Anti-Gay Therapy Leader Is Gay
In the years since we have had this blog, we have seen a parade of born-again preachers and gay-loathing Republicans caught with their britches down. We used to comment on it but it really is pretty much the norm. Those who are really really really opposed to homosexuality are often the ones who can't allow themselves to love as God intended.
One of the last remaining frontiers of hate has been so-called "conversion therapy." A lot of states have outlawed this kind of fake therapy which is supposed to turn gay people straight, but it keeps popping up and it has become sort of the last gasp for anti-gay ideology.
"What about people who don't want to be gay? Shouldn't they be allowed to live their lives however they want?" Sure, if it worked we'd have a whole different situation. The deal is: it doesn't work. The therapy is a hoax. A hateful hoax. They go in gay, and they come out gay. And guilt-ridden, ashamed, despondent.
One of the last remaining frontiers of hate has been so-called "conversion therapy." A lot of states have outlawed this kind of fake therapy which is supposed to turn gay people straight, but it keeps popping up and it has become sort of the last gasp for anti-gay ideology.
"What about people who don't want to be gay? Shouldn't they be allowed to live their lives however they want?" Sure, if it worked we'd have a whole different situation. The deal is: it doesn't work. The therapy is a hoax. A hateful hoax. They go in gay, and they come out gay. And guilt-ridden, ashamed, despondent.
The founder of one of the nation’s largest conversion therapy programs, who spent decades leading the organization, now says he is gay, apologizing for his role in the practice.We actually do have problems in this world. Gay people are not one of them. Let's move on.
McKrae Game, who founded and led Hope for Wholeness in South Carolina, publicly announced he was gay in early June, more than two years after the organization’s board of directors abruptly fired him.
In a Facebook post last week, Game, 51, said he was “wrong,” adding: “Please forgive me.”
“I certainly regret where I caused harm,” he wrote. “Promoting the triadic model that blamed parents and conversion or prayer therapy, that made many people believe that their orientation was wrong, bad, sinful, evil, and worse that they could change was absolutely harmful."
“It’s all in my past, but many, way TOO MANY continue believing that there is something wrong with themselves and wrong with people that choose to live their lives honestly and open as gay, lesbian, trans, etc.,” he added. “Learn to love yourself and others.”
In an interview with The Post and Courier published Saturday, Game called conversion therapy “a lie” and “false advertising” and called for the dissolution of conversion therapy practices or ex-gay ministries.
Game is one of several former gay conversion therapy leaders who have since cut ties with the movement and have come out as LGBTQ.
Conversion therapy group founder comes out as gay, apologizes
posted by JimK at 5:28 PM
250 Comments:
With an amicus brief filed on Friday, the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to essentially legalize anti-gay discrimination in the workplace. The brief, from Solicitor General Noel Francisco, argues federal prohibitions on employer discrimination do not extend to protect individuals from being fired or otherwise disenfranchised in the workplace because of their sexual orientation.
The Justice Department’s arguments pertain to the employment protections offered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which are being argued in two Supreme Court cases involving gay workers in October. Title VII is a federal law that prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, religion or national origin.
But it does not, the Justice Department says, cover sexuality.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department submitted another brief asking the Justices to conclude that Title VII does not protect transgender people from employer discrimination.
Toeing a similar line, federal lawyers now argue that “Title VII’s prohibition on discrimination because of sex does not bar discrimination because of sexual orientation.” By effectively drawing a distinction between sex and sexual identity, the brief aims to carve out the latter from Title VII’s protections.
The brief goes on to assert that discriminating against same-sex couples is not discriminatory on the basis of sex — arguing that employers are only required to apply similar treatments to people in male-male relationships and female-female relationships. In other words, as long as male and female members of the queer community are treated equally, the brief appears to argue, it is not a violation of Title VII to treat them differently than people in heterosexual relationships.
“Unfavorable treatment of a gay or lesbian employee as such is not the consequence of that individual’s sex,” the Justice Department argued, “but instead of an employer’s policy concerning a different trait—sexual orientation—that Title VII does not protect.”
Asked last week about his administration’s legal steps to make it easier to discriminate against LGBTQ people in the workplace, Trump sidestepped the question, touting his recent endorsement by the Log Cabin Republicans, a national LGBTQ organization. Several members of that group have quit in response to the endorsement, however, including board member Jennifer Horn.
“I’ve done very well with that community,” the President said last week. “Some of my biggest supporters are of that community.”...
Rump wants to make America hate again.
"Game is one of several former gay conversion therapy leaders who have since cut ties with the movement and have come out as LGBTQ."
Indeed, I seem to be sensing a pattern here.
Someone should bake this man a cake!
For some reason Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" seems to be the appropriate music to go along with the rainbow cake.
Last summer, Scott Pruitt left his job heading the Environmental Protection Agency and within a few months had started consulting for coal magnate Joseph W. Craft III. Three weeks after leaving the Interior Department, energy counselor Vincent DeVito joined Cox Oil Offshore, which operates in the Gulf of Mexico, as its executive vice president and general counsel. Now, Joe Balash — who oversaw oil and gas drilling on federal lands before resigning from Interior on Friday — is joining a foreign oil company that is expanding operations on Alaska’s North Slope.
Balash, who had served as the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for land and minerals management for nearly two years, confirmed in a phone interview Tuesday night that he will begin working for the Papua New Guinea-based Oil Search, which is developing one of Alaska’s largest oil prospects in years.
The company is drilling on state lands that lie nearby — but not inside — two federal reserves where the Trump administration is pushing to increase oil and gas development: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. During his time at Interior, Balash oversaw the department’s work to hold lease sales on the coastal plain of the 19.3 million-acre refuge and to expand drilling on the 22.8 million-acre reserve to the west of the refuge. Both sites are home to large numbers of migratory birds as well as caribou, polar bears and other wildlife.
Balash declined to disclose his specific role and said that while he would oversee employees who would work with the federal government on energy policy, he would abide by the Trump ethics pledge barring appointees from lobbying their former agencies for five years.
“I’ll supervise those who do,” he said, referring to Oil Search staffers with business before the federal government, “but I have a ton of restrictions dealing with the Department of Interior. Most of Oil Search’s properties are state lands. There isn’t really the federal nexus.”
Oil Search has been expanding aggressively in Alaska, where it says it has acquired more than 700 million barrels of crude reserves. In May, the company received the go-ahead from the Army Corps of Engineers, and it plans to ramp up production operations this year and over the winter....
Hooray for farm raised salmon.
Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas) announced Wednesday that he will not seek reelection in 2020, adding his name to the growing list of Republicans in Congress looking to give up their seats.
“After much prayer over the past few days and following conversations with my wife, Gina, during that time, I have decided that my current term will be my last,” he said in a statement.
Flores, first elected in 2010 [the tea-bagger wave after the election of America's first black president], is currently serving out his fifth term representing his state’s 17th Congressional District, an area near Austin that includes Waco.
He is one of at least a dozen Republican representatives who have so far announced they will not seek reelection ― and at least the fifth from Texas alone. The retirements present opportunities for Democrats to flip conservative-held seats as they seek maintain their grip on the House in 2020.
Flores said in his statement that he had never intended to serve more than six terms, and wishes to spend more time with his family.
“Even though my current term will be my final in Congress, I will continue working with a sense of urgency and diligence over the next 16 months to continue fulfilling my original campaign promises to the good folks in TX-17 to restore Liberty, Opportunity, and Security for hardworking Texas families who were left behind due to the disastrous policies of the Obama administration,” Flores stated.
He plans to “resume business activities in the private sector,” where he previously worked as an oil industry executive.
Others in the House who will sit out the next election cycle include: Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.); Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga.); Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ill.); Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.); Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.); Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas); Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah); Rep. Mike Conway (R-Texas); Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas); Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas); and Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), who is retiring at the end of the month to help care for his child.
Two Democrats, Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-Iowa), are leaving the House.
A handful of Senate members, including Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), are also not seeking reelection. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) will retire at the end of the year due to his health.
North Carolina’s political maps for the state legislature are unconstitutional and must be redrawn before the 2020 elections, a court has decided.
A panel of judges struck down the maps Tuesday, in a 357-page ruling that focused on the level of political partisanship used to draw them. The maps were drawn in 2017 to replace previous maps, drawn in 2011, that had also been ruled unconstitutional. Both sets of maps were drawn by North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature.
The judges found that “The North Carolina Supreme Court has long and consistently held that ‘our government is founded on the will of the people,’ that ‘their will is expressed by the ballot.’”
And that fact helped the judges conclude that the maps violated the state constitution because “it is the carefully crafted maps, and not the will of the voters, that dictate the election outcomes in a significant number of legislative districts and, ultimately, the majority control of the General Assembly.”
Tuesday’s decision may be the final word in this legal battle, since at least one top Republican lawmaker said he doesn’t plan to appeal the ruling.
“This is a historic victory for the people of North Carolina,” said Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, one of the groups that sued to overturn the maps. “The court has made clear that partisan gerrymandering violates our state’s constitution and is unacceptable. Thanks to the court’s landmark decision, politicians in Raleigh will no longer be able to rig our elections through partisan gerrymandering.”
The three-judge panel was unanimous in its ruling. The panel consisted of two Democrats — Paul Ridgeway of Wake County and Alma Hinton of Halifax County — and one Republican, Joseph Crosswhite of Iredell County.
“The conclusions of this Court today reflect the unanimous and best efforts of the undersigned trial judges — each hailing from different geographic regions and each with differing ideological and political outlooks — to apply core constitutional principles to this complex and divisive topic,” they wrote.
Republicans won a similar case earlier this summer at the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld North Carolina’s congressional districts.
The state’s legislative leaders argued during this trial over the state-level maps that the state courts should follow that federal ruling. But after the loss Tuesday, Republican Senate leader Phil Berger said he wouldn’t appeal and would instead start drawing new maps.
“We disagree with the court’s ruling as it contradicts the Constitution and binding legal precedent, but we intend to respect the court’s decision and finally put this divisive battle behind us,” Berger said in a statement. “Nearly a decade of relentless litigation has strained the legitimacy of this state’s institutions, and the relationship between its leaders, to the breaking point. It’s time to move on.”...
Read more here: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article234668747.html#storylink=cpy
The ruling here: https://www.nccourts.gov/assets/inline-files/18-CVS-14001_Final-Judgment.pdf?Bwsegeo1VV20zhJsp9hoClvmoRp3A6AR
President Donald Trump canceled a planned state visit to Poland on Thursday, saying his presence was needed in the United States to deal with Hurricane Dorian. But he actually went golfing. This was an unfortunate choice, more as a superfluous diplomatic insult than as a situation where the president’s input was substantively needed. To the extent that he did anything at all related to the hurricane he mostly contributed confusion by saying, falsely, that Alabama was in the path of the storm.
Though all recent presidents have had a somewhat inexplicable love of golf, when Trump goes golfing it’s different from normal presidential golfing because he golfs at luxury golf clubs that he owns.
This means that when the White House senior staff and the Secret Service do things like rent golf carts to ensure that the president remains safe and well-briefed while on the links, it’s not just an expenditure of public funds but an expenditure that directly lines Trump’s pockets. This is just about the most straightforward example of political corruption that one can imagine. (When it turned out that Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh was making companies that contracted with the city buy copies of her book, she was drummed out of office almost immediately.)
But in the United States of Trump, it wasn’t even the most egregious golf-related act to stem from the ill-fated trip to Poland. Yet nobody in any position of influence in politics seems to be trying to do anything about it.
While Trump spread misinformation and panic between rounds of golf, Vice President Mike Pence went to Poland in Trump’s stead. His team decided that it would make sense for him to stop over in Ireland on his way back, stay two nights, and do a day of meetings in Ireland between. The meetings are, of course, in Dublin, which is both the capital of Ireland and by far its largest city.
But Pence, curiously, is not staying in Dublin. Instead, his two nights will be spent at a Trump-owned luxury resort that’s about a three-hour drive away from the capital city — the plan is to commute cross-country by air to make the meetings work.
In distance terms, this is like staying at a hotel in Baltimore for your business trip to New York.
Except, of course, that the scandal here is not bad transportation logistics but the theft of public funds. The true analogy to what Pence is doing would be something like stealing money from the office expense account and using it to bribe your boss to give you a good performance review.
Then to make it three, this week we also learned the news that Attorney General Bill Barr is paying $30,000 for the privilege of hosting a party at the Trump hotel in DC.
But I’m hung up on the Pence story and on Trump’s habit of staying at his own clubs at taxpayer expense because in comparison to the bribery side of Trump’s corruption, the outright theft is just so straightforward. There is no holder of any office in America who would be allowed to steer public funds directly to entities he controls. It’s not that this kind of corruption is unheard of by any means. What’s so shocking about it is that it’s common enough that we have tons of precedent for the idea that it’s unacceptable. The Pugh case happened to be recent and relatively high profile, but the IRS’s list of public corruption prosecutions (https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/examples-of-public-corruption-investigations-fiscal-year-2015) is littered with examples of relatively minor officials going down for this sort of thing. But in Trump’s Washington it’s become kind of routine.
It’s well known that Donald Trump doesn’t like to admit he’s wrong, but somebody may have gone to extreme lengths on Wednesday to protect his ego.
During a hurricane briefing, the president showed an old weather map suggesting Dorian was previously on track to hit Florida.
However, it appeared as if someone took a Sharpie pen to the map to draw a swoosh around southern Alabama. The alteration was presumably meant to correspond with an incorrect tweet the president posted on Saturday saying the hurricane was headed there (and which the National Weather Service had to correct in a tweet of its own).
See: 18 U.S. Code § 2074. False weather reports
The man who bluffed and cheated his way to PUSA is committing yet another obvious con job.
He could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue, shoot a man, and he "wouldn't lose any voters."
Rump drew the sharpie line.
How do we know? His tell:
Asked about Sharpie line on the weather map, Rump replied: "No I just know that Alabama was in the original forecast. They thought it would get it, at least a piece of it. Actually we have a better map than that which is going to be presented, where we had many lines going directly, many models, each line being a model, and they were going directly through and in all cases Alabama was hit."
Remember this?
Video Trump says he didn't know about Stormy Daniels payment
And this?
Aaron Rupar✔
@atrupar
Replying to @atrupar
Trump says he "didn't know anything" about his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, sharing polling data with a person connected to Russian intelligence.
VIDEO
11:30AM - Jan 10, 2019
If that doesn't look like a five-year-old with chocolate smeared all over his face denying that he ate the Hershey bar I don't know what does.
In case you don't know what this is all about, this spells the whole stupid thing out. Long story short: Trump tweeted out that Alabama was in Hurricane Dorian's path over the weekend and he was wrong. Instead of admitting it he has doubled down and offered this ridiculous "proof" with a crude sharpie pen line extending the hurricane path.
You can't make this shit up.
https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/09/his-who-me-tell.html
Longtime Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner not running for reelection
Congressman becomes 12th House Republican to retire this year
Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner announced Wednesday that he will not run for reelection next year, according to multiple local media reports.
The longtime lawmaker’s exit means the Badger State is losing its most senior member, and the second-most-senior Republican in the House. He is also the second Wisconsin Republican to announce he is leaving Congress after Rep. Sean P. Duffy said last month that he would be resigning on Sept. 23.
In an interview with Reuters in Toronto, Scaramucci discussed his past support for the president and the chance of another Republican running a successful campaign to unseat Trump in a primary nominating contest, which he believes is the most likely outcome.
"There's no question. I'm raising PAC money," he said, referring to political action committees that help raise funds for candidates. "He's a very, very bad person, and he needs to be removed."
Trump's ex-communications director lasted just 11 days in the job, before he was fired as a result of an expletive-laden on-record conversation with a New Yorker reporter in which Scaramucci lambasted other senior White House staffers.
The past two weeks have seen him engage in a bitter and highly public war of words with his former boss, as the two exchanged insults on Twitter and in media interviews - a war which Scaramucci says is "just getting started. I will cross-sectionally dismantle him."
He declined to say whether the PAC money would go towards supporting Democrats, insisting that Trump will not be the Republican candidate on the 2020 ballot. Scaramucci said he will show up in person to campaign against Trump's re-election.
