12
   

Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

 
 
Lash
 
  -3  
Reply Mon 18 Nov, 2024 03:18 pm
Douglas Macgregor on X

Where is President Trump? President Biden just announced his plan to trap the American People into fighting a war with Russia that no one in the United States outside of the DC beltway wants.

Why has President Trump failed to condemn this cheap device as an attempt to overturn the election results??

Yesterday, President Putin reiterated one more time his policy on employing nuclear weapons if a massive conventional attack across Belarus or the Russian border is launched by a nuclear State.

This is a signal to the Germans in particular who plan to give Taurus missiles to Zelensky.

Last night, Russian Forces destroyed power generation facilities in Western and Eastern Ukraine. This means Ukrainians in the far West will also freeze in the coming winter.

In addition, there are no North Korean Troops West of the Urals. It’s another lie invented by MI6/CIA in a final futile attempt to breath life into Washington and NATO’s anti-Russian campaign
glitterbag
 
  2  
Reply Mon 18 Nov, 2024 03:27 pm
@Lash,
Lash wrote:

Chelsea Clinton vacationed with Ghislane Maxwell, who was invited and photographed at Chelsea’s wedding.


Donald Trump invited both Bill and Hillary Clinton to his wedding to his lovely third wife (doo do doo do doo do doo do).
0 Replies
 
Lash
 
  -3  
Reply Mon 18 Nov, 2024 04:44 pm
I’ll have to give it to you there—Bill & Hill are almost equal in trafficking & rape accusations to Ghislane and Epstein. Trump should be ashamed to associate with them.
blatham
 
  2  
Reply Mon 18 Nov, 2024 05:05 pm
@Lash,
If you are on twitter/X, definitely check out Lash's authority.
Quote:
Douglas Macgregor@DougAMacgregor
Oct 15
A Trump victory in America is a victory for the world.

Trump will deliver peace and prosperity..


Quote:
Ron Paul@RonPaul
Nov 14
Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.) is one of the most innovative thinkers of our time. In today's Liberty Report, he explains his recently-published detailed blueprint for a less expensive - and better - US military; and a safer America.


Quote:
Douglas Macgregor@DougAMacgregor
Jan 13
If you're sitting in Moscow or Beijing, might as well have a smoke and a beer and watch us destroy ourselves..

We are failing to enforce the law at our southern border.

It's killing us as a country, destroying our society and destroying societal cohesion.


Quote:
Chuck Callesto@ChuckCallesto
Sep 20
BREAKING REPORT: Col. Douglas Macgregor launches OPERATION FOCUS, activating millions of patriots across the nation.

Get involved before it is too late.

Election THEFT is STOPPED by activating at the local level.

Help Trump SAVE this Country.


Quote:
Jake Shields@jakeshieldsajj
Sep 9
According do General Douglas Macgregor Germany didn’t start WW2 they were simply reacting to communism


Quote:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr@RobertKennedyJr
May 6, 2023
Please watch my fascinating discussion of the Ukraine conflict with war hero and former senior NATO planner Col. Douglas MacGregor (ret.)


Quote:
Douglas Macgregor@DougAMacgregor
Sep 20, 2023
Wokeism is perversion, it is sick and it's wrong.

Our Government is in the hands of parties addicted to money and psychiatric drugs.

Most of the people running the Government remind me of the people we used to punch out in bars for entertainment.


Quote:
Joe Conason@JoeConason
May 7, 2023
As you surely know, MacGregor is a raving bigot and conspiracy promoter who often vented his hatred on your favorite Fox shows. He's also one of the most brazen Putin stooges.. https://mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-favorite-douglas-macgregor-stone-age-indigenous-people-south-asian

And such stuff goes on and on and on...
Lash
 
  -3  
Reply Mon 18 Nov, 2024 06:39 pm
@blatham,
blatham wrote:

If you are on twitter/X, definitely check out Lash's authority.
Quote:
Douglas Macgregor@DougAMacgregor
Oct 15
A Trump victory in America is a victory for the world.

Trump will deliver peace and prosperity..

