DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalPARTY LINE -- Putin Echoes Trump on Election Hacking 'Rumors'
Source: The Daily Beast
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that allegations of Moscow’s meddling in U.S. elections are “rumors used in an American domestic political battle,” almost parroting a line President Donald Trump has used in the past. “You referred to the example of the United States, which has not been confirmed by anyone or anything,” Putin said at a press conference. “It’s just rumors used in an American domestic political battle.” Trump last month tweeted: “The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign.”
On Saturday, Trump continued to cast doubt on Russia’s actions, telling Face the Nation, “It’s very hard” to know who may have been involved. “With that being said, I’ll go along with Russia. Could’ve been China, could’ve been a lot of different groups,” he said.
READ IT AT RIA NOVOSTI
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Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/05/02/putin-echoes-trump-on-election-hacking-rumors?via=desktop&source=copyurl
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/843776582825267201
'Unspinnably dumb': GOP strategist explains why Trumpcare 3.0 is an unprecedented political disaster
BRAD REED
02 MAY 2017 AT 10:26 ET
Republicans in Congress are once again trying to rally votes for their Obamacare replacement plan this week, but one longtime GOP strategist thinks they’d be better off not bothering.
In a tweet storm posted on Tuesday, Rick Wilson explained that the new bill’s provision allowing states to opt out of essential health benefits requirements will be a political nightmare for any Republican who votes in favor of it.
“Hop in the wayback machine with me for a moment to a series 2009 focus groups,” Wilson began. “We were prepping anti-Obamacare ads. In EVERY group and I mean EVERY group… Democrats, indys, hard Rs, soft Rs, rich, poor, black, white, urban, suburban… there was one argument that nuked everything else: And that was coverage for preexisting conditions.”
While noting that Obamacare had lots of other unpopular features — including the individual mandate to buy health insurance — Wilson said that he found no way to convince voters that denying health coverage to people with preexisting conditions was a good idea. All of which brings us back to the GOP’s latest health care plan.
“Now… the House GOP is trying to pass a bill that lets states end that coverage,” Wilson wrote. “Set aside policy. Set aside the economics. Think about the politics of it. They’re awful. They’re idiotic.”
more
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/unspinnably-dumb-gop-strategist-explains-why-trumpcare-3-0-is-an-unprecedented-political-disaster/
'I'm not sure he's OK': MSNBCs Joe and Mika are worried by Trump's 'bizarre' behavior
TRAVIS GETTYS
02 MAY 2017 AT 07:30 ET
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are increasingly worried about President Donald Trump’s mental state after a recent series of “bizarre” interviews.
Scarborough, who’s known Trump for years, warned Monday that the president’s “rambling and incoherent” speech patterns were “getting worse,” and he and Brzezinski returned from a week off the air to discuss their growing concerns.
“We’re going to say what maybe no one — we’ll do it again,” Brzezinski said. “I’m not sure he’s okay. I’m not sure he’s okay. You have that feeling with people who are not okay, where it starts to dawn on you that they are not okay. There’s a much bigger issue.”
The “Morning Joe” co-hosts stopped short of diagnosing the president, but they wondered if the stress of the job had triggered psychological problems or whether he was displaying confusion associated with a lack of sleep.
“It’s getting worse, worse than it has been,” Scarborough said. “You talk about the (Associated Press) interview and these other interviews. The president of the United States saying, ‘Gee, this is a lot harder than my last job was.’ There’s not a human being on the face of the earth that wouldn’t understand that you were stepping into the most difficult job of your life. Just look at pictures of presidents walking in and walking out of the White House.”
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http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/im-not-sure-hes-ok-msnbcs-joe-and-mika-are-worried-by-trumps-bizarre-behavior/
video at link, above
Trump Doubles Down On Claim That Jackson Could Have Prevented Civil War
By CAITLIN MACNEAL Published MAY 2, 2017 7:28 AM
After praising Andrew Jackson in a Monday interview with the Washington Examiner, President Donald Trump on Monday night repeated his claim that Jackson could have prevented the Civil War.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/859209801175269376
Trump made to sure to mention that Jackson died years before the Civil War began, perhaps because it was unclear from his initial comments that he knew Jackson was no longer alive when the Civil War began.
