Free Republic

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/02/recount-news-heres-the-latest-on-the-recount-efforts-in-mi-wi-and-pa.html

Ìt will be hard to say goodbye to President Obama. But what if instead of sulking about the next four years, we plan an epic sendoff to end all sendoffs? I picture a festive parade with bands playing and people lining the streets holding signs as Obama's motorcade slowly makes its way from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the final time. I envision Obama's being so moved by the outpouring of love and emotion that he and Michelle Obama emerge from their limousine and walk down the street just as they did during both Inauguration parades. We could make it into...

In President-elect Donald J. Trump’s newly named kitchen cabinet of business advisers, Wall Street is in. Silicon Valley is out. Mr. Trump has named 16 business leaders to serve on what’s being called the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, described as a group meant to guide his administration on economic matters. The list is notable for leaning toward New York executives and industries — finance in particular. The list echoes Mr. Trump’s picks for a number of major economic positions, including Treasury secretary (the former Goldman Sachs partner and hedge fund manager Steven T. Mnuchin) and commerce secretary (the billionaire...

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — One by one, the political operatives sitting around the table at Harvard’s campaign managers conference Wednesday afternoon explained why they thought their candidate could win — even though he or she ended up losing. And then came Corey Lewandowski. Lewandowski explained how he joined Donald Trump’s team in January 2015, and helped run “the most unconventional race in the history of the presidency” before his eventual firing 18 months later. “Embracing Mr. Trump’s wealth and not running from it,” Lewandowski said, “was a strategic decision that we made early on.” He continued: “The reason we did that...

While we knew it was impossible for President Obama to truly rein in the massive executive powers that he helped expand (following on the massive expansions from previous administrations) concerning national surveillance and war -- we had still hoped that maybe his concern about a President Trump would let him do a few small things to limit some of the most egregious powers. Instead, it appears that President Obama is doing the opposite, and expanding his war powers, just as he's about to hand them to someone that he, himself, has loudly criticized as being unfit for the Presidency. For...

Some snapped pictures, others watched intently as an official recount of 75 Philadelphia voting divisions took place Friday afternoon at the city's massive voting machine warehouse in Nicetown. The recount of 4 percent of the city's 1,686 voting divisions was the result of a recount campaign launched by Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein in various counties and states throughout the country. Philadelphia City Commissioners, who make up the Board of Elections, agreed to recount ballots in 75 divisions in which there were at least three affidavits for each division from voters asking for a recount. They rejected the request...

The first day of Wisconsin’s presidential recount narrowed the gap between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President-elect Donald Trump by precisely one vote. Trump defeated Clinton in Wisconsin’s initial tally by about one percent, or just over 22,000 votes. Nevertheless, Green Party candidate Jill Stein (who finished a very distant fourth) is demanding a full recount after suggesting fraud or technological glitches may have swayed the results. In response to Stein’s demand, Wisconsin began recounting all its ballots Thursday. But the first results to emerge suggest the final tally will be rather close to the original one. Only...

Blocked due to copyright.

Videocast 41:35 Dr. Roberts also adds, “You can be in office, but not in power. If anything is going to change, Trump has to be in power. The government has to belong to him in order to get anything done.”

A Mexican official from the city that just lost out on 1,000 jobs it expected to take from an Indiana Carrier plant says that Donald Trump is "telling the truth" when he rails against U.S. job losses . Jaime Garcia Astorga, secretary of economic development of Santa Catarina in the state of Nuevo Leon, told CNBC on Friday that "nobody" believed the president-elect was serious when he "made a lot of declarations" to voters about keeping U.S. jobs in the United States.

