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You've been Trumped!

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 13 Feb , 2020 9:44 pm
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https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... th-foreign
Quote:
President Trump said Thursday he may end the practice of having national security and foreign service staff listen in on his calls with foreign leaders after a July call with the president of Ukraine triggered his impeachment in the House....
Yeah, he's perfectly innocent and that was a "perfect call"...


https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... stone-case
Quote:
President Trump on Wednesday celebrated Attorney General William Barr for “taking charge” of the case against Roger Stone, questioning whether the charges should have been brought against his longtime associate and friend in the first place....

Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted. Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress
Trump supporters are all over the place now, trying to pull the wool over our eyes, saying yeah, Trump shouldn't tweet, but he had no influence over Barr changing the sentencing recommendation. ("If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.... it's a unicorn!"). I had to turn off NPR in the car this morning, when one of these guys then started going on about how the Mueller report just revealed "process crimes." "Process crimes" has become one of those buzzwords they use to imply that Trump obstructing justice and possibly collaborating with Russian hackers was no big deal, and you immediately know the person is a Trump toady.


When all four of the prosecuting lawyers quit the case they won, and one quits the DOJ (another seems to have severed ties in some way, too, though they're still working for another office), there should be major alarm bells going off everywhere. Something seriously stinks.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/1 ... ent-114684
Quote:
President Donald Trump’s post-impeachment acquittal behavior is casting a chill in Washington, with Attorney General William Barr emerging as a key ally in the president’s quest for vengeance against the law enforcement and national security establishment that initiated the Russia and Ukraine investigations....

With Bill Barr, on an amazing number of occasions … you can be almost 100 percent certain that there’s something improper going on,” said Donald Ayer, the former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration.... Ayer called the attorney general’s apparent intervention “really shocking,” because Barr “has now entered into the area of criminal sanction, which is the one area probably more than any other where it’s most important that the Justice Department’s conduct be above reproach and beyond suspicion.” ...

Barr’s evident intervention in matters of personal interest to the president, particularly as they relate to former campaign advisers once at the center of Mueller’s Russia probe, has now put the reputation of an entire institution at risk, DOJ veterans said. It sent an alarming signal to hundreds of line attorneys inside the department, who may now fear that any work touching on the president’s allies will be subject to political interference, they said. And it could undo decades of post-Watergate work to separate the president from the justice system, in ways that could damage DOJ’s credibility with federal judges and with the public as a whole....

...DOJ veterans and other legal experts who spoke to POLITICO unanimously agreed that Tuesday’s act of protest by the career prosecutors on the Stone case was unprecedented....

Ultimately, Stone’s fate will be left to Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who Trump has attacked with unfounded accusations of political bias. ...

I saw, in passing, that CNN was reporting that other DOJ lawyers are also thinking of leaving now.


I was disturbed today to see this sentence in The Hill's article.
Quote:
Trump has consistently lashed out at Mueller’s investigation, which did not find evidence of a conspiracy between his campaign and Moscow...
This is technically true, but it implies Trump was exonerated. What Mueller actually said was that he couldn't find enough evidence for a conspiracy, but that Trump and his associates actively hid things from the investigators and refused to talk. Mueller also said that he would have exonerated Trump if he could, but he can't.

So it seems Trump and Barr have succeeded in changing the narrative. Perhaps it's a good time to re-post an analysis.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ump-226664
Quote:
For nearly a month, the American public has been under the impression, thanks to a four-page "summary" by Attorney General William Barr, that Robert Mueller could not decide whether President Donald Trump had obstructed justice because of “difficult questions of law and fact.” Barr suggested that the special counsel, after 22 months of investigation, simply couldn’t make up his mind and left it to his boss to decide.

Now that we have seen almost the entire report of more than 400 pages, we know Barr intentionally misled the American people about Mueller’s findings and his legal reasoning. As a former federal prosecutor, when I look at Mueller’s work, I don’t see a murky set of facts. I see a case meticulously laid out by a prosecutor who knew he was not allowed to bring it.

Mueller’s report detailed extraordinary efforts by Trump to abuse his power as president to undermine Mueller’s investigation. ... [but] Department of Justice policy prohibits the indictment of a sitting president....

That is not the only time Barr deliberately misled the American people. His letter from March is full of half-truths and highly misleading statements. For example, Barr quoted the following passage from the report: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Barr omitted the first part of that sentence, which read: “Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”...

Interesting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/us/p ... trump.html
Quote:
“I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody,” Mr. Barr said in an interview with ABC News. “And I said, whether it’s Congress, newspaper editorial board, or the president, I’m going to do what I think is right. I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.”

...Mr. Trump’s criticisms “make it impossible for me to do my job and to assure the courts and the prosecutors in the department that we’re doing our work with integrity,” Mr. Barr said.

He added, “It’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.”
There is more than one possible interpretation of this (the New York Times thinks it's an "extraordinary rebuke" of Trump), but color me skeptical. I think it's all for show. My guess is that Barr is facing some revolt in the DOJ. So far, his actions certainly suggest he's being influenced by Trump - from massaging the Mueller report's conclusions to opening multiple investigations on Trump's enemies - from McCabe and Comey to Biden's son - to refusing to accept the conclusions of one of his own investigators (Horowitz?) when they didn't say what Trump hoped. He even had that suspicious meeting with the owner of Fox news shortly before Shep Smith abruptly left.

Though I wouldn't be at all surprised if Barr wanted Trump to stop tweeting and undercutting his defenders when they try to spin his words to something less damning. It would all be much simpler if it was done in private.





Will the Republicans, the former party of states' rights, be upset that Trump wants to dictate what New York state will do? I think it's unlikely.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ce-meeting
Quote:
President Trump took a shot at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) brother shortly before their planned meeting at the White House, telling the governor not to bring “Fredo” in reference to his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo.

“I’m seeing Governor Cuomo today at The White House. He must understand that National Security far exceeds politics,” Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon, about an hour before the two were scheduled to meet in the Oval Office.

“New York must stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment, start cleaning itself up, and lowering taxes,” Trump tweeted. “Build relationships, but don’t bring Fredo!” ...
“New York must stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment, start cleaning itself up, and lowering taxes,” sounds like a threat to me. "Or else" is definitely implied with the recent retaliation.

Cuomo is meeting with Trump over the retaliation against New York for closing its drivers license records to the federal government. Trump/DHS now won't let New York residents apply for or renew Global Entry and other trusted traveler programs (I'm not sure whether it applies to Pre-check, but haven't heard that mentioned). Cuomo was going to propose that they allow access to the records only for those people applying for Global Entry, etc.

If Trump refuses, that signals to me that there is absolutely no justification for his action.


https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... its-i-file
Quote:
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) on Thursday denounced President Trump after he suggested that the state and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) need to stop filing lawsuits against him in order for its residents to be able to enroll in Global Entry and other Trusted Traveler Programs (TTPs).

"When you stop violating the rights and liberties of all New Yorkers, we will stand down," James said on Twitter.

"[By the way], I file the lawsuits, not the Governor," she added....

Trump has clearly learned how to evade Congress's control over the budget. Will the Party of Trump members in Congress protest? (unlikely).
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/4830 ... -at-border
Quote:
President Trump on Thursday renewed a state of emergency he declared on the Southern border, which he has used to reprogram billions of dollars to building his border wall....

"The executive branch has taken steps to address the crisis, but further action is needed to address the humanitarian crisis and to control unlawful migration and the flow of narcotics and criminals across the southern border of the United States," he continued....

The notice comes just hours after reports surfaced that Trump was moving an additional $3.8 billion in defense funds toward building the wall. Those funds came from aircraft, ship-building and National Guard funds....

Previous transfers emptied accounts slated for military construction projects such as repairing barracks.
I laughed at "action is needed to address the humanitarian crisis." Trump creates humanitarian crises; he isn't concerned about them. And he certainly doesn't fix them.

This is the guy who is no longer allowed to run a charity without supervision because he misled donors and used it as a personal piggy bank. And we're supposed to believe he cares about those who are less fortunate? Especially those brown-skinned folks he always rails against?
Definitely a new version of reality.




https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... mp/606496/
Quote:
John Kelly Finally Lets Loose on Trump

The former chief of staff explained, in the clearest terms yet, his misgivings about Trump’s behavior regarding North Korea, immigration, and Ukraine.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... -criticism
Quote:
Former national security adviser John Bolton on Thursday came to the defense of former chief of staff John Kelly after President Trump lashed out over a series of criticisms Kelly made during an appearance at a New Jersey university.

"John Kelly is an honorable man. John and I have disagreed at times, as is commonplace at senior government levels, but he has always served his country faithfully," Bolton tweeted. "Conservatives especially have a responsibility to reject baseless attacks upon him."

Bolton and Kelly overlapped during their time at the White House, and their relationship was not always cordial. ...But they have defended each other at points after they both came under attack from Trump....



Trump ripped Kelly earlier ...

"When I terminated John Kelly, which I couldn’t do fast enough, he knew full well that he was way over his head. Being Chief of Staff just wasn’t for him," Trump tweeted. "He came in with a bang, went out with a whimper, but like so many X’s, he misses the action & just can’t keep his mouth shut, which he actually has a military and legal obligation to do."...
Those unenforceable non-disclosure agreements Trump made everyone sign, maybe? Experts have already pointed out that those are not legal to demand from members of the federal government, though I expect they may intimidate some former employees who don't want to spend their time and money fighting Trump's pet lawyers.


Early in the Trump presidency, someone said that, in the end, it may come down to the decent people from both parties fighting a common cause. I don't like Bolton's political aims and methods, and I've said that many times. But it seems that, underneath, he has a sense of fair play and a line he won't cross, and I respect that in him.

_________________

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 14 Feb , 2020 2:13 pm
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https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... -barr-over
Quote:
Geraldo Rivera asked Trump on his podcast “Roadkill” what his life would have been like if he chose Barr first.

“My life would’ve been a lot easier, but I might have been less popular,” Trump told Rivera.

“Because they say they like that that I fought it," he added, referencing his supporters. "They like that I won. They like that my base is much more energized.”...


“Let’s assume none of this stuff happened, that we had a nice, boring presidency, right?” Trump said. “I don’t think I’d have nearly the energy in the Republican Party that we have right now.”

Trump described Barr as a “very good man doing a very good job" in the podcast...
This was aired before Barr made his comments that Trump should stop tweeting about cases in the courts.

Speaking of which, here's Trump's tweet in response to Barr:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ges-him-to
Quote:
“The President has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.” A.G. Barr This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 14, 2020




Two analyses of considerations in the Roger Stone case/ Trump tweets/ prosecutors' resignations and withdrawals:.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... ice-114683
Quote:
In my experience, federal prosecutors handling high-profile cases discuss sentencing recommendations with their supervisors. It’s hard to believe that they signed the name of the United States attorney appointed by Trump without that attorney’s approval. And no one can seriously believe that the Justice Department conducted an “individualized assessment” that changed its view one day after it recommended a guidelines-based sentence for Stone.

What changed between Monday and Tuesday? This could be it: “This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”—a tweet sent by Trump. ...

Although the DOJ tried to distance its decision from Trump’s tweet, it is unheard of for the Justice Department to recommend a sentence on one day and tell the judge one day later that what it had recommended is wrong.

It’s also highly unusual for all four prosecutors on a case to withdraw, apparently in protest of the politically motivated move. For the acting criminal chief of their office—a man three rungs above them on the organizational chart—to personally appear in the case and file the document reversing their position is just as unusual. ...

