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| Porn Users Forum » WHY DOESN'T POTUS ARREST BILL CLINTON, HILARY CLINTON, AND OBAMA? |
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| 06-03-18 11:18pm - 2394 days | #801 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User  Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
What did I tell you? That the President of the US, Donald Trump, has absolute power. Here is Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, saying Trump could shoot the FBI director in the Oval Office and not be prosecuted for it. Why? Because he's the President, dummy. The Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the entire country. (I'm wondering if Rudy Giuliani in on drugs or what. Because this is the first President I've heard about who is above the law. But if Trump truly is above the law, then why doesn't he do as I suggested: Order the secret service and the Armed Forces to capture all Democrats, and all members of the Mueller probe, line them up, and execute them as traitors? Or just execute them for interfering with the President of the United States? If Donald Trump, as President, has absolute power. Except I think a lot of people don't believe Trump has absolute power. And that Giuliani is spouting a lot of nonsense. --------- --------- HuffPost Giuliani: Trump Could Have Shot Comey And Still Couldn’t Be Indicted For It HuffPost S.V. Date,HuffPost 7 hours ago President Donald Trump greets then-FBI Director James Comey in the Blue Room of the White House on Jan. 22, 2017. (Joshua Roberts / Reuters) WASHINGTON ― Candidate Donald Trump bragged that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any support, and now President Donald Trump’s lawyer says Trump could shoot the FBI director in the Oval Office and still not be prosecuted for it. “In no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted,” Rudy Giuliani told HuffPost Sunday, claiming a president’s constitutional powers are that broad. “I don’t know how you can indict while he’s in office. No matter what it is.” Giuliani said impeachment was the initial remedy for a president’s illegal behavior ― even in the extreme hypothetical case of Trump having shot former FBI Director James Comey to end the Russia investigation rather than just firing him. “If he shot James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day,” Giuliani said. “Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.” Norm Eisen, the White House ethics lawyer under President Barack Obama and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the silliness of Giuliani’s claim illustrates how mistaken Trump’s lawyers are about presidential power. “A president could not be prosecuted for murder? Really?” he said. “It is one of many absurd positions that follow from their argument. It is self-evidently wrong.” Eisen and other legal scholars have concluded that the constitution offers no blanket protection for a president from criminal prosecution. “The foundation of America is that no person is above the law,” he said. “A president can under extreme circumstances be indicted, but we’re facing extreme circumstances.” A president could not be prosecuted for murder? Really? It is one of many absurd positions that follow from their argument. It is self-evidently wrong. Norm Eisen, former White House ethics lawyer under President Barack Obama Giuliani’s comments came a day after The New York Times revealed that Trump’s lawyers in January made their case to special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump could not possibly have obstructed justice because he has the ability to shut down any investigation at any time. “He could, if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon if he so desired,” Jay Sekulow and John Dowd wrote in a 20-page letter. Dowd has since left Trump’s legal team, replaced by Giuliani. The letter also admits that Trump “dictated” a statement that was then released by his son, Donald Trump Jr., regarding a meeting held at Trump Tower in June 2016 between top Trump campaign officials and Russians with links to that country’s spy agencies. That meeting was scheduled after the Russians said they had damaging information about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton that would be of use to the Trump campaign. The Trump-dictated statement falsely claimed the meeting was primarily about the adoption of Russian children by American families ― the same topic that Trump claimed had been the substance of a conversation he had had with Russian leader Vladimir Putin the previous evening in Germany. The U.S. intelligence community concluded during the 2016 campaign that not only was Russia interfering in the U.S. election, but was actively trying to help Trump win. Both Sekulow and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders claimed, falsely, that Trump had not dictated the statement, but had merely offered his son suggestions. Sanders on Sunday referred questions about the matter to Trump’s outside legal team. Giuliani said Sekulow was misinformed about the Trump Tower meeting, which in any case was not that significant. “In this investigation, the crimes are really silly,” he said, arguing that the firing of Comey last year could not be construed as obstruction of justice because Trump had the right to fire him at any time and for any reason. “This is pure harassment, engineered by the Democrats.” Comey had been leading the FBI probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence until his dismissal, which led to the appointment of Mueller to take it over. Within two days of the firing, Trump told both NBC News and Russian officials visiting him in the Oval Office that he had done it because of the investigation. Eisen said Giuliani’s assertion, taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that a mob boss under investigation by the FBI could give Trump a bribe to fire the FBI director, Trump could explain on television that he had done so “because of this Mafia thing,” and then not face criminal charges. “Well, of course it would be appropriate to initiate a prosecution,” he said. “I think the legally correct answer is, as usual, the opposite of Giuliani’s answer.” Giuliani, once the mayor of New York City and prior to that the U.S. attorney there, took charge of Trump’s outside legal team in April, saying then that he planned to wrap the whole thing up within a few weeks. Now he said he is not sure when it will end because Mueller is taking too long and not turning over material to Giuliani ― such as a report of what was learned from an FBI informant who made contact with several members of the Trump campaign with links to Russia. Giuliani said he has so far met with Trump about 10 times and spoken to him on the phone another 40 or so times, totaling at least 75 hours of conversation. “I’m not billing by the hour, otherwise I could tell you exactly,” he joked about the case he has taken on for free. Mueller’s investigation has so far resulted in the guilty pleas of five people, including three former Trump campaign staffers, and the indictment of 14 other people and three companies. That total includes 13 Russians, Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and the Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” that was used to create and disseminate propaganda to help Trump win. A related investigation by Giuliani’s former U.S. attorney’s office is examining the dealings of longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. A former business partner has agreed to cooperate in that probe and plead to New York state charges. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 06-03-18 11:38pm - 2394 days | #802 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Democrats are evil scum. All Republicans are the salt of the earth, even though many Republicans are extremely wealthy, and Republicans love people, unlike the evil Democrats who want to enslave the white majority and stop Trump from making America great again. Praise the Lord. Praise Donald Trump. Praise the Republican party. Hallelujah. ----------- ----------- Rick Santorum says Barack Obama 'exacerbated racism' in the U.S. Michael Walsh 11 hours ago Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said former President Barack Obama had the power to bring the nation together but wound up increasing racism in part by the way he handled police shootings. Santorum, a conservative political commentator for CNN, made the accusation during a heated “State of the Union” panel discussion Sunday about racism in the United States. Karine Jean-Pierre, a senior adviser and national spokeswoman for MoveOn.org, a political action committee that raises money for progressive politicians, said it was “pretty horrific” to see voters sway toward Donald Trump’s campaign after electing the first African-American president. “There was an uproar. You saw the Tea Party. You saw obstruction by Republicans time and time again,” Jean-Pierre said. “It is kind of problematic. It says a lot about this country, and Donald Trump tapped into it.” Jean-Pierre, who worked on both of Obama’s presidential election campaigns and served in his administration, said it’s important to remember that Trump’s political career started in earnest by promoting birtherism, the false conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t born in the United States and was therefore ineligible for the presidency. She also criticized Trump for saying “you also had some very fine people on both sides” after white supremacists and counter-protesters clashed in Charlottesville, Va. Santorum, who was seated beside Jean-Pierre, appeared eager to speak after she said Trump “tapped into that racism” that’s been seen in the United States since 2008 — when Obama was elected. “What’s being ignored here is the role that Barack Obama played in all this,” Santorum said. “You can’t just go from ‘well, we elected out first black president’ and ‘all of a sudden we get Donald Trump.’ There was something in between those two things.” According to Santorum, “many, many, many people” saw Obama being racist himself and “doing more to exacerbate racism” in the United States. “Every time there was a controversy with someone of color involved, he took the side, many times, against the police,” Santorum said. “He did it over and over and over again. President Obama was to many people out there someone who could’ve brought this country together.” Jean-Pierre expressed disbelief at what she was hearing and said that in those instances Obama was standing up for people who had been unjustifiably treated. She asked if Santorum was referring to the times Obama addressed the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012, but the panel’s time was running out so the conversation came to an abrupt end. “This president could’ve [brought us] together. He didn’t,” Santorum said. “He divided us.” | |
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| 06-04-18 07:03am - 2393 days | #803 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump says he has the "Absolute Right" to pardon himself. Which might not be absolute power, but he feels (or at least says) he can break any federal law and get away with it. Even if that were true, which is doubtful, Trump would still be liable for breaking state laws. But Trump needs to be taken down. The guy is a menace to the American justice system. Either arrest him, or impeach him. Anything else is dangerous. A two-pronged approach is better: slap him with federal crimes. Then slap him with state crimes. A federal pardon does not cover state crimes. Trump needs tough love. He is begging for it. Tell him to bend over, then shove the American federal and state judicial system up his fat ass. --------------- --------------- Politics Trump Says He Has The 'Absolute Right' To Pardon Himself HuffPost Willa Frej,HuffPost 37 minutes ago President Donald Trump boasted about his “absolute right” to pardon himself in the Russia probe on Monday one day after Rudy Giuliani, one of his lawyers, raised the prospect. “Numerous legal scholars” have pointed out that Trump holds the constitutional authority to a self-pardon, he tweeted. “But why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?” He also lambasted the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller as unconstitutional. His comments echoed Giuliani’s, who said Sunday that a self-pardon was out of the cards and could lead to impeachment — but Trump could do it if he wanted to. “He has no intention of pardoning himself, but he probably — not to say he can’t,” Giuliani told ABC’s “This Week.” It’s the first time Trump has suggested pardoning himself, though he did tweet last year that “all agree the U.S. President has the complete power to pardon.” His legal team first pushed the notion of a self-pardon in a 20-page letter that they sent to Mueller in January, stating that Trump “could if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon if he so desired.” Trump and his legal advisers continue to advocate for an end to the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. Asked if Trump has decided whether he will voluntarily be interviewed by Mueller, Giuliani said the answer is most likely no. “But look, if they can convince us that it will be brief, it would be to the point, there were five or six points they have to clarify, and with that, we can get this — this long nightmare for the ― for the American public over,” Giuliani told ABC. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 06-04-18 04:51pm - 2393 days | #804 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fox News 7:44 PM Former Navy sailor reacts after receiving pardon from Trump A former Navy sailor who is one of five people to receive a pardon from President Donald Trump is planning to file a lawsuit against Obama administration officials, alleging that he was subject to unequal protection of the law. Specifically, Kristian Saucier, who served a year in federal prison for taking photos of classified sections of the submarine on which he worked, argues that the same officials who meted out punishment to him for his actions chose to be lenient with Hillary Clinton in her use of a private email server and handling of classified information. His lawyer, Ronald Daigle, told Fox News on Monday that the lawsuit, which he expects to file soon in Manhattan, will name the U.S. Department of Justice, former FBI Director James Comey and former President Barack Obama as defendants, among others. “They interpreted the law in my case to say it was criminal,” Saucier told Fox News, referring to prosecuting authorities in his case, “but they didn’t prosecute Hillary Clinton. Hillary is still walking free. Two guys on my ship did the same thing and weren’t treated as criminals. We want them to correct the wrong.” Daigle said that a notice about the pending lawsuit was sent to the Department of Justice and others included in it in December. There is usually a six-month period that must lapse before the lawsuit actually is filed. “We’ll highlight the differences in the way Hillary Clinton was prosecuted and how my client was prosecuted,” Daigle said. “We’re seeking to cast a light on this to show that there’s a two-tier justice system and we want it to be corrected.” While campaigning, and after taking office, Trump frequently voiced support for Saucier, who in March became the second person he pardoned. Trump often compared the Obama administration’s handling of Saucier’s case with that of Clinton. Saucier, who lives in Vermont, pleaded guilty in 2016 to taking photos inside the USS Alexandria while it was stationed in Groton, Connecticut, in 2009. He said he only wanted service mementos, but federal prosecutors argued he was a disgruntled sailor who had put national security at risk by taking photos showing the submarine's propulsion system and reactor compartment and then obstructed justice by destroying a laptop and camera. Saucier said that he recognized he had erred in taking the photos, which he said he wanted to show only to his family to show them where he worked. But he lashed out at Obama officials, saying that his prosecution was politically motivated, prompted by sensitivity about classified information amid the scandal involving Clinton's emails. “My case was usually something handled by military courts,” he said. “They used me as an example because of [the backlash over] Hillary Clinton.” Saucier, 31, said that the pardon has enabled him to pick up the pieces and rebuild his life with his wife and young daughter. A felony conviction left him scrambling to find work; he finally landed a job collecting garbage. Now, he works on design and engineering projects for an industrial boiler company. “Things are starting to go in the right direction,” Saucier said. “I work with a group of really great people, I get to use my skills set.” Because of the loss of income during his imprisonment, as well as earning below his potential when he collected garbage, he and his wife Sadie lost their home to foreclosure. Debt collectors called and his cars were repossessed. “With a pardon there’s no magic wand that that gets waved and makes everything right,” he said, “But I try to stay positive and look forward.” He praises the pardons that Trump has granted after his, and takes exception at the criticism. “The Obama administration singled out Dinesh for things most people don’t even get charged for,” Saucier said. “President Trump noticed that my career was exemplary and that I didn’t deserve what happened to me. Conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza, who was pardoned by Trump last week, had pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud. Trump tweeted Thursday: "Will be giving a Full Pardon to Dinesh D'Souza today. He was treated very unfairly by our government!" D'Souza was sentenced in 2014 to five years of probation after he pleaded guilty to violating federal election law by making illegal contributions to a U.S. Senate campaign in the names of others. The Associated Press contributed to this report. | |
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| 06-04-18 06:20pm - 2393 days | #805 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Does Robert Mueller listen to the White House press briefings? If he did, he would soon realize that his investigation is going nowhere. Sarah Sanders, the White House Press Secretary, declared, again and again, that President Trump has done nothing wrong. And that Trump does not plan on giving himself a pardon. Why is Mueller wasting his time, the taxpayers' money, and the resources of the US government investigating possible criminal activity, when the President himself, has said the investigation is worthless, less than worthless, a crime against the United States, because it is trying to hurt young men the President knows are good people? ------- ------- Politics Memo shows lawyers' inconsistencies on Trump Tower meeting Associated Press MARY CLARE JALONICK,Associated Press 3 hours ago WASHINGTON (AP) — For months, President Donald Trump's legal team, the White House press secretary and others in Trump's orbit said he did not dictate or help draft a June 2017 statement trying to explain the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his eldest son and a Russian lawyer. Turns out, that wasn't true. In a January letter to special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump's lawyers said the president "dictated a short but accurate response" to the first report that his son, Donald Trump Jr., and others had met with the Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential election. The New York Times revealed the existence of the letter on Saturday. The Trump Tower meeting — and the White House's initial response to the first reports of the meeting — has been a key moment in Mueller's investigation into whether anyone on the campaign colluded with Russia and whether Trump obstructed justice. The lawyers' statement is buried near the end of the 20-page memo, which asserts that Trump cannot be forced to testify and argues that he could not have legally committed obstruction of justice. In the initial written statement from Trump Jr. on June 8, 2017, he said the Trump Tower gathering was a "short introductory meeting" focused on a disbanded program that had allowed American adoptions of Russian children. Moscow ended the adoptions in response to Magnitsky Act sanctions created in response to alleged human rights violations in Russia. While the Magnitsky Act was discussed, it was later revealed that the meeting was held on the promise of damaging information about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. did not mention the promise of dirt on Clinton until a statement the next day. A look at the evolving explanations from the administration on how the statement was drafted: — JULY 16, 2017: In one of a series of interviews in June, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow said on NBC's "Meet The Press," that "the president was not, did not, draft the response. The response came from Donald Trump Jr. and, I'm sure, in consultation with his lawyer." He added: "The president was not involved in the drafting of the statement and did not issue the statement. It came from Donald Trump Jr. So that's what I can tell you because that's what we know." — JULY 31, 2017: In response to a Washington Post report that Trump had dictated the statement, Sekulow issued a statement: "Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent." — AUGUST 1, 2017: White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump "certainly didn't dictate, but he — like I said, he weighed in, offered suggestion like any father would do." Sanders argued there was "no inaccuracy" in the statement. — SEPTEMBER 7, 2017: In a closed-door interview with Senate Judiciary Committee staff, Trump Jr. was asked by investigators whether his father was involved in drafting the statement. He said he didn't know, and that he had never spoken to his father about it. Asked again, Trump Jr. said his father "may have commented through Hope Hicks," who was Trump's longtime aide. Investigators then asked if Trump Jr. knew if any of Trump's comments were incorporated into the final statement. "I believe some may have been, but this was an effort through lots of people, mostly counsel," Trump Jr. responded. Trump Jr. said he was asked if he wanted to speak to his father as the statement was drafted, but he said he "chose not to because I didn't want to bring him into something that he had nothing to do with." — JANUARY 29, 2018: In the letter to Mueller, Trump's then-lawyers wrote: "You have received all of the notes, communications and testimony indicating that the President dictated a short but accurate response to the New York Times article on behalf of his son, Donald Trump, Jr. His son then followed up by making a full public disclosure regarding the meeting, including his public testimony that there was nothing to the meeting and certainly no evidence of collusion." — JUNE 4, 2018: Asked about the discrepancies on Monday, Sanders repeatedly declined to answer and referred reporters to Trump's personal lawyers. "This is from a letter from the outside counsel and I direct you to them to answer that question," she said. ___ Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report. | |
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| 06-04-18 06:52pm - 2393 days | #806 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Donald Trump, one of the world's greatest legal minds, lays out 2 reasons why he could pardon himself. -------- -------- Christina Wilkie | @christinawilkie Published 9 Hours Ago Updated 7 Hours Ago CNBC.com Trump: 'I have the absolute right to pardon myself' 10 Hours Ago | 01:00 President Donald Trump on Monday laid out two rationales that he could use to justify granting himself a pardon in the event that he is ever charged with a federal crime. The arguments, made on Twitter, were accompanied by Trump's assertion that he has "the absolute right to PARDON myself." They were the latest signs that Trump is considering drastic action in order to protect himself from special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Disguised as a hypothetical situation, Trump's first rationale for pardoning himself was simply that he didn't do anything wrong. Trump's lawyers have told media outlets that the president is convinced that neither he nor anyone on his campaign ever colluded with Russia. Trump's lawyers also say he does not believe he has obstructed justice while in office. Trump himself has repeatedly denied that he colluded with Russia or obstructed an investigation of Moscow's meddling. The question of whether or not either of these assertions is true, however, is immaterial to the president's arguments about pardons. By Trump's logic, if he didn't do anything wrong, then any accusation that he did is, by definition, a false accusation. Moreover, the accusations Trump is talking about would almost certainly stem from the special counsel, which Trump regularly accuses of acting as an arm of the so-called deep state, a conspiracy orchestrated by his political enemies. This means that any accusation would not only be false, it would also have been concocted by Trump's enemies in the Justice Department — bureaucrats willing to use the power of the state not to advance justice, but to destroy Trump. By this reasoning, Trump's situation would be similar to that of conservative author Dinesh D'Souza, who pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance violations. Trump granted D'Souza a pardon just last week. In addition to the D'Souza model of using his presidential pardon powers to remedy an "unfair" prosecution of himself, Trump on Monday suggested a second rationale by which he would be justified in granting himself a pardon in the Mueller probe. A variation on Trump's first argument, his second claim went further, arguing that the special counsel's office was not merely corrupted by politics, it was out-and-out unconstitutional. (Trump's second tweet was originally posted at 9:07 a.m. Monday. It was later deleted and reposted at 10:01 a.m., this time with the correct spelling of "counsel.") It's unclear precisely why Trump believes the probe violates the Constitution, but on Sunday, he tweeted snippets of an interview on Fox News Channel with Mark Penn, a former Hillary Clinton campaign strategist who has argued that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Mueller had conflicts of interest that should have precluded their involvement in an investigation of the Trump campaign. Penn has also publicly questioned whether the broad investigative authority granted to the special counsel by the Justice Department is in keeping with what the framers of the Constitution intended. Setting aside Trump's widely debunked claim that the Clinton campaign conspired with Russia, the president's argument that the special counsel is unconstitutional is a relatively new one for Trump. More often, he has claimed that the probe is a hoax, a witch hunt or a conspiracy. Yet by aping Penn's argument in his tweet, the president appeared to be trying to bring a new level of legal gravitas to his tirades against the Mueller investigation. If the special counsel's probe were indeed unconstitutional, Trump could easily argue that this means any evidence uncovered during the probe, and any charges based on that evidence, would be unconstitutional, too. If the entire Mueller investigation is the equivalent of one, big unconstitutional search, as Trump appeared to claim on Monday, then pardoning individuals targeted by the probe, including himself, would be tantamount to righting a wrong and to protecting constitutional rights. The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump's arguments. Christina WilkiePolitical Reporter for CNBC.com | |
