***OFFICIAL TRUMP CABINET THREAD***

[boutons_deux]

 Potential Secretary of State Nominee Rex Tillerson Has an SEC Problem

ExxonMobil has been under SEC investigation since August.

But Trump and Tillerson share something else that hasn’t gotten as much attention—a penchant to rip off their business partners.


In ExxonMobil’s case, I’m talking about shareholders.

Tillerson’s company has been under formal investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission since August for failing to accurately value its proven oil reserves.

Those reserves are critical to investors for assessing the future viability of the company.

Without the certainty that the company can keep crude oil flowing decades into the future, ExxonMobil stock would plummet.

Rewriting the disclosures to investors with lower valuations would cost the company billions of dollars.

And actually the entire oil and gas industry would be affected by a new standard rather than the current ad hoc system.

https://www.thenation.com/article/po...tm_term=weekly

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Trump’s State Department pick just got busted as the owner of a shady Russia-US oil company

Leaked do ents confirm that ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, whom Trump appointed to head the State Department, owns a U.S.-Russia oil company.

The do ent — a 2001 corporate registration form from the Bahamas — shows Tillerson’s name listed among 17 other corporate officers for Exxon Neftegas. Tillerson is named as a director and chairman of the board, while four of the 18 officers are listed as residing in Russia. Three of the names are from Moscow, and one of the names is from Sakhalin, in Russia’s far eastern region.

German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung first published the do ent, which obtained it from an anonymous source. The leaks were then shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which also learned that ExxonMobil has 67 companies registered in the Bahamas for business deals with various oil-rich foreign governments, like Azerbaijan, Russia, and Venezuela.

http://usuncut.com/politics/trump-st...ent-russia-us/

Trash's administration is as toxically corrupt as Trash himself.

[CosmicCowboy]

Why is it shady Boo? You are showing how truly stupid you are.

You realize Exxon does business worldwide, don't you?

Just being registered in the Bahamas doesn't make them shady.

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He didn't get into Trash's cabinet or govt (yet), but he certainly hates free press and dissent, just like the Big Orange Turd

Newt Gingrich ramps up attacks on “propaganda media”: If you’re not with Trump, you’re the enemy

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/19/newt...ure-the-enemy/

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Like his secretary of state pick, Trump's selection for commerce secretary also has ties to Russia

Trump the president-elect has welcomed into his administration a businessman with a much tighter and more financially significant relationship with Vekselberg: Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor who has specialized in distressed assets and who is now Trump's pick for commerce secretary.

Russian oligarchs (looking for a place to stash their embarrassingly large wads of cash outside the country against the day when someone noticed they were running off with everything not nailed down) made a bid to take over the Bank of Cyprus.

However, European regulators balked at giving a crowd of kleptocrats their own private money laundering system/tax haven.

Wilbur Ross came to the rescue. Ross gave most of the oligarchs a buyout, leaving himself primary stockholder of the bank and No. 2 in Vekselberg’s' conglomerate.

When the bank’s new board was announced it included Ross, along with a representative for Vekselberg, and Vladimir Strzhalkovskiy—another Putin associate and former KGB member. To round things out, they also brought in a former CEO at Deutsche Bank who was also a Putin-pal.

Asked about Ross' dealings with Vekselberg, the Trump transition office did not respond to a request for comment.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1...28Daily+Kos%29

Don The Con is just yet another Useful Idiot for (Russian) powers behind the throne.

St Ronnie, dubya, Trash, nothing but Useful Idiots.


I'd really like to see those hours of Vlad's vids of Trash ing s and snorting coke.

[CosmicCowboy]

Boo, you can throw all the tantrums you want but Harry Reid ed you when he triggered the nuclear option. Trump will get whatever cabinet members he wants and the Democrats won't be able to stop him. Funny how that partisan can come back to haunt you...this time democrats did it to themselves...

[boutons_deux]

Boo, you can throw all the tantrums you want but Harry Reid ed you when he triggered the nuclear option. Trump will get whatever cabinet members he wants and the Democrats won't be able to stop him. Funny how that partisan can come back to haunt you...this time democrats did it to themselves...

you ALWAYS deflect.

That your venerated Trash will get his cabinet picks isn't the point. It's the corrupt, crazy, predatory assholes he is picking.

And Repugs will almost certainly kill the filibuster completely.

