President-elect Donald Trump touted resilient holiday spending and a strong stock market in a self-congratulatory tweet on Monday evening.Of course, the point that the September forecasts for Xmas spending were consistent with what happened makes no difference to The Grifter-Elect.
"The world was gloomy before I won - there was no hope. Now the market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!" the president-elect tweeted on Boxing Day.
Massive brawls and food-court fights played out at more than a dozen malls across the country in what proved to be a chaotic day after Christmas.Mall operators are balancing the idea of restricting teenagers to their need for foot traffic.
They're always on. It's a major selling point used by Amazon for it's Echo personal assistant.Yeah, who could have seen that this would happen?
Bentonville Police Department said it's why they want the device, and it could help solve a murder that happened over a year ago.
The attorney for James Andrew Bates said it's an invasion of privacy.
Allen Bates, James father said, "I have a strong feeling about personal privacy. But I have a much stronger feeling about my sons innocence."
Back in November of 2015, police said they were called to James Bates' home. That's where they found 47-year-old, Victor Collins dead, drowned inside a hot tub.
Bentonville Police Department hope any audio recordings can help decipher just what went on in the house that winter night.
Jason Miller, who was tapped only two days ago to be White House communications director, announced Saturday that he will not join Donald Trump’s administration.No ambitious political opeative turns down a job like that two days after the public announcement.
In a statement to POLITICO, Miller said the decision to back out of the job stemmed from a need to spend more time with his family. He noted that he and his wife are expecting their second child next month.
The New York co-chair for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign said his wishes for 2017 are to see President Obama have sex with a cow and die from mad cow disease and for Michelle Obama to be “let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe.”I suppose that it's only fair to wish that Paladino suffers fatal burns from his kerosene-soaked robes catching fire at his next cross-burning.
Carl Paladino also said he wants the outgoing President to be buried next to close advisor Valerie Jarrett, who he’d like to see convicted of treason and decapitated in prison by a “jihady (sic) cell mate who mistook (her) for being a nice person.”
As for the First Lady, Paladino — a former GOP gubernatorial candidate — said “I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.”
A former East Point police officer was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for murder and another was sentenced to 18 months in prison for the death of a man who died after he was repeatedly tased.Tasers have been sold, all along, as less-than-lethal self-defense tools. They weren't designed to be used for torturing people.
Fulton Superior Court Judge Henry Newkirk was obligated to sentence former East Point Police Department Sgt. Marcus Eberhart to life after he was convicted Friday of murdering Gregory Towns in April 2014. But the judge had latitude in deciding the punishment for former police Cpl. Howard Weems, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, reckless conduct and violation of an oath by a public officer.
A cybersecurity firm has uncovered strong proof of the tie between the group that hacked the Democratic National Committee and Russia’s military intelligence arm — the primary agency behind the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 election.I have no doubt that the Trump Transition Team has already called in an order of gift baskets and flowers to be delivered to the GRU.
The US Navy is keeping its yeomen, boatswain's mates and masters-at-arms.The Fort Fumble mafia hasn't screwed up this badly since they ditched the traditional sailor' uniform in the early `70s. At least this time, it didn't take years for them to figure it out.
The quartermasters and legalmen will stick around too, not to mention the hospital corpsmen.
After months of withering criticism from rank and file, officials on Wednesday announced a course reversal from an earlier decision to scrap the storied tradition of calling enlisted sailors by their naval occupations.
Donald Trump once suggested he wanted Carl Icahn to be his Treasury secretary. But with that job gone, he instead has tapped Icahn to serve as a special adviser on regulatory reform.Icahn's been a corporate pirate for decades. He is as much a psychopath as "Chainsaw Al" Duncan, men who demolish companies in the name of "shareholder return".
According to a report by John King at CNN, the Trump transition team has been floating the idea of an executive order that would impose a 5% tariff on all imported goods soon after Trump takes office.Smoot-Hawley, anyone? How'd that work out?
Donald Trump's adult sons are opening their father's presidency with a high-price fundraiser at which attendees can win a spot on a half-million-dollar hunting trip with Eric and Donald Jr.Right, fundraising for unspecified conservation organizations. Given their father's history of rather flexible use of charitable donations for his own self-aggrandizement, one would be advised to be extremely skeptical of events such as these.
The sons are hosting a “Camouflage and Cufflinks” event, pitched to ring in the new president’s “Opening Day,” the night of Jan. 21 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington. The attire, according to an invitation, is decidedly relaxed: “Jeans, boots and hats are welcome.”
