Trump wants William Barr to investigate Australia’s role in ‘Russia hoax’
Category: Trumpland Revealed
Our obsession with money and susceptibility to charisma, over-confidence and surface gloss have propelled us into an age where sham, spin, trickery and twaddle have become the new norms.
The Communist State of the USA Weopnising International Trade (ODT)
It’s a process that has prompted fears from business that as Trump’s trade war grows into a broader technology-driven conflict with China, the US could end up damaging its own economic future.
That fits with the Trump administration’s mantra that economic security is national security. So far the administration has used that to justify tariffs on steel and aluminium and to threaten more import duties on cars and parts from the EU and Japan.
“It’s always tricky to get export controls right. Too lax and critical technologies end up in the hands of our adversaries. Too strict and we limit our high tech companies’ ability to grow and further innovate, and we encourage others to develop their own capabilities in critical sectors,” he said.
Trump eyes an even more powerful weapon than tariffs for his trade war
How language in MSM protects: They still call Trump’s behaviour as a President “Diplomacy” when it’s the antithesis of the very word.
They call a person who built a platform for transparency “WikiLeaks a “Spy” and make every effort to shut down “whistleblowers” on any government issue. They accept Facebook Twitter etc publishers because of their ‘size’ and they promote the division of the world by engineering the MSM. Today the MSM accept Donald Trump as a ‘diplomat ‘ however, want a life sentance for Julian Assange why?
He Allowed us to see the USA for what they are and for what they do and are about to do with his open post box platform. They denied any extra charges where pending for his extradition when the world already knew those extra charges were already prepared and ready for process. We wonder why Donald Trump behaves like he does an American. He simply is and can’t be believed. (ODT)
Reckless: How Donald Trump’s diplomacy is inflaming the world
18 Ways Julian Assange Changed the World
The New York State Assembly passed a bill Wednesday that would allow Congress to get President Donald Trump’s state tax returns.
The Assembly voted 84-53 to require New York’s tax commissioner to release any state tax return requested by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee for any “specified and legitimate legislative purpose.”
“Transparency is essential, especially when it comes to the conflicts or potential conflicts of those who craft public policy,” Assemblyman David Buchwald (D), the bill’s sponsor, said during the floor vote, according to Bloomberg.
The Assembly also voted Wednesday 85-49 on an amendment to the bill directing the New York Tax Department to give Congress state tax returns specifically for elected officials. The original bill would have let Congress request any New York resident’s state tax returns.
via New York Assembly Votes To Allow Release Of Trump’s State Tax Returns | HuffPost Australia
“Our democracy is built on an understanding that one branch of government won’t systematically obstruct another,” said Rep. Ro Khanna. “Mueller named McGahn as a critical witness: the American people need to hear his testimony.”
via ‘This Is the Cover-Up’: Trump DOJ Instructs McGahn to Disregard Subpoena by House Judiciary
The agreement reached is nothing has changed all is back to where it was before Trump imposed the tariffs. Translated into reality Trump wimped. His method of dealing is clear impose a threat. Go back to normal and have it called a victory. Art of the deal = Fake News, Kim Jong Un does way better than Trump he actually gains ground. (ODT)
via Trump cools trade war by lifting North American metal tariffs | US news | The Guardian
Why, it’s as if I’d fallen asleep and woke up back in 2002!
State Department orders non-essential staff to leave Iraq amid escalating tensions with Iran
U.S. Military Says It’s on ‘High Level of Alert’ with Iran, Contradicting Its Own Coalition
Skeptical U.S. Allies Resist Trump’s New Claims of Threats From Iran
British General Contradicts U.S. Claim of Increased Threat From Iran-Backed Militias
Pentagon disputes British general’s assessment on Iranian threat
Key Commander in ISIS Fight Sees No Increased Threat from Iran-Backed Troops
Remember when George Tenet, head of the CIA, did his National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and Congress used it as the basis for supporting the war?
And then, after the war was underway, the Senate Intelligence Committee found the key findings were either exaggerated or unsupported by the actual evidence?