This seems useful information. One of the attack lines from Stone's defenders, including Trump, is that one of the jurors was biased. But it turns out that both the prosecution and the defense knew she was politically active during voir dire. So the defense could have struck her from the potential jurors if they liked.
https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/i ... candal-not
Quote:
...Earlier this morning, Trump supporters on Twitter exploded with allegations of jury bias in Roger Stone’s case. One of the jurors, a woman named Tomeka Hart, wrote a Facebook post defending the four prosecutors who withdrew from the case in protest after their superiors at the Department of Justice reversed their sentencing recommendation (more on that below).

The instant Hart outed herself, conservative journalists combed through her social media history and found that she’s not just a Democrat, she’s a former Democratic congressional candidate, a frequent donor to Democratic campaigns, and before the trial tweeted multiple times not just against Trump but also about the Mueller investigation. President Trump immediately weighed in...


So, there we have it—proof the trial was tainted, correct?

Not so fast. Neither the law nor the known facts support the claim. At least not yet. The law does not require judges to sideline potential jurors who have strong political beliefs. Democrats can sit in judgment on Republicans, and Republicans can sit in judgment on Democrats. The key question isn’t whether a person is partisan but rather whether they’re capable of setting aside political bias to decide questions of fact fairly and impartially. And, believe it or not, this happens all the time in the United States of America. It’s happened in my own cases.

Moreover, the jury selection process (called voir dire) provides attorneys with a limited number of peremptory challenges—which permit attorneys to strike jurors without showing cause—and ample opportunity to challenge jurors for cause. In the Stone case, the trial court struck at least 40 jurors for cause...

Did Hart truthfully answer every material question on voir dire? If so, then these “revelations” aren’t revelations at all, and the likelihood that they could form the foundation of a new trial are slim to none. Fortunately, there’s a transcript of the oral voir dire, and the transcript does not help Roger Stone. ...

[Transcript of her comments follows, then additional commentary]





https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/1 ... use-114826
Quote:
Trump installs loyalists in top jobs after impeachment purge
Trusted aide Hope Hicks will return, while Trump’s “body man” Johnny McEntee is getting a promotion.
Quote:
...One senior administration official said the West Wing personnel changes are likely to continue in the coming weeks to prepare for both the 2020 campaign season and a potential second term.

Taken together, the moves have signaled a pattern of reinstating and promoting those closest to Trump after purging staffers Trump viewed as insufficiently loyal or part of the alleged “deep state” plot to get him. The last seven days have seen a makeover of White House and agency offices, driven partly by Trump’s desire for revenge post-impeachment and partly by his wish to staff the West Wing with people with whom he feels comfortable.

The new hires and promotions like Hicks and McEntee also happen to be close with Kushner, who is overseeing the reelection campaign and has his own influential power center within the White House...

Johnny McEntee is ...being promoted to run the office responsible for filling hundreds of top political jobs throughout the federal agencies, according to three senior administration officials, replacing Sean Doocey, who will move over to the State Department....


McEntee’s new position atop the White House personnel office will be critical for staffing up across the government in 2020 and into a potential second Trump term. The office has long been seen as a weak spot within the administration, given the huge number of vacancies across agencies and a lack of vetting of several top officials that led to fallen nominees and embarrassing headlines...

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/1 ... ase-114547
Quote:
From being booed at the World Series to cheered at the college football championship game, Trump has spent the last few months popping up at various sporting events around the country — to mixed reactions. But Sunday's event promises to be a favorable landscape for a president who is trying to court voters in an election year through such appearances. ...

Trump, who plans to spend this weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in south Florida, will fly to the season-opening NASCAR race on his way back to Washington, according to two people familiar with the situation, including a Capitol Hill Republican aide.

Trump has shown an affinity for NASCAR in recent years after former CEO Brian France, Hall of Famer Bill Elliott and drivers Chase Elliott, Ryan Newman and David Ragan endorsed him when he was running for president in 2016. He later said multiple times that he had been endorsed by NASCAR.

The race itself this year will feature several cars sporting pro-Trump logos. Automotive news site GM Authority reported last week that a pro-Trump super PAC had sponsored two drivers, Tim Viens and Joe Nemechek, to run Trump-Pence 2020 insignia on their cars during the season opener this weekend....
Seriously, is the presidency just one big vacation for Trump?



This seems a perspective worth considering:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ow/606514/
Quote:
John Kelly had just finished his speech and opened up the floor to questions when a woman in the audience walked up to a microphone. She asked him how he plans “to atone for the blood of those immigrant children that are dying in detention centers” and while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

The accusation summed up the substantial skepticism and hostility that Kelly, the former White House chief of staff, faced here last night. Throughout his 75-minute appearance at the Mayo Performing Arts Center, hecklers in the crowd stood and shouted at him about the Trump administration’s family-separation practice and Muslim travel ban, two of the most controversial policies the White House enacted during Kelly’s tenure. Kelly also got smacked by the right....

Not many people who’ve worked closely with Trump have left the administration and unburdened themselves about what they saw. Yet seldom has it been more important to hear the unsparing evaluations of people who watched Trump in action. When a president routinely presents a warped picture of his own actions, it’s essential for the people who were in the room to verify what took place.

Kelly’s experience shows why many officials decide to keep quiet. Trump’s critics aren’t eager to absolve officials who were part of an administration whose policies they abhor. And Team Trump, meanwhile, won’t tolerate a whiff of dissent.

So most of the Trump diaspora has simply decided to stay silent....


EDIT to add:
Possibly another reason Barr is on the defensive against accusations he's doing Trump's bidding?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/us/p ... -barr.html
Quote:
Attorney General William P. Barr has assigned an outside prosecutor to scrutinize the criminal case against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, according to people familiar with the matter.

The review is highly unusual and could trigger more accusations of political interference by top Justice Department officials into the work of career prosecutors.

Mr. Barr has also installed a handful of outside prosecutors to broadly review the handling of other politically sensitive national-security cases in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington...

Over the past two weeks, the outside prosecutors have begun grilling line prosecutors in the Washington office about various cases — some public, some not — including investigative steps, prosecutorial actions and why they took them, according to the people....


The moves amounted to imposing a secondary layer of monitoring and control over what career prosecutors have been doing in the Washington office. They are part of a broader turmoil in that office coinciding with Mr. Barr’s recent installation of a close aide, Timothy Shea, as interim United States attorney in the District of Columbia, after Mr. Barr maneuvered out the Senate-confirmed former top prosecutor in the office, Jessie K. Liu....

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... f-of-staff
Quote:
A former top Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) adviser who helped craft some of President Trump’s most controversial environmental policies will return to the agency as its chief of staff, according to a Friday report from The Washington Post.

Mandy Gunasekara, who ran the Office of Air and Radiation under former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, played a key role in writing regulations to roll back pollution controls for coal-fired power plants and vehicle emissions, as well as the effort to leave the Paris climate accord.

Since leaving the EPA early last year, she founded Energy 45, a nonprofit “dedicated to informing the public about the environmental and economic gains made under the Trump administration.”...
The EPA wouldn't confirm (or deny) it to The Hill. All they said was “Ryan Jackson is chief of staff at EPA until February 21st, at which time Michael Molina will serve as acting chief of staff,”

The nonresponse makes me suspect the Post is correct.

btw,
Quote:
Jackson is leaving the EPA to work at the National Mining Association, which advocates for the coal industry among other clients
Somehow, I am not even surprised.




A summary of Trump's economy and a warning:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/23/tr ... a-us-2019/
Quote:
This has been a year of seemingly never-ending trade wars—between the United States and China, the United States and Europe, the United States and random other countries for random reasons, Japan and South Korea, and Britain and itself. It’s also been a culminating year for the Trump administration’s animus against the global trading system itself. Only a few small U.S. victories—an updated North American Free Trade Agreement, a limited deal with Japan, perhaps a mini deal with China—can be set against the accumulated turmoil, tensions, and tariffs.

And the trade war has exacted a heavy cost on the global economy. Businesses, and not just in the United States, have slowed down investment, and the manufacturing sector is in recession. U.S. businesses and consumers have shelled out tens of billions of dollars to pay for U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs (and billions more to pay off farmers hurt by Chinese retaliation to those tariffs). The chairman of the Federal Reserve bemoans that he is trying to make policy in uncharted waters, while forecasters race each other to slash global growth estimates.

For the United States, all this trade upheaval appears to be not a passing storm that will disappear with Trump but perhaps the new normal. Most Democrats running against Trump are just as protectionist, just as suspicious of the siren song of free trade, and just as eager to decouple the Chinese and U.S. economies. ...
It summarizes and links to some articles on significant economic news from the last year

_________________

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 17 Feb , 2020 2:58 pm
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https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/483 ... l-teams-to
Quote:
Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D) and Ed Markey (D) expressed “grave concerns” in a letter Sunday about reported plans to deploy Customs and Border Protection (CBP) SWAT teams into so-called sanctuary cities.

In the letter to the heads of CBP, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the two addressed the CBP announcement that its Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) will be deployed to several cities that refuse to cooperate with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement.

"The BORTAC deployment to Boston and other cities is unnecessary, unwelcome, and dangerous. But the specter of heavily armed, military-like personnel in our cities will accomplish one thing: provoke fear," Warren and Markey wrote....

Obviously, Trump is being heavy-handed, sending heavily armed "SWAT teams" to enforce policies against civilians in cities far from the border (also curious that he's doing this while simultaneously claiming he needs needs more funds and personnel, including the military, at the border with Mexico).

But he's also going after sanctuary cities in general. Some articles about it, and what can and can't be done (whether or not you think it should, is another question. President Obama was apparently frustrated by them as well. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/ ... ies-219754 But there have been changes on both sides since Trump started indiscriminately targeting illegal immigrants whether they're criminals, people who have been here for decades without any issues, some children who were brought here by their parents, or people who made a technical mistake that invalidated their status. For instance, the flight attendant who was a DACA recipient, brought to the US at the age of 3, and on her way to citizenship when she was arrested after her airline sent her on a flight outside the U.S. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as ... -1.5068252 )

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/1 ... tes-113597
Quote:
Trump administration goes to war with states over immigration
Quote:
The Trump administration dramatically escalated its war with so-called sanctuary states Monday, filing suit against California and New Jersey over laws that federal officials say undermine immigration enforcement.

The Justice Department suits target a California law banning privately run detention centers and a New Jersey law limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The new barrage of litigation also included a suit against a county in Washington state that effectively prohibits federal contractors from using the Seattle airport to carry out deportations....

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... es/440151/
Quote:
Why It's Difficult to Crack Down on 'Sanctuary Cities'

Republicans want to see a crackdown from Obama's Justice Department, but legal experts say cities like San Francisco have a lot of leeway.
Quote:
Republicans are pressing the White House to crack down on "sanctuary cities"—but there's only so much the Obama administration could do, even if it wanted to....

https://www.thirdway.org/memo/what-you- ... ary-cities
Quote:
While sanctuary cities have become a point of political tension in recent elections and on Capitol Hill, the issue isn’t as black or white—or as red or blue—as it may appear at first glance. Cities across the country, in both Democratic and Republican states, have expressed unwillingness to take on immigration enforcement as a direct result of decades of Congressional failure to pass comprehensive reform. According to The New York Times, there are five states and 633 counties that could be considered “sanctuary cities” by some definitions of that term. And tens of millions of people live in these areas. This includes not only large liberal cities like Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, but also cities like Tucson, AZ, and Tuskegee, AL, and even counties in states like Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.1

President Trump’s recent executive order attempts to make good on his campaign promise to crack down on sanctuary cities by denying them federal funds. In this memo we examine what sanctuary cities really are, what Trump and his allies are attempting to do to punish them, and what those actions would really mean for their communities....
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2 ... ump-000386
Quote:
Why I changed my mind on 'sanctuary' cities

When I worked in the Bush and Obama administrations, I opposed them. But under Trump, my position has changed.
Quote:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions opened a new front in the Trump administration’s immigration campaign this week when he threatened to revoke Department of Justice grants from cities and states which do not cooperate with immigration officials. Sessions’ action appears to be a real escalation in the administration’s effort to force state and local governments to end so-called sanctuary policies.

