I don't blame the PR hacks for not wanting to look at the polls today. Trump is -10 in Rasmussen.

And when I get time I might go back and see what the Trump supporters had to say when President Obama expanded public lands. I bet they sure weren't crowing about it

 

Oppsie


Judge Upholds Congressional Subpoena for Trump Financial Records

https://www.mediaite.com/trump/judge-upholds-congressional-subpoena-for-trump-financial-records/

 

Rex Tillerson just met in secret with the House Foreign Affairs Committee to talk about his time with Trump

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/05/re...-committee-to-talk-about-his-time-with-trump/

 

Carson is right to favor US citizens in public housing

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson faced harsh – and unwarranted – criticism from Democrats Tuesday when he appeared before a House committee to defend his commonsense proposal to end public housing assistance for illegal immigrants.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., called the proposal “cruel” and “inconsistent with HUD’s mission.”

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., called the proposal “despicable,” and said it was “among the most damaging proposals in public policy” she’s ever seen.

Carson, characteristically, kept his cool at the hearing conducted by the House Financial Services Committee.

The HUD secretary told Maloney that he would like to be with her when she explains to the American families in her district who are currently on a waiting list for public housing assistance why they should take a back seat to illegal immigrants.

Far from despicable, Carson’s proposal is a good one that restores fairness to the subsidized housing system and recognizes that American citizens have a greater right than illegal immigrants to government benefits.

Carson’s proposal would provide relief to low-income households headed by American citizens who now cannot get public housing due to a short supply. It would also provide relief to taxpayers who should not have to subsidize housing – or any living expenses – for people living in the U.S. in violation of our laws.

Most Americans are probably shocked to learn that illegal immigrants can get public housing benefits. Indeed, such assistance is prohibited by the Housing and Community Development Act of 1980.

According to a HUD study, about 25,000 households that include illegal immigrants are now living in public housing. About 55,000 children who are in the U.S. legally live in those households.

Some states have openly allowed illegal immigrants to live in public housing. For example, President Barack Obama’s Kenyan-born aunt, Zeituni Onyango, lived in a public housing unit in Boston for years after her first asylum application was rejected in 2004. She was ordered to leave the U.S. but refused. She was then granted asylum in 2010 and died in 2014.

 

First, notice this was not highlighted.

About 55,000 children who are in the U.S. legally live in those households.

And then note the panic setting in.

Trump Blames Low Poll Numbers on ‘ILLEGAL Witch Hunt’ In Epic Early AM Tweet Storm

*The two biggest factors dragging Trump's poll numbers down are his more than 10,000 lies and his tweeting. Which are actually both signs of his mental illness.

https://www.mediaite.com/donald-tru...egal-witch-hunt-in-epic-early-am-tweet-storm/

 

No wonder Trump is freaking out on national TV. There is something about Deutsche Bank that terrifies him.

Judge Refuses to Block House Subpoenas for Trump Bank Records

https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-refuses-to-block-house-subpoenas-for-trump-bank-records

 

Rex Tillerson Says Putin Outmaneuvered Trump at Key Meeting Because of ‘Discrepancy in Preparation’: WaPo

 

Back when Reagan was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's Nancy and his other handlers were smart enough to know they had to hide him from the press and one of the most dangerous times was walking from the White House to the helicopter where the press could shout questions at him. So the made sure to keep the engine on the helicopter running.

And Trump's handlers should try that to avoid disasters like Trump had today.

 

Trump Staffers Tell CNN They Dread International Flights on Air Force One: ‘Like Being Held Captive’

https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trum...hts-on-air-force-one-like-being-held-captive/

 

Many outlets. One script. Talk about collusion.

 

No leftist media exists or has ever existed.

It's just your emotions working up a frenzy for yourself...

 

Oh it's getting good...

Brennan, Clapper lash out at Trump for declassifying 2016 election intel

Former CIA Director John Brennan and former DNI James Clapper blasted President Trump on Friday night for directing Attorney General William Barr to declassify documents related to the surveillance of his campaign during the 2016 election, calling it "outrageous."

"I see it as a very, very serious and outrageous move on the part of Mr. Trump, once again, trampling on the statutory authorities of the Director of National Intelligence and the heads of the independent intelligence agencies," Brennan told MSNBC host Chris Hayes. "And it's unclear to me what Mr. Barr is actually going to do. Is he investigating a crime? Well, what's the predication of that crime? Or he is just going to be looking for information... that Mr. Trump can just give to his defenders on the right and cherry-pick information that could be taken out of context?"

Clapper, now a CNN analyst, insisted that the infamous Steele dossier was not used as sourcing for the intelligence community assessment in January 2017.

