board77

The Last Homely Site on the Web

You've been Trumped!

Post Reply   Page 46 of 65  [ 1284 posts ]
Jump to page « 144 45 46 47 4865 »
Author Message
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Sat 27 Oct , 2018 4:28 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
https://www.apnews.com/6cb0dae384cd45ddb9efe49a6aab1789
Quote:
Militia groups and far-right activists are raising money and announcing plans to head to the Mexican border to help stop the caravan of Central Americans, echoing President Donald Trump’s attacks on the migrants making their way toward the U.S.

Exactly how many militia members will turn out is unclear, and as of Friday, the caravan of about 4,000 people was still some 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) and weeks away from reaching this country.

But the prospect of armed civilians at the border — and the escalating political rhetoric over immigration — have fueled fears of vigilantism at a time when tensions are already running high because of the mail bomb attacks against some of Trump’s critics.

The U.S. Border Patrol this week warned local landowners in Texas that it expects “possible armed civilians” to come onto their property because of the caravan.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 29 Oct , 2018 8:41 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4136 ... der-report
Quote:
The U.S. military is set to deploy about 5,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to assist with the Trump administration’s response to a so-called migrant caravan of asylum seekers, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The number represents a significant increase over the initial estimate of 800 that several news outlets reported last week.

...The statement said the military will help U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with planning, engineering such as fencing and other barriers, aircraft to move CBP personnel, medical treatment for migrants, command and control, housing for CBP and protective equipment for Border Patrol officers....The U.S. military is barred by statute from enforcing U.S. laws, including immigration laws, on U.S. soil.

There are already 2000 National Guard troops down there as support staff. I don't believe they're allowed to do anything direct either. That's all CBP's job.

In other words, we're all paying for Trump's show.

(Maybe they can work on keeping the far right militia types from taking over any wildlife refuges while they're in the area. I've noticed that Trump has NOT said "thanks for the offer, but really it would be better if you please stay home" to his private militia followers.)




Trump continues to put all blame for divisiveness on the media (and none on himself), while leading chants of "Lock her up/ Lock him up" etc. at his rallies. I believe George Soros, one of the pipe bomb targets, was one of their recent targets. (don't ask me why. These rallies are like cults and not logical.)
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... emy-of-the
Quote:
The president said in a pair of tweets...

"There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly," Trump wrote on Twitter.

"That will do much to put out the flame of Anger and Outrage and we will then be able to bring all sides together in Peace and Harmony," he added.




https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... n-rollback
Quote:
The Trump administration’s move to end regulations on a fishing technique in California known to ensnare and kill sea turtles and whales has been ruled unlawful.

U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner late Friday ruled that the federal government “exceeded its authority” when it withdrew a rule in June 2017 that initially suspended the use of swordfish gillnets off the coast of Southern California if any bycatch limits were exceeded.

...The judge’s ruling sends the proposal back to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and orders the agency under the Commerce Department to either finalize the rule as proposed or consult with the Pacific Fishery Management Council on any revisions. The rule was initially endorsed by the council in 2015 and formally proposed for implementation by the NMFS in 2016. It was expected to gain final approval as a federal regulation until the Trump administration intervened.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 30 Oct , 2018 1:43 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
https://thehill.com/media/413732-shep-s ... -is-coming
Quote:
Fox News anchor Shepard Smith on Monday accused President Trump of exploiting the "migrant caravan" in order to stoke anxieties ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections.

"Tomorrow the migrants, according to Fox News reporting, are more than two months away, if any of them actually come here," Smith said on air. "But tomorrow is one week before the midterm election, which is what all of this is about," he added. "There is no invasion. No one’s coming to get you. There’s nothing at all to worry about."

..."When they did this to us, got us all riled up in April, remember?" Smith said. "The result was 14 arrests. We’re America, we can handle it. But like I said, a week to the election."


https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing ... i-know-and
Quote:
Retired airline pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who landed the famous "miracle on the Hudson," said Monday that “this is not the America I know and love” in a message encouraging voter participation ahead of the midterm elections.

..."To navigate complex challenges, all leaders must take responsibility and have a moral compass grounded in competence, integrity and concern for the greater good," he wrote. Tragically, people in positions in power today are not projecting their best, Sullenberger wrote. “Many are cowardly, complicit enablers, acting against the interests of the United States, our allies and democracy; encouraging extremists at home and emboldening our adversaries abroad; and threatening the livability of our planet.”

“Many do not respect the offices they hold; they lack — or disregard — a basic knowledge of history, science and leadership; and they act impulsively, worsening a toxic political environment,” he continued.


And from an official government spokesperson, :)
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... 63-million
Quote:
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during a Monday press briefing said President Trump won by an "overwhelming majority" of 63 million votes — despite the fact that his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, won 65.8 million votes and he lost the popular vote.

...."He got elected by an overwhelming majority of 63 million Americans who came out and supported him and wanted to see his policies enacted. He’s delivered on that," Sanders said during her first White House press briefing in weeks.

...The president has repeatedly touted the falsehood that he won the popular vote "if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally," a claim that has been disproven multiple times.


https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ip/574366/
Quote:
Trump's Murky Plan to End Birthright Citizenship

The president said he intends to remove the right through executive order—a move that would take direct aim at the Constitution and the millions of Americans born to immigrant parents.
Quote:
President Donald Trump is proposing removing the right to U.S. citizenship for children born to non-citizens on U.S. soil—a move that could spark fierce debate over the Fourteenth Amendment and American identity. In a new interview with Axios, the president said he intends to revoke birthright citizenship through an executive order.

In the interview with Axios, Trump falsely claimed that the United States is the only nation with birthright citizenship....NumbersUSA, a group that supports reduced immigration, compiled a list of 33 nations that also offer birthright citizenship, including Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.
I have no idea whether this challenge to the 14th amendment would affect other people. For instance, if parents become US citizens, their action automatically confers citizenship on their existing minor children, who don't have to apply separately. At a minimum, it seems as if it would affect the children of legal immigrants who are permanent US residents but not yet citizens - for instance, EB-1 visa holders. And meanwhile, the Trump administration is reducing legal immigration as much as it can and making it harder to become a citizen.


The 14th Amendment was ratified after the end of slavery and fixed various issues related to people who were formerly slaves. The part Trump apparently wants to eliminate is this:
Quote:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.


Edit to add:

And Trump's loyal sycophant chimes in:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... nstitution
Quote:
Vice President Pence said Tuesday that President Trump's plan to sign an executive order aimed at ending the practice of birthright citizenship in the U.S. may not conflict directly with the Constitution.
Some other members of the GOP are not so thrilled with the idea.



It looks like even our government propaganda has been taken over by the loonies promoting far right conspiracy theories:
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4138 ... s-violated
Quote:
A U.S. government broadcasting agency said Tuesday that it will investigate a segment aired by a Spanish-language program earlier this year that described George Soros as a “nonpracticing Jew of flexible morals” and “the architect of the financial collapse of 2008.”

U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) CEO John Lansing said in a statement that the individuals responsible for the broadcast will be placed on administrative leave pending the investigation. The segment aired in May on Radio and Television Martí, which broadcasts U.S. news in Cuba.

...The taxpayer-funded USAGM oversees the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, the parent company for Radio and Television Martí.

...The segment cites Judicial Watch, a right-wing group that has promoted conspiracy theories about Soros....
Tomás P. Regalado, director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, told Mother Jones last week that Judicial Watch "is a good source" but said it shouldn't have been the only source for the broadcast segment.


https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... nke-report
Quote:
The top government watchdog overseeing the Interior Department has referred an investigation into agency head Ryan Zinke to the Justice Department (DOJ) for potential prosecution. One of the ongoing probes by Interior’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) into Zinke will now be looked into by the agents at the DOJ, two people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post on Tuesday. CNN, citing two sources, reported later Tuesday that the DOJ inquiry is looking into whether Zinke used his office for personal gain.

https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... -to-allege
Quote:
The Office of the Special Counsel investigating the 2016 election has asked the FBI to investigate whether women have been offered money to make claims of sexual harassment against Robert Mueller.

