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2 hours ago, danvillebelle said:

Same.  

I think he will win again in November because the DNC is just as corrupt as the lot of them and will not allow a viable progressive candidate to get anywhere near the nomination.  I am 50; I no longer expect any of it to get any better within my lifetime.  It's only going to get worse.  

Me too. I think the DNC will fuck this up so much that we will basically hand this to Trump. He won't need to cheat to win. 

I'm preparing myself for another four years of him. 

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Just now, formergothardite said:

Me too. I think the DNC will fuck this up so much that we will basically hand this to Trump. He won't need to cheat to win. 

I'm preparing myself for another four years of him. 

Same.

I realize it's not the most honorable approach, but I'm drawing myself back from politics a lot and kind of checking out. (I'll obviously still vote in November though.) I'm just so depressed and frustrated with the whole lot of them. 

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This crap is just going to get worse. "Secret Service has paid rates as high as $650 a night for rooms at Trump’s properties"

Spoiler

President Trump’s company charges the Secret Service for the rooms agents use while protecting him at his luxury properties — billing U.S. taxpayers at rates as high as $650 per night, according to federal records and people who have seen receipts.

Those charges, compiled here for the first time, show that Trump has an unprecedented — and largely hidden — business relationship with his own government. When Trump visits his clubs in Palm Beach, Fla., and Bedminster, N.J., the service needs space to post guards and store equipment.

Trump’s company says it charges only minimal fees. But Secret Service records do not show that.

At Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, the Secret Service was charged the $650 rate dozens of times in 2017, and a different rate, $396.15, dozens more times in 2018, according to documents from Trump’s visits.

And at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, the Secret Service was charged $17,000 a month to use a three-bedroom cottage on the property, an unusually high rent for homes in that area, according to receipts from 2017. Trump’s company billed the government even for days when Trump wasn’t there.

These payments appear to contradict the Trump Organization’s own statements about what it charges members of his government entourage. “If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free — meaning, like, cost for housekeeping,” Trump’s son Eric said in a Yahoo Finance interview last year.

The full extent of the Secret Service’s payments to Trump’s company is not known. The Secret Service has not listed them in public databases of federal spending, as is usually required for payments over $10,000.

Instead, documents have come out piecemeal, through public records requests from news organizations and watchdog groups. The Washington Post compiled available records and found 103 payments from the Secret Service to Trump’s company dated between January 2017 and April 2018.

The records show more than $471,000 in payments from taxpayers to Trump’s companies. But — because these records cover only a fraction of Trump’s travel during a fraction of his term — the actual total is likely to be higher.

“It is more than a little disconcerting, knowing this is going on, and not knowing what the actual numbers are,” said Jordan Libowitz, of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “That’s kind of crazy that we know the president is benefiting from the presidency, and we do not know how. We do not know how many taxpayer dollars are in his pocket.”

The White House did not respond to questions about Trump’s knowledge of these payments.

In a statement, the Secret Service said that its spending “balances operational security with judicious allocation of resources.” By law, Secret Service agents are exempt from the government’s usual per diem spending limits while they are protecting the president. The Secret Service did not respond to a question about why the purchases weren’t listed in public databases.

Trump still owns his company. In response to questions from The Post, a company spokesperson said Mar-a-Lago does not charge the Secret Service $650 per room but did not address whether it had charged that rate in the past. The company also noted that the rental cottage at Bedminster contains “multiple rooms and [includes] numerous common spaces.”

The company did not answer questions about the rates it charges the Secret Service now.

“We provide the rooms at cost and could make far more money renting them to members or guests,” Trump Organization Executive Vice President Eric Trump said in a statement. He gave no details about how the company calculates the “at-cost” price.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump told voters that — if he was elected — he would not have time for travel.

“I would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” Trump told the Hill in a June 2015 interview. “I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off.”

But since taking office, Trump has spent more than 342 days — a third of his entire presidency — at his private clubs and hotels, according to a tally by The Post. Trump has said he works during these trips.

The Secret Service always comes with him, as it does with all presidents. But the Trump Organization has assured the public that it is giving the government a great deal. Last year, Eric Trump told Yahoo Finance that when his father does visit his properties, he is legally required to charge something.

Eric Trump did not say what law required Trump to charge his own government, and the Secret Service did not respond to questions asking what law he was referring to. The Secret Service is part of the Department of Homeland Security, whose internal directives state, “DHS may accept gifts to carry out program functions.”

“If he stays at one of his places, the government actually . . . saves a fortune because, if they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like 50 bucks,” Eric Trump said.

That appears to be wrong.

The Secret Service is required to tell Congress twice a year about what it spends to protect Trump at his properties.

But since 2016, it has only filed two of the required six reports, according to congressional offices. The reasons, according to Secret Service officials: key personnel left and nobody picked up the job.

Even in those two reports, the lines for Bedminster and Mar-a-Lago were blank.

The Secret Service officials said only that they abide by the law, but they did not elaborate. They are probably referring to a provision that requires them to tell Congress about “permanent” costs. They may not consider anything they’ve done at either club permanent.