On Monday, the leaders of Austria's far-right Freedom Party traveled to Moscow and signed a "working agreement" with Russia's ruling United Russia party. In announcing the pact, Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache mentioned that he also met with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's designated national security adviser, in Trump Tower a few weeks ago.As noted, the so-called "Freedom Party" was founded by Austrian Nazis after the war. That a senior Trump functionary is meeting with Austrian Nazis and getting into position to make kissy-face with Russia is rather interesting.
A [truck] has ploughed into a busy Christmas market in the heart of Berlin, killing nine people and injuring many more, police say.And this:
Police say they suspect it was a deliberate attack. Video shows stalls knocked over and people lying injured.
A suspect has been arrested while the suspected co-driver was found dead, police say.
A Turkish policeman has shot dead Russia's ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, apparently in protest at Russia's involvement in Aleppo.Russia in Syria, under the guise of "fighting terrorism", has engaged in aerial butchery of a scale not seen in a very long time. There are allegations that the Russians have deliberately attacked schools and hospitals. Which may be why Russia withdrew from the ICC.
The Army has stripped Maj. Gen. David Haight of three ranks, Army Secretary Eric Fanning said Friday, following revelations contained in documents and interviews of Haight's decade-long extramarital affair and “swinger lifestyle.Haight's real problem is that unlike another general, he didn't have a bunch of powerful politicians as rabbis.
FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the presidency, according to U.S. officials.No doubt that
Comey’s support for the CIA’s conclusion — and officials say that he never changed his position — suggests that the leaders of the three agencies are in agreement on Russian intentions, contrary to suggestions by some lawmakers that the FBI disagreed with the CIA.
Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to Donald Trump, says the president-elect interviewed Mitt Romney for the secretary of State position just to "torture him" for his former criticism.Romney, who as much as I've opposed him politically, is still a decent man. He can't seem to understand that Trump was fucking with him, just to humiliate him in front of the world.
Romney confidants say they still believe Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence were genuinely vetting Romney for the job, with phone calls, a meeting at Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, N.J., and a sumptuous two-hour dinner at Jean Georges in Manhattan, complete with frog legs and diver scallops.The one thing that nobody, other than those in his family, will ever say about Trump at his memorial service was that "he was a decent human being".
The problems occurred after an estimated 3 to 24 gallons of a petroleum-based chemical called Indulin AA-86 seeped into the city's water because of a backflow from an area oil refinery, city officials said.
A jury on Thursday found avowed white supremacist [the Asswipe of Charleston] guilty of federal hate crimes resulting in the deaths of nine black parishioners at a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina, last year.The jury was out for less than two hours. So they selected a foreman, had lunch, and then took a vote and that was it, I'd guess.
Renowned butcher Pat LaFrieda once dared me to eat an eyeball that he himself popped out of the skull of a roasted pig. That eyeball tasted better than the Trump Grill’s (Grille’s) Gold Label Burger, a Pat LaFrieda–branded short-rib burger blend molded into a sad little meat thing, sitting in the center of a massive, rapidly staling brioche bun, hiding its shame under a slice of melted orange cheese. It came with overcooked woody batons called “fries”—how can someone mess up fries?—and ketchup masquerading as Heinz.Trump, of course, can't let anyone get away with saying anything bad about him or his companies, so he had to fire back on Twitter.
Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) on Wednesday questioned the point of investigating Russia’s interference in the presidential election.Even now, a few GOP jackassess haven't given up on the idea that President Obama wasn't eligible to be president. Donald Fucking Trump was a leader of that effort to delegitimize President Obama.
Asked by CNN “New Day" host Alisyn Camerota whether the Kremlin "meddled" in the 2016 race, Collins replied: “I suppose we’ll never know. If we want to stipulate they did as far as hacking and releasing emails, if you want to stipulate that, that’s fine.
“I don’t think we should continue investigations, because at the end, what do we really accomplish? There’s nothing we can do to change it. We need to unite the country. People who are calling Mr. [President-elect Donald] Trump the ‘Electoral College president,’ you know, that’s insulting to our democracy.”
Ivanka Trump will reportedly get an office in the space typically reserved for the first lady, according to CNN.Since Trump has claimed that he'll "divest" by having his kids run his businesses for him, it only makes sense for them to more easily (not) tell the Grifter-in-Chief how his businesses are doing.
