It was front page, above the fold, and they put a Viser on it for you:
"How Stormy Daniels is beating Trump at his own game" by Matt Viser Globe Staff March 22, 2018
WASHINGTON — Stormy Daniels is proving that she is the master of the prolonged reveal.
Over the past 2½ months, the adult film actress and her lawyer have rolled out a textbook negative media campaign against the master of media manipulation, with a series of tantalizing details and disclosures that has provoked a storm of salacious and damaging news coverage.
And the worst for President Trump, who is in the rare position of struggling to win a tabloid-style media war, is yet to come. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is scheduled to appear in a “60 Minutes” segment on Sunday.
If it were just a reality show plot line, you could call it the ultimate comeuppance for Trump, the former “Apprentice’’ star who was said to call up New York tabloids, posing as someone else, to offer details of his own playboy lifestyle. But the sordid tragedy of this tale is sweeping up the political world and wreaking havoc across the GOP spectrum.
I'm sure the double-entendre was unintentional.
Not incidentally, a good deal of damage is being inflicted on first lady Melania Trump, who so far is stoically enduring the humiliation.
Of course, the Globe adds to it with this!
Trump and Daniels first met at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006, about four months after Trump’s youngest son, Barron, was born. Daniels later said — in an interview with InTouch magazine that was conducted in 2011 and published earlier this year — that they had sex after dinner in Trump’s hotel suite.
I don't want to watch this. I know the elite ruling cla$$ and their puppets are rife with perversion, and this is the least of it.
Less than two weeks before the 2016 election — and after speaking with several media outlets — Daniels reportedly agreed not to speak about the affair. She signed a nondisclosure agreement in return for a $130,000 payment that was handled by Trump’s longtime attorney, Michael Cohen. Cohen has acknowledged making the payment, which he said came out of his own pocket and was not part of the campaign.
Over the past several weeks, Daniels has hired a new attorney and has waged a battle to free herself from the agreement. She has claimed that it is not valid, partly because Trump — whose name was listed on the initial agreement as David Dennison, to hide his identity — did not sign it.
Trump’s attorneys last week began pursuing damages of $20 million from Daniels, saying that she had violated the agreement. Cohen has also obtained a temporary restraining order to prevent Daniels from speaking out. But the Trump team’s efforts to silence Daniels have only added fuel to the tawdry controversy.
Throughout it all, Trump himself has been in the rare position of not being the star of the show. He’s an uncooperative supporting actor — and an uncharacteristically silent one at that.
Which is what all this is, a ma$$ media circus.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
Trump has eschewed the advice of his lawyers and attacked special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Trump 2016 campaign contacts with Russia, but the president has not mentioned Daniels.
Oh, yeah, Mueller.....
"The GOP document says there's no evidence Trump associates had anything to do with hacked emails stolen from Democrats during the campaign, though it does mention "numerous ill-advised contacts with WikiLeaks." The president's son, Donald Trump Jr., messaged with WikiLeaks during the campaign. An assessment released in January 2017 by U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian military intelligence provided hacked information from the Democratic National Committee and Democratic officials to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has denied that Russia was the source of emails it released....."
They got them from Seth Rich and he was murdered for it.
Those the same intelligence agencies that lied us into Iraq?
“The two people he won’t talk about are Stormy Daniels and Vladimir Putin,” said Rick Wilson, a Florida Republican operative. Wilson, who helped lead a Republican anti-Trump effort during the 2016 campaign, expressed admiration for Daniels’s ability to keep her story alive.
“She understands in some ways even better than Trump how to ration out a story,” he said. “Trump has a great animal cunning about that stuff. But she really has it. She has it in spades. ”
Daniels seems to be relishing the attention, while gamely batting away criticism. Her Twitter feed is a stream of people accusing her of being a prostitute, making fun of her age, or calling her a greedy attention seeker. She engages, she doesn’t disagree, and she usually tosses in a fair amount of sexual innuendo.
I'm sure she is a paragon of liberation and a fine example of the power of women somewhere.
Last week her attorney, Michael Avenatti, said publicly that Daniels had been “physically threatened.” He would not say who issued the threat, or when. More information would come later, he said. The skimpy development and lack of context did not stop the media from giving the story a new round of coverage.
(Blog editor moans)
On Tuesday, Avenatti released an image of Daniels taking a lie detector test about her relationship with Trump. Her affirmative answers to having unprotected sex with Trump were cleared as true by the test administrator, America’s citizens were told. That news set off another two days of frantic coverage.
You can almost feel his titillation at the developments.
Avenatti has also been sending out images of Daniels with Anderson Cooper, who conducted the interview for “60 Minutes,” and hinting at some of the new details that could emerge. CBS started promoting the interview on Wednesday, sending a brief video clip saying: “She’s the porn star making headlines across America. Now Stormy Daniels is telling her story.”
I won't be watching, and how sad is it to "60 Minutes" of all things in the gutter. Mike Wallace must be rolling in his grave.
It has all put Trump in an unusual political and legal box. Staying silent runs counter to his self-proclaimed willingness to always punch back at his critics.
“When you think of the president going up against other politicians, it’s asymmetrical warfare,” said Frank Sesno, a former Washington bureau chief at CNN who is now director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. “Nobody can out-bully pulpit the president of the United States, but how can the president defend himself against a porn star behind the podium at the White House?”
This plot is getting thin.
Daniels is different from most of Trump’s other accusers because she is not claiming that Trump was abusive or touched her against her will. She says their affair was consensual — and she is also a far more willing participant in stoking the media frenzy than past participants in presidential affairs.
“Monica Lewinsky disappeared,” Sesno said. “We never heard from Monica Lewinsky. She didn’t do interviews, she didn’t go to events. She had a lawyer speaking for her, but to defend her honor, not to assert her identity as the woman who had the affair with the president.
Until recently, that is.
You go, girl!
“Not only does [Daniels] not shun the limelight, she seeks it,” he added.
The legal problems for Trump escalated this week on another front. Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Los Angeles, attempting to be released from a 2016 agreement not to speak about her own alleged consensual affair with Trump. The parent company of the National Enquirer, whose chief executive is close to Trump, paid her $150,000 for the rights to her story but never published anything, according to the lawsuit.
A state judge in New York also denied an attempt by Trump’s lawyers to block a defamation suit filed by Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant who alleges Trump sexually harassed her.
Wilson said his group was able to find at least eight women who had signed nondisclosure agreements after having affairs with Trump, but was unable to persuade them to speak out, for fear of retribution.
If Daniels is successful in getting her agreement voided, other women could come forward. Avenatti has also said that he has been approached by six women with similar accounts.
The White House, as well as Cohen’s attorney, Lawrence S. Rosen, did not respond to requests for comment about the potential for more accusers.
“If this is ruled unenforceable or questionable, you’re going to end up with a flood of these women,” Wilson said. “A flood.”
Like a flood of cum, so to speak.
--more--"
The real perversion was located on top:
"Trump names former ambassador John Bolton as his new national security adviser" by Mark Landler and Maggie Haberman New York Times
My print was a WaPo pos that told me "President Trump said Thursday that he was naming former ambassador John Bolton, a Fox News commentator and conservative firebrand, as his new national security adviser, replacing Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. The president announced the news in a tweet...." before asking me to pay a buck to read more.
Had to go to Arkansas to see it:
"Ex-envoy chosen as security adviser
WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump said Thursday that he was naming former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, now a conservative Fox News commentator, as his new national security adviser, replacing Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.
The president announced the news in a tweet.
Bolton is a fierce North Korea hawk who, in his prolific writings and television commentary, has said that pre-emptive war would likely be the only way to stop North Korea from obtaining the capability to attack the United States with a nuclear missile.
[Bolton has touted "the legal case for striking North Korea first" in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. In a subsequent interview with Breitbart News, Bolton warned that the North was on the cusp of being able to strike the continental United States and raised the specter of Pyongyang selling nuclear devices to other hostile actors such as Iran, the Islamic State, or Al Qaeda.
"We have to ask ourselves whether we're prepared to take preemptive action, or live in a world where North Korea -- and a lot of other people -- have nuclear weapons," he said.]
Bolton, who had dismissed negotiations with North Korea as a waste of time, moderated his views slightly after Trump announced he would sit down with Kim. He described Trump's decision as "diplomatic shock and awe" and suggested that the encounter between the two leaders would be short and largely devoid of traditional diplomacy.
"Tell me you have begun total denuclearization, because we're not going to have protracted negotiations," he imagined Trump telling the North Korean. "You can tell me right now or we'll start thinking of something else."
On Iran, Bolton has been even more hawkish than Trump, pushing for the president to withdraw from the nuclear agreement that the United States and five other world powers reached with Tehran during President Barack Obama's administration.
In January, Bolton told Fox News that Trump should dump the nuclear deal, reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran, and work toward an overthrow of the government there.
"There's a lot we can do, and we should do it," Bolton said. "Our goal should be regime change in Iran." He similarly called for bombing Iran in a New York Times editorial in 2015.
What kind of message does that send to North Korea? That the word of the U.S. government means nothing?
[McMaster's departure and Bolton's ascension will come about one month before a deadline for Trump to decide whether the United States will remain a party to the deal]
Bolton, a contentious foreign policy expert who briefly served as U.N. ambassador, has been a force in Republican foreign policy circles for decades. He has served in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and served as a Bush lawyer during the 2000 Florida recount.
Bolton, 69, brings a far more interventionist view into Trump's inner circle. A strong supporter of the Iraq war and an advocate for aggressive use of American power in foreign policy, he was unable to win Senate confirmation after his 2005 nomination to the United Nations post alienated many Democrats and even some Republicans.
[His critics cited a brusque and sometimes belittling manner with colleagues and underlings and many put-downs of the United Nations itself. Those include an oft-quoted remark that no one would notice if the high-rise UN building lost several of its floors.]
Kind of like a.... (gulp).... BULLY?
Bolton resigned after serving 17 months as a "recess appointment," which allowed him to hold the job on a temporary basis without Senate confirmation.
At the time, Bolton was often at odds with then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She told colleagues that Bolton undermined her and went behind her back to then-Vice President Dick Cheney, his old friend and patron.
Those old grievances resurfaced before Trump took office, when as president-elect he considered selecting Bolton as deputy secretary of state. That job would have been subject to Senate confirmation, and opposition was swift and bipartisan.
[Bolton has maintained a pair of political committees, which he has used to funnel political support to hawkish candidates. The top donor to the groups was Robert Mercer, who has given $5 million to Bolton's super PAC in recent years, the Associated Press reported.]
Must have gotten lost in all the Cambridge Analytica stuff.
Trump's selection of Bolton as his national security adviser drew raves from more hawkish members of Congress. "Selecting John Bolton as national security adviser is good news for America's allies and bad news for America's enemies," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Democrats and some Republicans reacted with concern that Bolton's hawkish positions could lead to more conflict. Bolton's positions on Iran and North Korea "are overly aggressive at best and downright dangerous at worst," said Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del.
We will see what marching orders he gets from the Trump administration.
McMaster, a three-star general, came to the Trump administration with an accomplished combat record in Iraq and a reputation as one of the Army's best thinkers on the subject of battling insurgents and the future of war.
McMaster's biggest win -- and area of greatest influence -- was the war in Afghanistan, where he convinced the president to nearly double the size of the force to 15,000 troops. But Trump resented McMaster for pushing it on him, U.S. officials said.
Yeah, blame him now that he's gone.
McMaster is credited with improving morale and bringing order to the National Security Council after the forced departure early last year of his predecessor, Michael Flynn.
That is the gist of my print and where it ended.
