February 24th-25th, 2017. It's been 469-470 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no. 45, and 397-398 days since the Jan 20th inauguration of some rich asshole.

Axios: the rich asshole wants longtime personal pilot to head FAA

BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 02/25/18 07:04 PM EST

President the rich asshole is pushing for his longtime personal pilot to head the Federal Aviation Administration, Axios reported Sunday.

One senior administration official told Axios that the rich asshole had recommended John Dunkin, who flew the rich asshole’s plane during the campaign, for the position.

The official said that Dunkin was interviewed for the post and was impressive.

“He’s on the list because he's the president’s pilot, but if he gets the job it won't be because he's the president's pilot,” the official told Axios.

Another administration official also confirmed that Dunkin was under consideration for the job, but that the pilot had the experience to lead the agency.

“John Dunkin isn’t just a pilot," the official said to Axios. "He’s managed airline and corporate flight departments, certified airlines from start-up under FAA regulations, and oversaw the rich asshole presidential campaign’s air fleet, which included managing all aviation transportation for travel to 203 cities in 43 states over the course of 21 months.”

the rich asshole had not nominated anyone to head the FAA but has said that he believes the agency would be run better if it were led by a pilot, CNN reported earlier this month.

The move comes amid a push by the rich asshole administration to privatize air traffic control.

The president met with the heads of several major airlines at the White House earlier this month.

Panama hotel seeks to evict the rich asshole officials: report

BY BRETT SAMUELS - 02/25/18 05:27 PM EST

Representatives at the rich asshole International Hotel and Tower in Panama are attempting to physically evict the rich asshole Organization’s team of executives at the property, but are facing opposition, The Associated Press reported Saturday.

Orestes Fintiklis, who owns most of the building's units, filed a legal complaint seeking to fire the rich asshole’s management team late last week, according to the report. The complaint also alleges the rich asshole team improperly destroyed documents. Witnesses reportedly heard the rich asshole employees using a shredder, according to the AP.

When Fintiklis came to deliver termination notices last Thursday, the rich asshole team’s security outfit “pushed and shouted” at him, according to the legal complaint. Hotel employees then called the police.

the rich asshole security staff then set up shop in the building's lobby Saturday, but there was no further conflict reported.

Representatives for the rich asshole Organization declined to comment to the AP.

This weekend’s incident is the latest escalation in a long-brewing spat over the fate of the Panama property.

The owners of the building in Panama pushed in November to remove the rich asshole name from the building in an effort to revive its business and combat low occupancy rates.

The luxury property at one point had paid at least $32 million to use the rich asshole brand, according to the AP.

TAGS TRUMP ORGANIZATION SOME RICH ASSHOLE

Senate pivots to stopgap 'Dreamers' deal

BY JORDAIN CARNEY AND RAFAEL BERNAL - 02/25/18 05:17 PM EST

The Senate is weighing a short-term fix for "Dreamers" as lawmakers struggle to break a stalemate that has stalled the chamber's debate.

The hunt for a fallback option comes ahead of the March 5 deadline created by President the rich asshole’s decision to end the immigration program and amid fresh questions about what, if anything, can clear Congress and win over the White House.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) is in talks with Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) about a plan to tie a three-year extension of protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients with roughly $7.6 billion in border security.

“I can promise that I’ll be back on the floor, again and again, motioning for a vote until we pass a bill providing relief for those struggling due to our inaction,” Flake said, outlining his plan.

Passing a years-long immigration stopgap is no one’s first choice for restoring protections from the Obama-era program, which the rich asshole administration announced it was ending last year. Democrats largely refused to touch the idea during the Senate’s debate, while GOP Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) referred to it as “Plan Z.”

But senators appeared increasingly resigned to any potential immigration legislation being a stopgap patch, rather than a permanent fix, after months of closed-door negotiations failed to produce a deal.

How long a potential stopgap agreement could last remains unclear. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) predicted Congress would only be able to punt into 2019, kicking the hot-button issue past the midterm elections.

“I think we wind up punting. I think we’ll do a one-year extension of DACA and punt,” he said.

GOP Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) have offered a bill to provide legal protections for current DACA recipients. But it could struggle to win Democratic support because it includes tens of billions in wall funding without a path to citizenship and doesn’t address the larger 1.8 million population of potential DACA recipients.

With the Senate turning back this week to confirming the rich asshole’s nominees, senators are pointing to a funding bill that needs to passed by March 23 to prevent a government shutdown as their next shot.

“Obviously we're going to have to deal with the DACA issue probably on the [omnibus] because of what has happened,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told reporters earlier this month, predicting the Senate would settle on including an extension.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the No. 2 Senate Republican, left the door open to dropping immigration into the mammoth spending bill, saying “some temporary provision” could be included if both sides can reach an agreement.

An aide said that Flake and Heitkamp are discussing trying to get the DACA extension included in mammoth omnibus legislation. And a spokesman for Flake added that the GOP senator would support trying to link the proposals.

There’s no guarantee a DACA-border security stopgap could get the 60 needed to clear the Senate as a stand-alone bill, or that leadership is willing to include it in the omnibus. And its path would be even rockier, if not impossible, in the House.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to say if the tight-lipped GOP leader supports a years-long immigration fix. Asked if McConnell would oppose including DACA in the omnibus, the aide pointed to his comments after the Senate failed to pass a deal.

McConnell left the door open to returning to immigration if a plan emerged that could pass both the Senate and the more conservative House and had what has so far remained elusive: the rich asshole’s support.

“If a solution is developed in the future that can pass both the House and the Senate and be signed into law by the president, it should be considered. But for that to happen, Democrats will need to take a second look at these core elements of necessary reform,” he said.

But Democrats and the White House appear increasingly dug in, with the rich asshole and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) exchanging barbs.

the rich asshole, during his Conservative Political Action Conference speech, said Democrats had “totally abandoned” DACA recipients.

“They don't want to do anything about DACA, I'm telling you, and it's very possible that DACA won't happen,” he told the conservative crowd.

Meanwhile, Schumer said “it’s clear to everyone but President the rich asshole” that the president is to blame.

“Democrats have been willing to negotiate for months, and have forged several bipartisan deals, but his refusal to take yes for an answer led to his partisan plan that only got 39 votes,” he said.

Democrats have been loath to embrace a short-term fix because they believe it provides no long-term security for “Dreamers," immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. Schumer hasn’t weighed in on the proposal.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat and a key senator in the immigration fight, is still urging action on immigration before March 5.

“Congress still has a chance to address the DACA crisis before March 5th, when 1,000 people will start losing their legal status every single day,” he said in a tweet.

With no must-pass legislation expected to come up before the deadline, Democrats’ options are limited. They could, for example, try to grind the Senate to a halt by launching an hours-long floor speech, limit the ability for committees to meet or try to get consent to pass an immigration bill.

No Democratic senator has signaled they are planning to create procedural headaches and much of the political oxygen is being sucked up by the debate over gun control following a shooting at a Florida high school, where 17 people were killed.

One Democratic aide described the current DACA debate as a “wait-and-see game.”

“[We’re] waiting to see what kind of traction Mr. Flake garners from his caucus on his 3-year patch proposal,” the aide said.

Two court decisions are further throwing the DACA timeline into limbo and helping feed Congress’s inertia, where lawmakers frequently wait until deadlines to tackle any legislation.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said that even though two courts ruled the DACA program has to stay on the books for now, “eventually that deadline [is] coming.”

“It's not going to be March 5, it looks like, but it may be early April, it may be other time periods,” he told an Oklahoma NPR station. “[But] some federal court is going to step out and is going to rule one executive can change another executive's decisions.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has set up an end of March deadline for action in his chamber and pledged to only bring up a bill that has the rich asshole’s support.

Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar (Texas) said he approached Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the House majority leader, on the floor and urged them to do “queen of the hill” on immigration, pitting Goodlatte and Rep. Michael McCaul's (R-Texas) bill against a narrower, bipartisan proposal by Reps. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.).

Under queen of the hill, competing proposals are voted on by the House and whichever gets the most votes is passed. But a top GOP leadership aide told The Hill "there is no queen of the hill strategy, the Goodlatte-McCaul bill is what is being whipped."

And Cuellar said Goodlatte told him the whipping operation had still not garnered 218 votes.

"They were whipping last week, last Wednesday, before we took off. … Thursday, they did not have 218. They didn’t want to give me the numbers, but said, ‘Well, we’re working on it,’ ” said Cuellar.

But Goodlatte said the conversation with Cuellar happened "weeks ago."

“The Securing America’s Future Act is the product of months worth of meetings and discussions with a diverse range of members and stakeholders. It is clear that this legislation is the only bill that can get a majority of Republican votes in the House," Goodlatte said of his proposal.

"Last week, we had a positive whip count and we are working quickly to build on that support so that we have the votes needed to pass the Securing America’s Future Act in the House,” he added.

Despite Goodlatte's optimism on capturing a majority of Republicans, Cuellar said the House Judiciary Committee chairman struck down his queen of the hill proposal, saying, " ‘No, my bill won’t pass, and your bill will pass. You’ll get 30, 40, 50 Republicans. We need our bill to pass — the Goodlatte bill.’ ”

— Mike Lillis contributed

the rich asshole Jr.: I like the 'mild and nice' media in India

BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 02/25/18 04:59 PM EST

some rich asshole Jr. expressed his approval for the "mild and nice" Indian media during his visit to the country.

"I am the first person in the history of India to say I love the Indian media. They are so mild and nice,” the rich asshole Jr. said at the Global Business Summit in New Delhi, NDTV reported.

The president’s son also called the American press “aggressive and brutal” during his remarks, and as an example referred to a Washington Post story that quoted him praising India's poor because "there is still a smile on a face."

"It wasn't me coming here for first time. It was me coming here after 10 years,” the rich asshole Jr. said, referring to India. “So everybody understood what I meant. But the Washington Post the next day said, 'some rich asshole Jr. likes poor people because they smile.’ ”

the rich asshole Jr. had made the initial comments during an interview with CNBC in India.

