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| Porn Users Forum » WHY DOESN'T POTUS ARREST BILL CLINTON, HILARY CLINTON, AND OBAMA? |
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| 05-11-18 08:52pm - 2323 days | #651 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User  Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Scoreboard on Guiliani: a bunch of statements turn out to be false or misleading. -------- -------- The Washington Post Giuliani’s comments won’t stop coming back to bite him by Aaron Blake May 10 1:58 In less than three weeks on the job, Rudy Giuliani has already made a mess. Rudolph W. Giuliani is still speaking for President Trump, even as his week-old comments continue to come back to bite him and complicate things for his bosses. It was announced Thursday that Giuliani is turning his leave of absence from the law firm Greenberg Traurig into a resignation. The stated reason was that Giuliani's duties as Trump's lawyer have monopolized his time. “This is a full-time job working for the president, and we’ve got to figure this out and get this over with,” Giuliani said. He dismissed the idea that his uneven advocacy for Trump had alienated his employer, saying that “half the firm is for [Trump], maybe half against — fifty-fifty. It wasn’t about that.” But at least one comment Giuliani made did seem to ruffle feathers at Greenberg Traurig: when he suggested that Michael Cohen's $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels was just business as usual. “That was money that was paid by his lawyer, the way I would do, out of his law firm funds,” Giuliani told Fox News on May 2. “Michael would take care of things like this like I take care of this with my clients. I don't burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.” ADVERTISING Turns out, Greenberg Traurig would rather not associate itself with such arrangements. “We cannot speak for Mr. Giuliani with respect to what was intended by his remarks,” a spokeswoman, Jill Perry, told the New York Times. “Speaking for ourselves, we would not condone payments of the nature alleged to have been made or otherwise without the knowledge and direction of a client.” In addition to suggesting Giuliani may have burned some bridges, the statement also undercuts the idea that this is a standard practice for reputable lawyers. Giuliani's own (now-former) employer is now openly disputing a central claim Giuliani made about the Cohen payment. And it's merely the latest Giuliani comment from last week that has caused problems and been reeled back in: After Giuliani disclosed that Trump reimbursed Cohen and offered conflicting timelines, Trump said patronizingly that Giuliani had “just started a day ago” and wasn't up to speed. “He’ll get his facts straight,” Trump said. Giuliani later backed off his timeline. Giuliani initially said Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey because Comey wouldn't say Trump was not under investigation. That was significant because it contradicted the previously stated reasons for Comey's firing. Giuliani later backed off that contention. He said three Americans were being released by North Korea, which eventually happened this week but which the White House wasn't ready to announce at the time. When asked whether Giuliani spoke for Trump on foreign policy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders offered a curt “Not that I'm aware of.” So basically every major claim Giuliani made has since fallen apart and/or been disowned by either him or his employers. And yet, he still seems to have Trump's trust. | |
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| 05-12-18 12:03am - 2323 days | #652 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Detroit Free Press Cohen approached Ford for consulting, Mueller wants to see the records Phoebe Wall Howard, Detroit Free Press Published 10:16 p.m. ET May 11, 2018 Attorney Michael Cohen's simultaneous relationship with Donald Trump and several blue chip companies that paid him for insight into the new president strikes legal experts as unusual and has triggered questions about client confidentiality. (May 11) AP President Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen approached Ford shortly after Trump's election offering his services as a consultant, but the Dearborn-based automaker told him no thanks, the Free Press learned late Friday. Special counsel Robert Mueller, who is charged with investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, learned of the incident and has asked Ford for records, the Free Press was told. Ford, which avoided a publicity black eye suffered by AT&T and Novartis pharmaceuticals, both of which hired Cohen, had no comment Friday evening. Michael Avenatti, attorney for Stephanie Clifford, the adult entertainer known as Stormy Daniels, late Friday confirmed what sources told the Free Press. “I can confirm that Mr. Cohen solicited Ford Motor Company," he said by phone. "It was in late 2016 into ’17. On multiple occasions. There was no policy. He was trying to sell access to the president. My understanding is that it was by phone and electronic communication.” Avenatti declined to say whether he knew if Cohen had approached other automakers. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the incident, said Mueller's team has interviewed Ford’s head of government affairs, Ziad Ojakli, who the Journal said rejected Cohen's offer. Cohen's offers of advice to major companies has come to light through Avenatti's legal fight with Trump and Cohen on behalf of Clifford, who is suing the president to get out of a confidentiality agreement. Cohen set up a company called Essential Consultants through which he paid Clifford $130,000 to buy her silence about asexual encounter she alleges she had with Trump in 2006. Essential Consultants, which Cohen set up shortly before making the payment to Clifford just weeks before the 2016 election, has since been tied to payments to Cohen by AT&T, Novartis Pharmaceuticals and a Russian oligarch. AT&T said Friday that hiring Cohen was a “big mistake." In a memo to employees, CEO Randall Stephenson called the hiring a “serious misjudgment,’” and said that the company’s chief lobbyist in Washington is leaving. AT&T's one-year contract paid Cohen $50,000 per month. Novartis paid Cohn $100,000 a month, but let the contract expire, company officials have said. An American company tied to Russian Viktor Vekselberg paid $500,000 to Essential Consultants, reports have said. Vekselberg was stopped and questioned at an airport this year by investigators for Mueller. Cohen's offices and hotel room were raided in an investigation by the U.S. attorney in Manhattan after a referral from Mueller. Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-222-6512 or phoward@freepress.com. | |
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| 05-12-18 08:26am - 2322 days | #653 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Low class behavior from the Stormy Daniels lawsuit. Rudy Guiliani calls Stormy Daniels lawyer a pimp (because Avenatti is representing Stormy Daniels, a porn star). Avenatti fires back, implying that Trump and Guiliani had a perverted relationship which was displayed when Guiliani dressed in drag and Trump was molesting Guiliani. Maybe this is how Trump and Guiliani behave in private, behind closed doors? The bottom line: Guiliani is Trump's attack dog, and Guiliani is doing a messy job trying to smear Stormy Daniels and her attorney. Kind of makes you lose any respect you had for Guiliani. And Stormy Daniels' lawyer seems to be handling himself much better, coming across as a man who knows his facts and is calm under pressure and very quick thinking. Who doesn't need to employ gutter language in trying to build his case against Cohen. ------------ ------------ Stormy Daniels lawyer fires back at Giuliani over 'pimp' jab By John Bowden - 05/11/18 07:11 PM EDT Michael Avenatti, the attorney representing adult-film star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against President Trump, fired back at Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Friday after he referred to Avenatti as a "pimp." Avenatti mocked Giuliani in a tweet, telling the former New York City mayor "I'm not the only 'pimp' you have experience with" while linking to a comedy sketch Trump and Giuliani performed in 2000 in which Giuliani wore drag. "Hey Rudy - It turns out I’m not the only 'pimp' you have experience with. History evidently is repeating itself," Avenatti wrote. In the sketch, which came about as part of the Mayor’s Inner Circle Press Roast when Giuliani was mayor, Trump appears to put his face in Giuliani's chest before the then-mayor pushes him away. "Oh, you dirty boy, you!" Giuliani exclaims in the video, slapping Trump. "Can't say I didn't try!” Trump replies. Avenatti fired back at Giuliani after Trump's lawyer told Business Insider earlier Friday that he would not accept an offer to debate Avenatti because he doesn't "get involved with pimps." Avenatti has tweeted that Giuliani should appear in a live televised forum to debate the facts of Daniels's case against the president. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is suing the president to formally void a non-disclosure agreement she signed shortly before the 2016 election that was meant to keep her quiet about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier. The actress is also suing Trump and his personal attorney Michael Cohen for their comments about her claims, saying they constitute defamation and have harmed her career. “I think it would be very helpful for the public to witness a discussion between Mr. Giuliani and me concerning the facts of the case, etc.,” Avenatti tweeted this week. “I am willing to participate on any network provided both sides are provided a fair shake. I am also willing to do it on 12-hrs notice.” Earlier this week, Giuliani said he wouldn't debate Avenatti even for "$10 million," saying "all he does is put out statements in the press and they fawn all over him." | |
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| 05-12-18 09:55am - 2322 days | #654 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news? Who was Stormy Daniels first attorney working for? For Stormy Daniels? Or for Michael Cohen, the opposing attorney who was trying to get Stormy Daniels to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement? An attorney is supposed to represent his client's interests (for the benefit of the client). But it seems that Stormy's attorney was actually working for the opposite side. ------- ------- Politics Michael Avenatti Says Michael Cohen Tried to Stop Stormy Daniels Hiring a 'Competent' Lawyer Newsweek Jessica Kwong,Newsweek Fri, May 11 6:52 AM PDT Stormy Daniels’s lawyer Michael Avenatti on Friday morning tweeted a screenshot of an email that President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen sent to Daniels’s attorney at the time, expressing concern that the adult film star, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, was seeking additional legal help. In the email, from February 22, 2018, Cohen wrote: “It is my understanding that Ms. Clifford has or is seeking the advice of additional counsel regarding the above matter,” referring to the subject line, “PP -vs-DD NDA,” which pertains to the nondisclosure agreement Daniels is suing Trump over. “Under no circumstances should you forward this document or the exhibits to anyone without my express written consent,” Cohen wrote to Keith Davidson, who is no longer representing Daniels. Avenatti, who subsequently became Daniels's attorney, tweeted that the email showed Cohen did not want her to retain “competent counsel” like himself. “Knowing what we know now, no wonder Mr. Cohen was doing everything he could to interfere with Ms. Daniels' efforts to get new counsel,” Avenatti tweeted. “He was desperate to avoid the cover-up from surfacing and was afraid that competent counsel would expose him and Mr. Trump. #MoreToCome #Basta.” Avenatti then addressed the subject line of Cohen’s email. “He has claimed in the case that DD was never a party to the NDA. But he specifically described it as the "PP vs DD NDA" in this email (his words),” Avenatti tweeted. The agreement, which Daniels claims is invalid because Trump did not sign it, uses the pseudonyms "Peggy Peterson" and "David Dennison" for Daniels and Trump, respectively. Avenatti has repeatedly called out Cohen, who is under criminal investigation for his business deals including the nondisclosure agreement for which he paid Daniels $130,000. This article was first written by Newsweek | |
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| 05-12-18 12:11pm - 2322 days | #655 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump administration rolls back transgender prison protections The Bureau of Prisons will use "biological sex" to determine where prisoners are housed. Ryan Koronowski May 12, 2018, 1:04 pm On Friday night, the Trump administration released new rules that change the way transgender people in prison are assigned housing, in a move that advocates said targeted the most vulnerable and posed a “direct threat to the safety of transgender people in our nation’s prisons.” Before the notice, for instance, a transgender woman could expect to be housed in a women’s prison, but under the new guidance she would be placed in a men’s prison because of her sex assigned at birth. Advertisement “Once again, the Trump Administration is turning its back on those most vulnerable. It is well established that transgender prisoners – particularly transgender women housed in men’s facilities – suffer much greater rates of sexual abuse than other prison populations,” said Lambda Legal’s Richard Saenz in a statement. The federal government’s own statistics show that 34 percent of transgender prisoners report sexual victimization, compared to 4 percent of all federal prisoners. A California study found that in prison, transgender people are 13 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than non-transgender people. The rollback happened after “four evangelical Christian women in a Texas prison sued in US District Court to challenge the Obama-era guidelines, and claimed sharing quarters with transgender women subjected them to dangerous conditions,” as Buzzfeed, which initially reported the rule change, said Friday night. The new notice deleted from the Transgender Offender Manual this sentence: “The TEC [Transgender Executive Council] will recommend housing by gender identity when appropriate.” It then detailed how the TEC should assess assignments on a “case-by-case basis” — beginning with using biological sex as the “initial determination” for assignment, then considering the inmate’s health, safety, behavioral history, and then the “management and security of the institution.” Advertisement “The designation to a facility of the inmate’s identified gender would be appropriate only in rare cases after the consideration of all of the above factors and where there has been significant progress towards transition as demonstrated by medical and mental health history,” the new guidance concludes. The threats to transgender prisoners are not limited to physical violence — a survey found that prison staff refused hormone therapy to 44 percent transgender, non-binary gender, and Two-Spirit respondents. The vast majority of survey respondents said they were refused undergarments that fit their gender. The National Center for Transgender Equality in a press release called the move a “direct threat to the safety of transgender people in our nation’s prisons.” It also argued that the change “stands in direct defiance of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which mandates prison officials must screen all individuals at admission and upon transfer to assess their risk of experiencing abuse.” Jeff Sessions could roll back protections for transgender prisoners This move, long feared by the LGBTQ community, was just another in a long line of actions the Trump administration has taken that threaten the rights of transgender people. The administration has attempted (with limited success) to ban transgender people from serving in the military, relying on junk science. It also reversed a rule that prevented health care providers from discriminating based on gender identity. The policy change affects some of the most vulnerable people in some of the most vulnerable places in the country. “The extreme rates of physical and sexual violence faced by transgender people in our nation’s prisons is a stain on the entire criminal justice system,” said executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, Mara Keisling in a release. | |
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| 05-12-18 10:56pm - 2322 days | #656 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The second coming of Richard Nixon. Mike Pence borrows Richard Nixon's speech to call for an end to Mueller's investigation. Will it work? It didn't for Richard Nixon. Maybe Mike Pence will have better luck. (Or, maybe it's a ploy to have the investigation continue, and increase Mike Pence's chances for becoming the next President.) ---------- ---------- Pence’s call for the special counsel to ‘wrap it up’ echoed Nixon nearly word for word What could possibly go wrong? Aaron Rupar May 11, 2018, 11:16 am During an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Thursday morning, Vice President Mike Pence called for special counsel Robert Mueller to “wrap it up.” “What I think is that it’s been a year since this investigation began, our administration has provided over a million documents, we’ve fully cooperated in it, and in the interest of the country I think it’s time to wrap it up,” Pence said. “And I would very respectfully encourage the special counsel and his team to bring their work to completion.” As Morning Joe noted, the content and tone of Pence’s call for the special counsel to end his investigation was remarkably similar to what President Richard Nixon said in January 1974 about the special prosecutor who was investigating him, Leon Jaworski. “As you know, I have provided to the special prosecutor voluntarily a great deal of material,” Nixon said. “I believe that I have provided all of the material that he needs to conclude his investigations, and to proceed to prosecute the guilty and to clear the innocent. I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end. One year of Watergate is enough.” Watch the two clips back to back for yourself: Nixon’s speech came three months after he fired the first prosecutor appointed to investigate Watergate, Archibald Cox, in the “Saturday Night Massacre.” Cox’s termination backfired — it both galvanized public opinion against Nixon, and failed to end the investigation. Jaworski was appointed to replace Cox about two weeks after the Saturday Night Massacre. Richard Nixon (1913 - 1994) gives the thumbs up after his resignation as 37th President of the United States. His son-in-law David Eisenhower is with him as he says goodbye to his staff at the White House, Washington DC. (Photo by Gene Forte/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images) Trump follows the Nixon playbook in response to Michael Cohen raid And as it turned out, one year of Watergate was not quite enough. After smoking gun evidence emerged that Nixon had lied about his involvement in the Watergate break-in, he resigned from office in August 1974 — about seven months after he called for the special prosecutor to wrap it up. | |
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| 05-12-18 11:21pm - 2322 days | #657 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: Since Trump often offers fake fantasies as "facts" to reporters and his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, I am offering my readers a glimpse into how the White House mess can be cleaned up: A GOP congressman from California (home of Cal Tech, the amazing college for scientific geniuses), suggests that Mueller should have Donald Trump seized and tortured into making a confession. Thus saving the nations millions of dollars in wasted investigations. A clean end to the career of a dirty slimeball. The congressman stated: "The Department of Justice is tricky business." Why not let the Department of Justice drain the swamp, as Trump promised repeatedly during his campaign, and let the chips fall where they may, by getting Trump to confess his crimes? ------ ------ Politics Trump Wouldn't Last Under Torture, GOP Congressman Says Amid John McCain POW Backlash Newsweek Gillian Edevane,Newsweek 15 hours ago A GOP congressman from California said Friday night that President Donald Trump wouldn't hold up well under torture, coming to the defense of Republican Senator John McCain as Trump surrogates continue to attack the Arizona legislator and veteran over his service record. HBO's Bill Maher asked Representative Duncan Hunter how long he thought the president could withstand torture, to which the congressman, who served three overseas tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, quipped, "not very long." The comment was met with laughs from Maher's audience. Maher agreed: "He'd probably torture his torturers, talking about the election. 'Nobody thought I'd get to 300," the HBO host said, referencing Trump's habit of invoking his electoral college win during interviews. Hunter's candor came after a week of Trump surrogates hurling insults at McCain, whose announcement that he would be opposing CIA pick Gina Haspel roiled some within his own party. On Thursday, a guest on Fox Business News accused McCain of succumbing to torture during the Vietnam war, dubbing him "Songbird John." Also on Thursday, special assistant to the president Kelly Sadler reportedly suggested that the views of McCain, who is battling brain cancer, are irrelevant since the Arizona Republican is "dying anyway." Trump, too, has slung insults at the ailing senator, infamously insinuating in 2015 that McCain wasn't a war hero because he was captured and spent more than five years as a prisoner of war. Hunter, who endorsed the president early during the 2016 campaign, went on to call the onslaught of attacks "rotten," but cushioned his criticism by saying that he had also made crass jokes during his time in the armed forces. "I've made the same John McCain joke with my friends, who are other Marines," the congressman said. 'If I were a better pilot, I wouldn't get shot down.'... I've made that joke. But I make it to my friends, not on national TV as the contender for the US presidency." "It shouldn't be done," he conceded. Hunter's appearance on Maher's show also came as the GOP congressman is facing mounting controversy over allegations that he violated campaign ethics. The Department of Justice is investigating the Southern California representative, The House Ethics Committee announced in March. Investigators said in a news release that Hunter "may have converted tens of thousands of dollars of campaign funds from his congressional campaign committee to personal use to pay for family travel, flights, utilities, healthcare, school uniforms and tuition, jewelry, groceries and other goods, services, and expenses." "The Department of Justice is tricky business," Hunter said, when Maher briefly brought up the investigation. This article was first written by Newsweek | |
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| 05-12-18 11:29pm - 2322 days | #658 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The truth comes out: Betsy DeVos is one of Donald Trump's better picks. ---------- ---------- Congressman to Trump: Betsy DeVos Is 'Rich, White, and Dumber Than a Bag of Hammers' By Gillian Edevane On 3/12/18 at 12:18 PM The public displays of acrimony between California lawmakers and President Donald Trump's administration continued on Sunday, with Representative Jared Huffman labeling Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as "rich, white, and dumber than a bag of hammers." Huffman, a Democrat who hails from Northern California, tweeted the insult from his personal account and directed it at Trump. "Dear President Trump, if you want to meet someone who has an actual IQ problem (as opposed to just being black), meet your Education Secretary Betsy DeVos," Huffman tweeted. "Rich, white, and dumber than a bag of hammers." The tweet linked to a viral clip of DeVos's much-pilloried Sunday interview on 60 Minutes. In the segment, DeVos, a devout believer in charter schools, struggles to answer questions about the quality of public education in her home state of Michigan. In the tense exchange, correspondent Lesley Stahl questioned whether it's wise to remove funds from public schools and inject them into charter schools, as DeVos had a hand in doing in Michigan. DeVos avoided answering the critique directly and pivoted by saying she "avoids talking about all schools in general, because schools are made up of individual students attending them." Since 1993, Michigan has been home to the lowest test score gains in the nation, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress. Huffman, whose tweet did not circulate widely on Twitter, earned a few detractors who disagreed with his language. Neither the congressman nor the Department of Education could be reached for comment. "I'm a constituent who supports you, but I don't think calling anyone 'dumber than a bag of hammers' is productive or becoming of a Congressman, no matter what," wrote Kirsten Gardner. "Please remember what Michelle Obama said about when they go low." | |
