“The Storm”

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Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 31, 2018 2:11 pm






somebody can't stay off 4Chan :P

Roseanne Barr grabbed her crotch while singing the National Anthem. Trump and the Republicans love her.

Kaepernick takes a knee in the name of justice. Trump attacks him and the GOP continues to go after his livelihood.
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Kathy Griffin was fired for posting a fake picture of Trump missing his head.

Why is Roseanne not being fired for posting a picture of gingerbread Jews going into an oven while she was dressed as Hitler?

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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: “The Storm”

Postby Jerky » Sun Apr 01, 2018 2:37 am

In the case of the Hitler imagery, it's probably got something to do with Roseanne herself being Jewish and having lost family in the Holocaust, which puts a different spin on the images she helped create. Holocaust humor is a big part of Jewish humor.

I don't wish to defend Roseanne's recent bullshit, pushing Qanon and the ridiculous, bass-ackwards notion that Trump has (scoff) SAVED women from the sex trade (I mean, of all the things to try and lay claim to...). She's either so damaged that giving her a national TV show is a REALLY bad idea, or she's mercenary to a degree that I can't even begin to understand.

Unless, of course, she's playing us all, and she's gonna pull a big switcheroo at some point. You never know.

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Re: “The Storm”

Postby BenDhyan » Sun Apr 01, 2018 3:29 am

You are quite right Jerky, she explains it starting around the 8 minute mark...

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Re: “The Storm”

Postby Jerky » Sun Apr 01, 2018 4:51 am

Thanks for this show, Ben. I love (and miss) Patrice O'Neal more with every passing day. Big fan of Sandra B, too.

Also, Roseanne comes across rather well in this interview. I agree with much of what she says here. Furthermore, I know a lot of people like her IRL, people with whom I used to be almost completely simpatico, but who, over the past half-decade or so, seem to have had their minds hijacked by a series of particularly virulent psy-ops designed to either take advantage of their pre-existing, conspiracy-accepting mindset (i.e. weaponizing it, as I have repeatedly argued here and elsewhere) and/or using bad faith arguments to steer them towards certain conclusions in such a way as to make them think that they've come to these conclusions completely on their own (a relatively recent and devastatingly effective propaganda trick that the Right has been working on and perfecting for decades now, the fruit of which we are now all feasting upon).

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Re: “The Storm”

Postby American Dream » Sun Apr 01, 2018 8:01 am

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Roseanne Roseanne Keeps Promoting QAnon, the Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory That Makes Pizzagate Look Tame

“Q” or “QAnon” refers to a user on the anonymous message board 4chan. The user claims to be a high-ranking government official with inside knowledge of the White House where, he claims, Trump is planning mass arrests of top Democrats for allegedly being involved in a satanic child-sex-trafficking ring. Or something. QAnon’s messages have always been vague to the point of near-gibberish, opening them to interpretation. When QAnon has given specifics—like the time he claimed John Podesta would be arrested or indicted Nov. 3—the prediction has fallen flat.

Days after that failed prophecy, Barr was on Twitter asking her followers to put her in touch with QAnon. Then, in what believers interpreted as confirmation of the QAnon theory, Barr’s internet presence went dark. Her Twitter account appeared to be suspended for several hours, and her website went offline for “technical reasons” according to a notice on the homepage.

“Roseanne had been talking about Q mostly all day and asking him to contact her, now,” one Redditor in the r/conspiracies subreddit wrote of Barr’s disappearance from Twitter, and claiming it confirmed the QAnon conspiracy. “I am viewing this as vindication.”

Barr was back online hours later.

“guys! i am OK! I’m here-thank you for worrying,” she wrote. “I am OK and back. explanation later on-”

“Q claims to be a high-ranking government official with inside knowledge of the White House where, he claims, Trump is planning mass arrests of top Democrats for allegedly being involved in a satanic child-sex-trafficking ring.”


She never appeared to offer the explanation. Redditors noted that Barr had lost more than 200,000 followers during her brief disappearance. The apparent purge suggests Barr’s account may have been flagged as having fake followers. Twitter does not comment on individual accounts, and a representative for Barr did not return The Daily Beast’s request for comment.

