US Politics: What Price Loyalty?

[Fragile Bird]

The answers of Pompeo are revealing and horrifying.

Asked if he would resign if he were asked to do something against the rule of law, he said he hadn't given it much thought, and you know, the answer is no, because from his study of past Secretaries of State, nobody resigns, it would be even more important for him to continue to serve.

He hasn't given it much thought.

Eta: Note, this is your CIA director. He hasn't given the idea much thought..

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Another hush money story broke, and now we’re in love child territory:

Quote

The New Yorker and the Associated Press published stories saying that National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc., paid $30,000 in late 2015 to Dino Sajudin, a former doorman at a Trump building to prevent him from publicizing a rumor that Donald Trump fathered a child out of wedlock. Sajudin told the tabloid he had heard Trump fathered a child with a Trump employee in the late 1980s, according to the reports.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/12/media/trump-national-enquirer-doorman/index.html

[Maithanet]

One important thing to note about the Cohen raid being done by federal agents outside Mueller's team is that there have been a lot of leaks about the raid, namely that they were interested in taxi medallions, two payouts Cohen made to Trump mistresses, and any communications regarding the Access Hollywood tape.  If this were being done by Mueller's people, we probably wouldn't know any of that. 

[Jace, Extat]

I love that CNN has started getting their commercials in while R's softball Pompeo.

There's something that just feels right about it.

[Fragile Bird]

21 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Another hush money story broke, and now we’re in love child territory:

http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/12/media/trump-national-enquirer-doorman/index.html

Damn, you beat me to it! more from The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/12/national-enquirer-tabloid-trump-doorman-affair-rumor

Quote

The Associated Press confirmed the details of the Enquirer’s payment through a review of a confidential contract and interviews with dozens of current and former employees of the Enquirer and its parent company, American Media Inc (AMI). Sajudin got $30,000 in exchange for signing over the rights, “in perpetuity,” to a rumor he’d heard about Trump’s sex life – that the president had fathered a child with an employee at Trump World Tower, a skyscraper he owns near the UN. The contract subjected Sajudin to a $1m penalty if he disclosed either the rumor or the terms of the deal to anyone.

I guess The Enquirer and AMI better review their NDA with employees, right?

[Jace, Extat]

25 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Another hush money story broke, and now we’re in love child territory:

http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/12/media/trump-national-enquirer-doorman/index.html

The weird thing about this is that the reporters who broke this said they found the rumors of the lovechild to be unfounded, but the payout is real.

That was this morning though.

[Maithanet]

4 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

The weird thing about this is that the reporters who broke this said they found the rumors of the lovechild to be unfounded, but the payout is real.

That was this morning though.

I heard it as: they hadn't found anything to confirm the story, and they were still looking into it when the story got killed.  Now, that doesn't mean it's true, but it doesn't mean it's not either. 

Paying 30k for someone NOT to repeat a false rumor is very strange.  I mean, if the girl comes forward and says DT isn't her father, and is willing to submit to a DNA test, you can prove this quite definitively.  Why then go to the trouble of the payout?  Is it just that paying 30k is peanuts to these people, and it isn't worth the headache of a Trump parentage story (even a false one?)  That seems hard to believe.  If you're willing to pay 30k to keep someone silent about a false story, you run the risk of a bunch of people showing up with their hand out talking about false stories of children Trump fathered all over the country. 

[Fragile Bird]

The title to this thread has proved it's worth and veracity!

Some Republican from Georgia named Isakson just thoroughly threw the former SoS under the bus, ran over him and then backed up over the body again. Without ever mentioning Tillerson by name.

Pompeo's going to go there and turn around the State Department. Would Pompeo pledge to do the same great job at State that he did at the CIA? And help the sad and depressed employees at the State Department?

Oh, said Pompeo, it was all possible because of the great and wonderful employees at the CIA! Does Pompeo know about the purge that went on at State? Did he somehow find all the loyal Republicans at the CIA who helped him get rid of the evil Obama swamp things? Will he find similar people who will root out the swamp at State?  Stay tuned! Buy popcorn!

[IheartIheartTesla]

None of this will matter to Trump's supporters (I swear, his approval numbers defy gravity). Rationalization: at least he didnt ask the mother of his love child to have an abortion.

In fact, that is the only thing I can think of that would lower his numbers. Like that extreme pro-life candidate in Iowa or PA that pressured his mistress to have one.

