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Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross shortlisted for top economic roles The Financial Times / November 15, 2016 Trump signals he plans to pursue pro-growth and business friendly economic policy US President-elect Donald Trump is sending another strong signal that he plans to take a pro-growth and business friendly approach to economic policy, with leading New York investors Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross on his short list for Treasury and Commerce secretary. The pair on Tuesday won the endorsement of billionaire investor and Trump backer Carl Icahn who announced after speaking with Trump that they were in the running for the top economic roles. “Both would be great choices,” Icahn said. “Both are good friends of mine but, more importantly, they are two of the smartest people I know.” Both men are pragmatists and free marketeers who would focus on ways to unleash US growth through business-friendly policies. Mnuchin, a 17-year veteran of Goldman Sachs who served as the Trump campaign’s chief fundraiser, is chairman of Dune Capital Management and Dune Entertainment Partners and a longtime business associate of Trump. The softly-spoken Ross is a private equity investor with a long history of striking deals around the world. He served as a senior economic adviser to the Trump campaign and was one of the main public articulators of his trade policy. Ross said the top economic priorities for a Trump administration would be encouraging infrastructure investment, the repatriation of profits parked overseas by US multinationals and corporate tax cuts and other measures to encourage investment. Among those is a plan designed to make it easier for companies to write off capital expenditures, much as they can now write off the interest they pay on debt, though not both at the same time. “We are tying to spur more investment. The big lagging thing in our economy has been shrinkage of gross private sector investment. I think it is one of the reasons why [US] productivity gains have not been so strong [in recent years],” Ross said. Low investment and bad trade agreements were in fact the two biggest things holding back the US economy, he said. But Ross also rejected the charge that a Trump administration would herald a new era of American protectionism, saying it would be focused on negotiating smarter trade pacts with the US’s major trading partners. A Trump administration would work to narrow its trade deficit with China and other countries. But it would not do so by applying blanket tariffs on imports from any country, he said. “The U.S. is the reason why the whole world has a trade surplus. We have a $500 billion deficit which is a 3 per cent permanent reduction in the size of our economy,” Ross said. “Cutting our balance of payments deficit doesn’t mean slapping on 45 per cent tariffs on everything from China. Absolutely not.” “But here is the key issue. We should treat ourselves as the world’s biggest customer and treat nations that are selling to us as suppliers to us,” he said. “One of the great dangers for trade is that since the free trade people are so ideological they do not admit that anything was wrong on any trade agreement so they run the risk of free trade going right down the drain — [which is why] there is all this populism and protectionism.” To secure better trade deals the Trump administration would pursue a three-point plan which would call for clear cost-benefit analyses, their automatic reopening for possible adjustments after five years and a requirement that other countries implement required changes to laws and other policies at the same time as the US. Mnuchin’s past and present collegues at Goldman Sachs speak of him as a hard worker, who tends to have a tough, ruthless streak with an intense focus. He was not considered to be particularly sociable or deft at navigating relationships. “He’s not a people-person or salesman, not at all,” a former colleague recalled, adding that he appeared to have a strong free-market ethos. .

LAPD chief says department will refuse to help Donald Trump’s deportation efforts The Washington Post / November 15, 2016 Donald Trump has pledged to begin deporting millions of undocumented immigrants as soon as he takes office next year. For now, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck has no plans to help him do it. “We’re going to maintain the same posture we always have,” says Beck. “We don’t make detentions or arrests based solely on status, whether that’s immigration status or any other status.” “If the federal government takes a more aggressive role on deportation, then they’ll have to do that on their own,” he continued. [We are not team players. We’re not going to help the federal government rid our nation of illegal immigrants, people inherently criminals by their action] Beck called any effort to arrest and deport people a “monumental task” and estimated that there are 500,000 undocumented residents in the city of Los Angeles alone. “This is a population we police by creating partnerships, not by targeting them because of their immigration status,” he added. If there was one location in the United States in which Trump could make the largest dent in the country’s undocumented population, it would be sprawling Los Angeles County, where citizens and noncitizens have lived side-by-side for decades. Almost a quarter of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants live in California, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. With an undocumented population of nearly 815,000, according to PPIC, Los Angeles County has more undocumented residents than any county in the state. Though estimates vary, experts calculate that more than 1.6 million illegal immigrants live in Texas, making it second only to California in the size of its undocumented population. The LAPD has spent decades avoiding a significant role in the enforcement of federal immigration policies, even as the city’s undocumented immigrant population swelled. Following a special order by then-chief Daryl Gates in 1979 that stopped officers from inquiring about someone’s immigration status, the Los Angeles Times reported, the LAPD has for decades managed to remain outside the contentious immigration debate. Beck says working with the Department of Homeland Security on deportation is not the department’s job. “I don’t intend on doing anything different,” he said. “We are not going to engage in law enforcement activities solely based on somebody’s immigration status. We are not going to work in conjunction with Homeland Security on deportation efforts. That is not our job, nor will I make it our job.” Unveiled in 1979, “Special Order No. 40” directed LAPD officers to “not initiate police action” in an effort to ascertain someone’s legal status. Officers were instructed to notify the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service after arresting someone “for multiple misdemeanor offenses, a high grade misdemeanor or a felony offense” or someone who “has been previously arrested for a similar offense.” “The Los Angeles community has become significantly more diverse during the past several years with substantial numbers of people from different ethnic and sociological backgrounds migrating to this City,” the order states. “Many aliens, whether from Latin American, African, Asian or European countries, are legal residents. Others are undocumented and are residing in the City without legal sanction.” Since Beck became police chief in November 2009, the Times reported, the department has gone even further to remove itself from playing a role in deportations. Officers no longer hand people “arrested for low-level crimes to federal agents for deportation and [have] moved away from honoring federal requests to detain inmates who might be deportable past their jail terms.” Beck says his command staff has met with community leaders and has delivered a consistent message when asked about immigration enforcement: “This is the same LAPD you had Monday, a week ago,” he said. “We have not changed because of the election on Tuesday. We have the same principles. We have the same values,” he said. “This is not going to change the way that the Los Angeles Police Department enforces the law.” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has reiterated that police would continue to enforce Special Order 40. “Our law enforcement officers and LAPD don’t go around asking people for their papers, nor should they,” he said. “That’s not the role of local law enforcement.” Though Trump has threatened to withhold federal tax dollars, mayors of U.S. cities across the country have promised to protect their [illegal immigrant] residents from deportation. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio even left open the possibility of deleting a database with the names of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants living in New York. He was joined in opposition by Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel and Seattle’s Ed Murray, both of whom have pledged to resist efforts to deport their residents. “Seattle has always been a welcoming city [to illegal immigrants],” Murray said Monday, according to ABC News. “The last thing I want is for us to start turning on our neighbors.”

In a huge but downplayed policy change, the Obama administration has decided to stop trying to overthrow Assad (regime change), which inherently reopens the door to cooperation with Russia. With the argument of whether or not Assad should go out of the way, we now will have a clear common goal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Obama directs Pentagon to target al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, one of the most formidable forces fighting Assad The Washington Post / November 10, 2016 President Obama has ordered the Pentagon to find and kill the leaders of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Syria that the administration had largely ignored until now and that has been at the vanguard of the fight against the Syrian government. The decision to deploy more drones and intelligence assets against the militant group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra reflects Obama’s concern that it is turning parts of Syria into a new base of operations for al-Qaeda on Europe’s southern doorstep. The move underlines the extent to which Obama has come to prioritize the counter­terrorism mission in Syria over efforts to pressure President Bashar al-Assad to step aside [Major strategy change], as al-Nusra is among the most effective forces­­ battling the Syrian government. That shift is likely to accelerate once President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has said he will be even more aggressive in going after militants than Obama, a stance that could lead to the expansion of the campaign against al-Nusra, possibly in direct cooperation with Moscow. The group now calls itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham — or Front for the Conquest of Syria — and says it has broken with al-Qaeda, an assertion discounted by U.S. officials. (This is the U.S. supported rebel group that beheaded a 12-year-old child before the world...... http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/topic/41827-syria/?page=2) Obama’s new order gives the U.S. military’s Joint Special ­Operations Command wider authority and additional intelligence-collection re­sources to go after al-Nusra’s broader leadership, not just al-Qaeda veterans or those directly involved in external plotting. The White House and State Department led the charge within the Obama administration for prioritizing action against the group. Pentagon leaders were reluctant at first to pull resources away from the fight against ISIS. Aides say Obama grew frustrated that more wasn’t being done by the Pentagon and the intelligence community to kill al-Nusra leaders given the warnings he had received from top counter­terrorism officials about the gathering threat they posed. Obama was repeatedly told over the summer that the group was allowing al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan to create in northwest Syria the largest haven for the network since it was scattered after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Officials also warned Obama that al-Nusra could try to fill the void as its rival ISIS lost ground. Lisa Monaco, Obama’s White House homeland security and counter­terrorism adviser, said Obama’s decision “prioritized our fight against al-Qaeda in Syria, including through targeting their leaders and operatives, some of whom are legacy al-Qaeda members.” “We have made clear to all parties in Syria that we will not allow al-Qaeda to grow its capacity to attack the U.S., our allies, and our interests,” she said in a statement. “We will continue to take action to deny these terrorists any safe haven in Syria.” To support the expanded push against al-Nusra, the White House pressed the Pentagon to deploy additional armed drones and intelligence-collection assets in the airspace over northwestern Syria, an area that had been sparsely covered by the United States until now because of its proximity to advanced Russian air-defense systems and aircraft. A bitterly divided Obama administration had tried over the summer to cut a deal with Moscow on a joint U.S.-Russian air campaign against al-Nusra, in exchange for a Russian commitment to ground Syrian government warplanes and to allow more humanitarian supplies into besieged areas. But the negotiations broke down in acrimony, with Moscow accusing the United States of failing to separate al-Nusra from more moderate rebel groups and Washington accusing the Russians of war crimes in Aleppo. Armed drones controlled by JSOC stepped up operations in September, according to military officials. Drone strikes by the U.S. military under the program began in October and have so far killed at least four high-value targets, including al-Nusra’s senior external planner. The Pentagon has disclosed two of the strikes so far. One of the most significant strikes — targeting a gathering of al-Nusra leaders on Nov. 2 — has yet to be disclosed, officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operations. So far, Russian air-defense systems and aircraft haven’t interfered with stepped-up U.S. operations against al-Nusra. Officials attributed Moscow’s acquiescence to the limited number of U.S. aircraft involved in the missions and to Russia’s interest in letting Washington combat one of the Assad regime’s most potent enemies within the insurgency. U.S. officials said they provided notifications to the Russians before the al-Nusra strikes to avoid misunderstandings. Officials who supported the [policy] shift said the Obama administration could no longer tolerate what one of them described as “a deal with the devil,” whereby the United States largely held its fire against al-Nusra because the group was popular with Syrians in rebel-controlled areas and furthered the U.S. goal of putting military pressure on Assad. Russia had accused the United States of sheltering al-Nusra, a charge repeated Thursday in Moscow by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. “The president doesn’t want this group to be what inherits the country if Assad ever does fall,” a senior U.S. official said. “This cannot be the viable Syrian opposition. It’s al-Qaeda.” Officials said the administration’s hope is that more-moderate rebel factions will be able to gain ground as both the Islamic State and al-Nusra come under increased military pressure. A growing number of White House and State Department officials, however, have privately voiced doubts about the wisdom of applying U.S. military power, even covertly, to pressure Assad to step aside, particularly since Russia’s military intervention in Syria last year. Trump has voiced strong skepticism about arming Syrian rebels in the past, suggesting that U.S. intelligence agencies don’t have enough knowledge about rebel intentions to pick reliable allies. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and other Pentagon leaders initially resisted the idea of devoting more Pentagon surveillance aircraft and armed drones against al-Nusra. In White House Situation Room meetings, Carter and other top Pentagon officials argued that the military’s resources were needed to combat ISIS and that it would be difficult to operate in the airspace given Russia’s military presence, officials said. While Obama, White House national security adviser Susan E. Rice, Secretary of State John F. Kerry and special presidential envoy Brett McGurk agreed with Carter on the need to keep the focus on ISIS, they favored shifting resources to try to prevent al-Nusra from becoming a bigger threat down the road. A senior defense official said additional drone assets were assigned to the JSOC mission. Carter also made clear that the Pentagon’s goal would be to hit al-Nusra leadership targets, not take strikes to try to separate the moderate rebels from al-Nusra, officials said. “If we wake up in five years from now, and ISIS is dead but al-Qaeda in Syria has the equivalent of [the tribal areas of Pakistan] in northwest Syria, then we’ve got a problem,” a second senior U.S. official said. . . .

Immigration hardliner says Trump team preparing plans for wall, mulling Muslim registry Reuters / November 15, 2016 An architect of anti-immigration efforts who says he is advising President-elect Donald Trump said the new administration could push ahead rapidly on construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall without seeking immediate congressional approval. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped write tough immigration laws in Arizona and elsewhere, said in an interview that Trump's policy advisers had also discussed drafting a proposal for his consideration to reinstate a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries. Kobach, reportedly a key member of Trump's transition team, said he had participated in regular conference calls with about a dozen Trump immigration advisers for the past two to three months. Trump made building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border a central issue of his campaign and supports “extreme vetting” of Muslims entering the United States as a national security measure. Kobach told Reuters last Friday that the immigration group had discussed drafting executive orders for the president-elect's review "so that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security hit the ground running." To implement Trump's call for "extreme vetting" of some Muslim immigrants, Kobach said the immigration policy group could recommend the reinstatement of a national registry of immigrants and visitors who enter the United States on visas from countries where extremist organizations are active. Kobach helped design the program, known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), while serving in Republican President George W. Bush's Department of Justice after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by al Qaeda militants. Under NSEERS, people from countries deemed "higher risk" were required to undergo interrogations and fingerprinting on entering the United States. Some non-citizen male U.S. residents over the age of 16 from countries with active militant threats were required to register in person at government offices and periodically check in. NSEERS was abandoned in 2011 after it was deemed redundant by the Department of Homeland Security and criticized by civil rights groups for unfairly targeting immigrants from Muslim- majority nations. Kobach said the immigration advisers were also looking at how the Homeland Security Department could move rapidly on border wall construction without approval from Congress by reappropriating existing funds in the current budget. He acknowledged "that future fiscal years will require additional appropriations." HELPED DRAFT TOUGH ARIZONA LAW Kobach has worked with allies across the United States on drafting laws and pursuing legal actions to crack down on illegal immigration. In 2010, he helped draft an Arizona law that required state and local officials to check the immigration status of individuals stopped by police. Parts of the law, which was fiercely opposed by Hispanic and civil rights groups, were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011. Kobach was also the architect of a 2013 Kansas law requiring voters to provide proof-of-citizenship documents, such as birth certificates or U.S. passports, when registering for the first time. A U.S. appeals court blocked that law after challenges from civil rights groups. .

Associated Press / November 15, 2016 A Minnesota man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiring to join ISIS in Syria after telling the judge: 'I am a terrorist, your honor'. Hanad Musse, 21, is one of nine friends in Minnesota's large Somali community who are being sentenced this week for conspiring to join the militant group. Earlier Tuesday, one of his co-defendants, Hamza Ahmed, received 15 years on charges connected to the plot. Before he was sentenced on Tuesday, Musse apologized for lying to his family and acknowledged that he committed a serious offense. The judge asked Musse directly whether he was a terrorist, and Musse replied: 'I am a terrorist, your honor.' Musse, Ahmed and two other men took a Greyhound bus from Minneapolis to New York in November 2014 and were stopped by federal agents as they tried to travel overseas from JFK Airport. Prosecutors said they were part of a group of friends who began inspiring and recruiting each other to join the Islamic State group in the spring of 2014. Some of their friends made it to Syria, but the nine who were prosecuted did not. Three men were sentenced Monday; two who cooperated were given lighter sentences, but another who didn't help prosecutors was sentenced to 10 years [why not deported to Somalia?]. Musse and Ahmed are among group members who pleaded guilty but did NOT cooperate with prosecutors. Four others await sentencing, including three who went to trial and were also convicted on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder outside the U.S., which carries a possible life sentence, though prosecutors are seeking sentences of 30 or 40 years. When the judge asked Musse why he didn't cooperate with the government, he replied that he felt he would have lost the support of the community. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, who has handled all of Minnesota's terror conspiracy cases, had the six defendants who pleaded guilty evaluated by a German expert on deradicalization and is taking those findings into consideration. The sentencings cap a long case that shined a light on terrorism recruitment in Minnesota, the state with the largest concentration of Somali immigrants in the U.S. The FBI has said about a dozen people have left Minnesota to join militant groups in Syria in recent years. .

26-year-old Ohio man pleads guilty to kidnapping, raping 6-year-old Mansfield News Journal / November 14, 2016 An Ashland, Ohio man admitted Monday in Ashland County Common Pleas Court that he pulled a six-year-old girl out of her bedroom and raped her in the back yard of her home last August. Brock D. Martin, 26, of 815 Union St., pleaded guilty to six felony charges as part of a plea bargain in which he also admitted to two other burglaries dating back to 2013, including one that was sex-related. Martin pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping, two counts of rape and one count of aggravated burglary, all first-degree felonies. He also pleaded guilty to single second-degree felony counts of attempted rape and burglary. As part of the agreement, the prosecution will drop one count of aggravated burglary and two counts of rape, all first-degree felonies, along with a second-degree felony attempted kidnapping count and a fifth-degree charge of drug possession. All four rape counts alleged in an 11-count grand jury indictment in September 2015 carried sexually violent predator specifications, while the aggravated burglary and kidnapping charges included sexual motivation and sexually violent predator specifications. According to Ashland County Prosecutor Christopher Tunnell, Martin was charged with an incident on Aug. 18, 2015 in which he pushed a fan out of a window of an Orange Street home on Ashland’s north side, reached in and pulled a six-year-old girl out of her bed and raped her in the back yard. He said Martin ran off into nearby woods after a resident of the home came out of the house and interrupted the incident. He later was captured by an Ashland Police Department K-9 unit. During a police interview, Martin confessed to two other, unsolved, crimes, including an Aug. 11, 2015 burglary in the 900 block of Orange Street in which a woman awoke to find him standing over her bed. Martin fled when he saw the woman’s husband come down the hallway after the husband came home from work. Martin also admitted to and was charged with an unsolved burglary on March 17, 2013 where he entered an Ashland residence around midnight and assaulted two 13-year-old girls who were having a sleepover. He attempted to drag one of the girls out of the home but fled after being caught in the act. The aggravated drug possession charge was for an incident involving Percocet. Tunnell told reporters Monday that Martin was not familiar with any of his victims. “It appears all the incidents were completely random,” he said. Martin originally pleaded innocent by reason of insanity to all counts in the indictment. However, Judge Ron Forsthoefel determined he was competent to stand trial after reviewing a competency evaluation report by the District V Forensic Diagnostic Center. During Monday’s hearing, Martin quietly answered “Yes, your honor,” as Forsthoefel asked him if he understood the charges, that he was waiving his right to a trial and most of his appeal rights and was agreeing to a sentence of life in prison without parole and to pay $3,000 in restitution for out-of-pocket victim medical expenses. The judge indicated he was ready to sentence Martin on Monday but delayed action until Dec. 19 at 9:20 a.m. after defense attorney Rolf Whitney asked for a pre-sentencing investigation into Martin’s background. Forsthoefel warned Martin that the state was not obligated to withdraw any of the charges if he changed his mind about his guilty pleas before sentencing. “You understand that if the court orders a pre-sentence investigation report it’s going to give me some information on your background, educational background, treatment and general and criminal history but it’s not going to change the impact of the written plea agreement and the likely sentence you are facing if we proceed with sentencing?” the judge asked. Martin replied that he did. One of the victim’s family members muttered that Martin was “one sick (expletive)” as she left the courtroom. Several other family members were heard to say after they met privately with Tunnell, that they were satisfied with the plea. Tunnell said the five charges that were dropped involved additional conduct that occurred in each circumstance. He also emphasized that each situation was accounted for with Martin’s guilty pleas. Tunnell did not anticipate that the pre-sentence investigation report would change any terms sentence in the plea agreement. .

