January 22nd, 2017. 434 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no.45, and 364 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
the rich asshole staffers are fed up with John Kelly’s nagging — and are now calling him ‘The Church Lady’: report
the rich asshole chief of staff John Kelly, left, and the Church Lady, right.
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White House chief of staff John Kelly has been credited with bringing a certain level of discipline to an otherwise chaotic West Wing — but apparently some members of the administration are growing tired of his style.
In Gabriel Sherman’s new report on tensions between Kelly and President some rich asshole, sources claim that Kelly’s preference for military-style order is a bad fit for an administration that has what Sherman describes as “a ‘Lord of the Flies’ office culture.”
In fact, sources tell Sherman that White House staffers are sick of Kelly’s constant “rectitude,” and they’ve started calling him “The Church Lady,” a reference to a “Saturday Night Live” sketch from the 1980s in which Dana Carvey would play a snippy, judgmental Christian talk show host.
the rich asshole has reportedly been very unhappy with Kelly after the retired general called some of the president’s past immigration positions “uninformed” during a Fox News interview. Given how much the rich asshole hates seeing other people try to make themselves look like they’re running his administration, there has been some speculation that the rich asshole will oust Kelly from his role in the near future.
Ivanka reportedly takes charge in firing Chief of Staff John Kelly after the rich asshole calls him ‘nut job’
Ivanka the rich asshole speaking to Dr. Oz (Photo: Screen capture)
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John Kelly’s time as President some rich asshole’s chief of staff may be coming to an end.
On Monday, author Gabriel Sherman reported that Ivanka the rich asshole had been put in charge of finding a replacement for Kelly.
“Ivanka is the most worried about it. She’s trying to figure who replaces Kelly,” someone who has spoken with the president’s daughter told Sherman.
According to Sherman, Kelly’s days as the rich asshole’s chief of staff “may finally have gone past the point of no return.”
“He wants to stay longer than Reince [Priebus],” an outside adviser explained to Sherman.
Kelly recently came under fire by the president’s defenders after he told lawmakers that the rich asshole had “evolved” on the issue of a border wall.
“The more Kelly plays up that he’s being the adult in the room—that it’s basically combat duty and he’s serving the country—that kind of thing drives the rich asshole nuts,” one Republican close to the White House explained.
the rich asshole recently suggested to a friend that Kelly had overstayed his welcome.
“I’ve got another nut job here who thinks he’s running things,” the rich asshole reportedly said.
‘You’re really big’: Kellyanne Conway begged the rich asshole not to obsess over crowd size by praising him, book says
KellyAnne Conway and some rich asshole at the Mercer family's 2016 "Heroes and Villians" costume ball on Long Island.
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White House aide Kellyanne Conway reportedly tried to convince President some rich asshole not to lie about the size of his inauguration crowd by telling him he is “really big.”
After media reports noted that the rich asshole’s inauguration crowd was much smaller than President Barack Obama’s, the rich asshole demanded that then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer tell the media otherwise, according to a new book by Fox News host Howard Kurtz.
The Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the book, reports that Kurtz describes Conway “as one of the few calming presences on the rich asshole.”
The Post notes that Conway spoke up when the rich asshole tried to have Spicer push back against the media’s correctly-reported crowd size estimates.
‘You’re really big,” Conway reportedly told the president. “That’s really small.”
In the end, the rich asshole ordered Spicer to attack the media’s reporting, making the press secretary ripe for mocking by Saturday Night Live
MSNBC panel blisters Mike Pence for ‘using troops as props’ to attack Democrats on shutdown
Vice President Mike Pence (MSNBC)
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Panelists on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” were aghast that Vice President Mike Pence launched a partisan attack on congressional Democrats during a speech to military service members during a visit to the Middle East.
Pence told U.S. troops stationed overseas that Democrats were to blame for the government shutdown, and he accused them of playing politics with military pay as a ploy to promote illegal immigration.
“The fact that vice president of United States would launch a partisan attack against another party in front of troops overseas is unspeakably bad and is corrosive,” said host Joe Scarborough. “The fact that Mike Pence did that after (Sen.) Claire McCaskill (D-MO) tried to get her amendment on the floor to guarantee (service members) that very pay and that Republicans killed it by not allowing that vote makes it even more corrosive.”
He asked panelists whether they’d seen another American political leader behave like that.
“I can’t recall any precedent for a president or a vice president speaking to U.S. troops, especially overseas, especially forward-based,” said MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who is traveling with Pence. “We were near the Syrian border. These Air Force teams, these men and women, are flying everyday against ISIS in Syria, so I cannot recall another moment like this.”
Richard Haass, longtime president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a veteran diplomat, said Pence’s partisan attack was unusual and inappropriate.
“I grew up in an era when politics stopped at the water’s edge,” Haass said. “When you went abroad, you spoke with one voice, the idea was to show that the country was one in coming together. This, shall we say, is the opposite. It’s using troops as props and it’s taking our domestic divisions, and essentially it’s broadcasting them to the world. Again, this works against the effectiveness of this country in the Middle Rast and beyond that.”
MSNBC analyst Elise Jordan, who served on the national security staff in the Bush administration, said Pence had violated an unwritten rule about addressing troops stationed overseas.
“I was in President (George W.) Bush’s speechwriting office,” Jordan said. “For these foreign trips there’s always a lot of speeches that are prepared in advance, but when you’re going to a base, it is an address to the troops. It is not about your politics. It’s about motivating the men and women on the front lines and thanking them for their service. It’s not about you and your political ambitions at the given moment.”
WATCH: James Clapper mocks Jared Kushner for trying to solve Middle East peace without security clearance
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Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper expressed befuddlement on Monday over the fact that the rich asshole son-in-law Jared Kushner has been given so many responsibilities related to foreign policy despite the fact that he still lacks a permanent security clearance.
During an interview on CNN, host Chris Cuomo outlined all the reasons that Kushner has still not been granted a full security clearance and asked Clapper how strange it was that the rich asshole son-in-law was still being given high-level responsibilities such as bringing peace to the Middle East.
“I can’t think of a situation like that,” Clapper admitted. “If it were normal people, they wouldn’t have access to classified information.”
Cuomo then pressed Clapper and asked him whether it was even possible for Kushner to do his job without security clearance — and Clapper said that it was not.
“He has a ‘Superman’ portfolio all the way from Middle East peace, to China, all the way to reorganizing the government,” Clapper said mockingly. “I don’t think realistically he could perform, given the sensitivities of those portfolios. I don’t know how he could do the job without full access to all the information that is potentially available to him.”
Watch the video below.
Chris Wallace kneecaps Mick Mulvaney for shutdown hypocrisy: ‘You supported holding the government hostage’
Mick Mulvaney speaks to Chris Wallace (Fox News/screen grab)
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Fox News host Chris Wallace suggested on Sunday that the White House was guilty of hypocrisy because officials who had supported a 2013 shutdown of President Barack Obama’s government now opposed a shutdown of President some rich asshole’s government.
During an interview with White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, Wallace noted that the rich asshole had said that President Barack Obama deserved blame for the 2013 shutdown even though Republicans initiated it to protest Obamacare funding.
“If President Obama was responsible then… isn’t President the rich asshole responsible now?” Wallace asked.
Mulvaney insisted that the “two presidents have acted” very differently during the shutdown.
“I will look you in the eye and tell you President Obama wanted that shutdown and he wanted to weaponize it,” Mulvaney insisted. “This president has worked really hard to prevent the shutdown.”
“He didn’t have a bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders yesterday,” Wallace pointed out. “Does he have one on the schedule today?”
Mulvaney accused Wallace of trying to “split hairs.”
“I don’t think anybody can say that this president wants this shutdown,” Mulvaney said. “You could not say the same thing about President Obama.”
“You blame Democrats,” Wallace observed. “But back in 2013, you supported holding the government hostage on this question of Obamacare.”
“Why was that legitimate then — the right reason to have a fight — but it’s not legitimate now,” the Fox News host wondered.
Mulvaney argued that times are different because Democrats support everything in the bill to open the government, even though the resolution does not include a solution for so-called Dreamers.
“They were asking us to vote to fund Obamacare,” Mulvaney complained. “Something that was very difficult for Republicans to do and we wouldn’t vote for it.”
“Sir, I think that’s a debating point,” Wallace interrupted. “You [Republicans] shut down the government in 2013… because you didn’t like Obamacare. You wanted to shut down the government again in 2015 because you didn’t like Planned Parenthood. They [Democrats] are willing to shut down the government because they want a solution [for Dreamers].”
“The point is that both them then and you now are willing to shut down the government because they support or oppose a policy,” Wallace said.
Watch the video below from Fox News.
the rich asshole is filling federal judgeships at a record pace, and that’s bad news for Roe v. Wade
Winning the long game?
Before he took up residency in the White House, former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed some of the country’s most restrictive abortion laws in 2016 — banning the procedure if it was sought because of fetal genetic anomalies, like Down syndrome, and requiring aborted fetuses to be cremated or buried.
A year later, a federal judge permanently blocked these laws, saying they were unconstitutional. The state has since appealed that decision to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, the policies have continued to spread on the state level. Ohio lawmakers passed similar measures — one just last week.
This legislative back-and-forth is the result of the weakening of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that granted a constitutional right to an abortion — with some qualifiers. The Supreme Court decision that followed Roe nearly 20 years later, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, permitted states to regulate abortions as long as those laws do not impose an “undue burden.” What exactly constitutes an “undue burden” — or an obstacle in the path of an individual seeking an abortion — is left to the federal courts to interpret.
This constitutional right of women and gender minorities should not depend on zip code, but it does. Abortion laws vary state-by-state, often depending on how aggressively state lawmakers push restrictions or protections. Where there are restrictive abortion laws, there are lawsuits. This legal patchwork means abortion access isn’t universal but dependent on home address and economic standing.
Federal judges acts as arbiters of abortion policy, and therefore are one of the biggest potential threats to Roe v. Wade.
Currently, there are 145 vacant federal judgeships total, and 17 of those vacancies are on the court of appeals. (The court of appeals — organized into 12 regional circuits — decides appeals from the district, or trial, courts.) The court of appeals hears roughly 7,000 cases annually, and just about 150 of those decisions make it all the way up to the Supreme Court. The the rich asshole administration has been afforded the opportunity to fill many of these critical seats and has been doing so at record speed.
“These are the judges that are interpreting the Constitution for the first time,” Julie Rikelman, senior litigation director at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told ThinkProgress. “When the Seventh Circuit talks about whether a law like [Indiana’s] is constitutional or not, it is really setting the standard for all of the states in that circuit, and so it really is very important to think about the judges that are on those federal appellate courts.”
the rich asshole has nominated two judges to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Senate has so far confirmed one: Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana. Civil rights advocates warned against confirming Coney Barrett because they say she’ll put her personal views above the law. Now, she could be one of the judges who decides whether to uphold now-Vice President Pence’s 2016 anti-abortion laws. (Judge selection is in February when oral arguments begin.)
Politicians in robes?
While the political party affiliation of the president choosing the judge has no direct bearing on the the judge’s decision, research suggests Republican-appointed justices tend to vote more conservatively on average than Democrat-appointed justices, especially if they’re deciding on civil rights cases.
Moreover, many of the rich asshole’s federal judge picks — including Amy Coney Barrett — were on his Supreme Court shortlist, which purportedly meant that they promised the president they’d “automatically” overturn Roe.
Barrett is an alleged member, or “handmaid,” of People of Praise, a Christian group which holds anti-abortion views. Separating personal religious convictions from the job isn’t impossible, but it could be for Barrett. Under questioning from Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Barrett said that were she picked to be a district judge, her faith would move her to not enter orders of death penalty. “Why does Barrett feel compelled to recuse herself from entering orders of execution as a trial judge, but not from affirming such orders as an appellate judge?” asked the Vetting Blog’s Harsh Voruganti. And for that matter, why only execution?
Barrett — like a handful of federal judges — is filling a seat that was left vacant under the Obama administration, but that Senate Republicans refused to fill. Had Obama been able to appoint more than one judge to the Seventh Circuit, he could have influenced a rather conservative court. Instead, the opposite is true.
the rich asshole picked Allison Eid, of Colorado, to fill a relatively moderate federal appellate court. Anti-abortion advocates view Eid as a win because, as a judge on the Colorado Supreme Court, “Eid voted to hear the appeal of an injunction against public displays of graphic abortion images.” The Senate also confirmed anti-gay blogger, John Kenneth Bush, to the Sixth Circuit. Bush wrote an amicus brief for a group opposing the admission of females into Virginia Military Institute; he argued VMI “does not appear to be compatible with the somewhat different developmental needs of most young women.”
So far, the American Bar Association found four of the rich asshole’s nominees unfit to serve; one was confirmed to the Eighth Circuit Court: Leonard Steven Grasz. During his tenure as Nebraska’s former chief deputy attorney general, Grasz defended the state’s so-called “partial-birth” abortion ban. While a Republican-appointed district judge says Grasz maintained professionalism in court, that same judge sharply criticized Grasz’s writings on abortions by dilation and extraction in a legal journal. “I conclude that Mr. Grasz proposes a strain of judicial activism that he ought to decry,” wrote the trial judge.
The gravity of these confirmations isn’t going unnoticed — at least by reproductive rights advocates.
“the rich asshole is radically remaking an entire branch of government,” said Erica Sackin, Director of Political Communications for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “These are lifetime appointments being filled with people who have a track record of working against women’s health and rights today.”
the rich asshole’s crowning achievement
the rich asshole’s presidency so far has been an onslaught of attacks against reproductive health — from the symbolic gestures, like the rich asshole speaking at the anti-abortion Right to Life rally, to concrete policy decisions, like cutting$214 million from teen pregnancy programs while maintaining funds to abstinence-only programs.
Regardless of the setbacks to the pro-choice movement, there have also been victories — largely in the courts. A Pennsylvania federal district court judge blocked the rich asshole’s rollback of the contraceptive mandate last year. (The the rich asshole administration signaled it may appeal the decision.) A federal appeals court sided with an undocumented minor who sought an abortion but was stopped by the rich asshole administration.
“Under the rich asshole administration, the courts have often been the last and sometimes only check on the harmful policies that they’ve been pushing,” Sackin told ThinkProgress.
The Republican Party is well aware that the rich asshole’s appointments are significant. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said judges — not the tax overhaul bill — represent the GOP’s greatest achievement during the rich asshole’s time in the White House.
The Senate has confirmed the most federal appellate judges in one year since the system started, and noted they “are relatively young.” So far, Republicans confirmed 12 appellate court and 10 district court judges. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved 17 more nominations for full Senate approval.
Conventional wisdom says that the greatest threat to Roe v. Wade is the potential retirement of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, leaving a vacancy to be filled by the second the rich asshole-appointed judge to the highest court. But the more insidious threat to Roe is already happening on the state level.
“What we saw after Planned Parenthood v. Casey was different states passing different restrictions and different courts saying different things about what an undue burden — what does that mean?” said Rikelman of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Three years ago, Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt qualified what an undeniable burden is. The Supreme Court overturned a stringent Texas law on clinics and doctors, which would have further reduced abortion availability. “A burden is undue and unconstitutional if its benefits are outweighed by the burdens — the obstacles that it places on women,” Rikelman said of the decision.
Even so, states continue to pass restrictive laws. Nineteen states adopted 63 new restrictions in 2017, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Unlike before Whole Women’s Health, when restrictions focused on cracking down on the provider, many restrictions in 2017 focused on policing the patients. A few of these restrictive laws have been challenged and blocked by federal courts.
Reproductive rights advocates who spoke with ThinkProgress maintain the law is on their side, and say this is how they’ll counteract the rich asshole’s judicial bench. Even so, this inevitable sea change is undoubtedly the greatest victory for anti-abortion advocates under the current administration — and will long outstay the rich asshole’s tenure.
Sarah Sanders insists the rich asshole didn’t ‘sit on the sidelines’: ‘What the president did clearly worked’
Sarah Sanders (Fox News/screen grab)
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White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders insisted on Monday that President some rich asshole’s actions regarding the government shutdown had “clearly worked.”
During Monday’s press briefing, one reporter noted that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had accused the rich asshole of sitting “on the sidelines” while lawmakers took the lead on negotiating an end to the shutdown.
Sanders rejected that assertion.
“Look, what the president did clearly worked,” Sanders told reporters. “The vote just came in 81-18. I would say that those numbers are much more in the president’s favor than in Sen. Schumer’s favor. I’m not sure what changed for [Sen. Chuck Schumer] and what he gained other than maybe Nancy Pelosi taking a bunch of Republican members out for dinner to celebrate their shutdown.”
“I’m not sure what other positive things came out of this weekend for Democrats,” she concluded.
Watch the video below from Fox News.
U.S. senators struck a deal on Monday to lift a three-day government shutdown and try to end a fight between Democrats and President some rich asshole’s Republicans over immigration and border security.
Legislation to renew federal funding to the government
cleared a procedural hurdle in the Senate and was expected soon to pass votes in the Senate and House of Representatives, allowing government to re-open through Feb 8.
Tens of thousands of federal workers had begun closing down operations for lack of funding on Monday, the first weekday since the shutdown, but essential services such as security and defense operations had continued.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he had come to an arrangement with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to keep the government open for the next few weeks after the Republican promised to let a bill on immigration reach the Senate floor.
The U.S. government cannot fully operate without funding bills that are voted in Congress regularly. Washington has been hampered by frequent threats of a shutdown in recent years as the two parties fight over spending, immigration and other issues. The last U.S. government shutdown was in 2013.
This shutdown, which began on the Friday’s first anniversary of the rich asshole’s inauguration as president, undercut his self-crafted image as a dealmaker who would repair the broken culture in Washington.
It had forced the rich asshole to cancel a planned weekend trip to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and created uncertainty around his scheduled trip this week to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In negotiations over the shutdown, Democrats had insisted that legislation to keep the government running include protections for young undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers.”
Republicans in turn said they would not negotiate on immigration until Democrats gave them the votes needed to reopen the government.
RICH ASSHOLE EXPECTED TO SIGN
the rich asshole was expected to sign the legislation, which would give Congress more time to try to reach agreement on a long-term spending bill that would resolve issues including immigration, border security and spending caps.
McConnell promised to allow a fair and open immigration debate “to consider a proposal that can actually be signed into law, a bipartisan, bicameral group is already negotiating and I look forward to completion of its work.”
Such a debate would occur if a deal on an immigration bill is not reached before Feb. 8, McConnell said
Democrats want Congress to address the issue of the Dreamers, more than 700,000 immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.
Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp welcomed the deal.
“You now have a commitment for a path forward for the so-called ‘Dreamers.; That’s critical. We’re going to get a vote. We’re going to regular order,” she said.
House of Representatives Republicans have been told by their leaders to plan on voting on re-opening the government immediately.
Markets have absorbed the shutdown drama over the last week, and on Monday morning world stocks and U.S. bond markets largely shrugged off the standoff even as the dollar continued its pullback. U.S. stocks were higher, the dollar was slightly lower and benchmark treasuries yields were off highs of the day.
Both sides in Washington had tried to blame each other for the shutdown.
Democrats said the rich asshole had not only failed to bring both sides together but made a deal more difficult by changing his position on what kind of agreement on immigration he would accept.
the rich asshole and Republicans accused Democrats of putting the interests of illegal immigrants ahead of U.S. military personnel and government workers.
Early polls showed that the rich asshole and Republican leaders were drawing most of the blame from American voters, but some Democrats worried they would pay a higher political cost if the shutdown dragged on.
More in new poll blame congressional Republicans for shutdown than Dems
BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE - 01/22/18 07:21 AM EST
Slightly more Americans said in a new poll they would blame Republicans on Capitol Hill over Democrats for a government shutdown.
In the Politico/Morning Consult poll released Monday — but conducted before the shutdown began — 41 percent of those polled said the GOP would be more to blame, while 36 percent said the Democrats would. Nearly a quarter, 23 percent, said they did not know or had no opinion.
The shutdown, which now stretches into its third day, began at midnight Saturday after the Senate failed to pass a short-term funding bill. Central to the fight between lawmakers is immigration, specifically the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which shields immigrants brought to the U.S. unlawfully as children from deportation.
Democrats are pushing for a fix to DACA, which the rich asshole said last year he planned to wind down.
Americans are split on whether or not DACA is worth shutting the government down over, pollsters found, with 42 percent saying the program “is important enough” to launch a government shutdown and 42 percent saying it is not significant enough for the closure.
The survey of 1,017 voters was conducted from Jan. 18-19. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
JANUARY 20, 2018 / 5:10 AM / 2 DAYS AGO
the rich asshole's dealmaker image tarnished by U.S. government shutdown
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For President some rich asshole, this weekend was supposed to be a celebration.
On the first anniversary of his presidency on Saturday, with the stock market roaring and his poll ratings finally rising, he had planned to rest at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, feted by friends and admirers.
Instead, the rich asshole stayed in Washington after he was unable to avert a government shutdown.
His failure to win passage by the U.S. Congress of a stopgap bill to maintain funding for the federal government further damaged his self-crafted image as a dealmaker who would repair the broken culture in Washington.
“This is the One Year Anniversary of my Presidency and the Democrats wanted to give me a nice present,” the rich asshole said in an early morning tweet, adding the hashtag #DemocratShutdown.
Even as the White House began pointing the finger at Democrats, the Republican president came under fire.
“It’s almost like you were rooting for a shutdown,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said of the rich asshole on Saturday.
the rich asshole, who in July 2016 said: “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,” has asserted that past government shutdowns were the fault of the person in the White House.
In a “Fox & Friends” interview after a 2013 shutdown, he said then-President Barack Obama was ultimately responsible.
“The problems start from the top and have to get solved from the top,” the rich asshole said. “The president is the leader, and he’s got to get everybody in a room and he’s got to lead.”
As this new shutdown, the first since 2013, looked increasingly likely on Friday, the rich asshole made a last-ditch effort to behave as the kind of problem-solver he has long claimed to be.
First, he postponed a long-planned weekend trip to his winter home Mar-a-Lago, where a lavish $100,000-a-couple fundraiser on Saturday would extol his first year in office.
He had little choice. Critics would have hammered him for attending such an event while government workers were being put on leave and many government services curtailed.
Then the rich asshole called Schumer, and, after a positive conversation, invited him to a meeting at the White House. It was intimate - just the president, Schumer and top aides. Republican leaders were excluded. The idea was to find some common ground. It lasted 90 minutes.
NO DEAL
One person familiar with the events said the two men agreed to seek a grand deal in which Democrats would win protections from deportation for some 700,000 young undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers” and the rich asshole would get more money for a border wall and tighter security to stem illegal immigration from Mexico.
By early evening, however, that plan was dead. The source said the rich asshole had spoken in the meantime with conservative Republicans and been hit with their objections to the deal with Schumer.
Another source familiar with the meeting said White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called Schumer later on Friday, after the meeting, and complained that the outline that Schumer and the rich asshole had discussed was too liberal.
“He did not press his party to accept it,” Schumer said later.
On Saturday, with no resolution to the shutdown seemingly in sight, the White House fired back at Schumer, with Mick Mulvaney, the rich asshole’s budget director, suggesting that the Democrat had misrepresented the details of the meeting and could no longer be trusted as a negotiator.
“You have to ask yourself at what point does it even become profitable to continue to work with somebody like that,” Mulvaney told reporters.
The confusion on Friday seemed part of a familiar pattern that has driven Democrats to distraction. the rich asshole courts their support and suggests flexibility, only to pivot and side with more conservative lawmakers.
It happened in September, after he cut a short-term government funding deal with Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.
Weeks later, when Schumer and Pelosi thought they had reached an agreement to preserve a program that protected Dreamers, congressional sources said the rich asshole walked away.
That stand-off lasted until earlier this month, when Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democratic Senator Dick Durbin reached a bipartisan proposal on immigration.
They believed the rich asshole had signaled he would support it. But in a heated Oval Office meeting, the rich asshole savaged the deal.
RELATED VIDEO
A Democratic senator alleged that the rich asshole said the United States needed to take fewer immigrants from Haiti and African nations, referring to them as “shit hole countries”. the rich asshole denied using that language but the controversy poisoned negotiations.
Both sides felt betrayed, and the rich asshole’s flip-flops left Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell mystified to the point where he said earlier this week that he could not figure out the rich asshole’s position on the issue.
Trust was further undermined when the rich asshole appeared to criticize a House stopgap funding bill that the White House hours earlier said he supported.
Members of each party blamed the other for the shutdown, but some of the blame landed on the president.
“some rich asshole is not capable of carrying out this kind of an intricate conversation about issues,” John Yarmuth, the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee, told reporters.
“He doesn’t have the attention span to do it. He doesn’t have the interest to do it. All he wants to do is show he’s engaged in the process.”
Reporting by James Oliphant, Susan Cornwell, Richard Cowan, David Brunnstrom and Rich McKay; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Alistair Bell
Melania the rich asshole was the first casualty of the SAG Awards with a subtle shot from the host
Norman Quarrinton
Posted with permission from Rare
Kristen Bell/Melania Trump“There has never been a host for this awards show before,” Bell said. “First time. First person. First LADY! I honestly never thought I would grow up to be the first lady, but you know what, I kind of like it. I think my first initiative as first lady will be cyberbullying… because I have yet to see any progress on that problem quite yet.”
Despite not directly referencing the first lady, it seemed like Bell was alluding to Melania’s mission to end cyberbullying.
“I’m looking at you Tony Hale!” she said gesturing toward the “Veep” actor. “You’re a bully! You guys, he’s a savage on Twitter!”
Bell’s monologue came to a close with a message of encouragement for the Times Up movement which fights against sexual harassment and inequality for women in the workplace. “We are living in a watershed moment, and as we march forward with active momentum and open our ears, let’s make sure we’re leading the charge with empathy and diligence,” she told the audience before ending on a gag. “Because fear and anger never win the race. Most importantly, regardless of our differences, I think we can all come together and delight in one thing — ‘Frozen 2’ is coming out in theaters in 2019! I’m very excited.”
Watch the whole thing below:
Ladies and Gentlemen, please give a standing RT to your FIRST EVER #sagawards Host, @IAMKristenBell!
RELATED: Things got awkward at the SAGs when Alison Brie was asked about her brother-in-law James Franco
Moderate Republican senators urge firmer pledge on immigration from McConnell
Susan Collins (Youtube)
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Three moderate Republican U.S. senators on Monday, emerging from a bipartisan meeting aimed at trying to end the government shutdown, said there could enough support if Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell made a firmer commitment to move legislation that would address so-called Dreamer immigrants.
“It would … be helpful if Senator McConnell’s language were stronger,” Senator Susan Collins, standing alongside fellow Republicans Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake, told reporters.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Tim Ahmann)
WATCH: CNN creates a hilarious supercut of the rich asshole’s biggest first-year screw-ups
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President some rich asshole has only been in office for a year — but that year has already been loaded with enough gaffes, flubs and humiliations to fill up eight years’ worth of lowlights for most presidents.
CNN on Monday put together a hilarious supercut of the rich asshole’s biggest first-year flubs, and it includes numerous botched handshakes, nonsensical tweets, and misadventures with water cups.
CNN’s Jeanne Moos, who narrated the video, took particular delight in playing clips of the rich asshole sniffling excessively and of the rich asshole getting his hand swatted away by wife Melania the rich asshole.
“You’ve got to hand it to President the rich asshole,” she said shortly before showing a montage of failed the rich asshole handshakes. “When it comes to flubs, he’s got his hands full.”
Watch the video below.
Kellyanne Conway uses Super Bowl to trash Hillary: ‘The Patriots are like that woman whose name I don’t mention’
Kellyanne Cownay speaks to Fox News (screen grab)
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Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway on Monday used a discussion about the upcoming Super Bowl to take a shot at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
During an appearance on Fox & Friends, Conway praised Eagles NFL players for not taking a knee during the national anthem, which many players have done throughout the season to protest systemic racism.
Conway, who is an Eagles fan, noted that President some rich asshole has a friendship with Patriots owner Bob Kraft.
“The Patriots are in the Super Bowl again and they haven’t been in the Super Bowl since last year,” she snarked. “We were so happy to have the Patriots here [at the White House] last year when they won. But we want to have the Eagles here this coming year.”
Conway added: “And I’ll just say that the underdog here is the Eagles and you know me, I love an underdog. The Patriots are like that woman [Hillary Clinton] whose name I don’t mention on TV anymore. People always count out the Eagles.”
In a recent appearance on CNN, Conway insisted that “nobody” at the White House talks about Clinton.
“We don’t care about her. Nobody here talks about her,” Conway told CNN host Chris Cuomo. “Nobody here talks about Hillary Clinton, I promise you.”
Watch the video below from Fox News.
Trust in US institutions plunges in the rich asshole’s first year
some rich asshole (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Wikipedia)
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Trust in U.S. institutions, particularly the government, has plunged in President Donald the rich asshole’s first year in office, according to a leading survey released on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The annual Edelman Trust Barometer showed overall trust in the four institutions it measures – the government, media, business and non-governmental organizations – falling more steeply in the United States than in any of the 28 countries surveyed.
the rich asshole has broken with presidential tradition and repeatedly denounced the media and judiciary – attacks his critics say risk undermining public confidence in those institutions.
By contrast, the country that saw the biggest trust gains among its own citizens was China, after a year in which President Xi Jinping cemented his hold on power at a triumphal party congress.
Faith in the Chinese government jumped 8 points to 84 percent. In the United States it fell 14 points to 33 percent.
“The United States is enduring an unprecedented crisis of trust,” said Richard Edelman, head of the communications marketing firm that commissioned the research.
Xi was the headliner in Davos last year, days before the rich asshole was inaugurated. This year, the rich asshole is the main attraction. He is expected to defend his “America First” policies in a speech on the final day of the conference of policymakers, CEOs, bankers and celebrities in the Swiss Alps, which runs from Jan. 23-26.
Pointing to the steep erosion in trust in the United States, Edelman said it was the first time since the survey began 18 years ago that such a precipitous drop was not linked to a specific event, such as an economic crisis or catastrophe, like the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
Instead it comes at a time when the U.S. economy is showing robust growth and stock markets are at record highs.
“Normally when things are going well, trust is pretty good,” Edelman said. “Increasingly there is a disconnect between trust and economic outcomes.”
FAKE NEWS
He attributed this to a politicisation of the public discourse in the United States and elsewhere that has left many people confused about what is fact and what is fiction.
The survey showed nearly 2 in 3 people are unable to distinguish reliable news from rumors and falsehoods. While trust in journalism rose to its highest level in years, faith in search engines and social media platforms like Google, Twitter and Facebook fell in 21 of the 28 countries, making media the least trusted of the four institutions globally.
The Edelman survey, based on the opinions of over 33,000 people and conducted between Oct. 28 and Nov. 20 of last year, showed an even deeper lack of trust in U.S. institutions among the “informed public” – people who are college educated, earn above-average incomes and consume news regularly.
Among this group, trust declined a whopping 23 points, putting the United States in last place among the 28 countries surveyed, below Russia and South Africa. In 2017 it ranked sixth.
In the broader U.S. population, faith in the government was equally low among respondents who said they voted for the rich asshole and those who supported his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. But trust in the media was significantly higher among Clinton backers.
The survey also showed that Americans’ trust in their own companies fell more steeply than in any other country, with Switzerland and Canada registering the highest levels of trust in their homegrown brands. It showed a revival of faith in “experts”, including academics and businessmen.
(Graphic on key players at Davos – //tmsnrt.rs/2DkHcEa)
US government workers awake to shut down, Senate vote looms
Sen Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (Photo: Screen capture)
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Hundreds of thousands of federal workers woke up on Monday with the U.S. government still shut down and the Senate expected to try again to restore federal funding, if only temporarily, and work on resolving a dispute over immigration.
Amid uncertainty about whether federal employees should report to work in the morning, senators were set to vote at midday on a funding bill to get the lights back on in Washington and across the government until early February.
Support for the bill was uncertain, after Republicans and Democrats spent all day on Sunday trying to strike a deal, only to go home for the night short of an agreement.
Markets remained calm on Monday morning as world stocks and U.S. bond markets largely shrugged off Washington’s standoff even as the dollar continued its pullback. U.S. stock futures edged lower.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said late Sunday that an overnight vote on a measure to fund government operations through Feb. 8 was canceled and would be held at 12 p.m. EST (1700 GMT) on Monday.
Up until Monday, most federal workers were not directly affected by the shutdown that began at midnight on Friday.
Many still awaited notification on whether they are “essential” employees or not, determining whether they must report to their offices.
Even late Sunday, the federal Office of Personnel Management provided little guidance. It said on its website that “federal government operations vary by agency.”
The Department of Defense published a memo on its website detailing who does and does not get paid in a shutdown and saying that civilian employees were on temporary leave, except for those needed to support active-duty troops.
The Department of Interior led by Secretary Ryan Zinke, offered no guidance on its website, which still had a “Happy Holidays from the Zinke Family” video near the top of the site. The department oversees national parks and federal lands.
The State Department website said: “At this time, scheduled passport and visa services in the United States and at our posts overseas will continue during the lapse in appropriations as the situation permits.”
‘DREAMERS’ DRAMA
The U.S. government has not been shut down since 2013, when about 800,000 federal workers were put on furlough. That impasse prevented passage of a needed funding bill centered on former Democratic President Barack Obama’s healthcare law.
The problem this time focused on immigration policy, principally President some rich asshole’s order last year ending an Obama program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which gave legal protections to “Dreamer” immigrants.
The “Dreamers” are young people who were brought to the United States illegally as children by their parents or other adults, mainly from Mexico and Central America, and who mostly grew up in the United States.
the rich asshole said last year he would end DACA on March 5 and asked Congress to come up with a legislative fix before then to prevent Dreamers from being deported.
Democrats have withheld support for a temporary funding bill to keep the government open over the DACA issue. McConnell extended an olive branch on Sunday, pledging to bring immigration legislation up for debate after Feb. 8 so long as the government remained open.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer objected to the plan and it was unclear whether McConnell’s pledge would be enough for Democrats to support a stopgap funding bill.
Congress failed last year to pass a complete budget by Oct. 1, the beginning of the federal fiscal year, and the government has been operating on a series of three stopgap spending bills.
Republicans control both the House of Representatives and the Senate, where they have a slim 51-49 majority. But most legislation requires 60 Senate votes to pass, giving Democrats leverage.
the rich asshole told a bipartisan Senate working group earlier this month that he would sign whatever DACA legislation was brought to him. The Republican president then rejected a bipartisan measure and negotiations stalled.
McConnell had insisted that the Senate would not move to immigration legislation until it was clear what could earn the rich asshole’s support.
Republican Senator Jeff Flake, who is involved in bipartisan immigration negotiations, said McConnell’s statements on Sunday indicated there was progress in negotiations and he urged his Democratic colleagues to approve another stopgap bill.
January 21, 2018
Harriet Sinclair
Posted with permission from Newsweek
Donald Trump has done well with the government shutdown, according to his ally Newt Gingrich, who suggested the president believes he is winning.
Speaking with New York radio host John Catsimatidis, the former speaker of the house discussed Friday’s government shutdown, which came after there was a failure to reach an agreement on the spending bill.
Blaming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Gingrich said the shutdown was being referred to as a “Democrat shutdown” and told Catsimatidis: “This is not what the Democrats hoped for. And I think President Trump has played this pretty well.”
Gingrich suggested Democrats were attempting to appeal to the Latino vote “almost on a tribal basis,” stating the rights of dreamers had been prioritized over the rights of others and suggesting that Democrats were holding the U.S. military hostage.
He was alluding to the shutdown’s impact on government appropriations, which will see U.S. soldiers receiving delayed payments.
The president held a last-minute meeting with Schumer to attempt to avoid the shutdown, Gingrich added, stating the president had done well in attempting to divert the situation.
However, Democrats have laid the blame for the shutdown at President Trump’s door, suggesting that with the Republicans holding a majority in both the House and the Senate, the Democrats cannot simply be blamed for causing an obstruction without some of the responsibility falling on Trump’s administration and the majority party.
But Gingrich argued that Schumer was being held responsible for the problem, stating of the minority leader “The attitude right now in the administration is that they won't give anything because they think he has made a huge mistake.”
"When the term, the Schumer shutdown, begins to catch on, you don't have any sense of people who are inclined to back off,” he added.
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