She’s arranged tournaments at Trump golf courses, served as the liaison to the Trump family during his presidential campaign, and even arranged Eric Trump’s wedding.
Now President Trump has appointed longtime loyalist Lynne Patton — who has zero housing experience and claims a law degree the school says she never earned — to run the office that oversees federal housing programs in New York.
Patton was appointed Wednesday to head up the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Region II, which includes New York and New Jersey, where she’ll oversee distribution of billions of taxpayer dollars.
Given Trump’s extensive mob ties, I bet we can all guess where some of that money is going. I wish Wayne Barrett were still alive.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
Just watch. What happened over in the UK is going to happen in NYC.
Also too, Trump just can’t help but dig himself deeper.
LAO
This is going to end well.
SFAW
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
You talking Grenfell? Or something else?
schrodingers_cat
T regime appointments, its not what you know but who you know.
dr. bloor
Eric Schneiderman will be dead of sheer exhaustion by the time this regime is deposed.
Bruce K
Oh, goody. Someone else for Eric Schneiderman to give the once-over. I wonder if Sing Sing accepts female convicts?
The Dangerman
If ever Team Peach Pustule is fully investigated, we will have to build new prisons.
Villago Delenda Est
The swamp is opening up a franchise in New York, it seems.
This is what crony capitalism mixed with kleptocracy looks like.
SFAW
@LAO:
I was going to say “You could always move to LI,” but I guess she’d cover that area, too.
But Hitlary’s e-mails!
Betty Cracker
Doesn’t one of the worthless Trumps have a dressage event ringmaster to appoint to head up FEMA? Kinda need someone in that spot. Hurricane season and all…
SFAW
@The Dangerman:
Good luck finding enough land for all that would be required.
If it were the 18th or 19th Century, we could ship them all to Oz. (Sorry, Trowel!)
hovercraft
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
They have to get by the city and state regulations. Wait what am I saying, NY and NJ are two of the most corrupt places in the country, hence the endless parade of officials being frog marched in front of the cameras. The only possible saving grace is that we hate Twitler so much, they may throw up road blocks just to fuck with her and him.
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
Yes! Michael Brown. Bush praised him for his Katrina relief, “You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie”.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@SFAW: Grenfell Tower. It would fit Donnie’s incompetence. If the regs hadn’t been in place, I firmly believe he would have insisted that his buildings be built with the cheapest materials available
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
Omarosa has been keeping a pretty low profile recently, perhaps she’s ready for more high profile position? Surely her Apprentice experience would fully qualify her? She’s proved herself to be a loyal serf.
Nicole
@Betty Cracker: No, but the owner of this year’s winner of the Kentucky Derby was his first choice for secretary of the Army. Truth.
The guy turned it down because he wasn’t willing to divest himself of his business holdings. That was back in February, when he didn’t realize he wouldn’t have to; nobody else did.
amk
Seanly
My favorite part is how Trump seems to think that HUD is some kinda African American federal agency. Almost as sacrosanct to him as his insistence that people owe the USA money directly for not paying enough into NATO.
Aleta
So now can they stall her participation in the investigation of the Eric foundation? By trying to claim executive privilege because she’s now in the federal branch? (I seem to recall Nixon tried this for someone and took it to the Supreme Court before he lost.)
amk
Nicole
@bemused: Though, technically, he wasn’t involved in Dressage; he was a judge of Arabian horses. So basically, an equine beauty pageant guy. If it’d been a Democratic administration, I’m sure FOX would have been all over his potential ties to terrorism, what with the Arab(ian) connection and all.
Amir Khalid
As hire As, Bs hire Cs, the saying goes; Trump is an F.
SatanicPanic
@Seanly: yeah, he’s got two black people in his entire admin, and they’re both in HUD and neither has any relevant experience. But they’re black so they must know stuff about urban areas appears to be Trump’s thinking.
gene108
@Nicole:
I believe the rank-and-file Cabinet Secretaries still have to fill out financial disclosure forms. Some potential Trump picks do not want to do that.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
Wayne Barrett is gone, but David Cay Johnston covered Trump for decades and wrote a book on him, and is still with us.
This 2015 piece of his is like the Rosetta Stone of Trump scandals, and many of these questions are still unanswered:
http://www.nationalmemo.com/21-questions-for-donald-trump/
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Seanly: The tokenism was embarrassingly lost on me until you mentioned it. Same person during the campaign who tried to act as a shield for Trump and his supporters against accusations of rascism
germy
@Seanly:
Well yeah. It’s got the word “urban” in it, so he thinks it’s America’s Dept of Black People.
