February 6th, 2017. It's been 451 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no.45, and 379 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
Puerto Rico was supposed to receive 30 million emergency meals. But only 50,000 were delivered.
Puerto Rico is still struggling, five months later, to recover from Hurricane Maria and from an inept relief effort from the rich asshole administration. Now, new reporting indicates that last October, the Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded a $156 million contract to a one-person company in Georgia that was assigned to help deliver 30 million emergency meals to hurricane survivors.
Instead, just 50,000 ready-to-eat meals were delivered, according to The New York Times.
On Tuesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee demanded that FEMA be subpoenaed to examine the documents the agency has refused to hand over, to find out how such an emergency relief debacle took place.
“It is difficult to fathom how FEMA could have believed that this tiny company had the capacity to perform this $156 million contract,” Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands wrote in a letter to the oversight chairman. “FEMA’s decision is even more incomprehensible given the company’s inability to fulfill previous government contracts that were only a fraction of the size.”
Indeed, the company in question, Tribute Contracting, had already had at least five previous FEMA contracts canceled because the company wasn’t able to deliver goods as promised.
Tribute also had no experience in large-scale disaster relief.
“According to these documents, one of the primary reasons FEMA failed to deliver these meals is because it inexplicably awarded a contract worth approximately $156 million to deliver 30 million emergency meals to a tiny, one-person company with a history of struggling with much smaller contracts,” Cummings and Plaskett stressed.
FEMA officials insists all necessary meals were eventually delivered. But the massive contract that has to be torn up certainly affected the larger relief effort, and more importantly, this latest revelation highlights the chaotic and botched relief effort that has become a hallmark failure of the rich asshole presidency.
Last year, it FEMA had to cancel a $30 million contract to another tiny, inexperienced contractor who failed to deliver hundreds of thousands of tarps and rolls of plastic sheets it had promised for storm survivors.
An Associated Press investigation into that failure revealed a FEMA organization that bordered on recklessness with its inept handling of crucial contracts to help rebuild Puerto Rico.
These FEMA debacles are reminiscent of the no-bid, $300 million contract to rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid that was awarded to a tiny Montana start-up company called Whitefish Energy, which also had no previous experience with federal contracts.
Whitefish Energy just happened to be located in the hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and was financed by a major the rich asshole donor.
Eventually, that contract was also canceled.
If FEMA under the rich asshole was as good at disaster relief as it is at canceling botched contracts, the American citizens of Puerto Rico might be much better off today.
The racist truth comes out.
some rich asshole’s chief of staff, John Kelly, is frequently credited with being a moderating influence on the rich asshole, but he has shown himself to be every bit the racist his boss is.
As the rich asshole and his fellow Republicans continue to hold Dreamers hostage to their extreme agenda, they have tried to cast themselves as compassionate seekers of a bipartisan solution to the problem that the rich asshole created when he rescinded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
But Kelly once again put the lie to that empty pose on Tuesday when he described Dreamers as “lazy.”
“There are 690,000 official DACA registrants, and the president sent over what amounts to be two and a half times that number, to 1.8 million,” Kelly told reporters on Capitol Hill.
“The difference between 690 and 1.8 million were the people that some would say were too afraid to sign up, others would say were too lazy to get off their asses but they didn’t sign up.”
Kelly tried to attribute his racist smear to what “others would say,” but in an interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade last week, Kelly made a nearly identical remark, without attributing it to “others.”
He made the same distinction between “the 690,000 official DACA recipients” and “people who would have qualified if they’d gotten off their, uh, well, had they registered like they should have.”
Kelly’s racist contempt for Dreamers is no different from the rich asshole’s, and has been on display for quite a long time. With just weeks to go before deportations are set to begin, Democrats must negotiate with eyes wide open to the kind of people they are dealing with.
Nicolle Wallace shreds Paul Ryan for backing the rich asshole — ‘the hamburger-eating Zamboni-riding loon we see on TV’
Nicolle Wallace is host of "Deadline: White House on MSNBC"
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MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace blasted Speaker Paul Ryan for allowing President some rich asshole and House Intel Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) to undermine America’s law enforcement and intelligence communities during “Deadline: White House” on Tuesday.
“So the dossier, which was provided to the FBI by a source who’s not just credible to American intelligence… he is credible all over the world because he’s a former British spy and he’s an expert on Russia,” Wallace noted.
“The standard was probable cause. The dossier has not been proven false. A third of it’s been proven true,” Wallace reminded.
“some rich asshole, I truly believe doesn’t know any better. I believe he’s the hamburger-eating, Zamboni-riding loon we see TV and on Twitter, but Paul Ryan knows better,” Wallace blasted.
“Paul Ryan’s behavior has been disgraceful,” NBC News national affairs analyst John Heilemann agreed.
“This guy’s behavior was the kind of behavior that in any other instance — if it wasn’t for the fact that some rich asshole was unhappy about it — any other in instance, every Republican in the world would say, of course, there should be surveillance on this guy, it looks like he’s doing business with Russian spies,” Heilemann explained.
“Stormy Daniels suggests the most salacious [allegations] probably are true. I’m serious,” Wallace noted.
“Let’s just be real here, [the dossier] is thought of not being true because of the golden showers and the sex. Okay? Let’s just lay it out,” Wallace suggested.
“I think that the Stormy Daniels and the $130,000 payment to a porn star make the most salacious things among the most credible,” Wallace suggested.
“Certainly they’re worth revisiting,” Associated Press White House reporter Jonathan Lemire suggested. “You learn more and more about some rich asshole’s private life, you think it’s possible it could be true.”
“I wish it had stayed private. I want to un-hear all these things,” Wallace admitted.
Watch:
Sanders insists ‘we are not advocating for the shutdown’ minutes after the rich asshole says he would ‘love a shutdown’
Sarah Huckabee Sanders (screen grab)
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White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders on Tuesday insisted that President some rich asshole was not “advocating” for a shutdown even though he had said that he would “love” one just moments earlier.
During a roundtable discussion about immigration earlier in the day, the rich asshole had suggested that he would support a government shutdown if Democrats did not help him pass tougher immigration laws.
“We’ll do a shutdown,” the rich asshole proposed. “And it’s worth it for our country. I’d love to see a shutdown if we don’t get this stuff taken care of.”
At Tuesday’s White House briefing, reporters reminded Sanders that the rich asshole had called the idea of a shutdown “devastating” just weeks before.
“The only people that have caused a shutdown are the Democrats who have repeatedly held the government hostage over their own politics,” Sanders charged. “Democrats actually shut the government down. Let’s not forget that.”
“If the Democrat [SIC] Party is going to continue to threaten a shutdown because they won’t include responsible immigration reform, including fixing MS-13 loopholes and other issues then the president welcomes that fight,” she added, reading from a statement. “It’s a fight we won last time and it’s one that we’re very confident that we’ll win again.”
Pressed on the president’s remarks, Sanders appeared to become frustrated.
“Look, we are not advocating for the shutdown,” she said. “That’s the fault of the Democrats.”
Watch the video below.
Rep. Andy Biggs goes all in on attacking Democrats who didn't applaud the rich asshole's State of the Union address.
Republicans will stoop mighty low to defend some rich asshole’s outrageous accusation that Democratic lawmakers were “treasonous” and “un-American” for refusing to applaud him at the State of the Union address.
The attack came Monday, at an official White House event, just hours after the rich asshole accused Democrats and former intelligence officials of leaking of classified information.
On Tuesday morning, Fox Business host Stuart Varney asked Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) for his reaction to those absurd statements.
Biggs allowed that the rich asshole “may have been a bit hyperbolic,” but said that failure to applaud the rich asshole was “disrespectful.”
“In the end, they might have some ‘splaining to do when they meet God,” Biggs added.
“Some ‘splaining to do at the Pearly Gates, I like that one!” a delighted Varney commented.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been defending the rich asshole by claiming that he was “clearly joking,” a disturbing reminder of the time she claimed the rich asshole was merely “making a joke” when he encouraged police brutality in a speech.
the rich asshole’s casual accusation of treason, joking or not, is outrageous. It’s another example of the rich asshole’s despotic instinct to quash dissent, and his fellow Republics should be condemning that language instead of defending it.
the rich asshole Orders Military Parade Because Everything Else Is Going So Well He Thought He’d Treat Himself
Practicing.
JIM WATSON/Getty Images
some rich asshole wants a parade. Real bad. And not just any parade, a big military one just like he’s seen on TV from far off lands where usually the size of the tanks is compensating for other, more significant shortcomings. It makes sense a parade, unconvoluted in its messaging, would appeal to the rich asshole’s pervasive sense of nostalgia for a time when orchestrated displays of bravado weren’t considered crass, but quaint. In fact, the rich asshole’s mused publicly about just such a military exhibition. Then, last month, the president’s brain asked his mouth to make it happen.
From the Washington Post:
[A] Jan. 18 meeting between the rich asshole and top generals in the Pentagon’s tank —a room reserved for top-secret discussions—marked a tipping point, according to two officials briefed on the planning… the rich asshole’s seemingly abstract desire for a parade was suddenly heard as a presidential directive, the officials said. “The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France,” said a military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the planning discussions are supposed to remain confidential. “This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”
There are questions of cost, the Post points out, but a White House official assures the news outlet all that’s been completed is “brainstorming,” nothing is set in stone. The bigger question is: why is the president brainstorming about this? Doesn’t he have tweets to send? Under normal circumstances, this doesn’t seem like something that would rise to the level of the president, but the rich asshole needs projects to keep him occupied. The tradition of military hardware inching down capital streets might ring a wee bit totalitarian to the average American that’s not on Snapchat, but the rich asshole is, of course, the Godzilla of democracy.
The impetus behind the rich asshole’s move to stage a military parade is that he saw one that he liked and now he wants one too. Last year, during a Bastille Day celebration in France, the Post describes the rich asshole reacting to the military parade that day much like a 7-year-old. “the rich asshole was awestruck by the tableau of uniformed French troops marching down Avenue des Champs-Elysees with military tanks, armored vehicles, gun trucks and carriers—complete with fighter jets flying over the Arc de Triomphe and painting the sky with streaks of blue, white and red smoke for the colors of the French flag,” the Post recalls. Flags! Colored smoke! Guns and tanks! Gimme, I want one. “It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen,” the rich asshole told reporters. “It was two hours on the button, and it was military might, and I think a tremendous thing for France and for the spirit of France.” “We’re going to have to try to top it,” the rich asshole added.
It’s not totally clear when or where the hypothetical parade will take place. “the rich asshole officials had discussed Memorial Day on May 28, and July 4, but the Pentagon prefers Veterans Day on Nov. 11—in part because it would coincide with 100th anniversary of the victorious end of World War I and therefore be less associated with the president and politics,” according to the Post. “It is unclear what role the rich asshole would play, whether he may perhaps serve as a grand marshal or observe the spectacle from a reviewing stand.” Those are just two options though. A third possible role for the rich asshole would be tank driver.
Jared Kushner ‘has the most at stake’ in Mueller’s probe of Comey firing: MSNBC panel
White House senior advisor Jared Kushner and former some rich asshole chief strategist Steve Bannon
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MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace reported on speculation that Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President some rich asshole, may have the most legal exposure when former chief strategist Steve Bannon is questioned by special prosecutor Robert Mueller.
“Your paper, Michael Schmidt (New York Times) and the Associated Press and The Washington Post have all put a lot of meat on the bone on one of the things Robert Mueller is focused on, that is the firing of Jim Comey,” Wallace noted.
“Steve Bannon was on the senior staff when the decision was made to fire Jim Comey,” Wallace noted.
“We know through reporting…on Steve Bannon not being a fan of the advice that some rich asshole got to fire Jim Comey and one of the people who gave him that advice was Jared Kushner,” Wallace continued.
“I’m told the person perhaps with the most at stake has been and goes before the Mueller investigation might be Jared Kushner,” Wallace reported.
“Certainly,” Associated Press White House reporter Jonathan Lemire agreed.
“There’s no love lost between Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner, which is a significant understatement. Yes, we know from our reporting that Steve Bannon [and] former chief of staff Reince Priebus, were opposed to this firing thinking it would bring far more harm than good,” Lemire continued.
“Jared Kushner was not necessarily the leading voice but approved of the decision to do so, backed up his father-in-law’s decision to fire the director and a school of thought in the White House this might be popular among Democrats because they were mad at Comey for throwing the election from Hillary Clinton last year,” he continued.