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| 06-05-18 06:31pm - 2392 days | #807 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: The mystery of Melania Trump's non-appearance. This is only a guess: Melania Trump asked for a divorce, and billions of dollars in a divorce settlement. Trump went ballistic. Instead of paying out billions of dollars, Trump spoke with his lawyers, and asked what was the cheapest he could get away with in a divorce settlement. His lawyers said Trump was the President, he is above the law. He could shoot Comey in the White House, and get away with it because he is the President, the most powerful man in the world (forgetting about Putin). So Trump had a brain storm: instead of shooting Comey, why not shoot Melania. Of course, Trump would have to pretend that Melania was having a snit and not making public appearances to support Trump. But Trump has his daughter, Ivanka, who will willingly stand in for Melania (even though Ivanka is married with children). This is why you will only see Melania in distant photos. Trump has hired a stand-in. The real Melania has gone missing. Trump needs time to find a reason why Melania is missing. Until then, the stand-in will have to do. But if Trump can bribe a coroner to issue a death certificate for Melania, then Trump is in the clear. Remember, he has the power to pardon himself. So Melania has to disappear from federal property, not state property, so Trump can avoid prosecution by a state. --------- --------- U.S. Melania Trump makes first appearance in nearly a month and no one is buying it Marcus Gilmer,Mashable 10 hours ago Among all of the many important news stories happening in the world right now, nothing has captivated us quite like the unexplained disappearance of First Lady Melania Trump. She finally made a brief public appearance on Monday night, but Twitter is still, well, sort of skeptical. After being out of the public eye for 24 days, which included recovery time for a kidney procedure on May 14, the First Lady made an appearance at an event for military Gold Star families on Monday night. (Not in attendance: the the Khan family, a Gold Star family who Trump beefed with during the 2016 campaign.) But if you thought this would put the mystery to rest, well, you'd be wrong. Yes, Melania shared photos of her appearance, but the photos were all taken from a distance and the event was closed to the press, so this is as good a look as we'll get for now. A video also showed the First Lady escorting her husband, the president, into the ceremony but, again, it was from a distance, and has become something of a Zapruder film for 2018. Still, plenty of evidence that Melania Trump is alive and, most importantly, well and not on some far flung island counting hundred dollar bills and hanging out with Elvis and Tupac. Even Trump himself got in on the jokes, making mention of the buzz around Melania's disappearance during his speech to the Gold Star families. And the news that the First Lady is skipping Trump's bizarre "AMERICA IS THE BEST" ceremony on Tuesday (in lieu of hosting the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles) surely will fuel more of the conspiracy fire. And, so, here we go again, another spin around the circle, waiting to see what Melania is up to. If you read this, Melania, blink once for "I'm fine" and twice for "I'll meet you in Zihuatanejo." | |
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| 06-05-18 07:16pm - 2392 days | #808 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
You have to admire White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. Either she honestly believes in Donald Trump the President as a man of honor, or she is a fabulous liar who can lie as well as her hero, Donald Trump. Either way, I do admire Sarah Sanders. I personally could not last more than a week, if that long, when giving out information that soon proves to be false or misleading. Somehow, Sanders is able to ignore that the statements of information she gives out often turn out to be misleading or false. Her position is that she is giving out the best information available to her, at the time she gives it out. And if the information changes, she appears to be comfortable with that. Because she is now giving out the most current information (and somehow ignoring the past information that does not agree with the current information). -------------- -------------- Sarah Sanders won't amend Trump Tower story, blasts reporters instead Dylan Stableford 5 hours ago For the second day in a row, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders refused to explain why she denied a report that President Trump helped draft a misleading statement for Donald Trump Jr. about his son’s infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer. At Tuesday’s press briefing, Sanders was again asked if she cared to revise her earlier remarks on the meeting given that Trump’s attorneys admitted this week that the president had, in fact, “dictated” his son’s response. “I’m not going to go into detail and get into a back and forth,” Sanders responded. “I know that you guys would love to engage on matters of conversations between the special counsel and the outside counsel, but we’ve purposely walled off and I’m not going to comment.” Last August, Sanders said that Trump “certainly didn’t dictate” the statement about the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting, which falsely asserted it was convened to discuss Russian adoption policy. The New York Times revealed that Trump Jr. arranged the sit-down with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, because he was told she had political dirt on Hillary Clinton. For months, Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, insisted that the president had nothing to do with crafting Trump Jr.’s statement. But in a letter to special counsel Robert Mueller revealed this week, Trump’s legal team said that the president “dictated a short” response to the Times report. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said on Monday night that it was a “mistake” by Sekulow and Sanders to say otherwise. During another exchange at Tuesday’s briefing, Sanders was asked whether she she thinks her statement from August was accurate. “I think you all know I’m an honest person,” she replied. Sarah Sanders White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP) The press secretary was then asked why the American people should trust the information coming from behind the White House briefing room podium. “I work every single day to give you accurate and up-to-date information, and I’m going to continue to do that,” Sanders said, before launching into a lecture about press coverage. “Frankly, I think my credibility is probably higher than the media’s. I think in large part that’s because you guys spend more of your time focusing on attacking the president instead of reporting the news.” She added: “I think that if you spent a little bit more time reporting the news instead of trying to tear me down, you might actually see that we’re working hard trying to provide you good information and trying to provide that same good information to the American people.” Later in the briefing, Sanders clashed with CNN’s April Ryan, who asked whether Trump is aware that NFL players protesting during the national anthem are trying to raise awareness about police-involved shootings. “The president has made his position crystal clear,” Sanders said, before interjecting as Ryan tried to asked a followup. “I let you rudely interrupt me,” Sanders said. “I’m going to ask that you allow me to finish my answer. I would be happy to answer if you stopped talking long enough to let me do that.” | |
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| 06-05-18 07:48pm - 2392 days | #809 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Pruitt needs a raise. Or else he needs a PAC to pay his personal bills. --------- --------- Scott Pruitt enlisted an EPA aide to help his wife find a job — at Chick-fil-A Scott Pruitt EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 16, 2018. (Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post) Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis and Josh DawseyWashington Post Three months after Scott Pruitt was sworn in as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, his executive scheduler emailed Dan Cathy, chairman and president of the fast food company Chick-fil-A, with an unusual request: Would Cathy meet with Pruitt to discuss "a potential business opportunity"? A call was arranged, then canceled, and Pruitt eventually spoke with someone from the company's legal department. Only then did he reveal the "opportunity" on his mind was a job for his wife, Marlyn. "The subject of that phone call was an expression of interest in his wife becoming a Chick-fil-A franchisee," company representative Carrie Kurlander told The Washington Post via email. Marlyn Pruitt never opened a restaurant. "Administrator Pruitt's wife started, but did not complete, the Chick-fil-A franchisee application," Kurlander said. But the revelation that Pruitt used his official position and EPA staff to try to line up work for his wife appears to open a new chapter in the ongoing saga of his questionable spending and management decisions, which so far have spawned a dozen federal probes. Paid Post Learn more Moving into downtown Chicago, companies find a perfect fit at WeWork Moving into downtown Chicago, companies find a perfect fit at WeWork Sponsored Content by WeWork Pruitt's efforts on his wife's behalf - revealed in emails recently released under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Sierra Club - did not end with Chick-fil-A. Pruitt also approached the chief executive of Concordia, a New York nonprofit organization. The executive, Matthew Swift, said he ultimately paid Marlyn Pruitt $2,000 plus travel expenses to help organize the group's annual conference last September. Multiple current and former EPA aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said Pruitt told them he was eager for his wife to start receiving a salary. Two said Pruitt was frustrated in part by the high cost of maintaining homes in both Washington and Oklahoma. EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox declined to comment on Pruitt's overtures on his wife's behalf to Concordia and Chick-fil-A. Federal ethics laws bar public officials from using their position or staff for private gain. A Cabinet-level official using his perch to contact a company CEO about a job for his wife "raises the specter of misuse of public office," said Don Fox, who was head of the federal Office of Government Ethics during the Obama administration. "It's not much different [from] if he [had] asked the aide to facilitate getting a franchise for himself." Asking a government scheduler, Sydney Hupp, to plan the meeting also marks a violation of federal rules barring officials from asking subordinates to perform personal tasks, Fox said. "It is a misuse of the aide's time to ask the aide to do something like this that is really for personal financial benefit." Hupp left the EPA last year; she did not respond to a request for comment. Hupp was not the only EPA employee enlisted to perform nonofficial tasks. Last month, Pruitt acknowledged Hupp's sister, Millan, helped him search for housing in Washington. She later told congressional staffers she made inquiries at the Trump International Hotel about buying him a used mattress while she was on the EPA payroll. The Georgia-based Chick-fil-A receives about 40,000 "expressions of interest" each year from people hoping to operate one of its restaurants, Kurlander said. "The process of becoming a franchisee is very thorough and results in approximately 100 people being selected each year," she wrote. "We are very proud of the fact that those who are selected demonstrate the leadership ability and business acumen needed to own and operate Chick-fil-A restaurants." Pruitt's expression of interest began on May 16, 2017, according to the emails released under FOIA, when Hupp emailed Cathy that her boss "asked me to reach out to you and see if you might be willing to get a time set up for the two of you to have a meeting." Cathy, who has championed socially conservative causes and had met Pruitt during his tenure as Oklahoma attorney general, replied within an hour, connecting Hupp with one of his own aides, Evan Karanovich. Karanovich asked whether "an initial phone call would be sufficient" and asked what the EPA chief wanted to talk about. "The Administrator did not mention a specific topic, but I will touch base with him to see if there is one," Hupp replied. The two sides arranged a conference call for June 23, with Cathy scheduled to be joined by a senior attorney in his legal department. That call did not happen, company officials said, adding "a call took place later between Administrator Pruitt and a Chick-fil-A staff member." The effort ultimately did not lead to a franchise for Marlyn Pruitt. Kurlander noted that "Mrs. Pruitt is not and has never been a Chick-fil-A franchisee." Around the same time, Pruitt contacted Swift, CEO of Concordia, a nonprofit organization that brings together leaders from the private and public sector. Pruitt asked Swift to call Marlyn Pruitt, Swift said in an email, which he did. "We discussed her interest in event planning for nonprofits and events that take place in Washington," Swift said. "Mrs. Pruitt was interested in meeting people in the nonprofit sector, and I offered to introduce her to some of Concordia's attendees based in Washington and for her to become involved with Concordia's events." Swift's group had invited Pruitt to speak at its 2017 conference in Manhattan, the same event where Marlyn Pruitt was paid $2,000 for three days' work. At the event, Pruitt was accompanied by at least three aides. EPA travel records show his first-class plane ticket cost $1,201.80, and his overnight stay came to $669. Swift defended Pruitt's handling of the matter. "Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Pruitt ever solicited a position for Mrs. Pruitt at Concordia, nor was it a condition of the agreement for the administrator to speak," he said. The Pruitts' focus on augmenting their household income appears to have come after the administrator moved to Washington and began paying for two full-time residences. Pruitt attracted widespread criticism for renting a $50-a-night condo from a Washington lobbyist in the early months of his tenure. Since then, his housing costs appear to have increased substantially. According to public records, Pruitt and his wife hold an $850,000 mortgage on their home in an upscale Tulsa, Oklahoma neighborhood, requiring monthly payments of approximately $5,500 - including $17,793 in property taxes the couple paid last year. The mortgage has an adjustable rate, records show, so those payments eventually could rise. In addition, the Pruitts lease an apartment in a modern development on Capitol Hill in Washington where one-bedroom units start at around $3,000 per month. As EPA head, Pruitt currently makes $189,600 a year, according to federal records. In a federal financial form filed after he was nominated to lead the EPA, Pruitt listed his only income as his attorney general's salary, about $133,000 per year. Under the entry for spouse's income and retirement accounts, he wrote, "None." Pruitt's most recent financial disclosure was due in May, but like many Trump administration officials, he has requested a filing extension. The Washington Post's Alice Crites and Andrew Tran contributed to this report. | |
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| 06-05-18 08:09pm - 2392 days | #810 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Never give a sucker an even break. Cop who was fired after ramming a suspect with his police car was hired by nearby sheriff's department. My guess is that the new sheriff's department thinks ramming a suspect with a car can be a good idea. So what about a suspect's rights? What rights? The right to be shot and killed? The right to be beaten until the cop has worked off his anger? The right to go to jail if the cops, after beating him, stops before the suspect is dead? Actually, there is a reason why the sheriff hired the fired cop: The sheriff thinks that the fired cop did not deliberately use his car to hit the suspect: instead, the suspect rammed the police car (even though the suspect was on foot and trying to run away, the sheriff thinks the suspect deliberately rammed the police car. In which case, the former police department can sue the suspect for damages to public property (the police car), in addition to any other charges the suspect is facing. ------------ ------------ Cop Who Was Fired After Ramming Suspect With Car Hired By Nearby County HuffPost Nina Golgowski,HuffPost 5 hours ago A Georgia police officer fired a day after video captured him hitting a suspect with his patrol car during a chase has been hired by a nearby sheriff’s department. Taylor Saulters, who was a rookie in the Athens-Clarke County Police Department, was picked up by the Oglethorpe County Sheriff’s Office on Monday, its sheriff announced on Facebook. “I have known him since he was a baby and I know he will be a great asset to our county,” Sheriff David Gabriel said. Taylor Saulters, formerly of the Athens-Clarke County Police Department, is now employed by the Oglethorpe County Sheriff's Office. Saulters, who was fired on Saturday, remains the subject of a probe by the Georgia Bureau of Investigations for the June 1 incident, the GBI confirmed to HuffPost. Gabriel, in announcing Saulters’ hiring in a statement, put his own spin on the action that got Saulter fired. The sheriff said Saulters’ name may sound familiar because of the incident “where a fleeing felon struck his patrol car while he was attempting to apprehend him.” Video taken from inside Saulters’ patrol car shows him driving after Timmy Patmon, 23, who was fleeing on foot through a neighborhood while wanted on a felony probation warrant. During the chase, Saulters drove over a curb and blew out a tire. After unsuccessfully attempting to use his vehicle as a roadblock he drove his car into Patmon, knocking him to the ground. Athens-Clarke County Police Chief Scott Freeman told WSBTV that Saulters was “very adamant that it wasn’t his intention to strike Mr. Patmon,” though an investigation found that he accelerated his vehicle and appears to have turned his steering wheel to hit him. Philip Holloway, an attorney representing Saulters, told the station that his client’s firing was an injustice but that he had received multiple job offers. According to the Athens Banner-Herald, Saulters graduated from the police academy less than a year ago. His father, police Capt. Jerry Saulters, heads the Athens-Clarke County Police Department’s criminal investigative division, WSBTV reported. The Oglethorpe County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. ----------------------- BBC News Officer fired for hitting suspect with car BBC News Mon, Jun 4 12:39 PM PDT Bodycam footage shows moment a man fleeing police is hit and sent flying into the windscreen of the patrol car. Officer Taylor Saulters has been fired by the Athens-Clarke County Police Department in the US state of Georgia. Police Officer Fired After Video Shows Him Hitting Fleeing Suspect With His Patrol Car Kara Warner,People Mon, Jun 4 9:13 AM PDT Georgia Police Officer Fired After Hitting Suspect with Car A police officer in Georgia has been fired after hitting a fleeing suspect with his patrol car late last week, PEOPLE confirms. In a statement obtained by PEOPLE, the Athens-Clarke County Police Department said the incident occurred Friday night while Officers Hunter Blackmon and Taylor Saulters were on patrol. Blackmon spotted a man, Timmy Patmon, whom he knew had a felony probation warrant, authorities said in the statement. The officers confirmed the validity of the warrant and attempted to make contact with Patmon, but he ran away. Saulters pursued the suspect with his patrol car and attempted to block Patmon’s path twice — all of which was captured on video and released publicly by Athens-Clarke County PD. “During Saulter’s first attempt to block Patmon, Saulters struck a curb and flattened his driver’s side front tire,” the department said in a statement. “On Saulter’s second attempt to block Patmon’s path with his patrol car, and during the maneuvering of the patrol car, Patmon impacted the right front quarter panel of Saulters’ car as Saulters was attempting to accelerate past Patmon.” A subsequent internal affairs investigation into Saulters’ conduct found he used excessive force in arresting Patmon. “Saulters did not have any information that would justify using a patrol vehicle to affect an arrest,” the investigation’s summary report states. At the scene on Friday, officers called for an ambulance to evaluate Patmon, who sustained minor injuries, after which he was turned over to the Clarke County Jail, authorities said. The extent of Patmon’s injuries “were scrapes and bruises,” police said. He has been charged with violating his probation and obstructing a law enforcement officer. Patmon remains in custody, and court officials said Monday he has not entered a plea and is scheduled to return to court on July 12. Records did not list an attorney who could comment on his behalf. • Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. In the wake of the incident, Officer Saulters was initially placed on administrative leave by Chief Scott Freeman and an internal affairs investigation was opened. The Georgia State Patrol and Georgia Bureau of Investigation were also brought in to conduct independent investigations of the incident. The GBI will find if criminal charges are appropriate against Saulters, according to the Athens Banner-Herald. “After reviewing the officers’ body camera footage, and all the other facts and circumstances of this case Chief Scott Freeman terminated the employment of Officer Taylor Saulters,” the department said in its statement. Saulters reportedly graduated from the police academy in the last year and was a rookie on the force. While Saulters said he did not meant to hit Patmon with his car, the summary report of the internal affairs probe, which was obtained by PEOPLE, says he “used poor judgement in using his patrol vehicle as a means to apprehend a fleeing suspect.” Officer Blackmon was not cited for any “policy violations or areas of concern.” “There are no facts that were uncovered that would have led to the justification for this level of use of force in this incident,” the report continues, noting that Patmon was clearly visible along the right side of Saulters’ car when the officer turned it in his direction. For his part, Saulters told investigators that he had trouble controlling his car after the driver’s side tire went flat and that Patmon “ran into his vehicle,” according to the report. He said he only wanted to block the suspect from further escape. (Efforts to reach Saulters for comment on Monday were unsuccessful.) Once in custody, according to the IA report, Patmon talked to Saulters about being hit by his car, to which Saulters responded: “I know, I know what I did. Why did you run?” After Patmon was struck, an onlooker said, “You didn’t have to hit that man like that.” | |
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| 06-07-18 08:50am - 2390 days | #811 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Giuliani insists that Stormy Daniels has no credibility because she's a porn star Dylan Stableford 1 hour 12 minutes ago Rudy Giuliani, Stormy Daniels (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Win McNamee/Getty Images, ingo H.W. Chiu/AP, Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images) President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani doubled down Thursday on his assertion that adult film actress Stormy Daniels has no credibility because of her profession. “If you’re involved in a sort of slimy business, [that] says something about you,” Giuliani told CNN. “Says something about how far you’ll go to make money.” The former New York City mayor said that if you’re a feminist and you support the porn industry, “you should turn in your credentials.” “Our real point about her is that she’s not just generally un-credible, she’s un-credible from the point of view of wanting to get money,” Giuliani said. “She’s a con artist.” During a panel discussion in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Wednesday, Giuliani was asked for his thoughts about Daniels, who received a $130,000 “hush money” payment from Trump’s longtime personal attorney in October 2016 in exchange for her silence about the sexual relationship she said she had with Trump in 2006. The president has denied the affair. Giuliani said he believes Trump, citing Daniels’s appearance as evidence. “When you look at Stormy Daniels — I know Donald Trump. Look at his three wives — beautiful women, classy women, women of great substance,” Giuliani said. “Stormy Daniels?” Giuliani continued: “Trump is a real gentleman who respects his wife and loves his daughter and has a warm relationship with his ex-wives — that’s not something I can say about everybody. I haven’t heard a bad word about him from his ex-wives.” In a 1993 book that detailed Trump’s divorce case with his first wife, Ivana Trump, she used the word “rape” to describe a violent sexual encounter she said she had with Trump. When the allegation resurfaced during the 2016 Republican primary, Cohen told the Daily Beast that Trump “never raped anybody” and added that, by definition, “you can’t rape your spouse.” “I respect all human beings. I even have to respect, you know, criminals,” he added. “But, I’m sorry, I don’t respect a porn star the way I respect a career woman or a woman of substance or a woman who has great respect for herself as a woman and as a person and isn’t going to sell her body for sexual exploitation.” Daniels is suing the president and Cohen for defamation. “So Stormy, you want to bring a case, let me cross examine you,” Giuliani said in Israel. “Because the business you’re in entitles you to no degree of giving your credibility any weight. And secondly, explain to me how she could be damaged. I mean, she has no reputation. If you’re going to sell your body for money, you just don’t have a reputation. Maybe old-fashioned, I don’t know.” Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti responded in a statement: “Mr. Giuliani is a misogynist. His most recent comments regarding my client, who passed a lie detector test and who the American people believe, are disgusting and a disgrace. His client Mr. Trump didn’t seem to have any ‘moral’ issues with her and others back in 2006 and beyond.” Avenatti added Thursday: “If any [attorney] for any Fortune 500 co. made the public comments that Giuliani did yesterday (which he affirmed this morning), they would be immediately fired. Giuliani must be fired by Mr. Trump NOW. Otherwise, it sends a message to the world that the comments are acceptable.” | |
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| 06-07-18 08:57am - 2390 days | #812 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Associated Press Analysis: HUD plan would raise rents for poor by 20 percent Associated Press Juliet Linderman and Larry Fenn, Associated Press,Associated Press 3 hours ago In this May 14, 2018, photo, two young boys walk across the grass of the Bridgeview Village Apartments in Charleston, S.C. A new data analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities shows that tenants in Charleston receiving housing assistance could see the second-highest average annual increase in the United States under a new proposal by HUD Secretary Ben Carson to raise rents for millions of low-income households. (AP Photo/Robert Ray) CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- Housing Secretary Ben Carson says his latest proposal to raise rents would mean a path toward self-sufficiency for millions of low-income households across the United States by pushing more people to find work. For Ebony Morris and her four small children, it could mean homelessness. Morris lives in Charleston, South Carolina, where most households receiving federal housing assistance would see rents rise an average 26 percent, according to an analysis done by Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for The Associated Press. Her increase would be nearly double that. Overall, the analysis shows that in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, low-income tenants — many of whom have jobs — would have to pay roughly 20 percent more each year for rent under the plan. That's about six times greater than the growth in average hourly earnings, putting poor workers at an increased risk of homelessness because wages haven't kept pace with housing expenses. "I saw public housing as an option to get on my feet, to pay 30 percent of my income and get myself out of debt and eventually become a homeowner," said Morris, whose rent would jump from $403 to $600. "But this would put us in a homeless state." Roughly 4 million low-income households receiving HUD assistance would be affected by the proposal. HUD estimates that about 2 million would be affected immediately, while the other 2 million would see rent increases phased in after six years. The proposal, which needs congressional approval, is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to scale back the social safety net, under the belief that being less generous will prompt those receiving federal assistance to enter the workforce. "It's our attempt to give poor people a way out of poverty," Carson said in a recent interview with Fox News. The analysis shows families would be disproportionately impacted. Of the 8.3 million people affected, more than 3 million are children. Morris, a pediatric assistant, said she sometimes works 50 hours a week just to get by. Her four young children would be hit hard if her rent increases, she said. "Food, electricity bills, school uniforms," she said. "Internet for homework assignments and report cards. All of their reading modules at school require the internet, without it they'll be behind their classmates. The kids are in extracurriculars, those would be scrapped. I would struggle just to pay my bills." The impact of the plan would be felt everywhere. Rent for the poorest tenants in Baltimore, where Carson was a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and where his own story of overcoming poverty inspired generations of children, could go up by 19 percent or $800 a year. In Detroit, where Carson's mother, a single parent, raised him by working two jobs, rents could increase by $710, or 21 percent. Households in Washington, D.C., one of the richest regions in the country, would see the largest increases: $980 per year on average, a 20 percent hike. "This proposal to raise rents on low-income people doesn't magically create well-paying jobs needed to lift people out of poverty," said Diane Yentel, CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. "Instead it just makes it harder for struggling families to get ahead by potentially cutting them off from the very stability that makes it possible for them to find and keep jobs." While the Department of Housing and Urban Development says elderly or disabled households would be exempt, about 314,000 households could lose their elderly or disabled status and see higher rents, according to the analysis by the policy center, which advocates for the poor. Carson's "Make Affordable Housing Work Act," announced April 25, would allow housing authorities to impose work requirements, would increase the percentage of income that tenants are required to pay from 30 percent to 35 percent, and would raise the minimum rent from $50 to $150. It would eliminate deductions, for medical care and child care, and for each child in a home: Currently, families can deduct $480 per child, significantly lowering rent. Donald Cameron, president and CEO of the Charleston Housing Authority, calls the proposal catastrophic. "We'd lose a lot of people within a very short time: the ones with the smallest pocket books, the least discretionary income," he said. Not all recipients of housing assistance think the plan is unfair. "I'm in favor of it," said Shalonda Skinner, 29, who lives in public housing with her five children. "Housing helps a lot of people. It will probably put a good amount of people out because some people don't like to work, they're not independent. But it's fair." If her rent were to go up, she said, "I'd work more," taking on more hair clients. Melissa Maddox Evans, general counsel for the Charleston Housing Authority, said she believes the proposal is based on a faulty premise — that most public housing residents don't have jobs and that rent increases will incentivize work. "Most tenants here work two or three job," she said. "When they are going out and finding work, are they going to make enough to accommodate that increase?" The policy center conducted its analysis based on 2016 HUD data. It includes tenants living in public housing and receiving Section 8 and project-based vouchers. It excludes housing authorities participating in the Moving to Work program, which allows districts to determine their own distinct rent policies. ___ Fenn reported from New York. | |
