“Outgoing GOP Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona will not vote to advance or confirm any judicial nominees until the Senate enacts legislation protecting special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
His announcement casts doubt upon the outcome of several dozen nominations Republicans hope to enact by year’s end.
“I have informed the Majority Leader that I will not vote to advance any of the 21 judicial nominees pending in the Judiciary Committee, or vote to confirm the 32 judges awaiting a confirmation vote on the floor, until S. 2644 is brought to the full Senate for a vote,” Flake said in a Wednesday floor speech, referring to the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act.
Though the Senate Republican caucus will grow when the new Congress is seated in January, for the moment they retain a tenuous 51-49 majority. With Flake’s announcement, the defection of one more Republican would defeat a nominee’s confirmation bid, provided all Democrats vote together.”
The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess. They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want. They are a disgrace to our Nation and don’t…
“Filmmaker Ami Horowitz: The Caravan is ‘Highly Organized,’ ‘Paid for by a Number of Organizations’
“Approximately 90 to 95% of the migrants are male.””
“Filmmaker Ami Horowitz traveled to Mexico and mingled inside the caravan headed to America. He revealed his findings to Tucker Carlson (emphasis mine):
“What we do know is this thing cost millions and millions of dollars. The mainstream media, and there are so many layers [of] onions to peel back, it’s hard to know where to begin. One of the lies the fake news if you will, media is trying to propagate is the fact that all this weird organic thing and all the water and the food and medicine, all dropped from … manna from heaven. It’s bologna. It’s all highly organized. It’s paid for by a number of organizations, we don’t know exactly where the money is coming from.”
“The Daily Wire provided a transcript (emphasis mine):
“The caravan is a giant group of people that emanated, for the most part, in Honduras and are heading up to the U.S.,” Horowitz explains. “A lot has been said about this caravan, so I decided to go down, check it out for myself, and figure out what is the reality versus the fiction.”
Horowitz took his crew down to the base camp for the caravan in the southern state of Oaxaca, which he describes as “an area of Mexico which is riddled with narco-crime and cursed with extreme poverty.”
“Despite the framing of the caravan as being full of women and children, the reality on the ground is quite different. Approximately 90 to 95% of the migrants are male,” notes Horowitz, over footage of rows and rows of men.
“The major narrative being pushed by the press is that the migrants are leaving Honduras because they are escaping extreme violence and that their lives are under constant threat, setting up the strategy that they will be able to enter the U.S. by asking for asylum,” “he says. “So I started by asking them a simple question: Why are you coming to America?”
Horowitz asked numerous of the people this question. It seems like the majority of them have chosen America to find jobs, not to escape the violence in Honduras.
One male migrant told Horowitz “there are no jobs” in Honduras. Another said the people “are looking for a better life, because we don’t have jobs.”
One young male stated he wants to finish school in America.
The left has described the caravan as organic and spontaneous, but Horowitz thinks the exact opposite has happened (emphasis mine):
“There’s a massive logistical effort underway, akin to moving an army,” he explains, over footage of all of the manpower and resources required to keep the caravan operational. “And it’s clearly costing someone millions of dollars for transportation, food, water, medicine and services that are being provided for members of the caravan.”
“It’s a supply chain that’s being delivered by an army of trucks, which are all necessary to keep this enormous group moving forward,” he continues over video of trucks filled with supplies and transport vehicles crammed with migrant men.”
—————–
“DOJ Rules Matthew Whitaker Can Serve as Attorney General
“Mr. Whitaker’s designation is no more constitutionally problematic than countless similar presidential orders dating back over 200 years.”
“The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel reached its decision from “provisions of the Vacancies Reform Act, which allows for the appointment of a senior staffer who had been in office for at least 90 days.”
A senior official at the DOJ said that “the White House sought legal guidance from Sessions’ own department on available options for replacing the attorney general” before Sessions resigned.
From USA Today:
Although Justice’s own line of succession provides for the deputy attorney general or other confirmed officials to serve as acting attorney general in the event of a vacancy, the Justice opinion argued that the internal provision for succession “does not displace the president’s authority to use the Vacancies Reform Act as an alternative.”
The opinion went on to assert that Whitaker’s designation was in keeping with the Constitution, which requires the president to obtain Senate approval before appointing so-called “principal” officers.
“Although an attorney general is a principal officer requiring Senate confirmation, someone who temporarily performs his duties is not,” the opinion stated. “As all three branches of government have long recognized, the president may designate an acting official to perform the duties of vacant principal office, including a Cabinet office, even when the acting official has not been confirmed by the Senate.””
No. Dear Leader won the wrestling match. If you are going to take 19 minutes to compose a Tweet, you have time to look up how to spell “they”.
….care how many lives the ruin. These are Angry People, including the highly conflicted Bob Mueller, who worked for Obama for 8 years. They won’t even look at all of the bad acts and crimes on the other side. A TOTAL WITCH HUNT LIKE NO OTHER IN AMERICAN HISTORY!
Now let’s get to some badly aged Tweets from Ricky’s favorite creepy porn lawyer…….
