The Trouble With Normal-Day 2
Robert Reich Has a Chilling Theory About Those Berkeley Protesters
WASHINGTON ― The morning after a federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of a travel ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries, President Donald Trump did what he often does when faced with a challenge: He launched a personal attack on Twitter at someone he saw as an opponent.
In his first public response to the nationwide halt of his week-old executive order, Trump appeared to suggest that U.S. District Judge James Robart of the Western District of Washington, who was appointed by a Republican president, wasn’t legitimate and that his decision would soon be made irrelevant.
This week broke all the records for phone calls to the U.S. Senate as America rises up to reject Popular Vote Loser Donald Trump, his basket of deplorable cabinet nominees, and his plans to repeal Obamacare.
A GOP consultant who was once asked to head up communications for now-President Donald Trump tweeted out a laundry list of suggestions to the media Saturday morning on how to best push back at a White House administration that continues to threaten them.
According to writer and media consultant Cheri Jacobus, “The days of pretending” what is happening under Trump isn’t “serious” is over and it is time for a concerted push-back.
Donald Trump Ordered To Pay $5.77 Million To Golf Club Members He Stiffed
The Florida business violated a contract, a federal judge ruled.
A Florida golf course owned by President Donald Trump has been ordered to immediately pay $5.77 million to former members who were denied refunds when the real estate mogul bought the club five years ago.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra ruled that Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter violated contracts that members had signed with the previous owner and were assumed by Trump when he bought the club in 2012. The average payment is expected be about $87,000 for each of the 65 members involved in the case. The members were awarded $4.8 million, plus $925,000 in interest.
The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department said Saturday they would stop enforcing key provisions of President Donald Trump’s travel ban after a federal judge temporarily blocked the executive order.
The State Department said it has reversed its revocation of approximately 60,000 visas for people from seven predominately Muslim countries. DHS said it “suspended any and all actions implementing the affected sections of the Executive Order.” Those actions include flagging travelers from the affected countries.
Donald Trump, the man who positioned himself as the common man’s shield against Wall Street, signed a series of orders today calling for reviews or rollbacks of financial regulations. He did so after meeting with some friendly helpers.
Matt Taibbi: The Vampire Squid Occupies Trump’s White House After running against Goldman as a candidate, Donald Trump licks the boots of the world’s largest investment bank
Here’s how CNBC described the crowd of Wall Street CEOs Trump received, before he ordered a review of both the Dodd-Frank Act and the fiduciary rule requiring investment advisors to act in their clients’ interests:
“Trump also will meet at the White House with leading CEOs, including JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman, and BlackRock’s Larry Fink.”
‘Trump is setting us free:’ White supremacists celebrate reports that Trump will dial down scrutiny
“This is absolutely a signal of favor to us.”
Online neo-Nazi and white supremacist forums have been unmistakably jubilant lately, as web chatter moved from celebrating President Donald Trump’s electoral victory to celebrating individual cabinet appointments and policy proposals.
On Thursday, internet racists celebrated another perceived victory: Reports that President Trump will soon remove white nationalist groups from a federal effort to study and neutralize extremist radicalization, and rebrand the program to focus solely on groups associating themselves with Islam.
Trump Has 2 Events This Weekend — And Both Benefit His Businesses
The president will attend the Red Cross Ball at his Mar-A-Lago estate, and a Super Bowl party at his Palm Beach golf resort.
Trump will spend Saturday and Sunday nights attending private events where his presence, and the attendant press coverage of the president, stand to directly benefit the properties’ bottom lines. Given that Trump earns income from both of these properties, his decision ― as president ― to attend events there creates the appearance that he may be using the presidency to increase the visibility, prestige and financial value of his clubs.
Donald Trump Is Breaking His Promise To Be Tough On Wall Street
The president’s agenda is full-throttle deregulation.
If there was ever doubt that President Donald Trump’s tough talk on big banks was an empty show, his first 12 days in office have put it to rest.
Trump is governing like a run-of-the-mill, deregulating Wall Street crony, despite his populist campaign rhetoric: His party’s platform pledged to return to the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which broke up big financial institutions by separating investment and commercial banking; he vowed to close a tax provision that saves private equity managers billions of dollars; he lambasted his opponent for her ties to Goldman Sachs, and he assailed the bank’s CEO in an election ad.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Horowitz, “has become the premier financier of anti-Muslim voices and radical ideologies, as well as acting as an exporter of misinformation that seeks to increase popular appeal for Horowitz’s fears and phobias.” This is also the same Horowitz who famously said, referring to the approximately a quarter of world’s population that adhere to the religion of Islam, “The problem is when you have a religion which preaches war and violence and hate, rationality is never gonna take over.”
“I personally wish that he had never run, I told him that, because I actually think this is something that is gonna be detrimental to his mental health too, because, he wants to be liked, he wants to be loved,” Stern said. “He wants people to cheer for him.”
When Stephen Colbert decided to close out 2016 on “The Late Show” with a rendition of R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It,” it was already getting hard to find much irony in the litany of disasters we had witnessed.
As Salon wrote about the remixed song, “From the Zika virus and Harambe to Donald Trump’s pussy-grabbing clip, Stephen Colbert hit the nail on the head in his review of 2016.” But much of the song also highlighted what 2016 had lined up for 2017: “Vitriolic, xenophobic, troll spite, Fourth Reich!” Colbert sang.
What makes for efficacious progressive politics? Rorty has been cited much recently as predicting the rise of Trump. In this book, he gives us a history of the political left, and draws a dividing line between old-time reformist leftist intellectuals like Upton Sinclair who worked for real change and post-’60s cultural critics like Slavoj Žižek who seem to believe that we are past hope. Rorty thinks we leftists need to reconnect with national pride, which he considers not a matter of jingoism or reverence for the government in power, but of hope in the American project, which is always being achieved. Our goal is a classless, casteless society: a society that produces less unnecessary suffering than any others and is the best means to the creation of a greater diversity of full, imaginative, daring individuals.
Federal judge temporarily blocks travel ban
Normal air service to the U.S. was resuming Saturday after a federal judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order barring entry by people from seven predominantly Muslim nations.
For now, it appears the order by U.S. District Court Senior Judge James L. Robart means that holders of U.S. visas or green cards allowing them to live and work in the U.S. can fly into the country as before. Trump’s order affected citizens of Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Yemen.
