Donald Trump and the Deathly Fallout (Part 15)

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an interesting perspective: "There’s a quick and easy way to see Trump’s tax returns"

Quote

State lawmakers across the country are pursuing creative methods to force President Trump to release his federal income tax returns before he can run for reelection in 2020. Unfortunately for citizens interested in greater presidential transparency, those efforts are likely to fail.

There is, however, a much easier way for state lawmakers to force the disclosure of Trump’s tax information: publishing the state tax returns already in their possession, which would reveal much of the same information appearing in his federal documents.

So far, state lawmakers have focused their attention on bills that would require candidates to release their federal income tax returns before appearing on those states’ presidential ballots. The Democratic-controlled New Jersey legislature approved such a bill last month. State lawmakers in California, New York and 20 other states have introduced similar legislation.

The ballot-access approach faces three formidable obstacles: First, Democrats control both the governor slot and legislatures in only half a dozen states. Republicans are likely to block the bills from becoming law anywhere else. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, is widely expected to veto his state’s ballot-access bill.

Second, if a ballot-access bill becomes law in a deep-blue state, there is no guarantee that Trump will comply. In states such as California — where he lost by a landslide — Trump might decide to keep his name off the 2020 ballot rather than release his returns.

Finally, Trump would almost certainly bring a constitutional challenge to any law requiring him to disclose his tax returns as a condition for ballot access, and it is far from clear that these laws would hold up in court.

But publishing Trump’s state tax returns is a much more viable option — and would make his returns available to the public now, rather than three years from now.

Trump’s New York state resident income tax returns show his salary, dividends, capital gains, rental real estate income and other income from all sources — including sources outside New York. If Trump fills out a “Resident Itemized Deduction Schedule” — as most high-income individuals in New York do — he also reports his gifts to charity. And if he is using phantom losses from previous years to offset tax on his current-year income, then the New York state return shows that too.

New York’s Department of Taxation and Finance keeps copies of Trump’s state returns from as far back as 1990. Current New York law prohibits state tax officials from disclosing an individual’s returns, but the New York legislature could amend that law to require the state tax authority to post the president’s returns from the past quarter-century on its website. For the sake of evenhandedness, the legislature might apply the same rule to its other elected officials. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is unlikely to object: He releases his returns every year, as do the state’s two senators, fellow Democrats Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Federal law does not stand in New York’s way. The Internal Revenue Code prohibits state officials from disclosing a taxpayer’s federal return, but it does not stop New York from disclosing information that Trump reports on his state forms.

A bill requiring the disclosure of Trump’s state tax returns should sail through the New York State Assembly, where Democrats enjoy an overwhelming majority. It would also stand a strong chance of passing the State Senate, where Democrats occupy roughly half the 63 seats. Moderate Republicans might come on board as well.

The political environment might be even more hospitable in other states with Democratic governors and Democratic-dominated legislatures — including California, Connecticut and Hawaii, where Trump has real estate investments and presumably files nonresident returns. While those returns don’t include as many details as Trump’s New York returns, they still could reveal some important information, such as his adjusted gross income from all sources, both in and out of state.

,,,

I hope this does come to pass. It would drive him absolutely batshit crazy.

[GreyhoundFan]

More damage to federal agencies: "White House tells agencies to come up with a plan to shrink their workforces"

Quote

The White House on Wednesday will instruct all federal agencies to submit a plan by June 30 to shrink their civilian workforces, offering the first details on how the Trump administration aims to reduce the size and scope of the government.

A governmentwide hiring freeze the president imposed on Jan. 23 will be lifted immediately. But Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters Tuesday that agency leaders must start “taking immediate actions” to save money and reduce their staffs. Mulvaney also said they must come up with a long-term blueprint to cut the number of federal workers starting in October 2018.

“This does not mean that agencies will be free to hire willy nilly,” Mulvaney said of the return to hiring. He called the restructuring — laid out in a 14-page memo — a “smarter plan, a more strategic plan, a more surgical plan” to rein in a bureaucracy that President Trump has called too big and bloated.

By following a budget the president proposed in March that calls for drastic cuts across most of the government, Mulvaney said some agencies such as the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs will add staff, while others, like the Environmental Protection Agency, will “end up paring” full-time employees “even greater than they would have . . . during the hiring freeze.”

“The executive branch of government has never been rebuilt,” Mulvaney said, claiming this effort will be more far-reaching than those of previous administrations.