Is this a good idea? It’s a tricky issue, as I know from experience. I served as a senior federal law enforcement official in both the Bush and Obama administrations—most recently as assistant secretary of Homeland Security for Border, Immigration and Trade Policy—and have never been particularly sympathetic to the “sanctuary” movement. In my previous role, I shared former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson’s view that it is “unacceptable” and “counterproductive to public safety” for local law enforcement to refuse to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, especially in facilitating the removal of dangerous criminals from the United States.

But the Trump presidency presents a different situation, one that has forced me to rethink my view. Given Trump’s radical new immigration policies, I now strongly back the sanctuary states and cities. It’s one thing to seek cooperation from local police departments in removing undocumented felons—that was the Obama policy. But it’s another to bully cities and states into a large roundup of otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants—and that’s exactly what Trump has proposed. That I cannot support...




https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... oger-stone
Quote:
The independent Federal Judges Association is planning an emergency meeting to address issues stemming from the Justice Department's decision to intervene in the case involving Roger Stone, a longtime ally of President Trump.

Philadelphia U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, president of the group, told USA Today that it “could not wait” until its spring conference to discuss the recent decisions made within the department and that its executive committee would convene a conference call on Tuesday after the department backtracked on its recommendation for Stone's sentence. ...

_________________

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 18 Feb , 2020 8:25 pm
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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/ ... 09538.html
Quote:
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday called for all cases stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election to be "thrown out" and suggested he could bring a lawsuit over the matter.

Trump made the comments hours before a telephone conference call between lawyers for the president's former adviser, Roger Stone, and prosecutors. Stone was convicted on seven counts of lying to the US Congress, obstruction and witness tampering....


https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... agojevichs
Quote:
Illinois House Republican leader Jim Durkin tore into President Trump on Tuesday for granting clemency to the state’s disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D)...

“We have a massive federal investigation into corruption in the state of Illinois and this action distracts and dilutes what I think is the proper role of the Department of Justice — to root out corruption,” Durkin said. “I don’t agree.”...

Trump on Tuesday commuted Blagojevich’s sentence after the former governor had served roughly half of a 14-year sentence...

Blagojevich was convicted on a wide array of corruption charges, including attempted extortion of a children's hospital for campaign contributions and trying to sell former President Obama’s Senate seat after the 44th president was elected to the White House in 2008. ...

While speaking to reporters in the state capitol in Springfield, Durkin described Blagojevich’s actions as “rogue on steroids.”...
Blagojevich did the requisite ass kissing, of course.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/bla ... n-68038252
Quote:
Imprisoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich argued in a column that fellow Democrats in the U.S. House who impeached President Donald Trump also would have tried to remove Abraham Lincoln.

Blagojevich, who is serving a 14-year federal sentence for corruption, doesn't mention Trump by name in the column titled, “ House Democrats Would Have Impeached Lincoln." However, his wife, Patti, tagged the Republican president when retweeting the column, published Wednesday by the conservative website Newsmax....

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ier-milken
Quote:
President Trump on Tuesday announced he has pardoned former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who served three years in prison on federal tax fraud charges, as well as financier Michael Milken, known for pioneering high-yield “junk” bonds....



https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/ ... 43105.html
Quote:
Timeline of Trump's shifting justifications for Soleimani killing

The Trump administration makes several contradicting statements as it explains why the US killed Iran's Soleimani.
Quote:
The White House added to its ever-evolving list of justifications for killing top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani last week when in a memo addressed to Congress, it did not specifically cite the "imminent threat" the Trump administration had previously said the Iranian general posed in justifying its January attack.

In a legally-mandated memo, the White House told Congress that Trump "directed" the strike that killed Soleimani "in response to an escalating series of attacks in preceding months by Iran and Iran-backed militias on the United States forces and interests in the Middle East"....



The president and government officials, in the weeks after the strike, have been vague, inconsistent, and at times contradictory when discussing intelligence surrounding the attack. That opacity has extended even to the administration's description of US casualties following Iran's retaliatory attack on an Iraqi military base that houses US troops: First, Trump said there were no injuries. The military later said that 11 US soldiers were being treated for what the president dismissed as "headaches". That number soon ballooned to 34, then 64, before the military announced that 109 soldiers were eventually diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries.

"[The administration] 'releasing information' is almost an overstatement," Glenn Carle, a former deputy national intelligence officer, told Al Jazeera. "What they've done is respond to pressure with momentary comments and dissembling."...




A very long and very disturbing read. The quotes are only a tiny fraction of what it examines.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ar/605530/
Quote:
The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President

How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election
Quote:
One day last fall, I sat down to create a new Facebook account. I picked a forgettable name, snapped a profile pic with my face obscured, and clicked “Like” on the official pages of Donald Trump and his reelection campaign. .... I also gave my cellphone number to the Trump campaign, and joined a handful of private Facebook groups for MAGA diehards...

The president’s reelection campaign was then in the midst of a multimillion-dollar ad blitz aimed at shaping Americans’ understanding of the recently launched impeachment proceedings. Thousands of micro-targeted ads had flooded the internet, portraying Trump as a heroic reformer cracking down on foreign corruption while Democrats plotted a coup. That this narrative bore little resemblance to reality seemed only to accelerate its spread. ...

The story that unfurled in my Facebook feed over the next several weeks was, at times, disorienting. There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with damning testimony about the president’s conduct, only to look at my phone later and find a slickly edited video—served up by the Trump campaign—that used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. ...


What I was seeing was a strategy that has been deployed by illiberal political leaders around the world. Rather than shutting down dissenting voices, these leaders have learned to harness the democratizing power of social media for their own purposes—jamming the signals, sowing confusion. They no longer need to silence the dissident shouting in the streets; they can use a megaphone to drown him out. Scholars have a name for this: censorship through noise....
Quote:
...The campaign is run from the 14th floor of a gleaming, modern office tower in Rosslyn, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. ... Unlike the bootstrap operation that first got Trump elected—with its motley band of B-teamers toiling in an unfinished space in Trump Tower—his 2020 enterprise is heavily funded, technologically sophisticated, and staffed with dozens of experienced operatives. ...
Quote:
... In college, P had studied the “Little Albert experiment,” in which scientists conditioned a young child to fear furry animals by exposing him to loud noises every time he encountered a white lab rat. The experiment gave P an idea. He created a series of Facebook groups for Filipinos to discuss what was going on in their communities. Once the groups got big enough—about 100,000 members—he began posting local crime stories, and instructed his employees to leave comments falsely tying the grisly headlines to drug cartels. The pages lit up with frightened chatter. Rumors swirled; conspiracy theories metastasized. To many, all crimes became drug crimes.

Unbeknownst to their members, the Facebook groups were designed to boost Rodrigo Duterte, then a long-shot presidential candidate running on a pledge to brutally crack down on drug criminals. ...

The campaign in the Philippines was emblematic of an emerging propaganda playbook,... the technological advances of the past decade, and the global proliferation of smartphones, governments around the world have found success deploying Kremlin-honed techniques.

In the United States, we tend to view such tools of oppression as the faraway problems of more fragile democracies. But the people working to reelect Trump understand the power of these tactics. They may use gentler terminology—muddy the waters; alternative facts—but they’re building a machine designed to exploit their own sprawling disinformation architecture....
Quote:
One afternoon last March, I was on the phone with a Republican operative close to the Trump family when he casually mentioned that a reporter at Business Insider was about to have a very bad day. The journalist, John Haltiwanger, had tweeted something that annoyed Donald Trump Jr., prompting the coterie of friends and allies surrounding the president’s son to drum up a hit piece. ...

The next morning, Don Jr. tweeted the story to his 3 million followers, denouncing Haltiwanger as a “raging lib.” Other conservatives piled on, and the reporter was bombarded with abusive messages and calls for him to be fired. ...

....According to people with knowledge of the effort, pro-Trump operatives have scraped social-media accounts belonging to hundreds of political journalists and compiled years’ worth of posts into a dossier.

Often when a particular news story is deemed especially unfair—or politically damaging—to the president, Don Jr. will flag it in a text thread that he uses for this purpose. ...

If something useful turns up—a problematic old joke; evidence of liberal political views—Boyle turns it into a Breitbart headline, which White House officials and campaign surrogates can then share on social media. (The White House has denied any involvement in this effort.)...
Quote:
Parscale has indicated that he plans to open up a new front in this war: local news. Last year, he said the campaign intends to train “swarms of surrogates” to undermine negative coverage from local TV stations and newspapers. ...

Running parallel to this effort, some conservatives have been experimenting with a scheme to exploit the credibility of local journalism. Over the past few years, hundreds of websites with innocuous-sounding names like the Arizona Monitor and The Kalamazoo Times have begun popping 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: Thu 20 Feb , 2020 1:16 am
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What the hell?? Has Trump elected himself Emperor of all the US now?
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... ersal-from
Quote:
President Trump on Wednesday signed an order in California to reengineer the state’s water plans, completing a campaign promise to funnel water from the north to a thirsty ag industry and growing population further south.

The ceremonial order comes after the Department of Interior late last year reversed its opinion on scientific findings that for a decade extended endangered species protections to various types of fish – a review that had been spurred by the order from Trump.

Trump said the changes to the “outdated scientific research and biological opinions” would now help direct “as much water as possible, which will be a magnificent amount, a massive amount of water for the use of California farmers and ranchers.”...



And, again, huh? I suppose Dear Leader doesn't much care about this position, since he publicly said he believed Putin in Helsinki over the conclusions of our own intelligence agencies. But this is nuts.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... rd-grenell
Quote:
President Trump announced Wednesday that he is tapping U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as his acting director of national intelligence.

The New York Times first reported and a source confirmed to The Hill earlier Wednesday that Trump was expected to choose Grenell, a close ally to replace current acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Joseph Maguire, who has served in the role since August. The president then announced his plans in a tweet, shortly before a campaign stop in Phoenix, Ariz.

Maguire is required by law to leave his position by March 12....
This is likely to be the answer for why anyone would do anything this stupid:
Quote:
According to one former State Department official, Grenell is treated as “extended family.”

“Unwavering loyalty. I can’t recall an incident where he has expressed any concern, annoyance or frustration with Trump,” the official said of Grenell’s relationship with the president....
And Grenell's mind-blowingly extensive experience in intelligence agencies? Here it is:
https://www.dw.com/en/who-is-richard-gr ... a-39797271
Quote:
Under the Bush administration, Grenell was the Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy on the diplomatic team of four different US Ambassadors to the United Nations (UN) at a time when the US pursued a military-friendly "cowboy diplomacy" foreign policy. Key topics over the course of Grenell's tenure there included US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian and North Korean nuclear policy and the alleged involvement of Syria in Lebanese politics...

Grenell served as a political advisor and media spokesman for various Republican politicians and campaigns, including John McCain's 2000 bid for the presidency. In 2009, Grenell founded Capital Media Partners, a strategic international communications firm. He continues to be a frequent media commentator....
https://www.politico.eu/article/trump-t ... -official/
Quote:
Trump taps German envoy Ric Grenell as top intelligence official

The move puts a loyalist with no obvious intel experience at the commanding heights of America’s spy agencies.
One small silver lining for Germany - I expect they're relieved to get rid of Grenell, whose bullying and arrogant ways they couldn't stand. Though his replacement is likely to be even worse.
btw, Grenell will now be on the National Security Council, too, as the result of this position.


Meanwhile, the post-impeachment purge of intelligent, capable people continues:
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4835 ... ion-report
Quote:
A top Defense Department official is set to leave the administration following a resignation request from President Trump.

John Rood,... who assumed his position in 2018, serves as a principal adviser to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and coordinates national security policy within the Pentagon as part of his role. He also oversees areas that deal with the country's partnership with foreign allies....


Rood played a role in initially certifying to Congress that Ukraine had taken actions to make institutional reforms within its government in order to receive $250 million in security assistance from the U.S....

The letter undermined the justification that some Trump administration members gave for withholding military assistance. ...

Rood reportedly also emailed Esper just hours after Trump's July 25 phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In the email, Rood informed the Pentagon chief of an upcoming meeting that would address Trump's "concern about endemic corruption in Ukraine and his reported view that US should cease providing security assistance," according to CNN.

Rood asserted that "placing a hold on security assistance at this time would jeopardize this unique window of opportunity and undermine our defense priorities with a key partner in the strategic competition with Russia."...
At this rate, pretty soon our entire government will be run by nothing but idiot Trump loyalists, mostly in acting positions so they will always bow down to whatever King Donald wants them to do.




Oh, and is it possible to be any more blatantly destructive?
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... regulation
Quote:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday announced a new proposed rollback to an Obama-era regulation dealing with waste from coal-fired power plants known as coal ash.

The proposed changes are the Trump administration's second set of changes to protections on waste laden with arsenic.

The EPA's proposal would ease regulations for the liners that coat the bottom of coal ash pits in order to stop the cancer-linked substance from leaking into groundwater. It would also in some cases allow the use of coal ash in closing landfills....
Trump is starting to remind me of when the Russians left their military bases in their former Soviet vassal states and completely trashed everything on their way out.




https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/ ... 11756.html
Quote:
A federal judge has found the United States government in contempt after authorities deported five young immigrants who were seeking to remain in the country under a programme for abused and neglected immigrant children.

US Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins issued the civil order last week after finding the Department of Homeland Security and US Citizenship and Immigration Services violated a 2018 preliminary injunction that required them to notify lawyers of any enforcement action against the young immigrants in a class-action lawsuit in California...
. Because the Trump administration ignored the law, they (in other words, we taxpayers) are paying $500/day in fines until these young people are returned to the US. One of them was already assaulted by gangs after being returned to Guatemala.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... unsanitary
Quote:
A federal Judge in Arizona ruled in favor of migrant advocates on Wednesday in a lawsuit alleging inhumane and unsanitary conditions in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities in Tucson.

U.S. District Judge David C. Bury ordered CBP to provide a bed, blanket, shower, potable food and water, and medical assessment for migrants held more than 48 hours. The ruling would also make permanent a preliminary injunction Bury issued in 2016 that requires CBP to provide clean mats and thin blankets to migrants held for longer than 12 hours and to allow access to body wipes....

The judge ruled that CBP will not be able to hold people for more than 48 hours “unless and until CBP can provide conditions of confinement that meet detainees’ basic human needs for sleeping in a bed with a blanket, a shower, food that meets acceptable dietary standards, potable water, and medical assessment performed by a medical professional.”...
I can't remember where the article was, but there was another one about how CBP is now prohibited from having people sleep on the floors of the bathrooms.
Edit: It's in the article above:
Quote:
Bury is also banning the use of bathrooms for sleeping, which came to light during the trial this year, when video was shown of a man trying to reach a bathroom but failing to because migrants were sleeping in them.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/ ... 33882.html
Quote:
A Venezuelan teenager has been forced back to Mexico by United States government authorities who denied her claims that she was fleeing political repression and violence, even after they accepted the same claims from her father....

Branyerly and her father could not request asylum under another Trump policy, a ban on most asylum claims at the southern border for people who came through a "third country". But in January, an immigration judge allowed her father, Branly, into the US by granting what's called withholding of removal, which requires meeting a higher legal standard....

Goodwin said Branyerly was in a "particularly vulnerable situation" as the daughter of a known political activist....
There have been reports of Mexican gangs preying on people the U.S. has sent to Mexico to wait for a hearing. I read a news report the other day of how pastors are taking some of these people back to safer parts of Mexico, then returning them for their hearings. It seems there's an industry springing up around kidnapping and threatening would-be immigrants and demanding ransom from their families.





https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/ ... 27583.html
Quote:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to claim during an extradition hearing that the Trump administration offered him a pardon if he agreed to say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails during the 2016 US election campaign, a lawyer for Assange said on Wednesday....

At a preliminary hearing held Wednesday in London, lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said that now-former Republican congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, visited Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in August 2017.

Fitzgerald said a statement from another Assange lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, recounted "Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange ... said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks."...
Who knows if this is true or not.

But this is kind of interesting, in conjunction with it:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... story.html
Quote:
A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy....

Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”
Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

The remarks remained secret for nearly a year....


When initially asked to comment on the exchange, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan, said: “That never happened,” and Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, said: “The idea that McCarthy would assert this is absurd and false.”

After being told that The Post would cite a recording of the exchange, Buck, speaking for the GOP House leadership, said: “This entire year-old exchange was clearly an attempt at humor. ....

When McCarthy voiced his assessment of whom Putin supports, suspicions were only beginning to swirl around Trump’s alleged Russia ties....

_________________

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 21 Feb , 2020 2:41 pm
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https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... disloyalty
Quote:
President Trump erupted at acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Joseph Maguire in a meeting last week over concerns about Maguire's staff's loyalty,...

...after learning a member of his staff, Shelby Pierson, gave a classified briefing last Thursday to the House Intelligence Committee regarding election security, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The specific contents of Pierson’s briefing are unknown, but Trump appeared to believe she had given information specifically to Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) that would be beneficial to Democrats if made public, the people familiar with the matter told the Post....


A committee official told the Post the briefing concerned “election security and foreign interference in the run-up to the 2020 election,” speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Members on both sides participated, including Ranking Member [Devin] Nunes [R-Calif.], and heard the exact same briefing from experts across the Intelligence Community,” the committee official said....

With Grenell and his absolute loyalty to Trump now controlling things, it seems unlikely that Congress will ever again hear about concerns with election security or foreign interference. Putin can help Trump all he likes and no one will ever know. In fact, it seems no one will ever know about intelligence matters unless Trump approves.

Of course, Trump already met privately with Putin and tore up witnesses' notes with impunity. The Party of Trump, formerly known as the Republicans, didn't care then. And they clearly don't care now.


They obviously have their marching orders - close your ears to anything the experts in national security tell you and argue with them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/us/p ... crats.html
Quote:
Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.

The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the briefing.

During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that he had been tough on Russia and that he had strengthened European security.

Some intelligence officials viewed the briefing as a tactical error, saying the conclusions could have been delivered in a less pointed manner or left out entirely to avoid angering Republicans. ...


Since the impeachment inquiry, tensions have risen between the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the committee. As officials navigate the disputes, the intelligence agencies have slowed the amount of material they provide to the House, officials said. The agencies are required by law to regularly brief Congress on threats....
I've heard that Trump is also required by law to nominate someone with intelligence experience to head the intelligence agencies. Grenell, of course, has none at all.

btw, it seems he's also going to continue serving as ambassador to Germany at the same time. Is the director of national intelligence so unimportant it's now a part-time job?

Also, my sympathies to the Germans. I'm sure they hoped they'd get rid of him. Grenell's expertise, whatever it is, does NOT seem to be in conducting diplomacy, in any way, shape or form. Unless diplomacy means acting like the quintessential Ugly American, hectoring your hosts, and breaking the rules of how an ambassador should act.






https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4 ... ons-report
Quote:
More than a dozen Americans who had tested positive for coronavirus and were flown home alongside others without the virus were transported despite objections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The 14 Americans who tested positive were among more than 300 who arrived back in the United States earlier this week after being evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, which has been the center of scrutiny over a coronavirus outbreak on board. ...

The State Department and some Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials decided to allow it while the CDC objected, warning of the risk of the disease spreading on the plane, the Post reported....

The Post reported that the CDC asked to be taken off the press release....
This was idiotic IMO. They were not evacuating these people from some place like China, where the medical care right now is appalling and/or sometimes nonexistent in the worst-hit areas. This is Japan, where they would have gotten care as good as in the U.S. (Americans seem to be pretty provincial when they don't understand this.) If they even became seriously ill - WHO now says about 80% get a mild upper respiratory illness, in other words a cold. 15% have viral pneumonia - the virus hits the lungs. And 5% become seriously ill. I assume this is among those who even show symptoms. One news story said that Japan, which is testing everyone coming into the country from a high risk area, found 8 infected people on a bus. Four had no symptoms at all.

The CDC asking to be taken off the press release is another clear warning that things in the government are not well at all. They were the ones with expertise in disease control but they didn't get the final say. And they're the only ones involved who have not been taken over by Trump loyalists. Yet. I hope they never are, because chaos and dumb decisions seem to inevitably follow when that happens.





Trivial but it gives insight into what sort of moron government officials are having to appease and obey. Will everyone now have to consult the Emperor before they give out an award, to make sure it meets with his approval?
It also tells you what sort of rhetoric he thinks his followers will like.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ring-rally
Quote:
President Trump took aim at the winners of the Academy Awards at a rally in Colorado Thursday night, singling out newly-minted best supporting actor winner Brad Pitt and best picture winner “Parasite.”

Trump blasted the Academy for giving its top honor to Bong Joon-Ho’s dark comedy about conflict between two families of different economic status, saying “The winner is a movie from South Korea. What the hell was that all about? We’ve got enough problems with South Korea, with trade. And after all that they give them best movie of the year?”...


EDIT to add:
https://www.axios.com/scoop-white-house ... ce5f0.html
Quote:
Johnny McEntee called in White House liaisons from cabinet agencies for an introductory meeting Thursday, in which he asked them to identify political appointees across the U.S. government who are believed to be anti-Trump, three sources familiar with the meeting tell Axios....

But McEntee suggested the most dramatic changes may have to wait until after the November election.
Trump has empowered McEntee — whom he considers an absolute loyalist — to purge the “bad people” and “Deep State.”
McEntee told staff that those identified as anti-Trump will no longer get promotions by shifting them around agencies....
There was already a story about Trump re-hiring McEntee though I didn't realize it was Kelly who fired McEntee in 2018. It comes as no surprise that his purpose is to purge the government of anyone who doesn't kiss Trump's ass. I assume the major targets will be those who are trying to do their jobs properly and so contradict Dear Leader.


EDIT 2:
It looks like Grenell has also been instructed to purge the intelligence services of people who are not Trump loyalists:
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/484 ... gence-pick
Quote:
Of concern to some lawmakers is Grenell’s decision to hire Kashyap Patel, a former key aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), with a mandate to purge officials viewed as disloyal to Trump, according to news reports.
Other concerns from this news article:
Quote:
Grenell has also sparked concern as a possible impediment to the exchange of information between intelligence community officials and lawmakers. He is looking into the intelligence shared at a classified briefing earlier this month in which lawmakers were told that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election and that Russian agents are trying to help Trump win reelection
Quote:
Asked if he was comfortable with Grenell’s qualifications, Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) acknowledged there’s little senators can do about his temporary appointment.

“I don’t know that we have much choice,” Thune said....

“The president can put people into an acting role as long as the law allows but at some point they’ll have to make a permanent nomination, so we’ll see what they do,” Thune said....

