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the rich asshole Administration Rolls Back Protections For Transgender Prison Inmates
An inmate’s sex assigned at birth will now be used to make the initial decision as to where transgender prisoners are housed.
(Reuters) - The rich asshole administration has rolled back protections for transgender prison inmates introduced under former President Barack Obama after some prisoners challenged the policies in court.
An inmate’s “biological sex” will now be used to make the initial decision as to where transgender prisoners are housed, instead of the gender to which they identify, according to a change in guidelines announced on Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
The move, decried by transgender rights advocates, comes after four women held at a Texas detention center filed a federal lawsuit. The inmates argued that the previous prison guidelines, introduced in January 2017 just days before Obama left office, put them at greater risk of rape because they might have to share facilities with transgender women.
Under President some rich asshole, the Justice Department said in August that it would evaluate the issues in the lawsuit.
Following Friday’s change to the guidelines, first reported by BuzzFeed News, prison authorities are instructed to consider the health and safety of transgender inmates, as well as “whether placement would threaten the management and security of the institution and/or pose a risk to other inmates in the institution.”
Bureau of Prisons officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday. But Nancy Ayers, a spokeswoman for the agency, told BuzzFeed News that the new policy takes into account the needs of all federal prisoners “and articulates the balance of safety needs of transgender inmates as well as other inmates.”
“The decision to disregard a transgender person’s gender identity is harmful and disrespectful,” David Stacy, government affairs director of the Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group, said in a statement.
The rich asshole administration has sought to ban transgender people from serving in the U.S. military and has taken other steps aimed at rolling back transgender rights.
In October, the administration said a federal law banning gender-based workplace discrimination does not protect transgender employees, reversing another Obama-era position.
In February, the rich asshole rescinded Obama administration guidance that said public schools should let transgender students use the restroom corresponding to their gender identity.
What Fresh Hell? the rich asshole’s kleptocracy comes into sharper focus
some rich asshole and family (Shutterstock)
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Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or at least were under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other embarrassments coming out of the current White House.
kleptocracy [klep-tok-ruh-see]1. a government or state in which those in power exploit national resources and steal; rule by a thief or thieves.
The Original Sin that led to all of the grift and corruption we’re seeing from this regime occurred when the media and political establishments allowed the rich asshole to run for the presidency without releasing his tax returns and take office without divesting his business interests.
Of course they were busy obsessing over Hillary Clinton’s emails. But not only did that signal to the rich asshole and his minions that they could get away with just about anything, it also resulted in a degree of opacity that only law enforcement can penetrate. Soon after the rich asshole was elected, The Wall Street Journal summed up this problem with a story about the labyrinthian web of front-companies that connected the rich asshole to just one of his more modest assets…
President-elect some rich asshole owns a helicopter in Scotland.To be more precise, he has a revocable trust that owns 99% of a Delaware limited liability company that owns 99% of another Delaware LLC that owns a Scottish limited company that owns another Scottish company that owns the 26-year-old Sikorsky S-76B helicopter, emblazoned with a red “RICH ASSHOLE” on the side of its fuselage.
We don’t really know the angles the rich asshole’s played to enrich himself and his loyalists using the power of the White House, and depending on the outcomes of various investigations, we may never know. But we have gotten some insights into the rich asshole money machine, thanks to some good reporting and, in some cases, from court filings. And one consistent theme has been huge slush funds of various types paying out giant sums to people in the rich asshole’s inner circle, and in some cases to the rich asshole himself.
The writing was on the wall during the 2016 campaign, when the rich asshole Organization quintupled the rent it was charging the rich asshole Campaign as soon as donors started picking up the tab. And on the same day in 2016 that the rich asshole cut a fundraising agreement with the RNC, “the campaign made payments to three the rich asshole properties” totaling around $200 grand.
This has continued since the election. As Walter Shaub, a former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, wrote for The Washington Post this week, “we taxpayers are paying tens of millions for [the rich asshole] to spend almost a third of his days in office visiting his properties. Some of the money goes into his pocket. We learned last fall that the Secret Service had paid him over $150,000 in golf cart rental fees for the privilege of guarding his life while he golfs. Last month, Public Citizen issued a report finding that the rich asshole’s businesses had billed $15.1 million to campaign, political committee and federal government sources since he first launched his presidential campaign.”
The Republican National Committee has been paying almost $38,000 per month to rent a “basically empty” office space from the rich asshole for his own 2020 campaign since late last year. The campaign itself paid the rich asshole Organization almost a half-million in inflated rent before the RNC took over the payments. According to The HuffPo, “in all, the rich asshole campaign spent $774,163 in donor money at the rich asshole-branded businesses last year.”
We still don’t really know where the $107 million the rich asshole’s grifter friends raised for his inauguration went. It was a cheap affair, but they managed to spend twice as much as Obama had for his star-studded inauguration in 2008. But we did know that a longtime friend of Melania’s, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, opened up a firm a month after the election that would grab $26 million of that sum for “planning” the event. This week, we learned that Mueller’s following the money, much of which came from foreign sources.
Wolkoff is by no means alone. A whole pack of grifters have been getting rich since the rich asshole’s election. His former bodyguard, Keith Schiller, left the White House and has been raking in $15,000 per month from the RNC ever since for “security consulting.” (Schiller had already cashed in to the tune of almost $300,000 during the 2016 campaign from the rich asshole Organization, the rich asshole Campaign and the RNC.) Elliott Broidy, the GOP deputy finance chair and close the rich asshole associate also managed to secure $200 million in new contracts from the UAE after the election, thanks to the shady middleman George Nader, who is now cooperating with Mueller. That was part of a coordinate effort to turn Broidy “into an instrument of influence at the White House for the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,” according to The New York Times. And as we mentioned last week, one of those countries’ rivals, Qatar, has pushed back against their influence by buying four increasingly-hard-to-sell the rich asshole properties, the most recent of which was purchased just after a judge dismissed a lawsuit against the rich asshole for violating the Emoluments Clause.
Former the rich asshole campaign manager Corey Lewandowsky has opened up or partnered with no fewer than three DC lobbying firms since the election (he denies working for a fourth). Brad Parscale, the guy the rich asshole hired to throw together a website for $1,500 and whose firm ultimately took in $94 million from the 2016 campaign, continued to get an average of $474,000 per month from the RNC after the election. Nobody really knows what Mike Pence’s nephew, John Pence, is doing for the rich asshole’s reelection campaign, but he’s making in the neighborhood of $120,000 per year for something, according to financial disclosures. And this goes on and on – there are actually way too many of these kinds of stories to detail here in full.
And then this week, thanks to the Woodward and Bernstein of the rich asshole era — a porn star and her lawyer – we learned that Michael Cohen, the rich asshole’s longtime consigliere and bagman, used the shell company that he’d set up to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels — and to a Playboy playmate whom the rich asshole probably knocked up before shifting the blame to Broidy — to… solicit payments from various corporations — including one tied to a Russian oligarch — for “access” to the rich asshole which, at least in some cases, he didn’t even deliver.
Three days before this tweet, Michael Cohen incorporated Essential Consultants LLC in Delaware. twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
On the very same day Donald Trump promised a 5-point plan to "Drain the Swamp," including preventing lobbyists from calling themselves consultants, Michael Cohen incorporated Essential Consultants LLCtwitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
Everything in his history suggests that the rich asshole himself has probably gotten a cut of at least some of these deals. Everything you’ve read above may be legal, but not if all this money was being shoveled around for corrupt purposes. Again, the rich asshole’s long history of sleazy business dealings make this a pretty safe bet.
Let’s pause here to recall that Robert Mueller’s team includes some of the country’s top prosecutors and investigators specializing in fraud and financial crimes, and they have had most of this information long before we even knew it existed. It’s possible that these crooks will get away with it, but if I were them, I wouldn’t bet my freedom on it.
And with that news, let’s consider some other outrages that may have been lost in the shuffle this week…
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Remember Scott Pruitt’s luxurious $120,000 trip to Italy, very little of which was spent working? Remember the sumptuous dinner that he enjoyed at Rome’s Hotel Eden, which runs around $300 a head?
This week, we discovered that Pruitt dined that evening “with Cardinal George Pell, a prominent climate-science denialist and Vatican leader who was also facing sexual abuse allegations.” The EPA intentionally left Pell’s name out of its description of the evening, according to The New York Times. “Kevin Chmielewski, Mr. Pruitt’s former deputy chief of staff for operations, said in an interview that top political appointees at the agency feared that the meeting would reflect poorly on Mr. Pruitt if it were made public. Twenty days after the dinner, authorities in Australia charged Cardinal Pell with sexual assault…” That would reflect poorly, but maybe more so for the alleged child molester than Pruitt.
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It should probably come as no surprise that “top aides to Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency are screening public records requests related to the embattled administrator, slowing the flow of information released under the Freedom of Information Act — at times beyond what the law allows.” More on that one at Politico.
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Will this ultimately add fuel the opioid crisis?
The Labor Department plans to unwind decades-old youth labor protections by allowing teenagers to work longer hours under some of the nation’s most hazardous workplace conditions.
Only time will tell.
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Here, via the Washington Post, is a great example of a bigoted policy that’s stupid even on its own terms…
The rich asshole administration has moved to expel 300,000 Central Americans and Haitians living and working legally in the United States, disregarding senior U.S. diplomats who warned that mass deportations could destabilize the region and trigger a new surge of illegal immigration.
It’s a bit like anti-choicers favoring abstinence-only education, which leads to more unintended pregnancies and ultimately more abortions. Stop hitting yourselves, wingnuts.
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Only the best… oh, you know…
Remember the "pink slime" lawsuit? Trump has tapped the star witness in that case — a Texas Tech professor who testified that “pink slime” is safe, wholesome and “100 percent beef” — to oversee food safety for the USDA. texasobserver.org/texas-tech-pro… by @collins_reports #txlege
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This story is consistent with the rich asshole regime’s relentless attempts to purge all information about climate change – which Marmalade Mussolini thinks is all a Chinese hoax – from the entire government.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. The adage is especially relevant for climate-warming greenhouse gases, which are crucial to manage—and challenging to measure. In recent years, though, satellite and aircraft instruments have begun monitoring carbon dioxide and methane remotely, and NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), a $10-million-a-year research line, has helped stitch together observations of sources and sinks into high-resolution models of the planet’s flows of carbon. Now, President some rich asshole’s administration has quietly killed the CMS, Science has learned.