But lawmakers have a significant say in how much money is provided to federal agencies and many — including Republicans — object to Trump’s proposed budget cuts. Many large-scale changes to the government — for example, a consolidation of offices with similar missions — would have to be approved by Congress.

Trump has asked the White House to “start from scratch” and intends to solicit ideas not just from business leaders but also from the public, Mulvaney said.

The White House is requiring agencies to improve the effectiveness and accountability of their employees, by rewarding high performers and clearing a straighter path to take action against poor ones.

...

What Agent Orange and Mulvaney don't seem to understand is that many federal employees are covered by unions and civil service regulations that make it difficult to fire or lay off. It usually ends up costing more. It's not like private industry, especially in an at-will state, where you can be let go with no notice or reason.

[JMarie]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

@JMarie, thank you for taking one for the team!  Still laughing about this: No mention of the Alabama governor, though.

O'Reilly Factor appears to be one step away from the Super Bass-O-Matic: 

 

He's going on vacation, so the commercial watching will have to be put on hold.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-oreilly-vacation-fox-news_us_58ed861ce4b0c89f91228c52

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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-james-comey-good-hillary-clinton-article-1.3046663

Quote

"We freed up so much and we're getting great, great credit for it," Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network's "Mornings with Maria." "We have done so much for so many people. I don't think that there is a presidential period of time in the first 100 days where anyone has done nearly what we've been able to do."

So now he's better than FDR.

[Cartmann99]

4 hours ago, AnywhereButHere said:

Apparently, The Orange Emperor will be heading back down to Mar-A-Lago for the Easter weekend. He can bluster his way through throwing missles at Syria and antagonizing N. Korea, but he can't handle a bunch of kids at an Easter Egg Roll. 

http://uproxx.com/news/trump-easter-egg-roll/ 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/us/politics/white-house-easter-egg-roll-trump.amp.html

It seems fluffy in comparison to all of the other crap this White House has shoveled these past few months, but just provide more proof on how utterly inept they are. There is no planning, no forethought with these people. 

I know I've said it before, but it truly does boggle the mind how bad the Trumps are at the public relations side of being the First Family. In the hands of someone halfway competent, this event could have been used to show the Trump family in a positive light. 

[47of74]

4 hours ago, Howl said:

@JMarie, thank you for taking one for the team!  Still laughing about this: No mention of the Alabama governor, though.

O'Reilly Factor appears to be one step away from the Super Bass-O-Matic: 

 

Or he'll be hawking the Wunder Boner;

 

 

[Cartmann99]

4 hours ago, Howl said:

@JMarie, thank you for taking one for the team!  Still laughing about this: No mention of the Alabama governor, though.

O'Reilly Factor appears to be one step away from the Super Bass-O-Matic: 

 

*Larraine Newman takes a drink of the pureed bass* Wow! That's terrific bass! 

I feel old that I knew the punchline. 

Will the toy salesman with the Bag O' Glass be showing up soon? 

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo did an annotated transcript of the tangerine toddler's interview on Fox Business. It's truly incredible. The man can't go more than a few minutes without praising himself.

[GreyhoundFan]

As if Agent Orange cares anything about service: "Haley Barbour: Trump shouldn’t gut the program that helped rescue my state"

Quote

If the politics of national service is a thorny subject for congressional Republicans — scrutinizing programs long embraced by Democrats but preserving programs seen as both patriotic and worth the money — financing it, or, in the words of White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, asking “a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit” to keep paying for it, is even thornier.

In the era of skinny budgets, it’s easy for congressional appropriators to lump national service programs in with longtime conservative targets for elimination. In a time of belt-tightening, it would be easy to think of them merely as an outgrowth of big government.

But the easy approach isn’t always the right one — in fact, it often isn’t. That’s why I urge my Republican colleagues to consider carefully before swinging the budget ax toward national service programs, as President Trump has proposed. These programs are crucial when it comes to disaster response. Having governed Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the costliest natural disaster in our nation’s history, I know all too well.

The spending blueprint offered last month by the White House slashes funding for, among other things, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the agency that administers the AmeriCorps program. AmeriCorps connects some 80,000 Americans annually with community and faith-based organizations to solve educational, public health, environmental and homeland security issues.

Now, that doesn’t sound like wasted government spending to me. And I don’t know about a West Virginia coal miner, but I know what the hard-working taxpayers of Mississippi think about AmeriCorps, whose volunteers played an outsized and critical role in the immediate- and long-term recovery from Katrina.

