The official Thread for Trash/Repug CRAPICATION of America, the planet

[boutons_deux]

Nature’s Great Bird Migration Under Threat By You-Know-Who

You could call it the Nebraska bird eclipse. At the first dart of morning light, so many sandhill cranes take off from the banks along the Platte River they darken the sky. This primeval spectacle, part of a massive spring migration from South America to the northern reaches, draws viewers from around the world.

For a century — through depression, world war and countless other national crises — American presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, have honored laws ensuring the survival of these migrating species.
Until this one.

Since Inauguration Day, the Trump administration has engaged in a tireless assault on the nation’s environmental protections.

It should thus surprise no one that it is

now going after the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

Three days before Christmas, it issued

a legal opinion that the law doesn’t prohibit the incidental killing of these birds.

Penalties for doing so vanished.

Gutting the law gives industry a free pass to stop taking steps to minimize the deaths of migrating birds. And

what makes the move especially perverse is that the things companies can do to comply cost, in most cases, mere pocket change.

industrial traps covered by the treaty have similarly simple fixes. And they’re not all related to oil, gas and coal.

U.S. migratory bird populations are already a fraction of their former size, largely because of habitat loss.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is credited with having spared billions of birds

from unnecessary death and saved numerous species — including the wood duck, snowy egret and sandhill crane — from extinction.

The attacks on the

Environmental Protection Agency,

the Clean Air Act,

the Clean Water Act,

President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and

now the Migratory Bird Treaty Act

are designed to demoralize us.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/natures-...-you-know-who/

Oligarchy/BigOil/BigCorp/Repugs/conservatives make the planet -hole-ier every day.

It's what you Trash fellators voted for, right?

[boutons_deux]

More fleecing of taxpayers, by oligarchy (BigFinance) Mulvaney

Mulvaney gives massive pay bumps to new hires at bureau, rips off consumers it's supposed to protect

Mulvaney has hired at least eight political appointees since he took over the bureau in late November.

Four of them are making $259,500 a year and one is making $239,595.

That is more than the salaries of members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, and nearly all federal judges apart from those who sit on the Supreme Court. […]

Mulvaney, as Trump’s budget director, has long railed against government spending.

One of his first directives as acting CFPB director was to announce he needed zero dollars in funding to run the agency, pledging to spend down the bureau’s surplus fund this quarter before requiring more money from the Fed — the CFPB is funded by the Fed and not through the traditional congressional budget process.

In his Jan. 17 letter to the Fed, Mulvaney said

he was asking for zero dollars because of the need to be “responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

But that tight-fisted approach apparently was not used with his staff’s salaries.

Further, it appears that

at least two people that Mulvaney hired for his office are for positions that did not exist under the previous administration, ( govt bloat! )

at an additional taxpayer cost of $259,500 per employee.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...sed-to-protect

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Nugent: Democrats Should Be Shot Like Coyotes




Ted Nugent likened Democrats, members of the media and others to “rabid coyotes” on Friday and suggested people should not wait to “get” their guns and “shoot” them on sight.

applied the same comparison to Hollywood and RINOS - the common acronym standing for Republicans in name only - during an interview on InfoWars’ The Alex Jones Show.

“Don’t ask why. Just know that evil, dishonesty, and scam artists have always been around and that right now they’re liberal, they’re Democrat, they’re RINOs, they’re Hollywood, they’re fake news, they’re media, they’re academia, and they’re half of our government, at least,” Nugent said

He said during a radio interview on March 31 that the students had “no soul

“The lies from these poor, mushy-brained children who have been fed lies and parrot lies,” Nugent said.

“I really feel sorry for them.

It’s not only ignorant, dangerous and stupid — it’s soulless.

To attack the good, law-abiding families of America

when well-known, predictable murderers commit these horrors is deep in the category of soulless.”

http://www.nationalmemo.com/nugent-democrats-should-be-shot-like-coyotes/

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one of the nastiest, but less well known as nasty, vindictive states, is Indiana, which also had the most KKK of any state.