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| 05-13-18 06:31pm - 2321 days | #659 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Donald Trump praises his incredible mom on Moher's day (His mother died in 2000, which might be why she is incredible.) (Forgets to mention his wife, Melania, who is a mother to his youngest legitimate son. Maybe there are other illegitimate children of President Trump, who have mothers, as well, that he forgot to mention.) And in true Mother's day tradition, President Trump chooses to go golfing; Instead of spending time with his current wife and youngest legitimate son. Or maybe that's Trump's gift to his wife and son: a vacation from his presence. ---------- ---------- Donald Trump Praises His 'Incredible' Mom on Mother's Day — But Doesn't Mention Melania Maria Pasquini May 13, 2018 02:20 PM There was one very important person missing from President Donald Trump’s Mother’s Day message: his wife Melania. “My fellow Americans, this Sunday is one of the most important days of the year: Mother’s Day. Since the earlier days of our republic, America’s strength has come from the love and courage and devotion of our mothers,” the 71-year-old commander-in-chief said in a video shared on Twitter. Although Trump went on to praise his mother, Mary MacLeod, who died in 2000, he did not mention the first lady, who is mother to the pair’s 12-year-old son Barron Trump. “My mother was a great person. Her name was Mary MacLeod. She came from Scotland and she met my father when she was very young. They were married for many, many years,” Trump continued. “I learned so much from my mother. She was just incredible. Warm, loving, really smart, could be tough if she had to be, but basically she was a really nice person.” While it’s unclear how Trump will spend the rest of his Sunday, around 10:45 this morning, he traveled to Trump National Golf Course in Potomac Falls, Virginia, according to a White House pool report. Briefly addressing the special day, the first lady shared a photo of a bouquet of pink roses on social media, writing, “Happy Mother’s day!” Although the Los Angeles Times reported the president also visited the golf course in Virginia on Mother’s Day last year, Trump made sure to include his wife, who was still living in New York with their son at the time, in his celebratory message. “Wishing @FLOTUS Melania and all of the great mothers out there a wonderful day ahead with family and friends! Happy #MothersDay,” he wrote. Trump’s omission comes after months of headlines dominated by Trump’s alleged extramarital affairs. Earlier this year, Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal said she had a 10-month sexual relationship with Trump that began in 2006. On May 2, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani shockingly confirmed the president reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen for the $130,000 paid to porn star Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about an affair she alleges she had with Trump shortly after Melania gave birth to their son, Barron, in 2006. Daniels passed a lie detector test when asked if she had unprotected sex with Trump. Trump has denied both affairs. Earlier this week, with her husband by her side, the first lady opened up about what motherhood means to her at a White House event honoring military mothers and spouses. “Mother’s Day, which is this Sunday, is celebrated just one time per year. I don’t know about all of you, but I think mothers should be celebrated each and every day,” Mrs. Trump said to applause, according to a pool report. “As a mother myself, I know what goes into raising a child,” she added. “It takes an incredible amount of strength, a lot of time, a generous amount of patience, and all of our love. As moms, we are so incredibly privileged to be able to bring children into this world and be a part of helping them grow into adults.” Amid the cheating allegations plaguing her husband, Mrs. Trump’s communication director, Stephanie Grisham, previously revealed that the first lady has been focusing her energy on her son. “She’s focused on being a mom and is quite enjoying spring break at Mar-a-Lago while working on future projects,” Grisham said in late March. Mrs. Trump has often said she loves being a hands-on mother to Barron. She told PEOPLE in 2015 that she helps her son with his homework, takes him to after-school activities and encourages him to dream. “He wants to be a golfer, a businessman, a pilot. It’s that age when you introduce him to stuff,” she said at the time. | |
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| 05-13-18 06:41pm - 2321 days | #660 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Michael Avenatti’s Mother’s Day gift to Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen is a father, not a mother. But Avenatti gave Cohen a gift anyway. Is Avenatti a really nice guy, or what? ---------- ---------- Michael Avenatti’s Mother’s Day bombshell, explained Stormy Daniels' lawyer doesn't take a day off. Judd Legum May 13, 2018, 8:52 pm On Mother’s Day, Michael Avenatti, attorney for Stormy Daniels, posted a cryptic tweet with several images of Trump Tower on December 12, 2016. The photos featured Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who Avenatti is suing on Daniels’ behalf, Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser and several men who are more difficult to identify. About six hours later, Avenatti revealed the identity of one of the other men in the picture. According to Avenatti, it’s Ahmed al-Rumaihi, a former Qatari diplomat who now heads up the nation’s massive investment fund. It has not been conclusively proven that the bald man in the elevator is Al-Rumaihi, but it looks like him. This is where the story gets very weird. Al-Rumaihi was one of several foreign investors in the BIG3 basketball league, a new 3-on-3 professional league started by rapper Ice Cube and his business partner Jeff Kwatinetz. The relationship between Al-Rumaihi, Ice Cube and Kwatinetz did not go well. Advertisement Ice Cube and Kwatinetz claim that Al-Rumaihi and the other foreign investors did not pay them millions they were promised. In April, they sued Al-Rumaihi and others for $1.2 billion in damages. In a declaration filed this month in related litigation, Kwatinetz claims Al-Rumaihi and others were using their investment in the league to try to gain influence over Steve Bannon, a former senior adviser to Trump who is reportedly close to Kwatinetz. According to Kwatinetz, this was part of a larger effort by Al-Rumaihi to act as an agent of Qatari intelligence. Kwatinetz claims that Al-Rumaihi invited him on a hike in January 2018 and said that he had a message to convey from the government of Qatari government to Steve Bannon. Al-Rumaihi said that the Qatari government would underwrite all of Bannon’s political activity in return for his support on issues of importance to the country. Bannon had recently lost support from his main financial backer, Rebekah Mercer. Kwatinetz says he told Al-Rumaihi such an offer was inappropriate. Al-Rumaihi allegedly responded by calling Kwatinetz naive and bragging that former Trump adviser Michael Flynn had no problem taking his money. The presence of Al-Rumaihi in Trump Tower on December 12, 2016 lends more credence to Kwatinetz claim. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is currently cooperating with Robert Mueller’s investigation. By including photos showing Michael Cohen accompanied by Al-Rumaihi, Avenatti is suggesting that Cohen might also be involved. Qatar recently bought a $6.5 million apartment in Trump World Tower in New York City. Last week, Avenatti disclosed that shortly after the election, Michael Cohen had been paid millions by several large corporate entities, including $500,000 from a company with ties to a Russian oligarch. The bulk of Avenatti’s report was quickly confirmed by news organizations and the companies themselves. | |
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| 05-13-18 08:59pm - 2321 days | #661 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
A special forces soldier live streams himself being waterboarded to support Trump's CIA nominee. It would be more impressive if the soldier took 2 rounds from a .357 Magnum through the head. Because a common boast by many loyalists is that they would take a bullet for the President. Michael Cohen probably said something similar. So, 2 rounds from a .357 Magnum through the head would prove this soldier's devotion to Trump. Anything less is just grandstanding. Another question: What crimes did the waterboarding force the soldier to reveal? Did he reveal when he started to masturbate? Did he reveal a list of his most serious crimes? What did the water boarding accomplish? That the soldier is a hero for grandstanding with his friends? Was this a friendly waterboading session, since it was done by his buddies? Were the CIA agents who waterboarded the friends of the "enemies" they waterboarded? Can the CIA be charged for consorting with the enemy, while doing friendly waterboarding games? Enguiring minds want to know. ----------- ----------- Politics Special Forces soldier livestreams himself being waterboarded and claims it is not torture in support of Trump's CIA nominee The Independent Andrew Buncombe,The Independent 11 hours ago A US special forces soldier has livestreamed a video of him being waterboarded by his friends, as part of an effort to promote Donald Trump’s nominee to head the CIA. The president wants acting CIA director Gina Haspel to take leadership of America’s preeminent intelligence agency from Mike Pompeo, who was recently confirmed as his new secretary of state. There is considerable opposition to Ms Haspel’s confirmation by the senate because of her previous role overseeing “black sites” during George W Bush’s so-called war on terror, in which water-boarding and other methods many consider to be torture, were used to interrogate prisoners. Over the weekend, Green Beret Tim Kennedy, a former mixed martial arts fighter, livestreamed the 41-minute footage, which shows him being voluntarily waterboarded and answering questions between sessions. He claimed it proved waterboarding was not torture. “The reason we are doing this ... is for us to have a conversation. Right now, an amazing hero has been appointed to be director of the CIA and because of that, some of the things she has done are being attacked,” Mr Kennedy said about Ms Haspel. “If I can change one person’s mind about what torture is and what I would do to protect American freedom, I will do this for years.” Between sessions, Mr Kennedy claimed being waterboarded was not torture and was simply uncomfortable. The Hill said Mr Kennedy criticised recent reports that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who has been charged with organising the 9/11 attacks, recently requested permission to share information pertaining to Ms Haspel’s nomination. He was reportedly waterboarded 183 times over 15 sessions while in US custody. During his 2016 election campaign, Mr Trump repeatedly defended waterboarding and other measures for dealing with terror suspects and said he would like to see them used again. Barack Obama ordered the US stop using such methods, amid questions about them being a form of torture and doubts as to their effectiveness. Ms Haspel, 61, whom Trump nominated to head the agency in March, has come under fire for overseeing a CIA black site in Thailand in 2002 where terror suspects were tortured. During testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, Ms Haspel said she would not allow the agency to return to the use of such methods. “I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral – even if it was technically legal,” she said. Ms Haspel’s nomination has been condemned by several high profile politicians, among them Republican senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war who has long been a critic of torture. Mr McCain is currently receiving treatment for an aggressive form of brain cancer. Mr McCain’s statement urging senators not to confirm her, led to more controversy when it emerged a While House aide had dismissed his views but saying: “It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway.” Over the weekend, it was reported that a second Democrat in the senate, Joe Donnelly had become the second member of that party to support Ms Haspel, making it more likely she will obtain the 50-vote minimum she needs for confirmation. Mr Donnelly, of Indiana, joins Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, in supporting her. | |
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| 05-14-18 10:47am - 2320 days | #662 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump defends the American public from worries about the environment. His EPA hides troubling reports about contamination issues that might cause public outrage. Better a contented public than a public who might be fearful about the dangers the environment might pose to them and their children. God bless Trump and his allies, who make billions from polluting America. --------- --------- Discussions about how to address the HHS study involved EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's chief of staff and other top aides, including a chemical industry official who now oversees EPA’s chemical safety office. | AP Photo White House, EPA headed off chemical pollution study The intervention by Scott Pruitt’s aides came after one White House official warned the findings would cause a ‘public relations nightmare.' By ANNIE SNIDER Updated 05/14/2018 01:05 PM EDT Scott Pruitt’s EPA and the White House sought to block publication of a federal health study on a nationwide water-contamination crisis, after one Trump administration aide warned it would cause a "public relations nightmare," newly disclosed emails reveal. The intervention early this year — not previously disclosed — came as HHS' Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry was preparing to publish its assessment of a class of toxic chemicals that has contaminated water supplies near military bases, chemical plants and other sites from New York to Michigan to West Virginia. The study would show that the chemicals endanger human health at a far lower level than EPA has previously called safe, according to the emails. “The public, media, and Congressional reaction to these numbers is going to be huge,” one unidentified White House aide said in an email forwarded on Jan. 30 by James Herz, a political appointee who oversees environmental issues at the OMB. The email added: “The impact to EPA and [the Defense Department] is going to be extremely painful. We (DoD and EPA) cannot seem to get ATSDR to realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be.” More than three months later, the draft study remains unpublished, and the HHS unit says it has no scheduled date to release it for public comment. Critics say the delay shows the Trump administration is placing politics ahead of an urgent public health concern — something they had feared would happen after agency leaders like Pruitt started placing industry advocates in charge of issues like chemical safety. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) called the delay "deeply troubling" on Monday, urging Pruitt and President Donald Trump "to immediately release this important study.""Families who have been exposed to emerging contaminants in their drinking water have a right to know about any health impacts, and keeping such information from the public threatens the safety, health, and vitality of communities across our country," Hassan said, citing POLITICO's reporting of the issue.Details of the internal discussions emerged from EPA emails released to the Union of Concerned Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act. The emails portray a “brazenly political” response to the contamination crisis, said Judith Enck, a former EPA official who dealt with the same pollutants during the Obama administration — saying it goes far beyond a normal debate among scientists. “Scientists always debate each other, but under the law, ATSDR is the agency that’s supposed to make health recommendations,” she said. The White House referred questions about the issue to HHS, which confirmed that the study has no scheduled release date. Pruitt‘s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, defended EPA’s actions, telling POLITICO the agency was helping “ensure that the federal government is responding in a uniform way to our local, state, and Congressional constituents and partners.” Still, Pruitt has faced steady criticism for his handling of science at the agency, even before the recent spate of ethics investigations into his upscale travels and dealings with lobbyists. In his year leading EPA, he has overhauled several scientific advisory panels to include more industry representatives and recently ordered limits on the kinds of scientific studies the agency will consider on the health effects of pollution. On the other hand, Pruitt has also called water pollution one of his signature priorities. The chemicals at issue in the HHS study have long been used in products like Teflon and firefighting foam, and are contaminating water systems around the country. Known as PFOA and PFOS, they have been linked with thyroid defects, problems in pregnancy and certain cancers, even at low levels of exposure. The problem has already proven to be enormously costly for chemicals manufacturers. The 3M Co., which used them to make Scotchguard, paid more than $1.5 billion to settle lawsuits related to water contamination and personal injury claims. But some of the biggest liabilities reside with the Defense Department, which used foam containing the chemicals in exercises at bases across the country. In a March report to Congress, the Defense Department listed 126 facilities where tests of nearby water supplies showed the substances exceeded the current safety guidelines. A government study concluding that the chemicals are more dangerous than previously thought could dramatically increase the cost of cleanups at sites like military bases and chemical manufacturing plants, and force neighboring communities to pour money into treating their drinking water supplies. The discussions about how to address the HHS study involved Pruitt's chief of staff and other top aides, including a chemical industry official who now oversees EPA’s chemical safety office. Scott Pruitt is pictured. | Getty Images EPA watchdog knocked Pruitt aides for slowing probe By ALEX GUILLÉN Herz, the OMB staffer, forwarded the email warning about the study's "extremely painful" consequences to EPA’s top financial officer on Jan. 30. Later that day, Nancy Beck, deputy assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, suggested elevating the study to OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to coordinate an interagency review. Beck, who worked as a toxicologist in that office for 10 years, suggested it would be a "good neutral arbiter" of the dispute. "OMB/OIRA played this role quite a bit under the Bush Administration, but under Obama they just let each agency do their own thing...," Beck wrote in one email that was released to UCS. Beck, who started at OMB in 2002, worked on a similar issue involving perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuel — linked with thyroid problems and other ailments — that has leached from defense facilities and manufacturing sites into the drinking water of at least 20 million Americans. Beck stayed on at OMB into the Obama administration, leaving the office in January 2012 and going to work for the American Chemistry Council, where she was senior director for regulatory science policy until joining EPA last year. Yogin Kothari, a lobbyist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, called Beck's January email "extremely troubling because it appears as though the White House is trying to interfere in a science-based risk assessment." Environmentalists say such interference was routine during the Bush administration. "It’s why the Obama administration issued a call for scientific integrity policies across the federal government," Kothari said in an email to POLITICO. "Dr. Beck should know firsthand that the Bush administration sidelined science at every turn, given that she spent time at OMB during that time." Soon after the Trump White House raised concerns about the impending study, EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson reached out to his HHS counterpart, as well as senior officials in charge of the agency overseeing the assessment to discuss coordinating work among HHS, EPA and the Pentagon. Jackson confirmed the outreach last week, saying it is important for the government to speak with a single voice on such a serious issue. “EPA is eager to participate in and, contribute to a coordinated approach so each federal stakeholder is fully informed on what the other stakeholders' concerns, roles, and expertise can contribute and to ensure that the federal government is responding in a uniform way to our local, state, and Congressional constituents and partners,” Jackson told POLITICO via email. Pruitt has made addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, a priority for EPA. The unpublished HHS study focused on two specific chemicals from this class, PFOA and PFOS. States have been pleading with EPA for help, and experts say that contamination is so widespread, the chemicals are found in nearly every water supply that gets tested. In December, the Trump administration's nominee to head the agency's chemical safety office, industry consultant Michael Dourson, withdrew his nomination after North Carolina's Republican senators said they would not support him, in large part because of their state's struggles with PFAS contamination. Dourson's previous research on the subject has been criticized as too favorable to the chemical industry. Shortly after Dourson's nomination was dropped, Pruitt announced a “leadership summit” with states to discuss the issue scheduled for next week. In 2016, the agency published a voluntary health advisory for PFOA and PFOS, warning that exposure to the chemicals at levels above 70 parts per trillion, total, could be dangerous. One part per trillion is roughly the equivalent of a single grain of sand in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The updated HHS assessment was poised to find that exposure to the chemicals at less than one-sixth of that level could be dangerous for sensitive populations like infants and breastfeeding mothers, according to the emails. | |
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| 05-14-18 11:01am - 2320 days | #663 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Pence praises anti-LGBTQ college for not discriminating against LGBTQ. Meaning: it's all right to call LGBTQ perverts, who should not be allowed-- as long as it's not reported in the newspapers. Except maybe the Fake Newspapers, that publish Fake News that Donald Trump does not buy or approve of. Pence and Trump uphold the values of Democracy, which means they will not discriminate against LGBTQ, while passing laws and regulations that do discriminate against LGBTQ, and fight the good fight to make discrimination against LGBTQ legal and moral and the law of the land. --------- --------- Pence praises anti-LGBTQ college for its nondiscrimination policies The vice president addressed one of the most LGBTQ-unfriendly colleges in the country. Zack Ford May 14, 2018, 11:47 am Vice President Mike Pence addressed the graduating class this weekend at Michigan’s Hillsdale College, which has been ranked as one of the most LGBTQ-unfriendly campus in the country. It’s the second time Pence has spoken there, belying his efforts to downplay his own anti-LGBTQ record. In his commencement remarks, Pence ironically praised Hillsdale’s history of nondiscrimination protections. “In 1844, those men and women did what no other college had done up to that time,” he said of its founders. “Hillsdale College prohibited any discrimination based on race, religion, and gender — at its very founding.” This is true, but the sentiment has not held up for LGBTQ students. In 2009, a group of Hillsdale students tried to form a Gay-Straight Alliance. The following year, the Hillsdale Board of Trustees explained why the club was prohibited in a news set of guidelines “regarding the mission and moral commitments of Hillsdale College.” The guidelines explain that “the College has always understood morally responsible sexual acts to be those occurring in marriage and between the sexes.” Same-sex marriage was, of course, not legal in Michigan at the time. “This understanding has been unwavering, undergirds its policies regarding student conduct, and informs its institutional practices,” the guidelines continue. Pressure to counter the college’s commitment in that regard would “disrupt its good order” and would be inconsistent with “both its independence and its purpose.” Hillsdale’s “independence” is notable. It does not allow students to take any federal funding to help pay their tuition, which means it is not bound by many federal education regulations — including those that govern how to respond to sexual assault as well as discrimination protections that, under the Obama administration at least, extended to LGBTQ students. Many other religious schools that do receive federal funding have obtained Title IX waivers so that they can also discriminate against LGBTQ students. In 2015, a month before the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing marriage equality for same-sex couples nationwide, a Hillsdale chaplain sent an email to the campus community informing them that “ugly things are happening in the Supreme Court right now.” If Justice Anthony Kennedy supports marriage equality, Chaplain Peter Beckwith warned, “I do not even think we can imagine the effects this could have on our nation, the church, and families.” He invited all recipients to attend a gathering that day to pray “for evil to be revealed and destroyed” — i.e. for a ruling against marriage equality. This is the school Pence called a “beacon of liberty and American ideals.” It’s not a good look for Pence, who has repeatedly lied about his history of anti-LGBTQ positions. In 2000, Pence’s congressional campaign website said that he would only support HIV treatment funding if it was diverted from organizations that “celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus” and distributed instead to “institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.” Over the past two years, Pence has rejected the characterization that he supported for ex-gay conversion therapies, insisting instead he wanted to support “groups that promoted safe sexual practices.” This is wholly unbelievable given Pence said in a 2002 interview that condoms don’t work and that ““the only truly safe sex…is no sex.” Further undermining his contemporary claims, Pence offered a “religious freedom” amendment to a 2007 hate crimes bill that he hoped would protect “pro-family groups showing that many former homosexual people had found happiness in a heterosexual lifestyle.” Pence did not discuss these topics this weekend, instead dedicating much of his remarks to boasting that “faith in America is rising again.” This is despite the fact that polls have repeatedly shown that the “nones” — those with no specific religious affiliation — are the fastest growing group, while Christian beliefs have been on the decline. Pence concluded his remarks by urging the students to embrace their faith as part of the administration’s plan to “Make America Great Again.” “If you hold fast to Him, if you live according to all that you have learned and the examples that you have seen in this special place, if you rededicate yourselves to the noble mission that has always animated the graduates of this college, I just know, at the bottom of my heart, right after we get done making this nation great again, your generation will make America greater than ever before.” | |
