You’ll just have to watch this Don Blankenship commercial to believe it.
We’ll file this under “How do you manage to vote for Joe Manchin even though he is such a terrible Democrat.”
This post is in: Assholes
You’ll just have to watch this Don Blankenship commercial to believe it.
We’ll file this under “How do you manage to vote for Joe Manchin even though he is such a terrible Democrat.”
by DougJ| 96 Comments
This post is in: Green Balloons
What’s up with Kellyanne’s husband turning on Trump?
George Conway, a high-profile attorney and the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, on Thursday appeared to once again question claims made by President Donald Trump’s legal team.
This post is in: Open Threads, Post-racial America, All Too Normal, Are these Nazis Walter?, Clown car
Proud Boy in Seattle finds a sign he doesn't like during #MayDay & tries with all his might to rip it up. It doesn't work out. [h/t @nategowdy] #MayDaySea pic.twitter.com/Z2P0KhQw0J
— Ash J (@AshAgony) May 2, 2018
Darn you, modern printshop technology! It’s even better if you can listen to the mocking commentary by the film-taker.
https://t.co/TlxYN2lHYv is no longer accessible.
"It is our determination that https://t.co/6wdYoGhdjN crossed the line and encouraged and promoted violence in a direct and threatening manner," a GoDaddy spokesperson said.https://t.co/6VGbmwOE0e
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) May 3, 2018
… In a statement provided to BuzzFeed News, a spokesperson for GoDaddy said that Spencer was given 48 hours to transfer the Altright.com domain to a different host before it was removed…
Spencer told BuzzFeed News that he has not yet found a new host for the site.
“We’re working on solving the problem, and solving it in a permanent way. So this might take some time,” Spencer said…
The removal of Altright.com comes only a few weeks after Facebook removed two Facebook pages associated with Spencer. The takedown was first reported by Vice, which said the pages were removed after the outlet contacted Facebook about hate groups using the platform…
Tech platforms have been locked in a back-and-forth with far-right internet communities since the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer. The Daily Stormer, an infamous neo-Nazi website, has continued to have similar issues with hosting. GoDaddy suspended the site’s hosting the same week that Google canceled the site’s domain registration in August last year.
This post is in: Clown Shoes
This seems normal:
As Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt faces a seemingly endless stream of scandal, his team is scrambling to divert the spotlight to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. And the White House isn’t happy about it.
In the last week, a member of Pruitt’s press team, Michael Abboud, has been shopping negative stories about Zinke to multiple outlets, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the efforts, as well as correspondence reviewed by The Atlantic.
“This did not happen, and it’s categorically false,” said EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox.
The stories were shopped with the intention of “taking the heat off of Pruitt,” the sources said, in the aftermath of the EPA chief’s punishing congressional hearing last week. They both added, however, that most reporters felt the story was not solid enough to run. On Thursday, Patrick Howley of Big League Politics published a piece on the allegations; he did not respond to request for comment as to his sources.
Everything is fine this is what happens when the adults are in charge.
Only the Best People for the Borgia PopePost + Comments (105)
This post is in: Dolt 45
Now we know why Giuliani was blabbing on Fox yesterday and today:
Federal investigators have wiretapped the phone lines of Michael Cohen, the longtime personal lawyer for President Donald Trump who is under investigation for a payment he made to an adult film star who alleged she had an affair with Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the legal proceedings involving Cohen.
It is not clear how long the wiretap has been authorized, but NBC News has learned it was in place in the weeks leading up to the raids on Cohen’s offices, hotel room, and home in early April, according to one person with direct knowledge.
At least one phone call between a phone line associated with Cohen and the White House was intercepted, the person said.
Previously, federal prosecutors in New York have said in court filings that they have conducted covert searches on multiple e-mail accounts maintained by Cohen.
They learned that the Feds intercepted a conversation between Cohen and the White House, probably proving they were lying about Stormy Daniels and that payment, so they are basically trying to reset the deck by saying of course Trump knoew. Not that any of it matters from a legal standpoint, but they aren’t focused on the legality, they are trying to innoculate their idiot followers.
The way this played out is that this was probably a wiretap unrelated to anything involving Trump, and instead about Cohen’s numerous other shady dealings, and this just popped up. But what Giuliani and company want is for the idiot Trump supporters to think that this is a witch hunt by the crooked FBI and Justice Department and proof they are just out to get Trump. In actuality, it’s just what happens when a bunch of degenerate liars and crooks with overlapping criminal fiefdoms get caught up tripping over each other’s dicks.
Giuliani, who, in another lifetime, put a bunch of people like that away, so he should know better and probably does but is just a lying piece of shit.