Of course, Pence is from Indiana, is loved by Christian supremacist theocrats.

Christian Sharia is here and now in many red/slave states

New Abortion Law Requires Doctors to Keep Records that Can Follow Patients through Life

Indiana law makes symptoms following abortion part of a permanent record, burdening women with lifelong stigma

https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/...s-through-life

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Everything you wanted to know about wildland forest fires but were afraid to ask


US Congress passed the Wildfire Suppression Funding and Forest Management Activities Act as part of the federal omnibus appropriations bill,

The Act

categorizes wildland fires as ‘disasters’,

increases annual fire suppression funding,

weakens environmental protection laws to increase logging, and

allows logging projects on thousands of acres

without full environmental impact analysis or meaningful public disclosure,

all in the name of reducing the risk or extent of wildfires.

Dr. Dominick DellaSala, Director of Forest Legacies and one of the co-authors of the report, said,

“The Wildfire Suppression Funding and Forest Management Activities Act

ignored the past three decades of science that has found fires,

including large high-severity fires,

are an ecologically essential part of forest ecosystems and

create highly biodiverse wildlife habitat.”

https://dereklee.scienceblog.com/128/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-wildland-forest-fires-but-were-afraid-to-ask/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campai gn=Feed%3A%20scienceblogrssfeed%20(ScienceBlog.com )

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Dieselgate Pales in Comparison to What Automakers Just Did in America

It might be time for automakers to close their corporate sustainability responsibility departments after their American lobbying association reversed efficiency and pollution gains and denied climate change

Back in October, I wrote a piece detailing the efforts by automakers to tear apart efficiency standards for cars, which would otherwise

save consumers money ($1.7 billion),

lessen oil imports,

save lives through curbed local air pollution,

reduce climate change pollutants, and not to forget,

create jobs and

make the automotive sector compe ive for a future with advanced (read: clean, efficient, and high-performing) vehicles.

It is a depressing state of affairs, and until there is significant pressure to act more responsibly, so-called

'pro-business' arguments should be called out for what they truly are:

a cover to lobby for increased short-term profits at the expense of people, the environment, and long-term economic compe iveness of the automotive sector.

Not only are automakers now succeeding in rolling back basic efficiency standards, something that should be a no-brainer to push forward and a win-win of a policy, but

they are now actually denying climate change in order to support this roll-back of efficiency standards.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...id-in-america/

[boutons_deux]

Scott Pruitt's lie about pay raises unravels, emails reveal he was behind scheme all along


The Atlantic has found evidence that Pruitt was not just aware of, but responsible for, raises that went to his top aides.

In the last few days, top staffers became aware of an email exchange between one of two aides who received such a raise and the agency’s human resources division.

In mid-March, Sarah Greenwalt, senior counsel to the administrator, wrote to HR in an attempt to confirm that her pay raise of $56,765 was being processed.

Greenwalt “definitively stated that Pruitt approves and was supportive of her getting a raise,” according to an administration official who has seen the email chain.

Those raises were large enough that they required approval from the White House. He was turned down.
Undaunted, Pruitt determined that

he could tap into money that was intended for consultants on the Clean Water Act

and instead funnel it to his friends. He ordered it done. When he was caught, he took the standard Donald Trump method to handle it: bald-faced lies.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...heme-all-along

[boutons_deux]

Trump's 'twelfth wave' of judicial nominees gets him closer to taking over federal courts

President Donald Trump may get a chance to “flip” three federal appeals courts that currently have a majority of Democratic-nominated judges.

Filling current vacancies at the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, and Eleventh Circuits would put Trump in striking distance of having a majority of Republican nominees on those courts.

Trump’s already gotten three seats on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over federal appeals in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. Major cases could now be decided by an all-Trump panel;

of course, it only takes two Trump judges to determine the outcome of a case.