...Mueller's office confirmed that they learned of the scheme from several journalists who were approached by a woman who said she had been offered $20,000 to make sexual assault allegations against Mueller, The Atlantic reported. The unnamed woman in a recent email to multiple journalists wrote that a man who said he worked for GOP activist Jack Burkman asked her “to make accusations of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment against Robert Mueller" in exchange for the money.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 31 Oct , 2018 2:28 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ps-sent-to
Quote:
The Pentagon on Tuesday said the number of troops to be sent to the border beginning this week is expected to rise.

“What I can confirm is there will be additional force over and above the 5,239; the magnitude of that difference, I don’t have an answer for you,” U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command head Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy told reporters at the Pentagon.

O'Shaughnessy added that the final number of troops is “undetermined,” and will change as the Pentagon works to “refine the requests” from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The cost of the deployment “is unknown at this time.”
Seriously, is Trump truly preparing for a group of people hoping to apply for asylum, or playing war at taxpayer expense? For perspective, I believe the US has approximately 2000 soldiers in Syria right now.

The total number of people in the caravan now is about 4000 and will almost certainly diminish greatly before they reach the border. So there will be several armed soldiers, at least, for every unarmed civilian who wants to either apply for asylum at an official border crossing, or turn himself/herself in to CBP after crossing at another site, as they typically do.
Plus, of course, the CBP personnel who usually handle this stuff and a bunch of National Guard troops that Trump already sent in his last panic attack.


Edit: This exclusive report from Newsweek is interesting, in light of the troop deployments:
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administ ... ps-1193694
Quote:
The Trump administration was informed that “only a small percentage” of Central American migrants traveling with several “caravans” headed toward the U.S. will likely make it to the border. The information was received before the administration moved ahead with plans to deploy more than 5,200 troops to the border, according to operational documents obtained by Newsweek.

...Operational documents sent to Newsweek by a Pentagon official outlining the deployment, dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot, reveal that the government continued its plans to send troops to the border despite anticipating that “based on historic trends...only a small percentage of migrants will likely reach the border.”

The estimates revealed in the documents, marked as “UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO//LES” (meaning the documents are for official use only and are law enforcement sensitive), stand in stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s claims of an “invasion” at the U.S. border.



https://thehill.com/latino/413981-us-po ... he-tropics
Quote:
Brazil's newly elected president, Jair Bolsonaro, is positioning himself to be a strong ally of President Trump, a move that could bolster U.S. influence in South America as the region’s largest economy tries to shed its socialist past.

Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist and former military officer, has praised Trump and echoed his rhetoric against "fake news," China and criminals. Trump returned the favor on Saturday, congratulating Bolsonaro for his electoral victory, saying the United States and Brazil will "work closely together on Trade, Military and everything else!"

The potential for strengthened ties between the U.S. and Brazil — the two largest countries, by population, in the Western Hemisphere — is very real, according to Juan Carlos Hidalgo, a Latin America expert at the Cato Institute in Washington.

"I think relations with the U.S. under the Trump administration are very likely to improve significantly," said Hidalgo.

This is who we may be getting closer ties with. Three sources with high factual reporting scores and varied right/left slants discuss Bolsonaro's background:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/worl ... ofile.html
Quote:
A knack for turning setbacks into opportunity has been a constant for Mr. Bolsonaro, the far-right populist who won Sunday’s runoff election to become Brazil’s next president, upending the political parties and norms that have governed Brazil since the end of military rule more than 30 years ago.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s broadsides against women, gay people, Brazilians of color and even democracy — “Let’s go straight to the dictatorship,” he once said as a congressman — made him so polarizing that he struggled to find a running mate until early August. Traditional parties and politicians considered him too extreme.

...President Trump called on Sunday to congratulate him on his victory, following up with a tweet on Monday morning that said, “Had a very good conversation with the newly elected President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who won the race by a substantial margin. We agreed that Brazil and the United States will work closely together on Trade, Military and everything else!”
https://www.americasquarterly.org/conte ... -bolsonaro
Quote:
This was vintage Bolsonaro: a grim, apocalyptic view of law and order. A clever, possibly sincere nod to democratic convention (“I’m not in favor of torture, but  …”). And a simple, easy-to-understand message that, in a country with 19 of the world’s 50 most violent cities, makes even some moderate Brazilians say: You know what? He may be right!

It’s a message that horrifies advocates of human rights and democracy, as well as those who say there are more effective (and legal) ways to fight crime. But it has helped make the Bolsonaros the most successful family in Brazilian politics at a time when much of Latin America and the world are experiencing an explosion of nationalist, anti-establishment fervor.
Quote:
In the final months of 2017, I spent numerous hours interviewing the Bolsonaros and their supporters, hoping to better understand the family’s surprising rise and the larger forces behind it. ...

What did I find? The most obvious hypothesis, that Bolsonaro is part of a global trend that gave us Trump, Brexit and other right-wing nationalists like Austria’s Sebastian Kurz, is true in many ways — but it falls apart in others. Indeed, the Bolsonaros are above all a Brazilian phenomenon, a product of not only the country’s severe economic, institutional and criminal crises since 2014, but also of its successes in the decade prior.
Quote:
Inevitably, he was asked about past controversies, including his 2003 statement to a female legislator that “I won’t rape you because you don’t deserve it.” Bolsonaro calmly explained that the legislator insulted him first, but also expressed a degree of regret. “I was out of line,” he said. “Sometimes I lose myself with words, and I apologize.” This was misleading....

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-r ... -1.3634572
Quote:
In the 28 years since his arrival in the chamber of deputies, Bolsonaro has eked out a pitiful record as a legislator, getting just two minor laws on to the statute books and never managing to occupy any of the chamber’s offices. When last year he ran to be its president he won the votes of just four out of 513 deputies, less than the number of disciplinary proceedings his distemperate behaviour saw him accumulate over the years.

But despite his undistinguished record, this political outsider is today the far right’s best-ever chance of winning a presidential election in Brazil....

His rise reflects the disillusion among voters with Brazil’s traditional political parties. Bolsonaro’s hardline law-and-order message and general distaste for democracy have been a constant feature of his decades on the political fringes. But, aided by his early and skilful co-option of Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, he has gained new adherents by tapping into the deep well of anger touched off by public prosecutors who, in 2014, in a series of cases that rocked the country’s political establishment to its core, revealed the true scale of political corruption in the country.

Edit 2:
This is part of the Saudi deal Trump doesn't want to give up after the murder of Khashoggi:
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4140 ... ith-saudis
Quote:
Five Republican senators are urging President Trump to suspend negotiations with Saudi Arabia on a nuclear energy agreement following the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
... [They say] “The ongoing revelations about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as certain Saudi actions related to Yemen and Lebanon, have raised further serious concerns about the transparency, accountability, and judgment of current decisionmakers in Saudi Arabia.”

The Trump administration has been negotiating what’s known as a “123 agreement” with the Saudis that would allow the kingdom to buy nuclear reactors from U.S. companies.

...Lawmakers expressed concerns about the potential nuclear energy agreement with Saudi Arabia even before the Khashoggi crisis because the Saudis have indicated they want a deal without the so-called “gold standard,” which would include prohibitions on enriching uranium and reprocessing spent fuel to produce plutonium, steps that are essential in producing nuclear weapons.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 01 Nov , 2018 11:59 am
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
Especially interesting in light of Newsweek's article about the internal memo at the Pentagon (above) debunking Trump's claims before the decision was made to send troops. Funny that no president before Dear Leader ever thought this would be a good idea.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4141 ... -to-border
Quote:
President Trump on Wednesday said he might deploy up to 15,000 service members to the U.S. southern border to stop a "caravan" of migrants from entering the country.

"As far as the caravan is concerned, our military is out. We have about 5,000. We'll go up to anywhere between 10 and 15,000 military personnel on top of Border Patrol, [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and everybody else at the border," the president told reporters on the South Lawn.
As opposed to doing something potentially useful, like hiring more people for the border patrol or prosecuting the employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Or maybe just not torpedoing bilateral immigration agreements at the last minute, after saying he would sign whatever the Democrats and Republicans could agree on.

I suspect part of the reason for this expensive show is so that he can claim credit for scaring off the "hordes" after the caravan dwindles as they always do.




https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/31/poli ... index.html
Quote:
The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly signaled it may allow states to release more ozone air pollution, commonly known as smog, dirtying the air in those states and neighboring ones, but the agency did not review the health impact of such a move.