[Paladin of Ice]

"We're back": Hawkish Neo-Cons see Pompeo and Bolton as a chance to get back into government work, direct the country again, and get a new generation of similar thinkers onto Washington's inside track.Some are unwilling to work for Trump, however, and many more are on a blacklist due to sign on with Never Trump movements or writing anti-Trump op-eds and such during the 2016 campaign.

Quote

But the arrival of John Bolton to the National Security Council, and Mike Pompeo to the State Department, could spell a fresh start for Washington’s Republican foreign-policy establishment, the kind of people who would have been automatic hires in a Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio administration. Many of them have been sitting on Capitol Hill or at think tanks, after also missing out on the action during the Obama administration. The tumultuous and bizarre Michael Flynn era, the messy, infighting fueled Flynn-to-Mc Master transition at the National Security Council, and the head-scratching austerity reign of Rex Tillerson at the State Department? These, some in foreign-policy circles felt, were better avoided. Bolton and Pompeo, though, seem like a return to something more familiar to those whose worldview and experience were shaped by the Bush administration, or even earlier Republican administrations.

But despite who serves under him, Trump is still the president. And statements made in the heat of the campaign—op-eds, public commentary, and especially signatures on anti-Trump letters—have had a lasting impact for some in the Republican foreign-policy sphere. The effective “blacklist” against Never Trumpers, who formed the core of the group that would be the likeliest pool of foreign-policy-related political appointees in a Republican administration, has still discouraged some who opposed Trump from even putting their names up for consideration.

At the same time, the new regime could lead to opportunities for a younger set, as older Bush Administration alumni start to age out of contention for the big jobs.

“With Tillerson and Mc Master there were basically no normal conservative right-wing kids getting national-security jobs. Anybody who wrote an anti-Trump letter was iced out,” the Bolton ally said. “Now with Pompeo and Bolton, if it can last long enough, there’s a chance to mold another generation of conservative foreign-policy types with real experience, a real network, and what does that meant for the next Republican administration? The people who work for Pompeo and Bolton could be the core of the movement for a long time to come.”

Bolton and Pompeo don’t exactly have a surplus of people to hire. Many Republicans in Washington have so far declined to work for Trump, wary of the administration’s unceasing internal chaos and mistrustful of the president and those surrounding him in the White House.

Or, they’ve been essentially disqualified due to past criticism of Trump. Both Bolton and Pompeo have been soliciting names. The atmosphere resembles the transition, with resumes flying around town from Hill types and think tankers. At the NSC, a list was drawn up for Bolton by outgoing National-Security Adviser H.R. Mc Master’s team, according to a source familiar with the list. Other sets of names are circulating unofficially. Already, changes are being made: NSC spokesman Michael Anton and Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert both resigned over the past few days just before Bolton could fire them, and replace them with his own people. Anton was briefly considered but not chosen for the vacant White House communications-director job, according to a former White House official. On Wednesday, CNN reported that deputy national-security adviser for strategy Nadia Schadlow had also resigned.

The departures of Anton, Bossert, and Schadlow show that Bolton is serious about installing his own people, but the reshuffling is taking place during a major crisis—right now, the likely U.S. military intervention against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.

“The biggest challenge both Bolton and Pompeo face are staffing challenges,” Edelman, who signed both letters during the campaign, said. “When it comes to political appointees, Bolton and Pompeo are going to be fighting over the same limited talent pool.” He pointed out that many of those in the 55 to 65 age bracket whom Pompeo could cull for senior positions were either career diplomats who had fled the government under Tillerson, or had signed letters that made them off-limits as political appointees.

Pompeo and Bolton are not, themselves, comforting enough for the most ardent anti-Trump conservatives to feel comfortable going inside. “If you really don’t like Trump you’re not gonna go in because John Bolton’s there now,” one of the Republican foreign-policy sources said.

That goes even for Bolton’s former employees. Some sources suggested to me that Mark Groombridge, who worked for Bolton at the U.S. mission to the UN and at his super PAC, might be someone Bolton is considering hiring. But when I reached out to Groombridge, he was unequivocally a no on the idea, sending a multi-part email listing his complaints with Bolton and, more importantly, with Trump, whom he adamantly opposes and views as a “misogynistic, narcissistic, and frankly asshole [sic].”

