Trump Said to Postpone Announcement on Future of Businesses
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/arti ... businesses
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by seemslikeadream » Mon Dec 12, 2016 9:07 pm
by seemslikeadream » Tue Dec 13, 2016 2:42 am
]Famous Media Boss Arrested in Turkey
World » SOUTHEAST EUROPE | December 1, 2016
The executive Director of the Doğan Holding Barbaros Muratoğlu has been arrested in Ankara on Thursday morning on suspicions of links with the organisation FETO of the Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, reported BGNES.
It is expected that the detainee will be escorted to Istanbul.
According to the official statement of the media group published on its website, Muratoğlu has been a member of the holding for 28 years, he has worked at different positions and has won the exclusive trust of the management, while the investigation against him is a surprise to everyone and there is no sufficient information for his arrest.
“Certain media circulated false information related to the investigation against Doğan Holding. We do not have links either with FETO, or with illegal activities. We consider the false publications to be an intentional campaign aimed at defaming and breaking our group.”
http://www.novinite.com/articles/177764 ... 0Hhyp.dpuf
by seemslikeadream » Tue Dec 13, 2016 8:55 am
Extradition Swap?
The conflicts between the commercial interests of the Trump family and U.S. foreign policy extend beyond the many financial benefits for the next president and his children. Already, there is a situation in which the president of the United States could be blackmailed by a foreign power through pressure related to his family’s business entanglements.In 2008, the Trump Organization struck a multimillion-dollar branding deal with the Dogan Group, a large corporation named after its influential family, for a two-tower complex in Istanbul. In 2012, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan presided over the opening ceremonies and met with Trump. But in June of this year, Erdogan called for the Trump name to be removed from the complex because of his anti-Muslim rhetoric; the Turkish president also said presiding over the dedication had been a terrible mistake. Erdogan later told associates he intended to impede America’s use of a critical Air Force base in Turkey should Trump win the presidency, a Middle Eastern financier with contacts inside the Turkish government told Newsweek. The financier spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing relations with his official contacts.In July, members of the Turkish military attempted a coup. Erdogan crushed the plotters, and his government has arrested more than 36,000 suspected participants and shut down 17 media outlets. The primary culprit, Erdogan declared almost immediately, was Fethullah Gülen, a 77-year-old Muslim spiritual leader who has lived in Pennsylvania’s Poconos region for many years. Erdogan demanded that the Obama administration extradite Gülen to face charges related to the coup.
12_23_TrumpConflict_07
Erdogan believes he has leverage with Trump, who's trying to build a huge office tower in Istanbul, which makes his business partners in Turkey vulnerable to harassment or even arrest.
BURHAN OZBILICI/AP
Gülen and Erdogan were allies until 2013, the year a series of corruption investigations erupted regarding government officials accused of engaging in a “gas for gold” scheme with Iran; Erdogan claimed the man with whom he once shared common goals was the driving force behind the inquiries, which he called an attempted “civilian coup.” Erdogan has placed Gülen on country’s list of most-wanted terrorists, but the Obama administration has not acted on the extradition request, and it has told the Turks they would have to produce proof of Gülen’s involvement in the coup attempt before he could be sent to Ankara, the Turkish capital.Enter Donald Trump. The day of the U.S. election, the news site The Hill published an article by Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, who has since been named as Trump’s national security adviser. “The forces of radical Islam derive their ideology from radical clerics like Gülen, who is running a scam,” Flynn wrote. “We should not provide him safe haven…. It is imperative that we remember who our real friends are.” (Flynn, who runs a consulting firm hired by a company with links to the Turkish government, seems unaware that radical Islamic groups like the Islamic State, or ISIS, are more likely to decapitate someone like Gülen.)That article, according to the financier with contacts in the Turkish government, led Erdogan and his associates to believe a Trump administration would not demand more evidence to justify deporting Gülen. So, almost immediately, Erdogan stopped condemning Trump and instead voiced support for him. The day after the U.S. election, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim issued a statement directly linking his country’s good wishes