President Donald Trump's Final Days...

[Arturo2nd]

One must admit that Angella Reid does really fit in with the Trump administration. If they weren't cutting jobs at HUD, Ben Carson might have had a place for her.

[Rogerbh]

Trump is known for replacing average looking women at his golf clubs with attractive women, perhaps he will be employing someone more "deserving" of his wandering fingers.
http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-pol-trump-women/

[HugoHackenbush]

Originally Posted by SanteeFats

Yeah I don't hold with the POTUS being the one to credit for the economy unless action(s) of theirs can be shown to be responsible. I must admit I was trolling a little bit to see what would happen . Curses foiled again by a logical response.

You should see my Facebook feed Santee. I have people falling all over themselves to give Trump credit for this. Despite as Diamelsx correctly point out, this is the result of long term trends. I also recall that these are the same people who called the unemployment numbers "phony" when they favored Obama, despite them being measured the same way for over 20 years, including Trump himself who said the numbers were closer to 40%.

My investment portfolio doubled in value during the Obama administration. I don't think he really deserves the credit for this, as economic factors as well as the stock market are incredibly complicated. But then again, he didn't screw it up either.

[tsunamiSD]

I hope that this is a case where someone will get an injunction to stop this...

Dept of the Interior IDs 27 monuments for possible end to protections

The Interior Department on Friday identified 27 national monuments, mostly in Western states, that it is reviewing for possible changes to the protections created by Republican and Democratic presidents over the past two decades. President Donald Trump ordered the review last month, saying protections imposed by his three immediate predecessors amounted to “a massive federal land grab” that “should never have happened.”
A list released Friday includes 22 monuments on federal land in 11, mostly Western states, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Nevada’s Basin and Range and Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine.
The review also targets five marine monuments in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, including a huge reserve in Hawaii established in 2006 by President George W. Bush and expanded last year by President Barack Obama.

In December, shortly before leaving office, Obama infuriated Utah Republicans by creating the Bears Ears National Monument on more than 1 million acres of land that’s sacred to Native Americans and home to tens of thousands of archaeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings.
Republicans in the state asked Trump to take the unusual step of reversing Obama’s decision. They said the monument designation will stymie growth by closing the area to new commercial and energy development. The Antiquities Act does not give the president explicit power to undo a designation and no president has ever taken such a step.
Trump’s order also targets the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, created by Clinton in 1996, and Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine, created last year by Obama. At 87,500 acres, Katahdin is the only one of the 22 monuments under review that is smaller than 100,000 acres, the minimum size designated by the order.

*****


FoxNews: Sister of Jared Kushner reportedly pitches US visa in exchange for $500G investment

The sister of White House senior adviser Jared Kushner reportedly pushed Chinese citizens in a presentation at a Beijing hotel to invest hundreds of dollars in a luxury New Jersey apartment complex that would help them obtain an investor visa.

The program Meyer flouted in the presentation Saturday is called the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. It allows wealthy foreign investors who are willing to invest large sums in U.S. projects that create jobs to apply to immigrate to the U.S., according to The Post. The Trump and Kushner businesses have both benefited from the visa program, according to Bloomberg. Jared Kushner had raised some $50 million from visa applicants for a Trump-backed apartment building in Jersey City, N.J.

longer version from Chicago Times

Watchdogs and ethics experts on Saturday criticized the Beijing event as an attempt to cash in on Kushner's newfound proximity to power.
"It's incredibly stupid and highly inappropriate," said Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer in President George W. Bush's administration, who has become a vocal critic of the Trump administration. "They clearly imply that the Kushners are going to make sure you get your visa. . . . They're [Chinese applicants] not going to take a chance. Of course they're going to want to invest."

The program has been used to the benefit both the Trump and Kushner family businesses. Before joining the White House, as chief executive of his family's real estate company, Jared Kushner raised $50 million from Chinese EB-5 applicants for a Trump-branded apartment building in Jersey City, according to the report.Blake Roberts, an attorney at the WilmerHale law firm who serves as Kushner's personal counsel, said: "Mr. Kushner divested his interests in the One Journal Square project by selling them to a family trust that he is not a beneficiary of, a mechanism suggested by the Office of Government Ethics. As previously stated, he will recuse from particular matters concerning the EB-5 visa program."
The EB-5 program has been criticized by members of Congress from both parties who have said the program in essence sells visas to the wealthiest foreigners.
The program has been extremely popular among rich Chinese, who call it the "golden visa" and are eager to get their families - and their wealth - out of the country. The fact that some use it to move their money out illegally, however, has made the program unpopular with the Chinese authorities.