Any shift in composition—particularly when

the new additions are ideologues with no interest in moderation or independence

—can change the course of circuit precedent.

why keeping an eye on vacancies in other circuits as well is necessary, if depressing.

Trump also has an opportunity to more than double the number of Republican appointees on the Ninth Circuit, which now has seven vacancies after the sudden death of Judge Stephen Reinhardt March 29.

Public pushback against horror-show nominees now and strong turnout in November are the only prospects for saving the judiciary from being

radicalized for a lifetime

—short of judicial impeachments, anyway.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1755898

Of course, Trash knows not one of these judges.

The extreme right wing ideologue judges are being handed to him by extreme rightwing ideologues like Federalist Society, etc.

the VRWC/oligarchy continues its coup d'etat

[boutons_deux]

Trash can't keep his in his pants, Stockman can't keep his hands off campaign funds

Former congressman Stockman convicted of fraud in Texas

A federal jury in Houston on Thursday found former Republican U.S. Representative Steve Stockman guilty of fraud and siphoning off hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds for his personal use.

Stockman, 61, who served two terms representing a Houston-area district from 1995 to 1997 and again from 2013 to 2015,

was found guilty on all but one of 24 felony charges including fraud, making false statements, money laundering and violating U.S. election laws, court records showed.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-texas-crime-stockman/former-congressman-stockman-convicted-of-fraud-in-texas-idUSKBN1HJ3BX?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews

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Defiant Mulvaney tells Senate he doesn't have to talk to them, Elizabeth Warren gives him an earful

Mulvaney has been on a total power grab, and feels like he's king of the hill now, as his testimony Thursday in an oversight hearing for the CFPB attests.

"While I have to be here by statute, I don't think I have to answer your questions," Mulvaney told

the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

"If you take a look at the actual statute that requires me to be here,

it says that I 'shall appear' before the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs of the Senate.

And I'm here and I'm happy to do it."

He was clearly not happy about doing it and he was a throughout.

So it was quite satisfying to watch Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts dish it out. (Watch video of the exchange below the fold.)

"Here's what you don't get, Mr. Mulvaney—this isn't about me," she said. "You're hurting real people to score cheap political points."

Warren pointed to a scammed soldier's father sitting in the audience at the hearing.

If Mulvaney had "gotten what [he] wanted" and eliminated the bureau — as he voted repeatedly to do while a member of the House — the man's son would still be getting exploited, she said.

She then ticked through successful CFPB cases one by one, asking Mulvaney each time where the money the bureau had recouped would be today if the agency didn't exist.

She swatted away his attempts to say other regulators with jurisdiction might have brought the same action.

"Oh I see, they could have brought the actions — that's the same agencies that didn't bring those actions before the crash of 2008 and that didn't bring this particular case," Warren said of a CFPB case against Citigroup.

"Let's not kid ourselves — let's not pretend like you hope that some other agency would do that work, Mr. Mulvaney,"

Warren added.

"I have a list of 11 bills that you supported during your time in Congress that would have made it harder for states and other federal agencies to protect consumers and to hold cheaters accountable."

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...tail=emaildkre

[boutons_deux]

Veteran Reporter Gets Death Threats For Bringing Up Possible Trump Resignation At WH Press Briefing

April Ryan

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...tail=emaildkre

I'm sure you ST KKK/Nazi/racists would be thrilled if Ryan were assassinated.

A knitter AND a woman, what's not for y'all to hate?

[boutons_deux]

Trash CRAPS on marijuana-obsessed JeBo once again, but accidentally does something PROGRESSIVE, and pisses off his base, law enforcement, BigPharma, BigAlcohol, evangelicals.

Trump to lift legal threat to states that permit marijuana use

President Donald Trump will lift his administration’s plans for a possible crackdown on states that have legalized marijuana after talks with a Colorado senator, the White House said on Friday, an action that undercuts U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Senator Cory Gardner, Trump’s fellow Republican whose state has some of the most permissive marijuana laws in the country, had blocked Senate confirmation of Justice Department nominations to force the change.