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| 05-14-18 11:24am - 2320 days | #664 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Shades of Donald Trump and his tax records: A bridge collapses, killing people and destroying property. But facts are withheld from the public about the crash, for about 60 days now, because the public does not have the right to know what the facts are. The bridge collapsed. People died. Property was destroyed. But the public's right to know what happened is limited by what officials are willing to expose: which seems to be very limited. Serving the greater good? What good? ------- ------- Miami Herald | MiamiHerald.com A crane operator working on the FIU bridge left the deadly scene — in his crane | Miami Herald A new pedestrian bridge linking the FIU campus to Sweetwater collapsed on Tamiami Trail on March 15, 2018. A crane operator working on the FIU bridge left the deadly scene — in his crane By Nicholas Nehamas, Charles Rabin And Andres Viglucci nnehamas@miamiherald.com crabin@miamiherald.com aviglucci@miamiherald.com May 14, 2018 08:00 AM Updated 2 hours 44 minutes ago No one seemed to notice when a large white crane that had been working at the doomed Florida International University bridge lurched away down Tamiami Trail shortly after the span collapsed. There was a disaster to respond to: Mountains of concrete. Horribly mangled cars. Dead and injured people. It wasn't until some time later that authorities began wondering what happened to the crane and its operator, a close eyewitness who might help the investigation into the collapse. But he, and the crane, were gone. "He drove away in the crane and nobody stopped him," said Carl Robertson, 73, a homeless man who lives near the site of the bridge. Robertson was right there and saw it fall down. He was the first person to call 911, using his aging cell phone. Photos and video taken immediately after the March 15 accident show the crane — rented from a Sweetwater firm called George's Crane — still present on the downed bridge’s northwest side. When a Miami Herald photographer took a wide-frame aerial shot of the disaster about an hour later, the crane was nowhere in sight. As the public tries to piece together what happened that chaotic day — at a time when government entities investigating the collapse have squeezed shut the flow of crucial information — the crane has become a source of speculation for amateur sleuths and online theorists. Readers asked the Herald: What was the crane doing and where did it go? In the absence of official explanations, some even wondered if the crane itself could have bumped the 950-ton bridge and caused the catastrophe. Did the operator then flee the scene in the most ungainly of getaway vehicles? Here is what is known: Police don't seem to believe the crane man fled the scene or caused the collapse, which independent engineers suspect was the result of structural and design flaws. They say the unidentified operator drove the crane a short distance away and stuck around to offer help — but for how long isn't clear. The crane — with the name "George's" emblazoned prominently on the boom — had been used to lift a piece of equipment for adjusting the span's internal steel supports around the time the bridge came crashing down at 1:47 p.m., killing six people. Robertson was a short distance west at his encampment. Within minutes of the bridge coming down, Robertson said, the crane's operator jumped out of the cab to untie a strand of caution tape that police coming from nearby FIU and Sweetwater had quickly anchored on the machine as they rushed to save lives. Then he started up his rig and rumbled west down Tamiami and out of sight. "I didn't think about it until later that day," Robertson said of the crane's disappearance. "I didn't have my wits about me because they were pulling people out." Although he was the first person to call 911, police recordings show, he says the cops never followed up to take a formal interview. After the Herald published a piece last week on FIU engineers discovering potentially problematic cracks in the bridge days before the collapse, Robertson called reporters to recount his story — and to ask if anyone had figured out where the crane and the crane man went. A lawyer for George's Crane — which rents hydraulic cranes as large as 170 tons — offered an explanation to the Herald. Far from fleeing, the operator needed to move the lumbering contraption out of the way, said the attorney, Bryant Blevins. Rescuers had shown up right away. "The emergency vehicles needed access," Blevins said. "They were getting there pretty quickly after the collapse. At that point, he had to move the crane." So, Blevins said, the crane man drove the boom mounted on a six-wheel trailer out of the way and then — what time exactly Blevins couldn't say — took it about 30 blocks north to the George's Crane lot in Sweetwater. That's where the crane stayed. The operator, however, returned to the scene "later that night" and was interviewed by police and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency that investigates on-the-job accidents, according to Blevins. A spokesman for OSHA declined to comment. The public knows very little about why the bridge came down. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the cause of the accident, has forbidden the release of potentially critical public records that might shed some light. The Herald is suing the Florida Department of Transportation to compel their release. George Bremer, who owns the crane company, could not be reached. Whatever happened, the operator's behavior is puzzling — and angers some attorneys who are involved in the case and learned of the crane's disappearance independently of the Herald. "Why would he leave the scene?" asked Alan Goldfarb, who is representing the family of Alexa Duran, an FIU student crushed to death in her vehicle during the collapse. "It doesn't make any sense. ... How could you remove equipment from an investigative scene?" The Miami-Dade Police Department, which is investigating the deaths as homicides, has its own version of where the crane and the crane man went. Capt. Alex Acosta says investigators believe the operator simply drove a few hundred feet from the collapsed bridge, parking the machine nearby. "He moved it right there on site, off to the side," Acosta said. "He must have just got nervous." The captain said the man — whose name the department is not willing to release — then went back to the accident scene to "render aid." After that, he went home. But police figured out who he was and got in touch. "He came back voluntarily [to the scene] and was interviewed," Acosta said. The crane operator spoke willingly with police, according to Acosta, and no action was taken against him. | |
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| 05-14-18 02:43pm - 2320 days | #665 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA, demanded 24-hour armed protection the first day he became head of the EPA. Pruitt, with foresight, knew that he was the man to take charge of the United States if Trump and Pence were somehow incapacitated. Therefore, with armed guards, Pruitt would then be able and ready to step into the breach, and lead our nation forward. All hail Pruitt, for his genius and foresight. Damn the torpedoes! Damn the cost! Obama was a coward, and careless about the security of his EPA chief. Thankfully, Pruitt is not a coward, which is why he demands and deserves 3 times the security force coverage that Obama's EPA chief had. Besides which, if Obama and his Vice President had been removed or assassinated, the Republican Party would have cheered. The Republican Party would mourn if Pruitt, our brave man at the EPA, who is dismantling Obama's EPA protections, were hurt or seriously injured. Republicans, the party that will not allow a fellow man to be left behind enemy lines! ---------- ---------- Watchdog: EPA’s Pruitt demanded 24/7 armed security on Day 1 Originally published May 14, 2018 at 12:39 pm Updated May 14, 2018 at 1:19 pm By MICHAEL BIESECKER The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt demanded and received unprecedented around-the-clock armed security protection on his very first day, according to new details disclosed Monday by the agency’s internal watchdog. EPA Inspector General Arthur Elkins said in letters to Democratic senators that Pruitt himself initiated the 24-hour-a day protection. Pruitt’s staff has previously said the enhanced protection, which far exceeds that afforded to past EPA administrators, was triggered by death threats. Elkins’ letter comes after Pruitt cited an August 2017 report by a staffer in the inspector general’s office detailing more than a dozen investigations of threats against him and his Obama administration predecessor as justification for stepped-up security measures, which has included flying first class on commercial airliners. Elkins said that 2017 summary was requested by Pruitt’s office and was not intended to justify tighter security. Marked “For Official Use Only,” the internal summary was then improperly made public, Elkins said. “The (Office of Inspector General) is not a decision maker for EPA,” Elkins wrote, adding that Pruitt’s staff began pushing for his office to assess threats against Pruitt within days of his arrival in Washington. “The OIG declined and informed EPA management that it is not the role of the OIG to provide a threat assessment, but rather the OIG is limited to the role of investigating and reporting back the facts.” The Associated Press reported last month that Pruitt’s preoccupation with his safety came at a steep cost to taxpayers, as his swollen security detail blew through overtime budgets and at times diverted officers away from investigating environmental crimes. Altogether, the agency has spent about $3 million on Pruitt’s 20-member full-time security detail, which is more than three times the size of his predecessor’s part-time security contingent. Elkins’ letter came two days before Pruitt is set to appear before a Senate committee where he is likely to face another round of questions about his security precautions and spending. EPA’s inspector general and congressional committees are conducting about a dozen investigations into actions by Pruitt and his closest aides. EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox did not immediately respond for comment about the inspector general’s letter. Pruitt said during congressional testimony last month that his extraordinary security spending was needed because the threats against him have been “unprecedented in terms of quantity and type.” Elkins’ letter was issued in response to questions from Sens. Tom Carper of Delaware and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. The Democrats said Monday that the new disclosures undercut Pruitt’s claims about the reasons for his pricey security enhancements. “A threat to a federal employee’s personal security is extremely serious, but so is using security as pretext for special treatment on the public dime,” the senators said in a joint statement. “This letter raises troubling questions about whether Administrator Pruitt told the truth during his testimony before the House. Now more than ever, Mr. Pruitt should come clean about his spending of taxpayer dollars on all manner of extravagances, and our colleagues on both sides of the aisle should demand he do so. | |
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| 05-14-18 03:03pm - 2320 days | #666 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Can Michael Cohen sue John Oliver for damaging Michael Cohen's professional reputation? I seriously think Cohen will get less business in today's markets since his professional reputation has been called into question in 2018. In 2017, Cohen got over $4 million dollars from big-name clients like AT&T, Novartis, and the President of the United States, Donald Trump. --------------- --------------- Entertainment John Oliver Rips Into ‘Total Moron’ Michael Cohen Over Consulting Scandal Newsweek James Tennent,Newsweek 7 hours ago John Oliver tore into President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen during a Last Week Tonight segment on Sunday, branding the embattled figure a “political novice” and “total moron.” Oliver started off by joking Cohen was such a bad lawyer that Donald Trump had to say “I need someone good, get me Rudy Giuliani on the phone,” to cheers from his audience. Cohen has been under scrutiny in recent weeks, first over a payment made to adult actress Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels, and then for a slew of other payments made to him by large corporations, allegedly for his consultancy expertise. Oliver took particular issue with the name of the shell company allegedly used by Cohen to receive the payments: Essential Consultants, LLC. “This company involves Cohen, who is absolutely not ‘essential’, he’s also not a ‘consultant’, plus there’s only one of him so even the ‘s’ in the company name is a big dumb lie,” Oliver said. Talking about allegations Cohen pitched himself as “closest to the president” to potential clients, Oliver added “that is a little bit weird because lawyers don’t generally pitch themselves by offering up info on their other clients—it’s like a doctor saying ‘if you hire me I’ll tell about all of Larry King’s birthmarks.’” On reports of drug manufacturer Novartis saying they had decided not to continue engaging with Cohen after just one meeting—even though they were in a deal with him worth over a million dollars—Oliver said “they basically paid a million dollars not to talk to Michael Cohen.” “At heart, these companies got exactly what they paid for,” Oliver said, “because they wanted to understand how the Trump administration worked and, think about it, they put their trust in a political novice who turned out to be a total moron and who was actually just bilking them for personal gain. “So you wanted to know how the Trump administration works? Congratulations, you just got a f*****g masterclass.” This article was first written by Newsweek | |
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| 05-14-18 05:03pm - 2320 days | #667 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump is a brave man. He is not afraid to call leakers traitors and cowards. Trump is a leaker himself. Maybe one of the most famous and frequent leakers. He has outed many opponents with his famous tweets. But Trump is not a coward. He is a brave man who is willing to tweet about his enemies. Trump warned Russia: 'Get ready' for a missile attack on Syria. This was before the US attacked Syria with missiles. If anyone else had tweeted this information, they could be charged with treason. (Giving advance warning to an enemy). But not Donald Trump. Why wasn't he charged with Treason? Because he is the Republican President, and the Republicans control Congress. But if someone on his payroll leaks information that is damaging to Trump's reputation, Trump states that person is a coward and a traitor. Trump's morality is a one-way street. Or maybe Trump has no morality. That might better explain who he is, how he acts. ----- ----- Trump calls leakers 'cowards' after aide's remark on McCain Associated Press DARLENE SUPERVILLE and JILL COLVIN,Associated Press 7 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump called West Wing leakers "traitors and cowards" on Monday as a dustup over a White House aide's crass remark about Arizona Sen. John McCain extended into a fifth day. In a Monday afternoon tweet, Trump said the "leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible." He added of the leakers: "We will find out who they are!" During a closed-door meeting last week, Trump communications aide Kelly Sadler dismissed McCain's opposition to the president's CIA nominee by saying of the Arizona Republican: "He's dying anyway." The 81-year-old McCain was diagnosed in July with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. White House spokesman Raj Shah said Monday that Sadler had been "dealt with internally." But he refused to say how. Pressed repeatedly on the issue at a briefing, Shah said Sadler apologized privately to the McCain family and still remains in her position. But Shah, who led the meeting in which Sadler made the comment, declined to say whether any disciplinary steps had been taken. He said he could not discuss how the situation was "addressed internally" because then it would no longer be internal. McCain left Washington in December and few expect him to return. Sadler called the senator's daughter Meghan McCain, a co-host of ABC's "The View," to apologize last week. Meghan McCain told ABC News that, during their conversation, she'd asked Sadler to apologize publicly and that Sadler had agreed. "I have not spoken to her since and I assume that it will never come," Meghan McCain told ABC. Numerous lawmakers have called on the White House to apologize, including No. 2 Senate GOP Leader John Cornyn of Texas, who told the The Associated Press on Monday: "The person who said it should apologize. It's totally inappropriate." No. 3 Senate GOP leader John Thune of South Dakota said the White House could have handled the incident better. "The smart thing to do would have been five days ago to just nip it in the bud and come out and apologize for it," he said. White House officials have condemned the leak of the private conversation, and some have expressed their support for Sadler. In a Senate speech Monday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell steered clear of Sadler's comment but praised the ailing Republican after visiting with him over the weekend in Arizona. "I told him we miss him," McConnell said in a Senate speech late Monday. "I was confident I was speaking for everybody in the Senate in conveying our deepest respects for him and all he's done for the county in his extraordinary life." McCain remains outspoken on political and policy debates. McConnell says the beloved, if not "smart-alecky," colleague had plenty to say about work during the visit. The comment by Sadler came after McCain, a Navy pilot who was beaten in captivity during the Vietnam War, urged his fellow senators to reject Trump's nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel. He said he believes she's a patriot who loves the country but "her refusal to acknowledge torture's immorality is disqualifying." Trump and McCain have had a difficult relationship. As a GOP presidential candidate in 2015, Trump said McCain was "not a war hero" because he was captured in Vietnam, adding, "I like people who weren't captured." Last July, McCain became the deciding vote against the GOP health care repeal with a dramatic thumbs-down. Trump later told the Conservative Political Action Conference that "except for one Senator, who came into a room at three o'clock in the morning and went like that" —Trump gave a thumbs-down — "we would have had health care (reform), too." ___ Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Alan Fram contributed to this report. | |
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| 05-14-18 05:19pm - 2320 days | #668 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The EPA’s new Office of Continuous Improvement ignores some important details During an announcement about making the agency "lean," EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt conveniently missed some details. Natasha Geiling May 14, 2018, 4:43 pm On Monday, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt announced the creation of a new “Office of Continuous Improvement,” meant to boost productivity inside the agency and cut operational waste. The office will expand the agency’s “lean management system,” which encourages employees to focus staff time on “mission-critical work.” According to Politico, the initiative was first created in 2014 under the Obama administration. According to an internal email obtained by Buzzfeed, the new office will focus on implementing lean management initiatives across 80 percent of the agency by 2020. The EPA’s webpage describing the change notes that lean management initiatives will help improve “the quality, transparency, and speed” of EPA services, resulting in “superior customer service” for stakeholders. Environmental groups criticized the announcement, arguing that it shifts focus away from the EPA’s core mission of environmental protection. “Scott Pruitt is advocating for a government that abandons its responsibilities to protect our clean air and water all while using taxpayer money to pay for lavish perks for himself,” Melinda Pierce, federal policy director for the Sierra Club, said in a press statement. “It’s clear that the only ‘customers’ Scott Pruitt intends to help are the corporate polluters directing his every move.” The announcement comes at a tenuous time for both the agency and Pruitt. For weeks, Pruitt has faced calls to resign after a cascade of ethical scandals became public, from the fact that he stayed in a condo owned by an energy lobbyist’s wife during his first few months in D.C. to the fact that he approved significant raises for political staff without White House approval. Pruitt did not mention those raises when announcing the plan to make the agency more “lean.” Pruitt also did not address reports that he spent more than $100,000 on first class travel during his first year as administrator, nor a finding by the Government Accountability Office that the EPA broke the law when it approved the installation of Pruitt’s soundproof phone booth last year, which cost over $40,000 in taxpayer funds. He also did not discuss his own personal, round-the-clock security detail, which he reportedly requested on his first day as administrator and which has cost nearly $3 million in taxpayer dollars. In just 24 hours, Scott Pruitt’s scandals blew up into an ethics crisis Nor did Pruitt make any mention of the fact that, under his leadership, more than 700 employees have left the agency, bringing staffing levels to their lowest since the Reagan administration. Pruitt also did not address the fact that for the past two years, the Trump administration’s budget has called for significant cuts to the agency. There was also no mention of that fact that, under Pruitt’s first year as administrator, EPA enforcement action against polluters has dropped 44 percent compared to previous administrators’ first years, nor was their any discussion of how “lean” management initiatives would be used to better enforce environmental regulations around the country. In fact, only those present in the room at EPA headquarters on Monday afternoon were able to hear the full discussion of exactly what the Office of Continuous Improvement would bring to the agency, since the audio on the agency’s livestream of the announcement malfunctioned for the majority of the press conference. | |
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| 05-14-18 05:28pm - 2320 days | #669 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This is the sort of seller Donald Trump has become. And if you complain that the item you bought was not what he advertised, he would sue you for defamation of character. Because Trump has plenty of character. Just not the kind you can depend on. --------- --------- Lifestyle Family Realizes Pet Dog Might Be a Bear After Animal Starts to Walk Around on Hind Legs People Kelli Bender,People 6 hours ago There is more canine confusion in China. Just a few days after news broke that a woman found out her puppy bought from a Chinese pet store last year is actually a fox, another pet owner has come to a similar conclusion. According to The Independent, two years ago, Su Yun, from Kunming in the Yunnan province of China, bought a puppy on vacation, believing it to be a Tibetan Mastiff, and brought the animal home. From day one, Yun and her family were impressed by their pet’s massive appetite. The “dog” reportedly chowed down on a box of fruit and two buckets of noodles everyday. But it wasn’t until the pet reached 250 pounds and started walking around on its hind legs that they realized there was a mistake. This “dog” is actually an Asiatic black bear. Since the family is slightly (and reasonably) afraid of wild bears and is not capable of caring for one of the large creatures, they have since transferred their former family pet to Yunnan Wildlife Rescue Centre, where it will receive proper care from wildlife professionals. | |
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| 05-14-18 05:51pm - 2320 days | #670 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: Since Trump seems to make up fake news as he goes along, I'm trying to follow in my hero's footsteps. Here is an article that explains how Trump wants to make America great again. But the Democrats are standing in his way. So, the best solution might be: For Congress to investigate all Democrats, charge them with treason, and have them shot. Thus, eliminating the cowards and traitors who oppose our Glorious Leader For Life, President Donald Trump, the founder of a great dynasty that will be continued with the ascendence of his favorite daughter, Ivanka Trump. And if any Republicans are traitors to Trump, they should be shot, as well. Make a clean sweep. Clean the swamp in Washington, is what the President promised. Now is the time to start. ---------- ---------- Trump to press GOP on changing Senate rules By Alexander Bolton - 05/14/18 06:37 PM EDT Frustrated with what he calls Democratic obstruction, President Trump is expected to press Senate Republicans during a lunch Tuesday to change the rules to speed up consideration of his nominees for vacant court seats and executive posts. It has taken an average of 84 days to confirm Trump’s nominees, far longer than for the four presidents who preceded him, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a non-partisan group that tracks confirmations. "Waiting for approval of almost 300 nominations, worst in history. Democrats are doing everything possible to obstruct, all they know how to do," Trump tweeted Saturday. Republicans on the Senate Rules Committee approved a measure last month to shorten the debate time for nominees on the floor, but the idea doesn’t have Democratic support. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has yet to say whether he will try to implement the change with a controversial party-line vote known as the nuclear option. White House legislative affairs director Marc Short told reporters several weeks ago that Trump would be “making a larger foray” into the slow pace of Senate confirmations. “By continuing to highlight and recognize the level of obstruction … it continues to put more pressure on the Senate to address this internally,” Short said. Conservatives such as Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.) say they want GOP leaders to trigger the nuclear option, whereby Senate rules would be effectively changed with a simple majority vote. “If I were president, I’d be asking us about it. ‘What are you going to do?’ I’d be pressing hard to change the rules of the Senate using Harry Reid’s precedent,” Johnson told The Hill Monday. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) used a party-line vote in 2013 to lower the threshold for ending debate on executive branch and most judicial nominees, changing it from 60 votes to a simple majority. Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas) on Monday said using the nuclear option to speed floor debate on nominees is “a good idea.” “We need to get it done,” he said of a possible rules change. Unless the nuclear option is used, Republicans would need 67 votes to change the Senate rules under regular order or 60 votes to issue a permanent standing order, which would have the same effect. But muscling through the rules change without Democratic support isn’t sitting well with moderate Republicans such as Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine), who aren’t on board with the plan. Murkowski says debate time for nominees should be shortened only if Democrats agree to change the rules. She says a partisan rules change without Democratic votes would encourage them to run roughshod over the minority-party rights when they someday take back the chamber. Republicans control 51 seats, but with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) away from the Senate indefinitely while he undergoes treatment for brain cancer, they have an effective majority of only 50 seats and could not afford a single defection if the nuclear option were triggered. No Democrat is expected to vote for the rules change. Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune (S.D.) said GOP leaders will first try to get 67 or 60 votes to shorten debate time. If that doesn’t work, all options are on the table, he said. “This idea that they can continue to use the clock the way they are to just stall us and kill time in the Senate, I think, is crying out for action,” Thune said. “Our members might raise it with him,” he added the lunch with Trump on Tuesday. Republicans say Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) has slowed down the pace of confirmation votes by requiring hours to pass on the floor before final confirmation votes. Senate rules require 30 hours to elapse for each nominee after the Senate votes on cloture to formally end debate and set up a final vote. The measure passed by the Rules Committee last month would limit that post-cloture time to two hours for district court nominees and to eight hours for most executive branch nominees. It would maintain the 30-hour rule for Supreme Court, circuit court and Cabinet-level nominees. As of May 10, Trump has sent 194 nominees to the Senate that had not yet been confirmed, according to the Partnership for Public Service. Meanwhile the number of vacancies on circuit, district and other federal courts has reached 149, according to uscourts.gov. Trump has repeatedly pressed McConnell to change the Senate’s rules unilaterally to speed work on his agenda, only to be repeatedly rebuffed. He urged Senate Republicans in January to use the nuclear option to pass an omnibus spending deal over Democratic objections. “If stalemate continues, Republicans should go to 51% (Nuclear Option) and vote on real, long term budget,” he tweeted. Changes to Senate rules are just one of the items expected to be on the agenda for Tuesday’s lunch. Trump and Senate Republicans are likely to discuss GOP messaging on the tax law and the president’s upcoming diplomatic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, among other things. A senior Republican aide said Trump would set the agenda at the meeting, noting he could also talk about the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem or his decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. The meeting will also give Republican senators a chance to press a few points of their own, notably their concerns over the administration’s trade agenda, which has raised fears of a global trade war. Some Republicans, such as Cruz, may also use the opportunity to push for another attempt at repealing ObamaCare. Cruz argued to the Senate GOP conference in a meeting before the May recess that leadership should set up another special budget process known as reconciliation to pass health-care reform with 51 Republican votes. But like rules reform, health care is an issue that divides the conference. Murkowski, Collins and other moderates don’t want to plunge into another partisan debate without consensus within the party over how to replace ObamaCare, which gave states billions of dollars to expand health insurance coverage across the country. | |
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| 05-14-18 06:01pm - 2320 days | #671 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Are there Jews who are prejudiced? Of course. Do we make them more powerful, more successful? Sometimes. ----------- ----------- U.S. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Blessed by Rabbi Who Compared Black People to Monkeys in Jerusalem Newsweek Ewan Palmer,Newsweek 14 hours ago Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner received a blessing in Jerusalem from a controversial rabbi who once compared black people to monkeys. The pair received a blessing from Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef on Sunday (May 11) during a visit to Israel ahead of the controversial opening of the new U.S. embassy. As reported by Forward, Yosef was criticised earlier this year for calling black people monkeys as he appeared to specifically attack African Americans during a sermon. During the talk, Yosef used the word “kushi”—a word used by the Talmud but considered a pejorative term for a black person in Modern Hebrew—before comparing the hypothetical man to a monkey. “You can’t make the blessing on every ‘kushi’ you see—in America you see one every five minutes, so you make it only on a person with a white father and mother,” the chief rabbi said, reported the Times of Israel. “How do would you know? Let’s say you know. So they had a monkey as a son, a son like this, so you say the blessing on him.” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned the chief rabbi’s comments as “utterly unacceptable.” Responding to the outcry, Yosef’s office said there was a religious context to the comparison made in the rabbi’s weekly sermon, adding he was merely citing the Talmud. Yosef has made controversial comments in the past. In 2016, he described how “non-Jews shouldn’t live in the land of Israel” and that the only reason non-Jewish people should remain in Israel was to serve Jews as slaves. “It is unconscionable that the Chief Rabbi, an official representative of the State of Israel, would express such intolerant and ignorant views about Israel’s non-Jewish population—including the millions of non-Jewish citizens,” Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO, and Carole Nuriel, acting Director of ADL’s Israel Office, said in a joint statement at the time. He also used his weekly sermon to describe secular women as “animals” because they do not dress modestly. His father, Ovadia Yosef, who died in 2013, was also a chief rabbi known for making controversial statements during his sermons, including describing Holocaust victims as the “reincarnations of the souls of sinners." Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are among five U.S. officials who will attend the ceremony to open the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem after its move from Tel Aviv, along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and Jason Greenblatt, special representative for international negotiations. President Donald Trump will not be in attendance in Jerusalem. This article was first written by Newsweek | |
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| 05-14-18 06:18pm - 2320 days | #672 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Torture expert tells man who waterboarded himself in support of CIA nominee, that his waterboarding was fake. "You're just holding your breath." Which is not how real waterboarding is performed. So like I wrote earlier, the man who waterboarded himself, if he was sincere, should have had his buddies put two .357 Magnum rounds into the man's head, as proof of his devotion to Trump and torture. That would have been sincere. And demonstrated that the man was suicidal. End of story. ------ ------ https://www.yahoo.com/news/torture-exper...ghter-150015057.html Torture Expert Tells MMA Fighter Who Waterboarded Himself in Support of Gina Haspel 'You’re Just Holding Your Breath' Newsweek Nicole Rojas,Newsweek 10 hours ago An expert on torture gave a brief lesson on waterboarding to Tim Kennedy, a former Green Beret and MMA fighter, who posted a video of himself being subjected to waterboarding in support of CIA nominee Gina Haspel. “Wrong. That’s not how it’s done. You’re just holding your breath,” Malcolm Nance tweeted at Kennedy on Saturday. Nance, a former counterterrorism and intelligence officer for the United States government, is the executive director of a non-profit defense research institute called TAPSTRI. “As a former SERE instructor & #Waterboarding qual’d resistance team member I can tell you it’s about aggression, intent, tiedown, pour technique, rate of flow & other factors," he continued. "It’s a Nazis/Commie torture. Deal w/it.” | |
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| 05-14-18 06:52pm - 2320 days | #673 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Donald Trump, a man of honesty, character, and with an eye to the main chance. Would Donald Trump demean the office of the President to make a few dollars? Of course not. He would not be so cheap. But maybe, for $500 million, he might agree to help China out. ---------- ---------- Trump Orders Help For Chinese Phone-Maker After China Approves Money For Trump Project HuffPost S.V. Date,HuffPost 3 hours ago WASHINGTON – A mere 72 hours after the Chinese government agreed to put a half-billion dollars into an Indonesian project that will personally enrich Donald Trump, the president ordered a bailout for a Chinese-government-owned cellphone maker. “President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast,” Trump announced on Twitter Sunday morning. “Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!” Trump did not mention in that tweet or its follow-ups that on Thursday, the developer of a theme park resort outside of Jakarta had signed a deal to receive as much as $500 million in Chinese government loans, as well as another $500 million from Chinese banks. Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, has a deal to license the Trump name to the resort, which includes a golf course and hotels. Trump, despite his promises to do so during the campaign, has not divested himself of his businesses, and continues to profit from them. “You do a good deal for him, he does a good deal for you. Quid pro quo,” said Richard Painter, the White House ethics lawyer for former President George W. Bush and now a Democratic candidate for Senate in Minnesota. “This appears to be yet another violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution,” Painter said, referring to the prohibition against the president receiving payments from foreign governments. The White House did not respond to HuffPost queries asking if there was a connection between the “MNC Lido City” project and Trump’s directive regarding ZTE. At Monday’s daily briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah referred questions about the Indonesian project to the Trump Organization. “That’s not something that I can speak to,” he said. The Trump Organization on Monday acknowledged its involvement in the resort, but did not respond to questions about how much the company would make from its licensing or management fees. ZTE phones have already been described as a security risk by the U.S. military and intelligence community. Two weeks ago, the military banned their use on bases for fear they could be used to track the locations of service members. The company, which is owned 33 percent by Chinese-government-owned enterprises, had been fined $1.2 billion last year after it was found to be violating U.S. sanctions against Iran and North Korea. After it was determined that ZTE officials had lied about their actions, the U.S. government last month banned it from purchasing U.S. components for seven years — a decision that essentially forced the company to shut down. Trump followed up late Monday afternoon with a new tweet on the issue: “ZTE, the large Chinese phone company, buys a big percentage of individual parts from U.S. companies. This is also reflective of the larger trade deal we are negotiating with China and my personal relationship with President Xi.” The new statement, however, still did not address the question of the Indonesian resort and the Trump Organization’s coming profit thanks to Chinese investment. “This is stunning. They perpetually find new things to surprise me,” said Robert Weissman, president of the open government advocacy group Public Citizen. “The idea of the president intervening in a law enforcement matter to satisfy a foreign government is extraordinary. And it’s extraordinary because it doesn’t happen. Opening that door threatens the integrity of all corporate law enforcement.” Shah, on other ZTE questions at the daily briefing, appeared to downplay the import of Trump’s directive to “get it done.” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will examine the matter “consistent with applicable laws and regulations,” Shah said. He acknowledged, however, that the issue is of great concern to the Chinese and its president, Xi Jinping. “In our bilateral relationship, there is a give and take,” Shah said. During his campaign, Trump attacked China almost daily for “stealing” U.S. jobs by manipulating its currency and using unfair trade practices. “No one has ever stolen jobs like other countries have taken from us,” Trump told a Nevada rally on Nov. 5, 2016. “We’ve lost 70,000 factories since China joined the WTO,” Trump told a Pittsburgh-area audience the following day. In recent months, Trump has been trying to craft a trade agreement with China at the same time he is asking for Xi’s help in cracking down on North Korea because of its nuclear weapons program. At a National Press Club speech Monday, Ross said that the ZTE sanctions were an enforcement action, unrelated to the trade negotiations, but that he would be reviewing the situation “very, very promptly” as a result of Trump’s request. For ethics advocates, the timing of the ZTE tweet on the heels of the Indonesian development announcement is yet another example of the consequences of Trump’s unwillingness to abide by the emoluments clause. “The Chinese government seems to have figured out a way to manipulate President Trump,” Weissman said. “It’s exactly why this anti-bribery clause of the Constitution is common sense.” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 05-15-18 12:30am - 2320 days | #674 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Business Michael Avenatti Threatens Daily Caller With Defamation Lawsuit Over ‘Hit Pieces,’ Email Shows Newsweek Jessica Kwong,Newsweek 11 hours ago Stormy Daniels’s attorney Michael Avenatti has made a name for himself while criticizing the actions of President Donald Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen, who arranged a nondisclosure agreement for Daniels, but an email sent by Avenatti suggests he took a page out of their playbook. In an email posted on Twitter Monday morning by Peter Hasson, a reporter for the conservative website The Daily Caller, Avenatti threatened to sue the website, Hasson and his colleague Joe Simonson if they continued to publish stories scrutinizing his business deals. The email from Avenatti, which started with “Off the Record,” was shared by Hasson a day after The Daily Caller published a story stating that Avenatti “has his own questionable history,” a past “littered with lawsuits, jilted business partners and bankruptcy filings,” and that people described him as “ruthless, greedy and unbothered by ethical questions.” In his tweet, Hasson wrote that Avenatti tried to call the email off the record, “which of course aren’t terms I agreed to since it was an uninvited email.” Avenatti’s email, with the subject line “Cut it Out,” stated, “Let me be clear. If you and your colleagues do not stop with the hit pieces that are full of lies and defamatory statements, I will have no choice but to sue each of you and your publication for defamation.” “During that process, we will expose your publication for what it truly is. We will also recover significant damages against each of you that participated personally,” the email read. “So if I were you, I would tell Mr. Trump to find someone else to fabricate things about me. If you think I’m kidding, you really don’t know anything about me. This is the last warning.” Avenatti threatening tone bears a striking resemblance to that of the president, whom his client Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is suing over a nondisclosure agreement regarding an alleged affair. Clifford claims the agreement is invalid because Trump did not sign it. Trump and Cohen, also similarly, have on many occasions threatened journalists who cast them in a negative light. Avenatti did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Newsweek on Monday. This article was first written by Newsweek | |
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| 05-15-18 01:19am - 2320 days | #675 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
White House can’t explain how Chinese financing of Trump-linked project doesn’t violate Constitution "I'll have to refer you to the Trump Organization." Aaron Rupar May 14, 2018, 3:51 pm Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah cannot explain how the Trump Organization’s involvement in a project in Indonesia partially financed by the Chinese government adheres to the Constitution’s emoluments clause and Trump’s personal promise not to pursue new foreign business deals while he’s president. “The Trump Organization is involved in a project in Indonesia building hotels, golf courses, residences — it is getting up to $500 million in backing from the Chinese government,” Noah Bierman of the Los Angeles Times said during Monday’s press briefing. “Can you explain the administration’s position on A, how this doesn’t violate the emoluments clause; and B, how this wouldn’t violate the president’s own promise that his private organization would not be getting involved in new foreign deals while he was president?” Shah didn’t even attempt to answer Bierman’s question. “I’ll have to refer you to the Trump Organization,” he said. Bierman pushed back, pointing out to Shah that “the Trump Organization can’t speak on behalf of the president as the president — the head of the federal government, the one who is responsible, who needs to assure the American people, and they don’t have that responsibility.” But Shah wouldn’t budge. “You’re asking about a private organization’s dealings that may have to do with a foreign government. It’s not something I can speak to,” he said, before calling on another reporter. A National Review report about the Chinese government’s involvement in financing “an Indonesian theme park that will feature a Trump-branded golf course and hotels” came just one day after Trump posted a bizarre tweet on behalf of the Chinese phone company ZTE — a company that had been hit hard by the Commerce Department for violating a ban on American companies “selling components to ZTE for seven years after it illegally shipped goods made with U.S. parts to Iran and North Korea,” according to Reuters. During Monday’s briefing, reporters repeatedly grilled Shah about what prompted Trump’s tweet promising to help ZTE — especially since the tweet came on the heels of a campaign in which Trump accused China of “the greatest single theft in the history of the world,” saying things like, “we can’t continue to allow China to rape our country.” Shah had no good answers for them. “This is part of a complex relationship between the United States and China that involves economic issues, national security issues, and the like,” Shah said at one point, in response to a question about what motivated Trump’s tweet. Later, another reporter asked Shah why Trump wants the Commerce Department to review sanctions on ZTE in the first place. “The president has asked Secretary Ross to look into the matter,” Shah said, adding that “the issue has been raised at many levels by the Chinese government with various levels of our administration.” “So just raising the issue is enough to spawn a presidential tweet and directive?” the reporter pressed. “It’s a significant issue of concern for the Chinese government, you know, and in our bilateral issue there’s a give an take,” Shah replied. The emoluments clause is a provision in the U.S. Constitution prohibiting presidents from leveraging their office into gifts from foreign governments. Trump is the only modern president to refuse to divest from his business interests upon taking office. Despite promising before his inauguration not to profit from foreign governments, there is little evidence Trump has followed through on his commitment. Meanwhile, foreign governments and diplomats have made a show of spending money at his properties. | |
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| 05-15-18 09:10am - 2319 days | #676 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
It's impressive how Republicans can talk so tough about truth, integrity, and core values. Individual responsibility. Not taking bailouts from the Federal government because each individual should have personal responsibility. But often times, when you examine the personal record of these politicians, you find a different picture: where they have lied, or presented a different picture of the truth than what is normally accepted, or they have used the Federal government, to the best of their ability, to make money from whatever Federal programs they could. Here is a case where a Republican candidate says we should not take bailouts for underwater mortgages, even if we were the victims of predatory financing or misleading applications. So even if we were screwed, we should toughen up and accept that it was our own fault, and not beg for help from the government. And to prove her ideas, she tells that she herself has an underwater mortgage. Except: There is no record of her underwater mortgage. Not on the financial disclosures she's required to file. Her spokesperson gave contradictory answers when questioned about the non-existing mortgage. First, that there was no mortgage. Then, that there was a mortgage, but it was not shown on the financial report, which would be an error, except that there was no error on the financial report. (It must be a political reality that you can say a fact is a fact, and at the next moment, say the fact is not a fact.) But Donald Trump does this all the time. He's an expert on facts that are not facts. On fake news. But he's not the only Republican who can't tell the difference between lies, exaggerations, and facts. --------- --------- Arizona Senate candidate kept talking about her mortgage. We can’t find it anywhere. Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ) told a 2012 Tea Party rally that "the bank still owns most of it." Josh Israel May 15, 2018, 8:42 am Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ), who is currently seeking her party’s nomination for retiring Sen. Jeff Flake’s (R) open seat, promised during her 2012 Congressional campaign that “truthfulness” and “integrity” would be “core values” of her campaigns. But that truthfulness may not have applied to her required disclosure statements. Last week, ThinkProgress reported that as a House candidate, McSally argued that the federal government should not take action to help underwater mortgage holders — even those who were victims of predatory lending and misleading terms — because she believed in “individual responsibility.” Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ) in 2015 No bailout for subprime mortgage victims, said Martha McSally. Try personal responsibility instead. In that April 2012 candidates’ forum, she noted that she could relate to those who owed more on their mortgages than the properties were even worth because of her own experience investing in undeveloped real estate. “I bought land in Elgin in 2006. Oh, it had been climbing, climbing, climbing and, guess what, it was right before it all fell. I’m upside down on that as well,” she said, referencing 18 acres she owns in the Elgin Estates lots near Tucson, valued at between $100,001 and $250,000. A ThinkProgress review of McSally’s financial disclosures since 2012 found no disclosure of any mortgage on that property (though she has reported owning the Elgin acres). Her initial filing included an October 2002 Bank of America Home Loans mortgage on her Tucson home and a separate USAA home equity line of credit on that. Her 2014 disclosure said that both were paid off in March 2013 thanks to a VA refinance (McSally was a longtime Air Force officer prior to her political career) and replaced with a Wells Fargo Bank Mortgage. Since 2015, she has also listed a separate September 2015 mortgage. The instructions on the disclosure forms — mandatory for House candidates and Members of Congress — require the reporting of “liabilities of over $10,000 owed to any one creditor at any time during the reporting period.” While that excludes mortgages on any personal residence that does not yield rental income, automobile loans, household furniture or appliances, business liabilities, and liabilities to family members, it would appear to include a large mortgage on undeveloped investment real estate on which McSally does not live. Asked for that initial story why her disclosure forms did not include any mortgage on the Elgin land, her spokesperson said in an email that the “Congresswoman has no loan on Elgin address, and it is therefore not a liability for her to disclose.” But another 2012 campaign speech makes it clear that, at least back then, she did have a massive mortgage on that land — one that was simply not disclosed. That year, in a February 22 speech to the overflow crowd outside a Tucson Tea Party event, McSally said that she had been raised in Rhode Island but owned two properties in her adopted home state of Arizona. “I bought some land in Elgin in 2006, although the bank still owns most of it,” she told the crowd. And just days before, in a radio interview, she said, “I own 18 acres of land in Elgin, although I haven’t paid it off yet, so I guess I don’t really own it.” Her office responded to a ThinkProgress requesting additional clarification about the discrepancy, and the same spokesperson appeared to contradict her previous claim that she had no loan on that property. “Were her forms incorrect? Answer: No. Or was she wrong in her 2012 speech? Answer: No,” wrote the spokesperson in an email. “Both her forms and 2012 speech were correct.” The discovery comes weeks after the Federal Election Commission (FEC) unanimously approved an audit that found McSally’s 2014 House campaign did not correctly report its finances and failed to collect employment information for more than 1,200 individual contributions. Aaron Scherb, director of legislative affairs for the nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause, told ThinkProgress that there is “unfortunately very little enforcement and verification of anything that’s contained in the [financial disclosure] reports” and that unless it was a pattern of intentional misstatements, the penalty is seldom more than a small fine. Still, he notes, erroneous disclosures like these undermine public trust. “I think every candidate or member of congress is ultimately responsible for the information that they include in their financial disclosure reports and FEC reports,” he concluded. “Repeated mistakes and errors can certainly undermine public confidence in an elected official’s ability to carry out one’s duties in public office.” | |
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| 05-15-18 10:14am - 2319 days | #677 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
You have to admire the genius (or is it the craziness) of some of these Supreme Court Judges who are appointed for life. Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court judge: And dissenting from the landmark same-sex marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges, he wrote that state benefits like marriage have nothing to do with dignity, stating that “slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits.” Marriage has nothing to do with dignity (I guess this means he can dis-respect his wife?). Slaves did not lose their dignity because the government allowed them to be enslaved. (Slaves are proud to be slaves, which is why it's unfortunate the US has outlawed slavery.) And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits.” (Poor people are better off as individuals, if they have no money to buy food, or get medical help, or shelter, because then they can be proud individuals who can die on their own.) Republicans, conservatives, thinking like true American individualists. Just like Donald Trump, who ignores the Constitution, when he: 1. keeps his business interests while acting as President of the US, which is an ethical violation of the US Constitution, but Trump has no ethics. 2. allows a deal with China, where China invests $500 million in a project that Trump's business will brand and manage, with $500 million more in Chinese bank loans. And a few days later, tweets his administration to help a Chinese phone company that was blacklisted one month earlier for violations, the blacklist was supposed to last 7 years, but Trump wants the blacklist lifted immediately. Corruption, graft, in plain sight, and Trump has not been indicted or impeached, with all the scandals about his administration? --------- --------- TWO IS A CONSTITUENCY Justices Thomas and Gorsuch Just Hinted They Would End Privacy as We Know It President Trump’s addition to the Supreme Court sides with the bench’s ‘originalist’—and it has terrifying implications for your rights. Jay Michaelson 05.15.18 4:26 AM ET This week, in the case of Byrd v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a person driving a rental car has the right to privacy—that is, not to have the car searched without probable cause—even if he’s not listed on the rental contract. It’s an interesting case, especially for law students, but not earth-shattering. But the short concurring opinion by Justice Thomas, which Justice Gorsuch joined, is a terrifying warning to anyone who cares about privacy in the age of digital surveillance. “I have serious doubts about the ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ test,” Justice Thomas began. At which point my eyes popped out of my head. For more than half a century, the “reasonable expectation of privacy” has been a bedrock of Fourth Amendment law in the United States. It is what keeps us safe from arbitrary government searches in our cars, in schools, and everywhere else outside the home. It is the doctrine whose boundaries are continually tested in the world of Big Data. And it is apparently a principle doubted by two justices of the Supreme Court. To be sure, the words “reasonable expectation of privacy” do not appear in the Constitution, which is what irks “originalists” like Gorsuch and Thomas. Rather, the Fourth Amendment states that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” That phrase covered the field in 1791. At the time, there were far fewer ways in which governmental searches might otherwise take place, particularly if you were the kind of propertied white male the text had in mind. And the Framers were clearly reacting against British army’s use of the “general warrant” to search people’s homes without any specific cause. Well, times have changed. A crucial case this term, for example, is Carpenter v. United States. There, the question is whether the government needs a warrant to obtain a person’s location data from cellphone-tower records. It’s a close case, and it could go either way. But however it turns out, the “reasonable expectation of privacy” will be the standard the court uses—not some imaginary world in which the Founders knew about cellphones. And so it has been for 50 years, since Katz v. United States, in 1957. Courts have determined that people have a reasonable (i.e. objective, rather than subjective) expectation of privacy exists not just in one’s person and property, but also in cars (to a more limited extent), hotel rooms, phone booths (that was the question in Katz), and phone records, but not garbage left out for collection, public documents one has signed (for obtaining a handwriting sample), or prison cells. And, this week, to rental cars a person is driving even if they’re not listed on the rental agreement. The Katz standard is not perfect. It requires the court to decide what society deems to be reasonable—“understandings that are recognized and permitted by society,” in the words of one case. That’s a moving target and a better subject for sociologists than jurists. Katz also rejects, but still mostly maintains, the general understanding that a “search” is about a physical intrusion into a private space. It’s a messy test. But Justice Thomas’ alternative is far more problematic. Returning to the text of the Fourth Amendment, he writes, “The issue, then, is whether Byrd can prove that the rental car was his effect. That issue seems to turn on at least three threshold questions. First, what kind of property interest do individuals need before something can be considered “their... effec[t]” under the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment? Second, what body of law determines whether that property interest is present—modern state law, the common law of 1791, or something else? Third, is the unauthorized use of a rental car illegal or otherwise wrongful under the relevant law [and does it] affect the Fourth Amendment analysis?” This half century of judicial time travel would erase privacy rights as we know them today. It’s hard to see how one’s cellphone records, for example, count as a personal effect (i.e. personal property). Or one’s web browser history, as tracked by an internet service provider. Or digital records of any kind, for that matter, unless they include a specific property interest. Originalism is one thing, but limiting the Constitution to property rights cognizable in the days of the horse and carriage is another. As in many other areas of Justice Thomas’ jurisprudence—civil rights chief among them—his principles would create a majoritarian republic that looks nothing like American democracy today. Nor is Justice Thomas’ “originalism” at all consistent. The same day he railed against the “reasonable expectation of privacy,” he joined the court in expanding the doctrine of “anti-commandeering,” which is also not found in the Constitution. “Originalism is one thing, but limiting the Constitution to property rights cognizable in the days of the horse & carriage is another.” Now, Justice Thomas has been writing crazy things for a long time. In the abortion case of Whole Women’s Health, he said that since the time of FDR, the Supreme Court’s constitutional jurisprudence is an “unworkable morass of special exceptions and arbitrary applications.” And dissenting from the landmark same-sex marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges, he wrote that state benefits like marriage have nothing to do with dignity, stating that “slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits.” That is, to put it mildly, an idiosyncratic view. What’s different is that now, there are, in effect, two Justice Thomases, due to the addition of Justice Gorsuch to the court, which, of course, was the result of unprecedented and democracy-shattering malfeasance on the part of Senate Republicans who refused to even consider the nomination of Merrick Garland. One weird, quirky justice is an outlier. Two begins to look like a constituency. Nor is this the first time that Justices Gorsuch and Thomas have together tacked to the right of the court’s conservative members. In a case about providing government funding to a church playground, the conservative majority held that such funding was not an unconstitutional support of a church, since it was offered to all playgrounds. Gorsuch wrote (and Thomas joined) that it was support of a church, and that was just fine. In another case last year, the court struck down Arkansas’ policy of listing straight couples who use artificial insemination on a child’s birth certificate, but not listing gay couples who do similarly. Justice Gorsuch (joined by Justices Thomas and Alito) wrote that “marriage” under Obergefell doesn’t mean equal marriage. It used to be that Republicans wanted another Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court: Someone with intellectual heft who moved the mainstream to the right while respecting the basic contours of Supreme Court jurisprudence. Increasingly, though, they now say they want another Justice Thomas: Someone who’ll throw out the baby with the bathwater, junk decades of precedent because he doesn’t like them, and radically remake the American state. In Justice Gorsuch, it seems like they’ve got one. | |
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| 05-15-18 11:23am - 2319 days | #678 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Obama ethics chief accuses Trump of violating emoluments clause: 'See you in court Mr. Trump' By Avery Anapol - 05/15/18 07:21 AM EDT Norm Eisen, the top ethics official under former President Obama, is accusing President Trump of violating the Constitution's emoluments clause. Eisen on Monday tweeted in response to a recent report that a major development project linked to Trump in Indonesia is expected to be supported by $500 million from the Chinese government. “This is a violation of the Emoluments Clause,” Eisen tweeted. “A big one. See you in court Mr. Trump.” The South China Morning Post reported that $500 million in Chinese government loans will support construction of MNC Lido City, a billion-dollar resort and theme park project that will feature Trump-branded hotels and a golf course. Richard Painter, former President George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer, also told the South China Morning Post that the project could violate the emoluments clause and said he “would have advised” Trump to sell his holdings in the project. Trump’s involvement in the project was solidified in 2015, according to the paper. Trump announced in a tweet over the weekend that surprised many in Washington that he was working with Chinese President Xi Jinping to boost Chinese telecommunications company ZTE, which was under a U.S. import ban for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. The report also comes after several weeks of back-and-forth on tariffs between the U.S. and China. Trump is already facing two lawsuits, both as the president and as an individual, for allegedly violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bans elected officials from financially benefitting from foreign governments. A federal judge in December dismissed another emoluments clause lawsuit against Trump that was brought by watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Trump has retained ownership of his company, though he handed control over to his two sons. Critics and ethics watchdogs say Trump is violating the clause whenever foreign governments make use of his hotels or golf courses. Trump has asked a federal judge to dismiss one of the lawsuits. | |
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| 05-15-18 11:30am - 2319 days | #679 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
NEWS FLASH: I just heard a news video where Melania Trump speaks. She is a foreigner. Who speaks broken English. She must be deported. Aliens not needed or wanted in Trump-USA. And if Trump had her imported under a concealed entry law, he must be prosecuted for allowing Broken-Speaking Foreigners into our Proud, White, English-Speaking land. Trump-USA is for White, English speaking natives. Get rid of the foreign rabble and misfits who are trying to enter. Where is the Great Wall that Donald Trump promised us? Shame on Donald Trump, the Great Liar, who makes empty promises. And marries these Evil women, who drain him of his money. (Except Trump is smart, and has all his wives sign agreements before he marries them.) | |
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| 05-15-18 12:34pm - 2319 days | #680 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
One problem with this article that says Trump has a problem whether to admit making the payoff to Stormy Daniels or not: There is no discussion of what penalties Trump might face, if he does not disclose making the payment(s) to Stormy Daniels. Apparently the penalties for failing to fully list all items on a financial disclosure form can be very little: Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, made numerous omissions on his financial disclosure forms. He filed an additional letter listing over $10 million in undisclosed holdings plus numerous business assets that were not listed. The White House (run by Trump) said that Jared Kushner was in compliance with applicable laws and regulations. However, it's my belief that if Jared had taken out a .357 Magnum revolver and shot dead 10 Democrats, the White House would automatically back Jard by stating "Jared was in fear of his life and only fired in self-defense." So what are the real, practical penalties Trump would face if he ignored the Stormy Daniels payment on his disclosure document? A fight in court, where he will be sending his lawyers to attack Stormy Daniels anyway? How long will it take Mueller or anyone in the Justice Department to find evidence to impeach Trump for crimes? Collusion with Russia? Improper payment to Stormy Daniels? Graft or bribe from foreign countries (the China investment in Trump project in Indonesia?). ---------- ---------- Financial disclosure deadline traps Trump in a dilemma of his own making A dilemma for a president who does not like to admit mistakes. Judd Legum May 15, 2018, 2:17 pm US President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the 37th Annual National Peace Officers' Memorial Service at the U.S. Capitol Building on May 15, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (CREDIT: Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images) US President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the 37th Annual National Peace Officers' Memorial Service at the U.S. Capitol Building on May 15, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (CREDIT: Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images) By the end of the day Tuesday, President Donald Trump must file his federal financial disclosure form. This document presents Trump with a dilemma: He must come clean about the nature of the payments made to Stormy Daniels, or else compound his legal problems. The issue at hand is the $130,000 payment that was made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in October 2016 by Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen. For the bulk of his time in office, Trump has assiduously denied all knowledge of the payment and Cohen, through another attorney, has stuck to his claim that he had never been reimbursed. Advertisement On May 2, however, Trump’s newly installed attorney Rudy Giuliani appeared on Hannity and upended everything, revealing that Trump had reimbursed Cohen for the money in a series of monthly payments over the course of 2017. If Cohen’s payment to Daniels was a campaign expense, made to improve Trump’s chances of winning the election, it presents Trump and Cohen with a host of legal problems. But even it was not made for that purpose, as Giuliani sometimes claims, it was a debt that Trump was required to disclose on his June 14, 2017 financial disclosure. He did not. Signature page of Trump's financial disclosure, filed June 14, 2017 Signature page of Trump's financial disclosure, filed June 14, 2017 In interviews, Giuliani admitted that Trump was “aware that Michael incurred expenses to help him” and “Michael [Cohen] knew he’d be reimbursed for it.” (Giuliani claims that Cohen’s payment was an “expense,” not a loan — a distinction that is not recognized under the law.) The Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has argued that Trump’s failure to disclose his debt to Cohen in June 2017 was a violation of federal law, including “18 U.S.C. § 1001 and the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 (‘EIGA’).” The law requires Trump to disclose the “identity and category of value of the total liabilities owed to any creditor . . . which exceed $10,000 at any time during the preceding calendar year.” Advertisement This next filing, due Tuesday, covers the calendar year 2017. Trump is faced with a difficult decision. He can come clean, report the debt he owed to Cohen over the course of 2017, and attempt to limit his legal exposure. Alternatively, Trump can again omit the debt, making his legal problems even worse. Apparently, Trump also owed Cohen additional money in 2017 for unknown reasons. (Total payments to Cohen from Trump over 2017 exceeded $350,000, according to Giuliani.) The nature of those debts may also have to be disclosed. The clock is ticking. | |
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| 05-16-18 08:34am - 2318 days | #681 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
People want Stormy Daniels lawyer to disappear. Or to make nice. While Trump and his lawyers smear Stormy Daniels lawyer and Stormy Daniels herself. One critic says the news does not hold Avenatti accountable. Accountable for what? I haven't heard or read any news items where Avenatti has made outlandish claims. He seems to speak well, clearly, and does not make claims or statements he can't back up. Instead, the opposing side, which seems to be led by Rudy Guiliani currently, has lied, made contradictory statements, tried to smear both Avenatti and Stormy Daniels. Has Trump or Guiliani been held accountable? In what way? They are asked questions, they can tell whatever statements that turn out to be contradictory or lies, and smears, or false, and they keep on lying and smearing Avenatti and Daniels. People are either stupid or make no sense? You are going to fight Trump and his team of lawyers by being Mr. Nice Guy? You will be crushed. Which is what they want. If Avenatti can prove or convince a judge or jury that the Daily Caller (conservative news that is attacking Avenatti for Trump's defense) has lied or libelled or committed any actions that can be punished by a lawsuit, I see no reason Avenatti can't sue them for whatever they are worth. Understand, Trump and his lawyers have threatened to sue Stormy Daniels for millions of dollars. Money she does not have. They want to destroy her. Based on a Non Disclosure Agreement that President Trump did not sign. The NDA might not be valid. But Trump and Cohen want to destroy Daniels, and silence her, based on a potentially non-legal NDA. So Avenatti is not supposed to fight back? He is supposed to roll over and play dead, while Trump and his lawyers smear both him and his client? Get real, people. -------- -------- Critics: Stormy Daniels Lawyer Michael Avenatti Went Too Far With Daily Caller Threat The Wrap Jon Levine,The Wrap 16 hours ago Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, has walked between raindrops in recent media appearances, skipping gleefully from “60 Minutes” to CNN to MSNBC. But with a threat to sue reporters at the conservative Daily Caller, he may finally have slipped. It was a “very Trump-like reaction to a media platform,” frequent MSNBC contributor Kurt Bardella told TheWrap, adding that Avenatti has until now received “kind of a free pass from character scrutiny” in the mainstream media. Conservative news outlets have groused for months about Avenatti, whose client, aka Stephanie Clifford, received a $130,000 payment from Trump attorney Michael Cohen in October 2016. A Washington Free Beacon story Friday calculated that he has received $175 million worth of media time in 108 CNN and MSNBC appearances since early March. The Daily Caller got in on the action Sunday: Reporters Peter Hasson and Joe Simonson wrote an article that said: “Avenatti’s past is littered with lawsuits, jilted business partners and bankruptcy filings.” On Monday, Avenatti sent Hasson an email threatening to sue him and Simonson. “Let me be clear. If you and your colleagues do not stop with the hit pieces that are full of lies and defamatory statements, I will have no choice but to sue each of you and your publication for defamation,” he wrote. “If you think I’m kidding, you really don’t know anything about me. This is the last warning.” Bardella is one of the rare people who can see the issue from the left and the right. He was a rising Republican star and former Breitbart spokesperson before he became a Democrat last year. “I thought immediately that it revealed a thin-skinned side of him that we have not seen or didn’t know existed given this media crush that has been unfolding for the last two months,” Bardella said of Avenatti’s legal threat. Avenatti’s swashbuckling attacks on Trump have made him a hero to some Trump opponents, as he has accused the president of sleeping with his porn-star client in 2006 and then trying to silence her through threats and Cohen’s payment. But others have tired of Avenatti. “I have had friends who don’t like Trump roll their eyes when he now comes on,” said Jon Nicosia, a former managing editor of Mediaite who spoke with TheWrap. “He has morphed from the lawyer of a porn star that may have slept with Trump to a go-to anti-Trump (and Trump associates) pundit. He’s been on shows where Stormy never comes up.” Joe Concha, media reporter for The Hill, added that Avenatti is “accomplished at making threats and promises he can’t back up.” But Concha said the news media doesn’t hold Avenatti accountable. Concha said that Avenatti tweeted a picture of a mysterious disc before he and Daniels appeared on “60 Minutes” in March — but never explained what the disc contains. “Where is that disc he tweeted out that was supposed to be the smoking gun for his client who is largely forgotten now?” Concha asked. “Why not present that evidence in the more than 100 interviews he’s conducted on CNN and MSNBC in the past two months alone? And why don’t any hosts press him on that?” Concha said more reporters would stand with the Daily Caller reporters if they worked for “any non-conservative outlet.” Avenatti did not immediately respond to request for comment. But he has taken the Trump approach of always attacking, and making no apologies. On Monday evening, Avenatti offered a vigorous defense of his email to Hasson, telling CNN’s Don Lemon that journalists who were “unethical” needed to be called out. (Lemon’s boyfriend later told Simonson, one of the Caller reporters, that the media is soft on Avenatti.) Avenatti later blocked both Hasson and Simonson on Twitter. The president has also been known to block reporters who harangue him with critical coverage. So is this the end of Avenatti’s reign at CNN and MSNBC? Not likely, said Bardella, who said he thinks the media will forgive the Trumpian outburst from Avenatti if he continues to make news. He also said it is easier for the mainstream media to overlook the bullying of a conservative outlet. “Writing that to the Daily Caller brings a very different reception than writing it to the Daily Beast,” said Bardella. | |
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| 05-16-18 08:58am - 2318 days | #682 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Is President Donald Trump getting his presidential pardons ready for Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner? Or will he let Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner go to prison, where they can learn humility and respect for the law, to be better people like President Trump? Enquiring minds want to know. Let's ask Sarah Huckabee Sanders, since she's the one person, besides Trump himself, who knows all the secrets of the Trump administration. She's the friendly sort, who is glad to explain how President Trump is making America great again. ------------ ------------ President’s aides believe Donald Trump, Jr. and Jared Kushner could be indicted: report The silence has driven President Donald Trump “mad,” according to MSNBC’s John Heilemann Travis Gettys May 14, 2018 5:46pm (UTC) This article originally appeared on Raw Story. The special counsel investigation has resulted in four guilty pleas and 19 indictments — but no one in Washington knows what could come next, because Robert Mueller isn’t talking. Many Trump aides and associates believe the president will ultimately be exonerated in the probe, but they told the Washington Post that Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner could be indicted. “The interactions with the Mueller team have been limited for this White House,” said the Post‘s Robert Costa, who reported the story. “Officials go in as witnesses, (Rudy) Giuliani, the former New York mayor, working as the president’s personal lawyer and interacting with some of the Mueller prosecutors and FBI agents.” Costa told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that a meeting with a Russian attorney set up by Trump Jr. and attended by both Kushner and Manafort remains under scrutiny by Mueller, who’s also looking into possible efforts by the president to obstruct the investigation of that Trump Tower meeting. “They also feel like there’s this variable inside the probe with regard to the president’s family,” Costa said. “Some of his advisers, they know about Gen. (Mike) Flynn, they know about others like (Paul) Manafort, who have been indicted and are about to go to trial. But those who haven’t even been interviewed, or with Mr. Kushner, they’re not sure where this is going, and that’s part of the problem for this White House. That’s why Giuliani said the president is trying to work on foreign affairs, because they just don’t know how long Mueller will take when it comes to the conduct question of the investigation and the collusion aspect.” New York Times reporter Nick Confessore said Mueller may be the quietest but most powerful man in Washington, D.C., and MSNBC’s John Heilemann said that silence had driven the president mad. “It makes Trump crazy,” Heilemann said. That leaves plenty of room for attorney Michael Avenatti, who’s suing the president on behalf of porn actress Stormy Daniels, to antagonize the president with findings from his own investigation. “All he gets is more Avenatti in his face,” Heilemann said. “It’s like there’s a double teamed yin-yang thing going on that I think is part of the mental gamesmanship that’s put Trump on defense.” He noted that Trump stopped his personal attacks last week and left Vice President Mike Pence, White House chief of staff John Kelly and attorney Rudy Giuliani to push back against the Mueller probe. “That’s how a normal White House would go about making the argument, not have the president on Twitter or acting in a histrionic way,” Heilemann said. “You wonder if for all the other noise whether they’re finding their way towards a more conventional strategy of trying to undermine the various probes under which they’re operating.” | |
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| 05-16-18 09:29am - 2318 days | #683 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The Republicans stand for high morals, clean conduct, and the Great American Way. If they were looking for dirt on Hilary Clinton, it was only to make America clean. All for a good cause. Democrats are slimeball creatures, who should be thrown out of the country as soon as they finish their prison terms. Hail to Trump, President of Trump-America, King of the greatest land in the world. ---------- ---------- Trump Tower transcripts detail quest for dirt on Hillary Clinton Jeremy Herb By Jeremy Herb, CNN Updated 1608 GMT (0008 HKT) May 16, 2018 New documents released on 2016 Trump Tower meeting (CNN)Thousands of pages of interview transcripts with the participants of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting shed new light on how eager Donald Trump Jr. and senior members of the Trump campaign were to obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton — and how frustrated and angry they were that the material did not come to fruition. The nearly 2,000 pages of interviews do not appear to contain information that would change the course of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's team and Russia. But the transcripts released by the Senate Judiciary Committee fill in new details about how Trump Jr., President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort were expecting a bombshell from Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Rob Goldstone, the British music publicist who arranged the Trump Tower meeting, told the committee he was anticipating a "smoking gun" from Veselnitskaya when he urged Trump Jr. to take the meeting, even though he thought it was a "bad idea and that we shouldn't do it." "I just sent somebody an email that says I'm setting up a meeting for someone that is going to bring you damaging information about somebody who was running to become the President of the United States," Goldstone said. "I thought that was worthy of the words 'smoking gun,' yes." The Senate Judiciary Committee's release Wednesday of the Trump Tower transcripts and hundreds of pages of exhibits provide the most comprehensive view yet into the circumstances surrounding the controversial meeting and the details of the roughly 20-minute encounter, in which Trump's team was expecting dirt from Veselnitskaya. The meeting -- and whether President Trump knew about it -- has become a central focus of Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as well as the congressional Russia investigations. Trump Jr. has told House investigators that he did not communicate with his father about the meeting before it happened. The White House has said the President weighed in on a misleading statement his son issued after the meeting became publicly known, more than a year later. Trump Jr. — who had emailed Goldstone ahead of the meeting about the dirt, "if it's what you say I love it" — told congressional investigators he was interested in "listening to information" about Clinton in the June Trump Tower meeting. "I had no way of assessing where it came from, but I was willing to listen," he said. Trump Jr. also said he did not inform his father about the meeting ahead of time, because he didn't want to bring him "unsubstantiated" information. And when the damaging information didn't materialize, as Veselnitskaya focused on US sanctions on Russia under the Magnitsky Act that the US passed to punish Russian human rights abuses, the testimony gives new insight into how Trump's team reacted. "Jared Kushner, who is sitting next to me, appeared somewhat agitated by this and said, 'I really have no idea what you're talking about. Could you please focus a bit more and maybe just start again?'" Goldstone said of Kushner, who was not interviewed by the committee. "And I recall that she began the presentation exactly where she had begun it last time, almost word for word, which seemed, by his body language, to infuriate him even more." But there is also discrepancy between the meeting participants about how long Kushner was present. While Kushner and Trump Jr. have said the now-White House senior adviser left in the middle of the meeting, others who were there told the committee they remembered Kushner staying the whole time. The committee on Wednesday released transcripts and hundreds of pages of related material from nine people connected to the meeting. The documents contain a record of closed-door committee interviews with five of the eight meeting attendees, including Trump Jr., Goldstone, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, translator Anatoli Samochornov and Ike Kaveladze, a Russian with ties to oligarch Aras Agalarov. Following the documents' release, Trump Jr. said the transcripts show he "answered every question asked." "I appreciate the opportunity to have assisted the Judiciary Committee in its inquiry," Trump Jr. said in a statement, "The public can now see that for over five hours I answered every question asked and was candid and forthright with the Committee. I once again thank Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Feinstein, as well as other members of the Committee and their staff for their courtesy and professionalism." The committee's documents also included responses from Veselnitskaya, as well as a statement from Kushner and a page of notes from Manafort. The committee also included the formal release of the transcript of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, who was not at the Trump Tower meeting but whose transcript was unilaterally released in January by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. In January, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said he planned to release the transcripts because the committee's interviews connected to the Trump Tower meetings had wrapped up. Democrats had pressed Grassley to subpoena Kushner for his testimony or schedule a public hearing for Trump Jr., but he chose not to do so following Feinstein's decision to release the Simpson transcript. This story has been updated and will continue to update with new developments. CNN's Katelyn Polantz, Kara Scannell, Juana Summers, Marshall Cohen, Jenna McLaughlin, Jeremy Diamond, Caroline Kenny, David Wright, Eli Watkins and Liz Stark contributed to this report. | |
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| 05-16-18 09:33am - 2318 days | #684 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Let's cut out the bullshit. Have President Trump and Michael Cohen seized by the FBI and the CIA, taken outside the United States, and waterboarded until they confess their crimes. Trump has tweeted in support of waterboarding. Let's use waterboarding to find the truth, to stop wasting time and taxpayers money, to drain the swamp of Washington lies, graft, corruptions, and slimeball politicians. | |
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| 05-16-18 12:44pm - 2318 days | #685 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Draining the swamp in Washington, and moving it to Texas. ------- ------- U.S. Disgraced former congressman Blake Farenthold won’t repay $84K sexual harassment settlement Good Morning America JOHN PARKINSON,Good Morning America 21 hours ago Former Rep. Blake Farenthold, the disgraced Texas Republican who resigned last month in the aftermath of a sexual harassment settlement, has secured his next paid gig – as a government lobbyist. But even though he’s going to be raking in a reported six-figure salary, Farenthold told ABC News that he has no intention of repaying an $84,000 sexual harassment settlement funded by taxpayers. Farenthold told a Corpus Christi, Texas talk radio station Monday that he’s accepted a position as a “legislative liaison” at the Calhoun Port Authority, previously known as the Port of Port Lavaca-Point Comfort. Farenthold’s hiring announcement was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. Reached via phone Tuesday morning by ABC News, Farenthold declined to comment on his new job. “I’m a private citizen now, so I’m not commenting about my employment,” Farenthold said. Farenthold then made clear that he has no intention of repaying an $84,000 taxpayer settlement stemming from a 2014 complaint by a former congressional aide alleging sexual harassment, gender discrimination and retaliation. “I will say this on the record: I have been advised by my attorneys not to repay that,” Farenthold told ABC. “That’s why it hasn’t been repaid.” Farenthold refused to disclose his attorneys’ justification for that legal advice. After Farenthold resigned on April 6, House Speaker Paul Ryan said he fully expected Farenthold to repay the settlement to the U.S. Treasury. The House Ethics Committee even released a statement urging Farenthold to uphold his promise to repay the settlement. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has also demanded Farenthold cover the costs for a special election to fill his seat in the 27th district, though Farenthold has also signaled he will not cover that expense either. In a May 2 letter, which Farenthold mistakenly addressed to The Honorable “Gregg” Abbott, Farenthold pointed at Texas special election Texas law, contending that Abbott’s call for a special election was “not warranted and should not have been called.” “Since I didn’t call it and don’t think it’s necessary, I shouldn’t be asked to pay for it,” Farenthold wrote. Farenthold declined to further discuss the governor's request with ABC. Farenthold served in the House of Representatives from January 5, 2011, until April 6, 2018. He sat on the House Committees on Oversight and Government Reform, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Judiciary. "I'm starting a new job today that has an hour-and-a-half commute," Farenthold said on 1360 KKTX-AM's Lago in the Morning. "You're gonna have me listening and calling in a whole lot now." His annual salary will be $160,000.10, just under the $174,000 he was paid in the House, according to Charles R. Hausmann, port director at the Calhoun Port Authority. "Blake is paid biweekly a salary of $6,153.85. He will not receive any incentives/bonuses," Hausmann wrote in an email to ABC. Hausmann confirmed that Farenthold started his new job on Monday, and added he "assisted on many projects that have benefited the Port and his District that led to his hiring." While former members of the House are prohibited from lobbying for at least one year after leaving office, Farenthold is seizing on a loophole that enables him to lobby on behalf of a government agency immediately. “Cooling off” restrictions do not apply to former lawmakers employed by a government agency, institutions of higher education and hospitals or medical research organizations, according to House Ethics rules. In a news release, Hausmann noted that Farenthold would be the port's "full-time legislative liaison" and "will be responsible for promoting the port’s agenda" and "helping in resolving funding issues." "Blake has always been a strong supporter of the Calhoun Port Authority and is familiar with the issues facing the Port. The Board looks forward to the services Blake can provide in assisting the Port with matters in Washington, D.C.," Hausmann stated. Hausmann added that Farenthold will also work to increase the Port’s presence and visibility in Washington with legislators, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Executive Branch, and other policy makers "to further the Port’s agenda and to obtain public funding." | |
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| 05-16-18 01:18pm - 2318 days | #686 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump, the man of 1 million lies. He now admits he repaid Cohen $100,000 plus. But does not say what the money was used for. Could it have been used for Michael Cohen's expenses at McDonalds? McDonalds has a $1 value menu. That would cover a lot of meals. But to find what the payment was for, would take subpoenas, maybe waterboarding, and extreme torture, because these guys are admitting nothing on their own. However, one nice thing about the loan/business expense: Cohen did not charge Trump any interest on the loan. Wow, what a friend. Loaning a billionaire over $100,000, and not charging interest. Michael Cohen is the kind of friend that everyone should have. -------------- -------------- Trump repaid attorney Cohen for 'third party' expense: disclosure Reuters By Ginger Gibson,Reuters 1 hour 22 minutes ago By Ginger Gibson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump acknowledged for the first time that he repaid his attorney Michael Cohen for a payment of at least$100,001 made to a "third party" in 2016, according to ethics disclosures signed by the president that were released by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics on Wednesday. Cohen made a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, shortly before the Nov. 8, 2016, presidential election in exchange for her staying silent about an alleged affair she had with Trump. Trump's new disclosure statement did not describe the purpose or the recipient of the 2016 payment made by Cohen. But the acting director of the ethics office, David Apol, in a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said it should have been disclosed in ethics documents that Trump filed in June 2017. Apol's letter was released with the Trump disclosures. The ethics office is a government watchdog that provides oversight of the executive branch program designed to prevent and resolve conflicts of interest. Trump's latest disclosure filing said Cohen incurred the expense in 2016 and that Cohen "sought reimbursement" in 2017. "Mr. Trump fully reimbursed Mr. Cohen," the report said. The payment made by Cohen was between $100,001 and $250,000 and there was no interest incurred, the report said. Trump had previously disputed whether he was aware of the payment by Cohen and if he reimbursed his attorney. In April, Trump told reporters he did not know anything about the payment. On May 2, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who joined Trump's personal legal team in April, said that Trump had reimbursed Cohen for the payment. Cohen has publicly acknowledged paying Daniels, saying he obtained the cash through a line of credit on his home. (Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Leslie Adler) | |
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| 05-16-18 01:31pm - 2318 days | #687 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Draining the swamp in Washington. Republicans have a higher moral code: put money in my pocket, and I am King of the World. -------- -------- Pruitt grilled over reported use of sirens to beat DC traffic By Nikki Schwab May 16, 2018 | 12:57pm | Updated WASHINGTON – EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said Wednesday that he didn’t recall asking that lights and sirens be used on his motorcade so he could get through Washington traffic faster. “I don’t recall that happening,” Pruitt told Sen. Tom Udall ( D-N.M.), who pressed the EPA chief on an array of allegations, including that he had used lights and sirens to make his way more quickly to Le Diplomate, a trendy French restaurant in Washington where Pruitt likes to have dinner. Pruitt was testifying before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday and mainly tussled with Udall, who announced early on that the EPA administrator was facing 16 separate investigations. Udall wanted to know, generally, if Pruitt’s security detail had ever flashed its lights or used its sirens in a non-emergency situation. What he received was a non-answer. “There are policies in place that governs the use of lights,” Pruitt said. “Those policies were followed to the best of my knowledge.” Udall pointed to reports, including one in the New York Times that said that Pruitt had encouraged the use of lights and sirens, even in non-emergency situations. Pruitt again answered that the “policies were followed to the best of my knowledge” as he said he didn’t recall ordering the lights and sirens to be used. The back-and-forth prompted Udall to announce that he was submitting for the record an email written by EPA aide Pasquale Perrotta that had the subject line “Lights and Sirens.” “Btw – Administrator encourages the use …” Perrotta wrote to a number of EPA officials whose names were blacked out. Perrotta left the EPA at the beginning of the month. “I think he’s been caught in a lie,” Udall told reporters after the hearing. Pruitt was pummeled by the Democrats on some of his other mini-scandals as well. “What a silly reason you had to fly first class,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who made a brief appearance at the hearing. “Nobody even knew who you were.” Pruitt has said he’s flown first class – instead of coach like most government employees – due to security concerns. The EPA chief has also taken heat for a sweetheart rental apartment deal, but at Wednesday’s hearing that took a backseat to his use of a government aide for his real estate hunt. “The individual that you’re referring to is a longtime friend of my wife and myself,” Pruitt said, explaining that Millan Hupp, a top scheduling aide, had searched for apartments for the EPA chief on her own time. “All activity that I’m aware of that was engaged in by the individual that you’re speaking about occurred in personal time.” Pruitt then told Udall that Hupp wasn’t paid for this work. “Then that’s a gift,” Udall said. “That’s in violation of federal law.” | |
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| 05-16-18 02:08pm - 2318 days | #688 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
How do you know if Pruitt, the Head of the EPA is lying? He opens his mouth. ----- ----- The Independent Scott Pruitt: EPA chief had ‘round-the-clock’ security since first day in office, contrary to his claims The Independent Mythili Sampathkumar The Independent Tue, May 15 8:30 AM PDT President Donald Trump’s head of environment Scott Pruitt has had round-the-clock security detail since his first day in office, contrary to his prior claim. Mr Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), read aloud a list of alleged threats he had received in 2017 in front of a Congressional panel as a reason for spending in excess of $3m in taxpayer money on his extensive security. However, emails obtained by the Washington Post show that there was no proper “threat assessment” done prior to Mr Pruitt’s security detail in place. In a letter to Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Thomas Carper earlier this week, EPA inspector general Arthur Elkins said that: “EPA’s Protective Service Detail began providing 24/7 coverage of the Administrator the first day he arrived”. Mr Elkins also said his office “played no role in this decision” and that Mr Pruitt requested the detail. Mr Pruitt and the EPA have defended the high costs - which included first-class plane tickets and several special agents - and said "these are threats that the [Inspector General of the EPA] has documented," Mr Pruitt told Congress just last month. The agency issued a statement last month that read: "According to EPA's assistant inspector general, Scott Pruitt has faced an unprecedented amount of death threats against him and his family. Americans should all agree that members of the President's Cabinet should be kept safe from these violent threats”. The emails actually showed that the detail was requested by Don Benton, a former state senator from Washington and a Republican who had been working as the agency’s White House adviser just ahead of Mr Pruitt’s February 2017 appointment. The threat assessment was only done once, in August 2017. The newspaper reported: "there were no confirmed threat cases open the day Pruitt took office, according to an individual with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation". Mr Benton said in a February 2017 email: “There will be several Executive Orders signed when [Pruitt] is sworn in that will likely stir the hornets nest and with the security issue in the Atlanta office last week as well as the lady who threatened former administrator [Gina] McCarthy not showing up for court and at large in DC it is best to be on the safe side". As a result the number of agents in the criminal and investigative unit of the agency had to be double to 16. Mr Pruitt's Cabinet position is not normally one that receives such extensive protection like the Secretaries of Defence, Homeland Security, and State. His predecessor Ms McCarthy guard was roughly a third of the size of Mr Pruitt's and she said in a recent interview that she kept her detail to a "minimum". What has stirred even more controversy in addition to spending taxpayer money was that the special agent in charge Eric Weese, who had predicted the increased security would be a "major disruption," was replaced at the request of Mr Pruitt. | |