Lash wrote:
If Only both Harris and Trump could’ve lost. It was definitely a victory of sorts that the US rebuked the genocidists. Macgregor seems to have much higher hopes than I do, but 🤞🏽

Quote:
Ron Paul@RonPaul
Nov 14
Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.) is one of the most innovative thinkers of our time. In today's Liberty Report, he explains his recently-published detailed blueprint for a less expensive - and better - US military; and a safer America.

Lash wrote:
I have a level of appreciation for Ron Paul. I think a less expensive, safer military are in order! Don’t you? I agree with his assessment of Col. Macgregor.

Quote:
Douglas Macgregor@DougAMacgregor
Jan 13
If you're sitting in Moscow or Beijing, might as well have a smoke and a beer and watch us destroy ourselves..

We are failing to enforce the law at our southern border.

It's killing us as a country, destroying our society and destroying societal cohesion.

Lash wrote:
I agree that we have had severe problems at the border and around the country with an intentional overload of immigrants caused by the Biden administration. While I’m definitely concerned about how it’s going to be handled by the Trump administration, I agree that it requires attention.

Quote:
Chuck Callesto@ChuckCallesto
Sep 20
BREAKING REPORT: Col. Douglas Macgregor launches OPERATION FOCUS, activating millions of patriots across the nation.

Get involved before it is too late.

Election THEFT is STOPPED by activating at the local level.

Help Trump SAVE this Country.

Lash wrote:
While this seems like over the top hyperbole to me, I understand how it feels to be concerned about Democrats cheating elections. They are notorious.

Quote:
Jake Shields@jakeshieldsajj
Sep 9
According do General Douglas Macgregor Germany didn’t start WW2 they were simply reacting to communism

Lash wrote:
A guy said a thing? Hearsay. Bad form.

Quote:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr@RobertKennedyJr
May 6, 2023
Please watch my fascinating discussion of the Ukraine conflict with war hero and former senior NATO planner Col. Douglas MacGregor (ret.)

Lash wrote:
Hahaha. I guess you and the He Man Kennedy Hatin’ Club are all nodding knowingly at this, but after some missteps from Kennedy, one thing I despised, and endless character assassination from the Dem Media, this isn’t the flex you think it is.

Quote:
Douglas Macgregor@DougAMacgregor
Sep 20, 2023
Wokeism is perversion, it is sick and it's wrong.

Our Government is in the hands of parties addicted to money and psychiatric drugs.

Most of the people running the Government remind me of the people we used to punch out in bars for entertainment.

Lash wrote:
‘Woke-ism’ seems to be a burr in the pants of half the country—likely designed to do perform exactly that division. But no matter what, that final sentence is disgusting.

Quote:
Joe Conason@JoeConason
May 7, 2023
As you surely know, MacGregor is a raving bigot and conspiracy promoter who often vented his hatred on your favorite Fox shows. He's also one of the most brazen Putin stooges..
Lash wrote:
Conason and media matters—hacks, on the DNC/ CIA payroll. 🤷‍♀️

https://mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-favorite-douglas-macgregor-stone-age-indigenous-people-south-asian

And such stuff goes on and on and on...


With all his warts, Douglas Macgregor is head and shoulders above everyone I can think of in the party you spend so much time defending.
0 Replies
 
glitterbag
 
  2  
Reply Mon 18 Nov, 2024 08:37 pm
@Lash,
Lash wrote:

I’ll have to give it to you there—Bill & Hill are almost equal in trafficking & rape accusations to Ghislane and Epstein. Trump should be ashamed to associate with them.



Good one granny, Trump isn't ashamed of ANYTHING. How often do you think he traveled to Bill & Hillary's child pro sex ring in Washington, D.C.? Who was your sponsor?
Builder
 
  -3  
Reply Mon 18 Nov, 2024 10:39 pm
@glitterbag,
Quote:
How often do you think he traveled to Bill & Hillary's child pro sex ring in Washington, D.C.?