The only thing that will stop this is a massive public outcry. Pick up the phone today and call your elected officials. Tell their staffers you are absolutely opposed to a replay of the disastrous Iraq war and you will be certain to vote against anyone who accepts this flimsy rationale for another war.
(202) 224-3121
via It’s All So Familiar: U.S. Building Up To Armed Conflict With Iran | Crooks and Liars
The Trump administration’s sudden march toward an armed conflict with Iran has a number of top Democrats and even some Republicans attempting to rein in the president’s hawkish senior officials before potentially tens of thousands of U.S. troops are once again engaged in a bloody conflict in the Middle East.
Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have renewed a push for a 2018 bill that would prohibit the U.S. from using funds for a war against Iran without first getting congressional approval. On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined the bill as a co-sponsor.
“We cannot let the Trump Admin drag us into yet another war in the Middle East,” Warren tweeted.
via Can Congress Steer The U.S. Away From War With Iran? | HuffPost Australia
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/opinion/star-columnists/2019/05/13/why-trumps-trade-war-did-not-led-to-a-recession/afp_1gc3bl.jpg)
How easy is that. Just redefine News as “fake” and now redefine “povert” and problems all go way. (ODT)
This month, the administration signaled it would like to change how the government adjusts its official poverty threshold for inflation every year, which could result in millionsfewer Americans qualifying for a wide range of benefits over time.
It’s only the most recent of many unilateral moves Trump has made on social policy, which all seek to fulfill an Inauguration Day promise to “get our people off of welfare and back to work.”
via Behind The Scenes, Trump Diligently Tries To Slash Social Programs | HuffPost Australia
Trump’s secret police and “gotchya” moment making a bad situation even worse. (ODT)
via A CBP Team Targets Travelers After They Pass Immigration
After the redacted Mueller report was made public, Donald Trump tweeted, “No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION.” But when the House Judiciary Committee asked to see Mueller’s full report, Trump said no way.
Trump Has Defied Nearly All Subpoenas. What Can the House Do?
Trump Strangelove: Or how America learned to worry and hate Empire — RT Op-ed
President Donald Trump seems to be making Americans hate the empire again, by embracing war – or maybe only pretending to do so – against Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and who knows where else.
and
Real News (ODT)
After Mueller’s report came out, the former White House counsel was reportedly asked to say it wasn’t obstruction when Trump told him to fire the special counsel.
via Trump Reportedly Asked Don McGahn To Say He Didn’t Obstruct Justice | HuffPost Australia
His administration won’t give the House answers on the Mueller report, Trump’s obstruction of justice and his personal finances, among other things.
Here are all of the investigations the Trump administration is fighting and seeking to thwart:
via Here’s How Congress Is Fighting To Get Answers From Trump | HuffPost Australia
So Trump admits NYT isn’t just Fake News but he was and was for a decade as far as the IRS is concerned (ODT)
“As these records make clear, Trump was perhaps the worst businessman in the world. His entire campaign was a lie.”
via It ‘Was Sport’ to Dodge Taxes, Admits Trump, After NYT Details Epic Business Failures
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested Tuesday that President Donald Trump may well try to block special counsel Robert Mueller from testifying before Congress.
During testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Barr was again by turns evasive and openly partisan as he defended Trump against the report’s evidence of obstruction and defended himself against accusations that he had misled Congress and the nation. After his testimony in the Republican-controlled Senate, Barr refused to appear before the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee, setting up a potential battle over whether he is guilty of contempt of Congress.
Before the week was out, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had accused Barr of lying to Congress, an accusation that certainly endeared Barr to Trump.
via Did Donald Trump’s Grip on the Justice Department Sabotage Robert Mueller’s Investigation?
