Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

What in the world? No seriously, what the…? When it comes to Saudi Arabia these days, things could not get weirder or uglier. Last November, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman forced Lebanon’s Prime Minister to resign—from Riyadh in a television appearance that had all the characteristics of a hostage video. At the same time, Saudi authorities detained almost 400 people in the Ritz-Carlton over corruption charges, only to release them after they handed over significant sums of cash and assets in what appeared to be little more than a shakedown. This past spring and summer, the government began arresting women activists, some of whom had been at the forefront of the decadeslong fight to drive that ended with a lift on the ban in June, and declared them traitors. Then, in August, Saudi leaders lashed out at Canada over a tweet criticizing their treatment of oppositionists—canceling flights, preventing Saudi students on government scholarship from studying at Canadian universities, and transferring sick Saudis from Canada’s hospitals. All of this was going on against the backdrop of the ill-conceived war in Yemen.

And now, a Saudi journalist named Jamal Khashoggi—a onetime confidant of senior Saudi officials and princes—has vanished. He disappeared into Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate on Oct. 2 and has not been heard from since. The Turks say he is dead, killed in the consulate by a hit team, with his body removed in boxes. The Saudis have declared this grisly tale nonsense and insist Khashoggi left the consulate not long after he arrived.

The most important question has been left unanswered, of course: What happened to Jamal Khashoggi? It seems abundantly clear that he never left the consulate, and the Saudi explanation that they cannot prove it because their security cameras weren’t working that day has a “dog ate my homework” quality to it. If he is not dead and really is a runaway groom, then surely someone must have seen him somewhere—there must be a trail of credit card charges, ATM transactions, or grainy footage from the departure gates at the airport in Istanbul before he made his getaway.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[xy5jn0]

He's already got those votes. He's using the corn subsidies to drive the price of gas down. It looks good on paper, even if it's less efficient and damages engines.

It's also a secondary concession to the corn lobby after dropping tariffs on sugar from Canada. Corn prices would suffer from increased competition without the increase in ethanol use.

So we consumers get screwed twice with more car repairs and higher corn prices. I doubt the drop in sugar prices will compensate.

Bakers will like it lol.
I pretty much agree. There's never anyone that does everything the way I think it should be done.
Overall I still believe he's doing a great job. Reagan too, had his mistakes. So did Clinton whom I thought did great with the economy.

 

[xy5jn0]

ADMISSION: Some Anti-Kavanaugh Protesters WERE Paid To Help Make 'Viral Moments’

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Jamieson is, simply put, the last person you'd ever label a "conspiracy theorist."

Which is exactly why her brand-new book — Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President — dropped like a neutron bomb right into the middle of 2018's fraught midterm elections. Jamieson's data-driven tome raises the notion that Russia's 2016 election interference campaign of hacked emails and Facebook trolls tipped the election to President Trump from the stuff of Twitter memes to the realm of academic proof.

The Penn professor's argument is bolstered not just by her decades-long reputation as a thought leader in the intersection of politics and communications, but by the fact that — like most of her ilk — she tended at first to dismiss the notion that Russian meddling had reached the level that it had caused Trump to win and Hillary Clinton to lose.

 

[xy5jn0]

A white guy calling another white guy "whitey" lmao

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

tRUMPFuckingIdiot ...

"Drew it."

 

[xy5jn0]

 

[xy5jn0]

 

[xy5jn0]

 

[xy5jn0]

Trump holds 'Make America Great Again' rally in Iowa

 

[flenser]

Bakers will like it lol.
I pretty much agree. There's never anyone that does everything the way I think it should be done.
Overall I still believe he's doing a great job. Reagan too, had his mistakes. So did Clinton whom I thought did great with the economy.

Those presidents all had one thing in common, cheap money. Clinton was the luckiest, since corporations and foolish investors were doing all the borrowing. But borrowing money from the Fed tends to end badly regardless of the sitting president's politics. With the 10Y bond yield approaching 3.25% I suspect the end is nigh.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

ISTANBUL — As Jamal Khashoggi prepared to enter the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, a squad of men from Saudi Arabia who investigators suspect played a role in his disappearance was ready and in place.