🙂
You are right. I should have turned my back on my client. Told her to “shut up” and stay quiet because people like you apparently believe assault victims are to blame. This line of thinking is disgusting and offensive to all survivors. And it makes lawyers not want to help them.
"I have consistently called on white males like me to step, take responsibility, and be a part of stoping the sexism and bigotry that other white males engage in."
At this point, the rest of the world is over the shock of The Cult’s favorite porn actor being elected President. They will spend the next two years laughing at us.
“There is much to disagree with in Donald Trump’s interest in nationalism. In his version of it, nationalism is a fragile egotism applied to the affairs of state. This approach has, like the president himself, created problems out of whole cloth before “solving” them. Regarding trade and defense agreements with our long-standing allies, we seem now always to be in some phase of this cycle.
But it was a little rich to hear French President Emmanuel Macron during the WWI armistice centenary observance on Sunday scold Trump on the evils of nationalism. Before an audience of world leaders gathered in Paris, Macron connected the European nationalisms that presaged the Great War to the nationalist posturing of the American president.
“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,” Macron said. “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying ‘our interests first, who cares about the others,’ we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great, and what is essential: its moral values.” He went on: “I know there are old demons which are coming back to the surface. They are ready to wreak chaos and death.”
If the new demons of chaos and death can be found chanting “USA! USA!” in MAGA caps, it’s striking how little they resemble the American demons of yesterday. In 2003, America’s foreign policy was anything but nationalist. It was, in fact, universalist in its prescription of liberty for all, and European leaders were also pretty worked up about that. Back then, the complaint out of Paris wasn’t that the Americans were abandoning their “moral values.” The problem was that we were championing them.
Our European allies, important as they are, tend to be inconsistent about values and consistent about criticizing America. That’s just the way it is. No matter what Macron says, nationalism is a potent force in daily life across Europe. Its why populist parties are on the rise and why the EU is being challenged from within. A lot of what we call identity politics, Europeans just call identity, and it goes to the core of their self-understanding.
The creation of the European Union itself wasn’t entirely about unity. It was spoken about, in the early going, as a potential challenger to American dominance in all sorts of ways—a kind of super-nationalist project. Of course, none of that came to pass. But the point is, in European idealism, there’s always some space for taking a shot at the U.S.”
“NeverTrump Republicans have been rabidly obsessed since 2015 to prevent Donald Trump’s nomination, election, and having failed, to join the left in nonstop criticism and condemnation of President Trump. They may be succeeding, but to what end? As they look around at the current political landscape, are they truly happy with the direction of the country? Or is that irrelevant, as long as they can strut around on their high horse, feeling smug, telling each other “I told you so”?
The NeverTrump movement began shortly after Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency. So-called “principled Republicans” were incensed that a loud-mouth from Queens, a TV reality star, a host of beauty pageants, someone never before elected to public office, should challenge the Republican establishment orthodoxy.
His tweets and straight talk were unacceptable. Calling out the media and his political opponents ran against the grain of how they thought Republicans should handle themselves in a presidential campaign. Trump did not follow the proper and acceptable savoir faire of John McCain or Mitt Romney, two prominent NeverTrumpers. The fact that both lost their elections to an easily defeatable far-left candidate who damaged the country badly during his eight-year reign of “fundamentally transforming America” seems to be lost on Trump’s GOP critics.
The NeverTrump names are familiar. Aside from the two noted above, there are others, all one-time Republicans, although their conservative beliefs have been tossed out the window over political expediency or ego. George Will, Max Boot, Steve Schmidt, Bret Stephens, Jennifer Rubin, and anyone with the last name of Bush. There are many in Congress too – Paul Ryan, Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, Bob Corker, and others.
Some of them left the party, with great fanfare, securing regular bookings on CNN and MSNBC to trash Trump and his deplorable supporters. They were puzzled why every Republican didn’t leave the party. They hoped for electoral success for the Democrats, the same political party they once criticized. After the midterm elections, they should be ecstatic.”
———————-
“Trump’s signature issues on the campaign trail were immigration and healthcare. He promised to “Build the wall” and “Repeal Obamacare”. Yet he could do neither alone. Both required the assistance of Congress, which was lacking despite these issues being the primary reason Congress was in Republican hands.
Congressional leaders balked at funding a border wall, instead choosing to fund Planned Parenthood. The “skinny repeal” of Obamacare crashed and burned when NeverTrump Senator No-Name figuratively gave President Trump the middle finger, but almost literally gave the Senate vote counter a thumbs down, killing the repeal.
Was Congressional resistance over policy? Perhaps a little was but most was simply a NeverTrump poke in the eye to the president and his agenda. Not only legislatively did NeverTrumpers hurt their party, but also in giving a reason for the Trump base to not turn out as they did in 2016. The Washington Post looked at turnout by party for the past few elections.
In the 2014 midterms, 4 million more Republicans voted than Democrats. In 2018 it was the opposite, as the chart below demonstrates. In addition, in 2018, Democrats turned out 79 percent of their 2016 presidential election voters, compared to only 75 percent for Republicans. Turnout wins elections, but Trump voters may not have turned out to vote for those shouting “NeverTrump!” Despite Trump’s involvement in the midterm campaigns, he wasn’t on the ballot, but members of Congress were.”
