it takes alot of nerve to approach the party you have consulted on NOTHING for a year and demand they supply you votes
They have no shame and they're busy fighting each other and no way will they compromise.
This was pretty much there only card and it played out as a pretty limp resistance. I guess there's some threat that this can happen again in three weeks but I'm sure Republicans aren't worried much. After they've got to be thinking "that's all you got? why would we give you anything now that you have already caved and reopened the government."
If they do do DACA they will claim credit for it like they are claiming credit for saving childrens health care. They are banking on people being dumb enough to not recognize that it was Republicans that stopped funding CHIP and let it expire just for fun and it was Trump that endangered DACA to begin with with his Executive order canceling the program.
If DACA does get passed we'll get to hear Trump say "Nobody loves Dreamers more than me."
This whole mess seems unnecessary. DACA and especially CHIP are not abominable programs.
I think that's the point. DACA and CHIP are both broadly popular and have plenty of bipartisan support. However, both programs have a great deal more support on the left than the right (So if only 60% of conservatives support it, 90% of liberals do).
So the GOP is using them as leverage to try to things that are broadly unpopular pushed through (The Wall for example).
This whole mess seems unnecessary. DACA and especially CHIP are not abominable programs.
I think that's the point. DACA and CHIP are both broadly popular and have plenty of bipartisan support. However, both programs have a great deal more support on the left than the right (So if only 60% of conservatives support it, 90% of liberals do).
So the GOP is using them as leverage to try to things that are broadly unpopular pushed through (The Wall for example).
And Chuck Schumer supposedly was offering those things, which pretty much nobody on the left wants, to issues that Trump/Republicans caused!
A court has ruled that Pennsylvania's districts are unconstitutional per the First Amendment and must be redrawn. The New York Times has a cool animation depicting the extent of the gerrymandering, and what could be theoretically possible if the gerrymandering had been taken even further. The shape of the districts is pretty weird and obviously not organic. The seventh district has been singled out for being a particularly obvious example. This is how the district changed over time Here's a close up.
Hey if Bill Clinton can get impeached for a BJ then what's paying off a porn star for a year long affair?
Not very much these days--remember that Clinton's problems were 20 years ago so times have changed a little. Or people just don't care as much. Or Congress doesn't already have it out for the sitting President--if the House during Clinton's second term had been majority Democrat I highly doubt any of those problems would have occurred.
I absolutely believe that you personally do not care about these kind of sexual escapades. But literally ANY other President before this one would be facing a massive scandal over this. Frankly, what I find more troubling is that certain media outlets just simply BURIED this story on purpose when they knew about it before the election. Not that it would have made a difference. Beyond that, we all know this isn't the only woman who has been paid off. I remember one of the main arguments about Clinton from Republicans in the '90s was how the Lewinsky scandal and his sexual behavior made him susceptible to blackmail. This narrative is NOWHERE to be found despite the fact that it is almost a certainty that Trump has these kind of financial deals with dozens of women. I'm beginning to think that the most salacious details in the dossier aren't so far-fetched after all. Wasn't his main argument when that story came out that it couldn't have happened because he was a germaphobe?? Apparently not enough of a germaphobe to refrain from sleeping with a PORN ACTRESS. It's not the act itself that is infuriating. It's the total double-standard in the media. Clinton's affair was the #1 story in the country every day for 2 years. Trump paying hush money to adult film stars doesn't even make it to A-19.
Moreover, who was the group of voters most opposed to Clinton's behavior?? It was the Christian Right. The fact that anyone would take these people seriously after Trump in regards to their stance on "morality" is a complete joke. Liberals never really claimed to care about politicians who have affairs. That has been almost solely the province of conservatives. When a conservative is caught in these situations, it's the hypocrisy that pisses us off, not the act itself being a hanging offense. They set the rules, and then made it clear they ONLY applied to Democrats.
Fact is, Democrats are completely ignoring the story on every level. Legislators, pundits, activists, and run-of-the-mill liberal voters. Mostly because the double-standard is so blatantly obvious and overwhelming that it's clear it isn't even worth addressing because it's a total waste of time. But I would bet EVERYTHING I OWN that if this kind of news had been revealed about Barack Obama, it would have destroyed his Presidency. I think we all know this.
What's most amazing is holier than thou VP Mike Pence just going out in the last coupe days and flat-out lying about the affair. Isn't LYING one of the Ten Commandments?? I mean hell, I don't even think Trump has bothered to deny this. I don't think anyone thinks this didn't take place, including Mike Pence. Why is he even bothering to lie about something the base has clearly indicated they don't even care about?? And that is my REAL issue with this: people like Mike Pence want to use their religion to force their views on others, especially in regards to abortion and gay rights. Well, if that's the case, then I expect every singe aspect of your life to adhere to biblical principles. I consider even ONE lie, one broken commandment a nullifying event to the credibility of that type of person.
