We're gonna feel pretty silly when Jared Kushner achieves Middle East peace, solves the opioid crisis, and makes government super efficient. https://t.co/yM91O7bTna
— Neil Irwin (@Neil_Irwin) March 30, 2017
Plenty, according to Elizabeth Spiers, in the Washington Post — “I worked for Jared Kushner. He’s the wrong businessman to reinvent government“:
On my first day of work as the editor in chief of the New York Observer, which had been acquired five years earlier by Jared Kushner, now the son-in-law and senior adviser to President Trump, I inherited an office and a desktop computer, both in fine but used condition. The computer was a recent-model Mac, but when I turned it on, it was inexplicably running Windows. I summoned our beleaguered IT guy to explain, and he informed me that it had belonged to Kushner, who liked the design of Apple products but preferred the Windows OS.
“So he was basically using a $2,500 desktop as a monitor?” I said. The IT guy shrugged…
I worked for Kushner for 18 months as he tried to infuse a much smaller institution than the U.S. government with cost-cutting impulses from the commercial real estate world. And my experience doesn’t bode well for the Office of American Innovation. Not everything that works in the private sector is transferrable to the public sector — and even if it were, Kushner isn’t the best person to transfer it…
When the paper had a profitable quarter for what I was told was the first time, Kushner floated the idea of layoffs to increase the margins, seemingly ignoring the fact that staff reductions would also reduce ad inventory by reducing content. A material part of what had been attractive about the job was the promise of expansion and growth. But we submitted business plans over and over again, and Kushner rejected them. He wanted the Observer to be cheaper to run, usually at the expense of growth and evolution, and he could not see the relationship between scale and profit — between risk and reward. (The White House did not answer a request from The Washington Post to provide Kushner’s perspective for this story.)…
When it became clear in 2012 that Kushner was conflating running lean with starvation, I submitted my resignation and left the Observer mostly on good terms with him, but I was disappointed. The company president resigned a few weeks later. Kushner eventually filled our positions with a family friend and his brother-in-law, the latter of whom had no media experience. He wanted outsiders to run the business — but loyal, compliant outsiders.
A few days after Trump won the election, Kushner folded the now attenuated print newspaper and subsequently announced that the Observer, in its digital incarnation, was for sale. He probably would refer to it as a “lean” operation. I would say in his zeal to trim the fat, he began eliminating muscle and hacked into a few bones. I realize also, in retrospect, that he may never have intended to grow it or improve it. It was for him, in essence, another vanity object — like the beautiful, expensive desktop computer he used as a monitor.
I worry that this new office will be more of the same: a vanity project, one that exists primarily to put Kushner in the same room with people he admires whom he wouldn’t have had access to before, glossing government agencies in the process with a thin veneer of what appears to be capitalism but is really just nihilistic cost-cutting designed to project the optics of efficiency…
Re Jared Kushner. https://t.co/ixZhUCzmLA pic.twitter.com/Abhbu2CjNr
— Bruce Bartlett (@BruceBartlett) March 30, 2017
Hunter Gathers
Upper Class Twit
Roger Moore
A good job.
tamiasmin
White House Office of American Innovation (WHOA!)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Meritorious inheritor.
To that type of person, wages aren’t investments and your labor force (both white and blue collar) isn’t considered a part of the capital of your institution.
Droppy
My own greatness is perfectly concomitant with my personal fortune (i.e., functionally zero in both cases), so I assume that must be true of JK too, right? Law of nature.
amk
so twitler goner or not?
hovercraft
@tamiasmin:
That was the big Tuesday announcement that was supposed to sweep any talk of Trumpcare’s implosion or any talk about TRussia away.
cmorenc
I still want to know what the Hell Kushner was thinking by holding a December meeting with Sergey Gorkov, chair of Russian bank VEB specifically included in US sanctions against Russia – Gorkov being a fellow grad of Vladimir Putin from what amounts to the KGB training Academy, and that bank being well-known as under the control of the Kremlin. Which Gorkov fellow contradicted Kushner’s story that he met Gorkov as a Trump transition adviser and not in his capacity in his capacity as a private developer as head of Kushner (real estate) companies. Even assuming for argument that Kushner did meet him in a Trump transition team advisory capacity – what possible legitimate business or working relationship did the Trump Administration need to have with a Kremlin-controlled Russian bank? As opposed to say, a capital-needy real estate development company having difficulty raising sufficient capital from US Banks or less conflicted international sources?
What in Hell was Kushner doing meeting with Gorkov at all?
rikyrah
Trump threatens hard-liners as part of escalating Republican civil war
By John Wagner, Mike DeBonis and Robert Costa
March 30 at 7:10 PM
President Trump threatened Thursday to try to knock off members of the House Freedom Caucus in next year’s elections if they don’t fall in line — an extraordinary move that laid bare an escalating civil war within a Republican Party struggling to enact an ambitious agenda.
In a series of tweets that began in the morning, the president warned that the powerful group of hard-line conservatives who helped block the party’s health-care bill last week would “hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast.”
The president vowed to “fight them” as well as Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections, a warning that his allies said was intended in the short term to make members of the Freedom Caucus think twice about crossing him again. But Trump’s pledge was met with defiance by many in the bloc, including some members who accused him of succumbing to the establishment in Washington that he had campaigned against.
Later in the day, Trump singled out three of the group’s members in another tweet, saying that if Reps. Mark Meadows (N.C.), Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Raúl R. Labrador (Idaho) got on board, “we would have both great healthcare and massive tax cuts & reform.”
Most of the roughly three dozen Freedom Caucus members were elected from safe Republican districts, and many of them faced no primary opposition. To make good on his threat, Trump would have to recruit GOP candidates to make the case that the Republican incumbent they face was unhelpful to an unorthodox, populist president.
Kay
He can’t see the relationship between risk and reward because they’re not connected in his world. It doesn’t matter. He takes risk, he gets rewarded. He doesn’t take risk, he also gets rewarded. What happens if he fails at this? Nothing, really, not to him. He’s doubly insulated – much more so than the Trumpsters who are not relatives- because no one will ever say anything critical of him or his father in law will be angry.
Who gets the duty of telling Trump that Ivanka or Jared are bad at their jobs? No one wants that.
I don’t know if any of you have ever worked in a nepotism environment but what it feels like day to day is an imposition. It feels like a burden. You end up furious with your boss for saddling you with impossible situations and you resent being dragged into the family shit. It makes everyone’s job harder because it adds this “shadow” element that shouldn’t be there. This very personal relationship and dynamic behind the scenes.
rikyrah
Make it 3 White House officials involved in Nunes intel escapade. Almost certainly more to come. https://t.co/YWNnziwesj
— Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) March 31, 2017
Big Ole Hound
Trump will resign by June and all his family will scurry back to their hidey holes of money and we will have to put up with Pence the religious wing nut and Ryan as VP…shudder.
The Other Bob
Dems need to continue to crush this tired “run government like a business” crap.
The mission of buisness is to provide the least service for the most profit. The mission of government is to provide the most service for the least expense. Government is more like a non profit.
When we run government like a buisness we end up with potholed streets, cities with lead poisoning, poor quality schools and people being treated like numbers on a spreadsheet.
rikyrah
How Trump’s Decision to Overrule His Appointees Is Blowing up in His Face
by Martin Longman March 30, 2017 4:06 PM
Well, stab me in the eye with a fork, imagine what I thought when I learned that Ezra Cohen-Watnick was one of the sources that House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes surreptitiously met with at the White House. I knew I remembered the name, and I only had to travel a little more than two weeks into the Wayback Machine to refresh my recollection.
The career professionals at the Central Intelligence Agency seem to have a lot of reservations about Team Trump, and now we can begin to see some of the reasons why. It’s also no coincidence that Devin Nunes shows up in that article about Cohen-Watnick. He’s there to bolster the case that the CIA only went after Michael Flynn and his allies, Robin Townley and Cohen-Watnick, to protect their own turf, rather than because Flynn has been the subject of a counterintelligence investigation since last July.
And, I mean, look, this isn’t just long-time intelligence officers who are grumpy about being criticized. The Washington Post reported that McMaster decided to remove Cohen-Watnick at the request of Trump’s hand-picked CIA director:
rikyrah
Why Did Russia Hack the Voter Rolls?
by Nancy LeTourneau
March 30, 2017 5:42 PM
You might remember that early on when the story of Russian hacking initially broke, a big concern of the Obama administration was that they were caught hacking voter rolls. The concern was that they would try to tamper with the tallies. But according to the intelligence community, that didn’t happen.
So why did they do it in the first place? Paul Wood might have come up with the answer.
Barbara
@Big Ole Hound: I don’t know. Yesterday’s NYT had an article on the Kushner family’s effort to obtain financing for the redevelopment of a building in New York that it paid too much for (bought in 2007, so seriously mistimed the market). They were in talks with a Chinese consortium that withdrew, probably because China is getting very tetchy about the amount of money leaving China to seek investment overseas. At any rate, the point is that although Kushner is very wealthy, like all real estate wealth, it tends to be more or less depending on how successful your last or biggest deal was. And in this case, it was a deal that is losing millions a year in debt payments and lost revenue with no clear path forward. I don’t think going back to the status quo ante will leave them with the same future prospects they anticipated. No idea how billionaires think generally, except that most are smart enough to realize that being elected to public office is rarely the most straightforward way to protect what they have.
OzarkHillbilly
@cmorenc:
He’s rich. Rich people get to do whatever the fuck they want.
rikyrah
The GOP Chasm Deepens
by Nancy LeTourneau
March 31, 2017 8:00 AM
I guess I should have waited a couple of days to write about the chasm that is growing within the ranks of Republicans, because lately things are on the brink of open warfare. It seems that no one in the GOP is quite ready to put the fiasco of their failure to repeal Obamacare aside.
Jonathan Swan provides a quote from a White House source:
……………………………………..
There had been talk of a meeting between the House Freedom Caucus, their allies in the Republican Study Committee, and moderates who are members of something called the Tuesday Group to discuss how to move forward on health care. That isn’t going to happen.
terraformer
@The Other Bob:
Exactly. Dems need to hammer these points home every chance they get. This is a great opportunity – with Trumpster Fire on one side and JKush on the other, who both profess their successful business acumen – to clearly describe what government does, how, and why, and contrast that with business.
Too many people reflexively think “gov as business” is the right approach; largely, I’d wager, because “it sounds correct.” Teachable opportunity here to help wash this thinking down the drain for good.
Gin & Tonic
@rikyrah: I’m sure young Mr. Cohen-Watnick will soon find out that there are people around him who play hardball and have a lot more experience doing so.
Kay
I feel like the fawning adoration of rich people for the last 30 years has created some confusion around “risk and reward”. If you make 30,000 dollars a year risk is different than if you make 3 million. A big risk on 30k a year means you’re homeless. Kushner will never be homeless. Not even close. We admire bold risk takers who really don’t take big risks. They take big risk and shift it to people who can’t shoulder it and wouldn’t have done it.
It has to effect THEM. Personally. In a catastrophic way. If it doesn’t it’s just a fucking game.
rikyrah
The Return of McCarthyism
This time the intelligence community is the target.
by James Bruno March 31, 2017
When I was in college and, later, as a young diplomat, I’d meet State Department old timers who related horrifying tales of the communist witch-hunt era of the 1950s, when Joseph McCarthy, an amoral and alcohol-sodden senator, rode a wave of nationwide anti-communist hysteria to root out mythical “traitors” inside the federal government. Prized on his hit list were career diplomats. As a compliant Congress stood by, the best of the State Department’s China hands were purged for allegedly having “lost China” to Mao Zedong’s communist forces. Their careers were destroyed, leaving a huge talent gap as well as a years-long fear among diplomats to stick their necks out.
Their real crime? Speaking truth to power in their honest reporting from the field. It took many years for the department to recover.
I fear our intelligence agencies may become the next targets of a political witch-hunt, stoked by another amoral politician: President Donald Trump. The attacks by Trump and his surrogates against the intelligence community (IC) have been frequent and harsh, echoing the baseless tirades during the McCarthy era.
“The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by ‘intelligence’ like candy. Very un-American!” tweeted the president following Gen. Michael Flynn’s dismissal as national security advisor. The term “un-American” suffused Joe McCarthy’s verbal attacks against his targets in the ‘50s. Perhaps no other politician today so closely channels McCarthy as Congressman Steve King, the firebrand Trump loyalist who has urged the president to “purge Leftists from the executive branch before disloyal, illegal and treasonist [sic] acts sink us.” He added, “People [in the IC] need to be rooted out.”
rikyrah
Why California’s New Infrastructure Plan is a Big Deal
Spandan Chakrabarti
March 30, 2017
California is not waiting around for Donald Trump’s promise of a yuuuuge federal infrastructure injection to become reality. Governor Brown and the leaders of our state legislature joined a coalition of business, labor and local government groups yesterday to announce a $52 billion transportation infrastructure investment, funded with California’s clean energy future in mind.
While there are already the usual suspects making noise in the state about “new taxes”, the plan will cost the average California driver $10 a month and save the average vehicle $700 a year in damage and maintenance when all is said and done. In addition to modernizing and repairing our roads, highways and bridges and focusing on high traffic corridors, the plan invests an additional $7.5 billion in public transit, and a billion dollars to improve road conditions conducive to walking and biking (*cough* yours truly *cough*).
In all, it raises California’s gasoline excise tax by 12 cents per gallon. But before you pass out at the prospect of slightly more expensive gasoline, consider that the excise tax in our state is adjusted yearly by the Board of equalization, and right now, the excise tax is just about 12 cents below what we paid two years ago. The plan would also increase the vehicle registration fee, essentially extending a progressive tax: the higher the price of your vehicle, the more your increase in fee is. $100 a year flat is collected from owners of electric vehicles to pay for road repairs.
In just the context of the state, the infrastructure plan would, at once, discourage the purchase of expensive gas guzzlers, encourage less driving and more transit and biking, and invite more economic development with a world class road infrastructure being added to our unbelievably diverse pool of talent.
rikyrah
Can you imagine the outcry if Hillary Clinton had insisted that diplomats at State not make eye contact with her? https://t.co/W9DRmzw33c
— Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey) March 31, 2017
mai naem mobile
Why,yes, there’s plenty Jared Kushner can’t do? Couldn’t convince his daddy in law to not run for POTUS for which he is so obviously unqualified for. Also,he’s unable to release his taxes. Or his wife’s .
Thoroughly Pizzled
When we’re back in power, we bump the estate tax up to 100%. And we proudly call it the death tax.
john b
the metaphor with the Mac running Windows is pretty off. Using a Mac to run Windows actually isn’t that bad of a thing. They are well-designed computers: few cords or mess about and they have good specs. It’s not using a $2500 computer as a monitor. It’s using it as a computer — and probably a pretty good one. That he insists on his employees using Windows might be a little overbearing, but in the business world, not that crazy.
Unless of course he was literally using a different computer tower and an iMac as only a monitor.
rikyrah
This child was patted down by a TSA agent for 2 minutes. Don’t think that’s a long time? Watch until the end. pic.twitter.com/6MG7tRqVsd
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 29, 2017
Barbara
@Kay: We also admire bold risk takers who do take real risks. We don’t necessarily like them and tend to make fun of them, but they are out there. This would be the Steve Jobs and Elon Musks of the world.
ETA: One problem is that we fail to distinguish between the Jared Kushners and Elon Musks of the world and tend to lump them together when they obviously represent very different pathways to prosperity. Most wealthy people at this point have inherited not made their wealth.
rikyrah
As more emerges re @realDonaldTrump’s theft of the presidency it gets clearer that we mustn’t keep calling him POTUS. He’s a usurper.
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) March 31, 2017
Gin & Tonic
@Kay: Edgar Bronfman (Seagram family): “To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn $100 million into $110 million is inevitable.”
rikyrah
Devin Nunes has some explaining to do
03/31/17 08:44 AM—UPDATED 03/31/17 08:54 AM
By Steve Benen
New evidence emerged yesterday that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), when he tried to lend credence to a Donald Trump conspiracy theory, relied on dubious information he received from two White House sources. As Rachel noted on the show, the Washington Post reported last night that there was also a third.
At least three senior White House officials, including the top lawyer for the National Security Council, were involved in the handling of intelligence files that were shared with the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and showed that Trump campaign officials were swept up in U.S. surveillance of foreign nationals, according to U.S. officials.
The New York Times identified two of Nunes’ sources: Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office. The Post pointed to a third: John Eisenberg, the top lawyer for the National Security Council.
rikyrah
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says the darndest things
03/31/17 09:20 AM
By Steve Benen
Earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer twice seemed to describe the Republican health care plan, which his boss supported, as “a bad deal” the president decided to walk away from. Given Donald Trump’s work on the legislation, reporters were puzzled to hear the president’s spokesperson describe the GOP proposal this way.
