Saturday, January 28, 2017

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'Hamilton' cast to sing at Superbowl 51?

 What a Joke.

Dumb Ass.


Trump's hard-nosed executive order asks what U.N. money is going for-and is it worth it?

Trump set to decrease US funding of United Nations
The Trump Administration intends to take a hard-nosed approach to one of the frustrating mysteries left behind by the Obama Administration: Just exactly how much money does the U.S. give to the United Nations, what is the money going for—and is it worth it?
The Administration’s tough strategy is specifically aimed at reducing, rather than eliminating, U.S. support  for the world organization and will not affect, at least in the short term, Washington’s current dues-paying  commitment to pay 22 per cent of the U.N.’s so-called “regular” budget ($5.6 billion for 2016-2017) and 28.5 percent  of its peacekeeping obligations ($7.9 billion) this year.
But at the same time, the intent is clearly to hold the U.N.’s feet close to the fire on its value to U.S. goals and interests, as well as take special aim at organizations that offer full membership to the Palestinian Authority or the Palestinian Liberation Organization, or are heavily influenced by states that sponsor or support terrorism and/or systematically violate human rights.
The methods for doing that include seeing what the organization has done with the money it has already received, finding ways to turn  as much spending as feasible into voluntary rather than mandatory contributions—which the Administration would like  to cut by 40 per cent—better sharing the international cost burden in the future, and making sure that U.S. contributions are  “used in a manner consistent with their designated purpose.”
Greater voluntary funding rather than automatic dues-paying has long been advocated by conservative reformers such as former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton (who is also a Fox News Contributor) as helping to bring the world organization into greater conformity with U.S. values and objectives.
The new approach is laid out in a draft presidential executive order obtained by Fox News that aims straightforwardly to “ensure better alignment between United States national interests and U.S. monetary support to the United Nations and other international organizations.”
Parts of the draft order are evidently still in flux, but that topic has long been a focus of concern among conservatives and U.S. activists suspicious of the runaway implications of the U.N.’s expanding global bureaucracy, but also among reformers frustrated at unsuccessful U.S. and Western efforts to rein in U.N. spending and make it more transparent and accountable, even while the U.S. remains far and away the world body’s biggest single financial supporter.
Those frustrations were especially aggravated by the Obama Administration’s stealth approach to U.S. funding: no aggregated figures on U.S. support for the U.N. and its sprawling array of funds, programs and agencies since 2010, when the overall tally, which could well have been low-balled, was about $7.7 billion.
The Administration has not yet given an indication of when the executive order will be published, but the intention in the draft version is to have the process in gear to  start taking effect by Jan. 1, 2018.
Indeed, notes Brett Schaefer, an expert on U.N. financing at the conservative Heritage Foundation, any changes as a result of the process are unlikely to be made until President Trump presents his budget for fiscal 2019. “It’s going to be a very deliberate process,” notes Schaefer. “Moreover, it’s incredibly overdue. The U.S. should be doing this as a matter of course.”
The title of the draft executive order—“Auditing and Reducing U.S. Funding of International Organizations”—makes clear that the Administration sees the challenge of transparency in the U.S. government itself as a necessary first step in dealing with semi-eternal complaints that the U.S. spends too much and gets too little for its U.N. financial support .
To deal with that, the draft order calls for:
  • Creation of an “International Funding Accountability Committee” in the executive branch, including the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence and the Counsel to the President, or their delegates, to take stock of spending on the U.N. and other international organizations (the U.N. got  about 90 per cent of that total, according to the Obama Administration’s 2010 tally)
  • Preparation of  a committee report by Jan. 1 of next year on the full tally of “current and expected” U.S. funding over the past eight years for any international organization, how much of that was voluntary or mandated, “how the organization expects to use [the funds] going forward”—and whether the organization provides enough information to make that possible;
  • The committee to ”identify a compelling national interest…directly advanced by continued funding,” as well as any organization where that condition wouldn’t be met;
  • Recommendations on “appropriate strategies”  for reform that would emphasize “transition” from dues paying to voluntary contributions, as well as “legislative, regulatory and administrative mechanisms” to “selectively fund the specific parts of an international organization that align with U.S. interests.”
  • Recommendations on  “appropriate strategies”  to reduce any “disproportionate”  U.S. share of support for specific U.N. and other budgets.
The order also calls for a special focus on a grab-bag of controversial international spending that includes:
  • Iinternational peacekeeping operations,  where U.N. spending has steeply  spiraled over a decade, though it is now slowly declining, and where sexual abuse and other scandals have proliferated;
  • Pay scales  for U.N. and other international staffers, which have eluded serious U.S. attempts at analysis
  • “Resolutions or sanctions that single out the State of Israel.”
The draft executive order takes specific aim at the United Nations Population Fund (already affected by a prior Trump Administration decision to withdraw funding from international organizations that support abortion) and the International Criminal Court, as well as “any United Nations affiliate or other international organization that circumvents sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Moreover, the process is clearly seen as ongoing—the draft order calls for the Accountability Committee to “perform future reviews as directed by the President”—and, to prevent another black hole from developing over U.N. funding, to  keep its accounting results on a public website.

