The President Only Likes Leaks from Hookers and Wikis

The President Only Likes Leaks from Hookers and Wikis

Continuing with just the (IMHO) under-reported stories, it has become increasingly disconcerting that the orange ass-hat refuses to follow the most basic security protocol:
     https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/19/if-trump-hates-leaks-needs-to-give-up-phone 
"So the only question remaining is how many foreign intelligence services have “pwned” the US president’s phone.

You may recall how he castigated Hillary Clinton for her private email system. Yet his own chronically insecure practices don’t stop him fulminating against all the “illegal leaks” that his nascent administration has already sprung. And he has ordered an internal investigation to find the traitors in their midst."
So, he’s using the full weight of a putsch/purge Justice Department to find whistleblowers, when he may well be the source of some of these leaks. I can’t emphasize how insecure this phone is, and how even newer, commercial, non-hardened phones would be a bigly less-awful choice (but still not acceptable). Fearing for their jobs should something from their department leak, WH staffers have started using a chat app which, by design, deletes messages as soon as they’re read. The problem?

the law governing the management and custody of presidential records. This says that “documentary materials produced or received by the president, the president’s staff or units or individuals in the executive office of the president the function of which is to advise or assist the president, shall, to the extent practicable, be categorised as presidential records or personal records upon their creation or receipt and be filed separately”.
The only time you are allowed to destroy these federal documents is in these scenaria:

(the president) obtains the agreement of the national archivist to the shredding and that, if the archivist does not agree, “copies of the disposal schedule are submitted to the appropriate congressional committees at least 60 calendar days of continuous session of Congress in advance of the proposed disposal date”.
This review-before-delete process is clearly not happening, and democracy loses a little more sunshine. Break the law or lose your job … that’s your choice if you’re working in this administration. Are we great again yet?


The mainstream media IS doing their job badly, just like DJ Trump done said

If the media had really been on the job, they would have jumped all over this story, which I had not previously seen. The GOP put out a “push poll” of jaw-dropping audacity. For those not familiar, a push poll is a persuasion piece disguised as as poll in an attempt to influence the opinion of those being “polled”; if I tried to make up an absurd example, a “question” might be something like “given that Hillary killed Vince Foster, and activist judges refuse to hear the overwhelming evidence that we’ll tell you about later and totally didn’t make up, don’t you think that Hillary belongs in jail instead of the White House?” However, I believe at least one of this “poll” questions exceeds even the most extremely wise-ass example I could dream up:
    “Do you believe that if Republicans were obstructing Obama like Democrats are doing to President Trump, the mainstream media would attack Republicans?”
This is from the party that shut down the government and nearly destroyed our credit rating just to oppose Obama. Who passed — by far — the least legislation of any congress in history while and because Obama was in office. Whose stated top priorities were “make sure nothing passes” (Tea Party) or “make sure Obama fails to get reelected” (Republicants). Who wouldn’t even consider doing their job of considering a supreme court nominee (and I would like to point out that even saying “we’ll listen to and then reject this awful candidate” — as the Democrats did with Bork — is at least arguably doing your job). The party of Birthers. The …. aggggg … I think I pulled a synapse.

If you’d like to take the poll and distort the results you can do so here, but given that this isn’t about getting input so much as giving it, you won’t accomplish much:
    https://gop.com/mainstream-media-accountability-survey/

For me, this is the ballsiest part: even if you don’t provide answers to any of the questions, except those requesting your contact info, you end up here at the end of the “poll”:
    https://donate.donaldjtrump.com/mainstream-media-accountability-survey
So, after asking your opinion for you, they then ask you to give to their needy commandant-in-chief. Who actually believes the big-league billionaire DJT needs their money, particularly now that he’s already been elected, especially after claiming he’d run on his own money in the first place? How do I get my hands on their mailing list … I should be able to sell these rubes anything, if they have any money left after being trickled down upon. Sadly, these Dickensians will soon lack even a trumppence (small enough currency to fit in any hand) to donate, or bail them out of debtor prison when they fail to pay their Trump U bills.


Older News: Somehow I missed this tidbit
 
Betsy "I'm not as harmless as my name sounds" DeVos is the least qualified of all Trump’s appointments so far. The fact that she’s also the perfect pick to destroy the department she heads is not unusual, but unless someone else is pulling the strings, she may lack the competence to gut American education (outside of super-wealthy voting districts). But I just learned this:
Her husband Dick DeVos was a chief executive of the beauty and nutrition giant Amway and her brother is Erik Prince, the founder of the controversial private security company Blackwater.That’s like the perfect storm of evil and hucksterism. Clearly, a fitting choice for this administration. Swamp? Filled.


Executive Order Round-up

I don’t understand how anyone who thought Clinton would be too cozy with Wall Street is OK with this cabinet. I can’t believe we even need a reg to say that your financial advisor should be working for rather than against you, unless one believes that finance is full of evil self-interested people, at which point deregulation of that group of sociopaths may not be a great idea. But this EO tops this week’s list of most-overlooked potential media talking points:
President Donald Trump will halt an Obama administration regulation, hated by the financial industry, that requires retirement advisers to work in the best interests of their clients, while the new administration reviews the rule.I realize they have their hands full, but this is exactly the kind of simple, easy-to-follow, not-easily-alternatively-interpreted ruling that the press can put in front of someone who thinks Trump has their economic interests at heart, in order to prove that corporations are the ones being looked after here.

And while I don’t really have a dog in this fight, I don’t see how the base’s communal head failed to explode at this EO after all the “takers” rhetoric used to get Trump into office:
Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to drug testing of unemployment compensation applicants.

I welcome your comments, but before you say “well, Obama was also busy with the EOs when he started” I need to preempt you with these questions: were those EOs designed to push the bounds of the constitution, and reshape the power wielded by the executive? Were they this disruptive and debatable, or were they primarily repealing the previous administration’s EOs (the most common use of an EO)? Remember: the plural of anecdote is not data.