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You've been Trumped!

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 27 Apr , 2018 2:02 pm
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Th Atlantic on Pruitt's proposed "secret science" BS rule and how it will change the EPA if it's allowed to stand:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... le/558878/
Quote:
In one sweeping move, the Trump administration may soon not only destabilize the last three decades of clean air and water rules, but also completely overhaul how the Environmental Protection Agency uses science in its work. If EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s recently-proposed rule gets enacted, it will spark a revolution in environmental regulation. But the question is—will it stand up in court?
Apparently, Pruitt can't read. And hopes no one else can either:
Quote:
An agency statement bragged that the rule “is consistent with” two bipartisan reports in particular: one from the Administrative Conference of the United States, and one from the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Wendy Wagner, a law professor at the University of Texas, knows both of those reports well. In fact, she wrote them. ...She said the proposed rule had nothing to do with her and her colleagues’ work. “I really don’t know what the problem is that they think they’re fixing,” she said, adding that many of her co-authors “would laugh and hoot” at some of the scientific ideas expressed in the rule.

“They don’t adopt any of our recommendations, and they go in a direction that’s completely opposite, completely different,” she told me after reading the rule. “They don’t adopt any of the recommendations of any of the sources they cite. I’m not sure why they cited them.”
It looks like part of what Pruitt and his cronies want to do is deny air pollution standards, in favor of the coal industry and other polluters:
Quote:
Just about everyone involved in the rule-making process agrees that the rule targets a specific and foundational piece of environmental science: the “Six Cities” study, from the Harvard School of Public Health. First published in 1993, the study found that Americans living in more air-polluted cities died earlier than Americans living in cleaner ones.The killer was a specific type of air pollution: fine particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns, which scientists call PM₂.₅. Subsequent studies of human anatomy and biochemistry have backed up this findings.

...While conducting the research in the 1970s and 1980s, Harvard scientists drew on hundreds of confidential medical records.

These scientists say they cannot now release the underlying data to the public because doing so—even on an anonymized basis—would reveal the identity of individual patients. But Harvard has turned over its data to third-parties and industry groups multiple times in the past. Each time, those scientists have reanalyzed the data and largely validated the results of the Six Cities study.

This isn’t enough for Steven Milloy, a policy adviser at the Heartland Institute and a former coal executive.... He argues that the EPA must release the data from the Six Cities study, even though that data is controlled by Harvard University. ...He contests that PM₂.₅ is not toxic at all.

And a related article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... is/559013/
Quote:
Experts Are for Facts, Amateurs Are for Analysis

President Trump and his aides are willing to let specialists gather data, but trust only their own conclusions.


And our regularly scheduled "news we hope to bury by releasing it on Friday afternoon":
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... ing-safety
Quote:
The Trump administration is proposing to roll back parts of a landmark offshore drilling safety regulation that was written in response to the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The rule, dubbed the Well Control Rule, was put into place in 2016. Its standards focus on blowout preventer systems, the emergency systems that offshore oil and natural gas drillers have on hand for when something goes wrong with drilling and operators lose control of the well. That happened in the BP spill, causing an explosion that killed 11 workers and an 87-day uncontrolled oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The announcement came Friday, a week after the eighth anniversary of the explosion.

...BSEE plans to send the proposal next week for publication in the Federal Register, which would kick off a 60-day public comment period, after which the agency could make it final.
Link to the federal register, if you want to comment, starting sometime next week:
https://www.federalregister.gov/




What might possibly be a purge of writers insufficiently loyal to Trump at a conservative media publication. I'm not sure it matters much. Still, it's interesting timing after Trump's ranting in the Fox interview yesterday.
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/38520 ... e-redstate
Quote:
Conservative outlet RedState fired most of its staff Friday while its owner, Salem Media, froze the site, citing an inability to "no longer support the entire roster of writers and editors." "The site name will linger, but RedState is all but dead now. I have invited the fired writers here," Erick Erickson, a RedState founder who left the site in 2015, wrote in a blog post.

Fired staffers said the cuts focused on writers who have been critical of President Trump.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 30 Apr , 2018 2:10 pm
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http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... tions-near
Quote:
The Interior Department will not restore long-standing federal protections for grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park.

The decision disregards a federal appeals court ruling that said that the Interior Department needed to consider how species' recoveries were affected by the loss of their habitats, The Associated Press reported.


http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... e-ex-trump
Quote:
An oil refinery owned by Carl Icahn, the billionaire and former adviser to President Trump, received a financial hardship waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), two sources told Reuters. The waiver would exempt Icahn’s refinery in Oklahoma from the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard program, which could save tens of millions of dollars, according to the news outlet.

The regulation aims to cut air pollution and reduce petroleum imports while requiring refiners to mix biofuels into their products, Reuters noted.

It added that the Obama administration had denied the refinery an exemption.


http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... we-know-it
Quote:
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is DEAD as we know it. This was a total disaster and an embarrassment to our great Country and all that it stands for. FAKE NEWS is alive and well and beautifully represented on Saturday night!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 30, 2018
Regardless of what you think of comedian Michelle Wolf's comments during the dinner, this is nothing more than wishful thinking by a delusional president. This dinner will continue and, after Trump is gone (provided he doesn't start a nuclear war), it will probably continue to have decent relations with presidents, as it has with every president but him.

Instead of attending, of course, he held more "campaign rallies" to stoke his ego.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 01 May , 2018 4:45 pm
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http://thehill.com/regulation/energy-en ... -testimony
Quote:
A whistleblower from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Administrator Scott Pruitt was “bold-faced” lying in his congressional hearing when he said no EPA employees faced retaliation.


https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... am/559295/
Quote:
What Netanyahu Did and Didn't Say About Iran's Nuclear Program
Quote:
What Israel’s prime minister included in his presentation is as striking as what he left out.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech Monday that he billed as showing “something that the world has never seen.” He vowed to provide evidence of Iran’s duplicity over its nuclear program, and especially its obligations to the nuclear agreement Tehran signed in 2015 with the world’s powers. But much of the speech concerned details of Iran’s covert nuclear program from the years 1999 to 2003, and it provided no smoking-gun evidence that those programs were continuing in violation of the deal—something that would have given Donald Trump’s administration the justification it might be looking for to withdraw from it.
I wouldn't be surprised if Netanyahu's presentation was mainly targeted at Trump, who isn't exactly a brilliant thinker. Even John Kelley has apparently called him an idiot.



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... bor-issues
Quote:
U.S. Factory Managers Fuming as Trump Tariffs Add to Headaches


Bloomberg editorial:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles ... ean-allies
Quote:
President Donald Trump has been determined to confront the U.S.’s European allies on every issue of importance, from trade to climate change to the multilateral deal with Iran. As politicians and publics on this side of the Atlantic become increasingly wary, it’s worth asking whether he really wants allies at all.

...The favorability of the U.S. (the country, not the administration) is at 46 percent in France and 35 percent in Germany, according to the Pew Research Center. That was the lowest since 2008, when the reputation of the U.S. hadn’t recovered from the Iraq invasion and the financial crisis was gathering steam. No such momentous events are taking place now, but there’s Trump. Germans, according to a poll released last month by Forsa, one of the top polling organizations in the country, overwhelmingly consider him a greater danger to world peace than Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that’s the case even among the conservative supporters of Merkel’s party.
Can't say I blame them for the low opinion of the U.S. in general, when we've got people who look at Trump and sycophantically defend everything he does.




Speaking of which - talk about a bunch of stupidly partisan lawmakers...
http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... nt-against
Quote:
A group of conservative House lawmakers have begun drafting a resolution that calls for the impeachment of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the top Department of Justice (DOJ) official overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

The impeachment document makes a series of charges against Rosenstein, the latest sign of escalating efforts among conservatives to oust the DOJ’s No. 2 official, according to a copy of the draft obtained by The Hill.

There has been no indication, however, that Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and other House GOP leaders will act on the measure, having largely remained silent amid calls for his removal by hard-line conservatives.
But hey, let's not impeach the idiot in the White House. :)



And a new speculation in the Mueller's investigations:
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/385602 ... tions-came
Quote:
Michael Zeldin, a CNN legal analyst and former assistant to Robert Mueller, said Tuesday he believes President Trump leaked the list of nearly 50 questions the special counsel allegedly wants to ask Trump.

“I think these are notes taken by the recipients of a conversation with Mueller’s office where he outlined broad topics and these guys wrote down questions that they thought these topics may raise,” Zeldin said on CNN's "New Day."

“Because of the way these questions are written ... lawyers wouldn’t write questions this way, in my estimation. Some of the grammar is not even proper," he continued. "So, I don’t see this as a list of written questions that Mueller’s office gave to the president. I think these are more notes that the White House has taken and then they have expanded upon the conversation to write out these as questions.”
I have no opinion on who might have leaked the questions. But it does seem very odd that Mueller's team, which has been very private except for pubic documents like subpoenas and indictments, would have done it.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 02 May , 2018 1:30 pm
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It looks like Navarro is indeed running the White House trade policies:
http://thehill.com/regulation/finance/3 ... -will-face
Quote:
Countries exempted from stiff U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum will still face tough restrictions, like import quotas, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro reportedly said Tuesday.