Trump unilaterally ordered stiff tariffs on foreign manufacturered washing machines and solar panels. Solar panels have been becoming cheaper with imported from China and are becoming competitive with polluting industries such as oil and gas. This tax on foreign produced solar panels will be a significant blow to the solar industry.
This has been inevitable since Trump began his general election campaign, and it's only a matter of time before someone takes the final step and a journalist gets killed. A country awash in guns, and paranoid, crazy people who can access them, and a President and his surrogates who call the press "enemies" on a daily basis. What could go wrong??
For f**k's sake, you simply cannot make this stuff up. MORE Whitefish, MT shenanigans:
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is a shareholder in a private Montana company that manufactures and sells firearms and advanced weapons materials, a financial interest he did not disclose when nominated last year.
In response to inquiries from HuffPost, both Zinke and the company, PROOF Research Inc., confirmed the secretary’s holdings, though the dollar value placed on them varied. This previously undisclosed holding comes to light after numerous decisions in his first year in office that benefited the hunting and gun industries.
PROOF Research Inc. was first established in 2011 in Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Montana, under the name Extreme Precision Armaments Inc., according to state of Montana business records. The company specializes in the production of lightweight rifles with high-precision carbon fiber barrels for hunting and military applications and was born as a merger of four smaller firearms and gun parts companies. It later changed its name to PROOF Research Inc. and moved to the nearby town of Columbia Falls.
Trump has signed the bill to end the shutdown. 48 Republicans and 33 Democrats voted in favor; 2 Republicans and 16 Democrats voted against, with John McCain not available for the vote.
Trump has signed the bill to end the shutdown. 48 Republicans and 33 Democrats voted in favor; 2 Republicans and 16 Democrats voted against, with John McCain not available for the vote.
CHIP is now off the table. Here is what happens next: Sometime before or on Feb. 8th, McConnell has promised an up or down vote (I believe requiring 60 votes) on a DACA fix. It seems right now that Senators will be able to add amendments. I don't know how this process goes quickly or smoothly. Assuming it happens at all, as McConnell is about the most cynical bastard I have ever seen in politics. But, for the sake of argument, let's say it DOES pass the Senate. It is not going to pass the House where the Freedom Caucus and Steve King of Iowa have Paul Ryan's balls in a jar in regards to this issue. The hard-right in the GOP House has been blocking sensible, bipartisan immigration reform since George W. Bush was pushing it in his second-term. Beyond that, Stephen Miller is still in the White House, and so is John Kelly.
The GOP can continue taking a hard-line on this. But if this keeps going on past March, and some of these DREAMERS start getting deported, we are going to see cell-phone video of those acts taking place. And ask Bill Clinton and Janet Reno how the Elian Gonzalez situation worked out from a public perception perspective. Then multiply that by 1000.
Beyond that, we now have McConnell on the record promising a DACA vote. There is video that has been playing alot online the last few days of Paul Ryan promising a DREAMER they didn't have anything to fear from Republicans and Trump. If they refuse to take care of this in 3 weeks, there is no possible way this issue can continue to be "both-sided". They are on the record. They've been putting this off for months upon months upon months until the legal status of nearly a million people is in limbo. On Feb. 8th, it's time to put up or shut up, or reveal themselves as monumental liars.
@jjstraka34 re: Trump and Ms. Daniels... You are correct--I don't care about that story because I operate under the presumption that most politicians are (or have recently been) involved in some sort of affair. You are also correct in that the Evangelical Right is incredibly hypocritical on this topic--Clinton got excoriated while Trump gets nothing.
Although not an evangelical, myself, I will try to reverse-engineer their logic about this. Extramarital affairs are bad (even though, technically, they do not violate the Ten Commandments--they state that you shall not covet your neighbor's wife but they don't actually say "don't have sex with her"...but let's not split hairs) but the other things they generally oppose, specifically abortion, are *worse* than an affair. They can justify a little backsliding from someone who isn't actually one of them--there is no way Trump is an evangelical--in order to gain political victories. I suspect that most of them are still frothing at the mouth that non-heterosexual people may legally get married now and so they will take whatever victories they can take via Trump, even if they do find him to be a little distasteful.
Not surprisingly, there were never even rumors of Obama having any affairs (at least, not that I recall) because he would have had to answer to Michelle. Hillary may be willing to put with a lot of crap in order to be in a position of power but I doubt she would have.
re: Whitefish, MT and Ryan Zinke....
