Trump promised his voters big government. Dems are calling themselves liberals for the first time in a generation. The Reagan era is dead.
— Apocalyptica (@ApocalypticaNow) April 26, 2017
.
Apart from taking hope where we can find it, what’s on the agenda for the day?
.
Consistent with partisan leanings, most under age 50 say they prefer a bigger govt with more services; those 50+ tilt toward smaller govt pic.twitter.com/ihagYK9J1J
— Alec Tyson (@alec_h_tyson) April 25, 2017
(Given that people over 50 are the ones taking most advantage of Social Security & Medicaid, I believe the technical term is “pulling up the ladder behind them”.)
WSJ/NBC News survey finds the public more amenable to activist government than any point since Q first posed in 1995 https://t.co/Y7ydl3H9U4 pic.twitter.com/Ar0WPhNYWX
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) April 23, 2017
NEW: Just 37% say Obamacare should be repealed and replaced, per ABC/WaPo poll; 61% say it should be fixed instead: https://t.co/TB8TxzC4tn pic.twitter.com/QuCkWYElAK
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) April 25, 2017
This is a net 25 point shift in THREE MONTHS https://t.co/idCj3cw045
— Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) April 25, 2017
rikyrah
Good Morning,Everyone???
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
OzarkHillbilly
Wow, that graph. What happened in 07/08 to make it go crazy like that?
Headline at the Guardian: Humpty Trumpty postpones his great wall
ThresherK
@rikyrah: Good morning!
Odd to see that Pew chart illustrate two entirely different ideas that way. A) with one shade of gold, B) with a slightly darker shade of gold.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Telling, ain’t it?
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I just can’t figure it out.
OzarkHillbilly
The latest sign that rich people are really very stupid: Has Nordstrom lost its mind? $425 for these muddy jeans
I had nooooooooooooo idea I was soooooooooooooo stylish.
Anybody wanna buy a pair of pig manure covered work boots? They still have that strong earthy scent that says, “Yep, Ahm a pig farmer. Let me just leave these boots outside.” Only for today you can have them for the down low price of $999.99.
Amir Khalid
What do people mean by “big government”, anyway: the number of agencies? The total staff count? The extent/scope/obtrusiveness of Federal regulation? The alleged inefficiency of the whole tax-dollar eating machine? That the Federal Government is helping those they don’t see as real Americans?
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning☕
@OzarkHillbilly: @Baud: somebody at Pew has a very sly sense of humor.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: With the right marketing, OzarkHillbilly® can be a household name.
Baud
@Amir Khalid: I don’t know. But 57% in the one graph is a lot higher than 48% in the other.
satby
@Amir Khalid: Hi Amir, great to see you again! For most conservatives, big government strictly means the parts that don’t directly benefit them: so in the 65+ cohort, everything that isn’t SS, Medicare, and probably military pensions.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: Anything that does not directly line my pockets with cash.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Lots of people and stuff who will help that person, preferably that person alone. Or at least that person the most.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Folk over 50 get Social Security and Medicare? Why am I not getting mine?
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You know what you did.
James E Powell
@debbie:
And definitely no help for any of “those people”
Iowa Old Lady
Trump is tweeting this morning, starting about an hour ago.
rikyrah
Analysis of the new GOP Healthcare Plan
https://mobile.twitter.com/sarahkliff/status/857065384570126336
Brachiator
The Republicans just can’t help themselves. There default position is to screw everyone, including the people who voted for them.
A Vox story suggests that the latest GOP health care plan would allow states to get rid of the existing condition requirement. Except that members of Congress and their staffs would be exempt from this.
Folks should post a little something to their Trumpeteer friends and family on FaceBook. How come the new GOP political hacks wants better healthcare for themselves than they do for the American people? And how does this square with Trump’s empty promise to come up with something better than Obamacare?
Trump will try to bury all this with his tax proposal outline. Oh yeah, that plan will guarantee that Trump himself pays taxes at the lower rates. If he pays anything at all.
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
Mayo Nation (Dolt45 voters) mean programs that help THOSE people, even if their muthaphuckin azzes are on the same program.Dont believe me…just read a few of those “Trump voters who have regrets” articles ???
satby
@?BillinGlendaleCA: you know what she meant ?
But here in Trumpcountry, SSDI is used as early retirement after people lose their jobs and can’t get another one. I have no idea how they manage to get doctor sign off of disability, but somehow they do. Lots of times for health complications of morbid obesity.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
Can we just go ahead and change “Even the liberal New Republic” to “Even the liberal New York Times” in the Balloon Juice lexicon?