I have always believed in the presumption of innocence but I know Michael Avenatti is not a fan of that principle. Out of respect for his preferences, I will therefore assume that he is guilty as hell.
You can’t be a traitor to something to which you never belonged. We were never advocates or supporters of idiocy, con artists, porn actors, obstruction of justice, fights with porn stars and department stores, economic illiteracy, regular illiteracy, or pathological lying. Those were always core elements of The Trump Cult, not conservatism.
“Lame duck Republican Sen. Jeff Flake announced his support for CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta at the end of his speech during the congressional correspondent dinner on Wednesday night.”
““And I’ve enjoyed well almost every minute of it. The work you do here is more important than ever and you do it well. Please keep doing it. And lastly, and most sincerely, go get ‘em Acosta,” he said.”
————————-
So since Flake is OK with “men” who get rough with women like Acosta did to that poor intern, I guess we can put him down as backing Avenatti for president too.
Acosta got “rough” with the intern? The Cult is now more panicky than the Cult Leader. That “allegation” was left out of Trump’s legal response to Acosta because it was false. Cultists must stay current with ever-changing Cult doctrine.
I continue to chuckle at the outrage of Trump using Twitter. Andrew Jackson (our 7th President, for those of you weak on history) was the first to take his thoughts directly to the people by having letters published in the newspaper and was severely criticized for it, especially by the aristocratic elite. There is nothing new under the sun.
I fear for out country. I really do.
I likely won’t be around, because cancer is slow and painful.
But it is fatal.
Just like our political situation.
It didn’t start with Obama, but that’s where it took it’s fatal turn.
There have been hints and threats to our sovereignty throughout history, but It took it’s permanent attachment under FDR.
That’s when the people learned that they can vote themselves benefits from the treasury.
A federal judge ruled Thursday that Florida election officials must give voters until Nov. 17 to correct mismatched signatures on thousands of ballots discarded under the state’s “signature match” law.
Florida is the only state where they have mismatched signatures.
And all of them voted Democrat.
H doubled the national debt WITH NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT
He corrupted the Justice Department beyond repair.
Among other things in foreign policy and social structure.
e.g. Fifteen years ago, no one would have thought of kneeling during the National Anthem.
“Election recounts would be more plausible if Democrats occasionally let the Republican win. But they don’t. Ballots miraculously discovered days and weeks after the election — in the back seat of a car, after helpful “corrections” to the ballots by election supervisors, etc. — invariably result in a surprise win for the Democrat.
Voters are just supposed to accept that, unless Republicans win an election by an insuperable margin, the Democrats will steal it.
And the thieving is cheered on by our media. Whenever President Trump has the effrontery to mention that GOP victories are being stolen by corrupt Democratic officials, the media snippily note that his claim is “UNSUBSTANTIATED.”
Thus, for example, in the first 60 seconds of CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Monday, Burnett said:
— “(The email from Trump headquarters) without providing any evidence … warns that, quote, corrupt Democrats are trying to, quote, steal election victories in Florida. …
— “It’s a baseless claim that President Trump has been pushing for days. …
— “(Gov. Rick) Scott (is) talking about rampant fraud without providing any evidence. …
— “Now, ‘steal an election,’ ‘committing fraud’ are big claims to make without having evidence.”
Hey! I have an idea! Why doesn’t CNN rustle up some reporters to go and investigate the biggest story of the year?
No, the burden is on random Republicans — who have jobs other than “reporting the news” — to produce bulletproof evidence of voter fraud. Otherwise, it’s just a wacky coincidence that these “recounts” always result in mysterious new votes for Democrats.
If a freelance investigative reporter like James O’Keefe actually does produce the evidence that our media are too lazy and biased to get for themselves, they sneer that O’Keefe can’t be trusted. He’s not a real reporter!
What a real reporter does is call up some left-wing outfit, get a quote, and peremptorily announce that there has never been an illegal ballot cast in any election, ever.”
Kneeling during the National Anthem, to me, isn’t really ‘new’ — it harkens back to the 1960s and 1970s when strongly anti-patriotic attitudes were fairly common and were on display not infrequently at public events. I’d argue that the fall from grace we’re seeing nationally now in the U.S. had its start many decades ago, perhaps as soon as WWII ended in victory. Maybe the seeds can be traced even further back in our short history as a nation.
But after the war, the U.S. quickly became very comfortable, materialism was on the rise, possibly peaking in the 1950s; no threat could seriously touch us, or so it seemed (although there were some Cold War scares that seemed to come close; they seemed, though, to unify us rather than to divide us.
There were victories in the Civil Rights movement and in the resilience that gave us a successful space program, all a credit to our willingness as a nation to right social wrongs within and to push into the future to explore new frontiers.
But Vietnam ended essentially in disaster and left us with a crisis of confidence and identity that I don’t think we were ever able to shake.
