Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Obama still scared of Trump with nuclear codes

Um...anyone with a brain is Yugely concerned.


President Barack Obama still doesn’t think Donald Trump can handle the nuclear codes or safely protect America from attack — he just doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.
Asked Tuesday about the president-elect’s tweeting Monday about North Korea’s apparently burgeoning nuclear capacity, White House press secretary Josh Earnest noted that Obama had repeatedly raised his concerns about Trump’s capacity for nuclear security during the 2016 campaign. When pressed about whether Obama has confidence in Trump’s abilities now, Earnest instead spoke of the confidence the outgoing president has in the career, non-political members of the intelligence community, military and State Department who are “ultimately responsible for implementing policies.”

Full Story 

No Promised Statement From Trump On Hacking

Twitter Now Official State Run Media
Says maybe a kinda press statement could become, as computers are strange and taco bowls great, a thing could be said on Jan 11th possibly, after him and Putin get their story straight...

Trump’s Indonesia Projects, Still Moving Ahead, Create Potential Conflicts

JAKARTA, Indonesia — One resort, planned as the largest in Bali, will overlook a spectacular Hindu temple. The other, in the verdant hills of West Java, will adjoin a theme park. The properties will be so luxurious, the Trump Organization says, that even an impressive five-star rating will not do them justice. So it will give them six stars instead.
Even as President-elect Donald J. Trump promises to end foreign business deals that could pose conflicts of interest — there will be “no new deals” while he is in office, he has said — his company is moving ahead with two Indonesian projects that illustrate how tricky that pledge might be.
Full Article

House GOP Faceplant On Ethics Coup Shows Public Shame Still Matters

Public outrage blocked a secret, midnight effort to nuke the congressional ethics watchdog.

WASHINGTON ― At around 3 in the afternoon on Monday, with much of the country yet to ease back to work, a Bloomberg reporter posted a curious bit of news on Twitter: House Republicans were considering moving the Office of Congressional Ethics under the oversight of the House Committee on Ethics.
That evening, Republicans gathered for a closed-door discussion and vote on the proposal, which had been put forward by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) as an amendment to the rules that would govern the lower chamber for the next two years. A handful of members argued in opposition, including the Republicans’ No. 2 man, Kevin McCarthy of California, but the amendment won the secret vote handily, 119-74, and became part of the full rules package.
Full Article via Huff Post 

 

House Fires at Ethics and Shoots Self 

Trump embraces ethics . . . for other politicians 

A day of chaos at the Capitol as House Republicans back down on ... 

Did a Trump tweet save the Office of Congressional Ethics? Not really

Who Thinks I Should Fly The Plane

Prominent Trump Backers Sign Letter Pushing To End Conflicts Of Interest

Some prominent conservatives have signed on to a letter warning President-elect Donald Trump that he needs to sell off his businesses to address his many conflicts of interest.
"Respectfully, you cannot serve the country as president and also own a world-wide business enterprise, without seriously damaging the presidency," says a letter sent Monday by a bipartisan group of politicians, ethics advocates and academics.
The letter was signed by several moderate Republicans, including former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson and former Rep. Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma, who was chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee.
Read More 


Russia Reacts to President Obama's Sanctions The Daily Show

Trevor Noah

President Obama imposes sanctions on Russia for interfering in the U.S.'s 2016 election, but Vladimir Putin sees no reason to retaliate ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration. (4:06)

Trump’s agenda would boost his bottom line

Republicans are promising moves that would be a boon to Trump’s finances, including one tax change that could save his family $4 billion or more.


Donald Trump stands to personally profit from the legislative agenda he is expected to push in his first 100 days, raising questions about whether he can separate his financial interest from his public office without totally cutting ties from his business empire.
The top items on the president-elect’s policy checklist — from rewriting the tax code to scrapping Wall Street regulations to repealing Obamacare — have for years been Republican orthodoxy. But Trump could see a direct benefit to muscling though broad tax cuts and eliminating regulations: billions of dollars in new savings for him and his family and fresh revenue for his business portfolio, according to a POLITICO analysis of Trump’s public statements and financial disclosures and interviews with tax experts.
Full Article via Politico

Building a deeper darker swamp.

Trump's Inauguration Platform

Sean Hannity Declares Reports That The US Has 17 Intelligence Agencies "Fake News"

 Tool
Hannity: "We Don't Have 17 Intelligence Agencies, So Now We've Got Fake News Stories To Bolster The Claim Of The President And The Democrats Losing The Election" Video ››› January 3, 2017 6:46 PM EST ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF 



RACHEL MADDOW WITH SEN BERNIE SANDERS

No Mandate

Putin’s Dream Team

It’s Trump, Priebus, Conway & Spicer LLP. To get Putin off the hook, they’re putting America on trial.

Lawmakers preparing Russia sanctions bill







Schiff Warns of 'Vigorous' Response by Congress If Trump Reverses Russia Sanctions

Brooks and Corn on Obama's active final weeks and the Trump-Putin 'bromance'

In foreign affairs, it was not a quiet few days leading up to the New Year's weekend -- from Secretary of State John Kerry’s blunt parting speech about Israel to President Obama’s announcement of retaliation against the Kremlin for election hacking. Hari Sreenivasan speaks with New York Times columnist David Brooks and David Corn of Mother Jones about the week in politics.