American workers get 14 days vacation when most OECD countries get 28
Yeah, yeah, yeah, unemployment is low and the stock market is high. But skyrocketing stocks benefit only the top 10 percent of wealthy Americans who own 84 percent of stocks. And while more people are employed now than during the Great Recession, the vast majority of Americans haven’t had a real raise since 1979.It’s bad out there for American workers. Last month, their ranking dropped for the third year running in the World Happiness Report,
Forty percent of workers say they don’t have $400 for an unexpected expense. Twenty percent can’t pay all of their monthly bills. More than a quarter of adults skipped needed medical care last year because they couldn’t afford it. A quarter of adults have no retirement savings.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers predicted the corporate tax cut would put an extra $4,000 in every worker’s pocket. They swore that corporations would use some of their tax cut money to hand out raises and bonuses to workers. That never happened. Workers got a measly 6 percent of corporations’ tax savings. In the first quarter after the tax cut took effect, workers on average received a big fat extra $6.21 in their paychecks, for an annual total of a whopping $233. Corporations spent their tax breaks on stock buybacks, a record $1 trillion worth, raising stock prices, which put more money in the pockets of rich CEOs and shareholders.
That’s continuing this year. Workers are never going to see that $4,000.
No wonder they’re unhappy. The system is working against them.
via The Untold Story of Trump’s ‘Booming’ Economy | The Smirking Chimp
The complaining Trump demands that Judge Nepolitano be sacked off Fox News (ODT
Donald Trump is a conspiracy theorist, but not a kooky or harmless one. He is a far-right conspiracy theorist who made up 10,000 fictions and actively supports the scariest and worst elements of the American Far Right, from Alex Jones of InfoWars to more obscure and even more poisonous nightshades of the internet.
via Conspiracy-Theorist-in-Chief Trump Tweetstorms the Far Right after Facebook Deplatformed Them
Key points:
A US State Department official said the China is America’s first great competitor that is “not Caucasian”
Senior Australian government officials have been scathing of the comments
Analysts have warned this plays into China’s “race” narrative
Goodbye to the Hippocratic Oath after 2000 years (ODT)
Doctors, nurses and other health workers can opt out of procedures such as abortions and sterilizations which violate their personal or religious beliefs, under a rule issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday.
When testifying before Congress, Barr was asked if he knew Mueller and what the latter thought of Barr’s summary. He pleaded ignorance, which we now know is a falsehood. Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe wonders whether the lie makes Barr himself eligible for impeachment.
via Mueller thinks Trump Committed Obstruction: Why he Wrote to Barr and why Barr Lied
Can Trump cancet the 2020elections due to a National Emergency? (ODT)
via Trump appointee Bolton inventing a new “Axis of Evil,” including Iran, to put US on War Footing
Remember the biggest crowd of any presidency (ODT)
The White House incumbent has told a staggering 10,000 lies since taking office, some big, some trifling. Here’s a selection
via Lies, damned lies and Donald Trump: the pick of the president’s untruths | US news | The Guardian
Histories Amoral POTUS (ODT)
The president is treating Congress with contempt. This cannot stand – and Congress must fight back
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Fox News analyst says Mueller report proves Trump did obstruct justice
Andrew Napolitano argued in an op-ed the president obstructed justice with ‘unlawful’ behavior related to the Russia inquiry
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/26/fox-news-andrew-napolitano-trump-obstruct-justice-op-ed
What is then a “donation” and what is Paid for? Imagine if Murdoch pulled away from Trump (ODT)
Gabe Sherman reveals how it works: If Fox News tries to reign in their worst voices like Jeanine Pirro, Trump picks up the phone and calls Rupert Murdoch.
But a sequence of events around Jeanine Pirro’s suspension shows how much clout Trump has. Even though Lachlan Murdoch is the head of Fox News now, Rupert Murdoch has Trump’s ear, and he uses it.
According to Sherman and his sources, staffers thought Jeanine Pirro would be fired, but Trump intervened, calling Rupert Murdoch to complain about her suspension. Instead of firing her, Sherman reports that Fox allowed Pirro to return to the air, but took out her opening monologue where she rants and stirs a froth of anger with viewers. That prompted Trump to complain to Rupert again, which caused a compromise to be forged where she could deliver an abbreviated version of her monologue.
“Trump called Rupert, and Rupert put pressure on the executives,” a source told Sherman.
Just like that!
via CONFIRMED: Fox News Is Officially State TV | Crooks and Liars
Washington: A former White House personnel security director has been instructed by the White House not to show up on Tuesday for questioning by the House Oversight Committee.