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| 06-07-18 09:09am - 2390 days | #813 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Time Magazine Cover Imagines Donald Trump As King HuffPost Jenna Amatulli,HuffPost 2 hours 13 minutes ago The latest Time magazine cover features President Donald Trump looking at his The latest Time magazine cover features President Donald Trump looking at his reflection in a mirror and seeing himself as “King Me” in a royal robe and crown. The image for the magazine’s June 18 edition aims to capture the first 500 days of Trump’s presidency, especially his approach to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible campaign collusion, the artist said. The illustration accompanies the cover story titled: “Donald Trump’s Campaign to Discredit the Russia Investigation May Be Working. It’s Also Damaging American Democracy.” “This portrait of Trump gazing into a mirror and seeing a king gets to the heart of how he and his legal team have approached this past week and the past 500 days, actually,” artist Tim O’Brien was quoted by Time as saying. “Besides the usual challenge of the short deadline and making the image work, whether or not to have him looking at himself or looking at us was the thing I pondered most. His eye contact with each reader, each American fits the situation best.” Trump this week boasted about his “absolute right” to pardon himself in the Russia probe. His lawyer told HuffPost Trump could have shot former FBI Director James Comey in the Oval Office and not be prosecuted. Many on Twitter had thoughts about the cover: Trump has taken issue with Time in the past. Last year, Trump claimed the magazine had informed him that he would “probably” be selected as its Person of the Year. He later tweeted: “Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named ‘Man (Person) of the Year,’ like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!” Fake Time covers showing a portrait of Trump with headlines proclaiming his reality TV show ratings were hanging in five of his resorts as recently as a year ago. | |
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| 06-10-18 03:37pm - 2387 days | #814 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stabbed President Trump in the back. A mortally wounded Trump has his finger on the box to send 1000s of nuclear missiles into Canada to wipe out the double crossing Canadians. Trump loves all people: even the ones from shithole countries. Canada is not a shithole country, but is a land filled with dishonest and weak Canadians, who must be punished for their bad behavior. Hopefully, the nuclear dust will be stopped before it enters the United States. Or else, we must build a wall between the US and Canada, as well as a wall between the US and Mexico. Come, America, donate to the Trump-Wall-That-Will-Keep-Us-Safe. (15% of all donations will go to the Trump charity, that will support Donald Trump and his family members once Donald Trump leaves the presidency.) ----- ----- Trump economic adviser: Trudeau 'stabbed us in the back' By Brett Samuels - 06/10/18 09:13 AM EDT White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Sunday tore into Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for “double crossing” President Trump with critical comments about U.S. trade policy. “He was polarizing. He really kind of stabbed us in the back,” Kudlow said in strikingly critical remarks during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “He did a great disservice to the whole [Group of Seven (G-7)],” he added. Kudlow specifically took issue with Trudeau's comments at a post-summit press conference, and repeatedly called the Canadian's actions a "betrayal." In a press conference after Trump departed for Singapore ahead of his Tuesday meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trudeau said Canada would move forward with retaliatory tariffs, saying Canada will "not be pushed around." In response, Trump attacked Trudeau on Twitter, calling him “dishonest & weak.” Kudlow called Trudeau’s press conference a “sophomoric, political stunt for domestic consumption.” “President Trump played that process in good faith. So, I ask you: He gets up in the airplane and leaves, and then Trudeau starts blasting him at a domestic news conference? I am sorry, that’s a betrayal. That’s a double cross.” Kudlow indicated that Trudeau's comments undermined the U.S. president ahead of his upcoming meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which is set to take place Tuesday morning in Singapore. "Kim must not see American weakness," Kudlow said. "This is a case where Trudeau, it was like, I don't know, pouring collateral damage on the whole Korean trip. That was a part of Trudeau's mistake. Trudeau made an error. He should take it back. He should pull back on his statements, and wish President Trump well in the Korean negotiations." Kudlow doubled down on his comments, faulting Trudeau with putting Trump in a position of appearing "weak" ahead of talks with North Korea. "I mean he can't put Trump in a position of being weak going into the North Korean talks with Kim. He can't do that," Kudlow continued. "And by the way, President Trump is not weak. He will be very strong as he always is." The remarks from a top economic adviser to the president about a long-standing U.S. ally were deeply unusual, and underscored the growing divide between the United States and its northern neighbor. The Trump administration has blamed Canada for Trump's decision to not sign on to a communique at the G-7 summit in Quebec, Canada, over the weekend. The president prompted concerns of a trade war after doubling down on his decision to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Canada, Mexico and European countries have vowed to implement retaliatory tariffs. | |
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| 06-11-18 04:22am - 2387 days | #815 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The Guardian Underpaid and exhausted: the human cost of your Kindle In the Chinese city of Hengyang, we find a fatigued, disposable workforce assembling gadgets for Amazon, owned by the world’s richest man. by Gethin Chamberlain in Hengyang, China Sat 9 Jun 2018 17.11 EDT Last modified on Sun 10 Jun 2018 21.04 EDT Five o’clock in the morning and the young woman’s eyelids are drooping. All night she has been removing spots of dust from Amazon smartspeakers with a toothbrush. Time seems to crawl. Now she is overwhelmed with exhaustion. She works on, more and more slowly, until she can do no more. She looks around the workshop. Other workers have rested their heads on the bench. She slumps forward and falls asleep. Let’s call the young woman Alexa. Alexa, what are you doing here? Workers not paid legally by Amazon contractor in China For an answer, we must fast forward a couple of months to last Monday. It is an overcast morning in the city of Hengyang, in the southern Chinese province of Hunan. More than seven million people live in this city, the second-largest in the province. It is known locally as the Wild Goose City, for the birds that used to stop off on their southerly migration, but many people even within China would struggle to find it on a map. The morning is warm but overcast, with a light haze that could be fog or pollution. The road to the Foxconn factory in Baishazhou Industrial Park is wide and lined with well-cared-for plants. There’s a steady stream of cars, motorbikes and buses heading towards the factory, which sits back from the road behind a large gate. Blue-uniformed security staff keep watch on those coming in and the street outside. Dozens of workers are arriving, casually dressed in jeans and T-shirts. Most are young and there is a good mixture of women and men. Ahead of them lies a 60-hour week, eight regular hours for five days, plus two more of overtime each day and another 10 on Saturday. They will be expected to hit tough targets and must ask permission to use the toilets. The overtime – up to 80 hours a month – is far in excess of the 36 hours stipulated in Chinese labour laws, but companies can and do seek exemptions and workers want the overtime, to boost their basic pay. These are the people who are making the smart speakers and tablets that Amazon hopes to make a fixture in millions more homes around the world this year: the Echo and Echo Dot – which both spring to life when the user addresses them as Alexa – and the Kindles. It is a year since Amazon sealed a deal with the giant Foxconn company to ramp up its hardware production in Hengyang, with the Chinese firm reportedly adding 30 new production lines and creating 15,000 jobs. The Foxconn factory producing Amazon Echo smartspeakers and Kindles in Hengyang. The Foxconn factory producing Amazon Echo smartspeakers and Kindles in Hengyang. Photograph: China Labor Watch Foxconn is China’s largest single private employer, and in March it reported a 4.2% increase in profits, with net income rising to £1.84bn in the last three quarters of 2017. Profits for the first quarter of this year were £605m and its CEO, Terry Gou, has a fortune reported to be about £5.3bn. But it is said to be keen to diversify to reduce its reliance on Apple and it is investing heavily in the Hengyang plant to meet the demand from Amazon. The Foxconn factory in Hengyang relies on the tried and tested formula of low wages and long hours. But here there is another element: the extensive use of agency workers who don’t have the security of a regular job. These employees – known as dispatch workers in China – are hired in from labour companies as an off-the-shelf workforce. They are generally slightly better-paid than permanent members of staff, but they get no sick pay or holiday pay and can be laid off without any pay at all during quiet months when production drops off. In some ways they resemble the Amazon products they are making: wanted one day and discarded the next. But the increasing reliance on a disposable workforce by companies has alarmed the Chinese government, and in 2014 it changed its labour laws to limit dispatch workers to just 10% of a company’s staff – and then only to cover temporary work. Companies were expected to fill most positions with regular staff on employment contracts. The wage slips pinned to the walls of the Foxconn factory in Hengyang suggest that the message may be taking some time to get through: they show that about 40% of the workforce in the Hengyang plant are bought in from agencies. These are the workers on whom Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is relying to further entrench his position as the world’s richest man. Bezos is worth an estimated £102bn, a fortune he acquired against a backdrop of global reports of misery for Amazon’s warehouse workers, exhausted by the demands made on them in return for the most basic of wages. Unions and labour rights groups have protested about low pay and harsh working conditions, and three delivery firms used by Amazon are facing a legal challenge from the GMB union, demanding that gig economy delivery drivers receive sick pay and holiday pay. My week as an Amazon insider Read more Last month it was revealed that ambulances had been called 600 times to Amazon’s UK warehouses over the past three years. There have been repeated calls for Amazon to improve the lot of its workers. But Bezos doesn’t see the need. Collecting an award for “outstanding personalities who are particularly innovative, and who generate and change markets, influence culture and at the same time face up to their responsibility to society” a couple of months ago, he was questioned about the controversies surrounding the way he made his money. “When you’re criticised,” he said, “first look in the mirror and decide: are your critics right? If they are right, change. Don’t resist.” But Bezos’s mirror apparently showed him that his critics were wrong. “I’m very proud of our working conditions and very proud of the wages we pay,” he told the audience gathered to fete him. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has become the world’s richest man. Photograph: Todd Williamson/Getty And now he and Gou have brought that same formula to Hengyang. But what draws two of the world’s richest men to set up in a city far from the big manufacturing hubs of Shenzhen, Shanghai, Tianjin and Guangzhou, with their easy access to shipping and huge industrial bases? For an answer, it helps to know that Alexa is working for 14.5 yuan an hour (£1.69). That’s £1 less than the £2.69 national average for a factory worker in China. Foxconn could not pay her so little in Shenzhen, where the legal minimum wage is 19.5 yuan an hour, or in Shanghai, where it is 20 yuan. Some days Alexa gets to work overtime. But when she opens her wage slip at the end of the month she will be disappointed, because she and her fellow dispatch workers are paid only the same 14.5 yuan rate that they get for the main shift, instead of the time-and-a-half stipulated by Chinese labour law and Amazon’s own supplier code of conduct. Foxconn promises agency workers a minimum of 3,700 yuan a month (£431.64), but pay slips and workers’ own accounts suggest real wages rarely get close to that figure. Most earn between 2,000 and 3,000 yuan, with permanent staff earning between 2,000 and 2,500 yuan. In 2017, the average wage for a worker in Hengyang was 4,647 yuan a month. Pay rates have rocketed in China in recent years, but Hunan remains one of the provinces with the lowest wages, and the minimum in Hengyang – 1,280 yuan a month – is barely half that in Shenzhen, where Foxconn’s Apple factory is based. I’m very proud of our working conditions and very proud of the wages we pay Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO That Shenzhen factory has been the subject of years of criticism for its treatment of staff manufacturing iPhones and other Apple devices – with 14 suicides in 2010 prompting the installation of netting around the factory dormitories to catch workers jumping from the roofs. Now rewind again, back to March. It is early evening and Alexa is getting off the bus and entering the factory for the night shift. She has secured a job as a dispatch worker through the Qizhong labour company – one of six supplying the factory – and has joined the production line making Amazon’s mini smart speaker, the Echo Dot. Alexa looks much like the other young women around her, but she has a secret. Alexa has been sent in undercover by the US-based labour rights investigator China Labor Watch to find out what is going on behind the security gate. It is the first time anyone has investigated Amazon’s production lines, and CLW has teamed up with the Observer (and the Sunday Mirror) to publish the findings. Its own report – Amazon Profits from Secretly Oppressing its Supplier’s Workers – is published online today. Alexa is early, like all the other workers. They know that they must leave time to clear security and be at their workstations for the 8pm start, though they won’t be paid for turning up early. She notices that the temperature inside the workshops is noticeably higher than outside and the anti-static gloves she has to wear quickly make her hands sweat. Every day when she returns to the company dormitory she shares with five other women, she jots down what she has seen in her diary: the monotonous work; the colleagues complaining about sore backs and the bright lights that make their eyes tired; the overwhelming sense of exhaustion. She notes that workers must ask permission from a supervisor to go to the toilet, and how some workers are left in tears when they are told off by their line manager. CONTINUED ON NEXT MESSAGE: | |
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| 06-11-18 04:26am - 2387 days | #816 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Today Alexa has to clean 1,400 Echo Dot speakers with a toothbrush dipped in rubbing alcohol to remove any specks of dust. Four-and-a-half hours into the shift, she is already flagging. “I was already so tired and my movements grew slower,” she writes later. “I brushed with less and less force. There were 20 or 30 speakers building up in front of me that I had yet to brush clean. “The speakers that remained to be cleaned kept building up in front of me. The line technician came over and told me to brush faster and that my movements were too slow … but I no longer had any strength.” Another day she chats to an older woman sitting opposite her. “The woman across from me said that she had been brushing for so long that her hand was growing numb, her neck was sore, her back was sore, her eyes couldn’t see clearly, and her vision was getting worse …” Another worker tells her she, too, is suffering: “While working at the same work position and doing the same motions over and over again each day, she felt exhausted and her back was sore and her neck, back and arms could barely take it any more.” Alexa’s diary makes no happier reading the following day. A woman of about 45 tells her how she has been scolded because she is not fast enough: “It might be because she was getting older so her speed was slower and her reactions were slower. When the line leader was telling her off, she started crying. After I returned to the dorm, an older woman … said that last time the line leader told her off, she also cried.” She describes long nights of repetitive and relentless work, with fellow workers close to falling asleep on their feet. During a break about midnight she sees that “many people were resting on the assembly line and sleeping, while others had pushed together some chairs and were sleeping on those. Some had even stacked together some foam boards and slept on top of them.” The workers’ eating area in Hengyang’s Foxconn factory. The workers’ eating area in Hengyang’s Foxconn factory. Photograph: China Labor Watch She finds little relief on returning to the dormitories, where she notes that there is no emergency escape plan in case of fire and “escape routes are unlabelled”. Workers complain about the living conditions, including leaks in the roof and lights in the showers not working. Alexa’s diary records her own frustrations on the production line and how she is overwhelmed by tiredness: “In my mind, I was both furious and lamenting as my hands continued the repetitive motions. My hands started feeling sore, but I managed to make it to 3am. “Around 4am, the workers across from me stopped working. I continued observing. The workers across from me told me I didn’t need to watch any more as the quota had already been reached. At this time, I saw that some of the people in the work positions behind us had also stopped and were sitting due to lack of work. I felt very tired so I rested my head on the assembly line. After a while, the line technician came over and tapped me and said I couldn’t sleep on the assembly line, so I sat up again.” At the end of the shift, Alexa leaves the workshop and goes to collect her phone from her locker: “There were a lot of people squatting or sitting on the kerbside, eating a boxed lunch or playing with their phones. They all looked exhausted.” Talk in the factory is of agency workers being laid off without pay during quiet periods: 700 in April and May, and 2,700 in January and February. Yet among the workers there is no great simmering anger, no burning resentment. Few have heard of Amazon or Bezos. They aren’t expecting very much and aren’t particularly disappointed when not very much is exactly what Foxconn and Amazon give them. One 32-year-old married man says he can earn a basic 2,000 yuan (£233) a month making Kindles, but even with overtime taking it up to around £315 it is not enough. Apple under fire over reports students worked illegal overtime to build iPhone X Read more “Currently, the wages are very low. I hope to be able to earn around 3,000 to 5,000 yuan a month. Though I doubt I can earn this on a consistent basis.” At least it is better than being a dispatch worker, he says. “The factory just fires them.” But a 19-year-old dispatch worker disagrees. He says he can earn 145 yuan a day if he works a couple of hours’ overtime and just accepts it when he is laid off: “The factory will schedule holidays for dispatch workers. Around half a month to a month. I just stay at home. It is OK.” It’s really not OK though, says Li Qiang, CLW’s executive director. Last month he wrote to Bezos, setting out the investigation’s findings and challenging the hiring of more than 40% of the workforce from agencies. “This violates Chinese labour law. Foxconn uses a large number of dispatch workers and violates workers’ interests via these dispatch companies. This practice is unethical and illegal,” he wrote. “I hope that you can compel your suppliers to improve their working situations and to manufacture Amazon products under ethical conditions.” But Amazon already knew this, because Alexa was not the only person running a ruler over the Foxconn factory in March. Amazon says that its own auditors also visited, and picked up “two issues of concern” – the high volume of dispatch workers and the illegal underpayment of overtime. Foxconn was told to fix it. Kara Hartnett Hurst, Amazon’s head of worldwide sustainability, responded to Li Qiang’s concerns, telling him: “Amazon takes reported violations of our supplier code of conduct extremely seriously. Amazon recognises our responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of factory workers manufacturing products for Amazon.” The company had, she said, a code of conduct for suppliers and it used independent auditors to inspect its suppliers, who were expected to respond to any issues identified. Last year, Bezos announced that he was considering a philanthropy strategy, “helping people in the here and now – short term – at the intersection of urgent need and lasting impact”. Apparently short of inspiration and unable to think of anything close to home, he took to Twitter to ask for suggestions. | |
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| 06-11-18 11:51am - 2386 days | #817 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Real news: Here's an exciting new investment option open for Trump. Collect dead bodies for free, by telling the people the bodies will be used for science and other good works. And that only tissue samples will taken from the dead bodies. Then, once the people have died, cut the bodies into parts, and sell them to whoever will pay the highest price. Perfectly legal, since no laws apparently stop this: the lying pitch, the dismemberment, whatever. Trump can make some nice change from his investment. ------ ------ Special Report: A business where human bodies were butchered, packaged and sold Thomson Reuters By John Shiffman, Reade Levinson and Brian Grow Jan 9th 2018 11:03AM PHOENIX (Reuters) - Sam Kazemi stood over the old man’s corpse. Nearby lay pliers, a scalpel and a motorized saw designed to cut drywall and pipe. On a busy day, Kazemi might harvest body parts from five or six people who had donated their bodies to science. On this day in November 2013, the corpse before Kazemi typified the donors who gave their remains to his employer, Biological Resource Center. SEE ALSO: Body found on burning oil tanker as rescue crews battle fires The man was a retired factory worker with a ninth-grade education. He had lived with his wife in a mobile home in Mohave Valley, Arizona, and had died six days earlier, aged 75. His name was Conrad Patrick. But after he died and his body was donated, Patrick became a commodity, known by the company’s initials and a number: BRC13112103. Reuters reviewed thousands of internal BRC records and confidential law enforcement documents containing profiles of Patrick and 2,280 other donors. The documents include invoices and inventories for thousands of body parts harvested from those people. They show how their bodies were dissected, which body parts were sent where, and why buyers obtained them. Kazemi helped cut up and package Patrick into seven pieces. BRC shipped Patrick’s left foot to a Chicago-area orthopedic lab. His left shoulder was sent to a Las Vegas company that holds surgical seminars. His head and his spine went to a project run by the U.S. Army. And Patrick’s “external reproductive organs” were sent to a local university. His right foot and left knee were placed in the company’s freezers, where they became part of BRC’s million-dollar inventory of flesh and bone. Slideshow preview image 10 PHOTOS The Biological Resource Center in Phoenix, Ariz. See Gallery For more than a year, Reuters has examined America’s body trade, a little-known and virtually unregulated industry. These businesses, which call themselves non-transplant tissue banks, are also known as body brokers. The operations can resemble meat-packing plants. At BRC, body parts from heads to fingernails were harvested and sold. On Saturday mornings, Kazemi taught college students how to dismember cadavers in the company lab. He also starred in a grisly training video, demonstrating how to carve out a man’s spine using a motorized saw. The documents obtained by Reuters – along with dozens of interviews with investigators, former BRC workers and families of donors – offer an unparalleled look at how one of America’s major body brokers operated. The records, never before made public, also reveal how little the government or the donors themselves understood what was happening at the company, and show in graphic detail how a cadaver becomes a commodity. Sales invoices detail many of those transactions. For $607, BRC sold the liver of a public school janitor to a medical-device company. The torso of a retired bank manager, bought by a Swiss research institute, fetched $3,191. A large Midwestern healthcare system paid $65 for two femoral arteries, one from a church minister. And the lower legs of a union activist were purchased by a Minnesota product-development company for $350 each. For raw material, the industry relies in large part on people too poor to afford a funeral, offering to cremate a portion of each donated body for free. A Reuters analysis of BRC donor files from May 3, 2011 through January 20, 2014 confirmed how important the disadvantaged were to business. The vast majority of BRC donors came from neighborhoods where the median household income fell below the state average. Four out of five donors didn’t graduate from college, about twice the ratio of the country as a whole. Before brokers accept a body, they typically present the donor or next of kin with a consent form. These agreements are often written in technical language that many donors and relatives say they find hard to understand. The documents give brokers the right to dismember the dead, then sell or rent body parts to medical researchers and educators, often for hundreds or thousands of dollars. At BRC, a whole body sold for $5,893, records show. Since 2004, when a federal health panel unsuccessfully called on the U.S. government to regulate the industry, Reuters found that more than 2,357 body parts obtained by brokers from at least 1,638 people have ended up misused, abused or desecrated. Documents reviewed for this article indicate that those figures are vastly understated. The extent of BRC’s operation surprised even investigators who raided the Phoenix-based company in 2014. There, agents discovered 10 tons of frozen human remains – 1,755 total body parts that included 281 heads, 241 shoulders, 337 legs and 97 spines. Applying a state forfeiture law, authorities hauled away the contents of BRC’s freezers, filling 142 body bags. One bag held parts from at least 36 different people. The seizure was so large that officials struggled to properly handle the body parts. When plans to cremate the remains stalled, officials brought three walk-in freezers to a military base and stacked the body bags inside, one atop another. Parts from 851 different people remained in those freezers for almost three years before they were cremated. The raid on BRC was part of a broader federal probe into the suspected practices of one of its clients, Arthur Rathburn. A Detroit body broker, Rathburn has pleaded not guilty to charges of defrauding customers. During a 2013 search of Rathburn’s warehouse, federal agents found rotting body parts along with four preserved fetuses, confidential photographs reviewed by Reuters show. It is not clear how Rathburn acquired the fetuses or what he planned to do with them. He was indicted for allegedly selling diseased body parts without warning buyers. His trial is set for January. After the BRC raid, the company went out of business. Its founder and former owner, Stephen Gore, later pleaded guilty to fraud – not for selling body parts but for misleading customers by shipping them contaminated specimens. His punishment: probation. He is expected to testify at the Rathburn trial. Gore’s attorney, Clark Derrick, said Gore always tried to act in the best interests of his donors. “At some point the business grew exponentially, we became shorthanded, we cut some corners, and for that I apologize and make amends,” Derrick said on Gore’s behalf. SEE ALSO: Can you commit murder in your sleep? PROFITING OFF THE POOR Gore housed his business in a 9,000-square-foot building once occupied by an insurance agency – a one-story facility near two interstate highways and the Phoenix airport. From 2005 until early 2014, court records show, BRC received about 5,000 human bodies and distributed more than 20,000 body parts. As Reuters reported last year, BRC also sold body parts to U.S. Army contractors for military experiments. A Pentagon spokeswoman said BRC provided the body parts “under false pretenses,” misleading the Army that consent had been secured for donors to be used in destructive tests. Among the parts BRC sold for the Army experiments were the heads and spines of Conrad Patrick and Leon Small, a 71-year-old retiree who had once managed a furniture factory. On the consent forms Patrick and Small signed, each man checked a box stating that he did not wish to be used in military or destructive tests, records show. But just days after Patrick and Small died, a BRC employee called their widows and persuaded them to amend the forms so their husbands could be used by the military, according to recordings of the calls reviewed by Reuters. The widows said the calls came during a traumatic time. “I didn’t understand what they were talking about,” Dona Patrick said. “But I said ‘OK.’” CONTINUED IN NEXT SECTION: | |