The Trump administration's position is outlined in a highly technical guidance memo about plans states must create and submit for EPA approval under the Clean Air Act's good neighbor requirements. It was sent in August to EPA regional offices and posted on the agency's website, but not announced to the public.

...The new memo is influential, because it guides decision making, but is not legally binding.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 02 Nov , 2018 1:06 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... under-bush
Quote:
The man at the center of President Trump's controversial new midterms ad who was convicted of the murder two police officers was readmitted to the U.S. during President George W. Bush's tenure, not under Democrats, as the ad says.

...The ad, which Trump tweeted and pinned to the top of his Twitter account, shows clips of Bracamontes spewing profanities and threats while at trial, followed by the message, "Democrats let him stay."

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ob-reports
Quote:
President Trump has reportedly tapped State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert as his pick to replace outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.

... She previously worked as a reporter and anchor at Fox News before joining the State Department in April 2017.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/01/tr ... mbassador/
Quote:
U.N.-based diplomats, who feared Trump might send an ideological warrior to represent him at Turtle Bay, said a Nauert appointment would be a relief.

“She’ll read her script well,” one U.N.-based diplomat said. “I think she will be effective in the sense of giving a high profile to the post.”

But other Washington insiders were skeptical that Nauert, who joined the State Department in April, 2017, could manage the job with her lack of foreign-policy experience.

“The job of representing our country in the complex corridors of power at the United Nations requires more experience in negotiations and knowledge of international law than Heather brings,” said Brett Bruen, a former diplomat and White House director of global engagement under the Obama administration.


https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/41432 ... ly-nothing
Quote:
Former ICE chief John Sandweg said Thursday that President Trump’s move to deploy up to 15,000 active-duty military personnel to stop a caravan of Central American migrants from entering the country will do “absolutely nothing.”

...The former ICE chief said deploying active-duty troops like the National Guard is not very effective, because they’re not allowed to “use force in any way shape or form,” and are instead used as “logistical support” for officials at the border. “You only deploy the Guard to get extra visibility on the border, to help the border patrol find when people illegally enter, and that’s just really not the problem here at all,” Sandweg said.

...“If we’re looking for a real solution to this issue — honestly the person who suggested it long ago was Ted Cruz, of all people, who said we need to surge quickly and hire a bunch of immigration judges to process these claims quickly,” Sandweg told Hill.TV.

More misleading photos are being circulated by people promoting anti-immigrant rhetoric on social media (though it's true that there were clashes at the Mexican border. According to the story below in USA Today, some Guatemalan authorities were hurt, not clear if any Mexicans were):
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mexic ... an-photos/
Quote:
Were These Mexican Police Officers Brutalized by Members of a Migrant Caravan?
A series of photographs showing injured police officers are genuine, but they are several years old and have nothing to do with immigrants or caravans.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/polic ... n-members/
Quote:
Does This Photograph Show a Police Officer Being Dragged by Caravan Members?
When it comes to fear-mongering over the Honduran caravan, any old picture of police being mistreated will do.
I guess too many people now know the US flag burning photos are fake, so the propaganda people have to stoke outrage in other ways.


And the following story is being widely reported in international newspapers as well as the U.S. I saw one article in a Malaysian newspaper. And Nigerian soldiers are already using it to justify killing unarmed protesters. Trump is really doing a great job of making the US look bad.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/poli ... 850582002/
Quote:
President Donald Trump said members of the U.S. military sent to the southern border to keep out thousands in a migrant caravan would "fight back" if immigrants throw stones and suggested soldiers might open fire on the group because there's "not much difference" between a rock or gun.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/wo ... s-10889800
Quote:
President Donald Trump on Thursday (Nov 1) warned that soldiers deployed to the Mexican border could shoot Central American migrants who throw stones at them while attempting to cross illegally.

...Trump spoke during a presentation of his controversial policy on cracking down against what he says is uncontrolled illegal immigration. He has ramped up the rhetoric daily ahead of next Tuesday's midterm congressional elections, accusing the opposition Democrats of wanting to throw open the borders to floods of "tough people," "rapists" and other types of threats.

...Despite Trump's increasingly severe warnings of immigration chaos, the government on Wednesday issued figures saying that only about 400,000 people have been apprehended at the border in 2018, down from around 1.6 million in 2000.




Edit to add the usual Friday afternoon the-administration-wants-to-bury-this-news-item:

EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler seems to be cleverer than Pruitt. Under him, the EPA is justifying skipping some steps in the name of "efficiency."
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... ution-rule
Quote:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to implement an “accelerated” process for deciding whether to further restrict allowable ground-level ozone pollution limits.

In a draft plan released Friday, the EPA explained ... “The current review of the [ozone standard] is progressing on an accelerated schedule and the EPA is incorporating a number of efficiencies in various aspects of the review process to ensure completion within the statutorily required period,” the agency wrote.

The changes from previous review processes include skipping a kick-off workshop, not giving the external air pollution advisory committee a separate period to review the standard apart from the public comment period and not writing a risk and exposure assessment.

“The successfulness of these and other efficiencies implemented in this review will be considered by the EPA in planning for other future [air standard] reviews,” the EPA said.
Funny how every other EPA managed to fulfill its obligations without skipping steps. They're trying to tell us they can't finish this in 2 years? This is something they knew about all along. So what happened? Did they not start working on it when they should have? Or is this just another excuse for the EPA to please the polluters under the Trump administration?


Also, the Pentagon estimates for Trump sending the military to the border:
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administ ... ps-1194215
Quote:
Migrant Caravan Troop Deployment Could Cost U.S. $50 Million Despite No Evidence of Terrorists, Major Criminal Gang Presence
Quote:
While the Defense Department has yet to reveal costs associated with deploying thousands of U.S. troops to the southwest border, a Pentagon official familiar with the details of the deployment told Newsweek that initial values could start within the $50 million range.

The estimated financial figure surged when factoring in the movement of equipment and associated logistical support combined with the allocation of funds for U.S. troops on temporary duty, the source said.

To put this into perspective, the source compared the roughly $50 million price tag to the Pentagon spending $25 million over the course of three months to place about 3,000 U.S. soldiers on recruiting assistance duty.
Also, some in the Pentagon don't seem thrilled with Trump's plan:
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administ ... ps-1198043
Quote:
The Trump administration’s plan to deploy thousands of troops to the U.S. border took officials by surprise, with many senior-level Defense Department officers saying they believed the move was politically motivated and a waste of money, multiple Pentagon sources with knowledge of the directive told Newsweek.

Four sources with direct knowledge of how plans for the troop deployment—dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot—came together said that the initial directive to send troops to the border came directly from the president’s office, known in Pentagon parlance as National Command Authority, which would mean President Donald Trump or Defense Secretary James Mattis.

...Speaking to Newsweek on condition of anonymity, as they are not authorized to speak to the media, the four U.S. military sources said senior leaders within the Pentagon had derided the deployment not only as a significant waste of taxpayer dollars but as running counter to military readiness, but that a minority lauded the Trump administration’s hardline crackdown on immigration.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 06 Nov , 2018 2:45 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
Maybe I just haven't been paying attention, but I don't remember ever seeing this sort of editorial by a major newspaper in any previous election. Especially USA Today, which tries to be middle-of-the-road:
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4151 ... s-lap-dogs
Quote:
In an editorial published on Election Day, USA Today urged voters to elect "Trump's lap dogs" out of office.

...It said the "current GOP-controlled House and Senate" had been "little but obedient lap dogs to President Donald Trump."

"This would be troubling under any circumstances. But it is especially so now with a president who careens from gross incompetence to troubling executive overreach; who tolerates, even encourages, corrupt behavior; and who tries to govern through a toxic mix of self-adulation, divisive rhetoric, fear-mongering, outright lies and juvenile name-calling."
They're stating the obvious, of course. But will it reach the many people who simply ignore politics as long as Trump's policies have not personally affected them yet? (other than perhaps all the stock volatility and prices going up from his tariffs). Or the farmers he tried to bribe with tax money bailouts after destroying the soybean market?


https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4 ... ctivity-on
Quote:
Facebook announced Sunday that it has suspended 115 accounts due to suspicious behavior on the eve of the midterm elections.

The company said in a news release that U.S. law enforcement contacted Facebook on Sunday night about online activity potentially linked to foreign entities. In response, the social media giant suspended 30 Facebook accounts and 85 Instagram accounts believed to be engaged in "coordinated inauthentic behavior."

...Gleicher said that the company would typically hold off on announcing its findings until it learned more, but wanted to make the latest report of suspicious behavior public given its proximity to the election.

Our official state-coordinated news media joins Trump at his recent rallies. Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, the two nuttiest commentators on Fox.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... aign-rally
Quote:
Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro joined President Trump on stage at his final campaign rally of the midterms, singing the president's praises and urging attendees to vote Republican.

...While Hannity and Pirro are vocal Trump supporters and frequently speak to him, it's unusual for cable news anchors to give candidate-style speeches at campaign rallies. On stage, Hannity promptly decried the press in attendance as "fake news," and echoed the president's mantra of "promises made, promises kept."

..."If you like the American that [Trump] is making now, you’ve got to make sure you get out there tomorrow if you haven’t voted yet," Pirro, host of "Justice with Jeanine," implored the crowd.

... conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh ... introduced the president in Missouri.


https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... ting-trump
Quote:
President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet briefly in Paris amid the city's annual celebration of Armistice Day, a Kremlin spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday.

Dmitry Peskov's comments come after Trump told reporters on Monday that he would probably not meet with his Russian counterpart while the two are in Paris

...Trump had previously been expected to meet with Putin in Paris. U.S. national security adviser John Bolton last month raised the prospect of a November meeting between the two leaders after speaking with Putin. “I said yes, in fact, that President Trump would look forward to meeting with him in Paris,” Bolton said at the time.

...The two are expected to discuss several key issues, including the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia, at their next meeting.
Which, I'm predicting, will once again have no one but the Russians and Trump and leave no records of what was said.





The Atlantic describes Trump's campaign rallies:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... es/574984/
Quote:
Inside the Alternative Universe of the Trump Rallies

The president warns of radical, far-left Democrats and immigrant thugs in terms that bear little or no resemblance to the truth. His voters can’t get enough.
Some of the people at these rallies are just amazing. And not in a good way - more like a cult or groupies willing to swallow any lie.



https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/41 ... long-lines
Quote:
A nonprofit group called Pizza to the Polls is delivering hundreds of pizzas to voters stuck in long lines waiting to vote. The donation-based website accepts pizza requests from anywhere in the U.S. Voters simply need to take a picture or video of themselves standing in line at a polling location and upload it to the nonprofit’s website. From there, Pizza to the Polls will order pizzas from the nearest pizza place and have them delivered to anyone in line.

...Pizza to the Polls is nonpartisan and ...anyone can use the free, donation-based service.
btw, beware of voting machine glitches and double check before you submit. Some people are reporting that machines are changing their votes (in both directions). It seems to be technical glitches, with some sites blaming wear-and-tear on machines from the higher than usual turnout.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 07 Nov , 2018 4:06 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
Well, basically the Democrats won control of the House and some governors races, but the GOP picked up some seats in the Senate. Not much different from your average midterm election despite the high turnout. So Trump will continue his destructive course with some checks on him, but not enough I think. His GOP lapdogs have not been stopped or even taught a particularly sharp lesson. And Trump will see it as vindication to continue on his current course.

Unfortunately, it seems that many Americans are not terribly bright and/or aware of what's going on. But we've seen this before, with the Iraq war and many other things.

Ordinary supporters of the current GOP and Trump are screwing themselves, too, of course. But few of them will ever have the self-awareness to realize that. And the rich ones don't give a damn about anyone as long as they profit.

And never mind even trying to get rid of our incompetent, crooked idiot of a reality TV star president. The only thing we can hope for is that the Mueller investigation reveals something even Trump's GOP bootlickers can't ignore.


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1NC1W9
Quote:
Although few European politicians said so openly, the hope in Berlin, Paris and Brussels was that U.S. voters would deliver a clear rebuke to Trump’s Republicans in the midterms, forcing a change of tack and bolstering hopes of regime change in 2020.

Some European politicians hailed Democratic gains in the House as proof of a shift. Frans Timmermans, first vice president of the European Commission, said Americans had chosen “hope over fear, civility over rudeness, inclusion over racism”.

But the outcome fell short of the “blue wave” some had hoped for. Republicans were able to strengthen their majority in the Senate, the chamber that has traditionally played the biggest role on foreign policy.

And in several high-profile House, Senate and governor races - in states such as Iowa, Florida, Georgia and Texas - Republicans closely allied with Trump emerged victorious.


btw, Gianforte - the asshole Trump recently praised for attacking a reporter - won in Montana:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... ional-seat


The good news is that there will now be more oversight of Trump's crooks:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... na/575086/
Quote:
Oversight Is the Biggest Winner of the Midterm Elections

The Democratic victory in the House provides an opportunity to drain the swamp, after two years of willful Republican cover for dodgy behavior.
The bad news is that some of the Republicans who were critical of Trump lost and there's an increased core of Trump loyalists in the House.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 07 Nov , 2018 8:54 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
Well, that didn't take Trump long.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... department
Quote:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has resigned as the top Justice Department official at President Trump’s request, a development that is likely to spark a firestorm of criticism following the midterm elections.

The decision punctuates months of criticism by President Trump of his top law enforcement officer over his recusal from the ongoing Russia investigation. And it confirms widespread speculation that Trump would move to fire Sessions sometime after the midterms.

...The president revealed that Matthew Whitaker, Sessions’s chief of staff, would take over as acting attorney general and said a permanent replacement would be nominated “at a later date.”
If Trump fired Sessions, I'll bet that means he wants someone who will muzzle the Mueller investigation.



Article from Sept about Whitaker's ascension at DOJ:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/us/p ... tment.html
Quote:
Matthew G. Whitaker, the chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, would become the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department, his White House counterpart, John F. Kelly, told him over the phone on Saturday morning, according to two people briefed on the call. To the White House, he was an obvious choice: a confident former college football player and United States attorney whom Mr. Kelly has privately described as the West Wing’s “eyes and ears” in a department the president has long considered at war with him.

...the arrangements to promote Mr. Whitaker show how White House aides seized on the days of uncertainty about Mr. Rosenstein to try to place a trusted loyalist at the top of a department whose traditional independence has long frustrated the president.

Expect Trump and the Republicans to quickly start doing all the things they held off on, so they wouldn't scare voters before the midterm elections. I wonder if Kelly and Matthis will be the next to go. I expect Trump has been itching to get rid of anyone he suspects might have discussed invoking the 25 Amendment (getting rid of an unfit president). And Rosenstein, who is in a "pre-scheduled" meeting with Trump today.


https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/415 ... ll-funding
Quote:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Wednesday that he will make an effort to get funding for President Trump’s border wall in the lame-duck session, adding that he had already spoken to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) earlier in the day.

...Republican leaders had declined to make a concerted push for border wall funding before the midterm election, fearing it could lead to a possible government shutdown that would hurt Republicans.

But now that Trump has helped McConnell expand his Senate majority by as many as four seats, the GOP leader said on Wednesday he will make a push to fund the president’s top priority, even though it will likely be met with stiff Democratic opposition.


And as I predicted, Trump is beating his chest, convinced that the election results prove Americans really love what he's doing.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... nt-embrace
Quote:
President Trump on Wednesday took a victory lap after the midterm elections, saying Republicans defied the odds by stopping a so-called “blue wave” of Democrats from taking control of both chambers of Congress.

“There was a big day yesterday. Incredible day,” Trump said during a White House news conference. “The Republican Party defied history to expand our Senate majority while significantly beating expectations in the House.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4155 ... conference
Quote:
President Trump held a lengthy and frequently hostile press conference Wednesday at the White House, where he repeatedly belittled individual reporters and cast blame on the media for causing division in the country.

In a roughly 90 minute press conference in the East Room, Trump regularly talked over reporters and cut them off as they sought follow-up questions. He simultaneously voiced a desire for the country to unify following the midterms and blamed the media for existing hostilities.
EDIT: Here's a report and the transcript from The Atlantic. It demonstrates quite nicely why Trump is not competent to be president.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ce/575188/
For instance, this:
Quote:
Reporter: What do you intend to say, sir, to President Xi and to President Putin when you meet with them later this month?

Trump: Well, I have a good relationship with both. I know President Xi better, but I think I have a very good relationship with both. I actually had a very good meeting in Russia that you people didn’t agree with, but that’s okay, it doesn’t much matter obviously, because here I am.

