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**President Trump 2018 Thread**


Brian

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https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/02/04/china-d...de-tension.html

 

Hope US sorghum farmers didn’t vote for Trump...but going by voting patterns in farming states, they’re going to be the first of many trade war victims.

 

Along with those already paying higher prices for their washing machines, as well as a 30-50% cost increase to install solar panel heating and cooling systems.

 

 

Stock market down nearly 200 more points in pre trading.

 

Trump will regret tieing all of his political fortunes to that indicator...even if GDP is way up this quarter, the stock market is likely to be down or flat.

Edited by caulfield12
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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 4, 2018 -> 10:11 PM)
Tonight's news report: "Sunday talk shows filled with Democrats and Republicans discussing a controversial memo". Republicans say the public has a right to know if the FBI process was corrupt, Democrats say the memo is an unfair attack on the FBI.

 

Then a summary of how the memo suggests that the Dems helped pay for the Steele Dossier and that was used as evidence for the surveillance and a comment by the President about how it's unfair - with no mention of any other evidence that the guy was a russian agent, no mention of the fact that they disclosed that it was paid for in part by political parties, no mention of the fact that they had repeated warrants for him even without the dossier. Then an appearance by Trey Gowdy saying that the use of opposition research in a FISA application was "Somewhat unprecedented" - WTF that actually means God only knows, because either there's a precedent or not.

 

Then a "the Democrats want their memo released too" both sides.

 

Without the center content, it comes off as the memo release being fair and yes the FBI is totally corrupt in the report.

 

WGN and NPR reporting were essentially the same as that today, too. Right wing propagandists are experts at exploiting our media's neverending desire to cover everything through a lens of "both sides."

 

The memo was full of outright lies and self-contradictions, but you'd never know it from a majority of the reporting.

 

 

e:

DevinNunes: "As far as we can tell, Papadopoulos had never even met with the President"

RTS1HQDG_atdalj.jpg

 

Edited by StrangeSox
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Trump/Sanders both lied about FBI rank and file reaction to Comey firing

https://www.lawfareblog.com/i-hope-instance...ing-james-comey

 

 

Over the next few days, a wealth of evidence emerged to suggest that Trump and Sanders were playing fast and loose with the truth. But we now have the documents to prove that decisively. Their disclosure was not a leak but an authorized action by the FBI, which released to us under the Freedom of Information Act more than 100 pages of leadership communications to staff dealing with the firing. This material tells a dramatic story about the FBI’s reaction to the Comey firing—but it is neither a story of gratitude to the president nor a story of an organization in turmoil relieved by a much-needed leadership transition.

 

Within a few days of the firing, both current and former FBI officials began pushing back against the White House’s claims. Then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that Comey “enjoyed broad support within the FBI" and that “the vast majority of employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey.”

 

Here at Lawfare, Nora Ellingsen—who served as a counterterrorism analyst at the FBI for several years—talked with roughly 20 of her former colleagues. She characterized the opinion of Comey among the FBI’s rank and file as almost universally positive. “Nearly everyone loved him,” she wrote, and the “degree of consensus on this point ... has been incredible.” She went on: “All of the people I talked to described having the same reaction when they heard that the director had been fired: complete shock, followed by deep sadness.”

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QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 5, 2018 -> 02:48 PM)
The should show him the video of Paul Ryan during Obama's last SOTU, and Trump's first speech last year when they said the exact same thing about infrastructure. Up and clapping with Trump. Sitting with a look of a kid who just got a week of detention with Obama. Treasonous.

 

They all acting as if someone shouted "You Lie!" in the middle of it or something.

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Trump's Department of Labor buried a report that showed their rules changes, which gave employers vastly more control over workers' tips, would result in employers stealing billions of dollars.

 

The Trump administration says that its new “tip pooling” rule will increase the paychecks of low-wage kitchen workers. Progressives say that it will increase the profits of restaurants, by allowing them to legally steal servers’ tips.

 

Reason has always favored the latter claim. It is true that the Department of Labor’s proposal, unveiled in December, would allow restaurant owners to transfer servers’ gratuities to cooks and dishwashers (in places where servers make at least the minimum wage). But the proposal would also allow restaurant owners to transfer those tips to their own pockets: While the measure empowers businesses to collect their tipped employees’ gratuities — and encourages them to redistribute that cash back to workers, in a manner that cuts non-tipped workers in on the deal — the rule doesn’t actually require businesses to give the money back.

 

It is hard to understand why a fervently pro-dishwasher administration would omit such a requirement. After all, there is no cause for thinking that “market forces” (i.e., competition for waitstaff) would be enough to prevent employers from stealing tips — at present, even laws against stealing tips aren’t enough.

 

And the administration gave skeptics another reason to doubt that its new rule would work as claimed: The Department of Labor (DOL) did not publish any quantitative estimate of how much income the proposal would transfer from workers to employers, even though it was required to do so by law.

 

Now, we know why the DOL cut that corner. As Bloomberg Law reports:

 

Labor Department leadership scrubbed an unfavorable internal analysis from a new tip pooling proposal, shielding the public from estimates that potentially billions of dollars in gratuities could be transferred from workers to their employers, four current and former DOL sources tell Bloomberg Law.

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ian bremmer

@ianbremmer

Wow: Republican views of FBI

 

Last month: 91% have “great deal” or “some” confidence in country’s law enforcement agencies.