Sure, 12 years later, it’s easy to take a detached, clinical view of the Katrina response and decide what worked, what didn’t and what to cut. But sorting all that out wasn’t so simple in the chaotic hours and days that followed the storm, when hundreds of thousands of Americans were displaced and in dire need of resources.

What was immediately apparent despite the chaos was the integral role being played by AmeriCorps members, around 40,000 in total, who trained and coordinated hundreds of thousands of faith-based and community volunteers who rapidly fanned out across our state to aid, and in many instances direct, recovery efforts.

These young men and women were the glue that bound together our entire volunteer operation. They ran our shelters and feeding centers, our donation warehouses and emergency call centers. They built or repaired more than 15,000 homes, completed thousands of damage assessments and supported emergency response centers throughout the Gulf Coast region. Crucially, they provided training that enabled volunteers to effectively clean up communities in the wake of the most expensive storm in American history.

Because congressional appropriators and presidents in the past didn’t exercise the easy option, the very same option being asked of Congress today, the work of AmeriCorps in the Gulf South was possible. The Commission on National and Community Service was originally enacted when Republican President George H.W. Bush signed the 1990 National and Community Service Act. In his first presidential acceptance speech, and again in his first inaugural address, Bush spoke of “a thousand points of light” glimmering across our nation, each light a shimmering demonstration of the power of taking part and pitching in. The Corporation for National and Community Service lets those lights shine brighter. Republicans can’t be the party that snuffs them out.

Today, President Trump and Congress are right to seriously address, for the first time in years, the crisis of the federal government’s budget bloat. But funding for national service programs, a tiny fraction of the massive federal budget, isn’t the place to start.

...

Yeah, Agent Orange isn't going to save anything that doesn't benefit big business or billionaires.

[GreyhoundFan]

More whiplash from the West Wing: "Trump changes course again, says health-care repeal must happen before tax overhaul"

Quote

President Trump and a top adviser on Wednesday pushed back plans to overhaul the tax code, saying they wanted to prioritize first a renewed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The comments from Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney mark a sharp reversal from the administration’s approach just a few weeks ago. After they were dealt a stinging defeat when conservative Republicans refused to vote for a GOP health-care plan, Trump angrily said he was pivoting to tax reform and has been peppering his top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, for details of their tax timeline ever since.

Cohn and his team — as well as top officials at the Treasury Department — have been hard at work trying to put together a tax overhaul blueprint that they believe would lower rates and create more jobs. But Trump — in an interview with Fox Business that aired Wednesday — said the tax effort would now have to wait.

“Health care is going to happen at some point,” Trump said. “Now, if it doesn't happen fast enough, I'll start the taxes. But the tax reform and the tax cuts are better if I can do health care first.”

Many White House officials had already been telling business executives and others that the tax overhaul plan was well underway.

But the new delay is a harsh political reality that White House officials are now accepting. Congressional budget rules make it much easier to pass a broad overhaul of the tax code once the roughly $1 trillion in taxes that are in the Affordable Care Act have already been repealed. So if the health-care law is repealed and replaced, the tax overhaul becomes politically easier.

Trump dismissed this concern several weeks ago following the first failed effort to repeal the health-care law, but he and Mulvaney both said on Wednesday that this was a procedural issue that had now adjusted their approach.

Trump had three major economic priorities that he wanted to push through Congress this year, and all are off to rocky starts. They wanted to pass the health-care repeal, then a tax overhaul, and then a bill that would allow for $1 trillion in new infrastructure spending. Republicans are split on each of these measures, though, and Trump has repeatedly changed the approach for each.

During the campaign, he had said that the infrastructure plan would be a mixture of public and private funding, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the plan would likely require a few hundred billion dollars in public funds.

But in an interview with the New York Times last week, Trump said he might decide to do the entire infrastructure package with public money, borrowing it by issuing debt at low interest rates. And he said he could try to package the infrastructure plan with an effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act as a way to draw in votes from Democrats.

But in his interview that aired Wednesday, the plans seemed to have changed again, saying they would focus anew on passing the health-care repeal and then move on to rewriting the tax code. Mulvaney made similar comments on CNN. Mulvaney said there are both procedural and political reasons to do the health-care repeal first, even though their effort failed once.

“There is the overall momentum,” Mulvaney said. “We think it's more ability to drive the debate on taxes after we fix health care. So I think generally speaking the plan is trying to do health care first.”

Trump’s comments on Fox Business suggested that the tax overhaul effort, despite months of work, still had a long way to go. For example, he was circumspect when asked about a controversial feature of the House GOP tax overhaul plan, called a border adjustment tax. The border adjustment tax would essentially raise taxes on imports but create incentives for exports, something top Republicans believe will encourage more U.S. investment. They have been pushing the White House to endorse the idea. White House officials have been all over the place on the idea, sometimes appearing to back it and other times suggesting it won’t work. Retailers and other businesses have tried hard to kill the idea, saying it will drive up their costs.

Trump, in the interview that aired Wednesday, said, “I haven't really wanted to talk about it. I have my own feelings. I don't like the word adjustment, because our country gets taken advantage of, to use a nice term, by every other country in the world.”

Instead, Trump said he wanted something that he called an “import tax” or a “reciprocal tax” or a “mirror tax” or a “matching tax.”

He floated the idea that the United States would essentially create an identical tax on a country-by-country basis to whatever import levies might be.

“When you say reciprocal tax, nobody can get angry,” he said. “Even the other countries, if like — if they're charging you a 50 percent tax, you say, okay, whatever you charge, we're charging.”

But Trump offered a big caveat on this idea when he added “I'm not saying that's what I'm doing.”

...

Re: the bolded statement: I think he's not saying that's what he's doing because he has no idea what he's doing.

[Cartmann99]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The WaPo did an annotated transcript of the tangerine toddler's interview on Fox Business. It's truly incredible. The man can't go more than a few minutes without praising himself.

   Um, can I wake up now? If we absolutely had to have a rich Republican for a president, couldn't we have had Jeb! or Romney? I don't like either one of them, but they are both sane, understand how government works, and are miles above this babbling moron!

[Penny]

21 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

   Um, can I wake up now? If we absolutely had to have a rich Republican for a president, couldn't we have had Jeb! or Romney? I don't like either one of them, but they are both sane, understand how government works, and are miles above this babbling moron!

I agree! 

[onekidanddone]

51 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

More whiplash from the West Wing: "Trump changes course again, says health-care repeal must happen before tax overhaul"

Re: the bolded statement: I think he's not saying that's what he's doing because he has no idea what he's doing.

Give it five minutes.  His little orange clump of of a shit mind will change again.

8 hours ago, JMarie said:

He's going on vacation, so the commercial watching will have to be put on hold.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-oreilly-vacation-fox-news_us_58ed861ce4b0c89f91228c52

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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-james-comey-good-hillary-clinton-article-1.3046663

So now he's better than FDR.

FDR was Hillary's fault.

[GreyhoundFan]

He really has no idea about economic policy, does he? "Donald Trump wants everything about America to be strong. He just announced one big exception."

Quote

As a candidate, President Trump emphasized American strength. As president, he is calling for a weak U.S. dollar, a departure from past presidents' economic policies.

Trump's support for a weak dollar, however, is no surprise. A weaker dollar — meaning a dollar that is less expensive in terms of foreign currency — would help achieve some of his major goals for the economy, especially stimulating U.S. manufacturing and limiting imports.

If foreigners can buy U.S. dollars cheaply, products made in the United States become cheaper for them. As a result, there is more demand for U.S. exports — a shift that would help Trump achieve his ongoing promise to reduce the U.S. trade deficit.

A strong dollar generally indicates that investors around the world are optimistic about the prospects for the U.S. economy. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump took credit for the strengthening dollar.

“I think our dollar is getting too strong, and partially that’s my fault because people have confidence in me. But that’s hurting — that will hurt ultimately,” Trump said, before suggesting that the phrase “strong dollar” could be misleading.

“Look, there’s some very good things about a strong dollar, but usually speaking the best thing about it is that it sounds good,” Trump said. “It’s very, very hard to compete when you have a strong dollar and other countries are devaluing their currency.”

For more than two decades, U.S. officials have consistently argued for a strong dollar — a rare point of bipartisan consensus in economic policy. Even Trump's treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said this year that a strong dollar was "a good thing” in the long run, while acknowledging negative consequences for manufacturers.

A strong dollar also draws in more immigrants from around the world. When immigrants can send more valuable dollars home to their families, working in the United States becomes more financially attractive. Limiting immigration has been another important feature of Trump's economic policy.

...

I'm surprised his ridiculously large ego can fit in the Oval Office.

