Trump 45

[47of74]

Jesus Donald. How far did you jam your face up Putin’s ass this time?  

[SilverBeach]

8 hours ago, fraurosena said:

So, keep your chin up. Do not let them get the better of you.

I'll be first at the polls when early voting begins. I'm discouraged, but I won't give up without a fight. 

[JMarie]

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/trump-state-of-the-union-guests-2020-janiyah-stephanie-davis-philadelphia-20200204.html

Quote

A Philadelphia mother and her fourth-grade daughter made a special appearance Tuesday night as guests for President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.

Stephanie Davis and daughter Janiyah sat in the gallery as the president spoke. He talked directly to the girl while discussing his plans for school choice and federal tax credits.

“Janiyah, I have some good news for you. 'Cause I am pleased to inform you that your long wait is over. I can proudly announce tonight that an opportunity scholarship has become available, is going to you, and you will soon be heading to the school of your choice,” Trump said.

The scholarship is being provided to Janiyah directly from U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who in her personal capacity donates her salary every year to various organizations, according to a Department of Education spokesperson.

The president praised Davis for wanting to get her daughter into a better school. Janiyah had been on a waiting list for a school-choice scholarship.

While Davis, a single parent, “would do anything to give her daughter a better future,” Trump said, “that future was put further out of reach when Pennsylvania’s governor vetoed legislation to expand school choice.”

Trump urged Congress to pass legislation to expand school-choice scholarships across the country.

Janiyah, who loves art and math, “has been assigned to low-performing schools,” according to a White House statement earlier in the day. The mother and daughter were not available for interviews and the White House did not name which school she attends.

But wait!

https://www.inquirer.com/news/donald-trump-school-choice-philadelphia-janiyah-davis-mast-charter-20200208.html

Quote

President Donald Trump turned a Philadelphia fourth grader into a poster child for the school-choice movement Tuesday when he told the nation that thousands of students were “trapped in failing government schools" and announced that the girl was at last getting a scholarship to attend the school of her choice.

But Janiyah Davis already attends one of the city's most sought-after charter schools, The Inquirer has learned. In September, months before she was an honored guest at Trump’s State of the Union address, she entered Math, Science and Technology Community Charter School III.

 

[apple1]

11 hours ago, SilverBeach said:

I'll be first at the polls when early voting begins. I'm discouraged, but I won't give up without a fight. 

THAT. So much THAT.

[GreyhoundFan]

No good reviews here:

 

[Ozlsn]

I'm not sure if The Atlantic's article on censorship through noise has been posted here yet but I'm finding it very interesting. Quote from the article:

"There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with damning testimony about the president’s conduct, only to look at my phone later and find a slickly edited video—served up by the Trump campaign—that used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. Wait, I caught myself wondering more than once, is that what happened today?"

It's entirely possible Trump does believe that everyone loves him, that the mainstream media is out to get him because the video he's being shown helps confirm what he wants to believe.

[GreyhoundFan]

Because he wants to kill off people: "Trump proposes $4.8 trillion election-year budget with big domestic cuts"

Spoiler

The White House is proposing a $4.8 trillion election-year budget Monday that would slash major domestic and safety net programs, setting up a stark contrast with President Trump’s rivals as voting gets under way in the Democratic presidential primary.

The budget would cut Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and also wring savings from Medicare despite Trump’s repeated promises to safeguard Medicare and Social Security.

It takes aim at domestic spending with cuts that are sure to be rejected by Congress, including slashing the Environmental Protection Agency budget by 26.5 percent over the next year, and cutting the budget of the Health and Human Services department by 9 percent. HHS includes the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Protection, which will see a budget cut even as the coronavirus spreads -- although officials said funding aimed at combating the coronavirus would be protected.

The budget is a proposal to Congress, and lawmakers have mostly rejected the White House’s proposed cuts in the past. Still, the budget plan sets up the Trump administration’s policy priorities heading into the November elections and are likely to draw scrutiny in Washington and on the campaign trail.

It would target the Education Department is for a nearly 8 percent cut, the Interior Department would be cut 13.4 percent, and the Housing and Urban Development department would be cut 15.2 percent.

The proposed cuts stand in contrast to proposals by major Democratic candidates to expand environmental, education and health care spending, setting up a clash between Trump and his 2020 rivals over their major campaign priorities.

Not all agencies would face cuts, though. Trump proposes to increase spending for the Department of Homeland Security, while keeping Pentagon spending mostly flat. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration budget would increase by 12 percent as Trump has said he wants the agency to prepare for space travel to Mars.

Even with all the proposed spending cuts, the budget would fail to eliminate the federal deficit over the next 10 years, missing a longtime GOP fiscal target. Instead, White House officials plan to say their budget proposal would close the deficit by 2035.

But it would only achieve this if the economy grows at an unprecedented, sustained 3 percent clip through 2025, levels the administration has failed to achieve for even one year so far. The U.S. economy grew 2.3 percent in 2019, the weakest level since Trump took office.

During Trump’s first year in office, his advisers said their budget plan would eliminate the deficit by around 2028. This new budget will mark the third consecutive time that they abandon that 10-year goal and instead suggest a 15-year target.

This new trend shows how little progress the White House is making in dealing with ballooning government debt, something GOP party leaders had made a top goal during the Obama administration. Trump’s first budget projected the deficit in 2021 would be $456 billion. Instead, it is projected to be more than double that amount.

Trump has shown little interest in dealing with the deficit and debt, though some GOP leaders say it remains a priority. The $4.8 trillion budget for 2021 would represent a $700 billion surge over levels from 2018.

White House officials have blamed congressional Democrats for inaction on the federal deficit. However, Trump has agreed to increase spending throughout the government because it was the condition on which Democrats accepted a higher military budget.