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the rich asshole’s national security team is weighing the elimination of the top White House cybersecurity job, multiple sources told POLITICO — a move that would come as the nation faces growing digital threats from adversaries such as Russia and Iran. John Bolton, the rich asshole’s hawkish new national security adviser, is leading the push to abolish the role of special assistant to the president and cybersecurity coordinator, currently held by the departing Rob Joyce…
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Finally, three ugly stories about what happens when you put white nationalists in charge of your justice system…
Sam Levin reported for The Guardian this week that Rakem Balogun, a father of three, “is believed to be the first person targeted and prosecuted under a secretive US surveillance effort to track so-called ‘black identity extremists.’” Balogun was held without bail for five months for being a vocal activist against police brutality.
The charges against him didn’t stand up, because we still have a more or less functional judicial system, but Balogun “lost his home and more while incarcerated.”
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Meanwhile, in Houston, undocumented immigrants who are caught perpetrating low-level offenses make bail, and then are scooped up by ICE as they leave the courthouse. Seems brutal but straightforward. But according to the Texas Observer, “abysmal record-keeping and an increasingly secretive immigration force have created a catch-22” for these mostly poor workers: “as they languish in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, sometimes for months, they are asked to do the impossible: show up for their Harris County court hearings…. The penalties for missing court are serious: Bonds can be raised or revoked, and the court can issue arrest warrants or new citations in a revolving-door scenario reminiscent of a Kafka novel.”
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Finally, The Intercept reported this week that Customs and Border Patrol appear to be targeting activists offering life-saving aid to undocumented immigrants.
“Nine volunteers with No More Deaths, an official ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, [have been] hit with federal charges in recent months for leaving water in a remote federal wilderness preserve where migrants routinely disappear and die,” writes Ryan Devereaux. The latest “arrest came just hours after No More Deaths published a report that documents evidence of Border Patrol agents destroying jugs of water that the group leaves for migrants in the desert.”
And here’s a key point:
Border Patrol agents and humanitarian groups in Arizona, such as No More Deaths, have long operated with an understanding that spaces used to save human lives are generally off limits to law enforcement. The verbal agreement upheld by Border Patrol agents in the Tucson Sector and volunteers in the area is built on a set of written principles modeled after Red Cross guidelines on the treatment of humanitarian aid organizations, which include a passage that reads, “Medical treatment provided by humanitarian aid agencies should be recognized and respected by government agents and should be protected from surveillance and interference.”
Graft and cruelty: the twin hallmarks of the rich asshole regime. Make sure you register and vote this fall.
the rich asshole administration struggles to deal with US enemy combatant
BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS - 05/12/18 06:26 PM EDT
The rich asshole administration is weighing how to proceed with a U.S. citizen it has held as an enemy combatant since September in a unusual case that could threaten the legal underpinnings of the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The man, known only as John Doe, has presented a difficult case for the administration since he was first picked up by Syrian Democratic Forces as an alleged ISIS fighter and turned over to the U.S. eight months ago.
Officials believe they lack sufficient useable evidence to try him in court, but for security reasons, are loathe to simply release him.
A D.C. appeals court on Monday blocked the government from transferring Doe to Saudi Arabia, where he also holds citizenship, further limiting the administration’s options and raising the possibility that the rich asshole administration could take the case to the Supreme Court.
The administration is also bracing for a possible ruling by a separate federal judge that the government lacks the authority to detain Doe in the first place. It’s unclear when this decision will come down, but it could mark the first time the courts have weighed in on the controversial legal rationale that both the rich asshole and Obama administrations have used to justify the use of force against ISIS.
The Justice Department said this week that it is “reviewing [the appeals court] decision and considering our next steps.”
“Both domestic and international law confer on the U.S. military broad discretion over battlefield operations, including the transfer of individuals captured on overseas battlefields,” it said.
In the meantime, Doe remains in U.S. military custody in Iraq, where he is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
According to the government, Doe attended ISIS training in Syria starting in March 2015. There, he swore allegiance to a deputy of ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a man named Abu Hafs al-Maghrebi.
He was assigned to be a fighter in the Zarqawi Brigade, a military unit that “guard[ed] the front lines” in Syria, where he procured fuel for ISIS vehicles, handled expenses and “performed other administrative tasks.” Later, he was tasked with guarding the gate of an ISIS oil field and monitoring personnel who worked on ISIS’s heavy equipment.
There is no public evidence that he took up arms on behalf of ISIS.
Ultimately, Justice Department lawyers say, Doe worked for ISIS for about two and a half years — “until air strikes and other military offensives against [ISIS] forced him to flee.” Syrian forces picked him up at a checkpoint as he was trying to escape Syria into Turkey. He identified himself as an American and said he wanted to turn himself in.
He was dressed in a style “typical of an [ISIS devotee],” the government claims, and "identified himself as 'daesh' — another word for ISIS."
And he was found carrying thumb drives containing ISIS personnel spreadsheet and “military style handbooks” about bomb building, interrogation techniques and weapons handling.
Doe maintains that he went to Syria to document the violence here, not to join ISIS.
But the details of his story have left some legal analysts surprised that the government doesn’t believe it has sufficient evidence to bring a basic terrorism charges against him — the most obvious solution that both the Obama and the rich asshole administrations have leveraged with U.S. persons suspected of aiding ISIS.
“Looks to me, in short, like the government does indeed have the option of pursuing what almost certainly would turn out to be a 20-year sentence,” writes Bobby Chesney, a national security law professor who worked on detention issues at the Justice Department in 2009.
The apparent disconnect has lead to some speculation that the government may be looking for a way to keep Doe out of the country permanently, perhaps by convincing him to renounce his U.S. citizenship. Yasar Hamdi, another U.S.-Saudi citizen who contested his status as an enemy combatant in court in the early 2000s, agreed to a voluntary transfer to Saudi Arabia in exchange for abandoning his U.S. citizenship.
When it first became public that the government was weighing transferring Doe to Saudi Arabia, in December, the ACLU accused the rich asshole administration of trying to pressure Doe to renounce his citizenship.
The government denied those accusations at the time, asserting that “the USG has not authorized any representative to discuss with the detainee the possibility that he might renounce his U.S. citizenship. Nor does the USG have any information that anyone has attempted to coerce him into doing so."
Jonathan Hafetz, the ACLU lead attorney representing Doe, told The Hill in an email Friday that “to our knowledge” no such conversations have taken place since December, either.
There is another option for the government. It could simply release Doe in Iraq, where he is being held presumably somewhere in the Kurdish region. He could walk free — or he could be immediately snatched up by Iraqi security forces and transferred to Saudi Arabian custody anyway, a move that could suggest the appearance of behind-the-scenes coordination with the U.S.
The Department of Justice, this week, maintained that Doe’s alleged activities with ISIS “implicate numerous national security, law enforcement, international relations and foreign policy concerns.”
If it is not going to charge or release Doe — and lacking the current authority to transfer him — the government is now at the mercy of the judicial system.
There are two distinct court cases surrounding the government’s handling of Doe — but both now turn on the issue of whether it is legally able to hold him as an enemy combatant in the first place.
Critically, Doe is arguing that because ISIS is not explicitly covered under the current congressional authorization for the use of military force — a subject of intense debate across multiple administrations — he cannot legally be held as an enemy combatant.
The federal courts have not weighed in on that issue and a ruling against the government’s longstanding interpretation that ISIS is an “associated force” of al Qaeda could upend the entire legal basis for military action against the terror group.
In a two-to-one split, the appeals court weighing whether the government could legally transfer Doe concluded that that authority rested on the precondition that he is being legally held in the first place — in other words, the government only has the power to transfer Doe if the courts agree that he is a lawfully held enemy combatant.
“Neither the legal inquiry nor the factual inquiry has taken place in this case,” Judge Sri Srinivasan writes.
That very question — whether Doe is being legally held — has been languishing before U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan now for months.
In the meantime, the government must decide amongst a limited set of unpalatable options: Continue to hold Doe indefinitely while waiting for Chutkan to hand down a potentially adverse ruling — or race the clock and try to win an appeal allowing it to transfer him.
There is no sign of when she will rule.
White House’s Sarah Sanders berated ‘selfish’ staff member for leaking ‘dying’ McCain joke in tense meeting: report
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders (Screenshot)
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Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders lashed out at the White House communications team for “selfish” leaks to the press, Axios reported on Saturday.
The Friday meeting came as the news cycle was dominated with coverage of communications staffer Kelly Sadler’s “joke” about Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) dying of brain cancer.
“No one is condoning the remark,” a source in the room argued. “The message to the staff is that leaking it to the press is not how you handle it.”
That account seems at odds with a source who told Axios that strategic communications director Mercedes Schlapp came to Sadler’s defense.
“You can put this on the record… I stand with Kelly Sadler,” Schlapp reportedly told the communications team.
Sanders was described as visibly upset and furious.
“I am sure this conversation is going to leak, too. And that’s just disgusting,” Sanders argued.
Her prediction that the meeting against leaking would leak was accurate.
Mulvaney defends White House aide over 'dying' McCain comment: It was 'joke' in 'private meeting'
BY LUIS SANCHEZ - 05/12/18 01:13 PM EDT
White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney on Saturday defended the White House aide who made a derisive comment about Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), saying the real issue was that the "bad joke" had been leaked to the press.
“This was a private meeting inside the White House. It was a joke. It was a badly considered joke that she said fell flat,” Mulvaney, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said during an appearance on Fox News.
But Mulvaney argued that the leak of the comment posed the greater issue: "The leak was designed to hurt that person. Also, it completely ignored the harm it would do to the McCain family, which is doubly inconsiderate."
The Hill first reported Thursday that special assistant Kelly Sadler had mocked McCain's brain cancer diagnosis a day after the Arizona Republican had come out against the rich asshole's pick to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel.
“It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway,” Sadler said, according to a source familiar with the remarks at the internal meeting.
The White House on Friday faced backlash over the comment from lawmakers and members of the media, with figures such as former Vice President Joe Biden and GOP Utah Senate candidate Mitt Romney blasting those mocking McCain.
McCain, 81, is in Arizona battling brain cancer.
Sarler called McCain's daughter, Meghan McCain, after news broke of her comment, a source told The Hill on Thursday.
The senator's wife Cindy chided Sadler on Twitter over the comment, while Meghan McCain suggested that the White House aide should be fired.
Despite the controversy over the remark, Mulvaney said Saturday he does not support calls for Sadler to be fired.
“You have to have freedom to speak in a private meeting. We have all said things in private ... that we would never say publicly. I think she handled it appropriately,” he said.
Fox News host blisters ‘shameless’ Michael Cohen for pay-to-play cash grab: Pay back your ‘swamp fees and apologize’
Michael Cohen, photo by IowaPolitics.com (the rich asshole executive Michael Cohen 013) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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Fox News anchor and former top strategist for the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, Steve Hilton, demanded an apology from some rich asshole fixer Michael Cohen on Saturday.
Writing for Fox, Hilton praised the rich asshole’s rhetoric against pay-to-play politics.
“It was all captured in one phrase that came to define the 2016 campaign’s epic battle between the populist insurgent and the corrupt Clinton machine and all it represented: Drain the Swamp!” the Tory argued. “Contrary to what his critics would have you believe, since his inauguration President the rich asshole has delivered on many of his Drain the Swamp promises, including tough new rules on lobbying.”
In Hilton’s thinking, all of the rich asshole’s progress is being undermined by his own attorney.
“Cohen was reported this week to have touted himself to a number of giant global corporations as someone who could give them an inside track with the new the rich asshole administration,” he noted. “But the real damage here is not to the reputation of AT&T or Novartis – it’s to President the rich asshole and his entire Drain the Swamp crusade.”
“Did Cohen even listen to what some rich asshole was saying on the campaign trail?” Hilton asked. “What part of Drain the Swamp did Cohen not understand?”
“By cashing in on his connection to the president to help giant global corporations, Cohen insulted every single the rich asshole voter,” he argued. “Here’s what needs to happen: Cohen must apologize, pay back his swamp fees and tell us who else he pitched his services to. We need to see the full list of the “select few companies” he reportedly offered to help.”
Hilton concluded that “there has to be a proper reckoning for the damage Cohen has done with his cynical, shameless behavior.”
Sanders scolded staff for leak of White House official’s ‘dying’ McCain comment: report
BY JOSH DELK - 05/12/18 12:55 PM EDT
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reportedly scolded her staff on Friday after one White House official's derisive comment about Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) became public.
In the meeting with communications staffers, Sanders called the comment by special assistant Kelly Sadler "unacceptable," according to ABC News, but sources told the network she was more upset over the leak of the remark.
“I am sure this conversation is going to leak, too. And that’s just disgusting,” she said according to a report by Axios on Saturday.
White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney on Saturday also condemned the comment making its way to the press. During an appearance on Fox News, Mulvaney called Sadler's comment a "bad joke" but said it was "inconsiderate" that it leaked.
The Hill first reported Thursday that Sadler said during a private meeting that McCain's opposition to President the rich asshole's nominee to become CIA director, Gina Haspel, "doesn't matter" because "he's dying anyway."
McCain, 81, is in Arizona battling brain cancer.
The comment prompted fierce pushback from lawmakers and the news media on Friday, while Sanders was grilled over the comment during the daily press briefing.
Mercedes Schlapp, the White House director of strategic communications, said Friday during a White House meeting that she stood by Sadler, Axios reported.
“You can put this on the record. ... I stand with Kelly Sadler," she said, according to Axios.
Attorney Avenatti drops a bombshell on Michael Cohen-linked DC law firm – then warns his contacts to come clean
Michael Avenatti on AM Joy -- MSNBC screenshot
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Appearing on MSNBC on Saturday morning, the attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels called for an investigation to highly influential Washington D.C. law firm over their contacts with President some rich asshole’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
Attorney Michael Avenatti followed that up with a warning to other Cohen contacts to come clean now because he will be coming after them.
Speaking with host Joy Reid, Avenatti pointed the finger at the law firm of Squire Patton Boggs, with whom Cohen reportedly held meetings at the same time he was lining up clients with promises of influence with the rich asshole.
Addressing Cohen’s post-election cash windfall, Avenatti suggested another line of inquiry for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators.
“Here’s another issue that hasn’t been touched on yet and I think it’s going to be the next front of inquiry,” the attorney explained. “Shortly after the election, Michael Cohen forms a relationship with a very well known law firm in Washington, D.C.. by the name of Patton Boggs. And Patton Boggs has a long history of lobbying and being involved between companies and the U.S. government, that’s a very unusual relationship to have been formed right after the election.”
“Michael Cohen is not your average Patton Boggs attorney,” he elaborated with a smirk. “Some of us have experience with Patton Boggs, I know I do. It’s a very reputable law firm — some of those people are highly educated –a lot of experience, so it’s a very unusual relationship. Why did Patton Boggs and Michael Cohen come together? What did Michael Cohen sell to Patton Boggs as it related to the idea that they were going to allow Michael Cohen come to the law firm?”
“It’s clear to me what he sold them,” he added. “What he sold them was a book of clients, a book of corporations or individuals that had already retained him for access to the U.S. president. That needs to be the next inquiry; what did Patton Boggs know, and when did they know it? Did they know that Michael Cohen was lobbying? Did they not know it?”
Avenatti then turned to the camera to deliver a warning to anyone who has been in contact with Cohen.
“What I’m going to say is, if folks want to continue to hide this stuff and cover it up, I think it’s fantastic. because I’m going to out them, okay?” he stated. “We’re going to out them, bring all of this stuff to light. So if you’re out there and you have stuff relating to your relationships with Michael Cohen that you have a reasonable doubt is going to come out, you should be concerned, because they are going to come out. You better come clean with the American people. You better try to get out in front of this, period.”
You can watch the video below via MSNBC:
Kansas governor signs bill banning police officers from having sex during traffic stops
BY MORGAN GSTALTER - 05/11/18 02:41 PM EDT
Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer (R) signed a new bill into law on Thursday that bans police officers from having sex with people they pull over for traffic violations.
Sexual relations are now outlawed for police “during the course of a traffic stop, a custodial interrogation, an interview in connection with an investigation, or while the law enforcement officer has such person detained,” The Kansas City Star reported Thursday.
Before the measure, Kansas was one of 33 states where consensual sex between police and an individual they detained was not a crime, according to the Star.
New York passed a similar bill last month, closing a loophole in the state law by specifiying that people in police custody are unable to consent to sex.
Kansas law previously banned sexual relations between officers and people in jail. However, it didn't state anything about people stopped on the street or in their custody outside of the jail, Kansas Rep. Cindy Holscher (D) said.
Holscher introduced the bill after an investigation found that a Kansas City, Kan., detective coerced women to have sex with him by threatening to arrest them or their family.
"This helps the person who was detained in their neighborhood or stopped for a ticket, that type of thing," she told the Star.
The newspaper reported that several members of the Kansas House Judiciary Committee were surprised this wasn't already against the law.
"Those of us who have been there for a few years thought it was something that had already been taken care of in the law," state Rep. John Carmichael (D) told the Star.
The committee pushed to bundle the law with other law enforcement reforms.
‘You’re wringing your own neck’: Writer shuts down the rich asshole apologist’s unhinged blather about president’s ‘innocence’
Daily Beast columnist Jonathan Alter and AIM editor Carrie Sheffield.
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A conservative pundit declared President some rich asshole “innocent” of all accusations being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller, during a Saturday morning appearance on MSNBC.
Carrie Sheffield, national editor at the right-wing Accuracy In Media, also lashed out at the Federal Bureau of Investigation during the interview with anchor Alex Witt.
“Carrie, which side of the coin do you fall on?” Witt asked. “Is it a legitimate investigation or is it a witch hunt?”
“So I supported a legitimate investigation,” Sheffield claimed. “But I think the longer this has dragged on, and we see reportedly that Mueller was one of the key figures in opening this Stormy Daniels’ mess, this is way far beyond the bounds of his original confines, which was to investigate collusion from the Russians that hasn’t happened.”
“The more and more we see obstruction on the part of the FBI as it relates to separation of power,” she continued. “They are obstructing members of Congress who are trying to get to the bottom of the partisan nature of the Steele dossier.”
“So the more we unpeel the layers, the more we see there is a partisan motivation for this investigation, which stems from the Clinton dossier,” she claimed.
“But Carrie, can it also be, the more you peel the layers, the more information you’re finding, the more things point to something potentially?” Witt asked. “And you have to investigate them?”
“Well, it just seems like there’s no ‘there’ there,” Sheffield opined. “It seems like the emperor’s clothes are not there.”
“Seems?” Witt asked. “Do have insight into Bob Mueller? Do you know what he’s doing? Do you know what the investigation has?”
“I think the answer is no, because nobody seems to,” the host continued. “This guy is playing things close to the vest. So how can you say there’s no ‘there’ there?”
“How do you know conclusively?” Witt asked.
“I know there’s the presumption of innocence until proven guilty and so therefore I know that our president is innocent until proven guilty,” Sheffield replied. “So in my opinion, according to the tea leaves, the evidence that I see to-date, it again, the president is innocent.”
Sheffield also criticized MSNBC political analyst Jonathan Alter for comparing the investigations into some rich asshole to the investigations into former President Richard Nixon.
“This is different from Watergate, so it’s offensive for to you make that comparison,” Sheffield claimed. “It’s inaccurate and it’s something that happens in the liberal media over and over again to try to obscure the truth, that’s why middle Americans are sick of this.”
The conservative pundit suggested that Bill Clinton would be a better historical comparison.
“I think the more accurate one is probably Bill Clinton, because he won re-election,” she argued, despite his impeachment occurring after Clinton’s successful 1996 re-election.
