Bunt ist schöner als uniform.

NYT kann langsam auch nicht länger die Wahrheit verheimlichen.
Alles wird herauskommen.

Now the dossier — financed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, and compiled by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele — is likely to face new, possibly harsh scrutiny from multiple inquiries.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/us/po...ler-report.html

Trump's Fed pick wants to ban women from college basketball games
The hits keep on coming for Stephen Moore, Trump's beleaguered pick for the Federal Reserve.

Stephen Moore, Trump's pick to serve on the Federal Reserve, wants to completely ban women from college basketball games.
https://shareblue.com/stephen-moore-fede...men-basketball/

Ganz wie die Mullahs im Iran und die Taliban in Afghanistan.

The growing partnership between Russia's government and cybercriminals
An Obama administration national security official tells 60 Minutes, "Increasingly, you cannot tell which is which when it comes to the criminal and the intelligence agency."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/evgeniy-mik...PLAD9JgQTxwVqQg

Mueller Report Makes It Official: Trump a Morally Despicable Human Being
Even though Mueller apparently doesn't believe a sitting president can be indicted, he provides a devastating indictment of Trump's character.
by Robert Reich

Democrats in Congress and talking heads on television will be consumed in the coming weeks by whether the evidence in the Mueller report, especially of obstruction of justice, merits impeachment.

In addition, the question of “wink-wink” cooperation with Russia still looms. Mueller’s quote of Trump, when first learning a special counsel had been appointed—“Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked”—has already become a national tagline. Why, Americans wonder, would Trump be “fucked” if he hadn’t done something so awful as to cause its revelation to “fuck” him?

We’ll also have Mueller’s own testimony before Congress, and Congress’s own investigations of Trump.
But let’s be real. Trump will not be removed by impeachment. No president has been. With a Republican Senate controlled by the most irresponsible political hack ever to be majority leader, the chances are nil.
Which means Trump will have to be removed the old-fashioned way – by voters in an election 19 months away.

The practical question, then, is whether the Mueller report and all that surrounds it will affect that election.
Most Americans already hold a low opinion of Trump. He’s the only president in Gallup polling history never to have earned the support of majority for single day of his term.
Yet Mueller’s report probably won’t move any of the 40 percent who have held tight to Trump regardless.
So how to reach the 11 percent or 12 percent who may decide the outcome?

Reveal his moral loathsomeness.
Democrats and progressives tend to shy away from morality, given how rightwing evangelicals have used it against abortion, contraceptives and equal marriage rights.
But that’s to ignore Americans’ deep sense of right and wrong. Character counts, and presidential character counts most of all.

Even though Mueller apparently doesn’t believe a sitting president can be indicted, he provides a devastating indictment of Trump’s character.
Trump is revealed as a chronic liar. He claimed he never asked for loyalty from FBI director James Comey. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never asked Comey to let the “Michael Flynn matter go”. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never pushed the White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Mueller finds he did. Trump even lied about inviting Comey to dinner, claiming falsely, in public, that Comey requested it.
Trump treats his subordinates horribly. He hides things from them. He lies to them. He yells at them. He instructs them to lie. He orders them to carry out illegal acts.
He’s a thug. He regrets his lawyers are not as good at protecting him as was his early mentor Roy Cohn – a mob lawyer. When reports surface about the now infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 2016, Trump directs the cover-up.
Trump is unprincipled. The few people in the White House and the cabinet who stand up to him, according to Mueller—threatening to resign rather than carry out his illegal orders—are now gone. They resigned or were fired.

In other words, Mueller makes it official: Trump is morally bankrupt. ...
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/...1Pg6oSzOeMuX4vs

Zitat von Nadine im Beitrag #6126

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Bunt ist schöner als uniform.

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US threatens to veto UN resolution on rape as weapon of war, officials say
The US is threatening to veto a United Nations resolution on combatting the use of rape as a weapon of war because of its language on reproductive and sexual health, according to a senior UN official and European diplomats.

The German mission hopes the resolution will be adopted at a special UN security council session on Tuesday on sexual violence in conflict.