Montanareddog
The Falstaff of Fifth Avenue is the greatest ACA booster we could have hoped for!
Kay
Still failing. It’s gotten worse since the election so the idea one or another “institution” would magically start functioning was wrong. I look at it like a series of failures, one after another but they haven’t stopped failing.
Trump hates judges because they’re the only check that’s functioning. Whether the decisions are correct or not they are operating independently of him, but, wow, to be down to one branch isn’t a good place to be.
Eric S.
Good morning from Chicago’s Red Line.
This past weekend we installed a new customer information and billing system. Today is day 3. While things are far from perfect it seems to calm. This is my 3rd big implementation of my career but the first I wasn’t in IT. Maybe that’s the difference. That, and the first set of customers are just today receiving their first bill out of the new system with a new account number.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Guess I should have joined AARP when they sent me that stuff.
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: Great questions. Makes me wonder what context pollsters provide to folks who are answering these questions, if any.
ET
I sort of feel that when repeal was the dog whistle representing “those people” and that President, the repeal numbers were higher because.. They hated them and him and they are gullible when it comes to GOP messaging. Also repeal wasn’t going to happen when the man most associated with it was still in the White House. It was “safe” to complain with no consequences. But now there is an even more active push to repeal and the “man” in the White House is more likely to sign the bill. Now repealers are faced with the “be careful what you wish for, you might actually get it” conundrum. Surprise! When the threat is really there they changed their minds. Congressional Republicans are slow creatures and not a beast to recognize when the winds change.
father pussbucket
But with yuuuuge tax cuts.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I’m wondering if our only hope to resolve this Russia thing is that Comey (acting to preserve his precious self-image, of course) provides enough of a bombshell when his investigation concludes to make it politically impossible for the Republican-controlled congress to avoid turning the matter over to special counsel for an independent investigation. That’s not a good place to be either, relying on fucking Comey. But in the absence of an outside actor, it’s hard to see how the Republicans don’t sweep this under the rug by under-staffing and generally obstructing the investigation.
efgoldman
@satby:
CBS found a Dr Feelgood in West Virginia who wrote tens of thousands of Rx for Opioids. I forgot what his payoff was and where it cam from. But there are doctors out there who will do the same for disability designations.
rikyrah
@Kay:
More truth from Kay?
efgoldman
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
They’ll do the lobbying whether they have your bux or not.
father pussbucket
@ET:
As “Taxi”‘s mechanic Latka said, you took the tongue right out of my mouth. It was always about Obummer.
rikyrah
@ET:
They like the CARE a lot more now that the Obama is gone ???
efgoldman
Cloudy and rainy. Did everybody go back to bed?
satby
@efgoldman: upstairs
?BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: No, a bit cloudy here too; but I took this picture anyway.
efgoldman
@satby:
That one’s not moving so fast, either
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I know this sounds sanctimonious but what has gotten lost here is the public interest. Elections don’t belong to politicians. They belong to voters. Just keep it simple. An investigation into how a US election was interfered with. Remove all the names- take out “Trump” and “Russia”. What would an investigation by a functioning system or country look like?
It shouldn’t look like this, where the FBI fucked up hugely right out of the gate and now Congress is failing and you can forget the rest of the executive branch because they’re all Trumpsters.
There just doesn’t seem to be any urgency and this is an ongoing failure- the system is still failing. We know where we end up with that- we end up with interference in another election.
OzarkHillbilly
@efgoldman: Still here.
Tenar Arha
@efgoldman: I just poked my head outside.Ugh, same.
laura
Single Payer Bill gets its first hearing in Sacramento today. Nurses rallying at the Capital at noon.
bemused
@Brachiator:
I’ve been wondering about Congress and staff and why they haven’t been concerned about how their shit health bills would affect them. Exemptions for the death panels doesn’t surprise me one bit. I’m just shocked it took them this long. Stupidest and most vile people on earth.
I like AL’s phrase on over 50 Medicare/SS recipients “pulling up the ladder behind them”. That phrase could apply to every GOP policy, imho.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Comey’s mistake (and it’s huge and unforgivable- he can’t fix it) was treating this situation as an exception.
It shouldn’t be an exception. It should be as rule-bound and methodical as any other investigation. Take out all the identifiers and context and just investigate.
Eric S.
