monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

jcboy wrote:

Oh my, Susan Collins just debunked Trumps statement in Comey's letter about "reassuring him 3 times that he wasn't under investigation."

Yeah? How was that accomplished, exactly? Got any kinda link for this wild-ass claim?

So where the Right's solution to the problem of nuclear waste?

EXCLUSIVE: KABUL, Afghanistan – It has been one month since the U.S. military dropped its largest non-nuclear combat weapon -- the MOAB -- to eradicate ISIS from its base in Afghanistan's Nanganhar province. And still, the ghostly destruction zone is a vision that haunts.

FoxNews.com has obtained exclusive images illuminating the bomb’s impact taken this week, showing the gouged and singed earth and even the limb of a dead fighter that had yet to be removed or buried.

...it worked extremely well, not only to kill more than 90 ISIS fighters, but to eliminate supply routes and squash morale within the terrorist organization.

"This was very effective -- many of ISIS' training camps are gone, bunkers destroyed," Gen. Qadamshah Shahim, chief of the general staff of the Afghan Ministry of Defense, who just stepped down from his role following the Mazar-i-Sharif attack, told Fox News.

But according to one high-ranking Afghan defense official the decision to use the MOAB was not taken hastily. Rather, it was a carefully calculated move.

The official said that a request to use such a weapon was brought to the attention of Afghan officials several months ago, and wasn't given the green light until all other options were explored and potential collateral damage and effectiveness studied.

"This wasn't about sending quick messages to show strength to other threatening countries like North Korea. This was about saving innocent Afghan lives from ISIS torture."

Hillary Clinton Lobbied Bangladesh PM on Behalf of Clinton Foundation Donor

Another Clinton Foundation pay-to-play scheme has been revealed by a foreign government. On May 11, Circa reported, “The Office of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina confirmed to Circa that Mrs. Clinton called her office in March 2011 to demand that Dr. Muhammed Yunus be restored to his role as chairman of the country’s most famous microcredit bank, Grameen Bank.”

In May 2012, the Bangladesh government was investigating the bank and Yunus for financial mismanagement and allegations that Yunus diverted bank funds to his private enterprises... the bank Grameen America donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation and Grameen Research donated an additional $25,000 to $50,000.

The Associated Press reported Yunus “met with Clinton three times and talked with her by phone during a period when Bangladeshi government authorities investigated his oversight of a nonprofit bank...Throughout the process, he pleaded for help in messages routed to Clinton, and she ordered aides to find ways to assist him.

Clinton State Department aides threatened the Bangladesh prime minister with an IRS audit of her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, who is a United States resident. “They would say over and over again, ‘Yunus has powerful friends,’ and we all knew they were talking of Secretary Clinton. Everybody knew it was Mrs. Clinton.”

Former Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni told Daily Caller there was likely a correlation between the World Bank denying a $1.2 billion loan to Bangladesh and pressure from Clinton’s State Department.

BREAKING: TREY GOWDY WILL BECOME OUR NEW FBI DIRECTOR!

Trump, knowing what’s best and what the American people want, wasted no time and found Comey’s replacement before he asked for his resignation.

'Gowdy has assured the president that he will do everything in his power to end the Russia witch hunt except where the Clintons and Podesta are concerned and to get back to what is really important, which is shutting down Obama’s Deep State and getting to the bottom of Benghazi.

Bakari Sellers, a former Democratic state representative and current CNN commentator, threw political caution to the wind Wednesday when he tweeted that Gowdy would be the best person for the now-vacant job.

"Dems are going to hate me for this. I don't care. The best replacement for Comey is Trey Gowdy," Sellers tweeted. "He's as honest as day is long."

Trump: Comey a 'grandstander,' 'showboat'

Trump, speaking to NBC News, gave his first in-depth remarks since the stunning ousting of Comey on Tuesday evening.

“Look he’s a showboat, he’s a grandstander,” Trump said. “The FBI has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil – less than a year ago. It hasn’t recovered from that.”

Trump said he had planned to fire Comey for some time, but “there’s no good time to do it by the way.” “I was going to fire regardless of recommendation,” Trump said.

Trump again repeated his assertion, contained in the letter firing Comey, that the former FBI head had told Trump on three separate occasions that he was not personally under investigation regarding any possible collusion with Russian officials. “And I’ve heard that from others,” Trump said.

“I had a dinner with him, he wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on,” Trump said. “…And I said, ‘I’ll consider we’ll see what happens’…And at that time he told me, ‘You’re not under investigation,’ which I knew anyway.”

Said Trump: “In one case I asked him…He said: ‘You are not under investigation.’”