Maguire’s term was due to expire March 11. Grenell will also be required to step down on that date unless Trump formally nominates someone to serve as permanent DNI. That would then allow Grenell to serve for at least six months longer.
And we all know Trump's habit of keeping positions filled by acting heads for incredibly long periods, which lets him bypass Congress and use whoever he likes. We also know that many people Trump has suggested for various positions turned him down. Few qualified people want to work for this dumpster fire of an administration. It's a poor career move and will probably get you fired anyway if you have any ethics or do anything to cross Dear Leader. He wants nothing but "yes men" surrounding him and he doesn't want to hear anything that contradicts his own limited understanding of the world.

_________________

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 27 Feb , 2020 7:11 pm
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OK, credit where credit is due. Trump passed the COVID-19 responsibility to Pence and, so far, Pence (who did a very poor job with AIDS in Illinois) seems to be on the right track.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4 ... oronavirus
Quote:
Pence taps career health official to coordinate White House coronavirus response
Quote:
Birx currently serves as the ambassador-at-large for the State Department coordinating the U.S. efforts to combat HIV/AIDS. An Obama-era appointee, she has held that role since 2014.

She has in the past served as a physician in the U.S. Army and as director of the U.S. Military HIV Research Program at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. She spent nearly a decade as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Global HIV/AIDS....
I think we can expect reasonable decisions if they listen to her and don't let Trump have any input.

But Dear Leader's idiotic ramblings at his press conference last night, about the Democrats causing the stock market crash (not even the Trump supporters are swallowing that one), and the media being out to get him... jeez.
Just reinforce the messages about sensible disease control practices (wash your hands often, cough into your elbow, stay home if you're sick, get help if your symptoms are severe, etc.), reassure people that the healthcare system in the U.S. is good and the truly sick will be taken care of, and ask people to comply with messages from public health officials for everyone's good. Then shut the hell up.

And I would have bet anything he'd would be proven a liar within a couple of weeks, when he claimed everything is fine and the number of cases in the U.S. is headed to zero. Turns out it happened even before the day was out. And the thing is, there are dozens of experts, including anyone at the CDC, who could have helped Trump avoid this particular egg on his face. If he just bothered to ask.

_________________

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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Frelga
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 27 Feb , 2020 9:15 pm
A green apple painted red
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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 28 Feb , 2020 4:47 pm
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Well, so much for Pence's move in the right direction with his appointment of Dr. Birx to head the COVID-19 response. It looks like she'll be controlled by Pence. And we all know Pence is controlled by Trump, who's a moron.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/p ... pence.html
Quote:
The White House moved on Thursday to tighten control of coronavirus messaging by government health officials and scientists, directing them to coordinate all statements and public appearances with the office of Vice President Mike Pence, according to several officials familiar with the new approach....

Mr. Pence convened a meeting of the coronavirus task force composed of some of the nation’s top public health officials. The vice president made it clear that they would report to him.

“I’m leading the task force,” Mr. Pence told reporters at the Department of Health and Human Services, even as he promised to rely on the guidance of experts....

Officials insist Mr. Pence’s goal is not to control what experts and other officials say, but to make sure their efforts are coordinated, after days of confusion with various administration officials making contradictory statements on television....

At the meeting with Mr. Pence on Thursday, Dr. Fauci described the seriousness of the public health threat facing Americans, saying that “this virus has adapted extremely well to human species” and noting that it appeared to have a higher mortality rate than influenza. “We are dealing with a serious virus,” Dr. Fauci said.Dr. Fauci has told associates that the White House had instructed him not to say anything else without clearance....

The president’s selection of Mr. Pence — and the decision to name Dr. Birx as the coordinator for the response — further erodes Mr. Azar’s traditional role as the nation’s top health official in charge of directing the government’s response to a medical crisis. Mr. Trump has told people that he considers Mr. Azar to be too “alarmist” about the virus....
Obviously, this is Not Good. Anthony Fauci has decades of experience in dealing with the public and knows what to say (or not to say) and they've even muzzled him.

The inclusion of Larry Kudlow and Steve Mnuchin on a disease response task force is also starting to look bad to me. I was in wait-and-see mode on that one earlier.


We'd have been better off, I suspect, if the entire Trump administration butted out completely and left all the messaging and response to be led by Alex Azar and the CDC. The CDC did a good job, and kept on top of updating guidance on its web pages during the 2019 H1N1 pandemic. But I also remember when they had to downplay messages about using condoms during the Bush era. Politicizing health is never good, and Trump is far, far worse than Bush.

Edit: To be fair, some of the Democratic presidential candidates seem to be politicizing this as well.
https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104
Quote:
AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness
Quote:
Democratic presidential contenders are describing the federal infectious-disease bureaucracy as rudderless and ill-prepared for the coronavirus threat because of budget cuts and ham-handed leadership by President Donald Trump. That’s a distorted picture. ...
The article mentions Biden and Bloomberg, but I've seen political coronavirus-related stunts from some of the others too.



btw, the article also mentions how the Orange Emperor is blundering around as usual and saying stupid stuff (so what else is new). The propaganda push from the White House is "the Democrats and media are using the coronavirus as a conspiracy to take down Our Dear and Beloved Oh-So-Wise Leader."
Quote:
Mr. Trump used an evening event honoring African-American History Month to rail against the news media..

“I think it’s an incredible achievement what our country’s done,” Mr. Trump said, noting that he had moved quickly to ban travel from China after the emergence of the virus. Even though a total of 60 people infected with the coronavirus are in the United States, he ignored all but the 15 who did not initially contract it overseas.

“Fifteen people is almost, I would say, a miracle,”

The media always gravitates toward clickbait and fear. It's what they do, with or without Trump, in this age of 24/7 headlines. They exist to sell themselves. That Trump doesn't recognize that and takes it personally is disturbing.
And, of course, Trump is wrong. The first case of apparent community-acquired spread, with no known link to anyone from China, has already appeared.


btw, I made a mistake earlier. Pence was governor of Indiana, not Illinois.




EDIT: OK, maybe I was hasty about Pence. Maybe he's learned from his experiences as governor. I clicked on this article, thinking "oh, jeez," given the headline and participants, but actually Pence doesn't sound unreasonable. He's certainly right in saying this.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... rs-part-of
Quote:
Pence told Limbaugh that the most effective way to combat the spread of disease is at the state level.

“But he talked to me about my practical experience as a governor, because a lot of people are aware the CDC is involved, HHS is involved, Homeland Security is involved, and we’ve managed the quarantines,” Pence said. “But honestly, what I learned as governor, it’s your state health department, it’s your local health care providers that are at the tip of the spear in the spread of infectious disease.”

So I suppose we'll have to wait and see whether Pence seems to be gagging health officials, in the interests of the economy and Trump support, or not. I think it will really backfire on the Trump administration if he does.

I don't care if Pence gags idiots like Kudlow or Wilbur Ross - they've been saying stupid stuff on talk shows. Probably under the direction of Trump, who seems completely clueless. There seems to be some new nonsense from Trump and his party stalwarts along the lines of "immigrants are going to invade us and make this all worse!" and "we've got to close the southern border to keep this all out!" They're exploiting the fear and uncertainty. I can't wait until all this initial panicky stage is over and people realize the end of the world is not nigh, and sensible but not extreme precautions start to prevail.


EDIT 2: The Trump administration and Pence are giving me whiplash, in giving them the benefit of the doubt then finding they probably don't deserve it. So it's starting to look like Pence is muzzling the scientists and not just the clueless administration officials. As I said earlier, Fauci has loads of experience - he knows what he's doing, what to say, and how to say it.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4851 ... hows-after
Quote:
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) on Friday said the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was told to "stand down" and not appear on five Sunday morning talk shows to discuss the coronavirus.

Garamendi told MSNBC's Hallie Jackson that Anthony Fauci was scheduled to do all five major Sunday talk shows, but says Fauci canceled the appearances after Vice President Pence took over the administration's response to the disease....




Dear Leader strikes me as either 1) desperate because he can't find a qualified candidate willing to simultaneously take this job and show absolute loyalty to himself/ willingness to lie for him, or 2) hoping to get Grenell as acting head of intelligence services for longer than the March deadline (see earlier reports):
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ence-chief
Quote:
President Trump has tapped Rep. John Ratcliffe to serve as his next director of national intelligence (DNI), reviving an appointment of the Texas Republican that previously derailed last year....

Trump had initially appointed Ratcliffe to serve as his intelligence chief in July, but the Texas congressman withdrew from consideration weeks later amid media scrutiny that he padded his résumé as well as bipartisan concerns about his experience....

_________________

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 03 Mar , 2020 12:43 am
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Not that this will come as a big surprise, but still.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4855 ... questioned
Quote:
The White House has withdrawn its nomination for Pentagon budget chief after the nominee questioned President Trump’s hold on Ukraine military aid that was at the center of the president’s impeachment....

[Elaine] McCusker has been acting comptroller since the summer and was officially nominated to take over as comptroller in November.

Her role as acting comptroller put her in the center of Trump’s decision to withhold $250 million in military aid to Ukraine, a decision that ultimately led to his impeachment.

In emails published by Just Security after a Freedom of Information Act request, McCusker expressed concerns about the legality of withholding the funds.

One exchange showed her at odds with White House Office of Management and Budget official Michael Duffey. When Duffey told her that it would be the Pentagon’s fault, not the White House’s, if funds weren’t spent by the legally mandated deadline, McCusker replied: “You can’t be serious. I am speechless.”

The Government Accountability Office later determined that withholding the aid violated the law. ...

OT: If anyone is watching the COVID-19 situation and looking for a clue on how nasty this disease might be outside Wuhan, I'd be watching the stats coming in from South Korea. So far, they've actively tested 100,000 people and found 4200 infections (22 deaths so far). They're not just testing people who have serious symptoms, or who have cold/flu symptoms after returning from an outbreak area outside the country
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4 ... china-than
The EU's European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has a nice site with good stats, including the number of confirmed cases and deaths, broken down by country, though you can also get them elsewhere (WHO, etc.).
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/geographi ... ncov-cases

_________________

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 05 Mar , 2020 6:15 pm
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I assume this is related to the new person Trump put in charge of federal employees to ensure that everyone is personally loyal to him.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... out-trumps
Quote:
The White House is using a new survey to question potential employees about President Trump’s appeal, according to multiple reports this week....

The White House’s Presidential Personnel Office reportedly sent the survey to federal departments on Monday as part of an effort to ensure those working in the administration are loyal to Trump.

The applicants are specifically asked “What part of Candidate Trump’s campaign message most appealed to you and why?”

This questionnaire would be utilized for political appointments in the administration,...

"The purpose of this document is to expedite Presidential Personnel's vetting process," the new survey says, before asking for all social media accounts and references. ...
CNN does say that asking about political lean is "not atypical" for an administration's political appointees. I have no idea whether that means "Most administrations ask it, though these sorts of detailed questions are pretty weird." or "There have been a few administrations that asked about lean." The article does add this:
Quote:
Two former Obama White House officials told CBS News they did not ask applicants about political leanings or opinions
I imagine they were more interested in getting competent people who will speak the truth, and not just some toady who will bow down to the president.



https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... gram-after
Quote:
The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) uses oil and gas revenue to fund a variety of conservation efforts, such as securing land for parks. But Trump has suggested cutting its funding by as much as 97 percent year after year, including in his most recent budget proposal.
So Trump then tweeted:
Quote:
"I am calling on Congress to send me a Bill that fully and permanently funds the LWCF and restores our National Parks," Trump tweeted. "When I sign it into law, it will be HISTORIC for our beautiful public lands.
(Congress has resisted Trump's efforts to cut this program. It's like the funding for CDC and NIH - Trump keeps proposing budgets that slash funding and Congress keeps saying no. Lots of other programs this has been happening to.)





With Biden now emerging as the front runner in the Democratic primaries, Trump's loyal allies have resurrected the Ukraine/Burisma nonsense. Romney might help stop that.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/486 ... -political
Quote:
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said on Thursday... “There's no question but that the appearance of looking into Burisma and Hunter Biden appears political, and I think people are tired of these kind of political investigations,” Romney told reporters.

Romney’s skepticism could signal a significant roadblock for Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson's (R-Wis.) efforts to subpoena a former consultant for a U.S. firm with ties to Burisma....

Republicans hold an 8-6 majority on the committee. That means a "no" vote from Romney will result in a 7-7 tie, which would result in the subpoena failing.


btw, it would be really nice if we could have a competent adult as president. One who spoke clearly and didn't confuse people:
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4 ... -18-states
Quote:
...Later in the interview with Hannity, Trump seemed to suggest those who have the virus could even continue going to work, something health officials strongly advise against.

“If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better,” Trump said....
EDIT: It seems the sentence might have been slanted by taking it out of context, though I don't have the time or inclination to make sure. Supposedly, these were the full remarks:
“A lot of people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor, they don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about those people. So you can’t put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and or virus. So you just can’t do that. So, if you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work. Some of them go to work, but they get better.”

In that case, I still call it one of Trump's woolly ramblings, sort of like listening to your elderly uncle where he basically got the gist of something (yes, the majority of the infections look to be fairly mild or asymptomatic, and underdetection of those infections is going to skew the initial estimates of the case fatality rate) but it's not clear if he understands the whole situation (there will also be serious cases, especially in the elderly and immunocompromised, and the only treatment available right now is to support the body and hope it can fight off the virus and recover. Some of those frail bodies won't be able to do that.) And a good leader and communicator would have immediately realized what he said and made it clear that he's not suggesting people with milder illnesses actually go to work sick (and explained why). But it looks like the media and some partisans may be trying to stoke outrage by making his statement look worse than it was. Not a very wise move IMO.



At least someone seems to have sat the idiot down and explained some things to him.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... oronavirus
Quote:
President Trump on Tuesday said the administration is no longer seriously considering closing the southern border due to the spread of the coronavirus, three days after he said the idea was being weighed "very strongly."
For one thing, it would be pretty pointless. For another, it would compound the economic effects of COVID-19 on supply chains (and investor panic), given the daily traffic of goods and people across the border.



EDIT to add:
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... relocation
Quote:
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has lost more than half of its Washington-based employees who were slated to move out West as the agency pushes ahead with a controversial plan to relocate staff.

New internal numbers from the Interior Department obtained by The Hill show 69 employees have left the agency rather than accept the new assignment. Another 18 left after the plans were announced but before they could be reassigned....

“This is a huge brain drain,” said Steve Ellis, who retired from BLM’s top career-level post in 2016. “There is a lot of really solid expertise walking out the door.”...

Friday, EDIT to add related story:
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... relocation
Quote:
A government watchdog found the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) largely failed to justify relocating nearly all of it’s [sic] Washington-based employees and scattering them across the West, delivering fuel to Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-A.Z.) as he weighs a subpoena on the subject.

A scathing report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) paints a picture of an agency that did little to determine how the move would improve the agency, excluded employees from having a say in the process and failed to do a proper analysis on a number of factors....

The report questions BLM’s decision to place the new headquarters in Grand Junction, a town of 60,000 in Colorado’s Western slope, located about four hours from any major airport....

The report also dings the agency for failing to do a proper cost-benefit analysis....

BLM repeatedly refused to supply information to GAO, echoing earlier complaints from Grijalva that his committee was often ignored by the agency....

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4 ... hdog-finds
Quote:
Poor communication and internal management decisions left the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ill-prepared to respond to the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy of family separations, according to an internal watchdog report released Thursday....

According to the inspector general, senior HHS officials had no idea the family separation policy was being implemented by the departments of Justice and Homeland Security until they learned about it from media reports. ...

It created a lack of available bed space, leaving hundreds of children inappropriately detained in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) custody, instead of with HHS. ...

And at the same time, the report found that warnings from staff were ignored. Key senior officials with HHS's Administration for Children and Families (ACF) "did not act on staff's repeated warnings that family separations were occurring and might increase," the report said....

Last edited by aninkling on Fri 06 Mar , 2020 9:03 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: Fri 06 Mar , 2020 3:36 pm
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https://apnews.com/fe8eee387b53888c478a24021fc101aa
Quote:
A federal judge on Thursday sharply rebuked Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the special counsel’s Russia report, saying Barr had made “misleading public statements” to spin the investigation’s findings in favor of President Donald Trump and had shown a “lack of candor.”...

The scolding was unusually blunt...

In his ruling, Walton said he needed to review the entire document itself because he could not trust that the Justice Department’s redactions of the report were made properly and in good faith. The judge said it would be “disingenuous” to presume the redactions were “not tainted by Attorney General Barr’s actions and representations” throughout the process....

Those inconsistencies, Walton wrote, “cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary.”
You can always tell how damaging the Trump supporters think something will be, by how quickly the usual suspects ( the ones who blindly defend Trump, no matter what) jump into the discussion. They leaped onto this one fast, with post after defensive post, which suggests to me they've got their orders to shut this story down.

If Barr made the redactions appropriately, Trump has nothing to worry about. If he didn't....


More analysis and some interesting things here:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/0 ... arr-122449
Quote:
Walton’s claim that Barr displayed a “lack of candor” is likely to reverberate loudly within the Justice Department. That phrase has unusual weight in federal law enforcement, where such an accusation can and does result in dismissal. “Lack of candor” is specifically what former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was accused of before being fired by Barr’s predecessor, Jeff Sessions, in 2018.
In previous case (this is a Republican judge, btw):
Quote:
...Prosecutors finally notified McCabe’s lawyers last month that no charges were being brought. The formal word came on the same day as a deadline that Walton had set for the release of previously secret court records about the issue.

Transcripts made public that day showed that at an earlier, closed-door hearing the judge used extraordinarly sharp language as he slammed the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation of McCabe, who has been a frequent target of attacks from Trump.

“The public is listening to what’s going on, and I don’t think people like the fact that you got somebody at the top basically trying to dictate whether somebody should be prosecuted,” Walton said. “I just think it’s a banana republic when we go down that road.”


FYI:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... eport.html
Quote:
See Which Sections of the Mueller Report Were Redacted
Quote:
About 10 percent of the special counsel’s 448-page report is blacked out. A bird’s-eye view of the report reveals the pattern of redactions. More is kept secret in the first volume of the report, which covers Russian interference in the 2016 election, than in the second, which covers possible obstruction of justice...



https://thehill.com/opinion/national-se ... olitics-is
Quote:
Reacting to the Trump administration’s withdrawal of Elaine McCusker’s nomination to become comptroller of the Department of Defense (DOD), a friend of mine emailed me: “I worked for her at CENTCOM when she was comptroller there. She was very good.”

How true. Not only was she very good at the Central Command’s headquarters in Tampa, but she carried out a highly commendable job both as congressionally-confirmed principal deputy under secretary of Defense to then-Comptroller David Norquist, and then as Norquist’s acting replacement when he moved up to become the DOD’s deputy secretary. Indeed, she was respected by both Democratic and Republican comptrollers who preceded her in that office.

McCusker’s sin was that she had questioned the ability of the White House to hold up funds for military assistance to Ukraine. ...

There is a rumor circulating in the defense community that the president sought McCusker’s ouster, even as principal deputy, but relented in the face of protests by the department’s leadership. ...Hopefully, there is truth that these pleas have succeeded in permitting her to retain her critical position in the Defense Department, at least for the moment....

... it is generally easier to find replacements for those in purely policy-making positions; Washington in particular is filled with a bevy of think-tankers who would give their right arms to take any top policy jobs that become vacant.

But defense budgeting is highly technical, even an arcane pursuit. To manage the department’s massive budgets and programs requires years, even decades, of hands-on experience. That the president sought to remove a talented budgeteer is a reflection of his ignorance of what her job entails....

_________________

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 10 Mar , 2020 8:16 pm
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https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ole-report
Quote:
Trump administration hires another college senior for key role
Quote:
A 22-year-old Iowa State University senior set to graduate in May has been hired for a key position in the Trump administration.

Anthony Labruna is set to start on Monday as a deputy White House liaison at the Department of Commerce...

Politico reported that some officials have expressed dismay over Labruna's hiring, saying they are "pretty concerned" he may lack experience.

The Department of Commerce says the Office of the White House liaison helps oversee the appointment of top officials to vacancies in the department and helps with special reports and projects. ...

The hiring follows the recent hiring of 23-year-old George Washington University senior James Bacon to a top role in the White House’s Presidential Personnel Office.

Labruna and Bacon were reportedly tapped in part by John McEntee, Trump’s former personal assistant who was fired in 2018 and recently rehired to head up the office. ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/us/p ... staff.html
Quote:
Fourth Time’s the Charm? Mark Meadows Takes Over Trump’s White House

Mr. Meadows, a retiring Republican congressman from North Carolina and one of President Trump’s most ardent defenders, becomes the latest chief of staff for a mercurial president who dispatched the previous three after they fell out of favor.



https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... -president
Quote:
The Republican mayor of Sterling Heights, Mich., the fourth-biggest city in the state, is abandoning his support of President Trump and endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden for president.

Michael Taylor, who cast his 2016 ballot for Trump, first told The Chicago Tribune of his decision on Monday, saying that he felt “Biden is the candidate who can unify all of the Democrats" and "appeal to moderates and Republicans like me who don’t want to see four more years of Trump."

He added in a tweet that he couldn't look at his three kids and tell them that he supported the president, whom he described as "deranged."...


https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4 ... enger-data
Quote:
The Trump administration has reportedly threatened airlines with fines unless they expand the types of data they collect on passengers to combat the spread of coronavirus....

Shortly after the White House imposed travel restrictions on foreign nationals who had been to China in the preceding two weeks, the administration demanded the airlines collect data on whether travelers had visited China in the last 48 hours, with executives responding that they lack the technology to collect the answers digitally and that they would have to either use paper or wait six months to upgrade the technology.

An official from the CDC accused the airlines of lying in response, according to CNN, and officials told the airlines they would face fines of up to $250,000 unless they comply by mid-March....
Meanwhile, we've obviously got community spread in a number of places and federal officials have (finally) acknowledged they're moving from a containment strategy to mitigation. So I can't see why it matters whether someone got infected in China or from the guy they ran into at CPAC or AIPAC or a drug company meeting (just to mention a few recent incidents).

But still we have to send everyone from a cruise ship in Oakland either to the hospital or (if asymptomatic) to a military base to be guarded from contact with others by soldiers, instead of just sending the local people to self-quarantine at home :
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/coro ... -concerns/
Rumor has it that Trump didn't even want the ship to dock and let people off.

A report from the previous batch of cruise ship passengers, who were brought back to the U.S. from Japan. (though back when this type of quarantine still made sense):
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ip/607138/

Meanwhile, some people who developed mild symptoms after being on a cruise or other travel have been told to just stay home until they recover and test negative, which is perfectly sensible.

Sending people with milder symptoms to the hospital to be isolated also boggles my mind. For one thing, truly sick people need the beds. For another, the last place I'd want to go with a viral upper respiratory infection is the hospital, unless I actually needed that level of care - if you end up picking up a secondary bacterial infection, which sometimes happens, it's much more likely to be a multiple drug-resistant one there than at home. U.S. hospitals especially have issues with them, from MRSA to Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, which seems to be the latest nasty hospital-associated bug you don't want to get.