@efgoldman: Cloudy and awaiting rain here. I wanted to stay in bed but my phone alarm said it was time to make the donuts and the 4 legged alarm said it was breakfast time.
rikyrah
Apparently repealing Obamacare could violate international law
The United Nations has contacted the Trump administration as part of an investigation into whether repealing the Affordable Care Act without an adequate substitute for the millions who would lose health coverage would be a violation of several international conventions that bind the United States. It turns out that the notion that “health care is a right” is more than just a Democratic talking point.
A confidential, five-page “urgent appeal” from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva, sent to the Trump administration, cautions that the repeal of the Affordable Care Act could put the United States at odds with its international obligations. The Feb. 2 memo, which I obtained Tuesday, was sent to the State Department and expresses “serious concern” about the prospective loss of health coverage for almost 30 million people, which could violate “the right to social security of the people in the United States.”
The letter urges that “all necessary interim measures be taken to prevent the alleged violations” and asks that, if the “allegations” proved correct, there be “adequate measure to prevent their occurrence as well as to guarantee the accountability of any person responsible.”
OHCHR requested that copies of the letter be shared with majority and minority leadership in both chambers of Congress and proposed that “the wider public should be alerted to the potential implications of the above-mentioned allegations.”
Apparently that didn’t happen. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s office said they didn’t receive the letter, and officials in House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s offices said Tuesday that they were unaware of it. The letter did make its way to the Department of Health and Human Services, where an employee leaked it to congressional Democratic leadership. A State Department spokesman said my inquiry was “the first I’m hearing of this.”
A spokesman for the U.N.’s human rights office in Geneva confirmed the authenticity of the letter, which was sent by Dainius Puras, a Lithuanian doctor who serves the United Nations under the absurdly long title “Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
The whole point of “process” the reason process protects, is that process reduces subjective bias.
We shouldn’t be in a situation where we are left to guess whether one person is “good” or “ethical”. We get more than that. We get to look at process and ask if it’s being followed. THAT’S what we rely on- not “Comey”- he doesn’t matter at all.
efgoldman
@Kay:
I keep repeating my mantra, because people forget: It was 26 months between the Watergate burglary and Tricksie Dicksie Nixie getting on the helicopter.
This thing is a lot more complicated and involves both financial malfeasance outside of politics and (probably) influence peddling, money laundering, direct influence on some campaigns by a foreign power, computer hacking, planting fake news….
Just like Watergate, once the indictments, firings and resignations start, one thing will lead to another….
Better to have solid indictments than to start just throwing shit against the wall. You’re a lawyer, right?
Flynn has now been called out by the bipartisan senior members of the house committee. Real testimony is coming up in both houses. Adam feels (and I agree) that NY AG Schneiderman is conducting a parallel investigation into state crimes. It’s a lot of stuff to get together.
Are you going to start posting on the front page again? I think a lot of people would like to see it.
rikyrah
uh huh
uh huh
Sen Richard Burr got $8.1M from McConnell’s Super PAC in September 2016. Same PAC that got millions from pro-Putin Ukrainian #BurrMustRecuse pic.twitter.com/nXKaEtbwYF
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) April 26, 2017
rikyrah
The Trump administration’s magical thinking on taxes would bust the budget
By Editorial Board
April 25 at 7:34 PM
PRESIDENT TRUMP is set to reveal the outlines of a tax reform plan Wednesday. The country will be improved if Mr. Trump leads the way toward lower rates, fewer loopholes and a simpler code. Where the plan could go dangerously astray is if the administration bases it on wishful thinking — specifically, that tax-cutting will pay for itself.
Specifics have been sketchy in the run-up to Wednesday’s announcement, in part because administration officials appear to be of different minds. But a few details emerged early in the week. The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Trump wants to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent and the top tax rate on so-called pass-through companies from 39.6 percent also to 15 percent. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, slashing the corporate rate by such a large amount would reduce revenue by $2.4 trillion over a decade, which is half of everything the government will spend in fiscal 2017. Cutting the tax on pass-throughs, meanwhile, would boost tax avoidance by encouraging people to take wages in the form of lower-taxed pass-through income.