The move appears to be the latest effort by the Trump administration to push back against congressional inquiries of the White House, which have proliferated since Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in January.
When Trump caves into the law will he yell No Collusion? (ODT)
White House instructs official to ignore subpoena over security clearances
These are US allies… no Customers (ODT)
Washington’s Gulf Institute director Ali Al-Ahmed called the killings “the largest mass execution of Shiites in the kingdom’s history.”
Who is Running the country? It’s not Trump! (ODT)
The myth of Donald Trump presents him as a man of authority, a leader loved and feared, a boss who demands loyalty – and gets it.
Trump tampered with witnesses. These Senate Republicans voted to oust Bill Clinton for doing just thatIn fact, nobody much listens to what Trump says and that fact might have saved his presidency, according to one of the more startling passages in the 448-page report by special counsel Robert Mueller that was released on Thursday.
“The president’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful,” Mueller writes, describing potential criminal obstruction of justice, “but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”
via All the president’s men and women: how disobedient aides saved Trump | US news | The Guardian
Attorney General William Barr has just banned bail for migrants seeking asylum…which by the way, is not a crime..and they need somewhere to keep these people, to concentrate them if you will.
Dictionary.com defines a concentration camp as: “a guarded compound or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents … for the confinement and persecution of prisoners.”
Well guess what, America?!
We are now officially building and maintaining concentration camps for migrant families who have come to our borders seeking asylum. Even though the mainstream media is reporting that the Trump Administration is “considering” tent concentration camps, the truth is that they have already been erected. As The Daily Beast published just two days ago, these camps already exist in El Paso, TX. These camps are former military hospital facilities converted to prison camps. Representative Nanette Barragan (D-CA) said after visiting the camp that it was “filthy” and “heartbreaking.”
via Concentration Camp Tents Ordered By Trump Administration | Crooks and Liars
President Donald Trump on Tuesday vetoed a resolution to end U.S. support of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen, which has been blamed for tens of thousands of deaths in the region.
“This resolution is an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities, endangering the lives of American citizens and brave service members, both today and in the future,” Trump said in a statement accompanying his veto.
via Trump Vetoes Bill To End U.S. Support For Saudis In Yemen War | HuffPost Australia
“The thing that’s related that I’m more concerned about is, we will eventually face another recession,” says Oh, of UCLA. “And what we’ve done through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is use a bunch of the tools that we need to deal with the next recession, at a time when we don’t have a recession.”
1. Corporate taxes fell off a cliff, fueling deeper deficits
2. A short-term economic boost is fading
3. Rich people gained more than poor people
4. Most other impacts: Either too soon to tell or too hard to see
via Trump’s tax cuts: 4 ways they changed the American economy – CNN
It does not take long to forget and fascists to return (ODT)
Demonising the ‘other’, confecting a crisis to entrench power and using cruelty to spread fear are all part of an assault on democracy
Trump is a President yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre in which there isn’t one. The Constitution of America doesn’t protect that as “free speech” (ODT)
Since President Donald Trump tweeted a video about Omar, she’s faced “a sharp increase in direct threats” to her life, according to her office.
via Rep. Ilhan Omar Says Death Threats Have Increased Since Trump’s Attack | HuffPost Australia
Don’t ever let it be said that America isn’t driven and has to have war somewhere (ODT)
Since the brutal murder of Saudi dissident and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi last October, Congress has increasingly pressured the Trump administration to stop backing the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in Yemen and halt U.S. arms sales to Riyadh. In response, President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that if the U.S. does not sell weapons to the Saudis, they will turn to U.S. adversaries to supply their arsenals.
“I don’t like the concept of stopping an investment of $110 billion into the United States,” Trump told reporters in October, referring to a collection of intent letters signed with the Saudis in the early months of his presidency. “You know what they are going to do? They’re going to take that money and spend it in Russia or China or someplace else.”
via Secret Report Reveals Saudi Incompetence and Widespread Use of U.S. Weapons in Yemen