Was the pizza thing? Obama was right into pizza parties, too.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  4  
Reply Mon 18 Nov, 2024 11:43 pm
@Lash,
However, this is about data cables, between the Nordic countries and mainland Europe resp. between the Nordic countries.
hightor
 
  4  
Reply Tue 19 Nov, 2024 03:55 am
Quote:
On Friday, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo locked in a $6.6 billion deal with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company for it to invest $65 billion in three state-of-the-art fabrication plants in Arizona. This will bring thousands of jobs to the state. The money comes from the CHIPS and Science Act, about which Trump told podcaster Joe Rogan on October 25: “That CHIPS deal is so bad.” House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he would work to repeal the law, although he backed off that statement when Republicans noted the jobs the law has brought to their states.

Also on Friday, a Trump-appointed federal judge struck down a Biden administration rule that would have made 4 million workers eligible for overtime pay. The rule raised the salary level below which an employer has to pay overtime from $35,568 to $43,888 this year and up to $58,656 in 2025. The decision by Texas judge Sean D. Jordan kills the measure nationally.

On Sunday, speaking from the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, President Joe Biden said that it would not be possible to reverse America’s “clean energy revolution,” which has now provided jobs across the country, primarily in Republican-dominated states. Biden noted that the U.S. would spend $11 billion on financing international responses to climate change in 2024, an increase of six times from when he began his term.

But President-elect Trump has called climate change a hoax and has vowed to claw back money from the Inflation Reduction Act appropriated to mitigate it, and to turn the U.S. back to fossil fuels. What Trump will have a harder time disrupting, according to Nicolás Rivero of the Washington Post, is the new efficiency standards the Biden administration put in place for appliances. He can, though, refuse to advance those standards.

Meanwhile Trump and his team are announcing a complete reworking of the American government. They claim a mandate, although as final vote tallies are coming in, it turns out that Trump did not win 50% of the vote, and CNN statistician Harry Enten notes that his margin comes in at 44th out of the 51 elections that have been held since 1824. He also had very short coattails—four Democrats won in states Trump carried—and the Republicans have the smallest House majority since there have been 50 states, despite the help their numbers have had from the extreme gerrymandering in states like North Carolina.

More Americans voted for someone other than Trump than voted for him.

Although Trump ran on lowering the cost of consumer goods, Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk, along with pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, have vowed to slash the U.S. government, apparently taking their cue from Argentina’s self-described anarcho-capitalist president Javier Milei, who was the first foreign leader to visit Trump after the election. Milei’s “shock therapy” to his country threw the nation into a deep recession, just as Musk says his plans will create “hardship” for Americans before enabling the country to rebuild with security.

Ramaswamy today posted on social media, “A reasonable formula to fix the U.S. government: Milei-style cuts, on steroids.” He has suggested that cuts are easier than people think. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump noted that on a podcast in September, Ramaswamy said as an example: “If your Social Security number ends in an odd number, you’re out. If it ends in an even number, you’re in. There’s a 50 percent cut right there. Of those who remain, if your Social Security number starts in an even number, you’re in, and if it starts with an odd number, you’re out. Boom. That’s a 75 percent reduction done.”

But, as Bump notes, this reveals Ramaswamy’s lack of understanding of how the government actually works. Social Security numbers aren’t random; the first digit refers to where the number was obtained. So this seemingly random system would target certain areas of the country.

Today, both Jacob Bogage, Jeff Stein, and Dan Diamond of the Washington Post and Robert Tait of The Guardian reported that Trump’s economic advisors are talking with Republicans in Congress about cuts to Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) formerly known as food stamps, and other welfare programs, in order to cover the enormous costs of extending tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Medicaid is the nation’s health insurance for low-income Americans and long-term care. It covers more than 90 million Americans, one in five of us. Rural populations, which tend to vote Republican, use supplemental nutrition programs more than urban dwellers do.

The Washington Post reporters note that Republicans deny that they are trying to reduce benefits for the poor. They are, they say, trying to reduce wasteful and unnecessary spending. “We know there’s tremendous waste,” said House Budget Committee chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX). “What we don’t seem to have in the hour of action, like when we have the trifecta and unified Republican leadership, is the political courage to do it for the love of country. [Trump] does.”

Those cuts will likely not sit well with the Republicans whose constituents think Trump promised there would be no cuts to the programs on which they depend.

Trump’s planned nominations of unqualified extremists have also run into trouble. Senate Republicans are so far refusing to abandon their constitutional powers in order to act as a rubber stamp to enable Trump’s worst instincts. Former representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a Trump bomb thrower, was unqualified to be the nation's attorney general in any case, but as more information comes out about his alleged participation in drug fueled orgies, including the news that a woman allegedly told the House Ethics Committee that she saw him engage in sex with a minor, those problems have gotten worse.

Legal analyst Marcy Wheeler notes that the lawyers representing the witnesses for the committee are pushing for the release of the ethics committee’s report at least in part out of concern that if he becomes attorney general, Gaetz will retaliate against them.

According to Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman, fear of the MAGA Republican colleagues who are already trying to bully them into becoming Trump loyalists is infecting congress members, too. When asked if Gaetz was qualified for the attorney general post, Representative Mike Simpson (R-ID) answered: “Are you sh*tting me, that you just asked that question? No. But hell, you’ll print that and now I’m going to be investigated.”

The many fringe medical ideas of Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., earned him the right-wing New York Post editorial board’s denigration as “nuts on a lot of fronts.” The board called his views “a head-scratching spaghetti of what we can only call warped conspiracy theories, and not just on vaccines.” Kennedy is a well-known opponent of vaccines—he called Covid-19 vaccines a “crime against humanity”—and has called for the National Institutes of Health to “take a break” of about eight years from studying infectious diseases, insisting that they should focus on chronic diseases instead.

Writing in the New York Times yesterday, Peter Baker noted that Trump “has rolled a giant grenade into the middle of the nation’s capital and watched with mischievous glee to see who runs away and who throws themselves on it.” Mischievous glee is one way to put it; another is that he is trying to destroy the foundations of the American government.

Baker notes that none of Trump’s selections would have been anything but laughable in the pre-Trump era when, for example, Democratic cabinet nominations were sunk for a failure to pay employment taxes for a nanny, or for a donor-provided car. Nor would a president-elect in the past have presumed to tap three of his own defense lawyers for top positions in the Department of Justice, effectively guaranteeing that he will be protected from scrutiny.

A former deputy White House press secretary during Trump’s first term, Sarah Matthews, said Trump is “drunk on power right now because he feels like he was given a mandate by winning the popular vote.”

Today Trump confirmed that he intends to bypass normal legal constraints on his actions by declaring a national emergency on his first day in office in order to launch his mass deportation of undocumented migrants. While the Congressional Budget Office estimates this mass deportation will cost at least $88 billion a year, another cost that is rarely mentioned is that according to Bloomberg, undocumented immigrants currently pay about $100 billion a year in taxes. Losing that income, too, will likely have to be made up with cuts from elsewhere.

Finally, today, CNBC’s economic analyst Carl Quintanilla noted today that average gasoline prices are expected to fall below $3.00 a gallon before the Thanksgiving holiday.

hcr
0 Replies
 
Lash
 
  -2  
Reply Tue 19 Nov, 2024 04:05 am
@Walter Hinteler,
Nobody’s interested in the Nordic countries except those who are hellbent in scaring them into compliance with supporting their bid for world domination.
Lash
 
  -2  
Reply Tue 19 Nov, 2024 04:11 am
Putin responds to idiots who are worried about WWIII after they did everything possible to start it:

https://x.com/boweschay/status/1858656498391400518?s=46
0 Replies
 
Lash
 
  -2  
Reply Tue 19 Nov, 2024 04:47 am
@Lash,
I hope Germany heeds the warning. There’s no need to offer yourselves up like Ukrainians while America safely watches what befalls you from across the world.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  3  
Reply Tue 19 Nov, 2024 05:33 am
@Lash,
Lash wrote:
Nobody’s interested in the Nordic countries except those who are hellbent in scaring them into compliance with supporting their bid for world domination.
Two cables in the Baltic – one between Finland and Germany, the other between Sweden and Lithuania – were severed on Sunday and Monday,
Might well be that they were cut pure accidentally - the earth is flat, isn't it?
Lash
 