This is the *third* time that little town in Montana and the Interior Secretary have been in the headlines in the last 6 months--I find that to be statistically anomalous. Without looking up the information, does anyone know the name of the Interior Secretary under Obama? Under Bush? No, I don't recall who those people were, either...but we all know who Ryan Zinke is.
It isn't surprising that Proof Technologies is a privately held firm, either. With public corporations you can find out all sorts of information by spending a little time online--names of the Board, corporate executives, SEC filings, quarterly statements, news releases, names of parent or daughter companies, extra DBA names (doing business as), etc. With private companies...well, in general unless you are working at the financial desk of some news organization, you already have your Series 6/63 licenses and you work with non-publicly-traded securities, or you are an investor in the privately-held company you probably won't be able to find out much about them since they don't have to file publicly with the SEC (they still file, just differently). Notice that the range of possible valuations for the stock he owns goes from $450 to nearly $2,000. Truthfully, 1,000 shares in a private corporation has no definable market valuation until the accountants perform an evaluation report. Private securities are like the dark web--you can get there if you know how but for the uninitiated it isn't trivial and you have to be more careful about your actions.
More from the article. Proof received an $11.4 million contract from the Dept. of Defense last year. Matt Marshall, Chairman of the Board, is also the CEO of Amyntor--another Whitefish corporation--who tried to get some counterterrorism contracts from the Trump Administration. Another listed director is Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney III (retired), who is also on the advisory board of TigerSwan, the private security firm which used extremely heavy-handed tactics against the protesters fighting against the Dakota Access pipeline (that story was tracked at Democracy Now for a long time). Finally, Zinke appointed Susan LaPierre, wife of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, to the board of directors for the National Parks Foundation. Didn't a lot of those other board members recently quit? Something like that. Anyway...Trump had to intervene personally and shut down the Dept. of the Interior's plan to allow trophy hunters to import the remains of elephants they had hunted in Africa. When Trump has to shut you down because you have gone over the top you have *really* gone over the top.
Bank of America is expected to reap a 3.5 billion dollar windfall from the tax cut. While it is absolutely true many banks do this (including mine), many do not, and Credit Unions definitely don't. And, again, Bank of America, like so many other companies, has decided to raise fees on customers after the public was sold a tax plan that was supposedly going to benefit everyone. This is only a step-up from predatory pay-day lending.
Bank of America is expected to reap a 3.5 billion dollar windfall from the tax cut. While it is absolutely true many banks do this (including mine), many do not, and Credit Unions definitely don't. And, again, Bank of America, like so many other companies, has decided to raise fees on customers after the public was sold a tax plan that was supposedly going to benefit everyone. This is only a step-up from predatory pay-day lending.
This is a non-story. You're not forced to do business with this bank. If they don't want to be bothered dealing with penny-ante accounts then find a bank that will. You make it sound like they're going to rake in the dough by doing this but it's more likely they're trying to weed out accounts with little activity or value...
I view it as exploitation of the poor. And I'll give you a personal example. Years ago I worked the graveyard shift as a valet at a casino. I was signed up for direct deposit. We got our money every Friday morning at around 5 am. However, one Friday I called to check my balance and had not received my money. I checked again an hour later and it still wasn't there. Turned out a number of employees had had an error in the transfer of their money. I didn't receive it til almost a week later. Of course, I had a multitude of checks in the mail. Though I was assured by my employer they would be contacting everyone's bank and remedying the situation, as well as talking to them myself, nothing ever got resolved for me. In the end, my account ended up $600 in the hole and I had no choice but to simply abandon it at the time. I had to cash my checks for $3 a pop at Wal-Mart for years because I couldn't get another account. The only reason I am at the bank I am at now (despite them having similar rules) is that a lady at a local branch near where I lived accepted my story and allowed me to open an account. It doesn't take much to be forced into this cycle of bleeding you for pennies you don't really have.
Once upon a time, you could put your money in the bank and just about keep up with inflation; you could earn nearly 5% (maybe even more) while inflation is generally tracked at 3.5% (long term). Then the S&L Crisis hit--remember Keating and Milken? (ancillary documentation: Milken served only 22 months, bounced back, and is today a billionaire, worth more than he ever was in the 1980s) Then the rules changed. Now you are often better off putting your money in the cookie jar as opposed to putting it in the bank, the drawback being that you don't get access to a debit card with the cookie jar. That may not be a bad thing, depending upon the circumstances. (on another side note, the government bailouts which ultimately ended the S&L Crisis were the direct precursors for the bailouts which occurred in 2008 and 2009)
Unless you are a high-net-worth individual, banks don't really want your money. They will temporarily hold it for you (for a small fee, of course) but what they really do is take all that money and put it in investments so they can earn interest on *your* money, then pay you peanuts for it. At some point this year, I am moving the direct deposit from the large bank to the credit union which is only a block from the house--I can walk there in only a few minutes.
