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#95

Granted this comes from the NY Post, more of a pro-T publication, but something like this will get a lot of buzz, when a column/review comes out, (Am an ex-New Yorker, and still check for their headlines as well as NY Daily News, which is by far a better paper.)

Mostly, my response to the Kushners is to say WTF
WTF
WTF.

And read this review on the book from Vicky Ward, who has covered NYC moneyed corridors, including an expose on the GW building which was bought from T. T panned the book.

This book comes out in Mid March, and it is sure to create a bit of blowback for the Kushners. :haircut_woman:

Kushner, Inc.: Greed, Ambition, Corruption” by Vicky Ward.

The publisher touted the presidential power couple known as Javanka, saying: “They are entitled inheritors of the worst kind; their combination of ignorance, arrogance and an insatiable lust for power has caused havoc all over the world, and may threaten the democracy of the United States.”

Noteably, Ivanka was doing positive press today on Good Morning America, appearing almost-like teflonated royalty. She is getting patents from China up the wazoo
while simultaneously supporting the women’s movement. Oh, my.

Many think Kushner is going to get indicted, but he keeps his legal team all over any accusations, etc. Tonight on Maddow, she described that his legal fees were covered by the RNC.

Also there was a bit of a kurfluffle on twitter this am that Charles Kushner was visited by the FBI this am, and while I was searching to verify it, I came across this.

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#96

Praise to the acts of kindness and those who will help others,
no questions asked. They do it because it is right.:heart_eyes:

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#97

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-wake-of-khashoggi-killing-trump-confidant-thomas-barrack-defends-saudi-arabia-says-us-has-committed-equal-or-worse-atrocities/2019/02/13/5ed0f5e4-2fb3-11e9-86ab-5d02109aeb01_story.html?utm_term=.c4ac44ba6844

Does Trump have even one friend who is a decent human being?

Barrack showed his true colors here. His apology sounds insincere and is limited in scope compared with the breadth and severity of his original criticism. I believe he felt safe making these remarks because he was in a distant land at an obscure conference – he wrongly supposed his words would not make it back to his home country. It’s shameful the way he trashes the U.S. – the great country whose free and democratic institutions provided him the opportunity to make his fortune.

Is Barrack, in part, responsible for Trump’s withholding of the report on the Khashoggi assassination?

And let’s not forget that he was head of Trump’s Inaugural Committee which is coming under scrutiny for failing to account for millions of dollars.

Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a billionaire real estate investor who is one of President Trump’s closest confidants, apologized Wednesday after defending Saudi Arabia in the wake of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing and saying the United States has committed “equal or worse” atrocities.

Barrack’s remarks on Khashoggi, made Tuesday at a summit in Abu Dhabi organized by the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Milken Institute think tank, were first reported by Dubai’s Gulf News.

“Whatever happened in Saudi Arabia, the atrocities in America are equal or worse to the atrocities in Saudi Arabia,” Barrack told the crowd at the Milken Institute’s MENA Summit, according to audio provided by Gulf News reporter Ed Clowes.

“The atrocities in any autocratic country are dictated by the rule of law,” Barrack continued. “So, for us to dictate what we think is the moral code there — when we have a young man [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman] and a regime that’s trying to push themselves into 2030 — I think is a mistake.” 



He appeared to suggest responsibility for the killing should not rest on Saudi leadership.

“I feel strongly that the bad acts of a few should not be interpreted as the failure of an entire sovereign kingdom,” Barrack said, maintaining that “rule of law and monarchies across the Middle East are confusing to the West.”

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#98

A small ray of sunlight
 :sun_with_face:

The Tennessee Valley Authority voted on Thursday to close two aging coal-fired power plants, including one supplied by a company led by a major supporter of President Donald Trump, who had urged the U.S.-owned utility to keep it open.

A few days ago Trump tweeted this:

Coal is an important part of our electricity generation mix and [the Tennessee Valley Authority] should give serious consideration to all factors before voting to close viable power plants, like Paradise #3 in Kentucky!

Why would Trump suddenly tweet to the entire nation this extremely specialized request to keep a particular ancient, coal-fired power plant open? – Especially considering that it is an abysmally inefficient plant that long ago was eclipsed by other plants using far more cost-effective natural gas or employing green energy? Why? Because the plant buys its coal from a major Trump donor, Robert Murray. This is a shameless act of influence peddling in plain site. Had Obama done this, the Republicans would have blown it up into a national scandal, but under Trump it has become just another day of ho-hum, in-your-face corruption.

The good news here is twofold. First, this dirty, inefficient plant actually is being shutdown – a welcome development for ratepayers and environmentalists. Second, and I feel this is even more important, government officials have had the courage to call out Trump and prevent him from fulfilling a publicly promoted quid pro quo. Let’s hope more of our agencies and representatives follow suit.

Here’s Rachel Maddow’s take on Trump’s tweet – this entire segment is worth watching or you can jump to 11:20 for the particulars on Murray Energy’s unabashed purchase of favors from the President:

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#99
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#100

Another ray of sunlight: :sun_with_face:

This is a follow-up to a previous post about how Trump was preparing to plow under the National Butterfly Center. Now, due to Democratic support in the budget negotiations, the center has received a reprieve.

Most of the reporting on this story has been a little off the mark, giving the impression that the center is now permanently protected – as Congressman Henry Cuellar, who crafted the relevant portion of the budget act, himself implies in this article. But the budget actually just states that no funds are provided for building a wall at the center’s location. If Trump secures funds elsewhere (via his unconstitutional “National Emergency” power grab), there’s nothing in this act that would prevent those funds from being used to build a wall there. However, this is certainly a giant step in the right direction and it should be celebrated – several other environmentally sensitive areas were also spared imminent desecration. Congressman Cuellar should be praised as well for his tenacity and vision in making this happen – there just may be a few more battles to wage.

Construction of a section of border wall through natural and historic areas in the Rio Grande Valley was blocked Thursday by a last-minute provision inserted in the budget deal by border-area Congressman Henry Cuellar.

“I know it’s been extremely important to a lot of people,” said Cuellar, D-Laredo, the only border congressman on the House-Senate conference committee that crafted the budget deal to fund the Homeland Security Department and other agencies and avert another government shutdown.

“This will stop any barrier from going within those areas, and that’s a huge victory,” he said.

Here’s the relevant section in the budget act:

2019%20budget%20act%20-%20no%20funding%20for%20wall%20through%20national%20butterfly%20center
2019%20budget%20act%20-%20no%20funding%20for%20wall%20through%20national%20butterfly%20center1040×764 67.6 KB

Screenshot @akarl_smith

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#101

Good catch @Keaton_James!

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#102

Foreshadowing

Trump%20Handmaid's%20tale

(from CNN coverage)

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#103

McCabe’s book The Threat redirects our thinking back to the 25th Amendment, which may be reconsidered or not. #WishfulThinking

The 25th Amendment addresses two essential components of executive-branch function: presidential succession and presidential disability.




For anyone hoping for a panacean comment in the congressional record that would justify Trump’s removal, the actual history will disappoint. The history of this provision does not give much by way of directive as to when a president is disabled enough to warrant the process it creates, much less the extent to which mental eccentricities rise to the level of a disability finding. Even less does it answer the question of whether such eccentricities are valid as disabilities when they were, as in Trump’s case, plainly evident at the time of election. But the history gives a great deal of insight into the scenarios of presidential deterioration that Congress feared and how those concerns led to the procedural instrument that Congress and the states ratified

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#104

The National Debt is now over 22 Trillion
Disregarded like the climate issue by the GOP is the National Debt, now over 22 trillion. Several years ago “Obama’s spending and debt crisis” was a primary focus for the GOP ( remember Paul Ryan’s speeches about fiscal concerns?) now they are caught up in a manufactured border crisis issue and with the tax cuts implemented the debt keeps rising like the water around the boiled frog.

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#105
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#106


Trade agreements/disputes, commodity pricing are sending many farmers into bankruptcy
in highest numbers in at least a decade.

Not good

A wave of bankruptcies is sweeping the U.S. Farm Belt as trade disputes add pain to the low commodity prices that have been grinding down American farmers for years.

Throughout much of the Midwest, U.S. farmers are filing for chapter 12 bankruptcy protection at levels not seen for at least a decade, a Wall Street Journal review of federal data shows.

Bankruptcies in three regions covering major farm states last year rose to the highest level in at least 10 years. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, had double the bankruptcies in 2018 compared with 2008. In the Eighth Circuit, which includes states from North Dakota to Arkansas, bankruptcies swelled 96%. The 10th Circuit, which covers Kansas and other states, last year had 59% more bankruptcies than a decade earlier.

