The Resident Is Our Mass Murderer

Posted by Rude One

Sometimes, oh, my sweet, weary people of Donald Trump's America, it feels like we're sailing in skiffs on a sea of shit and some of us believe we can get across the shit sea to shore and some of us believe that we're gonna sink but we all know we're damned to keep sailing as wave after wave of shit keeps hitting us, and every time we dare to hope that we've seen the worst shit wave, that perhaps we'll get a break and just sail as smoothly as possible through a shit sea, a fucking massive turd wave in a shit storm appears on the horizon and we've gotta batten down the hatches and ride this one out, even though we know that in the best possible circumstances, we'll get over or through but still coated in shit.

What does it change that we now have Trump on audio telling reporter Bob Woodward that he knew back in early February that COVID-19 was airborne and dangerous, far worse, in his own words, than a "strenuous flu"? What does it change that we now can hear Trump say that he downplayed the virus to the public on purpose? In some ways, obviously, it changes nothing. It doesn't bring back the dead. It doesn't rebuild the lives shattered by the shutdown economy. It doesn't really make us understand Trump any more than we already did. We know that he is the motherfuckingest motherfucker anyone has ever met. We know that he was deliberately avoiding action on coronavirus until the mounting death toll and hospitalizations forced him to do something.

But what has changed today is that we know without a doubt that Trump wasn't just spitballing and gambling that the virus wouldn't be bad, despite experts outside of the federal government telling us it would be. He knew. He fucking knew. He knew it and could articulate how dangerous the situation was going to get. And he chose to pretend otherwise and lie to the nation, forcing others to lie, too. After telling Woodward it was worse than the flu, he tweeted the exact opposite, mocking the idea that it's worse than the flu. After telling Woodward that "young people" are susceptible to it, he said that children are "almost immune" to the virus. And no matter how many ways Trump and his ass remoras attempt to spin this as nobly trying not to panic people, there's a fucking world of difference between yelling, "Fire" in a crowded theater and telling everyone to just sit still while the fire burns out.  This is not fine.

Every single person who knew should have spoken. They should have given Trump the finger and told us, including Bob fucking Woodward. Because how the fuck do we trust anything now? Most of us didn't trust Trump, but we thought we could look at others, look at the CDC or Anthony Fauci and find the truth. But they all decided to stay silent, out of either blind or craven loyalty to Trump or the misguided hope they could mitigate the damage by staying quiet, the pathetic error that so many tainted public servants have made.

And now we're supposed to listen when this lying son of a bitch whose face looks like a one-nut pig scrotum and who speaks in barks like a brain-damaged beagle bitch tells us to get an untested vaccine? Fuck off all the way to Moscow.

This is personal, too. I remember wondering all through February and into March whether or not I should wear a mask. I was reading articles about whether or not masks are effective, with many telling us not to worry about it, that the slim supply of masks had to go to health care workers. It gnawed at me until I finally decided, "Fuck it, I'm wearing one" about a week before the CDC changed course and said we should. The thing is that by that point I already had gotten COVID. I didn't get sick until a few days after I started mask-wearing, which means I was doing my part then.

As I've said before, I had very mild symptoms, just a low-grade fever, some fatigue, and a bit of a cough. Sure, it could have been far worse, and I'm pissed at Trump about getting sick. But most of the time, you have the goddamn virus before your symptoms show up. I should have been wearing a mask all along. I don't fucking know who I might have spread it to. And that bullshit weighs on me, and that's on Trump and everyone who stayed quiet.

We knew Trump was busily corrupting every part of the government he could get his shit-stained fingers on. We knew that he was too fucking lazy to really take the action that he needed to take, as simple as that may have been. We knew that we needed to amp up production of masks and gloves and fucking tests. We knew that it was goddamn weird that it didn't happen. We knew that the only thing that matters to Trump is re-election, something that Fauci is quoted as saying in Woodward's book. Fuck, we knew that Trump was actually, actively evil and not just stupidly so. The cockscab wants violence in the streets (which is something that makes his claim of trying to prevent panic utterly laughable).

I'm not really shocked by what we've learned. I'm frankly only shocked that Trump went on the record with it. Which means that he thinks he was right to lie to Americans. He said that today, like he's some fuckin' hero for shutting down the information we needed to save our fucking lives. And by so willingly talking to Woodward, it also means that, even though he should be forced out of office and arrested, Trump believes he will suffer no consequences for his evil. And every single time, that has been proven correct. Even now, when he's killed people in the middle of every avenue, the resident as our mass murderer. And that, dear Americans, is something we haven't seen in a long damn time.

Sometimes it feels like the sails on our skiffs are broken, and so we are just drifting on the shit sea, buffeted by the waves, wondering if we'll float to land before we die of exposure.

Voting Twice, Rigged Elections And Donald Trump The Cheater

I will NEVER take a vaccine from Putin.

I certainly don't trust it. Do you?

The Trump 2020 Campaign App Is Stealing User's Data

In a completely not-shocking turn of events, the Trump 2020 Campaign app has been found to be sucking up all the data that it can access from the people who have downloaded it, including their contacts, location data, and even their bluetooth connections. 

The Biden is also taking data from users, but nowhere close to the amount that the Trump team is taking, according to researchers. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this. 

Supreme Court denies Texas Democrats' request for mail-in ballots

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Friday that Texas need not treat all voters the same when deciding whether to allow mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.

The court refused to block a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which had ruled that all voters do not have to be allowed to vote by mail. Texas gives that option only to voters age 65 and older.

The state's Democratic Party challenged that policy, warning that younger voters would "be forced to either risk contracting COVID-19 during in-person voting or relinquish their right to vote at all."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/26/mail-voting-supreme-court-lets-texas-deny-ballots-most-voters/3244744001/ 

Trump Fights Reality As 2nd Wave Of Coronavirus Hits America

Donald Trump is trying to deny the very reality all around him at the moment because that reality isn't very good for his poll numbers. And if things get worse (and they will) those poll numbers are going to tank even further. 

New numbers are showing that the 2nd wave of the Coronavirus is currently upon us, and the resident is acting like this isn't even happening. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-10/second-u-s-virus-wave-emerges-after-state-reopenings 

Georgia Governor Lifts Some Shelter In Place Restrictions

Russia Backs Russian Spy Traitor Donald Trump's Re-election, And He Fears Democrats Will Exploit Its Support

A classified briefing to lawmakers angered the resident, who complained that Democrats would “weaponize” the disclosure.

American intelligence agencies concluded that Russia, on the orders of President Vladimir V. Putin, interfered in the 2016 presidential election.Credit...Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Adam Goldman, Julian E. Barnes, Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Fandos

• Feb. 20, 2020 Updated 7:01 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get resident Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.

The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, Mr. Trump berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump cited the presence in the briefing of Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who led the impeachment proceedings against him, as a particular irritant.

During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that he has been tough on Russia and strengthened European security. Some intelligence officials viewed the briefing as a tactical error, saying that had the official who delivered the conclusion spoken less pointedly or left it out, they would have avoided angering the Republicans.

That intelligence official, Shelby Pierson, is an aide to Mr. Maguire who has a reputation of delivering intelligence in somewhat blunt terms. The resident announced on Wednesday that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and long an aggressively vocal Trump supporter.

Though some current and former officials speculated that the briefing may have played a role in the removal of Mr. Maguire, who had told people in recent days that he believed he would remain in the job, two administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell had been in discussions with the administration about taking on new roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a kinship with Mr. Maguire.

Spokeswomen for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and its election security office declined to comment. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A Democratic House intelligence committee official called the Feb. 13 briefing an important update about “the integrity of our upcoming elections” and said that members of both parties attended, including Representative Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the committee.

Image

Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, is planning to leave government, according to an American official.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Mr. Trump has long accused the intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s 2016 interference as the work of a “deep-state” conspiracy intent on undermining the validity of his election. Intelligence officials feel burned by their experience after the last election, where their work became subject of intense political debate and is now a focus of a Justice Department investigation.

Part of the resident’s anger over the intelligence briefing stemmed from the administration’s reluctance to provide sensitive information to Mr. Schiff. He has been a leading critic of Mr. Trump since 2016, doggedly investigating Russian election interference and later leading the impeachment inquiry into the resident’s dealings with Ukraine.

After asking about the briefing that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other agencies gave to the House, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Schiff would “weaponize” the intelligence about Russia’s support for him, according to a person familiar with the briefing. And he was angry that no one had told him sooner about the briefing, the person said.

Mr. Trump has fixated on Mr. Schiff since the impeachment saga began, pummeling him publicly with insults and unfounded accusations of corruption. At one point in October, Mr. Trump refused to invite lawmakers from the congressional intelligence committees to a White House briefing on Syria because he did not want Mr. Schiff there, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Trump did not erupt at Mr. Maguire, and instead just asked pointed questions, according to the person. But the message was unmistakable: He was displeased by what took place.

Ms. Pierson, officials said, was delivering the conclusion of multiple intelligence agencies, not her own opinion. The Washington Post first reported the Oval Office confrontation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Maguire.

The intelligence community issued an assessment in early 2017 that President Vladimir V. Putin personally ordered an influence campaign in the previous year’s election and developed “a clear preference for resident-elect Trump.” But Republicans have long argued that Moscow’s campaign was designed to sow chaos, not aid Mr. Trump specifically.

And some Republicans have accused the intelligence agencies of opposing Mr. Trump, but intelligence officials reject those allegations. They fiercely guard their work as nonpartisan, saying it is the only way to ensure its validity.

At the House briefing, Representative Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican who has been considered for the director’s post, was among the Republicans who challenged the conclusion about Russia’s support for the resident. Mr. Stewart insisted that Mr. Trump has aggressively confronted Moscow, providing anti-tank weapons to Ukraine for its war against Russian-backed separatists and strengthening the NATO alliance with new resources, according to two people briefed on the meeting.

Mr. Stewart declined to discuss the briefing but said that Moscow had no reason to support Mr. Trump. He pointed to the resident’s work to confront Iran, a Russian ally, and encourage European energy independence from Moscow. “I’d challenge anyone to give me a real-world argument where Putin would rather have resident Trump and not Bernie Sanders,” the nominal Democratic primary front-runner, Mr. Stewart said in an interview.

Mr. Trump believes that Russian efforts to get him elected in 2016 have cast doubts about the legitimacy of his campaign victory. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Under Mr. Putin, Russian intelligence has long sought broadly to sow chaos among adversaries around the world. The United States and key allies on Thursday accused Russian military intelligence, the group responsible for much of the 2016 election interference in the United States, of a cyber-attack on neighboring Georgia that took out websites and television broadcasts.

Though intelligence officials have previously informed lawmakers that Russia’s interference campaign was ongoing, last week’s briefing did contain what appeared to be new information, including that Russia intends to interfere with the ongoing Democratic primaries as well as the general election.

The Russians have been preparing — and experimenting — for the 2020 election, undeterred by American efforts to thwart them but aware that they needed a new playbook of as yet undetectable 

methods.

They have made more creative use of Facebook and other social media. Rather than impersonating Americans as they did in 2016, Russian operatives are working to get Americans to repeat disinformation to get around social media companies’ rules that prohibit “inauthentic speech.”

And they are working from servers located in the United States, rather than abroad, knowing that American intelligence agencies are prohibited from operating inside the country. (The F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security can, with aid from the intelligence agencies.)

Russian hackers have also infiltrated Iran’s cyber-warfare unit, perhaps with the intent of launching attacks that would look like they were coming from Tehran, the National Security Agency has warned.

Some officials believe that foreign powers, possibly including Russia, could use ransomware attacks, like those that have debilitated some local governments, to damage or interfere with voting systems or registration databases.

Still, much of the Russian aim is similar to its 2016 interference, officials said: Search for issues that stir controversy in the United States and use various methods to stoke division.

One of Moscow’s main goals is undermining confidence in American election systems, intelligence officials have told lawmakers, seeking to sow doubts over close elections and recounts. Confronting those Russian efforts is difficult, officials have said, because they want to maintain American confidence in voting systems.

Both Republicans and Democrats asked the intelligence agencies to hand over the underlying material that prompted their conclusion that Russia again is favoring Mr. Trump’s election.

How soon the House committee might get that information is not clear. Since the impeachment inquiry, tensions have risen between the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the committee. As officials navigate the disputes, the intelligence agencies have slowed the amount of material they provide to the House, officials said. The agencies are required by law to regularly brief Congress on threats.

While Republicans have long been critical of the Obama administration for not doing enough to track and deter Russian interference in 2016, current and former intelligence officials said the party is at risk of making a similar mistake now. Mr. Trump has been reluctant to even hear about election interference, and Republicans dislike discussing it publicly.

The aftermath of last week’s briefing prompted some intelligence officials to voice concerns that the White House will dismantle a key election security effort by Dan Coats, the former director of national intelligence: the establishment of an election interference czar. Ms. Pierson has held the post since last summer.

And some current and former intelligence officials expressed fears that Mr. Grenell may have been put in place explicitly to slow the pace of information on election interference to Congress. The revelations about Mr. Trump’s confrontation with Mr. Maguire raised new concerns about Mr. Grenell’s appointment, said the Democratic House committee official, who added that the upcoming election could be more vulnerable to foreign interference.

Mr. Trump, former officials have said, is typically uninterested in election interference briefings, and Mr. Grenell might see it as unwise to emphasize such intelligence with the resident.

“The biggest concern I would have is if the intelligence community was not forthcoming and not providing the analysis in the run-up to the next election,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former intelligence official now with the Center for New American Security. “It is really concerning that this is happening in the run-up to an election.”

Mr. Grenell’s unbridled loyalty is clearly important to Mr. Trump but may not be ideally suited for an intelligence chief making difficult decisions about what to brief to the resident and Congress, Ms. Kendall-Taylor said.

“Trump is trying to whitewash or rewrite the narrative about Russia’s involvement in the election,” she said. “Grenell’s appointment suggests he is really serious about that.”

The acting deputy to Mr. Maguire, Andrew P. Hallman, will step down on Friday, officials said, paving the way for Mr. Grenell to put in place his own management team. Mr. Hallman was the intelligence office’s principal executive, but since the resignation in August of the previous deputy, Sue Gordon, he has been performing the duties of that post.

Mr. Maguire is planning to leave government, according to an American official.

Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

Adam Goldman reports on the F.B.I. from Washington and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. @adamgoldmanNYT

Julian E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote about security matters for The Wall Street Journal. @julianbarnes • Facebook

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015 as a campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on resident Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. @maggieNYT

Nicholas Fandos is a national reporter based in the Washington bureau. He has covered Congress since 2017 and is part of a team of reporters who have chronicled investigations by the Justice Department and Congress into residentt Trump and his administration. @npfandos

TRUMP SCAM UNCOVERED! He's Charging THOUSANDS For Single Rooms In Exchange For White House Access!!

Jesse Dollemore discusses a recent report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington which uncovered the TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS which Donald Trump is personally raking in from political groups who are staying at Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C., who in turn get White House access to him and his Cabinet!

Trump says he would listen if foreigners offered dirt on opponents - Trump Admits He's A Criminal

In a stunning admission, the resident told ABC News that he has no problem accepting dirt on a political opponent from a foreign power. In fact, Trump denied that foreign help should even be considered election interference.

During an interview with George Stephanopoulos for ABC News, Donald Trump said that he would take information from a foreign country if he felt that it could help his campaign and that no one in their right minds would contact the FBI. He contradicted himself multiple times in the short interview, but the bottom line is that he’s now willing to admit that he’d absolutely accept illegal foreign help for his campaigns. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.



Donald Trump is a menace and it seems Republicans don't care and Democrats lack the fortitude to stop him. He told George Stephanopoulos that, not only is the FBI Director WRONG, but that if he's approached by a foreign operative with dirt on an opponent, he would take the meeting and the information they have to offer!







resident Donald Trump may not alert the FBI if foreign governments offered damaging information against his 2020 rivals during the upcoming presidential race, he said, despite the deluge of investigations stemming from his campaign's interactions with Russians during the 2016 campaign.

Asked by ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos in the Oval Office on Wednesday whether his campaign would accept such information from foreigners - such as China or Russia - or hand it over the FBI, Trump said, "I think maybe you do both."

Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian

 Cast: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian



https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/exclusive-trump-says-he-would-listen-if-foreigners-offered-dirt-on-opponents/ar-AACMWHP

Huckabee Sanders Says God Wanted Trump To Be President

During an interview with CBN, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that God actually chose Trump to be resident and that the Almighty WANTED Trump to be resident of the United States.

This woman isn’t playing with a full deck, and her comments prove that. But there’s a lot of implications from her comment that she likely didn’t realize, and Farron Cousins explains those.

Watch Lindsey Graham Own Himself While Pandering To Trump

By KelleyKramer

This includes a nice little montage of Huckleberry being the most epic hypocrite.....

Senator Lindsey Graham said there would be “holy hell to pay” if Jeff Sessions was fired. Ari Melber breaks down how Graham has reversed so many of his positions on Trump that it has descended into a “hollowing out” of Republican leadership.

Fox News STUNS Lindsey Graham By Reminding Him He Defended Jeff Sessions

Lindsey Graham was left confused and startled after a recent appearance on Fox News where they reminded him that he had once said that firing Jeff Sessions would mark the beginning of the end of the Trump administration. 

Obviously he doesn’t feel this way anymore, but his stupid face when they showed him the clip apparently reminded him that everything online lives forever. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

 

Fraud Of Donald Trump's Self-Made Persona Exposed In Father's Financials

Trump Engaged In Suspect Tax Schemes As He Reaped Riches From His Father

A New Right Wing Veterans Donation Scam

By MineralMan

I got a couple of robo calls yesterday, and tracked them back, thanks to their lame phone number spoofing. The organization that called me is the American Veterans Honor Fund. It's new, and based in Virginia. They're just getting started in scamming people out of their hard-earned money.

Here's what they're up to: The organization claims to be funding veterans who are candidates for public office. Their website offers little information, but has a two-post blog on it. One of those candidates, who may well be behind the scam, is a right-wing militia leader from Ohio. He was thrown out of the only office he has held, but he's back in the race again. To his credit, he admits that he has never served in any branch of the military of the United States, after naming all of his medals and honors from his militia group.

Here's their website:

https://www.americanveteranshonorfund.com/

They don't say their name when they call. My guy said, "Hi! I'm Mark with the veterans." I hung up and back called him and got the organizations name and then Googled it.

Don't be taken in. It's a scam.

As a veteran, I hate this shit! 

Trump handed off the VA to three Mar-a-Lago fat cats who have been running it in secret

By Mark Sumner  

Daily Kos Staff

As it turns out, there are secret masters of the government, pulling the strings without the benefit of an election, nomination, or appointment. As a Propublica investigation has discovered, Donald Trump handed off control of the Department of Veterans Affairs to three members of his Mar-a-Lago golf resort. These three have been issuing orders to the people who are supposed to be running the department forming a “previously unknown triumvirate that hovered over public servants without any transparency, accountability or oversight.”

Known within the VA as “the Mar-a-Lago Crowd,” the three were Marvel Entertainment chair Ike Perlmutter, New York attorney Marc Sherman, and Bruce Moskowitz a “concierge” doctor who runs a service catering to the Palm Beach elite.

What reporter Isaac Arnsdorf discovered, through interviews and thousands of documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, is that these three have been ordering members of the VA around for over a year. At the beginning of the year, Trump’s appointment of Ronny Jackson, the doctor who had proclaimed that Trump has “great genes,” as the VA secretary ran into issues when reports of both abuse and incompetence surfaced around Jackson. After leaving the position vacant for months, Trump finally nominated acting director Robert Wilkie in May. But as it turns out, little of that maneuvering matters. Because when Trump wants to talk to the man in charge, he calls Perlmutter.

The documents turned up by Pro Publica don’t just show Perlmutter issuing orders to VA, but reviewing policy, and making personnel selections. VA officials, at taxpayer expense, traveled to Mar-a-Lago to “consult” with Perlmutter and get his approval.

“Everyone has to go down and kiss the ring,” a former administration official said.

If the idea that the chairman of Marvel Entertainment is running the VA makes it sound that there at least might be an injection of creativity into the agency, that’s not this guy. Perlmutter mounted a series of hostile takeovers—Revco, Coleco, Remington—and gained control of Marvel during a series of buyouts and bankruptcies. He was paid $800 million by Disney when that company bought out Marvel, mostly to go away. The company was specifically split in half so that Perlmutter had nothing to do with the films—because he’s famously abusive and bigoted.

Perlmutter also has a history of behavior that’s distinctly odd. That includes turning a fight with a neighbor over the condition of a private tennis court—surely one of those issues that affects all Americans—into a hate mail campaign in which Perlmutter accused the neighbor of, among other things “illegally harvesting his DNA.” As the Hollywood Reporter explains, Perlmutter sent out unsigned mailings around the exclusive community attacking his neighbor, then turned his attention to the man’s workplace, where he accused the neighbor of being a Nazi and covering up sexual assault. And then … Perlmutter really did show some creativity.

One series of mailings allegedly went out to more than a thousand inmates in prisons across Florida and Ontario, Canada, in [neighbor Harold] Peerenboom’s name, with provoking statements like, "While your [sic] in jail, I am writing to your mom, telling her exactly what kind of scumbag you are."

The guy who tried to get his neighbor killed by sending provocative notes to over 1,000 inmates … that’s the guy Trump has secretly put in charge of the VA.

It was Perlmutter who put together the “troika” now running the VA. Of the other two, at least Moskowitz is a doctor, and while his specialty of finding pricey experts to pay house calls on nervous Palm Beach millionaires may be miles away from providing service for millions of veterans, at least it’s health care adjacent. Sherman is a lawyer who specializes in white collar crime. As in, defending those accused of it. That’s likely endeared him to both Perlmutter and Trump, but none of his background indicates any knowledge of health care, veterans, or running a large organization.

The troika has been in place from the beginning of Trump’s time in office. With former VA chief David Shulkin forced to fly down to Mar-a-Lago for his ring-kissing in February of 2017.

Moscowitz then nicely informed Shulkin that he didn’t have to make a monthly appearance before the three actual heads of his agency. Instead, they would “set up phone conference calls at a convenient time.”

All those stories about how Shulkin was resisting implementing Trump’s policies, really boil down to his growing reluctance to take orders from the secret masters of his agency, who were ruling on the lives of wounded and ailing veterans between tee times. And they didn’t hesitate to bypass Shulkin.

The Mar-a-Lago Crowd bombarded VA officials with demands, many of them inapt or unhelpful. On phone calls with VA officials, Perlmutter would bark at them to move faster, having no patience for bureaucratic explanations about why something has to be done a certain way or take a certain amount of time, former officials said.

Much of what the troika kicked off seemed to be generated by hearsay, antecedents picked up from TV, and cases mentioned by friends. That included one example Perlmutter was particularly keen on that originated with ... the woman in charge of the disputed tennis court.

At the moment, he doesn’t appear to have written to thousands of inmates attempting to get them to murder David Shulkin. But at least that was some out of the box thinking. If sanity is a box.

https://www.propublica.org/article/ike-perlmutter-bruce-moskowitz-marc-sherman-shadow-rulers-of-the-va

When Did You Figure It Out?

By RfrancisR

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In a tweet, ABC News called Trump’s child concentration camps “shelters.”

 

When did you first realize that the Republican Party jumped the shark and began falling into a deep dark abyss of hostility to facts, reason, and empathy?

Was it when Nixon sent the National Guard to Kent State which resulted in that horrific massacre of anti-war protesters?  Maybe for some it was Nixon and Watergate?  Well, I get it. It would be fairly understandable to believe those were  just aberrations.

But why wasn’t it enough to come to that understanding when  Reagan decided to launch his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi the city where some of the most brutal civil rights killings took place, but not to memorialize the dead and and send a warning to the future, but to embrace concepts like “reverse racism,” which was clearly a dog whistle to the “I will tell you who the REAL racists are”?

OK, maybe coincidence? What about his nomination of a deeply racist man in Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship? Or the nomination of an equally racist man in Judge Bork to the Supreme Court who also called the Ninth amendment to the constitution an “irrelevant inkblot.”

No?

What about Reagan’s press secretary cracking jokes about gay men dying of AIDS during an official White House press conference?

What about Reagan’s cynical invention of the racist “welfare queen” stereotype of poor black women?

What about what remains one of the most hateful political conventions in history in the 1992 Republican Convention?

No? Just a few bad apples?

What about Bob Dole’s return of donations to the Log Cabin Republicans as to avoid offending his right wing base because he did not want to be seen as affiliating himself with LGBT who agreed with the Republican Party’s platform on all but one measure?

What about the subliminal confession of an absence of compassion for the suffering of others among the Republican faithful when George W Bush felt a need to coin the term “compassionate conservatism.”

No? What about when the Republican majority on Supreme Court decided to take the unprecedented step of reviewing state election law to shutdown attempts to have a proper recount in Florida?

No? Not then either?

What about when the Bush administration fabricated an excuse to go into a preemptive war in Iraq? What about Colin Powell’s fake vial of anthrax at the UN? What about Condi Rice’s mushroom cloud scare tactics to grow support for that illegal war? And it was an illegal war.

What about Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo? Water boarding? “Enhanced interrogation? No?

What about the cult of personality surrounding Sarah Palin who ran a smear campaign against Obama so awful that her own running mate had to refute her claims?

What about the threat of martial law in the USA if Congress did not give $800 billion to the big banks?

What about lies about “death panels?” What about “do not ask what good you could do?”

What about tea party activists waving guns at protests outside of events featuring Obama?

When did you figure it out? Was it when Republicans booed Rick Perry from uttering that very politically incorrect term “compassion” at a Republican debate? Did you figure it out then? Did you figure it out when mass shooting after mass shooting Republicans refused to act to protect the citizenry for the sake of the gun industry that lined their pockets?

What about the enthusiasm for Trump’s overt racism, xenophobia, islamaphobia?

If you just figured out the Republican Party is deep into an abyss of darkness, lies, mendacity, racism, and bigotry when they got to ripping babies from their mother’s arms, and refusing to give those children back to the mothers after immigration proceedings were over, you figured it out too late.

10 ways Donald Trump has dishonored American veterans

By Sarah K. Burris

Memorial Day was the holiday meant to honor fallen soldiers, but somewhere along the line it has become a day that also honors all veterans. Regardless of whether the holiday is Memorial Day or Armistice Day, resident Donald Trump is likely to mark the day claiming that he honors veterans who fought for America. It’s an interesting tactic given his history disparaging veterans, attacking Gold Star families, mocking prisoners of war, getting into a public battle with the family of a soldier that had just been killed.

Then there are the broken promises for the Veterans Administration. That alone could make for an even longer list.

However, as the resident celebrates fallen soldiers Monday, here are 10 of the times he did the opposite:

1. The John McCain attacks
“He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured, OK?” Trump said at a 2016 campaign event.



A few days later Trump even doubled down on his remarks.

2. Trump goes after the Khan family for speaking out in support of Hillary Clinton at the Democratic convention.
“Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing — and no one,” Khizr Khan said.

In the days that followed the statement, Trump went into full attack mode. He did everything from claim Khan’s wife wasn’t allowed to speak because she is a Muslim wife. He claimed he made sacrifices because he “created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures.” He even began spreading a conspiracy theory that came from some right-wing fever dream that Khan was secretly a “Muslim Brotherhood agent.”

It’s been almost two years and Trump has never apologized.

3. “My personal Vietnam”
Trump got five draft deferments while Vietnam raged for nearly 20 years. Trump had bone spurs, though. While we’ve heard about his medication list, height, weight and other factors, but the president’s physician, and former nominee to chair the Veterans Administration, never gave a status update on the spurs that kept him out of serving his duty.

He didn’t miss out, however. Trump said that his sex life was like his own personal Vietnam.

“I was dating lots and lots of women,” he said in 2004. “I just had a great time. They were great years, but that was pre-AIDS, and you could do things in those days that today you’re at risk doing. AIDS has changed a lot.”

“It is a dangerous world out there — it’s scary, like Vietnam,” he continued. “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

4. Promise the moon but give them pennies.
Twice, Trump promised that he would be donating to veteran causes. The reality, however, was another story. While campaigning in 2016, Trump indicated that he has sent nearly $6 million to different veterans groups nationwide, but when Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold called every veterans advocacy organizations to uncover who got what and how much, the donation was a little closer to nothing.

Despite making the claim for months, the money miraculously appeared to various organizations in the days that followed Fahrenthold’s report and questions for Trump.

5. The Niger widows.
The families that lost their husbands or sons in the Niger ambush didn’t get a call from the resident for nearly two weeks. When the call finally came it was only after the resident was blasted publicly in the press.

Except, when he called one family, he completely flubbed the call. Instead of taking the high road, Trump moved on to blast the family and a local Congresswoman and friend of the family who mentored the Sgt. La David Johnson.

If that isn’t bad enough, when Trump was blasted for his behavior, he swore that he had done more for Gold Star families than anyone. He even went so far as to claim that former President Barack Obama never called the families. Not only was the claim false, families who had received that heartbreaking call stepped up to call out the lie.

6. The $25,000 promise.
Chris Baldridge’s son was killed in June 2017 by an Afghan police officer. Over the phone, the resident told Army Sgt. Dillon Baldridge’s family how sorry he was. The father lamented how hard the family has struggled financially.

“He said, ‘I’m going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000,’ and I was just floored,” Baldridge told the Washington Post in an interview. “I could not believe he was saying that, and I wish I had it recorded because the man did say this. He said, ‘No other resident has ever done something like this,’ but he said, ‘I’m going to do it.'”

The interview took place five months after the promise. The check hadn’t arrived. After publicly outcry at another Trump lie, the White House told The Post “The check has been sent.” Better late than never.

6. Trump’s lie he fixed VA wait times.
Everything was supposed to change. Finally, the White House would have an advocate for the veterans, Trump claimed in 2016. But, his promises haven’t proved much in terms of action.

One thing Trump said he would change are the wait times at the VA. During at least two events in 2017, Trump swore he’d fixed it.

“I used to go around and talk about the veterans and they’d stand on line for nine days, seven days, four days… 15 days. People that could have been given a prescription and been better right away end up dying waiting on line,” he said during a July speech. “That’s not happening anymore.”

It was.

“Now [veterans] go right outside, they go to a doctor in the area, we pay the bill, and it’s the least expensive thing we can do and we save everybody’s life and everybody’s happy,” the resident claimed.

Except, they still wait. The Government Accountability Office quotes says that they still wait on average 81 days.

7. The backlog in veteran disability claims
Trump signed the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017 in August, saying that they were working to streamline disability compensation appeal claims for veterans.

It’s great for new vets applying for disability. For those who were stuck in the system, the wait continues as the legislation did nothing to reduce or address the current backlog or address appeals after denials. There are over 470,000 veterans stuck in the backlog. Former VA Secretary David Shulkin said that it would take $800 million and 10 years to clear the backlog of appeals.

They wait still.

8. VA’s Veterans Choice Program emergency funding ran out before it was supposed to.
Someone didn’t do their math correctly. When Congress passed and Trump signed the $2.1 billion in emergency funding for the VA’s Veterans Choice Program, it was supposed to keep the program afloat until February 2018. It ran out two months early.

9. Trump’s hiring freeze
Like many Republicans, Trump wanted to stop government from hiring new people, so he placed a freeze on any agencies bringing in new staff. For veterans looking for jobs at the Pentagon, in the social services or anywhere in government, they were locked out. While many might think it’s a small number, in 2015 The Hill reported that one-third of those applying for federal government jobs were veterans.

For understaffed agencies like the VA, the hiring freeze only made things worse.

10. Trump’s budget hurts veterans.
The Trump White House lacks a basic understanding for the daily life of those coming home from war and being discharged face. When Republicans sought to cut food stamps, they seemed to forget 1.5 million veterans use food stamps. Data on active-duty soldiers isn’t available because the Pentagon doesn’t share it. In 2013, however, 23,000 active-duty troops use food stamps.

Trump’s budget would gut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), by $17 billion for the 2019 budget.

“Veteran-specific benefits and services fall short of meeting the needs of veterans and their families, many of whom struggle to meet basic needs even with Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) supports,” the Center for American progress reported in 2017. “More than 3.9 million veterans live paycheck to paycheck—meaning their family incomes are less than twice the federal poverty level, or less than $50,000 for a family of four.”

So, if the resident touts his “many successes” that show how he has “done more for veterans than any president in the history of the world,” Americans can remind him what he has really done.

Nothing Is True

Trump authorizes release of controversial Republican memo

Donald Trump has authorized the release of a controversial Republican memo, and has sent word to the House Intelligence Committee the document may be made public, a White House official said.

www.cnn.com/2018/02/02/politics/republican-intelligence-memo/index.html

Why $1,000 One Time Bonuses Are Part Of The Tax Scam

By louis c

Let me give you a little background of what I've done for the past 22 years as work. I represent a union in the Greater Boston area and part of my responsibilities is to negotiate contracts with the employer on behalf of the union employees. The people I represent are mostly in the maintenance departments of schools, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, museums and sports' facilities.

The pay ranges from a low of about $26 per hour for unlicensed employees, to a high of $40 an hour for licensed personnel (electricians, plumbers, HVAC). So. let's just put the average at about $33 an hour for the sake of this argument.

A $1,000 bonus is not a pay raise. It represents less than fifty cents ($.50) an hour for the year. 40 hours a week x 52 weeks = 2080 x 50 cents is $1,040.

The one time bonus, instead of a 50 cent raise means the bonus is only for one year. A fifty cent raise is every year, as your salary has increased. On top of that, overtime is now calculated at the higher rate of pay, compounding the increase when you work the overtime.

I have generally been getting 2 and a half to 3 percent raises, per year, for 3 year contracts. This means we are getting 75 cents to a dollar increase each year, for each hour worked.

If I had to go into a ratification meeting on a three year contract with a $1,000 bonus and no raises for 3 years, they'd kill me, let alone not ratify the Tentative Agreement (TA).

When we enter the negotiations, we are often offered a bonus from the other side, for opener. A bonus doesn't increase the salary and dies after it is paid, as a salary increase lives on to the employee (and all the employees to follow) forever.

These well publicized one time bonuses should be seen for exactly what they are, part of the overall scam being perpetrated on the middle class workers of this country.