There are several honest ways out of the resulting budget hole: end or limit tax breaks such as the mortgage-interest deduction; raise the rates of other taxes; cut spending; or some combination. The dishonest way is to pretend the hole is shallower than the experts predict it will be — or even that the hole does not exist. That was the approach Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appeared to be taking last Thursday. “The plan will pay for itself with growth,” Mr. Mnuchin said, claiming that the Trump economic program could goose the economy so much that the government would recoup nearly $2 trillion over 10 years. He may be preparing some limits on deductions, but not nearly enough.
rikyrah
[email protected], I hope you didn’t have a small hand in keeping this from Dem leadership. #TrumpCare https://t.co/8Z4jFEL87g
— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) April 26, 2017
Spanky
@Betty Cracker:
There is no bombshell that big.
rikyrah
Quick Takes: The Smell of Desperation Emanating From the White House
by Nancy LeTourneau
April 25, 2017 6:00 PM
We all know that the White House is desperate to change the narrative that is developing about what a complete and utter failure Trump has been in his first 100 days. But who knew that their attempt to provide an alternative narrative would be such a mangled mess? Today they released a press statement titled, “President Trump’s 100 Days of Historic Accomplishments.” It lists three areas of accomplishments:
……………………………
Rather than list actual executive orders or bills Trump signed, they compare the number of them to how many have been signed by previous presidents. On executive actions, they got it all wrong, as you can read in this tweet storm from Peter Shulman. In counting the number of bills Trump signed, Oliver Willis fills you in on some of the particulars of what was included. Here’s a taste:
You get the idea. Real historic, huh? Especially in comparison to one of the measly little bills Obama signed in his first 100 days that was called the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
rikyrah
What Trump Didn’t Know
by Nancy LeTourneau April 25, 2017 3:15 PM
Here is another interesting tidbit from Trump’s interview with the Associated Press:
In other words, all those times that the president talked about NATO on the campaign trail and during the first months of his tenure, he didn’t actually know much about it. He goes on to say that he knows a lot about it now. But that is obviously not true since he continues to claim that he was right back when he didn’t know what he was talking about (just try and wrap you mind around that one) because countries aren’t paying what they owe. These are the facts:
rikyrah
In Trump’s latest defeat, court smacks down another executive order
04/26/17 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
After railing against presidential executive orders for a couple of years as a candidate, Donald Trump and his White House team have dramatically changed course, bragging about the Republican’s penchant for executive orders. That may not have been wise.
While Team Trump points to these orders as evidence of the administration’s governing progress, the fact remains that many of the directives are little more than glorified press releases, with little to no policy impact. As for the orders that are substantively significant, the president keeps finding those policies blocked in the courts.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: OUCH! She really went there, eh? Nancy Smash indeed!!
Btw AL is spot-on with this, as others above have noted:
Benefits for me, but not for thee!
No wonder they were repelled by “Stronger Together” – they can’t even conceive of how that works.
Jeffro
@rikyrah:
You’re going about this all wrong, rikyrah: you have to start with Trump is right at all times and in holding all positions, since he will in fact hold all positions on an issue depending upon the audience, time of day, and his own personal ego needs.
Alexandra Petri had an awesome take on this a couple weeks back: President Trump’s Broken Timeline:
Major Major Major Major
Guten Morgen. Up a bit early with the jet lag monster. Hi monster ??
I saw this sign from the science march floating around the inner tubes and wanted to share. Trust Data. Hilarious.
bemused
@Jeffro:
What kills me is the senior citizen Republican voters who are not the wealthy 1% or even close who have children and grandchildren. Evidently, they are ready to throw their own family under the bus along with the unworthies.
Chris
Praise and glory be.
To be fair, I think the teabaggers and Trump still have a lot of Reaganism in them – but even then, it’s noteworthy and wonderful that Reaganite rhetoric is no longer the center of politics.
Frank Wilhoit
The whole “size of government” thing is not about services. It is about accountability. No one — and I do mean that the number of individials is exacrtly zero — “hates government” for any other reason than criminals hate police.
Major Major Major Major
@Frank Wilhoit: “big government” means “n****r n****r n****r”.
Doug R
@efgoldman: They probably worked hard all their lives and finally realized they aren’t going to hit that big payoff they were promised. Now they have a chance to get out with some income and of course they feel a little guilt over it, which of course they project as “get the govmint out of my bizness”.
Think of it as a minimum income program, just medically sanctioned.
I can’t really begrudge them their DI.
liberal
They need to include the choice a lot of fucking idiots would pick: smaller government, more services.
sherparick
Again, I keep wondering about the media fascination with the minority of voters who put Trump in the White House, but at least this was a bit different:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/videos/a54735/trump-supporter-defense-cnn/
I have to give Paula Johnson credit for honesty, by saying that there is “Nothing Trump could do that would lose her support.” Alec Chalgren I guess is a Christianist, and also delusional. For both of them, Trump’s success or failure is their success or failure. Surprisingly, it is McCommons and Moss, the two old white guys, who appear to be the only two have the scales fall from their eyes.
liberal
@efgoldman: I thought it has to go before an administrative law judge. I don’t think the process is very lenient, and I’m skeptical a docs’ word is good enough.
liberal
@Frank Wilhoit: well put.
