many to wonder if US will fight a war with North Korea. Go, Trump. You are the man. Balls of steel. (A man who missed out enlisting in the military because of draft deferments and a doctor's note that stated he had pre-conditions). ---- ---- U.S. War With North Korea Would Be ‘Really Tough’ to Win, Says Top Marine Newsweek Tom O’Connor,Newsweek 1 hour 15 minutes ago The commander of the U.S. Marine Corps has warned about the realities of getting into a war with North Korea, a militarized state that vowed to continue developing nuclear and ballistic weapons despite international pressure. Addressing the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, four-star Marine Corps General Robert Neller said Thursday that the U.S. military was already preparing for a potential conflict with the armed forces of Kim Jong Un, who last year successfully launched intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and declared his country a nuclear state. Neller emphasized that such a fight would likely be the most daunting challenge his troops have ever faced. Related: North Korea sets up first military parade of 2018, and new weapons are likely to be on show Trending: U.S. War With North Korea Would Be ‘Really Tough’ to Win, Says Top Marine “It will be a very, very kinetic, physical, violent fight over some really, really tough ground, and everybody is going to have to be mentally prepared,” Neller said, according to CNN. “When they train, they have to keep in the back of their mind, they have to be [ready] physically, mentally, and always their spirit has to be steeled and ready for serious conflict that’s going to test them beyond anything they have ever done in their lives, that was my only intent. And I’ll say that as long as I’m in this office because that’s my job,” Neller added. GettyImages-884030122 North Korean soldiers and Pyongyang residents hold a rally to celebrate the North’s declaration on November 29 it had achieved full nuclear statehood, according to North Korea’s official Central News Agency (KCNA), on December 2, 2017. The commander of the U.S. Marine Corps has warned about the realities of getting into a war with North Korea, a militarized state that vowed to continue developing nuclear and ballistic weapons despite international pressure. KCNA/KNS/AFP/Getty Images The U.S. and North Korea have traded harsh rhetoric since the Cold War proxy conflict they fought in the early 1950s, but tensions rose particularly high last year as Kim defied the hardline administration of President Donald Trump by testing ICBMs capable of striking the U.S., as well as a hydrogen bomb. Following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps, Kim sought to establish a nuclear deterrent to a potential U.S. invasion intended to overthrow his government. Don't miss: Date Rape-Linked Drugs Could Be Detected Better Than Ever Before Thanks to This Student’s Invention The U.S. has responded by enhancing its naval assets in the Pacific and increasing joint military drills with Japan and North Korea’s neighboring, pro-West rival South Korea. Trump and Kim themselves have also exchanged personal insults and nuclear threats, raising concern among the international community. The verbal barrages between the nuclear-armed heads of state have slowed as the two Koreas independently sought peace, but Kim’s state-run media condemned a recent meeting of nations that supported South Korea during the Korean War, saying it was intended to sabotage ongoing negotiations. “The U.S. had better awake from a foolish daydream, properly facing up to the strategic position and entity of the DPRK as a world-level military power,” official ruling Korean Workers’ Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun wrote Thursday. “We are strong enough to snub war hysteria of the U.S. and defend peace on the Peninsula.” “It is the unshakable will of our service personnel and people to resolutely make tough counteractions against the acts of wrecking peace and security on the Peninsula,” it added. Most popular: Missouri GOP Senate Candidate Calls Feminists ‘Career-Obsessed Banshees’ With 'Snake-Filled Heads' RTX3V3JO South Korean and U.S. Marines take part in a winter military drill in Pyeongchang, South Korea, on December 19, 2017. The U.S. enjoyed a substantial advantage over North Korea in terms of overall military strength, but North Korea’s massive army and other nuclear, chemical and conventional weapons would prove a formidable adversary. Kim Hong-ji/Reuters The U.S. has been widely considered the foremost military power on Earth, and though North Korea has devoted much of its resources toward its defense industry, these developments remain far behind the U.S. military’s. Aside from North Korea’s arsenal of nuclear weapons and ICBMs, the secretive state is also believed to possess a massive stockpile of conventional and chemical weapons, the latter of which Pyongyang has denied. These factors have led a number of analysts to warn about an enormous death toll and even a potential loss for invading U.S. forces. Neller has previously addressed the prospect of a war with North Korea, telling soldiers that it would be “Game of Thrones–like,” referring to the popular HBO fantasy series involving warring clans in a fictional, mystical universe, Military.com reported earlier this month. He urged troops to prepare because “the fight never goes the way you think it’s going to go,” even though the U.S. had “certain capabilities” that North Korean forces lacked. Last month, Neller told U.S. Marines stationed in Norway to be ready for a “big-ass fight,” but did not specify who the enemy would be. This article was first written by Newsweek | |
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| 01-26-18 12:41am - 2480 days | #127 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Guggenheim offered Trumps a gold toilet in lieu of a Van Gogh AFP AFP 7 hours ago A fully functioning solid gold toilet, made by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, was offered to the Trumps in lieu of a requested Van Gogh (AFP Photo/William EDWARDS) New York (AFP) - The request was for a Van Gogh to adorn the walls of the president and first lady's private residence in the White House. The answer? No -- but how about a fully functioning, 18-karat gold toilet instead? While it's customary for US presidents to borrow works of art during their time in office, the Guggenheim in Donald Trump's hometown of New York was polite, but firm in its refusal, The Washington Post reported. When the White House requested the renowned Dutch painter's "Landscape With Snow," the museum's chief curator -- an outspoken Trump critic -- countered that the 19th century painting was "prohibited from travel except for the rarest of occasions." "We are sorry not to be able to accommodate your original request," wrote Nancy Spector in an email obtained by the Post, "but remain hopeful that this special offer may be of interest." Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's "America" -- a gleaming gold toilet -- was on display at the Guggenheim for nearly a year, installed in a restroom for the private use of members of the public with a guard posted outside. Now that the exhibition was over, the artist would "like to offer it to the White House for a long-term loan," the Post quoted Spector as emailing. "It is, of course, extremely valuable and somewhat fragile, but we would provide all the instructions for its installation and care." Asked to explain the meaning of the installation and why he offered it to the Trumps, 57-year-old Cattelan told the Post: "What's the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die and then it makes sense." The Guggenheim, asked by AFP, said it had "no further information to provide." The White House did not immediately respond to an AFP query. In a blog last August, Spector called the toilet "a cipher for the excesses of affluence" and said more than 100,000 people had queued "for the opportunity to commune with art and with nature." "Though crafted from millions of dollars' worth of gold, the sculpture is actually a great leveler. As Cattelan has said, "Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise." Neither is it the first association between Trump, whose Manhattan home is famous for its lavish gold color scheme, and a golden toilet. Last June, Trevor Noah's "The Daily Show" hosted a free exhibition in New York lampooning the president, inviting the public to soak up his tweets and fire off one or two of their own from a golden toilet. Dan Howley Dan Howley Daniel Howley,Dan Howley 11 hours ago | |
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| 01-26-18 04:37am - 2480 days | #128 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump calls report he ordered Mueller's firing 'fake news' Associated Press Tom Lobianco, Associated Press,Associated Press 2 hours 1 minute ago WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump on Friday dismissed as "fake news" a New York Times report that he ordered the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller last June, but backed down after White House lawyer Don McGahn threatened to resign. The newspaper reported Thursday that Trump demanded Mueller's firing just weeks after the special counsel was first appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Trump pushed back against the report, without addressing the specific allegation, as he arrived Friday at the site of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Fake news, folks. Fake news. Typical New York Times fake stories," Trump told reporters. McGahn said he would not deliver the order to the Justice Department, according to The Times, which cites four people familiar with the request by the president. Trump argued at the time that Mueller could not be fair because of a dispute over golf club fees that he said Mueller owed at a Trump golf club in Sterling, Virginia. The president also believed Mueller had a conflict of interest because he worked for the same law firm that was representing Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner. Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, did not immediately return a call for comment Thursday night. Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer working on the response to the Russia probe, declined comment Thursday night. The response from Democrats was nearly immediate. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that if the report in The Times is true, Trump has crossed a "red line." "Any attempt to remove the Special Counsel, pardon key witnesses or otherwise interfere in the investigation would be a gross abuse of power, and all members of Congress, from both parties, have a responsibility to our Constitution and to our country to make that clear immediately," Warner said. The report comes as Mueller moves ever closer to interviewing Trump himself. The president said Wednesday that he would gladly testify under oath — although a White House official quickly said afterward that Trump did not mean he was volunteering to testify. Last June, when Trump was considering how to fire Mueller, the special counsel's probe had not progressed far, at least not in public. At that time he had yet to call on any major witnesses to testify and had not yet issued any charges or signed any plea deals. But that would change just a few months later, when federal agents would arrest former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and ultimately turn him into a cooperating witness. Since then, Trump has largely stopped talking about explicitly trying to fire Mueller, but has instead shifted to accusing Mueller and his team of being biased and unable to complete a fair investigation. The latest evidence the president has cited was a string of text messages from a former agent on Mueller's probe, which show that agent vociferously opposing the president. But Mueller swiftly removed the agent, Peter Strzok, from his probe after learning about his texts. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump adviser Rick Gates were charged by Mueller with criminal conspiracy related to millions of dollars they earned while working for a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian political party. And former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn agreed to cooperate with investigators in a plea deal revealed two months ago. Flynn was charged with lying to the FBI. Mueller's investigators have been focusing their inquiry on questions surrounding Trump's firing of Flynn and also his firing of former FBI Director James Comey. They have slowly been calling in more witnesses closer to the president himself and, recently, began negotiating the terms of a possible interview with the president. On Thursday, Trump's lawyer said that more than 20 White House employees have given interviews to the special counsel in his probe of possible obstruction of justice and Trump campaign ties to Russian election interference. John Dowd, Trump's attorney, said the White House, in an unprecedented display of cooperation with Mueller's investigation, has turned over more than 20,000 pages of records. The president's 2016 campaign has turned over more than 1.4 million pages. The number of voluntary interviews included eight people from the White House counsel's office. An additional 28 people affiliated with the Trump campaign have also been interviewed by either the special counsel or congressional committees probing Russian election meddling. Dowd's disclosure did only not name the people nor provide a breakdown of how many were interviewed only by Mueller's team. | |
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| 01-26-18 10:21pm - 2479 days | #129 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump State of the Union Risks Being Upstaged by Stormy Daniels Interview on Jimmy Kimmel Newsweek Maria Perez,Newsweek 15 hours ago Trump State of the Union Risks Being Upstaged by Stormy Daniels Interview on Jimmy Kimmel President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address will not be the only thing the world will be watching come January 30. Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel announced on Thursday that he will be interviewing adult film star Stormy Daniels right after Trump’s speech. “I am pleased to announce that the very gifted @StormyDaniels will be on #Kimmel Tuesday 1/30 after the #StateOfTheUnion. I have MANY QUESTIONS! #MAGA,” Kimmel tweeted Thursday night. Daniels made the news earlier this month amid a wave of reports about Trump’s personal life before he entered the White House, including allegations that the two had a relationship. In a 2011 interview with In Touch Weekly that was not published until January 19, Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said she was invited to Trump’s hotel room where they had sex. The alleged encounter happened four months after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron. The story first came to light in a report in The Wall Street Journal that Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, gave Daniels a $130,000 payment to keep quiet about the 2006 sexual encounter less than a month before the 2016 election. On the one-year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, Daniels kicked off her “Make America Horny Again” tour at a South Carolina strip club. She posted the event on Instagram, but the social media site suspended her account two days after the tour took place. Trump will deliver his first State of the Union address on Tuesday. The annual speech is formally given to Congress to outline the administration's agenda for the upcoming year. While it’s unclear what Trump will say during his address, he is likely to tout the Republican tax reform bill, passed in December, and the state of the U.S. economy and stock market. The president’s address will air live on Tuesday, January 30 at 9 p.m. ET. | |
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| 01-27-18 02:55am - 2479 days | #130 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Donald Trump, the man of a 1,000 promises. As president-elect, Trump trashed Boeing’s stock by attacking on Twitter the high-priced Air Force One program. “Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion,” Trump tweeted. “Cancel order!” It’s not clear where Trump got the $4bn figure; at the time Boeing had a $170m contract to begin work on the next Air Force One. Now that Trump is president, his administration just signed a $24 million contract to replace 2 food chilling systems aboard Air Force One. The same thing with Trump attacking President Obama for wasting time playing golf. As President, Trump vowed, he would be on the job: no golf for Trump. Once he became President, Trump has spent far more time on the golf course than Obama ever did (in the comparable time in office). Trump is the man. His word is law. His word is shit. ======== ======== The Guardian Donald Trump's refrigerator upgrade for Air Force One set to cost $24m The Guardian Tom McCarthy,The Guardian 15 minutes ago Officials sign deal with Boeing to replace two food chilling systems Plane’s fridges must be equipped to handle 3,000 meals per day Trump on his way to Mar-a-Lago in April. The term ‘Air Force One’ refers not to any particular aircraft but to any plane carrying the president. What hums, flies above 30,000ft, and costs about as much as Donald Trump’s upstate New York manor? Trump’s new airplane refrigerators. The Trump administration has signed a $24m contract with Boeing to replace two food chilling systems aboard Air Force One, the president’s plane, according to reports. The systems are two of five such “chillers” aboard Air Force One, which must be equipped with a refrigeration capacity to handle 3,000 meals, according to military specifications. That’s enough to feed the president and 50 of his closest friends three meals a day for three weeks. And that’s assuming the president never indulged in his favorite plane fare: fast food. The $24m price tag, upon which Boeing declined to comment, amounts to enough taxpayer money to fund an estimated eight weekends for the president at Mar-a-Lago, which Trump visited 11 times in his first year as president. Or the cash could be used to provide security at Trump Tower in New York City, where the president no longer lives, for about two months. As president-elect, Trump trashed Boeing’s stock by attacking on Twitter the high-priced Air Force One program. “Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion,” Trump tweeted. “Cancel order!” It’s not clear where Trump got the $4bn figure; at the time Boeing had a $170m contract to begin work on the next Air Force One. The term “Air Force One” refers not to any particular aircraft but to any plane carrying the president. The list price for the 747 airplanes outfitted as Air Force One is about $350m, but customizing the planes costs much more. A consultant told Defense One that the plane was expensive not because Boeing was gouging the government but because military requirements for the craft are expensive to fulfill. “It’s not a contractor issue, it is a requirements issue,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice-president of analysis at the Teal Group consulting firm. “It’s not getting people rich.” | |
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| 01-27-18 03:11am - 2479 days | #131 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump needs to clear the swamp in Washington. That's what he campaigned on. That's what he needs to do. So, fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, put the Russian investigation behind him, and all the other legal problems Trump might be facing, and start to the lead the country like only Trump can do. Trump is the man. He has balls of steel. Fire Mueller, and anyone else who is not loyal to President Trump, our Commander in Chief. And then, Happy Days will be here again! Sieg Heil, America. The land of the brave and strong! | |
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| 01-27-18 02:00pm - 2478 days | #132 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The Washington Post Opinions Republicans redefine morality as whatever Trump does By Dana Milbank Opinion writer January 26 at 6:35 PM Someday, likely three years from now, perhaps sooner, perhaps — gulp — later, President Trump will depart the stage. But what will be left of us? New evidence suggests that the damage he is doing to the culture is bigger than the man. A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday found that two-thirds of Americans say Trump is not a good role model for children. Every component of society feels that way — men and women, old and young, black and white, highly educated or not — except for one: Republicans. By 72 to 22 percent, they say Trump is a good role model. In marked contrast to the rest of the country, Republicans also say that Trump shares their values (82 percent) and that — get this — he “provides the United States with moral leadership” (80 percent). And what moral leadership this role model has been providing! Soon after the release of this poll, we learned that Trump, in an effort to halt the Russia probe, planned to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, backing off only because his own White House counsel threatened to resign. So Trump obviously didn’t speak the truth when he said that he had never contemplated such a firing. And, at this writing, he is in Switzerland, responding by renewing his denunciations of the “fake news” media — an attack on the free press now emulated by despots the world over. In fairness, we learned of the proposed Mueller firing after the poll was conducted, so let’s see what else might have led 72 percent of Republicans to conclude Trump is a good role model: His lawyer arranged to make payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, a month before the election for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal. He used a vulgar word to describe African countries during a racist rant to lawmakers at the White House. He was mounting a campaign to discredit the “corrupt” FBI, the Justice Department and the special prosecutor, just as he previously sought to disqualify courts and judges. He backed a credibly accused child molester for the Senate from Alabama. And so on. Yet so strong is the pull of tribalism