In The News
The OM Wiener award goes to House Speaker Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan can’t just leave, go home, and check with Oscar Mayer to see if he can still drive the OM Wiener Mobile again like he did as a college student. Naaaw, instead he is threating baby boomers with making them pay again for their SS.
Ryan: “The one thing I obviously care a great deal about is entitlement reform and in particular health care entitlement reform,”
To put it into Randian language, the end of Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA.
Ryan: “The boomer generation is retiring and we have not prepared these programs,”
Before we give Paul the keys to the OM Wiener Mobile and he cracks it up, maybe he should explain? In spite of baby boomers building up a trust fund which has been used to cut taxes for corporations, the 1%, and other special interests, Paul who went to college on SS Survivor Benefits wants baby boomers to pay again and more.
– Then there is Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin.
Angry teachers took to the streets at the Kentucky state capitol in Frankfort Kentucky during the final days of the legislature shouting; “What do we want? Funding! When do we want it? Now!”
39 school districts, including the state’s largest in Louisville and Lexington closed as a result of teachers taking days off to go to Frankfort and protest the lack of action by the legislature. The bill passed by the legislature failed to shore up a state employees’ pension system that has less than a third of the money on hand that it needs to pay retirees.
Governor Matt Bevin had this to say about the teachers at the state capitol: “I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them, I guarantee you somewhere today a child was physically harmed or ingested poison because they were home alone because a single parent didn’t have any money to take care of them. I’m offended by the idea that people so cavalierly and so flippantly disregarded what’s truly best for children.”
– R.Lee Ermey died April 15, 2018 at the age of 74. For those of you who may not make the connection, honorary Gunnery Sergeant Emery played the Platoon Commander during Boot Camp in Stanley Kubricks “Full Metal Jacket.” I thought he was a lifer like my cousin who was a Master Gunnery Sergeant. Ermey served from 1961 to 1972. He did give a very convincing display of a drill instructor and convinced me of his authenticity. There was a private Joker, Snowflake, and Pyle. I was in Boot Camp with them. Staff Sergeant was in country for 14 months in 1968. He earned his honorary second rocker. Semper Fi.
A picture of a Trump staff meeting showing Vice President Pence in attendance and reviewing the strike on Syria was now said to be a meeting on Thursday night when Trump was updated on Syria. White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders used this picture to show a meeting which occurred on Friday night.
Unfortunately for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, VP Pence was in Peru on Friday night when the strike occurred. However, the picture was not on Thursday night either as UN Representative Nikki Haley was pictured in a striped shirt which she wore on Wednesday and not Thursday. Damn those eagle-eyed Whitehouse Press Correspondents.
From Peru, Vice President Pence was busily updating Congress on the air strike. Something President Trump would never had thought of doing.
– Like Father, like son. Apparently, Trump junior as a judge on the show Apprentice felt it was necessary to interview one of the contestants. Michael Cohen was able to get US Weekly to pull the story. Trump Jr is ending his 12 year marriage to his present wife Vanessa. The apple has not fallen far from the tree. I am sure there is more to be discovered with Michael Cohen.
– Finally, it is April 15 and here near Ann Arbor Michigan we have had snow and freezing rain again. It must be some of that fake climate change stuff going on which some of our commenters deny is happening. The climate is changing and not for the better.
Pretty much sums it up.
“The Libby pardon is signifying, and not in the way you think I mean it. The president* may indeed be sending a flare up for Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort and all the rest of them. But it also fashions an unbreakable link between the malfeasance and misfeasance of the Bush administration and the malfeasance and misfeasance of the Trump administration*. Primary among Libby’s partisans are veteran Republican legal hacks Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing. They’ve been pitching Scooter’s case for years. Now, they’re also working as legal advisers down in Camp Runamuck.
Since I don’t believe that Trump would know Libby if the latter sat in his lap, I’ve got to believe that this pardon is at least partly a little cookie thrown to Libby’s legal team. But this ties it all up in a nice bow. DiGenova and Toensing became famous for being TV lawyers during the Great Penis Hunt of 1998. They’ve since surfed the Republican sewage-treatment plants for clients, finally washing up in the sludge maelstrom of this White House. Their very presence, and what they’ve just managed to bring about on behalf of Scooter Libby, is all the proof you need of one fundamental fact.
Republicanism simply was Trumpism in waiting, and Trumpism is Republicanism in excelsis.”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19810572/trumps-scooter-libby-pardon-is-a-signal-in-more-ways-than-one/
EM:
It is interesting to see a president who will get down and mud wrestle with his opponents slinging one and two syllable barbs, insults, and names. Trump has really set the bar low for presidents going forward beyond his term. Who would have thought?
We have a bottom-a** president who evaded the draft multiple times, ran a Ponzi scheme in his real estate ventures forcing him into bankruptcy multiple times when real estate dropped and he could no longer borrow against it to pay off other loans, ran a fake college business to swindle money from those who can least afford it, can’t put together a few words to say for himself, a racist, a misogynist, a liar, a fool, a global embarassment, etc.
Barrack Obama, a black man who would have been scorned by Trump’s father, and has been maligned by Donald, in the presidency set the bar so much higher than what Trump could ever attain to as a man and will never be able to bring down to his level. White Trash . . .
Why Do Democrats Hate Trump? Tribalism
For those unfamiliar with this magazine considered to be liberal and/or conservative. Hated by members of both political parties.
From this article:
“You pick the Trump outrage that’s got liberals in a tizzy and I’ll point to an equal and not-so-opposite they had no problem with when it was authored by a Democrat.”
and the close
“Tribalism. Y’all are rabid over Trump for doing the same crap Obama did because Trump’s an R and hangs with the jocks and you’re a D and a geek so you hate Trump and miss Obama. Junior high school cafeteria seating system, anyone?
The worst thing about America’s political system is that it has no politics.”
Since Run brought up Climate Change:
” Finally, it is April 15 and here near Ann Arbor Michigan we have had snow and freezing rain again. It must be some of that fake climate change stuff going on which some of our commenters deny is happening. The climate is changing and not for the better.”
“…fake climate change stuff going on which some of our commenters deny is happening.”
I know of no one who denies fake or real climate change is happening. i hope Run doesn’t think that the April WEATHER is due to anthropogenic cause d climate change. Because if he does it proves what many AGW skeptics claimed was possible, cooling, and extended cooling is far more dangerous than extended warming. Compare the centuries of the Little Ice Age, a period of struggle for mankind in many areas, versus the past century plus since its end, a period of relatively easy growth.
Which view, cold bad versus warm bad, seems more rational?
Don’t waste our time please . . .
geez
the lower 48 states comprise about 3% of the globe
guns
immigrants
climate
trump
I cannot think of a worse combination of fed up beliefs. It is like corev is a caricature of total nonsense in one person
Run, you do not have standing on the climate change subject. Appears only Joel does.
Don’t waste yours and my time please.
Take a rest CoRev. Go to Breitbart where you may fit in with their crowd. Go for a bit. You are not going to highjack Angry Bear every time you want to make a point.
I hate rwdws
Anyone who thinks humans are not changing the climate is deluded
the number of illegal voters is miniscule and unimportant
Don’t know anyone that thinks the first amendment is bad, and know a lot of people whot think the USSC reading of the second amendment is bad
Racism is the single most dominant trait of rep voters.
please run off to someplace else
Your thoughts are nauseating
oh,
your right to speech does not come with a requirement we listen
His attacks on trump are meaningless, schoolyard taunts compared to the damage he did to our democracy and country.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Eventually the– administration does announce– that they’ve found that Russia is interfering– yet, and this is– this confounds me. I– I’m– I’m puzzled by this. Yet, when they decide to come out with a joint statement of the intelligence committees, you as the FBI director refused to sign it. Why?
JAMES COMEY: Because of the way we approach action in the run-up to an election. The– it’s not written down, despite what you might have heard, but there’s an important norm that I’ve lived my whole government career– obeying. If you can avoid it, you should not take any action in the run-up to an election that could have an impact on the election. By that, I mean the FBI or the Department of Justice. And so, we were being asked, in October, to sign onto a statement that says, “The Russians are messing with our election.” In my view and the view of the FBI leadership was it’s too late. And we can avoid action here. Because the goal’s already been accomplished. The American people already know this because lots of government officials have been on background talking to the press about this, members of Congress have been talking about it, the candidates are talking about it. So, the inoculation has already been achieved, and it’s October. So, we can avoid action here consistent with our policy that, whenever possible, we try and avoid action. So, we won’t sign this.
