What do you think about with current News and Opinions?

[guest1163268]

Something to understand what nurses think about re the Current News and their opinions!

[Beerman, BSN]

I wonder what the Obama administration is hiding?

"Obama boasted he had “the most transparent administration in history.” In reality, the Obama administration was as devious as the Nixon administration when it came to government secrecy.

Obama’s lawyers claimed a new veto power that turned FOIA into a travesty. White House Counsel Gregory Craig quietly notified all federal agencies in 2009 that “all documents and records that implicate the White House in any way are said to have ‘White House equities’ and must receive an extra layer of review, not by agency FOIA experts, but by the White House itself,” a congressional report noted. Politico observed in 2016 that in some cases, White House FOIA “referrals have led to years of delay.

”In 2011, Obama’s Justice Department formally proposed to permit federal agencies to falsely claim that FOIA-requested documents did not exist. The American Civil Liberties Union complained that the plan perverted “a law designed to provide public access to government information to be twisted to permit federal law enforcement agencies to actively lie to the American people.”"

https://nypost.com/2022/08/14/theres-no-sainthood-for-obama-national-archives-in-trump-fbi-raid-uproar/

[toomuchbaloney]

5 minutes ago, Beerman said:

I wonder what the Obama administration is hiding?

"Obama boasted he had “the most transparent administration in history.” In reality, the Obama administration was as devious as the Nixon administration when it came to government secrecy.

Obama’s lawyers claimed a new veto power that turned FOIA into a travesty. White House Counsel Gregory Craig quietly notified all federal agencies in 2009 that “all documents and records that implicate the White House in any way are said to have ‘White House equities’ and must receive an extra layer of review, not by agency FOIA experts, but by the White House itself,” a congressional report noted. Politico observed in 2016 that in some cases, White House FOIA “referrals have led to years of delay.

”In 2011, Obama’s Justice Department formally proposed to permit federal agencies to falsely claim that FOIA-requested documents did not exist. The American Civil Liberties Union complained that the plan perverted “a law designed to provide public access to government information to be twisted to permit federal law enforcement agencies to actively lie to the American people.”"

https://nypost.com/2022/08/14/theres-no-sainthood-for-obama-national-archives-in-trump-fbi-raid-uproar/

Bwahahaha

It sounds like you think maybe Trump was just trying to make those documents more quickly available for the public to review, a public service so to speak.

You get credit for an attempt to project something onto the last president that had to clean up after a republican. That president managed to avoid talking boxes of documents home after he was out of office. I wonder why Trump couldn't avoid that. 

Funny thing about Obama, he wasn't impeached twice and his home wasn't searched for federal documents 18 months after his predecessor took office.  

[toomuchbaloney]

Some Republicans Make a More Restrained Case for Defending Trump https://nyti.ms/3bVZ8vs

But some Republicans would rather project and deflect. 

Quote

Mr. Trump’s political action committee has been furiously fund-raising off the F.B.I. search, sending out at least 17 text messages to donors since Tuesday. “The Dems broke into the home of Pres. Trump,” one read. “This is POLITICAL TARGETING!” another alleged. “THEY’RE COMING AFTER YOU!” a third said.

Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, wrote another fund-raising email on Sunday: “The witch hunt continues…The FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago was a DISGRACE. In fact, it’s UNFATHOMABLE.”

On Saturday, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, also called for the repeal of the Espionage Act, one of the statutes that prompted the investigation.

Just consider how Trump has changed the republican party.  

