Posts Tagged ‘ Trump ’

Wham wham wham

Jan 19th, 2017 5:28 pm | By

Trump and his gang are going to take an axe to federal programs.

The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.

Also…

At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for eliminating the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation and for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions.

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Hail to the sleaze

Jan 19th, 2017 5:09 pm | By

Trump is partying up his inauguration…and he’s doing it at his hotel. That means he’s profiting while he parties, which is sleazy as fuck. Tomorrow at 12:01 Eastern it will become more than sleazy.

With sirens blaring, a fleet of limousines and security personnel raced down Pennsylvania Avenue twice in less than the last 24 hours to deliver Donald J. Trump to inauguration events.

But he was not heading to the White House. He was going to Trump International Hotel.

The hotel he leases from the federal government, and runs as a profit-making venture.

Conflicts that for months have been theoretical are now about to become real — most immediately a possible challenge by the federal government. It owns

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Ruining the brand

Jan 19th, 2017 1:26 pm | By

The Times addresses the question of why Putin wanted Trump; what’s in it for him?

Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth and a contributor to The Upshot, made the case succinctly:

Trump has flouted the norms of American elections and governance at every turn, including calling for the jailing of an opposing candidate, encouraging violence against protesters, endorsing the torture of prisoners, suggesting he might not respect the results of the election, falsely claiming that millions of illegal votes were cast, failing to resolve unprecedented conflicts of interest or to even disclose his tax returns, and attacking a federal judge based on his ethnicity (and that’s of course a highly incomplete list). I can’t directly assess

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28 out of 690

Jan 19th, 2017 6:11 am | By

Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

Politico’s Michael Crowley has a nice piece explaining the missing National Security Council staffers, and the dangers that could cause if there’s an early crisis. Hundreds of briefing papers have been created by Obama’s NSC and sent to Team Trump, but the New York Times reports that no one knows if they’ve been reviewed.

Yet the NSC is ahead of the curve for this administration. Look at the big four departments. There’s no Trump appointee for any of the top State Department jobs below secretary nominee Rex Tillerson. No Trump appointee for any of the top Department of Defense jobs below retired general James Mattis. Treasury? Same story. Justice? It is one of two

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It is never just locker room talk

Jan 18th, 2017 4:28 pm | By

Congressional Representative Luis Gutierrez on why he won’t be at the inauguration. Now there is a guy who knows how to talk, unlike President-elect Pussygrabber. The rep has something to say about the Pussygrabber.

My speech this morning on the Floor of the House about why I will not be at the inauguration ceremonies on Jan. 20 but will be marching with women at the Women’s March on Jan. 21. “We all heard the tape when Donald Trump was bragging – bragging! – about grabbing women by their private parts without their consent. It is something I can never un-hear. Bragging to that guy on TV that he would grab women below the belt as a way of hitting

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Donnie doing his hoamwerk

Jan 18th, 2017 10:22 am | By

Bahahahahahahaha Donnie from Queens tweets a candid shot of himself “writing” his inaugural address. Suuuuuuure he is. He’s totally writing it. You can tell by the casual expertise with which he tries to fold the pad in half while he’s writing on it.

 … Read the rest



Trump’s defamatory assertions may catch up with him

Jan 17th, 2017 5:34 pm | By

Another reason to think Donald Trump is not a very nice man.

A former contestant on the reality show “The Apprentice” filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday against President-elect Donald Trump over his response to her allegations that he groped her during a job interview in 2007.

Summer Zervos, a California restaurant owner who appeared on the show in 2006, accused Trump of aggressively kissing and grabbing her when she went to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel to discuss a possible job at the Trump Organization a year later.

In her suit, Zervos alleges that Trump defamed her when he denied her account of their interactions in the hotel room, accusing her and other women who made similar

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Falling apart

Jan 17th, 2017 4:57 pm | By

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution expanded on Trump’s assertion that John Lewis’s congressional district is “in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested)” a few days ago.

The Democrat’s district includes parts of Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton counties – and most of the city of Atlanta – as well as Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur and Morrow. The district has several of Atlanta’s most prominent gems, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the King Center and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And it has the bulk of Georgia’s higher education institutions: Emory University, Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Georgia Tech and Georgia State University are all in the 5th Congressional District. It is also where many of the

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Translating Trump

Jan 17th, 2017 3:59 pm | By

Rob Zaretsky at the LA Review of Books talks to a French translator about what it’s like translating Trump. They start with Obama. Translating him was a joy. Trump is…different.

Well, as I said, you have to be able to get into someone’s mind in order to translate his speech and reformulate it into your own language. Trump is not easy to translate, first of all, because, most of the time, when he speaks he seems not to know quite where he’s going. In my essay, I took the example of the interview he gave to The New York Times. He seems to hang onto a word in the question, or to a word that pops into his

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Bikers for Trump are on their way

Jan 17th, 2017 11:05 am | By

Today in TrumpOnTwitter.

His epistemology needs work. The fact that one sycophant says something flattering about his Twitter use is just that – a minor fact about one person. It’s far from sufficient to demonstrate that the media are dishonest about his Twitter use.

