Trump 20: Sauron Doesn't Seem So Bad After All

[louisa05]

I had lunch with a friend who is having serious health issues. She had a stroke, learned she has a heart defect, diabetes and may need bypass surgery. All at 45. She has an ACA exchange health plan. She is terrified, like losing sleep terrified, that she is going to lose her health insurance. 

And I know she voted for Trump. She preached all over social media about how there was no choice but to vote for him because of abortion. And it may end up biting her back so hard. I feel bad for her health problems. I truly do. But I have a hard time feeling bad about her worries over her health care. She voted for that. What exactly did she think was going to happen? What did all of these people think was going to happen? 

[GreyhoundFan]

This show needs to be cancelled immediately: "‘The Trump Show,’ Season 1, Week 21, reviewed"

Spoiler

A common reaction to Donald Trump’s presidency has been a sense that reality has outstripped even the most feverish fiction. The only thing to do when the world has come to feel like the implausible output of an ambitious but not particularly talented television writer is to cover it that way. Welcome to our recaps of “The Trump Show.”

At this point in the series’ run, I feel like I don’t need to note that that this week, “The Trump Show” ground through plot points at an exhausting rate. This is the mode the showrunners are committed to, and we’re basically strapped in for the ride. “The Trump Show” has no sense for why slowing down once in a while — whether to do an episode focused on one member of this huge cast of characters or simply to adopt a different tone that would give readers a break — might be to its benefit. And to be fair, the events the series set in motion don’t necessarily allow for that: Any pause would just leave the audience wondering about what’s happening in the Robert Mueller storyline or speculating about what Trump himself is doing whenever he’s off-screen*.

That said, I want to step out of the whirlwind myself and take some time this week to discuss how “The Trump Show” fits uncomfortably into the anti-hero genre in which it’s positioned itself.

“The Trump Show” is not the first series to try to fit into the model pioneered so successfully by creator David Chase and star James Gandolfini in “The Sopranos.” And despite signs of stagnation in the genre, and the rise of fresher templates for prestige television, it won’t be the last. On the surface, the character of Trump is an excellent fit for it. Like Tony Soprano, he bears the psychological freight of having grown up in the family he was born into, and like Tony, Trump is obviously torn between the things he values about his true business, and the mainstream adulation he craves.

But unlike the most compelling anti-heroes who came before him, Trump’s psychological transparency often saps the drama from his storyline. Compare the Cabinet scene in this week’s episode, when his staff went around the table trying to outdo each other in heaping praise on Trump. The sequence has the air of jaw-dropping implausibility that has become one of the defining stylistic moves of “The Trump Show.” But once you got past that, and the amusement of parsing the statements to see who’s winning the race to be most obsequious, the scene had little tension beyond a week-to-week who’s-up-who’s-down sort of thing.

Trump’s drive to dominate his underlings has little of the nuance that characterized, say, meth-cooking high school chemistry teacher Walter White’s (Bryan Cranston) relationship with former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) in “Breaking Bad.” In that series, Walt was initially disgusted by Jesse, then formed a fraught partnership with the younger man that he would do almost anything to maintain, then finally rescued Jesse in a suicidal and only partially redemptive grand gesture at the series’ conclusion.

Trump’s relationship with his underlings has none of that pathos nor back-and-forth. They’re mere employees, filling jobs that Trump barely seems to understand and certainly doesn’t care about. There’s something grand and haunted about that kind of contempt, but you can only do so many plots in which one character humiliates another before it gets old. And that’s not even to mention that so far, “The Trump Show” hasn’t had the courage to suggest that any of Trump’s employees have the sort of conflicted feelings toward Trump that Jesse developed for Walt. It’s a testament to the sophistication of “Breaking Bad” and the lack of equivalent courage on “The Trump Show” that the former is able to make a tormented, meth-cooking addict into a more morally complex character than a whole raft of Cabinet secretaries.