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| 06-11-18 11:53am - 2386 days | #818 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Bodies or parts from at least 20 BRC donors were used without their consent in Army experiments, Reuters found. Parts from Small and Patrick, however, were not. The military halted testing when it learned of the raid at BRC. The shoulders of both men were sent to a for-profit surgical training company in Nevada. The widows, Karen Small and Dona Patrick, are among two dozen next of kin who said they were surprised to learn that BRC profited from a relative’s donated body. “They prey on people that have no money, that are poor, that have no insurance – like us,” Patrick said. Family members of some donors said BRC employees led them to believe body donation was regulated by federal and state authorities, and that selling body parts is illegal. Based on those pitches, the relatives said they believed the remains wouldn’t be sold. In truth, there are virtually no regulations on the body trade. “It’s a horrible thing,” Small said. “Sick.” In a statement to Reuters last year, Gore said his employees took “great care to ensure that donors and their families were well-informed about the processes.” Gore acknowledged at his sentencing that he relied on books and the Internet for instruction on how to handle the bodies he sold. “HOMEMADE HORROR MOVIE” In 2012, BRC hired lab technician Kazemi. He earned $21 an hour. Before joining the company, his resume shows, he spent the previous decade working as a real estate agent, a waiter at a Morton’s steakhouse and a manager for an Olive Garden restaurant. When he arrived at BRC, he was 35 and had just graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in kinesiology, the study of body movement. At ASU, he was a teaching assistant in an anatomy lab. In 2013, Kazemi starred in a BRC instructional video. It opens with a jarring title, punctuated for emphasis: “Stripped Cervical Spine!” The video begins with a close-up of Kazemi wearing a mask, gloves, goggles and a surgical gown. Then it pulls back to reveal a body face down on a table. The man’s shoulders and arms have already been sheared off. The head lolls from side to side until Kazemi holds it still. With a scalpel, he makes incisions along the neck and back, then peels away the man’s skin and scalp. About seven minutes into the video, Kazemi picks up a construction saw. “On this one,” he says of the cadaver, “we are using a sturdy, thicker 9-inch blade. You want to make sure that the blade is long enough to reach from ear to ear across the back.” In his interview with Reuters, Kazemi described the video as clinical and “not disrespectful to donors” in any way. It was meant for internal use only, he said. Kazemi also said he did not know how BRC acquired donors or where body parts were shipped. In hindsight, Kazemi said using a motorized saw was wrong because it cannot be cleaned well enough to avoid spreading diseases. “Would I do something like that now that I know better? No,” Kazemi said. “But at the time, that’s what was provided to me.” Two retired investigators for the Arizona attorney general said even veteran prosecutors recoiled when they viewed the 24-minute video. AdChoices “It was like a homemade horror movie,” said Charles Loftus, the former assistant chief agent. “I couldn’t sleep at night after seeing that,” said Matthew Parker, another former agent who says he retired with a disability – post-traumatic stress disorder – related to his work on the case. “It looked like a junkyard chop shop where they are just ripping things apart.” INTERNING AT BRC Kazemi also spent Saturdays in BRC’s lab teaching college students about dissection. On one Saturday in late 2013, ASU junior Emily Glynn said she showed up for her first day at the lab. She was majoring in nutrition. “I was really surprised when I got the internship because I didn’t have any experience,” said Glynn, then 20. “Just went in the first day and learned things on the job.” That first day, under Kazemi’s direction, interns used pliers to remove fingernails from donors, Glynn recalled. “I don’t want to say it was barbaric, but it was weird,” she said. “One day, I found myself holding the hand of a 70-year-old woman and felt like I needed to apologize to her, to say, ‘I’m sorry.’” Neither Glynn nor Kazemi knew how the fingernails were used, they said, and Reuters could not locate invoices for that order. But the news agency did identify fingernails from 22 other donors that were sold by BRC. They went to a North Carolina bioengineering research company, SciKon Innovation. SciKon CEO Randy McClelland said he was unaware that BRC was raided by the FBI. He said his business helps companies study how products enter the bloodstream through fingernails. “Like new cosmetics that go on your skin,” he said. On another Saturday, Glynn said, Kazemi gathered the interns around the body of another elderly woman. “He says, ‘Emily, you’ve never cut off a head before, and everyone else has, so do you want to try?’” Glynn recalled. “And I’m, like, ‘OK.’” As she held the reciprocating saw, Glynn said, Kazemi steadied her grip. “It wasn’t a full-on chainsaw like you would see in a horror movie, but it was a smaller version,” Glynn said. “And then I just went for it. I was expecting lots of blood but there wasn’t much to it. It came right off,” she said of the woman’s head. Kazemi said he doesn’t remember helping an intern cut off a head or any other body parts. The Saturday sessions, he said, were more akin to lectures during which he showed interns various organs and other body parts. In her senior thesis, Glynn described her time at BRC differently. “Over the course of the internship, I stripped subcutaneous fat from the vertebrae of a cervical spine, practiced performing cricothyrotomies (incisions to the throat), sutured dismembered legs using an oversized needle and twine, and decapitated an elderly woman with what looked and sounded like a chainsaw from Home Depot,” Glynn wrote in her thesis. “Not once did I receive formal training or instruction.” CONTINUED: | |
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| 06-11-18 11:54am - 2386 days | #819 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
BODY PARTS TO MIDDLEMEN BRC’s customers were not always directly acquiring body parts from the broker for their own medical education, research or training programs. According to invoices, some customers were middlemen – brokers who resold or leased body parts originally donated to BRC. The consent forms gave BRC the discretion to choose its customers, but the forms did not state that body parts could be resold by third parties. In 2012 and 2013, BRC sold at least 961 body parts, including at least 224 human heads, to three such middlemen. One was Innoved Institute LLC, a Chicago-area medical lab provider that also supplies human body parts. Innoved was among BRC’s best customers. It received at least 32 shipments with 277 body parts. Innoved executives did not respond to requests for comment. Another was Rathburn, the Detroit-area broker facing trial next month. He received at least 26 heads from BRC. Rathburn’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment. A third middleman was Biological Resource Center of Illinois, another Chicago-area broker. Better known as BRC-IL, it received at least 658 body parts from BRC. BRC-IL operated independently from BRC. But it was also raided by FBI agents as part of the federal probe into suspected fraud against donors and customers. No one has been charged with a crime in the BRC-IL matter, and executives there did not respond to requests for comment. One of the shoulders shipped to BRC-IL came from the body of Robert Louis DeRosier, a casino security employee. He died at age 64 after a long battle with diabetes. His widow, Tama DeRosier, lives in a mobile home park in Mohave Valley, Arizona. She said her husband donated his body hoping it might contribute to diabetes research. She did not expect anyone to make money selling his remains. “That’s morbid,” the widow said. “Greed is a terrible thing.” Russell Parker Jr, who helped care for his dying brother Todd, said he was surprised to learn from a reporter that BRC sold Todd’s right knee and offered to sell Todd’s head. Friends had recommended BRC, he said. And when the company returned his brother’s ashes, everything seemed “all on the up and up, very professional.” “Shame on BRC for showing such disrespect,” Parker said. “That’s so wrong. It’s like trafficking.” CONFUSED CONSENT The companion of one donor cited another area of confusion: BRC’s use of the term “tissue.” In sales pitches and on consent forms, body brokers commonly talk about retrieving tissue from donors. To the medical community, “tissue” means any part of the body – from an organ to a torso. But in interviews with Reuters, family members of some donors said they believed “tissue” meant only skin samples. Though BRC did sell skin, those sales represented just 2 percent of its business, invoices show. Maureen Krueger said her partner of 42 years, Fidel Silva, told a female hospice worker in his final days that he wished to be cremated. “And that’s when she brought it up: ‘Would you be interested in donating tissues?’” Krueger recalled. The way she understood it, Krueger said, a few skin samples would be removed for research purposes. In return, BRC would cremate Silva for free. Silva, a 69-year-old construction worker with a high school degree, peppered the hospice worker with questions. “He asked, ‘Well, are you sure? What are they going to do?’” Krueger said. “He wanted to know. And that’s when she assured him it was only body tissues, they only took samples, they didn’t remove any organs or parts or anything. It was just tissues. And that’s when Fidel agreed.” The conversation took place at the Hospice of Havasu in Arizona. Its executive director, Dan Mathews, said he could not discuss the matter due to patient-privacy laws. But he said the hospice, which offers its clients options to donate their bodies to science, “removed that company BRC from our list of providers” upon hearing it was under investigation. Internal BRC records show the body broker removed Silva’s head, and his right and left arms from shoulder to hand. Each was tagged with a tracking number and prepped for sale. “Wow,” Krueger said. “I didn’t really realize they could do all that. I mean, I didn’t understand that’s what would happen with Fidel at all.” BODY PARTS IN LIMBO After the raid of BRC by federal and state agents, the body parts seized by authorities remained in limbo for almost three years. Their fate, detailed in confidential state logs, sworn statements and photographs, has never been made public. Logistical problems began the day of the raid, said former agents Parker and Loftus. Authorities were stunned to find so much human flesh inside BRC, they said. “We expected two freezers and a few hundred pounds of body parts,” said Loftus, who’s now running for state representative. “Instead, we found 40 freezers with 10 tons of bodies and parts.” Agents entered in hazmat gear and took biopsies from each body part to preserve as evidence. Records show the agents then placed the 1,755 parts into 142 body bags. The bags were sent to 10 local funeral homes so the remains could be cremated. But records and interviews show that BRC and others for whom it was storing body parts objected to their destruction. They argued that the parts had a value of more than $1 million. The cremation plans were put on hold, but authorities soon faced a pressing problem, according to former agents Loftus and Parker. Funeral homes could refrigerate but not freeze the body parts, and the mortuaries began to complain that some of the parts were starting to thaw. As a solution, authorities obtained three walk-in industrial freezers and installed them at a military base used by the Arizona National Guard. Then, body bag by body bag, the mortuaries delivered the parts, and Loftus and Parker helped carry them into the freezers. In an interview, Parker recalled feeling body parts sloshing around inside the bags as he moved them. Some bags leaked blood that stained his pants and shoes. The experience led to his PTSD diagnosis, he said. “It’s not how you treat human beings, human remains,” Parker testified in a deposition as part of his PTSD claim. “You don’t throw them in a bunch of body bags and then throw them into a freezer like a pile of garbage.” The spokeswoman for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office said the body parts were kept for federal authorities “as evidence in ongoing criminal investigations and prosecutions across the country.” An FBI spokesman declined to comment. In February, after almost three years in the containers, the remains were cremated and returned to families that requested them, the state spokeswoman said. In response to the Gore case, the Arizona governor signed into law a bill that requires body brokers like BRC to be licensed and regularly inspected. The new law calls for brokers to follow a set of standards and to hire a medical doctor to supervise company practices. Although the law was adopted a year and a half ago, it has yet to be enforced: The state health department still must create specific rules for brokers. It isn’t clear when it will. Health department officials, said a spokeswoman, “do not have an anticipated date of completion at this time.” (Shiffman reported from Phoenix and Washington. Levinson reported from Phoenix and New York. Grow reported from Atlanta. Edited by Blake Morrison) | |
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| 06-11-18 05:21pm - 2386 days | #820 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Scott Pruitt, the head of the EPA, is a man who like to make friends. So why are people picking on Pruitt? Pruitt is a fan of Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is a fan of Pruitt. That alone, should make Pruitt a hero to every right-thinking American. ----- ----- Powered by RebelMouse Politics Lorraine Chow Jun. 11, 2018 01:35PM EST Scott Pruitt. Gage Skidmore / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0 Pruitt Ordered Staff to Delay FOIA Requests, Top House Dem Says U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt directed staff to delay or withhold the release of requested public records relating to his scandal-ridden tenure at the agency, according to the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. "Your actions are particularly troubling in light of multiple reports that you have retaliated against EPA staff who disclose waste, fraud and abuse," Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland wrote in letter to Pruitt Monday. In the letter, Pruitt's former aides told Cummings' staff that the EPA boss appeared to be intentionally slowing down Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) responses for records related to the administrator, and directed staff not to respond until requests from the Obama administration had been completed. Cummings also alleged that Pruitt instituted a new review process requiring political appointees to review FOIA responses before they are released. "Under your tenure, EPA's front office is now responding more slowly, withholding more information, and rejecting more requests, according to EPA's own data and independent sources," Cummings wrote. "Combined with your refusal to produce documents requested by Congress, your actions in delaying records under FOIA raise concerns about a fundamental lack of transparency at EPA." The congressman said Pruitt's actions violate EPA and Department of Justice rules, in which simple requests should be processed more quickly than complex requests. "The orders you apparently gave to delay producing documents relating to your tenure appear to directly contradict EPA's own FOIA regulations, as well as guidance issued by the Department of Justice," he wrote. FOIA rules require government organizations to respond to a FOIA request with a denial or grant of access within 20 business days, although the agency may exceed that time limit if it needs to request more information in order to process the request. Cummings then cited a report from the Project on Government Oversight, which found that only 16.6 percent of FOIA requests to the administrator's office were closed from Jan. 20, 2017 to Dec. 29, 2017, compared to a closure rate of 78.76 percent for all EPA requests during that same period. In response to the letter, EPA spokesperson Kelsi Daniell told Reuters in a statement that Pruitt's office has seen a 200 percent increase in FOIA requests and "is working to release them in a timely manner." "We will respond through the proper channels," Daniell said. "When Administrator Pruitt arrived at EPA he inherited a backlog of FOIA requests, some dating back to 2008, and over the last year and a half, EPA has worked tirelessly to clear this backlog." Pruitt has been at the center of mounting controversy ever since he took office. The Sierra Club's own FOIA requests uncovered droves of information about Pruitt's questionable behavior in just the last few weeks: Reports that Pruitt spent over $1,500 in taxpayer dollars on 12 pens. Reports that Pruitt had his taxpayer-funded aides hunt for apartments for him. Reports that Pruitt abused his position at EPA in an attempt to secure a Chick-fil-a franchise for his wife. Reports that a major Trump donor helped Pruitt pick his Science Advisory Board. "Scott Pruitt will do everything possibly to operate in the shadows because every time his veil of secrecy is pulled back, we find more reasons he should resign," said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune in a statement. "Documents obtained by the Sierra Club's FOIA litigation have revealed even more about Pruitt's unethical and potentially illegal behavior, so it's no wonder he'd try and obstruct the process. It's essential that the EPA be completely transparent and forthright when it's comes to releasing public information under FOIA." Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook had similar sentiments. "From his $43,000 secure phone booth to his failure to keep records of decision-making, Scott Pruitt has taken astonishing steps to shield his activities from the public," Cook said in a statement. "Meddling with the long-established FOIA process is the latest indication he clearly has a lot to hide." "Who can blame Pruitt for taking steps to keep the public in the dark?" he asked. "Every time the EPA releases documents through a FOIA request, more revelations come to light showing he's not only the worst EPA administrator in history, but also the most corrupt cabinet secretary in modern times." | |
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| 06-11-18 05:43pm - 2386 days | #821 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Senate Security director leaked anti-Page information, says indictment By Rowan Scarborough - The Washington Times - Sunday, June 10, 2018 Former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page has been pursued by Christopher Steele and his dossier, the FBI, Democrats and Russia collusion-minded media. He has proclaimed his innocence throughout the two-year inquisition. Last week, he learned he had another adversary, this one hidden. A federal indictment showed that James A. Wolfe, director of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, was leaking secret anti-Page information to the press. His favorite recipient was reporter Ali Watkins, who quickly rose through the Washington journalism thicket from college intern to New York Times reporter at age 26. The indictment against Mr. Wolfe, 57, said he had a romantic relationship with Ms. Watkins from December 2013, when she was an intern, to December 2017. Two plot twists that month: She won a job at The New York Times, and the FBI confronted Mr. Wolfe. The indictment charges him with three counts of lying when he denied leaking to reporters. Conservatives complain the Watkins-Wolfe scandal is another example of Washington’s “deep state” media alliance trying to sabotage President Trump. New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin called one of Ms. Watkin’s stories “Part of the orgy of leaks targeting President Trump.” On reports that employer BuzzFeed and Politico knew she was sleeping with her source, Mr. Goodwin said: “The admission is shocking yet not surprising, given the collapse of journalistic standards in the age of Trump. Pure hatred of this president in newsrooms across America is blinding editors and reporters to basic fairness and glaring conflicts of interest.” Breitbart has taken to calling Mr. Wolfe a “deep state leaker.” Activist lawyer Robert Barnes tweeted: “The Senate intel Committee was supposed to monitor the [intelligence community] not be an extension of IC.” The indictment likely contained just a sampling of Mr. Wolfe’s supposed leaking. It said he and Ms. Watkins exchanged tens of thousands of phone calls and electronic messages. They met in office stairwells, restaurants and her apartment. It seems Mr. Wolfe had a particular interest in embarrassing Mr. Page. The indictment builds a case that Mr. Wolfe, after receiving classified documents labeled “secret” on Mr. Page unwittingly meeting with a Russian spy in 2013, provided the intelligence to Ms. Watkins. She wrote the story for BuzzFeed on April 3, 2017. Months later, The New York Times cited the scoop as one of the reasons it hired Ms. Watkins. The indictment alleges Mr. Wolfe also leaked Mr. Page’s scheduled appearances before the committee and a story that Mr. Page planned to invoke the Fifth Amendment instead of testifying. Mr. Page says that story was false. “It had long been a mystery to me how MSNBC always miraculously knew about/was well staked-out for my Hart Senate Office Building visits, despite by best effort attempts to stay undercover,” Mr. Page tweeted Friday. “I guess all these things are now becoming more understandable.” After the April 3 BuzzFeed story, Mr. Page sent a letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, North Carolina Republican, and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, Virginia Democrat. “I am increasingly coming to understand that these proceedings have thus far followed the precedent of prior show trials,” he wrote. The letter said that it is a felony for someone to leak his name as the person who was approached by spy Victor Podobnyy in New York in 2013. (No charges were filed against Mr. Page, an energy investor who lived in Moscow. He believed Mr. Podobnyy to be who he said he was: a Russian diplomat posted at the United Nations.) Being a target in the Russia collusion probe is not new to Mr. Page. The Christopher Steele dossier, financed by the Democratic Party, accused him of several felonies. He supposedly met with two highly placed Kremlin figures in July 2016 in Moscow to discuss bribes for sanctions relief. Mr. Steele, a British ex-spy committed to destroying the Trump campaign, said Mr. Page and campaign manager Paul Manafort organized the Russian interference. Mr. Page has denied ever knowing or talking with Mr. Manafort, much less conspiring with him. He denies ever meeting with the people named by Mr. Steele. Still, the FBI embraced the Steele dossier. The counter-intelligence division used the unverified opposition research paper to persuade a judge to issue a year’s worth of surveillance warrants on Mr. Page beginning in October 2016. Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, led by Rep. Adam Schiff of California, also used the dossier as a weapon against Mr. Page and the Trump administration. To date, none of Mr. Steele’s core collusion charges has been confirmed publicly. Copyright  2018 The Washington Times, LLC. | |