that we’ve reached a point where partisanship outweighs morality. Republicans aren’t approving of Trump despite his behavior; in calling him a role model, they’re approving his behavior. No doubt some of those Republicans now condoning Trump’s behavior will give the standard rebuttal: What about the Clintons? Well, Quinnipiac didn’t poll nationally during the Clinton presidency, but Gallup, during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in January 1999, asked a similar question. The number of Republicans back then saying Clinton did not provide good moral leadership, 91 percent, was similar to the 96 percent of Democrats who say Trump does not provide moral leadership today. The difference: Democrats disapproved of Clinton’s morality by 2 to 1 (65 to 33 percent), even as they overwhelmingly approved of his job performance. Only 16 percent of Republicans today say Trump does not provide moral leadership. The triumph of partisanship over morality starts at the top. Franklin Graham excused Trump’s alleged sexual encounter, and Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, declared that Trump gets a “mulligan” — a do-over — for his behavior. Such normalizing of Trump’s behavior makes the seediest elements feel safe to crawl out from under their rocks. The FBI reported in November that hate crimes were up again in 2016 after rising in 2015. And the Anti-Defamation League reported that anti-Semitic incidents were “significantly higher” through the first nine months of 2017 — a time in which Trump said there were “very fine people” among a march of neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville. (This month, as Trump was whipping up loathing of the “fake news” media, a young man was arrested for threatening to gun down CNN journalists.) Even public officials feel emboldened to give voice to the basest impulses. In recent days: A town manager in Maine was ousted for promoting racial segregation and “pro-white” views. A pro-Trump Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Missouri posted a statement saying he expects his wife to have dinner waiting for him each night and denouncing “nail-biting manophobic hell-bent feminist she devils who shriek” and have “nasty, snake-filled heads.” A Republican state representative in Kansas alleged that marijuana was illegal because “the African Americans, they were basically users and they responded the worst off to those drugs.” A Trump appointee to AmeriCorps resigned after CNN uncovered his past remarks saying “I just don’t like Muslim people” and similar statements. Politicians have always behaved badly. What’s new is the willingness of so many not just to look the other way but to call bad behavior good. Twitter: @Milbank Dana Milbank writes about political theater in the nation’s capital. He joined the Post as a political reporter in 2000. | |
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| 01-27-18 02:09pm - 2478 days | #133 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Stand by your man. Melania Trump (President Donald Trump's latest wife) stands by her man. Her spokesperson says Melania is sick of the lies and rumors and fake news about her husband. She supports her husband, the President of the United States, and Commander in Chief. He is the strong, proud leader of her family. --- --- Melania Trump’s Spokesperson Is Sick of Rumors About Marital Strife in the White House [The Cut] The CutJanuary 27, 2018 After Melania Trump cancelled her plans to mingle with the rich and powerful in Davos with Donald Trump this week, rumors started circulating that the growing Stormy Daniels-Trump scandal had caused marital strife between the President and First Lady. But according to Melania’s spokesperson, Stephanie Grisham, the First Lady is simply “focused on her family and role as FLOTUS.” Grisham responded to the recent rumors of Melania having recently spent multiple nights at a D.C. hotel, calling the claims “flat-out false” in a dramatic tweet. “BREAKING: The laundry list of salacious & flat-out false reporting about Mrs. Trump by tabloid publications & TV shows has seeped into ‘main stream media’ reporting. She is focused on her family & role as FLOTUS - not the unrealistic scenarios being peddled daily by the fake news,” she wrote. | |
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| 01-27-18 02:19pm - 2478 days | #134 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake victims beware: Donald Trump and his administration will not back your claims. Be warned! --- --- Betsy DeVos Sued for Rolling Back Campus Sexual Assault Protections [The Cut] The CutJanuary 27, 2018 Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who reportedly consulted men’s-rights groups before rescinding Title IX guidance on campus sexual assault last fall, is being sued for violating federal law and discriminating against accusers, the New York Times reports. Equal Rights Advocates, SurvJustice, and the Victim Rights Law Center filed the lawsuit in the Northern District of California against DeVos, the Department of Education, and Candice Jackson, the acting secretary for civil rights at the department who once referred to Donald Trump’s accusers as “fake victims.” In September 2017, DeVos issued a number of new rules to college campuses regarding the management of sexual assault complaints, including one especially dangerous directive related to the standard of evidence used in the investigation of rape cases. While the Obama administration ordered colleges to look for a “preponderance of evidence,” meaning that campus officials were more than 50 percent certain of someone’s guilt, DeVos announced colleges can now use the harder-to-meet “clear and convincing evidence” standard. According to the new lawsuit, DeVos’s guidance has had a “chilling effect” on assault reporting. Per the Times: In the complaint, SurvJustice said that the group had not only seen “a decrease in the number of sexual violence survivors seeking its services,” but also observed a trend in educational institutions not responding at all, or not responding as promptly to its clients’ complaints. The group also wrote of “students who have questioned whether they should continue with their plans to report sexual violence given the uncertainty regarding their legal protections and an anticipated lowered likelihood of success created by the policy change.” | |
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| 01-27-18 02:25pm - 2478 days | #135 | |
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messmer (0)
Disabled User  Posts: 2,582 Registered: Sep 12, '07 Location: Canada |
Since I am an occupant of the Great White North it would be imprudent for me to comment on U.S. Politics, but this I can respond to. Stormy Daniels? I thought your President had at least good taste when it came to women, but Stormy? Never could warm up to her! | |
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| 01-27-18 03:01pm - 2478 days | #136 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
messmer, I hear it gets cold up in Canada. Would you kick a warm-blooded woman like Stormy out of your bed on a dark, chilly night? Or maybe Stormy isn't as hot-blooded as I like to dream about. She might have cold, hard cash running through her veins. An electric blanket might be a cheaper and safer alternative, now that I think about it. LOL. | |
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| 01-27-18 03:44pm - 2478 days | #137 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Draining the swamp in Washington. Judge rules that Kushner firm must disclose partners' names. Donald Trump ran on the promise of draining the swamp of Washington. Now, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is going to reveal some of his business partners. He didn't want to. Privacy is important. But what's more important, is the public's right to know. (Just like the Federal Government argues that it has the right to know everything, along with the crooked FBI and crooked Hilary). Why hasn't Trump put Crooked Hilary and Fake Obama (who was not born in the US) in jail? Shame on Trump, a God-fearing man who never hesitates to tweet the truth. ---- ---- Associated Press Court rules that Kushner firm must disclose partners' names Associated Press Bernard Condon, AP Business Writer,Associated Press 21 hours ago FILE - In this Friday, Aug. 11, 2017, file photo, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner listens as President Donald Trump answers questions at a news conference, in Bedminster, N.J. A federal judge ruled on Friday, Jan. 26, 2018 that the family company once run by Jared Kushner isn’t allow keep the identity of its business partners in several Maryland properties secret. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File) NEW YORK (AP) -- A federal judge ruled Friday that the family company once run by Jared Kushner isn't allowed to keep secret the identity of its business partners in several Maryland properties. A U.S. district judge in the state rejected the argument that the privacy rights of the Kushner Cos. partners outweigh the public interest in obtaining judicial records in a lawsuit before the court. The decision means the company tied to President Donald Trump's son-in-law might be forced to provide a rare glimpse into how it finances its real estate ventures. The ruling backed the argument by The Associated Press and other news organizations that the media has a "presumptive right" to see such court documents and the Kushner Cos. had not raised a "compelling government interest" needed by law to block access. U.S. District Court Judge James K. Bredar ruled that Westminster Management, a Kushner Cos. subsidiary, must file an unsealed document with the identity of its partners by Feb. 9. The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by tenants last year alleging Westminster charges excessive and illegal rent for apartments in the state. The lawsuit seeks class-action status for tenants in 17 apartment complexes owned by the company. Westminster has said it has broken no laws and denies the charges. In addition to its privacy argument, the Kushner subsidiary had said media reports of the Maryland dispute were "politically motivated" and marked by "unfair sensationalism." Disclosure of its partners' names would trigger even more coverage and hurt its chances of getting an impartial decision in the case, it had said. In Friday's ruling, the judge said these are not "frivolous concerns," but the public's right to know is more important. "Increased public interest in a case does not, by itself, overcome the presumption of access," Bredar wrote. "In fact, it would logically strengthen it, particularly when the interest is due to the presence of important public figures in the litigation." He added that he saw no reason to buck "the presumption, and tradition, that the Court conducts its business in the sunlight." The AP joined ProPublica, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun and Baltimore TV station WMAR-TV in filing its motion. "The decision recognized the important principle that the courts are open to the public, especially in cases involving major public figures," said Nathan Siegel, a lawyer with Davis Wright Tremaine who represented the media in the motion. Kushner Cos. spokeswoman Christine Taylor said, "Although we did not prevail, we appreciate the careful consideration Judge Bredar gave to the issue." The Kushner Cos. has ownership stakes in a skyscraper on Fifth Avenue in New York, a residential tower across the Hudson River in New Jersey and dozens of smaller buildings in the area and in other states, including multi-family apartments at the center of the Maryland lawsuit. Jared Kushner stepped down as CEO of the Kushner Cos. early last year to become a senior adviser to Trump. He sold stakes in properties to comply with federal conflicts of interest rules, but held onto many of other assets. Not much is known about who has invested alongside his family over the years, how much money has come from overseas, and which banks and other financial institutions have lent to it. A financial disclosure report that Kushner filed with the federal government in July shows the names of limited liability companies that own properties, but not many of the owners behind them. In the report, Kushner showed he still owned a stake in Westminster Management, the subsidiary in the Maryland case. The report showed he received $1.6 million in income from it. | |