"The guiding principle of this administration, from the president down to his team, is that any country or entity like the European Union, which is exempt from the tariffs, will have a quota and other restrictions," Navarro told steel executives at a meeting, according to Politico.

Pence praises Arpaio:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ule-of-law
Quote:
Vice President Pence praised former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of contempt of court, as a “tireless champion of … the rule of law” during an event in Arizona on Tuesday.

Pence said at the tax event that he was “honored” by the former sheriff’s attendance, and called Arpaio a “great friend of this president and tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law,” to cheers from the crowd.

...Arpaio is also well-known for helping to popularize the "birther" conspiracy that questioned former President Obama’s birthplace, a fringe theory that Trump also promoted.
Someone needs to tell Pence (and the idiots who cheered) that being a champion of the rule of law means following court orders, NOT being held in contempt of court for defying a judge.



Noteworthy and admirable in these days of Democrat/ Republican polarization and blind GOP loyalty to Trump:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3859 ... mp-attacks
Quote:
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) is breaking with Trump and his scathing criticism of Tester, who the president has blamed for sinking Ronny Jackson’s nomination to be secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

...Isakson, the chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, pointed to a CNN story that detailed concerns Vice President Pence’s physician had about Jackson, saying it made Trump’s assertion that the allegations against Jackson were off base a “false statement.” “Part of the allegations made in one of the affidavits was verified by [CNN],” he said. “I did my job and every senator has the responsibility if they’re presented with accusations to try and seek the truth. And that exonerates everybody who seeks the truth.”

CNN reported that Pence’s physician privately raised his concerns with the White House about Jackson last year. The vice president’s doctor questioned whether Jackson had violated privacy protections for Pence’s wife.

Isakson’s comments comes as Trump and his allies have unleashed a rhetorical firestorm against Tester

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 03 May , 2018 2:32 pm
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http://thehill.com/homenews/morning-rep ... ing-report
Quote:
***BREAKING OVERNIGHT: Former New York City mayor Rudolph “Rudy” Giuliani, who joined President Trump’s legal team last week, told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity that the president reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about an alleged affair with the president.***

Trump in early morning tweets said the non-disclosure agreements are "very common" among celebrities and "people of wealth," adding that this one was used to stop "false and extortionist accusations."

It is impossible to overstate the legal and political fallout from Giuliani’s admission, despite his assurances to reporters last night that the president was “very pleased” with his presentation, which he said they coordinated in advance. Giuliani said Trump repaid Cohen over several months using funds that did not come from his campaign.
Even some Fox commentators are commenting that this is a problem:
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/38597 ... my-daniels
Quote:
“You have the president on tape on Air Force One saying he did not know about the payment, and you’ll have to ask Michael Cohen about that,” Ingraham said. “Rudy just goes on with Hannity and says ‘Oh no, he reimbursed them.'”

"I love Rudy, but they better have an explanation for that,” she added. “That's a problem."


With friends like this, who needs enemies?
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... p-he-wasnt
Quote:
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) said Wednesday that President Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey because Comey wouldn’t tell Trump that he wasn’t a target of the FBI investigation into Russia's election interference.

“He fired Comey because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation,” Giuliani, who recently joined Trump’s legal team, told Fox News’s Sean Hannity.

“He’s entitled to that. Hillary Clinton got that and he couldn’t get that,” Giuliani said. “So he fired him and he said, ‘I’m free of this guy.’ ”

Giuliani on Trump being interview by Mueller: "Are they objective? A lot of things point in the direction that they think James Comey is telling the truth and not the president."
Fancy that - investigators suspecting that someone who constantly lies isn't telling the truth...

I don't know exactly where this originally came from (someone's Twitter account), but someone on a message board shared this comment by a member of Trump's campaign, regarding his interview by Mueller's team: "The senate and the house are net fishing ... the special counsel is spearfishing. They know what they are aiming at and are deadly accurate."


Edit: Here's the source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/02/politics ... index.html
Also this:
Quote:
"It's clear they are still really focused on Russia collusion," Caputo said, adding, "They know more about the Trump campaign than anyone who ever worked there."


Edit to add:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... nes-report
Quote:
Federal investigators tapped the phone lines of President Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, according to a bombshell report by NBC News.

...he wiretap could dramatically raise the legal stakes for Trump if any potential conversations with his longtime lawyer were swept up by investigators, who are conducting a wide-ranging criminal probe into Cohen’s business activities. According to NBC News, it is unclear how long the phone had been wiretapped or when it was authorized, but sources tell the network that it was in place leading up to an FBI raid on Cohen last month.

...Glen Kopp, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said federal prosecutors have to jump through several hoops to get the Department of Justice and a federal judge to sign off on a wiretap. Kopp, who is now a partner in the New York office of the law firm Mayer Brown, said prosecutors need proof of a "dirty" call within the last 21 days that shows the phone is being used in the furtherance of a crime.

Then, he said, prosecutors would have to show the target phone was used to contact at least one other person who is potentially involved in a crime.

..."It's difficult it get because, on top of that, one of the requirements is that you have to establish there's no other, less investigative means of obtaining this information or evidence."

To get proof of a dirty call to obtain authorization for a wire tap, Kopp said, federal prosecutors often rely on an undercover or confidential source.

Edit: White House officials have apparently disputed that it was a wiretap. Instead, they say it was only a log of Cohen's calls (they can't listen), which is easier to get.

Last edited by aninkling on Fri 04 May , 2018 4:36 pm, edited 2 times 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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 03 May , 2018 4:50 pm
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https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/w ... ZoAya91hvS
Quote:
In the United States, Paul J. Manafort is facing prosecution on charges of money laundering and financial fraud stemming from his decade of work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.

But in Ukraine, where officials are wary of offending President Trump, four meandering cases that involve Mr. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, have been effectively frozen by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor.

...The decision to halt the investigations by an anticorruption prosecutor was handed down at a delicate moment for Ukraine, as the Trump administration was finalizing plans to sell the country sophisticated anti-tank missiles, called Javelins.

...Volodymyr Ariev, a member of Parliament who is an ally of President Petro O. Poroshenko, readily acknowledged that the intention in Kiev was to put investigations into Mr. Manafort’s activities “in the long-term box.”

“In every possible way, we will avoid irritating the top American officials,” Mr. Ariev said in an interview. “We shouldn’t spoil relations with the administration.”


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-obse ... ve-stream/
Quote:
During the annual National Day of Prayer commemoration at the White House on Thursday, President Trump signed the latest executive order of his presidency, to establish a faith-based office, the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative. He said it would focus on protecting religious freedom and ensuring that "the faith-based and community organizations that form the bedrock of our society have strong advocates in the White House and throughout the federal government."

...In addition to making recommendations to the administration, the office will also inform the administration of "any failures of the executive branch to comply with religious liberty protections under law." .... The order also aims to ensure faith based organizations have "equal access to government funding and equal right to exercise their deeply held beliefs."
I guess Trump really needs to curry favor with evangelicals right now. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state?



And the cost for Trump to keep the National Guard on the border is in:
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/38610 ... -cost-182m
Quote:
Sending 2,000 National Guard troops to the Mexican border will cost $182 million through the end of the fiscal year, the Pentagon’s top spokeswoman said Thursday...The 2,000 troops represent just half the amount that President Trump wants to send to the border.
Don't forget that Trump has said he wants to keep them there until Congress caves in and builds his wall. So multiply that part-year estimate by however many years...

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 04 May , 2018 2:41 pm
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http://thehill.com/policy/finance/38614 ... e-policies
Quote:
More than 1,100 economists on Thursday warned President Trump and Congress that protectionist trade policies will endanger economic growth.

The economists, which include 15 Nobel laureates and advisers to former presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama, sent a letter to Trump and Congress to step back from tariff threats by arguing that similar action plunged the country into the Great Depression in the 1930s.

https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... ar/559430/
Quote:
We Will Not Negotiate Under Threat'

Trump is using the possibility of tariffs to get trade concessions from Europe. The Europeans are not interested.

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/38619 ... 0b-by-2020
Quote:
President Trump's trade representatives presented Chinese officials with a document Friday asking China's government to reduce its trade deficit with the U.S. by $200 billion by the end of 2020, The Associated Press reports.

Two days of trade negotiations between Chinese officials and the U.S. trade delegation led by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin ended with no agreement between the two nations other than a pledge to continue talks, according to news reports, with China likely to balk at a list U.S. demands delivered by Trump's representatives.


I wonder which EPA employee he's going to blame this one on?
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... al-reasons
Quote:
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, when he joined the EPA, drew up a list of his preferred travel destinations and told his staff to find official reasons for him to travel to those countries, according to The Washington Post.