“I think you’re wringing your own neck here, Carrie, I don’t need to say very much,” Alter observed. “But you’re not in any position to make a judgment about when this investigation has run its course, nor is some rich asshole, Mike Pence or anybody else.”
Watch:
the rich asshole administration rolls back rules protecting transgender inmates in federal prisons
BY AVERY ANAPOL - 05/12/18 08:36 AM EDT
President the rich asshole’s Justice Department moved Friday to roll back a series of Obama-era rules applying to transgender inmates in federal prisons.
The Bureau of Prisons released a policy change to its manual, which now says that the department will use “biological sex” as the basis for assigning facilities and bathrooms.
The order strikes a provision in the manual that said officials would “recommend housing by gender identity when appropriate,” and now says that designating inmates to facilities based on their identified gender “would be appropriate only in rare cases.”
The changes, which were first reported by BuzzFeed News, also include the addition of the word “necessary” to guidelines about when institutions will facilitate medical treatment.
The move comes after four women in a Texas prison challenged the transgender protection regulations put in place in 2012, arguing that being housed with transgender women ”creates a situation that incessantly violates the privacy of female inmates; endangers the physical and mental health of the female Plaintiffs and others, including prison staff; [and] increases the potential for rape.”
Pentagon delivers ‘devastating’ report on Jared Kushner’s attempt to update health care program for vets
Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to President some rich asshole. (DoD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro)
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According to an internal report obtained by Politico, Pentagon officials delivered a “devastating” appraisal of a health care initiative being headed by President some rich asshole’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with some doctors saying it could lead to increased deaths if not enacted properly and soon.
The report states, “The first stage of a multibillion-dollar military-VA digital health program championed by Jared Kushner has been riddled with problems,” with the Pentagon evaluation detailing 156 “critical” or “severe” incident reports – a number evaluators called “devastating.”
“Traditionally, if you have more than five [incident reports] at that high a level, the program has significant issues,” an unidentified member of the testing team admitted in an interview.
According to the report, Cerner Corp., the digital health records company that began installing the military’s new software system hosting digital medical records in February 2017, could see difficulties in getting their contract delayed.
A White House spokesperson defended Kushner on Friday, saying the rich asshole’s son-in-law — who has no experience in government contracting — had no involvement with Department off Defense’s contract with Cerner, but gave the go ahead to use the firm because of an existing relationship.
“He still believes that the decision to move the VA to Cerner was the right one,” the spokesman said, but admitted Kushner has advocated for “moving slowly, methodically and properly” with the VA contract to avoid the problems experienced by the military hospitals.
You can read the whole report here.
Staffers Promptly Leak About Sarah Sanders Screaming At Them For Leaking ‘Dying’ McCain ‘Joke’
The rich asshole administration leaks more than a colander, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders decided to put a stop to it once and for all after a staffer leaked a nasty “joke” communications staffer Kelly Sadler told a nasty joke about “dying” John McCain’s brain tumor.
Axios reports that Sanders rounded up her team of imbeciles, racists, idiots, stupid people, bigots, Nazis, and other assorted deplorables to scream about the “selfish” leak of Sadler’s remarks.
Sanders said Sadler’s “joke” was inappropriate, but that there was no justification for leaking it to the press, whining that it ruined what she delusionally called a great day for the White House after the rich asshole’s photo-op with the returned North Korean hostages.
“It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway,” Sadler had said of McCain’s decision to oppose the rich asshole’s nomination of notorious torture advocate Gina Haspel to head the CIA.
“No one is condoning the remark,” a source told Axios. “The message to the staff is that leaking it to the press is not how you handle it.”
“Sarah cares so much about the team, the cause, this country and this President. Sarah did absolutely the right thing in condemning the remark but also condemning the selfish action,” another source said.
But someone did condone the remark.
“You can put this on the record… I stand with Kelly Sadler,” strategic communications director Mercedes Schlapp reportedly said during the meeting.
“I am sure this conversation is going to leak, too. And that’s just disgusting,” Sanders told her team of morons on Friday.
And she was right.
This account was confirmed by no fewer than five people in the room. It’s gotten to the point that Sanders’ crew don’t feel they can trust each other and are forced to clam up for fear of their horrific remarks being made public.
Looks like someone needs to say “I’m sorry, Aunt Lydia” very soon.
House Speaker Ryan ordered Trey Gowdy to babysit Devin Nunes when he met with DOJ officials: report
Devin Nunes speaks to Fox News (screen grab)
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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) has been waging such a public war against the Department of Justice that Speaker Paul Ryan arranged a congressional escort for his latest meeting, The New York Times reported Saturday.
“The relationship between the Justice Department and Mr. Nunes has so eroded that when he trekked down Pennsylvania Avenue on Thursday from the Capitol to the department to discuss his latest request, Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a Republican colleague and former federal prosecutor, tagged along at the encouragement of the House speaker to help keep the meeting civil,” The Timesreported.
Speaker Ryan’s supervision strategy may have been effective, following the meeting Rep. Nunes and Rep. Gowdy issued a positive, joint statement.
“We had a productive discussion today with officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Department of Justice, and FBI in which we raised questions related to information requested from the Intelligence Community,” the statement said. “The officials committed to holding further discussions of these matters, and we look forward to continuing our dialogue next week to satisfy the Committee’s request.”
Democrats, however, believe that the information request is just a smokescreen to obstruct the investigations into President some rich asshole.
“The goal is not the information, the goal is the fight,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). “And the ultimate objective is to undermine the Justice Department, undermine Bob Mueller and give the president a pretext to fire people.”
Russian Companies Will Make A Lot Of Money Thanks To the rich asshole Pulling Out Of Iran Deal
When the rich asshole pulled out of the Iran deal, he didn’t just risk causing a global crisis and a new war in the Middle East — he also ensured that his rich Russian friends would get richer.
Russia has condemned the rich asshole’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal President Obama worked so hard to secure, but that’s all fluff — Russian companies stand to gain quite a bit from the United States’ nonparticipation.
“The deal and the lifting of sanctions in 2015 marked the return of European business to Iran. But it’s unlikely they can keep doing business today, giving room to Russia,” political scientist Vladimir Sotnikov says. “Russia can now go ahead at full speed.”
“European companies are more exposed to the US market, they must comply not to get into trouble. The Russians are less (exposed) and have less to lose,” Igor Delanoe, an analyst at the Franco-Russian Observatory group, explained, adding that Russia and Iran managed a good business relationship “without any fuss” before the deal was put in place.
“They are used to working within legal and economic constraints,” Delanoe says, adding that Russia has a “real role to play” in Iran’s energy and electricity sectors. “The US has systematically forced Iran to turn more towards Russia and China.”
“Russia wants to sell steel, transport infrastructure and other manufactured goods to Iran. The less competition from the US and the EU, the better,” Charlie Robertson, an analyst at Renaissance Capital, says. Both Russia and China have said that they intend to continue doing business with Iran. As Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov says, “we are not scared of sanctions.”
Part of the reason Russia is not scared of sanctions is that the rich asshole repeatedly refuses to enforce sanctions against his friend Vladimir Putin’s country.
Another thing Russia has going for it is that the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran deal has pushed oil prices to their highest level since 2014, which Russia’s Alfa Bank calls a “great relief for the Russian market.”
the rich asshole’s interest, as most of us know, has never been what is good for the United States — and this is yet another example of him putting Russian interests ahead of our own.
It’s time to get the butternut bigot out of office. As he said himself, you “either have a country or you don’t.” We need to remove him while we still do.
the rich asshole just rolled back more Obama regulations – now he’s making transgender inmates less safe
President some rich asshole (AFP / NICHOLAS KAMM)
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The rich asshole administration has just rolled back regulations, mostly from the Obama era, designed to make transgender prisoners more safe. Going forward the Bureau of Prisons will not use an inmate’s gender identity, but their biological sex in determining which cell blocks they will be housed in, and which bathrooms transgender inmates can use.
“The designation to a facility of the inmate’s identified gender would be appropriate only in rare cases,” the new Transgender Offender Manual now says, as Buzzfeed’s Dominic Holden, who broke the news Friday evening, reports.
Holden adds that the new the rich asshole “policy apparently gives federal officials, for example, more leeway to place transgender women in cells alongside men — a circumstance that transgender advocates argue leaves transgender inmates vulnerable to violence and rape.”
By comparison, under President Obama, the “rules said officials must give ‘serious consideration’ to the wishes of transgender and intersex inmates when assigning facilities, while also instructing prison staff to ‘consider on a case-by-case basis whether a placement would ensure the inmate’s health and safety, and whether the placement would present management or security problems.'”
By comparison, under President Obama, the “rules said officials must give ‘serious consideration’ to the wishes of transgender and intersex inmates when assigning facilities, while also instructing prison staff to ‘consider on a case-by-case basis whether a placement would ensure the inmate’s health and safety, and whether the placement would present management or security problems.'”
That is no longer policy.
Housing and bathrooms are not the only areas rollbacks are being made in the way the Bureau of Prisons treats transgender inmates.
“The new guidance also inserts the word ‘necessary’ into a section of the manual on hormone and medical treatment, indicating the agency will make determinations about what sort of hormone therapies and other gender transition services are required.”
President the rich asshole himself has a history of attacking transgender people. His July 26, 2017 tweets announcing he would institute a total ban on transgender service members in the armed forces falsely claimed their health care costs were too high.
Mueller investigating funds used for the rich asshole inauguration
the rich asshole's inaugural committee raised massive amounts of cash, much of which is still unaccounted for.
Robert Mueller is looking into the curious case of some rich asshole’s record inaugural fundraising, according to a report by ABC News.
The report on Friday said the Russia special counsel and his team of investigators have questioned “several witnesses,” including the rich asshole’s friend and chair of the organizing committee Tom Barrack, about contributions to the fund — particularly “donors with connections to Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.”
Mueller’s interest in the inaugural committee seems to overlap with some figures who have entered the public spotlight recently thanks to disclosures of shifty payments to the rich asshole fixer Michael Cohen.