A day later, Spicer insisted he “never said” the legislation was a “bad deal.” He encouraged everyone to “check the transcript.” So I did check the transcript, and he really did suggest the bill was a “bad deal” – twice.
I can appreciate the fact that “Sean Spicer says strange things that don’t appear to be true” isn’t exactly breaking news – the Republican’s reputation has struggled in recent months for a reason – but this has been an especially unflattering week for the press secretary, and the week’s not quite finished.
The day after the “bad deal” flap, for example, Spicer said in reference to the Russia scandal, “[E]very single person who has been briefed on this, as I’ve said ad nauseam from this podium, that they have been very clear that there is no connection between the president or the staff here and anyone doing anything with Russia.” That’s obviously not true: the matter is still the subject of an ongoing FBI counter-intelligence investigation, which hasn’t drawn that conclusion, at least not yet.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I love that he was supposed to be the “normal” Trumpster and he’s a weirdo too. For the first time in my life I agree with George W Bush. These people are just fucking weird. They’re like oddballs and misfits who somehow all found one another and formed a clique.
Trump is odd. He’s an odd person. He’s so very public but he’s really not. He never goes out in public unless this bizarre, screaming, angry posse are clustered around him. He goes only to his own properties! He just happens to have several but if he had one he would be a person who never leaves his home. When I heard he’s a germophobe I thought “of course he is”.
ruemara
@Roger Moore: thread won. everyone go home.
I’m unsurprised. Wealth has truly been elevated these past few decades into meaning some sort of superiority of ability, even when it’s just inherited. Repulsive that we’re now governed by a family like this.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/30/17
Trump scandals risk inuring Americans to government corruption
Rachel Maddow reviews a list of less reported but no less outrageous current Trump administration scandals and notes that beyond the big Trump Russia scandal, Americans have to retain their ability to be shocked by corruption
schrodingers_cat
More efficiency in government in action, more bad hombres targeted for removal.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/30/17
Trump actions boosted Russian effectiveness
Rachel Maddow shares video of testimony by Clinton Watts, former FBI special agent, at today’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in which Watts explains how Russian fake news operations were made more effective because Donald Trump cited those stories.
Yarrow
I hope they take down Kushner and along with him Ivanka. The whole family needs to go to prison.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/30/17
Immunity in presidential scandals has complicated history
Michael Beschloss, NBC News presidential historian, talks with Rachel Maddow about the historical precedent for immunity granted in a presidential scandal
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I want to know how many of those stories were cited by the Senator from Vt.
OzarkHillbilly
@Thoroughly Pizzled: I’d call it the Meritocracy Tax. “You want it? Get off your fat lazy ass and earn it.” Even then they would start off well ahead of most others.
oldster
Don’t forget that Kushner bought his way into degrees, twice, with his father’s tainted money.
2.5 million bought him a spot as an undergrad at Hahvahd. 3 million bought him his NYU JD and MBA.
When your daddy buys you the way in, you don’t have to worry about failing out.
Kay
For everyone who said the GOP has to do something hard like throw 24 million off health care to get the tax cuts…that would only be true if they cared about anything other than tax cuts. And they don’t. They also don’t care of they pay for anything, but we knew that from the last GOP President:
schrodingers_cat
@OzarkHillbilly: The attack on immigrants is one more piece of evidence that meritocracy is dead. The right skin tone, the right parents are more important than merit and hardwork.
Kay
@oldster:
That’s on Harvard and NYU. No one ordered them to sell admission. They’re enablers of this “fawning worship of wealthy people” disease.
Barbara
@Kay: This is a case of familial Stockholm Syndrome and the only one who seems to be somewhat immune is his third wife, Melania, and her only recourse is staying away. Kushner was primed to join this enterprise because he is the kind of person who concluded that when his father went to jail for various federal offenses involving illegal campaign contributions and obstruction of justice, it wasn’t because his father broke the law but because his aunt and her husband were too selfish to join the conspiracy and looked out for their own interests instead.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodingers_cat:
Has Wilmer acknowledged anything related to Russian hacking? Some of the reporting seems to indicate that a lot of Berniebros were bots, but based on the kinds of exchanges we routinely have/had here, my theory is that they were just a bunch of gullible low info useful idiot tools of Putin that Bernie also exploited to enrich himself and put his already oversized ego on steroids.
Yarrow
@Barbara:
China is very transactional with a very long term view on the world. They “help their friends” and expect that at some point their “friends” will “help them” in return. Kushner probably initially seemed like a good investment because of his position and close connection to the White House and president. But things aren’t going well for the Trump presidency and the Chinese don’t like chaos. So Kushner now may not look like the best bet.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I’d have slightly more respect for them if they were bots or on Russia’s payroll. Sadly, stupidity you can often get for free.
Barbara
@Yarrow: This was in the works for some time prior to the election. The Kushner family now owns only half the building, having sold some of it to Vornado Realty Trust, which is also part of the redevelopment plan. China is cracking down much more generally on overseas investment by Chinese citizens.
Kay
@Barbara:
That’s really common among ordinary criminals too, the weird cause and effect analysis. You think they’re lying- that they know what caused X to occur- but they really don’t. TO THEM this is true- “she put me in prison”. Well, not really. You did that :)
Jeffro
Was at an awards dinner last night where one of the speakers reminded a room full of very well-off donors that “yes, we have all worked very hard…but no one in this room can deny that at least one time in their life, on their road to success, they got very lucky as well”.
It’s a good framing technique. It’s also the only thing that stands a chance in hell of getting through to rich folks that perhaps it wasn’t 110% bootstraps and sweat equity.
oldster
@Kay:
Oh, no disagreement there. It is despicable on the part of Harvard and NYU.
But it’s another indication that JK is a total empty suit. He’s not bright, he’s not successful, he has no talents or abilities.
(Incidentally, I also find it despicable that enough money will buy American citizenship. I’d like to end that practice, even though it brings us lots of millionaires. They aren’t worth the loss of dignity to our country.)
OzarkHillbilly
@schrodingers_cat: It’s always been that way. When I was born I was given an intentional walk to 1st base.
schrodingers_cat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Yesterday, there was a big debate in one of the morning threads about pro BS, FPer Hillary Rettig and many regular commenters sprang to defend her honor. Before the thread generated into a general troll fest with the arrival of pro BS commenters.
Barbara
@Kay: I would rather that they get tax cuts without throwing 24 million people off health care. The fact that Paul Ryan was so eager to throw 24 million people off health care is not a budgetary problem and I really wish to God people would stop seeing it as such. I had an argument with a colleague who started whining about the deficit but is reasonable enough to agree that there are many areas that could be on the table if we really had a budgetary issue, like the mortgage interest deduction or employer provided health benefits.
WereBear
Business by spreadsheet. As much as my dyscalculia-suffering self adores them, they create a reflexive mindset where “we cut this and this and look at that profit!”
Despite the impact of cutting “this and this” to your products and workforce.
ThresherK
That Kushner seems to be a 10-watt bulb stuck in a floodlight socket is true. That there’s a correct, better business genius to “reinvent government” is assumes facts not in evidence.
schrodingers_cat
@OzarkHillbilly: Its far more blatant now with T’s election and the anointing of the daughter and S-I-L, like a third world country ruled by a despot.
Chris
@rikyrah:
Nothing would please me more than spending the next four years watching Trump and the John Birchers purists tearing each other apart like hungry sharks.
SenyorDave
Somehow I missed the “Wilmer” thing. Who is Wilmer? Seems like people reference Bernie, if he is what is the reference?
Keith P.
The title has me wondering…how long before you can go into a cannabis dispensary and buy a quarter bag of ‘Jared Kush’?
schrodingers_cat
@amk: If he is gone too soon, mediabots will normalize Pence, I want the Rs to go down in flames too.
Keith P.
@Keith P.: Gets you so high, you forget anything you’ve promised.
schrodingers_cat
@SenyorDave: You cannot say his name, we will soon swarmed by his die-hard followers, who will be here to tell us how Democrat party sucks, and how anyone questioning the one true prophet is a neoliberal shill.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@SenyorDave:
code for a certain Independent Senator from a northern state so it doesn’t trigger the Batlight.
schrodingers_cat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Too late, Senyor Dave just mentioned him by name.
Yarrow
@rikyrah:
I completely disagree with this idea. Trump is the president. He took the oath. Call him the Republican president and hang him around their necks.
Patricia Kayden
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Having the common sense to be born into the right family at the right time in the right country. Precision birth. It’s a nifty talent to have.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Interesting (I almost said “surprising’, I don’t know if anything with this pack of goons can be called surprising at this point) that this Flynn/Nunes/junior WH aides thing is the first direct contact (that I’ve seen…?) between Bannon and the alleged moderating force of JarVanka.
also, too, this is just weird and I’m surprised (really) that it hasn’t been a bigger deal
No probe, no robe, motherfucker.
zach
I trust Kushner to run all of the most controversial parts of the Trump administration about as much as I trust the author of this piece to comment on IT issues… a mac running windows is not a glorified monitor… and even if it were it’s not a particularly good metaphor (Kushner’s not in this for vanity; he’s in it to serve the interests of his business partners so that he can get richer once the gig’s finished).
zach
@Keith P.:
Find a strain that produces a high with maximum paranoia and no upside.
Patricia Kayden
@Chris: It would be most satisfying if Trump goes down and drags the entire GOP with him. **fingers/toes firmly crossed**
Yarrow
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I think it’s both/and. Russian bots pushed conspiracy theories and fake news and gullible and stupid people helped amplify them, both on and offline.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also, I didn’t read it and won’t link to it because Axios, but twitter tells me that Courtier Supreme Mike Allen*, of all people, is describing Twitler as “frozen and brooding” and is now blaming the last person he talked to about issue X after issue X blows up in his face for not properly briefing him. His paranoia is of course being fed by the various factions in the palace.
Have we hit Day 75 yet?
* who no doubt hears the soft footfalls of Chris Ciliizza coming for his access and list of direct contact numbers
Chris
@rikyrah:
Not so fun fact: the intelligence community in general and the CIA in particular have been targets of the hard right since all the way back to the fifties, forties if you count J. Edgar Hoover.
With Hoover, it started with an angry tantrum at the fact that he wasn’t being put in charge of foreign intelligence in WW2 (thank God, someone realized that more power was the very last thing he needed), and spent the rest of the war probably putting more effort into bringing down the OSS, ultimately succeeding when it was shut down in 1945 before being restarted two years later as CIA.
Then there was Joe McCarthy himself, who included the CIA on his “full of card-carrying communists” list.
Then there was Nixon, who God knows how became persuaded that the CIA had stolen the 1960 election from him, and had Kissinger keep it on a tight leash.
Then there was Reagan, who was probably the least overtly hostile, but also nominated a CIA director who according to some reports liked to rewrite his own analysts’ conclusions whenever they disagreed with his preconceptions, and then presenting that to the NSC as “intelligence.” (And of course who had some of his underlings running their own CIA out of Oliver North’s office).
Then there was the Bush administration, which basically ordered the CIA to report what it wanted to hear about WMDs, then created its own separate intelligence shops under the control of people like Cheney and Rumsfeld who’d produce the intelligence they wanted to hear, then, when it turned out that Iraq did not have WMDs, decided to call the entire thing an “intelligence failure.”
For all the crap you hear about the Church Committee hearings and limp-wristed liberals tying our people’s hands, the right wing has done far more than its fair share of screwing the intelligence community.
And now there’s Trump. Good times.
WereBear
@rikyrah: Thank goodness. If we cannot destroy them, let them destroy themselves!
Honus
@Gin & Tonic: Edgar Bronfman was my neighbor in free union Virginia years ago. He was a decent guy despite being a billionaire.
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yarrow
@Barbara: There are probably multiple factors at play in the decision. But Trump’s failing presidency and the chaos isn’t helping Kushner close that deal with the Chinese. They don’t want to be in partnership with someone who might be in prison. That….complicates things.
germy
@zach: Knowing the honesty of this administration, you’d find yourself with a bag of catnip.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It certainly seems like the common characteristic everyone around Trump shares is an unwillingness to learn from mistakes and failures, doesn’t it? Sort of the inverse of the normal human learning process.
Shalimar
@Big Ole Hound: Ryan doesn’t automatically move up if Trump resigns or is removed from office. Pence becomes president and then names a VP, which almost certainly would be someone other than Ryan.
As much of a disaster as the House has been under Ryan, there doesn’t appear to be any replacement 218 House Republicans could agree on.
hovercraft
Kremlin Spox On US Relations: ‘New Cold War? Well, Maybe Even Worse’ (VIDEO)
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson said Friday that relations between the United States and Russia were “maybe even worse” than they were during the Cold War.
In an interview with “Good Morning America” host George Stephanopoulos Friday, Dmitry Peskov referenced Russian anger at a wave of sanctions implemented by the Obama administration in its final weeks, a response to the what the U.S. intelligence community had determined was Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The Obama administration also closed two Russian compounds in the United States and expelled dozens of Russian officials from the country.
“This is something that was never seen in diplomatic affairs in the world for lots and lots of decades,” Peskov said.
“Is it friendly? I’m afraid not. It’s not friendly,” he added. “It’s not legal, in terms of international law. So of course it was a very significant damage for our bilateral relations, organized as a farewell party by the then-administration in Washington.”
“If we’re at the lowest point in history, that means we’re in a new Cold War,” Stephanopoulos responded.
“New Cold War? Well, maybe even worse,” Peskov replied. “Maybe even worse, taking into account actions of the present presidential administration.”
Earlier in the interview, Peskov described accusations that Russia meddled in the 2016 election as “nothing but slander.”
“And all those fake news – having nothing beneath and having no evidence – were nothing else but slander,” he said. “That’s why we’ll continue to suggest to everyone insisting that Russia was interfering in this or that way into domestic affairs of the United States, we will suggest to them to read Mr. Putin’s lips.”
He was referring to remarks Putin made Thursday during a moderated panel. Asked if Russia had meddled in the United States’ election, the Russian president, through a translator, borrowed a promise from former President George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign: “Watch my lips: No.”
Honus
@Patricia Kayden: we call it the “Lucky Sperm Club”
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat:
Agreed. The longer he’s in office there is a danger he does something stupid, like start a war with North Korea, to deflect from his failing presidency. So I can’t quite decide the timing of the whole thing. Getting him out quickly would help avoid that war, but our national security would still be at danger in other ways because Pence and the Republicans are a danger to the country.
I think a long-ish drawn out set of investigations, while Trump gets more and more nervous, throwing everyone under the bus, until he’s finally forced out somehow…maybe around September? October? That part I can’t decide. Needs to be long enough that everyone involved with him is implicated, though. All top Republicans as well.
Kay
@Jeffro:
My husband is a good trial lawyer. When he questions jurors he asks them if they think they are “lucky”. He does this for two reasons- to find out if they are content- not people who will imprison someone they don’t like or who doesn’t look like them out of resentment but also to find out if they see that randomness is out there- it’s NOT all “I do THIS so I get THAT”. If they’re “open” in his words. He had a prospective juror tell him once “I don’t believe in luck I believe in God” and he was stumped – what to do with THAT response :)
rikyrah
@Kay:
More truth by Kay.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Yarrow:
Well those of us who had to either be subjected to or watch others be subjected to the vitriol unleashed on whomever the enemy-of-the-revolution-of-the-day was – always a woman and/or PoC, have a hard time imagining that as mostly bots. There was and still is a deep sick need to intimidate coming from a white male supremacist but holier than thou “progressive” place.
Kropadope
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Hey, already trying to lose 2020 are we? Can you not piss on half the Democratic primary electorate please?
rikyrah
@The Other Bob:
tell that truth.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: how many times do you think the flabby and rough beast has read and re-read that “baffled and paralyzed” passage this morning. Probably five times before he tweeted this
(time stamped at 4:04 am, which I’m sure is a sign of healthy, wealthy and wise)
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: He carries on until the mid terms, he and Pence are implicated as is the top leadership of Rs. Dems take back the House and Senate. A girl can dream.
hovercraft
@germy:
I take issue with the word paralyzed. He’s not paralyzed, he’s flailing and lashing out. His agenda, such as it is, may be paralyzed, but unfortunately he’s not.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kropadope:
Berniebros expressing concern and assigning blame to others for divisions in the Democratic party is rich.
laura
@rikyrah: if this bill doesn’t pass, 57 DOT employees in Sacramento County are laid off at the beginning of the fiscal year this July. And more in every city and county throughout the state.
So much work to do, so few workers to do it (they are still running understaffed from the massive layoffs from the Great Bankster Getaway of ’08) and passage would generate at least 13,000 good paying jobs.
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well, this habit of listening to and blaming the last person he talked to has been standard procedure for him, so that’s not really a change.
rikyrah
@Kay:
You never thought that you’d write you agree with Dubya.
LOL
They are trash with money. Plain and simple.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I don’t know of course but when I saw Merkel’s expression I was thinking “oh, yay, she gets to deal with the daughter”
It’s an imposition at work. You feel like “oh, no. You’re not giving me this. I don’t want to be part of your family dynamic, which looks horrible and weird BY THE WAY, since you forced me”.
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And just as he was calming down the Freedom Caucus stared trolling him at 6.22
Quick someone get him a Tonka Truck, vroom, vroom.
germy
@hovercraft:
Way too much drama in this administration for me. If I were younger and/or independently wealthy I might find it somewhat amusing. I think it’s dreadful.
rikyrah
@Kay:
The Evil One himself already told you..
” Deficits Don’t Matter.”
Never did to these muthaphuckas until a Black man became President. They didn’t say shyt as Dubya & Company exploded the deficit.
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He’s never been much of a sleeper. His agents, on the other hand…
rikyrah
@Barbara:
You keep on bringing this up, and I will continue to thank you.
They wanted Trumpcare because it was a tax cut bill masquerading as a healthcare bill. It also helped hurt Medicare, which, of course, turning it into a voucher program is one of the ZEGK’s dreams.
Kropadope
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I was here, I remember, don’t give me that bullshit. You guys were pissing all over anyone who supported Bernie or who criticized even any minor facet of Hillary, regardless of content or merit. And don’t get me started on the liberal paternalism.
What was that line about motes and planks again?
Kay
@rikyrah:
I sort of do care about the debt because as I understand it means they have to pay more to borrow and that makes me unhappy in an abstract way where I come dangerously close to the “family budget” comparison in my mind .
But, please. Obama was such a prudent person! If you think it’s a family budget I’d much rather have the Obama’s running it than these people who borrow tons and discharge in bankruptcy and don’t pay people. They’re reckless people.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
love this :)
clay
@germy:
Bullshit. Trump never “realizes” anything if it involves self-reflection or admitting error. This is all he knows. It is all he will continue to do, no matter what the “grown ups” (only relative to Trump!) around him try to change.
amk
Boom.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kropadope:
Well at least we know you’re not a bot, and are just that gullible all on your own.
Goku
@rikyrah: Since when did supposedly mainstream politicians start using the term “Leftists”? I thought that was a Reichfart/alt-right thing.
germy
Kropadope
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: No, you’re just as hermetically sealed in a bubble as the Republicans. Truth is incidental. The fact that you still haven’t stopped pissing all over people nearly a year after the primaries ended hasn’t registered with you, huh?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chris: Worth considering that these are three different things – Hoover just wanted moar power. during the Cold War the NeoCons wanted to discredit anything that contradicted their personal narrative of the Soviet Union and with Trump it’s just a simple contempt for the truth, so anything that’s into truth telling, whether it be the CIA, or the EPA or the Censuses is the enemy in Trump’s eyes. But one can see how Hoover’s attacks enabled the NeoCon’s attacks which in turn enable Trump’s.
As always with the Right, it’s turtles all the way down, one more stupid than the other.
Anonymous patient
@Big Ole Hound:
If Pence becomes President, he gets to nominate a new VP, it won’t just be Ryans’ “turn”. This is how Nelson Rockefeller became VP to Gerald Ford after Watergate ruined Nixon’s second term. Which turned the Republican party into a group of treasonous anti-democracy haters willing to work with foreign and domestic enemies of the Nation.
Goku
@Kropadope: And as we all know, BJ is the heart of the Democratic party, instead of a top 10,000 blog
amk
@Kropadope: 43% is not half. Other than that, time to put behind stupid primary wars.
rikyrah
Chaffetz explains his indifference towards Trump’s alleged corruption
03/31/17 10:09 AM—UPDATED 03/31/17 10:28 AM
By Steve Benen
In late December, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, an advisor to Donald Trump’s team for months, wrote a piece celebrating the Republican’s presidential transition, and touting the wealthy people who would serve in top administration posts.
“Why shouldn’t the president surround himself with successful people?” Kudlow wrote. “Wealthy folks have no need to steal or engage in corruption.”
It’s a curious argument: wealthy people don’t bother lining their pockets, because their pockets are already full.
Oddly enough, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) made effectively the identical argument to The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, explaining his indifference towards allegations of Trump corruption.
Asked specifically about reports that the president’s son-in-law was exploring a lucrative deal with a Chinese company while advising the president on foreign policy, Chaffetz suggested the story was irrelevant. “I don’t see how that affects the average American and their taxpayer dollars,” the Utah Republican said.
In other words, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, with direct responsibility for establishing checks on possible White House excesses, effectively declared that Team Trump corruption is improbable, and possibly even impossible.
This is, to a very real extent, bonkers. The idea that wealthy people don’t commit crimes to acquire more wealth is plainly at odds with millennia of human history.
Goku
@Kropadope: And really, if it bothers you that much, don’t read. This is a place for people to vent as well as talk shop about politics. Nobody’s holding a gun to your head
Kay
@rikyrah:
He builds that stupid wall his lie about “on time and under budget” is gonna come back to bite him. It’s already twice what he said it would be and I think the Homeland Security estimate is bullshit. They said “3 to 3.5 years”. So exactly the remainder of Trump’s first term? That’s a convenient number! That’s not even mentioning that he promised it would be free.
Did you see he’s reneging on the NAFTA promise? All politicians have made it a practice to lie about trade which is why they’re in such trouble on trade but Trump was specifically elected to “renegotiate trade deals”. They will notice if he doesn’t.
Goku
@Kay:
Can’t wait to drink those sweet MAGAt tears
drouse
J-Kush. I have a grower friend I’m going to mention that to. Maybe if he develops a strain with unwelcome and unpleasant after-effects, he can name it that. Mockery and derision must come from all directions.
Kropadope
@Goku: And you expect this is the only place this was going on? Hell, I love Samantha Bee, I’ve watched nearly every episode of her show, but she was wielding her liberal paternalism against on network television.
@amk: I meant to say nearly. And you’re nitpicking to avoid the point, which is that people are fruitlessly continuing an internecine war with a very significant proportion of their own electorate.
amk
@Kay: Mexico will pay for the wall must rank as the stupidest political stunt ever
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@amk: 43%? that must give equal weight to caucuses and primaries?
Yarrow
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: The FBI is investigating the depth of the Russian involvement in pushing fake news. Russian Twitter botnets were and are a thing. I’m not sure about something like here in Balloon Juice comments, but certainly they were all over social media. And then real people found something that resonated with them and amplified it. So, both/and.
Kropadope
@Goku:
Well, if it bothers you that much…
NotMax
Oxymoronic in its own way that the acronym for the new bogus ‘innovation’ office begins with WHOA.
amk
@Kropadope:
yeah, fuck you too.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kropadope:
I will never stop shitting over anyone who thought Trump and Hillary were the same because Bernie and his cult followers kept saying so, long after he had any mathematical path. Fuck every last one of those idiots. That’s why we’re here.
Kay
He’s been really good particularly in comparison to sweating bullets crazy person Nunes.
WHY is the thing for the public. That’s the question we need answered. What Trump/Russia did is interesting but WHY is what we need to know to interpret what they do now.
germy
@Goku:
They won’t know. It won’t be reported to them by their favorite media outlets, or it will be given a positive spin. They’re not sitting here reading balloon-juice or Charles Pierce. Drivetime radio will tell them it’s all good.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@clay:
It’s funny because your’ point is right there in the article; Trump thinks he can just stop the infighting he encourged threw his lazyness by just ordering his staff to cut it out rather than do the hard work that would be needed to fix it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: especially those who posted 2,000 word “If I can’t have Bernie, let it all burn” posts, and GBCW’d without ever quite going away.
Goku
@Kropadope: Just some advice. You’ll be much happier, trust me
Kropadope
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
And I won’t stop shitting on people who acted and continue to act like that was every single Bernie supporter or, for that matter, that Bernie was pushing that line. So we’re even.
lollipopguild
@hovercraft: Trump has encountered a thing called “The Real World”. He has lived in his own safe space for so long that he forgot about that great big world out there. “Here be Dragons”
D58826
What a way to ruin a Friday. Two press reports:
1. Ivanka will take the lead on US-China relations
2. Mattis says something must be done about N. Korea. Since Tillerson has rules out diplomacy/sanctions what else is there to ‘do’?