Google calls staffers back to US after Trump order on immigration, report says


Google called on its employees who may be affected by President Trump’s immigration order to get back to the U.S. as soon as possible, according to a report published Saturday.
Bloomberg obtained a copy of a memo from the company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai.
"It’s painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on our colleagues," Pichai wrote. "We’ve always made our view on immigration issues known publicly and will continue to do so."
An unidentified source told Bloomberg that the concern is that employees from one of the seven countries that Trump identified may not be allowed back in to the U.S., even if that person has  a valid visa.
"We are advising our clients from those seven countries who have green cards or any type of H-1B visa not to travel outside the U.S." Ava Benach, a partner at immigration law firm Benach Collopy LLP, said in the report. “No one is really sure whether a green card holder from these seven countries can return to the U.S. now. It’s fairly clear that an H-1B visa holder can’t," Benach said.
Trump's executive order suspends all immigration from countries with terrorism concerns for 90 days.
The State Department said the three-month ban in the directive applied to Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen - all Muslim-majority nations.
The order also calls for Homeland Security and State Department officials, along with the director of national intelligence, to review what information the government needs to fully vet would-be visitors and come up with a list of countries that don't provide it.
The order says the government will give countries 60 days to start providing the information or citizens from those countries will be barred from traveling to the United States.
The temporary halt to refugee processing does include exceptions for people claiming religious persecution, so long as their religion is a minority faith in their country. That could apply to Christians from Muslim-majority countries.

Trump-Putin call will be positive says top Russian official


The first official contact between President Donald Trump and his Russia counterpart Vladimir Putin is expected to be “positive”, Russian officials say.
Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted influential security chief Nikolai Patrushey on Saturday. He is the secretary of Russia’s Security Council.
The telephone call between expected to take place later Saturday will be the first official contact between the two leaders since Trump was sworn in as president last week.
TRUMP, MEXICAN LEADER TALK -- BY PHONE -- AS TENSIONS RISE
Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway told “Fox & Friends” on Friday that the two leaders may speak about U.S. sanctions against Russia and how to improve relations between the two nations.
Recent polls show that anti-American sentiment in Russia has dropped to 56 percent. Pollsters say it’s due to Trump’s indication he wants to improve relations.
The Kremlin has welcomed Trump's promises to mend ties with Moscow, which have been badly strained by the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. elections.
According to Denis Volkav of the Levada Center, Russia’s independent pollster, the Russian government has been gradually ending state television propaganda to get the public ready for possible reconciliation.
Ahead of the call planned for Saturday, Trump was noncommittal about whether he was considering lifting the economic penalties. He told reporters: "We'll see what happens. As far as the sanctions, very early to be talking about that."
Trump made those remarks Friday alongside British Prime Minister Theresa May, whose country — as part of the European Union — also levied sanctions on Russia following its provocations in Ukraine. Voicing the view of many in Europe, May said, "We believe the sanctions should continue."
On Saturday, Trump is also set to speak with the prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In the afternoon the president is scheduled to speak with the president of France, François Hollande, and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Vice President Mike Pence was expected to be on the Putin call with Trump. He wasn't expected to join other diplomatic calls the president planned for Saturday.

McConnell refuses to say whether 'nuclear option' in Supreme Court nomination is on table


The top Republican Senator Friday refused to say whether or not his colleagues would take the so-called “nuclear option” during the confirmation process for President Trump’s Supreme Court pick, but promised that the nominee will be “confirmed.”
“My answer’s going to be ... [Democrats] have set the standard,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told Politico.
If Republicans are unable to secure enough Democratic votes for Trump’s pick, they can change the rules and curb the filibuster. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., did that for lower court nominees and other nominations in 2013.
Trump has called on McConnell to kill the filibuster if Democrats resist his pick, but McConnell said the decision is not up to Trump.
"That’s not a presidential decision. That’s a Senate decision," McConnell told Politico.
Senate Republicans prevented former President Obama from filling Justice Antonin Scalia's seat, a political gamble that paid off when Trump was elected.
Trump has promised to seek someone in the mold of the conservative icon, who died nearly a year ago after serving on the Supreme Court for more than 29 years.
Trump said that his nominee is someone who will get approved, but Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats will vigorously fight any nominee not “mainstream.”
As minority leader, Schumer won't have the same power as McConnell to block a nominee. But his words signal that Democrats could filibuster and force Republicans to round up 60 votes to move ahead.
That will be a challenge for the GOP since they only hold 52 seats. McConnell suggested to the magazine that Senate democrats should not even require 60 votes.
GREGG JARRETT: THE FIRST (AND FRIVOLOUS) LAWSUIT AGAINST PRESIDENT TRUMP 
“The view was that you don’t filibuster judges ,” McConnell told the magazine. “It’s ironic that Professor Schumer was actually the one that said let’s open up the toolbox and use all of the tools. And so he’s the guy you ought to be talking to on  that issue: He  invited, in effect, where we are today.”
A spokesman from Schumer’s office, in response to McConnell, said, “People in glass  houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

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