  -3  
Reply Tue 19 Nov, 2024 06:12 am
@Walter Hinteler,
They were cut by the CIA, Mr FlatEarther. Try to comprehend the world you’re living in. You have much bigger problems than cut cables this morning.
Walter Hinteler
 
  4  
Reply Tue 19 Nov, 2024 06:38 am
@Lash,
Lash wrote:
They were cut by the CIA,
Thank you.
glitterbag
 
  4  
Reply Tue 19 Nov, 2024 08:36 am
@Walter Hinteler,
Well, there you go. Lash retired from the CIA in the 1980's, that's how she knows all of this stuff. Oh wait, that's wrong, she's a retired history teacher. Both thoughts are scary.
Walter Hinteler
 
  4  
Reply Tue 19 Nov, 2024 09:13 am
@glitterbag,
https://i.imgur.com/0KSspEll.png
Well, there's still a lot of work to be done for the CIA.


Lash is certainly better versed in history, but I can contribute at least one anecdote from the past
During my military service, we picked up a (suspected) CIA agent from the Baltic Sea in our ship (I made a navigational error, as it later turned out that we were just inside the three-mile zone on GDR territory).

0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  4  
Reply Wed 20 Nov, 2024 08:30 am
How Kennedy Could Make It Harder for You and Your Family to Get Vaccinated

Michael T. Osterholm and Ezekiel J. Emanuel wrote:
Vaccines save lives and reduce health care costs. Those are facts. They have been critical public health tools for more than 200 years. Their hallmark achievement was against smallpox, a frequently disfiguring and often fatal disease that killed over 300 million people in the 20th century before a worldwide vaccination campaign eradicated it in 1980.

Thanks to a vaccine, smallpox virus no longer exists outside the confines of a few secure laboratories. And there are many more success stories: polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, diphtheria, yellow fever. Outbreaks of all of these diseases have been sharply reduced by vaccines.

Which is why it is both head-scratching and outrageous that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a political figure with no medical or public health training, who has been accused of being an anti-vaxxer, or, more charitably, a vaccine skeptic, is Donald Trump’s choice to take the nation’s most powerful and important public health job.

Mr. Kennedy said the day after the election that “I’m not going to take away anybody’s vaccines.” But the potential to use the bully pulpit as secretary of health and human services to cast doubt on the efficacy of vaccines could mean that many people will skip their vaccinations, become sick from diseases we can prevent and die for no reason.

As The Times noted last year in an examination of “five noteworthy falsehoods” furthered by Mr. Kennedy, he “has promoted many false, specious or unproven claims that center on public health and the pharmaceutical industry — most notably, the scientifically discredited belief that childhood vaccines cause autism.”

Before vaccinations were available, parents worried constantly about their children contracting dangerous viruses. As recently as the 1950s, parents feared every summer, when polio epidemics were most common, that their children might contract the disease and become paralyzed. Today, vaccines are close to eliminating polio from the planet.

The story is similar for other diseases before vaccines became available. Measles killed an average of 440 people a year from 1953 to 1962, with a high of 552 deaths in 1958. By 2004, there were no deaths. Diphtheria claimed an average of 1,822 lives a year from 1936 to 1945. In 2004, there were no deaths, either. Invasive Haemophilus influenzae Type B killed an average of 1,000 a year in the 1980s. In 2005, there were fewer than five deaths.

Looking at vaccine accomplishments more broadly, a 2024 study showed that among children born from 1994 to 2023 in the United States, nine vaccines prevented an estimated 1.1 million deaths, 32 million hospitalizations and 508 million lifetime cases of illness. They also saved $540 billion in direct medical costs and $2.7 trillion in indirect costs over the same period.

Mr. Trump has promised to allow Mr. Kennedy to “go wild on health.” Mr. Kennedy has recently softened his position on vaccines, at least publicly, claiming he just wants Americans to have information on the safety of vaccines so they can make informed choices. “I’m going to make sure scientific safety studies and efficacy are out there, and people can make individual assessments,” he said.

Howard Lutnick, a chair of Mr. Trump’s transition team and his choice for commerce secretary, came away with a different impression after a conversation with Mr. Kennedy before the election. “He wants the data so he can say these things are unsafe,” Mr. Lutnick said. “He says if you give me the data, all I want is the data, and I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe.”

Our question is, what data is Mr. Kennedy talking about? Comprehensive national vaccine safety data are readily available to anyone. This includes the safety data used to license vaccines and data gathered after they have gone into use.

Every state requires students to have certain vaccines to attend school, for the most part based on recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Most states allow exemptions for religious or personal reasons. Vaccinations among children in kindergarten have remained below the federal target rate of 95 percent for four consecutive years. It was below 93 percent during the past school year.

Besides occupying a platform for public persuasion, Mr. Kennedy and the White House will have other levers at their disposal to reduce vaccine production and use. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices develops guidelines on vaccine use. Its recommendations have to be approved by the C.D.C. director to become policy. These recommendations help determine whether vaccines are covered at no cost for children and others. What’s worrisome is that Mr. Trump would nominate the next C.D.C. director, a decision Mr. Kennedy no doubt would have influence over. He would also select members of the immunizations committee.

It would be easy for Mr. Kennedy and his allies in the administration to discourage pharmaceutical companies from pursuing vaccine research and development. The Food and Drug Administration, which would be in Mr. Kennedy’s purview, can shape the types of clinical trials required to test a vaccine, slow the review of the results and determine who would be eligible to receive the vaccine. These costly roadblocks would discourage companies from continuing to research, develop and manufacture vaccines.

Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the Trump administration to revamp the government, assembled by the Heritage Foundation with assistance from Trump allies (and from which Mr. Trump has distanced himself), has also offered advice in the wake of the Covid pandemic: “Never again,” said the report, “should C.D.C. officials be allowed to say in their official capacity that school children ‘should be’ masked or vaccinated (through a schedule or otherwise) or prohibited from learning in a school building.”

The United States could reverse decades of health gains if Mr. Kennedy is given the ability to shape health policy and perhaps muzzle the C.D.C. on children’s vaccinations. Any actions that reduce the trust in and access to vaccines will result in an increase in serious illnesses, hospitalization and deaths not just in the United States but around the world.

nyt
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  2  
Reply Wed 20 Nov, 2024 02:34 pm
Quote:
Trump’s New Oligarchy Is About to Unleash Unimaginable Corruption

The elevation of Elon Musk to a key role suggests that right-wing elites are set to embark on a spree of sordid self-dealing.

Last spring, Donald Trump presided over a meeting with the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago resort. According to The Washington Post, Trump promised to fulfill a wish list of policies sought by their industry—while explicitly soliciting $1 billion in campaign contributions from them. Trump made similar promises to other ultrawealthy donors, vowing to keep their taxes low while urging them to cut large campaign checks.

Now that Trump has won the presidency again, it’s worth revisiting these episodes as a guide to what might be coming. It’s often said that Trump campaigned expressly on a platform of authoritarian rule, but this also applies to corruption: He didn’t disguise his promises to govern in the direct interests of some of the wealthiest executives and investors in the country—and he won anyway. Trump and his allies will likely interpret this as a green light to engage in an extraordinary spree of unrestrained malfeasance.

There are several reasons to fear this could amount to a level of oligarchic corruption that outdoes anything Trump did in his first term. In short, conditions are ripe for right-wing elites to try to loot the place from top to bottom.

First, Senate Democrats, who just lost majority control, are now bracing to hit a wall in their inquiries into Trump’s apparent quid pro quo dealings. The Senate Budget Committee has been investigating the aforementioned $1 billion solicitation from Big Oil executives, aiming to establish precisely what Trump promised them—he reportedly offered to systematically roll back President Biden’s green energy policies and other regulations—seemingly in direct exchange for campaign money.