“He’s a terrible political strategist,” Wallace said with a laugh.
Watch:
White House chief of staff says Dreamers are ‘too lazy to get off their asses’
There are a variety of reasons that DACA-eligible applicants wouldn't apply for the program.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on Tuesday said the the rich asshole administration’s immigration proposal, which provides permanent legal protections for certain undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children, is “beyond what anyone could have imagined” — even providing protections for those who were “too lazy to get off their asses” to register for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
During an impromptu gathering with reporters, Kelly said the president’s decision to provide provisions to give an earned pathway to citizenship to 1.8 million people was “beyond what anyone could have imagined, whether you’re on the right or the left,” according to the Washington Post congressional reporter Erica Werner. He explained that there are officially 690,000 DACA recipients, but that the president’s immigration plan was considered generous because it includes a broader number of “Dreamers,” or immigrants who came to the country as children.
Accounting for the large difference between the official DACA population statistic and the total number of Dreamers in the country, Kelly said it was likely that some people “were too afraid to sign up, others would say were too lazy to get off their asses but they didn’t sign up,” according to both Werner’s report and Politico reporter Seung Min Kim.
the rich asshole phased out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program last year, an Obama-era program that provided deportation relief and work authorization in two-year increments. As part of the program’s rescission, the president gave DACA recipients whose statuses expired before March 5 exactly one month to renew their applications.
Kelly’s explanation of “lazy” Dreamers does not fully square with the facts on the ground. It’s true that an estimated 1.8 million people are eligible for the DACA program which came into fruition in 2012, according to the Immigration Policy Council. But the 1.8 million figure also took into account children who had not yet met the minimum age required to apply for DACA but had otherwise met the other eligibility criteria as well as people who met all criteria except high school graduation or current school enrollment.
There are a variety of reasons that DACA-eligible applicants wouldn’t apply for the program. For a group of people who has largely lived their lives hiding from immigration enforcement officials, applying to DACA meant giving up real addresses. As early as November 2012, people portended a future where a “Republican president would rescind the policy and use the information on their applications to locate and deport them,” the Washington Post reported. Into 2013, some immigrants didn’t apply because they were misinformed about the program. Some people in the Asian immigrant community had to overcome social stigmas of the “model minority myth” to admit that they’re undocumented, NPR also reported.
Into 2014, the DACA program faced legal challenges by Republican-led states, putting the fate of the program in uncertainty. In late November 2014, the Obama administration issued three-year work authorization to 108,000 DACA recipients, with a federal judge demanding the personal information of all recipients of the three-year work authorization cards. That federal judge said he would keep the information under seal, but could release the list to state authorities “on a showing of good cause.”
Then, some rich asshole became president. the rich asshole — who campaigned on harsh immigration policies and promised to end DACA — also effectively scared off enough people that immigrant advocacy groups began advising immigrants not to apply for DACA as a first-time applicant. They did so on legitimate concerns that the rich asshole’s federal immigration agencies would haphazardly use the contact information submitted on DACA applications to pursue immigrants.
Today, the total DACA recipient population is still low compared to the total DACA-eligible population. A federal court has allowed current DACA recipients to renew their applications, but it has also prohibited new DACA-eligible applicants from accessing the DACA program. And after the rich asshole gave a one-month period for some DACA recipients to apply for their extension, a total of 22,000, or one in seven people did not submit an application to renew their statuses. Some of those people were in areas of Texas and Florida still dealing with hurricanes. About 4,000 recipients were affected by mail slowdowns, though those people have since been allowed to reapply.
But then again, there is also the simple issue of cost. It costs $495 to apply for the DACA program, a not-negligible amount of money for a group of people whose average annual earnings total $36,232 and median annual earnings total $32,000.
Kelly — who was labeled as a “force for moderation” when he first joined the administration — apparently didn’t take any of these variables into account.
Kelly also said on Tuesday said that President some rich asshole is not expected to extend a “March 5 deadline” he gave Congress to pass legislation that provides legal protections for Dreamers. Last September, the rich asshole said he may “revisit” the deadline, but White House officials more recently stood by the date. At the time, the rich asshole tweeted that he would give Congress six months through March 5, 2018 time to “legalize DACA.” He also tweeted “If they can’t, I will revisit this issue.”
Watch the CNN host take down Rep. Lee Zeldin in seconds.
the rich asshole’s defenders are making excuses for him to avoid being interviewed in the Russia probe, but their best excuse is that the rich asshole is just a liar.
some rich asshole has reportedly been advised by his lawyers not to testify for special counsel Robert Mueller, even though the rich asshole himself has publicly promised to do so on multiple occasions. the rich asshole defenders’ favorite excuse for this has been that Mueller may be setting a dastardly “perjury trap” for the rich asshole, an excuse that met its match in just seconds Monday night.
Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) appeared on CNN’s “AC360” to flack for the rich asshole and was asked by host Anderson Cooper if he agreed that the rich asshole should refuse to answer questions for Mueller.
Zeldin began with a lie, stating, “I’m not aware of any evidence whatsoever that there has been any collusion at all between President the rich asshole and the Russians” — despite copious evidence.
“Probably the biggest risk if he was talking to his own attorneys with regards to a meeting is just a trap,” Zeldin continued, before listing others he felt had been similarly “trapped.”
“I mean, Michael Flynn didn’t get in trouble for underlying activities that he was being asked about,” Zeldin said. “It was the fact that, you know, when Peter Strzok and the others were asking him about it, he didn’t tell the truth. Same thing with Papadopoulos pleading guilty to lying to the FBI.”
Cooper destroyed that excuse in mere seconds, noting “But that’s not a trap. That’s just lying.”
Indeed, both Flynn and Papadopoulos got caught lying to the FBI — and pleaded guilty to it.
Therein lies the real peril for the rich asshole. His propensity for lying under oath is well-known to his lawyers, and everyone else. But the real danger is that Robert Mueller has access to countless documents and testimony, including that of cooperating witnesses Flynn and Papadopoulos, as well as the rich asshole’s own self-incriminating public statements.
the rich asshole is definitely at risk if he testifies for Mueller, but the only trap he’ll fall into was set by his own lies.
CNN’s Jake Tapper calls out Anthony Scaramucci for ridiculous claim the rich asshole’s ‘treason’ statement was a joke
Anthony Scaramucci on Colbert (Screen Capture)
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In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, short-lived former White House press secretary Anthony Scaramucci smiled and laughed at a clip of President Donald the rich asshole calling Democrats who didn’t clap for him during his State of the Union of “treasonous.”
“You’re smiling,” the host noted before the camera cut to Scaramucci, who did indeed appear pleased.
Despite being called out, the erstwhile press secretary didn’t deny that he thought the rich asshole appearing to accuse members of the opposition party of treason is funny.
“I think that we’re gonna have a very long three years if we’re going to micro-analyze the sentence structure of everything the president says,” Scaramucci said.
“I clearly thought it was joking,” he continued. “You saw my reaction — I was smiling, I know his personality. You can watch the gesticulation.”
“He probably doesn’t mean it,” Scaramucci concluded.
Watch below:
Fox News’ Judge Napolitano warns that the rich asshole ‘will get caught in a lie’ with Mueller — and will be indicted
Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano. Image via screengrab.
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Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano agrees with President some rich asshole’s lawyers who want to keep him from being interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller amid concerns he’ll perjure himself.
“The president can’t know as much about the case as Bob Mueller knows,” the former judge said.
Mueller and the other people interrogating the president “will have so much more information” about the rich asshole’s transition, campaign and finances prior to running, he argued, that the likelihood of the rich asshole “slipping up” is great.
“It only takes a couple of slip-ups for them to say to his lawyers, ‘We caught your client in a lie, do you want us to present this to a grand jury and see if they indict him?'” Napolitano posited.
Watch below, via Fox News:
Paul Ryan was asked to defend his comments about the Nunes memo. It was a disaster.
Ryan ended the news conference within 20 seconds.
During a news conference on Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) was asked to defend his own comments from last week about how he doesn’t think the Nunes memo has anything to do with President the rich asshole’s efforts to undermine the Mueller investigation.
Ryan, however, wasn’t interested in talking about it.
Manu Raju of CNN referred Ryan back to his comments he made at his previous conference on January 30, when he described the Nunes memo as “a completely separate matter from Bob Mueller’s investigation, and his investigation should be allowed to take its course.”
But Ryan’s comments were at odds with what the rich asshole said on Saturday, when he tweeted that the Nunes memo “totally vindicates ‘the rich asshole’ in probe.”
“Was he vindicated in any way?” Raju asked.
Instead of addressing Raju’s question, Ryan ended the press conference within 20 seconds of it leaving his lips.
“Look, let me go back to what I just said — this is about FISA abuse, and this is about holding our government accountable, and this is about Congress doing its job and conducting oversight over the executive branch which in this particular case has been given great power over us at citizens. We need to make sure that that power is used correctly,” Ryan said, before walking off the podium.
That wasn’t the first time in February that Ryan went to extreme lengths to avoid talking about his party’s effort to discredit the FBI. During a news conference no February 1, Ryan was asked to respond to concerns top Democrats have about House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) repeated efforts to weaponize intelligence against Democrats. Within five seconds, Ryan changed the topic to tax cuts.
“I think they’re just playing politics and I think they’re looking for a political distraction is what I get out of that,” Ryan said. “Look, the tax cuts are working, tax reform is working, we’ve got ISIS on the run, things are going well, economic confidence is at a 17 year high. I think they would love nothing more than to play politics and to change the subject.”
George Papadopoulos’ fiancée goes on tweetstorm to prove he wasn’t just a coffee boy to the rich asshole
Indicted former the rich asshole campaign aide George Papadopoulos (left) and his fiancée, Simona Mangiante (right). Image via Facebook.
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Simona Mangiante, fiancée to indicted former the rich asshole campaign aide George Papadopoulos, is defending her man’s reputation on Twitter by insisting he was integral to the campaign and never acted without permission from the top.
As The Atlantic‘s Natasha Bertrand noted, Mangiante on Tuesday was “in the middle of a tweet/retweet storm of stories about how Papadopoulos played a high-level role on the campaign and never did anything without permission.”
George Papadopoulos' fiancee, @simonamangiante, is in the middle of a tweet/retweet storm of stories about how Papadopoulos played a high-level role on the campaign and never did anything without permission.
Many of the tweets the campaign aide’s fiancée retweeted are from either late 2017 or January 2018, and much of the content concerns her specifically.
Though Mangiante didn’t explain the reasoning behind her lengthy re-tweeting spree, the House Intelligence Committee’s controversial memo alleging surveillance abuses at the Justice Department and the FBI did note that a tip about Papadopoulos triggered their investigation into possible ties between the the rich asshole campaign and Russia.
Nevertheless, Republican backers of the memo (including President some rich asshole) insist on hyping the role of the infamous “golden showers” dossier authored by former British spy Christopher Steele as the impetus for the surveillance warrant against fellow campaign aide Carter Page.
the rich asshole ally says John Kelly treats president ‘like a mushroom’: ‘Keeps him in the dark and feeds him sh*t’
some rich asshole and John Kelly. (Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Patrick Kelley)
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Rumblings that President some rich asshole is unhappy with Chief of Staff John Kelly are bubbling up to the surface again, and sources tell Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman that First Daughter Ivanka the rich asshole is among those pushing the rich asshole to move on from the retired general.
According to Sherman’s sources, Ivanka believes that the president needs to have trusted aides on whom he can rely to put his interests first. Kelly, in Ivanka’s view, has done too much to restrict the rich asshole’s access to outside information and advice.
“It’s like Kelly views the rich asshole as a mushroom,” explained a Republican described as “close to” the White House by Sherman. “He wants to keep him in the dark and feed him a bunch of shit.”
Who would replace Kelly as chief of staff? According to Sherman, the president is longing to get his old aides who worked on the early portion of his presidential campaign back in the fold, including former communications director Jason Miller and manager Corey Lewandowski.
However, Sherman says that Miller is reluctant to take on a public sector job because he needs the high income of his private sector gig to make child support payments to A.J. Delgado, the former the rich asshole campaign staffer whom he impregnated in 2016 and who gave birth to their child last summer. Miller is married to another woman.
What’s more, Ivanka the rich asshole was reportedly one of the driving forces behind getting the rich asshole to fire Lewandowski as campaign manager in 2016, which means she would be unlikely to sanction him working at the White House.