What @jjstraka34 didn't mention that being "overdrawn" by even as little as $0.25 can result in a $35 NSF fee. If multiple transactions occur in the wrong order--the bills you set up for auto-pay from your account are taken out before your deposit is credited to your account--then you will receive a $35 NSF for each transaction.
Would you care if the porn star affair also involved breaking campaign finance laws?
President Trump is accused of paying $130,000 in hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels to hide an affair a month before the election. In what is probably just a coincidence, the Trump campaign transferred $130K to the Trump businesses a month after the election. pic.twitter.com/KKknIC9ClC
Once upon a time, you could put your money in the bank and just about keep up with inflation; you could earn nearly 5% (maybe even more) while inflation is generally tracked at 3.5% (long term). Then the S&L Crisis hit--remember Keating and Milken? (ancillary documentation: Milken served only 22 months, bounced back, and is today a billionaire, worth more than he ever was in the 1980s) Then the rules changed. Now you are often better off putting your money in the cookie jar as opposed to putting it in the bank, the drawback being that you don't get access to a debit card with the cookie jar. That may not be a bad thing, depending upon the circumstances. (on another side note, the government bailouts which ultimately ended the S&L Crisis were the direct precursors for the bailouts which occurred in 2008 and 2009)
Unless you are a high-net-worth individual, banks don't really want your money. They will temporarily hold it for you (for a small fee, of course) but what they really do is take all that money and put it in investments so they can earn interest on *your* money, then pay you peanuts for it. At some point this year, I am moving the direct deposit from the large bank to the credit union which is only a block from the house--I can walk there in only a few minutes.
What @jjstraka34 didn't mention that being "overdrawn" by even as little as $0.25 can result in a $35 NSF fee. If multiple transactions occur in the wrong order--the bills you set up for auto-pay from your account are taken out before your deposit is credited to your account--then you will receive a $35 NSF for each transaction.
Yes, I should have mentioned this, as this is exactly what sunk me in this case. I received nearly a dozen NSF charges at $25 a pop. In the end, I had no choice but to cancel my direct deposit, because all my money was going to cover my negative balance.$600 might has well have been $6000 at the time. I had to keep a roof over my head. That error made that morning altered my finances for nearly a decade. If the NSF fees had been waived in this circumstance (which is what my employer was supposed to talk to them to take care of) I could have probably crawled my way out of it. With them, I had no shot.
Would you care if the porn star affair also involved breaking campaign finance laws?
President Trump is accused of paying $130,000 in hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels to hide an affair a month before the election. In what is probably just a coincidence, the Trump campaign transferred $130K to the Trump businesses a month after the election. pic.twitter.com/KKknIC9ClC
Once upon a time, you could put your money in the bank and just about keep up with inflation; you could earn nearly 5% (maybe even more) while inflation is generally tracked at 3.5% (long term). Then the S&L Crisis hit--remember Keating and Milken? (ancillary documentation: Milken served only 22 months, bounced back, and is today a billionaire, worth more than he ever was in the 1980s) Then the rules changed. Now you are often better off putting your money in the cookie jar as opposed to putting it in the bank, the drawback being that you don't get access to a debit card with the cookie jar. That may not be a bad thing, depending upon the circumstances. (on another side note, the government bailouts which ultimately ended the S&L Crisis were the direct precursors for the bailouts which occurred in 2008 and 2009)
Unless you are a high-net-worth individual, banks don't really want your money. They will temporarily hold it for you (for a small fee, of course) but what they really do is take all that money and put it in investments so they can earn interest on *your* money, then pay you peanuts for it. At some point this year, I am moving the direct deposit from the large bank to the credit union which is only a block from the house--I can walk there in only a few minutes.
What @jjstraka34 didn't mention that being "overdrawn" by even as little as $0.25 can result in a $35 NSF fee. If multiple transactions occur in the wrong order--the bills you set up for auto-pay from your account are taken out before your deposit is credited to your account--then you will receive a $35 NSF for each transaction.
Agreed. I had that happen to me frequently back when I was married (my ex was terrible with money). The fee was $50 for an overdraft and that was at a credit union! That is far more criminal than charging a monthly service fee...
I had to go in years ago and raise hell once over that multiple NSF crap. One little mistake and bam, bam, bam, the fees rack up fast. I signed some papers that basically stated I did NOT want to be covered if the funds were not in my account. No money, no pay, simple as that. Finally worked. They acted like they could not understand or do anything at first of course. I might as well have walked in with lobsters coming out my ears for the looks I got.
