SPOILER

Vice President - Mike Pence

Het kabinet
Secretary of State - Mike Pompeo
Secretary of Treasury - Steven Mnuchin
Secretary of Defense - General Jim 'Mad Dog' Mattis
Attorney General - Jeff Sessions
Secretary of the Interior - Ryan Zinke
Secretary of Agriculture - Sonny Perdue
Secretary of Commerce - Wilbur Ross
Secretary of Labor - Alexander Acosta
Secretary of Health and Human Services - Alex Azar
Secretary of Housing & Urban Development - Ben Carson
Secretary of Transportation - Elaine Chao
Secretary of Energy - Rick Perry
Secretary of Education - Betsy DeVos
Secretary of Veterans Affairs - Ronny Jackson??? Robert Wilkie (Acting)
Secretary of Homeland Security - Kirstjen Nielsen

Cabinet-level officials:
White House Chief of Staff - John F. Kelly
Trade Representative - Robert Lighthizer
Director of National Intelligence - Dan Coats
Ambassador to the UN - Nikki Haley
Director of the Office of Management & Budget - Mick Mulvaney
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency - Gina Haspel
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency - Scott Pruitt
Administrator of the Small Business Administration - Linda McMahon

Andere kopstukken:
Ivanka Trump (Advisor to the President), Jared Kushner (Senior Adviser Strategic Planning), Stephen Miller (Senior Adviser Policy), John Bolton (National Security Adviser), Kellyanne Conway (Counselor), Donald McGahn (White House Counsel), Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Press Secretary), Christopher Wray (Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation), Robert Mueller (Special Counsel), Rod Rosenstein (United States Deputy Attorney General).

Verdwenen of voormalige kopstukken:
Kabinet: Tom Price (HHS), David Shulkin (VA), Rex Tillerson (State)
DOJ/FBI: Sally Yates, James Comey, Preet Bharara, Andrew McCabe
Communicatie WH: Mike Dubke, Sean Spicer, Anthony Scaramucci, Hope Hicks
Adviseurs enzo: Michael Flynn, Herbert McMaster, Reince Priebus, Rob Porter, Gary Cohn, Steve Bannon, John McEntee

SPOILER: juni

SPOILER: 8 augustus

SPOILER: 14 september

SPOILER: 19 oktober

SPOILER: juni

SPOILER: 8 augustus

SPOILER: 14 september

SPOILER: 19 oktober

SPOILER: juni

SPOILER: 8 augustus

SPOILER: 14 september

SPOILER: 19 oktober

SPOILER

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 10:07 schreef zalkc het volgende:
Waar kun je een beetje inzichtelijk krijgen wat nu de stand is met de recounts? Ben langzamerhand de draad kwijt met hoe de verdeling er voor staat eerlijk gezegd.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 11:28 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Stukje over (het gebrek aan) visie wat buitenlandbeleid aangaat:
https://foreignpolicy.com(...)-europe-isnt-optics/

quote:

D'Alessandro said he had a hard time uploading the results in time because he wasn't familiar with the website used to send them to the secretary of state.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 13:48 schreef zarGon het volgende:
Broward misses machine recount deadline -- by 2 minutes: https://www.foxnews.com/p(...)eadline-by-2-minutes

.

HAHHAAHHAHAHAHA.

[..]

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 13:48 schreef zarGon het volgende:
Broward misses machine recount deadline -- by 2 minutes: https://www.foxnews.com/p(...)eadline-by-2-minutes

.

HAHHAAHHAHAHAHA.

[..]

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 13:55 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Lijkt wel alsof Buurman & Buurman daar de verkiezingen organiseren, allemachtig.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 13:48 schreef zarGon het volgende:
Broward misses machine recount deadline -- by 2 minutes: https://www.foxnews.com/p(...)eadline-by-2-minutes

.

HAHHAAHHAHAHAHA.

[..]

quote:

A video surfaced Thursday of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi saying it might be a "great idea" to make it harder for some people to vote, and her campaign quickly responded that she was "obviously" joking.

Hyde-Smith, who is in a runoff against Democrat Mike Espy on Nov. 27, made the remark at a campaign stop in Starkville, Mississippi, on Nov. 3. It was posted to Twitter on Thursday by Lamar White Jr., publisher of The Bayou Brief. Smith earlier this week posted video of Hyde-Smith making a comment on Nov. 2 about a "public hanging" that started a controversy.

"And then they remind me that there's a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who ... maybe we don't want to vote," Hyde-Smith is heard saying. "Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. And I think that's a great idea."

twitter:

LamarWhiteJr twitterde op donderdag 15-11-2018 om 23:12:15 Cindy Hyde-Smith on voter suppression: "And then they remind me, that there's a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who that maybe we don't want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. And I think that's a great idea." Nov 2nd in Columbus, MS. https://t.co/OxNY77XCft reageer retweet

twitter:

LamarWhiteJr twitterde op donderdag 15-11-2018 om 23:52:15 Correction: Video WAS taken in Starkville on 11/03, which is what I had initially reported. There was some confusion, because apparently, Sen. Hyde-Smith has a talent for saying things like this often. @GanucheauAdam reageer retweet

SPOILER

Melissa Scallan, a spokeswoman for Hyde-Smith's campaign, said in a statement shortly after the video was posted that the senator "obviously" was "making a joke and clearly the video was selectively edited."

Danny Blanton, a spokesman for Espy's campaign, called Hyde-Smith a "walking stereotype who embarrasses our state."

"For a state like Mississippi, where voting rights were obtained through sweat and blood, everyone should appreciate that this is not a laughing matter," Blanton said in a statement.

The episode comes after that first controversial video was posted to Twitter on Sunday. In that video, Hyde-Smith is heard saying during a campaign stop in Tupelo on Nov. 2 that if the man who was next to her, later identified as a local rancher, "invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row."

Critics said the comment had a racial connotation in the context of Mississippi's history of lynching. Hyde-Smith said in a statement soon after the remark was posted that she "referred to accepting an invitation to a speaking engagement" and "used an exaggerated expression of regard."

"Any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous," she added.

Hyde-Smith then faced repeated questioning about the comment when she appeared Monday at a news conference alongside Republican Gov. Phil Bryant to announce an endorsement from the National Right to Life Committee, an anti-abortion rights group. She deferred to her initial statement and refused to comment further.

quote:

President Donald Trump must restore White House access to CNN reporter Jim Acosta, for now, a federal judge said, Bloomberg News reports.

https://www.bloomberg.com(...)ess?srnd=politics-vp.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 16:41 schreef zarGon het volgende:

[..]

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 16:47 schreef vipergts het volgende:

[..]

O jee dan zal de pleuris zo wel uitbreken

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 16:49 schreef zarGon het volgende:

[..]

Het is niet voor de US House, maar voor de Kentucky House.

De verhoudingen vóór de verkiezingen van 6 november: 64 R vs. 36 D.

Na de verkiezingen is het (momenteel): 47 R vs. 53 D. (=> +17 voor de Dems.)
Bron.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 17:01 schreef vipergts het volgende:

[..]

Verkeerde quote ik moest die van Acosta hebben

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 16:49 schreef zarGon het volgende:

[..]

Het is niet voor de US House, maar voor de Kentucky House.

De verhoudingen vóór de verkiezingen van 6 november: 64 R vs. 36 D.

Na de verkiezingen is het (momenteel): 47 R vs. 53 D. (=> +17 voor de Dems.)
Bron.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 16:41 schreef zarGon het volgende:

[..]

quote:

It furthers a portrait of a president overstepping his authority to settle personal scores and carries extra sting because it was issued by a judge Trump appointed.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 17:15:41 George Conway on why he withdrew from consideration for a job at DOJ: "I'm watching this thing and you know it's like, the administration is like a shit show in a dumpster fire… I realized this guy is going to be at war with the Justice Department." https://t.co/jYSRtv61ii reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 17:22 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]


[..]

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 16:26 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Mississippi GOP Sen. Hyde-Smith calls voter suppression 'great idea.' Campaign: 'Obviously' joking.

The caught-on-camera comment surfaced days after her remark about attending a "public hanging" stirred controversy.

[..]

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 16:07 schreef vipergts het volgende:

[..]

Wat ziet daar achter, ik zal het wel verkeerd zien maar mensen laten stemmen lijkt mij toch niet zo moeilijk. Controleert de federale overheid dat zo slecht

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 17:53 schreef Knipoogje het volgende:

[..]

De men in power hebben er baat bij dat stemmen -en dan vooral door democratische stemmers- moeilijk is. En als ze dan gestemd hebben, dan is het zaak deze zo slecht mogelijk te tellen. Zo simpel is.

En in enkele gevallen zijn de democraten zelf enorm incompetent.

twitter:

SchneiderCNN twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 16:25:12 "I will order defendants immediately restore Mr. Acosta's hard pass." Judge rules in favor of CNN in this initial proceeding and White House MUST restore @Acosta press pass IMMEDIATELY. reageer retweet

quote:

Mary Beverly Goetz is 76, uses a walker and recently had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. Worried her health issues would prevent her from voting for Democrat Jim Glenn in her western Kentucky state House district, she requested an absentee ballot by mail and sent it in weeks ahead of the election to make sure her vote was counted.

Glenn won by one vote.

"It made me feel good," Goetz said. "It made you feel like your vote really counted."

As the nation watches election officials in Florida and Georgia painstakingly review results in high-profile Senate and governor's races, many less prominent races across the country were decided by agonizingly close margins.

Glenn's victory in Owensboro, Kentucky, was one of six state House races decided by a handful of votes. In District 27, Democrat Jeff Greer lost to Republican Nancy Tate by six votes. In District 96, Republican Jill York lost to Democrat Kathy Hinkle by five votes. In District 91, Republican Toby Herald lost to Democrat Cluster Howard by seven votes.

And in Buckhorn, a coin flip allowed alcohol to be sold at a state park after an election there ended in a tie. It was at least the third time this year a coin flip had to decide a tied Kentucky election.

All of the House races were upheld on Thursday by county boards of elections, when a review of results from voting machines did not change the outcomes.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 19:41 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Een kennis van mij in Amerika (New York) kreeg vandaag een telefoontje met de vraag of hij 5 dollar wil doneren voor ‘toekomstige politieke ondernemingen van Hillary Clinton’. Hij mocht uiteraard ook meer overmaken dan 5 euro en het liefst vandaag nog omdat ze een target moesten halen.

Arme democraten, arm Amerika.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 19:37 schreef popolon het volgende:
Welcome back Jimmie!

God wat zal Trump razen als een malle.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 20:04 schreef nostra het volgende:

[..]

Kan hij hem strak negeren als Acosta een vraag wil stellen, of zit er een bepaald 'quotum' aan wie aan het woord mag?

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 19:41 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Een kennis van mij in Amerika (New York) kreeg vandaag een telefoontje met de vraag of hij 5 dollar wil doneren voor ‘toekomstige politieke ondernemingen van Hillary Clinton’. Hij mocht uiteraard ook meer overmaken dan 5 euro en het liefst vandaag nog omdat ze een target moesten halen.

Arme democraten, arm Amerika.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 20:22 schreef Ludachrist het volgende:

[..]

Het woord wordt volgens mij gewoon 'willekeurig' gegeven.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 19:31 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
3 peilingen voor de primaries van de democraten:

Biden 25%
Sanders 18%
Clinton 12%
Warren 4%
Harris 4%
Bloomberg 4%
none of the above 30%

HarrisX/@thehill 11/5-6

[ afbeelding ]

[ afbeelding ]

Biden en Sanders zijn momenteel de frontrunners, benieuwd of dat nog gaat veranderen en of ze meedoen.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 23:22:22 ATLANTA (AP) -- Democrat Stacey Abrams says she'll file federal lawsuit to challenge `gross mismanagement' of Georgia elections. reageer retweet

Full Speech: Stacey Abrams Ends Candidacy For Georgia Governor | NBC News

quote:

"Voting is not a right for some. It is a right for all. And it is not privilege. I stand here today as witness to that truth. This election is about all of us, as is the resolution of this moment."

[..]

To watch an elected official who claims to represent the people in this state baldly pin his hopes for election on the suppression of the people’s democratic right to vote has been truly appalling. So let’s be clear: This is not a speech of concession."

[..]

"Make no mistake. The former Secretary of State was deliberate and intentional in his actions. I know that 8 years of systemic disenfranchisement, disinvestment, and incompetence had its desired effect on the electoral process in Georgia."

[..]

"Pundits and hyperpartisans will hear my words as a rejection of the normal order. You see i’m supposed to say nice things and accept my fate. They will complain that I should not use this moment to recap what was done wrong or to demand a remedy."

[..]

"You see, as a leader I should be stoic in my outrage and silent in my rebuke. But stoicism is a luxury and silence is a weapon for those who would quiet the voices of the people. And I will not concede because the erosion of our democracy is not right."

quote:

The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, contradicting the Saudi government’s claims that he was not involved in the killing, according to people familiar with the matter.

The CIA’s assessment, in which officials have said they have high confidence, is the most definitive to date linking Mohammed to the operation and complicates the Trump administration’s efforts to preserve its relationship with a close ally. A team of 15 Saudi agents flew to Istanbul on government aircraft in October and killed Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate, where he had come to pick up documents that he needed for his planned marriage to a Turkish woman.

In reaching its conclusions, the CIA examined multiple sources of intelligence, including a phone call that the prince’s brother Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, had with Khashoggi, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence. Khalid told Khashoggi, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post, that he should go to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to retrieve the documents and gave him assurances that it would be safe to do so.

It is not clear if Khalid knew that Khashoggi would be killed, but he made the call at his brother’s direction, according to the people familiar with the call, which was intercepted by U.S. intelligence.

Fatimah Baeshen, a spokeswoman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, said the ambassador and Khashoggi never discussed “anything related to going to Turkey.” She added that the claims in the CIA’s “purported assessment are false. We have and continue to hear various theories without seeing the primary basis for these speculations.”

The CIA’s conclusion about Mohammed’s role was also based on the agency’s assessment of the prince as the country’s de facto ruler who oversees even minor affairs in the kingdom. “The accepted position is that there is no way this happened without him being aware or involved,” said a U.S. official familiar with the CIA’s conclusions.

The CIA sees Mohammed as a “good technocrat,” the U.S. official said, but also as volatile and arrogant, someone who “goes from zero to 60, doesn’t seem to understand that there are some things you can’t do.”

CIA analysts believe he has a firm grip on power and is not in danger of losing his status as heir to the throne despite the Khashoggi scandal. “The general agreement is that he is likely to survive,” the official said, adding that Mohammed’s role as the future Saudi king is “taken for granted.”

A spokesman for the CIA declined to comment.

SPOILER

Over the past several weeks, the Saudis have offered multiple, contradictory explanations for what happened at the consulate. This week, the Saudi public prosecutor blamed the operation on a rogue band of operatives who were sent to Istanbul to return Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia, in an operation that veered off course when the journalist “was forcibly restrained and injected with a large amount of a drug resulting in an overdose that led to his death,” according to a report by the prosecutor.

The prosecutor announced charges against 11 alleged participants and said he would seek the death penalty against five of them.

The assassination of Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Mohammed’s policies, has sparked a foreign policy crisis for the White House and raised questions about the administration’s reliance on Saudi Arabia as a key ally in the Middle East and bulwark against Iran.

President Trump has resisted pinning the blame for the killing on Mohammed, who enjoys a close relationship with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Privately, aides said, Trump has been shown evidence of the prince’s involvement but remains skeptical that Mohammed ordered the killing.

The president has also asked CIA and State Department officials where Khashoggi’s body is and has grown frustrated that they have not been able to provide an answer. The CIA does not know the location of Khashoggi’s remains, according to the people familiar with the agency’s assessment.

Among the intelligence assembled by the CIA is an audio recording from a listening device that the Turks placed inside the Saudi consulate, according to the people familiar with the matter. The Turks gave the CIA a copy of that audio, and the agency’s director, Gina Haspel, has listened to it.

The audio shows that Khashoggi was killed within moments of entering the consulate, according to officials in multiple countries who have listened to it or been briefed on its contents. Khashoggi died in the office of the Saudi consul general, who can be heard expressing his displeasure that Khashoggi’s body now needed to be disposed of and the facility cleaned of any evidence, according to people familiar with the audio recording.

The CIA also examined a call placed from inside the consulate after the killing by an alleged member of the Saudi hit team, Maher Mutreb, a security official who has often been seen at the crown prince’s side and who was photographed entering and leaving the consulate on the day of the killing.

Mutreb called Saud al-Qahtani, then one of the top aides to Mohammed, and informed him that the operation had been completed, according to people familiar with the call.

This week, the Treasury Department sanctioned 17 individuals it said were involved in Khashoggi’s death, including Qahtani, Mutreb and the Saudi consul general in Turkey, Mohammad al-Otaibi.

The CIA’s assessment of Mohammed’s role in the assassination also tracks with information developed by foreign governments, according to officials in several European capitals who have concluded that the operation was too brazen to have taken place without Mohammed’s direction.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his government has shared the audio with Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia.

In addition to calls and audio recordings, CIA analysts also linked some members of the Saudi hit team directly to Mohammed himself. Some of the 15 members have served on his security team and traveled in the United States during visits by senior Saudi officials, including the crown prince, according to passport records reviewed by The Washington Post.

The U.S. had also obtained intelligence before Khashoggi’s death that indicated he might be in danger. But it wasn’t until after he disappeared, on Oct. 2, that U.S. intelligence agencies began searching archives of intercepted communications and discovered material indicating that the Saudi royal family had been seeking to lure Khashoggi back to Riyadh.

Two U.S. officials said there has been no indication that officials were aware of this intelligence in advance of Khashoggi’s disappearance or had missed any chance to warn him.

Khashoggi “was not a person of interest,” before his disappearance, and the fact that he was residing in Virginia meant that he was regarded as a U.S. person and therefore shielded from U.S. intelligence gathering, one of the officials said.

Trump has told senior White House officials that he wants Mohammed to remain in power because Saudi Arabia helps to check Iran, which the administration considers its top security challenge in the Middle East. He has said that he does not want the controversy over Khashoggi’s death to impede oil production by the kingdom.

One lingering question is why Mohammed might have decided to kill Khashoggi, who was not agitating for the crown prince’s removal.

A theory the CIA has developed is that Mohammed believed Khashoggi was a dangerous Islamist who was too sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to people familiar with the assessment. Days after Khashoggi disappeared, Mohammed relayed that view in a phone call with Kushner and John Bolton, the national security adviser, who has long opposed the Brotherhood and seen it as a regional security threat.

Mohammed’s private condemnation of the slain journalist stood in contrast to his government’s public comments, which mourned Khashoggi’s killing as a “terrible mistake” and a “tragedy.”

U.S. officials are unclear on when or whether the Saudi government will follow through with its threatened executions of the individuals blamed for Khashoggi’s killing. “It could happen overnight or take 20 years,” the U.S. official said, adding that the treatment of subordinates could erode Mohammed’s standing going forward.

In killing those who followed his orders, “it’s hard to get the next set [of subordinates] to help,” the official said.

quote:

More than three dozen sealed criminal indictments have been added to the federal court docket in Washington, D.C. since the start of 2018.

Sealed criminal court files are assigned a case number, but do not indicate the identity of the parties or the nature of the charges, so it is impossible for the public to discern what those sealed cases contain.

But several legal experts told ABC News the number of sealed cases awaiting action right now is unusual. Fourteen were added to the docket since late August alone, a review by ABC News has found, just as the midterm elections were drawing near and longstanding Justice Department policy precluded prosecutors from taking any public action that could appear to be aimed at influencing political outcomes.

And the inadvertent discovery on Thursday night of what appear to be secret charges pending against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has drawn fresh attention to the mystery. Legal experts told ABC News that the sealed cases could be tied to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possibly part of a quiet effort to protect his investigation from any premature effort to shut it down.

“I assume that Mueller knew that once the election was over, there could be an existential threat to his investigation,” said Matthew Miller, a former senior Justice official under former Attorney General Eric Holder. “He knew the best thing to do was act before that.”

A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment on the investigation or the uptick in sealed indictments.

SPOILER

Sealed indictments are often used in cases where a defendant is overseas and U.S. prosecutors don’t want to tip off their target before they have a chance to make an arrest. But they can also be used to pressure someone to flip on a more important target, according to Kendall Coffey, who served as U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Florida in the mid-1990s, “especially if there was someone who presented the hope of providing proactive assistance – undertaking conversations, especially recorded conversations with other suspects in the investigation.”

Mueller has used a sealed indictment before. The case against unpaid Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos remained a secret for three months before charges of lying to investigators were eventually made public in October 2017. Only then, after Mueller's team secured a cooperation agreement, did the public learn the one-time foreign policy advisor would be the first from Trump’s campaign to plead guilty in the probe.

Brett Kappel, a veteran political law expert said he calculated that 16 percent of all the criminal cases filed thus far in 2018 remained under seal, a number he considered “unusually high.” And those were kept under seal much longer than usual, he said.

“They normally only remain sealed until the person who has been indicted has been apprehended,” he said. “The other major reason why a case is initially sealed is that publicly revealing the name of the accused would impede an ongoing investigation.”

Coffey said he did not know if the stack of secret charging papers had any ties to Mueller. But if they did, he said, they would have enabled the special counsel’s team to keep cases moving ahead of the midterms.

“If indeed Mueller had prepared cases for prosecution but did not want the announcement to impact on pending elections then a sealed indictment might have been the preferred method,” Coffey said.

And there was good reason, Miller said, for Mueller to lock in charges before the midterms.

Mueller can only indict someone with the approval of the Attorney General, and once the indictments have been approved and filed, any effort to withdraw charges would involve a judge.

At the time, those approvals fell to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein because Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the Russia matter. But President Trump had sent strong signals he planned to replace Sessions after the elections with someone who might be more willing to curtail the probe into Russian election interference and possible collusion.

The day after the elections, Trump appointed acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, who has previously denounced the Mueller probe. A Justice Department spokeswoman said this week that Whitaker “is fully committed to following all appropriate processes and procedures at the Department of Justice, including consulting with senior ethics officials on his oversight responsibilities and matters that may warrant recusal.”

“You can’t prevent a new AG from blocking new indictments,” Miller said. “But if you were ready to move on cases, you could return a bunch of indictments under seal. If the stumbling block is approval from Mueller’s supervisors, you get that approval while you still have a supervisor who approves of your work.”

quote:

Dick Cheney’s former top national-security aide has come under scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller, two people with knowledge of the probe tell The Daily Beast. It’s the latest sign that Mueller’s probe has expanded beyond the narrow bounds of Russian interference in American politics.

Mueller’s team has been looking into the communications and political dealings of John Hannah, the former Cheney adviser who later worked on Trump’s State Department transition team. This includes interactions with Lebanese-American businessman and fixer George Nader, who brokered meetings between foreign dignitaries and Team Trump, and Joel Zamel, a self-proclaimed social-media guru with deep ties to Israeli intelligence. The Daily Beast previously reported that the three men met with a top Saudi general in the days leading up to Trump’s inauguration to discuss plans to undermine and overthrow the government of Iran.

Hannah, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, is close with Nader and Zamel, both of whom the special counsel has questioned, according to two people with knowledge of those relationships. Hannah is listed on the website of one of Zamel’s firms, Wikistrat, as a member of its advisory council. Nader worked with Hannah on Iraq policy during the George W. Bush administration, according to four people who worked with the two or who knew of their interactions during the war. Hannah is now a senior counselor for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a pro-Israel think tank known for its criticism of the Iranian regime.

Hannah and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment for this story. The Special Counsel’s Office declined to comment. A representative for Nader declined to comment. And a lawyer for Zamel did not respond to requests for comment.

Nader and Zamel have both been questioned by the Special Counsel’s Office and are reportedly cooperating with its probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Nader has been questioned about his ties to high-level officials in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, his relationship with Zamel, and his interactions with the Trump campaign. Mueller has questioned Zamel about his role pitching top campaign officials on an influence operation to help Trump win the election—which could have broken federal election laws.

Mueller’s interest in Hannah’s communications and interactions with the two suggest the special counsel’s probe is broader than previously understood.

SPOILER

“Mueller might be opening another front here,” said John McLaughlin, the former acting director of the CIA. “His mandate is to examine Russian collusion, but there’s the clause in his mandate that’s very open-ended—to the effect of ‘and any associated matters.’ It could be a separate line of inquiry about efforts to influence the election by foreigners.”

Since the investigation’s launch in 2017, the Special Counsel’s Office has looked at various aspects of the Trump campaign, including payments to former porn stars, foreign lobbying by campaign aides, and hacking by Russian spies into U.S. computer networks. Mueller has so far indicted more than a dozen people and is preparing for the sentencing of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman.

Less has been said about Mueller’s probe of individuals involved in meetings that seem to lie on the outside of the main focus of the investigation. For example, the special counsel has looked at the January 2017 Seychelles meeting between Nader, former Blackwater head Erik Prince, and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian sovereign wealth fund. And it has asked witnesses about the offer by Zamel to employ social-media manipulation to help Trump defeat Republican primary opponents and Hillary Clinton, according to two individuals who worked with the group.

Mueller’s probe of Hannah’s interactions and communications with Nader, Zamel, and other Trump officials sheds new light on what appears to be a lesser-known side of the special counsel’s investigation—one that deals with Israeli, Emirati, and Saudi influence in the 2016 presidential elections.

Hannah is one of the individuals who sits at the center of that nexus.

“These are countries that are extremely powerful that operate outside of a Democratic framework converging in the most sacred of America’s democratic institutions: its election,” said Karen Greenberg, director of Fordham University’s Center for National Security.

“The Cheney group was often doing things... outside the customary boundaries of America’s internal and external politics,” she added. “If Mueller finds evidence of wrongdoing, it would make us wonder why we as a community—whoever we are—weren’t paying attention to Cheney alums’ persistent presence in American domestic politics.”

During the Republican primaries, Hannah was working as one of the senior leaders at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He often spoke publicly about the need for the U.S. to address the Iranian threat in the Middle East, especially as it related to Israel.

He introduced Nader to Zamel sometime in 2016, according to two people involved in the interaction.

One of Zamel’s companies, Wikistrat, was well-connected in Washington and had built up a base of high-level American military and intelligence officials to serve—or, at least, to appear to serve—as consultants to the firm. Meanwhile, Zamel’s other company, Psy Group, was in the midst of trying to sell the Trump campaign on an online influence strategy and was communicating with several Trump officials, including Rick Gates, who has since pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI. The New York Times was first to report the connection between Psy Group and Gates.

Eventually, the Psy Group plan was presented to Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign officials in August 2016 in a meeting that included Prince, Nader, and Zamel. The campaign never moved forward, according to individuals with knowledge of Psy Group’s work. But others familiar with Zamel and his interactions in the summer of 2016 told The Daily Beast it is unclear if the social-media plan was ever dropped.

Nader paid Zamel a large sum of money after Trump was elected, the Times reported, but it is unclear what that payment was for or if it related to Psy Group’s work.

Nader, for his part, was also developing his relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the UAE as well as senior Saudi officials, which included Mohammed Bin Salman, the de-facto leader of the kingdom. Throughout 2016 and 2017, Nader met with the two Gulf leaders and developed strategy on how to work with the Trump campaign. In one instance in January 2017, less than a week before the Seychelles meeting, Nader met in New York with Zamel, Trump campaign officials and Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, the head of Saudi intelligence, to discuss a plan to topple the regime in Tehran.

Hannah, too, was in touch with Gulf officials, including the UAE’s ambassador to the U.S., Youssef Otaiba, according to emails published by The Intercept in 2017.

At the same time, Hannah was working on the State Department’s transition team. He helped advise former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Middle East policy. Matters he advised on included a possible embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, according to two people who worked with him. The rest of the advisers came from various corners of Washington, including think tanks and other political offices.

Those who worked on the transition team said Hannah was a somewhat unusual figure. In a team largely stocked with relative amateurs and policy outsiders, he was one of the few who “actually understood how government worked.”

In November 2017, Hannah wrote an op-ed for Foreign Policy, praising the Trump State Department.

“With time and learning, there’s reason to believe that the administration more broadly can overcome its initial stumbles. Whether the same can be said of [Trump’s often-embattled Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson is much less clear,” Hannah wrote, acknowledging his time on the department’s transition team. “If your objective is to maximize the effectiveness of American foreign policy, it’s essential that the secretary of state be universally perceived as having the full backing of the commander in chief.”

Hannah is still working at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. It is unclear if he is still in touch with the Trump administration.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op zaterdag 17-11-2018 om 03:35:49 Big news out of Arizona: Democrat Katie Hobbs has declared victory in Arizona's Secretary of State race over Republican Steve Gaynor. Gov. Ducey called to congratulate Hobbs. The victory could have big implications for 2020. https://t.co/AjMXikzVjq reageer retweet

quote:

MSNBC “11th Hour” anchor Brian Williams broke in with breaking news on Thursday after the Department of Justice inadvertently revealed the existence of sealed charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Williams was fortunate to have as a guest Frank Figliuzzi, the former Assistant Director for Counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“So, Frank, what’s the significance of this development to you?” Williams asked.

“Well, this has deep meaning also for me personally, because I was in Washington at headquarters when the entire intelligence community was wrestling with what to do with Julian Assange and Wikileaks,” he noted. “And that the great debate about whether we should even treat him as a foreign power — they were doing that much damage to us.”

“Look, I said before on your show, Brian, I think the strategy for Mueller is to tell us the story of a corrupt president through the indictments of others,” he noted.

“Understand that our intelligence community has Wikileaks covered like a blanket — as if they are a foreign adversary,” he revealed. “So when Trump sees questions he doesn’t like to answer, he might be realizing that Mueller has so much more on the classified side than anyone ever realized.”

“And maybe –just maybe — that is [spying] coverage of Julian Assange and Wikileaks and their role with the Russians in the release of emails during the presidential campaign,” Figliuzzi continued. “We have to wait and see.”

11th Hour

quote:

House Democrats, poised to reactivate a probe of President Trump’s campaign ties to Russia, said this week that an investigatory priority is learning more about a Republican activist who sought 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s private emails, and whether he served as a conduit between the Trump campaign and Russia-tied groups.

“That is an area of continuing interest for us,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), who is expected to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when Democrats regain control of the House in January, said in an interview. “In fact, that’s one of the areas that we’ve been able to make progress” on, despite Republican attempts to end the probe.

Mr. Schiff declined to detail what more the panel has learned. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the GOP activist, Peter W. Smith, who died in 2017, secretly raised $100,000 to secure emails deleted from Mrs. Clinton’s private computer server, and that he struck up a professional relationship with Mike Flynn, then a Trump aide, who later pleaded guilty in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Another priority Mr. Schiff identified is to determine any financial relationship between the Trump Organization and Russian entities or individuals. Mr. Trump, his company and the Kremlin all have denied collusion or other improper ties.

The House Intelligence Committee probe into Russia’s role in the election ground to a virtual halt last year. Majority Republicans tried to shift its focus from possible Trump-Russia collusion to what they said was a flawed and biased Justice Department probe.

SPOILER

Mr. Schiff said the parameters of the panel’s work would be guided partly by the status in January of Mr. Mueller’s criminal investigation.

“But our intention would be to look at those areas that we were precluded from getting answers,” he said. “And there are entire investigative threads which the Republicans refused to pursue because they thought it too threatening to the president.”

Jack Langer, a spokesman for Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), current chairman of the House Intelligence panel, said Democrats “claimed nearly two years ago to have ‘more than circumstantial’ evidence of collusion. So instead of investigating new conspiracy theories, they should finally reveal the bombshell evidence they claim to already have.”

Democrats have said Republican lawmakers blocked the inquiry and cooperated with the White House to short-circuit the probe.

Another Democratic committee member, Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, said in an interview that Mr. Smith’s activities are “very ripe” for investigation. The key question, he said, is whom, if anyone, Mr. Smith was communicating with in Mr. Trump’s orbit.

Mr. Trump this week resumed his attacks on Mr. Mueller, who many on Capitol Hill are anticipating soon will announce new indictments after a lull surrounding the midterm elections.

Mr. Smith, a Chicago businessman active in Republican politics, funded his effort to find Mrs. Clinton’s missing emails in the fall of 2016. Emails reviewed by the Journal show he raised money from associates and began making inquiries to experts about how to obtain the emails from the so-called dark web, which provides users with anonymity.

Mr. Smith died in a Minnesota hotel room in 2017 in what authorities ruled a suicide, weeks after telling friends that he believed he had obtained the missing emails, the Journal previously reported. He spoke to a Journal reporter shortly before his death, describing his quest to find Mrs. Clinton’s emails.

His activities also have been scrutinized by Mr. Mueller, according to witnesses in the probe.

Mr. Smith said that he met with hackers in suburban Washington, D.C., according to one of his former associates. “I was told by Smith that he met with several groups of hackers in a suburban Washington hotel on the weekend of August 27-8, 2016. I have no idea what he meant by ‘several’ nor did I ask him for clarification,” said John Szobocsan, a friend and business partner who worked closely with Mr. Smith during 2016.

Mr. Smith was in contact with powerful Republicans in Mr. Trump’s orbit into the final months of his life, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Mr. Flynn and others, according to interviews and the emails reviewed by the Journal.

The emails show Mr. Smith brainstormed about business ventures involving Mr. Flynn and later went so far as to copy Mr. Flynn’s government-provided email account on a message to Mr. Trump’s incoming defense secretary, Mr. Mattis. In February 2016, Mr. Smith wrote to a friend to discuss “a possible way into cybersecurity to involve Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn.”

An attorney for Mr. Flynn declined to comment. The Pentagon also declined to comment.

Other emails that Mr. Flynn is copied on show Mr. Smith either communicating directly with high-level Trump administration officials and allies or discussing such connections.

'I've answered them very easily': Trump on Mueller investigation questions

quote:

Donald Trump said on Friday that he has answered written questions from special counsel Robert Mueller but has not yet submitted them.

The president told reporters in the Oval Office that he answered the questions “very easily” this week about the special counsel’s ongoing investigation into 2016 election interference and possible ties between Russia and the president’s campaign.

“You have to always be careful when you answer questions with people that probably have bad intentions,” said Trump in his latest swipe at the integrity of the investigation. “But no, the questions were very routinely answered by me.”

Trump did not say when he would turn over the answers to Mueller. The special counsel had signaled a willingness to accept written answers on matters of collusion but Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has said repeatedly that president would not answer Mueller’s questions on possible obstruction of justice.

Trump had huddled with lawyers at the White House this week but made clear: “My lawyers don’t write answers, I write answers.”

SPOILER

He continued to maintain his innocence while launching a fresh round of attacks on the investigation, saying “there should have never been any Mueller investigation” while claiming it was a waste of millions of dollars.

ButTrump denied being “agitated” by the investigation despite his outburst of critical tweets the day before.

“The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess,” Trump tweeted Thursday as part of a series of overheated morning posts. The investigators did not care “how many lives they can ruin”, he wrote.

While the special counsel was publicly quiet in the run-up to last week’s midterm elections, his investigation has suddenly returned to the forefront of Washington conversation and cable news chyrons.

Rumors are reverberating that Mueller may be preparing more indictments and there has been widespread media coverage of two Trump allies, Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi, who say they expect to be charged.

Trump’s flurry of attacks came despite repeated warnings from his aides to refrain from targeting the special counsel.

quote:

Op zaterdag 17 november 2018 04:20 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination

[..]

quote:

DONALD TRUMP TELLS FOX NEWS HE WAS TOO 'BUSY ON CALLS' TO VISIT ARLINGTON CEMETERY ON VETERANS DAY

President Donald Trump said he “should have” attended a service on Veterans Day at Arlington Ceremony earlier this week, a rare public regret by the president, but also offered an excuse about making “calls for the country,” according to part of an interview released by Fox News on Friday.

Bron: Newsweek

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 19:41 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Een kennis van mij in Amerika (New York) kreeg vandaag een telefoontje met de vraag of hij 5 dollar wil doneren voor ‘toekomstige politieke ondernemingen van Hillary Clinton’. Hij mocht uiteraard ook meer overmaken dan 5 euro en het liefst vandaag nog omdat ze een target moesten halen.

Arme democraten, arm Amerika.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 18:24 schreef Puddington het volgende:

twitter:

SchneiderCNN twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 16:25:12 "I will order defendants immediately restore Mr. Acosta's hard pass." Judge rules in favor of CNN in this initial proceeding and White House MUST restore @Acosta press pass IMMEDIATELY. reageer retweet

So much winning.

quote:

Op zaterdag 17 november 2018 10:30 schreef Toby56 het volgende:

[..]

Trump overweegt om in de nabije toekomst gewoon weg te lopen als kritische vragen hem niet aanstaan. Wat een held.

Ik houd mijn vingers gekruist voor de mogelijkheid dat, als deze narcistische crimineel het Witte Huis verlaat, in 2021 of 2025, er -tig juridische zaken tegen hem worden opgestart. Ik vermoed dat Mueller en de FBI al zoveel shit hebben gevonden dat de man, wanneer-ie weer een 'gewone' burger is, voor een fiks aantal jaren achter de tralies mag voor een ontspannen oude dag. Lock him up.

quote:

Op zaterdag 17 november 2018 10:32 schreef Knipoogje het volgende:

[..]

Hoop dat tegen die tijd een democratische president weer aan de macht is, want een republikein zal 'm 100% zeker een pardon geven. Zelfs een democraat doet dat misschien omdat het nu eenmaal traditie is

quote:

Op zaterdag 17 november 2018 10:30 schreef Toby56 het volgende:

[..]

Trump overweegt om in de nabije toekomst gewoon weg te lopen als kritische vragen hem niet aanstaan. Wat een held.

Ik houd mijn vingers gekruist voor de mogelijkheid dat, als deze narcistische crimineel het Witte Huis verlaat, in 2021 of 2025, er -tig juridische zaken tegen hem worden opgestart. Ik vermoed dat Mueller en de FBI al zoveel shit hebben gevonden dat de man, wanneer-ie weer een 'gewone' burger is, voor een fiks aantal jaren achter de tralies mag voor een ontspannen oude dag. Lock him up.

quote:

Drug giant Pfizer announced on Friday it will increase the list prices of 41 medicines in January, just months after it agreed to temporarily roll back price hikes under pressure from President Donald Trump.

Pfizer's new price increases, which take effect Jan. 15, will apply to 10 percent of its portfolio, the company said. Most of those drugs will see 5 percent increases.

Trump attacked Pfizer in July after the company raised prices, just weeks after he announced a drug pricing plan he claimed would result in "historic" price cuts. Trump accused the company of "taking advantage of the poor & others unable to defend themselves," and Pfizer a day later agreed to cancel the price increases.

Pfizer at the time said the rollback would give Trump an opportunity to work on his administration's drug price plan. The company said it would reinstate price increases at the end of the year if the administration's drug pricing plan didn't take effect.

A spokesperson for HHS Secretary Alex Azar criticized Pfizer’s latest price hikes, saying they “further illustrate the perverse incentives of America’s drug pricing system.”

SPOILER

Trump's criticism of Pfizer earlier this year also prompted nine other drugmakers to roll back or freeze prices. But the gestures were largely seen as symbolic, with some companies agreeing to freeze prices just weeks after they already took what is usually their last price increases of the year — companies typically raise prices in January and July. Health policy experts have expected the industry would resume regular price increases starting in January.

“The drug price pledges made earlier this year were just for show — it was obvious at the time, and it's obvious now,” said Walid Gellad, director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing at the University of Pittsburgh. “The bully pulpit doesn't work, and even if it did, we don't want a system in which the only way to bring down drug prices is for the president to publicly berate a company — that's not a healthy market and not good policy.”

But some health policy experts said they think Trump’s tendency to lash out at drug companies will keep price hikes lower next year, even it doesn’t completely eliminate them.

“I think it’s less likely we’ll see the same manner of price increases of previous years (double digit) that the market had grown accustomed to, but I don’t think that entails a wholesale stop to price increases,” John Leppard, an analyst at the research firm Washington Analysis, said in an email.

Pfizer said the new price increases are expected to be offset by higher rebates and discounts given to insurance companies and pharmacy benefits managers, and it doesn’t expect the hikes will increase its 2019 revenue. Azar spokesperson Caitlin Oakley pointed out the company’s discounts won’t help consumers who must pay list price or a set percentage of it.

Trump's drug pricing plan from May, a 44-page outline of proposals, largely remains unimplemented. Drug pricing is one area where the new Democratic House majority could find common ground with Trump.

Some Wall Street analysts said drug companies were holding down price increases this summer to avoid provoking more aggressive action from the Trump administration. But just before the elections, the administration offered proposals the industry doesn't like, including one tying Medicare payments for some expensive drugs to lower prices set by European countries.

Drug companies, "don't need to play nice anymore (or not 'as nice')," Bernstein investment analyst Ronny Gal said in an email.

quote:

Lawyers on Friday brought a challenge to the validity of President Donald Trump’s appointment of acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker to the Supreme Court.

Questions have surrounded the legality of Whitaker’s appointment since the day after the midterm elections when Trump forced out the former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and announced on Twitter that Whitaker was his choice to be the acting attorney general. The Justice Department, however, has defended the appointment's legality.

“Because Whitaker’s appointment does not satisfy the Appointments Clause, it is unlawful, and he cannot serve as Acting Attorney General,” the lawyers wrote in Friday evening’s filing.

The issue is being brought to the Supreme Court in Barry Michaels’ pending petition for certiorari in a case challenging the federal law barring possession of a gun by a felon. In addition to Michael Zapin, Michaels’ lawyer on previous filings, Tom Goldstein and his colleagues at Goldstein Russell joined in Friday’s filing.

SPOILER

Goldstein and the firm earlier this week had joined the Maryland attorney general in challenging Whitaker’s appointment in a different case before a trial judge. They argued in that filing that the appointment violates both a federal law setting the order of succession at the Justice Department — it includes only other people whose positions require Senate confirmation — and the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, which requires the Senate to provide advice and consent on principal officers of executive branch departments. Whitaker, as Sessions' former chief of staff, was not confirmed by the Senate for his position.

In Friday’s filing at the Supreme Court, the lawyers made similar arguments, specifically raising the issue by asking the court to declare that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and not Whitaker, should be substituted as the respondent in the case for those reasons.

The Justice Department has pushed back against the legal criticism of the appointment, making public a memorandum from the department's Office of Legal Counsel on Nov. 14 that concludes the appointment is legal under a different law, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, that allows the president to make such "acting" appointments — including a provision that allows senior officials who have worked in a department for at least 90 days, even those who have not been confirmed by the Senate, to serve as acting officers. The memo went on to conclude that the appointment also is constitutional under the Appointments Clause because an "acting" officer like Whitaker is an inferior officer who Congress has authorized to be appointed without Senate confirmation.

Additionally, the lawyers also ask the justices to take up the case without waiting for lower courts to rule, as it ordinarily would, because the issue is “a pure question of law” and could arise in “thousands” of cases.

Noting the many “personal responsibilities” of the attorney general, they warn, “If this Court declines to resolve this question immediately and instead determines several months in the future that Mr. Whitaker’s appointment was always invalid, then ‘unwinding’ all of those personal orders would be a fraught and disruptive exercise that could embroil the federal courts in innumerable collateral disputes.”

SPOILER

Title IX, the federal civil rights law created to ensure gender equality in education, applies to all schools that receive federal funding, including nearly all colleges and universities, all public K-12 schools and a few private K-12 schools that receive federal dollars. The regulations differ slightly for K-12 schools versus college and university campuses.

The suggested guidelines are similar to a copy partially leaked in August which faced swift criticism from survivor advocacy groups for making it harder for victims to report harassment and assault.

Below are the provisions that could have the largest impact on how sexual misconduct is handled in school settings across the country:

1. Narrowing The Definition Of Sexual Misconduct
Keeping with the leaked copy, Friday’s suggested guidelines narrow the definition of sexual misconduct, defining it as “unwelcome conduct on the basis of sex that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to the recipient’s education program or activity.”

Jess Davidson, executive director of survivor advocacy organization End Rape on Campus, described this portion of the regulations as “one of the most harmful parts of the rule.”

“The definition is extreme and it’s going to require that students are harassed multiple times before they are able to receive any form of accommodation,” she told HuffPost.

2. Schools Are Only Responsible If Assaults Take Place On Campus
Under the proposed guideline, a school “is only responsible for responding to conduct that occurs within its ‘education program or activity.’” The Education Department loosely defines “education program or activity” as “all of the operations of” a school including anything that has “any academic, extracurricular, research, [or] occupational training.”

This definition, however, does not include off-campus housing or bars and other settings within a school environment where assault and misconduct often take place. This is one of the most worrisome provisions of the entire 149-page proposal because 87 percent of college students live off campus.

Davidson noted that this provision could prove disastrous for marginalized students, specifically community college and commuter students who spend a majority of their time off-campus.

Additionally, this would allow schools like Michigan State and Ohio State, both currently embroiled in sexual assault scandals, to sidestep misconduct perpetrated by staff at off-campus events.

“Would it make sense for Larry Nassar not to be held accountable if he only abused student athletes at off-campus events? It’s absurd,” Sejal Singh, policy coordinator for Know Your IX, said to HuffPost in August.

3. ‘Mediation’ Instead Of Investigation
Under the proposed provisions, the accused can participate in a live cross-examination of the alleged victim through a third party (although this does not apply fully to K-12 incidents).

Unlike the earlier leaked copy, Friday’s proposed rule would not allow the accused to cross-examine their accuser personally. Additionally, the accuser is allowed to request that their alleged perpetrator watch the live cross-examination from a separate room which prohibits “any unnecessary trauma that could arise from personal confrontation.”

This process, known as mediation, encourages schools to simply work it out themselves instead of following a regulated investigation protocol.

“Before the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), schools pushed survivors to ‘work it out’ with their rapists, fostering a climate where students were afraid to come forward” anti-sexual violence organization Know Your IX said in a Friday statement. “The Department’s decision to revert back to a harmful status quo will allow for schools and rapists to intimidate survivors into silence.”

Additionally, the Education Department has not offered any guidelines on how this mediation process would potentially play out.

4. Victims Can Only Report To Certain People
The guidelines would restrict whom a victim can report to in order to implement corrective measures through the school. College students would only be able to report a Title IX issue with the school’s Title IX coordinator which, Davidson said, is cause for concern.

“The lived experience of most college students don’t set them up to go first to the dean of students or to the Title IX administrator directly,” she said. “Most students want to talk to ― as anybody does ― students want to talk to a campus official or an adult who they trust, who will be on their side, who will affirm them, and will help them find safety and an answer.”

“To see this definition go forward ― that would essentially give a free pass to OSU and Michigan State and Larry Nassar ― is really horrifying,” Davidson added.

It’s worth noting that mandatory reporting laws still apply, but for a student to receive help and protection from their school specifically, they would need to seek out a Title IX coordinator.

This provision would not apply to students K-12.

5. A Higher Standard Of Evidence Needed To Prove Guilt
The proposed guidelines state a school can use “either the preponderance of the evidence standard or the clear and convincing evidence standard.” Many survivor advocate groups, however, highlighted that using a “clear and convincing” standard would treat sexual misconduct survivors more harshly than victims of other discriminatory campus crimes.

“Instead of imposing discriminatory procedural hurdles for campus sexual harassment cases, schools should use the same standards that they use for other serious campus wrongdoing, such as physical assault or arson,” Know Your IX noted.

Many politicians and Title IX advocates were up in arms over the proposed guidelines. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) urged Congress to stand against the proposal, writing that it “seems intended to make college campuses safe spaces to commit sexual assault and harassment instead of safe spaces to learn.”

In a Friday statement, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called on “every woman, man, mom, dad, and anyone else who cares about campus safety and preventing sexual assault to make your voices heard and demand that Secretary DeVos and President Trump withdraw this proposal immediately.”

Lara Kaufmann, Director of Public Policy for Girls Inc., pointed out how damaging this proposal could be for K-12 girls specifically.

“All girls should be able to grow up safe, respected, and valued,” she said in a statement to HuffPost. “Unfortunately, these new proposals will lead to fewer students reporting assaults and harassment, more dangerous K-12 schools, and more girls being denied their civil right to equal access to education.”

President of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten also condemned the proposed rules in a Friday statement.

“This rule abdicates the responsibility to protect every student’s right to safety on campus,” she said. “It tells academic institutions that they needn’t bother helping to protect students; they won’t be liable. These changes once again demonstrate that students are not DeVos’ priority.”

Since she was confirmed as Secretary of Education last year, DeVos has been on a mission to overhaul the Obama-era Title IX guidelines and regulations. In 2017, DeVos met with people “wrongly accused” of sex crimes (a group consisting mainly of so-called men’s rights activists) and, not long after, rescinded an Obama-era Title IX guideline, The Dear Colleague Letter.

“It’s worth noting that the secretary has talked a lot about the importance of a fair process but that’s not what this reads like to me,” Davidson said. “This isn’t somebody trying to create fairness in the process, this is somebody who is trying to prevent the process from taking place at all.”

Legally, the Education Department is required to consider all comments from the public and publicly respond to criticism before making a decision.

quote:

Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 19:41 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Een kennis van mij in Amerika (New York) kreeg vandaag een telefoontje met de vraag of hij 5 dollar wil doneren voor ‘toekomstige politieke ondernemingen van Hillary Clinton’. Hij mocht uiteraard ook meer overmaken dan 5 euro en het liefst vandaag nog omdat ze een target moesten halen.

Arme democraten, arm Amerika.

twitter:

Rambobiggs twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 21:11:04 So basically @RepSwalwell wants a war. Because that’s what you would get. You’re outta your fucking mind if you think I’ll give up my rights and give the gov all the power. https://t.co/bK1GVyjFej reageer retweet

twitter:

RepSwalwell twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 21:22:02 @Rambobiggs And it would be a short war my friend. The government has nukes. Too many of them. But they’re legit. I’m sure if we talked we could find common ground to protect our families and communities. reageer retweet

twitter:

Rambobiggs twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 21:27:31 @RepSwalwell So our government would nuke its own country in order to take guns? Wow reageer retweet

twitter:

RepSwalwell twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 21:37:55 @Rambobiggs Don’t be so dramatic. You claiming you need a gun to protect yourself against the government is ludicrous. But you seem like a reasonable person. If an assault weapons ban happens, I’m sure you’ll follow law. reageer retweet

twitter:

RepSwalwell twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 22:02:58 Don’t be so dramatic. No one is nuking anyone or threatening that. I’m telling you this is not the 18th Century. The argument that you would go to war with your government if an assault weapons ban was in place is ludicrous and inflames the gun debate. Which is what you want. https://t.co/oX0rY7Nbs1 reageer retweet

twitter:

ScottAdamsSays twitterde op zaterdag 17-11-2018 om 16:03:01 Scott Adams talks about Swalwell Derangement Syndrome, CIA leaks, Pelosi votes, and coffee. https://t.co/kCLagW5JXX reageer retweet

quote:

Op zondag 18 november 2018 16:09 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:
Interessant wel, een Democraat in California, Eric Swalwell, die het best wel oké vind om kernwapens in te zetten tegen de burgerbevolking wanneer wapenbezitters hun wapens niet inleveren:
USA Today (op-ed van Swalwell)
NBC News

Sterker nog, Swalwell gebruikt het woord oorlog:

twitter:

Rambobiggs twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 21:11:04 So basically @RepSwalwell wants a war. Because that’s what you would get. You’re outta your fucking mind if you think I’ll give up my rights and give the gov all the power. https://t.co/bK1GVyjFej reageer retweet

twitter:

RepSwalwell twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 21:22:02 @Rambobiggs And it would be a short war my friend. The government has nukes. Too many of them. But they’re legit. I’m sure if we talked we could find common ground to protect our families and communities. reageer retweet

twitter:

Rambobiggs twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 21:27:31 @RepSwalwell So our government would nuke its own country in order to take guns? Wow reageer retweet

twitter:

RepSwalwell twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 21:37:55 @Rambobiggs Don’t be so dramatic. You claiming you need a gun to protect yourself against the government is ludicrous. But you seem like a reasonable person. If an assault weapons ban happens, I’m sure you’ll follow law. reageer retweet

twitter:

RepSwalwell twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 22:02:58 Don’t be so dramatic. No one is nuking anyone or threatening that. I’m telling you this is not the 18th Century. The argument that you would go to war with your government if an assault weapons ban was in place is ludicrous and inflames the gun debate. Which is what you want. https://t.co/oX0rY7Nbs1 reageer retweet

We hebben het hier over iemand die mogelijk een Presidentiële race in 2020 overweegt.

quote:

Op zondag 18 november 2018 16:24 schreef Mike het volgende:
Oostwoud moet maar even naar Scott Adams kijken, die uitlegt waarom het zo stom is als je zo'n tekst als die van Swalwell letterlijk neemt:

twitter:

ScottAdamsSays twitterde op zaterdag 17-11-2018 om 16:03:01 Scott Adams talks about Swalwell Derangement Syndrome, CIA leaks, Pelosi votes, and coffee. https://t.co/kCLagW5JXX reageer retweet

quote:

Op zondag 18 november 2018 16:09 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:
Interessant wel, een Democraat in California, Eric Swalwell, die het best wel oké vind om kernwapens in te zetten tegen de burgerbevolking wanneer wapenbezitters hun wapens niet inleveren:
USA Today (op-ed van Swalwell)
NBC News

Sterker nog, Swalwell gebruikt het woord oorlog:

twitter:

Rambobiggs twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 21:11:04 So basically @RepSwalwell wants a war. Because that’s what you would get. You’re outta your fucking mind if you think I’ll give up my rights and give the gov all the power. https://t.co/bK1GVyjFej reageer retweet

twitter:

RepSwalwell twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 21:22:02 @Rambobiggs And it would be a short war my friend. The government has nukes. Too many of them. But they’re legit. I’m sure if we talked we could find common ground to protect our families and communities. reageer retweet

twitter:

Rambobiggs twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 21:27:31 @RepSwalwell So our government would nuke its own country in order to take guns? Wow reageer retweet

twitter:

RepSwalwell twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 21:37:55 @Rambobiggs Don’t be so dramatic. You claiming you need a gun to protect yourself against the government is ludicrous. But you seem like a reasonable person. If an assault weapons ban happens, I’m sure you’ll follow law. reageer retweet

twitter:

RepSwalwell twitterde op vrijdag 16-11-2018 om 22:02:58 Don’t be so dramatic. No one is nuking anyone or threatening that. I’m telling you this is not the 18th Century. The argument that you would go to war with your government if an assault weapons ban was in place is ludicrous and inflames the gun debate. Which is what you want. https://t.co/oX0rY7Nbs1 reageer retweet

We hebben het hier over iemand die mogelijk een Presidentiële race in 2020 overweegt.

SPOILER

twitter:

pyryluminen twitterde op zondag 18-11-2018 om 15:13:41 Just an ordinary day in the Finnish forest ~ Ihan normipäivä suomalaisessa metsässä #Trump #forest #firesafety #raking #forestry #Finland #Finnish #CaliforniaFire #RakingAmericaGreatAgain #rakingtheforest #Suomi #haravointi #metsäpalot #rakingleaves https://t.co/YOKA3D6C2K reageer retweet

quote:

President Sauli Niinistö of Finland told Ilta-Sanomat, the country's second-largest newspaper, on Sunday that he never discussed raking with Trump during their brief meeting in Paris last weekend, where the leaders attended various commemorations marking the centennial of the armistice that ended World War I.

"I mentioned [to] him that Finland is a land covered by forests and we also have a good monitoring system and network," Niinistö said, adding that he recalled telling Trump: "We take care of our forests."

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Apec summit fails to agree on statement amid US-China spat

For the first time, Apec leaders were unable to agree on a formal written declaration, amid sharp differences between the world’s top two economies over the rules of global trade.

“You know the two big giants in the room. What can I say?” said the host, the Papua New Guinean prime minister, Peter O’Neill, conceding defeat.

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, admitted the failure came down to “different visions on particular elements with regard to trade that prevented full consensus”.

Sources said that going into the meeting the United States had pressed for the leaders to issue what amounted to a denunciation of the World Trade Organization and a call for its wholesale reform.

That demand was a step too far for Beijing, which would be likely to get less preferential treatment under any changes.

O’Neill indicated the WTO had been a sticking point in agreeing a joint communique.

“Apec has got no charter over the World Trade Organization. That is a fact,” he said. “Those matters can be raised at the World Trade Organization.”

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A bitter race for the White House.

A secret campaign meeting in New York.

And a presidential contender willing to conspire with a foreign government to clinch the win.

The Rachel Maddow Show 11/18/2018 | MSNBC Betrayal: The Plot That Won the White House

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Op zondag 18 november 2018 16:56 schreef Xa1pt het volgende:

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Je hebt wel een hele bijzondere manier van lezen.

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Op vrijdag 16 november 2018 19:41 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Een kennis van mij in Amerika (New York) kreeg vandaag een telefoontje met de vraag of hij 5 dollar wil doneren voor ‘toekomstige politieke ondernemingen van Hillary Clinton’. Hij mocht uiteraard ook meer overmaken dan 5 euro en het liefst vandaag nog omdat ze een target moesten halen.

Arme democraten, arm Amerika.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 02:42 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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https://www.theguardian.c(...)elt-and-one-way-road

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 02:06 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

SPOILER

[ afbeelding ]

De Finnen gingen er ook lekker mee aan de haal op social media

twitter:

pyryluminen twitterde op zondag 18-11-2018 om 15:13:41 Just an ordinary day in the Finnish forest ~ Ihan normipäivä suomalaisessa metsässä #Trump #forest #firesafety #raking #forestry #Finland #Finnish #CaliforniaFire #RakingAmericaGreatAgain #rakingtheforest #Suomi #haravointi #metsäpalot #rakingleaves https://t.co/YOKA3D6C2K reageer retweet

Finnish president denies ever discussing ‘raking’ with Trump

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 08:28 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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De ziel van een anarchist. Een die maar al te graag een escalatie wil.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 11:26 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Stukje over O'Rourke en 2020

'He’s Barack Obama, but white’: Beto O’Rourke blows up the 2020 Democratic primary
https://www.politico.com/(...)ratic-primary-995353

Hij schijnt er over na te denken.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 11:29 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Het iig iemand die in een heel bias georïenteerde kiesgemeenschap stemmen kan trekken.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 11:40 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Hij lijkt mij een prima kandidaat opzich maar ik zou zelf toch liever een vrouw zien en iemand die iets senior is qua ervaring.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 11:42 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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ehh. Hillary hebben we gehad, en je weet wat er toen is gebeurd.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 11:42 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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ehh. Hillary hebben we gehad, en je weet wat er toen is gebeurd.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 11:45 schreef Vis1980 het volgende:

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Ik wist niet dat Hillary de enige vrouw is die aan die omschrijving voldoet.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 11:50 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Je zou kunnen stellen dat Trump bij een campagne hetzelfde effect heeft op ELKE andere vrouwelijke kandidaat die aan die omschrijving voldoet.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 11:50 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Je zou kunnen stellen dat Trump bij een campagne hetzelfde effect heeft op ELKE andere vrouwelijke kandidaat die aan die omschrijving voldoet.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 11:52 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Dat zou dan wel een hele domme stelling zijn, al helemaal ongefundeerd.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 11:55 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Trump weet PRECIES hoe hij een vrouw moet intimideren. En welke daarvoor ontvankelijk is.

[ afbeelding ]

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 12:45 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Dus omdat Trump een vrouwonvriendelijke creep is, is iedere vrouw die het tegen hem opneemt per definitie kansloos? Wat is dat voor een bizarre redenering?

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 12:53 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Niet zo bizar als je denkt. De meeste politici hebben een "flow' nodig om tijdens een rally tot een goed verhaal te komen. Trump gebruikte bij Hillary het effectiefste wapen wat hij heeft. Een vorm van disruptie die hij alleen bij vrouwen kan uitvoeren. Waar mannen zich er helemaal niet aan storen, kan Trump dit wapen bij elke vrouw in de strijd gooien, en doorbreekt zo die flow. En dat maakt vrouwen zo makkelijk te beschadigen met een monster als Trump. Daar moet je dus een politiek monster tegenover zetten. Iemand zonder scrupules.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 11:55 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Trump weet PRECIES hoe hij een vrouw moet intimideren. En welke daarvoor ontvankelijk is.

[ afbeelding ]

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 13:44 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Aanranding is nou niet echt een hele goede strategie tijdens een live tv-debat.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 12:53 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Niet zo bizar als je denkt. De meeste politici hebben een "flow' nodig om tijdens een rally tot een goed verhaal te komen. Trump gebruikte bij Hillary het effectiefste wapen wat hij heeft. Een vorm van disruptie die hij alleen bij vrouwen kan uitvoeren. Waar mannen zich er helemaal niet aan storen, kan Trump dit wapen bij elke vrouw in de strijd gooien, en doorbreekt zo die flow. En dat maakt vrouwen zo makkelijk te beschadigen met een monster als Trump. Daar moet je dus een politiek monster tegenover zetten. Iemand zonder scrupules.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 12:53 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Daar moet je dus een politiek monster tegenover zetten. Iemand zonder scrupules.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 13:51 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Nee maar dit is Trump's meesterlijke strategie om een vrouw uit haar "flow" te halen waardoor iedere vrouw per definitie kansloos is tegen hem.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 14:14 schreef RM-rf het volgende:

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Je bedoelt dus zoiets als ongeveer alle mannelijke politici die Trump in 2016 tijdens de republikeinse primaries afgesabelt heeft?

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 14:36 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Precies. Stuitend dat er nog steeds mensen zijn die zo naïef zijn dat ze denken dat het helpt om een nog grotere bullebak tegenover Trump te zetten. Trump zal altijd harder schreeuwen, schokkendere uitspraken doen, meer mensen schofferen, etc.

Wat je nodig hebt is iemand die uit zichzelf genoeg media aandacht opeist omdat hij of zij een authentiek verhaal heeft. Wat dat betreft is ORourke wel weer een goede keuze.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 14:01 schreef OMG het volgende:

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Daarnaast hebben republikeinen het niet zo op vrouwen, zie de opmaak van vrouwelijke leden in het huis, dus zie ik een vrouwelijke kandidaat het toch makkelijk verliezen in de mix van Trump stompzinnigheden en debiele attack ads. Zie ook niet zoveel in je dood staren op specifiek een vrouwelijke kandidaat.

Message from Jeff Bezos - SNL

quote:

For two years, observers have speculated that the June, 2016, Brexit campaign in the U.K. served as a petri dish for Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign in the United States. Now there is new evidence that it did. Newly surfaced e-mails show that the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, and Cambridge Analytica, the Big Data company that he worked for at the time, were simultaneously incubating both nationalist political movements in 2015.

Emma Briant, an academic expert on disinformation at George Washington University, has unearthed new e-mails that appear to reveal the earliest documented role played by Bannon in Brexit. The e-mails, which date back to October of 2015, show that Bannon, who was then the vice-president of Cambridge Analytica, an American firm largely owned by the U.S. hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, was in the loop on discussions taking place at the time between his company and the leaders of Leave.EU, a far-right nationalist organization. The following month, Leave.EU publicly launched a campaign aimed at convincing British voters to support a referendum in favor of exiting the European Union. The U.K. narrowly voted for the so-called Brexit in June, 2016. The tumultuous fallout has roiled the U.K. ever since, threatening the government of the Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May.

Bannon did not respond to requests for comment. But his name and private e-mail address appear on the chain of three e-mails in October, 2015, between Brittany Kaiser, the director of program development at Cambridge Analytica, and Arron Banks, who headed the Leave.EU campaign and referred to himself in the title of his memoir as one of “The Bad Boys of Brexit.” Banks could not be reached for comment regarding the e-mails, which were first published Saturday by the British Web site openDemocracy.

SPOILER

The precise role played by foreign entities in promoting and possibly funding Brexit has been clouded in mystery and controversy. British law forbids foreign contributions to its political campaigns—just as U.S. law bars foreign campaign contributions. The laws are designed to prevent international manipulation of domestic affairs. Executives working for Cambridge Analytica, which filed for bankruptcy this spring, have categorically denied that the firm was paid to do any work for the Leave.EU campaign. The new e-mails do not contradict that, but show that, even if the firm was not paid for its services, it laid some of the early groundwork for the Leave.EU campaign. The e-mails show that Banks and others in the Leave.EU leadership met with Cambridge Analytica executives in 2015, and discussed what Banks called a “two-stage process” that would “get CA”—Cambridge Analytica—“on the team.”

In an e-mail dated October 24, 2015, Banks also discussed tasking Cambridge Analytica with helping him raise funds through the U.S. for the Leave.EU campaign. In a note to the Cambridge Analytica executives with whom he had met, Banks wrote, “It’s clear that major donors are sitting on the fence, but we aim to do something about that.” Banks returns to the topic later in the note, adding, “We would like CA to come up with a strategy for fund raising in the states and engaging companies and special interest groups that might be affected by TTIP”—the pending Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

Banks did not address the potential illegality of direct foreign donations, but suggested a strategy that might circumvent the letter of the campaign-finance laws, if not their intent. Banks suggested enlisting Cambridge Analytica’s help in reaching out to Americans “with family ties to the UK.” Evidently, by targeting Americans with British relatives, the hope was that they could avoid campaign-finance-law violations. He suggested that Cambridge Analytica, which boasted of having access to two hundred and thirty million Americans’ voter-registration data, as well as other personal information, could be solicited “to raise money and create SM [social media] activity.”

The following day, a Cambridge Analytica staffer sent an e-mail back to Banks, again with Bannon included on the chain, suggesting that the firm was on board with the idea of developing a proposal that would include “US-based fundraising strategies.”

Whether foreign funds secretly supported the Brexit movement has become the focus of intense speculation and investigation in the U.K. The British probes, in many respects, are parallel to the Robert Mueller investigation of possible Russian support for Trump’s 2016 campaign. Banks has drawn particular scrutiny because his business spent some nine million pounds supporting the Brexit campaign, making him the country’s single largest political-campaign donor by far, despite questions about whether he had the personal wealth to contribute that much on his own. Banks has insisted that his contributions were legal, and that foreign sources, including Russia, contributed no funds. But multiple British agencies have launched inquiries, including a criminal investigation into Banks’s role by the National Crime Agency, the U.K.’s equivalent to the F.B.I.

Brittany Kaiser, the former executive at Cambridge Analytica whose name appears on the new e-mails, has since become something of a whistle-blower, exposing the company’s role in the Brexit campaign to the press. Reached through a spokeswoman, she declined to comment.

While the e-mail chain includes Bannon, there is no evidence that he read or commented on the exchange between the Leave.EU leaders and the Cambridge Analytica executives. In the fall of 2015, Bannon was busy setting up a new office for Cambridge Analytica in Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., and pitching the firm’s services to Republican candidates, including Donald Trump. The firm initially worked for Ted Cruz’s Presidential campaign. But, when Trump won the Republican nomination, the Mercer family, which had financially supported Trump’s Presidential bid, insisted that Trump put Bannon in charge of the campaign and bring in Cambridge Analytica, in which the family was heavily invested, as well.

Executives at Cambridge Analytica claimed that they had access to unprecedented quantities of advanced “psychographic” data that enabled the Trump campaign to micro-target its pitch to voters. But, this past May, the company filed for bankruptcy in the wake of allegations—denied by Cambridge Analytica executives—that it had improperly obtained millions of people’s personal data from Facebook, without the users’ permission, in violation of the company’s regulations.

The possibility that both Brexit and the Trump campaign simultaneously relied upon the same social-media company and its transgressive tactics, as well as some of the same advisers, to further far-right nationalist campaigns, set off alarm bells on both sides of the Atlantic. Damian Collins, a member of Parliament, and chair of its Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which held an inquiry into fake news, told the Observer, which has broken much of the news about Cambridge Analytica in the U.K., that the new e-mails “suggest that the role of Bannon and Mercer is far deeper and more complex than we realised. There’s a big question about whether Mercer’s money was used in the Brexit campaign and it absolutely underscores why Britain needs a proper Mueller-style investigation. There are direct links between the political movements behind Brexit and Trump. We’ve got to recognise the bigger picture here. This is being coordinated across national borders by very wealthy people in a way we haven’t seen before."

The American investigations into foreign interference in Trump’s election, and British probes into Brexit, have increasingly become interwoven. The role of the Russian Ambassador to the U.K., Alexander Yakovenko, has reportedly been the subject of interest both to Mueller’s investigators and to those in the U.K., who have examined his relationship to Banks. The role of Nigel Farage, the former leader of the far-right, Euroskeptic U.K. Independence Party, who has been an ally of Bannon and Trump, has also reportedly stirred the interest of investigators in both countries, especially after he was spotted in 2017 leaving the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, in which Julian Assange has taken refuge. Assange’s media platform, WikiLeaks, published many of the e-mails stolen by Russia from the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 election season.

How and whether all of these pieces fit together is the subject of Mueller’s investigation, but the lack of a similar single, overarching investigation in the U.K. has led critics to call for one. Emma Briant, for instance, who has submitted the new e-mails to the British government for further investigation, told openDemocracy that “this evidence shows that Banks was seeking foreign funding for Brexit from the very beginning.” She argued that the U.K. inquiry, like the U.S. one, needed to follow the money and the potential manipulation of public opinion as nationalist policies rose on both sides of the Atlantic.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op maandag 19-11-2018 om 14:00:02 White House officials sent Jim Acosta a letter stating that his pass is set to be suspended again once the restraining order expires, Axios reports.CNN is fighting back, and is expected back in court as soon as today.https://t.co/DBeCyTaTJ4 reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 18-11-2018 om 19:01:09 So funny to see little Adam Schitt (D-CA) talking about the fact that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was not approved by the Senate, but not mentioning the fact that Bob Mueller (who is highly conflicted) was not approved by the Senate! reageer retweet

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 16:05 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 18-11-2018 om 19:01:09 So funny to see little Adam Schitt (D-CA) talking about the fact that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was not approved by the Senate, but not mentioning the fact that Bob Mueller (who is highly conflicted) was not approved by the Senate! reageer retweet

Trump over Adam Schiff...

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 16:05 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 18-11-2018 om 19:01:09 So funny to see little Adam Schitt (D-CA) talking about the fact that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was not approved by the Senate, but not mentioning the fact that Bob Mueller (who is highly conflicted) was not approved by the Senate! reageer retweet

Trump over Adam Schiff...

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"Today, the court made clear that there is no absolute First Amendment right to access the White House. In response to the court, we will temporarily reinstate the reporter's hard pass. We will also further develop rules and processes to ensure fair and orderly press conferences in the future," Sanders said. "There must be decorum at the White House."

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 14:52 schreef thesiren.nl het volgende:
Iemand met verstand en humor die hem kan baiten domme dingen te doen. Je weet dat trump altijd offscript gaat daar moet je hem pakken.

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A group of Senate Democrats is suing to block Matt Whitaker from serving as acting attorney general on grounds that his placement in the post was unconstitutional.

The suit, which is being filed by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI) in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is the latest and most aggressive salvo against the Whitaker appointment. Last week, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel defended Whitaker’s promotion in a memo that drew immediate criticism for its expansive understanding of the president’s power. That view is in hot dispute, including from the state of Maryland, which petitioned a federal judge to stop him from serving on constitutional grounds.

The latest suit, which was brought by the groups Protect Democracy and the Constitutional Accountability Center for the Senators, argues that Whitaker’s appointment violates the Constitution’s Appointments Clause because the U.S. Senate did not confirm him to his prior post. Whitaker was chief of staff to now-former Attorney General Jeff Sessions before President Trump elevated him to his current gig. Trump did so through the Vacancies Reform Act, which allows the staffing of vacant positions for up to 210 days. But many constitutional scholars have argued that the Vacancies Reform Act doesn’t let the president appoint people to cabinet-level positions who haven’t been senate confirmed. The Senate confirmed Whitaker in 2004 as a U.S. Attorney in Iowa, but his opponents—most prominently George Conway, the husband of White House senior staffer Kellyanne Conway, and former Solicitor General Neal Katyal—say that confirmation has effectively lapsed.

SPOILER

“Installing Matthew Whitaker so flagrantly defies constitutional law that any viewer of Schoolhouse Rock would recognize it,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “President Trump is denying Senators our constitutional obligation and opportunity to do our job: scrutinizing the nomination of our nation’s top law enforcement official. The reason is simple: Whitaker would never pass the advice and consent test. In selecting a so-called “constitutional nobody” and thwarting every Senator’s constitutional duty, Trump leaves us no choice but to seek recourse through the courts.”

Whitaker has publicly criticized Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. A few months after Mueller’s installation, Whitaker stated definitively that there was no collusion between Team Trump and the Kremlin. As a vociferous defender of the Trump administration, his appointment has spooked career Justice Department officials.

To legally challenge Whitaker’s appointment, the plaintiffs will have to show they have standing––meaning, that his appointment violated their rights. The question of whether this select group of Democratic senators has standing on grounds that Whitaker’s appointment violated their constitutional right to advise and consent the president on cabinet-level appointments will undoubtedly be debated. David Rivkin, a constitutional lawyer who served in the George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan administrations, told The Daily Beast previously that to win this kind of suit, the Senate would first have to vote to claim standing as an institution.

"The stakes are too high to allow the president to install an unconfirmed lackey to lead the Department of Justice – a lackey whose stated purpose, apparently, is undermining a major investigation into the president,” said Whitehouse in a statement. “Unless the courts intercede, this troubling move creates a plain road map for persistent and deliberate evasion by the executive branch of the Senate's constitutionally mandated advice and consent. Indeed, this appointment appears planned to accomplish that goal.”

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 16:13 schreef Vis1980 het volgende:

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Wat een enorme jankerd. Hij heeft echt het gedrag van een kleuter. En maar klagen als mensen wat over de president zeggen.

Daarnaast lijkt hij steeds banger te worden.

Edit: Adam Schiff: "Wow, Mr. President, that’s a good one.

Was that like your answers to Mr. Mueller’s questions, or did you write this one yourself?"

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 14:52 schreef thesiren.nl het volgende:
Iemand met verstand en humor die hem kan baiten domme dingen te doen. Je weet dat trump altijd offscript gaat daar moet je hem pakken.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 16:45 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Hij heeft succes er mee. Én weer een paar Dems bezig gehouden. Het mooie van Robert Mueller is dat hij zwijgend en vastberaden zijn eigen weg gaat. Bij Mueller heeft Trump geen succes. Hij heeft NIETS waar hij Mueller mee uit balans kan halen. De tactiek van Mueller zouden ze ook bij de media en Dems moeten overnemen. Stil, grimmig en vastberaden, en daar hebben ze nu gelukkig de tools voor.

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Op maandag 19 november 2018 17:14 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Het is niet aan de media om ten strijde te trekken tegen Trump.

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Landmark court rulings, laws and constitutional amendments have allowed women the right to vote, to make decisions about their reproductive health and to some degree, to receive equal pay for equal work. But women are not guaranteed equal rights under the United States Constitution. That's why, for decades, women's rights advocates across the country have supported an Equal Rights Amendment.

Nearly 50 years ago, Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment, barring sex discrimination. But thirty-eight states had to ratify it before it took effect. Earlier this year, Illinois became number 37 and a bipartisan group of lawmakers is campaigning to make Virginia the final, historic vote.

For the past 10 days, those lawmakers have traveled the state on a bus tour, trying to grow enthusiasm for the amendment. And they will need a lot of it. Last session, a group of primarily Democratic lawmakers tried to ratify the amendment, but it didn't even make it to the floor for a vote. Today, there seems to be Republican support and more energy around the ratification than before.

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"When we talk about things such as equal pay for equal work, ending sex discrimination, what we are talking about is giving those things teeth," says Virginia Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, a Democrat.

Foy says laws can change and court rulings can be reversed, so she's sponsoring a bill to make Virginia the 38th, and final, state.

"We have been on the wrong side of history for too long," she says. "We have fought against desegregation. We have fought against interracial marriage. We have fought against women's rights to vote."

Foy's co-sponsor is Republican Virginia State Senator, Glen Sturtevant.

"We are the birth place of the bill of rights, but we need to continue to make sure that we include this fundamental American value, which is equality of everyone before the law, in the US constitution," He said Sunday as he wrapped up the ERA campaign's 10-day, statewide bus tour.

Some legal experts say an Equal Rights Amendment will give women a better chance at winning discrimination cases in court.

Patricia Wallace, an attorney in Richmond, says it will also be easier to strike down state laws, like one in North Carolina that says it's not legally considered rape if a woman agrees to have sex, then changes her mind.

"There are various little statutes around the country that do things like that," Wallace says. "Where there's a disparate treatment of men and women."

Wallace says it could also enshrine the policy that allows women to be in active military combat.

In Virginia, The ERA has bipartisan support, but it's still a hard sell for some conservatives.

"Our concern is that people don't understand what it actually does," says Victoria Cobb, president of the group Family Foundation of Virginia.

Cobb fears the ERA is a vehicle to expand abortion rights disguised as women's equality and that it will force women to be drafted into the military.

"We should be able to embrace a society that can have equal respect and dignity and pay for women without sameness. Without everything between men and women having to be the same," Cobb says. "My daughter should not have to be drafted into military combat to ensure that she can be paid equally."

Proponents say Congress already has the authority to include women in the draft, should it be reinstated.

The most prevalent argument against the ERA is more logistical than ideological. The deadline to ratify the amendment passed decades ago. But supporters are confident Congress can extend or even rescind that deadline, which it did once already in the 1970s.

But that's a fight for another day.

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Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal slammed President Trump on Monday for his criticism of retired Adm. William McRaven, the leader of the 2011 mission that killed Osama bin Laden.

“The president is simply wrong. He’s uninformed and he is pushing an idea that I think is not helpful,” McChrystal, who led U.S. forces in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010, said on CNN.

McChrystal said he believes Trump’s comments that the U.S. should have hunted down bin Laden sooner are “symptomatic of a crisis in leadership we have in the nation today.”

"I don’t think personal attacks on anyone is warranted," he added.

[..]

"I think there’s a certain honesty to what’s happening now," he said. "The president didn’t go to Arlington Cemetery for Veterans Day, and maybe that’s honest because if you really don’t care it would be dishonest to pretend that you do."

quote:

GOP: Retired admiral who Trump attacked is ‘hardly a non-political figure’

The Republican National Committee used Twitter on Monday to defend President Trump's ongoing criticism of retired Navy Adm. William McRaven, tweeting that the former Navy SEAL is "hardly a non-political figure."

The tweet accusing McRaven of partisan leanings earned pushback, including from a progressive veteran's group.

"Worth noting after recent comments: Retired Adm. William McRaven was reportedly on Hillary Clinton’s short list for Vice President in 2016," the GOP account tweeted. "He’s been critical of President @realDonaldTrump— even dating back to the 2016 campaign. He’s hardly a non-political figure."

twitter:

GOP twitterde op maandag 19-11-2018 om 18:19:32 Worth noting after recent comments: Retired Adm. William McRaven was reportedly on Hillary Clinton’s short list for Vice President in 2016. He’s been critical of President @realDonaldTrump— even dating back to the 2016 campaign. He’s hardly a non-political figure. reageer retweet

McRaven was on a long list of possible vice presidential nominees that Clinton’s campaign chairman sent in an email. The email was hacked by Russia and released by WikiLeaks, CBS News reported at the time.

McRaven was also on a list of staff suggestions for Trump's national security adviser, according to The Washington Post.

Trump for days has been attacking McRaven, calling him a "Hillary Clinton fan" and "Obama-backer" during a Sunday interview. McRaven in a statement to CNN over the weekend said that he "did not back Hillary Clinton or anyone else."

"I am a fan of President Obama and President George W. Bush, both of whom I worked for," he added.

McRaven, who oversaw the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, called Trump's anti-media rhetoric "the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime."

"Worth noting that @GOP is now backing smears against a man who did nothing but dedicate 37 years of his life to defending America, organizing and overseeing the mission to take out one of our most dangerous foes in the process," progressive veteran's group Vote Vets tweeted in response to the GOP post.

Conservative radio show host and former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh tweeted, "So f***ing stupid of the GOP. But they do what Trump says."

twitter:

votevets twitterde op maandag 19-11-2018 om 19:28:05 Worth noting that @GOP is now backing smears against a man who did nothing but dedicate 37 years of his life to defending America, organizing and overseeing the mission to take out one of our most dangerous foes in the process.Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. https://t.co/V7laAO12iS reageer retweet

twitter:

WalshFreedom twitterde op maandag 19-11-2018 om 19:05:18 So f***ing stupid of the GOP. But they do what Trump says. https://t.co/lJuzAmFybw reageer retweet

twitter:

HeerJeet twitterde op maandag 19-11-2018 om 19:18:02 I'm no political genius but I think attacking a retired military commander who led the Bin Laden raid and is now struggling with cancer is ... poor optics. https://t.co/lpAuHVxDPZ reageer retweet

twitter:

nedprice twitterde op maandag 19-11-2018 om 19:37:39 Worth noting this isn't just the unhinged blather of @realDonaldTrump; it's the Republican National Committee now racing to defend one of the more indefensible statements to have come out of the President's mouth. Note to @GOP: It's OK to take a pass. https://t.co/pgGz75D8c0 reageer retweet

Trump has been suggesting that the U.S. took too long to hunt down bin Laden, saying it should have been easier to locate the al Qaeda leader in Pakistan.

The former Navy SEAL who reportedly killed bin Laden also defended the mission on Monday, saying, "We all wanted to get him as soon as we could."

quote:

Op maandag 19 november 2018 21:47 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

[..]

https://thehill.com/polic(...)attacked-is-hardly-a

Trump endorses Hillary Clinton

quote:

Op maandag 19 november 2018 17:14 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Het is niet aan de media om ten strijde te trekken tegen Trump.

quote:

The Pentagon is set to begin a drawdown of its 5,800 troops from the Southwest border as early as this week, the Army commander overseeing the mission told POLITICO today — even as the approaching caravan of refugees prompted U.S. customs officers to close a port of entry near Tijuana, Mexico.

All the active-duty troops that President Donald Trump ordered sent to the border before the midterm elections should be home by Christmas, said Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, who is running the mission from San Antonio, Texas.

Buchanan also confirmed previous reports that the military rejected a request from the Department of Homeland Security for an armed force to back up Border Patrol agents in the event of a violent confrontation.

"That is a law enforcement task, and the secretary of defense does not have the authority to approve that inside the homeland," Buchanan said.

He said the troop deployment should start falling rapidly as engineer and logistics troops — some the largest parts of the deployment — wind down their mission of building base camps and fortifying ports of entry for the Border Patrol.

"Our end date right now is 15 December, and I've got no indications from anybody that we'll go beyond that," said Buchanan, who leads the ground component of U.S. Northern Command.

twitter:

TheBeatWithAri twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 00:08:46 WATCH: Trump goes from being "100%" ready to testify under oath in Mueller probe, to "probably" won't sit down with Mueller or answer any obstruction questions: https://t.co/ao7FNhu8Fs reageer retweet

quote:

Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails last year to White House aides, Cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many of them in violation of federal records rules, according to people familiar with a White House examination of her correspondence.

White House ethics officials learned of Trump’s repeated use of personal email when reviewing emails gathered last fall by five Cabinet agencies to respond to a public records lawsuit. That review revealed that throughout much of 2017, she often discussed or relayed official White House business using a private email account with a domain that she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner.

The discovery alarmed some advisers to President Trump, who feared that his daughter’s practices bore similarities to the personal email use of Hillary Clinton, an issue he made a focus of his 2016 campaign. Trump attacked his Democratic challenger as untrustworthy and dubbed her “Crooked Hillary” for using a personal email account as secretary of state.

Some aides were startled by the volume of Ivanka Trump’s personal emails — and taken aback by her response when questioned about the practice. Trump said she was not familiar with some details of the rules, according to people with knowledge of her reaction.

The White House referred requests for comment to Ivanka Trump’s attorney and ethics counsel, Abbe Lowell.

SPOILER

In a statement, Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Lowell, acknowledged that the president’s daughter occasionally used her private email before she was briefed on the rules, but he said none of her messages contained classified information.

“While transitioning into government, after she was given an official account but until the White House provided her the same guidance they had given others who started before she did, Ms. Trump sometimes used her personal account, almost always for logistics and scheduling concerning her family,” he said in a statement.

Mirijanian said Ivanka Trump turned over all her government-related emails months ago so they could be stored permanently with other White House records.

And he stressed that her email use was different than that of Clinton, who had a private email server in the basement of her Chappaqua, N.Y., home. At one point, an archive of thousands of Clinton’s emails was deleted by a computer specialist amid a congressional investigation.

“Ms. Trump did not create a private server in her house or office, no classified information was ever included, the account was never transferred at Trump Organization, and no emails were ever deleted,” Mirijanian said.

Like Trump, Clinton also said she was unaware of or misunderstood the rules. However, Clinton relied solely on a private email system as secretary of state, bypassing government servers entirely.

Both Trump and Clinton relied on their personal attorneys to review their private emails and determine which messages should be retained as government records.

Clinton originally said none of the messages she sent or received were “marked classified.” The FBI later determined that 110 emails contained classified information at the time they were sent or received.

Austin Evers, executive director of the liberal watchdog group American Oversight, whose record requests sparked the White House discovery, said it strained credulity that Trump’s daughter did not know that government officials should not use private emails for official business.

“There’s the obvious hypocrisy that her father ran on the misuse of personal email as a central tenet of his campaign,” Evers said. “There is no reasonable suggestion that she didn’t know better. Clearly everyone joining the Trump administration should have been on high alert about personal email use.”

Ivanka Trump and her husband set up personal emails with the domain “ijkfamily.com” through a Microsoft system in December 2016, as they were preparing to move to Washington so Kushner could join the White House, according to people familiar with the arrangement.

The couple’s emails are prescreened by the Trump Organization for security problems such as viruses but are stored by Microsoft, the people said.

Trump used her personal account to discuss government policies and official business less than 100 times — often replying to other administration officials who contacted her through her private email, according to people familiar with the review.

Another category of less-substantive emails may have also violated the records law: hundreds of messages related to her official work schedule and travel details that she sent herself and personal assistants who cared for her children and house, they said.

People close to Ivanka Trump said she never intended to use her private email to shroud her government work. After she told White House lawyers she was unaware that she was breaking any email rules, they discovered that she had not been receiving White House updates and reminders to all staff about prohibited use of private email, according to people familiar with the situation.

Using personal emails for government business could violate the Presidential Records Act, which requires that all official White House communications and records be preserved as a permanent archive of each administration. It can also increase the risk that sensitive government information could be mishandled or hacked, revealing government secrets and risking harm to diplomatic relations and secret operations.

Revelations about Clinton’s personal email system led to an FBI investigation of whether she had mishandled classified information. The scandal shadowed Clinton throughout the 2016 White House race, culminating in then-FBI Director James B. Comey’s controversial decision to hold a news conference a few months before the election to announce his conclusion that she had been reckless with government secrets but that there was not sufficient evidence she had intended to skirt the law.

During the campaign, Donald Trump said the Democratic nominee’s “corruption is on a scale we have never seen before” and called her personal email use “bigger than Watergate.”

Trump supporters still chant “Lock her up!” at his rallies, and the president, nearly two years into his administration, continues to tweet about Clinton’s emails.

“Big story out that the FBI ignored tens of thousands of Crooked Hillary Emails, many of which are REALLY BAD,” he tweeted in August, referring to a Fox News story about claims that the bureau did not scrutinize all her emails. “Also gave false election info. I feel sure that we will soon be getting to the bottom of all of this corruption. At some point I may have to get involved!”

Ivanka Trump first used her personal email to contact Cabinet officials in early 2017, before she joined the White House as an unpaid senior adviser, according to emails obtained by American Oversight.

In late February 2017, she used her personal email to contact Small Business Administration chief Linda McMahon and propose they meet to explore “opportunities to collaborate.” The following month, she emailed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, suggesting that their staffers meet to discuss ways to collaborate on “locational/workforce development and k-12 STEM education.”

While her messages were largely about government work, Trump was not then subject to White House records rules.

When she joined the White House on March 30, Trump pledged to comply “with all ethics rules,” responding to complaints that her voluntary role gave her all of the access and perks of the White House — but none of the legal responsibilities or constraints.

“Throughout this process I have been working closely and in good faith with the White House counsel and my personal counsel to address the unprecedented nature of my role,” she said in a statement at the time.

But Trump continued to occasionally use her personal email in her official capacity, according to people familiar with the review.

Her husband Jared Kushner’s use of personal email for government work drew intense scrutiny when it was first reported by Politico last fall. The revelation prompted demands from congressional investigators that Kushner preserve his records, which his attorney said he had.

But Trump had used her personal email for official business far more frequently, according to people familiar with the administration’s review — a fact that remained a closely held secret inside the White House.

“She was the worst offender in the White House,” said a former senior U.S. government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal dynamics.

After discovering the extent of her email use in September 2017, White House lawyers relied on Lowell, Ivanka Trump’s attorney, to help review her personal emails to determine which were personal and which were official business, according to the people.

The White House Counsel’s Office did not have access to her personal account and could not review it without invading her privacy and possibly violating privileged communications with her attorneys, people familiar with the review said.

After his review, Lowell forwarded emails that he had determined were related to official business to Ivanka Trump’s government account, a move he viewed as rectifying any violations of the records law, they said.

Lowell’s review found less than 1,000 personal emails in which Trump shared her official schedule and travel plans with herself and her personal assistants, according to two people familiar with the review.

Separately, there were less than 100 emails in which Trump used her personal account to discuss official business with other administration officials.

The scope of her personal email use had not emerged in response to American Oversight’s records request, which sought Trump’s correspondence with Cabinet agencies in early 2017. Most internal White House communications are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

“I’m disappointed — although not entirely surprised — that this administration disregarded clear laws that they more than anyone should have been aware of,” Evers said.

In many cases, government officials contacted Ivanka Trump first at her personal email address. That was the case with a note she received in April 2017 from Treasury official Dan Kowalski, who was seeking to set up a meeting between the president and the secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international economic group of which the United States is a member.

“I apologize for reaching out to you on your personal email for this, but it is the only email I have for you,” he wrote, according to an email obtained by American Oversight.

“For future reference my WH email is [redacted],” Ivanka Trump replied. “Thanks for reaching out and making this introduction.”

But other times, Trump used her private email to initiate official business.

In April 2017, she used her personal email to write to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s chief of staff, Eli Miller, suggesting that he connect with her chief of staff, Julie Radford. The email chain, obtained by American Oversight, was copied to Radford’s government account.

“It would be great if you both could connect next week to discuss [redacted],”she wrote. “We would love your feedback and input as we structure.”

quote:

Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 00:28 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

TheBeatWithAri twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 00:08:46 WATCH: Trump goes from being "100%" ready to testify under oath in Mueller probe, to "probably" won't sit down with Mueller or answer any obstruction questions: https://t.co/ao7FNhu8Fs reageer retweet

Goh wat onverwacht

quote:

Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 00:46 schreef Kansenjongere het volgende:

[..]

Er was toch al eerder gezegd dat als hij zou antwoorden het schriftelijk moest gebeuren omdat zijn adviseurs doodsbang zijn dat hij in een mondeling gesprek zichzelf elke zin tegenspreekt?

quote:

Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 00:44 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Ivanka Trump used a personal email account to send hundreds of emails about government business last year

[..]

quote:

Former top members of the intelligence community rebuked President Donald Trump on Monday for deriding the retired Navy SEAL who oversaw the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden as a "Hillary Clinton backer" and suggesting that he should have caught the al Qaeda leader sooner.

Responses to Trump's comments about retired Adm. Bill McRaven, who has criticized the president's attacks on the press, poured in Monday from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who said Trump should apologize.

"This president owes Admiral McRaven and all of the SEALS involved in that operation an apology for what he's saying. He's undermining his position as commander-in-chief. Not only with those that conducted the operation, but with the entire military," Panetta, who served as the U.S. Secretary of Defense under President Barack Obama at the time of the 2011 raid that killed bin Laden, said on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports" Monday.

Leon Panetta: President Donald Trump Is Weakening His Position As Commander-in-Chief | MSNBC

SPOILER

In a public statement issued later in the day, Panetta said Trump's "statement criticizing McRaven for not getting Bin Laden sooner is patently ridiculous" and "demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of how our military and intelligence agencies operate."

Earlier in the day, Brennan, who was Obama's homeland security adviser at the time of the bin Laden raid and served as CIA director from 2013 to 2017, tweeted to Trump that "you constantly remind us how substantively shallow & dishonest you are on so many fronts, which is why we are in such dangerous times."

“You would need an extremely tall ladder to get anywhere near the level of intellect, competence & integrity of Bill McRaven & your predecessors,” Brennan, a prominent Trump critic, said on Twitter.



Brennan is a senior national security and intelligence analyst for MSNBC and NBC News.

Trump revoked Brennan's security clearance in August, prompting McRaven to write an opinion article for The Washington Post urging the president to revoke his clearance, as well, so that he could "add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency."

Clapper, who served as Obama’s director of national intelligence from 2010 to 2017, told CNN Monday that the comments from the president were “kind of typical, unfortunately, of President Trump.”

He added that, “what this really is, rather than its misplaced criticism of Bill McRaven, it’s really a slam at the intelligence community, who was responsible for tracking down Osama Bin Laden.”

“It reflects, I think, his complete ignorance about what that took,” he said.

Meanwhile, Robert O’Neill, a former Navy SEAL who claims to have fired the shots that killed bin Laden, told NBC News' Hallie Jackson Monday that "what the president said about McRaven" was "a little inaccurate"

"The raid to get Osama bin Laden was not only bipartisan, it was non-partisan. Everybody involved wanted to get him as soon as we could get him," O'Neill said.

"Admiral McRaven is the reason that my SEAL team got it and Obama approved it. That's just as simple as it gets," he added.

In an interview with Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday,” Trump blasted McRaven, who oversaw the raid, as a "Hillary Clinton fan" and said bin Laden should have been captured much sooner, though he did not explain how the Obama administration should have done so. The president made the comments after Wallace asked him about McRaven's criticism of Trump's attacks on the press.

Last year, McRaven, who did not make an endorsement in the 2016 presidential election, called Trump's lambasting of the news media possibly "the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime" during a speech at the University of Texas.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 19-11-2018 om 16:26:39 Of course we should have captured Osama Bin Laden long before we did. I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center. President Clinton famously missed his shot. We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools!.. reageer retweet

McRaven responded on Sunday, telling CNN that he did not support Clinton or anyone else in the 2016 election. He emphasized that partisanship did not play a role in his career.

On Monday morning, however, Trump doubled down on his remarks, tweeting that, "Of course we should have captured Osama Bin Laden long before we did."

quote:

President Trump has a new feud, this time with a Navy Seal commander who oversaw the mission to kill Osama bin Laden. Retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson tells Ari Melber that Trump "does everything" for "his political domestic base" and that attacking Admiral McRaven and sending troops to the border were "a political stunt". Wilkerson adds that Trump is the "absolute enemy" of the media's ability to represent Government's actions to citizens.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 01:40:24 NBC News calls NM-02: Xochitl Torres Small (D) is the apparent winner in New Mexico 2. Democrat gain. —@NBCPoliticsThis now puts Democrats with a net gain of 38 seats in the House. reageer retweet

twitter:

NateSilver538 twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 02:13:20 Democrats are about even-money right now to wind up with *40* or more House seats. Unless there's something we don't know about, it looks like they'll win UT-4, bringing their floor to 39. CA-21 is a Tossup. Then they have outside chances in GA-7 and NY-27 reageer retweet

twitter:

NateSilver538 twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 02:02:47 McAdams (D) now leads Mia Love (R) and there isn't really supposed to be a lot left out there to count. We're moving this race to Likely D for now.https://t.co/5dIAMh5SDu reageer retweet

twitter:

dsamuelsohn twitterde op maandag 19-11-2018 om 22:03:28 NEW Mueller brief filed in Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, addressing Whitaker appointment and what it does to a subpoena fight to get testimony from a Roger Stone associate. In short, special counsel lawyers say the change in who's in charge "has no effect on this case." https://t.co/UnO6si450H reageer retweet

SPOILER

twitter:

MaddowBlog twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 03:43:29 In state after state, Republicans have tilted the playing field, perverting democracy to their advantage. https://t.co/xmF6vFfhrn reageer retweet

quote:

Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 08:10 schreef thesiren.nl het volgende:
Lock her up. Ivanka doet een Hillary.
Washington (CNN)Ivanka Trump last year used a personal email account to discuss or relay official White House business, according to emails released by a nonpartisan watchdog group.

The Washington Post reported Monday the White House conducted an investigation into Trump's email usage and that she used her personal email address for much of 2017.

Van:
https://edition.cnn.com/2(...)l-account/index.html

quote:

Op maandag 19 november 2018 17:25 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:

[..]

Dat zou je zeggen ja.

quote:

Op maandag 19 november 2018 21:54 schreef zarGon het volgende:

[..]

Een ander proberen te 'verzwakken' door diegene "Hillary Clinton-fan" te noemen...

Trump endorses Hillary Clinton

.

Ik snap verder echt niet hoe ze accepteren dat Trump keer op keer zit te schijten op de militairen...

quote:

President Trump is surrounded by fools.

There’s that fool William H. McRaven, Special Operations commander of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and the other fools in the U.S. military, who should have brought down bin Laden “a lot sooner,” because “everybody in Pakistan” — all 208 million of them — knew the terrorist leader was living in “a nice mansion.” Trump alone “predicted Osama bin Laden” in 2000 when “nobody really knew who he was.”(Were they waiting for Trump to give them bin Laden’s Zip code plus four?)

There are the fools in the CIA, who have concluded based on so-called evidence that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered last month’s killing of Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. But Trump alone understands that we’ll never know the truth, because the crown prince denied involvement “maybe five different times.”

There’s that fool Chris Wallace at Fox News, who didn’t understand why Trump skipped Arlington National Cemetery on the Monday after Veterans Day after skipping a visit to a U.S. military cemetery in France two days earlier. But Wallace, if he were wiser, would have known Trump was “extremely busy on calls for the country” as well as “doing other things.”

There are the foolish Finns who, after Trump claimed Finland avoided forest fires because “they spent a lot of time on raking,” are now mocking him by posing with garden tools in the woods. But Trump knows Finnish forest-raking is real because Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto, told him about it just last week (even if Niinisto can’t remember this).

Worst of all are the fools in California — people who insist on calling the fire-destroyed town there “Paradise” instead of “Pleasure,” as Trump prefers to call it — who assert that the fires were caused by drought instead of their own mismanagement. As Trump well knows, “there is no drought” in California and there is “plenty of water.”

No one has suffered as many fools as Trump has. But this is to be expected when a “very stable genius” leads a “stupid country.”

SPOILER

Trump knows “more about courts than any human being.” He knows “more about steelworkers than anybody.” He knows “more about ISIS than the generals do,” and “more about offense and defense than they will ever understand.” He knows “more about wedges than any human being that’s ever lived.” He even knows more about medicine than his doctor, dictating a doctor’s letter predicting he would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

How does Trump know so much about so many things? Explaining his disagreement with scientists on climate change, Trump told the Associated Press: “My uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years. Dr. John Trump. And I didn’t talk to him about this particular subject, but I have a natural instinct for science.”

Given Trump’s natural scientific instinct, you don’t need a B.S. from Trump University to know how frustrating it must be to be contradicted repeatedly by “experts” — some in his own administration!

The intelligence community unanimously believes that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, but Trump’s instinct says there’s no reason to disbelieve Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denials.

Satellite imagery shows that North Korea has enhanced its ability to launch missiles, but Trump says, “I don’t believe that.”

The scientific consensus supports the theory of climate change, but Trump says “it could very well go back” to cooling.

Trump’s instinct has led him to a number of scientific discoveries over time:

“The worst hurricanes were 50 years ago.”

Vaccines cause autism in “many” healthy children.

The flu shot is “totally ineffective.”

Exercise is unhealthy.

Coal is “indestructible.”

Windmills are a “killing field” for birds and can make people who live near turbines “go crazy after a couple of years.”

It’s okay to look directly at the sun during a solar eclipse.

California is “shoving” water out to sea “to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish.”

With such a high level of technical expertise, Trump waited 19 months into his presidency to name a White House science adviser. More than 1,000 members of the National Academy of Sciences accuse Trump of the “denigration of scientific expertise and harassment of scientists.”

But they don’t understand. Trump knows more about science than the scientists do.

And this is the problem with being surrounded by fools: Though Trump gives his presidency an “A-plus,” most Americans — about 60 percent — do not appreciate his brilliance.

He deserves better — and he should demand it. He should walk away, withdraw his excellence, maybe get a place in Pleasure — and leave us to suffer our own foolish “scientists” and “experts” and “facts.” That would really show us.

quote:

Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 10:28 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

[..]

https://www.washingtonpos(...)m_term=.78fc252747a9

quote:

Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 08:10 schreef thesiren.nl het volgende:
Lock her up. Ivanka doet een Hillary.
Washington (CNN)Ivanka Trump last year used a personal email account to discuss or relay official White House business, according to emails released by a nonpartisan watchdog group.

The Washington Post reported Monday the White House conducted an investigation into Trump's email usage and that she used her personal email address for much of 2017.

Van:
https://edition.cnn.com/2(...)l-account/index.html

quote:

Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 10:56 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:
Maar Hillary moet nog steeds de bajes in en niet enkel voor het vergrijp m.b.t. de mailserver.

quote:

Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 06:29 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

MaddowBlog twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 03:43:29 In state after state, Republicans have tilted the playing field, perverting democracy to their advantage. https://t.co/xmF6vFfhrn reageer retweet

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 11:18 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Het is wel een vertekend grafiekje, bv. in Wisconsin deden in veel races met een Democratische incumbent überhaupt geen Republikein mee. Dit heeft ook deels met gerrymandering te maken natuurlijk maar op die manier kom je wel al snel bij dit soort verhoudingen.

quote:

Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 11:18 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Het is wel een vertekend grafiekje, bv. in Wisconsin deden in veel races met een Democratische incumbent überhaupt geen Republikein mee. Dit heeft ook deels met gerrymandering te maken natuurlijk maar op die manier kom je wel al snel bij dit soort verhoudingen.

quote:

Trump administration officials suggested sharing census responses with law enforcement, court documents show

Trump administration officials have privately discussed the possibility that in the future census information could be shared with law enforcement, according to documents filed in a legal challenge over plans for a new citizenship question on the 2020 survey.

The subject came up after a Democratic lawmaker asked whether responses to the survey could ever be shared with law enforcement agencies, something that has been strictly illegal according to federal law governing the census.

After a congressional hearing in May about the citizenship question, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) submitted a written query about whether the Justice Department agreed with a memo it had issued in 2010 saying the USA Patriot Act could not override the confidentiality of the census.

In a June 12 email, department officials discussed among themselves how to answer Gomez’s question in a way that left the answer open. Justice Department attorney Ben Aguinaga suggested to acting assistant attorney general John Gore that they not say “too much” in response to Gomez’s question, in case the issue were to “come up later for renewed debate.”

Confidentiality is considered a fundamental premise of the census and crucial to the success of the constitutionally mandated count, which surveys each household in the country every 10 years. That confidentiality is enshrined in the Census Act of 1879.

In 1954, Congress codified the rules, which say that the Commerce Department, which oversees the survey, cannot share the data with any other government agency or court. Violators are subject to up to five years in federal prison and up to $250,000 in fines. The law can be changed only by Congress.

The Justice Department email was included in documents filed in San Francisco federal court for a trial slated to begin in January.

SPOILER

It appeared to leave open the possibility of reconsidering the 2010 memo, which was issued at the time of the first decennial census to be conducted after the 9/11 attacks and the creation of the USA Patriot Act.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the email or whether census confidentiality is subject to debate. Acting Census Bureau director Ron S. Jarmin has blogged about the importance of the count’s confidentiality.

The revelation comes at a time when immigrant communities feel besieged and are already worried about participating in the census, which determines the allocation of $800 billion a year in federal funds along with congressional apportionment.

Gomez’s question asked if there was “any provision of any law that might compel Census to disclose confidential census data for law enforcement or national security purposes?”

In the email to Gore about how to respond, Aguinaga wrote: “I don’t think we want to say too much there in case the issues . . . or related issues come up later for renewed debate. So, I’ve just said that the Department will abide by all laws requiring confidentiality.” It is unclear whether Gore answered the email. Gomez’s office said it received a reply with that wording months later.

Six lawsuits have challenged the administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the count, saying it will dissuade immigrants and their families from filling out the forms and lead to an inaccurate and more costly count.

Filling out the census is required by law. The cost of the count increases when census workers must circle back to households that do not respond to the forms in the initial round.

Additional uncertainty about whether their responses will be protected probably would further undermine the count, census experts say.

“It could reinforce fears about how this administration could use census responses,” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former staff director of the House census oversight subcommittee. Gomez’s question “should have been an easy opportunity for the Justice Department to reaffirm that there is an ironclad wall around personal census responses.”

“If the administration and the commerce secretary don’t right that ship quickly, the entire census could be in trouble,” she added.

Although raising doubts about confidentiality could have a chilling effect on response rates, Thomas Wolf, counsel with the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which has filed briefs in the current lawsuits, said the Justice Department does not have the authority to change the rules.

“The Census Act makes it absolutely clear that individual census responses cannot leave the Commerce Department” and that general census data cannot be shared for law enforcement purposes, Wolf said. “The Department of Justice has absolutely no say in whether the census data can be shared; [it] has to follow federal statutes just like everyone else.”

He added that “the only way these statutes can change is if Congress changes them, and I’m highly skeptical that a Democrat-led House is going to change them.”

Instead, Wolf said, the discussion may have been an example of government officials floating an idea to see if it is workable. “This administration likes to test the fences,” he said. “This fence is an electrical fence; it would be in­cred­ibly illegal.”

House Democrats have vowed to push hard against threats to the count. Gomez, who sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Monday that “the new Democratic House majority will do everything in our power to directly address these anti-immigrant efforts” related to the 2020 count. “These emails prove that the Trump administration is using every tool at their disposal to vilify our immigrant communities, including the 2020 Census.”

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Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 10:56 schreef Oostwoud
[b]Maar Hillary moet nog steeds de bajes in en niet enkel voor het vergrijp m.b.t. de mailserver.

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Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 11:30 schreef archito het volgende:

[..]

Ik zou het best frustrerend vinden om als Democraat in een diep Republikeins district te wonen of andersom, kun je je stem gewoon weggooien.

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Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 11:43 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:
Als er gronden waren om Clinton te vervolgen, dan was dat allang gebeurd.

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Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 11:43 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:
Als er gronden waren om Clinton te vervolgen, dan was dat allang gebeurd.

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Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 12:54 schreef vipergts het volgende:

[..]

Ik denk niet dat zulk soort mensen zich druk maken om gronden die willen gewoon dat die celdeur achter haar dichtgaat

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Rep. Joe Kennedy III: It’s time to legalize marijuana at the federal level

The first recreational marijuana shops in the commonwealth of Massachusetts are opening their doors Tuesday, two years after Massachusetts resoundingly voted in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana. It’s a familiar trend across the country, where popular support for marijuana has surged. Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia have now legalized marijuana in some form — three on Election Day just this month.

I’ve remained skeptical.

My reluctance to embrace legalization stems primarily from one place: my ongoing work with the mental health and addiction communities. I’ve seen the devastating effects of drugs that are used and abused. I’ve met family after family torn apart by addiction. And I’ve heard — repeatedly — from mental health advocates on the frontlines who have grave concerns about what access to marijuana might do for those prone to abuse. They worry about research showing marijuana can be addictive, particularly for adolescents.

At the same time, I’ve heard from others who see marijuana quite differently. The parent whose epileptic child needs marijuana to calm her seizures. The veteran whose trauma it eases. The black teen arrested for smoking a joint while his white friends did the same with impunity.

Over the past year, I’ve worked to rectify these perspectives. I’ve read, I’ve researched, I’ve had countless conversations with people on both sides. One thing is clear to me: Our federal policy on marijuana is badly broken, benefiting neither the elderly man suffering from cancer whom marijuana may help nor the young woman prone to substance use disorder whom it may harm. The patchwork of inconsistent state laws compounds the dysfunction. Our federal government has ceded its responsibility — and authority — to thoughtfully regulate marijuana.

This needs to change. Given the rapid pace of state-level legalization and liberalization, I believe we must implement strong, clear, and fair federal guidelines. To do that requires us to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and legalize it at the federal level.

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A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from denying asylum to migrants who crossed the southern border illegally, saying the president violated a “clear command” from Congress to allow them to apply.

In a ruling late Monday, Jon S. Tigar of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco issued a temporary nationwide restraining order barring enforcement of the policy, which President Trump has billed as an urgent attempt to halt the flow of thousands of asylum-seeking families across the border each month.

Several thousand migrants are now waiting to cross a legal entry point at San Ysidro, across from Tijuana. Many are from a caravan that drew Trump’s wrath in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections, when he made illegal immigration his closing argument. He and his allies spread fear about the “Caravan heading to the Southern Border,” which, as he asserted without evidence in one pre-election tweet, included “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners.” In another, he warned of “some very bad thugs and gang members.” Labeling the movements of Central American migrants a “national emergency,” Trump last month deployed active-duty troops to the border.

As a result of Tigar’s restraining order, migrants may once again seek asylum either at legal entry points or after crossing illegally onto U.S. soil.

The order that Tigar blocked was announced Nov. 9, though the White House had as early as last month floated dramatic changes to the way the United States affords sanctuary to people fleeing persecution in their home countries.

The judge’s order remains in effect until Dec. 19, at which point the court will consider arguments for a permanent order. The administration offered no immediate comment overnight but has routinely appealed adverse decisions.

Tigar said the president could not shift asylum policy on his own.

“Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” wrote the judge, nominated to the federal bench in 2012 by President Barack Obama. He reasoned that the “failure to comply with entry requirements such as arriving at a designated port of entry should bear little, if any, weight in the asylum process.”

SPOILER

The ruling was the latest in a string of court decisions blocking the administration’s hard-line immigration policies, including its efforts to crack down on “sanctuary cities” and to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that affords legal protections for hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. The net effect, barring Supreme Court reversals, has been to substantially weaken the hand of presidents in an area where their authority has in the past been expansive.

Still, the administration has not been without victories. In June, the Supreme Court, by a 5-to-4 vote, upheld a revised version of the travel ban that aimed to keep foreigners from several Muslim-majority nations from entering the country.

The asylum case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups on behalf of East Bay Sanctuary Covenant. The order reflects the judge’s view that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits, and would suffer irreparable injury from the executive action.

The rule pursued by the Trump administration would allow only people who cross at legal checkpoints on the southern border to request asylum, while those entering elsewhere would be able to seek a temporary form of protection that is harder to win and doesn’t yield full citizenship. The changes would amount to a transformation of long-established asylum procedures, codified both at the international level and by Congress.

In his proclamation, Trump said the changes were necessary to prepare for the caravan’s arrival, arguing that asylum seekers had no “lawful basis for admission into our country.” In justifying the policy, the administration relied on the same emergency authority invoked as grounds for the “travel ban."

In a hearing Monday, Scott Stewart, a lawyer for the Justice Department, spoke of a “crushing strain” of migrants attempting to cross the border illegally. He alleged that most asylum claims were “ultimately meritless.”

But the judge seemed skeptical, observing that border apprehensions are near historic lows and that, regardless, federal law says all people on U.S. soil can apply for asylum, no matter how they arrived.

“If this rule stays in effect, people are going to die,” Melissa Crow, senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said after the hearing. “There are going to be people who fall through the cracks in our system.”

Tigar voiced concern for the fate of asylum seekers under the changes. The administration’s rule, he observed, would force individuals “to choose between violence at the border, violence at home, or giving up a pathway to refugee status.”

And in his decision, he wrote that the government’s argument that the manner of entry can be the lone factor rendering a migrant ineligible for asylum “strains credulity."

“To say that one may apply for something that one has no right to receive is to render the right to apply a dead letter,” he argued. “There simply is no reasonable way to harmonize the two.”

The judge pointedly denied the claim that the president, by fiat, could give the manner of entry added legal weight as a determinant of asylum. He reasoned that the “interpretive guide” of United Nations compacts on asylum lent extra force to congressional requirements. The intent of Congress, Tigar wrote, was “unambiguous.”

“And if what Defendants intend to say is that the President by proclamation can override Congress’s clearly expressed legislative intent, simply because a statute conflicts with the President’s policy goals, the Court rejects that argument also,” the judge found.

Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney who argued the case, welcomed the ruling in a statement.

“This ban is illegal, will put people’s lives in danger, and raises the alarm about President Trump’s disregard for separation of powers,” he said. “There is no justifiable reason to flatly deny people the right to apply for asylum, and we cannot send them back to danger based on the manner of their entry. Congress has been clear on this point for decades.”

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 15:30:07 Chuck Schumer is calling on the DOJ inspector general to "conduct an investigation of whether any potentially unlawful or improper communications have occurred between Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, the White House, and other entities." https://t.co/ILdc4L1Grx reageer retweet

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twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 16:30:22 Ethics watchdog American Oversight has sent a letter to the House Oversight and Senate Judiciary leaders demanding an investigation into Ivanka Trump's e-mail use. https://t.co/oAxljNFZHh https://t.co/dp8TFehodq reageer retweet

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SPOILER

Statement from President Donald J. Trump on Standing with Saudi Arabia

America First!

The world is a very dangerous place!

The country of Iran, as an example, is responsible for a bloody proxy war against Saudi Arabia in Yemen, trying to destabilize Iraq's fragile attempt at democracy, supporting the terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon, propping up dictator Bashar Assad in Syria (who has killed millions of his own citizens), and much more. Likewise, the Iranians have killed many Americans and other innocent people throughout the Middle East. Iran states openly, and with great force, "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!" Iran is considered "the world's leading sponsor of terror."

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia would gladly withdraw from Yemen if the Iranians would agree to leave. They would immediately provide desperately needed humanitarian assistance. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has agreed to spend billions of dollars in leading the fight against Radical Islamic Terrorism.

After my heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia last year, the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States. This is a record amount of money. It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development, and much additional wealth for the United States. Of the $450 billion, $110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries - and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business. It would be a wonderful gift to them directly from the United States!

The crime against Jamal Khashoggi was a terrible one, and one that our country does not condone. Indeed, we have taken strong action against those already known to have participated in the murder. After great independent research, we now know many details of this horrible crime. We have already sanctioned 17 Saudis known to have been involved in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, and the disposal of his body

Representatives of Saudi Arabia say that Jamal Khashoggi was an "enemy of the state" and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but my decision is in no way based on that – this is an unacceptable and horrible crime. King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman vigorously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn't!

That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran. The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region. It is our paramount goal to fully eliminate the threat of terrorism throughout the world!

I understand there are members of Congress who, for political or other reasons, would like to go in a different direction - and they are free to do so. I will consider whatever ideas are presented to me, but only if they are consistent with the absolute security and safety of America. After the United States, Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producing nation in the world. They have worked closely with us and have been very responsive to my requests to keeping oil prices at reasonable levels – so important for the world. As President of the United States I intend to ensure that, in a very dangerous world, America is pursuing its national interests and vigorously contesting countries that wish to do us harm. Very simply it is called America First!

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Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 19:01 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:
Trump's statement, met maar liefst 8 uitroeptekens...

[..]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018(...)ashoggi-killing.html

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Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 19:42 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Over gerrymandering en proportionaliteit; in andere staten profiteren Dems juist weer van first past the post. Neemt niet weg dat het een inherent oneerlijk systeem is.

[ afbeelding ]

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Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 19:32 schreef rockstah het volgende:
Is wel een eerlijk statement wat mij betreft. Ze hebben er zelf voor gekozen om SA als proxy in te zetten in hun dwaze kruistocht tegen Iran en dat heeft hun lot nog dieper verbonden dan al het geval was.

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Op dinsdag 20 november 2018 20:35 schreef Lord-Ronddraai het volgende:

[..]

Niet bepaald eerlijk om te doen alsof Iran flink aanwezig is in Yemen en op die manier SA uitlokt. Dat conflict is voornamelijk burgeroorlog en daar heeft SA een zijde gekozen. Iran heeft vervolgens de andere zijde wel wat politieke steun en misschien wat wapens geleverd maar voornamelijk om SA's belangen dwars te zitten.
Niet echt eerlijk om te doen alsof SA een geweldige bondgenoot is terwijl de meeste Europese leiders worden uitgemaakt voor rotte vis.
Niet bepaald eerlijk om te doen alsof hij ook maar een fuck geeft om die Kashoggi.

Maar ik ben het wel met je eens dat het des te duidelijker wordt dat Trump een soort dubbel down op SA en het verhaal met Iran als boeman doet. Ik denk dat die regio een stuk stabieler zou worden als Trump uit de reet van SA kruipt en Iran een eerlijke kans geeft.

twitter:

maggieNYT twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 22:52:45 SCOOP: Trump wanted to order Justice to prosecute Clinton, Comey. @nytmike and me https://t.co/KsfO8DHqwd reageer retweet

twitter:

nytmike twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 22:52:19 EXCLUSIVE: White House lawyers warned the president in a memo that he could be impeached if he tried to get the Justice Department to investigate his rivals. With @maggieNYT https://t.co/zwhqJcdXBt reageer retweet

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President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.

The encounter was one of the most blatant examples yet of how Mr. Trump views the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies. It took on additional significance in recent weeks when Mr. McGahn left the White House and Mr. Trump appointed a relatively inexperienced political loyalist, Matthew G. Whitaker, as the acting attorney general.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump read Mr. McGahn’s memo or whether he pursued the prosecutions further. But the president has continued to privately discuss the matter, including the possible appointment of a second special counsel to investigate both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Comey, according to two people who have spoken to Mr. Trump about the issue. He has also repeatedly expressed disappointment in the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, for failing to more aggressively investigate Mrs. Clinton, calling him weak, one of the people said.

A White House spokesman declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. declined to comment on the president’s criticism of Mr. Wray, whom he appointed last year after firing Mr. Comey.

SPOILER

“Mr. McGahn will not comment on his legal advice to the president,” said Mr. McGahn’s lawyer, William A. Burck. “Like any client, the president is entitled to confidentiality. Mr. McGahn would point out, though, that the president never, to his knowledge, ordered that anyone prosecute Hillary Clinton or James Comey.”

It is not clear which accusations Mr. Trump wanted prosecutors to pursue. He has accused Mr. Comey, without evidence, of illegally having classified information shared with The New York Times in a memo that Mr. Comey wrote about his interactions with the president. The document contained no classified information.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers also privately asked the Justice Department last year to investigate Mr. Comey for mishandling sensitive government information and for his role in the Clinton email investigation. Law enforcement officials declined their requests. Mr. Comey is a witness against the president in the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

Mr. Trump has grown frustrated with Mr. Wray for what the president sees as his failure to investigate Mrs. Clinton’s role in the Obama administration’s decision to allow the Russian nuclear agency to buy a uranium mining company. Conservatives have long pointed to donations to the Clinton family foundation by people associated with the company, Uranium One, as proof of corruption. But no evidence has emerged that those donations influenced the American approval of the deal.

In his conversation with Mr. McGahn, the president asked what stopped him from ordering the Justice Department to investigate Mr. Comey and Mrs. Clinton, the two people familiar with the conversation said. He did have the authority to ask the Justice Department to investigate, Mr. McGahn said, but warned that making such a request could create a series of problems.

Mr. McGahn promised to write a memo outlining the president’s authorities. In the days that followed, lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office wrote a several-page document in which they strongly cautioned Mr. Trump against asking the Justice Department to investigate anyone.

The lawyers laid out a series of consequences. For starters, Justice Department lawyers could refuse to follow Mr. Trump’s orders even before an investigation began, setting off another political firestorm.

If charges were brought, judges could dismiss them. And Congress, they added, could investigate the president’s role in a prosecution and begin impeachment proceedings.

Ultimately, the lawyers warned, Mr. Trump could be voted out of office if voters believed he had abused his power.

For decades, White House aides have routinely sought to shield presidents from decisions related to criminal cases or even from talking about them publicly. Presidential meddling could undermine the legitimacy of prosecutions by attaching political overtones to investigations in which career law enforcement officials followed the evidence and the law.

Perhaps more than any president since Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Trump has been accused of trying to exploit his authority over law enforcement. Witnesses have told the special counsel’s investigators about how Mr. Trump tried to end an investigation into an aide, install loyalists to oversee the inquiry into his campaign and fire Mr. Mueller.

In addition, Mr. Trump has attacked the integrity of Justice Department officials, claiming they are on a “witch hunt” to bring him down.

More significant, Mr. Mueller is investigating whether the president tried to impede his investigation into whether any Trump associates conspired with Russia’s campaign to sow discord among the American electorate during the 2016 presidential race.

Mr. Trump stoked his enmity for Mrs. Clinton during the campaign, suggesting during a presidential debate that he would prosecute her if he was elected president. “If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation,” Mr. Trump said.

“It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Mrs. Clinton replied.

“Because you would be in jail,” Mr. Trump shot back.

But two weeks after his surprise victory, Mr. Trump backed off. “I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with The Times. “She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways, and I am not looking to hurt them at all. The campaign was vicious.”

Nonetheless, he revisited the idea both publicly and privately after taking office. Some of his more vocal supporters stirred his anger, including the Fox News commentator Jeanine Pirro, who has railed repeatedly on her weekly show that the president is being ill served by the Justice Department.

Ms. Pirro told Mr. Trump in the Oval Office last November that the Justice Department should appoint a special counsel to investigate the Uranium One deal, two people briefed on the discussion have said. During that meeting, the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, told Ms. Pirro she was inflaming an already vexed president, the people said.

Shortly after, Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote to lawmakers, partly at the urging of the president’s allies in the House, to inform them that federal prosecutors in Utah were examining whether to appoint a special counsel to investigate Mrs. Clinton. A spokeswoman for the United States attorney for Utah declined to comment on Tuesday on the status of the investigation.

Mr. Trump once called his distance from law enforcement one of the “saddest” parts of being president.

“I look at what’s happening with the Justice Department,” he said in a radio interview a year ago. “Well, why aren’t they going after Hillary Clinton and her emails and with her, the dossier?” He added: “I am not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I am very frustrated.”

twitter:

NatashaBertrand twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 23:35:51 aaaaand voilà—Matthew Whitaker in July 2016: I would indict Hillary Clinton https://t.co/gAVKMmNFWj (h/t @matthewamiller) https://t.co/HH23mgxN6L reageer retweet

quote:

According to FBI Director James Comey’s statement on Tuesday, former secretary of State Hillary Clinton could have been charged with violating several different code sections, and he detailed the evidence that supports bringing criminal charges.

Yet, Director Comey’s judgment was that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring the case. I disagree. I believe myself to have been a reasonable prosecutor, and when the facts and evidence show a criminal violation has been committed, the individuals involved should not dictate whether the case is prosecuted.

One statute that Secretary Clinton could be charged with violating is 18 U.S.C. section 793(f). Under this section, a prosecutor must prove that:

•The person had lawful possession of information relating to national defense.

•Through gross negligence that person permits that information to be removed from its proper place of custody (or given to someone else, or lost, or stolen).

Although it might be intuitive that a secretary of State lawfully possess information that relates to national defense, the facts laid out by Director Comey also establish that this is exactly the type of information in this case.

Of the emails either turned over or recovered by the FBI, 110 contained information that was classified at the time it was sent or received, of which eight email chains contained information that was top secret at the time it was sent.

The facts also show it was gross negligence when she removed the information from State Department security. Secretary Clinton made the decision to use a personal email system, one that had inferior security to the State Department’s or even another commercial vendor’s email service.

A reasonable prosecutor may ask, if on numerous occasions, an unknown State Department employee had taken top secret information from a secured system, emailed that information on a Gmail account, and stored the information on a personal server for years, would that individual be prosecuted? I believe they would.

Matthew Whitaker, U.S. attorney 2004-09, is executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust.

Published 7:45 PM EDT Jul 5, 2016

twitter:

NatashaBertrand twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 14:31:23 New: Former FBI lawyer Jim Baker—a close @Comey friend who knew about Trump's loyalty requests & efforts to protect Flynn in 2017—breaks his silence, notes that Nixon's contact with the officials investigating him was included in his articles of impeachment. https://t.co/anYCFBDlxI reageer retweet

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Nearly 45 years ago, the House Judiciary Committee concluded that President Richard Nixon’s contact with high-level Justice Department officials overseeing the Watergate investigation, detailed in a 62-page “road map” of evidence collected by prosecutors in 1972–73, amounted to an impeachable misuse of executive power.

A half century later, the FBI’s former top lawyer, Jim Baker—a close friend and associate of fired FBI Director James Comey—is laying out parallels, albeit subtly, to President Donald Trump’s interactions with the law-enforcement officials who have been investigating him and his campaign team since July 2016.

In a piece for Lawfare published on Monday, Baker and co-author Sarah Grant, a student at Harvard Law School, used the newly unsealed Watergate road map to show how one president’s attempts to control an investigation targeting him and his associates were quickly exposed and, ultimately, used against him. As the road map laid out, Nixon interacted regularly with the man supervising the Watergate investigation—Henry Petersen, then the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division—and pumped him for information.

SPOILER

“The president, in short, was using a senior Justice Department official to gather intelligence about an ongoing criminal investigation in which he was personally implicated,” Baker and Grant wrote, pointing out that Nixon repeatedly asked Petersen whether he himself was being investigated. Their interactions, moreover, “must be understood within the larger context of the president’s knowledge of the facts regarding Watergate at the time.” In other words, what did the president know, and when did he know it?

Trump is never mentioned in the piece. But it seems safe to say that Baker’s interest in the road map is not purely historical, and that he perceived some eerie parallels between 1973 and 2017. Baker was one of three top FBI officials who knew about Trump’s conversations with Comey between January and May of last year, in which Trump requested Comey’s loyalty, attempted to shield his then–National-Security Adviser Michael Flynn from FBI scrutiny, and asked Comey to reassure him, and even state publicly, that he was not a subject of the ongoing Russia investigation.

One episode cited by the author, which Petersen described in 1973 grand-jury testimony that was later included in the road map, is particularly striking in its similarities to the events of last year. On May 19, 1973, Petersen testified that he had visited the White House a few months earlier to alert Nixon to the fact that his chief of staff and assistant for domestic affairs were both under federal investigation. Petersen suggested that Nixon fire them to protect the presidency from any legal exposure. But Nixon demurred. “He said he couldn’t believe it,” Petersen testified to Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, referring to Nixon. The president called his staffers “fine, upstanding guys,” according to Petersen, and said he didn’t think he should fire them. (Nixon, of course, knew at the time that both staffers were key figures in the events leading up to the Watergate break-in, which Nixon had orchestrated.)

Fast-forward to January and February 2017, when the White House was alerted to Flynn’s legal exposure stemming from conversations he had during the presidential transition period with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

In late January, White House counsel Don McGahn was warned by Sally Yates, then acting attorney general, that Flynn had lied to the FBI about those conversations. “We told him we were concerned that the American people had been misled about what General Flynn had done, and that we weren’t the only ones who knew about this,” Yates testified last year, a few months after she was fired by Trump. “We told them we were giving them this information so they could take action.” Despite Yates’s warnings, the White House waited nearly three weeks to ask Flynn to resign. And the day after Flynn was ousted, Trump asked Comey to consider letting Flynn “go” because “he is a good guy,” according to a contemporaneous memo Comey wrote, documenting the meeting.

Whether Trump ordered Flynn, who has been cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, to discuss the issue of sanctions with Kislyak and then lie to federal investigators about it is still an open question. But in 1974, Nixon’s interactions with Petersen, which involved misleading Petersen about what he and his staffers knew and when they knew it, were considered an impeachable offense. As Baker noted, Article II, paragraph 5, of the House Judiciary Committee’s Articles of Impeachment for Nixon stated that he “knowingly misused the executive power by interfering” with the FBI and the DOJ Criminal Division throughout the investigation.

It is still not totally clear what Trump knew about his campaign team’s interactions with Russian and Russian-linked foreign nationals in 2016, such as his son’s meeting with Russians at Trump Tower to obtain dirt on Hillary Clinton, or his foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos’s repeated efforts to set up a Trump-Putin meeting after being told that the Russians had “thousands” of Clinton’s emails. As such, it is hard to gauge whether the president’s perceived interference in the Russia investigation—i.e., firing the FBI director and attorney general and appointing an ally, Matt Whitaker, to oversee the Mueller probe—is analogous to Nixon’s conscious attempts to divert attention and resources away from his central role in Watergate. Trump has repeatedly said that there was no collusion between any members of his campaign and the Russians.

But Whitaker’s appointment is arguably the furthest Trump has gone in trying to exert direct control over an investigation that seems to be closing in on his inner circle. Whereas Trump tried and evidently failed to secure Comey’s loyalty, he has a safer bet in Whitaker—a White House ally who criticized the scope of Mueller’s investigation last year and has stated categorically that there “was no collusion” between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Post-Watergate, presidents were encouraged to maintain a healthy separation from the Justice Department in order to protect the independence of prosecutorial decisions—and themselves. But Trump is not one for tradition. Since appointing Whitaker, Trump has claimed to know about the Mueller probe’s “inner workings” and suggested that he won’t sit for an interview with investigators despite the looming threat of a subpoena (which Whitaker could negate). At one point earlier this year, Trump was even receiving classified information about the Russia investigation from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. John Dean, who served as Nixon’s White House counsel from 1970 to 1973, told me that “following Nixon, it became a post-Watergate norm that the White House stayed out of DOJ business. Trump ignores all norms.” So, following his presidency, Dean said, those norms “will probably become law.”

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 03:00:00 Ron Wyden says that he'll introduce legislation requiring the U.S. Intelligence Community to publicly release an assessment of their findings regarding Jamal Khashoogi's murder. https://t.co/rKx1D10ea2 reageer retweet

quote:

Wyden Statement In Response to Khashoggi Announcement

Wyden Intends to Introduce Legislation to Require Public Assessment Next week

Washington, D.C. –Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., released the following statement in response to Donald Trump’s announcement today giving Saudi Arabia a pass for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi:

“Donald Trump’s statement makes clear that he does not care who ordered the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

“Putting America first does not include subservience to the leaders of an authoritarian and murderous monarchy. Under Donald Trump’s reasoning, there is no atrocity Saudi Arabia can commit that will lead the U.S. to act independently, according to our own values and interests.

“I reject that reasoning. Giving the Saudis a free pass here reveals this administration’s crippling weakness, even in the face of the murder of a journalist and U.S. resident.

“I renew my call for CIA Director Haspel and DNI Coats to state publicly what the U.S. Intelligence Community believes about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. If they will not, I intend to offer legislation to require the IC to release an unclassified public assessment of who ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s killing when the Senate returns next week.”

twitter:

Redistrict twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 04:42:14 Dems' national lead in raw House votes - now 8.8 million - just broke the record for largest for either party in the history of midterm elections (previous record was 8.7 million set by Dems in 1974). https://t.co/0pm7oW1pFE reageer retweet

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 04:58 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

Redistrict twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 04:42:14 Dems' national lead in raw House votes - now 8.8 million - just broke the record for largest for either party in the history of midterm elections (previous record was 8.7 million set by Dems in 1974). https://t.co/0pm7oW1pFE reageer retweet

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 09:08 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

Leuk, maar hoe gaan ze dit effectief gebruiken?

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 09:23 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

....ze hebben 39 zetels gewonnen?

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 09:51 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

De Republikeinen hadden tot voor een maand geleden zowel het huis als de senaat. En hebben die niet effectief benut. De dems mogen dan nu de meerderheid in het huis hebben, maar de vraag is hoe nu verder? Er zit nu een president in het Witte Huis die categorisch weigert om advies in te winnen bij zijn partijgenoten (laat staan de oppositie), en voornamelijk zijn eigen doelen nastreeft. In de visie van Trump zijn mensen die een andere mening hebben VIJANDEN. De dems moeten dus waken dat het huis een politiek oorlogsgebied puur voor eigenbelang wordt.

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 09:51 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

De Republikeinen hadden tot voor een maand geleden zowel het huis als de senaat. En hebben die niet effectief benut. De dems mogen dan nu de meerderheid in het huis hebben, maar de vraag is hoe nu verder? Er zit nu een president in het Witte Huis die categorisch weigert om advies in te winnen bij zijn partijgenoten (laat staan de oppositie), en voornamelijk zijn eigen doelen nastreeft. In de visie van Trump zijn mensen die een andere mening hebben VIJANDEN. De dems moeten dus waken dat het huis een politiek oorlogsgebied puur voor eigenbelang wordt.

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 01:02 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

NatashaBertrand twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 14:31:23 New: Former FBI lawyer Jim Baker—a close @Comey friend who knew about Trump's loyalty requests & efforts to protect Flynn in 2017—breaks his silence, notes that Nixon's contact with the officials investigating him was included in his articles of impeachment. https://t.co/anYCFBDlxI reageer retweet

The Eerie Parallels Between Trump and the Watergate ‘Road Map’

Lawmakers thought Nixon’s gathering of inside information about the Watergate probe from DOJ was an impeachable offense.

[..]

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 12:56 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:

[..]

Nog steeds vallen over Watergate in een wereld waar van iedereen informatie verzameld wordt. Watergate is vooral nog een media-dingetje van butthurt-journalisten.

Richard Nixon was een briljante man en een geweldige president, zeer onderschat. Omdat hij op bepaalde tenen stond, het politieke spel beter begreep dan de meesten en een introverte hork was met weinig charisma wordt hij vooral langs de meetlat gelegd van het ik-mag-je-niet-gehalte.

Kijken we naar zijn daden: op buitenlandbeleid gemakkelijk een van de top-5 presidenten van de VS, als het niet top-3 is. Op binnenlandbeleid de laatste progressieve Republikein: equal pay-equal employment, legalisering abortus, oprichting EPA, Clean Water Act, afschaffing van dienstplicht, verlagen leeftijd voor stemrecht, 70% van de staatsschuld afbetaald, National Cancer Act, ik kan nog wel even door gaan. Zijn plan voor een basisinkomen en toegang tot gezondheidszorg voor alle Amerikanen (later overgenomen door Mitt Romney die 'Romneycare' als gouverneur invoerde, waarvan Obama het op zijn beurt weer van afkeek) zijn helaas nooit van de grond gekomen.

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 12:56 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:

[..]

Nog steeds vallen over Watergate in een wereld waar van iedereen informatie verzameld wordt. Watergate is vooral nog een media-dingetje van butthurt-journalisten.

Richard Nixon was een briljante man en een geweldige president, zeer onderschat. Omdat hij op bepaalde tenen stond, het politieke spel beter begreep dan de meesten en een introverte hork was met weinig charisma wordt hij vooral langs de meetlat gelegd van het ik-mag-je-niet-gehalte.

Kijken we naar zijn daden: op buitenlandbeleid gemakkelijk een van de top-5 presidenten van de VS, als het niet top-3 is. Op binnenlandbeleid de laatste progressieve Republikein: equal pay-equal employment, legalisering abortus, oprichting EPA, Clean Water Act, afschaffing van dienstplicht, verlagen leeftijd voor stemrecht, 70% van de staatsschuld afbetaald, National Cancer Act, ik kan nog wel even door gaan. Zijn plan voor een basisinkomen en toegang tot gezondheidszorg voor alle Amerikanen (later overgenomen door Mitt Romney die 'Romneycare' als gouverneur invoerde, waarvan Obama het op zijn beurt weer van afkeek) zijn helaas nooit van de grond gekomen.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 13:49:51 Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower! reageer retweet

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 14:53:08 What better day to issue a big THANK YOU to Saudi Arabia than the day after the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was confirmed by U.S. intelligence as the architect of the assassination and dismemberment of a Washington Post journalist https://t.co/aHmi5IS93b reageer retweet

quote:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) released Matthew Whitaker’s personal financial disclosures today, which revealed that the forms had been edited five times in the two weeks since his appointment as Acting Attorney General.

CREW filed a FOIA request with the DOJ today asking for all versions of Whitaker’s OGE form 278e, a list of staff who reviewed and approved the form, and any correspondence by DOJ staff about the form and delays in its certification.

On November 7, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned at the request of the President. President Trump then named Whitaker, Sessions’ chief of staff, as acting Attorney General rather than Deputy Assistant Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who was next in the line of succession.

Whitaker was not Senate-confirmed, and therefore never faced questions about potential conflicts of interest. This elevates the importance of Whitaker’s Public Financial Disclosure Report and OGE Form 278e because they are the only public window into his business ties and potential conflicts. The requested documents will shed light on the extent of any conflicts of interest Whitaker may have and the extent to which he has fully and accurately advised DOJ of those conflicts since his initial appointment as Chief of Staff to the Attorney General.

While DOJ has made the most recent certified version of Whitaker’s form publicly available, it has not yet disclosed all prior versions, which CREW requested at the time of his appointed and should have been made immediately available.

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 12:56 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:

[..]

Nog steeds vallen over Watergate in een wereld waar van iedereen informatie verzameld wordt. Watergate is vooral nog een media-dingetje van butthurt-journalisten.

Richard Nixon was een briljante man en een geweldige president, zeer onderschat. Omdat hij op bepaalde tenen stond, het politieke spel beter begreep dan de meesten en een introverte hork was met weinig charisma wordt hij vooral langs de meetlat gelegd van het ik-mag-je-niet-gehalte.

Kijken we naar zijn daden: op buitenlandbeleid gemakkelijk een van de top-5 presidenten van de VS, als het niet top-3 is. Op binnenlandbeleid de laatste progressieve Republikein: equal pay-equal employment, legalisering abortus, oprichting EPA, Clean Water Act, afschaffing van dienstplicht, verlagen leeftijd voor stemrecht, 70% van de staatsschuld afbetaald, National Cancer Act, ik kan nog wel even door gaan. Zijn plan voor een basisinkomen en toegang tot gezondheidszorg voor alle Amerikanen (later overgenomen door Mitt Romney die 'Romneycare' als gouverneur invoerde, waarvan Obama het op zijn beurt weer van afkeek) zijn helaas nooit van de grond gekomen.

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 15:51 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

Butthurt jornalisten?

En je mist de hele essentie van het artikel: het misbruik maken van de uitvoerende macht door de president om een jouw onwelgevallig onderzoek te dwarsbomen.

quote:

"This is where America stands. It's not time for finger-pointing. We know the problem: it's been years of neglect, and in many cases, it's been these radical environmentalists that want nature to take its course," Zinke said in the Sunday interview. "We have dead and dying timber. We can manage it using best science, best practices. But to let this devastation go on year after year after year is unacceptable."

quote:

"I will lay this on the foot of those environmental radicals that have prevented us from managing the forests for years. And you know what? This is on them," Zinke said on Brietbart News Sunday. But he also said "it's not the time for finger-pointing" on the causes of the fires.

quote:

Harvesting in a trade war: U.S. crops rot as storage costs soar

(Reuters) - U.S. farmers finishing their harvests are facing a big problem - where to put the mountain of grain they cannot sell to Chinese buyers.

For Louisiana farmer Richard Fontenot and his neighbors, the solution was a costly one: Let the crops rot.

Fontenot plowed under 1,000 of his 1,700 soybean acres this fall, chopping plants into the dirt instead of harvesting more than $300,000 worth of beans.

His beans were damaged by bad weather, made worse by a wet harvest. Normally, he could sell them anyway to a local elevator - giant silos usually run by international grains merchants that store grain.

But this year they aren’t buying as much damaged grain. The elevators are already chock full.

“No one wants them,” Fontenot said in a telephone interview. As he spoke, he drove his tractor across a soybean field, tilling under his crop. “I don’t know what else to do.”

Across the United States, grain farmers are plowing under crops, leaving them to rot or piling them on the ground, in hopes of better prices next year, according to interviews with more than two dozen farmers, academic researchers and farm lenders. It’s one of the results, they say, of a U.S. trade war with China that has sharply hurt export demand and swamped storage facilities with excess grain.

In Louisiana, up to 15 percent of the oilseed crop is being plowed under or is too damaged to market, according to data analyzed by Louisiana State University staff. Crops are going to waste in parts of Mississippi and Arkansas. Grain piles, dusted by snow, sit on the ground in North and South Dakota. And in Illinois and Indiana, some farmers are struggling to protect silo bags stuffed with crops from animals.

U.S. farmers planted 89.1 million acres of soybeans this year, the second most ever, expecting China’s rising demand to give them better returns than other bulk crops.

But Beijing slapped a 25 percent tariff on U.S. soybeans in retaliation for duties imposed by Washington on Chinese exports. That effectively shut down U.S. soybean exports to China, worth around $12 billion last year. China typically takes around 60 percent of U.S. supplies.

The U.S. government rolled out an aid program of around the same size - $12 billion - to help farmers absorb the cost of the trade war. As of mid-November, $837.8 million had been paid out.

Some of that money will pass from farmers to grain merchants such as Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM.N) and Bunge Ltd (BG.N), who are charging farmers more to store crops at elevators where there is limited space. Bunge and ADM did not respond to requests for comment on storage fees.

The storage crunch and higher fees have boosted revenues at grain elevator Andersons [ANDE.O], Chief Executive Officer Pat Bowe said in an interview.

“It’s paying a grain handler to store - it’s the old-fashioned way to make money,” Bowe said.

quote:

China keeps defying predictions that it would run out of soybeans

When the U.S.-China trade dispute escalated earlier this year, most market participants assumed China could never completely cut U.S. soybeans out of its import program due to the sheer volume it consumes.

However, the U.S. soybean season has reached its typical peak export week and Chinese buyers are still nowhere in sight, worrying analysts that China may have pulled off the impossible.

[..]

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 16:18 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

In de ogen van Oostwoud moeten de media de zittende macht niet zo dwarszitten, oftewel niet zo butthurt lopen doen. Who cares als de president zijn concurrent illegaal afluistert? Daar ga je toch geen aandacht aan besteden als journaille?

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 15:55 schreef zarGon het volgende:
https://www.whitehouse.go(...)anding-saudi-arabia/

Deze statement. .

twitter:

Cirincione twitterde op dinsdag 20-11-2018 om 19:39:53 This is, without a doubt, the most uninformed, imbecilic, toady, poorly-written, categorically untrue statement I have ever seen from a president of the United States. A complete disgrace. https://t.co/9eqoWFeroX reageer retweet

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 16:02 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 13:49:51 Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower! reageer retweet

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 14:53:08 What better day to issue a big THANK YOU to Saudi Arabia than the day after the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was confirmed by U.S. intelligence as the architect of the assassination and dismemberment of a Washington Post journalist https://t.co/aHmi5IS93b reageer retweet

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 16:59 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

[..]

Het was 45$ toen hij verkozen werd (WTI crude), de prijs ging omhoog door zijn sancties tegen Iran... En waar hij die 82$ vandaan haalt? De prijs piekte op 9 Oktober: 74.96$.

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 16:59 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

[..]

Het was 45$ toen hij verkozen werd (WTI crude), de prijs ging omhoog door zijn sancties tegen Iran... En waar hij die 82$ vandaan haalt? De prijs piekte op 9 Oktober: 74.96$.

quote:

A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday struck down a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, ruling that it “unequivocally” violates women’s constitutional rights.

The law, considered one of the most restrictive in the country, was passed in March. It had already been put on hold by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves after the state’s lone abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, immediately sued.

Under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, states may not ban abortions before a fetus is viable, and the medical consensus is that viability typically begins between 23 and 24 weeks, Reeves wrote on Tuesday.

The judge acknowledged feeling “frustration” that Mississippi lawmakers passed the statute even though similar bans in other states have also been thrown out by federal courts.

“The real reason we are here is simple. The state chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-long campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Reeves wrote, referring to the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case that established a legal framework for abortion.

“This court follows the commands of the Supreme Court and the dictates of the United States Constitution, rather than the disingenuous calculations of the Mississippi Legislature,” he added.

Governor Phil Bryant was traveling and was not immediately available to comment, according to his office. The state attorney general’s office, which defended the law in court, did not immediately comment on the ruling.

SPOILER

The decision effectively invalidates a similar 15-week ban in Louisiana, which was set to take effect only if the Mississippi law survived a court challenge.

“Today’s decision should be a wake-up call for state lawmakers who are continuously trying to chip away at abortion access,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the abortion clinic, said in a statement.

Abortion rights advocates have warned that the Roe precedent could be vulnerable following the October confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who is widely seen as an abortion foe.

Other states have sought to install severe restrictions in the hope of provoking a legal fight at the nation’s top court. The Republican-controlled Ohio House of Representatives last week approved a measure that would ban abortions at six weeks, while Iowa’s law banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected is tied up in a court battle.

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 16:39:34 One of the major news weeklies in the Netherlands, De Groene Amsterdammer, writes that—along with a couple other Trump-Russia books like RUSSIAN ROULETTE by Corn/Isikoff—PROOF OF COLLUSION is part of a "golden age of journalism" in America. Link (English): https://t.co/cLl17HdGmE https://t.co/3ZaicsduS2 reageer retweet

twitter:

awprokop twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 16:46:41 New Mueller filing contrasts Papadopoulos's pre-sentencing "remorse" with his post-sentencing protests that he did nothing wrong. https://t.co/0wokXnZ8Gq reageer retweet

SPOILER

twitter:

awprokop twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 16:49:45 Full filing: https://t.co/Z1LYqAdrUwMain gist is that Mueller says there's no good reason to delay Papadopoulos starting to serve his jail sentence on Monday. reageer retweet

twitter:

awprokop twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 16:50:49 Mueller footnote re: Papadopoulos https://t.co/yA9eEoZQw0 reageer retweet

twitter:

AP twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 18:25:02 BREAKING: In rare rebuttal, Chief Justice Roberts rejects Trump criticism of federal judges, praises independent judiciary. reageer retweet

quote:

Chief Justice John Roberts is pushing back against President Donald Trump’s description of a judge who ruled against Trump’s new migrant asylum policy as an “Obama judge.”

It’s the first time that the leader of the federal judiciary has offered even a hint of criticism of Trump, who has previously blasted federal judges who ruled against him.

Roberts said Wednesday the U.S. doesn’t have “Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.” He commented in a statement released by the Supreme Court after a query by The Associated Press.

Roberts said on the day before Thanksgiving that an “independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

Last year, the president used the term a “so-called judge” after the first federal ruling against his travel ban.

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 18:09 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Judge strikes down Mississippi ban on abortions after 15 weeks

[..]

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 18:59 schreef nostra het volgende:

[..]

Zijn dat niet gewoon wetten die bewust worden ingevoerd om federaal te worden verworpen, zodat ze ermee naar het SC kunnen?

quote:

“The real reason we are here is simple. The state chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-long campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Reeves wrote, referring to the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case that established a legal framework for abortion.

quote:

Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was “really astounded” by President Donald Trump’s apparent dismissal of U.S. intelligence assessments that Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi last month.

“I never thought I’d see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” Corker said in statement on Twitter Tuesday, in response to a statement put out by the White House casting doubt on the Saudi government’s involvement in the journalist’s slaying.

Corker and Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on his committee, sent a letter to Trump on Tuesday to determine within 120 days whether bin Salman “is responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s murder.”

The White House statement Tuesday, attributed to Trump, was roundly criticized after the president claimed “we may never know all of the facts” surrounding the slain journalists murder by Saudi government officials at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

“Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said in the statement.

“That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi,” Trump said. “The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region.”

SPOILER

Corker indicated Tuesday that he was not remotely satisfied with the president’s statement that ran counter to the CIA’s claim that it has intelligence substantiating bin Salman’s involvement in Khashoggi’s killing.

“‘Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t’ won’t cut it,” Corker tweeted Tuesday.

Trump has provided at least two reasons for his reticence to hold the Saudi government and the crown prince, to account: the military-industrial complex and oil.

He does not want to scuttle a multi-billion arms deal between American munitions contractors and the Saudi military. And on Wednesday before heading to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend, he signaled that keeping oil prices from the Saudis low played a role in his decision to issue what lawmakers from both parties have uniformly panned as a weak response to the journalist's killing.

“Saudi Arabia, if we broke with them, I think your oil prices would go through the roof. I’ve kept them down. They’ve helped me keep them down,” the president said during a mini-news conference Tuesday as he headed for Marine One en route to his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort for the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

“We’re going to stay with Saudi Arabia,” Trump said a few minutes later in another wild 20-minute question-and-answer session on the South Lawn. “Saudi Arabia is probably the second-biggest oil producer. They’ve worked with us very well. We’ve kept oil prices down.”

twitter:

MSNBC twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 17:30:05 "This was as cold-blooded a statement as I can ever remember being issued by a president ... it began by saying 'America First!,' and the subtext, for me throughout, was 'values last.'" - Richard Haass https://t.co/9SjUQ7WlbW reageer retweet

Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 02: "PUTTING A PRICE TAG ON LIFE"

quote:

PUTTING A PRICE TAG ON LIFE
Sandel presents some contemporary cases in which cost-benefit analysis was used to put a dollar value on human life. The cases give rise to several objections to the utilitarian logic of seeking “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Is it possible to sum up and compare all values using a common measure like money?

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 18:19 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 16:39:34 One of the major news weeklies in the Netherlands, De Groene Amsterdammer, writes that—along with a couple other Trump-Russia books like RUSSIAN ROULETTE by Corn/Isikoff—PROOF OF COLLUSION is part of a "golden age of journalism" in America. Link (English): https://t.co/cLl17HdGmE https://t.co/3ZaicsduS2 reageer retweet

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 21:00:00 The W.H. has signed a memo allowing troops stationed at the border to engage in some law enforcement roles and use lethal force, if necessary — a move legal experts have cautioned may run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act, Military Times reports.https://t.co/Mag7p4npiY reageer retweet

quote:

The White House late Tuesday signed a memo allowing troops stationed at the border to engage in some law enforcement roles and use lethal force, if necessary — a move that legal experts have cautioned may run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act.

The new “Cabinet order” was signed by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, not President Donald Trump. It allows “Department of Defense military personnel” to “perform those military protective activities that the Secretary of Defense determines are reasonably necessary” to protect border agents, including “a show or use of force (including lethal force, where necessary), crowd control, temporary detention. and cursory search.”

There are approximately 5,900 active-duty troops and 2,100 National Guard forces deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Some of those activities, including crowd control and detention, may run into potential conflict with the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. If crossed, the erosion of the act’s limitations could represent a fundamental shift in the way the U.S. military is used, legal experts said.

The Congressional Research Service, the non-partisan research agency for Congress, has found that “case law indicates that ‘execution of the law’ in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act occurs (a) when the Armed Forces perform tasks assigned to an organ of civil government, or (b) when the Armed Forces perform tasks assigned to them solely for purposes of civilian government.” However, the law also allows the president “to use military force to suppress insurrection or to enforce federal authority,” CRS has found.

SPOILER

Military forces always have the inherent right to self defense, but defense of the border agents on U.S. soil is new. In addition, troops have been given additional authorities in previous years to assist border agents with drug interdictions, but the widespread authorization of use of force for thousands of active-duty troops is unique to this deployment.

Each domestic deployment of troops to any of the 50 states or U.S. territories is governed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3121.01B, “Standing Rules of Engagement, Standing Rules for the Use of Force by U.S. Forces.” Two annexes, L and N, are specific to Defense Department missions in support of civilian authorities.

However, each mission is unique, and the standing rules for the use of force can be adjusted except for the limitation against active-duty U.S. forces conducting law enforcement on U.S. soil, which is enshrined in the 1898 act.

Posse Comitatus is “always looming in the background. You never invoke it as such because it is such a background principle,” said William Banks, author of “Soldiers on the Home Front: The Domestic Role of the American Military” and the former director of the Institute for National Security and Counter-terrorism at Syracuse University’s College of Law.

Defense officials said the language in the directive was carefully crafted to avoid running up against the bedrock legal limitations set in Posse Comitatus. The law was originally intended to protect the states from being controlled by federal troops. It has evolved into a singly defining, almost church versus state-type wall forbidding active-duty forces under the control of the president from conducting any types of crowd control or law enforcement domestically, essentially ensuring that the U.S. military is not used to control or defeat American citizens on U.S. soil.

Kelly said in the signed directive that the additional authorities were necessary because “credible evidence and intelligence” have indicated that the thousands of migrants who have now made their way to the U.S. checkpoint near Tijuana, Mexico, “may prompt incidents of violence and disorder” that could threaten border officials.

But the White House still may find itself in a legal challenge if the authorities in the memo are determined to be counter to the law, Banks said.

“Even [an executive order] couldn’t overcome Posse Comitatus,” Banks said.

For months, Trump has looked to the military to seal off the U.S.-Mexico border because he has not been able to persuade Congress to fully fund a border wall.

Instead, Trump has sought to make the military’s border presence more aggressive and suggested that he might send as many as 15,000 U.S. troops to the border.

Last month, just before the mid-term elections, Trump told troops they could consider migrants throwing rocks at them the use-of-force equivalent of migrants threatening them with firearms. Under current military rules of engagement, that would authorize a return use of deadly force. Trump later backtracked on the rifles comment, saying he never directed troops to shoot migrants and that Customs and Border Protection would take the lead in any of those scenarios.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 21:51:11 Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have “Obama judges,” and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country. It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an “independent judiciary,” but if it is why...... reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 22:09:20 .....are so many opposing view (on Border and Safety) cases filed there, and why are a vast number of those cases overturned. Please study the numbers, they are shocking. We need protection and security - these rulings are making our country unsafe! Very dangerous and unwise! reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 23:17:33 “79% of these decisions have been overturned in the 9th Circuit.” @FoxNews A terrible, costly and dangerous disgrace. It has become a dumping ground for certain lawyers looking for easy wins and delays. Much talk over dividing up the 9th Circuit into 2 or 3 Circuits. Too big! reageer retweet

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 23:31 schreef trein2000 het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op woensdag 21-11-2018 om 23:17:33 “79% of these decisions have been overturned in the 9th Circuit.” @FoxNews A terrible, costly and dangerous disgrace. It has become a dumping ground for certain lawyers looking for easy wins and delays. Much talk over dividing up the 9th Circuit into 2 or 3 Circuits. Too big! reageer retweet

Ik ben het jiet eens met de rechter dus we gaan z’n district opdelen

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 23:39 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Is overigens wel wat voor te zeggen.

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 23:48 schreef trein2000 het volgende:

[..]

Ik ken die specifieke situatie niet. Maar hoezo is er iets voor te zeggen?

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 01:17 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Mexicaanse overheid heeft bekend gemaakt dat er wel 500 criminelen mee lopen met de 'caravan'.

quote:

Los Angeles prosecutors declined to charge Michael Avenatti with a felony, stemming from his arrest last week on a domestic violence accusation, officials said Wednesday.

The L.A. County District Attorney’s Office bumped Avenatti’s case down to the L.A. City Attorney’s Office, a separate Southern California prosecution agency that presses misdemeanor cases.

Mareli Miniutti, who received a temporary restraining order against Avenatti, claimed that he roughed her up by grabbing her wrist and throwing her out of his apartment.

SPOILER

“A case presented today by Los Angeles police involving attorney Michael Avenatti has been referred to the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office for misdemeanor filing consideration,” the LA County DA’s office said in a statement.

A rep for the L.A. City Attorney's Office said there's no timeline for making a decision on Avenatti's potential misdemeanor case.

“We will review the case and we will not have any further comment,” said Rob Wilcox, a spokesman for L.A. City Attorney Mike Feuer.

Avenatti, the lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels in her case against President Donald Trump and his former lawyer Michael Cohen, was arrested on suspicion of felony domestic abuse last week at his apartment in West Los Angeles.

Miniutti said she'd been living with Avenatti since January and last week they got into an argument over money. That dispute led to a tussle, she said, with Avenatti allegedly calling her an "ungrateful f****** b****."

The incident left red marks on her skin, Miniutti claimed.

Avenatti said he was happy with the DA's decision.

“I am grateful that the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office has rejected filing any charges against me after a fair, careful and thorough investigation,” he said in a statement. “I have maintained my innocence since the moment of my arrest.”

After Avenatti's arrest, Daniels said if the accusations against him "prove true," she'd replace him. A rep for the adult film actress could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday.

twitter:

MSNBC twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 05:32:03 "Trump's unabashed willingness to link his steadfast support of Saudi Arabia...and his love of cheap oil raise a number of questions— most especially, is there some kind of explicit deal here?"— @chrislhayes https://t.co/X8BtiwIvgE reageer retweet

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 15:55 schreef zarGon het volgende:
https://www.whitehouse.go(...)anding-saudi-arabia/

Deze statement. .

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 22:43 schreef Freak188 het volgende:
Worden wel een hoop krokodillentranen gelaten om die hele Kashoggi-zaak. Tuurlijk is het pertinent fout dat zoiets gebeuren kan, maar S.A. doet talloze andere vreselijke dingen (oorlog in Jemen) en daar hoor je die politici nauwelijks over.

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 13:34 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Trump gaat intussen los op Chief Justice Roberts op Twitter. Zou hij beseffen dat Roberts nu de swing vote in het Supreme Court is heworden?

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 01:23:09 Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming? reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 13:54 schreef archito het volgende:
Die. man. is. zo. dom.
(of een leugenaar)
((of allebei))

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 01:23:09 Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming? reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 13:34 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Trump gaat intussen los op Chief Justice Roberts op Twitter. Zou hij beseffen dat Roberts nu de swing vote in het Supreme Court is heworden?

quote:

CIA Has Recording of Saudi Crown Prince Ordering Khashoggi Silenced, Turkish Media Reports
Prominent Turkish columnist says CIA director Gina Haspel had 'signaled' the existence of the recording in a visit to Ankara

The CIA has a recording of a phone call in which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave instructions to "silence Jamal Kashoggi as soon as possible," Turkish news website Hurriyet Daily News said on Thursday. It cited a prominent Turkish columnist as saying CIA director Gina Haspel had "signaled" the existence of the recording during a visit to Ankara last month. (Haaretz).

SPOILER

A Turkish official contacted by Reuters said he had no information about such a recording. "There is talk of another recording," Hurriyet newspaper journalist Abdulkadir Selvi wrote in a column, saying the purported call took place between Prince Mohammed and his brother, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington.

"It is being said that CIA chief Gina Haspel indicated this during her visit to Turkey," he wrote, adding that they had discussed Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdom's de facto ruler.

"It is being said the crown prince gave orders to 'silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible'," in a call which was monitored by the U.S. agency, he said.

A day earlier, Turkish news site Haberturk released what it said was quotes from a tape of the Saudi dissident journalist's last moments.

Also Thursday, Federica Mogherini, the European Union's foreign affairs chief, said after talks with Turkey's foreign minister that a transparent and credible investigation into the killing of Khashoggi has not yet been completed.

Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdom's de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Riyadh has said it was seeking the death penalty for five suspects in the case.

Speaking at a joint news conference with EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara, Mogherini said she was completely against any application of the death penalty.

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 15:07 schreef Nibb-it het volgende:

[..]

twitter:

Comey twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 16:21:30 Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans. I’m still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a “closed door” thing because I’ve seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Let’s have a hearing and invite everyone to see. reageer retweet

twitter:

mickbk twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 16:12:29 Trump: “Steam is very reliable. Electromagnetic – unfortunately you have to be Albert Einstein to really work it properly...”Navy Officer: “Yes sir. You sort of have to be Albert Einstein to run the nuclear power plant that we have here as well, but we’re doing that very well.” https://t.co/uJkNgxzF2B reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 17:11 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

mickbk twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 16:12:29 Trump: “Steam is very reliable. Electromagnetic – unfortunately you have to be Albert Einstein to really work it properly...”Navy Officer: “Yes sir. You sort of have to be Albert Einstein to run the nuclear power plant that we have here as well, but we’re doing that very well.” https://t.co/uJkNgxzF2B reageer retweet

twitter:

JenJenJones2 twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 17:12:14 @mickbk @jwgop Steam and raking--the future is here. reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 17:16 schreef zarGon het volgende:

[..]

Wat meer context (bericht uit mei 2017): https://www.theatlantic.c(...)aft-carriers/526386/.

Gaat blijkbaar om de catapults op de nieuwste aircraft carriers.

twitter:

kyledcheney twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 16:53:27 COMEY’S LAWYER says Comey will fight the subpoena in court: “While the authority for Congressional subpoenas is broad, it does not cover the right to misuse closed hearings as a political stunt to promote political as opposed to legislative agendas.”https://t.co/wa65SPzllP reageer retweet

twitter:

rgoodlaw twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 17:00:21 President Trump lies to the faces of US troops during Thanksgiving Day Teleconference:"I hate the cover up. And I will tell you this, the Crown Prince hates it more than I do. And they have vehemently denied it. The CIA points it both ways."WSJ?Fox News?WaPo ?ABC?others https://t.co/avaIG2jRS3 reageer retweet

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 16:40:11 Reporter: Who should be held accountable for [Jamal Khashoggi's murder]? Trump: Maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very vicious place. (via CBS) https://t.co/M7rv9f6YCk reageer retweet

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 16:55:38 Trump on Saudi Arabia and Jamal Khashoggi: "Do people really want me to give up hundreds of thousands of jobs? And frankly, if we went by this standard, we wouldn't have anybody as an ally." (via ABC) https://t.co/2nJ8n8vUyZ reageer retweet

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 17:00:02 Trump says the CIA has not "concluded" that Crown Prince MBS ordered Jamal Khashoggi's murder, then adds "Whether he did it or whether he didn't, he denies it vehemently." https://t.co/nc77UAaAQj reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 19:06 schreef 2Happy4U het volgende:
Gelukkig doet Trump wat tegen de oprukkende islam

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 15:13 schreef nostra het volgende:

[..]

Die Turken lachen zich helemaal suf met hun trapsgewijze lekken. Daar kunnen de trolls hier nog wat lessen nemen.

quote:

President Trump said Thursday that he is thankful "for having a great family and for having made a tremendous difference in this country."

Trump made the comment when asked by reporters what he is grateful for on Thanksgiving shortly after holding a phone call with troops overseas.

"I've made a tremendous difference in the country," Trump said. "This country's so much stronger than it was when I took office and you wouldn't believe it

Bron

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 19:47 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

When it comes to self evaluations, Trump gives himself an A-plus a lot

twitter:

ddale8 twitterde op donderdag 22-11-2018 om 19:43:49 Q: How you preparing for Xi?Trump: “I’m very prepared, I’ve been preparing for it all my life. It’s not like, oh gee I’m going to sit down and study it. I know every detail. I know every stat, I know it better than anyone who’s ever known it, and my gut has always been right.” reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 19:18 schreef Montov het volgende:

[..]

Remember donaties aan de Clinton Foundation door S-A?
Oef, wat een projectie. En Trump maar openbaar toegeven dat het hem alleen maar om het geld gaat.

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 22:29 schreef Knipoogje het volgende:

[..]

S-A schurkt al decennia aan tegen de elite van de VS. Punt is natuurlijk dat ze nu hun hand een beetje overspeeld hebben waarop een gepaste reaktie moet volgen. Want zo gaat dat. Aktie=reaktie.

Nu krijgen ze een aai over hun bolletje. Openlijke moord van een VS staatsburger is dus vanaf nu gelegitimeerd. Kunnen ze weer een stapje verder gaan.

Trump had er wijs aan gedaan SA gewoon een aardige straf te geven. Dan laten ze het wel uit hun hoofd de volgende keer.

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2018 23:00 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:
Trump geeft het leger blijkbaar toestemming voor schoot to kill bij de grens (video nu.nl) wtf....

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2018 16:16 schreef mcmlxiv het volgende:

[..]

En waarom ben je dan nu zo idolaat van een man die het tegengestelde is van Nixon als het gaat over het beleid? Alleen omdat hij net als jij een beetje bang is voor buitenlanders moslims?

quote:

Op vrijdag 23 november 2018 12:31 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:
Het verliezen van de presidentiële race in 2016 ligt nu volgens Hillary aan migrantenstromen. Wanneer gaat dat mens eens van haar oude dag genieten?

quote:

Op vrijdag 23 november 2018 12:38 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Waarom zou zij haar mening niet mogen uiten?

quote:

Op vrijdag 23 november 2018 12:31 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:
Het verliezen van de presidentiële race in 2016 ligt nu volgens Hillary aan migrantenstromen. Wanneer gaat dat mens eens van haar oude dag genieten?

quote:

Op vrijdag 23 november 2018 12:59 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Waarom vind je haar mening zo boeiend?

Ik las de kop, haalde m'n schouders op en scrollde vervolgens door naar artikelen die ik wel relevant vind.

quote:

Op vrijdag 23 november 2018 13:00 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:

[..]

De Clintons hebben nogal wat invloed gehad in de Amerikaanse politiek. Het is geen willekeurig bloggertje of vloggertje die dit zegt.

quote:

Op vrijdag 23 november 2018 13:01 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Juist: gehad.

quote:

Op vrijdag 23 november 2018 12:00 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:

[..]

Hoe kom je erbij dat ik idolaat ben van Trump? Ik houd het kort: dat is niet het geval.

quote:

Op vrijdag 23 november 2018 14:06 schreef Vis1980 het volgende:

[..]

Oke, Hans.

Waarom verdedig jij hem overal dan?
Wat vind jij van zijn Thanksgivingspeech?

quote:

Op vrijdag 23 november 2018 12:59 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:

[..]

Mag best, maar het begint na al die tijd een beetje sneu te worden.

twitter:

BettyBowers twitterde op woensdag 22-08-2018 om 02:38:41 Trump says his mother's recipe her Thanksgiving turkey was to “gestate” it. Apparently, she carried it in her womb. What a hostess! https://t.co/5fxtsft3Ip reageer retweet

quote:

Conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi is in plea negotiations with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, according to a person with knowledge of the talks.

The talks with Corsi — an associate of both President Trump and GOP operative Roger Stone — could bring Mueller’s team closer to determining whether Trump or his advisers were linked to WikiLeaks’ release of hacked Democratic emails in 2016, a key part of his long-running inquiry.

Corsi provided research on Democratic figures during the campaign to Stone, a longtime Trump adviser. For months, the special counsel has been scrutinizing Stone’s activities in an effort to determine whether he coordinated with WikiLeaks. Stone and WikiLeaks have repeatedly denied any such coordination.

Stone has said that Corsi also has a relationship with Trump, built on their shared interest in the falsehood that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

David Gray, an attorney for Corsi, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mueller. Stone declined to comment on Corsi’s plea negotiations. An attorney for Trump declined to comment.

The deal is not yet complete and could still be derailed. Last week, Corsi said his efforts to cooperate with prosecutors had broken down and that he expected to be indicted on a charge of allegedly lying. He described feeling under enormous pressure from Mueller and assured his supporters that he remains supportive of the president.

In a webcast and a series of interviews, Corsi said he had spoken to prosecutors for 40 hours and feared that he could spend much of the remainder of his life in prison.

SPOILER

After two months of interviews, Corsi, 72, said he felt his brain was “mush.”

“Trying to explain yourself to these people is impossible . . . I guess I couldn’t tell the special prosecutor what he wanted to hear,” he added.

At that time, he gave no indication that he intended to plead guilty, instead casting himself as an unfairly targeted victim of a Mueller campaign against Trump.

Then, Corsi abruptly fell silent, canceling a scheduled Nov. 13 interview with NBC. Gray, his attorney, told NBC that he had just spoken to the special counsel’s office and had advised Corsi to cancel.

Since then, Corsi has resumed talks with Mueller’s team about a possible deal that could result in him agreeing to plead guilty in exchange for leniency, according to the person familiar with the situation.

It is not clear what information Corsi could leverage to get a deal with prosecutors. However, he told the Daily Caller last week that prosecutors are focused on whether he had developed a source with inside information about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s plans.

Corsi said he did not have a direct source to the group. Instead, he said he developed a theory that Assange had access to hacked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and that WikiLeaks would release them in October 2016.

He told the Daily Caller that he shared his prediction with many people, including Stone.

If Mueller could prove that Corsi learned about Podesta’s emails from Assange or another person in contact with him, he could try to link WikiLeaks’ releases to Stone or others in Trump’s world.

Stone told the publication that Corsi never relayed such information.

“He never told me that he had figured out or believed that John Podesta’s emails had been stolen,” Stone said.

On Aug. 21, 2016, Stone tweeted “it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel.” He has insisted his tweet had nothing to do with any plan by WikiLeaks and that it was based on research Corsi had provided to him about work Podesta and his lobbyist brother Tony had done involving Russia.

“He simply told me of their Russian business deals in banking gas and uranium,” Stone said in a text message this week to The Washington Post. “There was NO WikiLeaks context.”

Stone told the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017 that his Podesta tweet was “based on a comprehensive, early August opposition research briefing provided to me by investigative journalist, Dr. Jerome Corsi, which I then asked him to memorialize in a memo that he sent me on August 31st, all of which was culled from public records. There was no need to have John Podesta’s email to learn that he and his presidential candidate were in bed with the clique around Putin.”

Stone has since said that the information in the Aug. 31 memo — which he received 10 days after his now-infamous tweet — was similar to information that Corsi had relayed to him verbally before the tweet.

The prediction that Corsi said he made that Assange would publish Podesta’s emails was correct: on Oct. 7, 2016, WikiLeaks began publishing 50,000 emails stolen from Podesta’s account, releasing them in batches of a few thousand at a time each day leading up to the November election.

Corsi told the Daily Caller that he based his prediction on public sources of information, including the fact that Podesta was not among the Democrats whose emails had been published by WikiLeaks when the group released Democratic National Committee correspondence in July.

He said he concluded that WikiLeaks must be holding back Podesta’s correspondence to make a bigger splash later in the campaign.

Podesta did not work for the DNC and the emails were stolen from his private Gmail account, not an address linked to the Democratic Party.

Corsi told the Daily Caller that Mueller’s prosecutors did not believe his explanation and pressed him to name his WikiLeaks source. They were especially interested, he said, in a trip he took to Italy with his wife that he said coincided with his realization about the Podesta emails.

“They said they wanted me to tell the truth, but when I did tell the truth they told me it was preposterous, and they wouldn’t accept it,” Corsi said.

Stone is under scrutiny because he made a series of comments during the campaign that suggested he was in contact with Assange and knew of WikiLeaks’ plans.

Since then, Stone has vigorously contended that his comments were exaggerations based on public information, as well as tips from New York radio host and comedian Randy Credico.

Stone has also told The Post that Corsi had a relationship with Trump and spoke directly with the Republican candidate during the campaign.

Stone said the two men became friendly after Corsi published a book in 2011 advancing the false theory that Obama was not qualified to hold office because he was not born in the United States. Trump became a leading proponent of that falsehood.

quote:

A state judge ruled on Friday that a lawsuit by the New York State attorney general could proceed against President Trump and the Trump Foundation over allegations of misused charitable assets, self-dealing and campaign finance violations during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers had argued that the court did not have jurisdiction over Mr. Trump, as president, and that the statutes of limitations had expired in the case of some of the actions at issue. They also contended the attorney general’s office suffered from a “pervasive bias” against Mr. Trump.

In her 27-page ruling, Justice Saliann Scarpulla disagreed. “I find I have jurisdiction over Mr. Trump,” she wrote.

Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for the Trump Foundation, said in a prepared statement: “The decision means only that the case goes forward. As we have maintained throughout, all of the money raised by the Foundation went to charitable causes to assist those most in need. As a result, we remain confident in the ultimate outcome of these proceedings.”

The White House directed questions to the Trump Organization; a company representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It was the second time this year that a New York State judge in Manhattan had decided that Mr. Trump, just because he is president, is not immune from civil court cases that involve his unofficial activities or actions that took place before he was in office.

In June, Justice Jennifer Schecter ruled that a defamation lawsuit could proceed against Mr. Trump for disparaging women who accused him of sexual misconduct. The suit was brought by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice.”

Justice Schecter wrote in her ruling: “There is absolutely no authority for dismissing or staying a civil action related purely to unofficial conduct because the defendant is the President of the United States.” Justice Scarpulla quoted the passage in her own ruling.

Justice Scarpulla also cited the decision to allow a sexual harassment suit brought by Paula Jones against Bill Clinton to proceed during his time as president.

SPOILER

The lawsuit against Mr. Trump was filed by Attorney General Barbara Underwood in June. It came after a two-year state investigation into the Trump Foundation found that Mr. Trump and his family had improperly used the charity to settle business disputes and to bolster his campaign for president, even involving it in a 2016 political fund-raiser in Iowa.

The suit names Mr. Trump as well as two of his children, Ivanka and Eric.

“The Trump Foundation functioned as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests,” Ms. Underwood wrote in a statement on Friday. “We welcome Justice Scarpulla’s decision, which allows our suit to move forward.”

The foundation and Trump family could face millions of dollars in penalties from the suit.

The attorney general is seeking to make the foundation pay $2.8 million in restitution, the amount raised for the foundation at the Iowa fund-raiser; the office is also seeking to prevent the president from running another nonprofit for 10 years.

One argument Mr. Trump’s lawyers made as they sought to have the law suit dismissed was that the attorney general’s office was politically biased against the president.

When the suit was first filed, Mr. Trump directed his ire at former attorney general Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat and a vocal critic of the president, who by that time had been forced from office by a scandal involving his treatment of women; Ms. Underwood had taken over several weeks before.

In her decision, Justice Scarpulla wrote that “given the very serious allegations” set forth in the suit, there was “no basis” for finding that animus and bias were the sole motivation for the investigation.

Justice Scarpulla did rule in Mr. Trump’s favor on one point. She denied the attorney general’s request that the Trump Foundation be prevented from operating until the lawsuit is resolved.

But that was a moot point, she noted, because the family was already “trying voluntarily to dissolve the Foundation.”

twitter:

business twitterde op zaterdag 24-11-2018 om 14:10:11 Donald Trump is succeeding in making China pay most of the cost of his trade war https://t.co/iPl6SKeK4T reageer retweet

quote:

Op zaterdag 24 november 2018 14:13 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Doet ie weer goed

twitter:

business twitterde op zaterdag 24-11-2018 om 14:10:11 Donald Trump is succeeding in making China pay most of the cost of his trade war https://t.co/iPl6SKeK4T reageer retweet

quote:

The tariff revenues can be distributed to US consumers and could increase US welfare.1
1 On Twitter President Trump repeatedly refers to the increased tax revenues due to the import tariffs. Indeed these revenues could be used to finance tax reforms. Thus, the redistribution argument might be valid.

quote:

The aggregated welfare losses in China and the US are around USD 1.6 billion. Only about one third, or USD 522 million, of these losses are sustained by US consumers (green triangle in Figure 1), while the remainder falls to Chinese exporting firms.

quote:

Op vrijdag 23 november 2018 14:06 schreef Vis1980 het volgende:

[..]

Oke, Hans.

Waarom verdedig jij hem overal dan?
Wat vind jij van zijn Thanksgivingspeech?

quote:

Op zondag 25 november 2018 20:11 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Je onderstreept juist hoe debiel de Republikeinse talking points zijn, maar goed dat snap je zelf ook wel.

quote:

Op zaterdag 24 november 2018 13:02 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Nog wel een aardig stuk over de geografische spreiding van welvaartsgroei in de VS:
https://www.politico.com/(...)icy-solutions-000791

quote:

Op zondag 25 november 2018 20:22 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:

[..]

Niet echt, want ik ben niet pro/anti-Republikeins of pro/anti-Democraten, hoe graag users als jij mij ook in een hokje willen stoppen.

quote:

Op zondag 25 november 2018 20:32 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Dat is uiteraard niet waar het hier om gaat. Het gaat om het feit dat jij een volstrekt debiel talking point herkauwt. Dat soort retoriek voor inteeltrednecks neemt toch vrijwel geen Nederlander serieus?

Een politicus maakt terecht het punt dat een geweer niet echt helpt tegen tegen een kwaadwillende overheid met onder andere een nucleair arsenaal (maar ook drones, stealth bommenwerpers, Apaches, tanks en ga zo maar door). Om dan te roepen dat betreffende politicus burgers wil bestoken met nucleaire wapens is toch niet serieus te nemen? Je gaat me echt niet wijs maken dat je dat gelooft. Het is gewoon de zoveelste trollpoging.

quote:

Op zondag 25 november 2018 20:36 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:

[..]

Kernwapens, stealth bommenwerpers, drones, apaches, tanks etc. zijn inderdaad veel krachtiger wapens dan een burgermilitie met aanvalsgeweren. Het gaat echter niet om de superioriteit van overheidswapens t.o.v. burgerwapens. Het gaat om de verknipte moraliteit waarmee zo'n politicus twitterberichten de wereld instuurt.

Met stealth bommenwerpers, drones, apaches, tanks krijg je niet de gehele Amerikaanse burgerbevolking uitgemoord. Daar is het land te groot voor en zijn er teveel plekken om te schuilen. Wat wel zou werken? Juist, tactical nukes. Dat betekent dat er weldegelijk een verschil zit in de praktische uitvoerbaarheid van het argument.

twitter:

BreakingNLive twitterde op zondag 25-11-2018 om 20:57:42 BREAKING NEWS: Illegal immigrants are reportedly storming the U.S. border from the Mexican city of Tijuana right now. https://t.co/IIRucrqfvx reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 25-11-2018 om 21:27:34 Europe has to pay their fair share for Military Protection. The European Union, for many years, has taken advantage of us on Trade, and then they don’t live up to their Military commitment through NATO. Things must change fast! reageer retweet

quote:

Op zondag 25 november 2018 20:36 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:

[..]

Kernwapens, stealth bommenwerpers, drones, apaches, tanks etc. zijn inderdaad veel krachtiger wapens dan een burgermilitie met aanvalsgeweren. Het gaat echter niet om de superioriteit van overheidswapens t.o.v. burgerwapens. Het gaat om de verknipte moraliteit waarmee zo'n politicus twitterberichten de wereld instuurt.

Met stealth bommenwerpers, drones, apaches, tanks krijg je niet de gehele Amerikaanse burgerbevolking uitgemoord. Daar is het land te groot voor en zijn er teveel plekken om te schuilen. Wat wel zou werken? Juist, tactical nukes. Dat betekent dat er weldegelijk een verschil zit in de praktische uitvoerbaarheid van het argument.

quote:

Op zondag 25 november 2018 19:23 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Aardig stuk over de keerzijde van deregulering:
https://www.wired.com/sto(...)er-is-making-us-sick

quote:

What could those "sketchy things" have been? Well, no one here at DC Tribune has contacts inside the Democratic Coalition, but I've done plenty of analysis myself if you've been following me here, and the first example of a place to look would be at the $800,000 that Graham's political action committee took from Len Blavatnik, a citizen of the US and UK who emigrated from the USSR in the 1970s with his family and returned to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Blavatnik is the business partner of Viktor Vekselberg in Rusal, the world's second-largest aluminum manufacturer, which was founded by Oleg Deripaska. Do those names sound familiar? They should by now. Vekselberg is the Russian billionaire who was discovered in May to have been funneling secret payments to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen through the same shell company that Cohen set up to disburse payments to Trump's mistresses, Essential Consultants. Deripaska is the Putin ally who worked with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to lobby the United States in efforts that would benefit Putin's Kremlin. Toward the middle of Manafort's first trial, it was discovered that Deripaska had loaned him ten million dollars in an unsecured contract.

Len Blavatnik is a US citizen and his contributions to Graham's PAC would not be illegal if 100 percent of the money could be proven to have come from American income. But if any of that almost one million dollars he sent to Graham came from Rusal, it would look more than "sketchy" -- it would be a blatant campaign finance violation.

quote:

Op zondag 25 november 2018 21:30 schreef Nibb-it het volgende:
Het gaat los in Oekraïne, ergo:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 25-11-2018 om 21:27:34 Europe has to pay their fair share for Military Protection. The European Union, for many years, has taken advantage of us on Trade, and then they don’t live up to their Military commitment through NATO. Things must change fast! reageer retweet

quote:

Op zondag 25 november 2018 23:32 schreef Lord-Ronddraai het volgende:

[..]

Alsof Europa niet genoeg aan het leger uitgeeft
Hij wil gewoon dat we meer Amerikaans wapentuig kopen. Daarbij wat huilt hij nou zelf stapt hij toch ook uit deals die zijn land ondertekent heeft.

quote:

Op zondag 25 november 2018 23:32 schreef Lord-Ronddraai het volgende:

[..]

Alsof Europa niet genoeg aan het leger uitgeeft
Hij wil gewoon dat we meer Amerikaans wapentuig kopen. Daarbij wat huilt hij nou zelf stapt hij toch ook uit deals die zijn land ondertekent heeft.

quote:

Op zondag 25 november 2018 23:32 schreef Lord-Ronddraai het volgende:

[..]

Alsof Europa niet genoeg aan het leger uitgeeft
Hij wil gewoon dat we meer Amerikaans wapentuig kopen. Daarbij wat huilt hij nou zelf stapt hij toch ook uit deals die zijn land ondertekent heeft.

twitter:

ABCPolitics twitterde op zondag 25-11-2018 om 15:10:33 What's next in the Mueller investigation?"I think the report is going to be devastating to the president," Harvard Law Professor Emeritus @AlanDersh says. "And I know that the president's team is already working on a response to the report" https://t.co/GlcWTIu29g #ThisWeek https://t.co/LtogMZA5rP reageer retweet

Trump defender Alan Dershowitz: Mueller’s final report ‘is going to be devastating to the president’

quote:

A 60 Minutes investigation has found the separations that dominated headlines this summer began earlier and were greater in number than the Trump administration admits

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 26-11-2018 om 02:59:13 .@60Minutes did a phony story about child separation when they know we had the exact same policy as the Obama Administration. In fact a picture of children in jails was used by other Fake Media to show how bad (cruel) we are, but it was in 2014 during O years. Obama separated.... reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 26-11-2018 om 03:07:27 ....children from parents, as did Bush etc., because that is the policy and law. I tried to keep them together but the problem is, when you do that, vast numbers of additional people storm the Border. So with Obama seperation is fine, but with Trump it’s not. Fake 60 Minutes! reageer retweet

twitter:

johnkruzel twitterde op maandag 26-11-2018 om 03:09:39 That’s false https://t.co/XX5ouJG2kF https://t.co/Ckinqh4Sjm reageer retweet

quote:

A peaceful march by Central American migrants waiting at the southwestern United States border veered out of control on Sunday afternoon, as hundreds of people tried to evade a Mexican police blockade and run toward a giant border crossing that leads into San Diego.

In response, the United States Customs and Border Protection agency shut down the border crossing in both directions and fired tear gas to push back migrants from the border fence. The border was reopened later Sunday evening.

Soon after the migrants began their midmorning march to the border in Tijuana, they were met by Mexican federal police officers at a bridge that leads to the San Ysidro border crossing, through which millions of people and vehicles pass each year. At that point, many of the marchers bypassed the police by running across a dry riverbed.

The police, carrying riot shields, formed a new line and appeared to contain the rush of migrants 100 yards or more from the crossing. They erected metal barriers on the roads and sidewalks leading to the main border crossing for cars and trucks.

A smaller group of migrants then tried to make their way to a train border crossing a few hundred yards away, where they were stopped by tear gas fired by United States Customs and Border Protection officers.

After the gas cleared, Mexican federal police officers pushed the protesters back from the area of the train crossing.

Customs and Border Protection officers also used tear gas at a separate point a few hundred yards away to drive back the migrants.

SPOILER

Some of the migrants told The New York Times they thought they could negotiate with United States officials to be allowed to pass. A few men tried to climb the wall but fell back in the face of the gas.

At least two dozen tear gas canisters could be seen on the Mexican side of the border after the migrants eventually turned back.

Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, writing on Twitter, said, “Tear gas across the border against unarmed families is a new low.”

twitter:

brianschatz twitterde op zondag 25-11-2018 om 23:43:44 Tear gas across the border against unarmed families is a new low. reageer retweet

Kirstjen Nielsen, the Homeland Security secretary, said in a statement that some migrants who were trying to breach the fence had thrown projectiles at Customs and Border protection workers.

“As I have continually stated,” she said, “D.H.S. will not tolerate this type of lawlessness and will not hesitate to shut down ports of entry for security and public safety reasons.”

Mexico’s interior ministry said that 500 people were involved in the march on Sunday, a fraction of the total number in the caravan that left Honduras and headed north last month, and that those who had attacked federal police would be deported. Municipal officials said that 39 people had been arrested.

The unrest in Tijuana comes amid broader discussions about how to deal with the growing number of migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America who are amassed at crossing points in Tijuana and elsewhere along the border.

The backlog of people waiting to request asylum at a checkpoint has swelled, causing frustration among the migrants to boil over. Some of those rushing the border on Sunday had children in strollers and in their arms.

“The longer the caravaners stay in Tijuana, the more likely they are to succumb to the temptation to cross illegally into the U.S.” said Wayne Cornelius, professor emeritus of political science at the University of California, San Diego, who is an expert on the border.

Mexico inaugurates a new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, next Saturday, and top cabinet officials in his incoming government had planned to meet on Sunday to discuss possible solutions for dealing with the population.

The Trump administration has demanded that Mexico agree to host migrants applying for asylum as they wait for a hearing before an immigration judge in the United States. The wait can last months or even years, during which time many migrants are released and allowed to work under rules that President Trump has vowed to change. Mr. Trump wants them to wait in Mexico instead.

But the meeting of the incoming administration officials in Mexico City to discuss a response was derailed by the chaotic events along the San Ysidro border crossing. The focus of the meeting immediately shifted to the day’s crisis, and the political implications it might have for the treatment of migrants and the anti-migrant sentiment it might incite in Mexico.

Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday that it “Would be very SMART if Mexico would stop the Caravans long before they get to our Southern Border, or if originating countries would not let them form.”

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 25-11-2018 om 14:28:30 Would be very SMART if Mexico would stop the Caravans long before they get to our Southern Border, or if originating countries would not let them form (it is a way they get certain people out of their country and dump in U.S. No longer). Dems created this problem. No crossings! reageer retweet

Thousands of migrants began arriving in Tijuana about 10 days ago and have been housed since then in squalid conditions in a community sports center that has been converted into a makeshift shelter. Many have become increasingly desperate with the realization of the obstacles still before them in reaching the United States.

Tijuana city officials say they have no money to improve conditions at the sports center, where more than 5,000 migrants are sheltering in a space with capacity for no more than 3,500.

Fani Caballero, 32, a migrant from Honduras who arrived with the caravan, sat by the train tracks, within sight of United States agents on the other side of the steel columns of the border fence. Her daughter, Cristina, 7, cried as Customs and Border Protection helicopters circled overhead.

“People had thought that they were going to open the gates, but that was a lie,” Ms. Caballero said. “We thought it would be easier.”

She had signed up for an interview with a United States asylum officer, the first step in the asylum application process — but the surge of migrants with the caravan meant she would be waiting for weeks.

“Now, I guess I’ll just wait my turn, because I can’t go back to my country,” she said.

Andrés Medina, 22, was not ready to give up either, even after he had been tear gassed. “We’ve got to try one more time,” said Mr. Medina, who said he had left Honduras to escape gang recruitment.

“We don’t even have weapons,” he said. “We just wanted to cross.”

quote:

The U.S. president inherited a remotely piloted weapon of death from his predecessor. In his earliest period in office, he used this lethal robot force promiscuously, sharply escalating attacks on suspected terrorists away from his declared wars. As time went on, his use of drone strikes in those places diminished.

Barack Obama? Well, yes. But a look at available statistics for drone strikes on America’s undeclared battlefield shows that this description also applies to Donald Trump.

In 2009 and 2010, Obama launched 186 drone strikes on Yemen, Somalia, and especially Pakistan. Donald Trump’s drone strikes during his own first two years on three pivotal undeclared battlefields, however, eclipse Obama’s – but without a corresponding reputation for robot-delivered bloodshed, or even much notice. In 2017 and 2018 to date, Trump has launched 238 drone strikes there, according to data provided to The Daily Beast by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and the drone-watchers at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London.

Those numbers come with a slew of asterisks. The amount of drone strikes on the full-fledged acknowledged battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria have, ironically, proven far more difficult to track than those in shadow warzones—and knowledgeable observers like Chris Woods of the UK’s Airwars organization believe that the true center of the drone strikes is found there. Additionally, the toll of how many people, particularly civilians, those strikes on shadow battlefields have slain is, at best, a rough estimate.

[..]

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 04:22 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:
Geen problemen mee. Trump is een klootzak maar de grens zomaar bestormen mag nooit beloond worden.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 07:54 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Asiel aanvragen is een mensenrecht dat niet met traangas beantwoord moet worden. Eigenlijk te bizar voor woorden dat ik je dit moet uitleggen.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 08:45 schreef Chivaz het volgende:

[..]

Is het ook niet een plicht om je in het eerste veilige land waar je komt je de aanvraag moet doen?
Ik krijg net op het nieuws mee dat de aanvragen gewoon behandeld worden.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 08:45 schreef Chivaz het volgende:

[..]

Is het ook niet een plicht om je in het eerste veilige land waar je komt je de aanvraag moet doen?
Ik krijg net op het nieuws mee dat de aanvragen gewoon behandeld worden.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 04:22 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:
Geen problemen mee. Trump is een klootzak maar de grens zomaar bestormen mag nooit beloond worden.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 08:45 schreef Chivaz het volgende:

[..]

Is het ook niet een plicht om je in het eerste veilige land waar je komt je de aanvraag moet doen?
Ik krijg net op het nieuws mee dat de aanvragen gewoon behandeld worden.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 07:54 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Asiel aanvragen is een mensenrecht dat niet met traangas beantwoord moet worden.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 09:57 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Je kunt natuurlijk ook gewoon de asielaanvraag weigeren in plaats van armoedzaaiers te bestoken met traangas.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:23 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:

[..]

De grens bestormen en het hek proberen te beklimmen is een asielaanvraag?

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:24 schreef trein2000 het volgende:

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Nee, maar wel een noodzakelijke voorwaarde voor...

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:22 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:

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Ze vragen geen asiel aan, ze bestormen de grens.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:30 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Lees je a.u.b. eerst even in. Asielaanvragen liggen al langere tijd stil. Dan worden mensen wanhopig, logisch.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 03:04 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

ABCPolitics twitterde op zondag 25-11-2018 om 15:10:33 What's next in the Mueller investigation?"I think the report is going to be devastating to the president," Harvard Law Professor Emeritus @AlanDersh says. "And I know that the president's team is already working on a response to the report" https://t.co/GlcWTIu29g #ThisWeek https://t.co/LtogMZA5rP reageer retweet

Trump defender Alan Dershowitz: Mueller’s final report ‘is going to be devastating to the president’

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:32 schreef Arcee het volgende:

[..]

Vooralsnog gebeurt er voor wat betreft Trump geen ene reet

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:32 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:

[..]

Alweer een schijnbeweging. De grens bestormen om illegaal binnen te komen heeft niets met asiel te maken.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:33 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Als asielaanvragen in behandeling genomen zouden worden was dat niet nodig geweest

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:33 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:

[..]

Heb je niet opgelet? Hoeveel campagnemedewerkers moeten er worden opgepakt?

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:34 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:

[..]

Klinkklare onzin, illegale immigratie bestaat al ver voor Trump. Dit is precies het soort domme gezeik dat de Democratische partij ook parten speelt.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:36 schreef Arcee het volgende:

[..]

Ja, om Trump heen vallen ze bij bosjes, maar Trump zelf blijft nog steeds buiten schot.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:37 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Illegale immigratie was er altijd al (daalt ook al langer) maar de chaotische situatie die zich nu ontvouwt is het gevolg van het nalatige handelen van Trump.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:39 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:

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Dan doet Trump dus toch iets goed. Beetje het idee van een stilstaande klok.

Nogmaals: idioten die de grens bestormen moet je afketsen. Welke president er dan ook is.

quote:

Op maandag 26 november 2018 17:42 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Is al jaren aan de gang, lang voor Trump. Heb jij deze chaos onder Obama gezien?