He seems to think his daughter should be immune from press attention … Read the rest



Trump names his heroes

Jan 16th, 2017 11:27 am | By

The transcript part 2.

Next comes the bit I saw on Twitter, which motivated me to read the whole thing. Empty empty empty. He is so empty.

Do you have any models — are there heroes that you steer by — people you look up to from the past?

Well, I don’t like heroes, I don’t like the concept of heroes, the concept of heroes is never great, but certainly you can respect certain people and certainly there are certain people — but I’ve learnt a lot from my father — my father was a builder in Brooklyn and Queens — he did houses and housing and I learnt a lot about negotiation from my father — although I also

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Trump really is Trump

Jan 16th, 2017 11:08 am | By

The Times published a full transcript of the interview of Trump that Michael Gove and Kai Diekmann did for the Times and Bild respectively. It’s not a surprise yet it is a surprise. It’s the same old thing yet it still amazes. He can’t talk competently, and the content of what he says is absurd or horrifying or both. He’s always worse than one can believe.

Their opener is to ask him about relations with Germany and Scotland [and presumably the UK as a whole] – and he replies by talking about his golf course and how it’s raking in the cash thanks to how low the pound is.

They talk about Brexit and he talks about “strong borders” and … Read the rest



Trump’s holiday plans

Jan 16th, 2017 10:07 am | By

Trump is perhaps aware that his tribute to Martin Luther King was a little thin on specifics (unless you consider “wonderful” and “great” to be specifics), so he’s meeting with King’s oldest son to find out what they were.

Sean Spicer, Mr. Trump’s press secretary and communications director, announced the planned meeting in New York between Mr. Trump and Martin Luther King III in a morning posting on Twitter. It came two days after the president-elect had taken to the social media platform to attack Mr. Lewis after the congressman said an interview that he would not attend the inauguration and did not see Mr. Trump as a legitimate president because of questions about whether Russian hacking had affected

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All of the many

Jan 16th, 2017 9:31 am | By

Even when Trump tries for once not to be an asshole, he remains an asshole. That’s because he’s so inadequate and empty.

Behold his masterpiece for MLK Day:

Oh yes, all the many wonderful things. So many. Very wonderful. Very very wonderful.

Honor him. Honor him for being great. So great. Very very very great. Very very great man who did many many very very wonderful things.

Exclamation point!… Read the rest



They should APOLOGIZE

Jan 15th, 2017 4:28 pm | By

The latest TrumpOnTwitter:

No. John Lewis doesn’t need the ignoramus Trump telling him what to work on, and he’s not Trump’s assistant.

Says the man whose campaign rallies were notorious for their hatemongering which often developed into violence. Says the man who spews hatred for individuals and groups every day on Twitter. Says … Read the rest



Compare

Jan 15th, 2017 12:13 pm | By

Susan Campbell has a terrific post at The Hill comparing Trump and John Lewis over time.

n a photograph from his youth, President-elect Donald J. Trump poses in the dress uniform of a New York Military Academy cadet. He’s posed next to his father, real estate mogul Fred C. Trump, and his mother, the Scottish immigrant/social climber, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump.

He graduated from NYMA in 1964, and with all due respect to the class of ’17, at the time his school had the reputation as little more than a holding pen for rich, disaffected young men who’d reach a level of incompetence unwelcome at other institutions.

During that same time, John Lewis, the son of

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More than $5 million for unpaid labor

Jan 15th, 2017 11:24 am | By

Item 2 from Amy Suskind’s list – Bloomberg reported on January 5:

Donald Trump’s new Washington hotel, located just blocks from the White House, owes electricians, wood workers and a plumbing and heating business more than $5 million for unpaid labor, according to liens filed against the property with the District of Columbia.

The 263-room hotel, located on the historic site of the city’s former main post office, opened in October following a $212 million renovation of the 1899 structure. The liens were filed in November and December, according to public records.

Trump has acknowledged not always paying all his bills, saying it’s often a negotiating tactic when work is subpar. His companies have been sued numerous times over

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Thank you all for peeing here

Jan 15th, 2017 11:14 am | By

Last night’s Alec Baldwin as Trump:

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36 items

Jan 15th, 2017 11:03 am | By

Amy Siskind posted a list yesterday, saying that “experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.” Some of the items are new to me and demand research. Number 2 for instance made my eyes stand out on stalks, as did 23.

1. The Office of Government Ethics director publicly lamented, “we seem to have lost contact with the Trump-Pence transition since the election.”
2.Three vendors have placed liens on the Trump hotel in DC for unpaid bills of over $5 million, in total.
3. The OGE similarly said they had not completed ethics reviews of Trump’s cabinet nominees. Leader McConnell said the Democrats need to “grow up” on Trump’s desire

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Roll out

Jan 14th, 2017 3:25 pm | By

Tired of wanting to rip your own head off to avoid seeing Trump’s gestures any more? Here’s a pleasing alternative.

H/t Jen… Read the rest