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| 05-16-18 02:23pm - 2318 days | #689 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The knives are out for Rudy Giuliani. And not all of them are Democrat knives. There is at least one Republican knife in Giuliani's back. Who is the Republican traitor? Jay Goldberg, a lawyer, who thinks that Guiliani should not be Trump's lawyer. Although I don't have a lot of respect for Guiliani, who seems more like a vicious attack dog than an attorney, I think Guiliani has opened up the eyes of many to the slimeball nature of him and his boss, Donald Trump. So I am willing to let Guiliani continue to tell us lies and contradictions about Trump, in the hope that Guiliani will help to bring Trump down. --------- --------- HuffPost Longtime Trump Lawyer Slams Giuliani As 'Polarizing Figure' Who Shouldn't Deal With Mueller Jay Goldberg, the attorney who represented President Donald Trump for almost two decades, doesn’t think Rudy Giuliani is fit to be handling the legal team tasked with handling special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Not only is Giuliani not sufficiently experienced, Goldberg said, but he also may be in it for his own gain. “I think he’s a polarizing figure,” Goldberg said of the former New York City mayor on MSNBC’s “The Beat With Ari Melber” on Tuesday. “There are those people who think he was a wonderful prosecutor but he has no record managing a defense of someone who’s accused of wrongdoing. I told him that I didn’t think that Giuliani was the right person for him to select. I thought there were much better people that he could use in terms of negotiating with Mueller.” Giuliani is misguided if he thinks he can scare Mueller into winding down the investigation, Goldberg added. And to go on cable television and make revelations ― he was referring to Giuliani telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity that the $130,000 that Trump’s current lawyer Michael Cohen paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels came from Trump himself ― without fully debriefing the client points to “the height of unpreparedness,” Goldberg said. Goldberg also noted his concern that Giuliani joined Trump’s legal team in order to “aggrandize himself whether at the expense of Trump or not.” Giuliani, who joined Trump’s legal team in April, said he planned to use this week’s one-year anniversary of the probe to continue calling for its completion. “There has been no evidence presented of collusion or obstruction, and it is about time for them to end the investigation,” Giuliani told Bloomberg News on Tuesday. “We don’t want to signal our action if this doesn’t work ― we are going to hope they listen to us ― but obviously we have a Plan B and C.” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 05-16-18 02:38pm - 2318 days | #690 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: Trump vows to shut down company that helped police to illegally record phone calls. Trump is fierce about the protection of privacy: his own privacy. He is also fierce about the police being able to invade the privacy of anyone not connected to him. So in this case, where a company was helping police illegally spy on people, Trump would obviously take the side of the police: find the evil doers, and put them in prison. And if they are already in prison, keep them there even longer. Except: if it's a friend or buddy of Trump, it's a witch hunt, which is a shameful act and maybe even treason. ----------- ----------- Business The company that helps police track phones was reportedly hacked Engadget Rob LeFebvre,Engadget 43 minutes ago Securus is known for allegedly helping prisons violate Sixth Amendment Securus is known for allegedly helping prisons violate Sixth Amendment protections by recording "at least" 14,000 phone calls between inmates and lawyers. There was also a report at The New York Times that a former sheriff in Mississippi County used the service to track cellphones, including those of other officers, without court orders. Now, an unidentified hacker has apparently provided Motherboard data from Securus, which includes usernames and "poorly secured" passwords for thousands of the company's customers in law enforcement. The concern here is that any malicious entity could use these logins to access the location of any of the phones tracked by the company. Motherboard reports that the hacker sent several internal company files, including a spreadsheet marked "police," which contained 2,800 user names, email addresses, phone numbers, hashed passwords and security challenge questions. The data is apparently from 2011 forward, and includes information from sheriff departments and city police from places including Minneapolis, Phoenix, Indianapolis and more. We've reached out to Securus for comment and will update this post if we hear back. Motherboard This article originally appeared on Engadget. | |
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| 05-16-18 03:06pm - 2318 days | #691 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Rex Tillerson warns of 'integrity and ethics crisis' – but doesn't name Trump The Guardian Tom McCarthy,The Guardian 1 hour 21 minutes ago Former secretary of state speaks at Virginia Military Institute and urges graduates to resist ‘leaders [who] seek to conceal the truth’ On Wednesday, Rex Tillerson said: ‘When we as a people, a free people, go wobbly on the truth, even on what may seem the most trivial of matters, we go wobbly on America.’ Rex Tillerson, the former secretary of state, warned on Wednesday that America had plunged into a “crisis of ethics and integrity in our society and among our leaders” that could set the country down “a pathway to relinquishing our freedom”. Tillerson, who was dismissed in March by Donald Trump, did not name the president. But his remarks, before a graduating class at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington were largely seen as directed at the Trump administration. “If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom,” Tillerson said. “A responsibility of every American citizen to each other is to preserve and protect our freedom by recognizing what truth is and is not, what a fact is and is not, and to begin by holding ourselves accountable to truthfulness and demand our pursuit of America’s future be fact-based, not based on wishful thinking, not hoped-for outcomes made in shallow promises, but with a clear-eyed view of the facts as they are and guided by the truth that will set us free to seek solutions to our most daunting challenges.” If we do not confront the crisis of ethics and integrity in our society, democracy as we know it is entering its twilight years Rex Tillerson Trump has presented himself as a defender of the truth, having invented and popularized the phrase “fake news”, by which he means news that is bad for him. But the president has been repeatedly exposed as an habitual liar prone to exaggerating the size of his crowds, his fortune and his popularity; given to denials of acquaintances, deals and relationships; and offering changing and contradictory descriptions of his own actions and motivations and those of people around him. Tillerson’s address to the military school was scheduled before he was removed as secretary of state. Upon Tillerson’s departure, Trump praised him by saying: “I very much appreciate his commitment and his service and I wish him well. He’s a good man.” But Trump admitted that he and Tillerson “disagreed on things”, including the Iran nuclear deal, which Tillerson wished to stay in, and the 2017 blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, which Tillerson criticized and Trump supported. “We were not really thinking the same,” Trump said. Ironically, Tillerson was an early advocate of making diplomatic overtures to North Korea, prompting Trump to tweet last year, “he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man”. Such clashes may have fed the concerns Tillerson aired on Wednesday, in a speech that warned that the United States must never take its “long-held allies for granted, both in trading relations and in national security matters”. Tillerson’s most powerful theme, however, was the importance of standing up for the truth. “When we as a people, a free people, go wobbly on the truth, even on what may seem the most trivial of matters, we go wobbly on America,” he said. “If we do not as Americans confront the crisis of ethics and integrity in our society and among our leaders in both the public and private sector, and regrettably at times into the nonprofit sector, then American democracy as we know it is entering its twilight years.” Tillerson, the former chief executive of ExxonMobil, has largely avoided the spotlight since leaving government. His tenure as secretary of state was criticized for his perceived aloofness, his failure to fill rank-and-file jobs and his failure to maintain the alliances he touted in his speech. In October 2017, Tillerson denied that he had considered resigning over a news report that he had called the president a “moron” – but he did not deny calling Trump that. Tillerson was succeeded in the secretary of state job by Mike Pompeo, who ended Tillerson’s hiring freeze and said he wanted to give the department its “swagger” back. In excerpts of a pep talk for staff, Pompeo said: “Swagger is not arrogance; it is not boastfulness, it is not ego. No, swagger is confidence; in one’s self, in one’s ideas. In our case, it is America’s essential rightness.” | |
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| 05-16-18 07:04pm - 2318 days | #692 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
House of Lies and Graft. Can you believe anything Donald Trump and Michael Cohen state? Maybe it helps if you are drunk, or believe in blind ambition and greed. ------- ------- Michael Cohen's efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow went on longer than he has previously acknowledged Hunter Walker and Brett Arnold 2 hours 20 minutes ago WASHINGTON — Prosecutors and congressional investigators have obtained text messages and emails showing that President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was working on a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow far later than Cohen has previously acknowledged. The communications show that as late as May 2016, around the time Trump was clinching the Republican nomination, Cohen was considering a trip to Russia to meet about the project with high-level government officials, business leaders and bankers. Cohen has said that, beginning in September 2015, he worked with a Russian-born developer named Felix Sater to build a luxury hotel, office, and apartment complex called Trump World Tower Moscow. In a statement to Congress, Cohen claimed he gave up on the project in late January 2016, when he determined the “proposal was not feasible for a variety of business reasons and should not be pursued further.” However, Yahoo News has learned that text messages and emails that Sater provided to the government seem to contradict Cohen’s version of events. The communications show Cohen was discussing the deal until at least May 2016. Multiple sources have described to Yahoo News the texts and emails with Cohen that Sater has provided to the government. Sater confirmed to Yahoo News that he provided all of his texts and emails with Cohen to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as well as to the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate’s Intelligence and Judiciary committees. Sater also confirmed that his communications chronicled his extensive efforts to get the tower built. “I was trying to build the tallest tower in Europe. For me, it was a business transaction,” Sater told Yahoo News. “I have fully cooperated with every investigation and every committee. I have provided absolutely everything voluntarily, and not under subpoena, that was asked of me and will continue to willingly cooperate. All my communications show I was tenaciously trying to get a supertall tower built and nothing else.” Cohen and his attorneys have not responded to requests for comment on this story. Mueller’s probe into Russian intervention in the 2016 election has increasingly turned its focus on Cohen, who spent over a decade as an executive at Trump’s company and became one of the future president’s closest confidantes. Cohen left the Trump Organization after Trump’s election, but he remained the president’s personal lawyer. Sources familiar with the Mueller investigation have previously told Yahoo News that prosecutors working with Mueller have been asking questions about Cohen’s work to build the Moscow tower, his personal taxi business and his real estate portfolio, as well as payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump. Last month the FBI searched Cohen’s residences and office under a warrant obtained by federal prosecutors in New York, acting on a referral by Mueller. The warrant sought records related to Cohen’s personal business dealings and the payments to the women. Trump Tower Moscow was not covered by the warrant, which could indicate that Mueller has decided to keep that aspect of the investigation under his own control. Sater, who first met Cohen when they were both in high school, worked with President Trump’s real estate company to build hotels in Florida and New York during the mid 2000s. At that time, he also discussed potential projects in Russia with Trump’s company. As part of his deal to build Trump-branded properties, Sater had a Trump Organization business card and an office in the company’s Manhattan headquarters. Sater was convicted on charges related to a stock fraud scheme orchestrated by Russian organized crime figures in 1998. He then became a federal informant who spent years providing crucial information to the government about mobsters and terrorists. The emails and texts show Cohen and Sater began discussing a potential tower in Moscow in the second half of 2015. Sater said he could introduce Cohen to high-level figures in Russia, including bankers, business people and politicians. In emails that were published by the New York Times, Sater suggested that he could get the backing of Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the project could benefit both Trump’s chances of being elected and America’s relations with Moscow. “I will get Putin on this program, and we will get Donald elected,” Sater wrote in a November 2015 email. The emails and texts described to Yahoo News, which have not previously been made public, show Sater and Cohen continued discussing the deal into 2016. Sater was explicit that high-level figures in Russia needed to be involved because a project of this magnitude could not be completed without Putin’s approval. Around the start of that year, Cohen became frustrated because Sater had not been able to set up the necessary meetings. Cohen swore at Sater and said he would make his own high-level contacts in Russia. As part of his efforts to pursue the Moscow project on his own, Cohen emailed top Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in mid-January 2016 requesting “assistance” for the tower development. “Without getting into lengthy specifics, the communication between our two sides has stalled,” Cohen wrote. The email was sent to a generic Kremlin press address, and Cohen has said did not receive a response. In a statement to the House Intelligence Committee, Cohen said he abandoned the Moscow project “for business reasons” in January 2016 when the company couldn’t get necessary government permissions. Cohen further said the decision to give up on the Moscow tower was not related to Trump’s presidential campaign. But the communications Sater provided to Mueller’s team and three congressional committees paint a different picture of the deal. After Cohen made his own attempts to pursue the plan in January, the messages indicate that he continued to communicate with Sater about the potential project. The pair continued talking between January and May of 2016, when Sater began pressing Cohen to travel to Russia to work on the deal. Sater encouraged Cohen to go to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in mid-June 2016. Sater presented the event as an opportunity for Cohen to meet top Russian officials, business leaders and bankers in one place. He obtained an invitation for Cohen, who indicated he was considering the trip but ultimately said any travel to Russia would have to take place after the Republican convention, which took place in July 2016. They did not discuss the project further. In his statement to the House Intelligence Committee, Cohen said that Sater “constantly” encouraged him to go to Russia and that he declined to make the trip. According to Sater, he eventually gave up on the project in December 2016 when Trump, who had just been elected, said his company would do “no new deals” while he was in office. | |
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| 05-16-18 08:39pm - 2318 days | #693 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Civil rights and environmental groups are afraid of Trump's choices for judges. Says Trump's picks are bad for the environment, bad for civil rights. The best solution to their worries: Impeach Donald Trump now. Don't be stupid. Don't be afraid to act. If there is not enough evidence to convict, not a problem: The impeachment process takes a long time. Time enough, just as Republicans have done, to string the process out, long enough to gather more evidence. And then Trump can be convicted when there is sufficient evidence. In the meantime, Trump's legal problems will occupy him enough to slow his attack on the environment and civil rights, but maybe not enough to stop his graft, because Trump, as everyone knows, has a hard head for business. ----------- ----------- Civil rights and environmental groups raise the alarm on a key judicial nomination Michael Walsh 4 hours ago Civil rights leaders and environmentalists are calling on the Senate to reject President Trump’s choice of Andrew Oldham for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit when it votes on the nomination Thursday. During a press call on Wednesday, top brass for national civil rights and environmental advocacy organizations accused Oldham, 39, the top legal adviser to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, of fighting against voting rights, reproductive rights and government efforts to safeguard the environment and the public health. As Abbott’s general counsel, Oldham repeatedly helped the Lone Star State join then-Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt’s lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Tiernan Sittenfeld, the senior vice president of government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, said Oldham challenged the EPA’s ability to implement the Clean Air Act and advocated overruling the landmark Massachusetts v. EPA decision that directed the agency to limit carbon pollution. “But it’s not just that. Oldham is so extreme that he doesn’t just disagree with federal protections; he actually questions their constitutionality,” Sittenfeld said. “He said, and I quote, ‘One of the reasons why the administrative state is enraging is not that you disagree with what the EPA does — although I do disagree with a lot of what it does. That’s not the thing that makes it enraging. It’s the illegitimacy of it.’” When contacted for comment, the Office of the Texas Governor told Yahoo News via email, “Andrew Oldham has an impressive and extensive background, as well as a robust understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law. Mr. Oldham has served with dedication and distinction as chief legal adviser in the General Counsel’s office, and the justice system would be well-served by his appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Governor Abbott wholeheartedly supports his appointment to the court.” Even without a Supreme Court vacancy, Trump is reshaping the judiciary with his nominations to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which comprises 11 circuit courts with jurisdiction over different regions of the country. All of the speakers on the press call expressed concern for what Oldham’s confirmation would mean for the Fifth Circuit, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Yahoo News asked whether Oldham’s ascent would have implications outside those states. Joanne Spalding, the chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club, replied that the Fifth Circuit’s decisions are not binding for other regions, but they are persuasive and could be cited in any other district. “There are many extreme decisions that are never actually reviewed by the Supreme Court. They stand and are binding by the states,” she said. Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, added that the Supreme Court used to release opinions on about 150 cases a year but that this figure has been chopped roughly in half over the decades. That means, she said, that appeal courts more often issue rulings that become the law of the land. “It is also why the administration is focusing on and prioritizing filling seats on the courts of appeal because they know how critically important and powerful these judges and courts are, particularly given the fewer number of cases heard by the Supreme Court.” Aron noted that if he is confirmed by the Senate, Oldham would be Trump’s fifth appointee to the circuit courts. “It’s extremely worrisome and reflects an extreme case of court-packing,” she said. Kristine Lucius, executive vice president for policy for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said key civil rights questions — such as voting rights and educational opportunities — have historically been raised in the Fifth Circuit, whose population includes more people of color than any other circuit. “What we also saw in the DACA and DAPA cases is that there was forum shopping, and people go to that circuit and are able to get nationwide injunctions. So, to the extent your question is about implications outside those states, we have very recent cases as examples where cases were brought but had nationwide impact,” Lucius said. The Obama administration introduced DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) in June 2012 and DAPA (Deferred Action of Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents) in November 2014. DACA protected some undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. DAPA granted deferred action status to some undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. since 2010 and have children who are American citizens or lawful residents. Texas and 35 others states sued the federal government, and the Fifth Circuit blocked these executive orders on immigrations from then-President Barack Obama in 2015. The Alliance for Justice said Oldham was “the architect of Texas’s strategy to block the expansion of DACA to additional Dreamers and parents of U.S. citizens or green card holders across the country.” Daniel Goldberg, legal director for the Alliance for Justice, said Oldham is just one of many “narrow-minded elitists” appointed by Trump to “erode and eviscerate” critical rights and legal protections. He said that Trump knows his legislative agenda is going nowhere and that if he introduced legislation to repeal the Clean Air Act, millions of people would be outraged. Instead, Goldberg suggested, Trump is stacking the courts with young ideologues who will destroy the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and worker protections through their rulings. “This is a very conscious strategy of Donald Trump and the far right to weaken our laws through stacking the courts,” he told Yahoo News. Goldberg said past presidents, such as Obama, consulted with senators from the other party and nominated mainstream jurists who enjoyed broad, bipartisan support. Rather than finding consensus nominees, he continued, Trump is nominating jurists with clear ideological records of chipping away at legal rights. Trump nominated John Bush, who spread “birther” conspiracies on an anonymous blog, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He nominated Damien Schiff, who said Justice Anthony Kennedy was akin to a “judicial prostitute,” to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. He nominated Wendy Vitter, who promoted the idea that taking birth control increases a woman’s chance of being attacked or murdered and wouldn’t say whether Brown v. Board of Education was rightly decided, to the Eastern District of Louisiana. “These are not individuals past presidents would have nominated,” Goldberg said. “These are individuals who are being nominated for one purpose, and that’s to get on the court so they can weaken our constitutional rights and critical laws.” Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review, said these “cry-wolf” accusations are commonly brought against Republican judicial nominees by liberal advocacy groups. Shapiro had worked with Oldham on the DAPA litigation because CATO had filed amicus briefs and had helped to craft the legal arguments. “I think he’s a very bright lawyer, a skilled lawyer. His commitment to originalism and textualism is clear, and that can be said of most of the Trump judicial nominees, certainly at the circuit court” level, Shapiro told Yahoo News. The goal of Trump’s White House Counsel’s office, he continued, is to nominate originalists and textualists (adherents of philosophies that lean toward a strict reading of the letter of the Constitution and statute law) with a track record of intellectual rigor and commitment to their philosophies. “Every president tries to reshape the judiciary and should! This is a very big power that every president has over judicial nominations,” Shapiro said. “I would argue that, at least in the domestic sphere, it’s the biggest presidential power because executive actions can be rescinded, as we’ve seen. Regulations can be repealed, legislation can be sunsetted or changed, but federal judges are for life.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked President Obama’s nomination to fill a Supreme Court vacancy for nearly a year, leaving the seat open for Trump to make an appointment. | |
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| 05-16-18 09:05pm - 2318 days | #694 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Trump writes that his failure to disclose his payment to lawyer Michael Cohen last year was OK. And that he disclosed the payment he made on this year's form only because he is a nice man. However, knowingly and willfully falsifying or omitting required information on the financial disclosure form can be prosecuted as a criminal offense, punishable by as long as a year in jail. And the Office of Government Ethics determined Wednesday that Cohen’s payment to Daniels, which Trump repaid last year, constituted a loan that should have been reported on the president’s June 2017 financial disclosure form. So President Trump could be prosecuted for this. Imagine, the President, who promised to make America great again, being accused of a crime? ---------- ---------- HuffPost Trump’s Failure To Report Stormy Daniels Payoff Referred To Prosecutors HuffPost S.V. Date,HuffPost 5 hours ago WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s failure last year to disclose that he repaid his lawyer Michael Cohen for Cohen’s pre-election payout to Stormy Daniels has been referred to the Department of Justice. The Office of Government Ethics determined Wednesday that Cohen’s payment to Daniels, which Trump repaid last year, constituted a loan that should have been reported on the president’s June 2017 financial disclosure form. Trump did disclose the liability in a footnote to the form he filed Tuesday. The note claimed he did not have to make the disclosure, but was doing so anyway “in the interest of transparency.” In a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, acting OGE Director David Apol wrote, “You may find the disclosure relevant to any inquiry you may be pursuing regarding the president’s prior report that was signed on June 14, 2017.” Knowingly and willfully falsifying or omitting required information on the financial disclosure form can be prosecuted as a criminal offense, punishable by as long as a year in jail. Trump and his White House staff had for months denied knowing anything about Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels to buy her silence about the affair the porn star said she had with Trump a decade earlier. Trump’s newest outside lawyer Rudy Giuliani finally admitted that Trump had repaid Cohen in a Fox News interview earlier this month. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. In a Wednesday interview with HuffPost, Giuliani continued to insist that Cohen’s payment to Daniels ― which he previously described as the settlement of a nuisance claim ― was fully aboveboard. “This is a perfectly legitimate thing,” Giuliani said. “There’s nothing wrong with it.” When asked why an ostensibly legitimate payment had been funneled through the newly registered Delaware shell company Essential Consultants, Giuliani said: “No, it wasn’t.” He then added that there was no need to list Trump’s monthly payments to Cohen at all. “It was listed out of an excess of caution.” Both of Giuliani’s assertions, however, are incorrect. “OGE has concluded that, based on the information provided ... the payment made by Mr. Cohen is required to be reported as a liability,” Apol wrote in his letter to Rosenstein. The payment to Daniels ― whose real name is Stephanie Clifford ― was made on Oct. 27, 2016, by Essential Consultants LLC to her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, according to a copy of the wire transfer. Essential Consultants was created by Cohen days earlier. He used it in the coming weeks and months to collect millions of dollars in consulting fees from corporate clients like AT&T, Swiss drugmaker Norvatis and Columbus Nova, which described itself as an affiliate of a conglomerate known to be owned by a Russian oligarch. “Once again Mr. Giuliani has attempted to deceive the American people with this payment,” said Michael Avenatti, Daniels’ new lawyer, who is trying to break the nondisclosure agreement in court. In a follow-up interview, Giuliani said that he did not know how Cohen had paid Daniels ― “Lawyers do things under LLCs all the time,” he said ― and that he had correctly anticipated that the OGE would rule that Trump had needed to disclose the $130,000 as a loan. That is why, he said, he decided to disclose it himself. The FBI and federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York are investigating Cohen. They removed documents and electronic equipment from Cohen’s offices using a search warrant last month, although he has not been charged with any crime. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, meanwhile, continues his year-old investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russian intelligence services, which were actively working to help Trump win in 2016. Rosenstein appointed Mueller after Trump first fired FBI Director James Comey, and then shortly thereafter told both NBC News and Russian diplomats visiting the Oval Office that he had done so because of the FBI’s Russia probe. Trump has repeatedly called the Mueller probe a “witch hunt” spurred by Democrats angry that they had lost an election they believed they would win. Giuliani, who was once the U.S. attorney leading the office now investigating Cohen, makes that same argument and says news outlets that cover the Mueller investigation and the Stormy Daniels payment are treating Trump unfairly. “The guy’s making tremendous progress for us all over the world,” Giuliani said of Trump. “You guys are worse than he says you are.” Mueller’s investigation has so far resulted in the guilty pleas of five individuals, including three former Trump campaign staffers, and the indictment of 14 other individuals and three companies. That total includes 13 Russians, Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and the Internet Research Agency “troll farm” that was used to create and disseminate propaganda to help Trump win. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which filed a complaint with the OGE and the Justice Department in March asserting that Cohen’s payment to Daniels constituted a loan to Trump, filed a second complaint Wednesday. “There is substantial evidence that President Trump had knowledge of the loan when he filed his 2017 [financial disclosure form] notwithstanding his failure to report it,” read the complaint signed by Noah Bookbinder, CREW’s executive director, and Norm Eisen, its chairman. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 05-16-18 09:18pm - 2318 days | #695 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
I can understand why the White House might be irritated that John McCain is not dead. He has cancer. Let him die already, so the White House won't have to deal with him or any of his friends, who should also die from cancer, bless God in Heaven. That's an emotion I can sympathize with. It would be a blessing if all my enemies died of cancer. But I don't pray to God for such an event. I trust that God will do the right thing, on His own. ------------ ------------ Politics White House 'Irritated That John McCain Is Not Dying Of Cancer,' Ana Navarro says Newsweek Harriet Sinclair,Newsweek Tue, May 15 7:37 AM PDT CNN commentator Ana Navarro has said the White House is “irritated that John McCain is not dying of cancer” following its failure to apologize after an aide quipped that the senator’s opinion didn’t matter because “he’s dying anyway.” As the White House faced criticism for not issuing an official apology over the aide’s comments, the political pundit, who is no fan of President Donald Trump, slammed officials. “I think, frankly, what’s happening here is that the White House is irritated that John McCain is not dying of cancer—he’s living with cancer," Navarro said on CNN's New Day on Tuesday. "And he is choosing to make every single day on this Earth something that’s meaningful and counts, and he is still confronting Donald Trump for his outrages.” The aide at the center of the controversy, Kelly Sadler, has offered the McCain family a private apology following comments made in a closed-door meeting that dismissed the senator’s opposition to President Donald Trump’s CIA nominee Gina Haspel with the crude comment about his health. However, the White House has not offered a public apology, instead stating that the incident has been “dealt with internally,” The Hill reported. But the lack of public apology has upset McCain’s family, and left some prominent members of the Republican party at odds with the White House. Senator Lindsey Graham was among those who spoke out against the remark, telling Face the Nation on Sunday: "If it was a joke, it was a terrible joke. I just wish somebody from the White House would tell the country that was inappropriate, that's not who we are in the Trump administration." Graham added that it was not up to him to decide whether Trump should issue an apology, but added: “If something happened like that in my office—somebody in my office said such a thing about somebody, I would apologize on behalf of the office.” This article was first written by Newsweek | |
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| 05-16-18 10:14pm - 2318 days | #696 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
One further note on the payment by Trump to Cohen. The president’s June 2017 financial disclosure form showed that Trump paid Cohen an amount between $100,000.01 and $250,000.00. However, in his news interview a few weeks ago, Guiliani stated that Trump made payments to Cohen of $35,000 per month, for a total of $460,000 to $470,000. So what happened to the money above the $130,000 paid to Stormy Daniels? And why wasn't that money listed on the financial disclosure forms? Is it because Trump does not bother following the laws? That would make him a criminal, if he is prosecuted for these crimes. | |
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| 05-16-18 10:28pm - 2318 days | #697 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The man who leaked Michael Cohen's financial info did so because other information on Trump’s lawyer mysteriously disappeared Rob Price A whistleblower who leaked financial documents related to Michael Cohen did so because files about Cohen were missing from a government database. That revelation came via a New Yorker interview published on Wednesday, in which the whistleblower, a career law-enforcement official, claimed two missing Suspicious-Activity Reports (SAR) indicate Cohen pulled down millions more dollars through his shell company than originally reported last week. That shell company is Essential Consultants, LLC, which Cohen set up in October 2016 to issue a $130,000 payment as part of a nondisclosure agreement with an adult-film star who claimed she had an affair with Donald Trump. After Trump's election, Cohen solicited corporations for "consulting" gigs and funneled large sums of money from those firms through Essential Consultants, LLC. A whistleblower who leaked financial information about Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen's finances to the media did so because files about Cohen were missing from a government database, sparking concerns about a potential cover-up, according to a new report from The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow. Farrow spoke to the law-enforcement official who leaked the documents, and who has not been publicly identified. The documents in question are Suspicious-Activity Reports (SARs) filed by a bank used by Cohen, First Republic Bank. There are believed to be three of these reports written — but the official was only able to find one of them in FINCEN, a database operated by the Treasury Department, the report said. This absence was unusual, the official reportedly said: "I have never seen something pulled off the system. ... That system is a safeguard for the bank. It's a stockpile of information. When something's not there that should be, I immediately became concerned." In response, The New Yorker's source took the decision to leak the one available SAR to the media. It has sparked a string of damaging headlines about Cohen and how Trump's lawyer and so-called fixer sought payments from companies following Trump's 2016 election, apparently for consulting work — including AT&T and pharma giant Novartis. The two SARs that the whistleblower couldn't find detail larger quantities of money being paid to Cohen, according to the report: One for "a little over a million dollars" and another for "suspect transfers totaling more than two million dollars." The official is reportedly worried that the documents are "being withheld from law enforcement," though another possibility is that they may have been restricted due to their contents, potentially at the request of special counsel Robert Mueller — though sources told The New Yorker such a move would be highly unusual. Either way, the reported existence of two additional SARs suggests there may be further revelations to come about Michael Cohen's financial activities. Washington Post columnist and former US Treasury Department official, Daniel Drezner reacted to the revelations on Wednesday evening: "As someone who worked at Treasury on anti-money laundering activities, my reaction to this Ronan Farrow story is holy s--t," Drezner wrote. Funneling money through Essential Consultants LLC Cohen set up the shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, in October 2016 to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to the adult-film star, Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had an affair with Trump a decade prior. Shortly after Trump won the presidential election in November that year, Cohen solicited large sums of money from corporations, with various promises of access and insight on Trump. The telecom giant AT&T and the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis are among the companies that contracted Cohen's service s. Other companies Cohen reached out to declined his offers. News of Cohen's solicitations put an unflattering light on his post-election activities and raised some ethics questions about the use of his existing relationship with Trump for personal financial gain. Cohen is currently the subject of a criminal investigation via the US Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York. The FBI raided his properties last month.. | |
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| 05-16-18 11:29pm - 2318 days | #698 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: Let's make it a night to remember. Give President Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize. But make it conditional on him accepting the prize in Sweden. Then, have the CIA kidnap him, waterboard him (since Trump approves of waterboarding), and force him to confess his crimes. Since confessions under torture might not be legally admissable, have the CIA put Trump in one of his out-of-sight torture camps, the ones that are officially denied. Then the US can have a special election, to vote for the next President of the United States. Everyone will be happy and satisfied at such a happy and momentous occasion. (Except Mike Pence, who might grouse that he should be the next President.) --------- --------- The Wrap Jordan Klepper Begs Nobel Committee to Just Give Trump the Peace Prize (Video) “This prize has been Trump’s life-long dream, right behind ‘threesome in space,'” “The Opposition” host says Ross A. Lincoln Last Updated: May 16, 2018 @ 10:39 PM On Wednesday’s episode of “The Opposition,” Jordan Klepper basically begged the Nobel Committee to give Donald Trump a Nobel Peace Prize, even if talks in Korea appear to have stalled. “This prize has been Trump’s life-long dream, right behind ‘threesome in space,'” said Klepper, who asked the Nobel committee to “focus up” on the fact that Trump has “almost achieved peace on the Korean peninsula.” On Tuesday, North Korea threatened to abandon the nuclear summit planned for June in response to upcoming joint military operations between South Korea and the United States. About this move, Klepper joked that “this chubby, egomaniacal tyrant can’t be trusted, and every American knows who I’m talking about,” while nodding to a side-by-side image of Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. “Just give Trump his Nobel now,” Klepper said. “So what if he put the cart before the horse — horses love it when the cart comes first.” In 2009, the Nobel committee awarded the peace prize to Barack Obama just 10 months into his presidency for what critics at the time said was essentially not being George Bush. So perhaps there’s hope for Trump yet. | |
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| 05-17-18 02:31am - 2318 days | #699 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Why Mike Pence won't be president Matt Bai 15 minutes ago Throughout the first year of the administration, as President Trump veered from one crisis of his own invention to another while fending off fast-moving investigations, people talked about Mike Pence as the guy more likely than any of his recent predecessors to wake up one morning and find himself president of the United States. Now, with Trump nearing the halfway mark, with the investigations plodding along and the country acclimated to daily chaos, people talk about Pence as the guy in Washington who most desperately wants to be president, and who would say just about any noxious thing to set himself up as Trump’s natural successor. In a much-discussed Washington Post column last week, the venerable conservative George Will proclaimed Pence the single worst person in government for publicly deifying Trump at Cabinet meetings and for sucking up to Trump supporters like the infamous Sheriff Arpaio in Arizona. “Trump is what he is, a floundering, inarticulate jumble of gnawing insecurities and not-at-all compensating vanities, which is pathetic,” Will wrote. “Pence is what he has chosen to be, which is horrifying.” Then, a few days later, a team of reporters at the New York Times weighed in with a detailed account of how Pence is subtly supplanting Trump, even as he exalts the president, by taking control of the party’s midterm strategy and establishing his own power base in the states. But if it’s true that Pence is scheming and charming his way into prime position, like some slow-eyed version of Frank Underwood, then he’s probably wasting whatever talent he has, playing chess on a checkerboard. Because history and common sense would tell you that this is probably as close as Pence is getting to the presidency — or at least if the voters have anything to say about it. There’s no question that Pence is building his own political operation, separate from Trump’s. Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, is one of the party’s sharpest young strategists, having once worked closely with Haley Barbour and Jeb Bush to elect a bevy of Republican governors. Recently, as you may have read, Pence also tried to hire Jon Lerner, an aide to U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, as his foreign policy adviser. (Trump nixed the idea, because Lerner had been a “never Trumper” during the campaign.) Lerner is a pollster by trade, and a good one, who used to do focus groups for House Republicans. If you think Pence wanted him around for his advice on North Korea, then you probably think Jared Kushner has a unique grasp of the Middle East. No, Pence is definitely positioning himself for an opening, which is exactly why he goes off at Cabinet meetings about how blessed he is just to breathe the same air as Trump. He says those things because the only way he can privately maneuver to consolidate power is to publicly venerate the boss at the same time. This is politics 101. A guy like Ayers can do that math in his sleep. Except here’s the problem for Pence: Close as he is to the presidency, his chances of ever getting the job fall somewhere between remote and imaginary. Let’s look at three possible scenarios as Pence and his team must see them. The first, I guess, is the 2024 plan. Trump gets reelected in 2020 on a soaring economy, leaves office a hero and bequeaths his legacy to his loyal No. 2, who vows to erect the new Trump Memorial on the site of the now-leveled FBI building. Pence must know how unlikely this one is. Even if Trump were to be reelected and celebrated by a majority of Americans, which seems mathematically dubious, he’d probably try to keep the whole thing inside the family brand, drafting Ivanka to run, or maybe Jared, if they could teach him to speak without sounding like Mr. Bill from the old “Saturday Night Live”s. At a minimum, Trump’s success would validate the idea of celebrity-driven, antiestablishment politics, leaving a pretty slim path for a career politician who promises Trumpism without the personal magnetism. The second possibility is what you might call the gift wrap scenario. Robert Mueller stumbles on some kind of explosive revelation, Trump resigns or defects to Moscow, and the presidency is handed to Pence just in time for the 2020 campaign. Pence becomes this generation’s Gerald Ford, who was a healer of the country after Watergate and barely lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976, even after pardoning Richard Nixon and enduring a brutally divisive primary. Run that same election on five different days, and Ford probably wins it twice. Except that Pence wouldn’t be anything like Ford, really. Ford had succeeded Spiro Agnew as vice president at the end of 1973; he’d barely had time to learn the lunch menu when he ascended to Oval eight months later. Everyone knew Ford had nothing to do with Watergate. Pence, on the other hand, has played a one-man Greek chorus to Trump’s never-ending Zeus routine. If Trump goes down, Pence does, too. He might get a few months of presidential proclamations under his belt, but his odds for beating out other Republicans for the nomination, let alone a Democratic challenger, are about on par with Stormy Daniels winning an Oscar. Which leads us to the final and most plausible path, which we can call the 2020 vision. Facing historic disapproval numbers, and growing tired of the same cheeseburger every night, Trump declares himself an overwhelming success and passes on reelection. Pence, like Hubert Humphrey, steps into the breach, the one man who can appeal to both Trump loyalists and party hacks, and trounces Gov. Cynthia Nixon in the Electoral College. Well, OK. But if Trump is so unpopular that he feels obliged to step aside, it’s hard to imagine Republicans turning to his lackey as a savior. If they wanted someone who could bridge that intraparty divide, they could look to a Cabinet member like Haley or even Rick Perry, who wouldn’t have to walk back a bunch of poetic odes to the great leader. And let’s be clear: There have been 24 vice presidents since 1900. Exactly one of them — George H.W. Bush — was elected president while occupying the vice presidency, following a popular presidency and facing a weak opponent. That would not be Pence’s situation. A really talented politician might be able to pull it off. But this is the underlying problem: Pence is not an especially talented politician. His only statewide victory, to the governorship of Indiana in 2012, came in an overwhelmingly Republican state. By 2016, after a series of controversies, most notably the antigay law that cost the state badly, Pence’s reelection was in serious doubt. Had he not been rescued by Trump, it’s plenty possible that he’d be running to reclaim the congressional seat that his older brother is now trying to win. Pence is, to use a phrase once employed by Barack Obama, likable enough. He’s really not the worst person in government. He’s not even the worst person on the hallway. What he is is too eager to please, too bendable in his convictions, too easily carried away in fawning rhetoric. History has a name for people like that. It’s called a running mate. No amount of plotting will make it something else. | |
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| 05-17-18 07:48am - 2317 days | #700 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Guiliani says the Republicans never used any dirt on Hilary Clinton. The Republicans did nothing illegal. So why are the Democrats running a probe that is a waste of American money? Shut down the Mueller probe, that is damaging America and its standing in the world. Save America. It is Comey who should be investigated. It is Mueller who should be investigated. It is Hilary Clinton who should be investigated. Expose the traitors, for what they are. Put them and jail. And let Trump be free to make America great again. -------- -------- Politics Rudy Giuliani Offers A Head-Spinning New Defense Of Trump HuffPost Dominique Mosbergen,HuffPost 6 hours ago Rudy Giuliani says there’s “nothing illegal” about trying to find compromising information about opponents — even if the source is Russia. “When I ran against [the Democrats], they were looking for dirt on me every day,” Giuliani told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Wednesday night, in response to a question about Donald Trump Jr.’s apparent quest to find “dirt” on Hillary Clinton before the 2016 presidential election. “That’s what you do, maybe you shouldn’t, but you do. Nothing illegal about that,” Giuliani said. “Even if it comes from a Russian or a German or an American, doesn’t matter.” Giuliani, who joined President Donald Trump’s legal team last month, went on to say that the “main thing” was that the Trump campaign “never used it … they rejected it,” referring to political “dirt.” “If there was collusion with the Russians, they would’ve used it,” he added. Observers on Twitter expressed bewilderment at Giuliani’s remarks. Giuliani also told Ingraham that special counsel Robert Mueller, whose probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election will enter its second year on Thursday, should promptly wrap up the investigation. Mueller “has nothing” on Trump, said the former New York City mayor. “We’re trying to get [Mueller] to end this,” Giuliani said. “This is not good for the American people." This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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