Yet as national security adviser, McMaster never forged the kind of bond that would allow him to speak honestly to the president. At times, Trump, who complained that McMaster was stubborn, didactic and long-winded, seemed to tune out the active duty general.
Tension between Trump and McMaster had grown increasingly public. It had appeared McMaster's departure was imminent last week -- but White House officials insisted the speculation was false.
Oh, look, another White House that lies.
In a statement released by the White House, the White House said McMaster's exit had been under discussion for some time and stressed it was not due to any one incident, such as this week's leak about Trump's recent phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
All you can do is shake your head.
McMaster had briefed Trump before the Putin call -- and his team drafted all-caps instructions telling Trump not to congratulate the Russian leader on his re-election victory. Trump did it anyway.
An internal investigation into the leak is underway, said a White House official who -- like others interviewed about the announcement and the White House shake-up -- demanded anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Got their own plumbers, huh?
How Nixonian!
Trump is reshaping much of his national security team ahead of planned talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the coming weeks and as he faces a key decision in May on whether to maintain the Iran nuclear deal. Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on March 13, saying the two had disagreed over Iran and other matters of foreign policy.
Tillerson's exit forecast trouble for McMaster, who had aligned himself with the embattled secretary of state in seeking to soften some of Trump's more contentious foreign policy desires.
Tillerson said Bolton is ‘mean-spirited.’
In Bolton, Trump has chosen a frequently combative personality who fits more with his style, but it wasn't clear how White House staff members will react to their new boss.
In recent years Bolton has served as a Fox News contributor and senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. He has also been a frequent behind-the-scenes visitor to Trump in the Oval Office and had campaigned openly to replace McMaster in recent weeks.
Oh, man, what a scum!!!
In early March, Bolton met with Trump and Chief of Staff John Kelly to discuss North Korea and Iran. He was spotted entering the West Wing earlier Thursday, and hours later, Bolton confessed surprise at how quickly Trump announced the appointment.
"This hasn't sunk in," he said on Fox News, where he was pre-scheduled for an interview.
Bolton, in the Thursday night Fox News interview, downplayed the significance of his past public statements, saying he would defer to the president's judgment.
Yeah, Trump often keeps his own counsel, but he is unmistakably veering toward the combative approach.
"I've never been shy about what my views are," Bolton said.....
Here is his file.
--MORE--"
Here is the reaction across a spectrum of viewpoints:
"Any support I’ve shown for Trump has gone out the window this evening. And no, I am not being melodramatic. I am a simple man with modest needs. One of them is for my country to stop fighting unnecessary wars. When you wake up and realize that we’re the bad guys and that the media propaganda is there to make you docile, you will see that nothing else matters but human life. Forget about healthcare, transgender bathrooms, abortion, tax cuts — everything is secondary. --MORE--"
"In light of Trump's continuing betrayal of US patriots who voted for him, stuck with through thick and thing during the contested election, the Russian collusion lie ... we now have a growing list of Trump double-crosses: the retirement of dozens of Republicans in the Senate, Congress; the CIA infiltration in the electorate; Jerusalem to be capital of Israel; US troops in Syria, WWIII against Russia; Pompeo to the State Department, Bolton to the NSC; 2nd Amendment rights eviscerated in the new budget (#omnibus2018); I now think that he was a ringer all along, the Russian collusion story just a distraction from a darker agenda for honest US citizens and Christians. -- whatreallyhappened--"
Yup, most of the base is abandoning him, but not all:
Israel ministers welcome Trump’s appointment of John Bolton
I imagine they would. They are probably cackling with glee.
"The Bolton thing is huge, as it represents a sea change in Trump's own reckoning of his place in the world. He's been managing things remarkably well, steering between mostly Khazar-paid traitors like the never-Trumpers, the Clintonistas and various assorted Zionists, all with the help of some unseen American patriots, which help he now appears to feel he no longer needs, allowing him to take the shekels. He really did need the help of those patriots, and I fully expect to see him entering a period of personal disasters. The problem, as always, with the Khazars is that they never stop shekeling until the larger society reacts violently in self-defense." -- xymphora
I guess that means Kushner is back in.
Amnesty International: Trumpeting for War… Again
Nothing but another Jewman rights group, which explains their prominence in my pre$$.
"There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing." -- Ralph Peters
Have you seen the map?
Let the blitzkreig begin:
"They mask and conceal the fact that our massive, wealth-devouring military machine is a mass murder juggernaut that kills, and has killed for decades, millions of ignorant, innocent people around the world for the benefit of American Capitalism. All our government’s phony, sanctimonious bullshit about “nation building”, “promoting democracy”, “defeating terrorism”, “punishing dictators”, “R2P” and all the vast lexicon of doublespeak official America blathers at a jaded world, is just hollow, dishonest, pathetic cover for the voracious Capitalist Jabberwock that mandates the rape and destruction of the world for the vile greed of its boss clique of mindless, heartless, subhuman monsters..... --MORE--"
"Though some have been warning about the catastrophic potential for a third global conflict for years, the idea of a third world war in today’s world is
completely insane. A third world war might sound crazy, but it is only crazy if we fail to understand the desperation that continues to plague the men in suits who pull the strings guiding American foreign policy. As America’s power and influence wane, the time will come for both
Russia and China to make their mark on the global stage. Just on a side
note, it should come as no surprise that Trump’s nominated ambassador to
Australia, Adm. Harry Harris, is a known anti-China war hawk who
recently warned Congress to prepare for a war with China. Why should we need to prepare for a war with China? Who talks and
thinks like that? A nation on a slow and inevitable decline that cannot
refuse to admit defeat in almost any battle theater since World War II,
that’s who. Realistically, nobody wants a third world war, but as the U.S.
increasingly thrashes to maintain its control of the global financial
markets, its network of over 1,000 bases worldwide, and its status as
the world’s global policemen, a third world war may be Washington’s only
hope at staying afloat as the world’s top power..... --MORE--"
Yeah, who talks and thinks like that?
"President Trump has officially picked a fight with China, but an escalating trade war isn’t inevitable. Just as important, China has also signaled a willingness to talk....."
What do they know that you do not?
Who he is not picking a fight with:
"It’s so unpopular that lawmakers from both parties and President Trump’s top drug regulator want to kill it. But the pharmaceutical industry, flexing its powerful lobbying muscles, is successfully fighting back efforts to end a loophole that costs taxpayers and consumers billions of dollars a year....."
There they go again, and it's my humble opinion that their pills led to what the Globe came wrapped in this morning:
"Adults marvel at youth-led gun control movement; Boston teens say it’s about time" by Akilah Johnson Globe Staff March 22, 2018
Buses from across the country will roll into the nation’s capital Saturday, delivering tens of thousands of students and their families to the March for Our Lives, a rally against gun violence sparked by one of the deadliest school shootings in modern American history.
The country — including Boston — has a long history of activist movements with young people at the forefront. Students staged lunch-counter sit-ins during the civil rights movement. Young people protested the Vietnam War at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. And in the past few years, young people have influenced attitudes on everything from income inequality (Occupy Wall Street) to police brutality (Black Lives Matter) to immigration reform (Dreamers).
Where are the antiwar protests now, and why was Occupy treated badly at the time and clubbed out of the commons?
This moment, though, feels different, according to youth organizers and those who study the nation’s social movements. The anti-gun-violence rallies and protests led by young activists have been roundly applauded by adults, including prominent politicians and pundits. That’s partly because the adults have largely conceded the Parkland students’ point: No child should go to school fearful that he or she might not come home. What has been intensely debated is what to do about it.....
Which clues you in to the controlled opposition, agenda-pushing nature of the protests; otherwise, the pre$$ would not be glowing over them.
--more--"
Looks to me like they are the ones being led.
Related:
"Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Parliament on Thursday began enforcing a new law requiring lawmakers to check guns, explosives, and other weapons at the door before entering the legislative chamber. In the country’s raucous domestic politics, brawls are common in Parliament, and apparently enough lawmakers also carry weapons that the new law immediately became contentious....."
If the rancorous partisanship were real, we Americans would be seeing the same thing.
Also see: At least 3 dead after gunman attacks French supermarket
I have no idea whether it is real or what I suspect is another staged and scripted event complete with narrative to follow.
At least fake fear is funny:
"Four’easter turns into fake storm" by Mark Arsenault Globe Staff March 22, 2018
To stand out in a winter full of storms, it helps to have a brand.
Nor’easter used to sound scary by itself, but that’s your grandpa’s storm. Now we have bomb cyclone and snowmageddon and snowpocalypse. When the bombpocalypse comes, we’ll all just cash in our 401(k)s for survival gear and gold.
May need to cash that in sooner than you think, dip$hit.
The dud of a storm that dribbled through Boston on Thursday had been dubbed by the Storm Hype Industrial Complex as the Four’easter, a catchy, marketable name for the fourth nor’easter of the month. It was supposed to arrive Wednesday with up to a foot of snow. (Yes we, too, breathlessly reported worst-case scenarios.)
But even though nary a flake fell....
--more--"
Yeah, weather is funny now!
I would have gone out to eat but their was a line:
"A case is dismissed, and the cloud that loomed over Walsh dissolves" by Maria Cramer and Milton J. Valencia Globe Staff March 23, 2018
It was an explosive case, a public corruption probe with the potential to undermine a new mayor’s political agenda.
In 2014, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s administration came under FBI scrutiny for its cozy relationship with organized labor. Two years later, a pair of high-ranking City Hall officials were indicted on charges they threatened to withhold permits from organizers of the Boston Calling music festival unless they hired union members, a violation of the federal law prohibiting extortion. There was speculation more indictments would follow, casting scrutiny on a mayor with deep ties to organized labor.
Legal observers are divided on what led to the case’s demise. Some said prosecutors overreached from the start, others pointed to a 2017 Appeals Court ruling that made it harder to prosecute union officials charged with extortion under what is known as the Hobbs Act.
“The die [was] already cast,” said Wally Zimolong, a Philadelphia-based attorney for construction companies who has followed union extortion cases around the country. “The battle was lost when they lost in the First Circuit.”
Zimolong said the dismissal of the case is a troubling sign for businesses. “Unions have acted very aggressively to protect their traditional market,” he said. “State prosecutors either don’t have the stomach for it or aren’t empowered to prosecute these kinds of crimes.”
But others said the Burhoe decision only provides more evidence that prosecutors have been too zealous in pursuing cases against unions. “What’s endemic in this prosecutor’s office is this idea that extortion and fraud are open-ended vehicles for federal prosecutors to criminalize any behavior they think is improper,” said Michael Anderson, a Boston-based labor lawyer.....
--more--"
Thankfully, the “distraction is gone.”
State bill would ease ways to register voters
Is that a good idea in light of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal that is vaporizing as I type, or is it just another avenue of government data collection?
For some reason the "quiet guffaws in the State House hallways" over the DoR hirings have been removed because "class has always been the third rail in politics."
"Congress Approves $1.3 Trillion Spending Bill, Averting a Shutdown" by Thomas Kaplan, New York Times | March 22, 2018
WASHINGTON — Congress gave swift approval to a $1.3 trillion spending bill that will keep the federal government open through September but broadly defies the Trump administration’s wishes to reshape it.
The House voted 256 to 167 to approve the bill early Thursday afternoon, less than 24 hours after the spending plan, which stretched 2,232 pages, had been unveiled.
After a scare over whether a fiscally conservative senator might force a brief government shutdown this weekend, along with an unexpected grievance from another senator over the renaming of an Idaho wilderness area, the Senate voted 65 to 32 to approve the bill around 12:30 Friday morning.
Instead, they shutdown Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, for complaining that no one had time to read it.
Government funding was set to expire Friday night, but by approving the bill, lawmakers moved to avert what would have been the third shutdown of the year.
The spending bill, which congressional leaders agreed to on Wednesday and President Trump seemed to grudgingly endorse on Twitter, provides big increases to the military and to domestic programs — and clearly rebuffs the Trump administration’s efforts to sharply scale back the reach and scope of the federal government.
See: Trump signs $1.3 trillion spending package
After he blustered about vetoing it, in what can only be termed fake news!
The bill funds the government for the 2018 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1 and is already almost halfway over. Congress paved the way for this week’s legislation with a two-year budget deal last month that raised strict limits on military and domestic spending by about $140 billion this year.
In dividing up the spoils of that budget agreement, Congress rebuked the Trump administration’s initial vision for the federal government in many ways. The president’s desire to drastically cut spending on the environment was rebuffed. Programs like the National Endowment for the Arts and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, far from being eliminated, were spared any reductions. Not only did the administration’s request for deep cuts to the National Institutes of Health go nowhere, but Congress gave the agency an additional $3 billion.
Meaning Congre$$ is in control as a white flag flies from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Sometimes you save the president from themselves,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma and the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the health institutes.
Is that why they brought Bolton aboard?
The spending bill “repudiates the abysmal Trump budget, investing robustly in critical priorities like child care, transportation infrastructure, national security, election protection, medical research, opioid abuse prevention and treatment, veterans’ health services and much more,” said Representative Nita M. Lowey of New York, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.
The Democrats got everything they Dreamed of (almost).
At the White House, Mr. Trump’s top advisers worked to put the best face on a package they conceded fell short of fully funding his priorities and contained many items he would rather not have accepted, but the bill landed with a thud among conservatives who are still on Capitol Hill.
The additional spending comes at the expense of adding even further to the national debt, which has topped $21 trillion. The growing debt has seemed of minimal concern on Capitol Hill in recent months, where Republicans passed a sweeping tax overhaul late last year that will also result in piling up more debt.
The process for approving the bill left bruised feelings as well, as the enormous bill was not made public until Wednesday night.
“In all honesty, none of us know what is actually in this bill,” Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, said Thursday morning, just hours before House members were asked to vote on it.
And they called it representative democracy!
The bill’s eventual approval in the Senate was never in doubt.....
--more--"
Related:
"White House, Dem deal on immigration proved unattainable" by Alan Fram Associated Press March 22, 2018
WASHINGTON — An effort to protect young Dreamer immigrants from deportation never really had much chance of squeezing into the last bill Congress must pass this election year. That’s why bargainers from both parties were surprised when the White House tried anyway.
The catch: It was bait to win more money for President Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico.
The immigration talks failed, and Trump ended up getting $1.6 billion for his wall and other border security steps, just a year’s worth of funds. That left prospects dim that Congress would act this year to renew the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, or that Trump would get much more money for his wall as Democrats eyeing a potential House takeover in November’s elections become increasingly resistant to helping him.
‘‘Until they stop acting like idiots and stop trying to use Dreamers as hostages to pass their stupid xenophobic laws and stupid ideas like the border wall, nothing changes,’’ said Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat of Arizona and member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Trump took a different view, expressed in a tweet Wednesday:
By one account, a different person said.
Large numbers of Republicans don’t want to protect immigrants here illegally, period.....
--more--"
See:
"An 18-year-old man is accused of attacking a fellow student with a steak knife in a Bunker Hill Community College men’s room Wednesday, but he claims the alleged victim followed him into the restroom and pulled the knife, attorneys said at the man’s arraignment Thursday. Jerry Pierre-Louis of Mattapan surrendered to awaiting state troopers. Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Paul Lewis said Pierre-Louis is under the supervision of the state Department of Youth Services following an April 2017 conviction for carrying a firearm without a license. Carey said Pierre-Louis had immigrated to the United States from Haiti eight years ago, graduated from Boston International High School, and has been living with his father and two brothers and studying to be an X-ray technician at the community college. The arrest report shows he is still a Haitian citizen....."
Now I got limp dick.
