Donald Trump

oftenreading

mickeyrat said:

Bentleyspop said:

mickeyrat said:

DewieCox said:

IC, didn’t realize his angle. Just assumed it was the same as his wife and checked out after the first couple paragraphs. 

he's a cofounder of the lincoln project and has written op-eds against him since before he was elected.  fucks with him on twittet constantly.

Check out his daughter.
She seems to hate both her parents and the so-called president and isn't shy about it.

teenage girl right?

I'm 52. I am not looking through a teenagers anything.

Agreed. She's 15. It's both silly and sad that she's getting attention for her adolescent views on her parents. 

Gern Blansten

oftenreading said:

mickeyrat said:

Bentleyspop said:

mickeyrat said:

DewieCox said:

IC, didn’t realize his angle. Just assumed it was the same as his wife and checked out after the first couple paragraphs. 

he's a cofounder of the lincoln project and has written op-eds against him since before he was elected.  fucks with him on twittet constantly.

Check out his daughter.
She seems to hate both her parents and the so-called president and isn't shy about it.

teenage girl right?

I'm 52. I am not looking through a teenagers anything.

Agreed. She's 15. It's both silly and sad that she's getting attention for her adolescent views on her parents. 

I've looked through her stuff...if she is 15 then her parents need to pay a hell of a lot more attention to what she is putting on there.  Holy shit.

Gern Blansten

That being said...it's hilarious how she rips on tRump.

ikiT

mickeyrat said:

Bentleyspop said:

mickeyrat said:

DewieCox said:

IC, didn’t realize his angle. Just assumed it was the same as his wife and checked out after the first couple paragraphs. 

he's a cofounder of the lincoln project and has written op-eds against him since before he was elected.  fucks with him on twittet constantly.

Check out his daughter.
She seems to hate both her parents and the so-called president and isn't shy about it.

teenage girl right?

I'm 52. I am not looking through a teenagers anything.

check

mickeyrat

  https://www.rollcall.com/2020/08/11/doi-withheld-behnhardt-records-during-confirmation-ig-says/?fbclid=IwAR2J8MuSWlbIf7RJDbL9Ws3fRAOMMwEu1F0KiVXGumyn3PCZci7mJEnytRg

DOI withheld Bernhardt records during confirmation, IG says

Staff at the department’s legal office and others who process Freedom of Information Act requests were told to ‘temporarily withhold documents related to Bernhardt’

Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee budget hearing in March. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)

• 
  

By Benjamin J. Hulac

Posted August 11, 2020 at 7:39pm

Political officials at the Interior Department deliberately held back “sensitive” records about Interior Secretary David Bernhardt during his confirmation process, the department’s internal watchdog said Tuesday.

Bernhardt had his confirmation hearing in March 2019 and the Senate confirmed him by a 56-41 vote in April.

But in February 2019, shortly after Bernhardt was nominated by President Donald Trump to be secretary, Hubbel Relat, an advisor to Bernhardt, directed staff at the department’s legal office and other DOI staffers who process Freedom of Information Act requests to “temporarily withhold documents related to Bernhardt” that were being released as part of a lawsuit, the Interior Department’s inspector general said in a report released Tuesday.

DOI withheld 253 pages from the plaintiff’s request before releasing “most” of them in December, months after Bernhardt’s confirmation, the IG said. The report does not identify which lawsuit or records, and the inspector general closed its investigation.

During the Trump administration, Interior and other federal agencies have implemented more aggressive screening procedures for FOIA requests, drawing ire from outside watchdog groups.

As CQ Roll Call first reported in May 2019, Interior has used an “awareness review” policy to allow political officials at the department to screen records that may be released under records requests and pluck out items for release, a practice FOIA experts called troubling and rare.

Bernhardt defended the awareness review policy before the Senate, and Interior defended its activity in a statement after the IG report was released.

“The report demonstrates that the Department’s actions were consistent with its legal, ethics, and FOIA obligations, including the applicable court order,” a DOI spokesman said Tuesday.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., urged the IG to investigate Interior’s awareness review practice and upbraided the department in a joint statement Tuesday, accusing it of a “coverup” to insulate Bernhardt.

"Political appointees at the agency have put their ideologically-based personal interests over the interests of the American people, violating the public trust upon which the Department of the Interior is based,” the pair said. “Officials at Interior are now on the record admitting what we suspected all along: they orchestrated a cover-up to protect Secretary Bernhardt during his confirmation, and all but lied to Congress about it."