It sounds like a joke, but I’m serious.
rikyrah
Cole,
I hope you and Steve have come to some sort of agreement :)
rikyrah
I read this on twitter yesterday.
Burns me up.
Putting completely unqualified people over there, to be the fall guys for when they loot HUD.
GregB
The coarse cynicism of this man and his lackeys, stooges and dupes is just so grotesque.
gene108
@rikyrah:
I wonder how many HUD contracts get routed to the Trump Org and Kushner’s companies…
HUD is some low hanging fruit for those crooks.
Kay
They should tell the public who is in charge of the investigation and what kind of resources they have devoted- whether it’s a priority or not. They should do that simply because voters have a vital interest in elections. If this were a state investigation- if there were proof that someone had interfered in “a” (single) state election process, the state official in charge would have to show voters that the state had it in hand- were working on it with some urgency because obviously there are always elections around the corner. That would be routinely expected. They don’t seem to have any sense of the PUBLIC interest in this investigation. The Senators said it at the hearing(s) but they have to SHOW it to people.
rikyrah
UW professor got it right on Trump. So why is he being ignored?
Originally published June 14, 2017 at 6:00 am
Professor Christopher Parker was one of the few to foresee Donald Trump’s win — and the likely reasons why. Not that people want to hear about it.
By Danny Westneat
Seattle Times staff columnist
Ask Google the question “who predicted Trump winning the election?” and you get 19.3 million results.
Most are about professors with oddball prediction systems, or the rare pollster who got it right, or the liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, who famously sent out a mass gut-level warning about Donald Trump’s appeal last summer.
One name that doesn’t come up: Christopher Parker.
“Nobody in the media has called me up and said ‘you were right,’ ” says Parker, a political-science professor at the University of Washington for the past 11 years.
Parker has his suspicions about why he’s been overlooked, which we’ll get to in a minute. But first: He correctly foresaw in September 2015 that Trump would win the GOP nomination — eight months before Trump clinched it.
Then, last September, Parker told anyone who would listen, which was not many, that Trump could well win the presidency. And now, most important, new research shows Parker was more than just prescient about the outcome. He was nearly alone in nailing why it would happen.
“It’s what the data showed and what history would suggest, so I didn’t see it as some out-there guess,” Parker shrugs now. “It seemed like a no-brainer to me.”
On Monday researchers released the most comprehensive survey data yet aimed at understanding what actually went down in Election 2016. The group includes academics but also right-leaning outlets such The Heritage Foundation and left-leaners like the Center for American Progress.
What’s different about the Voter Study Group is that it tracks the attitudes and votes of the same 8,000 adults since before the 2012 election, and then throughout the 2016 election. So it’s like the nation’s largest, longest political focus group.
The story we’ve told ourselves — that working-class whites flocked to Trump due to job worries or free trade or economic populism — is basically wrong, the research papers released this week suggest.
They did flock to Trump. But the reason they did so in enough numbers for Trump to win wasn’t anxiety about the economy. It was anxiety about Mexicans, Muslims and blacks.
Here’s how they put it in academese: “What stands out most, however, is the attitudes that became more strongly related to the vote in 2016: attitudes about immigration, feelings toward black people, and feelings toward Muslims,” writes George Washington University professor John Sides. He notes that the media focused on less-educated whites, but negative racial attitudes fueled by Trump were a big motivator for college-educated whites, too.
A substantial share of Trump voters “appeared to embrace a conception of American identity predicated on birthplace and especially Christian faith,” Sides found.
This is the drum Parker has been banging for years. His 2013 book on the tea party, “Change They Can’t Believe In,” with professor Matt Barreto (now at UCLA), used survey data to show it was not a small government movement as advertised. It was more about America being stolen from “real Americans” — a reaction triggered by the election of President Obama.
“I’ve got three words for you: scared white people,” Parker says. “Every period of racial progress in this country is followed by a period of retrenchment. That’s what the 2016 election was about, and it was plain as it was happening.”
bemused
@Nicole:
Ha, it’s kind of disturbing how easily it is to read wingnut minds and what nutty bs they will dream up.
Big Ole Hound
@Betty Cracker: “Good job Brownie”…memories!
Starfish
Are these terrible appointees going to get through, or do people vote against them because they are unqualified?
amk
now even the ‘establishment’ rethugs have started spouting twitler’s vile attack on media. chances of impeachment by these corrupt cowards moving towards nil.
Jeffro
@LAO: All of a sudden, HeckuvaJob Brownie looks over-qualified. Nice work, GOP!
ETA: jesus, read the thread first, Jeffro
Geeno
@Bruce K: Bedford Hills is the women’s equivalent.
Chris
@rikyrah:
Yep.
Another thing that gets kinda lost in the whole “economic anxiety” narrative; wealthier and better-educated whites, by and large, went for the same things. Which makes perfect sense. Almost all of the right wingers I know have college degrees. It doesn’t make them any less racist. It just teaches them to be racist with bigger words and longer sentences.
TS
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s not who you know, but who you are willing to praise as a great and powerful leader.
hovercraft
Where are the new fangled font buttons Alain promised us?
NO SHIT !!!!!!!!!!!!! I know we’re only dirty hippies but we’ve been telling you this for the past year to stop with the “ECONOMIC ANXIETY” Bullshit.
Now can someone please shove this up BS ass so he can shut the fuck up? Thank you.
Boatboy_srq
What is it with Conservatistss that they all seem to value university degrees but can’t be arsed to work to obtain them?
Jack the Second
@gene108: Are the Trumps OK with minorities living in their buildings now?
Baud
Were there no surgeons available to fill this position at HUD?
bystander
@Big Ole Hound: Heckuva job, Brownie.
Now we get treated to even lower forms of idiocy on a daily basis. Bush Jr is the New Churchill.
Boatboy_srq
@The Dangerman: I’m sure CCA and Wackenhut have spares. Which will hopefully be made federal properties through eminent domain.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@rikyrah:
This is my shocked face.
@hovercraft:
What’s a bro supposed to do with this info though? Look in a mirror?
amk
It’s free for all 1%ers looting.
Peale
@amk: We already knew that their focus for 2018 is going to be running against the media, so its not surprising. They can’t really run against, say, Mexicans this time around since they need to claim that they’ve rounded all the dangerous ones up. Gays are still kind of off limits. They’ve supposedly put Blacks back in their place, so the threat from that quarter is over. So media, especially Jewish Media, is the way to go.
rikyrah
@gene108:
True…but a pot of BILLIONS.. is still a pot of BILLIONS.
germy
good news from the NYT
hovercraft
@Starfish:
They all get through. It’s all part of the project to shrink the government down to drown it in the bathtub. Making it more dysfunctional makes people hate it more, so this is all very helpful. The more unqualified the better. Think about it, Brownie and Ken Starr still get invited on TV to opine about shit, they’re not hiding away in shame.
schrodingers_cat
@TS: You forgot handsome.
Chris
@germy:
Yeah, that’s today. Let’s see what he says tomorrow.
Starfish
@hovercraft: This is so depressing.
Here is a Bernie voter who is sorry though.
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW: Until 1783 made it impossible, WE were the dumping ground for transportees. We got the religious nuts, the Aussies got the thieves and prostitutes. The Aussies got the better bargain.
schrodingers_cat
@germy: His ICE director has said though that any undocumented person can be deported, he doesn’t want to wait till they become criminals. Can we trust Vichy Times ?
The Ancient Randonneur
OT and possibly mentioned in an earlier thread:
Nevertheless, she persisted:
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
If I had a wall of favorite quotes, this would be on it.
sukabi
@germy: why go after the kids when you get a “2fer” by going after the parents instead?
Peale
@germy: We’ll see what happens tomorrow, when the decision is reversed. But that’s the third immigration reversal. A few weeks ago, we started accepting refugees as well. No announcement that the changes that extreme vetting measures were put in place because Obama was just letting in every ISIS drug dealing thief and his uncle as long as they pledged allegiance to anyone but Jesus. H1-B lottery took place as well. The nativistst cannot be happy.
Mike in NC
@Villago Delenda Est: Last week’s episode of “American Gods” was all about the policy of Transportation to the New World. Very well made.
Chris
@Peale:
The nativists don’t know shit about shit. Never have, never will. As long as their god-king is telling them what they want to hear on Twitter, they’ll be fine.
(And yes, I’m sure some of them will be made aware of this through their issue of Stormfront or whatever announcing that, gasp, shock, horror, Trump lied. But that megaphone isn’t going to out-shout Trump’s).
Davey C
@SFAW:
As a resident of LI, I find your suggestion that anybody might want to move here to be unnecessarily cruel and hurtful.
catclub
@dr. bloor: I was wondering what Preet Bharara was working on when he was fired, and who is following up on those investigations.
tobie
@Kay: I believe the next in the chain of command is Assoc AG Rachel Brand. Nominated by Trump, approved with a party-line vote, 52-47. Here’s a link to her wiki bio. Lawfare blog and the like should have more information on her. Neal Katyal describes her as brilliant but so does Sessions. She’s conservative but hopefully honest.
