Former gubernatorial candidate and co-chair of President-elect Donald Trump's New York campaign Carl Paladino is standing by controversial comments about Michelle Obama made in Buffalo weekly ArtVoice that have sparked outcry on social media.

In a lengthy statement released Friday afternoon, Paladino defended his comments that he would like to see the first lady "return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla."

He said his remarks have "nothing to do with race" and "tough luck if you don't like my answer." His statement slams "2 progressive elitist ingrates" — Barack and Michelle Obama — "who have hated their country so badly and destroyed its fabrice in so many respects in 8 years."

"Michelle hated America before her husband won," Paladino charged. "She then enjoyed all the attention, the multi -million dollar vacations, the huge staff and other benefits. Then when Hillary lost, she and Barack realized that without Hillary, there was no one to protect the little, if any, legacy he had. That's when Michelle came out and said there is no hope for America. Good, let her leave and go someplace she will be happy."

<<snip>>

Paladino's original comments were published by ArtVoice as part of a package on what Western New Yorkers went out of 2017. The questions were:
1. What would you most like to happen in 2017?
2. What would you like to see go away in 2017?
3. Who would you like to see run for mayor of Buffalo in next year's election?
4. Should the new $50 million Amtrak station be at Central Terminal or Canal Side?

Here are Paladino's responses:
1. Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford. He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to Valerie Jarret, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a Jihady cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her.

2. Michelle Obama. I'd like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.

<snip>>

...continued here - http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Former-gubernatorial-candidate-wants-Michelle-10815635.php

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This crap has to end. It's unbelievable that we have these type of ignorant people among us.

My tit for tat - Return Melania back to being a hochee mama.

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http://www.snopes.com/melania-trump-vs-michelle-obama/

Dear MoveOn member,

The conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C., is that come January, Republicans will be able to abolish the Affordable Care Act, torpedoing health insurance coverage for 30 million people and that nobody will make a peep about it.1

On Tuesday, we showed that the conventional wisdom is dead wrong.

On that day, MoveOn members and allies gathered outside of 82 Republican House and Senate offices in 26 states across the country, and thousands more flooded state GOP offices with phone calls.

Our message: "Don't take away our health care." And if you try, you've got a fight on your hands.

The demonstrations, organized in partnership with 45 local and national groups, sparked dozens of media stories and a multitude of social media posts. More importantly, they couldn't be ignored by the Republican Congressional staffers inside the offices. A staffer for West Virginia's Senator Shelley Moore Capito sat down with a group of protesters—and readily told them that she knew that there were protests happening at Capito's other offices around the state.

You may not see it on Fox News—yet!—but the resistance to taking away Americans' health care has begun.

Here are a few snapshots of what it looked like out there on Tuesday:

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This is just the first taste of what the GOP—and any Democrat who dares join them in trying to take away health care that tens of millions of Americans count on—will encounter.

If they repeal the Affordable Care Act, many clinics and hospitals will have to shut their doors.2 Hundreds of thousands of jobs will disappear.3 And tens of millions of people will lose the insurance that they rely on. Until now, Republicans' attempts to repeal Obamacare have just been play-acting, a way to rile up their base. But now, they're shooting with real bullets. And as the rest of the country wakes up to what they're planning to do—hurt real people—a firestorm of opposition is building.

Trump and his Republican friends have said that repealing the Affordable Care Act will be their first priority this January. We can make it their first defeat. By stopping them, we'll slam the door on their plans to slash and privatize Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, public schools, and so many other fundamental services that Americans rely on. And by battling against their atrocious plan, we'll demonstrate to the American people whose side Trump is really on—and what we stand for as progressives.

Happy holidays and thanks for all you do.

–Ben W., Emma, Katharine, Victoria, and the rest of the team

P.S. You can see the entire day of action photos via Facebook here.

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https://twitter.com/TomthunkitsMind/status/811827445364039680

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https://twitter.com/TomthunkitsMind/status/811477889396965376

https://twitter.com/TomthunkitsMind/status/811105462720532480

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BEIJING — China on Tuesday returned a U.S. naval drone seized in the South China Sea last week, a peaceful resolution to a military standoff that threatened to inflame maritime tensions ahead of president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

<<snip>>

Trump soon weighed-in on the matter, posting a message on Twitter that said: “China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters — rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.”

When the Chinese side eventually agreed to return the vessel, Trump weighed in again. “We should tell China that we don’t want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!” he wrote.

Trump’s response to the drone’s seizure deepened Chinese concerns about the president-elect’s Asia policy. Since winning the U.S. presidential election, he surprised Beijing by taking a phone call from Taiwan’s leader, Tsai Ing-wen, a move that broke with decades of diplomatic practice.

His comments on the Taiwan issue and tweets on the drone’s seizure have made him a figure of derision and ridicule in the Communist Party-controlled press.