Sessions on Jan. 4 rescinded a policy begun under Democratic former President Barack Obama that had eased enforcement of federal marijuana laws in states that legalized it. In doing so, Sessions, who has taken a hard line against marijuana, gave federal prosecutors wide la ude to pursue criminal charges.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...Health+News%29

===============

Colorado has harvested half a billion dollars in taxes and fees since it legalized recreational weed.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/19/news/colorado-marijuana-tax-revenue/index.html

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Having enriched the oligarchy by $100Bs, or $Ts, Trash/Repugs/oligarchy are crushing, grinding down the poor

Trump just dealt a brutal blow to every single welfare program with shameful executive order

President Trump is now finding ways to cut benefits for the poorest, neediest Americans – those who rely on food stamps, rent subsidies, Medicaid or participate in other federally-subsidized safety net programs.

Pushed by his conservative backers, Trump would like to do an overhaul of all government assistance for the poor, elderly, sick and needy.


However, his plan would require Democratic votes (which he can’t get) to fulfill

his campaign pledge to stop what he perceives as the abuse of government programs by people who want to receive benefits but have no intention of working.
As a result,

Trump signed an Executive Order today which requires no bipartisan support

for a top to bottom review of all government assistance by every agency to find places where he can ins ute a work requirement for continued support.

Trump justifies his work requirements as a favor to those getting assistance.

“The Federal Government,” says a statement accompanying his new order, “should do everything within its authority to empower individuals by providing opportunities for work.”

Trump said in a statement that this order will restore “independence and dignity to millions of Americans,” an Orwellian sentiment if there ever was one.

Officially, the new requirements only apply to those able bodied enough to work, although

there is no detail about what that means or to which programs it will apply.

That is left up to the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, the Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, HUD, Education and Transportation, which are to review every public assistance program they manage to see where they can force people to work or face a loss of their subsidy checks.

Each department head is to submit a report within 90 days with their suggested changes to implement Trump’s goal.

While they are at it, the Executive Order also encourages them to

review existing services iow, cut spending

to see how they can be streamlined or eliminated

because apparently there are too many ways for poor people to grab those scraps falling off the table after the one percent have feasted.

Steven Wagner of HHS’s Administration for Children and Families has pledged that

he will take “aggressive action” to strengthen work requirements to get those lazy moms and their kids off the federal dole.

HHS has already started to apply the work requirement to those who receive Medicaid,

for the first time since the program to give medical assistance to the needy was created as part of the Great Society by then-President Lyndon Johnson.

HHS has also unleashed red states

like Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana, Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky and Mike Huckabee’s Arkansas to

apply work requirements for health benefits.

This also follows a December order by the

Agriculture Department that gives states more control over food stamp programs, which could mean not just work requirements but also mandatory drug testing.

former physician Ben Carson has been making it

tougher for people to qualify for federal housing and subsidies under the Orwellian theory that giving them assistance just drives them further into poverty.

he is making sure, at a time that homelessness in America is reaching epic proportions, that

no one gets a roof over their head if he can find a way to keep them out.

as long as someone who has to beg the government for a little help, or a mother who needs food stamps to buy milk for her kids – but who is able bodied – is forced to work for their benefits.

https://washingtonpress.com/2018/04/10/trump-just-dealt-a-brutal-blow-to-every-single-welfare-program-with-shameful-executive-order/

America, of the lower 80%, and certainly the bottom 20%, are ed and un able.

[boutons_deux]

Trash HHS Official Posted -"our forefathers would have hung Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton."



