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

[boutons_deux]

‘Republicans don’t care’: Conservative shreds GOP for letting Trump turn US into ‘third-world dictatorship’

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin accused Trump of turning the U.S. into a “banana republic.”

“You know, Jennifer Rubin, you have Donald Trump, who owns a $200,000 a head private club — who we do not know who the members are — but we keep getting little inklings that they have little perks,” Reid suggested.

“Donald Trump is becoming more like other world leaders that are not so savory necessarily, whose business interests and essentially financial interests get deeply entangled with their interest in leading their governments.”

“The [Mar-a-Lago] fee used to be $100,000, he doubled it once he became president because he can now monetize the presidency in a way that no one has ever done before,” Rubin began.

“He began this trip in Hawaii where he was, again, touting a Trump property.

No one else has used the presidency to advance his own personal business interests”

“And there’s a reason why he’s getting away with it and that is that Republicans don’t care,” she asserted.

“They could easily stop this, they could easily pass legislation or invoke the Emoluments Clause and prohibit him from receiving income and monies from foreign leaders.

But they roll over and play dead. This is becoming a banana republic, a third world dictatorship where the rule of law is supplanted.”

“The president’s financial and personal interests are above national interests and he cavorts with people who share those rotten values, antidemocratic values,” Rubin concluded.

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/rep...e+Raw+Story%29

and Repug voters don't care, either, as the Repugs screw Repug voters every which way, just as long as Repugs crush knitters, Mexicans, LGBT, Muslims, women.

[boutons_deux]

Trash appointed Christian Sharia assholes

Trump to nominate notorious anti-feminist to be ‘Ambassador for Women’

President Trump is expected to nominate Penny Nance,

an anti-LGBTQ,

anti-abortion, and

anti-feminist activist,

to be the “Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues,” a position created under President Obama.

Since 2010, Nance has led the Concerned Women for America (CWA),

a Christian social policy organization that has been listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ hate group.

She doesn’t believe that efforts to restrict health coverage for women are part of a “war on women,”

but she used that term to describe the Violence Against Women Act.

And she claims that legal abortion is worse than the Holocaust.

https://thinkprogress.org/penny-nanc...-4b6cd92e57c6/

[boutons_deux]

Dangerous Medicaid waivers likely to be approved under Trump administration

Premiums and work requirements could hit the program's 68 million beneficiaries hard.

A philosophical change is underway for the decades-old Medicaid program, which provides health coverage for over 68 million people, including children, pregnant persons, seniors, modest income-earners, and those living with disabilities.

released new criteria Tuesday outlining how it will judge state applications that look to innovate the 1965 insurance program.

Notably omitted from the newly unveiled plan: “expanding eligibility.”

Veering away from the Obama administration’s goal to extend coverage, the Trump administration is seemingly prioritizing overall efficiency and personal responsibility among enrollees instead.

“We will not just accept the hollow victory of numbers covered, but will dig deeper and demand more of ourselves and of you,”

CMS will now accept applications it has historically rejected, such as those that impose work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries.

“New CMS Medicaid waiver criteria is thinly veiled rhetoric to pave the way for approvals of state policies that

will cause loss of coverage,”

the Obama administration denied 1115 waivers it said would undermine access to affordable insurance.

the new criteria hopes to align Medicaid with private insurance — more importantly,

its implementation marks a not-so-secret victory for Verma,

whose health care consulting firm, SVC Inc., actually designed Ohio’s rejected Medicaid 1115 waiver. Under Verma’s leadership, rejected applications like the one her company previously crafted for Ohio could be — and likely will be — approved:

on Tuesday,

Verma said CMS would approve proposals that promote “community engagement”, a cloaked reference to work requirements.

imposing premiums or work requirements went against the statute outlined in the le XIX of The Social Security Act, which created Medicaid.

“If people can’t access insurance through, let’s say, their job, they are legally en led to Medicaid,”

Several states in addition to Maine have have submitted waiver proposals to CMS that would impose requirements, including

Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Utah, and Wisconsin. all red!

More than half of nondisabled adults on Medicaid are already working, accordingto the Kaiser Family Foundation. The rest are at risk of losing coverage.

Imposing extra obstacles like work requirements and premiums is just not “realistic”, Ryan said, adding that most of those individuals live below the poverty level.

https://thinkprogress.org/dangerous-medicaid-waivers-likely-to-be-approved-under-trump-administration-074893df504b/

Verma is Paul Rand's ideal of a true Ayn Rand sociopathic and social/economic Darwinist.