Reporter: You mean Helsinki?

Trump: But the fact is that I had a very, very good meeting, a very, very good meeting with President Putin. And a lot was discussed about security, about Syria, about Ukraine. About the fact that President Obama allowed a very large part of Ukraine to be taken. And right now, you have submarines off that particular parcel that we’re talking about.

Reporter: That was President Putin who annexed Crimea, sir.

Trump: That was President Obama’s regime. That was during President Obama, right? That was not during me.

Reporter: But it was President Putin, sir, who did the annexation—

Trump: No, no, it was President Obama that allowed it to happen. Had nothing to do with me.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4155 ... -criticism
Quote:
Retiring GOP Rep. Ryan Costello (Pa.) ripped President Trump on Wednesday for his criticism of Republican lawmakers who lost their reelection bids, accusing the president of being the reason why Democrats picked up more than two dozen House seats on Tuesday.

..."To deal w harassment & filth spewed at GOP MOC’s in tough seats every day for 2 yrs, bc of POTUS; to bite ur lip more times you’d care to; to disagree & separate from POTUS on principle & civility in ur campaign; to lose bc of POTUS & have him piss on u," Costello wrote during Trump's criticism of GOP lawmakers at a White House press conference on Wednesday.

"Angers me to my core," he added.

Those who voted for any of the Republicans in Congress are responsible for what happens from now on. They saw what Trump was, for 2 years, and didn't care.



EditL
Even if Rosenstein remains, he's just been neutered. Here comes part 2 of Trump's move to shut down the Mueller investigation.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... ssia-probe
Quote:
President Trump's pick to replace ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to take over oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) confirmed Wednesday.

"The Acting Attorney General is in charge of all matters under the purview of the Department of Justice," DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement to The Hill.
Whitaker has already written editorials about how Mueller should not be allowed to look into Trump's finances and about how a special counsel should not have been appointed. I expect a lot of public faked outrage from Congressional Republicans, followed by them not doing a thing. I'll give credit to Trump for one thing - he may be a crook, but he's clever in playing the game of protecting himself.

Last edited by aninkling on Thu 08 Nov , 2018 4:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
Jude
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 07 Nov , 2018 11:09 pm
Aspiring to heresy
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 19653
Joined: Wed 23 Feb , 2005 6:54 pm
Location: Canada
 
I had read that one of the effects of Dems taking over the house is that Trump will be powerless to muzzle the investigation. Is that not the case then?

_________________

[ img ]

Melkor and Ungoliant in need of some relationship counselling.


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 07 Nov , 2018 11:28 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
I think that's too simplistic and depends on a lot of people doing what's ethical and acting as a check on the presidency.

I could be wrong, but I believe that the head of the Dept of Justice has to sign off on releasing Mueller's report and has authority over the investigation, up to limiting its scope or shutting it down.

Even if Mueller had the report ready before the midterm elections, it's apparently considered unethical to release it too close before the elections and influence them. Of course, that gives a crooked president the opportunity to shut down the investigation right after the midterms and before the new House is sworn in (by appointing someone like Whitaker as head of Dept of Justice).

The House could vote to start impeachment proceedings over this (though the remaining Trump loyalists will not do so and I'm not sure if the Democrats have enough votes even after the new members are sworn in, in January), but the Senate holds final power over the impeachment. I believe that requires a 2/3 majority in the Senate.

And I predict there's no way in hell the Trump sycophants will vote for impeachment. A year ago, Sen Graham was saying that firing Sessions would be a line Trump couldn't cross.... and today, he's looking forward to confirming Trump's new pick. I hope that someday in the future we find out just what leverage Trump holds over the heads of the GOP. Everyone seems to think that this will be like Watergate. But back then, the Republicans had some principles and ethics and also faced pressure from public opinion.


There's more about Whitaker, too:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... al-us-firm
Quote:
Donald Trump’s new acting attorney general was part of a company accused by the US government of running a multimillion-dollar scam.

Matthew Whitaker was paid to sit on the advisory board of World Patent Marketing, which was ordered in May this year to pay a $26 million settlement following legal action by federal authorities, which said it tricked aspiring inventors.

...Court filings in the case against World Patent Marketing show that Whitaker received regular payments of $1,875 from the Florida-based company, and sent a threatening email to a victim of the alleged scam.

Whitaker publicly vouched for the company, claiming in a December 2014 statement that they “go beyond making statements about doing business ‘ethically’ and translate those words into action.”
This guy didn't belong in the Dept of Justice in the first place.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 08 Nov , 2018 2:38 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
Jude, you might be interested in this. It covers the various statutes governing a special counsel and what Whitaker might or might not be able to do legally - and practically, whether or not it ends up being legal.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... ng-to-fire
Quote:
...whether Whitaker can fire Mueller is the wrong question. With Trump, the real question is: If he orders Whitaker to fire Mueller, will there be any consequences? As Trump himself knows, without consequences for a breach, the rule of law is essentially meaningless.

Congress realized this too when, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, it passed the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, which effectively established a fourth branch of government — a so-called “independent counsel” — whose prosecutorial power was not under presidential control.

The statute was a reaction to the Saturday Night Massacre when President Nixon ordered his attorney general to fire the special prosecutor who had subpoenaed recorded conversations in the oval office...

This is interesting:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... -under-the
Quote:
Fox News legal commentator Andrew Napolitano on Thursday morning said the man President Trump named as the new Acting attorney general "does not qualify under the law" to take the job.

..."There’s only three ways a person can become acting attorney general," Napolitano said. "One, if you are the deputy attorney general - Rod Rosenstein. The president signs an executive order and makes you acting."

..."Two is if you are already in the Department of Justice and have a job that requires Senate confirmation and you have received confirmation," Napolitano rattled off. "That is not the case with Matt Whitaker because he’s the chief of staff. That does not require Senate confirmation."

"Three is a recess appointment which is not relevant here because the Senate is not in recess,"




I expect people have heard about the controversy Trump manufactured by deciding to pull CNN reporter Jim Acosta's press pass.
(Whether this is an attempt to control the news cycle from focusing on the other things he's doing, like firing Sessions, is something I don't know).

What's truly appalling about this is that the White House seems to be blatantly lying to the American people through his spokesperson, Sarah Sanders. This should bother everyone, that they're so confident of their power that they don't worry about telling easily refuted lies. Regardless of what you think of Acosta in general.

Last night, Sanders claimed that Acosta "put his hands on a young woman," the intern who tried to pull the microphone from him, saying “We will ... never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern. This conduct is absolutely unacceptable" This was quickly refuted by reporters of all political persuasions who were sitting nearby.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4156 ... nns-acosta
A sampling of the comments:
Quote:
This is not what happened. You could have banned him simply for refusing to abide by any of the normal rules of the press room. No need to state something happened that didn’t. https://t.co/p9hgtVE8eZ
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 8, 2018

I sat next to Acosta at the press conference today. The White House intern came to take the microphone to the next reporter called on for a question, and Acosta, right or wrong, refused to give it to her when she reached out to grab it. https://t.co/ZHi7sbEKUf
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) November 8, 2018

A) there's video showing that's not what happened B) Trump has been accused of sexual assault/harassment by over a dozen women so please spare us the false outrage https://t.co/ke6pWBd0Qv
— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) November 8, 2018

This is video of the White House intern attempting to wrench the mic away from @Acosta. He is not “placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job,” as @PressSec claimed. Suspending his pass over this is a blatant abuse of presidential power. pic.twitter.com/zSmIQF0xKv

— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) November 8, 2018


Today, the White House put out a video they've edited to promote their lie.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... costa-aide
Quote:
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is facing accusations that she shared an edited video of the exchange between CNN correspondent Jim Acosta and an administration aide at President Trump's post-midterm news conference on Wednesday.

Sanders shared the video on her official Twitter account to justify the White House's decision to revoke Acosta’s press credentials after his tense exchange with Trump.

We stand by our decision to revoke this individual’s hard pass. We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video. pic.twitter.com/T8X1Ng912y
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 8, 2018

...During the press conference, the aide attempted to take a microphone away from Acosta as he questioned Trump, but he refused to let go. Video shows his arm brushing hers in the process.

...dozens of social media users, including several reporters and political analysts, said that the video Sanders shared zooms in on the moment of contact, and appears to have been sped up to make the moment appear more aggressive.

