Last Call For The Ivanka Job

The gaslighting propaganda deluge of garbage that Ivanka Trump is somehow responsible for "millions of jobs being created" is one of the most laughable lies of the Trump regime, and yet industry groups are absolutely pretending she's singlehandedly powers the economy by herself.

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is giving Ivanka Trump, the president's elder daughter and a White House adviser, an award for supporting manufacturing.

Trump will be the inaugural recipient of the association’s Alexander Hamilton Award. The new accolade marks the 125th anniversary of NAM and comes as the group launches its Creators Wanted workforce campaign to recognize leaders in manufacturing.

“Ivanka Trump embodies the collaborative spirit and relentless drive needed to solve manufacturers’ most pressing challenge — the workforce crisis. Like no one in government has ever done, she has provided singular leadership and shown an unwavering commitment to modern manufacturing in America,” NAM President Jay Timmons said in a statement.

She will receive her award on Wednesday in Washington at NAM’s Creators Wanted kick off.

“America is home to the best workforce in the world, but the skills of today do not mirror those of tomorrow. I am committed to ensuring our workforce is equipped with the skills they need to seize the vast opportunities that lie ahead,” Trump said in a statement.

She joined NAM's Manufacturing Institute in September to announce a major expansion of a skills training and apprenticeship program created by Toyota Motor North America.

This is ludicrous. Ivanka Trump has done absolutely nothing other than multiple failed lines of clothing and shoes trading off her father's name, and yet she's somehow the smartest businesswoman on Earth now?

Do people believe this nonsense?

From Donald Trump’s 2017 presidential inauguration through the end of November 2019, the American economy added a total of about 6.2 million jobs. But during a speech at a White House event on paid family leave on Thursday, the president credited his daughter, Ivanka Trump, with personally creating more than twice as many jobs over the same timespan.

“14 million people she’s gotten jobs for,” Trump said, referring to Ivanka. “Her goal when she started it two years ago was 500,000 jobs. She’s done over 14 million, so that’s really something.”

FOURTEEN MILLION JOBS?!? 

Have we gone insane?  What kind of North Korean reality warping is going on here?

The Klep-Trump-Cracy, Con't

House Democrats had their particular emoluments lawsuit dismissed outright at the DC Circuit over lack of standing.

A federal appeals court has rejected a lawsuit from Congressional Democrats who accused President Donald Trump of violating the Constitution by receiving profits from foreign governments' spending at his luxury Washington hotel and other businesses.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision did not address the legality of Trump's business dealings, but held that the more than 200 Democratic senators and House members who banded together in 2017 to bring the suit against the president lacked legal standing to do so.

The unanimous ruling from an ideologically diverse three-judge panel suggested that if the House or Senate had formally authorized the suit, it may have been allowed to proceed, but the lawmakers acting as plaintiffs in the case did not have standing to pursue it on their own.

"Only an institution can assert an institutional injury," the court wrote in its brief, 12-page decision.

Trump quickly lauded the decision.

"We just won the big emoluments case," the president told reporters on the south lawn of the White House as he departed for a trip to North Carolina. "It was a total win... It was another phony case and we won it, three to nothing."

"Another win just in. Nervous Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in Congress sued me, thrown out. This one unanimous, in the D.C. Circuit," he added later in a post to his Twitter account.

The lawmakers could seek review by the full bench of the D.C. Circuit or the Supreme Court, but it seems more likely that the battle over Trump's private businesses' receipts from foreign sources will continue through other cases currently pending at two other federal appeals courts. Lawyers for the Congressional Democrats signaled they may continue the fight beyond Friday's ruling.

“We're disappointed in the panel's decision and are considering next steps," said Elizabeth Wydra, the president of the Constitutional Accountability Center and a member of the legal team that helped represent Democrats in the case. "It is important to recognize that today’s ruling is not a decision on the merits. The Court of Appeals did not in any way approve of President Trump’s repeated and flagrant violations of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause.

This was always the longest of the shots against Trump's self-dealing, the latest of which is news that the Secret Service is regularly paying Trump's hotels $650 a night.

President Trump’s company charges the Secret Service for the rooms agents use while protecting him at his luxury properties — billing U.S. taxpayers at rates as high as $650 per night, according to federal records and people who have seen receipts.

