Just Saying Who's Trumping der Fuhrer?

[Richard Stanley]

Is it possible that we're getting into arguing two sides of a false dialectic, when really we should be resuming our above-it-all, evenhanded perspective?

Yes. This stems from that I am constantly focussing on Trump here, which leaves the incorrect impression that I'm supporting such as Hillary and the DNC. If we could lock him (and her) up, we'd still have to deal with all the swamp, the one that Trump said he was going to clean up. And then there is the Moscow swamp. There are no good guys in this.

The assumption here is that Texans and Californians are malleable, sheep-like creatures who are unable to decide on their own whether they would like to support secession movements.

No, it means that the Russians want to act as agents provocateur anywhere they think they can gain advantage. In the case of the Texas, California, and Catalonian movements, these were pre-existing entities which could be leveraged.

Or is the USG going to have to resort to increasingly repressive measures to keep Texans in line?

This is what my Apocalypse How? millennial analysis suggests to me will eventually happen. Jewish War 2.0, or is that 3.0?

 

[Jerry Russell]

In this NY Times interview with Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I was especially interested in the part where he explicitly denied that it's all some sort of theatrical act.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/08/us/politics/trump-corker.html

WASHINGTON — Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged in an interview on Sunday that President Trump was treating his office like “a reality show,” with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”

[....]

It began on Sunday morning when Mr. Trump, posting on Twitter, accused Mr. Corker of deciding not to run for re-election because he “didn’t have the guts.” Mr. Corker shot back in his own tweet: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

[....]

The senator, who is close to Mr. Tillerson, invoked comments that the president made on Twitter last weekend in which he appeared to undercut Mr. Tillerson’s negotiations with North Korea.

“A lot of people think that there is some kind of ‘good cop, bad cop’ act underway, but that’s just not true,” Mr. Corker said.

Without offering specifics, he said Mr. Trump had repeatedly undermined diplomacy with his Twitter fingers. “I know he has hurt, in several instances, he’s hurt us as it relates to negotiations that were underway by tweeting things out,” Mr. Corker said.​

 

[Jerry Russell]

About that path to World War III, the World Socialist Web Site is on top of it. Is anybody else worried? Not Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com, he thinks it's all bluster. Not Codepink, the Korean situation isn't even on their list of issues & campaigns. Joe and I have talked about this many times on the podcast, and we've said we can't believe it either.

But, this is getting to sound more and more like Trump means business. And even if he doesn't, he's painted the North Koreans into an impossible corner.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/10/09/pers-o09.html

Donald Trump continued his campaign of incendiary statements over the weekend, threatening to launch a war with North Korea that could unleash a nuclear catastrophe.

On Saturday afternoon, the US president tweeted that past administrations “have been talking to North Korea for 25 years.” This “hasn’t worked,” he wrote, adding: “Sorry, but only one thing will work!” Asked later to elaborate on what he meant, Trump replied, “You’ll figure that out pretty soon.”

These threats came three weeks after Trump’s tirade at the United Nations General Assembly September 19, when he declared that the US was “ready, willing, and able” to “totally destroy” North Korea, a country of 25 million people. Four days later, Trump threatened to assassinate the North Korean leader. If the North Korean foreign minister’s speech at the UN “echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man [Kim Jong-Un],” Trump wrote, “they won’t be around much longer!”

On Thursday, Trump organized a White House dinner with US military leaders, which had all the hallmarks of a meeting of a war cabinet. During a photo op before the dinner, Trump, surrounded by generals in military uniform, likened the moment to “the calm before the storm.” Asked what storm he was talking about, Trump would only say, “You’ll find out soon.”

To the extent that Trump’s words are interpreted as a genuine expression of the policy and plans of the United States government, the inescapable conclusion is that the world stands on the brink of the most devastating military conflict since the outbreak of World War II. Were language and reality in correct political alignment, the present situation would be described officially as an “Imminent danger of war.”

Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, embroiled in a political conflict with Trump, warned that the president’s reckless threats were leading the United States “on the path to World War III.” But despite Corker’s statement on Sunday, there is, within the ruling elite and its media, a staggering disconnect between consciousness and reality. The public declarations emanating from the White House are being reported by the media as if they will have no consequences. The thinking seems to be that Trump doesn’t mean what he says. The consequences of a war would prove to be so catastrophic that Trump is simply bluffing.