Bunch o crooks. And STILL only gettin slaps on the wrist for illegal practices, Wells Fargo and Suntrust being two of the worst for overdraft fees and unscrupulous mortgage practices. I still get a little money for a class action lawsuit against Suntrust every few years.
To add my 2 cents in to the bank fee talk: my parents are currently going through a divorce, which has spread both of their finances thin, in addition to assisting multiple disabled family members, my dad rarely has more than a couple hundred in any bank account at any given time. Because of court orders from the divorce, he is not allowed to close any bank accounts. Guess where he banks.
We have overdraft protection here in Canada. My bank has two options; a pay per use which is $5 + interest of the overdraft when created or upped, or 4 per month + interest of the overdraft (regardless if it is used or not). This is on top of any banking fees the account might incur.
People even think that is high as it only takes advantage of the lower class.
We have overdraft protection here in Canada. My bank has two options; a pay per use which is $5 + interest of the overdraft when created or upped, or 4 per month + interest of the overdraft (regardless if it is used or not). This is on top of any banking fees the account might incur.
People even think that is high as it only takes advantage of the lower class.
No one is suggesting that people should just be able to make payments without funds. In my case, the bank just paid the checks and automatic payments that had been set up, and then added another $300 in fees. I had no idea this was even possible at the time (essentially, they allowed my account to go as low as negative $600 before they stopped). It would have been FAR better for me if I simply could have paid my bills a week or two late. Instead, since they forced my account into the negative, the only thing I could do was write a couple more checks for cash back (since I now had a $600 credit line in regards to a negative balance I never asked for) and then make sure my next check didn't deposit into the account. There was no other choice to avoid an endless cycle of NSF fees and negative balances.
Would you care if the porn star affair also involved breaking campaign finance laws?
Yes. This doesn't surprise me, either, but it is indicative of the fact that we have been needing serious campaign finance reform for at least 10 or 20 years.
Would you care if the porn star affair also involved breaking campaign finance laws?
Yes. This doesn't surprise me, either, but it is indicative of the fact that we have been needing serious campaign finance reform for at least 10 or 20 years.
Coincidence, my foot.
I don't see how this can't be a major story with this revelation, and yet it continues to just hang in the background. It's fairly clear his fixer, Michael Cohen, set up a fake LLC for the express purpose of making this payment with campaign cash. This is illegal. If it had ever been revealed Clinton had paid campaign cash to Monica Lewinsky, it would have been 50 nails in the coffin (all that was ever discovered is that Washington power-player Vernon Jordan recommended her for a job). But this was ALWAYS the concern with Trump. That his criminality and antics would be so blantant, 90% of it would get swept under the rug. On the other hand, if they were this sloppy with hush money to a porn star, imagine what Mueller and a team of federal prosecutors is finding.....
imagine what Mueller and a team of federal prosecutors is finding.....
I don't want to imagine, I'm ready to hear it and move on to President Pence. But maybe he was involved too. Since this will probably stretch out after the 2018 midterms it might be a move to President Pelosi (lol)
imagine what Mueller and a team of federal prosecutors is finding.....
I don't want to imagine, I'm ready to hear it and move on to President Pence. But maybe he was involved too. Since this will probably stretch out after the 2018 midterms it might be a move to President Pelosi (lol)
Senator Ron Johnson today went on national TV and declared that there is a "secret society" in the FBI involved in a conspiracy to take down Trump. That simply echoes what we have been hearing in right-wing media for weeks. We now know Sessions was trying to get Christopher Wray to fire Andrew McCabe at the behest of the President. We are entering Joe McCarthy territory here pretty rapidly. The Republican Party, on all levels, seems willing to demolish and destroy the entire apparatus of federal law enforcement to protect Trump. And we are supposed to believe these measure are being taken for nothing?? Give me a break.....
Turns out, if a serial child predator loses just ONE time to a moderate Democrat, Alabama Republicans will simply change the rules so that kind of atrocity never happens again. Why bother with elections?? They are dangerous. Too many black people showed up at the last one.
Senator Ron Johnson today went on national TV and declared that there is a "secret society" in the FBI involved in a conspiracy to take down Trump.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Senator Ron Johnson has neither names nor details nor documents to support this theory. And the reason he has none of these things is because he completely fabricated the entire idea--or listened to someone who did.
That's the beauty of a conspiracy theory. You can say that someone, somewhere, somehow, is doing something sinister without ever bothering to pin down any details or dig up any hard proof, and yet people will honestly believe that somewhere, that nameless someone really is somehow doing that something.
People will believe most any theory, as long as it puts the good guys and bad guys in the right places.
Senator Ron Johnson today went on national TV and declared that there is a "secret society" in the FBI involved in a conspiracy to take down Trump.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Senator Ron Johnson has neither names nor details nor documents to support this theory. And the reason he has none of these things is because he completely fabricated the entire idea--or listened to someone who did.
