DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalArnold Schwarzenegger Undergoes Emergency Heart Surgery
3/30/2018 8:06 AM PDT
Arnold Schwarzenegger has undergone emergency open-heart surgery ... TMZ has learned.
Sources connected to Arnold tell TMZ, the 70-year-old Schwarzenegger went to Cedars-Sinai Thursday for a catheter valve replacement. We're told the surgery is somewhat experimental and he developed complications.
Doctors were prepared in case the catheter valve replacement failed ... and quickly decided Arnold needed emergency open-heart surgery, which we're told lasted several hours.
This is not the first time Arnold has gone under the knife for heart surgery. He had an aortic valve replaced in 1997. At the time doctors didn't feel the procedure was urgently needed, but Arnold decided to do it while he was still young. He also said at the time the condition was congenital and had nothing to do with steroids.
As for his condition ... we're told he's stable.
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https://www.tmz.com/2018/03/30/arnold-schwarzenegger-open-heart-surgery-valve-replacement/
House Intel Committee Findings Contradict Kushner's Testimony
by Ryan Goodman
March 30, 2018
Jared Kushner and his attorneys likely did not enjoy something they read when the House Intelligence Committee released its findings on Russian election interference last Thursday. The report, drafted by Chairman Devin Nunes and supported by only GOP members of the Committee, has become yet another instance of a failure of bipartisan investigations on the Hill. Even one of the leading members of the Committee, Republican Trey Gowdy, acknowledged on Fox News Sunday that Americans should “not have confidence in” the report’s conclusion that there was no evidence of Trump campaign collusion and should have confidence in what Mueller’s investigation produces instead. (Gowdy recently announced his retirement from Congress citing his distaste for hyper-partisanism in his line of work.) As expected, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to tweet his chosen highlights of the Committee’s findings. There was plenty for the President to champion. Except.
When Kushner read the report’s “Finding #32” he was surely disappointed. That’s because the Committee’s stated conclusion contradicts Kushner’s written statement to Congress concerning the important June 9 meeting with Russians in Trump Tower. The Committee’s finding states that Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and Paul Manafort attended the meeting “where they expected to receive…derogatory information on candidate Clinton from Russian sources.”
That line in the Committee’s findings is generally consistent with what Trump Jr. told Congress he expected to receive at the meeting. It is highly inconsistent with what Kushner told Congress.
Kushner’s written statement to Congress, which his lawyers released publicly, denied that he knew what the June 9th meeting was going to be about. That’s at least the most plausible, if not universal understanding, of what Kushner wrote (read, for example, this line-by-line annotation of Kushner’s statement by former federal prosecutor turned defense attorney Renato Mariotti at Just Security). Even the most charitable reading of Kushner’s statement is that he did not directly and unequivocally state he had no foreknowledge of the meeting’s purpose, but that he nevertheless sought to leave the clear impression, with Congress and the public, that he did not know the purpose of the meeting before attending.
more
https://www.justsecurity.org/54408/house-intel-committee-findings-contradict-kushners-testimony/
Woman Sentenced to 5 Years for illegally voting in 2016
BY MITCH MITCHELL
mitchmitchell@star-telegram.com
March 28, 2018 08:50 PM
Updated 1 hour 58 minutes ago
FORT WORTH - A judge sentenced a Rendon woman to five years in prison Wednesday for voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election while she was on supervised release from a 2011 fraud conviction.
Crystal Mason, 43, waived her right to a jury trial and chose to have state District Judge Ruben Gonzalez assess her sentence.
J. Warren St. John, her defense attorney, said after the verdict that an appeal had already been filed and that he is hopeful his client will soon be released on bond.
"I find it amazing that the government feels she made this up," St. John told the court. "She was never told that she couldn't vote, and she voted in good faith. Why would she risk going back to prison for something that is not going to change her life?"
MORE
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article207176829.html
Most Republicans Say Trump Is Being Framed
Source: PoliticalWire
March 30, 2018 at 9:42 am EDT By Taegan Goddard
A new Economist/YouGov poll finds 58% of Republicans think President Trump is being framed by the FBI and Department of Justice in the Russian investigation.
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Read more: https://politicalwire.com/2018/03/30/most-republicans-say-trump-is-being-framed-by-fbi/
I'd Missed This Insane Comparison - By Josh Marshall
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/979560767992356864
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/id-missed-this-insane-comparison
AP Poll: 33 Percent Of Young Americans Approve Of Trump's Job Performance
Source: Talking Points Memo/AP
By STEVE PEOPLES and Emily Swanson | March 30, 2018 10:06 am
NEW YORK (AP) — A majority of young people believe President Donald Trump is racist, dishonest and “mentally unfit” for office, according to a new survey that finds the nation’s youngest potential voters are more concerned about the Republican’s performance in the White House than older Americans.
The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV found that just 33 percent of Americans between the ages of 15 and 34 approve of Trump’s job performance.
That’s 9 points lower than all adults, who were asked the same question on a separate AP-NORC survey taken this month.
-snip-
The survey is the first in a series of polls designed to highlight the voices of the youngest generation of voters. The respondents, all of whom will be old enough to vote when Trump seeks re-election in 2020, represent the most diverse generation in American history.
Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ap-poll-young-americans-trump-approval-rating
Threatened by youth movement, NRA exploits racial divisions
By Astead W. Herndon GLOBE STAFF MARCH 29, 2018
-snip-
By casting the students from Parkland, whose classmates were recently gunned down by a mass shooter, as just more out-of-touch white liberal lobbyists, the NRA is making an overt racial appeal to nonwhites to reject the wave of antigun protests sweeping the country. The NRA itself is an overwhelmingly white organization with a fraught racial history, but the organization is now attempting to capitalize on existing fears among blacks and Hispanics that gun-control advocates do not sufficiently emphasize shootings in cities that overwhelmingly affect minority neighborhoods. It is both a blunt racial appeal and a sophisticated strategy rife with coded language.
“They only want to hear from black people who agree with gun control,” Noir said in a video released Saturday, the day of March for Our Lives rallies in Washington, Boston, and around the country. In other videos, the NRA seemed to push the idea that people who live in inner cities should arm themselves against gangs, not succumb to gun restrictions.
NRA experts said the new strategy could be a sign of an increasingly fearful organization. After the mid-February shooting that killed 17 people in Parkland, student activists have presented the American gun lobby with its most formidable opponent in years.
“There’s a recognition from the NRA that this is a more real threat than other gun-control movements,” said Scott Melzer, author of a 2009 book called “Gun Crusaders: The NRA’s Culture War.”
He cited a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that showed a plurality of Americans had a negative opinion of the NRA for the first time in nearly two decades.
“They’ve mostly only had to message to their base because that’s all they need to do,” Melzer said. “But now there’s something else going on here and they recognize this as more potentially ominous.”
more
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2018/03/29/threatened-youth-movement-nra-wields-race-card/9rVPNn5xdQFnuSjekFRN6M/story.html
Ty Cobb on Russia probe: Mueller is 'my audience, not anybody else'
By LOUIS NELSON 03/30/2018 07:14 AM EDT
While he may work for the West Wing, White House attorney Ty Cobb said this week that the audience for his job is Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading an investigation of the 2016 campaign.
Cobb, in an interview on Wednesday with Vox, said the Trump administration’s cooperation with the Mueller investigation was delayed at one point because of staffing issues. But Cobb said Mueller’s team has been understanding with him and has now received nearly everything it asked for.
“The reality is that I had hoped with some success we could have gotten the document production [sending documents to Mueller] done earlier, but I didn’t have the staff or the support internally in the White House initially to get that done. And Mueller fully understood that,” Cobb said. “He’s my audience, not anybody else, and I needed him to understand that I was working as hard as I could with whatever I had to meet his deadline, so, mission accomplished as far as I’m concerned.”
Cobb said the incendiary book by author Michael Wolff slowed the work of Mueller’s team because its contents prompted additional interviews to conduct. The FBI internal watchdog report that led to the firing of Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s former deputy director, could similarly slow Mueller’s team, as could the forthcoming book from former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by the president last spring.
more
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/30/ty-cobb-audience-robert-mueller-492478
Florida shooting survivor Hogg won't accept Ingraham's apology over mocking tweet
Source: Politico
By CRISTIANO LIMA 03/30/2018 10:18 AM EDT
Florida shooting survivor David Hogg declined on Friday to accept Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s apology over a tweet mocking him, saying she’s only expressing remorse because a flurry of advertisers dropped her program.
Hogg, who called for companies to boycott the talk show host after she derided the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student over several college application rejections, framed Ingraham’s apology as insufficient and self-serving. Pressed on whether he'd accept her apology, he replied, "No."
“She’s only apologizing after a third of her advertisers pulled out and I think it’s really disgusting the fact that she basically tried promoting her show after apologizing — or ‘apologizing’ to me,” Hogg told CNN during an interview Friday.
Ingraham issued an apology for her remarks Thursday after several advertisers announced they were cutting ties with the program.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/30/david-hogg-laura-ingraham-apology-492543
Surprise: Trump's newest Cabinet nominee has no relevant experience
By Eugene Robinson Opinion writer March 29 at 7:29 PM
You can’t make this stuff up: President Trump has announced he will nominate a medical doctor who has no discernible management experience to run the second-largest agency in the federal government. Can presidents be sued for malpractice?
The man Trump has named to become secretary of veterans affairs, Ronny L. Jackson , happens to be the president’s personal doctor. More to the point, given Trump’s perpetual hunger for sycophancy, is the fact that Jackson showered the president with hyperbolic Dear-Leader-style praise during a widely viewed television appearance in January.
Trump has “incredibly good genes,” the White House physician said in describing a examination he had given the president. Trump’s overall health is “excellent.” His “cardiac assessment” put him “in the excellent range.” If his diet were a bit better, “he might live to be 200 years old.” In any event, “I think he will remain fit for duty for the remainder of this term and even for the remainder of another term if he’s elected.”
That is an unusual way to describe a 71-year-old man whose height was reported as a generous 6 feet 3 inches , and weight at an eyebrow-raising 239 pounds, which classifies him as overweight — but conveniently one pound short of obese. Jackson’s are odd words characterizing a man whose cheeseburger-laden diet my doctor would describe as suicidal and whose coronary calcium scan results, according to many other physicians, indicate some degree of heart disease and a clearly elevated risk of heart attack.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/surprise-trumps-newest-cabinet-nominee-has-no-relevant-experience/2018/03/29/07d34886-338e-11e8-8abc-22a366b72f2d_story.html
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