Repugs busy as stinky beavers, enriching the oligarchy while screwing the poor.

===========

In nasty KKK home Indiana:

"According to Verma, "you have to make your contribution every month, with a 60-day grace period. If you don't make the contribution, you're out of the program for 12 months. It's a strong personal responsibility mechanism.""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seema_Verma

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

How's Verma's "personal responsibility" work in Indiana?

"A study from the liberal think tank the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), found that because of the premiums required, one-third of eligible individuals who apply are not enrolled because they haven’t made a premium payment.

Around 30,000 people, the study found, had been found eligible in the past 60 days but hadn’t enrolled at all.

“HIP 2.0’s premiums are deterring significant numbers of eligible low-income people from enrolling,” the report concluded.

For many people, the cost wasn’t the biggest obstacle.

Rather, 84 percent of people who were bumped from HIP Plus to HIP Basic for nonpayment said they had been confused about the payment process and the program in general."

https://www.theatlantic.com/business...-pence/511262/

So Verma's CMS is setting a trap to kick people out of Medicaid and into the ER, where they will typically be sicker and more expensive for taxpayers.

Repugs are all about ing poor people out of health care to "pay for" the oligarchy's tax cuts in the Class War.

[boutons_deux]

Trash is warping the energy market to help just one supporter—at a cost to climate, health, and jobs

Donald Trump

has wrecked America’s standing in the world by unilaterally removing the nation from the Paris agreement,

placed millions at risk from climate change by dumping the Clean Power Plan,

buried hundreds of miles of streams and rivers with an executive order to remove limits on dumping waste, and

cut short the lives of thousands by requiring utilities to keep more polluting power sources in the mix.

And all of it, all of it, helps one man.

A proposal by Energy Secretary Rick Perry to alter the nation's electricity markets would provide

a windfall for a small group of companies —

most strikingly one owned by coal magnate Bob Murray, a prominent backer of President Donald Trump.

The “reliability” standards being pushed by Perry’s Department of Energy

explicitly penalize utilities for using wind or solar power and

reward providers who keep aging coal power and nuclear plants up and running.

Even natural gas-powered plants aren’t allowed to meet the specifications that were specifically drawn to protect coal.

Perry's plan would force consumers to subsidize ailing coal-fired and nuclear power plants with billions of dollars

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1713515

This is what y'all misogynist Nazis voted for, right?

asshole hick JimmyRicky's TX is leads the nation in wind power, but now he's a Good German following orders from Trash so that TX utilities will be penalized for using wind power.

[boutons_deux]

the oligarchy with $Bs to spend buying the elections, the laws, the regs, the politicians, the judges

Pharmaceutical Industry Scores Another Election Victory

A year after California voters rejected what would have been a first-of-its-kind state law to regulate drug prices, Ohioans did the same.

The most expensive ballot measure in Ohio's history was resoundingly rejected by voters on Tuesday, handing a victory to the pharmaceutical industry that spent big money to defeat it.

The measure -- which would have been a first of its kind in the nation -- would have let state health agencies pay the same for prescription drugs as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which gets a 24 percent discount off drug manufacturers' prices.

With 27 percent of precincts reporting, almost 80 percent voted against it.

With at least $58 million in contributions, the opposition in Ohio -- which included the drug companies -- had more than three times the money on hand as the campaign in support of the legislation, which only raised roughly $16 million.

If passed, proponents of the Ohio Drug Price Relief Act said it would have saved the state $400 million a year.

But former Ohio Budget Director Greg Browning (a bought-Repug, no doubt), who opposed the measure, analyzed the bill and said that

the $400 million in savings were grossly oversold because states typically get discounts on drugs anyway.

http://www.governing.com/gov-electio...28GOVERNING%29

... but what's the harm in LEGALLY forcing "discounts"?

Just another of the millions of ways America is ed and un able.

Even with "discounts on drugs anyway", Americans still pay way more than "single buyer" countries pay for the same drugs.

[boutons_deux]

Mitch McConnell powers up a production line for Trump’s right-wing judges

Senate Republicans are rubber-stamping Trump’s judicial picks to pack the courts with right-wing extremists

there's good reason to fear that the ability of the courts to work as a check on Trump's more fascistic desires is quickly being eroded. That's because Senate Majority Leader

Mitch McConnell and Sen. Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, have set up a factory-style assembly line for Trump's judicial nominees, and are getting them confirmed at a dizzyingly fast rate.
Trump's big problem so far is that he's "not winning" in the courts, Sharon McGowan, the director of strategy for Lambda Legal, told Salon.

"So the way he wants to start winning is changing the refs.”


the president can do this because

McConnell deliberately created numerous vacancies in the federal courts during Barack Obama's presidency.

McConnell's decision to stall the confirmation hearing for Judge Merrick Garland, Obama's highly qualified Supreme Court nominee, got some attention, although that was largely drowned out by the daily horror show of the presidential campaign.

The fact that McConnell was doing the same thing for numerous other seats on the federal judiciary, in hopes of holding them open for a Republican president, barely got any attention in the media.

McConnell stalled so much on confirming Obama's nominees that Obama pretty much gave up on sending nominees to the Senate.

Well, the strategy worked.

By the time Trump got to office,

there were 103 judicial vacancies in the federal courts.

Now, of course, McConnell's strategy has completely changed. Instead of finding every reason to slow the process down,

McConnell and Grassley have gotten creative about how quickly they can cram these appointees through the confirmation process,

https://www.salon.com/2017/11/08/mit...udicial-picks/


The oligarchy will own the Federal judiciary just like it owns Congress and the Exec

America is ed and un able, for decades

[boutons_deux]

Trump’s choice for No. 2 at EPA admitted he saw coal baron’s action plan to dismantle agency

Lobbyist attended meetings on Rick Perry proposal to subsidize coal plants.




admitted he viewed a plan developed by a top coal producer to roll back environmental regulations at the agency and attended meetings on Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s proposal to subsidize coal and nuclear plants.

Andrew Wheeler said Murray Energy was one of his lobbying clients while working at the law firm Faegre Baker Daniels.

“has said that he has a three-page plan that is being implemented by Scott Pruitt at the EPA. He said they’re already through the first page.”

https://thinkprogress.org/epa-nominee-coal-lobbyist-daaf80485dff/

[boutons_deux]

Trump’s top environmental pick says she has "many questions" about climate change

Kathleen Hartnett White, the former head of the Texas Council on Environmental Quality and President Trump’s pick to serve as his top White House environmental official, faced tough questioning at her confirmation hearing Wednesday.

Kathleen Hartnett White, President Trump’s pick to serve as his top White House environmental official,

“I’m not a scientist" GFY,

She did acknowledge that there was probably some human contribution, “the extent to which I think is very uncertain.”

That contradicts leading scientific assessments on the matter, which have pinned climate change largely on human greenhouse gas emissions.

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/11...-about-climat/

When Repugs want for govt, they have an infinite source in TX

[boutons_deux]

GOP Senator ‘Worries About Extremist Views’ of Kathleen Hartnett White at Confirmation Hearing

The move mirrors that of Rick Perry, who said humans were partially responsible for climate change at his hearing before reverting to denial after his confirmation.

White, who has previously stated that ethanol policies are causing “massive distortions in the economy” and have “led to food riots in several countries,” said Wednesday she “erred” by not basing her previous position on current data and now “salutes the [ethanol] industry.”

Earlier this year at his Senate confirmation hearing for energy secretary, Rick Perry claimed the “climate is changing” and “some of it is caused by man-made activity.” But a few months later Perry danced his way back into the climate denial camp, saying that climate change “is not settled science”

On other environmental matters, White mostly stuck to views that have earned her both ridicule and harsh criticism from scientists and environmentalists.

In the past, White has said that

climate change is the “dogmatic claim of ideologues and clerics,”

“fossil fuels dissolved the economic justification for slavery” and that

renewables are “a false hope.”

When questioned about her past statements, White deflected or defended her position,

saying her earlier comments were being taken out of context.

“Your positions are so far out of the mainstream, they’re not just outliers they’re outrageous.”

Merkley, of Oregon, held up a chart from a recent climate report published by the Trump administration finding that there is “no alternative explanation” for climate change other than humans.

The chart showed the contribution of humans, solar flares and volcanic activity to climate change, and Merkley asked White whether she accepted the results.



he report, White said, is a “product of the past administration, not this one” and that “there’s incredible difference of opinion among climate scientists.”

TCEQ ... under White’s leadership, the agency had purposefully underreported radiation levels in drinking water to downplay its danger.

KHOU’s reporting found that White, with the green light from Perry, ordered staff to continue fixing the numbers.

When asked why the agency didn’t challenge the EPA on strict radiation levels for drinking water instead of fudging the numbers, she told KHOU reporter Mark Greenblatt, “There are legal challenges, because of law not because of science, that are almost impossible to win.”

https://www.texasobserver.org/gop-se...ation-hearing/

White is VERY STRONG on rhetorical bull , but it's still 100% reeking TX BULL .

Corn's red states pushing hard to keep the totally insane corn ethanol scam going.

[boutons_deux]

“Climate change” and “global warming” are disappearing from government websites

The deletions follow a pattern of undoing work on climate change under the Trump administration.

It’s happened not just at the Environmental Protection Agency but also at the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

federal agencies that are trying to boost fossil fuels and roll back efforts to study, mitigate, and adapt to climate change.

DOE Energy Information Administration’s Energy Kids page was altered to play up fossil fuels and play down climate change,

while the EPA’s “Student’s Guide to Climate Change” was unlinked from its main page and buried on its site.

Brian Klippenstein, who led the Trump transition team for the USDA, was gunning for people working on climate change as soon as he arrived.

< lots of examples by Agency >

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-envir...online-website

May Mar-a-Lago drown sooner rather than later.

[boutons_deux]

The oligarchy's kakistocracy is unstoppable

NOT EXACTLY A ROCKET SCIENTIST

.

On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce Committee confirmed Oklahoma Republican Jim Bridenstine for the top position at NASA. A single vote clinched the nomination, over opposition from all 13 Democrats on the panel.

Next, he’ll face a vote by the full Senate.

Democrats raised many questions during Bridenstine’s nomination, including

why a conservative climate skeptic with little scientific or technical experience should lead a non-partisan research administration.

NASA is best known for its missions to space, but the agency’s Earth Science Division makes a critical contribution to our understanding of climate change.

when asked to expand on the extent of those contributions, replied,

“That is a question I do not have an answer to.”

(He’s also spoken out against the legalization of gay marriage in the past.)

http://grist.org/briefly/the-senate-just-approved-trumps-pick-for-nasa-chief-you-can-probably-guess-what-he-thinks-about-climate-change/

"answer to" a question? Is that Oklahoma vernacular?

It's certainly not American idiom or usage.

Stupid is as stupid speaks

[boutons_deux]

Paul Ryan running the most closed, restricted, discussion-free House in history

Paul Ryan was in no hurry to talk about Tuesday night’s Democratic victories. Instead, he was up on Wednesday morning with some bragging about his very efficient and effective House.

Paul Ryan‏

In the House, we've passed almost 400 bills in the first 10 months of the Trump admin.

That's more than under Clinton, Bush, or Obama.

Of course, those bills consist of hundreds of new Post Office names, a couple of DOA healthcare bills, and multiple demands to lock up Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, James Comey, Robert Mueller, and every host of a late-night TV show.

Ryan’s faux productivity is a far cry from his claimed goals when he took the spot.

Paul Ryan vowed an end to the much-despised top-down approach of his predecessor when he took the speaker’s gavel in 2015, promising a House that’s “more open, more inclusive, more deliberative, more participatory.”

“We're not going to bottle up the process so much and predetermine the outcome of everything around here,” he said in his first news conference as speaker.

But it’s not as if Paul Ryan is getting nothing done …

Ryan has yet to allow a single piece of legislation to be governed by an open rule, which allows members to propose changes on the floor.

Or maybe it is.

With Paul Ryan locking down the House process so that

only his selected bills hit the floor,

and Mitch McConnell at least as bad on the Senate side, the legislative process is more one-sided than it’s ever been.

In both chambers, Republicans are breaking with long-standing traditions and stretching the rules

to the breaking point to allow them to run bills through without Democrats being able to either introduce a bill or enact a filibuster.

“The Republican Majority has now made history for all the wrong reasons,” said House Rules Committee ranking Democrat Louise Slaughter of New York in a statement Tuesday.

“Under Speaker Ryan’s leadership, this session of Congress has now become the most closed Congress in history.”

By keeping the House closed to Democratic input, Ryan makes it possible for his members to vote only on bills that align with the Republican base, and protects them from having to even cast a vote on anything the slightest bit controversial.

For example, Ryan has saved his members from having to consider any legislation that might address the kind of bump stock

used in the mass shooting at Las Vegas. If it came up, it might well pass, but it would be … uncomfortable. Especially to the NRA. So Ryan makes sure it simply never comes up.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...use-in-history

[boutons_deux]

Trump's breaking all the records … for nominating unqualified judges

Another one of popular vote loser Donald Trump's judicial pick, another "not qualified" assessment from the American Bar Association. Not that Trump cares—he's cut the ABA out of the nominating and vetting process.

The latest, Brett Talley for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, makes four.

Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) released late Tuesday, the committee said that it did not have any concerns with Talley's "integrity or temperament," but that he lacked the "requisite experience."

Talley has drawn some scrutiny for his online presence.

He authored a 2013 blog post

calling on readers to "join the National Rifle Association" and

calling gun control legislation rolled out after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School "the greatest attack on our cons utional freedoms in our lifetime."

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1713935

Repugs are telling Trash which rightwing extremist/Christian Taliban assholes to nominate, and McConnell, having denied Obama, is rushing through the assholes.

America is ed and un ed by Repug judges for decades.

[boutons_deux]

Senate Panel Approves Absurdly Unqualified Judicial Appointee

Trump's nominee to be a federal judge in Alabama, has never tried a case, was unanimously rated "not qualified" by the American Bar Association's judicial rating committee,

has practiced law for only three years and,

as a blogger last year, displayed a degree of partisanship unusual for a judicial nominee,

denouncing "Hillary Rotten Clinton" and

pledging support for the National Rifle Association.

"The judge story is an untold story. Nobody wants to talk about it," Trump said last month, standing alongside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in the White House Rose Garden. "But when you think of it, Mitch and I were saying, that

has consequences 40 years out, depending on the age of the judge — but 40 years out."

the Senate Judiciary Committee, on a party-line vote, approved him for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.

"laughable" that none of the committee Republicans objected to confirming a lawyer with as little experience as Talley to preside over federal trials.

"He's practiced law for less than three years and never argued a motion, let alone brought a case. This is the least amount of experience I've seen in a judicial nominee,"

urged the Judiciary Committee to reject Talley because of his lack of qualifications and because of doubts over whether he had the "temperament and ability to approach cases with the fairness and open-mindedness necessary to serve as a federal judge."

http://www.nationalmemo.com/senate-panel-approves-absurdly-unqualified-judicial-appointee/

[boutons_deux]

Report: State Department plans buyouts to cut budget, bypassing Congress

The buyouts are meant to push forward on President Donald Trump's promised budget cuts, which Congress rejected,

The State Department will offer $25,000 buyout to diplomats and other officials who leave by April, according to a report Friday in The New York Times.

The move comes amid plans by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for a major reorganization across the State Department. But the buyouts are meant to push forward on President Donald Trump’s budget, rather than as part of the reorganization,

That budget proposed a 28 percent cut to State Department funding. Congress has so far rejected that proposal, with appropriations bills keeping State Department funding largely intact.

“If we implemented this budget, we’d have to retreat from the world and put a lot of people at risk,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC),

The State Department has about 25,000 full-time American employees. Tillerson plans to cut that staff by nearly 2,000 people, or about 8 percent, according to The Times.

The buyouts will not be available to security, IT, medical, or facilities staff, whom the State Department is trying to retain.

https://thinkprogress.org/state-dept...-51aebc8ed998/

... so in order to enrich the oligarchy, Trash/Rexxon intend to remove, destroy the 100s of years of experience, knowledge of professional, career diplomatic staff.

Increase the hard power of MIC by $50B+, while destroying the soft power of diplomacy by filling, later, the empty diplomatic positions with political hacks.

... sounds like Bannon still infects Trash's for brains.

[boutons_deux]

Bannon/Miller white male supremacist/nationalism at work

Trump's H-1B Reform Is to Make Life for Immigrants and Companies

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

Despite its enthusiastic rhetoric about the H-1B program, which provides temporary visas to high-skilled workers, the administration failed to make significant changes in time to impact the program’s annual lottery this April, leaving some who had anticipated action fuming. It has also declined to take up any of the legislative proposals for H-1B overhaul.

Starting this summer, employers began noticing that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications.

Cases that would have sailed through the approval process in earlier years ground to a halt under requests for new paperwork.

The number of challenges — officially known as “requests for evidence” or RFEs — are up 44 percent compared to last year, according to statistics from USCIS.

The percentage of H-1B applications that have resulted in RFEs this year are at the highest level they’ve been since 2009, and by absolute number are considerably higher than any year for which the agency provided statistics.

Instead, says Peter Roberts, an immigration lawyer whose clients include large multinationals and startups, the administration is punishing everyone.

He said many of this year’s challenges were “beyond ridiculous, trumped-up requests — no pun intended — issued either without legal basis or making no sense from a common sense standpoint,” and questioned whether they’d stand up.

“How do you change the way we live? You can change the laws, or you can change the way we interpret them,” he said. “This is the latter.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-06/trump-s-h-1b-reform-is-to-make-life- -for-immigrants-and-companies

Will US companies, denied cheap Asian labor, hire much more expensive US labor? "labor arbitrage" is why American companies love cheap foreign labor, as Trash does in Mar-a-Lago.

[boutons_deux]

Trash and his wealth-sucking HHS pushing fee-for-service (quality of service ignored), siding with greedy docs.

Trump Health Agency Challenges Consensus on Reducing Costs

For several decades, a consensus has grown that reining in the United States’ $3.2 trillion annual medical bill begins with changing the way doctors are paid: Instead of compensating them for every appointment, service and procedure, they should be paid based on the quality of their care.

The Obama administration used the authority of the Affordable Care Act to aggressively advance this idea, but many doctors chafed at the scope and speed of its experiments to change the way Medicare pays for everything from primary care to cancer treatment. Now,

the Trump administration is siding with doctors

— making a series of regulatory changes that slow or shrink some of these initiatives and let many doctors delay adopting the new system.

The administration has proposed canceling or shrinking Medicare initiatives that required doctors to accept lump sums for cardiac care and joint replacements, two of Medicare’s biggest cost drivers. More than 1,100 hospitals were scheduled to take part in the cardiac initiative starting in January, and 800 have been participating in the joint replacement program.

Mr. Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services has exempted more doctors from a provision that created merit pay by giving them bonuses or penalties depending on the quality of their work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/h...er=rss&emc=rss

crapification everywhere, no attempts at improvement, with the oligarchy always getting richer, and America, Americans getting ed

[boutons_deux]

Another fox, nothing but foxy kakistorcrats

Trump says will nominate ex-pharma executive Azar as health secretary

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he has chosen

former pharmaceutical company executive Alex Azar to serve as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary and

vowed to lower the price of medicines.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-healthcare-azar/trump-says-will-nominate-ex-pharma-executive-azar-as-health-secretary-idUSKBN1DD1UD

[boutons_deux]

Interior Decorator: Zinke’s Push To Redesign Flags And Accessorize With Dead Animals

A week after taking over the Department of the Interior, Ryan Zinke inquired about redesigning the agency’s flag, according to internal emails HuffPost has obtained.

The department flag is emblazoned with a bison and has gone largely unchanged for a century. The emails indicate that Zinke wanted to redesign the flags and make them bigger, so that neither his secretarial flag nor the agency flag would be smaller than the United States flag that flies atop the Interior Department’s headquarters on C Street in Washington, D.C. The emails do not indicate how he wants to redesign the flag.

Zinke’s revival of an obscure military flag-flying tradition.

when Zinke enters the building, “a security staffer takes the elevator to the seventh floor, climbs the stairs to the roof and hoists a special secretarial flag.”

When he goes home, the flag comes down.


Zinke was sworn in March 1 and arrived at his post the following morning sporting a cowboy hat and riding a horse.

The flag inquiries by the former Montana congressman and Navy SEAL throw Zinke a dead fish!

were part of a broader revamping at Interior that included

outfitting his office with a slew of taxidermied creatures

and a bronze bust of his hero Teddy Roosevelt.

“You can’t make this stuff up,” Joe Nassar, director of Interior’s Office of Facilities and Administrative Services, wrote to several other Interior employees a few weeks later, referring to the pending delivery of a stuffed bobcat.

Interior staff worked through March to get the agency chief’s office to his liking, emails show.

The effort involved shuffling around a huge grizzly bear,

mounting the heads of a bison and elk directly into the office’s carved oak paneling, and

accommodating the arrival of a $1,749 leather couch from California that included “white-glove delivery service.”

a bison Zinke has named “Rosie”

morale at the agency is “in the toilet.”

“Soon after he was confirmed, we had a snow storm — big one.” (It was less than 3 inches.)

“And he was out there on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial shoveling the snow all by himself.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/interior-department-ryan-zinke-flags-stuffed-animals_us_5a0369d7e4b0937b510f5554

Repug GOVERNANCE! What's not to ridicule!

Apparently, being a Macho Man killer Navy SEAL doesn't cure your childish fantasies, nor improve your taste and style

[boutons_deux]

President Trump's Latest Federal Judge Nominee is a Ghost-Hunting Horror Novelist





Have you heard about Brett Talley?

He’s the 36-year-old lawyer that President Trump chose to become a federal judge.

And while Talley is getting a lot of heat

for being unqualified,

never once even trying a case, and

for failing to mention that his wife is a senior lawyer at the White House,

there’s another fact that most other news outlets have ignored.

Talley is a ghost-hunting horror novelist.

Talley is up for a lifetime judicial appointment to the Federal District Court based in Montgomery, Alabama,

and while the American Bar Association has given him a “not qualified” rating,

https://gizmodo.com/trumps-latest-fe...ing-1820338915

[boutons_deux]

Behold, Trash's AmeriKKKa

Hate crimes are on the rise, FBI says

The FBI says that more hate crimes can be blamed on the rise on incendiary rhetoric over the past year

https://www.salon.com/2017/11/13/hat...rise-fbi-says/

[boutons_deux]

Trump's Pick for Health Secretary Led Company That Jacked Up Insulin Prices

The Canadian research team that developed insulin as a breakthrough treatment for diabetes back in 1923 sold the patent for just $3, essentially giving its intellectual property away for the greater good.

During Azar's eight-year tenure as president and vice president of Eli Lilly's operations in the United States,

the pharmaceutical giant raised the price of Humalog, a fast-acting form of insulin, from $2,657 per year to $9,172.

That's a 345 percent price increase for a drug that millions of patients depend on,

"As Tweeter-in-Chief, Trump tells us Azar will be a 'star' who will lower prescription prices," Maybarduk said in a statement.

"Maybe he should have asked the six million diabetic Americans whose insulin prices have more than tripled under Azar's watch at Eli Lilly."

He is a staunch conservative who has

criticized the Affordable Care Act and

reportedly supports converting federal Medicaid funding into block grants,

a longstanding Republican goal that critics say could limit access to health care for low-income people.

a 2016 survey found that the average patient in the US spends $571 a month to treat their diabetes.

"Even with insurance, many Americans are spending around half their income on insulin and other supplies they need to stay alive,"

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42595-trump-s-pick-for-health-secretary-led-company-that-jacked-up-insulin-prices

[boutons_deux]

again, Trash doesn't know this loser, they are handed to him by The Federalist Society, etc and he rubber-stamps them through.

Trump’s judicial picks are so ludicrous he may just be trolling us

Who you gonna call?

Trump trolls liberals by appointing a ghostbuster,

and one with an obvious ethical conflict

https://www.salon.com/2017/11/15/tru...e-trolling-us/

[boutons_deux]

A Wide-Open Door For Pesticide Lobbyists At The Agriculture Department

congressional aides asked Rebeckah Ad , a top official at the Department of Agriculture, to reveal the iden ies of the people serving on the deregulation team she leads at the agency.

Rebeckah Ad , a top official at the Department of Agriculture, to reveal the iden ies of the people serving on the deregulation team she leads at the agency.

Ad , a former pesticide industry executive, brushed off the request,

In February, Trump ordered major federal agencies to set up the deregulation teams, to fulfill a campaign promise to cut red tape for businesses.

Corporations and industry groups quickly hired lawyers, lobbyists and economists to help them influence the process with billions of dollars at stake.

The regulations under review cover a range of subjects, including the cleanliness of drinking water and the safety of highways.

The Trump administration has declined to make public the names of many members of the teams. It has also generally not provided records related to the teams’ calendars and correspondence.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/wide-ope...re-department/

Deregulation of air, water, soil standards is voluntary manslaughter by the oligarchy, with no accountability.

[boutons_deux]

In your poverty-stricken faces, mother ers

‘The 1% shops for bathroom mats’:

Internet roasts photo of ‘Bond villain’ Mnuchin posing with sheet of money





< great hilarity from Twitter >

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/the...e+Raw+Story%29