Today's News (2020/1/23)
Jan. 23rd, 2020 11:45 pmI was very busy today and this can be at best called a mini-update.
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Matt McDermott
twitter.com/mattmfm
CBS News reports that GOP Senators have been warned by Trump team: "Vote against the president, and your head will be on a pike." How is this acceptable?
https://twitter.com/mattmfm/status/1220555307916677120
[link includes CBS News screencap]
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There Were No 'Moderate Republicans' in the Senate on Tuesday. Only Collaborators.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/were-no-moderate-republicans-senate-020100781.html
[Original article Esquire; this is a subfeed]
WASHINGTON—The biggest news about this corrupt administration* was not made in the Senate chamber on Tuesday. It was made out on the campaign trail by Senator Professor Warren. From CNBC:
“If we are to move forward to restore public confidence in government and deter future wrongdoing, we cannot simply sweep this corruption under the rug in a new administration,” Warren wrote in the plan. The progressive Democrat cited a report by a nonpartisan good government group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which found “ unprecedented” corruption in the Trump administration, as well as other reports of self-dealing among administration officials and the president’s family members.
“That’s why I will direct the Justice Department to establish a task force to investigate violations by Trump administration officials of federal bribery laws, insider trading laws, and other anti-corruption and public integrity laws, and give that task force independent authority to pursue any substantiated criminal and civil violations,” she said.
Make no mistake. If we ever are going to repair the damage done by this administration*, it is going to have to include a thorough fumigation of every corner of the national executive. The first big mistake made by President Barack Obama was his determination to look forward, and not back. Too many of the criminals working for the last worst president in history skated. Too many Wall Street vandals got away clean. That cannot be allowed to happen again. The corruption of this administration* is unprecedented. It demands this kind of unprecedented response.
...
In this, no Republican was different from any other Republican. Lisa Murkowski and Tom Cotton were the same. Thom Tillis and Ted Cruz were the same. Cory Gardner and Jim Inhofe were the same. Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse were the same as Mike Rounds and Mike Enzi. And they were all the same as Mitch McConnell. There were no moderate Republicans in the Senate on Tuesday. There were no Never Trumpers. There were only collaborators. There was no independence in the Senate on Tuesday, only complicity. And it was a deadening, sad thing to watch. The only real reaction was another cup of soggy oatmeal from the increasingly useless Susan Collins.
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Cohen says Trump directed him to pay for poll rigging
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/17/politics/michael-cohen-poll-rigging/index.html
Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump's former "fixer" Michael Cohen said Thursday that he paid the head of a small technology company thousands in 2015 to rig online polls at "the direction of and for the sole benefit of" Trump.
Cohen was responding to a report in The Wall Street Journal that he paid John Gauger, the owner of RedFinch Solutions LLC, between $12,000 and $13,000 for activities related to Trump's campaign, including "trying unsuccessfully to manipulate two online polls in Mr. Trump's favor" and creating a Twitter account called "![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
womenforcohen" that "praised (Cohen's) looks and character, and promoted his appearances and statements boosting" Trump's candidacy.
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Palantir CEO Alex Karp defends his company’s relationship with government agencies
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/23/palantir-ceo-alex-karp-defends-his-companys-work-for-the-government.html
Palantir CEO Alex Karp said he stands by his company’s controversial work for the U.S. government, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The secretive Peter Thiel-backed data analytics start-up ramped up its work for governments in 2019, Karp said Thursday.
″The core mission of our company always was to make the West, especially America, the strongest in the world, the strongest it’s ever been, for the sake of global peace and prosperity, and we feel like this year we really showed what that would mean,” Karp said in an interview with “Squawk Box” co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Palantir has reportedly grown its inventory of government contracts to more than $1.5 billion in value by beating out more traditional defense contractors like Raytheon. Last March, Palantir won an $800 million contract to build an intelligence system to aid soldiers in remote environments. Since 2014, Palantir has worked with ICE to identify undocumented immigrants, prompting some employee protests.
“We started this contract under Obama, and obviously there’s a lot of legitimate concern about what happens on our border, how it happens, and what does the enforcement look like?” Karp told CNBC. “It’s a legitimate, complex issue. My personal position is we acknowledge the complexity. The people protesting, whom I respect, should also acknowledge that complexity.”
-----
Matt McDermott
twitter.com/mattmfm
CBS News reports that GOP Senators have been warned by Trump team: "Vote against the president, and your head will be on a pike." How is this acceptable?
https://twitter.com/mattmfm/status/1220555307916677120
[link includes CBS News screencap]
-----
There Were No 'Moderate Republicans' in the Senate on Tuesday. Only Collaborators.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/were-no-moderate-republicans-senate-020100781.html
[Original article Esquire; this is a subfeed]
WASHINGTON—The biggest news about this corrupt administration* was not made in the Senate chamber on Tuesday. It was made out on the campaign trail by Senator Professor Warren. From CNBC:
“If we are to move forward to restore public confidence in government and deter future wrongdoing, we cannot simply sweep this corruption under the rug in a new administration,” Warren wrote in the plan. The progressive Democrat cited a report by a nonpartisan good government group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which found “ unprecedented” corruption in the Trump administration, as well as other reports of self-dealing among administration officials and the president’s family members.
“That’s why I will direct the Justice Department to establish a task force to investigate violations by Trump administration officials of federal bribery laws, insider trading laws, and other anti-corruption and public integrity laws, and give that task force independent authority to pursue any substantiated criminal and civil violations,” she said.
Make no mistake. If we ever are going to repair the damage done by this administration*, it is going to have to include a thorough fumigation of every corner of the national executive. The first big mistake made by President Barack Obama was his determination to look forward, and not back. Too many of the criminals working for the last worst president in history skated. Too many Wall Street vandals got away clean. That cannot be allowed to happen again. The corruption of this administration* is unprecedented. It demands this kind of unprecedented response.
...
In this, no Republican was different from any other Republican. Lisa Murkowski and Tom Cotton were the same. Thom Tillis and Ted Cruz were the same. Cory Gardner and Jim Inhofe were the same. Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse were the same as Mike Rounds and Mike Enzi. And they were all the same as Mitch McConnell. There were no moderate Republicans in the Senate on Tuesday. There were no Never Trumpers. There were only collaborators. There was no independence in the Senate on Tuesday, only complicity. And it was a deadening, sad thing to watch. The only real reaction was another cup of soggy oatmeal from the increasingly useless Susan Collins.
-----
Cohen says Trump directed him to pay for poll rigging
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/17/politics/michael-cohen-poll-rigging/index.html
Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump's former "fixer" Michael Cohen said Thursday that he paid the head of a small technology company thousands in 2015 to rig online polls at "the direction of and for the sole benefit of" Trump.
Cohen was responding to a report in The Wall Street Journal that he paid John Gauger, the owner of RedFinch Solutions LLC, between $12,000 and $13,000 for activities related to Trump's campaign, including "trying unsuccessfully to manipulate two online polls in Mr. Trump's favor" and creating a Twitter account called "
womenforcohen" that "praised (Cohen's) looks and character, and promoted his appearances and statements boosting" Trump's candidacy. -----
Palantir CEO Alex Karp defends his company’s relationship with government agencies
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/23/palantir-ceo-alex-karp-defends-his-companys-work-for-the-government.html
Palantir CEO Alex Karp said he stands by his company’s controversial work for the U.S. government, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The secretive Peter Thiel-backed data analytics start-up ramped up its work for governments in 2019, Karp said Thursday.
″The core mission of our company always was to make the West, especially America, the strongest in the world, the strongest it’s ever been, for the sake of global peace and prosperity, and we feel like this year we really showed what that would mean,” Karp said in an interview with “Squawk Box” co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Palantir has reportedly grown its inventory of government contracts to more than $1.5 billion in value by beating out more traditional defense contractors like Raytheon. Last March, Palantir won an $800 million contract to build an intelligence system to aid soldiers in remote environments. Since 2014, Palantir has worked with ICE to identify undocumented immigrants, prompting some employee protests.
“We started this contract under Obama, and obviously there’s a lot of legitimate concern about what happens on our border, how it happens, and what does the enforcement look like?” Karp told CNBC. “It’s a legitimate, complex issue. My personal position is we acknowledge the complexity. The people protesting, whom I respect, should also acknowledge that complexity.”