As a presidential candidate, Trump said he would eliminate not just the annual federal deficit but all debt held by the United States after eight years in office.

“Trying to balance the budget in 10 years is very difficult, so having a longer time horizon makes a lot of sense,” said Marc Goldwein, a senior vice president at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates reducing the deficit. “Fifteen years is still very aggressive.”

The deficit is the gap between spending and revenue, and this year it is projected to breach $1 trillion for the first time since 2012. White House officials are expected to try to emphasize on Monday that their budget proposal would make progress toward reducing the deficit by 2030 but not eliminate the gap.

The budget aims to cut spending on safety-net programs such as Medicaid and food stamps, cutting food stamp spending by $181 billion over a decade. It proposes to squeeze hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare over a decade through cost-saving proposals such as reforming medical liability and modifying payments to hospitals for uncompensated care. Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program are also targeted for “reforms” that yield billions in cuts.

Democrats such as Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, said early reports indicate the budget includes “destructive changes … while extending [Trump’s] tax cuts for millionaires and wealthy corporations.” Administration officials said their plan only lowered the rate at which the programs would grow in size.

During the last year President Barack Obama was in office, the deficit was less than $600 billion, but it has grown significantly since then.

The 2017 GOP tax cuts and new domestic spending approved by bipartisan majorities in Congress have widened this gap markedly. However, the Trump administration’s new budget summary contains the line: “All administration policies will pay for themselves, including extending tax cut provisions expiring in 2025.”

Without action by Congress and the administration, tax cuts for families and individuals would expire at the end of 2025. Budget experts have projected that extending those tax cuts would reduce revenue by roughly $1 trillion.

The largest parts of the government’s budget are “mandatory” spending programs that are automatically renewed each year without congressional approval, such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Trump said on Twitter Saturday that the budget “will not be touching your Social Security or Medicare.” In 2015, he promised not to seek cuts to Medicaid as well, but his budgets have routinely sought big Medicaid changes that would cut roughly $800 billion from the program over 10 years.

Those proposals have not gained traction in Congress, however, and Trump has not fought for Congress to consider the changes as much as he’s battled over some of his other priorities.

The budget is expected to request $2 billion in homeland security spending for the southern border wall — billions less than in past years and billions less than Congress has agreed to. However, the administration has siphoned billions more from the Pentagon budget ever since declaring a national emergency at the border following last winter’s government shutdown.

Administration officials say the wall has moved into a new phase, focused on execution of the project now that funding for it has been secured. The budget document says the administration expects to have completed 400 miles of new border wall by the end of 2020.

“The president’s budget to fund the wall and border security [comes] with big increases for infrastructure, technology and law enforcement personnel,” said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the budget was not yet released. “This request is based on what’s required to gain operational control of the border.”

Overall, the budget proposes 5 percent net cuts in domestic discretionary spending, the category of government spending that covers agencies like HHS and the Education Department, but does not include Social Security or Medicare.

These proposed cuts fall well below spending caps that lawmakers and the administration already agreed to in a bipartisan budget deal for 2021. That all but ensures the budget will face bipartisan opposition on Capitol Hill.

The federal debt has already grown by about $3 trillion under Trump.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Man not smart:

[WiseGirl]

[GreyhoundFan]

The Mango Moron is being extra moronic: "Trump promotes Larry David’s MAGA hat spoof. Did he get the joke?"

Spoiler

The grainy 28-second video that appeared on President Trump’s Twitter account Monday was immediately recognizable to fans of Larry David and HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

It was a recording of a scene from the Season 10 premiere in which David’s character de-escalates a confrontation with an angry biker by putting on a “Make America Great Again” hat. Thinking he’s in the presence of a fellow Trump supporter, the biker’s attitude completely changes, and he goes from screaming obscenities at David to giving him a gentle warning.

“TOUGH GUYS FOR TRUMP!” the president tweeted alongside the uncensored video, which he pinned to the top of his Twitter profile for increased visibility.

People, however, were quick to suggest that Trump may have picked the wrong pop culture reference to tout his base. Many noted that the road rage scene is part of a running gag within the episode intended to mock the distinctive pro-Trump accessory, which David’s character calls “a great people repellent.”

“Satire is dead,” one Twitter user wrote.

By early Tuesday, “Larry David” was trending on Twitter, and the short video had been watched more than 5 million times. Detractors roasted Trump for appearing to miss the joke, with at least one person describing it as “a spectacular self-own.” Meanwhile, others applauded the president’s sense of humor and called the clip “exquisite.”

In “Happy New Year,” which first aired Jan. 19, the subject of MAGA hats is brought up during a conversation between David, who plays a fictionalized version of himself, and his best friend, Jeff Greene (portrayed by Jeff Garlin). David gets the idea to sabotage an unwanted lunch date by donning a MAGA hat after Greene goes on a mini-rant about a Trump supporter they both know.

“See him around town with that hat, ‘Make America Great Again,’ ” Greene says. “I don’t need that crap. He makes me want to not be anywhere near him."

At lunch, the sight of David in a MAGA hat draws dirty looks from other diners and sends his companion hustling out of the trendy Los Angeles restaurant. David later uses the red hat to deter a couple from sitting next to him at a sushi bar.

But the hat interactions take a turn when David is faced with the irate biker he almost runs into while driving. Instead of using the accessory as a repellent, David puts it on in an attempt to calm the biker, who is screaming expletives — and it works.

“Oh,” the biker says in a much quieter voice after he sees David in the hat. “Just be more careful next time, okay?”

Then, in case the joke is lost on any viewers, David spells out his reasons for wearing the hat a few minutes later when Greene storms into his office demanding to know whether he’s pro-Trump.

“No, no,” David responds, explaining that he had been using the hat to avoid interacting with people.

“It’s really coming in handy,” David continues. Greene chimes in, “Yeah, ’cause no one’s going to want to be anywhere near you.”

In a January interview with the Hollywood Reporter, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” executive producer Jeff Schaffer addressed filming the MAGA hat scenes around Los Angeles.

“Larry in the hat is such a dissonant image,” said Schaffer, who also directed the episode. “You realized when he put it on that you just never see a person in a MAGA hat in Los Angeles. It’s like spotting a double rainbow of intolerance.”

The larger context of the biker scene appeared to not matter to Trump on Monday night, who shared the clip without bleeping out any of the swear words. Trump has repeatedly highlighted the toughness of his base, telling Breitbart News in 2019, “I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

As Trump’s supporters praised his “grand sense of humor,” critics didn’t hesitate to call out the president for having “zero self awareness” and “cluelessly tweeting.”

“Nobody told the president that in the show, Larry David wears the hat as a people repellent,” one person tweeted.

Several people compared the Monday tweet to Trump’s past attempts to riff on pop culture that haven’t gone over well, pointing to a campaign video released in December that depicted the president as Marvel supervillain Thanos from “Avengers: Endgame.”

“This is worse than the Thanos tweet,” a Twitter user opined.

At least one person quickly shut down any speculation that David could be considered part of “the MAGA crowd.”

“As the MAGA crowd begins to wonder why Larry David is trending, their confusion will be met with anger as they realize that he is not, in fact, a MAGA man,” the person wrote.

David has publicly criticized Trump and reportedly donated to the presidential campaign of former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is running for the Democratic nomination.

And David has not shied away from letting his feelings about Trump supporters be known, as many learned Monday night when a short clip of the comedian discussing the episode started widely circulating. At a January event in New York, David was asked whether he was concerned that mocking MAGA hats would alienate some viewers.

“Alienate yourselves,” David shouted. “Go, go and alienate. You have my blessing.”

 

[JMarie]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The Mango Moron is being extra moronic: "Trump promotes Larry David’s MAGA hat spoof. Did he get the joke?"

  Hide contents

The grainy 28-second video that appeared on President Trump’s Twitter account Monday was immediately recognizable to fans of Larry David and HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

It was a recording of a scene from the Season 10 premiere in which David’s character de-escalates a confrontation with an angry biker by putting on a “Make America Great Again” hat. Thinking he’s in the presence of a fellow Trump supporter, the biker’s attitude completely changes, and he goes from screaming obscenities at David to giving him a gentle warning.

“TOUGH GUYS FOR TRUMP!” the president tweeted alongside the uncensored video, which he pinned to the top of his Twitter profile for increased visibility.

People, however, were quick to suggest that Trump may have picked the wrong pop culture reference to tout his base. Many noted that the road rage scene is part of a running gag within the episode intended to mock the distinctive pro-Trump accessory, which David’s character calls “a great people repellent.”

“Satire is dead,” one Twitter user wrote.

By early Tuesday, “Larry David” was trending on Twitter, and the short video had been watched more than 5 million times. Detractors roasted Trump for appearing to miss the joke, with at least one person describing it as “a spectacular self-own.” Meanwhile, others applauded the president’s sense of humor and called the clip “exquisite.”

In “Happy New Year,” which first aired Jan. 19, the subject of MAGA hats is brought up during a conversation between David, who plays a fictionalized version of himself, and his best friend, Jeff Greene (portrayed by Jeff Garlin). David gets the idea to sabotage an unwanted lunch date by donning a MAGA hat after Greene goes on a mini-rant about a Trump supporter they both know.

“See him around town with that hat, ‘Make America Great Again,’ ” Greene says. “I don’t need that crap. He makes me want to not be anywhere near him."

At lunch, the sight of David in a MAGA hat draws dirty looks from other diners and sends his companion hustling out of the trendy Los Angeles restaurant. David later uses the red hat to deter a couple from sitting next to him at a sushi bar.

But the hat interactions take a turn when David is faced with the irate biker he almost runs into while driving. Instead of using the accessory as a repellent, David puts it on in an attempt to calm the biker, who is screaming expletives — and it works.

“Oh,” the biker says in a much quieter voice after he sees David in the hat. “Just be more careful next time, okay?”

Then, in case the joke is lost on any viewers, David spells out his reasons for wearing the hat a few minutes later when Greene storms into his office demanding to know whether he’s pro-Trump.

“No, no,” David responds, explaining that he had been using the hat to avoid interacting with people.

“It’s really coming in handy,” David continues. Greene chimes in, “Yeah, ’cause no one’s going to want to be anywhere near you.”

In a January interview with the Hollywood Reporter, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” executive producer Jeff Schaffer addressed filming the MAGA hat scenes around Los Angeles.

“Larry in the hat is such a dissonant image,” said Schaffer, who also directed the episode. “You realized when he put it on that you just never see a person in a MAGA hat in Los Angeles. It’s like spotting a double rainbow of intolerance.”

The larger context of the biker scene appeared to not matter to Trump on Monday night, who shared the clip without bleeping out any of the swear words. Trump has repeatedly highlighted the toughness of his base, telling Breitbart News in 2019, “I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

As Trump’s supporters praised his “grand sense of humor,” critics didn’t hesitate to call out the president for having “zero self awareness” and “cluelessly tweeting.”

“Nobody told the president that in the show, Larry David wears the hat as a people repellent,” one person tweeted.

Several people compared the Monday tweet to Trump’s past attempts to riff on pop culture that haven’t gone over well, pointing to a campaign video released in December that depicted the president as Marvel supervillain Thanos from “Avengers: Endgame.”

“This is worse than the Thanos tweet,” a Twitter user opined.

At least one person quickly shut down any speculation that David could be considered part of “the MAGA crowd.”

“As the MAGA crowd begins to wonder why Larry David is trending, their confusion will be met with anger as they realize that he is not, in fact, a MAGA man,” the person wrote.

David has publicly criticized Trump and reportedly donated to the presidential campaign of former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is running for the Democratic nomination.

And David has not shied away from letting his feelings about Trump supporters be known, as many learned Monday night when a short clip of the comedian discussing the episode started widely circulating. At a January event in New York, David was asked whether he was concerned that mocking MAGA hats would alienate some viewers.

“Alienate yourselves,” David shouted. “Go, go and alienate. You have my blessing.”

 

Maybe he thought it was Bernie Sanders in the clip?

[GreyhoundFan]

"The largest federal employee union punches back at Trump"

Spoiler

As President Trump continues battering federal employees, their largest union sent him a rousing retort Monday that it might be bloodied, but not busted.

Delegates to the American Federation of Government Employees legislative conference were fired up by high-profile speakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and three Republicans, who pledged their support as Trump continues to push policies that would hit the workers’ wallets and the ability of unions to represent them.

Even as they were meeting in the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill hotel, Trump released a fiscal 2021 budget proposal that would make most federal employees pay more for a cut in retirement benefits.

And in a Jan. 29 memo, first reported by Government Executive, Trump gave Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper the power to stop collective bargaining with federal unions. “Where collective bargaining is incompatible with these organizations’ missions,” the memo says, “the Department of Defense should not be forced to sacrifice its national security mission.”

Everett Kelley, the union’s secretary-treasurer and acting president, said “denying nearly half a million Defense Department workers the collective bargaining rights guaranteed to them by law since 1962 would be a travesty — and doing it under the guise of ‘national security’ would be a disgrace to the sacred oath and obligation that all federal workers make to their country. This administration will not stop until it takes away all workers’ rights to form and join a union, and we will not stop doing everything we can to prevent that from happening.”

They have some powerful help — namely Pelosi, who was greeted as a hero and welcomed with a long and loud standing ovation. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) also spoke.

When you get into the arena with Trump, Pelosi said to cheers, “you have to be ready to take a punch; you got to be ready to throw a punch.”

The punches they have taken include three 2018 executive orders that made it more difficult for labor organizations to organize and represent federal staffers. But labor punched back and recently won 12 weeks of paid parental leave and a 3.1 percent pay raise for 2020, despite initial opposition from Trump, who earlier had proposed a pay feeze.

In addition, the House last week approved the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would strengthen the ability of workers nationally to organize. Passage in the Republican-controlled Senate is doubtful, yet the same once was said about the parental leave and pay raise bills that are now law.

Securing Pelosi’s attendance was quite the attraction for the union members, particularly after her high-profile, speech-ripping confrontation with Trump at his State of the Union address last week. Also notable during this time of harsh partisanship were speeches by three Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, to an organization that usually, but not strictly, endorses Democrats. Republican Reps. Tom Cole (Okla.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) also spoke.

Collins was greeted warmly, though one shout of “impeach” was heard from the audience. Collins, like all but one Republican, voted to acquit Trump of the impeachment charges lodged by the Democrats who control the House. They said Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to have its president announce an investigation into his rival, former vice president Joe Biden and Biden’s son Hunter, for the president’s personal, political gain.

Collins rejected Trump’s rationale of Pentagon “flexibility” as the reason for his plan to exclude Defense staffers from labor negotiations with management. “Please know,” she said to cheers, “that I will work with my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to protect the right of DOD civilian employees to engage in collective bargaining.”

The other senator on the podium was a longtime, strong supporter of federal employees, Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who represents thousands of them, particularly in the District suburbs and in the Hampton Roads area.

Though Trump’s impeachment acquittal is less than a week old, it seemed forgotten (except for the shout when Collins took the stage) until Kaine decided to discuss “the elephant in the room.”

“I don’t want to re-litigate it, but I want to point out something very unusual and unique and special about it,” he said. It was the first presidential impeachment generated “by courageous federal employees. When they saw something wrong, they were willing” to speak up, he said, before being interrupted by applause.

“It wasn’t just the folks who testified,” he added. “But what we know from the impeachment trial is that many . . . stepped forward and said that this was wrong, this is against U.S. policy, you’re hurting our country, you’re hurting an ally. . . .

“The American public and Congress would not have even known about this slimy scheme, if it were not for the federal employees.”

Kaine named no names. That’s a good thing, given the retribution Trump exacted against Marie Yovanovitch, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Gordon Sondland, all of whom testified during the House impeachment hearings and none of whom kept their positions.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh: "Judge dismisses lawsuit to compel White House to archive records of Trump calls, meetings with Putin, other foreign leaders"

Spoiler

A federal judge Monday dismissed a lawsuit brought by historians and watchdog groups to compel the White House to preserve records of President Trump’s calls and meetings with foreign leaders, saying that Congress would have to change presidential archiving laws to allow the courts to do so.

Federal courts have ruled that the Presidential Records Act is one of the rare statutes that judges cannot review, and that another law, the Federal Records Act, does not specify exactly how agency heads should preserve records, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said in a 22-page opinion.

“The Court is bound by Circuit precedent to find that it lacks authority to oversee the President’s day-to-day compliance with the statutory provisions involved in this case,” Jackson wrote of the U.S. Court of the Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

However, the judge added pointedly, “This opinion will not address, and should not be interpreted to endorse, the challenged practices; nor does it include any finding that the Executive Office is in compliance with its obligations.”

Jackson said that though those who brought the lawsuit allege Congress expressed “grave concerns” about the practices at issue, it is Congress that has the power to “revisit its decision to accord the executive such unfettered control or to clarify its intentions.”

The lawsuit was filed in May by three organizations — government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the National Security Archive at George Washington University, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). The groups alleged that the White House was failing to create and save records as required of Trump’s meetings and communications with foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The lawsuit preceded Congress’s impeachment inquiry into the White House — which ended last week in a Senate acquittal — that was triggered by a July 25 phone call in which Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate unsubstantiated corruption allegations against former vice president Joe Biden, a leading Democratic presidential candidate, and his son Hunter Biden.

The groups suing had asked unsuccessfully for an emergency ruling, citing allegations that the episode exposed record-keeping practices “specifically designed to conceal the president’s abuse of his power,” CREW said in a statement. The groups sought a court order to ensure records are not destroyed, misfiled or never created.

In a statement, CREW spokesman Jordan Libowitz said the watchdog was “disappointed to see today’s ruling” but is reviewing an appeal.

Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University said it would “certainly appeal.”

“Congress assumed presidents would want to save their records. Even [Richard M. Nixon] saved the tapes,” Blanton said, referring to Oval Office audio recordings that helped expose the Watergate scandal. Lawmakers also must decide whether they will give archiving laws “teeth,” making them enforceable and subject to congressional oversight, he said.

The Justice Department had moved to dismiss the lawsuit, saying appeals courts have precluded courts from weighing in on presidents’ compliance with the archiving law.

Without conceding their arguments for dismissal, department lawyers in October promised the court that the White House would not destroy records of Trump’s calls and meetings with foreign leaders while the lawsuit was pending. Justice Department lawyers also said the government had “instructed relevant personnel to preserve the information” sought.

They include records of communications with foreign leaders, record-keeping policies and practices, White House or agency investigations into such matters and efforts to return, “claw back” or “lock down” such records.

The suing groups allege the White House and other executive branch officials have mismanaged records of politically sensitive Trump conversations. They cited reports that Trump has met several times with Putin with no note-takers present or official U.S. record created, and that Trump “confiscated” a State Department interpreter’s notes after another meeting. They also cited a Trump meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam, where only two interpreters were present and no official record created.

The absence of records risks “real, incalculable harm” to national security and effective foreign policy by depriving policymakers and historians of a documentary record of actions taken under federal law, the groups argued.

Justice Dept. assures judge White House won’t destroy records of Trump calls, meetings with foreign leaders

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is true: "Trump’s latest rally stunts are designed to get you to surrender"

Spoiler

In the end, many of President Trump’s ugliest degradations — the nonstop lying, the constant efforts to undermine faith in our political system, the relentless delegitimization of the opposition — often seem to converge in some sense on a single, overarching goal:

To get you to give up.

To give up on what, exactly? On the prospects for accountability for Trump, via mediating institutions such as the media, or via other branches of government, or even via the next election, and more broadly, on the very notion that our political system is capable of rendering outcomes that have not been thoroughly corrupted to their core.

Trump displayed all these pathologies at his rally in New Hampshire on Monday night:

• Trump predicted that “a lot” of Republicans will cast crossover ballots (which GOP-leaning independents could do in this state), for the “weakest” of the Democrats in Tuesday’s primary. Trump didn’t merely encourage this; he said it will happen, which seems designed to sow doubts among Democrats about the outcome, and to get them to fear Republicans’ ability to tamper with it.
• Trump again shouted the monumental falsehood that he lost the state in 2016 only because of enormous numbers of illegal voters. This doesn’t merely prep Trump’s voters to see a 2020 loss as illegitimate. It also lets Democrats know that Trump has prepped Trump Nation not to accept a loss, and thus to lose faith in the likelihood of a peaceful transfer of power even if Trump is legitimately defeated.
• Trump advisers told the Associated Press that they hoped his rally would create logistical obstacles for Democratic candidates there. The obvious intent here is again to psych out Democrats with the suggestion that Trumpworld has the capability to sabotage their political processes.
• Trump ridiculed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for “mumbling” during his speech to Congress, then visibly approved as the crowd chanted: “Lock her up!” Trump has similarly delegitimized the opposition in all kinds of ways, at one point even scripting a rally speech to render the voters who elected the Democratic House as literally nonexistent.

Such delegitimization of the opposition strikes at the core of our system. Recognizing the opposition’s legitimacy is a key pillar of accountability in government: It sends the message that a president grasps that he is in some sense beholden to all Americans, not just those who voted for him.

But the opposite message is precisely what Trump wants the other side’s voters to take away from such displays: He does not recognize that he is beholden or accountable to them in any way. Thus, this is also about demoralizing them in a forward-looking sense as well.

This effort runs deeper than it often seems. Former presidents Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton both provided the country with gestures designed to conclude their scandal dramas — Nixon with the helicopter liftoff, Clinton with a public apology.

By contrast, Trump continues to assert that his corrupt conduct in the Ukraine shakedown was entirely above reproach — and has explicitly stressed that he hasn’t learned anything from his impeachment and trial.

As Quinta Jurecic notes, the key here is that Nixon and Clinton acknowledged they had put the country through a searingly difficult moment — which Trump refuses to do. Indeed, only he and his voters have been victimized, by the impeachment “coup,” this effort to disenfranchise them, which in turn formed the justification for GOP senators to corrupt Trump’s trial beyond recognition.

But something else is going on here as well. By refusing to offer any recognition of wrongdoing, by shutting down all cooperation with the House, by unapologetically corrupting his own trial, Trump is in effect rendering as dead letters impeachment itself, accountability itself, and even the very idea that the amassing of such an enormously compelling fact record detailing Trump’s misconduct should have any significance at all.

You should give up.

It’s no accident that Trump went out of his way to draw attention to this quote from a Democratic voter, buried in this New York Times account of Democratic worries about turnout in Iowa:

“A lot of people feel defeated,” said Danny Villazon, 54, a lawyer. “Trump always wins. The Mueller report and then impeachment. It seems like nothing can stop him.”

The link between demoralization and low turnout is not lost on Trumpworld. When the Iowa caucus suffered its meltdown, numerous Trumpworld figures spread conspiracy theories about it, an obvious effort to depress confidence in the result of the nomination battle among supporters of the losers, perhaps sapping turnout in the general election.

Similarly, Trump regularly “jokes” about staying in office beyond two terms — at least 27 times, by Rick Hasen’s count. The subtext is that legitimate constraining institutions will fail.

You should give up.

None of this is to concede magical powers to Trump. He remains vulnerable for reelection. And we don’t have to succumb to any of this. As Jurecic says, the impeachment asserted that the Constitution matters in the face of nihilism.

What’s more, the enormous fact record produced by impeachment and the special counsel’s investigation has tremendous inherent value — not just as statements in the face of such nihilism that presidential corruption, accountability and facts themselves matter, but also as road maps for further revelations.

Similarly, the success of House Democrats in assembling this fact record under tremendous duress — and the parade of patriotic witnesses who smuggled out the truth at grave risk of retribution, which Trump openly advertised truth tellers will face — reminds us that public service matters, as well.

Whether by instinct or design, Trump and his propagandists plainly see their successful sowing of doubt in the integrity of our political system — their sowing of a kind of sneaking dread that Trump is successfully corrupting everything in sight — as being in some basic sense a positive for him.

But we don’t have to succumb to any of it.

 

[fraurosena]

This is scary. I can see the plan towards absolute dictatorship unfolding here. Trump will start interfering more and more with the legislative and judiciary, and getting away with it because everyone is looking the other way at the elections. He needs to be stopped before then, otherwise he will simply nullify the election results... and we all know the Trumplican party will enable him all the way. It’s the only way they can hold on to power.

I hope with all my heart he hasn’t infected the military by then, so they can step in if there is such a coup attempt.

[GreyhoundFan]

As usual, George is correct:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump is obsessed with height. Now he’s trying to weaponize it in the election."

Spoiler

I have to hand it to President Trump. Not only is he the rare politician to understand the most powerful, insidious but overlooked dynamic in American presidential politics, he has now become the first to fully weaponize it.

Hate? No. Height.

And I feel like I’m to blame.

For 32 years, I have been reporting in this newspaper about the effect of height on electoral success. No other journalist or political scientist ever seemed inclined to heed my research, but Trump recognizes this unhappy truth: Height is destiny. All too often, the taller candidate wins.

His fascination with stature has been on display over the past four years, as he has repeatedly tarred his antagonists — even those who aren’t actually short — with unsubtle diminutives: “Little Marco,” “Little Katy,” “Little Rocket Man,” “Liddle’ Bob Corker,” “Liddle’ Adam B. Schiff.” (The House impeachment manager is reportedly 5-foot-11.)

But these had the feeling of mere playground taunts. Now he is expanding his epithets into rants. This month, Trump explicitly raised the issue of height as if to suggest it is central to political leadership. In a pre-Super Bowl interview, Fox’s Sean Hannity asked him what he thought of candidate Mike Bloomberg.

“Very little. I just think of little. You know, now he wants a box for the debates to stand on. . . . Okay. There’s nothing wrong. You can be short. Why should he get a box to stand on? He wants a box for the debates! Why should he be entitled to that? Really! Does that mean everyone else gets a box?”

Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, is 5-foot-8. His camp has denied asking for a box. On Tuesday, Trump was harping on height again with an insinuating message on his retweet of an old golf-course photo of the two of them. “Mini Mike is a short ball (very) hitter. Tiny club head speed. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!”

I started writing about this back in 1988 — the year George H.W. Bush (6-2) faced off against Michael Dukakis (5-8) — because I thought it was wrong to judge candidates by their height. I never imagined anyone would take my heartfelt research and use it to diminish opponents. Now I’m less eager to take credit for exposing this flaw in our system. I am afraid of what happens next.

Granted, it can be hard to get a handle on the exact heights of these image-sensitive public figures. Trump said he was 6-foot-3, a number that still circulates in online search results, but in the televised 2016 primary debates he was clearly shorter than 6-foot-3 Jeb Bush, who stood next to him. Politico found evidence that Trump’s 2012 driver’s license put him at 6-foot-2. And while Hillary Clinton was 5-foot-5 in 2008, according to her spokesperson, by 2016 the anonymous brain trust of Google had decreed that she was 5-foot-7.

So Trump had a 7- to 9-inch advantage over his opponent, the most since 1864 when Abraham Lincoln beat George McLellan, 10 inches shorter. Some pundits argued his unusual decision to cross the stage behind Clinton during the Oct. 9, 2016, presidential debate was an attempt at physical intimidation. Nonsense: He just wanted to make his height advantage clear.

Since 1952, when many voters had their first chance to see presidential candidates on television, 12 of the 17 contests have been won by the taller person. And no shorter candidate has ever succeeded overcoming a deficit larger than five inches — the gap between George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004.

Heightism is wrong. The electoral bias against us short people should be exposed and eradicated. I don’t have a solution yet. I rather liked the idea of boxes behind the debate lecterns, but now Trump has spoiled that.

Blatant heightists may argue that taller people make better presidents, pointing to Lincoln, our tallest. I note that two of our worst chief executives, James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding (both 6-foot), were among the big guys.

The bias goes back to our species’ earliest days, when pecking-order struggles were often settled by larger humans winning the fights. Height became synonymous with power and competence. Which may be the reason that taller people are more likely to get the big promotions, while those of us with height challenges are picked only for tasks like tunneling out of prisons or acting as stunt doubles for Danny DeVito.

In my lonely, early years of reporting on this, I had difficulty convincing people that height was a valid issue. Some campaign spokespeople would laugh at me when I asked how tall their candidates were. But my persistence has given height analysis a bit more respectability. Campaign officials now readily answer the question, although they may still snicker while typing the email.

Democrats running for president, in rough order of height, include Joe Biden (6-foot), Bernie Sanders (6-foot), Andrew Yang (6-foot), Tom Steyer (5-10), Pete Buttigieg (5-9), Elizabeth Warren (5-8), Amy Klobuchar (5-8) and, as I said, Bloomberg (5-8). Please alert me if you know any of those numbers to be wrong. Campaigns tend to exaggerate.

Trump, meanwhile, has faced a GOP challenge from Bill Weld (6-3) and, until he abandoned the race Friday, Joe Walsh (6-foot). Trump is unlikely to debate Weld because his true height would be revealed if he stood next to the former Massachusetts governor.

Klobachar suggested at the Democratic primary debate in Iowa that height didn’t matter. “You don’t have to be the tallest person in the room,” she said. She’s wrong! We have to accept the truth before we can fix the problem!

I apologize for that emotional outburst. I admit that below-average height is not a total bar to success. The current owner of The Washington Post, whom I revere, is only 5-foot-7. But I am often the puniest person in the room, and it’s getting worse. In 1988 when I started writing about this, I was 5-foot-5¾. I haven’t checked in many years, so I got out the tape measure. I am down to 5-foot-4.

Perhaps I should take comfort in the fact that three of the last five presidential elections (2000, 2004, 2012) have been won by the shorter person. An unconscious sense of injustice may be sinking in. Even at 6-foot-2, Trump is taller than any of his likely opponents, but he is sloppy with his facts, which might hurt him. Two of the men on his short list, Schiff and cable-news personality Donny Deutsch (5-10) are actually at or above the average height for adult American males (5-10).

I am upset when Trump demeans the undersized. But I also empathize with him, and the anxiety that leads him to pretend he is taller than he is. Having come from the reality-TV environs of show business, he knows how important height is. Some of his fellow celebrities have gone to great lengths to disguise the truth. Men’s Health magazine once looked at published heights and checked them against reality. It found that Charles Bronson was 5-foot-7, not 5-foot-11; Burt Reynolds was 5-foot-8, not 5-foot-11; and Arnold Schwarzenegger was 5-foot-10, not 6-foot-2.

A tweet from Trump on this subject would help. He seems committed to what he’s doing, but I have hope he will see the light. You don’t have to admit anything, Mr. President. Just call for an end to the posturing and comparing. It would be a boon to those of us still shrinking, with no end in sight.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I think I need an airsick bag:

[GreyhoundFan]

Dotard doesn't understand basic math:

 

[WiseGirl]

[HerNameIsBuffy]

11 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump is obsessed with height. Now he’s trying to weaponize it in the election."

  Hide contents

I have to hand it to President Trump. Not only is he the rare politician to understand the most powerful, insidious but overlooked dynamic in American presidential politics, he has now become the first to fully weaponize it.

Hate? No. Height.

And I feel like I’m to blame.

For 32 years, I have been reporting in this newspaper about the effect of height on electoral success. No other journalist or political scientist ever seemed inclined to heed my research, but Trump recognizes this unhappy truth: Height is destiny. All too often, the taller candidate wins.

His fascination with stature has been on display over the past four years, as he has repeatedly tarred his antagonists — even those who aren’t actually short — with unsubtle diminutives: “Little Marco,” “Little Katy,” “Little Rocket Man,” “Liddle’ Bob Corker,” “Liddle’ Adam B. Schiff.” (The House impeachment manager is reportedly 5-foot-11.)

But these had the feeling of mere playground taunts. Now he is expanding his epithets into rants. This month, Trump explicitly raised the issue of height as if to suggest it is central to political leadership. In a pre-Super Bowl interview, Fox’s Sean Hannity asked him what he thought of candidate Mike Bloomberg.

“Very little. I just think of little. You know, now he wants a box for the debates to stand on. . . . Okay. There’s nothing wrong. You can be short. Why should he get a box to stand on? He wants a box for the debates! Why should he be entitled to that? Really! Does that mean everyone else gets a box?”

Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, is 5-foot-8. His camp has denied asking for a box. On Tuesday, Trump was harping on height again with an insinuating message on his retweet of an old golf-course photo of the two of them. “Mini Mike is a short ball (very) hitter. Tiny club head speed. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!”

I started writing about this back in 1988 — the year George H.W. Bush (6-2) faced off against Michael Dukakis (5-8) — because I thought it was wrong to judge candidates by their height. I never imagined anyone would take my heartfelt research and use it to diminish opponents. Now I’m less eager to take credit for exposing this flaw in our system. I am afraid of what happens next.

Granted, it can be hard to get a handle on the exact heights of these image-sensitive public figures. Trump said he was 6-foot-3, a number that still circulates in online search results, but in the televised 2016 primary debates he was clearly shorter than 6-foot-3 Jeb Bush, who stood next to him. Politico found evidence that Trump’s 2012 driver’s license put him at 6-foot-2. And while Hillary Clinton was 5-foot-5 in 2008, according to her spokesperson, by 2016 the anonymous brain trust of Google had decreed that she was 5-foot-7.