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| 01-28-18 12:18pm - 2477 days | #138 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The Washington Post Democracy Dies in Darkness Trump does not understand why, as President, he can not control the investigation on himself. Why he can't direct the agents investigating him, demand their loyalty, fire them if they are disloyal. He is the President, for God's sake. How dare people under his command (he is the Commander in Chief of the nation) investigate him!!! ---- ---- Politics Trump sought release of classified Russia memo, putting him at odds with Justice Department Trump on Russia probe: ‘You fight back, oh, it’s obstruction’ President Trump on Jan. 24 suggested that he could be investigated for obstruction of justice for his decision to “fight back” against the Russia probe. (Video: David Nakamura/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) By Ashley Parker, Rosalind S. Helderman, Josh Dawsey and Carol D. Leonnig January 27 at 4:37 PM On Wednesday, as Republicans were clamoring to make public a secret document they think will undercut the investigation into Russian meddling, President Trump made clear his desire: Release the memo. Trump’s directive was at odds with his own Justice Department, which had warned that releasing the classified memo written by congressional Republicans would be “extraordinarily reckless” without an official review. Nevertheless, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly relayed the president’s view to Attorney General Jeff Sessions — although the decision to release the document ultimately lies with Congress. Kelly and Sessions spoke twice that day — in person during a small-group afternoon meeting and over the phone later that evening — and Kelly conveyed Trump’s desire, a senior administration official said. Trump and his Republican allies have placed special emphasis on the classified memo, which was written by staff members for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and suggests that the FBI may have relied on politically motivated or questionable sources to justify its request for a secret surveillance warrant in the investigation’s early phase. Democrats have characterized the memo as misleading talking points designed to smear the FBI. They said it inaccurately summarizes investigative materials that also are classified. Trump “is inclined to have that released just because it will shed light,” said a senior administration official who was speaking on the condition of anonymity to recount private conversations. “Apparently all the rumors are that it will shed light, it will help the investigators come to a conclusion.” The intervention with Sessions, which has not previously been reported, marked another example of the president’s year-long attempts to shape and influence an investigation that is fundamentally outside his control. Trump, appearing frustrated and at times angry, has complained to confidants and aides in recent weeks that he does not understand why he cannot simply give orders to “my guys” at what he sometimes calls the “Trump Justice Department,” two people familiar with the president’s comments said. Such complaints, and Trump’s repeated attempts to pressure senior law enforcement officials through firings or other means, have now become one of the main focuses of the investigation — including Trump’s order last summer to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, which prompted White House counsel Donald McGahn to threaten to quit before Trump backed down. Trump recently revived his complaints that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein was not properly supervising Mueller’s probe, and suggested that he should fire Rosenstein — a highly controversial action against the person officially overseeing the special counsel’s investigation, an adviser who speaks frequently with Trump said. The president also made clear in recent days that he hopes that new questions facing the investigation allow him or his associates to make changes at the Justice Department, two people familiar with Trump’s comments said. The president has told close advisers that the memo is starting to make people realize how the FBI and the Mueller probe are biased against him, and that it could provide him with grounds for either firing or forcing Rosenstein to leave, according to one person familiar with his remarks. He has privately derided Rosenstein as “the Democrat from Baltimore.” Rosenstein is not a Democrat. He was appointed as a U.S. attorney in Maryland by President George W. Bush and was kept in that post by President Barack Obama. One senior White House official said he personally had not heard the president make comments about getting rid of Rosenstein, which were first reported by CNN. A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment. As Mueller narrows his probe — homing in on the ways Trump may have tried to impede the Russia investigation — a common thread ties many of the incidents together: a president accustomed to functioning as the executive of a private family business who does not seem to understand that his subordinates have sworn an oath to the Constitution rather than to him. On Wednesday, speaking briefly to reporters, Trump defended his actions in the probe as “fighting back” against unfair allegations. “Oh, well, ‘Did he fight back?’ ” Trump said. “You fight back, ‘Oh, it’s obstruction.’ ” The Russia probe has also figured prominently in Trump’s souring relationships with some former allies and confidants. Trump first became enraged with Sessions after the attorney general recused himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, which Trump thinks led to the appointment of Mueller. Later, after his former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, accused Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, of a “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” meeting with a Russian lawyer in a new book, the furious president cast Bannon out of his orbit, as well. Sally Q. Yates, the acting attorney general whom Trump fired early last year for failing to enforce his travel ban, said in an interview that Trump’s behavior — from his June decision to call for Mueller’s firing to other meddling throughout the year — is “beyond unusual” and “really dangerous.” “If you get to what’s most essential and important and, I think, really damaging to our country, beyond just the confines of this administration, it’s this attack on our democratic institutions and particularly the Department of Justice,” she said. “It is a firm tradition at the Department of Justice that the White House just has absolutely no involvement in criminal investigations or prosecutions, period.” She added: “It seems like there are almost weekly efforts to try to get DOJ to open up a case on his former political rival. . . . The near daily attacks on the FBI — we’ve never seen anything anywhere close to this before.” Indeed, Trump has shown a repeated pattern of attempting to regain control of the Russia investigation and deploy the Justice Department for his own protection and personal gain — comments and actions Mueller’s team could include in the obstruction-of-justice portion of their probe. The problem, said Barry Bennett, a former senior adviser on the Trump campaign, is that subordinates sometimes confuse Trump’s angry venting for actual administration directives. “Some people still either don’t understand the difference between the president’s bark and his bite, or they’re more than willing to take advantage of the bark to assume that it was a bite,” Bennett said. “Trust me, everybody on the campaign was ‘fired’ more than once, but it never really happened.” The arc of a potential case of obstruction of justice stretches back to the earliest days of Trump’s presidency. In January 2017, at a one-on-one dinner, then-FBI Director James B. Comey said, Trump told him: “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty.” A month later, in February, Trump dismissed others from the Oval Office and told Comey that Michael Flynn — Trump’s former national security adviser who was fired for misleading Vice President Pence about his contacts with Russians — had done nothing wrong, according to Comey’s testimony to Congress. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Trump said at the time, according to Comey. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” Then, in phone calls in March and April, Trump told Comey that he needed him to lift the “cloud” of the Russia investigation and “get out” that Trump personally was not under investigation. And then on May 9, an angry Trump finally fired the FBI director. Shortly after dismissing Comey, the president asked Andrew McCabe, his acting FBI director, whom he voted for in the 2016 election, according to people with knowledge of the conversation. In December, when The Washington Post reported that McCabe intended to retire in early 2018 once he becomes fully eligible for his pension benefits, Trump took to Twitter to criticize him. A person who has spoken with Mueller’s team said investigators’ questions seemed at least partially designed to probe potential obstruction from Trump. “The questions are about who was where in every meeting, what happened before and after, what the president was saying as he made decisions,” this person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to recount a private session. This person added that while it seemed unlikely Mueller’s team would yield any evidence of a coordinated effort to aid the Russians — “If you were on the campaign, you know we couldn’t even collude with ourselves,” he said — the investigators might find more details to support obstruction of justice. | |
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| 01-28-18 12:20pm - 2477 days | #139 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