Yes, this woman was appointed a position at HHS after she had compiled this de able mound of fetid horse on her social media pages.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...tail=emaildkre

THE BEST PEOPLE (who hate knitters, wimmen, non-Repugs)

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Like Trash, stinky Zinke is corrupt fraud (and he's keeping BigCorp predators out of HIS state, not others)

Trump’s Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke calls himself a geologist, but he has never held a job as one

In more ways than one, Zinke has quietly become one of the most controversial figures in the Trump administration

https://www.salon.com/2018/04/17/tru...-a-job-as-one/

[boutons_deux]

Ryan Zinke Is Opening Up Public Lands. Just Not at Home.




WHITEFISH, Mont. — When Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was a state senator from this idyllic mountain town, he drove a Prius, sported a beard and pushed President Barack Obama to make clean energy a priority.

Today, the beard and Prius are gone, and Mr. Zinke has emerged as

a leading figure, along with Scott Pruitt of the Environmental Protection Agency, in the environmental rollbacks that have endeared President Trump to the fossil fuel industry and outraged conservationists.

In the last year, Mr. Zinke has

torn up Obama-era rules related to oil, gas and mineral extraction and

overseen the largest reduction of federal land protection in the nation’s history,

including an effort to slash the size of Bears Ears National Monument.

But here in Montana, where support for drilling in certain beloved areas can be a career killer, Mr. Zinke has struck a different note.

And as he faces allegations that he has violated travel and ethics rules, an examination of his Interior Department record shows that his pro-development bent has not always applied to his home state,

where he is viewed as a fiercely ambitious candidate for future office.

In the past year, Mr. Zinke has

halted the sale of oil and gas leases near Yellowstone National Park,

opposed gold mining in that area, and

urged the president to protect one national monument,

Montana’s Upper Missouri River Breaks,

while creating another, the Badger-Two Medicine, just miles from his childhood home.

“It is very clear that Montana is treated very differently,”

said Chris Saeger, a Whitefish resident who leads a conservation group called the Western Values Project.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/u...e-montana.html

iow, Zinke is a 100% NIMBY-ist

[boutons_deux]

Repugs/oligarchy continue to staff up their kakistocracy

Asshole to head NASA is non-NASA, non-scientist, non-manager, climate denier

Jeff Flake switches vote to save Trump's NASA nominee

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...nee/ar-AAw21Ew

[boutons_deux]

Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge draws closer

The Trump administration is moving toward oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, fulfilling a longtime Republican priority that most Democrats fiercely oppose.

A notice being published Friday in the Federal Register starts a 60-day review to sell oil and gas leases in the remote refuge, one of the most pristine areas in the United States and home to polar bears, caribou, migratory birds and other species.

This region of Alaska’s North Slope has been protected for almost 60 years. It’s one of the few relatively undisturbed regions in a world where even “wilderness” often includes roads, pipelines, power lines, buildings and frequent human presence that disrupt habitats.

Trump views the destruction of America’s greatest wildlife refuge as one of his signature triumphs.

Addressing fellow Republicans at a GOP conference in West Virginia in February, Trump said a friend told him that every Republican president since Ronald Reagan wanted to get oil drilling approved in the refuge.

“I really didn’t care about it, and then when I heard that everybody wanted it — for 40 years, they’ve been trying to get it approved, and I said, ‘Make sure you don’t lose ANWR,’” Trump said.

He didn’t even want it …

but the idea that

he could do something that had evaded others, even something horrible,

was irresistible to Trump.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...e-draws-closer

Trash still avenging the knitter for ridiculing him, erasing knitter's good, and gratuitously doing something horrible, just because he can, to inflate his sick self.

[boutons_deux]

Trump’s New Ploy to Force Electricity Customers, Taxpayers to Bailout Uneconomic Coal and Nuclear Plants

the Trump Administration is considering using the Defense Production Act - a relic of the Cold War -

to force electricity customers and taxpayers to pay billions of dollars to bailout uneconomic coal and nuclear plants.

Despite fierce objections by grid operators, consumer advocates, and business interests, the

Trump Administration has continually pursued failed attempts over the past year to interfere in electricity markets in order to prop up dirty and dangerous fossil fuels that can’t compete with cheap clean energy resources like solar, wind and energy efficiency.

