WTF Community

Dept. of I Really Don't Care, Do U? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

HUD Secretary Ben Carson has been illegally withholding aid to Puerto Rico for months

‘A National Disgrace’: Trump Proposes Social Security Change That Could End Disability Benefits for Hundreds of Thousands

“Donald Trump and his advisers know that this will kill people, and they do not care. Every current and future Social Security beneficiary must band together to defeat this horrific proposal, or else all of our earned benefits will be next.”

Inspectors warn unsafe pork could make its way to consumers under Trump rule change

The new system will speed up the processing lines and reduce the number of inspectors.


Donald Trump Jr killed rare endangered sheep in Mongolia with special permit

https://news.yahoo.com/donald-trump-jr-killed-rare-193318963.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=tw

2 Likes

Russia’s State TV Calls Trump Their ‘Agent’

Russian commentators note, rightly, that “sooner or later, the Democrats will come back into power," and they’re already joking about offering Trump asylum.

4 Likes

When did nazis stop being the villains? Was it Charlotteville? “Very fine people”?

Or was it the Pentagon and major US military units celebrating the Battle of the Bulge with an image of Waffen SS officer & war criminal Joachim Peiper, who was responsible for the Malmedy massacre of US POWs during the battle?



3 Likes
2 Likes

So this is a thing now.

Boaters warned after Russian spy ship spotted off South Carolina coast – The USCG says they’ve received multiple reports that the RFN Viktor Leonov, a surveillance ship, has been operating “in an unsafe manner”.

FLORENCE, S.C. (WPDE) - A Russian spy ship is maneuvering its way along the Southeast coastline, according to the United States Coast Guard, particularly South Carolina and Florida in recent days.

The USCG says they’ve received multiple reports that the RFN Viktor Leonov, a surveillance ship, has been operating “in an unsafe manner” while navigating through international waters managed by USCG Sector Jacksonville, which covers the ports of Charleston and Savannah.

“We are aware of Russia’s naval activities, including the deployment of intelligence collection ships in the region,” a U.S. Northern Command spokesperson told The Washington Times. “While we won’t discuss specific measures being taken, NORAD and USNORTHCOM routinely conduct air and maritime operations to ensure the defense of the United States and Canada.”

CNN says the Leonov was being shadowed by the Norfolk-based U.S. guided-missile destroyer USS Mahan. The Russian Navy has a long history of surveilling the U.S. via ships. The U.S. Naval Institute reports surveillance ships monitoring U.S. naval bases along the East Coast in the past, including Naval Station Norfolk, Naval Station Mayport, Florida, and the nuclear submarine base at Kings Bay, Georgia. The Leonov regularly patrols along the East Coast and has made at least one appearance annually since 2015, CNN reports.

The Coast Guard says the unsafe operations include not energizing running lights while in reduced visibility areas, not responding to hails by commercial vessels attempting to coordinate safe passage and other erratic movements.

Boaters in waters off the Southeast coast are asked to maintain a sharp lookout and use extreme caution when navigating nearby the vessel. Mariners are asked to report any unsafe situations to the USCG.

The U.S. Naval Institute reports that early this week, U.S. guided-missile destroyer USS Ross was being followed by the Russian corvette Vyshny Volochyok while the Ross was operating off the coast of Romania in the Black Sea.

3 Likes


Trump inaugural committee under criminal investigation, sources say


Matt Gaetz Tells Veteran That “Democracy Is Not Sacred”

Half of active-duty service members are unhappy with Trump, new Military Times poll shows



4 Likes

And check out how the numbers are trending. Pretty much a disaster for Trump. From the article:

trump%20military%20poll

Prediction: About two months before the election, Trump will announce some kind of financial benefit for our troops.

4 Likes

Wonder how the T rally is going in MI?

4 Likes

All of it changed tonight…a line has been drawn in the sand. Whatever comes next, he’s been handed back his due.

2 Likes

While the rest of Washington focused on impeachment proceedings Wednesday, Mitch McConnell successfully pressed forward on a subject that has been the one knockout success for the Republican Senate and President Donald Trump: judges.

Wednesday afternoon, the Senate majority leader forced a deal with Democrats to expedite 11 federal district judge nominations.