I really don’t want to think about the answer. Movie sequels may be fine but I have no desire to see the Korean War sequal.
Kay
“Telling” how? To me it means we may finally have reached a point where they won’t reflexively lie. That’s sort of comforting. There is maybe a bottom on the lying, for this one Trumpster anyway.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat:
Don’t the re-election campaigns for the House and Senate start pretty much after the April recess of this year? So if Trump and his crew are on trial throughout the summer spilling over into fall it could affect the campaign.
OTOH, the American electorate has short memories so perhaps if it was over the done by the end of 2017 it would be too soon. Perhaps it should go through the holiday season and into Jan/Feb of next year?
Goku
@germy: From what I heard on r/EnoughTrumpSpam on reddit about r/theDonald, many were pissed at least about the R House vote for internet privacy. I think much more will eventually get thru to enough of them I hope
NotMax
@Enhanced Voting Techniques
The WYSIWYG (mal)administration.
Notice how the MSM, as one, has abandoned using the word “pivot?”
germy
@D58826:
And when McCain heard that he probably felt a thrilled tingle all over.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I mean, what the fuck is up with that emo bullshit? Putin really did expose the weak underbelly of the American electorate – a bunch of misinformed self-absorbed know nothings susceptible to propaganda and potential cult members with no critical thinking skills, on the left and right.
germy
@Goku: I hope you’re right.
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yeah, after months of putting up with dishonest bullshit from the likes of you. I figured since very few people here were responding to earnest debate, I’d try a different approach. Those posts were me attempting to realize assertions you were making from the beginning for the sake of pigeonholing an entire group of people. I was playing a character YOU helped to create. You obviously noticed the difference because I keep hearing about it. And I’ve been here for a decade and posting reliably for at least 8 years, so quit acting like that was the only thing I ever did.
And get a handle on your own prejudices. Like seriously. I’m trying to help you.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@rikyrah:
Molesting underage girls like Trump been accused of is pretty damn corrupt and doesn’t involve money.
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody baby”, now I have to go find it! Thanks for the ear worm ;-)
Kropadope
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
And you and I aren’t part of that, nope, nosiree. We’re totally woke and always right. FOH
J R in WV
@SenyorDave:
“Somehow I missed the “Wilmer” thing. Who is Wilmer? Seems like people reference Bernie, if he is what is the reference?”
Well, you can set up Google to notify you if specific words are mentioned on a web site, or even a group of web sites. Then you can go to the web site and troll for your fetish til you drive regulars wild. This happens if you mention wilmer’s real name here at B-J, some of the trolls show up almost immediately, very reliably.
So people generated the wilmer nickname for BS, and the trolls went away, mostly. It’s been discussed a lot, but it is easy to miss details in the swamp of raving jackal comments.
Goku
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I also don’t understand the desire to come to a hostile place to argue about some mean things an anonymous person on the interwebs said to them during the primaries almost a year ago. Looking at you Kropadope
Chris
@D58826:
This is why the entire thing is so stupid. There is nothing else to do, unless you want a war that would probably go nuclear and would certainly ruin a major trading partner and ally, and I assume we’re not that crazy yet.
But they have to look like they’re in charge, so they’re basically reenacting this moment from Spaceballs:
President Skroob [to Dark Helmet]: “Do something!”
Dark Helmet [turns to Col. Sanders]: “Do something!”
Col. Sanders [lifts headset to scream at unseen underling]: “Do something!”
germy
Saw this in the reader comments over at nymag:
amk
@D58826: meh. both mean nothing.
Goku
@Kropadick: just wanted to test this :D
J R in WV
@Honus:
” He was a decent guy despite being a billionaire.”
Money doesn’t make you despicable, it just makes being despicable painless, if it’s already the way you’re bent. No negative reinforcement for being a dick. That really affects some people strongly.
Yarrow
@NotMax:
They moved from “pivot” to “Who is the One Experienced Person Who Can Help Trump Fix His Administration.” They no longer seem to think Trump can do it on his own. They don’t yet understand that it will never happen.
hovercraft
@D58826:
Of course Lucretia is taking the lead in our Jhyna relatioship, there are billions to be made there. Incidentally the only place in the world where the value of the brand has increased.
As for Secretary, “No Eye Contact”-WaP Tillerson, he doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground unless that hole contains crude oil.
Barbara
@Kay: The request for immunity was timed in conjunction with the testimony of other people. The guy who wanted immunity regarding the Clinton server reportedly did so for two reasons. The first was that he had maybe not declared all of the income he had made from the work he did, and the other was that he ignored a request to purge files (well before any investigation) and then purged them anyway on his own initiative after the server practices came under investigation. He thought it was okay because he should have done it earlier and they really should not still have been there. This is why non-lawyers should not make decisions like this on their own.
amk
they did start it. #FUdonuhld.
germy
@Yarrow: Scott Pelley has been surprising me lately. CBS News is doing some real fact checking. Rather than lazily repot half the story, he takes it to the finish line by exposing the lie of the day. Maybe the folks watching will learn a few things.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kropadope: Now, now. I named no nyms. If you feel guilty about voting for Trumpy, you should work on that, maybe with a counselor?
gvg
Idiots like Jared give business a bad name. Cutting costs to the point of lowering profits has been fashionable for a few decades now. It irritates me. Good business doesn’t have just one answer nor formula. It is about making profits, but the how can be several different ways. Sometimes there are wasteful overspending that need to be cut. Other times investment is the best choice. Customers don’t all want or need exactly the same product. Mass produced and cheap is a legitimate market but so is unique or high service. Businesses tend to look for a niche that they are better at. Some industries are old and more investment is throwing money away, other industries are constantly changing and need investments that are smart and know the area. Failing to grow buyers by cutting too much is not a new mistake. I learned about this in an undergrad business degree, I am sure they teach it for MBA too but I guess this dude couldn’t be bothered to understand.
there are actually useful things someone from business could bring to government but I have never seen one of these evangelists of business do it. they repeat the same mistakes. Also the good info is already known. We have been doing business and government for thousands of years. People have talked and learned. It’s not new and mysterious.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Goku:
But don’t call them cultists.
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You MADE him a troll!Barbara
@hovercraft: Totally OT, but one of my daughters asked me if I had ever considered how many popular songs about love sound like they were written by stalkers. Now, I can’t listen to any song without considering this possibility. Case in point, one of my favorite pop songs (by Jerry Butler): “Never Gonna Give You Up”
J R in WV
@Kay:
“He [my husband] had a prospective juror tell him once “I don’t believe in luck I believe in God” and he was stumped – what to do with THAT response :)”
That’s the ultimate in close-minded, never fail to strike that juror! I’m speaking from my time on juries, you can’t make rational arguments with someone who doesn’t believe in logic at all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: I am become Gozer, Maker of Trolls
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Barbara: Every Breath You Take
glory b
@Jeffro: I listen to a podcast by npr (don’t judge me) called “How I Built This.” Lots of interesting interviews with folks like Mark Cuban, L.A. Reid, Kate Spade, etc(did you know the guy behind the 5 hour energy drink was a Hindu monk?).
Every one of them worked hard, the guy behind Honest Tea scraped the labels off Snapple bottles and put his own on them to have samples for buyers, the Chinese immigrant couple behind the Chesapeake Bay Candle company used empty used soup cans as molds.
But every one I’ve heard so far has a story of at least one failure and an admission about the luck they had. Every one.
Goku
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: It reminds me of that old xkcd comic “Someone is wrong on the Internet”. Kropadope just can’t seem to help himself. In all seriousness, I don’t blame all or even most Wilmer supporters for last fall; just the dead enders. There were several factors.
glory b
@Barbara: “I’ll Be Watching You?”
germy
@Barbara: “My Aim Is True”
It would be alarming to see that in an inbox from an ex.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chris:
Heh. Reminds me of the wonderful old Arthur Guiterman poem Pershing at the Front, which I first read and loved and thought was hilariously funny in about fourth grade:
hovercraft
@Kay:
It’s not that they’ve stopped reflexively lying, inaugural crowd size 3 million illegal votes, it’s just that they have new lies and conspiracy theories to spin. Lying is and always will be the first response, only if confronted with absolute will they switch to the the lie that the never said what you say they said. The tape you are showing of them saying it has been edited and taken out of context by the dishonest liberal media.