And of course, though the focus on Golden Age anti-hero shows tends to be on their male protagonists, the women are an essential part of the formula. For some reason, “The Trump Show” has decided to tell Ivanka and Melania Trump’s stories mostly through blind-sourced cover pieces in gossip magazines: Ivanka graced the June 19 issue of Us, while Melania appeared on the June 19 issue of Ok! From a plot purpose, I find this approach inexplicable, though production of “The Trump Show” has been dogged with persistent rumors about both actresses’ availability for and interest in the production, so it’s possible that this is simply a logistics work-around as the showrunners try to manage their sprawling and troubled cast. As long as this persists, “The Trump Show” is going to be missing an essential and clarifying element of domestic drama.

The Ivanka storyline this week seemed intended to position her as struggling with her father’s decision-making, though the story didn’t live up to the “Why I Disagree With My Dad” headline. But if the takeaway is going to be that “she’s learned to take … defeats in stride,” Ivanka’s storyline will never match the heights of Carmela Soprano’s (Edie Falco) struggles with whether to stay in her marriage, or Meadow Soprano’s (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) slow capitulation to her father’s business. Maybe there was a point at which we could imagine that Ivanka Trump would take a different path, but the inflection point for her is long in the rear-view mirror: She’s already made the equivalent of Meadow’s choice to become a mob lawyer.

And even by the standards of shows about middle-aged white male anti-heroes, Melania Trump’s role seems thankless. She doesn’t even have the draining parenting challenges that Corinne Mackey (Cathy Cahlin Ryan) faced on “The Shield,” or the frustrating but sexually charged dynamic that characterized the relationship between Jimmy and Elena McNulty (Dominic West and Callie Thorne, respectively, on “The Wire”). “The Trump Show” is giving her nothing to play. That may be a reflection of the series’ main character. But the best anti-hero dramas have always been aware that even if a man dismisses or marginalizes his wife, it would be mistake for the series to do the same.

*We should know that the answer to this is “watching cable television,” but to the series’ credit, Trump is such a stylistically volcanic character despite his penchant for routine that you can’t help but wonder. It’s a compelling juxtaposition.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

It's hard to believe he foisted himself on us two years ago today: "If Trump never got off that escalator, where would he be now?"

Spoiler

It was two years ago Friday that this infamous moment in American political history occurred.

...

At a little after 11:05 Eastern on June 16, 2015, Donald Trump gingerly stepped onto an escalator at Trump Tower and rode it to the White House. At the time, it was just another ingredient mixed into the bizarre impossibility that was his presidential bid. Now, it marks the first moment that Trump appeared in public as a candidate, and it was perfectly Trumpian in its execution.

For no real reason, it occurred to me on Friday to wonder what would have happened if Trump had never gotten off that escalator. If, instead of stepping off at the bottom in the lower level of the Trump Tower atrium, it were instead an infinite escalator that stretched on in the same direction to eternity, and Trump was still riding along. Where, I wondered, would he end up?

And then I answered my question.

To do so, though, I had to answer a number of other questions first. Namely, we have to know three things: How fast he was traveling, the direction he’s traveling in and how much time had elapsed.

1. How fast was Trump traveling?

This is trickier to determine than you might realize.

We have this video of Trump going down the elevator. But it’s hard, from that, to judge distances, and because speed is a function of distance and time, that’s a problem.

Happily, in October of 2015, I visited Trump Tower for an article exploring what there was to see and do in the building. Part of that involved recording my own trips up and down the escalator, filling in at least one variable for me.

For example, that video told me that it took 4.6 seconds to travel the length of one of the vertical panes of glass that makes up the side of the escalator. You can see those vertical lines in this version of the Trump video:

...

That video is important; we’ll come back to it.

In the GIF below, you can see the actual time that elapses as my thumb travels the length of one of those panes of glass.

...

Again: 4.6 seconds.

Now we need to know how big those panes of glass are. You may remember from high school that, given the lengths one side of a triangle and the angles within the triangle itself, you can figure out the lengths of other two sides. (If you didn’t take trig, you may not remember that.) We know one of the angles: By definition, one angle is a right angle, 90 degrees.

...

(In this and the ensuing diagrams, the diagonal line — the hypotenuse of the triangle — is the escalator itself.)

Matt Johnson of the Schindler elevator company informed me that escalators in the United States are mandated to be angled at 30 degrees, which gives us another angle. (And the third, because a triangle’s angles add up to 180 degrees.)

