Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by Nordic » Sat Nov 26, 2016 5:50 pm
82_28 » Wed Nov 23, 2016 8:41 pm wrote:Let's see one of his boys get out on the football field, basketball court, etc. Let's see him or any of them write something not ghost written. Yeah, good genes.
by identity » Sat Nov 26, 2016 9:38 pm
Trumpy Butt
(n) Used to reference a dog's butt hole immediately prior to the dog having a bowel movement. Right before a dog has a bowel movement, their butt hole starts to expand and pucker, causing an uncanny resemblance to Donald Trump's mouth. The Trumpy Butt is a signal to the owner or dog walker that the dog is about to go. The state following Trumpy Butt is often referred to as "Brown Eye."
Rover's been looking for a poop spot forever, but now he has Trumpy Butt so I know he's about to go.
by norton ash » Sun Nov 27, 2016 12:29 am
by seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 28, 2016 12:18 pm
MONDAY, NOV 28, 2016 08:30 AM CST
Trump charges, without evidence, millions voted illegally
JULIE PACE AND STEVE PEOPLES, ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is claiming, without evidence, that millions of people voted illegally in the election he won, issuing the baseless claim as part of his angry response to a recount effort led by the Green Party and joined by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
“I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump tweeted Sunday. He later alleged “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.”
Trump’s transition team did not respond to questions seeking evidence of the claims.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, said Monday that he had “not seen any voter irregularity in the millions.”
“I don’t know what he was talking about on that one,” Lankford said of Trump on CNN’s “New Day.”
Indeed, there has been no evidence of widespread tampering or hacking that would change the results of the presidential contest between Trump and Clinton. The Democrat’s team said it had been looking for abnormalities and found nothing that would alter the results.
Still, Clinton’s campaign was joining a recount led by Green Party candidate Jill Stein in up to three states. Wisconsin election officials are expected to meet Monday to discuss a possible timeline for a recount of that state’s presidential votes; recounts are possible in Pennsylvania and Michigan as well.
“We intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,” Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias said.
Trump narrowly won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and, as of Wednesday, held a lead of almost 11,000 votes in Michigan, with the results awaiting state certification Monday. All three would need to flip to Clinton to upend the Republican’s victory, and Clinton’s team says Trump has a larger edge in all three states than has ever been overcome in a presidential recount.
Still, Trump and his lieutenants assailed the effort, calling it fraudulent, the work of “crybabies” and, in Trump’s view, “sad.” Clinton leads the national popular vote by close to 2 million votes, but Trump won 290 electoral votes to Clinton’s 232, not counting Michigan.
Trump spent the Thanksgiving holiday at his private club in Palm Beach, Florida and returned to New York Sunday night. He was scheduled to hold a series of meetings with prospective administration hires Monday as he seeks to build out his Cabinet and senior White House staff.
Trump’s team was divided over his pick for secretary of state, one of the most prominent and powerful Cabinet posts. The president-elect is said to be choosing between former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee who fiercely criticized Trump throughout the presidential campaign.
In an unusual public airing of internal machinations, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway warned Sunday that the president-elect’s supporters would feel “betrayed” if he tapped former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as secretary of state. Romney was “nothing but awful” to him for a year, she said.
The spectacle of close aides who speak frequently with Trump in private being so explicit about their personal opinions in public raised the possibility that Conway was acting at Trump’s behest. Romney denounced Trump in scathing terms during the campaign, prompting Trump to call him a “choker” who “walks like a penguin.”
People involved in the transition process said Trump’s decision on his secretary of state did not appear to be imminent. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and John Bolton, a former ambassador to the U.N., have also been under consideration.
Even with major administration decisions looming, Trump seems preoccupied by the prospect of a recount.
“Hillary Clinton conceded the election when she called me just prior to the victory speech and after the results were in,” He tweeted Sunday. “Nothing will change.”
He quoted from Clinton’s concession speech — “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead” — and he concluded: “So much time and money will be spent – same result! Sad.”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Conway said Stein, “the Hillary people” and others supporting recounts have to decide whether they are going to back a peaceful transition “or if they’re going to be a bunch of crybabies and sore losers about an election that they can’t turn around.”
Clinton’s lawyer said her team has been combing through the results since the election in search of anomalies that would suggest hacking by Russians or others and found “no actionable evidence.” But “we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself,” he said.
Texas elector who criticized Trump says he’s resigning
By KYLE CHENEY 11/28/16 10:11 AM EST
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A Republican member of the Electoral College who had expressed reservations about supporting President-elect Donald Trump has opted instead to resign his position and turn it over to an alternate elector.
Art Sisneros, a Texas Republican elector who told POLITICO in August that he was strongly weighing a vote against Trump, confirmed Monday that he would quit the position. Sisneros had said as recently as last week that he still hadn't decided how to cast his electoral vote.
Sisneros detailed his decision to resign in a little-noticed blog post over the weekend. In it, he argued that Trump is unqualified to be president — but also wrote that he knows he can’t prevent it from happening.
“If Trump is not qualified and my role, both morally and historically, as an elected official is to vote my conscience, then I can not and will not vote for Donald Trump for President. I believe voting for Trump would bring dishonor to God,” Sisneros wrote. “The reality is Trump will be our President, no matter what my decision is.”
Sisneros said his resignation is a reflection of his belief that “our republic is lost.”
“Since I can’t in good conscience vote for Donald Trump, and yet have sinfully made a pledge that I would, the best option I see at this time is to resign my position as an Elector,” Sisneros wrote. “This will allow the remaining body of Electors to fill my vacancy when they convene on Dec 19 with someone that can vote for Trump. The people will get their vote … I will sleep well at night knowing I neither gave in to their demands nor caved to my convictions. I will also mourn the loss of our republic.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/a ... gns-231874
Trump’s pro-torture, pro-Israel CIA chief
Michael F. Brown Power Suits 22 November 2016
Congressman Mike Pompeo indicates he wishes to expand an already vast surveillance apparatus. Gage Skidmore
A Tea Party congressman from Kansas has accepted an offer by US president-elect Donald Trump to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
Mike Pompeo, a three-term member of Congress and member of the House Intelligence Committee, is one of several hardliners picked by Trump for a top post. If confirmed by the Senate, he would would oversee a vast surveillance apparatus which he has indicated he wishes to expand.
Pompeo and David B. Rivkin Jr., a senior fellow at the neoconservative think-tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argued in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal that “Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.”
They urged Congress to pass a law “re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a single comprehensive, searchable database.”
Pompeo, as noted by The Nation, “is a foreign policy hawk who has fiercely opposed the Iran nuclear deal, stoked fears of Muslims in the US and abroad, opposed closing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and defended the National Security Agency’s unconstitutional surveillance programs as ‘good and important work.’”
A figure close to the far-right Koch brother billionaires, Pompeo has also suggested that National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden should be executed.
Praise for Israel’s police
Trump, who has promoted plans to surveil Muslims and mosques in the US, has also lauded Israel’s use of racial profiling as a model for the US to follow.
Pompeo’s praise for Israel’s police two months into a wave of violence that saw Palestinians being executed in the streets is further cause for alarm.
In December last year, Pompeo stated that he “traveled to Israel and Lebanon, where I was briefed on the unconscionable acts of violence being committed against innocent Israeli civilians and police officers.”
Pompeo made no reference to the Israeli occupation, discriminatory anti-Palestinian laws, or the overwhelming violence Israeli forces have brought to bear against Palestinians.
“I saw graphic video footage of some of the violent acts that are continually targeted at Israelis, solely because they are Jewish,” Pompeo asserted, conflating Palestinian resistance to a decades-long military occupation with religious bigotry.
“After seeing this, I can tell you that the Israeli people and the Israeli National Police are demonstrating admirable restraint in the face of unspeakably cruel attacks. As a friend of the state of Israel, I commend the officers for their professionalism and thank them for all they do,” he added.
That fall, however, Israeli forces and armed civilians used deadly force against Palestinians who posed no immediate lethal threat. Subdued captives were repeatedly summarily executed – sometimes on video – with Israeli leaders such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraging “the transformation of police officers, and even of armed civilians, into judges and executioners,” as an Israeli rights group put it.
Amnesty International has called for investigations into such killings and a ranking US senator, along with 10 members of Congress, has asked the State Department to probe “possible gross violations of human rights by security forces in Israel and Egypt – incidents that may have involved recipients, or potential recipients, of US military assistance.”
Pompeo made his defense of the Israeli police notwithstanding that force’s brutal beating of American citizen Tareq Abukhdeir the previous year in the Shuafat neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, where police intimidation and violence is an everyday reality.