“Trump is not behaving as a president who will become master of the White House in a month,” the Global Times, a Communist party controlled newspaper, wrote in an editorial on Sunday. “He bears no sense of how to lead a superpower.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-returns-seized-us-naval-drone/2016/12/20/4dde17b2-c633-11e6-acda-59924caa2450_story.html?postshare=861482216591609&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.dd21e25580b6

https://twitter.com/TomthunkitsMind/status/810970319045459969

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-jnY6gQhlDbVUrS4Et69l3SAKb1H4znwniKl7fPe4js/mobilebasic

December 13, 2016

Dear Leaders:

We are a group of attorneys throughout the United States. Like our elected officials, each of us has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. We are deeply concerned that recent revelations regarding the 2016 election could undermine confidence in the outcome of the 2016 election.

The public has recently learned that a bipartisan group of United States elected officials was provided a briefing by U.S. intelligence agencies in September. This briefing contained credible evidence that Russia was not only carrying out a campaign of disinformation against United States citizens, but was in the opinion of U.S. intelligence agencies, likely doing so with the goal of ensuring a specific outcome in the U.S. election. Despite this red flag, this bipartisan group chose not to alert the public or to issue a bipartisan statement urging state and local officials to take federal help in protecting their voting-registration and balloting machines from Russian cyber-intrusions. There is therefore now a question as to whether such interference did occur, which in combination with the Russian disinformation campaign and likely hacking of political parties' emails, threatens to delegitimize the results of the 2016 election.

Like the bipartisan group of Senators (Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Jack Reed (D-R.I.)) who issued a statement on Sunday, December 11, we believe that potential Russian interference in the election should alarm every American and that Congress must investigate further without allowing it to become a partisan issue.

We further believe that this series of events represents an unprecedented threat to the United States and to the integrity of the 2016 election. Therefore, we need to allow for a thorough and proper investigation of these issues, and to ensure the integrity of the remaining steps of our election process as well as future elections.

The Constitution provides for a safeguard to help us to ensure that no one can take the office of President if there is reason to believe that the election was compromised by outside forces: the Electoral College. Like a growing bipartisan group of Electors who have called for an intelligence report to be provided to them prior to their vote, we believe it is necessary for the members of the Electoral College to have as much information as possible about the nature of the possible intrusions into the United States' democratic process by the Russian government prior to voting, so that they may make an informed decision as to who should become our next President.

We therefore request the following actions be taken immediately:

1) As much information as possible regarding the potential Russian interference with our election must be declassified with sufficient time for the Electors to receive it prior to December 19 so that the Electors may have sufficient information to make an informed decision prior to voting.

2) The Electors must receive an intelligence report detailing what senior intelligence officials know and suspect at this time, prior to voting. This information should include a briefing by the Director of National Intelligence.

3) If it is not possible to declassify this information in time, the date of the Electoral College vote must be delayed until such time as it is possible to provide the Electors with sufficient information for them to make an informed decision prior to voting.

Furthermore, we support a Congressional bipartisan commission to investigate the actions, intent, and results of the likely Russian interference with the 2016 election; and to determine the vulnerabilities in our system that allowed these possible intrusions to occur. This commission must recommend steps to prevent such an intrusion from occurring in the future.

This is not a partisan issue. This may be a fundamental threat to our democracy from a foreign nation with a real effect on the outcome of this election, the extent of which is not yet known. As Americans who are loyal first and foremost to our Constitutional democracy, we must work together to overcome any such threat.

1. Ryan Sullivan (TX)
2. Ricki Goodstein (PA)
3. Andrea Likwornik Weiss (NY)
4. Francey (PA)
5. Shari Gribbin (PA)
6. Jaunita Flessas (DC)
7. Amanda Glickman (VA)
8. Carol Meltzer (NY)
9. Mary Ellen Halloran (NJ)
10. Cheryl D. Harris (NY, GA)
11. Ethan Mann (GA)
12. Alexandra Haas (CO)
13. Ingrid Leverett (CA)
14. Elizabeth Inglehart (IL, NY)
15. Veronica Rodriguez ( TX)
...
...
3999. Chris Barnett (CA)
4000. Eun-Hee Chang (CA)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2016/dec/01/donald-trump-business-interests-conflicts

I will be leaving my great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday. The early morning announcement, which provided no further details but promised a press conference on 15 December, followed weeks of bad press over conflicts of interest posed by the Trump Organization’s international real estate dealings.

“While I am not mandated to do this under the law,” Trump wrote, “I feel it is visually important, as president, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses.”

So far, the visuals haven’t been good for the president-elect. Photos showing his daughter Ivanka Trump – who is slated to take over the family business – sitting in on meetings with foreign leaders raised new concerns over the failure to separate the Trump family brand from the presidency. Days later, a series of Facebook photos showed a meeting between the president-elect and Indian real estate partners, adding fuel to the fire.

Closer to home, the business interests of the Trump Organization will cross paths with the US government on multiple fronts, providing ample opportunity for further conflicts.

<snip>

continued at link

General Services Admin
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National Labor Relations Board
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Dept of Justice
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I am so disheartened that the American electorate is letting this corrupt rogue into the WH. GAH