Former S&P sovereign bond unit executive who participated in the Obama era 2011 credit downgrade basically calls Trump's America a banana republic, and DOGE not a proper government department

 WSJ: What about DOGE’s accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system?

Kraemer: We don’t have all the details of what they took and on what basis. It seems highly irregular. People from a department, which is not even a proper government department, that have gone and gotten access to data, that we have to assume is quite, I should say sensitive, which doesn’t belong in the hands of unelected individuals. 

WSJ: Have you ever seen anything like this before?

Kraemer: Yes, I think I have seen this. Regimes that don’t respect checks and balances. But they tend to be more in the emerging markets. This is exactly what sets rich and poor countries apart, right? It’s the qualities of institutions, the rule of law, the transparency of decision-making. 

So have I seen this? Yes. But have I seen it in an advanced economy, in an OECD member country? No, I have not.

The whole thing is here.

Banana Republican Donald Trump denies meddling in New York Mayor Eric Adams case as 6 top prosecutors quit over DOJ dismissal order

 

 ... After Sassoon refused to dismiss the case Thursday, the matter was reassigned to John Keller, the acting head of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, who then also refused to dismiss the case and quit, NBC reported. ...

Acting DOJ criminal division chief Kevin Driscoll also resigned Thursday after refusing to accept the Adams case.

At least three other senior officials in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section quit after that following a meeting with the deputy attorney general. ...

Sassoon had been the lead prosecutor at the fraud and conspiracy trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former head of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried was sentenced last March to 25 years in prison.

More.

 

USAID was not just great in the opinion of the old Marco Rubio, both Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump thought so too, deploying millions of its dollars for their pet projects under Trump I lololol

 

A bunch of phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rollas, but I repeat myself.

 

Melania and Ivanka's close ties to USAID exposed as Trump goes scorched-earth on the 'corrupt' agency:

Melania and Ivanka Trump used thousands of dollars from USAID to fund pet projects during Trump's first term it's been revealed as the agency's spending comes under scrutiny from the president.

The president has gone scorched-earth against the USAID this week, berating its use of tax-payer dollars and saying it had to be 'corrupt' in its spending.

But despite Donald's disdain for the aid agency, it has maintained close ties with his wife and daughter for years by investing in their government ventures. 

USAID helped fund Melania Trump's Be Best program and Ivanka Trump's Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative during the first Trump term.

And each woman traveled with the agency on separate trips to Africa, where they praised the investments it was making on the continent.

Ivanka Trump travelled with then-USAID administrator Mark Green to Africa in April 2019, where they met with women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia and rural cocoa farmers on the Ivory Coast.

USAID oversaw $265 million per year in spending Ivanka Trump's women's business initiative and an associated antipoverty program.

Melania Trump partnered with the agency on her 2018 trip to Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt.

In Malawi, the first lady promoted USAID's national reading program, which was donating on Trump's behalf 1.4 million textbooks to the more than 5,600 primary schools in the poverty-stricken nation.

'I am so proud of the work this administration is doing through USAID and others,' the first lady said at the time, 'and look forward to the opportunity to take the message of my Be Best campaign to many of the countries, and children, throughout Africa.'

In his first term, Trump heavily cut funding for the aid agency but it still found money to invest into his family's government ventures.

Ivanka Trump used USAID for her program to promote women in business, claiming 12 million women around the world had been helped by it.

She travelled with the agency to Colombia in September 2019 to run a workshop for women entrepreneurs.

That same year, she also used over $11,000 from the agency to buy video recording and reproducing equipment for a White House event, its records show.

Meanwhile, USAID was one of the first agencies to name an ambassador to Melania Trump's Be Best initiative.

When Melania Trump first announced her signature program in May 2018, she asked government agencies to name a liaison to her group. USAID immediately did so.

At her one-year anniversary celebration in May, Melania acknowledged the agency and thanked it for naming the first Be Best ambassador.

'For the first time in history, the United States Agency for International Development has appointed a Be Best ambassador,' she said.

'On this one year anniversary of my initiative, I call on all of our partner agencies to appoint a be best ambassador who will serve as a liaison between my office and their respective agency to better highlight and promote the programs and services offered to parents and children on behalf of the US government,' she added.