“There is something about the Indian people that is unique here to other parts of the emerging world,” he said during the interview. “You go through a town, and I don’t mean to be glib about it, but you can see the poorest of the poor, and there is still a smile on a face ... It’s a different spirit that you don't see in other parts of the world where people walk around so solemn."

The president's son is in the country on a trip to promote the rich asshole properties. He and his brother Eric the rich asshole are overseeing the rich asshole Organization while their father is in office.

The rich asshole administration has said that the rich asshole Jr.'s trip is totally separate from any administrative business. However, ethics experts did criticize the trip after it was revealed the president's son would deliver a foreign policy speech in India.

the rich asshole Jr., like his father, has often criticized the media for its coverage of his family and the rich asshole administration.

Poll: the rich asshole approval rating drops down to match lowest of presidency

BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 02/25/18 10:34 AM EST

President the rich asshole's approval rating has dropped down to match the lowest level of his presidency, according to a new poll.

A CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds just 35 percent of respondents approve of the job the rich asshole is doing in the White House.

That number matches the president's lowest approval rating of his time in office, which in the CNN poll was last December.

Among Republicans, 80 percent approve of the rich asshole's job performance, compared with 13 percent who say they disapprove.

Just 5 percent of Democrats approve of the rich asshole's performance.

The poll also finds that a majority of respondents, 54 percent, disapprove of the rich asshole's handling of gun policy, compared with just one-third of respondents who approve of it.

The poll was conducted from Feb. 20-23 among 1,016 adults. The margin of error is 3.7 percentage points.

The poll comes after 17 people were killed earlier this month when a gunman opened fire at a Florida high school, throwing the issue of gun control into the spotlight.

Students in recent weeks have become vocal advocates for gun control, demanding that lawmakers act to prevent future school shootings. the rich asshole has indicated a number of ideas are under consideration, ranging from arming teachers to raising the federal age requirement on purchasing semi-automatic weapons.

Businesses look to maximize tax breaks under GOP plan

BY NAOMI JAGODA - 02/25/18 08:30 AM EST

Businesses are starting to evaluate how to minimize their tax bills as the GOP tax-reform plan takes effect.

The measure President the rich asshole signed in December makes a number of significant tax-code changes that impact businesses. Accountants and lawyers are pouring over the pages of the law and are starting to think about how companies can maximize their tax savings.

But businesses are often moving cautiously because they are waiting for the IRS to provide guidance that clears up ambiguities in the law. And the process of businesses developing their tax-planning strategies and the IRS pushing back against actions it views as abusive will occur over a number of years.

“The full extent of this won’t be understood for years,” said Mark Everson, who served as IRS commissioner from 2003 to 2007 and now serves as vice chairman of alliantgroup.

One of Republicans’ top priorities in overhauling the tax code was to improve business competitiveness. Business tax changes in the new law include cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, creating a 20 percent deduction for income of noncorporate businesses known as “pass-throughs” and moving the U.S. to a territorial tax system that generally doesn’t tax American companies’ foreign earnings.

Companies are in the early stages of figuring out how they might want to restructure — and what investment decisions they may want to make — in order to best take advantage of the new law.

A top issue that businesses are contemplating is whether they should be organized as traditional corporations or pass-throughs. Companies have until March 15 to make an election if they want to change their entity status for the entirety of 2018.

Corporations have their income taxed twice: once at the entity level and again when earnings are paid to shareholders. Pass-through businesses, on the other hand, only have their income taxed once; they have their income taxed through the individual code on their owners’ returns.

Under the old tax code, it made sense for many companies to be pass-throughs because they are only subject to one level of tax. But under the new law, some companies might find it more beneficial to be corporations because the entity-level corporate tax rate is now much lower and they may not be sure if they qualify for the new pass-through deduction.

Donald Susswein, a principal at RSM, said that if a family owns a business that it plans to keep for a long time, and the family plans to reinvest its profits into the business rather than pay dividends, “then corporate status is desirable because, at least in the short run, the rate is lower.”

On the other hand, business owners who are planning to sell their companies in the near future may benefit from remaining pass-throughs, he said.

The tax law also has new restrictions on businesses’ ability to deduct their interest expenses, so companies with a lot of debt may be looking at paying off debt and finding alternative financing options. And businesses also might look into investing in new equipment faster than they had anticipated, given a new provision, expiring after five years, that allows businesses to immediately write off the full costs of their capital investments, Susswein said.

It will take some time for businesses to fully figure out how they want to restructure due to the new law. Tax experts said that many of the provisions are complicated and will need clarifications from the Treasury Department and the IRS.

“There’s some pretty significant questions that Treasury need to answer just to comply with tax law,” said Ray Beeman, co-leader of the Washington Council Ernst & Young practice.

Gerald Thomas, chair of McGuireWoods’ business tax group, said that “given that this tax reform act … was rushed through Congress in such a short period of time, there is a lot of ambiguity in the new tax provisions.” the rich asshole signed the tax law less than two months after the House first introduced a version of the bill and just days after the final version was released.

Provisions on the pass-through deduction and the international tax rules are among the top areas where businesses are seeking guidance, and are among the 18 topics on the IRS’s list of areas where it plans to issue guidance to help with initial implementation of the tax law.

Acting IRS Commissioner David Kautter told reporters after a hearing earlier this month that the pass-through and international areas are the places where there will need to be the most work on guidance, since the law creates new systems in those areas.

“Those are the two areas where I think we’re going to have the greatest lift in terms of building something that’s broad and deep and new,” he said.

As time goes on, businesses may discover loopholes in the law that allow them to keep their taxes low in ways that the drafters of the tax law did not intend. In these cases, the IRS may issue guidance to clamp down on behavior it perceives to be abusive, and Congress may have to craft new legislation to provide fixes.

One example of Treasury planning to crack down on a business behavior has already popped up. Following a Bloomberg report that hedge-fund managers were taking actions to try to get around new limits on the carried interest tax break, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the department would issue guidance to clarify that that behavior is not allowed.

“That’s something we believe we have the authority to do,” he said.

Everson said that Congress and the IRS will have to stay abreast of businesses’ actions.

“We’re at the beginning of a very long and continuous process here,” he said.

TAGS STEVEN MNUCHIN SOME RICH ASSHOLE

NRA spokeswoman denies conflict with the rich asshole on guns

BY LUIS SANCHEZ - 02/25/18 09:57 AM EST

National Rifle Association (NRA) spokeswoman Dana Loesch said on Sunday that there isn’t a conflict between the NRA and President the rich asshole, despite differences in opinion on the legal age to purchase long guns.

“I know that people are trying to find daylight between President the rich asshole and 5 million law-abiding gun owners," she said on ABC's "This Week." "These are just things that he’s discussing right now.”

Following the Florida school shooting that left 17 dead, the rich asshole said last week that the legal age to purchase a firearm should be raised to 21. The White House later clarified that he was talking about semi-automatic weapons.

Loesch stressed that the NRA does not support raising the legal age to purchase a gun.

"So the position is you do not want to raise the age?” host George Stephanopoulos asked Loesch.

“That’s what the NRA came out and said. That’s correct,” Loesch said.

“The 5 million members of the NRA have made their position incredibly clear.”

Advocates calling for gun reform led by the student survivors of the Florida shooting have focused their attention on the NRA and Republican politicians the gun group supports.

The gun rights group has largely defended its positions and focused on mental health and protecting schools.

Read more from The Hill:

the rich asshole rolls the dice on 3 percent growth

BY VICKI NEEDHAM AND SYLVAN LANE - 02/25/18 07:30 AM EST

The rich asshole administration is forecasting 3 percent growth for the next few years, betting that a slew of policy changes like slashing taxes and regulations will fuel a more robust economic expansion.

President the rich asshole has touted his ability to reach lofty economic goals, with officials arguing that his tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks and the infrastructure plan will usher in faster economic growth.

But economists warn that any bump in growth could be short-lived and fraught with recessionary pressures that will rise heading into the next decade.

On Tuesday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) put out a detailed 568-page analysis of the the rich asshole administration’s economic outlook. It predicts 3 percent growth through 2020, which would be 11 years into the latest expansion.

“There's so much momentum in this economy,” said Kevin Hassett, chairman of the CEA, on Thursday.

“Right now, we're looking at an economy that's about as solid and as good as we've seen since before the financial crisis,” Hassett said.

Economists forecast that the tax law, among other factors, will probably provide a healthy boost to the economy that could push up growth to 3 percent — a scenario that could give a lift to the GOP in this year’s midterm elections.

Gus Faucher, chief economist for the PNC Financial Services Group, said his group is still working on its latest forecast, but said it will bump the growth projection to 3 percent for 2018, up from a 2.7 percent estimate after fourth-quarter 2017 growth numbers were released at the end of January.

“With the new spending bill raising the caps on discretionary spending, the economy will get more support from the federal government,” Faucher said.

“Consumer spending, business investment and homebuilding will all be positives for growth this year,” he said.

Keeping up that level of growth beyond this year could prove difficult. It would require sustained growth through 2019 — the recession ended in June 2009 — despite the pressures of burgeoning federal deficits and rising inflation.

“However, over the next couple of years growth will slow to 2 percent, as the impact from the tax cuts and greater spending will only be temporary,” Faucher said.

The current economic expansion, which began under the Obama administration, is now the third longest in U.S. history and will probably move up to the second spot in the coming months.

“Three percent growth this year is possible, even likely, given the temporary boost to growth fueled by the deficit-financed tax cuts and government spending increases,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s Analytics.

“But growth will be substantially slower by 2020, and recession risks high, as the stimulus fades and the economy tries to digest the higher interest rates resulting from the deficit-financed stimulus,” Zandi said.

Longer-term growth is expected to remain around 2 percent a year, a level the economy would have likely maintained without the added stimulus from the Republican tax law, he said.