...

Now we just need the length of one of the sides.

From that video I shot in October 2015, we can see that my body descends from about the height of my glasses to the height of my belt as I travel down the escalator the length of that pane of glass.

...

How much time had elapsed?

That second video, above, tells us that Trump got on the escalator at about 11:05 a.m. and 46 seconds. You can see the time change shortly before the video ends. That means that, as of writing, about 63 million seconds had passed.

That means that, at 0.3 meters per second, Trump would have traveled a grand total of about 18,837 kilometers on that infinite escalator. But where would it have taken him?

In which direction was Trump traveling?

Trump Tower is located at the intersection of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. 57th runs east-west, and the escalator runs parallel to the street. So, 18,837 kilometers due west of Trump Tower, right?

No, for two reasons.

First, Manhattan’s streets don’t run true east-west. Instead of pointing due west at 270 degrees, for example, Charles Petzold calculated that the streets run about 29 degrees off that mark. Meaning that 57th Street runs at about 299 degrees — as does our escalator.

...

Second, though, the Earth is roughly a sphere, not an endless flat plain. That means that the escalator would probably, at some point, stop going down and start coming back up, perhaps even emerging from under the surface of the Earth. And, in fact, at 18,837 meters, that’s precisely what it does.

...

That’s a complicated graphic, so let’s walk through it.

The large triangle that’s overlaid on Earth is our escalator triangle from above. Here, the escalator part is the solid line. It ends at a point somewhere above the Earth’s surface — but where?

We can draw a dashed line back to the center of the earth. Using trig, we can figure out the angle between Trump Tower and that endpoint, and then the distance from the center of the Earth to the endpoint. The diameter of the Earth is 12,742 kilometers, meaning that the radius is about 6,371 kilometers. And that tells us that our endpoint is about 10,224 kilometers above the surface of the Earth.

How high is that? It’s just past the approximate end of the exosphere, the last point at which there are still detectable remnants of Earth’s atmosphere.

Trump would need to be in a space suit, at this point.

Where on Earth would he be? This is actually fairly easy to calculate. Using more math, we learn that the distance along Earth’s surface we need to travel is about 11,200 kilometers. We know that we’re headed 299 degrees from Trump Tower, in a west-northwesterly direction. Plugging that into Google Earth, we learn that Trump is in space about 600 miles south of Wake Island in the South Pacific.

...

How much would such an escalator cost? Well, a 30-foot tall escalator can apparently cost about $200,000. Ours is 9,418 kilometers high. Setting aside the cost of supporting an escalator in midair, that’s a cost of about $206 billion.

More than even Trump could afford.

Instead of his Mexican wall, maybe we could build that escalator. We could then invite him and his cronies to take a ride on it.

[onekidanddone]

What I am about to tell you all is the truth, I swear to Rufus.  I'm watching one of those low budget digital channels which only shows reruns, you know for people like me who don't have cable.  Anyway a commercial comes on for "Make America Sober Again". What the actual fuck?  The announcer blathers on about how horrible addiction is, and and keeps telling you to call a toll free number. Never says that it is an addiction hotline or a treatment center, just to call. I think it is very creepy.  As if they are just trying to get your name and number to put you on a robo call list.

Who are they kidding?  Who can remain sober with Orange Shit Stain in office?

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

 

 

AAAND now I'm having flashbacks to my sister and I annoying our parents to no end riffing on this sketch. Mostly involved reciting the Spam breakfast options in silly voices while referring to each other as Spamella and Spammie.  On a good day it would morph into the dead parrot sketch. 

I'm not normally a spam fan, but I did go to a Hawaiian restaurant recently with a freinds.  We tried the Spam musubi (can't remember if that was correct spelling) which was a caramelised slice of spam on sushi rice wrapped with some nori. It was surprisingly good. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump retains assets worth at least $1.4 billion, new disclosure shows"

Spoiler

President Trump retains control of assets that as of April 15 were worth at least $1.4 billion and had generated nearly $600 million in gross revenues in the previous 15½ months, according to a new financial disclosure released Friday.