Kathleen
@Baud: You may want to hitch your wagon to the Ozark Hillbilly brand. It would endear you to the neglected and maligned WWC!
CONGRATULATIONS!
@?BillinGlendaleCA: And where’s mine? IM 51 DAMMIT I WANT MY FUCKING SOROS BUCKS
hovercraft
This is Amazing
By Josh Marshall Published April 26, 2017, 9:04 AM EDT
This is really quite astounding. In this morning’s edition of Mike Allen’s not-Playbook from Axios he introduces what seems to be Ivanka Trump setting up something that sounds a lot like the Clinton Foundation, only in this case run from within the White House by a top presidential aide who is also the President’s daughter, who also runs her own large international company and who also has two brothers who are currently running the President/Father’s company and trying to rake in as much money as possible on the fame and power of the presidency. Also, let’s be honest, the Trumps are a notoriously corrupt family, especially when it comes to running foundations.
No less astounding is that Allen never mentions that there’s anything problematic about this or that it doesn’t mimic in a wildly more corrupt way what President Trump nominally ran most of the 2016 campaign against.
Follow the link to see an outline of the “foundation”
What’s worth asking is this: Is this even envisioned as a foundation and non-profit? Or is Ivanka setting up something like a venture capital or private equity fund? i.e., one designed to make a profit?
As is the case on many other fronts, Trump and his family ran the 2016 campaign not so much against Hillary Clinton but a looking glass Hillary Clinton which was actually what they aspired to be and do if they won.
———————————————
Ugh, these fucking people are beyond shameless and corrupt. No one could find any wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation, they were open and transparent, does anyone think for a moment that either will be able to be said about this “foundation” if it ever gets off the ground? Fucking deatheaters!
rikyrah
Laughable White House claim: Trump has ‘rebuilt’ US global standing
04/26/17 08:43 AM—UPDATED 04/26/17 08:51 AM
By Steve Benen
With Donald Trump and his team struggling to spin the president’s 100th day in office, it makes sense for the White House to point to vague accomplishments that are inherently subjective. Trump likes to point, for example, to the nation’s improved “spirit” in the wake of his inauguration, which may seem silly, but it’s a claim that’s difficult to disprove because there’s nothing specific or quantifiable to examine.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer rolled out a related pitch at yesterday’s briefing:
The number of phone calls may be accurate – although with this White House, one shouldn’t make too many assumptions – but chatting with world leaders doesn’t exactly offer evidence of leadership. Trump, after all, spoke with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by phone soon after taking office, and that was a disaster.
But I’m fascinated by the White House’s broader, vaguer belief that Trump has “rebuilt America’s standing in the world.” At least for now, that’s tough to prove or disprove by any quantifiable metrics, but it’s still pretty easy to laugh at Spicer’s latest boast.
Let’s back up for a minute to provide some useful context. Younger readers may not recall this, but towards the end of the Bush/Cheney era, the United States’ international reputation took a severe hit, largely as a result of the war in Iraq. There were anecdotal reports about Americans traveling abroad with Canadian flags sewn onto their belongings, hoping to avoid confrontations with critics of U.S. policies and leaders.
Cermet
So, ACA was unpopular under President Obama but suddenly, when a black guy is out of office, it is wildly appreciated – I’d say go figure but anyone who thinks this country isn’t racist and filled with nothing (zero) but religious hypocrite’s is extremely stupid.
hovercraft
Further proof that the GOP is eager and ready to expand it’s reach into the youth vote.
GOP Senator Says Men Who Wear Tutus Are Asking For Fights
en. Mike Enzi (R-WY) told high school students last week that a man who wears tutus to bars and gets into fights “kind of asks for it.”
The senator made the remark Thursday during a Q&A with students grades 6-12 at Greybull High School, in response to one student who asked what he was doing to “improve the life of the LGBT community in Wyoming.” The exchange was recorded and later published by the Greybull Standard. (Listen here at 32:40)
Enzi said that not everything can be achieved through the law, and “what we need to have is a little civility between people.” Then he launched into a bizarre anecdote.
“We always say that in Wyoming you can be just about anything you want to be, as long as you don’t push it in somebody’s face,” the senator said. “I know a guy who wears a tutu and goes to bars on Friday night and is always surprised that he gets in fights. Well, he kind of asks for it. That’s the way that he winds up with that kind of problem.”
rikyrah
Maddow’s entire phucking show last night was pretty much all Russia.
sigh.