Andrew Intrater, who runs Columbus Nova, gave $250,000 to the inaugural fund. He is a business associate of and relative to Russian billionaire oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, who is close to Vladimir Putin. Intrater and Vekselberg attended the rich asshole’s inauguration.
Another likely person of interest is Leonard Blavatnik, who has extensive business ties in Russia and is no stranger to attention from Mueller’s team over contributions to the rich asshole — he gave $1 million to the committee through his company, Access Industries.
AT&T — which came under fire for the “big mistake” it made after the rich asshole was elected in paying Michael Cohen $600,000 to do very little — gave $2,082,483to the inaugural fund (second only to Sheldon Adelson’s $5 million contribution).
Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, Dow, Bank of America, Qualcomm, and Boeing each contributed $1 million to the fund, and many other corporations gave hundreds of thousands, which is not unheard of for an inaugural committee. Yet the rich asshole’s corporate contribution total hit $45 million, which is $8 million less than the $53 million Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration raised in total from individuals and corporations.
What happened to the money the rich asshole collected? Apart from huge perksto top donors, it’s not fully clear.
The committee the rich asshole formed to fund his inaugural festivities raised $107 million, the most in history, about twice the previous record. While prior administrations used donations limits to allay fears of bribery and influence-buying, the rich asshole’s committee had no such limits.
Obama banned corporate, PAC, and lobbyist money — a rule that was abandoned by the rich asshole. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush refused corporate contributions over $100,000 (Bush increased the limit to $250,000 for his second inaugural). The complete lack of any such limits on the rich asshole’s inaugural fund, and the corresponding lack of transparency of how the money was actually spent after the relatively smaller festivities died down fostered concerns of graft and bribery.
One year later the committee filed tax forms showing that it had paid $26 million to an event planning firm (created six weeks before Inauguration Day) run by a friend of Melania the rich asshole, while donating $5 million to charity. The filing did not list spending by subcontractor.
The total spending disclosed by the rich asshole’s inaugural committee dwarfs that of past committees. ProPublica asked Greg Jenkins, who ran George W. Bush’s committee in 2005, how the rich asshole could have spent so much on his inaugural events, and he replied:
It’s inexplicable to me. I literally don’t know. They had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events and they raise at least twice as much as we did. So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.
Steve Kerrigan led both of Barack Obama’s inaugural committees, and he told ProPublica, “We literally did two inaugurations for less than the cost of that.”
‘I feel so stupid’: the rich asshole supporters ‘tricked by the devil’ now facing financial ruin
some rich asshole during CNN debate (Photo: Screen capture via video)
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Small business owners who supported some rich asshole are complaining about troubles hiring foreign seasonal labor the Lexington Herald-Leader reports.
The newspaper interviewed multiple landscaping business owners who claim they are unable to hire Americans for the same wages.
Eddie Devine voted for the rich asshole, but worries he may go out of business if he is unable to continue hiring 20 foreign workers a season though the H-2B visa program.
“I feel like I’ve been tricked by the devil,” Devine admitted. “I feel so stupid.”
Devin says the rich asshole’s policies are more about race than economics, noting that the rich asshole properties in New York and Florida rely upon the H-2B visa program for 144 jobs a year.
“I think there’s a war on brown people,” he argued. “I want to know why it’s OK for him to get his workers, but supporters like me don’t get theirs.”
“We live and die by these visas,” said Ken Monin, owner of Monin Construction. “Last year we about went bankrupt. The workers we were supposed to get in March didn’t show up until August because they couldn’t get visas.”
“Americans don’t want most of these jobs,” Monin claimed.
Giuliani contradicts White House on AT&T merger, then backtracks
"The president denied the merger."
Rudy Giuliani, who was hired by the White House to help defend the special counsel’s probe against President some rich asshole, is yet again backtracking on comments unrelated to the Russia investigation that go against previous White House statements.
On Friday, Giuliani told the Huffington Post that “the rich asshole denied the merger [between AT&T and Time Warner].” That was news to many, as the stance of the White House for the last few months has been that the rich asshole has had no hand at all in the merger, a consolidation which the Department of Justice is suing to block.
In the interest of damage control, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reiterated the White House’s position Saturday morning, “The Department of Justice denied the deal,” she told CNN.
Giuliani was then forced to backtrack, telling CNN that the rich asshole “didn’t interfere” with the Justice Department’s case. According to Giuliani, what he was trying to say was that the $600,000 payment AT&T made to Michael Cohen’s LLC did not sway the rich asshole to act in the corporation’s favor.
AT&T confirmed the payment last week, saying in a statement, “Essential Consulting was one of several firms we engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration.”
Whether or not the rich asshole personally denied the merger is vital, considering the political implications that have plagued the case from the beginning.
Time Warner is the parent company of CNN, a news outlet President the rich asshole has a long history of bitter conflict with. In October of 2016, when AT&T announced its bid to buy Time Warner, then-candidate the rich asshole said he opposed the deal, and has since maintained that position, saying the deal is “not good for the country.”
There were concerns, however, that the rich asshole and his aides would try to block the deal even though he was not supposed to play a direct role in whether or not it gets approved.
Giuliani’s comments on AT&T are the latest in a series of gaffes by the former New York mayor that have done more harm than good to the president.
Last week, he appeared on ABC News and gave an incoherent interview that suggested the rich asshole had never even met adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with the president while before he ran for office. Giuliani was forced to backtrack after host George Stephanopoulos showed a picture of the rich asshole and Daniels standing together.
Giuliani also suggested that $130,000 in “hush money” made to Daniels “may have involved the campaign,” which counters the rich asshole legal team’s larger narrative — that the payment was irrelevant to the campaign. These statements could later be used against the rich asshole in court.
HBO’s Bill Maher scorches Heartland voters for ‘getting in bed’ with a mobbed-up the rich asshole
HBO host Bill Maher -- screenshot
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On Friday night, HBO host Bill Maher had a few things to say to voters in the heartland who fell in love with some rich asshole whose presidency is more “Goodfellas’ and less “Camelot.”
Pointing out the motley cast President some rich asshole brought to Washington, D.C., with him, the Real Time host described them as New York City’s “most toxic trash” — listing off the rich asshole acolytes Michael Cohen, Rudy Giuliani, some rich asshole Jr, and Anthony Scaramucci.
“What happened to your values? What happened to good manners and monogamy? You’re the ‘my word is my bond’ people. These guys lie just to stay in practice,” Maher lectured the rich asshole’s salt of the earth voters. “You’re all about an honest day’s work. the rich asshole watches TV until noon. You’re frugal. They spend like identity thieves who’ve got a hold of your PIN number. You’re the stoics. the rich asshole’s a whiny little b*tch.”
“People call this presidency a ‘reality show,’ It’s more like a Scorsese movie,” Maher raged. “Everything the rich asshole does is modeled on the mob. Who does the rich asshole surround himself with? Disposable lawyers and idiot members of his own family. Who’s his worst enemy? The FBI.”
“And I must say, as someone who has never liked some rich asshole, even before he got into politics, his being president has been quite a revelation,” Maher remarked. “I always thought of him as an egomaniac and a blowhard. But I didn’t realize until this very year that he was a cheap hood all along, a common thug.”
Maher added the rich asshole voters are getting what they deserve for “getting in bed with the mob.”
You can watch the video below via HBO:
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May 12, 2018
As a new Ebola outbreak was declared on Tuesday, the rich asshole called to rescind emergency outbreak funding and the White House abruptly disbanded its global health security team.
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Tuesday that a new Ebola outbreak has emerged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — and thanks to the rich asshole administration, we are woefully under-equipped to deal with it.
Just as news broke about the resurgence of the deadly disease, the rich asshole administration made a series of moves that could severely hamper America’s capacity to respond to disease outbreaks.
Hours before the announcement from WHO, the rich asshole called on Congress to rescind $252 million that had been set aside specifically for the purpose of dealing with Ebola outbreaks. The money was left over from the funds that Congress appropriated to fight the 2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, which was the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded.
The money, which the rich asshole referred to as “irresponsible federal spending,” was actually set aside intentionally in anticipation of the next outbreak. Having funds available immediately allows the U.S. to quickly deploy health officials to the site of the outbreak so it can be stopped before it spreads further and becomes a deadly — and extremely costly — international crisis.
But the rich asshole thinks outbreak preparedness is “excessive spending” and wants Congress to rescind all of the funding.
And that’s not the only move the rich asshole administration made on Tuesday that threatens to cripple our ability to effectively deal with deadly disease outbreaks.
As WHO was confirming the details of the new Ebola outbreak, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, the top White House official in charge of coordinating the national response to deadly pandemics, abruptly left the administration.
He was reportedly “pushed out” by the rich asshole’s new national security adviser, John Bolton, and will not be replaced with someone else.
To make matters worse, the global health security team that Ziemer oversaw was disbanded upon his exit. This means that “no senior administration official is now focused solely on global health security,” the Washington Post reports.
The outbreak in the DRC is still small, involving two confirmed Ebola cases and 32 more suspected cases, including 18 deaths, as of Wednesday. However, Ebola spreads incredibly rapidly and experts are concerned that the disease could easily be carried by travelers to more densely populated towns and cities due to the location of the outbreak.
Keeping it contained will depend on a rapid response — and the rich asshole administration just made it harder for the U.S. to mount such a response.
And this won’t be the last outbreak we have to worry about. Ebola outbreaks appear to be occurring with greater frequency in recent years, and infectious disease outbreaks are on the rise around the world.
As the rich asshole continues to throw money at a useless border wall, he’s leaving the entire nation vulnerable to deadly diseases lurking just a plane ride away.
A gaslighter’s favorite trick: Fluid hard-lining
Pres. some rich asshole gives an angry response during an interview (Screen capture)
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You can’t win with a gaslighter but not for lack of clearly delineated moral categories. Gaslighters have plenty of those. They’re preachy masters of black and white moral categorizing. They always draw tidy distinctions with sanctimonious authority, as clear as the difference between heads and tails.
“Heads I win, tails you lose.”
“Not fair! You mean heads I lose, tails I win.”
“That’s what I said, idiot. Heads you lose, tails I win.”
“You mean tails you lose, heads you win.”
“Exactly. Tails you lose, heads I win.”
“Not fair! You mean heads I lose, tails I win.”
“That’s what I said, idiot. Heads you lose, tails I win.”
“You mean tails you lose, heads you win.”
“Exactly. Tails you lose, heads I win.”
Firm though their distinctions are, it doesn’t prevent them from being as slippery as they want. Drawing hard lines and then moving the lines fluidly to suit their whims is the gaslighter’s favorite trick. Gaslighters are rhetorical gerrymanderers.
Gerrymandering is, of course, a political term for drawing and redrawing voting district lines for political advantage. Gerrymandering has become such a problem in America that Obama declared ending it to be his post-presidential priority.
Democrats have done their share of gaslighting. These days the GOP is bent on doing more than its share. The Koch brother’s foundation has been funding aggressive campaigns to take over state government because whichever party holds office gets to gerrymander congressional district lines after the 2020 census. So far, the GOP has control of 35 state governments.
But gerrymandering is a far bigger political problem than this. In politics, there’s rhetorical gerrymandering too, as there probably is in everyday life.
If you’re dealing with an everyday gaslighter you’re dealing with a master of rhetorical gerrymandering, drawing hard distinctions between good and bad, that they then wiggle to their advantage. Let’s start with some political gaslighting examples since they’re so blatant and on everyone’s minds these days.
Make America Great Again, fake news, elites, and PC—these delineate clear categories. MAGA is always a virtue according to the rich asshole and fake news, PC and elites are always vices. His supporters love his black and white clarity. His opponents, like me, think he’s a slippery con-man hypocrite. Why?
Rhetorical gerrymandering. Though the rich asshole postures as the hard and fast authority on the difference between virtue and vice, he plays fast and loose with his virtue and vice category boundaries.
the rich asshole can’t stand fake news. He draws a hard line against it. Hard though it may be, the line is completely flexible in his hands. Whatever flatters him is real news. Whatever insults him is fake news.
Same with PC. If it offends others they’re just snowflake, PC losers. If it offends him, it’s not PC. Elite insiders? He draws a hard line against them, defined as anyone powerful who gets in his way.
Fake news, PC, elite: The categories are absolute but the lines are drawn by gut. It’s not difficult to pull off that kind of slipperiness if you’ve seen the light as he and his followers have. Here’s how that works:
You’ve seen the light. You’ve discovered that X is always good, Y is always evil. From now on, you represent X against Y. You are the very embodiment of X, so you needn’t bother defining X carefully. Just call everything you like X and everything you don’t like Y.
I always get a few angry letters when I pick on the GOP these days. I got one recently from someone who didn’t like me suggesting that if the rich asshole irritates you, you should channel your frustration into wondering more carefully how to draw the line between jerks and non-jerk.
The reader was hurt and offended that I would suggest that the rich asshole was a jerk. She said maybe we need a jerk as president these days to drain the swamp. A sentence later, she said that maybe I’m the real jerk for writing my article.
So which is it? Are jerks the heroes who drain the swamp or the evil ones who write articles that offend GOPC sensitivities? It all depends on how you define jerk.
My point here is that to gaslighters, a definition isn’t something to bother with. If you’re on the side of virtue against vice, however you label them, just trust your gut to label correctly.
Call it whatever’s popular in your tribe at the moment but slide yourself into the virtue tent and kick your opponents out of the virtue tent at every opportunity. You’ll get nothing but confirmation that you’ve drawn the right distinction because you’ll never experience self-doubt again.
And it’s not just the GOP. I live in Berkeley, California, where a recent fad was mindfulness, not as a useful daily meditation practice but as a way of life. Ekart Tolle was this movement’s early some rich asshole. He labeled virtue as mindfulness, spirituality, and being in the now. He labeled vice as ego. Having “discovered” these “true” labels, he then went around labeling whatever he liked as mindful and whatever he hated as ego. We ended up with a lot of mindful gaslighters in this town, quick to push you out of the tent as unmindful and egotistical if you got in their way.
In short, here’s the gaslighter big trick:
- Have an epiphany that makes it clear as night and day, what’s good and what’s bad.
- Draw a hard line between good and bad with a label for each. X is always good. Y is always bad.
- Trust your gut to label everything you like as X and everything you don’t like as Y.
Congratulations! From now on you’re always on the side of X-right and anyone who gets in your way is Y-wrong. That’s the gaslighting. You make anyone who disagrees with you wrong. Heads, the gaslighter wins, tails the victim loses.
A skillful gaslighter collects many X’s and Y’s all wielded the same way. Think of the advantage even with the handful from my reader. In so many words:
Show respect (good) for the rich asshole. You’re being disrespectful (bad) to his supporters. He’s not “PC” (bad) but maybe it takes a “jerk” (good) to drain the swamp. Maybe you’re the “jerk” (bad) for showing “disrespect” (bad) to us. The “elites” (bad) deserve “disrespect” (good). That’s why we need a “disrespectful” (good) powerful (“elite”—good) “jerk” (good) as president.
However you slice it, those who disagree with her are bad. That’s the gaslighting, making others wrong by use of fluid hardline categorization. Having multiple fluid hardline categories to wield, traps victims any way they turn. Heads I win, tails you lose, or tails I win heads you lose. No matter how you slice it, you lose.
Some popular examples of fluid hard-lining these days:
- For libertarians: Liberty is good. Liberty is whatever I like.
- For the religious: Faith is good. Faith is whatever I like.
- For the spiritual: Spirituality is good. Spirituality is whatever I like.
- For the anti-PC warrior: PC is bad. PC is whatever I don’t like.
- For the “open-minded”: Open-minded is good. Open-minded is being receptive to whatever I say.
- For the “non-judgmental”: Judgment is bad. Judgment is whatever I don’t want to hear.
- For the conservative: Liberal is bad. Liberal is whatever I don’t like.
- For the liberal: Conservative is bad. Conservative is whatever I don’t like.
One can be interested in any of these approaches without being a gaslighter. Gaslighting results from claiming to draw a hard line that you wield with fluid self-serving authority.
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May 12, 2018
A White House staffer made a crass 'joke' about Sen. John McCain's health. But Sarah Huckabee Sanders was reportedly angrier about the leak than she was about the comment itself.
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain took a stance against the rich asshole’s nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, over her record on torture. That led a White House staffer to make a nasty comment about McCain’s ill health and prognosis.
But press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was reportedly more upset that the staffer’s comment leaked out than she was about the comment itself.
During a closed-door meeting Thursday, White House special assistant Kelly Sadler said McCain’s opposition to Haspel needn’t concern anyone in the administration.
But her reason for saying so was vile.
“It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway,” Sadler said, mocking 81-year-old McCain’s diagnosis of brain cancer.
Despite disgust and backlash, the White House refused to apologize for Sadler’s comments. Sanders told reporters that she would neither comment on the incident nor rebuke Sadler.
“I’m not going to validate a leak one way or the other out of an internal staff meeting,” Sanders said. And she justified her refusal to apologize by dismissing the controversy as “people [who] want to create issues of leaked staff meetings.”
In keeping with that attitude, ABC News reports that while Sanders “scolded” her staff over the comment, it appeared that her anger was focused elsewhere.
“Sanders called the comment ‘unacceptable,’ but was said to be more upset about the leak” than the mocking of McCain’s health.
Sadler herself did call McCain’s daughter to apologize, according to ABC News. Meghan McCain expressed frustration that a comment like Sadler’s wouldn’t result in firing.
“I don’t understand what kind of environment you’re working in when that would be acceptable and you can come to work the next day and still have a job,” she said on “The View” on Friday.
Yet Sadler’s comment actually fits in perfectly and repulsively well with the rich asshole administration.
After all, during the presidential campaign, the rich asshole himself launched one of the nastiest political attacks McCain has likely ever received.
At the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, the rich asshole lashed out at McCain in petulance over the senator’s dislike for him. But the rich asshole went beyond his usual absurd nicknames. He actually mocked McCain’s decorated military service and time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
“He’s not a war hero,” the rich asshole insisted. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” He later added that he thought McCain had “done very little for the veterans.”
the rich asshole, of course, never even went. He managed to secure five draft deferments, claiming he had “bone spurs” in one foot that prevented him from serving.
McCain himself indirectly slammed the rich asshole for using his wealth and connections to avoid service.
“One aspect of the [Vietnam] conflict by the way that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest income level of America, and the highest income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur,” McCain said during an interview with C-SPAN3.
“That is wrong,” he added.
It is indeed. As is saying a senator’s opinion on a crucial issue doesn’t matter because he likely doesn’t have long to live.
Sanders took her cues from the rich asshole, insisting there was nothing to apologize for in Sadler’s crude comment. And no wonder, since just days ago at the NRA convention, the rich asshole was on the attack again, this time against not just McCain.
He went after special counsel Robert Mueller, who earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart as a Marine in Vietnam. And he smeared former Secretary of State John Kerry, who earned three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star during his own service in Vietnam.
This White House is no friend to the military or to veterans, no matter who they are. Sanders’ refusal to thoroughly denounce a nasty attack against a war hero and member of Congress only goes to show that the administration sees nothing wrong with that.
the rich asshole administration rolls back transgender prison protections
The Bureau of Prisons will use "biological sex" to determine where prisoners are housed.
On Friday night, the rich asshole administration released new rules that change the way transgender people in prison are assigned housing, in a move that advocates said targeted the most vulnerable and posed a “direct threat to the safety of transgender people in our nation’s prisons.”
Before the notice, for instance, a transgender woman could expect to be housed in a women’s prison, but under the new guidance she would be placed in a men’s prison because of her sex assigned at birth.
“Once again, the rich asshole Administration is turning its back on those most vulnerable. It is well established that transgender prisoners – particularly transgender women housed in men’s facilities – suffer much greater rates of sexual abuse than other prison populations,” said Lambda Legal’s Richard Saenz in a statement.
The federal government’s own statistics show that 34 percent of transgender prisoners report sexual victimization, compared to 4 percent of all federal prisoners. A California study found that in prison, transgender people are 13 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than non-transgender people.