“Had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War,” Trump told the Washington Examiner earlier on Monday. “He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart.”
“He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, ‘There’s no reason for this,’” Trump added. “People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-jackson-saw-civil-war-coming
Trump administration denies it plans to end Michelle Obama's girl's education program
Source: The Washington Post
By Krissah Thompson May 1 at 10:38 PM
The White House is batting down reports that the Trump administration had planned to scuttle one of Michelle Obama’s signature initiatives.
Hours after CNN reported on an internal Peace Corps email that announced a plan to stop supporting the former first lady’s “Let Girls Learn” program, a White House spokesman said there had been no changes to the initiative.
The cable network’s CNN Films division, which celebrated Obama’s work to improve educational opportunities for girls in developing countries in a documentary last year, reported that Sheila Crowley, acting director of the Peace Corps, sent an email to employees this week shutting down the education campaign.
“Moving forward, we will not continue to use the ‘Let Girls Learn’ brand or maintain a stand-alone program,” Crowley wrote in a message obtained by CNN. The Peace Corps, which had played a key role in promoting the first lady’s initiative, will continue its work to support girls’ education but it is unclear whether Michelle Obama’s branding will remain a central focus.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-trump-administration-ends-michelle-obamas-girls-education-program/2017/05/01/45548da6-2ea7-11e7-9dec-764dc781686f_story.html?utm_term=.bf0c21b28006&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
Trump promised to free a Pakistani surgeon who helped find bin Laden. He's still in prison.
By Rick Noack May 2 at 5:00 AM
Before being elected, President Trump made a promise he said would take “two minutes” to fulfill: Facilitating the release of Shakil Afridi, who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden in 2011 and was subsequently arrested by Pakistani authorities.
But 103 days into Trump's administration — and on the sixth anniversary of the raid in which bin Laden was killed in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad — the Pakistani surgeon is still being held on vague charges. His case adds to concerns that the administration is not willing to back foreigners who have risked their lives for the United States during conflicts abroad. Such worries have mounted since Trump temporarily banned Iraqi translators who worked alongside American soldiers from entering the United States shortly after his inauguration.
In the case of Afridi, Trump had initially committed to help. “I would tell them, 'Let him out,' and I'm sure they would let him out,” said Trump, speaking to Fox News one year ago. But the then-presidential candidate soon learned the hard way that Pakistan had no intention of resolving the dispute quickly.
The covert 2011 U.S. raid in Abbottabad — conducted without the prior knowledge of Pakistani authorities — left officials there deeply embarrassed. Days after bin Laden's death, Afridi was captured and accused of having run a fake vaccination program for the CIA to obtain DNA samples that could prove the al-Qaeda leader was in the city.
The program was reportedly launched under the assumption that bin Laden lived in the Abbottabad compound together with other family members. Whether Afridi actually managed to collect samples from bin Laden's family remains unclear.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/05/02/trump-promised-to-free-a-pakistani-surgeon-who-helped-find-bin-laden-hes-still-in-prison-and-theres-no-end-in-sight/?utm_term=.e22aa65f026e
BIRDS OF A FEATHER -- What Lies Beneath Trump's Fixation With Strongmen Like Duterte
From Erdogan to Putin to even Kim, President Trump has plenty of kind words for authoritarians—and their shared narcissism has a lot to do with it.
Michael DalyMICHAEL DALY05.02.17 2:20 AM ET
The younger Donald Trump and his father had considerable dealings with organized-crime figures who loomed large in New York’s construction industry.
So we should not be greatly surprised that our new president so readily connects with such gangsters as Vladimir Putin of Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Kim Jong Un of North Korea and even Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who has been called “the Trump of the East.”