Four EPA officials familiar with Pruitt's travel arrangements tell the newspaper that Pruitt created the list shortly after taking office last year and directed aides to plan official visits to countries on the list while finding official EPA business to rationalize the travel.


http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... epart-usda
Quote:
Former Trump campaign aide Sam Clovis is leaving his role in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) at the end of the week, Politico reports.

Clovis worked at the USDA as a senior adviser since January 2017, most recently serving in the department’s National Resources Conservation Service. His last day is Friday.

...Clovis served as one of Trump’s chief policy advisers during the campaign. He was later nominated as an undersecretary at the USDA, where he would have served as the department's chief scientist. The pick faced intense criticism from environmental advocates and some lawmakers who questioned Clovis’s scientific credentials.
As in, he had none. Basically, he was a right wing talk show host with no scientific background at all, ended up withdrawing his nomination with a BS excuse about being unable to receive fair consideration (under a GOP-controlled Senate!), then was appointed as a senior advisor in the USDA despite being unqualified for that as well.
Clovis background: https://www.salon.com/2017/11/02/donald ... l-climate/




http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... rian-group
Quote:
The State Department has reportedly frozen funding for a humanitarian group working in Syria, threatening the group’s effectiveness. CBS News reported Thursday that the State Department has put funding for the White Helmets group under "active review" as it determines which foreign aid programs to continue funding.

The White Helmets have essentially served as emergency responders in the war-torn country. Meanwhile, the U.S. had provided roughly one-third of the group’s total funding, CBS reported.
[/quote]

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 04 May , 2018 8:36 pm
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http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... lders-they
Quote:
Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) staff can no longer advise builders they need to obtain a permit mandated by law to maintain endangered species habitat, according to new Interior Department guidance.

An April 26 memorandum sent from FWS principal deputy Director Greg Sheehan to regional directors wrote that it was "not appropriate" for personnel to tell private parties when it's required under the law for them to seek an Incidental Take Permit (ITP).

Businesses and individuals must request and ITP if they believe their developments could interfere with the habitat of endangered species, under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Quote:
"This new memorandum essentially muzzles FWS biologists from telling private landowners that they need to apply for an incidental take permit when they will harm threatened or endangered species even though it is FWS’s job to ensure listed species are not harmed," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species Director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Greenwald said the guidance underscores a trend that's been occurring at FWS, where employees are more relaxed in their ESA enforcement. He believes that the guidance will make it harder to enforce because FWS will no longer leave a paper trail of recommendations for permits.
And/or some landowners will be in trouble when Trump's clowns are gone and enforcement of the law begins again. Or when they get sued.



This week, DHS is kicking out people from Honduras who have been here for 20 years. We've seen a steady stream of these announcements this year.
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/ ... -hondurans
Quote:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Friday the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 57,000 Honduran citizens in the United States.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen gave them until January 2020 — the maximum 18-month period — to return to Honduras or seek different immigration status.

The Hondurans protected by TPS have been in the United States at least since Hurricane Mitch hit the country in 1998


This is the president of the United States, pursuing his vendettas.
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/38 ... nra-speech
Quote:
President Trump took aim at Democratic senators on Friday, specifically singling out three lawmakers up for reelection this year, as impediments to his agenda.

During remarks in Dallas at the National Rifle Association (NRA) Leadership Forum, Trump reiterated his attacks on Montana Sen. Jon Tester, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, who publicized damaging allegations against Trump's former pick to lead the Veterans Affairs Department.

And he targeted two other Democratic senators up for reelection in states he won — Sens. Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Bob Casey Jr. (Pa.) — for their votes 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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 07 May , 2018 12:47 pm
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... clear-deal
Quote:
Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal.

People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.


...Jack Straw, who as foreign secretary was involved in earlier efforts to restrict Iranian weapons, said: “These are extraordinary and appalling allegations but which also illustrate a high level of desperation by Trump and [the Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, not so much to discredit the deal but to undermine those around it.”

One former high-ranking British diplomat with wide experience of negotiating international peace agreements, requesting anonymity, said: “It’s bloody outrageous to do this. The whole point of negotiations is to not play dirty tricks like this.”



Edit to add:

http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... ks-role-in
Quote:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has given the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee the summary of a 2010 report that could shed more light on the role Gina Haspel, President Trump's pick to lead the CIA, played in the destruction of videotapes documenting a pair of brutal interrogations. The files from the DOJ's “Durham report” — named after John Durham, the special prosecutor assigned to the case — have never been made public or given to Congress.

...At the time, the DOJ provided no details behind Durham’s decision not to bring criminal charges against the officials involved, frustrating civil liberties advocates who said the destruction of the tapes constituted obstruction of justice.

The tapes documented the interrogations of two CIA detainees at a “black site” prison in Thailand, which Haspel herself briefly ran. One of those detainees, Abu Zubaydah, was waterboarded more than 80 times prior to Haspel’s arrival. USS Cole bombing suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was also waterboarded while at the prison, three times after Haspel was sent to run the compound. The decision to destroy the tapes was made by Jose Rodriguez, then head of the agency’s clandestine service — but Haspel, at the time his chief of staff, has been reported as having strongly advocated for the choice.

...According to the Morell memo and internal emails released as part of a Freedom of Information Act case at the time, Rodriguez was concerned that the videotapes might leak, arguing that “the heat” officials would face over the destruction “is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into the public domain.” ...He feared that if the tapes leaked, it would cause the same kind of international uproar raised by the publication of graphic photos of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq the year before

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ating-more
Quote:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday is reportedly set to announce that the administration will increase its prosecution of parents crossing the U.S. border illegally, in the hope it will convince people to avoid making the trek for fear they will be separated from their children.


http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... -us-mexico
Quote:
The Interior Department is sending its law enforcement officers to help the Department of Homeland Security secure the U.S.– Mexico border, according to an internal email obtained by The Hill.... According to the guidance, officers will be sent ...[to] Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona and Amistad National Recreation Area in Texas.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called his decision to deploy Interior law enforcement officers to the southern border "the first of many steps Interior will take to secure the homeland."... Zinke told the Hill in a statement. "Interior is ready, willing, and able to deploy a significant force to carry out the President's mission."

...Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a requests for comment. The USPP referred questions to the Interior Department. The Border Patrol referred questions to DHS.


http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/he ... mium-hikes
Quote:
Premiums for ObamaCare plans in Maryland are poised to rise substantially next year. CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, which is the largest insurer in the Mid-Atlantic, has asked state regulators for an average 26.4 percent increase. The range of hikes runs from an 18.5 percent increase for its HMO plans to a 91.4 percent for its PPO plans. Kaiser Permanente has asked for a 37.4 percent increase.

Insurers have said a number of policies being promoted by the Trump administration are to blame for rising premiums and the departure of healthy people from the risk pool, including the repeal of ObamaCare’s individual mandate penalty


http://thehill.com/policy/finance/38655 ... n-spending
Quote:
The White House is set to ask Congress to revoke $15 billion in spending, starting a 45-day clock for Congress to act. ...Nearly half of the $15 billion — $7 billion — will come from two accounts in the Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP).The White House sees the cuts as uncontroversial because the money is unspent funds from expired programs, such as a fund to reimburse some state expenses in fiscal 2017.

...Critics of the claw-back maneuver said proposals to rescind as much as $60 billion would fly in the face of bipartisan negotiations that led to the spending bill, which was approved in the GOP-controlled House and Senate with Democratic votes.


http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... der-pruitt
Quote:
New internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) documents are shedding light on the agency’s attempts to keep Administrator Scott Pruitt's activities secret, especially before they take place.

The documents, first reported on Monday by The New York Times and obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Sierra Club, additionally show that EPA staff often frame potential reporters or attendees at events as either “friendly” or “unfriendly.”
Friendly, of course, refers to industry-friendly.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 08 May , 2018 1:24 pm
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http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/ ... r-scrutiny
Quote:
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision to dramatically scale back a pesticide fine on a California company has raised eyebrows, highlighting the ethical land mines facing an administration filled with former lobbyist and business executives.

The Obama administration hit the company, Syngenta, with a $4.8 million fine in December 2016 for violating pesticide regulations that resulted in the sickening of farm workers in Hawaii.

Once the Trump administration took over, the civil fine was reduced to $150,000, though the EPA also ordered Syngenta to spend a minimum of $400,000 to conduct worker training on how to use pesticides.

...Close observers of the EPA noted that Jeff Sands, who was a top EPA agricultural adviser at the time of the settlement, was previously a lobbyist for Syngenta. Sands told The Hill he was in no way involved in the decision to reduce the fine, and there is no evidence that he worked on the settlement. The move is also in line with other actions from President Trump’s EPA

...The ethics waiver Sands received upon joining the EPA allowed him to work on issues that could affect his former industry, the agricultural sector, at large. However, the waiver request did not ask that he be exempted from rules prohibiting him from being involved with any agency action that would specifically affect a former employer.

...Syngenta had been on Pruitt’s radar, with two executives from the company meeting separately with him in May 2017, before Sands joined the agency, about pesticide regulation, according to calendars obtained by the New York Times.
Curiously, Sands left the EPA a month after the fine was lowered.