Folks.
If I followed her segments right, Flynn was not only taking money, but didn’t tell anyone about the money.
His Security Clearance had EXPIRED.
This White House will not produce the paperwork for the re-issuance of his Security Clearance.
I am inclined to believe that there is NO PAPERWORK, and these muthaphckas hired a National Security Advisor with NO SECURITY CLEARANCE.
rikyrah
This grotesque need to micromanage and infantilize President Obama in every waking moment of his private life is INSANE. Yes, INSANE.
— meta (@metaquest) April 26, 2017
Because it makes perfect sense to ask 44 to make even more unrequited overtures to decency.
— jelani cobb (@jelani9) April 26, 2017
rikyrah
Our last president wrote acclaimed books. Our current president. Can’t. Read. https://t.co/f95ibu7xZ3
— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) April 26, 2017
sherparick
Its also ANZAC Day, the 102d anniversary of the amphibious assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula, a rather dubious national baptism in blood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_Campaign. Something to think about with the current guy in charge, who gets his information and advice from the fevered war mongers (who never go to war) on Fox News.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG48Ftsr3OI&feature=youtu.be
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
http://noglory.org/index.php/multimedia/poetry-and-spoken-word/55-wilfred-owen-dulce-et-decorum-est#.UsdcILRZhiY
rikyrah
Orrin Hatch inadvertently helps end the debate over the deficit
04/26/17 10:09 AM
By Steve Benen
The White House will release some details today about Donald Trump’s new tax plan, but administration officials have already acknowledged the fact that the costs of the policy won’t be offset with spending cuts, and Team Trump doesn’t much care about the impact on the deficit.
It’s likely Republicans on Capitol Hill will adopt a similar attitude. The New York Times reported late yesterday that “the powerful chairman of the Senate finance committee said Tuesday he was prepared to support President Trump’s plan to cut corporate tax rates to 15 percent even if it added to the budget deficit.”
Well, yes, of course he can – because Republican concerns about the deficit are, and have always been, a sham.
In fact, Orrin Hatch offers a terrific case study on the matter. In the Bush/Cheney era, the Utah Republican voted for all kinds of Republican priorities – wars, tax cuts, Medicare expansion, etc. – by adding the costs to the national charge card. In 2009, Hatch told the Associated Press that “it was standard practice not to pay for things” during Bush’s presidency.
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
Either that or actual journalistic investigation. It’s not as crazy as it sounds given that the White House is leaking like a sieve. It’s a toss up what ends up mattering more, that, or the MSM’s extraordinary spinelessness.
rikyrah
Trump’s EPA chief keeps finding himself in hot water
04/26/17 09:20 AM
By Steve Benen
The principal problem with Scott Pruitt leading the Environmental Protection Agency is that he appears to be overtly hostile, not only to environmental protections in general, but to the work of the agency he leads in specific.
But while Pruitt’s work as the EPA chief is itself controversial, there are several other controversies swirling around Pruitt directly that, in a normal administration, might very well put the Oklahoma Republican’s career in jeopardy.
We’ve learned recently, for example, that Pruitt used private email to conduct official business, though he gave sworn congressional testimony in which he said the opposite. Pruitt is also accused of illegally hiding correspondence that documented his cooperation with the oil and gas industries during his tenure as Oklahoma’s attorney general. As if this weren’t enough, there’s also evidence pointing to Pruitt’s role in a botched execution in Oklahoma.
And yesterday, yet another controversy emerged regarding the EPA administrator’s work.
Patricia Kayden
@Brachiator: Don’t you know that the Republican Congress Critters are too beautiful to suffer along with the rest of us peons? Of course, they would exempt themselves from any harm their own policies cause. That’s just how they roll.
Gin & Tonic
Now that I am slowly, step by step, starting to regain mobility in my hand I find myself marveling, every time I do the various exercises, what a subtle and complex creation it is. So many inter-related parts that have to work together. Since two of my major bones are still pinned together, that particular lack of mobility has effects far beyond what I would have expected. Funny that we don’t think how marvelous something is until we can’t have it.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
Speaking of laughable, over at Townhall they have this love letter to buck the troops.
The Best “First 100” Of My Lifetime
Mark Davis
Posted: Apr 26, 2017
I had to spend some reflective moments before saying this out loud– the notion that these first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency are the best opening 14 weeks of any presidency since I’ve been alive.