A unified spirit briefly reappeared in the wake of 9/11 — but it so quickly faded that it seemed later like an illusion. Complaints by some Americans that we brought the attack on ourselves were quickly being voiced in the aftermath. We ‘deserved’ it.
Others among us, who recognize God’s sovereignty in all events that come to pass, considered, too, whether there wasn’t a national chastisement that needed to be weighed.
At any rate, from there it’s all somehow felt like a free fall off a cliff to many of us. We can’t seem to get ‘it’ back, that spirit that made our nation so unique, a beacon of hope in the world. It seems that we no longer understand who or what we are, what the nation set out to represent (or that is viewed now as evil, in fact, from the standpoint of indigenous people groups). Public figures on both sides who dominate our confused and chaotic news-scape are symptoms of what we and our culture have become: angry, haughty, quick to speak and slow to listen, a people without a unified vision, a nation at war within, with seemingly no more common ground. A people shaking their fists at God and one another.
Good comment, DJ.
It’s hard to hold the big picture before our own eyes continually when we live individual small lives. I’m so thankful God doesn’t have that problem.
He is really scared about something. The indictments are generally announced on Fridays. We will see if he knows something we don’t know yet.
Universities will someday study what highly conflicted (and NOT Senate approved) Bob Mueller and his gang of Democrat thugs have done to destroy people. Why is he protecting Crooked Hillary, Comey, McCabe, Lisa Page & her lover, Peter S, and all of his friends on the other side?
My favorite part of the last Tweet is the “(and NOT Senate approved)”. Trump knows no more about our form of government and the Constitution than he knows about economics, monogamy or truthfulness. However, he learned during the Kavanaugh matter that some appointments require Senate confirmation, so he just throws that language out whenever possible, knowing The Cult will say, “Yeah. That’s right! Mueller wasn’t approved by the Senate.”
Such statements by Trump are what make the college degree the dividing line in current American politics.
“A federal court is compelling former secretary of state Hillary Clinton to respond to further questions — under oath — about her notorious emails.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan issued the ruling Wednesday in response to a lawsuit from Judicial Watch, the conservative research and investigative group that has long had its sights on both of the Clintons.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton was jubilant about the decision in a Thursday morning tweet: “Breaking: Court rules late today Hillary Clinton must answer more email questions — including key [questions] about the setting up of her email system.””
Breaking: Court rules late today Hillary Clinton must answer more email questions — including key q's about the setting up of her email system. Court denied our request to unseal vid depositions of Clinton aides. Great work by Michael Bekesha! https://t.co/VBKkm3H8gipic.twitter.com/00k6pRsHNe
Democrat Senator Kamala Harris compares ICE to the KKK and appears to suggest that they are a terrorist group during a Senate hearing to consider the nomination of Ronald Vitello to be the director of ICE.
NPR’s @asmamk reports from Palm Beach County that the supervisor of elections said they did not complete their machine recount on time and resubmitted the preliminary results tabulated on Saturday.
This appears to be extremely troubling evidence of voter fraud, coordinated by Democrats, in order to steal FL elections. This would go beyond mere shadiness/incompetence — official forms were allegedly altered in order to get illegitimate votes counted. Investigate now. https://t.co/tQOi9CGIKz
So much for the national media's favorite talking point that there has been no direct evidence of voter fraud. Illegally altering the form to try to get voters to submit cure affidavits after the election with a plan of convincing a judge to include them is exactly that.
1.The dividing line is rough, not perfect. There are intelligent people without a college degree and ignorant people with a degree.
2. It is a sliding scale. Those with graduate degrees are less likely to be conned by Trump (or other demagogues) than those with only undergraduate degrees. Those without high school diplomas are even more likely to be conned than those who finished high school.
3. As a nation we are either becoming more ignorant or at least more tolerant of gross ignorance. Thirty to forty years ago, no freshman Congressman would have said something as stupid as Trump’s Tweet. If he had started to, a 23 year old aide would have educated him about the Special Counsel statute lest he be seen as a laughingstock.
4. The college degree line applies to whites, not blacks. I have not studied the voting patterns of Asians or Hispanics of different levels of educational attainment enough to comment.
Having said all that, the college degree line is the new dividing line for whites.
There is quite a bit of data here and it goes back to 1994 so trends are visible.
In 1994, people with undergraduate degrees, but without graduate degrees, were the most Republican of the four groups divided by educational attainment. I believe that was also true in the 1980s and for some time prior to Reagan. It is certainly not true today.
Wandering Views 
The Flakey traitor continues to be Democrats best friend. Now wonder boters picked a Dem to replace him. They just went with what they were used to.
All as a vindictive parting shot at Trump. Pathetic little weasel.
https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/14/jeff-flake-robert-mueller/
“Outgoing GOP Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona will not vote to advance or confirm any judicial nominees until the Senate enacts legislation protecting special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
His announcement casts doubt upon the outcome of several dozen nominations Republicans hope to enact by year’s end.
“I have informed the Majority Leader that I will not vote to advance any of the 21 judicial nominees pending in the Judiciary Committee, or vote to confirm the 32 judges awaiting a confirmation vote on the floor, until S. 2644 is brought to the full Senate for a vote,” Flake said in a Wednesday floor speech, referring to the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act.
