All Things Trump: Is it over yet?

[L'Emmerdeur]

Paul Ryan must be so pleased.

'"What Cruelty Looks Like": Trump Finalizes Plan to Strip Food Aid From 750,000 Low-Income People by 2020'

The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it has finalized a plan to tighten punitive work requirements for food stamp recipients, a move that would strip nutrition assistance from an estimated 750,000 low-income people by mid-2020.

"Pay attention. This is what cruelty looks like," tweeted the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights in response to the completed rule, which would be the first of a series of proposed food stamp cuts to take effect.

The rule change, which was first unveiled earlier this year, would restrict states' ability to exempt people without dependents from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program's work requirements. The rule is set to take effect April 1, 2020.

"For able-bodied adults without dependents, U.S. law limits SNAP benefits to three months, unless recipients are working or in training for 20 hours a week," the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. "States can waive those limits in areas where unemployment runs 20% above the national rate, which was 3.6% in October."

The Trump administration's proposal to curtail states' ability to waive work requirements sparked a flood of outrage from aid groups, Democratic lawmakers, and ordinary people. During the rule's 60-day public comment period, tens of thousands of people decried the measure as an immoral attack on the most vulnerable by an administration that has worked tirelessly to fatten the pockets of the rich.

"The comments make it clear that most Americans not only oppose but are utterly repulsed by this plan to punish the poorest among us by denying them help to feed themselves," Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), said in a statement in April.

According to an Urban Institute study (pdf) published last week, the Trump administration's three proposed SNAP changes combined would strip federal food aid from 3.7 million people.

"The basics of the situation are clear," Rolling Stone's Patrick Reis wrote Tuesday. "When it came to tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, Trump and Republicans felt the nation's finances were firm enough to give up more than $1,500,000,000,000. When it's time to spend a fraction of that to help poor people eat, that's when the well has supposedly run dry."

[Tero]

I guess they should all pack up and get those jobs welding tar sands pipeline and fracking out West? Maybe The Wall fencing too.

[Scot Dutchy]

Poor boy.

Trump cuts short Nato summit after fellow leaders' hot-mic video

Aa furious Donald Trump cut short his attendance at the Nato summit in London after a group of leaders, including Boris Johnson, was caught on video ridiculing the US president at Buckingham Palace for staging lengthy press conferences.

The notoriously thin-skinned Trump cancelled a planned press conference and branded the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, “two-faced” after he was revealed on video leading the laughter at Trump’s expense together with other US allies.

Trump said the Canadian leader was probably angry because he called him out over Canada’s failure to meet the Nato target of spending 2% of its GDP on defence, a target that has developed a shibboleth status in the president’s eyes and underlines his transactional approach to the western defence alliance.

Footage emerged late on Tuesday that appears to show world leaders joking about Trump at the summit, which has been marked by sharp disagreements over spending and future threats, including China and Turkey’s role in the alliance, as well as a clash of personalities that triggered a flurry of incendiary language being deployed by leaders.

The video shows leaders including Trudeau, Johnson, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, and Princess Anne at the Buckingham Palace event on Tuesday evening.

Johnson asks Macron: “Is that why he was late?” before Trudeau interjects: “He was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top.”

Trudeau adds: “Oh, yeah, yeah yeah. He announced … ” before he is cut off by Macron, who speaks animatedly to the group. Macron’s back is to the camera and his words are inaudible.

After an edited cut in the film, the footage later shows an incredulous Trudeau telling the group: “You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor.”

[JimC]

Narcissistic personalities don't deal well with being laughed at...

[Sean Hayden]

How is an "able-bodied" adult without children the most vulnerable person in our society?

I think aid should be based on need. You shouldn't have to jump through hoops. You simply demonstrate you can't afford to feed yourself and you get the help. This meets people where they are at.

I don't need to pretend you're the most vulnerable, or any other nonsense. For all I know you could be a piece of shit, but you gotta eat.

[Tero]

"We are going to have so much fun without you losers,” said the U.S. commander in chief of the impromptu new intergovernmental alliance he formed after proclaiming that “the old NATO is stupid,” explaining that he had already poured billions of dollars of funding into the collective to ensure they have the “best summit ever.” “France and Canada think they’re so cool, but we could totally destroy them in a fight. I already met with Qaboos, Stevo, and Dési, and we’re gonna get matching satin jackets and they’re gonna look sick.” At press time, Trump was already threatening to pull out of his newly formed alliance after accusing its members of not paying their fair share of the budget.

[Tero]

In a sweeping 300-page document released this week, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee outlined evidence that they say proves President Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2020 elections for personal gain

[Joe]

Narcissistic personalities don't deal well with being laughed at...

Note to Democrats. Fire the policy advisers and hire comics.

[pErvinalia]

Why isn't John Stewart running in 2020?

[Tero]

Why is nobody significant (ten governors) with a political future running?

[Tero]

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CNN
Washington (CNN)The prosecutor chosen by Attorney General William Barr to examine how US agencies investigated President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign has said he cannot provide evidence to the Justice Department's inspector general in support of a theory that the case was a setup, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz contacted multiple US intelligence agencies and Connecticut federal prosecutor John Durham -- who Barr appointed to lead a separate review of the 2016 investigation into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia -- to ask whether a Maltese professor who communicated with a Trump campaign staffer was actually a US intelligence asset attempting to trap the campaign, the people told The Post.

The intelligence agencies said the professor was not their asset and Durham told Horowitz he didn't have evidence that would refute the inspector general's findings on that point, the people said.

Horowitz's report, which is due to be released next Monday, is expected to conclude that the FBI's investigation was legally predicated, despite errors and potential wrongdoing by some lower-level FBI employees involved in it, CNN reported last month.

The report is also expected to conclude that Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, was appropriately targeted for surveillance and the FBI appropriately disassociated itself from Christopher Steele, a former British spy who's the author of the infamous dossier about President Donald Trump, after leaks and contacts with the media were uncovered.

But despite this, Barr -- a longtime skeptic of the Russia probe, and particularly the FBI's tactics to investigate Trump campaign associates -- has told conservative allies Horowitz's report won't be the last word on the matter.

Instead, the attorney general has told allies to wait for Durham's investigation, which he believes will be more complete.

Durham is a Trump appointee who has investigated numerous public corruption cases under Republican and Democratic administrations.
He was appointed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate corruption surrounding the use of FBI informants in Boston in the late 1990s, and later called on to investigate the CIA's destruction of videotapes of detainee interrogations in 2008.
CNN's Laura Jarrett, Evan Perez and David Shortell contributed to this report.

[Tero]

https://mobile.twitter.com/P_Lepinkaine ... 9600583682

[Tero]

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[Woodbutcher]

17F9F3A8-25CB-42F4-B449-B56838EAB41B.jpeg

Aha! This is why he said he had insurance....a dacha in Ukraine!

[Tero]

Rudy is trawling for conspiracies far and wide, feeding it to conpiracy radio and TV:

Rudy Giuliani has found a new ally in his globe-trotting attempts to fight President Trump’s impeachment, teaming up with a cable-news reporter and conspiracy-theory political cartoonist who has suggested that Hillary Clinton killed Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich and that Democrats eat people.

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported Giuliani traveled to Hungary and Ukraine this week to set up interviews with former Ukrainian prosecutors who have been critical of former Vice President Joe Biden. The interviews are meant for a series on pro-Trump cable channel One America News hosted by Rion, a reporter, anti-feminist children’s book author, and political cartoonist.

In October, Rion claimed that former FBI lawyer Lisa Page had an affair with former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Rion’s vaguely sourced report went viral in corners of the right-wing blogosphere that has become obsessed with Page’s sex life and her connection to the investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia. But Rion’s network quietly retracted the entire story later that month.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/rudy-giul ... save-trump