Pompeo’s website features just two paragraphs on foreign policy. Notably, almost one whole paragraph of that is devoted to his strong support for Israel:
“America must … continue to stand alongside our allies around the world – such as our democratic ally in the Middle East, Israel. The US-Israeli alliance serves as a cornerstone of international and regional security. As a vibrant and dynamic democracy, Israel is a model of progress in the Middle East, and the United States must continue to support the State of Israel.”
The suggestion that Israel, which has occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip for almost half a century, is a “model of progress in the Middle East” is the type of language that would come up for inquiry in Pompeo’s confirmation hearing if Democrats were to become keener to connect with liberal Democrats and younger voters who, according to polls, are showing increasing sympathy toward Palestinians rather than Israel.
“Law and order” Trump
Pompeo’s lionization of Israel’s police accords with the Trump campaign’s heavy emphasis on “law and order.”
Candidate Trump was endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police, raising questions about how police forces would interact with demonstrators as well as people in Latino, African American and Muslim communities during a Trump presidency built on racism and bigotry directed at these and other groups.
Tom Jackman, who covers crime and the courts for The Washington Post, noted that Trump told the Fraternal Order of Police in a questionnaire he “would rescind an executive order by President Obama which limited the transfer of military equipment to local law enforcement, saying the transfers were ‘an excellent program that enhances community safety.’”
Pompeo regards the use of waterboarding as within the parameters of US law, a viewpoint Senator Dianne Feinstein, author of a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the practice, said she would challenge during Pompeo’s confirmation hearing.
Trump is also on record voicing support for torture practices such as waterboarding and killing the families of alleged terrorists. Trump stated in February: “I would bring back waterboarding and I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
Under pressure, Trump appears to have backed away from killing family members of “terrorists,” but grave fears remain that he will go beyond waterboarding or, at the very least, redefine what constitutes torture.
Senator John McCain sought to allay such concerns over the weekend, stating, “If [any agency of government] started waterboarding, I swear to you, there’s a whole bunch of us that would have them in court in a New York minute.”
“And there’s no judge in America that wouldn’t say they’re in violation of the law because it’s specifically, in law, now prohibited,” McCain added.
Mike Pence, the vice president-elect, rejected McCain’s assertion, telling Face the Nation, “We’re going to have a president again who will never say what we’ll never do.”
The torture proposed by Trump and Pompeo is very much aligned with practices carried out by the Israeli government.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel has asserted – as recently as this month – that Israel’s “using torture happens and is not exceptional in interrogations. Painful handcuffing and threats are a common method used in Shin Bet [Israel’s domestic intelligence agency] interrogations with the purpose of causing a detainee grave pain and suffering and to break his spirit.”
Hunger strikes and torture
From Israel to Guantánamo Bay, brutal interrogation and prison techniques have been applied in the post-9/11 world by the US and its allies.
In response to Pardiss Kebriaei with the Center for Constitutional Rights describing the forcible feeding of hunger striking prisoners at Guantánamo, Pompeo replied, with the dismissive and misogynistic rhetoric characteristially espoused by Trump and his allies, “I have no idea what that woman is talking about.”
Pompeo added: “The last thing to say about these folks who are assertedly [sic] hunger strikers is that they look to me like a lot of them have put on weight.”
The bizarre claim points to a type of cruelty that is likely to pervade a Pompeo CIA – one that may even surpass the abuses and law-breaking of the George W. Bush administration.
Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a prisoner at Guantánamo, described the process of forcible feeding to The New York Times in 2013:
“I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.”
Yet the probable next director of the CIA regards such brutality as a means of putting on weight. Such outrageous and odious views have proved to be a springboard – for more than Pompeo – into Trump’s good graces.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/mi ... -cia-chief
by seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 28, 2016 1:57 pm
Trump Christmas Ornament On Amazon! Reviews Are Coming In & It's Pure Comic Gold.
By Seashells
Wednesday Nov 23, 2016 · 11:53 PM CST
For $250 you can have this tacky, over-priced memento of our American Democracy falling over a cliff in slow motion.
Gives new meaning to the term “Gag Gift”. Retails for $250. Product Description: Made of brass and finished in 14K gold. This ornament is sure to make any tree stand out. Reviews are hilarious as are the Questions. Happy Thanksgiving! At least we have something else to mock openly over this weekend.
Question:
Will this ornament keep all it’s pre-holiday promises?
Answer:
It's already backing off jailing my Elf on a Shelf.
Question:
How many years will this ornament last?
Answer:
It's already showing signs of it's complete inability to understand the scope of an ornament's responsibility.
It tried to put my nativity figures into an internment camp. Would not buy again.
I had strings of colored lights on my tree, but I put this ornament on and now they're all white.
I don't want to be braggadocious, but most of these reviewers here are very very low energy. We're making Christmas trees great again.
This was a gift from my crazy racist uncle in rural Pennsylvania (or Ohio, Florida, Michigan, I forget where he's from). Anyway, As soon as I hung it on my tree it appointed a man in a white hood to be the Angel. It also made fun of my handicapped son. Would not recommend.
Not what I asked for, but it's being forced on me.
No matter where I hang it, now my tree will not stop leaning to the alt-right.
Also, my nativity figures have suddenly disappeared. Would not recommend to a friend. Would not even recommend to an enemy.
Somehow, someway I electronically choose a more logical, classier ornament. I checked and double checked my electronic order but alas on Nov 9th, 2016 I wake up to this on my doorstep. This is a big league, yuge mistake. My order says I have until Dec 19, 2016 to return it. I just need 270 people to back me. Help!!!!
It's less of a Christmas Red and more of a Third Reich Red. It doesn't come in a size suitable for Narcissistic Egos. It only appears to look appealing to racists, misogynists, and Hitler. Warning : Once you put it on the Christmas Tree, it will build a wall between it and all other non-white ornaments. In the Nativity, it slut-shamed Mary, defending it as "Stable Talk" and then decided to deport Joseph for having an "anchor baby" as a refugee from the Middle East. I would return it, but we decided to melt the piece of crap over our neighbors' Mennorah (let me tell you, it smelled horrible, too).
“Every time I try to hang it on the branch, it yells "WRONG!" No matter which branch I try, it's "WRONG!" My brother and father can hang it up just fine, but when my mother and I try, it's just "WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!" Also, in the middle of the night, I'll hear it loudly yell "SHE'S A FOUR." When I go into the living room to investigate, our angel tree-topper will be on the floor and a naked Barbie will be at the top of the tree.”
“Came with an entire crate of white hood ornaments. Great bargain! Downside: My tree is now on fire.”
”Given the amount of money people pay for Nazi memorabilia nowadays, $250 is a great investment for what's likely to become the future hot ticket item for World War III collectors.”
“I'm subtracting a star because it randomly shrieks "Rosie O'Donnell" during the night which is a little weird when I think about it.”
”Listen, let me tell you, I know ornaments. This is the best ornament. Ask anyone. The best. I bought this with just a small loan from my father, and this is truly bigly. Other ornaments have gotten into our country illegally. Let me tell you; they are not sending their best ornaments. And those ornaments are bringing their problems with them. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. Some, I assume, are good ornaments. We need to build a wall, and the ornaments will pay for it.”
”Many people are saying this is a fantastic ornament, so I bought it without doing any further research.”
Came with an entire crate of white hood ornaments. Great bargain! Downside: My tree is now on fire.
A group of guys in white hooded sheets barged into my home and put this on my Christmas tree. Then they painted swastikas on my walls, peed on the carpet, and told me to "live with it". I said I didn't ask for this and they said, "Stop being a crybaby and get over it". When I tried to remove it from my tree, it wouldn't come off -- and to my surprise, it started laughing and sniffing and singing 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' by the Rolling Stones. I called the police but they said there is nothing they can do about it and if I call again, I'll lose my social security, my healthcare, and my right to vote. All my neighbors say the same thing happened to them. Nobody wants this thing but we've all got one and we're stuck with it no matter we do.
Listen, let me tell you, I know ornaments. This is the best ornament. Ask anyone. The best. I bought this with just a small loan from my father, and this is truly bigly.
Other ornaments have gotten into our country illegally. Let me tell you; they are not sending their best ornaments. And those ornaments are bringing their problems with them. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. Some, I assume, are good ornaments.
We need to build a wall, and the ornaments will pay for it. ISIS!
1.0 out of 5 starsNot suitable for households with cats
ByGeorge H W Bushon November 24, 2016
Tried to order the blue ornament but the computerized order machine kept flipping my order to this red one. Reordered by mail (paper) but this one arrived unwanted anyway.
Tried to return it, but something called the Electoral College refused and sent it back.
Put it on the tree just for laughs and went to bed. In the morning, to my horror, I found that the ornament had built a wall around the nativity scene, demanded to see baby Jesus' birth certificate then deported Jesus, Joseph and Mary plus the 3 wise men. It next proceeded to short out the lights setting the cross on top of the tree on fire.
Also my 2 kitties are cowering under the couch, hissing and clawing when approached. WTH is that all about?
Will it hit on my 14 year old daughter?
I’m also kind of concerned it’ll make a habit of walking into the bathroom while my daughter is showering.
Does the matching Ivanka ornament have all the correct import paperwork?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/2 ... ot-neutral
by seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 28, 2016 5:00 pm
State contender Petraeus knowingly leaked secrets to biographer, lied to FBI
Tom Vanden Brook , USA TODAY 3:34 p.m. EST November 28, 2016
Will Petraeus Become Secretary Of State?
President-elect Donald Trump continues his search for a new U.S. secretary of state, with his focus on former CIA director David Petraeus. USA TODAY
AP PETRAEUS KKR A FILE USA DC
(Photo: Cliff Owen, AP)
WASHINGTON — Retired Army general David Petraeus, who stepped down as CIA chief amid the scandal of an extramarital affair and pleaded guilty to divulging classified information, has emerged as a top contender as secretary of State in the incoming Trump administration.
Petraeus’ fall from grace was swift but not complete. He resigned immediately from the CIA in November 2012 after the affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell became known. The most famous military leader of his generation, Petraeus remained in limbo, under FBI investigation and generally avoiding public life, until March 2015 when he accepted a plea agreement in which he admitted to spilling a massive amount of sensitive information to Broadwell and lying to FBI agents about it.
Since then, Petraeus has gradually crept back into view, authoring a number of op-ed pieces for major newspapers, including USA TODAY, and working for a venture capital firm. Last week, he told the BBC that he would serve in Donald Trump’s administration if asked.
On Monday, he was scheduled to meet with President-elect Trump to discuss the top post in Trump’s Cabinet. He would bring a lifetime of military and diplomatic experience at the highest levels, having commanded U.S.-led forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He is credited with tamping violence in Iraq for a time by instituting a counterinsurgency strategy and a “surge” of U.S. forces there.
All of his success, however, comes with the major caveat of the plea agreement he struck with the Justice Department. It contains echoes of the controversy that surrounded the failed presidential bid of Hillary Clinton, who maintained a private email server when she served as secretary of State. However, in Clinton’s case, FBI Director James Comey found no cause to prosecute her for careless handling of classified information.
Petraeus wasn’t sloppy with classified information. He purposely gave it away to his lover and biographer and sought to cover that up by lying to federal investigators, according to the plea deal. The FBI investigation gained steam in the spring of 2013. USA TODAY was first to report that FBI agents interviewed Petraeus at his Arlington, Va. home.
USA TODAY
FBI interviews Petraeus as part of probe
Here’s are key details of the case and plea deal Petraeus reached with the government:
• In late August 2011, Petraeus delivered to Broadwell eight black books containing classified and unclassified notes he took during meetings, conferences and briefings he took as a military commander. Broadwell, author of All In: The Education of David Petraeus, reviewed the material at a private home in Washington. That was a double no-no: Petraeus should not have released the information, and the home was not approved for storing such sensitive data.
• The notebooks he forwarded contained a trove of the nation’s most guarded secrets, including secret code words, the names of covert operatives, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, and discussions at the highest levels of the national security establishment, including the president.
• Petraeus knew the risk of divulging the information and fretted about it in a taped interview with Broadwell, saying, “"Um, well, they're really — I mean they are highly classified, some of them."
• Petraeus “unlawfully and knowingly” removed classified materials and kept them in unauthorized locations from August 2011 to April 2013. He agreed to plead guilty to one criminal count of mishandling classified information.
• Petraeus’ lies. He told FBI agents during an interview at his CIA office in October 2012 that he “had never provided any classified information to his biographer. “Defendant David Howell Petraeus then and there knew that he previously shared the black books with his biographer.” He also signed a form after resigning from the FBI assuring authorities that he possessed no classified information; at the time, the black books were still at his home.
• The penalty: The federal court levied a fine of $100,000 against him, $60,000 more than prosecutors had sought, and placed him on probation in the plea deal.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged Monday that senior Obama administration officials have continued to consult with Petraeus, “based on his years of service to this country and his areas of expertise.” He said he did not know how recently those consultations have continued.
“Obviously, maintaining any sort of informal advisory role is a lot different from being nominated secretary of State for the United States,” he said.
“I’m certainly not going to speculate on who’s going to serve in the Trump administration," Earnest said. "I think every president is going to have to decide for themselves what kind of person can best serve them and the country.”
Petraeus has also remained a favorite of Senate heavyweights such as Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and the leading Democrat on the panel, Jack Reed of Rhode Island.
They praised him in January after Pentagon officials concluded that Petraeus be allowed to retain his four stars in retirement, a decision that allowed him to maintain a pension of around $220,000 per year. The senators wrote that Petraeus had a “long career of exceptionally distinguished, honorable and dedicated service to our nations and to the soldiers he so brilliantly led in combat.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli ... /94547624/
Housing Secretary Frontrunner Ben Carson Recently Called Fair Housing 'Communist'
Carson would likely ax an amendment to the Fair Housing Act and "other mandated social-engineering schemes."
By Brendan Gauthier / Salon November 28, 2016
If appointed secretary of Housing and Urban Development, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson — rumored to be President-elect Donald Trump’s top pick — would likely reinforce housing discrimination in an effort to reduce “communist” government overreach.
Carson is a vocal critic of HUD’s “affirmatively furthering fair housing,” an Obama-era rule aimed at strengthening a stipulation in the 1968 Fair Housing Act that requires communities “affirmatively further” fair housing practices.
From The New York Times:
“But for much of the time since the Fair Housing Act was passed, this ‘affirmative’ mandate has been largely ignored by both local communities and HUD itself. The Obama administration rules were an effort to address that half-century oversight. And some fair-housing advocates have spent just as long fighting for it.”
“These government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality create consequences that often make matters worse,” Carson wrote in a 2015 Washington Times column criticizing affirmatively furthering fair housing. “There are reasonable ways to use housing policy to enhance the opportunities available to lower-income citizens, but based on the history of failed socialist experiments in this country, entrusting the government to get it right can prove downright dangerous.”
Carson lumped together affirmatively furthering fair housing “with other mandated social-engineering schemes.”
In an interview with an Iowa radio station in 2015, Carson learned of a fair housing agreement between HUD and the city of Dubuque through which low-income families would relocate from Chicago in order to qualify for Section 8 housing.
“This is just an example of what happens when we allow the government to infiltrate every part of our lives,” he responded. “This is what you see in communist countries where they have so many regulations encircling every aspect of your life that if you don’t agree with them, all they have to do is pull the noose. And this is what we’ve got now. Every month, dozens of regulations — business, industry, academia, every aspect of our lives — so that they can control you.”
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politi ... -communist
by seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 28, 2016 6:25 pm
norton ash » Sat Nov 26, 2016 11:29 pm wrote:Triumph of the man-baby... the special rapture of the big sports fan.
by seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 28, 2016 9:23 pm
'Radically Mainstream': Why the Alt-Right Is Celebrating Trump's Win
"We've been legitimized by this election," says movement leader Richard Spencer
Richard Spencer speaks to reporters at his National Policy Institute's conference in November. Linda Davidson/The Washington Post/Getty
By Sarah Posner
5 hours ago
Inside the Ronald Reagan Building a few blocks from the White House, and a block from President-elect Donald Trump's new Washington, D.C., hotel, a 26-year-old woman named Emily is praising National Socialism. "I mean, I think it's worked in certain countries," she says. "It is really funny how brainwashed people are, to think an economic system means that you're going to kill people."
Trump's campaign has legitimized Richard Spencer's movement, and Spencer couldn't be happier about it
We're at a conference hosted for the past six years by Richard Spencer, the president of the National Policy Institute, a small think tank that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a leading promoter of "academic racism." In recent years, Spencer has also become one of the most identifiable leaders of the so-called Alt-Right movement – a loose consortium of white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, men's rights activists and social media denizens who believe white people are under threat from immigration, multiculturalism and political correctness.
At nearly 300 attendees, this year's gathering – taking place less than two weeks after Trump's upset victory – is his largest to date. Spencer often speaks of his followers' youth, and he'd offered discount tickets for this event to millennials; when I asked him to introduce me to a few, he sent me to Emily, who would only share her first name, and to Lana Lokteff. (Most conference participants refused to disclose their last names, in keeping with an Alt-Right culture of anonymity, with some wearing dark sunglasses throughout the day. Many on the Alt-Right contend that they have been forced into hiding by political correctness.)
Emily says she came to the Alt-Right just this year through 4chan – which is credited with popularizing such racist memes as Pepe the Frog. She found its message board /pol/, or politically incorrect, revelatory. "These are scary ideas," Emily says. While she sometimes wonders why she spends all her time "obsessing over" things like Internet forums, she sees her time spent online as urgent: "We're trying to get the laws of truth."
Lokteff hosts a radio program on Red Ice, a "pro-European" online radio and television platform, which recently featured Holocaust denier David Cole discussing the "truth" about Auschwitz and a discussion with another guest on "how the holohoax instigated her own red-pill process" – Alt-Right speak for becoming woke to white nationalism.
Both women are certain lies pervade our understanding of the world, and the Alt-Right has led them to the truth. "I hated myself my whole life because I was white, like ever since I was 11 years old, and the guilt just kept piling on," says Emily. She recalls, with resentment, being told that white people are responsible for slavery, and being assigned to read To Kill a Mockingbird in school. "After this movement, I found it – the guilt – I don't have it anymore."
She's at the conference because of her frustration that "self-hating whites" simply "don't care if white people go extinct."
Over the years, Lokteff has come to question the Holocaust, the government's mass murder of Native Americans and the Armenian genocide. Revisionist history is a big part of her show, and she speaks warmly of one of her guests, Mark Weber of the Institute for Historical Review, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a pseudo-academic organization dedicated to Holocaust denial and the defense of Nazism. As a measure of the group's sentiments, the Anti-Defamation League reports that IHR's last conference, in April 2004, was cosponsored with the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Lokteff tells me she appreciates Weber for "tackling the gas chamber story," a reference to the organization's longstanding efforts to build a case that the Auschwitz gas chambers were used only for delousing clothing, or as bomb shelters.
"For me," says Lokteff, "looking into these things doesn't mean, 'Oh, I hate Jews.' It's like, 'This many Jews didn't die, alright?'"
Of course millions of Jews did, in fact, die, but there's no time for that. We've been called back into the Atrium Ballroom for a speech by Kevin MacDonald, a former psychology professor at Cal State-Long Beach who's become an intellectual hero of the Alt-Right. He's speaking on "America and Jewish Consciousness," a speech replete with anti-Semitic tropes about the threat of Jewish wealth, power and influence. "Jews see whites as more of an enemy than Muslims, down the road," he says. "Muslims are not a high-IQ group, they're not becoming elite in our society, and I don't think they see them as competitors."
November 19, 2016 - Washington, DC, United States of America - Peter Brimelow, Kevin MacDonald, Jason Jorjani, and Jared Taylor answer reporters questions at a white nationalist National Policy Institute conference at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in downtown Washington D.C. on Saturday, November 19, held in part to celebrate Donald Trump's presidential victory. The group's leader, Richard Spencer, coined the term Alternative-Right, or Alt-Right, to express an ideology based on white supremacy, xenophobia and racism. Several hundred protesters demonstrated outside.
Peter Brimelow, Kevin MacDonald, Jason Jorjani and Jared Taylor Jeff Malet/Newscom/ZUMA
Sitting down for lunch, the day after the election, Spencer had insisted that Nazism was a "nonstarter," and even spoke critically of all the "sieg heiling and swastikas" at a National Socialist Movement rally I had recently covered. "I don't think that's our base," he said. "That's not the Alt-Right. I mean, if I wanted that to be who we are, I would have called this the ‘Hitler Was Right' coalition or something. I mean, as controversial as the Alt-Right is, it is a starter," by which he means a concept with movement-building potential.
So at the conference, I'm curious how Spencer is responding to MacDonald's speech. I edge closer to where he's seated, write a phrase of MacDonald's – "Jewish role in white dispossession" – on a piece of a paper and hand it to him. "Do you agree?" I ask. Spencer reads it, and hands the paper back: "Yes."
Half an hour later, Spencer himself is onstage, celebrating Trump's victory as his own. "We willed Donald Trump into office, we made this dream our reality!" he says. Then he shares a quote from the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl – one, he says in a characteristic effort to provoke a reaction, "I'm sure our friends at the Anti-Defamation League know very well": "If we will it, it is no dream." For Spencer, if Jews can have a homeland in Israel, surely whites are entitled to their own homeland as well.
"We knew he could win," Spencer says of Trump, even though the "mainstream media" was blind to the possibility. Or perhaps, he says, "we should refer to them in the original German: Lügenpresse," the Nazi term for a "lying press," a phrase that was popularized at Trump rallies during the final weeks of the campaign.
After leading off with the Lügenpresse provocation, which instantly electrifies the room, Spencer's delivery picks up on his audience's excitement; the speech isn't just about lambasting the Lügenpresse, it's a call for Trump to give the Alt-Right, his most fervent base, its just reward. "We demand to live in the world that we imagine!" Spencer proclaims, calling American society sick and disgusting. "We want something normal." He says this is white Americans' "great struggle," but that "we were meant to overcome it."
"It's only normal," he says, "when we are great again."
"Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!" he shouts. At least a dozen people in the audience respond with the Nazi salute.
Spencer pauses, steps away from the dais, and smiles. "Alright," he says. "We should all go get drunk."
Ten days earlier, I'm waiting outside a restaurant in Washington, D.C.'s trendy Logan Circle. It's the day after the election, and Spencer has suggested we meet for lunch. The mood of passersby is desultory. Two men recognize and greet each other; when one asks how the other is doing, he shrugs sadly. The first man responds, "I know."
But when Spencer arrives, he's elated. He was out late drinking and celebrating the win, and says he got only three hours of sleep. He started his evening at the Trump Hotel and then just roved around the city, where he says he was stopped and greeted by fans. "I don't want to get too indulgent," he says, "but it is actually kind of wild where you'll meet people and they'll be like, ‘Oh, I love you.'"
What we learned on Election Day, he says, is "intensity really does matter." Democrats were demoralized and stayed home, he points out, while white Trump voters were energized. "It was just a remarkable thing that has happened."
"We're making Trump cool and edgy," Spencer says. "That is of such great importance, it can't be measured."
Over lunch, Spencer says that building white nationalism – or "identitarianism," as he prefers to call it – poses enormous challenges, because the movement's ideas are still considered taboo, even toxic, by many Americans. "You're jumping off into the unknown without any assurance of a parachute," he says of working in the movement. "Or that you're kind of taking a leap off a cliff and hoping that your parachute works." You do so knowing your job opportunities may be curtailed, your family ties strained. Funding, too, has been a struggle. "A multi-millionaire can fund a rather extreme left-wing group and suffer no social consequences for it. He's not going to get disinvited from his cocktail parties, he's not going to be denounced by his minister. But on the right – I think even you would admit it's like that."
Trump's historic win, he says, could change all that.
"We've been legitimized by this election," he says. While the campaign itself was a huge boost to the movement, Trump's election, he says, has brought the Alt-Right to "a new level." "Legitimacy is … an unmeasurable, intangible thing that is everything."
He says he sees Trump as a symbol, a vehicle for white aspirations, in much the same way so many projected their hopes and dreams onto Obama. "That made him cool, it made him a force, and I think we've made Trump a force in that way. And you can't measure how important that is."
As he hungrily eats an omelet, hash browns and bacon, Spencer begins to dream out loud. The Alt-Right "can plausibly say we are influencing Breitbart," he says – but now, in the wake of the Trump win, he can imagine, even predict, that Fox News will develop a show speaking directly to the movement. Maybe it will be called "Alt-Nation."
He imagines producing a series of white papers that would trickle up into conversations inside the White House, starting with one he produced in October on why NATO should be dismantled. "That is influence, where people are thinking things that they had no idea who planted this in their head," he says. He likens his approach to the film Inception, in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays a thief who's able to invade people's unconscious thoughts. "It's planting ideas," he says. "People will come to the conclusions themselves, but the true influencer is the one who kind of helps them, that kind of leads them there."
Then he starts to fantasize about what he could do as Trump's secretary of state. "I'm not delusional," Spencer says, acknowledging that it will never actually happen. But he can't resist laying out his vision for a Trump foreign policy. He says he would like to see Trump make a "mission to Moscow" akin to Richard Nixon's trip to China, resetting the U.S.-Russian relationship as one of "friendship," starting with a commitment not to take sides on Ukraine. (Later, at the conference, Spencer would claim that the protests in Kiev's Maidan Square preceding Russia's invasion of Ukraine were financed by George Soros.) He likewise imagines Trump traveling to Syria to meet with President Bashar al-Assad – who has brutalized and slaughtered his own citizens in the course of the country's five-year civil war – to say, "You're a civilized person, you are a source of stability in this chaotic world and we're not going to have an opinion on any civil war that you're engaged with." Spencer's call to remake U.S. foreign policy along these lines has already been taken up by the president-elect, who spoke with Putin the Monday after the election and who was subsequently described by Assad as a "natural ally" in the fight against terrorism.
On the home front, Spencer expresses enthusiasm for Ivanka Trump's proposal for paid family leave. "A lot of intelligent women who have great DNA, who are wasting it, in a way, by becoming career gals, and they're waking up and they're 45 and they're living with cats," he says. Paid leave would allow them to discover that "they really like kids and like being at home, and like babies." When I say I hear in his words echoes of natalism – a political ideology that promotes childbearing – he agrees, saying he'd call it "natalist socialism."
Although he has mocked Washington's think-tank establishment in the past, today he stresses the need to press his ideas inside the Beltway. "I think we've leveraged ourselves in an incredible way," he says, "but at some point we need to cross the Rubicon and have a footprint."
He talks cryptically about his contacts in the world of conservative think tanks and media. "They know who we are, we know them, like there is contact, there has been first contact." He has high hopes for Washington's younger thought leaders, because "when you talk about people over the age of 50, it's sometimes hard to get them to create new neural pathways."
"If you're young and you're edgy," Spencer says, "you're Alt-Right" – or, he hopes, you will be soon.
November 19, 2016 - Washington, DC, United States of America - Nathan Domigo of the white supremacist group Identity Evropa, is in attendance at a National Policy Institute conference at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in downtown Washington D.C. on Saturday, November 19, in part to celebrate Donald Trump's presidential victory. The NPI's leader, Richard Spencer, coined the term Alternative-Right, or Alt-Right, to express an ideology based on white supremacy, xenophobia and racism. Several hundred protesters demonstrated outside.
Nathan Domigo Jeff Malet/ZUMA
On a Friday afternoon, the day before the conference, I meet Spencer at the Willard hotel in downtown D.C. His room is appointed with gold and green brocade wallpaper, cherry wood furniture and brass light fixtures, and Spencer – the only full-time employee of the National Policy Institute – is multi-tasking. He's printing out conference programs, taking calls from journalists and conference-goers, and trying to book a private room at a restaurant for a dinner that night, in the wake of a canceled booking he blames on protests by anti-fascist groups. Then he quickly changes into a suit jacket to sit down with a documentary film crew. It's Spencer's unexpected 15 minutes of fame.
Later in the afternoon, William Regnery, the septuagenarian founder of NPI, knocks on Spencer's hotel room door. He asks for ice and pours himself a drink. While the cameras track Spencer, Regnery holds forth with me, weighing in on his political views by telling me he's not a racist or a white supremacist, but rather a "tribalist."
Regnery is part of a conservative dynasty perhaps best known for its eponymous publishing house, home to such authors as Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich and Donald J. Trump. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes him as a publicity-shy, behind-the-scenes activist who, unlike other family members, "ran headlong into the fever swamps of white nationalism, where his familial and financial clout allowed him to set himself up as a major force shaping the entire movement." He has established, the SPLC notes, a whole network of racist and anti-Semitic organizations, news sites and publishing houses including NPI, which he founded in 2005 to promote "the American majority's unique historical, cultural, and biological inheritance."
Regnery seems to be taking delight in how Trump has awakened white people. He's pleased with Trump's appointment of Stephen Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, as his chief strategist and advisor, because Bannon has shown an "openness" to "alternative perspectives."
He speaks enthusiastically about Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump's pick for attorney general, though many are opposing the Sessions nomination in light of his history of racist comments and racially motivated prosecutions in his role as a U.S. Attorney. Regnery refers to the senator familiarly as "Jeff" – though later insists Sessions doesn't know him personally – and calls him a "great guy."
At one point, Spencer shares his aspiration for a Sessions Department of Justice: a reversal of course on fair housing. "If an Attorney General Sessions stopped enforcing fair housing laws," he says, "that would be wonderful."
Sam Dickson, a former Klan lawyer, stops by to help Spencer with the dinner plans; he later tells me that he too approves of the Sessions pick, praising the senator's "good record on immigration." His hope is that Sessions will investigate wrongdoing by "the large numbers of blacks" who "lied to the police, the media – the ‘Hands up, don't shoot' stuff."
Just as Regnery begins to hold forth on immigration, disputing the idea that America is a nation of immigrants, Nathan Damigo arrives. An up-and-comer in the Alt-Right, Damigo is the founder of a campus group called Identity Evropa. He argues that the Syrian refugee crisis is less of a calamity for the Syrians than for the white people of Europe and the United States.
Identity Evropa – one of a handful of small groups that Spencer sees as allies – describes itself as "a generation of awakened Europeans who have discovered that we are part of the great peoples, history, and civilization that flowed from the European continent" and who "oppose those who would defame our history and rich cultural heritage." Here in Spencer's hotel room, Damigo characterizes immigrants as colonizers: "They're not looking to integrate, they're looking to become a fifth column" and "shift the power dynamics of a nation towards themselves."
Spencer agrees, and says that the Syrian refugee crisis amounts to a "big racial war." Then again, to Spencer, many things are. "This life is a struggle," he says, looking up from his MacBook. "Life is a war."
What has been "legitimized," in the Alt-Right view, is the movement's central creation myth: that white people are being "dispossessed" in contemporary America. Regnery tells me during a break in the conference, over coffee in the Reagan building's food court, that he feels "a real sense of dispossession" because the country is no longer "90 percent white."
Regnery insists again that he is not a white supremacist – an assertion he backs up with racist claims about genetic differences in intelligence. "If you are a white supremacist, all other races are inferior," he says. Then, as if to display his dispassionate adherence to science, he adds that Ashkenazi Jews – of which I am one, he makes sure to point out – have "an average IQ of 115," while "we whites have an average IQ of 100."
Their excitement is not just about Sessions or any other Trump appointee – it's also about Trump himself. Regnery says Trump has made it more acceptable to talk about "white dispossession," bringing it into the national conversation. He hadn't previously realized, Regnery says, that there was such a large audience for Alt-Right ideas, but believes there is one in the estimated "52 million whites" who voted for Trump.
"Where there's a will, there's a way," says Regnery. "Our job is to give them the will."
Overview of attendees (some are media) at an Alt Right ( alternative right) conference hosted by the National Policy Institute in Washington, DC on November 18, 2016. The think tank promotes white nationalism and critics accuse them of being racist and anti-semitic. The chairman of the National Policy Institute, Richard Spencer, has been permanently banned from entering the UK, and was deemed a 'national security threat' after his arrest in Hungary in 2014. He was recently banned from Twitter in a prominent purge by the company this week.
The NPI conference in November. Linda Davidson/Washington Post/Getty
Three days later, after Spencer's closing speech and the Nazi salutes it elicited made headlines, the president-elect was asked about the Alt-Right during his meeting with journalists from The New York Times. After being pressed several times about the movement, and Spencer's conference in particular, Trump finally said, "Of course I condemn. I disavow and condemn."
Spencer texts me at 7:30 the next morning, wanting to chat. I read to him that portion of the transcript of the Times meeting and ask for his response. First he says the media got it wrong; those weren't Nazi salutes but "stiff-armed" or "Roman" salutes – "a fascist salute." Then he says his "Hail Trump" call was meant "in the spirit of fun," but "the media has seized on this one line." The "Lügenpresse," Spencer points out, is "not exclusive to the Third Reich."
When I ask how seriously he takes Trump's disavowal, Spencer says Trump is not necessarily disavowing the Alt-Right itself, but "this monster that the media has created about the Alt-Right. This idea that the Alt-Right is neo-Nazism, he's disavowing that."
Spencer recognizes his own looming PR problem, but says taking flack from the mainstream is apparently just "the burden you take on as the vanguard." He tries to paint each damaging revelation as evidence of how the Alt-Right is "new and fresh." About the A1 Washington Post story that hit newsstands that morning, headlined in print "Richard Spencer's Vision: Apartheid in America," Spencer says, "That is their quote. That is not mine. … That is just idiotic, no. Apartheid failed."
On the other hand, he contends, Apartheid was "a very misunderstood political movement," one that came to be seen as "a monster from history." And he says, again, that he does support the idea of a "racially based state – that is my ultimate vision."
PR problems, he says, have both disadvantages and advantages. One of the advantages, he implies, is that although the public is shocked at first, once the taboo is broken, the shocking thing – a Nazi salute, for example – can come to seem merely "cheeky."
Trump's election is symptomatic, to Spencer, that "it is dawning upon millions of white Americans that their future is being cut off from them." That's why he'll encourage his forces to make sure Trump fulfills his campaign promises to not only build a wall, but impose a "dramatic" and "lasting" impact on immigration. Deporting all "illegal immigrants," he says, would "fundamentally make a difference in terms of the demographic trajectory of the United States."
"We want to be radically mainstream – that is, we really want to enter the world, we want our ideas to be at the table, and people to listen to them," says Spencer.
Now, he notes, "that is happening to a very large degree."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/fe ... in-w452493
by 82_28 » Mon Nov 28, 2016 9:26 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 28, 2016 10:11 pm
Hillz Helicopters Spied on Me!
ANGEL CHEVRESTT
ByJOSH MARSHALLPublishedNOVEMBER 25, 2016, 12:49 PM EDT
This morning it was announced that KT McFarland, a Fox News national security analyst [Ed. note: Fox News terminated McFarland's contract in the wake of the appointment] and Reagan administration official will serve as Donald Trump's Deputy National Security Advisor. Well, she also tried to run against Hillary Clinton when Clinton ran for reelection to the Senate in 2006. She lost the GOP primary to John Spencer. But along the way she ... well, I don't quite know what to call it. But in addition to a seemingly lifelong penchant for dubious self-promotion and resume inflation McFarland claimed that Clinton was so worried about her candidacy that she sent secret helicopters to spy on her house in the Hamptons and also cased her apartment Manhattan. "Hillary Clinton is really worried about me, and is so worried, in fact, that she had helicopters flying over my house in Southampton today taking pictures."
McFarland's bio also says this: "Ms. McFarland held national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan Administrations: as an aide to Dr. Henry Kissinger on the NSC Staff (1970-76);" McFarland was born in 1951, making her either 18 or 19 when she went to work as an aide to Kissinger in 1970.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/hi ... pied-on-me
by seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 29, 2016 8:11 am
Trump Registered 8 Companies in Saudi Arabia During Presidential Campaign
Looks like Trump's going to be as corrupt as he possibly can.
By Brad Reed / Raw Story November 28, 2016
LAS VEGAS, NV - FEBRUARY 22: Republican 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks from podium at a rally at the South Point Hotel & Casino on February 22, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com
Donald Trump regularly got on his high horse during the presidential campaign about the Clinton Foundation receiving donations from Saudi Arabia — but it looks like he was eager to do business with the Saudis the entire time.
The Washington Post has found that Trump registered eight new companies during this year’s presidential campaign that “appear tied to a potential hotel project in Saudi Arabia.”
Elsewhere, the Post has found that Trump has started companies that “range from sprawling, ultraluxury real estate complexes to one-man holding companies and branding deals in Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Panama and other countries, including some where the United States maintains sensitive diplomatic ties.”
As Trump prepares to take over the Oval Office, many reports have swirled around the massive conflicts of interest the new president-elect faces. Among other things, critics have raised alarms at the fact that Trump is letting his children run his businesses instead of putting them into a genuine blind trust, as well as his decision to continue meeting with foreign business partners even though he will soon become the United States’ commander-in-chief.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/t ... l-campaign
Carl Bernstein Blasts Trump's Unhinged Voter Fraud Claim: 'More Paranoid Than Nixon'
Plenty of Republicans agree; Trump's tweet is nuts.
By Janet Allon / AlterNet November 28, 2016
In one of his first official acts, acting on a tip from insane conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his InfoWars website, President-elect Donald Trump attempted to distract from his rampant conflicts of interest to spread the malignant lie of massive voter fraud.
The tweeter-in-chief was unable to suppress his desire to lash out at Hillary Clinton's two-million-and-counting popular vote tally over Trump's, especially in light of the fact that there will now be a recount in three key swing states: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. On Sunday, Trump tweeted: "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." He alleged that this supposed fraud occurred in Virginia, California and New York, three states he lost, the last two by what can only be described as humiliating margins.
A less-frequent tweeter, legendary Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, could not restrain himself from responding. "This factless madness shows @realDonaldTrump to be unhinged. If PresNixon had a Twitter account it would not reflect this much paranoia," Bernstein wrote pointedly.
Nixon with a Twitter account is something to ponder.
Bernstein was hardly alone in pointing out that Trump's absurd claim has no basis in reality. GOP Senator Tom Lankford told CNN: “I’ve not seen any voter irregularity in the millions. There’s always some on the edges, but I’ve not seen anything on the [level of] millions, I don’t know what he was talking about.”
Another official, Tom Rath, a longtime Republican adviser and former attorney general of New Hampshire, expressed himself on Twitter Sunday evening: “This will probably cost me my spot in the Cabinet but there was no fraud, serious or other, in this election in NH,” Rath tweeted. “There just wasn’t.”
There is zero evidence of the degree of voter fraud Trump is spouting, or even a lesser degree. Voter fraud is a well-worn right-wing canard designed to demonize undocumented immigrants and lay the groundwork for future voter suppression efforts. On the other hand, there is some evidence that the vote tallies in Wisconsin might have been tampered with, which is why Jill Stein's Green Party has launched a recount.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/c ... noid-nixon
The controversial legal theory that could get Trump sued
A doctrine embraced by president-elect's anti-immigration backers could be key to challenging his business conflicts.
By JOSH GERSTEIN 11/29/16 05:04 AM EST
Liberals and some conservative critics of Donald Trump’s business ties are pointing to the same theory as a key to getting the issue in front of a federal court, if Trump doesn’t completely divest himself of his business holdings. | AP Photo
A legal doctrine embraced by some of President-elect Donald Trump’s allies in the anti-immigration movement could open the door a legal challenge to Trump’s ongoing business ties with foreign governments.
Under the theory, competitors to Trump’s U.S. hotels or even some of his Trump-branded properties overseas could claim their businesses are being hurt as foreign nations seek to curry favor with Trump.
Many conservative legal scholars contend that the approach, known as “competitor standing,” undermines the Constitution’s limits on the powers of the courts.
However, the doctrine has been repeatedly embraced by advocates for stricter immigration policies, including a group affiliated with Trump backer and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and by Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute, which says it opposes mass immigration, has leveled the competitor standing argument repeatedly in recent years to help plaintiffs get standing to block immigration and labor policies alleged to put American workers at a disadvantage.
"It has kinds of mixed results," institute attorney John Miano said. "It normally works more than it doesn't work, but then the courts sometimes make up reasons on the fly ...You don't know what they're going to make up to deny standing."
Now, liberals and some conservative critics of Trump’s business ties are pointing to the same theory as a key to getting the issue in front of a federal court, if Trump doesn’t completely divest himself of his business holdings. They say a competitor's lawsuit could be used as a way to enforce the Constitution's "foreign emolument" clause, which prohibits U.S. officials from accepting gifts or benefits from foreign governments without permission from Congress.
"It's critical," former Obama White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen said. "You know how nobody ever heard of the foreign emolument clause and now there are 3 POLITICO stories on it every day?...Competitor standing is going to be the same."
A lawsuit seeking to enforce the Constitutional provision would face an uphill battle, but it would make sense to launch such a challenge through a direct competitor facing potential harm from foreign government's benevolence towards Trump's businesses, legal experts said.
"Competitors have remarkable success getting standing to claim their competitors are being regulated too leniently," said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Siegel, a former Justice Department appellate lawyer. "If anyone could have success, a competitor would be a good choice."
American investors in projects in competition with Trump businesses anywhere in the world might level legal challenges, but one obvious flashpoint for such litigation is Trump's brand-new luxury hotel in Washington. Trump promoted the hotel at events there on two occasions during the campaign. Some diplomats are considering directing business to the hotel in order to curry favor with the incoming president and his aides, The Washington Post reported earlier this month.
Some lawyers say Washington is a relatively friendly venue for a business looking to press such arguments. "If you want to bring a case on competitor standing, you're best off bringing it in the D.C. Circuit," Miano said.
But the challenges facing such a suit would still be daunting. For one thing, judges might demand concrete proof or details of how a competitor is suffering direct harm as a result of the foreign-government-business going to Trump.
"Unless someone came up with a really strong argument that they're being hurt by this, judges are going to say you need more than speculation, more than just anonymous quotes," said University of Cincinnati law professor Brad Mank. "If there's any way to get rid of a case involving really messy factual issues ...I think judges would want to avoid the case."
And there are other potential pitfalls for such a suit.
The Supreme Court has indicated that competitors, environmentalists and others can have standing to sue when their injury is something the law in question was intended to prevent or ameliorate. But the foreign emoluments clause isn't a law, it's part of the Constitution, so it's unclear how judges would apply that principle, known as the "zone of interests."
"I'm sure that if a hotel in Washington said foreign diplomats shouldn't be able to stay at the new Trump hotel, the government would at least argue that that's not what the emoluments clause is there for, that it's there not for protecting competition and business interests, but to protect all of us from having the problems caused by conflicts of interest of government officials," Siegel said.
Since the Reagan administration, the competitor-standing theory has fueled a series of immigration-related challenges brought by labor unions, including bricklayers and longshoremen complaining about competition from foreign nationals in the U.S. More recent cases have been filed by American tech workers objecting to various labor and immigration policies allowing U.S. employers to hire foreigners.
Perhaps the most colorful recent competitor standing case involved Americans who formerly worked as shepherds or goatherds.
A judge threw out their challenge to Labor Department guidance that eased the process for hiring foreigners to do such work in the U.S. However, the D.C. Circuit overturned that decision in 2014, ruling that the American workers had competitor standing and that the guidance letters were improperly issued. The appeals court panel's decision was unanimous: two Democratic appointees joined one Republican appointee in backing the herders.
In addition to litigation, there are a couple of other options to enforce the foreign emolument clause drawing new scrutiny as a result of Trump's global business empire.
One is impeachment, which seems remote. Another, put forward by former Obama White House Counsel Bob Bauer has suggested that Congress could seek to regulate Trump's foreign business ties by legislation, but it's unclear whether lawmakers could reach a consensus on such a measure or whether Trump would sign it.
Eisen acknowledges that it's far from clear how the courts would come out on a competitor lawsuit, but he said he's still hoping Trump will try to head off the question by placing his assets in a blind trust run by an independent trustee, not his children.
"I'm still personally hopeful the president elect will avert many future competitor standing stories by doing a true blind trust," the former White House lawyer said. "If he doesn't, it's going to be litigation boom times in competitor standing and people will have all kinds of motivations to bring those cases."
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/t ... ory-231899
House Democrats demand Chaffetz probe Trump’s finances
By Mike DeBonis November 28 at 3:16 PM
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz leaves a Republican conference meeting with Vice President-elect Mike Pence on Capitol Hill on Nov. 17. (J. Lawler Duggan for The Washington Post)
Democrats on Monday made their strongest call to date for a congressional investigation into President-elect Donald Trump’s business entanglements and possible conflicts of interest, asking the GOP’s top House investigator to launch a formal probe.
Seventeen Democratic members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee called on the panel’s chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) to “begin reviewing [Trump’s] financial arrangements in order to identify and protect against conflicts of interest.” The demand, in a seven-page letter, comes two weeks after the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), made a similar request to Chaffetz.
That request, according to the Democrats, did not receive a reply. A spokeswoman for Chaffetz did not return a request for comment Monday.
“You have the authority to launch a committee investigation, and we are calling on you to use that power now,” Cummings and 16 other Democrats wrote. “You acted with unprecedented urgency to hold ‘emergency’ hearings and issue multiple unilateral subpoenas to investigate [Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton] before the election. We ask that you show the same sense of urgency now.”
[Investigate Trump’s potential conflicts of interest, top Dem tells Chaffetz]
The Democrats said their phone lines have been “flooded” by supporters of an investigation into Trump’s business dealings, “jamming our phone lines with more calls than we have ever received in response to any other issue.”
Their letter asks Chaffetz to request copies of Trump’s income tax returns and to invite Trump aides to brief lawmakers on “their plans for protecting against conflicts of interest.” It cites multiple news reports raising questions about whether Trump would be able to keep his business dealings at arm’s length as long as his children continue running his companies under the Trump Organization umbrella.
The Washington Post, for example, reported that at least 111 Trump companies have done business in 18 countries and territories — creating a panoply of potential ethical pitfalls as Trump takes the nation’s foreign policy reins.
Donald Trump's many potential conflicts of interest, explained Play Video2:50
Donald Trump has a lot of potential conflicts of interest as president – but there's no law that specifically requires a commander in chief to remove themselves from all of their business interests. The Fix's Peter W. Stevenson explains why presidents usually put their assets in a "blind trust" to avoid problems. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
[A scramble to assess the dangers of President-elect Donald Trump’s global business empire]
The concerns also land closer to home: Trump’s new Washington hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue NW is operated in a government-owned building under a lease with the General Services Administration. Neither Trump nor the GSA have indicated how they plan to eliminate or mitigate a possible conflict of interest, and there are already indications that the hotel is a prominent venue for those seeking to curry favor with the incoming president.
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Before Trump’s win on Nov. 8, Chaffetz had pledged to continue vigorous investigating of Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Afterward, he said the email investigation would continue. “I still have a duty and obligation to get to the truth about one of the largest breaches of security at the State Department,” he said on Nov. 9.
Chaffetz has not publicly addressed how he intends to handle questions about Trump’s business dealings. Generally speaking, except in the most egregious circumstances, congressional investigators tend to handle presidents of their own parties with kid gloves.
In an interview with the Daily Caller earlier this month, Chaffetz said it was his panel’s “job and responsibility . . . to oversee all expenditures by the executive branch, no matter who the president is.”
Last week, the Salt Lake Tribune, the largest paper in Chaffetz’s home state, called on him to vigorously investigate Trump’s finances.
“Chaffetz, Cummings, their committee, Congress and the American people need to know if Trump will, or even might be tempted to, manage domestic, foreign, military and trade policy in ways that put his own interests ahead of those of the nation or its people,” the paper wrote.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pow ... -finances/
Donald Trump’s Washington Hotel Is About To Violate Its Government Lease
Another conflict of interest for the president-elect.
11/28/2016 11:20 pm ET
Marina Fang
Associate Politics Editor, The Huffington Post
When President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January, he apparently will violate the lease for his new hotel in Washington, adding to the growing list of conflicts of interest between his business enterprises and his duties as president.
The lease for the Trump International Hotel, housed in Washington’s historic Old Post Office Pavilion, which is owned by the General Services Administration, contains a clause forbidding elected officials from involvement, according to two experts. Trump, as president, essentially would be both landlord and tenant.
In an op-ed published Monday in Government Executive magazine, Steven Schooner and Daniel Gordon, former government officials who specialize in federal contract law, recommended that GSA “immediately end the hotel lease relationship, before Trump becomes president” to avoid ethics problems.
The Post Office Lease differs from many of Mr. Trump’s other business arrangements. That’s because, in writing the contract, the federal and D.C. governments determined, in advance, that elected officials could play no role in this lease arrangement. The contract language is clear: “No ... elected official of the Government of the United States ... shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom...”
The language could not be any more specific or clear. Donald Trump will breach the contract on Jan. 20, when, while continuing to benefit from the lease, he will become an “elected official of the Government of the United States.”
Read the full op-ed here.
Schooner served as an associate administrator at the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in the Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton. Gordon was that office’s chief administrator under President Barack Obama. Both now teach law at George Washington University, focusing on federal contract law, and in recent weeks, have been sounding the alarm about Trump’s potential ethics violations involving his new hotel.
The GSA and the Trump Organization in 2013 agreed to a $180 million lease over 60 years. As president, Trump would oversee the GSA and appoint its administrator ― a conflict of interest with his business.
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GSA officials said they are looking into the matter, telling Government Executive that the agency “plans to coordinate with the president-elect’s team to address any issues that may be related to the Old Post Office building.”
The hotel, completed more than a year behind schedule, hosted several events during Trump’s campaign. In September, Trump held a press conference there, in which he finally acknowledged that President Barack Obama was born in the United States. In October, he held a glossy ribbon-cutting ceremony to commemorate the hotel’s grand opening, which doubled as a campaign event.
The hotel is just one of Trump’s businesses that may benefit from his presidency. Trump has said that he would place his businesses into a “blind trust” and that his children, who also have roles in his presidential transition team, would take over operations.
If the GSA enforces the lease by canceling it, the agency risks litigation.
“In the end, it’s just a frigging lease,” Schooner told The Huffington Post this month. “If GSA wants to terminate it tomorrow, the only thing Trump can do is sue and get money damages. That’s a price worth paying.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/don ... 39a78a34fe
by seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 29, 2016 11:50 am
How To Keep Trump From Becoming President? 25th Amendment Could Declare Republican Mentally Unfit
BY TIM MARCIN @TIMMARCIN ON 11/28/16 AT 11:37 AM
'New York Hates You!' Protesters Rally Outside Trump Tower In New York City
Amid widespread protests and worrying signs of dysfunction in the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, millions across the United States are likely wondering how, or if, it's possible to oust the billionaire from the White House before the 2020 presidential election. While there have long been talks of impeachment hearings, a favorite theory this week for removing Trump from power involves the 25th amendment to the Constitution.
The amendment was approved in 1967, pushed into existence in the wake of the stunning 1963 death of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in Dallas. The Constitution had never officially laid out a succession plan that detailed how, exactly, a vice-president should take power should a president no longer be able to carry out his or her duties. Up until the amendment, vice presidents effectively took over because of a precedent set by Vice President John Tyler in 1841, according to the National Constitution Center. The 25th amendment clearly spelled out that a vice president took over if a president died, resigned or, importantly, was removed from office.
The amendment opened the door for removal if a president was deemed to be unfit for office, different from an impeachment hearing that typically centers around investigating if a president acted illegally while in office.
There are two options to remove a mentally unfit president, which were helpfully laid out step-by-step by Fusion. The first option requires a majority of the president's cabinet — positions such as secretary of state and secretary of defense — joining together with the vice president to declare the president is unfit. The second option requires the vice president to convince a majority of the House of Representatives and the Senate to decide the president is unfit. Both chambers of Congress then submit a letter stating such, which removes the president from power.
In both cases, the president can then submit a letter claiming he is fit for office, which then mandates a special session to vote on the issue. Once that special session is called, those trying to oust the president, in this case Trump, would have 21 days to convince a two-thirds majority of both Congressional chambers to vote to keep Trump out of the Oval Office.
While this might seem like a long shot, many are navigating toward it. Liberal "GQ" correspondent Keith Olbermann called it an instant impeachment, a sort-of "crazy-man clause." "For my money, he's nuts — couldn't pass a sanity test, open book," Olbermann said. "But of course, Section Four of the 25th Amendment here does not say 'nuts' — or impaired, or erratic or unbalanced or unhealthy or bipolar or narcissist or sociopath or psychopath. It only says 'that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.'"
http://www.ibtimes.com/how-keep-trump-b ... ly-2451687
by seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 30, 2016 10:39 am
Frightened by Donald Trump? You don’t know the half of it
George Monbiot
Many of his staffers are from an opaque corporate misinformation network. We must understand this if we are to have any hope of fighting back against them
Myron Ebell
‘For years, Myron Ebell has attacked efforts to limit climate change, through lobbying, lawsuits and campaigns.’ Photograph: Jonathan Becker
Wednesday 30 November 2016 01.00 EST
Yes, Donald Trump’s politics are incoherent. But those who surround him know just what they want, and his lack of clarity enhances their power. To understand what is coming, we need to understand who they are. I know all too well, because I have spent the past 15 years fighting them.
Trump’s climate denial is just one of the forces that point towards war
Over this time, I have watched as tobacco, coal, oil, chemicals and biotech companies have poured billions of dollars into an international misinformation machine composed of thinktanks, bloggers and fake citizens’ groups. Its purpose is to portray the interests of billionaires as the interests of the common people, to wage war against trade unions and beat down attempts to regulate business and tax the very rich. Now the people who helped run this machine are shaping the government.
I first encountered the machine when writing about climate change. The fury and loathing directed at climate scientists and campaigners seemed incomprehensible until I realised they were fake: the hatred had been paid for. The bloggers and institutes whipping up this anger were funded by oil and coal companies.
Among those I clashed with was Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The CEI calls itself a thinktank, but looks to me like a corporate lobbying group. It is not transparent about its funding, but we now know it has received $2m from ExxonMobil, more than $4m from a group called the Donors Trust (which represents various corporations and billionaires), $800,000 from groups set up by the tycoons Charles and David Koch, and substantial sums from coal, tobacco and pharmaceutical companies.
For years, Ebell and the CEI have attacked efforts to limit climate change, through lobbying, lawsuits and campaigns. An advertisement released by the institute had the punchline “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution. We call it life.”
Corey Lewandowski
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Former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, like other members of Trump’s team, came from a group called Americans for Prosperity. Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Images
It has sought to eliminate funding for environmental education, lobbied against the Endangered Species Act, harried climate scientists and campaigned in favour of mountaintop removal by coal companies. In 2004, Ebell sent a memo to one of George W Bush’s staffers calling for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to be sacked. Where is Ebell now? Oh – leading Trump’s transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency.
Trump's health secretary pick: not big on women's health
Read more
Charles and David Koch – who for years have funded extreme pro-corporate politics – might not have been enthusiasts for Trump’s candidacy, but their people were all over his campaign. Until June, Trump’s campaign manager was Corey Lewandowski, who like other members of Trump’s team came from a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP).
This purports to be a grassroots campaign, but it was founded and funded by the Koch brothers. It set up the first Tea Party Facebook page and organised the first Tea Party events. With a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, AFP has campaigned ferociously on issues that coincide with the Koch brothers’ commercial interests in oil, gas, minerals, timber and chemicals.
In Michigan, it helped force through the “right to work bill”, in pursuit of what AFP’s local director called “taking the unions out at the knees”. It has campaigned nationwide against action on climate change. It has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into unseating the politicians who won’t do its bidding and replacing them with those who will.
I could fill this newspaper with the names of Trump staffers who have emerged from such groups: people such as Doug Domenech, from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, funded among others by the Koch brothers, Exxon and the Donors Trust; Barry Bennett, whose Alliance for America’s Future (now called One Nation) refused to disclose its donors when challenged; and Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, funded by Exxon and others. This is to say nothing of Trump’s own crashing conflicts of interest. Trump promised to “drain the swamp” of the lobbyists and corporate stooges working in Washington. But it looks as if the only swamps he’ll drain will be real ones, as his team launches its war on the natural world.
How far is too far for Donald Trump?
Understandably, there has been plenty of coverage of the racists and white supremacists empowered by Trump’s victory. But, gruesome as they are, they’re peripheral to the policies his team will develop. It’s almost comforting, though, to focus on them, for at least we know who they are and what they stand for. By contrast, to penetrate the corporate misinformation machine is to enter a world of mirrors. Spend too long trying to understand it, and the hyporeality vortex will inflict serious damage on your state of mind.
Don’t imagine that other parts of the world are immune. Corporate-funded thinktanks and fake grassroots groups are now everywhere. The fake news we should be worried about is not stories invented by Macedonian teenagers about Hillary Clinton selling arms to Islamic State, but the constant feed of confected scares about unions, tax and regulation drummed up by groups that won’t reveal their interests.
The less transparent they are, the more airtime they receive. The organisation Transparify runs an annual survey of thinktanks. This year’s survey reveals that in the UK only four thinktanks – the Adam Smith Institute, Centre for Policy Studies, Institute of Economic Affairs and Policy Exchange – “still consider it acceptable to take money from hidden hands behind closed doors”. And these are the ones that are all over the media.
When the Institute of Economic Affairs, as it so often does, appears on the BBC to argue against regulating tobacco, shouldn’t we be told that it has been funded by tobacco companies since 1963? There’s a similar pattern in the US: the most vocal groups tend to be the most opaque.
As usual, the left and centre (myself included) are beating ourselves up about where we went wrong. There are plenty of answers, but one of them is that we have simply been outspent. Not by a little, but by orders of magnitude. A few billion dollars spent on persuasion buys you all the politics you want. Genuine campaigners, working in their free time, simply cannot match a professional network staffed by thousands of well-paid, unscrupulous people.
You cannot confront a power until you know what it is. Our first task in this struggle is to understand what we face. Only then can we work out what to do.
• Twitter: @GeorgeMonbiot. A fully linked version of this column will be published at monbiot.com
George Monbiot will be available to comment on this thread for one hour, from 10.15am
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... SApp_Other
by norton ash » Fri Dec 02, 2016 8:20 pm
Donald Trump Probably Just Made China Really Mad
by Katie Reilly @katiemacreilly DECEMBER 2, 2016, 6:25 PM EST
President-elect Donald Trump on Friday spoke with the president of Taiwan—a move that breaks with nearly 40 years of diplomatic tradition, amid reports that the Trump Organization is looking to expand there.
The phone call with President Tsai Ing-wen threatens to upset China, which has a long-running dispute with the self-governing island. The United States broke ties with Taiwan in 1979, and no president or president-elect is believed to have spoken with a leader of Taiwan since then.
The call was first reported by the Financial Times, and Trump’s transition confirmed in a statement that he had spoken with Ing-wen, who congratulated Trump on his election victory.
“During the discussion, they noted the close economic, political, and security ties exists between Taiwan and the United States,” the transition said. “President-elect Trump also congratulated President Tsai on becoming President of Taiwan earlier this year.”
by SonicG » Fri Dec 02, 2016 9:20 pm
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