They had arrived from Riyadh, the Saudi capital, early that morning and checked in at two international hotels in Istanbul before driving to the consulate in the leafy Levent neighborhood, said two people with knowledge of the investigation. One of them, the Mövenpick Hotel Istanbul, is a few minutes from the consulate by car.

By the end of the day, a 15-member Saudi team had conducted its business and left the country, departing on planes bound for Cairo and Dubai, according to flight records and the people familiar with the investigation.

Turkish officials have previously said they believe that Khashoggi, a prominent journalist and critic of the Saudi government, was killed inside the consulate.

Before Khashoggi’s disappearance, U.S. intelligence intercepted communications of Saudi officials discussing a plan to capture him, according to a person familiar with the information. The Saudis wanted to lure Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia and lay hands on him there, this person said. It was not clear whether the Saudis intended to arrest and interrogate Khashoggi or to kill him, or if the United States warned Khashoggi that he was a target, this person said.

Saudi officials, however, have denied reports that they sent a 15-man team to Istanbul on the day Khashoggi disappeared, saying that the only team they sent to Turkey consisted of investigators who arrived Saturday to help find the journalist.

According to flight records, two privately owned planes flying from Riyadh arrived in Istanbul on Oct. 2, one before sunrise and the other in the late afternoon. A Turkish official linked the call signals of the two twin-engine Gulfstream IV planes to those that investigators believe carried the 15 Saudis. The planes are owned by Riyadh-based Sky Prime Aviation Services, according to public records.

Turkey’s government says it has seen no evidence supporting the Saudi claim that Khashoggi ever left the consulate alive.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

In the final months of President Obama’s administration, the government’s top consumer regulator was negotiating a large settlement with the student loan collector Navient, which it said had misled borrowers and made mistakes that added billions of dollars to their bills.

But after President Trump’s victory, the talks between the company and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau broke down. Two days before his inauguration, the bureau sued Navient, accusing it of “systematically and illegally failing borrowers at every stage of repayment.” Two states, Illinois and Washington, simultaneously filed their own suits in state courts.

As the bureau has taken a softer approach toward industries, including payday lending, and had its own acting director say it too often exceeds its authority, the possibility that the Trump administration will ease up on Navient has prompted more states to join the legal fray. Five have now sued Navient, two of them within the past four months.

“There is growing concern among myself and state attorneys general that the federal government is not only losing interest in holding student loan servicers like Navient accountable, but that the federal government is actively looking for ways to shut down state enforcement actions against Navient and other student loan servicers,” said Jim Hood, the Mississippi attorney general, who sued Navient in July. “The timing of filing our lawsuit reflects that concern.”

Two years ago, Navient was willing to reach a settlement to end the bureau’s three-year investigation. It would adjust how it serviced loans and write off some private loans it owned that were considered predatory, according to three people familiar with the talks.

But after Election Day, there was a greater sense of urgency from officials at the bureau — a frequent target for criticism by Republicans. The bureau and a group of state attorneys general, who were conducting their own investigation, aimed high: fines and debt relief that together would have topped $1 billion, the people said.

The talks fell apart, prompting suits against Navient alleging that the company had harmed hundreds of thousands of borrowers by failing to steer them toward the loan repayment options that would have been best for them. Borrowers incurred nearly $4 billion in additional interest charges that could have been avoided, the plaintiffs argued in legal filings.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The Vostok-2018 war games in eastern Siberia last month marked Russia's biggest military exercise in more than 30 years, with about 300,000 Russian, Chinese and Mongolian troops taking part.

More than just an exercise, the war games were a public relations opportunity to showcase military hardware, Russia's second-biggest source of income after oil.

During Vostok-2018, Russia showed off the S-400 surface-to-air missile, one of the country's most advanced and marketable weapons systems in recent years.

The S-400 is a massive upgrade to the S-300, its predecessor which was recently sent to Syria.

Because of its capabilities, several countries including China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Indiaand Qatar have said they are willing to buy the S-400.

Almost every government that announced it was planning to buy the system was threatened with some kind of diplomatic retaliation from the US, NATO or adversaries.

The reason for this blowback, according to several experts Al Jazeera interviewed, is not only because the S-400 is technologically advanced, it also poses a potential risk for long-standing alliances

 

[Michael Scally MD]