The report states that in early February 2019, Relat met with three attorneys from the department's solicitor's office "who were assigned to assist with the FOIA litigation. According to two of them, Relat told them during this meeting to take all documents related to Bernhardt — addressed to him, sent from him, or referring to him — out of the court-ordered document production related to the FOIA litigation.”

The report says the third official could not remember if that direction came from Relat but confirmed the direction was made.

Interior Solicitor Daniel Jorjani told the IG investigators he thought Relat’s action was proper under FOIA and that he was ultimately responsible for the decision to delay the release of public records.

At his confirmation in the summer of 2019 before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee, Jorjani told members an awareness review process did not exist at the department.

FOIA requests submitted by CQ Roll Call, other news-gathering organizations and environmental groups such as Earthjustice, as well as the report released today, show the opposite: that such a policy did exist.

Wyden and Grijalva said Jorjani’s statements to Congress “were not truthful” and demanded the Justice Department investigate if the solicitor perjured himself.

Halifax2TheMax

Team Trump Treason's 4D chess and brilliant brilliance beyond all brilliancy strikes again. From George Will no less. And someone really should take a look at this policy and Moscow Mitchy Baby's ties to an aluminum smelter in Kentucky owned by putin on the Ritz's henchmen (see bolded below).

Donald Trump’s almost erotic relationship with the Whirlpool Corp. continued last week when he traveled to Whirlpool’s factory in Clyde, Ohio, where he boasted to workers that he reimposed tariffs on Canadian aluminum. Why this pleased them is mysterious.

“Canada was taking advantage of us, as usual,” he said, as usual. He is indignant that although America has been made great again, it is being bullied by Canada, which inflicts on U.S. purchasers aluminum that is too inexpensive, destroying “our aluminum jobs.”

But only 3 percent of U.S. aluminum jobs involve producing primary aluminum. Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics explains that smelters use vast quantities of energy, so most are located where electricity is inexpensive, as in Canada, which has abundant hydropower. Only three companies smelt primary aluminum in the United States, and one of them, Alcoa, smelts globally, so these tariffs essentially serve two companies. Ninety-seven percent of U.S. aluminum jobs involve making things from the metal — things that will cost more and hence sell less because of Trump’s tariffs.

The Trump-Whirlpool romance began in 2017 when Whirlpool sought, and got, protection from imported washing machines that Americans desired because of price and quality. In 2006, when the government had worried about Whirlpool’s purchase of its largest competitor, Maytag, Whirlpool had said: Worry not, competition from imports (especially from South Korea’s Samsung and LG) will keep our prices low and quality high. Eleven years later, although Whirlpool still had a larger market share than Samsung and LG combined, Whirlpool got Trump’s administration to impose tariffs on those companies’ machines.

But in March 2018, the administration, citing the “national security” threat posed by steel and aluminum imports — mostly from military allies, including Canada, and other friendly nations — imposed tariffs on those metals. Some nations, including Canada, retaliated with tariffs, some of them on agricultural products, which caused the administration to pay billions to farmers as balm for injuries it had provoked.

When not farming in Iowa’s Butler County, Charles E. Grassley (R) chairs the Senate Finance Committee. He said there would be no ratification of the USMCA (the U.S./Mexico/Canada Agreement, NAFTA’s successor) unless the retaliation against agriculture stopped. It stopped and the USMCA passed, but the United States retained the right to reimpose tariffs on aluminum imports if they surged “meaningfully beyond historic volumes.” But imports are not, as the administration claims, “substantially” above historical levels. This year’s January-through-June imports from Canada of primary aluminum were nearly 5 percent lower than those of 2017’s first six months. But Trump, unfazed by the nuisance of numbers, unsurprisingly imposed tariffs, and Canada unsurprisingly retaliated with tariffs on U.S. goods.

Lynn A. Westmoreland, a former six-term member of Congress, says U.S. aluminum smelters produce slightly less than 1 million tons a year. In 2017, U.S. consumption was more than 5 million tons. Westmoreland says: We must buy the difference somewhere. If not from our neighbor, ally and USMCA partner Canada, “Would U.S. trade officials prefer aluminum from Russia or China?”

Steel and aluminum are used in washing machines and other appliances, and tariffs on imported metals raise prices. A few jobs are created or protected at substantial cost to the public. Fifteen months ago, this column reported on a study by a Federal Reserve researcher and two University of Chicago economists who found that the tariffs raised the prices of washing machines on average $86 — but also the prices of clothes dryers by $92 because manufacturers used the tariffs on the former as an excuse to raise prices on the latter. The 1,800 manufacturing jobs created by this protectionism cost more than $817,000 apiece.