Senate Democrats have asked the Trump administration to provide more details on the costs of Trump’s travel as part of negotiations over a bill governing the Secret Service. But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has told the Senate committee that he opposes a requirement to deliver those details until December 2020 at the earliest, which falls after the election.

“They’ve really stonewalled us,” said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.). “He’s trying to hide the details from the public, because he knows how bad it looks. That’s the truth of it. He’s a billionaire, but we’re spending millions of dollars to support his for-profit clubs and for-profit businesses.”

The Post sought to quantify one part of that spending — the money that goes directly to Trump’s own businesses.

Most of the 103 payments discovered by The Post went to just three Trump properties: the Trump International Hotel in Washington and the president’s clubs at Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster.

They showed that Trump had quickly shattered past precedent. Other recent presidents have allowed the Secret Service to use their properties — George H.W. Bush’s compound in Maine, Bill Clinton’s home in suburban New York, George W. Bush’s ranch in Texas — free, according to the Secret Service and spokespeople for those former presidents.

The Post could find only one other recent example of a president or vice president charging his own Secret Service rent. Former vice president Joe Biden charged $2,200 a month for a cottage on his property in Delaware. Unlike the payments to Trump, Biden’s payments were listed in public spending databases. Biden was paid a total of $171,600 over six years.

Trump exceeded that total within three months, records show.

In February 2017, for instance, Trump made his first presidential trip to Mar-a-Lago — a for-profit club with guest rooms and suites available to members. The Secret Service sent dozens of people. Most of them stayed at other hotels nearby.

But they also rented at least three rooms at Mar-a-Lago, records show.

The rate: $650 per night, according to two people who saw receipts. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

That was more than triple the normal limit on federal spending for a hotel room in that area, which was $182. It was even more than what the State Department paid for rooms at Mar-a-Lago around the same time, which was $520 to $546.

“The operational needs of the Secret Service can differ from those in the Department of State,” a Secret Service spokeswoman said, to explain why their rooms had cost more than the State Department’s.

Presidents are exempt from federal conflict-of-interest rules. And the Secret Service is exempt from hotel-room spending limits.

So Trump’s company was free to charge what it wanted.

And, according to one former senior administration official with direct knowledge of the operation, his club often treated the Secret Service like any other customer. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve relationships with the Trump administration.

“The club wanted to charge the rack rate,” the former official said, saying that sometimes officials had to call Eric Trump to lobby for a lower rate. “The club managers were not always that accommodating.”

In 2018, the room rate charged to the Secret Service was lower: $396.15 per night, according to public records obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch. One possible reason for the drop in price: The 2018 receipts list the Secret Service as an “honorary member” of the club, which could have made it eligible for a member discount.

But in 2018, receipts show, the Secret Service tended to book more rooms and stay longer than they had in 2017 — in one case, when Trump came for two weekends in a row, the Secret Service rented four rooms for nine nights apiece. They stayed all week, even while Trump was gone.

In Bedminster, records show, the Secret Service went further: It paid not by the day — but for a whole month at a time. The Secret Service rented the club’s “Sarazen Cottage,” a three-bedroom building near Trump’s own villa, from July 1 to Oct. 1, 2017.

The former senior administration official said the cottage was needed to store equipment and provided living space for five or six agents. So — even though Trump was only there about a third of the time — the equipment was there every day. So they paid every day.

“You can’t rent the villa part of the year to someone else because it has to stay a Secret Service space,” said the official.

The Trump club does not publish data on the normal rates for these cottages — even to its own members. They are told to contact management for a quote, according to member brochures obtained by The Post.

But the rate of $17,000 per month seems unusually high for a monthly rental. Since fall 2017, there have been 100 rental listings for homes with three or more bedrooms in Bedminster, according to the website Zillow.com. None were anywhere near Trump’s rate; the average rental rate was $3,400, and the highest rent listed on Zillow was $8,500. Trump charged twice that.

It is unclear whether the monthly payments to Trump’s company began earlier or continued after the date of the last record. Documents obtained by Property of the People — a watchdog group set up to seek documents on Trump’s administration — also appear to show the $17,000 per month rate being paid in May 2017.

And former housekeepers from the Bedminster club have said that the Secret Service continued to use the cottage long after these records end, through 2018.

Another visitor to the club — who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve access to the club — reported seeing Secret Service agents in the cottage as recently as December.

The Secret Service did not answer questions about whether it was still paying.

The many gaps in the Secret Service data leave many unanswered questions.

Among them: Why were these payments to Trump’s clubs not listed in public databases of federal spending, such as usaspending.gov? The Secret Service has publicly listed many other transactions related to Trump’s stays at his clubs — rentals of golf carts, tents and portable toilets.

But it has not listed any of these payments to Trump’s own businesses.

“It is a surprise” that these payments are not listed, said Sean Moulton of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight. Without public data about payments to Trump, he said, “the public doesn’t even know the questions they should be asking.”

