Thursday, February 20, 2020

Trump Aides Have Loud, Gladiator-like Fights in the Oval Office and the President Doesn't Mind, Mulvaney Says



But Mulvaney told the Oxford Union that aides leave their individual thoughts at the door once Trump makes a decision on a subject. As proof, he pointed to White House economic adviser and free-trade advocate Larry Kudlow, who now publicly backs Trump's use of tariffs.
"My party is very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House," Mulvaney said, according to the Post. "The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president. Then Donald Trump became president, and we're a lot less interested as a party."

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

draining the swamp

https://time.com/5785970/trump-commutes-rod-blagojevich-clemency-blitz/

 President Donald Trump has gone on a clemency blitz, commuting the 14-year prison sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and pardoning former NYPD commissioner Bernie Kerik, among a long list of others.
Trump also told reporters that he has pardoned financier Michael Milken, who pleaded guilty for violating U.S. securities laws and served two years in prison in the early 1990s. Trump also pardoned Edward DeBartolo Jr., the former San Francisco 49ers owner convicted in a gambling fraud scandal who built one of the most successful NFL teams in the game’s history.
Blagojevich, who appeared on Trump’s reality TV show, “Celebrity Apprentice,” was convicted of political corruption, including seeking to sell an appointment to Barack Obama’s old Senate seat and trying to shake down a children’s hospital. But Trump said he had been subjected to a “ridiculous sentence” that didn’t fit his crimes.
 
Kerik served just over three years for tax fraud and lying to the White House while being interviewed to be Homeland Security secretary.
“We have Bernie Kerik, we have Mike Milken, who’s gone around and done an incredible job,” Trump said, adding that Milken had “paid a big price.”
Earlier, the White House announced that Trump had pardoned DeBartolo Jr., who was involved in one of the biggest owners’ scandals in the sport’s history. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to failing to report a felony when he paid $400,000 to former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards in exchange for a riverboat gambling license.

Boy Scouts File for Bankruptcy Following Sex Abuse Lawsuits

https://time.com/5785605/boy-scouts-bankruptcy/


Most of the newly surfacing cases date to the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s; the organization says there were only five known abuse victims in 2018. The Boy Scouts credit the change to an array of prevention policies adopted since the mid-1980s, including mandatory criminal background checks and abuse-prevention training for all staff and volunteers, and a rule that two or more adult leaders be present during all activities.

 

Liberals and Conservatives React in Wildly Different Ways to Repulsive Pictures

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/the-yuck-factor/580465/

 Why do we have the political opinions we have? Why do we embrace one outlook toward the world and not another? How and why do our stances change? The answers to questions such as these are of course complex. Most people aren’t reading policy memos to inform every decision. Differences of opinion are shaped by contrasting life experiences: where you live; how you were raised; whether you’re rich or poor, young or old. Emotion comes into the picture, and emotion has a biological basis, at least in part. All of this and more combines into a stew without a fixed recipe, even if many of the ingredients are known.
 

How the Right Wing Convinces Itself That Liberals Are Evil

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2018/how-the-right-wing-convinces-itself-that-liberals-are-evil/

 
IIf you spend any time consuming right-wing media in America, you quickly learn the following: Liberals are responsible for racism, slavery, and the Ku Klux Klan. They admire Mussolini and Hitler, and modern liberalism is little different from fascism or, even worse, communism. The mainstream media and academia cannot be trusted because of the pervasive, totalitarian nature of liberal culture.

Joe Orlow's theory that Evil came to the world solely because of liberals

The liberals have already hijacked democracy and imposed their mindset on the masses. Anything that rebalances society is for the better. If it takes an autocratic President, so be it. At least the autocratic President we have bends his will to that of the people who elected him. And isn't that what democracy is all about?
Donald Trump won the election! Get over it, already. In the past, a government from one party could rule over both parties. But now the country is too split. So the party out of favor feels like they have no say. Which is true, somewhat.
When Bernie gets elected, I'll feel like that, too. So let me enjoy the presidency I brought about while I can.

Monday, February 17, 2020

which situation do you prefer?

Living in USA with Trump as King and his family inherits the job or a democracy based on the present constitution and laws?

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Preet Bharara sounds the alarm on Donald Trump's move


If William Barr Truly Believed in Rule of Law, He Would Resign

https://time.com/5784932/william-barr-resign-rule-of-law/

 Barr’s commitment at his most recent confirmation hearing, reaffirming that an Attorney General must prevent political influence from corrupting the course of justice in criminal cases, was important to legitimate his candidacy to lead the department, given the concerns that arose after his nomination. But he has proven himself unable or unwilling to live up to that commitment.
Since he joined the Administration just over a year ago, Barr has operated in a manner that has raised serious questions about whether he is working to benefit the President or the people. He misrepresented the conclusions of the Mueller report. On his watch, DOJ tried to protect the President from legitimate constitutional oversight by withholding the Ukraine whistleblower complaint from Congress. DOJ then summarily declined to open an investigation into the Ukraine complaint and defended Trump’s position that executive branch emails related to Ukraine did not have to be turned over to a media organization that sought unredacted versions, using the same privilege arguments Trump asserted to withhold them from Congress. Although the Department has responded to past questions about Barr’s personal involvement by saying he was aware but did not participate in decision-making, we know from his takeover of Roger Stone’s sentencing that he is fully capable of usurping a case when he does not like how it is being handled. He has also assigned a handpicked U.S. Attorney appointed by Trump to review matters the President has shown interest in.

 

She said a Bethlehem church was in Palestine. But ‘Jeopardy!’ accepted Israel as the right answer.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/13/jeopardy-bethlehem-church/

 The Church of the Nativity, which many believe is the birthplace of Jesus, sits by a white-stoned square in the heart of Bethlehem near the controversial concrete barrier that encircles the West Bank. UNESCO, which has selected the church as a World Heritage Site, lists it as one of three such locations in Palestine.
So for many of those who slammed “Jeopardy!” over the weekend, the trivia answer was, well, more than trivial. It was a commentary, implicit or not, on a hotly contested and deeply emotional question in Middle East geopolitics.
The Oslo accords of 1995 give the Palestinian Authority control over Bethlehem and the West Bank, though that is complicated by Israeli settlements and military checkpoints. Under a historic “Status Quo” agreement, the church and other holy sites near it area must be jointly shared and protected by various Christian denominations.
 

Trump's 'Deep State' conspiracy theory just took a big hit

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/14/politics/andrew-mccabe-donald-trump-department-of-justice/index.html


 President Donald Trump is deeply invested in the idea that there is a "Deep State" embedded within the government bureaucracy -- and centered in the Department of Justice -- which actively worked to defeat him in 2016 and then sought to undermine him once he won the presidency.That conspiracy theory, which has never had much merit, suffered a near-fatal blow Friday afternoon when the Department of Justice declined to pursue criminal charges against former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.

That decision ends a nearly-two-year investigation into whether McCabe, in his role as a senior official in the FBI, lied to investigators about conversations he had with reporters. McCabe had long insisted that if he had done so it had been purely accidental, and noted that, in his role, he was authorized to speak to the media.
Trump spent much of the investigation dumping on McCabe, a man who he insisted was, along with former FBI director James Comey, at the center of the "Deep State" conspiracy against him.

Conservatives see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in Trump

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/15/opinions/conservatives-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity-in-trump-brown/index.html

  While it may be easy to dismiss a significant number of President Donald Trump's supporters as members of a worshipful cult of celebrity, underneath that storyline is a stark policy reality -- one that's inadequately understood and reported on. In Trump, politically conservative America has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fundamentally alter the direction of the nation.