As for the technical difficulties on her website, DomainTools shows the website underwent a semi-regular maintenance procedure that day. Like many celebrities, Barr registers her website through a privacy-protecting service. The service registers the website under randomly generated email proxies, which change every few months. One of those occasional changes occurred Nov. 17, potentially causing technical difficulties or suggesting other technical work on the site that briefly took it offline.

But even with Barr returned, some fans were suspicious that an imposter had replaced her. “How do we know its you?” one tweeted at the returned Roseanne.

“Let us know that you are really back,” another tweeted. “Give us a real sign that will let us know it really is you.”

Redditors theorized that Barr had suspended herself to draw attention to QAnon. “Conspiracyception: She deleted her account to make it seem like Twitter is cooked,” one wrote.

The month after her brief disappearance, Barr deleted all her tweets and announced a temporary Twitter retirement after a knock-down fight with Hillary Clinton supporters on the website.

She was back in January, and has since resumed tweeting about QAnon, in apparent contradiction of fans who had previously claimed Twitter was censoring her conspiracy tweets. Since Friday, she has tweeted or retweeted content relating to QAnon (or its other name “The Storm”) at least four times, in addition to a March 24 tweet that read “MKULTRA,” the name of a 1960s CIA mind-control program. The context for the tweet was not clear.

Her most recent post about QAnon is a retweeted clip of Stephen Colbert welcoming then-candidate Donald Trump onto his show. “You are not supposed to see this video,” the video, which is tagged with a QAnon hashtag is captioned.

The clip, in fact, aired during Colbert’s CBS show. Barr retweeted it early Thursday. Hours earlier, she and Trump had spoken on the phone.

The QAnon tweets weren’t Barr’s first dabbling in conspiracy. A prolific Twitter user, Barr had once retweeted an InfoWars report “on the ‘5.7 Million Illegals’ who they baselessly claim voted in the presidential election,” The Daily Beast’s Amy Zimmerman previously reported. Barr has also pushed conspiracy theories about murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, whom some truthers believe was killed in a Clinton-ordered hit.

Barr’s politics have also tended toward the fringes. In 2009, Barr (who is Jewish) posed for a photoshoot in the Jewish youth magazine Heeb, in which she dressed as Hitler eating singed, human-shaped “Jew cookies.” The magazine, which labeled Barr “the last celebrity utterly incapable of giving a fuck” later pulled the photo spread.

In 2012, she launched a presidential campaign as a Green Party candidate but lost to Jill Stein in the primary. Since then, Barr’s views have veered right with blatantly Islamophobic tweets. In an August 2016 Twitter rant, she claimed “jew hater hillary clinton’s handler huma weiner is a filthy nazi whore.”


https://www.thedailybeast.com/roseanne- ... -look-tame
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Re: “The Storm”

Postby Luther Blissett » Mon Apr 02, 2018 6:21 pm

GOP strategist warns Trump to ‘get good legal help now, because the storm is coming’


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... ar-AAvl6Tg
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Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 02, 2018 9:52 pm

Stormy Daniels’ lawyer vows to ‘boil’ Donald Trump ‘like a frog in a saucepan’



southpaw


Michael Cohen has filed his motion to compel Stormy Daniels into arbitration, and Trump has joined in it. This will prompt Daniels to refile her motion to depose the president and Cohen
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Big Cases Bot

New filing in @StormyDaniels v. @realDonaldTrump: Compel Arbitration

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... ation.html

Here is Michael Cohen's declaration in support of the arbitration motion. (Notably, the copy of the settlement agreement he attached to his declaration is not signed by Donald Trump.)

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The settlement agreement provided that "DD" would elect which state's law governs the contract. If Trump hasn't signed as "DD" or made an election, what law should apply? I expected Cohen and Trump to address this in their motions, and they haven't. They just assume it's CA law.

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There's a great exchange of emails in the exhibits, but the attorneys didn't redact their contact info and I don't wanna do it--so for now I'll just give you this excerpt.

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https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/ ... 0314265600



trump and his lawyers made the mistake of admitting everything Stormy Daniels said on 60 minutes is true :)

trump lawyer says Stormy already violated the Confidential Agreement by disclosing on 60 minutes ...it's all on page 9 and 10....... it is all true :D
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Tue Apr 03, 2018 5:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: “The Storm”

Postby 82_28 » Mon Apr 02, 2018 10:42 pm

Here's a pretty scary article that sadly makes sense.

Donald Trump, defender of Christian America? It’s not as ludicrous as it sounds

For Christian nationalists, Trump’s presidency is a gift from God — and his unethical conduct is a major plus

Paul Rosenberg04.01.2018•9:00 AM

Consternation over evangelical support for Donald Trump got another jolt with Stormy Daniels' interview on "60 Minutes" last Sunday, but new research from Clemson sociologist Andrew Whitehead and two colleagues provides strong evidence that Trump is actually an ideal candidate for the Christian right. It sounds crazy, I know — but not to those in his evangelical base, a demographic that supported him by a ratio of roughly four to one, and others who share their particular worldview.

The key, Whitehead’s research shows, is Trump’s role as a champion of “Christian nationalism” — an Old Testament-based worldview fusing Christian and American identities, and sharpening the divide with those who are excluded from it. That stands in contrast to the tradition of “civil religion,” which “often refers to America’s covenantal relationship with a divine Creator who promises blessings for the nation for fulfilling its responsibility to defend liberty and justice.”

America is certainly understood as special, in this latter tradition — but that's rooted in a special obligation. “Christian nationalism, however, draws its roots from ‘Old Testament’ parallels between America and Israel, who was commanded to maintain cultural and blood purity, often through war, conquest, and separatism,” Whitehead’s paper explains. “Unlike civil religion, contemporary manifestations of Christian nationalism can be unmoored from traditional moral import, emphasizing only its notions of exclusion and apocalyptic war and conquest.”

When push comes to shove, the more vicious the leader, the better. The moral restraints of the deeply pious are the last thing you want for the job. Hence, Trump’s impious leadership makes perfect sense, once you realize what’s at stake. It’s a feature, not a bug. And evangelical voters, Whitehead argues, know it.

Using data from the Baylor Religion Survey, conducted shortly after the 2016 election, Christian nationalism predicted voter support for Trump better than any other explanations that have previously been provided, as reported in the paper, “Make America Christian Again: Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election."

The paper considered a range of factors others have highlighted, as well as religious activities and beliefs. Religion mattered deeply, it found, but not in the sense it is most often discussed in the political world.

“Knowing how religious someone is, like how often they attend church or if they view the Bible as God’s literal word to them, doesn’t help us predict" whether they voted for Trump, Whitehead told Salon. What's more important is whether or not "they view the U.S. as a Christian nation." Religious faith certainly shapes such views, he added, but the connection from there to Trump is indirect. “So the influence of personal religiosity on whether someone voted for Trump ‘flows through’ Christian nationalism.”

That last point helps explain why Trump’s lack of piety doesn’t seem to matter. “Support for Trump has more to do with symbolic boundaries than with personal piety,” Whitehead said. “Trump is a perfect test of the power of Christian nationalist rhetoric: It has little to do with the personal piety of the speaker, and everything to do with access to power.”

This is not a new idea. A month before the 2016 election, Yale sociologist Philip Gorski explained his view of what was driving Trump’s religious support on his blog (“Why do evangelicals vote for Trump?”). “Trumpism is a secular form of religious nationalism,” he wrote. “By ‘religious nationalism,’ I mean a form of nationalism that makes religious identity the litmus test of national belonging. By ‘a secular form of religious nationalism,’ I mean one that strips religious identity of its ethical content and transcendental reference. In Trumpism, religion functions mainly as a marker of ethnicity.” Gorski was offering a hypothesis; Whitehead’s paper provides detailed support.


continues. . .
https://www.salon.com/2018/04/01/donald ... it-sounds/

Basically, ain't no reasoning with 'em. No way. No how.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 03, 2018 5:35 pm

Stormy Daniels requests 'suspicious' bank information related to hush payment
MJ Lee
By MJ Lee, CNN National Politics Reporter

Updated 4:49 PM ET, Tue April 3, 2018

Avenatti: Trump popping champagne too soon

(CNN)A lawyer for Stormy Daniels is asking the Treasury Department to release information filed with the government by a bank about "suspicious" activity surrounding the porn star's hush-money deal with Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's longtime attorney.

Michael Avenatti made the request in a letter addressed to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Monday. A copy of the letter was shared with CNN.

Avenatti wrote in the letter that the $130,000 payment that Cohen made to Daniels is central to her lawsuit against Trump, Cohen and Essential Consultants -- the company that Cohen established in 2016 to facilitate the transaction. A "suspicious activity report," or SAR, was filed by First Republic Bank -- the bank Cohen allegedly used to make the payment -- to the Treasury Department, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.

The details of the $130,000 payment are not only key to Daniels' lawsuit, Avenatti argued, but also of "great public concern" to the country.
"(W)e request that you publicly release the SAR, along with any and all underlying facts, transactions, and documents in your control upon which the SAR is based," Avenatti wrote to Mnuchin. "And as Secretary of the Treasury, it is well within your authority to release the requested SAR information to allow the public to learn critical information relating to the payment."
He added, "Indeed, if the payment was made as innocently as Mr. Cohen has suggested, there should be no objection to the prompt release of the SAR."

The $130,000 payment was wired to the trust account of Daniels' former lawyer, Keith Davidson, at City National Bank in Los Angeles, according to the Wall Street Journal. Avenatti's letter to Mnuchin did not mention City National Bank or request any information related to it.
The letter comes as questions continue to swirl about Cohen's payment to Daniels just days before the 2016 election. Cohen has said that he used personal funds to facilitate the payment. Neither the Trump campaign nor the Trump Organization were involved in -- or ever repaid Cohen for -- the transaction, Cohen said.
Advocacy groups and some campaign finance and legal experts have raised concerns that Cohen's effort to quiet an individual making politically unflattering claims about then-presidential candidate Trump may have constituted an illegal in-kind campaign contribution.

Even as the White House continues to deny that Trump had an extramarital affair with Daniels in 2006, Daniels insists that she had a one-time sexual encounter with Trump. She filed a lawsuit last month to void the so-called "hush agreement" she signed in 2016 to keep quiet about the alleged affair. The contract cannot be enforced, Daniels is arguing, because Trump himself never signed it.
As a part of that case, Daniels is also suing Cohen for defamation, saying that he has publicly suggested that she is lying.
Avenatti requested in the letter to Mnuchin that the Treasury secretary release information about the bank transaction by April 11.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/03/politics ... index.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 05, 2018 6:18 pm

trump just threw his lawyer Cohen under the bus/plane :D

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Michael Avenatti

Good (actually GREAT) things come to those who wait!!! The strength of our case just went up exponentially. You can't have an agreement when one party claims to know nothing about it.

We very much look forward to testing the truthfulness of Mr. Trump's feigned lack of knowledge concerning the $130k payment as stated on Air Force One. As history teaches us, it is one thing to deceive the press and quite another to do so under oath.


In his first public remarks, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he knew nothing about $130,000 paid to Stormy Daniels.
he just stepped into a really big trap.



Trump Denies Knowing of Any Hush Money Paid to Porn Actress
WASHINGTON — President Trump denied on Thursday knowing of a $130,000 payment his lawyer made to a pornographic film actress who claims to have had a sexual encounter with him, referring questions about the transaction to his personal lawyer.

Mr. Trump made his first public remarks about the matter on Air Force One as he returned to Washington from White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., where he had held a round table on tax cuts. Asked by a reporter whether he knew about the payment to the actress, Stephanie Clifford, known in her films as Stormy Daniels, he said, “No.”

Asked why Michael D. Cohen, his personal lawyer, had made the payment, Mr. Trump said, “You’ll have to ask Michael.”

The president said he did not know where the money had come from.

Ms. Clifford has said that she was paid $130,000 before the 2016 election to buy her silence. She is now suing Mr. Trump to abrogate a nondisclosure agreement that was supposed to prevent her from discussing her relationship. She claims the agreement is null and void because Mr. Trump never signed it.

Ms. Clifford’s pugnacious lawyer, Michael Avenatti, quickly responded to the president on Twitter, pressing to use legal discovery to expose the back-and-forth around the $130,000 payment. He accused Mr. Trump of a “feigned lack of knowledge” about the payment. And he repeated his desire to depose Mr. Trump in a legal proceeding.

“As history teaches us, it is one thing to deceive the press and quite another to do so under oath,” Mr. Avenatti wrote.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/us/p ... d=tw-share
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: “The Storm”

Postby BenDhyan » Thu Apr 05, 2018 8:21 pm

Apparently Lisa Page has ratted on Andy, presumably to save her own skin. Would be interested to know who McCabe met in London?
2 min Fox video...

New details on Andrew McCabe's firing Apr. 05, 2018
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Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 05, 2018 8:25 pm

Faux News ...come on Ben

stop watching FauxNews...just a bit of friendly advice

you know what is so funny about your link to Faux News ....all the link police here will not say one stinking word to you about a FauxNews link.....that's how I know they are full of crapolla!!!!!

You know trump is running the country by watching FauxNews don't you?

you know who else had a "lack of candor" under oath?

Jeff Sessions three times under oath had a "lack of candor" but guess what he fired McCabe and Sessions still has his job....did Faux News tell you that?

I'm waiting to see the report ...it's been three weeks now

but that's neither here nor there....did you hear this on your tv tonight Ben?

you know who got Pruitt hired? Carl Icahn

How about this BLIZZARD?

At Least 23 Ethical Issues Are Dogging EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt

It’s a lot deeper than his $50-a-night rental from industry lobbyists.

Alexander C. Kaufman
Scott Pruitt is facing mounting pressure to resign from the Environmental Protection Agency amid intensifying scrutiny of his alleged ethical lapses.

On Tuesday, two Republican House members joined Democrats and environmental groups in calling for Pruitt to step down. On Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that “the president thinks that he’s done a good job, particularly on the deregulation front,” but added that “we take this seriously and we’re looking into it.” On Thursday, Hogan Gidley, a deputy White House press secretary, said on Fox News that he “can’t speak to the future of Scott Pruitt.”

Pressure escalated Thursday afternoon as two new reports alleged that Pruitt tried to abuse his vehicle’s emergency sirens to cut through traffic, and that five EPA officials who challenged Pruitt’s “unusually large spending” were either reassigned, demoted or forced out.

If Pruitt exits, he will have served the shortest term of any EPA administrator in history, and will be the first forced out since Anne Gorsuch Burford, President Ronald Reagan’s first EPA administrator, resigned in disgrace in 1983. Burford was EPA’s first female administrator (not to mention the mother of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch), and stepped down after being cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over Superfund records.

Pruitt’s aggressive attempts to roll back environmental regulations, undermine critical work on climate change and disqualify huge swathes of scientific research in favor of industry-backed science have defined his 14 months at the agency. Yet his future in the Trump administration now hinges on an ongoing White House review of his spending, his use of loopholes to give political appointees unapproved raises, and links to lobbyists who gave him a great deal on a Capitol Hill rental.

To give a sense of just how many questions are now swirling about Pruitt, here’s a short list of issues that raise concerns over his leadership as the nation’s top environmental regulator:

1. His Washington housing arrangement.


At the center of Pruitt’s ballooning ethics crisis is his $50-a-night sweetheart deal to rent a room in a luxury Capitol Hill townhouse linked to a fossil fuel industry lobbying firm, Williams & Jensen. The EPA’s ethics lawyers scrambled to approve the arrangement, but struggled to defend the administrator after news broke that his adult daughter also stayed at the residence. But those EPA lawyers walked back the approval in a Wednesday memo, arguing that they did not have all the necessary information to consider the arrangement. During the time Pruitt stayed at the condominium, Williams & Jensen’s clients won approval from the EPA for a pipeline-extension project.

2. A shady real estate deal in Oklahoma.


In 2011, Pruitt and his wife, Margaret, bought a property in Tulsa, Oklahoma, days before a court ruled that it had been fraudulently transferred by a Las Vegas developer who was on the hook for a $3.6 million loan default, according to a report the watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy published Thursday in Salon. Pruitt, then Oklahoma attorney general, flipped the property four months later, selling it to a shell company set up by a major campaign donor, Tulsa business magnate and Oklahoma Republican Party finance chair Kevin Hern.

3. Giving unapproved raises.


Pruitt used a loophole in the Safe Drinking Water Act to give two of his longtime aides raises of $56,765 and $28,130 after the White House rejected his request for the salary increases. The law includes a provision that allows the administrator to hire up to 30 people without White House or congressional approval for work related to the law. In a contentious Fox News interview on Wednesday, Pruitt insisted the action was taken without his knowledge, and said he didn’t know who made the decision. But the law dictates that the administrator must approve the hires, calling his exasperated statements on Trump’s favorite cable channel into question.

4. His first-class travel ― and his explanation.


Federal regulations dictate that government employees be “prudent” when “making official travel arrangements,” and book “the least expensive class of travel that meets their needs.” Yet Pruitt routinely spent between $1,400 and $4,000 on flights to Boston, New York and Corpus Christi, Texas, according to The Washington Post. He regularly stayed in luxury hotels. His international travel expenses soared into the six figures. In June, a trip to an environmental summit in Italy cost more than $120,000, while a December trip to Morocco to promote liquefied natural gas ― a bizarre responsibility for the nation’s environmental regulator to take on ― reportedly cost nearly $40,000 with staff. In February, Pruitt defended his first-class airfare, insisting angry members of the public heckled him in economy class.


5. His frequent trips back home to Oklahoma.


The EPA shelled out between $2,000 and $2,600 for Pruitt’s first-class flights to his home state of Oklahoma, where he spent 43 out of 92 days last spring. The trips cost a total of more than $12,000 in airfare, according to records released last year. His frequent travel triggered a probe from the EPA inspector general, and prompted speculation that the former Oklahoma attorney general was using the EPA’s budget to lay the groundwork for an eventual campaign for governor or Senate in the Sooner State.

6. About that Morocco trip...


The EPA inspector general recently expanded its inquiry into Pruitt’s travel costs to include expenses related to the December trip to Morocco to promote liquefied natural gas. The trip also attracted new scrutiny in light of Pruitt’s Washington housing arrangement. The EPA denied that Pruitt met with officials from Cheniere Energy Inc., a gas firm that paid Williams & Jensen $80,000 for lobbying, or the lobbying firm itself. But Democrats called the trip outrageous, and one insisted, “This is not an area within his portfolio. He’s not supposed to be globetrotting to promote the sale of LNG.”

7. A private jet?


The EPA considered spending roughly $100,000 a month to lease Pruitt a private jet, according to The Washington Post. Aides ultimately scuttled the idea before Tom Price resigned as secretary of health and human services in September after revelations that he routinely took costly chartered flights.

8. Around-the-clock security.


Pruitt isn’t just afraid of airplane hecklers. He’s uniquely paranoid about threats from protesters. Last year, the EPA approved Pruitt’s request for roughly 30 full-time, around-the-clock security guards, costing the agency at least $2 million per year, according to CNN. That doesn’t count the cost of flying the guards in first class, which the EPA confirmed last month. No Cabinet member in U.S. history has ever been assassinated.

9. Spending $120,000 to hire an opposition researcher for the media.


Pruitt cultivated a contentious relationship with reporters early on, granting interviews primarily to friendly outlets such as Fox News, Breitbart News and The Daily Caller, while declining to provide even basic information about his schedule or actions to mainstream news organizations. Last year, he signed off on a $120,000 no-bid contract with a firm whose president boasts being “a master of opposition research” and whose senior vice president, as Earther noted, took part in a campaign to shape negative opinions about Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) through “scathing op-eds and online hot takes.” The EPA canceled the contract after Mother Jones exposed the deal.

10. Spending roughly $43,000 on a soundproof phone booth.


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Pruitt’s secretiveness comes at a high price. Last fall, he installed a soundproof phone booth in his office. Pruitt defended the expense, initially estimated at $25,000, in a congressional hearing, where he said, “It’s necessary for me to be able to do my job.” Last month, The Washington Post reported that the cost was nearly double the original price, at nearly $43,000.

11. He tried to use emergency sirens to cut through D.C. traffic.


Pruitt asked his security team to use his vehicle’s emergency lights and sirens to speed through traffic in Washington to get to an official appointment, CBS News reported on Thursday. The lead security agent told him not to, advising the Pruitt that the sirens were only to be used in emergencies. The agent was reassigned less than two weeks later.

12. Punishing EPA staffers who challenged his spending.


Pruitt reassigned, demoted or forced out five agency officials who challenged his “unusually large spending on office furniture and first-class travel,” The New York Times reported on Thursday afternoon.

13. Allowing an aide to moonlight as a media consultant.


The EPA ethics office in August gave John Konkus, a top Pruitt aide, approval to work as a media consultant outside the agency. But, after E&E News broke the story, the EPA refused to disclose the identities of Konkus’ clients.

14. His naked political ambitions.


Pruitt’s interest in becoming Oklahoma’s governor, or replacing Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) when his fifth term ends in 2020, has been widely discussed for months. But, more recently, the EPA administrator appeared to have even loftier ambitions. In January, Politico reported that he was eyeing the job of U.S. attorney general as Jeff Sessions’ relationship with the president frayed. A profile in The New York Times last month quoted sources saying Pruitt had been plotting to make a bid for president as early as 2024.

15. His past ties to natural gas companies.


Pruitt’s decision to live under the roof of a gas industry lobbyist is less surprising when you consider that Pruitt allowed Devon Energy Corp., an Oklahoma City-based gas giant, to write a complaint to the EPA under his letterhead as the state attorney general in 2011. He barely changed a word before signing and sending the complaint as his own, The New York Times reported in 2014. Emails released days after he was confirmed as EPA administrator showed a long history of chummy conversations between Pruitt’s office and gas companies in his state.

16. Meeting more with fossil fuel companies than with health advocates.


Pruitt spent more time meeting with oil, gas and coal industry officials than with environmental and public health advocates during his first few weeks in office, according to calendars reviewed by HuffPost. That trend continued. During his first 10 months in office, Pruitt gave more than 30 speeches to industry groups and companies regulated by the EPA, but did not speak once before an environmental or public health group during the same period, according to a report by ThinkProgress.


17. Withholding his appointment calendars.


The EPA has refused to release Pruitt’s calendars for months, breaking with a precedent set by the previous administration. During Pruitt’s first year in office, plaintiffs, including news outlets and environmental groups, filed 55 public records lawsuits against the EPA, making it the busiest year for litigation since 1992, according to Politico.

18. Refusing to recuse himself.


Of the 14 times Pruitt sued the EPA as Oklahoma attorney general, four lawsuits aimed to block the Clean Power Plan, the signature Obama administration regulation to cut emissions from the utility sector. Despite this, Pruitt refused to recuse himself from the EPA’s effort to repeal the rule once he took office.

19. His “red team-blue team” debate on climate science.


Pruitt proposed hosting a televised debate on climate science, pitting a “red team” against a “blue team,” and running a military-style exercise to offer the American people an “objective” perspective on global warming. The plan was widely panned by scientists and researchers, who said it gave undue weight to industry-backed climate deniers whose views are not backed up by overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change is human-caused. White House chief of staff John Kelly killed the idea, which he considered ill-conceived and politically risky, according to The New York Times.

20. His embrace of the right-wing Heartland Institute.


Since Pruitt took office, the EPA has worked closely with the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank that transformed itself from a defender of Big Tobacco under the auspice of “smokers’ rights” to a leading proponent of climate change denial. The group receives funding from conservative donors, including Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the billionaires who bankrolled Trump’s presidential campaign. Last year, the group submitted a list of names to the EPA for Pruitt’s red team-blue team debate. It included a convicted child sex offender. Heartland has been a lightning rod for controversy. In January, HuffPost reported that the group protected a former executive charged with stalking and harassing a female colleague half his age.

21. Booting scientists off EPA advisory boards without telling them.


Pruitt announced plans late last year to bar scientists who receive EPA research funding from serving on the agency’s advisory boards, a move widely seen as an attempt to give industry-paid researchers more control over the regulatory process. In doing so, Pruitt named new scientists to head the Science Advisory Board, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and the Board of Scientific Counselors. But the previous leaders of those boards told HuffPost the EPA never alerted them before they were booted.

22. Spending a lot of election money on luxury travel before joining the EPA.


From 2002 to 2016, Pruitt, then Oklahoma attorney general, received more than $300,000 in donations from the oil, gas and coal industries. Even more went to a political action committee and a super PAC set up to help him get re-elected and fund like-minded politicians. Yet only a fraction of the money went to campaigns, while the fundraising groups paid for Pruitt to take trips to places such as Hawaii and New Orleans, where he stayed in luxury hotels, according to filings HuffPost reviewed in January.

23. Naming a coal lobbyist as his No. 2 ― the man who could replace him.


If Pruitt is fired or resigns, his likely successor is a coal lobbyist he picked as his No. 2. Andrew Wheeler, who previously lobbied for the coal giant Murray Energy. Wheeler is a climate change denier and is considered an actor with the skills to execute the same deregulatory agenda Pruitt has pursued. Wheeler spent four years working at the EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, earning him a reputation as someone who, unlike Pruitt, knows the agency he would be running.

This story has been updated with news of additional allegations against Scott Pruitt.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sc ... 0a1191647f
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: “The Storm”

Postby BenDhyan » Fri Apr 06, 2018 3:42 am

Re my Fox video post above, I think I know who McCabe's man Strzok met in London....Alexander Downer, Australia's High Commissioner (Ambassador) to the UK.

Stephan McIntyre Thread... Some context on Strzok meetings in London on Aug 2, 2016. on July 29, Strzok asked Lisa if she had discussed "new case" with McCabe.

https://twitter.com/ClimateAudit/status/982097087725690880
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Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Apr 06, 2018 10:18 am

from the mini storm department

MY BOLD

McCabe has emails proving Republicans lied about him misleading Comey: report

Two Republican congressmen appear to have been caught in a lie about former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mark Meadows (R-NC) told Fox News on Thursday night that the FBI’s disciplinary office found that McCabe lied to then-Director James Comey about leaking information to the press.

Jordan claimed that the FBI’s disciplinary office found that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe lied to then-Director James Comey.

But Michael Bromwich, McCabe’s attorney, told The Washington Post that claims of email evidence “clearly show that Mr. McCabe advised Director Comey that he was working with colleagues at the FBI to correct inaccuracies before the stories were published, and that they remained in contact through the weekend while the interactions with the reporter continued.”

Bromwich also slammed Republicans for “attempting to create a false narrative” about McCabe’s ouster.

“We deeply regret being compelled to respond to this selective leaking with any comment at all,” Bromwich added.

“Nevertheless, one thing is clear: Mr. McCabe never misled Director Comey. Director Comey’s memory of these interactions was equivocal and speculative, while Mr. McCabe’s recollection is clear, unequivocal and supported by documentary evidence,” Bromwich concluded.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/mccabe ... r4.twitter


FUN FACT :)
Fox News host forced to look up ‘oligarchy’ on live TV to explain latest Russia news
Image
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/04/fox-ne ... ak.twitter
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 07, 2018 12:40 pm

STORMY!!

my red ...my bold

Michael Avenatti

Expect a major announcement in the coming days regarding our efforts to identify the thug who threatened Ms. Clifford in Las Vegas in 2011 to “leave Trump alone” while making reference to her little girl. You can run but you can’t hide.
#thugsearch
#seriousconsequences
#basta


Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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