Also: Why did the Secret Service spend so much at Trump’s D.C. hotel, a place where — unlike Bedminster and Mar-a-Lago — Trump has not stayed overnight since taking office? In response to records request from NBC News, the Department of Homeland Security released a listing of 39 payments there during Trump’s first year, totaling $159,000.

The documents do not give the reasons for those payments — or give the rate that Trump’s company charged.

 

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Democrats are just ridiculously bad at conveying their positive messages and highlighting the negatives in the GOP. So, so bad at it. Trump is giving them plenty of material to attack him with that could appeal to many voters. But instead they get sucked into talking about letting criminals vote and other stuff like that and that is all that people remember. 

Trump is absolutely going to win this if democrats continue on like they are doing now. I really think the impeachment was a terrible idea because to way, way too many people it will look like he was vindicated. Democrats have to start hitting him where it hurts. They need to make how much money he costs tax payers front and center. They need to continually harp on how his finances are shady.  

This election is being given to Trump on a gold platter right now because the democrats are floundering. If Trump wins the democratic party needs to just close up shop and let a new party emerge. 

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19 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"In Unhinged Propaganda Rally, Trump Proclaims Victory After Impeachment Acquittal"

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In more than an hour of improvisational ramblings that appeared more like fascist propaganda than a White House event, President Donald Trump on Thursday declared victory the day after Senate Republicans acquitted him in impeachment proceedings that were largely favorable toward him.

As the former reality television host walked to his lectern, he received a standing ovation while “Hail to the Chief” played, before launching into an unhinged riff targeting some of his favorite and most frequently mentioned subjects, listing them off in a Mad Libs-like frenzy.

The speech, which resembled his ad-libbed campaign rallies, was held in the East Room, typically reserved for more measured and sometimes somber official White House events.

“We had the witch hunt. It started the day we came down the elevator,” he said, referring to his campaign launch in June of 2015. “And it never really stopped.”

“It was evil, it was corrupt, it was dirty cops, it was leakers, it was liars, and no president should ever have to go through this,” he continued. “Dirty cops. Bad people.”

“We went through hell, unfairly,” Trump continued, after pontificating on various subjects, as he does at his campaign rallies. “We did nothing wrong.”

He then held up the front page of Thursday’s Washington Post, with the headline “Trump Acquitted.”

“It’s the only good headline I’ve ever had in The Washington Post,” he said of the newspaper, a frequent subject of his attacks against the media.

“We first went through Russia, Russia, Russia. It was all bullshit,” he continued, with his remarks turning into a comedy roast at times.

At the end of his hour-plus remarks, he offered his only apology: to his family “for having them have to go through a phony, rotten deal by some very evil and sick people.”

On Wednesday, in an expected party-line vote, the Republican majority in the Senate voted to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. During the trial, they voted down Democrats’ efforts to demand witness testimony and documents, which Trump and the White House had repeatedly refused to provide.

Only one Republican, Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), joined the Democratic minority in voting to convict Trump on the abuse of power article.

“The president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust,” he said on the Senate floor. “What he did was not perfect. No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security and our fundamental values.”

Trump and his allies immediately began attacking the senator and 2012 Republican presidential nominee, including spreading conspiracy theories, such as suggesting “slick, slippery, stealthy Mitt Romney” threw the 2012 race, which he lost to President Barack Obama.

Earlier Thursday, Trump also went after Romney in a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, traditionally a venue where presidents have promoted bipartisanship.

Instead, Trump treated the event — attended by lawmakers of both parties, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — as an airing of grievances.

“As everybody knows, my family, our great country and your president have been put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people,” he said. “They have done everything possible to destroy us and by so doing very badly hurt our nation.”

His East Room remarks were similarly an airing of grievances, before turning into an extended thank-you speech, as if he were accepting an Academy Award. He devoted much of his remarks to thanking numerous Republican lawmakers and allies, sometimes taking personal credit for their electoral victories.

While thanking House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), Trump spent several minutes graphically detailing the 2017 shooting that wounded Scalise and several other lawmakers, police officers and aides.

At several points, he described multiple GOP representatives as “straight out of central casting,” underscoring the speech as a self-indulgent spectacle — fit for a former reality television show host obsessed with the performance of being president. 

I couldn't bring myself to watch the dotard's rambling.

Just watching excerpts on Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers’s shows was hard enough.

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As much as there's a problem in the DNC, part of the issue lies with voters, as in - "If my candidate doesn't win - I'm staying home!". This poll shows the percentage of voters who will vote or not based on if their candidate wins the primary. Some of the results are disturbing. I get voting according to your beliefs and conscious. That's what the primary is for - I certainly have my favorite. You can better believe though, that no matter who comes out of the primary for the Dems - I'm voting for them! The alternative is so, so much worse. In this case, perfect is the enemy of good. 

http://emersonpolling.com/2020/01/24/national-2020-biden-and-sanders-battle-in-two-way-race-for-democratic-nomination/

 

natjan2.png

Edited by AnywhereButHere
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Sigh: "Individual members of Congress barred from suing President Trump over business dealings"

Spoiler

Individual members of Congress cannot sue President Trump to stop his private businesses from accepting payments from foreign governments, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled Friday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously dismissed a lawsuit filed by more than 200 Democrats in Congress seeking to enforce the Constitution’s anti-corruption emoluments provision.