 

AP FACT CHECK: Trump and a tale of 2 sheets of paper

Trump says no infrastructure until investigations end

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump held up and read from a sheet of paper in the Rose Garden this past week as he argued he's been hounded by investigators in the Russia probe for no reason. "Nearly 500 search warrants," says the page, from an ABC News graphic. "More than 2,500 subpoenas." And: "19 special counsel lawyers & 40 FBI agents worked the case."

If that sounds like overkill by the Robert Mueller inquiry, it's only half the story.

Trump did not show or quote from a second page that goes with the graphic, laying out the results of the investigation. Among them: "37 total indicted ... 26 Russians indicted ... 4 people sent to prison ... 7 guilty pleas." In Trump's telling, it's all a hoax.

Selective accounting like that has been a constant in Trump's rhetoric.

A look at some of his recent statements, on the Russia investigation, the border, the economy and more:

TRUMP INVESTIGATIONS

TRUMP: "I don't do cover-ups." — Rose Garden remarks Wednesday to reporters.

THE FACTS: Federal prosecutors may not agree with that assertion, which he made in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's accusation that the president was engaged in a cover-up. Trump spoke after breaking off an infrastructure meeting when Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., came to the White House for it.

Prosecutors' court filings in December said Trump directed his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to make payments to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal during the 2016 presidential campaign. Both women alleged they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which the White House denies.

In particular, the Justice Department says the hush money payments were unreported campaign contributions meant to influence the outcome of the election. That assertion makes the payments subject to campaign finance laws, which restrict how much people can donate to a campaign and bar corporations from making direct contributions.

Trump has said the payments were "a simple private transaction," not a campaign contribution.

Separately, the Mueller report found that Trump dictated his son Trump Jr.'s misleading statement about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower to cloak its purpose.

Cohen, who pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance crimes in connection with those payments, had previously implicated Trump. The department's filings backed up Cohen's claims.

The Mueller report said Trump learned in summer of 2017 that the news media planned to report on the meeting at Trump Tower between senior campaign officials and Russians offering derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Trump directed aides not to disclose the emails setting up the meeting. Before the emails became public, the president also edited a press statement for Donald Trump Jr. by deleting a line that acknowledged that the meeting was "with an individual who (Trump Jr.) was told might have information helpful to the campaign" and instead said only that the meeting was about adoptions.

That episode was among 10 identified by the Mueller investigation of possible obstruction of justice by Trump. Mueller said in his report that he could not conclusively determine that Trump had committed a crime or that he hadn't.

___

TRUMP: "ILLEGAL Witch Hunt." — tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Trump is wrong to suggest, as he has done before, that the FBI acted illegally by investigating him. The FBI does not need to know if or have evidence that a crime occurred before the bureau begins an investigation.

Many investigations that are properly conducted ultimately don't find evidence of any crime. The FBI is empowered to open an investigation if there's information it has received or uncovered that leads the bureau to think it might encounter a crime. Apart from that, the investigation into the Trump campaign was initially a counterintelligence investigation rather than a strictly criminal one, as agents sought to understand whether and why Russia was meddling in the 2016 election.

___

TRUMP: "The greatest Hoax in American History." — tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: A two-year investigation that produced guilty pleas, convictions and criminal charges against Russian intelligence officers and others with ties to the Kremlin, as well as Trump associates, is not a hoax.

Mueller charged 34 people, including the president's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and three Russian companies. Twenty-five Russians were indicted on charges related to election interference, accused either of hacking Democratic email accounts during the campaign or of orchestrating a social media campaign that spread disinformation on the internet.

Five Trump aides pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller, and a sixth, longtime confidant Roger Stone, is awaiting trial on charges he lied to Congress and engaged in witness tampering.

Mueller's report concluded that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was "sweeping and systematic." Ultimately, Mueller did not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. But the special counsel didn't render judgment on whether Trump obstructed justice, saying his investigators found evidence on both sides.

___

BIDEN

TRUMP, on Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden: "He's not from Pennsylvania. I guess he was born here but he left you, folks. ... He left you for another state and he didn't take care of you because he didn't take care of your jobs. He let other countries come in and rip off America." — Montoursville, Pennsylvania, rally Monday.

THE FACTS: It's true that Pennsylvania-born Biden left the state without taking care of jobs for the people he left behind. He was a boy, 10 or 11, when his family moved to Delaware in 1953.

___

TRADE

TRUMP on his trade dispute with China: "I'll be honest, we are getting hundreds of millions of dollars brought into our country. We've never gotten 10 cents. We are getting hundreds of billions of dollars coming into our country." — remarks to reporters Thursday.