[Devius]

US President Donald Trump has dismissed FBI director James Comey, White House says.

"Today, President Donald J Trump informed FBI Director James Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office," said a White House statement.

The surprise move comes after it emerged Mr Comey gave inaccurate information about Hillary Clinton's emails to Congress last week.

Mrs Clinton has blamed Mr Comey for her election defeat to Donald Trump.

Details:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39866170

[tsunamiSD]

Originally Posted by Devius

Mrs Clinton has blamed Mr Comey for her election defeat to Donald Trump.

Details:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39866170

this from Nate Silver...

The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election

Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College.
The letter isn’t the only reason that Clinton lost. It does not excuse every decision the Clinton campaign made. Other factors may have played a larger role in her defeat, and it’s up to Democrats to examine those as they choose their strategy for 2018 and 2020.
But the effect of those factors — say, Clinton’s decision to give paid speeches to investment banks, or her messaging on pocket-book issues, or the role that her gender played in the campaign — is hard to measure. The impact of Comey’s letter is comparatively easy to quantify, by contrast. At a maximum, it might have shifted the race by 3 or 4 percentage points toward Donald Trump, swinging Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida to him, perhaps along with North Carolina and Arizona. At a minimum, its impact might have been only a percentage point or so. Still, because Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than 1 point, the letter was probably enough to change the outcome of the Electoral College.

And yet, from almost the moment that Trump won the White House, many mainstream journalists have been in denial about the impact of Comey’s letter. The article that led The New York Times’s website the morning after the election did not mention Comey or “FBI” even once — a bizarre development considering the dramatic headlines that the Times had given to the letter while the campaign was underway. Books on the campaign have treated Comey’s letter as an incidental factor, meanwhile. And even though Clinton herself has repeatedly brought up the letter — including in comments she made at an event in New York on Tuesday — many pundits have preferred to change the conversation when the letter comes up, waving it away instead of debating the merits of the case.
The motivation for this seems fairly clear: If Comey’s letter altered the outcome of the election, the media may have some responsibility for the result. The story dominated news coverage for the better part of a week, drowning out other headlines, whether they were negative for Clinton (such as the news about impending Obamacare premium hikes) or problematic for Trump (such as his alleged ties to Russia). And yet, the story didn’t have a punchline: Two days before the election, Comey disclosed that the emails hadn’t turned up anything new.

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by Devius

US President Donald Trump has dismissed FBI director James Comey, White House says.

"Today, President Donald J Trump informed FBI Director James Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office," said a White House statement.

The surprise move comes after it emerged Mr Comey gave inaccurate information about Hillary Clinton's emails to Congress last week.

Mrs Clinton has blamed Mr Comey for her election defeat to Donald Trump.

Details:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39866170

Isn't it interesting that this move comes immediately after Comey testified that the investigations into ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government were ongoing? Does anyone doubt that this is the last we hear of these probes?

Jeff Sessions certainly "recused" himself.

[LadyLuck]

Given the way Comey botched the Clinton email investigation I would think people would be glad to see him go. Just because Comey is gone why do people make the leap to the Trump/Russian investigation being over? Trump didn't sack the entire FBI. That story isn't going away. The Dems wailed when Comey mistreated HRC and now they're wailing because he gets canned (for good cause). You cannot please some people.

[jcjc7]

Originally Posted by LadyLuck

Given the way Comey botched the Clinton email investigation I would think people would be glad to see him go. Just because Comey is gone why do people make the leap to the Trump/Russian investigation being over? Trump didn't sack the entire FBI. That story isn't going away. The Dems wailed when Comey mistreated HRC and now they're wailing because he gets canned (for good cause). You cannot please some people.

Strange how he hasn't been fired from January 20th until now huh? Just like it's strange how the countries where the 9/11 terrorists came from were excluded from his travel ban.

[diamelsx]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

Isn't it interesting that this move comes immediately after Comey testified that the investigations into ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government were ongoing? Does anyone doubt that this is the last we hear of these probes?

Jeff Sessions certainly "recused" himself.

Originally Posted by LadyLuck

Given the way Comey botched the Clinton email investigation I would think people would be glad to see him go. Just because Comey is gone why do people make the leap to the Trump/Russian investigation being over? Trump didn't sack the entire FBI. That story isn't going away. The Dems wailed when Comey mistreated HRC and now they're wailing because he gets canned (for good cause). You cannot please some people.

Firing someone is not a problem, firing someone all of a sudden with no replacement ready while that person is investigating you and your dealings raises suspicions just a bit.