Though the Senate Republican caucus will grow when the new Congress is seated in January, for the moment they retain a tenuous 51-49 majority. With Flake’s announcement, the defection of one more Republican would defeat a nominee’s confirmation bid, provided all Democrats vote together.”
———————-
And they will, Flake included.
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Here’s the traitor in action, with his best Dem buddy, of course.
——————–
https://twitter.com/AlexisinNH/status/1062810083397115906
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Someone seems a little panicked this morning.
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Now about those people pouring in…..
A caravan of women and children fleeing violence and crime?
No more like a caravan of crime and violence taking their show on the road.
This whole thing has been a well orchestrated scam from the start.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/11/filmmaker-ami-horowitz-the-caravan-is-highly-organized-paid-for-by-a-number-of-organizations/
“Filmmaker Ami Horowitz: The Caravan is ‘Highly Organized,’ ‘Paid for by a Number of Organizations’
“Approximately 90 to 95% of the migrants are male.””
“Filmmaker Ami Horowitz traveled to Mexico and mingled inside the caravan headed to America. He revealed his findings to Tucker Carlson (emphasis mine):
“What we do know is this thing cost millions and millions of dollars. The mainstream media, and there are so many layers [of] onions to peel back, it’s hard to know where to begin. One of the lies the fake news if you will, media is trying to propagate is the fact that all this weird organic thing and all the water and the food and medicine, all dropped from … manna from heaven. It’s bologna. It’s all highly organized. It’s paid for by a number of organizations, we don’t know exactly where the money is coming from.”
“The Daily Wire provided a transcript (emphasis mine):
“The caravan is a giant group of people that emanated, for the most part, in Honduras and are heading up to the U.S.,” Horowitz explains. “A lot has been said about this caravan, so I decided to go down, check it out for myself, and figure out what is the reality versus the fiction.”
Horowitz took his crew down to the base camp for the caravan in the southern state of Oaxaca, which he describes as “an area of Mexico which is riddled with narco-crime and cursed with extreme poverty.”
“Despite the framing of the caravan as being full of women and children, the reality on the ground is quite different. Approximately 90 to 95% of the migrants are male,” notes Horowitz, over footage of rows and rows of men.
“The major narrative being pushed by the press is that the migrants are leaving Honduras because they are escaping extreme violence and that their lives are under constant threat, setting up the strategy that they will be able to enter the U.S. by asking for asylum,” “he says. “So I started by asking them a simple question: Why are you coming to America?”
Horowitz asked numerous of the people this question. It seems like the majority of them have chosen America to find jobs, not to escape the violence in Honduras.
One male migrant told Horowitz “there are no jobs” in Honduras. Another said the people “are looking for a better life, because we don’t have jobs.”
One young male stated he wants to finish school in America.
The left has described the caravan as organic and spontaneous, but Horowitz thinks the exact opposite has happened (emphasis mine):
“There’s a massive logistical effort underway, akin to moving an army,” he explains, over footage of all of the manpower and resources required to keep the caravan operational. “And it’s clearly costing someone millions of dollars for transportation, food, water, medicine and services that are being provided for members of the caravan.”
“It’s a supply chain that’s being delivered by an army of trucks, which are all necessary to keep this enormous group moving forward,” he continues over video of trucks filled with supplies and transport vehicles crammed with migrant men.”
—————–
The media lies.
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Hmm. That was 17 minutes ago. Did Melania or an aide manage to wrestle the phone out of his hands before he finished?
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Why would he be cranky?
He’s won again, and with that win, Trump has assured the Mueller witch hunt will be wrapping up soon. 🙂
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/11/doj-rules-matthew-whitaker-can-serve-as-attorney-general/
“DOJ Rules Matthew Whitaker Can Serve as Attorney General
“Mr. Whitaker’s designation is no more constitutionally problematic than countless similar presidential orders dating back over 200 years.”
“The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel reached its decision from “provisions of the Vacancies Reform Act, which allows for the appointment of a senior staffer who had been in office for at least 90 days.”
A senior official at the DOJ said that “the White House sought legal guidance from Sessions’ own department on available options for replacing the attorney general” before Sessions resigned.
From USA Today:
Although Justice’s own line of succession provides for the deputy attorney general or other confirmed officials to serve as acting attorney general in the event of a vacancy, the Justice opinion argued that the internal provision for succession “does not displace the president’s authority to use the Vacancies Reform Act as an alternative.”
The opinion went on to assert that Whitaker’s designation was in keeping with the Constitution, which requires the president to obtain Senate approval before appointing so-called “principal” officers.
“Although an attorney general is a principal officer requiring Senate confirmation, someone who temporarily performs his duties is not,” the opinion stated. “As all three branches of government have long recognized, the president may designate an acting official to perform the duties of vacant principal office, including a Cabinet office, even when the acting official has not been confirmed by the Senate.””
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No. Dear Leader won the wrestling match. If you are going to take 19 minutes to compose a Tweet, you have time to look up how to spell “they”.
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Now let’s get to some badly aged Tweets from Ricky’s favorite creepy porn lawyer…….
🙂
———–
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——————-
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At this point, the rest of the world is over the shock of The Cult’s favorite porn actor being elected President. They will spend the next two years laughing at us.
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Some of you thought I was kidding.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/07/politics/rudy-giuliani-trump-credibility-porn-videos/index.html
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Awwwww. is the poor little surrender monkey still sore at that mean, old Trump?
He complains either way, so he’ll just have to get over it.
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/politics-ideas/nationalism-old-europes-new-boogeyman/
“There is much to disagree with in Donald Trump’s interest in nationalism. In his version of it, nationalism is a fragile egotism applied to the affairs of state. This approach has, like the president himself, created problems out of whole cloth before “solving” them. Regarding trade and defense agreements with our long-standing allies, we seem now always to be in some phase of this cycle.
But it was a little rich to hear French President Emmanuel Macron during the WWI armistice centenary observance on Sunday scold Trump on the evils of nationalism. Before an audience of world leaders gathered in Paris, Macron connected the European nationalisms that presaged the Great War to the nationalist posturing of the American president.
“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,” Macron said. “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying ‘our interests first, who cares about the others,’ we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great, and what is essential: its moral values.” He went on: “I know there are old demons which are coming back to the surface. They are ready to wreak chaos and death.”
If the new demons of chaos and death can be found chanting “USA! USA!” in MAGA caps, it’s striking how little they resemble the American demons of yesterday. In 2003, America’s foreign policy was anything but nationalist. It was, in fact, universalist in its prescription of liberty for all, and European leaders were also pretty worked up about that. Back then, the complaint out of Paris wasn’t that the Americans were abandoning their “moral values.” The problem was that we were championing them.
Our European allies, important as they are, tend to be inconsistent about values and consistent about criticizing America. That’s just the way it is. No matter what Macron says, nationalism is a potent force in daily life across Europe. Its why populist parties are on the rise and why the EU is being challenged from within. A lot of what we call identity politics, Europeans just call identity, and it goes to the core of their self-understanding.
The creation of the European Union itself wasn’t entirely about unity. It was spoken about, in the early going, as a potential challenger to American dominance in all sorts of ways—a kind of super-nationalist project. Of course, none of that came to pass. But the point is, in European idealism, there’s always some space for taking a shot at the U.S.”
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The responses to Dear Leader’s Tweets are generally pretty funny:
https://twitter.com/rahzkat/status/1063049312848904193?s=21
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Pat yourself on the back Ricky……..
You and your friends are being recognized for your work….. as traitors.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/11/thanks_nevertrumpers_are_you_happy_now.html
“NeverTrump Republicans have been rabidly obsessed since 2015 to prevent Donald Trump’s nomination, election, and having failed, to join the left in nonstop criticism and condemnation of President Trump. They may be succeeding, but to what end? As they look around at the current political landscape, are they truly happy with the direction of the country? Or is that irrelevant, as long as they can strut around on their high horse, feeling smug, telling each other “I told you so”?
The NeverTrump movement began shortly after Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency. So-called “principled Republicans” were incensed that a loud-mouth from Queens, a TV reality star, a host of beauty pageants, someone never before elected to public office, should challenge the Republican establishment orthodoxy.
His tweets and straight talk were unacceptable. Calling out the media and his political opponents ran against the grain of how they thought Republicans should handle themselves in a presidential campaign. Trump did not follow the proper and acceptable savoir faire of John McCain or Mitt Romney, two prominent NeverTrumpers. The fact that both lost their elections to an easily defeatable far-left candidate who damaged the country badly during his eight-year reign of “fundamentally transforming America” seems to be lost on Trump’s GOP critics.
The NeverTrump names are familiar. Aside from the two noted above, there are others, all one-time Republicans, although their conservative beliefs have been tossed out the window over political expediency or ego. George Will, Max Boot, Steve Schmidt, Bret Stephens, Jennifer Rubin, and anyone with the last name of Bush. There are many in Congress too – Paul Ryan, Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, Bob Corker, and others.
Some of them left the party, with great fanfare, securing regular bookings on CNN and MSNBC to trash Trump and his deplorable supporters. They were puzzled why every Republican didn’t leave the party. They hoped for electoral success for the Democrats, the same political party they once criticized. After the midterm elections, they should be ecstatic.”
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“Trump’s signature issues on the campaign trail were immigration and healthcare. He promised to “Build the wall” and “Repeal Obamacare”. Yet he could do neither alone. Both required the assistance of Congress, which was lacking despite these issues being the primary reason Congress was in Republican hands.
Congressional leaders balked at funding a border wall, instead choosing to fund Planned Parenthood. The “skinny repeal” of Obamacare crashed and burned when NeverTrump Senator No-Name figuratively gave President Trump the middle finger, but almost literally gave the Senate vote counter a thumbs down, killing the repeal.
Was Congressional resistance over policy? Perhaps a little was but most was simply a NeverTrump poke in the eye to the president and his agenda. Not only legislatively did NeverTrumpers hurt their party, but also in giving a reason for the Trump base to not turn out as they did in 2016. The Washington Post looked at turnout by party for the past few elections.
In the 2014 midterms, 4 million more Republicans voted than Democrats. In 2018 it was the opposite, as the chart below demonstrates. In addition, in 2018, Democrats turned out 79 percent of their 2016 presidential election voters, compared to only 75 percent for Republicans. Turnout wins elections, but Trump voters may not have turned out to vote for those shouting “NeverTrump!” Despite Trump’s involvement in the midterm campaigns, he wasn’t on the ballot, but members of Congress were.”
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Truth.
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You can’t be a traitor to something to which you never belonged. We were never advocates or supporters of idiocy, con artists, porn actors, obstruction of justice, fights with porn stars and department stores, economic illiteracy, regular illiteracy, or pathological lying. Those were always core elements of The Trump Cult, not conservatism.
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Flakey’s gone full on flake now, and proves the authors assertions in 8:00AM.
https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/14/flake-cnn-acosta-trump/
“Lame duck Republican Sen. Jeff Flake announced his support for CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta at the end of his speech during the congressional correspondent dinner on Wednesday night.”
““And I’ve enjoyed well almost every minute of it. The work you do here is more important than ever and you do it well. Please keep doing it. And lastly, and most sincerely, go get ‘em Acosta,” he said.”
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So since Flake is OK with “men” who get rough with women like Acosta did to that poor intern, I guess we can put him down as backing Avenatti for president too.
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Acosta got “rough” with the intern? The Cult is now more panicky than the Cult Leader. That “allegation” was left out of Trump’s legal response to Acosta because it was false. Cultists must stay current with ever-changing Cult doctrine.
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Everyone watched the video Ricky. We know what we saw.
Since you seem to have forgotten, the video is here,.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/08/white-house-suspends-press-pass-cnns-jim-acosta-after-testy-exchange-with-trump/?utm_term=.1f963eddeee7
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So that is getting “rough” but the Cult blindly follows the man who bragged about “grabbing women by the &$@&$”?
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I continue to chuckle at the outrage of Trump using Twitter. Andrew Jackson (our 7th President, for those of you weak on history) was the first to take his thoughts directly to the people by having letters published in the newspaper and was severely criticized for it, especially by the aristocratic elite. There is nothing new under the sun.
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The advantage that Sasse has over Flake, Corker and Kasich is his sense of humor.
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I fear for out country. I really do.
I likely won’t be around, because cancer is slow and painful.
But it is fatal.
Just like our political situation.
It didn’t start with Obama, but that’s where it took it’s fatal turn.
There have been hints and threats to our sovereignty throughout history, but It took it’s permanent attachment under FDR.
That’s when the people learned that they can vote themselves benefits from the treasury.
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From “The Washington Examiner”
A federal judge ruled Thursday that Florida election officials must give voters until Nov. 17 to correct mismatched signatures on thousands of ballots discarded under the state’s “signature match” law.
Florida is the only state where they have mismatched signatures.
And all of them voted Democrat.
See my 9:50.
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What did Obama do? you ask.
H doubled the national debt WITH NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT
He corrupted the Justice Department beyond repair.
Among other things in foreign policy and social structure.
e.g. Fifteen years ago, no one would have thought of kneeling during the National Anthem.
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Might as well…
https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2018/11/14/gop-to-dems-here-take-our-wallets-too-n2535981
“Election recounts would be more plausible if Democrats occasionally let the Republican win. But they don’t. Ballots miraculously discovered days and weeks after the election — in the back seat of a car, after helpful “corrections” to the ballots by election supervisors, etc. — invariably result in a surprise win for the Democrat.
Voters are just supposed to accept that, unless Republicans win an election by an insuperable margin, the Democrats will steal it.
And the thieving is cheered on by our media. Whenever President Trump has the effrontery to mention that GOP victories are being stolen by corrupt Democratic officials, the media snippily note that his claim is “UNSUBSTANTIATED.”
Thus, for example, in the first 60 seconds of CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Monday, Burnett said:
— “(The email from Trump headquarters) without providing any evidence … warns that, quote, corrupt Democrats are trying to, quote, steal election victories in Florida. …
— “It’s a baseless claim that President Trump has been pushing for days. …
— “(Gov. Rick) Scott (is) talking about rampant fraud without providing any evidence. …
— “Now, ‘steal an election,’ ‘committing fraud’ are big claims to make without having evidence.”
Hey! I have an idea! Why doesn’t CNN rustle up some reporters to go and investigate the biggest story of the year?
No, the burden is on random Republicans — who have jobs other than “reporting the news” — to produce bulletproof evidence of voter fraud. Otherwise, it’s just a wacky coincidence that these “recounts” always result in mysterious new votes for Democrats.
If a freelance investigative reporter like James O’Keefe actually does produce the evidence that our media are too lazy and biased to get for themselves, they sneer that O’Keefe can’t be trusted. He’s not a real reporter!
What a real reporter does is call up some left-wing outfit, get a quote, and peremptorily announce that there has never been an illegal ballot cast in any election, ever.”