55-pound teen critical after 2 years 'isolated' in Shelby County basement WVTM 13 / November 15, 2016 A 14-year-old boy weighing only 55 pounds is fighting for his life after spending much of two years locked in the basement of his Helena home with little food, water or medical care. Authorities in Shelby County announced charges against the boy's adoptive parents, and say it's one of the most horrific cases they've investigated. "It's the worst case of neglect that I have ever seen," said Helena police Chief Pete Folmar. The 14-year-old boy, whose name is not being released, is in critical condition. Authorities said he weighs less than half of what a boy his age should weigh. “Doctors noted the child was severely, chronically malnourished, dehydrated, suffering from acute respiratory distress, shock, hypothermia, hypothyroid and that he was close to death. The child remains gravely ill at this time and faces a long and difficult recovery and an uncertain prognosis," Helena police Chief Pete Folmar said. Richard and Cynthia Kelly late Monday afternoon were charged with aggravated child abuse, a Class B felony. They were moved from the Helena City Jail to the Shelby County Jail, where they were undergoing the booking process. Their bonds are set at $1 million bond each. The investigation began Sunday when Helena police were notified by hospital staff through DHR of the boy's arrival at the hospital. Authorities say his parents took him there when his condition worsened. Richard and Cynthia Kelly are accused of denying food, nourishment and medical care to the boy, who was "subjected to forced isolation for extended periods of time." Authorities say that "isolation" was disciplinary in nature. The boy was was not enrolled in Shelby County Schools, and authorities were told he was homeschooled. Neighbors said they had seen the boy mowing the lawn weekly through the summer while his dad stood on the porch and watched him. They told WVTM 13 they believed he was 8 or 9 years old because he was so small. . .

5 Utah students stabbed in boy's locker room; teen detained Associated Press / November 15, 2016 As a group of boys at a Utah high school changed Tuesday morning into gym clothes for physical education class, a straight-A student pulled out a knife in the locker room and stabbed five of his classmates, sending the injured running for their lives and covered in blood. The 16-year-old suspect with no record of disciplinary trouble also stabbed himself in the neck and was cornered by school workers until a police officer assigned to Mountain View High School got to the locker room and subdued him with a Taser shot. The five victims are all expected to survive. The two most seriously injured were in critical but stable condition. The suspect was treated and released following the attack. Police say none of the victims had done anything to hurt the suspect, and the stabbings were not racially or ethnically motivated. School district spokeswoman Kimberly Bird said the suspect was a new sophomore student who was previously homeschooled. There were no indications he was having problems or being bullied.

Trump remains direct election advocate, dislikes Electoral College Associated Press / November 15, 2016 President-elect Donald Trump once tweeted that the Electoral College is “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” But now that it has helped him to win the election, does he still believe that? “I’m not going to change my mind just because I won,” Trump said in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday. “But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win.” Trump beat Clinton in last week’s election by amassing more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win. He won 290 to Clinton’s 228, with Michigan and New Hampshire still too close to call. But Clinton currently leads Trump in the popular vote by more than 700,000 votes (61.3 million to 60.6 million) with several million left to be counted. If her lead holds, Clinton would be the first presidential candidate since 2000 to win the popular vote while losing the White House. (In that year, Al Gore lost the Electoral College to George W. Bush.) Hillary Clinton, who was then first lady, called at the time for the college to be disbanded so that no one would ever have to doubt again whether his or her vote counted. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lesley Stahl: Now, for months, you were running around saying that the system is rigged, the whole thing was rigged. You tweeted once that the Electoral College is a disaster for democracy. Donald Trump: I do. Lesley Stahl: So do you still think it’s rigged? Donald Trump: Well, I think the electoral ca-- look, I won with the Electoral College. Lesley Stahl: Exactly.But do you think-- Donald Trump: You know, it’s-- Lesley Stahl: --it’s rigged? Donald Trump: Yeah, some of the election locations are. Some of the system is. I hated-- Lesley Stahl: Even though you won you’re saying that-- Donald Trump: I hated-- well, you know, I’m not going to change my mind just because I won. But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win. There’s a reason for doing this because it brings all the states into play. Electoral College and there’s something very good about that. But this is a different system. But I respect it. I do respect the system.