 

 

Wait, what? "Trump on NATO: ‘I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete.’"

Quote

President Trump on Wednesday pledged his full support to NATO, reaffirming the United States' commitment to the alliance and saying he no longer considers it “obsolete,” a sharp reversal from his rhetoric on the campaign trail and during his first weeks in office.

On a day when Trump dramatically changed his stance on several policy positions, his statement about NATO stood out given his consistent criticism of the military alliance and its importance to U.S. allies.

For more than a year, Trump has said NATO is outdated and costing the United States too much money, suggesting replacing it with an alternative organization focused on counterterrorism and repeatedly using the word “obsolete.” As recently as January, Trump continued to stand by this position — which alarmed many NATO members — saying in a Jan. 15 interview with the Times of London and Germany’s Bild that NATO is “obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror” and that critics of his comments have “started saying Trump is right.”

During a joint news conference Wednesday afternoon with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump professed that his criticisms prompted the alliance to make changes that satisfied his concerns--though he did not specify what those were.

“I complained about that a long time ago, and they made a change — and now they do fight terrorism,” Trump said. “I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete.”

It's unclear what changes the president was referencing. NATO added a new assistant secretary general position focused on intelligence and security in July, although experts say the change does not mark a major shift for the organization and point out that NATO has long addressed concerns of terrorism. For months after the position was created, Trump continued to call NATO obsolete.

...

He's batshit crazy.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Coast Guard faces growing costs for protecting Trump’s Mar-a-Lago"

Quote

The U.S. Coast Guard has received no extra funding to cover the additional costs of protecting President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort during his frequent trips to the Florida estate, the service’s top official said Wednesday.

Adm. Paul Zukunft, the Coast Guard’s commandant, also provided new details about the challenges the service faces in safeguarding the Palm Beach property because of its waterfront exposure on two sides — the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Intracoastal Waterway to the west.

Whenever Trump visits, Zukunft said, the Coast Guard dispatches helicopters, patrol boats and anti-terrorism teams for round-the-clock patrols, Zukunft said during a breakfast with journalists.

“We have teams protecting the approaches to Mar-a-Lago on both coasts,” Zukunft said. “We’re also protecting in the air, as well,” he added, noting that the service watches for “low, slow fliers” and any other “potential aviation threat to our commander in chief.”

Asked about the costs of protecting Mar-a-Lago, Zukunft said officials were trying to determine a figure to provide to Congress, but that at the moment the service was working within existing funding constraints.

“Is there a supplemental to support this?” he said. “The answer is no.”

Zukunft’s comments highlight the growing costs to taxpayers of Trump’s lifestyle, including routine jaunts to Mar-a-Lago and the need to fortify Trump Tower in New York, where Trump’s wife and youngest son have chosen to live. Trump is expected to return to Mar-a-Lago this weekend for his seventh trip since the inauguration.

...

Trump has spent about 21 days at Mar-a-Lago this year. Based on a Washington Post review of estimates of past presidential trips and assessments of security costs, Trump’s continued travel there could drive the price tag for Coast Guard support at the estate into the tens of millions of dollars over a four-year term.

An MH-65 Dolphin helicopter, commonly used in air patrols like those over Mar-a-Lago, costs $7,533 an hour to run, or more than $180,000 for an all-day patrol, service financial documents show. An RB-S Defender-class response boat patrolling near Mar-a-Lago costs $1,434 an hour to run, or about $34,400 a day.

When President Barack Obama flew to South Florida for a weekend in 2013, the Coast Guard spent about $586,000 to patrol waterways and cover official travel and lodging costs, according to a Government Accountability Office report last year.

When the president is in town, the Coast Guard also establishes three wide-ranging “security zones” along the Palm Beach shorelines and in the nearby Lake Worth Lagoon, which are guarded by gunboat.

The Coast Guard’s budget is only a fraction of the government money spent toward protecting the president’s estate. Palm Beach County spends more than $60,000 a day toward overtime for deputies and other costs when the president is in town, local-government officials said.

The Secret Service has also faced an additional budgetary strain. The agency requested $60 million in funding on top of its traditional budget for the next year to help pay for the travel of the president and top-ranking officials, as well as the protection of the Trump family’s private home in Trump Tower, according to internal documents reviewed by The Post.

...