"I'm going to be on the street in swing states talking to suburban women about this person and the danger that this person presents to their children," Scaramucci said.
His previous support for the president was due to "accepting levels of gaslighting (psychological manipulation) that I should not have been accepting," he said.
"Think like a patriot. We have to remove him from power," Scaramucci said, adding that the president had "early stage fascism."
So where did the Mooch suddenly get this commanding grasp of the obvious?
Trump, acting like his usual 4th-grade self, called Scaramucci a "highly unstable nut job," a "dope" and "a mental wreck" on Twitter.
UKRAINE’S NEOPHYTE president, Volodymyr Zelensky, took a big step this week toward proving that he will be, as he promised, the most pro-reform president in Ukraine’s history. On Monday, he laid out a breathtakingly ambitious five-year plan including virtually every measure the International Monetary Fund and Western governments have urged on Ukraine in recent years, from land reform to the privatization of state companies to a cleansing of the judiciary.
That ought to be cause for celebration in Washington, where successive Democratic and Republican administrations have tried to draw Ukraine away from Vladimir Putin’s Russia and into the ranks of Western democracies, only to be frustrated by the fecklessness and corruption of the country’s political leaders. Yet Mr. Zelensky has so far failed to win the backing of President Trump. Not only has Mr. Trump refused to grant the Ukrainian leader a White House visit, but also he has suspended the delivery of $250 million in U.S. military aid to a country still fighting Russian aggression in its eastern provinces.
Some suspect Mr. Trump is once again catering to Mr. Putin, who is dedicated to undermining Ukrainian democracy and independence. But we’re reliably told that the president has a second and more venal agenda: He is attempting to force Mr. Zelensky to intervene in the 2020 U.S. presidential election by launching an investigation of the leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden. Mr. Trump is not just soliciting Ukraine’s help with his presidential campaign; he is using U.S. military aid the country desperately needs in an attempt to extort it.
The strong-arming of Mr. Zelensky was openly reported to the New York Times last month by Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who said he had met in Madrid with a close associate of the Ukrainian leader and urged that the new government restart an investigation of Mr. Biden and his son. Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, while Joe Biden, as vice president, urged the dismissal of Ukraine’s top prosecutor, who investigated the firm.
Mr. Giuliani also wants a probe of claims that revelations of payments by a Ukrainian political party to Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, were part of a plot to wreck Mr. Trump’s candidacy. In other words, Trump associates want the Ukrainian government to prove that Ukraine improperly acted against Mr. Trump in the 2016 election; but they also want it to meddle in his favor for 2020.
Mr. Zelensky is incapable of delivering on either demand. The revelations about Mr. Manafort came from a Ukrainian legislator who was fighting for domestic reform, not Hillary Clinton. And the Biden case, which has already been investigated by Ukrainian authorities, is bogus on its face. The former vice president was one of a host of senior Western officials who pressed for the dismissal of the prosecutor, who was accused of blocking anti-corruption measures.
The White House claims Mr. Trump suspended Ukraine’s military aid in order for it be reviewed. But, as CNN reported, the Pentagon has already completed the study and recommended that the hold be lifted. Yet Mr. Trump has not yet acted. If his recalcitrance has a rationale, other than seeking to compel a foreign government to aid his reelection, the president has yet to reveal it.
It's the economy, stupid:
WASHINGTON/CHICAGO (Reuters) - Farm loan delinquencies rose to a record high in June at Wisconsin’s community banks, data showed on Thursday, a sign President Donald Trump’s trade conflicts with China and other countries are hitting farmers hard in a state that could be crucial for his chances of re-election in 2020.
The share of farm loans that are long past-due rose to 2.9% at community banks in Wisconsin as of June 30, the highest rate in comparable records that go back to 2001, according to a Reuters analysis of loan delinquency data published by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
While the number of seriously delinquent farm loans is rising nationwide, the noncurrent rate has more than doubled at Wisconsin’s community banks since Trump took office in January 2017. It now stands higher than in any other of the top 10 U.S. farm states as measured in production - a list that includes California, Iowa and Texas.
Nationwide, the share of farm loans at all FDIC-insured banks that are at least 90 days past due or are no longer accruing interest because of repayment doubts stood at 1.5% at the end of June, the FDIC data showed.
That marked the highest rate since 2012 but only about half the rate seen at community banks in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin played a pivotal role in Trump’s 2016 election victory and is widely expected to be a battleground again in the November 2020 contest.
Farmers there could be feeling the pinch more than in other big farming states like Iowa because Wisconsin’s crops are touched by multiple fronts of Trump’s trade wars, including with China, Canada and Mexico, said John Newton, chief economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, an agricultural lobby group.
Wisconsin’s farmers also received smaller federal aid payments than those of Iowa or Illinois, other major agricultural states hit by foreign tariffs, during a first round of federal trade aid payments meant to ease the economic pain of the trade wars, according to an analysis by the Farm Bureau of federal government data on payments through mid-May.
That bailout package focused on helping producers of soybeans, a crop that is grown on more acres in Illinois and Iowa than in Wisconsin. The government started taking applications for a second round of farm-related trade aid in July...
See Wisconsin's woes: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/12/5734/5684/Wisconsin%20woes.png
Great job, good anonymous ;)
Its taken Trump longer than we thought it would, but he's finally managed to destroy the ten year long economic recovery Obama created. Things are bad for Americans and getting worse. And getting worse for the world economy too thanks to Trump.
The other disaster that Trump's trade war has caused is the 9000 fires burning in the Amazon rain forest. The Amazon rainforest provides 20% of the worlds oxygen and it is now burning down at an unprecedented scale that threatens life on earth. The double edged sword of human caused global climate warming and deforestation is an existential global disaster humans are racing towards as fast as they can.
How is this Trump's fault? Trump's trade war with China has resulted in an embargo on American soybeans. Farmers in South America seeing an opportunity to take the Chinese soybean market away from the United States have been setting fires throughout the Amazon rain forest to clear land to grow soybeans to steal the former American market share.
When atmospheric oxygen levels start declining in ten years, blame Trump.
Wyatt and Regina Hardiman think humanity can burn down the Amazon rain forest that provides 20% of earth's oxygen and there will be no consequences.
The shit's hitting the fan now and will rapidly get worse. They can pray to their god all they want for help then but it won't change the extinction path life on earth is on.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/05/americas-hidden-racial-harmony/#.XXFE38RGUI4.twitter
"When you mention the Trump era political climate, I feel the same way about him as anyone else. And I knew he'd win, and how.
What frustrates me are my friends, people I share the same political party with, won't OWN the reason why,"
You say the reason why, like it should be obvious to me liberals are partly to blame for Trump being elected, but I don't see that. I see no way Hillary could have run a signficantly better Campaign. Here's my reasons why Trump was elected - bias, corruption, lawbreaking:
1) a massive and systematic and unprecidented effort by the Russian government to seed discord, discredit Hillary and promote Trump
2) Wide scale voter suppression by Republican governnors - photo voter ID laws, gerrymandering, closing of polls in districts that vote Democratic while opening more in districts that vote Republican, cutting the number of days and operating hours for voting, cutting Sunday voting which is a heavy voting day for the black community, not allowing out of state student voters to vote, purging voter rolls to lower voter turnout which historically favours Republicans, billboards put up in minority neignbourhoods threatening serious jail time for voting illegally (which makes valid miniority voters doubt whether or not they are elligible to vote due to their history of being oppressed by and punished disproportionately by white government, Republican "protect the vote" efforts where armed partisans go to polling stations and ask minorities if they are eligible to vote in an effort to intimidate them into not voting, and I'm sure I'll think of several more of these after I send you this email.
3) Profit focused liberal media gives billions of free air time to Trump's outrageousness during the 2016 election. Trump is covered non-stop while Democrat candidates for president and nominee Hillary can't get any air time for their policies. Frequently the major media out lets will often broadcast a camera view of an empty podium waiting for Trump to speak while Democratic presidential candidates get no air time while they are making major policy announcements.
4) Liberal media, in an effort to prove they aren't biased, overcompensates and attacks Hillary non-stop over nothing-burger of her private email server (just as Collin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and many others had done historically) while giving Trump a pass on his mountain of serious concerns. Trump is still making hay out of Hillary's security "breech" while he has from day one used an unsecure cell phone for sensitive calls to world leaders amongst a string of other security breaches he's been told allow foreign adversaries to listen in on. There's no evidence Hillary's email server was ever compromised but its established fact Trump is allowing enemies to listen in on his government calls.
5) Comey, perhaps overcompensating to show he's not biased against Republicans as the liberal media also did, breaks FBI policy and talks about the investigation into Hillary and castigates her while keeping secret that the FBI has opened an investigation into Trump/Russia collusion. Obama asks Mitch McConnell to make a bipartisan condemnation of the Russian government breaking American law to tilt the election to Trump. Evil McConnell of course is only interested in maximizing the chances Trump wins regardless of how anti-democratic that is, refuses and timid Obama fails to make public that there is proof Russia is foiling American democracy. This is a huge unfair advantage for Trump.
6) Comey, again breaking FBI policy, a week or so before the election announces he's reopening the investigation into Hillary's emails because of the investigation into Anthony Wiener who is married to Hillary's campaign manager(?) Huma Abedine. This is a bombshell right before the election that pushes Trump over the top. Even though a couple of days before the election Comey publicly announces he's found nothing new and is re-closing the investigation into Hillary's emails, the damage is done and its too late to change the fuzzily aware public's perception that Hillary is probably guilty of serious email security breeches and is untrustworthy just as Republicans have been saying and fabricating stories to support for decades.
7) Non-stop massive Republican gas lighting of American while Democratic politicians much more so play by the rules (not that they don't cheat lie and deceive too, just that they don't do it as much as Republican politicians)
8) Trump makes an age-old appeal to racism and in a day of apparent turmoil a fearful public who hates the liberal change they see in society likes his spitting in the face of convention and is highly motivated to vote while Democratic voters have been discouraged by the decades long dishonest Republican onslaught against Hillary and democrats. Republicans run up the deficit when they are in power, and then when Democats are in power Republicans get religion and suddenly not one thin dime can be spent on anything to benefit the public until the federal debt is paid down and the deficit eliminated. And Democrats bend to this because its the right thing to do and we are generally meeker while conservatives are generally more aggressive and push us around. Then Republicans lie to the public about how they are the fiscal conservatives and Democrats are the tax and spenders and Democratic campaigns fail to correct the record and the American public has been believing this lie about Republican fiscal conservatism for Decades. The gas-lighting of the public has been incredibly effective because its easier to fabricate a short lie about reality than it is to document and prove that the truth is not at all like Republicans constantly claim it is. The half-aware American public buys Republican bullshit again and again.
9) The electoral college system gives an unfair advantage to Republicans as does the assignation of 2 senators to each state. Hillary got 3 million more votes than Trump in 2016 and he barely managed to eke out an electoral college win by 77,000 votes in three states to be declared president against the spirit of democracy. Democratic Senators also got millions more votes than Republican senators and yet a majority of Republicans were elected to the Senate. California elects two senators for its 35 million people and North Dakota with its one million people also gets two senators. That's not proportionally representative democracy.
So, its pretty popular for some liberals and conservatives to go around saying "I knew Trump would win due to liberal stupidity (over something I'm not sure what), liberals blew it, its their own fault Trump was elected, they better not do the same thing next time", but other than the issues I've mentioned, I don't see how liberals could have done anything significantly better to have allowed Hillary to win in 2016. From everything I see, its was effin near a miracle that Trump won in 2016. He needed all the above actions to be maximally bent his way to win, and if any one of them wasn't he'd have lost, and Republicans got all those stars to line up for them and eke out a 77,000 vote electoral college win against the willl of the American people. By all means, tell me what I'm missing.
Hey Wyatt/Regina, do you two know the difference between "finite" and "infinite"?
Because in my discussions with you on the future of our planet you don't seem to understand the distinction.
Please give TTF readers your definitions of "finite" and "infinite" so we can try to understand your viewpoint on the existential threat of unchecked human population growth.
Wyatt and Regina are ashamed of their beliefs and viewpoints so they don't want to try and publicly defend them.
Wyatt and Regina think "So what if South Americans burn down the Amazon rain forest to take soybean market share from the USA - there's always plenty more oxygen producing rain forest where that came from!"
Evangelical christians fiddle while the earth burns.
Trump tweeted. "Lester Holt doesn't even bring up the subject of President Trump or the Republicans when talking about the importance or passage of Criminal Justice Reform. They only talk about the minor players, or people that had nothing to do with it...And the people that so desperately sought my help when everyone else had failed, all they talk about now is Impeaching President Trump!"
Teigen and Legend are frequent, outspoken critics of Trump.
"lol what a (expletive). tagged everyone but me. an honor, mister president," Teigen tweeted.
She added: "the absolute best part of his tweet is I literally didn't speak in the special, nor was I mentioned. I'm cackling at the pointless addition of me because he cannot not be a (expletive)."
Legend also chimed in: "Imagine being president of a whole country and spending your Sunday night hate-watching MSNBC hoping somebody--ANYBODY--will praise you. Melania, please praise this man. He needs you.
"Your country needs you, Melania," he added, before retweeting a photo of the first lady smiling while leaning in to greet Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the G-7 summit that previously had the hashtag #MelaniaLovesTrudeau trending.
Poor, poor Donny Trump, the two objects of his desire, Melania and Ivanka Trump both deeply infatuated with Justin Trudeau and multiple pictures out there of them making goo-goo eyes and him and smiling longingly - ooo, that kick to his "man"-hood is going to leave a mark!
Republican voters in at least four states will have no say in their party’s 2020 presidential nominating contests, after their respective Republican parties decided to cancel them and pledge all of their delegates to President Donald Trump.
So far, the Republican parties of Arizona, Kansas, Nevada and South Carolina have canceled their nominating contests, justifying the decision as primarily about saving money.
The excuse hasn’t pacified any of the three Republican candidates challenging Trump for the party’s nomination, who cast it as a fundamentally undemocratic act.
It isn’t unusual for state parties to cancel nominating contests when an incumbent candidate is running unopposed. Trump, however, is facing three Republican rivals in former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, and former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh.
“Primary elections are important, competition within parties is good, and we intend to be on the ballot in every single state no matter what the RNC and Trump allies try to do,” Walsh told Politico. “We also intend to loudly call out this undemocratic bull on a regular basis.”
Trump on Monday characterized the group as “a joke” and “a laughingstock,” and defended the states’ decision to cancel elections. “States don’t want to waste their money,” he told reporters.
The Kansas GOP estimates it will save $250,000 by canceling its caucus and pledging its delegates without any input from voters.
Walsh suspects Trump’s 88 percent approval rating among Republicans isn’t nearly as firm as the president wants people to believe, he told CNN, so Trump advisers are working to quiet potential sources of dissent ahead of time.
Instead of money, Trump advisers are likely more concerned about historical precedent: President George H.W. Bush lost re-election in 1992 after getting challenged by Pat Buchanan.
“What is Donald Trump afraid of?” former Gov. Weld asked The Associated Press, rhetorically.
Voting is “the ultimate right of speech in America,” he continued, “and Trump’s machine in South Carolina has just told the people of South Carolina that they don’t need to be heard. Donald Trump wants to be treated as a monarch, but we rejected that idea 200 years ago.”
Trump Raids Funds Meant to Deter Russia to Pay for His Ecosystem Destroying Wall
https://theweek.com/articles/863216/joe-biden-presidency-climate-catastrophe
https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-what-global-warming-obama-to-buy-marthas-vineyard-mansion-1844248/
https://nypost.com/2019/09/08/the-truth-about-democrats-climate-chamber/
https://www.dailycaller.com/2019/09/08/kerns-trump-women-minorities/
Hey Wyatt/Regina, do you two know the difference between "finite" and "infinite"?
Because in my discussions with you on the future of our planet you don't seem to understand the distinction.
Please give TTF readers your definitions of "finite" and "infinite" so we can try to understand your viewpoint on the existential threat of unchecked human population growth.
Evangelical christians lie and fiddle while the earth burns.
Wyatt and Regina are ashamed of their beliefs and viewpoints so they don't want to risk trying to defend them on a public forum.
Peter Wehner
worked in Reagan/Bush/Bush white houses...