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| 06-12-18 04:55am - 2386 days | #822 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: Donald Trump's secret brother: accused of killing his mother. Donald Trump will probably avoid the funeral, because Trump is busy meeting with the North Korean dictator. And Trump was never that close with the mother of his secret brother (a back street affair, which is common for the rich and famous). However, if it doesn't interfere with Trump's golf plans, Trump might visit his secret brother in jail. In the disguise of inspecting jails in the US. Or maybe not. Because Trump is a busy man. But Melania needs to take care. Anything can set Trump into one his raging tweets, and Melania could go missing for an extended time. Maybe Melania should hire her own security guards, just to be safe. Trump is well-known for turning on the people closest to him. Which includes his ex-wives. The problem is made worse by the power of the pardon: Trump believes he is above the law, and can pardon himself. Let us hope he does not kill his wife and use the pardon as defense. ---------- ---------- 'God got into my body': Man accused of brutally beating mother, burning body in backyard Tribune AISHA MBOWE AND MATT CARON Jun 11th 2018 8:19PM X HAMDEN, Connecticut (WTIC) -- Police arrested a man in connection with his mother's death in Hamden. 34-year-old Kyle Tucker went before a judge Monday where he is charged with murdering his mother, Donna Tucker at their Hamden home on Broadway Street on Friday. Court documents obtained by FOX61 reveal the grizzly circumstances. After originally fabricating a story, Tucker admitted to the killing. “Something happened,” said Tucker during police interrogation. “God got into my body and walked me downstairs with my baseball bat and it was very quick and almost even hard to remember.” In tweets posted a day after the killing, Tucker writes, “I don’t mind admitting it. Donnas favorite son was Ryan and her second favorite Mason...so at least they’re worthy competitors for Mommas love.” Tucker explained how he took his baseball bat downstairs into the kitchen and hit his mother in the head. She collapsed to the ground and he hit her again in the face. He then dragged her body out the side door and to the backyard fire pit. Tucker used gasoline to accelerate the flame and kept the fire burning for eight hours. He used chemicals including bleach to clean the blood in the kitchen and eventually re-painted the walls. AdChoices Police soon came knocking. Originally, Tucker told them he last saw his mom early Friday morning and said she was drunk and got picked up by an unknown druggie. But Kyle became the prime suspect after investigators discovered he used his mother’s Amazon account to order an urn. Kyle told police he killed his mother in self defense. He said Donna tried to kill him, “over 20 times.” Kyle said Donna tried to poison his food and put parasites in his bed. Neighbors told FOX61 they remember Donna as a kind woman. “It’s sad because I knew the lady, she was nice. Her dog played with our dogs. She was a cool lady,” said neighbor Rob Cavallaro. Cavallaro also recalled his past run ins with Kyle. “He thought that he had a stick that was possessed by the devil and he tried to light the house on fire and my friend had to tackle him down and stop him,” he said. Tucker will be in court next on June 19th in New Haven. His bond was upheld at $5 million. by Taboola | |
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| 06-12-18 02:03pm - 2385 days | #823 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: From the leader of the free world, the insult-bombarding con-man who delights in demeaning his enemies, even though he loves all people: I don't want to hear any fucking crazy talk from my advisers ahead of the N. Korean meeting. ---------- ---------- Politics Trump Told Mike Pence Not to Allow Any 'F***ing Crazy Talk' From His Advisers Ahead of Kim Jong Un Meeting: Report Newsweek Paul Leblanc,Newsweek Mon, Jun 11 9:52 AM MST President Donald Trump urged his top advisers to show restraint in their comments about North Korea in the lead up to his much-anticipated summit with the country's leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore Tuesday. “Mike, you got it?,” the president asked Vice President Mike Pence, according to a White House official who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. “No f---ing crazy talk from anybody in the administration.” The summit was previously called off, with both countries issuing comments that set back negotiations. North Korea abruptly canceled the summit in May when Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton said the United States’ approach to North Korea negotiations would follow the “Libya model.” “We have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004,” he said on Fox News, referring to a process of denuclearization in Libya which eventually led to the toppling and death of leader Muammar Gaddafi. The summit was then officially called off by Trump after a North Korean official called Mike Pence a “political dummy.” Yet just days later, on June 1, Trump announced that the meeting was back on after he hosted a top North Korean official at the White House. That did not stop the potentially destabilizing comments, however. Rudy Giuliani, the president’s attorney, told reporters last week: “Kim Jong Un got back on his hands and knees and begged for it, which is exactly the position you want to put him in.” Trump’s call for restraint is a shift in tone from his own tweets about the North Korean Leader. “The Chinese Envoy, who just returned from North Korea, seems to have had no impact on Little Rocket Man. Hard to believe his people, and the military, put up with living in such horrible conditions. Russia and China condemned the launch,” he said in November 2017. In January, the president tweeted, “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Trump told reporters before leaving the G7 summit in Canada for Singapore that he’ll be able to know within a minute if a deal will be possible with the North Korean leader. “It’s just my touch, my feel—that’s what I do,” he said. “They say you know you’re going to like somebody in the first five seconds—you ever hear of that one? Well, I think I’ll know very quickly whether or not something good is going to happen. I think I’ll know whether it will happen fast.” He added, “And if I think it won’t happen, I don’t want to waste my time,” he said. “I don’t want to waste his time.” This article was first written by Newsweek | |
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| 06-12-18 02:20pm - 2385 days | #824 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Is Trump slowly revealing that he is a pawn of his spy-master Putin? Trump says the US will save a massive amount of money by stopping US wargames in the area. And Trump says he wants to get our soldiers out of South Korea. Without bothering to tell US allies in advance. As President, Trump can advance the interests of Russia, China, and even North Korea. How much is Trump getting paid in secret for advancing Russia, China, and North Korea interests? Or is Trump a true Russian patriot, doing his work for free? ---------- ---------- Trump's 'astonishing' concession to Kim Jong Un and North Korea James Kitfield 1 hour 31 minutes ago President Trump holds up the document that he and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un just signed in Singapore on Tuesday. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP) At Tuesday’s press conference in Singapore following his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, President Trump surprised America’s Asian allies, and reportedly his own Pentagon, by surrendering a major bargaining chip in the form of U.S.-South Korea military exercises. “We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see that the future negotiation is not going as it should,” Trump told reporters, referring to the annual exercises as “provocative.” “At some point, I have to be honest — I used to say this during my campaign … I want to get our soldiers [in South Korea] out. I want to bring our soldiers back home.” As was the case when Trump fulfilled other controversial campaign pledges in the foreign policy arena — including scuttling the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear agreement, his comments sent shudders through the already shaky architecture of military alliances that undergird U.S. global power. Abandoning joint military exercises will immediately begin to degrade the readiness and deterrent posture of the 32,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, military experts say. Retired Adm. Harry Harris, the former head of U.S. Pacific Command and the Trump administration’s chosen ambassador to South Korea, explained the logic behind the military exercises in congressional testimony last year. “We are obliged to defend South Korea by treaty. They have a strong and capable military, as we do. But if we’re going to defend or if we’re going to fight with them on the peninsula then we have to be able to integrate with their military,” Harris told the House Armed Services Committee. “We have to maintain our degree of readiness, not only unilateral readiness, but also our combined and joint readiness with our brothers and sisters in the ROK [Republic of Korea] military.” Equally surprising as Trump’s military announcement was the fact that he reportedly took this unilateral step without notifying South Korean and Japanese allies, or the Pentagon. The cancellation of the exercises has been a North Korean priority for decades, and in calling them “war games” and “provocative,” Trump adopted the rhetoric of Pyongyang. Marines of South Korea and the U.S aim their weapons during joint military exercises. (Photo: Lee Jin-man/AP) “What’s really disconcerting is that Trump announced unilaterally to the leader of North Korea that the United States is going to stop military exercises with our allies, without first telling our allies or even the Pentagon. That’s astonishing,” said Michael Green, a senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a former senior director for Asia on the National Security Council. “Then Trump says he’d like to pull U.S. troops out of Asia, which is a real heart-warming development for Beijing and Moscow, who want nothing more than to weaken and eventually unravel our alliances. So this is a pretty stunning development.” Before the summit Trump suggested that Kim’s two meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the run-up to talks had hardened Pyongyang’s positions. Some China experts believe that Xi specifically asked Kim to bring up the military exercises as a major issue for discussion. Trump’s subsequent remarks about wanting to withdraw forward-deployed U.S. troops from Asia was a further boon to China’s strategic aspirations. As former BBC bureau chief Paul Danahar noted in a tweet, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that Trump would suspend military exercises with South Korea even before Trump announced it at his own press briefing. “That suggests Kim’s people were on the phone to Beijing straight after the meeting cos they recognized how big a concession it was,” Danahar tweeted. “Beijing was unhappy when Kim announced that he was unilaterally freezing his missile and nuclear weapons tests, and I believe the Chinese encouraged him to put the issue of also freezing the U.S.-ROK military exercises on the table in their discussions,” said Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at CSIS. “Certainly it was astonishing to hear President Trump talk about these exercises as ‘war games’ and ‘provocative,’ which is language taken right out of Pyongyang’s playbook. Trump’s message that he wants to pull U.S. troops out was just further music to China’s ears.” Even in the unlikely event that North Korea actually surrenders its nuclear weapons, it will still possess large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, a 1.2 million man army, and enough conventional firepower to raze the South Korean capital of Seoul in the opening days of any conflict. Meanwhile, the U.S.-ROK deterrent posture against those formidable forces will continue to degrade as long as the freeze of joint exercises lasts, and will deteriorate even faster with continued talk of a withdrawal of U.S. troops. Retired four-star Gen. Barry McCaffrey is the former chief of U.S. Southern Command. “I believe it was entirely inappropriate for President Trump — who has no understanding of nuclear weapons and strategic alliances and was completely unprepared — to meet alone with the North Korean dictator without so much as a note-taker present,” he told Yahoo News in an interview. “I’m very concerned that Trump signaled that if Kim gives up his nuclear weapons, then the United States will withdraw our troops from South Korea. Once you start that process it’s a one-way street of retreat from the Pacific Rim, which would leave our allies to confront a belligerent North Korea and an aggressive and massively armed China alone.” | |
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| 06-13-18 01:54am - 2385 days | #825 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Rudy Guiliani's wife gives her brutal opinion on her husband: he is a cheating liar. Why would she say such a thing? Because it might be true. -------- -------- Rudy Giuliani’s wife says he’s a cheating liar By Julia Marsh June 12, 2018 | 3:39pm Modal Trigger Rudy Giuliani’s wife says he’s a cheating liar Rudy Giuliani’s wife told The Post on Tuesday that her estranged husband is lying when he says he hasn’t been having an affair — and insisted that the illicit relationship began before they were separated. Modal Trigger As The Post exclusively reported Tuesday, Giuliani has been cheating on wife Judith Nathan with married New Hampshire hospital administrator Maria Rosa Ryan, according to sources. Giuliani denied the affair to The Post, although he added that the dinner and movie he shared with Ryan at a posh spa March 29 — five days before Nathan filed for divorce — occurred when he “was in effect separated.” Nathan shot back in a statement, “My husband’s denial of the affair with the married Mrs. Ryan is as false as his claim that we were separated when he took up with her.” There was no legal filing for a separation before Nathan filed for divorce. | |
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| 06-13-18 02:08am - 2385 days | #826 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Andrew McCabe's lawyer sues the Justice Department. Claims the Justice Department is violating the law by refusingn to identify and share the internal policies that led to his termination one day short of the 20 years' service he would need to be eligible for an immediate pension. Any unbiased person would see the firing as a political attack on McCabe. Can Trump subvert the Federal government to act illegally? Of course. He's the President. And he'l do whatever he pleases, until the courts or Congress force him to follow the rules of ethical behavior and legal behavior. Because Trump has no ethical behavior. And he's blind to the law, unless it slaps him across the face. Impeach the lying son of a bitch, the most corrupt President we've ever had. ------------ ------------ Andrew McCabe’s lawyer sues Justice Department The lawsuit does not directly challenge Andrew McCabe’s dismissal, but rather claims that the Justice Department is violating the law by refusing to identify and share the internal policies that led to his termination one day short of the 20 years’ service he would need to be eligible for an immediate pension. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Andrew McCabe’s lawyer sues Justice Department By JOSH GERSTEIN 06/12/2018 08:02 PM EDT Updated 06/12/2018 10:33 PM EDT Share on Facebook Share on Twitter A lawyer for Andrew McCabe, the fired deputy director of the FBI, is suing the Justice Department and the FBI, claiming that his client is being denied access to records critical to defending him in connection with the misconduct allegation that led to his dismissal in March. In the suit, filed Tuesday evening in U.S. District Court in Washington, McCabe’s attorney David Snyder demands copies of manuals and policies used by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General and the FBI in conducting investigations and carrying out employee discipline. The lawsuit claims that McCabe’s firing “violated federal law and departed from applicable administrative rules, standards, policies, and procedures.” The suit does not directly challenge McCabe’s dismissal, but rather claims that the Justice Department is violating the law by refusing to identify and share the internal policies that led to his termination one day short of the 20 years’ service he would need to be eligible for an immediate pension. “Defendants have publicly claimed, again and again, that they complied with all applicable law, policies, and procedures when they investigated, adjudicated, and dismissed Mr. McCabe from the FBI,” the suit says. “Plaintiff has repeatedly requested that Defendants disclose those policies and procedures. Those requests have been denied by some of the same high-ranking officials who were involved in, or were responsible for, the investigation, adjudication, and/or dismissal of Mr. McCabe.” McCabe’s attorney’s suit says that most or all of the policies at issue should be publicly available online or in agency reading rooms open to the public, but Justice officials have rebuffed requests for the documents. Spokespeople for the Justice Department, the Office of Inspector General and the FBI declined to comment on the suit Tuesday evening. Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe in March, citing findings from the inspector general that “McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.” The suit comes two days before the inspector general’s office is set to release a highly anticipated report on alleged politicization of the FBI and Justice Department during the 2016 presidential election. | |
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| 06-13-18 02:18am - 2385 days | #827 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Those big boys must stick together. Rudy Guiliani denies affair with married "good friend" Maria Ryan. Just like Donald Trump denies affair with Stormy Daniels. Maybe Guiliani and Trump can tesify in court that they are both good old boys who might talk about sex but would never stray from the marital bed. Would that be perjury? Of course. But that wouldn't stop either of these two professional liars. My mistake: they wouldn't swear to it in court, because they might be guilty of perjury. But lying in public is perfectly acceptable, because there's apparently no legal penalty for telling lies in public. --------- --------- Rudy Giuliani denies affair with married 'good friend' Maria Ryan Miami Herald Mon, Jun 11 10:00 PM PDT Donald Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is vehemently denying reports that his separation from Judith Nathan was caused by an alleged affair with Dr. Maria Rosa Ryan, whom he insists is just a "friend." The pair has been linked on several occasions in recent months, including an alleged meet-up at a resort in New Hampshire the weekend before Giuliani's separation from his wife of 15 years. Giuliani said he knew the split was coming – but insisted it wasn't because of any hanky-panky with the married Ryan. "I think this occurred on March 29 and I was separated on April 2, so I had a pretty good inkling of it (the divorce)," he told the New York Daily News Tuesday. According ... | |
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| 06-13-18 02:45am - 2385 days | #828 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Donald Trump and Rudy Guiliani can now promote Nevada's most famous pimp for the Nevada legislature. Maybe Hof will give discounts to these two cock-hounds for their support. But no cameras allowed. The secret service can check out the security of the premises, and demand doctors papers the selected girls are disease-free and willing to sign Non-Disclosure-Agreements before the men get down and dirty with these playmates. Remember, Trump and Guiliani are married men. ------ ------ Dennis Hof, Nevada's most famous pimp, wins GOP primary Associated Press MICHELLE L. PRICE,Associated Press 1 hour 40 minutes ago FILE - In this June 13, 2016, file photo, Dennis Hof, owner of the Moonlite BunnyRanch, a legal brothel near Carson City, Nevada, is pictured during an interview in Oklahoma City. Hof, the owner of half a dozen legal brothels in Nevada and star of the HBO adult reality series "Cathouse," won a Republican primary for the state Legislature on Tuesday, June 12, 2018, ousting a three-term lawmaker. Hof defeated hospital executive James Oscarson. He'll face Democrat Lesia Romanov in November, and will be the favored candidate in the Republican-leaning Assembly district.(AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File) LAS VEGAS (AP) — Pimp Dennis Hof, the owner of half a dozen legal brothels in Nevada and star of the HBO adult reality series "Cathouse," won a Republican primary for the state Legislature on Tuesday, ousting a three-term lawmaker. Hof defeated hospital executive James Oscarson. He'll face Democrat Lesia Romanov in November, and will be the favored candidate in the Republican-leaning Assembly district. Hof celebrated his win at a party in Pahrump with Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss at his side. "It's all because Donald Trump was the Christopher Columbus for me," Hof told the Associated Press in a phone call. "He found the way and I jumped on it." Hof, who wrote a book titled "The Art of the Pimp," has dubbed himself "The Trump of Pahrump," and held a rally with longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone. Hof was in the limelight in 2015, when former NBA player Lamar Odom was found unconscious at Hof's Love Ranch brothel in Crystal, Nevada, after a four-day, $75,000 stay. If Hof wins in November, he wouldn't be the only brothel owner in elected office — Lance Gilman, the owner of the famous Mustang Ranch in northern Nevada, is a Storey County Commissioner. Voters in November will be voting on closing down brothels at least one of the seven Nevada counties where they're legally operating. The question will be on the ballot in Lyon County, where Hof owns four brothels. Activists are also gathering signatures to try to get to get measure on the ballot in Nye County, where Hof owns two more brothels in the desert outside the city of Pahrump. He painted the anti-brothel efforts as political retribution that's tied to his opponent, but Oscarson and the referendum backers deny any connection. Most brothels operate in rural areas of Nevada. They're banned in the counties that contain Las Vegas and Reno. Hof said Tuesday he's downsizing his business by selling off some brothels to focus more on politics. Oscarson and Hof previously faced off in 2016 when Hof ran for the seat as a Libertarian. Oscarson won with 60 percent of the vote. | |
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| 06-13-18 03:05am - 2385 days | #829 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Donald Trump slams "punch drunk", "low IQ" Robert De Niro. Does this mean Donald Trump won't be watching any more Robert De Niro movies? Even ones that might be nominated for Academy Awards? The President is one of the finest movie critics we have: he knows which actors and actresses deserve their fame, and which one are shamelessly over-rated, like Robert De Niro and no-talent Meryl Streep. However, there is still hope: Trump has a big heart, and he can make friends with anyone, even people he has insulted and denigrated for years. So De Niro and Streep might still be invited to the White House, one Christmas day. ------- ------- President Trump slams 'punch drunk,' 'low IQ' Robert De Niro for Tony outburst Raechal Leone ShewfeltEditor, Yahoo Entertainment ,Yahoo Celebrity•June 12, 2018 President Trump and actor Robert De Niro are publicly feuding. (Photo: Getty Images) President Trump and actor Robert De Niro are publicly feuding. (Photo: Getty Images) In probably the least surprising news ever, President Trump has responded to Robert De Niro’s swipe at him from the stage of Sunday’s Tony Awards. De Niro, you’ll recall, appeared to say “f*** Trump,” although his words were censored from the CBS broadcast. Trump hit back at De Niro, whom he nicknamed “Punchy,” using his preferred method of communication: Twitter. …realize the economy is the best it’s ever been with employment being at an all time high, and many companies pouring back into our country. Wake up Punchy! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2018 The first part of POTUS’s slam of the two-time Oscar winner quickly amassed 44,000 “likes,” which is considerable for his posts. For example, about 30,000 people approved of a message he shared earlier in the day about his historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump sent the tweets about De Niro from Air Force One as he returned from the meeting with Kim, according to CNN. The Raging Bull star has been vocal about his disdain for Trump. In January, De Niro referred to him as the “baby-in-chief” at the National Board of Review Awards. He also declared in a 2016 video that he’d like to “punch Trump in the face.” De Niro delivered his latest anti-Trump comments while introducing Bruce Springsteen to the well-heeled audience there to see Broadway’s best recognized. “First, I wanna say, ‘f*** Trump,'” De Niro declared. “It’s no longer ‘Down with Trump,’ it’s ‘f*** Trump.'” While Trump didn’t approve of De Niro’s words, the audience sure did. He got a standing ovation. | |
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| 06-14-18 06:44pm - 2383 days | #830 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump responds to suit by sleazy Democrats: Are there any Democrats that aren't sleazy? Maybe the ones that are dead and buried? ---------- ---------- New York's Attorney General Sues The Trump Foundation June 14, 201811:22 AM ET Laurel Wamsley President Trump, pictured with his children Eric, Ivanka and Donald Jr. in January 2017, said Thursday on Twitter that "I won't settle this case!" Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Updated at 2:37 p.m. ET New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood is suing the Donald J. Trump Foundation and its board of directors over what she calls "extensive and persistent violations of federal law," her office announced Thursday. The directors of the foundation named in the suit are President Trump and three of his children: Donald J. Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump. The suit alleges "unlawful political coordination" with Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, "self-dealing" that benefits Trump's businesses, and other violations of the law. Underwood's suit seeks to dissolve the Trump Foundation and collect nearly $3 million in penalties. Trump quickly replied on Twitter: "The sleazy New York Democrats, and their now disgraced (and run out of town) A.G. Eric Schneiderman, are doing everything they can to sue me on a foundation that took in $18,800,000 and gave out to charity more money than it took in, $19,200,000. I won't settle this case!" "Schneiderman, who ran the Clinton campaign in New York, never had the guts to bring this ridiculous case, which lingered in their office for almost 2 years. Now he resigned his office in disgrace, and his disciples brought it when we would not settle," he added. The 41-page petition to New York's Supreme Court cites voluminous evidence, including photos and emails, in alleging that Trump used his foundation's charitable assets to pay legal fees, to promote his hotels and other businesses and to buy personal items. It also alleges that at Trump's request, the foundation "illegally provided extensive support to his 2016 presidential campaign by using the Trump Foundation's name and funds it raised from the public to promote his campaign for presidency, including in the days before the Iowa nominating caucuses." The lawsuit states that the foundation's board existed in name only and failed to provide oversight to the organization for at least the past 19 years: "It has not met since 1999 and does not oversee the activities of the Foundation in any way." The petition says the foundation has no written criteria or protocol for the grants it considers or approves and that "Mr. Trump ran the Foundation according to his whim rather than the law." In addition to the penalties and dissolution of the foundation, the lawsuit seeks to ban President Trump from serving as director of a New York not-for-profit for 10 years and also a one-year ban for his children named in the suit. Underwood also sent letters Thursday to the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission, "identifying possible violations of federal law for further investigation and legal action by those federal agencies." Underwood became New York's attorney general last month, after Eric Schneiderman resigned the post. Schneiderman had pursued a number of cases against Trump, including one over Trump University, in which Trump agreed to pay a $25 million settlement. The attorney general's investigation of the Trump Foundation began in June 2016, according to the lawsuit. In a statement Thursday, Underwood says that her office's investigation found that "the Trump Foundation was little more than a checkbook for payments from Mr. Trump or his businesses to nonprofits, regardless of their purpose or legality." "This is not how private foundations should function and my office intends to hold the Foundation and its directors accountable for its misuse of charitable assets," Underwood adds. | |