This post is in: Goddamned Traitors, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Russiagate, Trump-Russia, Assholes, General Stupidity
There’s some controversy about whether Giuliani’s clusterfuck interview with Hannity last night was the deliberate launch of a new legal strategy for handling the Stormy Daniels thing or a misstep by a demented dipshit who got his client into an even bigger mess. Josh Marshall reckons it was the latter:
What you have are a half dozen brainstorms cooked up by a group of old men in a room used to bending reality to their purposes when something goes wrong. That’s much more difficult on a national stage in front of intense scrutiny. That’s what happened last night. Rudy Giuliani is far, far past his prime, used to the accommodating hothouse world of Fox News cronies and cash and carry deal-making in his law firm gigs. This was as sloppy as it looked and did his client no favors.
On purpose or not — it really is hard to tell, but that is always the case with the Trump shit-storm. I think Marshall is 100% correct about the Fox News hothouse. Here’s a clip that illustrates the confines of that noxious bubble:
Giuliani: "Jared is a fine man … but men are disposable"
?? pic.twitter.com/MaSA4N84pV— Nicole Lafond (@Nicole_Lafond) May 3, 2018
Partial transcript for those who can’t/won’t watch:
HANNITY (in a reverent, hushed, bewildered and horrified tone): “There’s a Politico report today basically suggesting that now Mueller would consider Ivanka Trump…a…a…a target.”
[Indignant digression about Hope Hicks, another woman in Trump’s orbit who gives the grotesque pair chivalry-boners.]GIULIANI (incredulously): Ivanka Trump?!?!? I would, I would, I think I would get on my charger and go right into their offices with a lance if they went after Ivanka.”
HANNITY: I, uh, at this point, sir, I honestly agree with you, and I fear for the country.”
GIULIANI: “Now, I think if they DO do Ivanka, which I doubt they will, the whole country will turn on them. They’re going after his daughter?”
HANNITY: What about his son-in-law? They’ve talked about him!”
GIULIANI: “I guess, uh, Jared is a fine man. You know that. But men are, you know, disposable.” [laughs] “But a fine woman like Ivanka? Come on!”
Set aside for a moment the creepy and sexist spectacle of these two infantilizing a 30-something woman who is (preposterously!) sold as a self-made business mogul and a person who merits a White House advisory role. Giuliani and Hannity’s musings about Ivanka demonstrate what I hope is a fatal flaw in the Trump administration’s political strategy for surviving a cascade of scandals.
The approach seems predicated on the mistaken belief that the view from Fox News holds sway across the land. Would millions rise up to follow Giuliani’s lead — mounting steeds, seizing lances and charging into Mueller’s office to defend Ivanka Trump’s honor? Outside of a relative few loud-mouthed Fox rage-bots, my guess is nope.
But it’s not surprising that these morons think this way — it comes straight from the top. To the extent that he governs at all, Trump governs as if the only Americans who exist are the goobers who support him.
That fantasy may survive visits to his self-branded clubs; it may stay intact while Trump tosses chunks of red meat at carefully screened audiences at rallies, and it may seem realistic while he’s viewing highly curated Fox News content. But I don’t think it’s gonna fly when people outside the Fox News bubble get a say this November.
Speaking for myself, it would make my fucking day to see Ivanka Trump lead a perp-walk conga line — to see all of these arrogant, corrupt, know-nothing motherfuckers swept out of power. I’m not so deluded as to imagine everyone in America agrees, but I’m damn sure not alone. And my friends and I vote.
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance
The Notice for Benefits and Payment Parameters (NBPP) is the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) annual playbook for running Healthcare.gov. Most of it is fairly boring mechanical changes to risk adjustment but there are always some significant policy changes in it.
One of the quiet policy changes is the expansion of a hardship exemption for individuals who live in counties where there is either no insurers or a single insurer offering coverage. Here is the language from the fact sheet:
CMS also issued new guidance today expanding hardship exemptions. Under this hardship exemption guidance, individuals who live in counties with no issuers or only one issuer, will now qualify for a hardship exemption from paying the Affordable Care Act’s penalty for not having coverage.
The no insurer part makes sense, it formalizes the procedure of what could be done in a bare county. I think pretty much every health wonk in the country has thought that if a county has no insurers, a hardship exemption would be granted on either automatic affordability grounds(divide by zero error) or on Secretary’s discretion.
The interesting part was the extension of a hardship exemption to single carrier counties. About a quarter of enrollees in 2018 were in single carrier regions. This was odd. An exemption allows an individual to not pay the individual mandate penalty. The individual mandate penalty zeroes out but is not eliminated on January 1, 2019.
I originally did not think this was a big deal:
This makes me lean towards thinking that these two exemptions are primarily messaging rules and not rules with significant pragmatic impact.
I think I am wrong. This rule has some pragmatic impact as it will worsen the Metal risk pool’s morbidity as more people can now buy Catastrophic plans.
Yet another hole in the hull — Single carrier hardship exemptionPost + Comments (9)