Syngenta's violation was not trivial or a one-time event:
Quote:
In January 2016, a Hawaiian subsidiary of the company allegedly treated a field on a farm with a chlorpyrifos, a powerful pesticide so dangerous that it is not sold to the general public and workers are required to wear protective gear when working around it.

The company did not warn the workers that the field had been recently sprayed, nor did they have “adequate decontamination supplies” at the farm. Ten workers were taken to the hospital, though the company later said none were injured.

The second violation came in January 2017, when workers were again not warned to stay out of a chlorpyrifos-treated field.



http://thehill.com/policy/defense/38661 ... r-pentagon
Quote:
One month after President Trump’s unexpected move to deploy the National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border, the Pentagon is quietly pushing ahead in moving thousands of troops and equipment south.

At least 1,500 guardsmen have now been sent to the border to curtail a “surge of illegal activity,” according to Trump, amid outstanding questions about the cost of the endeavor, how long troops will stay and how warranted the move is.

Rep. Vicente González (D-Texas), whose district includes a stretch along the southern border, said he’s seen no real change on the ground in his area since the Pentagon began sending troops last month.“I’m all for security and law and order, but it’s just such a monumental waste of taxpayer dollars,” González told The Hill. “I haven’t seen any abrupt changes on the border. I’ve been here for the past week, so other than making political news, I haven’t seen any real changes on the ground.”

...The Pentagon’s April memo ...stipulates that the guardsmen are not to perform law enforcement activities or interact with migrants or other individuals detained by Homeland Security without his approval. These limitations, said González, raise real questions about the helpfulness of having the troops at the border, “They have different rules of engagement, they’re not able to make the arrests that a CBP officer does,” he said. “We have a shortage of CBP officers.”
Quote:
Trump, who made immigration a cornerstone of his presidential campaign, has repeatedly come back to the topic, most recently at a tax-reform roundtable in Ohio on Saturday when he said that people might “have to think about closing up the country.”

“They don’t want the wall, but we’re going to get the wall, even if we have to think about closing up the country for a while,” Trump said. “We’re going to get the wall. We have no choice. We have absolutely no choice. And we’re going to get tremendous security in our country.”
This sounds like he's aware that the majority of Americans think his wall is a stupid idea, but doesn't care.



http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ous-future
Quote:
Gina Haspel, my highly respected nominee to lead the CIA, is being praised for the fact that she has been, and alway will be, TOUGH ON TERROR! This is a woman who has been a leader wherever she has gone. The CIA wants her to lead them into America’s bright and glorious future!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2018

...Trump has praised Haspel, a career CIA official, for her work at the agency and accused Democrats of trying to obstruct her nomination because she is "too tough on terror."
Given that Haspel's nomination is controversial because a) she oversaw a US torture site, then later advocated for destroying the records of that torture, and b) selecting someone linked to these "black sites" sends a message to the world about the US attitude toward torture, Trump's comments sound to me like he's saying "yeah, torture is fine." (which, if I remember right, he's said in the past).



http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... obs-report
Quote:
The Trump Labor Department wants to loosen protections that prevent teenagers from working longer hours at hazardous workplaces, Bloomberg Law reported Tuesday.

Sources familiar with the move told the outlet that the Labor Department is going to propose relaxing some decades-old Hazardous Occupations Orders (HO).The current rules allow some 16 and 17-year-old apprentices and high school students to receive very limited exemptions to work in hazardous occupations — usually no more than an hour a day.Some of these dangerous jobs include roofing work or operating chainsaws and powerful machinery that are deemed too dangerous for those under 18.





Edit: Not surprising. but Dear Leader has just destroyed the Iran treaty, too. Good luck negotiating future treaties with people who expect you to keep your side of the bargain I've read that the EU may try to salvage the treaty, but that could mean direct economic confrontations with the US. So all around, a mess and no one better off, as far as I can tell.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -iran-deal
Quote:
President Trump on Tuesday announced he will not renew sanctions waivers for the Iran nuclear deal, taking a step that could lead to the deal’s unraveling.

...International inspectors and the deal’s signatories, including U.S. officials, have said Iran continues to comply with the terms of the agreement, but Trump has long derided the Obama-era accord as the “worst deal ever negotiated.”
And this is the person Republicans have nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. (no, this is not a joke)


https://www.vox.com/2018/5/8/17319608/t ... -explained
Quote:
6 questions about the Iran deal you were too embarrassed to ask
President Trump will soon remove the US from the Iran nuclear deal. Here’s how we got to this point — and other questions about the agreement you might need answered.
Quote:
...So those are the stakes: angry, potentially worse-off European allies and an Iran possibly unleashed to build nuclear weapons.

French President Macron said on Sunday that the US leaving the Iran deal “could mean war,” although he added that he doesn’t think Trump wants a conflict. Still, that shows just how serious this moment is: Foreign leaders are openly wondering if war with Iran is imminent because of Trump’s decision.

https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... al/558800/
Quote:
Trump essentially is taking hostage something the Europeans value, threatening to kill the agreement unless they pay him ransom. So France, Germany, and the U.K. have been valiantly seeking a way out of the crisis Trump manufactured, attempting to accommodate the president’s demands while staying true to their own obligations under the JCPOA. They are doing so not because they agree that the deal is in urgent need of repair. They don’t. Rather, they are rightly worried that Trump will make an ideologically inspired and fact-free decision to tear it down, with profoundly negative consequences for their national security interests.

http://www.dw.com/en/donald-trump-annou ... a-43701802
Quote:
President Trump has pulled the US out of the international accord and will impose the "highest level of economic sanctions" on Iran. All eyes are now on European leaders to see if they can hold the deal together.
Quote:
Trump's decision will not only ramp up tensions with Iran, but could also further unsettle Washington's ties with its European allies — particularly France, Germany and the UK — who sought to convince the US leader to remain in the deal.


Related:
http://www.dw.com/en/secretary-of-state ... a-43580671
Quote:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo kicks off Mideast tour in pursuit of new Iran sanctions

US Secretary of State Pompeo is in the Middle East to gain support from Saudi Arabia for new sanctions on Tehran. President Trump has vowed to take action after labeling the Iran nuclear agreement the "worst deal ever."

http://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3867 ... t-the-pump
Quote:
Iran deal withdrawal may well hit you at the pump
Quote:
With President Trump formally announcing the U.S. will exit the Iran nuclear deal, it appears likely there will be cutbacks in Iran oil production in the coming months. Importantly though, production is not expected to plunge given the inherent delays built into the deal... there are concerns that reinstating sanctions on the fifth-largest oil producer in the world will curb global oil output by 300,000-600,000 barrels per day over the next year, creating further upward price pressures.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 08 May , 2018 10:01 pm
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And if all that wasn't enough for one day, the House also set a troubling precedent:
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/38677 ... -precedent
Quote:
The House voted Tuesday to repeal a controversial edict on auto lending from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), capping off an unprecedented use of congressional powers that could give Republicans a new way to reverse regulations.

Republicans and a group of Democrats passed a resolution to repeal the CFPB’s 2013 guidance on “dealer markups,” which is the additional interest an auto dealer adds to a third-party loan as extra compensation. The measure to repeal the 2013 policy, which is not a formal federal rule, passed the Senate last month.

President Trump is expected to sign the resolution. If he does, it would be the first time Congress used its powers under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to repeal an informal federal policy.

...The Leadership Conference, a nonprofit civil rights group said the guidance repeal “represents an unprecedented and unwise use of the CRA procedure.” “The law was intended to allow Congress to block the implementation of new agency rules before their impact is felt — not guidances that have been in place for years,” wrote the group’s president, Vanita Gupta, in a Monday letter.

It’s unclear what other informal rules Republicans could take aim at next.
I'm not even sure how this works. The CRA was supposed to have a finite time span during which they could undo the work of the previous administration. They couldn't repeal some of Obama's work by CRAs because it had been too long; they were forced to use the normal channels of formal rule-making.

Also, the massive use of CRAs by the GOP members currently in Congress and Trump signing them all is unprecedented. No previous Congress or administration has done this. And don't forget that a CRA means that no one in the future can pass a substantially similar regulation. They're pretty much burning down the house here if they don't like something.



btw, more potential repercussions from Trump killing the Iran deal, from Bloomberg.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -with-iran
Quote:
Among the larger deals at stake:

Airbus Group SE signed off on a contract with Iran for 100 jetliners worth about $19 billion at list prices
Boeing Co. and Iran’s Aseman airline signed a $3 billion agreement for 30 737 Max jets; the U.S. company also struck a $16.6 billion deal with national carrier Iran Air for 80 aircraft
Total SA along with China National Petroleum Corp. signed a 20-year agreement valued at $5 billion to develop phase 11 of the South Pars offshore gas field
Quote:
Global Power Balance

On the international stage, the biggest winners from a resumption of American sanctions could be two other signatories to the deal -- China and Russia, whose influence has gradually spread in the Middle East as the U.S. has scaled back its engagement.
Quote:
A collapse of the nuclear deal would be a blow for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the reformists who championed a diplomatic settlement to the nuclear standoff that had left Iran increasingly isolated. The nuclear deal is a rare concrete achievement for Rouhani, who was re-elected last year but has been weakened by demonstrations, a currency crisis and problems in the banking sector.