But what if he isn’t? What if the North Korean government takes the threats of the American president, as it must, seriously? With Trump having publicly declared that he will destroy North Korea and that the doomsday hour is fast approaching, how will the Pyongyang government interpret American military actions near the borders of its country? With only minutes to make a decision, will the regime view the approach of a US bomber toward North Korean airspace as the beginning of a full-scale attack? Will it conclude that it has no choice but to assume the worst and initiate a military strike against South Korea? Will it fire missiles, as it has threatened, in the direction of Japan, Guam, Australia, or even the United States?

From a purely legal standpoint, North Korea can claim, in light of Trump’s threats, that such action on its part would be an act of self-defense, a legitimate response to an imminent military threat.

[.....]

A war with Korea could break out at any time. This is the reality of the situation. Rather than speculating idly over whether Trump is merely bluffing, the critical task is the building of a powerful movement, based on the working class, against the drive to war. The very fact that the American president smirks and laughs as he threatens millions with annihilation is itself sufficient proof that the US political system is terminally sick and capable of any crime.​

 

[Jerry Russell]

Chris Hedges is complaining at Truthdig that the ruling elites have lost all moral and intellectual credibility, and are "smearing critics as traitors who are in the service of a hostile foreign power."

He goes on to explain that RT is one of the few outlets remaining, where dissident voices can get an audience, let alone get paid. He says his show on RT amplifies the voices of those dissidents, who otherwise would be silenced.

Unfortunately, working for RT does put one in the position of being the employee of a foreign power, hostile or not. Hedges isn't saying how this effects his journalistic independence, but I don't see how he can argue that there's no influence whatsoever.

Hedges says that much of Boris Yeltsin's 1996 presidential campaign fund of $2.5 Billion came indirectly from the US government. This gives a new meaning to the phrase 'asymmetrical warfare', if Russia can get similar results by spending a few dollars for Chris Hedges' lunch money; plus a few targeted Facebook ads.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-silencing-of-dissent/

 

[Richard Stanley]

In this NY Times interview with Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I was especially interested in the part where he explicitly denied that it's all some sort of theatrical act.

Last night the Rachel Maddow Show showed several of the Russian purchased Facebook ads that independant investigators have obtained. The amazing thing is just how crude they are, with much 'Renglish', i.e. Russian-English. Maybe the calculation is that the target demographic will not notice the Renglish. And in any case, the campaign covers a broader swath than the campaigns themselves, but also pretend to represent BLM, agitating about Ferguson and Baltimore, seccession movements, even including two blacks (really from Nigeria) for Trump. The common thread is in sowing division, no matter who is ultimately responsible.

At about 8 minutes into the following video are some of the ads:

 

[Richard Stanley]

Referring to my prior post about the TV show 30 Rock, I discovered another interesting nugget, perhaps a coincidence?

In Season 2's episode, Ludachristmas, Jack Donaghy shows Liz Lemon a news clip of Hurricane Zapato bearing down on southern Florida. The town of Jupiter is highlighted with a big red circle.

Jack is delighted when he thinks his mother, Colleen, is unable to visit him for the holidays due to her flight from Florida being grounded by Hurricane Zapato. ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludachristmas​

The Spanish word 'zapato' merely means 'shoe', but it is unusual for the storm naming system to reach into the 'Z' names. And this would be an odd name in any case. However, the surname Zapata was used by Bush 41 for his global oil exploration company. According to legend, the name was humorously selected because it was unclear to them whether Emiliano Zapata was a (Mexican) patriot or merely a bandido.

Jupiter, Florida is also home to another Trump golf course, only a few miles from Mar-a-Lago. Jupiter was where Bush 43 was ensconsced in a classroom of black schoolchildren reading them a story about a goat on 9/11.

Season 2 is where the character Tracy Jordan does a political ad espousing a 200 foot high wall with Mexico, expresses the theme of making America great again, and tells his fellow blacks not to vote at all. (He can not be seen asking them to vote for a Republican, or risk losing his credibility.)

It is in this season that Jack Donaghy takes an active interest in Republican politics, while ironically falling in love with a radical Democratic congresswoman. The congresswomen is also legally representing children from a town where GE's major stakeholder, the Sheinhardt Wig Company, has polluted the water and the children are now ORANGE.

Orange, fake hair, fake tan?

 

[Richard Stanley]

Boris Yeltsin's 1996 presidential campaign fund of $2.5 Billion came indirectly from the US government.

That would be record breaking even for the USA.

About that path to World War III, the World Socialist Web Site is on top of it. Is anybody else worried? Not Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com, he thinks it's all bluster. Not Codepink, the Korean situation isn't even on their list of issues & campaigns. Joe and I have talked about this many times on the podcast, and we've said we can't believe it either.

But, this is getting to sound more and more like Trump means business. And even if he doesn't, he's painted the North Koreans into an impossible corner.

Trump is also being painted as coming more and more unhinged. It's being stated that most all Republican Senators, at least, and even WH staffers think that he is bonkers, but haven't been willing to comment on the record like Corker did.

If this is an act, then there must be an end game, but we still don't know what this near term end game is exactly.

 

[Jerry Russell]

"Steve Bannon is about to plunge the Republican Party into civil war"

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/145229/steve-bannon-plunge-republican-party-civil-war

Now, the long-heralded Republican civil war may have finally arrived. Bloomberg Politics reported on Monday that white nationalist Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, is planning to back primary challenges to nearly every GOP senator seeking re-election next year: “He’ll support only candidates who agree to two conditions: They will vote against [Mitch] McConnell as majority leader, and they will vote to end senators’ ability to block legislation by filibustering.”

Conspicuously absent from the list of senators in Bannon’s crosshairs is Ted Cruz.​

 

[Richard Stanley]

There is a narrative now being presented that there is a big crack developing within the Trump administration over Trump's seemingly increased, unhinged nature. But, the follow excerpted article about John Kelly appears to diverge from this narrative. To me, it seems more in line with my view that the Georgetown cabal (in the WH) is merely running the Kaos script for our neoSamson, Agent Orange Leaks. With Agent Orange having decertified the Iran treaty, the "f...ing moron" seems to have 'crossed a Rubicon' in my mind, at least. From this point forward, will any other nation be able to trust that an agreement with the USA can be maintained longer than the term of the then current President? Agent Orange has overtly made the USA less reliable than Iran and North Korea, while justifying the latter's paranoia.

Bannon, part of the Georgetown cabal, is operating per the original plan, the WH in-fighting all just part of the magical distraction. In fact, Bannon is literally the de facto leader of the new Republican Party.

Ironically, while promising to "drain the swamp", Trump's administration is proving to be insanely and brazenly corrupt. As one talking head stated, "you have to try to be this bad." Indeed. Combined with the ever growing Russia scandal, and the Puerto Rico shit, and such as the Corker rebellion, his only way forward soon will indeed be war and the implementation of an overt police state.

...
“The good news is, out there we have a great State Department doing the diplomacy thing night and day,” he said. But then he added something striking.

“As Jim Mattis and I have many, many times said when we were in uniform: If we don’t fund the State Department properly, buy us more bullets,” he said. Later, he expanded on that thought. “We don’t like to think of things turning military, but that’s always an option. The great thing about our military is it’s a real deterrent factor around the world.”

That aphorism — spend money on diplomacy or you have to spend money on war — is meant to be cautionary. You don’t want war, of course, which is why you invest time and money on creating diplomatic solutions to problems.

Kelly’s use of it, though, is fraught. The Trump administration isn’t investing resources in the State Department to the extent that past presidents have, both in terms of funding and staffing. And at the same time, Trump is indeed spending more on bullets.

A profile of Tillerson in the New Yorker made this point quite well.

Shortly after arriving at State, “Tillerson told staff members that he intended to cut State’s budget by nearly a third, possibly eliminating two thousand diplomatic jobs and billions of dollars in foreign aid,” the New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins wrote. At the same time, Trump’s budget proposed adding $54 billion to the budget of the Defense Department.

Less diplomacy. More bullets.

Filkins quoted a former Obama administration official who made a comment that mirrored Kelly’s.

“All of our tools right now are military. When all of your tools are military, those are the tools you reach for,” the official said. ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ery-reassuring-adage-about-diplomacy-and-war/​

 

[Richard Stanley]

60 Minutes just aired a show segment on the opioid crisis, one which Trump promised he would take action against during his campaign, but has done nothing, .... except to make a Congressional author of a bill that opened the floodgates of opiates in 2013 his new drug czar (see the last excerpted paragraph below). The dark irony here is that those being killed, including many in the home congressional districts of these two congresspersons that authored the bill, would be more likely to be Trumpistas. This as they were and are more prone to the economic dislocations of the last decades. This number of casualties is far greater than his margin of victory in the 3 critical states that gave him his Electoral College.

Yes, this is how Trump drains the swamp, and Makes America Great Again.

Below from: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-dea-agent-opioid-crisis-fueled-by-drug-industry-and-congress/

In the midst of the worst drug epidemic in American history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's ability to keep addictive opioids off U.S. streets was derailed -- that according to Joe Rannazzisi, one of the most important whistleblowers ever interviewed by 60 Minutes. Rannazzisi ran the DEA's Office of Diversion Control, the division that regulates and investigates the pharmaceutical industry. Now in a joint investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post, Rannazzisi tells the inside story of how, he says, the opioid crisis was allowed to spread -- aided by Congress, lobbyists, and a drug distribution industry that shipped, almost unchecked, hundreds of millions of pills to rogue pharmacies and pain clinics providing the rocket fuel for a crisis that, over the last two decades, has claimed 200,000 lives.

...
In 2013, Joe Rannazzisi and his DEA investigators were trying to crack down on big drug distributors that ship drugs to pharmacies across the country. He accused them of turning a blind eye as millions of prescription pain pills ended up on the black market. Then, a new threat surfaced on Capitol Hill. With the help of members of Congress, the drug industry began to quietly pave the way for legislation that essentially would strip the DEA of its most potent tool in fighting the spread of dangerous narcotics.

JOE RANNAZZISI: If I was gonna write a book about how to harm the United States with pharmaceuticals, the only thing I could think of that would immediately harm is to take the authority away from the investigative agency that is trying to enforce the Controlled Substances Act and the regulations implemented under the act. And that's what this bill did.

The bill, introduced in the House by Pennsylvania Congressman Tom Marino and Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, was promoted as a way to ensure that patients had access to the pain medication they needed.

Jonathan Novak, who worked in the DEA's legal office, says what the bill really did was strip the agency of its ability to immediately freeze suspicious shipments of prescription narcotics to keep drugs off U.S. streets -- what the DEA calls diversion.

...
In the end, the DEA signed off on the final version of the "Marino bill." A senior DEA representative told us the agency fought hard to stop it, but in the face of growing pressure from Congress and industry lobbyists, was forced to accept a deal it did not want. The bill was presented to the Senate in March of 2016.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced the legislation and it passed the Senate through unanimous consent with no objections and no recorded votes.

It passed the House the same way, with members of Congress chatting away on the floor.

A week later, with no objections from Congress or the DEA, President Barack Obama signed it into law without ceremony or the usual bill signing photo-op. Marino issued a press release the next day claiming credit for the legislation.

The drug distributors declared victory and told us the new law would in no way limit DEA's enforcement abilities. But DEA chief administrative law judge, John J. Mulrooney, who must adjudicate the law, wrote in a soon-to-be-published Marquette Law Review article we obtained, that the new legislation "would make it all but...impossible" to prosecute unscrupulous distributors.

...
Joe Rannazzissi now consults with state attorneys general who have filed suit against distributors for their role in the opioid crisis. Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn is running for the Senate. As for Congressman Marino, he was just nominated to be President Donald Trump's new drug czar.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-dea-agent-opioid-crisis-fueled-by-drug-industry-and-congress/​

 

[Richard Stanley]

The heat generated from my prior post, 'obviously', has caused the Trump administration to pull Marino's nomination to Drug Czar this morning.

 

[Richard Stanley]

I probably should have placed this in a new or other thread, but all this (extra) chaos will happen under Trump's watch, and he gets sole authority to delay its release further. As the article mentions, there are a lot of files and, like the limited trial release a few years ago, there will be a frenzy to access and interpret them.

...
The federal government’s long campaign to try to choke off rampant conspiracy theories about the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy is threatening to end this month in massive confusion, if not chaos.

Within the next two weeks, the National Archives is legally obligated to release the last of thousands of secret documents from government files about the assassination, most of them from the CIA, FBI and the Justice Department.

And there is every indication that the massive document dump—especially if any of it is blocked by President Donald Trump, the only person empowered under the law to stop the release of the files—will simply help fuel a new generation of conspiracy theories.

Trump, no stranger to conspiracy theories, including totally unsubstantiated theories about a link between Ted Cruz’s father and JFK’s death, has not yet revealed his plans for the documents. His friend and political adviser Roger Stone, the Republican consultant who is the author of a book claiming that President Lyndon Johnson was the mastermind of the Kennedy assassination, said last week that he has been informed authoritatively that the CIA is urging Trump to delay the release of some of the JFK documents for another 25 years. “They must reflect badly on the CIA even though virtually everyone involved is long dead,” Stone said in a statement on his website. ...
http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...xt-jfk-document-dump-could-be-a-fiasco-215716​

 

[Jerry Russell]

If you're thinking Pence would be any better, here's this cautionary article --

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/23/the-danger-of-president-pence

Marc Short, the head of legislative affairs in the Trump White House, credits Pence for the Kochs’ rapprochement with Trump. “The Kochs were very excited about the Vice-Presidential pick,” Short told me. “There are areas where they differ from the Administration, but now there are many areas they’re partnering with us on.” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, who has accused the Kochs of buying undue influence, particularly on environmental policy—Koch Industries has a long history of pollution—is less enthusiastic about their alliance with Pence. “If Pence were to become President for any reason, the government would be run by the Koch brothers—period. He’s been their tool for years,” he said. Bannon is equally alarmed at the prospect of a Pence Presidency. He told me, “I’m concerned he’d be a President that the Kochs would own.”​

 

[Richard Stanley]

Yes, I have discussed on this thread that Pence will be a theocrat. Fortunately, Pence has his own liabilities if Trump goes down. For one thing he was in charge vetting Flynn and failed to do anything when they had been told about Flynn's activities as a foreign agent. But agent Bannon is lying through his teeth, because the Mercers and the Koch brothers are aligned (see below).

Furthermore, the Koch brothers bankroll the YAF, the libertarian Cato Institute, the Libertarians, the Tea Party(s), ... The latter means ideological overlap with Bannon, and the common thread is the Roman Catholic agenda, furthering the rolling coup starting with Vatican II ecumenicism and the JFK assassination. As I have also discussed the Libertarian ideology and its Austrian School Economics were sponsored by The Mont Pelerin Society and its traditionalist Catholic 'monarchists' intent on restoring the ancien regime. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

First you need to get all the players straight because this issue is complex. The American Enterprise Institute, (AEI) and Young Americans Foundation, (YAF) is bankrolled by Charles and David Koch and Helen and Richard DeVos. Richard and Helen are the parents of Dick DeVos, husband to Betsy Prince DeVos, sister of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and mentor and benefactor (read "bankroller") to Vice President Mike Pence. See how the dots are connecting? Connect this one. Robert and Rebekah Mercer are major contributors to the Young Americans Foundation (YAF) and of course where you find the Mercers you find Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and his production company, Glittering Steel. Glittering Steel has bankrolled different speakers on campuses, including Milo Yiannopoulos' recent engagement at Berkeley which broke out into a riot. Glittering Steel is currently under investigation by the Secretary of State of the State of California for failure to register as a business entity. This complaint was only lodged recently, but could result in civil and criminal charges being brought against Bannon for income tax evasion, among other things. ...
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...-Hate-Speeches-On-College-Campuses-Everywhere​

 

[Richard Stanley]

As most people know about the latest Trump fiasco, regarding his lying about calling families of killed soldiers, and what he said to one widow, few realize the backdrop to the recent death of the 4 most recent soldiers killed in Niger. This has to do with Trump bizarrely adding the neighboring nation of Chad to his last travel ban (which was recently overturned). Chad turns out to have been a very strong military ally in the trumped up WOT, in this case against Boko Haram. Trump's addition of Chad to the travel ban list apparently caused Chad to remove their military from Niger. And so, Maddow wonders whether the 4 American died as a consequence?

Trump's self-defense is infuriating because of his prior dissing of such families, and Senator McCain, and especially so since Trump was a typical draft dodger who got an exemption by claiming he had heel spurs. During the time that he supposedly had heel spurs he was very active physically in various activities of a young and wealthy man, a Fortunate Son as the CCR song says.

 

[Richard Stanley]

The mythos that the 'adult' White House generals are babysitting Agent Orange Leaks for the sane rest of us has now been exposed as false. General Kelly came out in defense of Trump's incoherent lies about what he said to a widow and about what other Presidents have done in these cases. Kelly then viciously attacked Florida Congresswoman Wilson with bald lies, including the ironic ad hominem that she is an empty gun. Kelly ripped Wilson for listening in on the Trump phone call, but Wilson was a close friend of the family and the deceased soldier, and the widow and Wilson were riding in a car at the time.

As I had covered before, Kelly's military bio reveals that he is such an "empty gun", like Michael Flynn (whose only experience facing a gun was while getting shot in the back on a US military base shooting range). More to the point - such 'political' generals are part of the Fifth Column Catholic cuckhold coup cabal propping up Lifetime Actor Trump, who himself was a Jesuit Fordham alumni. They are facilitating the unfolding Futurist Apocalypse I describe in Apocalypse How, Part 1.

Furthermore, Kelly's rhetoric, even about what he wasn't lying about is steering U.S. military / civilian relations in the wrong direction. This is good only if you consider the death of the Republic / democracy good and the rise of a new Imperium (the Fourth Reich) a good thing. This restoration of a monarchical ancien regime is what a revanchist Traditionalist Catholic would indeed support, and is what covertly binds such as Trump, Kelly, Flynn, Conway, Bannon, Sean Hannity, the Koch brothers, et al. together.

...
Wilson responded by saying Kelly wasn’t telling the truth.

"That’s a lie. How dare he," Wilson said on CNN.

Luckily, a video can help settle this specific back-and-forth.

A video unearthed by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel of the April 10, 2015, event preserved Wilson’s speech. While it does portray Wilson speaking animatedly and indulging in some braggadocio -- she is known as a colorful, outspoken politician with a soft spot for fashionable hats -- Kelly mischaracterized her remarks in significant ways.

The effort she bragged about was initially requested by the FBI itself, and her actions were made in service of honoring the memory of the two slain agents. She also shared the credit, saying it could not have been accomplished without the help of her Republican colleagues, including then-House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Perhaps most notable, the video doesn’t show Wilson boasting about securing money for the building, which had been obtained before she was even in Congress.

The video shows Wilson telling the audience that shortly before the dedication of a new FBI building in Miramar, Fla., the FBI approached her to see whether she could help name the building after FBI agents Benjamin Grogan and Jerry Dove, who were killed during a 1986 shootout with bank robbers south of Miami. Naming federal buildings is typically a responsibility of Congress.

"The ribbon-cutting has been scheduled in four short weeks," Wilson recalled being told. "The dedication is on the government’s calendar and cannot be changed. One problem: The FBI wants to name this gorgeous edifice at the same time, in four weeks. Everyone said that’s impossible -- it takes at least eight months to a year to complete the process, through the House, the Senate and to the president’s office.

"I said, I’m a school principal and I said, excuse my French, ‘Oh, hell no!’ We’re gonna get this done. Immediately I went to attack mode. I went to the Speaker, Speaker Boehner, and I said, "Mr. Speaker, I need your help. The FBI needs your help, and our country needs your help and we have no time to waste.’ (Boehner) went into attack mode, and in two days pulled it out of committee, brought it to the floor for a vote."

At that point, Wilson said, she "dashed it over to the Senate," where Florida Sens. Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio helped get it to the floor in two days. "And guess what? The president signed the bill into law this past Tuesday, April 7, 2015, with a bang, bang, bang."

Wilson did not mention anything about securing funding for the building, nor did she brag about using her influence with Obama.

In an interview with the Miami Herald, Wilson called "crazy" Kelly’s notion that she claimed she had gotten the money. "That building was funded long before I got to Congress. I didn’t say that. I have staff, people who write the speeches. You can’t say that."

The Herald reported that the General Services Administration "had already bid out a $144 million construction contract for the project in September 2010, just a few months before Wilson won her congressional seat. The bidding for federal projects takes place after Congress has secured the funding." ...
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...hecking-john-kelly-frederica-wilsons-2015-sp/​

 

[Richard Stanley]

Jared Kushner is once again under scrutiny for a failure to disclose. This time regarding his startup company, Cadre, which facilitates online trading of real estate developments shares as if they were stocks.

...
The type of business Cadre does is also noteworthy because it sits at the nexus of Kushner’s two power bases: real estate and, now, politics.

Cadre operates as an online platform, connecting wealthy investors like Soros, for example, to emerging real estate properties in which they can buy partial ownership. The billionaire was one of Cadre's initial key investors, opening up a $250 million line of credit between his family offices and Kushner’s start-up.

But ethics experts think the real estate investing platform may allow foreign investors to hide their identities to the public, though not to Cadre insiders.

"It's a novel kind of business," said Virginia Canter, who is executive branch ethics counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Because of the real estate interests that can be traded on the platform, and who can be buying and selling that real estate, [Kushner’s] financial interest in Cadre concerns me … You can have foreign governments or other individuals who have significant interests before Jared Kushner. This is the man responsible for Middle East peace talks and the American Innovation office.

"The point is, Cadre could result in a benefit to him and there’s no way for us to have any insight or to hold him accountable," she added. "In any other administration, he’d be required to divest of this asset. You line this up with [Kushner's] failures on his security forms … and it’s a lot to just say it was an inadvertent failure. It looks like it’s a systemic problem and, in some cases, more than that."
http://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-ivanka-trump-white-house-forms-omissions-cadre-millions-679231​

 

[Richard Stanley]

The Swampy Republican's finally pass some legislation, with the necessary help of Mike Pence. To further demonstrate the political schizophrenia that swamp gas induces, such as Senator Flake, a Tea Partier before the Tea Party existed, has had to announce retirement because he will certainly lose reelection for not being "new neoconservative" (aka Trumpian faux-populist) enough.

That this bill passed the Senate almost certainly means that Flake voted for it.

Sometimes it's unclear whether policymakers are living in the same world as their constituents. This is one of those times.

On Tuesday, the GOP rolled back an Obama-era rule that would have kept big financial firms from making consumers sign agreements that take away their right to sue the firms. With help from Vice President Mike Pence's tiebreaking Senate vote, the move is being considered a legislative victory for the party.

It's unclear why, however, because it's hard to see how voters will cheer legislation that is essentially a gift to Wall Street. The rule in question, set to take effect in 2019, was made by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government agency set up after the financial crisis to ensure that products like credit cards and mortgages aren't scamming people.

The argument for why the GOP wants to make it harder for people to sue financial firms pretty much all comes down to two ideas: The rule would be hard on financial firms, and the CFPB never actually proved that it would work. The two points are made, remade, and rephrased ad nauseam in an 18-page report posted on the Treasury Department's website.

The whole thing is nonsense. Even worse, it's unnecessary. We — consumers and voters — know the only thing we need to know to understand why this rule should take effect.

I'll give it to you in three words: Equifax tried it.

...
Wall Street is doing just marvelously and has been — blips aside — since earnings turned the corner around 2012. This argument is yet another example of the GOP and Wall Street trying to sell the American people the myth that corporate America is suffering, when in fact it's doing just fine.

One of the biggest purveyors of this myth is JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. His lobbyists now will most likely get a big high five, and his struggling postcrisis firm will get some much-needed relief.

Just kidding.

From 2008 through 2016, JPMorgan laid off almost 27,000 employees. Yet, during that same period, Dimon's compensation hit over $27 million — a 39% pay raise. The bank also had enough cash lying around to buy back $37.8 billion in stock during that period, which had to help Dimon and other company executives — who are paid largely in stock — quite a bit.

Does it sound to you as if this is an industry in need of relief from class-action lawsuits?...
http://www.businessinsider.com/gop-roll-back-obama-arbitration-rule-2017-10​

 

[Richard Stanley]

The following is an interesting analysis on the Russian Uranium One deal where the Russian's put money in the Clinton's pocket. And that Putin seems to forget that it also reveals that he was trying to put both the Clinton's and Trump in his pocket. And while the FBI, Obama, Hillary, and Robert Mueller are all wrapped up in this.

Will, Mueller actually take action against beastly emperor to be Trump? Doubtful.

 

[Richard Stanley]

Here's a slightly different take on the Uranium deal, and Trump's misdirection on fake Fake News, as opposed to real Fake News.