Yet, he writes a letter to a committee headed by then-Congressman Jason Chaffetz, a partisan viper of the first order, saying that he has reopened the Clinton email investigation. Because Comey is not a four-year-old playing with his toes in the mud, he has to know that this letter is going to get leaked about eight seconds after it arrives in Chaffetz’s hot little hands. But he won’t sign onto an intelligence committee report about Russian ratfcking because it might involve the FBI in something that “the American people are already talking about” and because it might be seen as tampering with the election? Please to be pulling the other one now.”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19827955/james-comey-interview-trump-clinton-emails/
His name will go down in infamy. And deservedly so.
I wonder if anyone has accumulated the total number of people trump has cheated in his life?
I know a few in Atlantic City, and then:
“The circumstances are nothing short of bizarre: a sitting president of the United States has written a check for $25 million to a group of Americans who credibly claimed that he ripped them off by perpetrating a fraud.
You know things are bad for a president when a story like this goes almost entirely unnoticed by the public, eclipsed by a dozen or so more pressing scandals.
Regardless, after keeping a close eye on this case for a long while, I think it’s a shame to see the case end – because I’ve long believed this is one of the underappreciated controversies of Trump’s recent career.
Indeed, as regular readers may recall, the finalized settlement agreement wasn’t supposed to happen at all – according to the president.
During the 2016 presidential race, Trump boasted during a debate, “This is a case I could have settled very easily, but I don’t settle cases very easily when I’m right.” After boasting that the Better Business Bureau gave Trump University an “A” rating – a claim that turned out to be a brazen lie – Trump added, “Again, I don’t settle cases. I don’t do it because that’s why I don’t get sued very often, because I don’t settle, unlike a lot of other people.” (The assertion that he doesn’t “get sued very often” also turned out to be a demonstrable falsehood.)
After the election Trump settled the case he said he’d never settle – shortly before he was supposed to take the stand in his own fraud case.
And what a case it was. The Washington Post reported in 2015 about students sometimes “max[ing] out their credit cards to pay tens of thousands of dollars for insider knowledge they believed could make them wealthy.”
What I’ve long found important about this story are the parallels between the unaccredited “school” and Trump’s rise to political power: a group of Americans, looking for easy solutions and wowed by a celebrity making too-good-to-be-true promises, put their faith in an accused scam artist, only to learn that Donald Trump had no intention of delivering on outlandish pledges that never really made any sense.
Rank-and-file voters, however, do not have the option of filing a class-action lawsuit.
As for the lingering consequences, the Dallas Morning News had a report the other day that stood out:
President Donald Trump named former Texas Deputy Attorney General David Morales on Tuesday to a trial bench in Corpus Christi. Morales had been recommended to the White House by Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.
Morales made headlines during the presidential campaign when news outlets learned that in May 2010 the state’s consumer protection division had sought permission to pursue what it believed was a strong case against Trump and Trump University. Investigators asserted that Texas taxpayers had been bilked out of more than $2.6 million, and sought to file a $5.4 million lawsuit.
Morales rejected the recommendation. Texas dropped its investigation. Trump University voluntarily ceased operations in Texas.
Last week, Morales was apparently rewarded for his trouble.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/judge-finalizes-25-million-settlement-trumps-fraud-case
So I got a playboy model, a pawn star and a judge paid off by the potus in plain sight.
geez
I got my answer. You can’t count that high.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/09/donald-trump-unpaid-bills-republican-president-laswuits/85297274/
From dishwashers to students to business owners.
Well, at least you can say he is willing to cheat anyone.
Draw your own conclusions on the FBI’s IG report. David Warsh gives a synopsis.
I read somewhere Ermey had been a DI during his time in the Corps. He had a blog which I followed for a while years ago. We have lost a character!
As to Trump/Macron/May redline, they put a stick on their shoulders and told Russia to knock it off……
Good thing the Russians are as calm as they were 30 odd years ago when SAC did a overly “realistic” mass exercise.
The definition of immorality is the pedophile school teacher meeting out judgement without evidence against the kids that do not bend over, US guilty the last two false flags.
ilsm:
If Trump was not strutting over this and laughing and Sessions had waited till McCabe qualified for retirement, little would be said. Sessions is a weasel who should have never been the AG. Trump is a recognized liar. There is more to this than what we read.