“It frankly doesn’t really matter who the national-security adviser is,” Groombridge said. “I don’t know that John has his ear. That’s not a criticism of John, that’s just a function of the president.”

Some Republicans are pushing a Balanced Budget Amendment again. Considering this is coming on the heels of them hobbling government revenue with their tax scam and right after the CBO projected trillion dollar a year plus budget deficits because of said tax legislation, it's a nice reminder that everything Republicans do on fiscal policy is aimed solely at returning us to the glory days before the New Deal, and everything they say otherwise is a bullshit smokescreen to try to cover that.

Quote

Republicans were unfazed by the deficit impact of their $1.5 trillion tax cut when they passed it. Now they are trying to make deficits unconstitutional.

The House is scheduled to vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment Thursday. Though several states require their legislatures to pass a balanced budget every year, the federal government does not have the same requirement. In fact, many economists argue it’s necessary for the federal government to go into debt for the greater good of the economy. Nevertheless, balanced budget amendments are something of a white whale on the right. And many conservatives believe it is the only way to actually enact spending cuts.

There’s no question the United States is in a lot of debt, but Democrats are quick to point out the irony of Republicans pushing a Balanced Budget Amendment now: On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office — the independent official body that measures the impact of legislation — reported that deficit spending will increase by $11.7 trillion over the next 10 years, $1.58 trillion of which is because of the Republican tax cuts and the omnibus spending bill.

For decades, Republicans have campaigned on cutting federal spending and reducing the national debt. And while there’s an ongoing debate among economists over how big an actual threat the deficit is, Republicans, now in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, have done just the opposite.

The bill the House plans to vote on this Thursday would be one of the first steps in amending the US Constitution to bar the government from spending more than it brings in in federal revenue. Changing the Constitution requires approval from two-thirds of the House and Senate and then it must be passed by two-thirds of state legislatures. Republicans currently hold 32 of 50 state legislatures.
This is all very unlikely to happen. But Republicans are pushing it anyway. It reveals a deeply unpopular partisan agenda to make deep cuts to everything from food stamps to health care.

...

Now, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) gets a vote on a version of this amendment. The amendment would ban deficit spending, require that spending not exceed 20 percent of gross domestic product, and require a majority to increase taxes and three-fifths majorities to raise the debt limit.

While fighting to pass tax cuts, Republicans steered clear of talking about the deficit. Many rejected reports from the CBO and offered rosy economic growth projections instead. They even passed a waiver to ensure the tax bill wouldn’t automatically trigger a sequestration across some major mandatory spending programs, like Medicare, federal student loans, and agriculture subsidies under the 2010 deficit management pay-as-you-go law.

But almost immediately after the tax bill passed and the sequester was averted, House Republicans’ seemed to remember their longstanding concerns about the national debt and began eying ways to trim government spending, targeting everything from food stamps and Medicaid to Social Security and Medicare.

The CBO says the national debt will likely be equal to the size of the Gross Domestic Product in 10 years, and if Congress chooses to extend Republican tax policies, those deficits will only grow larger. So far, under a Republican-led Congress, the deficit is expected to grow to $804 billion this fiscal year, which ends on September 30 — about $665 billion more than in 2017.

And so Republicans who supported the tax cuts and many who supported the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that will keep the government open through September 30 and fund the military at historic levels, are now behind an initiative to make deficits illegal.

...

There’s no question that the Balanced Budget Amendment is a messaging bill, giving Republicans the chance to go home to their constituents and say that they voted in favor fiscal responsibility.

But as such, it highlights the part of the Republican agenda that’s unpopular. To balance a budget, you can do one of two things: raise taxes or cut spending. Republicans cut taxes last year, and their ideas to cut spending (reforming entitlement programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security) are deeply unpopular.

Medicare and Social Security continue to stand along Medicaid as some of the most popular federal spending programs. Earlier this year, only 12 percent of Americans said they wanted Congress to decrease Medicaid spending, according to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. A Pew study found only 10 percent of Republican-leaning Americans wanted to reduce funding for Social Security, and 15 percent wanted to decrease spending on Medicare.

Yesterday there was a Senate hearing for Judicial Nominee Wendy Vitter. Vitter is a anti-abortion activist who pushed lies including that getting an abortion makes a woman more likely to get cancer or die a violent death. She also wanted to put brochures saying this (which she called facts at the time) in doctors offices. Oh, and she refuses to say if she thinks school desegregation is a good thing.