“Although of course we are left with much bigger deficits and larger debt burden.”

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.3 percent pace in 2017, up from 1.5 percent in 2016 and only 0.1 percent shy of the Obama White House’s projection.

The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, in its most recent analysis in December said that growth this year would settle around 2.5 percent but fall to 2.1 percent in 2019 and 2 percent in 2020.

At their latest meeting in January, central bankers said “they anticipated that the rate of economic growth in 2018 would exceed their estimates of its sustainable longer-run pace and that labor market conditions would strengthen further.”

Most of that upward adjustment is from “information suggesting that the effects of recently enacted tax changes — while still uncertain — might be somewhat larger in the near term than previously thought,” the Fed said in January meeting minutes released on Wednesday.

While jobs growth has remained steady, the labor market added the fewest since 2012 during the rich asshole’s first year in office.

The economy added 200,000 jobs in January, more than expected, and boasted the strongest wage growth since the 2008 recession. Wages increased 2.9 percent in 2017, the best rate since May 2009, as the labor market tightened and states raised their minimum wage levels.

The unemployment rate has held at 4.1 percent for the past several months, a 17-year low.

But baby boomers hitting retirement age and the rich asshole’s push for tighter immigration policies are likely to further shrink an already tight labor force, likely making it difficult to achieve faster growth.

“The administration's wishful growth forecast far exceeds those from independent sources, such as the Fed, Wall Street firms and international economic agencies,” said Aaron Sojourner, an economist at the University of Minnesota, who recently worked for the CEA under Obama and the rich asshole.

“Tax changes may boost growth a little, but less than they are promising,” Sojourner said.

Still, the uptick in business and consumer confidence — spending amounts to nearly 70 percent of the economy — could provide another lift to economic growth, at least for this year.

The Conference Board is forecasting the economy to grow by as much as 2.9 percent in 2018 behind wage growth and higher producer prices, which both signal firming inflation.

Market volatility “reminds business leaders that expansions are not immortal,” the Conference Board said in its Feb. 14 analysis.

the rich asshole had campaigned on boosting economic growth to a 4 percent to 5 percent pace. Economists roundly dismissed that promise as improbable, even as congressional Republicans praised the rich asshole’s optimism.

Now the rich asshole administration and GOP Congress have coalesced around bringing economic growth up 3 percent a year, saying their policies can consistently achieve that level of expansion.

“We, at the CEA, and in this White House, don't accept that there's a new normal,” Hassett said Thursday.

“You can see that there's a very strong case to be made that we can just go back to normal and stop modifying the word ‘normal’ when we think about the economy.”

Crowd roars for teen who stands up to GOP senator over guns at town hall

Tommy Christopher

February 25, 2018

Republicans like Sen. Chuck Grassley are hearing from teenagers across the country.

Survivors of the Parkland school shooting continue to demand action on gun violence and inspire others to do the same. And Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley found out just how dedicated these young people are at a recent town hall.

Grassley, one of the few Republicans willing to face his constituents at town halls, was confronted by 18-year-old Eden Knoop at an event in Manchester.

Knoop described the catastrophic injuries that result from firearms like the AR-15. With those weapons, “the bullet leaves the rifle with such velocity and such energy that it tears through organs and muscle,” she noted.

“Students are afraid, and they are afraid because of weapons like the AR-15,” Knoop continued. “So my question to you is, what are you going to do to prevent, and to protect us from weapons like the AR-15?”

The crowd immediately roared with approval.

Grassley delivered a rambling and indirect response, expressing support for other proposals Republicans are pushing to avoid meaningful action on gun safety. He did not mention the AR-15, and he doesn’t support an assault weapons ban.

And Grassley heard similar pleas from many of his constituents over the weekend. At one event in Burlington, a woman held up a photo of her 5-year-old son and tearfully asked, “Is his life less valuable than a high-power assault weapon? Is his life less valuable to you than the weapons that you defend?”

But Grassley reportedly did not look at the woman as she spoke. “Every life that exists is a life because of God-given life that we have,” was his only response.

the rich asshole and Florida Gov. Rick Scott refused to attend a gun violence town hall last week. But other elected Republicans would do well to pay attention to Grassley’s experience. The questions are only going to get more difficult, and the answers aren’t satisfying anyone.

Public support for gun control is surging, and so is support for the young people who are leading the way.

Reporters nail GOP for humiliating itself in Russia memo fiasco

Tommy Christopher

February 25, 2018

"The Democratic memo made the GOP memo look even stupider."

the rich asshole and the Republicans are still confronting the humiliation of their failed intelligence memo. Now that the Democrats have released their rebuttal, that embarrassment is only growing.

For weeks, Republicans hyped House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes’ memo, only to have it blow up in their faces.

When Democrats on the committee compiled a report that further exposed the Republicans’ lies, the rich asshole tried to block it.

But on Saturday, a redacted version of the Democratic response was finally released. And it quickly became clear why the rich asshole didn’t want it to see the light of day.

On MSNBC Sunday afternoon, two reporters nailed the Republican Party’s failure.

Yahoo News White House correspondent Hunter Walker noted that the new document was “much more devastating” for Republicans than Nunes’ was for the Democrats.

And HuffPost reporter Laura Bassett labeled the Republican document an “own goal.”

“What they set out to do, they did the opposite,” she noted, before easily summing up the latest humiliation.

“The Democratic memo made the GOP memo look even stupider,” she said.

the rich asshole didn’t do himself or his party any favors by tweeting an attack on the Democrats’ release that was a bald-faced lie.

This entire debacle further shows how desperate the rich asshole and his Republican enablers are to protect him from the Russia investigation.

But as former the rich asshole adviser Rick Gates’ guilty plea this week shows, time is running out for all of them.

the rich asshole’s approval returns to all-time low as support for gun control soars

Tommy Christopher

February 25, 2018

the rich asshole's approval ratings show he is on the wrong side of history again.

the rich asshole’s approval ratings were already dismal, and have sunk to a record low after his disastrous response to the Parkland school shooting.

His initial reaction to the killing of 17 people at a Florida high school was to go into hiding. He then blamed the students and tried to exploit the tragedy for his own benefit.

While grieving loved ones laid one of the slain students to rest, the rich asshole golfed just a few miles away. And his aides called the tragedy a “relief” from the administration’s many scandals.

But even given time to consider his next steps, the rich asshole’s response has only gotten worse.

He used empathy cliff notes at a “listening session” with survivors of gun violence. And he responded by obsessing about arming up to 40 percent of our teachers.

That led to a plunge in the rich asshole’s approval, along with a surge in support for gun control.

According to a CNN poll released Sunday, the rich asshole’s approval has fallen to 35 percent. That matches the lowest rating of his presidency, after a momentary bump to 40 percent in January.

70 percent of Americans expressed overwhelming support for “stricter gun control laws.” That’s the highest percentage since 1993, and fifteen points higher than in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

And 57 percent said they would support a “ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of rifles capable of semiautomatic fire, such as the AR-15.” That goes much further than the assault weapons ban that Republicans allowed to expire in 2004.

Previous mass shooting have seen periods of intense activity that gave way to inaction. But this time appears to be different. Public interest in the subject remains steady, largely due to the movement led by the student survivors themselves.

the rich asshole and the Republicans are standing with the NRA for now. But the rich asshole’s cratering approval numbers prove just how out-of-touch that stance is with the nation.

Kellyanne Conway laughably claims the rich asshole has improved US global image

Tommy Christopher

February 25, 2018

This alternative fact won't fly.

the rich asshole’s approval rating is slipping after a brief bump, so Kellyanne Conway responded in typical fashion by lying through her teeth.

After a yet another disastrous week for the rich asshole, Conway appeared on Fox News’ “Watters’ World” to try to deflect the bad news.

She praised the rich asshole’s unhinged appearance at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference. And she told Watters that people “love” the rich asshole “all across the country.”

“The numbers now show that,” host Jesse Watters said. “He’s at 50 percent approval rating, which is higher than President Obama at the same time in their presidency.”

“Our standing in the world is up according to these independent polls, as well,” Conway claimed. “And that’s a direct nexus because of his leadership.”

But Watters and Conway are both telling absurd lies.

the rich asshole’s approval rating did crack 50 percent in one outlier poll that heavily favorsRepublicans. But a brand-new CNN poll shows the rich asshole’s approval matching his historic low of 35 percent. And his average approval among nine polls is 42.2 percent, including that one outlier.

As for the nation’s standing, the most recent Gallup survey shows just 30 percent approval for the United States’ role on the global stage. That’s down from 48 percent under President Obama, and “the lowest level Gallup has recorded since beginning its global leadership poll over a decade ago.”

Conway appears to be citing a different Gallup poll that measured Americans’ perceptions of our standing in the world. But even that poll showed only 29 percent of Americans think world leaders respect the rich asshole, far lower than under President Obama.

That standing likely won’t improve after the rich asshole casually threatened to do something “very, very unfortunate for the world” if diplomacy with North Korea doesn’t work.

the rich asshole’s reckless and incompetent handling of world affairs may be fine with the isolationist segment of his supporters. But in the real world outside of Fox News, the rich asshole is as unpopular as ever.

Cartoon the rich asshole greets ‘disgraced sheriffs, spineless pastors, French Nazis’ to CPAC — where he roasts Romney

MARTIN CIZMAR
25 FEB 2018 AT 19:47 ET

Cartoon the rich asshole at CPAC/Screenshot

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Stephen Colbert’s Our Cartoon President the rich asshole has released its own version of the rich asshole’s CPAC speech.

“Welcome to my endorsement club, Mitt. You’re seated next to Roy Moore and his nieces,” cartoon the rich asshole says. “”As a Mormon, Mitt can’t drink coffee. But apparently he can spit shine my nipples, all the way to the United States senate.”

Cartoon the rich asshole of course discussed gun control.

“I want to make sure that only stable-minded people can buy a gun that would have single-handedly brought the Roman Empire to its knees. [One guy at Mar-A-Lago] mentioned that Australia banned big guns and now it’s overrun with scorpions and crocodiles.”

Watch below.

the rich asshole ‘would love’ to ‘execute all drug dealers here in America’: report

MARTIN CIZMAR
25 FEB 2018 AT 19:31 ET

President some rich asshole (AFP / MANDEL NGAN)

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some rich asshole has some things in common with President Rodrigo Duterte, the blustery strongman president of the Philippines who has overseen the extrajudicial slaughter of thousands of his people.

According to a new report, the rich asshole is interested in going Full Duterte, with a law that would make selling drugs punishable by death.

“According to five sources who’ve spoken with the rich asshole about the subject, he often leaps into a passionate speech about how drug dealers are as bad as serial killers and should all get the death penalty,” Axios reports. “the rich asshole tells confidants a softer approach to drug reform—the kind where you show sympathy to the offenders and give them more lenient sentences—will never work.”

The report says that the rich asshole “has said he would love to have a law to execute all drug dealers here in America, though he’s privately admitted it would probably be impossible to get a law this harsh passed under the American system.”

It’s already theoretically possible. Currently, 20 states have laws which allow drug dealers to be charged with first-degree murder in the event of a fatal overdose on their product. Some of those states also have the death penalty.

A study on the subject of charges for overdose deaths by the Drug Police Alliance found that such laws were counterproductive as they typically ensnared friends or family instead of dealers and that such laws tended to make users less likely to report overdoses so that the victims could be saved.

“Elected officials unfamiliar with, or resistant to, harm reduction, prevention, and treatment interventions are introducing punitive, counterproductive legislative measures in a misguided effort to reduce overdose fatalities,” the report reads. “Though their rhetoric may be compassionate, their policies are anything but. They are adopting a law and order approach to solve a public health crisis, with devastating consequences.”

NRA pushes back on the rich asshole’s gun plans after Florida shooting

REUTERS
25 FEB 2018 AT 17:21 ET

Wayne LaPierre NRA speaks to CBS News (screen grab)

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The National Rifle Association pushed back on Sunday against modest proposals by President some rich asshole and other Republicans to change U.S. gun laws in the wake of a school shooting in Florida that killed 17 students and staff.

The powerful gun lobby group does not support the rich asshole’s proposals to raise the age limit for buying certain types of guns and to ban bump stocks that enable semi-automatic rifles to shoot hundreds of rounds a minute, a spokeswoman said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“The NRA doesn’t back any ban,” Dana Loesch said.

the rich asshole was endorsed by the NRA in his 2016 presidential election campaign and often trumpets his support for the constitutional right to own guns.

But the Feb. 14 massacre at a Florida high school has mobilized high school students to push for restrictions on gun sales, spurred several companies to sever ties with the NRA and energized gun-control activist groups.

As November congressional elections draw closer, the rich asshole and Republicans are under pressure to show they are responding to concerns about school safety without angering supporters who oppose gun control.

Since the Florida shooting, the rich asshole has declared support for raising the age limit to 21 from 18 for buying rifles. The 19-year-old shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida had bought his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle legally.

“That’s what the NRA came out and said, that’s correct,” Loesch said when pressed on whether the group opposes raising the minimum age.

the rich asshole also has asked the Justice Department to develop a regulation that would effectively ban the sale of bump stocks, an accessory used last year by a shooter who killed 58 people at a Las Vegas outdoor concert, the deadliest attack by a single gunman in U.S. history.

the rich asshole has also said he supports legislation to tighten background checks for gun buyers, although he has not provided specific details.

Republican Senator Pat Toomey, a sponsor of a bill that would require background checks for weapons sold at gun shows and on the internet, said the rich asshole’s support could help advance proposals that floundered in years passed.

“Our president can play a huge and in fact probably decisive role in this. So I intend to give this another shot,” Toomey said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Legislation to close background checks loopholes failed to clear the 60-vote threshold in the U.S. Senate after a shooter killed 26 children and teachers in 2012 at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

DAYLIGHT WITH NRA?

Loesch tried to play down the emerging differences between the NRA and the White House.

“I know that people are trying to find daylight between President the rich asshole and five million law-abiding gun owners,” she said. “He’s really looking for solutions … so far nothing’s been proposed yet.”

Tweaks to gun laws face an uphill battle among conservative Republicans in Congress. On Sunday, Representative Thomas Massie from Kentucky said he opposed changes to background check laws and other restrictions on gun ownership.

“I wish that background checks stopped criminals or stopped school shootings, but they don’t,” Massie told NBC.

the rich asshole has strongly endorsed the idea – backed by the NRA in the wake of the Newtown shooting – of arming trained teachers with guns.

Loesch said the group believes individual schools should decide whether to arm teachers. On Saturday, the rich asshole said on Twitter the proposal would be left “up to states.”

Loesch said more emphasis should be placed on how the FBI and local police missed warning signs and tips about the shooter, calling it an “abdication of duty.”

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel has come under fire after a deputy at the school at the time of the shooting stayed outside. Several news reports said that three other deputies were slow to enter the building.

Israel said on CNN on Sunday that he had no plans to resign, and that the department would investigate all aspects of the shooting.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton, Pete Schroeder and Yasmeen Abutaleb; Editing by Kieran Murray, Andrea Ricci and Daniel Wallis)

Ivanka the rich asshole either had classified info or embarrassed herself to Korean president: MSNBC analyst

MARTIN CIZMAR
25 FEB 2018 AT 16:30 ET

Ivanka meets with South Korean officials/Screenshot

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Ivanka the rich asshole wasn’t just in South Korea to throw shade at snowboarders. The president’s daughter also “briefed” the president of South Korea on plans for sanctions against North Korea.

This is a problem because she doesn’t have a permanent security clearance, noted analyst Chris Lu on MSNBC.

“It’s significant on many different levels,” says Lu. “We are left now with the wholly unqualified presidential daughter providing a briefing to the president of one of our major allies about economic sanctions. So one of two things happened. Either she got access to classified information in order to do the briefing, which would be improper, or she simply gave President Moon a briefing that he probably could have read about in a newspaper, and that’s embarrassing.

The problem starts with the South Korean ambassador—or lack of one. Thirteen months into the new administration, the position still sits vacant because the nominee backed out over the rich asshole’s threats to attack the North. Since the rich asshole doesn’t have anyone qualified to take point on relations between the nations, he’s sent his daughter, whose professional credentials include a fashion line sold at Macy’s

Ivanka’s access—or non-access—was defended by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who said that the presidential first daughter was briefed on what he described as“largest set of sanctions ever imposed in connection with North Korea.

“Ivanka the rich asshole has been briefed on this. She’s been part of the team,” Mnuchin said. “She had dinner with President Moon. They had a private discussion in advance about this occurring. And this has been an interagency process.”

Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner is under mounting pressure regarding his security clearance, which Chief of Staff John Kelly is reportedly looking to pull

‘I’ve been emancipated!’: Omarosa claims leaving life under the rich asshole is like being ‘freed from the plantation’

TOM BOGGIONI
25 FEB 2018 AT 16:04 ET

Omarosa on CBS -- screengrab

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In the latest installment of Celebrity Big Brother, Omarosa Manigualt, the longtime confidante to President some rich asshole going back to their Apprentice days, called being expelled from the White House like being “freed from the plantation.”

Speaking on the CBS reality show, the former the rich asshole advisor who was booted unceremoniously from the White House after clashing with Chief of Staff John Kelly, likened her latest stint with the rich asshole to slavery, according to Entertainment Weekly.

“Oh, freedom, I’ve been emancipated,” Omarosa exclaimed. “I feel like I just got freed off a plantation.”

According to the report, Omarosa said to not expect the rich asshole to stop tweeting anytime soon.

“He’s never getting off Twitter. We actually have a Twitter rep and a Facebook rep at the White House,” Omarosa explained before adding it would be impossible to babysit the rich asshole every hour of the day.

“He’s up in his underwear at 4 in the morning. Who’s gonna monitor that? The bad tweets happen between 4 in the morning and 6 in the morning. Ain’t no one else up there but Melania,” she laughed.

Watch the video below:

‘Gun control is too hard’: Internet rains hell on Rick Santorum for blaming school shootings on single moms

DAVID BADASH, THE NEW CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
25 FEB 2018 AT 14:18 ET

Rick Santorum appears on CNN (screen grab)

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Right wing culture warrior and anti-gay Christian extremist Rick Santorum used his platform as a CNN contributor to deliver his hot take on America’s gun violence pandemic. On Sunday’s “State of the Union” Santorum railed against what he sees as a common denominator in mass shootings: single mothers and the lack of fathers in the home.

“Gun control is a debate we need to have,” Santorum told the panel. “Another debate we need to have is something that’s also common in these shootings: there fact that these kids come from broken homes without dads. And that is not something that we’re talking about and that is a commonality.”

“We want to talk about things we can work together on, how about working together to try to see what we can do to try to get more dads involved” in the lives of their children, Santorum concluded.

Many watching were outraged and took to social media:

Columnist who needed protection from jeering CPAC attendees rips conservatives for falling for creeping ‘Trumpism’

TOM BOGGIONI
25 FEB 2018 AT 14:03 ET

Mona Charen - MSNBC screengrab

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Appearing MSNBC with host Aaron Gilcrest on Sunday afternoon, conservative columnist Mona Charen took more than a few shots at the attendees at the annual CPAC conference for booing her when she lectured conservatives about defending former Judge Roy Moore and President some rich asshole who have been accused of assaulting women.

Saturday afternoon Charen took part in a panel discussion where she was jeered for not toeing the conservative line.

“I’m disappointed in people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women who are in our party, who are sitting in the White House, who brag about their extramarital affairs, who brag about mistreating women,” Charen speaking about President the rich asshole, told the CPAC audience as they booed her.

On MSNBC, Charen described her appearance, saying she had no problem with people who disapproved of her comments, but lamented the direction conservatism has gone under the rich asshole.