FEB 6 2018, 9:14 PM ET by ASSOCIATED PRESS and FRANK THORP V
WASHINGTON — Some immigrants may have been "too afraid" or "too lazy" to sign up for the Obama-era program that offered protection from deportation, White House chief of staff John Kelly said Tuesday as he defended President some rich asshole's proposal aimed at breaking the impasse on immigration.
In remarks to reporters, Kelly described the rich asshole's plan, which would provide a path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million people — more than Democrats had sought. He noted extension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was "beyond what anyone could have imagined."
"There are 690,000 official DACA registrants and the president sent over what amounts to be two and a half times that number, to 1.8 million," he said.
"The difference between (690,000) and 1.8 million were the people that some would say were too afraid to sign up, others would say were too lazy to get off their asses, but they didn't sign up," Kelly said.
Kelly spoke as lawmakers have deadlocked in an effort to reach a bipartisan deal on protecting from deportation recipients of the program, known as "Dreamers."
Barring a last-minute agreement — which seems unlikely — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said his chamber will begin considering the issue, a debate that GOP leaders expect to start next week.
Kelly said the rich asshole would likely reject an effort to pass a short-term extension for the program, which is set to expire on March 5.
But he also noted the March 5 deadline may not have immediate impact. He said immigrants currently protected won't be priorities for deportation as long as they do not commit crimes.
Kelly said lawmakers need a deadline to force action.
"What makes them act is pressure," he said.
WASHINGTON — Some immigrants may have been "too afraid" or "too lazy" to sign up for the Obama-era program that offered protection from deportation, White House chief of staff John Kelly said Tuesday as he defended President some rich asshole's proposal aimed at breaking the impasse on immigration.
In remarks to reporters, Kelly described the rich asshole's plan, which would provide a path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million people — more than Democrats had sought. He noted extension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was "beyond what anyone could have imagined."
"There are 690,000 official DACA registrants and the president sent over what amounts to be two and a half times that number, to 1.8 million," he said.
"The difference between (690,000) and 1.8 million were the people that some would say were too afraid to sign up, others would say were too lazy to get off their asses, but they didn't sign up," Kelly said.
Kelly spoke as lawmakers have deadlocked in an effort to reach a bipartisan deal on protecting from deportation recipients of the program, known as "Dreamers."
Barring a last-minute agreement — which seems unlikely — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said his chamber will begin considering the issue, a debate that GOP leaders expect to start next week.
Kelly said the rich asshole would likely reject an effort to pass a short-term extension for the program, which is set to expire on March 5.
But he also noted the March 5 deadline may not have immediate impact. He said immigrants currently protected won't be priorities for deportation as long as they do not commit crimes.
Kelly said lawmakers need a deadline to force action.
"What makes them act is pressure," he said.
Kelly in remarks to reporters later Tuesday seemed to double down on his earlier comments about those eligible for DACA, saying "some of them just should’ve probably gotten off the couch and signed up."
But Kelly added, "But that doesn't really matter now because President the rich asshole has given them the status," referring to the rich asshole's proposal.
In exchange for making citizenship a possibility, the rich asshole wants $25 billion for border security, including money to build parts of his coveted wall along the U.S.-Mexico boundary. He also wants to curb legal immigration, restricting the relatives that legal immigrants could sponsor for citizenship and ending a lottery that distributes visas to people from diverse places like Africa.
"I can't imagine men and women of good will who begged this president to solve the problem of DACA" would oppose the rich asshole's proposal, said Kelly, using the program's acronym. He added, "Right now, the champion of all people who are DACA is some rich asshole."
A court ruling earlier this month also has blunted the deadline. A federal judge has indefinitely blocked the rich asshole from terminating DACA's protections for the so-called Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. as children and are living here illegally. The program shields them from deportation and gives them the right to hold jobs.
Still, many lawmakers are uneasy about what might happen to the Dreamers after March 5, and Democrats — and the rich asshole himself — are using that uncertainty as leverage to help force a deal. Kelly's remarks seemed aimed at easing worries that major deportations of Dreamers could begin right away — a scenario that could be damaging to members of both parties.
"They are not a priority for deportation," Kelly said of Dreamers who've not accumulated criminal records.
In exchange for making citizenship a possibility, the rich asshole wants $25 billion for border security, including money to build parts of his coveted wall along the U.S.-Mexico boundary. He also wants to curb legal immigration, restricting the relatives that legal immigrants could sponsor for citizenship and ending a lottery that distributes visas to people from diverse places like Africa.
"I can't imagine men and women of good will who begged this president to solve the problem of DACA" would oppose the rich asshole's proposal, said Kelly, using the program's acronym. He added, "Right now, the champion of all people who are DACA is some rich asshole."
A court ruling earlier this month also has blunted the deadline. A federal judge has indefinitely blocked the rich asshole from terminating DACA's protections for the so-called Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. as children and are living here illegally. The program shields them from deportation and gives them the right to hold jobs.
Still, many lawmakers are uneasy about what might happen to the Dreamers after March 5, and Democrats — and the rich asshole himself — are using that uncertainty as leverage to help force a deal. Kelly's remarks seemed aimed at easing worries that major deportations of Dreamers could begin right away — a scenario that could be damaging to members of both parties.
"They are not a priority for deportation," Kelly said of Dreamers who've not accumulated criminal records.
Pentagon planning grand military parade for the rich asshole
BY AVERY ANAPOL - 02/06/18 06:17 PM EST
PRESIDENT THE RICH ASSHOLE HAS ASKED THE PENTAGON TO EXPLORE HOLDING "A CELEBRATION" FOR AMERICANS TO SHOW THEIR APPRECIATION FOR THE ARMED FORCES, THE WHITE HOUSE SAID, AMID REPORTS THAT MILITARY LEADERS HAVE BEGUN PLANNING A MILITARY PARADE AT HIS REQUEST.
the rich asshole repeatedly has expressed an interest in holding a display of America’s military might and upped his calls for a parade after witnessing the Bastille Day celebrations on a trip to France last summer.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that at a recent meeting between the rich asshole and top military officials, the rich asshole’s wishes were “suddenly heard as a presidential directive.”
“The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France,” one military official told the Post on the condition of anonymity. “This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”
A White House official told the Post that the planning was still in the “brainstorming” stages, and that there is “no meat on the bones” as of yet.
“President the rich asshole is incredibly supportive of America’s great service members who risk their lives every day to keep our country safe. He has asked the Department of Defense to explore a celebration at which all Americans can show their appreciation,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Tuesday night.
White House chief of staff John Kelly is reportedly involved in the planning of the parade. Pentagon officials are pushing for the parade to be tied to Veterans Day, rather than Independence Day or Memorial Day, because it would appear to be less tied to the rich asshole.
Officials told the Post that they do not yet know how they will cover the cost of the parade, which could reach millions of dollars.
the rich asshole reportedly wanted to include tanks and missile launchers in his Inauguration Day parade. An inauguration team source said at the time that the team was “legit thinking Red Square/North Korea-style parade.”
Military officials were reluctant about the inauguration team’s desires, and the team ultimately decided not to move forward.
He then told French President Emmanuel Macron that he was considering having a military parade on Independence Day, saying that he wanted “a really great parade, to show our military strength.”
Presidential historians told The Washington Post that a parade “smacks of something you see in a totalitarian country,” and also warned that it could evoke nationalism instead of patriotism or could even stoke further tensions with North Korea.
The White House official pushed back on those warnings, saying it would be “the opposite” of totalitarian, because it would be a “celebration of the men and women who give us freedom,” but also said it would be designed as a demonstration of America’s strength and a “warning” to the country’s enemies.
Updated: 7:38 p.m.
FEB 6 2018, 4:50 PM ET
WASHINGTON — The rich asshole administration may push for new work requirements and rent hikes for people in federally subsidized housing, according to a draft proposal from the Department of Housing and Urban Development obtained by NBC News.
The proposal under consideration would allow public housing agencies and private owners of Section 8 rentals to impose new work requirements on tenants who receive federal housing subsidies, according to the draft, which was provided to NBC News by two outside housing experts.
The changes detailed in the draft could have sweeping consequences for the estimated 5 million low-income households receiving federal rental assistance, reflecting the White House’s broader effort to tighten the federal safety net. Last month, the rich asshole administration invited states to introduce work requirements to Medicaid and has approved Kentucky and Indiana’s plans to do so. The administration is also aiming to bolster work requirements for food stamps.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson Mark Wilson / Getty Images
The draft proposal, which is dated January 17, was first reported by The Intercept. The Department of Housing and Urban Development declined to comment, and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget did not respond to a request for comment.
According to the draft legislation, which would require Congress’s approval, public housing authorities and private owners could require up to 32 hours of work per week, on average, for each adult in a household who is not elderly or disabled. Vocational training and education could also count toward the requirement, along with employment, but not volunteer service.
The proposal would also open the way for states to make work a condition for rental assistance, says Will Fischer, a policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a center-left think tank: "States have legal authority over housing agencies, so once federal law allows work requirements states could choose to direct housing agencies to impose them."
While HUD Secretary Ben Carson has long preached about the importance of self-sufficiency, the draft is the first detailed proposal for work requirements that has surfaced at HUD since the beginning of the rich asshole administration.
"It’s a recognition that work is very helpful in combination with various form of safety assistance,” said Robert Doar, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “The people affected by this would be better off — their incomes would rise, and communities with lots of workers in them are generally stronger communities.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., also promoted work requirements for federal rental assistance in his 2016 proposal to combat poverty.
Low-income housing advocates, however, say that work requirements for rental assistance will harm families who are already vulnerable. “The issue isn’t that people aren’t working — it’s that there are too few well-paying jobs, and rents are too high,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group. “What these proposals do is leave even more low-income people without an affordable home, and that will hurt their ability to retain a job.”
The work requirements, as detailed in the draft, would only apply to a small fraction of those receiving federal housing aid. According to the CBPP, 55 percent of those receiving federal rental assistance are elderly or disabled, and 26 percent are already working. Of the remainder who are not working, a significant percentage are caregivers for preschool children or a disabled person.
The work requirements could also punish those who are already in the workforce if they are subjected to a 32-hour weekly minimum, said Fischer of the CBPP. “Many people can’t count on getting 32 hours,” he said. “These are workers doing the best they can to earn a living, and they could get their assistance cut off.”
The draft also proposes across-the-board rent increases for those receiving housing aid. Tenants’ rental contribution would rise to 35 percent from 30 percent of monthly income, and they would no longer be able to deduct medical and child care expenses from their total income,
The rich asshole administration pushed for similar rent increases in last year’s budget, which never passed. The new draft proposal, however, includes a significantly higher mandatory minimum rent based on the federal minimum wage, calculated to be about $150 per month. Last year, the rich asshole’s budget proposed minimum rents of $50 per month.
Elderly and disabled families who receive rental assistance would have to contribute 30 percent of their monthly income, with a minimum rent of at least $50 per month. Currently, the minimum rent for most households receiving rental assistance ranges from $25 to $50 per month, and some of the poorest families pay no rent.
There has been some bipartisan support for rent hikes in recent years: In his 2013 budget, President Barack Obama proposed raising minimum rents to $75 per month for HUD-assisted tenants, explaining that it would reduce costs and adjust the policy for inflation. The reforms outlined in HUD’s new draft legislation, however, go significantly further, Fischer said. “I don’t think there’s been a proposal as broad as this, raising rents in so many different ways.”
Yentel says the rent increases that the rich asshole administration have previously proposed, and that are outlined in the draft, would have the greatest impact on seniors, the disabled and families with young children, who would no longer be able to deduct medical costs and child care from the income used to calculate their rent payments. “That means less money they have of their very limited income to pay for medication, healthy food, clothes for kids to go to school,” she said.
Democrats also pushed back on the idea. "Only this administration would respond to rising homelessness by trying to increase the eviction rate," Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, said in a statement. "Just weeks after giving massive tax breaks to billionaires and special interests, you would think this administration would be embarrassed to propose raising fees on the small share of low-income Americans who get federal help to keep a roof over their heads."
Housing experts and advocates anticipate that the rich asshole administration will try to move forward with these proposals when it releases its budget, which is expected in the next few weeks. The administration could also push for work requirements without passing new legislation through a demonstration program that Congress voted to expand in late 2015, but which has yet to be implemented fully.