Imaginactive has come up with an updated hypersonic jet concept designed to make our world a lot smaller. Named Paradoxal, the aircraft would fly at the edge of space, allowing it to cut trips from Los Angeles to Sydney down to 3 hours, Imaginactive said. Today, that trip takes commercial airlines more than 14 hours to complete. Passengers would sit in one large, theatre-like cabin rather than a narrow tube as they do in today’s commercial airliners.I thought that the whole point of ramjets was that they had no moving parts, but times change.
Paradoxal would be powered by two rotary ramjet engines, which would power the flying wing to around 60,000 feet, reaching speeds of around Mach 3. At that point, liquid oxygen would be injected into the gas port converting the engines to rockets. The rockets would take Paradoxal at supersonic speeds to an altitude of about 40 miles where it would fly a sub-orbital parabolic trajectory at hypersonic speeds.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday he has picked ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state, calling him "among the most accomplished business leaders and international deal makers in the world."I'm sure they'll happily tell everyone how choosing the CEO of the biggest of Big Oil will be good for the paycheck-earners of this country.
President-elect Donald Trump is about to inherit a newly empowered Voice of America that some officials fear could serve as an unfettered propaganda arm for the former reality TV star who has flirted for years with launching his own network.Yeah, "if he chooses to exploit the opportunity". Of course he will. I'd be somewhat surprised if either Bannon or Roger Stone aren't appointed to be the CEO of the VOA.
Buried on page 1,404 of the National Defense Authorization Act that passed last week is a provision that would disband the bipartisan board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent U.S. agency that includes Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcast Networks.
The move – pushed by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce as a way to streamline the agency – concentrates control into a powerful CEO that is appointed by the president.
That change, combined with a 2013 legislative revision that allows the network to legally reach a U.S. audience, which was once banned, could pave the way for Trump-approved content created by the U.S. diplomacy arm, if he chooses to exploit the opportunity.
They’ve been with him from the beginning — when no one believed he could win, and when the Republican Party establishment wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.The writing was on the wall once Trump picked Reince Priebus as his chief of staff.
But now, as President-elect Donald Trump builds out his administration, the loyalists who helped launch his campaign and powered its stunning early victories are growing worried they won’t be getting plum jobs.
Many of them say they’ve heard nothing about their career prospects and, during furtive huddles, have been commiserating with one another about how they can’t seem to get their calls to top Trump transition brass returned. Some are convinced that party establishment figures who’ve taken the reins of the transition are giving them short shrift.
Figures show that six million Americans are behind on their auto loan payments by at least 90 days. This delinquency is causing concerns for lenders. Researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank say that late payment levels are now at their highest since 2010, and pressure may increase for borrowers to prove their financial circumstances.Except that car loans are easier to resolve if they're not paying (repo man). But still, the sign aren't terribly good:
The car loan market is robust but recent years have seen an increasing level of delinquency in subprime loans. As a result, there is a mounting worry, because similar trends in behavior occurred in the lead-up to the financial crisis in 2008.
Nearly 1 out of 3 car shoppers have negative equity on their trade-ins when they’re purchasing their next vehicle, according to Edmunds.com.Which means that if they want to trade in, they have to come up with five grand, cash, to pay off the loan.
Edmunds’ data shows that an estimated 32 percent of all trade-ins toward the purchase of a new car through the first three quarters of 2016 were underwater.
It’s the highest rate on record, and it’s up from 30 percent of all trade-ins toward new car purchases from January to September last year.
These “upside down” shoppers had an average of $4,832 of negative equity at the time of trade-in — also a record.
Rudy Giuliani — Donald Trump’s top surrogate and defender in the final months of the presidential election — withdrew his name from consideration for the post, the President-elect’s transition team said Friday.Rudolph's big mistake, like that of the piano guy and bunches of others, was not getting paid up front. Which was the same mistake Christie made.
US intelligence agencies believe Russia acted covertly to boost Donald Trump in the election race, US officials have told leading newspapers.Trumps brain-dead riposte of "they wuz wrong about Saddam Hussein" is about as kindergartenish as it gets.
A report in the New York Times says the agencies had "high confidence" about Russian involvement in hacking.
A CIA assessment reported by the Washington Post made similar findings.
Donald Trump has picked Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn to direct the National Economic Council in the White House, NBC News reported Friday morning.Some "swamp draining", there.
The council helps advise the president on economic policy.
Cohn would be the second Goldman-linked appointment for the president-elect, who already named former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Mnuchin as Treasury secretary.
...
Trump was a vocal critic of Wall Street banks on the campaign trail and repeatedly called on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to release the transcripts of the paid speeches she delivered to Goldman Sachs. He also accused former GOP primary rival Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) of being “owned” by Goldman Sachs.
Trump has picked Andrew Puzder, the head of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's fast food restaurants, as his nominee for Labor secretary.In other words, a guy from an industry that has thrived on paying people as little as possible and is rife with complaints about wage theft and otherwise screwing over workers. This is the guy who is going to work to protect the rights of workers in the Grifter Administration.
In all previous technological revolutions, people who lost their jobs mostly moved to new ones, but that will be less likely when the robots take over. A.I. that can learn from experience will replace many accountants, lawyers, bankers, insurance adjusters, doctors, scientific researchers and some creative professionals. Intelligence and advanced training will no longer mean job stability.What will happen to humanity where there is very little productive work for people to do?
Gradually the A.I. era will transform the essence of human culture. When we’re no longer more intelligent than our machines, when they can easily outthink and outperform us, making the sort of intuitive leaps in research and other areas that we currently associate with genius, a sort of learned helplessness is likely to set in for us, and the idea of work itself may cease to hold meaning.
Donald [Fucking] Trump has selected Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general and a close ally of the fossil J.fuel industry, to run the Environmental Protection Agency, signaling Mr. Trump’s determination to dismantle President Obama’s efforts to counter climate change — and much of the E.P.A. itself.So we can now call it the "Environmental Pollution Agency".
The U.S. Secret Service is the hot, new "amenity" in the Trump Tower, where desperate brokers are trying to lure well-heeled clients into the building on Fifth Avenue that has served as President-elect Donald Trump’s home as well as his campaign and transition headquarters.Trump gets cash every time there's a new condo owner or tenant in the building and his company profits in other ways.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Dr. Ben Carson, a onetime political rival who became one of his leading surrogates on the campaign trail, to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. ... Carson said recently through a spokesperson that he did not feel prepared to run a federal agency, but he has since changed his mind.When the President(-elect) calls you and asks you to serve, I suspect most people have the sense of duty to not decline, especially if you're of the same party.
Multiple Democratic senators told POLITICO in interviews last week that after watching Republicans sit on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court for nearly a year, they’re in no mood to fast-track Trump’s selections.One of the oldest rules in politics is "I'll do unto you like you did unto me."
Princess Cruise Lines has made history by receiving the largest-ever criminal penalty involving deliberate vessel pollution. The line has agreed to plead guilty to seven felony charges stemming from its deliberate pollution of the seas and intentional acts to cover it up.Tha amount of detail that is contained in the story makes me wonder if they got off cheap.
A North Carolina man was arrested Sunday after he walked into a popular pizza restaurant in Northwest Washington carrying an assault rifle and fired one or more shots, D.C. police said. The man told police he had come to the restaurant to “self-investigate” a false election-related conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton that spread online during her presidential campaign.And this:
The restaurant’s owner and employees were threatened on social media in the days before the election after fake news stories circulated claiming that then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief were running a child sex ring from the restaurant’s backrooms. Even Michael Flynn, a retired general whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to advise him on national security, shared stories about another anti-Clinton conspiracy theory involving pedophilia. None of them were true. But the fake stories and threats persisted, some even aimed at children of Comet Ping Pong employees and patrons. The restaurant’s owner was forced to contact the FBI, local police, Facebook and other social-media platforms in an effort to remove the articles.So this is where we are heading, people: An administration run by people who buy into conspiracy theory and fake news bullshit. Flynn has a reputation for believing in what his gut tells him and then ordering subordinates to come up with the proof to justify his feelings.
Alec Baldwin was back on "Saturday Night Live" this week to mock Donald Trump's love of tweeting, and the real president-elect hopped on his favorite social media platform during the show to let Baldwin know he wasn't laughing.
In a break with decadeslong diplomatic tradition, President-elect Donald Trump spoke directly with the president of Taiwan, a move that drew an irritated response from China on Saturday and looked set to cast uncertainty over U.S. policy toward Asia.The three-way dance between the United States, Taiwan and China has been going on for over 40 years. Leave it to Trump to tromp around like an elephant in a chicken factory.
It is perhaps unprecedented for a U.S. president or president-elect to speak directly with a leader of Taiwan.
The call also has drawn attention to Taiwanese media reports that the Trump Organization is interested in investing in the Taiwanese city of Taoyuan, near Taipei.