President-elect Donald Trump spoke with the president of Taiwan by phone on Friday, in a move likely to infuriate Beijing and hinder US-China relations. "President-elect Trump spoke with President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, who offered her congratulations," according to a readout of the call released by Trump's transition team. "During the discussion, they noted the close economic, political, and security ties" between Taiwan and the United States, the statement continued. "President-elect Trump also congratulated President Tsai on becoming President of Taiwan earlier this year." The call, first reported by the Financial Times, is the first time a US president has...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Friday kept up his postelection push to position himself as a protector of immigrants against President-elect Donald Trump, announcing the creation of a $1 million "legal protection fund" to help those fighting possible deportation. The fund was created in partnership with the National Immigrant Justice Center to "provide immediate legal information, screenings, consultations and representation to individuals who may be at risk for deportation," according to a news release from Emanuel's office. The money will come from the $20 million the city set aside for Emanuel's property tax rebate program, according to city spokeswoman Jennifer Martinez.

One particularly tough and indigestible nugget of talk-radio stupidity afflicting the guts of conservatism is the idea that there is some sort of fundamental difference between bribing a business with tax cuts and bribing it with a wheelbarrow full of cash. The Trump-Pence bailout of Carrier’s operations in Indiana provides an illustrative case... Republicans might have had a little bit of a point in the question of general tax cuts: A tax cut and spending are different things, even if the budgetary effects are exactly the same. But in the matter of industry-specific or firm-specific tax benefits of the sort...

President-elect Donald Trump is set to meet Friday with North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a red-state Democrat, which could put Senate Democrats at a further disadvantage if she were to join the Trump administration. Heitkamp told CNN Thursday she has no inkling of what the meeting may be about, but said she was open to discussing serving in a Trump administration. News of the meeting set off a panic among top Democrats, some of whom began to privately make the case that Heitkamp should stay in the Senate rather than give up a seat that would likely be a GOP...

IMEE PICCHI. December 2, 2016. As Breitbart Wages "War" On Kellogg’s, Advertisers Flee Breitbart News, an ultraconservative website that has served as a platform for the white nationalist “alt-right” movement, is touting its growing readership and “main street American values” as a reason advertisers should stick with it. Some marketers, however, are heading for the exits, directing their advertising dollars away from Breitbart amid the publication’s call for a boycott against Kellogg’s (K), which has pulled its ads from the site. That prompted Breitbart to declare “war” on Kellogg’s: Editor-in-Chief Alexander Marlow said on the site that “to blacklist Breitbart...

Being a convert to Islam does not make Ellison anti-American. But the Minnesota lawmaker, as a visible and a vocal supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, is supporting an anti-American agenda. The Muslim Brotherhood—in its own words, as evidenced in court documents—calls for “destroying Western civilization from within” and replacing that civilization with a supremacist, sharia law-based autocracy. Even Saudi Arabia has outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, making it a state-designated terrorist organization. Ellison also supports the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America, and the Muslim Students’ Association, all of whom—based on well-established public record—are linked to...

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) came out against Donald Trump’s selection of retired Marine Gen. James Mattis for secretary of Defense, saying she would not support a necessary congressional waiver to allow him to take on the role. Gillibrand is the first lawmaker to oppose waiving the prohibition on former military officers heading the Pentagon less than seven years after retiring. “While I deeply respect General Mattis’s service, I will oppose a waiver,” she said in a statement. “Civilian control of our military is a fundamental principle of American democracy, and I will not vote for an exception to this rule.”...

Wisconsin Representative Sean Duffy (R-WI) went on with Tucker Carlson tonight to discuss the recount in Wisconsin.   Duffy said Democrats and far left Green Party supporters are stalling the recount in Dane County Wisconsin, where Madison is located. The county is holding a hand recount. The recount will not be completed by the deadline on December 20th. Therefore, according to Rep. Duffy, the state will quite possibly be forced to forfeit their electoral votes.   This was the plan all along. Democrats knew they couldn’t make up 20,000 votes. But they also knew if they stalled on the...

The first day of the Wisconsin recount is over, and, perhaps ironically (or not, depending on your perspective), it was Green Party candidate Jill Stein who gained the most votes in the updated returns. However, on December 2, according to the Wisconsin State Journal, a group of Donald Trump supporters asked a federal judge to stop the recount, saying it violates equal protection clauses because the state doesn’t have uniform standards for recounts and could miss the December 13 federal deadline for completing election results because of it. Stein’s vote tally increased by 17 votes (she went from 7 votes...

Documents release at link.