The report, which the president voluntarily filed with the Office of Government Ethics, underscores the unprecedented financial interests Trump has brought with him to the Oval Office, an arrangement that has generated sharp criticism and spurred legal challenges.

The new 98-page disclosure, released by the ethics office, shows that Trump has held onto the vast majority of his assets since his last disclosure in May 2016, which indicated that his holdings were worth at least $1.5 billion.

However, he shed his stocks and securities, the report indicates. The disclosure does not reveal when the investments were sold. However, a Trump spokesman said in December that he had liquidated his entire stock portfolio in June 2016, around the time he began pouring millions into his presidential campaign.

Since this January, all of Trump’s business assets have been in a trust managed and controlled by his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, as well as longtime Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg. Dcuments released in April show that Trump is the beneficiary of the trust and is allowed to draw money from it at any time.

The president was not required to file a new finanical disclosure with the Office of Government Ethics until next spring, but Trump decided to voluntarily submit an updated report in his first year in office, following the tradition of past presidents including Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

The disclosure reports provide only a rough financial picture of the president’s holdings. The income listed for Trump enterprises generally represent gross revenue, not net revenue. And because the form only requires officials to report wide ranges of income and debt, it is impossible to use it to precisely gauge someone’s net worth.

The report also does not require officials to report their exact income or tax rate or charitable giving — unlike a tax return, which the president has refused to release.

The new filing shows that Trump had at least $310 million in liabilities spread across 16 loans, most of them mortgages, an amount similar to what he reported in his prior financial disclosure. The liabilities include debts on Trump properties such as Trump National Doral and 40 Wall Street.

The liabilities are likely much larger because five of the debts were worth over $50 million. Documents for those individual loans suggest Trump actually has a minimum of $500 million in debt.

For the first time, Trump reported earning income from Trump Tower in Kolkata, India, where he holds a licensing agreement with local developers. He said he received more than $100,001 from the deal.

Likewise, he reported income for the first time from his new hotel and condominium tower in Vancouver, which opened in February. Trump reported that he earned more than $5 million from the project, which was developed by the son of one Malaysia’s richest men.

And he reported that his trust owns a new company called Storage 106 LLC that was incorporated in Delaware in January. It is worth between $5 million and $25 million and produced more than $100,001 in income, the report shows. New York property records indicated that the corporation owns a series of storage units and commercial condos in the Trump Parc building on Central Park South in New York City.

Trump’s refusal to divest his holdings before taking office have triggered a cascade of complaints related to the use of government resources to promote properties such as Mar-a-Lago in Florida, allegations that he is violating the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause and questions about how he is being used to promote the Trump Organization’s projects abroad.

Earlier this week, the Democratic attorneys general in Maryland and the District of Columbia and nearly 200 Democratic members of Congress filed separate lawsuits alleging that payments to Trump businesses violated the Constitution’s anti-corruption clauses.

But Trump’s tax attorney, Sheri Dillon, told reporters in January that by setting up a trust, he was taking “all steps realistically possible to make it clear that he is not exploiting the office of the presidency for his personal benefit.”

She said the agreement governing the trust required that the Trump Organization would ink no new foreign deals while Trump was in office and that he would be provided limited information about his business’ progress — he would not be told, she said, how individual units of the business were doing, only provided periodic profit-and-loss statements for the entire enterprise.

Trump’s diclosure reflected the apparent demise of his wife Melania’s high-end skincare line, which included anti-aging products made with caviar. The “Melania Marks” skincare company is no longer listed as one of her assets.

The first lady drew wide criticism earlier this year when she claimed in a libel lawsuit that a defamatory story in the Daily Mail had squandered her “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to launch a broad commercial brand and bring in multimillion-dollar business opportunities.

Melania Trump previously reported between $15,001 and $50,000 in income from her accessories line. But during the past year, she listed no income from the brand.

No surprise here.

[Cartmann99]

More thoughts about Mrs. Pence's towel charms....

