May 16, 2018

Kristen Stewart flouts the "Women must wear heels rule" at Cannes

?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kristen-stewart-ditches-heels-cannes-red-carpet-no-flats-rule_us_5afb4e80e4b0779345d3d248

May 16, 2018

Trump's pick to run Labor's pension agency: Mitch McConnell's (UNEMPLOYED) brother-in-law

Yet his nominee, Gordon Hartogensis, is well known to some of Washington’s most politically influential: He is the brother-in-law of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Chao’s sister, Grace, is married to Hartogensis.

Hartogensis was nominated to direct the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a Labor Department agency that collects insurance premiums from sponsors of defined-benefit plans and pays out benefits when companies cannot meet their obligations.

------

Hartogensis declined to immediately comment when reached by phone Tuesday. His current position is managing his family’s trust, according to his LinkedIn page.

His nomination by Trump raised questions among government ethics experts on the selection process and vetting for Hartogensis, a nominee with no apparent public service experience or direct insight into the agency’s mission.

“The White House’s process for naming and vetting candidates is flawed,” Scott Amey, the general counsel for the Washington-based Project on Government Oversight, said Tuesday. “This seems to be another example of who you know rather than what you know.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/15/trumps-pick-to-run-labors-pension-agency-mitch-mcconnells-brother-in-law/?utm_term=.27b9be659493

May 15, 2018

Michael Cohen 'asked Qatari investor for millions of dollars' which he said he would 'pass to Trump

Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, is facing claims he asked a Middle Eastern official for millions of dollars to give to 'Trump family members' in a meeting at Trump Tower weeks after the president's election victory, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Cohen is alleged to have asked Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, a former diplomat in charge of a $100bn Qatari investment fund, to send 'millions' through him to Trump family members. A source told DailyMail.com that the Qatari said he refused.

Al-Rumaihi on Tuesday issued a statement agreeing that he was at Trump Tower and a source with knowledge of the daysaid that Cohen had 'popped in' briefly to a meeting. Photographs show that he was part of a group greeted by Cohen, who went up in an elevator with them.

DailyMail.com can disclose that the group also included Qatar's foreign minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5732429/Michael-Cohen-asked-millions-dollars-pass-Trump-family-members.html#ixzz5FcNcL58N

May 15, 2018

EPA watchdog says Pruitt sought 24/7 protection from start

WASHINGTON (AP) — An internal watchdog at the Environmental Protection Agency said that Administrator Scott Pruitt demanded and received unprecedented, around-the-clock protection from armed officers on his first day — a detail that appears at odds with past claims that the stepped-up security measures came in direct response to death threats.

EPA Inspector General Arthur Elkins said in letters to Democratic senators that Pruitt himself initiated the 24-hour protection, which far exceeds the part-time security afforded to past EPA administrators.

Elkins' letter comes after Pruitt cited an August 2017 report by a staffer in the inspector general's office detailing more than a dozen investigations of threats against him and his Obama administration predecessor as justification for stepped-up security measures, which has included flying first class on commercial airliners.

Elkins said that 2017 summary was requested by Pruitt's office and was not intended to justify tighter security. Marked "For Official Use Only," the internal summary was then improperly made public, Elkins said.
https://pilotonline.com/news/government/politics/nation/article_112a37c1-9a72-5846-b5f7-f8c9f38a598c.html

May 15, 2018

EPA Halted Publication of Research About Chemical Pollutants After White House Warned of PR "Nightma

EPA Halted Publication of Research About Chemical Pollutants After White House Warned of PR “Nightmare”

Newly released emails have shown that the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House halted the publication of new research on chemical pollutants after one White House official warned of the “potential public relations nightmare” publishing the research could bring.

According to a report by Politico, the Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry had concluded that pollutants produced by large chemical plants and military bases pose a danger to human health at levels lower than previously thought. That finding could lead to far higher costs for companies and for the Defense Department if it translated into higher standards for cleaning up water sources to prevent contamination. But it has been more than three months since the study was finished, and the HHS confirmed that there is no plan to publish its results.

The EPA defended the inaction as a matter of taking the time to coordinate responses to “local, state, and Congressional constituents and partners.”

---

Emails obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Union of Concerned Scientists revealed that a White House aide warned of the damage the study’s results could have on the EPA and on the Defense Department. “The public, media, and Congressional reaction to these numbers is going to be huge,” the aide wrote. The political appointee who oversees environmental issues at the Office of Management and Budget then forwarded that email to the EPA’s top financial officer.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/epa-and-white-house-block-report-on-chemical-pollutants.html

May 15, 2018

Mike Pence's Mount Rushmore: Trump,Trump, Trump, Trump

Mike Pence's Mount Rushmore: Trump,Trump, Trump, Trump



Washington (CNN)Mike Pence's official role is vice president of the United States. But, unofficially, he's the president of a very important group within the White House: Donald Trump's fan club.