[toomuchbaloney]

The Arizona Republican Party’s Anti-Democracy Experiment https://nyti.ms/3w0DRYc

Quote

The aggressive takeover of the Arizona G.O.P. by its far-right wing was made manifest on primary night earlier this month, when a slate of Trump-endorsed candidates — the gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, the U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, the state attorney general candidate Abraham Hamadeh and the secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem — all prevailed. As a group, they maintain that the 2020 election was stolen, have promoted conspiracy theories about Covid and have vowed to protect Arizona’s schools from gender ideology, critical race theory and what McCarthyites denounced 70 years ago as “godless communism.” They have cast the 2022 election as not just history-defining but potentially civilization-ending. As Lake told a large crowd in downtown Phoenix the night before the primary: “It is not just a battle between Republicans and Democrats. This is a battle between freedom and tyranny, between authoritarianism and liberty and between good and evil.” A week later, in response to the F.B.I.’s executing a search warrant at Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, Lake posted a statement on Twitter: “These tyrants will stop at nothing to silence the Patriots who are working hard to save America.” She added, “America — dark days lie ahead for us.” Far from offering an outlier’s view, Lake was articulating the dire stance shared by numerous other Republicans on the primary ballot and by the reactionary grass-roots activists who have swept them into power.

Maybe this kind of thinking will go down in history books as the Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Quote

Arizona has thus become what the state’s well-regarded pollster Mike Noble characterizes as “magenta, the lightest state of red.” In the face of this shift, the state’s G.O.P. has aggressively declined to moderate itself. Instead, it has endeavored to cast out some of its best-known political figures. Last year, it censured its sitting governor, Doug Ducey; its former U.S. senator Jeff Flake; and Cindy McCain, the widow of the U.S. senator and 2008 G.O.P. presidential nominee John McCain, arguably the state party’s second-most-famous elected official, after Barry Goldwater.

Quote

What is different now is the use of “democracy” as a kind of shorthand and even a slur for Democrats themselves, for the left and all the positions espoused by the left, for hordes of would-be but surely unqualified or even illegal voters who are fundamentally anti-American and must be opposed and stopped at all costs. That anti-democracy and anti-“democracy” sentiment, repeatedly voiced over the course of my travels through Arizona, is distinct from anything I have encountered in over two decades of covering conservative politics.

This is not a new phenomenon for American conservatives... to work against democracy... it's just more overt now. 

[subee, MSN, CRNA]

2 hours ago, toomuchbaloney said:

Bwahahaha

It sounds like you think maybe Trump was just trying to make those documents more quickly available for the public to review, a public service so to speak.

You get credit for an attempt to project something onto the last president that had to clean up after a republican. That president managed to avoid talking boxes of documents home after he was out of office. I wonder why Trump couldn't avoid that. 

Funny thing about Obama, he wasn't impeached twice and his home wasn't searched for federal documents 18 months after his predecessor took office.  

The NY Post article (while it might make correct points) is just what-about-ism to the conversation about Trump taking documents to his house.  The National Archives has no quarrel with Obama taking into possession what was not his.

[toomuchbaloney]

2 hours ago, subee said:

The NY Post article (while it might make correct points) is just what-about-ism to the conversation about Trump taking documents to his house.  The National Archives has no quarrel with Obama taking into possession what was not his.

Yeah... but apparently we have to give ourselves whiplash to consider every crazy defense offered up on Trump's behalf.  It's odd that so many people seem unable to resist the draw of these increasingly desperate attempts to deflect from or excuse this specific Trump behavior.  

[toomuchbaloney]

Prosecutors Struggle to Catch Up to a Tidal Wave of Pandemic Fraud https://nyti.ms/3Apfztz

Quote

“It’s clear there’s tens of billions in fraud,” said Michael Horowitz, the chairman of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which includes 21 agency inspectors general working on fraud cases. “Would it surprise me if it exceeded $100 billion? No.”

The effort to catch fraudsters began as soon as the money started flowing, and the first person was charged with benefit fraud in May 2020. But investigators were quickly deluged with tips at a scale they’d never dealt with before. The Small Business Administration’s fraud hotline — which had previously received 800 calls a year — got 148,000 in the first year of the pandemic. The Small Business Administration sent its inspector general two million loan applications to check for potential identity theft. At the Department of Labor, the inspector general’s office has 39,000 cases of suspected unemployment fraud, a 1,000 percent increase from prepandemic levels.

But prosecutors face a key disadvantage: While fraud takes minutes, investigations take months and prosecutions take even longer.