The office is too powerful, and the consequences are too dangerous, to allow a person to become president who views morality only through the prism of whether an action advances his own narrow interests, his own distorted desires, his own twisted impulses. When an individual comes to believe his interests and those of the nation he leads are one and the same, it opens the door to all sorts of moral and constitutional devilry.
https://disq.us/url?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fideas%2Farchive%2F2019%2F09%2Fdonald-trump-not-well%2F597640%2F%3AX0hEYv2reS-0x60XaMR4UcBmrYw&cuid=1478235
Why gayness can never be eliminated or even reduced in the human race:
Some months ago, a JMG reader asked me if I had any ideas about some shocking behavior between gay and straight men he'd witnessed in the 1950's. Apparently a gang of heterosexual men would seek out a group of gay men. The heterosexual men would force the gay men to perform fellatio on them in an alley-way and during the...orgy(?) the heterosexual men would be punching and kicking the men performing fellatio on them telling them things like "You worthless pervert,suck my dick" and the gay men would be saying things like "I am a terrible person, I deserve to be punched by you, thankyou for beating me" and so on.
I tried to find that comment this evening but unfortunately Disqus only keeps the last couple months of comments so I couldn't get the exact text. Anyway, I thought about it a lot and although it strikes me as an improbable story and I find it a bit hard to believe it actually happened, I realize it could have happened and here's what I think was going on between these gay and heterosexual men:
Both the gay and straight men wanted to engage in this sexual activity but its not acceptable to their society to be gay, so they excuse this sexual contact to themselves by the heterosexual men telling themselves "I'm not guilty of having gay sex because I'm doing this to punish and humiliate these gay men for being gay, not because I enjoy sex with a man." and the gay men telling themselves "I'm being punished for engaging in this gay sex, so that absolves me of guilt for engaging in gay sex.". Due to a disapproving society both the heterosexual and gay men needed these rationalizations to give themselves permission to engage in sex with each other.
I've thought about why gay men exist for decades now and like many could never resolve the seeming contradiction of a behavioral trait being passed on by natural selection and gay men not having any desire to procreate. Recently the reason gay men are always born in similar numbers throughout history finally occurred to me:
Gay men are born to lessen the pressures of sexual demands, activity, and child bearing on females. By providing an additional sexual outlet to a tribe's more aggessive and potentially violent heterosexual males, gay men help the survivability of the tribe as a whole, rather than the survivability of their individual genes. Gay men serve to cushion females from male sexual demands and repercussions as well as to promote harmony between tribal members and to lower the tendency of hyper masculine males towards intra tribal violence - a less sexually frustrated male is a less violent male.
So this does not bode well for anti-gay religious people who dream of ridding humanity of gayness - its never going to happen, gayness is just way too fundamental and ingrained into who we are as people and who so many animals are that reproduce through male/female sex.
Gayness exists in every animal species scientists have looked to find it in. Gayness clearly has existed from very early on in the evolutionary history of life on earth and serves the purpose of lessening the pressures of sexual demands and child bearing on females by providing an alternative outlet for the sexual aggression of males. Gayness is obviously deeply intertwined in the core of our genetic makeup and has been so intertwined in the genes of the animal kingdom as well for hundreds of millions of years. There's simply no way something so at the core of behavior amongst species that procreate sexually can ever be separated from the rest of our genes.
It is destructive to society to try and suppress and deny that gayness is an inevitable and beneficial part of humanity.
Hey folks, as I've requested in the past, please forward the three links below to anyone you know with an interest in gayness and morality. I've been sending similar versions of this email to everyone I can:
As I demonstrate in the three comment threads on various political issues below, Evangelical Christians have perverted The Founder's Intent and are using the First Amendment as a weapon to entrench in law their legal superiority over innocent people they disapprove of. If they are left unchecked the oppression of LGBT people against the will of the democratic majority will be firmly entrenched in American society for decades to come.
Religion never has and never will unite the world. Humanity faces existential threats from Human Caused Global Climate Warming to nuclear holocaust. We need a united humanity to address these threats and will only have it if all religions willingly subordinate themselves to the highest moral imperative of society - "To have the best society we can, society's highest priority has to be maximizing the happiness for all in an equal and fair way."
http://vigilance.teachthefacts.org/2018/12/flynn-free-trump-continues-to-march-off.html#comments
http://vigilance.teachthefacts.org/2018/12/drowning-accomplished.html#comments
http://vigilance.teachthefacts.org/2019/01/moco-hunkers-down.html#comments
To access the #200 and higher comments, go to the bottom of the blue page and click on th red "Post a comment" icon. When the white comment window page comes up, click on the "Newer" icon.
I know most are too busy to read all this (the anonymous religious conservative's lengthy posts you can mostly ignore), but I think this is important to making the world a better place so please pass on these links to anyone you know with an interest in LGBT issues and morality. Morality is the ground which greatly favours LGBT people. As I did in the comment threads above, you can't lose with an anti-gay conservative when you put the only rational moral code first - "Do whatever you want, but harm no one".
If the Trump administration gets its way, approximately 28.3 million acres of federal land across Alaska could be transferred, sold or opened up to extractive development, according to a new Center for American Progress analysis of the federal government’s land management actions in the state.
The administration’s agenda in Alaska amounts to “one of the most brazen public land liquidation efforts in U.S. history,” the left-leaning think tank writes in its report.
The analysis highlights nine separate actions that put protected public land on the chopping block. Those include President Donald Trump’s well-documented rush to open the 1.5 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling and his directive last month to allow logging and other potential development in more than 9 million acres of Tongass National Forest, the largest remaining intact temperate rainforest on the planet.
It also includes several lesser-known initiatives, including revoking a pair of land withdrawals, a move that could ultimately open 1.3 million acres to future development; a land exchange that would allow for a road to be built through the 417,000-acre Izembek National Wildlife Refuge; and an ongoing rewrite of an Obama-era management plan that protected more than 13 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve from oil exploration.
Kate Kelly, CAP’s public lands director and a co-author of the report, said public lands in Alaska are facing a “perfect storm” as the state’s Republican delegation and the Trump administration have partnered to push pro-extraction policies.
“The size and scope is simply staggering,” said Kelly, who also served as a senior adviser at the Interior Department during the Obama administration. “We are talking about nearly 30 million acres, [an area] approximately the size of Georgia, that are at risk of being sold out or transferred. These are lands that belong to all Americans.”
The Interior Department did not respond to request for comment.
CAP’s analysis comes as the Trump administration faces backlash over the recent appointment of William Perry Pendley, a conservative lawyer who has spent decades campaigning for the sale and transfer of federal lands, as acting director of the federal Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the Interior Department. In that role he now oversees 245 million acres of public land.
Pendley, who once wrote that the “Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold,” spent his first few weeks on the job trying to repair his image, as E&E News reported. In an op-ed in The Denver Post, he swung back at what he described as “attacks on my character and misrepresentations of my past.”
Pendley’s appointment added to conservationists’ fears that it is only a matter of time before the Trump administration embraces transferring control of federal lands to states, as the Republican platform calls for. The administration maintains that it “adamantly opposes the wholesale sale or transfer of public lands,” an Interior Department spokesperson recently told The Washington Post.
Yet it continues to slash environmental protections and open up millions of additional acres of land and offshore waters to logging, mining and drilling.
Nowhere is more emblematic of Trump’s exploitation-first mindset for America’s public lands than Alaska, Kelly said. And she sees the administration’s efforts there as “doubly problematic” because of their potential to further drive global climate change.
“This plan would log America’s largest old-growth forest and at the same time lock our nation into fossil fuel emissions that we can’t afford,” she said.
Donald Trump came to the presidency a complete novice to government and often found his corrupt, authoritarian impulses frustrated by its bureaucracy. But he is slowly learning how to control the machine that has stymied him. This is the story of 2019, as Trump has replaced institutionalists attempting to curtail his grossest instincts with loyalists happy to indulge them. It is playing out across multiple dimensions. This is the through-line between several seemingly disconnected episodes from the last several days.
The pattern played out in its most absurd form via Trump’s manic insistence on justifying his inaccurate warning that Alabama “likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” from Hurricane Dorian, at a time when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was forecasting the state faced no risk. At first, Trump attempted to justify his lie by brandishing a chart he crudely doctored.
More ominously, on Friday, the NOAA issued an official statement backing up Trump’s original false claim. And the Washington Post reported the agency had instructed its staff not to contradict Trump’s claims. “This is the first time I’ve felt pressure from above to not say what truly is the forecast,” an NOAA meteorologist told the Post. “It’s hard for me to wrap my head around. One of the things we train on is to dispel inaccurate rumors and ultimately that is what was occurring.”
The controversy might appear absurd and contentless. But Trump views the stakes as high, not without reason. Among his supporters, Trump has created a cultlike devotion to his competence and honesty, both of which are threatened by acknowledging his falsehood about the hurricane.
Also on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported the Department of Justice is launching an antitrust investigation of automakers who had agreed with California to raise their emissions standards. Trump is driven by a desire to overturn an Obama-era rule increasing mileage standards out of an obsession with destroying his predecessor’s legacy and an automatic rejection of any policy to limit climate change. Trump took the agreement as a personal affront, raging publicly at the automakers for dealing with California and undercutting his leverage to loosen emissions standards.
The antitrust investigation is a preposterous abuse. The automakers are not conspiring to fix prices. They are negotiating pollution regulations with a state that is legally entitled to set its own air-pollution rules. But the threat of retribution has already dissuaded automakers from dealing with California. “One person with direct knowledge of negotiations said that Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz had indicated an interest in joining, but later abstained due to fears of political fallout,” reports the Journal. The New York Times notes that other auto firms steered clear of dealing with California because they “fear retribution from an unpredictable administration.”
It is not new for firms to tiptoe around a temperamental president. What’s novel is the Department of Justice being used as Trump’s legal muscle. The threat of a nasty tweet is now bolstered with the threat of massively expensive litigation.
Also on Friday, the Washington Post editorial page reported an explosive new development in Trump’s Ukraine scandal. The president has sent Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to pressure its government to supply evidence of misconduct by Joe Biden – even though there isn’t any sign Biden has done anything wrong. Here is another field where, by conscripting foreign countries to rough up domestic political rivals, Trump has broken new ground.
But Trump is not relying solely on Giuliani’s efforts at persuasion. Trump has refused to allow Ukraine’s president a White House visit, and suspended $250 million in military aid, to pressure its government into complying. To be sure, weakening Ukraine’s military dovetails neatly with Trump’s pro-Russian stance. But the Post reports that Trump is using the aid, which enjoys bipartisan support, as an extortion device.
Finally, the New York Times supplied more details on the ongoing scandal of Trump profiting from his office. During the presidential campaign, Trump waved away concerns about the unprecedented conflicts of interest that would arise from him running a business at the same time he wields enormous power. Republicans in Congress have evinced no concern whatsoever about Trump’s corruption, refusing to take even modest steps like compelling the release of his tax returns.
Increasingly, Republicans are dispensing with the fig leaf and flaunting their complicity. Putting money in Trump’s pocket by booking his properties has become a symbol of partisan solidarity. It is a signal of support both to the president and to fellow Republicans or business clients that you are on the ins with the boss. “President Trump has really been on the side of the Evangelicals and we want to do everything we can to make him successful,” one Evangelical leader tells the Times. “And if that means having dinner or staying in his hotel, we are going to do so.” Aggressive lack of curiosity has given way to open boasting of the quid pro quo arrangement.
None of these stories by itself has the singular drama of a Teapot Dome or a Watergate. Indeed, the mere fact that there is so much corruption prevents any single episode from capturing the imagination of the media and the public. But it is the totality of dynamic that matters. A corrupt miasma has slowly enveloped Washington. For generations, both parties generally upheld an assumption that the government would abide rules and norms dividing its proper functioning from the president’s personal and political interests.
The norm of bureaucratic professionalism and fairness is a pillar of the political legitimacy and economic strength of the American system, the thing that separates countries like the U.S. from countries like Russia. The decay of that culture is difficult to quantify, but the signs are everywhere. Trump’s stench is slowly seeping into every corner of government.
The number of people without health insurance jumped by 2 million from 2017 to a total of 27.5 million in 2018, according to census data release Tuesday.
It’s the first time the census survey reported an increase in the number of people without insurance since 2009, before ObamaCare took effect and vastly expanded coverage.
The total uninsured rate increased to 8.5 percent in 2018 from 7.9 percent in 2017.
Census officials said the increase was mostly driven by a drop in the number of people, including kids, covered by public programs like Medicaid.
The number of children without insurance also increased from 2017 to 2018 by 0.6 percent.
Kids living in the South were more likely to be uninsured than children living in other parts of the U.S.
Between 2017 and 2018, the uninsured rate for children living in the South increased by 1.2 percentage points to 7.7 percent
Hispanic children were more likely to not have insurance.
"“President Trump has really been on the side of the Evangelicals and we want to do everything we can to make him successful,” one Evangelical leader tells the Times. “And if that means having dinner or staying in his hotel, we are going to do so.” Aggressive lack of curiosity has given way to open boasting of the quid pro quo arrangement."
Indeed.
Trump has appointed Tony Perkins to a powerful foreign policy position which gives Perkins the money and influence of the American government to continue and vastly expand upon American evangelical christians' global anti-lgbt crusade.
Perkins and the euphemistically named American "Family" groups (code word for anti-gay) have had a decades long investment of millions upon millions of dollars to promote increased global animus towards lgbt people and to prevent criminal laws punishing innocent lgbt people from being repealed. Perkins and these groups also worked directly with Putin's government to draft Russia's anti-lgbt law that prevents gays from speaking about their lives or the government sanctioned attacks on them. This anti-free speech law effectively makes it illegal to be gay in Russia. Perkins and his evangelical followers very badly want to see the USA go the same route as Russia.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxylK6fR81rckQxWi1hVFFRUDg/view
The Authoritarians
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter 1 Who Are the Authoritarian Followers?
Chapter 2 The Roots of Authoritarian Aggression, and Authoritarianism Itself
Chapter 3 How Authoritarian Followers Think
Chapter 4 Authoritarian Followers and Religious Fundamentalism
Chapter 5 Authoritarian Leaders
Chapter 6 Authoritarianism and Politics
Chapter 7 What's To Be Done?
The author says around 25% of the population are Right Wing Authoritarians. I say that number could be as high as 40% based on my very regular encounters of such people and the roughly 40% of the population that makes up Trump's hard core base.
Earth Rise Apollo 8
Its definitely finite, Wyatt/Regina. If you two know what that means.
"they’ll ignore decades of technology just to deny that an unborn baby is a human being".
A zygote is not a human being. It his human tissue but it is not in anyway what people normally associate with being a person. The same goes for a human fetus that the vast majority can't distinguish from a rabbit fetus.
A person has certain qualities that make them a person. The ability to think, feel pain, love, hate, eat,sleep, move of our own volition. Early pregnancies can do none of what we associate with being a person - they are NOT a person. Liars like Perkins try to conflate tissue being human in nature (just as my fingernail is human and the fingernail of a chimp is not) with little developed tissue being a person.
By law and by practical necessity, throughout the entirety of human history all societies have not considered a pregnancy a person until natural birth happens.
Oops, I was trying to post on this thread and got confused as to where I was, lol :)
Partay!
https://worldredeye.com/2019/09/rebuke-jerry-falwell-jr-s-comment-politicos-someones-gotta-tell-freakin-truth-jerry-falwells-aides-break-silence-article/
On Monday morning, Politico published a major exposé on Jerry Falwell Jr., the religious right's most influential supporter of Donald Trump and the president of Liberty University, an evangelical institution formed by his father, Southern Baptist minister Jerry Falwell. Writer Brandon Ambrosino paints a damning picture of the younger Falwell as a man unrestrained by his own religion's teachings on sexual morality or any other kind of Christian ethics.
The laundry list of malfeasance and inappropriate behavior is impressive, "from partying at nightclubs, to graphically discussing his sex life with employees, to electioneering" and "directing university resources into projects and real estate deals in which his friends and family have stood to make personal financial gains."
