February 26th, 2017. It's been 471 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no. 45, and 399 days since the Jan 20th inauguration of some rich asshole.
A Democratic governor confronted the rich asshole on arming teachers and the rich asshole was not happy
"I just suggest we need a little less tweeting and a little more listening."
During an event at the White House on Monday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) challenged President the rich asshole on his plan to arm teachers — to his face. And the president was visibly not happy about it.
After the rich asshole said that he thinks it’s “very important” to arm “a small portion” of teachers that are “very gun adept” in order to prevent schools shootings, Inslee explained why he thinks that’s a bad idea.
“If I may respond to that, lemme just suggest whatever percentage it is — I heard at one time you might have suggested 20 percent — whatever percentage it is, speaking as a grandfather, speaking as the governor of the state of Washington, I have listened to the people who would be affected by that, I have listened to the biology teachers, and they don’t want to do that at any percentage,” Inslee began.
“I have listened to the 1st grade teachers that don’t want to be pistol-packing 1st grade teachers, I have listened to law enforcement who have said they don’t want to have to train teachers as law enforcement agents, which takes about six months,” Inslee continued.
The governor went on to urge the rich asshole to listen more, tweet less, and take the proposal to arm teachers off the table.
“Now I just think this is a circumstance where we need to listen — that educators should educate, and they should not be foisted upon this responsibility of packing heat in 1st grade classes,” Inslee said. “Now I understand that you have suggested this, and we suggest things and sometimes then we listen to people about it and maybe they don’t look so good a little later, so I just suggest we need a little less tweeting and a little more listening, and let’s just take that off the table and move forward.
the rich asshole tightly crossed his arms and side-eyed Inslee while he spoke.
Instead of addressing any of the points Inslee raised, as soon as he finished speaking, the rich asshole said, “you know, we have a number of states right now that do that and I think with that in mind, I’ll call on Greg Abbott, the great governor of Texas.”
the rich asshole was alluding to Texas’ existing program to train and arm “school marshals” — school officials who are trained to respond to active shooters, but have to keep their guns in a lockbox when students are around.
Later during Monday’s event, the rich asshole floated the idea of giving teachers a $1,000 bonus for carrying concealed firearms in schools. But at no point did he mention banning or limiting access to AR-15s, the semi-automatic weapon that has been used in a number of recent mass shootings, including the one that killed 17 earlier this month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
the rich asshole’s idea to end mass shootings in the classroom is a crock of sh*t — and here’s why
President some rich asshole departs the White House for Palm Beach, FL (Shutterstock)
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Let’s be honest. It’s hard to imagine a worse idea than arming teachers in the classroom to prevent mass shootings. It’s an unserious idea — a crackpot idea, really — that won’t ever happen, of course. But since the president of the United States is out there pretending to treat it seriously, I guess the rest of us have to as well.
I mean, where would the teachers keep the guns? Do you want Miss Veronica packing a loaded gun in your 5-year-old’s class? What are the greater odds — that a lunatic gunman would enter the classroom or that there would be an accident involving the gun and someone’s kid winds up in the emergency room or worse?
It’s absurd. Or as my sister, the third-grade teacher/education professor, so aptly put it, “moronic.” Or should we now expect kids to hold cookie sales to buy their teachers a Kevlar vest?
“It’s inconceivable,” my sister said, “that a teacher would use a gun to kill a child. I can’t think of a profession more separate from violence.”
It’s absurd. It’s moronic. It’s straight out of the more-guns-mean-less-crime school of non-thinking. It is also, to this point, the president’s bright idea to end mass shootings in the classroom, although, I should point out he’s talking about arming teachers who have been, say, Marines or others similarly trained. He thinks there could be 10-20 percent who qualify and maybe as many as 40 percent, which leads me to wonder how many teachers he hangs out with. I’ve got a sister, wife and daughter who are teachers/professors, and none of them has ever fired a shot. But maybe that’s just me.
I did once have a U.S. history teacher who was a Marine. We used to entertain the rest of the class by arguing, and pretty angrily, about the Vietnam War when we should have been talking about, I don’t know, the Missouri Compromise. He used to tell us when he was a World War II officer, he prided himself on never having taken prisoners. In retrospect, I’m kind of glad he wasn’t armed.
Presumably, the rich asshole is talking about teachers carrying a concealed weapon, although who knows? Is a concealed weapon sufficient to take on an AR-15 from someone coming into the classroom who doesn’t expect to get out alive? We’re told by the president that “a gun-free zone to a killer, or somebody who wants to be a killer, that’s like going in for ice cream.”
It’s an interesting theory. the rich asshole says that the shooters are “cowards,” who wouldn’t bring a gun to school if they knew they’d be met with guns—as if they cared about consequences or were busy looking for soft targets. I wish I could have asked him this: How many of the ice-cream-loving school shooters are either dead or in prison? (Hint: Without doing the research, I’m guessing all of them.)
He also says school shooters are “savage sickos,” but adds in the Parkland shooting: “A teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened.” Well, there’s this conflicting evidence from the armed deputy at Stoneman Douglas who apparently chose not to confront the shooter and didn’t shoot the hell out of him. This was a trained Broward County officer who stood aside while 17 kids were killed. He resigned from the force. the rich asshole called him a “coward.” I don’t know. I’m guessing the guy sent to guard schools is not chosen for his gun-fighting abilities.
And, of course, there are all the pretty obvious red flags — serious warnings about the shooter — that various law enforcement officials saw but didn’t apparently think were important. And we’re talking about arming teachers?
Where we can all agree is that there are few things worse than mass school shootings, even if the NRA accuses the media of loving them. (Note: I’ve covered five, starting with Columbine, one as heartbreaking as the next. Only a sociopath would make that accusation against reporters, or anyone else, and actually mean it.) And mass shootings, we know, don’t happen only at schools, but at churches and at movie theaters and at country music concerts.
But let’s get past emotions here and move on to the data. In 2008, The New York Times did a survey of all NYPD shootings from 1996 to 2006. They found cops — the good guys with guns — hit their intended target 34 percent of the time, which means they missed two shots out of every three. And if that’s sounds low, try to put yourself in their place — shooting at actual human beings is apparently harder than you might have guessed from watching TV.
More pertinent numbers, though, were found in a 2006 study from the Rand Center on Quality Policing, which determined that in a gunfight the police hit rate fell to just 18 percent. In other words, firing at someone while someone is firing at you is a hell of a thing to try to do, and that’s for cops who are trained to do just that. Imagine a teacher shooting across a classroom full of students while trying to bring down the heavily-armed sicko savage.
Or consider this: In an FBI analysis of law enforcement engagement with 45 active shooters between 2000 and 2013, the cops were either killed or wounded 21 times.
In other words, this has got nothing to do with ice cream or with teacher training. This has to do with the intersection of disturbed young men and their easy access to high-powered guns. And unless you’re talking about how to resolve that complicated issue, you’re not saying anything that matters.
‘Follow the money’: CNN’s Charles Blow calls BS on the rich asshole’s billion-dollar call to arm teachers
Charles Blow (Photo: Screen capture)
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If President some rich asshole is serious about his call to arm teachers in the wake of the deadly mass shooting on Valentine’s Day in Parkland, Florida, he’ll have to figure out how to pay for it, CNN commentator and New York Times columnist Charles Blow remarked on Monday.
“In all these discussions, I always like to try to follow the money,” Blow told CNN host Erica Hill.
Citing a Washington Post article that analyzed how much it would cost to purchase those guns, the columnist noted the government would have to spend upwards of a billion dollars to buy more than 718,000 guns for teachers and train them on how to use the firearms.
Nevertheless, Blow argued that gun violence as it currently stands is already expensive.
“A conservative estimate of how much gun violence costs America, which is largely on the shoulders of taxpayers, is $230 billion — with a “b” — a year,” Blow noted. “That’s everything from health services to police investigations to incarcerations.”
“They’re not proposing anything that’s gonna hurt gun manufacturers and they are proposing a lot of things that are going to shift burden onto taxpayers’ backs instead of dealing with the guns,” he concluded.
Watch below, via CNN:
How the mainstream media got played by the rich asshole
President some rich asshole delivered a televised statement a day after returning from a marathon trip to Asia. (AFP / Nicholas Kamm)
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The media spent a ton of time in 2017 puzzling over whether President the rich asshole thinks climate change is real. That was a ton of time wasted. His stance has long been clear, thanks to more than a hundred tweets and loads of comments dismissing or denying climate change.
The fact that the rich asshole has called global warming a “hoax” was mentioned in nearly a quarter of all segments about climate change on the nightly news and Sunday morning programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC in 2017 — and in more than a third of those instances, the networks didn’t push back by affirming that human-driven climate change is a reality. Network journalists did numerous interviews asking the rich asshole administration officials for clarity on the president’s stance. And outlets from Time to CNN cited the hoax claim and tried to make sense of the rich asshole’s nonsensical climate views.
This misfire by mainstream media follows on the heels of a different sort of failure in 2016. That year, broadcast networks spent way too little time on climate change overall and completely failed to report during the campaign on what a rich asshole win would mean for climate change.
Now the networks are covering climate change but squandering too much of that coverage in trying to read the rich asshole’s Fox-addled mind and divine whether he accepts climate science. That’s crowding out reporting on other, more critical climate-related news, from how the rich asshole administration is aggressively dismantling climate protections to how climate change makes hurricanes and wildfires more dangerous.
It’s bad enough that outlets waste all this time on old news about the rich asshole’s climate views. But what makes it even worse is that they too often get the story wrong.
Consider this example: Last June, the rich asshole’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, did the rounds on TV news to defend her boss’ decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement. When asked to clarify the rich asshole’s views on climate change, she said more than once that he “believes the climate is changing” and “he believes pollutants are part of that equation.”
Haley was employing Republicans’ favorite obfuscation technique on climate change — what savvy observers call “lukewarm” climate denial. The obfuscators try to sound reasonable by admitting that the climate is changing, but then get all squishy about why it’s changing or how it will play out or what we could possibly do about it. (In fact, there is overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is the primary cause of climate change, a fact that U.S. government experts again confirmed just three months ago.) You’d think that journalists who’ve been covering national politics would be thoroughly familiar with this gambit by now. the rich asshole nominees made liberal use of it during confirmation hearings last year, and other Republicans have been employing it for longer still.
But ABC News completely fumbled the story. Splashing the words “BREAKING NEWS” and “CLIMATE CHANGE FLIP” across the screen, ABC’s World News Tonight made Haley’s comments seem like big deal.
Anchor Tom Llamas reported that her remarks represented a “dramatic switch” and “major concession” with “the administration saying the president does believe that the climate is changing.” Correspondent Gloria Riviera described Haley’s remarks as “a stunning reversal.”
There was no reversal. There was just a stunning incident of ABC falling for the rich asshole administration spin.
Other networks and outlets have made similar mistakes, failing to properly identify the rich asshole team’s lukewarm climate denial and put comments in context. Like when The Associated Press declared, “the rich asshole changes his tune on climate change,” though in fact he had done no such thing, as Grist pointed out at the time.
Instead of continuing to fixate on (and misreport) the rich asshole’s personal views about climate change, journalists should offer more reporting on the consequences of having a president who disregards climate science and opposes climate action. Those consequences include: Policies that encourage dirty energy instead of clean energy. Less innovation. Fewer jobs in renewables and energy efficiency. Diminished national security. More destructive storms and dangerous wildfires, and communities that are less prepared to cope with them.
Topics like these got dramatically less coverage last year than they deserved, in large part because so much climate reporting was centered on the rich asshole. A new Media Matters analysis found that when corporate broadcast TV news reported on climate change last year, they spent 79 percent of the time on statements or actions by the rich asshole administration — and even that included little coverage of efforts to roll back the Clean Power Plan and other climate regulations. Issues like how climate change affects the economy or public health got even less attention. And in a year when hurricanes and other forms of extreme weather hammered the U.S., the networks hardly ever mentioned climate change in their coverage of those disasters.
Instead of trying to analyze the rich asshole’s well-established refusal to accept climate science, media should be telling stories of how climate change is happening here and now, how it’s affecting real people, and how the EPA and other agencies are ripping up climate regulations. When they chase the rich asshole around and let him set the agenda, the hoax is on all of us.
WATCH LIVE: Sarah Sanders holds White House press briefing
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Screenshot)
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White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is holding a briefing with reporters on Monday. The event is scheduled to begin at 3:00 p.m. (ET). Watch live video below:
These are the top 10 signs the US is the most corrupt nation in the world
some rich asshole (Screen Capture)
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Those ratings that castigate Afghanistan and some other poor countries as hopelessly “corrupt” always imply that the United States is not corrupt. This year’s report from Transparency International puts the US on a par with Austria, which is ridiculous. All kinds of people from politicians to businessmen would go to jail in Austria today if they engaged in practices that are quite common in the US.
While it is true that you don’t typically have to bribe your postman to deliver the mail in the US, in many key ways America’s political and financial practices make it in absolute terms far more corrupt than the usual global South suspects. After all, the US economy is worth over $18 trillion a year, so in our corruption a lot more money changes hands.
1. A sure sign of corruption is an electoral outcome like 2016. An addled nonentity like some rich asshole got filthy rich via tax loopholes a predatory behavior in his casinos and other businesses, and then was permitted to buy the presidency with his own money. He was given billions of dollars in free campaign time every evening on CNN, MSNBC, Fox and other channels that should have been more even-handed, because they were in search of advertising dollars and the rich asshole was a good draw. Then, too, the way the Supreme Court got rid of campaign finance reform and allowed open, unlimited secret buying of elections is the height of corruption. The permitting of massive black money in our elections was taken advantage of by the Russian Federation, which, having hopelessly corrupted its own presidential elections, managed to further corrupt the American ones, as well. Once ensconced in power, the rich asshole Inc. has taken advantage of the power of White House to engage in a wide range of corrupt practices, including an attempt to sell visas to wealthy Chinese and the promotion of the the rich asshole brand as part of diplomacy.
2. The rich are well placed to bribe our politicians to reduce taxes on the rich. The Koch brothers and other mega-rich troglodytes explicitly told Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan in 2017 that if the Republican Party, controlling all three branches of government, could not lower taxes on its main sponsors, there would be no billionaire backing of the party in the 2018 midterms. This threat of an electoral firing squad made the hundreds of bribe-takers in Congress sit up and take notice, and they duly gave away to the billionaire class $1.5 trillion in government services (that’s what federal taxes are, folks, services—roads, schools, health inspections, implementation of anti-pollution laws—things everyone benefits from and which won’t be there any more). To the extent that the government will try to continue to provide those slashed services despite assessing no taxes on the people with the money to pay for them, it will run up an enormous budget deficit and weaken the dollar, which is a form of inflation in the imported goods sector. Inflation hits the poor the worst. As it stands, 3 American billionaires are worth, as much as the bottom 150 million Americans. That kind of wealth inequality hasn’t been seen in the US since the age of the robber barons in the 19th century. Both eras are marked by extreme corruption.
One sign of American corruption is the rapidity with which American society has become more unequal since the 1980s Reagan destruction of the progressive income tax. The wealthier the top 1 percent is, the more politicians it can buy to gather up even more of the country’s wealth. In my lifetime the top one percent has gone from holding 25% of the privately held wealth under Eisenhower to 38% today.
3. Instead of having short, publicly-funded political campaigns with limited and/or free advertising (as a number of Western European countries do), the US has long political campaigns in which candidates are dunned big bucks for advertising. They are therefore forced to spend much of their time fundraising, which is to say, seeking bribes. All American politicians are basically on the take, though many are honorable people. They are forced into it by the system. The campaign season should be shortened to 3 months (did we really need 2 years to get an outcome in which a fool like the rich asshole is president?), and Congress should pass a law that winners of primaries don’t have to pay for political ads on tv and radio.
When French President Nicolas Sarkozy was defeated in 2012, soon thereafter French police actually went into his private residence searching for an alleged $50,000 in illicit campaign contributions from the L’Oreale heiress. I thought to myself, seriously? $50,000 in a presidential campaign? Our presidential campaigns cost a billion dollars each! $50,000 is a rounding error, not a basis for police action. Why, George W. Bush took millions from arms manufacturers and then ginned up a war for them, and the police haven’t been anywhere near his house.
American politicians don’t represent “the people.” With a few honorable exceptions, they represent the 1%. American democracy is being corrupted out of existence.
4. Money and corruption have seeped so far into our media system that people can with a straight face assert that scientists aren’t sure human carbon emissions are causing global warming. Fox Cable News is among the more corrupt institutions in American society, purveying outright lies for the benefit of the fossil fuels billionaire class. The US is so corrupt that it is resisting the obvious urgency to slash carbon production. Virtually the entire Republican Party resists the firm consensus of all respected scientists in the world and the firm consensus of everybody else in the world save for a few denialists in English-speaking countries. This resistance to an urgent and dangerous reality comes about because they are bribed to take this stance. Even Qatar, its economy based on natural gas, freely admits the challenge of human-induced climate change. American politicians like Jim Inhofe are openly ridiculed when they travel to Europe for their know-nothingism on climate.
5. That politicians can be bribed to reduce regulation of industries like banking (what is called “regulatory capture”) means that they will be so bribed. Scott Pruitt, a Manchurian candidate from Big Oil, has single-handedly demolished the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of polluting industry. This assault on the health of American citizens on behalf of vampirical corporations is the height of corruption.
6. The US military budget is bloated and enormous, bigger than the military budgets of the next twelve major states. What isn’t usually realized is that perhaps half of it is spent on outsourced services, not on the military. It is corporate welfare on a cosmic scale. I’ve seen with my own eyes how officers in the military get out and then form companies to sell things to their former colleagues still on the inside. Precisely because it is a cesspool of large-scale corruption, the rich asshole’s budget will throw over $100 billion extra taxpayer dollars at it.
7. The US has a vast gulag of 2.2 million prisoners in jail and penitentiary. There is an increasing tendency for prisons to be privatized, and this tendency is corrupting the system. It is wrong for people to profit from putting and keeping human beings behind bars. This troubling trend is made all the more troubling by the move to give extra-long sentences for minor crimes, to deny parole and to imprison people for life for e,g, three small thefts.
8. The National Security Agency’s domestic spying was a form of corruption in itself, and lends itself to corruption. With some 4 million government employees and private contractors engaged in this surveillance, it is highly unlikely that various forms of insider trading and other corrupt practices are not being committed. If you knew who Warren Buffett and George Soros were calling every day, that alone could make you a killing. The American political class wouldn’t have defended this indefensible invasion of citizens’ privacy so vigorously if someone somewhere weren’t making money on it.
9. As for insider trading, it turns out Congress undid much of the law it hastily passed forbidding members, rather belatedly, to engage in insider trading (buying and selling stock based on their privileged knowledge of future government policy). That this practice only became an issue recently is another sign of how corrupt the system is.
10. Asset forfeiture in the ‘drug war’ is corrupting police departments and the judiciary. Although some state legislatures are dialing this corrupt practice back, it is widespread and a danger to the constitution.
So don’t tell the global South how corrupt they are for taking a few petty bribes. Americans are not seen as corrupt because we only deal in the big denominations. Steal $2 trillion and you aren’t corrupt, you’re respectable.
‘Don’t worry about the NRA,’ the rich asshole tells US governors
President some rich asshole (AFP/File / Fabrice COFFRINI)
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U.S. President some rich asshole told governors on Monday not to worry about the National Rifle Association lobbying group as states consider how to improve school safety after 17 students and educators were killed at a Florida high school on Feb. 14 by a gunman with semiautomatic rifle.
“Don’t worry about the NRA. They’re on our side,” the rich asshole told more than 35 governors, including Rick Scott of Florida, during a White House meeting. “And you know what, if they’re not with you, we have to fight them every once in a while. That’s OK. They’re doing what they think is right.”
The massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, inflamed the nation’s long-running debate over gun rights.
the rich asshole, a Republican who backed gun rights during and since his 2016 presidential campaign, last week suggested that arming teachers could help stop more rampages. He did not mention on Monday raising the legal age to buy assault rifles to 21, an idea he emphasized last week and one that Florida’s Scott, also a Republican, backed after the rampage.
The NRA could not be reached for immediate comment.
Investigators said the assault was carried out by Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old former student at the high school, who legally purchased a semiautomatic AR-15 assault weapon nearly a year ago. Police charged Cruz, who had been kicked out of the school due to disciplinary problems, with 17 counts of premeditated murder.
The shooting has rattled long-drawn political lines on gun rights in the United States, where Republican officials have often backed any efforts to tighten gun ownership rules, often out of concern about potential retribution by the powerful NRA.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat, told the rich asshole that teachers in his state do not want to carry weapons. In a later interview with MSNBC he said he was encouraged by the rich asshole’s apparent flexibility on issues like raising the minimum age to buy firearms and stronger background checks.
“We do need not just more rhetorical flourishes by the president,” Inslee told MSNBC. “If he’s going to be serious, he needs to be true to his commitment.
Florida plans to invest $500 million to have a significant law enforcement presence in every public school in the state, Scott told the White House meeting, adding “I’m not waiting for the federal government.”
OFFICER NOT A ‘COWARD,’ LAWYER SAYS
the rich asshole criticized the law enforcement officers who responded to the shooting.
An armed school resource officer stationed at the school stayed outside during the attack, and has since resigned his position. Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel has been criticized for his department’s response to the shooting.
“The way they performed was, frankly, disgusting,” the rich asshole said, adding that he believed that if he were in the same situation, he would have run into the school, “even if I didn’t have a weapon.”
The businessman-turned-politician avoided military service during the Vietnam War through student and medical deferments.
He has called the school resource officer, Scot Peterson, a “coward.”
An attorney for Peterson defended his actions in a statement that he had remained outside because he believed the gunfire was occurring outside the school, according to local media.
“Allegations that Mr. Peterson was a coward and that his performance, under the circumstances, failed to meet the standards of police officers are patently untrue,” attorney Joseph DiRuzzo said in the statement.
the rich asshole has said he plans to limit sales of “bump stocks,” an accessory that can modify a legally purchased semiautomatic rifle to fire at high rates of speed akin to a machine gun. Fully automatic machine guns are largely banned under U.S. law.
The NRA has pushed back against that idea, saying that new restrictions on firearms would impinge on the rights of law-abiding gun owners while having no effect on public safety.
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
‘It’s nothing like the movies’: Military vet with SWAT training expertly dismantles the rich asshole’s plan to arm teachers
Malcolm Nance (MSNBC)
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MSNBC analyst and former Naval intelligence officer Malcolm Nance vividly explained why President some rich asshole’s suggestion to arm teachers was so dangerous.
Nance appeared Monday on “MSNBC Live,” where he told host Stephanie Ruhle that specialized military training was required to override survival instincts — and even that didn’t always work.
“You have to be trained to want to get up and go into fire, that’s what the armed forces does for you,” Nance said. “I went through SWAT officer training when I got out of the military, and the first thing they do is they teach you is to really lock up and then move in on a target. That’s what active shooter training is for in law enforcement. But if you’re not really trained, you’re not proficient, it’s not like in the movies. The movies have nothing to do with reality. You’re putting yourself where you can be killed.”
Ruhle pointed out that mass shooters frequently used military-style firearms to carry out massacres, which would put teachers armed with concealed weapons at a distinct disadvantage.
“We have a lot of people going on, you know, what they think they see in the movies,” Nance said. “If you’ve got a handgun and that’s all the tool you have, you have to be extremely well trained to go out and engage someone who has a fully automatic or semiautomatic weapon.”
He said movies did not adequately depict what a real firefight would be like.
“Depending on the distance that you’re away, civilians don’t understand, in close quarters, the first thing you have to experience is the explosive sound of the weapon going off — not yours, the shooter’s,” Nance said. “It practically deafens you in an urban environment, inside a school building or something like that. It’s not like in the movies, where can you hear. It’s like somebody stabbing your ear a knife. If you can get past that and still move you’ll be conducting a gun battle, a firefight with people running back and forth in front of you. It’s just — unless you’re very skilled soldier or a police officer who has already been through that, through simulation or an actual incident, you cannot even start to predict the effect. ”
Even if the teacher managed to survive a firefight with a shooter armed with a high-powered rifle, they’d face danger once law enforcement arrived.
“If you are a teacher who thinks you’re doing a defensive, you know, pose and protect a student, law enforcement will just assume you’re the shooter,” Nance said. “If we start introducing five, 10 guns into that school, the complexity of target identification and clearance and knowing whether that individual is safe or whether they’re actually complicit and waiting for you to turn your back, it’s absolutely mind-boggling. Law enforcement will go the default — which is to shoot the person with the gun.”
‘Pissed-off’ Parkland dad hammers the rich asshole for endorsing NRA’s ‘paranoid delusions’
Fred Guttenberg (MSNBC)
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A grieving father reacted in anger to President some rich asshole’s assurances to governors that they should not fear the National Rifle Association.
Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jamie was killed Feb. 14 in a mass shooting at her Florida school, listened to the president’s remarks through an earpiece as he awaited an appearance Monday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.”
“It’s one of those things where I start off feeling okay, and I end up pissed off,” Guttenberg said. “I apologize for my language. The talk listed a lot of nice ideas, but it was wrapped up in something that was horribly scary, this idea that we should embrace the NRA and take the NRA in as our friends in this policy. That, to me, sounds like somebody who doesn’t understand what we need to do. That, to me, sounds like somebody who does not want to do what we need to do to keep the kids of this country safe. That, to me, does not sounds like somebody who wants me to send my kid back to school and know he’s going to be safe. The NRA does not have my kid’s best interest at heart — I’m certain of that.”
Guttenberg memorably and emotionally confronted Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) during a CNN town hall on gun safety, and he said he was disturbed by statements made last week by NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre and spokeswoman Dana Loesch.
“It bothered me all weekend, (but) it hit me this weekend,” Guttenberg said. “What you need to know about me is about 15 to 20 years ago, I used to work in the world of pharmaceuticals, specifically in the area of mental health. I called on doctors with an antipsychotic. I used to listen to patients talk about their delusions, their hallucinations, and their paranoid behavior.”
“The language — and I’m not a doctor here and I’m not diagnosing anybody — but the language that was used and is used by this group sounds an awful lot like those patients that I used to listen to, they speak some scary language,” Guttenberg continued. “I will not embrace them, and please don’t ask me to. We need to stop them. We need to stop their role in policy. We need to reach out to every single company that gives them the money to have power over our elected officials.”
Poll: Voters want the rich asshole to do more to address violence against women
BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 02/26/18 01:52 PM EST
A large majority of voters say President the rich asshole needs to do more to address violence against women and there is widespread support for Congress to pass tougher new laws on domestic violence, according to a new poll.
The latest Harvard CAPS-Harris survey finds that 68 percent of voters believe that the rich asshole needs to do and say more about violence against women. Sixty-percent of voters say Congress should pass new legislation addressing violence against women.
Those findings come as #MeToo movement has helped spur a growing public awareness about the treatment of women in the workplace.
A number of high-profile men in politics, journalism, business and entertainment have resigned or been forced out of leadership positions over accusations that they groped or mistreated women.
The Harvard CAPS-Harris survey found that 55 percent of voters have a favorable view of the #MeToo movement.
Meanwhile, the survey found that the rich asshole polls dismally among women — and young women in particular.
“the rich asshole does poorly with women in their twenties and needs to do a lot more on domestic violence to be credible to this group and on the issue,” said Harvard CAPS-Harris co-director Mark Penn.
Sixty-three percent of those surveyed said there is inadequate due process when it comes to dealing with allegations of sexual harassment.
the rich asshole has repeatedly denied allegations by a number of women who have accused the president of forced or unwanted kissing or touching. He has also defended other men accused of wrongdoing, saying that they’ve been judged too quickly.
Some public intellectuals have warned about a “moral panic,” saying that the accused are being chased from their jobs or public life without being given a chance to defend themselves.
Seventy-seven percent of those polled said those accused of sexual harassment should get the same legal protections as those accused of other crimes.
“the rich asshole has support for demanding due process but people also want these laws tightened further,” Penn said.
The White House has been dealing with a scandal over former staff secretary Rob Porter, who resigned earlier this month after it was revealed that his two ex-wives had accused him of battery.
Chief of staff John Kelly initially defended Porter, leading to a chorus of demands that Kelly step aside. It’s unclear how long Kelly knew about the allegations, but the FBI had notified the White House about the testimony from his ex-wives as part of its background check into Porter.
The poll found that 37 percent of voters believe Kelly mishandled the controversy, against 22 percent who said he acted appropriately. Forty-one percent didn’t know enough about the scandal to comment.
