DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalCalifornia Republicans Didn't See It Coming
December 1, 2018 at 8:12 am EST By Taegan Goddard
Politico: “It was one of several nasty midterm shocks for California Republicans: Internal polling described to Politico showed Knight and Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Mimi Walters — all of whom lost — narrowly leading their Democratic opponents at the end of the campaign. Not only did the GOP get crushed in California, the party also got taken by surprise by the intensity of the backlash in the nation’s largest state, where Republicans projected confidence nearly all year before watching Democrats flip a whopping six House districts — and possibly a seventh.”
“The nightmare results were the end result of a toxic brew of overconfidence and presidential unpopularity, as some Republicans failed to recognize and reckon with the unprecedented negative reaction to President Trump in districts from Orange County to California’s agriculture-heavy Central Valley.”
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https://politicalwire.com/2018/12/01/california-republicans-didnt-see-it-coming/
Chuck Todd slams Scott Walker
The USDOJ just filed court documents arguing that Trump has no idea what he's talking about
The US Justice Department just filed court documents arguing that Trump has no idea what he’s talking aboutMATTHEW CHAPMAN, ALTERNET - COMMENTARY
01 DEC 2018 AT 07:12 ET
One of the most popular arguments on the right to excuse President Donald Trump from wrongdoing ahead of any findings from the Russia investigation is to claim that the investigation itself is corrupt — and these arguments typically center on the idea, with no evidence whatsoever, that the FBI lied to the judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court when pursuing a warrant to probe Trump’s presidential campaign.
Trump himself has made this claim on Twitter, saying that “the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon” for “the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” and that “the DOJ, FBI and Obama Gang need to be held to account” because they “Misled the Court to provide a pretext to SPY on the Trump Team.” And he even recklessly moved to declassify sensitive documents surrounding the surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, in the attempt to try to prove this misconduct.
But Trump is wrong. And in fact, he is so stunningly wrong that his own lawyers with the Department of Justice had to take the extraordinary step of saying, in a filing to the D.C. District Court for a Freedom of Information Act case, that Trump essentially has no idea what he’s talking about on FISA classification, and that what he says on Twitter cannot be presumed to be evidence of anything:
https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1068638150665404416
https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1068639034598150144
https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1068639899191033857
The idea that the FBI misled FISA judges to get a warrant against the Trump campaign has been debunked by the release of the FISA applications, revealing that there was a perfectly solid legal basis to investigate Carter Page amid his suspicious travel to Russia.
more
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/12/us-justice-department-just-filed-court-documents-arguing-trump-no-idea-hes-talking/
Cohen: Trump Knew I Called Kremlin for Help With Trump Tower Moscow
Source: The Daily Beast
The president downplays his knowledge of the project, but his ex-fixer says he knew a lot—and that a cover-up before Congress was crafted while talking to Trump’s lawyers.
Justin Miller
12.01.18 2:32 AM ET
Another bombshell lobbed by Michael Cohen exploded late Friday night: He says he told Donald Trump about a phone call to the Kremlin asking for the Russian government’s help to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in 2016.
And Cohen also claims he was talking to Trump’s lawyers and White House staff in 2017 while he crafted a misleading statement to Congress seeking to cover up the truth about the Moscow project and the level of Trump’s involvement.
The twin accusations were made late Friday by Cohen’s lawyers in a case being prosecuted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. They were contained in a sentencing memo in which Cohen asked for a no-jail sentence in exchange for his cooperation with Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Cohen told the House and Senate intelligence committees last year that he only briefed Trump three times about the plan to build a 100-story skyscraper in Russia’s capital. Cohen also said his general inquiry to the Kremlin went unanswered.
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/cohen-trump-knew-i-called-kremlin-for-help-with-trump-tower-moscow?ref=home
Whitaker fielded early fraud complaints from customers at patent company yet promoted it ...
Source: The Washington Post
Whitaker fielded early fraud complaints from customers at patent company yet promoted it for years, records show
By Carol D. Leonnig, Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger November 30 at 12:00 PM
Months after joining the advisory board of a Miami-based patent company in 2014, Matthew G. Whitaker began fielding angry complaints from customers that they were being defrauded, including from a client who showed up at his Iowa office to appeal to him personally for help, new records show.
Yet Whitaker, now the acting attorney general, remained an active champion of World Patent Marketing for three years — even expressing willingness to star in national television ads promoting the firm, the records show.
Internal Federal Trade Commission documents released Friday in response to a public records request reveal the extent of Whitaker’s support for World Patent Marketing, even amid a barrage of warnings about the company’s behavior.
The FTC eventually filed a complaint against World Patent Marketing, accusing it of cheating customers and falsely promising that it would help them patent and profit from their inventions, according to court filings. Some clients lost their life savings, the agency alleged.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/acting-attorney-general-whitaker-fielded-early-fraud-complaints-from-customers-at-patent-company-yet-promoted-it-for-years-records-show/2018/11/30/919b76bc-f4a2-11e8-80d0-f7e1948d55f4_story.html
Trump Scrambles To Save Palestinian Aid After Realizing Strategic Misstep
Source: Talking Points Memo/The AP
By MATTHEW LEE
November 30, 2018 7:26 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — For two years, the Trump administration has unabashedly slashed U.S. aid to the Palestinians. Now, amid signs it may finally roll out its long-awaited Middle East peace plan, the administration is scrambling to save what little remaining Palestinian assistance it provides.
The striking turnabout is the result of the belated realization that an obscure new law will likely force the U.S. to terminate all aid to the Palestinian Authority, including security assistance supported by Israel, by the end of January. Eliminating such aid, which totaled $61 million this year even as other assistance was being cut, would deal a blow to Palestinian-Israeli security cooperation that both sides value. The law would also require the Jerusalem offices of the U.S. Agency for International Development to close.
To avert that possibility and remove a potentially lethal complication to the promised peace plan, the administration is rushing to find a solution. It will dispatch Army Lt. Gen. Eric Wendt, who serves as U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, to Congress in the coming days to urge lawmakers to come up with a fix to the law, known as the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act of 2018, to allow the aid to continue.
Congressional aides said they expect Wendt and other officials to start making the case next week in the hope of securing a fix in the short time it has left in session this year.
Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-scrambles-save-palestinian-aid-after-strategic-misstep
Trump administration approves seismic tests that could harm many thousands of Atlantic dolphins...
Source: The Washington Post
Trump administration approves seismic tests that could harm many thousands of Atlantic dolphins and whales
Federal officials are expected to grants permits that allow companies to possibly kill marine life as they search for oil and gas deposits.
By Darryl Fears November 30 at 11:55 AM
The Trump administration is preparing to take an important step toward future oil and natural gas drilling off the Atlantic shore, approving five requests from companies to conduct deafening seismic tests that could kill tens of thousands of dolphins, whales and other marine animals.
The planned Friday announcement by the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the Commerce Department, to issue “incidental take” permits allowing companies to harm wildlife is likely to further antagonize a dozen governors in states on the Eastern Seaboard who strongly oppose the administration’s proposal to expand federal oil and gas leases to the Atlantic. Federal leases could lead to exploratory drilling for the first time in more than half a century.
In addition to harming sea life, acoustic tests — in which boats tugging rods pressurized for sound emit jet engine-like booms 10 to 12 seconds apart for days and sometimes months — can disrupt thriving commercial fisheries. Governors, state lawmakers and attorneys general along the Atlantic coast say drilling threatens beach tourism that has flourished on the coast in the absence of oil production.
Seismic testing maps the ocean floor and estimates the whereabouts of oil and gas, but only exploratory drilling can confirm their presence. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill that soiled the Gulf of Mexico resulted from an exploratory drill. Another gulf disaster that looms almost as large has spewed oil for more than 14 years. The Taylor Energy Co. spill of up to an estimated 700 barrels a day started when a hurricane ripped up production wells, and could continue for the rest of the century, according to the Interior Department.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/11/30/trump-administration-to-let-companies-run-deafening-seismic-tests-that-can-kill-marine-life-a-step-toward-oil-drilling-in-atlantic/
ORIGINAL OP
Trump administration to let companies run deafening seismic tests that can kill marine life, a step toward oil drilling in Atlantic
By Washington Post Staff November 30 at 11:46 AM
The planned Friday announcement by the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the Commerce Department, that it will issue the permits to five companies is likely to further antagonize a dozen governors in states on the Eastern Seaboard who strongly oppose the administration’s proposal to expand federal oil and gas leases to the Atlantic. Federal leases could lead to exploratory drilling for the first time in more than half a century.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
From the same link as the update, above
Note to Trump: The Mueller Probe Costs Roughly $0.00 - Not $40 Million
By Eric Levitz @EricLevitz
Shortly after waking Thursday morning, the president of the United States announced that a high-profile federal investigation was actually illegal — and exorbitantly expensive.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1068116413498429445
There are a few reasons to treat Donald Trump’s estimation of the Mueller probe’s cost with skepticism. For one thing, the president appears to have some doubts about it himself — ostensibly, his own first reaction upon typing the number was to question whether such outlandish spending was even possible. For another, just 48 hours ago, Trump referred to the Mueller investigation as the “now $30,000,000 Witch Hunt.” Now, perhaps Robert Mueller decided Wednesday that his team needed a Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta in order to chase down Roger Stone. But it seems more likely that the president is picking large numbers out of thin air, in a bid to discredit the investigation into his campaign’s alleged ties to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Another point in favor of theory No. 2: As of September, the fiscal cost of the Mueller investigation was roughly $0.00. By that point, the probe had spent roughly $26 million. But, by striking a plea agreement with Paul Manafort for his myriad white-collar crimes — an agreement that required Trump’s former campaign manager to forfeit five multi-million-dollar properties, a life-insurance policy, and the contents of multiple bank accounts — Mueller’s investigation had acquired somewhere between $26 million and $42 million worth of revenue for the federal treasury.
The Mueller probe’s (apparent) profitability is indicative of more than just Donald Trump’s mendacity: It also reflects the fact that there are few forms of law enforcement more cost-efficient than cracking down on super-rich tax cheats and money launderers. And yet, for some strange reason, the federal law enforcement has not made punishing the financial malfeasance of the super-rich a top-tier priority.
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http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/trump-tweet-mueller-probe-usd40-million-fact-check-paul-manafort.html
NAFTA 2.0 is signed -- but it's far from finished
Friday’s signing starts the clock on what could be a monthslong process to approve the deal in Congress.
By DOUG PALMER and MEGAN CASSELLA 11/30/2018 08:07 AM EST
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — North American leaders formally signed their new trade agreement Friday, marking the end of 15 months of contentious talks between the U.S., Canada and Mexico — and the beginning of what could be months of fierce debate between the Trump administration and Congress.
The signing, which took place on the sidelines of the G-20 summit, shifts the onus onto each country’s legislatures to approve the agreement before it can actually take effect. And that could be a problem in the U.S., where some Democrats have already been opposing the labor and environmental provisions in the pact, now known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement or USMCA.
Despite a push by a handful of Republican senators to vote on the agreement during the lame-duck session, procedural hurdles make it almost certain there won’t be a vote until sometime next year when Democrats are controlling the House. That’s jeopardizing President Donald Trump’s chances of fulfilling what has been a signature pledge of his presidency.
Trump expressed confidence Friday that the pact would sail through Congress. "It's been so well-reviewed, I don't expect to have very much of a problem," he said as he stood onstage in a hotel conference room next to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trump called the trade deal “a truly groundbreaking achievement" before the three leaders sat down at a table and signed it.
more
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/30/usmca-signed-g20-999748
Ex-Sen. Al Franken takes first steps back into public arena
By STEVE KARNOWSKI
today
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Nearly a year after he resigned his U.S. Senate seat amid sexual misconduct allegations, Al Franken is testing whether he can make a comeback in the #MeToo era.
The former “Saturday Night Live” funnyman released a podcast on health care this week, just days after a Thanksgiving Day Facebook post in which he mused how much he missed “being in the fight every day.”
“When I left the Senate I said I was giving up my seat but not my voice, and after the midterm elections I thought I’d start experimenting with ways to make my voice heard,” Franken said as he opened the podcast. He ended by saying: “Maybe I’ll do another one, I don’t know.”
Franken was a safe bet for re-election before a radio host last year accused him of forcibly kissing her during a USO tour in the Middle East in 2006, and circulated a photo in which he can be seen pretending to grope her breasts. That was followed by allegations from several women that he groped them while posing for photos.
more
https://apnews.com/852dd792399c4ca6a64eb2c0e4a3a273
Profile Information
Name: DonGender: Male
Hometown: Massachusetts
Home country: United States
Member since: Sat Sep 1, 2012, 03:28 PM
Number of posts: 60,536