That's the beauty of a conspiracy theory. You can say that someone, somewhere, somehow, is doing something sinister without ever bothering to pin down any details or dig up any hard proof, and yet people will honestly believe that somewhere, that nameless someone really is somehow doing that something.
People will believe most any theory, as long as it puts the good guys and bad guys in the right places.
And we haven't even gotten into the #releasethememo hashtag. Once again, I think Josh Marshall sums it up perfectly:
That gets to an even bigger point. Today DC is buzzing about a “secret memo” Devin Nunes staffers wrote about alleged FBI/CIA anti-Trump wrongdoing during the 2016 campaign. He has made this classified memo available to all members of the House. He has refused to share it with the FBI – the organization accused of wrongdoing. He and the White House have worked to create a rightwing faux groundswell of demands to “release the memo” to the public. Russian intelligence backed social media accounts have worked to amplify the “release the memo” push.
We can dig into the arcana of these claims and conspiracy theories. But all of this – every last bit of it – is the work of the White House and its defenders on Capitol Hill making war on the Mueller probe. All of this is an effort to disrupt and discredit the Mueller probe. And it starts inside the Trump White House. It goes all the way back to Flynn’s attempt to snoop on the investigation into himself exactly one year ago.
In a political sense, all of this amounts to obstruction. It has gone as far as demands for purges of the FBI, the Department of Justice, even jailing various perceived Trump law enforcement enemies who have been part of this on-going probe. But what counts in a political sense does not necessarily count in a legal sense. Certainly, the efforts of corrupt members of Congress to defeat an investigation into a Presidential ally go far beyond anything the obstruction statutes are meant to encompass.
Let me be clear: I am not saying that Robert Mueller is going to start investigating Devin Nunes for obstruction. My point is that if Mueller is taking an expansive view of President Trump’s wrongdoing (as the scrutiny of the Sessions bullying suggests) and subversion of the rule of law it may be difficult to draw a bright line between Trump’s pressure on Sessions and the various ways Trump, his cronies and allies have worked with people like Nunes and others to protect himself by defeating Mueller’s investigation.
These are not statutory crimes. They political crimes, subversion of the political order and the rule of law that ordinary statutes are not designed to grapple with. Where this will lead is not at all clear.
It will probably end with Congress shutting down the Mueller investigation--they started it so they may also end it--along with "preemptive" pardons despite the inherent admission of guilt when they are accepted. Or there may be some sort of emergency shake-up in the leadership at the DoJ. Or all of the above.
Comments
This was pretty much there only card and it played out as a pretty limp resistance. I guess there's some threat that this can happen again in three weeks but I'm sure Republicans aren't worried much. After they've got to be thinking "that's all you got? why would we give you anything now that you have already caved and reopened the government."
If they do do DACA they will claim credit for it like they are claiming credit for saving childrens health care. They are banking on people being dumb enough to not recognize that it was Republicans that stopped funding CHIP and let it expire just for fun and it was Trump that endangered DACA to begin with with his Executive order canceling the program.
If DACA does get passed we'll get to hear Trump say "Nobody loves Dreamers more than me."
So the GOP is using them as leverage to try to things that are broadly unpopular pushed through (The Wall for example).
Embarrassing.
The seventh district has been singled out for being a particularly obvious example. This is how the district changed over time
Here's a close up.
Moreover, who was the group of voters most opposed to Clinton's behavior?? It was the Christian Right. The fact that anyone would take these people seriously after Trump in regards to their stance on "morality" is a complete joke. Liberals never really claimed to care about politicians who have affairs. That has been almost solely the province of conservatives. When a conservative is caught in these situations, it's the hypocrisy that pisses us off, not the act itself being a hanging offense. They set the rules, and then made it clear they ONLY applied to Democrats.
Fact is, Democrats are completely ignoring the story on every level. Legislators, pundits, activists, and run-of-the-mill liberal voters. Mostly because the double-standard is so blatantly obvious and overwhelming that it's clear it isn't even worth addressing because it's a total waste of time. But I would bet EVERYTHING I OWN that if this kind of news had been revealed about Barack Obama, it would have destroyed his Presidency. I think we all know this.
What's most amazing is holier than thou VP Mike Pence just going out in the last coupe days and flat-out lying about the affair. Isn't LYING one of the Ten Commandments?? I mean hell, I don't even think Trump has bothered to deny this. I don't think anyone thinks this didn't take place, including Mike Pence. Why is he even bothering to lie about something the base has clearly indicated they don't even care about?? And that is my REAL issue with this: people like Mike Pence want to use their religion to force their views on others, especially in regards to abortion and gay rights. Well, if that's the case, then I expect every singe aspect of your life to adhere to biblical principles. I consider even ONE lie, one broken commandment a nullifying event to the credibility of that type of person.
Good times.
http://thehill.com/media/370207-man-arrested-after-threatening-to-kill-cnn-employees
For f**k's sake, you simply cannot make this stuff up. MORE Whitefish, MT shenanigans:
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is a shareholder in a private Montana company that manufactures and sells firearms and advanced weapons materials, a financial interest he did not disclose when nominated last year.
In response to inquiries from HuffPost, both Zinke and the company, PROOF Research Inc., confirmed the secretary’s holdings, though the dollar value placed on them varied. This previously undisclosed holding comes to light after numerous decisions in his first year in office that benefited the hunting and gun industries.
PROOF Research Inc. was first established in 2011 in Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Montana, under the name Extreme Precision Armaments Inc., according to state of Montana business records. The company specializes in the production of lightweight rifles with high-precision carbon fiber barrels for hunting and military applications and was born as a merger of four smaller firearms and gun parts companies. It later changed its name to PROOF Research Inc. and moved to the nearby town of Columbia Falls.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/01/zinke-didnt-bother-disclosing-his-shares-in-a-gun-company-that-does-business-with-the-government/
The GOP can continue taking a hard-line on this. But if this keeps going on past March, and some of these DREAMERS start getting deported, we are going to see cell-phone video of those acts taking place. And ask Bill Clinton and Janet Reno how the Elian Gonzalez situation worked out from a public perception perspective. Then multiply that by 1000.
Beyond that, we now have McConnell on the record promising a DACA vote. There is video that has been playing alot online the last few days of Paul Ryan promising a DREAMER they didn't have anything to fear from Republicans and Trump. If they refuse to take care of this in 3 weeks, there is no possible way this issue can continue to be "both-sided". They are on the record. They've been putting this off for months upon months upon months until the legal status of nearly a million people is in limbo. On Feb. 8th, it's time to put up or shut up, or reveal themselves as monumental liars.
Although not an evangelical, myself, I will try to reverse-engineer their logic about this. Extramarital affairs are bad (even though, technically, they do not violate the Ten Commandments--they state that you shall not covet your neighbor's wife but they don't actually say "don't have sex with her"...but let's not split hairs) but the other things they generally oppose, specifically abortion, are *worse* than an affair. They can justify a little backsliding from someone who isn't actually one of them--there is no way Trump is an evangelical--in order to gain political victories. I suspect that most of them are still frothing at the mouth that non-heterosexual people may legally get married now and so they will take whatever victories they can take via Trump, even if they do find him to be a little distasteful.
Not surprisingly, there were never even rumors of Obama having any affairs (at least, not that I recall) because he would have had to answer to Michelle. Hillary may be willing to put with a lot of crap in order to be in a position of power but I doubt she would have.
re: Whitefish, MT and Ryan Zinke....
This is the *third* time that little town in Montana and the Interior Secretary have been in the headlines in the last 6 months--I find that to be statistically anomalous. Without looking up the information, does anyone know the name of the Interior Secretary under Obama? Under Bush? No, I don't recall who those people were, either...but we all know who Ryan Zinke is.
It isn't surprising that Proof Technologies is a privately held firm, either. With public corporations you can find out all sorts of information by spending a little time online--names of the Board, corporate executives, SEC filings, quarterly statements, news releases, names of parent or daughter companies, extra DBA names (doing business as), etc. With private companies...well, in general unless you are working at the financial desk of some news organization, you already have your Series 6/63 licenses and you work with non-publicly-traded securities, or you are an investor in the privately-held company you probably won't be able to find out much about them since they don't have to file publicly with the SEC (they still file, just differently). Notice that the range of possible valuations for the stock he owns goes from $450 to nearly $2,000. Truthfully, 1,000 shares in a private corporation has no definable market valuation until the accountants perform an evaluation report. Private securities are like the dark web--you can get there if you know how but for the uninitiated it isn't trivial and you have to be more careful about your actions.
More from the article. Proof received an $11.4 million contract from the Dept. of Defense last year. Matt Marshall, Chairman of the Board, is also the CEO of Amyntor--another Whitefish corporation--who tried to get some counterterrorism contracts from the Trump Administration. Another listed director is Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney III (retired), who is also on the advisory board of TigerSwan, the private security firm which used extremely heavy-handed tactics against the protesters fighting against the Dakota Access pipeline (that story was tracked at Democracy Now for a long time). Finally, Zinke appointed Susan LaPierre, wife of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, to the board of directors for the National Parks Foundation. Didn't a lot of those other board members recently quit? Something like that. Anyway...Trump had to intervene personally and shut down the Dept. of the Interior's plan to allow trophy hunters to import the remains of elephants they had hunted in Africa. When Trump has to shut you down because you have gone over the top you have *really* gone over the top.