Donald Trump was sitting in the audience listening.

Neither the East Wing, the West Wing, nor Ivanka Trump's office responded to DailyMail.com's request for comment.

USAID delivers billions of dollars in humanitarian aid overseas.

The Trump administration is threatening to shut it down or bring the independent agency under the umbrella of the State Department.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now acting director of the agency it's been announced this week.

Hundreds of USAID contractors were placed on unpaid leave and some were terminated. Elon Musk, who is running Trump's Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE program, said the agency would be eliminated.

Its Washington D.C. office is closed and employees were either put on leave or told to work from home.

Trump has said of the agency: 'It's been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out.'

He also claims it 'had to be corrupt' to approve certain initiatives. 

The president has berated the agency for its spending practices, including having a subscription to Politico Pro, a service that tracks legislation and other government news.

And his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, gave a blistering account of USAID's spending. Speaking to reporters at the White House last week, she held up a sheet of paper giving details of the astonishing ways in which taxpayers' money had been doled out.

It was an apparent reference to a story in Daily Mail, which first outlined the shocking expenditures related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), on which President Trump has ordered a crackdown.

'I don't know about you. But as an American taxpayer, I don't want my dollars going toward this crap. And I know the American people don't either. And that's exactly what Elon Musk has been tasked by President Trump to do. To get the fraud, waste and abuse out of the federal government,' Leavitt said.

Banana Republican Donald Trump hastily makes Elon Musk a special government employee AFTER THE FACT of allegations of impropriety since January 20

 

White House says Elon Musk serving as a ‘special government employee’

There is nothing in this story indicating that Musk or his employees have undergone the standard background checks.

Unvetted individuals are working with the most sensitive personal data of hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors.

Reminds me of nothing so much as Bill and Hillary Clinton possessing the FBI's files on government employees.

 

 

More tariff theatre: Trump announces 25% tariffs on Canada on Saturday, reverses himself before dinner on Monday lol

 

Trump pauses tariffs on Canada imports for 30 days after doing the same for Mexico

... Trudeau said Canada had made new commitments “to appoint a Fentanyl Czar.” 😉😉

“Canada is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan — reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology and personnel, enhanced coordination with our American partners, and increased resources to stop the flow of fentanyl,” the prime minister wrote. “Nearly 10,000 frontline personnel are and will be working on protecting the border.” ...

In 2024, more than 21,100 pounds of fentanyl was seized by U.S. authorities on the border with Mexico, compared to only about 43 pounds seized at the Canadian border. ...

Trump announces 25% tariffs on Mexico on Saturday, reverses himself before lunch on Monday lol

 

 Stocks that got hit the most from Trump’s tariffs before the Mexico reprieve

... Shares of companies spanning the auto, industrial, retail and beverage industries with international supply chains were hit particularly hard. ... The president said Monday that he’s pausing the Mexico tariffs for one month after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum agreed to immediately send 10,000 soldiers to her country’s border to prevent drug trafficking.

The country which can't stop the drug cartels from operating unchecked within its own borders is going to stop drug traffic to the USA because it puts its troops closer to our border?

Phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rolla.

Trump used a phony picture of California lol

 

I don't trust either of these guys as far as I can throw them

 

In 2016 J. D. Vance and Pete Hegseth were both conventional NeverTrumpers, and had not been particularly religious.

Hegseth was for Marco Rubio in 2015-16 originally, and then for Ted Cruz before acquiescing to Trump. Vance didn't come around to Trump until 2021, whom he needed in his run for US Senate in 2022 from Ohio.

 

Pete supposedly had a religious transformation in 2018, according to new Wikipedia information, which however contradicts itself:

 

"He has said that he underwent a religious transformation in 2018 following his marriage to his third wife" but

 

"Hegseth and Rauchet, who has three young children from her first marriage, married on August 16, 2019."

 

Oops. Sounds like it was more like 2019, but who really knows? Wikipedia only found out yesterday that Hegseth was born on June 6, 1980. How does this country approve a SECDEF without knowing until now when he was even born?

 

Meanwhile J. D. converted to Catholicism in 2019, what a coincidence, but was an atheist roughly until he was in law school at Yale during the first Obama administration. His "faith" is primarily intellectual by his own admission.