Hardliners, who warned through years of talks that the U.S. was not a trustworthy partner, would emerge strengthened. There are also signs that the attitudes of ordinary Iranians, many of whom welcomed a deal they hoped would bring prosperity, are hardening.
And, of course, they also go into the risk of war, as well as the possible effects on oil.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 09 May , 2018 4:48 pm
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http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... boost-coal
Quote:
Energy Secretary Rick Perry confirmed that the Trump administration is looking into using a Cold War-era law to prop up struggling U.S. coal and nuclear power plants....The law could allow the administration to provide help to the industries in the form of loans and loan guarantees or purchase commitments. It could also be used to help specific regions or plants.

...His comments come a day after a coalition of natural gas, renewable energy and energy efficiency groups wrote a letter to Perry telling him to reject calls to bail out FirstEnergy, which filed for bankruptcy in early April ...[and] is asking Perry to intervene to keep the nuclear plants functioning.

"Power plant retirements are a normal, healthy feature of electricity markets. There is no emergency or threat to the national defense on which the Department could lawfully base the exercise of its emergency authorities," the groups wrote in their Tuesday letter to Perry.


http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... m-under-my
Quote:
President Trump's nominee to lead the CIA vowed on Wednesday not to bring back the spy agency's controversial interrogation program,

...The CIA has learned some tough lessons from that experience. We were asked to tackle a mission that fell outside our expertise,” she continued, describing it as a “lesson learned" for the agency.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... as-immoral
Quote:
President Trump's pick to lead the CIA declined to directly answer repeated questions on Wednesday about whether she views the controversial interrogation techniques used by the CIA following the Sept. 11 terror attacks as "immoral."


http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... tials-over
President Trump early Wednesday suggested taking away news networks' press credentials over "negative" coverage.
Quote:
"The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake)," Trump wrote on Twitter.

"Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?"


http://www.businessinsider.com/uk-germa ... eal-2018-5
Quote:
In a joint statement, British Prime Minister Theresa May, French president Emmanuel Macron, and German chancellor Angela Merkel expressed "regret and concern," and called on Washington not to take steps that would prevent other countries from upholding it.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said Tehran aimed to continue to comply with the deal's terms, and would swiftly reach out to the its other signatories - Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China - to keep it in place.

... Moscow said it too would focus its efforts on maintaining the accord. It called Trump's decision "deeply disappointing".

...EU leaders are concerned that Washington could use its influence over the world's financial system to prevent businesses in other countries that have not reimposed sanctions on Iran from doing business there.

As if to hammer home that concern, Trump's new ambassador to Germany, who presented his credentials in Berlin earlier on Tuesday, tweeted that German businesses should halt their activities in Iran immediately

http://www.france24.com/en/20180509-gul ... -iran-deal
Quote:
Gulf Arab countries were on Wednesday bracing for the economic and security fallout after President Donald Trump announced the United States was exiting the Iran nuclear deal. Three countries led by Saudi Arabia immediately backed Trump while Qatar reacted cautiously. Oman and Kuwait also gave circumspect positions.

...Should new cracks emerge in the region, ambitious economies, namely China, could seek zones of influence. The concern, the analyst said, is the Gulf becoming "the new playground for a revived Cold War".

The other looming debacle is whether a US pullout from the Iran deal could trigger a nuclear arms race
... In March, Saudi Arabia's crown prince said if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, the kingdom would be compelled to follow suit.

Trump's "plan B," from an article about the efforts of the remaining partners to save the Iran deal:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... ns-on-iran
Quote:
Many European diplomats believe that Washington has no plan in preparation on how to contain Iran, apart from placing such intense economic pressure on Iran that a popular rising leads to regime change. Asked about his next steps, Donald Trump appeared uncertain at a cabinet meeting.

“They’ll negotiate or something will happen,” the president said, warning that if Iran resumed the nuclear activities, there would be “very severe consequences”.
Certainly, no one could accuse this president of being a deep thinker.

Also from this article:
Quote:
it appeared on Wednesday that, after the failure of its diplomatic charm offensive with Washington, Europe was going to unite to protect the deal, even if it meant putting its member states on an economic collision course with the US.

Work on the package being coordinated by the European Union is at an early stage, but the EU is being urged to warn the US it will impose countersanctions if the US attempts unjustifiably to cripple EU firms trading with Iran.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 09 May , 2018 8:43 pm
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These two opinion pieces from The Hill may also be of interest. One describes a bill that has been introduced to protect some formerly legal immigrants who Trump is now deporting. The other analyzes a bunch of anti-environmental provisions that have been put in the Farm Bill.


From Rep Wasserman Schultz, regarding Trump's planned deportations of TPS recipients (so far, apparently people from El Salvador, Haiti, Liberia, Nicaragua, Nepal, Sudan and Honduras have lost their TPS protections):
Quote:
...In fact, if Trump’s TPS revocations are carried out, federal taxpayers will see a steep bill, costing as much as $3.1 billion to deport Salvadorans, Hondurans and Haitians alone.

...Trump was given these warnings by senior U.S. diplomats last year: mass deportations could further destabilize affected regions, triggering a new surge of illegal immigration. Trump ignored them.
Quote:
That’s why I’ve joined more than 100 other members of Congress in supporting the American Promise Act. It would provide legal permanent residence for vetted TPS and DED recipients if they can demonstrate a continuous physical presence for at least three years prior to the bill becoming enacted or demonstrate extreme hardships.

The American Promise Act also would require clearer explanations of TPS terminations and evaluate a country’s ability to repatriate its own people.


Also, concerns about the Farm Bill (HR 2)soon to come up for a vote in the House, from Jamie Rappaport Clark (president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, also a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). Especially with Pruitt's industry-friendly EPA and Zinke at Interior, these provisions look bad.
http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-envir ... d-wildlife
Quote:
Title IX, the “Poisoned Pollinators Provision,” would exempt pesticide registrations from key requirements to protect imperiled species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Title VIII would weaken species protections and other safeguards on national forestlands. Title II would shortchange critical conservation programs that depend on farm bill funding and implementation which benefit wildlife in every state.

...The bill is jammed with ESA and Clean Water Act overrides. Title IX includes provisions that would undermine protections for endangered and threatened species from potentially harmful pesticides and allow for pesticide dumping into waterways without meaningful oversight.

...Section 9111, “Registration of pesticides,” would rescind the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) legal obligation to consult with expert federal wildlife agencies to assess the effects of toxic and potentially dangerous pesticides on endangered and threatened species. It allows EPA to make unilateral, self-interested determinations regarding pesticide impacts on endangered species on an extended timeframe.

EPA would have until 2026 or 2033 to complete reviews for registered pesticides, and four years for pesticides registered after enactment of this language.

...Section 9114, “Unlawful Acts,” will exempt EPA, pesticide manufacturers and end users from liability for killing endangered wildlife if the EPA determines that the pesticide won’t jeopardize listed species or destroy critical habitat.

The forestry provision ... would ... allow approval of 6,000-acre logging projects without basic review and oversight provided under the National Environmental Policy Act.

It creates new exemptions (also for projects up to 6,000 acres) — covering almost every logging project conceivable, with no limit on the number or proximity, putting huge swaths of forests on the chopping block. It creates new exemptions for harmful grazing practices, roadbuilding and other activities on public lands that warrant review.

It attacks the Roadless Rule by allowing harmful forest management activities if consistent with local forest plans, even if prohibited by national or state-specific roadless rules. The Forest Service can ignore impacts to listed and sensitive species, wilderness areas and other extraordinary circumstances when approving the use of exemptions.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 10 May , 2018 10:43 pm
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Two international news reports on the recent events in the Middle East. Both mention that, while the tensions have been rising between Israel and Iran in recent months, Trump deciding to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement has added fuel to the flames.


https://globalnews.ca/news/4199343/isra ... cket-fire/
Quote:
Israel considers Iran to be its most bitter enemy, citing Iran’s hostile rhetoric, support for anti-Israel militant groups and development of long-range missiles. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the international nuclear agreement with Iran, with strong support from Israel, has further raised tensions.

Israel and Iran have appeared to be on a collision course for months.
Interestingly, this article also mentions that Netanyahu met with Putin on Wednesday to discuss military coordination in Syria.* It looked to me as if Netanyahu's earlier presentation about Iran was aimed at persuading Trump to nix the Iran deal (and Netanyahu was definitely celebrating afterward). So I'm wondering where all that fits in, and what happens if France, Germany, the UK, Russia (and China?) manage to salvage the deal without the US.