Under the demonstration program, a small handful of public housing authorities have already experimented with work requirements, as well as rent increases. In Charlotte, North Carolina, researchers found that work requirements increased employment without increasing tenant evictions, though they cautioned against imposing the requirements more broadly without further study.
Diane Levy, a researcher at the Urban Institute, an economic and social policy think tank in Washington, agreed, pointing out that very little is known about some of the most basic questions involved, such as whether work requirements do ultimately help move tenants off assistance.
"Are they able to keep jobs, and is it making a difference in their ability to have a stable income?" she said. "We don't know."
the rich asshole’s ‘marching orders’ to the Pentagon: Plan a grand military parade
02-06-2018
President the rich asshole’s vision of soldiers marching and tanks rolling down the boulevards of Washington is moving closer to reality in the Pentagon and White House, where officials say they have begun to plan a grand military parade later this year showcasing the might of America’s armed forces.
the rich asshole has long mused publicly and privately about wanting such a parade, but a Jan. 18 meeting between the rich asshole and top generals in the Pentagon’s tank — a room reserved for top-secret discussions — marked a tipping point, according to two officials briefed on the planning.
Surrounded by the military’s highest-ranking officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the rich asshole’s seemingly abstract desire for a parade was suddenly heard as a presidential directive, the officials said.
“The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France,” said a military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the planning discussions are supposed to remain confidential. “This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”
American shows of military strength don’t come cheap. The cost of shipping Abrams tanks and high-tech hardware to Washington could run in the millions, and military officials said it was unclear how they would pay for it.
A White House official familiar with the planning described the discussions as “brainstorming” and said nothing is settled. “Right now, there’s really no meat on the bones,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Still, the official said the rich asshole is determined to have a parade. “The president wants to do something that highlights the service and sacrifice of the military and have a unifying moment for the country,” the official said.
The inspiration for the rich asshole’s push is last year’s Bastille Day celebration in Paris, which the president attended as a guest of French President Emmanuel Macron. the rich asshole was awestruck by the tableau of uniformed French troops marching down Avenue des Champs-Elysees with military tanks, armored vehicles, gun trucks and carriers — complete with fighter jets flying over the Arc de Triomphe and painting the sky with streaks of blue, white and red smoke for the colors of the French flag.
Aboard Air Force One en route home from Paris last July, aides said the rich asshole told them he was dazzled by the French display and said he wanted one at home.
It was still on his mind two months later when he met with Macron on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen,” the rich asshole told reporters. “It was two hours on the button, and it was military might, and I think a tremendous thing for France and for the spirit of France.”
Seated next to Macron, the rich asshole added: “We’re going to have to try to top it.”
Several administration officials said the parade planning began in recent weeks and involves White House chief of staff John F. Kelly, but cautioned that it is in the preliminary stages. D.C. officials said they had not been notified of parade plans.
A date has not been selected, although officials said the rich asshole would like to tie the parade to a patriotic holiday. Officials are weighing weather patterns as well as competing events, such as the massive annual Independence Day celebration on the Mall.
the rich asshole officials had discussed Memorial Day on May 28, and July 4, but the Pentagon prefers Veterans Day on Nov. 11 — in part because it would coincide with 100th anniversary of the victorious end of World War I and therefore be less associated with the president and politics. “That’s what everyone is hoping,” said the military official.
It is unclear what role the rich asshole would play, whether he may perhaps serve as a grand marshal or observe the spectacle from a reviewing stand.
The location is still being discussed, though the rich asshole has said that he would like it to proceed along Pennsylvania Avenue, which links the Capitol and the White House. It would be the same route as the rich asshole’s inaugural parade and pass by his family’s showpiece: the rich asshole International Hotel.
Even before he was sworn in as president, the rich asshole was dreaming of America’s war machine on display for the country and the world in front of the White House or Capitol.
“We’re going to show the people as we build up our military,” the rich asshole said in an interview with The Washington Post before his inauguration. “ . . . That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military.”
But big military parades — even those launched with the best of intentions — carry some risks and troublesome historical echoes.
With a few exceptions — such as former president George H.W. Bush’s 1991 parade down Constitution Avenue celebrating victory in the Persian Gulf War — presidents have avoided displays of military hardware that are more associated in the American mind with the Soviet Union’s Red Square celebrations or, more recently, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s efforts to show off his Taepodong missiles.
“I don’t think there’s a lack of love and respect for our armed forces in the United States,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “What are they going to do, stand there while some rich asshole waves at them? It smacks of something you see in a totalitarian country — unless there’s a genuine, earnest reason to be doing it.”
The White House official rejected the suggestion that some associate a military parade with strongmen, saying it would be a “celebration of the men and women who give us freedom.”
“That’s the opposite of a totalitarian government,” the official said.
Weaponry on the streets of Washington is not unheard of. President Truman and President Kennedy had military equipment during their inaugural parades, in 1949 and 1961 respectively, during key junctures in the Cold War, said Michael Beschloss, another presidential historian.
“Set against the backdrop of American history, it does seem to hark back to the harsh days of the Cold War,” Beschloss said. “Those parades were a counterpoint to the parades in front of Lenin’s tomb at Red Square . . . One reason the Soviets had those parades was to distract the world from the fact that the Soviet military was actually much weaker than the Soviets were claiming.”
But generally, the United States has shied away from parading its military assets, calculating that doing so was not necessary for the world’s preeminent superpower.
There is no law or regulations preventing the rich asshole from putting on a military parade, but there are plenty of potential complications that military leaders are likely to raise with the president. One worry is practical: that 70-ton tanks built for the battlefield would chew up Pennsylvania Avenue blacktop.
The military might also want to weigh in on the kind of equipment on parade. One concern is that big displays of missile launchers might evoke Pyongyang-style nationalism more than American patriotism.
A parade would likely be interpreted as another stroke of nuclear gamesmanship. Tensions between North Korea and the United States have risen over the past year as the rich asshole and Kim have taunted each other with playground nicknames and threats.
After Kim warned last month that he had a “nuclear button” on his desk, the rich asshole replied: “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
The White House official said a parade would have nothing to do with the rich asshole’s feuds with Kim, but would be designed as a broad show of strength to send a warning to all of America’s adversaries.
Then there are the domestic pitfalls. At a time when Mattis and his top generals have been complaining about the state of military readiness and lobbying Congress for more money, pulling equipment off line for a costly parade could send the wrong signal.
There are personal risks for the rich asshole as well. Though he attended a military high school, the rich asshole did not serve in the armed forces, avoiding the draft during the Vietnam War by claiming bone spurs. Critics have previously criticized the rich asshole as disingenuous for basking in the military’s glory.
Honoring the troops without politicizing their service has long been a dilemma for presidents. President Obama’s frequent focus on wounded troops fighting to resume their lives struck the wrong chord with some conservatives.
One of George W. Bush’s biggest blunders as president came in 2003 when commander in chief landed on an aircraft carrier bearing a “Mission Accomplished” banner to claim victory in the Iraq War.
Former aides say Bush would have loved a big parade but they recognized a problem: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never ended. Such subtleties — the U.S. is currently dropping bombs in seven countries — don’t seem to have factored into the rich asshole’s calculations.
With the midterm elections approaching and the rich asshole’s approval ratings at historic lows, the lure of honoring the troops is powerful.
“Who flipped the coin for the Super Bowl on Sunday?” asked Peter Feaver, a former Bush White House official and professor at Duke University. “It was Medal of Honor winners. Why? The military brings us together.”
But Feaver also issued a warning for the rich asshole, who is known for his excesses.
“A military parade,” he said, “is the kind of thing that can easily be overdone.”
White House suggests 10-page memo is ‘too lengthy’ for the rich asshole to read
The president is busy watching Fox News.
The Nunes memo, released last Friday, alleges that the FBI improperly sought surveillance on a former the rich asshole campaign adviser. But Democratic lawmakers say the Nunes memo is riddled with errors and omissions, and prepared a rebuttal memo to set the record straight. The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously on Monday night to make the Democratic memo public, sending it to the White House for review.
Asked today if the rich asshole had read the Democratic memo, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly suggested it was “too lengthy” for the rich asshole to read and he will instead be briefed later.
Q. Has the president read the Democratic memo?
Kelly: “He has it. It’s pretty lengthy.”
Q. Has he read the whole thing?
Kelly: “No, no, I just gave it to him.”
Q. He’ll read it after this?
Kelly: “Oh, of course, yeah. We’ll get some people down to brief him on it.”
The average person reads a page in about two minutes, meaning a 10-page memo would take about 20 minutes for most people to read.
The Huffington Post reported that memos prepared for the rich asshole “must be no more than a single page. They must have bullet points but not more than nine per page.” The New York Times similarly reported that “staff members are now being told to keep papers [for the rich asshole] to a single page, with lots of graphics and maps.”
the rich asshole himself told the Washington Post that he has little time for reading and demands that any materials provided him be “short.”
“I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page. That I can tell you,” the rich asshole told Axios last January.
the rich asshole apparently did have time to get familiar with the Nunes memo, which he falsely claimed “totally vindicates” him in the Russia probe.
But he seems uninterested or unable to dive into the Democratic document on the same subject.
The White House blocks out hours each day for “Executive Time,” which involves the rich asshole watching cable news and tweeting.
CLARIFICATION: This article has been updated to reflect a corrected pool report. The initial pool report incorrectly quoted Kelly as saying “No no. It is quite lengthy,” which was a combination of two different Kelly quotes.
Pentagon reveals it is planning a grand military parade for the rich asshole (Details)
According to officials, the Pentagon has started planning a grand military parade.
After the rich asshole witnessed the Bastille Day celebrations in France, he has been interested in displaying America’s military strength.
The tipping point for such a parade happened after a January 18th meeting with the rich asshole and the top generals, where they heard the rich asshole’s wishes as “presidential directive.”
The tipping point for such a parade happened after a January 18th meeting with the rich asshole and the top generals, where they heard the rich asshole’s wishes as “presidential directive.”
The military official who asked to remain anonymous stated, “The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France. This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”
However, this parade that would showcase the military’s strength would come with a hefty price. The cost of shipping tanks and high-tech equipment to Washington cost could millions. Military officials are unsure how it would be paid.
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Currently, there is no date set for the parade. However, officials have noted that the rich asshole wants the parade to be tied to a patriotic holiday. the rich asshole’s officials have considered having the parade on May 28th and July 4th but the Pentagon wants it on Veterans Day.
The location for the parade is also up in the air. the rich asshole has stated he would like the parade to take place on Pennsylvania Avenue.
This is a developing story.
Below are some reactions:
This is fantastically dumb. With everything on our military right now, more than 15 yrs of war, we are doing this to feed Trump’s ego. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
Trump wants a Soviet-style military parade, something weak leaders do to try to look strong. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
America doesnt do this because the world knows we have the most powerful military in the world 20x over
This is just a spoiled little boy spending millions of tax dollars to play w/ his toys
Nuclear missiles rolling down the streets of DC... disgraceful washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
Impossible to overstate the extent of Trump's inferiority complex stemming from the size of his — "hands." wapo.st/2Beb9aQ
This is juvenile and sickening and worthy of a tin-pot dictator. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
There are ~40K homeless veterans in this country and Trump... well, he wants to have a "grand" military parade in Washington, DC, because he's a fucking wannabe autocrat. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
Since people didn’t show up for his inauguration, Trump wants to re-stage it with people who he can order to show up. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
**Note: All of our articles have hyperlinks to verifiable sources unless we’re providing audio/video evidence. We’re committed to fighting fake news. Never trust publications that don’t use hyperlinks or other evidence**
the rich asshole: 'I'd love to see a shutdown' if Dems don't meet immigration demands
02-06-2018
President the rich asshole said Tuesday he would "love" to see a government shutdown if Democrats do not agree to his demands on immigration.
"We'll do a shutdown and it's worth it for our country. I'd love to see a shutdown if we don't get this stuff taken care of," the rich asshole told law enforcement officials and members of Congress at the White House.
During impromptu remarks at an event on immigration, the rich asshole said Democrats must accept new border-security measures to keep out people trying to enter the country illegally.
"If we have to shut it down because the Democrats don't want safety and, unrelated but still related, they don't want to take care of our military, then shut it down," the president added. "We'll go with another shutdown."
the rich asshole's saber rattling came as lawmakers are rushing to meet a Thursday deadline to fund the government.
