Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Animals

The President epitomizes exactly the thinking that we oppose.
"You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals."

USA Today
This is what we call evil.

The particular statement refers to people who are trying to immigrate to the United States from foreign countries. But whenever you view other human beings in this way, when you deny their actual humanity whether because of their race, religion, their sexuality, poverty, or any other reason, then you are the one who has lost your humanity. Love and empathy for one another is all we have.

It will play well with the base, no doubt. God help us.

386 Comments:

Blogger Priya Lynn said...

No tribal fictions need be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbours, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish. The days of our religious identities are clearly numbered. Whether the days of civilization itself are numbered would seem to depend, rather too much, on how soon we realize this.

May 16, 2018 7:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The Predictable Implosion of the North Korea Talks Begins

Put that Nobel Peace Prize on hold for a while, kids, because as I predicted from the moment this began, the diplomatic talks to bring peace to the Korean peninsula and an end to the North Korean nuclear weapons program are going up in flames.

North Korea is rapidly moving the goal posts for next month’s summit between leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump, saying the United States must stop insisting it “unilaterally” abandon its nuclear program and stop talking about a Libya-style solution to the standoff…

If the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-U.S. summit,” he said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s official name. He also questioned the sequencing of denuclearization first, compensation second.

That Libya-style solution they’re referring to comes directly from John Bolton:

Trump and his top aides, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, have repeatedly said that the United States wants the “complete verifiable irreversible denuclearization of North Korea” — a high standard that Pyongyang has previously balked at.

Bolton, known for his sharply hawkish views, has said that North Korea must commit to a disarmament similar to “Libya 2004.” Seven years after surrendering his nuclear program, Gaddafi was overthrown, then brutally killed by opponents of his regime…

“This is not an expression of intention to address the issue through dialogue. It is essentially a manifestation of awfully sinister move[s] to impose on our dignified state the destiny of Libya or Iraq, which had been collapsed due to the yielding of their countries to big powers,” Kim Gye Gwan said.

And therein lies the problem. Think about this from Kim Jong-Un’s perspective. The model that Bolton, Pompeo and Trump have offered them for these negotiations is a model that resulted in Gaddafi being deposed from office, with the help of American cruise missiles, and then murdered. Why would he think that was a good model? Why would he want to do that? We could have offered an entirely different path, of course. We could have offered the path of Iran, where an agreement was signed to eliminate their nuclear weapons program in exchange for lifting the sanctions and thus helping their economy and their entire country.

Of course, we could have offered that and now no longer can because Trump reneged on that agreement and violated it. So again, from Kim’s perspective, why would he trust us in any negotiations? I wouldn’t. Would you? We can’t trust him either, of course, and that’s why this was never going to work from the get go. Both countries are run by clueless juveniles who bluster and posture but are utterly incapable of being rational and thoughtful. Two hopelessly irrational people — make that three, counting Bolton — cannot reach a reasoned, intelligent diplomatic solution to this or any other problem.

And this is why I did nothing but point and laugh at anyone who thought this was going to succeed. And because I know the history here, starting with Kim’s grandfather, and saw the familiar pattern being followed. Those who ignore history are forced to relive it, the old saying goes; those who don’t are still forced to watch other people do the same things over and over again and expect a different result.

May 16, 2018 8:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Senate Democrats on Wednesday voted to start debate on a measure to restore the "net neutrality" regulations that the Federal Communications Commission killed late last year, thanks to a parliamentary tactic that allowed them to seize control of the floor over the objection of Republican leaders.

The 52-47 vote allowed the debate to begin, and signals there are enough "yes" votes in the Senate to pass the resolution Wednesday afternoon. The resolution being debated was written under the Congressional Review Act, and if passed by the House and Senate, it would reverse the FCC's decision to kill the Obama-era rule that requires the government to regulate the Internet like it does the telecommunications industry.

One Republican, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, helped make the vote possible over the objections of the GOP majority. Collins signed on to a discharge petition with 49 Democrats, giving the effort the simple majority required to force a vote on the matter.

But she was also joined by Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska., which let supporters get to 52 votes.

May 16, 2018 8:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The President epitomizes exactly the thinking that we oppose."

yes, you oppose the idea that there are bad people in the world

unless they work in the Trump administration

then, they're vicious and evil, and anything is justified to stop them

""You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals."

This is what we call evil.

The particular statement refers to people who are trying to immigrate to the United States from foreign countries."

it does? it refers just to people trying to immigrate, and nothing else?

I read it and it looks like he was talking about certain immigrants, not all

"But whenever you view other human beings in this way, when you deny their actual humanity whether because of their race, religion, their sexuality, poverty, or any other reason, then you are the one who has lost your humanity."

how about if they rape and kill people and join MS-13 and, horror of horrors, oppose gay marriage?

can we view them as animals then?

"Love and empathy for one another is all we have."

so all you have is empathy for MS-13?

because I read Trump's comments and that's who he was referring to

"It will play well with the base, no doubt."

no doubt

kind of like when TTFers celebrate someone's death and the prince of empathy, Jimbo himself, says there is "no reciprocity"

"God help us."

if you really have so much sympathy for those in other countries, and you want God to help you, here's an idea:

go to church, sign up for a mission post and head for the frontlines

May 16, 2018 11:58 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Re: Jim's post.

Let's not forget Eric Trump telling Sean Hannity that Democrats who criticize hsi father "are not even people".

It runs in the family.

May 17, 2018 12:18 AM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

what do you think about Eric and Sean, Priya?

are they people?

May 17, 2018 12:33 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

There were 74 contacts (that we know of) between the Trump Campaign and Russians. Initially Trump and his people denied that any contacts had taken place with the Russians. Then as contacts were discovered they acknowledged those but claimed no other contacts took place. They lied about this every step of the way. This takes place against a backdrop of extensive interactions between the Trump campaign and what look like obvious efforts to collude with Russia to affect the election. Trump, his family, and everyone connected with this investigation acts like they've got something to hide. 74 contacts with a foreign government is way beyond what the norme is for a campaign and its contacts with foreign governments. Its clear both parties were eager to collude to help Trump win the election, its clear collusion took place, all that remains is for Mueller to provide the evidence that it was a criminal conspiracy and from what little has leaked out to day that appears to be very likely the case.

Keep in mind that when Mike Pence called for the Mueller investigation to end and he claimed there had been no evidence of a criminal conspiracy presented to date, investigations don't normally release any evidence they have before going to court. So that Mueller has presented no evidence to date means nothing, that's the normal way FBI investigations work, its FBI policy not to discuss ongoing investigations so as to avoid tipping off the suspects as to what the investigators have which would could help criminals evade justice through destroying evidence, fabricating stories, etc. Mueller may well have vast arrays of evidence showing there was a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but he's not going to tell anyone about it until the investigation is over.

May 17, 2018 1:53 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

So, Americans are fascinated with their American born princess Meghan Markle.

You can't blame them though when the top of their society is Donald Trump - you definitely want some royalty to look up to when that's the case, lol!

May 17, 2018 2:00 AM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

"Trump, his family, and everyone connected with this investigation acts like they've got something to hide."

as do Comey, Clapper, Brennan, and Hillary

"74 contacts with a foreign government is way beyond what the norme is for a campaign and its contacts with foreign governments."

not really

they're not exactly Lichtenstein

but then Priya is an expert at beyond the "norme"

"Its clear both parties were eager to collude to help Trump win the election,"

it's only clear that the campaign would take information from any source

kind of like when Hillary paid for the Steele dossier, which came from Russian sources

she sure acted like she had something to hide

"its clear collusion took place,"

Trump's campaign took no part in any collusion

information gathering is not collusion

"all that remains is for Mueller to provide the evidence that it was a criminal conspiracy and from what little has leaked out to day that appears to be very likely the case."

that's all there ever was

and nothing alleged so far is criminal

it's clear there is no evidence

"Mueller may well have vast arrays of evidence showing there was a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but he's not going to tell anyone about it until the investigation is over"

he "may well" have evidence that the Comet Ping-Pong story is true too

that would be criminal

nothing alleged about Trump and Russia is criminal

"So, Americans are fascinated with their American born princess Meghan Markle"

no more than usual

it is kind of historic and cool that an African-American could become part of the British royalty but this is not exactly Wallis Simpson

May 17, 2018 6:03 AM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

"No tribal fictions need be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbours,"

this is why Priya so dearly loves all the neighbors to the South

but why won't Priya acknowledge that Eric and Sean and Donald and Jared and Sarah Huckabee and Betsy DeVos are people too?

that their happiness is inextricable from our own?

May 17, 2018 6:08 AM  
Anonymous Missing Files Motivated the Leak of Michael Cohen’s Financial Records said...

A law-enforcement official released the documents after finding that additional suspicious transactions did not appear in a government database.

Last week, several news outlets obtained financial records showing that Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal attorney, had used a shell company to receive payments from various firms with business before the Trump Administration. In the days since, there has been much speculation about who leaked the confidential documents, and the Treasury Department’s inspector general has launched a probe to find the source. That source, a law-enforcement official, is speaking publicly for the first time, to The New Yorker, to explain the motivation: the official had grown alarmed after being unable to find two important reports on Cohen’s financial activity in a government database. The official, worried that the information was being withheld from law enforcement, released the remaining documents.

The payments to Cohen that have emerged in the past week come primarily from a single document, a “suspicious-activity report” filed by First Republic Bank, where Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants, L.L.C., maintained an account. The document detailed sums in the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to Cohen by the pharmaceutical company Novartis, the telecommunications giant A.T. & T., and an investment firm with ties to the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

The report also refers to two previous suspicious-activity reports, or sars, that the bank had filed, which documented even larger flows of questionable money into Cohen’s account. Those two reports detail more than three million dollars in additional transactions—triple the amount in the report released last week. Which individuals or corporations were involved remains a mystery. But, according to the official who leaked the report, these sars were absent from the database maintained by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or fincen. The official, who has spent a career in law enforcement, told me, “I have never seen something pulled off the system. . . . That system is a safeguard for the bank. It’s a stockpile of information. When something’s not there that should be, I immediately became concerned.” The official added, “That’s why I came forward.”

Seven former government officials and other experts familiar with the Treasury Department’s fincen database expressed varying levels of concern about the missing reports. Some speculated that fincen may have restricted access to the reports due to the sensitivity of their content, which they said would be nearly unprecedented. One called the possibility “explosive.” A record-retention policy on fincen’s Web site notes that false documents or those “deemed highly sensitive” and “requiring strict limitations on access” may be transferred out of its master file. Nevertheless, a former prosecutor who spent years working with the fincen database said that she knew of no mechanism for restricting access to sars. She speculated that fincen may have taken the extraordinary step of restricting access “because of the highly sensitive nature of a potential investigation. It may be that someone reached out to fincen to ask to limit disclosure of certain sars related to an investigation, whether it was the special counsel or the Southern District of New York.” (The special counsel, Robert Mueller, is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. The Southern District is investigating Cohen, and the F.B.I. raided his office and hotel room last month.)

Whatever the explanation for the missing reports, the appearance that some, but not all, had been removed or restricted troubled the official who released the report last week. “Why just those two missing?” the official, who feared that the contents of those two reports might be permanently withheld, said. “That’s what alarms me the most.”

May 17, 2018 7:25 AM  
Anonymous Uno Who said...

Even rapists and MS-13 are human beings, they are not animals. They may be bad human beings and it may make sense to punish them, but the distinction between human beings and animals is not one that is based on some judgment of their behavior. As human beings they are accountable for their behavior, they are woven into the web of society and will experience the pressures of the responsibilities of being human.

Members of the Trump family and administration are human beings. They are selfish, short-sighted human beings but they are real people and will be held accountable for their actions in a way that an animal cannot be. We will not take them behind the barn and shoot them for their failures and then eat them for dinner, we will charge them with their crimes and subject them to the fair, careful, and caring processes that we use to determine what consequences a human being should experience for violating formalized norms.

Thinking of people as less than human lets you forfeit your obligation to behave with decency toward them, and our decency is the one thing that separates us from other species of animal. Trump's statement is a huge leap backward for America and represents a kind of destructive nihilism that decent humans have to oppose and destroy; the fact that this is not even on the front page of the newspaper today is shocking. We are now a country that sees some people as animals -- this is the definition of evil. We will pay for this.

May 17, 2018 8:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Even rapists and MS-13 are human beings, they are not animals"

yes, your pompousness

everyone knows that

Trump used a metaphor that is often used to refer to violent people

it's a very common usage in NYC, where Trump hails from

but when Trump says it, well, liberal hypocrites seize the opportunity

maybe you're not human

perhaps you're half jackass, half slug

but we do know one thing

at some point in your life, you've also described someone using extra-species metaphor

maybe you said they were snakes

or weasels

or wallflowers

or bookworms

but, I assume you're beyond that now and can pronounce judgement on others

this fine day, you realize, that we do, in fact, love our neighbours, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish

"Thinking of people as less than human lets you forfeit your obligation to behave with decency toward them,"

I guess you feel pretty bad now, using all those animal metaphors to refer to your fellow human beings

"and our decency is the one thing that separates us from other species of animal."

so, you're now saying that someone who lacks that decency is no different from animals

wala! you're just like Trump

"Trump's statement is a huge leap backward for America and represents a kind of destructive nihilism that decent humans have to oppose and destroy;"

what a load of hyperbole

"the fact that this is not even on the front page of the newspaper today is shocking."

not really

people have called MS-13 "animals" before

it's just a term of disdain

kind of like Baltimore calls their baseball team Orioles

how dehumanizing!

"We are now a country that sees some people as animals"

actually, we don't

not even Trump

and you know that


"-- this is the definition of evil. We will pay for this."

maybe you can make a down payment and move to Canada with Priya

that would be a good way for you to pay!!

May 17, 2018 11:10 PM  
Anonymous reciprocity city said...

"and our decency is the one thing that separates us from other species of animal."

TTF really takes the cake, man

tries to write a comment denouncing Trump for referring to rapists and killers as animals

and, in the midst of it, calls Trump an animal because he refers to rapists and killers "indecently"

TTF must give out training in how to be a horse's ass

I guess it's not decent to call rapists and killers "animals"

rapists and killers have feelings too

but TTF has no "reciprocity" for Trump

May 18, 2018 5:30 AM  
Anonymous Trumplandia sucks said...

Thanks for the demonstration.

May 18, 2018 7:51 AM  
Anonymous Michael Gerson said...

The Trump era is a renaissance of half-witted intolerance

May 18, 2018 7:58 AM  
Anonymous Crickets commence chirping said...

"in the midst of it, calls Trump an animal because he refers to rapists and killers "indecently""

Liar.

Show us the quote from above where someone calls Trump an animal.





May 18, 2018 9:18 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous play straight out of the Joseph Goebles propaganga manual "Accuse others of that which you are guilty".


Lying is standard operating procedure for Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous. They made that clear themselves when they said "there are many situations where its appropriate to lie", "he lied, so what?", and "most people lie all the time".

May 18, 2018 2:11 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Trump Tried to Build Moscow Tower Right Up to the Election

Donald Trump likes to defend himself against charges of collusion with Russia by saying that he has no business dealings in that country at all, so they had nothing to offer him. But an investigative report from Buzzfeed shows that he was working to get a Trump Tower approved in Moscow literally right up until election day in 2016.

What the article above does not mention is that Trump was seeking financing for Trump tower Moscow from a Russian bank sanctioned by the U.S. government.

The corruption is deep in this one.

May 18, 2018 2:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals," Bauer said during a town hall meeting, as the Greenville News reported over the weekend. "You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sc-lt-gov-andre-bauer-compares-helping-poor-to-feeding-stray-animals/

"The president of the United States this week compared poor immigrants to animals. The Republican-controlled Congress is preparing to make it harder for the poor to get food. These are not coincidences.

For the ruling class, laws are for the little people. Rulers are exempt. Laws should be punitive to keep the hoi polloi in line.

Thus the proposal in Congress to make it even harder for struggling Americans in need of nutritional support, i.e., food, to get any."

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2018/05/kick-down-kiss-up-by-bloggersrus.html

Thank goodness it failed:

"A sweeping farm bill failed in the House on Friday in a blow to GOP leaders who were unable to placate conservative lawmakers demanding commitments on immigration.

The House leadership put the bill on the floor gambling it would pass despite unanimous Democratic opposition. They negotiated with members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus up to the last minutes.

But their gamble failed. The vote was 213 to 198, with 30 Republicans joined 183 Democrats in defeating bill.

The outcome exposed what is becoming an all-out war within the House GOP over immigration, a divisive fight the Republicans did not want to have heading into midterm elections in November that will decide control of Congress."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/18/house-moves-toward-vote-on-farm-bill-with-outcome-uncertain-in-dispute-over-immigration/

May 18, 2018 4:13 PM  
Anonymous Russia, Russia, Russia said...

WSJ reports Paul Manafort’s Former Son-in-Law Cooperating With Federal Investigators, Sources Say

May 18, 2018 4:20 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

"Liar.

Show us the quote from above where someone calls Trump an animal."

sure,

I live to please

first, someone said that Trump has failed to act decently:

"Thinking of people as less than human lets you forfeit your obligation to behave with decency toward them,"

then, they say that decency, which they say Trump has failed at, is the one only thing that makes anyone human:

"and our decency is the one thing that separates us from other species of animal."

so, it's simple logic

if you don't have the ONE THING that makes one human and separates you from other species of animal, then, by definition, you aren't human

that kind of hypocrisy is called TTFism

did you know that Merriam-Webster has five definitions of the word "animal" and that two refer to humans?

did you know that the American Heritage Dictionary's third definition of "animal" is “a person who behaves in a bestial or brutish manner.”?

The dictionary epitomizes exactly the thinking that TTF opposes.

This is what they call evil.

Whenever the dictionary views other human beings in this way, when they deny their actual humanity whether because of their race, religion, their sexuality, poverty, or any other reason, then the dictionary is the one that has lost its humanity. Love and empathy for one another is all we have.

Merriam and Webster will play well with the base, no doubt.

God help us.

May 18, 2018 9:46 PM  
Anonymous kumbayah said...

those MS-13 gangsters that Trump refers to aren't animals

they are people that act very unwisely

like this small sample:

That brutality has continued:

►In 2013, two gang members beat and hacked a 16-year-old Houston teen to death using bats and machetes. They also almost decapitated him, the Houston Chronicle reported. The gang suspected he had shared information with El Salvadoran police. Both killers were sentenced 35 years in prison. Both were from El Salvador, here illegally. One had been picked up previously on an immigration charge, a common thread for the gang. That’s why it comes up in the context of sanctuary city roundtables.

►In 2017, as many as 10 MS-13 members stabbed a man more than 100 times in Maryland. They decapitated him and cut out his heart. The first suspect charged, who allegedly stabbed first, wasMiguel Angel Lopez-Abrego, of El Salvador, who was here illegally.

►Also last year, MS-13 members shot an unidentified girl who was thought to be 15 in the head and chest, leaving her body in the middle of a busy street in Houston’s Chinatown. The murderer said he killed her to appease Satan. “The beast did not want a material offering, but wanted a soul,” he said. He was from El Salvador originally, and here illegally.

Way back in 2003, Brenda Paz was famously murdered by MS-13 after cooperating with police as an informant. CBS News’ Dan Rather reported on the slaying.

Rather reported that MS-13 conducted "investigations” and held meetings where they went over things like recruitment, drug sales and murder. A “greenlight” was unanimously agreed upon to assassinate Paz at such a meeting. Paz was lured to a fishing trip with her boyfriend, who along with his fellow gang member stabbed her to death in front of a witness.

The list goes on:

►In 2017, four gang members were arrested for a spree of 10 murders in Las Vegas.

►In 2014, MS-13 “enforcers” were deployed by a cartel to kidnap and torture teenagers in St. Paul.

►In 2012, Dennis Gil-Bernardez, a Honduran native and a leader in the gang, was sentenced to 80 years for, among many other crimes, stabbing a man to death on a street in Washington, D.C.

►Four men were hacked to death on Long Island, N.Y.

►A 15-year-old girl was tortured, had a tattoo cut off, and then was stabbed to death.

May 18, 2018 9:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

well, we fooled a few dumb Dems into voting for Gina Haspel

now, we have a CIA director that will espionage fun again

first up, Michael Avenatti has an appointment at Langley

they got a waterboard with his name on it!

May 18, 2018 10:17 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Stormy Daniel's lawyer Michael Avenatti is a genius. He waited until Trump signed and filed his financial disclosure form and then...reveals at least 2 more hush money payments were made that he clearly didn't disclose. Well played Mr. Avenatti, well played.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

May 18, 2018 10:49 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Further to my comment above: Many of those Russians Trump was dealing with during the election to get his building in Moscow built were either aware of or involved in the Russian government meddling in the 2016 election. Oh yeah, there was collusion all right.

Fun Fact: Bob Mueller's investigation has gone on for one year, or .25 Benghazis.

The real problem isn't the U.S.'s easy access to guns, its the NRA's easy access to politicians.

"No way to prevent this", says only nation where this regularly happens.

Mueller's investigation: $3.2M
Behnghazi "investigation":$7M
Bill Clinton investigation: $70M
Trump's golfing trips: $83M
New debt from Republican tax bill:$1.5T
So, keep that in mind when you hear Republican's selective "outrage" over the cost of the Mueller investigation.

In an effort to stop school shootings, Trump formed a school safety commission in March and put Betsy DeVos in charge. No one has heard from the commission since. There have only been 2 meetings, no agenda, no timeline, and Bestsy DeVos refuses to speak to the media.
Meanwhile, there have been 10 school shootings since Parkland. Friday's shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, which left at least tenpeople dead, was the 16th this year

May 19, 2018 3:23 AM  
Anonymous where is TTF's apology to the President? said...

Left-wing journalists have conceded that President Donald Trump had referred to MS-13, not immigrants in general, as “animals.”

Daily Beast reporter Asawin Suebsaeng conceded the industry-wide “mistake.”

Asawin Suebsaeng

@swin24
team trump folk have a point that some in The Media misconstrued what trump said about ms-13.

They are wrong when they say Trump is “owed” an apology

Politico Magazine‘s chief political correspondent Tim Alberta laid equal blame on “a media climate that feeds on outrage and speed” — and Trump’s “history of using racially-charged language.”

Tim Alberta

@TimAlberta
Awful lot of reporters screwed up re: Trump’s “animals” remark. It’s the result of a media climate that feeds on outrage and speed and re-tweets.

The Associated Press had to delete a tweet Thursday that portrayed President Trump’s remarks during a meeting Wednesday as referring to illegal immigrants generally rather than violent MS-13 gang members.

CNN updated a tweet that quoted the remarks without the context that they were about MS-13.

The New York Times has yet to issue any sort of correction or clarification despite tweeting out a story that the remarks were about illegal immigrants, not just MS-13.

President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., called them out Thursday.

"Weird what happenes when you take out the first sentence specifically talking about MS-13 gang members. Not surprising that you would conveniently ignore that but I would think your readers deserve the truth not your chosen narrative. How does this even pass for “journalism”?"

“The president was very clearly referring to MS-13 gang members who enter our country illegally,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Thursday.

“If liberals and the media want to defend MS-13 they are welcome to,” she added.

The President responded to a similar question: “When the MS-13 comes in, when the other gang members come into our country, I refer to them as animals and guess what, I always will.”

May 19, 2018 5:12 AM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

"Stormy Daniel's lawyer Michael Avenatti is a genius. He waited until Trump signed and filed his financial disclosure form and then...reveals at least 2 more hush money payments were made that he clearly didn't disclose. Well played Mr. Avenatti, well played.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!"

his 15 minutes of fame have now ended

as soon as the media realized the whole story was making Trump's ratings go up, they dropped it

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

what Priya doesn't realize is that Hillary didn't declare her payments to the Russians via Fusion and Steele on her disclosure forms

happens all the time

ooops!

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

May 19, 2018 8:30 AM  
Anonymous #1 on Trump's Nixonian Enemies List said...

Jeffrey P. Bezos, owner of Amazon and the Washington Post

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon%27s_Enemies_List

May 19, 2018 8:45 AM  
Anonymous You wish said...

"his (Avenatti) 15 minutes of fame have now ended"

What Avenatti has uncovered about the GOP's Liar-in-Chief is forever recorded in the history books: our pussy grabbing president reimbursed his personal capo, Michael Cohen, for paying off a porn star $130,000.00 to keep quiet about Trump's unsatisfying night of sex with her.

The civil lawsuit that high-profile attorney Michael Avenatti is pursuing on behalf of adult film actress Stormy Daniels is based on an agreement that Daniels signed shortly before the 2016 election, promising not to disclose her (alleged) sexual relationship with Donald Trump. She’s asking a California trial judge to declare that the agreement isn’t enforceable against her because Trump (or his pseudonym, David Dennison) never signed the document, and because it’s void for public policy reasons, too. Avenatti has been racing from one microphone and news camera to another, blaring damning information about Trump’s sometime attorney, Michael Cohen (and, by implication, the president himself). The suit, and Avenatti’s aggressive TV lawyering, has rattled Trump’s legal team, provoking Rudy Giuliani into a series of damaging admissions—including the revelation that Trump did indeed reimburse Cohen for his $130,000 payoff to Daniels.

Trump's a very human thug and America will soon scrape him off our shoe.

May 19, 2018 9:06 AM  
Anonymous Boy are you uninformed said...

"now, we have a CIA director that will [sic] espionage fun again

first up, Michael Avenatti has an appointment at Langley

they got a waterboard with his name on it!"

Boy are you uninformed.

"I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral — even if it was technically legal," said Gina Haspel, the career CIA officer who is now nominated to lead the agency. It was one of many replies she gave on Wednesday to pointed questions about what her values and priorities would be as leader of America's intelligence agency....

...Warner moved on to ask Haspel if she believes the CIA's interrogation program in the early 2000s "was consistent with American values."

Haspel began her reply by discussing how America has changed since the Sept. 11., 2001, terrorist attacks and the country's decision to hold itself to a "stricter moral standard," adding that she supports that standard.

Warner followed that up by asking how Haspel would respond to a request from Trump and the White House that might run counter to her moral values.

"I would never, ever take CIA back to an interrogation program," Haspel said. She added that she would not "put CIA officers at risk by asking them to undertake risky, controversial activity again."

Warner asked, "If this president asked you to do something that you find morally objectionable, even if there is an [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, what will you do? Will you carry out that order or not?"

"Senator, my moral compass is strong," Haspel said. "I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral — even if it was technically legal. I would absolutely not permit it." Prodded again by Warner, Haspel said, "No. I believe that CIA must undertake activities that are consistent with American values."..."

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/09/609681289/gina-haspel-confirmation-hearing-cia-nominee-faces-senators-questions

May 19, 2018 9:16 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

""I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral — even if it was technically legal," said Gina Haspel""

Haspel's defence for having overseen torture during Bush was that she "had to follow orders". Her claim that she would now refuse orders to torture prisoners isn't credible in the slightest.

May 19, 2018 1:37 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

People across the United States are thrilled beyond belief that their American born princess has married her prince. The Royal wedding is perhaps the most exciting thing that Americans have ever witnessed.

Americans have always longed for a royal family to call their own and now they can finally lay claim to having their very own Royal. And she is a delight, isn't she? She has so much of that charisma that Lady Diana had. May she, as Diana did, use it to bring attention to people in need.

Congratulations America!

May 19, 2018 1:43 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The Anti-Christ Will Be A Gay Jew

Elsewhere he claims anyone who doesn't believe in Jesus is the anti-christ. I guess that makes me the anti-christ, lol!

But, wait a minute, wasn't Obama the anti-christ according to conservative American christians??? I'm confused.

May 19, 2018 1:59 PM  
Anonymous Friday’s massacre was the 22nd school shooting of 2018. It is only May. said...

Following another school shooting, this one leaving 10 dead and 13 injured in Texas, Houston’s police chief is calling out elected officials for their failure to protect the children they claim to hold so dear.

Police Chief Art Acevedo posted a pained message on Facebook after Friday’s shooting in the nearby town of Santa Fe, in which a 17-year-old student at Santa Fe High School gunned down his classmates and a teacher.

No one ― not even the terrified kids themselves ― seemed to be all that surprised, with one student telling the local news she felt “eventually it was going to happen here too.”

Acevedo said he has had enough inaction when it comes to protecting children.

“Today I spent the day dealing with another mass shooting of children and a responding police officer who is clinging to life,” the police chief wrote Friday. “I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve shed tears of sadness, pain and anger.”

He had a message to those who would choose their guns over the safety of kids.

“I know some have strong feelings about gun rights, but I want you to know I’ve hit rock bottom and I am not interested in your views as it pertains to this issue,” he said.

Friday’s massacre was the 22nd school shooting of 2018. It is only May.

The police chief previously marched with demonstrators during the March 24 March for Our Lives event, held in response to the Feb. 14 mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 dead.

“This isn’t a time for prayers, and study and inaction, it’s a time for prayers, action and the asking of God’s forgiveness for our inaction (especially the elected officials that ran to the cameras today, acted in a solemn manner, called for prayers, and will once again do absolutely nothing),” Acevedo added.

May 19, 2018 2:33 PM  
Anonymous What we expect from Christians said...

A former Dallas judge who’s now running in a GOP runoff for local commissioner has admitted to setting up a living trust that rewards his children for marrying white, Christian spouses of the opposite sex.

Vickers Cunningham confirmed the arrangement in an interview with The Dallas Morning News after his estranged brother, Bill Cunningham, told the paper that the former judge was racist and revealed details about the trust.

The candidate, however, calmly defended the trust arrangement to The Dallas Morning News, explaining that he distributes money to his children for certain “milestones,” such as earning an advanced degree — and marrying what he considers the right kind of spouse.

“I strongly support traditional family values,” Cunningham told the outlet in the video above, which he defined as marrying within one’s own race. “If you marry a person of the opposite sex that’s Caucasian, that’s Christian, they” — meaning his children — “will get a distribution,” he added, referring to a payout.

May 19, 2018 8:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Police Chief Art Acevedo posted a pained message on Facebook after Friday’s shooting in the nearby town of Santa Fe, in which a 17-year-old student at Santa Fe High School gunned down his classmates and a teacher.

No one ― not even the terrified kids themselves ― seemed to be all that surprised, with one student telling the local news she felt “eventually it was going to happen here too.”

Acevedo said he has had enough inaction when it comes to protecting children."

an odd thing to hear from the chief of police

isn't he the one that is charged with protecting the citizens of the town

"“Today I spent the day dealing with another mass shooting of children and a responding police officer who is clinging to life,” the police chief wrote Friday. “I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve shed tears of sadness, pain and anger.”

He had a message to those who would choose their guns over the safety of kids."

I have a message for police chiefs who use most of their officers to enforce inane traffic laws like sea belts while leaving public schools wide open:

get your priorities straight

"“I know some have strong feelings about gun rights, but I want you to know I’ve hit rock bottom and I am not interested in your views as it pertains to this issue,” he said."

not interested in the views of your constituents?

you might as well quit now

move to someplace like Chicago where everyone stays safe because of the strict controls on guns

May 20, 2018 6:38 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the latest Reuters poll out gives Dems a 1 point edge in the generic Congressional poll

they were up double digit earlier this year

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2018_generic_congressional_vote-6185.html

which leads to an interesting question:

could they become one of the few opposition parties to not gain ground in the first midterms after a new President is elected?

if so, posts like this one at TTF made this piece of history happen

new protected class for TTFers: MS-13

May 20, 2018 7:30 AM  
Anonymous Emily Litella said...

Wow. Maybe if the pro-gun party wins it all we can have school massacres every week.

Oh, we've had 22 school mass shootings in 4.5 months already this year.

Never mind.

May 20, 2018 10:15 AM  
Anonymous Oops, you forgot a few said...

"the latest Reuters poll out gives Dems a 1 point edge in the generic Congressional poll"

And the latest Economist/YouGov poll gives Dems a 5 point edge and the latest Rasmussen Reports poll gives Dems a 6 point edge.



Enjoy!

May 20, 2018 10:25 AM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

"MAY 20, 2018 7:30 AM
Anonymous Emily Litella said...
Wow. Maybe if the pro-gun party wins it all we can have school massacres every week.

Oh, we've had 22 school mass shootings in 4.5 months already this year."

Emily, you poor deluded fool

do you live in the DC area?

go down to a museum on the Mall

you have to be searched and scanned to get anywhere near a bunch of creepy old paintings

this week, I went to a program at the National Archives

had to wait 20 minutes for my turn to be patted down

and yet, at the one place that has had 22 shootings in the last 4 months, people come and go freely

we value a bunch of antiques more than the lives of the future generation

and cops cruise the streets wasting time giving people tickets for rolling stops and not wearing a seat belt

how about having a couple of cops walking the beat in every school hall?

might be worth a try instead of trying to impede the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens

did you know Congress passed a law making it a Federal crime to possess a firearm in a school?

yeah, they did that 28 years ago

The federal Gun-Free School Zones Act prohibits anyone from knowingly possessing a firearm that has moved in or otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce at a place the person knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone.

before the end of that decade, we had Columbine

and bloodshed hasn't ceased since because the publicity-seeking animals who do this know they can kill a lot of people without anyone there to stop them

Never mind the truth, right?

"Oops, you forgot a few said...

And the latest Economist/YouGov poll gives Dems a 5 point edge and the latest Rasmussen Reports poll gives Dems a 6 point edge."

the poll I used was the most recent but, with the election months away, the most important aspect is the trend

let's just say, America isn't moving toward the Dems, they're moving away

and Dems keep on doubling down on idiocy

America elected Trump with the full knowledge he was a thriced divorced cad who sleeps around

getting the names out really doesn't change anything

you think, with the economy humming, voters will reject the GOP because Trump had the decency to try to keep the girls quiet?

Enjoy your time in Fantasyland!

Tip: go ahead and stand in line for the Dumbo ride

it's worth it for Dems!

May 20, 2018 11:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

so worth it!

for a few magical moments, Dems can feel good about being dumbos!!

hey, do you guys know if the Hillary campaign paid for all the damage Hillary did to the hotel room on election night, or did the bill for the rampage come out of her own pocket, or did her lawyer pay and get reimbursed?

special prosecutor time!!

and remember: Hillary's not President so she can be indicted

membership has its privileges!!

May 20, 2018 11:51 AM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

"People across the United States are thrilled beyond belief that their American born princess has married her prince"

oh, we find the whole thing amusing

but "thrilled beyond belief"?

Priya's lack of knowledge and understanding is beyond belief

how, with all the information available in the cyber age, does a person remain so ignorant?

"The Royal wedding is perhaps the most exciting thing that Americans have ever witnessed"

I wouldn't say it's even in the top thousand

"Americans have always longed for a royal family to call their own"

not really

we have had a lot of families try to become that and we always laugh them off the stage

think Jeb! and Hillary "I'm with her" Nasty Woman

"and now they can finally lay claim to having their very own Royal"

you ever hear of Grace Kelly, Rita Hayward, and Wallis Simpson?

this is nothing new

"And she is a delight, isn't she?"

oh, she's alright

a b-level actress but she hasn't done anything to embarrass herself

"She has so much of that charisma that Lady Diana had."

only compared to the bores of Windsor

"May she, as Diana did, use it to bring attention to people in need."

well, that's mainly what the royal family

it's nice

they have the time

"Congratulations America!"

you mean cuz Trump's making us great again?

May 20, 2018 4:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Priya:

Congratulations America!

May 20, 2018 4:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

So someone working for the 2016 Trump campaign became alarmed at what he/she saw going on and contacted the FBI to give them information about the suspicious goings on. Trump's now freaking out and screaming "They implanted a spy in my campaign!". No Donald, an honest person working for you was troubled by the unethical/illegal things you were doing and went to the FBI about it. And even if the FBI did implant a spy in your campaign (they didn't) to monitor illegal activities there would be nothing illegal or unusual about that - the FBI regularly infiltrates criminal organizations to collect evidence to bring the members to justice. Stop whining cadet bone-spurs, you did this, take your medicine like a man and do your time. You know what they say "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.".

May 20, 2018 5:51 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

"So someone working for the 2016 Trump campaign became alarmed at what he/she saw going on and contacted the FBI to give them information about the suspicious goings on. Trump's now freaking out and screaming "They implanted a spy in my campaign!". No Donald, an honest person working for you was troubled by the unethical/illegal things you were doing and went to the FBI about it. And even if the FBI did implant a spy in your campaign (they didn't) to monitor illegal activities there would be nothing illegal or unusual about that - the FBI regularly infiltrates criminal organizations to collect evidence to bring the members to justice. Stop whining cadet bone-spurs, you did this, take your medicine like a man and do your time. You know what they say "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."."

first of all, the intelligence agencies have lied repeatedly about why they started investigating Trump, this is just the latest

second, no one saw anything unethical/illegal - if they did, we'd already know it

third, if we allow them to get away with that, it will be the end of our democracy - no candidate will have a chance if a President can simply make a pretext for spying on his rivals' campaign



May 20, 2018 9:04 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

it's not that amazing that the press was biased against Trump

they've always had that

it's more pronounced and shameless now but that's not the big thing

it's not that Obama's intelligence officers were trying to help Obama

that's ominous but if it was that alone, we have the capacity to counter it

what's really creepy is how the intelligence colluded with the mainstream media

they'd leak classified information to the media and then get hired a couple of months

and the Dems are fine with that

how progressives have regressed

I hear you're working with the C I A

they wouldn't have you in the MAF I A

May 20, 2018 9:41 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

How the Trump family sold U.S. foreign policy to the highest bidder

The Times scoop on Trump’s dealings with the Saudis and UAE is the puzzle piece that finally brings the big picture into focus. As Trump’s unlikely 2016 campaign drew closer to the White House, it triggered a mad dash to sell American foreign policy to the highest bidder — and some of the world’s worst autocrats stepped up to the plate. What happened next is arguably tantamount to treason. What is beginning to take shape is the outlines of a scandal that threatens to be worse than Watergate on a massive scale, that would make Richard Nixon’s crimes truly seem like “a third-rate burglary” in comparison.

A shadowy network of computer hackers in Eastern Europe and experts in psywar techniques used illegal methods — including voter suppression aimed at African Americans — to essentially steal a U.S. presidential election decided by a mere 100,000 or so votes in a few key states. Meanwhile, the foreign countries that backed this enterprise and their billionaire allies also found myriad ways to financially support America’s new ruling junta — dangling real estate deals, hiring Trump allies, booking big parties at Trump hotels, giving millions to Trump’s inauguration that no one can now account for — in ways that have built a bonfire out of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

And here’s the worst part: The sudden trashing of long-standing American policy objectives — like the Iran deal or delaying any move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem until a true Israel-Palestinian peace deal — risks war on large scale. People could die in the name of keeping 666 Fifth Ave. and the Trump Organization afloat. Arguably, some already are.

Much more at the link.

May 20, 2018 11:54 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

FBI under pressure from Republicans to unmask source, putting US security at risk

“It would be at best irresponsible, and at worst potentially illegal, for members of Congress to use their positions to learn the identity of an FBI source for the purpose of undermining the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in our election.”

“The first thing any new member of the Intelligence Committee learns is the critical importance of protecting sources and methods,” Warner continued. “Publicly outing a source risks not only their life, but the lives of every American, because when sources are burned it makes it that much harder for every part of the intelligence community to gather intelligence on those who wish to do us harm.”

As former FBI agent and senior lecturer at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University, Asha Rangappa, pointed out in an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, the investigation into possible campaign ties with Russia began as a counterintelligence probe, “not a criminal one.”

The goal of such a probe, Rangappa writes, is to “identify, monitor and neutralize foreign intelligence activity in the United States.” Rangappa goes on to explain:

Accusations that the FBI was “spying” on the Trump campaign – rather than spying on foreign spies, which is its job – erase the important distinctions between counterintelligence and criminal investigations. It also displays a shocking ignorance of the devastating consequences to our national security if the Justice Department hands over the information that Nunes is demanding: “Burning” the FBI’s purported source and exposing how it obtained intelligence against Russia’s efforts only helps Russia cover its tracks, change tactics and improve its future operations against the United States.

Trump and his supporters, Rangappa concludes, “should be glad to know that the FBI appears to have been trying to thwart a hostile country’s efforts to infiltrate his campaign.”

May 21, 2018 2:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"As Trump’s unlikely 2016 campaign drew closer to the White House, it triggered a mad dash to sell American foreign policy to the highest bidder — and some of the world’s worst autocrats stepped up to the plate"

nice fantasy, maybe you could sell it to the SYFY network to make a miniseries

you might have a stronger case if it was about the Clintons while Hillary was Secretary of State and Bill and the Foundations were raking it im

"What is beginning to take shape is the outlines of a scandal that threatens to be worse than Watergate on a massive scale, that would make Richard Nixon’s crimes truly seem like “a third-rate burglary” in comparison."

that's true

Obama's use of the intelligence agencies to spy on Trump's campaign is Watergate on steroids

"A shadowy network of computer hackers in Eastern Europe and experts in psywar techniques used illegal methods — including voter suppression aimed at African Americans — to essentially steal a U.S. presidential election decided by a mere 100,000 or so votes in a few key states."

this is a new one, so the Russians try to keep blacks from voting

because it's also been alleged they were pushing Black Lives Matter

"And here’s the worst part: The sudden trashing of long-standing American policy objectives — like the Iran deal or delaying any move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem until a true Israel-Palestinian peace deal — risks war on large scale."

there is no greater risk of war today than last year

the Iran deal was never ratified by Congress and is hardly a long-standing American policy objectives, indeed it trashed American policy objectives by exchanging hundreds of billions for a temporary halt in nuclear production

the move of the US embassy, which Russia did before us, was promised by Clinton-Bush-Obama

it's on the Israeli side of Jerusalem so there is no reason it should lead to war except that the Palestinians will only be happy when the state of Israel is destroyed and all Jews driven into the Mediterranean

“It would be at best irresponsible, and at worst potentially illegal, for members of Congress to use their positions to learn the identity of an FBI source for the purpose of undermining the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in our election.”

this line has been used repeatedly throughout the Russian investigation and then, when the truth comes out, it turns out that there was no reason for the secret except to protect Obama officials from having their misdeeds exposed

not cooperating with Congressional oversight trashes the Constitution

May 21, 2018 4:35 AM  
Anonymous Pop goes the bubble said...

"no one saw anything unethical/illegal"

Bullshit. Don Jr. was salivating at the thought of receiving unethical/illegal information from Russians during that June 2016 meeting at Trump tower and he and his Daddy are still lying about it today.

Unlike Tom Downey, who received unethical/illegal Bush debate prep materials in 2000 and had his lawyer call the FBI to report it, Don Jr. and his Daddy lied about the June 2016 meeting and Daddy Pussy Grabber even personally concocted a bullshit press release saying that June 2016 Trump tower meeting had been about adoption.

May 21, 2018 10:34 AM  
Anonymous everybody in the whole cell block is dancing to the "Takes a Village" rock said...

"Bullshit"

you mean, TTF?

yeah, I agree

"Don Jr. was salivating at the thought of receiving unethical/illegal information from Russians"

actually, there would have been nothing at all illegal or unethical about receiving the information he was offered

they said they had information that Hillary was working with the Russians

if that were true, we all needed to know that

they didn't give this information, probably because Don Jr didn't offer any quid pro quo

we now know, however, that Hillary did pay the Russians for information and she used campaign funds to do so

"during that June 2016 meeting at Trump tower and he and his Daddy are still lying about it today"

they can lie about anything they want to

a Congressional committee has released its finding on the meeting

hint: nothing

"Unlike Tom Downey, who received unethical/illegal Bush debate prep materials in 2000 and had his lawyer call the FBI to report it,"

that's not really the same

what would be the same would be is if a Russian citizen had contacted Downey and said he had information that George Bush was colluding with the Russians

but that didn't happen

so we're back where we started:

TTF is bullshit

"Don Jr. and his Daddy lied about the June 2016 meeting and Daddy Pussy Grabber even personally concocted a bullshit press release saying that June 2016 Trump tower meeting had been about adoption."

so someone that thinks before he talks and consults with others about how his words might be construed is "bullshit"?

again:

TTF is bullshit

btw, the parties who set up the meeting said they would have information about Hillary colluding with Russians but the meeting did actually turn out to be about adoption

right now, what's coming out about the involvement of intelligence agencies in sabotaging the campaign of a rival to the President is alarming

Obama pioneered abuse of power in his re-election campaign when he used the IRS to prevent the formation of opposition political action groups

now, it turns out that the CIA was paying a professor in England over a hundred grand to try to set up low-level members of Trump's campaign to say things that could be used to justify spying on the campaign

a couple of days ago, Dems and their co-conspirators in the Obama intelligence community, were saying this guy's life would be in danger is he was outed

but that was just another cover-up

based on what Dems now think is alright, Trump would be justified in planting spies in the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign because of his past involvement with the Communist Party

in other words, we can't just let this pass

Obama, Hillary, Comey, Clapper, Brennan: they belong behind bars

May 21, 2018 3:22 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

If the Justice Department and FBI are, as we’ve been told incessantly over the past year, not merely patriots but consummate professionals incapable of being distracted by partisanship or petty Washington intrigues, why are Donald Trump’s antagonists freaking out over the fact that an inspector general will assess whether political motivation tainted an investigation into the president’s campaign? The American people should get a full accounting of what transpired during 2016. Isn’t that what we’ve been hearing since the election?

You believe Trump is corrupt. I get it. But surely anyone who alleges to be concerned about the sanctity of our institutions and rule of law would have some cursory curiosity about whether an investigation by the administration of one major party into the presidential campaign of another major party was grounded in direct evidence rather than fabulist rumor-mongering. Otherwise, any administration, including Trump’s, could initiate an investigation for whatever cooked-up superficial reason it wanted.

Then, when a constitutionally empowered oversight committee demanded information about that investigation, the DOJ could accuse it of “extortion” and stonewall for years.

I don’t know if there’s a big conspiracy by the deep state. But it’s pretty obvious to me that leaders of our institutions aren’t above engaging in spying. John Brennan spied on the legislative branch and lied about it to the American people. James Clapper spied on the American people through a domestic surveillance program and lied about it to Congress. Although the Obama administration never tweeted nasty attacks on journalists, it did spy on and prosecute them. It’s completely plausible that those in the upper echelon of law enforcement saw Trump as a threat, then used wobbly evidence as the pretext to investigate his campaign. If not, it’ll be good to clear their names.

“FBI used informant to investigate Russia ties to campaign, not to spy, as Trump claims,” read a truly silly New York Times headline last week. You can call it whatever makes you happy, but in the real world the act of furtively gathering information about someone else is called “spying.”

The Washington Post reported, for instance, that the informant was surreptitiously seeking information by “seeking out and meeting three different Trump campaign officials.” The spy, according to the piece, had contacts with the CIA. This is unprecedented. Why shouldn’t we find out if the reasons that girded the investigation were sound?

Perhaps all of this will lead to nothing exciting. Perhaps the competing narratives that have sprung up around Trump and Russia will end far less dramatically than either of their champions hope. But when “rule of law” enthusiasts keep arguing the DOJ is “independent” of the president, then turn around and argue that a congressional oversight committee shouldn’t have the right to ask the executive branch for documents pertaining to their inquiry, one begins to suspect that perhaps some of the hyperbolic rhetoric we’ve been hearing over the past two years has been little more than partisanship.

Most of those arguing that Trump is attacking the “constitutional system,” by demanding the DOJ investigate its conduct, know well that he has full authority to do so. Many sat quietly for eight years of executive abuse. It’s not as if the president instructed the DOJ to stop following the law, after all. He had as much ammunition to ask for an investigation as Democrats had when asking for a special counsel.

May 21, 2018 9:19 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

Presidents ask the DOJ to do all kinds of things all the time. If the attorney general doesn’t like it, he can resign. If the folks running the DOJ or FBI don’t like it, they can quit. If Congress doesn’t like it, they can impeach the president. That’s the “constitutional system” every president, including Trump, functions under.

Is Trump pushing the issue for political reasons? Of course. If Mueller doesn’t come back with any evidence of collusion — and all the other indictments and criminality he’s found matter, of course, but they have nothing to do with the impetus for the investigation — it will be all the more important to figure out what the previous administration was up to. Precedent and history matter.

The New York Times recently ran a 4,000-word ostensible overview of the FBI’s Trump–Russia probe, which fed the impression that investigators were tougher on a hapless Hillary Clinton, whose accidental blunders and honest mistakes ruined her chances of election, but ignored Trump’s nefarious ties to a foreign power. The problem with this tale, as it stands now, is that there was an abundance of evidence suggesting that Clinton was engaged in criminal activity — sending numerous classified and top secret documents over unsecured servers, destroying evidence, etc.

Comey claimed he couldn’t prove intent. Now perhaps Mueller will bring the goods at some point. But to this point, there has not been any evidence to back up the hysteria that followed 2016. It’s completely reasonable to find out what prompted it.

If, as numerous smart people have said, the FBI and DOJ would never ever engage in such partisanship or recklessness — or maybe ineptitude — then a methodical accounting of events leading up to the special counsel investigation would help them.

May 21, 2018 9:19 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

CBS daily tracker:

Nearly two in three Americans think the nation's economy is in good shape, and most of them believe President's Trump's policies are at least somewhat responsible for that.

68% percent think Trump's policies are responsible for how great the economy is doing

SIXTY

EIGHT

PERCENT

only 11% think Trump's policies aren't responsible for how great the economy is doing

I'm scared for Dems

they may start jumping out of windows!!

May 21, 2018 10:35 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

SCOTUS Rules 5-4 That Employers Can Block Workplace Class Action Suits, Opinion Written By Neil Gorsuch

The woefully unqualified Neil Gorsuch is proving to be the disaster for justice that we all predicted he would be. The conservatives on the court just gave big business the right to further abuse and oppress their employees and prevent them from doing anything about it. And of course Gorsuch was thrilled to be able to squeeze the little guy under his thumb. No doubt Gorsuch would vote in favour of slavery if that decision had ever come before him.

The epitome of this evil was Neil Gorsuch's vote for the employer in a case where a truck driver's rig broke down in extreme cold weather. The employer's rule required the truck driver to stay with the rig until repair comes. This driver stayed with the rig as long as he could but was freezing to death and left to stay alive. The employer fired him and ultra evil Gorsuch voted that the right thing was for the employer to be allowed to force the employee to stay with the broken down truck and freeze to death. Neil Gorsuch is utterly devoid of humanity.

May 22, 2018 1:14 AM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

"The woefully unqualified Neil Gorsuch is proving to be the disaster for justice that we all predicted he would be"

Trump has had a lot of triumphs but Gorsuch takes the cake

He's as great as I all predicted!!

"The conservatives on the court just gave big business the right to further abuse and oppress their employees and prevent them from doing anything about it"

no, the SCOTUS ruled in favor of a law as written

it wasn't a matter of rights

if it needs to be changed, it can be done legislatively

"And of course Gorsuch was thrilled to be able to squeeze the little guy under his thumb. No doubt Gorsuch would vote in favour of slavery if that decision had ever come before him."

you think so?

wow, if he's that bad, maybe Dems shouldn't have nominated a loser like Hillary

I've been listening to a radio station lately that plays great jazz music and also has talk shows that discuss diversity issues with a progressive, even socialist slant

they all talk about how the democratic party has failed blacks in America and they need to find an alternative

last week, they were saying that we got stuck with Trump because Dems nominated someone "who couldn't get the vote of a penguin at the South Pole"

btw, they also say the mainstream media is controlled by the CIA, pointing out how they get leaks from them and then hire them
this wasn't a ruling on constitutionality

"The epitome of this evil was Neil Gorsuch's vote for the employer in a case where a truck driver's rig broke down in extreme cold weather. The employer's rule required the truck driver to stay with the rig until repair comes. This driver stayed with the rig as long as he could but was freezing to death and left to stay alive. The employer fired him and ultra evil Gorsuch voted that the right thing was for the employer to be allowed to force the employee to stay with the broken down truck and freeze to death."

why would anyone want to work for such an employer?

it's a big world

find a better employer

"Neil Gorsuch is utterly devoid of humanity."

devoid of humanity, huh?