McConnell’s thrust is emblematic of what he sees as his crowning achievement. So far, he has led the charge changing the landscape of the federal courts across the country with a record number of appellate court judges – currently at 50 – and Supreme Court nominees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

“My motto for the remainder of this Congress is ‘leave no vacancy behind,’” McConnell told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday.

McConnell had scheduled procedural votes on nominees coming roughly every two hours. Two votes were held Wednesday before the agreement was reached to speed things along with 11 consecutive votes in the late afternoon. Final votes to confirm the nominees have not yet been scheduled.

The threat of keeping senators in extra days or through the weekend is a tactic as old as time, but nevertheless usually yields results. Previous deals cutting short debate and allowing nominees to be approved so senators can go home for recess have been met with liberal unhappiness, however.

Two deals reached last year allowed senators to return home to their states during the middle of the re-election campaign, but in the end it was Democratic incumbents who lost, giving the Republicans the stronger 53-47 majority they enjoy today.

In August 2018, the agreement was for 11 administration nominees. In October 2018, it was for 15 – including three appellate judges.

With their majority, Republicans can defeat any Democratic efforts to filibuster, or block a final vote on, any Trump nominee along party lines. And Democrats acknowledge there’s little they can do overall to stop McConnell.

He’s using his control of the floor and his majority to force votes on a series of judges,” said Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware. “He is determined to confirm as many judges as he possibly can. And we are insisting on a roll call vote on every one of them.”

The nominees under consideration this week are:

Matthew Walden McFarland for the Southern District of Ohio.

Anuraag Singhal for the Southern District of Florida.

Karen Spencer Marston for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Daniel Mack Traynor for the District of North Dakota.

Jodi W. Dishman for the Western District of Oklahoma.

John M. Gallagher for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Bernard Maurice Jones II for the Western District of Oklahoma.

Mary Kay Vyskocil for the Southern District of New York.

Kea Whetzal Riggs for the District of New Mexico.

Robert J. Colville for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Lewis J. Liman for the Southern District of New York.

Gary Richard Brown for the Eastern District of New York.

Stephanie Dawkins Davis for the Eastern District of Michigan.

The Senate confirmed McFarland by a 56-38 vote, primarily along party lines, Wednesday. Senators voted to cut off debate, or invoke cloture, on the Singhal nomination as well.

2 Likes
3 Likes

I saw that they removed it, but now they’re gaslighting about it?

So, either these guys were incompetent and are trying to cover for it with a joke or did it on purpose because they’re clowns.

Or both. It could be both.

#BestPeople.

2 Likes

This one most likely but wow huh?!

3 Likes

Deregulation brings more uncertainty…whether you eat meat or not.

Two federal inspectors warned that “mystery” meat and other unwanted materials will contaminate pork throughout the U.S. under the new meat inspection rules currently being used in a pilot program, NBC News reported Monday.

Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) inspectors Anthony Vallone and Jill Mauer told NBC News that they filed whistleblower disclosure forms with the Office of Special Counsel about their concerns with the reduction of the required number of federal inspectors at plants.

The consumer’s being duped,” Mauer said, adding that the meat may be more likely to contain feces, sex organs, toenails, bladders and unwanted hair.

A pilot program for the adjusted rules for pork lines has been implemented at five plants. Five inspectors who worked at these plants talked to NBC News, while four others submitted affidavits with similar concerns.

NBC News notes that none of the inspectors it talked to say they themselves allowed unsafe meat to pass inspection.

“If this continues across the nation, when you open your package of meat, what you’re gonna get for a pathogen is gonna be a mystery,” Mauer added.

Typically, seven federal inspectors check the meat for defects, but under the new rules, the required number would drop to two or three with more experience but less hands-on time with the meat. The plants’ own employees would be instructed to check the meat directly without any required federal training.

The rules would also eliminate the maximum speed of the meat lines, giving less time for inspections.

“You can’t really see very much in that time. So there’s a lot of contamination heading out the door,” Vallone told NBC News.

The other 35 plants in the U.S. are expected to apply for the new inspection rules. Those 40 plants together produce 92 percent of the pork Americans eat, NBC News reported.

4 Likes

This is my thread about Trump’s transactional nature and use of the dual loyalty canard.

I bring it up because, with the Christianity Today article, Trump is once again boasting he’s the best thing to ever happen to Christianity, and particularly evangelicals.

But it’s the dual loyalty canard again. It’s the same thing he does with blacks and Hispanics and Jews: he’s offering them things they want in the hopes that they’ll completely ignore all of his crimes and atrocities and immorality.

Only in this case it’s actually working for him:
image

Here’s an excellent thread by another writer looking at Trump’s transactional nature:

Like the stories with Wikileaks and Seth Rich and other GOP/Trump/Russia coverups, Rudy Giuliani didn’t talk Trump into his mad Ukraine gambit.

Putin did.

‘Putin told me’: Former White House officials say Russian president convinced Trump of Ukraine conspiracy theory


Former White House officials say they feared Putin influenced the president’s views on Ukraine and 2016 campaign

The House amendment, which was passed in July, was drafted to explicitly study the feasibility of screening for white nationalist beliefs in military enlistees.

But the final version of the bill passed by the Senate and sent to President Donald Trump for his signature now only requires the Department of Defense to monitor for “extremist and gang-related activity,” rather than specifically referencing white nationalism.

“We know that white nationalist extremists are actively trying to enlist in our military, and we know they are doing so to acquire combat and weapons training,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, the congressman who introduced the House amendment, said in a statement

“I introduced my amendment because keeping this hateful ideology out of our military is crucial to our national security and to the safety of our service members. We can’t address the problem if we won’t acknowledge there is one, which is why I was disappointed by the Senate Republicans’ decision to strike this language,” the California Democrat said.

A Senate Armed Services Committee spokesperson said Aguilar’s complaint was “absurd.”

“The language from the amendment, which was agreed to in a bipartisan vote by both House and Senate, was expanded beyond Rep. Aguilar’s amendment to include extremist organizations of all kinds: white nationalists, radical Muslims, gang members and others who aren’t suitable to join the military,” the spokesperson said.

The change was first reported by the Huffington Post and confirmed Thursday after CNN reviewed the discrepancy in the House and Senate versions of the bill.

The news comes days after the US military and naval academies launched internal investigations after cadets and midshipmen were captured on ESPN’s pre-game show for the Army-Navy game making a hand gesture that some interpreted as white nationalist and others interpreted as innocent.

In a statement Sunday night, the US Military Academy – commonly known as West Point – said its investigation is looking into the “use of hand gestures by a few Cadets” during the broadcast before Saturday’s game.

“The United States Military Academy is fully committed to developing leaders of character who embody the Army Values. I have appointed an Investigation Officer … to conduct an administrative investigation into the facts, circumstances, and intent of the Cadets in question,” Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams, superintendent of the academy, said.

The gesture in question is when someone forms the “OK” sign with their fingers and thumb – a sign that can be associated with white nationalism.

The Anti-Defamation League, which studies hate messages, said in a report earlier this year that it now considers the “OK” gesture a hate symbol in some cases.

The ADL has previously said the use of the “OK” symbol “in most contexts is entirely innocuous and harmless.” The gesture acquired new significance in 2017 after some members of the website 4CHAN claimed it represented the letters “wp” for “white power,” according to the ADL.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has tracked extremist groups and their actions for decades, applauded the military for investigating the matter.

"It is definitely hard to know if they intended this as a white power signal, but given who these people are, they should be sure to take this very seriously. We cannot have people playing around with white supremacy in the military," Heidi Beirich, the director of the Intelligence Project at the SPLC, told CNN. “If nothing else, it’s a teachable moment. Even if they didn’t mean it. They should know that the symbol now has two very different meanings.”

2 Likes

Fact-checker: Trump made more false, misleading claims in 2019 than in 2018 and 2017 combined

3 Likes


image

Trump has posed as tough against Iran, but has largely ignored the fact that Turkey helped Iran evade sanctions. It seemed possible he would intervene on behalf of Turkey’s Halkbank…

However, Erdogan has used this scandal it seems to divest himself of former allies, who he has accused of being involved in the scandal.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-08/erdogan-acusses-former-allies-of-alleged-fraud-over-halkbank

This has not stopped Halkbank from trying to evade punishment, though.

Turkey’s Halkbank fails to halt U.S. prosecution for aiding Iran

Trump Admin Fights Bill Punishing Turkey for Its Russian Deal

The State Department laid out the administration’s opposition to sanctions on Turkey in a seven-page memo sent to the Senate, and obtained by The Daily Beast.

3 Likes

This abomination serves as our President.

Every day I say this to you and myself…

WTF WTF WTF WTF WTFery

2 Likes