By June, Trump had so openly begun discussing firing Mueller that Bannon and Reince Priebus, who was then chief of staff, grew “incredibly concerned,” huddling to strategize about how to dissuade the president and enlisting others to intervene with him. In mid-June, Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of the conservative Newsmax Media and a longtime Trump confidant, voiced those concerns publicly, telling PBS “NewsHour,” “I think he’s perhaps terminating the special counsel.” And that same month, Trump did, in fact, order McGahn to fire Mueller, a directive first reported Thursday by the New York Times. But McGahn told West Wing staff — though not the president — that he would quit before carrying out Trump’s directive, and the president ultimately backed down, people familiar with the events said. Allies of the president said that his demands for absolute loyalty are not unreasonable — and not indicative of any attempts to obstruct justice. “Of course the president ought to be able to expect loyalty,” said Newt Gingrich, an unofficial Trump adviser. “He is the chosen president of the United States by the American people, and he is the chief executive. If they’re not loyal to him, who the hell are they supposed to be loyal to?” In recent weeks, Mueller’s team has questioned White House staff about the June episode in which Trump expressed interest in firing Mueller, a person familiar with those interviews said. Mueller has also asked about Trump’s repeated outbursts against his attorney general, including a moment in late July when Trump nearly ousted Sessions out of anger at the Russia probe. Although McGahn had called Sessions at Trump’s request in early March to urge him not to recuse himself, Sessions stepped aside that same day — and the president was furious. By July 19, Trump was venting publicly, telling the Times that it was “very unfair” of Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia investigation and that he would not have nominated Sessions to be attorney general if he had known of his plans. The next day, facing Trump’s public criticism, Sessions announced that he would remain attorney general “as long as it is appropriate.” That same day, a White House adviser told a Post reporter that Trump was “stunned” that Sessions had not yet quit. The president, this adviser added, has been hoping that Sessions would be embarrassed enough by Trump’s scathing public remarks to leave on his own. Shortly after, Trump issued a directive to Priebus: Go to Sessions and secure his resignation, according to two people with knowledge of the episode. But Priebus hesitated, declining to outright ask Sessions to quit and instead working to manage Trump’s anger, those two people said. In the following days, Republicans rallied to Sessions’s defense, and Trump backed off. A person who has interacted with Mueller’s team said the prosecutors seem to be pursuing a theory that Trump’s actions over months have followed a consistent pattern. “Their theory appears to be that he goes after people who are not loyal,” this person said. “He wants in place people who are loyal, to make sure he doesn’t get in trouble in the investigation.” This person added that key episodes in this narrative include Trump’s order that Sessions not recuse himself from the investigation; the firing of Comey; his efforts to intervene to get the Flynn investigation dropped; and then, above all, Trump’s dictation aboard Air Force One in July of a misleading statement to be released by his son, Don Jr., about his meeting with the Russian lawyer at Trump Tower during the campaign — “the most obvious obstructive act,” this person said. To prove obstruction of justice, Mueller would have to show that Trump didn’t just act to derail the investigation but did so with a corrupt motive, such as an effort to hide his own misdeeds. Legal experts are divided over whether the Constitution allows for the president to be indicted while in office. As a result, Mueller might seek to outline his findings about Trump’s actions in a written report rather than bring them in court through criminal charges. It would probably fall to Rosenstein to decide whether to submit the report to Congress, which has the power to open impeachment proceedings. Local Politics Email Alerts Breaking news about local government in D.C., Md., Va. As Trump faced growing questions about myriad concerns from his June directive to fire Mueller to his more recent grousing about Rosenstein, the White House was largely silent. In response to several specific queries, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley offered a written statement that addressed few of them. “The president has been clear publicly and privately that he wants absolute transparency throughout this process,” Gidley said in the statement. “Based on numerous news reports, top officials at the FBI have engaged in conduct that shows bias against President Trump and bias for Hillary Clinton. The president has said repeatedly for months there is no consideration of terminating the special counsel.” Philip Rucker and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report. | |
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| 01-31-18 07:50am - 2474 days | #140 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
More fake news. Trump gave his first State of the Union Address last night. Late night TV comedians dis-respected our great President with fake humor. Should Trump send his Nazi and Commie supporters after these enemies of the US Government? Enquiring minds want to know. ---- ---- Jimmy Kimmel and Stormy Daniels won the late night Trump speech analysis Ken Tucker 2 hours 5 minutes ago Stephen Colbert and The Daily Show both went live on Tuesday night in order to react to the president’s State of the Union speech. Jimmy Kimmel’s coup, of a sort, was booking adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who has in the past claimed to have had an affair with Donald Trump. Colbert came out, as he usually does, with verbal guns blazing. He did what amounted to an annotated replay of the speech, with comic footnotes. After a clip of Trump talking about the hurricane recovery in Puerto Rico (“We are with you, we love you, and we will pull through together”), Colbert observed, “That will be a touching message for the people of Puerto Rico once they have electricity to turn on their TV’s.” Unlike the wild, improvised, often angry post-election live show Colbert did after Trump’s election, this live show stuck to the Late Show formula, which reminded us how low-boil-despairing Colbert and his audience remain. On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah delivered such lines as, Trump “reached across the aisle — and not just to grope someone” and commented that the stony silence to the speech from the Black Congressional Caucus in the room was “like reverse-Showtime at the Apollo.” As usual, Noah was occasionally clever without any sort of overarching framework to his political comedy. Not trying to be coherent at all, yet landing some of the strongest humor-punches was Jimmy Kimmel. He prefaced the Stormy Daniels interview with a clip from that morning’s The View, with guest S.E. Cupp. (You don’t know S.E. Cupp? You mean you don’t watch her daily conservative talk show on HLN? Congratulations, you’re an American.) Cupp whined that Kimmel booking Daniels was unfair to Republicans because “Monica Lewinsky was also caught having an affair with a president. Who’s booking Monica Lewinsky?” Kimmel then played clips from three times he has interviewed Monica Lewinsky. “Put that in your S.E. Cupp and smoke it,” he said. The Stormy interview wasn’t all that much. She’s sticking by the non-disclosure agreement she signed in allegedly being paid to remain silent on the subject of Trump. But she didn’t deny the salacious details in the In Touch interview Daniels granted in 2011. Kimmel asked if she found it odd that Trump, during his campaign, brought out a group of women who’ve accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct to try and psyche out Hillary before a debate. “Odd, no — dirty, yes,” said Daniels with a puncturing terseness. Kimmel also did a fascinating segment in which he brought out a Latino couple who came to this country illegally many years ago, to engage in a discussion with six people who said they were strongly against illegal immigration. The segment had few laughs, and mostly just proved that the most extreme opinions emanated from the most aggressively pro-Trump supporters. “I want to start deporting illegals even before MS-13,” said a man with a long white beard and a red Make America Great Again ball-cap on. (He was referencing the MS-13 Latino gang that Trump equated with all illegal immigrants in his speech.) No one gave their full names, but this guy — “Bad Santa” was Kimmel’s nickname for him — was unashamed to sit in front of this man, woman, and their infant daughter and say, “They should throw them out.” In a way, Kimmel was being as manipulative as Trump was in his speech, bringing out civilians as living illustrations of various triumphs of Trump’s first year. But it was effective in showing the stark contrast between Republicans who disagree about our immigration laws, and MAGA zealots without a shred of politeness. I have to say that the night’s best Good Old-Fashioned Talk-Show Joke goes to Conan O’Brien, who said, “Trump said he now supports a plan for young immigrants to become citizens. When asked why, Trump said, ‘Because I may have to look for a new wife soon.’” Johnny Carson would have told one like that. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS. The Daily Show airs weeknights at 11 p.m. on Comedy Central. Jimmy Kimmel Live airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on ABC. Conan airs weeknights at 11 p.m. on TBS. | |
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| 01-31-18 05:15pm - 2474 days | #141 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump calls for powers to fire federal workers more easily.' Federal job protections make it difficult for the government to oust civil servants. But Trump advisers have discussed making that task easier, as well as instituting hiring freezes, weakening staff unions and reducing retirement benefits, as HuffPost has previously reported. This is a good thing. Maybe we can fire Trump, who does a shithole job of running this country. It's difficult to impeach a President. How about passing a law that says: Take a vote of the US voters: if 50.0000001% or more of the voters vote to remove the President, fire him, and have a new election to re-elect a new President. Sounds good. And this is what Trump is demanding: the right to fire Federal employees. ---- ---- Politics Trump Calls On Congress To Empower Agencies To Oust Federal Workers HuffPost Chris D'Angelo,HuffPost 20 hours ago WASHINGTON — In a speech that repeatedly touched on the importance of job creation, President Donald Trump also called on Congress to give government agencies the power to oust federal workers. WASHINGTON — In a speech that repeatedly touched on the importance of job creation, President Donald Trump also called on Congress to give government agencies the power to oust federal workers. “All Americans deserve accountability and respect ― and that is what we are giving them,” Trump said during his first State of the Union Address. “I call on the Congress to empower every Cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people.” His comments drew applause from the Republican-controlled Congress. In his push to “drain the swamp,” Trump has promised to drastically reduce the size of government. And his 2018 budget request called for sweeping cuts at numerous federal agencies. Federal job protections make it difficult for the government to oust civil servants. But Trump advisers have discussed making that task easier, as well as instituting hiring freezes, weakening staff unions and reducing retirement benefits, as HuffPost has previously reported. In a post to Twitter, Walter Shaub, the former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, said Trump’s statement Tuesday “serves the goal of politicizing the career ranks.” Tony Reardon, the national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, told FCW News that the president’s comments were “unfortunate” and left “the impression that federal employees are not dedicated to public service.” “Federal employees must retain existing protections that stop unfair and arbitrary management practices, along with political favoritism and retaliation,” he told the publication. “Our workforce is non-partisan and merit-based and any reduction in due process protections is a step backward for our country,” Reardon said in an emailed statement. Last week, The New York Times reported that Trump had attempted to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel overseeing the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. He reportedly abandoned the idea after White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to resign. This story was updated with a quote from Tony Reardon. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 02-01-18 02:27pm - 2473 days | #142 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: President Trump says he is the greatest President the United States ever had. Greater than Washington and Lincoln. (Trump didn't say this himself, but his good friend Senator Orin Hatch said it.) (But a spokesperson for Hatch corrected this, by saying, Senator Hatch did not say Trump was the greatest President, but that Trump could be the greatest President the US ever had.) However, Trump claims he is now ready to be immortalized on Mount Rushmore, where the faces of lesser persons like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln are shown. Go, Trump! You are the greatest! ---- ---- Trump tells GOP retreat he's ready for Mount Rushmore Dylan Stableford 1 hour 45 minutes ago President Trump appeared to be in a jovial mood at a GOP retreat in West Virginia on Thursday, boasting about how his administration has “fulfilled far more promises than we’ve promised.” And without quite saying so himself, he claimed Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, once told him that he is “the greatest president in the history of our country.” “And I said, ‘Does that include Lincoln and Washington?’” Trump recalled. “And he said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I love this guy.’” A spokesman for Hatch told a reporter for the Guardian newspaper that the senator has said Trump “can be” the greatest president ever to hold the office, but never said he “is” the greatest ever. Trump’s remarks at the annual gathering of Republican members of Congress at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.V., came a day after the train taking lawmakers there hit a dump truck, killing the driver of the vehicle. The president extended prayers to those affected by the train accident before launching into a freewheeling speech that elaborated on the themes of Tuesday’s State of the Union address — with Trump veering off the script numerous times during his 35-minute talk. Trump boasted about the accomplishments of his administration’s first year. President Trump pauses while speaking at the 2018 House and Senate Republican Member Conference at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP) “That was one of the greatest years in the history of politics,” Trump said. “We had a year that was unlike, I think, any.” Trump then lauded himself for what he said were campaign promises kept, including the passage of tax reform, the repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate and the lifting of a ban on drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or “ANWR.” The latter two were provisions included in the GOP tax bill. “We’ve fulfilled far more promises than we’ve promised,” the president said. “I call it promises plus.” Trump called for the creation of more vocational schools to supplement the economy with skilled workers, but seemed to mix them up with community colleges. “When I was growing up, we had vocational schools,” the president recalled. “I remember I was in high school, and there were people in class, I remember one person in particular, he wasn’t, like, the greatest student. He just wasn’t. And I saw him one day and he was able to fix a car blindfolded. “I think the word ‘vocational’ is a much better word than, in many cases, a community college,” he continued. “A lot of people don’t know what a community college means or represents.” Related: Trump’s 1st State of the Union vs. Obama’s: By the numbers Later, while discussing immigration, Trump called for a permanent fix to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an expiring Obama-era program shielding undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children — so-called Dreamers — from deportation. President Trump, flanked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., left, and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., addresses the Republican congressional retreat at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., Feb. 1, 2018. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) “I’ve been hearing about DACA for so many years, some people call it Dreamers,” Trump said. “It’s not Dreamers, don’t fall into that trap.” The president then reiterated a quote from his State of the Union. “I said the other night, ‘We have Dreamers in our country too,’” he said. “We’re either going to have something that’s fair and equitable, or we’re going to have nothing at all.” Earlier Thursday, Trump falsely claimed that the 45.6 million television viewers for his first State of the Union address was “the highest number in history.” According to Nielsen, an estimated 45.6 million people tuned in to watch Trump’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night — millions less than the number who watched President Barack Obama’s and President George W. Bush’s first State of the Union addresses, in 2010 and 2002, and about a quarter-million less than President Bill Clinton’s first State of the Union in 1994. Trump did not mention the ratings at the retreat. He criticized Democrats for not clapping during his State of the Union address, particularly when he made a claim about African-American unemployment. Trump asserted that the unemployment rate for African-Americans is the lowest ever, but observers have pointed out that it has been declining for years. “When I made that statement the other night, there was zero movement from the Democrats,” the president said. “They sat there stone cold, no smile, no applause. You would’ve thought on that one they would’ve at least clapped a little bit.” | |
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| 02-01-18 07:00pm - 2473 days | #143 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
People who have not walked in his shoes have no right to offer him opinions. This man is Judge, Jury, and Executioner of our laws. Proud to be a shithole. The only way to be a man is to carry a badge and gun, so you can shoot these criminals. God bless America. Land of the righteous and red-necked lawmen. ----- ----- U.S. ICE Chief Will ‘Never Back Down’ From Telling Undocumented Immigrants To Be Afraid HuffPost Roque Planas,HuffPost Wed, Jan 31 5:10 PM PST SAN ANTONIO ― Thomas Homan, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, doubled down Wednesday on his controversial comments from last year that all undocumented immigrants should be worried about getting arrested and deported under the Trump administration. “I’ll never back down on those words,” Homan said at the Border Security Expo in San Antonio, a conference that connects law enforcement with companies looking to win contracts. “If you violate the laws of this country, if you enter illegally ― which is a crime ― it’s not going to be OK anymore.” The acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement thinks people who haven't walked in his shoes have no business offering him opinions. (Jonathan Ernst / Reuters) A career immigration enforcement official who started as a Border Patrol agent more than three decades ago, Homan loudly championed some of President Donald Trump’s most contentious immigration positions on Wednesday. That included the White House’s opposition to standalone legislation to grant legal status to young undocumented immigrants who have benefited from Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama administration program that Trump canceled. “If we get a clean DACA bill, shame on all of us,” Homan said. Immigrant rights groups have pressured Congress to pass a bill that would address the plight of these Dreamers, after Trump threw their tenuous legal status into jeopardy last year. But the White House has insisted that any legislation to deal with the cancellation of DACA should also include billions of dollars for Trump’s proposed border wall expansion, along with cuts to legal immigration. The impasse played a key role in the brief shutdown of the federal government earlier this month. Addressing DACA without also cracking down further on immigration would only spur more unauthorized immigration, Homan said ― even as he acknowledged that illegal crossings had plummeted to their lowest levels in four decades. “I 100 percent support the wall,” Homan added. He spent much of his speech lashing out at so-called “sanctuary” cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, often by declining to hold some undocumented immigrants accused of lesser state crimes until federal authorities can pick them up. Homan said it irritated him that politicians who have “never carried a badge and a gun” can limit his agents’ ability to go into local jails to make arrests. Working through the jails, he said, expedites the deportation process and makes it safer for ICE agents, because they don’t have to go knocking on people’s doors. Restricting ICE’s access to local jails, he said, will only drive his agents to target undocumented immigrants in their neighborhoods, which will result in more unauthorized immigrants without criminal records being picked up. ICE under Homan’s watch has received much criticism from immigrant rights groups and some Democratic politicians for an uptick in arrests of unauthorized immigrants without criminal convictions. Those critics deride the Trump administration’s tactics as unfocused, saying they breed fear in immigrant communities. Some local law enforcement officials, including some of the police chiefs and sheriffs for the largest cities and counties in Texas, have also warned that indiscriminate deportation efforts make immigrants distrustful of local cops. Less than a week after Trump took office, his administration tossed out Obama-era guidelines that focused deportation efforts on recent border-crossers, people with serious criminal histories and those who had prior deportations on their records. But according to Homan, the only way to resolve the country’s contentious immigration problems is by cracking down on undocumented immigrants more uniformly. And he characterized critics ― whether local officials, journalists or “people on on the left” ― as unworthy of contradicting him on policy, unless they’ve worked in law enforcement. “When they’ve seen what we’ve seen, then they can have an opinion,” Homan said, addressing himself to the immigration agents and officials in the room. “Until then, we’re going to enforce the law without apology. And I’m not going to stop talking.” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 02-01-18 07:09pm - 2473 days | #144 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Michigan dog gets letter granting him unemployment benefits. However, those benefits are later denied. Will this cause psychological problems for the doggy, who will then need counseling and health-care benefits? --- --- CBS/AP February 1, 2018, 11:36 AM Michigan man gets letter granting his dog unemployment benefits SAUGATUCK, Mich. -- Michael Ryder had been approved for $360 a week in Michigan unemployment benefits -- until the state learned he'd been dogging it at the Detroit-area restaurant where he supposedly worked. Ryder is a German Shepherd owned by attorney Michael Haddock on the other side of the state in Saugatuck, CBS Detroit reports. Speaking to WWJ Newsradio 950, Haddock said he was indeed surprised when he received a benefits letter addressed to "Michael Ryder" from Michigan's Unemployment Insurance Agency. The paperwork listed the dog as having been employed by Kruse and Muer, an upscale seafood chain. "He's very food driven, so it's no coincidence that he had a restaurant on his application," Haddock said, with a chuckle. When Haddock contacted the agency about the letter, he was told the agency's computer system had sent it, but that the claim was later was flagged as suspicious and denied. Haddock added that, while he's not entirely sure what Ryder does all day, he is pretty sure that his dog has never had a job. Could it have been a practical joke? "I have plenty of friends that maybe would do something (like this), but they would genuinely fess up to it by now. So, yeah, I'm not sure," he said. Agency spokesman Chris De Witt said that they're still looking into the matter, but they may never know who filed the claim. "Due to criminals stealing data from a number of different places -- Equifax, other places where this has happened over the last few years -- criminals are now using that information to file for unemployment benefits, and the IRS is running into the same problem with tax refunds. That's how this starts." De Witt said, fortunately, in this case there were enough indicators to raise red flags about the claim, and no money was paid out. Investigations administrator Tim Kolar wrote in a tongue-in-cheek email that he knows "first-hand it is rare for 'man's best friend' to contribute financially to the household and that will continue in this instance."  2018 CBS Interactive Inc. | |
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| 02-01-18 11:43pm - 2473 days | #145 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Arizona House kicks out Rep. Don Shooter over sex misconduct Associated Press Bob Christie, Associated Press,Associated Press 5 hours ago PHOENIX (AP) -- The Arizona House kicked out Republican Rep. Don Shooter on Thursday because of a lengthy pattern of sexual misconduct, making him the first state lawmaker in the U.S. to be expelled since the #MeToo movement emerged last year. Other legislators nationwide have resigned or been stripped of their leadership posts after being accused of misconduct. But the expulsion marked a new escalation in handling such cases after a report ordered by the legislative leader of his own party showed Shooter engaged in a pattern of sexual harassment toward women. The drama on Arizona's House floor lasted for about two hours, with bipartisan female lawmakers in red gathering in a circle, holding hands and hugging before the vote began. Then Shooter took center stage, saying he had said and done stupid things but "I stood on the carpet, I took it like a man, I apologized." "It's been my honor to represent the people of District 13," Shooter said. "I have faithfully executed my duties. I've never taken bribes, I've never considered one way or another except on the merits of a bill." At the end of his speech, he held his arm out, dropped the microphone on the floor and walked out. He was one of three lawmakers to vote against his ouster, with 56 House members supporting it. The fallout comes months after Republican Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita said Shooter propositioned her for sex and repeatedly commented on her breasts. Many other women, including the then-publisher of Arizona's largest newspaper, then complained that he subjected them to inappropriate sexual comments or actions. Shooter said earlier in the day that he deserved to be punished but did nothing to justify expulsion. He had been facing censure, but Republican House Speaker J.D. Mesnard moved for a vote to expel him after the embattled lawmaker sent a letter to fellow legislators Thursday. It alleged that the investigative report Mesnard commissioned into Shooter's and Ugenti-Rita's behavior whitewashed accusations against another House member that were worse than the claims he faced. Shooter wrote that the report omitted a young woman's complaint that another lawmaker subjected her to unwanted sexual advances. He would not name the lawmaker. The report says Ugenti-Rita's boyfriend sent sexually explicit communications to someone. Investigators determined that happened but that there was no evidence Ugenti-Rita knew or was involved. Mesnard said he talked to the woman and learned Shooter's description her concerns weren't true. "It was then I realized Rep. Shooter's letter was nothing more than an effort to use this individual as a pawn," Mesnard said. "So he was not, in fact, standing up for the victim but rather further victimizing this person." The House speaker told Shooter that the vote was now about expulsion and asked for any weapons he had with him. Mesnard said Shooter turned over a handgun. Firearms are banned at the Legislature, but lawmakers have been known to carry them in gun-friendly Arizona and the rule generally isn't enforced. Shooter was elected to the Senate in 2010, and moved to the House in 2016. The lawmaker from the southern Arizona city of Yuma was known around the Capitol as a politically incorrect jokester who threw booze-fueled parties in his office on the last day of legislative sessions. The initial complaints against him came from Ugenti-Rita in mid-October. In the following weeks, the woman then working as the publisher of the Arizona Republic newspaper and a number of others also complained about inappropriate behavior and comments. Former newspaper publisher Mi-Ai Parrish, who is Asian-American, wrote in a column that Shooter told her last year during a meeting in his office that he had done everything on his "bucket list," except for "those Asian twins in Mexico." The investigation substantiated some of the allegations, but not all. Shooter has denied sexual harassment but acknowledged that he had made "jarring, insensitive and demeaning" comments. He asked for the investigation after Ugenti-Rita said he propositioned her. His seat was immediately declared vacant and will be filled by another Republican. GOP committee members in his district will nominate three people for the post, and officials in Yuma County will make the final choice. The #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct spread widely in October, targeting men in Hollywood, politics and elsewhere. It came a year after the Tennessee state House removed Rep. Jeremy Durham after an investigation detailed accusations of improper sexual contact with at least 22 women. In Arizona, Republican Rep. Noel Campbell said Shooter's actions should be condemned but voted against kicking him out. "I believe it is up to the people of his district to either expel him or not," he said. "I think that is the real judging body." | |
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| 02-03-18 01:08am - 2472 days | #146 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news? Congressional memo supports putting Trump in jail for suspicious behavior. Put the scofflaw in jail now, before he fills Washington with immoral, licentious allies and crooks. Trump, the criminal mastermind who stole the election to become President with the help of Russian allies. Posted by the Keep America Clean And Moral Majority. Freedom to the people! ---- ---- Not all details in GOP memo help undercut Mueller probe Associated Press ERIC TUCKER, MARY CLARE JALONICK and CHAD DAY,Associated Press 2 hours 58 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and his supporters are using a congressional memo alleging FBI surveillance abuse to raise questions about the origins of a federal investigation into his campaign's ties to Russia. But the four-page document includes revelations that might complicate the effort to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing probe. The document contends that the FBI relied excessively on an ex-British spy whose opposition research was funded by Democrats when it applied for a surveillance warrant on a Trump campaign associate. Yet it also says the investigation into potential Trump ties to Russia actually began several months earlier — "triggered," it says, by information involving a separate campaign aide. The spy who compiled the allegations admitted to having strong anti-Trump sentiments, but he was not a random find for the bureau. Rather, he was a "longtime FBI source" with a credible track record, says the memo from the House intelligence committee's Republican chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, and his staff. The warrant authorizing the FBI to monitor the communications of campaign adviser Carter Page? Approved by a judge on four occasions, according to the memo, and signed off on by Trump's hand-picked deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. Without the underlying materials being made public, the memo only further intensified a partisan battle over how to interpret the actions of the FBI and Justice Department during the early stages of the counterintelligence investigation Mueller later inherited. "Having decided to cherry-pick, the Nunes team picked a bunch of the wrong cherries for its own narrative," Matthew Waxman, a