Amen!

Awesome, and we knew it all along about federal employees.

Lincoln often gets credited with the phrase "A house divided cannot stand," but it goes back much further than that. It was Jesus Christ who originally said it.

Amen.

Thanks for the heads up!

Kind of makes you want to puke doesn't it?

Where'd ya get the "fake" news?

Good Riddance!

If they are guilty then they better be very worried.

Yeah, me too. And I don't care who knows it. If they want to come and threaten me, I got somethin' for 'em.

I see no problems with this. Whoever is against it must be anti-American.




DONALD J. TRUMP CONTRACT WITH THE AMERICAN VOTER
What follows is my 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again. It is a contract between myself and the American voter – and begins with restoring honesty, accountability and change to Washington
Therefore, on the first day of my term of office, my administration will immediately pursue the following six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC:
● FIRST, propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress;
● SECOND, a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health);
● THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated;
● FOURTH, a 5 year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service;
● FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government;
● SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.
On the same day, I will begin taking the following 7 actions to protect American workers:
· FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205
· SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
· THIRD, I will direct my Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator
· FOURTH, I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately
· FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.
· SIXTH, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward
· SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure
Additionally, on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law:
· FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama
· SECOND, begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States
· THIRD, cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities
· FOURTH, begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back
· FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting.
Next, I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:
1. Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act. An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate.
2. End The Offshoring Act Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.
3. American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.
4. School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to gives parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local
communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable.
5. Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications.
6. Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.
7. End Illegal Immigration Act Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.
8. Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.
9. Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values
10. Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.
On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities, and honesty to our government.
This is my pledge to you.
And if we follow these steps, we will once more have a government of, by and for the people.

Just another crooked government agency. But hey, let's make the government bigger anyway!

From reason.com




The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), apparently not satisfied with exerting a considerable and often wildly inappropriate amount of control over what people can put in their bodies, has also taken extraordinary and secretive steps to control what sorts of information people can read about the agency's decisions.

To understand how the FDA controls news about its policies, you have to understand news embargoes, in which a source agrees to provide information if reporters agree to hold the news until a specific time.

Embargoes are a widely employed and often useful part of journalism: They can help give reporters time to go over stories—especially those with complex, technical aspects—carefully, and can help ensure that critics and opinion writers don't feel pressured to rush to judgment. Embargoes, in other words, give reporters the opportunity to think, clarify, and work through a story without worrying about getting scooped. And in the process, they can help create better journalism. Or at least that's the hope.

The flip side, of course, is that embargoes can also be used by sources to control stories, at least to some extent. By forcing every outlet to agree to the same embargo, PR operators can ensure that there's a flood of stories all at once, making it seem like something—usually a product that someone is trying to sell—is suddenly everywhere in the news. Embargoes can also be used to keep negative news and reviews from leaking before a product hits the market. In at least one case I'm aware of, video game critics, in exchange for early access to a game, were forced to agree to an embargo that didn't lift until 12 hours after the game was available to buy online.

Traditionally, the limiting factor on embargoes stories is just time. But according to scathing report in Scientific American, the FDA has recently been adding another factor for sharing news with early reporters: No outside sourcing. This turns into what is called a "close-hold embargo."

The FDA initially attempted to impose a close-hold embargo in 2011, according to the story, but updated its official embargo policy to allow reporters to contact third parties following complaints by journalists. Except that apparently the FDA secretly went ahead with a close-hold embargo strategy anyway, despite its own publicly posted rules. And according to snippets from an agency memo published by Scientific American, the explicit goal is to shape and control news coverage:

The FDA, too, quietly held close-hold embargoed briefings, even though its official media policy forbids it. Without a source willing to talk, it is impossible to tell for sure when or why FDA started violating its own rules. A document from January 2014, however, describes the FDA's strategy for getting media coverage of the launch of a new public health ad campaign. It lays out a plan for the agency to host a "media briefing for select, top-tier reporters who will have a major influence on coverage and public opinion of the campaigns.… Media who attend the briefing will be instructed that there is a strict, close-hold embargo that does not allow for contact with those outside of the FDA for comment on the campaign."

Why? The document gives a glimpse: "Media coverage of the campaign is guaranteed; however, we want to ensure outlets provide quality coverage of the launch," the document explains. "The media briefing will give us an opportunity to shape the news stories, conduct embargoed interviews with the major outlets ahead of the launch and give media outlets opportunities to prepare more in-depth coverage of the campaign launch."

The FDA has apparently relied on this practice not only to control when news is published, and who reporters talk to for their stories, but which news organizations get access to information. As the Scientific American story notes, major outlets such as Fox News and National Journal sometimes didn't receive invites to pre-release press briefings at all. In one case documented in the story, an FDA spokesperson told a National Journal reporter that the agency could not confirm or speculate on the timing for the of new rules regarding e-cigarettes—despite having already scheduled a release date and set up a briefing with other news outlets. In another, an FDA spokesperson claimed not to have contacted Fox News because of a lack of a good press contact.

The FDA, for its part, doesn't like it when reporters acknowledge that close-held embargoes even exist. After The New York Times noted in a story that the FDA had provided information on the condition that they "not talk to industry or public health groups" until after the news was public, an FDA official sent the Times reporter responsible for the story an email complaining about the mention, and noting that no other outlet had shared the details of the embargo. The very fact that a close-held embargo is in place is supposed to remain secret.

The FDA is not alone in its use of close-hold embargoes. For example, early details about a 2012 paper, which was eventually retracted, claiming a connection between genetically modified foods and rat cancer, were also provided under similar rules. But the story focuses on the ways in which the FDA has used the practice, despite its official policy saying otherwise.

This whole thing is appalling, especially given that it's an arm of the federal government using it to prevent the public from seeing outside opinions on its decisions.

Unfortunately, the strategy seems to work much of the time, as the story notes that reporters from major news outlets, including all the broadcast TV networks, CNN, and the Associated Press, have participated in such embargoes, and published stories without any critical comment.

At that point, why not just become an FDA press officer? In fact, as the story notes, one former reporter for the AP did just that. When Scientific American asked for comment on the his work as a reporter, he responded: "I'm not really sure whether I'm comfortable discussing that at this point."

I'm doin' great how are you? I went to get a glimpse of the reast of the world and do you know what? Its just as crazy out there as it is on this site.

Yeah but the way its set up it almost looks like the beer could be coming from the urinal.