“This drift that had begun before the rich asshole, and has been rapidly accelerated since the rich asshole is one where we are now — we traditional conservatives now find ourselves in the strange position of having to defend not this or that public policy so much as elemental decency, acting like a grown-up, and just adhering to civility,” Charen explained.

“Do you think your words reached anyone, resonated with anyone?” host Gilcrest asked.

“I hope so. I believe so,” she replied. “I’ve gotten tremendous response since then on social media and it seems to have struck a nerve. I’ve been so frustrated over the last two years watching so many leaders of the conservative movement and leaders of the Republican Party sort of fold to Trumpism. I’m just waiting to see if anybody will stand up and tell the simple truth that this is somebody who is not deserving of our admiration, that he should be criticized, that he should not be treated as some sort of moral leader.”

Watch the video below via MSNBC:

‘She has no soul’: Former associate of Dana Loesch accuses NRA spokesperson of auditioning for the rich asshole job

TOM BOGGIONI
25 FEB 2018 AT 12:38 ET

Dana Loesch at CPAC -- screenshot

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Appearing on MSNBC’s AM Joy, a former Breitbart employee who worked with NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch when she wrote for the conservative website, accused her of being an opportunist just looking for a check and maybe a job in some rich asshole’s White House.

Kurt Bardella, who served as a spokesperson for Breitbart before leaving over the treatment of a female staffer allegedly assaulted by former the rich asshole campaign manager Cory Lewandowski, had little good to say about the current face of the NRA.

“Kurt, what about the demonization, once again by Dana Loesch at CPAC on Thursday saying the media ‘likes and loves’ mass shootings for a very specific reason?” host Joy Reid asked the former conservative.

“I mean, this is a different dimension of idiocy that we’re seeing right now on display from people like Dana. There are no words,” Bardella began. “This is someone who clearly frankly has no soul, but is a paid mercenary who is happy to keep cashing a check from the NRA to spread ridiculousness.”

“To make the insinuation that anybody, anyone on this planet enjoys covering these types of terrible events …. I think the real controversy here is that the events keep happening and the message they’ve come up with is we actually need more guns in schools and this will go away,” the AM Joy guest continued. “In fact the kids are coming under fire from the crazy right.”

“What disturbs me the most,” he elaborated, “is when Dana left that conference, she went back to her social circle and she got high-fives from everybody. They’re giving her ‘You did a great job. Way to go.’ some rich asshole probably loved it. He’s probably thinking, ‘I should hire that girl at some point.’ That’s the biggest toxicity going on, that they’re just talking to one another and fueling this.”

Watch the video below via MSNBC:

Survivor David Hogg calmly destroys Dana Loesch for duping NRA members: ‘Everything she says is spectacle’

DAVID EDWARDS
25 FEB 2018 AT 11:47 ET

David Hogg speaks to ABC News (screen grab)

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Parkland mass shooting survivor David Hogg, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, called out NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch on Sunday for representing the gun lobby instead of the organization’s 5 million members.

During an interview on ABC, Loesch became enraged over the idea of banning AR-15s or even increasing the minimum purchase age to 21 years old.

Hogg predicted that there would be a change in the way the American public responds to mass shootings because students who had grown up as America was experiencing the epidemic are now old enough to vote.

“Kids are not going to accept this,” Hogg explained. “We love to complain about things… We’re going to have to look very hard at the foundation of this country.”

Hogg also had a message to members of the NRA.

“Listen to Dana [Loesch],” Hogg said, looking directly at the camera. “Is she really speaking to you guys, is she trying to fight for you guys? Or is she actually trying to fight for the gun lobby?”

“Everything she’s saying seems like spectacle,” he added. “Is it just her tone? Or is it what she’s actually saying?”

Watch the video below from ABC.

Dana Loesch comes unglued over gun control: 5 million gun owners want 18-year-olds to be able to buy AR-15s

DAVID EDWARDS
25 FEB 2018 AT 10:00 ET

Dana Loesch speaks to ABC News (screen grab)

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NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch became combative on Sunday when she was asked if her group would back a ban on devices that effectively convert semi-automatic weapons into automatic weapons.

During an interview on ABC News, host George Stephanopoulos asked Loesch if the NRA would support President some rich asshole’s call to set an age limit of 21 on the sale of semi-automatic weapons.

“The NRA has made their position incredibly clear,” Loesch said.

“That’s a no,” Stephanopoulos pointed out.

“People are trying to find daylight between President the rich asshole and 5 million law-abiding gun owners all across the United States,” Loesch said. “These are things he’s discussing… nothing has been proposed yet.

“The position is you do not want to raise the age,” the ABC host pressed.

“That’s what the NRA came out and said,” Loesch admitted.

When it came to banning so-called bump stocks, which effectively make semi-automatic rifles into fully-automatic rifles, Loesch said that it was also a non-starter.

“The NRA already made it clear the ATF needs to do their job,” the NRA spokesperson opined. “They need to make sure their definitions are consistent.”

“The ATF says they don’t have the authority right now to ban bump stocks,” Stephanopoulos explained. “The president has said he wants those to be banned. Will the NRA back that?”

“The NRA doesn’t back any ban,” Loesch replied. “The NRA has asked the ATF to do its job and make sure that these classifications are consistent.”

When she was asked about banning all military-style assault weapons, Loesch became enraged.

“This is really a discussion about banning all semi-automatic firearms,” she complained. “And I wish that we could be genuine in our discussion about that. That’s the position on AR-15s. And AR-15s are going to be in that school protecting students and teachers when they return back to class.”

“We are the only country that has wide access to these kinds of weapons and no one else has the frequency or the intensity of mass shootings that we do,” Stephanopoulos charged.

“That’s actually not true,” Loesch stated incorrectly.

Watch the video below.

CNN host shuts down Jack Kingston blaming Hollywood over shooting when asked if the rich asshole will stand up to the NRA

TOM BOGGIONI
25 FEB 2018 AT 09:21 ET

Former Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) on CNN.

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Appearing on CNN Sunday morning, conservative Jack Kingston did everything he could to shield President some rich asshole form having to exhibit any type of leadership and buck the NRA when it comes to pushing forward sensible gun control policies.

Speaking with host Victor Blackwell, Kingston filibustered left and right on new gun laws while denying the NRA was a political group.

“You know what I think would be really great is if we could hear from party leaders on both sides of the aisle right now and say, ‘You know what? This is substantive, let’s get to work on it,” Kingston explained.

“One question to Jack is: will the president buckle when the NRA exerts overwhelming pressure on him because they gave him $30 million during his presidential campaign?” panelist Maria Cardona asked.

“Why are we swinging at the NRA?” Kingston shot back. “Remember, it’s about the 2nd Amendment and not a political group.”

“It’s absolutely about a political group,” Cardona quickly responded.

“Let me say this. I would put in there what is the effect of violence on video games and violence in Hollywood?” Kingston continued.

“Jack, that wasn’t the question!” host Kingston interjected. “Jack, the president said in the health care conversation that ‘I will take the heat. Whatever this group puts together, I will take the heat on that.’ When the heat came a day or two later he was backing out and doing exactly what he said he wouldn’t do.”

“Right now the president says the NRA is for it and the NRA has said they are not for it,” Blackwell charged.

“I know the NRA is hated by the left, but this –,” Kingston attempted.

“It has nothing to do with the left or right,” Blackwell exclaimed, cutting him off. “It has to do with the president’s commitment to doing what he says he wants to do and the NRA’s insistence it will not happen.”

“The party leaders should grab this,” Kingston attempted again.

“Who is the Republican Party leader?” Blackwell challenged. “If you’re saying the party leader should grab it, isn’t that the president?”

“No, I’m talking about the legislative branch. Let’s have Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) say we will take it and run with it. I don’t know why this is such a hard concept?” Kingston replied.

Watch the video below via CNN:

Death threats force Parkland shooting survivor to leave Facebook

Cameron Kasky says he has received "graphic death threats."

LUKE BARNES FEB 23, 2018, 2:35 PM

At a town hall on Wednesday night, the survivors of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, made Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) squirm with a series of pointed questions about his support for the Second Amendment. One question that drew particularly loud cheers came from Cameron Kasky, when he asked Rubio, “Can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA?”

But while the crowd at the town hall may have forcefully backed Kasky, the 17-year-old has been subject to a different reception online, where he says he’s encountered vicious smears and death threats.

The trolling has gotten so bad that, earlier in the day, Kasky said he was taking some time off Facebook because “the death threats from the NRA cultists are a bit more graphic than those on Twitter.”

Kasky isn’t the only teenager getting death threats for their activism against the NRA. David Hogg, also 17, has fiercely advocated on television for improved gun control laws in the wake of the mass shooting which left seventeen of his classmates and teachers dead. Over the last week, he has been a central target for conspiracy theorists believing that he is in fact not a student but a “crisis actor”. One video claiming Hogg was an actor got more than 200,000 views and was the top trending video on YouTube before it was taken down.

Now Hogg’s family members are receiving death threats as well. “I’m under so much stress,” David’s mother, Rebecca Boldrick, told the Washington Post. “I’m angry and exhausted. Angry, exhausted and proud.”

Harassment of the survivors of mass shootings has become a horrifyingly familiar part of the post-tragedy routine.

After surviving a bullet to the head during the Las Vegas massacre, for example, 30-year-old Braden Matejka was inundated with death threats. “You are a lying piece of shit and I hope someone truly shoots you in the head,” one wrote. “It’s madness. I can’t imagine the thought process of these people,” Matejka told the Guardian at the time. “Do they know that we are actual people?”

And last June, a Florida woman was given prison time after pleading guilty to making a series of death threats against a parent whose child was killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting.

Part of the reason these conspiracy theories, and the death threats against survivors that accompany them, become so popular is because they manage to exploit the algorithms of major social media platforms that dictate what content is “trending.” YouTube, for instance, removed the video claiming that David Hogg was a crisis actor — but only after media backlash. Because its trending column is dictated by algorithms, no one was able to spot the problem early. Facebook has a similar problem, with content claiming that the Parkland students were lying being shared hundreds of thousands of times on its platform in wake of the shooting.

GOP Congressman explains why 97% of Americans are wrong about background checks

"You're trying to put lipstick on a pig."

STEPHANIE GRIFFITHFEB 25, 2018, 12:39 PM

A Republican Congressman scoffed on Sunday at proposals popular with Americans that would strengthen background check system for purchasing guns, calling such moves little more than “putting lipstick on a pig.”

Representative Tom Massie (R-KY) seemed to suggest that the entire background check system was pointless.

“I wish that background checks stopped criminals or stopped school shootings but they don’t. They failed in Texas with the church shooting. They failed at Columbine,” the Kentucky lawmaker said.

In the aftermath of the horrific school shooting in Parkland, Florida, there has been a strong push for strengthening the federal background checks system, making it harder for people with criminal records or serious mental health problems to purchase deadly firearms.

A national poll by Quinnipiac University found that a remarkable 97% of Americans supported universal background checks. This includes the overwhelming majority of gun owners and NRA members.

But Kentucky Representative Tom Massie is apparently among the 3% who oppose background checks for all gun purchases.

Massie’s thinking, however, appears to be influential in the White House.

Last week, President some rich asshole, made controversial remarks in which he called for arming teachers in the classroom, which he said would be the most effective way to keep students safe. the rich asshole called for arming 20 percent of schoolroom teachers and staff, who would earn pay bonuses after passing firearms training. The suggestion has been broadly derided by actual teachers.

Earlier this year, Massie introduce the Safe Students Act, which would repeal a 1990 law making it unlawful for unauthorized individuals to carry a firearm in a school zone.

Massie blamed a failed background check system as the reason why emotionally troubled teens were able to carry out mass shootings in Columbine, Colorado in April 1999 and the December 2012 elementary school shooting at Newtown, Connecticut.

“The shooter in Connecticut who stole his mother’s firearms and shot her before he committed the crime isn’t going to be stopped by a background check. Neither were the two perpetrators in Columbine that got other people to buy the guns for them,” Massie said.

But Massie rejected the idea, floated by moderator Chuck Todd, that failures of the background check system means the system should be improved, not scrapped.

“We’re not putting enough information in it. You’re trying to put lipstick on a pig,” he said on NBC television’s Meet the Press.

the rich asshole has called for strengthening background checks and boosting the minimum age for the purchase of assault-style weapons, policies that are opposed by the NRA.

The Parkland shooting was carried out by a 19-year-old former student who was reported multiple times to the authorities, leaving 17 students and teachers dead.

NRA spokeswoman confronted with the facts on the assault weapons ban. She had no answers.

Rather than face the facts, NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch ducks, dodges, and distracts.

CASEY MICHEL FEB 25, 2018, 10:21 AM

With the NRA continuing to watch its corporate support crumble, it is struggling to provide responses to basic facts about the links between mass shootings and high-powered rifles.

The latest round of obfuscation came Sunday, when NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch tangled with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

In her appearance, Loesch repeatedly danced around Stephanopoulos’s point that, during the U.S.’s decade-long ban on assault weapons, both incidents and deaths due to the weapons dropped dramatically. As Stephanopoulos pointed out, research from the University of Massachusetts’ Louis Klarevas found that, from 1994-2004, there were only 12 incidents – about one per year – due to assault weapons, totaling some 89 deaths.

In the decade following, however, both numbers spiked. From 2004-2014, there were 34 incidents involving assault weapons – and over 300 deaths.

“Look at that right there,” Stephanopoulos said, pointing to the numbers. “We see the casualties go way up.”

But Loesch ignored the numbers, instead claiming that the ban “did not have much of an effect on the crime rate.”

At no point in the appearance did Loesch address the fact that the repeal of the weapons assault ban coincided with a tripling in the rate of both incidents and deaths from assault weapons. And Stephanopoulos, to his credit, wouldn’t let Loesch skate free.

“Excuse me for a second,” he said. “No one’s saying this is going to eliminate every single killing. But we do know that we’re the only country that has wide access to these kind of weapons, and no one else has the frequency or the intensity of these mass shootings than we do.”

Loesch, as it is, pointed out that France has seen a higher casualty rate from mass shootings than the U.S. over the past decade – due almost exclusively to the Bataclan terrorist attack.

However, she failed to address the rate of mass shootings overall. (Or the fact that the U.S. has a far, far higher rate of deaths from firearms than other developed countries.) In one study, a pair of researchers from Texas State University and State University of New York in Oswego found that, from 2000-2014, the U.S. had more mass shootings than 10 other developed nations combined – a list that included France. Even when adjusted for population, the U.S. is still higher than France.

More numbers also show just how much the tide of public opinion is turning against the NRA’s message. A CNN poll released Sunday showed a striking surge in support for increased gun control, with some 70 percent of those surveyed saying they favor increasing restrictions — the highest rate in 25 years. Perhaps most impressively, a majority of those in gun-owning households now support increasing restrictions for gun purchases — as do, at 49 percent, a plurality of Republicans. The rate of support is also nearly 30 points higher than it was in 2014, when only 44 percent of Americans backed increasing restrictions.

The poll found “57% who back a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of rifles capable of semi-automatic fire, such as the AR-15,” up 8 points since October.

POLITICS

02/25/2018 12:07 am ET

Mexican President Cancels Trip To Washington After Heated Call With some rich asshole

Neither leaders will back down from their stance on Mexico paying for the rich asshole’s border wall.

By Carla Herreria

The president of Mexico halted upcoming plans to visit the White House after a reportedly tense phone conversation with President some rich asshole, according to the Washington Post.

U.S. and Mexican officials told the Post that President Enrique Peña Nieto called off his visit to Washington D.C. after the rich asshole refused his request to publicly affirm Mexico’s ongoing stance that the country will not pay for a border wall between the two countries during a phone call on Tuesday.

President Peña Nieto has long maintained that Mexico will not pay for the rich asshole’s plans to fortify the border with a wall, as the country finds the even the gesture offensive.

The officials who were familiar with the call spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity because the 50-minute call was confidential.

A White House official confirmed with CNN that Peña Nieto’s meeting with the rich asshole was tentatively scheduled for March, but was placed on hold after their conversation.

A three-sentence White House readout of the phone call did not specifically mention the rich asshole’s multibillion-dollar border wall, but it did note that the president “underscored his commitment to expanding cooperation between the United States and Mexico on security, trade, and immigration.”

According to the Washington Post, Peña Nieto and the rich asshole spent a “considerable portion” of the phone call discussing the border wall.

A Mexican official told the paper that the rich asshole “lost his temper” during Tuesday’s conversation. U.S. officials said the rich asshole was frustrated and exasperated because he thought Peña Nieto was being unreasonable for expecting him to walk back plans for his controversial campaign promise, according to the Post.

the rich asshole and Peña Nieto had previously quarreled over the border wall during a phone conversation early last year.

Leaked transcripts of a Jan. 27, 2017, phone call between the two leaders reportedly show the rich asshole insisting that his wall was “the least important thing” to talk about while adding that “politically [it] might be the most important.”

During the conversation, both leaders agreed that talking about the wall was unproductive, but when Peña Nieto said, “Mexico cannot pay for that wall,” the rich asshole responded: “You cannot say that to the press.”

“The press is going to go with that, and I cannot live with that,” the rich asshole told Peña Nieto, according to the transcripts. “You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances.”

A White House official told CNN that Tuesday’s call was “less hostile” than last year’s conversation, but not any more productive.

POLITICS

02/24/2018 03:01 pm ET Updated 1 hour ago

The Teens Are Coming For The NRA, And They Can’t Be Stopped

We are witnessing history.

By Sebastian Murdock

The most powerful gun lobby in the U.S. is facing its greatest threat yet: Generation Z.

Less than two weeks after a deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, left 17 dead and more than a dozen injured at Stoneman Douglas High School, teens across the country have made a simple request to the nation: They don’t want to fear getting shot in their schools. And they’re fighting like hell to make sure we know it.

The National Rifle Association and the politicians who pocket money from them likely hoped talk of gun control would simmer down as the days went on, but it has not.

Instead, students are continuing the fight to make sure they and those who died stay in the headlines.

School Walkouts

Two days after their friends were slaughtered by a gunman with an AR-15, a group of about 50 teenagers walked out of South Broward High School in Florida to protest for better gun control laws. It was just the beginning.

This week, students left their schools in droves across the country to protest the NRA. Hundreds of students staged walkouts in Florida as others headed to the State Capitol in Tallahassee to pressure lawmakers.

In Washington, D.C., dozens of student activists gathered in front of the White House to make their voices heard.

Students in states including Arizona, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, and Colorado ― among others ― showed solidarity with the victims and students of Douglas High by also leaving classes to demand that no civilian gets access to a weapon of war.

From Children To Leaders

“I’m 17, but in a matter of days have aged decades,” Douglas High student Delaney Tarr said during a protest in Florida last week.

It’s been a sentiment echoed by many of the survivors who have been forced to grow up faster than they should have. Yet somehow, they’ve found a way to turn their immense grief into actionable change.

Dozens of student leaders — whose numbers keep growing — from Douglas High have been organizing protests while delivering impassioned, articulate arguments as to why they want better gun control.

At the same protest as Tarr, student leader Emma Gonzalez spit fire at the NRA.

“Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this: We call BS!” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez ― along with other student activists including Cameron Kasky and David Hogg ― is just one of many new leaders who have sacrificed their own childhoods to fight the NRA. Students swayed President some rich asshole into attending a listening session. Others have met with politicians to voice their concerns. Students all over are grabbing the media spotlight not because they want it, but because they refuse to let the movement decay.

Social Media Savants

No one knows how to hurt feelings more than a pissed-off teenager. Some people in power ― including NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch ― are learning that the hard way. Observe:

Teenagers from Douglas High are using social media to elevate their platform in incredible ways. Gonzalez has amassed more than 500,000 Twitter followers since the tragedy, and Twitter has proactively verified many of the Parkland students raising their voices. Students are reaching politicians and celebrities who are helping to further elevate their platform. And amidst all of that, they’re actively fighting trolls and conspiracy theorists convinced the children of a school shooting are “crisis actors.”

“The students on Twitter have been a wonderful counterpoint to what we have seen as this machine of right-wing propaganda,” Jen Golbeck, an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies, told NBC News.

Challenging Politicians

It’s bad time to be Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.

At a CNN Town Hall on Wednesday, Douglas High junior Kasky had a simple question for Rubio:

“Can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA?” he asked.

Rubio fumbled the question, eventually saying he would continue to receive NRA money because “people buy into my agenda.” He has so far accepted $3,303,355 in donations from the NRA in his political career.

Children are challenging and embarrassing politicians who refuse to act on responsible gun control. In Florida, protestors made clear they plan to vote out any elected officials who take NRA money.

During the president’s listening session on Wednesday, Douglas student Sam Zeif tearfully asked the president how an AR-15 could come into someone’s hands.

“I turned 18 the day after, woke up to the news my best friend was gone,” Zeif said. “I don’t understand why I can still go in a store and buy a weapon of war, an AR. How is it that easy to buy this type of weapon? How have we not stopped this after Columbine, after Sandy Hook? I’m sitting with a mother who lost her son. It’s still happening.”

Instead of stricter gun laws, the president has suggested arming teachers. Students of Douglas high ― along with teachers themselves ― have blasted the absurd solution.

Because of newly increased pressure, the Justice Department must now look again at bump stocks, a device that enables a shooter to fire a gun as if it were automatic and was used in last year’s Las Vegas mass shooting. Even hard-line Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott has broken with the rich asshole and other GOP lawmakers by announcing a proposal Friday that would raise the age of buying a gun in Florida to 21 and to strengthen background checks.

Last week, Al Hoffman Jr., a top Republican political donor in Florida, announced he would no longer give money to politicians that did not support a ban of AR-15s.

“For how many years now have we been doing this — having these experiences of terrorism, mass killings — and how many years has it been that nothing’s been done?” Hoffman told The New York Times. “It’s the end of the road for me.”

Sponsorships Dropping For NRA

This week, the NRA has seen their corporate sponsors jumping ship in record numbers, dealing what might ultimately be the heaviest blow to the organization.

Because of the student activism in Parkland and beyond, companies from airlines to banks have made clear that they will cut ties with the NRA for the foreseeable future. The First Bank of Omaha announced Thursday that because of increased pressure from customers, they would no longer support gun lobbyists.

“Customer feedback has caused us to review our relationship with the NRA. As a result, First National Bank of Omaha will not renew its contract with the National Rifle Association to issue the NRA Visa Card,” a First National Bank spokesman told HuffPost.

Insurance company MetLife has followed suit, along with airlines Delta and United, cybersecurity company Symantec, multiple car rental companies and more. The list continues to grow.

And for those companies still linked to the NRA, don’t worry. HuffPost is keeping track.

Get Ready To March

It all leads to this: On March 24, a “March For Our Lives” will be held across the country to demand that lawmakers enact meaningful gun control legislation. A group of student activists from Douglas High have organized what is likely to be a massive event, and will be marching in the country’s capital.

“In every single city, we are going to be marching together as students begging for our lives,” Kasky said on ABC. “This isn’t about the GOP. This isn’t about the Democrats. This is about the adults. We feel neglected. At this point, you’re either with us or you’re against us.”

We’re with you.

POLITICS

02/24/2018 11:57 pm ET

some rich asshole Fundraises Off Parkland Shooting Tragedy, Touts His ‘Safer Schools’

The newsletter was emailed Friday to supporters.

By Mary Papenfuss

A some rich asshole and Mike Pence “weekly newsletter” laments the horror of the Parkland school shooting that killed 17 people, then ends with a “contribute” button so people can give money ... to the rich asshole and Pence.

The newsletter, paid for by “some rich asshole for President Inc,” was emailed Friday to supporters.

The first the rich asshole tout in the newsletter, headlined “President the rich asshole — Week 57: Safer Schools,” said that the president and first lady Melania the rich asshole “visited with victims and first responders following the shooting and met incredible people they will never forget.” The piece is accompanied by a photo of the rich asshole and the first lady at the hospital bedside of a Parkland shooting survivor wrapped in bandages.

The message adds: “The President is now engaging in an important national conversation about school safety and ways to prevent any future attacks. President the rich asshole is taking steps towards banning gun bump stocks and strengthening background checks for gun purchasers. The President has made his intent very clear: ‘making our schools and our children safer will be our top priority.’”

Screenshot of the Feb. 24 issue of the “Weekly the rich asshole Pence Newsletter” mailed to supporters.

Other stories note the rich asshole handing out medals of valor to law enforcement officers, his infrastructure plan and a “confidence boom” among small businesses.

The newsletter ends with a red “CONTRIBUTE” link as well as a link to “VISIT OUR STORE.”

Despite the rich asshole’s proposed plan to strengthen background checks for gun purchases, he and Congress rolled back tougher checks on people with mental illnesses who purchase guns a year ago. The Obama-era regulation would have barred guns to people receiving Social Security checks for mental illnesses.

The suspected shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Nikolas Cruz, was reportedly treated for mental illness.

the rich asshole’s proposed budget also cuts funds for the background checks system by millions of dollars.

Survivors aren’t likely to see the aftermath of their tragedy as something to tout in a fundraising newsletter. Students and parents of the school have slammed the rich asshole, other politicians and the National Rifle Association for lack of action on stricter gun control to avert future tragedies.

Parkland mom Lori Alhadeff, screamed at the rich asshole on a CNN video to “do something” the day her 14-year-old daughter, Alyssa, was killed. “You can stop the guns from getting into these children’s hands,” she cried.

Teachers have slammed the president’s recommendation that 20 percent of teachers be armed in schools so they could shoot it out with attackers.

POLITICS

02/24/2018 02:45 am ET Updated 13 hours ago

The RNC Asked Tweeters To Tell some rich asshole Their Priorities. They Didn’t Hold Back.

“Stop tweeting like a crazy loon.”

By Lee Moran

The Republican National Committee used Twitter to ask people to tell President some rich asshole their priorities on Friday night.

And it provoked a series of curt responses.

“The President is listening,” the tweet read. “Let him know your priorities here.”

It invited people to click on a link to the GOP’s official website, where they could fill in a 32-question survey featuring questions such as: “Are you concerned by the potential spread of Sharia Law?” and “Is Russia a concern to you?”

On completing the questionnaire, it linked to a donation page on the rich asshole’s official website, which asked folks to “please take the next step and consider making a contribution to help us enact our America First agenda and fend off vicious attacks.”

the rich asshole likely won’t be focusing on any of the suggested priorities anytime soon:

This statement from Bank of America should make gun manufacturers very worried

The financial giant previously extended a $40 million line of credit to the Ruger firearm company.

MELANIE SCHMITZ FEB 24, 2018, 2:46 PM

Bank of America says it’s reexamining its relationships with gun manufacturers in the wake of widespread boycotts targeting the National Rifle Association (NRA). The boycotts followed a deadly shooting at Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 people were killed.

“We are joining other companies in our industry to examine what we can do to help end the tragedy of mass shootings, and an immediate step we’re taking is to engage the limited number of clients we have that manufacture assault weapons for non-military use to understand what they can contribute to this shared responsibility,” a Bank of America spokesperson said in a statement to Axios on Saturday.

Financial institutions like the First National Bank of Omaha, as well as several airlines, car rental companies, and insurance companies such as MetLife, have recently cut ties with the gun lobby, many of them shutting down NRA member discount programs under pressure from consumers.

The Bank of Omaha, which offered NRA-branded credit cards, cited “customer feedback” as the reason for its initial review of its business dealings. Just days after ThinkProgress reported the card’s existence, the bank announced it would not renew its contract with the NRA after it expires.

Bank of America’s decision comes on the heels of a February 19 New York Times editorial by author and columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, who suggested that the financial industry could push back against the massive gun lobby if credit card issuers began banning the sales of firearms using their products.

“To be clear: Those three banks won’t let you use your credit card to buy Bitcoin, but they will happily let you use it to buy an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle — the same kind of gun used in mass shootings in Parkland; Newtown, Conn.; San Bernardino, Calif.; Las Vegas; and Sutherland Springs, Tex.,” Sorkin wrote. He added that there was precedent for such a move: in early February, several companies, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America itself, banned the use of their respective cards to purchase cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

“Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, which issues credit cards and owns a payment processor, has talked about how he and his bank have ‘a moral obligation but also a deeply vested interest’ in helping ‘solve pressing societal challenges,'” Sorkin wrote. “This is your chance, Mr. Dimon.”

According to Axios, Bank of America’s most recent announcement may be part of a larger effort to keep its business practices aligned with its “Responsible Growth” strategy, a pledge to help drive the economy “in sustainable ways” by creating jobs, developing communities, fostering economic mobility, and “address[ing] society’s biggest challenges.”

Bank of America previously extended a $40 million line of credit to firearms manufacturer Sturm, Ruger & Co — better known by it’s shorter title, Ruger — in December 2007. That contract was initially set to expire in June 2017, but the bank agreed to extend the expiration date to June 2018, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In August 2016, Ruger announced a fundraising campaign for the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), pledging to match up to $5 million in donations.

“We wanted to offer an opportunity for folks to contribute to the NRA-ILA, knowing that their donation will be backed by a matching contribution from Ruger,” CEO Mike Fifer stated at the time. “Make no mistake, the Second Amendment is on the ballot this November and we all have to be completely committed to preserving it.”

Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA-ILA, added, “Friends, the fight is already on. If we wait until November, we will lose everything. So challenge every gun owner you know. This is a fight for our freedom!”

It’s unclear whether the Ruger contract is one of the business relationships Bank of America has pledged to reexamine.

Representatives for Bank of America did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

House Democrats release intelligence memo defending DOJ, FBI investigation

BY AVERY ANAPOL AND JOHN BOWDEN - 02/24/18 04:15 PM EST

House Intelligence Committee Democrats on Saturday released their memo defending the Justice Department (DOJ) and FBI against allegations of surveillance abuses made in a memo by committee Republicans.

The 10-page Democratic memo charges that the Republican memo was wrong to assert that the FBI's investigation of Russian election meddling resulted from the creation of the so-called Steele dossier — an unverified private intelligence document detailing the rich asshole's ties to Russia.

The Democratic memo claims that the FBI had been investigating the rich asshole associates for seven weeks before the dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele, was handed over to them. This, according to the memo, means that the FBI did not rely on the dossier to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on the rich asshole campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

The GOP memo — which was assembled by House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and his staff — depicted a Justice Department fractured by bias against the rich asshole while he was a candidate, but did not specify any particular criminal statutes that may have been violated.

According to the GOP document, information from the Steele dossier was "essential" to the acquisition of surveillance warrants on the rich asshole campaign aide Carter Page. It claims that then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe told the committee in December that without the information from the Steele dossier, no surveillance warrant for Page would have been sought.

Aside from rebutting these claims, the new Democrat memo reveals that the FISA warrant and its three subsequent renewals were approved by judges who were appointed by Republican presidents.

The memo also shows that FBI fact-finding contradicted Page's sworn testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, and corroborated parts of the Steele dossier relating to Page.

In the document, Democrats also assert that House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) did not read many of the underlying classified documents that Democrats say contradict his claims.

"The Committee Majority's memorandum, which draws selectively on highly sensitive classified information, includes other distortions and misrepresentations that are contradicted by the underlying classified documents," the memo reads, "which the vast majority of Members of the Committee and the House have not had the opportunity to review, and which Chairman Nunes chose not to read himself."

The release of the document comes after President the rich asshole earlier this month blocked the memo from being made public without redactions. Many lawmakers from both parties argued that the American people deserved the right to view the rebuttal since the GOP memo had been released just weeks before.

the rich asshole claimed at the time of its release, that the information in the GOP memo "totally vindicates" him in the investigation into whether the rich asshole campaign colluded with Russia to win the election.

Meanwhile, House conservatives have been touting the memo's revelations as “worse than Watergate” and hinted that it could prove the undoing of the federal investigation into the rich asshole’s campaign.

The White House responded to the release of the Democrats' memo Saturday, saying it fails to answer questions raised by the original GOP document made public earlier this month.

“This politically driven document fails to answer serious concerns raised by the Majority’s memorandum about the use of partisan opposition research from one candidate, loaded with uncorroborated allegations, as a basis to ask a court to approve surveillance of a former associate of another candidate, at the height of a presidential campaign,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

the rich asshole later tweeted on the memo, saying: “The Democrat memo response on government surveillance abuses is a total political and legal BUST. Just confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!”

Nunes said on Saturday that the Democrat rebuttal will not affect the substance of the GOP's document.

"What you’re not going to see is anything that actually rejects what was actually in our memo," Nunes said while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "What you’re not going to see is anything that actually rejects what was actually in our memo."

"What you basically will read in the Democratic memo is they are advocating that it is okay for the FBI and DOJ to use for political dirt paid for by one campaign and use it against the other campaign," he said.

Nunes said earlier this month that he wanted the Democrat's memo out.

"We think it’s ridiculous on the face of it," Nunes said during an interview on Fox News. "We think it’s very political about how they attack myself, they attack Chairman Gowdy, they turn Carter Page into some super-secret Russian spy, they talk about how Christopher Steele is a really, really good source when we know that he lied to the FBI."

Democrats cheered the release of the memo on Saturday, touting it as proof that Republicans crafted a memo lacking proper context in an attempt to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of alleged collusion between the rich asshole associates and Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and lead author of the memo, championed the document as a defense of the FBI and Justice Department.

“The Democratic response memo released today should put to rest any concerns that the American people might have as to the conduct of the FBI, the Justice Department and the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]," Schiff said after its release.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) went further in her statement, calling on Republicans to end "political charades" surrounding the Russia investigation following the memo's release.

“The release of the House Intelligence Committee Democrats’ memo helps set the record straight on Republicans’ attempts to obstruct the investigation into the the rich asshole-Russia scandal," Pelosi wrote.

In his statement, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) lashed out at the rich asshole, who he accused of silencing Democratic opposition by delaying the release of the Democratic memo until redactions were made.

"By initially delaying the release of the memo, the president purposefully silenced any Democratic rebuttal to the fabricated conspiracy theories pushed by Chairman Nunes. Obviously, there is something the president is afraid of," Schumer said.

Both the memos have added to the debate over Mueller's investigation, which shows no signs of slowing down.

the rich asshole campaign adviser Richard Gates on Friday pleaded guilty to two charges brought against him by Mueller’s team in federal court in Washington, D.C.: one count of conspiracy against the United States and one count of making a false statement to the FBI agents investigating Russian interference.

Mueller filed the criminal information one day after he unveiled a new superseding indictment charging Gates and the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort with a slew of financial-related crimes stemming from their work for pro-Russian political forces in Ukraine over the past decade. The alleged crimes are unrelated to the work Manafort and Gates did for the the rich asshole campaign.

Dem.countermemo by M Mali on Scribd

Updated at 8:00 p.m.

As women turn on the rich asshole, new budget axes birth control

Caroline Orr

February 24, 2018

The rich asshole administration is revamping the nation's family planning program to prioritize abstinence-only and religious-based counseling.

The rich asshole administration announced Friday that it plans to cut funding for the Title X family planning program and prioritize funding for abstinence-only and religious-based programs.

The announcement, which was already long overdue, is just the latest move by the rich asshole administration to restrict access to birth control and roll back the clock on women’s health.

By eliminating the Obama administration’s emphasis on all forms of contraception, the move also marks another attempt by the rich asshole — who remains obsessed with President Obama — to undo the progress made by his predecessor in any and all ways possible.

“The rich asshole-Pence administration is quietly taking aim at access to birth control under the nation’s program for affordable reproductive health care, which 4 million people rely on each year,” said Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, according to Politico.

“This is a clear attempt to roll back access to the type of birth control that most women want to use. The last thing anyone wants is for some rich asshole or Mike Pence to weigh in on her sex life — but this announcement essentially invites them into the bedroom.”

The federal Title X family planning program currently funds nearly 4,000 family planning sites nationwide and provides services to more than 4 million low-income women and men each year. Grants distributed through Title X are used to fund services provided by state and local public health departments, as well as family planning organizations, community health centers, and other private nonprofit agencies.

In Friday’s announcement, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided a budget that cuts $20 million from the previous year’s funding level.

The announcement also emphasizes HHS’s new priorities, which include programs that place a special emphasis on encouraging “committed, safe, stable, healthy marriages” and focus on “the benefits of avoiding sexual risk or returning to a sexually risk-free status, especially when communicating with adolescents.”

HHS also says they will prioritize programs that “that do not normalize sexual risk behaviors [among adolescents], but instead clearly communicate the research informed benefits of delaying sex or returning to a sexually risk-free status.”

Essentially, HHS wants to replace evidence-based family planning methods with abstinence-based programming, which is not just ineffective, but dangerous. It also threatens to undo significant progress in reducing teen pregnancy and unintended pregnancy — progress that was made in large part due to comprehensive sex education and access to birth control.

While providers like Planned Parenthood will not be barred from applying for funding, the emphasis on applicants with religious backgrounds and abstinence counseling will make it harder for comprehensive pregnancy prevention programs to obtain federal funding. Planned Parenthood provides services to an estimated 41 percent of all Title X patients, most of whom are low-income women.

It doesn’t exactly come as a surprise that the rich asshole administration is using Title X to attack birth control. Valerie Huber, the new head of the Title X office, was president of an abstinence-only advocacy group prior to joining HHS, and has expressed her doubts about the effectiveness of evidence-based pregnancy prevention programs.

Huber has also said she prefers the term “sexual risk avoidance” because it avoids the negative connotations that abstinence-only programs have rightly earned. That language is used throughout Friday’s announcement.

Also at HHS is radical anti-abortion activist Charmaine Yoest, who was appointed by the rich asshole last April. Among Yoest’s many extremist beliefs is her desire to ban all forms of birth control.

And then there’s Mike Pence, one of the leaders in the war on women’s health, who once absurdly described condoms as “very, very poor protection.”

Friday’s announcement comes just a week after it was revealed that the rich asshole administration allegedly worked with a hate group called Alliance for Defending Freedom to make it easier for states to defund Planned Parenthood.

These policies explain why women are fighting back in unprecedented numbers, with a record-breaking 30,000 women ready to run for office. And it’s not just the rich asshole who will pay the price. Asked which party they would vote for in the midterm elections, 64 percent of American women in a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll said they would choose a Democratic candidate, compared to just 29 percent for Republicans —— a stunning 35-point advantage for Democrats.

Republicans may want to deny that the war on women’s health is happening, but millions of American women are standing on the battlefield — and for them, it couldn’t get more real than this. In November, the GOP will see just how real it is, too.

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

February 24th-25th, 2017. It's been 469-470 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no. 45, and 397-398 days since the Jan 20th inauguration of some rich asshole.

Cameron Kasky says he has received "graphic death threats."

"You're trying to put lipstick on a pig."

Rather than face the facts, NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch ducks, dodges, and distracts.

School Walkouts

From Children To Leaders

Social Media Savants

Challenging Politicians

Sponsorships Dropping For NRA

Get Ready To March

The financial giant previously extended a $40 million line of credit to the Ruger firearm company.

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