So Trump had a 7- to 9-inch advantage over his opponent, the most since 1864 when Abraham Lincoln beat George McLellan, 10 inches shorter. Some pundits argued his unusual decision to cross the stage behind Clinton during the Oct. 9, 2016, presidential debate was an attempt at physical intimidation. Nonsense: He just wanted to make his height advantage clear.

Since 1952, when many voters had their first chance to see presidential candidates on television, 12 of the 17 contests have been won by the taller person. And no shorter candidate has ever succeeded overcoming a deficit larger than five inches — the gap between George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004.

Heightism is wrong. The electoral bias against us short people should be exposed and eradicated. I don’t have a solution yet. I rather liked the idea of boxes behind the debate lecterns, but now Trump has spoiled that.

Blatant heightists may argue that taller people make better presidents, pointing to Lincoln, our tallest. I note that two of our worst chief executives, James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding (both 6-foot), were among the big guys.

The bias goes back to our species’ earliest days, when pecking-order struggles were often settled by larger humans winning the fights. Height became synonymous with power and competence. Which may be the reason that taller people are more likely to get the big promotions, while those of us with height challenges are picked only for tasks like tunneling out of prisons or acting as stunt doubles for Danny DeVito.

In my lonely, early years of reporting on this, I had difficulty convincing people that height was a valid issue. Some campaign spokespeople would laugh at me when I asked how tall their candidates were. But my persistence has given height analysis a bit more respectability. Campaign officials now readily answer the question, although they may still snicker while typing the email.

Democrats running for president, in rough order of height, include Joe Biden (6-foot), Bernie Sanders (6-foot), Andrew Yang (6-foot), Tom Steyer (5-10), Pete Buttigieg (5-9), Elizabeth Warren (5-8), Amy Klobuchar (5-8) and, as I said, Bloomberg (5-8). Please alert me if you know any of those numbers to be wrong. Campaigns tend to exaggerate.

Trump, meanwhile, has faced a GOP challenge from Bill Weld (6-3) and, until he abandoned the race Friday, Joe Walsh (6-foot). Trump is unlikely to debate Weld because his true height would be revealed if he stood next to the former Massachusetts governor.

Klobachar suggested at the Democratic primary debate in Iowa that height didn’t matter. “You don’t have to be the tallest person in the room,” she said. She’s wrong! We have to accept the truth before we can fix the problem!

I apologize for that emotional outburst. I admit that below-average height is not a total bar to success. The current owner of The Washington Post, whom I revere, is only 5-foot-7. But I am often the puniest person in the room, and it’s getting worse. In 1988 when I started writing about this, I was 5-foot-5¾. I haven’t checked in many years, so I got out the tape measure. I am down to 5-foot-4.

Perhaps I should take comfort in the fact that three of the last five presidential elections (2000, 2004, 2012) have been won by the shorter person. An unconscious sense of injustice may be sinking in. Even at 6-foot-2, Trump is taller than any of his likely opponents, but he is sloppy with his facts, which might hurt him. Two of the men on his short list, Schiff and cable-news personality Donny Deutsch (5-10) are actually at or above the average height for adult American males (5-10).

I am upset when Trump demeans the undersized. But I also empathize with him, and the anxiety that leads him to pretend he is taller than he is. Having come from the reality-TV environs of show business, he knows how important height is. Some of his fellow celebrities have gone to great lengths to disguise the truth. Men’s Health magazine once looked at published heights and checked them against reality. It found that Charles Bronson was 5-foot-7, not 5-foot-11; Burt Reynolds was 5-foot-8, not 5-foot-11; and Arnold Schwarzenegger was 5-foot-10, not 6-foot-2.

A tweet from Trump on this subject would help. He seems committed to what he’s doing, but I have hope he will see the light. You don’t have to admit anything, Mr. President. Just call for an end to the posturing and comparing. It would be a boon to those of us still shrinking, with no end in sight.

 

He needs to wear a bra with that shirt.  No one needs to see his headlights on.

[GreyhoundFan]

29 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

He needs to wear a bra with that shirt.  No one needs to see his headlights on.

Actually, I'd prefer he wear a burqua. None of us need to see any part of him.

[AuntK]

On 2/6/2020 at 3:32 PM, SilverBeach said:

Most of FJ knows I'm black. Most of us detest the orange menace, and those who don't are ostracized. Some black evangelicals may pray for the fool, but as a collective we are not that stupid to be manipulated by that racist chump. We know when we're getting gamed. 

I absolutely cannot watch that person open his piehole, I have a visceral bad reaction of repulsion and disgust. 

I pray for him and for his gang of thugs that support him. I pray that his life choices result in the logical consequences one would expect for an aging, overweight man with a poor diet, no exercise, stress-filled life, with few real friends, who is approaching 80. Let's face it, this may sound morbid, but the bright spot is that he is obviously having health issues & these issues are getting harder to ignore. His unsteady gait, slurred words, irregular hand gestures, difficulty walking all indicate his health is worsening. I pray that Americans will open their eyes and see what a disaster he is. I don't think America can survive another 4 years of Trump. But then, I don't think he can survive another term either.

[fraurosena]

What’s this about then?

 

Never mind. Here’s why:

 

So it turns out the firing of Vindman is the thing that finally got Kelly to talk. Not the treachery of his country, but the attack on a fellow military man. My opinion of him has not changed. He should have offered to testify before the House. Where was he then?

[Dandruff]

25 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

So it turns out the firing of Vindman is the thing that finally got Kelly to talk. Not the treachery of his country, but the attack on a fellow military man. My opinion of him has not changed. He should have offered to testify before the House. Where was he then?

At least he's talking, though.  If more of these alienated former higher-ups would choose loyalty to their friends and country over enabling Trump then word might start to really get around.