NickM
Just had to put our beautiful Bernese Mountain dog girl to sleep. Ruby – 4 years old, full of life and she got cancer. Most loving pet I’ve ever had. So gentle with my little girls. I’m mostly a lurker but had to share bc you all know what it’s like and while most here are assholes you have a heart for pets. (JK)
schrodingers_cat
@NickM: {{{ }}} May she RIP. Do you have any pictures to share, she sounds lovely.
Jim Parene
@Chris: Excellent obsevation! I’m stealing this.
Immanentize
I just saw that Rod Rosenstein might recuse himself from supervising the Mueller probe. Kinda makes sense because if the probe now includes obstruction (firing of Comey) he certainly would be a fact witness.
Brachiator
But, but, but … Trump claims that demands of “loyalty” are not important to him.
Oh well, this will appeal to those Trump supporters who believe that expertise, training, intelligence and competence are nothing more than elitist frills.
Meanwhile pundits will weakly debate whether Patton’s appointment is an example of running the country like a business or mere cronyism.
D58826
from ABC a heart warming story of a man meeting the daughter he never knew he had. She was raise by a family member and thought her Mom was a step-sister. Need a bit ofgood news today
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/dad-meets-daughter-never-knew-existed-40-years-122202368–abc-news-topstories.html?cid=social_twitter_abcn
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim Parene: Send all royalties to my favorite political action group, VoteVets.
Peale
@rikyrah: O.K. but that still doesn’t quite explain why there aren’t enough democratic voters to overcome that issue and if there ever will be. I do agree that the Wilmerite half of the party would like a working class that concerned itself with economic issues. Heck they’d like to lead that discussion. They have always wanted to be the vaguard leading the proletariat to class consciousness after all. But the basic assumption was that other voters would respond to the naked white supremacy by rallying around an alternative set of values. That didn’t happen, either.
hovercraft
@Starfish:
That was interesting, I appreciate his apology and that the scales have fallen from his eyes and that the BS koolaid worn off, but it’s too late. Sometimes I’m sorry, I screwed up just isn’t enough, your screw up is just too great, there is no way to put what you broke back together. I’m not saying to tell people like him to go to hell. but they need to understand that actions have consequences, and apologizing is the first step, the next is to actually do something to make up for your mistake, work to make amends, we have another election coming up really fast so what’s he going to do to help take back the house and senate, what’s he going to do to encourage young people, especially those who like him drank the BR koolaid, how’s he going to make sure that they are woke, and ready to put their backs into creating the conditions for the changes we all so desperately want to see? Don’t just tell me you’re sorry, show me.
Karen
@schrodingers_cat: There are days when I firmly believe that there is a “list” of worst possible people for job; but they are willing to brown nose, this is the list that orange one is using.
James Powell
@GregB:
True, but we should never forget that nearly one-half of voters were certain then – and according to all reports remain certain now – that putting Trump and his lackeys, stooges, and dupes in the White House was a good idea.
And we should never forget that every single Republican senator and congressperson fully and forcefully supports this man and his lackeys, stooges, and dupes and that this includes every supposedly moderate, reasonable, not a wing-nut Republican who is regularly quotes in the NYT and invited on the cable & Sunday shows to represent the ideas of competence & good faith.
And we can never forget that none of this would have been possible without the NYT’s 24 year campaign of vilification against Hillary Clinton.
NB – I exhale something like this once a week and I always feel a tiny bit better afterwards. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to vent in a safe place & manner.
Karen
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: thanks to known mob connects he did, many of which were built with corruption is normal
ruemara
@NickM: Oh, I”m so sorry. There’s nothing half as fluffy and filled with joy like a Bernese Mountain Dog. I once had to film a promo with one and it was all I could do to not keep him. Deepest condolences to your lovely little girl. 4 years is too young.
Omnes Omnibus
@hovercraft: He did say that he voted for HRC in the general election. I don’t have a problem with people who supported someone other than HRC in the primaries but had sense enough to know that voting for her was the only viable choice in November – not Stein, not a write-in, not staying home. If he was unenthusiastic, I don’t really care; he voted for the only non-Trump option.
Laura
@NickM: we assholes proudly wear our hearts on our sleeves.
I’m so sorry that you made the difficult decision to spare your Ruby from suffering. Sending you a tender (((((hug))))).
Humdog
@NickM: Very sorry for your loss. Four years is much too short.
D58826
Man oh man a lot of tweeter activity about whither Mueller will be fired. Who would do it, how many DOJ people would refuse and resign or be fired, ABC reporting Rosenstein thinks he may have to recuse him self. That last item is raising speculation that Der Fuhrer has already asked the DAG to fire Mueller.
Steeplejack (phone)
@NickM:
So sorry for your loss.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@germy: Man, what a cuck Trump is! Think more will abandon him because of this?