When I read about the towel charms last fall, the article I read said you put them on your towels and leave them there. So, you put a small hole in your towel to attach said charm, and then you run it through the washer and dryer when the towel is dirty. When we don't notice a hole or tear in our clothing, towels, or bed linens, and launder them as usual, the hole or tear gets bigger, so what's going to happen to the hole we made in the towel to attach the charm?

Secondly, what do you think is going to happen to a hunk of metal smacking around inside of your washer and dryer? The charm is going to get beat up so you have to buy new charms, and said charms smacking around will help to shorten the life of whatever else they are washed and dried with.

Lastly, how long do you think the average kid would take to notice that there's a piece of metal attached to the edge of the towel with a metal ring that s/he can use to hit people and things with? 

I don't have a pool, but if I did, I'd hit the garage sales and thrift stores for several different colored towels for the pool area and be done with it. People are not usually that careful with towels around pools and spas, so I think it's wise to save your nicer towels for your bathroom(s).  

[AuntK]

2 hours ago, louisa05 said:

I had lunch with a friend who is having serious health issues. She had a stroke, learned she has a heart defect, diabetes and may need bypass surgery. All at 45. She has an ACA exchange health plan. She is terrified, like losing sleep terrified, that she is going to lose her health insurance. 

And I know she voted for Trump. She preached all over social media about how there was no choice but to vote for him because of abortion. And it may end up biting her back so hard. I feel bad for her health problems. I truly do. But I have a hard time feeling bad about her worries over her health care. She voted for that. What exactly did she think was going to happen? What did all of these people think was going to happen? 

My sympathies to your friend for her health problems. BUT, not to sound too callous, her insurance problems she has helped to bring about on herself.  I'm getting really tired of these Trump voters that are just now discovering that they are about to lose their health insurance, or be deported, or lose Social Security benefits necessary for their survival, or that the jobs they thought were coming back are gone forever, etc. etc. WHAT IN THE HELL DID THEY EXPECT??? They had YEARS to read, listen and find out what a liar, cheater, thief that Trump was and they just chose to ignore it because of what?? Emails? Abortion? Gay marriage? And now we have a RUSSIAN PUPPET in the White House, a TRAITOR, willing, not only to sell out his supporters but to sell out this COUNTRY? I'm sorry, but I only have two words for these dimwits --- FUCK YOU!

Rant over. Breathing back to normal . . . for now.

[Ali]

Unless you have 19 kids, it is not that complicated. Just buy a different color towel for each child. Then you always know who forgot to hang up his or her towel if the towel thing is a big deal in your household.

[louisa05]

@AuntK. Totally agree. I have no sympathy over her insurance worries. She chose that. If she had been against him and voted for anyone else or no one at all, I'd feel differently.

[AuntK]

Watching MSNBC tonight. . . they are drawing parallels to Nixon.  The 45th anniversary of the Watergate break-in coincidently is this weekend.  During Nixon's last days, he was wandering the halls of the White House talking to the portraits. Trump, on the other hand, is reportedly screaming at the tv sets, and telling anyone who will listen about this "witch hunt." I think he is losing it. . . he may explode before the investigation is over. He seems extremely concerned about something that may come out! The Russian tapes, perhaps?

[JMarie]

NO! NO! NO!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/16/politics/gingrich-defends-trump-again/index.html

Quote

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Friday that it's impossible for President Donald Trump to obstruct justice because of the fact that he's president.

"Technically, the President of the United States cannot obstruct justice," Gingrich said at the National Press Club in an event to promote his new book, "Understanding Trump." "The President of the United States is the chief executive officer of the United States. If he wants to fire the FBI director, all he's got to do is fire him."

However, Gingrich himself has in the past voted to impeach a president over such charges. While speaker of the House, Gingrich voted in 1998 to impeach President Bill Clinton on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury.

Now, with a Republican in power, Gingrich has changed his tune. On Friday he called the investigation into Trump a "witch hunt."

"The left right now is engaged in the Salem witchcraft process of, 'We know somebody's evil, we know somebody's bad. I wonder who we should burn at the stake? Maybe it's you, whoever you are,'" Gingrich said. He encouraged the audience to read Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," saying "that's the mentality of the left right now."