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| 06-15-18 11:44am - 2382 days | #831 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: President Trump, the most corrupt President the US ever had, is seeing his house of cards falling down. Paul Manafort, Trump's ex campaign manager, is now in jail pending trial. How long will it be before Trump himself goes to jail, unable to further his spymaster Putin's work? Trump is not only corrupt, he is also treasonous. In the latest deal with N. Korea, Trump promised to weaken US influence in the Asia area, helping Russia, China and North Korea increase their influence. ---------- ---------- Judge sends ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to jail pending trial Thomson Reuters Sarah N. Lynch and Warren Strobel Jun 15th 2018 1:35PM WASHINGTON, June 15 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday sent Paul Manafort to jail pending trial after he was charged with witness tampering, in the latest episode in a slow fall from grace for a man who was President Donald Trump's campaign chairman in 2016. Manafort, a longtime political operator and businessman, has been a focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Manafort has been indicted in both Washington and Virginia on a series of mostly financial-related charges, including conspiring to launder money and defraud the United States. He had been on home confinement in Alexandria, Virginia, and had been required to wear an electronic monitoring device. But last week Mueller charged him in a new indictment with witness tampering. Manafort pleaded not guilty to that charge on Friday but U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington revoked his bail, sending him to jail. “I have no appetite for this," she said. "But in the end, I cannot turn a blind eye. "You’ve abused the trust placed in you," she added later. Manafort turned around briefly to wave to his wife in the front row before heading out a door at the back of the courtroom, court witnesses said. Mueller, whose investigation has overshadowed Trump's presidency, is investigating whether the president's 2016 campaign colluded with Moscow and whether Trump has unlawfully sought to obstruct the Russia probe. Trump has called Mueller's investigation a witch hunt and has denied wrongdoing. Legal experts have said Mueller wants to keep applying pressure on Manafort to plead guilty and assist prosecutors with the probe. Manafort chaired the Trump campaign for just two months before resigning in August 2016 following a news report he had received possibly illegal payments from the political party of Ukraine's former, pro-Russian president. Jackson had previously rebuffed Manafort's repeated requests to end his home confinement in exchange for pledging $10 million in real estate as collateral. His trial in the Washington case is scheduled for September. Manafort's trial on the related charges in Virginia is set for July 25. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. A June 8 indictment charged Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort aide and political operative with alleged ties to Russian intelligence, with tampering with witnesses about their past lobbying for Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. The indictment accused Manafort and Kilimnik of attempting to call, text and send encrypted messages in February to two people from a political discussion group - the so-called Hapsburg Group - that Manafort worked with to promote Ukraine's interests in a bid to sway their testimony. Mueller's team this month asked the judge to revoke Manafort's bail. Manafort has long-standing ties to a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine and a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin. In addition to conspiracy to launder money and defraud the United States, the charges against Manafort in Washington include failing to register as a foreign agent for the pro-Russia Ukrainian government under former President Viktor Yanukovych. None of the charges against him make reference to alleged Russian interference in the election nor the accusations of collusion between Moscow and Trump’s campaign. The Kremlin has denied meddling in the election. (Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch Writing by Alistair Bell Editing by Will Dunham and Jonathan Oatis) | |
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| 06-15-18 11:58am - 2382 days | #832 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump admits he is a liar. Says it does not matter. Anyone other than the President could be charged with obstructing an investigation. Will Trump be charged with any crimes? There should be numerous crimes he has committed already during the Presidential campaign and as President? When will the American public, or the justice system, hold Trump accountable? Trump's presidency is not only a house of cards, it is a house of lies. And corruption and graft. ------------ ------------ Trump admits he dictated lie about his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer, says it doesn’t matter The president claims it doesn't matter because the statement was made to "the phony New York Times." Zack Ford Jun 15, 2018, 11:58 am Trump admitted to reporters Friday that he had dictated a false statement about his son's meeting with a Russian informant. The president claimed it didn't matter, because the statement was given to the "phony New York Times." (CREDIT: Fox News/Screenshot) Trump admitted to reporters Friday that he had dictated a false statement about his son's meeting with a Russian informant. The president claimed it didn't matter, because the statement was given to the "phony New York Times." (CREDIT: Fox News/Screenshot) President Trump fielded a variety of questions from reporters on the White House lawn Friday morning, during which he broached the topic of his son, Donald Trump Jr., and a statement the younger Trump made to The New York Times about his meeting with Russian operatives during the campaign, which later turned out to be false. Trump suggested that it didn’t matter if the statement — which he dictated — was true, because it was only a comment for a newspaper. “It’s irrelevant! It’s a statement to The New York Times — the phony, failing New York Times,” he said. “That’s not a statement to a high tribunal of judges. That’s a statement to the phony New York Times. In fact, frankly, he shouldn’t even speak to The New York Times because they only write phony stories anyway!” Trump Jr. first issued a statement to the Times last July after the outlet reported that he and other Trump campaign officials had met with with a Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, on June 9, 2016. At the time, Trump Jr. claimed that the meeting was held primarily to discuss “a program about the adoption of Russian children” following the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 U.S. law sanctioning many wealthy Russian oligarchs. Russia banned U.S. parents from adopting Russian children in December 2012, in retaliation for those sanctions. One day later, however, the Times published a second report detailing that the meeting had actually been held to discuss “damaging information” the Russians had on Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. tried to preempt that report by tweeting out the original emails arranging the meeting, hoping to prove he had nothing to hide. These emails, however, only confirmed that the campaign had been eager to receive Russian assistance during the 2016 election, in order to take down Clinton. A week after the reports were published, Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal attorney, insisted on Meet The Press that the Times statement had come from Trump Jr., without any input from the president. However, the Washington Post reported two weeks later that the president had personally dictated the statement himself. Trump’s lawyers downplayed the revelation and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders continued to defend the Times statement, glossing over the president’s role in the matter. “The statement that Don Jr. issued is true,” Sanders said during a press briefing. “There’s no inaccuracy in the statement. The president weighed in as any father would based on the limited information that he had.” In September, Trump Jr. admitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that, in direct contradiction his initial Times statement, he had, in fact, attended the meeting with Veselnitskaya with the express purpose of receiving damning information on Clinton. This past April, it was revealed that Veselnitskaya is a Russian informant who has been “actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general” since 2013. President Trump responded to this news by inventing yet another explanation for the meeting, telling supporters at a campaign rally that Russian President Vladimir Putin must have felt that the Trump administration “was killing us,” and told Veselnitskaya to invent the claim that she was involved in the government “so that we can go and make their life in the United States even more chaotic.” CREDIT: SCREENGRAB WATCH: Sarah Sanders repeatedly refuses to explain her own false statements Earlier this month, the Times published a report about a January memo written by Trump’s legal team — including Sekulow — that explicitly stated “the President dictated a short but accurate response to The New York Times article on behalf of his son, Donald Trump, Jr.” The memo was a direct contradiction to the team’s earlier statements that claimed the president had a “minimal” role in the process. Sanders has since refused to clarify her own statements from last August, when she told reporters Trump “certainly didn’t dictate” the Times statement. During a press briefing June 4, Sanders was mum on the issue, insisting all questions needed to be directed to outside counsel. | |
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| 06-15-18 12:11pm - 2382 days | #833 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Is it legal to shoot someone who is stealing your property? Some people say yes, other people say no. What about Donald Trump? Should he be lynched because of the harm he has done to the United States? A better solution would be to take away all his property and wealth, and put him in prison. Because prison is where he belongs. ------------ ------------ 'When has it ever become legal to shoot someone because they’re pulling off in your car?' Janique Walker describes the day in 2017 when her brother, 17-year-old Charles Macklin, was shot and killed by a concealed carry license holder in Chicago’s North Austin neighborhood. (Nuccio DiNuzzo / Chicago Tribune) Katherine Rosenberg-DouglasChicago Tribune Janique Walker knows the cost of a split second. Her younger brother, 17-year-old Charles Macklin, was killed while trying to steal a Jeep from a Chicago fire lieutenant on the West Side last August. The lieutenant had left the Jeep running, and Macklin jumped behind the wheel. ADVERTISING The lieutenant ran in front of the Jeep and shouted, “Get out,” according to a police report. When Macklin began pulling away, the lieutenant drew his gun and fired through the open driver’s side window, hitting the teen in the chest. Macklin’s last words were, “Sorry, bro,” according to the police report. The teen died on the pavement. He did not have a gun on him. The lieutenant had a concealed carry license. He was not charged and he was not disciplined by the department, according to spokesman Larry Langford. “That was investigated by us, and we found no violation of any rules,” Langford said. “The police didn’t arrest, the state’s attorney found no reason to charge. There was no wrongdoing as far as the Fire Department is concerned.” READ MORE: Almost nothing is known about dozens of concealed carry shootings in Illinois. Why? » Walker, 20, has organized protests, started a Facebook page and launched a hashtag on Twitter. She says she hasn’t given up hope of getting justice for her brother. She believes her brother was found guilty by one man with a gun. Walker said her brother should be alive to stand before a judge and take responsibility for his actions. “When has it ever become legal to shoot someone because they’re pulling off in your car?” she asked. “Even if (Macklin) did that, if he did steal the car. You’ve got insurance — let him go to jail. I would’ve rather had to get a call to go bail him out of jail than to get a phone call that he’s dead.” Walker organized a protest where her brother was killed. As they marched, she said she was approached by more than one person who said they witnessed the shooting. One woman said she saw Macklin lying on the pavement, struggling to breathe. “She’s traumatized about it,” Walker said. “I get that. I couldn’t imagine watching a little boy dying in front of me either.” DATA: The Tribune compiled a list of shootings by concealed carry holders in Illinois » Several instructors contacted by the Tribune said they emphasize in their courses that guns should only be used when a life, not property, is at stake. David Lombardo, a concealed carry instructor who said he has trained more than 7,000 people to get state licenses, said he would let an armed carjacker take his car. “You want my car? You can have it and I’ll hand over a (credit) card for gas, too," he said. "I’m not going to defend a car with a gun, that’s what insurance is for. I’ll get a better one.” According to a police report, the Jeep was parked on the right side of the street and the teen was turning left to pull away from the curb when he was shot. "Vehicle starts to move forward. (The firefighter) moves to the left and draws his concealed firearm and fires one shot through the driver’s window.” Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, did not return calls seeking comment on the case. Lt. Matthew Boerwinkle, a spokesman for the Illinois state police, said it would not be appropriate for his agency to comment, even though it oversees the issuance of concealed carry permits. He responded with a copy of the Illinois’ “use of force” statute, which says a person is justified in using force to defend his life or the life of another if they reasonably fear similar force against them is imminent. | |
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| 06-15-18 12:26pm - 2382 days | #834 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
If you are a cop, do you have the right to rape a woman? Damn straight. Just don't do it in front of witnesses. And make sure you claim self-defense. Or maybe the woman was resisting arrest. Here's a cop who seems to be in trouble, because he tried to rape his wife's best friend. What I don't understand is why the cop was suspended without pay. Most cops that are suspended or re-assigned are still getting full pay. If you're a cop, you need your pay to pay your bills. And you need the protection of the law, to shield you from any complaints from pussies who might not like the way you act. If you are a cop, then you are God's left hand, and should be immune to criticism. ------------ ------------ Cop accused of raping wife’s best friend inside couple’s home By Joshua Rhett Miller June 15, 2018 | 11:41am | Updated Modal Trigger Cop accused of raping wife’s best friend inside couple’s home Manuel Gutierrez Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department A Las Vegas cop was arrested for raping his wife’s best friend — who woke up to the man on top of her after a night of drinking at the couple’s home, she said. The alleged victim, Vivian Solomon, of San Diego, told KSNV that she was visiting her longtime friend last week, meeting the woman’s husband, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Officer Manuel A. Gutierrez, and their 6-month-old baby for the first time. After a night of drinking on Saturday, Solomon said, she went to bed in the couple’s home. “All of a sudden I woke up and he was on top of me,” Solomon told the station. “I asked him to stop, screamed for him to get out. I was so disoriented, so confused and scared.” Solomon said she then took an Uber to Southern Hills Hospital before being escorted by police to University Medical Center, where a rape exam was performed. “I couldn’t imagine that that would ever have happened,” she said. “I thought I was in my best friend’s home in a safe place — the home of a police officer.” Solomon said Gutierrez’s wife later apologized for her husband’s actions, saying she “had no words” for his conduct. “She said how sorry she was that this happened,” Solomon said. Gutierrez, 37, has worked for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department since early 2014. He was suspended without pay following his arrest Saturday. Solomon has since returned to San Diego, but she can’t shake the pain and anguish associated with the attack, she said. “I am fully traumatized and I consider myself a strong woman,” she said. “I am crumbled.” Gutierrez, who was charged with one count of sex assault, remained in custody at the Clark County Detention Center on Friday in lieu of $25,000 bail, records show. He’s scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on Aug. 30. A message seeking comment from his attorney, Courtney Kluever, was not immediately returned. | |
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| 06-15-18 12:30pm - 2382 days | #835 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Rudy Giuliani suggests the Manafort business could 'get cleaned up with some presidential pardons' 3:04 p.m. ET President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani reacted to the news Friday that Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is being sent to jail for witness tampering by telling the New York Daily News that "things might get cleaned up with some presidential pardons" when the "whole thing is over," the paper's Chris Sommerfeldt reports. Giuliani has spent the last two days gunning for Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to suspend Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Manafort was charged as a part of Mueller's probe with, among other things, conspiracy against the United States and conspiracy to launder money. Earlier Friday, Trump tweeted: "Wow, what a tough sentence for Paul Manafort, who has represented Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, and many other top political people and campaigns. Didn't know Manafort was the head of the mob." Giuliani, who famously prosecuted crime families while serving as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, likewise told Sommerfeldt: "I just don't understand the justification for putting [Manafort] in jail. You put a guy in jail if he's trying to kill witnesses, not just talking to witnesses." Jeva Lange | |
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| 06-15-18 06:13pm - 2382 days | #836 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Why doesn't Pruitt say he is new to the job, and therefore does not know all the rules? That might excuse him from the criticisms he has been getting. The same for Trump: Trump is a new president. He might not know it's wrong for presidents to lie to the American people. Or to take bribes and graft and make millions of dollars on the side while serving in a public position. God bless America. The land of the free, white rich men. ----------- ----------- Politics EPA's Pruitt Got Rose Bowl Tickets. Democrats Want to Know How Terrence Dopp, Jennifer A Dlouhy Terrence Dopp, Jennifer A Dlouhy 12 hours ago Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), listens during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, May 16, 2018. Pruitt faced intense criticism in his first Senate testimony since a crush of ethical allegations that have put his job in jeopardy. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt obtained tickets to the Rose Bowl with the help of a firm that does public affairs and communications work for energy companies -- and a top congressional Democrat wants to know the details. Representative Elijah Cummings, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter to Renzi Stone, founder of public relations firm Saxum, asking for documents on how he helped Pruitt obtain the tickets. The company represents Plains All American Pipeline LP, which has a petition pending before the EPA to discharge hydrostatic test water from a pipeline in Corpus Christi, Texas, Cummings said. Saxum, based in Oklahoma City, touts “a large, diversified energy practice,” aimed at helping support the marketing communications, public relations and public affairs needs of a wide range of energy companies. It appears not to have registered lobbyists working in Washington or Oklahoma either, based on a Bloomberg review of disclosures and the firm’s principals. Millan Hupp, Pruitt’s former director of scheduling and advance, in May told Cummings’s committee that Stone provided Pruitt with Rose Bowl tickets for him and his family, according to a statement from Cummings. In addition to his work at Saxum, Stone also serves on the University of Oklahoma Board of regents, the lawmaker said. “Federal ethics rules prohibit government employees from accepting gifts, such as tickets to sporting events, unless they pay ‘market value,”’ Cummings wrote. “Moreover, a government employee may not accept a gift provided ‘because of the employee’s official position.”’ Pruitt has become a lightning rod of controversy, after news organizations published stories that he enlisted aides on multiple occasions to help his wife secure a Chick-fil-A Inc. franchise. He’s also drawn scrutiny for his use of first-class air travel, a $50-a-night condo rental from a lobbyist and round-the-clock security detail. | |
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| 06-15-18 06:27pm - 2382 days | #837 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Did Donald Trump ever hire anyone honest? Or does he prefer to hire people with shady backgrounds, because they are cheaper to hire, or more effective at getting jobs done? Donald Trump, the leader of the new American Moral Majority: the most corrupt President in American history. ---------- ---------- AP: Trump 2020 working with ex-Cambridge Analytica staffers Associated Press Jeff Horwitz, Associated Press,Associated Press 5 hours ago FILE - In this May 31, 2018, Brad Parscale, campaign manager for President Donald Trump's 2020 re-election, boards a bus after arriving at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Thursday, May 31, 2018, to motorcade back to the White House after Trump returns from a visit to Houston and Dallas. A company run by former officials at Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm brought down by a scandal over how it obtained Facebook users’ private data, has quietly been working for President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election effort, The Associated Press has learned. The AP confirmed that at least four former Cambridge Analytica employees are affiliated with Data Propria, a new company specializing in voter and consumer targeting work similar to Cambridge Analytica’s efforts before its collapse. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File) WASHINGTON (AP) -- A company run by former officials at Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm brought down by a scandal over how it obtained Facebook users' private data, has quietly been working for President Donald Trump's 2020 re-election effort, The Associated Press has learned. The AP confirmed that at least four former Cambridge Analytica employees are affiliated with Data Propria, a new company specializing in voter and consumer targeting work similar to Cambridge Analytica's efforts before its collapse. The company's former head of product, Matt Oczkowski, leads the new firm, which also includes Cambridge Analytica's former chief data scientist. Related Video: Facebook Defends Itself Against Data NYT Report Watch news, TV and more on Yahoo View. Oczkowski denied a link to the Trump campaign, but acknowledged that his new firm has agreed to do 2018 campaign work for the Republican National Committee. The AP learned of Data Propria's role in Trump's re-election effort as a result of conversations held with political contacts and prospective clients in recent weeks by Oczkowski and Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale. In one such conversation, which took place in a public place and was overheard by two AP reporters, Oczkowski said he and Parscale were "doing the president's work for 2020." In addition, a person familiar with Data Propria's Washington efforts, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect business relationships, confirmed to the AP that Trump-related 2020 work already had begun at the firm along the lines of Cambridge Analytica's 2016 work. Both Oczkowski and Parscale told the AP that no Trump re-election work by Data Propria had been planned, but confirmed that Parscale had helped Data Propria line up a successful bid on 2018 midterm polling-related work for the RNC, awarded earlier this week. Oczkowski had previously told the AP the firm had no intention of seeking political clients, but now says his young company had changed course. "I'm obviously open to any work that would become available," Oczkowski said, noting that he and Parscale had worked together closely during Trump's 2016 campaign. Parscale told the AP that he has not even begun awarding contracts for the 2020 campaign, which he was appointed to manage in March. "I am laser-focused on the 2018 midterms and holding the House and increasing our seats in the Senate," he said. "Once we do those things, I'll start working on re-electing President Trump." London-based Cambridge Analytica was accused of playing a key role in the 2014 breach of 87 million Facebook users' personal data. The company said it did not use the information for Trump's 2016 campaign, but some former employees have disputed that. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that it was "entirely possible" the social media data ended up being used in Russian propaganda efforts. In May, Cambridge Analytica filed for bankruptcy and said it was "ceasing all operations." A British investigation of Cambridge Analytica and its parent company will continue despite the shutdown, the U.K.s Information Commissioner's office said last month. Among the former Cambridge Analytica employees at Data Propria is David Wilkinson, a British citizen who was the company's lead data scientist. During the 2016 campaign, Wilkinson helped oversee the voter data modeling that informed Trump's focus on the Rust Belt, according to a Cambridge Analytica press release issued after the election. Another issue raised by Data Propria's work on Trump's re-election effort is the firm's financial links to Parscale, Trump's campaign manager. Parscale is a part owner of Data Propria's parent company, a publicly traded firm called Cloud Commerce that bought his digital marketing business in August. Over the last year, Cloud Commerce has largely rebuilt itself around Parscale's former company, now rebranded Parscale Digital. Parscale sits on Cloud Commerce's board of directors and provides the company with the majority of its $2.9 million in revenue, according to the company's most recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Even though Parscale is not directly receiving money from Data Propria work, he owns a stake equivalent to 22 percent of the company's current equity and Cloud Commerce is obligated to pay him roughly two million dollars in special dividends and debt payments related to the purchase of his old business. Aside from the ties to Parscale, Cloud Commerce's parent company is an unusual candidate for blue chip political work. Founded in 1999, the firm has repeatedly changed its name and business model, and the company's most recent audit "expressed substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern" without continuing infusions of cash. An AP investigation of Cloud Commerce in March found that a former CEO of its predecessor firm pleaded guilty to stock fraud in 2008 and remained active in Cloud Commerce's affairs until at least 2015. Cloud Commerce says the man has had no connection with its business since at least 2011. ___ Associated Press writers Michael Biesecker, Juliet Linderman and Steve Peoples contributed to this reporting. | |
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| 06-16-18 07:00pm - 2381 days | #838 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Is President Trump a criminal? Some people believe he, and his family, have broken the law. How long can he get away with it? Trump promised to drain the swamp in Washington when he campaigned for President. Except--he is now part of the swamp. -------------- -------------- Former IRS attorney says IRS 'should go after' Trump Geobeats Jun 16th 2018 9:35PM A former Internal Revenue Service attorney on Friday suggested in a New York Times op-ed that the IRS “should go after” President Trump. “The New York State attorney general yesterday filed a lawsuit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation and its directors, accusing the charity and the Trump family of violating campaign finance laws, self-dealing and illegal coordination with the presidential campaign,” Philip T. Hackney wrote. “I believe Mr. Trump is also criminally liable for his actions,” Hackney added. “If I were still at the I.R.S., based on the lawsuit, I would make a criminal referral, on charges of tax evasion or false statements on a tax return, or both.” A press release by the state attorney general’s office outlined the allegations. “As alleged in the petition, Mr. Trump used the Trump Foundation’s charitable assets to pay off his legal obligations, to promote Trump hotels and other businesses, and to purchase personal items,” the release noted. “In addition, at Mr. Trump’s behest, the Trump Foundation illegally provided extensive support to his 2016 presidential campaign by using the Trump Foundation’s name and funds it raised from the public to promote his campaign for presidency, including in the days before the Iowa nominating caucuses.” In the wake of the lawsuit, Trump took to Twitter Thursday and posted his comment. “The sleazy New York Democrats, and their now disgraced (and run out of town) A.G. Eric Schneiderman, are doing everything they can to sue me on a foundation that took in $18,800,000 and gave out to charity more money than it took in, $19,200,000. I won’t settle this case!” Trump tweeted. “Schneiderman, who ran the Clinton campaign in New York, never had the guts to bring this ridiculous case, which lingered in their office for almost 2 years. Now he resigned his office in disgrace, and his disciples brought it when we would not settle,” Trump wrote in another tweet. | |