Priya, when you deny someone's humanity whether because of their race, religion, their sexuality, poverty, or any other reason, then you are the one who has lost your humanity. Love and empathy for one another is all we have.

you are constantly trying to say someone or another is devoid of humanity and is, thus, an animal

forsake your evil ways and step into the light

May 22, 2018 6:01 AM  
Anonymous @JimCarrey said...

I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
AND TO THE GUN MAKERS FOR WHOM IT STANDS
ONE NATION, UNDER GREED-INDEFENSIBLE,
WITH BUTCHERY AND INJUSTICE FOR THE MOST INNOCENT OF ALL

May 22, 2018 7:12 AM  
Anonymous Trumplandia citizen said...

Yes by all means

We should all step into the light so we too can encourage our fellow citizens to "start jumping out of windows!!"

"But to this point, there has not been any evidence to back up"

Sure if you ignore the Guilty Pleas So Far in Mueller's Probe

Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security advisor

George Papadoupoulos, a former Trump campaign aide

Richard Pinedo, who pleaded guilty to using stolen identities to set up bank accounts that were then used by the Russians.

Alex Van Der Zwaan, who pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his interaction with Gates.

And lastly Former Trump campaign official Rick Gates pleads guilty to 2 charges -- "he admitted conspiring to defraud the United States regarding the millions of dollars he and Manafort earned while working for a political party in Ukraine. He also pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI earlier this month during an interview in which he was trying to secure a plea deal."

May 22, 2018 7:25 AM  
Anonymous Trump is s thug just like Putin said...

Stop waiting for the constitutional crisis that President Trump is sure to provoke. It’s here.

On Sunday, via Twitter, Trump demanded that the Justice Department concoct a transparently political investigation, with the aim of smearing veteran professionals at Justice and the FBI and also throwing mud at the previous administration. Trump’s only rational goal is casting doubt on the probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, which appears to be closing in.

Trump’s power play is a gross misuse of his presidential authority and a dangerous departure from long-standing norms. Strongmen such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin use their justice systems to punish enemies and deflect attention from their own crimes. Presidents of the United States do not — or did not, until Sunday’s tweet:

“I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes — and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Rather than push back and defend the rule of law, Justice tried to mollify the president by at least appearing to give him what he wants. The Republican leadership in Congress has been silent as a mouse. This is how uncrossable lines are crossed.

The pretext Trump seized on is the revelation that FBI source Stefan A. Halper made contact with three Trump campaign associates before the election as part of the FBI’s initial investigation into Russian meddling.

With the full-throated backing of right-wing media, Trump has described this person as a “spy” who was “implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president.” This claim is completely unsupported by the facts as we know them. Trump wants you to believe a lie.

The informant was not embedded or implanted or otherwise inserted into the campaign. He was asked to contact several campaign figures whose names had already surfaced in the FBI’s counterintelligence probe. It would have been an appalling dereliction of duty not to take a look at Trump advisers with Russia ties, such as Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, when the outlines of a Russian campaign to influence the election were emerging...

May 22, 2018 7:45 AM  
Anonymous Trump is a thug just like Putin said...

...Trump claims this is the nation’s “all time biggest political scandal” because, he alleges, Justice Department officials and the FBI used a “spy” to try to “frame” him and his campaign, in an effort to boost his opponent Hillary Clinton’s chance of winning the election. This conspiracy theory has so many holes in it that it’s hard to know where to begin. But let’s start with the glaringly obvious: If the aim was to make Trump lose, why wasn’t all the known information about the Trump campaign’s Russia connections leaked before the election, when it might have had some impact?

The truth appears to be precisely the opposite of what Trump says, which is not uncommon. The record suggests that Justice and the FBI were so uncomfortable investigating a presidential campaign in the weeks and months before an election that they tiptoed around promising lines of inquiry rather than appear to be taking a side. The FBI director at the time was James B. Comey, and while we heard plenty about Clinton’s emails before the vote, we had no idea that such a mature investigation of the Trump campaign was underway.

Now that the Mueller probe has bored into Trump’s inner circle — and federal authorities have raided the homes and office of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen — the president appears to be in a panic. The question is whether he sees this “spy” nonsense as a way to discredit Mueller’s eventual findings, or as a pretext for trying to end the investigation with a bloody purge akin to Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.”

The Justice Department answered Trump’s tweeted demand by announcing that an existing investigation by its inspector general will now “include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation” by the FBI. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein may hope that is enough to avoid a showdown. I fear he is wrong.

None of this is normal or acceptable. One of the bedrock principles of our system of government is that no one is above the law, not even the president. But a gutless Congress has refused, so far, to protect this sacred inheritance.

Trump is determined to use the Justice Department and the FBI to punish those he sees as political enemies. This is a crisis, and it will get worse.

May 22, 2018 7:45 AM  
Anonymous Sad, believe me said...

"Trump has had a lot of triumphs but Gorsuch takes the cake

He's as great as I all predicted!!"

Thanks for the illustration: Conservatives used to decry the power of activist judges; now they see those judges as their last line of defense. That turnaround is a symptom less of hypocrisy than of decline.

May 22, 2018 9:42 AM  
Anonymous Normal people can't make this stuff up said...

Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt has a novel idea to curb school mass shootings: Ban trench coats.

Hewitt, an MSNBC host, rejected limits on guns as a response to last week’s school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, where police say a student used his dad’s shotgun and revolver hidden beneath a trench coat to kill 10 people.

“To the teachers and administrators out there, the trench coat is kind of a giveaway,” Hewitt said Monday on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” on Salem Radio Network. “You might just say no more trench coats. The creepy people, make a list, check it twice.”

Hewitt said he suggested coat control because he can’t see stepping on gun rights.

Two teen murderers killed 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999 while wearing trench coats. They were initially incorrectly described as members of a group known as the “Trench Coat Mafia.”

Guns don't kill people. People in trench coats kill people. Got it.

May 22, 2018 10:52 AM  
Anonymous TRUTH said...

What sets the United States apart from the rest of the civilized world is not Ritalin or school entrances or violent video games or trench coats but the astronomical number of guns and the easy access to them.

May 22, 2018 12:35 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

"Yes by all means

We should all step into the light so we too can encourage our fellow citizens to "start jumping out of windows!!""

you morons are amusing, if nothing else

I was using Priya the Hypocrite's words to show what a hypocrite Priya is

Priya was joining Jim in pontificating about the dangers of dehumanizing others

and, then, amazingly, as if unable to perpetuate a consistent point of view, says this:

"Neil Gorsuch is utterly devoid of humanity."

we all know Priya is a hypocrite

but the inability to disguise it is still stunning

what a piece of work

but you also wonder about people who can't bring themself to admit that certain biological humans have crossed the line into savage bestiality

if you want to understand the moral sickness at the heart of leftism, read the first paragraph of the most recent column by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne:

"It's never right to call other human beings 'animals.' It's not something we should even have to debate. No matter how debased the behavior of a given individual or group, no matter how much legitimate anger that genuinely evil actions might inspire, dehumanizing others always leads us down a dangerous path"

let's begin with the first sentence: "It's never right to call other human beings 'animals'"

this is so self-evident to Dionne that he adds, "It's not something we should even have to debate"

only someone who has never thought about it could make such a claim

actually, it is not right to never call another human being an "animal"

calling the cruelest among us names such as "animal"actually protects humans

the word "beastly" exists for a reason and is frequently applied to human beings

by rhetorically reading certain despicable people out of the human race, we elevate the human race

we recognize that some behaviors are out of line with being human

biologically, we are all human

but if "human" is to mean anything moral, some people who have committed particularly heinous acts of evil against other human beings are not to be considered human

Dionne says, "dehumanizing others always leads us down a dangerous path"

he provides not a single argument for this truly absurd comment

anyone who refuses to "dehumanize" the Nazi physicians -- who, with no anesthesia, froze naked people for hours and then dropped them in boiling water to rewarm them; put people in depressurized rooms where their eardrums burst, driving them out of their minds from pain; rubbed wood shavings and ground glass into infected wounds, etc. -- is, to put it very mildly, profoundly morally confused

May 22, 2018 1:04 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

What would Dionne have us call those Nazi physicians -- "not nice," "badly flawed," "evil"? Why is rhetorically ostracizing them from the human race "a dangerous path"? He doesn't have an answer because he lives in the left's world of moral-sounding platitudes. Leftism consists almost entirely of moral-sounding platitudes -- statements meant to make the person making them feel morally sophisticated. But based on their relative reactions to the sadists of the MS-13 gangs, I trust Donald Trump's moral compass more than E. J. Dionne's.

It is ever dangerous to use dehumanizing rhetoric on people? Of course -- when it is directed at people based on their race, religion, ethnicity, nationality or any other immutable physical characteristic. The Nazis did what they did to Jews and others because they dehumanized them based on their religious/ethnic/racial identity. That's why racism is evil. But why is it dangerous to use such rhetoric on people based on their behavior? By equating labeling the cruelest among us "animals" with labeling Jews "animals," Dionne cheapens the fight against real evil.

Rabbi Leon Radzik, a Holocaust survivor who had been in Auschwitz, was asked what word he would use to characterize the sadistic guards in the camp. His response: "They were monsters with a human face."

Incredibly, Dionne would not agree with him.

An MS-13 member who goes by the gang name “Animal” received a 40-year prison sentence this week for a conspiracy that included the murder of a 15-year-old boy, the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts said Tuesday.

The nickname, which the prosecutors highlighted in the headline of a press release, is particularly telling, coming just a week after President Trump called members of the violent, immigrant-fueled MS-13 gang “animals.”

Joel Martinez, 23, admitted he murdered the 15-year-old as part of his initiation as a “homeboy” in Mara Salvatrucha, the gang’s full name.

“I stabbed the culero three times,” Mr. Martinez said, according to prosecutors. “He stared at me and he asked me if I was going to, if I was going to stab him. I told him, ‘Yes, the Mara rules you.’”

May 22, 2018 1:07 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

"Yes by all means

We should all step into the light so we too can encourage our fellow citizens to "start jumping out of windows!!""

I almost forgot this little morsel of TTF crap

here's what I said:

"I'm scared for Dems

they may start jumping out of windows!!"

how is that "encouraging our fellow citizens to start jumping out of windows"?

I was simply pointing out that the left's worship of the deep state may cause them to become deeply dismayed

because the deep state is headed for the ash bin of history

"One of the bedrock principles of our system of government is that no one is above the law"

so why has Mueller indicted Trump aides for perjury but not Comey, Clapper and Brennan, who have all lied in Congressional testimony?

why does the left act as if any criticism of Mueller amounts to treason?

he wasn't elected and has no papal infallibilty

last year, most Americans, including me, assumed the Russians had hacked Hillary's computer because the CIA and FBI said so

now, I'm beginning to wonder

no indictment has been made, although Russians were indicted of using social media to spread false stories

Mueller is in for a surprise if that ever comes to trial, btw, because posting false stories on the internet is not a crime

hacking would be, but no indictments have been made

probably because it didn't happen

why, if all the emails were hacked, was only Podesta's emails leaked?

doesn't make sense

we know his weren't intercepted not by hacking but when he fell for a phishing scheme and disclosed his password

this whole thing is unraveling and it's clear that the collusion, and abuse of power, were the work of Hillary's allies

the family that brought oral sex into the textbooks of American history now will bring collusion too

sad

May 22, 2018 1:30 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Automakers To Trump: Climate Change Is Real

Bloomberg reports:

Automakers urged the White House to cooperate with California officials in a coming rewrite of vehicle efficiency standards, saying “climate change is real.” The plea came in a letter to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the industry’s leading trade group.

It said carmakers “strongly support” continued alignment between federal mileage standards and those set by California. General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., Daimler AG and nine other carmakers are members of the Alliance.

Officials from the state have pledged to fight a Trump-led rollback, setting up a potential messy legal battle and the risk of different mileage requirements in California and 12 additional states that follow its rules.

“Operating under two or three sets of regulations would be inefficient and disrupt a period of rapid innovation in the auto industry,” Schwietert wrote, adding that fractured rules could have negative consequences for the roughly 7 million people employed directly or indirectly by the American auto industry.

May 22, 2018 2:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"but if "human" is to mean anything moral, some people who have committed particularly heinous acts of evil against other human beings are not to be considered human

Dionne says, "dehumanizing others always leads us down a dangerous path"

he provides not a single argument for this truly absurd comment"

1: Providing a single argument is not necessary for anyone who wasn't born yesterday. Examples are sprinkled throughout history.

2: Truly absurd? Really? You got so close and yet didn't learn a damn thing.


Here is just one example - you should have picked it up as you are clearly aware of Nazis:

Untermensch:

Although usually incorrectly considered to have been coined by the Nazis, the term "under man" was first used by American author and Klansman Lothrop Stoddard in the title of his 1922 book The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man.[8] It was later adopted by the Nazis from that book's German version Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen (1925).[9]

The German word Untermensch had been used earlier, but not in a racial sense, for example in the 1899 novel Der Stechlin by Theodor Fontane. Since most writers who employed the term did not address the question of when and how the word entered the German language, Untermensch is usually translated into English as "sub-human."

The leading Nazi attributing the concept of the East-European "under man" to Stoddard is Alfred Rosenberg who, referring to Russian communists, wrote in his Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (1930) that "this is the kind of human being that Lothrop Stoddard has called the 'under man.'" ["...den Lothrop Stoddard als 'Untermenschen' bezeichnete."][10] Quoting Stoddard: "The Under-Man – the man who measures under the standards of capacity and adaptability imposed by the social order in which he lives".

Hitler didn't start shipping shipping people to Auschwitz, gassing them and burning them the week after he got into office, he set up a multi-media empire to de-humanize Jews and other undesirables first. Ever heard of the Christian Joseph Goebbels? He considered being a Catholic priest, but somehow decided to become a the world's most infamous propaganda minister instead.

Goebbels is the one that cultivated the ideas of Jews being less than human (dirty, thieving, rats) for 6 years before Hitler even entered Poland.

Before locals starting killing their neighbors in Serbia and Rwanda, there were major media campaigns to dehumanize the soon-to-be victims.

You must have been asleep on those days in history class. Or do they not teach that stuff in the home schools?


May 22, 2018 2:31 PM  
Anonymous it's not too cool to be ridiculed but you brought this upon yourself said...

Good ol' Priya.

The one who put the id in idiot and makes sure TTF looks nuts!

Priya, Nazis dehumanized Jews on the basis of race, not behavior.

Think real hard and you'll figure it out.

The Nazis were monsters, not human.

In the aftermath of the Kanye West dust-up, my heart goes out to the white people who control the Democratic Party. My pity stems from the hip-hop megastar's November announcement to his packed concert audience that he did not vote in the presidential election but if he had, he would have voted for Donald Trump. Then, on April 21, West took to his Twitter account, which has 28 million followers, to announce, "I love the way Candace Owens thinks." Owens is Turning Point USA's director of urban engagement and has said that former President Barack Obama caused "damage" to race relations in the United States during his two terms in office.

West's support for Trump, along with his criticism of the "plantation" mentality of the Democratic Party, has been met with vicious backlash from the left. In one song, West raps, "See, that's the problem with this damn nation. All blacks gotta be Democrats. Man, we ain't made it off the plantation." Rep. Maxine Waters said West "talks out of turn" and advised, "He should think twice about politics -- and maybe not have so much to say." The bottom-line sin that West has committed is questioning the hegemony of the Democratic Party among black Americans. The backlash has been so bad that West had to hire personal security to protect him against threats made against his life. Fortunately, the police are investigating those threats.

Kanye West is not saying anything different from what Dr. Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Jason Riley, I and other black libertarians/conservatives have been saying for decades. In fact, West has tweeted quotations from Sowell, such as "Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it" and "The most basic question is not what is best but who shall decide what is best." Tweeting those Sowell quotations represents the highest order of blasphemy in the eyes of leftists.

The big difference between black libertarians/conservatives and West is that he has 28 million Twitter followers and a huge audience of listeners whereas few blacks have even heard of libertarian/conservative blacks outside of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. (I might add in passing that Dr. Thomas Sowell is one of the nation's most distinguished and accomplished scholars alive today.)

The Kanye problem for the Democratic Party is that if the party doesn't keep blacks in line and it loses even 20 to 25 percent of the black vote, it can kiss any hope of winning any presidential and many congressional elections goodbye. Democrats may have already seen that threat. That's why they support illegal immigration and voting rights for noncitizens. Immigrants from south of the border who are here illegally may be seen as either a replacement for or a guarantee against the disaster of losing the black vote.

May 22, 2018 2:53 PM  
Anonymous it's not too cool to be ridiculed but you brought this upon yourself said...

Keeping blacks blind to the folly of unquestioned support for the Democratic Party by keeping blacks fearful, angry and resentful and painting the Republican Party as racist is vital. Democrats never want blacks to seriously ask questions about what the party has done for them. Here are some facts. The nation's most troublesome and dangerous cities -- Indianapolis, Stockton, Oakland, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Kansas City, Baltimore, Memphis, St. Louis and Detroit -- have been run by Democrats, often black Democrats, for nearly a half-century. These and other Democratic-run cities are where blacks suffer the highest murder rates and their youngsters attend the poorest-performing and most unsafe schools.

Democrats could never afford for a large number of black people to observe, "We've been putting you in charge of our cities for decades. We even put a black Democrat in the White House. And what has it meant for us? Plus, the president you told us to hate has our unemployment rate near a record low." It turns out that it's black votes that count more to black and white politicians than black well-being, black academic excellence and black lives. As for black politicians and civil rights leaders, if they're going to sell their people down the river to keep Democrats in power, they ought to demand a higher price.

May 22, 2018 2:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Priya, Nazis dehumanized Jews on the basis of race, not behavior."

1: That wasn't Priya.

2: "Bullies," "monsters," or "nationalists" will always find an excuse for dehumanzing their victims. Whether it's their race, behaviour, hair color, religion or lack thereof, political leanings, national or ethnic origin, that is entirely irrelevant. Their victims get victimised - physically and / or emotionally abused or even killed.

If someone thinks their degrading treatment of minorities doesn't fall into the same class as the "monsters" because they are targeting "behaviors" rather than race, they are deluding themselves. That is the kind of superficial rationalization only a psychopath finds compelling.

May 22, 2018 3:21 PM  
Anonymous Reminder for the blissfully ignorant said...

"by keeping blacks fearful, angry and resentful and painting the Republican Party as racist is vital."

No painting required. Everyone saw the "very fine people" who marched in Charlottesville and heard them chanting their Nazi "White Power" slogans.

August 2017: Deconstructing the symbols and slogans spotted in Charlottesville

October 2017: White Supremacists Return to Charlottesville Chanting, ‘Russia is Our Friend’
Led by Richard Spencer, about 50 people suddenly descended on a statue of Robert E. Lee on Saturday night—and they say they’ll be back.


"...“They were shouting ‘You will not replace us,’ ‘Russia is our friend,’ ‘the South will rise again,’ ‘we'll be back,’” said a University of Virginia faculty member, who wished not to be named for fear of retribution.

“I saw a bunch of guys filing in with what appeared to be torches and then the shouting started. I decided that I wasn’t going to avoid them and I got right up in their faces,” the faculty member said.

Spencer, who advocates for “peaceful ethnic cleansing” of non-whites, made a brief speech through a bull horn.

“We are here to represent white America’s interest,” Spencer shouted, claiming Charlottesville residents have a “false sense of community,” according to the faulty member..."

May 22, 2018 4:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"by keeping blacks fearful, angry and resentful and painting the Republican Party as racist is vital."

Bwaahahahahahahahhaahaha!

It doesn't take a single drop of paint.

It's 2018.

People have cell phones.

With cameras.

And the internet.

May 22, 2018 4:50 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Lots of Republicans are saying that mass shootings have more to do with mental illness than with guns. So why are they fighting Obamacare, which includes the largest expansion of access to mental health care in U.S. history? Because whether something is good or bad doesn't matter, only that it was done by Obama matters.

Preacher Who “Laid Hands” On Trump: Half Of Congress Performs Human Sacrifice And Drinks Blood

“At the highest level, the people that rule the planet worship Lucifer. These people perform human sacrifices and drink blood. I don’t care what you believe. We’ve got all the documentation on it. Bohemian Grove in the redwoods of northern California, it’s a men’s only club founded out of San Francisco. That’s why homosexuality is at an all time high because half of them are all involved in it, including the Congress and the Senate and it goes all the way to pedophilia at the highest levels of government.” – Rodney Howard-Browne.

If you ever wondered how a large minority of Americans can believe Trump isn't corrupt, its because they are this far detached from reality.

May 22, 2018 4:54 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Sources at the Nobel Prize Committee say that if Trump resigns from office quickly he'll win the Nobel peace prize.

May 22, 2018 5:01 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

EPA Boots Press From Pruitt Summit, Reporter Shoved

NBC News reports:

The Environmental Protection Agency barred The Associated Press and CNN from a national summit on harmful water contaminants on Tuesday — and guards forcibly shoved a female reporter out of the building.

The EPA blocked the media organizations, along with the environmental-focused E&E News, from attending the meeting in Washington, convened by EPA chief Scott Pruitt.

“The Environmental Protection Agency’s selective barring of news organizations, including the AP, from covering today’s meeting is alarming and a direct threat to the public’s right to know about what is happening inside their government,” said AP Executive Editor Sally Buzbee.

Yeah, things with the Trump administration aren't headed in an ominous directly at all...

Under Pruitt the EPA allows businesses to pollute all they want and the public is kept blind to the damage to their health. Pruitt is truly the most evil man in all of American government with the possible exception of Trump.

May 22, 2018 5:14 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Pruitt believes the christian thing to do is ignore all damage to the environment and people's health.

May 22, 2018 5:15 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

"That wasn't Priya"

always good to hear

""Bullies," "monsters," or "nationalists" will always find an excuse for dehumanzing their victims. Whether it's their race, behaviour, hair color, religion or lack thereof, political leanings, national or ethnic origin, that is entirely irrelevant. Their victims get victimised - physically and / or emotionally abused or even killed."

the topic was MS-13. Trump called them "animals". their behavior is so evil that they proudly choose the nickname themselves. and yet, Dems have compared this characterization by the President to the Third Reich. and, by doing so, Dems have revealed their lack of moral judgement. expect TV ads on this in the fall. they will gain votes from the sane base, no doubt.

"If someone thinks their degrading treatment of minorities doesn't fall into the same class as the "monsters" because they are targeting "behaviors" rather than race, they are deluding themselves. That is the kind of superficial rationalization only a psychopath finds compelling."

if you think condemning evil, sadistic behavior as inhuman is a rationalization, you aren't rational

"No painting required. Everyone saw the "very fine people" who marched in Charlottesville and heard them chanting their Nazi "White Power" slogans.

August 2017: Deconstructing the symbols and slogans spotted in Charlottesville

October 2017: White Supremacists Return to Charlottesville Chanting, ‘Russia is Our Friend’
Led by Richard Spencer, about 50 people suddenly descended on a statue of Robert E. Lee on Saturday night—and they say they’ll be back.

"...“They were shouting ‘You will not replace us,’ ‘Russia is our friend,’ ‘the South will rise again,’ ‘we'll be back,’” said a University of Virginia faculty member, who wished not to be named for fear of retribution.

“I saw a bunch of guys filing in with what appeared to be torches and then the shouting started. I decided that I wasn’t going to avoid them and I got right up in their faces,” the faculty member said.

Spencer, who advocates for “peaceful ethnic cleansing” of non-whites, made a brief speech through a bull horn.

“We are here to represent white America’s interest,” Spencer shouted, claiming Charlottesville residents have a “false sense of community,” according to the faulty member...""

if you think the GOP is Nazi because of 50 fringe protesters in Charlottesville, I think it would be fair to say Dems are NAMBLA

no photoshop needed

we have the movie "Call Me By Your Name"

"It doesn't take a single drop of paint.

It's 2018.

People have cell phones.

With cameras.

And the internet."

we know that

Hillary used 'em to make up a bunch of fake news in 2016

May 22, 2018 5:25 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

"Lots of Republicans are saying that mass shootings have more to do with mental illness than with guns."

yeah, well, guns are inanimate objects

"So why are they fighting Obamacare, which includes the largest expansion of access to mental health care in U.S. history?"

because it is socialist and doesn't work and interferes with the individual choices of otherwise free citizens

"Because whether something is good or bad doesn't matter, only that it was done by Obama matters."

well, he was the Worst

that's why Congress wouldn't approve anything he's done

and since he had no Congressional approval, his mistakes are easy to fix!

"If you ever wondered how a large minority of Americans can believe Trump isn't corrupt, its because they are this far detached from reality."

if you ever wonder how large a minority of Americans believe that Trump's policies aren't responsible for the economic boom, it's 11%

and the ones who know he's responsible: 68%

his "corruption" doesn't seem to be hurting anyone

so, under Priya's magical formula of ethics, Trump is good!

Priya: the meaning of right is do whatever you want as long as no one gets hurt right away

May 22, 2018 5:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The former chairman of the Trump campaign who met with a suspected FBI informant said during a recent radio interview he believes the source was attempting to establish an “audit trail” that would provide the FBI with justification to obtain warrants to spy on members of the campaign.

Sam Clovis confirmed during a radio interview Monday with the “Simon Conway Show” that he met with Stefan Halper, the suspected informant, in either late August or early September 2016.

“They were trying to literally plant evidence or create an audit trail that would lead investigators on something. Then they would have justification to go back for their Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants and all their other things,” Clovis said of the FBI and Halper.

Clovis said he and Halper met in the lobby of a DoubleTree hotel in Arlington, Va., for coffee.

Clovis said Halper, who previously worked at the University of Cambridge and for past Republican presidential administrations, had met with Trump campaign aide Carter Page, and used that meeting as “bona fides” to secure an appointment with Clovis.

“And then I think he used my meeting as bona fides to get a meeting with George Papadopoulos,” Clovis said.

Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI and is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller and his team as they continue their investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The former Trump campaign co-chairman, who went on to work in the Department of Agriculture but left the administration this month, said he believes Halper’s motivation was to get to Papadopoulos. But he said the FBI “misread” Papadopoulos’ relationship with the campaign.

“What unsettled me, and I think that’s accurate, is the fact of what he tried to do with George Papadopoulos, and that was to establish an audit trail from the campaign or somebody associated with the campaign, back to those Clinton emails —whether or not they existed, we don’t know,” Clovis said.

“This to me appears to have been a deliberate effort, a deliberate and intentional effort on the part of the leadership of the FBI to create something that did not exist, and that is exactly what this looks like,” Clovis said. “And I think at the end of the day that’s what we’re going to find out.”

Reports last week detailed how the FBI had a confidential source working for it as it investigated Russian meddling

May 22, 2018 6:28 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

President Trump is ordering the Justice Department formally to examine whether the Obama administration used the FBI to attempt a political hit on his 2016 campaign. It’s about time.

On Sunday the president tweeted that he will instruct the DOJ to investigate whether the FBI/DOJ “infiltrated or surveilled the Trump campaign for political purposes.” The last three words are key, because we already know the Trump campaign was under FBI "surveillance." Only the motive and who gave the orders remains a mystery.

Remember the umbrage in March 2017 when the president said that he had been “wiretapped” before the election? Then-FBI Director James Comey testified he had had “no information” to support that idea, and he had “looked carefully inside the FBI." Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said there was no surveillance, and as DNI he would have known about a court order on "something like this." PolitiFact labeled the claim 100% false.

What a difference a year makes. Recent revelations of the extent of the anti-Trump surveillance activity have forced Trump critics to adopt a new narrative. Clapper now says spying on the campaign was actually a good thing. The New York Times took issue with the term “spying,” saying rather that it was simply an “investigation.” This dickering over terms is reminiscent of when former Attorney General Loretta Lynch insisted the “investigation” into Hillary Clinton’s home-brew email server be called a “matter.”

Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa wrote in the Washington Post that the spying was in fact for Trump’s protection, which he would understand if he knew the first thing about the art of counter-intelligence. But if the FBI was trying to shield the Trump campaign from evil Russkies, why not inform the candidate up front both to warn him and to allay any potential misunderstandings? The New York Times helpfully answers that the FBI was protecting the integrity of the election by keeping the spying under wraps — and in fact if any campaign was hurt it was Hillary Clinton’s.

This flurry of revisionist interpretations comes prior to the expected release of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Hillary Clinton email investigation, which could contain criminal referrals. The IG is also looking into how the FBI obtained a FISA warrant to begin its spying campaign on an unnamed Trump aide. Shortly after the president’s tweet on Sunday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein asked the Inspector General to expand this investigation to include “whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation.”

May 22, 2018 6:35 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again, it's a gas gas gas said...

The FBI and Justice Department could help matters at this point with radical transparency, releasing all the information about every aspect of what they dubbed Operation Crossfire Hurricane. But at every turn the DOJ has raised national security objections to revealing practically anything important. This is harmful to the DOJ and the country. The department leadership needs to understand that a considerable number of Americans believe that the DOJ itself has become a national security threat.

Besides, how could the FBI’s spying on the Trump campaign not have been for political purposes? We have FBI special agent Peter Strzok’s private texts to his paramour FBI lawyer Lisa Page reviewing an Aug. 15, 2016, meeting in then-deputy director Andrew McCabe’s office with top FBI officials, saying the government “can’t take the risk” that “Trump gets elected” and the Russia investigation was their “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency. If the Strzok-Page texts were not still heavily and strategically redacted we would know much more. And the fact remains that a major party candidate has never been subjected to such a bizarrely concocted and systematic official investigation during and after an election. Derailing this bastardized process and the Mueller investigation it spawned is not obstruction of justice, but obstruction of injustice.

Whoever came up with the Rolling Stones-inspired name “Crossfire Hurricane” for the horrendous spy operation had a strange sense of humor. But as we watch the truth gradually emerge, see the abuses of power laid bare, and entertain the prospect that the principle actors behind this wretched excess may be held criminally responsible, to quote the Stones, “it’s all right now, in fact it’s a gas.”

May 22, 2018 6:38 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

open tolerance for homosexuality is turning young people gay

More Americans are identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday.

The rise was mostly seen among millennials, defined as people born between 1980 and 1999, with the percentage among that group expanding from 7.3 to 8.1 from 2016 to 2017. That .8 growth was the biggest year to year increase among any age group since Gallup started asking respondents whether they personally identify as LGBT in 2012.

Using Gallup data taken from interviews with over 340,000 adults.

Gallup also found LGBT identification is more common among people with lower incomes.

May 22, 2018 6:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"the topic was MS-13. Trump called them "animals". their behavior is so evil that they proudly choose the nickname themselves. and yet, Dems have compared this characterization by the President to the Third Reich. and, by doing so, Dems have revealed their lack of moral judgement. expect TV ads on this in the fall. they will gain votes from the sane base, no doubt."

It was Mims that mentioned MS-13. Trump's animal quote was after that. He didn't bother to distinguish whether his latest xenophobic rant was limited to MS-13 or was just his usual unfiltered "not politically correct" diatribes that his base laps up.

That ambiguity left plenty of room for misunderstanding, given the history of his rhetoric. Go ahead and blame the democrats for that though, just like you blame the democrats for him being president now. Talk about "party of responsibility."

"if you think condemning evil, sadistic behavior as inhuman is a rationalization, you aren't rational"

Nobody said that, or even alluded to that. Why do you still think that twisting what people posted into something with entirely different meanings is useful for scoring points?

Or is that your home schooling interfering with basic reading comprehension?

Condemning people for bad behaviour is the easiest thing to do. It may even rile up people against them - to get angry and maybe beat the up, or even worse. If you're dealing with Nazis or MS-13, a lot of people won't even complain.

But none of that process actually helped address the underlying problem. Nazi's didn't do all their damage by themselves. They recruited all sorts of otherwise "normal" people in the German populace help using their propaganda. That propaganda started out by dehumanizing people.

Dehumanizing MS-13 doesn't help solve any problems either. You can lock them up, shoot them, beat the crap out of them, and call them all the beastly names you like. It won't help one damn bit.

Until you start dealing with the underlying issues the normal human beings have to deal with before they ever get to the point where they would even consider joining MS-13, or any other group of thugs, all you're doing is the same thing that hasn't fixed anything before.

Expect to get more of the same.

May 22, 2018 6:57 PM  
Anonymous Dana does a big blue belly flop on June 26 said...

Dana's opponent sent me a personal thanks.

"Thanks to you, we hit our fundraising goal! I am incredibly grateful.

Your support means the world to me, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. You were crucial to ensuring we've got the necessary resources to share our progressive values across our community. Because of you, we are this close to bringing this thing home.

It's not over yet, and we need to make sure we make a blue wave on Election Day (June 26).

Every voice matters. Every vote matters.

Sincerely,"

Looks like Dana is in for more humilation.

At least Jeff is a normal, hetero with three kids and a wife of the complementary gender.

Who do you think everyone will vote for?

May 22, 2018 6:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"open tolerance for homosexuality is turning young people gay".

Cool! This calls for a celebration!

Now all we need to do is spread tolerance to the places most responsible for the global overpopulation problem and we can start getting the human population down to an environmentally sustainable level.

The world doesn't have to be destroyed by the overpopulation of people!

May 22, 2018 7:07 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The popular vote losing pussy grabber is using unsecure cell-phones for all his communications despite the urging of his security personel. He refuses to change because he says "its too inconvenient". The security teams says Trump should assume that everything he says on his phones is known by the top six intelligence organizations of hostile countries. During the election he repeatedly blasted Hillary for using a private email server and putting personal interests above operational security, regularly screaming that "She should be in jail!" for doing so. HIllary's private email server was a great deal more secure than Trump's phones - there is no evidence that her server was ever compromised. Trump should be in jail based on his own standards.

May 22, 2018 9:39 PM  
Anonymous Dana Beyer will lose again said...

Gina Haspel sworn in yesterday, so the water boarding may commence

that gal is gonna have so much fun!

May 22, 2018 9:53 PM  
Anonymous the world is raving about Trump's economy!! said...

Over the past few months, U.S. economic data has been much more resilient than the rest of the world, and this had led to stronger earnings growth and revisions for American companies, according to Credit Suisse.

Part of the reason that U.S. companies are outperforming their international peers is tax reform.

According to a note from Credit Suisse, expectations for revenue, earnings and earnings per share (EPS) growth in the first-quarter for developed markets outside the U.S. and Canada (EAFE) were 3.9%, 6.9%, and 6.4%, respectively. Among the companies that have already released their quarterly reports, EPS results beat by 1.5%, with revenues surprising by 0.4%.

European and Japanese earnings are projected to increase by 7.2% and 6.1%, respectively. So far, European companies have exceeded bottom-line projections by 2.2% whereas Japanese firms disappointed by -0.6%.

For the U.S., S&P 500 expectations were for revenue, earnings and EPS of 8.4%, 24.1%, and 25.6%, respectively, with tax reform adding 7.6% to the bottom line. But, even without tax reform, U.S. companies should have outperformed their international counterparts – without the cut in the corporate tax rate earnings per share growth would have been 16.5%.

Last December, President Trump signed into law a massive tax reform package that included slashing the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%.

On Tuesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the president’s economic plan is starting to kick in, adding that it’s possible the nation could have a GDP number that surprises on the upside “very significantly.”

May 22, 2018 10:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Federal Court Affirms Rights Of Transgender Students


Via press release from the ACLU:

A federal court today denied the Gloucester County School Board’s motion to dismiss a case brought by former student Gavin Grimm, holding that Title IX and the Constitution protect transgender students from being excluded from the common restrooms that align with their gender identity. The court directed the parties to schedule a settlement conference within 30 days. The case was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Virginia.

Joshua Block, senior staff attorney with the ACLU LGBT &HIV Project, had this reaction: “The district court’s ruling vindicates what Gavin has been saying from the beginning. Federal law protects Gavin and other students who are transgender from being stigmatized and excluded from using the same common restrooms that other boys and girls use. These sorts of discriminatory policies do nothing to protect privacy and only serve to harm and humiliate transgender students.”

Woohoo!

May 23, 2018 12:10 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Perhaps the need or desire to own an assault weapon is in itself a mental illness.

Caitlyn Jenner: Trump Is The 'Worst President We Have Ever Had' On LGBTQ Rights

She foolishly supported the popular vote losing pussy grabber during the campaign, its a little late now to see the light. Caitlyn is very very stupid.

Hmmm, just like Trump

May 23, 2018 1:39 AM  
Anonymous You'll believe anything said...

"Thanks to you, we hit our fundraising goal! I am incredibly grateful."

Waldstriecher's campaign reported raising a whopping $2,072.00 since January!

Name of Entity : Waldstreicher, Jeff Friends Of Entity Number : Filing Period Name : 05/15/2018 Pre-Primary1 Gubernatorial Report Due Date :
Campaign Finance Report Summary Sheet
01003393 05/22/2018

Contributions � Schd 1, Col A
$2,072.00
Ticket Purchases � Schd 1, Col B
$0.00
Federal Committees � Schd 1, Col C
$0.00
Political Clubs � Schd 1, Col D
$0.00
MD Candidate and Slate Accounts � Schd 1A, Col E
$0.00
MD Party Central Committees � Schd 1A, Col F
$0.00
MD Political Action Committees � Schd 1A, Col G
$0.00
Non-Federal Out-of-State Committees � Schd 1A, Col H
$0.00
Other � Schd 1B, Col I
$0.00
Loans � Schd 3, Col K
$0.00

May 23, 2018 8:13 AM  
Anonymous The Seventh State said...

WALDSTREICHER MISLEADS ON ENDORSEMENTS. AGAIN.
APRIL 30, 2018 DAVID LUBLIN


Del. Jeff Walstreicher, running for the open D18 Senate seat, has a graphic at the top of his campaign’s Facebook page with quotes from the Washington Post calling him is “a reformist voice” who “deserves reelection.”

Unfortunately, these quotes are from the Post’s endorsement of Waldstreicher for reelection as delegate four years ago. I suppose one could argue that the word “reelection” indicates that it’s old, as Jeff is not running for reelection but the Senate. But it’s easy to miss that clue and fail to make the connection.

Waldstreicher and frequent state legislative candidate Dana Beyer, his main opponent for the Senate seat, both ran for the House of Delegates in 2006 and 2010. The Post endorsed neither in the 2006 primary. In the more recent 2010 primary, they endorsed Beyer but not Waldstreicher even though he was the incumbent.

Jeff has also posted the following to his Facebook page:

[photo]

While Jeff is a certified gun sense candidate, he has not been endorsed by Moms Demand Action. Indeed, MDA sends out the following in their notification email:

"[B]eing a Gun Sense Candidate should not be considered a formal endorsement from Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund and multiple candidates running in the same race may receive the Moms Demand Action Gun Sense Candidate distinction."

Like all certified gun sense candidates, including Dana Beyer, he is free to use the logo but not to claim an endorsement. However, Jeff’s campaign intentionally modified the logo to turn the Moms Demand Action imprimatur into an endorsement. If you want to see an example of how to properly use the logo, check out Mila Johns’ delegate campaign webpage.

This isn’t the first time that Jeff has misled regarding endorsements. Previously, I noted that he made it easy for voters, including me, to think that he had been endorsed by Rep. Jamie Raskin even though that was not the case.

I don’t know why the frontrunner who collected a nice passel of genuine endorsements needs to give the false impression that he has endorsements that he doesn’t. It just feeds an impression of someone who is less than wholly trustworthy...

http://www.theseventhstate.com/?tag=jeff-waldstreicher

May 23, 2018 12:31 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And in the Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous "the gays are doing just fine" file:

Oregon Principal Fired for Constant Abuse of LGBT Students

Earlier this month, we learned that administrators in the North Bend School District in Oregon were accused of wildly discriminatory practices against LGBTQ students. Those allegations have now been confirmed and some of the people responsible are now out of their jobs — and it’s all because two students in particular were willing to speak up.

According to the ACLU of Oregon:

… they told one of our clients she was going to hell for being gay, subjected LGBTQ students to harsher discipline than their straight peers, and equated homosexuality with bestiality. We also learned that both LGBTQ students and straight students have been forced to recite Bible passages as a punishment.

Two of the students at North Bend High School, seniors Liv Funk and Hailey Smith (above, left to right), brought these problems to the attention of a friendly counselor. That, in turn, led to help from Willamette Law School’s legal clinic, which later brought the case to the Oregon Department of Education.

The DoE sent a letter to District Superintendent Bill Yester back in March detailing their findings and calling for reform within the district… which didn’t materialize.

Now there are real consequences for that inaction:

North Bend High School principal Bill Lucero and school resource officer Jason Griggs are being removed from their jobs in the district’s settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon…

The high school, which serves just over 1,000 students, will also be required to work with the ACLU to implement training and policies aimed at preventing future discrimination.

While much of the media attention focused on how gay students may have had to read the Bible as punishment, you really need to check out Funk and Smith’s stories to get a sense of just how bad things were in their school.

Funk says she was subject to an anti-gay slurs by multiple students (including the principal’s son), physically assaulted, and told by a school police officer that she’s “going to hell.”

In Smith’s story, the principal’s son nearly ran the two girls over. And the principal had little sympathy for the way LGBTQ students were treated in his building:

May 23, 2018 2:27 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...


The discrimination wasn’t an isolated incident and it didn’t just come from students. When I told the principal that my civics teacher called me out in front of the whole class and said same-sex marriage was “pretty much the same thing” as marrying a dog, the principal told me “everybody has the right to their own opinion.” The next day, the teacher apologized, but as I walked away, he said “don’t go marrying your dog.”

But because Funk and Smith were brave enough to take action, that principal is out of a job along with the officer who said gay people would go to hell. They won’t be missed.

It’s appalling this sort of faith-based discrimination still occurs today. Beyond that, it surprised me that this occurred in Oregon of all places. Granted it’s not one of the more liberal parts of the state, but you expect this kind of bigotry in the Bible Belt, not the west coast. That should send a strong message that this could happen anywhere — and it will continue unless courageous students or teachers are willing to speak up about it.

There will undoubtedly be some retaliation against Funk and Smith — at the very least, the students who treated them like outcasts will double down on that. But there are also, very likely, other students at that school who were victims of discrimination who may not have been able to speak up. I hope the harassment they faced will come to an end now, too.

Sometimes, these stories seem so wildly inappropriate, you think there must be some kind of miscommunication going on. That was certainly my reaction when I heard a public school in Oregon was making LGBTQ students read the Bible as punishment. But it was accurate, it was investigated, and the instigators have rightfully been punished.

Bill Lucero and Jason Griggs will have plenty of time to read the Bible themselves now since they won’t be wasting taxpayer money harassing students who fall outside their Christian bubble.

Maybe they’ll come across the Golden Rule. Or anything Jesus said about being kind. They obviously skipped those parts earlier.

May 23, 2018 2:27 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Because regardless of what happens to gays, its "just fine" with Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous.

May 23, 2018 3:11 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

So, at the mango mussolini's urging the NFL has banned players from protesting the disproportionate killing of blacks by police.

The owner of the NY Jets has decided to stand up to the racists and announced he will pay the fine for any players that kneel in protest of black killings during the national anthem (which itself is a racist song).

May 23, 2018 4:47 PM  
Anonymous I LOVE NY said...

More great news from the venerable Gallup:

http://news.gallup.com/poll/234866/two-three-americans-support-sex-marriage.aspx

Two in Three Americans Support Same-Sex Marriage

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sixty-seven percent of Americans support same-sex marriage -- the highest level in Gallup's trend. In each of the past three annual polls, Gallup has recorded three-percentage point increases among Americans who say same-sex marriages should be legally valid. The current figure is up 40 percentage points from the 27% who supported gay marriage when Gallup first polled on the question in 1996.

These data are from Gallup's annual Values and Morals poll, conducted May 1-10.

Some of the increases in support may be due to greater numbers of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) adults getting married in the U.S. Using data for all of 2017, Gallup has found that more than 10.4% of LGBT adults are married to a same-sex spouse. This means that Americans are more likely to know someone who has married a same-sex partner, and the visibility of these marriages may be playing a role in overturning some folks' previously held opposition to their legal status.

Gay marriage became legal nationwide in 2015 upon the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision. This came more than a decade after the first state, Massachusetts, had legalized gay marriage. In the years leading up to the decision, a patchwork of state laws were created for and against same-sex marriage.

Democrats Reach New High in Support for Same-Sex Marriage

Democrats remain the most likely to support gay marriage among party groups. The 83% of Democrats in favor of legally recognized same-sex marriages is the highest level of support recorded for this group.

Democrats are nearly twice as likely as Republicans to support legal recognition of gay marriages -- less than half of the GOP favors legal gay marriage (44%). The latest figure for Republicans' views on gay marriage is similar to the 47% recorded in 2017. The GOP has seen growth in the percentage of Republicans who favor legally recognized gay marriage over the years, but has yet to reach majority support.

Meanwhile, independents' opinions on the issue are closer to those of Democrats. Currently, 71% of independents say gay marriages should be recognized by the law as valid, matching this group's previous high from last year.

Bottom Line

With the third anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision nearing and no formidable opposition trying to undo gay marriage's legality, it's likely that the percentage of married LGBT adults in the U.S. will continue to grow as new generations of same-sex couples enjoy their newfound rights.

The trend toward increased public support for same-sex marriage could very well continue, given that there is still room for increased support among Democrats and independents. Reaching a national consensus on the issue would depend more on greater acceptance among Republicans, who remain mostly opposed to legally recognized same-sex marriages.

In addition to the general trend toward greater acceptance of gay marriage, the same-sex weddings taking place across the country may be softening opposition among some Americans who once feared for what legalization would bring. But now that it's been legal for nearly three years -- and even longer in certain states -- some opponents to gay marriage may be rethinking their previous opposition.

Americans have changed their minds on the legality of other issues as well. Gallup's trend on support for legalization of marijuana has largely mirrored its trend on legalization of gay marriage. On both issues, support gained steadily in the 2000s before reaching majority level in the 2010s.

May 23, 2018 5:14 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

So, in another abuse of power Trump has bullied the Justice Department into briefing Republicans on the ongoing Mueller investigation while refusing to allow any Democrats to attend.

The Republicans falsely claim they have the right to this information as part of congress's oversight duties but they are breaking the law by preventing Democrats from attending. The law says that "Congress" has oversight duties, "Congress" includes both Democrats and Republicans, not Republicans alone. This is a serious abuse of power.

And of course minutes after Republicans get more confidential details on the investigation into the tangerine tornado they'll illegally pass that information onto Trump to help him escape justice, just as they've done everytime in the past.

May 23, 2018 6:12 PM  
Anonymous Jeff is a loser of a pipsqueak said...

"Jeff’s campaign intentionally modified the logo"

I've had with that apple-ballot-licking shrimp

he looks like that squirrel in the animated shorts with the head too big for his body that chases nuts in a glacier

Jeff, you've colluded with the teachers' union and now you will pay for your crimes by losing the election to a real basket case: Dana Beyer

losing to Dana is about the most ignominious defeat any politician can suffer

it's almost as bad as when Hillary lost to Trump, the most unpopular candidate ever

congrats on flaming out in such a distinctive way

"Earlier this month, we learned that administrators in the North Bend School District in Oregon were accused of wildly discriminatory practices against LGBTQ students"

really?

what kind of cool stuff did they do?

"Those allegations have now been confirmed and some of the people responsible are now out of their jobs"

yeah, they must have been flooded with offers to help other schools

"— and it’s all because two students in particular were willing to speak up"

hero of the left: those who stick up for numero uno

"… they told one of our clients she was going to hell for being gay,"

well, maybe they thought she was

these administrators were entitled to their opinion

"subjected LGBTQ students to harsher discipline than their straight peers,"

of course they did

like what?

I want to enjoy the details

May 23, 2018 9:49 PM  
Anonymous Jeff is a loser of a pipsqueak said...

"and equated homosexuality with bestiality"

did they actually "equate"?

or was it more like "compare"?

because I could see an argument for the latter

"We also learned that both LGBTQ students and straight students have been forced to recite Bible passages as a punishment"

hardly a punishment

I remember a band teacher when I was in school that made kids practice when they got detention

I guess that was harassment, huh?

btw, I thought you said the gays were subjected to harsher discipline than their straight peers

sounds like gays and straights received the same treatment

say, are you playing a switcheroo?

(btw, gays are, by definition, not "peers" of straights)

"Two of the students at North Bend High School, seniors Liv Funk and Hailey Smith (above, left to right), brought these problems to the attention of a friendly counselor"

hey, wait a minute

you said they were "willing to speak up"

sounds like they went to one of those lunatic fringe gay advocate teachers to speak for them

he sounds like just the type of teacher that votes for Jeff Walchoker

we need to get these types of teachers out of the public schools!

"The DoE sent a letter to District Superintendent Bill Yester back in March detailing their findings and calling for reform within the district… which didn’t materialize"

nice! very nice!!

"Now there are real consequences for that inaction:"

I've said it before: the goal of lunatic fringe gay activists is to criminalize any speech that says homosexuality is immoral

"The high school, which serves just over 1,000 students, will also be required to work with the ACLU to implement training and policies aimed at preventing future discrimination."

the Viet Cong called that "re-education" camp

"While much of the media attention focused on how gay students may have had to read the Bible as punishment, you really need to check out Funk and Smith’s stories to get a sense of just how bad things were in their school."

what happened?

were they forced to read Revelation?

"Funk says she was subject to an anti-gay slurs by multiple students (including the principal’s son),"

oh, deaR

"physically assaulted,"

of course they were

remember when John McCain's supporters physically assaulted Sir Barry's supporters?

"and told by a school police officer that she’s “going to hell.”"

oops, they did it again

will democracy, as we've known it, survive?

"In Smith’s story, the principal’s son nearly ran the two girls over."

of course he did

"And the principal had little sympathy for the way LGBTQ students were treated in his building:"

but, of course

May 23, 2018 9:50 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Comparing the two parties

29.5 years Republican:
144 criminal indictments
93 convictions
34 prison sentences (so far)

28 years Democrat:
5 criminal indictments
3 convictions
3 prison sentences.

The Republican party is overwhelmingly the party of corruption. And there are a lot more indictments, convictions, and prison sentences to come from Trump's time.

May 23, 2018 10:37 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The 26 Most Despicable Things Donald Trump Has Ever Done

Missing from the list is taking away health insurance from millions and boosting the cost for everyone else plus enabling the rape of the environment by appointing Scott Pruitt to stop all restrictions on pollution.


And note on item #11:

The story that Marla Maples said Trump was "the best sex I've ever had" is unconfirmed. It came about after Trump called a reporter and whined that there had been no stories about him in their magazine. The reporter said "You need to give us something to write about". Trump said "Marla says I'm the best sex she's ever had". The reporter said can you confirm that with her?" Trump then said "Hey Marla, am I the best sex you ever had? She says "yes"". So, yeah, Marla never said that.

May 23, 2018 10:46 PM  
Anonymous Hillary not hilarious anymore said...

"A CBS News poll shows that fewer Americans believe Mueller’s investigation to be legitimate (44 percent) than to be politically driven (53 percent)"

it's a long arc, but it bends toward justice

what Obama and Hillary did is a much more serious threat to our democracy than anything Russia did

and Trump did nothing at all other than be a crass cad

I don't like him either but he is a victim here

maybe Barry and Hillarry will eventually be pardoned by Trump for the good of the country but we can't let this pass without making clear it will never be tolerated again

A Democratic Watergate is unfolding before our eyes.

It’s no wonder Obama’s former CIA chief John Brennan is tweeting like a madman, attacking President Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Brennan’s running scared because it’s starting to look like he may have been a co-conspirator in the biggest political scandal since, well, Watergate.

Yesterday, Trump met with FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to inquire if Brennan’s CIA and the FBI spied on his 2016 presidential campaign, as reported by The New York Times and other media last week.

If it’s confirmed that the Obama administration used U.S. intelligence agencies and the Justice Department to go after political opponents — to keep Democrats in power through a presidential election cycle — Attorney General Jeff Sessions should immediately un-recuse himself from the Russia “collusion” witch hunt, shut it down and open a criminal investigation into all parties involved.

And to think that Democrats and their puppets in media have been calling Trump the greatest threat to democracy all this time when their party may have been using authoritarian tactics against the leader of the opposition party and his associates.

It will be the height of irony if it is established that Democrats, who have been screaming Russia, Russia, Russia for the past two years, making Putin out to be the bogeyman, themselves used police state tactics including spying, waging a massive disinformation campaign against Trump and his associates, and other scurrilous actions eerily similar to Communist regimes.

Special counsel Robert Mueller would be wise to wrap up his investigation before he’s accused of being the last act in a chain of conspiracy that could implicate Obama, Brennan, James Comey, Hillary Clinton and others. The truth is coming out.

Today, U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin and more than a dozen other lawmakers are expected to introduce a resolution alleging FBI and Justice Department misconduct involving improper surveillance in the Trump-Russia probe.

Trump should also declassify information the DOJ has been withholding from Congress, so lawmakers entrusted with oversight can obtain pertinent documents and information without excessive redactions and further stonewalling.

The Democrats have overplayed their hand and karma is now nipping at their heels.

It’s hard to feel sorry for them

May 23, 2018 11:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A recap of the lies by Obama's CIA and FBI about how the Russia-Trump hoax was started:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/trump-russia-investigation-obama-administration-origins/

May 23, 2018 11:47 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The porn star who was paid hush money to stay silent about a sexual tryst she says she had with President Trump was honored with an official Stormy Daniels Day in West Hollywood and given a key to the city on Wednesday.

“In these politically tumultuous times, Daniels has proven herself to be a profile in courage by speaking truth to power even under threats to her safety and extreme intimidation,” city officials said in a statement.

Mayor John Duran and members of the West Hollywood City Council presented Daniels with the key and a proclamation at Chi Chi LaRue’s, a Santa Monica Boulevard sex shop named after a drag queen and gay pornographic director.

May 23, 2018 11:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Breaking: Here's photographic proof that Crooked Hillary met with a Russian spy during the campaign

May 24, 2018 1:32 AM  
Anonymous screeeeech! said...

"Mayor John Duran and members of the West Hollywood City Council presented Daniels with the key and a proclamation at Chi Chi LaRue’s, a Santa Monica Boulevard sex shop named after a drag queen and gay pornographic director"

what more could I add?

Growth: A new report shows that the median household income has climbed 3% since President Trump took office. It's another sign of a strong economy, and at least one poll shows the public credits Trump for the good news. Should Democrats wave bye to the Blue Wave?

Median household income has been steadily increasing under Trump, rising from $59,471 in January 2017 to $61,483 last month, according to Sentier Research, which tracks income on a monthly basis using census data.

This also means that household income is now higher than it's been in at least 50 years — after adjusting for inflation.

This is a sharp turnaround from the Obama years. Sentier data show that median household income was the same when President Obama left office as when he arrived. Under Obama, household incomes continued to fall steeply for two full years after the recession officially ended, and then took four years to make up that lost ground. Incomes then flatlined again, posting no overall gain between August 2015 and December 2016.

This is just another indication that the economy has notably strengthened under Trump. And polls show that the public's mood has brightened considerably as a result.

The latest IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index is 53.6. This index has been in positive territory (anything over 50 is optimistic) since Trump took office. The Quality of Life Index, meanwhile, hit a 14-year high in May and the Financial Stress Index is at an all-time low.

Gallup's tracking poll shows that 67% now say it's a good time to find "a quality job in the U.S.," which is the highest since Gallup started asking this question. The best this measure ever got under Obama was a paltry 45%.

CNN's poll finds that 57% now say "things are going well in the U.S.," up from 49% in February.

The latest CBS News/YouGov poll found that 64% rate the economy as somewhat or very good.

But what must really concern Democrats is that 68% of the public now says Trump's policies deserve at least some of the credit, according to the CBS poll. Thirty-five percent say he deserves a "great deal" of credit for the current economy, while only 11% say he deserves none at all.

That same poll found the Democratic advantage in the "generic ballot" at only +2 points. The latest Reuters poll has Republicans up by almost 6 points. As recently as March, Democrats had an average 9-point lead on this question — which is seen as an indicator of the enthusiasm for the two parties going into the midterm elections in November.

Trump's approval numbers have also been eking out steady gains.

Naturally, this spate of good news has garnered little attention in the press, which remains fixated on the phony Russia scandal and, more broadly, on bringing down the Trump administration.

So, does Trump deserve credit for the upturn in the economy?

Consider this: President Obama raised taxes, imposed massive new regulations and mandates, and routinely berated the private sector. The economy responded with the worst economic recovery in modern times.

Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress have gone in the exact opposite direction, with sweeping tax cuts and significant deregulation. And since then we've seen growth, income, optimism all moving upward.

Given that, we think the public has it right for giving Trump credit for this turnaround.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE:

Black support of Trump has more than doubled in the past month.

May 24, 2018 5:30 AM  
Anonymous this is the day of the expanding man said...

Judge find constitutional right to follow President on twitter

this is great new for TTFers looking to get guidance:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge in New York on Wednesday ruled that President Donald Trump may not legally block Twitter users from his account on the social media platform based on their political views.

Trump has made his @RealDonaldTrump Twitter account an integral part of his presidency, using it to promote his agenda, announce policy and attack critics. He has blocked many critics from his account.

U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan ruled that comments on the president’s account, and those of other government officials, were public forums, and that blocking Twitter users for their views violated their right to free speech under the First Amendment of Constitution.

May 24, 2018 5:36 AM  
Anonymous why hasn't he been indicted? said...

In an interview with the ladies of “The View” Tuesday afternoon, James Clapper told another lie about his previous lies about the NSA program to spy on American citizens.

Meghan McCain confronted Clapper about a statement he made while testifying before Congress five years ago, when he was asked whether or not the NSA was spying on Americans.

“In 2013 when you were asked about it, you said ‘no,'” McCain said. “So that is a lie.”

“I made a mistake,” Clapper said. “I didn’t lie. I was thinking about something else, another program.”

Clapper then proceeded to prattle on about two different surveillance programs in an attempt to obfuscate his answer.

“I’ve been trotting up the Hill testifying for 25 years,” Clapper said. “Gee, just for a change of pace, I think I’ll lie on this one question and by the way do it on live television and do it in front of one of my oversight committees. So I made a mistake, but I didn’t lie.”

Let’s revisit the exchange that Clapper referenced.

In 2013 Sen. Ron Wyden asked Clapper: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans?”

He did not ask Clapper about a specific program. Wyden simply asked if the NSA was collecting any data at all on millions of Americans, and Clapper said no. As it turns out, his response was a lie, plain and simple. Instead of fessing up and admitting that he lied before Congress five years ago, he’s doubling down.

May 24, 2018 5:42 AM  
Anonymous I was with her said...

you know, I really hate to admit this but....it looks like someone's making America great again!

Mr TTF

May 24, 2018 6:22 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

You Can’t Break Up With Trump, North Korea! He’s Breaking Up With You First!

May 24, 2018 3:46 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

So, one of the popular vote losing pussy grabber's favourite excuses for not being interviewed by the Mueller investigation about Trumpgate was that he had this upcoming meeting with North Korea and he couldn't take time away from preparing for that. Well that excuse is gone.

LOL, like Trump was actually going to prepare for this meeting with NK- he's far too lazy for that, he was just going to wing it like he does with everything.

May 24, 2018 4:05 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Given that, we think the public has it right for giving Trump credit for this turnaround."

Not anyone that remembers Republicans threatening to throw the govt off a fiscal cliff if Obama didn't agree to sequestration. Spending then could have moved the economy forward a lot faster, just like it is now.

But Republicans couldn't risk letting a democrat, especially a BLACK one take credit again for bringing the US out of a major recession caused by reckless investment deregulation. The last thing they needed was another "FDR" fixing things after Republicans screwed it up.

It took a little over 8 years of Republican presidents to collapse the US economy in 1929, and Hoover (R) was unable to do anything to fix it, even though it happened at the beginning of his term. FDR fixed it and won WWII at the same time.

It took a little less than 8 years for Bush 2 to destroy the growing economy that Clinton left him, and he was unable to fix it before he left office too. With the Republican congress fighting him every step of the way, Obama managed to add 11.6 million jobs, increase household income to the highest level ever recorded, lower illegal immigration, and find and kill Osama Bin Laden. And that ain't all:

https://www.factcheck.org/2017/09/obamas-final-numbers/

Reagan is the ONLY republican president since WWII to have unemployment go down during his administration. If past results are even mildly correlated to future performance, the odds aren't good for the Mango Mussolini. The big question is will it take a full 8 years for him to undo Obama's gains, or can he totally screw it up in 4?

May 24, 2018 5:59 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Hear Hear Good anonymous!

With Bankruptcy King's ongoing push to start trade wars with the world he's well on the track to undoing Obama's economy in less than four years.

May 24, 2018 6:32 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Trump fans are too busy fondling their daughters to waste time with logic.

May 24, 2018 6:33 PM  
Anonymous walked looking said...

"MAY 24, 2018 6:22 AM
Blogger Priya Lynn said...
You Can’t Break Up With Trump, North Korea! He’s Breaking Up With You First!

MAY 24, 2018 3:46 PM
Blogger Priya Lynn said...
So, one of the pussy grabber's

MAY 24, 2018 6:32 PM
Blogger Priya Lynn said...
Trump fans are too busy fondling their daughters to waste time with logic."

always count on Priya to concoct the the most puerile of comments

Priya is as juvenile as Trump

doesn't Canada's medical system include free psychiatric care?

May 24, 2018 11:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"favourite excuses for not being interviewed by the Mueller investigation"

Mueller hasn't cleared the bar necessary to require a President to testify

he does, however, qualify for some quality time with a water board

see Director Haspel

May 24, 2018 11:38 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Not anyone that remembers Republicans threatening to throw the govt off a fiscal cliff if Obama didn't agree to sequestration. Spending then could have moved the economy forward a lot faster, just like it is now."

amazing ignorance

Obama the Worst had zero interest rates and doubled the national debt in eight years

the economy should have been flying but that nattering nabob of negativism known as Obama the Worst mismangled it

"But Republicans couldn't risk letting a democrat, especially a BLACK one take credit"

give up

black people have woke to the fact that Dems duped them

they are gravitating to Trump, the President with the lowest black unemployment in history

"FDR fixed it and won WWII at the same time."

actually, the economy didn't improve until we entered the war

FDR didn't fiix it

"It took a little less than 8 years for Bush 2 to destroy the growing economy that Clinton left him,"

it actually took the Dems two years after they took Congress to destroy the Bush economy that hummed for 6 years of calamities

May 24, 2018 11:50 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Social Security Fun Facts

Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add nothing to the national debt. Social Security has a $2.5 trillion surplus. Congress has "borrowed" trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. So when Republicans say we need to cut Social Security in order to balance the Federal budget, here's what they really mean:

"We've taken trillions from Social Security to pay for unfunded wars, tax cuts for the rich and subsidies for Exxon/Mobil and we need to cut your benefits so we won't have to pay it back."

The road to hell is paved with Republicans.

Today the mango mussolini and the Republicans put the final nail into the coffin of American democracy. As most Americans know the justice department can't discuss an ongoing investigation. Trump bullied Rod Rosenstein under threat of firing to tell Republicans what was going on in the investigation into Trumpgate regarding an informant's discussions with the FBI. Republicans made a bullshit excuse that this was part of their oversight duties but never before has the Justice Department given details of an ongoing investigation to congress. And of course under no circumstances is the subject of an investigation allowed to hear details of what the investigation has found before the investigation is complete. Trump and his people are the subject of the Trumpgate investigation and letting them hear the details of what the investigation has found is illegal.

Everyone expects the Republicans to leak to Trump and his lawyers what was revealed about the investigation in the meeting. This totally destroys the rule of law. What no one expected was for Trump to send his lawyer and white house staff to the meeting. The whitehouse insisted this was not a cause for concern as Trump's people were only there for the start of the meeting and left before any discussion took place and even that is unheard of and totally inappropriate. But then Trump's lawyer Giulianni let the truth slip that he, Trump, and his lawyers all expected to hear directly from Republicans what was discussed about the investigation in the meeting. He said "We want to see how the briefing went today and how much we learned from it. If we learned a good deal from it it will shorten the whole process considerably...What I need to know is what's the basis for [Mueller] doing it, what did the informant produce?".

By law Giulianni is not supposed to learn anything from the briefing, nothing! No one from the white house is supposed to learn anything from the briefing, BY LAW. And here Giuliani is spilling the beans that the Republican congressmembers will be telling Trump and his lawyers all this information they are not supposed to have under any circumstances. This whole thing is extraordinary in the worst possible sense. The idea that this aspect of this counterintelligence investigation would be revealed at all in this manner, to say nothing of having one of the president's lawyers there, albeit at the beginning, to send a message to the Republicans there as to what the president expects after the meeting is to cross an uncrossable line. This is a kind of executive interference in the workings of the Justice Department and the FBI that has never been countenanced in the U.S. before. It is extraordinary and it is appalling.

The criminality of Trump and congressional Republicans is so brazen that the rule of law in the United States officially died today. Welcome to the Trump dictatorship.

May 25, 2018 1:42 AM  
Anonymous don't roll with the foreign troll said...

"We've taken trillions from Social Security to pay for unfunded wars, tax cuts for the rich and subsidies for Exxon/Mobil and we need to cut your benefits so we won't have to pay it back."

More than half of the total debt derives from Obama's presidency.

"Today the mango mussolini and the Republicans put the final nail into the coffin of American democracy."

Democracy seems to be functioning quite well. We've been having primaries the last few weeks and the results are diverse. Even wackos like Dana Beyer are making a case to voters. Dana's main promise is to "fight Trump". Sounds like a democracy.

Do tell us your Orwellian definition of democracy!

"As most Americans know the justice department can't discuss an ongoing investigation."

Not publicly, but they can obviously discuss it with their boss, the President.

Constitutionally, the President can only be investigated by Congress.

As most Americans know, but few Canadians understand.

"Trump bullied Rod Rosenstein under threat of firing to tell Republicans what was going on in the investigation into Trumpgate regarding an informant's discussions with the FBI."

Informant? There is no sense in which this was an "informant". This individual was a paid spy who was tasked by the Obama White House with entrapping low-level Trump campaign workers as a pretext to surveil the campaign. Even Brennan, who may wind up in jail, used the term "spy" to refer to this individual who received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the CIA. Brennan said "it's good thing we had a spy there." Why? The spy found out nothing because nothing was there. "Informant" is a lie by the media. This guy was not part of the Trump campaign, he actively tried to infiltrate the campaign. He even applied for a job himself but was turned down.

"Republicans made a bullshit excuse that this was part of their oversight duties but never before has the Justice Department given details of an ongoing investigation to congress."

in Priya's topsy-turvy world "oversight" means blind rubber-stamp

in a democracy, the executive branch is accountable to the legislature

in addition to illegally denying access to Congress, DOJ has also stonewalled judges

we actually have three branches of government and the DOJ is not one of them

"And of course under no circumstances is the subject of an investigation allowed to hear details of what the investigation has found before the investigation is complete. Trump and his people are the subject of the Trumpgate investigation and letting them hear the details of what the investigation has found is illegal."

they've said Trump is not a target and they haven't changed that

there is also a DOJ directive that Presidents can't be indicted by DOJ and Mueller has stated he concurs with it

one of the things that the meeting looked at was what Mueller was charged with investigating

there is no excuse for keeping this from anyone with a security clearance

the only reason the charge is secret from the general public is national security

the other thing that the meeting looked at was why a spy was used by the former President to spy on the campaign of the candidate of another party

this is an unprecedented abuse of powere

after this has wrapped up, we need a law that says that can only happen by a specific declaration of Congress

May 25, 2018 6:10 AM  
Anonymous don't roll with the foreign troll said...

"Everyone expects the Republicans to leak to Trump and his lawyers what was revealed about the investigation in the meeting. This totally destroys the rule of law."

the rule of law is fine

if someone's thinks the President has broken the law, that's an issue for Congress not the DOJ

it's a law called the Constitution

"What no one expected was for Trump to send his lawyer and white house staff to the meeting."

oh, OK

go ahead and think outside the box

"By law Giulianni is not supposed to learn anything from the briefing, nothing! No one from the white house is supposed to learn anything from the briefing, BY LAW."

What law are you referring to?

There is no such law. Which is obvious by your continual use of the phrase "everybody knows".

You neither know the law nor everybody.

"And here Giuliani is spilling the beans that the Republican congressmembers will be telling Trump and his lawyers all this information they are not supposed to have under any circumstances. This whole thing is extraordinary in the worst possible sense. The idea that this aspect of this counterintelligence investigation would be revealed at all in this manner, to say nothing of having one of the president's lawyers there, albeit at the beginning, to send a message to the Republicans there as to what the president expects after the meeting is to cross an uncrossable line."

A counter-intelligence investigation is not a criminal investigation. Can you at least make up your mind what we're talking about? Your ramblings are quite confused. All counter-intelligence operations are the responsibility of the President. There is no deep state with any legal basis. A President can't be a spy, by definition, because his agenda, mandated by his election, is the mission of the government.

Don't like his agenda? Work to get someone else elected in 2020.

If you're an American, that is. If not, you're a foreign troll and it's none of your business.

"This is a kind of executive interference in the workings of the Justice Department and the FBI that has never been countenanced in the U.S. before. It is extraordinary and it is appalling."

Neither DOJ nor the FBI are constitutionally mandated organizations. They were created by Congress to assist the President in fulfilling his duties, not to oversee the Presidency. Prior to that, the President was intimately involved in prosecutions. DOJ and the FBI are accountable to the President. So, "This is a kind of executive interference in the workings of the Justice Department and the FBI that has never been countenanced in the U.S. before" is a lie.

"The criminality of Trump and congressional Republicans is so brazen that the rule of law in the United States officially died today. Welcome to the Trump dictatorship."

thanks. so you're part of the welcoming committee?

what kind of dictatorship tolerates perpetual demonstrations blocks from its residence and the continual denunciation by the mainstream media and the minority party in the legislature? what kind of dictatorship follows court orders and argues its case? what kind of dictatorship cancels executive orders and asks the legislature to make laws?

let us know how the "dictatorship" has reacted to your day-in, day-out attacks on our government

and don't even try to get into our country, foreign troll

May 25, 2018 6:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ryan said afterward that the Intelligence Committee had “the responsibility to ask tough questions of the executive branch” and that the Justice Department was cooperating.

“I appreciate the department arranging today’s briefing,” he said. “As always, I cannot and will not comment on a classified session. I look forward to the prompt completion of the intelligence committee’s oversight work in this area now that they are getting the cooperation necessary for them to complete their work while protecting sources and methods.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to comment as he left the classified briefing, but said in an interview with NPR that nothing he heard changed his support for the Russia probe, led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

“The two investigations going on that I think will give us the answers to the questions that you raise — the [inspector general] investigation in the Justice Department and the Mueller investigation,” McConnell told NPR. “I support both of them, and I don’t really have anything to add to this subject based upon the Gang of Eight briefing that we had today, which was classified.”

Democrats, meanwhile, said that based on the information they had received, the president’s claims of a political spy were unsupported.

“Nothing we heard today has changed our view that there is no evidence to support any allegation that the FBI or any intelligence agency placed a spy in the Trump campaign or otherwise failed to follow appropriate procedures and protocols,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif), Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Schiff said in a statement.

May 25, 2018 7:25 AM  
Anonymous Get 'em while they're cheap said...

White House gift shop ‘Deal of the Day’: Trump-Kim summit souvenirs

May 25, 2018 7:59 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"“Nothing we heard today has changed our view that there is no evidence to support any allegation that the FBI or any intelligence agency placed a spy in the Trump campaign or otherwise failed to follow appropriate procedures and protocols,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif), Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Schiff said in a statement."

interesting they had to speak in lockstep

are they saying Brennan, NY Times & the rest of the mainstream media are lying?

May 25, 2018 9:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Democrats and their media allies are again shouting “constitutional crisis,” this time claiming President Trump has waded too far into the Russia investigation. The howls are a diversion from the actual crisis: the Justice Department’s unprecedented contempt for duly elected representatives, and the lasting harm it is doing to law enforcement and to the department’s relationship with Congress.

The conceit of those claiming Mr. Trump has crossed some line in ordering the Justice Department to comply with oversight is that “investigators” are beyond question. We are meant to take them at their word that they did everything appropriately. Never mind that the revelations of warrants and spies and dirty dossiers and biased text messages already show otherwise.

We are told that Mr. Trump cannot be allowed to have any say over the Justice Department’s actions, since this might make him privy to sensitive details about an investigation into himself. We are also told that Congress—a separate branch of government, a primary duty of which is oversight—cannot be allowed to access Justice Department material. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes can’t be trusted to view classified information—something every intelligence chairman has done—since he might blow a source or method, or tip off the president.

That’s a political judgment, but it holds no authority. The Constitution set up Congress to act as a check on the executive branch—and it’s got more than enough cause to do some checking here. Yet the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have spent a year disrespecting Congress—flouting subpoenas, ignoring requests, hiding witnesses, blacking out information, and leaking accusations.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has not been allowed to question a single current or former Justice or FBI official involved in this affair. Not one. He’s also more than a year into his demand for the transcript of former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s infamous call with the Russian ambassador, as well as reports from the FBI agents who interviewed Mr. Flynn. And still nothing.

Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, is being stonewalled on at least three inquiries. The House Judiciary and Oversight committee chairmen required a full-blown summit in April with Justice Department officials to get movement on their own subpoena. The FBI continues to block a fuller release of the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia report.

May 25, 2018 10:11 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not that the documents that Justice sends over are of much use. Mr. Grassley this week excoriated the department for its routine practice of redacting key information, and for similarly refusing to provide a “privilege log” that details the legal basis for withholding information. His team recently discovered that one of the items Justice had scrubbed from the Peter Strzok-Lisa Page texts was the duo’s concern that former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe had a $70,000 conference table. (Was it lacquered with unicorn tears?) A separate text refers to an investigation that the White House is “running,” but conveniently blacks out which one. The FBI won’t answer Mr. Johnson’s questions about who is doing the redacting.

This intransigence is creating an unprecedented toxicity between law enforcement and Congress, undermining what has long been a cooperative and vital relationship. It is also pushing lawmakers ever closer to holding Justice Department officials in contempt or impeaching them. Congress hasn’t impeached a member of the executive branch (presidents excepted) since the 19th century. Let’s agree such a step would amount to a real crisis. And the pressure to use these tools to get disclosure is growing, as congressional Republicans worry about losing their oversight authority in the midterms, and suspect the Justice Department is stringing them along for that very reason.

Which is why Mr. Trump was right to order that Justice comply with Mr. Nunes’s demands for documents about the alleged FBI spy Stefan Halper and other information related to the catalyst of this investigation. As president, he has a duty to protect the reputation and integrity of the Justice Department—even from its own leaders. Forcing officials to comply with legitimate congressional oversight is far better than sitting back to watch those same officials singe the institution and its relationship with Congress in a flame of impeachment resolutions.

Mr. Trump has an even quicker way to bring the hostility to an end. He can—and should—declassify everything possible, letting Congress and the public see the truth. That would put an end to the daily spin and conspiracy theories. It would puncture Democratic arguments that the administration is seeking to gain this information only for itself, to “undermine” an investigation. And it would end the Justice Department’s campaign of secrecy, which has done such harm to its reputation with the public and with Congress.

May 25, 2018 10:11 AM  
Anonymous Another scene from Trumplandia said...

Roger Stone Sought Information on Clinton From Assange, Emails Show
Ex-Trump adviser urged intermediary to ask WikiLeaks for specific dates of rival candidate’s communications

https://www.wsj.com/articles/roger-stone-sought-information-on-clinton-from-assange-emails-show-1527191428

May 25, 2018 11:29 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

God- "Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life".

Leviticus 25:44-46

May 25, 2018 3:01 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The biggest genocide in human history didn't occur in Nazi Germany, but on American soil.

100 Million Native Americans were slaughtered and lost their homeland.
Historical Fact: Most of the people doing the slaughtering were christians. Sorry if you can't handle the truth.

May 25, 2018 3:05 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

People who think that their god grants them special favours, while that same god allows millions of kids to suffer and starve, are not only delusional, they're also especially arrogant, vain, and self-absorbed.

May 25, 2018 3:15 PM  
Anonymous LMAO said...

Trump’s New ‘MAGA’-Themed Swimwear Sinks On Twitter
“Does this swimsuit make me look racist?”

May 25, 2018 3:15 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous's "logic":

"You should accept and not complain abut Trump's unethical and illegal behavior because if you don't like it he could act a great deal more unethically and illegally than that."

May 25, 2018 3:21 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

So, gas prices are up 31% over the past few months and millions have lost health care while the rest have had their health insurance costs rise in far beyond the pittance most Americans got from the bankruptcy king's tax cut for the super rich.

Are you tired of winning yet?

Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

May 25, 2018 3:26 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Senator says Trump Jr. may have lied in congressional testimony

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., says the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., may have provided “false testimony” to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he was asked about the Trump campaign’s involvement with foreign governments and foreign nationals.

In a two-page letter Thursday to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the panel, Coons said that information in recent news reports contradicts Trump Jr.’s September 2017 testimony.

“I am writing to you because I am deeply concerned that, based on new information we learned this week, Donald Trump Jr. provided false testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I would like to renew my request that he be called to return and appear before the full committee to testify in an open hearing,” Coons wrote

May 25, 2018 3:38 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

REVEALED: Trump Lawyer Cohen Met With Oligarch At Trump Tower Before Inauguration To Discuss US-Russia Relations

May 25, 2018 Trump Corruption, Trump Lies

The New York Times reports:

Eleven days before the presidential inauguration last year, a billionaire Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin visited Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet with Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, according to video footage and another person who attended the meeting.

In Mr. Cohen’s office on the 26th floor, he and the oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, discussed a mutual desire to strengthen Russia’s relations with the United States under President Trump, according to Andrew Intrater, an American businessman who attended the meeting and invests money for Mr. Vekselberg. The men also arranged to see one another at the inauguration, the second of their three meetings, Mr. Intrater said.

Days after the inauguration, Mr. Intrater’s private equity firm, Columbus Nova, awarded Mr. Cohen a $1 million consulting contract, a deal that has drawn the attention of federal authorities investigating Mr. Cohen, according to people briefed on the inquiry.

May 25, 2018 3:40 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Trumpgate just keeps getting bigger and bigger!

And we only know a tiny fraction of the evidence against Trump and his people as Mueller has been following Justice Department policy and not discussing the ongoing investigation, unlike Comey did with the nothing burger investigation into Hillary that handed the election to the popular vote losing pussy grabber.

May 25, 2018 3:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/05/24/memorial-day-gas-prices-get-ready-3-per-gallon-fuel/637125002/

May 25, 2018 3:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

So, you can thank Trump's violating the Iran Nuclear Deal for the higher gas prices.

May 25, 2018 5:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"You should accept and not complain abut Trump's unethical and illegal behavior because if you don't like it he could act a great deal more unethically and illegally than that."

actually, if you don't like it, you could work to support a Democrat nominee with a chance to win

did any rational person really think Felonious Milhaus von Pants Suit was that person?

btw, no one's gonna vote for Pocohantas or Bernie either

Biden or Jerry Brown might work but they'll be pretty old in 2020

"So, gas prices are up 31% over the past few months"

no kidding

at least everyone has a decent job so they can afford to buy some of it

no thanks to Obama the Worst

"and millions have lost health care"

you mean that crappy insurance with deductibles so high that poor people couldn't go to the doctor?

btw, as of now, Obamacare is still intact

it's why healthcare is so expensive

"Are you tired of winning yet?"

nah, we love winning

just like Baby Justin's land loves losing

it just seems like the way it should be!!

"Senator says Trump Jr. may have lied in congressional testimony"

oh dear...

will he be locked up with Comey, Clapper & Brennan?

“I am writing to you because I am deeply concerned that, based on new information we learned this week, Donald Trump Jr. provided false testimony"

gee, he's so deeply concerned, how does he sleep at night?

don't tell him about Comey, Clapper & Brennan

he'll have a coronary event!!

"Trump Lawyer Cohen Met With Oligarch At Trump Tower Before Inauguration To Discuss US-Russia Relations"

so what?

"Eleven days before the presidential inauguration last year, a billionaire Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin visited Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet with Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, according to video footage and another person who attended the meeting."

didn't you guys say the NY Times lies?

"In Mr. Cohen’s office on the 26th floor, he and the oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, discussed a mutual desire to strengthen Russia’s relations with the United States under President Trump,"

how nefarious!

talking peace with the new President...

HOW DARE HE?!?!?!?!?!?

"The men also arranged to see one another at the inauguration, the second of their three meetings, Mr. Intrater said."

oh, how the plot thickens

did he meet with Jabba the Hut too?

"Days after the inauguration, Mr. Intrater’s private equity firm, Columbus Nova, awarded Mr. Cohen a $1 million consulting contract, a deal that has drawn the attention of federal authorities investigating Mr. Cohen, according to people briefed on the inquiry."

according to "people", it has "drawn attention" that Cohen was in businsess

didn't you guys say that anyone in business has to serve anyone who walks in the door?

remember the deviants that wanted a gay "wedding" cake?

Trumpgate just keeps getting bigger and bigger!

"And we only know a tiny fraction of the evidence against Trump and his people as Mueller has been following Justice Department policy"

anything that zero is a fraction of is also zero

did you ever take math in school?

"So, you can thank Trump's violating the Iran Nuclear Deal for the higher gas prices."

you gotta love the way Trump brings the hypocrisy out in Dems

they spend years whining that the Iraq war was all about oil

and now they think we should compromise with ayatollahs to keep gas prices down!!

May 25, 2018 7:58 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Republican Jeff Flake:

"Your national leadership is, well, not good at all. Our presidency has been debased by a figure who seemingly has a bottomless appetite for destruction and division and only a passing familiarity with how the constitution works. And our Article 1 branch of government, the congress, that's me, is utterly supine in the face of a moral vandalism that flows from the White House daily...

How did we arrive at a moment of such great peril, wherein the president of the United States publicly threatens on Fox & Friends (as historians will note), to interfere with the administration of justice and seems to think the office confers on him the ability to decide who and what gets investigated and who and what does not. And just this week the president, offering an outlandish rationale, ordered an investigation into the investigation of the Russian attack on our electoral process. Not to defend the country against future attacks mind you, but to defend himself. Obviously, ordering investigations is not a legitimate use of presidential power. Rule of thumb, if the only acceptable outcome in a matter of law or justice is a result that is satisfactory to the leader then you might be living in a democracy that is in trouble.

If the leader attacks the legitimacy of any institution that does not pay him obeisance, say the independent judiciary, or the free press, you might live in a democracy that is trouble. The rule of law is an elemental value, a value that preceded and gave rise to our constitution. It is not an ideology subject to the pendulum swings of politics or something to be given the thumbs up or the thumbs down during a call to your favourite morning show. It is the basis for our system of self-government. America without the rule of law is no longer America. My sounding this alarm against the government that was elected under the Republican banner and that calls itself conservative makes me no less Republican or conservative. And opposing the president and much of what he stands for is not an act of apostacy, it is rather an act of fidelity."

Note, Jeff Flake said this before the president's lawyer stated he and Trump would be getting all the highly confidential information about the investigation into Trumpgate discussed at the Justice Department meeting with Congress they are by law not allowed to have. Every subject of an ongoing investigation would dearly love to know what the evidence is against them as the investigation happens, but they have no right to that evidence until when and if they are indicted for a crime. Trump lawyer Giuliani is saying Trump has a right to this confidential investigatory information but that is simply not true unless Trump has been indicted - is that what Giulianni is saying?

What would Flake have said if he'd have known Trump and the congressional Republican boot lickers would so brazenly violate the rule of law? Trump is following in the footsteps of Putin who has bit by bit dismantled Russian democracy to create a dictatorship for himself.

May 25, 2018 8:35 PM  
Anonymous random TTFer said...

Flake lives up to his name

I am an ordinary voter living far from the Beltway who feels gaslighted by our political and media establishments regarding the Russia investigation. Our current Yanny versus Laurel political moment is probably confusing even for professional political commentators. But for ordinary Americans it is a bewildering, disorienting spectacle.

Which is it: Is Donald Trump a threat to the republic, or is the deep state the threat? Was the Russia investigation legit, or was it concocted by an out-of-control Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency? Was it an FBI “informant,” or was it a “spy”?

Has America become Venezuela, as Republicans say, because the Obama administration spied on the campaign of a political adversary? Or has it become Venezuela, as Democrats say, because our current president is attacking his investigators?

The answers to the above questions depend on which camp one is in. In our hyperpartisan times, each side has its own narrative.

The Democrats and their supportive media outlets (CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times) have been saying for a year that Trump and his campaign likely colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election, that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will eventually find proof of it, and that Trump will, as a result, get impeached.

Those on the Right point to the various leaks and reports to say there was no collusion, the Russia investigation was a set-up to undermine Trump’s presidency, and that the investigation needs to wrap up.

Looking at all of this, one wonders: If Watergate had happened today, would there be a bipartisan, national consensus that the president had done grave misdeeds and needed to resign? Probably not. There would be two narratives, each spinning madly, with no consensus.

I’m a Democrat, and it would be easier to accept my side’s version of unfolding events. It would certainly make my life easier when talking with my liberal friends. But facts are pesky things, and I’ve become increasingly aggravated by my own side. It seems the desire to win the 2016 election and Trump hatred has not only warped the Democratic political and media establishments, but exposed them for what they are.

Yes, Trump is intemperate, narcissistic, and the most unconventional president ever. But it appears that his opponents in our political and media establishments are far worse: they wanted to subvert democracy to save it from Trump; they wanted to thwart the will of Trump’s 63 million voters and not just undermine his presidency, but to concoct an investigation to impeach him and get him out of office.

Looked at this way, it appears that Trump’s election is vindicated for many reasons: There appears to be a deep state in this country comprising both Republicans and Democrats, which will not abide an outsider president.

May 25, 2018 10:01 PM  
Anonymous random TTFer said...

This Is a Horrible Look for Democrats

Meanwhile, my fellow Democrats aren’t in a good spot: They are increasingly becoming the kind of low-information voters they despise and think are only on the other side. For instance, a 2017 poll showed that a majority of Democrats (52 percent) believed Russia tampered with vote tallies in the 2016 election to help elect Trump, despite no evidence. That is akin to 69 percent of Americans believing in September 2003 that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Further, many of my Democratic friends are in the dark about many of the smaller events and facts surrounding the Mueller investigation. They don’t know, for instance, that a federal judge, T. S. Ellis, rebuked Mueller for trying to target Trump. They don’t know that one of the Russian companies Mueller indicted for tampering in the 2016 election, Concord Catering, didn’t exist at the time of the election, and that when they showed up in court to contest the charges, Mueller was unprepared to proceed with the case.

This isn’t entirely ordinary Democrats’ fault, but that of the legacy media outlets they rely on for their news and analysis, which have let their audiences down completely. These media outlets (CNN, ABC, NBC, The New York Times, etc.) have devoted little or no time to many of the stories that “help” Trump or fail to advance the Russia collusion narrative. For instance, ABC, CBS, and NBC together spent a total of just 153 seconds covering Ellis’s rebuke of Mueller.

This Is Not Just a Media Problem

There is only one word to describe CNN and MSNBC’s coverage in the last year and half: grotesque. They’ve gone so over-the-top with their anti-Trump coverage, so lacking in self-awareness, that even criticizing them seems like a waste of time.


But I sense a bigger problem on the Democratic side, both among ordinary Democrats and prominent left-leaning pundits. In the Trump era, many seem unable to grasp irony and facts as it applies to their own side. For instance, when they talk about Trump violating the rule of law or obstructing justice, don’t they realize that some of us are thinking: Yes, but where were you when the FBI didn’t apply the rule of law to Hillary Clinton, and why didn’t you object when Hillary obstructed justice by deleting emails under subpoena? Shouldn’t the rule of law apply to everyone?

In these troubling times, I’ve been grateful for the commentators on the Right who’ve explained what’s happening and put it in perspective. I’ve also appreciated people like Mark Penn, who broke with party lines and loyalty to the Clintons to speak the truth of what’s happening. His reason, of course, may not be just to defend Trump but to defend the rule of law and our democracy.

Everything that happened in 2016 and 2017 needs to come out in the open: the botched FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, the surveillance of Trump’s campaign, the shady origins of the Russia investigation. There needs to be a reckoning.

There needs to be a reckoning for the mainstream media as well, as to why, as one critic said this week, they’ve acted as “lapdogs for the Deep State and propaganda arm of the Left.” Maybe I’m not a good enough Democrat, but I’m far more troubled by what is happening to Trump than by Trump himself.

May 25, 2018 10:01 PM  
Anonymous Drip, drip, drip... said...

The BBC reports: The government of Ukraine had been seeking U.S. missles. The newly elected Ukraininian president paid Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen $400,000 to arrange a meeting with Trump. The special prosecutors office had been prosecuting Trump's campaign chair Paul Manafort related to his business relationship with the pro-Russia magnificently corrupt previous government in Ukraine. Ukraine's new government had some information about Manafort and had been cooperating with the Special counsel. Almost immediately after the Ukraine's president had a visit to the Whitehouse he ordered all his prosecutors to cutoff any help the were giving to Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump. Once source in Kiev said that after that oval office meeting he secretly bought with a large payment to Cohen "President Poroshenko had given Trump "a gift", making sure that Ukraine would find no more evidence to give the Trump inquiry into whether the Trump campaign had "colluded" with Russia.

May 25, 2018 10:04 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Breaking:

FBI obtains Spanish wiretaps of Alexander Torshin, the Russian banker & Putin ally who met with Don. Trump Jr. at the NRA convention in 2016.
"Trump's son should be concerned," says Spanish prosecutor.


In 1934, The Karlsruhe football club in Berlin, Germany refused to give the Nazi salute before playing against a French Team. The club was banned from playing for 12 months. Hitler eventually made it a crime to refuse to give the Nazi salute. Trump suggested that NFL players who don't stand for the national anthem don't belong in the country.


Joyce Alene

@JoyceWhiteVance

1-Can we believe anything Giuliani says these days?
2-Subjects of investigations don't get access to evidence against them while the investigation is in progress. For all the obvious reasons. Presidents not above this or any other law. https://twitter.com/JonLemire/status/1000146810160209920 …

May 25, 2018 10:29 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Trump can access to Mueller's evidence against him when he's indicted and not before!

May 25, 2018 10:30 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The remarkable letter the president sent to Kim Jong-Un was classic Trump trolling. It struck a perfect balance between praise for the dictator for releasing the three American hostages while gleefully reminding him our nuclear arsenal can level his entire nation. Most importantly, Trump left the door open for Kim Jong-Un to wise up. If the North Korean dictator truly wants to improve the economic conditions of his country, he’ll drop his petty, childish antics. The letter brilliantly captured Trump’s position and voice.

It’s no surprise that Trump’s political adversaries on Capitol Hill and in the media are celebrating this foreign policy “failure.” But let’s remember a couple of things.

First, Trump literally had nothing to lose by pulling out of the summit. For the United States, it’ll simply be the status quo. For North Korea, they’re still facing heavy sanctions and isolation from the rest of the world. So if that’s what they want, that’s what they’ll get.

Secondly, Trump still got three American prisoners out of North Korea without giving up anything, so these past several weeks of peace talks weren’t a waste of time at all.

Still, it’s a shame that the Trump haters are cheerleading this setback instead of simply being on Team USA.

Sure, those commemorative coins are now pretty much worthless and Trump may not be handed the Nobel Peace Prize this year, but he has roughly seven more years to strike a peace deal (depending of course if he wins his reelection). This administration figured that, unlike previous administrations that North Korea hoodwinked, Trump has no intention of being played. As he wrote in “The Art of The Deal,” he can’t be afraid to walk away from the table.

The biggest takeaway from all of this is that the most unpredictable dictator was outplayed by the most unpredictable president. Let’s hope there will eventually be peace in the Korean Peninsula and that the summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-Un actually takes place.

May 26, 2018 9:55 AM  
Anonymous eight signs Obama spied on the opposition said...

maybe President Trump illegally conspired with Russia and was so good at covering it up he’s outwitted our best intelligence and legal and media minds who've been searching for evidence for two years

but there’s no reason to think that

there's a lot of reason, however, of wrongdoing much more insidious, because it implies widespread misuse of America’s intelligence and law enforcement apparatus

eight signs of a counterintelligence operation deployed against Trump for political purposes:


Code name

The operation had a code name: Crossfire Hurricane

Wiretap fever

secret surveillance was conducted on at least seven Trump associates: chief strategist Stephen Bannon; lawyer Michael Cohen; national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn; adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner; campaign chairman Paul Manafort; and campaign foreign policy advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos

the FBI applied for a secret warrant in June 2016 to monitor Manafort, Page, Papadopoulos and Flynn

that's six months before Flynn's conversation with Russia’s ambassador

the FBI applied four times to wiretap Page after he became a Trump campaign adviser July 2016, he starting spending much of his time in Trump Tower

Manafort was wiretapped before and after the election including during a period when he regularly talked to Trump and Manafort has a residence in Trump Tower

electronic surveillance was used to listen in on three Trump transition officials in Trump Tower — Flynn, Bannon and Kushner

the FBI also wiretapped Flynn’s phone conversation with the Russian ambassador on Dec. 31, 2016, as part of “routine surveillance”

Cohen was the subject of a “pen register” used to monitor phone numbers and internet communications

May 26, 2018 10:45 AM  
Anonymous eight signs Obama spied on the opposition said...

National security letters

another tool used by the FBI to obtain phone records and other documents in the investigation were national security letters, which bypass judicial approval

improper use of such letters has been an ongoing theme at the FBI

reviews by DOJ’s Inspector General found widespread misuse under Mueller — who was then FBI director — and said officials failed to report instances of abuses as required

Unmasking

“unmasking” — identifying protected names of Americans captured by government surveillance — was frequently deployed by at least four top Obama officials: James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence; Samantha Power, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Susan Rice, former national security adviser; Sally Yates, former deputy attorney general

names of Americans caught communicating with monitored foreign targets must be, BY LAW, “masked,” or hidden within government agencies, so the names cannot be misused or shared

however, Power made near-daily unmasking requests in 2016

before that was uncovered, Clapper claimed ignorance

Rice admitted to asking for unmasked names of U.S. citizens in intelligence reports after initially claiming no knowledge of any such thing

Clapper also admitted to requesting the unmasking of “Mr. Trump, his associates or any members of Congress”

Clapper and Yates admitted they also personally reviewed unmasked documents and shared unmasked material with other officials

Changing the rules

in December 2016 — the same day the government listened in on Trump officials at Trump Tower — Rice unmasked the names of Bannon, Kushner and Flynn

the same day, Clapper made a new rule allowing the NSA to widely disseminate surveillance material within the government without any privacy protections

Media strategy

former CIA Director John Brennan and Clapper, two of the most integral intel officials in this ongoing controversy, have both joined national news organizations where they have regular opportunities to shape the news narrative — including the actual issues under investigation

Clapper secretly leaked salacious political opposition research against Trump to CNN in fall 2017 and was later hired by CNN

in February, Brennan was hired by MSNBC

May 26, 2018 10:52 AM  
Anonymous eight signs Obama spied on the opposition said...

Leaks

there’s been an orchestrated series of leaks — some true, some false, but nearly all of them damaging to President Trump’s interests

just a few: that Flynn was wiretapped, the Steele dossier, Comey's briefing Trump on it, private Comey conversations with Trump, Comey’s memos recording those conversations and criticizing Trump, the subpoena of Trump’s personal bank records and Flynn planning to testify against Trump

Friends, informants and snoops

The FBI used one-time CIA operative Stefan Halper in 2016 as an informant to spy on Trump officials

another player is Comey friend Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor, who leaked Comey’s memos against Trump to The New York Times after Comey was fired

Richman actually once worked for the FBI under a status called “Special Government Employee”

the FBI used former reporter Glenn Simpson, his political opposition research firm Fusion GPS, and ex-British spy Christopher Steele to compile allegations against Trump, largely from Russian sources, which were distributed to the press and used as part of wiretap applications

---------

eight signs of a counterintelligence operation

it can be assumed there’s much we don’t yet know

but it explains why there’s so much material that the DOJ has resisted handing over to congressional investigators

May 26, 2018 10:58 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism characterized by dictatorial power. It can be easily recognized by some or all of the following:

- Wins by destroying opponents with convoluted or blatantly false propaganda
- Discredits media with direct attacks on anything they don't agree with often promoting lies.
- Perpetrate blatant lies and massive unsubstantiated claims repeated frequently (millions voted illegally).
- Expect extreme Nationalism(blind loyalty) rather than Patriotism (earned respect)
- Supports extreme wealth inequality U.S. top 1% owns 71% of U.S. wealth
- Divides people by promoting racism homophobia antisemitism and fear of immigrants
- Discredits legal system with continuous propaganda about false corruption
- Seeks through direct or indirect genocide cutting Social Security and safety net programs to eliminate anyone that does not contribute to the wealth of the 1% (the elderly, disabled and poor)
-Creates extreme wealth for the 1% by imposing massive military budgets at the expense of infrastructure healthcare housing and basic subsistence.

Trump in a nutshell

May 26, 2018 1:32 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Breaking: Alexander Torshin, a sanctioned top Russian banker with close ties to Putin forged ties with the NRA prior to the election and allegedly funneled money to them to help Trump win the presidency. The FBI is investigating.

---------------------------------------


If you sport a confederate flag in any way, shape, or form, you are disqualified from criticizing anyone for sitting or kneeling during the national anthem as that action of protest is nowhere near the level of disrespect of celebrating the failed attempt at seceding from the country you claim to love. The confederate flag is literally as un-american as you can get. Yes its history, but it's the history of people who didn't want to be a part of the United States.

May 26, 2018 1:34 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Trump's Sole Goal As President Is To Get Revenge On Obama By Undoing His Accomplishments - Regardless of How Much Damage He Causes

Obama was not perfect, but few presidents are. However, what he was able to do was unite the country in a way that hadn’t been seen for decades. Since Trump isn’t anywhere near as beloved, he has devoted much of his time and energy to undoing everything Obama has put in place. From affordable birth control and health care for women to policies that combat global warming and welcome immigration, Trump wants it all gone.

Political analyst David Gergen told CNN host Don Lemmon that, Trump’s various deals and policies are, “more about blowing up the former president’s legacy than anybody wants to admit.”

If there is one thing that Trump despises, it’s being disliked, but with his racist, misogynistic, and ignorant views, he hasn’t been able to escape the wrath of the public or Hollywood. He’s so disturbed by his low approval ratings that he will try anything to combat them.

In fact, in summer 2017, Trump shared an unverified poll that said 61% of the public believed he was a better president than Obama. OK, sir.

Poor Trump couldn’t even let us all enjoy Thanksgiving without trying to make a dig at Obama. During the Presidential Turkey pardon in 2017, he quipped,”As many of you know, I have been very active in overturning a number of executive actions by my predecessor. However, I have been informed by the White House counsel’s office that Tater and Tot’s pardons cannot, under any circumstances, be revoked.”

That might be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Though Obama is a Democrat and Trump claims to be a Republican, Trump can’t even seem to find a middle ground when dealing with the more liberal party. In fact, a European diplomat who spent a great of time with Trump in the White House noticed he only really cared about the Harvard Law graduate’s position on things.

The diplomat told Buzzfeed,“He will ask: ‘Did Obama approve this?’ And if the answer is affirmative, he will say: ‘We don’t.’ He won’t even want to listen to the arguments or have a debate. He is obsessed with Obama.”

May 26, 2018 1:35 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Taking credit where credit is not due

Donald Trump is all about getting credit — whether he deserves it or not.

The main reason why Trump is obsessed with Obama is that he adores praise. It’s Obama’s work and policies that have put the United States in the great economic position that it’s in currently. Trump, of course, can’t accept this as fact.

If (or when) the economy takes a nosedive, Trump is going to have to answer for that.

Creating an (unfounded) scandal

Donald Trump helped push the birther movement pre-presidency

Well before Trump even began to speak of getting into politics seriously, he went after Obama, claiming that he was not actually born in the U.S. In fact, it was Trump’s repeated appearances on Fox News that helped push the birther movement along.

Since the birther movement failed to discredit Obama, Trump is trying to do so with his own presidency. How ironic that he’s the one who has been riddled with scandals and sexual assault allegations.

Alternative views

Though we think Trump’s fixation on Obama is plain as day, Trump supporters, including Fox News host Sean Hannity, believe we’ve got it all wrong. According to Hannity, Obama is the one with the obsession. On his show in December 2017. Hannity bellowed,

[Obama] is obviously sick, pathetic, and twisted in this obsession with President Trump. It’s kind of like everybody in the media. Every single chance Obama gets, whether it’d be here at home, overseas, it doesn’t matter. He’s trashing, trying to undermine the president. Maybe he can’t get over the fact that his record was atrocious. Maybe he needs to take his own advice and accept the results of the election.

We’d love to see the interviews and speeches where Obama supposedly trashed Trump. Then again, we all know Hannity, Trump, and the folks at Fox aren’t great with actual facts.

May 26, 2018 1:36 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Mike Pence Urges Christian Hate Group to “Share the Good News of Jesus Christ”

In a move that’s absolutely inappropriate if not illegal, Vice President Mike Pence told a group of pastors yesterday to “share the good news of Jesus Christ.”

Pence made a surprise appearance at Friday’s Watchman on the Wall conference put on by the Family Research Council, which is designated an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

According the Christian Broadcasting Network, Pence urged the pastors to keep evangelizing.

… Pence outlined how the Trump administration has championed causes important to the evangelical community and implored them to continue to, “share the good news of Jesus Christ.”

“Keep preaching the good news. Keep preaching in season and out of season as the Bible says. Always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that you have,” he continued.

“Forty years ago this spring, I literally walked down and gave my life to Jesus Christ and so I just want you to continue [to] share the gospel, share that life changing message,” he shared.

Pence also told the pastors what this administration had done for them — which is a rarity, considering how little they’ve done for anybody else. He referred to stacking the courts with ultra-conservative candidates, the U.S. embassy now in Jerusalem, their efforts to repeal the Johnson Amendment (so pastors can endorse candidates from the pulpit without their churches losing their tax breaks). And he even celebrated Trump’s anti-abortion stance:

He received multiple standing ovations from the evangelical crowd especially when Pence declared how President Trump is the, “most pro-life president in American history…standing without apology for the unborn and the sanctity of life. That’s President Donald Trump.”

Right. The guy who paid hush money to cover up an affair with a porn star that occurred shortly after his third wife gave birth to his fifth child is really a champion of conservative values. The guy who celebrates the “sanctity of life” has an administration that’s been tearing families apart while losing track of children afterwards. And that’s when they’re not trying to start wars all over the world. They’ve made it harder for poor people to get affordable health care, pushed for abstinence-only sex education (that we know leads to more abortions), and rallied their base against minority groups.

That’s the man who evangelical pastors continue to support, in part because Pence is right there with them.

But you knew that already.

Imagine for a moment, though, if a Democratic president went to a non-Christian religious conference and implored the audience to spread their faith. Right-wing media outlets would go nuts. It’s only because evangelicals have such privilege in this country — and in this administration — that the man who’s a heartbeat (or an impeachment) away from the presidency could show up at their event and encourage them to promote his personal faith… and it barely registers on the administration’s daily list of scandals.

So much for the myth that Christians are being persecuted.

May 26, 2018 1:54 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Whatever respect the rest of the world has for the US leaders has been pretty much destroyed over the last 18 months. Even the leader of North Korea is starting to look slightly less crazy in comparison.

And we thought George W Bush was terrible enough.

May 26, 2018 2:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Leaks

there’s been an orchestrated series of leaks — some true, some false, but nearly all of them damaging to President Trump’s interests"

It's really a shame that none of these leaks happened before Nov 2016. It could have saved the world a whole lotta orange hangovers.

Somehow, Obama was criminally sneaky enough to do all of this damaging investigation, yet NOT underhanded enough to use it when it could have actually made a difference.

Somehow, Comey only held press conferences about Clinton investigations, and none about the ongoing ones for IQ45. If Obama wanted to damage Trump's interest, clearly, the best possible time to do it was BEFORE the election.

Duh.

He didn't though. Probably some obscure police practices about keeping investigations quiet until you find all the criminals - you know, keeping criminals from telling their friends before they can destroy evidence and leave the state or the country.

Now that leaks are coming out during the Trump administration, the conspiracy theorists are working overtime to cook up new stories to try and hide the fact that the Head Cheez Doodle and his cronies were cavorting with our biggest enemy for the past 50 years and taking money from them.

Pay no attention to the man behind the gaudy gold curtain. It was all Obama's fault. He was the one destroying democracy, not the one who's comrades were actually meeting with the Russians.


“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”

― George Orwell, 1984

May 26, 2018 2:30 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Way to go, Good Anonymous!

The story fabricated by Trumpsters is absurd of the face of it.

You summed it up very nicely :)

May 26, 2018 2:36 PM  
Anonymous good anonymous said...

Who what where when why? That's the effort to understand that byzantine drama known to the world as the Trump-Russia-collusion investigation.

Let’s start with “when.” When did it start? We know that the FBI opened its official investigation on 31 July 2016. An obscure, low-level volunteer to the Trump campaign called Carter Page was front and centre then. He’d been the FBI’s radar for a long time. Years before, it was known, the Russians had made some overtures to him but 1) they concluded that he was an “idiot” not worth recruiting and 2) he had actually aided the FBI in prosecuting at least two Russian spies.

But we now know that the Trump-Russia investigation began before Carter Page. In December 2017, The New York Times excitedly reported in an article called “How the Russia Inquiry Began” that, contrary to their reporting during the previous year, it wasn’t Carter Page who precipitated the inquiry. It was someone called George Papadopoulous, an even more obscure and lower-level factotum than Carter Page. Back in May 2016, the twenty-something Papadopoulous had gotten outside a number of drinks with one Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat in London and had let slip that “the Russians” had compromising information about Hillary Clinton. When Wikileaks began releasing emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee in June and July, news of the conversation between Downer and Papadopoulos was communicated to the FBI. Thus, according to the Times, the investigation was born.

There were, however, a couple of tiny details that the Times omitted. One was that Downer, an avid Clinton supporter, had arranged for a $25 million donation from the Australian government to the Clinton Foundation. Twenty-five million of the crispest, Kemo Sabe. They also neglected say exactly how Papadopoulos met Alexander Downer.

As it turns out, George Papadopoulos made several new friends in London. There was Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor living in London who has ties to British intelligence. It was Mifsud—who has since disappeared—who told Papadopoulos in March 2016 that the Kremlin had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Then there is Stefan Halper, an American-born Cambridge prof and Hillary supporter. Out of the blue, Halper reached out to Papadopoulos in September 2016. He invited him to meet in London and then offered Papadopoulos $3,000 to write a paper on an unrelated topic. He also pumped him about “Russian hacking.” “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?” Halper is said to have asked him. He also made sure Papadopoulos met for drinks with his assistant, a woman called Azra Turk, who flirted with him over the Chardonnay while pumping him about Russia.

May 26, 2018 3:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Halper also contacted Carter Page and Sam Clovis, Trump’s campaign co-chair. Is Stefan Halper, the “spy” on the Trump campaign, at the origin of the Trump-Russia meme?

Not really. The real fons et origo is John Brennan, Director of the CIA under Obama. As Trump’s victories in the primaries piled up, Brennan convened a “working group” at CIA headquarters that included Peter Strzok, the disgraced FBI agent, and James Clapper, then Director of National Intelligence, in order to stymie Trump’s campaign.

So much of this story still dwells in the tenebrous realm of redaction. But little by little the truth is emerging, a mosaic whose story is gradually taking shape as one piece after the next completes now this face, now another.

There are details yet to come, but here is the bottom line, the irreducible minimum. A cabal of CIA and FBI operatives, including the Director of the CIA, John Brennan, along with other members of the intelligence “community,” prominently including James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, and various members of the Obama administration, colluded to undermine Donald Trump’s campaign.

Like almost everyone else, they assumed that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in, so they were careless about covering their tracks. If Hillary had won, the department of Justice would have been her Department of Justice, John Brennan would still be head of the CIA, and the public would never have known about the spies, the set-ups, the skulduggery.

But Hillary did not win. For the last 16 months, we’ve watched as that exiled cabal shifted its efforts from stopping Trump from winning to a desperate effort to destroy his Presidency. Thanks to the patient work of Devin Nunes, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and a handful of GOP Senators, that effort is now disintegrating. What is being exposed is the biggest political scandal in the history of the United States: the effort by highly placed—exactly how highly placed we still do not know—members of one administration to mobilise the intelligence services and police power of the state to spy upon and destroy first the candidacy and then, when that didn’t work, the administration of a political rival.

It is banana republic behaviour, but it looks now as if those responsible for this effort to undermine American democracy and repeal the results of a free, open, and democratic election will be exposed. Let’s hope that they are also held to account.

May 26, 2018 3:46 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

There goes Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous posting while pretending to be Good Anonymous - what a loser!

May 26, 2018 3:55 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Emails show cooperation among EPA, global warming deniers

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Newly released emails show senior Environmental Protection Agency officials working closely with a conservative group that dismisses climate change to rally like-minded people for public hearings on science and global warming, counter negative news coverage and tout Administrator Scott Pruitt's stewardship of the agency.

John Konkus, EPA's deputy associate administrator for public affairs, repeatedly reached out to senior staffers at the Heartland Institute, according to the emails.

"If you send a list, we will make sure an invitation is sent," Konkus wrote to then-Heartland president Joseph Bast in May 2017, seeking suggestions on scientists and economists the EPA could invite to an annual EPA public hearing on the agency's science standards.

Follow-up emails show Konkus and the Heartland Institute mustering scores of potential invitees known for rejecting scientific warnings of man-made climate-change, including from groups like Plants Need CO2, The Right Climate Stuff, and Junk Science.

The emails underscore how Pruitt and senior agency officials have sought to surround themselves with people who share their vision of curbing environmental regulation and enforcement, leading to complaints from environmentalists that he is ignoring the conclusions of the majority of scientists in and out of his agency especially when it comes to climate-changing carbon emissions.

They were obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Southern Environmental Law Center, which sued to enforce a Freedom of Information request and provided them to The Associated Press.

The EPA maintains close working relationships with a broad range of [global warming denying] public and private groups, and Heartland is just one of many the agency engages with "to ensure the public is [mis]informed," said EPA spokesman Lincoln Ferguson.

"It demonstrates the agency's dedication to advancing President Trump's agenda of environmental stewardship and regulatory certainty," he said.

The public hearing referred to in the May 2017 email ultimately was canceled when the EPA official who runs it fell ill, the EPA said.

But Bast contended in an email sent to EPA staffers and others that the official called off the hearing after learning that climate-change "skeptics planned to attend."

The Heartland Institute calls itself a leading free-market think-tank. It rejects decades of science saying fossil-fuel emissions are altering the climate.

May 26, 2018 3:56 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

"Of course The Heartland Institute has been working with EPA on policy and personnel decisions," Tim Huelskamp, a former Kansas Republican congressman who now leads the group, said in a statement to the AP.

"They recognized us as the pre-eminent organization opposing the radical climate alarmism agenda and instead promoting sound science and policy," Huelskamp wrote.

He said Heartland would continue to help Pruitt and his staff.

An email last February shows Bast forwarded to followers an email with the line "From the White House," rallying activists to public hearings the EPA was then holding around the country on repealing an Obama-era power plan meant to curb fossil-fuel emissions.

The email is signed by a Pruitt political appointee and gives the name of another EPA official for activists to call. It's not clear from the email, however, who initiated the attempt to rally conservatives for the public hearing.

Konkus was a Republican political consultant when Pruitt named him to the agency. His duties include reviewing awards of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants. The Washington Post reported in September that Konkus had been scrutinizing grant applications for mentions of climate change, which he reportedly calls "the double C-word."

Emails show he and former EPA spokeswoman, Liz Bowman, repeatedly reached out to Heartland to talk over critical coverage by the Post.

Lakely, the Heartland spokesman, responds he's shared the article with colleagues, "asking them to jump to your aide (sic) and defend this position."

Konkus also contacted Heartland and other conservative groups asking for what he calls "echo" amplifying word of Pruitt's regulation-cutting efforts, according to the emails.

And an email from Bast, shared with EPA staffers and others, shows the then-Heartland president celebrating news that a reporter, Justin Gillis, was leaving The New York Times.

"Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead . Still waiting for Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin at the WaPo and Seth Borenstein at AP to flame out," Bast writes.

May 26, 2018 3:56 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Regulation has helped, not hindered California’s green economy

Earlier this year, California raked in $2.7 trillion gross state product, overtaking the UK as the world's fifth largest economy -- only Germany, Japan, China and the US itself produce more annually. It isn't just our lush farming regions or the technological wonders coming out of Silicon Valley that have made California an economic bellwether, the state's strict adherence to environmental regulations, which go far and above what the rest of the nation demands, have certainly helped as well.

California has long been on the leading edge of environmental regulation. The state created its first Air Pollution District way back in 1947, a decade and a half before the passage of the US Clean Air Act, in response to public outcry over the air quality in Los Angeles.

The benefits of these environmental regulations are well-documented. For the past 25 years, the state's GDP and population have steadily increased while per capita carbon dioxide emission rates have remained static. Since 2006, when the state passed its California Global Warming Solutions Act, per capita GDP has increased by $5,000 (nearly double the national average) and job growth has outpaced the rest of the nation by 27 percent while its per capita CO2 emissions dropped 12 percent, according to the annual California Green Innovation Index from California-based think tank, Next10.

"GDP growth in California has outpaced the US as a whole in recent years," Meredith Fowlie, a professor of economics at University of California Berkeley, told NBC News in 2017. "Over this same time period, the state has implemented the most ambitious climate change policies in the nation. And CO2 emissions in the state have fallen."

And it's not just the air we breath but also the structures we live and work in, that have also benefited from environmental regulation. While the state has only just recently proposed requiring new homes to come equipped with solar panels, California has been dictating environmentally-conscientious building codes for decades.

In 1978, California implemented a series of radical and far-reaching changes to its residential building codes that would gradually become more strict over time. The aim was "to reduce the electricity and gas now used in typical new buildings by at least 80 percent for new buildings constructed after 1990," per the California Energy Commission's 1979 biennial report.

Smog In Los Angeles
View photos
Smog In Los Angeles
LA smog in 1956

May 26, 2018 3:57 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Compared to pre-code houses, the modern California home uses 75 percent less power. Taken together, statewide household energy savings since 1978 run equivalent to the output of seven 500 MW gas-fired plants. Overall, the state's per capita energy use has remained flat since the 1970s despite its economy growing a whopping 80 percent over the same period.

"When you increase energy efficiency and clean energy, what are you doing you spending less on energy and more on jobs to install and retrofit existing buildings," Pierre DelForge, Director of High Tech Sector Energy Efficiency, Energy & Transportation program at the Natural Resource Defense Council, told Engadget. "So this is actually reinvesting in the local economy."

Even during the bad times after the 2008 recession hit, California lawmakers ignored calls to gut the protections in the name of economic growth and instead established the state's greenhouse gas emissions cap-and-trade program -- the only one of its kind in the nation -- which in 2016 cleared $2.5 billion in revenue from emission permits.

Interestingly, the 2008 recession and its fallout had an unexpected effect on the California economy, one which helped establish the state's modern "green economy."

"Blue collar industries initially left the state rather than stay in place, the pollution caused by those industries also left the state," William Fulton, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University who served as the planning director for the City of San Diego told NBC News. "But the economy then shaped around that kind of aftermath, and there was growth in other areas like the green industry."

Today, green sector jobs outnumber those in the fossil fuel industry 8.5 to one. California has 300,000 jobs in green energy, more than double the 146,000 offered in Texas, the next largest employer in that industry.

"California is the most energy efficient economy in the world, and least carbon intensive," Adam Fowler, a research manager at Beacon Economics, told Wired in 2017. "We have a very clear time series showing that the decoupling of fossil fuel use from GDP is possible."

May 26, 2018 3:58 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

"We've already decided as a state and as a Legislature that we want to dramatically reduce pollution and move forward toward a clean energy future," Kevin de León told the LA Times. "That debate is over. Now we're deciding how to get there."

That decision will not likely involve any input from the federal government as many of these regulations run counter to the public positions of both Scott Pruitt's EPA and the Trump administration.

In fact, in February of last year, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León raspberried the administration when he announced legislation that would ensure existing federal rules on air quality, water protection, endangered species and worker safety enacted prior to the start of the Trump administration would remain enforceable within the state, regardless of whether they were rolled back nationally.

"California can't afford to go back to the days of unregulated pollution," De León told an assembly of reporters during a press conference. "We're not going to let this administration or any other undermine our progress." The California legislature attempted a similar gamble back in 2003, during the George W Bush administration, when it sought to maintain existing standards for power plants while the Feds were relaxing regulations.

Then again in March of 2017, the California Air Resources Board voted to increase the fuel efficiency standards of gas and hybrid-electric vehicles in the state, just as the EPA was touting a nationwide rollback of those same regulations. Established in 2012, the fuel efficiency rules demand that vehicles hit 54.5 MPG by 2025. The Trump administration has tried to lower that standard.

"All of the evidence — call it science, call it economics — shows that if anything, these standards should be even more aggressive," board member Daniel Sperling told the New York Times.

What's more, this past April, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced that is office is bringing suit against the EPA over its reportedly illegal rollback of the "Once In, Always In" policy. This policy required the state's leading producers of air pollution, those that produce more than 10 tons of a single pollutant or 25 tons of mixed emissions (think, oil refineries), to take permanent steps to reduce their emissions.

"Instead of prioritizing the health of hard working Americans, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt wants to let major polluters off the hook. That is unconscionable, and it is illegal," Becerra said in a statement. "If the 'Once In, Always In' policy is rescinded, children in California and around the country -– particularly those who must live near the polluting plant or factory -- may grow up in an environment with tons of additional hazardous pollutants in the air they breathe. California will not allow that to happen. The EPA must be held accountable."

These legal challenges are still before the courts but have already garnered support from a handful of other similarly-minded states. "A lot of small steps create big momentum," said Lauren Navarro, a senior policy manager at the Environmental Defense Fund, told the LA Times. "These are pieces of what it takes to get to a clean-energy economy."

May 26, 2018 3:58 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

"WASHINGTON (AP) - Hillary Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more votes than President-elect Donald Trump, giving her the largest popular vote margin of any "losing" presidential candidate.

Even with the FBI and Russia colluding to interfere in the election to favour Trump and Republican politicians wide spread suppression of minority voters (who typically vote Democrat) Trump still lost the popular vote! Imagine if there had been a fair election!

Trumped barely eked out a win by 78,000 votes in three states.

Donald Trump is the most illegitimate president in U.S. history.

May 26, 2018 4:01 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

No moral person would deny that in the spirit of democracy Hillary Clinton is the rightful president of the United States.

She got nearly 3 million more votes than Trump and only due to the anti-democratic electoral college system which makes votes in conservative states worth more than votes in liberal states is Trump president on a technicality.

As Trump said himself "The electoral college is a disaster for democracy!"

May 26, 2018 4:05 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

WH quietly issues report to Congress showing benefits of regulations greatly exceed their costs

Trump's White House quietly released its 2018 draft report to Congress on the costs and benefits of regulations and the results show that major rulemakings over the past decade have yielded great benefits.

The findings are at odds with an administration that's pushing federal agencies to cut rules and ease excessive regulatory burdens it says were imposed by the previous administration.

The Trump administration report says that from fiscal 2007 through 2016 the annual economic benefits of major rulemakings reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) were estimated to be between $287 billion and $911 billion.

The report found that from Oct. 1, 2006, to Sept. 30, 2016, the annual benefits of regulations outweighed the annual costs, which were estimated to be between $78 billion and $115 billion in 2015 dollars.

The results, regulatory advocates say, seem to undercut the president's continued push for a policy requesting that two regulations be removed for every new rule proposed.

Sofie Miller, a senior policy analyst at George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center, said the report is not a tally of the costs and benefits of rules issued by the Trump administration, but rather a window into the regulatory activity undertaken by the Obama administration.

“We are issuing this report after a change in administration, and therefore would like to clarify that OMB’s reporting of the results of these [regulatory impact analyses] does not imply an endorsement by the current Administration of all of the assumptions made and analyses conducted at the time these regulations were finalized,” OMB said in the report.

As Miller notes, the accounting is for 137 major rules — those with an annual economic impact of $100 million or more — that agencies have calculated both monetized costs and benefits for.

But OMB details in the report it's looking to change the way it writes the report given the Trump administration's focus on deregulation. The GOP-led Congress has also successfully repealed 15 regulations under the Congressional Review Act.

OMB said in the report that it’s considering whether to change the report and completely remove rules that were repealed or report them separately. It's also looking at whether to adjust the reporting of the costs and benefits of revised rules if a subsequent analysis suggests the impacts weren't adequately analyzed or if the impacts are different than originally expected.

Public Citizen, a public interest group that sued Trump over his two-for-one regulatory order, said the report undercuts the justification for Trump’s deregulatory agenda.

“Every year that the government has calculated the costs and benefits of federal regulations, it always has shown that health, safety and environmental protections are one of the best investments we can make — with returns on investment that would make Fortune 500 companies jealous,” Amit Narang, the group’s regulatory policy advocate, said in a statement.

“These results are even more compelling given that the cost-benefit methodology used in this report habitually overstates compliance costs and understates the less tangible but very real benefits of regulatory safeguards,” he said.

May 26, 2018 4:10 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The popular vote losing pussy grabber's only "accomplishment" as president has been to gut pollution regulations.

As we can see, this will harm the economy directly and indirectly be hurting the health of workers through added pollution causing missed work days and higher health care costs.

Trump is a disaster as president. If it weren't for Obama setting things right and setting the U.S. on a path of growth the U.S. economy would be in a shambles under Trump - he just hasn't been able to destroy the good Obama has done yet, but he's working furiously on it.

May 26, 2018 4:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"So much of this story still dwells in the tenebrous realm of redaction. But little by little the truth is emerging, a mosaic whose story is gradually taking shape as one piece after the next completes now this face, now another."

Translation:

"Our first conspiracy theory wasn't convoluted enough. Here is another one that is even more convoluted to cover up the holes in the first theory."


“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

― George Orwell, 1984

May 26, 2018 5:20 PM  
Anonymous having fun watching the Dems squirm said...

"No moral person would deny that in the spirit of democracy Hillary Clinton is the rightful president of the United States"

only an despicably immoral troll, who wishes the worst on america, would continue to pursue this dishonest assertion after it's been explained why it is false

"She got nearly 3 million more votes than Trump and only due to the anti-democratic electoral college system which makes votes in conservative states worth more than votes in liberal states is Trump president on a technicality"

it's not true that liberal states are disproportionately represented in the electoral college

it is mostly based on the House of Representatives distribution among the states, which is based on the most recent census

Priya is just lying here

shocker!

what could be true is that the liberals are concentrated in a couple of small areas so that they win those states by a large margin and still win the most votes but lose overall

btw, the census includes illegal aliens so that result in over-representation, but not by much so it's not that significant

but the real problem that screws up our system is that California has a rule that the two top candidates in the general primary are the two on the ballot

therefore, there are usually no Republicans on the ballot in California

hence, there was no reason for California Republicans to vote- and California is more than 10% of the population!!

if California didn't have this quirky rule, Trump would have had more total votes, easily

to make the understatement of the century, America doesn't trust Hillary

May 26, 2018 5:49 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"So much of this story still dwells in the tenebrous realm of redaction. But little by little the truth is emerging, a mosaic whose story is gradually taking shape as one piece after the next completes now this face, now another."

Translation:

Obama's deep state is using the pretense of national security to cover up their crimes

but, thanks to the heroic Devin Nunes, the truth is being found out

May 26, 2018 5:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Trump is a disaster as president"

polls show Americans think everything's going great!!

Trump's personal popularity is less than 50% but that's about 3 times Congress, the media, Hillary and generic Canadians

look, don't jump out a window or anything, the I think we're going to have a blue gurgle this fall and another 4 years for Trump in 2020 to get things ready for Pence!!

don't worry though

I'm sure Donald will pardon Obama, out of respect for the office

Hillary, Comey, Clapper, Brennan may spent some quality time behind bars though

May 26, 2018 7:39 PM  
Anonymous good anonymous said...

"Somehow, Obama was criminally sneaky enough to do all of this damaging investigation, yet NOT underhanded enough to use it when it could have actually made a difference"

so cute when the TTFers try to imitate anon

anon says, oh yeah, Trump is so brilliant he colluded with Russia and then cover it up so well that the all the media and top-notch investigators can't find any evidence

and they come up with this

problem is, Obama was too stupid to realize Trump was going to win

he thought Hillary had it all wrapped up

he was saving the Russia hoax for insurance, in case Trump did somehow win

don't bother trying to deny it

there's a tape with two FBI agents saying just that

May 26, 2018 7:48 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Trump lies - film at 11:00

AP Fact Check: Trump says illegal crossings down; they're up.

Lying Donald Trump just claimed illegal border crossings are down 40% since he became president, they're actually up 20%.

Non stop lying this guy, just like Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous.

May 26, 2018 9:08 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The same people who were in an uproar over a fake child trafficking ring in an imaginary basement of a pizza shop are unfazed about almost 1500 children disappearing after the Trump administration ripped them from their families at the border. PBS has confirmed that some of these children have been given to human traffickers.

Why aren't you effing "pro-life" christians marching in the street over all these lost kids? You shame brown women for having aboortions but you don't give a sh*t about brown kids tossed away like garbage.

A recent Pew poll asked if the U.S. had a responsibility to accept refugees. No group was less supportive of that than white evangelical protestants. "And they'll know we are christians by our love, by our love...".

Lying Donald Trump tweeted "Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents once they cross the Border...". The truth is that its his own administrations policy that does that and as usual lying Trump blames his own misdeeds on Democrats just like lying Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous falsely accuses me of lying.
Trump Blames Own Border Policy on Democrats

Trump says "our ancestors tamed a continent" and "we are not going to apologize for America".

Genocide. He's celebrating genocide.

May 26, 2018 9:30 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

@JoyAnnReid "This is repugnant. Dragging screaming, terrified children out of their mothers' arms to punish asylum seekers is fundamentally un-American. And yet, its the policy of the Trump administration. May God have mercy on our souls."

May 26, 2018 9:33 PM  
Anonymous lock her up without a pardon said...

"Trump lies"

a very Presidential quality

you didn't seem to mind when Bill, Barry, or Hillary did

remember last year when Trump said "they wiretapped Trump Tower" and all the Dem hyenas went "what a liar!"

apologies are due

but first, the trials

film at 24/7

"The same people who were in an uproar over a fake child trafficking ring in an imaginary basement of a pizza shop"

I don't recall anyone in an uproar about that stupid story

show us an example

we'll wait

"are unfazed about almost 1500 children disappearing after the Trump administration ripped them from their families at the border"

I'm fazed

what do you think we should do?

kill a couple million unborn children to make up for it

"PBS has confirmed that some of these children have been given to human traffickers."

you mean PBS knows where these kids are and didn't rescue them?

the ghastly media!!

"Why aren't you effing "pro-life" christians marching in the street over all these lost kids?"

is Trump kills any kids, I'll join the march

"You shame brown women for having aboortions but you don't give a sh*t about brown kids tossed away like garbage."

actually, there are many evangelical groups that provide services that facilitate the birth and adoption of unwanted children of any and all colors

but, let's hope someone can figure out what an aboortion is!!

maybe it's when Trump says "boo" and Priya jumps!!

"A recent Pew poll asked if the U.S. had a responsibility to accept refugees. No group was less supportive of that than white evangelical protestants"

you have to look at the wording and definitions of these type of polls

they're usually some form of deception

"And they'll know we are christians by our love, by our love..."

look at the context of the scripture that song is based on

"Lying Donald Trump tweeted "Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents once they cross the Border..."

Donald has said he won't break the law by acting without Congress enacting authorization

Dems were offered a deal but refused it because they wanted to make Trump look bad

they are pathetic

Priya is very angry that the Dems have been caught colluding to thwart Trump by corruptly misusing the intelligence agencies paid for by the taxpayers of the US

look for Priya to get madder and madder

this isn't going away

and Hillary, who hasn't exactly been a gracious loser, can't expect a pardon!!

May 26, 2018 10:00 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

UN Human Rights Complaint has been filed against Trump for losing children he took away from asylum seekers at the border.

-----------------------

NEVER FORGET:

When a white supremacist murdered a protestor by running her over with his car, Republicans responded by trying to pass laws makine it legal to run over protestors with your car.

---------------------------

@realDonaldTrump
"The failing @nytimes quotes "a senior White House official" who doesn't exist as saying "even if the meeting were reinstated, holding in on June 12 would be impossible, givne the lack of time and the amount of planning needed." WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources."

Trump Lies About Existence Of White House Official

How many thousands of lies is he up to now?

This is a ridiculous lie about the Times,” said Daniel Dale, a Toronto Star White House correspondent. “The senior White House official is not only real - the official said June 12 was extremely unlikely *at an in-person White House briefing to the media* on Thursday.”

“I mean, every reporter on the call knows who this official was, and this official exists,” said Weekly Standard reporter Michael Warren. “And we all heard the official say it.”

The official is Matt Pottinger who serves on the National Security Council. He briefed dozens of reporters on background.

May 27, 2018 2:51 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Hannity 2008: "His willingness to meet with North Korea is one of the most disturbing displays of Obama's lack of foreign policy expertise"

Hannity 2018: "His willingness to meet with North Korea is a huge foreign policy win for President Trump.

LOL, sounds just like Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous!

Trump Claims The FBI Never Warned Him About The Russian Infiltrators (That The FBI Warned Him About)

---------------------------------------

So, hurricane season is starting again and Puerto Rico is still reeling from last year. Bullshitter Trump awared himself a "10 out of 10" for the pathetic response to the disaster last year. No one lies like Trump, with the possible exception of Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous!

And a hearty congratulations! to the women of Ireland where a large majority of the public voted to overturn that countries draconian ban on abortion. One's body is inviolable and no one else has a right to it, including a fetus.

May 27, 2018 2:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"UN Human Rights Complaint has been filed against Trump for losing children he took away from asylum seekers at the border"

that oughta scare the hell outta him

"When a white supremacist murdered a protestor by running her over with his car, Republicans responded by trying to pass laws makine it legal to run over protestors with your car"

Look, it's so touching when Priya reaches out to let everyone what a liar Priya is and what a poor uneducated speller Priya is

"@realDonaldTrump
"The failing @nytimes quotes "a senior White House official" who doesn't exist as saying "even if the meeting were reinstated, holding in on June 12 would be impossible, givne the lack of time and the amount of planning needed." WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources."

Trump Lies About Existence Of White House Official

How many thousands of lies is he up to now?

This is a ridiculous lie about the Times,” said Daniel Dale, a Toronto Star White House correspondent. “The senior White House official is not only real - the official said June 12 was extremely unlikely *at an in-person White House briefing to the media* on Thursday.”

“I mean, every reporter on the call knows who this official was, and this official exists,” said Weekly Standard reporter Michael Warren. “And we all heard the official say it.”

The official is Matt Pottinger who serves on the National Security Council. He briefed dozens of reporters on background."

shocking, life must get lonely for people like Priya

"MAY 27, 2018 2:51 AM
Blogger Priya Lynn said...
Hannity 2008: "His willingness to meet with North Korea is one of the most disturbing displays of Obama's lack of foreign policy expertise"

Hannity 2018: "His willingness to meet with North Korea is a huge foreign policy win for President Trump.

LOL, sounds just like Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous!

Trump Claims The FBI Never Warned Him About The Russian Infiltrators (That The FBI Warned Him About)

---------------------------------------

So, hurricane season is starting again and Puerto Rico is still reeling from last year. Bullshitter Trump awared himself a "10 out of 10" for the pathetic response to the disaster last year. No one lies like Trump, with the possible exception of Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous!"

Priya is very angry that the Dems have been caught colluding to thwart Trump by corruptly misusing the intelligence agencies paid for by the taxpayers of the US

look for Priya to get madder and madder

this isn't going away

and Hillary, who hasn't exactly been a gracious loser, can't expect a pardon!!

"One's body is inviolable and no one else has a right to it, including a fetus."

ever hear a legal concept called "estoppel"

if you create a situation where someone is dependent on you, you have right to kill them to end the dependency situation you created

but thanks for reminding us how evil you are, Priya

it helps to put all your lies in perspective

May 27, 2018 6:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Promissory estoppel is a legal principle that a promise is enforceable by law, even if made without formal consideration, when a promisor has made a promise to a promisee who then relies on that promise to his subsequent detriment. Promissory estoppel is intended to stop the promisor from arguing that an underlying promise that was made should be not be legally upheld or enforced. The doctrine of promissory estoppel is part of the law in the United States and other countries

When you engage in behavior leading to another human being having a dependency on your promise, you can't legally withdraw that commitment

May 27, 2018 7:10 AM  
Anonymous Trumplandia's liar in chief lies again said...

Trump falsely accuses the New York Times of making up a source. It was an official who briefed reporters.

President Trump on Saturday falsely accused the New York Times of using an unnamed source “who doesn’t exist” in a story on negotiations between the United States and North Korea, but the official cited spoke to reporters Thursday in a briefing arranged by the White House.

“The Failing @nytimes quotes ‘a senior White House official,’ who doesn’t exist, as saying ‘even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed,’” Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.”

The senior White House official cited by the Times spoke to dozens of reporters Thursday at the White House and on a conference call to brief them on Trump’s decision earlier that day to cancel his June 12 summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The Washington Post, which participated in the briefing, agreed to the rules as laid out by White House press officials at the time, which were to refer to the briefer as a senior White House official. The Post also used information from that briefing in subsequent stories and continues to abide by the agreed upon ground rules.

When an Associated Press reporter asked Thursday why the briefing was not on the record, the official noted that Trump had already spoken on the topic through his letter to Kim, as well as at a bill-signing event earlier that day. The White House wanted to “let the president’s remarks stand,” the official said.

The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment Saturday on why Trump was accusing the Times of falsifying the source when it arranged the briefing for reporters and insisted that the official not be named....

May 27, 2018 8:36 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Trump’s Fantasy of His Own Popularity

Call this the eternal sunshine of the narcissistic mind. Trump gave the commencement address at the US Naval Academy this week and told the graduates that under his leadership, the United States is now respected again around the world. As usual, he has reality flipped precisely on its head.

This just in from the real world: Respect for the United States and its leadership has plummeted dramatically since Trump took office.

Global confidence in US leadership has fallen to a new low, and the country now ranks below China in worldwide approval ratings, according to a new Gallup poll.

The survey of opinion in 134 countries showed a record collapse in approval for the US role in the world, from 48% under Obama to 30% after one year of Donald Trump – the lowest level Gallup has recorded since beginning its global leadership poll over a decade ago.

Of course, this is obviously fake news. All news that runs contrary to the narrative Trump is selling is fake. All evidence that he is wrong is fake. Always and forever. The truth, however, is that Trump has made the United States into a laughingstock around the world. He is an embarrassment to the country everywhere he goes. The world sees him as an egomaniacal, ignorant, tempestuous man-baby, because that is precisely what he is. But inside his head, he is the hero of every story, the savior of the country if not the entire world. Even his delusions of grandeur have delusions of grandeur.

May 27, 2018 1:16 PM  
Anonymous How do you spell N-E-P-O-T-I-S-M? said...

China Approves 5 New Trademarks For Ivanka Trump Business As President Forges ZTE Deal

Ivanka Trump’s business has won approval from the Chinese government for at least five new trademarks. The approval came just days before President Donald Trump announced he was working on a controversial deal to drop U.S. prohibitions against China cellphone manufacturer ZTE.

Another trademark was given trial approval. The trademarks grant Ivanka Trump operations exclusive rights to market a variety of products in China that could potentially amount to millions of dollars in profits. Ivanka Trump Marks LLC received approval last year for several other trademarks after she began working in the White House. Three of them were granted the same day she dined with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago.

The applications for the trademarks were submitted over a year ago, and the trademark registrations were accepted May 7. Just five days later Trump announced he was working on a deal to lift U.S. business barriers against ZTE in order to save Chinese jobs.

Meanwhile, some 72 hours before his tweet about ZTE, China quietly agreed to loan $500 million to an Indonesian theme park project in which the president is a partner. Chinese banks agreed to loan an additional $500 million to the project.

The non-profit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, D.C., said the trademark deal again raises concerns about the Trump family’s international businesses and potential conflicts of interest.

“As a White House adviser, Ivanka has represented the United States at multiple diplomatic events despite the potential conflicts her business interests present,” CREW said in a statement.

Trump settled on a ZTE deal Friday that will require the nation to pay a $1.3 billion fine. ZTE, one of the world’s largest telecom equipment makers, suspended its main operations after it was barred in 2016 from doing business in the U.S. for violating sanctions against Iran and North Korea.

The deal is unpopular with both Democrats and Republicans.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) said Friday that ZTE will “crush” U.S. companies and “spy and steal from us.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) said in a statement Friday: “We all know that China is involved in stealing our intellectual property. There is no better way to do it than through ZTE, and we’re going to let them be here, and slap them on the wrist with a fine? That’s a dereliction of our duty here in the Congress, and it’s the president’s duty to protect us.”

May 27, 2018 1:46 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Border Patrol beat, sexually assaulted, and denied medical care to immigrant children, ACLU says

These people take their cues on how to behave from the top. Trump and Sessions have made it clear they consider these people animals who should be abused and the border patrol is just doing what their superiors want.

May 27, 2018 2:53 PM  
Anonymous Las Vegas Shooter Ranted About Government Conspiracy to Seize Guns said...

It’s been well over half a year since the horrific Las Vegas massacre, which claimed nearly 60 lives and wounded hundreds more. Even with all the time that has passed, the public still knows surprisingly little about the gunman, Stephen Paddock.

Of course, the internet — and, more specifically, the radical right-wing corners of the internet — wasted little time in trying to portray Paddock in a very specific light: as an anti-Trump Democrat with Antifa affiliations.

One of the most compelling pieces of “evidence” circulated by right-wing cyber sleuths was a collection of low resolution photos of a man at several anti-Trump rallies — including one where he’s wearing a pink pussyhat.

Snopes and others quickly disproved claims that these photographs were of Paddock , but other right-wing conspiracy theories about the Las Vegas shooter circulated in the aftermath as well...

...Though a specific motive remains elusive, a more complete image of the gunman’s background is emerging — thanks to a collection of documents unsealed by law enforcement officials. And, by all indications, the real-world Paddock was dramatically different than the man right-wing pundits tried to make him out to be.

An unidentified man interviewed by police and FBI says he met Paddock near a sporting goods store in Las Vegas less than a month before the shooting. The man had connected with Paddock online and agreed to sell him plans that would help convert firearms from semi-automatic to automatic fire. During the meeting, Paddock acted erratically, ranting about conspiracy theories.

The man said that Paddock claimed FEMA displacement housing erected after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was “a dry run for law enforcement and military to start kickin’ down doors” and hauling Americans off to FEMA “camps.” A government program to confiscate civilians’ guns would soon follow, Paddock explained. He added that someone had to do something to wake up the American public to this grim future and that they had to arm and prepare themselves.

While the veracity of this account is uncertain, it’s telling that the man was interviewed by both local police and the FBI, which suggests at least a degree of credibility.

Conservatives routinely attempt to take the moral high ground after mass shootings to chastise anyone who dares point out the need to talk gun reform. Yet it is these same people who, using little or no verified data, will jump at any opportunity to paint mass shooters as rabid leftists — or, if they aren’t white, radicalized Islamists.

In fact, some Republicans, including Rep. Claudia Tenney of New York, have even gone on the record to say most mass shooters end up being registered Democrats — a thoroughly disingenuous and inaccurate statement, which PolitiFact debunked.

In reality, most mass shooters and domestic terrorists in recent history — if they are politically motivated — tend to hold radical right-wing views. And why wouldn’t that be the case, given that such beliefs are shifting alarmingly from the fringes toward mainstream circulation?

One need not look further than the scaremongering rhetoric coming from powerful groups like the National Rife Association. The NRA has drummed up some controversy in recent times with their alarmist TV ads, such as this one in which viewers are told unequivocally that “They” want to ban every single gun in the country:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyI3uSk1xLw

Then there’s this infamous ad from NRA Spokeswoman Dana Loesch, in which she warns viewers of the violent left before calling for a war against liberals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_jkPhrddc

I recently wrote about an FBI report which showed that active shooter incidents have spiked 25 percent over the last two years. Now, of course, not all of those incidents were ideologically motivated, nor were they all committed by radical right-wingers. Even so, it suggests an alarming trend.

Given the toxic rhetoric being spewed by NRA and the like, is it truly a surprise that armed individuals would take it upon themselves to act?

May 27, 2018 3:06 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

In the future it may be hard to pinpoint the beginning of authoritarianism in the U.S. But a failure by congress to investigate whether Trump and hi8s aides used a private intelligence agency to dig up dirt on American citizens to help scuttle the Iran nuclear deal will be a key moment.

Trita Parsi "Wow! @RichardEnge got his source to speak on camera that it was Trump that hired Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube to target former Obama's officials and supporters of the #IranDeal (including myself) in order to discredit and silence us..."

Science teacher hero Jason Seaman - Waffle House Hero James Shaw Jr.

It took Trump just 24 hours to tweet Jason Seaman was "brave and heroic", and exactly2 22 days to give James Shaw Jr. a "lackluster" call. I wonder what the difference is between these two unarmed heroes, both of whom bravely disarmed a gunman to selflessly save others??? WHAT OH WHAT COULD IT BE???

Tactics of the Third Reich:

- Criticize a free press.
- Call for removal of term limits.
- Blame your predecessors
- Single out your enemies and ridicule them in public.
- Align yourself with other dictators/fascists.-Fail to condemn violence done on your behalf.
- Endorse police brutality.
- Discredit the nation's system of justice.
- Issue exective orders, bypassing government.=Bully the meek into submission.
- Tell your supporters what they want to hear.
- Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.
-Assault the facts.

Executives of big U.S. companies suggest that the days of most people getting a pay raise are over, and that they also plan to reduce their work forces further.

May 27, 2018 11:01 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Well, I'm pretty sure that isn't what Paul Ryan said was going to happen...

May 27, 2018 11:04 PM  
Anonymous the rising chorus said...

Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn blasted Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation on Monday, warning the special counsel’s team of a looming “reckoning” and calling for the probe to end.

Penn -- who served as a pollster and adviser to former President Bill Clinton and a chief political strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign -- said "this process must now be stopped, preferably before a vote in the Senate."

"Rather than a fair, limited and impartial investigation, the Mueller investigation became a partisan, open-ended inquisition that, by its precedent, is a threat to all those who ever want to participate in a national campaign or an administration again," Penn wrote.

He continued, “Stopping Mueller isn’t about one president or one party. It’s about all presidents and all parties. It’s about cleaning out and reforming the deep state so that our intelligence operations are never used against opposing campaigns without the firmest of evidence.”

Penn also raised other questions about the origins of the investigation into Russian meddling and potential collusion with Trump campaign associates during the 2016 presidential election -- like how the FBI knew to speak with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer following an apparently suspicious conversation with Trump adviser George Papadopoulos.

“This wasn’t intelligence. It was likely opposition research from the start,” he wrote, adding that “in no way” would a “fourth-hand report from a Maltese professor justify wholesale targeting of four or five members of the Trump campaign.”

Penn went on to criticize the now-infamous dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, claiming it was “bounced back and forth between the press and the FBI so it appeared that there we multiple sources all coming to the same conclusion.”

Former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe testified last year that no Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant would have been sought against another Trump adviser without the Steele dossier information, according to a GOP House Intelligence Committee memo released in February.

Justice Department Director of Public Affairs Sarah Flores on Sunday announced that the agency requested Horowitz expand the ongoing review of the FISA application process to include Trump's request.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein issued a statement noting that "if anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action."

But Penn took aim at both Mueller and Rosenstein.

“With Attorney General Jeff Sessions shoved out of the way, Rosenstein and Mueller then ignored their own conflicts and took charge anyway. Rosenstein is a fact witness, and Mueller is a friend of Comey, disqualifying them both,” Penn wrote, adding later that Sessions “needs to take back his Justice Department.”

May 28, 2018 7:36 AM  
Anonymous FOX News' missing paragraphs said...

The rising chorus is over at FOX News, where it sings to itself.

You left out these bits:

"The blistering column follows new revelations about an FBI informant who reportedly had discussions with multiple Trump campaign members in 2016. "

And

"Papadopoulos has since pleaded guilty in Mueller’s investigation to making false statements to the FBI."

So has Trump's former national security advisor, Micheal Flynn, and Rich Gates, and Alex van der Zwaan. All four of these gentlemen have pleaded guilty to federal crimes involving the election of Donald Trump by Putin and company.

That's a rising chorus of guilty pleas.

Stay tuned, more to come.

May 28, 2018 7:53 AM  
Anonymous the rising chorus said...


"The rising chorus is over at FOX News, where it sings to itself"

the story was about the views of a political strategist that worked for both Bill and Hillary C

of course, it was reported by FOX News, but let's face it, the Washington Post and NY Times are part of the conspiracy to collude against the decision of the voters in 2016

they try to avoid revealing truths that don't reinforce the Russia-Trump hoax, that they have invested so much of their reputation in advancing

"So has Trump's former national security advisor, Micheal Flynn, and Rich Gates, and Alex van der Zwaan. All four of these gentlemen have pleaded guilty to federal crimes involving the election of Donald Trump by Putin and company.

That's a rising chorus of guilty pleas."

I don't recall Rich Gates, and Alex van der Zwaan pleading "guilty to federal crimes involving the election of Donald Trump"

they were charged in connection with work they did with Paul Manafort long before Trump announced his candidacy

as for Flynn, he was interviewed by Andrew McCabe of the FBI

both McCabe and James Comey have said they thought his lie was inadvertent

after all, he wasn't lying about doing anything illegal

in most cases, if an FBI interviewer and the Director of the FBI concluded that a witness wasn't intentionally lying, that would be the end of it

but the weaselly Mueller saw an opportunity to blackmail someone high in the Trump campaign

why did Flynn plead guilty?

Mueller was threatening to start harassing Flynn's son with a bunch of scurrilous charges

but another relevant point: Flynn's supposed crime also didn't constitute being "guilty to federal crimes involving the election of Donald Trump"

the conversation in question happened after Trump had been elected and was part of transition discussions with a foreign official

which brings us to Papadapoulos

he was a low-level campaign worker, unlikely to know of a Trump-Russia plot

if he knew it, scores of people would and yet no such person has been found

what happened is a CIA spy who ran into him told him that the Russians had stolen Hillary emails

then later, another CIA spy met him and said "you know about the stolen Hillary emails, right?"

so, wanting to impress by overstating his importance, he said "of course I know all about it"

he likely lied out of personal embarrassment

"involving the election of Donald Trump by Putin and company"

back to this

there is no reason to think any effort by Russians influenced the election decisively

in James Clapper's new book, he says Trump only won by 80,000 votes and so he's sure the Russians are responsible for his election

but there a thousand other actors trying to influence the election that you could say the same about

false stories by MSNBC or the Washington Post may have influenced that many people

so might statements by union officials, or Planned Parenthood, or the NRA, or Seth Myers, or Colin Kapernik, or Harry Reid, or Benjamin Netanyehu, or Kim Sum Fat, or Christopher Steele, or James Comey, or Angela Merkel, or Ted Cruz

what does Clapper think about them?

truth is: James Clapper, intelligence official is a oxymoron

emphasis on the moron

he thought that Saddam had WMD, had no idea that an Arab Spring was coming, was sure North Korea was a decade away from developing an ICBM that could hit the US, had no clue al-quaeda was planning 9-11

he has no intelligence

May 28, 2018 9:54 AM  
Anonymous Chorus of guilty pleas said...

You write lousy fiction and doubled the number of spies supposedly involved.

If you're going to lie, you may as well go for the whopper!

May 28, 2018 10:32 AM  
Anonymous Another whopper: Trump Unbelievably Rips Dems For Immigrant Kids Being Separated From Parents said...

President Donald Trump has bashed the Democrats for a hugely controversial policy created by his own administration: separating undocumented immigrant children from their parents.

He urged Americans in a Saturday morning tweet to “put pressure” on the Democrats to “end the horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents.”

Despite what Trump tweeted, there is no law requiring children to be separated from their parents. The separation policy was adopted by his own administration. It was underscored in a speech in early May by Attorney General Jeff Sessions (in the video here ).

"ACLU
Verified account
@ACLU

No law requires this — separating parents and children is your administration’s choice.

Hundreds of kids as young as 18 months are in danger of suffering lifelong trauma.

We won’t let you shift the blame or use families as bargaining chips for your wall. #EndFamilySeparation https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1000375761604370434 …

11:50 AM - May 26, 2018"

The policy has been hit with a firestorm of criticism, with some even comparing the increasing dehumanization of immigrants in America as similar to the ugly atmosphere in Germany before the Holocaust.

"The Holocaust did not end with people being called subhuman, constantly compared to criminals, put into yellow markers with children torn from the the arms of screaming mothers.."

"Even in the shameful internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry in the wake of Pearl Harbor, the US Government didn’t rip families apart."

"this can't be who we are becoming"

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) took first lady Melania Trump to task in light of her new “Be Best” mission for children. “Separating toddlers from parents is definitely not a ‘Be Best’ policy,” he tweeted. “Are you going to do anything about it?”

In chilling Senate testimony last month, a Health and Human Services official said the government was unable to locate nearly 1,500 children who had been released from its custody. Steve Wagner, acting assistant secretary with the Administration for Children and Families of HHS, insisted that the federal agency is “not legally responsible for children” once they’re handed over to a sponsor.

Until recently, families that illegally crossed the Mexican border together generally faced civil deportation proceedings. But as of May, the Trump administration is sending all parents to jails run by the U.S. Marshals Service. Because migrant children cannot be held in jails, they are placed elsewhere by the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement. Before the Trump administration, the office handled children who crossed the border alone.

White House chief of staff John Kelly, who called the harsh new policy a “technique” and a “tough deterrent,” explained earlier this month to NPR: “They’ll be sent to foster care — or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States.”

"Trump and Sessions have made it clear they consider these people animals who should be abused and the border patrol is just doing what their superiors want."

Exactly right again, Priya Lynn!

May 28, 2018 10:45 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"You write lousy fiction"

Oh, do let us know what you think is fictitious so we can disabuse you

or do you just speak in generalities because you know you have no facts?

"and doubled the number of spies supposedly involved"

no, there were two individuals involved, at least

they operated just as I said

I don't know if everyone was paid as much as Halper

remember, they tried to deny this until Brennan, cracked under pressure and blurted out "well, it's a good thing there were!"

"If you're going to lie, you may as well go for the whopper!"

you mean like that whopper about the President colluding with Russia?

a recent poll showed that 56% of Americans think that Trump and Russia colluded to tamper with ballots in the election

and there is not one shred of evidence that is so

why don't people know that?

because the media have colluded with Obama's intelligence officials to create a false impression

"The policy has been hit with a firestorm of criticism, with some even comparing the increasing dehumanization of immigrants in America as similar to the ugly atmosphere in Germany before the Holocaust"

well, who are these "some" who said this?

is it Priya and Ward sitting around the nuthouse with nothing to do?

"Until recently, families that illegally crossed the Mexican border together generally faced civil deportation proceedings. But as of May, the Trump administration is sending all parents to jails run by the U.S. Marshals Service. Because migrant children cannot be held in jails,"

this actually applies to all criminals

should we change the law to make it easier to enter the country illegally?

"Trump and Sessions have made it clear they consider these people animals who should be abused and the border patrol is just doing what their superiors want."

look, someone posted one of Priya's lies

neither Trump nor Sessions said that

however, Priya routinely says that anyone who disagrees with TTF dogma has lost what makes humans different from animals, making it clear Priya thinks they are animals

May 28, 2018 1:13 PM  
Anonymous Lies, lies and more lies said...

Everybody know who called humans "animals."

Take your lies to some right wing site where they might be appreciated.

May 28, 2018 1:40 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

GOP Midterm Slogan: 'We Need Guest Workers To Do Your Jobs!'
-- Ann Coulter

"At a rally in Michigan last weekend, President Trump promised to bring in lots of guest workers to -- I quote -- "do your jobs."

Once, long ago, Trump was against replacing American workers with cheap foreign labor....

...The president needs to understand, unless he drops his bizarre and totally uncharacteristic desire to bring in people to do your job, the voters might just bring in someone else to do his.

The plus side of the midterm elections is that liberals have gone mad. The minus side is that voters intensely hate Republicans. Liberal insanity is not going to save a GOP dead set on pleasing the donor class by screwing over ordinary Americans. As usual...

...Even the "3-D chess" lunatics don't say, It's great that Trump is screwing over his voters, like Republicans always do! What they say is: Through some innate sixth sense, a higher vision, a third eye, Trump has an immensely complicated plan that you can't understand to make things come out exactly the opposite of the way they are currently headed.

Maybe. But if Trump doesn't do something major on his central campaign promise -- not repainting border fences and telling us it's the wall -- see you on Nov. 7."

May 28, 2018 1:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shortly after word leaked that Kelly Sadler had taken a nasty shot at John McCain, President Trump convened a meeting in the Oval Office for a tiny group of communications staffers, according to sources familiar with the gathering. Sadler, Mercedes Schlapp, Raj Shah, and John Kelly all gathered in front of the Resolute Desk for a conversation with Trump about the leaking problem. They were the only people in the room, though the door to the outer Oval was open.

What happened: The president told Sadler she wouldn’t be fired for her remark. He added, separately in the conversation, that he’s no fan of McCain. Then Trump, who had grown obsessed with the leaking problem, told Sadler he wanted to know who the leakers were. Sadler then stunned the room: To be completely honest, she said, she thought one of the worst leakers was Schlapp, her boss.

Schlapp pushed back aggressively and defended herself in the room. And in follow up conversations after the meeting, some of Schlapp’s colleagues also came to her defense. (In a prior meeting, she had said, "You can put this on the record: I stand with Kelly Sadler"). Sadler went on to name other people she also suspected of being leakers.

The allegation — like a previous internal meeting to deal with leaking — ultimately got leaked to us.

It's a free-for-all in there with everyone in the White House, including the president, leaking and accusing others of leaking.

He runs a very tight ship.

May 28, 2018 1:57 PM  

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