THE FACTS: This is not true. The tariffs he's raised on imports from China are primarily if not entirely a tax on U.S. consumers and businesses, not a source of significant revenue coming into the country.

A study in March by economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Columbia University and Princeton University, before the latest escalation, found that the public and U.S. companies were paying $3 billion a month in higher taxes from the trade dispute with China, suffering $1.4 billion a month in lost efficiency and absorbing the entire impact.

It's also false that the U.S. never collected a dime in tariffs before he took action. Tariffs on goods from China are not remotely new. They are simply higher in some cases than they were before. Tariffs go back to the beginning of the U.S. and were once a leading source of revenue for the government. Not in modern times. They equate to less than 1% of federal spending.

___

BORDER

TRUMP: "Our country is full. We don't want people coming up here. Our country is full. We want Mexico to stop. We want all of them to stop. Our country is packed to the gills. We don't want them coming up." — Pennsylvania rally Monday.

THE FACTS: Trump's declaration that the U.S. is too "full" to accept migrants due to an overwhelmed southern border is his latest flip-flop. It turns out the U.S. is only "full" in terms of the people Trump doesn't want.

Just last month, the president had made clear that more migrants are needed due to an improving economy.

"We have companies pouring in. The problem is we need workers," he told Fox Business Network on April 28.

"We need people to come in," Trump said at a Wisconsin rally on April 27.

Immigrants as a whole make up a greater percentage of the total U.S. population than they did back in 1970, having grown from less than 5 percent of the population to more than 13 percent now. In 2030, it's projected that immigrants will become the primary driver for U.S. population growth, overtaking U.S. births.

___

TRUMP: "The wall is being built as we speak. We'll have almost 500 miles of wall by the end of next year." — Pennsylvania rally Monday.

THE FACTS: It's unclear how Trump arrives at 500 miles (800 km), but he would have to prevail in legal challenges to his declaration of a national emergency or get Congress to cough up more money to get anywhere close. Those are big assumptions.

So far, the administration has awarded contracts for 244 miles (390 km) of wall construction, but more than half comes from Defense Department money available under Trump's Feb. 15 emergency declaration. On Friday, a federal judge in California blocked Trump from building key sections of the wall with that money; a separate challenge is before a judge in New York.

Nearly all of what Trump has awarded so far is for replacement barriers and fencing, not new miles of wall. Even if Trump prevails in court, all but 14 miles (22 km) of those awarded contracts replace existing barriers.

The White House says it has identified up to $8.1 billion in potential money under the national emergency, mostly from the Defense Department.

Customs and Border Protection officials say the administration wants Congress to finance 206 miles (330 km) next year. The chances of the Democratic-controlled House backing that are between slim and none.

___

ECONOMY

TRUMP: "My Administration is achieving things that have never been done before, including unleashing perhaps the Greatest Economy in our Country's history." — tweet Wednesday.

TRUMP: "Most successful economy, perhaps, in our country's history." — remarks to reporters Wednesday.

THE FACTS: The economy is solid but it's not one of the best in our country's history, no matter how many times he asserts it. Trump is also claiming full credit for an economic expansion that began under President Barack Obama in mid-2009.

The economy expanded at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. That growth was the highest in just four years for the first quarter.

In the late 1990s, growth topped 4 percent for four straight years, a level it has not yet reached on an annual basis under Trump. Growth even reached 7.2 percent in 1984.

While the economy has shown strength, it grew 2.9% in 2018 - the same pace it reached in 2015 — and simply hasn't hit historically high growth rates.

___

TRUMP claims "the best unemployment numbers in history." — Pennsylvania rally.

THE FACTS: The 3.6% unemployment rate in the latest report is not the best in history. It's the lowest since 1969, when it was 3.5%. The U.S. also had lower rates than now in the early 1950s. And during three years of World War II, the annual rate was under 2%.

___

HEALTH CARE

TRUMP: "Drug prices are coming down, first time in 51 years, because of my administration." — remarks Wednesday to reporters.

THE FACTS: Trump continues to ignore an increase in drug prices.

The Labor Department's Consumer Price Index for prescription drug prices shows an increase of 0.3% in April compared with the same month last year. The index tracks a set of medications, both brand names and generics, and Trump has frequently made his boast since the updated numbers showing higher costs came out.

Other independent studies point to increasing prices for brand-name drugs as well and more overall spending on medications.

An analysis of brand-name drug prices by The Associated Press showed 2,712 price increases in the first half of January, compared with 3,327 increases during the same period last year. However, the size of this year's increases was not as pronounced.