*Edit: It seems this is a system to de-escalate conflicts that has been in place since 2015, where Israel gives Russia prior notice of its attacks in Syria. https://www.timesofisrael.com/russia-ur ... -in-syria/


https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/wo ... e-10219512
Quote:
Expectations of a regional flare-up, amid warnings from Israel that it was determined to prevent any Iranian military entrenchment in Syria, were stoked by U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement on Tuesday that he was withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

The Trump administration portrayed its rejection of that agreement as a response, in part, to Iran's military interventions in the Middle East, underpinning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's tough line towards Tehran.
Quote:
Iran and Israel were already drawing deeper into confrontation before Trump pulled the United States out of the deal, but his move has shaken up the region. Within Iran, it could empower hardliners while weakening the moderate camp that has sought better relations with the West.
Quote:
Thursday's exchange followed a suspected Israeli rocket strike in Syria on Tuesday on a military base in Kisweh, hours after Trump's announcement on the nuclear deal.


Related:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/pompeo-wa ... nd-report/
Quote:
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently warned Iran that if it harms Israel, the American military will respond, the Walla news site reported Thursday, quoting senior Israeli sources.

...Pompeo visited Israel last week, soon after taking office, and held talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Pompeo warned then of Iran’s “destabilizing and malign activities” in the Middle East. “We remain deeply concerned about Iran’s dangerous escalation of threats to Israel and the region and Iran’s ambition to dominate the Middle East remains,” he said. “The United States is with Israel in this fight,” Pompeo added.

...The US secretary’s visit to Israel preceded Netanyahu’s presentation of Iran’s nuclear weapons archive



As an aside, why do we get such lousy coverage of world events in the U.S.? Mostly it just seems like "Iran fired rockets into the Golan Heights, so Israel retaliated" without any history or background about the conflicts.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 11 May , 2018 6:02 pm
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http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... aves-admin
Quote:
A top official who would lead the U.S. response if a deadly pandemic broke out has left the administration amid a broad reorganization of the national security team, The Washington Post reported Thursday. Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer left the National Security Council (NSC) this week, and national security adviser John Bolton dissolved the global health security team that Ziemer oversaw.

The Post reported that Ziemer will not be replaced, and that his departure means that there is no single official at the highest levels of the administration who focuses only on global health security.

...Ziemer’s departure from the NSC is the latest since Bolton joined the administration last month. Four senior aides left or resigned under pressure from the council during Bolton’s first week on the job.


Speaking of Bolton, a couple of older articles warning about the neocons Trump is gathering around him:
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... ge/558785/
Quote:
The Iran Regime-Change Crew Is Back
That probably spells doom for the nuclear deal.
Quote:
These days, those regime-change evangelists, having shrugged off the lessons of the Iraq War, are back at the helm of U.S. foreign policy. John Bolton, Donald Trump’s new national-security adviser, has long advocated regime change in Iran, and more recently has argued that the administration should openly embrace it as a foreign-policy goal. At the same time, Bolton and his ilk are pushing for a denuclearization deal with North Korea ahead of Trump’s planned summit with Kim Jong Un, the country’s leader. Preparations for the meeting will likely be in full swing by May 12, the next deadline for extending the Iran deal. The Trump administration, in other words, could find itself in the odd situation of tearing down the nuclear deal with Iran while pursuing a similar deal with North Korea.

...Regime-change advocates were emboldened by the anti-government demonstrations that swept across Iran this past winter.
...Since the demonstrations, the Trump administration has viewed Iran’s rulers as vulnerable. Additional economic pressure, it believes, could threaten their hold on power. Undoing the nuclear deal would pave the way for a return to punishing international economic sanctions on Tehran—this time, not only for its nuclear program, but for its pursuit of medium- and long-range missiles, and support for the Assad regime in Syria. Such a scenario would restrict trade, discourage foreign investment, and potentially force Iran out of the oil market. This would please Saudi Arabia, whose economy depends on high oil prices. During his visit to Washington, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman predicted that the price of oil could rise to $80 a barrel—a price he would need in order to realize his ambitious economic agenda and fulfill the kingdom’s military and political aims. Excluding Iran from oil markets would certainly help realize that prediction.
Note: Saudi Arabia did, in fact, join Netanyahu in praising Trump's withdrawal from the Iran deal.



https://thebulletin.org/bolton-threat-i ... -deal11645
Quote:
McMaster’s ousting and Bolton’s arrival, potentially coupled with Mike Pompeo’s ascendance at the State Department as Tillerson’s replacement, make it much likelier for the administration to pull out of the nuclear deal and potentially even confront Iran militarily.

To understand why this may be the case, it’s imperative to examine Bolton’s worldview, nonproliferation track record, and stance on Iran.

Bolton largely sees the US foreign policy toolkit through the prism of what most national security professionals view as the last resort: military action. Indeed, Bolton has long advocated for bombing countries to settle disputes and mitigate threats, before such options as negotiations, sanctions, and naming and shaming on the international stage are fully exhausted. In particular, Bolton famously called for attacking Iran to address the challenge stemming from the country’s nuclear ambitions—and this, as the negotiators were working toward a comprehensive agreement achieving strict limits on those ambitions. Likewise, Bolton has often brushed aside the need for multilateralism.

I'm not sure about this source, but a quick look suggested it was legitimate. The information it gives is sobering. (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-amer ... servative/ "Right-center bias. Factual reporting: High"):
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/ ... ter-trump/
Quote:
The Untold Story of John Bolton’s Campaign for War With Iran
Everyone knows Bolton is a hawk. Less understood is how he labored in secret to drive Washington and Tehran apart.
Quote:
the strong likelihood that Donald Trump will now choose John Bolton as his next national security advisor creates a prospect of war with Iran that is very real. Bolton is no ordinary neoconservative hawk. He has been obsessed for many years with going to war against the Islamic Republic, calling repeatedly for bombing Iran in his regular appearances on Fox News, without the slightest indication that he understands the consequences of such a policy.

...It was Bolton who persuaded Trump to commit to specific language pledging to pull out of the JCPOA if Congress and America’s European allies did not go along with demands for major changes that were clearly calculated to ensure the deal would fall apart.
Quote:
During multiple trips to Israel, Bolton had unannounced meetings, including with the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, without the usual reporting cable to the secretary of state and other relevant offices. Judging from that report on an early Bolton visit, those meetings clearly dealt with a joint strategy on how to bring about political conditions for an eventual U.S. strike against Iran.






http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3872 ... ork-report
Quote:
Lawmakers are eyeing a plan to preserve evidence and reports compiled by special counsel Robert Mueller following Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) refusal to bring legislation protecting Mueller's job to the Senate floor.

...Talks on such a plan "involve assuring the evidence is preserved and reports are done if the special counsel is fired or other political interference is undertaken by the president," Blumenthal told NBC News.

Blumenthal said that some Republican senators are also involved in the discussions.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/us/p ... esign.html
Quote:
Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, told colleagues she was close to resigning after President Trump berated her on Wednesday in front of the entire cabinet for what he said was her failure to adequately secure the nation’s borders,

Mr. Trump’s anger toward Ms. Nielsen, who was sitting several seats to his left at the meeting, was part of a lengthy tirade in which the president railed at his cabinet about what he said was its lack of progress toward sealing the country’s borders against illegal immigrants,... During the meeting, Mr. Trump yelled about the United States’ porous border and said more needed to be done to fix it. When members of his cabinet pointed out that the country relies on day laborers who cross the border each day, Mr. Trump said that was fine, but continued to complain
It seems that Trump and "his aides" (Bolton? Navarro?) are the ones directly pushing to have children taken away from their parents.
Quote:
One persistent issue has been Mr. Trump’s belief that Ms. Nielsen and other officials in the department were resisting his direction that parents be separated from their children when families cross illegally into the United States, several officials said. The president and his aides in the White House had been pushing a family separation policy for weeks as a way of deterring families from trying to cross the border illegally.

...On Monday, Justice Department officials announced that border agents will refer 100 percent of illegal crossings for prosecution, a decision that will most likely result in more family separations.
Quote:
one official said the family separation issue is just one part of the president’s broader frustration with the pace of progress on an immigration crackdown... Since taking office, Mr. Trump’s efforts to impose a travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries were held up for months in the courts. The courts have also interfered with his push to end an Obama-era program to help people brought to the United States illegally as young children.

And Trump is still happy with Pruitt:
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... -in-pruitt
Quote:
President Trump told reporters Friday that he still has confidence in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administration Scott Pruitt amid continuing ethics and spending scandals.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 11 May , 2018 8:04 pm
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http://thehill.com/policy/international ... fter-trump
Quote:
A top nuclear expert has resigned from the State Department following President Trump's decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. Richard Johnson, acting assistant coordinator in the agency’s Office of Iran Nuclear Implementation, stepped down this week, according to Foreign Policy.

...Officials told Foreign Policy that the 38-year-old Johnson’s departure is the latest symptom of what they have dubbed a “brain drain” in the agency under the Trump administration. About 60 percent of career diplomats left the department under Trump.
But who needs diplomats when clearly the neocons are what Trump wants.