With little fanfare, this investigation has been making progress: At least one major energy company confirmed that the gathering happened, and most of the other companies haven’t refuted the central allegation, according to a committee aide. Democrats have followed up with demands for company documents that might illuminate exactly what took place.

But there is zero chance the incoming GOP majority will continue down this road, which means it will be much harder for Democrats to compel these companies to illuminate the true nature of their transaction with Trump.

“Republican control of the Senate will unfortunately undermine congressional efforts to hold Trump and executives accountable for wreaking havoc on our planet and selling out American families and U.S. energy policy to the highest bidder,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, chair of the Budget Committee, told me in a statement. He added that this will hamper getting to the bottom of this “apparent quid pro quo.” Once these policy changes start in earnest, we’ll have no way to trace them back to it, let alone to shed congressional light on influence peddling in real time.

Or take the ongoing Senate Finance Committee investigation into Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s international business dealings. That probe has established that Kusher took in over $100 million from Saudi and other foreign investors without returning any profits on those investments.

This is raising questions for Democrats about whether the arrangement was a means for foreign entities to channel money to the family of the potential next president, raising obvious conflict of interest issues. (Kushner has provided an alternate explanation: that his firm moved slowly to invest the money he’d collected.)

GOP control of the Senate could make it significantly harder to get to the bottom of these arrangements, a Democratic aide tells me, even as Trump takes control over the nation’s foreign policies, inviting still more influence seeking.

“The next four years are going to be a smash and grab under Trump,” Senator Ron Wyden, chair of the Finance Committee, told me in a statement. Wyden added that the “special interests who put Trump back in office expect a return on their investment,” which is “all the more reason not to let up on oversight.” But Republicans will now make this oversight a lot harder.

Then there’s Trump’s decision to tap billionaire Elon Musk to head the grandiosely and misleadingly titled Department of Government Efficiency, a nongovernmental body that will push substantial cuts in regulations, spending, and personnel. As The New York Times reports, Musk has grown infuriated with oversight on his SpaceX company, yet he will now be in a position to get Trump to consider regulatory rollbacks that benefit him, even as he enjoys lucrative federal contracts. That, plus government oversight on his other companies, creates the potential for serious conflicts of interest.

Trump has suggested Musk’s role will only be advisory. But even if that proves true, it’s ominous that Trump would so conspicuously hand Musk so much public influence over decisions that could heavily impact Musk’s own bottom line, especially with Trump so heavily indebted to Musk for transforming Twitter into a pro-Trump propaganda and MAGA disinformation machine. At minimum, Trump is basically declaring that his administration will be open for business to those who boost and assist him politically.

“Trump is showing that he will reward people who help him by giving them tremendous influence over his administration,” Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told me. “This will encourage more people to direct their largesse Trump’s way. We expect government to look out for the public interest. Trump is open about the fact that government is meant to serve his supporters, business partners, and friends.”

Other new openings for influence peddling will beckon. Bookbinder notes that during Trump’s first term, his publicly traded Truth Social platform did not exist. Now, Bookbinder points out, it provides an easy channel for wealthy people to curry favor with Trump by buying stock in it—even simpler than booking rooms at his hotels, which reaped millions for Trump’s businesses during his first term.

“A publicly traded stock in a large company provides an easy way to drop a lot of money and quickly affect Trump’s net worth,” Bookbinder said. “Every president before him has divested financial interests so there wasn’t a clear way to influence them. Truth Social stock makes that even easier.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s plan to purge the government of career civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists will create new avenues for sordid inside dealing. For instance, Biden initiatives like new federal protections for millions of workers from excessive heat—which are opposed by some business interests—are now in the rulemaking process and will be in the hands of the new administration. It’s easy to see MAGA appointees letting bogus information peddled by special interests undermine that regulation’s future. Career officials who remain—but whose protections against termination will be weaker under Trump—will be less likely to object when Trumpist appointees corrupt the rulemaking process more broadly.

