quote:

The Trump National Golf Club in Florida has agreed to pay close to $5.45 million to settle a class action lawsuit after members argued that a regulation imposed by Donald Trump before he became president cheated them out of fees.

Details of the agreement to settle the suit — filed on behalf of 65 former club members — were released in an unopposed motion filed Friday in federal court in West Palm Beach.

Trump changed the membership rules of the club in Jupiter when the Trump Organization purchased the former Ritz-Carlton Golf Club & Spa in 2012. The club had allowed members who wanted to leave to continue to play golf (and pay dues) until replacement members were found. Their memberships deposits were refunded once replacements stepped into the spots.

Under Trump, members who had declared they wanted to leave either had to convert their memberships to discounted nonrefundable deposits to continue club access — or stop using the club altogether while replacements were found, which meant it could take years before their fees would be refunded.

Trump National Golf Club has agreed to pay the money, but will not admit wrondgoing.

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 15:32 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
Deze? https://trumptube.tv/ (Presentatreuse = Lara Trump)

Kennelijk kunnen sommigen er geen genoeg van krijgen.

twitter:

wwd twitterde op vrijdag 23-02-2018 om 21:16:34 .@gucci donates $500K to gun-control march planned for Washington next month: https://t.co/OEabcypKwU https://t.co/XO3Gy1EkBS reageer retweet

quote:

I have seen a handful of AR-15 injuries in my career. I saw one from a man shot in the back by a SWAT team years ago. The injury along the path of the bullet from an AR-15 is vastly different from a low-velocity handgun injury. The bullet from an AR-15 passes through the body like a cigarette boat travelling at maximum speed through a tiny canal. The tissue next to the bullet is elastic—moving away from the bullet like waves of water displaced by the boat—and then returns and settles back. This process is called cavitation; it leaves the displaced tissue damaged or killed. The high-velocity bullet causes a swath of tissue damage that extends several inches from its path. It does not have to actually hit an artery to damage it and cause catastrophic bleeding. Exit wounds can be the size of an orange.

With an AR-15, the shooter does not have to be particularly accurate. The victim does not have to be unlucky. If a victim takes a direct hit to the liver from an AR-15, the damage is far graver than that of a simple handgun shot injury. Handgun injuries to the liver are generally survivable unless the bullet hits the main blood supply to the liver. An AR-15 bullet wound to the middle of the liver would cause so much bleeding that the patient would likely never make it to a trauma center to receive our care.

Video shows 13-year-old buy a gun on first try

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 15:03 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Vooral met dat soort bubbelgroepjes. Als je het bij een progressieve PAC zou wagen om iets positiefs te zeggen over belastingverlagingen voor het bedrijfsleven dan was je waarschijnlijk de volgende keer ook niet meer welkom.

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 16:30 schreef grrrrg het volgende:

[..]

Onzin, dat is gewoon een belastigverlaging. Als liberaal valt er prima iets positiefs te zeggen over belastingverlagingen.

Hier hebben we het over het walgelijk vrouwonvriendelijk gedrag van oom Donald en het feit dat de GOP een pedofiel steunde. Kritiek op de leider is onmogelijk geworden.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zaterdag 24-02-2018 om 14:21:02 So true Wayne, and Lowest black unemployment in history! https://t.co/gDxxJdZQUm reageer retweet

quote:

As conspiracy theorists accuse survivors of the Florida school shooting of being “crisis actors,” President Trump on Saturday retweeted a fringe radio host who once used identical language to peddle hoaxes about the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre in 2012.

The host, Wayne Dupree, has also repeatedly attacked survivors of the high school massacre in Parkland, Fla., who are pushing for new gun laws after 17 of their schoolmates and teachers were killed with an AR-15 rifle last week.

Trump’s retweet of Dupree had nothing to do with guns. It was also four years old and didn’t seem particularly relevant to anything in the news.

twitter:

WayneDupreeShow twitterde op vrijdag 07-11-2014 om 06:11:17 This is what it's all about! It's ok 2 b black, conservative and love America and not vote Democrat! Freedom exists! http://t.co/G1694H03BX reageer retweet

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 16:44 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Het punt is dat men geen kritiek met duidt op de eigen waarheid. In plaats van open discussie worden afwijkende opvattingen geweerd.

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 16:44 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Het punt is dat men geen kritiek met duidt op de eigen waarheid. In plaats van open discussie worden afwijkende opvattingen geweerd.

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 17:47 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

True maar ik zou CPAC geen bubble noemen in de zin dat het 'n een of andere fringe group is. Iemand als Romney was daar ook regelmatig te vinden. Met andere woorden wat we in het filmpje zagen gebeuren is een breedgedragen sentiment onder Republikeinen.

quote:

Help! I've Got A Bulldozer On The Phone!

President Donald Trump phoned in a rambling, virtually non-stop talk with Jeanine Pirro on her Fox News program Saturday night, calling the newly released Democratic intelligence memo a “nothing,” and blasting Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) as a “total phony” and a “bad guy” who has done something “probably illegal.”

Nearly each time Pirro tried to speak, Trump bulldozed right over her.

What happened at the Florida school “would have been a whole different story” if “brave” football coach Aaron Feis, killed protecting children, had been packing a gun. “He’d be alive today,” Trump said. Had 15 percent or 20 percent of the teachers been armed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the gunman “would never have run into the building if he thought that bullets were going to come flying back into him.”

He said “gun-free zones are very dangerous because the bad guys love gun-free zones.”

As for his hoped-for military parade, he said: “I’d like to have a parade. A lot of the generals would like to have a parade to celebrate what we’re doing.” As to when the parade might occur, he mentioned July 4th or Veteran’s Day as possible dates.

He added that “our military was very depleted; it was going in the wrong direction” before he took office. Democrats, he said, “don’t care so much about the military, sadly.”

twitter:

SamuelLJackson twitterde op vrijdag 23-02-2018 om 22:12:56 Can someone that's been in a Gunfight tell that Muthafukka that's Never been in a Gunfight, the flaws of his Arm The Teachers plan??!! reageer retweet

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 20:20 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
Tja, Jeanine, je moet zo'n kerel ook niet live in de uitzending gooien als hij belt... je wéét toch dat dat fout gaat?

[..]

twitter:

SamuelLJackson twitterde op vrijdag 23-02-2018 om 22:12:56 Can someone that's been in a Gunfight tell that Muthafukka that's Never been in a Gunfight, the flaws of his Arm The Teachers plan??!! reageer retweet

Donald Trump's phone call on Fox News with judge jeanine 2/24/18

quote:

Texas police shoot man who disarmed possible church shooter

Police in Amarillo shot an innocent man who helped foil a possible church shooting.

The shooting happened shortly after 9 a.m. Feb. 14 at the Faith City Mission, a faith-based outreach organization. Police said Joshua Len Jones, 35, of Amarillo, barged into a church building at Faith City Mission, pulled out a gun and was holding about 100 congregants and church staff hostage.

In the time between when police were dispatched and when officers arrived, a handful of churchgoers wrestled Jones to the ground. One of the congregants was able to grab Jones' gun.

Officers entered the building and saw the churchgoer holding the gun and opened fire, according to the Amarillo Police Department. The churchgoer was hospitalized in stable condition.

The victim, who spoke to ABC 7 Amarillo, has since been released and told the station he would do it all over again despite being shot by police. "There were other people there," Tony Garces said. "I just took the gun away from him. I got shot. I got the bad part. It's life."

quote:

"...each & every morning, bawling our eyes out... might be the last time I'll see him alive!"
"But that's terrible! What kind of a job is that?"
"Job? Don't be ridiculous, he's only 14, he's still going to school!"

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 20:38 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

Ja het was weer tenenkrommend. Voor wie het aankan:

Donald Trump's phone call on Fox News with judge jeanine 2/24/18

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 20:56 schreef nostra het volgende:

[..]

"You did all this in just one year, with the economy.".

Dat mens zou rechter geweest zijn in jouw strafzaak.

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 20:41 schreef Re het volgende:
https://theintercept.com/(...)rump-administration/

Koch rules the US

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 21:16 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

In Amerika kun je ook rechters kiezen. Wie dat systeem ooit bedacht heeft was of extreem naïef of extreem sadistisch.

quote:

Before the United States Marine Corps allowed me to carry a live M-16 assault rifle, I went through hundreds of hours of firearms training. Classroom sessions devoted to nomenclature, maintenance and basic operation accounted for more than two weeks of study before I even set eyes on ammunition. For weeks, I carried an M-16 without a magazine — a dummy weapon, basically. I secured it with a padlock overnight while I slept in the barracks, and unlocked it each morning before chow.

Only at the shooting range was I allowed to check out magazines and ammo from the armory. The first day at the range I spent 12 hours disassembling, cleaning and reassembling the weapon. I had to do this blindfolded. I had to do this while a drill instructor hurried me, yelling that enemies were at the gate. I had to do this while fellow Marines wept nearby from doing hundreds of burpees as punishment for not being able to reassemble their weapons fast enough.

The military issue M-16 is the model for the AR-15 assault rifle that the accused shooter used to kill 17 people this month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The shooter bought the weapon lawfully. He received zero hours of mandated training. There is no reason that any civilian, of any age, should possess this rifle.

At the White House on Wednesday, President Trump suggested that if a football coach at the high school, Aaron Feis, had been armed, he would have saved even more lives than he did, perhaps even his own, because rather than simply shielding students from gunfire, he could have drawn his weapon, fired and killed the assailant — putting a tidy end to the rampage.

This is absurd. More likely, had Mr. Feis been armed, he would not have been able to draw his weapon (a side arm, presumably) quickly enough to stop the shooter, who with an AR-15 would have had the coach outgunned. Even if the coach had been able to draw his weapon — from where? his athletic shorts? — any shots he managed to fire would have risked being errant, possibly injuring or killing additional students.

SPOILER

As some studies have shown, even police officers have missed their targets more than 50 percent of the time. In firing a weapon, Mr. Feis would have only added to the carnage and confusion.

What if a history teacher had also been armed? And an English teacher, and a math teacher, and the janitorial staff members? In this National Rifle Association fever dream, a high school would concentrate so much firepower in the hands of its employees that no deranged individual with a weapon would dare enter the premises.

This sort of thinking also has no grounding in reality. People attack heavily armed institutions all too often, as with the mass shootings in 2009 at Fort Hood in Texas and in 2013 at the Washington Navy Yard. Assailants in such cases aren’t typically worried about losing their lives in the process. Usually, losing their lives is part of the plan.

A few days ago, the lunacy of the suggestion to arm teachers was driven home to me as I prepared to teach my undergraduate creative writing class. I arrived uncharacteristically early and sat down with a few students to banter about this and that.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang outside. Everyone froze, until we realized it was a campus utility truck backing up to a loading dock. Then the students relaxed again.

But I spent the next few minutes before class thinking about whether the windows opened fully and would enable 20 kids to escape an active shooter. I checked: They did not open at all. I noticed to my dismay that the door to the classroom opened out, not in, which thwarted my plan to throw my heavy table up against the door in case a shooter blasted his way down the hall. Even after class began, I found myself fantasizing about inventing a bulletproof Kevlar curtain that I could have at the ready to affix to the door frame if the need arose.

Here is something I didn’t think about: I did not think about arming myself to protect my students. President Trump on Thursday specified that he wants only certain teachers — “highly adept people, people that understand weaponry” — to be armed. I will immodestly state that among professors in the United States, I am almost certainly one of the best shooters. But I would never bring a weapon into a classroom. The presence of a firearm is always an invitation to violence. Weapons have no place in a learning environment.

Last month, the State Legislature in West Virginia, where my university is located, introduced the Campus Self-Defense Act. This would prohibit colleges and universities from designating their campuses as gun-free zones. If this act becomes law, I will resign my professorship. I will not work in an environment where professors and students pack heat.

When I was a young Marine, I had to learn how to use many weapons. It was part of my mission to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” My mission these days is to write books and teach literature and creative writing. It’s a noble calling, too. But no one should be asked to put his life on the line for it.

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 20:41 schreef Re het volgende:
https://theintercept.com/(...)rump-administration/

Koch rules the US

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 20:57 schreef Szura het volgende:
FOX is pure aids

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 22:47 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:
Intercept is geen betrouwbare bron.

quote:

The Intercept

LEFT-CENTER BIAS

Factual Reporting: HIGH

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-intercept/

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 23:07 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:

[..]

Wel.

[..]

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 23:12 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:

[..]

Geen idee waar dat vandaan komt, net zo extreem als FOX and friends maar dan de andere kant.

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 23:12 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:
Geen idee waar dat vandaan komt

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 21:43 schreef vipergts het volgende:

[..]

Waarom hier hoor je bij alles komt door D66 rechters. Alle systemen hebben hun nadelen ook in hun gekozen vorm kun je er wel vanuit gaan dat de overgrote meerderheid recht spreekt door te oordelen volgens de geldende wetten.
Ok de bedenkers hadden in hun ziekste fantasieen Trump niet kunnen bedenken

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 23:24 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Rechters zijn er om de wet uit te leggen, niet om de wet te vormen. Mijns inziens zou een rechter nooit een politieke rol moeten vervullen. En al helemaal niet direct gekozen worden. Je laat een stadion vol voetbalfans toch ook niet voor de wedstrijd de scheidsrechter kiezen? Dan krijg je namelijk altijd iemand die op de hand van de meerderheid is en niet objectief meer. Zo ook met gekozen rechters.

Roy Moore is een voorbeeld. Zo'n man wil je toch niet over een rechtszaak laten gaan waar bijvoorbeeld een zwarte jongen terecht staat? Of een pedofiel?

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 23:15 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Ben je mss in de war met palmerreport oid?

quote:

Palmer Report
tussen LEFT en EXTREME in
Factual Reporting: MIXED
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/palmer-report/

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 20:38 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

Ja het was weer tenenkrommend. Voor wie het aankan:

Donald Trump's phone call on Fox News with judge jeanine 2/24/18

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 23:15 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Waar haal je dit vandaan?

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 23:54 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:

[..]

Van het lezen van de site vooral. Voornamelijk extreem-linkse idioterie.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 00:03 schreef Recce het volgende:

[..]

Volgens de chart op deze site: http://www.allgeneralizationsarefalse.com/ is The Intercept wel behoorlijk links, maar geen idioterie.

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 23:29 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Dat is simpelweg niet waar. De VS kent geen civielrecht maar common law om maar eens wat te noemen.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 00:03 schreef Recce het volgende:
Volgens de chart op deze site: http://www.allgeneralizationsarefalse.com/ is The Intercept wel behoorlijk links, maar geen idioterie.

quote:

In Singapore, the death penalty is mandatory for drug trafficking offenses. And President Trump loves it. He’s been telling friends for months that the country’s policy to execute drug traffickers is the reason its drug consumption rates are so low.

"He says that a lot," said a source who's spoken to Trump at length about the subject. "He says, 'When I ask the prime minister of Singapore do they have a drug problem [the prime minister replies,] 'No. Death penalty'."

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 01:53 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Trump privately talks up executing all big drug dealers

[..]

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 06:14 schreef Doublepain het volgende:

[..]

als het werkt...

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 06:14 schreef Doublepain het volgende:

[..]

als het werkt...

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 20:57 schreef Szura het volgende:
FOX is pure aids

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 06:14 schreef Doublepain het volgende:

[..]

als het werkt...

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 09:21 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:
https://www.nu.nl/buitenl(...)wetswijzigingen.html

Wapenlobby tegen elke wetswijziging. Niet verrassend natuurlijk maar kom op van 19 naar 21 lijkt me iig een klein goed stapje. Nu mag je dus eerder wapens kopen dan drank _!

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 09:23 schreef Mystikvm het volgende:

[..]

Dat een club met 5 miljoen leden ook zoveel invloed heeft. Bizar. In de Vs wonen nog altijd ruim 320 miljoen mensen. 315 miljoen mensen worden dus niet vertegenwoordigd door dit clubje dat in elk geval alle Republikeinen in zijn zak lijkt te hebben.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 09:23 schreef Mystikvm het volgende:

[..]

Dat een club met 5 miljoen leden ook zoveel invloed heeft. Bizar. In de Vs wonen nog altijd ruim 320 miljoen mensen. 315 miljoen mensen worden dus niet vertegenwoordigd door dit clubje dat in elk geval alle Republikeinen in zijn zak lijkt te hebben.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 09:53 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
En weet hij zich daarbij presidentieel te gedragen, of niet?

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 09:55 schreef Ludachrist het volgende:

[..]

Dit is een retorische vraag, toch?

quote:

Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and a senior adviser to the White House, said she isn’t sure if teachers should be given firearms after the massacre at a Florida high school earlier this month that left 17 people dead. But she remained open to the proposal, saying such plans were “not a bad idea. (But) to be honest, I don’t know.”

“Obviously, there would have to be an incredibly high standard for who would be able to bear arms in our school,” she said. “But I think there is no one solution to creating safety. I think that having a teacher who is armed, who cares deeply about her students or his students and who is capable and qualified to bear arms is not a bad idea, but it is an idea that needs to be discussed.”

The proposal has drawn severe condemnation from teachers, parents and lawmakers who have argued that gun control would be a more effective means to keep school shootings from happening.

quote:

Donald Trump’s approval rating has slumped again to match the lowest of his presidency, according to two new polls.

The surveys were conducted amid mounting activism for gun control and security clearance problems in the White House. Support for stricter gun laws has spiked to the highest level since 1993 and Americans aren’t happy with Trump’s position on the issue, CNN has found.

Despite Trump’s bullish take on his performance, the president’s approval rating fell five points over last month to 35 percent, according to a CNN survey, conducted by polling firm SSRS. That number matches the lowest rating of his presidency in December.

A separate poll by USA Today and Suffolk University’s Political Research Center found similar results, with the president’s approval rating also slipping to match the lowest point that survey has found at 38 percent, with 60 percent disapproving of the job he’s doing.

Gun control looks to be a particular problem for the president.

SPOILER

The CNN poll was conducted Feb. 20 to 23 amid outrage over guns in the wake of the Parkland school shooting that killed 17 people. Only a third of those polled approve of how Trump is handling gun control policy, with 54 percent disapproving, the CNN poll found. Just over 12 percent of those surveyed said they have yet to make up their mind on the issue.

CNN’s poll on the gun issue found that 70 percent of those surveyed now back stricter gun laws. That’s up significantly from 52 percent who took that position in an October survey shortly after the mass shooting in Las Vegas killed 58 people. Just 27 percent of those polled oppose more stringent laws, CNN found in its latest poll.

An increasing proportion of Americans are worried that they or a family member will become a victim of gun violence. Almost six in 10 people (57 percent) are worried now — compared with 44 percent after the 2016 mass shooting in Orlando. Fears are higher among parents of children under the age of 18 (62 percent to 55 percent for non-parents), CNN found.

The USA Today poll found that 76 percent (to 12 percent) of those polled believe that people who have been treated for mental illness should be prohibited from owning guns. The accused gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had reportedly been treated for mental illness. Despite Trump’s expressed support to toughen up background checks for gun purchases, he and Congress a year ago rolled back stricter checks on people with mental illnesses who purchase guns.

The survey also found that 63 percent (to 29 percent) of those polled believe that semi-automatic guns like the AR-15 used by the Florida shooter should be banned. The president has said he would support raising the minimum age for buying such firearms from 18 to 21, but hasn’t supported a ban and is not likely to.

The USA Today survey also found that 66 percent (to 33 percent) of those polled believe tightening gun-control laws and background checks would prevent more mass shootings.

Of those polled, only 19 percent believe there’s a ‘good to excellent’ chance Congress will take action on gun control in the foreseeable future.

The polls were also taken during more bad news for the administration, including new charges against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and following revelations of domestic abuse allegations against staffers in the White House amid continuing concerns about the lack of security clearance for personnel.

Among the least supportive groups for Trump in the CNN survey, the president’s approval stands at just five percent among Democrats, 22 percent among Americans ages 35 and younger, 23 percent among non-whites and 29 percent among women. Only 35 percent of independents approve of Trump’s performance in the White House.

Among Republicans, 80 percent approve of Trump’s performance, though that’s down a point from Trump’s lowest rating among self-described party members last September. Among people over 50, 43 percent approve of the job Trump is doing, and 42 percent of all men give him a favorable rating.

Trump’s approval rating is well behind former presidents at this point in their presidency: 12 percent behind the previous low set by Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, and 14 percent behind Barack Obama.

The CNN poll has a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points, but it’s larger for subgroup surveys. The USA Today poll has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 09:59 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

[ afbeelding ]

Being presidential is een tweede natuur voor deze man. Zeg nou zelf, hier zit toch een wereldleider?

quote:

A surge of violent threats, tips and false alarms aimed at schools inundated school districts and police departments in the days after the deadly shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla.

