Yes, Trump has hit the ground running. I would be cautious as well. Trump is taking this country full tilt right. Even further right than Bush II 2000-2008. I am sure some of you love this, but one party in complete control can be dangerous.

 

Just saw a clip of Trump's interview with ABC. Holy shit. Trump just said wait and see about taking Iraq oil. Go ahead and commit that war crime bud. Calling it now. Trump starts World War III in his first term.

 

Who here thinks Pence, Kushner, Bannon, Priebus, Ryan, and McConnell are running this country while Trump is the blowhard figurehead?

 

President Trump received a mandate from the American people. He promised to work for us and fix the mess. People have to get over their surprise and incredulity that we finally have in charge a non-politician who doesn't owe anyone favors and is going to do exactly what he told us he was going to do.

Those of you still pining for that rainbow we've tossed in the trash: This is what leadership and achievement look like. This is what competence looks like. Get you heads out of the dumpster and take a good look.

 

The other scary thing about the ABC interview with Trump is he only wants to hear sugar coated news from Fox. Dude, you realize your the President of the United States, right? Your news cannot be sugar coated. You need to realize everything you do is not going to be right thing, thus giving other news agencies and the American people the right to be critical. Trump is a pussy. Get those feelings in check. Grow some balls. Quit being a baby. Quit dividing this country with your conspiracy theories.

 

No he's not.

Wrong on several fronts.

First, executive orders have a constructive and justifiable purpose. They end up on court when they are used to legislate. When Trump uses executive orders to reverse Obama's executive orders, it becomes a hard case in court, to prove that Trump is overstepping his executive authority!

Second, many of the "executive orders" that ended up in court really were not executive orders. They were presidential memoranda. Obama used presidential memoranda as a form of deception (to avoid the appearance of giving too many executive orders). Obama used more presidential memoranda than any president in history. At Snopes, Politifact, and all the other bogus sources you leftist moonbats use for your "facts," presidential memoranda aren't even counted when they make the outragous claims that "the Messiah's abuses of power are okey dokey cuz W done it too."

 

Beats Valerie Jarrett, doesn't it? Not a Saracen in the whole bunch.

 

Thanks for replying as I put the dick head (xxxaddict76) on ignore the first day I saw him here...
Just another sock I did not want to figure out...

 

I figured it is a sock too. Don't know who it is, and don't care, but it's entertaining. xxxaddict usually has the back of AnonDePlume and DistantLover. Fitting.

 

Reuters Top News ‏@Reuters 39m39 minutes ago
BREAKING:
Trump will sign executive order today about voter fraud investigation - White House.

 

Forget about the west coast and the tens of millions of illegal aliens living there.

Fraud was everywhere.

In New Hampshire, the same buses from Massachusetts were turned away from several towns. The same buses-- same plate numbers-- were tracked all over the lower half of the state, and they were voting anywhere a locality would let them. At how many town did the wetbacks in those towns actually vote?

Then there is early voting, which is nothing more than a mechanism that allows college kids to vote twice-- once at home, and again in their college town.

In Michigan (which had one of the Stein recounts), the recount was suspended before completion when the organizers realized that virtually all of the fraud was happening on behalf of Clinton. Stuffed ballot boxes almost everywhere they looked.

In Springfield, MA stories are coming out of local districts having less than 100 registered voters, showing hundreds of reported votes for Clinton. They stuffed the ballot boxes by running the voter rolls through a routine that identified people who haven't voted in ten or more years, and then used those names to stuff the boxes.

And then California... Just imagine the bigger cities and all the illegal aliens voting there. Look at San Diego. More illegals than citizens.

This has to be fixed. Fast. Before the mid-term elections, all the nation's voter rolls have to be expunged and recompiled, starting with lists of citizens of the United States.

 

Reuters Top News ‏@Reuters 8m8 minutes ago
Nuclear 'Doomsday Clock' ticks closest to midnight in 64 years

 

Trump Expected to Ban Syrian Refugees Indefinitely in New Exec. Orders
The countries, viewed as hotbeds of terrorism, are Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Libya.
Those who already have a visa will not be allowed to enter.

The orders would also create a 120-day moratorium on admitting all refugees from those seven countries
to the U.S. and an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees specifically.

