Tag: trump

McConnell Covered Up CIA Reports That Russian Hacks Were Aimed At Electing Trump

from Washington Post 12/9/16:

in mid-September:

Obama dispatched Monaco, FBI Director James B. Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to make the pitch for a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” against Russian interference in the election, according to a senior administration official.

…

In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals.

And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as “the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.”

The Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed on the need to take the threat seriously. Republicans, however, were divided, with at least two GOP lawmakers reluctant to accede to the White House requests.

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

Some of the Republicans in the briefing also seemed opposed to the idea of going public with such explosive allegations in the final stages of an election, a move that they argued would only rattle public confidence and play into Moscow’s hands.

McConnell’s office did not respond to a request for comment. After the election, Trump chose McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as his nominee for transportation secretary.

McConnell Covered Up CIA Reports That Russian Hacks Were Aimed At Electing Trump

BREAKING: Republicans Will Re-File Religious Freedom Bill Protecting Anti-Gay Beliefs

tpfnews:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Mike Lee of Utah will reintroduce a bill next year to protect people and corporations that hold a religious objection to same-sex marriage, a spokesman for his office told BuzzFeed News, adding that the political climate amid Donald Trump’s presidency will give the legislation a better shot at advancing than it had the past two years.

“Hopefully November’s results will give us the momentum we need to get this done next year,” said Lee’s spokesman, Conn Carroll.

Trump vowed during the campaign to sign the First Amendment Defense Act, arguing it would “protect the deeply held religious beliefs of Catholics and the beliefs of Americans of all faiths.”

Carroll added, “We do plan to reintroduce FADA next Congress and we welcome Trump’s positive words about the bill.”

The measure was filed in both the House and Senate in 2015, but only got a hearing in the House. The bill faltered amid protests from Democrats and speculation that President Obama would veto the measure if it reached his desk.

“Any effort to protect religious liberty has brighter prospects with a new Congress and new administration,” said Sen. Ted Cruz.

Sen. Ted Cruz, a co-sponsor of the bill who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the bill was referred in the current Congress, believes the election results are a game-changer.

“The prospects for protecting religious freedom are brighter now than they have been in a long time,” the Texas Republican told BuzzFeed News. “We are having ongoing conversations with our colleagues both in Congress and leaders in the new administration about a multitude of ways we can honor the commitment made to the voters in this last election.”

The First Amendment Defense Act would ban the federal government from punishing individuals and corporations — for example, denying them a tax exemption or a grant — if they act on a “religious belief or moral conviction” that marriage is between one man and one woman. It also protects those who think “that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

It had 172 House co-sponsors and 37 in the Senate.

This time around, Cruz said, “Any effort to protect religious liberty has brighter prospects with a new Congress and new administration,”adding that a “relentless assault” on religious liberty was a key driver for voters.

Carroll said he “absolutely” believes the bill will get a Senate hearing next year. “We made great progress last Congress, the first Congress it was introduced, the House had hearing, and we have every reason to believe the momentum will continue next year.”

But LGBT groups and Democrats have insisted the measure attempts to legalize anti-gay discrimination, undermining the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling last year, and may be found unconstitutional. A federal court suspended a similar bill passed by Mississippi legislature this year due to concerns it violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

The bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Raúl Labrador of Idaho, did not respond to questions about whether he would re-file the bill. Trump’s transition team did not reply when asked if the president-elect stood by his pledge to sign the bill if it reaches his desk.

Well, this opens the door for both denial of marriage rights and denial of birth control access.  …. I knew this was coming.  I mean you could see it coming from a mile off.  It’s just so disheartening.  

BREAKING: Republicans Will Re-File Religious Freedom Bill Protecting Anti-Gay Beliefs

BREAKING: According to secret CIA assessment, Russia interfered with the election for Trump

tpfnews:

According to the Washington Post, a secret CIA assessment found Russia made efforts to sway the the 2016 presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor.

In a “closed-door briefing” detailed by the Post, agency officials told senators Russia aimed to put Trump in the White House. According to the agency, individuals with connection to Russia provided Wikileaks with thousands of hacked Democratic National Committee emails that likely caused Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers to dip in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

One senior unnamed U.S. official who the Post said that the the intelligence leaks were part of a deliberate attempt to hurt Clinton in the polls.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” the official said. “That’s the consensus view.”

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

Some of the Republicans in the briefing also seemed opposed to the idea of going public with such explosive allegations in the final stages of an election, a move that they argued would only rattle public confidence and play into Moscow’s hands.

McConnell’s office did not respond to a request for comment. After the election, Trump chose McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as his nominee for transportation secretary.

BREAKING: According to secret CIA assessment, Russia interfered with the election for Trump

Chuck Jones: I’m the union leader Donald Trump attacked. I’m tired of being lied to about our jobs.

drst:

justinspoliticalcorner:

I’m a union leader in Indianapolis. I represent the Carrier workers whose jobs Donald Trump has pledged to save. And I’m tired of being lied to.

In February, corporate officials came to our plant and announced that they were closing the facility. They would move 1,300 jobs to a plant in Mexico. (Three hundred and fifty positions would remain in Indianapolis, mostly filled by research and development staff.)

Over the next several months, my team and I worked tirelessly to keep Carrier in our city. We came up with $23 million in savings, but the Carrier brass said that wasn’t enough. They could save $65 million by moving to Mexico. We couldn’t match that unless we were willing to cut wages to $5/hour and cut all benefits.

So we started to negotiate a severance package instead – one week of pay for every year of service, a $2,500 lump sum for every employee and free health care for six months.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, Trump got involved. He sat down with Carrier leaders. Afterward, he announced that 1,100 jobs would be saved. When I first heard the news, I was optimistic. But I began to get nervous when we couldn’t get any details on the deal. I urged caution, but our members got their hopes up. They thought their jobs had been saved.

When I met with Carrier officials last Thursday, I realized that that wouldn’t be the case. Though Trump said he’d saved 1,100 jobs, he hadn’t. Carrier told us that 550 people would get laid off.

Trump didn’t tell people that, though. When he spoke at our plant, he acted like no one was going to lose their job. People went crazy for him. They thought, because of Trump, I’m going to be able to provide for my family.

All the while, I’m sitting there, thinking that’s not what the damn numbers say. Trump let people believe that they were going to have a livelihood in that facility. He let people breathe easy. When I told our members the next day, they were devastated.

I was angry, too. So I told a Washington Post reporter the truth – that Trump’s 1,100 number was wrong. When Trump read my comments, he got angry. Wednesday night, he tweeted:

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“Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country!”

And later:

“If United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana. Spend more time working-less time talking. Reduce dues.”

Now our office is getting phone calls and emails from people who are mad that I called Trump on his dishonesty. One man left five messages (though when I called him back and told him who I was, he hung up the phone). Some people have suggested that Trump didn’t mean to lie, he just got the numbers wrong. But I know that’s not true. On the campaign trail, Trump made perfectly clear how excellent a negotiator he is. I have negotiated hundreds of contracts. I know that if I’m going to have a fighting chance, I better damn well know the numbers.

To be honest, the attention isn’t a big deal. I’ve been doing this job for 30 years. In that time, people have threatened to shoot me, to burn my house down. I’m not a macho man, but I’m just used to it.

What I can’t abide, however, is a president who misleads workers, who gives them false hope. We’re not asking for anything besides opportunity, for jobs that let people provide for their families. These plants are profitable, and the workers produced a good-quality product. Because of corporate greed, though, company leaders are racing to the bottom, to find places where they can pay the least. It’s a system that exploits everyone.

Chuck Jones is telling it like it is.

Trump lied his ass off about Carrier and attacked Jones for telling the truth about his charade.

H/T: Chuck Jones at Washington Post, via Hartford Courant

ImwithChuck

Chuck Jones: I’m the union leader Donald Trump attacked. I’m tired of being lied to about our jobs.

It’s wrong to compare a United States President to Hitler. Not because it’s an exaggeration but because it’s backwards. American policy inspired Hitler, not the other way around. Adolf Hitler was a student of US History, developing his concept of concentration camps and genocide from the American policy of reservation creation and the near extermination of our Native population. The concept of a master Aryan race didn’t come from Hitler but from American scientists whose work in eugenics shaped national policies of forced sterilization, segregation, and marriage restrictions. Hitler merely brought to Europe what America had been doing for centuries. Donald Trump is the rightful successor of that centuries long legacy, not a new danger.

Manila Ryce
(via fullpraxisnow)
Source: fullpraxisnow

airyairyquitecontrary:

rottenbrainstuff:

wildcard47:

thrillers:

valadilenne:

I’ve been thinking a lot about the meeting between Trump and Obama at the White House, and here’s the thing.

Obama used to be a law professor. This is key.

Law school is so, so different from college. 

In college, everyone expects there to be a “syllabus day,” kind of a grace period where they can show up and get the lay of the land, figure out the bare minimum that they can get away with, the TA gives everyone their office hours, there’s an introductory lecture, and everybody leaves a few minutes early to go take a nap or something. You do the bullshit assignments, you say something in class now and then to get your participation check mark, and figure out how badly you can do on the final and still pass. 

But see, in law school, all the methodologies you’ve spent the last 17 years operating under go out the window. Day one of law school is you being thrown into the deep end of the pool—you’ve had a homework assignment for two weeks now, and it’s to read the first 200 pages of your casebook. And now it’s you and the teacher (who is usually as smug as Alex Trebek) gauging and assessing what you managed to absorb while you skimmed through all those pages of reading so you could hurry up and get to the other 150 pages of reading for your next period class, in front of 50 people who are all smarter than you. And if you fuck up, or you didn’t do the reading, you are at the mercies of not just the professor, but the silent satisfied judgment of your peers. 

Law school is hard, and it will make you feel stupid and tongue-tied and like you don’t know anything and can’t form an argument—because you don’t, and you can’t. Everybody there has had a 4.0 since birth. Everybody there was the smartest kid in their class, and you’re all rabidly competing for a sliver of a chance at something down the road. It’s petty, and savage, fiercely entrenched in a culture of formalities and ceremony, and exactly like Washington DC. 

Yesterday when I was driving home, the NPR reporter talking about the Oval Office meeting mentioned that Trump had thought it was going to be a “getting to know you” type meeting, but that he was surprised when Obama stretched their talk out to 90 minutes before sending him along to the Capitol building where he met with congressional leaders for more lengthy meetings and stuff he didn’t want to do.

And he hasn’t even gotten to the actual job yet. 

So think about that as we go into this. 

Trump walked into the Oval Office like a two-pump-chump freshman thinking it was syllabus day, and what he got was the first day of law school, and he hadn’t done the reading like everyone else had, and Professor Obama decided to put him in the hot seat. 

This was Obama’s chance for the most perfect revenge that would never be picked up on as revenge at all. He was gracious, polite—everything he needed to be for a peaceful transition and a good review from the press. And that would continue when the doors were closed, because that’s the key. Not a Come to Jesus meeting, oh no. If Obama were smart—and he is very smart—he would have treated Trump like an equal, and brought the discussion to a level that assumes far more of Trump than anyone has so far. Assumes that he’s an adult who’s been paying attention. Statistics, esoteric minutiae about the executive branch procedure, economic growth numbers, labor figures, domestic policies, countries Trump has never even heard of, shit that would never in a million years have been in Trump’s campaign soundbites or digestible summaries. 

No way to escape. No aides to remember any of it for him. Just the two of them. 

Because that’s what would strike a precise chill into Trump. The thundering realization that he’s woefully unprepared for the hard, boring, thankless reality of this, and Obama’s version of a smooth transition won’t and shouldn’t include remedial civics. 

That’s what I saw when they shook hands and Trump stared at the floor instead of looking back into Obama’s face. He’s just figured out how little he knows about any of this. 

And that should give you a small glow of satisfaction, because after those meetings, Trump definitely has the 1L Terror Shits. In January, the night sweats and insomnia will show up, but for these first few weeks—nothing but diarrhea and self-doubt.  

My fucking god you guys, seriously nothing makes me happier than this. I think about this and it makes a warmth in my bitter little heart.

Because it is 1000% true.

I looked at those photos of Trump and Obama shaking hands and that’s exactly what I see there in his face, a kind of sinking realization of what exactly he’s gotten himself into.

Why did such a stupid chump ever think this was a job he even wanted? This is an asshole who’s had everything in his life handed to him. This is hard fucking work, did he think it was going to be golf and blowjobs 24/7 while he gives vague instructions to a secretary who runs off and does all the real work for him?

I can’t fucking wait to see more photos of his stupid chump face with that solemn expression of “wtf have i done” on it. I can’t wait to see him at the end of his four year term.

he will be entirely hairless and grey all over

I’m not so sure Trump has the self-awareness to make that kind of experience stick in a lasting way.  I’m pretty sure his defenses will snap back into place soon enough and he’ll be blaming everybody else for his own shortcomings.  Still, I definitely like that they are separating him from Pence and making it very clear that the buck stops with him.  

Remember this story from when Trump was looking for a running mate?  (New York Times)

One day this past May, Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reached out to a senior adviser to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who left the presidential race just a few weeks before. … But according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?

When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.

Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?

“Making America great again” was the casual reply.