The 45th POTUS - Donald J. Trump

[Norah]

https://apnews.com/0f1305c8742547df9bcf ... -secretary

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Donald Trump named his Treasury secretary, Teena Colebrook felt her heart sink.

She had voted for the president-elect on the belief that he would knock the moneyed elites from their perch in Washington, D.C. And she knew Trump's pick for Treasury_Steven Mnuchin_all too well.

OneWest, a bank formerly owned by a group of investors headed by Mnuchin, had foreclosed on her Los Angeles-area home in the aftermath of the Great Recession, stripping her of the two units she rented as a primary source of income.

"I just wish that I had not voted," said Colebrook, 59. "I have no faith in our government anymore at all. They all promise you the world at the end of a stick and take it away once they get in."

Less than a month after his presidential win, Trump's populist appeal has started to clash with a Cabinet of billionaires and millionaires that he believes can energize economic growth.

The prospect of Mnuchin leading the Treasury Department drew plaudits from many in the financial sector. A former Goldman Sachs executive who pivoted in the early 2000s to hedge fund management and movie production, he seemed an ideal emissary to Wall Street.

When asked on Wednesday about his credentials to be Treasury secretary, Mnuchin emphasized his time running OneWest_which not only foreclosed on Colebrook but also thousands of others in the aftermath of the housing crisis caused by sub-prime mortgages.

"What I've really been focused on is being a regional banker for the last eight years," Mnuchin said. "I know what it takes to make sure that we can make loans to small and mid-market companies and that's going to be our big focus, making sure we scale back regulation so that we make sure the banks are lending."

But the prospect of Mnuchin leading the Treasury Department prompted Colebrook and other OneWest borrowers who say they unfairly faced foreclosure to contact The Associated Press. Colebrook wishes she could meet with Trump to explain why she feels betrayed by his Cabinet selection after believing that his presidency could restore the balance of power to everyday people.

"He doesn't want the truth," she said. "He's now backing his buddies."

The Trump transition team has been sensitive to preserving trust with its voters. Senior adviser Kellyanne Conway publicly warned that supporters would feel "betrayed" if former critic Mitt Romney was named secretary of state, for instance.

For Mnuchin, the fundamental problem stems from the Great Recession. His investor group was the sole bidders to take control of the troubled bank IndyMac in 2009. The group struck a deal that left the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission responsible for taking as much as 80 percent of the losses on former IndyMac assets and rebranded the troubled bank as OneWest.

The combination of OneWest's profitability, government guarantees and foreclosure activities drew the ire of activist groups like the California Reinvestment Coalition. It found the bank to be consistently one of the most difficult to work out loan modifications with even though OneWest never drew a major response from government regulators.

By June of 2014, five years after taking over OneWest, Mnuchin sold the bank for $3.4 billion at a tremendous profit.

Colebrook said she learned the hard way about OneWest's tactics, after the regional bank acquired her home lender, First Federal Bank of California, in late 2009.

In 1998, she bought a triplex for $248,000 in Hawthorne, California, not too far from Los Angeles International Airport.

She rented out two of the units and lived in the third. Colebrook refinanced her mortgage in order to renovate the property and help buy additional homes to generate rental income.

By the time the financial crisis struck in 2008, she had an interest-only mortgage on the triplex known as a "pick-a-payment" loan. Her monthly payments ran as high as $2,000 and only covered the interest on the debt. Then she got ensnarled in the economic downturn.

"All my tenants lost their jobs in the crash," Colebrook said. "They couldn't pay. It was a knock-on effect."

Over five years, she tried unsuccessfully to adjust her loan with OneWest through the Treasury Department's Home Affordable Modification Program. But she said that One West Bank lost paperwork, provided conflicting statements about ownership of the loan and fees and submitted charges that were unverified and caused her loan balance to balloon. By the time she lost her home in foreclosure in April 2015, the payoff balance totaled $517,662.

Colebrook said she is still challenging the foreclosure in court.

She now lives with her boyfriend in the small California city of San Luis Obispo. She volunteers at a homeless shelter, knowing that she could just as easily have ended up there.

"I cook at the homeless shelter because there but the grace of God go I."

[tragabigzanda]

Trump may turn the very role of the US President into a sort of reality TV thing. The way he plays with Twitter, Mitt Romney, etc, and the media plays back with him.

One of two scenarios need to happen to ensure our country doesn't start getting its political coverage from Perez Hilton:

1. The conventional outlets need to stop giving prime headline real estate to those sorts of stories, and need to start getting way more bullish on the nuts and bolts of his policies (and then of course the populace needs to become far more interested in that sort of stuff);

2. There would have to be some sort of political-journalism movement wherein earnest, hard-working reporters pursue those stories, with a consistently high level of factual accuracy, while being willing to work for free/peanuts.

A guest on NPR this morning basically made my first point. I felt smug and smart and felt bad that my wife had to experience me that way so early in the morning.

[Strat]

https://apnews.com/0f1305c8742547df9bcf978b2c15997c/Trump-voter-lost-her-home-to-new-Treasury-secretary

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Donald Trump named his Treasury secretary, Teena Colebrook felt her heart sink.