So much dishonorable behavior in this era of Trump.  

[toomuchbaloney]

In Alaska, Sarah Palin’s Political Comeback Stirs Debate Among Voters https://nyti.ms/3w5SHwL

We vote today... ranked voting...Palin will be ranked right behind Bigfoot in my ballot. 

Quote

Several voters said Ms. Palin had abandoned Alaska, after she resigned from the governor’s office in 2009 amid ethics complaints and legal bills. But Ms. Palin’s support remains strong among other Republicans, including conservative women who have followed her political rise and have seen themselves in her struggles as a working mother.

She is little more than a political celebrity now... best known for quitting as governor and acting crazy for attention. 

[subee, MSN, CRNA]

1 hour ago, toomuchbaloney said:

In Alaska, Sarah Palin’s Political Comeback Stirs Debate Among Voters https://nyti.ms/3w5SHwL

We vote today... ranked voting...Palin will be ranked right behind Bigfoot in my ballot. 

She is little more than a political celebrity now... best known for quitting as governor and acting crazy for attention. 

And the following quote of hers just puts here in the real dirtbag catagory:

Palin wrote similar Internet messages, including this one: "Commonsense conservatives and lovers of America: Don't retreat, instead, reload!"

[toomuchbaloney]

45 minutes ago, subee said:

And the following quote of hers just puts here in the real dirtbag catagory:

Palin wrote similar Internet messages, including this one: "Commonsense conservatives and lovers of America: Don't retreat, instead, reload!"

In Alaska the Palins are famous for drunken violence and brandished weapons around the Wasilla area.  

[toomuchbaloney]

Top Democrats Accuse Homeland Security Watchdog of Blocking Testimony in Jan. 6 Inquiry https://nyti.ms/3ApbwgF

Quote

Mr. Cuffari, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, claims that the Secret Service hampered his investigation into the matter. Congressional committees accuse him of failing to adequately carry out an inquiry.

Adding to Congress’s concern: deleted text messages related to the Capitol attack from top Homeland Security and Defense Department officials in the Trump administration. Defense officials have said that some phones of Trump administration officials were “wiped” when they left their government jobs.

Mr. Cuffari’s office similarly conducted a so-called iPhone refresh in June, when employees were instructed to wipe their devices and decide which text messages should be saved. The inspector general’s office did not immediately respond to questions about whether Mr. Cuffari preserved any relevant text messages during the process.

Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan and the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent letters last week to Mr. Cuffari, the Homeland Security secretary and the departing Secret Service director, requesting more information about the deleted communications and the process for preserving federal records.

Quote

The inspector general also directed the Secret Service to halt its internal search for purged texts so that it would not “interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation.” The agency has turned over the personal cellphone numbers of agents as part of that inquiry, according to a person familiar with the matter.

But Ms. Maloney and Mr. Thompson said that Mr. Cuffari’s office had delayed telling Congress about the missing messages for months and severely hampered an internal investigation into the matter. His office “may have taken steps to cover up the extent of missing records,” they said.

The lawmakers have called on Mr. Cuffari to recuse himself from the investigation, a demand he has refused. They have also called for two officials in his office to testify.

Is there any honesty or honor among Trump appointees?

[subee, MSN, CRNA]

4 minutes ago, toomuchbaloney said:

Top Democrats Accuse Homeland Security Watchdog of Blocking Testimony in Jan. 6 Inquiry https://nyti.ms/3ApbwgF

Is there any honesty or honor among Trump appointees?

Well, the ones who testified at the hearings  had concerns.  But, of course, those appointed to major cabinet positions were chosen because of their willingness to cooperate with criminality.  Elaine Chao, Sonny Perdue, Wilber Ross and Ben Carson would be my a-listers for trying to make the most money from their positions.

38 minutes ago, toomuchbaloney said:

In Alaska the Palins are famous for drunken violence and brandished weapons around the Wasilla area.  

Yes, they struck me as the kind of family I deal with in family court:)  Have the IQ of a Big Mac between them and outstanding gonadal fortitude.