The Defense Production Act permits the president to control private industry to ensure the United States has the resources needed amid a war or after a national disaster - two situations that are not happening.

Despite the business community, customer advocates, and grid operators repeated insistence that the market is functioning well and that there is no emergency,

Trump and the coal and nuclear industries are cartoonishly intent on forcing electricity customers and taxpayers to pay billions of dollars to prop up dinosaur power plants.
“Using the Defense Production Act to prop up uneconomic plants when there is ample capacity is a clear abuse of Presidential power.

We, along with many, many others, stand ready to protect electricity customers, taxpayers, and America’s clean energy economy by fighting this latest ploy - along with scores of other similar ploys - Trump’s team is considering.”

https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2018/04/19/trumps-new-ploy-force-electricity-customers-taxpayers-bailout-uneconomic-coal

China picks winners, let's losers die

Trash, to BigEnergy, picks losers that are dying.

[boutons_deux]

Repugs are NOT racist, or NOT s to BigFinance!

With Vote to Kill Guidance Against Racist Auto Lending, Senate GOP Takes War on Regulations to 'Vicious' New Level

"This may end up being the most vicious hardball escalation and norm-breaking of Trump's first two years."

Senate on Wednesday was characterized as uniquely dangerous because it uses the Congressional Review Act (CRA)—a law intended to allow Congress to repeal new rules only "within 60 legislative days of their enactment"—to roll back a five-year-old guidance.

"The CRA never was intended to be used against older, settled rules,"

"Today's Senate vote sets a dangerous deregulatory precedent that stretches the CRA far beyond its original intent,

allowing Congress to overturn regulatory protections

that have been in place for years or even decades [and] opening up a new front in the right's war on regulations."

According to a Politico report published Tuesday, that is precisely what the GOP-controlled Congress is aiming to do.

Republicans believe that if they can "retroactively" determine a guidance meets the legal definition of a rule, they can start the 60-day clock and proceed to repeal the guidance with a simple majority using the CRA.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/04/18/vote-kill-guidance-against-racist-auto-lending-senate-gop-takes-war-regulations?utm_term=With%20Vote%20to%20Kill%20Gui dance%20Against%20Racist%20Auto%20Lending%2C%20Sen ate%20GOP%20Takes%20War%20on%20Regulations%20to%20 %27Vicious%27%20New%20Level&utm_campaign=The%20CIA %20Wants%20You%20Know%20This%20About%20Its%20Tortu re%20Program%20%7C%20Your%20Week%20In%20Review%20& utm_content=email&utm_source=Act-On+Software&utm_medium=email&cm_mmc=Act-On%20Software-_-email-_-The%20CIA%20Wants%20You%20Know%20This%20About%20It s%20Torture%20Program%20%7C%20Your%20Week%20In%20R eview%20-_-With%20Vote%20to%20Kill%20Guidance%20Against%20Rac ist%20Auto%20Lending%2C%20Senate%20GOP%20Takes%20W ar%20on%20Regulations%20to%20%27Vicious%27%20New%2 0Level

... with the oligarchy dictating to the Repug s which old reglations to kill, to increase the oligarchy's wealth and power.

[boutons_deux]

GOP candidates are now mimicking Trump’s authoritarianism. That’s ominous.

by echoing his xenophobia, his veiled racist appeals, his attacks on the news media, and even occasionally his calls for imprisoning his political opponents.

The Times piece, by Jeremy Peters, reports that in West Virginia, GOP Senate primary candidate Don Blankenship is running an ad that says: “We don’t need to investigate our president. We need to arrest Hillary … Lock her up!”

In multiple GOP races across the country, the Times piece reports, candidates are employing phrases such as “drain the swamp,” “build the wall,” “rigged system” and even “fake news.”