In Hitchcock, Tex., an 18-year-old student told a teacher last week that he would turn their school into “another Florida,” the police said. In Brethren, Mich., a 17-year-old student was arrested after the sheriff’s office received a call from a principal saying that the student had threatened to attack the high school. An AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle was found at the teenager’s home.

A father in Shorewood Hills, Wis., walked into his child’s elementary school on Thursday, entered a classroom and handed the teacher a piece of cardboard with the word “gun” written on it, apparently in an attempt to raise concerns about the school’s security. The move provoked panic, fear and a call to the police department two blocks away. The man was arrested and booked into jail, accused of disorderly conduct.

Every school day in the week after Feb. 14, the day of the attack at the Florida high school, at least 50 threats or violent incidents at schools were reported across the country, according to the Educator’s School Safety Network, an advocacy organization that has tracked news reports of threats and violence since 2016. Normally, the group records an average of 10 to 12 incidents a day. The group’s count includes many incidents that turn out to be false alarms or hoaxes.

SPOILER

Experts said that the sharp increase in threats and false alarms in the days since the Florida shooting reflects the unusually intense public conversation and media coverage that have unfolded since that attack. In the tense days that have followed, the experts said, teenagers are borrowing the language of school shootings to provoke or cause turmoil. And anxious school employees are on high alert, watchful for any sign of a potential shooter and quick to summon the police over behavior that, in a different moment, might have been overlooked.

Florida had at least 31 incidents in the week after the shooting, more than any other state, the group said; Ohio followed, with 29; and Kentucky was third, with 24. Other states that experienced unusually high numbers of threats, false alarms or other incidents included California, Georgia, Mississippi, New York, Texas and Virginia.

Dozens of teenagers have been arrested in connection with threats, often posted on Twitter or Snapchat. School administrators are scrutinizing students and their backpacks closely; the day after the Florida attack, a student at Clarksburg High School in Montgomery County, Md., was found to have a loaded Glock 9-millimeter handgun in his bag at school, the police said. A student at Pasco High School in Dade City, Fla., was arrested on Friday after a staff member conducting a routine sweep of vehicles in the parking lot discovered an AR-15 rifle and ammunition in the student’s truck. (The school district later said that the gun apparently had been meant for hog hunting.)

The police say they are taking all reports seriously in light of the attack in Florida, where law enforcement authorities had been given warnings about the suspect who is accused of fatally shooting 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Scott Israel, the sheriff of Broward County, Fla., said on Thursday that his department had received 23 calls regarding the suspect, Nikolas Cruz, over several years, but may not have followed up on them sufficiently. On Jan. 5, a woman who knew Mr. Cruz called the F.B.I.’s tip hotline saying that she was worried he might resort to slipping “into a school and just shooting the place up.” In that call, made more than a month before the attack, she gave the authorities an unambiguous warning: “I know he’s going to explode.”

Aaron Chapin, the chief of the Shorewood Hills Police in Wisconsin, said, “We have to treat every situation as if it’s real.” He added that police departments could become overwhelmed chasing false alarms or threats that turn out to be hoaxes. “If we’re constantly fielding non-actual threats, at some point there’s exhaustion,” he said.

The number of threats to schools has risen after previous school shootings as well, including an attack in January in Benton, Ky., where two 15-year-old students were killed, according to Amy Klinger, a founder of the Educator’s School Safety Network and its director of programs. But the jump in threats has been especially pronounced since the Florida attack.

“It’s reflective of the feeling in the country,” Ms. Klinger said. “You have to think about what someone who’s making a threat wants to get out of it. They want chaos, fear, for people to be upset.”

That is exactly what occurred in school districts like the one in Orono, Minn., where a high school student wrote last week in an anonymous Twitter post: “Orono is not safe. Today at 12:00 p.m. I will shoot up the school myself.”

The police were called, the school went into lockdown, and teachers and students barricaded doors with metal cabinets and desks. Parents rushed to the school and were kept outside, while they texted and called their children for several hours and waited for updates.

The boy who the police say wrote the Twitter post was arrested and charged as a juvenile with making terroristic threats. Correy Farniok, the chief of police in Orono, said the authorities took the threat seriously because of its specificity.

Other campuses have closed in recent days in response to vague social media postings. An Instagram post on the former N.F.L. player Jonathan Martin’s verified account, featuring an image of a shotgun, a reference to revenge and the name of his former high school in California, prompted the closing of the school, Harvard-Westlake.

Across the nation, students and school employees said they were on alert. Two 16-year-olds in Arlington, Tex., were arrested after tipsters said they scrawled on a wall and wrote online that they were planning to attack their school.

At El Camino High School in Whittier, Calif., a school employee said he heard a 17-year-old student telling a classmate, “I guarantee you the school will be shot up in three weeks.”

The employee confronted the student and reported him to the police. When investigators from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department searched the boy’s home, they recovered two AR-15 rifles, two handguns and 90 high-capacity magazines.

Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based research group, said the attack in Florida seemed to resonate more strongly than most previous attacks, heightening the sensitivity to additional possible threats, at least for now.

“You’ve got the threats coming into schools and the bomb scares,” Mr. Wexler said. “But you also have the related part of citizens being more attentive to threats. People are probably recording more situations, and that’s creating a higher sensitivity to the whole issue.”

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 00:19 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Ik werd gevraagd waarom ik vond dat gekozen rechters geen goed idee zijn.

quote:

Rechters zijn er om de wet uit te leggen, niet om de wet te vormen.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 10:07 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
After Parkland, a Flood of New Threats, Tips and False Alarms (NYTimes)

quote:

President Donald Trump’s personal pilot is reportedly one of several people under consideration to lead the Federal Aviation Administrations.

Axios was the first to report that John Dunkin, who has worked for Trump since before he became president, was on a shortlist to lead the FAA. A White House official later confirmed to The Washington Post that Dunkin was under consideration.

The FAA regulates all civil aviation in the U.S. and has an annual budget of more than $16 billion.

“John Dunkin isn’t just a pilot,” an unnamed White House official told Axios. “He’s managed airline and corporate flight departments, certified airlines from start-up under FAA regulations and oversaw the Trump presidential campaign’s air fleet, which included managing all aviation transportation for travel to 203 cities in 43 states over the course of 21 months.”

Trump has touted the expertise of his pilot before. In a meeting with executives from the aviation industry last year, the president called Dunkin a “smart guy” who “knows what’s going on. I have a pilot who’s a real expert,” Trump said.

Dunkin was brought in for a preliminary conversation about the role. Several other people have also been interviewed, including Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and Dan Elwell, who has served as acting administrator of the agency since January.

quote:

Op zondag 25 februari 2018 17:08 schreef DestroyerPiet het volgende:
Een vergelijking tussen de reacties van Obama en Trump op een School shooting.

Opinion | An hour-by-hour comparison of Trump and Obama responding to school shootings

kan je zien dat Obama een echte president was die probeerde dingen op te lossen terwijl Trump alleen maar boos kan twitteren.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 14:31 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:
Een ding is Trump een absoluut meester in: De schuld aan een ander geven

quote:

Rick Santorum, former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, suggested that absent fathers and broken homes could be part of the reason for mass shootings.

“Gun control is a debate that we need to have,” Santorum said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. However, he also said there was “another debate” we should have, and that’s “the fact that these kids come from broken homes without dads.”

“That is not something we’re talking about and that is the commonality,” Santorum said. “We want to talk about things we can work together on? How about working together to try to see what we can do to get more dads involved in the lives of the kids. What we have is moms raising children in single-parent households simply breeding more criminals.”

Santorum also said single mothers just needed politicians who weren’t afraid of “kicking them in the butt.” His plan at the time would’ve denied benefits to women who did not identify the fathers of their children.“If they don’t give the name, they don’t get any welfare,” he said.

SPOILER

quote:

Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman was finally booted off "Celebrity Big Brother" on Sunday, but not before viewers were treated to more barbs against the Trump administration.

In her most explosive comments yet, Newman complained that she was shunned by others in the administration because she was a black woman in a White House that she compared to a "plantation." Newman also said she was "thinking of writing a tell-all" about her experiences.

"I was literally the only African-American woman on the senior staff," Newman said in a montage of clips that aired in a recap episode on Saturday. "I'm inside trying to fight for my own political life while I'm going into meetings with people who are ignoring me. Because I was black, people wouldn't even talk to me."

When Newman finally left her job as the communications director of the White House Office of Public Liaison in December, she said to herself: "Ooh, freedom, I've been emancipated. I feel like I just got freed off of a plantation."

As for her tell-all tome, Newman said President Donald Trump was "going to come after me with everything he has. Like, I'm going up against a kazillionaire."

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 15:01 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:

[..]

Nou, Creepo Extraordinario (10 Vilest Quotes) Rick "There's no such thing as global warming" Santorum kan er ook wat van:

"Moms raising children in single-parent households are simply breeding criminals"

[..]

SPOILER

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

In a major setback for the Trump administration (hoeveel keer hebben we DAT inmiddels al niet gelezen?) the Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a lawsuit over the future of an Obama-era program that protects so-called Dreamers from deportation.

The decision all but ensures that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will remain in effect for recipients after the March 5 deadline originally set by the White House. It also takes some of the pressure off Congress to act to pass its own legislation to protect young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, something lawmakers have repeatedly failed to do.

President Donald Trump rescinded DACA in September, putting its nearly 700,000 recipients at risk of losing two-year deportation relief and work permits. He said he wanted to put in place permanent protections for Dreamers, but demanded major policy changes on legal immigration, asylum-seekers and border security that senators rejected earlier this month.

The Trump administration has the power to end DACA, which President Barack Obama had implemented through executive action. But a spate of lawsuits in California and New York have argued that the White House flouted procedures required by federal law and violated the equal protection rights of DACA recipients.

Several lawsuits filed in the Northern District of California were consolidated into one and resulted in the first nationwide, preliminary injunction barring the Trump administration from ending the DACA program while the lawsuit proceeds. The order, issued in January, requires U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to keep processing DACA renewals for people who have been approved for the program in the past, but doesn't require them to process first-time applications.

The Department of Justice downplayed the importance of Monday's decision.

"While we were hopeful for a different outcome, the Supreme Court very rarely grants certiorari before judgment, though in our view it was warranted for the extraordinary injunction requiring the Department of Homeland Security to maintain DACA," department spokesman Devin O'Malley said in a statement. "We will continue to defend DHS' lawful authority to wind down DACA in an orderly manner."

The Supreme Court's decision Monday concerned the California lawsuit. A separate judge issued a nationwide injunction earlier this month based on another lawsuit, this one heard in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 08:49 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Ik denk niet dat het om zeep helpen van dealers de vraag naar drugs doet verminderen, jij wel?

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 16:52 schreef Doublepain het volgende:

[..]

Op een gegeven moment zal de demand wel lager worden, risico voor dealers worden groter dus duurder

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 17:37 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
Terwijl hij zelf overal in een golfkarretje moet worden vervoerd omdat hij niet eens korte stukjes kan lopen?

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 17:23 schreef Szura het volgende:
@ZekeJMiller
Trump rips Fla. Deputies for not going into school. "I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon."

https://twitter.com/zekejmiller/status/968155353912369152

quote:

Trump, a notorious germaphobe, is discussing his extreme distaste for blood. The mere sight of it, he says, causes him to recoil in disgust.

“I was at Mar-a-Lago and we had this incredible ball, the Red Cross Ball, in Palm Beach, Florida. And we had the Marines. And the Marines were there, and it was terrible because all these rich people, they’re there to support the Marines, but they’re really there to get their picture in the Palm Beach Post… so you have all these really rich people, and a man, about 80 years old—very wealthy man, a lot of people didn’t like him—he fell off the stage,” said Trump.

“So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face, hits his head, and I thought he died. And you know what I did? I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away,” said Trump. “I couldn’t, you know, he was right in front of me and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him… he’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible. You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red. And you have this poor guy, 80 years old, laying on the floor unconscious, and all the rich people are turning away. ‘Oh my God! This is terrible! This is disgusting!’ and you know, they’re turning away. Nobody wants to help the guy. His wife is screaming—she’s sitting right next to him, and she’s screaming.”

Thank God for the Marines. “What happens is, these 10 Marines from the back of the room… they come running forward, they grab him, they put the blood all over the place—it’s all over their uniforms—they’re taking it, they’re swiping [it], they ran him out, they created a stretcher. They call it a human stretcher, where they put their arms out with, like, five guys on each side,” shared Trump.

“I was saying, ‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’ The next day, I forgot to call [the man] to say he’s OK,” said Trump, adding of the blood, “It’s just not my thing.”

quote:

And like most Trump tales, what was intended as a story about the bravery and heroism of a handful of Marines instead revealed far more about the man telling it.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 17:39 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Hij gaat dan toch gewoon op de rug van een tijger naar binnen?

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 17:43 schreef clumsy_clown het volgende:

[..]

[..]

Uhuh. Tuurlijk. Trump saves the day, zolang er niets te zien is wat mogelijk bah is.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 17:23 schreef Szura het volgende:
@ZekeJMiller
Trump rips Fla. Deputies for not going into school. "I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon."

https://twitter.com/zekejmiller/status/968155353912369152

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 17:56 schreef Falco het volgende:

[..]

Nee man, op een leeuw stormt ie naar binnen.

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 15:01 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:

[..]

Nou, Creepo Extraordinario (10 Vilest Quotes) Rick "There's no such thing as global warming" Santorum kan er ook wat van:

"Moms raising children in single-parent households are simply breeding criminals"

[..]

SPOILER

[ afbeelding ]

.
Of, euh... Omarosa Manigault? "I Was Shunned At 'Plantation' White House Because I Was Black"

[..]

"Because I was black"? Is ze niet meer zwart dan?

[ afbeelding ]
_{. . . . . . ."You know, some of my best blacks are even friends!"}

SPOILER

Donald Trump is on track to win reelection to the presidency of the United States.

Yes, despite Russiagate, despite shitholegate and despite whatever gate he blunders through next. Despite approval ratings that would make Nixon weep. Despite his mind-numbing political misjudgments—defending accused pedophiles, for example—and the endless, unnecessary daily drama. Trump is winning. It is actually happening, people. And if there are those who want to stop it—and there are, of course, millions—they need to know what they are up against. It’s a lot more than they overconfidently think.

First, consider the fact that Trump is simply lucky. Maybe one of the luckiest men to ever run for president. He’s somehow managed to turn his reputation for audacity and shamelessness into a shield. How many controversies and scandals has he survived that would have destroyed any of his predecessors long ago or sent them hiding in their homes in shame? The other day his personal lawyer made the preposterous claim that he personally paid $130,000 to an ex-porn star threatening to expose her relationship with Trump—with money from his own pocket—apparently just because Trump is a notoriously swell guy. How many lawyers do you know who’d so generously shell out over one hundred grand for a friend simply out of the goodness of their heart?

Did anyone believe that ridiculous story? Who knows—because it’s off the front pages and we moved on to yet another shocking scandal like last weekend’s tweetstorm, when the president of the United States seemed to blame the Russia investigation for the death of schoolchildren in Florida. Remember the pardon of the controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a birther who was accused of using his office to target political opponents and conduct racial profiling and was found guilty of a felony for disobeying a court order? Remember the phone call with the war widow when Trump seemed to forget the dead soldier’s name? Nobody does. We are too exhausted. We don’t have time.

Second, consider Trump’s record as president. He actually has something to run on. He’s cut taxes. He’s rolled back regulations. He’s put ISIS on its heels. The economy and the stock market are humming along again, despite recent turmoil. Any other Republican incumbent running on that record of relative peace and prosperity—just as Eisenhower and Reagan did—would be in pretty good shape for reelection. Trump, as loathed as he is, might not cruise to reelection on an electoral landslide like those predecessors. But if jobs continue to be created and the economy continues to hum, whether he deserves the credit or not, enough voters might just hold their nose again and vote for him.

Third, his opposition can’t get their act together. Who speaks for the Democratic Party? Depends on what time it is. What does the Democratic Party stand for? Well, they hate Trump and Russia. Oh, and they oppose tax cuts, always a popular proposition, especially at a time when Trump’s supposedly satanic tax bill has now found favor with a majority of the nation.

A lot, of course, depends on who Trump will be running against come November 2020. With Trump appearing both despised and vulnerable, the Democratic field in 2020 is going to be perhaps the largest in the party’s history. But that’s actually a problem. One can easily envision an ugly two-, three- or four-way free-for-all between aging but popular politicians—Biden, Warren and Sanders—along with any number of younger but untested outsiders that could divide the party for the entire campaign. The Hillary and Bernie wings never quite reconciled in 2016—to Trump’s benefit. This time, the divide looks like it could be even worse.

Ah, but wait, you say. You forgot about the silver-haired knight waiting in his castle to come out and slay the orange dragon once and for all. What about the Robert Mueller investigation, the one that CNN has devoted its entire network to covering with such intensity that they may soon move the entire D.C. bureau to Mueller’s front lawn? Isn’t that going to send Trump and his evil cronies to the pokey?

Well, I guess it’s possible. But not likely.

22_donald_trump_59_gty_1160.jpg
LAW & ORDER

How Trump Could End Up Diminishing His Own Power
By ASHA RANGAPPA
Donald Trump is pictured. | Getty Images
ANALYSIS

Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic
By BLAKE HOUNSHELL
NixonBillyGrahamAP.jpg
CHURCH AND STATE

When Richard Nixon Used Billy Graham
By JEFF GREENFIELD
It’s true that Mueller seems to run a tight ship with a penchant for surprises, such as the recent indictment of 13 Russians for conspiring to tamper with the 2016 elections. Maybe Mueller will take the unprecedented step of indicting a sitting American president, for everything from perjury to obstruction of justice to secretly running an Airbnb with Vladimir Putin. But, in fact, that seems like a bolder move than one can expect from a by-the-book former prosecutor who needs to maintain his credibility. Most likely, Mueller and his team will compile a persuasive but not conclusive case that the president committed one or more crimes, leaving it for the good men and women of the United States Congress to decide what to do about it. And when has Congress last been counted on to do the right thing?

Then there’s the truly desperate notion lingering out there among the left: Surely there must be someone in the GOP who will come to his or her senses and lead a stand against the president. Yes, maybe it will be Mitt Romney, who hates Trump so much he tried to be his secretary of state. Or maybe it’s Bob Corker, who quite incredibly seems to have gone from saying Trump was unstable and roaming around an adult day care center to becoming a telephone buddy trying to regain Trump’s favor.

Face it: The Republicans, most of them, are by now so accustomed to inertia and groupthink and political impotence that they seem willing to lose control of the House just to avoid getting a mean tweet from the president. Think the GOP will abandon Trump easily? They’ve all but given up.

Yep. Trump is a helluva lucky guy. And that just might give us six more years.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 19:24 schreef grrrrg het volgende:
Was dit artikel al voorbij gekomen?
https://www.politico.com/(...)roval-ratings-217037

SPOILER

Donald Trump is on track to win reelection to the presidency of the United States.

Yes, despite Russiagate, despite shitholegate and despite whatever gate he blunders through next. Despite approval ratings that would make Nixon weep. Despite his mind-numbing political misjudgments—defending accused pedophiles, for example—and the endless, unnecessary daily drama. Trump is winning. It is actually happening, people. And if there are those who want to stop it—and there are, of course, millions—they need to know what they are up against. It’s a lot more than they overconfidently think.

First, consider the fact that Trump is simply lucky. Maybe one of the luckiest men to ever run for president. He’s somehow managed to turn his reputation for audacity and shamelessness into a shield. How many controversies and scandals has he survived that would have destroyed any of his predecessors long ago or sent them hiding in their homes in shame? The other day his personal lawyer made the preposterous claim that he personally paid $130,000 to an ex-porn star threatening to expose her relationship with Trump—with money from his own pocket—apparently just because Trump is a notoriously swell guy. How many lawyers do you know who’d so generously shell out over one hundred grand for a friend simply out of the goodness of their heart?

Did anyone believe that ridiculous story? Who knows—because it’s off the front pages and we moved on to yet another shocking scandal like last weekend’s tweetstorm, when the president of the United States seemed to blame the Russia investigation for the death of schoolchildren in Florida. Remember the pardon of the controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a birther who was accused of using his office to target political opponents and conduct racial profiling and was found guilty of a felony for disobeying a court order? Remember the phone call with the war widow when Trump seemed to forget the dead soldier’s name? Nobody does. We are too exhausted. We don’t have time.

Second, consider Trump’s record as president. He actually has something to run on. He’s cut taxes. He’s rolled back regulations. He’s put ISIS on its heels. The economy and the stock market are humming along again, despite recent turmoil. Any other Republican incumbent running on that record of relative peace and prosperity—just as Eisenhower and Reagan did—would be in pretty good shape for reelection. Trump, as loathed as he is, might not cruise to reelection on an electoral landslide like those predecessors. But if jobs continue to be created and the economy continues to hum, whether he deserves the credit or not, enough voters might just hold their nose again and vote for him.

Third, his opposition can’t get their act together. Who speaks for the Democratic Party? Depends on what time it is. What does the Democratic Party stand for? Well, they hate Trump and Russia. Oh, and they oppose tax cuts, always a popular proposition, especially at a time when Trump’s supposedly satanic tax bill has now found favor with a majority of the nation.

A lot, of course, depends on who Trump will be running against come November 2020. With Trump appearing both despised and vulnerable, the Democratic field in 2020 is going to be perhaps the largest in the party’s history. But that’s actually a problem. One can easily envision an ugly two-, three- or four-way free-for-all between aging but popular politicians—Biden, Warren and Sanders—along with any number of younger but untested outsiders that could divide the party for the entire campaign. The Hillary and Bernie wings never quite reconciled in 2016—to Trump’s benefit. This time, the divide looks like it could be even worse.

Ah, but wait, you say. You forgot about the silver-haired knight waiting in his castle to come out and slay the orange dragon once and for all. What about the Robert Mueller investigation, the one that CNN has devoted its entire network to covering with such intensity that they may soon move the entire D.C. bureau to Mueller’s front lawn? Isn’t that going to send Trump and his evil cronies to the pokey?

Well, I guess it’s possible. But not likely.

22_donald_trump_59_gty_1160.jpg
LAW & ORDER

How Trump Could End Up Diminishing His Own Power
By ASHA RANGAPPA
Donald Trump is pictured. | Getty Images
ANALYSIS

Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic
By BLAKE HOUNSHELL
NixonBillyGrahamAP.jpg
CHURCH AND STATE

When Richard Nixon Used Billy Graham
By JEFF GREENFIELD
It’s true that Mueller seems to run a tight ship with a penchant for surprises, such as the recent indictment of 13 Russians for conspiring to tamper with the 2016 elections. Maybe Mueller will take the unprecedented step of indicting a sitting American president, for everything from perjury to obstruction of justice to secretly running an Airbnb with Vladimir Putin. But, in fact, that seems like a bolder move than one can expect from a by-the-book former prosecutor who needs to maintain his credibility. Most likely, Mueller and his team will compile a persuasive but not conclusive case that the president committed one or more crimes, leaving it for the good men and women of the United States Congress to decide what to do about it. And when has Congress last been counted on to do the right thing?

Then there’s the truly desperate notion lingering out there among the left: Surely there must be someone in the GOP who will come to his or her senses and lead a stand against the president. Yes, maybe it will be Mitt Romney, who hates Trump so much he tried to be his secretary of state. Or maybe it’s Bob Corker, who quite incredibly seems to have gone from saying Trump was unstable and roaming around an adult day care center to becoming a telephone buddy trying to regain Trump’s favor.

Face it: The Republicans, most of them, are by now so accustomed to inertia and groupthink and political impotence that they seem willing to lose control of the House just to avoid getting a mean tweet from the president. Think the GOP will abandon Trump easily? They’ve all but given up.

Yep. Trump is a helluva lucky guy. And that just might give us six more years.

Ik heb ook het idee dat we in een Berlusconi situatie terecht zijn gekomen.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 19:24 schreef grrrrg het volgende:
Was dit artikel al voorbij gekomen?
https://www.politico.com/(...)roval-ratings-217037

SPOILER

Donald Trump is on track to win reelection to the presidency of the United States.

Yes, despite Russiagate, despite shitholegate and despite whatever gate he blunders through next. Despite approval ratings that would make Nixon weep. Despite his mind-numbing political misjudgments—defending accused pedophiles, for example—and the endless, unnecessary daily drama. Trump is winning. It is actually happening, people. And if there are those who want to stop it—and there are, of course, millions—they need to know what they are up against. It’s a lot more than they overconfidently think.

First, consider the fact that Trump is simply lucky. Maybe one of the luckiest men to ever run for president. He’s somehow managed to turn his reputation for audacity and shamelessness into a shield. How many controversies and scandals has he survived that would have destroyed any of his predecessors long ago or sent them hiding in their homes in shame? The other day his personal lawyer made the preposterous claim that he personally paid $130,000 to an ex-porn star threatening to expose her relationship with Trump—with money from his own pocket—apparently just because Trump is a notoriously swell guy. How many lawyers do you know who’d so generously shell out over one hundred grand for a friend simply out of the goodness of their heart?

Did anyone believe that ridiculous story? Who knows—because it’s off the front pages and we moved on to yet another shocking scandal like last weekend’s tweetstorm, when the president of the United States seemed to blame the Russia investigation for the death of schoolchildren in Florida. Remember the pardon of the controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a birther who was accused of using his office to target political opponents and conduct racial profiling and was found guilty of a felony for disobeying a court order? Remember the phone call with the war widow when Trump seemed to forget the dead soldier’s name? Nobody does. We are too exhausted. We don’t have time.

Second, consider Trump’s record as president. He actually has something to run on. He’s cut taxes. He’s rolled back regulations. He’s put ISIS on its heels. The economy and the stock market are humming along again, despite recent turmoil. Any other Republican incumbent running on that record of relative peace and prosperity—just as Eisenhower and Reagan did—would be in pretty good shape for reelection. Trump, as loathed as he is, might not cruise to reelection on an electoral landslide like those predecessors. But if jobs continue to be created and the economy continues to hum, whether he deserves the credit or not, enough voters might just hold their nose again and vote for him.

Third, his opposition can’t get their act together. Who speaks for the Democratic Party? Depends on what time it is. What does the Democratic Party stand for? Well, they hate Trump and Russia. Oh, and they oppose tax cuts, always a popular proposition, especially at a time when Trump’s supposedly satanic tax bill has now found favor with a majority of the nation.

A lot, of course, depends on who Trump will be running against come November 2020. With Trump appearing both despised and vulnerable, the Democratic field in 2020 is going to be perhaps the largest in the party’s history. But that’s actually a problem. One can easily envision an ugly two-, three- or four-way free-for-all between aging but popular politicians—Biden, Warren and Sanders—along with any number of younger but untested outsiders that could divide the party for the entire campaign. The Hillary and Bernie wings never quite reconciled in 2016—to Trump’s benefit. This time, the divide looks like it could be even worse.

Ah, but wait, you say. You forgot about the silver-haired knight waiting in his castle to come out and slay the orange dragon once and for all. What about the Robert Mueller investigation, the one that CNN has devoted its entire network to covering with such intensity that they may soon move the entire D.C. bureau to Mueller’s front lawn? Isn’t that going to send Trump and his evil cronies to the pokey?

Well, I guess it’s possible. But not likely.

22_donald_trump_59_gty_1160.jpg
LAW & ORDER

How Trump Could End Up Diminishing His Own Power
By ASHA RANGAPPA
Donald Trump is pictured. | Getty Images
ANALYSIS

Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic
By BLAKE HOUNSHELL
NixonBillyGrahamAP.jpg
CHURCH AND STATE

When Richard Nixon Used Billy Graham
By JEFF GREENFIELD
It’s true that Mueller seems to run a tight ship with a penchant for surprises, such as the recent indictment of 13 Russians for conspiring to tamper with the 2016 elections. Maybe Mueller will take the unprecedented step of indicting a sitting American president, for everything from perjury to obstruction of justice to secretly running an Airbnb with Vladimir Putin. But, in fact, that seems like a bolder move than one can expect from a by-the-book former prosecutor who needs to maintain his credibility. Most likely, Mueller and his team will compile a persuasive but not conclusive case that the president committed one or more crimes, leaving it for the good men and women of the United States Congress to decide what to do about it. And when has Congress last been counted on to do the right thing?

Then there’s the truly desperate notion lingering out there among the left: Surely there must be someone in the GOP who will come to his or her senses and lead a stand against the president. Yes, maybe it will be Mitt Romney, who hates Trump so much he tried to be his secretary of state. Or maybe it’s Bob Corker, who quite incredibly seems to have gone from saying Trump was unstable and roaming around an adult day care center to becoming a telephone buddy trying to regain Trump’s favor.

Face it: The Republicans, most of them, are by now so accustomed to inertia and groupthink and political impotence that they seem willing to lose control of the House just to avoid getting a mean tweet from the president. Think the GOP will abandon Trump easily? They’ve all but given up.

Yep. Trump is a helluva lucky guy. And that just might give us six more years.

Ik heb ook het idee dat we in een Berlusconi situatie terecht zijn gekomen.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 19:24 schreef grrrrg het volgende:
Was dit artikel al voorbij gekomen?
https://www.politico.com/(...)roval-ratings-217037

SPOILER

Donald Trump is on track to win reelection to the presidency of the United States.

Yes, despite Russiagate, despite shitholegate and despite whatever gate he blunders through next. Despite approval ratings that would make Nixon weep. Despite his mind-numbing political misjudgments—defending accused pedophiles, for example—and the endless, unnecessary daily drama. Trump is winning. It is actually happening, people. And if there are those who want to stop it—and there are, of course, millions—they need to know what they are up against. It’s a lot more than they overconfidently think.

First, consider the fact that Trump is simply lucky. Maybe one of the luckiest men to ever run for president. He’s somehow managed to turn his reputation for audacity and shamelessness into a shield. How many controversies and scandals has he survived that would have destroyed any of his predecessors long ago or sent them hiding in their homes in shame? The other day his personal lawyer made the preposterous claim that he personally paid $130,000 to an ex-porn star threatening to expose her relationship with Trump—with money from his own pocket—apparently just because Trump is a notoriously swell guy. How many lawyers do you know who’d so generously shell out over one hundred grand for a friend simply out of the goodness of their heart?

Did anyone believe that ridiculous story? Who knows—because it’s off the front pages and we moved on to yet another shocking scandal like last weekend’s tweetstorm, when the president of the United States seemed to blame the Russia investigation for the death of schoolchildren in Florida. Remember the pardon of the controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a birther who was accused of using his office to target political opponents and conduct racial profiling and was found guilty of a felony for disobeying a court order? Remember the phone call with the war widow when Trump seemed to forget the dead soldier’s name? Nobody does. We are too exhausted. We don’t have time.

Second, consider Trump’s record as president. He actually has something to run on. He’s cut taxes. He’s rolled back regulations. He’s put ISIS on its heels. The economy and the stock market are humming along again, despite recent turmoil. Any other Republican incumbent running on that record of relative peace and prosperity—just as Eisenhower and Reagan did—would be in pretty good shape for reelection. Trump, as loathed as he is, might not cruise to reelection on an electoral landslide like those predecessors. But if jobs continue to be created and the economy continues to hum, whether he deserves the credit or not, enough voters might just hold their nose again and vote for him.

Third, his opposition can’t get their act together. Who speaks for the Democratic Party? Depends on what time it is. What does the Democratic Party stand for? Well, they hate Trump and Russia. Oh, and they oppose tax cuts, always a popular proposition, especially at a time when Trump’s supposedly satanic tax bill has now found favor with a majority of the nation.

A lot, of course, depends on who Trump will be running against come November 2020. With Trump appearing both despised and vulnerable, the Democratic field in 2020 is going to be perhaps the largest in the party’s history. But that’s actually a problem. One can easily envision an ugly two-, three- or four-way free-for-all between aging but popular politicians—Biden, Warren and Sanders—along with any number of younger but untested outsiders that could divide the party for the entire campaign. The Hillary and Bernie wings never quite reconciled in 2016—to Trump’s benefit. This time, the divide looks like it could be even worse.

Ah, but wait, you say. You forgot about the silver-haired knight waiting in his castle to come out and slay the orange dragon once and for all. What about the Robert Mueller investigation, the one that CNN has devoted its entire network to covering with such intensity that they may soon move the entire D.C. bureau to Mueller’s front lawn? Isn’t that going to send Trump and his evil cronies to the pokey?

Well, I guess it’s possible. But not likely.

22_donald_trump_59_gty_1160.jpg
LAW & ORDER

How Trump Could End Up Diminishing His Own Power
By ASHA RANGAPPA
Donald Trump is pictured. | Getty Images
ANALYSIS

Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic
By BLAKE HOUNSHELL
NixonBillyGrahamAP.jpg
CHURCH AND STATE

When Richard Nixon Used Billy Graham
By JEFF GREENFIELD
It’s true that Mueller seems to run a tight ship with a penchant for surprises, such as the recent indictment of 13 Russians for conspiring to tamper with the 2016 elections. Maybe Mueller will take the unprecedented step of indicting a sitting American president, for everything from perjury to obstruction of justice to secretly running an Airbnb with Vladimir Putin. But, in fact, that seems like a bolder move than one can expect from a by-the-book former prosecutor who needs to maintain his credibility. Most likely, Mueller and his team will compile a persuasive but not conclusive case that the president committed one or more crimes, leaving it for the good men and women of the United States Congress to decide what to do about it. And when has Congress last been counted on to do the right thing?

Then there’s the truly desperate notion lingering out there among the left: Surely there must be someone in the GOP who will come to his or her senses and lead a stand against the president. Yes, maybe it will be Mitt Romney, who hates Trump so much he tried to be his secretary of state. Or maybe it’s Bob Corker, who quite incredibly seems to have gone from saying Trump was unstable and roaming around an adult day care center to becoming a telephone buddy trying to regain Trump’s favor.

Face it: The Republicans, most of them, are by now so accustomed to inertia and groupthink and political impotence that they seem willing to lose control of the House just to avoid getting a mean tweet from the president. Think the GOP will abandon Trump easily? They’ve all but given up.

Yep. Trump is a helluva lucky guy. And that just might give us six more years.

Ik heb ook het idee dat we in een Berlusconi situatie terecht zijn gekomen.

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op zondag 25-02-2018 om 21:39:12 I've no idea what's going on at POLITICO. First its editor-in-chief wrote a piece calling himself a "Russiagate skeptic"—relying wholly on misstatements of fact in the Trump-Russia probe. Now we get this.The reality: Trump won't be on the ballot in 2020. https://t.co/Ub3QEUYehf reageer retweet

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 19:24 schreef grrrrg het volgende:
Was dit artikel al voorbij gekomen?
https://www.politico.com/(...)roval-ratings-217037

SPOILER

Donald Trump is on track to win reelection to the presidency of the United States.

Yes, despite Russiagate, despite shitholegate and despite whatever gate he blunders through next. Despite approval ratings that would make Nixon weep. Despite his mind-numbing political misjudgments—defending accused pedophiles, for example—and the endless, unnecessary daily drama. Trump is winning. It is actually happening, people. And if there are those who want to stop it—and there are, of course, millions—they need to know what they are up against. It’s a lot more than they overconfidently think.

First, consider the fact that Trump is simply lucky. Maybe one of the luckiest men to ever run for president. He’s somehow managed to turn his reputation for audacity and shamelessness into a shield. How many controversies and scandals has he survived that would have destroyed any of his predecessors long ago or sent them hiding in their homes in shame? The other day his personal lawyer made the preposterous claim that he personally paid $130,000 to an ex-porn star threatening to expose her relationship with Trump—with money from his own pocket—apparently just because Trump is a notoriously swell guy. How many lawyers do you know who’d so generously shell out over one hundred grand for a friend simply out of the goodness of their heart?

Did anyone believe that ridiculous story? Who knows—because it’s off the front pages and we moved on to yet another shocking scandal like last weekend’s tweetstorm, when the president of the United States seemed to blame the Russia investigation for the death of schoolchildren in Florida. Remember the pardon of the controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a birther who was accused of using his office to target political opponents and conduct racial profiling and was found guilty of a felony for disobeying a court order? Remember the phone call with the war widow when Trump seemed to forget the dead soldier’s name? Nobody does. We are too exhausted. We don’t have time.

Second, consider Trump’s record as president. He actually has something to run on. He’s cut taxes. He’s rolled back regulations. He’s put ISIS on its heels. The economy and the stock market are humming along again, despite recent turmoil. Any other Republican incumbent running on that record of relative peace and prosperity—just as Eisenhower and Reagan did—would be in pretty good shape for reelection. Trump, as loathed as he is, might not cruise to reelection on an electoral landslide like those predecessors. But if jobs continue to be created and the economy continues to hum, whether he deserves the credit or not, enough voters might just hold their nose again and vote for him.

Third, his opposition can’t get their act together. Who speaks for the Democratic Party? Depends on what time it is. What does the Democratic Party stand for? Well, they hate Trump and Russia. Oh, and they oppose tax cuts, always a popular proposition, especially at a time when Trump’s supposedly satanic tax bill has now found favor with a majority of the nation.

A lot, of course, depends on who Trump will be running against come November 2020. With Trump appearing both despised and vulnerable, the Democratic field in 2020 is going to be perhaps the largest in the party’s history. But that’s actually a problem. One can easily envision an ugly two-, three- or four-way free-for-all between aging but popular politicians—Biden, Warren and Sanders—along with any number of younger but untested outsiders that could divide the party for the entire campaign. The Hillary and Bernie wings never quite reconciled in 2016—to Trump’s benefit. This time, the divide looks like it could be even worse.

Ah, but wait, you say. You forgot about the silver-haired knight waiting in his castle to come out and slay the orange dragon once and for all. What about the Robert Mueller investigation, the one that CNN has devoted its entire network to covering with such intensity that they may soon move the entire D.C. bureau to Mueller’s front lawn? Isn’t that going to send Trump and his evil cronies to the pokey?

Well, I guess it’s possible. But not likely.

22_donald_trump_59_gty_1160.jpg
LAW & ORDER

How Trump Could End Up Diminishing His Own Power
By ASHA RANGAPPA
Donald Trump is pictured. | Getty Images
ANALYSIS

Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic
By BLAKE HOUNSHELL
NixonBillyGrahamAP.jpg
CHURCH AND STATE

When Richard Nixon Used Billy Graham
By JEFF GREENFIELD
It’s true that Mueller seems to run a tight ship with a penchant for surprises, such as the recent indictment of 13 Russians for conspiring to tamper with the 2016 elections. Maybe Mueller will take the unprecedented step of indicting a sitting American president, for everything from perjury to obstruction of justice to secretly running an Airbnb with Vladimir Putin. But, in fact, that seems like a bolder move than one can expect from a by-the-book former prosecutor who needs to maintain his credibility. Most likely, Mueller and his team will compile a persuasive but not conclusive case that the president committed one or more crimes, leaving it for the good men and women of the United States Congress to decide what to do about it. And when has Congress last been counted on to do the right thing?

Then there’s the truly desperate notion lingering out there among the left: Surely there must be someone in the GOP who will come to his or her senses and lead a stand against the president. Yes, maybe it will be Mitt Romney, who hates Trump so much he tried to be his secretary of state. Or maybe it’s Bob Corker, who quite incredibly seems to have gone from saying Trump was unstable and roaming around an adult day care center to becoming a telephone buddy trying to regain Trump’s favor.

Face it: The Republicans, most of them, are by now so accustomed to inertia and groupthink and political impotence that they seem willing to lose control of the House just to avoid getting a mean tweet from the president. Think the GOP will abandon Trump easily? They’ve all but given up.

Yep. Trump is a helluva lucky guy. And that just might give us six more years.

Ik heb ook het idee dat we in een Berlusconi situatie terecht zijn gekomen.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 19:33 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

Wel bij Abramson

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op zondag 25-02-2018 om 21:39:12 I've no idea what's going on at POLITICO. First its editor-in-chief wrote a piece calling himself a "Russiagate skeptic"—relying wholly on misstatements of fact in the Trump-Russia probe. Now we get this.The reality: Trump won't be on the ballot in 2020. https://t.co/Ub3QEUYehf reageer retweet

Gov. Inslee calls out Trump on plan to arm teachers

quote:

I've listened to the first grade teachers that don't want to be pistol-packing first grade teachers... We need to listen and educators should educate... I just suggest we need a little less tweeting here and a little more listening."

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 19:24 schreef grrrrg het volgende:
Was dit artikel al voorbij gekomen?
https://www.politico.com/(...)roval-ratings-217037

SPOILER

Donald Trump is on track to win reelection to the presidency of the United States.

Yes, despite Russiagate, despite shitholegate and despite whatever gate he blunders through next. Despite approval ratings that would make Nixon weep. Despite his mind-numbing political misjudgments—defending accused pedophiles, for example—and the endless, unnecessary daily drama. Trump is winning. It is actually happening, people. And if there are those who want to stop it—and there are, of course, millions—they need to know what they are up against. It’s a lot more than they overconfidently think.

First, consider the fact that Trump is simply lucky. Maybe one of the luckiest men to ever run for president. He’s somehow managed to turn his reputation for audacity and shamelessness into a shield. How many controversies and scandals has he survived that would have destroyed any of his predecessors long ago or sent them hiding in their homes in shame? The other day his personal lawyer made the preposterous claim that he personally paid $130,000 to an ex-porn star threatening to expose her relationship with Trump—with money from his own pocket—apparently just because Trump is a notoriously swell guy. How many lawyers do you know who’d so generously shell out over one hundred grand for a friend simply out of the goodness of their heart?

Did anyone believe that ridiculous story? Who knows—because it’s off the front pages and we moved on to yet another shocking scandal like last weekend’s tweetstorm, when the president of the United States seemed to blame the Russia investigation for the death of schoolchildren in Florida. Remember the pardon of the controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a birther who was accused of using his office to target political opponents and conduct racial profiling and was found guilty of a felony for disobeying a court order? Remember the phone call with the war widow when Trump seemed to forget the dead soldier’s name? Nobody does. We are too exhausted. We don’t have time.

Second, consider Trump’s record as president. He actually has something to run on. He’s cut taxes. He’s rolled back regulations. He’s put ISIS on its heels. The economy and the stock market are humming along again, despite recent turmoil. Any other Republican incumbent running on that record of relative peace and prosperity—just as Eisenhower and Reagan did—would be in pretty good shape for reelection. Trump, as loathed as he is, might not cruise to reelection on an electoral landslide like those predecessors. But if jobs continue to be created and the economy continues to hum, whether he deserves the credit or not, enough voters might just hold their nose again and vote for him.

Third, his opposition can’t get their act together. Who speaks for the Democratic Party? Depends on what time it is. What does the Democratic Party stand for? Well, they hate Trump and Russia. Oh, and they oppose tax cuts, always a popular proposition, especially at a time when Trump’s supposedly satanic tax bill has now found favor with a majority of the nation.

A lot, of course, depends on who Trump will be running against come November 2020. With Trump appearing both despised and vulnerable, the Democratic field in 2020 is going to be perhaps the largest in the party’s history. But that’s actually a problem. One can easily envision an ugly two-, three- or four-way free-for-all between aging but popular politicians—Biden, Warren and Sanders—along with any number of younger but untested outsiders that could divide the party for the entire campaign. The Hillary and Bernie wings never quite reconciled in 2016—to Trump’s benefit. This time, the divide looks like it could be even worse.

Ah, but wait, you say. You forgot about the silver-haired knight waiting in his castle to come out and slay the orange dragon once and for all. What about the Robert Mueller investigation, the one that CNN has devoted its entire network to covering with such intensity that they may soon move the entire D.C. bureau to Mueller’s front lawn? Isn’t that going to send Trump and his evil cronies to the pokey?

Well, I guess it’s possible. But not likely.

22_donald_trump_59_gty_1160.jpg
LAW & ORDER

How Trump Could End Up Diminishing His Own Power
By ASHA RANGAPPA
Donald Trump is pictured. | Getty Images
ANALYSIS

Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic
By BLAKE HOUNSHELL
NixonBillyGrahamAP.jpg
CHURCH AND STATE

When Richard Nixon Used Billy Graham
By JEFF GREENFIELD
It’s true that Mueller seems to run a tight ship with a penchant for surprises, such as the recent indictment of 13 Russians for conspiring to tamper with the 2016 elections. Maybe Mueller will take the unprecedented step of indicting a sitting American president, for everything from perjury to obstruction of justice to secretly running an Airbnb with Vladimir Putin. But, in fact, that seems like a bolder move than one can expect from a by-the-book former prosecutor who needs to maintain his credibility. Most likely, Mueller and his team will compile a persuasive but not conclusive case that the president committed one or more crimes, leaving it for the good men and women of the United States Congress to decide what to do about it. And when has Congress last been counted on to do the right thing?

Then there’s the truly desperate notion lingering out there among the left: Surely there must be someone in the GOP who will come to his or her senses and lead a stand against the president. Yes, maybe it will be Mitt Romney, who hates Trump so much he tried to be his secretary of state. Or maybe it’s Bob Corker, who quite incredibly seems to have gone from saying Trump was unstable and roaming around an adult day care center to becoming a telephone buddy trying to regain Trump’s favor.

Face it: The Republicans, most of them, are by now so accustomed to inertia and groupthink and political impotence that they seem willing to lose control of the House just to avoid getting a mean tweet from the president. Think the GOP will abandon Trump easily? They’ve all but given up.

Yep. Trump is a helluva lucky guy. And that just might give us six more years.

Ik heb ook het idee dat we in een Berlusconi situatie terecht zijn gekomen.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 19:35 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Dat is op zijn zachtst gezegd minstens net zo voorbarig als het politico stuk.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 20:04 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Die threads van Seth lezen altijd als een spannende thriller, maar ik ben ze toch maar met een korrel zout gaan nemen.

quote:

SethAbramson twitterde: I've no idea what's going on at POLITICO. First its editor-in-chief wrote a piece calling himself a "Russiagate skeptic"—relying wholly on misstatements of fact in the Trump-Russia probe. Now we get this.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 20:16 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Ik vind zijn analyses wel ok eigenlijk. Ik heb niet de indruk dat hij er echt vaak helemaal naast zit.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 20:20 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Probleem is vooral die 'holy shit!'-ondertoon. Seth geeft je keer op keer de indruk dat het laatste uur van Trump nu echt heeft geslagen.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 20:22 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

True. Dat toontje is inderdaad soms vervelend.
Maar het doet weinig af aan de analyses.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 20:27 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Ik heb Abramson nog niet op een foute voorspelling kunnen betrappen maar zijn volgende is dat Manafort zal gaan flippen.
We zullen zien....

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 20:29 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Manafort gaat ook flippen. Even tegen Trump getuigen en hij is over vijf jaar vrij man.

Of niet en levenslang.

Ik weet het wel.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 20:30 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Dat stoelt wel op de gedachte dat Trump hem geen pardon geeft of als Trump hem wel pardonned Manafort verder wel succesvol vervolgd zou worden op staatsniveau + natuurlijk dat hij wat te bieden heeft.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 20:33 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

Ik meen gelezen te hebben bij Abramson dat Trump geen gratie kan verlenen als Manafort belastende informatie over hem heeft?

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 20:35 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Vraag me af waarop dat gestoeld zou zijn? Vanwege obstruction of justice oid?

quote:

Top Republicans on Capitol Hill have made a concerted decision in their Russia inquiries: They are staying away from digging into the finances of President Donald Trump and his family.

Six Republican leaders of key committees told CNN they see little reason to pursue those lines of inquiry or made no commitments to do so -- even as Democrats say determining whether there was a financial link between Trump, his family, his business and Russians is essential to understanding whether there was any collusion in the 2016 elections.

Republicans have resisted calls to issue subpoenas for bank records, seeking Trump's tax returns or sending letters to witnesses to determine whether there were any Trump financial links to Russian actors -- calling the push nothing more than a Democratic fishing expedition.

quote:

- We all know this president would not only have fled, but trampled everyone between him and safety.

- I'm sure this is just what the parents of those killed and the students who survived but lost friends need to hear. Is there no event or issue this pathetic coward will attempt to exploit?

- I actually think Trump could have stopped the shooter with his bare hands, after all didn’t Chairman Mao once disarm a bomb in Beijing with a simple wave of his hand. And then there was time Josef Stalin singlehandedly killed 5 grizzly bears attacking a school in Siberia.

- I remember Donald Trump cowering and sneaking into the service entrance at campaign rally, going through the bushes and across the asphalt because there were demonstrations going on. This all took place while he was flanked by his body guards. Please, if there is a higher being, save us from this fraud.

- Remember the scene in Seinfeld in which George thought he saw a fire at a kiddie birthday party and he ran like a frightened chicken, pushing children out of the way and even knocking over a woman with a walker? That would be Trump.

- My grandmother used to have a dog called Robby. He was the bravest dog you'd ever seen. ready to tackle the biggest dog or human without any fear whatsoever. As long as he was on a leash. Otherwise, he kept very much to himself. No reason why I bring this up.

- I watched this live. Never in my 75 years have I ever heard a more babbling idiot than this man on this day. He has lost his mind completely. It was the most frightening public display and utterances I have ever observed in any public official. But just think about it - he's the President.

- As President he is supposed to be "consoler" in chief and fix the issues that led up to yet another massacre. He is not supposed to inflate himself and his ego at the expense of first responders, teachers and students. He is not helping the country, he is hurting it further.

- When do we start calling him "Patient in Chief"?

- My husband is a Vietnam vet. He has been a teacher in a public school on a Native American Reservation in Wisconsin for over thirty years. He would never carry a gun on school property. But he would lay himself down to protect his students and anyone else in the school. Now come to Wisconsin, Mr. President, look my husband square in the eye and tell him you would do the same.

quote:

The supreme court has rejected the Trump administration’s unusual request to bypass a federal appeals court in a case stemming from the president’s cancellation of a program that protects young immigrants known as Dreamers.

The court’s decision on Monday against intervening in a California lawsuit means the government must continue to accept renewal applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or Daca.

The California attorney general, Xavier Becerra, who brought the suit, said the decision was a victory for the “rule of law” and the 800,000 people protected from deportation by the program. “We hope all these victories are adding up to show this is a program that is fully legal,” Becerra said.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 20:30 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Dat stoelt wel op de gedachte dat Trump hem geen pardon geeft of als Trump hem wel een pardon geeft, Manafort verder wel succesvol vervolgd zou worden op staatsniveau + natuurlijk dat hij wat te bieden heeft.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 22:21 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Topman in de campagne en aanwezig bij de meeting. Het lijkt me stug dat hij niets te bieden heeft. Gates had dat namelijk wel.

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op vrijdag 23-02-2018 om 21:39:03 20/ Manafort and Gates aren't philanthropists—they worked for Trump for free because they anticipated they'd find profit in it at some point. Their lengthy history of criminal conspiracies suggests that they received nearly all their paydays from pro-Putin politicians in Ukraine. reageer retweet

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op vrijdag 23-02-2018 om 21:56:21 29/ So if Manafort and Gates were both at one point on the run from Deripaska, and then Manafort, via an intermediary, offered campaign intel to Deripaska—the intel having a monetary value and thus constituting coordination with a foreign national—why would he hide it from Gates? reageer retweet

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 23:00 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:
Zou wel mooi zijn als Manafort een paar jaartjes achter de tralies verdwijnt. Die man is al decennia een criminele zwendelaar.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 23:05 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Met de aanklachten die hij nu aan zijn broek heeft hangen komt hij nooit meer vrij, tenzij hij gaat praten.

quote:

Manafort wanted Steve to look at a transcript of a story, [...]

“Twelve-point-seven-million-dollar payment from Ukraine?”

[...]

“Does Trump know about this?”

[...]

“It was a long time ago,” he added. “I had expenses.”

[...]

Just as Steve had thought, the story ran the next day, August 15, on Page One, above the fold.

“I’ve got a crook running my campaign,” Trump said when he read it.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 23:23 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Zijn verleden is ook uiteindelijk waar Manafort op plat ging bij Trump

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/04/paul-manafort-and-me-216004

[..]

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 23:25 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Vreemd dat Trump decennia nodig had om daar achter te komen. Hij kent Manafort immers al sinds begin jaren tachtig. Trump wist best dat de man een opportunistische zwendelaar is.

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 23:25 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Vreemd dat Trump decennia nodig had om daar achter te komen. Hij kent Manafort immers al sinds begin jaren tachtig. Trump wist best dat de man een opportunistische zwendelaar is.

quote:

One of President Trump's closest political aides is slated to appear before the House Intelligence Committee to testify behind closed doors in its ongoing investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election, multiple sources say. White House communications director Hope Hicks was supposed to appear before the committee in January, but her interview was abruptly postponed while counsel for the White House and committee sorted out the scope of her testimony.

Hicks' uniquely close and longstanding relationship with President Trump makes her an essential witness to many key moments in the Trump campaign, the transition period, and the presidency. Before she joined his campaign in 2015, Hicks handled public relations for Ivanka Trump at the Trump Organization.

The committee will want to question Hicks about any and all contact Trump campaign members might have had with Russian intermediaries. However, one of the most charged issues likely to be addressed is Hicks' knowledge of the White House's initial statement, drafted aboard Air Force One, in response to press reports of a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians and Trump campaign officials. Committee members will presumably want to probe what role the president himself had in the process – which is also an area said to be of special interest to special counsel Robert Mueller.

Hicks' own role in responding to reports of the meeting may also be scrutinized. According to a report in the New York Times, a former spokesman for President Trump's legal team, Mark Corallo, planned to tell Mueller's team that Hicks said on a conference call that emails written by the President's son, Donald Trump, Jr., about the Trump Tower meeting, "will never get out."

SPOILER

In a statement at the time, Hicks' lawyer, Robert P. Trout, strongly denied Corallo's allegation. "She never said that," Trout said, "And the idea that Hope Hicks ever suggested that emails or other documents would be concealed or destroyed is completely false."

Hicks has already been questioned by the special counsel and the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of their respective investigations, according to multiple sources.

It is still unclear what, if any, limitations the White House may have placed on Hicks' testimony. But the White House and the committee have been at loggerheads on the scope of witness questioning before, with the White House cordoning off any events or topics that took place after the conclusion of the campaign.

When former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski appeared before the committee in January, he exasperated committee Democrats by saying he was not prepared to answer questions about the time following his departure from the Trump campaign. Though Lewandowski did not assert executive privilege, and though he has expressed a willingness to return before the committee, his return has not been scheduled, let alone compelled.

In the case of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who appeared before the committee once in January and again on February 15, the White House presented the committee with a series of yes-or-no questions that ranking member Adam Schiff, D-California, said were "literally scripted," in such a way that any attempts by the committee to move beyond them drew an unresponsive answer.

Bannon told the committee in February that he had been instructed by the White House to invoke executive privilege.

"That is not how executive privilege works – that's how stonewalling works," Schiff said at the time, adding that the only course forward for Congress was to initiate contempt proceedings.

As the House makes its return from a week-long recess, it is unclear what, if any, contempt proceedings have begun.

While the Republican leading the committee's Russia probe, Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, did not rule out holding Bannon in contempt, he made clear the decision was not entirely in his hands. Following Bannon's appearance on February 15, Conaway said he believed Bannon should answer the committee's questions, but "contempt is a big deal and I don't have unilateral control over that conversation."

He indicated he would be consulting with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and "an awful lot of lawyers" on next steps.

quote:

The Trump Organization announced Monday that it donated the profits from “foreign government patronage” at its hotels last year to the U.S. Treasury, but declined to identify those foreign customers or the amount of the contribution.

President Trump’s company made the donation on Thursday, according to George A. Sorial, the Trump Organization’s chief compliance counsel.

“Although not a legal requirement, this voluntary donation fulfills our pledge to donate profits from foreign government patronage at our hotels and similar business during President Trump’s term in office,” Sorial said.

The Washington Post asked for more details: How much was donated? Which Trump properties were included in this accounting? Which foreign entities had paid money to Trump’s businesses?

“We have nothing further to share at this time,” Amanda Miller, a Trump Organization spokeswoman, wrote in an email.

SPOILER

The Treasury Department also did not immediately respond to questions about the donation.

The Trump Organization’s contribution was first reported by the Associated Press.

Trump’s decision to maintain ownership of his company while in office raised questions about whether foreign government money flowing to his properties violates the Constitution’s “foreign emoluments clause,” which bars federal officials from taking gifts or “emoluments” from foreign states.

To assuage concerns about such payments, Trump promised before taking office that he would donate profits from foreign governments. But the details of that promise — how would “profit” be calculated, and which properties would be covered? — have remained vague.

A federal judge in Maryland is currently considering a lawsuit, brought by the attorneys general from Maryland and the District of Columbia, accusing Trump of violating the emoluments clause.

On Monday, Rob Marus, a spokesman for District of Columbia Attorney General Karl A. Racine, said the Trump Organization’s donation bolstered the suit.

“With this announcement, President Trump’s businesses seem to confirm that they accepted payments from foreign governments in violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause,” Marus said in a statement. “Whether the Trump Organization donated the proceeds from those foreign emoluments is irrelevant to our case, but we would certainly be interested in learning more about which foreign governments have paid the President.”

On Monday evening, Trump’s hotel in the District was scheduled to host a gala put on by the Kuwaiti Embassy. This will be the second year in a row that Kuwait has held its National Day party there.

twitter:

mitchellreports twitterde op dinsdag 27-02-2018 om 00:39:30 The administration reportedly so desperate to sell nuclear reactors to Saudis they are willing to waive non-proliferation requirements banning enrichment that could produce weapons....raises big policy questions https://t.co/O3GctMCkFe reageer retweet

twitter:

Acosta twitterde op dinsdag 27-02-2018 om 01:58:13 Trump appears to be backing away from his support for 21 year age limit for assault weapons purchases, sources tell us tonight. reageer retweet

quote:

Politically, Americans are more divided than ever.

When it comes to issues of race, immigration, national security, and environmental protection, they disagree about how the government should handle things like never before.

Relative to polls in the 1990s, Republicans are now much more likely to say poor people have it easy, while Democrats are less likely to say so. Conservatives are also more likely to say that environmental regulations are costing the US too many jobs. Liberals now seem less convinced that peace can be achieved through military strength than they were decades ago.

The Pew Research Center reports that the country's political divisions now far exceed "divisions along basic demographic lines, such as age, education, gender and race." The share of Americans who sit in the middle of the political spectrum is lower, too.

Russian bots are taking advantage of these widening differences on Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to drive Americans' opinions further apart.

But what in the brains of conservative and liberal voters actually drive their belief systems? Scientists have been researching the psychological differences between people with different stances, and there are a few key ways that people on opposite ends of the political spectrum see the world. Here's what the data shows:

[..]

quote:

Op maandag 26 februari 2018 17:23 schreef Szura het volgende:
@ZekeJMiller
Trump rips Fla. Deputies for not going into school. "I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon."

https://twitter.com/zekejmiller/status/968155353912369152

twitter:

CaseyCagle twitterde op maandag 26-02-2018 om 20:02:28 I will kill any tax legislation that benefits @Delta unless the company changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with @NRA. Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back. reageer retweet

twitter:

kindNotWeak2017 twitterde op dinsdag 27-02-2018 om 02:20:36 Trump today: "I'd take on the shooter even if I didn't have a gun!" . Trump tonight: "you're crazy if you think I'll take on Wayne Lapierre and Dana Loesch!" reageer retweet

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 09:13 schreef truthortruth het volgende:
Wel prettig dat Trump nu een hoop bullshit spuit waar zelfs zijn aanhang van zal denken, yeah right!

quote:

Today, I want to hear your ideas on a number of critical issues. But most importantly, we want to discuss the public safety in schools and public safety generally. But school safety — we can't have this go on.

I'm grateful that Governor Rick Scott is here, and we thank him for his leadership in the aftermath of the terrible tragedy in Parkland, Florida. Horrible. Our nation is heartbroken. We continue to mourn the loss of so many precious, innocent young lives. These are incredible people. I visited a lot of them.

But we'll turn our grief into action. We have to have action. We don't have any action. It happens, a week goes by, ‘Let's keep talking.’ Another week goes by. We keep talking. Two months go by, all of a sudden everybody is off to the next subject. And when it happens again, everybody is angry, and ‘Let's start talking again.’ We've got to stop.

SPOILER

By the way, bump stocks — we're writing that out. I'm writing that out myself. I don't care if Congress does it or not. I'm writing it out myself, okay? You put it into the machine-gun category — which is what it is, it becomes essentially a machine gun, and nobody's going to be able — it's going to be very hard to get them. So we're writing out bump stocks.

But we have to take steps to harden our schools so that they're less vulnerable to attack. This includes allowing well-trained and certified personnel to carry concealed firearms. At some point, you need volume. Now I don't know that a school is going to be able to hire 100 security guards that are armed. Plus, you know, I got to watch some deputy sheriffs perform this weekend. They weren't exactly Medal of Honor winners, all right? The way they performed was, frankly, disgusting. They were listening to what was going on — the one in particular. He was then — he was earlier, and then you had three others that probably a similar deal a little bit later, but a similar kind of a thing. You know, I really believe — you don't know until you test it, but I think — I really believe I'd run into — even if I didn't have a weapon. And I think most of the people in this room would have done that, too, because I know most of you. But the way they performed was really a disgrace.

Second, we must confront the issue of mental health, and here is the best example of mental health. This kid had 39 red flags. They should have known. They did know. They didn't do anything about it. That was really a bad time, I have to tell you. Nobody bigger for law enforcement than I am, but between the people that didn't go into that school and protect those lives and the fact that this should have been solved long before it happened, pretty sad. So we have to confront the issue, and we have to discuss mental health, and we have to do something about it.

You know in the old days we had mental institutions, had a lot of them, and you could nab somebody like this because — you know, they did. They knew he was — something was off. You had to know that. People were calling all over the place. But you used to be able to bring them into a mental institution, and hopefully he gets help or whatever, but he's off the streets. You can't arrest him, I guess, because he hasn't done anything, but you know he's like a boiler ready to explode, right? So he's — he just — you have to do something. But you can't put him in jail, I guess, because he hasn't done anything. But in the old days you'd put him into a mental institutions, and we had them in New York, and our government started closing them because of costs. And we're going to have start talking about mental institutions, because a lot of the folks in this room closed their mental institutions also. So, we have no halfway. We have nothing between a prison and leaving him at his house, which we can't do anymore. So, I think you folks have to start thinking about that.

Third, we have to improve our early-warning response systems, so that when friends, family and neighbors do warn the authorities about a violent or dangerous individual, action is taken quickly and decisively. Look, you had the one mother — if you remember in Connecticut? You saw how horrible that was. She was begging, begging to take her son in and help him do something — anything, he's so dangerous — and nobody really listened to her. And he ended up killing her, and then the rest. You know what happened. It was a horror. But she was begging to do something about her own son. Recently, you had a grandmother that got to see the notes of her grandchild, and she reported him, and they nabbed him. He was ready to go in for a school, it looked like. She reported him. And there the law enforcement did a very good job.

Fourth, we must pursue common-sense measures that protect the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans, while keeping guns out of the hands of those who pose a threat to themselves and to others.

And, fifth, we must strive to create a culture in our country that cherishes life and condemns violence and embraces dignity. Now, with all of that, over the weekend, I cannot believe the press didn't find this out. I can't believe it. I think they're getting a little bit — I could never use the word lazy. You don't want to say that. We don't want to give them any more enthusiasm than they already have. But I can't believe they didn't figure this one. Because I had lunch with Wayne LaPierre, Chris Cox and David Lehman of the NRA. And I want to tell you, they want to do something. And I said, “Fellows, we've got to do something. It's too long now, where we've got to do something.”

And we're going to do very strong background checks — very strong. We're going to do background checks. If we see a sicko, I don't want him having a gun. And, you know, I know it was a time when anybody could have — I mean, even if they were sick, they were fighting. And I said, “Fellows, we can't do it anymore.”

There's no bigger fan of the Second Amendment than me, and there's no bigger fan of the NRA. And these guys are great patriots. They're great people. And they want to do something. They're going to do something, and they're going to do it, I think, quickly. I think they want to see it. But we don't want to have sick people having the right to have a gun. Plus, when we see somebody's sick like this guy, when the police went to see him, they didn't do a good job. But they have restrictions on what they can do. We've got to give them immediate access to taking those guns away, so that they don't just leave, and he's sitting there with seven different weapons — got to give them immediate access.

Don't worry. You're not going to get any — you won't — don't worry about the NRA. They're on our side. You guys, half of you are so afraid of the NRA; there's nothing to be afraid of. And you know what? If they're not with you, we have to fight them every once in a while. That's okay. They're doing what they think is right. I will tell you, they are doing what they think is right. But sometimes, we're going to have to be very tough, and we're going to have to fight them. But we need strong background checks. For a long period of time, people resisted that. But now people, I think, are really into it.

And John Cornyn — great guy, senator — Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, hopefully, are going to work on some legislation. I hope you guys — they started already. In fact, John has legislation in. We're going to strengthen it. We're going to make it more pertinent to what we're discussing. But he's already started the process. We've already started it.

Many of this — in other words, you'll do a rule, you have to wait 90 days. That's sort of what's happening with the bump stocks. I'm waiting for the next process, but it's gone. Just don't worry about it. It's gone — essentially gone, because we're going to make it so tough that you're not going to be able to get them. Nobody's going to want them anyway.

You know, bump stocks, you shoot rapidly but not accurately. I don't know if you have ever heard what a bump stock does. The bullets come out fast, but you don't know where the hell they're going. That's why nobody even really too much came to its defense. But he used it in Las Vegas. He was using bump stocks in Las Vegas, as you know. So, we're getting rid of them.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 08:53 schreef Arcee het volgende:

twitter:

CaseyCagle twitterde op maandag 26-02-2018 om 20:02:28 I will kill any tax legislation that benefits @Delta unless the company changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with @NRA. Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back. reageer retweet

Dat is nog 'es kleur bekennen. Gewoon toegeven dat de NRA gelijk staat aan conservatives. Daarnaast moet de invloed van de regering natuurlijk altijd minimaal zijn voor de Reps, tenzij je die in je eigen voordeel kunt gebruiken zoals hier. Alsof een bedrijf niet zelf bepaalt met wie het zaken doet.

quote:

Georgia’s lieutenant governor said on Monday he would work to derail a multimillion-dollar tax cut that would benefit Delta Air Lines unless the company reinstated its relationship with the National Rifle Association.

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who also serves as president of the Georgia state Senate, intimated in a tweet he would “kill any tax legislation” as punishment to Delta, which last week said it would end its discount program for members of the NRA. Delta, headquartered in Atlanta, is one of more than a dozen companies that have distanced themselves from the gun lobby following the massacre of 17 people at a Florida high school on Feb. 14.

“Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back,” Cagle, a leading Republican candidate to replace Gov. Nathan Deal, wrote on Monday.

SPOILER

The Georgia legislature has been considering a new bill that would restore a massive sales tax exemption on jet fuel. Delta, the state’s largest private employer, would be the provision’s main beneficiary and save about $40 million a year.

Just last week, Cagle had endorsed the measure, and it was expected to move through to Gov. Nathan Deal’s desk quickly.

Cagle’s statement drew some rebukes from other lawmakers, including Stacey Abrams, a Democratic candidate for governor, who urged lawmakers to “take action to roll back dangerous laws that put guns in the wrong hands.”

“I applaud Delta’s decision to listen to feedback from its customers and reject #NRA extremism that has prevented commonsense reform for too long,” Abrams wrote on Twitter.

Another Democrat, state Sen. Steve Henson, told ABC News that “Republican fear of the NRA is evidently more important than the Georgia business climate, jobs, or the well-being of Georgia citizens.”

And the ACLU of Georgia also called Cagle’s threat inappropriate in a statement to ABC. “Politicians should not use taxpayer dollars to impose ideological litmus tests and punish organizations that express views that politicians dislike,” ACLU Executive Director Andrea Young said.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday that Delta had been attempting to downplay the political motivations behind its decision, saying it was a supporter of the Second Amendment and that the company held a “neutral” stance on gun control measures. The company noted a separate instance in which it had withdrawn support “over a politically and emotionally charged issue” after it ended its sponsorship of a staging of “Julius Caesar,” which depicted the assassination of a Donald Trump-like character.

The memo did little to assuage Cagle and other conservatives in the Georgia General Assembly.

“I’m tired of conservatives being kicked around on our values. It’s time we stand up and fight and show corporations that conservative values are important, not just to Georgia but to the entire nation,” Cagle told the Journal-Constitution. “We can fight for jobs, but we can also fight for values.”

quote:

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee (D) on Monday urged President Donald Trump to lay off Twitter and instead listen to Americans and back away from one of his suggestions for dealing with mass shootings. Inslee directly challenged Trump as he and other governors met at the White House with the president and several senior administration aides.

“I’ve listened to the biology teachers and they don’t want to [be armed] at any percentage,” the former U.S. House member said. “I’ve listened to the first-grade teachers who don’t want to be pistol-packing first-grade teachers. I’ve listened to law enforcement, who have said they don’t want to train teachers [on firearm use]. ... Educators should educate, and they should not be foisted upon this responsibility of packing heat in first-grade classes.”

Inslee ended his remarks by saying, “So I just suggest we need a little less tweeting here, and a little more listening, and I just suggest we take [Trump’s proposal] off the table and move forward.”

SPOILER

Trump responded by noting that “a number of states right now” allow educators to bear arms while in the classroom.

At least eight states allow teachers in some capacity to carry guns on K-12 school campuses. But law enforcement groups and teacher organizations have expressed opposition to the president’s proposal to arm certain teachers, arguing it could lead to accidental loss of life.

The National Rifle Association, the nation’s top gun lobby, thinks it would be a good move. “Evil walks among us ([i]dat klopt dan wel weer - bp[/i[) and God help us if we don’t harden our schools and protect our kids,” NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said last week.

The public seems divided on the matter. Fifty percent of Americans oppose allowing more teachers and school officials to carry guns, while 44 percent support the idea, according to a recent CBS News poll.

Some notable Republicans are among those opposing equipping more teachers with guns, including Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Marco Rubio, both of Florida.

“The notion that my kids are going to school with teachers that are armed with a weapon is not something that, quite frankly, I’m comfortable with,” Rubio said last week during a CNN town hall on gun violence and gun control.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 09:37 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
iets uitgebreider: Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor Tells Delta To Give NRA Back Its Discounts, Or Else (HuffPo)

Stel je voor, een bedrijf dat zelf beslist met welke bedrijven ze zaken willen doen!

[..]

SPOILER

The Georgia legislature has been considering a new bill that would restore a massive sales tax exemption on jet fuel. Delta, the state’s largest private employer, would be the provision’s main beneficiary and save about $40 million a year.

Just last week, Cagle had endorsed the measure, and it was expected to move through to Gov. Nathan Deal’s desk quickly.

Cagle’s statement drew some rebukes from other lawmakers, including Stacey Abrams, a Democratic candidate for governor, who urged lawmakers to “take action to roll back dangerous laws that put guns in the wrong hands.”

“I applaud Delta’s decision to listen to feedback from its customers and reject #NRA extremism that has prevented commonsense reform for too long,” Abrams wrote on Twitter.

Another Democrat, state Sen. Steve Henson, told ABC News that “Republican fear of the NRA is evidently more important than the Georgia business climate, jobs, or the well-being of Georgia citizens.”

And the ACLU of Georgia also called Cagle’s threat inappropriate in a statement to ABC. “Politicians should not use taxpayer dollars to impose ideological litmus tests and punish organizations that express views that politicians dislike,” ACLU Executive Director Andrea Young said.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday that Delta had been attempting to downplay the political motivations behind its decision, saying it was a supporter of the Second Amendment and that the company held a “neutral” stance on gun control measures. The company noted a separate instance in which it had withdrawn support “over a politically and emotionally charged issue” after it ended its sponsorship of a staging of “Julius Caesar,” which depicted the assassination of a Donald Trump-like character.

The memo did little to assuage Cagle and other conservatives in the Georgia General Assembly.

“I’m tired of conservatives being kicked around on our values. It’s time we stand up and fight and show corporations that conservative values are important, not just to Georgia but to the entire nation,” Cagle told the Journal-Constitution. “We can fight for jobs, but we can also fight for values.”

quote:

Joseph Yun, the State Department’s top diplomat on North Korea policy, will retire at the end of the week, the agency said Monday.

Yun, a former ambassador to Malaysia, currently serves as the special representative for North Korea policy and has served with the foreign service since 1985. He has been instrumental in crafting U.S. policy on the Korean peninsula since his appointment by President Barack Obama in 2016 and helped secure the release of gravely ill American student Otto Warmbier last year.

“It was completely my decision to retire at this time,” Yun told CNN about his departure.

SPOILER

The news was first reported by CNN and The Washington Post, and later confirmed by the Department of State.

“The Secretary has reluctantly accepted his decision and wished him ‎well,” State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement provided to HuffPost. “Ambassador Yun has served with distinction for more than 30 years ... we are sorry to see him retire.”

Nauert noted that “diplomatic efforts regarding North Korea will continue based on our maximum pressure campaign to isolate the DPRK until it agrees to begin credible talks toward a denuclearized Korean peninsula.”

Yun is the State Department’s top official working on North Korean issues and has been a strong advocate for engagement with the regime, particularly as tensions have increased in the region. He was among the first to learn that Warmbier had fallen into a coma at some point during his 17-month detention in the country, and he flew to Pyongyang last June to secure his release.

Warmbier died just days later.

The Post noted that Yun also served as the U.S. official tasked with communicating with North Korean representatives at the United Nations in New York, the backchannel used by diplomats to communicate even while official channels are closed.

Yun’s departure comes just days after the close of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, where diplomats from North Korea hovered around envoys from the United States for weeks. A secret meeting between Vice President Mike Pence and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister was canceled at the last minute after Pence used the trip to slam the regime and declined to acknowledge the North Korean representatives.

But, despite the frosty encounters, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Sunday the North was willing to open a dialogue with the United States, although it was unclear if such talks would come with strings attached. The U.S. has said in recent weeks it would hold preliminary talks with the North, but only to explain that it would keep up international pressure in hopes of convincing the North to abandon its nuclear weapon programs.

The U.S. also announced a new barrage of sanctions against Pyongyang last week.

Yun’s departure leaves the Trump administration without another senior official on the Korean peninsula. The White House has yet to nominate an ambassador to South Korea and pulled back from a widely respected candidate last month after the man, Victor Cha, expressed concerns over policy decisions related to North Korea.

It’s unclear who will replace Yun, but morale in the foreign service has been falling since Donald Trump took over the presidency in January 2017. Dozens of top-level officials at the State Department have left the agency over the past year, and applications to join the foreign service have plummeted.

quote:

David Hogg, a Parkland survivor advocating for gun reform after the shooting, has specifically been calling on FedEx and other companies to cut ties with the NRA.

“No matter who you are or what organization are I’d be a huge help if you changed your shipping service over to @USPS or @DHLUS or @UPS in support of us. In fact tweet out at companies that use only use @FedEx and demand action! Let’s get this done!” Hogg tweeted Monday before FedEx issued its statement.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 10:22 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Roy Moore Endorses Missouri GOP Candidate Who Expects ‘Home Cooked Dinner At 6’



Leer dan koken!

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 10:22 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Roy Moore Endorses Missouri GOP Candidate Who Expects ‘Home Cooked Dinner At 6’



Leer dan koken!

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 10:46 schreef Puddington het volgende:

[..]

Waarom is die gast nog relevant? Hij heeft verloren.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 10:51 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Dat is nog niet duidelijk toch? Het hertellen loopt.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 10:56 schreef Puddington het volgende:

[..]

Had Jones niet met zo'n verschil gewonnen dat dat niet nodig was?

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 10:22 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Roy Moore Endorses Missouri GOP Candidate Who Expects ‘Home Cooked Dinner At 6’



Leer dan koken!

twitter:

thistallawkgirl twitterde op donderdag 25-01-2018 om 20:48:09 Courtland Sykes is what happens when you let Jesus take the wheel and he crashes into a tanker truck full of Axe body spray. reageer retweet

twitter:

StevenLongSC twitterde op maandag 26-02-2018 om 15:38:36 I’m giving away 3 handguns!! 1 to a K-12 teacher/staff, 1 to a higher ed faculty/staff, and 1 to a freedom loving patriot! Read all about it here: https://t.co/SDMGsdO6tT https://t.co/mvAmObSHan reageer retweet

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 09:29 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
Voor degenen die dol zijn op alle kanten opvliegende wartaal, hier Trumps gehele speech van gisteren (WaPo):

[..]

SPOILER

By the way, bump stocks — we're writing that out. I'm writing that out myself. I don't care if Congress does it or not. I'm writing it out myself, okay? You put it into the machine-gun category — which is what it is, it becomes essentially a machine gun, and nobody's going to be able — it's going to be very hard to get them. So we're writing out bump stocks.

But we have to take steps to harden our schools so that they're less vulnerable to attack. This includes allowing well-trained and certified personnel to carry concealed firearms. At some point, you need volume. Now I don't know that a school is going to be able to hire 100 security guards that are armed. Plus, you know, I got to watch some deputy sheriffs perform this weekend. They weren't exactly Medal of Honor winners, all right? The way they performed was, frankly, disgusting. They were listening to what was going on — the one in particular. He was then — he was earlier, and then you had three others that probably a similar deal a little bit later, but a similar kind of a thing. You know, I really believe — you don't know until you test it, but I think — I really believe I'd run into — even if I didn't have a weapon. And I think most of the people in this room would have done that, too, because I know most of you. But the way they performed was really a disgrace.

Second, we must confront the issue of mental health, and here is the best example of mental health. This kid had 39 red flags. They should have known. They did know. They didn't do anything about it. That was really a bad time, I have to tell you. Nobody bigger for law enforcement than I am, but between the people that didn't go into that school and protect those lives and the fact that this should have been solved long before it happened, pretty sad. So we have to confront the issue, and we have to discuss mental health, and we have to do something about it.

You know in the old days we had mental institutions, had a lot of them, and you could nab somebody like this because — you know, they did. They knew he was — something was off. You had to know that. People were calling all over the place. But you used to be able to bring them into a mental institution, and hopefully he gets help or whatever, but he's off the streets. You can't arrest him, I guess, because he hasn't done anything, but you know he's like a boiler ready to explode, right? So he's — he just — you have to do something. But you can't put him in jail, I guess, because he hasn't done anything. But in the old days you'd put him into a mental institutions, and we had them in New York, and our government started closing them because of costs. And we're going to have start talking about mental institutions, because a lot of the folks in this room closed their mental institutions also. So, we have no halfway. We have nothing between a prison and leaving him at his house, which we can't do anymore. So, I think you folks have to start thinking about that.

Third, we have to improve our early-warning response systems, so that when friends, family and neighbors do warn the authorities about a violent or dangerous individual, action is taken quickly and decisively. Look, you had the one mother — if you remember in Connecticut? You saw how horrible that was. She was begging, begging to take her son in and help him do something — anything, he's so dangerous — and nobody really listened to her. And he ended up killing her, and then the rest. You know what happened. It was a horror. But she was begging to do something about her own son. Recently, you had a grandmother that got to see the notes of her grandchild, and she reported him, and they nabbed him. He was ready to go in for a school, it looked like. She reported him. And there the law enforcement did a very good job.

Fourth, we must pursue common-sense measures that protect the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans, while keeping guns out of the hands of those who pose a threat to themselves and to others.

And, fifth, we must strive to create a culture in our country that cherishes life and condemns violence and embraces dignity. Now, with all of that, over the weekend, I cannot believe the press didn't find this out. I can't believe it. I think they're getting a little bit — I could never use the word lazy. You don't want to say that. We don't want to give them any more enthusiasm than they already have. But I can't believe they didn't figure this one. Because I had lunch with Wayne LaPierre, Chris Cox and David Lehman of the NRA. And I want to tell you, they want to do something. And I said, “Fellows, we've got to do something. It's too long now, where we've got to do something.”

And we're going to do very strong background checks — very strong. We're going to do background checks. If we see a sicko, I don't want him having a gun. And, you know, I know it was a time when anybody could have — I mean, even if they were sick, they were fighting. And I said, “Fellows, we can't do it anymore.”

There's no bigger fan of the Second Amendment than me, and there's no bigger fan of the NRA. And these guys are great patriots. They're great people. And they want to do something. They're going to do something, and they're going to do it, I think, quickly. I think they want to see it. But we don't want to have sick people having the right to have a gun. Plus, when we see somebody's sick like this guy, when the police went to see him, they didn't do a good job. But they have restrictions on what they can do. We've got to give them immediate access to taking those guns away, so that they don't just leave, and he's sitting there with seven different weapons — got to give them immediate access.

Don't worry. You're not going to get any — you won't — don't worry about the NRA. They're on our side. You guys, half of you are so afraid of the NRA; there's nothing to be afraid of. And you know what? If they're not with you, we have to fight them every once in a while. That's okay. They're doing what they think is right. I will tell you, they are doing what they think is right. But sometimes, we're going to have to be very tough, and we're going to have to fight them. But we need strong background checks. For a long period of time, people resisted that. But now people, I think, are really into it.

And John Cornyn — great guy, senator — Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, hopefully, are going to work on some legislation. I hope you guys — they started already. In fact, John has legislation in. We're going to strengthen it. We're going to make it more pertinent to what we're discussing. But he's already started the process. We've already started it.

Many of this — in other words, you'll do a rule, you have to wait 90 days. That's sort of what's happening with the bump stocks. I'm waiting for the next process, but it's gone. Just don't worry about it. It's gone — essentially gone, because we're going to make it so tough that you're not going to be able to get them. Nobody's going to want them anyway.

You know, bump stocks, you shoot rapidly but not accurately. I don't know if you have ever heard what a bump stock does. The bullets come out fast, but you don't know where the hell they're going. That's why nobody even really too much came to its defense. But he used it in Las Vegas. He was using bump stocks in Las Vegas, as you know. So, we're getting rid of them.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 11:39 schreef ZCAB het volgende:
'Missouri is the real America' is een van de meest anti-Amerikaanse dingen die ik ooit heb gehoord. Zelfs de inwoners van Missouri zelf zullen wel denken: 'Jezus, is dat echt het beeld dat hij heeft van ons land? Twee armoedige en met misdaad overgoten stedelijke gebieden omringd door sojavelden en koeien?'

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 12:26 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
South Carolina state Rep. Steven Long (R) organiseert een loterij voor leraren en overig schoolpersoneel... de drie prijzen: nee, geen boeken, geen lesmaterialen, geen veiligheidscursus... EEN GUN NATUURLIJK! (Duh.)

twitter:

StevenLongSC twitterde op maandag 26-02-2018 om 15:38:36 I’m giving away 3 handguns!! 1 to a K-12 teacher/staff, 1 to a higher ed faculty/staff, and 1 to a freedom loving patriot! Read all about it here: https://t.co/SDMGsdO6tT https://t.co/mvAmObSHan reageer retweet

meer: https://www.huffingtonpos(...)9448e4b02cb368c4e246

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 14:18 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Oh,

hij heeft weer een aanval.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 14:20 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Hij is bang voor Manafort.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 14:25 schreef Szura het volgende:
http://thehill.com/blogs/(...)bits-on-social-media

Ok bedankt, Melania.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 14:16 schreef Szura het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 14:16 schreef Szura het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 14:43 schreef Falco het volgende:

[..]

Dit is fake of echt?

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op dinsdag 27-02-2018 om 13:49:41 WITCH HUNT! reageer retweet

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 14:43 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op dinsdag 27-02-2018 om 13:49:41 WITCH HUNT! reageer retweet

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 14:25 schreef Szura het volgende:
http://thehill.com/blogs/(...)bits-on-social-media

Ok bedankt, Melania.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 15:05 schreef vipergts het volgende:

[..]

Ik vind het wel dapper ze doet wat ze kan terwijl ze met Donald getrouwd is

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 15:18 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Volgens mij doet ze helemaal niets.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 15:55 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Stuk in politico: Kans is groot dat Trump in 2020 herkozen gaat worden.

https://www.politico.com/(...)roval-ratings-217037

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 15:56 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Eerst maar wachten tot November.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 15:55 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Stuk in politico: Kans is groot dat Trump in 2020 herkozen gaat worden.

https://www.politico.com/(...)roval-ratings-217037

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 15:59 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Kans dat de democraten de midterms winnen zijn erg groot, maar de republikeinen kunnen ook hun meerderheid behouden met een beetje geluk en een goede campagne.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:11 schreef Ludachrist het volgende:

[..]

Gewaagde voorspelling wel.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:01 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
We shall see

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:15 schreef Treinhomo het volgende:

[..]

Gezien je ondertitel:
Deze toevallig gezien ? Was een week of twee geleden op TV.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:12 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
huis net wel of net niet denk ik.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:17 schreef Ludachrist het volgende:

[..]

Tevens heel gewaagd.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:18 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:

[..]

Wat denk jij dan?

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:19 schreef Ludachrist het volgende:

[..]

Republikeinen houden in beide de meerderheid.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 15:59 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Ook leuk om te lezen:

Kans dat de democraten de midterms winnen zijn erg groot, maar de republikeinen kunnen ook hun meerderheid behouden met een beetje geluk en een goede campagne.

Politico:

https://www.politico.com/(...)2018-midterms-217088

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:25 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Ik voorspel dat Trump in 2026 geen president meer is.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:26 schreef Ludachrist het volgende:

[..]

In 2020 zou hij het wel nog kunnen worden voorspel ik, maar misschien ook niet.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 15:59 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Ook leuk om te lezen:

Kans dat de democraten de midterms winnen zijn erg groot, maar de republikeinen kunnen ook hun meerderheid behouden met een beetje geluk en een goede campagne.

Politico:

https://www.politico.com/(...)2018-midterms-217088

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:29 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Wordt spannend dus.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:17 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Vond het erg leuk om te zien, het was helaas wel een beetje gekleurd. Maar het blijft de VPRO

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:34 schreef Treinhomo het volgende:

[..]

Voornamelijk raw material, toch ?

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 15:55 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Stuk in politico: Kans is groot dat Trump in 2020 herkozen gaat worden.

https://www.politico.com/(...)roval-ratings-217037

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 15:18 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Volgens mij doet ze helemaal niets.

quote:

A top U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers on Tuesday that he has not received specific direction from the Trump administration to disrupt Russian cyberattacks targeting U.S. elections.

“I haven’t been granted any additional authorities,” NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers, who also serves as commander of U.S. Cyber Command, told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

While Rogers said he has not asked for additional authorities to stop Russian cyberattacks at the source, he noted that it would ultimately be up to President Trump to give him that permission.
“I need a policy decision that indicates there is specific direction to do that,” Rogers said. “The president ultimately would make this decision in accordance with a recommendation from the secretary of Defense.”

Rogers did say he has directed the cyber mission force to "begin some specific work" on the issue, but would not go into further detail on the steps in the unclassified setting.

SPOILER

Democrats on the committee seized on Rogers’s comments as evidence that the administration has not done enough to counter future election interference.

“Essentially, we have not taken on the Russians yet,” said Rep. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking member, who accused the administration of “essentially sitting back and waiting.”

While Rogers pushed back on the notion that the administration has done nothing to counter Russian interference, he acknowledged that the response so far—which has included sanctions passed by Congress—has been insufficient in deterring such behavior.

“They haven’t paid a price, at least, that has significantly changed their behavior,” Rogers said.

At the same time, Rogers said confronting Russian hackers in the cyber realm would not necessarily be the “optimal” response to Moscow’s efforts to interfere in U.S. elections.

“I’m not sure that the capabilities that I have would be the optimal or only response to this,” Rogers said.

“It could be a part of the response,” he added.

Rogers was grilled by lawmakers from both parties about the steps the government has taken to deter and respond to Russian efforts to disrupt American elections throughout the hearing, which was scheduled to examine the fiscal year 2019 budget request for U.S. Cyber Command.

U.S. officials have blamed Russia for directing cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, and probing digital election infrastructure not involved in vote tallying, as part of the 2016 influence effort.

The Department of Homeland Security responded to Russian hacking by providing state and local election officials with cyber testing and other resources to help protect their systems from future cyberattacks.

Rogers’s comments Tuesday mirrored those he made before the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month, when he and other top intelligence officials said they expect Russia to meddle in the 2018 midterms.

“We’re not where we need to be or where we want to be,” he told Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.).

Rogers is serving out his final weeks as leader of the NSA and Cyber Command. Trump has tapped the leader of Army Cyber Command, Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, to replace him.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:52 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Zie discussie vanaf hier.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 18:54 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Ook leuk om te lezen van politico:

Kasich heeft grote interesse om zich kandidaat te stellen voor de GOP als Trump zich niet herkiesbaar stelt omdat hij geen zin meer heeft of wanneer hij is afgetreden en Pence president is.

Er is zelfs een kleine kans dat hij Trump uitdaagt als Trump wel voor een tweede termijn gaat en dan als hij niet wint dat hij als onafhankelijk kandidaat meedoet.

https://www.politico.com/(...)ary-elections-422337

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 18:54 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Ook leuk om te lezen van politico:

Kasich heeft grote interesse om zich kandidaat te stellen voor de GOP als Trump zich niet herkiesbaar stelt omdat hij geen zin meer heeft of wanneer hij is afgetreden en Pence president is.

Er is zelfs een kleine kans dat hij Trump uitdaagt als Trump wel voor een tweede termijn gaat en dan als hij niet wint dat hij als onafhankelijk kandidaat meedoet.

https://www.politico.com/(...)ary-elections-422337

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 17:22 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
NSA director says he hasn’t received orders from Trump to disrupt Russian cyberattacks targeting elections

[..]

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 21:14 schreef OMG het volgende:
Wie?

quote:

Brad Parscale (born January 3, 1976) is an American digital media and political strategist. He served as the digital media director for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Parscale began working for the Trump Organization in 2011, developing and designing websites and creating and managing digital media strategies. In early 2015, Trump hired Parscale and his firm, Giles-Parscale, to create a website for his exploratory campaign. When Trump declared himself a Republican candidate in 2015, one of the first people he called was Parscale, asking him to update his exploratory campaign site into a "full-fledged presidential campaign website."[1] Throughout the Republican primary, Parscale was responsible for the Donald J. Trump for President website, as well as for digital media strategy and online fundraising campaigns. In June 2016, Parscale was officially named digital media director for the Donald J. Trump for President campaign, overseeing all aspects of digital media and online fundraising, as well as traditional media strategy, like radio and television placements.[2] In January 2017, Parscale, along with another senior Trump aide, Nick Ayers, formally launched America First Policies, a non-profit organization that promotes President Trump's agenda and White House initiatives.[3]

twitter:

mkraju twitterde op dinsdag 27-02-2018 om 21:30:12 “We got Bannon’ed,” one Dem says of Hicks testimony, which is in its fifth hour. Rs holding fire. with @jeremyherb https://t.co/cwnmL30LKl reageer retweet

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 21:07 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Brad Parscale campagne leider voor Trump in 2020

Zojuist een press release.

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

A memo sent Friday downgraded the presidential son-in-law and adviser and other White House aides who had been working on interim clearances.

Presidential son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has had his security clearance downgraded — a move that will prevent him from viewing many of the sensitive documents to which he once had unfettered access.

Kushner is not alone. All White House aides working on the highest-level interim clearances — at the Top Secret/SCI-level — were informed in a memo sent Friday that their clearances would be downgraded to the Secret level, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.

The SCI acronym stands for sensitive compartmentalized information, a category of information that comes from sensitive intelligence sources and must be walled off.

SPOILER

The memo was not signed by chief of staff John Kelly, but it comes as the retired Marine general and other top White House aides are grappling with the fallout of a scandal involving former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, which revealed that dozens of White House aides had yet to receive permanent clearances but nonetheless had access to some of the country’s deepest secrets.

The president has the ability to grant Kushner a permanent clearance, but Trump said Friday — the same day the memo was sent — that he was leaving the decision to his chief of staff.

“I will let General Kelly make that decision,” Trump told reporters. “I have no doubt he’ll make the right decision.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the memo.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to comment on Kushner’s clearance status at a briefing Tuesday.

“We actually haven’t commented on Jared’s issue indicated, but we have commented on his ability to do his job. Which, he’s a valued member of the team and he will continue to do the important work that he’s been doing since he’s started in the administration.”

Kushner’s attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement that Kushner “has done more than what is expected of him in this process.”

Lowell added that the changes would “not affect Mr. Kushner’s ability to continue to do the very important work he has been assigned by the president.”

Friday’s decision is the first change to the clearance process instituted in the wake of the Porter debacle that will directly affect Kushner, who serves as a senior adviser to Trump and has until now had access to the president’s daily brief, the most highly-classified document that Trump sees.

Kelly took the rare step last week of issuing a public statement that Kushner would be able to continue his work in the White House unfettered.

“As I told Jared days ago, I have full confidence in his ability to continue performing his duties in his foreign policy portfolio including overseeing our Israeli-Palestinian peace effort and serving as an integral part of our relationship with Mexico,” Kelly said in the statement.

It was unclear whether Kushner would need access to top secret information to continue performing those duties — and whether Kelly was prepared to enact a policy that could be perceived as a jab at the president’s son-in-law.

The decision to downgrade White House still working on interim clearances, however, indicates that Kelly is prepared to impose the same sort of discipline on the White House clearance process that he has tried to impose on the West Wing staff more broadly.

“The American people deserve a White House staff that meets the highest standards and that has been carefully vetted — especially those who work closely with the president or handle sensitive national security information,” Kelly told colleagues in a memo circulated on Feb. 16. “We should — and in the future, must — do better.”

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 21:55 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Kushner loses access to top-secret intelligence

[..]

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 21:14 schreef OMG het volgende:
Wie?

quote:

Special counsel Robert Mueller has moved to dismiss recently-unveiled charges against Rick Gates, who pleaded guilty last week in federal court in Washington.

http://www.washingtonexam(...)deal/article/2650138

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op dinsdag 27-02-2018 om 13:49:41 WITCH HUNT! reageer retweet

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 22:12 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

https://twitter.com/parscale

Het brein achter de 2016 online campagne.

Heb een paar interviews met hem gezien. Hele slimme gozer.

quote:

On March 17, 2017, WikiLeaks tweeted that it had never communicated with Roger Stone, a longtime confidante and informal adviser to President Donald Trump. In his interview with the House Intelligence Committee last September, Stone, who testified under oath, told lawmakers that he had communicated with WikiLeaks via an “intermediary,” whom he identified only as a “journalist.” He declined to reveal that person’s identity to the committee, he told reporters later.

Private Twitter messages obtained by The Atlantic show that Stone and WikiLeaks, a radical-transparency group, communicated directly on October 13, 2016—and that WikiLeaks sought to keep its channel to Stone open after Trump won the election. The existence of the secret correspondence marks yet another strange twist in the White House’s rapidly swelling Russia scandal. Stone and Trump have been friends for decades, which raises key questions about what the president knew about Stone’s interactions with Wikileaks during the campaign. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[..]

quote:

Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.

It is unclear if any of those countries acted on the discussions, but Kushner’s contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns inside the White House and are a reason he has been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance, the officials said.

Kushner’s interim security clearance was downgraded last week from the top-secret to the secret level, which should restrict the regular access he has had to highly-classified information, according to administration officials.

H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s national security adviser, learned that Kushner had contacts with foreign officials that he did not coordinate through the National Security Council or officially report. The issue of foreign officials talking about their meetings with Kushner and their perception of his vulnerabilities was a subject raised in McMaster’s daily intelligence briefings, according to the current and former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

SPOILER

Within the White House, Kushner’s lack of government experience and his business debt were seen from the beginning of his tenure as potential points of leverage that foreign governments could use to influence him, the current and former officials said.

They could also have legal implications. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has asked people about the protocols Kushner used when he set up conversations with foreign leaders, according to a former U.S. official.

Officials in the White House were concerned that Kushner was “naive and being tricked” in conversations with foreign officials, some of whom said they wanted to deal only with Kushner directly and not more experienced personnel, said one former White House official.

Kushner has an unusually complex set of business arrangements and foreign entanglements for a senior White House aide, experts have said. But his behavior while in office has only drawn more scrutiny and raised concerns that he would be unable to obtain a final security clearance, which he needs to perform the many jobs Trump has entrusted to him, from negotiating foreign trade deals to overseeing a Middle East peace process.

“We will not respond substantively to unnamed sources peddling second-hand hearsay with rank speculation that continue to leak inaccurate information,” said Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Kushner’s lawyer.

White House officials said McMaster was taken aback by some of Kushner’s foreign contacts.

“When he learned about it, it surprised him,” one official said. “He thought that was weird...It was an unusual thing. I don’t know that any White House has done it this way before.”

The official said that McMaster was “not concerned but wanted an explanation. It seemed unusual to him.”

In the months since, McMaster and Kushner have worked to coordinate so that the National Security Council is aware of Kushner’s contacts with foreign officials and so Kushner has access to the council’s country experts to prepare for meetings.

“General McMaster has the highest regard for Mr. Kushner and the two work well together,” said NSC spokesman Michael Anton. “Everything they do is integrated...it’s seamless.”

Foreign governments routinely discuss ways they can influence senior officials in all administrations.

“Every country will seek to find their point of leverage,” said one person familiar with intelligence intercepts of foreign officials discussing Kushner.

But Kushner came to his position with an unusually complex set of business holdings and a family company facing significant debt issues.

A Mexican diplomatic source said that Kushner “has remained strictly professional” in his dealings with the country, “with both sides looking after their interests but trying to find common ground.”

Officials from the UAE identified Kushner as early as the spring of 2017 as particularly manipulable because of his family’s search for investors in their real estate company, current and former officials said.

Officials at the embassies of China, Israel and the UAE did not respond to requests for comment.

Kushner’s lack of a final security clearance has drawn scrutiny in recent weeks. He had an interim clearance that gives him access to information at the top-secret level, as well as more highly classified information, such as the president’s daily intelligence briefing. But the application for his final clearance dragged on for more than a year. The downgrading of his interim clearance from top secret to secret was first reported by Politico.

On Feb. 9, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein alerted White House Counsel Don McGahn that significant issues would further delay Kushner’s security clearance process, according to four people familiar with their discussions.

Kushner has repeatedly amended a form detailing his contacts with foreign persons. Not fully disclosing foreign contacts ordinarily would result in a clearance being denied, experts said.

On Friday, Trump said White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly would make a final decision on whether Kushner would continue to have a security clearance.

During 2016, Kushner was simultaneously running his family business, Kushner Cos., and helping to oversee Trump’s campaign. One of his top business concerns was what to do with his family’s investment in 666 Fifth Ave. in New York, which the company bought under his direction for $1.8 billion in 2007, the highest price paid at the time for a U.S. office tower. The purchase became troubled as the Great Recession hit, and Kushner refinanced it, leaving the company with a $1.2 billion debt that comes due in January 2019.

The Manhattan property has been a particularly nettlesome problem inside the government because Kushner’s company has sought foreign money on the project.

Kushner and his company had proposed a redevelopment plan that would double the building’s size, requiring major new investment. Before Trump took office, Kushner and other company officials explored several options for the financing. They met with an executive of a Chinese-run insurance company, Anbang, which had bought the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. They also discussed a possible investment by the former finance minister of Qatar, who oversaw an investment fund. But after Kushner served as Trump’s senior adviser for a few months in the White House, questions arose about potential conflicts of interest, the financing talks ended, and neither Anbang nor the Qatari fund signed on.

Thomas Barrack, a close Trump friend who asked the Qataris to consider investing in the Fifth Avenue property, has told The Washington Post that the refinancing efforts were “crushed” because Kushner’s move to the White House “just about completely chilled the market, and [potential investors] just said, ‘No way — can’t be associated with any appearances of conflict of interest,’ even though there was none.”

Questions have also been raised about whether Kushner discussed financing with a Russian banker. Kushner met in December 2016 with Sergey Gorkov, the top executive of Vnesheconombank. The bank has said they talked about “promising business lines and sectors,” but Kushner told Congress that the meeting did not involve any discussion about his family’s company.

Kushner, upon entering the White House, divested his stake, which is now controlled by family members. With the deadline for the $1.2 billion debt looming, the company has continued to search for a lender. The redevelopment plan appears to be on hold after the company’s main partner, Vornado, run by Trump friend Steve Roth, deemed it “not feasible.”

Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, who plays a major role at the company, told The Post in a recent interview that he and the firm have not been contacted by Mueller. The company, which is privately held, has stressed that the Fifth Avenue property is a small fraction of its assets and that it is doing well financially.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 21:55 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Kushner loses access to top-secret intelligence

[..]

quote:

Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.

It is unclear if any of those countries acted on the discussions, but Kushner’s contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns inside the White House and are a reason he has been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance, the officials said.

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 00:01 schreef Szura het volgende:

[..]

En wat is daarvan mede de oorzaak?

https://www.washingtonpos(...)m_term=.4b27ba3edc17

[..]

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 00:06 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Jared Kushner indictment incoming in three, two, one...

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 00:07 schreef Szura het volgende:

[..]

LOCK HIM UP
LOCK HIM UP

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 23:33 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Roger Stone's Secret Messages with WikiLeaks

Transcripts obtained by The Atlantic show Donald Trump's longtime confidante corresponded with the radical-transparency group.

[..]

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 00:26 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:

[..]

Lekker, dat WikiLeaks wordt eindelijk ook eens uitgekleed .

quote:

The political strategist and online guru who was named President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Tuesday has a close financial relationship with a penny-stock firm with a questionable history that includes longstanding ties to a convicted fraudster, according to an Associated Press investigation.

Brad Parscale, who played a key role in Trump’s 2016 election victory, signed a $10 million deal in August to sell his digital marketing company to CloudCommerce Inc. As part of the deal, Parscale currently serves as a member of California-based company’s management team.

The company touts itself as “a global provider of cloud-driven e-commerce and mobile commerce solutions.” But records reviewed by the AP raise questions about its current financial picture and its rocky past.

Cloud Commerce’s operations have not turned a profit in nearly a decade, the records indicate. The company’s most recent quarterly earnings showed it has spent more than $19 million in investor money since its creation nearly two decades ago and has only $107,000 in cash on hand.

And in 2006, a top executive at the company, which was operating under a different name at the time, was caught in an FBI bribery sting and later pleaded guilty to securities fraud. The company said the former executive no longer has any connection to the company, but documents reviewed by the AP indicate he has remained involved in CloudCommerce’s major corporate decisions in recent years.

Parscale did not answer written questions from the AP about what he knew regarding CloudCommerce and its history when he sold his firm to the company and joined its board of directors.

A press release announcing Parscale’s hiring as Trump’s new campaign manager included Eric Trump calling him “an amazing talent” who has the Trump family’s “complete trust.”

SPOILER

The owner of an obscure web development firm before the 2016 presidential race, Parscale parlayed commercial website work for Trump family businesses into a role as the public face of Trump’s highly successful digital campaign. He is considered an ally of Jared Kushner and has taken credit both for selling Trump on digital advertising and for the campaign’s vital last-minute pivot to Michigan and Wisconsin.

“Brad was essential in bringing a disciplined technology and data-driven approach to how the 2016 campaign was run,” Kushner, Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, said in the campaign press release.

As part of the deal with CloudCommerce, the company acquired Parscale’s web development company, including roughly 60 employees, many of his past clients and a web-hosting business that services some Trump family business websites.

CloudCommerce did not acquire Parscale’s digital advertising business, however. That work has been transferred to another Parscale company based in Florida, which handles as much as $1 million a month in digital advertising for the Trump campaign alone.

Parscale is on the payroll of five campaign and political advocacy organizations tied to Trump, lucrative work that made him central to Trump’s campaign even before his appointment as campaign manager.

In addition, Parscale has hired Eric Trump’s wife, Lara, a move that reflects his close relationship to the family and shields how much she is being paid from public disclosure because she works for a private company. According to the terms of her hiring last March, she was Giles-Parscale’s liaison to the campaign, working out of Trump Tower.

Neither she nor Parscale responded to emailed questions about her current compensation.

When Parscale’s CloudCommerce deal was originally announced last August, the price of CloudCommerce’s shares surged.

“Big week for the parent company of my commercial business,” Parscale tweeted, noting that its stock was up 500 percent. CloudCommerce is a penny stock, meaning its shares do not trade on a major stock exchange and can be bought for just pennies a share. Such stock often is thinly traded and prone to fluctuate due to speculation.

“I’ve got Fortune 500 companies calling,” CloudCommerce chief executive Andrew Van Noy said in an interview before the AP raised questions about the company’s history. Van Noy said the company hopes to do more work for the Trump Organization, though “any conversation with the family happens at the Brad level. I work with him daily.”

CloudCommerce’s financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission give varying descriptions of Van Noy’s business career before he joined the company in the spring of 2011. They said he ran a “boutique real estate private equity firm” through the end of 2008 and oversaw more than $300 million of transactions during a roughly six-month stint at Morgan Stanley at the beginning of 2010.

But in a bankruptcy filing Van Noy made in Utah in August 2010, Van Noy said he was unemployed — and had earned less than $9,000 in each of the last three years. Along with six-figure debts from unpaid credit cards and repossessed cars, he also faced two real-estate fraud lawsuits. A judge ruled against him in one case and Van Noy agreed to settle the other for the full amount of funds he was accused of misspending.

After the AP asked Van Noy to reconcile the conflicting filings, he hung up and then emailed a request for written questions, which he did not answer. He did not respond to subsequent phone calls and emails.

Created in 1999, CloudCommerce has repeatedly changed its name and lines of business, which have included health care, software and digital marketing. Past corporate names include Latinocare Management Corp., Roaming Messenger Inc. and Warp 9 Inc.

One constant throughout has been Jonathan Lei, the former chief executive of several CloudCommerce predecessors, including Roaming Messenger, which court records show he was running in 2006 when he and a fellow executive agreed to pay a $1 million bribe to hedge fund managers who promised to buy Roaming Messenger stock on behalf of unwitting clients.

The hedge fund managers turned out to be undercover FBI agents. In a plea agreement to a single count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, Lei escaped any prison sentence by becoming a government cooperator. A judge sentenced him to five years of probation and a $10,000 fine. The company itself was not charged.

As a condition of Lei’s probation, court records show he was barred from owning or involving himself with any publicly traded company during his probation. But securities filings in 2008 — during the period Lei was still under probation — showed he still owned over 25 percent of the company, which had been renamed Warp 9 Inc.

Lei maintained his public holding of company stock for years after his conviction. By the time CloudCommerce adopted its current name, however, his name was nowhere to be found in its annual reports.

Van Noy told the AP that Lei had not been involved in running the company for at least six years. But CloudCommerce emails with outside parties showed him actively involved in company affairs as recently as 2015 — and he continues to be included in internal communications regarding its business activities, according to a review of documents by the AP and two people familiar with the company who spoke on condition of anonymity due to concerns they could be sued over the disclosures.

CloudCommerce’s most recent disclosure of ownership shows that one of Lei’s relatives, Elaine Lei, owns 11.4 percent of CloudCommerce through a shell company located in Lake Tahoe, Nevada — a stake she received from Lei.

As recently as 2015, Lei himself also remained an investor through NewQuest Ventures LLC, another holding company, according to SEC filings. A person familiar with CloudCommerce provided the AP with documentation reflecting that Lei remains involved in the company’s major decisions, including acquisition targets.

Neither Lei responded to requests to comment sent to Jonathan Lei’s email address or a message left at Elaine Lei’s company in Nevada. Elaine Lei’s relation with Jonathan Lei is unclear, but Van Noy acknowledged the familial tie.

Regulators have raised questions about possible manipulation in CloudCommerce’s stock in the past. In June 2016, the company said it received an inquiry from the stock exchange on which it trades about online stock promotion activities that “coincided with higher than average trading volume and increases in the company’s stock price.” There have been no subsequent announcements about the inquiry by the OTC Markets Group, the company that owns the exchange on which CloudCommerce trades.

CloudCommerce denied any involvement in efforts to hype its stock, and the OTC Markets Group said it generally does not comment on specific companies.

An expert on penny stock trading said the details about CloudCommerce — including its history of losses, limited cash, the fraud once committed by Lei and discrepancies in its current chief executive’s biography — raise concerns.

“There are sufficient red flags to give a responsible regulator reason to investigate,” said Jacob Frenkel, a former senior counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission who focused on penny stock fraud and is now in private practice. “What about this company isn’t a red flag?”

Of the $10 million sale price for Parscale’s firm, $9 million is described in company financial filings as the “stated value” of Parscale’s preferred stock, meaning it is hypothetical and bears no relation to its current value. Calculating the value of Parscale’s hosting firm before it was sold to CloudCommerce is difficult because it was privately held with no public disclosures about its clients, revenues or expenses.

Parscale is prohibited from selling his CloudCommerce stock for at least two years. The remaining $1 million from the sale was supposed to be paid in cash by Jan. 1 for Parscale’s web hosting business, but the company informed investors earlier this month that it will be paying Parscale in installments over the course of a year.

Frenkel, the former SEC enforcement attorney, said Parscale’s two-year contractual limits on selling his shares would delay his ability to benefit from any rise in the company’s stock.

“There are many examples in the small cap world where credible individuals are enticed into taking ownership, leadership or directorship roles in companies and come to regret that decision,” Frenkel said.

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 01:02 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Trump campaign chief lends name to penny stock tied to felon

[..]

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 01:05 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Dit is dus waarom je niet drie jaar voor de verkiezingen je campagnemanager bekend moet gaan maken

Die is al weg voordat de campagne überhaupt begonnen is, mark my words.

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 01:10 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

Nog meer onderzoek voor Mueller

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 01:13 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Dit lijkt me niet onder Mueller's taakomschrijving vallen. Hij is niet de enige aanklager in de VS hè.

twitter:

oneunderscore__ twitterde op dinsdag 27-02-2018 om 16:34:23 Here's the tweet from the Kremlin troll farm Trump's reported new campaign director Brad Parscale amplified three weeks before the 2016 election.https://t.co/izNiVpH34p https://t.co/oF3ICLGuwA reageer retweet

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 01:13 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Dit lijkt me niet onder Mueller's taakomschrijving te vallen. Hij is niet de enige aanklager in de VS hè.

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op woensdag 28-02-2018 om 01:31:19 BREAKING NEWS: Top Trump Aide George Papadopoulos' Kremlin-Agent Contact Josef Mifsud (Who Has Disappeared) Is Revealed to be "Friend" of Sergei Lavrov, the Man the Steele Dossier Said in 2016 Was Running Trump-Russia Coordination and Trump Blackmail: https://t.co/EqgLhvCvfH … https://t.co/2cEIvwfoyk reageer retweet

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op woensdag 28-02-2018 om 01:33:10 2/ Sergei Lavrov is also the man who Trump disclosed classified intelligence to in the Oval Office......another sign that, as law professor Jonathan Turley recently argued in THE HILL, there is *no evidence whatsoever* of Trump-Russia collusion. /sarcasm reageer retweet

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 02:05 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op woensdag 28-02-2018 om 01:31:19 BREAKING NEWS: Top Trump Aide George Papadopoulos' Kremlin-Agent Contact Josef Mifsud (Who Has Disappeared) Is Revealed to be "Friend" of Sergei Lavrov, the Man the Steele Dossier Said in 2016 Was Running Trump-Russia Coordination and Trump Blackmail: https://t.co/EqgLhvCvfH … https://t.co/2cEIvwfoyk reageer retweet

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op woensdag 28-02-2018 om 01:33:10 2/ Sergei Lavrov is also the man who Trump disclosed classified intelligence to in the Oval Office......another sign that, as law professor Jonathan Turley recently argued in THE HILL, there is *no evidence whatsoever* of Trump-Russia collusion. /sarcasm reageer retweet

quote:

Investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller have recently been asking witnesses about Donald Trump's business activities in Russia prior to the 2016 presidential campaign as he considered a run for president, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Questions to some witnesses during wide-ranging interviews included the timing of Trump's decision to seek the presidency, potentially compromising information the Russians may have had about him, and why efforts to brand a Trump Tower in Moscow fell through, two sources said.

The lines of inquiry indicate Mueller's team is reaching beyond the campaign to explore how the Russians might have sought to influence Trump at a time when he was discussing deals in Moscow and contemplating a presidential run.

SPOILER

Mueller was appointed to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. The President claims that any investigation of his family's finances would be a breach of the special counsel's mandate.

Two of the sources said they do not know from the questions asked whether Mueller has concrete evidence to indicate wrongdoing.

"You ask everything even if you don't think it's credible," one of the sources said, adding, "the allegations are out there, and it was checking the box."

The special counsel's office, an attorney for the President and the Trump Organization all declined to comment for this story.

Questions about Trump's entry into the campaign

Investigators asked one witness when Trump became serious about running for President, a person familiar with the matter said, adding that investigators seemed very interested in when Trump actually decided to run and how that coincided with his business ventures.

The source said the witness told Mueller's team his impression was that Trump was serious about running back in 2014. Trump tweeted earlier this month that he "didn't know" that he was going to run for president in 2014.

This witness was also asked whether Russians had been seen in the office at Trump Tower New York prior to 2015. The answer was no.

Questions have also touched on the possibility of compromising information that Russians may have or claim to have about Trump, according to two sources familiar with the matter. That subject matter echoes claims in a controversial dossier written by a former British spy who was paid by an opposition research firm underwritten by Trump's Democratic opponents.

Questions about Trump's Moscow trip

Several lines of questioning to witnesses have centered on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which was held in Moscow, and unsuccessful discussions to brand a Trump Tower Moscow, two sources said.

For the pageant, Trump partnered with Aras Agalarov, and his son, Emin Agalarov, billionaire real estate developers in Russia. In congressional testimony last year, Donald Trump Jr. said that "preliminary discussions" to build a tower in Moscow began between the Trump Organization and the Agalarovs after the Miss Universe pageant. Trump tweeted with excitement about the potential project, saying "Trump Tower-Moscow is next."

But the plans fell through. Rob Goldstone, a publicist for pop star Emin Agalarov, told Yahoo News last year that the Trump Tower deal was scrapped because "the economy tanked in Russia" from harsh sanctions imposed by Western countries.

One of the sources said, based on the questions, that Mueller's team was focused on the financing of the Miss Universe Pageant, such as who paid for what and what money was paid to whom.

The Trump Organization has never disclosed exactly how much it was paid to hold the beauty pageant in Russia. But Trump's lawyers said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Trump Organization made $12.2 million from foreign sources that year, and a "substantial portion" came from the Moscow event.

A second area of focus was what happened during the event. The source said questions also focused on meetings Trump had with Russian business people or government officials, leading the source to believe the investigators were probing the possibility of "kompromat," or compromising material, on Trump.

Along these lines, the source said, investigators were interested in logistics surrounding Trump's hotel room in Moscow: Who was there? Who would have access to it? Who was in charge of security? Who was moving around with him during the trip?

About two years after the pageant, Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen began negotiations with another Russian company for a Trump Tower in Moscow. Trump even signed a non-binding letter of intent in October 2015. But Cohen says he cut off negotiations in January 2016. One of the sources said Mueller's team has also asked about this project, in addition to the potential Agalarov deal.

Trump did not mention during the presidential campaign that his company explored these two business deals in Russia. Instead, he insisted that he had "nothing to do with Russia." Even when talking about his past dealings with Russians -- like the Miss Universe pageant -- Trump never referred to the prospective deal that fell through a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses.

Trump's past business dealings have been an area of interest to counterintelligence officials. CNN has previously reported that before the special counsel's appointment in May, the FBI had combed through the list of shell companies and buyers of Trump-branded real estate properties and scrutinized the roster of tenants at Trump Tower reaching back more than a half-dozen years.

Investigators have looked at the backgrounds of Russian business associates connected to Trump surrounding the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.

CNN reported last month that the Trump Organization has given some documents to Mueller, and that the bulk of the information requested was from the time during the campaign and transition, not Trump's earlier business dealings.

Last year, Trump said he would view any investigation of his or his family's personal finances as a "violation" by Mueller that crosses a red line. Trump's lawyers previously have said that Trump's business dealings from the time before he was a presidential candidate do not fall under the scope of what Mueller is authorized to investigate by the Justice Department.

Mueller was appointed last spring to investigate Russian meddling and "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation," according to the order signed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee.

Holder on why he might run for president in 2020: 'I think I've got the guts'

quote:

Q: From where you’ve sat and where you sit now, has President Trump obstructed justice?

ERIC HOLDER: “I think you can make a pretty good technical case.”

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 16:31 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Politico mag niet eens bij Trump langs. Geloof jij het vodje nu ineens wel?

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 23:35 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Vandaag weer special elections:

New Hampshire House of Representatives District Belknap 3
Oorzaak: Donald Flanders (R) is overleden
2016 verkiezing deze zetel: Dit district heeft 4 zetels, de uitkomst leidde tot 3 R en 1 D
2016 presidentiele verkiezing: Trump 53,63% - 41,17% Clinton
2012 presidentiele verkiezing: Obama 50,13% - 49,12% Romney

Kentucky House of Representatives District 89
Oorzaak: Marie Rader (R) heeft haar ontslag ingediend vanwege gezondheidsredenen
2016 verkiezing deze zetel: Geen tegenstander
2014 verkiezing deze zetel: R 70,2% - 29,8% D
2016 presidentiele verkiezing: Trump 58,94% - 34,35% Clinton
2012 presidentiele verkiezing: Obama 38,90% - 58,93% Romney

Connecticut House of Representatives District 120
Oorzaak: Laura Hoydick (R) heeft haar ontslag ingediend nadat ze burgemeester is geworden
2016 verkiezing van deze zetel: R 62,69% - 37,31% D
2014 verkiezing van deze zetel: R 62,8% - 33,8% D (- 3,5% Independent)
2016 presidentiele verkiezing: Trump 46,86% - 49,00% Clinton
2012 presidentiele verkiezing: Obama 52,66% - 46,17% Romney

Alle zetels hebben zowel een R als D kandidaat. Zo te bezien twee redelijke kansen om een zetel te pakken van de republikeinen voor de democraten lijkt het.

quote:

Democrats have now picked up 41 seats in contests since Trump's election.

Democrat Philip Spagnuolo won a special election for the Belknap 3 House District in New Hampshire Tuesday night, adding yet another state legislative flip to Democrats' already impressive roster of Trump-era special election wins.

He won by a seven-point margin in a district that Trump carried by 12 percentage points, making for a very impressive 19-point swing toward the Democrats. Meanwhile, over in Connecticut Democrats flipped another seat -- House District 120 -- winning a narrow 51-49 race in a seat that Clinton carried 49-47.

Earlier in the evening, a Democrat running for a seat in deep red Kentucky pulled off an even more impressive swing, losing by "only" 34 points in a district that Trump carried by a landslide 79-17 margin.

The New Hampshire House is enormous, so a single seat there doesn't make a huge difference. And the 28-point improvement on Hillary Clinton's results in Kentucky is at best a moral victory. But in the aggregate, special elections are painting a picture of a building Democratic wave. And since Trump took office, Democrats have picked up an impressive 41 seats in elections across the country.

quote:

Republican Robert Goforth wins the special election for the 8th House District seat in the Kentucky legislature.

Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes announced the results Tuesday evening, with Goforth acquiring 2,809 votes, while Democratic challenger Kelly Smith had 1,399 votes.

Goforth won Jackson County 1,320-225, and he won Laurel County 538-146. Smith won in Madison County 1,028-951.

Goforth will replace Marie Rader, who resigned from the seat on Dec. 31 due to health reasons.

Election results will be certified next Tuesday.

quote:

Hope Hicks, the White House communications director, told House investigators on Tuesday that her work for President Trump, who has a reputation for exaggerations and outright falsehoods, had occasionally required her to tell white lies.

But after extended consultation with her lawyers, she insisted that she had not lied about matters material to the investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible links to Trump associates, according to three people familiar with her testimony.

The exchange came during more than eight hours of private testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. Ms. Hicks declined to answer similar questions about other figures from the Trump campaign or the White House.

She also pointedly and repeatedly declined to answer questions about the presidential transition or her time in the White House, lawmakers who sat in on the testimony said, telling investigators that she had been asked by the White House to discuss only her time on the campaign. They added that she did not formally invoke executive privilege.

A lawyer for Ms. Hicks declined to comment.

SPOILER

The committee, which has been investigating Russia’s meddling for nearly a year, has increasingly found itself butting up against the White House over similar claims by witnesses.

When Stephen K. Bannon, who served as Mr. Trump’s chief strategist until he was forced out in August, similarly refused to testify about his work for the presidential transition team and the White House, Republicans on the committee quickly subpoenaed him. Mr. Bannon continued to refuse to talk about those subjects, and lawmakers are weighing whether to initiate contempt proceedings.

There was no indication that Republicans would subpoena Ms. Hicks.

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the committee, said Republicans were applying a double standard to Mr. Bannon — who has been exiled from Mr. Trump’s circles after disparaging the Trump children in a book by the author Michael Wolff — and all other witnesses. He urged Republicans who control the committee to subpoena Ms. Hicks.

“That’s an overly broad claim of privilege that any court of law would sustain. And I think the White House knows that,” Mr. Schiff said. “This is not executive privilege, it is executive stonewalling.”

Members of the committee said that under pressure from lawmakers, Ms. Hicks and her lawyers had consulted the White House during the interview and determined that she could answer limited questions about her work on the transition.

Still, Mr. Schiff said that important questions had been left unaddressed.

A fixture of Mr. Trump’s inner circle throughout the campaign and in the White House, Ms. Hicks is viewed as a valuable witness by investigators. She was involved in the firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director in May and the drafting of a statement in July in response to questions about a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Russians and top Trump campaign officials. The statement and its drafting have attracted the interest of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

Ms. Hicks refused to answer questions about both, lawmakers said.

Investigators working for Mr. Mueller interviewed Ms. Hicks over two days in December. She has also testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The interview was the committee’s first in more than a month. Democrats and Republicans have spent the better part of that time bitterly wrangling over a Republican memo accusing the F.B.I. and the Justice Department of abusing their powers to spy on a former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 14:55 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:
Hij is gewoon letterlijk Fox News aan het herhalen nu.

Wat een dwaas

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 05:40 schreef Blue_Panther_Ninja het volgende:
Wat is er toch telkens met EU mensen en hun haat jegens 2A/NRA/conservatieven/DJT e.d?

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 23:35 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Vandaag weer special elections:

New Hampshire House of Representatives District Belknap 3
Oorzaak: Donald Flanders (R) is overleden
2016 verkiezing deze zetel: Dit district heeft 4 zetels, de uitkomst leidde tot 3 R en 1 D
2016 presidentiele verkiezing: Trump 53,63% - 41,17% Clinton
2012 presidentiele verkiezing: Obama 50,13% - 49,12% Romney

Kentucky House of Representatives District 89
Oorzaak: Marie Rader (R) heeft haar ontslag ingediend vanwege gezondheidsredenen
2016 verkiezing deze zetel: Geen tegenstander
2014 verkiezing deze zetel: R 70,2% - 29,8% D
2016 presidentiele verkiezing: Trump 58,94% - 34,35% Clinton
2012 presidentiele verkiezing: Obama 38,90% - 58,93% Romney

Connecticut House of Representatives District 120
Oorzaak: Laura Hoydick (R) heeft haar ontslag ingediend nadat ze burgemeester is geworden
2016 verkiezing van deze zetel: R 62,69% - 37,31% D
2014 verkiezing van deze zetel: R 62,8% - 33,8% D (- 3,5% Independent)
2016 presidentiele verkiezing: Trump 46,86% - 49,00% Clinton
2012 presidentiele verkiezing: Obama 52,66% - 46,17% Romney

Alle zetels hebben zowel een R als D kandidaat. Zo te bezien twee redelijke kansen om een zetel te pakken van de republikeinen voor de democraten lijkt het.

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 08:58 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Waarom komt 'de andere kant' toch nooit veel verder dan een beetje dom proberen te trollen e.d.?

quote:

Court Orders Trump To Stop Revoking Dreamers’ Protections Without Notice (HuffPo)

The Trump administration has to stop revoking undocumented young people’s deportation protections without due process, a federal judge ruled on Monday.

The new order does not affect President Donald Trump’s effort — launched in September but currently on hold because of a separate court ruling — to end the broader Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

That’s because in addition to rescinding DACA as a whole, the Trump administration has repeatedly terminated individual undocumented immigrants’ deportation protections without providing notice or a chance to respond.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez issued a preliminary injunction to halt that practice. Under the order, the government must reinstate deportation protections for certain individuals and cannot revoke them from others unless it first notifies those people, offers an explanation and allows them to respond.

If the government had done that, José Gil Robles, a 25-year-old undocumented immigrant who came to the U.S. at age five, wouldn’t have lost his status in the first place, according to the suit.

SPOILER

Gil, one of the plaintiffs represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, was arrested in September for driving with a canceled license. In Minnesota, where Gil lives, DACA recipients have to go to the DMV to show their new paperwork when they renew their protections if they want to maintain their driver’s license, and Gil hadn’t done it after his latest DACA renewal. It slipped his mind, he said. He was released the next day, sorted out his driver’s license soon after and went about his life working and helping out with his five younger siblings.

A month later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed up at Gil’s work and detained him, ultimately opting to hold him for more than a month. While he was in detention, ICE issued him a notice to appear, a document that tells an immigrant they are in removal proceedings. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services informed Gil that it had revoked his DACA protections when it issued the notice to appear, without notifying him beforehand that he was at risk of losing his status.

Now Gil is out of detention, but he no longer has DACA, even though his misdemeanor driving charge is not something that should make him ineligible for the program, ACLU attorney Katrina Eiland said. Government attorneys said in court during the class-action lawsuit that Gil had been arrested and charged with two felonies ― something the ACLU demonstrated was incorrect. Because he was given no explanation for his DACA revocation or a chance to respond, Gil wasn’t able to correct the record before losing his protections, Eiland said.

The ACLU argued against the government’s practice of automatically terminating DACA status for individuals given a notice to appear ― after all, anyone eligible for DACA is in the U.S. without legal status and by definition could be issued such a notice. The judge sided with the ACLU, and temporarily barred the government from revoking someone’s DACA protections solely because they’d been issued a notice to appear in court over their undocumented status.

The government now has 14 days to tell the court whose DACA status it has terminated since last Jan. 19 ― the day before Trump became president ― without providing them notice. The Trump administration must then reinstate DACA status and work permits for those individuals unless they have been convicted of a criminal offense that disqualifies them from the program, according to the injunction.

The ACLU identified 22 young undocumented immigrants who lost their DACA status without notice in the past year, but Eiland said there could be dozens more ― not to mention many others who would, should the injunction become permanent, be spared from seeing their own protections similarly terminated in the future. Although Trump rescinded DACA last September, individuals can still renew their protections under a court order.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Monday order on DACA revocations.

Gil is hoping that once he gets his DACA status back, he can work and then go to college, although he’s not sure yet what he would like to study. “I just want to go back to school, make something of myself and show [that I] can contribute to this country,” he said.

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 04:17 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Hope Hicks Acknowledges She Sometimes Tells White Lies for Trump

twitter:

ChadWigmore twitterde op woensdag 28-02-2018 om 03:58:54 Define "white lies". Define "sometimes". Asking for a friend (his name is Robert) reageer retweet

twitter:

Kris_Sacrebleu twitterde op woensdag 28-02-2018 om 03:54:21 Common white lies:"I'm five minutes away", "You look great", "I'm fine", "I was just about to call you", "There was no collusion with the Russians". (Wait a minute! One of these things is not like the other.) 🤔 reageer retweet

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 10:42 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Kushner heeft geen clearance meer voor SCI.

Dus geen vrede in het midden oosten.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 22:06 schreef AnneX het volgende:

[..]

Dus trump wordt gebrief’d , onthoudt het verkeerd en geeft zijn interpretatie wel door aan Jared en poef het midden oosten ontploft...

Zoiets?

quote:

Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 10:44 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Zonde. We waren zo dichtbij.

quote:

The past 50 years have redefined what it means to be female in America. Girls today are told that they can do anything, be anyone. They’ve absorbed the message: They’re outperforming boys in school at every level. But it isn’t just about performance. To be a girl today is to be the beneficiary of decades of conversation about the complexities of womanhood, its many forms and expressions.

Boys, though, have been left behind. No commensurate movement has emerged to help them navigate toward a full expression of their gender. It’s no longer enough to “be a man” — we no longer even know what that means.

Last week, 17 people, most of them teenagers, were shot dead at a Florida school. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School now joins the ranks of Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine and too many other sites of American carnage. What do these shootings have in common? Guns, yes. But also, boys. Girls aren’t pulling the triggers. It’s boys. It’s almost always boys.

America’s boys are broken. And it’s killing us.

SPOILER

I used to have this one-liner: “If you want to emasculate a guy friend, when you’re at a restaurant, ask him everything that he’s going to order, and then when the waitress comes … order for him.” It’s funny because it shouldn’t be that easy to rob a man of his masculinity — but it is.

Last week, 17 people, most of them teenagers, were shot dead at a Florida school. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School now joins the ranks of Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine and too many other sites of American carnage. What do these shootings have in common? Guns, yes. But also, boys. Girls aren’t pulling the triggers. It’s boys. It’s almost always boys.

America’s boys are broken. And it’s killing us.

The brokenness of the country’s boys stands in contrast to its girls, who still face an abundance of obstacles but go into the world increasingly well equipped to take them on.

The past 50 years have redefined what it means to be female in America. Girls today are told that they can do anything, be anyone. They’ve absorbed the message: They’re outperforming boys in school at every level. But it isn’t just about performance. To be a girl today is to be the beneficiary of decades of conversation about the complexities of womanhood, its many forms and expressions.

Boys, though, have been left behind. No commensurate movement has emerged to help them navigate toward a full expression of their gender. It’s no longer enough to “be a man” — we no longer even know what that means.

Too many boys are trapped in the same suffocating, outdated model of masculinity, where manhood is measured in strength, where there is no way to be vulnerable without being emasculated, where manliness is about having power over others. They are trapped, and they don’t even have the language to talk about how they feel about being trapped, because the language that exists to discuss the full range of human emotion is still viewed as sensitive and feminine.

Men feel isolated, confused and conflicted about their natures. Many feel that the very qualities that used to define them — their strength, aggression and competitiveness — are no longer wanted or needed; many others never felt strong or aggressive or competitive to begin with. We don’t know how to be, and we’re terrified.

But to even admit our terror is to be reduced, because we don’t have a model of masculinity that allows for fear or grief or tenderness or the day-to-day sadness that sometimes overtakes us all.

Case in point: A few days ago, I posted a brief thread about these thoughts on Twitter, knowing I would receive hateful replies in response. I got dozens of messages impugning my manhood; the mildest of them called me a “soy boy” (a common insult among the alt-right that links soy intake to estrogen).

And so the man who feels lost but wishes to preserve his fully masculine self has only two choices: withdrawal or rage. We’ve seen what withdrawal and rage have the potential to do. School shootings are only the most public of tragedies. Others, on a smaller scale, take place across the country daily; another commonality among shooters is a history of abuse toward women.

To be clear, most men will never turn violent. Most men will turn out fine. Most will learn to navigate the deep waters of their feelings without ever engaging in any form of destruction. Most will grow up to be kind. But many will not.

We will probably never understand why any one young man decides to end the lives of others. But we can see at least one pattern and that pattern is glaringly obvious. It’s boys.

I believe in boys. I believe in my son. Sometimes, though, I see him, 16 years old, swallowing his frustration, burying his worry, stomping up the stairs without telling us what’s wrong, and I want to show him what it looks like to be vulnerable and open but I can’t. Because I was a boy once, too.

There has to be a way to expand what it means to be a man without losing our masculinity. I don’t know how we open ourselves to the rich complexity of our manhood. I think we would benefit from the same conversations girls and women have been having for these past 50 years.

I would like men to use feminism as an inspiration, in the same way that feminists used the civil rights movement as theirs. I’m not advocating a quick fix. There isn’t one. But we have to start the conversation. Boys are broken, and I want to help.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 04:12 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

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Democrats just flipped two state legislative seats in Connecticut and New Hampshire

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Robert Goforth wins special election for Ky. House seat

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 09:20 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Resultaten zijn binnen, NH en CT flippred Democratic.

twitter:

NateSilver538 twitterde op woensdag 28-02-2018 om 03:41:34 But important to remember that generic ballot polls are, at this early stage, mostly of registered voters rather than likely voters. Not crazy to think the Dem advantage could grow once pollsters switch over to likely voter models in the fall. reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 27 februari 2018 20:29 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Trouwens leuk weetje:

Levi Sanders, zoon van ex-presidentskandidaat Bernie Sanders, wil het congres in. Hij is een democratische kandidaat voor het 1st district van New Hampshire

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws(...)-bernie-sanders--wi/

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 12:49 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
Ik vond ook nog deze (via artikel in Time): https://sandersforcongress.com/

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 12:57 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
Voormalig presidentiëel fotograaf Pete Souza laat zien hoe een rennende president er in het echt uit ziet (verrassend genoeg niet als een aanstormende reuzenpudding met wapperende armen & benen & afgewend hoofd omdat hij geen bloed kan zien):

https://www.instagram.com(...)ofile_upsell_control

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 13:19 schreef nostra het volgende:
Dick's Sporting Goods Inc., one of the largest retailers of its kind in the United States, is taking new steps to curtail the sale of firearms in its 700-plus stores, including ending sales of assault-style rifles and banning the sale of guns to people younger than 21, the company announced this morning.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA(...)lt/story?id=53403284

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 00:10 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Nu al zin in vrijdag. Vrijdag is Muellerdag.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 13:36 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Ik heb eerder zin in het moment dat Mueller aanklopt bij de Oval office; "Mijnheer Trump, ik heb een arrestatiebevel voor u."

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 13:57 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:

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Volgens mij kan dat niet, als president is hij onschendbaar? Dan moet hij toch eerst afgezet worden?

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 13:57 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:

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Volgens mij kan dat niet, als president is hij onschendbaar? Dan moet hij toch eerst afgezet worden?

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:01 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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even wachten tot november ..

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:09 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:

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De democraten gaan nooit 2/3 van het huis krijgen, laat staan 2/3 van de senaat.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:09 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:

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De democraten gaan nooit 2/3 van het huis krijgen, laat staan 2/3 van de senaat.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:15 schreef Tchock het volgende:

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Je hoeft ook geen 2/3e van het huis te hebben voor een impeachment, alleen een normale meerderheid om de procedure te starten. Daarna moet de Senaat veroordelen met 2/3e meerderheid.

Dat de Dems het huis gaan winnen in november is lastig, maar zeker niet uitgesloten. De senaat winnen met 2/3e meerderheid is wel uitgesloten (het is zelfs wiskundig niet mogelijk). Voor een impeachment zullen dus altijd Republikeinse senatoren nodig zijn.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:15 schreef Tchock het volgende:

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Je hoeft ook geen 2/3e van het huis te hebben voor een impeachment, alleen een normale meerderheid om de procedure te starten. Daarna moet de Senaat veroordelen met 2/3e meerderheid.

Dat de Dems het huis gaan winnen in november is lastig, maar zeker niet uitgesloten. De senaat winnen met 2/3e meerderheid is wel uitgesloten (het is zelfs wiskundig niet mogelijk). Voor een impeachment zullen dus altijd Republikeinse senatoren nodig zijn.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:38 schreef Euribob het volgende:

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Dat ze het Huis gaan winnen lijkt me bijna een zekerheidje eerlijk gezegd. Daar hebben ze maar 24 zetels voor nodig hé.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:38 schreef Euribob het volgende:

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Dat ze het Huis gaan winnen lijkt me bijna een zekerheidje eerlijk gezegd. Daar hebben ze maar 24 zetels voor nodig hé.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:43 schreef Tchock het volgende:

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Zoals Clinton ook een zekerheidje was, uhuh.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:44 schreef Euribob het volgende:

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Kratje bier op zetten?

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:46 schreef Tchock het volgende:

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Nee, ik denk dat de kans dat ze winnen vrij groot is. Maar geen zekerheidje.

Of ze de senaat winnen, dat wordt echt spannend. Daar zijn de kansen veel slechter maar als de anti-Trumpgolf aanhoudt is alles mogelijk.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:15 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:
koffiedik kijken

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 15:01 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:

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Sjit... net weggegooid, even checken of ik er nog iets in kan zien...

*spennend muziekje opzetten doet*

Oh, da's een mooie! Eind mei zegt Oom Donald na een afgrijselijke vertaalfout bij Fox&Friends via Twitter de diplomatieke betrekkingen met 23 landen op, waaronder Nederland. Een onbekend aantal R-senatoren ("meer dan 10 maar minder dan 40") eist op hoge poten snoeiharde maatregelen, waarna O.D. ze dreigt ze voor het vuurpeloton te zullen slepen. De GOPTOP blijft aarzelen en de partij valt uiteen in "Real Conservatives", een Tea Party-deel en een deel dat zich voorlopig als "Independent" zegt te zullen beschouwen. Republikeinse kiezers zijn het geklooi binnen de partij volledig zat en blijven in november massaal thuis.

Ik zie het al, mijn koffiedik is duidelijk ook niet meer wat het geweest is.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:46 schreef Tchock het volgende:

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Nee, ik denk dat de kans dat ze winnen vrij groot is. Maar geen zekerheidje.

Of ze de senaat winnen, dat wordt echt spannend. Daar zijn de kansen veel slechter maar als de anti-Trumpgolf aanhoudt is alles mogelijk.

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Mike Pence Suggests Legal Abortions In U.S. Could End ‘In Our Time’

Standing before a roomful of anti-abortion activists in Nashville on Tuesday, Mike Pence described the “great progress” made under President Donald Trump to limit women’s access to legal abortions in the U.S. and abroad.

He called for the activists in the room to work ever harder to help “restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law.” He then made a stunning suggestion: that legal abortion could “once again” be banned in the U.S., and that it could happen “in our time.”

SPOILER

Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the Susan B. Anthony List and Life Institute, an anti-abortion group, the vice president announced that “life is winning in America once again,” before ticking off the many policies enacted under Trump aimed at limiting access to abortions.

“The President reinstated the Mexico City Policy to prevent American tax dollars from funding organizations that promote or perform abortions beyond our borders,” said Pence, a devout Christian who’s been described as one of Washington’s most anti-abortion Republicans.

“Our administration has stopped U.S. funding of the United Nations Population Fund so American taxpayers are no longer forced to support abortion around the world,” the VP added, his words met with loud applause and cheers. “And I can’t tell you how proud I was in my role as president of the Senate to cast the tie-breaking vote on a bill the President signed to allow states like Tennessee to defund Planned Parenthood.”

In his speech, Pence described Trump as the “most pro-life president in American history.” Over the years, Trump has had a mixed record on women’s reproductive rights. In 1999, he even described himself as “very pro-choice,” though he’s since said that he changed his mind on the issue after meeting the child of a friend who decided not to have an abortion.

Pence said the Trump administration would continue to push measures to restrict abortion access, but he stressed that “the opposition is always looking for ways to undo our achievements” and urged anti-abortion activists to take action.

“For all the progress since 1973,” he added, referencing the year of the Roe v. Wade decision, “I just know in my heart of hearts that this will be the generation that restores life in America.”

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Parkland Shooter’s Rifle Magazines Etched With Swastikas (HuffPo)

Officials say they found swastikas etched into the Florida high school shooter’s rifle magazines, CNN and CBS News reported. But it’s yet unclear whether Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old who police say confessed to opening fire Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has any connections to white supremacist groups.

Florida’s Department of Children and Family Services investigated Cruz in 2016 after video on Snapchat showed the teen cutting his arms. During the investigation, Cruz’s mother told officials her son had drawn “hate signs,” including a Nazi symbol and the words “I hate N*****s,” on his backpack at some point, reported the Sun-Sentinel.

SPOILER

Initial media reports of the massacre connected Cruz to the Florida-based white supremacist group Republic of Florida. But there later proved little evidence of such a link.

The accused gunman fired 150 rounds in roughly seven minutes, killing 17 people, before trying to escape by dropping his rifle and his backpack in an attempt to blend in with other students, investigators have said.

Cruz left behind 180 rounds of ammunition, which suggests the death toll could have been higher if the gunman continued shooting instead of attempting to flee, according to CNN and CBS News.

Representatives for the Coral Springs Police Department and Broward County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately return HuffPost’s requests for comment.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 16:07 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
Geen binding met White Supremacy-groepen maar toch...

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SPOILER

Initial media reports of the massacre connected Cruz to the Florida-based white supremacist group Republic of Florida. But there later proved little evidence of such a link.

The accused gunman fired 150 rounds in roughly seven minutes, killing 17 people, before trying to escape by dropping his rifle and his backpack in an attempt to blend in with other students, investigators have said.

Cruz left behind 180 rounds of ammunition, which suggests the death toll could have been higher if the gunman continued shooting instead of attempting to flee, according to CNN and CBS News.

Representatives for the Coral Springs Police Department and Broward County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately return HuffPost’s requests for comment.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:46 schreef Tchock het volgende:

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Nee, ik denk dat de kans dat ze winnen vrij groot is. Maar geen zekerheidje.

Of ze de senaat winnen, dat wordt echt spannend. Daar zijn de kansen veel slechter maar als de anti-Trumpgolf aanhoudt is alles mogelijk.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 14:51 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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De senaat is IMHO het belangrijkste. Dan halen ze gelijk de belangrijkste tool uit handen van deze president. Dan mag hij wel even blijven zitten zonder schade aan te richten. Want die gluiperige Pence bezorgt mij de kriebels, en ik denk dat dit voor veel Amerikanen ook op gaat.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 16:29 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Bij de bookmakers / Predictwise staan ze vooralsnog op iets van 60/40. Het registered vs likely voters onderscheid dat FiveThirtyEight aanhaalt kan daar nog wel effect op hebben.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 16:34 schreef Tchock het volgende:

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Bedoel je voor House of Senate, en 60 in wiens voordeel?

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A judge in Washington on Wednesday set a Sept. 17 trial date for former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort on charges from special counsel Robert Mueller, including money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent.

The decision from U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson would put Manafort on trial at the height of the midterm campaign season, a potentially unwelcome distraction for Republicans as they try to maintain majorities in Congress.

SPOILER

Manafort also faces the prospect of another trial in Alexandria, Virginia on a separate indictment Mueller's team obtained earlier this month accusing the veteran lobbyist and political consultant of 18 counts of tax and bank fraud. Manafort is scheduled to be arraigned in that case on Friday. No trial date has been set there.

During the brief hearing Wednesday morning where Jackson scheduled the Washington trial to open in September, she also scolded Manafort and his team for a statement his spokesman issued last Friday maintaining his innocence despite the guilty pleas from his longtime aide, Rick Gates.

The judge said the comments appeared to run afoul of the order she issued in November limiting public statements about the case by lawyers involved and by the defendants.

"I can understand the impulse to not let that go by without stating your innocence, [but] In issuing that statement about the prosecution, I believe it's contrary to the order," said Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

Jackson said she wasn't going to take action in response last week's statement but warned she would if there were further violations.

Manafort defense attorney Kevin Downing indicated that he believes Jackson's order and a Supreme Court precedent it cited do not authorize a complete blackout of all comments by the parties in a criminal case. The defense lawyer said, as he's suggested before in court, that he plans to file a motion to clarify the order.

Jackson noted that she offered both sides the opportunity to object to her order last year and neither side did. "I'll read anything you file," she said.

During Wednesday's hearing, the judge also expressed some concern about "overlap" between the Washington case and the Virginia one, although she said ultimately the burden of two successive trials is likely to fall most heavily on the defense.

Prosecutor Greg Andres stressed that Mueller's team gave Manafort the option to face a single case in Washington on all the charges, but Manafort declined to waive his right to have the tax charges brought where he lives, which is in Virginia.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 19:20 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

NRA - Sunday with Lubach

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 19:41 schreef Nintex het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

Hope Hicks is ondervraagd, maar ook onschuldig bevonden.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 19:36 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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"Sunday with Lubach"

Die man heeft ook een keer een internationale hit gehad hoor

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 19:50 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Dit filmpje werd in ieder geval wel geretweet door Samuel L. Jackson.

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Op woensdag 28 februari 2018 20:00 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Ik vind Lubach best leuk en ik kijk ook als ik tijd heb, maar dat gehengel naar de volgende internationale hit hoeft van mij niet zo. Liever blijft hij bij dingen die betrekking hebben op Nederland, als ik iets in zijn stijl over Amerika wil zien heb ik zat keus uit betere Amerikaanse programma's.