But she's the wife of a former Senator, she was greeted warmly by the Republicans at her hearing, and non of them have indicated they would vote against her. In fact, only 1 Republican has voted against any Trump judicial nominee thus far. So, say hi to your newest Federal Judge, and good luck trying to get her or any Trump nominee not to strike down progressive laws and causes for the next 20 years after Trump is gone. This country fucked itself so hard in 2016, and will be feeling it for so long afterwards.

[Jace, Extat]

6 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I heard it as: they hadn't found anything to confirm the story, and they were still looking into it when the story got killed.  Now, that doesn't mean it's true, but it doesn't mean it's not either. 

Paying 30k for someone NOT to repeat a false rumor is very strange.  I mean, if the girl comes forward and says DT isn't her father, and is willing to submit to a DNA test, you can prove this quite definitively.  Why then go to the trouble of the payout?  Is it just that paying 30k is peanuts to these people, and it isn't worth the headache of a Trump parentage story (even a false one?)  That seems hard to believe.  If you're willing to pay 30k to keep someone silent about a false story, you run the risk of a bunch of people showing up with their hand out talking about false stories of children Trump fathered all over the country. 

This is a weird one. I

3 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

None of this will matter to Trump's supporters (I swear, his approval numbers defy gravity). Rationalization: at least he didnt ask the mother of his love child to have an abortion.

In fact, that is the only thing I can think of that would lower his numbers. Like that extreme pro-life candidate in Iowa or PA that pressured his mistress to have one.

I think it's more likely he would lose the Rand Paul vote for giving money to someone who hadn't 'earned' it.

[TheKitttenGuard]

Quote

President Trump has instructed top administration officials to explore re-entering the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact he pulled the U.S. out of last year.

Speaking after a trade meeting with Trump, Republican senators said the president told National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to look into re-joining the negotiations.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/382867-trump-orders-officials-to-look-into-re-entering-tpp-trade-pact

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

30 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Damn, you beat me to it! more from The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/12/national-enquirer-tabloid-trump-doorman-affair-rumor

I guess The Enquirer and AMI better review their NDA with employees, right?

 That Pokémon hunting got you 'd! 

[Fragile Bird]

I watched Wendy Vitter being questioned at her hearing. She was asked at least three times if the Brown v Board of Education was a decision she agreed was correctly decided. She refused to answer, saying she would not comment on whether or not a decision was correctly decided by the SCOTUS, that the decision was a precedent she would follow.

Cuz SCOTUS decisions are never overturned, right?

How can you not say a desegregation case from 1954 was correct in 2018? Holy shit! This is not someone who should sit on a federal court.

Hey, maybe she'll be the next SCOTUS nominee!

[Fragile Bird]

3 minutes ago, TheKitttenGuard said:

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/382867-trump-orders-officials-to-look-into-re-entering-tpp-trade-pact

   

Agree!

Because first you undo everything Obama did, and then you do it better! 

And I guess Trump supporters in 2020 will say, he entered into good free trade agreements, instead of bad free trade agreements!

[Week]

Uhhh...

Someone stole his phone.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

28 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

None of this will matter to Trump's supporters (I swear, his approval numbers defy gravity). Rationalization: at least he didnt ask the mother of his love child to have an abortion.

In fact, that is the only thing I can think of that would lower his numbers. Like that extreme pro-life candidate in Iowa or PA that pressured his mistress to have one.

It would have no long term effect what so ever. All he has to say is that he’s a changed man and asked for God’s forgiveness and he’s in like Flynn baby.  

[Jace, Extat]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It would have no long term effect what so ever. All he has to say is that he’s a changed man and asked for God’s forgiveness and he’s in like Flynn baby.  

There is zero chance he would do that and zero chance his fans (they're not supporters, they're fans) would ask it of him.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

 

 

 

I mean, I kinda agree with Hannity. He is indeed not journalist jackass. He is just an ordinary one.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

   

Agree!

Because first you undo everything Obama did, and then you do it better! 

And I guess Trump supporters in 2020 will say, he entered into good free trade agreements, instead of bad free trade agreements!

OMG! Trump solved the “????????” portion of the underpants gnomes scheme:  

Step One: Undo everything good your predecessor did, then reimplement those programs.

Step Two: ???????? Rely on the abject stupidity of your supporters to believe you actually did something.

Step Three: So! Much!!! Winning!!!!!