for Trump with its desire to get Gülen back. “We congratulate Mr. Trump. I am openly calling on the new president from here about the urgent extradition of Fethullah Gülen, the mastermind, executor and perpetrator of the heinous July 15 coup attempt, who lives on U.S. soil.” In a telephone call that same day with Erdogan, Trump passed on compliments to the Turkish president from a senior official with his company’s business partner on the Istanbul project, whom the president-elect was reported to have called “a close friend.” The official, Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, is the son-in-law of Dogan Holding owner Aydin Dogan and was instrumental in the development of the Trump complex in Turkey. That Trump delivered messages from his business partner to Erdogan has been reported in numerous media outlets in Turkey, including some closely tied to the government, and has not been denied by Turkish officials or the Trump transition team.According to the Middle Eastern financier with contacts in the Erdogan administration, Trump’s casual praise of a member of the Dogan family prompted Erdogan to believe this relationship might give him leverage over the president-elect. In the past, Erdogan has placed enormous pressure on the Dogan Group, which owns media operations that have been critical of him, by imposing a $2.5 billion tax fine and calling for supporters to boycott its newspapers and television stations. Then, just weeks after hearing Trump’s kind words about his Dogan business partner, Erdogan lashed out at the Turkish company again.On December 1, authorities detained Barbaros Muratogl, a 28-year veteran of Dogan who was the company’s representative to Ankara. His alleged crime? Maintaining links to the movement led by Gülen, thus connecting the Dogan executive to the attempted coup. In response, Dogan shares fell 8.6 percent. (The purported evidence against Muratogl: public accusations from an editor at a newspaper owned by a company that competes with Dogan.)Once again, follow the dominoes as they tip over. Erdogan is frustrated in his efforts to grab Gülen; Trump praises a Turkish executive who works with his business partner there, Dogan. A few weeks later, a senior Dogan executive is detained on threadbare allegations. If Erdogan’s government puts more pressure on the company that’s paying millions of dollars to Trump and his children, revenue flowing from the tower complex in Istanbul could be cut off. That means Erdogan has leverage with Trump, who will soon have the power to get Gülen extradited. The financier with contacts in the Turkish government explained the dynamic to Newsweek: “Erdogan has something he believes Trump wants, and Trump has someone Erdogan desperately wants.
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/12/23/dona ... 31140.html
by 82_28 » Tue Dec 13, 2016 9:37 am
by seemslikeadream » Tue Dec 13, 2016 9:40 am
by seemslikeadream » Tue Dec 13, 2016 5:59 pm
SATIRE FROM THE BOROWITZ REPORT
PUTIN AGREES TO RECEIVE INTELLIGENCE BRIEFINGS IN TRUMP’S PLACE
By Andy Borowitz 11:20 A.M.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEXEI NIKOLSKY / AFP / GETTY
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—In what Donald Trump’s transition-team members are calling a further example of international coöperation, Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to receive daily U.S. intelligence briefings in the place of the President-elect.
Trump, who had earlier decided that he did not need the briefings and had assigned Vice-President-elect Mike Pence to receive them, said on Tuesday that Putin was a “much better choice.”
“No offense to Mike, but Vladimir Putin is just a terrific, terrific guy to do this,” he said. “He knows all the players.”
Trump said that, while he was “totally uninterested” in receiving the briefings, Putin appeared to be “extremely interested.”
“He’s just terrific,” he said.
Trump also touted his deal-making prowess in securing the Russian President’s services. “The American people are getting an amazing deal here,” he said. “Putin is doing this totally for free.”
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz ... umps-place
by seemslikeadream » Tue Dec 13, 2016 6:44 pm
Energy Dept. rejects Trump’s request to name climate-change workers, who remain worried
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pow ... 516bcc6d13
TUESDAY, DEC 13, 2016 01:47 PM CST
Source: Donald Trump’s campaign is threatening “political reprisal” for defecting Republican electors
One elector tells Salon, Trump affiliates are placing "career pressure" on GOP electors to toe the line on Dec. 19
MATTHEW ROZSA
Source: Donald Trump's campaign is threatening "political reprisal" for defecting Republican electors
(Credit: AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Donald Trump’s campaign is pressuring Republican electors into voting for them under “threats of political reprisal,” according to a member of the Electoral College who spoke to Salon under the condition of anonymity.
“We have gotten reports from multiple people,” the elector said, “that the Donald Trump campaign is putting pressure on Republican electors to vote for him based on . . . future political outcomes based on whether they vote for Donald Trump or not.”
The elector emphasized that these reports had come straight from the Republican electors themselves, with the threats steering clear of violence but instead focusing on “career pressure.”
“It’s all political, basically,” the elector said. “If Trump becomes the president, he’s going to be able to put pressure on the state parties and they won’t be involved anymore.”
The likely impetus behind the Trump campaign’s actions is the rise of the Hamilton Electors, a group led by Democratic electors within the Electoral College who are trying to convince 37 of the Republican electors currently pledged to Trump to instead vote for a moderate Republican. (Most of the Hamilton Electors’ support seems to be coalescing behind Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.) The Democratic electors would then do the same in a sign that they’re putting country over party.
If the Hamilton Electors’ plan succeeds and in the process deny Trump the 270-vote minimum necessary to be officially elected president, the election then must be decided by the House of Representatives. Electors are scheduled to convene in their respective states this coming Monday to cast their votes. Two prior presidential elections, in 1800 and 1824, were decided by the House of Representatives.
The Hamilton Electors are so named because of Federalist Papers No. 68, in which Alexander Hamilton wrote that electors had a constitutional duty to make sure “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” It also encouraged electors to thwart the election of any president who might serve as a vessel for “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”
This latter instruction prompted a bipartisan group of 10 electors to write an open letter on Monday to James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, demanding to know before Dec. 19 the extent of Russia’s involvement in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
http://www.salon.com/2016/12/13/report- ... -electors/
by 82_28 » Thu Dec 15, 2016 4:29 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Dec 15, 2016 6:59 pm
Putin won the lottery and he won it big league
Written by
Profile image for Doyle McManus
Doyle McManus, Contributor
Vladimir Putin must feel as though he's won the lottery.
His government made a modest investment in cyberespionage against Hillary Clinton, a candidate he roundly disliked, and it paid off, big league.
Never mind the flap over whether the Russian president aimed to put Donald Trump in the White House; U.S. intelligence agencies agree unanimously that Russia wanted to disrupt the campaign and succeeded. Now the incoming president of the United States says he yearns for a friendlier relationship with Putin and dismisses the evidence of cyberespionage as partisan whining.
His nominee for secretary of state, Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Rex Tillerson, is an oilman who lobbied the Obama administration to relax economic sanctions against Russia (understandably, because they were costing his company millions) and was awarded the Order of Friendship by Putin.
"This is a fantastic team," Sergei Markov, a Putin adviser, told Bloomerg News this week. "These are people that Russia can do business with."
"I'd say Russia has eaten our lunch," Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution, told me. "From their standpoint, it sounds as if they're getting a lot of what they want."
And what does Putin want? Hill ticked off a list:
First, he wants recognition as the leader of a great power and a resumption of summit meetings between the two presidents. According to the Kremlin, Trump has already agreed to a meeting.
Second, NATO: Putin wants the United States to reduce its military presence in the NATO countries on Russia's western border, including the three Baltic states. President Obama has increased troop deployments there; Trump said he might cut them if NATO countries don't spend more on defense.
Third, Ukraine: Putin wants the West to revoke the sanctions imposed after his 2014 invasion of Ukraine and to recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea. "We'll be looking at that," Trump said in July -- a noncommittal answer that opened the door to a big concession. (It would be easy, too; the executive order on sanctions comes up for renewal by the president in March.)
Fourth, Syria: Putin wants the U.S. to support his efforts to bolster Syrian President Bashar Assad's corrupt, autocratic regime. Trump says he wants a U.S.-Russian-Assad alliance to fight jointly against Islamic State.
Fifth, missile defense: Putin wants the U.S. to cancel plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, including bases in Romania and Poland. Trump's position on the issue isn't known.