Speaking of the “liberal media”, yesterday Katy Tur had a panel made up of Micheal Steele, Joe Walsh and Hugh Hewitt on to discuss TRussia.
Garbage.
Chris
@glory b:
There’s a quote from Harrison Ford that I’ve saved that’s about this:
“You cannot get where I got without luck. Bags of it. Fucking bags of it. You can be as good as I am or better. You can be incredibly more attractive and charming and capable and still be shit out of luck.”
Saved because it’s not only a rich guy who’s saying that, it’s Harrison freaking Ford, easily one of the biggest Hollywood stars of the last forty years. It’s such a breath of fresh air compared to all the one percenters who whine that we just don’t appreciate how special and uniquely talented and hardworking they are and it’s so unfair.
rikyrah
@Kay:
But, Kay…he didn’t mean it.
Isn’t that what they say when we bring up all that he said during the campaign?
les
@rikyrah: Maybe you could start an aggregator blog?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@glory b: One of the few times I watched the Oprah Winfrey program was a show about ‘the new homeless’, or something like that. The case I remember was an upper middle class woman (O knew her audience) whose husband died, she lost her health insurance, was diagnosed with cancer, survived but lost the house, went broke wound up living in her car with her teenage daughter. Robert Reich was on to discuss the statistics of how precarious life is for people who don’t realize it, and said something about how ordinary bad luck can ruin your life. Herself interrupted in stentorian tones, “I don’t believe in luck, Bob, ‘luck’ is when opportunity meets preparation.” I’m sure she had that affirmation written on her bathroom mirror. That Randian, Romneyesque (“I inherited nothing!”) self-contragratualtion stayed with me, it’s one of the reasons I so enjoyed Letterman’s years long taunting of Herself.
ETA:
hovercraft
@Barbara:
That’s so funny! I think you can view most love songs as borderline stalkerish, talk of never ending devotion that nothing can come between.
Follow You Anywhere
Monica Heldal
And you Jimmy
you were making up excuses for me
excuses for me
not to come with you home
but I’m back now
been walking ’round your house for some time
and every garden tree I’ve climbed
but you’re gone
I guess there’s no place for us now
but I’ll go with you anywhere if you’ll allow me
this town is starting to look down upon us now
‘cus baby you’re no good
And I’ll follow you anywhere, anywhere, anywhere
I’ll follow you anyhwere, anywhere
I’ll follow you anywhere, anywhere
if i only knew where you’d go
if i only knew where you’d go
and I’ll follow you anywhere, anywhere, anywhere
I’ll follow you anyhwere, anywhere
I’ll follow you anywhere, anywhere
if i only knew where you’d go
if i only knew where you’d go
Tonight Jimmy
the old town seems so very far away
our music in the soft and windy days over there
is all gone
and I’ll follow you anywhere, anywhere, anywhere
I’ll follow you anyhwere, anywhere
I’ll follow you anywhere, anywhere
if i only knew where you’d go
if i only knew where you’d go
if i only knew where you’d go
oh, where you’d go
oh, where you’d go
oh, where you’d go
Yeah that’s totally not creepy ;- )
Gelfling 545
@oldster: It’s amazing that people like Trump and Kushner and Trump sons 1 and 2 wanted for nothing, got a gold plated education and emerged ignorant, incurious and amoral. But let’s blame the poor, deprived and ill educated for their plight.
D58826
@amk: Hope your right. NK could decide it does mean something and decides to strike first. We could talk tough our way into a corner and Der Fuhrer hates to back down and look weak so he strikes out.
Unstable on both sides of the equation
rikyrah
waspuppet
So the guy who spent $2,500 on a Mac because it looked pretty when he wanted to run Windows was lecturing people about running a lean operation?
glory b
@hovercraft: “If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody baby”
Another stalker song!
NotMax
@hovercraft
Flash from the past, Litltle Peggy March.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
nothing material, anyway. I’m sure Uday and Qusay, especially the one who looks like a Salem’s Lot vampire, have cried in the dark lonely night, while their Pappy is tweeting madness, about the fact that it’s Princess Tackycrap and her consort who Daddy turns to when it’s time for press releases and photo-ops
and to paraphrase somebody, all this mess could have been avoided if we could have somehow summoned the spirit of Fred Trump to say, “It’s okay, Donald, I love you anyway”
Spanky
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Way before then there was Little Peggy March with “I will Follow Him“.
Chilling.
glory b
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The fact that she thinks she came from sleeping on her Mom’s friend’s porch in Mississippi to being a billionaire by nothing but her own efforts is maddening.
If nothing else, lucky that her father took her from her pretty neglectful mother and paid part of the expenses for her to go to college.
I admire her accomplishments, but, ugh.
Kay
@rikyrah:
They know a lot, though, anti-NAFTA people. Not the rank and file where it’s become just proxy for “I’m a populist” but the actual people who focus on trade and have for years. It’s like anything else. If it’s “your issue” you get down in the weeds. That’s why I got upset with people here during the Obama trade wars. You can’t say Trumpka doesn’t understand trade deals. He may use broad over the top language but that’s because he’s also an advocate. He knows what’s in them. A lot of them know what’s in them. They have a position but that doesn’t mean they know less. It means they know more. They will know much more than Trump does about currency manipulation and anti-dumping and steel. It may not trickle down the masses of Trump supporters! But it will matter a lot to those people who understand the various terms and provisions.
Kropadope
@germy: no you made yourselves trolls, that I chose to stroll in response was my own decision but one that I would make again. You earned it.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I didn’t vote for Trump. The fact that you can’t distinguish between the primaries and the general election is your own problem. The fact is that I voted for Hillary, I donated to her, and I asked anyone else who would listen to vote for her.
hovercraft
@NotMax: I associate “I will follow” with Sister Act, much less creepy.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Remember the day I set you free
I told you you could always count on me darling
From that day on, I made a vow
I’ll be there when you want me
Some way, some how
Oh baby there ain’t no mountain high enough
Ain’t no valley low enough
Ain’t no river wide enough
To keep me from getting to you babe
Oh no darling
No wind, no rain
Or winters cold can stop me baby, na na baby
‘Cause you are my goal
Setting someone free? Literally? CREEEEEEPY.
Gindy51
@Kay: i blame that stupid TV show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. fits the time line since it started in 1984.
J R in WV
@Kropadope:
You seem to be ignoring the fact that Senator Wilmer is still pissing all over the Democratic Party long after he lost the primary. Fuck him!!
And fuck you too for continuing to piss all over the only party with any chance to improve America.The day it became impossible to win the nomination Senator Wilmer should have shut up his criticism and worked to elect the Democratic candidate. He did not do that. That’s when he lost his right to be a leader in the Democratic party, permanently.
D58826
I’ve been wonder why NC Sen. Burr has become so bipartisan and responsible in his approach to Trumpgate. Well:
The entire article is about how Trump tried to insulate himself from the scandal.
Interesting article if true. Not sure of the blogger’s reputation.
https://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/five-point-donald-trump-russia-freefall/2122/
WereBear
It was bullshit then, and with business standards eroding like a sand castle, it’s even more bullshit now.
EBT
To be fair, the point where you really and truly had to do layout and music on a Mac died in like 2003.
Gindy51
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: The Beatles “Run for Your Life” is THE creepiest of them all.
“Run For Your Life”
Well I’d rather see you dead, little girl
Than to be with another man
You better keep your head, little girl
Or I won’t know where I am
You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That’s the end ah little girl
Well I know that I’m a wicked guy
And I was born with a jealous mind
And I can’t spend my whole life
Trying just to make you toe the line
You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That’s the end ah little girl
Let this be a sermon
I mean everything I’ve said
Baby, I’m determined
And I’d rather see you dead
You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That’s the end ah little girl
I’d rather see you dead, little girl
Than to be with another man
You better keep your head, little girl
Or you won’t know where I am
You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That’s the end ah little girl
Nah nah nah
Nah nah nah
Nah nah nah
Nah nah nah (fade out)
PJ
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Says the one who asserts that anyone who preferred a candidate less centrist than Hillary is a pro-Putin tool. With commenters like you and Schrodinger’s Cat, who bring this up NEARLY EVERY DAY, democracy and free speech are the enemy and anyone who didn’t immediately fall in line to praise the anointed savior, Hillary Clinton, is the enemy. The whole point of the primary process and the electoral process is to help voters suss out the strengths and weaknesses of candidates – if candidates can’t take the heat, they shouldn’t be up there. Clinton went in to the primaries knowing that her support of the war in Iraq, the Goldman Sachs speeches, her entire record was going to come back at her, and she handled it the way she wanted to. (To her credit, she never whined about the primaries or Sanders the way you do.) You and your ilk, however, cannot stand that any of this should have been questioned or discussed. That is fundamentally illiberal, and if that is the Democratic Party you want, it’s going to be very small.
