LingcodKilla posted:

It is once we stick our dick in it.

Nostalgia4Infinity posted:

Your daily dose of

http://huff.to/2m1ACL4

LtCol J. Krusinski posted:

I love knight croolers!

Hot Karl Marx posted:

Gobbeldygook posted:

We've collectively forgotten what utter children some of our previous presidents were. Bush Sr.:

"President Bush declared today that he never, ever, wants to see another sprig of broccoli on his plate, whether he is on Air Force One or at the White House or anywhere else in the land.

''I do not like broccoli,'' the President said, responding to queries about a broccoli ban he has imposed aboard Air Force One, first reported this week in U.S. News and World Report. ''And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States, and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli!''"

cowboy elvis posted:

Not even going to pretend that if I were president, the kitchen staff would keep like three Tombstone pizzas on hand at all times.

EVA BRAUN BLOWJOBS posted:

SwampDonkey posted:

Not a poo poo post.


http://abc7chicago.com/news/veteran-fighting-deportation-after-2-tours-in-afghanistan/1739129/

quote:

Donald Trump’s latest series of tweets, which allege the Obama administration “had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory,” have been widely described as baseless. But, while it may not be true that the Obama White House directly orchestrated a plot to monitor the Trump campaign—indeed, Obama has refuted the allegations—Trump’s claims are loosely based on existing evidence that the FBI was doing so as part of an investigation into Trump staffers’ alleged ties to Russia.

Interpreting Trump's tweets often involves figuring out what was on conservative media the night or hour before. In this case, several observers have tagged a Thursday night broadcast by conservative talk radio host Mark Levin, or a Friday summary of the broadcast on Brietbart News, as possible sources. (If true, this would represent an expansion of Trump’s usual cable-TV-heavy information diet).

Levin and Breitbart’s thesis is that the Obama administration used “police state” tactics to undermine Trump, a claim rooted, though a little loosely, in existing reporting. The Guardian has reported that the FBI applied for a Foreign Intelligence Service Act (FISA) warrant last summer to monitor members of the Trump campaign, but was denied in its initial attempt. Last November, former British MP and openly anti-Trump journalist Louise Mensch reported that the FBI had succeeded in its second request for a FISA warrant, which was later confirmed by the BBC.
Such a warrant would only have been granted if the FBI—not the Obama administration—was able to convince a judge that the Trump campaign had credible links to a foreign power.

The key distinction is that this was an FBI investigation, not an order from the White House itself. Commenting on this morning’s tweets, an Obama spokesman told the New York Times that “no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice.” FBI Director James Comey downplayed the existence of such an investigation at the time, perhaps explaining Trump's having just learned about the efforts.
The roots of the FISA warrant were themselves odd. According to both Mensch and the BBC, they centered on a server in Trump Tower found last Spring to have been communicating with Russia’s Alfa Bank, itself reportedly with strong ties to Vladimir Putin. The FBI reportedly came to conclude that the communications were likely innocuous.
One thing that is painfully clear in all of this is the widely divergent frames that can be put around a set of events. Where Trump’s critics see a legal investigation into foreign influence, he (and presumably his supporters) see a “McCarthyist” abuse of power of the same criminal stripe as the Watergate break-in.Only one of those interpretations can be right.

Handsome Ralph posted:

Any other pol would be smart enough to not touch Comey but if Trump tries to get him to resign or fall on his sword...Ohhhh boy, that will not go over well for him in the long run.

Piell posted:

Spicer says Trump will not accept a result from Congress on the wiretapping that he doesn't like.

KildarX posted:

What?it'd be more surprising if he did.

quote:

General Motors is laying off 1,100 workers in Michigan -- the fourth layoff it's announced since November.

The company is eliminating the third shift at its Lansing Delta Township plant, which makes three SUVs built on the same platform -- the Chevrolet Traverse, the Buick Enclave and the GMC Acadia. But the new version of the Acadia is being built on a smaller platform, so production of that car moved to a Spring Hill, Tenn., plant last summer.