The most titillating story, previously reported by the Miami Herald, concerns the fact that Falwell and his wife, Becki, seem to have have an interesting sex life involving sharing naked photos with other men — men who, likely not coincidentally, enjoy healthy levels of financial assistance from the Falwells and Liberty University. For instance, Politico reports that Falwell sent pictures of his wife in "a French maid costume" to their personal trainer, Ben Crosswhite. They also used Liberty funds to set Crosswhite up as the owner of a lucrative gym.
There's a lot more of this sort of thing, making it quite clear that Falwell is a first-rate hypocrite who poorly hides a love of power, luxury and sexual freedom behind a facade of Christian piety.
But it's foolish to imagine that any of this will affect Falwell's political power or standing with the larger white evangelical community. The pretense that the religious right was motivated by faith and morality was dropped — or should have been — when white evangelicals flocked to vote for Trump in greater numbers than they did for George W. Bush, who if he was convincing about little else, was convincingly a man of faith.
Here's the thing: The real purpose of the Christian conservative movement is to uphold white supremacy and patriarchy, full stop. As long as Falwell Jr. keeps that up — as his father did before him — his flock will stick with him just as they've stuck with Trump, a thrice-married chronic adulterer who has bragged about sexual assault on tape...
Falwell first rose to fame as a Baptist minister due to his stalwart opposition to civil rights, which he called "a terrible violation of human and private property rights." He declared that the 1964 Civil Rights Act "should be considered civil wrongs rather than civil rights." He also once declared, in response to the historic Brown v. Board of Education case, that if the Supreme Court "had known God's word and had desired to do the Lord's will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made."
In response to Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1965 march in Selma, Alabama, Falwell gave a famous sermon — which was printed out and widely distributed — railing against "church leaders [who] are so obsessed with the alleged discrimination against Negroes in the South." While saying he was personally opposed to discrimination, Falwell insisted that activist clergymen like King "need to get off the streets and back into the pulpits and into the prayer rooms."
Falwell's belief that ministers should stay out of politics only applied to anti-racists, of course. In 1968, Falwell "opened his pulpit to George Wallace," the segregationist Alabama governor who was then running for president, explains Matthew Avery Sutton in his history of Falwell and the religious right...
On this, the 18th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans, Donald Trump pauses to remember that awful day.
Donald J. Trump ✔
@realDonaldTrump
If it weren’t for the never ending Fake News about me, and with all that I have done (more than any other President in the first 2 1/2 years!), I would be leading the “Partners” of the LameStream Media by 20 points. Sorry, but true!
8:19 AM - Sep 11, 2019
Because who will ever forget where they were that day, when an ABC News/Washington Post poll showed five Democratic presidential contenders leading Trump in head-to-head matchups?
God bless America.
Correction:
When I mentioned above that Trump's trade war with China has resulted in the burning of the Amazon rain forest (to take soybean markets away from the U.S.) I said that there were 9000 wildfires burning in the Amazon. Apparently that was an old number, I saw on the news last night:
There are 74,000 wildfires burning in the Amazon rain forest due to Trump
The Amazon provides 20% of the world's oxygen. Anti-gay Evangelical christians like Wyatt and Regina Hardiman will tell you we can burn down the entire Amazon and suffer no consequences - Don't believe them!
Amanda Marcotte nailed it!
The Congressional Budget Office reported on Tuesday that, with one month to go, the federal deficit for fiscal year 2019 has already topped $1 trillion. As night follows day, Trump administration critics blamed the tax cuts.
And once again, the data prove them wrong.
The CBO report says that the federal deficit reached $1.067 by the end of August. That’s up $168 billion from the comparable period in fiscal year 2018. The deficit this year will be larger than the entire budget was in 1987.
Where did the increase come from? Why, tax cuts, of course.
But the report shows that revenues climbed 3.4% so far this fiscal year – a growth rate that’s faster than GDP. Spending, however, shot up by 6.4%.
Look within the data, in fact, and you see that the tax cuts are working as promised – by accelerating economic growth, they’re at least partially paying for themselves.
Take corporate taxes. Ask any Democrat running for president and they will bemoan the tax “giveaways” to giant corporations. What they won’t tell you is that corporate tax revenues are up 5%.
In fact, corporations paid $8 billion more in the 11 months of this fiscal year than they did in the same period of fiscal year 2018. That increase alone is enough to fully fund the Environmental Protection Agency for an entire year.
What’s more, the CBO notes that corporate income tax payments through May were on 2018 activities. When you compare corporate taxes from June through August to same months last year, they are already up $18 billion – a 48% increase!
Meanwhile, individual income and payroll taxes are up $82 billion – a 3% increase over the prior year. Payroll taxes alone, which are a good indication of how well the job market is because they are automatically deducted from every worker’s wages, are up 6.4%.
Now look at the spending side of the equation.
The CBO report shows that while revenues have climbed by $102 billion, spending shot up by $271 billion.
The entire increase in the deficit over last year is due to rampant spending increases, not the Trump tax cuts.
Spending increases were across the board.
Social Security costs climbed 5.7%; Medicare, 6.5%; Medicaid, 4.6%.
Defense spending is up 7.9%, but spending on everything else in the budget has climbed by 4.5%.
Here’s the really worrisome figure: Interest payments on the national debt is up 14% over the prior year.
It should go without saying that these levels of spending growth are unsustainable. Yet instead of confronting them, lawmakers and the Trump administration are aggravating them. Entitlement reform is a non-issue at the moment. Every increase in defense spending has to be matched with a hike in spending on domestic programs. The national debt continues to explode.
And while Republicans appear indifferent to the debt explosion, Democrats are eager to more than double the size of the federal government, without saying how they’d pay for that increase let alone bring existing annual deficits down to earth.
To paraphrase Herbert Stein, something that can’t go on forever, won’t. The only question is when it won’t
The 2020 Democrats again take the debate stage Thursday, filling millions of family rooms across America with their faces and voices. With the field of presidential contenders essentially cut in half, it will be a very different event than the previous two sessions. For the first time, all the front-runners will be on the stage the same evening. Pundits have already started to handicap the event and create the narratives that will invariably dominate the post-debate news coverage.
The composition of the field tells us a great deal about what Democrats value. The number of candidates on the stage who have ever run a business has fallen from four to one. The field is dominated by the three A’s – academics, attorneys, and activists.
The three White House aspirants with business experience who failed to make the cut -- John Hickenlooper, Michael Bennet, and John Delaney -- are too practical to make the big policy promises that capture the hearts of the liberal base of the Democratic Party. They comprehend the unintended consequences of these sweeping agendas and were unwilling to fully embrace them. They equivocated when it came to eliminating private health insurance, making college “free,” and imposing a new “wealth tax” on the richest Americans. Their reluctance to participate in this attack on the free market system rendered them irrelevant inside their own political party.
This isn’t surprising. There appears to be a fundamental disdain for successful business people among Democrats. In 2016, Michael Bloomberg was greeted with chants of “one-percenter” as he stood up to support Hillary Clinton at the party’s convention. Howard Schultz was accused by Democrats of being a billionaire egomaniac – despite providing tens of thousands of jobs to returning soldiers, and health care, tuition reimbursement, and stock options to hundreds of thousands of employees. Some of the attacks on Schultz were motivated by fears that he would run as an independent and possibly compromise Democrats’ 2020 chances of defeating President Trump. Yet Tom Steyer, who along with Bloomberg has been one of the most dedicated financial supporters of Democrats, received similar treatment when he decided to run as a Democrat. The ridicule with which his campaign has been met should send an unmistakable message: “We love your money, but not you.”
Some will argue that this isn’t news. Arnold Schwarzenegger often pointed out the Democrats’ institutional confusion by suggesting that “you can’t love jobs and hate the people who create them.” Once upon a time, the party of Franklin Roosevelt accepted this as a tenet of the faith. Over the last three decades, however, party elites have been steering their brethren in a different direction. Since Michael Dukakis’ disastrous 1988 campaign, Democrats have tried to argue that they support the private sector and economic growth. With this campaign they are amending that stance. The new credo is: “We support economic growth, provided it’s driven by government programs.” With all due respect to Bill Clinton, “the era of big government,” which never really went away, is back with a vengeance.
This approach carries consequences both electorally and from a governance perspective. The Democrats are effectively working for President Trump by rejecting the private sector. He wants to position this race as a choice between socialism and capitalism; they are beating him to the punch. Instead of a referendum on Trumpism, the election could turn on the relative merits of two competing economic systems. While polls differ on the number of voters who prefer socialism, the average is less than a third of Americans. Those tend to be younger citizens who vote less frequently.
From a governance perspective, it also likely means any new administration would be long on big government programs. If this is the direction our country takes, I hope Democrats take a moment to evaluate prior big government engineering. Yes, Medicare has helped take care of our most vulnerable citizens, but it’s also helped usher in four decades of runaway health care inflation. Medicare Part D has enabled many Americans to afford their prescription drugs, while simultaneously driving up the costs for millions of others. Likewise, the $150 billion we’ve spent every year trying to make higher education accessible to more Americans hasn’t led to affordability; rather, it’s led to inflation. Democrats would be wise to involve some of those business people they so easily cast aside -- the ones who understand how markets work
The entire media narrative about the Amazon fires is another alarmist farce.
We have had wildfires for many years now in the Amazon, even in the tropical rainforest – mainly started by humans for forest clearing and ranching.
Reports in usually reputable media with captions such as National Geographic’s “The Amazon is burning at record rates – and deforestation is to blame.” Similarly, the BBC is reporting it as a “record.”
But is it? You would not guess from these headlines that NASA’s description for the original photo says that it is burning at less than average rates.
Bit of a big difference there. The BBC did mention this but don’t even link to the NASA page to check and in only two throwaway sentences easy to miss.
US space agency NASA said that overall fire activity in the Amazon basin was slightly below average this year. The agency said that while activity had increased in Amazonas and Rondonia, it had decreased in the states of Mato Grosso and Pará.
The black and Hispanic unemployment rates both just hit another all-time low, proving that the Trump administration's focus on providing equal opportunity to all Americans is doing more to empower racial minorities than any of the divisive approaches the Democrats have ever tried.
President Trump has advanced an economic agenda that puts American workers at the center of the government’s decision-making. Policies such as cutting taxes for middle-income workers, fighting back against foreign trade cheaters, and stopping the flow of illegal immigration empower all workers and are improving the lives of working Americans and their families.
These policies have had remarkable effects, especially for blacks, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and women, all of whom have achieved all-time low unemployment rates on this president’s watch — and the outlook just keeps getting better.
The African American unemployment rate, for instance, fell to a new record low of 5.5% in August, significantly lower than the previous record of 5.9% that was set in May 2018. The unemployment rate for black women dropped even more precipitously, from 5.2% to 4.4%. The current disparity between the black and white unemployment rate is at the lowest point on record, proving that the president’s pursuit of indiscriminate prosperity is succeeding at reducing racial economic inequalities.
Latino unemployment also decreased in August, matching historic lows set earlier this year thanks to the Trump administration’s policies. With an unemployment rate of only 4.2%, Hispanics are thriving in this strong economy, proving that there’s truth to John F. Kennedy’s sage observation that “a rising tide lifts all boats.”
In fact, minority workers have filled the vast majority of the millions of new jobs created under this administration. Since the end of 2016, roughly 4.5 million newly created jobs have gone to minority workers between the ages of 25 and 54, compared to 700,000 that have been filled by white workers.
Nevertheless, Democrats and the mainstream media keep pushing a divisive agenda that pits Americans against each other, usually by portraying one group’s success as another group’s loss. While President Trump works to improve economic conditions and create opportunity for all Americans, Democrats and the liberal media advocate cynical policies meant to stoke ethnic conflict. This strategy is irresponsible and risks severing the ties that bind us together as American citizens who bleed the same red blood of patriots.
Slavery reparations, for instance, have gone from a fringe notion to a central talking point among the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. They have proposed all sorts of measures to offer black Americans cash payments as compensation for “structural racism,” but none of those proposals could ever provide the level of dignity and independence that come with access to good jobs and rising wages. Conversely, the president’s pro-growth economic agenda, coupled with the “Opportunity Zone” initiative he created to encourage new investment in impoverished neighborhoods, has already demonstrably improved the lot of minorities in America, which is reflected in the record number of new businesses started by black women, the reduction of food stamp enrollment by 6.2 million Americans, and many other measures of economic success.
Donald Trump has created an economy that empowers all Americans, and the record-low unemployment rates for black and Hispanic workers show that his approach is working.
Instead of undercutting the shared bonds of fellow countrymen and -women, this president is bringing people together by expanding economic opportunity to all Americans, including communities that had been left behind by establishment politicians for far too long.
Keep dreaming!
Rump stinks and is about as much of a uniter as his favorite dictators.
Chinese Communist Party President Xi Jinping:
“He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin:
“If he says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him. I’ve already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, ‘Oh, isn’t that a terrible thing’—the man has very strong control over a country. Now, it’s a very different system, and I don’t happen to like the system. But certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.”
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte:
“I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan:
“Frankly, he’s getting very high marks. He’s also been working with the United States. We have a great friendship and the countries—I think we’re right now as close as we’ve ever been … a lot of that has to do with a personal relationship.”
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi:
“We agree on so many things. I just want to let everybody know in case there was any doubt that we are very much behind President el-Sisi. He’s done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation. We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt. The United States has, believe me, backing, and we have strong backing.”
"Anonymous Shithole dictators said...
Keep dreaming!
Rump stinks and is about as much of a uniter as his favorite dictators."
this is the epitome of TTF logic
Trump has managed an economy that has been a godsend to the minorities that have supported Dems for years and gotten nothing in return for it
their response: they disagree with his approach to foreign policy, saying Trump should try to confront the world's dictators instead of trying to engage them
again, what has that ever achieved?
Last year, when Christine Blasey Ford emerged after then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings to accuse him of attempted rape at a house party when both were teenagers, there were many unanswered questions both about her story and her credibility.
She offered no proof that she and Kavanaugh had ever even met. She couldn’t remember where it happened, when it happened, or how she arrived at or departed from the party. None of the four alleged witnesses she eventually named, including one of her closest lifelong friends, corroborated her accusations. Prior to airing her allegations with the media, she scrubbed her entire social media history that indicated she was a liberal activist.
To this day, there is zero evidence beyond her claims that the alleged assault ever happened. One detail, however, remains particularly intriguing. The Blasey family stayed conspicuously silent about the veracity of her allegations. A public letter of support for Ford that began “As members of Christine Blasey Ford’s family . . .” wasn’t signed by a single blood relative. Reached for comment by the Washington Post, her father simply said, “I think all of the Blasey family would support her. I think her record stands for itself. Her schooling, her jobs and so on,” before hanging up.
Privately, however, it appears the Blasey family had significant doubts about what Ford was trying to accomplish by coming forward and making unsubstantiated allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. Within days of Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, a fascinating encounter took place. Brett Kavanaugh’s father was approached by Ford’s father at the golf club where they are both members.
Ralph Blasey, Ford’s father, went out of his way to offer to Ed Kavanaugh his support of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, according to multiple people familiar with the conversation that took place at Burning Tree Club in Bethesda, Maryland. “I’m glad Brett was confirmed,” Ralph Blasey told Ed Kavanaugh, shaking his hand. Blasey added that the ordeal had been tough for both families.
The encounter immediately caused a stir at the close-knit private golf club as staff and members shared the news. The conversation between the two men echoed a letter that Blasey had previously sent to the elder Kavanaugh. Neither man returned requests for comment about the exchanges.
Blasey never explicitly addressed the credibility of his daughter’s allegations, but he presumably wouldn’t have supported the nomination of a man he believed tried to rape his daughter.
It wasn’t just Ford’s father. The national drama played out on a decidedly local scale as the D.C.-based family and friends of Ford’s quietly apologized to friends and family of Kavanaugh, even as the toxic political environment made it punitive for them to speak up publicly.
One friend who was subjected to both public scrutiny and private pressure because she cast doubt on Ford’s story was Leland Keyser, one of Ford’s closest friends at the time of the alleged attack. Keyser wanted to support her but nevertheless had no recollection of the event.
Keyser’s son noted on a GoFundMe page for his mother that she put “everything in her life at risk” in order to tell the truth about Ford’s allegations. Son Alex Beckel wrote that his mom “resisted immense personal pressure and courageously came forward with the truth,” adding that she “stood up and did what was right when she had everything to lose and nothing to gain.”