She had voted for the president-elect on the belief that he would knock the moneyed elites from their perch in Washington, D.C. And she knew Trump's pick for Treasury_Steven Mnuchin_all too well.

OneWest, a bank formerly owned by a group of investors headed by Mnuchin, had foreclosed on her Los Angeles-area home in the aftermath of the Great Recession, stripping her of the two units she rented as a primary source of income.

"I just wish that I had not voted," said Colebrook, 59. "I have no faith in our government anymore at all. They all promise you the world at the end of a stick and take it away once they get in."

Less than a month after his presidential win, Trump's populist appeal has started to clash with a Cabinet of billionaires and millionaires that he believes can energize economic growth.

The prospect of Mnuchin leading the Treasury Department drew plaudits from many in the financial sector. A former Goldman Sachs executive who pivoted in the early 2000s to hedge fund management and movie production, he seemed an ideal emissary to Wall Street.

When asked on Wednesday about his credentials to be Treasury secretary, Mnuchin emphasized his time running OneWest_which not only foreclosed on Colebrook but also thousands of others in the aftermath of the housing crisis caused by sub-prime mortgages.

"What I've really been focused on is being a regional banker for the last eight years," Mnuchin said. "I know what it takes to make sure that we can make loans to small and mid-market companies and that's going to be our big focus, making sure we scale back regulation so that we make sure the banks are lending."

But the prospect of Mnuchin leading the Treasury Department prompted Colebrook and other OneWest borrowers who say they unfairly faced foreclosure to contact The Associated Press. Colebrook wishes she could meet with Trump to explain why she feels betrayed by his Cabinet selection after believing that his presidency could restore the balance of power to everyday people.

"He doesn't want the truth," she said. "He's now backing his buddies."

The Trump transition team has been sensitive to preserving trust with its voters. Senior adviser Kellyanne Conway publicly warned that supporters would feel "betrayed" if former critic Mitt Romney was named secretary of state, for instance.

For Mnuchin, the fundamental problem stems from the Great Recession. His investor group was the sole bidders to take control of the troubled bank IndyMac in 2009. The group struck a deal that left the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission responsible for taking as much as 80 percent of the losses on former IndyMac assets and rebranded the troubled bank as OneWest.

The combination of OneWest's profitability, government guarantees and foreclosure activities drew the ire of activist groups like the California Reinvestment Coalition. It found the bank to be consistently one of the most difficult to work out loan modifications with even though OneWest never drew a major response from government regulators.

By June of 2014, five years after taking over OneWest, Mnuchin sold the bank for $3.4 billion at a tremendous profit.

Colebrook said she learned the hard way about OneWest's tactics, after the regional bank acquired her home lender, First Federal Bank of California, in late 2009.

In 1998, she bought a triplex for $248,000 in Hawthorne, California, not too far from Los Angeles International Airport.

She rented out two of the units and lived in the third. Colebrook refinanced her mortgage in order to renovate the property and help buy additional homes to generate rental income.

By the time the financial crisis struck in 2008, she had an interest-only mortgage on the triplex known as a "pick-a-payment" loan. Her monthly payments ran as high as $2,000 and only covered the interest on the debt. Then she got ensnarled in the economic downturn.

"All my tenants lost their jobs in the crash," Colebrook said. "They couldn't pay. It was a knock-on effect."

Over five years, she tried unsuccessfully to adjust her loan with OneWest through the Treasury Department's Home Affordable Modification Program. But she said that One West Bank lost paperwork, provided conflicting statements about ownership of the loan and fees and submitted charges that were unverified and caused her loan balance to balloon. By the time she lost her home in foreclosure in April 2015, the payoff balance totaled $517,662.

Colebrook said she is still challenging the foreclosure in court.

She now lives with her boyfriend in the small California city of San Luis Obispo. She volunteers at a homeless shelter, knowing that she could just as easily have ended up there.

"I cook at the homeless shelter because there but the grace of God go I."

But the prospect of Mnuchin leading the Treasury Department prompted Colebrook and other OneWest borrowers who say they unfairly faced foreclosure to contact The Associated Press. Colebrook wishes she could meet with Trump to explain why she feels betrayed by his Cabinet selection after believing that his presidency could restore the balance of power to everyday people.

Fuck you (for dramatic effect). I dont know how these people couldnt see through Trump from day 1. Its their own fault at this point. You voted for him. Most people saw through Trump and knew damn well what would happen. We all know he's a con man. Fool me once....

[bune]

Trump may turn the very role of the US President into a sort of reality TV thing. The way he plays with Twitter, Mitt Romney, etc, and the media plays back with him.

One of two scenarios need to happen to ensure our country doesn't start getting its political coverage from Perez Hilton:

1. The conventional outlets need to stop giving prime headline real estate to those sorts of stories, and need to start getting way more bullish on the nuts and bolts of his policies (and then of course the populace needs to become far more interested in that sort of stuff);

2. There would have to be some sort of political-journalism movement wherein earnest, hard-working reporters pursue those stories, with a consistently high level of factual accuracy, while being willing to work for free/peanuts.