Some members of former administrations are slamming Trump just for pulling the pass of a reporter who challenges him:
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4156 ... n-abuse-of
Quote:
Joe Lockhart, who served as a spokesman for former President Bill Clinton, blasted the Trump administration for pulling CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta’s press pass.

...“The ‘hard pass’ that WH reporters [have] are used as a security tool for the WH,” Lockhart tweeted. “Reporters who are vetted are allowed access that most reporters don't have. Those passes are not designed as a tool to pick the reporters you like or punish those you don't. This is an abuse of power.”


Edit:

This is not surprising. Undoubtedly why Dear Leader appointed him.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ssia-probe
Quote:
President Trump's new acting attorney general reportedly has no plans to recuse himself from overseeing the special counsel's investigation into Russian election interference, despite lawmaker calls for him to do so.
Protests over Trump firing Sessions are planned all over the country this evening. What's surreal is that, if not for the investigation, many people (myself included) would be happy to see Sessions gone. His one redeeming feature was that he was ethical enough to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation. Of course, in Trump's eyes, that was his one flaw.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 09 Nov , 2018 2:53 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
If you want to set up an account at The Telegraph in the UK, they apparently have a comparison of the Trump administration's fake video of Acosta and real footage of what happened.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/1 ... o-experts/
Quote:
The Telegraph asked a video verification expert to analyse the footage, who said it appeared to have been manipulated - you can watch our side-by-side comparison and analysis of the two videos below.
The AP's video expert also concluded that the editing was deliberate:
https://www.apnews.com/c575bd1cc3b1456cb3057ef670c7fe2a
Quote:
...a frame-by-frame comparison with an Associated Press video of the same incident shows that the one tweeted by Sanders appears to have been altered to speed up Acosta’s arm movement as he touches the intern’s arm, according to Abba Shapiro, an independent video producer who examined the footage at AP’s request.

...It’s also unlikely the differences could be explained by technical glitches or by video compression — a reduction in a video’s size to enable it to play more smoothly on some sites — because the slowing of the video and the acceleration that followed are “too precise to be an accident,” said Shapiro, who trains instructors to use video editing software.


Also, some news agencies are reporting that the fake video originally came from InfoWars, the far right conspiracy site of Alex Jones. So our government representatives are apparently promoting fake propaganda from a site that everyone knows is completely nutty and not to be believed.

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/g ... punishment
Quote:
The edited video looks authentic: Acosta appeared to swiftly chop down on the arm of an aide as he held onto a microphone while questioning President Donald Trump. But in the original video, Acosta's arm appears to move only as a response to a tussle for the microphone. His statement, "Pardon me, ma'am," is not included in the video Sanders shared.

Critics said that video - which sped up the movement of Acosta's arms in a way that dramatically changed the journalist's response - was deceptively edited to score political points. That edited video was first shared by Paul Joseph Watson, known for his conspiracy-theory videos on the far-right website Infowars.

...A frame-by-frame breakdown by Storyful, a social-media intelligence firm that verifies media content, found that the edited video included repeated frames that did not appear in the original footage.
So who's going to believe anything put out by Trump's minister of propaganda from now on? Because Trump and Ms Sanders have not apologized or retracted the video, and news that the video had been edited has been widespread since yesterday.




Despite their last minute nature, hundreds of people joined protests in various cities to protect the special counsel's investigation.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mueller-pr ... 018-11-08/
Quote:
Protests have sprung up across the country Thursday night calling for the protection of special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into possible collusion between President Trump's campaign and Russia. Several hundred had gathered in New York's Times Square and other places like Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, North Carolina, Tennessee and Philadelphia.

In New York, demonstrators could be heard chanting "Hands off Mueller" and "Nobody is above the law" as they marched downtown
Including some protests only covered in local news:
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/loca ... 85680.html
Quote:
About 200 people gathered at Burnett Park in downtown Fort Worth Thursday evening to protest the firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and to demand the Mueller investigation into the Trump campaign be protected.

...Protesters chanted, “Whose above the law? No one’s above the law!” as cars passed by at 5 p.m. along Burnett Street. Some cars honked in support.
Someone pointed out on a messageboard that we may never know what Whitaker is doing behind the scenes. Supposedly, he has to sign off on Mueller's indictments and subpeonas.

So now we have a guy who Fox's legal expert (and others) say was not appointed in accordance with the law, refusing to recuse himself despite obvious conflicts of interest, and a clear Trump partisan who may have been appointed as Session's Chief of Staff to be Trump's "eyes and ears" in the Justice Dept...

If Trump gets away with this, we might as well call ourselves Russia.




EDIT
https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... sting-urge
Quote:
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are calling for an emergency hearing after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced he was resigning at President Trump's request on Wednesday.

House Judiciary Democrats are demanding answers for Sessions's ousting in letters written to the panel's GOP chairman and Sessions's replacement, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, respectively.

...In their letter to Whitaker, the Democrats warned that a "constitutional crisis" could ensue if the Mueller probe is not protected, urging the new top cop to recuse himself and place Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein back in the supervisory role for the probe.

“There is little doubt that President Trump’s decision to force the firing of Attorney General Sessions places Special Counsel Mueller’s inquiry at grave risk,” Democrats' letter to Whitaker reads.
If the Republicans had any integrity left at all, this would be a bipartisan call.


And Trump has released a proclamation about immigrants claiming asylum. No, that term is not a mistake - The Hill calls it a proclamation.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ing-asylum
Quote:
President Trump on Friday said he has signed a proclamation restricting certain immigrants from claiming asylum, completing a controversial move that is expected to trigger a wave of legal challenges.

...The White House has not yet released text of the proclamation and it remains unclear who exactly would be covered.
This follows new rules yesterday that prohibit people from claiming asylum unless they enter the US at an official entry site:
Quote:
Under new Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security rules published Thursday, immigrants who illegally cross the U.S. southern border from Mexico would be barred from claiming asylum. All asylum claims must be made at a legal port of entry.
Which, I think, will mean 2 things. 1) The Trump administration will probably refuse to process more than a few claims a day at entry sites and/or declare that they're not taking asylum claims today (not the first time they've done that). 2) As there's no incentive for people now to turn themselves in after crossing the border illegally, closure of the ports of entry means that more people will be trying to sneak in. This will result in more work for the border patrol, more clashes, more deaths as migrants try to find unexpected routes. And fewer people who are processed officially, entering through normal asylum channels where we know about them and can either approve or deny their asylum claims. In other words, more damn chaos and less rule of law. And more excuses for Trump to waste money sending the military to the border.

Edit: Trump's proclamation has now been clarified at the link above. It's the policy that was rolled out yesterday. It goes counter to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which says immigrants within the U.S. can make an asylum claim, no matter how they entered. Trump is using a provision that might let him deny entry based on national security concerns. The legality of this move in unclear, but when did Trump ever let that stop him?


Oh, and not one word about the propaganda video from the asshole now flying off to France to enjoy a military spectacle and parade.

But he did defend Whitaker, claim he "doesn't know him" despite appointing him, and claim that the legal experts who say Whitaker is not qualified to be be appointed are wrong. He also mentioned that he might like Chris Christie as the permanent AG. The crook responsible for Bridgegate.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ssia-probe

I hope the French welcome Dear Leader as he truly deserves.



Oh, and one last present from Sessions to Trump, before he left:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... nt-decrees
Quote:
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in one of his final acts as the nation’s top cop, curtailed the ability of law enforcement officials to use court-enforced agreements to create change within local police departments accused of civil rights violations.

I suspect Trump didn't like this nearly as much:
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... l-pipeline
Quote:
A federal judge blocked the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline Thursday, saying the Trump administration’s justification for approving it last year was incomplete.

In a major victory for environmentalists and indigenous rights groups, Judge Brian Morris of the District Court for the District of Montana overturned President Trump’s permit for the Canada-to-Texas pipeline, which the president signed shortly after taking office last year.

Morris’s ruling repeatedly faulted the Trump administration for reversing then-President Obama’s 2015 denial of the pipeline permit without proper explanation. He said the State Department “simply discarded” climate change concerns related to the project.

btw, Trump is unhappy his chosen ones might not win in Florida:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... count-grow
"
Quote:
If you look at Broward County, they have had a horrible history," President Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday. "And if you look at the person, in this case a woman, involved, she has had a horrible history, and all of the sudden they’re finding votes out of nowhere and Rick Scott, who won, you know it was close, who won by a comfortable margin, every couple of hours it goes down by a little bit.”

“Bad things are going on in Broward Country, really bad things. We’ve been to court, had a lot of drama. We won. I say this: We easily won. But every hour it seems to be going down. I think that people have to look at it very, very cautiously," he also said.

He also noted that there “could be” a federal role if a recount became necessary.

Florida is in the midst of potential recounts in the Senate race between Sen. Bill Nelson (D) and Gov. Rick Scott (R), as well as the gubernatorial race between Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum (D) and former Rep. Ron DeSantis (R).
And yet some Americans continue to support Trump. It boggles your mind, what version of reality those people inhabit.


Edit 2:
Predictable:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ct-mueller
Quote:
Jeff Flake(y) doesn’t want to protect the Non-Senate confirmed Special Counsel, he wants to protect his future after being unelectable in Arizona for the “crime” of doing a terrible job! A weak and ineffective guy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2018


...Flake, on Thursday, said he and Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.) would go to the Senate floor next week to try to get a deal on advancing the legislation.

The Senate Judiciary Committee last year passed a bill to protect Mueller — or any other special counsel — in the event he is fired, but that legislation stalled amid opposition from GOP leadership. Any new legislation would likely meet the same fate with the Republicans’ expanded majority in the upper chamber.


Edit 3:

And if you can't win them, cast doubts on the legitimacy of the elections. In addition to Florida, Trump is claiming that the Arizona elections were corrupt:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... in-arizona
Quote:
President Trump criticized the vote count effort in Arizona’s tight Senate race, where Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema has taken a narrow lead over Republican Rep. Martha McSally with half a million votes yet to be counted.

“Just out — in Arizona, SIGNATURES DON’T MATCH. Electoral corruption - Call for a new Election? We must protect our Democracy!” Trump tweeted, offering no evidence for his claim regarding signatures.

And right on cue, the worst Trump partisans and Trump bots are starting threads on political messageboards implying that Republican candidates will only lose these close elections if there's fraud.

Susan Collins shows ethical behavior on Whitaker and backs efforts to protect Mueller:
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/416 ... estigation

Another prominent Republican who hasn't signed on to the idiocy of Trump:
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing ... nt-caravan
Quote:
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) took aim at his fellow Republicans on Friday, accusing them of "fear mongering" about a caravan of migrants bound for a U.S. port of entry and abandoning discussions of the topic following Tuesday's midterm elections.

..."A week before the election all voters heard about was the #caravaninvasion," Kasich wrote Friday. "Now, all that fear mongering has seemed to cara-vanished."
And more Whitaker news. Apparently, that FBI investigation is still active. :
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... nvolved-in Rather interesting to have the interim Attorney General as a possible target of an FBI investigation... which he now has authority over.

Seriously, what a bunch of crooks in the Trump administration.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
Jude
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Sat 10 Nov , 2018 9:29 pm
Aspiring to heresy
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 19653
Joined: Wed 23 Feb , 2005 6:54 pm
Location: Canada
 
Since I got here first, I'll save Inky the trouble of posting this one:

Light rains keep Trump from WW I memorial in France

I'm tempted to change the headline to "Light rains keep delicate little Trump from memorial that honours men and women that endured weeks and weeks of miserable conditions so that he could enjoy his freedom".

I note that that the light rains didn't stop Prime Minister Trudeau, President Macron and Chancellor Merkel from attending.

_________________

[ img ]

Melkor and Ungoliant in need of some relationship counselling.


Top
Profile Quote
LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 12 Nov , 2018 3:12 am
The Grey Amaretto as Supermega-awesome Proud Heretic Girl
Offline
 
Posts: 21757
Joined: Thu 24 Feb , 2005 3:46 pm
 
Well, he does seem to be umbrella impaired....

:roll: :roll: :roll:

_________________

[ img ]


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 12 Nov , 2018 1:23 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
I suspect all concerned might not have been too sorry he couldn't make it. ;)

I've read that he was invited to Macron's peace conference after the pomp and circumstance part, and declined, and no one pressed him too hard to come. Rather surreal, to see Putin attending a conference on how never to have another world war, and the U.S. president heading home instead.

The French did take the opportunity of his visit to fly a baby Trump balloon.

He's spouting more of his rants and nonsense on Twitter today, undermining democracy (Florida elections are corrupt and must be called for the GOP candidate instead of letting Florida handle their recount, etc), threatening to pull firefighting funds from Calif, etc., but I'm not going to bother posting his nonsense. The Ministry of Propaganda has also put out the new explanation for Trump missing the ceremony - it wasn't the rain; he was being considerate and not disrupting the roads with a motorcade. https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... disruptive (and yet Gen. Kelly and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joe Dunford managed to get there, as did the heads of all other countries)

What seems curious to me is that Pompeo also skipped the trip to the cemetery, as did Putin, and on Sunday both Putin and Trump arrived late to the ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe and separately from other world leaders. News reports say Putin didn't get to Paris until Sunday, but I guess I have a suspicious mind. Especially since Trump and Putin were asked to skip any private meetings this time by France/ Macron and both seem arrogant enough to ignore that.



btw, US papers are reporting that Trump and Putin did not meet in Paris, except for Trump's happy smile to see Putin at the Arc de Triomphe (in sharp contrast to his glumness around our traditional allies) and Putin's "thumbs up." According to an Australian paper, they did have a long conversation later at lunch. A longer meeting is slated for later this month in Buenos Aires:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/the ... 50ffz.html
Quote:
By chance, on Sunday, Australia’s governor-general Peter Cosgrove was sat next to Putin at the Armistice Day commemoration at the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris....

A more significant interaction between the pair was at a subsequent lunch, out of view of the media, for the world leaders at the Elysee Palace.“They had a lively and lengthy conversation at lunch today and I thought ‘how good’s that, I’m glad they’re talking’. And I’m glad they’re relaxed in each other’s company. They certainly were today. So to me I think that’s good,” Cosgrove said.
Putin and Trump were originally supposed to sit side-by-side at lunch, but the French switched the seating arrangements to lessen the chance of a quiet private conversation that others couldn't overhear.




Meanwhile, Iran seems to be abiding by the nuclear deal Trump dumped and North Korea seems to be thumbing its nose at Trump. No surprise at the latter:

https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... mid-new-us
Quote:
Citing a confidential report it obtained, the Associated Press reported that the U.N. atomic watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found that Iran has stayed within the limits set by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed to in 2015.

The IAEA said it was able to access each of Iran's nuclear sites and verify that Iran has stayed within the limits set by the pact.
https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... orth-korea
Quote:
A Washington-based think tank on Monday said it has identified 13 of the estimated 20 undeclared missile operating bases in North Korea, while noting the somewhat-limited capabilities of the sites.

...“North Korea’s decommissioning of the Sohae satellite launch facility, while gaining much media attention, obscures the military threat to U.S. forces and South Korea from this and other undeclared ballistic missile bases,” Bermudez wrote, adding that the sites appear to be "active and being reasonably well-maintained."

...North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump held a summit that included discussions of denuclearization, but negotiations between the countries seem to have stalled in recent weeks. A meeting set for last week between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a top North Korean official was indefinitely postponed.


Contrast this with what the Trump administration has shared publicly:
https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying ... gi-killing
Quote:
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday that Canada's intelligence agencies have heard the Turkish recordings related to the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi."Yes," Trudeau said Monday at a news conference when asked if Canadian intelligence officials had heard the audio, according to NBC News.
"Canada's intelligence agencies have been working very closely on this issue with Turkish intelligence, Canada has been fully briefed on what Turkey had to share,” he added.

Edit to add:
https://thehill.com/latino/416257-ice-h ... ned-report
Quote:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is currently holding ... an average daily population of 44,631 people in custody.

That number is 4,000 higher than the totals for which Congress has allotted funding.

... Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used nearly $100 million in funds from other agencies, most notably the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to help fund ICE’s record-setting detainee custody.
No one knows where they're taking the funds from this time.