He just keeps costing us more and more.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s weather-vane presidency gyrates wildly with the winds"

Quote

President Trump rose to power on a combination of meanness, incoherence and falsehoods. His strategy depended almost entirely on playing off the unpopularity and weaknesses of others.

Every aspect of his approach has blown up on him since he took office, but as is always the case with Trump, he will not take any personal responsibility for what’s going wrong. He must find a scapegoat. The latest object of his opprobrium would seem to be Stephen K. Bannon, the chief White House strategist.

But dumping Bannon would only underscore the extent to which Trump is a political weather vane, gyrating wildly with the political winds. He’s “populist” one day, conventionally conservative the next and centrist the day after that. His implicit response is: Who cares? Let’s just get through another week.

At the moment, he is basking in praise from large parts of the foreign policy establishment for his decision to fire missiles into Syria. This is the hour of maximum danger for Bannon. Trump may now figure he should ride for a while with his newfound friends in the elite. The presence of the disheveled, ultra-nationalist Bannon just won’t do at the tony country-club party Trump wants to throw for himself.

And so Trump, in an interview with the New York Post’s Michael Goodwin, did to Bannon what he has done to everyone else: He offered an entirely misleading account of their relationship.

“I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump said. “I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.”

Hmm. Contrary to Trump’s claim, he has known Bannon since 2011 and appeared nine times on Bannon’s radio show. Just a few months ago, Bannon was cast as the political genius who saw the electoral potential in the Midwestern swing states. But with Trump, every good idea is his idea and every failure belongs to someone else, so Bannon is now an afterthought.

The weather vane will twirl again soon because Trump faces renewed trouble, on an old front and a new one.

Trump has gone to great lengths — including lying about former president Barack Obama having his “wires tapped” — to distract from inquiries into his campaign’s possible ties to Russia’s effort to subvert the 2016 election.

But Tuesday brought a reminder that the story won’t go away until it’s resolved. The Post reported that the FBI obtained an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor the communications of the man Trump once listed as a foreign policy adviser, Carter Page. (Trump has since downgraded Page’s role to “low-level.”) The news was an indication of the seriousness of the investigation of links between Trump’s campaign and Russia. While Trump hopes that his administration’s complete about-face on Vladimir Putin — from fawning praise to hostility — will settle the matter, it won’t.

And then the good people of Kansas’s 4th Congressional District cast ballots in a special election on Tuesday. While Republican Ron Estes won the seat over Democrat James Thompson, Estes’s winning margin of nearly 7 percentage points was anemic compared with Trump’s 27-point win in the district last year. And Republican Mike Pompeo, whose appointment as Trump’s CIA director created the opening, was reelected last year by a margin of 31  percentage points.

This swing will petrify Republicans in Congress who, up to now, have largely stayed in line behind Trump. It’s also likely to give additional spine to Trump’s GOP critics, both on the far right and closer to the center.

The energy in politics is now clearly on the anti-Trump side. Republicans will surely notice the sharp falloff in loyalist turnout in Republican bastions. Last year, for example, Trump carried Harper County, south of Wichita, with 1,996 votes to 393 for Clinton. Estes could manage only 837 votes there, to 307 for Thompson. And energized Democrats swung big Sedgwick County, which includes Wichita, from Trump to Thompson.

As Trump’s comments to Goodwin showed, he still longs to run against “crooked Hillary.” He also still loves to bash Obama. But Trump is on his own, with only his own record to answer for. He can let go of Bannon and anyone else he wants to blame for the chaos of his presidency. But governing is hard, especially when your principles are as flexible as your relationship with the truth.

...

 

[Cartmann99]

New Keith Olbermann video about President Jackass:

 

[Howl]

Olbermann is awesome.  I hadn't come across him until FJ, so thank you, @Cartmann99! 

And now more jackass-ery:  "Trump Threatens to stop Obamacare payments"  to force Democrats to negotiate. What we've all been waiting for (not): chaos in the health care system.  Nobody, except Trump, thinks this is a good idea. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, thanks, Agent Orange: "Global stocks drop after Trump talks down dollar"

Quote

BEIJING — Global stock markets turned lower and the dollar was volatile Thursday after President Donald Trump withdrew a threat to declare China a currency manipulator and said the U.S. currency was “getting too strong.” Tensions over North Korea also weighed on investors ahead of a long weekend in many markets.