Trump Voters Explain Themselves

Hamilton Nolan

Last week, I asked people who voted for Donald Trump to write in and explain why they made that choice. They did!

We got dozens of emails from Trump supporters telling us why they voted the way they did, and I have grouped selections of them into general categories below. Though this is not a scientific sample, it covers the bases pretty well.

So: Why did you vote for Donald Trump?

Read On via Deadspin


Dave Barry’s Year in Review: 2016 — What the ... ?

Best year end review of 2016 by far. Hilarious!

By Dave Barry via Miami Herald


In the future, Americans — assuming there are any left — will look back at 2016 and remark: “What the HELL?”
They will have a point. Over the past few decades, we here at the Year in Review have reviewed some pretty disturbing years. For example, there was 2000, when the outcome of a presidential election was decided by a tiny group of deeply confused Florida residents who had apparently attempted to vote by chewing on their ballots.
Read The Rest

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/dave-barry/article123321019.html#storylink=cpy
 

Hillary And Bill Clinton To Attend Trump Inauguration

Will their attendance help normalize a Trump presidency? I am not understanding this.

via NPR

Aides to Hillary and Bill Clinton tell NPR's Tamara Keith that the 2016 Democratic nominee and former president will attend the ceremony in Washington, D.C., later this month.
President George W. Bush's office announced earlier that he and former first lady Laura will also attend. Jimmy Carter had previously announced his intention to be on hand.
Full Story

It's Not Donald Trump That American Corporations Are Excited About

Jan. 3, 2017

Corporate America is about to go on a spending spree! They're so excited about Donald Trump that they can't hold themselves back!
Except, um, maybe that's not it after all. The Wall Street Journal reports that the stock market rally of the past month might be due to something more mundane:
The 6.7% rally since then, much of it since Election Day, has largely been attributed to the potential for tax cuts, looser regulation and fiscal spending under the president-elect. But the rise has also coincided with a fundamental improvement: U.S. companies'return to earnings growth.
"It's earnings growth that drives stocks over the long term," said Tom Cassidy, chief investment officer at Univest Wealth Management Division…Earnings for companies in the S&P 500 grew 3.1% in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to FactSet, entering positive territory for the first time since the first quarter of 2015, when they grew 0.5%. Analysts polled by FactSet expect the rebound to continue, and are estimating a 3.2% growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2016.
The third quarter, needless to say, was back when everyone was expecting Hillary Clinton to be the next president of the United States. Full Article via Mother Jones



Cuomo Announces 'First-of-Its-Kind' Plan to Offer Free College Tuition for Low- and Middle-Income New Yorkers

Anyone with a family income under $125,000 would qualify under the plan, which Bernie Sanders called "revolutionary"

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed a plan to offer free college tuition to New Yorkers whose families make less than $125,000 a year. Hailing the plan as the first of its kind in the nation, Cuomo said Tuesday the "Excelsior Scholarship" would apply to anyone accepted to any two- or four-year city or state university. Nearly a million families would qualify. Source: Cuomo Announces 'First-of-Its-Kind' Plan to Offer Free College Tuition for Low- and Middle-Income New Yorkers | NBC New York  Follow us: @nbcnewyork on Twitter | NBCNewYork on Facebook 

 

Megyn Kelly, New Face Of NBC News, Spent Election Withholding News From The Public

››› MATT GERTZ

The new face of NBC News spent the final months of the presidential campaign withholding vital information about Donald Trump, revealing it only in the book she published days after the election.


Fox News host Megyn Kelly has been hired away by NBC, where she will play “a triple role in which she will host her own daytime news and discussion program, anchor an in-depth Sunday night news show and take regular part in the network’s special political programming and other big-event coverage.”
There are many reasons to be concerned with Kelly’s move, among them her history of using white racial anxiety to bolster her career, her willingness to defend and promote anti-gay "hate groups," and her ability to use a patina of unearned credibility to push out the same right-wing lies that her Fox colleagues spout. But among them must certainly be her decision to wait until after the election to reveal key facts about Trump's interactions with her network.
In her book, Settle for More, Kelly writes that she learned Trump had inside information from Fox about the question she would ask him at the first Republican primary debate. She confirms that during the campaign, former network chairman Roger Ailes was shilling for more positive coverage of the now president-elect. She reports that she was "offered gifts" by Trump "clearly meant to shape coverage," and details numerous death threats she received after Trump attacked her in interviews and on Twitter, which led her to hire security guards, and a Fox executive to warn to Trump’s lawyer that “If Megyn Kelly gets killed, it's not going to help your candidate.”
None of this came out during the campaign -- in fact, Kelly plugged her book in May by stating, “For the first time, I’ll speak openly about my year with Donald Trump.” “There are times,” The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple writes of the book, “when Kelly all but smacks the reader in the face with her scoop-preservation strategy.”
Kelly defends her conduct by saying she was prioritizing her family's safety. That's a valid reason to stay silent about the threats of violence from Trump supporters, but not to hide Trump's bribes or efforts inside the network to support him.
Reporters have a responsibility to provide news when it matters to the American people, not when the news is most convenient for their books sales. It’s unfortunate that NBC News doesn’t seem to agree.
Thanks to Media Matters