Sixth, ironically, Russia wants talks about cyberwarfare. "The Russians think we've been doing it to them all the time," Hill said. The Russian-sponsored hacking of the Democratic National Committee may have begun as retaliation for U.S. cyberespionage in Russia, she said. "They're telling us to knock it off," she added.
The danger isn't that Trump will seek a warmer, more cooperative relationship with Russia; that would be a good thing.
But even before his inauguration, Trump has already moved the starting point of any "reset" partway toward Putin's position, with nothing offered in exchange.
"The Russians would love to get rid of NATO," Hill noted. "For them, nothing could be better than if the U.S. walks away from it."
And on hacking, "Trump is doing the work of the Russian government for them," she said. "He's pushing back against the CIA, so they don't have to."
All this by the guy who wrote "The Art of the Deal."
Trump has long claimed he will bargain more aggressively than the Obama administration, but when it comes to Russia he's not negotiating very hard. Indeed, he's taken positions Republicans would criticize if he were a Democrat.
And some Republicans are pushing back. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said this week that he wants a serious, bipartisan investigation into Russian hacking. Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio and others said they plan to question Tillerson closely before they decide how to vote on his nomination.
Their point isn't to relitigate the presidential election; that's over. Instead, they're warning Trump that he can't cozy up to Russia without creating serious trouble in his own party. It's to make clear that a foreign government can't meddle in a U.S. election without penalty, no matter who benefits.
And it's to remind the president-elect that in high-stakes negotiations, a president should rarely give anything away for nothing -- a rule Donald Trump, of all people, ought to endorse.
Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Email: doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/comme ... on-lottery
FOOD FIGHT
December 15, 2016
10:30 a.m.
Donald Trump Could Be Deposed for 7 Hours in the José Andrés Lawsuit in January
By Chris Crowley
Just two weeks before his inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump will be deposed for his ongoing legal squabble with chef José Andrés. The chef, you’ll recall, was originally supposed to open a restaurant in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., before he bailed on the projects following racist remarks Trump used to launch his campaign. (It all seems so long ago, doesn’t it?) Trump’s team sued for breach of contract, and though the lawsuit was filed in Washington, D.C., Andrés’s lawyers agreed to depose Trump in New York, which he requested for apparent security reasons.
Trump’s lawyers had also asked for questions covered in a past deposition to be prohibited, and for questioning itself to be limited to two hours, as his schedule is very busy (Kanye!). That request was denied on Wednesday by D.C. Superior Court judge Jennifer A. Di Toro, who argued that doing so would hamper the defense’s ability to prepare for trial and that Trump’s statements are too important to both parties’ claims. This means that Trump’s deposition could last as long as seven hours, which will certainly test his reportedly very short attention span.
Earlier this week, Andrés suggested the two simply set aside their differences and donate to a cause that supports veterans. So far, Trump has been too busy yelling at Vanity Fair to respond.
Donald Trump won't be getting out of this lawsuit
by Ahiza Garcia @ahiza_garcia
December 7, 2016: 6:15 PM ET
Donald Trump may be America's next president, but that doesn't come with a get-out-of-lawsuit card.
A U.S. District Court judge denied Trump's motion to have a suit against his Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, dismissed.
The case was presented before Judge Kenneth Marra in August during a two-day non-jury trial. Marra has yet to issue a decision.
Before the trial began, lawyers for Trump asked that the case be dismissed. Marra denied that request Wednesday.
According to the suit, about 150 members of the golf club claim that when Trump took over the club, the terms of their membership were changed and they lost access, but Trump refused to refund their dues.
The suit alleges Trump has refused to hand over $5 million and is in breach of contract.
Trump's lawyers couldn't be reached for comment.
Related: LeBron James on why he wouldn't stay at Trump's NYC hotel
The members claim they had "refundable" membership status under the former ownership.
Private clubs that offer a refundable membership category allow members to pay dues until a new club member joins and can take over the payments. Essentially these existing members are placed on a "resigned" list until their membership is transferred to someone new.
In the case of Trump's club, the plaintiffs claim that when he bought the club in 2012, he changed the rules and terminated their "resigned" or "refundable" status.
Related: Donald Trump settles Trump University lawsuits
"As the owner of the club, I do not want them to utilize the club nor do I want their dues," Trump wrote in December 2013, after buying the club. "In other words, we are committed to seeing Trump National Golf Club - Jupiter on the list of the best clubs in the world and if you choose to remain on the resignation list, you're out."
Trump previously tried to have the suit thrown out, but Marra refused that request in July. At that time the judge also ruled that the case could continue as a class action.
Related: Trump transportation pick Elaine Chao made $1.2 million from Wells Fargo
The Jupiter Golf Club suit isn't the only lawsuit Trump has been dealing with in recent years.
On November 19 -- a little over a week after being elected president -- Trump settled three lawsuits against Trump University for $25 million. The settlement meant that he wouldn't have to testify in a San Diego trial that was scheduled to begin on Nov. 28.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/07/news/co ... golf-club/
Trump Falsely Says U.S. Claim of Russian Hacking Came After Election
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and DAVID E. SANGERDEC. 15, 2016
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday falsely stated that the United States government had waited until after the election “to complain” that Russia had hacked into American political organizations to interfere in the presidential race. But in doing so, he raised substantive questions about the Obama administration’s slow response to a cyberattack that proved successful.
In another of his provocative, early-morning posts on Twitter, Mr. Trump cast doubt on the government’s conclusion that Russia had carried out the hacking with the approval of the highest levels of the Kremlin, suggesting instead that the finding was a case of postelection sour grapes by President Obama.
“Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?” Mr. Trump asked, ignoring the fact that the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., formally blamed Russia on Oct. 7 — a full month before Election Day — for the cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee and other organizations. In September, meeting privately in China with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Obama not only complained, the White House says, but warned him of consequences if the Russian activity did not halt.
“If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act?” Mr. Trump wrote.
The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.
A Times investigation reveals missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of a campaign to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.
The Twitter post was the latest move by the president-elect to accuse the intelligence agencies he will soon control of acting with a political agenda, and to dispute a well-documented conclusion that Moscow carried out a meticulously planned series of attacks and information releases devised to interfere in the 2016 presidential race. In the message, Mr. Trump again sought to dismiss the evidence of Russia’s misdeeds as the unfounded complaints of sore losers casting about for reasons to reject the results of the election.
But Mr. Trump also seized upon questions that have roiled the White House and the highest echelons of the Obama administration: Why did it take months after Russia’s breaches had been discovered for Mr. Obama to publicly name Moscow as the culprit? And why did Mr. Obama opt not to openly retaliate, through sanctions or other measures?
White House officials say the warning to Mr. Putin at a September summit meeting in Hangzhou, China, constituted the primary American response. But when the administration decided to go public a month later with its conclusion that Russia was responsible, it did so in a written statement from the director of national intelligence and the secretary of homeland security, not in a prominent presidential appearance. And there was no promise of economic sanctions against the individuals or organizations responsible.
Officials said they worried that any more public response to the hacking would raise doubts about the integrity of the election, something that Mr. Trump was already seeking to do in campaign appearances in which he insisted that the election was “rigged.”
GRAPHIC
Following the Links From Russian Hackers to the U.S. Election
The Central Intelligence Agency concluded that the Russian government deployed computer hackers to help elect Donald J. Trump.
OPEN GRAPHIC
Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, on Thursday harshly criticized Mr. Trump for casting doubt on the veracity of the Russian attacks, saying it was at odds with his own call during the campaign for Moscow to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, a remark his team has since dismissed as a joke.
“I don’t think anybody at the White House thinks it’s funny that an adversary of the United States engaged in malicious cyberactivity to destabilize our democracy — that’s not a joke,” Mr. Earnest said. “It might be time to not attack the intelligence community, but actually be supportive of a thorough, transparent, rigorous, nonpolitical investigation into what exactly happened.”
Asked to respond to Mr. Trump’s Twitter post, Mr. Earnest pointed to the Oct. 7 statement that blamed Russia for the hacks and said they were an attempt to undermine American democracy. “It was obvious to everyone who was paying attention, including the gentleman whose thumbs authored that tweet, that the impact of that malicious activity benefited the Trump campaign and hurt the Clinton campaign.”