States in those circuits accounted for nearly half of all sales of U.S. farm products in 2017, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

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#107

:pray::+1:

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#108
#109

Hmmm Just read this :frowning:

Coinciding with drastic measures by the White House to build a wall on the southern border, a federal judge threw out a court challenge by a butterfly-conservation center whose 100-acre facility on the Rio Grande in South Texas stands in the way.

“Unfortunately for the plaintiff, the Fourth Amendment offers little refuge for unenclosed land near one of the countries’ external borders,” U.S. District Judge Richard Leon wrote Thursday, dismissing the suit by the North American Butterfly Association.

Though construction of a border wall is set to include 33 new miles of barriers across the Rio Grande Valley, Leon said the challengers made no showing that the government had entered or searched physical structures on the its National Butterfly Center without consent.

The center may be able to seek damages under trespass theory, Leon noted, but he emphasized that the search and seizure clause offers no relief for “open fields,” even when owned privately.

Leon also backed the government’s right to search any privately owned land within 25 miles of bordering countries.

So they already have excavators and such lined up ready to go. I guess we just have to hope that the contractors are going to wait until certainty of funding.

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#110

Keep an eye out for this decision
whether the SCOTUS will find that Wilbur Ross additional question on the census and citizenship can be included or not.

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court announced Friday that it would move quickly to decide whether the Trump administration can ask U.S. residents on the 2020 census whether they are citizens, a case infused with time pressures and immigration politics.

The court’s announcement comes a month after a federal judge in Manhattan ruled Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross committed “egregious” legal violations when he moved to add the citizenship question to the census. The justices will review that decision, adding another chapter to the court’s interaction with Trump administration initiatives affecting immigrants.

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#111

Flagrant and targeted influence peddling


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#112

Kentucky teen participates in a vigilante-type legal take down of what the Washington Post chooses to print. The kid with the MAGA hat who got in the Native American’s face is now suing the newspaper. The long-form video suggests that the kid was not directly bothering the man, and editorially everyone went off the rails.

But this is now our new normal
divisive counter-punch, brought to us by our Pres and his band of Fox commentators. Take them down is the only response
? WTF?

I saw a lot of coverage of the event
and social media was the first to break out the real story with the longer-form coverage.

You wonder what the net effect will be of all this.

Division.

The family of the Kentucky teen who was involved in an encounter with a Native American advocate at the Lincoln Memorial last month filed a defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post on Tuesday, seeking $250 million in damages for its coverage of the incident.

The suit alleges that The Post “targeted and bullied” 16-year-old Nicholas Sandmann in order to embarrass President Trump. Sandmann was one of a number of students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky who were wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats during a trip to the Mall when they encountered Nathan Phillips, a Native American activist.

News accounts, including in The Post, and videos of their encounter sparked a heated national debate over the behavior of the participants.

“In a span of three days in January of this year commencing on January 19, the Post engaged in a modern-day form of McCarthyism by competing with CNN and NBC, among others, to claim leadership of a mainstream and social media mob of bullies which attacked, vilified, and threatened Nicholas Sandmann, an innocent secondary school child,” reads the complaint.

It added, “The Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the President.”

https://www.foxnews.com/us/covington-high-students-legal-team-sues-washington-post

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#113

Parents please block YouTube on all your child’s devices. If you don’t know how, message me and I can help you. YouTube’s “free” content is not worth it!

NestlĂ©, Epic Games and other major brands said on Wednesday that they had stopped buying advertisements on YouTube after their ads appeared on children’s videos where pedophiles had infiltrated the comment sections.

The companies acted after a YouTube user posted a video this week to point out this behavior. For the most part, the videos targeted by pedophiles did not violate YouTube’s rules and were innocent enough — young girls doing gymnastics, playing Twister or stretching — but the videos became overrun with suggestive remarks directed at the children.

The commenters left time stamps for parts of the video that can appear compromising when paused — like a girl’s backside or bare legs. They also posted remarks that praised the girls, asked whether they were wearing underwear, or simply carried a string of sexually suggestive emojis.

About two years ago, hundreds of companies pulled money from YouTube over concerns about ads showing up next to problematic content from terror or hate groups and videos that seemed to endanger or exploit children.

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#114

In NC 9th Congressional District, Harris calls for new election!

In a surprise move today before the State Board of Elections, GOP Candidate Mark Harris calls for a new election.

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