D58826
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ve voted for an unenthusiastic/lesser of two evils candidate in the past. BUT I voted.
It would be nice if there was a hook in social media and letters to the editor that checked if you voted in the most recent election. If you didn’t vote then your comment would go where it belongs – the great circular file in the sky. NO play the game then NO right to complain.
James Powell
@rikyrah:
People who are fearful bigots don’t want to hear that they are fearful bigots. They want to hear flattering euphemisms that makes them feel wise, good, honored. The people who publish & broadcast what passes for news are not in the business of making their readers & audiences feel bad about themselves.
rikyrah
The Plum Line
Trump is now under investigation, and he has no one to blame but himself
By Greg Sargent June 15
THE MORNING PLUM:
The Post is reporting that President Trump is now personally under investigation by the special counsel for possible obstruction of justice, and this morning, Trump is in full meltdown-martyr mode over it. In a couple of tweets, he lashed out wildly at an unnamed “they,” who (raged Trump) failed to get him on collusion charges and are now trying to get him on “obstruction,” which he railed at as the “single greatest witch hunt in American history,” one that is “led by very bad and conflicted people.”
But Trump’s own words and actions are what led directly to both the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Muller III and to the fact that Trump’s own conduct is now being scrutinized. What’s more, Trump’s claims of persecution should be taken as more than mere deflection or an effort to stoke his supporters’ grievances. They hint that Trump could still try to remove Mueller, a possibility that must be taken more seriously now that Trump is a target.
………………………..
In other words, Trump’s own words, in multiple settings, are potentially key pieces of evidence against him. Trump publicly admitted he fired Comey because of unhappiness with the Russia investigation. Comey testified that Trump’s demand for “loyalty” came in the context of a conversation about whether Comey would continue to serve as FBI director at his pleasure. Comey also said he took Trump’s request that he drop the Flynn probe as “direction” and an “order.”
Benjamin Wittes, editor of the Lawfare Blog, notes that it’s important to remember that, in obstruction investigations, the sum total or pattern of facts is often critical. “When you’re doing an obstruction investigation, all the facts are important,” Wittes told me today. A reasonable prosecutor, Wittes noted, won’t look at this “as a discrete series of interactions,” and instead is likely to ask, “Is there some pattern of behavior that constitutes obstruction? If you’re looking for a pattern of behavior that constitutes obstruction, you want to know the entire pattern.”
To be sure, some of these facts are in dispute. Trump has denied demanding Comey’s loyalty, and his advisers have said (ludicrously) that Trump merely asked Comey to drop the Flynn probe.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Peale: I think I have an explanation. Too many stupid and apathetic people live in this country. Sometimes I think if oligarchic dicatorship was established here, none of them would ever notice or care, unless they were affected. Maybe not even then, as they might rationalize any violations of their civil rights as the state protecting national security or whatever excuse the regime gave
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Peale: I think I have an explanation. Too many stupid and apathetic people live in this country. Sometimes I think if an oligarchic regime was established here, none of them would ever notice or care, unless they were affected. Maybe not even then, as they might rationalize any violations of their civil rights as the state protecting national security or whatever excuse the regime gave
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Karen: That’s unfortunate
Karen
@Villago Delenda Est: it is nearly impossible to find anything that hasn’t been whitewashed about the Puritans, children are taught these people came seeking religious freedom; not they were thrown out of country after country for their treatment of women. This was a group that practiced muzzling women by locking metal cages on their heads, some wore “slave” collars that leashes could be attached to when they left the house. The rule of thumb said that woman couldn’t be beaten with anything bigger around that husbands thumb.
I had a college class whose sole focus was women and what treatment they received in “New World” there was a reason so many wives and daughters escaped to live with Native tribes.
Roger Moore
@Boatboy_srq:
I think it reflects their general worldview. They value status symbols but only as symbols; they don’t care about how people get them. That’s why they respect inherited wealth as much, if not more, than earned wealth.
rikyrah
@NickM:
Sorry for your loss :(
D58826
OKay down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass. Kat Tur is reporting on NBC –
So now the lawyer has to lawyer up,. But isn’t he the same guy who told WH staffers they didn’t need a lawyer.
https://twitter.com/KatyTurNBC/status/875751904105639936
Roger Moore
@germy:
Let’s see how it plays out in practice before celebrating. I’m willing to bet that ICE still tries to deport people eligible for DACA, just without the fanfare of going after them as a group.
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah:
Insightful observation. I was just hung up on the tokenism (blah people doing urban things), but this plausibly takes the plot even further.
Jim Parene
@Villago Delenda Est: I absolutely will! As soon as I can clear up my long standing financial difficulties. LOL!
Mike J
@D58826: Also, Michael Caputo hired Dennis Vacco of Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman
O. Felix Culpa
@NickM: Only four years old? It’s sad at any age, but so young is particularly hard. Heartfelt condolences.
LurkerNoLonger
@D58826: Isn’t there some statistic that says there are 5 lawyers for every 1 American? If you work for Trump you just might need all 5.
sharl
@NickM: I’m so sorry for your loss. My brother LOVES Bernese Mountain dogs; he’s on his third one. I don’t know what common characteristics are exhibited by the breed (other than being big dogs), but my brother’s have always been sweet and adorable goofs, and are one of the highlights of my visits to his home over the holidays.
TenguPhule
@The Dangerman:
Jobs Program! Silver Lining!
TenguPhule
@SFAW:
Giant hollow plastic ball prisons anchored undersea.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@O. Felix Culpa: Interesting. But that doesn’t change the fact that Trump appointed this woman. He would still responsible because he would have had to have known she wasn’t qualified. Ball is back in his court
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Seeing some tweets that there are intercepts of Newtie setting up meetings between the Russians and the Trump campaign.
TenguPhule
@Villago Delenda Est:
Is it too late to trade?
O. Felix Culpa
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Oh, perhaps I wasn’t clear in my remarks: Trump is definitely responsible for appointing a person he KNOWS is unqualified. It sets up a situation where he and his cronies can more easily loot HUD. So he gets a twofer: token POC plus unlimited government cash!
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Never forget or minimize Republican and Russian vote suppression and tampering. At the rate things are going and given how literally every other accusation flung out by Trump and the Republicans has turned out to be true about themselves, I fully expect to find at some point that Clinton actually would have gotten more votes in the three states that strangely swung towards Trump but for the vote counts and registrations that were altered.
SatanicPanic
@Starfish: huh, that tweetstorm is kind of great
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Totally this. (See also, flag lapel pins).
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
THEY SAID….they were only going to round up the CRIMINALS…
THAT’S.WHAT.THEY.SAID.
Not that I believed them, but, that’s how they sold this swill.
D58826
@LurkerNoLonger: We will be lucky if the people who work for Der Fuhrer leave 5 for the rest of us.
Timurid
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
I still can’t get my brain around that story.
It looked more like a rocket blowing up on the launch pad than any kind of building fire…
D58826
@TenguPhule: Aren’t there enough private prisons where they can be starved and beaten in?
Jeffro
TOO LOL TOO BE TRUE: Trump’s Lawyer Has Hired His Own Lawyer (per The Hill)
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: Sounds like the same point I’ve heard Adam making. Yup. Scared white people could literally be the death of us all. : (
TenguPhule
@D58826: Can’t trust the present owners not to coddle them as fellow scumsuckers. New underwater prisons with military guards is the only way to be sure they get what they deserve and get it good and hard.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Preemptive Crime Prevention.
TenguPhule
White House without a plan to address debt ceiling
And remember folks, the actual deadline is the end of July.
So I guess today is going to be at least a +3 for me.
opiejeanne
McMegan on the Grenfell fire in London, and it’s her usual awful crap:
People could have been saved but at what cost to other people
Miss Bianca
@Starfish: Wow, that was cool to read.
The Moar You Know
@Jeffro: Dude was in way over his head, his statement the other day showed that. At least, unlike our unlawfully elected president, he’s smart enough to know what he does not know and to get help.
My advice would be “fire your client”, but I’m risk adverse. He’s probably (correctly) thinking that if he can keep Trump out of jail, he’ll have made his career. He’d be right, but that’s a rather high-stakes low-probability outcome from what I see at the moment.
Jeffro
@TenguPhule: You know what would be a good plan to raise the debt ceiling? Just go. Ahead. AND RAISE THE EFFING DEBT CEILING!! Seriously GOP, you suck at this ‘governing’ thing. Not every issue is an opportunity to defund Planned Parenthood, or get rid of the minimum wage, or take away POCs’ right to vote. Jesus. Y’all already rang up the credit card and now you don’t want to pay the bill?!? Just. Raise. The. Damn. Thing.
Jeffro
@The Moar You Know: I’m guessing we are 72 hours or less away from one of these clowns showing up on Bob Mueller’s doorstep drunk as a skunk and crying, wanting to ‘make it right’…
Miss Bianca
@NickM: Berners never live long enough, but four years old is way too young. My condolences.
Roger Moore
@TenguPhule:
I’m surprised; I’d expect you to advocate mass executions as the most practical way to avoid prison overcrowding from everyone associated with Trump being convicted.
TenguPhule
@Jeffro:
That would require them to schedule a vote. Which they have not yet done.
They don’t just not have a plan, they don’t even have the initiative to start.
bystander
@Jeffro: Per The Hill? Or The Onion?
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore: We can extract value from them with their hard labor at the seaweed farms and salt mines. Those unable to fulfill their quotas get thrown out the airlock without a tank.
ETA: Also jobs program to build the things.
catclub
@D58826:
Nope, I think it was Marc Kasowitz who was telling staffers that.
Cohen is probably lawyering up because he was involved in the Ukraine peace/ceasefire scam – so mixed up with Russian kleptocrats.
Jeffro
@bystander: Is there even a difference anymore?
Jeffro
@D58826: My bad, you got there first (about Cohen). I am in a bad habit of not looking upthread today for some reason.
D58826
@catclub: so many lawyers so few brain cells to keep them straight. At least when you go to a ballgame you can buy a scorecard to keep everything straight
The Moar You Know
@NickM: I am truly sorry. Bernese are the sweetest dogs ever. Every one I meet at the dog park ends up sitting on my feet within five seconds of the first pet on the head.
sukabi
@D58826: no, think it was the other one Kasowick or something…the one that looks like he’s Drumpf doctors long lost twin.
The Moar You Know
@Jeffro: First guy to jump gets immunity. I’d bet cash money someone’s already done this.
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: Exactly! For immigration related news Greg Siskind and Alt_Immigration Twitter feeds have been more reliable than Vichy Times.
catclub
@rikyrah:
possibly because without Comey’s Oct 26 announcement, Clinton wins. Did he predict THAT, also?
Yes, he is right on the trends that led to it being closer than Obama’s wins, but without Comey’s announcement, she wins.
Heidi Dog
@NickM: So very sorry for your loss.
sukabi
@rikyrah: and in their view anyone crossing the border without the proper papers is criminal, so they are doing EXACTLY what they said.
debit
@NickM: I am so sorry. It’s hard enough when it’s an elderly pet, but only four years is just heart wrenching.
D58826
@TenguPhule: On a serious note we do have an expensive under utilized prison that the GOP demanded that we keep open fore the worst of the worst. It’s GITMO. On the bright side it is located on a nice tropical island. Of course on the down side the current occupants do want that pesky call to prayer 5 times a day. They would have do a bit of fixing up to remove the arrow facing east to Mecca. But for Jared they could shift it a bit to point to Jerusalem. For Ivanka they could install one on a pivot so it could always point to the city with most current fashion shows. For Der Fuhrer it would just point straight DOWN.
Just goes to show that it was one more thing that Obama failed to think thru when he wanted to close the prison but YRTLE and ZEGS in their far sighted wisdom stopped them.
D58826
@The Moar You Know: MY sister had 4 burners over the past decade and had to put them all down. Two were getting up there in years but the other two were relatively young. Now they just have an all american rescue. I never really notice any difference when it came to mooching off the table at dinner. Of course when she had the 3 it was a bit of an assembly line.
D58826
@opiejeanne: Since the victims where ‘those’ people I guess you wouldn’t want to burden the right kind of people.
Seriously she is sick.
It hasn’t been mentioned but as I watched the video the T word lurked in the background. After all if you can use a care, truck, hammer or knife why not a molotov cocktail. After all you had a building with a lot of code violations and a flammable curtain wall. Get a job as a maintenance guy so you know where to shut off an alarms/sprinklers. Jam open the elevator doors on a number of floors and then go down the fire tower(s) opening door and spreading gasoline. When you reach the bottom soak the curtain wall and then toss a match.
So whither it was arson/terrorism or just an accident, in all my years of watching news reports of building fires I’ve never seen a building burn like a roman candle as that one did
Chris
@D58826:
On this note – the Navy hates Gitmo. I know a person who used to work on Cuban affairs in the State Department, and every Navy person he spoke to about the base confirmed that it’s useless, does nothing but cost money, and if we finally give it back to the Cubans some day, they won’t miss it. Gitmo had literally no purpose other than being a thorn in Castro’s ass until Donald Rumsfeld found one.
(Which is a good thing to keep in mind when you get to Colonel Jessup’s “you need me on that wall” speech the next time you see “A Few Good Men” – actually, no, we don’t. We really, really don’t).
D58826
reading this thread and by the time your done it is the legal equivalent of ‘Who’s on First’ when trying to keep track if the players/lawyers, what part of each investigation they have to recuse themselves from, and what is the reason for the recusal.
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson
Timurid
@Jeffro: Will he bring a dozen roses or a machete?