I’m not eighty, but I’m not thirty, either. I was born in the year of Dwight Eisenhower’s second inauguration, 1957. So, presuming my choices will be culled from Republican presidents, my choices are Nixon, Reagan, both Bushes and Trump. The ascendancy of Gerald Ford, splashed across our history in the messy wake of Watergate, did not exactly unfold with the kind of initiatory agenda that freshly elected Presidents get……..
While historians and policy wonks properly examine everything he has said and not said, and done and not done, I begin with a glorious truth that is draped around every day of the new Trump presidency: Hillary Clinton is not President.
So this counts? Trump starts to amass 100 Days points just by not being Hillary? He absolutely does. Look at the bullets we dodge with each passing hour because he attracted a coalition that prevented her victory—additional years of a sluggish economy, unreliable global leadership, the guarantee of more years of disastrous spending, a parade of activist tyrants in judicial robes— whatever kind of President Trump will be, it is instantly light-years better than the fate we could be enduring had November 8 gone differently………
And to return to Mrs. Clinton for just one more thing– If there is one item that nudges the Trump 100 days to the top of my lifetime list, it is the outright rescue of our Republic by a Supreme Court justice who could spend the next three or four decades weighing cases not on personal or political whim, but on constitutional precepts.
Every other item I’ve mentioned is a work in progress. The Trump agenda that unfolds in the coming years will contain twists, turns, and some measures of successes and failures. But Neil Gorsuch is there now, standing guard every day against the tyrannical nonsense of the type that tells a sitting President he cannot enact a travel ban or withhold funding from sanctuary cities……..
Here’s what we do know. For all the relief and vigor we felt in Reagan’s first 100 days, it was a fortunate rebound from the ineptitude of Jimmy Carter. Trump’s victory is an opportunity to dig out of a far deeper and darker hole. In 2016, with our image around the world eroded, our economy depressed, our debt exploding and our constitution bludgeoned, America had an opportunity to invite further doses of the same poisons, or save ourselves.
Thank God in heaven, we did it. And on every one of these first 100 days of Trump– complete with the occasional misstep, the occasional exaggeration, the occasional brushfire– there is cause for celebration, and a sound basis for claiming this administration’s rollout as my favorite, ever.
——————————————
I expect this to be the tenor of the coverage of 100 days in conservaland.
And before you ask, from Wikipedia :
Mark Davis is an American radio host, newspaper columnist and political commentator. His local talk show, The Mark Davis Show, airs weekdays from 7am to 10amCT on 660AM “The Answer” KSKY in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. His popular column is published in The Dallas Morning News. From 2008 to 2012, Davis was a rotating guest host for The Rush Limbaugh Show; since 2012, he has served as the Friday host of the Salem Radio Network’s Morning in America.
Davis describes himself as a libertarian conservative, opposing smoking bans, religious indoctrination in public education, and illegal immigration. He also supports the War on Terror and drug prohibition.
He is the author of “Upside Down: How the Left Turned Right Into Wrong, Truth Into Lies and Good Into Bad” (2016) and Lone Star America: How Texas Can Save Our Country (2014), both from Regnery Publishing.
Brachiator
@Patricia Kayden:
Oh, I know the Republicans are a bunch of turds. I just find it amazing that their voters are falling so hard for their BS.
That’s why I hope that people will do a Facebook campaign to rub the noses of their Trump loving friends and family into the reality of their stupidity.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 4/25/17
Russians behind payments for Flynn’s work for Turkey: Report
Rachel Maddow highlights the details of a new report from Politico into the people behind disgraced former Trump NSA Mike Flynn’s foreign agent work for Turkey which found not Turks but Russians.
rikyrah
White House has privately told Pelosi it may stop ACA CSR payments NEXT MONTH, Dem aide tells me:https://t.co/jBKFBsiQvD
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) April 26, 2017
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 4/25/17
White House claims no documents on ex Trump NSA Mike Flynn
Rachel Maddow reports on a bizarre impasse between the House Oversight Committee and the Trump White House when a request for paperwork on the security clearance of disgraced former Trump NSA was met with the claim that such paperwork could not be produced.
rikyrah
May?
May?
PHUCK OUTTA HERE!!
SUBPOENA THEIR AZZES!!
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 4/25/17
Cummings: May take White House subpoenas to get Flynn docs
Congressman Elijah Cummings talks with Rachel Maddow about the frustration of the House Oversight Committee that the White House won’t produce documents on disgraced former Trump NSA Mike Flynn and what it may take to get those documents.
rikyrah
He. Earned. Every. Damned. Penny.