Why the West's right wing admires Vladimir Putin France 24 / November 15, 2016 Russian President Vladimir Putin is widely admired by right-wing leaders in Western democracies – including Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen – a stark reversal from when conservatives were the staunchest of Cold Warriors. Autocratic Russian President Vladimir Putin has garnered much admiration in recent years from a bevy of right-wing politicians who have praised everything from his single-minded pursuit of Russian national interests to his rejection of “elitist” liberal values. Republican US President-elect Donald Trump, UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage and French National Front leader Marine Le Pen have all expressed varying degrees of appreciation for the Russian leader’s approach to international affairs. This would seem to mark something of a reversal from previous decades, when Western conservatives took a more adversarial approach to Russia and its interests, shoring up international support for the alliances and agreements that isolated and contained Moscow. And while many on the right have traditionally favored robust interventionist foreign policies, the “new right” appears to be veering toward isolationism and a rejection of internationalism, preferring go-it-alone strategies of national self-interest that undermine support for both the EU and NATO, much to the Kremlin’s delight. At the same time, identity politics have come to the fore in the form of a preoccupation with questions of national identity and the challenges posed by multiculturalism, the pursuit of liberal secularism and a sharp rise in immigration. Nationalist, Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, National Front leader Marine Le Pen was unequivocal in rejecting the global status quo, telling BBC presenter Andrew Marr that it is the EU and not Vladimir Putin that poses the real threat to Europe. Le Pen characterised the EU as an "oppressive model" of “unfettered globalisation that has been imposed upon us”, expressing the hope that one day it would be replaced by a "Europe of free nations". In a further rejection of internationalism, she said NATO had lost its raison d’être. “NATO continues to exist even though the danger for which it was created no longer exists,” said Le Pen, laughing off the suggestion that Moscow poses a threat to Europe. “What is NATO protecting us against, exactly? Against a military attack from Russia? … In fact, NATO today has become a tool to ensure that its member countries comply with the will of the United States.” This is “unbearable” for someone who values independence and sovereignty, she said. Le Pen hailed Putin’s approach to global affairs as an example of "reasoned protectionism", saying he is understandably “looking after the interests of his own country and defending its identity”. Asked about her views on immigration, Le Pen said France was simply not capable of handling any more arrivals. “We cannot take care of hundreds of thousands of people arriving here, because our first obligation is to protect the French people,” she said. The National Front leader, who is a candidate for the French presidency next year, said the UK’s vote for Brexit in June and the recent election of Donald Trump in the US had been part of a "global revolution". Le Pen expressed the hope that France would join this revolt by rejecting elitism when it votes for a new president in April. She said the election would offer a choice between a "multicultural society, on which fundamentalist Islam is encroaching" and an "independent nation where people are able to control their own destiny". ‘We want our country back’ For UKIP leader Nigel Farage, sovereignty is also at the heart of his political philosophy. He told Fox News in the days following the June 23 Brexit vote that the decision to leave the EU was not based on economic concerns, as many had surmised. "It was decided by a basic argument of sovereignty," he said. "Should we make our own laws in our own country, and crucially, should we control our own borders?" In the following days, Farage hailed the Brexit result in an address before the European Parliamant in which he warned that Britain might not be the last to leave the union. He called the vote “a seismic result, not just for British politics [and] for European politics but perhaps even for global politics”, saying that “ordinary people” had sent a clear message: “We want our country back. We want our fishing waters back. We want our borders back. And we want to be an independent, self-governing, normal nation…” This renewed focus on sovereignty while questioning current international norms echoes some of the views expressed by the Russian president. Farage shocked many when he was asked by GQ magazine in a 2014 interview which world leader he admired most. "As an operator, but not as a human being, I would say Putin," he replied. After coming under fire, he later defended his statement in London at a Chatham House event. "I said I don't like him, I wouldn't trust him and I wouldn't want to live in his country, but compared with the kids who run foreign policy in this country, I've more respect for him than our lot.” Farage, has expressed strong disdain for the European Union, once telling RT that EU leaders "are not undemocratic. They are anti-democratic. These are very bad and dangerous people. They are the worst people we have seen in Europe since 1945." 'At least he's a leader' US President-elect Donald Trump has also been criticized for praising Putin and remains under scrutiny over allegations that either he or his advisers had inappropriate contact with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential campaign. On a US morning talk show on December 18 last year, Trump defended Putin over allegations that he has had numerous political opponents and journalists murdered. "He's running his country, and at least he's a leader. Unlike what we have in this country," Trump said, in a reference to US President Barack Obama. America is at a great disadvantage. Putin is ex-KGB, Obama is a community organizer. Unfair. — Donald J. Trump / April 17, 2014 At an NBC News forum on national security in September, Trump doubled down on these sentiments, saying that Putin "has been a leader far more than our president has been". "I’ve already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, ‘Oh, isn’t that a terrible thing – the man has very strong control over a country.’ Now, it’s a very different system, and I don’t happen to like the system. But certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader." NBC moderator Matt Lauer reminded Trump that Putin had annexed Crimea, invaded eastern Ukraine, supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and is suspected of being behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails. "Well, nobody knows that for a fact," Trump interrupted. Rejecting 'cosmopolitan' values Many on the political right view Putin as an ally in defending Western civilization against an excess of multiculturalism and the “cosmopolitan” beliefs that they feel threaten more traditional values. Moreover, his pragmatic view of world affairs suits those who prefer a realpolitik approach over grandiose visions of spreading democratic values, with often questionable results. “Putin supports conservative values and puts his country's interests above international concerns or political correctness, without being apologetic for doing so,” says Liliya Karimova, a Russia and Eurasia expert at the Kennan Institute/Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. A South Caucasus expert at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme who declined to be named pointed out that the Western right wing and Putin also “agree on a number of common enemies”, including “Islamic extremism, the liberal left [and] ‘cosmopolitan’ values”. He said the global interests of the right wing and Russia are also beginning to merge. There is now a strong affinity between their worldviews that includes “rejecting universalist values and insisting on national specificity/isolationism”. “Right-wingers in the West don't see the point of getting involved in conflicts in faraway countries where US or European interests are not clear, or of wasting resources investing in grand projects to democratize other parts of the world,” the analyst said. “This [jibes] with Putin's basic concept of spheres of influence – Putin appears as a partner in ‘taking care’ of parts of the world in which right-wingers see no vital interest.” Russia is no longer the “ideological rival” that the Soviet Union once was, he noted. “[And] without ideological issues at stake, Putin appears to be a transactional politician – a ‘dealmaker’ that we can do business with. This suits the kind of post-truth politics that Western right-wingers are currently embracing, and fits with the idea that Putin can be trusted and relied upon in a world where the US no longer wants to be a global policeman.” “He is your ideal realpolitik* partner.” * A system of politics or principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations. Karimova said Trump “was able to capitalize on the idea of strong – if not authoritarian – leadership in the likes of Putin”, a position that marked “a departure from a stance that Republicans in the US have traditionally taken toward authoritarian leaders”.