Mr. Trump’s comments on Thursday seemed to underscore the degree to which Russia’s efforts to influence the election and his own bid to raise doubts about the integrity of the balloting dovetailed, essentially guaranteeing that there would be questions about the voting result. Mr. Obama faced a choice to respond forcefully and risk seeming to interfere in the contest himself, or allow the meddling to continue.
In a conference call with reporters later Thursday morning, aides declined to explain Mr. Trump’s position on whether Russia had been responsible for the breach or describe what he would do about the issue as president. Jason Miller, a spokesman, said he would let Mr. Trump’s “tweets speak for themselves,” and added that those raising questions about the hacking were refusing to come to terms with his victory.
“At a certain point you’ve got to realize that the election from last month is going to stand,” Mr. Miller said.
The response stands in stark contrast to that of many Republicans and Democrats who have said that regardless of how they feel about the election, Russia’s role in hacking to influence it must be investigated thoroughly.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on Thursday that Mr. Trump’s chosen secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, must acknowledge Russia’s attempts to interfere in the election in order to earn his confirmation vote.
“If he doesn’t believe that,” Mr. Graham told CNN, “I would have a hard time voting for him.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/us/po ... obama.html
by seemslikeadream » Sat Dec 17, 2016 8:12 am
Democrats call for special counsel to probe Trump team’s focus on climate scientists
By Chris Mooney December 16 at 5:00 PM
Nine Senate Democrats, led by Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, called Friday for an investigation into a questionnaire sent by the Trump transition team to the Energy Department, asking for names of “employees or contractors” who attended United Nations climate change meetings under President Obama.
The questionnaire was disavowed Wednesday by the Trump transition, which released a statement that it was “not authorized or part of our standard protocol” and that the individual who sent it had been “properly counseled.”
[Trump transition says request for names of climate scientists was ‘not authorized’]
But the lawmakers still want the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to investigate the incident, saying the questions asked “appear to have violated long-standing federal laws designed to protect civil servants against coercion for partisan purposes.” They cite the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which created a merit system for the promotion and advancement of federal employees, and, the senators wrote, “establishes that employees should be protected” against partisan pressures.
Their move appeared to escalate the controversy surrounding the questionnaire and the fears it stoked among scientists about how the incoming administration will treat their research, particularly on the most hot-button issues like climate change.
In their letter, the Democratic senators cited not only the question about employees who attended climate change meetings internationally but also a request for a list of “all Department of Energy employees or contractors who have attended any Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon meetings,” and a “list of the top 20 salaried employees” at various national laboratories.
“Taken together, these questions seem to demonstrate a clear intent to retaliate or discriminate against federal employees,” the letter states.
The Office of Special Counsel, headed by special counsel Carolyn Lerner, protects federal employees and whistleblowers. It polices “prohibited personnel practices,” which, when it comes to politics in particular, include the following, according to the agency: “An employee cannot be pressured into political activity by a superior. This section also prohibits retaliation against an employee for refusing to engage in political activity.”
The senators suggest that the questionnaire may constitute a prohibited personnel practice because its questions “appear to be motivated by partisan political purposes” — to challenge Obama policies on climate change and to identify those staffers who participated in or implemented them. The group also is asking for an investigation of whether any similar questionnaires have been sent to other federal agencies.
Other agencies involved in U.S. climate policy include the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. Scientists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also conduct considerable research related to climate change.
The Trump transition team, by email Friday afternoon, reiterated its prior statement that the questionnaire in question was “not authorized.”
Deborah Katz, a civil rights attorney with Katz, Marshall and Banks, said she considered the Democrats’ request “appropriate.” She noted that the transition team’s intention is “crucially important, but it feels very McCarthyite in nature, in trying to put together a list of people.”
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From the perspective of the Office of Special Counsel, Katz said, the fact is that the Trump transition team does not yet control the Energy Department and so it isn’t implementing personnel practices. Nor has any action yet been taken against any employee as a result of the questionnaire. The Energy Department ultimately refused to provide any names to the transition team.
“If actions were taken against any of these people, because of their political activities either outside of work or because they engaged in climate change work in their official capacities, it would in my view be a clear violation of the law and would be a prohibited personnel practice,” she said.
J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees said the union welcomed the call for an investigation. “Our laws were designed to protect civil servants from political intimidation and retaliation,” he said in a statement, “and any attempt to circumvent these laws must be fully investigated and appropriately addressed.”
But Robert Henneke, the general counsel of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative group, had a different response to the Democrats’ move.
“Every American, including federal employees, have a right to their own [personal] viewpoints,” he said in a statement. “But, executive branch federal employees owe an obligation to be faithful in executing the policies and direction of the next Administration. For those that will not, they should find employment elsewhere.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... 93324b2c7f
Washington Post automatically inserts Trump fact-checks into Twitter
Chrome plug-in comes 6 months after Trump revoked Post's campaign press credentials.
SAM MACHKOVECH - 12/16/2016, 5:35 PM
In an apparent first for any American news outlet, the Washington Post released a Chrome plug-in on Friday designed to fact-check posts from a single Twitter account. Can you guess which one?
The new "RealDonaldContext" plug-in for the Google Chrome browser, released by WaPo reporter Philip Bump, adds fact-check summaries to selected posts by President-elect Donald Trump. Users will need to click a post in The Donald's Twitter feed to see any fact-check information from the Washington Post, which appears as a gray text box beneath the tweet.
Samples of the RealDonaldContext extension at work.
But the fact-checking sometimes take a subtler tack.
Or even a snarky one.
Many of the embedded fact-check summaries lead off with "this is incorrect or false."
The "LEARN MORE" text is clickable, even though its text color isn't different.
Not every major declarative tweet from the past two months contains a fact-check note.
Nor does the plug-in dive into every assertion. We'll have to see whether the plug-in, going forward, offers fact checks on statements about rival publications.
With the extension installed, Trump's Twitter account now includes dozens of fact-check notes on any post with a statement that WaPo's editors deem inaccurate or misleading. In these cases, the added gray box includes a simple headline, a few explanatory sentences, and a link to a longer WaPo article that offers fuller context. Samples of the extension at work have been posted in the above gallery.
The extension does not appear to offer context or statements in the case of a post being accurate, and Bump tells Ars Technica that the fact-checking has only gone back to late November. His announcement post about the extension claims that "our goal is to provide additional context where needed for Trump's tweets moving forward (and a few golden oldies)."
In June, Trump announced that his Presidential campaign team had revoked the Washington Post's press credentials. He accused the Post of "incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting" and insulted the paper, calling it "phony and dishonest." Bump tells Ars that the extension is in no way a response to that action: "Thought of it this morning," he wrote via Twitter.
The extension arrives two days after current Post owner, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, met Trump alongside a panel of tech-industry CEOs and leaders, including CEOs from Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, and Google parent company Alphabet.
This plug-in is actually Bump's second offering for the Chrome browser (and second related to Trump). The first, "Add the Trump Tariff," automatically changes product prices in Amazon based on expected cost changes due to Trump's announced tariff policies.
As of press time, Trump's Twitter account has not yet acknowledged the Post's Chrome plug-in.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016 ... o-twitter/
A Dire Prediction for Trump's First 100 Days
Putin's power grab is a blueprint for Donald Trump's budding kleptocracy.
By Travis Nichols / AlterNet December 15, 2016
If Trump is sworn in as president, there will be a terrorist attack on U.S. soil within his first 100 days. [Editor's note: Or anytime early in his term; the results would be the same.] In response to this terrorist attack, pundits will say America must rally behind the president, that we must put the disputed election, the CIA intelligence of tampering, the bruised egos and hurt feelings behind us and come together to fight the outside threat. And we’ll do it, and Trump will no longer be the unpopular buffoon in office with a giant asterisk and no mandate. He will be entrenched on the throne.
The attack will happen either because groups that have been plotting for years recognize the first days in the reign of a uniquely unqualified puppet of corporate interests as an opportunity (see here), or it will occur with the complicity of Trump’s corporate interests and their shadowy intelligence services in order to shore up support for their uniquely unqualified stooge.
The daily revelations of Trump’s ties to Russian intelligence services and business interests, as well as his appointment of Russian “Order of Friendship” winner Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, make this dire prediction plausible.
Why? Because it’s happened before.
In the fall of 1999, just months after then-unknown former FSB agent Vladimir Putin had been sworn in as prime minister of Russia, someone began bombing apartment buildings. Over the course of two terrible months, hundreds of people died in the series of explosions around the country and thousands were injured. As Masha Gessen tells it in her book The Man Without a Face, “panic set in all over the country.” The majority of the country assumed Chechen terrorists were responsible. Paranoia became the national mood and vigilante surveillance the national pastime. Into this chaos stepped Vladimir Putin.
“Putin made one of his first television appearances,” Gessen writes, “‘We will hunt them down,’ he said of the terrorists. ‘Wherever we find them, we will destroy them. Even if we find them in the toilet. We will rub them out in the outhouse.'...His popularity began to soar.”
Putin never looked back. Over the next 17 years, Putin , the uniquely unqualified newcomer to political office , became a global authoritarian. Russia was never the same.
Since those fateful days, experts around the world have come to agree that the Russian government was complicit in the terrorist bombings that swept Putin into power.
In the U.S., reporters as ideologically far apart as the National Review and the New York Review of Books have come to the same conclusion.
From the National Review:
“The evidence is overwhelming that the apartment-house bombings in 1999 in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk, which provided a pretext for the second Chechen war and catapulted Putin into the presidency, were carried out by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).”
From the New York Review of Books:
“The evidence...makes an overwhelming case that Russian authorities were complicit in these horrific attacks.”
Primarily and most astonishingly, the evidence is simple. The FSB was caught red-handed planting bombs in an apartment building.
Again, from the National Review:
"...a fifth bomb was discovered in the basement of a building in Ryazan, a city southeast of Moscow, and those who had placed it turned out to be not Chechen terrorists but agents of the FSB. After these agents were arrested by local police, Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB, said that the bomb had been a fake and that it had been planted in Ryazan as part of a training exercise. The bomb, however, tested positive for hexogen, the explosive used in the four successful apartment bombings.”
And from the NYRB:
“Residents of an apartment complex had reported unusual activity in the basement and observed that three people in a car with partially papered-over license plates had unloaded sacks whose contents they couldn’t make out. A professional bomb squad arrived and discovered that the sacks contained not only sugar but also explosives, including hexogen, and that a detonator was attached. After the sacks were examined and removed, they were sent by the local FSB to Moscow. The entire apartment building was evacuated. Local authorities found the car used by the three who had planted the explosives, a white Zhiguli, in a nearby parking lot. To their astonishment the license plates were traced to the FSB.”
In case that isn’t enough, there’s also conclusive evidence the FSB had advanced knowledge of the previous bombings, and at the very least, refused to step in to stop them. And Hexogen, the ingredient found in all of the bombings, as well as the sacks in Ryazan, could at the time only be obtained from government facilities controlled by the FSB.
So, to summarize: In 1999 the FSB, the same organization now suspected of tampering in the U.S. election to tip it in favor of Donald Trump, was caught in the act of planting bombs in civilian apartment buildings in Russia in order to sow chaos and consolidate power for its disputed leader of choice.
Surely, we’d never accept such a blatant power grab or allow ourselves to be manipulated so easily here in the U.S. Surely there’s no way that the people complicit in bombing their own people would be left free to hold onto power, and even if they were, that we would let evidence of them tampering in our own presidential election slide? Right?
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/t ... y-disaster
by tapitsbo » Mon Dec 19, 2016 6:41 pm
by 82_28 » Mon Dec 19, 2016 9:12 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Dec 19, 2016 9:22 pm
by Freitag » Tue Dec 20, 2016 1:01 am
The_Donald wrote:304-227 = 77 electoral vote margin. Kek had the two defectors defect to honor Trump with Dubs. Trump will be 70 years, 7 months, and 7 days old on Inauguration Day. Meme Magic, Fam....IT'S REAL
by tapitsbo » Tue Dec 20, 2016 1:10 am
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