Trump likes to surround himself with people who adore him -- and don't mind speaking, sometimes at length, of their admiration and respect for the boss man. But, no one does it quite like Pence. He is the Picasso of the platitude, the Kandinsky of kissing up. And the praise is always delivered with the same knowing smile and this-really-comes-from-the-heart tone.
It's why -- or a big part of why -- Pence has never really run afoul of Trump in a major and public way. He knows that Trump wants to be praised at all times. And he is happy to oblige.

The latest example of Pence laying it on thick came Monday night at the Israeli Embassy in Washington where the vice president dropped this pearl of praise on the President:

"From King David's time to our own, President Trump has now etched his name into the ineffaceable story of Jerusalem. And as the
President said just this morning, today is nothing less than a great day for Israel."

King David! Trump!

So, that happened.

Does Pence etching Trump into Israel's Mount Rushmore on Monday night have anything to do with the fact that The New York Times published a story just hours before the vice president spoke detailing the rising tensions in the White House over Pence's aggressive political operation? Many people are saying that.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/15/politics/mike-pence-donald-trump-loves/index.html

May 14, 2018

At FDA, TVs now turned to Fox News and can't be switched

CBS News has confirmed an email was sent to researchers at the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research responding to apparent efforts to change the channel on internal television screens. The email from "[White Oak] Digital Display" sent on Wednesday, May 3, was sent to inform the researchers of the "reason for the change from CNN to Fox." White Oak is the name of the FDA's campus.

The email goes on to inform employees that the decision came from the Trump administration.

"The reason for the change is that a decision from the current administration administrative officials has requested that all monitors, under our control, on the White Oak Campus, display FOX news," the email reads.

Then, White Oak apologizes for the "inconvenience," adding, "I am unable to change any of the monitors to any other news source at this time."

An FDA spokesperson got back to CBS News after our deadline, telling us, "There was no directive or memorandum from the Administration that went out to employees about broadcast news channels displaying on monitors in common areas throughout the FDA's White Oak campus."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/at-fda-tvs-now-turned-to-fox-news-and-cant-be-switched/

May 14, 2018

massive new fissure opened on Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, hurling bursts of rock and magma

massive new fissure opened on Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, hurling bursts of rock and magma with an ear-piercing screech on Sunday as it threatened nearby homes within a zone where authorities had just ordered an evacuation

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5725879/Huge-new-1-000ft-fissure-opens-Hawaii-amid-fears-explosive-eruption.html#ixzz5FViZKc8o

May 14, 2018

Donald Trump does 1 thing at least 20 times a day

The President vents to associates about the FBI raids on his personal attorney Michael Cohen — as often as "20 times a day," in the estimation of one confidant — and they frequently listen in silence, knowing little they say will soothe him. Trump gripes that he needs better "TV lawyers" to defend him on cable news and is impatient to halt the "witch hunt" that he says undermines his legitimacy as President.

First, "TV lawyers"!

But, more importantly -- 20 times a day!

That's, um, a lot. It's not as often as the average American checks their phone per day (46 times!) but it's way more than we pee (4-7 times a day).

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/14/politics/donald-trump-mueller-probe/index.html

May 14, 2018

Spicer/Priebus purposesly got Trump hooked on Fox. Now Fox rules Trump through the show

The New York magazine piece reports that former White House advisers Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus sought to deliberately drive Trump deeper into the Fox News bubble, because he was getting overly agitated by criticism on MSNBC and CNN. They did this by talking up Fox’s high ratings and importance to Trump’s base until Trump’s television diet became, as one former official put it, “mainly a complete dosage of Fox.”


But this has created its own alarming problems, officials now say. Fox gets Trump riled up about topics that weren’t supposed to be on that day’s agenda, forcing White House staff to scramble to refocus. And Trump’s addiction to Sean Hannity — who has become a kind of walking security blanket for the president — is having a deep impression on his view of the Mueller investigation:


Regardless of the news of the day, the overarching narrative of the show is the political persecution of Trump, and by extension of Hannity and Hannity’s viewers, at the hands of the so-called deep state and the Democratic Party, and the corrupt mainstream media, a wholly owned subsidiary of both. Everything comes back to … Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, a phony, petty diversion from what should be the real focus: prosecuting Hillary Clinton.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/05/14/alarming-new-revelations-about-trumps-addiction-to-fox-news/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&noredirect=on