Kelly defends Trump's policy of taking children away from their parents at the border.
Quote:
White House chief of staff John Kelly defended the Trump administration’s new "zero tolerance" policy on border-crossing immigrants, pushing back on accusations that separating immigrant families is “cruel.”

...NPR’s John Burnett asked Kelly in a new interview about criticisms of the new policy, specifically that “people say that's cruel and heartless to take a mother away from her children.”

“I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” Kelly responded. “The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.”
Sorry, I don't give a damn about the "justifications". The U.S. used to have a moral compass sometimes. Now it seems to be totally gone. Can you imagine being a 5-year-old, taken on a long, strange and scary journey, and at the end of it, strangers tear you away from your mother and father? And the poor parents, terrified at what might be happening to their child - whether they're safe, ill, etc.?

What a bunch of sick bastards, using deliberate cruelty as a deterrent to illegal immigration.



And some of Trump's staff seem to be a nasty bunch.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... li=BBnb7Kz
Quote:
Furor built Friday among lawmakers in both parties and family members following reports that one of President Donald Trump's aides, Kelly Sadler, had mockingly referred to Sen. John McCain's brain cancer diagnosis during a White House meeting.

...During a White House meeting on Thursday, Sadler reacted to McCain's announcement that he opposes Gina Haspel's nomination as CIA director because of her involvement in the agency's enhanced interrogation program. "He's dying anyway," Sadler said




From Der Spiegel, a European perspective on recent events:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 07237.html
Quote:
Trump Strikes a Deep Blow to Trans-Atlantic Ties

With his decision to blow up the Iran deal, U.S. President Donald Trump has thrown Europe into uncertainty and anxiety -- and raised the specter of a new war in the Middle East. One thing is certain: the trans-Atlantic relationship has been seriously damaged.
Quote:
The mood in Paris, Brussels and Berlin is reminiscent of the period just prior to the war in Iraq. Most of Europe refused to back the U.S. in that conflict, even if the British and the Italians joined then-President George W. Bush in the offensive. This time around, however, the Europeans are united in their desire to preserve the deal with Iran, even if nobody knows how they might be able to.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 06258.html
Quote:
In the dispute over steel and aluminum tariffs, Trump proved again this week that he sees politics in much the same way as he does casinos: as a big game in which he wants to write the rules and be the croupier at the same time.

...The sources of the trade deficit are varied and complex, but Trump is intent on addressing the problem primarily via trade policy. He wants to force his partners to lower import tariffs for products from the U.S. or to limit their exports to America through quotas. To achieve that, Trump is sowing discord among trading partners and he is attempting to negotiate bilaterally, thus undermining the WTO.

...Ultimately, though, neither Merkel nor Macron is sitting in the driver's seat on this issue. EU Commissioner Malmström is responsible for trade in the European single market. And despite the new deadline, she is preparing for a trade war with the Americans. The unadorned room in the European Parliament where the Monitoring Group USA of the International Trade Committee meets has become a kind of "war room." Here, members of parliament hunch over the fine print of lists of possible countermeasures that could be taken by the EU if Trump really does act.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 14 May , 2018 2:23 pm
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http://thehill.com/policy/international ... ulling-out
Quote:
The U.S. is reportedly ramping up security at diplomatic posts in the Middle East after pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and ahead of the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.

The State Department has been working on doubling down on security at posts around the Muslim world for weeks, CNN reported, amid raised concerns about the consequences of the Trump administration's policy moves on the Middle East.
Edit:
As expected, the protests arrived and at least 53 Palestinians have now been killed. Apparently, not only did Trump stir things up with moving the embassy, his administration picked a uniquely bad day to open it, in terms of trying to minimize conflict:
https://globalnews.ca/news/4206031/prot ... jerusalem/
Quote:
The timing of Monday’s events was deeply symbolic to Israel and the Palestinians.
...The U.S. said it chose the date to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s establishment.

But it also marks the anniversary of what Palestinians call their “nakba,” or catastrophe, a reference to the uprooting of hundreds of thousands who fled or were expelled during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.
Trump's spokesperson responds:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ce-in-gaza
Quote:
“The responsibility for these tragic deaths rests squarely with Hamas. Hamas is intentionally and cynically provoking this response,” White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah said during Monday’s briefing.

...Shah did not answer when asked if the U.S. was calling on Israel to use restraint in its response to protesters, as the French government had. He instead reiterated that Hamas was to blame for the violence.
So, rather than expressing regret for the deaths and hoping the violence can end, the Trump administration stirs things up more.
Quote:
Shah said he does not believe the opening of the new embassy, nor the burst of violence, will derail the Trump administration’s efforts to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Yeah, right.




http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... for-profit
Quote:
The Education Department has in recent months largely dismantled a team charged with investigating abuses by for-profit colleges, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The investigative team was created in 2016 to look into widespread fraud claims against for-profit colleges. Roughly a dozen investigators and lawyers were later added to the unit. The Times reported that the team now consists of three employees, who focus mainly on student loan forgiveness applications. The investigations into for-profit colleges have largely come to a stop, according to the report.

An example of why amateurs making the decisions is rarely a good idea:
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/38 ... ram-report
Quote:
A military-Veterans Affairs health initiative supported by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner received a harsh assessment from the Pentagon, according to a recent Politico report.

The news outlet, which acquired the report, said the Pentagon’s assessment found that a software program known as MHS Genesis is “neither operationally effective, nor operationally suitable.” “The end result everyone is familiar with — years and years of delays and many billions spent trying to fix the mess,” an individual testing the program told the news outlet.

The Pentagon’s review found 156 “severe” or “critical” incident reports that could cause patients to die



http://thehill.com/homenews/media/38753 ... day-report
Quote:
While it was previously known that Trump and Hannity are friendly, and that Trump often watches Hannity’s show due to his tweets praising the conservative host for his ratings, New York Magazine shares new details that show the extent of their relationship.

...Hannity is reportedly one of a few dozen people who have access to Trump’s official phone line, and the two speak on the phone nearly every night after Hannity’s show.... One White House official told New York Magazine that Hannity’s influence on the president “fills the void” left by former chief strategist Steve Bannon, and that Hannity’s influence on the president is on the same level as that of other administration officials.
Watch Hannity just once if you want to know how bad this is.

Link to the full story:https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2 ... calls.html
It's an interesting and disturbing read, to see how Trump is manipulated and influenced.




http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... sal-on-zte
Quote:
A former aide under the Obama administration said he was surprised on Sunday by President Trump’s announcement that he is working with China to help Chinese telecommunications equipment-maker ZTE get “back into business,” according to the Financial Times.

...Telecom giant ZTE is the fourth-largest phone vendor in the U.S. But, last month, the company was slapped with an export ban from the Commerce Department after the U.S. said it had violated a deal by circumventing sanctions against Iran and North Korea.

Wolf, who oversaw the beginning of the ZTE case during his time in the Obama administration told the Financial Times, “I’m highly confident that a [U.S.] president has never intervened in a law-enforcement matter like this before. … It’s so outside the way the rules were set up.”

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 14 May , 2018 9:28 pm
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/ ... udy-536950
Quote:
Scott Pruitt’s EPA and the White House sought to block publication of a federal health study on a nationwide water-contamination crisis, after one Trump administration aide warned it would cause a "public relations nightmare," newly disclosed emails reveal.

The intervention early this year — not previously disclosed — came as HHS' Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry was preparing to publish its assessment of a class of toxic chemicals that has contaminated water supplies near military bases, chemical plants and other sites from New York to Michigan to West Virginia.

The study would show that the chemicals endanger human health at a far lower level than EPA has previously called safe, according to the emails.

“The public, media, and Congressional reaction to these numbers is going to be huge,” one unidentified White House aide said in an email... “The impact to EPA and [the Defense Department] is going to be extremely painful. We (DoD and EPA) cannot seem to get ATSDR to realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be.”


btw, both Republicans and Democrats think Trump's abrupt decision to help ZTE is nuts:
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/38 ... se-company
Quote:
President Trump’s abrupt decision to offer a potential lifeline to Chinese phone-maker ZTE is sending shockwaves through Washington, sparking criticism from lawmakers who have pushed for tighter restrictions on Chinese telecommunications companies.



And in the meantime, Congress is angry over the flippant White House staffer's comment about McCain dying (they probably assume, as do I, that the atmosphere was conducive to that comment), while Trump and Conway are angry that anyone ever found out:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3876 ... ment-grows
Quote:
Republican senators are demanding a public apology after a White House staffer joked about GOP Sen. John McCain's failing health, even as the administration is doubling down on its decision to handle the fallout "internally."

The growing divisions between the Senate GOP caucus and the White House comes on the eve of a closed-door Tuesday lunch between President Trump and Senate Republicans.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... test-white
Quote:
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday she expects to see a staff shakeup in the wake of the furor over leaked comments made during an internal meeting last week.

...Conway’s warning came hours after President Trump condemned White House leakers as “traitors and cowards,” and vowed to discover the source of the problem.

The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible. With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2018
With all the important things in the world happening at this moment, this is what Dear Leader cares about.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 15 May , 2018 12:52 pm
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The world response to the clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers, from a couple of articles from The Times of Israel. In a nutshell, most nations recognize the complicated mess of Palestinian/Israeli relations and try not to take sides. The Trump administration sides wholly with Netanyahu, while making empty claims that it wants peace (hint: you won't get people to negotiate if you're blatantly siding with one of the combatants).
https://www.timesofisrael.com/australia ... za-deaths/
Quote:
[Australian] Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Melbourne Radio 3AW the loss of life was “tragic” but that “Hamas’s conduct is confrontational. They’re seeking to provoke the Israeli Defense Forces.” ...Meanwhile Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop called on Israel to be proportionate in its response and refrain from excessive use of force. She added in a statement that Israel had the right to protect it population and called on Palestinians “to refrain from violence and attempting to enter into Israeli territory.”

Several countries condemned the events, questioning the proportionality of Israel’s response while urging Hamas to refrain from violence. The EU called for “utmost restraint” by all sides. South Africa and Turkey said they were recalling their ambassadors from Israel, with Ankara accusing Jerusalem of “genocide.”

The United States was one of the only countries to endorse Israel’s version of the events and fully blame Hamas for the deaths on the border. Later Monday it also blocked the adoption of a UN Security Council statement that would have called for an independent probe of the violence.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-quashe ... za-deaths/
Quote:
The United States on Monday blocked the adoption of a UN Security Council statement that would have called for an independent probe of deadly violence on the Israel-Gaza border, which erupted as the new US embassy in Jerusalem was opened, diplomats said.

....British Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman urged “calm and restraint”.

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the violence, emphasizing that “Palestinians have the right to peace and security” and reiterating his commitment to a two-state solution.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/ireland-d ... er-deaths/
Quote:
Ireland summoned the Israeli ambassador Tuesday to communicate its “shock and dismay” over the deaths of dozens of Palestinians during clashes with Israeli security forces along the border with the Gaza Strip the day before.

Not covered in most news sources - not all Israelis agree with Netanyahu and Trump and some protests were peaceful.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... bassy-move
Quote:
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators waiting outside the embassy gave the finger to buses carrying guests to and from the event.

...At the embassy inauguration, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the military, praising soldiers protecting the Gaza border. Israeli peace groups condemned the government’s response, with B’tselem saying Israeli political and military leaders had shown “appalling indifference to human life” by firing live ammunition.


Possibly more escalation coming:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-th ... ue-report/
Quote:
Israel has reportedly warned Hamas that it will resume assassinations of the terror group’s leaders if Hamas continues to organize clashes on the Gaza border. The terror group, meanwhile, vowed revenge after Monday’s deadly riots.

“If the protests continue, the assassinations will return,” Hadashot TV news quoted security officials as saying in a message sent to Hamas via Egypt.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/kushner-p ... ?r=US&IR=T
Quote:
Jared Kushner hypes peace deal as Israel kills scores of Palestinian protesters during US embassy move to Jerusalem
Quote:
The protests will culminate on Tuesday, the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, or what Palestinians call a "catastrophe," when Israel was created and large swaths of land moved into Israeli control. Many Palestinians have taken offense to the US moving its embassy on the anniversary of Nakba, which they see as adding insult to injury.

"A massacre will happen on a 15th," Isam Hammad, one of the organizers of the protests, told Haaretz.

https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... ce/560357/
Quote:
Moving the embassy is not, however, a policy that will break the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, make it easier for the U.S. to mediate between the two sides, or bring peace any closer. In fact, the manner in which the embassy move was announced and implemented pushes all these things much farther away—a reality that was underscored when Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinians in Gaza, during the penultimate day of a weeks-long demonstration there, even as the embassy dedication was happening.

It was jarring to behold, while all this blood was being shed, the emphasis on peace at the embassy dedication: Israeli singer Hagit Yaso performed “Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu” (“Peace Will Come To Us”). U.S. Ambassador David Friedman extolled the virtues of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. And Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner said, “We will look back on this day” and remember that “the journey to peace started with a strong America recognizing the truth.” Clearly, Trump and his administration are refusing to own up to the real consequences that his decision will have on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But dissembling about the true costs of moving the embassy will only complicate American policy in the region.

... the president has insisted multiple times that he has “taken Jerusalem off the table,” implying that Jerusalem is no longer a disputed issue between the parties and that the two sides can now move on to resolving the other final status issues, such as security, borders, and refugees.

Yet these repeated claims have an Alice in Wonderland quality to them; it is obvious that nothing could be further from the observable truth. Trump’s Jerusalem announcement took nothing off the table; in fact, it did precisely the opposite. By loudly and forcefully recognizing Israel’s rightful claim and connection to Jerusalem but not recognizing that Palestinians have their own claim and connection to the city as well, Trump elevated the Jerusalem problem to heights heretofore unachieved.


Trump snubs former ambassador, while sending his daughter and son-in-law to the embassy opening.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/obamas-am ... y-opening/
Quote:
Daniel Shapiro, the US ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, was not invited to Monday’s opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem.

Shapiro, who served as president Barack Obama’s ambassador in Tel Aviv from 2011 to January 2017, said he would have been pleased to attend the ceremony and that he firmly supports the embassy move, but did not receive an invitation.

_________________

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


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 16 May , 2018 1:37 pm
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Congressional Republicans met with Trump yesterday, but spent the time listening to a 45 minute, rambling monologue instead of discussing anything.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/201 ... -fine.html
Quote:
What is more interesting about the lunch is that the senators didn’t seem to press the president on much of anything, including those issues that matter greatly to the broader public. They probably view it as better to work the president in confidence rather than confront him in a meeting, details of which would certainly leak and cause a scene. Yet when the president talked about trade or what’s going on with his threat to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement—the fear of all fears among the Senate Republican caucus—he neither solicited nor got much feedback. They didn’t press him about his weird hyping of a Chinese company. According to Sen. John Kennedy, the president said he would have a health care announcement coming in a few weeks, but he didn’t say what. The president said things were going great with North Korea, and everywhere. He insisted he wanted his border wall but didn’t give any guidance about how they might secure that.


Speaking of which...
http://thehill.com/policy/international ... essured-to
Quote:
North Korea will reconsider a planned summit with President Trump if it continues to be pressured to "unilaterally" abandon its nuclear program, according to a senior North Korean official. Yonhap News Agency reported on Tuesday that North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan says the country will not accept a U.S. deal that will force the country to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for the relaxation of economic sanctions.

...The statement came hours after the country announced it was suspending talks with South Korea, with which it had been engaged in unprecedented negotiations for weeks.
Not that this comes as a surprise to any but the terminally naive.




http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... tts-emails
Quote:
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) inspector general said it is investigating EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s use of nonpublic email accounts, the latest in a series of federal investigations into the agency chief.

The inspector general, an independent office within the EPA, will look into whether Pruitt is keeping a record of his emails, as he is mandated to by federal law, and whether the EPA is searching all his accounts when fulfilling public records requests.

http://thehill.com/policy/international ... gs-in-gaza
Quote:
Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, applauded Israeli forces on Wednesday for what she called their "restraint" in the face of protests in Gaza a day earlier that left at least 60 dead.

Sometimes it seems like Trump's constant lying has infected everyone in this administration:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... separating
Quote:
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) ...asked [Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen]Nielsen at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental affairs committee hearing on national security needs and authorities if President Trump directed her “to separate parents from children as a method of deterrence of undocumented immigration?” Nielsen answered that she had not been directed to do so “for purposes of deterrence.”

Asked why she is separating families, Nielsen said her decision “has been that anyone who breaks the law will be prosecuted.” “If you are a parent or you are a single person or you happen to have a family, if you cross between the ports of entry, we will refer you for prosecution,” Nielsen said. “You have broken U.S. law.”
Hmm, I seem to remember Kelly admitting that it's being done for purposes of deterrence just a few days ago. Not to mention the leaks from the meeting where Trump berated people for not implementing his policy of taking children from their parents.

I've also noticed them sticking to the wording that they're taking the parents from the children, as if that makes it somehow better.




http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/38 ... rough-regs
Quote:
The Trump administration may take action to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood as a result of pressure from congressional Republicans and anti-abortion lobbyists.

...Republicans see the action as a way to motivate the GOP base ahead of the midterm elections, where the party’s majorities in the House and Senate are in play.
So their message to the GOP is: Ignore everything awful Trump has done because we're going to defund Planned Parenthood and make anti-abortion activists happy.



Edit to add a Washington Post article that details all the things that don't make sense about Trump's sudden about-face on ZTE:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... -firm-zte/
Quote:
Just about everything is odd about President Trump's recent tweet that he wants to help Chinese technology company ZTE “get back into business, fast” because its failure costs “too many jobs in China.”
I've seen speculation that his reward from China is that a Chinese state-sponsored company has signed on to a Trump project in Indonesia. But there doesn't seem to be any clear link between the two, only timing that looks bad. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/worl ... nesia.html

_________________

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


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