A neighbor across the arroyo has a big old cottonwood tree that is just gorgeous at this time of year.
I’m about ready for an open thread without politics, too. How’s the weather in your part of the world?
This post is in: Open Threads
A neighbor across the arroyo has a big old cottonwood tree that is just gorgeous at this time of year.
I’m about ready for an open thread without politics, too. How’s the weather in your part of the world?
This post is in: Russiagate, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
When news of the Trump campaign’s wrongdoing surfaces, like Julia Ioffe’s scoop today, my feelings are always mixed. On the one hand, I can go along with the predominant feelings of the threads here, the anticipation of the actors in orange jumpsuits, the anger at what they’ve done to our country, the hope that our national nightmare is coming to an end.
On the other, I feel a bit hopeless. The country elected this man and the doofuses around him. The media fell for the Russian tricks. And Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are much too busy looting the country for their billionaire sponsors to do anything about it.
And I don’t know how this ends.
Watergate was a simple burglary, directed and covered up by the President. This involves years of money laundering, ambitions of an emotionally and ethically deficient man and his hangers-on, and some things we don’t yet understand, like how those folks in flyover country like Jeff Sessions and Sam Clovis got so friendly with the Russians. There are multiple threads.
Robert Mueller and his team are pulling on some of those threads, and they will come loose eventually. People will be convicted. It may happen quickly or it may linger.
Some large number of people seem to be implicated. Most of those in the Trump campaign, possibly Ryan and McConnell. Most of the chain of succession is made up of the incompetent Cabinet officers Trump has appointed. I don’t know how we’re going to deal with that.
Then there is the question of how the public will take it. I think that this will not be a major problem. There will be a vocal minority that continues to support Trump, but most will follow the political leadership. And yeah, the Republican leadership stinks, but I think that will turn one way or another.
Yes, let’s enjoy seeing the facts come out and imagining the perp walks. But we need to prepare for a long and unpleasant slog.
This post is in: Dolt 45, "Lock Her Up!!"
I can’t wait to watch these motherfuckers get perp walked:
Just before the stroke of midnight on September 20, 2016, at the height of last year’s presidential election, the Wikileaks Twitter account sent a private direct message to Donald Trump Jr., the Republican nominee’s oldest son and campaign surrogate. “A PAC run anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” Wikileaks wrote. “The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC. We have guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump.’ See ‘About’ for who is behind it. Any comments?” (The site, which has since become a joint project with Mother Jones, was founded by Rob Glaser, a tech entrepreneur, and was funded by Progress for USA Political Action Committee.)
The next morning, about 12 hours later, Trump Jr. responded to Wikileaks. “Off the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around,” he wrote on September 21, 2016. “Thanks.”
The messages, obtained by The Atlantic, were also turned over by Trump Jr.’s lawyers to congressional investigators. They are part of a long—and largely one-sided—correspondence between Wikileaks and the president’s son that continued until at least July 2017. The messages show Wikileaks, a radical transparency organization that the American intelligence community believes was chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it had hacked, actively soliciting Trump Jr.’s cooperation. Wikileaks made a series of increasingly bold requests, including asking for Trump’s tax returns, urging the Trump campaign on Election Day to reject the results of the election as rigged, and requesting that the president-elect tell Australia to appoint Julian Assange ambassador to the United States.
Mueller knows who he asked about this. We will soon, too, but I am guessing Roger Stone is involved.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 101 Comments
This post is in: Republicans in Disarray!
I think we can cut the “if true” bullshit:
Beverly Young Nelson, speaking Monday at a news conference in New York with women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred, said Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16.
Nelson said that Moore physically attacked her in a car, grabbing her breasts and trying to force her head down on to his crotch.
“I thought he was going to rape me,” said Nelson, who at one point broke down in tears.
[…] Immediately after the press conference, Cory Gardner, the chair of the National Republican Senate Committee, said that if elected on 12 December, Moore should be expelled from the Senate.
It takes a 2/3 vote to expel a senator. I doubt the Republicans would have the votes on their side.
by Betty Cracker| 215 Comments
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Domestic Politics, Open Threads, General Stupidity
Might as well share the stupid here:
So handy having medical professionals in the family… pic.twitter.com/nxGSeBZd5l
— Betty Cracker (@bettycrackerfl) November 13, 2017
Favorite response so far:
Betty, congratulations on your increasing energy levels and lustrous coat
— Lowkey (@LowkeyTwits) November 13, 2017
Open thread!
by Betty Cracker| 237 Comments
This post is in: Election 2017, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, General Stupidity
Mitch McConnell bails on Roy Moore:
Here is the video of @SenateMajLdr saying he believes the women accusing Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexually assaulting a 14-year old and pursuing other teens. pic.twitter.com/169YSHlXym
— Nick Storm (@NStorm_Politics) November 13, 2017
Expect a stampede of denunciations and a wholesale jettisoning of the “if true” construction from what passes for “mainstream” elected Republicans these days.
Will Moore bow out of the race? He sure doesn’t seem like the type. The people who are calling Moore’s accusers liars don’t care what Mitch McConnell says.
I’m curious about McConnell’s turnabout only in the academic sense. Is this a last-ditch effort to force Moore from the race because McConnell has seen data / knows about bombshells that suggest Moore will lose? That would be my guess.
Anyhoo, we’re closing in on $15K raised for Moore’s opponent, Doug Jones, who is like Atticus Finch from the FIRST Harper Lee novel, only with a better jury pool. Help him whip the pedophile’s ass in the upcoming election if you can!
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance
I think the next big ACA story will be state based waivers. Liberal states have submitted Section 1332 waivers. Conservative states have submitted Section 1332 waivers. Hard to categorize states are preparing waivers. I think that the non-appropriation of Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) subsidies and thus the routing of payments through Advanced Premium Tax Credits (APTC) is a net benefit to waiver applications that have to meet strict federal budget neutrality guardrails but this is not an infinite benefit.
Andrew Sprung at Xpostfactoid is sketching out a potential auto-enrollment waiver. I think auto-enrollment is interesting and solves some significant political and policy problems if well implemented but I don’t think auto-enrollment is a plausible waiver pathway.
the Kaiser Family Foundation has calculated that more than half of the 10.7 million people who are uninsured and eligible for marketplace coverage can find free bronze plans in the ACA marketplace, and 70% can access bronze plans for less than the cost of paying the penalty for going without coverage…..A state could use an ACA innovation waiver, however to try an auto-enrollment scheme — especially a state in which a particularly higher percentage of the uninsured had incomes below 250% FPL.
I am trying to figure out how this would score and I am running into problems.