 

And now look at the two of 'em lol.

 

Phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rollas who lick their fingers, stick them in the air, and check whichaway the wind comin' from uh huh.

 

 

 

I don't care what you think of Senator Tim Kaine, D-VA, he nailed Pete Hegseth's unrepentant ass to the canvass

 

 Pete Hegseth is no repentant Christian. He's a phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rolla.

This man represents a new low for the GOP.

From the story here:

“I want to return to the incident that you referenced a minute ago that occurred in Monterey, California, in October 2017,” Kaine opened. “At that time, you were still married to your second wife, correct?” 

After Hegseth agreed that he believed so, Kaine followed with “And you had just fathered a child by a woman who would later become your third wife, correct?”

“Senator, I was falsely charged and I fully. investigated and completely cleared,” Hegseth said of the sexual assault allegation, but Kaine pressed.

“So you think you are completely cleared because you committed no crime? That’s your definition of cleared?” Kaine pressed. “You had just fathered a child two months before by a woman that was not your wife. I am shocked that you would stand here and say you are completely cleared. Can you so casually cheat on a second wife and cheat on the mother of a child who had been born two months before? And you tell us you are completely cleared. So how is that completely cleared?”

“Senator, her child’s name is Gwendolyn Hope Hegseth, and she’s a child of God, and she’s seven years old,” Hegseth replied.

“I mean, you cheated on the mother of that child less than two months after that daughter was born, didn’t you?” Kaine pressed. 

 “Those were false charges. Well, no, totally investigated. And I was completely cleared. And I’m so grateful for the marriage I have to this day,” Hegseth answered.

“So you’ve admitted that you had sex at that hotel in October 2017. You said it was consensual. Isn’t that correct?” Kaine continued. “You’ve admitted that it was consensual, and you were still married, and you just had a child by another woman again. How do you explain yourself?”

“Completely false charges against me,” Hegseth insisted, even though he agreed to a non-disclosure agreement and financial settlement with his accuser.

Elon Musk, phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rolla

 

In March 2016 Pete Hegseth was no different from NeverTrumpers like Erick Erickson, Mark Levin, Charlie Kirk, and Ben Shapiro who all now bend the knee

 

 CNN video here from Dec 3rd, in which Hegseth criticizes Trump for being an arm chair warrior who had the temerity to criticize John McCain while avoiding the draft.

Which is rich coming from Hegseth who was never regular military.

It's Megyn Kelly interviewing him, too, lol, who has been defending Pete The Warrior and his PTSD for his bad behavior with the women.

I keep waiting for someone to ask Hegseth how many firefights he was in in the field in Afghanistan. We'd all like to know in this age of stolen valor. We know that's a fact about his time in Iraq, but everyone keeps talking as if that's what he did in Afghanistan when the only evidence I find is that he taught a course there and that his stay was very brief.

More at Mediaite here.

Bunch of phony, baloney, plastic banana, good time rock 'n rollas.

Every single dollar spent by government is a dollar thrown into the fire, except for those handed directly to Elon Musk for every Tesla sold, so Trump adding a new Department of Government Efficiency is extremely amusing

Yeah, let's put the HOG feeding at the government trough and getting filthy stinking rich off electric car subsidies and tax credits, and government rocket contracts, in charge of government efficiency.

 

 

 Trump announces Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy to lead new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ 

What a bunch of phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rollas. 

"Government efficiency" is one of those oxymorons that is more equal than other oxymorons.

Kamala Harris should make up her mind already, oddly tells Latino audience all of a sudden that she comes from the working class and will not forget it

 Her PhD dad and PhD mom both had . . . jobs lol.

Link. 

Did Kamala forget that she's been touting herself repeatedly as middle class? 

 

 

 

 

The Latino woman says she herself is middle class and struggling, but Kamala in response clearly states she won't forget that she comes from the working class.

Does Kamala think all Latinos are working class?

This guy's just preoccupied with the shiny object Kamala is wearing and misses the Freudian slip:

Jane Doe alleges Doug Emhoff slapped her really hard, ending their relationship in May 2012, three friends back up her story and allege Emhoff may have caused his knocked-up nanny to miscarry

 

Kamala Harris's husband Doug Emhoff 'forcefully slapped ex-girlfriend for flirting with another man' in booze-fueled assault after date to star-studded gala:

... The third friend, a female top company executive, said Jane told her the story in 2018. ...

'He's holding himself out to be something he absolutely is not. And that's bulls***,' said the female executive. 'I feel like people should know who their leaders really are.

'[Jane] was always leaning Democratic. I have always voted Democratic. If anything I would like to tell a story on the other side. But this is the truth,' she added.

'He's a really bad guy. To hold him out as a supporter of women is just disgusting.

'Unfortunately, you've got a nut in Trump, and then you've got not a good choice on the other side.

'People can make their own choice once they know. But I feel like transparency is the best disinfectant for bad behavior.'

The Dynamic Duo of Phony Baloney: Kamala Harris quotes Ecclesiastics like Joe Biden quotes The Palmist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Have they ever read a word of it?

When you have to write articles like this with eight weeks to go lol

 How Kamala Harris Can Prove She’s Not a Flip-flopping Phony

Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine

Kamala Harris’s effort to depict herself as a candidate of safe but forward-looking change (as opposed to the decidedly unsafe and reactionary change represented by Donald Trump) has unsurprisingly spurred a host of GOP attacks on a cherry-picked assortment of unpopular or at least questionable-sounding policy positions from her past, ranging from support for a single-payer health-care system and sympathy for undocumented immigrants to opposition to fracking and to aggressive policing tactics.

 

Is Chris Cillizza, formerly of CNN, WaPo, Meet the Depressed, and PMSNBC cherry-picking?

 

I mean, most of these lists are incomplete because Harris' has left a LONG trail demonstrating her extreme leftism in speeches, interviews, tweets, policy statements from 2019, et cetera, and it's a daunting task to list them all. Any list of them will show an editor's bias about what's important in the editor's opinion.

But the idea from James Carville endorsed by Kilgore that Harris can just say she learned in the White House that spending $800 billion over ten years in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act to reverse climate change was good enough when in 2019 she said it would take $1 trillion PER YEAR for ten years is just laughable.

 

LAUGHABLE.

That's hardly going to fly with the climate change left, let alone anyone else.

 

Ed Kilgore's just pretending that isn't the case. He's an enabler of Harris' silence in the face of the flip-flops.

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Turley: Zuckerberg fought for years to conceal his cooperation with government censorship until the Republican House Judiciary Committee forced his hand

 Zuckerberg is just another, you guessed it . . .

Zuckerberg's sudden regret only came after his company fought for years to conceal the evidence of its work with the government to censor opposing views. Zuckerberg was finally compelled to release the documents by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and the House Judiciary Committee. 

Now forced to admit what many of us have long alleged, Zuckerman is really, really sorry. 

More.

Kamala Harris is as phony about health care choice as the day is long, every position in the campaign requires the jabs

 

Phony, baloney, plastic banana, good time rock n' rolla Barack Hussein Obama told Republicans to go sit in the back of the bus in October 2010, just before Republicans ate his lunch and swept the House

 In Woonsocket, Rhode Island, Monday 25 October 2010.

Video.

Stories:

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/obama-to-gop-%E2%80%98they-can-come-for-the-ride-but-they-have-to-sit-in-back/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obama-tells-republicans-to-sit-in-back

https://www.today.com/news/rove-reacts-obama-saying-gop-should-be-back-wbna40024583

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2010/10/25/obama-assails-gop-on-clouded-final-campaign-push/

https://www.theledger.com/story/news/2010/10/26/obama-assails-gop-in-races/26396696007/

 

Kamala Harris, phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rolla, astroturfs event at Pittsburgh restaurant Saturday, kicks out all the patrons at 4pm and brings in her own using over a dozen vans

 

Staff told patrons that they would have to leave due to a ‘private event’ which turned out to be a campaign stop for Kamala Harris. ...

‘They kicked us out of Primanti Brothers,’ one man commented as a person in the crowd filmed a caravan of over a dozen unmarked Ford Transit vans arrived to the location.

More.

I saw this on X and thought it couldn't possibly be true and dismissed it over the weekend.

This story was published yesterday.

You'll be told in media and ads that she has strong support in Pittsburgh.