Those charges, compiled here for the first time, show that Trump has an unprecedented — and largely hidden — business relationship with his own government. When Trump visits his clubs in Palm Beach, Fla., and Bedminster, N.J., the service needs space to post guards and store equipment.

Trump’s company says it charges only minimal fees. But Secret Service records do not show that.

At Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, the Secret Service was charged the $650 rate dozens of times in 2017, and a different rate, $396.15, dozens more times in 2018, according to documents from Trump’s visits.

And at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, the Secret Service was charged $17,000 a month to use a three-bedroom cottage on the property, an unusually high rent for homes in that area, according to receipts from 2017. Trump’s company billed the government even for days when Trump wasn’t there.

These payments appear to contradict the Trump Organization’s own statements about what it charges members of his government entourage. “If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free — meaning, like, cost for housekeeping,” Trump’s son Eric said in a Yahoo Finance interview last year.

Trump scams US taxpayers, and he takes foreign money for pay-for-play schemes.  That's never been in doubt, but the legal struggle is designed to make sure it never is settled.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Trump continues to collect heads for his wall now that he's been crowned by the Senate GOP, and the next name on the list is Alexander Vindman, who testified in the House impeachment proceedings.

President Trump is preparing to push out a national security official who testified against him during the impeachment inquiry after he expressed deep anger on Thursday over the attempt to remove him from office because of his actions toward Ukraine.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — a National Security Council aide who testified during House Democrats’ impeachment hearings — will be informed in the coming days, likely on Friday, by administration officials that he is being reassigned to a position at the Defense Department, taking a key figure from the investigation out of the White House, according to two people familiar with the move who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel decisions.
Vindman had already informed senior officials at the NSC that he intended to take an early exit from his assignment and leave his post by the end of the month, according to people familiar with his decision, but Trump is eager to make a symbol of the Army officer soon after the Senate acquitted him of the impeachment charges approved by House Democrats.

Trump made clear on Thursday that he is ready to make his impeachment a key part of his reelection strategy and highlight his anger at Democratic leaders who led the charge to remove him from office, as well as Republicans who did not embrace the defense of his actions even though he was acquitted by the Senate on Wednesday.

Vindman being "reassigned" is the least of the things Trump plans to do.

At an event in the East Room of the White House, he called Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) a “horrible person” and derided Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) as a flip-flopping Republican with “no sign of principles” whose vote to convict Trump on abuse of power charges was born not out of principle but bitterness over his failed 2012 presidential bid.

And he kicked off the day at the National Prayer Breakfast by questioning the two lawmakers’ claims about the role religion plays in their public lives.

“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong. Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that that’s not so,” he told a room full of religious leaders.

Trump and his allies are considering doing more than just launching verbal fusillades at his perceived enemies over impeachment as the decision regarding Vindman shows. Some of the president’s aides are discussing whether to remove or reassign several administration officials who testified during the impeachment inquiry, according to aides and advisers who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans. Meanwhile, Senate committee chairmen are ramping up their investigation into Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine while his father, Joe, was vice president.

“Lieutenant Colonel Col. Vindman and his twin brother — right? — we had some people that — really amazing,” Trump said during an event at the White House, mocking the national security counsel aide who testified during hearings investigating the White House’s actions toward Ukraine.

Expect much more of this in the coming weeks and months ahead.  Yes, Trump's targets have protection and resources for now, but then again, those only remain as long as Trump doesn't go for the jugular right away.  He;s already targeting Joe Biden with a nonsense "investigation".  You have to think that plenty of folks could be next.

StupidiNews!

• With 100% of Iowa caucus precincts reporting in Pete Buttigieg has a one-tenth percentage point lead over Bernie Sanders as question remain about a possible recanvass.
• After a record-breaking 328 days in space, NASA astronaut Christina Koch is back on Earth after she and two others landed safely in a Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan.
• A Chinese doctor who tried to warn the planet about the Wuhan coronavirus has died from the disease as the death toll in China is now over 630.
• The Pentagon says US forces have killed a top terrorist leader in Yemen as a drone strike is believed to have killed Al-Qaeda affiliate head Qasim al-Rimi. 
• The first clinical trial results of using CRISPR gene editing technology to fight cancer are promising, but the cancers also evolved defenses to combat and slip past the changes made by the treatment.