Agent Orange Proposes Cutting The Drug Control Office’s Funding by 95%

From the New York Times…

When he was running for office, Donald J. Trump promised to rid America of the scourge of drugs, vowing to crack down on dealers and invest heavily in programs to get heroin and other opioids off the streets.

But on Friday, President Trump’s administration revealed plans to gut the 2018 budget of his Office of National Drug Control Policy. According to an Office of Management and Budget document obtained by The New York Times, the White House is proposing to slash the drug policy office budget by about 95 percent, to just $24 million from $388 million.

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Yeah… That’s Not Gonna Happen…

So apparently Agent Orange thinks he can bring peace to the Middle East…

Despite bleak prospects for success, President Donald Trump promised on Wednesday “to do whatever is necessary” to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

At a White House meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Trump pledged to reinvigorate the stalled Mideast peace process that has bedeviled his predecessors and said he would serve as “a mediator, an arbitrator or a facilitator” between the two sides. “We will get it done,” Trump confidently told Abbas.

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Orange Pope-Wannabe Chips Away at Separation of Church and State

HEY ATHEISTS! SKEPTICS! ARE YOU OUT THERE? IS THIS AN ISSUE YOU’RE WILLING TO CARE ABOUT?

Fucking Asshole-in-Chief fucker has now given churches the freedom to be openly political without losing their tax-exempt status.

Declaring he was giving churches their “voices back,” President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at easing an IRS rule limiting political activity for religious organizations — a move that fell far short of a more sweeping order some supporters had expected.

As he marked the National Day of Prayer at the White House on Thursday, Trump signed the order on religious freedom, which directs the Treasury Department to not take “adverse action” over churches or religious organizations for political speech. The rule has rarely been enforced. Still, opponents said the restrictions have a chilling effect on free speech.

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I. Hate. Republicans. With Every. Fiber. Of. My. Being. (Health Care)

(Content warning: rape, rape survivors… and also a lot of strong, angry, ranting language)

So the fucking Rethuglicans in the fucking House voted to replace sections of the ACA, including doing away with the stipulation that health insurance companies can’t deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions… and one of those fucking conditions was fucking rape.

When House Republicans passed the American Health Care Act on Thursday, many Americans likely thought of their family and friends living with cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. These diseases are commonly referred to as “pre-existing conditions” – conditions which, under the Republican health care bill, could result in them being denied health insurance.

But another, less publicised group of people were also concerned by the bill’s passage: rape survivors.

Before Obamacare, some insurance companies considered rape and domestic abuse pre-existing conditions. One woman, Jody Neal-Post, says she was turned away after telling a potential insurance that she was a domestic violence victim – despite otherwise being perfectly healthy.

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Guess Who’s Now Heading the Securities and Exchange Commission?

From Reuters…

The U.S. Senate voted on Tuesday to confirm attorney Jay Clayton to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency tasked with policing and writing rules for Wall Street.

In a 61-37 vote, the Senate approved the nomination, with some moderate Democrats joining their Republican colleagues in supporting his confirmation.

Clayton could be officially sworn in as SEC chairman as soon as Thursday.

The White House still must complete some paperwork, including an action by President Trump to formally designate him as SEC chairman.

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Not-My-President Directly Involved in Hunt for Tweeter

Remember that tweeted photo comparison of the crowd at President Obama’s inauguration and the crowd at Agent Orange’s inauguration?

Left: An aerial view of President Barack Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Right: An aerial view of President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017 in Washington, D.C. National Park Service

Left: An aerial view of President Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Right: An aerial view of President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017 in Washington, D.C. National Park Service

From Time…

President Donald Trump was “directly involved” in the quest to find the staffer from the National Park Service who retweeted a comparative photo of his inauguration crowd with that of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

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Welp… The Border Wall is Going Ahead…

From the Atlantic…

Mick Mulvaney, the president’s budget director, said on Tuesday that the administration will replace segments of chain-link fencing with a 20-foot-tall steel fence along the southern border, despite Congress refusal to fund the president’s border wall in its spending bill.

Trump, for his part, has claimed that the administration is “beginning to build the wall,” which was a central plank of his presidential campaign, saying that “we’re putting up a lot of new wall in certain areas.” Mulvaney elaborated Tuesday that there is funding to “replace cyclone fencing with 20-foot high steel wall.” He declined repeated questions from White House reporters about where along the border the fencing would go, or how many miles it would cover.

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