[CosmicCowboy]

Boo, are you telling me you don't see the delicious irony of the Democrats screwing themselves out of any possible chance to influence Trumps nominations? That it never occurred to them that the nuclear option could come back to haunt them? I thnik it's freaking hilarious...all they can do is howl and whine like Booboo.

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Trump's new budget director gave a speech to the John Birch Society just six months ago

The Republican Party has, for some years now, been a spawning ground for lunatics. We had assumed that eventually the party would tire of them and toss them out. Donald Trump, however, is elevating them to the top levels of government.

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), the ultra-conservative congressman tapped by Donald Trump to run the Office of Management and Budget, recently accepted a speaking invitation from the notorious John Birch Society, an extreme right-wing group known for peddling outlandish conspiracy theories for more than half a century.

The John Birch Society is one of the few conservative groups so implausibly paranoid and conspiracy-minded as to be shunned wholesale by the rest of the movement.

They have been implausibly paranoid and conspiracy-minded for decades. But Mulvaney's a sport, and we live in implausibly paranoid and conspiracy-minded times.

His July speech, flagged by the Democratic opposition research group American Bridge, was billed as an address on "the Federal Reserve's role in bailing out Europe."

According to its website, the John Birch Society believes that the Federal Reserve is uncons utional and should be abolished and that "the only cons utional money is gold and silver coin."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1...28Daily+Kos%29

Guess who founed JBS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_C._Koch

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Friedman Even Worse Than I Thought

I already realized that US Ambassador to Israel nominee David Friedman, in addition to supporting the worst and most violent elements in Israeli society, is in fact a terrible person. But I didn't know how far he'd gone in pros uting the Holocaust in the service of his friend and client Donald Trump.

In his latest column in Haaretz column Peter Beinart digs up this quote ....

October 20, 2016: “While the revelation of Mr. Trump’s demeaning comments caught on tape some 11 years ago brought him, as one would expect, widespread negative attention, The New York Times ran with the story with all the journalistic integrity of the worst gossip rag. If only the Times had reported on the Nazi death camps with the same fervor as its failed last-minute attempt to conjure up alleged victims of Donald Trump, imagine how many lives could have been saved.”

I did not realize you could

leverage the Holocaust and the 6 million Jewish victims as a cudgel to defend a man caught on tape bragging about 'grabbing' women by their 'pussies' and coercing sex.

But you can. David Friedman did. And he'll be our next Ambassador to Israel.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/...+%28TPMNews%29

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[CosmicCowboy]

Damn Boo...you are right. Maybe he can pick up you and a couple of homeless people to lower the averages.

[rmt]

boutons, don't you want successful people leading the country? Would you rather have penniless failures? Why haven't you criticized Obama's cabinet? Isn't Kerry wealthy? Hillary?

[CosmicCowboy]

boutons, don't you want successful people leading the country? Would you rather have penniless failures? Why haven't you criticized Obama's cabinet? Isn't Kerry wealthy? Hillary?

Boo just LOVES Heinz Ketchup.

[spurraider21]

Damn Boo...you are right. Maybe he can pick up you and a couple of homeless people to lower the averages.

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Gingrich Says Trump's No Longer Interested In 'Drain The Swamp'

Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that Donald Trump’s “drain the swamp” catch phrase was “cute” but that the President-elect now disclaims it.

During an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition” Wednesday, host Rachel Martin asked if the former House speaker had been “working in the swamp, to use Donald Trump’s language.”

“I’m told he now just disclaims that. He now says it was cute, but he doesn't want to use it anymore,” Gingrich said, referring to the phrase. “I'd written what I thought was a very cute tweet about ‘the alligators are complaining,’ and somebody wrote back and said they were tired of hearing this stuff.”

Later, Gingrich added: “I personally, as a sense of humor, like the alligator and swamp language, and I think it vividly illustrates the problem, because all the people in this city who are the alligators are going to hate the swamp being drained.

And there's going to be constant fighting over it.

But, you know, he is my leader

and if he decides to drop the swamp and the alligator I will drop the swamp and the alligator.”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/newt-gingrich-trump-not-using-drain-the-swamp?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_ca mpaign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29

Noot, the bootlicking crocodile

[Thread]

^It served him well, by God.

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Trump's budget director wants the government to stop funding scientific research

Mick Mulvaney, the ultra-conservative South Carolina congressman whom Donald Trump has tapped to be his budget director, has questioned whether the federal government should spend any money on scientific research.

Mulvaney recently delivered his insights to the flouride-is-a-communist-plot John Birch Society,

and for those really craving a flashback to the days of “the AIDS virus does not cause AIDS,” the man who would have his finger on the figures for the nation’s research budgets justified the attack on basic science by questioning the connection between the Zika virus and birth defects.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concluded in April that the Zika virus causes microcephaly and other defects. But Mulvaney wrote:

“Brazil's microcephaly epidemic continues to pose a mystery -- if Zika is the culprit, why are there no similar epidemics in countries also hit hard by the virus?”

The answer is likely one that Mulvaney never even paused to consider—abortion. Brazil was hit first, but as the disease spread to other areas, increased awareness of its effects made detection and treatment more available.

But for those like Mulvaney, who regard all of

science as some sort of mystery religion run by a cabal of leftists who only want excuses to steal money from hard-working billionaires and halt the righteous profits that could be made selling DDT,

the idea that Zika only caused 1,500 cases of microcephaly is a reason to stop the payments on science.

http://m.dailykos.com/stories/2016/12/19/1612724/-Trump-s-budget-director-wants-the-government-to-stop-funding-scientific-research?detail=email&link_id=8&can_id=4217e8eb109 c68bd0c2e4143dd2d8c15&source=email-lie-down-with-dogs-wake-up-with-fleas-guess-who-trumps-national-security-advisor-met-up-with&email_referrer=lie-down-with-dogs-wake-up-with-fleas-guess-who-trumps-national-security-advisor-met-up-with&email_subject=lie-down-with-dogs-wake-up-with-fleas-guess-who-trumps-national-security-advisor-met-up-with

Defunding Fed research will be high on Repugs list

Mulvaney is a Kock Bros tea bagger from ing SC.

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Donald Trump’s skin-deep staffing logic: Cabinet staffers are being chosen based on a “look”

The president-elect privately admits he looks for a “central casting" quality

President-elect Donald Trump’s logic for staffing his administration seems to be skin deep — quite literally.

“Presentation is very important because you’re representing America not only on the national stage but also the international stage, depending on the position,” Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller told The Washington Post Wednesday.

This tendency has led the president-elect to make some rather unorthodox choices. While Trump chose friend of Russia Rex Tillerson to be his secretary of state — even though he will be the first individual to hold that post without any government experience in modern history — he bypassed former United Nations ambassador John Bolton in part because he was turned off by the neoconservative’s walrus mustache.

“Donald was not going to like that mustache,” The Post reported an aide of saying. “I can’t think of anyone that’s really close to Donald that has a beard that he likes.”

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/22/dona...sed-on-a-look/

Don The Con is all show business and just as fraudulent as his Cheetos skin, his tacky, way-too-long hair, his over-stated wealth.

[CosmicCowboy]

Ahhhhh.

Morning coffee

Sunrise

A Boo Meltdown tantrum

Life is good!

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Trump’s budget director has some awfully strange ideas about economic policy

he is a little bit of an odd choice. He’s not even on the budget committee, which, like the OMB, does a lot of work related to the federal budget. And unfortunately for America (and, to an extent, the world writ large), his stated views on a number of crucial economic policy questions are absurd. If implemented, they could have terrible consequences for the American economy.

immediately made his mark with the eccentric view that there was no need for periodic increases in the federal government’s statutory debt ceiling.

Mulvaney was unimpressed. “I have heard people say that if we don’t do it it will be the end of the world,” he told the Hill in 2010. “I have yet to meet someone who can articulate the negative consequences.”

Rather than ask someone to explain it to him, Mulvaney simply chose to wallow in ignorance, and a few weeks later he popped up on Fox News saying again that he didn’t see what the big deal was. When a deal was eventually reached, Mulvaney voted against it, warning darkly that excessive debt threatened the country.

Six months later, he once again denounced lifting the debt ceiling. This time, he revealed a different kind of fundamental ignorance about how federal debt works, asking rhetorically, “Does the president really ever intend to pay it back?” and wondering why the Obama administration doesn’t submit a budget that “produces a surplus that generates the money with which to repay the debt that he's asking us to take on today.”

People who lend money to the US government, of course, get paid back. But the federal government itself, in practice, never pays its total debts down to zero.

while speaking to the fringe-right conspiracist group the John Birch Society in July, Mulvaney claimed the Federal Reserve had “effectively devalued the dollar.”