 

Today: 73% agree “members of FBI & Dept of Justice are working together to delegitimize Trump through politically motivated investigations.”

 

Reuters

 

Politicization of law enforcement and justice is straight out of the authoritarian playbook.

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Tammy Duckworth en fuego:

 

"We don't live in a dictatorship or a monarchy. I swore an oath—in the military and in the Senate—to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to mindlessly cater to the whims of Cadet Bone Spurs and clap when he demands I clap," Sen. Tammy Duckworth tweeted Monday evening.

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QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Feb 6, 2018 -> 10:37 AM)
I can't wait for Trump to call her a loser for losing both her legs in war and then for Republicans who usually worship anything military not say anything.

It's too bad he weaseled out of the war. The military could have used his mind. Probably would have saved thousands of American lives, and ended the war sooner. He knows more than the Generals you know.

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FEMA tapped Tiffany Brown, an Atlanta entrepreneur with no experience in large-scale disaster relief and at least five canceled government contracts in her past.

 

FEMA awarded her $156 million for the job in Puerto Rico, then this happened

 

FEMA Contract Called for 30 Million Meals for Puerto Ricans. 50,000 Were Delivered.

 

The mission for the Federal Emergency Management Agency was clear: Hurricane Maria had torn through Puerto Rico, and hungry people needed food. Thirty million meals needed to be delivered as soon as possible.

 

For this huge task, FEMA tapped Tiffany Brown, an Atlanta entrepreneur with no experience in large-scale disaster relief and at least five canceled government contracts in her past. FEMA awarded her $156 million for the job, and Ms. Brown, who is the sole owner and employee of her company, Tribute Contracting LLC, set out to find some help.

 

Ms. Brown, who is adept at navigating the federal contracting system, hired a wedding caterer in Atlanta with a staff of 11 to freeze-dry wild mushrooms and rice, chicken and rice, and vegetable soup. She found a nonprofit in Texas that had shipped food aid overseas and domestically, including to a Houston food bank after Hurricane Harvey.

 

By the time 18.5 million meals were due, Tribute had delivered only 50,000. And FEMA inspectors discovered a problem: The food had been packaged separately from the pouches used to heat them. FEMA’s solicitation required “self-heating meals.”

 

“Do not ship another meal. Your contract is terminated,” Carolyn Ward, the FEMA contracting officer who handled Tribute’s agreement, wrote to Ms. Brown in an email dated Oct. 19 that Ms. Brown provided to The New York Times. “This is a logistical nightmare.”

 

Four months after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, a picture is emerging of the contracts awarded in the earliest days of the crisis. And examples like the Tribute contract are causing lawmakers to raise questions about FEMA’s handling of the disaster and whether the agency was adequately prepared to respond.

 

On Tuesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, which has been investigating the contract, asked Representative Trey Gowdy, the committee chairman, to subpoena FEMA for all documents relating to the agreement. Lawmakers fear the agency is not lining up potential contractors in advance of natural disasters, leading it to scramble to award multimillion-dollar agreements in the middle of a crisis.

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QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 6, 2018 -> 10:51 AM)
FEMA tapped Tiffany Brown, an Atlanta entrepreneur with no experience in large-scale disaster relief and at least five canceled government contracts in her past.

 

FEMA awarded her $156 million for the job in Puerto Rico, then this happened

 

FEMA Contract Called for 30 Million Meals for Puerto Ricans. 50,000 Were Delivered.

Trump only hires the best. If Hillary were President, many Puerto Ricans would not get meals, and be without power for months....

Edited by Dick Allen
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Trump and his far right allies, who are controlling the direction of the GOP, are offering DACA in exchange for drastic cuts in legal immigration. A new Quinnipiac poll finds that only 17% of Americans support cutting legal immigration, but that's the starting point for discussions on not deporting hundreds of thousands of people right now.

 

e: here is why they're pushing that plan

 

Trump immigration plan could keep whites in U.S. majority for up to five more years

 

Keep America poorer, whiter, and older.

 

The Census Bureau projects that minority groups will outnumber non-Hispanic whites in the United States in 2044. The Post's analysis projects that, were Trump's plan to be carried out, the date would be between 2045 and 2049, depending on how parts of it are implemented.

 

All told, the proposal could cut off entry for more than 20 million legal immigrants over the next four decades. The change could have profound effects on the size of the U.S. population and its composition, altering projections for economic growth and the age of the nation's workforce, as well as shaping its politics and culture, demographers and immigration experts say.

 

“By greatly slashing the number of Hispanic and black African immigrants entering America, this proposal would reshape the future United States. Decades ahead, many fewer of us would be nonwhite or have nonwhite people in our families,” said Michael Clemens, an economist at the Center for Global Development, a think tank that has been critical of the proposal. “Selectively blocking immigrant groups changes who America is. This is the biggest attempt in a century to do that.”

 

But by reducing the country's overall population, the plan could eventually reduce the overall growth rate of the U.S. economy. Under Trump's plan, the U.S. economy could be more than $1 trillion smaller than it would have been two decades from now. That's largely because the economy would have fewer workers.

 

The plan could also raise the median age of U.S. workers. About 4 of every 5 immigrants is projected to be under the age of 40, while only half of the country's overall population is that young, according to Census Bureau data. A demographic crunch is already expected because of millions of upcoming retirements from the aging “baby boomer” generation, raising concerns about the long-term solvency of programs such as Social Security and Medicare that rely on worker contributions.

Edited by StrangeSox
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