Trump tapped the misery of factory workers, but can he bring back their jobs? Natalie Kitroeff, Los Angeles Times / November 15, 2016 Michael Smith is not used to stretching a paycheck. As recently as March 2015, the 42-year-old was earning nearly $100,000 a year as a district manager on oil fields for company based in Union City, Pa. Then oil prices dropped, and his company laid him off. Smith, a father of four boys, now makes $12 an hour as an apprentice electrician. He is not a die-hard disciple, but voted for Donald Trump because he’s desperate for something new. “Do I think Donald Trump is what this country needs and do I think he will make it great again? No,” Smith said. “Do I think he is a step in the right direction? Absolutely.” It was not poor Americans who made the difference in this election; it was people like Smith. Trump soared among white voters who earn decent wages, but have seen their pay decline and jobs in their industries disappear over the past 15 years. Some of those workers say they were responding in part to Trump’s repeated bashing of trade, and at the same time perceived Hillary Clinton as a poster child for the free-trade deals that her husband signed and President Obama tried to push through Congress. “A lot of our members equated NAFTA to Hillary and Bill Clinton,” said Donnie Blatt, a coordinator with the United Steelworkers union in Ohio. “A lot of our members felt like they hated Hillary Clinton, they believed she caused the loss of all their jobs.” But it will be almost impossible for Trump to fulfill his promise to bring back most of the assembly line gigs lost to globalization, economists say. The U.S. has moved toward advanced manufacturing, which employs highly educated people, and plants that once required manual labor are now manned by robots that work faster than people and cost less. U.S. factories are producing more than ever, with far fewer employees. “The Democrats have no credibility with these people, and the trade issue brings it out more than anything,” said Dean Baker, the co-director of the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Trump is making these promises, but they aren’t realistic. It isn’t like he has a plan to bring the jobs back, but he was out there saying it.” It’s not surprising that trade issues resonated with some voters in vast swaths of the Midwest and Southeast. Since 2000, American manufacturers wiped 5 million people off their payrolls, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Millions of those jobs went to China or Mexico, research suggests. For context, it took more than three decades for 560,000 mining jobs to disappear, after reaching a peak of 1.2 million the early 1980s. The shock of losing so many middle-class jobs so quickly hit hardest in the Rust Belt states, which were crucial to Trump’s victory. Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania had among the steepest cuts in assembly line jobs across the country since 2000. California cut the most manufacturing jobs of any state from 2000 to 2015, partly because its workforce is so huge. More than 576,000 Californians lost their jobs in factories over that period. But the biggest losers after California were Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, which hemorrhaged a combined 1.2 million manufacturing jobs. That means that about a quarter of the total manufacturing job loss in the country since 2000 occurred in those four swing states. Ohio and Pennsylvania voted for a Republican for the first time since at least 2004. Michigan hasn’t been called for Trump, but he is leading there. The counties in those states where Clinton lost the largest number of voters compared with Obama in 2012 were also the counties that lost particularly large numbers of manufacturing jobs over the last 15 years, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. How much of the shift took place because of trade is hard to tell: The job losses mostly took place during the first decade of this century, but the states did not flip to vote for a Republican until this year. And many other issues were in play, including tensions over immigration, race and the presence of a woman on the Democratic ticket. Still, trade and its impact on manufacturing jobs almost certainly played a role in boosting Trump’s prospects in the nation’s industrial belt. “The real ones who are hurt [by trade] are centered, not coincidentally, in the swing states in this election,” said Peter Navarro, an economist from UC Irvine who has been a powerful voice on Trump’s economic advisory board. “You go around the rim of the Midwest…those are the key states that have been ground zero of this problem,” Navarro said. These workers were not necessarily scraping by — the average American with a factory gig made around $64,000 in 2015, BLS data show. But in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, pay for manufacturing employees has declined or remained relatively flat since 2000, after adjusting for inflation, even as it inched up in the country overall. Ryan Germonto said that when he hears politicians talk dreamily about the economy today, he feels betrayed. “Even if the progressives want to say we are progressing, we aren’t really progressing,” Germonto said. The 32-year-old father of two used to make $55,000 inspecting gear boxes used in wind turbines for Eickhoff Wind Energy, in Pittsburgh. But the company stopped making the gear boxes in the U.S., and Germonto was laid off in November 2015. Now he’s working at a job that barely pays his bills. He makes $40,000 per year as a site manager, overseeing the housekeeping staff at an upscale mall in Pittsburgh. He now has to pay $800 per month for healthcare coverage that cost him less than $250 at his old job. “I’m sick of outsourcing jobs. I’m sick of the government taking the easy way out,” Germonto said. He voted for Trump because he believes the real estate mogul is “more for the people” than Clinton. Economists say that people like Germonto were already in trouble. Automation has been steadily decimating assembly line jobs, and as new plants come back to the U.S. they are increasingly staffed by robots. But trade has also damaged American factories, something workers noticed long before academics measured it. “Until a few years ago most economists were convinced that international trade had only very minor implications for labor markets,” said David Dorn, an economist who specializes in U.S.-China trade. “Academics and policymakers underestimate the negative side effects of globalization by quite a bit,” he said. China alone could have knocked out up to 2.4 million jobs in the U.S. from 1999 to 2011, according to a recent study that Dorn co-wrote. That economic shock made people want change. Areas that were hammered by trade became more likely to vote out incumbents in favor of “politicians that were politically extreme” to Congress between 2002 and 2010, Dorn and three other economists found in a September study. White-dominated regions opted for unconventional conservatives in the tea party, while places with a majority of Blacks, Hispanics and Asians chose Democrats at the other extreme, Dorn’s study found. Germonto, the former gear box inspector, said he didn’t vote on race issues, but they were on his mind. “More people are hating on white Americans than any other race or any other walk of life,” he said. “I think white America is fed up with that.” In reality, there isn’t a politician in the country who could turn things around for manual laborers in this country, economists say. Manufacturing output in the U.S. — the amount that we produce — reached a record high this year, after tanking during the recession. But jobs have only trickled back, and the ones that are appearing aren’t going to women and men who work with their hands — they’re going to highly educated engineers, programmers and MBAs. “There is a reallocation away from traditional manufacturing, toward parts of manufacturing that are more intensive in tech and in human capital,” said Enrico Moretti, an economist at UC Berkeley. “Automation keeps reducing the need for blue-collar positions." Lindsay Patterson, 61, doesn’t buy Trump’s guarantee to resuscitate jobs like his. Patterson lost a $50,000 annual salary with benefits when the tubing plant he worked for in Philadelphia shut down in October 2015. “They lost market share because Chinese pipes were coming in and it was becoming really difficult for them to compete on the price they were charging,” said Patterson, who is now getting by on an unemployment check and his wife’s salary as a schoolteacher. Patterson voted for Clinton, because he says Trump can’t change what’s happened to industrial America. “He is going to start a fight with China and with all these companies to bring jobs back, but it isn’t that easy,” Patterson said. Still, many of Patterson’s former coworkers sided with Trump, because he said the right things, often and loudly. “They hear it, it sounds good, and if they don’t have anything to base it on, well, that was what they have been waiting to hear,” Patterson said.

Chevy forges off-road cred with Colorado ZR2 Automotive News / November 15, 2016 Chevrolet hopes to take advantage of surging demand for midsize pickups with an off-road, high-performance version of the Colorado. Chevy unveiled the Colorado ZR2, touted as having the most off-road technology of any vehicle in its segment, at a private event ahead of the Los Angeles auto show. The ZR2 has a 3.5-inch wider track than the standard Colorado and a lifted suspension. Modified bumpers give the truck better off-road clearance, while functional rockers improve handling over rocks and other obstacles. Chevy did not give details about market launch or pricing for the 2017 truck. “Our engineers have been incredibly successful developing Corvette and Camaro performance variants with broad performance envelopes,” Mark Reuss, GM’s product development chief, said in a statement. “The ZR2 applies that same philosophy to off-road performance. You can go rock crawling on Saturday, desert running on Sunday, and comfortably drive to work on Monday. This truck can do it all, and do it all well.” The ZR2, visually similar to a concept version shown here two years ago, builds on the Colorado’s momentum at a time when sales in the segment are up 25 percent this year. That compares with a gain of just 2.4 percent for full-size pickups this year through October. U.S. sales of the Colorado, up 29 percent, and its GMC sibling, the Canyon, up 21 percent, account for a large portion of the segment’s gain. Chevy says fewer than 8 percent of Colorado buyers previously had a full-size Silverado, suggesting that its sales have been overwhelmingly incremental to the brand rather than cannibalizing a more expensive and undoubtedly more profitable product. More than 50 percent of buyers are new to Chevrolet, said Alan Batey, General Motors’ president of North America. Batey said the vehicles most commonly traded in for a Colorado are the Ford F-150 and Toyota Tacoma, but that many buyers previously drove cars and never owned a pickup before. “They come from everywhere,” Batey said in an interview. “They don’t need a truck. They want a truck.” Chevy partnered with Multimatic Inc., the Ontario motorsports company that’s building the GT supercar for Ford Motor Co., to create the ZR2’s dampers. The ZR2 will be the first use of Multimatic dynamic suspensions spool valve dampers in an off-road vehicle. The technology, previously used on the 2014 Camaro Z/28, enhances ride and handling performance both off road and on, while offering increased precision and manufacturing repeatability, Chevy said. “From our experience on Z/28, we knew the performance advantages offered by DSSV dampers,” said Mark Dickens, Chevrolet’s executive director of performance variants, performance parts and motorsports engineering. “For the driver, this translates to greater confidence and control in a wider range of driving experiences.” Chevy said the ZR2 shares powertrains with the standard Colorado and will be available in nine drive configurations. It can tow 5,000 pounds and has a 1,100-pound payload capacity. To develop the ZR2, Chevy said it created new off-road test areas at GM’s proving ground in Yuma, Ariz., including high-speed desert sand trails, low-speed loose river-rock crossings and steep hills. The truck’s components also were tested in Moab, Utah, and the Rubicon Trail. .

Automotive News / November 15, 2016 The next generation of Ford’s Expedition SUV is expected to be offered in two wheelbases, based on new spy photographs of the vehicle undergoing testing on public roads around Ford Motor Co.’s product development campus in Dearborn, Michigan. The next Expedition is scheduled to debut in 2017, possibly as a 2018 model. And two different sized grilles indicate a variety of engines will be offered. The engine lineup for the Expedition will likely mimic the F-150 pickup: a base 3.5-liter, 2.7-liter twin turbo V-6 and a high output twin turbo 3.5-liter V-6. A 5.0-liter V-8 or a 3.0-liter V-6 diesel, the same motor used in Land Rover SUVs, is also expected to be available. Transmission choices are likely to be six-speed automatic standard with 10-speed automatic optional. Styling of the vehicles in the photos shows shorter rear doors cut directly into the rear wheel wells, a more rounded roof and a smaller rear window. The side mirrors also appear new. One of the engineering vehicles also has a rear muffler with twin exhausts, a first for Expedition. .

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Rand Paul: I oppose both Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton for secretary of state The Guardian / November 15, 2016 Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul reiterated his opposition to both former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former UN ambassador John Bolton as secretary of state in an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday. Paul condemns Bolton as “out of touch”. He said Trump should “pick people who agree with his foreign policy”. Trump repeatedly argued on the campaign trail that the Iraq war was a mistake and condemned what he saw as an overly interventionist foreign policy from Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. As Paul phrased it, Trump was “standing up not just to Woodrow Wilson” but also “a whole line of neocons in both parties”, and the senator believed such policies were “a big part” of Trump’s campaign. Paul, who serves on the Senate foreign relations committee, insisted “there is no way I could vote for someone who is an unrepentant supporter of the Iraq war and regime change. I think that is a disaster for the country. It has made us less safe and so categorically I can’t support anybody that supports regime change.” He noted in particular that Bolton, who wrote an op-ed in support of bombing Iran in 2015, was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the Iraq war and pointed out that Giuliani agreed with the former UN ambassador on Iran. Instead, Paul suggested Senate foreign relations committee chair Bob Corker as an alternative. He’s “much more of a realist, not likely to be loading the bombs to go to Iran tomorrow”. In contrast, he suggested that Bolton’s hawkish stance was perhaps because he was trying to “assuage guilt” over “not serving in combat”. Paul, who has been one of the leading advocates for privacy issues in the Senate, also expressed concern about Giuliani as a potential attorney general, pointing out the former New York mayor had far fewer disagreements with the president-elect on the subject than he did. Paul noted that while “Trump wasn’t as concerned about privacy as I am, he still very consistently said regime change was a mistake”. The result was that Paul found Giuliani as attorney general to be “less objectionable but still a concern for civil liberties”. When asked if private companies should purge user data in advance of a Trump administration, Paul said: “I just don’t know yet, but having Giuliani or Chris Christie in charge of information would be very worrisome.” Paul also made clear he would continue to work across the aisle with Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, as bipartisan privacy watchdogs. One privacy battle taking shape early in the next administration concerns the reauthorization of a critical surveillance provision, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that permits the widespread collection of Americans’ international communications. Paul said he was preparing to contest the reauthorization of 702, the legal wellspring of the NSA’s controversial Prism program. The Kentucky senator’s criticisms of Giuliani come nearly a decade after the former New York mayor attacked Rand Paul’s father, Ron, when they both ran for president in 2007. During a presidential debate, Giuliani interrupted Ron Paul and attacked him after Ron Paul suggested that the United States’ interventionist foreign policy was a contributing factor to the terrorist attacks of September 11. .

Ford going ahead with moving small car production to Mexico: CEO Reuters / November 15, 2016 Ford is moving ahead with plans to shift production of small cars to Mexico from Michigan, while "two very important products" will be built in its U.S. factories, CEO Mark Fields told Reuters on Tuesday. President-elect Donald Trump has criticized Ford for the decision to shift production of Focus small cars to Mexico in 2018, and said he would consider levying tariffs on Mexican-made Fords. "We’re going forward with our plan to move production of the Ford Focus to Mexico, and importantly that’s to make room for two very important products (Ranger and Everest) we’ll be putting back into Michigan plants," said Fields. "There will be no job impact whatsoever with this move." Ford Chairman Bill Ford Jr. said last month he met with Trump. Ford has countered Trump's criticism, saying the company makes more cars and trucks in the United States than any other automaker. Fields said with U.S. gasoline prices so low, "it's very difficult for us to be able to make money on a vehicle produced in the U.S." in the small car segment. If Ford decided to build the Focus small car line in the United States, and had to raise the price, "we wouldn't sell the vehicle." Also at the Los Angeles Auto Show, Ford launched the U.S. market EcoSport, a small SUV that Ford will import from its plant in Chennai, India. (The EcoSport is also produced in Rayong, Thailand, Chongqing, China and Camcari, Brazil) "We already have the plants and investment in other parts of the world. It frees us up to make further investments in the U.S.," Fields said, pointing to the money invested to launch a new SuperDuty pickup at a plant in Kentucky. Related reading - http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/topic/45093-trump/?page=7

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My friend, look at this thread, which I started. Read my very first post. http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/topic/40814-people-should-and-do-trust-me-hillary-clinton/?page=1 Rather than have a big mess, a bunch of cluttered "noise", I thought to organize Clinton and Trump news on separate focused threads (David started the original "Trump" thread). When I post the news, I avoid the "opinions" of the news organizations, and the generally worthless hearsay, and post what was actually said, and try to support it with video. If you see the man/woman say it, that is factual. About the cheating, the masses will never be told what these two people have actually done in their lives. It's ensured that we can't connect the dots. And we aren't witnesses. We only know what we're told, and we're often told from a script that has ulterior motive when it comes to government. Their goal is to manipulate and control you. When you become upset over Hillary or what not, that indicates they have succeeded. Take a step back, a deep breath, and stay in control of your thoughts. Don't allow them to control it. Trump said that he was going to drain the swamp in Washington, because politicians couldn't make America great again. And yet, he ran as a republican, forming a bond with the political establishment rather than running as an independent, and 99 percent of his camp are career politicians.