A guest on NPR this morning basically made my first point. I felt smug and smart and felt bad that my wife had to experience me that way so early in the morning.

Something something we get that all day?

[Strat]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/08/technol ... index.html

"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."

Then the shit he says at the end of the clip

"Then they come back and say oh i was fighting for isis, and we say oh come on in!"

This fucking guy. Unbelievable.

[E.H. Ruddock]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/08/technology/donald-trump-internet/index.html

"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."

Then the shit he says at the end of the clip

"Then they come back and say oh i was fighting for isis, and we say oh come on in!"

This fucking guy. Unbelievable.

well what would you say to someone wanting back in that was fighting for ISIS?

[Strat]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/08/technology/donald-trump-internet/index.html

"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."

Then the shit he says at the end of the clip

"Then they come back and say oh i was fighting for isis, and we say oh come on in!"

This fucking guy. Unbelievable.

well what would you say to someone wanting back in that was fighting for ISIS?

Does he, and do you really think that they come to the border and say "yea ive been fighting for isis, can i have house here now?"

[Strat]

and then we just say "sure come on in?"

[tragabigzanda]

Trump may turn the very role of the US President into a sort of reality TV thing. The way he plays with Twitter, Mitt Romney, etc, and the media plays back with him.

One of two scenarios need to happen to ensure our country doesn't start getting its political coverage from Perez Hilton:

1. The conventional outlets need to stop giving prime headline real estate to those sorts of stories, and need to start getting way more bullish on the nuts and bolts of his policies (and then of course the populace needs to become far more interested in that sort of stuff);

2. There would have to be some sort of political-journalism movement wherein earnest, hard-working reporters pursue those stories, with a consistently high level of factual accuracy, while being willing to work for free/peanuts.

A guest on NPR this morning basically made my first point. I felt smug and smart and felt bad that my wife had to experience me that way so early in the morning.

Something something we get that all day?

[E.H. Ruddock]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/08/technology/donald-trump-internet/index.html

"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."

Then the shit he says at the end of the clip

"Then they come back and say oh i was fighting for isis, and we say oh come on in!"

This fucking guy. Unbelievable.

well what would you say to someone wanting back in that was fighting for ISIS?

Does he, and do you really think that they come to the border and say "yea ive been fighting for isis, can i have house here now?"

My comment was facetious, btw.

[Strat]

He talks about this shit like he's a 10th grader. He creates his own moronic narrative and answers it himself and his followers think he's a genius.

[Strat]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/08/technology/donald-trump-internet/index.html

"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."

Then the shit he says at the end of the clip

"Then they come back and say oh i was fighting for isis, and we say oh come on in!"

This fucking guy. Unbelievable.

well what would you say to someone wanting back in that was fighting for ISIS?

Does he, and do you really think that they come to the border and say "yea ive been fighting for isis, can i have house here now?"

My comment was facetious, btw.

Shit. use the arrow then! Im too riled up. Its friday. Fuck this shit.

[tragabigzanda]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/08/technology/donald-trump-internet/index.html

"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."

Then the shit he says at the end of the clip

"Then they come back and say oh i was fighting for isis, and we say oh come on in!"

This fucking guy. Unbelievable.

well what would you say to someone wanting back in that was fighting for ISIS?

Does he, and do you really think that they come to the border and say "yea ive been fighting for isis, can i have house here now?"

My comment was facetious, btw.

Shit. use the arrow then! Im too riled up. Its friday. Fuck this shit.

What's up, buddy? What're you riled up about?

[E.H. Ruddock]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/08/technology/donald-trump-internet/index.html

"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."

Then the shit he says at the end of the clip

"Then they come back and say oh i was fighting for isis, and we say oh come on in!"

This fucking guy. Unbelievable.

well what would you say to someone wanting back in that was fighting for ISIS?

Does he, and do you really think that they come to the border and say "yea ive been fighting for isis, can i have house here now?"

My comment was facetious, btw.

Shit. use the arrow then! Im too riled up. Its friday. Fuck this shit.

What's up, buddy? What're you riled up about?

clearly Donald Trump.

[Strat]

Well fuck. Close the internet? He mocks free speech. He's dumb. I can't believe people voted for the fucking guy.

[McParadigm]

Has now filed to block all three recounts.

[McParadigm]

Invited to the White House.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/31/asia/phil ... index.html

"Just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a bitch," Duterte said. "Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong," he added

[tragabigzanda]

Invited to the White House.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/31/asia/phil ... index.html

"Just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a bitch," Duterte said. "Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong," he added

Huh? Dutere was invited to the White House? Or wrong link?

[Jorge]

Invited to the White House.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/31/asia/phil ... index.html

"Just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a bitch," Duterte said. "Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong," he added

Huh? Dutere was invited to the White House? Or wrong link?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-phili ... SKBN13R20P

[bune]

He talks about this shit like he's a 10th grader. He creates his own moronic narrative and answers it himself and his followers think he's a genius.

I'd make a joke about average intelligence of his followers being 5th grade level but that's hanging fruit.