Bank of America is expected to reap a 3.5 billion dollar windfall from the tax cut. While it is absolutely true many banks do this (including mine), many do not, and Credit Unions definitely don't. And, again, Bank of America, like so many other companies, has decided to raise fees on customers after the public was sold a tax plan that was supposedly going to benefit everyone. This is only a step-up from predatory pay-day lending.
Unless you are a high-net-worth individual, banks don't really want your money. They will temporarily hold it for you (for a small fee, of course) but what they really do is take all that money and put it in investments so they can earn interest on *your* money, then pay you peanuts for it. At some point this year, I am moving the direct deposit from the large bank to the credit union which is only a block from the house--I can walk there in only a few minutes.
What @jjstraka34 didn't mention that being "overdrawn" by even as little as $0.25 can result in a $35 NSF fee. If multiple transactions occur in the wrong order--the bills you set up for auto-pay from your account are taken out before your deposit is credited to your account--then you will receive a $35 NSF for each transaction.
Yes, I should have mentioned this, as this is exactly what sunk me in this case. I received nearly a dozen NSF charges at $25 a pop. In the end, I had no choice but to cancel my direct deposit, because all my money was going to cover my negative balance.$600 might has well have been $6000 at the time. I had to keep a roof over my head. That error made that morning altered my finances for nearly a decade. If the NSF fees had been waived in this circumstance (which is what my employer was supposed to talk to them to take care of) I could have probably crawled my way out of it. With them, I had no shot.
I would have expected it would have been from one of his charities.
Bunch o crooks. And STILL only gettin slaps on the wrist for illegal practices, Wells Fargo and Suntrust being two of the worst for overdraft fees and unscrupulous mortgage practices. I still get a little money for a class action lawsuit against Suntrust every few years.
We have overdraft protection here in Canada. My bank has two options; a pay per use which is $5 + interest of the overdraft when created or upped, or 4 per month + interest of the overdraft (regardless if it is used or not). This is on top of any banking fees the account might incur.
People even think that is high as it only takes advantage of the lower class.
Coincidence, my foot.
Meanwhile, in Alabama:
Turns out, if a serial child predator loses just ONE time to a moderate Democrat, Alabama Republicans will simply change the rules so that kind of atrocity never happens again. Why bother with elections?? They are dangerous. Too many black people showed up at the last one.
That's the beauty of a conspiracy theory. You can say that someone, somewhere, somehow, is doing something sinister without ever bothering to pin down any details or dig up any hard proof, and yet people will honestly believe that somewhere, that nameless someone really is somehow doing that something.
People will believe most any theory, as long as it puts the good guys and bad guys in the right places.
That gets to an even bigger point. Today DC is buzzing about a “secret memo” Devin Nunes staffers wrote about alleged FBI/CIA anti-Trump wrongdoing during the 2016 campaign. He has made this classified memo available to all members of the House. He has refused to share it with the FBI – the organization accused of wrongdoing. He and the White House have worked to create a rightwing faux groundswell of demands to “release the memo” to the public. Russian intelligence backed social media accounts have worked to amplify the “release the memo” push.
We can dig into the arcana of these claims and conspiracy theories. But all of this – every last bit of it – is the work of the White House and its defenders on Capitol Hill making war on the Mueller probe. All of this is an effort to disrupt and discredit the Mueller probe. And it starts inside the Trump White House. It goes all the way back to Flynn’s attempt to snoop on the investigation into himself exactly one year ago.
In a political sense, all of this amounts to obstruction. It has gone as far as demands for purges of the FBI, the Department of Justice, even jailing various perceived Trump law enforcement enemies who have been part of this on-going probe. But what counts in a political sense does not necessarily count in a legal sense. Certainly, the efforts of corrupt members of Congress to defeat an investigation into a Presidential ally go far beyond anything the obstruction statutes are meant to encompass.
Let me be clear: I am not saying that Robert Mueller is going to start investigating Devin Nunes for obstruction. My point is that if Mueller is taking an expansive view of President Trump’s wrongdoing (as the scrutiny of the Sessions bullying suggests) and subversion of the rule of law it may be difficult to draw a bright line between Trump’s pressure on Sessions and the various ways Trump, his cronies and allies have worked with people like Nunes and others to protect himself by defeating Mueller’s investigation.
These are not statutory crimes. They political crimes, subversion of the political order and the rule of law that ordinary statutes are not designed to grapple with. Where this will lead is not at all clear.