While there was no evidence to support Ford’s claim other than her testimony, some believed her because they said she would have no motivation to lie. Critics point to the nearly $1 million she raised in GoFundMe accounts and the honors that Sports Illustrated and Time Magazine bestowed on her. New books featuring her cooperation downplay the copious problems with her account.
So what was the point of the cavalcade of unsubstantiated allegations? Ford’s attorney Debra Katz offered not so much a hint as a confession. Ford testified that she had no political motivation. But in remarks captured on video, Katz admitted that Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh were at least in part driven by fear he might not sufficiently support unregulated abortion on the court.
“We were going to have a conservative” justice, she said, “but he will always have an asterisk next to his name” that will discredit any decision he makes regarding abortion. What’s more, she added, “that is part of what motivated Christine.”
Heavy Duty Liars Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "The entire media narrative about the Amazon fires is another alarmist farce....You would not guess from these headlines that NASA’s description for the original photo says that it is burning at less than average rates.
No surprise they're lying even more than the deceptive right wing propaganda article they got the original lie from. The deceptive right wing article talks about fires being below average in PART of the Amazon and of course, as is their standard tactic, they lie and falsely claim NASA says the fire season in the Amazon as a whole is below average"
Here's the truth about what NASA says about Amazon rain forest fires:
"Uptick in Amazon Fire Activity in 2019"
You can never trust what a right wing media organization publishes. Even less so, Wyatt and Regina Hardiman's retelling of it.
Here's more of what NASA ACTUALLY SAID about the 74,000 wild fires burning in the Amazon that Trump's foreign policy started:
"With the fire season in the Amazon approaching its midpoint, scientists using NASA satellites to track fire activity have confirmed an increase in the number and intensity of fires in the Brazilian Amazon in 2019, making it the most active fire year in that region since 2010.
Fire activity in the Amazon varies considerably from year-to-year and month-to-month, driven by changes in economic conditions and climate. August 2019 stands out because it has brought a noticeable increase in large, intense, and persistent fires burning along major roads in the central Brazilian Amazon..."
The source of 20% of the earth's oxygen is being burned down as fast as South American farmers can set it on fire. They're doing it to steal the American share of the Chinese soybean market China has stopped buying.
American farmers will never see those markets come back to them, and the Amazon will keep burning at record rates.
Wyatt and Regina Hardiman will tell you we can burn down the entire Amazon rainforest and not face any serious consequences, that their god will save us - don't believe them!
Wyatt/Regina's god has never stopped any human caused disaster and he never will. Only the christian god's non-existence could excuse his inaction.
Wyatt and Regina have made a ton of hay over the years. out of taking stories about a fraction of the world and falsely claiming they apply to the whole planet. For example:
The planet has warmed dramatically over the past one hundred years with a couple of tiny pockets of the earths's surface that have gotten colder than average. One of these places is the north eastern United States where Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous live.
One winter they loudly announced global warming was a farce as "there have been more record lows than record high temperatures this year." That was true in the North Eastern United States, but for the globe as a whole it was a lie and Wyatt/Regina repeatedly falsely asserted the situation of record lows versus record highs applied to the entire planet rather than just a fraction of the 2% of the earth's surface that makes up the United States.
And of course they've done the same effin' thing here with the out of control Amazon rain forest fires - claiming a small fraction of the forest with a below average rate of fire is true for the entire Amazon when the truth is the number of fires in the Amazon as a whole are way above average.
Wyatt and Regina spout this kind of deception non-stop, on every possible issue, decade after decade. They haven't the slightest misgiving about lying on an almost continuous basis to prop up their favourite fairy tales about reality. Clearly when you can believe a just and loving god metes out infinite punishment for finite and often trivial crimes you can convince yourself any bullshit is true, no matter how outrageous.
Here's a cute little tidbit from the right wing propaganda article from which Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous derived their lie that there is no concern about the record wildfires in the Amazon:
"UNICEF reports that the data from satellite images show that Brazil lost 2,254 square kilometers (870 square miles) of forest in July, between three and five times the amount lost in the same month for each of the previous four years."
Three years ago, in an attempt to prove he wasn’t racist, Donald Trump infamously pointed to a man in the audience of his presidential campaign rally and declared him “my African American.”
Now, more than 2 1/2 years into Trump’s presidency, that man, Gregory Cheadle is abandoning the Republican Party to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020.
Cheadle, 62, announced his decision to run as an independent in an interview with “PBS NewsHour” published Thursday. After 18 years in the party, he told the news program, he believes Republicans are using Black men like him as “political pawns” in their “pro-white” agenda.
“President Trump is a rich guy who is mired in white privilege to the extreme,” Cheadle told PBS on Thursday. “Republicans are too sheepish to call him out on anything and they are afraid of losing their positions and losing any power themselves.”
Cheadle didn’t say where he’ll run, but Federal Election Commission records show he’s run four times before in California’s 1st Congressional District.
Trump’s blatant displays of racism have been a cornerstone of his presidency and campaign.
Cheadle said Trump crossed the line for him when the president attacked the city of Baltimore and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) earlier this summer.
In late July, Trump blasted Cummings as a “racist” and described Baltimore as a “rodent-infested mess” of a district where “no human being would want to live.”
Cheadle, who is from Redding, California, told PBS that he had enough of the Republican Party when he saw his friends defend Trump’s remarks on Baltimore.
“They were sidestepping the people of color issue and saying that, ‘No, it’s not racist,’” he said. “They were saying these people were socialists and communists. That’s what they were saying. And I thought this is a classic case of whites not seeing racism because they want to put blinders on and make it about something else.”
Trump faced backlash during his 2016 campaign when he pointed to Cheadle as “my African American,” though at the time, Cheadle said he wasn’t offended.
I guess it wasn't as obvious to him then that he the token black being used as a pawn. I guess you can't fool all the people all the time.
Leaders of a California church subjected dozens of homeless people to forced labor, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Members of the Imperial Valley Ministries were arrested Tuesday in Californian cities El Centro and San Diego and in Brownsville, Texas, after reportedly coercing homeless people into surrendering their welfare benefits and forcing them to beg for up to nine hours a day, six days a week. The donations they received would then allegedly go to into the pockets of church leaders.
A dozen members of the ministry, including former pastor Victor Gonzalez, have been charged with conspiracy, forced labor, document servitude and benefit fraud. If found guilty, they face up to 20 years each in prison.
"The indictment alleges an appalling abuse of power by church officials who preyed on vulnerable homeless people with promises of a warm bed and meals," said U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer in filings. "These victims were held captive, stripped of their humble financial means, their identification, their freedom and their dignity."
Imperial Valley Ministries (IVM) claims its mission is to "restore" those grappling with drug addiction at free faith-based rehabilitation group homes. It also raise money to open churches and rehab centers in other cities.
Most of the alleged victims were recruited from outside El Centro, including from San Diego and Texas, with offers of free food and shelter. According to prosecutors, IVM also promised new members they would be given resources to eventually return home.
When recruits checked into a group home, they were reportedly required to sign agreements with strict regulations, such such as "you are not to discuss things of the world" and "the only thing to be read is the holy Bible." Phone calls were prohibited and, except on Sundays, recruits were only served two meals a day.
The agreements also allegedly warned that any rule-breaking would be met with "discipline." Punishments reportedly included the withholding of food: In one instance, church leaders allegedly refused to allow a diabetic woman to obtain insulin or food in response to her low blood sugar.
Some former residents, including those who did not require drug rehabilitation services, claim they were being held against their will.
According to the indictments, IVM leaders locked recruits inside the group homes with deadbolts and nailed the windows shut. They also allegedly confiscated driver's licenses, passports and immigration papers to prevent members from leaving. EBT cards were reportedly surrendered and given to other ministry members.
One 17-year-old former recruit claimed he broke a window and ran to a neighboring property to call the police. The teen was brought to a medical center to be treated for lacerations.
Recruits were told not to seek or accept outside work, and warned that their children would be taken away if they left the church. They were also told their loved ones had rejected them, according to the U.S. Attorney.
All of the identified victims are now free, said Brewer, and have been connected with specialists to provide assistance with shelter, transportation and any necessary support services.
"Human trafficking robs victims of their most basic human rights," said FBI Special Agent-In-Charge Scott Brunner. "Victims of human trafficking are often unseen by society, left pleading in silence."
Why are your Social Security benefits considered taxable income? Let Ronald Regan explain why:
"In 1984 I lowered the top income tax rate from 70% to 28%. Then I imposed the first ever income tax on social security benefits to make up for it."
And the federal debt still doubled under Reagan.
Ronald Reagan was the end of Republicans having the slightest concern for fiscal responsibility.
" If you thought churches holding slaves for labor ended with the Magdalene Laundries, think again"
So appalling. When you think humans are inherently evil and their god so much more important its okay for god to kill innocents whenever he feels like it, you can rationalize to yourself inflicting any terrible abuse on your fellow man.
How sad it must be believing that scientists, scholars, historians, economists, and journalists have devoted their whole lives to deceiving you, while a reality-TV star with decades of fraud and exhaustively documented lying is your only beacon of honesty.
Andrew McCabe is one step closer to a reckoning with justice.
U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu has recommended moving forward with charges against Andrew McCabe.
The Department of Justice correctly rejected the equivalent of a Hail Mary appeal from McCabe’s lawyers that he not face criminal charges for lying. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie K. Liu has recommended moving forward against the fired former FBI acting director. Presenting the case to a federal grand jury is imminent.
Lest we forget, McCabe has helped put people behind bars for lying. He should be held to the same legal standard.
In a scathing condemnation of McCabe last year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general – a neutral investigator appointed by former President Barack Obama – concluded that McCabe “lacked candor” on four occasions when questioned by federal agents about leaking information to a reporter.
A lack of candor, mind you, is a polite way of saying McCabe lied – not once, but four times.
Federal prosecutors have spent the better part of 17 months evaluating the incriminating evidence. They have been more than fair in listening to the explanations and excuses offered by defense lawyers.
In his own defense, McCabe claims he was stricken with a sudden onset of incoherence and amnesia. It was all a misunderstanding and miscommunication, he insists.
In the alternative, McCabe avers that it was nothing more than an innocent failure of recollection. Not likely.
None of the people associated with Trump were ever afforded such vapid excuses when Special Counsel Robert Mueller leveled criminal charges for lying against people like Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Roger Stone.
Should McCabe, who has never disguised his enmity toward the president, be treated any differently because he served in law enforcement? Absolutely not.
McCabe’s deceptions are obvious on their face. He denied to investigators that he helped deliver information to a Wall Street Journal reporter. In fact, he had. He told agents he had no idea who leaked the material. In fact, he had authorized it himself.
In subsequent interviews, McCabe was given multiple chances to correct his lies. Instead, he doubled down in an audio-recorded interview with the same false denials.
McCabe, a person possessed of chronic misjudgment, an inflated sense of self-importance, and utter disregard for both the law and executive authority, should never have been employed at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.
Briscoe Cain, a Republican serving in the Texas House of Representatives, is facing a possible FBI investigation over a threatening message he sent to Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke.
“My AR is ready for you Robert Francis,” Cain wrote on Twitter in response to O’Rourke’s proposed assault weapons ban.
Twitter later deleted the message for violating “rules for threats of violence,” the Guardian reported. However, O’Rourke shared a screenshot and called it a death threat.
O’Rourke’s campaign told CNN it plans to report the message to the FBI.
Cain later called O’Rourke “a child” and taunted the people who had reported his message.
“Cool bro,” he wrote to one.
O’Rourke has made gun control a central message of his campaign, especially after last month’s mass shooting in his hometown of El Paso, which left 22 people dead. The message Cain initially responded to was a partial quote from Thursday night’s Democratic debate, in which O’Rourke was asked about his proposed mandatory buyback of assault weapons.
“Critics call this confiscation. Are you proposing taking away their guns, and how would this work?” asked debate moderator David Muir.
O’Rourke said assault weapons were designed for a battlefield, not for hunting or personal protection.
“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” he said to cheers. “We’re not going to allow it to be used against your fellow Americans anymore.”
Last year, Cain was thrown out of the state Democratic convention after trying to distribute prank gun control signs, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported at the time. One attendee accused him of brandishing a gun at the event.
According to the Dallas Morning News, Cain told his fellow lawmakers earlier this year that he has Asperger syndrome and said: “Sometimes the things I say or do may come off completely different from what I intended.”
IF REPRESENTATIVE CAIN CANNOT CONTROL WHAT HE SAYS AND DOES, HE SHOULD BE BANNED FROM OWNING AN ASSAULT RIFLE.
Two-thirds of Americans support assault weapons ban: Fox News poll
"Two-thirds of Americans support assault weapons ban"
that's why we have a constitution
it guarantees that innocent people can't have their right to bear arms taken away by the government
there are several other rights that can't be taken by popular votes
let me know if you need more examples
In the last few weeks, Democratic presidential candidates have focused on fears of a recession, accusing President Trump of recklessness in handling the nation's economic affairs.
"The warning signs for another recession are flashing," Elizabeth Warren tweeted recently. The economy is "teetering on a recession," Joe Biden said a few days later, probably meaning that it is teetering on the edge of a recession. "We're now about to enter the Trump recession," said top Bernie Sanders aide Jeff Weaver. Democrats took note of a Washington Post poll saying that Trump's approval rating has fallen in light of the fact that 6 in 10 Americans fear a recession will arrive in the next year.
So on Thursday, at the Democratic Party's first one-night presidential debate, the first opportunity to showcase the party's ten leading candidates, what role did the nation's widespread economic anxieties play?
Almost none. The candidates simply didn't talk about it. The word "recession" was uttered just once in the entire debate. (By Julián Castro, who noted the poll's finding of recession fears.) Nor was the word "unemployment" ever spoken. Nor was there a discussion of job creation. Nor was there much of a discussion of wages.
The Democrats know they have no chance to win on the economy.
Over four hours of debate among what felt like a thousand Democratic candidates, a few notable topics scarcely came up. There was no heated tussle over jobs plans. No argument over how to set the national debt on a better path, and no proposals to balance the budget or change the country’s entitlement structure. There was less discussion of getting work to America’s forgotten communities than in the last election cycle.
Thursday, the Democratic silence on the economy was a concession to the president. The candidates didn't even try to argue that the economy is terrible. Nobody would buy it.
In past elections, voters have traditionally accorded jobs and the economy a very high place among the issues they consider most important.
Nor did they spend much time — actually any time at all — on an issue roiling their party in Washington: whether to impeach the president. The I-word never came up in the debate. No moderator asked about it. No candidate brought it up, even though five of them, Warren, Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris, would have to vote on the issue if impeachment reached the Senate for a trial.
The Dems know both issues are losers for them.
But, then, they are headed or certain defeat anyway.
And the winner is … Donald Trump.
The Democrats’ third presidential debate was a long-winded, platitude-filled disaster where no single candidate could claim a clear victory. Instead, the seven men and three women took turns displaying why they are all probably unelectable.
Start with Joe Biden’s incoherence. The nominal front-runner, the former vice president had a 40-year reputation for never shutting up. Now he can’t manage to finish a sentence without interrupting himself.
Nearly all his efforts to make a point were swamped by a sudden change of direction mid-sentence, and then another change a few words later as a random thought popped into his head and out his mouth. None of his rivals needed to interrupt him — he did it to himself.
Most of the time I had no idea what he was trying to say, let alone what he actually said. I veered between feeling sorry for him and expecting the AFLAC duck to come out on stage and shake its head in bewilderment.
I have said all along that I don’t believe Biden will be the nominee, and last night left me more certain than ever. He’s not capable of going the distance in the primaries and then taking on Trump.
Biden’s poor performance and the failure of any others to have a breakout night should have been good news for Sen. Elizabeth Warren. She has placed second in most recent polls, but Warren failed to take advantage of the opening Biden presented and shied away from attacking him directly.
Instead, she mostly stayed in her comfort zone, which meant issuing radical calls for overthrowing everything and giving Washington more power over virtually all aspects of American life. Her sweeping assertions reminded me of a recent conversation with a veteran New York Dem.