Ermey was what I would call a Platoon Commander at San Diego Boot Camp. DIs reported to them and were usually 2 or three stripers. Ermey was 3-up and 1 down or a Staff Sergeant. After 11 years, that is not much. I wonder why he did not stay in for 20. He seemed like a lifer. My nephew left after nine years and a Sergeant and he was still in his twenties. I was an E-5 after three years; but, they also wanted me to stay around too. Lot of officers bending my ear. It was time to go. Ermey made it easy for me to explain what boot camp was like to my wife and kids. I did not have to explain.
The conclusion is easy, the FBI tilted the election as much as they possibly could.
Here is what Digsby had to say:
I hate having to defend James Comey. I really hate it. I still think he’s a sanctimonious showboater and his holier-than-thou attitude still rubs me the wrong way. I will never understand his actions in 2016. But watching the Villagers get on their high horses and condemn him for fighting Trump on his own terms is making me sick. Comey isn’t the first one to call Trump out for being what he is. He’s not “lowering the bar.” He’s not saying anything that millions of Americans don’t scream at the TV every single day, including many people who work in newsrooms. It’s just that the Republicans used to say it then they all stopped and became his toadies in public.
I am not happy having to use him against the orange-haired white circle around the eyes miscreant.
I agree.
EMichael,
Too much pain to comment to your ad hominems on Professor Thoma’s blog.
Whatever JO is it is more intelligent than you confusing decontaminating first responders from a domestic fuel spill with decontaminating militarized gases. Maybe your terrorists gases were not militarized?
I had a lot more but you know I am a veteran, you do not know I had CBR training and did not technical work around the possibility of dealing with decontaminating things.
Stick to the ad hominem!
And you obviously do not care to read what the CDC says about sarin decontamination. WHich means you are a liar and a ..
JO means jerkoff.
And that is not an adhom. It is you.
Seriously, children get gassed by Asaad in a repetition of his murderous acts and you recite RT to me.
Just get the f away from human beings, you russian troll.
Might have been a little bit strong. I apologize to the other readers on thsi blog.
People think news sources have no effects on other people and their actions.
“Up in La Belle Province, Alexandre Bissonnette is on trial for shooting up a mosque in Quebec City on January 29, 2017, killing six people and wounding 19 others. As part of the evidence against Bissonnette, who apparently knew full well what he was doing and is an accomplished bullshit artist besides, the prosecutors entered a list of the Twitter feeds that Bissonnette visited while he was ramping himself up to mass murder. Andy Riga of The Montreal Gazette reports on the quite unsurprising details.
In the weeks before the attack, Bissonnette checked the Twitter feeds of right-wing American commentators, as well as conspiracy theorists, and alt-right and white supremacist/neo-Nazi leaders, a document presented at the hearing shows.
(I have to admit that Commentarice politique conservatrice makes even Laura Ingraham sound classy.)
Way I figure it, Canada is trying to export the worst of its fossil fuels down here while we export the worst of our political and cultural waste products up there. I blame NAFTA.”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19833610/canada-mosque-shooter-ben-shapiro-right-wing-pundits/
I cannot copy the list of the feeds, but it contains the “usual suspects.”
Emike,
(Clifford’s Principle) “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence.” A version of the quote uses “immoral” instead of “wrong”. Propagandists Trump, May and Macron are wrong!
The evidence at Douma is missing. The pictures are not consistent with any military gas, nor are there debris from the delivery “systems”.
The difference between Apr 17 and Apr 18; 17 was al Nusra group of terrorists. ’18 is Saudi supported Jays al Islam (Army of Islam) who have held Sharia law in Douma since 2015. Common both have not provided evidence!
You have an issue with evidence and looking at only whims that support your belief system.
When I read your stuff I go to Job…. whom when he finally got a rise from God for his complaining God said: “who are you to debate from no knowledge”.
Which supports Clifford!
In the future think Clifford (19th century mathematician likely annoyed by the blither of economists and bankers) and think evidence more important think!
Learn something: https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/army/fm/3-5/fm3-5.pdf
Global security shares the USA/.USMC field manual!
For sarin it is not soap and water, read the long process for “buddy care”….
The big three must be interested in the ARAMCO IPO!
Yeah, I go a field manual or the CDC manual. Let me think about who I would listen to. Suffice to say that your thoughts on hoses as “proof” it was not a chemical is pure, unadulterated bs.
Just like your claim that there was no evidence last year is pure, unadulterated bs. But you don’t care, you just keep lying. Reminds me of someone. And that someone is thanking you for supporting Russia’s block regarding Asaad’s chemical warfare.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/probe-syria-gas-attacks-180206070604664.html