“The Members can, and likely will, continue to use their weighty voices to make their case to the American people, their colleagues in the Congress and the President himself, all of whom are free to engage that argument as they see fit. But we will not—indeed we cannot—participate in this debate,” according to the unsigned order from Judges David S. Tatel, Thomas B. Griffith and Karen LeCraft Henderson.

The ruling from three judges appointed by presidents across the political spectrum is a blow to several efforts in court to challenge Trump’s alleged self-dealing through his private businesses.

The rarely tested language at issue in the case bars U.S. officials from accepting payments, benefits or other “emoluments” from foreign governments without consent from Congress. The provisions once appeared to be a prime opportunity for Trump’s critics to force the president to change his business tactics or at least get him to disclose more about his company.

Instead the Congressional case has been tossed and a second case brought by the attorneys general of D.C. and Maryland would be withdrawn if Trump sells the lease for his hotel in downtown Washington, which his company is working on right now.

Justice Department lawyers, defending the president, said the ban refers narrowly to compensation in exchange for official action or in an employment-type relationship — and does not broadly include any profit, gain or advantage.

Spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Friday the department is “very pleased” with the outcome.

Constitutional Accountability Center President Elizabeth Wydra, who represented the lamakers at oral argument, said “we’re disappointed in the panel’s decision and are considering next steps.”

Lawmakers could ask the full court to rehear the case or seek review from the Supreme Court, but that seems less likely because the D.C. Circuit decision was unanimous. Tatel was tapped by Bill Clinton; Griffith by George W. Bush and Henderson by George H. W. Bush.

The ruling did not address the underlying merits of the challenge or how to define an “emolument,” but rather who has the right to sue.

The 12-page opinion pointed to past Supreme Court decisions, which the judges said bar individual lawmakers from bringing lawsuits on behalf of the entire body in part because Congress acts through majority votes in the House and Senate.

“Our conclusion is straightforward because the Members—29 Senators and 186 Members of the House of Representatives—do not constitute a majority of either body and are, therefore, powerless to approve or deny the President’s acceptance of foreign emoluments,” the court ruled.

After oral argument in December, one of the lead plaintiffs in the case, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) rejected the idea that such a lawsuit must come from the entire legislature.

“Individual members of Congress simply cannot do their job,” he said, if there is no legal right or standing to sue.

The lawsuit is one of three similar cases pending in appeals courts, one step below the Supreme Court, intended to reveal details about the president’s closely held business interests.

The congressional case extends beyond Trump’s luxury hotel in downtown Washington, which he leases from the federal government and where the governments of Kuwait, Malaysia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and others have paid to hold events or book rooms.

The congressional case reached the D.C. appeals court after Judge Emmet G. Sullivan cleared the way for lawmakers to issue 37 subpoenas seeking financial information, interviews and other records, including ones related to Trump Tower and his Mar-a-Lago Club in South Florida.

But that request went on hold after the appeals court stepped in midstream and intervened — at Trump’s request and with Sullivan’s consent — to consider the untested separation-of-powers issues.

 

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*adds “Shitbiscuit” to list of nicknames*

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6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

And the audience not only applauded, but applauded and stood up? WTF???

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For those who have never been to DC, federal buildings here are beautiful and tasteful. We don't need them turned into tacky gold crap. "Why Trump shouldn’t be allowed to dictate how federal buildings are designed"

Spoiler

A little-known architectural design group is advocating new guidelines that could radically change the look and feel of federal buildings in the nation’s capital. The proposed executive order, circulating in draft form, mandates that new federal buildings, especially those in and around the District of Columbia, be built in “classical architectural style.”

The White House declined to comment on the document, which the New York Times reported earlier this week has been spearheaded by the National Civic Art Society, an educational nonprofit group that appears to be aligning its agenda with that of the Trump administration. The proposed guidelines have roiled architectural circles in Washington, drawn a rebuke from the American Institute of Architects (“The AIA strongly opposes uniform style mandates for federal architecture,” the group said) and introduced the NCAS to a much wider public than it has enjoyed in the past.

When the society was beginning to get attention about a decade ago, it often seemed to be a one- or two-man operation. Justin Shubow, one of the group’s leaders, would show up at public hearings and other events and inveigh angrily, if not always coherently, against modern and postmodern architecture. The Frank Gehry-designed memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower, which opens in May, was a favorite target of his ire.

Now Shubow, who is not an architect or professional designer, has a presidentially appointed seat on the Commission of Fine Arts, the independent federal agency that oversees the design of the nation’s capital. And the National Civic Art Society, which has attracted a powerful and wealthy board, is proposing an enormous change not just to the design of federal buildings, but also to an oversight process that has largely succeeded, for more than a century, in holding architects to a high level of professionalism when creating new structures in the capital. If adopted, the executive order would be the most significant attempt yet to insert the new politics of populism into the world of art, aesthetics and design.

Shubow, now the NCAS president, didn’t return messages seeking comment.

The executive order, first reported by Architectural Record, is a seven-page document — part ode to the beauty and dignity of the buildings created under the discriminating eye of the CFA more than a century ago, part tirade against more recent styles labeled “brutalism” and “deconstructivism.”

The White House declined to comment on the document.

Like the early rhetorical efforts of the NCAS, the proposed guidelines are full of holes and confusion, and the draft document, obtained by The Post, doesn’t look terribly professional. It is printed on plain paper, includes colloquial phrases such as “just plain ugly” and offers broad and clumsy definitions of architectural styles. But there are details that read as though someone is attempting to get President Trump to endorse an order that would undo decades of professional design oversight.

It would, for example, be directed at all federal courthouses and agency headquarters, all federal buildings in the D.C. area, and all federal buildings expected to cost “more than $50 million,” while excluding infrastructure (postmodern highway bridges and pipelines are apparently okay) and “land ports of entry” (visitors and immigrants don’t deserve a “dignified” and inspiring doorway when they come to the United States).

More troubling is the document’s creation of a new “President’s Committee for the Re-Beautification of Federal Architecture,” which would effectively override the independent CFA and might allow the White House to intervene in major architectural decisions. And it’s clear from the language of the proposed order that the president is the draft order’s target audience, from its title (“Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again”) to explicit language endorsing “Spanish colonial and other Mediterranean styles generally found in Florida,” thus including Trump’s privately owned Mar-a-Lago resort in the fold of acceptable “traditional” styles.

This is a document carefully tailored to a particular grievance-ridden form of populism. Another provision could effectively exclude any artists, architects, designers, critics or engineers “directly affected by the construction or remodeling” of federal buildings from participating in public panels about federal design projects. That is a breathtaking assault on freedom of expression, packaged as sop to members of the public who feel they aren’t regularly heard or given deference in public discourse. Most sane people who attend public architecture panels will roll their eyes at least occasionally at the pomposity or vaporous pretension of some panelist or other, but that is hardly grounds for blanket exclusion of professional opinion.

Today’s Trump-driven populism is turning out to be enormously expensive, and this executive order would only add to the tab. Although it has a few clauses allowing the General Services Administration — the federal government’s landlord, which would implement these changes — to consider the costs of implementing the guidelines, the executive order would create a situation in which costs would inevitably balloon. The guidelines would apply not only to new construction, but also to remodeling and rebuilding projects. They could effectively limit the number of architects who would compete for federal projects, giving the government fewer options when it considers proposals.

And they would limit the flexibility of architects to find efficient solutions to basic problems. When news of the proposed order first leaked, it seemed like an Ozzie-and-Harriet document, a nostalgia-propelled diktat meant to make America look like every building was a bank or library built in 1920. But this isn’t the architectural equivalent of requiring federal workers to wear knee breeches and a tricorn hats. It is the architectural equivalent of making every federal contractor use a hammer and nails, exclusively; no other tools allowed. It is an attempt to mandate (with only a few exceptions) a single solution to all architectural problems.

Consider the range of those issues, especially today, when architects who design for the federal government must not only produce buildings with the requisite office space and other functions, but also buildings that are secure from terrorist threats; buildings that create a healthy, livable environment for their users; buildings that are sensitive to their context and minimize the costs and other impacts of energy use. Retrofitting Washington to deal with terror threats has effectively subverted the symbolism of classical buildings like the U.S. Supreme Court, where visitors no longer use the main porticoed entrance — a symbol of openness, dignity and access — and must enter through the sides, where they can be screened.

Energy-efficient buildings use a range of design elements that were never a part of the architectural vocabulary of Michelangelo and Palladio, two of the architects mentioned as representative of the preferred classical style. It isn’t clear that the public considers these green elements, including access to outdoor spaces and the incorporation of natural elements and materials, to be dehumanizing.

But this isn’t about giving the public what it wants. It’s about sending everyone to their default battle lines, making it seem as if there is no middle ground between liking traditional architecture and liking contemporary architecture. And that’s what makes the new document almost as risible as the old fulminating style of the National Civic Art Society partisans a decade ago. It is so old-fashioned.

Contemporary architecture is in a pretty good place right now, with old ideological arguments about classicism, modernism and postmodernism mostly dead issues. The focus among professional architects is the creation of effective buildings, buildings that don’t solve every problem with hammer and nails, buildings that finesse elegant solutions to a growing list of architectural needs and necessities. Reading this proposed order will give anyone who grew up in the supercharged academic climate of the 1980s or ’90s a little PTSD — it’s that over-the-top angry about issues most people simply don’t argue about anymore.

But we’ve learned the hard way that we can’t expect things that are patently ridiculous to go away of their own accord. We’ve seen how people with thin résumés and overweening ambition can insert themselves into institutional chaos, and prevail by turning up the volume until all the quiet, sober, serious professionals leave in disgust. We’ve seen how people who would not ordinarily disagree can be brought to rancorous conflict simply by resurrecting old grievances, irrelevant but not forgotten.

Does anyone really think that Washington would be a more beautiful city if the National Gallery’s East Wing (designed by I.M. Pei) had never been built? Does anyone think the hangar-size National Air and Space Museum would look better with giant Corinthian columns plastered on the front? Whether these buildings would be affected, does anyone really want to pay an unknown but probably ruinous extra cost to retrofit federal buildings to look as though they were designed in 1750?

Dress it up in language about making American beautiful again, and you will find some takers. Unfortunately, it may only take one man to make this change, and this document is tailored to him.

 

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The layers of corruption are mind-blowing: "Here’s a new abuse of power by Trump that should alarm you"

Spoiler

The big danger emerging from President Trump’s acquittal isn’t just that he has learned his whole party is unprepared to constrain any future abuse of power he undertakes. It’s that he has learned his party will, with a few stray exceptions, wholeheartedly support and even actively participate in it.

So what will this look like going forward?

In the immediate future, even if we don’t see a single, monstrous new scandal emerge, we might instead witness a slow accumulation and acceleration of insidiously incremental abuses of power that, taken together, continue to erode the rule of law.

Here’s a case in point, one that will take on increasing salience as the 2020 election churns forward: Trump’s abuse of the classification process.

This may sound dry and wonky. But it could be enormously consequential.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) has called on the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, to undertake a review of whether the administration is over-classifying government information to keep it hidden from public view to protect Trump.

We already have examples of this. Democrats on the House impeachment inquiry demanded declassification of closed-door testimony by a top aide to Vice President Pence about his Sept. 18 call with the Ukrainian president.

The administration refused. Democrats continued to insist it showed Pence had deeper knowledge of Trump’s Ukraine shakedown than publicly known. But this information was kept classified and was never aired at Trump’s Senate trial.

“What we know is that the president sees classification as a way to advance his political interests,” Murphy told me in an interview. “He sees that he can use classification to keep embarrassing information from the public.”

Now Murphy wants GAO to conduct a systematic review of classified information currently held by the Office of Senate Security, which guards such info, to determine two things. First, whether information that should be classified is being over-classified, unduly limiting how many lawmakers see it. Second, whether information is being classified that shouldn’t be at all, in violation of the law.

Both are bad. The first severely cramps congressional oversight. The second could be illegally constraining members of Congress from publicly discussing information that would illuminate the administration’s conduct and policies.

Murphy wants GAO to compare classification designations that information received when it was held by the administration alone, with designations it got when it was transmitted to the Senate. This would show whether additional classifications were larded on before the info was given to lawmakers.

Murphy claims he has already seen a pattern of this. GAO could flesh this out.

How Trump could abuse this power toward reelection

Murphy suggested a hypothetical, in which the intelligence community documents another extensive Russian effort to sabotage the 2020 election to help reelect Trump — which intelligence officials themselves have warned is happening.

Congress would gather information on this effort. But if Trump over-classified it, lawmakers couldn’t discuss it publicly.

“The information we will gather about Russian interference will likely come through clandestine methods,” Murphy told me. “It is possible the president will be able to keep classified all the information the U.S. gathers about Russian attempts to support his election. That’s the nightmare scenario.”

This would put members of Congress in the “awful and unacceptable position” of possessing information about outside interference in the election, without being able to legally share it with the public, Murphy added.

Unlike in 2016, we now know this is going to happen — how it will work, and on whose behalf. Such methods could keep secret other foreign interference efforts we don’t know about, and possibly any domestic efforts to encourage them.

To be clear: This would keep voters in the dark about forces impacting the very election that Trump and his propagandists have held up as the only legitimate mechanism to hold him accountable, in service of the claim that his impeachment was illegitimate.

Or consider Trump’s efforts to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which will take on more campaign importance as Trump casts himself as a scourge of leftism, global and domestic.

“The president sees enormous political opportunity in trying to topple Maduro,” Murphy told me. “We all know it’s not going well. What if the president starts to classify information relative to how strong Maduro is getting, and he goes out on the campaign trail and says, ‘Maduro is on the cusp of being toppled’?”

“This allows him to make all sorts of untrue claims and robs us of the source material to contest those claims,” Murphy continued.

If the GAO does establish a pattern of abuse, this would equip lawmakers to exert pressure on Trump to refrain from such future abuses. It could also bolster public skepticism of Trump’s campaign boasts, and his inevitable shrugging about Russian interference.

Republicans will shrug at this, too

We all had a hearty laugh about Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who justified acquitting Trump by claiming he has “learned" from impeachment and will now be “much more cautious” about future abuses.

But underlying this head-in-the-sand-ism is something deadly serious. GOP senators who opposed new witnesses at Trump’s trial have happily neutered themselves in the quest to protect Trump. Denying themselves incriminating information about him also denied it to the public, making it easier to defend him. To justify this, they have used their stature as lawmakers to defend Trump’s absurd rationales for blocking information from them.

You can see the same happening with future classification abuses. Republicans will use their prestige as lawmakers to justify Trump’s future abuse of this power. This will constrain them, but it will also relieve them of the horrifying obligation to share with the public information that would be politically damaging to Trump — and to them, as well.

 

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11 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The layers of corruption are mind-blowing: "

Like him firing anyone who spoke against him in the impeachment process? 

13 hours ago, smittykins said:

"Shitbiscuit” 

Oh @GreyhoundFan what an awesome thread title for 45.

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17 hours ago, smittykins said:

*adds “Shitbiscuit” to list of nicknames*

Yeah I just did the same. 

And I just sent the local paper this about Shitbiscuit 

Quote

 

I imagine many are clutching hard calcium objects that came from the mantles of mollusks over Speaker Pelosi’s handling of Trump’s speech. 

Spare me. If John Boehner or Paul Ryan had dropped a deuce on the desk in front of President Obama after he finished an address to Congress many of the people complaining about the Pelosi would have been high fiving each other and loudly boasting about how President Obama deserves it. 

And Speaker Pelosi acted with far more class and decorum then I would have been able to muster so I don’t fault her at all for ripping up the speech on camera. 

They better not edit out my remarks about dropping a deuce. 

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A good one from Dana Milbank: "This vulgar man has squandered our decency"

Spoiler

“Character is the only secure foundation of the state.”

— President Calvin Coolidge, addressing the National Republican Club in New York, 1924.

“It was all bullshit.”

— President Trump, addressing Republicans in the White House and a national television audience on Thursday after his acquittal.

From the birth of the Republic — indeed, from the birth of Athenian democracy — it has been an article of faith that self-governance cannot survive without leaders of character.

“Not much probity is needed for maintaining or sustaining a monarchical government or a despotic government,” wrote the Baron de Montesquieu, whose philosophy inspired the Framers. “But in a popular state, one more recourse is necessary, which is virtue.”

Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist 68, confidently predicted that the Constitution would prevent those with “talents for low intrigue” from reaching the highest office: “There will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters preeminent for ability and virtue.”

Washington, Emerson, Lincoln, even Richard Nixon spoke of the American experiment’s reliance on leaders of character. But this week, our leaders took a decided turn against that belief.

Though a majority of senators agreed that President Trump had done wrong, the Senate cleared him of wrongdoing. They acquitted him even though he expressed no contrition and even though his agent, Rudy Giuliani, had just stated that he, with Trump’s permission, would go on committing the same behavior that got Trump impeached.

The president had broken the law, cheated in his reelection, abused a vulnerable ally by withholding military aid, emboldened a foe and concealed the facts — and there would be no consequences. His fellow Republicans rejected even the symbolic sanction of censure.

It didn’t take long to see the consequences of acquittal: Trump’s blasphemy at the National Prayer Breakfast, his obscene rant in the White House, his move to evict from the White House a decorated military officer who testified during impeachment, his attorney general’s edict that he alone would decide which presidential candidates to investigate and his Treasury Department’s release of sensitive records about the family of a Trump political opponent even as it refuses to release similar records about Trump.

This is a man of the lowest character — and his partisans cheer. The Post identified more than 30 distortions in his State of the Union address Tuesday, where he announced he would award the nation’s highest civilian honor to a man who joined Trump in spreading the “birther” libel and who popularized the tune “Barack the Magic Negro” for his millions of listeners.

And the Republicans on the House floor chanted: “Four more years!”

Of this?

After chronicling the impeachment proceedings over several months, I’m convinced the most enduring consequence of the depressing spectacle will be America’s loss of decency. Long after the details of the Ukraine scandal have faded, after Trump leaves the scene in one year or five, Americans will wrestle with the damage done by blessing the behavior of this vulgar man.

The menace of Trump has never been any one policy — his policies, after all, are constantly changing — but his shredding of dignity in public life and of our shared sense of right and wrong. “A man without character or ethical compass will never find his way,” Adam Schiff warned the Senate. “There is nothing more corrosive to a democracy than the idea that there is no truth. … Truth matters, right matters, but so does decency. Decency matters.”

Trump’s partisans in the Congress, because they fear him, or because they like his economic policies or his judicial nominations, stuck with him through “Access Hollywood” and Stormy Daniels; putting child immigrants in cages and assassinating the character of honorable public servants; his racist attack on a federal judge and the succor he gave neo-Nazis in Charlottesville; his lies by the thousand, his public vulgarity and misspelled insults; his relentless assaults on the free press, law enforcement and Muslims; and, now, cheating in the election.