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Just from my perspective:
Kneeling during the National Anthem, to me, isn’t really ‘new’ — it harkens back to the 1960s and 1970s when strongly anti-patriotic attitudes were fairly common and were on display not infrequently at public events. I’d argue that the fall from grace we’re seeing nationally now in the U.S. had its start many decades ago, perhaps as soon as WWII ended in victory. Maybe the seeds can be traced even further back in our short history as a nation.
But after the war, the U.S. quickly became very comfortable, materialism was on the rise, possibly peaking in the 1950s; no threat could seriously touch us, or so it seemed (although there were some Cold War scares that seemed to come close; they seemed, though, to unify us rather than to divide us.
There were victories in the Civil Rights movement and in the resilience that gave us a successful space program, all a credit to our willingness as a nation to right social wrongs within and to push into the future to explore new frontiers.
But Vietnam ended essentially in disaster and left us with a crisis of confidence and identity that I don’t think we were ever able to shake.
A unified spirit briefly reappeared in the wake of 9/11 — but it so quickly faded that it seemed later like an illusion. Complaints by some Americans that we brought the attack on ourselves were quickly being voiced in the aftermath. We ‘deserved’ it.
Others among us, who recognize God’s sovereignty in all events that come to pass, considered, too, whether there wasn’t a national chastisement that needed to be weighed.
At any rate, from there it’s all somehow felt like a free fall off a cliff to many of us. We can’t seem to get ‘it’ back, that spirit that made our nation so unique, a beacon of hope in the world. It seems that we no longer understand who or what we are, what the nation set out to represent (or that is viewed now as evil, in fact, from the standpoint of indigenous people groups). Public figures on both sides who dominate our confused and chaotic news-scape are symptoms of what we and our culture have become: angry, haughty, quick to speak and slow to listen, a people without a unified vision, a nation at war within, with seemingly no more common ground. A people shaking their fists at God and one another.
But of course, the story isn’t over yet. … 🙂
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I’m feeling ‘big-picture’ reflective this morning I guess.
It’ll pass. lol
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Good comment, DJ.
It’s hard to hold the big picture before our own eyes continually when we live individual small lives. I’m so thankful God doesn’t have that problem.
Debra
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He is really scared about something. The indictments are generally announced on Fridays. We will see if he knows something we don’t know yet.
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My favorite part of the last Tweet is the “(and NOT Senate approved)”. Trump knows no more about our form of government and the Constitution than he knows about economics, monogamy or truthfulness. However, he learned during the Kavanaugh matter that some appointments require Senate confirmation, so he just throws that language out whenever possible, knowing The Cult will say, “Yeah. That’s right! Mueller wasn’t approved by the Senate.”
Such statements by Trump are what make the college degree the dividing line in current American politics.
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Meanwhile, in actual news…..
Thank you Judicial Watch, for once again providing the oversight our failure of a Congress fails at doing adequately. ..
https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/15/federal-court-clinton-more-questions-emails/
“A federal court is compelling former secretary of state Hillary Clinton to respond to further questions — under oath — about her notorious emails.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan issued the ruling Wednesday in response to a lawsuit from Judicial Watch, the conservative research and investigative group that has long had its sights on both of the Clintons.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton was jubilant about the decision in a Thursday morning tweet: “Breaking: Court rules late today Hillary Clinton must answer more email questions — including key [questions] about the setting up of her email system.””
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This is a front runner for the D nomination?
Nice. 🙂
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——————
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Head. Desk.
And in that remaining county?…..
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🙂
https://twitter.com/patsajak/status/1062749776419139586
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Well at least they admitted it.
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‘Seems kind of voter fraudish’
Yeah it does….
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Busted memes abound.
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Interesting. Maybe a remedial economics course on Fox and Friends might help.
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Mostly agree at 3:24, Ricky, but college degree, schmollege degree.
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SolarP,
A few thoughts:
1.The dividing line is rough, not perfect. There are intelligent people without a college degree and ignorant people with a degree.
2. It is a sliding scale. Those with graduate degrees are less likely to be conned by Trump (or other demagogues) than those with only undergraduate degrees. Those without high school diplomas are even more likely to be conned than those who finished high school.
3. As a nation we are either becoming more ignorant or at least more tolerant of gross ignorance. Thirty to forty years ago, no freshman Congressman would have said something as stupid as Trump’s Tweet. If he had started to, a 23 year old aide would have educated him about the Special Counsel statute lest he be seen as a laughingstock.
4. The college degree line applies to whites, not blacks. I have not studied the voting patterns of Asians or Hispanics of different levels of educational attainment enough to comment.
Having said all that, the college degree line is the new dividing line for whites.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/full-display-midterms-america-s-great-education-realignment-n936556
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There is quite a bit of data here and it goes back to 1994 so trends are visible.
In 1994, people with undergraduate degrees, but without graduate degrees, were the most Republican of the four groups divided by educational attainment. I believe that was also true in the 1980s and for some time prior to Reagan. It is certainly not true today.
http://www.people-press.org/2018/03/20/1-trends-in-party-affiliation-among-demographic-groups/
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