ICE arrests nearly 1,400 in major anti-gang operation

The United States Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested 1,378 people over the last six weeks in a massive gang-related operation. Of those, 1,095 were confirmed as gang members, ICE said, while the remaining 238 "were arrested on either criminal or administrative charges"

ICE also said that 10 people arrested had entered the US as unaccompanied minors - and nine of them were gang members. Another three had been part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) scheme - so called "dreamers", or undocumented immigrants who arrived as children who are allowed to stay.

During the six-week operation, 238 firearms were seized, alongside almost 600lb (270kg) in mixed drugs, and almost half a million dollars in cash.

The large-scale operation was part of Operation Community Shield, an ongoing programme which targets gang members with the help of federal and local law enforcement agencies.

“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.

The company owned by the sister of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, has pulled out of presentations planned for China this weekend.

Kushner Companies was scheduled to pitch real estate opportunities to investors in the southern cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou at the weekend.

But last week, Nicole Meyer Kushner came under fire for using her brother's name in a pitch.

Critics accused the business of playing up the family's White House links.

The company said the comments were misconstrued but has apologised.

Ms Meyer and Kushner Companies president Laurent Morali had been included in promotional material for the upcoming events.

But on Thursday, James Yolles, a spokesman for the firm, said in a statement: "No one from Kushner Companies will be in China this weekend."
Ms Meyer had mentioned her brother while urging investors to put $500,000 (£386,500) into a New Jersey property project through the so-called EB-5 programme.

The EB-5 visa programme, often used by wealthy Chinese nationals, allows foreign investors a path to a green card if they invest more than $500,000 in a project that creates jobs in the US.
Critics of the programme say it is used as a means of cheap financing for property developers.

Earlier this year in March, Kushner Companies - owned by Jared Kushner, who is also a senior advisor to Mr Trump - ended talks with Chinese firm Anbang Insurance over a major redevelopment project in New York City.

That potential deal had raised questions about a conflict of interest.

Mr Kushner has said he stepped away from his family's business operations, but government ethics filings show that he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, continue to benefit from their stake in Kushner Companies.

True to form, Trump doesn't try to play the role of a calculating, mealy-mouthed politician who may need Comey's support some day....He doesn't give a **** if he really pisses Comey off and gives him extra incentive to want to "get back" at him. Bring it on.

INSIDE TRUMP’S COMING WAR WITH THE F.B.I.

The desire to defend the F.B.I.’s honor, and to set the record straight, appears to be already motivating law-enforcement sources to try to punch holes in Trump’s version of events.

Comey will need a way to fully tell his side of the controversies that ultimately sunk him at the F.B.I.

Maybe he’ll do it by a thousand cuts, feeding information to friendly reporters and prosecutors.

Maybe he’ll give a TV network an extended, exclusive interview.

..after being thoroughly vilified by the media while he was F.B.I. director, citizen Comey is now on the way to seeing it vindicate him, at the expense of President Trump.

obstruction of a federal investigation can get you 20 years in the slammer, and several legal experts think a case can be made that that's what he;s done by firing Comey.

What's missing from the chart is any illustration of the typical changes that have occurred over longer time spans due to the host of other geological & solar factors involved. That omission creates the deceptive and incorrect impression that ONLY CO2 concentrations are driving the changes we see now, and deprives us of any basis on which to see if the changes indicated are indeed significant in the long term.

Yes, there has been some recent warming. But so what? What is its cause? Is it unusual compared to previous centuries? Is it necessarily a bad thing?

And, most important from a policy perspective, What can we do about it anyway?

Rush Limbaugh and I have had a good-natured mini-disagreement over his characterization of global warming as a “hoax”. President-elect Trump has also used the “hoax” term.

I would like to offer my perspective on the ways in which global warming is indeed a “hoax”, but also a legitimate subject of scientific study.

Global warming has become a reason for government to institute policies, whether they be a carbon tax or whatever, using a regulatory mechanism which the public would never agree to if they knew (1) how much it will cost them in reduced prosperity, and (2) how little effect it will have on the climate system.

So, the policy prescription does indeed become a hoax, because the public is being misled into believing that their actions are going to somehow make the climate “better”.

In this regard, politicians using global warming as a policy tool to solve a perceived problem is indeed a hoax.

I like to say that global warming research isn’t rocket science — it is actually much more difficult. At best it is dodgy science, because there are so many uncertainties that you can get just about any answer you want out of climate models just by using those uncertianties as a tuning knob.

Scientists need to stop mischaracterizing global warming as settled science. The only part that is relatively settled is that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has probably contributed to recent warming. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is dangerous.

And it surely does not mean we can do anything about it… even if we wanted to.

“Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good”: