Or maybe David Anderson! Trump just now on healthcare reform:
“Now, I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”
Posting “Trump said something idiotic” observations is a full-time job that sane people declined midway through the campaign, but damn. I hope President Obama reads that and laughs and laughs.
In other news, Trump signaled his budget will propose a $54B hike in defense spending and slashing other agencies by the same amount. Because dog knows we need more warheads, battleships, tanks, etc., rather than stupid old healthcare, boring education, dumb environmental protections, assistance for olds and kids, etc.
Anyhoo, open thread.
David Anderson
I prefer day drinking over crying in the corner
The Moar You Know
Med school only takes four weeks, after all. Not sure what all the libtard whining is all about.
/Trump’s Brain
dedc79
1) More JCC’s evacuated today for bomb threats
2) Has there been a post on how EPA Administrator Pruitt lied to Congress when he said he never conducted state business on a private email account?
LAO
@David Anderson: Learn to multitask! I drink while crying in the corner. (I’m only half kidding).
Mustang Bobby
So they can’t just write a law that says “The Affordable Care Act is hereby repealed” and be done with it? That’s what they said, wasn’t it?
Another Scott
Yay! We’re finally going to close the “horses and bayonetes” gap!!1
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Gindy51
Duhhhhhh. What a fucking idiot.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@David Anderson: Why not both?
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): LAO beat me to it.
The Moar You Know
@David Anderson: Give John Boehner a call. That guy’s a fucking EXPERT on doing both.
Humboldtblue
It may not mean much in the end, but Rep. Peter De Fazio (SW Oregon) has teamed up with Sanders to introduce a bill that would strengthen Social Security
chopper
and these are the same fuck smellers who bitched about how the ACA was 800 pages long.
dm
Hey, Betty:
Frontpage this: https://twitter.com/jptrib1/status/835881057526378496
You’ll know you want to.
D58826
So Das Fuhrer is upset that the US doesn’t ‘win’ wars any more. Ignoring what ‘win’
measns in the 21st century lets go back to the war that just about everyone agrees we WON -WWII. After we WON that war we took the lead in developing a post-war military/economic/political strategy that has kept the peace in Europe, seen a major decline in war in most of the rest of the world and has ushered in a period of economic growth that has raised billions out of abject poverty.
Now obviously we did not do everything perfectly and we have made our fair share of mistakes since 1945 but the world is a better place than it was going into WWII.
And what does Trump/Bannon want to do – deconstruct the entire American lead/built structure. NATO/EU/global trade deals, all of it gone.
It is simply getting so depressing that it is painful to watch
Roger Moore
This is what happens when people who can’t afford healthcare because the NRA has convinced them it’s more important to expand their personal arsenal get their choice for president.
LAO
The simple fact that one cannot wave a magic wand and have all the Republican/Trump campaign promises come true, is a shock to the mouth breathers.
Although not quite appropriate — my favorite tweet of all time:
SiubhanDuinne
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
Been thinking about you. I know it’s been a difficult time for you, and hope you were able to lay your father to rest in a way that honoured him and comforted those who loved him.
Barbara
“Nobody” is what he says when what he really means is that he never thought about it at all before this very moment. He assumes that what other people thought or told him was meaningless and inconclusive because he is the only person who matters in his world. Only the narcissist in chief can determine when something is complicated.
David Anderson
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): I can do both, I just prefer to focus my attention on one activity at a time.
Baud
Well, when you consider the equipment we’re going to lose on poorly planned failed raids….
SiubhanDuinne
As for Trump, I think that must be a Fake Tweet™. He has told us for years that he understands everything about everything, nobody knows things the way he does (because he’s smart, a really smart guy, okay?), he knows better than the so-called “experts.” So Betty Cracker would be doing all of us a big favour if she would just stop disseminating fake stuff like this.
Barbara
@D58826: Yes, he wants to go back and unwin WWII — snatching long overdue defeat from the jaws of prior victory. Not that things should not evolve ever or existing commitments should not be re-examined, they should, but this evident glee at blowing things up is a transparent cover for allegiance to Putin and white supremacists. It is certainly not principled.
Baud
David Anderson is Jesus’s nym!
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
OT, but Chez Pazienza, of the Daily Banter and of the Bob and Chez Show, passed away over the weekend. RIP, Chez.
schrodingers_cat
Hitler comparisons for T abound but I think T is more like Kaiser or the Czar during WWI, a soft princeling, a fount of unworkable ideas and convinced of his own greatness. That this person was elected in one of oldest democracies of the world is what is truly sad.
Say what you will about H, he was not born with a golden spoon in his mouth.
Corner Stone
“Let them eat depleted uranium cake!”
JustRuss
While this is of course stupid, it will play great with his base, amping their support for him and keeping the rest of the GOP too afraid to step out of line. Really pisses me off that this incompetent boob is an effing genius at one thing: keeping the GOP lined up behind him. I just hope he’s toxic enough that we can flip the House in 2018, if we last that long.
Tractarian
At this point I’m just left hoping that, when a crisis inevitably hits, the president’s stunning incompetence and lack of preparation does not result in widespread loss of life.
liberal
@LAO: yeah, that’s a great tweet.
WP had an article on reactions in IA to Trump recently. (Not all voted for him.) Morans.
Corner Stone
But I…I..don’t understand. If Trump needed someone who thoroughly understands the complexity of health care in America all he has to do is reach out to The Wonk’s Wonk ™ aka ZEGS. You need someone to wonk? He will wonk so hard there won’t be a shred of wonk left for anyone else to wonk over. Because Paul Ryan cares, you know. He has thought deeply and cared beautifully about poverty, the poor, the poverty stricken poor, and those who are not quite poor enough just yet.
Ask Paul Ryan for The Plan ™ !
germy
@Mustang Bobby:
Why couldn’t it be as easy as when he ended his marriages? (Simply intoned “I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee” and then off for a round of golf)
I watched some of Pruitt’s speech (as much as I could take) and I swear I didn’t hear one word about the environment. It sounded instead like every speech I’ve ever heard from upper management assuring me the company was going to enjoy record profits.
germy
@Mustang Bobby:
Why couldn’t it be as easy as when he ended his marriages? (Simply intoned “I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee” and then off for a round of golf)
I watched some of Pruitt’s speech (as much as I could take) and I swear I didn’t hear one word about the environment. It sounded instead like every speech I’ve ever heard from upper management assuring me the company was going to enjoy record profits.
Thoroughly Pizzled
It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.
Gretchen
Gee, maybe that’s why it took a 3000 page bill that they complained so much about. And maybe repealing 3000 pages of regulations when they didn’t check into what those regulations were would have consequences.
PK
.
I think Barak Obama and around 65 million people knew. But since they’re nobodies in Trumpland, he is correct in his own head.
Corner Stone
@JustRuss: Not really anything genius about it. Keep the lizard brain mouth breathing contingent happy by setting them free to tip over headstones in cemeteries and all the elected officials know what’s in store for them if they step out of line.
ET
Only those people NOT PAYING ATTENTION or the truly STUPID would NOT have figured out that healthcare policy was hard.
dmsilev
That Tweet makes perfect sense once you realize that the only person who Donald Trump thinks is real is Donald Trump.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@SiubhanDuinne: Set for Wednesday. My brother will be here later today. The family has had a good time remembering things Dad said and did; he was a bit of a comedian (both intentionally and otherwise) so there’s a lot of material to work with. Mom’s holding up OK, but there’s a lot of activity at the moment. I know from personal experience what’s coming for her; I’m just going to try to help where I can.
I appreciate your kind words and thoughts, and those of the rest of you as well. Dad is at peace, and we will be ok.
lollipopguild
@Corner Stone: I love and am in awe of your phraseology! I am not worthy!
Brachiator
After the “Moonlight” Oscar flub last night, I imagined that I had slipped into some benign alternate timeline where had Hillary won the election.
Hell, I would even prefer seeing that other alternative time line, the one imagined by purity pony riders. You know, the one where “Trump, Clinton, no difference.”
Instead, we are back to the Madness of King Trump.
ETA. This extra defense spending. Will protect us from who?
Corner Stone
@Tractarian:
How can it not? If not immediately then following on, doesn’t it seem the most likely outcome?
After 9/11 Bush set in motion actions that killed millions of people. And W was a god damned towering intellect compared to Trump. Trump is dumber, more ignorant, less curious than W – basically across the board – *and* he has surrounded himself with dumber and less competent people. Probably about the same levels of evil intent, just in different directions.
Betty Cracker
@Tractarian: Yeah, that’s the best case scenario in the near term. The rest of the world seems to be figuring out that the lights are on but no one’s home in the USA, so they’re making plans to deal with global crises without us. But it’s difficult to envision a domestic crisis that Team Shitgibbon won’t make worse. If the Obama Doctrine was “don’t do stupid shit,” the Trump Doctrine is “all stupid shit, all the time.”
MattF
So, ‘nobody’ is now the enemy.
germy
Thousands of furious Trump fans can’t stop visiting a website that pretends Clinton won By Peter Holley
Amanda in the South Bay
@dedc79: that’s cool, did you know Trump got 306 ev?
lollipopguild
@Thoroughly Pizzled: They wear their stupidity and ignorance like medals on their chest.
germy
Calouste
Someone should hint to that ignorant shitgibbon that single player is a lot simpler than what the U.S. currently has.
amk
A know nothing pos feted and fluffed by the fucking media.
Yarrow
The follow up tweet from the same guy linked at the top:
You can click through for Trump’s actual comments, but the gist is he suggests doing nothing because 2017 is going to be a disaster for Obamacare, so they should just sit back and watch it implode. And 2018 will be even worse. And that as soon as Republicans do anything to it will become their problem.
He’s not wrong about all that. Edit: I meant he’s not wrong about that last bit. The rest of it, no, it’s not going to be “a disaster.”
hovercraft
Every fucking person knew it was complex. Did the fact that the GOP couldn’t figure out a replacement plan in 6 fucking years not give him a hint?
I know he’s dumb, I know he’s ignorant, I know he’s a buffoon, but every fucking time he opens his mouth, he shows that even my non existent expectations over estimate him. Who knew that he believes his own bullshit. He is dangerously ignorant
trollhattan
@JustRuss:
Well, it’s totally necessary if you consider that Obama slashed the DoD budget for eight consecutive years, and by “slashed” I mean raised.
Proposed bump should net six or seven more F35s.
MattF
@dmsilev: You must know the old anecdote from Bertrand Russell– A solipsist was certain that she was the only sentient being in the universe. The only question she couldn’t answer was why no one believed it.
skerry
@ShadowingTrump launched today. 15 progressive ex-officals and scholars have formed a “shadow cabinet”.
Calouste
@germy: Milo would be sacked within two days as a Starbucks barista for insulting customers.
japa21
Ever since 9/11, the standard mantra for the GOP has been ”nobody knew” or “who could possibly have known” whenever anything on their watch goes bad. Of course, when anything on a Dem watch goes bad, their mantra changes to “even a simpleton could have predicted”.
Yarrow
@skerry: Interesting. I seem to remember some discussion of that here as a conceptual idea to push back against the various parts of Trump’s appointed government.
Aleta
It’s not just the spending and his defunding what is worthy. This is the piece that satisfies his sex drive, will let him give dramatic orders to the military, use them to dominate world-wide under his name. He’s a sick sick fuck and he’ll bring years of death and grief if Congress even compromises on this.
? Martin
This is an interesting story to follow
The case regards the seemingly arbitrary and ad-hoc way voting rights are granted to expats and overseas service members in contrast to residents of US territories. It seems to me that USSC is going to have to find a way to reconcile that, and that could be a good precedent for voting rights more broadly.
glory b
@Gretchen: Remember Mozart saying his music had the number of notes it needed to have?
trollhattan
@Calouste:
Just the wimmens. “A mocha? You could stand to lose a few Missy, how about a skinny latte and a few spin classes?”
Another Scott
@Amanda in the South Bay: Of course, he really only got 304 EVs, not 306. He can’t even get that right…
Cheers,
Scott.
Corner Stone
Welp, we can pack it in and call off the dogs. GOP House Intel Chairman Nunes has just stated there is no evidence of wrongdoing by the Trump campaign re: Russia.
Now let’s get after them leakers!!
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: add to that the fact that 9/11 was sorta caused by W’s incompetence in the first place.
Another Scott
@japa21: It’s unpresidented, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@Yarrow: Trump’s framing is even dumber in context: He claims that he wouldn’t have to do anything but sit back and watch the ACA implode but that out of the goodness of their hearts, he and the GOP are not going to do that.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@SiubhanDuinne:
I have to agree, Alternative Facts(tm) teach us that 1) Trump has a HUGE brain able to taking in complex subjects in a ten second glance 2) Trump has ALL the best people, NO EXCEPTIONS.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): I’m sorry about your dad.
MomSense
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire:
Such sad news.
Steve in the ATL
@Another Scott:
I think that was the joke….
hovercraft
@germy:
If only, we were living that fantasy.
Instead a bunch of angry racists and misogynists* have saddled us with an idiot who has less comprehension than a chimpanzee is our president.
*I don’t want to hear about how I should try to understand that it’s more complicated than that. Willful ignorance and blindness is the same thing that afflicts this moron, people who refused to believe their lying eyes and ears are to blame for this. They do not get a free pass, by saying they wanted something different, a rich white man, is so very different from all the presidents that have come before.
satby
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Ben, I missed the news of your dad’s passing. Deepest condolences to you and your family. It’s good you can all be together to remember and support each other. So sorry.
me
Oh for fucks sake…
Another Scott
@Steve in the ATL: Hey, it’s Monday. One can’t be sure on days like this…
:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
Republican health care plan leaks, becomes subject of controversy
02/27/17 10:30 AM
By Steve Benen
One of the most important angles to the long-awaited Republican health-care plan is the context: Americans have been promised that the GOP alternative to the Affordable Care Act would meet a series of key benchmarks.
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump promised, “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.” After the election, the Republican president vowed, “We’re going to have insurance for everybody…. Everybody’s going to be taken care of.”
And it’s against this backdrop that Politico, among others, reported on Friday on the GOP plan that makes no meaningful effort to keep any of Team Trump’s promises.
…………………….
It’s worth emphasizing that this refers to an actual bill. Before members took a break last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) sent Republican lawmakers home with a series of talking points related to health care policy, including the vague outline of a GOP blueprint, but the draft that emerged late last week is actual legislative text, not a public-relations document.
And as is obvious reviewing the bill, it’s a doozy. By replacing the ACA with this Republican approach, the wealthy would get a massive tax break, while assistance to working families would be reduced and Medicaid expansion would face a big cut. To pay for their policy, GOP leaders intend to begin taxing employer-provided insurance – a policy that would cause massive disruptions and which many Republicans have already dismissed as a non-starter.
Aleta
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Take good care of yourself too please, as you attend to your mother and family. I hope you have chances for rest and good food. My thoughts are with you.
GregB
The question needs to be asked:
What do the Russians have on Devin Nunes?
Major Major Major Major
@me: sure, Trump may be taking away their awesome immigrants, but at least he’ll be bringing back the coal jobs.
Aleta
@Corner Stone: “no evidence of wrongdoing by the Trump campaign re: Russia.
Now let’s get after them leakers!!”
Maybe the Russian mob can ferret them out.
Baud
@germy: I like the concept but in reality the hate machine would have been revved up to eleven had Clinton won.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: It’s not a bad framing for the GOP, given their choices. They can do nothing and then their base hates them for not repealing Obamacare. They can make major changes and take away insurance from a bunch of people and then voters are highly motivated to vote them out. They can do what is actually the best thing and fix some of the problems, but that would probably include pissing off big donors and raising taxes, which would anger their base. Or they can do very small changes and try to rebrand it as Trumpcare.
The last one is their best option and Trump’s positioning as “doing it out of the kindness of our hearts” isn’t the worst political positioning. “It’s all going to fail anyway so we’ll fix it so it’s better while we work out a super fantastic replacement plan. Because we care so much about you.” Their voters are dumb and will likely believe that–will want to believe it.
The GOP is stuck with this issue. They created it. They own it. I don’t see Trump’s comments as the worst of all political positions for them. It’s still their mess, though.
D58826
@ET: If it was easy, Teddy R. would have passed it back in 1908
Yarrow
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): I somehow missed your comments about your dad’s passing. Deepest condolences. You have been through a lot and this is one more loss. Remember to take care of yourself while you’re taking care of your mom and anyone else.
Baud
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): I too missed the information. My condolences.
Woodrowfan
@lollipopguild: and they probably stick themselves with the pin trying to put it on..
Another Scott
One for Richard/David: Drum – WSJ: Republicans Give Up, Admit They Can’t Create a Non-Appalling Health Care Plan:
Good.
We can’t let up though. We have to fight them every single day…
Cheers,
Scott.
D58826
@rikyrah:
Which is why Obamacare pretty much left the employer-based system alone (other than establishing requirements for what all health ins. must cover). If it was that easy to change the employer based system they could have gone right to some form of single payer
Woodrowfan
I am so sorry Ben
Stan
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
Well, yes, they do. I know a lot of people like that. To be very generous, I think they get sick of highly educated people whose knowledge is valued more than their own (which isn’t necessarily right) but that valid idea (“Your education is not more valuable than mine, no matter what society thinks”) gets morphed into “Knowledge I don’t understand has no value”.
Reminds me of the jacksonians. Only this time it’s going to be worse.
Stan
@D58826:
This is scary but true – many of the Trump voters I know – the ones who actually know a little history – have this feeling that we fought on the wrong side in WW2. Seriously. They think we should have allied ourselves with the Germans to kill off the Soviets.
burnspbesq
If you’re wondering why Darrell Issa is saying he’s in favor of an independent investigation … Cook now rates CA-49 as a tossup for 2018.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott:
“If Obama hadn’t killed single-payer this couldn’t have happened.”
piratedan
still very surprised that they never took the expedient measure of expanding Medicare/Medicaid to all of the states, slapping a new name on it, calling it Trumpcare and thereby co-opting the kudos and reducing the teeth gnashing and hand wringing… but I guess their set of “principles and ethics” wouldn’t allow that someone actually get health care out of this.
Aleta
@burnspbesq: Heartening news. Thanks.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: For the sake of party unity, can’t we all agree to blame Obama?
mai naem mobile
Dolt 45 bases everything on “the black guy did it so it’s gotta be easy and I can do it.”
rikyrah
@chopper:
I thought it was 2000 pages long.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Just keep in mind, raising the DOF budget and paying for it are two different things. That’s been the Tea Tards game for years, authorizing all this spending and turning around and not paying for it.
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: They’ve inherited a good economy, so that might help them a bit in paying for some of these things.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: I thought for the sake of party unity we had to turn all party leadership over to non-members.
rikyrah
Trump’s pick to head Medicare and Medicaid, y’all
Wants to cut mandatory maternity coverage
CarolDuhart2
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Condolences, Ben. I lost my mother last year after a brief illness. Just take care of yourself the best you can and just do day by day.
CarolDuhart2
For the life of me, I can’t see why the Republicans insist on the repeal shit-show. Taking away things from people is never popular and from 20 million definitely political suicide. Who’s really happy about this? Not the insurance co who stand to lose money, not the patients who will lose coverage and service, not the hospitals and doctors who lose funding. The mouthbreathers who say it’s “Obama” like Pavlov dogs will not vote for a Democrat even if Democrats were the only party in existence. So if they left alone they lose nobody, I bet.
rikyrah
@dedc79:
As a Black person, I know the image, in my mind, of the persons calling in these threats.
And, they never look like Muslims. …
Is it just me?
someone on another blog said that they’re doing this because they want Jewish folks to believe it’s Muslims doing this.
What say you?
mr_gravity
If only we had a large square that our military could march through.
CarolDuhart2
@rikyrah: If so, it’s not working. Muslims have stepped up to the plate and helped out in a lot of ways, and vice versa. Those people forget that both groups know they are religious minorities and both groups feel very vulnerable.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Would you trust someone who voluntarily joined the party to lead it?
@CarolDuhart2: They are afraid of getting primaried from the right.
The Moar You Know
@Calouste: I worked at Starbucks for a year and a half a long, long time ago. No, this shitbird wouldn’t dare open his dumb mouth to a customer. He’d rape a fellow employee instead. The company wouldn’t do shit about that, and he’d figure that out very quickly.
Kenneth Kohl
It sounds like shitgibbon is aping NoKo’s budgeting philosophy
germy
@rikyrah:
lollipopguild
@rikyrah: The people making these calls are WHITE racist anti-semitic rear ends. I say this as a white person myself. I think most Jewish people know that it is the KKK/Nazi types that are doing this.
Corner Stone
@Baud:
Ahh, finally. *slips into warm, soapy bathtub*
hovercraft
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
Sorry for your loss. Sounds like he lived a good life.
Take care of yourself and your family.
lollipopguild
@mr_gravity: Trump Square?
socraticsilence
@Mustang Bobby:
The great part is their Obama era grandstanding (passing a repeal bill he vetoed) is coming back to bite them: virtually every right wing or right-leaning forum or blog I’ve read in the last few weeks has at least one post on “just putting the 2016 repeal bill back on the docket” while the cooler heads try to explain that they can’t do that and rationalize the lies about quick repeal.
mai naem mobile
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Condolences on your dad passing. Take care of yourself and your mom, especially after the temporary crowd of people leaves.
? Martin
Well, this is surprising to nobody. Sessions just dropped the DOJs claims that Texas’s photo ID law was enacted with discriminatory intent. I guess it’s all good now. Party on, Texas.
Roger Moore
@CarolDuhart2:
Because they’ve been promising it very explicitly for a long time. Backing down would be a huge loss of face. Of course they’ve also been promising to replace it for just as long, and that doesn’t seem likely to happen, either. Also, too, they really want to repeal because it would mean a big tax break for the ultra-rich, who are their main constituency.
Corner Stone
Party on, Martin!
Party time! Party time! Excellent!!
MattF
@rikyrah: Quite the contrary. Muslims have been openly supportive towards Jews these days. Which (by the way) should not surprise anyone.
Corner Stone
Speaking of Jeebus weeping, freaking Gretchen Carlson to MSNBC? The Greta hour is completely unwatchable, I honestly tried, Maddow. They brought in the Blonde Devil Goddess and stole my beloved Tamron Hall from me, now this? I’mma bought to go John Wick on NBC’s ass.
“He took that from me! Stole that from me! Murdered that FROM MEEE!!!”
Brachiator
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Sorry to hear about your loss, but good to know that you and your family are holding up well. Peace to you and yours in this difficult time.
Baud
I don’t follow Booman as much as I used to, but this seems like the definitive smackdown of any lingering “controversy” over the DNC Chair race.
Barbara
@Another Scott: In a very real way, Republicans need to convince their donors — the ones who thought they were buying the goody bags that were going to be distributed to themselves at the end of the birthday party — that they really can’t do what they need to without losing power. The grass roots compulsion to repeal Obamacare was always a construct of mostly affluent people who resented money going in any direction other than into their own pockets.
raven
Judge orders stiff sentences for two in Douglasville hate crime
Smart ass motherfuckers
As the defendants wept uncontrollably, a Douglas County judge on Monday sentenced two people to lengthy prison terms for their part in disrupting an African-American birthday party with Confederate flags, racial slurs and armed threats in 2015.
Superior Court Judge William McClain castigated the two, Kayla Rae Norton, 25, and Jose Ismael Torres, 26, for perpetrating what he called a hate crime.
He sentenced Torres to 20 years, with 13 to serve in prison; Norton was given 15 years, with six to serve.
Kayla Norton (Douglas County Sheriff’s Office) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Their actions were motivated by racial hatred,” said McClain.
Yarrow
@Corner Stone: So that’s Greta Van Susteren, Megyn Kelly and now Gretchen Carlson. Is NBC/MSNBC aiming to become Fox News 2016? I don’t think this is going to work out well for them. They’re going to lose their current audience and not really get a new audience. People who want to watch Fox watch Fox, not former Fox News hosts on MSNBC.
SiubhanDuinne
@me:
Heartbreaking and infuriating.
Aleta
More information on what happened to Henry Rousso at the Houston airport when he was “detained” because they didn’t understand a provision of his tourist visa for academics. (He was arrested, “followed by an extensive interrogation, the recording of my fingerprints, a search of the body in order. I protested, but “this is the procedure.”
He was fortunate because he was Caucasian and because the president of Texas A&M plus an immigration law professor got him released after 10 hours.
Barbara
@D58826: The so-called Cadillac tax actually affects a not insubstantial percentage of employer provided health plans. It is actually true that an unlimited level of tax favoritism for group health coverage makes it harder to reduce health care spending. The problem with Republicans making this point is that all of their proposals end up trying to reduce the favoritism not for the purpose of reducing health care costs and equalizing health care allocation in a more sensible and egalitarian way, but solely to enrich people who are already rich.
piratedan
and what all of this comes down to is essentially this…
because we elected an honest pol, who happened to be black… The GOP has moved heaven and earth to try and make whatever accomplishments he managed null and void. So, for the sake of their bruised racial fee-fees, a bunch of people who managed to have health insurance for the very first time at the expense of some taxes on the richest among us, have to lose that. Hell, these fuckers would bring Bin Laden back from the dead if they could.
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: American Jews aren’t that stupid. Shit, my little brother’s middle name is “Allen” and not “Alan” because my grandparents didn’t want people to think he might be a Jew. An argument my Boomer parents thought was reasonable. This country has a history and it’s not in the remote past.
SiubhanDuinne
@burnspbesq:
That’s great news. Do they frame it as Issa vs Doug Applegate, or vs Generic Democrat?
ETA: I ask because I’m pretty sure I read, maybe here, that Applegate plans to run again in 2018. Haven’t heard of anyone else yet, but it’s early days and geographically far from me.
TriassicSands
I am convinced that each day when Trump gets up his primary goal for that (and every other) day is to prove beyond any doubt that he is the dumbest person in the world.
His unbelievably (but perfectly believable) comment about no one knowing about the complexity of health care is just the latest in an unbroken line of colossally stupid Trump utterances.
If a person’s primary goal each day were to be to prove to the world that he (in this case) is the stupidest person alive, I suggest he would have said pretty much exactly what Trump says every day.
Even the Republicans — not known for their mental prowess — knew how complicated health care is — that’s one of the reasons why they can’t come up with a replacement plan for Obamacare. The other reason is that their goals and the normals goals of a health care plan/system are completely incompatible.
Normally, a health care system seeks to cover all the people. Republicans only want to cover the wealthy and those employed by large corporations. Normally, those designing a health care system will accept that it will cost a lot of money. Republicans insist that it be cheap. Normally, the designers will understand that for-profit insurance companies are incompatible with an efficient system designed to cover everyone. Republicans think that for-profit insurance companies will lower the price of insurance while raising its quality through a race to the bottom competition. And so on…
Note to Mr. Trump: You can stop trying to prove your stupidity. You win! You’re definitely the most profoundly stupid person alive. Or dead.
Aleta
@raven: Glad to hear this. I wonder who will sponsor their appeals.
“(McClain) called into question the Douglasville Police Department’s decision not to arrest any of the “Respect the Flag” group that day. He called it “inexplicable” and “a very bad mistake.”” Mystifying.
D58826
@Barbara: True but that was a relatively small number of plans. And the GOP was leading the charge to repeal the Cadillac tax IIRC. Now they want it on steroids. (sigh)
Brachiator
@CarolDuhart2:
It makes total sense to Republicans. Somewhere, maybe Maddow, I saw a clip of a Republican legislator having a town hall meeting where she addressed this. The Repeal 2 Step goes like this.
People who get medical insurance through their employer will not notice any difference. In fact, things might get better (how? who knows)
The 20 million who got health care through the Exchange did not deserve it because 20 million healthy people who did not need or want Obamacare were being taxed via the individual mandate. That’s not fair, is it? To tax 20 million healthy people so that 20 million lazy bums could get health insurance. So this is why repeal is essential. It’s the fair and right thing to do.
Mumble mumble maybe high risk pools mumble mumble or nothing, whatever. The important thing is no taxes. Everyone likes and will be happy with no individual mandate.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
That was Fake News. Clearly.
The Moar You Know
@Aleta: It occurred to me a few days ago, with these stories cropping up, that one of the first, and very difficult, things that an incoming Dem administration is going to have to do is more or less fire every single last ICE/CBP employee and start over from scratch. Don’t know quite how we’re going to manage that, but these people seem to have reason to believe they can do whatever the fuck they want these days, and they are, without regard for laws or courts.
Barbara
@rikyrah: Someone who uses the logic of “we’re going to show you how bad Muslim terrorists are by terrorizing you ourselves first” is someone who hates you. Why aren’t they out there terrorizing their own congregations or cemeteries?
MattF
@D58826: I’m just boggled by the idea that Repubs are thinking of messing with a big middle-class entitlement. Someone in the R party should whisper into the ears of the Republican powers-that-be, “You know, very wealthy people are a very small minority. They may be tastier than the plain old middle-class– but there aren’t very many of them.”
Barbara
@D58826: It’s more than you think and it expands over time. The missing link in all of these policy options is a more targeted method for reducing health care expenditures.
Baud
@MattF: They’ve come to believe, with some justification, that there is nothing they can do that will cost them the white vote.
dedc79
@rikyrah: Has the ring of kkk/neonazis to me.
Hopefully they’ll catch these a-holes and we’ll find out.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
I read the piece you linked and I sincerely thought it must be from some Onion-y site until I cross-checked against a couple of other papers. Yeah, I know President Bannon is attempting to “deconstruct the administrative state” by appointing agency heads who are 180° from the mandate of their departments, but at some point it just begins to seem like farcical overkill. But no.
Sigh.
rikyrah
Questions surrounding Trump’s Yemen raid linger
02/27/17 12:43 PM—UPDATED 02/27/17 01:07 PM
By Steve Benen
,………………….
Owens’ father, Bill, told the Miami Herald that he still has questions about what happened and hopes an inquiry will produce answers.
Bill Owens, himself a veteran, was on hand when his son’s remains arrived at Dover Air Force Base. Told before the plane landed that the president was en route, he told the chaplain, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to see him.” He went on to tell the Miami Herald, “I told them I didn’t want to make a scene about it, but my conscience wouldn’t let me talk to him.”
Ruckus
@hovercraft:
QFT
Of course he believes his own bullshit. That he’s joined up with a few other bullshit believers and gotten a few million to agree with his moronic level of bullshit is what makes him dangerously ignorant. We now have a pig ignorant political philosophy being led by a pig ignorant political moron, leading pig ignorant morons down into the shit, and the rest of us have to fight every step of the way to avoid their pig ignorant shit.
? Martin
@MattF: Republicans have always led with the idea that those entitlement programs were a sign of failure and that being on them was a sign of failure. That if they didn’t exist, there would be so many good jobs that nobody would need the programs.
Democrats focus on making sure everyone has bread, Republicans say if not for the bread, everyone would have cake.
So even the folks benefitting from the programs will vote against them because they believe the promise. Minorities are never promised cake by the GOP and are instead told they’re lucky to even have bread, so they don’t buy the lie that they might get cake. They know if they want cake, they’ll have to get it themselves.
Brachiator
@Baud:
I had a question about this part of his commentary.
What is it that these progressives want? How would we know who their real allies are?
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh
This Twitter feed is the truth.
Latino learns that respectability won’t save him.
Baud
@Brachiator:
I can’t speak for them, but I assume they want control.
They will tell us!
Aleta
Stories of ICE illegal actions from 2006-2010 http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-92645771/
ChristianPinko
“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile” — Condoleeza Rice
“Nobody knew health care could be so complicated” — Donald Trump
Ruckus
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
Sorry about your dad. Not easy that. Glad you sound as well as can be expected.
Take care of you and your family, that will help a lot.
You have a shoulder if you need it. Plenty of them actually.
rikyrah
‘Heil Trump!’: Brawl erupts inside the Minneapolis Institute of Art as protesters confront neo-Nazis
— Michael F Ozaki MD (@brontyman) February 27, 2017
Villago Delenda Est
Ben,
Been there, done that, with both parents. Never easy. But family sticks together, and yours is coming together to support each other.
Your Dad led a great life. Just look at those great kids he raised!
May the Prophets look over you from the Celestial Temple.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@The Moar You Know:
Med school only takes four weeks, after all. Not sure what all the libtard whining is all about.
When Trump University restarts, its new medical program will only take 4 weeks. If your willing to pay a premium it’ll only be 2 weeks.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Heard a House “Freedom Caucus” (free from what, exactly?) member claim insurance premiums would drop so hugely when the Free Markets ™ were set Free that even the poorest would be able to afford them. No mention whether magic of some kind were involved.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Beginning to smell like the Pat Tillman incident.
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: It is so right on that it makes me slappy, stabby, and shouty.
rikyrah
The Return of the Alpha Males
by Nancy LeTourneau
February 27, 2017 10:37 AM
During his speech at CPAC, Donald Trump said something we got used to hearing from him during the campaign.
That is a good description of Trump’s entire world view. Everything is about a competition to decide who wins and who loses. It’s why almost four months after the election, he is still consumed by talk about how he won.
But the statement above is about “winning” when it comes to foreign policy. That is why Susan Glasser points to the fact that White House national security aide Sebastian Gorka refers to the “return of the alpha male” as the crux of Trump’s foreign policy.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
It’s a very soothing site!
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: It’s in part because Donald is draft dodging dogshit who had a chance to show how big his balls were in the rice paddies, and declined. Compare and contrast with John Kerry, who wasn’t about ball displays, just accomplishing his mission with as much of his team alive and kicking as possible.
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan: Freedom from common sense
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: Gorka is a fraud.
schrodingers_cat
@Villago Delenda Est: Is he British, some article mentioned his plummy (?) British accent.
schrodingers_cat
@Villago Delenda Est: How come all these so called alpha males are ugly and fat.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, but he recently became a US citizen.
Ruckus
@Stan:
Then why are they so willing to back a man who is willing to sleep with the Russians? Like all of their bullshit, they are ignorant of their own positions, when they actually take one.
Their history consists of, whatever we want right now is right and what we wanted 5 minutes ago didn’t happen.
They all have the maturity of a 5 yr old, at best.
? Martin
@Brachiator: This is what I was trying to convey the other night. Two things:
1) Civil rights are inviolable to this group. There is no ‘we’ll tolerate this for a while and then change it’ for them. I don’t think comes into play here – Democrats are pretty unified on that front, though tactics do vary.
2) Most young people look forward with very little optimism regarding their quality of life. They see stories extolling how noble this guy is for walking 10 miles to a job that pays $3/hr + tips because he can’t afford a car. Where the story is trying to lift someone up for determination, it’s also serving to normalize that situation unless it also tackles how profoundly wrong it is for people to not have a living wage (and those stories never do). So young people see a future of long hours, low wages, no pension, no healthcare, and no affordable housing – because that’s the vision that the GOP explicitly endorse and which Dems oppose, but not with the kind of existential zeal that the young people need. They don’t see coal jobs as the future, they see college, and that was a HUGE part of Bernie’s appeal – everyone can go to college, and nobody will be poor for 20 years after due to debt.
Now, Bernie’s plan had a TON of unintended consequences that he failed to address (I’m an actual expert on higher education policy) but it pointed to a spot on the horizon that was much closer to where young people think we should be heading than where Clinton was pointing (which was still much better than where we are now, and which I thought was much more thought through). Perez is pointing to where Clinton is pointing, and he sees the unintended consequences of Bernies plan.
In short, free college has turned into our small version of repeal obamacare. A plan that glosses over the costs and unintended consequences but which some people have latched onto with fury. They mean well, but like everyone else they’re not particularly keen on the 26 page policy paper that explains it all. They prefer the tweetable version.
Barbara
@Brachiator: The comments give it away. According to some of them, not choosing Ellison was done solely to punish Ellison for supporting Sanders. Never mind that Perez did more for workers in his short tenure at Labor and more for civil rights during his tenure at Justice than Sanders has ever done as an elected representative from Vermont.
Corner Stone
@rikyrah: I would suggest that anyone who was intimidated by Pajama Boy may need to book some time in a safe space with a visiting therapist on call.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Where are all the “Benghazi” Republicans?
It clearly looks as though Trump wanted to prove that he was tough. He doesn’t realize the lives he is putting at risk when he plays toy soldiers.
stinger
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): To be remembered with love and laughter is what we all hope for. Sincere condolences to you and your family.
pamelabrown53
@Baud: #124.
Great link to Booman, Baud. I, too, have all but stopped visiting his site because his posters are just mainly insufferable purity ponies. Even at his gig at “The Washington Monthly”, he’s been erratic. However, the post to which you linked was well-researched and analyzed.
So thanks for bringing it to our attention.
manyakitty
@rikyrah: I’m Jewish and I never once thought it was Muslims.
Baud
@? Martin:
As you describe it, it sounds more like Trump’s “I’m going to bring back coal jobs” argument rather than “repeal Obamacare,” although I’m being nitpicky.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
No need for an inquiry, Twitler has determined what the problem is.
Steve in the ATL
@raven:
Good–love the message sent by those sentences. I imagine they would be reduced on appeal, if the defendants can cobble together enough welfare and disability checks to pay an attorney. Or perhaps the Sons of Confederate Veterans will provide counsel.
And does Jose Ismael Torres really think that the Confederacy/KKK/GOP are organizations for him? Not too bright, clearly.
mr_gravity
@lollipopguild: Thinking of something that’s both red and square……Kansas?
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat: @Certified Mutant Enemy:
IIUC he’s Hungarian, schooled in part in the UK, and the accent is a weird mashup that reminds me of WF Buckley and Sully. “dnexon” at LGM found his PhD dissertation (evidently from a Hungarian diploma mill) and it’s not looking good as he unpacks it. But it certainly explains the world view. I’ll give him this–he’s not the least shy about plopping himself in front of a mic or camera, unlike the rest of that lot.
? Martin
@raven: I’d like to think that would serve as a lesson to others, but I doubt it will.
Baud
@pamelabrown53: You’re welcome!
ArchTeryx
@David Anderson: No, crying in the corner is my job.
lollipopguild
@trollhattan: I am sure the Underpants Gnomes(TM) will come out at night and fix everything.
? Martin
@Baud: Yeah, that might be a better comparison.
lollipopguild
@mr_gravity: It would be big enough. Trump and his Ego would have enough room.
? Martin
@trollhattan: I think it’s freedom from economic reality.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@trollhattan: Gorka was born in the UK, his parents are from Hungary.
He went to “graduate school” in Hungary.
Villago Delenda Est
@hovercraft: It’s really easy to say that when your military experience consists of playing with little green plastic army men.
geg6
@rikyrah:
If they think that, they are more stupid than I thought. No Jewish person I know would fall for that idea. They know who their enemies are here in the US and it isn’t the Muslim community.
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
Bill Owens, Kazir Khan, Cindy Sheehan, Pat Tillman’s family, these are not “real”goldstar family members, they are questioning the behavior and motivations of a republican president, so they are not patriots.
pamelabrown53
@Yarrow: #127.
This past Dec., we went on a Christmas cruise and some RWNJ, launched into a diatribe about how NBC was a fake news source for liberals. He exhibited much rancor…and belicosity. I was shocked. Made me think that I don’t enough about what goes on in Right Wing Cray Land.
Anyway, it appears that NBC’s powers that be are spooked by a sustained vitriolic campaign. Sad! They just surrendered to the worst of America and still ill be rejected.
Gelfling 545
So even W, who has been so very quiet in retirement, took a couple of whacks at Trump. He may be the only person in the world truly grateful for Trump who will now hold the ” worst ever” title, but the Bush family doesn’t look like getting over Trump’s treatment of Jeb(!).
WereBear
Mr WereBear told me about the Oscars screwup: I fear that the Trump virus is spreading like wildfire.
Stupidy is the new competence.
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan: I have never heard this person because of my cable news and TV media fast. These days I get my news from Balloon Juice, Washington Post, BBC and Hindu (lefty Indian Newspaper)
trollhattan
@Certified Mutant Enemy: Ah, thanks for the clarification. He sounds like a fraud
talkinglying to the BBC because his accent comes across as “snooty New England Brahman” and not Brit.Barbara
@rikyrah: I read this article and I think I want someone to just kill me now. The notion that David Dukes has formed a group to protect the interests of those with non-Jewish European heritage — like me — is more than I can stand. I don’t NEED to be protected. For God’s sake.
SiubhanDuinne
@WereBear:
I just figured Putin had hacked PricewaterhouseCoopers.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
My very first encounter was a BBC World Service interview and I almost flew into the radio to strangle him.
schrodingers_cat
@? Martin: BS is full of bullshit. He has no idea how to deal with Wall Street either.
schrodingers_cat
@Certified Mutant Enemy: Any links to comrade Putin?
aimai
@Ruckus: But this is why his followers love him. He speaks their language–they don’t understand it either. They never have. They are like the people who say “Picasso paints just like my kid! I could paint like that, I betcha!” and then, when they come back from a lecture on art they say, to their admiring relatives “why, you’d never believe it but it turns out this stuff is hard! That’s why they call it art!” They broker knowledge/experience for their social circle first by pretending that anyone can do X thing, and then by explicating to their followers that its actually really hard but that they will stand in and do it for the rest of us.
Patricia Kayden
@Mustang Bobby: That’s exactly what they want to do but are probably not going to do because of the angry constituent push back they’ve been facing at town hall meetings. When actually faced with the prospect of losing healthcare access, it appears that many people are coming around to appreciate it and not wanting to see it disappear. Repubs are discovering that repealing the ACA is not as popular as Fox News has led them to believe.
lollipopguild
@Villago Delenda Est: And every time he plays “Army” he loses.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
This is fitting today. Ten minutes ago, one of the support staffers who works exclusively another lawyer in the office asked me if I do bankruptcies in Indiana as well as in Kentucky, because medical bills were up over $30,000, and that more were coming. I advised that I do, and said I’d be happy to meet with their client. He said “no, its for me”.
He was one of the biggest Trumpers in the office. Railed against Obamacare constantly. I pointed out that if he were in Kentucky with a functioning exchange, at his pay rate, it would have been free (KyNect has been a boon for us – all the support staff has been super pleased).
Jeffro
Has the Pentagon already started leaking that they don’t want/need an extra $54B?
Roger Moore
@Barbara:
I’m not sure that’s 100% true. There has always been a lot of support from people who believed that Obamacare was going to interfere with their own healthcare, either because they were dependent on government healthcare and thought the cost of Obamacare was coming out of their benefits- especially true from Medicare beneficiaries who were worried about how Obamacare took money from Medicare Advantage- or because they thought adding a lot of people would overwhelm the system and make it harder for them to get care.
The really big thing is that those worries have become less and less realistic now that Obamacare is in effect and they repeatedly haven’t happened. It was much easier to scare people about hypothetical future dangers when everything was still in the future. Now that those problems haven’t shown up, or haven’t shown up to nearly the extent they were threatened, the fear has died down a bit. Meanwhile, there are now people who know for damn sure that they’re benefiting from Obamacare and are going to fight to keep it from being shut down.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@schrodingers_cat: Any links to comrade Putin?
Other than via Trump, I don’t know.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@The Moar You Know:
You win the Internet today.
Patricia Kayden
@raven: Good. I remember when this occurred. Disgusting.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
That attitude does not bubble up from the bottom. It may not come from the very top but allowing it is a management issue.
The big take away here is that this didn’t just start, it’s been going on for decades. I’ve run into asshole BP agents decades ago and in differing countries. Not all of them were complete assholes and it can be a tough job. But like street cops, if the job you ask them to do is be a hard ass, at some time, probably very early in their employment, they will see everyone opposite them as the enemy. And that just isn’t true, not everyone is. Look at it the way conservatives look at almost everything. Their way is the only way, regardless of their inconsistencies, every thing and everyone that doesn’t agree with them is wrong and needs to be wiped out. And that is why they liked what the Nazi’s did, it’s why they like what Vlad does, those regimes reinforce their world view. They expect peace and prosperity from this, no matter that it’s illogical, and doesn’t fit into being an actual human or if this sounds better, history be damned.
NoraLenderbee
@The Moar You Know:
Some of them are, unfortunately. I had a few Jewish Facebook friends (now ex-friends) who voted for Shitgibbon. Some because they’re plain racist; one because she is scared shitless of Muslims coming to murder her in her bed. (I’m Jewish, too.)
The Moar You Know
@Gelfling 545: Saw that today. It’s…unusual. And I might add that I had a powerful and uncontrollable burst of nostalgia for the “good ol’ days” under BUSH, goddammit, which is just an indicator in my head that Trump is a lot worse and more dangerous than I’ve been allowing myself to acknowledge (hey, I have to get out of bed in the morning).
And yeah, the Bush family is down…but never out. And they are some of the last people in the world whose enemies list I’d want to be on. Bad hombres indeed.
The Moar You Know
@Gelfling 545: Saw that today. It’s…unusual. And I might add that I had a powerful and uncontrollable burst of nostalgia for the “good ol’ days” under BUSH, goddammit, which is just an indicator in my head that Trump is a lot worse and more dangerous than I’ve been allowing myself to acknowledge (hey, I have to get out of bed in the morning).
And yeah, the Bush family is down…but never out. And they are some of the last people in the world whose enemies list I’d want to be on. Bad hombres indeed.
The Moar You Know
@Gelfling 545: Saw that today. It’s…unusual. And I might add that I had a powerful and uncontrollable burst of nostalgia for the “good ol’ days” under BUSH, goddammit, which is just an indicator in my head that Trump is a lot worse and more dangerous than I’ve been allowing myself to acknowledge (hey, I have to get out of bed in the morning).
And yeah, the Bush family is down…but never out. And they are some of the last people in the world whose enemies list I’d want to be on. Bad hombres indeed.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Good.
The Moar You Know
@Gelfling 545: Saw that today. It’s…unusual.
And yeah, the Bush family is down…but never out. And they are some of the last people in the world whose enemies list I’d want to be on. Bad hombres indeed.
Barbara
@Roger Moore: Those other people were riled up by the usual groups that are organized around tax cuts. This is how faux grass roots organizing has worked since at least 1988, when pharmaceutical manufacturers funded the opposition to Medicare outpatient prescription drug coverage by convincing a bunch of wealthy oldsters that the bill was taxing Medicare beneficiaries in order to raise money to give expensive drugs to faggots with AIDS. It worked.
schrodingers_cat
@hovercraft: Yes he considers them losers and he is also envious, and he wants to lord it over them.
PaulW
@dedc79:
every time a Jewish center has to evacuate because of a bomb threat, they should send the bills – for the expenses of calling in the cops and emergency teams – to Steve Bannon and force him to pay for them. He wants to play the leader of the Alt-Right Neo-Nazi A-Hole Squad, let him pay.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
And far more important is that he doesn’t give a fuck about the lives that he puts at risk. As long as that life isn’t his, He. Doesn’t. Fucking. Care.
NorthLeft12
I think that this statement firmly establishes that Deadbeat Donald is Republican to the core.
WHOCOULDANODE??? Accompanied by the mandatory shoulder shrug.
CarolDuhart2
@PaulW: Great idea. Also if represented by a Republican, send a copy.
scuffletuffle
@rikyrah: Stomp loudly and swing a big dick…
Ruckus
@aimai:
Correct me if I’ve misunderstood…..
You are saying it’s the stupid being led by the willfully ignorant. Or do I have it backwards?
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus:
This is why dodging the draft was actually a smart move on his part. Fraggings don’t respect rank. An asshole SP4 can be fragged, too.
Brachiator
@? Martin:
But some of them don’t seem to care so much about civil rights as they do a very narrow vision of civil liberties.
If free college is the essence of what they want, this is also very narrow. And a misleading goal. And the “promise” of free college in a country where some elementary and high schools are failing can curdle into a cruel elitist joke.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
So I put this bit of joy up on the Book of Faces today. It seems to be getting some play…
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: The places where college is subsidized or free have difficult entrance exams and other requirements.
Brachiator
@Ruckus: RE; It clearly looks as though Trump wanted to prove that he was tough. He doesn’t realize the lives he is putting at risk when he plays toy soldiers.
And yet he fooled at least some veterans and veteran groups into thinking that he would be on their side. That lie is beginning to unravel.
sherparick
@dedc79: IOKIYR get out jail card.
rikyrah
Why did Keith Ellison lose the DNC race?
By David Weigel
February 26 at 3:37 PM
……………………
As one of just two reporters who went to every DNC forum — the other was Nomiki Konst, a Young Turks reporter who will also serve on the DNC’s “unity commission” to change the primary system — I saw angst about this reaction building for weeks. I also saw why 235 DNC members decided to back Perez. Had the race been shorter, Ellison might well have won. But a few converging factors blunted his momentum — and they weren’t the factors that got the most coverage.
DNC members were not ready to reject the Obama legacy. The basic critique of Bruenig et al is right: The leadership of the Democratic Party, nationally and in most states, has resisted acknowledging the failures of the Obama years. Brazile opened the first of the party’s four “future forums” by telling Democrats that the DNC “failed you” in 2016 and “got cocky about our invincible blue wall.”
But for Brazile and other Democrats, the death blows to the party’s 2016 campaign were struck by Russian hacking and by FBI Director James B. Comey. They have little time for the activists who say that the Democratic primary between Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Hillary Clinton was “rigged” — the “evidence,” the establishment wing says, comes from emails hacked from the DNC and the Clinton campaign and released at damaging times to divide the party. (This is separate from the issue of then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz scheduling only a few, late party presidential debates, which even Perez criticized. When he stumbled and appeared to say that the primary had been “rigged,” he explained that he was talking only about the debates.)
rikyrah
Totalitarian Trump White House Removes Democratic Governors From Joint Press Conference
By Sarah Jones on Mon, Feb 27th, 2017 at 1:36 pm
President Trump continuously claims to be the victim of Democratic obstruction while presenting himself as a “unity” president, but he spends a lot of his time dissing Democrats. In fact, he is doing what Republicans inaccurately accused President Obama of doing. And then Trump whines about the reaction to his insults and snubs.
Monday morning, Trump put an end to the bipartisan post National Governors Association and President press availability by shuttling the Democratic governors off site.
Zeke Miller tweeted:
Jared Leopold tweeted:
In 2014 during the press availability post NGA meeting, when governors of both parties spoke to reporters after their meeting with then President Obama, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) accused President Obama of having waved the “white flag of surrender” on economic growth. Did President Obama ban Republicans from the press availability after this? No, of course not.
……………..
So the NGA meetings were tinged with partisanship even though they weren’t supposed to be. But never has a president – especially in their second month of office – completely dissed an entire party and shuttled them away from the press availability.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
And I’d bet that more than a few of them were.
Thing is that if the shitgibbon had been drafted or joined, his education would have shoved him into the officer corp. I do believe that his utter stupidity would have saved him, he never would have made it past the first week. In navy basic there was a barracks that housed the discipline unit. The less than willfully stupid did tasks like scrub floors with tooth brushes and the hardcore stupid dug and refilled six foot deep holes in soft sand. Under armed guard. Anyone with more sense than a flower pot figured out that joining in with the majority was far easier. But there were always those for whom fighting to be the biggest moron was an honor.
It’s not often that we get to honor the biggest moron with the top job in the heap, but here we are. We obviously didn’t know that life is a mobius strip and we just are at the point where it turns back on itself.
rikyrah
Trump Plans To Take Health Care Away From 20 Million Americans And Blame Obama
By Jason Easley on Mon, Feb 27th, 2017 at 11:47 am
While speaking to the nation’s governors, President Trump laid out a plan for taking away health care from 20 million Americans and then blaming Obama and the Democrats.
The President said, “I say to the Republicans if you really want to do something politically something good, don’t do anything. Sit back for a period of two years because seventeen is going to be a disaster, a disaster for Obamacare if we don’t do something. Let it be a disaster because we can blame that on the Dems that are in our room, and we can blame that on the Democrats and President Obama. Let it implode, and then let it implode in eighteen even worse, don’t do anything, and they will come begging for us to do something. But that’s not the fair thing to do for the people, not the fair thing. Politically, I think it would be a great solution. Because as soon as we touch it, if we do the most minute thing, just a tiny little change. What’s gonna happen? They’re going to say, ‘It’s the Republicans’ problem.’ That’s the way it is.”
President Trump said that this is what Republicans can’t do, but what he described is the most likely outcome for Obamacare repeal.
Trump was actually arguing for Republicans not to repeal Obamacare so that they don’t get the blame for killing it, but at the same time, he was also arguing that they have to get rid of Obamacare.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: What I want to know is…really, seriously…WHY THE FUCK DO THESE PEOPLE EVEN CARE. Before Wilmer started ragging on DWS, none of them could have told you who the DNC chair was, or what the DNC does.
As it is, we get a whip-smart, progressive labor and civil rights wonk as the Chairman…and the guy the WilmerBros wanted to win because reasons is…not banished to the wilderness…not forced to eat shit and turn Republican…no, he’s the VICE-CHAIRMAN. And he doesn’t even have to quit his day job – you know, Democratic congressman? Of whom we need more, not fewer.
Jesus Chicken-Fried Christ. I just CAN.NOT. with these people anymore.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: I read that story easier, and this
is a good example of what I found wrong with it: It’s an opinion piece, and the opinion is unsupported. A HuffPo reporter asked actual DNC members (voters) what swayed them to Perez, and they talked about his managerial experience, and a couple were not thrilled about Ellison’s close connections to non-Democrats who think they should run the Democratic Party.
Spanky
@The Moar You Know:
I just dropped in during a mid-afternoon quiet spell, so this has no doubt already been covered, but …
They CAN do wetf they want, because they’re Trump’s brownshirts. He seems to have tested out various agencies very early in his term, and the immigration and border agents have (obviously) been very happy to oblige wetf Trump asks them to do, without regard to due process.
Now back to reading the thread ….
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Don’t care. Why are some of these people intent on reliving and re-fighting the Democratic Primary instead of moving ahead and doing what is necessary to defeat the Republicans in 2018 and in 2020?
Obama won his elections. What have these other fools done?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Miss Bianca: NPR had an interview this a.m. with a professional Wilmerite, Leslie Wimes, who was braying about the ESTABLISHMENT! And said not one thing of substance, and the interviewer didn’t try to bring any in. It was an incredibly annoying segment.
Millard Filmore
@Aleta:
Cuba could make a killing in the European tourism market with the right advertising.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
As the rest of the vets on here, or most anywhere else will tell you, there is no shortage of stupid among vets. Look at my post #232 or ask me any number of stories about the VA, which I’m at a lot more than I like to be these days. Had a dream the other day that I was at the VA and some asshole walked in with a trump tee shirt on. An old vet, obviously in his 90s, normally shuffled along with the help of a cane, was using that cane to beat the moron with the trump shirt on over the head and yelling at him to let him know that the old man didn’t fight nazi’s, and live another 60 yrs to come to the VA and find them in line next to him.
I actually woke up smiling.
Baud
@Brachiator:
QFT.
? Martin
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah. The challenge with something like free college is that we don’t treat higher education as a fungible commodity. We recognize (usually wrongly, but not always) that Harvard is great, and UC San Diego is very good, and Bowling Green is decent, and Cal State Chico is okay, even when studying the same degree. Now, nobody has EVER measured whether students learn more or come out better prepared among those institutions. For all we know Chico has the best educational attainment of them all.
So, if we make them free, how do we decide who goes to each? I will tell everyone straight up that nobody admits students the way that you think we do. We turn down quantitatively better students for quantitatively worse ones and do it on a large scale. It’s blindingly obvious if you’ve ever read admissions files (10s of thousands in my case) that the economic circumstances that a child grows up in has a massive impact on their readiness for college. A so-called ‘meritocracy’ for college admission would push the rich kids to the top and the poor kids to the bottom on a scale that you don’t see in any other public arena. Assuming that free college increased the number of students applying (which is daunting as most of the UC campuses each get 100K apps per year just at the undergrad level) then that stratification would only get worse. One equalizing factor now is that we can scholarship up the poor kids to make our public university more attractive than it is to the rich kids who will need to pay. We’d lose that important lever to providing access to as broad a cross-section of the state as possible.
Now, the solution to this is to increase supply, but in California that would mean adding somewhere in the neighborhood of a million seats to the higher ed systems to meet qualified demand. I’m cool with that – but that’s 30 major universities, and they don’t get built quickly, and they don’t get built inexpensively.
There’s a lot of really difficult challenges with doing this that I think are worth tackling, but they can’t get glossed over. They really matter a lot. If you don’t do the expansion, I guarantee that minority and first generation access to college will be gutted with a free college plan. The group you’re most trying to help gets locked out. Perez realizes this and went down the means testing route, which is one way to address the problem, just not the one that young people want. They want the massive build-out by taxing us old rich people. I’m fine with that approach, but someone in the Democratic party needs to package that and sell it, and nobody is.
? Martin
@Brachiator: Well, to be perfectly fair, the Obama years weren’t good for state-level Democrats. With a few exceptions like California, state level Democrats got gutted. The states that flipped are all republican controlled at the state level.
Look at the holdouts: HI, CA, OR, NV, NM, IL, MD, DE, NJ, MA, VT. AK, WA, CO, NY, CT, ME are mixed. Dems lost their blue wall by losing a the state level.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please Mr Trump, do this. Yes, do this!
And the Democrats better have this on tape. Trump got elected by some because he promised to use his genius business skills to repeal and to replace Obamacare with something better. So please let him and the Republicans sit back on their fat asses and do nothing. This is even better than obstructionism. Deliberate refusal to govern. Yeah, exactly the sort of tactic that we want to see from the master deal maker, Trump.
Meanwhile, the Democrats had better work on plans to revise, shore up and protect Obamacare. But they don’t have to make them entirely public. Just enough to let people know that they are not sitting back and waiting for Obamacare to collapse.
Idiot. He clearly does not realize that he is president of the United States. He really believes that the government is now a subsidiary of the Trump Organization and only officially Trump branded stuff matters. Unless he has personally created it and signed off on it, it doesn’t exist.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Hard for him to keep his stories straight when his head is so far up his ass that he can’t see or hear what he just said 5 minutes ago. It’s also why everything that comes out of his mouth sounds like a fart.
Now of course I’m being crude to make a point but the reality is that the current Republican president is the leader of that extremely undistinguished party, that he is a moron and that his party will follow him right over the thousand foot cliff he is standing at the edge of. (He of course thinks he’s standing above his adoring fans, because he’s a moron) They are willing, ready and certainly able to follow, shove and stampede over the edge with him. And the only thing we can do is get out of the way.
That and take pictures of them on the way down.
raven
@Ruckus: ding
raven
@Brachiator: some?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
How did the little Trumpling respond to your KyNect observation? Is our Trumplings learning?
Lyrebird
Another thing to cry over,
or get fired up about,
within those budget cuts:
In this RawStory quote of a CNN reporter on the Pentagon beat, another nugget:
Emphasis mine.
I hope that the reporter’s closing statement is a good sign… as others here have mentioned, it’s kinda hard to set up a dictatorship if you first tick off the military & intel organizations!
Lyrebird
@Ruckus: Thanks, and go dreamed-up geezer, go!
different-church-lady
@ChristianPinko: Yup. If a republican can’t anticipate it, then it is impossible for anyone to anticipate it. Funny how that works.
Brachiator
@? Martin:
How is Obama or some Obama policy responsible for this?
To say that this happened during the Obama years is like saying California had a drought during the Obama years.
different-church-lady
@rikyrah: “Here, hold my beer and watch this…” Gorka continued.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@? Martin: True, but… that’s a parallel argument to the people who push the idea that Trump’s victory was a rebuke of Obama. I think a lot of those states “we” lost were long overdue realignments. WI and OH were off-year victories, in 2010 people were still pissed about the economy, and I know Walker at least ran big on the (moronic) idea that the key to recovery was to cut gov’t spending. I assume Kasich did too. In Illinois (IIRC) a historically weak candidate lost very narrowly to a self-funding billionaire.
I think in WI Dems lost the last two Supreme Court elections, and in one they didn’t even field a candidate. I don’t like DWS, but I don’t think she can be blamed for that.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@rikyrah:
Lets be clear – those were the governors of big fucking states with a shitton of the American people living in them.
America’s money, right there.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Obama is all powerful and a weakling at the same time. BS acolytes exist to supply talking pts to Republicans. Crooked Hillz, Weak O, rigged elections etc etc.
? Martin
@Brachiator: I’m not saying Obama is at fault here, I’m saying that the people at the DNC can’t exactly point to Obama’s victories as evidence that they did a good job, or even the Obama strategy being good because either they didn’t apply it to the states, or its a strategy that fails at the state level.
All I’m saying is that the last 8 years are a really mixed bag for Democrats, and we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking otherwise.
Mike in NC
$54B would be a sweet investment on a new Air Force base. Name it Trump AFB and of course it would have a yooouge and very classy golf course. The PX would only carry Ivanka’s merchandise (take that Nordstrom’s!).
? Martin
@Lyrebird: Reporters need to ask him why defeating ISIS is delayed.
Trump said he’d have ISIS defeated within 30 days. It’s now past that. What’s the holdup?
dr. bloor
@Brachiator: One of the post election criticisms of Obama is that he was too focused on staying “above the fray” and neglected party building responsibilities. There’s more than a little “why didn’t he use the bully pulpit to create single payer health care” logic to it.
I for one think competence in government should be it’s strongest, most evident selling point, although he arguably was less “brand conscious” than his predecessors.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Not learning at all. Just eager to have his health issues overtake him and die, it seems. Seemed weirdly enthusiastic, frankly.
He’s a late 50s evangelical originally from Eastern Kentucky, former drinker, very closeted uber gay who lives with and takes care of his mother.
I just wish him and his Jesus wish would stop voting.
Iowa Old Lady
There were only four people in my aerobics class this morning, and all of us were rolling our eyes at Trump, even the guy who says he’s met Grassley and kind of likes him. Thank god because the warmongering and stupidity over healthcare scared the crap out of me.
Craig McMahon
@? Martin: An excellent point, but I did want to point out that I’m not sure there was any way to stop an anti-incumbent wave in 2010. While the Recession officially ended in June of 2009, things were still pretty bad for a lot of people in the fall of 2010. The result was a lot of GOP pickups, which in turn led to massive redistricting after the 2010 Census.
That doesn’t absolve Obama and co of all responsibility in failing to build on their gains in 2008, of course, but it’s been a pretty big deal at the state level. I posted this morning that in my home state of NH, the GOP currently controls the state senate 14-10. However, if the state senate districts were what they were pre-2010 redistricting and everyone voted exactly as they voted this fall, the Dems would control the state sen by a margin of 13 to the GOP’s 12. When the NH Dems controlled the state senate, there was no serious effort to gerrymander the hell out the state. It doesn’t seem to be a priority for Dems.
In a lot of ways I think the Democrats are like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. We think “THIS time, the Republicans are going to engage with seriously and even if we disagree, it’ll be in good-faith” and then “AUGH! they didn’t have any intention of good faith at all!”
I once said to a colleague during the general election that I wished the Democrats were more willing to fight dirtier–nothing illegal, of course, but dirtier. She responded that Democrats aren’t like that–we fight hard but fair, and want to follow the agreed upon rules, win clean, and govern with some semblance of bipartisan respect for the GOP minority.
I think that it’s a very admirable sentiment, but a luxury we can ill afford. I don’t think for a second the GOP cares about “playing fair.” Rather than reform their platform, they’d rather suppress the votes of people who disagree with it. When they win, it’s “we won, get over it.” When WE win, it’s “you need to work with us! Bipartisanship!” The sort of implicit assumption that the Democrats need to be the “bigger person” leads to nothing but crappy NYT profiles on empathizing with Trump voters.
For my part, I’m sick of being the bigger person. In 2002, a couple of GOP operatives in NH jammed phone lines leading up to election day, seriously hurting the GOTV efforts and certainly impacting a close race (final margin was ~20k votes). People went to jail over it. The RNC paid for the defense of at least one of the people charged, and later had to pay the NH Dems a six-figure settlement in a civil suit.
They are not the loyal opposition. They are not principled crusaders for smaller, smarter government. They are not motivated by a deep concern for Traditional Morality and American Values.
They’re bullies, kleptocrats, and grifters, and we should run them out of government on a rail.
I have incredible respect for Mrs Obama, but no, I don’t want to go high when they go low. I’m through with the high road. The high road got us a gerrymandered House, a stolen Presidential election, and James Freaking Comey.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Ha! Sounds like a sweet dream.
I do hope that other vets are starting to see through the smoke that Trump tried to blow up their asses.
different-church-lady
@? Martin:
“Nobody knew
health caredefeating terrorists could be so complicated.”CarolDuhart2
@dr. bloor: I’m tired of this “Obama didn’t do enough party building” . The Republicans realized that this sort of thing requires full-time professional operatives and media work, and hired people who can do this all day, leaving the professional politicians time to do their thing. If Obama had tried this, he would have only been able to give it a cursory amount of his time. Notice that while Republican politicians will do a party line, they aren’t the ones actually creating the material. They just echo what the creators say and do.
The Moar You Know
@schrodingers_cat: He knows enough to cash $600k worth of their checks to buy a vacation home. Wish I knew how to deal with Wall Street that badly.
different-church-lady
@? Martin:
Democrats fooling themselves into thinking one thing or another is a huge part of the reason I stayed away from this place for three months.
Kay
It’s the gross arrogance that says everyone can do everyone’s job BUT BETTER.
“All you have to do is…” We’re a whole country of people like that. Loud mouth know it alls. It’s not appealing.
Trump spent the whole campaign calling people “dummies” and his supporters ate it up. It’s gross. Bragging and bullshitting isn’t admirable.
Barbara
@Brachiator: I am not going to wholly blame Obama, but it is true that most of the organizing energy in the Democratic party in 2008 revolved around Obama. He built an incredible operation, and then mostly put it on ice. He is not responsible for blue dogs running away from the ACA. He is not responsible for tea party eruptions. And so on. But to the extent that he might have provided more of an institutional counterweight through the equivalent of a political campaign to support the ACA, he didn’t do it.
The Moar You Know
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: No wonder the poor fucker wants to die, he’s already living in hell.
Baud
@Craig McMahon: It’s kind of a false dichotomy. There are many high roads and many low roads. No one really knows what combination of those works.
debit
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): So very sorry to hear about your loss. You and your family are in my thoughts.
MattF
@different-church-lady: That ‘nobody’ is a tricky fellow. Knows all sorts of things.
Ruckus
@Kay:
You do know of course that everyone else’s job is a lot easier than mine, don’t you? A classic case of human failing, thinking that everyone else is dumber than them. And a change from when a least lip service was paid to a very reasonable management (I think there was a five minute period when this was true!) concept and that is to hire people smarter than you, they will make you look good by actually doing the work properly. Of course one still has to let them shine and acknowledge them for having done so, something that I’d bet the majority of managers fail at constantly.
japa21
@Craig McMahon: 2010 was a combination of things. A lot of disappointed Dems either sat out the election or voted third party. The Koch sponsored Tea Party was on a roll. But most importantly, a lot of Dem candidates ran away from Obama. Obama was out there campaigning for candidates that were willing to have him. But many did ‘t and very few defended either Obama Care or the stimulus. Instead of an aggressive offense or even a spirited defense, many candidates just went into sleep mode. A great example was Melissa Bean in Illinois, which is why we ended up with Joe Walsh.
Tenar Arha
@me: Yeah, I headdesk at these articles, a lot.
Barbara
@? Martin: The first time I heard Sanders promise free tuition, my immediate thought was that he was utterly tone deaf to the concerns of anybody who was not firmly ensconced in the middle class. Focusing on college by allocating massive amounts of funding without even paying lip service to K-12 basically guarantees that Sanders would lock in current educational advantages to those who have access to high quality pre-college education. It would subsidize better off students who least need subsidies. Current students might object that they are not well off and need the help, but the dynamic is not static. Many students who are currently in a public university would not have gotten in if they had to compete with three times as many applicants for what would now be free tuition. To me this is blindingly obvious, and probably obvious to many people struggling to get their kids into better K-12 schools, but apparently it is not obvious Sanders, or he doesn’t care.
Brachiator
@? Martin:
I agree. I just don’t see the connection to anything that Obama did or did not do.
@dr. bloor:
Yeah, I guess Obama was supposed to govern, build the party, and deal with Republican obstructionism all at the same time.
What was the Democratic Congressional leadership supposed to be doing while all this was going on?
Also, as an aside, the single payer thing was and always will be bullshit, but some of Obama’s opponents could not let it go.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): My condolences.
Shell
Who is the Rep apologist, frequently on CNN, whose response to ANY criticism of Trump is “The Democrats are still bitter that Hillary lost..”
waysel
@? Martin: Obama was sorta busy at the time, IIRC. And didn’t a fairly insurmountable amount of Koch brother money influence the turnover of many of these states?
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Having to pop in and out – phones and doorbells ringing to beat the band. Thank you all, will check in as I can.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
Interesting. I see what you’re saying. Thanks for the perspective on this.
Miss Bianca
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Do I understand correctly that your father died? My condolences..
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Shell:
All of them, Katie!
J R in WV
@Stan:
Allied with the German Nazis to kill off the Soviet Russians…………………………..
How fuqin stupid is that? We beat the Germans, and then we beat the Soviet Union years later. I thought the Republicans believed (stupidly) that Ron Demento Reagan beat the Soviet Union single-handed!!!
There is no limit to Republican stupid. Nope, can’t find one. Every day they dig that hole of stupid deeper, and in surprising directions.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
There are probably 6 or 8 Jewish people stupid enough to believe that good ole red neck haters are NOT doing this, that the real haters are American Muslims.
The rest of the world, all of it, knows it’s mouth-breathing Republicans, who don’t vote because they don’t know how, doing all of this anti-semitic crazy hater stuff. And the racism thing, that too.
J R in WV
@? Martin:
Perhaps there is some organization, in Texas, with standing, who can take on the legal struggle to have discriminatory voting laws, and gerrymandering declared unconstitutional and illegal. I wonder who that might be….
Maybe the Texas Democratic Party, all 6 of ’em? Kidding, there are a lot of Texans who are Democrats. Or the ACLU with the SPLC…
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Miss Bianca: Yes, and thank you.
J R in WV
@SiubhanDuinne:
I kicked in a llittle $$ to Col Doug Applegate, and will again. I would do cold calling for him if he does a web page to support that. Working phones for Hillary’s campaign, they had a slick looking web page to give you the next number to call,, and an input for what you found in each call, Dem, Strong Dem, neutral, Republican, or Strong Republican.
But we found that many people, esp strong Dems, had been called several times before. What we needed was a good page of facts to inform neutral or weak R voters about Hillary’s actual policies, and for the system to keep people who had been called already from being called again if they told their caller they were with the Democratic party.
I think the contracting house that provided data services to the DNC or Hillary’s campaign was ripping them off by claiming things their tool didn’t really do. Wonder how Obama’s tools worked? If they still exist?
Steve in the ATL
@J R in WV:
Shit, I personally know that many Jewish people who believe that. It boggles my mind. They don’t even respond to other Jewish people who try to set them straight.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
These progressives are Republican (or perhaps Russian) Trolls. No question about it. They hate Democracy and will do anything to break it.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
In Europe many of the teachers of English are British,, with those accents. I note that some South Indian folk seem to have a bit of British in their accents as well. Depends on who was teaching the teachers in many cases, no doubt.
But Gorka is just a nazi fraud, whatever his accent. I’m sure Trump thinks that makes him smart, being able to remember those “odd Oxfordian” pronounciations.
Little Bear
@JustRuss: justruss, you ( probably unwittingly) offend the glorious, beautiful, wholesome boob!