Congress vests presidents with vast discretion for government’s management of trade, so corporations seek protection, and administrations often grant it, regardless of steep and demonstrable social costs. Those who govern us are governed by this principle: Concentrated benefits are visible and appreciated; dispersed costs are invisible and hence not resented.

Of all the congressional Republicans’ many apostasies from professed principles, none is as momentous — because none has such comprehensive implications — as abandonment of free trade. This encourages promiscuous government nullifications of market allocations of wealth and opportunity, and the displacement of consumer and producer preferences by government — meaning political — dictates, an odd achievement for a party rhetorically horrified by socialism.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/tariff-man-punishes-the-canadian-bullies/2020/08/11/70a99d40-dc0d-11ea-b205-ff838e15a9a6_story.html?hpid=hp_save-opinions-float-right-4-0_opinion-card-d-right:homepage/story-ans

Kat

https://twitter.com/billmaher/status/1291931845060255744

Smellyman

Kat said:

https://twitter.com/billmaher/status/1291931845060255744

brought a tear to my eye.

Beautiful eulogy.

Hi!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/13/trump-rolls-back-methane-climate-standards-oil-gas-industry

Merkin Baller

https://twitter.com/andmichaelgreen/status/1293906645462839297?s=21

dignin

Merkin Baller said:

https://twitter.com/andmichaelgreen/status/1293906645462839297?s=21

Too true.

Gern Blansten

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/511840-ocasio-cortez-challenges-trump-to-release-his-transcript-after-he-calls-her-a?fbclid=IwAR2zrVQITT2N_dAP7oAIz_pQ36zILzqgxt-dzKeAU7pgTf7T5HpSkT4cisY&fbclid=IwAR3MGBow8R7OuPFwTrWvXpgbCuMJ5_9zbR9CwebvwZRO2IE5sPmCU7En2mM

This is beautiful....AOC challenges tRump to release his college transcripts and compare grades

brianlux

Son of a bitch!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/13/donald-trump-usps-post-office-election-funding

Trump admits he is undermining USPS to make it harder to vote by mail

Not only does this suck for the possible mayhem this may cause in November but, though obviously a lesser problem, his trashing the post office is hurting my on-line book sales because people are becoming wary of ordering media mail items.  And of even less importance but, nevertheless rather irritating- I have some records that are WAY overdue to arrive because of Trump's b.s. 

Bentleyspop

brianlux said:

Son of a bitch!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/13/donald-trump-usps-post-office-election-funding

Trump admits he is undermining USPS to make it harder to vote by mail

Not only does this suck for the possible mayhem this may cause in November but, though obviously a lesser problem, his trashing the post office is hurting my on-line book sales because people are becoming wary of ordering media mail items.  And of even less importance but, nevertheless rather irritating- I have some records that are WAY overdue to arrive because of Trump's b.s. 

republican politicians and voters don't  care about defunding the USPS.

As long as he claims to be a lover of christ, guns, and less taxes for millionaires. The idiots won't care.

And as long as he claims to be a forced birther the idiots won't care.

As long as continues to be a lying racist xenophobic piece of shit the idiots wont care.

cutz

brianlux said:

Son of a bitch!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/13/donald-trump-usps-post-office-election-funding

Trump admits he is undermining USPS to make it harder to vote by mail

Not only does this suck for the possible mayhem this may cause in November but, though obviously a lesser problem, his trashing the post office is hurting my on-line book sales because people are becoming wary of ordering media mail items.  And of even less importance but, nevertheless rather irritating- I have some records that are WAY overdue to arrive because of Trump's b.s. 

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1293896544668782592

mickeyrat

wonder what the mail order gun sellers think?

jeffbr

I know Nikki Haley isn't happy about the delays, but in typical Cult 45 form, blames the seller, and not the slow delivery caused by her idiot orange leader's actions. I'm sure her pain is real, though:
https://twitter.com/NikkiHaley/status/1292810162344988672

wndowpayne

Kat said:

https://twitter.com/billmaher/status/1291931845060255744

ouch,,just..ouch..

josevolution

https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1294033047143108608?s=21
Damn it only took 3 1/2 years for a reporter to ask him this! POSP 

gimmesometruth27

josevolution said:

https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1294033047143108608?s=21
Damn it only took 3 1/2 years for a reporter to ask him this! POSP 

of course he just ignored it.

this should be the first question asked at every one of these rallies, i mean press briefings.