Liberal Librarian
April 26, 2017
So. Barack Obama is going to make a speech to Cantor Fitzgerald, for which he is going to earn an honorarium of $400,000. And Leftist Twitter is acting like he farted live on stage in front of 300 million people.
I will use this tweet as a condensation of everything this segment of the commentariat is saying:
She, “in general”, doesn’t begrudge politicians cashing in. But, for some UNKNOWN REASON, she begrudges this politician earning what his market value is.
Why could that be?
…………………..
Is it because, as a certain librarian said, he’s supposed to be doing this?
Barack Obama is supposed to put on a hairshirt and live in a monastery, apparently. Meanwhile, Bernie has a beach house. Sit down.
It seems like I have to repeat myself, because people just don’t get the message: BARACK OBAMA OWES US NOTHING. He’s not your magic Negro. He’s not your Daddy. He’s not your Chosen One. You put all that on him. He is a man who answered a call to serve, and served better than most people who occupied his office. And he served while being castigated from both Right and Left. Don’t forget, St. Bernard of Sanders opined that it would be right and proper were Pres. Obama primaried in 2012. Barack Obama had to suffer slings and arrows from his “friends” as much, if not more so, than from his “enemies”.
J R in WV
@Kay:
You could post your comments to the front page without spending any more time on it than your commenting takes. Some of them, anyway, would stand alone.
And Mark Davis, turds for brains. He really
thinksbelieves, (doesn’t, can’t think, obviously) that a real estate developer who is commonly known to be mobbed up in NYC, who has paid damages for fraud, brags in air about sexual assault, who has connections with Russia, is surrounded with other people who work for Russia, is a better president than Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton?Oh yeah, pull the other one now, it has bells on it! And that’s what we’re fighting, and some people agree with that 2 watt bulb.
Kay
@efgoldman:
It’s a basic state function to provide free and transparent elections. It’s like water coming out of the faucet when you turn it on. People should be able to rely on their government to investigate meddling in their elections in a timely and competent manner.
They’re muddling it all up. It isn’t about protecting the reputation of the FBI or intelligence services. It is ABOUT whether people know what is going on with their elections. That’s the job- clean, transparent elections.
Comey should have never made an exception because by doing that he left us vulnerable to HIS judgment. He doesn’t get to do that. All of those sayings? “Doing it by the book”, etc.? Those are compliments. Ordinary people rely not on individuals but on process. The moment he deviated from ordinary process he became part of the problem. He doesn’t get to be creative and “problem solve” and decide Trump is likely to lose so he should interfere re:Clinton. That isn’t his job. He works within the process. Only.
rikyrah
So, the Nazi in the White House has a phony PhD?
http://reynolds.web.unc.edu/gorka/
Gin & Tonic
@rikyrah: Speaking of Wilmer – I just got a fundraising call from the DSCC. About a minute into her script, the nice lady brought up his name. I interrupted her and said “he’s not a Democrat.” She demurred about how he is supporting some Democratic initiatives. I may have gotten somewhat strident in telling her that he is no ally of the Democratic Party and is in fact part of the reason we have Trump in the WH. I suggested that she recommend to her scriptwriters that they revise their message if they ever want another penny out of me.
Fucking morons.
Betsy
Thank you, Anne Laurie, for these bright points in the news!!!
Goku
@hovercraft:
Just wait, chump, Trump will show you and everyone else how awful he can be. Davis will still be repeating this shit to mutated rats in the radioactive ruins of his home.
So he’s a fascist, then?
rikyrah
@efgoldman:
you know I’m on Team Kay frontpaging again :)
hovercraft
@Kay:
I’m jumping on the bandwagon, yes! to having you back on the front page. No pressure ;- )
Goku
@Goku: minus the religious indoctrination in schools, but I’m sure he’s not sincere about it
artem1s
@rikyrah:
If a judge in Hawaii blocking EOs chaps their asses, imagine what a letter from Geneva is gonna do to them. HOLY CRAP. I love UN’s moxie. Can one of them invoke the 25th and take over? extreme circumstances call for extreme measures after all.
hovercraft
@Gin & Tonic:
Good for you, FSM help the poor person who calls me claiming to represent the democrats and mentions his name, it will not be pleasant.
dogwood
@Gin & Tonic:
I got a call from a different group a couple of days ago. I didn’t even wait for the caller to mention Bernie, I asked up front if he was part of this organization. When he included Bernie as part of the movement for “better” democrats I went through my objections and hung up on him.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
Our nation isn’t going to survive 26 more weeks of this shit. The entropic effect is accelerating towards maximum.