***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[Belgium]

Only the best people
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/30/rudy-giuliani-mek-iran-paris-rally
Rudy Giuliani calls for Iran regime change at rally linked to extreme group
Trump lawyer speaks at Paris event staged by MeK, once listed as terrorist organisation and widely seen as a personality cult
Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, addressed a rally staged by an extreme Iranian opposition group in Paris on Saturday, calling for regime change in Tehran.

Giuliani spoke to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an umbrella coalition largely controlled by the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), which was once listed as a terrorist organisation in the US and Europe and is still widely viewed as a Marxist-Islamist cult built around the personality of its leader, Maryam Rajavi.

“We are now realistically being able to see an end to the regime in Iran,” Giuliani told a crowd of about 4,000, many of them refugees and young eastern Europeans who had been bussed in to attend the rally in return for a weekend trip to Paris.

“The mullahs must go, the ayatollah must go, and they must be replaced by a democratic government which Madam Rajavi represents,” Giuliani said. “Freedom is right around the corner ... Next year I want to have this convention in Tehran!”

The former New York mayor, who became a cyber security adviser in the White House before being named as Trump’s personal lawyer in April, is one of a long line of American conservative hawks to attend the NCRI annual conference. Another prominent guest on Saturday was Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and a close Trump ally.

In his speech, Giuliani said the fall of the government in Tehran would be brought about by economic isolation.

“When the greatest economic power stops doing business with you, then you collapse ... and the sanctions will become greater, greater and greater,” he said.

In May, Trump abrogated the 2015 international nuclear deal with Iran and ordered a campaign of intense economic pressure, threatening sanctions against any foreign company doing business with Iran and calling for an end to trade in Iranian oil by November. Giuliani suggested that the current wave of protests in Iran was being orchestrated from outside.

“Those protests are not happening spontaneously,” Giuliani said. “They are happening because of many of our people in Albania [which hosts an MeK compound] and many of our people here and throughout out the world.”

It was unclear whether “our people” was intended to mean the US or the MeK.

The guest of honour at last year’s NCRI conference was John Bolton, who has since become Trump’s third national security adviser. Bolton told the 2017 rally US policy should be to make sure the Islamic Republic “will not last until its 40th birthday” –1 April 2019.

The policy of the Trump administration is not officially to call for regime change, though top officials have often hinted at it. Outlining his approach in May, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said it was up to the Iranian people to relieve the pressure on the country by changing their government.

Giuliani was one of 33 senior US officials and military brass at the year’s conference on Saturday. Bill Richardson, former US ambassador to the United Nations, US energy secretary and Democratic governor of New Mexico, was also in attendance.

Stephen Harper, former prime minister of Canada, also delivered a speech advocating regime change in Iran.

Most observers of Iranian politics say the MeK has minimal support in Iran and is widely hated for its use of violence and close links to Israeli intelligence.

In sweltering temperatures on Saturday, around 4,000 people arrived by bus at the Parc des expositions centre. Many were draped in the MeK flag, which replaces the sign for “Allah” on the Iranian flag with a yellow lion. Others wore yellow sun hats displaying the hashtag “#Maryam Rajavi”.

Around half of the attendees were Iranian. The other half consisted of an assortment of bored-looking Poles, Czechs, Slovakians, Germans and Syrians who responded to a Facebook campaign promising travel, food and accommodation to Paris for a mere €25. Hundreds of Syrian refugees settled in Germany also attended. Many snoozed under trees during speeches.

“We saw the deal on Facebook and we agreed to come on a holiday,” said a young Syrian mother as she sat on the conference floor, fanning her two young children. “I have never seen Paris. I don’t know anything about the MeK.”

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

Maxine got bigger balls than a lot of these dudes

 

[Nike Jordan]

Auntie Max talkin that ****

For real doe, Be safe

Maxine wants ALL DA SMOKE.

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

What was that C word Republicans been throwing around again?

 

[AEA18]

Do they think their crazy supporters are the only ones who have access to their social media posts?

 

[MalcolmNewton]

Do they think their crazy supporters are the only ones who have access to their social media posts?

Not even that, why post dumb/racist things to twitter, facebook, instagram at all. You'd think these right wing idiots would learn by now that all they will do is get aired out for it but they keep doing it. At least the low level idiots end up losing their jobs or something similar.

 

[Nike Jordan]

 

[Nike Jordan]

Scary thing is, Trump and Co. Could probably get a lot more horrible **** done if they coded their racism just a little bit. But none of them are smart enough to figure it out.

I expect the 2024 Republican nominee to be a full-on Nazi at this point.

 

[IATT]

 

[Belgium]

Pruitt has already been under 12 separate investigations for a while now.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-pruitt/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.308160adf95f
Top EPA ethics official discloses that he has urged additional investigations into Scott Pruitt
The Environmental Protection Agency’s chief ethics officer, who initially had approved a $50-a-night condo rental and other decisions by administrator Scott Pruitt, disclosed this week that he has urged the agency’s inspector general to investigate various allegations that Pruitt misused his government position.

Kevin Minoli, who focuses on ensuring that EPA employees abide by federal laws governing conduct, told the Office of Government Ethics in a letter dated Wednesday that he had recommended the new inquiries after “additional potential issues regarding Mr. Pruitt have come to my attention through sources within the EPA and media reports.”