Trump’s enablers will ask: What about Bill Clinton? He, too, had glaring character defects. The difference is Clinton, though acquitted, was forced to apologize for his conduct and was roundly denounced by fellow Democrats. In my articles from the time, I described him as a “lout and a liar” with a “strained relationship with the truth,” a weak “moral code,” “hypocrisy,” and an “unconvincing” claim that he didn’t commit perjury.

Now, the precious few Republicans willing to say Trump’s behavior was anything less than perfect — Lamar Alexander, Joni Ernst, Susan Collins, Rob Portman — somehow deceive themselves into thinking he will reform his ways. As if.

“I believe that in national life as the ages go by we shall find that the permanent national types will more and more tend to become those in which, though intellect stands high, character stands higher,” Theodore Roosevelt predicted more than a century ago. He, like Hamilton, imagined “disinterested and unselfish” leaders endowed with “a lofty scorn of doing wrong to others.”

Roosevelt, and Hamilton, didn’t imagine Trump.

Schiff, in his closing argument to the Senate this week, said this: “Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less, and decency matters not at all.” But, Schiff pleaded: “Truth matters to you. Right matters to you. You are decent. He is not who you are.”

With Republicans’ latest embrace of this man of the lowest character, they are becoming who he is.

And as our children see our feckless leaders tolerate a president without a fiber of virtue, I fear that we will all become who he is.

 

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Bernie Bros cost the dems the election in 2016, with their petulant staying home instead of voting for Hilary. They, like many others, didn't think the orange shitstain would win. Hopefully they now know better.

My concern is that Bernie will not appeal to Republicans who loathe the orange menace, but who remain conservative. Their votes are needed to insure that thing in the oval office is put out.  I believe the Russians screwed things up in Iowa, and already have a game plan for interfering with this year's election, with rethug blessings. The turnout has to be blue and massive to counteract this. 

Joe Biden is bland but will appeal to those who are comfortable with old white men as president. I think we are past due for a woman president, but I don't think Elizabeth Warren can get past the evangelicals, neither will Mayor Pete because he is gay Truly though, anybody but Dump, anybody.

I'm afraid and discouraged at this point. I believe the rethugs have an agenda, in cahoots with billionnaires like the Koch brothers, to dismantle democracy as we know it. There is no other explanation for the wholesale discarding of the constitution and the responsibilities of legislative branch oversight of the executive. My passport is current.

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13 minutes ago, SilverBeach said:

I'm afraid and discouraged at this point. I believe the rethugs have an agenda, in cahoots with billionnaires like the Koch brothers, to dismantle democracy as we know it. There is no other explanation for the wholesale discarding of the constitution and the responsibilities of legislative branch oversight of the executive.

You've hit the nail on the head here. We are seeing the culmination of decades of planning from rightwing fanatical billionaires. 

Being fearful and discouraged in the current circumstances is quite understandable. However, this is precisely what they are counting on: people being afraid and discouraged and who therefore stay home and don't vote. They want people to think "What's the use?". They need people to be fearful and disheartened. Because if they're not, if people refuse to bow down, refuse to be cowed, then they will go out and vote. And the blue wave will be so overwhelming no amount of meddling will be able to turn the tide. 

So, keep your chin up. Do not let them get the better of you. Instead, let their antics, their corruption, their cheating, fan the flames of your determination to get them out. 

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2 hours ago, SilverBeach said:

Joe Biden is bland but will appeal to those who are comfortable with old white men as president. I think we are past due for a woman president, but I don't think Elizabeth Warren can get past the evangelicals, neither will Mayor Pete because he is gay Truly though, anybody but Dump, anybody.

Yes, though I think Mike Bloomberg might also be able to get the job done...if a Jewish man can get past the evangelicals.  I like the way he's getting the anti-Trump message out.

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5 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

Yes, though I think Mike Bloomberg might also be able to get the job done...if a Jewish man can get past the evangelicals.  I like the way he's getting the anti-Trump message out.

And he has the money to bury Dumpy in negative ads.

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FWIW, I'll still vote, from local elections on up.

I still don't have any hope the national political scene will get any better.  We live in an oligarchy, full stop.

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I'm experiencing a strong physical reaction to the acquittal and subsequent punishment of those who dared speak out. I feel sick in my soul, and so discouraged that today I have been in tears at least three times. 

Not too many years ago I was a conservative Christian Republican. An active voter for years. (I'm 55yo). Worked on political campaigns, went to prolife rallies, the whole nine yards. What a good sheep I was.

I voted for Trump because I was already moving away from the church and the right. I sure as hell did not want Ted Cruz. I live in Cruz country and it's just sickening, the politicking from Cruz and the syncophanting of all the true believers who want a real Christian in the Oval Office and really, in every office down to dog catcher.

I feel like democracy is gasping for breath. I fear 45 will never give up power and there will never be a 46. All the good christians will line the roadways and cheer the emperor's new and holy robes, God's anointed to lead us to Gilead.

I left the GOP and the church. I am heartsick because there is no making America great again, there is remaking America into a tyrant's dystopia where human rights do not exist.

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