Seagull:

Truly embarrassing.. This is one of those times I don't try to take up for Trump. He does himself no favors with tweets like that. Everyone tells him so but he doesn't listen. Just keeps firing away..

I still prefer he and his crew running our foreign policy now than the community organizer and fine arts degree guy that preceded them.

The man is mentality unstable.

Say what you will about our past Presidents, they didn't threaten to start a nuclear holocaust.

He needs to be removed from office....quickly!!!

North Korea has opened up communications with the south this evening. Last time that happened a few years ago nothing came of it. But perhaps Li’l Kim is so threatened by the size of Trump’s button that this time they will have serious talks.

And this is why I still support Trump even though he says and tweets dumb things from time to time. I believe his policies are good for America, and we need that right now.

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Manufacturing in the U.S. Just Accelerated to Its Best Year Since 2004

By Katia Dmitrieva Bloomberg

January 3, 2018, 8:00 AM MST Updated on January 3, 2018, 8:12 AM MST

U.S. manufacturing expanded in December at the fastest pace in three months, as gains in orders and production capped the strongest year for factories since 2004, the Institute for Supply Management said Wednesday. ...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... since-2004

Study: Young male migrants fuel rise in violence in Germany
[Associated Press]

FRANK JORDANS Associated Press January 3, 2018

BERLIN (AP) — The recent influx of mostly young, male migrants into Germany has led to an increase in violent crime in the country, according to a government-funded study published Wednesday.

The study used figures from the northern state of Lower Saxony to examine the impact of refugee arrivals on crime in 2015 and 2016, a period when the number of violent crimes reported increased by 10.4 percent.

The authors concluded that 92 percent of the additional crimes recorded could be attributed to the increase in refugee numbers.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/study-influx ... 55219.html

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It's really a shame what is happening in Europe. The influx of Muslim immigrants and refugees are causing a ton of problems. Hell, Sweden had to incorporate a fenced off heavily guarded "safe zone" for women at their big New Years Eve celebration the other night, because there are so many sexual assaults of women by Muslim men at big public gatherings now. It's getting insane. Of course when Trump tries to talk about this he is just a racist Islamophobe. But it is a genuine concern, even if the main stream media do ignore all the nightmare stories coming out of Europe.

If you like Trump's policies so much, could President Pence carryout those policies?

Get the madman out of the WH.

Trump signs order disbanding voter fraud commission

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday disbanding his controversial voter fraud commission amid infighting, lawsuits and state officials’ refusal to cooperate..............Trump convened the commission to investigate the 2016 presidential election, after alleging repeatedly and without evidence that voting fraud cost him the popular vote. Trump won the electoral college................The White House blamed the decision to end the panel on more than a dozen states that have refused to comply with the commission’s demand for reams of personal voter data, including names, partial Social Security numbers, voting histories and party affiliations................Critics saw the commission as part of a conservative campaign to make it harder for poor people and minority voters to access the ballot box, and to justify Trump’s claims of voter fraud.
https://www.apnews.com/b3d4e5974aba421b ... commission
Sessions appoints US attorneys to replace some forced out

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday named 17 interim U.S. attorneys to temporarily take the place of some of the dozens of Obama administration holdovers he ordered to resign last year

Sessions was facing a deadline. The vacancies had been temporarily filled by prosecutors who are permitted to serve in that position for just 300 days.

The White House still hasn't nominated anyone to serve permanently as top prosecutor in each of the 17 districts, including the high-profile Southern District of New York, which encompasses Manhattan, where Trump Tower and other family-owned properties are located.

Geoffrey S. Berman, who emerged early on as the Trump administration's candidate. He worked as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District in the 1990s and is now a law partner of former New York Mayor and Trump ally Rudy Giuliani

The Attorney General has appointed the following individuals to serve as Interim United States Attorneys: Geoffrey Berman – Southern District of New York

Rudy Giuliani is an admirer of Trump and has been friends for decades and speaks with Trump regularly.

Shawn Anderson – Districts of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands
Geoffrey Berman – Southern District of New York
Gregory Brooker – District of Minnesota
Craig Carpenito – District of New Jersey
Stephen Dambruch – District of Rhode Island
Richard Donoghue – Eastern District of New York
Dayle Elieson – District of Nevada
Duane Evans – Eastern District of Louisiana
Timothy Garrison – Western District of Missouri
Nick Hanna – Central District of California
Joseph Harrington – Eastern District of Washington
Grant Jaquith – Northern District of New York
Maria Chapa Lopez – Middle District of Florida
Kenji Price – District of Hawaii
Matthew Schneider – Eastern District of Michigan
Gretchen Shappert – District of the Virgin Islands
Alexander Van Hook – Western District of Louisiana