D58826
@Chris:
Yep I knew in the pre-911 days it was there to raise Castro’s blood pressure 20-30 points.
Mnemosyne
@D58826:
Honestly, speculation like that is letting the people in charge off the hook for their actions. You sound like the 9/11 troofers who were convinced that the Twin Towers couldn’t possibly have collapsed because of the fire because everybody knows metal doesn’t burn, duh!
As other people have mentioned, this kind of outside cladding has caused similar fires in places like Las Vegas with similarly awful results. No need to invent some “bad guys” when human greed, neglect, and stupidity are sufficient explanation.
Roger Moore
@TenguPhule:
If we raise the estate tax to 90+%, then mass executions could provide funding for all kinds of government programs.
TriassicSands
This is only peripherally about the Bully-in-Chief.
The other day a commenter expressed amusement that reporters were now enumerating exactly how many anonymous sources they had in putting together a story.
Here is the latest edition from the WaPo:
Seventeen! Well, I guess if 17 anonymous sources say it’s true, then, by golly, it’s true. Who will be the first to 100?
opiejeanne
Dammit. This is McMegan’s article about how it’s too expensive to make other people safe: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-16/beware-of-blaming-government-for-london-tower-fire
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
As I said above, someone with a Twitter account needs to ask McMegan why the Republican reps didn’t charge the gunman like she advised 6-year-olds to do in case of a mass shooting.
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: Seven different multistory building burns that I know of with this exterior cladding, all with identical results (building goes up like a rocket) although less loss of life due to sprinklers or luck. Very unlikely this was due to a bad guy. All it takes is a bad wire in the wall and that’s the ballgame.
Think most countries don’t allow the stuff.
Chris
@D58826:
I seriously doubt if we raised his blood pressure as much as he raised that of our leadership (and our right wing). Dude outlasted ten freaking presidents. Don’t like him one bit, but that’s fucking impressive.
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore: This is true and a very compelling point that may need to be considered.
hovercraft
London fire: May offers £5m to victims amid criticism of response
Prime minister offers cash and help with housing to victims and visits scene of deadly blaze after initial response criticised
I guess to her, throwing some money from the sofa cushions counts as a show of compassion. Just wow.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
Like I keep saying, the thing that really makes me angry is that the residents were complaining about the fire hazards and warning the management and local government that something like this could happen, and nobody listened to them.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: Sorry I missed that. She’s such an idiot.
The Moar You Know
@hovercraft: Like I said earlier, she is giving Trump a run for his money as worst national leader ever. She has all of Thatcher’s humanitarianism combined with the social skills of an angry pit viper.
@Mnemosyne: I was just there a few months ago. It’s a poor spot in the middle of some of the world’s most expensive housing. I am not in any way surprised they were ignored.
hovercraft
@TriassicSands:
I thik the record is the story a couple of months back that had 30 annonymous sources. Inside Trumps Anger and Impatience from the Wa Post. which relied on “the private accounts of more than 30 officials at the White House”
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: I just tweeted at her, why she didn’t ask them why they didn’t charge the gunman.
KithKanan
@hovercraft: Seriously. Given that…
@Mnemosyne:
…the number should be more like £5m each and that would still be grossly inadequate compensation for the callous indifference to human life at multiple levels that caused this.
trollhattan
@NickM:
:-( That’s so sad, I hope you and your little girls especially can get over the pain of losing such a wonderful friend. I’ve known a few and can’t name a more engaging breed.
Uncle Cosmo
@Villago Delenda Est: They got the Irish too (post-1798)*. You might want to recalibrate your conclusion.
* ETA: I meant the Irish rebels & cutpurses. We got the ones who were mostly hungry.
David Anderson
@Betty Cracker: Look on the bright side — there are two tropical systems forming in the Atlantic basin right now:
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/two-named-storms-may-be-forming-atlantic
TriassicSands
@hovercraft:
Thanks! I’ll make a note of that as I watch for the count to reach triple figures.
I am curious. Do 30 sources make a story 1.764705882352941 times as reliable as a mere 17?
henqiguai
@TriassicSands(#168): No, it’s 1.764705882352942 times as reliable as a mere 17.
TriassicSands
@henqiguai:
Check your math. I divided it out by hand and it comes to —
1.76470588235294117 or rounding off it is 1.7647058823529412
but the one still stands.
And I have 127 sources — mathematicians, physicists, cpas, and elementary school students who agree.
henqiguai
@TriassicSands (#171):
And you’re assuming, I presume, that I was being serious. Au contraire, I was being a flyby smartass.
TriassicSands
@henqiguai:
Well done. That just goes to show you (and me) that snark is not always apparent, especially on a site where people correct others (and I’ve done that).