Kropadope
@Goku:
I’ve come here every day almost for a decade. Why should I feel compelled to leave because a clique of assholes among the many, many commenters feels compelled to needlessly be assholes on a daily basis about one particular subject. I see it every day, since the primaries ended I only respond when it’s particularly egregious.
The real question should be, why have a political blog if everyone’s gonna agree about everything? Attempts to force conformity are not a good look.
ETA:
@PJ:
This a million times over.
PJ
@rikyrah: Oh, they mattered under Clinton, too (who provided the Republicans with a large surplus which they immediately squandered).
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@PJ:
The only crime Debbie Wasserman Schultz is guilty of was letting that carpetbagging mediocre all talk no walk fraud into the Democratic Party tent for his own self-aggrandizing purpose, in which he proceeded to piss all over everything and everyone in it, and still is, yet he still hasn’t deigned to join. So please spare me your analysis about what the Democrats need to do – here’s my suggestion – never ever ever let a non-Dem into the tent to piss all over everything again. Maybe Sanders could try borrowing the GOP to run against Trump from the left. See how far he gets with that. He seems to have a certain appeal to the same race and class of voters that Trump does, because he didn’t appeal to the base of the Democratic party.
Kropadope
@J R in WV:
Actually, he did work to elect the nominee. That’s why the DNC has him out on TV and working on outreach efforts. At least it speaks well for the Democrats that their leadership isn’t on board with the folktales you tell yourselves. That’s why they’re the better party, leadership is resisting the tendency toward epistemic closure being pushed by their most angry and prejudiced voters.
glory b
@J R in WV: Well, along with the fact that he left the party too.
PJ
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Sanders never said that Clinton and Trump were the same. The vast majority of Sanders voters voted for Clinton. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/12/sanders-supporters-clinton-vote-survey You repeat the same shit, over and over, just like Fox News.
PJ
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: You’re certainly a prime example.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kropadope: so you’re not willing to try therapy then?
after how many months of accusing her of corruption, which corruption he couldn’t get very specific about when asked, like everything else in his ‘platform’, but all those vague and righteous promises sure made dewy-eyed adolescents and willfully ignorant old white hippies feel good about themselves, didn’t they?
no that was a futile attempt to stop him, and all you little Bernie! bunnies, from pissing inside the tent. Had they asked me, I could have told them the junior senate from Vermont is intellectually incontinent. The Cornel West example was right there in front of them.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@PJ:
Oh please. By the time the election came, the damage had been done – Sanders and Trump had the same line of attack against the Democrats – everything was rigged, everything was corrupt, Hillary was cheating with DWS, and over and over and over on twitter and in my FB feed every damn day for months, and I sound like Fox News? Unlike you, I remember the constant relentless bullshit being thrown at Dems by our self-appointed progressive betters. By the end Fox and Berniebros were using the same right wing bullshit stories using the same framing as you are re Hillary’s weaknesses, instead of focusing on Trump.
rikyrah
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
this
this
T-H-I-S
glory b
@Kropadope: Wait, I though the DNC were the worst ever!
Actually, we people of color, especially the women, saw the looming disaster that Trump represents and we were desperate to avoid it. and we didn’t want to hear anything from bros who weren’t going to go down like we were if they didn’t sign on.
So yeah, don’t allow anyone who doesn’t belong to a party and doesn’t get that the opponent in the primary isn’t the enemy, to run as the new leader of the party. Anyone who doesn’t get that if you call her corrupt, any endorsement later looks suspect.
And when you call someone corrupt be able to prove it when they challenge you to do so. And don’t complain that your opponent called you unqualified when, as it turned out, no one on your staff learned that you must read beyond the headline of a newspaper story.
And if you want to lead the party, find out whose in it and don’t tell THE BASE, the people of color, that you’ll get to their problems as soon as you fix white people’s economic anxiety.
Oh, and don’t hire Russian shills (Tad Devine) to run your campaign, and show your tax returns too.
PJ
I’ll take your word for it (about your Facebook/Twitter feed), but you might want to leave the Facebook/Twitter echo-chamber, for the sake of your mental health. That’s not the real world, and Putin is relying on people like you, who confuse the two.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@PJ:
Nothing became clearer as the days went on that a cult was forming around Bernie, and that he was enjoying every minute of it. I believe that he’s glad Hillary lost, and that he has absolutely no regrets about being a contributor to that. He’s an old white guy – what does he care? Her loss has given him a bigger voice and his cult followers a chance to keep running around saying “Bernie would have won”, while never realizing that he was completely unvetted and as opaque as Trump on his financials, and that no one was calling him on his bullshit – especially the “I wuz robbed” bullshit – because it served everyone’s need to hurt the Dem nominee.
Which Berniecrats won their races in November, anyway, signalling the pent up demand for Sanders and his “revolution”? None? Oh.
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Self appointed betters? Pissing inside the tent? The projection is strong in you.
And our electoral system is corrupt. Look at our president and Congress and how they got elected. Hillary and Bernie were fighting against it.
clay
@rikyrah:
Criminy, don’t these people listen to Springsteen?
“Poor man wanna be rich/Rich man wanna be king/And a king ain’t satisfied ’til he rules everything.”
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@glory b:
Has he really addressed the Russian hacking that benefited him so much? If he has, I’ve missed it. Did Wilmer ever weigh in on the whole alt-right turn of the Trump campaign? Hillary gave one of the most important bravest speeches I’ve ever heard any politician give about that. I couldn’t imagine that guy doing that same thing in a million years.
Kropadope
@glory b: No, the DNC being the worst ever was a fairytale you bought into. I’m tired of u putting words in my mouth. And remember what I said about liberal paternalism? Bernie won some non-white demographics in some primaries. Asserting that Bernie was only attracing whites was part of the fairytale and helped toward its self fulfillment. Some here even went do far as to assert everyone who wasn’t a straight white male owed the Dems their vote
Debbie1
@Hunter Gathers: He may have money, but he’s not upper class. He comes from the same sewer as his father-in-law.
No One You Know
@hovercraft:
I take your point, but they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive, as nature shows.
Goku
@Kropadope: I mean, the Dems are far and away the best choice for non-whites. They don’t want to exterminate them by poverty, lock them up in prison and take away their franchise, or mass deport them for example
Goku
@Kropadope: Just saying, if they bother you, then just ignore them. The opinions people express on this blog are inconsequential for the most part
Jacel
@D58826:
Make M.A.S.H. Great Again.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Why doesn’t he just run as a Republican? Let him vie for these racist morons by being Trump Lite, see what that gets him. He clearly pines to be the working class hero of the white working class of his radical 60s glory days, before women/minorities made such a big racket and demanded they stop being marginalized.
Kropadope
@Goku: It’s still presumptuous to demand someone’s vote based on demographics. And if I think someone’s wrong about something, shouldn’t I be able to tell them so and why? There’s just a huge double standard here as to whom you can complain about. If we can’t disagree without being told to go away, which is why you’re telling me to do, why have a blog at all?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think you might be nuttier than Applejacks. On the bottle? Off your meds? Just generally damaged by too much interaction with reality
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Or better yet, pack up the old carpet bag, have Jane gas up the Saab and go run for a House seat in WV or OH, where he has his finger on the pulse of the totes non-racist WWCs! After all, he knows what they really want better than they do, and if he shouts it enough, they will come
around.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He needs to shut his fucking yap. He’s out there today again shit talking Dems about how they lost the election – of course didn’t mention Russian hacking and his own duplicity, and that Hillary beat his wrinkled old ass by 4 million votes, and Trump by 3 million votes. WHAT.A.FRAUD.
Steve in the ATL
@Keith P.:
Gets you so high that you hallucinate that some Chinese dudes gave you $400MM.
Ksmiami
@Barbara: that’s actually incorrect. The majority of millionaires in America are 1st gen self made. The numbers are detailed on Thomas Stanley’s website…
Ksmiami
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: fuck that irrelevant sob. I never want to hear Wilmer’s name again
Ksmiami
@Barbara: actually the police’s every breath you take is about stalkerism