Both this year and last, the number of price cuts was minuscule. The information for the analysis was provided by the health data firm Elsevier.

An analysis by Altarum, a nonprofit research and consulting firm, found that in 2018, spending on prescription drugs was one of the main factors behind a 4.5% increase in U.S. health spending. Spending on prescription drugs grew much faster than in 2017, according to the study.

___

TRUMP: "We will always protect pre-existing conditions." — Pennsylvania rally.

THE FACTS: He's not protecting health coverage for patients with pre-existing medical conditions. His Trump administration instead is pressing in court for full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, including provisions that protect people with pre-existing conditions from health insurance discrimination.

Trump and other Republicans say they'll have a plan to preserve those safeguards, but the White House has provided no details.

Obama's health care law requires insurers to take all applicants, regardless of medical history, and patients with health problems pay the same standard premiums as healthy ones. Bills supported in 2017 by Trump and congressional Republicans to repeal the law could undermine protections by pushing up costs for people with pre-existing conditions.

 

A host of misleading and assumed information by none other than the state-run leftist media, absolute misnomers.

 

Utah judge suspended for criticizing Trump on social media and in court


5/25/19

A Utah judge has been suspended for six months without pay after he made a series of critical statements about President Donald Trump online and in his courtroom over the past few years.

The Utah Supreme Court filed its court ruling this past week on Judge Michael Kwan’s actions.

Kwan, who has served as a justice court judge in Taylorsville for 20 years, was cited for “improper use of judicial authority and his inappropriate political commentary,” the latter often involving President Trump.

The court noted multiple times when Kwan had provided political comments that criticized Trump, as a presidential candidate in 2016 and as president on his Facebook page and in court.

Three days after the 2016 election, Kwan wrote on Facebook, “Think I’ll go to the shelter to adopt a cat before the President-Elect grabs them all” — a reference to the "Access Hollywood" tape in which Trump was heard bragging about grabbing women's genitals without consent.

Almost a month after Trump’s inauguration, Kwan said “welcome to the beginning of the fascist takeover” and questioned whether Congressional Republicans would be “the American Reichstag,” this time referring to the political body of Nazi Germany.

Judge Kwan defended his online commentary by stating that he had a First Amendment right to share his views about elected officials' political and social stances, calling it “constitutionally protected speech” and describing his statements as “social commentary or humor.”

In response, the ruling written by Utah Supreme Court Justice John Pearce dryly noted, “It is an immutable and universal rule that judges are not as funny as they think they are. If someone laughs at a judge’s joke, there is a decent chance that the laughter was dictated by the courtroom’s power dynamic and not by a genuine belief that the joke was funny.”

The court ruling also noted a moment in court that demonstrated the judge’s political leanings and views of the president.

When a defendant said he was praying to get a large tax return in 2017 to pay off his fines and avoid going to jail, Kwan appeared to tell the man he shouldn’t hold his breath because of President Trump.

“Prayer might be the answer,” the judge said, “’cause he just signed an order to start building the wall and he has no money to do that, and so if you think you are going to get taxes back this year, uh, yeah, maybe, maybe not. But don’t worry, there is a tax cut for the wealthy, so if you make over $500,000 you’re getting a tax cut.”

The inquiry also noted a pattern of behavior by Kwan, including a lewd statement about President Bill Clinton’s sexual history and for his involvement with a politically biased nonprofit.

Though Kwan continued to defend his use of speech, and said that his Facebook profile remained largely private, Judge Pearce and the Utah Supreme Court said the judicial office requires sacrifice.

“Fulfillment of judicial duties does not come without personal sacrifice of some opportunities and privileges available to the public at large,” Pearce wrote. “And as a person the public entrusts to decide issues with the utmost fairness, independence, and impartiality, a judge must at times set aside the power of his or her voice.”

 

Interesting.
The Kwan quotes are amazingly similar to the spew we are subjected to around here.

Almost as if despicables are hearing messages beamed to them from central headquarters.

 

It's about damn time something is done about Judicial activism, I hope this sends a statement.

 

And the same thing is going to happen to Trump's campaign rallies. That is all Trump has done since he became president. Tweet and campaign. And its getting old because he's a one trick pony.

Trump Tweets Lose Their Sting: The President's Interaction Rates Have Plummeted Since He First Took Office

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump...tes-have-plummeted-since-he-first-took-office

 

One thing that can be said, they are in locked step.

 

‘Tasteless’ Trump gets torn to shreds for starting off Memorial Day with an unhinged impeachment rant

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/05/ta...morial-day-with-an-unhinged-impeachment-rant/