In fact, at the time he spoke, the Fed had presided over two straight years of rapid dollar appreciation against other world currencies and a years-long span of inflation that was below the central bank’s target rate.

This is a somewhat obscure-sounding topic, but it’s directly relevant to Trumpian economic themes. The runup in the value of the dollar that Mulvaney didn’t realize was happening played a crucial role in the stalling out of American job creation in the manufacturing sector.

From 2010 through to 2014, employment in manufacturing grew steadily alongside overall growth in employment as the economy recovered from the Great Recession.

For the past two years, however, manufacturing employment has fallen slightly even while overall job growth has been decent. The rapid rise in the value of the dollar — which makes the United States an unattractive location in which to make things that are tradable globally — has played a key role in this.

If Mulvaney were to push up the value of the dollar further, he would further harm the manufacturing sector.

His view, however, was that the Fed’s alleged devaluation had “choke[d] off economic growth,” and that people should look instead to Bitcoin as a currency that is “not manipulatable by any government.”

Mulvaney authored a Facebook post in which he questioned whether the government should play any role in scientific research (“do we need government-funded research at all”) and also called into question the link between the Zika virus and microcephaly birth defects.

a top economic policy official in the American government wants to sharply increase the value of the dollar and/or default on the national debt.

Senate Democrats will have the opportunity to probe Mulvaney’s views on these matters — along with

his vow to “end Medicare as we know it” and

his denunciation of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme” —

so the American people can get a clearer sense of what it is we’re in for.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...y-debt-ceiling

This is the typical ignorant tea party red/slave sate asshole that Kock Bros hire to up govt.

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Republicans In Congress Are TERRIFIED Of Trump And His 'Horde Of Enforcers'



Donald Trump ran roughshod over his GOP opponents in the 2016 Republican primaries. It was a scorched Earth style campaign that left his foes, not just beaten, but humiliated.

He didn't merely challenge their policy positions or leadership skills, he used language meant to shame them. Fellow Republicans were viciously maligned as "Lyin' Ted' and "Little Marco." Eventually Trump succeeded in capturing the nomination, but not without leaving bodies on the battlefield.

Those same tactics are now being deployed against the Republicans in Congress. Many of them are saying privately that they are fearful of taking positions against Trump.

That poses a critical problem because their traditionally conservative views are often at odds with Trump's twisted brand of populism. Trumpulism favors cordial relations with Russia and its strongman Vladimir Putin. It proposes to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure improvements, mainly benefiting wealthy contractors. It is critical of the U.S. alliance with NATO. It would impose stiff tariffs on American companies with foreign factories.

All of these positions are in direct opposition to decades of Republican doctrine.
The problem now is that Republicans are literally afraid to speak their minds.

They have been warned by Trump and his surrogates that any

diversion from total obedience to his agenda would be viewed as betrayal.

As reported by Politico:

"It’s little wonder that Capitol Hill Republicans have papered over their not-insignificant policy differences with Trump, shying away from any statement about the president-elect that might possibly be construed as critical.

They’re terrified of arousing the ire of their tempestuous new leader — or being labeled a turncoat by his army of followers."

[...]"Since the election, numerous congressional Republicans have refused to publicly weigh in on any Trump proposal at odds with Republican orthodoxy, from his border wall to his massive infrastructure package.

The most common reason, stated repeatedly but always privately:

They're afraid of being attacked by Breitbart or other big-name Trump supporters."

The threat from Breitbart is a real concern. Especially since its chairman, Stephen Bannon, is currently on leave to serve as Trump's strategic advisor in the White House. But it doesn't stop there.

As South Carolina GOP Rep. Mark Sanford said, "People are naturally reticent to be the first out of the block for fear of Sean Hannity, for fear of Breitbart, for fear of local folks."

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016...ng-their-minds

Thereby, Don The Con TrashBrain becomes autocratic dictator surrounded by goons, Schutzstaffel, brown shirts, Fox, Breitbart, and all the hate media.

America The Beautiful, ed and un able.

[CosmicCowboy]

ahhh...another good meltdown laugh from Boo before the evening rush hour.

[boutons_deux]

ahhh...another good meltdown laugh from Boo before the evening rush hour.

CParasite with another silly deflection from the Trash catastrophe

[boutons_deux]

Trash band of unfunny clownish assholes

Schooled on Benghazi and Pizzagate, Trump team is heavy on conspiracy theorists

https://www.washingtonpost.com/power...t-draw7&wpmm=1