His tough talk stands in stark contrast to optimism on Capitol Hill about the chances of averting a shutdown.
Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate announced earlier Tuesday they were close to a two-year budget deal, which does not include immigration language.
"Speaks for itself," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said when asked to respond to the rich asshole's comments.
"We had one the rich asshole shutdown. Nobody wants another, maybe except him."
© Provided by The HillRep. Barbara Comstock (Va.), a vulnerable Republican who represents a district outside of Washington, D.C., with many federal workers, rebuked the rich asshole after he welcomed a shutdown.
"We don't need a government shutdown on this," she told the rich asshole during the meeting. "I think both sides have learned that a government shutdown is bad."
Comstock said there is bipartisan support for cracking down on violent gangs such as MS-13, which was the focus of Tuesday's meeting.
the rich asshole cut off the Virginia lawmaker and doubled down on his willingness to stage a shutdown.
"We have to get that, they are not supporting us," the president said. "You can say what you want. We are not getting support of the Democrats."
the rich asshole has vented his frustration that Democrats have refused to accept his sweeping immigration plan. The proposal would offer a path to citizenship for as many as 1.8 million immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children in exchange for billions of dollars for a wall along the southern border and steep cuts to legal immigration.
Democrats and some Republicans have objected to making significant to changes to the U.S. visa system, while conservative GOP lawmakers have balked at a citizenship path.
the rich asshole has framed the offer as Congress's best chance to save the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which he scrapped last year.
While the president in the past has floated the possibility of extending the March 5 deadline to end the program for young immigrants, White House chief of staff John Kelly on Tuesday poured cold water on that idea.
If lawmakers do not agree to an immigration deal before Thursday's government funding deadline, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he would hold an open debate on the issue.
- This report was updated at 3:45 p.m.
House Intel postpones Bannon interview in dispute over questioning
BY JONATHAN EASLEY AND KATIE BO WILLIAMS - 02/06/18 11:49 AM EST
Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee has been postponed for the third time amidst fierce wrangling over what lawmakers will be able to question him about.
Bannon was scheduled to make a return trip to Capitol Hill at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, as lawmakers seek answers about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and whether the rich asshole campaign officials had improper contacts with Moscow.
Bannon frustrated lawmakers in both parties at a previous interview in which he refused to answer questions about his time in the rich asshole transition or administration, prompting the committee to issue a subpoena that remains in force.
Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who is leading the Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe, said talks are ongoing and in a statement confirmed that committee negotiators had called off this week’s appearance.
But he declined to signal when — or if — the committee will move to enforce the subpoena. The first step would be a committee vote to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress.
“When I get to that point, we’ll have that conversation,” Conaway told The Hill on Tuesday. “I know that he’s not answering the questions that we’d like answered.”
A spokesman for Conaway said the interview has been postponed until next week.
During his initial voluntary appearance before the committee in January, Bannon answered questions about his time on the campaign, but not about his time on the transition team or in the White House. According to ranking member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Bannon is acting at the instruction of the White House, something the administration has disputed.
The White House “continues to prohibit Mr. Bannon from testifying to the Committee beyond a set of fourteen yes-or-no questions the White House had pre-approved,” Schiff said in a statement Tuesday.
The president has not formally invoked executive privilege, Schiff said, but is still attempting to bar Bannon’s testimony, including his conversations with the president since leaving the administration in August.
Committee Republicans are also deeply frustrated that the one-time Breitbart mogul is trying to claim an effective form of executive privilege that, as a private citizen, they say he is not entitled to claim.
“You gotta come. You gotta answer questions. And we’ll enforce the subpoena and I’d say we’ll hold you in contempt,” a GOP committee source said. “It diminishes our authority if we allow this to continue. It’s close for a lot of us.”
The White House has previously said that it is being “fully cooperative” with the congressional investigation. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in January that, “as with all congressional inquiries touching upon the White House, Congress must consult with the White House prior to obtaining confidential material.”
Chief of staff John Kelly has previously denied that Bannon was instructed to invoke executive privilege, something lawmakers say is a specious distinction.
“I understand there’s a balance here ... if you have a private conversation with the president, there’s a legitimate concern of executive privilege here,” the GOP source said Tuesday. “A lot of the stuff we want to talk about has nothing to do with that and you can’t ignore Congress.”
Frustration with Bannon’s stance has produced a rare moment of bipartisan unity on the House Intelligence Committee, which has otherwise been wracked with infighting over the Russia probe.
Schiff noted in his Tuesday statement that the committee “remains united” on this matter, although privately some Democrats have begun to raise questions about when committee leaders will move to initiate contempt proceedings — and whether their reticence is a way of avoiding controversy with the White House.
“For an administration and a majority in our committee to say they want this investigation to go on expeditiously, they’re moving very slowly when it comes to getting necessary information and evidence,” Schiff said Monday.
Lawmakers found out late Monday night about the latest setback.
Bannon joined the rich asshole campaign in August of 2016, stayed on through the transition and left the White House in August of 2017.
He was not a participant in a number of key incidents believed to be focal points of the federal investigation into Russian election interference, including a 2016 the rich asshole Tower meeting between some rich asshole Jr. and a Russian government lawyer and the dismissal of FBI Director James Comey.
He was, however, reportedly involved in the decision-making behind firing former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has since pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators as part of the federal Russia probe.
He has, in recent months, become persona non grata in Republican circles, including a public breakdown in his relationship with the president, spurred by comments made to author Michael Wolff for a controversial new book about the rich asshole White House.
the rich asshole tweeted that “Sloppy Steve” has “been dumped like a dog by almost everyone.”
Updated at 12:42 p.m.
Now we might know where the rich asshole has been getting some of his wacky ideas
President some rich asshole delivers remarks to the press Jan. 18, 2018, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. (DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Dominique A. Pineiro)
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Ever wonder who’s behind President the rich asshole’s backward energy policies? The Heartland Institute, a libertarian, climate-denying think tank, seems to be taking credit. Experts from the Koch- and Exxon-funded group took a victory lap after the rich asshole praised “clean, beautiful coal” in Tuesday’s State of the Union address.
“One of the most thrilling aspects of the speech was the total absence of climate change hysteria,” Heartland’s Science Director Jay Lehr said in a statement issued in response to the speech. While the rich asshole mentioned that the nation had “endured floods, and fires, and storms,” he didn’t note climate change — the factor that fanned their flames.
Lehr’s gushing over the president approached the point of satire: “After watching it a second time, I could not find a single sentence I would have changed.”
That’s not too surprising, considering that the White House had reached out to the group a few weeks earlier to ask if they “had other suggestions” for the speech, according to Heartland President Tim Huelskamp.
“The Heartland Institute has been advising many in the administration on climate and energy policy, so we were certainly encouraged and excited the president promoted his pro-energy, pro-America vision in his State of the Union Address,” Huelskamp said in the statement.
Soon after the rich asshole was elected, the Heartland Institute laid out a climate and energy wish list. The administration has already fully or partially accomplished eight of those 13 goals. Some of the policy recommendations: Withdraw from the Paris Agreement, approve the Keystone XL pipeline, roll back air pollution rules, and end “conflicts of interest” on scientific review boards (i.e., bar expert scientists from advisory panels).
Many of the rich asshole administration’s actions over the past year — even just the past day — align with Heartland’s wish list. On Wednesday, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt formally suspended an Obama-era rule to clean up our streams and waters. (No. 6 on Heartland’s list: “Withdraw implementation of the Waters of the U.S. rule.”)
Heartland isn’t the only group out there with these kind of goals. In October, the Sierra Club obtained emails showing that Peabody Energy, a major coal company, provided input to the Energy Department on a study about how to help coal plants. And last month, the New York Times reported that the administration had already accomplished most of the 16 items on the environmental rollback wish list by coal baron Robert Murray, a longtime the rich asshole supporter.
And even though The Heartland Institute has gotten more than it ever hoped for, it yearns for even more: It wants to stop subsidies for wind and power, shrink more national monuments, and, you know, end the entire EPA.
House Intel threatens Bannon with contempt if he uses White House orders to avoid testifying
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President some rich asshole talks to chief strategist Steve Bannon during a swearing in ceremony for senior staff at the White House in Washington, U.S. January 22, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
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Steve Bannon remains under subpoena by the House Intelligence Committee, despite White House efforts to keep him from testifying before lawmakers.
The panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), issued a statement Tuesday saying the committee still expected to question the former White House chief strategist, who has agreed to be interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller.
“Testifying before the Special Counsel does not obviate Mr. Bannon’s obligations under the subpoena issued by the Committee,” Schiff said.
Schiff said the panel would consider holding Bannon in contempt of Congress if he followed White House orders against testifying beyond a pre-approved set of 14 yes-or-no questions.
“Should Bannon maintain his refusal to return and testify fully to all questions, the Committee should begin contempt proceedings to compel his testimony,” Schiff said.
Contempt of Congress is a federal misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum $100,000 fine and up to one year in federal prison.
Bannon was present in the White House during periods Mueller may be investigating for a possible obstruction of justice charge, and he also shopped opposition research showing the rich asshole’s links to the mafia before joining his Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted in June 2012 to hold then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt for failing to cooperate with a congressional inquiry into Operation “Fast and Furious” after President Barack Obama asserted executive privilege over some documents in the probe.
GOP lawmaker criticizes the rich asshole to his face for inviting shutdown
BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 02/06/18 03:02 PM EST
Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) criticized President the rich asshole to his face on Tuesday for saying he would “love to see a shutdown” during a meeting with lawmakers and administration officials.
“We don’t need a government shutdown on this,” Comstock said during the White House meeting with the rich asshole, according to a pool report.
“You can say what you want; we are not getting support of the Democrats,” the rich asshole said.
Comstock represents a Virginia district in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., that is home to many federal workers. She is considered a top target for Democrats in this fall's midterm elections. Hillary Clinton defeated the rich asshole by 10 points in Comstock’s district in the 2016 election, and a crowded Democratic field has emerged to fight for the right to take her on in the fall.
Before the remarks to Comstock, the rich asshole said he would be willing to have another government shutdown if Republicans and Democrats can't make a deal on immigration that includes his priorities.
"We’ll do a shutdown and it’s worth it for our country. I’d love to see a shutdown if we don’t get this stuff taken care of," the rich asshole said.
“If we have to shut it down because the Democrats don’t want safety and, unrelated but still related, they don’t want to take care of our military, then shut it down. We’ll go with another shutdown," he added.
the rich asshole spoke as reports emerged of a possible deal to fund the government for the next two years. Lawmakers face a Feb. 8 deadline to fund the government and prevent a shutdown.
House rejects effort to condemn lawmaker for demanding 'Dreamer' arrests
BY CRISTINA MARCOS - 02/06/18 11:39 AM EST
The House on Tuesday rejected an effort by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to condemn Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for asking the Capitol Police to arrest immigrants without legal status who were guests of lawmakers at President the rich asshole’s State of the Union address last week.
Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.), chairwoman of the Hispanic Caucus, offered a resolution to condemn Gosar for “inappropriate actions that intimidated State of the Union guests and discredited the U.S. House of Representatives.”
House Republicans moved to table Lujan Grisham’s resolution in a party-line, 231-187 vote.
Dozens of Democrats had invited young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, often referred to as “Dreamers,” as their guests to the State of the Union.
Some of the young immigrants in attendance were recipients of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Individuals with valid documentation through DACA are in the country legally and would not have been at risk of arrest.
Gosar urged the Capitol Police to check the identification of people attending the speech.
“Of all the places where the Rule of Law needs to be enforced, it should be in the hallowed halls of Congress. Any illegal aliens attempting to go through security, under any pretext of invitation or otherwise, should be arrested and deported,” Gosar wrote in a series of tweets.
The resolution offered by Lujan Grisham states that Gosar “abused his power in an attempt to interfere with and politicize the U.S. Capitol Police’s efforts to provide for a safe, secure, and open environment during the State of the Union” and violated rules requiring all members to behave in a manner reflecting “creditably” on the House.
Gosar slammed the resolution and criticized Lujan Grisham, saying he "will not be intimidated by her left-wing nonsense and efforts to silence my speech.”
“I have a First Amendment right to speak out against their advocacy for criminals, gang members, drug dealers, human traffickers and simple run-of-the-mill law breakers who have violated our immigration laws," Gosar said.
“I will continue to speak out on behalf of Americans, real Americans of all ethnicities, who play by the rules and do not violate our laws.”
Lujan Grisham forced a vote on her resolution to condemn Gosar using a process that allows any member to bring up a “privileged” measure raising questions about the dignity and integrity of the House.
Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) forced a vote on a similar resolution in 2014 to condemn then-House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) for cutting off the microphone of the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), at a hearing.
Fudge was serving as chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus at the time, of which Cummings is also a member. House Republicans similarly tabled Fudge’s resolution to condemn Issa as they did on Tuesday for Lujan Grisham’s effort against Gosar.
Lawmakers are trying to negotiate a deal that would allow such immigrants to stay in the U.S. in exchange for border security measures. The the rich asshole administration is phasing out the DACA program, which means current recipients could face deportation if their current legal status expires.
Democrats widely blasted Gosar for demanding arrests of undocumented immigrants last week, while some Republicans also joined in the pushback.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the co-author of a bill to give Dreamers a path to citizenship, tweeted last week: “Oh my goodness, RepGosar. Dreamers don’t pose a threat to us. This is so drastic and cruel. Dios mío.”
A spokeswoman for Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said that “the Speaker clearly does not agree.”
Still, no Republican supported the effort to condemn Gosar on Tuesday.
Updated at 11:55 a.m.
‘Because he’s stupid’: Ex-RNC chairman nails the simplest explanation for Carter Page’s behavior
Michael Steele (MSNBC)
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Carter Page appeared on TV again Tuesday morning to discuss his role in the rich asshole campaign and his contacts with Russia — which prompted a fundamental question from MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson.
The former the rich asshole campaign foreign policy adviser explained to ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he was one of many informal advisers to the Kremlin, which he boasted about in a 2013 letter.
But that did little to help Jackson understand how Page was handling the scrutiny he found himself under in the special counsel probe of the rich asshole campaign ties to Russia.
“Why is Carter Page still talking?” Jackson asked.
Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said there was a simple explanation.
“Because he’s stupid,” Steele said, laughing. “He’s clearly not listening to any legal counsel. It’s a guy who thinks he’s playing a game. What the hell?”
He said Page repeatedly made incriminating public comments that he then tried to walk back in subsequent TV appearances, and Steele said his actions were baffling.
“It’s crazy, it makes no sense,” Steele said. “I’m sorry it’s just so silly.”
Daily Beast political reporter Betsy Woodruff said Page’s actions were more than just baffling.
“Carter page’s behavior in this situation is indicative of him having some pretty serious issues,” Woodruff said. “People who make responsible decisions for themselves don’t go into interviews with the House Intelligence Committee without a lawyer. That’s incredibly irresponsible, and any person who had insight on this process would tell Carter that. The decisions he’s making are self-destructive and indicative of some issues.”
the rich asshole: Dems opposing immigration plan support 'open borders'
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 02/06/18 11:27 AM EST
President the rich asshole on Tuesday accused Democrats who oppose his immigration proposal of advocating for "open borders" and failing to take seriously the effort to enshrine into law legal protections for "Dreamers," immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
In a tweet, the rich asshole cited a Harvard-Harris poll putting support for his immigration priorities at roughly 65 percent and reiterated his demand that any legislative deal on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would need to boost border security, end family-based immigration and do away with the diversity lottery program.
"Polling shows nearly 7 in 10 Americans support an immigration reform package that includes DACA, fully secures the border, ends chain migration & cancels the visa lottery," he tweeted. "If D’s oppose this deal, they aren’t serious about DACA-they just want open borders."
Polling shows nearly 7 in 10 Americans support an immigration reform package that includes DACA, fully secures the border, ends chain migration & cancels the visa lottery. If D’s oppose this deal, they aren’t serious about DACA-they just want open borders. dailycaller.com/2018/01/22/pol…
the rich asshole's immigration proposal would offer a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers in exchange for billions of dollars in funding for his long-promised wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
In a follow-up tweet on Tuesday, the rich asshole called for a merit-based immigration system that would end family-based immigration and the diversity lottery program, which provides a limited number of visas to people from countries with low levels of immigration to the U.S.
We need a 21st century MERIT-BASED immigration system. Chain migration and the visa lottery are outdated programs that hurt our economic and national security. whitehouse.gov/articles/natio…
But many Democrats have already indicated that the president's plan is a non-starter. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has accused the rich asshole of using a possible path to citizenship for Dreamers as a "tool to tear apart our legal immigration system."
‘This is your excuse?’ Maxine Waters body slams Steve Mnuchin for failing to implement Russian sanctions
Maxine Waters (ABC/screen grab)
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Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) on Tuesday blasted Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin for failing to follow a law that requires implementing Russian sanctions.
During Mnuchin’s testimony before the Financial Stability Oversight Council on Tuesday, Waters noted that the Treasury Department had not met the deadline on Russian sanctions passed by a veto-proof majority after Russia was caught interfering in the 2016 U.S. elections.
For his part, Mnuchin claimed that “the sections you’re referring to has been delegated to the State Department.”
“Who is responsible for delegating what was passed by an overwhelming majority of this House to the State Department?” Waters asked.
“The president,” Mnuchin answered.
“So the president decided that despite the fact that in the law that we passed, it delegated responsibility to Treasury, that he decided that he wanted it to be delegated to the State Department rather than Treasury,” Waters said. “And this is your excuse for not having implemented the law, is that correct?”
“No, it’s not my excuse,” Mnuchin replied. “The president had the authority to delegate within that as he chose fit.”
“But the final conclusion is that nothing has been done!” Waters charged. “There has been no waiver, there has been no delay, there has not been anything that has been done. You did not waive or delay sanctions. That is the conclusion.”
Mnuchin argued that an “enormous amount of work” had been done on by the Treasury on Russian sanctions.
“Would you describe the ‘enormous amount of work’ that has been done?” Waters pressed.
Mnuchin insisted that there was a classified document that proved the work had been done.
“Are you telling me that your response to the overwhelming majority of this Congress having created law to impose sanctions on Russia that undermined our democracy, that your response is classified?” Waters gasped.
“I assure you that as it relates to the work being done in Treasury, there will be sanctions,” Mnuchin stated. “We complied with the law on time.”
“The Congress of the United States does not know what you are doing!” Waters shot back. “The Congress of the United States does not expect that your response to the public policy that was developed by us be somehow responded to in a classified way.”
Watch the video below from ABC.
Rep. Maxine Waters repeatedly presses Treasury Sec. Mnuchin on Russian sanctions passed by Congress last year. "This is your excuse for not having implemented the law?" abcn.ws/2hFejwL
CNN’s Alisyn Camerota laughs at GOP lawmaker for claiming ‘you lie’ wasn’t disrespectful — but not clapping for the rich asshole was
Alisyn Camerota and Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY)
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CNN host Alisyn Camerota couldn’t help but laugh at Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) who twisted himself into a pretzel trying to justify President Donald the rich asshole’s accusation that Democrats were treasonous for not clapping for him at the state of the union address last week.
Collins began by attacking Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who walked out of the address and claimed that the move was completely unacceptable.
“I think that says it all when it comes to the Democrat response,” Collins claimed. “They were stoic, sitting on their hands. They did not want to applaud at any turn…it was just a very partisan reaction. And I’ve sat through some of former President Obama’s states and we were–”
Camerota played a series of clips from President Barack Obama’s address in 2010 and 2013, showing Republicans stone-faced, many shaking their heads.
“Why wasn’t that embarrassing?” Camerota asked.
Collins argued that it was a level of “degrees.” Democrats did the same thing to the rich asshole, however, it was different, Collins argued. Because “Democrats were more subdued” while Republicans were “reserved.”
Camerota laughed out loud asking how both groups not applauding can mean one was more subdued than the other. She then questioned how walking out was worse than Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouting “you lie” at Obama, but the congressman simply made a joke about it.
“That wasn’t very subdued, Congressman,” Camerota said of Wilson.
“No, in fact, you might get a chuckle, I suggested to Joe Wilson that during the rich asshole’s address he should stand up and shout, ‘Now that’s the truth!'” Collins said.
“Congressman, now that’s a funny line, but you seem to be ignoring the point,” Camerota said. “Which is, that was incredibly disrespectful. Why are you more focused on Democrats not applauding?”
“Well, no, that was disrespectful,” Collins conceded. “I would say it was an emotional response, much like Gutierrez storming out of the chamber. It is what it is, what it was, for that moment in time, where Joe Wilson was reacting to something he thought was not truthful and Gutierrez was reacting to the president saying we should respect our flag.”
“Hold on,” Camerota paused. “You think yelling ‘you lie’ at the president of the United States is the same as walking out of a room?”
Collins tried to argue that walking out of the room while Republicans are chanting “USA! USA!” is “very disrespectful,” where “in the case for Joe Wilson something just hit him he was not hearing and it was an emotional response.”
“Humm,” Camerota pondered. “I see, so Joe Wilson’s was an emotional response but not Gutierrez. OK. Thank you.”
Watch below:
Fox News is now openly undermining the credibility of federal judges
This is the logic used by authoritarian regimes.
On Tuesday morning, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) joined Fox & Friends to push the conspiracy theory that the FBI’s investigation of the rich asshole campaign is rooted in the anti-the rich asshole bias of Obama-era officials. But host Ainsley Earhardt took things a step further by suggesting the very FISA court that granted a warrant to surveil former the rich asshole campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page was corrupted by political motives.
Referring to the 11 FISA court judges, Earhardt incorrectly claimed three of them were appointed by former President Bill Clinton (in fact two were), adding: “All it takes is one judge, right, to make the decision.”
“When that application is put in front of the court, there is one judge there making the decisions, that’s right,” Jordan replied. “And there are subsequent times that it has to get renewed where there could be different judges, but there is one judge at the time.”
All 11 FISA judges were appointed to the FISA court by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by former President George W. Bush. Earhardt, however, is suggesting that any judge who was appointed to the federal bench by Clinton would have a conflict of interest when it came to cases involving the rich asshole campaign officials.
Ironically, Earhardt’s logic — that any judge appointed by a Democrat is incapable of following the law when it comes to cases involving Republican officials — would lead to the complete politicization of the courts.
In fact, if a person was constructed in a lab to look like a legitimate target of FISA surveillance, they would resemble Carter Page. While Jordan joined the rich asshole’s favorite show on Tuesday morning, Page was on Good Morning America struggling to explain why a man who bragged about advising the Kremlin before joining the rich asshole campaign wouldn’t be a legitimate target of surveillance.
“There was a lot of people advising.” Page said. “We were part of an informal group — meeting in Geneva, Paris, we had a meeting in the New York Stock Exchange. The first meeting was in the New York Stock Exchange, the center of capitalism, right?
Kaine hits Trump over shutdown threat: If you don't want to work, take some extra 'executive time'
BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 02/06/18 03:40 PM EST
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) ripped President Trump for saying he would “love to see” a government shutdown, asking why Trump is "constantly rooting for a government shutdown?"
“Look, if you don’t wanna work, just take some extra 'executive time' — don’t threaten the economy or thousands of federal workers. OK?” he added.
Kaine included screenshots of an Associated Press tweet quoting Trump saying he would “love to see a government shutdown” if Democrats didn’t meet his demands on immigration, as well as Trump’s tweet last year saying the U.S. “needs a good ‘shutdown.’”
Why is President Trump *constantly* rooting for a government shutdown?— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) February 6, 2018
Look, if you don’t wanna work, just take some extra “executive time” — don’t threaten the economy or thousands of federal workers. OK? pic.twitter.com/VhW5NigJYT
Trump had made the comments in favor of a shutdown during a White House meeting with lawmakers and law enforcement officials on Tuesday.
"We’ll do a shutdown and it’s worth it for our country. I’d love to see a shutdown if we don’t get this stuff taken care of," Trump said.
Senate leaders from both parties say they’re optimistic they’ll reach a dealto fund the government by the Feb. 8 deadline.
While that deal would not include language to help "Dreamers" facing deportation beginning next month, the Senate is separately expected to start a floor debate aimed at passing legislation on immigration after Feb. 8 if no deal on immigration is reached sooner.
Stock slide bites boastful the rich asshole, but rising wages great for GOP
BY LIZ PEEK, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 02/06/18 11:20 AM EST
Everything these days immediately turns political, and the stock market sell-off is no exception. Critics were quick to tie the downdraft to President the rich asshole, noting that he had, after all, taken credit for the strong gains posted since his election.
That said, the stock market retreat is not all bad news for Republicans. First, it is happening early in the year; bulls would argue that the accelerating economy will override short-term anxieties in time to push shares higher before the midterm elections.
This is an overreaction; remember that the Fed, and central banks elsewhere, have hoped to push inflation to 2 percent. So far, they have failed. The latest reading on price increases was that core inflation rose to 1.8 percent in December, close but still short of the Fed’s target.
It is true that in January, wages increased 2.9 percent compared to the year before, the biggest jump since June 2009. That increase propelled bond yields higher, with the rate on the 10-year Treasury approaching 3 percent for the first time in years.
But, surely that is good news for workers and for Republicans. Remember that many years of stagnant wages were one of the critical issues in the 2016 election. Democrats like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Hillary Clinton argued that the government needed to artificially boost pay through jacking up the federal minimum wage.
Republicans ran on hiking economic growth, which they claimed would naturally lead to higher incomes. Liberal economists like Larry Summers, who blamed “secular stagnation” for President Obama’s tepid growth record, dismissed GOP ambitions as ridiculous.
the rich asshole laid out a platform of lower corporate taxes and reduced regulation, which he said would elicit increased business capital investment, leading to higher productivity and pay raises. That is what is occurring now.
The economy added 200,000 jobs in January, more than expected. For the fourth month in a row, unemployment stood at 4.1 percent, the lowest level since December 2000. There is no doubt that the job market has tightened.
As important, capital spending has started to rebound, which is expected to lead to higher productivity. Last year, for the seventh year in a row, worker productivity underperformed, rising only 1.2 percent.
That is in line with the Obama years, but way below the historical gains of 2.1 percent achieved annually since 1947. Economists argue that productivity growth is essential to rising wages. Capital spending, in turn, leads to productivity gains.
Such spending has recently turned up, spurred in part by the tax bill, which allowed for immediate expensing of capital goods.
The most recent report from the Institute for Supply Managementindicated that factory demand for equipment was accelerating and that backlogs for such goods were lengthening — all signs of robust demand.
The shift from an economy and stock market supported by trillions of dollars in monetary easing to an environment dominated by accelerating real growth has shaken investors who have been on autopilot for almost a decade.
This is a tectonic plate shift in perspective, not a minor mudslide. The only big mistake that stock pickers have made over the past several years is to have sold nearly anything at all. For a lot of 30-somethings on trading desks, a world with volatility and rising interest rates is a challenge.
Going forward, investors will watch wages and other costs carefully, and they will dissect every utterance of our new Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. He has taken the reins from Janet Yellen just in time to preside over a chaotic market, with the transition adding some extra uncertainty.
But Powell is known to share Yellen’s caution and will likely for the time being share her presumed path forward, instigating two-to-three rate hikes over the balance of the year. He is not a bomb thrower.
Meanwhile, we should remember that almost every year, the market sustains a correction of 5 to 15 percent. This is the norm, not a reason to panic. It is also reassuring that the Wall Street buzz is that the plunge in shares has been driven by program trading; those investing on fundamentals are not selling.
Earnings and growth continue to be robust. Fourth-quarter earnings reports were upbeat and an unusual number of companies (75 percent) produced results above expectations.
Those who are warning of lofty valuations, as Janet Yellen recently did, cite price/earnings multiples that are at the high end of their historical range. But those levels reflect interest rates that are still low; as rates recover and earnings grow, P/E’s will drift lower. That does not signal a market collapse, but rather a modest correction.
For the rich asshole supporters, the news is good on one other important front: The president will probably tune down his boasting about the stock market. He made a risky choice when he took credit for day-to-day stock gains; I doubt we’ll hear much of that going forward.
But he should continue to celebrate the rising confidence, higher spending and faster growth that unquestionably stemmed from his election. And Republicans should run on those accomplishments, which are good for middle class Americans.
Democrats have repeatedly argued that rising stock markets don’t benefit U.S. workers. If so, lower stock prices won’t hurt them, either.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. For 15 years, she has been a columnist for The Fiscal Times, Fox News, the New York Sun and numerous other organizations.
the rich asshole’s ‘Deep State’ conspiracy is a ‘fascist concept’ aimed at undermining democracy: Ex-CIA officer
President some rich asshole speaking to the United Nations (Screenshot)
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Former intelligence officer Glenn Carle doesn’t think much of President some rich asshole’s efforts to muddy the waters of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election — but he believes the rich asshole’s ultimate goal is something much darker.
Writing in the Daily Beast, Carle says that the president is doing everything in his power to attack and discredit any agency or organization that might hold him accountable for his actions.
“The idea of the ‘Deep State’ opposing elected leaders and the rule of law is — I will be blunt here — a fascist concept, which is intended to discredit the institutions of democracy,” he writes. “It is done, precisely, so that a ‘Leader’ can represent the ‘people’ without the encumbrance of law or representative institutions.”
However, Carle believes that this effort to intimidate law enforcement officials out of investigating the president and his associates can only end in failure.
“I can state with confidence that the reaction in the FBI and the CIA to the Nunes memorandum will be disdain for what Madison calls, the ‘vicious arts’ in it,” he writes. “It will be seen for what it truly is: an attempt to protect what appears to be the rich asshole entourages’ ties to Russian intelligence. And there will be irritation at the groundless slurs it casts on FBI officers, and anger at the harm it could cause the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Justice.”
Carle is best known as the author of The Interrogator, a memoir recounting what he later came to believe was the immoral and wrongful torture of a suspected al-Qaeda agent.
White House spokesman: the rich asshole has not focused on the stock market
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 02/06/18 10:47 AM EST
A White House spokesman claimed on Tuesday that President the rich asshole has not focused on the stock market, despite his repeated praise for Wall Street’s post-election rally.
“Obviously the president did tout the stock market, but I would hardly say he focused on it,” White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said during a Fox Business network appearance.
.@hogangidley45: "No question the president was involved and responsible for the increase in the stock market, but also the overall economy."
The president has tweeted half dozen times about stock prices in 2018 and more than 50 times since becoming president.
"The Fake News Media barely mentions the fact that the Stock Market just hit another New Record and that business in the U.S. is booming...but the people know! Can you imagine if 'O' was president and had these numbers - would be biggest story on earth! Dow now over 25,000.” the rich asshole tweeted last month.
But the White House has made it clear that the rich asshole should not shoulder the blame for the recent losses on Wall Street.
"No question the president was involved and responsible for the increase in the stock market, but also in the overall economy,” Gidley said Tuesday.
The spokesman accused media outlets of ignoring the market’s gains over the past year, only to focus on stocks once they went south.
“Where were they when it was going up?” he asked. “They didn’t say a word about that. So, they’re trying to discredit this president and his economic prowess and what he’s been able to do.”
U.S. stocks dropped sharply on Monday, extending a massive sell-off on Wall Street.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 1,100 points on Monday, the largest one-day point loss in its history. The Dow had a volatile open on Tuesday, dropping more than 500 points before quickly recovering to erase most of the losses.
Past presidents have refrained from talking frequently about the stock markets in order to avoid being tied to their performance.
“Good time to recall that in the previous administration, we NEVER boasted about the stock market -- even though the Dow more than doubled on Obama's watch -- because we knew two things: 1) the stock market is not the economy; and 2) if you claim the rise, you own the fall,” tweeted Jay Carney, a White House press secretary under President Obama.
In dueling memos, we are seeing President the rich asshole in panic mode as he knows Mueller is getting close
BY FORMER REP. STEVE ISRAEL (D-N.Y.), OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 02/06/18 10:30 AM EST
Less than a week after delivering a State of the Union address extending an olive branch, the president of the United States has used it to try to bludgeon an opponent, this time tweeting a smear against Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). the rich asshole called the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee “Little Adam Schiff” (I guess we’re running out of original insults), followed by a veiled threat that he “Must be stopped!” (Full disclosure: Schiff and I are very close friends and I have supported his congressional campaigns.)’
The State of the Union might be strong, but the state of President the rich asshole seems to be sheer panic. The tweet about Schiff, combined with his behavior around the release of the Nunes memo, reveals a president in relentless fear of facts, consumed with discrediting, defaming and distracting. Now, the president has boxed himself in a scenario where he must decide whether to declassify and release a countervailing memo by Schiff and other House Democrats. The president’s attack on Schiff is vintage the rich asshole — damage the messenger, muddle the message.
Thurm’s on-camera technique included these lines: “I’m not being defensive! You’re the one who’s being defensive! Why is always the other person who’s being defensive? Have you ever asked yourself that? Why don’t you ask yourself that?” Or, I think of that child who refuses to let you into his or her room, barricades the door and proclaims there’s nothing wrong inside. Chances are, you force open the door.
Until all the facts are in and various investigations completed, we should reserve judgment on whether the president colluded with Russians in order to protect his financial or other interests in Russia. Or whether he sought to change U.S. policy in illegal or inappropriate ways. Or whether he obstructed justice. But his approach to accusations that he considers baseless doesn’t exactly exude innocence.
To recap, the man who has nothing to hide. the rich asshole fired the FBI director for meandering and contradictory reasons, first claiming that he did it because James Comey was too tough on Hillary Clinton, and then because of the frivolity of the Russia investigation (not to mention the next day telling Russian officials that the firing had relieved “great pressure” on him).
He fired Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, after making a series of highly unusual phone calls to Bharara following the election. He unleashed rage at his attorney general’s decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, impeding his ability to control it.
the rich asshole asked the deputy attorney general, who is the top official in the Justice Department on the Russia investigation, if he was “on my team.” He routinely attacks the FBI, reportedly pressuring FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to resign, which occurred last week.
He declassified and released the suspect “Nunes memo” (against the advice of his intelligence and Justice Department officials) and then immediately proclaimed it to represent his vindication, only to have his assertion rebuffed by many House Republicans. He now tweets that the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee “must be stopped.”
Do these seem like the actions of a man who has nothing to hide? No reason to fear? No. This is a president seeming to live in fear and loathing, one who is willing to go to extraordinary and even dangerous lengths to protect himself from an investigation he insists has no merit. This is a president who doesn’t simply try to sweep away inconvenient facts but, instead, uses the broom to club those pursuing the facts.
This is a president and a presidency in panic. Why? The question could probably be better answered by an unimpeded independent investigation running its course, rather than by a panicked early-morning tweet.
Steve Israel represented New York in Congress for 16 years. His next novel, “Big Guns,” will be published in April 2018.
Americans are manipulated by fake news because religion has infected our politics: Peabody-winning journalist
Journalist, essayist and researcher Kurt Andersen (Photo: Screen capture)
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Writer and reporter Kurt Andersen, in conjunction with Big Think, walked through the ways in which the United States has entered a kind of post-truth era.
In a video, the linguistic expert on President some rich asshole’s speaking style explained that people seem to be losing IQ points year after year and it’s all due to a slow decline in truth. In 2012, he explained that the Republican candidates that agreed in the scientific theory of evolution dropped to one-third of the field. By 2016, just one candidate, Jeb Bush, believed in science. Even Bush said that the cornerstone of biology shouldn’t be taught in schools, however, and if it was it should be taught along with the religious belief of Creationism.
Andersen explained that he doesn’t think the Republican Party is growing stupider each year, rather they’re fearful to challenge the chosen reality of their voters.
“I don’t think all of them disbelieve in evolution – some of them – but they were all obliged to say yes to falsehood and magical thinking of this religious kind, and that’s where it becomes problematic,” he said.
“America has always been a Christian nation,” Andersen quoted. “That had always meant a different thing one hundred years ago or even 50 years ago than it means today… Christian Protestant religion became extreme. It became more magical and supernatural in its beliefs in America than it has for hundreds of years or for any other place in the world.”
As the Protestant Christians became more extreme, the Republican Party was similarly becoming more extreme.
“So, one thing that has happened, and one thing that has led the Republican Party to fantasy and wishful untruth more and more into its approach to policy…are now in the Republican mainstream,” Andersen argued.
Things like a belief in a secret Muslim plot to overthrow the United States for Sharia Law, climate change being a Chinese hoax and even President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim and some rich asshole came to save America with the birther campaign, are all issues that are easy to believe if “fantasy and wishful untruths” are the norm. It makes it easier to accept conspiracy theories or fake news.