Public opinion on Kelly is split, with 50 percent saying he should keep his job and 50 percent saying the rich asshole should replace him.
“The Porter controversy is likely to blow over, with it having damaged Kelly somewhat but not knocking him out,” said Penn.
The Harvard CAPS-Harris online survey of 1,934 registered voters was conducted from Feb. 16-19. The partisan breakdown is 37 percent Democrat, 32 percent Republican, 29 percent independent and 4 percent other.
The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll. The Hill will be working with Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll throughout 2018.
The survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.
Washington governor confronts the rich asshole at White House
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 02/26/18 12:41 PM EST
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) confronted President the rich asshole on Monday over his proposal to arm educators in order to prevent future school shootings.
Inslee stood and objected to the controversial idea during a meeting with the nation’s governors at the White House, telling the rich asshole that law enforcement agencies and instructors are both alarmed by the idea of teachers “packing heat” around young children.
“So I just suggest we need a little less tweeting here, a little more listening,” said Inslee, who has been rumored as a possible Democratic challenger to the rich asshole in 2020. “Let’s just take that off the table and move forward.”
The president stood with his arms folded but did not directly respond to the Washington governor’s comment. He did call on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to explain how teachers and coaches are trained to carry firearms in his state.
The surprising confrontation came during an hourlong appearance by the rich asshole, during which he spoke about issues ranging from immigration and North Korea to trade and the economy.
But the central focus of the meeting was the nation’s gun laws, which have come under increasing scrutiny following this month’s deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
The president has come under pressure from Democrats, and some Republicans, to approve stricter laws cracking down on the type of rifle that was used in the shooting, which left 17 dead.
But many Republicans and the National Rifle Association (NRA) have resisted new restrictions on guns, arguing that stronger mental health programs and turning schools into “hard targets” could prevent future massacres.
the rich asshole said he ate lunch last weekend with top NRA executives Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox, even as he said he is willing to take on the powerful gun-rights group.
“If they’re not with you, we have to fight them once in a while, that’s OK,” the president said. “But sometimes we’re going to have to be very tough and we’re going to have to fight them.
the rich asshole has floated a wide-range of proposals, from bolstering the gun background check system and raising the age limit to buy certain high-powered rifles to giving guns to trained teachers and staff. the rich asshole expressed doubt the NRA would oppose his response.
"Don't worry about the NRA,” the president told the governors. ”They're on our side. Half of you are so afraid of the NRA — there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
the rich asshole, however, has placed the greatest emphasis on arming teachers, a proposal that has run into opposition from Democrats and many Republicans, including Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R).
The president dismissed criticism of the idea, saying that educators would have to have a “natural talent” for handling firearms, “like hitting a baseball or hitting a golf ball.”
“The headline was the rich asshole wants all teachers to have guns. the rich asshole wants teachers to have guns. I don’t want teachers to have guns. I want highly trained people,” he said.
the rich asshole also said law enforcement officers must act to stop shooters given the chance, saying that sheriff’s deputies outside the Florida high school “weren’t exactly Medal of Honor winners.”
"I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon and I think most of the people in this room would have done that, too,” the rich asshole said.
the rich asshole did single out one area where he said he would take on the NRA: bump stocks.
“I’m writing that out myself. I don’t care if Congress doesn’t,” the rich asshole said.
Bump stocks are attachments that allow certain semi-automatic rifles, like the type used in the Florida shooting, to fire much more rapidly.
The device was used in last year’s massacre at a Las Vegas outdoor concert, which left 58 people dead.
Over the past week, the rich asshole has sought to demonstrate he is ready to take action to prevent future incidents of mass gun violence.
He held an emotional listening session with children and parents affected by school shootings last week at the White House, which was shown on national television.
the rich asshole: Some lawmakers are 'so scared' of the NRA
BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 02/26/18 12:38 PM EST
President the rich asshole on Monday accused some governors of being “scared” of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and argued that “sometimes” government officials would have to fight the gun lobby to achieve necessary reforms.
The president’s comments — made during a bipartisan meeting at the White House of more than three dozen state governors — are his most aggressive to date in taking on the NRA, which spent big in 2016 to help elect him.
the rich asshole said he had lunch over the weekend with NRA officials Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox and again signaled that the NRA could be open to some of the proposals he has made on new gun restrictions.
“Don’t worry about the NRA,” the rich asshole said. “They’re on our side.”
Still, the president said that some people in the room of governors — most of those on hand were Republicans — are “so scared” of the NRA and that “sometimes” you have to fight them.
The president has proposed raising the age of purchase for all guns from 18 to 21 — a proposal that the NRA opposes. That proposal has picked up steam in recent days among Republicans on Capitol Hill.
the rich asshole has also called for expanding background checks, although it’s unclear if he hopes to go further than an NRA-backed bill that aims to incentivize agencies to utilize the current background checks system.
The president is also looking to ban bump stocks, which can be affixed to semi-automatic weapons to make them fire more rapidly.
“I don’t care if Congress doesn’t [act on bump stocks],” the rich asshole said Monday. “We’re getting rid of it.”
The president has directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to review whether bump stocks can be banned through the regulatory process. The NRA says it supports the review of potential new federal regulations on bump stocks but does not support banning them outright.
Congress is under pressure to act on new gun laws following a mass shooting earlier this month at a Florida high school that left 17 dead.
The student survivors from that shooting have flooded state capitols, cable news and social media to demand federal action.
The outrage has shone a harsh spotlight on the NRA, with several corporations cutting their ties with the gun lobby over fears it could hurt their brand.
the rich asshole was once highly critical of the NRA, writing in his book “The America We Deserve” that Republicans were too beholden to the gun lobby and blaming the murder rate on gun use. In that book, the rich asshole also called for banning “assault weapons.”
But the rich asshole campaigned in 2016 as a Second Amendment absolutist, warning his base of supporters that, if elected, Democrats would come for their guns while calling expanded background checks a “slippery slope.”
Court tosses challenge to the rich asshole's two-for-one regulatory order
BY LYDIA WHEELER - 02/26/18 12:38 PM EST
A federal district court judge on Monday dismissed a challenge to President the rich asshole’s executive order directing federal agency heads to eliminate two rules for every new rule proposed.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Randolph Moss said Public Citizen, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Communication Workers of America, AFL-CIO failed to prove their members will be harmed by the president’s orders, which is a burden of proof required to bring a lawsuit.
The public interest groups argued they had “organizational standing” because the order has a chilling effect on their respective missions to encourage agencies to adopt regulations designed to protect public health and safety, the environment and workers’ rights.
The groups argued in court documents that the rich asshole's action forces them to evaluate whether losing two rules is worth the benefit of a new one before lobbying for an agency action.
But Moss said the groups did not show that this concern has or will keep them from pursuing new protections.
"On the present record, however, the Court must conclude that it lacks jurisdiction."
the rich asshole has counted his administration’s ability to cut down the nation’s regulatory rulebook as one its greatest accomplishments to date.
In December, White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Administrator Neomi Rao said federal agencies issued 67 deregulatory actions and three regulatory actions through September.
Updated: 12:53 p.m.
Gorsuch silent as high court weighs crucial case on union fees
BY LYDIA WHEELER - 02/26/18 11:52 AM EST
The Supreme Court on Monday returned to a familiar issue over union fees in a potential landmark case labor groups say could threaten the financial vitality of public-sector unions.
The court was split on the issue in 2016, and it could now be up to newly seated Justice Neil Gorsuch to break the tie. Court watchers are expecting him to rule that state laws allowing the practice are unconstitutional as his predecessor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, had been expected to do.
But Gorsuch, who was the only member of the court hearing the issue for the first time, remained quiet for the hourlong arguments on Monday.
At issue are the rules in Illinois and 22 other states that have laws that allow public-sector unions to collect a “fair-share fee” from employees for collective bargaining activities regardless of whether the employee is a member of the union.
Mark Janus, a child support specialist for the state of Illinois, argues having to give up about $45 from each paycheck to the American Federation of State, Country and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31 violates his First Amendment rights.
The union bargaining with government officials — in this case, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) — over salaries and other benefits for government employees, he said, is inherently political.
It was an argument Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the swing vote in the court, seemed to agree with, suggesting that wages of public employees, the size of the workforce and overtime pay can all affect the amount of a state's budget.
The AFSCME, however, argues it needs these funds to offset the significant costs they incur negotiating working conditions for all employees. State laws allowing unions to collect these fees are justified, the union says, to keep the peace and avoid a situation where nonunion members get a "free ride."
In 2014, the court side-stepped the issue then deadlocked on the question with only eight justices in 2016.
To side with Janus, the court is being asked to overrule a principle it established in 1977 in a case known as Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, something members of the court’s more liberal wing appear to adamantly oppose.
In that case, the court upheld the constitutionality of “fair-share fees” paid to finance the collective-bargaining activities of unions that are obligated under state law to represent both union members and nonmembers. But the court said the money can’t fund political or ideological activities unrelated to bargaining.
Justice Elena Kagan said the court has never overruled a case where the reliance on precedent has been this great.
She said overruling Abood would invalidate thousands of municipal contracts that cover millions of government workers.
“When have we ever done something like that?” she asked.
Tillerson, Kelly internally complain about Kushner encroachments: report
BY JULIA MANCHESTER - 02/26/18 10:09 AM EST
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and White House chief of staff John Kelly have voiced frustration about Jared Kushner's encroachment on Tillerson's position, according to a report from Politico.
Tillerson is reportedly frustrated with Kushner's involvement in foreign affairs, which are usually handled by the nation's diplomatic corps. Kushner, however, has been responsible for Israeli-Palestinian relations, as well as U.S. relations with Mexico and China.
Tillerson has also reportedly expressed frustration about U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and national security adviser H.R. McMaster over what he reportedly sees as an encroachment on his position.
“We can’t have four secretaries of state,” Tillerson said.
Politico also reports that Kelly has repeated Tillerson's complaints, which reportedly have not been taken well by Kushner.
"We need a secretary of state who is supportive of the president," Kushner told Kelly, according to Politico.
The Hill has reached out to the White House and the State Department for comment.
Kelly is in the process of grappling with the issue of Kushner's security clearance in the White House.
The White House has implemented new procedures on security clearances to ensure swift and comprehensive background reviews for staff with access to sensitive information in the wake of the scandal surrounding domestic abuse allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter.
Porter was able to review classified information on a partial security clearance for months despite the fact that the FBI informed the White House that his two ex-wives had accused him of abuse.
The incident drew attention to Kushner's security clearance.
Kushner is reportedly one of only a few people in the White House with access to the president's daily intelligence briefings.
the rich asshole said on Friday that Kelly would have the final say on Kushner's security clearance.
“I will let Gen. Kelly make that decision,” the rich asshole said at a news conference. “And he's going to do what's right for the country. And I have no doubt he will make the right decision.”
Ivanka the rich asshole: Question about father’s sexual misconduct accusers ‘inappropriate’
BY JULIA MANCHESTER - 02/26/18 09:06 AM EST
Ivanka the rich asshole said it is inappropriate to ask her about the sexual misconduct allegations against her father, President the rich asshole.
“I think it’s a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter if she believes the accusers of her father when he’s affirmatively stated there’s no truth to it," the first daughter told NBC's Peter Alexander in an interview that aired on Monday.
"I don't think that's a question you would ask many other daughters. I believe my father, I know my father, so I think I have that right as a daughter to believe my father," she continued.
Numerous women have come forward to accuse the president of sexual misconduct.
the rich asshole in a tweet last week denied an accusation from Rachel Crooks, who came forward with her allegation in 2016. His tweet came after The Washington Post published a profile on Crooks.
"Never happened!" the rich asshole tweeted.
House Republican asked 11 times why he opposes universal background checks and has no answers
"Paperwork and stuff like that."
During an interview on CNN on Monday, Rep. Scott Taylor (R-VA) was asked 11 times by host Chris Cuomo to cite a single reason he’s opposed to universal background checks for gun purchases or transfers.
Taylor struggled do it, but insisted he’s opposed to them anyway.
“What I am in favor of is a stronger background check, one that takes into account social media, other things potentially,” Taylor said. “I don’t know exactly how that looks like, but I’m willing to listen to all sides to figure out how we make it stronger to make sure folks that should not get guns don’t get them.”
Cuomo pressed Taylor on the point.
“But what about all sales? All sales is a pretty simple way to put it,” he said.
Taylor responded by alluding to vague concerns he has that mandating background checks for all sales or transfers would pose problems for fathers who want to give guns to their sons. When Cuomo pointed out that nobody complains about having to do paperwork if they want to transfer ownership of a boat to their children, Taylor — who received $3,500 from the National Rifle Association during the 2016 election cycle — resorted to insisting that enforcement of a new background check law would be impossible.
“You find ways to enforce laws, lots of laws are difficult to enforce, you find a way,” Cuomo replied. “Why would you only have certain sales affected by background checks? I don’t get why that’s a good thing. You said, ‘well, it’s hard to enforce’ — that’s not a standard of whether or not you put a law in place. You put the law in place then you figure out how to enforce it.”
After that point, Taylor could come up with nothing beyond repeatedly insisting that he’s opposed to more background checks now because he’s been opposed to them the past.
“I’m not supportive of universal background checks — I’m not supportive of it Chris,” Taylor said. “I’m not supportive of it.”
“Why?” Cuomo asked.
“I don’t agree with universal background checks — I don’t agree with it, I haven’t supported it,” Taylor reiterated. “I don’t support universal background checks — I don’t support you coming and me having to have a sale if I’m — paperwork and stuff like that — if I’m giving my gun to my son. I don’t agree with gun registration — I don’t agree with it.”
Cuomo ended the interview by telling Taylor, “I don’t understand why if you care about monitoring who gets weapons and access to them, you wouldn’t cover all sales. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
Taylor replied by saying, “Again Chris, you know, you and I disagree, and that’s fine. We can have diversity of opinion and rigorous debate, and that’s what elections are for.”
the rich asshole: I would have run into school during shooting even without a gun
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 02/26/18 11:25 AM EST
President the rich asshole on Monday claimed he would have run into a Florida high school to prevent a gunman from carrying out this month's mass shooting.
"You don't know until you test it, but I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon,” the rich asshole told a gathering of governors at the White House. "And I think most of the people in this room would have done that, too."
The president was doubling down on his criticism of an armed sheriff’s deputy who did not confront the shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed earlier this month.
"They weren’t exactly Medal of Honor winners, alright?" the rich asshole said. "The way they performed was frankly disgusting.”
the rich asshole also told the governors he ate lunch last weekend with leaders of the National Rifle Association (NRA).
"Don't worry about the NRA,” the rich asshole told the governors. ”They're on our side.”
the rich asshole taunts press for not knowing he had lunch with NRA’s Wayne LaPierre days after mass shooting
Wayne LaPierre speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
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President some rich asshole reportedly mocked media on Monday for failing to find out that he had lunch with the head of the National Rifle Association just days after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
According to AP correspondent Zeke Miller, the rich asshole revealed the meeting while speaking to Republican governors on Monday.
At the same event with Republican governors, the rich asshole suggested that he could have stopped the shooter who killed 17 in Parkland, Florida even if he did not have a gun.
“I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon and I think most of the people in this room would have done that, too,” the president opined.
‘I can’t talk about that’: Florida AG Pam Bondi won’t say if there was ‘stand down order’ for Broward deputies
Pam Bondi speaks to Fox News (screen grab)
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Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday refused to reveal why four Broward County deputies reportedly failed to confront a shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
While speaking to Fox & Friends, Bondi explained that Gov. Rick Scott had called for a “full investigation” of Sheriff Scott Israel and the Broward County Sheriff’s Department.
“I know a lot more than you all do now so all I’m going to say is, yes, I believe there needs to be a full investigation,” she said. “I don’t think some people were honest and we’re going to investigate this situation in Florida and the right thing will be done.”
“Was there a stand down order?” Fox News host Steve Doocy wondered.
“I can’t talk about that,” Bondi replied.
“That would explain why the [deputies] didn’t go inside,” Doocy noted.
Bondi later suggested that some of members of the Broward sheriff’s department “weren’t honest with me, nor were they honest with the governor.”
“Why wouldn’t they be honest,” co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked.
“Well, if they were there and didn’t want people to know they were there, that could have been it,” Bondi revealed. “But I’m not going to discuss farther.”
Watch the video below from Fox News.
the rich asshole team plots president’s refusal to testify in Russia probe: ‘It would be a travesty to waste his time’
An image of Pres. some rich asshole playing golf (Twitter.com)
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some rich asshole’s legal team is reportedly brainstorming ways for the president to avoid testifying before special counsel Robert Mueller.
The Wall Street Journal reported that members of the rich asshole’s legal team have been developing plans to shield the president from having to testify or be interviewed by investigators. Lying under oath or to federal agents carries a prison term.
One member of the legal team told the Journal that Mueller’s office “has all of the notes and memos of the thoughts and actions of this president on all subjects he requested in real time without reservation or qualification, including testimony from his most intimate staff and eight lawyers from the White House Counsel’s Office. Any question for the president is answered in these materials and testimony.”
“It would be a travesty to waste his (some rich asshole’s) time and to set a precedent which would cripple a future president,” the source added.
Read the entire report here.
‘He can’t walk 300 feet unassisted’: Internet buries the rich asshole’s ‘fantasies’ about being able to stop Parkland shooter
President some rich asshole rides on a golf cart.
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President some rich asshole on Monday insisted that he would have rushed in to personally stop Nikolas Cruz from murdering 17 people at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
While attacking Florida deputies for not entering the school while the shooting was still occurring, the rich asshole said that “I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon.”
the rich asshole’s claim was met with instant ridicule on the internet, as many commenters noted that the president infamously got out of serving in the military during the Vietnam War by citing “bone spurs” on his medical examination.
Check out the top reactions to the rich asshole below.
MOTHERFUCKER YOU'RE AFRAID OF STAIRS! twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/st…
Yes, Trump just oozes self-sacrifice and courage twitter.com/zekejmiller/st…
Trump on the #Parkland school shooting : "I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon."
Trump: “I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon....unless there are stairs. I don’t do stairs.”
his dumbass would get Swiss cheesed too RT @CNBC: Trump on Florida massacre: 'I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon.' cnb.cx/2HNbvWJ
So says the 5-time bone spur deferment@realDonaldTrump Trump says of Parkland shooting: "I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon." The Latest on his meeting with state governors is here: apne.ws/MBhc3ln
Trump rips Fla. Deputies for not going into school. "I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon.".
Run? He'd run? Fast jog? Fast walk? Wait where's the golf cart? Ok, wait stairs! Ohhhh the bone spurs....the pain...
Draft-dodging the rich asshole says he would have personally stopped Parkland shooter ‘even if I didn’t have a weapon’
some rich asshole does an interview with BBC Panorama in 2013 (Screen cap).
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President some rich asshole, who infamously avoiding serving in the Vietnam War by citing “bone spurs” in his medical examination, said on Monday that he would have personally intervened to stop Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz.
“I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon,” the rich asshole said during a meeting with the nation’s governors, according to Associated Press reporter Zeke Miller.
the rich asshole’s remark came as part of a broader criticism leveled at Florida deputies who did not act to stop Cruz while he was murdering 17 people at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. He said Monday that the deputies “weren’t exactly Medal of Honor winners.”
the rich asshole last week trashed the deputy sheriff who was present at the high school but who did not enter to try to stop the shooter by saying he did “a very poor job.”
the rich asshole says must improve early response system for violent people
President some rich asshole gestures as he addresses the nation's governors, in town for their Annual Winter Meetings, as he hosts the Governor's Ball at the White House, Washington, DC, U.S., February 25, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Theiler
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U.S. President some rich asshole, meeting with governors at the White House, said on Monday that authorities need to improve early-warning response systems for violent people after a Florida attacker killed 17 people in one of the country’s deadliest school shootings.
Authorities have said they had received multiple tips about the Florida high school shooter before his deadly rampage, and that at least one tip sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not acted on properly.
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Another failure for Dotard no45.
Supreme Court refuses to hear the rich asshole challenge on DACA
BY LYDIA WHEELER AND RAFAEL BERNAL - 02/26/18 09:33 AM EST
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear the rich asshole administration's challenge to a lower court ruling temporarily blocking it from winding down the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
The decision delivers a blow to the rich asshole administration, which argues that DACA is unconstitutional. It also could ease some pressure on Congress to quickly come up with a legislative solution, however, since it means the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will continue to review the case.
The decision comes just a week before a March 5 deadline set by President the rich asshole for Congress to enact legislation to replace the program established by former President Obama. It allows immigrants who entered the country illegally as children to work and go to school in the United States.
The court denied the government's request that it hear the case without prejudice.
"It is assumed that the court of appeals will proceed expeditiously to decide this case," the court said.
The Supreme Court could still agree to hear the case after it is heard by the lower appeals court.
The justices provided no further explanation for their decision. It takes four justices to agree to hear a case.
A White House spokesman said in a statement after the court’s decision that the “clearly unlawful” DACA program benefits “illegal immigrants en masse.”
“The district judge’s decision unilaterally to re-impose a program that Congress had explicitly and repeatedly rejected is a usurpation of legislative authority,” deputy press secretary Raj Shah said.
“The fact that this occurs at a time when elected representatives in Congress are actively debating this policy only underscores that the district judge has unwisely intervened in the legislative process,” he added.
“We look forward to having this case expeditiously heard by the appeals court and, if necessary, the Supreme Court, where we fully expect to prevail.”
Congress has been unable to reach an agreement on a measure to replace Obama's executive action and has just one full legislative day scheduled before the March 5 deadline.
In exchange for language allowing DACA recipients and other "Dreamers" to remain in the United States and get a path to citizenship, the rich asshole has demanded money for his proposed wall on the Mexican border and changes to two legal immigration programs.
The House remains at an impasse, with leadership officially only considering a bill proposed by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) that is widely believed to be unable to pass in the Senate.
The Senate is looking for short-term solutions that would extend DACA for two or three years while a new immigration deal is worked out.
Had the California court — and later a New York court — not enjoined the rich asshole's order, DACA beneficiaries would have begun to lose their benefits after the deadline.
Nearly 20,000 DACA recipients lost their benefits following the September announcement as they failed to apply for renewal in the month granted to them by the rich asshole administration.
Under the injunction, beneficiaries who were covered by DACA in September — including those who didn't renew — are allowed to apply for a two-year renewal of their permit.
The injunction does not protect people who would have aged into DACA, leaving the youngest "Dreamers" subject to deportation and without documentation to allow them to work or go to school.
The nearly 800,000 people who did get DACA status at some point will be allowed to apply for renewal, although the glut of applications is expected to create lapses in coverage for certain beneficiaries. For some, that will mean losing their work permits — and if employed, their jobs — at least temporarily.
Of those 800,000, more than 100,000 left the program by leaving the country, receiving different immigration status or being expelled from the program. Former DACA beneficiaries will be allowed to reapply while the injunction lasts as long as they weren't removed from the program for criminal or gang behavior.
Since the program's inception, about 2,000 beneficiaries were expelled from DACA for criminal acts.
The Justice Department's request to challenge the lower court ruling was rare in that it asked the Supreme Court to jump ahead of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in reviewing the case.
The court typically will only bypass an appellate court when there’s an emergency involving foreign affairs, a serious separation of powers concerns or when it has already agreed to hear another case dealing with the same question.
Andrew Pincus, a Supreme Court litigator and partner at Mayer Brown, a Washington, D.C.-based law firm, said the earliest a decision could be expected from the appeals courts would be in June or July.
"We’re certainly looking at a matter of a significant number of months," said Pincus.
And lawsuits similar to the ones in California and New York are under review in the District of Columbia and Maryland, meaning more similar injunctions could surface in coming months.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said the the rich asshole administration's attempts to circumvent the appeals process have actually slowed down the process.
"You could let the the rich asshole administration know the court would run its course faster if the the rich asshole administration would stop appealing every decision," said Becerra.
"They should look no further than the mirror if they have concerns about why they don’t have success," he added.
Theodore Boutrous Jr., a partner at Gibson Dunn who’s representing the six DACA recipients in the challenge with Becerra and the board of regents of California's universities, praised the court for allowing the normal appellate process to play out.
“DACA is a lawful and important program that protects young people who came to this country as children and who know this country as their only home,” he said in a statement.
“The Dreamers have relied on DACA to make decisions about their education, jobs, and families and to make valuable contributions to society as doctors, lawyers, teachers, and members of the military.”
Boutrous added that he’s confident the court of appeals will affirm the district court’s injunction. His office said the appellate court is not likely to hear arguments in the case before May.
Updated at 12:21 p.m.
U.S. LEGAL NEWS
FEBRUARY 26, 2018 / 9:37 AM / UPDATED 44 MINUTES AGO
Supreme Court rejects the rich asshole over 'Dreamers' immigrants
Lawrence Hurley, Andrew Chung
6 MIN READ
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday dealt a setback to President some rich asshole, requiring his administration to maintain protections he has sought to end for hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought illegally into the United States as children.
The justices refused to hear the administration’s appeal of a federal judge’s Jan. 9 nationwide injunction that halted the rich asshole’s move to rescind a program that benefits immigrants known as “Dreamers” implemented in 2012 by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama.
The protections were due to start phasing out beginning in March under the Republican president’s action, announced in September.
Under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, roughly 700,000 young adult, mostly Hispanics, are protected from deportation and given work permits for two-year periods, after which they must re-apply. Congress so far has failed to pass legislation to address the fate of the “Dreamers,” including a potential path to citizenship.
San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled last month that DACA must remain in place while litigation over the legality of the rich asshole’s action is resolved, prompting the administration’s unusual appeal bypassing a federal appeals court and going directly to the Supreme Court.
“The DACA program -- which provides work permits and myriad government benefits to illegal immigrants en masse -- is clearly unlawful. The district judge’s decision to unilaterally re-impose a program that Congress had explicitly and repeatedly rejected is a usurpation of legislative authority,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said.
“We look forward to having this case expeditiously heard by the appeals court and, if necessary, the Supreme Court, where we fully expect to prevail,” Shah added.
The administration argued that Obama exceeded his powers under the Constitution when he bypassed Congress and created DACA.
Alsup ruled that the challengers, including the states of California, Maine, Maryland and Minnesota and Obama’s former homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano, were likely to succeed in arguing that the administration’s decision to end DACA was arbitrary.
In a brief order, the Supreme Court justices did not explain their reasoning, but said the appeal was “denied without prejudice,” indicating they will maintain an open mind on the underlying legal issue still being considered by a lower court, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The high court also said it expects the lower court to “proceed expeditiously to decide this case.”
‘FULLY LEGAL’
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, called the administration’s bid to bypass the 9th Circuit, which has ruled against the rich asshole on other matters, “unusual and unnecessary.”
“We look forward to explaining to the Ninth Circuit court that DACA is fully legal. For the sake of the Dreamers who help make our economy and our state strong, the rescission of DACA should not be allowed to stand,” Becerra said in a statement.
The DACA dispute is the latest major case brought to the Supreme Court for its consideration arising from the rich asshole’s immigration policies. The justices are due to hear arguments in April on the legality of his latest travel ban order barring entry to people from several Muslim-majority nations.
Greisa Martinez, a DACA recipient who works in Washington with the immigrants’ rights group United We Dream, said she was grateful the Supreme Court’s action gave people already enrolled in the program more time, but said most young immigrants who are eligible for the protections have not signed up.
“We need a permanent solution now,” Martinez told reporters. “This back and forth on DACA and the legislative process has created a crisis in our community.”
Justice Department spokesman Devin O‘Malley said in a statement that “while we were hopeful for a different outcome,” the high court rarely agrees to take up cases before a lower court has ruled, “though in our view it was warranted for the extraordinary injunction requiring the Department of Homeland Security to maintain DACA.”
the rich asshole’s move to rescind DACA prompted legal challenges by Democratic state attorneys general and various organizations and individuals in multiple federal courts.
On Feb. 13, a second U.S. judge issued a similar injunction ordering the administration to keep DACA in place. U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn acted in a lawsuit brought by plaintiffs including a group of states led by New York.
Judges Alsup and Garaufis did not say that the administration could not at some point end the program, only that there was evidence it did not follow the correct procedures in doing so.
The rulings allow those who had previously applied for protections and whose two-year status was soon to expire to apply beyond the deadline set by the administration in September. The original plan put on hold by the court rulings said that only those who re-applied by October and whose status was due to expire by March 5 could re-apply.
The administration is not processing new applications.
Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Washington and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Will Dunham
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
In blow to the rich asshole, Supreme Court won’t hear appeal of DACA ruling
BY PETE WILLIAMS POLITICS
FEB 26 2018, 12:31 PM ET
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear the rich asshole administration's appeal of a federal judge's ruling that requires the government to keep the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program going.
Under a lower court order that remains in effect, the Department of Homeland Security must continue to accept renewal applications from the roughly 700,000 young people who are currently enrolled in the program, known as DACA. The administration had intended to shut the program down by March 5, but that deadline is now largely meaningless.
In a brief order, the court said simply, "It is assumed the court of appeals will act expeditiously to decide this case."
Supreme Court declines to hear 'Dreamers' challenge 3:39
Monday's denial also gives Congress more time to come up with a legislative solution, though repeated bipartisan efforts have failed so far.
At a White House meeting with governors from around the coutry, President some rich asshole said after the court's decision, "We'd like to help DACA" and criticized the lower court.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, "Today's Supreme Court action shows that rescinding DACA was not only legally questionable, but also unjust and cruel. The court's action is welcome news, but only Congress can provide the permanent protection our Dreamers need and deserve."
The Supreme Court's denial Monday was expected, because the justices rarely accept appeals asking them to bypass the lower courts.
The program allows children of illegal immigrants, known as Dreamers, to remain here if they were under 16 when their parents brought them to the U.S. and if they arrived by 2007. Those given DACA status must renew it every two years.
On Jan. 9, a federal judge in San Francisco, William Alsup, ruled in favor of the University of California and its president, former Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano. They sued to keep the program going after the rich asshole administration said in September that it would end it within six months. Alsup said Attorney General Jeff Sessions had wrongly concluded that DACA was put in place without proper legal authority.
Nancy Pelosi breaks House record with 8-hour DACA speech1:18
The Justice Department said it would contest that ruling before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California. But government lawyers also asked the Supreme Court to take the highly unusual step of agreeing to hear the case, bypassing the appeals court.
"The district court has entered an unprecedented nationwide injunction requiring the government not simply to tolerate, but to affirmatively sanction, a continuing violation of federal law by nearly 700,000 aliens," said Solicitor General Noel Francisco in asking the justices to take the case.
After the Supreme Court's decision Monday, the White House said, "The DACA program — which provides work permits and myriad government benefits to illegal immigrants en masse — is clearly unlawful. The district judge's decision to unilaterally re-impose a program that Congress had explicitly and repeatedly rejected is a usurpation of legislative authority...We look forward to having this case expeditiously heard by the appeals court and, if necessary, the Supreme Court, where we fully expect to prevail."
The Supreme Court has agreed only about a dozen times in the past century to immediately take a case and bypass the federal appeals courts, and those case usually involve a national emergency, such as nationwide strikes in the steel and coal industries.
In asking the court to take the case, the Justice Department took another unusual step in declining to ask the justices to block the lower court order in the meantime, which would have allowed the government to shut DACA down as planned. Such a start-and-stop approach, the government said, would frustrate the goal of winding the program down in an orderly way.
Monday's action by the Supreme Court leaves the DACA challenge pending before the California appeals court, where it is in the early stages. The Justice Department has said it will take at least another year to get back to the Supreme Court for a decision on DACA's future.
If Congress acts in the meantime to extend the program or provide an alternative path to citizenship for its recipients, the legal case would probably be dismissed.
U.S. Supreme Court rejects the rich asshole over 'Dreamers' immigrants
02-26-2018
WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday dealt a setback to President some rich asshole, requiring his administration to maintain protections he has sought to end for hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought illegally into the United States as children.
The justices refused to hear the administration's appeal of a federal judge's Jan. 9 injunction that halted the rich asshole's move to rescind a program that benefits immigrants known as "Dreamers" implemented in 2012 by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. Under the rich asshole's action, the protections were due to start phasing out beginning in March.
In a brief order, the justices did not explain their reasoning, but said the appeal was "denied without prejudice," indicating they will maintain an open mind on the underlying legal issue still being considered by a lower court. The high court also said it expects that appeals court to "proceed expeditiously to decide this case."
Under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, roughly 700,000 young adult, mostly Hispanics, are granted protect from deportation and given work permits for two-year periods, after which they must re-apply. A total of about 1.8 million people are eligible for the program, a sizable fraction of the more than 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally.
the rich asshole's administration had appealed a Jan. 9 nationwide injunction by San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who ruled that the DACA program must remain in place while the litigation is resolved.
The administration had challenged a nationwide injunction by San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who ruled that DACA must remain in place while the litigation is resolved.
In an unusual move, the administration appealed directly to the Supreme Court instead of going first to a federal appeals court.
Alsup ruled that the challengers, including the states of California, Maine, Maryland and Minnesota and Obama's former homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano, were likely to succeed in arguing that the administration's decision to end DACA was arbitrary.
Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley said in a statement that the administration will continue to defend the Department of Homeland Security's "lawful authority to wind down DACA in an orderly manner."
O'Malley said that "while we were hopeful for a different outcome," the high court rarely agrees to take up cases before a lower court has ruled, "though in our view it was warranted for the extraordinary injunction requiring the Department of Homeland Security to maintain DACA."
The DACA dispute is the second major case the Supreme Court will hear in the coming months arising from the rich asshole's immigration policies. The justices are due to hear arguments in April on the legality of his latest travel ban order barring entry to people from several Muslim-majority nations.
Congress so far has failed to pass legislation to address the fate of the "Dreamers," including a potential path to citizenship.
the rich asshole's move to rescind DACA prompted legal challenges by Democratic state attorneys general and various organizations and individuals in multiple federal courts. His administration argued that Obama exceeded his powers under the Constitution when he bypassed Congress and created DACA.
On Feb. 13, a second U.S. judge issued a similar injunction ordering the rich asshole administration to keep DACA in place. U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn acted in a lawsuit brought by plaintiffs including a group of states led by New York.
Alsup and Garaufis did not say that the administration could not at some point end the program, only that there was evidence it did not follow the correct procedures in doing so.
The rulings allow those who had previously applied for protections and whose two-year status was soon to expire to apply beyond the deadline set by the administration in September.
The original plan put on hold by the court rulings said that only those who re-applied by October and whose status was due to expire by March 5 could re-apply.
The administration is not processing new applications.
Supreme Court rejects administration appeal over DACA
Updated: 7:28 AM PST Feb 26, 2018
The Supreme Court is rejecting the rich asshole administration's highly unusual bid to get the justices to intervene in the controversy over protections for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants.
The justices on Monday refused to take up the administration's appeal of a lower court order that requires the administration to continue accepting renewal applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. What made the appeal unusual is that the administration sought to bypass the federal appeals court in San Francisco and go directly to the Supreme Court.
In an unsigned comment, the justices wrote that they assume "the court of appeals will proceed expeditiously to decide this case."
A judge in New York also has ruled in favor of immigrants challenging the end of DACA, and that case is expected to proceed to the federal appeals court in New York.
President some rich asshole had set March 5 as the end date for the DACA program. The court order says applications must be accepted indefinitely. DACA has provided protection from deportation and work permits for about 800,000 young people, many who were brought to the U.S. illegally.
It's unclear how the court's action Monday will affect efforts in Congress to come up with a legislative fix. The Senate recently failed to pass an immigration bill.
The Supreme Court rarely hears a case before a lower appeals court has considered it.
Supreme Court rejects Justice Department attempt to fast-track DACA decision
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a case involving the rich asshole administration’s repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and on Monday rejected an appeal from the Justice Department to review a lower court decision that put an injunction on the government's attempt to end DACA.
The ruling means any possible Supreme Court review will have to come after the federal appeals court weighs in, instead of immediately as the rich asshole administration requested.
It also means the administration's March 5 deadline for ending the DACA program is less meaningful, as the lower court injunction will stand for now as the case continues.
The Justice Department sought a Supreme Court review after a federal district court in California ruled against President the rich asshole’s attempt to rescind the program, which protects immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children from the threat of deportation and grants them work permits. Judge William Alsup ordered the administration to begin accepting renewal applications from those participating in DACA.
In a rare move, the Department of Justice appealed to the high court in the case,Department of Homeland Security v. the Regents of University of California, bypassing the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and expediting review of the lower court’s decision. The Justice Department admitted it's request was a rare one, and said it would keep defending its right to repeal DACA in court.
“While we were hopeful for a different outcome, the Supreme Court very rarely grants certiorari before judgment, though in our view it was warranted for the extraordinary injunction requiring the Department of Homeland Security to maintain DACA,” Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement. “We will continue to defend DHS’ lawful authority to wind down DACA in an orderly manner.”
The rich asshole administration announced in September it would end the DACA program by March 5, setting up a six-month deadline for Congress to come with a legislative solution addressing Dreamers.
Lawmakers are working on an immigration deal, though one hasn’t yet been struck, and Congress isn't expected to pass a bill in time for the rich asshole's deadline next week.
The rich asshole administration was dealt another blow this month when a second federal judge, this one in New York, blocked the administration’s attempt the end DACA.
In an amended order, Judge Nicholas Garaufis required the rich asshole administration to continue processing DACA renewal requests.
Supreme Court rejects the rich asshole administration's appeal over DACA
DACA supporters march to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office to protest shortly after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions' announcement that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), will be suspended with a six-month delay, on Tue., Sept. 5, 2017, in Phoenix.
AP
Last Updated Feb 26, 2018 12:32 PM EST
The Supreme Court is rejecting the the rich asshole administration's highly unusual bid to get the justices to intervene in the controversy over protections for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants.
The justices on Monday refused to take up the administration's appeal of a lower court order that requires the administration to continue accepting renewal applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. The DOJ appealed a lower court's decision in The Regents of the University of California and Janet Napolitano v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Elaine Duke, to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and asked the U.S. Supreme Court take up the case directly late last month.
The appeal came after a U.S. district court temporarily blocked the the rich asshole administration from ending DACA, the program former President Barack Obama established to protect immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children.
What made the appeal unusual is that the administration sought to bypass the federal appeals court in San Francisco to appeal directly to the Supreme Court.
Since then, a judge in New York also has ruled in favor of immigrants challenging the end of DACA.
In a brief unsigned comment, the justices said they assume "the court of appeals will proceed expeditiously to decide this case." The court order says applications must now be accepted indefinitely. DACA has provided protection from deportation and work permits for about 800,000 young people, many who were brought to the U.S. illegally.
President the rich asshole, addressing the nation's governors Monday, complained that "nothing's as bad as the Ninth Circuit." He said of that particular appeals court that "every single case is against us" in the Ninth Circuit. "We'll see what happens from them," some rich asshole said.
The White House also issued a statement accusing the district court judge in the case of having "unwisely intervened in the legislative process" by acting while Congress is debating the policy. White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah also said, "We look forward to having this case expeditiously heard by the appeals court and, if necessary, the Supreme Court, where we fully expect to prevail."
In a statement from Department of Justice spokesman Devin O'Malley, the DOJ says they will continue to defend "DHS' lawful authority to wind down DACA in an orderly manner.
"While we were hopeful for a different outcome, the Supreme Court very rarely grants certiorari before judgment, though in our view it was warranted for the extraordinary injunction requiring the Department of Homeland Security to maintain DACA," O'Malley added.
In September, some rich asshole said he would end the DACA program by March 5 but the court's ruling now delivers a blow to the administration's end date. Congress still has yet to formally provide a fix the DACA program, with the Senate most recently rejecting all four immigration proposals brought to the Senate floor this month.
© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
US Supreme Court rejects challenge to EPA water regulation
U.S. Supreme Court is seen in Washington, U.S., October 3, 2016. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a challenge led by states and environmental groups to an Environmental Protection Agency regulation that lets government agencies transfer water between different bodies, such as rivers and lakes, without needing to protect against pollution.
The nine justices left in place a lower court ruling upholding the EPA’s “water transfers rule,” issued in 2008 by Republican former President George W. Bush’s administration, that exempted such transfers from a national water discharge program aimed at curbing pollution.
Under the landmark Clean Water Act, permits are required for the “discharge of any pollutant” into “navigable waters.” Opponents of the EPA rule said water transfers can pollute otherwise pristine water bodies and should require permits.
The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year ruled that the EPA had acted reasonably in 2008 in adopting the rule over the objections of environmental groups.
A coalition of seven states led by New York and environmental groups led by Riverkeeper Inc appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.
The appeals court overturned a 2014 ruling by a federal judge in New York who ordered the agency to go back to the drawing board on one aspect of the 2008 regulation, which exempts transfers from the national water discharge permit program that is administered by the EPA.
Some local government entities, such as the South Florida Water Management District and New York City, supported the regulation in part because obtaining permits and staying compliant is costly. They said no permits should be required because water is merely being transferred from one place to another and pollutants are not being added.
Business interests that depend on government-funded water management systems also supported the rule.
As well as pitting New York state against New York city, the rule also divides states, with a group of 11 Western states led by Colorado backing the EPA.
The Supreme Court has been asked before to decide the underlying legal question of whether permits are required for water transfers but has yet to rule on it.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
Eric the rich asshole: Russia meddling ‘started off as a hoax’ — but ‘I wish Obama would have’ stopped them
Eric the rich asshole (Fox News)
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Eric the rich asshole admitted on Fox News that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election — but he blamed his father’s predecessor for not stopping it.
The president’s son told “Fox & Friends” that the Democratic response to a memo compiled by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) showed the FBI investigation of the rich asshole campaign was politically motivated, although even co-host Ainsley Earhardt gently corrected his claim.
“My thoughts are, they dug and dug and dug and finally found themselves,” the rich asshole said. “It’s awful what happened. You had the FBI and Department of Justice, you had them use opposition research to spy on a presidential candidate in this country, and it’s horrible. This is the worst abuse imaginable, something you would see in a third world country, and it happened here.”
“You know, people have to take this seriously,” he continued. “There is nothing worse than when, you know, government — I mean, it’s just very, very dark what happened, and I don’t think the Democratic memo said anything. In fact, I think it confirmed that, you know, the judge wasn’t told that this was opposition research.”
Earhardt pointed out that the FISA court that approved surveillance against a rich asshole campaign adviser was told that some of the evidence had been gathered by political operatives, but the president’s son pressed on.
“What started off as a hoax, you know, the rich asshole won the election because of Russia, has been nothing further from the truth, and they ended up finding themselves in this whole irony, and it’s kind of amusing,” the rich asshole said.
Co-host Brian Kilmeade said it was troubling that Russia was bold enough to interfere in the U.S. election, and he said it had to stop.
“I agree,” the rich asshole said. “I wish Obama would have done that. If he knew, which he clearly did, I wish he would have stopped that. The big question is, why did he do nothing about it?”
Texas GOP lawmaker: No need to probe the rich asshole’s finances because Deutsche Bank is German, not Russian
Mike Conaway (Screen Capture)
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Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), who is currently leading the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, told CNN this week that he doesn’t see any need for Congress to scrutinize loans given by Deutsche Bank to President some rich asshole on the grounds that it isn’t a Russian bank.
“I don’t see the link at this stage,” Conaway said, referring to calls to examine whether the Deutsche Bank loans establish financial links between the rich asshole and Russia. “Deutsche Bank is a German bank — I don’t see the nexus… I bet every big bank has a Russian customer somewhere.”
Deutsche Bank last year agreed to pay out $630 million in penalties after getting busted for being involved in a $10 billion Russian money laundering scheme that involved its Moscow, New York and London branches.
Deutsche Bank was also the one major bank that was willing to lend the rich asshole money in the late ’90s, after a string of business failures made him toxic for all other Wall Street banks. In total, the rich asshole has roughly $300 million in outstanding debts to Deutsche Bank.
Because of the banks key role in funding both the rich asshole and Russian money laundering operations, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has said that he believes potential links are very much worth examining.
“I think the allegations on money laundering are credible enough that we ought to, in the exercise of due diligence, see if this was one of the other vectors of the Russian active measures campaign,” Schiff said earlier this month. “To me, that is far more potentially compromising than any salacious video would be.”
‘It’s crazy’: Morning Joe panel agrees CPAC debacle proves ‘the Republican Party has lost its mind’
Morning Joe panel (MSNBC)
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MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” hosted former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele to discuss his feud with Conservative Political Action Conference organizers.
CPAC communications director Ian Walters said Steele was picked to lead the RNC from 2009 to 2011 because “he was a black guy,” and CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp excused his remarks as “unfortunate.”
Steele called out Schlapp during a Sirius XM radio program, saying Walters’ remarks were “stupid” — and he told “Morning Joe” that the entire episode was alarming.
“I’ve known Matt a long time, too, (and) we’ve been, as I said at the beginning of that interview, we’ve been through a lot of wars together,” Steele said. “But that was a moment among many in that interview, and those nine minutes in which I saw Matt not just drink the Kool Aid but take the IV and plunge it into his arm, and it was stunning and disappointing.”
Host Joe Scarborough was shocked that conservative columnist Mona Charen was escorted out of CPAC for her own safety after challenging GOP support for politicians accused of sexual misconduct.
“Mona Charen used to be something that liberals would have contempt for because she was so conservative, she was a Reagan conservative,” Scarborough said.
MSNBC’s Mike Barnacle said the GOP had gone completely around the bend.
“It’s as if the Republican Party has lost its mind,” he said.
Scarborough said loyalty to President some rich asshole had replaced conservative ideology as the defining feature of the current Republican Party.
“You know, when you have Erick Erickson insufficiently conservative to go speak at this conference, you have a problem,” Scarborough said. “National Review, I mean, people were talking about how National Review, I read in some article attendees were saying it’s too liberal. It’s crazy.”
CNN’s Chris Cuomo laughs out loud at state of Trumps’ marriage: ‘Not a lot of mystery there’
Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo (Photo: Screen capture)
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After a report about the disappearance of First Lady Melania the rich asshole following revelations her husband cheated on her with two adult film stars, all CNN’s Chris Cuomo could do is crack up.
The report detailed what “seemed” to be happening between the first couple but Cuomo found the assumption that there was some sort of ambiguity to be hilarious.
“I think ‘mysterious’ is the right word she’s feeling through all of this and that she’s doing,” Camerota said. “Considering what the headlines have been. She’s also done little to dispel the stories. So, what do you make of that?”
White House reporter Kate Bennett recalled the Clintons and John F. Kennedy and Jackie as an indicator of how Mrs. the rich asshole might be feeling.
“How a couple handles headlines and rumors is indicative of how they are individually,” Bennett said. She went on to compare the Trumps to the Obamas, who would send “mushy” messages and mark anniversaries while in the White House. Barnett said that there are differences in that the first lady doesn’t go on global trips and didn’t travel with her husband to the State of the Union address.
Mrs. the rich asshole even took a different motorcade to Air Force One the day another“salacious” story was released about an affair.
After a chuckle, Cuomo noted they’re “looking for clues” as to the relationship of the Trumps.
“Remember this?” Cuomo said grabbing the hand of his colleague Alisyn Camerota and then slapping it away. “All I’m saying is–”
“Look no further?” Camerota asked.
“Whatever happens with them happens,” Cuomo continued. “That’s their personal business. But we don’t have to hunt for clues.”
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