 

Waaaahhh...Trump is gonna undo all of Obama's Executive Orders.

While many like to brag how Obama issued the fewest Executive Orders*, guess who signed the most in their first 100 days. Not only that, apparently orange was the new black back in 2009. Whole lot o' revokin' going on.





* As Clarse noted,there have been Presidential Memoranda, and who knows what else. "Baracky notes", maybe? They're like Sticky Notes, but they probably won't be sticking around for too long.

 

This circus is full of laughs today!

You would think that cyber security would be taken more seriously but helaas pindakaas!

http://usuncut.com/politics/sean-spicer-tweeted-account-passwords/

http://usuncut.com/news/hacker-reveals-trumps-potus-twitter-account-linked-unsecure-gmail-address/

Thinskin

 

draining the swamp

If you’re looking for a job in Donald Trump’s State Department, now would be a good time to apply, given the number of new vacancies as of this week.

On Wednesday, Patrick Kennedy, who was the State Department’s undersecretary for management, resigned his post after nine years of service. Shortly after his resignation, several other top officials at the State Department — Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Ann Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for consular affairs Michele Bond, and Office of Foreign Missions Director Gentry O. Smith — also quit, according to the Washington Post. All of those senior officials served in the State Department for both Democratic and Republican presidents.

Their resignations follow the exodus of two other senior officials at State. On Inauguration Day, Gregory Starr, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security, and Bureau of Overseas Building Operations director Lydia Muniz both resigned after Donald Trump was sworn in as president.

============================
State Dept. official accused of offering 'quid pro quo' in Clinton email scandal


An unnamed FBI official alleges Patrick Kennedy asked agency to downgrade classified email in exchange for FBI agents in more countries.

By NOLAN D. MCCASKILL


10/17/16 10:55 AM EDT


Updated 10/17/16 03:14 PM EDT

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/fbi-state-department-clinton-email-229880

 

Thu Jan 26, 2017 | 3:05pm EST
Exclusive: Expecting Trump action, U.S. suspends refugee resettlement interviews


By Yeganeh Torbati | WASHINGTON
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has temporarily halted trips by staff to interview refugees abroad as it prepares for a likely shakeup of refugee policy by President Donald Trump, two sources with knowledge of the decision said on Thursday.

The decision effectively amounts to a pause in future refugee admissions, given that the interviews are a crucial step in an often years-long process.

The DHS leadership's decision to halt the interview trips was communicated to those involved in the U.S. refugee admission process on Wednesday, one of the sources said.

It means that though Trump has not yet ordered a temporary halt to the refugee program, future admissions are likely to be delayed.

Trump is expected to sign an executive order that would include a temporary ban on all refugees, and a suspension of visas for citizens of Syria and six other Middle Eastern and African countries.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters on Thursday that Trump could sign several executive orders on Friday, but that the nature of those had not been decided yet.

Becca Heller, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project at the New York-based Urban Justice Center, said she was informed of the decision to halt the overseas interviews by several people in and outside of government.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which conducts the refugee interviews, did not respond to a request for comment.

DHS officers regularly visit countries such as Jordan, Malaysia, El Salvador, Kenya and Ethiopia to interview refugees seeking to enter the United States. It is usually one of the last steps in the refugee resettlement process.

Obama approved allowing up to 110,000 refugees in the 2017 fiscal year, compared with 85,000 the prior year.

 

PM May calls on Trump to renew special relationship

Eager to win favour -- and a trade deal -- with the new U.S. president to bolster her hand in the divorce talks with the European Union, May said both countries shared many values and that, contrary to his statements that NATO was "obsolete," Trump had told her he was committed to the U.S.-led military alliance.

May said she supported Trump's "reform agenda" to make NATO and the United Nations "more relevant and purposeful than they are today," and "many of the priorities your government has laid out for America's engagement with the world."

But there may be sticking points in Friday's talks - May said she condemned the use of torture and would stick to UK policy, suggesting Britain may not accept intelligence that could have come from such methods that Trump could reintroduce.

"We condemn torture and my view on that won't change – whether I'm talking to you or talking to the president," she said when asked what impact it would have if Trump brought back a CIA program for holding terrorism suspects in secret prisons.