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/nyre ... attan.html

https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first- ... dorse-yet/

http://www.wcjb.com/content/news/Sessio ... 21013.html

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

[ So! If trump is found guilty of money laundering by Mueller, how will this effect the court proceedings? Deutsche Bank NY ? trump financials and tax returns ? trump holdings ? All in New York.....All in this particular district ! Interesting ! ]
Trump blasts Bannon over book, says ex-aide 'lost his mind'

President Donald Trump launched a scathing attack on former top adviser Steve Bannon on Wednesday, responding to a new book (" FIRE AND FURY ) that portrays Trump as an undisciplined man-child who didn't actually want to win the White House and quotes Bannon as calling his son's contact with a Russian lawyer "treasonous."
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wir ... k-52119086

DONALD ! PAYBACK IS A BITCH
Trump attorney sends Bannon cease and desist letter over 'disparaging' comments

Lawyers on behalf of President Donald Trump sent a letter Wednesday night to former White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon demanding he refrain from making disparaging comments against the president and his family. The letter, comes after excerpts from a forthcoming book by journalist Michael Wolff were made public Wednesday, causing a stir. ( "FIRE AND FURY" )

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-at ... d=52128555

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT ONE DONALD
TOP 20 REVELATIONS FROM TRUMP ‘FIRE AND FURY’ BOOK ABOUT GOLDEN SHOWERS, IVANKA, BANNON AND MORE

1. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, described a meeting set up by Donald Trump Jr. with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” Bannon is quoted as saying.

2. Bannon reportedly said the president likely met with the meeting’s participants afterward, speculating that Trump’s son brought them up to his father’s office. “The chance that Don Jr. did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero,” Bannon said.

3. Trump didn’t want to win, and no one in his campaign thought he would win. “Well, it would only be a problem if we won,” ­former national security adviser Michael Flynn assured his friends about his decision to accept $45,000 for a speech in Russia.

4. Trump’s daughter Ivanka described Trump’s hair as a perfectly engineered hairdo that takes many steps to complete. “She often described the mechanics behind it to friends: an absolutely clean pate—a contained island after scalp-reduction surgery—surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the center and then swept back and secured by a stiffening spray,” the book says.

5. Trump wondered what a golden shower was after hearing reports of the intelligence dossier that alleges that Russian security forces have compromising details about the president. “Having dispensed with [CNN chief Jeff] Zucker, the president of the United States went on to speculate on what was involved with a golden shower,” Wolff writes.

6. Trump would speculate on the flaws of his staff after hanging up the phone with them. "Bannon was disloyal (not to mention he always looks like shit). [Reince] Priebus was weak (not to mention he was short—a midget)," Wolff recalls about Trump's reflections. "[Jared] Kushner was a suck-up. Sean Spicer was stupid (and looks terrible too). Conway was a crybaby. Jared and Ivanka should never have come to Washington."

7. Ivanka and husband Jared Kushner agreed that if one of them were to run for president in the future, it would be her. “They didn’t say that?” said Bannon upon learning about the deal. “Stop. Oh, come on. They didn’t actually say that? Please don’t tell me that. Oh my God.”

8. Trump eats at McDonald’s so often out of paranoia and because he is a germaphobe. "Long afraid of being poisoned, he would say that one reason why he liked to eat at McDonald's was because nobody knew he was coming and the food was safely prepared," the book says.

9. Trump asked Hope Hicks, the White House communications director who had dated former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, why she was worried about Lewandowski's bad press after he got fired. "You've already done enough for him,” Trump apparently said. “You're the best piece of tail he'll ever have."

10. Hicks and Trump had a very close relationship, and Trump's inner circle saw her as something of a daughter to the president. "[Hope] Hicks was in fact thought of as Trump’s real daughter, while Ivanka was thought of as his real wife,” the book states.

11. As a candidate, Trump had no interest in learning about the Constitution, which he knew very little about. “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment, before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head,” said Sam Nunberg, a former adviser to the Trump campaign.

12. Trump used derogatory language to express his anger toward Sally Yates. “Trump conceived an early, obsessive antipathy for Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates,” the book reads. “She was, he steamed, ‘such a c---.’”

13. Trump didn't enjoy his own inauguration. "He was angry that A-level stars had snubbed the event, disgruntled with the accommodations at Blair House, and visibly fighting with his wife, who seemed on the verge of tears," the book claims.

14. Trump reassured Melania that he would not win the election. On election night, when it became clear that he would win, "Melania was in tears—and not of joy."

15. The travel ban was passed on a Friday so that people would protest at airports. Asked why the timing was on a weekend, Bannon said, “So the snowflakes would show up at the airports and riot.”

16. Trump never reads. “He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semiliterate,” the book says.

17. Trump would mention getting in bed with other women. “Trump liked to say that one of the things that made life worth living was getting your friends’ wives into bed,” the book claims.