But the draft resolution has already been stripped of one of its most important elements, the establishment of a formal mechanism to monitor and report atrocities, because of opposition from the US, Russia and China, which opposed creating a new monitoring body.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/a...pon-of-war-veto

The Mueller report makes a damning case about Trump's dishonesty
First Read is your briefing from "Meet the Press" and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-th...honesty-n996966

New Mexico Border Militia Leader Allegedly Said Group Planned to Assassinate Obama, Clinton
Larry Mitchell Hopkins allegedly said his vigilante group was training to kill Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and Barack Obama, because of their ‘support of Antifa.’

According to an arrest warrant for Larry Mitchell Hopkins, witnesses told authorities that he’d said the United Constitutional Patriots were training to “assassinate” liberal billionaire George Soros, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and former President Barack Obama.

The 69-year-old and his armed militia, which spreads conspiracies and searches for asylum seekers on the border, have been accused of illegally detaining migrants. Hopkins was arrested Saturday on charges of possessing firearms and ammunition as a convicted felon.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/larry-mitc...e-obama-clinton

Inside The Mueller Report, This Man Saw A Photo Of His Dad Being Used By Russians
When a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election was released to the public and Congress on Thursday, the effects of Russian influence efforts through social media became clearer.

Part of the information in the report included examples of material that Russian trolls used, and one particular image stood out to Ronnie Hipshire, a retired coal miner in West Virginia.

On Page 31 of the Mueller report, Hipshire saw a photo of his father, Lee, a coal miner who died of complications from black lung disease, on a poster for a "Miners for Trump" rally in Pennsylvania. The Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency had used the photo, without the family's permission, for a pro-Trump poster.

It's a striking image, but one that Hipshire says his father would not have wanted used to support President Trump.
"What I didn't like about seeing this on the Mueller report is them stealing my dad's picture and putting it on a Trump campaign rally," Hipshire said in an interview with NPR's All Things Considered. "My dad was one of the most staunch Democrats that you'll ever see in your life, and he never would have even thought about putting his face on something like that. It just was beyond me to see it."
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/21/715765240...-used-by-russia

The U.S. just had the most Q1 layoffs in a decade
The U.S. saw its highest level of layoffs in a first quarter since 2009, data from staffing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas released Thursday showed.

By the numbers: Employers cut 190,410 jobs in the first 3 months of the year — 10.3% higher than the number of layoffs announced in the fourth quarter of 2018 and 35.6% higher than job cuts announced in the same quarter of 2018.

The impact: It's the highest number of job cuts in a quarter since 2015.
https://www.axios.com/us-q1-layoffs-in-a...mfYBahWqwvhR1X4



"Job market is weakening": Private payroll job growth hits 18-month low
U.S. job growth fell to an 18-month low in March, according to a Wednesday report from ADP and Moody’s Analytics. Private payrolls increased by 129,000 in March, missing the 173,000 economists expected.

"The job market is weakening, with employment gains slowing significantly across most industries and company sizes," said Moody's Mark Zandi in a statement.
The bottom line: The ADP jobs report is seen as an important precursor to Friday's official government jobs report. The numbers don't bode well for those fearing that the booming jobs market is slowing down — especially after February's dismal report that showed only 20,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy.
https://www.axios.com/job-growth-march-h...b8c7e8e70c.html

Auch CNN fängt an hinter den Kulissen zu schauen:

Mueller's report looks bad for Obama

The Mueller report flatly states that Russia began interfering in American democracy in 2014. Over the next couple of years, the effort blossomed into a robust attempt to interfere in our 2016 presidential election. The Obama administration knew this was going on and yet did nothing. In 2016, Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice told her staff to "stand down"

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/19/opini...ings/index.html

Zitat von nahal im Beitrag #6137

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Auch CNN fängt an hinter den Kulissen zu schauen:

Mueller's report looks bad for Obama

The Mueller report flatly states that Russia began interfering in American democracy in 2014. Over the next couple of years, the effort blossomed into a robust attempt to interfere in our 2016 presidential election. The Obama administration knew this was going on and yet did nothing. In 2016, Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice told her staff to "stand down"

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/19/opini...ings/index.html

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Trump throws an early morning tantrum for two hours straight
Trump was very busy running the country Tuesday morning. And by running the country, we mean rage tweeting.

Being leader of the free world is a big job, as you are responsible for the needs of nearly 330 million people, help oversee one of the most important economies in the world, and also deal with foreign threats and other world crises.
Yet, despite all of that, Trump found two hours Tuesday morning to air his grievances with the media, congressional Democrats, Twitter, and the European Union in a series of unhinged tweets that are sure to kick off yet another round of speculation about Trump's mental state.
https://shareblue.com/trump-twitter-tantrum-two-hours/

Trump’s Washing Machine Tariffs Cleaned Out Consumers
A new report finds the tariffs raised $82 million for the U.S. Treasury but ended up increasing costs for consumers by about $1.2 billion.
https://reason.com/2019/04/22/trumps-was...-out-consumers/

Economy 101.

Evan McMullin: Trump welcomed the Russian attack and obstructed resulting investigations, an impeachable offense
What kind of patriotic American wouldn’t reject and report a foreign offer to collaborate against our country?

As with many Americans, I began reading special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference as soon as it was released. As a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, I couldn’t help but see the events it recounts the way that President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, would have viewed them as they happened.

What the report revealed, page after page, was President Donald Trump and his campaign’s efforts to profit from the most “sweeping and systematic” — to use the words of the report — information warfare attack ever waged against the United States of America.

Trump and his team were uniquely positioned to sound the alarm and halt the Russian attack, but instead they welcomed it. And then they tried to obstruct efforts to investigate it. As such, Trump bears distinct responsibility for our failure to defend against Russia’s hostility and take the steps necessary to deter future threats.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/mu...ense-ncna997076

What you missed in the Mueller report
POLITICO dived back into the report and its 2,000-plus footnotes to unearth a few details that have not gotten much attention.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/2...indings-1287072

Exzellente Arbeit von Darren Samuelsohn, Kyle Cheney und natuerlich der wie immer brillianten Natasha Bertrand.

Is Braidy Industries of Kentucky getting in bed with Russian mobsters?
Not the rough-and-tumble “Godfather” crowd with the bent noses and such names like Tessio, Barzini and Luca Brasi.

If all goes according to plan, by the middle of the year, we’ll be in business with Oleg Deripaska, a buddy of Vladimir Putin.
He could be sending $200 million — if you believe media reports — in what could very well be mobbed-up money to northeastern Kentucky to build a $1.7 billion aluminum plant on an old strip mine there.
The United States government, according to the New York Times, has long believed that Deripaska has deep ties to Russian organized crime — the Bratva — so much so it has limited his travel here and prohibited him from doing business in this country.

Last November, the New York Times quoted Mikhail Khodorkovsky, another Russian billionaire, saying he stayed out of that battle and urged those he worked with to do the same because of the ruthlessness of the fight. “There were so many murders, I refused to go into this business,” Khodorkovsky said.
According to the Times, many have claimed that Deripaska “engaged in theft, intimidation, bribery and even murder, notably of a Russian banker in 1995,” but that none of those claims has been substantiated.
He was sued in Delaware in 2004 in a case that portrayed him as a “member of a criminal gang that seized control of an iron-ore mining complex in the Ural Mountains in the late 1990s,” the Times wrote.
“The previous manager claimed that at a meeting attended by Mr. Deripaska, a mafia leader and five armed thugs, he was told to transfer a majority share or ‘this is the last time you will leave here alive.’” ...

The Trump administration lifted the sanctions in January after Deripaska agreed to reduce his ownership stake in the Moscow-based company, the world’s second-largest aluminum manufacturer, from 70% to less than 45%.
And that came only after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell backed that decision despite large numbers of Republicans and Democrats who objected to allowing Rusal and its parent company En+ Group into the United States.

The House voted to keep the sanctions 362-53, but the Senate fell three votes short of the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. McConnell, along with Sen. Rand Paul, voted against the resolution.
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/ne...mob/3508198002/

Face It, Repubs, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Way Smarter Than You Guys
Not to treat her like the Second Coming—she is, again, just a neophyte lawmaker—but in her passion, her preparedness and her pugnacity, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is conducting a master class on the power of light and air, using the notoriety you gave her to do so
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/...CvYgJaR8O3yhIZE

They will never learn. Or change. They are conservative for reasons. 😄

Tax return bills could kick Trump off the ballot in some blue states
"As of February 20, 2017 legislators in 18 states (Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia) have introduced bills" to require "future presidential candidates to disclose income tax returns in order to be placed on the general election ballot."
https://www.axios.com/trump-tax-returns-...09eb77d8b7.html

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
Paul Krugman, of the Fake News New York Times, has lost all credibility, as has the Times itself, with his false and highly inaccurate writings on me. He is obsessed with hatred, just as others are obsessed with how stupid he is. He said Market would crash, Only Record Highs!
2:59 AM - 23 Apr 2019

Thorsten@Airvooocht
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
Paul Krugman: „So all the “fake news” was true. A hostile foreign power intervened in the ... election, hoping to install Donald Trump in the WH. The Trump campaign was aware of this ... and welcomed it. And once in power, Trump tried to block any inquiry into what happened.“
4:48 AM - 23 Apr 2019

Thorsten‏@Airvooocht
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
Paul Krugman: „The fact is that the occupant of the White House betrayed his country.“
4:50 AM - 23 Apr 2019

Thorsten@Airvooocht
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
„The modern G.O.P. is perfectly willing to sell out America if that’s what it takes to get tax cuts for the wealthy.“
4:53 AM - 23 Apr 2019

Paul Krugman@paulkrugman
Someone is listening!
5:14 AM - 23 Apr 2019

😂😂😂

"Republicans for the Rule of Law" present the following ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFo1DfNd...JvwwaY2LwDjPREE


Bill Kristol@BillKristol
I think we'll call this ad "Sounds of Silence:"

"'Fools', said I, 'You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows...
But Mueller's words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made..."
6:18 PM - 22 Apr 2019

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D4za1RpXkAA8lGA.jpg

Sing along to the tune of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoOM_p3UE-A

Die heutige Serie von Twitter Rants ist einmal mehr Proof dafuer, dass ein Wahnsinniger im Oval Office sitzt:

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
I wonder if the New York Times will apologize to me a second time, as they did after the 2016 Election.
But this one will have to be a far bigger & better apology.
On this one they will have to get down on their knees & beg for forgiveness-they are truly the Enemy of the People!
3:08 AM - 23 Apr 2019

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
The Radical Left Democrats, together with their leaders in the Fake News Media, have gone totally insane!
I guess that means that the Republican agenda is working.
Stay tuned for more!
3:18 AM - 23 Apr 2019

Das ist womit sich ein amerikanischer Praesident heutzutage befasst und auf welchem Niveau er sich aeussert.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D42E94EX4AA9fXp.jpg

Philip Rucker@PhilipRucker
Trump’s tweets this morning don’t square with this 2017 claim: “They like to say I watch television - people with fake sources. You know, fake reporters, fake sources.
But I don't get to watch much television. Primarily because of documents. I'm reading documents. A lot.”
4:37 AM - 23 Apr 2019

Andererseits, heute morgen -vom "stable genius" selbst:

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
Sorry to say but @foxandfriends is by far the best of the morning political shows on television.
It rightfully has BY FAR the highest ratings, not even close.
Morning Psycho (Joe), who helped get me elected in 2016 by having me on (free) all the time, has nosedived, too Angry...
3:44 AM - 23 Apr 2019

Donald J. Trump‏@realDonaldTrump
....Dumb and Sick. A really bad show with low ratings - and will only get worse.
CNN has been a proven and long term ratings and beyond disaster.
In fact, it rewarded Chris Cuomo with a now unsuccessful prime time slot, despite his massive failure in the morning. Only on CNN!
3:54 AM - 23 Apr 2019

Fuer sein idiot following alles kein problemo.

The Great Republican Abdication
So all the “fake news” was true. A hostile foreign power intervened in the presidential election, hoping to install Donald Trump in the White House. The Trump campaign was aware of this intervention and welcomed it. And once in power, Trump tried to block any inquiry into what happened.

Never mind attempts to spin this story as somehow not meeting some definitions of collusion or obstruction of justice. The fact is that the occupant of the White House betrayed his country. And the question everyone is asking is, what will Democrats do about it?

But notice that the question is only about Democrats. Everyone (correctly) takes it as a given that Republicans will do nothing. Why?
Because the modern G.O.P. is perfectly willing to sell out America if that’s what it takes to get tax cuts for the wealthy. Republicans may not think of it in those terms, but that’s what their behavior amounts to.

The truth is that the G.O.P. faced its decisive test in 2016, when almost everyone in the Republican establishment lined up behind a man fully known to be a would-be authoritarian who was unfit morally, temperamentally and intellectually for high office.

In their chilling book “How Democracies Die,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt call this “the great Republican abdication.” The party’s willingness to back behavior it would have called treasonous if a Democrat did it is just more of the same.

Levitsky and Ziblatt say that when mainstream politicians abdicate responsibility in the face of a leader who threatens democracy, it’s usually for one of two reasons. Either they have the misguided belief that he can be controlled, or they’re willing to go along because his agenda overlaps with theirs — that is, they believe that he’ll give them what they want.
At this point it’s hard to imagine that anyone still believes that Trump can be controlled. But he is delivering on the Republican establishment’s agenda — certainly far more than any Democrat would.

The key point is that Republicans are committed to a policy agenda that is deeply unpopular. By large margins, the American public believes that corporations and the wealthy don’t pay their fair share in taxes. By even larger margins, the public opposes cuts to safety-net programs like Medicaid. Yet as far as I can tell, every G.O.P. budget proposal over the past decade has combined big tax cuts for the rich with savage cuts in Medicaid.

If the Republican agenda is so unpopular, how does the party win elections? Partly by lying about its policies. But mainly the G.O.P.’s political achievements depend on identity politics — white identity politics. Exploiting racial resentment to capture white working-class voters, while pursuing policies that benefit only the wealthy, has been the core of the party’s political strategy for decades. That’s why, in an increasingly diverse country, Republican support has stayed overwhelmingly white.

In a fundamental sense, Trumpism is the culmination of that strategy. Commentators keep calling Trump a “populist,” but the only way in which he actually caters to working-class white voters is by appealing to their racial animus. He may be successful in doing so partly because it’s the only thing about his political persona that’s sincere: All indications are that he really is a racist.

His substantive policies, however, have followed the standard right-wing agenda: In 2017 he passed a huge tax cut, largely for corporations, that disproportionately benefited the wealthy, and almost succeeded in repealing Obamacare, in the process gutting Medicaid.
And these policies have endeared him to the G.O.P.’s money men. “Deep-pocketed Republicans who snubbed Donald Trump in 2016 are going all in for him in 2020,” reports Politico.

They’re doing so even though they know that Trump was installed in office in part thanks to Russian aid, that his financial entanglements with foreign governments pose huge conflicts of interest and that he consistently shows a preference for dictatorships over our democratic allies.
As I said, the modern G.O.P. is perfectly willing to sell out America if that’s what it takes to get tax cuts for the wealthy.

Once you accept this reality, two conclusions follow.
First, anyone expecting bipartisanship in dealing with the aftermath of the Mueller report — in particular, anyone suggesting that Democrats should wait for G.O.P. support before proceeding with investigations that might lead to impeachment — is being deluded. Trump is giving the Republican establishment what it wants, and it will stick with him no matter what.
Second, it’s later than you think for American democracy. Before 2016 you could have wondered whether Republicans would, in extremis, be willing to take a stand in defense of freedom and rule of law. At this point, however, they’ve already taken that test, and failed with flying colors.

The simple fact is that one of our two major parties — the one that likes to wrap itself in the flag — no longer believes in American values. And it’s very much up in the air whether America as we know it will survive.
https://leaders.economicblogs.org/krugma...can-abdication/