There are currently 3,144 workers at the Lansing plant. The workers who are keeping their jobs are pretty safe -- the company just invested $583 million in the plant to make the new generation of Traverses and Enclaves there.

GM has been scaling back production and employment due to lower U.S. sales.

In November, GM said it was eliminating the third shift at the nearby Lansing Grand River plant, as well as at the Lordstown Ohio plant. Those layoffs, which were the first U.S. job cuts announced by GM since 2010, took place in late January.

Then in December it announced plans to eliminate the third shift at its only remaining facility within Detroit city limits -- the Detroit Hamtramck plant.
The four rounds of layoffs will cut a total of 4,400 jobs. The company employed 105,000 as of the end of last year. However, GM still has more U.S. employees now than it did in 2015, when it employed 97,000 workers.

quote:

Trump University Lawsuits May Not Be Closed After All
President Trump’s postelection agreement to pay $25 million appeared to settle the fraud claims arising from his defunct for-profit education venture, Trump University. But a former student is now asking to opt out of the settlement, a move that, if permitted, could put the deal in jeopardy.

Lawyers for the student, Sherri Simpson of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Monday asked a federal judge in San Diego to reject the settlement unless former students are given an opportunity to be excluded from the deal so they can sue Mr. Trump individually.

If the judge, Gonzalo Curiel, decides that Ms. Simpson and potentially others should have that chance, legal experts say it could disrupt the settlement because Mr. Trump and his lawyers saw the deal as a way to resolve all of the claims, once and for all, to avoid a trial and distractions to his presidency.

“If even one person could opt out of the settlement and force a trial, that might, in fact, crater the deal,” said Shaun Martin, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. “I’m sure Judge Curiel will be aware of that.”

The agreement, announced in November, appeared to resolve years of hotly contested litigation, including two federal class-action cases in San Diego and a separate suit by Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general. Students maintained that they were cheated out of tuition through high-pressure sales tactics and misleading claims about what they would learn. At one point during the contentious case, Mr. Trump questioned Judge Curiel’s impartiality based on his Mexican heritage.

Mr. Trump, who has rejected the claims and did not acknowledge fault in the settlement, posted on Twitter after the settlement announcement that the only downside of his winning the presidency was that it meant he “did not have the time to go through a long but winning trial on Trump U.”

Patrick Coughlin, a lawyer representing the class-action plaintiffs, said that it was a “terrific settlement” and that the objection seemed “politically motivated.” He said he feared that the objection could result in delays for students who have waited years to get money back. “She could have excluded herself before and pursued her own litigation,” he said. “That time passed.”

Lawyers for Mr. Trump did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Monday is the deadline for students to file claims to participate in the settlement, or object to it — as in the case of Ms. Simpson.

Her lawyers argue that a notice sent to students about the class-action lawsuits in 2015 left the impression that they could later request to be excluded from a settlement, but that opportunity was not afforded to them in the agreement.

“There was precious little reason to exercise the right to opt out at that juncture” in 2015, wrote one of Ms. Simpson’s lawyers, Gary Friedman of New York, in the objection filed on Monday. “The case was barreling towards trial, by all accounts.”

Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said that Judge Curiel would probably give the objection serious consideration, but that he would have to weigh it against “substantial pressure to hold the deal together.”

“A lot of work has gone into this, and people are generally satisfied all around,” Mr. Tobias said.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers have said that they would waive their fees and that they expected roughly 7,000 former students to recover half to all of what they spent on courses.

If they are allowed, it is not clear how many former students may seek to opt out.

In 2010, Ms. Simpson — a lawyer who spoke out about her Trump University experience during last year’s campaign — paid $1,495 for a three-day seminar, in which she said instructors pressured her to sign up for the $35,000 “Gold Elite” program under the premise that she would have access to the “resources of Mr. Trump and his real estate organization,” she wrote in a sworn statement. She split the fee with another student, spending about $19,000 in total, Mr. Friedman said.

But she soon grew dissatisfied when promises went unfulfilled. She wrote, “The Gold Elite program was a scam.”