Gingrich was a vocal advocate for Trump during his campaign and at one time was considered for the vice president slot. He said a reported investigation of Trump for obstruction of justice in the Russia probe -- which Trump himself said is happening -- is related to a failed attempt to prove election collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, which Gingrich called the "Russia Fantasy."

"Everybody on the left has been walking around town chanting, 'watch for the Russian connection, watch for the Russian connection, look for the collusion,'" Gingrich said. "Turns out, even Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the (Senate) intelligence committee, says there is zero evidence of collusion. So now the newest one is, 'Ah, but there was obstruction of justice over the collusion.'"

Gingrich said he has cautioned many in the Trump administration about the seriousness of the current investigations.

"I keep telling everybody at the White House, this is not like New York real estate law, this is criminal law," he said. "These people are coming after you to put you in prison, and you need to be very careful and you need to listen to your lawyers, and I say this as much to the President as anybody; this is not a game."

Gingrich raised eyebrows earlier this week when he appeared to blame liberal rhetoric for the shooting at a GOP congressional baseball practice Wednesday that left five, including Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, wounded and the gunman dead.

Speaking on Fox News' "Outnumbered," Gingrich said, "It's part of a pattern. You've had an increasing intensity of hostility on the left."

Trump can't obstruct justice because... why?  Because he *is* justice?  No, that can't be it, because of the separation of powers.

[fraurosena]

Oh, and about that emoluments clause...

 

and also...

 

I wonder what evil plot they're hatching, huddled secretively together like that? Can't be something good, that's for sure.

[nvmbr02]

Back on the spam topic for a minute... it totally is just a part of island life. I do like spam musubi, spam fried rice and these spam breakfast sandwiches that is made from jalapeño spam, a over medium egg, red onion and tomato. I never ate spam growing up but after spending some time in Hawaii and living in Guam it has grown on me. 

As for the Trump discussion...  I really have no words. I just keeping waiting for someone in the Republican Party to step up and do the right thing. I think once one person does it the cards will fall. But they are all little lemmings that are incapable of taking a stand. It is discusting. 

[fraurosena]

How many investigations? I'm losing count. Here's another one joining the fray.

Civil Rights Commission Will Launch Two-Year Probe of Trump Administration

Spoiler

President Trump is under many microscopes right now.

Not only did he allude through a tweet on Friday that he is the subject of an internal investigation by special counsel, but on the same day, an independent federal agency commissioned under Congress also said “grave concerns” were prompting an investigation into federal civil rights enforcement within his administration.

The United States Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan agency charged with advising the president and Congress on civil rights matters, unanimously approved a comprehensive two-year probe into the “degree to which current budgets and staffing levels allow civil rights offices to perform” their functions within the administration, said the agency in a statement.

The federal watchdog group became concerned about the Trump administration after several agencies announced budget and personnel cuts in departments that oversee civil rights. The "proposed cuts would result in a dangerous reduction of civil rights enforcement across the country, leaving communities of color, LGBT people, older people, people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups exposed to greater risk of discrimination," said the statement.

The commission, created under the Civil Rights Act and funded by Congress, expressed specific worry in seven agencies under the president, including the Department of Education and the Department of Justice.

The “repeated refusal” of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to commit to enforcing federal civil rights during Congressional testimony coupled with deep budget cuts within the agency’s Office of Civil Rights is “particularly troubling,” the agency added in the statement.

DeVos was asked during a Senate subcommittee hearing earlier this month whether discrimination against LGBTQ students in private school would be allowed.

While she did say “schools that receive federal funds must follow federal law,” she did not commit to banning discrimination, saying that area of law is “unsettled.”

The Department of Education did not return a request for comment by NBC News.

The commission also wants to look into the Department of Justice, which it says has completely changed its priorities.

“Actions by the Department indicate it is minimizing its civil rights efforts,” the statement said. “For example, a majority of the Commission criticized DOJ’s decision to site Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers in courthouses as a dangerous impediment to access to justice for all Americans,” the statement said.

The investigation will also look into the departments of Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Environmental Protection Agency and the Legal Services Corporation — which are all expected to slash budget and personnel that monitor civil rights.