KEEPING SCORE: In Europe, London’s FTSE-100 lost 0.6 percent to 7,307 and France’s CAC-40 shed 0.6 percent to 5,072. German’s DAX slid 0.4 percent to 12,108. On Wall Street, the future for the Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.2 percent and that for the Standard & Poor’s 500 was off 0.3 percent.

BEIJING — Global stock markets turned lower and the dollar was volatile Thursday after President Donald Trump withdrew a threat to declare China a currency manipulator and said the U.S. currency was “getting too strong.” Tensions over North Korea also weighed on investors ahead of a long weekend in many markets.

KEEPING SCORE: In Europe, London’s FTSE-100 lost 0.6 percent to 7,307 and France’s CAC-40 shed 0.6 percent to 5,072. German’s DAX slid 0.4 percent to 12,108. On Wall Street, the future for the Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.2 percent and that for the Standard & Poor’s 500 was off 0.3 percent.

DOLLAR TALK: On the dollar’s exchange rate against those of major trading partners, Trump said: “I think our dollar is getting too strong, and partially that’s my fault because people have confidence in me.” He added that “It’s very, very hard to compete when you have a strong dollar and other countries are devaluing their currency.” Those remarks helped push the yen to its highest level since mid-November, just after the presidential election.

CURRENCY: After slumping in the wake of Trump’s comments, the dollar steadied at 109.10 yen, compared with Wednesday’s 108.80 yen. The euro edged down to $1.0634 from $1.0665.

ANALYST VIEWPOINT: “After a few weeks of relative calm, the ‘Trump hurricane’ is back to disrupt the tranquility in the currency markets,” said Margaret Yang of CMC Markets in a commentary. “I describe Trump’s influence on currencies as a hurricane as it’s both harmful and unpredictable. It is debatable whether Trump can have both a weak currency and massive fiscal stimulus at the same time.”

...

Yeah, he is like a hurricane--loud and destructive.

[Childless]

13 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

He really has no idea about economic policy, does he? "Donald Trump wants everything about America to be strong. He just announced one big exception."

I'm surprised his ridiculously large ego can fit in the Oval Office.

 

 

Wait, what? "Trump on NATO: ‘I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete.’"

He's batshit crazy.

Sure he loves NATO now that he needs their help in Syria.  Wanker.

[GreyhoundFan]

Flip-flop: "Trump backs off fiscal pledges and adopts centrist policies that he once fought"

Quote

President Trump is abandoning a number of his key campaign promises on economic policy, adopting instead many of the centrist positions he railed against while campaigning as a populist.

Trump will not label China a “currency manipulator,” he told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, despite a campaign pledge that he would apply the label on his first day in office. He also said he was open to reappointing Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet L. Yellen after saying last year that the central banker should be “ashamed” of what she was doing to the country.

And he embraced the Export-Import Bank, a government agency that he mocked last year and that has long been despised by conservatives who labeled it crony capitalism.

The statements represent a move toward the economic policies of more centrist Republicans and even at times align with the approach of former president Barack Obama. Should he follow through on the newly articulated positions, it would suggest that the candidate who ran as the ultimate outsider is increasingly adopting a more moderate economic agenda.

The reversals come amid a period of rapid evolution for Trump on both foreign and domestic issues.

Trump’s commitment to repealing the Affordable Care Act has wavered. On Wednesday, he said repealing the Affordable Care Act needed to be Congress’s main priority after scrapping the effort several weeks ago.

On the global stage, Trump’s reversals have been even sharper. Last week, he ordered airstrikes against the Syrian military, even though he promised during the campaign to keep the United States out of conflicts in the Middle East.

He is also adopting the Obama administration’s call to oust Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, a position he refused to take during the campaign. The shift on Syria enraged some of Trump’s campaign supporters who had embraced his isolationist foreign policy.

Trump has also sharpened his criticism of Russia, a major break from the praise he lavished on Russian President Vladimir Putin during the campaign.

...

Many of Trump’s new positions show his shift away from a populist platform embraced by the Republican Party’s most conservative members. For example, in 2015, he said the Export-Import Bank was not “necessary” because it mainly helped a few large companies that did not need assistance. The agency essentially offers financing support for companies that export goods overseas, helping many U.S. companies reach new markets.

In the Wall Street Journal interview, Trump rejected his past thinking on this, saying that “lots of small companies are really helped” and that “it’s a very good thing.”

Others have found his changes reassuring. Barry Bosworth, a senior fellow in the economic studies program at the Brookings Institution, said, “Boy, what a surprise to find that he’s moved so far.”

“The president’s positions were ‘shoot from the hip,’ and, basically, I think the professional economists found it absurd,” Bosworth said. “To observe that he’s willing to move back towards a more rational policy, even while he’s being pushed in the opposite direction [by some advisers] . . . to me, it says the president listens to common sense. In that respect, I think it’s encouraging.”

Trump’s new statements may not reflect a permanent change of view, as the president’s policies have been continually fluid since he entered politics. Trump has floated different ideas on how to pay for new infrastructure projects and how to rework the tax code, even though he is not committed to those ideas and the planning remains in flux.

And despite his move toward more conventional policies, the president on Wednesday again demonstrated he is willing to defy many norms.

Past presidents have typically refrained from commenting on the value of the dollar or the interest rate set by the Federal Reserve for fear of upsetting markets.

...

 

[candygirl200413]

Breaking News

U.S. Drops One of Its Largest Non-Nuclear Bombs on ISIS Target in Afghanistan

The war is coming soon, I feel it.

[iweartanktops]

5 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

Breaking News

U.S. Drops One of Its Largest Non-Nuclear Bombs on ISIS Target in Afghanistan

The war is coming soon, I feel it.

Well.... Fuck. I don't know what to say. 

[GreyhoundFan]

As if the bombing in Afghanistan isn't bad enough, the NYT is reporting that 18 fighters allied with the US were killed by allied forces in Syria this week.

Quote

WASHINGTON — An airstrike by the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State killed 18 Syrian fighters allied with the United States, the military said on Thursday.

The strike, on Tuesday in Tabqah, Syria, was the third time in a month that American-led airstrikes may have killed civilians or allies, and it comes even as the Pentagon is investigating two previous airstrikes that killed or wounded scores of civilians in a mosque complex in Syria and in a building in the west of Mosul, Iraq.

Tuesday’s strike was requested by coalition allies who were on the ground near Tabqah, the United States Central Command, which oversees combat operations in the Middle East, said in a statement. The fighters had called in the airstrikes and “identified the target location as an ISIS fighting position,” it said, using another name for the Islamic State.

The Central Command statement said that the target location turned out to be a “fighting position” for the Syrian Democratic Forces, who have been fighting the Islamic State alongside the United States.

It was unclear whether the strike came from an American warplane or one from the other coalition partners.

“The coalition’s deepest condolences go out to the members of the S.D.F. and their families,” Central Command said in the statement, calling the episode “tragic.” Military officials said the cause is being investigated.

...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh: "Trump Signs Law Taking Aim at Planned Parenthood Funding"

Quote

WASHINGTON — President Trump signed legislation on Thursday aimed at cutting off federal funding to Planned Parenthood and other groups that perform abortions, a move cheered by conservatives who have clamored to impose curbs on reproductive rights.

The measure nullifies a rule finalized in the last days of the Obama administration that effectively barred state and local governments from withholding federal funding for family planning services related to contraception, sexually transmitted infections, fertility, pregnancy care, and breast and cervical cancer screening from qualified health providers — regardless of whether they also performed abortions. The new measure cleared Congress last month with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tiebreaking vote in the Senate.

The previous Department of Health and Human Services regulation, which took effect two days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, said that states and localities could not withhold money from a provider for any reason other than an inability to provide family planning services.

Mr. Trump has shown ambivalence about Planned Parenthood, voicing support for its health-related services other than abortion, and his daughter Ivanka has urged him to tread carefully on the issue, concerned about the possible political repercussions of the Republican effort to defund the organization altogether. As a middle ground, Mr. Trump has proposed preserving federal funding for Planned Parenthood if it stops providing abortion services.

But the organization has said it will never accept such a deal. And federal law already prohibits government funding for abortion, except in cases of rape or incest, or to save a woman’s life.

Regardless of his misgivings about the effort, Mr. Trump appeared ready to accept congressional Republicans’ idea of using a broad health care overhaul to strip all federal funds from Planned Parenthood. When the Freedom Caucus, a conservative faction of House Republicans, refused to support legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act last month, Mr. Trump took to Twitter to denounce the group, saying it had “saved Planned Parenthood.”

...

 

[CrazyLurkerLady]

I don't understand why he's so determined to start a war. It's like he's insulting and/or bombing everybody he can think of in hopes of starting a war with one of them. Or is it just that he's so used to building himself up by putting others down and now he can do that on the ultimate level? 

I am so, so scared.