The GOP Senate candidate in Tennessee ran an ad that promises to stand with Trump “every step of the way to build that wall,” and

even echoes Trump’s attacks on African American football players protesting systemic racism and police brutality:

“I stand when the president walks in the room. And yes, I stand when I hear ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.'”

Meanwhile, National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar reports that in the Indiana Senate GOP primary, Mike Braun, the candidate who is most vocally emphasizing Trump’s messages — on trade, the Washington “swamp” and “amnesty” — appears to be gaining the advantage.

Braun’s ads basically recast true conservatism as Trumpism in its incarnation as populist anti-establishment ethno-nationalism.

, one of the Indiana GOP Senate candidates has

bashed “Crooked Hillary Clinton,” and

all three have cast aspersions on the Mueller probe.

One called it a “fishing expedition,” and another claimed: “Nothing’s been turned up except that Hillary Clinton is the real guilty party here.”

The question all this raises is whether there is a large swath of GOP primary voters who are fully prepared to march behind Trump into full-blown authoritarianism.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...nl_most&wpmm=1

[Mikeanaro]

[boutons_deux]

W T F (oh, it's slave-state Texas)

Texas charter school assignment asks 8th graders to list the 'positive aspects' of life as a slave

Manu Livar called BULL , his paper:




https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...ife-as-a-slave

[boutons_deux]

Mick Mulvaney’s confession highlights the corrosive influence of money in politics

Mick Mulvaney said the quiet part out loud.

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Tuesday at the American Bankers Association conference in Washington.

“If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

told the 1,300 industry executives and lobbyists that they should push lawmakers hard to pursue their shared agenda.

Mulvaney’s comment appears emblematic of a mentality that pervades Trump’s orbit.

Multiple Republicans admitted last fall during the debate over tax cuts that they worriedabout losing campaign contributions if they didn’t vote for the legislation. “My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again,’”

“As a businessman and a very substantial donor to very important people, when you give, they do whatever the you want them to do,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal in 2015. “As a businessman, I need that.”

“You better believe it,” Trump replied. “I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me.”

Mulvaney’s comments are especially notable because he’s been viewed for several years, by supporters and critics alike, as one of Wall Street’s best friends in Washington.

“He was tapped by President Trump in November to temporarily run the [CFPB], in part because of his promise to sharply curtail it,”

he has frozen all new investigations and

slowed down existing inquiries by requiring employees to produce detailed justifications.

He also sharply restricted the bureau’s access to bank data … And

he has scaled back efforts to go after payday lenders, auto lenders and other financial services companies accused of preying on the vulnerable.

[Mulvaney received nearly $63,000 from payday lenders for his campaigns.]

But he wants Congress to go further and has urged it to wrest funding of the independent watchdog from the Federal Reserve,

a move that would give lawmakers — and those with access to them — more influence on the bureau’s actions.”

Mulvaney also announced during yesterday’s speech to the bankers he will likely end public access to a database used by consumers to file complaints against financial ins utions.

- “Mulvaney didn’t offer this as a sad concession to reality but an actual principle of governance he had personally abided,”

-- Many journalists are characterizing Mulvaney’s statement as scandalous:

“A remarkable admission that would very likely spark an immediate House ethics investigation [if he was still in Congress],”

“I’ve never before seen a former member describe Congress so explicitly as an extortion racket,”

“Mulvaney is my No. 1 draft pick for Guy Who Would Give The Detective Extra Information To Amuse Himself But It Ultimately Leads To His Downfall,”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...nl_most&wpmm=1

[boutons_deux]

Trump officials went on a taxpayer-funded shopping spree. Here’s the bill.

Well over $3 million and counting





the Trump administration has an unusual appe e for first class or privately chartered flights. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in privately chartered domestic flights (not including his attempt to book an Air Force jet for his honeymoon), in sharp contrast to former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geither, who always flew in coach on commercial airlines.

https://thinkprogress.org/how-many-taxpayer-dollars-trump-cabinet-have-wasted-95e4ef80f6cc/