While the commission does not have the ability to enforce the findings of its investigation, it will present the final report to Congress at the end of 2019. After that, it’s up to legislators to act.

"For 60 years, Congress has charged the Commission to monitor Federal civil rights enforcement and recommend necessary change,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, who chairs the Commission. “We take this charge seriously, and we look forward to reporting our findings to Congress, the President, and the American people.”

I think this initiative sends out a good signal. As things stand right now, I'm not hopeful anything will be done with the results after two years. Unless the elections next year changes the landscape in Congress to blue.

 

[fraurosena]

Oh my, what a caring presidunce he is!

 

 

[Howl]

6 hours ago, JMarie said:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Friday that it's impossible for President Donald Trump to obstruct justice because of the fact that he's president.

Newt Gingrich has no moral compass.  None.  Not even being married to über Catholic Ms. Callista (Oopsie, I'm an adulteress!) helps him out.  He does't know know moral true north from a damn toe fungus.  I know he's an unctuous Newt, but he's such a damn lickspittle toadie, desperate to be relevant again.  Wonder if he has Sarah Palin on speed dial. 

[fraurosena]

Here's some more information on that secretive meeting I posted about above. Seems like this was (part of) what they were hatching up.

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

Quote

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Friday that it's impossible for President Donald Trump to obstruct justice because of the fact that he's president.

"Technically, the President of the United States cannot obstruct justice," Gingrich said at the National Press Club in an event to promote his new book, "Understanding Trump." "The President of the United States is the chief executive officer of the United States. If he wants to fire the FBI director, all he's got to do is fire him."

So the US got rid of monarchy only to have absolute presidency? Is this man accountable to none?

[fraurosena]

HuffPo's Sam Stein is following the money:

 

 

 

[fraurosena]

More on the money trail:

Trump DC hotel and Mar-a-Lago score millions of new income for president’s business empire after election

Spoiler

The Trump-branded hotel blocks from the White House has quickly generated almost $20 million of income for the Trump Organization while Mar-a-Lago, the private club used as a "Southern White House," has seen profits climb nearly 25 percent — figures that are sure to fuel ethics advocates' charges that Donald Trump is profiting off the presidency.

Trump's 98-page financial disclosure was released unexpectedly late Friday by the Office of Government Ethics, almost a year before required and with no initial comment or explanation from the White House.

Details about the Trump International Hotel in the revamped Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House are likely to become part of a growing debate over the constitutional ban on president's receiving gifts and payments while in office — known as the emoluments clause. It requires Congress to approve any payment or gift from a foreign entity a president decides to keep.

Trump faces three lawsuits already over that ban, with groups such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, and more than 200 members of Congress suing over the constitutional ban. They point to conferences held at the Washington hotel to promote U.S.-Turkey relations, the planned celebration there of Kuwaiti National Day and numerous private gatherings in the ballroom and other facilities.

In Friday's financial disclosure report, which reflects business during the 2016 calendar year, the Trump Old Post Office LLC cited hotel-related revenue in reporting income of $19.6 million. The hotel has been open just a few months, and in his 2016 financial-disclosure report Trump had simply offered a range between $100,000 and $1 million.

"It certainly raises the question whether the income is coming from people wanting to get the president's attention," said Jordan Leibowitz, spokesman for CREW. "We can presume it's because he's president — the question is where is that money coming from?"

To that point, a required foreign lobbying form filed by Saudi Arabia on May 31 shows the kingdom spent $270,000 on lodging and food at the Trump International Hotel between October 2016 and March 2017.

When stating he was stepping away from his business empire earlier this year, Trump pledged to donate profits from foreign government money spent at his hotels to the U.S. Treasury. But critics argue that isn't happening, or at least not in a consistent, transparent fashion.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer earlier in the week dismissed those concerns as partisan bickering, and in a brief statement late Friday, he did not address them anew.

"President Trump welcomed the opportunity to voluntarily file his personal financial disclosure form; while this filing is voluntary (as no report was due until May 2018), it has been certified by the Office of Government Ethics pursuant to its normal procedures," Spicer said.

Richard Painter, the chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007, saw the Friday disclosure as a missed opportunity.

"Bottom line ... he has not changed the fundamental economic relationship he has with the Trump Organization," said Painter, now a law professor at the University of Minnesota.

Trump, through his family, still retains the financial interest in the Trump Organization, he said. And significantly, the disclosure forms report only income.

"It does not include the debt that is held by the corporate entity," Painter said, noting that misses a tremendous array of potential conflicts, ranging from what the Trump family business might owe banks to partners who might put up investment in his foreign companies.

One marquis property showing income gain is the Palm Beach resort called the Mar-a-Lago Club, which Trump calls his southern White House and it doubled its initiation fees to $200,000 in January, weeks before Trump took office. The disclosure form includes reported income of $37.2 million for the Florida resort, up sharply from $29.8 million in the previous year's report.

Trump has hosted foreign leaders such as Xi Jinping at the resort, further blurring the lines between politics and Trump Organization profits. In the five months he has been in office, Trump has visited Mar-a-Lago on 25 days and his golf clubs in Florida and in Virginia, outside Washington, on 31 days.

The disclosure forms are not audited balance sheets like those reported quarterly by large publicly traded companies such as GE or Apple. The financial disclosure forms list a filer's positions held on companies and in a separate section the filer's assets and income they generate. This number presumably doesn't include offsetting expenses, taxes, depreciation and the like. Those would be found on tax returns, which Trump has declined to release despite saying during the campaign he'd do so.

The disclosure document was actually signed Wednesday by the president but released late Friday by the Office of Government Ethics. It shows Trump has "resigned" his participation in 565 companies, "quitting" most of these companies on Jan. 19, 2017, the day before he was sworn in as the nation's 45th president.

After taking office, Trump opted against Office of Government Ethics recommendations that he divest his holdings. Instead, he transferred day-to-day management of most of the companies to his sons Eric and Donald Jr., who pledged they'd keep work and the White House separate.

They haven't, however.

Both regularly tweet support of their father's presidency and appear on cable television promoting their father's political priorities. They also criticize his detractors, blurring the line between the Trump Organization and the Trump White House.

Trump's golf courses also show large amounts of reported income — which presumably does not reflect offsetting expenses. His course in Jupiter, Fla., reported $20.1 million income while his Bedminster, N.J., course generated income of $19.7 million. His Charlotte, N.C., course reported income of $15 million. The Trump National Golf Club in the District of Colombia reported income of $17.5 and income on the prized Trump National Doral golf course in Miami of $115.8 million actually reflected a decline from $131.9 million in the 2016 report.

Is the man actively trying to aid the emoluments lawsuits against him? He did not have to release this information until next spring but he chose to do it now. 

[louisa05]

2 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

So the US got rid of monarchy only to have absolute presidency? Is this man accountable to none?

Gingrich had a decidedly different opinion when he led the impeachment of Bill Clinton. The third article of impeachment was for obstruction of justice. 

These people are drowning in their own hypocrisy and they don't even seem to notice. 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

1 hour ago, louisa05 said:

These people are drowning in their own hypocrisy and they don't even seem to notice. 

Nah they know it. They also know that diehard trumpsters couldn't care less. And they only need the diehards to keep in check the Repugliklans in Congress. Till the next elections.

I am curious to see how Repugliklans will spin their ass kissing support once the Trump Spell will be gone economic crisis will strike again and his popularity will be lower than GWB's.

[apple1]

3 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

So the US got rid of monarchy only to have absolute presidency? Is this man accountable to none?

No. It sure wasn't "the US" (I know, this might be a fine point). Only about 60% of eligible voters voted in the 2016 presidential election, and of those, 46% voted for Trump. I believe that makes about 28% of eligible voters (shame on those who didn't vote!) And now we have him. Until next election.

12 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

I am curious to see how Repugliklans will spin their ass kissing support once the Trump Spell will be gone economic crisis will strike again and his popularity will be lower than GWB's.

He's already less popular than either Bush.

[JMarie]

6 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Oh my, what a caring presidunce he is!

 

 

Why was Hannity's tweet noteworthy?  Gingrich is on his show every night, and every night they talk about the "Deep State" (at least in the first few minutes, or until I start to feel ill).