18. Trump offered to marry TV hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. “You guys should just get married,” Trump told them. “I can marry you! I’m an internet Unitarian minister,” Kushner said. “What?” said the president. “What are you talking about? Why would they want you to marry them when I could marry them? When they could be married by the president! At Mar-a-Lago!”

19. The president's lifestyle followed many unusual routines. "If he was not having his 6:30 dinner with Steve Bannon, then, more to his liking, he was in bed by that time with a cheeseburger, watching his three screens and making phone calls," the book says.

20. Trump would share private details about himself, then get upset when information was leaked. "As details of Trump’s personal life leaked out, he became obsessed with identifying the leaker. The source of all the gossip, however, may well have been Trump himself," Wolff writes. "In his calls throughout the day and at night from his bed, he often spoke to people who had no reason to keep his confidences."

http://www.newsweek.com/top-20-revelati ... non-769899
<

Seagull:

I'm not so sure you would like that. Pence is more conservative on social issues. Gay rights, abortion, etc..

Here is some more good news. Hopefully this will help small businesses arrange affordable health care for their employees. My wife pays a fortune for her staff.

.

U.S. Department of Labor Announces Proposal to Expand Access to Healthcare Through Small Business Health Plans

WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Labor today announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to expand the opportunity to offer employment-based health insurance to small businesses through Small Business Health Plans, also known as Association Health Plans.

Up to 11 million Americans working for small businesses/sole proprietors and their families lack employer-sponsored insurance. These 11 million Americans could find coverage under this proposal. Many small employers struggle to offer insurance because it is currently too expensive and cumbersome. These employees – and their families – would have an additional alternative through Small Business Health Plans (Association Health Plans). These plans would close the gap of uninsured without eliminating options available in the healthcare marketplace.

Under the proposal, small businesses and sole proprietors would have more freedom to band together to provide affordable, quality health insurance for employees.

The proposed rule, which applies only to employer-sponsored health insurance, would allow employers to join together as a single group to purchase insurance in the large group market. These improvements stand to open health insurance coverage for millions of Americans and their families by making it more affordable for thousands of small businesses and sole proprietors. By joining together, employers may reduce administrative costs through economies of scale, strengthen their bargaining position to obtain more favorable deals, enhance their ability to self-insure, and offer a wider array of insurance options.

As proposed, the rule would:

Allow employers to form a Small Business Health Plan on the basis of geography or industry. A plan could serve employers in a state, city, county, or a multi-state metro area, or it could serve all the businesses in a particular industry nationwide;
Allow sole proprietors to join Small Business Health Plans, clearing a path to access health insurance for the millions of uninsured Americans who are sole proprietors or the family of sole proprietors.

The proposed rule includes important protections for Americans. Small Business Health Plans (Association Health Plans) cannot charge individuals higher premiums based on health factors or refuse to admit employees to a plan because of health factors. The Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration will closely monitor these plans to protect consumers.

The NPRM will be published in the Federal Register on Jan. 5, 2018, and be available for public comment for 60 days. The Department encourages interested parties to submit comments on the proposed rule. The NPRM, along with the procedures for submitting comments, can be found at the Federal Register website.

EBSA News Release:

01/04/2018

Contact Name:
Eric Holland

Email:
holland.eric.w@dol.gov

Phone Number:
(202) 693-4676

Release Number:
18-0002-NAT

https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ebsa/ebsa20180104

More good news ...

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Dow Industrials Cross 25000 for First Time

Should it close above that mark, milestone would represent the fastest 1,000-point gain in the blue-chip index’s history


By Corrie Driebusch,
Georgi Kantchev and
Michael Wursthorn

Updated Jan. 4, 2018 11:02 a.m. ET
152 COMMENTS

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped past 25000 for the first time Thursday, on pace to notch the fastest run to a fresh 1000-point milestone in history.

The blue-chip index, which heavily weights industrial giants such as Boeing Co. and Caterpillar Inc., was recently up 171 points, or 0.7%, at 25094. If the Dow industrials close above 25000, the jump from 24000 would have taken 23 trading days, ahead of the 24-day spans that took the index to 11000 in 1999 and 21000 in March.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.6% and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.3%.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/global-sto ... 1515034296

And more good news ...

US private sector added 250,000 jobs in Dec, vs estimate of 190,000: ADP

Jeff Cox | @JeffCoxCNBCcom

Private sector job creation surged in December as a strong holiday shopping season pushed companies to hire more workers, according to a report Thursday from ADP and Moody's Analytics.

Companies hired 250,000 new workers to close out the year, well above Wall Street expectations of 190,000. The month was the best for job creation since March and topped the 185,000 in November, a number that was revised lower by 5,000.

The total brought 2017's private payroll growth as gauged by ADP and Moody's to 2.54 million, an average of 212,000 a month.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/04/us-priv ... 0-adp.html

And more good news ...