It is of course possible that Trump’s administration will display no trace of such seamy schemes. But that’s unlikely. When Trump first ran in 2016, he similarly celebrated his own corruption—declaring that not paying taxes “makes me smart”—but positioned himself as a traitor-to-his-class figure who would employ his personal familiarity with insider corruption to benefit ordinary Americans. Now he is openly promising to directly reward his elite allies with governing spoils, and not bothering to make a serious case that this will benefit the public.

It is sometimes argued that Trump’s reelection was driven by revulsion at “elites.” However true that is, it’s not hard to see what’s coming next. If and when Trump’s initiatives—from canceling prosecutions of himself to unleashing hell on immigrants—spur widespread criticism, certain pundits will intone that the criticism merely reflects his success in “taking on the elite class.” Meanwhile, Trump will be selling the government off for parts to his oligarchic right-wing elite cronies, and the jarring incongruity of it all won’t disturb these pundits in the slightest. After winning the presidency again despite making these corrupt deals right out in the open, why would Trump feel remotely constrained?
[url=It is of course possible that Trump’s administration will display no trace of such seamy schemes. But that’s unlikely. When Trump first ran in 2016, he similarly celebrated his own corruption—declaring that not paying taxes “makes me smart”—but positioned himself as a traitor-to-his-class figure who would employ his personal familiarity with insider corruption to benefit ordinary Americans. Now he is openly promising to directly reward his elite allies with governing spoils, and not bothering to make a serious case that this will benefit the public.

It is sometimes argued that Trump’s reelection was driven by revulsion at “elites.” However true that is, it’s not hard to see what’s coming next. If and when Trump’s initiatives—from canceling prosecutions of himself to unleashing hell on immigrants—spur widespread criticism, certain pundits will intone that the criticism merely reflects his success in “taking on the elite class.” Meanwhile, Trump will be selling the government off for parts to his oligarchic right-wing elite cronies, and the jarring incongruity of it all won’t disturb these pundits in the slightest. After winning the presidency again despite making these corrupt deals right out in the open, why would Trump feel remotely constrained?[/quote] Greg Sargent
0 Replies
 
Lash
 
  -3  
Reply Wed 20 Nov, 2024 02:34 pm
@Lash,
We are here after years of me telling you we were headed this way.
Hightor’s dishonest comments are ridiculous. They condemn him.
Lash wrote:

I wonder if the power behind Biden/US is ready to grab all the oil in the Middle East.

This seems like an End Game scenario.

Israel/US is goading the ME countries to attack them—thereby having their flimsy casus belli to destroy and occupy.

The Wolfowitz Doctrine states the US will retain control or hegemony over the global community.

We’ve only recently been losing that grip.

The Rand Corp wrote the plan for ‘extending Russia’ which I shared here long ago. That plan backfired; it extended the US instead and killed alot of Ukrainians, while intentionally making life in Europe more difficult than it had to be. US’ shabbily orchestrated management of Ukraine to damage Russia also bolstered BRICS membership, a major thorn in the US backside, and now fissures show weakened US alliances.

So next up, genocide in Palestine. I don’t know what the underlying goal was, but countries are stepping up to openly denounce the US—Israel has lost soooo much good will. Israel is becoming a pariah in the eyes of the people of this world. The formerly agreeable African states are taking Israel to the ICC. Small poor countries like Yemen are forcing Goliath to spend 2 million a shot to deflect their $2000. missiles.

80% Democrats
70% Republicans
74% Independents
want this stopped immediately AND ALSO want justice for Palestinians—involving prosecution of Biden and his crew for war crimes.

So, they win—and the world as we know it is over.
I’m sure you won’t like this world.

Or the people win—and the world as we know it is over.
This could be much better.

The vast difference in the will of the people and the behavior / rhetoric of their masters is bringing this situation to a historic flashpoint.

Some kind of big change is coming.
I’m hoping for the best.

Don’t be still dickering around, campaigning for the dirtiest SOB in American history who brought down the US.




0 Replies
 
 

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