We would be remiss if we didn’t wish the UniParty in Washington DC and the K-Street lobbying community a Happy Cinco de Mayo.
The collective Wall Street, K-Street, corporate media and professional political class, including well compensated CONservative media pundits, will soon showcase an exhaustive and financially motivated immigration reform legislative project.
We’re watching your meetings. All your taco bowls are belong to us...
Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders fills in for White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer today as Mr. Spicer is fulfilling his naval reserve duty.
Prior to delivering remarks aboard USS Intrepid to celebrate the historic military alliance between The United States and Australia, President Trump and Prime Minister Turnbull met on the sidelines for a bilateral discussion. Interesting interpersonal dynamic, brings out a sensibility from President Donald Trump not customarily noted…
During the briefly allowed press Q&A both leaders provided additional thoughts and comments on various current events: Healthcare, legislation, social-media etc.
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It’s the first time POTUS has been photographed taking the dominant position in a handshake with an international leader. It denotes a certain amount of skepticism…
Shortly after taking office Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull began his relationship with President Trump by demanding Trump adhere to President Obama’s commitment to take refugees from Australia. Surprise, that call did not go well.
Tonight, after making Turnbull wait an extra 3 hours due to healthcare bill celebrations, President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet face-to-face with PM Turnbull for the first time. Their meeting is in New York City as part of the commemorations celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Coral Sea in World War II.
After President Trump diplomatically greets the insufferable doofus, President Trump will be giving a speech honoring the military aboard the USS Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.
Update: Video Added
Against the backdrop of President Trump assembling the mid-east alliance group, and with the previous diplomatic outline of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in mind, the travel schedule is not necessarily a surprise.
WHITE HOUSE – President Trump has accepted the invitation of King Salman bin Abd Al-Aziz, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, to visit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia later this month. The visit will reaffirm the strong partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia and allow the leaders to discuss issues of strategic concern, including efforts to defeat terrorist groups and discredit radical ideologies.
President Trump has also accepted the invitation of President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit Israel, where he will further strengthen the United States-Israel partnership. The leaders will discuss a range of regional issues, including the need to counter the threats posed by Iran and its proxies, and by ISIS and other terrorist groups. They will also discuss ways to advance a genuine and lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The various media pundits and news stories are calling H.R. 1180 a “new overtime bill”. However, in reality the ‘take pay or take time off’ concept is more than 50 years old; we used to call it “compensatory time” or “comp time”.
WASHINGTON – […] Voting along party lines, the House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday that would allow private-sector employers to compensate their overtime-working employees with paid time off instead of paying them time-and-a-half as currently required.
The bill, H.R. 1180, would tweak the Fair Labor Standards Act, which mandates employers that require hourly-paid employees to work more than 40 hours a week to pay time-and-a-half, or 1.5 times their usual hourly rate. The bill also prohibits employers from coercing or intimidating employees to choose time off instead of overtime pay.
House Republicans passed the bill, sponsored by Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.), with no Democrats voting in favor. The bill will now go to the Senate, where it will require 60 votes to avoid a filibuster by Democrats. (read more)
The professionally Democrat hate the concept, but most Democrat politicians have zero experience in understanding how incredibly beneficial compensatory time can be.
The House of Representative have passed the ObamaCare Repeal/Replacement bill by a final vote of 217-213.
Over the next few weeks/months the bill will work through the Senate and then return to the House to reconcile any differences. The House bill takes the increasing, costly IRS tax/penalties on ObamaCare down to $0 – effectively crippling the individual mandate and the employer mandate.
President Trump will hold a 3:30pm EDT celebratory news conference at the White House, and GOP lawmakers are expected to take buses from Capitol Hill to attend. Mitch McConnell and 52 republican senators now have the challenge of passage.
The UniParty is sly, I would say professionally and expertly so, and before readers feel the need to point out the obvious – when it comes to legislation, yes, I am professionally cynical.
The reason is simple, having trained ourselves to see when the pea is never under the shell, the legislative conversations that really matter are always behind a Potemkin Village called K-Street.
You have to know the unwritten legislative rules of the UniParty as they have been evidenced for almost 15 years to understand the ruse.
♦ First, the reason a vote, any vote, is “announced”, and just doesn’t take place, is because it provides the controlled opposition time to frame their anti-(fill_in_the-blank) talking points. This is by design. When a legislative vote is “announced” it is a dog-whistle call out to the institutional lobbyists that the legislation will be rail-roaded and ultimately fail.
We are entirely clear-eyed as to the scope of the challenge. No-one amid our association is naive to the seemingly impossible scale against the backdrop of history. It may be that their task is impossible. Yet, if they do not try then how will we know it can’t be done? And if they do not try, it most certainly won’t be done…
There is absolutely no doubt of the work that has been going on for months, quietly, mostly under the radar. National media are completely deficient for not covering the ongoing events and the diplomacy that has been taking place all year.
We have a front row seat to what President Trump has been assembling, and I would never bet against the ability of President Trump and the people now aligned in consequence.
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The Diplomatic Timeline below:
Several people have requested thoughts and analysis on the decision by South Carolina (former) Police Officer Michael Slager to plead guilty to civil rights violations.
From the outset this case was unique, stunningly so. Our research into this case was necessarily fact-driven because any emotional review of the shooting is fraught with over simplistic reaction. This is one of those cases where logic battles with emotion and the outcome, as it stands today, is even more evidence toward that end.
Michael Slager pleading guilty to federal charges against the State’s inability to gain any criminal charges shows how the dynamic of law can run parallel to justice but not necessarily merge. This is the framework for my perspective on this case.
It’s important to note what Slager’s plea isn’t. There is no admission of violation of statutory state law. Slager is not pleading guilty to any form of manslaughter, and most certainly isn’t guilty of level of statutory murder. The unusual nature of this dynamic is why the State of South Carolina has withdrawn any/all criminal charges now that Slager has plead guilty to a federal violation of Scott’s civil rights.