Job-cut announcements in 2017 see lowest level since 1990, Challenger report says

Chloe Aiello | @chlobo_ilo

U.S. employers announced plans to cut 32,423 jobs in December, bringing the year's total to a low not seen since 1990, global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported Thursday.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/04/job-cut ... enger.html

Remember when the community organizer in chief said Trump doesn't have a magic wand and those jobs just aren't coming back?

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Here's more on the new Labor Department ruling. ...

Trump Rule Aims to Extend Health Care Option to 11 Million Uninsured

Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH / January 04, 2018

Small businesses and sole proprietors will be able to band together under a new federal rule to create employee health plans that would expand coverage options for 11 million uninsured Americans, senior Trump administration officials said.

The Labor Department rule allowing “association health plans,” placed Thursday in the Federal Register, builds on an executive order by President Donald Trump from October.

One senior Trump administration official said during a background briefing Wednesday that the association health plans will “level the playing field” between small businesses and large corporations and provide “more health care for more people at a lower cost.”

Currently, 8 million Americans employed by small businesses and another 3 million sole proprietors, who do business without employees, don’t have access to a group health insurance plan.

Entry on the Federal Register opens a 60-day public comment period, and the rule could be implemented as early as summer, officials said.

“The main objective of this effort is to expand choices for people who do not yet have insurance and [create] more options for employers and employees to take advantage of,” Robert Moffit, a senior fellow in health policy studies at The Heritage Foundation and a former assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, told The Daily Signal.

In theory, individual small businesses without many employees could band together—in some cases across state lines—to create a health insurance plan covering a combined, large pool of employees, not unlike that of a health plan run by a big company with its own large pool of employees.

Such association members must have a “commonality,” which could be based on region or industry, senior administration officials said on background.

For example, companies in a specific state could band together for a plan. Already, industry groups such as the National Association of Restaurants and the National Homebuilders Association have expressed support for the concept.

While association plans are targeted for small businesses, a larger corporation could join one. However, these companies already have existing plans, so there would be less incentive to do so, the senior administration officials said.

Conceptually, the association health plans would be comparable to certain union-sponsored plans, such as that of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, in which an individual entrepreneur may buy into a larger health insurance plan, officials said.

Administration officials who briefed state leaders on the idea described them as “cautious but not antagonistic” and “intrigued.”

States will be free to regulate to ensure the solvency of the plans.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, the health insurance lobby, has warned that such plans could be prone to fraud without state oversight.

“For example, between 2000 and 2002, insurance scams through associations left more than 200,000 policyholders with unpaid medical bills totaling $252 million,” a research brief from the organization says.

However, Moffit contends this is not alone a reason to oppose the plans.

“That’s a matter of how they are governed,” Moffit said. “Medicaid is prone to fraud. Nobody is saying we should ban Medicaid. If that’s a reason for opposition, you could apply such a rationale across the board to welfare programs and food stamps.”

Participating companies will be required to have a role in governing the health plans, senior administration officials said.

Another potential point for opponents is that fewer people who are uninsured will turn to the existing insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

This could drive up the cost of the exchange plans, because they would have fewer participants. But Trump administration officials contend their plan will increase consumer options.

The rule will go into place administratively under an existing law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, known as ERISA.

When signing the executive order Oct. 12, Trump predicted:

Insurance companies will be fighting to get every single person signed up, and you will be hopefully negotiating, negotiating, negotiating, and you’ll get such low prices for such great care.

Trump’s executive order primarily does three things:

—Allows more small businesses to form associations to buy insurance plans, with the goal of creating more competition and expanding options across state lines.

—Reviews establishment of “short-term limited duration insurance,” which would not be subject to Obamacare’s expensive and comprehensive coverage regulations.

—Makes it easier for businesses to offer health reimbursement accounts, allowing more employees of small businesses to get coverage through work.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who had opposed other administration-backed health care plans, said at the signing ceremony that the Trump executive order was “the biggest free-market reform of health care in a generation.”

Paul added that the reform, “if it works and goes as planned, will allow millions of people to get insurance across state lines at an inexpensive price.”

In a Facebook post Thursday morning, Paul said he “applauds” the new rule allowing association health plans as described in the original version of this article:

Rand Paul
2 hours ago

For the past year, I have worked with the President and his administration to dramatically increase the availability of health care while at the same time decrease the costs. I applaud the administration for its action today, and I look forward to the finalization of the proposed rule.

http://dailysignal.com/…/trump-rule-aim ... alth-car…/

Trump Rule Aims to Extend Health Care Option to 11 Million Uninsured

The idea will “level the playing field” between small and large businesses and provide “more health care for more people at lower cost," one official says.
dailysignal.com

http://dailysignal.com/2018/01/04/trump ... uninsured/

I'm glad you and your wife's business are doing so well.

Remember bubbles burst.

So do nuclear bombs.

Check the jet stream. May even get some radioactive fallout in Montana.