The letter, first reported Saturday by the New York Times and obtained independently by The Washington Post, does not spell out the precise actions that triggered Minoli’s concern. But a government official with direct knowledge of the inquiries, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because details have not been released publicly, said the referrals involved instances in which Pruitt potentially misused his position, such as having subordinates help with his housing search, inquire about a mattress or secure tickets to the Rose Bowl. Federal standards of conduct bar public officials from accepting free services or gifts from their subordinates, and from using their position for their own financial benefit.

The referrals also included a $2,000 payment, first reported by The Post nearly a month ago, that Pruitt’s wife received last year to help with logistics at an annual conference for the New York nonprofit group Concordia, the official said. Pruitt also spoke at the conference and had introduced his wife to the group’s chief executive as part of a broader push to find her employment.

“To the best of my knowledge, all of the matters that I have referred are either under consideration for acceptance or under active investigation,” Minoli wrote, adding that he had “provided ‘ready and active assistance’ to the Inspector General and his office.”

In a March memo, Minoli initially had approved retroactively of Pruitt’s lease of a room in a Capitol Hill condo co-owned by health-care lobbyist Vicki Hart, saying that the favorable rate — $50-a-night, charged only when he stayed there — did not constitute a gift because that rate for 30 consecutive days would have equated to a monthly rent of $1,500. Minoli described that as “a reasonable market value.”

But days later, he wrote a subsequent memo saying he lacked key facts when he first evaluated the lease. After the news broke, multiple current and former EPA officials confirmed that Pruitt’s daughter stayed at the condo free last summer while she was working as a White House intern.

“Some have raised questions whether the actual use of the space was consistent with the terms of the lease,” Minoli wrote. “Evaluating those questions would have required factual information that was not before us and the Review does not address those questions.”

In addition, EPA ethics officials only later learned that Vicki Hart’s husband, J. Steven Hart, who was the chairman of the prominent firm Williams & Jensen at the time of the rental, also had lobbied the EPA on behalf of clients such as Coca-Cola and Smithfield Foods.

Minoli also gave ethics approval for several private and military flights that Pruitt took early in his tenure, including a $5,719 private air charter last August from Denver to Durango, Colo., as well as a $36,068 military jet that Pruitt and several aides took last June from an event with President Trump in Ohio to New York to catch a flight to Italy.

In a statement Saturday, the EPA noted that the bulk of Minoli’s five-page letter to the OGE’s acting director involved merely reporting back “on a number of administrative and staffing issues, some of which predate the Trump Administration.” The EPA noted that it had taken “early steps to address some of the concerns the OGE raised well before this letter was sent last week, including the hiring of two additional ethics officials and ongoing ethics training and retraining” staff.

“Part of the remainder of the letter discusses cooperation with the [Office of the Inspector General], a normal course of business for any agency, and the entire EPA is always responsive to the OIG and their requests for information,” EPA spokesman John Konkus said in the statement.

The EPA inspector general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.

Minoli’s letter came months after a top government ethics official implored the EPA to address any violations linked to Pruitt’s spending habits, his condo lease from a lobbyist and various personnel decisions.

David J. Apol, the OGE’s acting director, took the unusual step in April of telling EPA officials that some ethics questions surrounding Pruitt deserved further scrutiny.

“Public trust demands that all employees act in the public interest, and free from any actual or perceived conflicts,” he wrote to Minoli at the time.

The EPA’s Minoli answered Apol’s letter with one of his own, noting that agency ethics officials “lack independent investigatory authority,” according to a copy of the response reviewed by The Post. Rather, Minoli wrote, his office has a “long-standing practice” of referring such inquiries to the EPA inspector general.

 

[gry60]

Cornell says the factory equipment was left to rust away in North Korean warehouses. And more than four decades later, the [North Korean] government has yet to pay for those 1,000 Volvos.
....

..
.
We tambout 1970s Volvos...

They haven't paid off those cars since the 1.9.7.0.s

But let's have a summit with them. Surely, they'll honor their word.

 

[aepps20]

having your posts liked by the same dude too

He liked our posts because they resonate with future Coalition members. Kanye was treated very unfairly and Trump was right.

 

[wavycrocket]

Maxine got bigger balls than a lot of these dudes

I swear. Queen Maxine. She standing super tall, and i love it man.

Unapologetic

 

[gry60]

 

[aepps20]

Maxine James Brown Waters is the epitome of #SmashMouthPolitics Dims never want to embrace. She's the type of Lib that concerns me. Libs don't realize they have an MVP. But they will keep losing with Undapper Charles and Stubborn Nancy.

 

[RustyShackleford]

A deal will be signed.......



It is a finesse, it follows a cycle.

Kim got everyone where he wants them.

Anyone paying attention could have seen this coming

 

[whywesteppin]

Anyone paying attention could have seen this coming

 

[IATT]

Can't

Make

This

Stuff

Up

 

[MalcolmNewton]

 

[IATT]

 

[MalcolmNewton]

I think he may be competing with Donald Jr for twitter d-bag of the year.

 

[MalcolmNewton]

 

[plansb]

Love the dems are lazy do-nothings with no jobs theme you get from the trumpers. Back when i had a facebook i saw people posting that **** a lot. The funny thing is a lot of those people are slobs with ****ty jobs.

 

[IATT]