The rollback happened after “four evangelical Christian women in a Texas prison sued in US District Court to challenge the Obama-era guidelines, and claimed sharing quarters with transgender women subjected them to dangerous conditions,” as Buzzfeed, which initially reported the rule change, said Friday night.
The new notice deleted from the Transgender Offender Manual this sentence: “The TEC [Transgender Executive Council] will recommend housing by gender identity when appropriate.” It then detailed how the TEC should assess assignments on a “case-by-case basis” — beginning with using biological sex as the “initial determination” for assignment, then considering the inmate’s health, safety, behavioral history, and then the “management and security of the institution.”
“The designation to a facility of the inmate’s identified gender would be appropriate only in rare cases after the consideration of all of the above factors and where there has been significant progress towards transition as demonstrated by medical and mental health history,” the new guidance concludes.
The threats to transgender prisoners are not limited to physical violence — a survey found that prison staff refused hormone therapy to 44 percent transgender, non-binary gender, and Two-Spirit respondents. The vast majority of survey respondents said they were refused undergarments that fit their gender.
The National Center for Transgender Equality in a press release called the move a “direct threat to the safety of transgender people in our nation’s prisons.”
It also argued that the change “stands in direct defiance of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which mandates prison officials must screen all individuals at admission and upon transfer to assess their risk of experiencing abuse.”
This move, long feared by the LGBTQ community, was just another in a long line of actions the rich asshole administration has taken that threaten the rights of transgender people. The administration has attempted (with limited success) to ban transgender people from serving in the military, relying on junk science. It also reversed a rule that prevented health care providers from discriminating based on gender identity.
The policy change affects some of the most vulnerable people in some of the most vulnerable places in the country.
“The extreme rates of physical and sexual violence faced by transgender people in our nation’s prisons is a stain on the entire criminal justice system,” said executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, Mara Keisling in a release.
John Kelly said immigrants could not ‘assimilate well’ — so a genealogist dug up the Kelly’s family history
John Kelly gives a press conference/Screenshot
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White House chief of staff John Kelly, made a highly offensive comments about immigrants during an interview with National Public Radio on Friday.
Kelly said immigrants are: “not people that would easily assimilate into the United States into our modern society.”
He continued: “They’re overwhelmingly rural people in the countries they come from — fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm. They don’t speak English. … They don’t integrate well, they don’t have the skills.”
Kelly received a serious backlash from colleagues for these comments. One genealogist, took it a step further.
Jennifer Mendelsohn, looked up Kelly’s ancestry to prove to him and the rest of America that we all come from immigrants. Mendelsohn found out through a 1900 census bureau that Kelly’s great grandfather lived in America undocumented for 18 years and could not “read, write, or speak English.”
She revealed her findings on Twitter:
I need to pause and give credit and thanks to @Yokumbrook, the genealogist who did the legwork on John Kelly's tree.
The 1930 census shows those great-grandparents living with their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, one of whom was Kelly's mother.
John DeMarco had been here for 47 years and was not an American citizen ("AL"). Crescenza had been here for 37 years and spoke no English. pic.twitter.com/5Nyfsu48y0
Deep dive tk, but here is the 1910 census showing Kelly's great-grandfather Giuseppe Pedalino and his second wife Concetta. (Kelly's great-grandma died in 1898.)
He was a wagon driver.
She was illiterate and could not speak English 10 years after arrival.#resistancegenealogy
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle tears up while scolding White House for John McCain comments
MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle noting Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been awarded "the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, the Bronze Medal, the Navy Combat Action ribbon, the prisoner of war medal, and many, many more."
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MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle chocked up and was near tears reporting on the “fierce backlash” against White House special assistant Kelly Sadler’s comments on Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
“We’re coming to you at a time when poking fun at the impending death of a former Navy fighter pilot, a prisoner of war, a long-time public servant who is now battling brain cancer, that appears to be fair game,” she noted. “Today, it is from a top White House communications — a communications — aide for President the rich asshole, her name is Kelly Sadler.”
As Ruhle recounted McCain’s experience in Vietnam, she began to choke up.
“In all, McCain spent 2,008 days in captivity,” Ruhle reported. “That’s 5 1/2 years — he did not see his wife and his children for a total of six years.”
“So let me recap for you — White House communication aide Kelly Sadler, Senator John McCain survived being blown out of the sky, sinking to the bottom of the lake, 5 1/2 years of torture and is now battling brain cancer.”
“And Mrs. Sadler, if you wonder about his time in captivity, please, I invite you to watch him walk,” the host continued. “To this day he walks with a limp and he cannot raise his arms above his shoulders.”
“So please, tell us again, Mrs. Sadler, how Senator John McCain, he doesn’t matter,” Ruhle challenged. “Senator John McCain matters, he’s a great American who fought and nearly died multiple times for the freedoms you and I enjoy every single day.”
Ruhle also called out White House chief of Staff John Kelly for allowing such behavior.
“John Kelly, you are the chief of staff of that White House, please, we’d love to hear an apology,” Ruhle urged.
Watch:
Mueller looking into foreign-linked donations to the rich asshole inauguration: report
BY AVERY ANAPOL - 05/11/18 11:56 AM EDT
Federal investigators are reportedly looking into donations to President the rich asshole's inauguration from donors with links to foreign entities.
Sources told ABC News that special counsel Robert Mueller's team has questioned several inauguration donors with personal or business connections to Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Mueller's team has also interviewed longtime the rich asshole friend Tom Barrack, who oversaw the inauguration fundraising efforts, and also operates a fund with hundreds of millions in real estate and other holdings in the Middle East.
Barrack brought in more than $107 million for the rich asshole’s inauguration.
Multiple donors who gave up to $1 million to the rich asshole inauguration fund have links to the named countries, according to public records reviewed by ABC.
Mueller’s team has reportedly been asking witnesses about Leonard Blavatnik and Andrew Intrater, two American businessmen who made major donations to the inauguration and have business ties to Russia, according to ABC News.
Mueller is investigating whether the rich asshole campaign colluded with Russia, and has so far indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups on charges related to meddling in the election.
He has also charged a number of former the rich asshole campaign officials on criminal financial charges unrelated to their work on the campaign.
Updated at 12:13 p.m.
Go along with US sanctions, and you’ll face jail: Russian lawmakers warn
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at the Gorki residence outside Moscow, on March 29, 2013. [AFP]
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Russian lawmakers want to make it a criminal offense punishable by up to four years in jail to observe sanctions imposed by the United States or other foreign countries, Russian news agencies reported on Friday.
Washington imposed sweeping sanctions on some of Russia’s biggest companies and businessmen on April 6, striking at allies of President Vladimir Putin to punish Moscow for its alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and other so-called malign activities.
Russia has since been considering how to respond and the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, is due to start voting on specific counter sanctions legislation on Tuesday next week, a day after a draft law is brought to parliament.
A current draft of that legislation envisages jailing any individual or the representatives of any legal entity in Russia who refuses to supply services or do business with a Russian citizen citing U.S. or other foreign sanctions.
Such a crime would be punishable by up to four years in jail or other limits on an individual’s freedom or by a fine of up to 600,000 roubles ($9,730), Russian news agencies reported.
The same legislation would also make it a criminal offense for Russian citizens to help foreign governments sanction Russia by providing advice or information.
The same legislation would also make it a criminal offense for Russian citizens to help foreign governments sanction Russia by providing advice or information.
That offense would be punishable by up to three years in jail or other restrictions on an individual’s freedom or by a fine of up to 500,000 roubles ($8,110), Russian news agencies said.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said last month he backed the idea of making it a criminal offense to observe U.S. sanctions and said the government should support sanctions-hit Russian companies to ensure that jobs were not lost.
However, lawmakers have diluted other proposed measures removing earlier language that targeted specific goods and sectors amid fears about how such measures might hurt Russian consumers and industries.
There were also concerns that specific measures targeted against U.S. goods might prompt Washington to enact more sanctions on Moscow and it is unclear whether the current draft law may yet undergo further dilution.
AT&T: Hiring Cohen was 'big mistake'
BY ALI BRELAND - 05/11/18 09:40 AM EDT
AT&T's CEO said Friday that hiring President the rich asshole's personal attorney Michael Cohen was "a big mistake."
In a memo to employees, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that while everything the company did in hiring Cohen was in accordance with the law, they should not have hired him.
“There is no other way to say it — AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake,” Stephenson wrote. “To be clear, everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate. But the fact is, our past association with Cohen was a serious misjudgment.”
In the letter, Stephenson also announced that Bob Quinn, AT&T’s senior executive vice president of external & legislative affairs, will step down. AT&T’s legislative affairs group will now report to the company’s general counsel, David McAtee.
Stephenson explained Quinn’s departure as a retirement without specifying further.
The AT&T CEO also included a fact sheet with his letter to employees detailing the company’s version of events around hiring Cohen.
According to the fact sheet, Cohen approached the company around the time of the rich asshole presidential transition, saying that he would be leaving the rich asshole Organization to consult for corporate clients on the new administration.
AT&T confirmed that it paid Cohen $600,000, in monthly $50,000 installments from January 2017 to December 2017.
AT&T paid a Cohen company, Essential Consultants LLC. That is the same company the rich asshole lawyer used to pay adult-film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to not talk about an affair she alleges she had with the rich asshole.
AT&T paid Cohen at a time when it was pursuing a merger with Time Warner, which required administration approval.
On the campaign trail, the rich asshole had said that he opposed the merger and would attempt to block it if he were elected.
The Department of Justice has since sued to block the $85 billion merger. The case is still pending.
Ex-Navy officer says John Kelly would have been ‘kicked out’ of Marines for ‘disgraceful’ remarks on immigrants
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly (Screen capture)
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After White House chief of staff John Kelly made a series of divisive remarks about immigrants, a former Naval officer and current intelligence analyst slammed the four-star general.
“They don’t integrate well,” Kelly said of undocumented immigrants, deriding their education levels and claiming they “don’t have skills.”