May will have navigate the middle ground carefully, wary of being criticized as too pro-Trump or alternatively as too negative toward a future trading partner.

She has threatened to walk away from the EU if she fails to get a good deal, and some critics say that could give other countries, like the United States, the upper hand in any talks.

And the EU might not take kindly to any overly friendly overtures to a president some of the bloc's main leaders have voiced concern about.

Some kind of trade agreement, though, is high on her list of priorities, despite Britain and the United States being at odds over genetically modified organisms, meat production and public procurement and May unable to sign deals until after Brexit.

May says she will launch the divorce talks by the end of March by triggering Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which gives up to two years to negotiate an exit deal. Only then can she agree with third countries.

Both leaders should use the time to find areas where they could remove trade barriers, May said.

"We're both very clear that we want a trade deal."

 

Fri Jan 27, 2017 | 9:12am EST
Red tape chokes off drilling on Native American reservations

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...BN15B0E7?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social
By Valerie Volcovici | FORT BERTHOLD, NORTH DAKOTA


When the U.S. oil boom hit North Dakota a decade ago, wells sprang up quickly on the edges of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, an expanse of prairie and rolling hills three times larger than Los Angeles.

Tribe members here, facing a 40 percent unemployment rate and sending their children to 1950s-era school buildings, were eager to tap some of state’s most promising reserves. But layers of federal regulation - applying only to tribal lands - slowed them down for years, frightened away investors and cost them millions of dollars.

"The reservation looked like the hole of a donut," said Marcus Levings, who was chairman of Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara (MHA) Nation's reservation at the time. "Everything around us was moving, and there was nothing in the middle."

Fort Berthold has since caught up to become one of the state's most productive regions. But the initial delays undermined the MHA Nation’s sense of sovereignty and cost it badly needed revenue - an experience echoed in widespread complaints from other tribes and from energy firms, including some owned by Native Americans.

Now, with U.S. President Donald Trump in office and oil prices rising, their frustration is fueling a renewed push to streamline approvals for drilling and mining on Indian reservations.

Clearing regulatory hurdles for a single project on tribal lands can take as many as 50 steps, compared to a half dozen for oil wells on private property. The process can take three times as long to complete, according to tribal leaders, lawyers specializing in Native American issues, oil company executives and federal regulators.

Officials at the agency overseeing that process - the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), a division of the Department of Interior - did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A spokesperson for Trump, who campaigned on a promise to slash energy regulation, declined a request for comment.

The stakes are high. Native American reservations cover just 2 percent of the nation's surface, but by some estimates contain as much as a fifth of all U.S. oil and gas reserves, along with vast coal stockpiles.

Some tribes, for environmental or cultural reasons, have shunned the idea of developing these reserves, but many others want to tap the vast wealth beneath their homelands.

A coalition of Native Americans appointed by Trump's team to guide his Indian policy is researching proposals to make energy development easier on tribal lands - including the controversial idea of transferring them to private ownership.

That coalition met privately in Washington last month with tribal representatives and Trump’s team, and the group listed deregulation of energy development on reservations as a high priority, according to a person who attended the meeting.

Representatives of the coalition did not respond to requests for comment.

Congress, now firmly in Republican control after November’s election, also appears poised to act. The Indian affairs committees in the House and Senate are planning to re-introduce legislation this year that would streamline Bureau of Indian Affairs approval processes for tribal energy resource agreements, said Senator John Hoeven, a Republican from North Dakota and the new chair of the Senate Indian affairs committee.

U.S. Representative Raul Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona, has opposed previous efforts to relax energy regulations on tribal lands, including a 2015 proposal he argues would have undermined public input before project approvals. That could weaken the legal arguments of residents impacted by environmental damage, he said in an interview.

"The regulations are there for the public, including tribal members, to know what the intended and unintended consequences of that project are going to be," he said.

MORE at Link above

 

The problem with that is that the oil companies drilled everywhere around it as close as they could get so the money may be lost for good if they decide they can only put 2 or 3 wells in.

If you've been in the Bakken you know that you only get one chance unless you are willing to drill your own well and fight tooth and nail against companies like Haliburton to sell that oil.

One Indian Reservation did just that.