But this bonding seems to run deeper than some Art of the HUGE Deal notion that befriending such figures is part of doing business, just as it was back when The Donald needed to keep deliveries coming to the Trump Tower site during a citywide concrete strike.
Trump appears to delight in authoritarian strongmen who operate on the principle that might makes right. The allure for a guy such as him may be partly explained by a group of German psychologists who published a study last year concluding that “narcissists of a feather flock together.” Psychology Today summarized their research, saying, “The theory driving the study was that friends of narcissists are themselves narcissists. In other words, the only people who can stand being friends with narcissists are other narcissists. Narcissists are not only tolerant of narcissism in their friends, they also are not turned off by the selfishness, arrogance, and bossiness that would drive non-narcissists away.”
The Psychology Today article quotes the study as finding, “Similar narcissistic friends might help each other to achieve such a rapport by respecting the same life strategy, avoiding conflicts, sharing the same mating behavior and preferences for competition, and displaying the same non-caring attitudes.”
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/02/what-lies-beneath-trump-s-fixation-with-strongmen-like-duterte
Trump: Congress Needs Shutdown to Fix 'Mess'
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said a shutdown of the U.S. government would be necessary in order to fix the “mess” in Congress. “The reason for the plan negotiated between the Republicans and Democrats is that we need 60 votes in the Senate which are not there!” Trump tweeted. “We either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix miss!” he added. Trump is likely referring to the funding agreement reached between Democratic and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill in which he did not get his desired funding immediately for items such as a border wall with Mexico.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/859393829505552385
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/05/02/trump-congress-needs-shutdown-to-fix-mess?via=desktop&source=copyurl
GOP Lawmaker: Those With Pre-Existing Conditions Not Living 'The Right Way'
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) on Monday implied that people with pre-existing health conditions simply aren’t living their lives “the right way.” Brooks, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, which opposed the previous GOP health-care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, made the comments while responding to a question about protections for people with pre-existing conditions in an interview with CNN on Monday. Lamenting the fact that people who “lead good lives” are “seeing their costs skyrocketing,” Brooks said the House GOP bill now in the works would allow health-insurance companies to require people with higher health-care costs to pay more. Their contribution would “help offset all these costs, thereby reducing the costs to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy, and right now those are the people who’ve done things the right way, and they’re seeing their costs skyrocketing.” Apparently catching himself, Brooks then quickly conceded that many people with pre-existing conditions have those conditions “through no fault of their own.” It was too late to correct himself, however. Brooks’ comments were quickly met with outrage on social media, with many tweeting directly at the Alabama congressman to question how children born with heart defects or other illnesses could have not “led good lives.”
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/05/01/gop-lawmaker-those-with-pre-existing-conditions-not-living-the-right-way?via=desktop&source=copyurl
ONE BILLION DOLLARS -- Report: Jared Kushner Didn't Disclose Startup Stake
ONE BILLION DOLLARS
Report: Jared Kushner Didn’t Disclose Startup Stake
Senior adviser and son-in-law to the president, Jared Kusher, allegedly failed to note on a government financial-disclosure form $1 billion in loans and the fact that he is part-owner of real-estate finance startup called Cadre, The Wall Street Journal reports. Due to his stake in Cadre, Kushner is a business partner of Goldman Sachs, as well as Peter Thiel and George Soros. Overall, Kushner failed to identify about $1 billion in loans from more than 20 lenders, according to the report, which was based on securities and other filings. A lawyer for Kushner, Jamie Gorelick, said the stake in Cadre is detailed in a new, revised version of the financial-disclosure form and that it will be publicized after certification from ethics authorities. Gorelick said Kushner has “resigned from Cadre’s board, assigned his voting rights, and reduced his ownership share.”
READ IT AT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/05/02/kushner-didn-t-disclose-startup-stake?via=desktop&source=copyurl
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Name: DonGender: Male
Hometown: Massachusetts
Home country: United States
Member since: Sat Sep 1, 2012, 03:28 PM
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