Columbia University professor and former Bush administration official, wrote in an email. The memo, released over the objections of the FBI and Justice Department, could well give Trump and Republicans new grounds to challenge the Mueller investigation as politically tainted. Even before its declassification Friday, Trump had been telling confidants he believed the document would validate his concerns that the FBI and Justice Department conspired against him. The central allegation is that agents and prosecutors, in applying in October 2016 to monitor the communications of campaign adviser Carter Page, concealed from a judge that a former spy whose findings had provided grounds for suspicion had been funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee. That omission is important, Republicans say, because a judge should have known that "political actors" were involved in allegations that led the Justice Department to believe Page might be an agent of a foreign power — something he has consistently and strenuously denied. Research from former spy Christopher Steele, according to the memo, "formed an essential part" of the application to receive the warrant, though It's unclear how much or what information he collected was included in the application, or how much has been corroborated. Steele's opposition research effort was initially funded by the conservative Washington Free Beacon. It was later picked up by the Clinton campaign and the DNC through a Washington law firm The FBI this week expressed "grave concerns" about the memo and called it inaccurate and incomplete. Democrats called it a set of cherry-picked claims aimed at smearing law enforcement and said its release will do long-term damage to the law enforcement and intelligence communities. For one thing, Democrats say, it's misleading to say a judge was not told of the potential political motivations of the people paying for Steele's research. Beyond that, though, the memo confirms the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign began in July 2016 — months before the surveillance warrant was even sought — and was "triggered" by information concerning a different campaign aide, George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI and is cooperating with Mueller's investigation. The timing makes clear that other Trump associates beyond Page, who was part of the election effort for only a short period and was not in the president's inner orbit, had generated law enforcement scrutiny. The memo also omits that Page had been on the FBI's radar just a few years earlier as part of a separate counterintelligence investigation into Russian influence. Though the memo focuses on Page, intelligence committee Democrats wrote in a response, "this ignores the inconvenient fact that the investigation did not begin with, or arise from Christopher Steele or the dossier, and that the investigation would persist on the basis of wholly independent evidence had Christopher Steele never entered the picture." Other details in the memo could also challenge Republican claims of bias. The warrant requested in October 2016 was subsequently renewed on three additional occasions, meaning that judges approved it four times. And one of the Justice Department officials who approved it was Rosenstein, a Trump appointee. Trump, who lambasted the FBI and Justice Department on Twitter, was asked later in the day if he was more likely to fire Rosenstein and if he still had confidence in him. The president simply said, "You figure that one out." Though the document had been classified, since it deals with warrants obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the White House declassified it Friday and sent it to Nunes for immediate release. The disclosure of the document is extraordinary since it involves details about surveillance of Americans, national security information the government regards as among its most highly classified. Its release is likely to further escalate an intra-government conflict that has divided the White House and Trump's hand-picked law enforcement leaders. Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray had personally lobbied against the memo's disclosure, arguing it could set a dangerous precedent. The memo's release also comes amid an ongoing effort by Trump and congressional Republicans to discredit Mueller's investigation, which focuses not only on whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia but also on whether the president sought to obstruct justice. ___ Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin, Catherine Lucey, Matthew Daly, Desmond Butler and Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report. | |
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| 02-03-18 09:11am - 2471 days | #147 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
FAKE NEWS: Trump calls GOP memo "an American disgrace". Trump will resign in protest from the swamp in Washington, that has blackened his name. Trump is pure white: he will never be colored by shithole African countries. Trump stands for truth and justice, which is why he will resign instead of being impeached and sent to prison. Trump will forever stand behind his lies and smears, unafraid until the FBI and Justice Department sends agents to arrest him. Go, Trump! The most un-racist President we've ever had. --- --- Trump calls disclosures in GOP memo ‘an American disgrace' Colin Campbell 23 minutes ago Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: Yuri Gripas/Reuters, Donald Trump via Twitter, Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters President Trump angrily tweeted Saturday morning about the disclosures about FBI procedures contained in the Republican congressional memo that was released Friday after the White House declassified it. “This memo totally vindicates ‘Trump’ in probe,” the commander in chief wrote, speaking in the third person. “But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on,” he continued. “Their [sic] was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!” Trump was addressing the memo drafted by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calf., the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, purporting to show that there was insufficient evidence to put Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page under surveillance during and after the campaign. The 4-page memo focused on the role of Christopher Steele, a former British spy who drafted a controversial dossier on Trump’s ties to Russia. Nunes made pointed mention of the fact that Steele’s work was funded by Democratic organizations. (The memo also highlights reporting by Yahoo News Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff, who was the first to report that Page was under federal investigation over a trip he had taken to Moscow two months earlier. In the new Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast, Isikoff discusses his role in the controversy.) But the Nunes memo also shows, as Democrats on the committee have said, that the FBI’s broader investigation into Russian election meddling in 2016 and possible collusion with the Trump campaign did not originate with the Steele dossier. The memo appears to reference what news reports have described as a boast by another Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, that the Trump campaign had access to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s emails, which had been hacked by Russian agents. Papadopoulos and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn have both pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about their contacts with Russia and are now cooperating with the probe. Democrats claim that Nunes cherry-picked his claims to muddle the debate and potentially justify the firing of Justice Department officials overseeing the Russia investigation. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, responded to Trump’s tweet by pointing to Papadopoulos. The investigation has long drawn Trump’s ire. “I think it’s a disgrace,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday. “What’s going on in this country, I think it’s a disgrace.” In a tweet Friday morning before the memo’s release, the president deplored that the “top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans.” Trump throughout the 2016 campaign and even after taking office has demanded that the Justice Department pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, his Democratic foe, for a variety of alleged offenses. Read more from Yahoo News: | |
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| 02-03-18 09:52am - 2471 days | #148 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
FAKE NEWS: When the FBI investigated Hilary Clinton before the Presidential election, Republicans claimed the FBI was doing its job. When the FBI investigated Trump, Republicans are calling it a smear campaign to discredit Trump. I love the way Republicans (like most politicians) can talk out of both sides of their mouth, giving opposite opinions depending on whether the target is a Democrat or a member of the Republican party. --- --- Opinions The Nunes memo wasn’t meant to win over everyone — just 34 senators By Max Boot Columnist February 3 at 8:46 AM “When you’re attacking FBI agents because you’re under criminal investigation, you’re losing.” That was White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeting on Nov. 3, 2016. Back then, it was Democrats who were complaining about the FBI, and with ample justification: The bureau had released a letter 11 days before the election announcing that it was reopening its investigation of Hillary Clinton based on emails found on former New York congressman Anthony Wiener’s laptop. Nate Silver later concluded, “Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28.” Comey’s supposed anti-Clinton bias was even (disingenuously) cited by President Trump as his rationale to fire the FBI director. Now Trump and his most fervent followers are attacking the FBI for anti-Trump bias. On Friday, Trump tweeted: “The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans.” So the top leadership of the Justice Department and FBI — all appointed by Trump, all Republicans — are biased against Republicans? | |
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| 02-04-18 12:04pm - 2470 days | #149 | |
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RagingBuddhist (0)
Disabled User  Posts: 893 Registered: Jan 23, '07 |
I've always tried to keep politics and religion out of any online forum that wasn't devoted to either of those topics. PornUsers certainly isn't one of them and I'm not sure why it's allowed here. It's bad enough that this country is now more polarized than ever with fucking party politics. That kind of division has no place here. Sarcasm is a body's natural defense against stupidity. Edited on Feb 04, 2018, 12:54pm | |
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| 02-04-18 01:32pm - 2470 days | #150 | |
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Onyx (0)
In-Activated by Staff Posts: 149 Registered: Nov 28, '17 |
Edited on Mar 20, 2018, 10:18pm | |
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