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| 06-16-18 07:14pm - 2381 days | #839 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump opens his mouth — and spews lies By Michael A. Cohen June 15, 2018 On Friday, President Trump strolled out to the White House lawn to speak to reporters. What followed was a cavalcade of lies, mischaracterizations, and breathtakingly inappropriate statements. Here’s just a sampling: On the release of an FBI Inspector General report on the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server, he said, “I’ve been totally exonerated” and claimed that the report shows “I did nothing wrong, there was no collusion, no obstruction.” This proves, Trump said, “that the Mueller investigation has been totally discredited.” Trump also argued that the “top people at the FBI” (who he also called “scum”) were plotting against his election. The report did no such thing. In fact, the report had nothing to do with the Russia investigation. When asked about Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager, who had his bail revoked Friday for tampering with witnesses, Trump described him as someone who “had nothing to do with” his campaign and worked for him for “a very short period of time.” In fact, Manafort worked for Trump for approximately five months and ran the Republican National Convention for Trump. In regard to Mike Flynn, his former national security adviser, Trump said, “Maybe he didn’t lie.” Not only did Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI, but the president fired Flynn for the specific reason that Flynn misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian officials. On North Korea, Trump said that he had “great chemistry” and a “really great relationship” with Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is a serial human rights abuser. He also said that when Kim speaks, “his people “sit up at attention” and he’d like “my people” to do the same. He added later that the “nuclear problem” with North Korea is “solved.” President Trump’s unusual diplomatic choices can be concerning. Trump bragged about the success of the summit with Kim, which he said has “solved” the “nuclear problem” with North Korea. Of course, that’s not true at all. But Trump also said that the deal he signed with Kim would lead to repatriation of American war dead from the Korean War, which is something he claimed that the parents of Korean War veterans had begged him to do. The Korean War ended 64 years ago. Any parents of those killed in the war have long since passed. When asked about the his administration’s recently enacted policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the border, Trump said it was a law that had been forced upon him by Democrats. This is an egregious, bald-faced lie — even for Trump. There is no such law, and a month ago Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, gave a public speech in which he boasted about the new separation policy. Trump’s own chief of staff, John Kelly, has publicly stated that the policy was necessary to deter immigrants from entering the country illegally. Trump complained that Russia was expelled from the G-8 because President Obama “didn’t like” Vladimir Putin. He also accused his predecessor of having “lost Crimea” and said that he “gave away” the region to Russia. Unmentioned by the president was that Russia invaded and annexed Crimea. Finally, Trump told a female reporter who was persistently asking him questions to be “quiet” and called her “obnoxious.” Here’s the thing: This impromptu Trump presser, first with “Fox and Friends” host Steve Doocy, and then with a gaggle of actual reporters, was both unprecedented and not at all unusual. Granted, it’s rare for a president simply to wander out on the White House lawn to talk to reporters. What’s not rare is Trump repeatedly and brazenly lying. It’s even less rare that Trump praised and defended an authoritarian ruler, mindlessly attacked the FBI, denied he had much to do with his former campaign manager, or acted rudely toward a woman. What’s so striking about Trump’s performance is that in the context of the last three years of American politics, it’s not striking at all. These kinds of presidential performances, which once upon a time would have been stunning and exceptional, are now just routine parts of the news cycle. It’s simply become impossible for those of us to cover this White House to capture the daily onslaught of outrage and scandal. Consider, for example, that 24 hours ago the New York attorney general’s office, after a two-year investigation, sued the Trump Foundation and the Trump family for a multitude of campaign finance violations, self-dealing, and unlawful coordination with a presidential campaign and even went so far as to send referral letters to the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission. But it does say everything about the truly insane political moment that we are living in that this lawsuit — which suggests the president of the United States broke the law — is at best a one-day story. I’m not writing this to once again bemoan the extent to which we’ve all become inured to the lying, law-breaking, corruption, inhumanity, incompetence, and daily gaslighting of this administration. That train has clearly left the station. There’s no way not to be inured to this unending avalanche of bad behavior. Rather, I’ll ask the questions that I’ve been asking some variation of for the past three years: When is enough for the Republican Party? When will Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and the congressional leadership finally do something to stop the lying narcissistic madman running this country? Will there ever come a point when they have the courage to say this must end? And if they don’t — and let’s be honest, the chances that they will are somewhere between zero and none — can America emerge unscathed from two-and-a-half more years of this madness? I like to be optimistic, but days like today — that will likely be forgotten within the next 48-72 hours — make me seriously wonder and worry about what the future might hold. Michael A. Cohen’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @speechboy71. | |
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| 06-16-18 07:25pm - 2381 days | #840 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The Worst Lies Sarah Huckabee Sanders Has Told Refinery29 Natalie Gontcharova Fri, Jun 15 10:00 AM PDT Every day it becomes increasingly clear that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is less of a press secretary and more of a mouthpiece for the Trump administration's steady stream of propaganda. She defends the president's most indefensible statements — like claiming that he was "joking" when he seemed to encourage police brutality — scolds reporters for doing their job (that would be standing up to the powerful), and keeps briefings short, infrequent, and almost devoid of useful information. It's no wonder that journalists are growing increasingly frustrated with Sanders, which was obvious when tensions escalated during Thursday's 18-minute press briefing. "Credibility issues are just getting more obvious and reporters are getting really frustrated with it and it's causing tension," a White House reporter told Politico on Thursday. "It’s sort of coming to a head. The statements are more disprovable, more obvious." During that briefing, only the third in June, Sanders sparred with reporters, claiming that laws allowing for the separation of parents and children at the border "have been on the books for over a decade." This is not true. There are no laws that require this separation. The Trump administration's decision to pursue border-crossing cases as criminal rather than civil, which means parents are put in jail and kids in detention centers — where many have reported physical and sexual abuse — is what's leading to the increased number of children being torn away from their parents. The administration has also reportedly separated some families seeking asylum, who flee to the U.S. to escape domestic abuse or violence in their countries. At one point, reporter Brian Karem asked Sanders: "These people have nothing. They come to the border with nothing, and they throw children in cages. You’re a parent, you’re a parent of young children. Don’t you have any empathy for what they go through?" The answer should be simple. But Sanders told Karem to "settle down" and accused him of wanting more TV time. When asked about Attorney General Jeff Sessions quoting the Bible to defend the administration's policies, Sanders said: "I can say that it is very biblical to enforce the law. That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible." Let the record stand that the Bible also says, "When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt." (Leviticus 19:33-34) Thursday was unfortunately far from the only time Sanders has "smudged" facts. In May, she faced new questions over her credibility after claiming not to know that Trump had reimbursed his attorney Michael Cohen $130,000 for Stormy Daniels' "hush money." A reporter asked her: "Were you lying to us at the time? Or were you in the dark?" Sanders said she gave the best information she had at the time. But even if she were telling the truth, it shows a stunning lack of communication and coordination among Trump's circles. In February, Sanders stood by White House senior aide Rob Porter after two of his ex-wives accused him of physically abusing them, providing detailed information to the FBI — calling him "effective in his role" and saying he is of the "highest integrity and exemplary character." Instead of standing by the women, she muddled the details of how the White House handled the allegations and stuck to her scripted statement: "The president supports victims of domestic violence and believes everyone should be treated fairly and with due process." This was not evident throughout the Porter fiasco. There are more lies: After the October 2017 terrorist attack in New York City, Sanders said that immigrants coming to the U.S. through the diversity visa program are not vetted. They are. At a press briefing in June 2017, she said, "The president in no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence." He has encouraged his supporters, multiple times, to attack protestors and journalists who are exercising their first amendment rights. It's all on video. And when Trump accused Obama of wiretapping him during the 2016 presidential campaign (false), she offered misleading information about several news outlets having reported the same. "As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!" Trump tweeted last year. Except that's their entire job. Sources inside the White House have told CBS News that Sanders wants to leave by the end of the year, which wouldn't be surprising given the revolving door of staffers. | |
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| 06-16-18 07:35pm - 2381 days | #841 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Politics Trump Finally Admits That He’d Really Like to Be a Dictator Spin Maggie Serota Fri, Jun 15 5:54 AM PDT President Trump made a “surprise” appearance on the White House lawn on Friday morning for a free-wheeling Fox & Friends interview. Among all the topics the president addressed, the least surprising was his fondness for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, or rather, the devotion the people trapped in his gulag nation are forced to show him. While telling Fox & Friends nodding head Steve Doocy about the progress he thinks he made with Kim regarding denuclearization, he unexpectedly pivoted into one of the most honest admissions he’s ever made in public. “He’s the head of a country, and I mean, he’s the strong head, don’t let anyone think anyone different,” Trump said. “He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Trump could either be talking about his own staff or the country at large when referring to “my people.” Doocy generously interprets it to mean the former and points out that Kim “cleaned house, three of his top generals, some of the hardliners, he fired” before the Singapore summit. Trump seems to take visible joy in pointing out that “fired” is likely a euphemism for having officials who fall out of favor executed. “I think maybe ‘fired’ at least,” Trump said when discussing how Kim deals with personnel issues. “‘Fired’ may be a nice word.” When Trump moved on to a press spray with reporters who don’t serve as a PR tool for the president and his family, he was not stoked on being questioned on his creepy aspiration of having citizens pledge fealty through fear and intimidation. When asked by CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny what Trump meant when he said he wants his “people to sit up at attention,” the president essentially gaslights him. “I’m kidding,” Trump said. “You don’t understand sarcasm. Who are you with? You’re with CNN? Hey, you are the worst.” Sure, the demonstrable narcissist who is all horny for military parades and constantly accuses the free press of being the enemy of the American people is “just kidding” when he says he envies the iron fist with which Kim rules a glorified open air prison. This post Trump Finally Admits That He’d Really Like to Be a Dictator first appeared on SPIN. | |
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| 06-17-18 03:27am - 2381 days | #842 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This is not right. If you are a cop, you have a moral right to torture people. Even if you are an ex-cop, you still have that right. No one can take your rights away from you. President Trump, this man was a cop. You must issue a pardon, so the man is free to exercise his legal rights: torturing women and blacks and anyone else who is socially beneath him. --------- --------- CRIME 6 hours ago Ex-Oklahoma cop kidnapped, tortured woman while son, 10, watched: police By Bradford Betz | Fox News James Otterbine, 32, had worked for El Reno Police Department until a month or two ago, a dispatcher told McClatchy. A former Oklahoma cop was arrested this week after a woman he allegedly kidnapped escaped from his car and called 911. James Otterbine, 32, of El Reno, met the woman from Miami online about two months ago, the Miami Herald reported, citing police. Otterbine and the woman continued an online relationship for several weeks before he bought her a plane ticket to Oklahoma, she told police. Within a few weeks of her arrival, Otterbine turned violent, she said. At one point, Otterbine allegedly duct-taped and handcuffed her to a chair during an argument, she told police. At another, Otterbine locked her in his basement, threatening to kill her and himself, police said. Otterbine told police his actions were “consensual,” because the woman liked “rough sex.” He added that for one of the “brutal” episodes, his 10-year-old son was present. On Tuesday the woman called police from inside Otterbine’s car, but the call was disconnected. Police obtained her identity through the phone number and contacted her relatives in Florida, who said she was staying with Otterbine. As police drove to Otterbine’s house, they received another call from the woman, who had managed to escape from Otterbine’s car. Police found her at a nearby bank, “battered and bruised,” the Herald reported. Otterbine was arrested and charged with kidnapping and domestic abuse in the presence of a 10-year-old child, according to jail records. “When investigators informed me of the details this poor girl had lived through, I was absolutely mortified, but elated she had survived,” said Canadian County Sheriff Christ West. Otterbine was an employee of Geary Police Department until a month or two ago, a dispatcher said. It was not known why he was terminated. He remained in jail as of Saturday with bond set at $30,000. Bradford Betz is an editor for Fox News. Follow him on Twitter @bradford_betz. | |
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| 06-17-18 03:40am - 2381 days | #843 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump allows ZTE to stay in business after China invests $500 million in his project. With an additional $500 million future investment from China banks. Can anyone say graft? --------- --------- Business America Wasn't Tough Enough on China's ZTE—Here's How to Make It Right The National Interest Grant Newsham,The National Interest 7 hours ago Grant Newsham Security, Americas A ZTE employee checks a motherboard at a production line in a factory in Shenzhen, Guangdong province April 17,2012.China's ZTE Corp, which recently sold Iran's largest telecommunications firm a powerful surveillance system, later agreed to ship to Iran millions of dollars worth of embargoed U.S. computer equipment, documents show. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu The Trump Administration has been better than its predecessors when it comes to Asia. However, the chance to reign in ZTE has been misplayed, and such opportunities come along infrequently. America Wasn't Tough Enough on China's ZTE—Here's How to Make It Right The United States Commerce Department has granted Chinese telecom company, ZTE, a reprieve from a seven-year ban on using U.S.-made parts—a bad that was effectively a corporate death sentence. However, ZTE remains on probation and has to do a few things. These include; paying a $1 billion fine and placing $400 million in escrow—money forfeited in the event of future misbehavior; replacing ZTE’s board and management within thirty days; and installing a U.S.-selected compliance team for ten years. This is going to hurt ZTE—and China’s Communist Party (CCP). However, it’s the sort of pain one feels when trying not to laugh aloud in public. The American government has named its price on ZTE. This price was for ZTE's gross violations of U.S. law and sanctions, for bribing its way into contracts around the world, and for spying. But China can pay these prices. A billion dollar fine? The Chinese government will just reimburse ZTE. $400 million in escrow? Not even peanuts, more like the ‘dust’ left in the empty peanut jar. Change out ZTE’s management? Easy enough. As for the American compliance team? It’s hard to imagine that a handful of Americans—maybe a couple of whom speak Mandarin—are going to ride herd on a Chinese company with 75,000 employees and global operations. For the Chinese, all of these punishments will be a bearable inconvenience. And with the compliance team inside the company—they’ll be easy to monitor. But won’t the compliance team report directly to ZTE’s new chairman, as U.S. Commerce Secretary Ross noted? Yes, but presumably it’s the chairman tacitly approved by the Chinese Community Party, and who therefore knows not to say ‘no.’ Now, China may of course order ZTE to cooperate fully. And while the Trump Administration is pleased with having taught the Chinese a lesson—and put the fear of God in them—it's business as usual for the Chinese government and every other Chinese company on the planet. In fact, turning ZTE into a “clean” company may be too tall an order—even for the Chinese Communist Party. However, based on first-hand experience in this field, here’s what is required: First, a new CEO or President of ZTE who takes the matter seriously. This could be because a future leader of ZTE is afraid of getting in trouble with the United States, but it would be even better if the company's new leader saw the matter as a competitive advantage. As one unusual company president put it: "People see what kind of company we are (an honest one) and we get more business as a result." This new CEO also needs to be scary enough that his writ runs throughout the company—this includes keeping an eye on independent-minded executives who’ll otherwise do anything to make money. Anything. Next, ZTE needs enough honest, competent ‘monitors’ (call them what you will) that report directly to the CEO and are fully worked into the business process, so every single deal is vetted and understood. Additionally, they need the authority to reject transactions—not just recommend against them. If this is done, eventually the company’s rank-and-file will come around—or else leave (usually for competitors who are less inclined to ethical behavior). Now, this is all hard to do even at a Western company—where the rules are understood—even if flouted. Consider HSBC, Standard Chartered, VW, Siemens, and many other companies who have gotten in trouble. So how do you accomplish this at a company ultimately beholden to the Chinese government? That is a tough question that is hard to find an answer to. A fundamental problem with ZTE—and Chinese companies in general—is that prohibited behaviors in the West are more often than not the preferred practices in China. These include bribery, theft of proprietary information and sanctions evasion. And why not? They reason it's a way to make money after all. Some years back an American company in China discovered a local company in a distant part of the country using its advertisement with only the company name changed. When confronted, the Chinese company president’s straight-faced reply was “I did it because it worked.” As for the U.S. government’s spying concerns with ZTE products, one imagines the espionage will be better hidden or moved to another ‘platform’ company instead of terminated. Hopefully, Mr. Trump doesn’t think of ZTE as a ‘good faith’ gesture intended to elicit future Chinese forbearance and concessions elsewhere. As one American businessman with several decades in China aptly noted: “My experience has been one does not gain any favor with the CCP by performing “good deeds” to influence the CCP’s opinion of us.” More likely, Mr. Trump considers the ZTE probation as something of a club to be wielded at convenience to force Chinese acquiescence on a range of other issues. This may succeed. But better to have ‘killed’ ZTE, noted that there are other companies on the U.S. list, and then said to China: “Now let’s talk.” All of this displays a curious lack of cold-bloodedness on the Trump Administration's part—a cold-bloodedness that one needs when dealing with the Chinese regime. The CCP seldom, if ever, shows similar restraint, and then only tactically as it goes for the jugular. The Trump Administration has been better than its predecessors when it comes to Asia. However, the chance to reign in ZTE has been misplayed, and such opportunities come along infrequently. Indeed, it's akin to a boxing match where one boxer lands a staggering blow on his opponent's chin, but instead of following up with another punch, he backs off, lets the other guy catch his breath—and then helps him to his corner—and sponges off his head. Maybe Mr. Trump has a plan for ZTE. But maybe not. Grant Newsham is a Senior Research Fellow with the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies in Tokyo. | |
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| 06-17-18 07:21am - 2380 days | #844 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: A man is being investigated, for punching an elderly woman. The woman might lose her eyesight as a result. The man is probably going to be hired as a policeman. The man is probably asking to be hired at the level of a police captain, since he has demonstrated a history of knowing how to deal with the public. The man has my vote, that he will be able to effectively deal with the scum that ride trains. --------- --------- News Local news Breaking News Person of interest in custody after police release photos of man suspected of punching woman on Red Line train . Chicago police released these photos of a man suspected of punching a woman on a Red Line train in Rogers Park this week. (Chicago Police Department) Paige Fry Chicago Tribune A person of interest was being questioned Friday afternoon after police released surveillance photos of a man suspected of punching and seriously injuring a woman in her 60s on a northbound Red Line train in Rogers Park, the third violent incident on the line this week, according to Chicago police. The 67-year-old woman from Evanston was reading a Kindle when a man approached and, “completely unprovoked,” hit her in the face around noon Thursday as the train approached the Jarvis station, police said. “We learned today that our victim may lose her eyesight as a result,” chief police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a tweet. “CPD needs assistance in unspeakable attack on a senior citizen” Ald. Joe Moore, 49th Ward, said the attacker apparently was “suffering from some mental health issues.” Police described the man as black, in his 20s, between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-9 and wearing a short-sleeve blue “Illinois” T-shirt, jeans, brown shoes and black backpack. Two other incidents have been reported on the Red Line this week. On Tuesday, shots were fired at a South Side station around 11:30 p.m., police said. A gunman shot at another man near the entrance to the station in the 100 block of West 79th Street, police said. No one was hit, but there was a bullet hole in the door of the station and a bullet fragment recovered from the scene, police said. The person who was shot at left before police arrived. On Monday afternoon, a 23-year-old man was shot after getting on a train at the Garfield Red Line station in the 200 block of West Garfield Boulevard. | |
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| 06-17-18 05:15pm - 2380 days | #845 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Slippery con-man Trump admits everything's he's been saying about North Korea's nukes is a lie. -------- -------- Trump accidentally admits everything he’s been saying about North Korea’s nukes is a lie Days ago, Trump said the North Korean threat was "no longer." Now, he's worried that talks could "break down." Aaron Rupar Jun 17, 2018, 2:26 pm On Sunday morning, President Trump explained why he agreed to halt joint military exercises with South Korea during his meeting in Singapore with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. “Holding back the ‘war games’ during the negotiations was my request because they are VERY EXPENSIVE and set a bad light during a good faith negotiation,” Trump wrote. “Also, quite provocative. Can start up immediately if talks break down, which I hope will not happen!” But Trump’s acknowledgement that talks with North Korea could “break down” conflicts with the line he’s been pushing since he returned from Singapore — that he’s already solved the problem. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted, categorically, that “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” He sought to reassure Americans that as a result, they could now “sleep well.” But if it truly were the case that North Korea’s nuclear threat had ended once and for all, then there would be no need to worry that talks could “break down.” In reality, the work of trying to solve the problem posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons has just begun. As ThinkProgress detailed, Trump’s tweets indicating otherwise represented a brazen attempt to gaslight the American public. North Korea maintains its nuclear capabilities and the agreement he signed with Kim doesn’t detail any sort of verifiable denuclearization process. Instead, the agreement merely says, “Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” It does not detail how North Korea will “work toward complete denuclearization” or any sort of inspection process other countries can rely on to verify it is actually doing so, nor does it require the Kim regime to give up any of his nukes at any particular time. Nonetheless, in interviews immediately after the summit with George Stephanopoulos and Sean Hannity, Trump insisted that Kim — whom he praised as “a strong guy” with “a very good personality” who is “very strategic” and “very impressive” — could be trusted. During the Hannity interview, Trump claimed that Kim agreed to terms that, for some reason, didn’t make it into the actual written agreement. And when Stephanopoulos pressed Trump how how “he is going to know that [Kim] is keeping his word,” all Trump could say is “we’re going to be following things, we’re going to be monitoring things.” Trump’s Sunday morning tweet wasn’t the first time in the last week that he accidentally told the truth about the North Korea situation. During a news conference after the summit, Trump had a moment of radical honesty and revealed how he’ll handle things if Kim — as he’s done in the past — doesn’t live up to his vague pledge to denuclearize. “Honestly, I think he’s going to do these things. I may be wrong,” Trump said. “I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘hey, I was wrong.’ I don’t know that I’ll admit that but I’ll find some kind of an excuse.” On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the idea of ending joint military exercises with South Korea — one that took both American and South Korean officials by surprise when it was announced following the Singapore summit — came from Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. “Trump had an idea about how to counter the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, which he got after speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin: If the U.S. stopped joint military exercises with the South Koreans, it could help moderate Kim Jong Un’s behavior,” the Journal reported. | |
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| 06-17-18 09:47pm - 2380 days | #846 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Republicans cite the Bible and God's law as the reason Democrats are evil, lying scum. All Democrats should be exterminated. Make America great again. Make Donald Trump Dictator for Life of the United States of Trumpland. And make sure Donald Trump has plenty of money in graft, because if there's anything con-man Donald loves more than money and owning the tallest buildings in every country, it's the fame and adulation of his followers. The Donald, greatest American who ever lived. Long live Dictator Donald Trump!!!! ------------ ------------ Melania Trump makes statement on family separations as protests grow NBC News Daniella Silva Jun 17th 2018 5:27PM First lady Melania Trump uncharacteristically waded into a fierce debate around immigration on Sunday, pushing for bipartisan cooperation to end the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border. "Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform," according to a statement from her spokeswoman. "She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart." The first lady's statement stood in contrast to comments made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who implemented the "zero tolerance" policy that has led to the separation of families at the border. The president has also repeatedly blamed Democrats opposed to his immigration reform proposal, falsely crediting an anti-trafficking law that passed unanimously in 2008 under President George W. Bush for the separations. The detention of children apart from their parents is a result of the policy mandated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and there is no law that requires family separation. As such, congressional action is not necessary to stop it. Sessions has said the intent is to eventually prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally. Last week, Sessions gave a full-throated defense of the policy leading to family separations, saying having children does not give migrants immunity from prosecution and citing the Bible as justification. "Non-citizens who cross our borders unlawfully, between our ports of entry, with children are not an exception," the attorney general said. "They are the ones who broke the law, they are the ones who endangered their own children on their trek." Meanwhile, politicians and advocates protested, marched and visited an immigration detention center on Father's Day to call attention to parents and children that have been separated as a result of Trump's policies. On Sunday morning, members of Congress from New York and New Jersey demanded access to a privately run detention facility in New Jersey to meet with detained fathers separated from their children. The administration separated 1,995 children from 1,940 adults from April 19 to May 31, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said Friday. A chaotic scene unfolded Sunday morning as seven Democratic members of Congress sought entry to the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility in New Jersey. The politicians said they had authorization from detainee attorneys to visit five asylum seekers who had been separated from their children, but were kept from entering the facility for nearly two hours as employees and police denied them entry. At one point after a contentious exchange, a detention center employee taped pieces of paper to a window in front of her desk, blocking the Congress members' view. The lawmakers spoke to various staff and authorities at the center, demanding to be allowed entry but were repeatedly refused with the reasoning that more senior officials at the facility needed to arrive at the facility first. The members trying to gain entry were Democrats Rep. Jerry Nadler, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, of New York, and Rep. Frank Pallone, Rep. Albio Sires and Rep. Bill Pascrell, of New Jersey. The politicians held a news conference afterwards and described "heart-breaking stories" told by father's who were separated from their kids. Nadler said the group spoke to "fathers whose children have been ripped from their arms, who have no idea when or if they'll see their children again." He said the group was planning to introduce legislation in Congress next week that would stop families from being separated. Pallone described meeting a man whose 5-year-old daughter was taken from him. The man has heard his daughter was taken to Michigan, but he is not sure and has not spoken to her, he said. "They took his daughter while he sleeping at 3 a.m. in the morning," he said. "He got on his knees and cried and begged them and they took her away." Meanwhile, Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke and former El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar and others led a Father's Day march to Tornillo, Texas, where migrant children are being held in a tent city detention facility. Hundreds marched down the road to the Tornillo Port of Entry in protest, according to NBC affiliate KTSM. A crowd gathered outside the main port of entry entrance, with demonstrators from all over Texas and some from New Mexico, KTSM reported. Marchers held signs and chanted "What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now" and "Free our children now." "Right now our country is taking kids away from their parents, detaining them in tent camps like this one, but our country is also standing up and marching and forcing some accountability for what we're doing," O'Rourke, who is also running for the Senate seat held by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, said outside the facility. "There is nothing more human than doing everything you can for your child when they face in some cases certain death, rape, torture to take them in your arms and bring them to safety," he said. | |
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| 06-18-18 07:03am - 2379 days | #847 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Con-man Donald Trump, the most corrupt US President we've ever had, encourages Washington Post workers to strike, after the Washington Post publishes Russian collusion story. Is Trump sticking up for workers' rights? Not really. He is opposed to workers' rights, and his administration is working to reduce the power of workers unions and any laws protecting workers rights. So why is Trump encouraging Washington Post workers to strike? Because he hates the Washington Post, which publishes stories critical of Trump and his administration. If Trump were a dictator, his fondest wish, he could shut down the Washington Post. But America is still a democracy. So, as a true Democrat (all Democrats are evil scum), Trump wants the workers to shut down the Washington Post. Trump says the workers should go on strike because their employee is not paying them enough. But Trump promotes policies that will pay workers less, will give workers less job security. Trump, the slime-ball con-man President, who grabs for money through graft and corruption while President of the United States. ------------------- ------------------- Trump encourages Post employees to strike, hours after paper breaks bombshell Russia collusion story "I think a really long strike would be a great idea." Aaron Rupar Jun 17, 2018, 11:52 am Just hours after The Washington Post published a bombshell story about a previously undisclosed May 2016 meeting between Roger Stone and a Russian national who promised political dirt about Hillary Clinton, President Trump encouraged Post employees to go on strike. “Washington Post employees want to go on strike because Bezos isn’t paying them enough,” Trump tweeted. “I think a really long strike would be a great idea. Employees would get more money and we would get rid of Fake News for an extended period of time! Is @WaPo a registered lobbyist?” Trump’s tweet, coming as it does on the heels of the Post’s report, is the latest evidence that his repeated attacks on Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos are motivated by the publication’s coverage of Trump — not any sort of principled concern about the state of the postal service or well-being of Post employees. The Post reported that Stone — a longtime Trump adviser — met in May 2016 with a man who called himself Henry Greenberg. Greenberg initially contacted Trump campaign communications official Michael Caputo and offered dirt about Hillary, and Caputo responded by arranging the meeting with Stone. According to text messages Stone sent to Caputo after the meeting that have been obtained by the Post, Greenberg — who has at times used the name Henry Oknyansky and claimed in a 2015 court filing to be an FBI informant — asked for $2 million in exchange for his information. Asked by Caputo if Greenberg offered “Anything interesting at all?”, Stone replied, “No.” Stone failed to disclose his meeting with Greenberg during his sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017. During an interview on Sunday morning on C-SPAN, Stone said he simply forgot about the the episode until the Post’s report. The Post’s report comes less than a month after The Wall Street Journal obtained emails indicating Stone withheld key documents from the House Intelligence Committee that indicate he lied about his communications with a radio host he hoped would serve as a backchannel to WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. A lawyer for Stone, Grant Smith, responded to the Journal’s report by claiming, lamely, that the emails weren’t turned over to the House Intelligence Committee because they were “not encompassed within the scope of the committee’s request.” But the committee’s investigation, which was recently ended by a pro-Trump faction led by chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), was about Russia’s efforts to meddle in the election — precisely what Stone was discussing with the radio host in the email. As The Post details, “Stone and Caputo’s interactions with Greenberg mean that at least 11 Trump associates or campaign officials have acknowledged interactions with a Russian during the election season or presidential transition.” In December 2016 and January 2017, incoming White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and Vice President-elect Mike Pence both categorically denied during TV interviews that there was any contact between the Trump campaign and Russia at all. During a CNN interview on Sunday, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani downplayed the Post’s report by arguing that while Stone may have been willing to collude with Russia, he didn’t successfully pull it off, so it’s no big deal. “It seems to me… whatever the differing recollections about this, it sorta gets resolved with the fact that Stone did nothing about it,” Giuliani said. “He came to the conclusion according to the Post that it was a waste of time.” The Stone-Greenberg meeting occurred a month before top Trump campaign officials met at Trump Tower with a Russian agent who promised them political dirt about Hillary Clinton. Team Trump has tried to downplay that meeting with a similar line of argument: While they may have been willing to collude, that doesn’t matter since they weren’t able to do so. It remains unclear, however, exactly what information was passed from Russian agents to the Trump campaign, and what team Trump did with it. | |
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| 06-18-18 07:15am - 2379 days | #848 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Con-man Trump has new friends and allies: The dictators of Russia (Putin, Trump's main hero), China, and now North Korea. These are the people he admires the most: strong, ruthless people who know how to make friends and eliminate enemies. Why can't Trump be just as great as his new friends? He can. Have all Democrats put in prison camps awaiting execution. And proclaim Trump as Dictator for Life of the United States of Trumpland. ------- ------- Trump saluted a North Korean general — and it’s already being used as propaganda by Kim Jong Un U.S. presidents are typically not expected to salute any foreign dignitary or military official. Melanie Schmitz Jun 14, 2018, 10:57 am Updated: Jun 14, 2018, 11:25 am President Trump was criticized this week for appearing to salute a top general of Kim Jong Un. (CREDIT: Kevin Lim/THE STRAITS TIMES/Handout/Getty Images) North Korean state media aired footage of President Trump saluting a top military official accompanying leader Kim Jong Un to the summit in Singapore this week. Despite making no substantive commitments, the footage shows the North Korean dictator won a crucial propaganda victory. The as-of-yet unverified footage was aired during a 42-minute Korean Central Television documentary that “showed events largely from Kim’s perspective,” according to the Washington Post. “With its focus on Kim, the KCTV documentary seems to show North Koreans that their leader is the star of the show,” the Post wrote Thursday. Advertisement The documentary footage was later captured by BBC monitors, and appears to show Trump shaking hands with a number of Kim’s aides and officials. At one point, Trump greets one of Kim’s military generals, who salutes him, prompting Trump to salute back before moving on down the line. As the BBC Monitoring team notes, Trump initially appears confused as to whether he should wait and shake hands with the general or salute back. Eventually, he opts for the latter. Advertisement The moment was quickly highlighted on North Korean news stations, which are propaganda vehicles controlled by the state, to portray Kim as having the upper hand in the negotiations, a feat made easier by Trump’s own words and actions later, following the summit. In a news conference immediately following the meeting, Trump spoke to reporters and praised the North Korean dictator, calling him “very talented,” claiming that “Anybody that takes over a situation like he did at 26 years of age and is able to run it and run it tough… I don’t say he was nice or say anything about it. He ran it, few people at that age. You can take 1 out of 10,000 could not do it.” Later in the week, during separate interviews with Fox News’ Sean Hannity and ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Trump also stated that Kim had “a very good personality, he’s funny, and he’s very, very smart,” and claimed that the North Korean people loved the genocidal dictator. Trump claimed in an interview with ABC News this week that the North Korean people loved leader Kim Jong Un, sparking outcry and renewing discussion of the Kim regime's crimes against humanity. (CREDIT: Kevin Lim/The Strait Times/Handout/Getty Images) Trump claims North Koreans ‘love’ Kim Jong Un, who jails and tortures anyone who expresses dissent Trump’s decision to salute the North Korean general isn’t strictly outside the rules, although it is peculiar. The U.S. Army Regulations manual states that it’s customary for members of the armed services to “salute officers of friendly foreign nations when recognized as such” and that the president should be saluted by all uniformed personnel (although North Korea can hardly be considered “friendly”). The State Department’s Foreign Service guide also suggests that diplomats should follow traditional greeting protocol when meeting officials from another country. However, protocol has long dictated that presidents traditionally are not required to bow or salute foreign dignitaries or military leaders, as The New York Times noted in 1994. Advertisement Several past presidents have faced scrutiny for abandoning tradition and showing deference to foreign officials. Both President Obama and President George W. Bush were slammed for bowing before Japanese emperors, and President Clinton was also slammed for appearing to bow slightly to the emperor during a meeting in 1994. Obama specifically was criticized for appearing to “bow” to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in 2009, with right-wing publications and pundits claiming it was unbecoming of the president to show deference to the foreign leader or “kowtow” to his officials. “American presidents do not bow before foreign dignitaries, whether they are princes, kings, or emperors,” The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb complained at the time. Last May, however, Trump’s critics pointed out that he had also appeared to bow slightly when receiving the King Abdul Aziz Collar from King Salman in Saudi Arabia. Supporters claimed that Trump was only bending over or stooping down. This article has been updated to reflect new information reported by the Washington Post, that specifies the footage of Trump saluting the North Korean general comes from a 42-minute Korean Central Television documentary. | |
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| 06-18-18 11:57am - 2379 days | #849 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Con-man Trump tries to blame Democrats for Republican policy of separating children from parents. Why does the Justice Department not throw this con-man in jail for his constant lies and graft? Because the Justice Department, headed by Jeff Sessions, is corrupt. The Justice Department allows Trump to stay in power. It is so sad that America is led by a corrupt and lying president. ------- ------- Trump: 'The United States will not be a migrant camp' Dylan Stableford 3 hours ago President Trump on Monday again tried to shift blame for his administration’s controversial policy of separating immigrant families at the border to Democrats, while others in his administration threw up a variety of confusing, misleading and sometimes contradictory explanations and defenses. “Why don’t the Democrats give us the votes to fix the world’s worst immigration laws?” the president tweeted. “Where is the outcry for the killings and crime being caused by gangs and thugs, including MS-13, coming into our country illegally?” “Children are being used by some of the worst criminals on earth as a means to enter our country,” he continued. “Has anyone been looking at the Crime taking place south of the border. It is historic, with some countries the most dangerous places in the world. Not going to happen in the U.S.” “CHANGE THE LAWS!” Trump wrote, adding: “It is the Democrats [sic] fault for being weak and ineffective with Boarder [sic] Security and Crime. Tell them to start thinking about the people devastated by Crime coming from illegal immigration. Change the laws!” President Trump speaks to reporters at the White House on Friday. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) There is no U.S. law requiring that the children of immigrants entering the country illegally to be separated from their parents. The administration, unlike previous ones, is treating the adults as criminals and jailing them, which requires them to be separated from the children. In an address to the National Space Council at the White House on Monday afternoon, Trump continued to blame Democrats for the family separation crisis while ratcheting up the rhetoric. “I say, very strongly, it’s the Democrats fault,” Trump said. “The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility.” Children taken into custody in cases related illegal entry into the U.S. rest at a facility in McAllen, Texas, on Sunday. (Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Rio Grande Valley Sector via AP) “We want safety and we want security,” Trump added. “If the Democrats would sit down instead of obstructing we could have something done very quickly — good for the children, good for the country.” Trump’s comments come amid growing bipartisan backlash over the Trump administration policy that has resulted in 1,995 children being separated from parents who are accused of illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border between April 19 and May 31. According to Quinnipiac University poll released by Monday, 66 percent of American voters oppose the policy of separating children and parents when families illegally cross the border, compared to 27 percent that support it. “I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel,” former first lady Laura Bush wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published on Sunday night. “It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.” Many of the children separated from their families have been held in detention centers. In one facility toured by the Associated Press, hundreds of children were seen “in a series of cages created by metal fencing.” The children were given “bottles of water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets.” On Sunday night, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pushed back against mounting criticism by denying that the policy actually exists. “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border,” she tweeted. “Period.” On “Fox & Friends” Monday, Hogan Gidley, a special assistant to the president, said the policy of separating children from their parents is “all the Democrats’ doing.” But recent comments from members of the Trump administration would indicate otherwise. Attorney General Jeff Sessions In April, Sessions announced a new “zero-tolerance policy,” which he described as an “escalated effort to prosecute those who choose to illegally cross our border.” Under Sessions’ directive, all those apprehended for entering the United States illegally — including families with small children — would be criminally charged. “To those who wish to challenge the Trump Administration’s commitment to public safety, national security, and the rule of law, I warn you,” Sessions said. “Illegally entering this country will not be rewarded, but will instead be met with the full prosecutorial powers of the Department of Justice.” Last week, Sessions responded to criticism from church groups and religious leaders, citing the Bible in his defense. “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” Sessions said. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful. “Our policies that can result in short term separation of families is not unusual or unjustified,” he continued. “American citizens that are jailed do not take their children to jail with them. And non-citizens who cross our borders unlawfully between our ports of entry with children are not an exception. They are the ones who broke the law. They are the ones who endangered their own children on their trek.” Sarah Sanders, White House press secretary Last week, Sanders also cited the Bible in her defense of the immigration policy. “It is very biblical to enforce the law,” Sanders told reporters. “The separation of illegal alien families is the product of the same legal loopholes that Democrats refuse to close. And these laws are the same that have been on the books for over a decade. And the president is simply enforcing them.” Sanders also insisted that ripping children from their parents is a moral practice. “It’s a moral policy to follow and enforce the law,” she said. Chief of Staff John Kelly In an interview with NPR last month, Kelly said that the “name of the game” is deterrence. “The vast majority of the people that move illegally into United States are not bad people,” Kelly said. “They’re not criminals. They’re not MS-13. Some of them are not. But they’re also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society. They’re overwhelmingly rural people in the countries they come from — fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm. They don’t speak English; obviously that’s a big thing — they don’t speak English. They don’t integrate well; they don’t have skills. They’re not bad people. They’re coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws.” Kelly agreed that family separation is a “tough deterrent” but disagreed that it was “cruel and heartless to take a mother away from her children.” “I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” Kelly said. “The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States, and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.” Senior policy adviser Stephen Miller “No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement,” Miller told the New York Times last week. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero-tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.” During a background call with reporters Friday, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security echoed Miller’s sentiment. “Advocates want us to ignore the law and give people with families a free pass,” the spokesman said. “We no longer exempt entire classes of people.” First lady Melania Trump On Sunday night, the first lady’s office issued a statement saying that Melania Trump “hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform.” “We need to be a country that follows all laws,” she added. “But also a country that governs with heart.” | |
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| 06-18-18 12:25pm - 2379 days | #850 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Donald Trump says the law must be obeyed. 2 pre-teen girls were driving a SUV which flipped. The girls do not have a driver's license. The girls are criminals, and must be executed. This is Trump's dream: make America great again. Kill the 2 girls, and help make America strong. Trump, the corrupt, lying President of the United States. Even though the girls were dressed in pink, they are still criminals. Try not to feel guilt, because criminals must be executed, as part of Trump's plan to destroy America. Also, Fox news reporters are saying the immigrant children who are being held in cages are living like they are on holiday. All the children are happy. Fox news, supporting the corrupt President of the US. Fox news, the propaganda arm of the Trump regime. Fox news, spreading the lies of the Trump regime. --------- --------- Sacramento Bee | Sacbee.com Sisters flip SUV on a Dunkin' Donuts run. They're only 10 and 12 years old, NY cops say | The Sacramento Bee A 10-year-old girl and her 12-year-old sister flipped an SUV on its side Thursday in Staten Island, New York, on a joyride to a Dunkin’ Donuts near their house, police say. The SUV belongs to their father’s girlfriend. A 10-year-old girl and her 12-year-old sister flipped an SUV on its side Thursday in Staten Island, New York, on a joyride to a Dunkin’ Donuts near their house, police say. The SUV belongs to their father’s girlfriend. WNYW National Sisters flip SUV on a Dunkin' Donuts run. They're only 10 and 12 years old, NY cops say By Don Sweeney dsweeney@sacbee.com June 17, 2018 01:57 PM When Giovanni Biscello saw a white SUV crash into parked cars and flip on its side, he dashed from the Staten Island bagel shop where he works to help. "I looked in the back window, looked in the front, there was nobody in the car," he told WABC. "I said, ‘Where are the drivers?’ I turned around, two little girls standing by the fence, they were both crying and I found out they were the drivers of the car." The sisters, ages 10 and 12, were unhurt, reported the TV station. "I think there was an angel watching over them," Biscello said. The girls had taken the SUV — owned by their father’s girlfriend — on a run to a Dunkin’ Donuts shop a few blocks from their home, according to WCBS. The 10-year-old drove, police said. “Dressed in pink, looked adorable, and they had been the drivers of the vehicle,” witness Mary McLean told the station. “How their foot reached the pedal is beyond me.” McLean told WCBS that she and other witnesses were amazed when the girls crawled from the crashed SUV. “Everyone was just like really? Really?” she said. The crash, which took place at 2 p.m. Thursday, occurred about two blocks from the Dunkin’ Donuts, reported WNYW. The father of the girls and his girlfriend were not home at the time. No charges have been filed in the crash, though an investigation continues, WNYW reported. | |
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