Malcolm Nance, an MSNBC military analyst, tweeted Kelly’s comments were “disgraceful” and that the chief of staff “embraces openly racist & bigoted ideals.”
“He would have been kicked out of [the U.S. Marine Corps] for comments fractionally close to this,” the onetime senior chief petty officer wrote.
Disgraceful. General John Kelly embraces openly racist & bigoted ideals. He would have been kicked out of the @USMC for comments fractionally close to this. twitter.com/geoffrbennett/…
Good economic vibes fail to make GOP tax law popular
BY NAOMI JAGODA - 05/11/18 06:08 AM EDT
Americans are feeling upbeat about the economy and the state of the country, but that doesn’t appear to be translating into support for the tax bill — a worrying trend for Republicans seeking to keep the House.
GOP lawmakers and outside conservatives acknowledged the gap and give a variety of explanations.
They say taxpayers may not yet be seeing benefits from the law and that President the rich asshole and congressional Republicans could spend more time messaging on the issue.
“We should be talking about it every day,” said Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
By most standards, the economy should be bolstering the GOP’s midterm hopes.
The unemployment rate declined to 3.9 percent in April, the lowest level since December 2000, while the number of job openings hit a record high in March.
A CNN poll conducted this month found that 57 percent of respondents think the country is doing well, up from 49 percent in February.
A CBS News poll conducted earlier this month found that 66 percent of adults think the economy is good. The news outlet’s polls have found that at least 60 percent of respondents have rated the economy as good since the rich asshole took office.
Polls on the tax law, however, keep finding that disapproval of the law exceeds approval. Several polls have also shown that few people have noticed an increase in their paychecks due to the measure.
The CBS News poll found that 43 percent of voters approved of the law while 46 percent disapproved. It also found that 62 percent thought the law would either hurt them or have no effect.
A Monmouth University poll conducted late last month found that 40 percent approved of the tax law and 44 percent disapproved. It also found that most Americans think they have been helped only a little or not at all from the growing economy.
Republicans frequently say public opinion on the tax law will rise as people see its beneifts, which they say will take time.
“I think there’s going to be a delayed effect on the benefits of tax reform because a lot of people, I think, until they file next year, maybe aren’t seeing it directly, particularly if they auto-deposit [their paychecks],” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), a member of Senate GOP leadership and the tax-writing Finance Committee.
Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas), a member of the Ways and Means Committee, said that many taxpayers have just finished filing their tax returns this year under the old code. Most of the tax cuts in the law take effect for the taxes people will file next year.
“I think a lot of people are just unsure still how it affects them,” he said.
Several Republicans also say Democrats’ messaging against the bill has been effective.
“The Democrats uniformly voted against it, and they’re going home and messaging that and trying to act if there’s no relationship between what you legislate and what happens in the economy,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who still thinks the tax law will still work to Republicans’ advantage in the long-run.
Some supporters of the tax law say it would help if the rich asshole would focus more of his energy on touting the economy and the tax cuts, rather than other issues such as the Russia investigation. the rich asshole has veered off-topic during recent events designed to be about the tax law.
“I would love to see him focused on the benefits of the tax policy and the regulatory policy,” said Brandon Arnold, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) announced this week that the panel will hold a series of hearings on the benefits of the tax law.
Brady told reporters on Thursday that the committee wants to “to be able to shine a light” on the impact of the tax law on job creators and hear about the effects for businesses and individuals. Earlier in the week, he said he thinks “most polling is flawed” and that Americans like the law more when they learn about its contents.
But Democrats argue that the polls don’t show strong support for the tax law because people view the benefits as mostly going to the wealthy, rather to themselves.
Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, said that Republicans “oversold the tax plan,” since many people are getting a fairly small tax cut and most people haven’t gotten more money or benefits from their employers.
Rep. Richard Neal (Mass.), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said he thinks the panel’s upcoming hearings are about messaging for Republicans, but that voters aren’t buying the GOP arguments.
“They’re trying to convince people that the tax cut for wealthy people is an achievement, and I think that it’s not going anywhere at the moment,” he said. “People overwhelmingly see that it contributes to more concentrated wealth.”
Republicans said that a smart way to talk about the tax law is in the context of the improving economy and the rich asshole’s overall economic agenda.
“The tax bill is a means to an end. We’re not going to talk about the tax bill as a standalone,” said Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
“The tax bill and what we’ve done on regulatory reform is about economic expansion and growth, and it’s resulted in an economy with the lowest unemployment in 15 years,” he added.
The CNN poll showed that Democrats’ lead in the generic congressional ballot is shrinking, with the party’s lead falling within the margin of error. Even if voters aren’t attributing the good economic news to the tax law, Republicans think they can benefit from the strong economy.
“One piece of legislation doesn’t necessarily accomplish everything,” said former Republican National Committee spokesman Doug Heye.
Still, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist said that Republicans would be in even better shape if voters were crediting the tax law for the positive economic signs.
“Yes it’s good if people are just not grumpy. It’s even better if they attribute it to you,” he said.
Connected reporter says the rich asshole enjoys almost nothing about his job — except the Diet Coke bell
New York Times' reporter Maggie Haberman (left) and President some rich asshole inside the Oval Office. Image via screengrab.
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Does President some rich asshole actually enjoy being president?
According to well connected New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, the answer is, “No.”
In an interview with Slate, Haberman says that the rich asshole mostly doesn’t like being president, although he does enjoy some of the perks that come along with it.
“I have never thought he is enjoying this job,” she said. “I think he enjoys the title Mr. President. I think he enjoys Air Force One, Marine One, the big car, having a lot of Secret Service, his Diet Coke bell, all of that stuff.”
Haberman said that almost everything else, however, is a downgrade for the president in terms of what he experienced in his previous life as a real estate mogul and reality TV star.
“I don’t think he particularly likes living in the White House,” she said. “I certainly don’t think he enjoys the job. In fairness, I think that most presidents don’t love the job when they are in it, but I think that others have experienced it quite differently.”
GOP has few takers for 2020 convention
BY REID WILSON - 05/11/18 06:05 AM EDT
Cities across the country are turning down the opportunity to host the 2020 Republican National Convention, where President the rich asshole is expected to be nominated for a second term.
The cities that have rejected hosting duties insist the rich asshole and today’s divisive politics are not factors in their decisions. They instead cite high security costs and disruptions in the normal flow of business and traffic.
But the rich asshole is almost certainly a factor in some cities’ decisions to opt out.
“Most of the cities that have turned down the RNC are Democratic cities,” said Evan Siegfried, a New York-based Republican strategist.
“Their leaders do not want to suffer blowback with their residents for hosting the rich asshole and neither do they want to have local business owners angry because protestors smashed their store windows.”
Any convention attracts protestors, but the interest and passion stirred up in the rich asshole era, breathlessly covered by cable news networks, is expected to attract throngs of presidential critics to a host city in 2020.
Adam Bruns, managing editor at Site Selection magazine, said any city hoping to host a mammoth event like a political convention would have to take security, protests and disruption into account.
“Unlike most corporate site selections, conventions bring armies of protestors — virtually a complete menu of side evens with their own security and traffic demands,” Bruns said.
Only three cities are even in the running to host the GOP in 2020 — and only one, Charlotte, N.C., is public and open about its interest.
Charlotte’s Democratic mayor, Vi Lyles, has met with Republican National Committee (RNC) officials and is working with North Carolina Republicans to woo the party to the city, which hosted President Obama’s re-nomination in 2012.
Duke Energy, which funded much of the 2012 Democratic convention, has signaled it will do the same for Republicans in 2020. Private fundraising efforts for a potential host committee are already underway, according to those with knowledge of the city’s bid.
Representatives from the Nevada GOP pitched the RNC’s site selection committee last week on Las Vegas, but city officials aren’t on board. A spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said the city had declined to submit a bid. The authority was not aware of another bid submitted on Las Vegas’s behalf.
San Antonio, which had been interested in the process, has pulled out.
San Antonio’s city council last week voted against bidding on the convention. Mayor Ron Nirenberg cited the $40 million that Cleveland had to spend on security to host the GOP’s 2016 convention as a cause for concern.
Republicans with knowledge of the planning process said a total of seven cities expressed some interest in hosting the convention. But several of those cities pulled out of contention before completing their bids, citing conflicts of one form or another.
Nashville, Tenn., and Philadelphia, two other cities that were once part of the process, also pulled out.
Heather Middleton, a spokeswoman for the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau, said her city decided they could not make a convention work. Deana Gamble, a spokeswoman for Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, said her city had no plans to reach out to the RNC.
Republicans say security concerns have more to do the difficulties of finding a host than any the rich asshole effect.
Ron Kaufman, the longtime head of the RNC’s site selection committee, said cities became increasingly conscious of security costs after Homeland Security officials began designating political conventions as national security events, a decision made in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
“They’re a little bit worried about costs and they’re a little bit worried about demonstrations,” Kaufman said. “It’s getting harder and harder to find venues that can be tied up for as long as it takes for a modern convention to take place. That’s a problem.”
Other cities say they cannot afford to block off venues where the convention would be held, usually a sporting arena that can hold tens of thousands of delegates, volunteers, media and VIPs. Parties typically ask cities to reserve those spaces for as long as six weeks before the convention begins, to accommodate construction and technology upgrades.
Kaufman said Cleveland’s experience is a selling point. While Cleveland shelled out tens of millions for security, a post-convention analysis found the convention led to a $185 million economic windfall for the city.
Cassie Smedile, the RNC’s national press secretary, said the party would not comment on its site selection process. Kaufman said he hoped to present a recommendation to RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel at the party’s summer meeting in Nashville in August.
Kaufman said the number of cities bidding for the convention was not atypical of previous years.
Going back to the Reagan era, he said, Republicans considered an average of about three to four bids every four years. The six cities that bid on the convention in 2016, he said, was abnormally high.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has been slower to begin its site selection process. The party has sent requests for proposals to eight cities — Atlanta; Birmingham, Ala.; Denver; Houston; Miami Beach, Fla.; Milwaukee, New York and San Francisco. Michael Tyler, a DNC spokesman, said the party expects its selection process to take a year.
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