I suppose some of this stuff is driven by public panic. I heard today about a flight being diverted because three people got difficult about being seating near someone with allergies who was coughing and sneezing but had no fever. Though, to the airline's credit, they removed the three idiots, not the allergic person. :) (Of course, the three will soon be on Twitter, working up outrage against the airline.)



Oh, and Trump is already planning to bail out (AKA bribe?) the oil industry with taxpayer money:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/ ... ucers.html
Quote:
The Trump Administration will review solutions to the pain felt by US oil producers as oil prices fall to multi-year lows on Monday, according to Bloomberg.

Administration officials will present the President with options, which will include financial assistance to industries affected by the coronavirus and the oil price crash. These measures may include cash injections, tax credits, payroll tax cuts, and tariff reductions on specific Chinese imports, Bloomberg sources familiar with the matter said on Monday....
Never mind the fact that, the decrease in oil prices will be good news for consumers and some industries. (however long this spat between Saudi Arabia and Russia lasts, before OPEC hikes prices once again and shale-oil production once again becomes profitable for the U.S. oil companies)

_________________

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 11 Mar , 2020 7:50 pm
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Unbelievable.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN20Y2LM
Quote:
The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion, according to four Trump administration officials. ..

Staffers without security clearances, including government experts, were excluded from the interagency meetings, which included video conference calls, the sources said.

“We had some very critical people who did not have security clearances who could not go,” one official said. “These should not be classified meetings. It was unnecessary.”

The sources said the National Security Council (NSC), which advises the president on security issues, ordered the classification.”This came directly from the White House,” one official said. ...

An NSC spokesman did not respond to questions about the meetings at HHS. But he defended the administration’s transparency ...“From day one of the response to the coronavirus, NSC has insisted on the principle of radical transparency,” said the spokesman, John Ullyot. He added that the administration “has cut red tape and set the global standard in protecting the American people under President Trump’s leadership.” ...

The meetings at HHS were held in a secure area called a “Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility,” or SCIF, according to the administration officials.

SCIFs are usually reserved for intelligence and military operations. Ordinary cell phones and computers can’t be brought into the chambers. HHS has SCIFs because theoretically it would play a major role in biowarfare or chemical attacks. ...
Seriously what an absolute moron. Trump doesn't have a clue how professionals work (no, CDC experts are not going to run around saying stupid or careless stuff just to make Trump look bad.) And he has the strategic planning skills of a newt, because when people hear this, some will probably assume some great and terrible secrets are being kept from them, and panic more.

And John Ullyot sounds like he would fit right in making announcements for Kim Jong Un in North Korea. All hail our glorious leader indeed. Is there anyone in this administration who's allowed to just do their job without simultaneously kissing Trump's ass and telling us how wonderful he is? It's getting really disturbing, that everyone is running around genuflecting to Trump with everything they say. No functional western government with a sane leader works that way.


https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... oronavirus
Quote:
President Trump is considering an address to the nation to discuss the coronavirus, according to an adviser familiar with the discussions.

The adviser cautioned that nothing had been decided, but that there was talk among White House aides of Trump delivering an address focused on how the administration is responding to the growing health crisis.

"I think Trump should give a national television address tonight or tomorrow night and be the commander in chief and really lay out a set of prescriptions," the person said....
Please, no. Just no. Put the chief toddler with the emperor complex in a room somewhere to play with his toys and let the adults deal with this. [EDIT: Alas, it looks like he will. I guess he's not getting enough attention these days.]


https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4 ... us-spreads
Quote:
During a visit last Friday to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Trump donned a “Keep America Great” hat as he lashed out at Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), whose state has seen the greatest outbreak [FYI: He apparently called Inslee a snake and told Pence not to be too complimentary to him.]...

“I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it,” Trump said at the CDC. “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
Trump also claimed that there were so many test kits that anyone who wanted a test could get one, which was nonsense, and had to be quickly corrected by those who know better.

The encouraging part:
Quote:
As the vice president’s office has taken over coordinating the messaging strategy, political appointees have been booked on television less frequently to speak about the virus. Instead, Fauci, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar and Pence have conducted television interviews.
I'm glad to see the fears about muzzling Fauci turned out not to be true.

Still, they could do better.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/p ... xperts-not
Quote:
....The White House has struggled to maintain messaging surrounding the spreading disease, with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar last week contradicting Vice President Pence's claims that the U.S. did not have enough coronavirus tests to meet the expected demand.

"There is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been," Azar told ABC News.*

President Trump, meanwhile, told reporters at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that day that "anybody who wants a [coronavirus] test gets a test."

The president also indicated that he did not want infected passengers from a cruise ship to come on land for treatment, but deferred to Pence, who is overseeing the administration's coronavirus task force. Pence later said infected passengers would be brought on land for treatment....

*I guess those hospitals that requested testing earlier were just denied for the hell of it? (No, you don't do that if there is plenty of testing capacity).






https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... ging-group
Quote:
The internal watchdog at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has agreed to lawmakers’ request to investigate whether grants from the agency funded efforts to lobby for reduced protections for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.

Democrats in the House and Senate asked for the investigation in November after reports in Alaska [sic] media that a $2 million federal grant to help prepare for potential changes in forest protections was, in part, funneled to the Alaska Forest Association, a timber industry group....

Beyond whether the USDA grants, distributed through its U.S. Forest Service, were improperly handed away, lawmakers also have questions about how the overall grant itself came to deal with the roadless rule.

The $2 million in funds were originally intended for grants to combat wildfires, but it was later modified to allow Alaska to use it to weigh in on changes to the roadless rule....

btw, the predicted spin from Trump toadies has arrived, as predicted in an earlier article:
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-envi ... ation-bill
Quote:
President Trump called on senators to deliver on conservation bill — they listened
Quote:
Quill Robinson is the vice president of government affairs at the American Conservation Coalition.
The reality, from an earlier article I posted - Trump's budget has repeatedly called for drastic cuts to this program: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... gram-after

_________________

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 12 Mar , 2020 12:53 pm
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Brilliant. Trump wants to "do something" about the COVID-19 outbreak so, as usual, he does something pointless and dumb.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... o-european
Quote:
A former homeland security adviser in the Trump administration said Thursday that he sees "little value" in President Trump's move to impose travel restrictions on Europe ...

Tom Bossert, who served in the administration from 2017 to 2018, called it a "poor use of time and energy," arguing that the restrictions wouldn't be helpful, considering the U.S. already has more than 1,300 confirmed cases of the disease. ...

"Earlier yes. Now, travel restrictions/screening are less useful," Bossert tweeted.

"We have nearly as much disease here in the US as the countries in Europe....
My guess is that this 1300 cases is a severe underestimate, considering how testing has really just started. I wouldn't be surprised if we have at least as many infections as most European countries, in relation to the population numbers, and maybe more.

And the corollary is that Trump will then spend our taxes on bailing out the airlines and other industries hit by this useless move. He also wants to shut down cargo, which will make an even bigger economic mess.


And this part is just bizarre:
Quote:
It also does not apply to the United Kingdom, which formally left the European Union in January.
The U.K. has had a few hundred (known) cases so far. How is this different than Germany or Spain or France or any number of E.U. countries?


The text of Trump's speech. Basically, he's gone from "nah, we won't get any more cases" to "this is a foreign invasion and the greatest threat to health ever and we have the greatest response ever and we're going to protect you all."
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... s-pandemic
Quote:
This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history. I am confident that by counting and continuing to take these tough measures we will significantly reduce the threat to our citizens and we will ultimately and expeditiously defeat this virus. From the beginning of time nations and people have faced unforeseen challenges, including large-scale and very dangerous health threats. This is the way it always was and always will be. It only matters how you respond and we are responding with great speed and professionalism. Our team is the best anywhere in the world.

To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days. The new rules will go into effect Friday at midnight. These restrictions will be adjusted subject to conditions on the ground. There will be exemptions for Americans who have undergone appropriate screenings and these prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, but various other things as we get approval. Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing. These restrictions will also not apply to the United Kingdom. At the same time, we're monitoring the situation in China and South Korea, and as their situation improves, we will re-evaluate the restrictions and warnings that are currently in place for a possible early opening.
(at least someone wrote him a section of health officials' advice to read, about the only useful part of his speech. Not that we haven't heard the same thing constantly from more reliable sources.)


What a joke. Might as well say we're going to stop next year's flu outbreak by setting up fans to blow the virus away from the cities. Yeah, we can and should try to slow COVID-19's spread with sensible measures, so the seriously affected can get the care they need, but acting like this is the arrival of ebola is as dumb as pretending it won't cause any deaths.

Oh, and he's giving the oil industry, airlines etc. permission not to pay any taxes at all for now, while spending more money, AKA greatly increasing the national debt:
Quote:
I am instructing the small business administration to exercise available authority to provide capital and liquidity to firms affected by the coronavirus. Effective immediately the SBA will begin providing economic loans in affected states and territories. These low interest loans will help small businesses overcome temporary economic disruptions caused by the virus. To this end I'm asking Congress to increase funding for this program by an additional $50 billion. Using emergency authority, I will be instructing the Treasury Department to defer tax payments without interest or penalties for certain individuals and businesses negatively impacted. This action will provide more than $200 billion of additional liquidity to the economy.

In a nutshell, as we all knew, Trump is a xenophobic, fearful ass and we can't get rid of him soon enough.
What a shame the Republicans in the Senate refused to do it when they could have. Judging by how Pence is handling things so far, I'd say we'd be far better off if he was president right now and he didn't have to be constantly bowing to Trump's idiotic whims. (and I say that as someone who isn't a fan of Pence or his attitudes).


I'm actually more afraid now of what the Trump's response will do than the virus itself.




EDIT to add:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... oronavirus
Quote:
President Trump is weighing whether to declare a national emergency over the coronavirus, which would free up additional resources to combat the rapidly spreading disease.

"We have things that I can do. We have very strong emergency powers under the Stafford Act," he said during an Oval Office meeting with the Irish prime minister "I have it memorized practically as to the powers in that act, and if I need to do something I’ll do it. I have the right to do a lot of things that people don't even know about."...
I think the last thing we want, right now, is more power in the hands of this power-hungry moron. He will not use those powers well.


https://thehill.com/policy/finance/4871 ... rom-europe
Quote:
Stocks plummeted Thursday morning after President Trump restricted travel from Europe to the U.S., the latest sign that the coronavirus is slamming the economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 2,000 points shorty after 10 a.m. Thursday, plunging 8.6 percent.

The index already on Wednesday had slipped to more than 20 percent below its 52-week high, entering what traders consider a bear market. ...



This is also a worrisome situation. I saw the news about the Americans soldiers killed yesterday and was afraid of how Dear Leader will react this time. We dodged a bullet last time because Iran had a muted response to Trump's response. From some accounts, Esper (and Milley?) were the hawks behind getting Trump to order the Soleimani assassination and they sound belligerent again.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4872 ... tack-kills
Quote:
The Pentagon’s top leaders on Thursday confirmed that Iranian-backed militia were behind the rocket attack in Iraq that killed two U.S. troops and one British soldier a day earlier, saying that “all options are on the table” for a response. ...

“Let me be clear, the United States will not tolerate attacks against our people, our interests or our allies,” Esper added.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, who spoke alongside Esper, echoed that all options are on the table ....

The Pentagon chief also said he spoke to President Trump on Wednesday about the attack and the president gave him all the authority he needs to possibly respond....
We're still stubbornly remaining in Iraq, against its own government's wishes (at least the ones they've said publicly) and providing the opportunity for this scenario to happen. Then, when it inevitably happens again (no, the pro-Iran militias in Iraq are not going to disappear), we talk about starting a war with Iran again.