And the estimate of the costs for Dear Leader sending the military to sit on the border now seems to be around $200-$300 million. Don't ask me what the National Guard, previously sent to provide logistical support to the border patrol, is now supposed to do with their time.
https://www.wlfi.com/content/national/499736951.html
Quote:
Dunford said the DHS requested logistical support, "so you'll see some soldiers down there right now that are putting up concertina wire and reinforcing the points of entry," and that the military is providing "both trucks and helicopter support and then also some medical support."

..."DoD anticipates more than 7,000 active-duty troops will be supporting DHS soon," Manning said. The breakdown of personnel includes "1,100 in California, 1,100 in (Arizona) and 2,600 in Texas," according to Manning.

..."It's not my job to assess the appropriateness of the mission," Dunford said. "It's my job to accept the legality of the mission and, again, the capability of our forces to perform that mission. So others outside the ring can make a subjective assessment as to what ... we're doing but I'm not going to comment on that."

...Trump's decision to deploy active-duty US troops and the earlier deployment of National Guard forces to the southern border could cost between $200 million and $300 million, according to an independent analysis and Department of Defense figures on guard deployments.

We seem to be providing some free equipment to the idiot citizens' militias at the same time. Someone mentioned that one of the ongoing problems at the border is that these militias steal stuff from the National Guard.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... f-industry
Quote:
The Zinke effect: how the US interior department became a tool of big business

Trump’s interior secretary has been remaking the agency charged with protecting public lands as an ally of big energy, e-mails and records reveal
Quote:
“All the new administration was interested in was their checklist for dismantling regulations and weakening environmental and land use protections,” said the former staffer. “Instead of asking why a senator or lobbyist or CEO was asking for a special favor and whether or not it was allowed under the law, this administration wanted to know why the special favor wasn’t already done and which deep state employee was standing in the way.”
Quote:
Zinke rapidly installed a slew of conservative operatives and industry sympathizers in key positions throughout the agency. Because these senior advisers, counselors and other appointees are rarely subject to Senate approval, few people know their names. They nevertheless wield immense power and are responsible for much of the day-to-day work at the interior department.

Hundreds of pages of correspondence and calendars reviewed by the Guardian and Pacific Standard show how Zinke and his top aides have favored corporate and conservative calls to prioritize resource extraction at the expense of conservation, while consistently delivering on industry desires – despite sometimes running afoul of conflict of interest rules.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 13 Nov , 2018 2:44 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ker-is-not
Quote:
The state of Maryland is expected to ask for an injunction on Tuesday saying Matt Whitaker is not the legitimate acting attorney general, claiming instead that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should have been promoted to the position, The New York Times reported.

The injunction will come as part of the state's lawsuit against former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, according to the Times, who resigned at President Trump's request last week. A federal judge in Maryland will now have to name Sessions's successor in the lawsuit, and the state is planning to argue Whitaker's appointment to the role was not constitutional, according to a draft filing obtained by the newspaper

"[Trump may not] bypass the constitutional and statutory requirements for appointing someone to that office,” the plaintiffs reportedly wrote in the draft filing.

It looks like Nielsen is probably the next one to be kicked out of the Trump administration. Her fatal flaw seems to have been telling Trump the truth:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... eek-report
Quote:
President Trump is planning to oust Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen as early as this week, The Washington Post reported on Monday. Five current and former White House officials told the Post that Trump is planning to remove Nielsen as soon as possible.

...Trump has berated Nielsen in public and in private since she was hired, aggressively going after her during Cabinet meetings and mocking her in conversations with other White House officials, the Post reported.

...Trump has grown frustrated with Nielsen when she reportedly tells him that some of his hard-line proposals, including completely shutting down the border with Mexico, would not be feasible.


Speaking of former members of the Trump administration, Steve Bannon's latest target seems to be overturning things in Europe. He doesn't seem to be making much headway there. From Der Spiegel:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 35297.html
Quote:
he Stephen Bannon Project Searching in Europe for Glory Days Gone By

It used to be that Europeans would head to the New World on the search for a new start. Former White House strategist Stephen Bannon, though, has made the journey in reverse. Contrary to his grand plans, however, he's not making much progress.




also, Sinema (Democrat) won Arizona's Senate seat in the end, despite Trump's tweets claiming that Arizona election officials should just hand the victory to McSally. McSally ignored Trump's nonsense and was a gracious loser, conceding the election.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 13 Nov , 2018 3:03 pm
The Grey Amaretto as Supermega-awesome Proud Heretic Girl
Offline
 
Posts: 21757
Joined: Thu 24 Feb , 2005 3:46 pm
 
Any speculation on why he missed the Veterans' Day remembrances here in the US? :scratch: Given the fact that he seems to like to take opportunities to kiss up to law enforcement and the military, I think it was odd.

_________________

[ img ]


Top
Profile Quote
aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 13 Nov , 2018 7:11 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
Many other people did, too, and I've seen plenty of guesswork, but I don't think anyone knows. Bad mood? Ill? Worried about indictments from Mueller (Trump Jr?) and the coming majority in the House? To throw out my own guess, I'm usually a wreck with jet lag, the day after returning from a trip to Europe. And I'm not in my 70s. I can imagine him taking the day off rather than appearing in public looking groggy and awful.

But rumors do say Mueller is getting ready for another round of indictments and writing his report.


Speaking of odd:
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4164 ... -khashoggi
Quote:
National security adviser John Bolton on Tuesday said that an audio recording of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing does not appear to implicate Saudi Arabia's crown prince.

Speaking to reporters in Singapore, Bolton said that while he hasn’t heard the recording, “that’s not the conclusion that I think the people who heard it have come to,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

Bolton’s comments come after The New York Times reported Monday night that audio shared with the United States by Turkey includes a member of the kill team telling someone on the phone to “tell your boss,” adding words to the effect of “the deed was done.”

Citing three unnamed people familiar with the recording, the Times reported that American intelligence officials believe the “boss” in question is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
So we're supposed to believe that 1) Bolton, Trump's National Security Advisor, is out of the loop on this, and 2) though this sounds like it implicates bin Salman, as does the circumstantial evidence, we're supposed to believe the "boss" is someone else? Independent aides acting on their own in autocratic Saudi Arabia? Sounds to me like the Trump administration is trying very hard to keep their arms and nuclear deal with the Saudis from being affected.



Another corrupt person appointed (and now indicted) at the EPA:
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... in-alabama
Quote:
An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official in the Trump administration was indicted Tuesday ... Trey Glenn, the regional director for EPA’s southeast region, helped Birmingham, Ala. law firm Balch & Bingham between 2014 and 2017 to fight potential EPA actions to clean up contaminated sites in north Birmingham and Tarrant on behalf of Drummond Co., which could be responsible for the cleanups, AL.com reported.

...Glenn and former Alabama Environmental Management Commissioner Scott Phillips ... were charged with multiple alleged violations of state ethics laws, including soliciting a thing of value from a principal, lobbyist or subordinate; and receiving money in addition that received in one’s official capacity.

...Then-EPA chief Scott Pruitt named Glenn to lead the EPA’s southeast region, based in Atlanta, in August 2017, after the alleged incidents that are the subject of the indictment.



This is rather gossipy, but it sounds like Gen. Kelly and Melania Trump have been clashing over her efforts to promote her aides to senior level positions and bring them along on trips.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... t-lady-nbc
If this is true, I don't see why we need to pay for her aides to have senior level positions (with the accompanying salaries) or to come along on trips, if it isn't the usual White House protocol. I think we've already spent enough tax money on the Trumps' lifestyle and trips. Especially those to his golf courses and his sons' business trips overseas.

Last edited by aninkling on Tue 13 Nov , 2018 7:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


Top
Profile Quote
Jude
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 13 Nov , 2018 7:19 pm
Aspiring to heresy
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 19653
Joined: Wed 23 Feb , 2005 6:54 pm
Location: Canada
 
CNN sues Trump Administration over revoking reporter's credentials

It will be interesting to follow this, especially if they win. Because the Trumpists can't stand to be seen backing down over any issue, and if they are forced to reinstate Acosta, every time he attends a press conference will be another public humiliation for them.

However, because of the speed of most court cases, the Trump administration could be long gone by the time a verdict is actually reached.

_________________

[ img ]

Melkor and Ungoliant in need of some relationship counselling.


Top
Profile Quote
Display: Sort by: Direction:
Post Reply   Page 46 of 65  [ 1284 posts ]
Return to “The Symposium” | Jump to page « 144 45 46 47 4865 »
Jump to: