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by seemslikeadream » Sun Jan 15, 2017 1:17 am
by Iamwhomiam » Sun Jan 15, 2017 4:05 am
by Heaven Swan » Sun Jan 15, 2017 5:53 am
by 82_28 » Sun Jan 15, 2017 8:05 am
from Politico’s James Kirchick and TPM’s Josh Marshall
1. Trumps debt load has grown dramatically over the last year, from $350 million to $630 million. His liquid assets have also decreased. Trump has been blackballed by all major US banks.
2. Post-bankruptcy Trump has been highly reliant on money from Russia. He has relied on Russian investors to buy their properties around the world.
3. Trumps Soho project was hit with a series of lawsuits claiming fraud against investors. Emerging out of that litigation however was news about secret financing for the project from Russia and Kazakhstan. Most attention about the project has focused on the ties to the Russian criminal underworld.
“The project occasionally received unexplained infusions of cash from accounts in Kazakhstan and Russia.”
4. Trumps campaign manager and top advisor. Paul Manafort spent most of the last decade as top campaign and communications advisor for Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian Ukrainian Prime Minister and then President whose ouster in 2014 led to the on-going crisis and proxy war in Ukraine. Yanukovych was and remains a close Putin ally.
5. Trump’s foreign policy advisor on Russia and Europe is Carter Page, a man whose entire professional career has revolved around investments in Russia and who has deep and continuing financial and employment ties to Gazprom. You can’t be involved with Gazprom without being wholly in alignment with Putin’s policies.
6. Over the course of the last year, Putin has aligned all Russian state controlled media behind Trump. Trump has repeatedly praised Putin, not only in the abstract but often for the authoritarian policies and patterns of government which have most soured his reputation around the world.
There’s more. Josh’s article goes on about Trump walking from NATO, refusing to back NATO members in the Ukraine in the event of Russian invasion, and suggests very strongly that Trump may have in fact pulled off the biggest deal of his life, by selling out the United States of America in order to eliminate his Russian debt.
by seemslikeadream » Sun Jan 15, 2017 10:39 am
Report: CIA set up task-force in 2016 to investigate possible Russian funding of Trump's campaign
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/report-ci ... 53783.html
by seemslikeadream » Sun Jan 15, 2017 1:37 pm
by Iamwhomiam » Sun Jan 15, 2017 3:51 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 16, 2017 12:43 pm
John’s Gospel of Trump’s Illegitimacy
Charles M. Blow
Charles M. Blow JAN. 16, 2017
On Friday, the Georgia congressman, civil rights icon and Donald Trump inauguration-boycotter John Lewis told NBC’s Chuck Todd something that I believe millions of Americans are thinking.
“I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president,” Lewis said. “I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.”
The release of the clip in which Lewis made his stark assessment came on the same day that the F.B.I. director, James Comey, and other intelligence officials provided a classified briefing to members of the House, no doubt divulging information to which we mere mortals are not privy. After the meeting, Representative Maxine Waters of California blasted: “It’s classified and we can’t tell you anything. All I can tell you is the F.B.I. director has no credibility!”
It would be easy to simply claim that emotions are running high or that partisan pain is abnormally acute. But I continue to argue, strenuously and adamantly, that to simply see the extraordinary events unfolding before us as purely ideological blinds us to the very real concern that our sovereignty has been compromised.
Trump, the president-elect tweet stormer, couldn’t let this go, particularly Lewis’s assessment.
Early on Saturday morning, Trump shot back at Lewis in possibly one of the most ill-advised political social media moments I can recall, publishing two tweets that together read: “Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk — no action or results. Sad!”
John Lewis, in the foreground, being beaten by a state trooper during a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala., in 1965. Credit Associated Press
Stop and think about what you just read: A lecher attacking a legend; a man of moral depravity attacking a man of moral certitude; an intellectual weakling attacking a warrior for justice. This on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, no less.
Trump attacks Lewis as, “All talk, talk, talk — no action”; Lewis, who repeatedly thrust his body unto the breach for justice, who was arrested, beaten and terrorized, including during the time that young Trump was at his well-heeled schools, receiving draft deferments from the Vietnam War.
In fact, one of Trump’s five deferments was in 1965, the same year as the Selma marches and “Bloody Sunday,” during which Lewis was struck so violently by a state trooper wielding a billy club that Lewis’s skull was fractured.
Coincidentally, Trump finally received his permanent exemption from the draft, a 4-F status, in the year before he and his father were sued by the Department of Justice for violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968 — one of the many justice issues Lewis championed.
As The New York Times noted at the time: “The government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals ‘because of race and color.’ It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.”
Let’s be clear: Donald Trump doesn’t even deserve to stand in John Lewis’s shadow. The spectacular obscenity of Trump’s comment is incomparable and deeply repulsive.
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And furthermore, I don’t find what Lewis said about Trump’s illegitimacy to be outrageous, or off the mark in the least.
I guess for me, it comes down to a rather profound semantic question: Does ‘legitimate’ refer here to the meaning in law or principle?
It is true that Donald Trump is, by all measures of the law, the legitimate president-elect and will legitimately be inaugurated our 45th president on Friday, no matter how much it pains me to write that or pains you to read it. There simply is no constitutional or statutory mechanism to nullify the installation of an elected president based on election influencing, even by a hostile state actor. The framers of the Constitution had no way of anticipating digital warfare being used in a propaganda attack. The Constitution was ratified before electric lights were invented.
But there is another way of considering legitimacy, another test that his election doesn’t meet: That is when legitimacy is defined as “conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards.”
Here, Lewis and his fellow believers are on solid footing. Trump has bucked our conventions; his life is rife with percolating conflicts; Comey outrageously threw a wrench in the works with his meaningless, last-minute letter about Clinton’s email (which is now, quite rightly, being investigated); and the intelligence community has determined with high confidence that Russia interfered in our election in an effort to hurt Clinton and help Trump, their desired candidate.
The only thing of burning significance left to know is whether there was any collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign and whether there are any other unknown connections between those two entities.
Mr. Trump, I join John Lewis in asserting with full confidence and clear conscience that I, too, don’t see you as a legitimate president. Your presidency is illegitimate insofar as outside interference in an election violates our standards and principles. You will wear that scarlet “I” on your tan chest for as long as you sit in the White House.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/opin ... .html?_r=0
by liminalOyster » Mon Jan 16, 2017 12:59 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 16, 2017 1:17 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 16, 2017 1:30 pm
John Lewis’ fifth district residents respond to Trump’s comments with #defendthe5th, photos of neighborhood
Najja Parker The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
11:55 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 14, 2017 Atlanta News
President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter Saturday morning to target Atlanta as a “crime infested” area that is in “horrible shape.”
by DrEvil » Mon Jan 16, 2017 6:15 pm
President Trump: The Inauguration
4pm, BBC One/ STV
"After a long absence, The Twilight Zone returns with one of the most ambitious, expensive and controversial productions in broadcast history. Sci-fi writers have dabbled often with alternative history stories - among the most common is the "What If The Nazis Had Won The Second World War" setting - but this huge interactive virtual reality project, which will unfold on TV, in the press, and on Twitter over the next four years, sets out to build an ongoing alternative present.
The story begins in a nightmarish version of 2017 in which huge sections of the US electorate have somehow been duped into voting to make Donald Trump president. It sounds far-fetched, and it is, but as it goes on it becomes more and more chillingly plausible. Today's feature-length opener concentrates on the gaudy inauguration of President Trump, and the stirrings of protest and despair surrounding the ceremony, while pundits speculate gravely on what lies ahead. It's a flawed piece, but a disturbing glimpse of the horrors we could stumble into, if we're not careful."
by liminalOyster » Mon Jan 16, 2017 6:41 pm
Talk radio hosts and bloggers may benefit from White House press move
Trump team proposal for new venue which may allow more to ask questions follows president-elect’s latest outbursts against mainstream reporters
Monday 16 January 2017 13.20 EST
Talk radio hosts and bloggers could be given greater access to official White House press briefings once the Trump administration takes office, under a highly irregular proposal being floated that may also remove briefings from the West Wing.
Trump’s pick for White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said on Sunday that due to “off the chart” interest in the new administration, the president-elect was considering moving briefings from the James S Brady press briefing room, which has been used by presidents to address the media since 1970, to a venue with a greater capacity.
A report published by Esquire magazine on Saturday indicated the venue could be inside the Old Executive Office Building, just west of the White House.
“I know change is difficult sometimes,” Spicer told Fox News. “But sometimes change can actually be better.”
Spicer argued the proposal would mean “you can involve more people, be more transparent, have more accessibility”. He suggested that this would mean outlets that are not traditionally part of the White House press corps would be able to ask questions during presidential press briefings.
“There’s a lot of talk radio and bloggers and people that can’t fit in right now and maybe don’t have a permanency because they’re not part of the Washington elite media,” Spicer said, “but to allow them an opportunity to ask the press secretary or the president a question is a positive thing. It’s more democratic.”
Around 200 journalists make up the White House press corps. The Brady press briefing room holds 49 permanent seats for major media organisations, which are granted space by the White House Correspondent Association (WHCA). The Guardian is among those outlets allocated a space.
White House briefings are open any journalist that seeks access and passes security clearance, but the president more typically takes questions from major news organisations with an allocated seat.
It remains unclear how the proposal would be implemented, but it is likely to be interpreted as a hostile rebuke to conventional media outlets around the country.
Jeff Mason, the WHCA president and Reuters White House correspondent, said he had a “constructive”, nearly two-hour meeting with Spicer on Sunday. Mason “emphasized the importance of the White House press briefing room” and its proximity to West Wing officials.
“I made clear that the WHCA would view it as unacceptable if the incoming administration sought to move White House reporters out of the press work space behind the press briefing room,” Mason said in a statement. “Access in the West Wing to senior administration officials, including the press secretary, is critical to transparency and to journalists’ ability to do their jobs.”
Spicer agreed to discuss any changes to the current system with the WHCA, Mason said.
During a chaotic press conference at Trump Tower on Wednesday, the first the businessman has held since July 2016, hundreds of journalists crammed into a small pen as Trump frequently lambasted certain media organisations and occasionally individual reporters. Trump was incensed by reports on a leaked and unsubstantiated dossier, which alleged frequent contacts between his campaign team and Russian authorities, and suggested the Kremlin held compromising material that could be used to blackmail Trump.
Trump was also asked by a reporter at Breitbart News what his views were on media ethics and “fake news”, to which he replied: “Some of the media outlets that I deal with are fake news more so than anybody. I could name them, but I won’t bother. You have a few sitting right in front of us.
“They’re very, very dishonest people, but I think it’s just something we’re going to have to live with. I guess the advantage I have is that I can speak back.”
According to the Associated Press, Breitbart News, branded by critics as a racist, far-right news site, was the only media organisation to have a reserved seat in the front row for the conference. Steve Bannon, Trump’s incoming chief strategist and senior counselor, previously served as the site’s executive chairman.
The president-elect’s campaign drew consistent support from numerous conservative talk radio hosts and internet conspiracy theory sites, for instance Alex Jones’s InfoWars. During the campaign, Trump took the unprecedented step of appearing on Jones’s site, known as America’s foremost conservative conspiracy theory outlet. Jones has previously dismissed the Sandy Hook massacre, in which 20 elementary school students and six school staff were murdered, as “completely fake”, and has branded the September 11 terror attacks an “inside job”.
Trump was interviewed for around 30 minutes by Jones in December 2015, and later called Jones a “nice guy”. Jones claimed in November that Trump called him to thank him for his support after winning the presidential election.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... gers-trump
by seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 16, 2017 10:10 pm
by Grizzly » Mon Jan 16, 2017 11:13 pm
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