It's like being on a boat where they've announced there's a norovirus outbreak, meanwhile the captain's drunk and waving a pistol around and the weather service just announced there's a typhoon forming in the vicinity. Just nuts.

_________________

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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Jude
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 12 Mar , 2020 6:39 pm
Aspiring to heresy
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aninkling wrote:
We dodged a bullet last time because Iran had a muted response to Trump's response.
Um. They shot down a passenger plane, killing everyone on board. Is that what you call a muted response?

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 12 Mar , 2020 10:58 pm
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Jude, you know better if you've been reading the news. Iran's response was a limited strike on a US airbase in Iraq, with plenty of warning to Iraq, which I'm sure they knew would be passed on to the U.S. They could have responded far more belligerently. As a result, the tensions between the US and Iran were temporarily defused instead of escalating toward open war.


Shooting down the passenger plane was a screw-up and a terrible accident, plain and simple. Just like the time the U.S. accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger airliner during a previous time of heightened tensions.



Speaking of which, things are about to escalate over there again.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/ ... 46232.html
Quote:
Retaliatory air raids hit Iraqi targets after attack on US troops

Iraqi airport under construction in the city of Karbala reporteldy among the locations targeted by the United States.

_________________

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 09 Jul , 2020 3:54 pm
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While I'm here, a different perspective on John Bolton's book on Trump:

https://quillette.com/2020/06/30/the-ro ... -a-review/
Quote:
Several books have already sought to illuminate the malign zaniness of the Trump White House. Journalist Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury arrived in January 2018...

...So yet another volume—even one written by a person whose leadership of the NSC meant a great deal of face time with Trump—may seem otiose. Indeed, some reviewers have concluded it is exactly that. Bret Stephens, a conservative Trump opponent and columnist for the New York Times, sums up Bolton’s book as one which “tells all, yet somehow manages to say nothing.” ... Stephens’s New York Times colleague Jennifer Szalai, meanwhile, is dismissive in another way. Attacking the author rather than his work, she reminds the paper’s largely liberal readership of Bolton’s strongly hawkish views, and finds him deficient in style, organisation of material, and ability to mark out large issues from “a stew of detail.” David Ignatius in the Washington Post and Graeme Wood in the Atlantic are less reproachful, and indeed at times complimentary, but both agree that this is not a significant piece of work.

I think it is, but I should first concede some agreement with the above. It’s not as badly written at Szalai says, but it’s clunky,...

...There’s more where that comes from. Like Trump, Bolton believes that the Obama presidency’s conduct of foreign policy between 2009 and 2017 was pretty much a disaster. But unlike Trump, he knows why he thinks that. Like most of Trump’s weary aides, he learns quickly the correctness of the observation attributed to Jonathan Swift that “you cannot reason someone out of something that he or she was not reasoned into.” ...

[but]...The importance of his job is the central reason why this inelegant memoir is valuable. Unlike the former chroniclers (including Newman, a minor figure in the hierarchy) and the many reporters who have prised, or been granted, leak after leak from the White House, Bolton was in the Oval Office, in the conference rooms, in the meetings with foreign leaders, even at the dinner-summit tables in Washington and abroad. These were the times when the President of the United States sat down with, or opposite, his fellow leaders to discuss the issues of a world for which the US, even now, is more responsible than any other single state. And the witness can be devastatingly, frighteningly revealing. At one dinner with Xi, Bolton recounts how the Chinese leader went through a list of points on a set of prepared cards he considered central to this most crucial relationship. Trump, on the other hand, ad libbed and said whatever came into his head....

.... Still, to read that, in his capacity as president, Trump actually encouraged the oppression of a people on account of their religious beliefs is one of many jolts Bolton’s memoir administers. I received another when I discovered that Trump had told Erdoğan that he would intercede on behalf of a Turkish state-owned bank being investigated by US prosecutors he described as “Obama people.” ...

We have become used to stories of this kind, but an account from someone who actually witnessed these hair-raising exchanges has considerably more power than anonymous briefings of what may be politically or personally motivated hearsay. In narratives of this kind, nothing is more valuable than a narrator who has followed the advice an old minister gives to successors in C.P. Snow’s 1954 novel The New Men—“always be present in the flesh.” ...

Worth posting (also added an article with concerns from a Japanese physician on masks in the heat, in the other thread. They don't normally wear masks in the summer either.)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN24B351
Quote:
President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone...

Trump’s decision to commute Stone’s sentence days before he was due to report to prison marked the Republican president’s most assertive intervention to protect an associate in a criminal case and his latest use of executive clemency to benefit an ally. ...

Stone was among several Trump associates charged with crimes in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that documented Russian interference to boost Trump’s 2016 candidacy....



Mueller’s investigation found extensive contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russians.

Republican reaction on Capitol Hill was largely muted, with a handful of Trump allies welcoming the action.

But Senator Mitt Romney, the only Republican to vote to convict Trump at his Senate impeachment trial, denounced the action on Twitter: “Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.”...



A Washington jury in November 2019 convicted Stone on all seven criminal counts of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness.

Trump repeatedly lashed out on Twitter about Stone’s case, accusing prosecutors of being corrupt, the juror forewoman of political bias and the judge of treating his friend unfairly. ...
It's a shame the Democrats are alienating so many of us lately with their support of far left positions. I would have sworn this election was theirs to lose, otherwise. Now I'm starting to wonder if we'll even manage to get rid of Trump, despite him being utterly unfit for the job of president IMO.

_________________

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 05 Nov , 2020 7:51 pm
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As I've been warning for months elsewhere, the Democrats sat in their echo chambers, thinking every right-thinking person feels the same way they do, and nearly blew their chance to get rid of Trump.


https://reason.com/2020/11/04/media-tru ... 020-biden/
Quote:
The Media Had 4 Years to Figure Out Trump Voters. They Blew It.
Quote:
As independent thinkers exit mainstream institutions, groupthink and blind spots are likely to get worse.

When Donald Trump pulled off a stunning upset and won the presidency in 2016, few people were more shocked than the professional take-havers in the mainstream media. Pundits, journalists, and political strategists—who live in Washington, D.C., or New York City but seldom leave their Twitter bubbles—were totally blindsided by the fact that a crass reality TV star had managed to defeat Hillary Clinton, the embodiment of the Democratic establishment.

A healthy media might have learned from its mistakes, engaged in soul-searching, and tried to gain some insights into the working-class coalition that Trump had assembled. Clearly, this didn't happen, because four years later—in the midst of a nail-bitingly close election—the predictions of the pundit class have proven to be no more accurate than they were in 2016. In fact, by some measures the experts performed even worse than last time: The pre-election polls, which suggested a landslide Biden victory, Democratic control of the Senate, and gains in the House, are so spectacularly wrong it calls the validity of the profession into doubt....



https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/11/0 ... s-chances/
Quote:
Wasn’t Covid supposed to kill Trump’s chances?

Many voters share Trump’s aversion to lockdown, mask mandates and rule by scientific decree.
Quote:
It was ‘the pandemic election’. 3 November was billed as an opportunity for voters to reject Trump’s irrational, scientifically illiterate mishandling of coronavirus and opt instead for Biden’s altogether more sensible, expert-backed, precautionary approach. Or, at least, that’s how things were supposed to have played out.

We might not know who will be the next American president, but the closeness of the contest shows this was far from the resounding rejection of Trump’s pandemic leadership commentators had fantasised about.

Certainly, Trump and Biden could not be more different in their attitudes to coronavirus. For months, Biden stayed home and campaigned from his Delaware basement. When he emerged, he was so firmly committed to mask-wearing that the Washington Post declared the mask had become a ‘symbol of Biden’s campaign’. Trump didn’t only spurn face masks — he also hosted a ‘superspreader’ event at the White House. He caught Covid, recovered, and promptly resumed touring the country and holding rallies.

It’s not just optics. Biden’s views on the Supreme Court and fracking may be fuzzy but his policies on coronavirus are crystal clear. He wants to mandate mask-wearing and introduce a national testing plan; he backs lockdowns and plans to issue ‘scientific reopening guidelines’ for schools and businesses. Trump, on the other hand, has flirted with backing the Great Barrington Declaration – a move that led him to be branded ‘the pro-infection candidate’. According to the Atlantic, Trump’s handling of the pandemic has been ‘so lax as to effectively cede the country to a virus whose spread is controllable’.

The election was posed as a chance for America ‘to choose how bad the pandemic will get’. ...
btw, the idea that a virus of this nature and mostly mild symptoms is "controllable" is a laugh. The pandemic will happen, whether or not we destroy everything along the way or not, and it will also eventually end, most likely with the virus circulating much like previous respiratory coronaviruses that infected humans.
And a few years from now, I'm pretty sure we'll be back to the “old” thinking of 6 months ago, based on many, many years of research on various microorganisms, that surgical and cloth masks do precious little to stop virus circulation, when used by actual humans and not physics experiments and computer models.




This thread might also be an eye-opener for some
https://old.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepti ... tics_dont/



An now I have to confess that Biden's authoritarian, economically disastrous, and scientifically debatable COVID plans, woke identity politics, approval of certain politically "valuable" protests in the middle of a pandemic (no better than Trump's foolish rallies IMO), refusal to say he wouldn't support packing the Supreme Court or eliminating the Senate filibuster, actually made me flirt briefly with the idea of voting for Trump.

I've seen too much about how Trump governs, and the way he rides roughshod over any semblance of ethics, to do it... but I also couldn't vote against my own interests and support the Democrats. Especially when their main focuses in the campaign were not Trump's flawed governance and lack of ethics, but a false claim he made the pandemic worse and some dubious claims he's a racist. I also refuse to reward the media for their censorship, hysteria, and hype. I don't give much of a damn about Biden's awful son, but there is no way in hell I'll let the media decide what I'm allowed to hear or not hear, and whether that might reflect on Biden. I'm also sick to death of riots being minimized, when the media would be maximizing their coverage if it wasn't a cause they support, or the suppression and ridicule of very valid scientific views on COVID.

So I was a liar when I claimed earlier that I'd vote for a ham sandwich over Trump. I chose Jo Jorgensen. I wasn’t in a swing state but, in the end, I would have made the same choice if I was, let the chips fall where they may. From the look of it, I was not the only one the Democrats lost.

Well, I'm glad of few things. One is that Biden will probably eke out a narrow victory, after all the challenges are done, though admittedly I dread a Biden presidency almost as much as another 4 years of Trump. Another is that the Democrats got a sharp shock with the closeness of the race. Though I honestly doubt they'll learn the right lesson, but instead swing toward the radical left and the "woke" and away from the center even more. (I've already seen an MSNBC pundit proclaiming the election results are because there are more deplorable racist voters than the ever-so-saintly woke people ever thought.) And the third is that the Senate and House races will put a crimp in their more radical plans. And I say that as someone who likes the idea of universal healthcare, and am sorry that will have to fall by the wayside, for now, too.

_________________

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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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 05 Nov , 2020 9:37 pm
The Grey Amaretto as Supermega-awesome Proud Heretic Girl
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You know, inky, I've read most of your posts all this time, though I rarely commented. You said some insightful things, for sure, and I never believed that Biden would pull off a landslide. No, I am surrounded by Trump supporters and have lots of thoughts on them that I really won't bother to share. But what I have noticed with your posts is an increasing bitterness and anger, and I'm sad about that, just as I'm sad about it all across the board for this country and this world (and for myself). I wish someone wiser than all of us could help us figure out how to fix that. :(

Sent from my SM-G965U1 using Tapatalk

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