Trump’s stance on immigration puts him closer to Obama The Financial Times / November 14, 2016 As Donald Trump reaffirms his goal of expelling at least 2 million unauthorized [illegal] immigrants with criminal records, Hispanic groups and other critics argue that his stance is closer to President Barack Obama’s than usually thought. Advocacy groups who criticize the president-elect’s plans as unjust and unworkable have also attacked Mr Obama as the “deporter-in-chief” for expelling more than 2.7 million unauthorized immigrants during his first seven years in office. The current president’s policy on deportations ran in parallel to his effort to give others the right to remain legally in the US. “Obama is the person who has deported more people than any president before him,” said Clarissa Martinez de Castro of the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group that dubbed the White House’s current occupant the deportation president in 2014. “If you listen to the debate it sounds like Obama has been at the border giving people green cards. It’s ludicrous, these alternative realities. The notion that Obama hasn’t been enforcing the law is an easy talking point to stir your base, unless you are suffering the consequences of his actions.” Mr Trump vowed on Sunday to deport 2-3 million people including “gang members [and] drug dealers” in the US illegally but appeared to step back from his campaign pledge to expel all of the US’s 11 million unauthorized immigrants. His promise to do in short order what took the Obama administration two terms has raised questions about the feasibility of his promises, given legal and practical impediments to throwing even hardened criminals out of the country quickly. Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute, a research group, said Mr Trump’s ability to fulfil his pledge would be hindered by the constitution’s requirement to give deportees legal due process and by the limitations of the US’s enforcement apparatus. “Our immigration court system is quite clogged. You would be adding another group to the clogged system,” he said, noting that there is already a backlog of 500,000 deportation cases. “It would require a huge expansion of law enforcement personnel. But even after that it would require a huge expansion in the number of immigration judges and prosecutors. Putting such a system in place quickly would be a tall order,” Mr Chishti said. In an interview with CBS on Sunday, Mr Trump — who campaigned on building a border wall and ordering mass deportations — identified immigration reform as one of his top three priorities alongside healthcare and changes to the tax system. “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate,” he said. Independent analysts were baffled by the numbers the president-elect gave. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that 820,000 of the US’s 11 million unauthorized immigrants have a criminal conviction and that 300,000 are for felonies, the most serious crimes. In 2012 the Department of Homeland Security estimated that there were 1.9 million “removable” non-Americans with criminal convictions, but more than half of them were legally present with green cards or other forms of visa. “The vast majority of the American public would agree that somebody who poses a national security threat or a threat to community wellbeing should not be released on to the street,” said Ms Martinez de Castro. But she said Mr Trump had failed to provide specifics about who he would categorize as a criminal. “I’m assuming he’s casting a very broad dragnet,” she said. To the dismay of immigrant advocates, a substantial number of the Obama administration’s deportations have involved people who committed minor infractions such as traffic violations or had no criminal record at all. The Obama administration stepped up deportations in part to show Republicans that the border was secure as it tried to persuade Congress to pass a comprehensive package of immigration reforms. But that legislative effort failed in 2013. A subsequent attempt to use Mr Obama’s executive powers to remove the deportation threat for some 4m unauthorized immigrants with no criminal records was stopped by the Supreme Court in June. Mr Trump appeared to soften his stance on mass deportation towards the end of his campaign and said on Sunday that many illegal immigrants were “terrific people”.

Reuters / November 14, 2016 Despite his opposition to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, President-elect Donald Trump is considering two advocates of that war for top national security posts in his administration. Former top State Department official John Bolton is under consideration as Trump's secretary of state. Ex-CIA Director James Woolsey is under consideration for U.S. director of national intelligence. Both men championed the Iraq invasion. Top Bolton aide Frederick Fleitz, who earlier worked at the CIA unit that validated much of the flawed intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, is involved in transition planning. A return to power for the three officials would represent a change of fortune for them and other "neoconservatives" who provided the intellectual backing for the invasion of Iraq. The group saw its clout wane in Bush's second term, as U.S. troops in Iraq found themselves mired in a sectarian civil war, and has watched from the sidelines during Democratic President Barack Obama's eight years in power. Trump has said he opposed the invasion of Iraq, in which more than 4,000 U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died, and which led to the creation of al Qaeda in Iraq, the forerunner to ISIS.

SEC Chairman White to Leave Agency, Opening Door to Conservative Shift The Wall Street Journal / November 14, 2016 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Mary Jo White (age 69 in December) plans to step down in January, opening the door to a new Republican-appointed leader who could move to loosen rules on Wall Street and curb the aggressive enforcement approach Ms. White prosecuted. The change in command portends a significant shift at the SEC, which has for six years focused on tightening rules required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, a regulatory overhaul championed by Democrats. A Republican SEC chairman, appointed by President-elect Donald Trump, also could pull back on a host of rules that Ms. White conceived, including curbs on mutual funds’ use of derivatives, and stricter controls on algorithmic traders and off-exchange venues known as dark pools. Ms. White’s departure also creates uncertainty in the short run because the SEC would have to operate with just two of the five commissioner seats filled after she leaves. Gridlock could ensue because one commissioner would have an effective veto on any regulatory decision or enforcement action. During Ms. White’s tenure, which began in April 2013, the SEC overhauled the regulation of money-market mutual funds, credit-rating firms, stock exchanges, and electronic trading venues. She frequently navigated political infighting at the SEC to complete Dodd-Frank requirements, and such friction could continue under a Republican chairman. The SEC is normally governed by five commissioners, including three from the president’s party and two from the other. President Barack Obama nominated two candidates to fill the existing vacancies more than a year ago, but the gridlocked Senate hasn’t confirmed them. Republican Commissioner Michael Piwowar is likely to lead the agency as acting chairman after Ms. White exits, although Mr. Trump could nominate someone else as Ms. White’s permanent successor. The SEC also pursued record numbers of enforcement cases during Ms. White’s term, including claims against private-equity firms such as Blackstone Group LP and Apollo Global Management. Her handpicked priorities included the policing of financial-reporting fraud and punishing even the smallest violations on the theory that it would deter a culture of misconduct. Mr. Trump hasn’t yet signaled his choices to fill SEC vacancies. But his aides have tapped Paul Atkins, a conservative former SEC commissioner, to handle issues related to the transition for the SEC and other financial regulatory agencies. The change in leadership at the SEC is just one of many ways financial regulation is expected to change course sharply—through personnel and policy—during Mr. Trump’s presidency. His transition team on Nov. 10 issued a statement saying it was crafting a plan to “dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act.”