Anderson explained that he doesn’t care if people believe what they want to believe in private. However, when religious belief “bleeds over into how we manage and construct our economy and our society,” there’s a problem. It will cause lasting trouble for the country.
Watch below:
WATCH: MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough flares with anger when guest asks him to stop interrupting Mika Brzezinski
Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough (MSNBC)
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MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough bristled when a guest stopped him from talking over his co-host and fiancée, Mika Brzezinski.
“Morning Joe” hosted historian and author Rick Perlstein to talk about his recent New York Times op-ed, “Our Hackable Political Future.”
Perlstein tried to put disinformation campaigns spread by Facebook and Twitter into historical context, and Scarborough said lawmakers such as Sen. Kamala Harris — who appeared on the show the previous day — were reluctant to punish social media giants for their roles in election hacking.
“It goes back to money,” he said. “Why doesn’t Kamala Harris want to come on our show — and we’re so glad she did — but why wasn’t she aggressively going after Facebook and Twitter?”
Brzezinski suggested playing back Harris’ comments, but Scarborough continued with his point.
“She represents them,” he said. “She’s in California, she represents them and if she’s going to run for president — this, by the way, applies to everybody running for president, not just her — you don’t want to cross Facebook.”
Brzezinski disagreed, but Scarborough was unconvinced.
“Don’t kid yourself, they all will — they all will have trouble and that is where we stand,” Scarborough said, and then started to pose a question to Perlstein. “I want to ask you before we go.”
Perlstein, however, stopped Scarborough.
“Joe, I think Mika was trying to say something there,” Perlstein said, and Brzezinski giggled. “What were you saying, Mika?”
“I just don’t think Kamala Harris will have a hard time crossing Facebook and these companies when she is across the table from them,” Brzezinski said. “I think she’s trying to work with them which is why she wasn’t strong on the show yesterday.”
Scarborough seemed annoyed by the interruption, and asked Perlstein if he had experienced a technical difficulty.
“I’m curious, did your earpiece go out — did you not here that before?” Scarborough said, and then asked the show’s director if there had been a problem. “I knew she was trying to say something. Alex? Alex? Is Rick’s ear piece working?”
Perlstein assured the host his earpiece was fine, and Scarborough later tried to joke off the incident.
“Am I interrupting you again?” Scarborough asked, as Brzezinski tried to take them to a commercial break. “Is there anything else you wanted to say? You said Kamala Harris could stand up — I heard that. I would feel horrible if Rick thought that I interrupted you.”
Brzezinski repeated her assertion that Harris could be a “force to be reckoned with,” and Scarborough flirted with his wife-to-be.
“You know, I think you’re right,” he said. “You’re always right.”
the rich asshole calls for illegal immigration crackdown after NFL player's death
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 02/06/18 08:54 AM EST
President the rich asshole on Tuesday re-upped his call for a crackdown on illegal immigration after police revealed that the man accused of killing Indianapolis Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson in a suspected drunk driving accident is an undocumented immigrant.
"So disgraceful that a person illegally in our country killed @Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson," the rich asshole tweeted. "This is just one of many such preventable tragedies. We must get the Dems to get tough on the Border, and with illegal immigration, FAST!"
So disgraceful that a person illegally in our country killed @Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson. This is just one of many such preventable tragedies. We must get the Dems to get tough on the Border, and with illegal immigration, FAST!
Jackson was killed on Sunday when a Ford F-150 struck him and another man on the side of a highway in Indianapolis. According to CNN, Indiana State Police identified the suspect as Manuel Orrego-Savala, a Guatemalan citizen who is in the U.S. illegally.
Orrego-Savala had twice been deported from the U.S., once in 2007 and again in 2009, CNN reported.
the rich asshole has repeatedly pointed to crimes allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants to bolster his calls for ramping up border security and cracking down on illegal immigration.
One such case is that of Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old woman who was shot and killed in 2015 by an undocumented immigrant. the rich asshole seized on the case during his 2016 presidential campaign as an example of the need to curb illegal immigration.
The man responsible for Steinle's death, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges in November but was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm. the rich asshole reacted angrily to that verdict, calling the acquittals "a complete travesty of justice."
The Kate Steinle killer came back and back over the weakly protected Obama border, always committing crimes and being violent, and yet this info was not used in court. His exoneration is a complete travesty of justice. BUILD THE WALL!
When President some rich asshole addressed the country in his State of the Union address last week, it was the first time he explicitly endorsed the traditionally Democratic issue of paid family leave.
“As tax cuts create new jobs, let us invest in workforce development and job training. Let us open great vocational schools so our future workers can learn a craft and realize their full potential,” said the rich asshole. “And let us support working families by supporting paid family leave.”
The line received thunderous applause from both sides of the aisle.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is working with Ivanka the rich asshole to come up with a paid leave policy that Republicans can vote for. The conservative argument against paid family leave in the past has been Republicans vehemently oppose any mandate on employers or higher taxes.
Rubio doesn’t want the federal government to pay for paid family leave, but rather require individuals to withdraw from their Social Security benefits whenever they need to take time off for a new baby or other family related-matters. This would have the adverse effect of requiring individuals to delay their retirement age.
As Politico puts it, this would mean that someone who would begin receiving their full Social Security benefits when they turn 67 years old but wants to take six weeks of paid leave wouldn’t draw Social Security benefits until six weeks after their 67th birthday.
But Rubio’s plan is much more sinister beneath the surface. While this approach is bad for retirees, it’s also bad for the future of Social Security as a whole.
“This seems like something [Republicans] are doing to get good headlines. What this really is is a cut to Social Security,” Linda Benesch, spokesperson for Social Security Works told ThinkProgress. “The proposal that Rubio and Ivanka are reportedly considering involves an increase in the retirement age of people who choose to take leave. An increase in the retirement age is always a benefit cut. Either people are getting benefits for a shorter amount of time or if they choose to claim later their bonus for deferring benefits will be smaller.”
Rubio’s plan fails to address what would happen to a large portion of Social Security beneficiaries who are not of retirement-age, yet rely on Social Security to live.
Of the 45 million Americans who collect payments from the Social Security program, over one-third (almost 17 million) are not retired workers, they’re the 5 million spouses and children of disabled workers, the 7 million spouses and children of deceased workers, and the 5 million disabled workers.
It is unclear whether the Rubio-Ivanka plan would cut disability and survivor benefits for people who take parental leave as well.
“This proposal treats Social Security like a private account that can be borrowed against rather than what it actually is, a social insurance program to protect against risks that can befall all workers – aging, disability, or death,” said Benesch.
Proponents of this approach towards paid family leave see this as the first step in privatizing Social Security. In an article written in the conservative publication The Federalist last week, Carrie Lukas wrote:
Encouraging people to think about Social Security’s assets as if those benefits are their property for use now or at retirement could even encourage people to want to move more in that direction and transform the current pay-as-you-go system into one that pre-funds future benefits and with assets that belong to individuals. That may sound farfetched. But it’s no more farfetched than the idea that, after decades of promoting the idea of partial privatization, at long last, public opinion will undergo a sea change to embrace personal accounts or other substantial Social Security reforms.
Lukas is president of the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, a non-profit funded by the Koch Brothers, who have long advocated for privatized Social Security.
This is the second policy issue Rubio and Ivanka the rich asshole have teamed up on, the first being an expanded child tax credit. They both advocated for an expanded, refundable child tax credit to help working families in favor a slightly higher 22 percent corporate tax rate. Rubio’s amendment was ultimately rejected by Republicans in the Senate because it was too expensive. President the rich asshole was adamant about a permanent 20 percent corporate tax rate, which costs $1 trillion dollars on it’s own. Ultimately, the Senate budged and voted for a 21 percent corporate tax rate — without Rubio’s amendment.
the rich asshole’s FEMA tapped unproven entrepreneur to give 30 million meals to Puerto Rico — she only delivered 50K
Puerto Rico in wake of Hurricane Maria (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP)
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency last year gave a big contract to an Atlanta-based entrepreneur who had no experience in large-scale disaster relief — and she completely failed to meet the goals set for her by the agency.
The New York Times reports that Tiffany C. Brown, who was awarded a $156 million contract to deliver meals to Puerto Ricans suffering from the aftermath of Hurricane Maria last year, delivered only around 50,000 meals by the time she was supposed to have delivered 18.5 million.
The issue, reports the Times, is that “the food had been packaged separately from the pouches used to heat them,” whereas “FEMA’s solicitation required ‘self-heating meals.'”
Because of this, FEMA canceled Brown’s contract, which had originally called on her to deliver 30 million meals to the hurricane-stricken U.S. territory.
Although FEMA says that it relied on other contractors to deliver meals to Puerto Rico after the contract with Brown fell through, the Times writes that “there is little doubt that in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans struggled with access to food” since “the storm shut down ports on an island that imports about 85 percent of its food supply.”
Brown is now seeking a settlement of $70 million in exchange for the terminated contract, as she claims to the Times that FEMA never told her that meals had to be shipped together with their heating pouches.
Conway freezing out experts, relying on political staff in drug policy office: report
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 02/06/18 08:53 AM EST
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway's work at the administration's opioid abuse policy office has led to policy experts being frozen out of the decision-making process in favor of political appointees, according to a report in Politico.
The news site reports that President the rich asshole is expected to propose massive budget cuts this year to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) as it struggles to function without a director or chief of staff, who was fired in December.
"It’s fair to say the ONDCP has pretty much been systematically excluded from key decisions about opioids and the strategy moving forward,” a former the rich asshole administration staffer told Politico.
One political appointee in the office is Andrew Giuliani, the 32-year-old son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R), who the White House told Politico has no background in drug policy.
Republicans in Congress who represent states hit hardest by the opioid crisis say they are unsure as to what Conway's actual role is at the ONDCP.
“I haven’t talked to Kellyanne at all and I’m from the worst state for this,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, (R-W.Va.). “I’m uncertain of her role.”
“If I want technical advice, I’m going to work with Baum,” added Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.). “If I want to get a message to the president, Kellyanne is somebody that I know I can talk to.”
Opioid deaths surged in 2016, the deadliest year so far of the abuse epidemic. Deaths from drug overdoses related to opiates increased nearly 28 percent, from roughly 33,000 in 2015 to more than 42,200 in 2016.
Amid skyrocketing numbers, former ONDCP officials say the drug policy office is not taking a leading role in addressing the crisis.
“I don’t know what the agency is doing. I really don’t,” said Regina LaBell, the ONDCP's chief of staff under President Obama.
“They aren’t at the level of visibility you’d think they’d be at by now.”
Was the rich asshole ‘vindicated in any way?’ Paul Ryan refuses to answer after reporter nails him over Nunes memo
House Speaker Paul Ryan (Screenshot)
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House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Tuesday refused to say if President some rich asshole was “vindicated” by a controversial Republican memo alleging surveillance abuse at the Justice Department.
During a press conference, a reporter noted that Ryan had said last week that the memo would not impact Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling and possible collusion with the rich asshole campaign. After the memo was released, however, the rich asshole suggested the document was proof the investigation was unfairly biased against him.
But Ryan would not say whether he agreed that the memo was vindication for the president — and dodged the question entirely.
“Let me go back to what I said,” he said. “This is about FISA abuse and this is about holding our government accountable and this is about Congress doing its job over the executive branch.”
Watch video below:
GOP lawmaker demands all ‘insults’ to Devin Nunes be ‘redacted’ from Democratic response memo
Brad Wenstrup speaks to Fox News (screen grab)
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Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) asserted on Tuesday that a Democratic response to a Republican memo critical of the Russia investigation includes “insults” to Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) and possibly other Republicans.
During an interview with Wenstrup, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade wondered if President some rich asshole would release the Democratic memo without any further redactions as he had done for the Republican memo.
“I think it needs to be vetted,” Wenstrup opined. “I can tell you, the [Democratic memo] we voted on to move forward to the White House certainly needs vetting and a lot of redaction of things that would compromise methods. And also, there’s personal insults and attacks.”
When pressed for details, the congressman replied: “There’s some people — Republicans — named and I don’t think that was appropriate.”
“So they went after Chairman Nunes?” Kilmeade asked.
“Yeah, I think that we will see that they went after a couple of key figures on the Intelligence Committee personally,” Wenstrup revealed.
It was not immediately clear what information is contained in the Democratic memo that Wenstrup considers to be “insults” of Nunes and other “key figures” on the committee.
Watch the video below from Fox News.
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