Alternative Facts with Kellyanne Conway

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Gobsmacked]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Clever tweet but way over Trumpy McFuckface's head. No way will he understand. It's got BIG words. 

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, Gobsmacked said:

Clever tweet but way over Trumpy McFuckface's head. No way will he understand. It's got BIG words. 

Trump thinks prevarication and mendacity are STDs.

[onekidanddone]

10 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Trump thinks prevarication and mendacity are STDs.

Trump Tweet: I more about mendacity than anybody, or so people are saying. I think frankly nobody knows more about it than me, or so I hear, 

[SilverBeach]

CNN is changing, I am spending more time over at MSNBC.

[Howl]

We DVR Ari Melber and watch later in the evening, and DVR Rachel Maddow and Hardball (because it ends up being saved at the end of Rachel Maddow) and watch the following morning.  I'm being very careful about CNN, because of it's swing to the right.  Trying not to go to their web site to scan news.  

But back to Kellyanne and George; as mentioned previously, I think they are working the same game from two sides.  George is undermining Trump, hard, to keep him out office for another four years.  Kellyanne is on the inside, working hard to keep the alt-right juggernaut going for as long as it can go.

They both want to keep the Federalist society making nominations and getting them appointed at SCOTUS and Federal judiciary level and continuing to dismantle a regulatory government and hammering women's reproductive rights. 

 Make no mistake; they are both hard core conservatives with an agenda that was developed early on in both their careers and that has only strengthened with their ascension to power.  I don't think George is sleeping on the couch; I think they go home and congratulate each other on keeping the whole shit-er-roo going.  

Edited March 30, 2019 by Howl

[GreyhoundFan]

YES!

 

[Howl]

This is why I love twitter so hard: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"George Conway: Trump is a cancer on the presidency. Congress should remove him."

Spoiler

George T. Conway III is a lawyer in New York.

So it turns out that, indeed, President Trump was not exonerated at all, and certainly not “totally” or “completely,” as he claimed. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III didn’t reach a conclusion about whether Trump committed crimes of obstruction of justice — in part because, while a sitting president, Trump can’t be prosecuted under long-standing Justice Department directives, and in part because of “difficult issues” raised by “the President’s actions and intent.” Those difficult issues involve, among other things, the potentially tricky interplay between the criminal obstruction laws and the president’s constitutional authority, and the difficulty in proving criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt.

Still, the special counsel’s report is damning. Mueller couldn’t say, with any “confidence,” that the president of the United States is not a criminal. He said, stunningly, that “if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.” Mueller did not so state.

That’s especially damning because the ultimate issue shouldn’t be — and isn’t — whether the president committed a criminal act. As I wrote not long ago, Americans should expect far more than merely that their president not be provably a criminal. In fact, the Constitution demands it.

The Constitution commands the president to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” It requires him to affirm that he will “faithfully execute the Office of President” and to promise to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” And as a result, by taking the presidential oath of office, a president assumes the duty not simply to obey the laws, civil and criminal, that all citizens must obey, but also to be subjected to higher duties — what some excellent recent legal scholarship has termed the “fiduciary obligations of the president.”

Fiduciaries are people who hold legal obligations of trust, like a trustee of a trust. A trustee must act in the beneficiary’s best interests and not his own. If the trustee fails to do that, the trustee can be removed, even if what the trustee has done is not a crime.

So too with a president. The Constitution provides for impeachment and removal from office for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” But the history and context of the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” makes clear that not every statutory crime is impeachable, and not every impeachable offense need be criminal. As Charles L. Black Jr. put it in a seminal pamphlet on impeachment in 1974, “assaults on the integrity of the processes of government” count as impeachable, even if they are not criminal.

And presidential attempts to abuse power by putting personal interests above the nation’s can surely be impeachable. The president may have the raw constitutional power to, say, squelch an investigation or to pardon a close associate. But if he does so not to serve the public interest, but to serve his own, he surely could be removed from office, even if he has not committed a criminal act.

By these standards, the facts in Mueller’s report condemn Trump even more than the report’s refusal to clear him of a crime. Charged with faithfully executing the laws, the president is, in effect, the nation’s highest law enforcement officer. Yet Mueller’s investigation “found multiple acts by the President that were capable of executing undue influence over law enforcement investigations.”

Trump tried to “limit the scope of the investigation.” He tried to discourage witnesses from cooperating with the government through “suggestions of possible future pardons.” He engaged in “direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.” A fair reading of the special counsel’s narrative is that “the likely effect” of these acts was “to intimidate witnesses or to alter their testimony,” with the result that “the justice system’s integrity [was] threatened.” Page after page, act after act, Mueller’s report describes a relentless torrent of such obstructive activity by Trump.

Contrast poor Richard M. Nixon. He was almost certain to be impeached, and removed from office, after the infamous “smoking gun” tape came out. On that tape, the president is heard directing his chief of staff to get the CIA director, Richard Helms, to tell the FBI “don’t go any further into this case” — Watergate — for national security reasons. That order never went anywhere, because Helms ignored it.

Other than that, Nixon was mostly passive — at least compared with Trump. For the most part, the Watergate tapes showed that Nixon had “acquiesced in the cover-up” after the fact. Nixon had no advance knowledge of the break-in. His aides were the driving force behind the obstruction.

Trump, on the other hand, was a one-man show. His aides tried to stop him, according to Mueller: “The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”

As for Trump’s supposed defense that there was no underlying “collusion” crime, well, as the special counsel points out, it’s not a defense, even in a criminal prosecution. But it’s actually unhelpful in the comparison to Watergate. The underlying crime in Watergate was a clumsy, third-rate burglary in an election campaign that turned out to be a landslide.

The investigation that Trump tried to interfere with here, to protect his own personal interests, was in significant part an investigation of how a hostile foreign power interfered with our democracy. If that’s not putting personal interests above a presidential duty to the nation, nothing is.

White House counsel John Dean famously told Nixon that there was a cancer within the presidency and that it was growing. What the Mueller report disturbingly shows, with crystal clarity, is that today there is a cancer in the presidency: President Donald J. Trump.

Congress now bears the solemn constitutional duty to excise that cancer without delay.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[onekidanddone]

12 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Yea Kelly I’m busy scrubbing my toilet right now the apology is going to wait

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love Erin Burnett snarking on Kellyanne.  (Sorry, I couldn't embed the video, so it's linked).

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

K-Con had to go on Faux to whine about Nancy: "Pelosi refuses to engage with White House aide Kellyanne Conway over wealth"

Spoiler

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to engage with Kellyanne Conway on Thursday after the White House counselor took aim at the Democrat’s wealth a day after the speaker, who is second in line to the presidency, said she would negotiate with President Trump rather than with members of his staff.

“I’m not going to talk about her,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters at her weekly news conference when asked about Conway’s comments. “I responded as the speaker of the House to the president of the United States. Other conversations people want to have among themselves is up to them.”

Lawmakers have sometimes discovered in negotiations with senior White House aides or even Vice President Pence that Trump has the opposite opinion, leaving Congress to struggle in making a deal.

Pelosi, the first female House speaker and the most powerful woman in the Democratic Party, has been involved in many of those negotiations.

On Wednesday, Trump angrily walked out of a White House meeting on infrastructure with the speaker and other Democratic leaders.

Conway asked Pelosi whether she had a response for the president after he stormed out of the room, The Washington Post reported. Pelosi replied that she would respond directly to the president, not staff. As those in the room got up to leave, Conway said to Pelosi, “That’s really pro-woman of you,” according to people familiar with the meeting.

Conway described the exchange in an interview with Fox News Channel on Thursday morning.

“I said, respectfully, ‘Madam Speaker, would you like to address some of the specifics the president talked about?’ ” Conway said. “And she said, ‘I talk to the president. I don’t talk to staff.’ ”

Conway — who lives in a $7.7 million mansion in Northwest Washington — then went on to take aim at Pelosi’s personal wealth.

“Let’s face it. She’s the sixth-most-rich member of Congress. She treats everybody like they’re her staff. She treats me like I’m either her maid or her driver or her pilot or her makeup artist. And I’m not. And I said to her, ‘How very pro-woman of you,’ per usual, because she’s not very pro-woman. She’s pro-some women, a few women,” Conway said.

The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call listed Pelosi as the 30th wealthiest member of the House or the Senate during the last Congress, with an estimated net worth of $16 million.

More alternative facts.

[GreyhoundFan]

Hey, Kellyanne, have you ever heard the phrase, "pot calling the kettle black"? Just asking for a friend: "‘A grandstander and a showboat’: Kellyanne Conway attacks Comey for op-ed"

Spoiler

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway attacked former FBI director James B. Comey as “a grandstander and a showboat” on Wednesday in response to an op-ed by Comey in which he defended the FBI against repeated criticism from President Trump.

During a morning television appearance, Conway suggested that Comey is worried about ongoing investigations into the origins of the probe of possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. The probe was launched under the watch of Comey, whom Trump later fired.

“Methinks he doth protest too much,” Conway said of Comey on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends,” adding that it “sounds like there’s panic in the world of Jim Comey.”

Multiple probes are looking at whether the FBI and other intelligence agencies properly handled the early stages of the investigation, including applications for court-ordered surveillance.

In his op-ed for The Washington Post, Comey wrote that it is important to “call out [Trump’s] lies that the FBI was corrupt and committed treason, that we spied on the Trump campaign and tried to defeat Donald Trump.”

“Who cares what he thinks?” Conway said of Comey during her interview. “We said ‘no collusion’ for two years, and they couldn’t take us for our word.”

Conway said she also objected to Comey’s characterization in the op-ed that the investigation of Trump’s campaign was conducted by “good people trying to figure out what was true, under unprecedented circumstances.”

She called both Comey and his former deputy, Andrew McCabe, liars and pointed to two former FBI officials who sent private text messages expressing disdain for Trump during the investigation. The two were having an affair at the time.

“We already know how much the sexters, I mean the texters, of course, were making fun of Trump voters,” Conway said.

I wish Kellywise would crawl back into the sewer.

[GreyhoundFan]

George is trolling the mango moron again:

 

[Howl]

On 3/29/2019 at 11:09 PM, Cartmann99 said:

Trump thinks prevarication and mendacity are STDs.

Or he's trying to remember if those are the names of women he paid off. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Office of Special Counsel recommends removal of Kellyanne Conway from federal office for violating the Hatch Act"

Spoiler

The Office of Special Counsel has recommended the removal of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway from federal office for violating the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from engaging in political activity in the course of their work.

The report submitted to President Trump found that Conway violated the Hatch Act on numerous occasions by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.”

The counsel said Conway was a repeat offender and recommended that she be removed from federal office.

The Office of Special Counsel is run by Henry Kerner, whom Trump nominated to the post.

I know it won't happen, but it would be nice.

[fraurosena]

7 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Office of Special Counsel recommends removal of Kellyanne Conway from federal office for violating the Hatch Act"

  Hide contents

The Office of Special Counsel has recommended the removal of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway from federal office for violating the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from engaging in political activity in the course of their work.

The report submitted to President Trump found that Conway violated the Hatch Act on numerous occasions by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.”

The counsel said Conway was a repeat offender and recommended that she be removed from federal office.

The Office of Special Counsel is run by Henry Kerner, whom Trump nominated to the post.

I know it won't happen, but it would be nice.

I'd like to know what George has to say about it...

[GreyhoundFan]

Is anyone surprised by this? "Trump says he won’t fire Kellyanne Conway over Hatch Act violations"

Spoiler

President Trump said Friday that he will not fire White House counselor Kellyanne Conway for repeated violations of the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from engaging in political activity in the course of their work.

“Well I got briefed on it yesterday, and it looks to me like they’re trying to take away her right of free speech, and that’s just not fair,” Trump said during an interview on Fox News.

His comments came a day after the Office of Special Counsel publicly recommended Conway’s removal from federal office, calling her a “repeat offender.”

A report submitted to Trump found that Conway violated the Hatch Act on numerous occasions by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.”

“No, I’m not going to fire her,” Trump said. “I think she’s a terrific person. She’s a tremendous spokeswoman. She’s been loyal. She’s just a great person.”

Trump characterized the comments in question from Conway as merely responding to questions.

“You ask a person a question, and every time you’re supposed to say, ‘I can’t answer, I can’t answer?’ ” Trump said. “I mean, she’s got to have a right of responding to questions.”

On Thursday, the White House counsel immediately issued a letter calling for the Office of Special Counsel to withdraw its recommendation that Conway be removed — a request the agency declined.

In an interview, Special Counsel Henry Kerner called his recommendation that a political appointee of Conway’s stature be fired “unprecedented.”

“You know what else is unprecedented?” said Kerner, a Trump appointee who has run the agency since December 2017. “Kellyanne Conway’s behavior.”

“In interview after interview, she uses her official capacity to disparage announced candidates, which is not allowed,” he said, adding: “What kind of example does that send to the federal workforce? If you’re high enough up in the White House, you can break the law, but if you’re a postal carrier or a regular federal worker, you lose your job?”

The Office of Special Counsel is a quasi-judicial independent agency that adjudicates claims of retaliation by whistleblowers and administers the Hatch Act and other civil service rules. It is a separate agency from the office run by now-former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In its 17-page report, the Office of Special Counsel found that Conway repeatedly attacked 2020 Democratic presidential candidates while she was being interviewed by media outlets in her official capacity and tweeted about the candidates from her official account.

The agency noted that Conway attacked former vice president Joe Biden’s lack of “vision,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts spent “decades appropriating somebody else’s heritage and ethnicity,” and called Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey “sexist” and a “tinny” “motivational speaker.”

During a one-week period leading up to the 2018 midterm elections, Conway posted at least 15 messages on Twitter that were political and in support of midterm election candidates or the Republican Party, according to the report.

“Her defiant attitude is inimical to the law, and her continued pattern of misconduct is unacceptable,” the agency wrote.

I noticed that George hasn't tweeted about this. He's been busy commenting on other topics, however.

[GreyhoundFan]

Because of course: "White House moves to bar counselor Kellyanne Conway from testifying to Congress about alleged violations of Hatch Act"

Spoiler

The White House will block counselor Kellyanne Conway from testifying before a House panel about allegations by a government watchdog that she violated the Hatch Act, increasing the likelihood of another subpoena battle between the two branches of government.

White House lawyers on Monday rejected the House Oversight Committee’s request for Conway to appear at a hearing Wednesday.

In a letter addressed to Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), Pat A. Cipollone, counsel to the president, wrote that “in accordance with long-standing precedent, we respectfully decline the invitation to make Ms. Conway available for testimony before the Committee.”

House Democrats counter, however, that the White House has no right to claim executive privilege or immunity for Conway because the alleged violations deal with her personal actions — not her duties advising the president or working in the West Wing.

The Hatch Act bars federal employees from engaging in political activity during work hours or on the job. But a report submitted to President Trump earlier this month by the Office of Special Counsel — which a Trump appointee runs — found that Conway violated that law on numerous occasions by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.”

It recommended that Trump terminate her federal employment.

The panel plans to vote Wednesday to subpoena Conway if she does not agree voluntarily to answer questions. 

Meanwhile, Conway has appeared on national television to defend her name. On Monday morning, she said on Fox News Channel that House Democrats are trying to retaliate against her for managing Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“You know what they’re mad about?” Conway said. “They want to put a big roll of masking tape over my mouth because I helped as a campaign manager for the successful part of the campaign. . . . So they want to chill free speech because they don’t know how to beat [Trump] at the ballot box.”

Special counsel Henry Kerner, a longtime congressional GOP staff member, said in an interview that her description is not true.

“We’re trying to hold Ms. Conway to the same standard we hold other people in government to,” Kerner said Monday. “My staff came up with violations. They’re obvious. She says things that are campaign messages.”

The Office of Special Counsel is a quasi-judicial independent agency that adjudicates claims of retaliation by whistleblowers and administers the Hatch Act and other civil service rules. It is separate from the office run by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who led an inquiry of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Because Conway is a presidential appointee, the Office of Special Counsel has no authority to discipline her. It can make recommendations, but it falls to Trump to make a decision. He has indicated that he has no plans to fire her.

In its 17-page report, the office found that Conway repeatedly attacked 2020 Democratic presidential candidates in interviews with media outlets in her official capacity and tweeted about the candidates from her official account.

The agency noted that Conway criticized former vice president Joe Biden as having a lack of “vision,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) spent “decades appropriating somebody else’s heritage and ethnicity,” and called Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) “sexist” and a “tinny” “motivational speaker.”

During a one-week period leading up to the 2018 midterm election, Conway posted at least 15 messages on Twitter that were political and in support of candidates or the Republican Party, according to the report. “Her defiant attitude is inimical to the law, and her continued pattern of misconduct is unacceptable,” the agency wrote.

House Democrats argue that Conway’s alleged infractions are emblematic of the administration’s behavior and a prime example for their oversight. Conway was warned to change her behavior but has not, and lawmakers think they can hold her up as an example to argue that the administration thinks it is above the law.

The hearing Wednesday will feature the agency’s recommendation to remove Conway, as well as its reports about other Trump administration appointees. Conway and Kerner were invited to attend.

In her TV appearance on Monday, Conway said that it wasn’t clear that she is subject to the Hatch Act and that the situation is being misconstrued.

“We think I’d be the first member of the West Wing to ever be hauled in front of Congress to talk about the Hatch Act,” Conway said.

“The Hatch Act means that you can’t advocate for or against the election of — of an individual,” she continued. “And if I’m talking about the failures of Obama-Biden care, if I’m talking about the fact that 28 million Americans have no health insurance, that’s a fact. If I’m quoting what some of the candidates say about the other candidates, I’m just repeating the news to you as I read it that day.”

I wish she'd just go away. now.

[Audrey2]

13 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Because of course: "White House moves to bar counselor Kellyanne Conway from testifying to Congress about alleged violations of Hatch Act"

  Reveal hidden contents

The White House will block counselor Kellyanne Conway from testifying before a House panel about allegations by a government watchdog that she violated the Hatch Act, increasing the likelihood of another subpoena battle between the two branches of government.

White House lawyers on Monday rejected the House Oversight Committee’s request for Conway to appear at a hearing Wednesday.

In a letter addressed to Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), Pat A. Cipollone, counsel to the president, wrote that “in accordance with long-standing precedent, we respectfully decline the invitation to make Ms. Conway available for testimony before the Committee.”

House Democrats counter, however, that the White House has no right to claim executive privilege or immunity for Conway because the alleged violations deal with her personal actions — not her duties advising the president or working in the West Wing.

The Hatch Act bars federal employees from engaging in political activity during work hours or on the job. But a report submitted to President Trump earlier this month by the Office of Special Counsel — which a Trump appointee runs — found that Conway violated that law on numerous occasions by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.”

It recommended that Trump terminate her federal employment.

The panel plans to vote Wednesday to subpoena Conway if she does not agree voluntarily to answer questions. 

Meanwhile, Conway has appeared on national television to defend her name. On Monday morning, she said on Fox News Channel that House Democrats are trying to retaliate against her for managing Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“You know what they’re mad about?” Conway said. “They want to put a big roll of masking tape over my mouth because I helped as a campaign manager for the successful part of the campaign. . . . So they want to chill free speech because they don’t know how to beat [Trump] at the ballot box.”

Special counsel Henry Kerner, a longtime congressional GOP staff member, said in an interview that her description is not true.

“We’re trying to hold Ms. Conway to the same standard we hold other people in government to,” Kerner said Monday. “My staff came up with violations. They’re obvious. She says things that are campaign messages.”

The Office of Special Counsel is a quasi-judicial independent agency that adjudicates claims of retaliation by whistleblowers and administers the Hatch Act and other civil service rules. It is separate from the office run by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who led an inquiry of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Because Conway is a presidential appointee, the Office of Special Counsel has no authority to discipline her. It can make recommendations, but it falls to Trump to make a decision. He has indicated that he has no plans to fire her.

In its 17-page report, the office found that Conway repeatedly attacked 2020 Democratic presidential candidates in interviews with media outlets in her official capacity and tweeted about the candidates from her official account.

The agency noted that Conway criticized former vice president Joe Biden as having a lack of “vision,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) spent “decades appropriating somebody else’s heritage and ethnicity,” and called Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) “sexist” and a “tinny” “motivational speaker.”

During a one-week period leading up to the 2018 midterm election, Conway posted at least 15 messages on Twitter that were political and in support of candidates or the Republican Party, according to the report. “Her defiant attitude is inimical to the law, and her continued pattern of misconduct is unacceptable,” the agency wrote.

House Democrats argue that Conway’s alleged infractions are emblematic of the administration’s behavior and a prime example for their oversight. Conway was warned to change her behavior but has not, and lawmakers think they can hold her up as an example to argue that the administration thinks it is above the law.

The hearing Wednesday will feature the agency’s recommendation to remove Conway, as well as its reports about other Trump administration appointees. Conway and Kerner were invited to attend.

In her TV appearance on Monday, Conway said that it wasn’t clear that she is subject to the Hatch Act and that the situation is being misconstrued.

“We think I’d be the first member of the West Wing to ever be hauled in front of Congress to talk about the Hatch Act,” Conway said.

“The Hatch Act means that you can’t advocate for or against the election of — of an individual,” she continued. “And if I’m talking about the failures of Obama-Biden care, if I’m talking about the fact that 28 million Americans have no health insurance, that’s a fact. If I’m quoting what some of the candidates say about the other candidates, I’m just repeating the news to you as I read it that day.”

I wish she'd just go away. now.

Has anyone tried pouring water on her? It sure worked for the Wicked Witch of the West.