He said Warren was the only one of his party’s candidates he would have trouble supporting against Trump, and that was because of her radicalism.
To judge from last night, both things remain possible. Her double-edged sword was on full display.
Sometimes she did cut through the fog to deliver clear policy ideas in a manner that was concise. But it also became clear that, no matter the topic, her response always followed the same formula. Namely, that the whole system must be demolished because “money” and “corruption” are to blame for everything that ails America.
Health care, the economy, taxes, climate issues, fossil fuels, trade, blah blah blah — all of it is evil and it all has the same root to her.
Beyond her one-size-fits-all answer, I didn’t hear her saying a single thing about America that she likes. She’s so invested in smashing everything and starting over that, unless she can become more of a happy warrior, she very well could suffer a historic thumping in a general election.
The other top-tier candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, came in with his usual angry rant and only moderated his voice near the end, when he seemed to grow tired of shouting. It’s hard to imagine that he either gained or lost anything from the evening. He came with a cult following and left with a cult following.
All of which means the fireworks in Houston only served to cement the notion that Dems are still far from being settled on the path and the person to take them to the White House.
The conclusion was underscored by the fact that the debate came on the same day that the House judiciary panel produced a muddled message about whether it intends to try to impeach the president or just keep harassing him. The confusion illustrates how united Dems are against Trump, and yet how divided they are about how to go about beating him.
Impeach him first, or not at all? Go with an unexciting and unpredictable Biden, or take a flyer on Warren or Sanders, whose ideas are from another planet?
For now, there don’t seem to be any other options.
Trump, of course, can be counted on to help the Dems with blunders of his own and he remains fully capable of losing an election he should win. But that can only happen if the Dems meet the threshold tests of finding a candidate and a platform that can energize the party’s base and also appeal to the working-class voters who abandoned Hillary Clinton in 2016 and gave the White House to Trump.
The nomination voting begins in February, which gives the party nearly five months to get its act together. If Thursday was any indication, five years wouldn’t be enough time.
"...we have a constitution
it guarantees that innocent people can't have their right to bear arms taken away by the government"
There is no right to own a weapon of war, an assault weapon, in the Constitution.
Ant the courts have already declared the right to bear arms is not unlimited and that guns and gun ownership would continue to be regulated.
"There is no right to own a weapon of war, an assault weapon, in the Constitution."
it didn't limit the guarantee to certain kinds of weapons
"Ant the courts have already declared the right to bear arms is not unlimited and that guns and gun ownership would continue to be regulated."
ant I don't think the current court will agree with you
these types of weapons haven't been widely used in shootings and a previous ban accomplished nothing so Congress let it expire
be honest, you want all guns banned, don't you?
this is just a meaningless step unless it's an incremental step in a larger agenda
which is what it is
"Dems are still far from being settled on the path and the person to take them to the White House"
Dems in 2019 are down to 10 candidates.
In September 16, 2015, CNN hosted the second Republican debate. The 15 attendees were:
Santorum, Jindal, Pataki, Graham, Trump, Carson, Bush, Cruze, Walker, Rubio, Fiorina, Huckabee, Paul, Kasich, and Christie.
https://ballotpedia.org/CNN_Republican_debate_(September_16,_2015)
"Dems in 2019 are down to 10 candidates.
In September 16, 2015, CNN hosted the second Republican debate. The 15 attendees were:
Santorum, Jindal, Pataki, Graham, Trump, Carson, Bush, Cruze, Walker, Rubio, Fiorina, Huckabee, Paul, Kasich, and Christie."
you might notice that several of those names had a reasonable shot at being elected
none of the 10 Dems do
btw, there are more than 10 Dems running
the DNC has shut them out at an early date
that will come back to bite 'em on the arse, as a few of the excluded might have had a shot in the general election
here's the most electable of the 10:
Former Vice President Joe Biden was asked about slavery reparations during Thursday's 2020 presidential debate, and his answer left some viewers confused.
ABC moderator Linsey Davis referenced a 1975 statement from Biden, in which he said he'd "be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago," before asking him about his thoughts on the issue of reparations.
"What responsibility do you think that Americans need to take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?” Davis asked Biden.
"Look, there’s institutional segregation in this country. And from the time I got involved, I started dealing with that," Biden, the current Democratic frontrunner, said.
He then launched into a sermon implying that black parents don't know how to raise their own children.
Asked about his past comments denying responsibility, as a white man, for America's sins, he gives an answer insinuating that black parents don't know how to raise kids.
He noted that black parents might not know exactly how to help educate their children outside of school — then offered a suggestion.
"Play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the record player — on at night, make sure that kids hear words," Biden said. "A kid coming from a very poor school — a very poor background — will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time we get there."
Earlier this month, the former vice president said that "poor kids are just as bright as white kids."
This guy is a dream candidate...if you want to stop the Dems
LOL!!!
"be honest, you want all guns banned, don't you?
this is just a meaningless step unless it's an incremental step in a larger agenda
which is what it is"
No moron that's not what it is. Handguns are plenty enough to protect oneself. In most situations, an assault rifle is unwieldy and absurd overkill to protect oneself from the average assailant - they're too big to hide on your person and way too heavy to carry around all day.
Until the US is overrun with a foreign invader, there is really no reason for Joe Citizen to be playing with war weapons.
The assault rifle is the perfect weapon however for disgruntled assholes to go out in a blaze of glory. And there are dark places on the internet where these assholes fantasize and discuss the best way to kill large groups of people. For some reason, the largest majority of these appear to be single, white, and VERY unhappy heterosexual males. But I digress.
For some reason, the idiot right - you know, the same ones who scream bloody murder about abortions - are dead set with the concept that the right to bear arms trumps the rights of other American citizens to actually LIVE peacefully.
Most US citizens aren't allowed fully automatic machine guns, or grenade launchers, or working tanks and nuclear missiles. That's just plain reasonable.
There is enough of the US population that is unstable enough that they shouldn't be trusted with access to dangerous weapons. And even if it were allowed for people to cultivate Anthrax in their basement, for the common good, it's simply not a good idea to allow it.
The danger to society far outweighs the "benefit" to the individual.
The cognitive dissonance of the "right" these days is so extreme that it suggests a solution to two of their major issues at once - I suggest a modest proposal:
First, ban abortions.
Then, every unwanted child of a heterosuxual union that would have been aborted (if it was legal) is kept happy and well fed in a room somewhere well known and advertised to the public as having no security guards.
Then when one of these 2nd Amendment, gun-loving nut jobs decides he wants to get his rocks off by blowing people's brains out, he can head over to the unwanted children's home and go to town. He can clear out the whole building and not worry about anyone shooting back at him.
This of course would be totally legal, whereas killing innocent people OUTSIDE the building would result in the death penalty.
This should reduce the number of innocent mass shooting victims immensely, satisfy the gun nuts, and at the same time, eliminate abortion.
It's a win - win - win.
Wednesday, September 11
Race/Topic (Click to Sort) Poll Results Spread
General Election: Trump vs. Biden ABC News/Wash Post Biden 55, Trump 40 Biden +15
General Election: Trump vs. Sanders ABC News/Wash Post Sanders 52, Trump 43 Sanders +9
General Election: Trump vs. Warren ABC News/Wash Post Warren 51, Trump 44 Warren +7
General Election: Trump vs. Harris ABC News/Wash Post Harris 50, Trump 43 Harris +7
General Election: Trump vs. Buttigieg ABC News/Wash Post Buttigieg 47, Trump 43 Buttigieg +4
"It's a win - win - win"
not for the Dems
they might not even take Massachusetts in 2020
do fill us in on how many people have been killed domestically with assault weapons in the last year...
answer: few
many more people are killed by knives every year
btw, the Second amendment mentions a "militia" being necessary to the security of a free state
sounds like weapons of war are covered in the constitutional right
it's not just for home protection but to empower the people to defend against tyranny
"President Huckabee" is making political predictions again.
Yawn
"btw, the Second amendment mentions a "militia" being necessary to the security of a free state"
You conveniently left out the "Well-regulated" description of militia, moron. Exactly what well-regulated militia were these mass murderers part of?
NONE.
Your moronic argument is moronic, moron.
If there were something like the National Guard where all these people could store their assault weapons in an armory, and take them out for training exercises on a regular basis, and then return them to storage, you could could say that is part of a "well-regulated militia," and they should have access to these weapons.
But that's not even close to what we have. We have an assault-weapon free-for-all, where nearly anyone can get an assault weapon as long as they can pay for it. They don't have to be part of any militia at all. They could just be a vigilante, a jerk, a KKK member, or another idiot with a gun fetish. There is simply no room in the 2nd amendment under "well-regulated militia" where these people could fit in.
And your omission of it either shows your ignorance of the law, or your willingness to stretch it to fit your own ideology.
"it's not just for home protection but to empower the people to defend against tyranny"
The most likely source of tyranny in the US right now is Mango Mussolini in the White House.
But I don't see Republicans doing anything to stop him.
"do fill us in on how many people have been killed domestically with assault weapons in the last year...
answer: few
many more people are killed by knives every year"
Your moron produced pure bullshit is hereby filled in.
The FBI Expanded Homicide Data Table 11: Murder Circumstances, by Weapon shows of the 15,129 total American murder victims in 2017, 3,283 of them were killed by "Other guns or type not stated [stated types are Handguns, rifles, Shotguns]" and 1,591 were killed by "Knives or cutting instruments."
Good anonymous said "Two-thirds of Americans support assault weapons ban"
Bad anonymous said "that's why we have a constitution"
The constitution doesn't give anyone a right to own an assault rifle, rocket launcher or a tank.
The constitution gives each American a right to own a musket, not a weapon the founding fathers never knew could exist.
That's called constitutional originalism people, the crooked conservative judges favourite theory of applying the law.
Let me add this to my previous comment:
While Conservative judges adamantly claim that "Constitutional Originalism" is the unbiased foundation from which they make all legal decisions, that couldn't be farther from the truth.
Conservative Justices Are The Real "Judicial Activists".
If we judge "judicial activism" by some objective standard such as, say, how often they vote to strike down laws passed by the citizens' elected representatives, the more conservative justices have done so significantly more than the more liberal justices.
"[Professor Geoffrey] Stone concludes that the moderately liberal justices apply an approach in line with “the original concerns of the Framers of the Constitution and in their distinctive understanding of the special responsibility of courts in our constitutional system,” while the Court’s conservatives’ “votes cannot be explained by any consistent theory of constitutional interpretation” but are instead driven by their own policy preferences.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said Bad anonymous said "that's why we have a constitution"
You hypocrite. What good is your constitution when you conservatives constantly violate it to implement your own favoured policy positions?
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "Andrew McCabe is one step closer to a reckoning with justice."
This kangaroo court action by the Trump Justice Department and the posting of it by Wyatt/Regina is intended as a message to all Justice Department employees: "Get on side with Trump or else. If you try to hold us accountable for our crimes, we will destroy your career, we will smear your reputation, we will do everything possible we can (legal or not) to harm you and your family."
The tens of thousands of the men and women in the Justice Department who serve faithfully and strive every day to carry out their jobs in a non-partisan manner deserve better than this. They deserve to be able to do their jobs to the best of their ability without political interference or threat of retribution for not ignoring the law to favour Trump in everything they do.
Trump illegally fired FBI director Comey for acting as he was bound to do by law and patriotism - open a counterintelligence investigation into Trump's collusion with Russia. Chief investigator Mueller documented 140 pages of Trump/Russia collusion and recommended Congress pursue the criminal matter to its logical conclusion because an off the cuff comment in an old FBI memo supposedly prevents him from charging Trump with any crime.
Trump then proceeded to go through the entire top management of the FBI (more than a dozen faithful honest employees) and threatened and smeared each of them on Twitter, demanding they let him break the law as he pleases. When that didn't discourage these fine men and women from doing what's right, Trump fired them one by one and replaced them with his own lackys like Attorney General Bill Barr who auditioned for the job by publicly stating the president has absolute power to do whatever he wants, including to shut down any investigation into his own criminal activity, that Congress and the Judiciary (which the founding fathers intended as co-equal branches of government) are not co-equal, but must bend to the absolute authority he wants Trump to have and that Trump is unconstitutionally seizing at every opportunity.
Jessie liu is acting on the direction of Trump to prosecute those who oppose his corruption. It is a kangaroo court and the Grand Jury and the lower level justice department employees have said this prosecution makes no sense and isn't warranted.
Trump and Wyatt/Regina have all ranted about how Andrew McCabe was allegedly biased against Trump and here Trump is trying to prosecute McCabe for not being forthcoming under oath over not revealing something that would have helped Hillary Clinton - the Trump prosecution of McCabe is being justified by an absurd idea and assertion - that McCabe (illegally) avoided revealing something that would have helped Hillary because his goal was to help Hillary. This is your American democracy turning into a dictatorship before your very eyes.
When you want to see if a prosecution of McCabe over what he's done is warranted, you look at what the Justice Department has done with similarly situated people who have done something similar and the Justice Department has not prosecuted those people. The attempt to prosecute McCabe for actions no one else has been prosecuted for is just another move straight out of the ditcators handbook - punish and destroy those who rightfully oppose you and reward heavily those who do your unbridled bidding.
While many in the media were fixated on Trump’s Twitter spat with Chrissy Teigen, or laughing at the lingering absurdity of Sharpie-gate, the rule of law continued to be shredded apace.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority allowed Trump to go ahead with his shutdown of the country’s asylum infrastructure along the southern border while lawsuits against it work their slow way through the system. This, despite lower courts’ having issued injunctions against the policy because of the grave threat it poses to asylees’ lives. And that same day, North Carolina’s GOP legislators came to work in order to override the Democratic governor’s veto of the state budget—despite having assured the Democrats, most of whom were off commemorating the 9/11 attacks, that the session was only a formality and that no votes would be held.
Now, don’t get me wrong; Trump’s hurricane tantrum, followed by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s Stalin-like threats to NOAA officials when they failed to back the weather forecaster in chief’s ludicrous and baseless claim that Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama, were disturbing. But in the grand scheme of things, the shenanigans of a cabinet official who has long since proven his yes-man bona fides in toadying up to a would-be dictator aren’t nearly as consequential as the Supreme Court’s allowing Trump to single-handedly rewrite decades of US immigration policy in pursuit of an increasingly overt white-nationalist agenda, while also walking away from America’s international obligations vis-à-vis asylum seekers and refugees.
On the hurricane front, the real story this week was, again, about border policy, not Sharpie pens: Washington turned away more than a hundred Bahamian hurricane refugees who lacked the requisite visas. Trump absurdly warned that “very bad people” and drug dealers could enter the United States as purported disaster refugees. And US Customs officials took—kidnapped, really—a 12-year-old Bahamian girl away from her godmother when she arrived on US soil, refused to let her aunt collect her in Miami, and then dumped her into a shelter for abandoned children. Remember the GOP’s outrage when the Clinton Justice Department took Cuban child Elián González from US relatives in order to return him to Cuba to be with his father? Well, now child abuse is official government immigration policy—and the GOP hasn’t a word to say in criticism.
Domestically, just-released data shows that, for the first time in a decade, the number of Americans without health insurance went up last year—and not by a little bit, but by 2 million, mostly because of cuts in Medicaid enrollment. That’s what happens when the federal government persistently undermines the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, and when GOP-controlled states reject federally subsidized Medicaid expansion. The trend was partly bucked by California, which has invested huge amounts in expanding its health systems and publicizing its insurance exchange—but even there, the percentage covered dipped slightly. This ought to be a front-burner story, but it came and went with barely a media whimper, as did a similar story a few months back showing large declines in the number of kids covered by the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Don’t get distracted by the Twitter fights and pandering of Trump hirelings. Brutal practices are being normalized by this administration and its allies in other branches of government, and utterly destructive policy decisions are being rolled out daily.
This bears repeating:
"Remember the GOP’s outrage when the Clinton Justice Department took Cuban child Elián González from US relatives in order to return him to Cuba to be with his father? Well, now child abuse is official government immigration policy—and the GOP hasn’t a word to say in criticism."
Rachel Maddow Picks Apart A New GOP Tactic That May Backfire On The Party
Rachel Maddow on Wednesday explained how a new GOP tactic to protect President Donald Trump from embarrassment may actually backfire spectacularly.
The host of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” referred to a report ProPublica published Wednesday saying the Republican National Committee is refusing to give GOP candidates across the country access to local polling data showing how voters feel about Trump.
“Republican insiders believe these analytics are being withheld to try and prevent GOP candidates from publicly distancing themselves from the president or leaking unfavorable results that embarrass Trump,” the article noted.
“This means the Republican Party would rather disadvantage their own candidates, their own senators, their own members of Congress, than risk any Republican taking any kind of stand against Trump or risking anybody leaking that information in a way that might embarrass the president,” said Maddow.
“That, of course, is a capital offense in the Republican Party right now,” she added.
The Republican party is in lockstep with Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr in using the Justice Department to bring charges against anyone that opposes Trump out of patriotism and dedication to the rule of law - look at the kangaroo court they're trying to put Andrew McCabe through, a man with a long history of impeccable behavior at the FBI.
Bill Barr ended all the investigations into Trump admin people who had done far, far worse than he accuses Andrew McCabe of, they got off scot free while Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr absurdly argue that McCabe should be prosecuted for not revealing information to the public that would have helped Hillary because he wanted to help Hillary win in 2016 - its just so obviously contrived to punish Trump's honest critics and to try to prevent more people from telling the truth about Trump as the rule of law requires them to do.
Trump administration drops Obama-era water protection rule
Trump is polluting the water you drink, the food you eat and the air you breathe. Is it really worth sacrificing your and your children's health to stick it to liberals?
He's doing this because his sole motivation for being president (besides enriching himself and his supporters like Tony Perkins) is to get back at Obama buy trying to undo everything Obama did as president.
That's what his violating the Iran Nuclear Deal is all about, it had to go because it was a good thing and it happened while Obama was president. Now Trump has Iran on the verge of having a nuclear weapon and he's secretly pleading with them to come to the table to sign a "Trump" brand deal that is basically the same as the Iran Nuclear Deal negotiated while Obama was president. That's what he did with NAFTA 1.1 - he scuttled it to sign basically the same thing so he could claim he made a great new deal (new deal, same as the old deal).
Why on earth would Iran sign a new nuclear deal with Trump and set the precedent that any incoming president can renege on the promises of the American government?
This kind of damage to the reputation of the United States of America will take a generation to repair.
The sooner Trump is gone, the better for all Americans.
Students at Liberty University in Virginia gathered Friday to protest in the wake of news reports containing allegations that school president Jerry Falwell Jr. improperly benefited from the institution and disparaged students in emails.
Students joined together at the private evangelical university known for being an influential hub in conservative politics and held up signs calling for accountability and an investigation.
Elizabeth Brooks, a junior majoring in politics and policy, told The Associated Press by phone that a recent Politico Magazine story as well as a Reuters report prompted the protest at the school in Lynchburg. She said about 35 students were involved.
“I couldn’t stay silent anymore,” the 20-year-old said. “I would like to see President Falwell address this himself and for there to be an investigation into the allegations to see whether or not they’re true.”
At least one student held a sign that read: “I TRUST JERRY.”
The Politico story contained allegations that Falwell “presides over a culture of self-dealing” at Liberty that has improperly benefited him and his family. The story cited unnamed sources described as current and former officials or Falwell associates.
Falwell told The AP on Tuesday that he wasn’t going to “dignify the lies that were reported” in the Politico piece, calling the reporter for the story a “little boy.”
Falwell said he would ask the FBI to investigate. He also said Liberty has hired “the meanest lawyer in New York,” whom he declined to identify, to pursue civil cases.
Brooks said student protesters were particularly upset about quotes of emails in the Reuters story posted Thursday in which Falwell allegedly referred to one student as “emotionally imbalanced and physically retarded.”
David Corry, Liberty’s general counsel, told Reuters that Liberty wouldn’t respond “without knowing the details or seeing email chains in their entirety.”
Brooks grew up in Lynchburg and said she remembers when Falwell’s father, Jerry Falwell Sr., died in 2007. She referred to the elder Falwell’s often-used quote about the school: “If it’s Christian, it ought to be better.”
“I am a Christian,” Brooks said. “And that quote from Jerry. Sr. really does embody our mission. We didn’t come out here to be angry or militant. We honestly just wanted to show the student body that there are people like them who care and who want to see this place be the best it can be.”
Falwell Jr.’s early and ardent support of President Donald Trump created a rift on campus during the presidential campaign and has sparked controversy since.
The Trump administration reportedly scrapped three border wall projects it was looking to build after determining there weren’t enough funds to pay for them.
In a court filing, officials said current savings didn’t amount to enough to pay for the additional 20 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Arizona and California, Bloomberg reported.
The filing comes as lawmakers are preparing to ignore Trump’s request to loosen restrictions on border wall funding as part of a short-term spending deal and amid renewed tensions over the border ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline to avoid another government shutdown.
The administration also announced recently it was moving forward with shifting $3.6 billion from military projects to wall construction.
The announcement follows a Supreme Court ruling in July that the Trump administration could start using $2.5 billion in military funds to build its wall on the southern border, handing a major legal victory to the president.
"Falwell Jr.’s early and ardent support of President Donald Trump created a rift on campus during the presidential campaign and has sparked controversy since."
Very interesting.
Then there's that whole Falwell Jr. thing where he lavished money on the buff pool boy and Trump's fixer Michael Cohen helped make certain sexy picture of the Falwells go away and suddenly Falwell Jr. went from refusing to endorse Trump to kissing his ring. Nothing suspicious about that, nope, nosiree.
Fifty years of "Trickle down economics" has turned millionaires into billionaires and the working class into the working poor.
No surprise here:
New Sexual Misconduct Allegation Against Illegitimate Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous say "Boys will be boys, rules are for liberals".
Every single senator who voted for Brett Kavanaugh despite the clear obfuscation and obstruction of the investigation into his history of sexual assault should feel deeply ashamed. It is an enormous tragedy of the democratic process.
God bless Christine Blasey Ford and all the bullshit she suffered through to expose Brett Kavanaugh's predation.
Now let's find out who paid off Brett Kavanaugh's debt while the press is doing the FBI's job.
A New York Times essay published Saturday evening and adapted from the upcoming book "The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation" featured new information that two reporters said corroborated a prior claim of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh and uncovered evidence supporting a previously unreported claim.
Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh's, alleged during Kavanaugh's confirmation process that the now-confirmed justice had exposed himself to her in college. Her account had received less attention than Ford's at the time though, as Ford had testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"During his Senate testimony, Mr. Kavanaugh said that if the incident Ms. Ramirez described had occurred, it would have been 'the talk of campus.' Our reporting suggests that it was," wrote New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly.
The reporters said at least seven people they interviewed had heard about the incident –including the alleged victim's mother.
Despite the presence of these witnesses, Pogrebin and Kelly say that the FBI "interviewed none of them, though we learned many of these potential witnesses tried in vain to reach the F.B.I. on their own."
Pogrebin and Kelly said they also uncovered another incident of sexual misconduct in which another one of Kavanaugh's classmates "saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student."
The classmate, Max Stier, flagged the report to the FBI, but they declined to investigate the incident.
Trump tweeted "Brett Kavanaugh should start suing people for liable, or the Justice Department should come to his rescue. Accusations without recrimination"
Not stated: How the United States Department of Justice would "come to the rescue" of a judge who is the subject of bad press. Prosecutions? Civil suits brought by government lawyers?
What law makes it illegal to make credible accusations?
Trump is seriously, frighteningly unstable – the world is in danger
I think we have to face the truth that no one seems to want to admit. This is no longer a case of excessive narcissism or grandiosity. We’re not simply dealing with an unusually large ego.
The president of the United States is seriously, frighteningly, dangerously unstable. And he’s getting worse by the day.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/15/donald-trump-nuts-impeachment-25th-amendment-2020-election
I sat through those hearings. Brett Kavanaugh lied to the U.S. Senate and most importantly to the American people. He was put on the Court through a sham process and his place on the Court is an insult to the pursuit of truth and justice.
He must be impeached.
#KavanaughLied because that's what alcoholics do. They lie.
Pennsylvania has lost 8,300 manufacturing jobs this year, while Wisconsin has lost 4,000. Factories are slumping in the Midwest and that is bad news for the Mango Mussolin's re-election chances
The beginning of the recession is well underway. Its a tribute to the amazing Job Obama did that its taken Trump almost three years to sabotage the 11 year economic boom Obama brought about.
"Every single senator who voted for Brett Kavanaugh despite the clear obfuscation and obstruction of the investigation into his history of sexual assault should feel deeply ashamed. It is an enormous tragedy of the democratic process."
senators who voted against Kavanaugh based on the clearly false testimony of Christine Blasey Ford should be be removed from office
oh wait, the voters already did that in November 2018
LOL!!
"God bless Christine Blasey Ford and all the bullshit she suffered through to expose Brett Kavanaugh's predation."
the story she made up didn't pass scrutiny
meeanwhile, she suffers with the proceeds of her million dollar gofund me page
"A New York Times essay published Saturday evening and adapted from the upcoming book "The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation" featured new information that two reporters said corroborated a prior claim of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh and uncovered evidence supporting a previously unreported claim."
most unreliable phrase in our modern society: "two reporters said"
"Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh's, alleged during Kavanaugh's confirmation process that the now-confirmed justice had exposed himself to her in college. Her account had received less attention than Ford's at the time"
that's because the whole story was so dubious, even the generally shameless press dn't want to defend it
there is no such concern among TTFers though
"Pogrebin and Kelly said they also uncovered another incident of sexual misconduct in which another one of Kavanaugh's classmates "saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student."
The classmate, Max Stier, flagged the report to the FBI, but they declined to investigate the incident."
maybe they didn't think it was true
which, of course, it isn't
"What law makes it illegal to make credible accusations?"
they all turned out to be not credible
"Trump is seriously, frighteningly unstable – the world is in danger"
not really
"I think we have to face the truth that no one seems to want to admit."
no one other than all the Dems, all the press , all the celebs
other than that, no one seems to want to admit it
"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/15/donald-trump-nuts-impeachment-25th-amendment-2020-election"
thanks for the British take
you may remember they their war against us
"He must be impeached."
go ahead
make Trump's day
"The beginning of the recession is well underway. Its a tribute to the amazing Job Obama did that its taken Trump almost three years to sabotage the 11 year economic boom Obama brought about."
recession is negative GDP growth
the first time that happens will be the beginning of the recession
probably about 13 years from now
I posted "Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh's, alleged during Kavanaugh's confirmation process that the now-confirmed justice had exposed himself to her in college. Her account had received less attention than Ford's at the time"
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "that's because the whole story was so dubious, even the generally shameless press dn't want to defend it".
The press was all over it and demanding why the FBI ignored the over a dozen people who came forward to corroborate her story. The FBI turned them away because they were afraid of the wrath of halfway dicatator Trump.
"Pogrebin and Kelly said they also uncovered another incident of sexual misconduct in which another one of Kavanaugh's classmates "saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student. The classmate, Max Stier, flagged the report to the FBI, but they declined to investigate the incident."
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "maybe they didn't think it was true". Normally one investigates before claiming a corroborating report isn't true. Not in Trump's Justice Department though, if your story makes Trump or his appointee look bad, they just ignore it. Then minions like Wyatt/Regina lie and say "Oh, it must not have been true."
Wyatt/Regina said "which, of course, it isn't"
Jesus Efffin Christ!
Didn't I just say Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous would assert it isn't true despite having know personal knowledge of any of it?
Hey Wyatt/Regina, why don't you take the evidence that "convinced" and show it to us? (Evidence, smevidence, that rule of law stuff is for liberals - Wyatt/Regina Hardiman)
I said "What law makes it illegal to make credible accusations?"
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonmouis said "they all turned out to be not credible". You can't judge that without investigating. And they never investigated. Of course Wyatt/Regina think its their god-given right to make up whatever story they think helps corrupt Republicans.
Wyatt/Regina said "thanks for the British take you may remember they their war against us"
Yes, something about not wanting to be under the heal of a king with absolute power. And now you're letting Trump seize absolute power without so much as a whimper. How the American spirit has fallen...
Pennsylvania has lost 8,300 manufacturing jobs this year, while Wisconsin has lost 4,000. Factories are slumping in the Midwest and that is bad news for the Mango Mussolin's re-election chances
The beginning of the recession is well underway. Its a tribute to the amazing Job Obama did that its taken Trump almost three years to sabotage the 11 year economic boom Obama brought about.
Remember, illegitimate supreme court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's personal calender from the time corroborated Christine Blasey Ford's allegation that he tried to rape her.
Kavanaugh claims he was never at such a party but his calendar had an entry that said "Brewskies with so and so and so and so" who were the two other people Christine Ford said were present when Kavanaugh tried to rape her and almost killed her.
"The beginning of the recession is well underway. Its a tribute to the amazing Job Obama did that its taken Trump almost three years to sabotage the 11 year economic boom Obama brought about."
we have positive GDP growth
that's not the beginning, end, or middle of any "recession"
Dems have a fantasy there will be a recession before the next election
this desire, that Americans will suffer, is their only glimmer of hope
when that's true, it's time to reconsider the path you're on
it will be interesting to see how many minorities stick with the Dems when:
1. the Trump administration has presided over the lowest minority unemployment in history
2. Dems oppose giving inner city families the choice to opt out of the failing hellholes called inner-city public schools
3. Dems have been in charge of decaying and dangerous inner cities for years
4. Trump has moved to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in and taking jobs that might otherwise go to lower income workers
5. Dems have tolerated Bill Clinton's crime bill which has placed large swaths of minority youth in prison
The premise of the Democrat debate was that President Trump is a white supremacist, that his supporters are racists, and that the Constitution is a catalog of suggestions that can be ignored by an all-knowing tyrant like Kamala Harris, who wants to eliminate assault weapons (and the Second Amendment) by executive order.
They are not racists, and the president is not a white supremacist. If he were, he would acquiesce to the deplorable conditions that have existed for years in America’s Democrat-run urban centers. Instead, he has challenged Democrats to live up to their rhetoric about human rights. It’s time to do something about poverty — not just talk about it. Trump has accomplished more in three years than 50 years of self-congratulatory leftist social engineering with inflated titles such as “The Great Society.” If you want greatness, you can start with the record-low unemployment among blacks, Latinos and women that are the result of Trump’s war against globalism and the entrenched bureaucracy.
As for those presidential polls that show Trump lagging badly, you have to ask yourself why the 2020 surveys would be any more predictive than the ones in 2016 were.
Most of the polls are commissioned by media organizations that are virulently anti-Trump, or by political interests that are threatened by President Trump’s anti-establishment instincts. That, in itself, should make them suspect. It’s no secret that there are as many ways to jigger a poll’s outcome as there are ways to mix a drink.
But beyond the question of polling mixology — er, methodology — you have to ask yourself whether there are reasons why even a valid poll would come to invalid conclusions. The answer, of course, is that there are — and in the case of a poll about Donald Trump, the reason is ... well ... Donald Trump. He is such a polarizing figure that many poll respondents probably do not feel safe sharing their intention to vote for the man.
It’s no different than the decision to leave your MAGA hat at home when you head out for dinner at a tony restaurant and (supposing you live in New York City) a Broadway play. Haven’t we all seen brutal images of old men (and young, for that matter) being beaten for the audacity to wear their red cap in the wrong neighborhood?
Likewise, we are inundated 24 hours a day with anti-Trump propaganda on the cable news channels and on the Internet telling us that the president is a Russian spy (thanks, CNN!), a racist (thanks, MSNBC!), a liar (thanks, Washington Post!) and a lying racist Russian spy (thanks, New York Times!).
It’s enough to make you keep quiet at the water cooler the day after another rousing Trump rally, or to maybe add a grumble under your breath about how you can’t stand his juvenile tweets, and it may even be enough to make you tell a prying pollster that you support the vulgar, boorish demagogue Beto O’Rourke and his open borders rather than the president who gets things done in spite of (or maybe because of) his brash narcissistic personality.
Finally, there is one more unseen thing that strengthens Republican faith in President Trump as we get closer to Election Day. That is the unseen — and usually unspoken — price tag for all the free stuff promised by the Democratic marauders who are laying siege to our capitalist economy. Free college, free pre-K, free health care, free jobs, free money — add it all up, and you will soon discover that a hundred trillion dollars in spending is the equivalent of that unseen iceberg that sunk the Titanic.
The Democrats may be enjoying a pleasant cruise in the friendly waters of the fawning mainstream media today, but when President Trump starts campaigning in earnest, they won’t know what hit them.
More than a day after publishing a bombshell exposé detailing a new sexual misconduct allegation against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the New York Times added a significant passage, along with an editor's note, that undercuts the claim.
The report published Saturday evening was adapted from an upcoming book by reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly titled The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation and due out Tuesday.
The Times reporters revealed the account of one of Kavanaugh's male classmates at Yale University, Max Stier, who said he witnessed Kavanaugh make inappropriate sexual contact with a female student in the mid-1980s. Stier notified the FBI and senators about the incident. Although the FBI did not investigate the claim, two officials who communicated with Stier corroborated the story to the Times.
In the updated version of the article, the following passage was added: "The female student declined to be interviewed and friends say she does not recall the episode."
"An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book's account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party. The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article," read the editor's note at the bottom of the story that was added Sunday evening.
After the report's publication Saturday, liberal activist organizations and 2020 Democratic candidates called for Kavanaugh to be impeached.
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Times is under fire for its story about a new sexual misconduct allegation against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The paper apologized for an offensive tweet, and revised its article to reflect that the alleged victim couldn't recall the incident.
The Times reported on an allegation that Kavanaugh exposed himself at a Yale University party as a freshman. Yet the story did not initially include the detail that the woman supposedly involved in the incident declined to be interviewed, and that her friends say she doesn't recall it.
That detail was later added, and the Times explained the change in an editor's note.
The newspaper also apologized for a tweet promoting the article sent out by its opinion section that it called clearly inappropriate and offensive.
In September 2018, I warned about the abbreviated FBI investigation into allegations that Brett M. Kavanaugh engaged in sexually aggressive behavior: “If Democrats retake one or both houses in November, they will be able to investigate, subpoena witnesses and conduct their own inquiry. The result will be a cloud over the Supreme Court and possible impeachment hearings … Kavanaugh has not cleared himself but rather undermined faith in the judicial system that presumes that facts matter.”
And sure enough, two New York Times reporters have found multiple witnesses to the allegations from Deborah Ramirez that Kavanaugh exposed himself during a dorm party at Yale. One newly discovered witness had information concerning yet another, similar event. That witness, Max Stier, is the chief executive of Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that, among other things, tracks nominations and confirmations. According to the Times report, he brought the information to the Senate Judiciary Committee (Who? Who knew about this?) and to the FBI. (I have relied on him for expertise about the federal government and found him to be scrupulously nonpartisan and honest.) He might have been a compelling witness. The New York Times now reports that the woman involved in the incident Stier witnessed does not remember it...
lyse Hogue, head of NARAL Pro-Choice America, told me, “Americans should be appalled that GOP Senators are complicit in the cover-up of Brett M. Kavanaugh’s abuses rather than demanding all evidence be brought [to] light before confirmation.” She continued, “We can’t undo the wrongs that have been done to these women but we can and will make those who refused them justice pay at the polls next year. We’re hearing from voters from Maine to Colorado who are committed to make this count.”
And speaking of Maine, it’s Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) who will once more receive the lion’s share of the criticism and anger. Not only did she cast the last holdout vote on the premise that Kavanaugh would uphold the right to an abortion (!), but she accepted an obviously fraudulent investigation. Had she demanded a real inquiry, including witnesses we now know about, the truth might have come out before Kavanaugh was elevated to the court. The Supreme Court might not have been grievously diminished. Collins was already high on the list of progressives’ targets for 2020. This will be one more reminder that she utterly failed in her role to render advice and consent on judicial nominees...
Kavanaugh already is tainted in the eyes of those who believe he lied when he denied any and all allegations of sexual conduct as well as excessive drinking. A cloud hangs over the Supreme Court as things stand, and perhaps it would get darker with some investigation. Nevertheless, Kavanaugh would remain — given that Republicans would never vote to remove him and Kavanaugh would never resign. The credibility, fairness and honesty of the court will be in doubt for as long as he sits on the court.
If Democrats do win the White House, they may pursue this, or worse, ratchet up the Supreme Court wars by adding seats (Well, Kavanaugh’s vote shouldn’t count! And the Gorsuch seat was illegitimate, too!). The Supreme Court will continue to hemorrhage respect and legitimacy. And the pattern will continue, another institutional casualty in the Trump era. If only Collins had displayed the courage to demand a legitimate investigation, both parties, the Senate and the Supreme Court might have avoided this debacle.
A Democratic senator told the FBI last fall of new information he said was relevant to allegations made against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh — a claim that was not investigated at the time but has since become public in an upcoming book chronicling the bitter confirmation fight.
Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) wrote to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray on Oct. 2, 2018, requesting an “appropriate follow up” with one individual who had come to Coons with information about Kavanaugh. Although the person’s name was redacted in the one-page letter, a spokesman for Coons confirmed Monday that the individual was Max Stier, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale University who now leads a prominent nonpartisan group in Washington.
In the letter obtained by The Washington Post, Coons said “several individuals” contacted his office who had wanted to share information with federal authorities but said they had “difficulty reaching anyone who will collect their information.”
“I cannot speak to the relevance or veracity of the information that many of these individuals seek to provide, and I have encouraged them to use the FBI tip portal or contact a regional FBI field office,” Coons wrote to Wray. But Stier, Coons said, “was one individual whom I would like to specifically refer to you for appropriate follow up.”
The FBI promptly acknowledged receiving the letter from Coons, according to his spokesman, Sean Coit. The two top senators on the Judiciary Committee at the time — Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) — were copied on Coons’s letter to the FBI...
Aides said Coons wrote the letter because he wanted to get relevant information about credible allegations as quickly as possible to the FBI. When Coons wrote the letter Oct. 2, FBI officials were in the middle of conducting a new, supplemental background check on Kavanaugh — who was facing multiple allegations of sexual misconduct — ahead of his confirmation vote.
Kavanaugh was confirmed Oct. 6.
Stier had also requested to remain confidential, aides said, so Coons wanted to send the information directly to the FBI so sensitive details would not become public...
The Coons connection was first reported by Jackie Calmes of the Los Angeles Times, who is also writing a book on Kavanaugh.
Trump is a serial sexual predator who has been accused by more than twenty women of harassment and/or assault. So naturally Trump lashed out on Twitter to protect Kavanaugh from the truths that are emerging.
Trump's first inclination is always to blame everything on the media. It's his way of telegraphing to his cult followers that, despite the facts and the evidence, what they are hearing is not to be believed. Trump's assertion that Kavanaugh is "an innocent man who has been treated HORRIBLY," has no basis in reality. And it's absurd to suggest that he has been treated worse than his victims.
However, Trump goes completely off the ledge when he offers his advice that Kavanaugh should sue the press and his accusers for libel. Trump has often threatened to sue his own accusers, but always chickens out. During the 2016 campaign he swore that "All of these liars will be sued after the election is over." Those lawsuits never came to pass. His lawyers surely told him that truth is a defense against libel, and the proceedings would subject him to discovery, wherein he would have to provide all relevant documents and evidence in his possession. There is no way he would do that.
Even worse, Trump said that "the Justice Department should come to [Kavanaugh's] rescue." This is further proof that Trump believes the Justice Department serves as his personal attorney, and can serve the same function for Kavanaugh. Clearly Trump has no idea how government works. But, unfortunately, he does have an Attorney General, William Barr, who doesn't care how government works and is willing to violate the Constitution on behalf of a criminal president.
Trump's glaring ignorance is apparent throughout these tweets. He obviously doesn't know what "recrimination" means. Just retaliating against the women in these matters by calling them "liars" is recriminatory. And they have also been disparaged as drunks and sluts. Trump's complaint that his critics are trying to "scare [Kavanaugh] into turning Liberal," and to "influence his opinions," makes no sense whatsoever. How would holding Kavanaugh accountable for his past behavior - and more recent lies - cause him to rule more favorably for the people causing him so much trouble? If anything, it would have the opposite effect.
Let's be clear. The only reason Trump is even bothering to make a stink about this is that he's afraid for his own fate. He even said as much in another tweet where he asked if it "sounds familiar" that Kavanaugh's criticisms were based "on threats of Impeaching him over made up stories."
Trump regards this as an attack against him. He doesn't care about Kavanaugh or the Supreme Court, and certainly not the law. He sees this as criticism of his choice for the nomination and his own sex crimes. And anything that reflects negatively on him must be attacked with the full force of his viciousness and dishonesty. That's how the diseased minds of malignant narcissists work. And Trump is, once again, providing a textbook example of this. Sadly, it's also an example of why no one with these hostile and destructive psychoses should ever serve as president.
the previous three posts are examples of classic demagoguery
Democrats have controlled the House and have not impeached Kavanaugh
they promised they would investigate if they took the House
so, why does anyone think a guy trying to sell a book was able to find things they couldn't?
President Donald Trump’s critics have called him many things during his nearly three years in office. “Racist.” “Fascist.” “Misogynist.” “Anti-middle class.” “Anti-poor.” And so on. But if that’s so, he’s failing miserably at all those things they accuse him of.
A spate of recent data and reports, including an update of the income and poverty statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau for 2017 and 2018, show just how bad that failure is.
Take that “racist” charge. The Census report shows that black unemployment, at 5.5% in August, is the lowest it’s been since records started being kept in 1972.
The gap between black unemployment and white unemployment is also the lowest on record.
Typically, the unemployment rate for African Americans is at least two times the white unemployment rate. Today, it’s about 1.6 times the white rate.
It isn’t only African Americans who are doing better. Both Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans now have near-record low unemployment rates.
Just ask the Washington Post. To its credit, it recently analyzed Labor Department data. What it found was shocking: More than 86% of the jobs added since the end of 2016 went to minorities. Out of 5.2 million new jobs, minorities accounted for 4.5 million.
If Trump’s a racist, he’s an abject failure.
What about that other favorite epithet of the left, “misogynist”? If Trump hates women so much, why do his policies seem to provide so many opportunities for them?
As The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan notes: “Among full-time, year-round workers, the number of women increased by 1.6 million and the number of men increased by about 700,000 between 2017 and 2018.”
The median real income for female-headed households with no spouse rose 5.8% from 2017 to 2018. For married couples, there was no change. The poverty rate for female-led households shrank from 26.2% in 2017 to 24.9% in 2018.
OK, but surely, billionaire Trump hates the poor and his policies have been disastrous for them, right?
In fact, as the Census data show, the number of people living in poverty fell by 1.4 million people in 2018 alone, with the poverty rate dropping from 12.3% to 11.8%, its lowest since before the 2007 financial crisis. That decline was led by female-headed households, minority ones in particular, the most vulnerable of all.
Meanwhile, Department of Agriculture data show that 6.3 million Americans have fallen out of the food stamp program since Trump took office. The main reason: parents in poor families are getting jobs and are no longer eligible.
Critics might have a point about the shrinking middle class. There are indeed fewer Americans falling into that classification. But not for the reasons you might think.
As economist Mark J. Perry notes, the middle class is shrinking and has been for a long time. The reason: As the economy expands, more people have entered the high-income brackets than ever before in history.
Since 2007, the year before the financial crisis, the middle class — defined as those earning $35,000 to $100,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars — has fallen from 43% of the population to 41.7% in 2018.
A sign that the middle class is being “squeezed,” as the left likes to say? Hardly.
The share of those considered “poor” has also fallen, from 29.4% to 27.9% of the population.
Where did all the poor and middle class go? To the upper-income level. It swelled from 27.7% to 30.4%.
“Many prominent people like Paul Krugman and progressive politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren claim that American’s middle class has been declining, disappearing, collapsing, losing ground, vanished, stagnated, etc.,” Perry, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute recently wrote. “But the Census Bureau data on household income over time displayed above demonstrate conclusively that those assertions are incredibly and verifiably wrong.”
As for those at the bottom, a recent report by the group Just Facts found that the poorest 20% of Americans consume more goods and services than the average citizen does in most rich countries, including Europe.
As James D. Agresti of the Foundation for Economic Education put it, “In other words, if the U.S. ‘poor’ were a nation, it would be one of the world’s richest.”
The point here is, those trends have accelerated under Trump, data show.
Are these data surprising? Not when you consider that economists are almost unanimous in saying that the best antidote for poverty is a job.
Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation helped push economic and job growth up strongly after years of Obama-era stagnation.
That doesn’t mean every policy the White House puts forth has been good for the economy, as the raging debate over tariffs shows.
Still, as the old saying goes, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” That’s still true today. And for women and minorities, thanks to Trump’s policies and the economy’s ongoing expansion, the boats have never been higher.
"Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation helped push economic and job growth up strongly after years of Obama-era stagnation."
How quickly Republicans forget that shortly after they got control of Congress, they put the budget under "sequestration" to stifle growth that Obama would be credited for after saving the economy from the disastrous Bush collapse. They said sequestration was necessary to keep the debt from exploding.
As soon as a Republican got in the White House, there was magically no need for fiscal restraint anymore and they went on a spending spree, exploding our national debt.
Our economy is on a sugar high right now, spurred on by tax cuts that have never paid for themselves. It is only a matter of time before the interest on that debt becomes a noose around the US economy, and drags us down. That outcome is entirely avoidable, but "fiscal responsibility" is a only a phrase Republicans use to undermine Democratic efforts to fix the economy - not something they actually do themselves.
Republicans believe that as long as a Republican is in the White House, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter" (Dick Cheney).
No country in history has been able to into debt ad infinitum. But that is what Republicans are pushing for. Of course when it fails, and the debt crushes a generation of American kids, the Republicans will blame the Democrats for it.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "the previous three posts are examples of classic demagoguery
Democrats have controlled the House and have not impeached Kavanaugh"
Ooooh, looky there, as per usual Wyatt/Regina trying to pretend its Democrats fault Kavanaugh hasn't been impeached rather than Republican's.
There's no point in impeaching when a Republican controlled Senate is doing everything it can to put and keep corrupt judges like Kavanaugh on the bench. Democrats would love to impeach Kavanaugh and Trump, but any effort to do so will be blocked by Republicans trying to turn the U.S. into a dictatorial theocracy.
Wyatt/Regina said "they promised they would investigate if they took the House"
And they've kept that promise.
At least to the degree they can given the unconstitutional obstruction by the Trump cabal in the executive branch.
Trump has stated that he will not give Congress (the founders intended Congress to have equal authority to the president) any information they are entitled to and that they routinely get on a regular basis to perform their constitutionally granted responsibility to oversight of the Executive/Trump branch of government.
Trump is hiding all his corrupt dealings in his grab for absolute power, violating every subpoena he's required to respond to by the rule of law.
Trump is subverting more and more of the constitutionally granted power of the co-equal branches of government of Congress and the Judiciary. His total and complete violation of Congress's mandatory obligation to presidential oversight and stacking the judiciary with people who've announced they personally will rule in favour of Trump at every opportunity is an existential threat to the future of democracy in the United States.
Wyatt/Regina made a bullshit show of patriotism over the 1776 American revolution against a tyrannical despot while they devote all their efforts to cementing a new tyrannical despot, Trump, in power.
Wyatt and Regina Hardiman, you are a disgrace to your country and the values it was founded upon.
I said "The beginning of the recession is well underway. Its a tribute to the amazing Job Obama did that its taken Trump almost three years to sabotage the 11 year economic boom Obama brought about."
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "we have positive GDP growth"
You mean you used to have positive GDP growth. The latest records only show what happened in the previous quarter, not what is happening now, which is that Pennsylvania has lost 8,300 manufacturing jobs this year, while Wisconsin has lost 4,000. Factories are slumping in the Midwest and that is bad news for the Mango Mussolin's re-election chances
The beginning of the Trump recession is well underway. Its a tribute to the amazing Job Obama did that its taken Trump almost three years to sabotage the 11 year economic boom Obama brought about.
The manufacturing job losses in the states Trump narrowly won thanks to Russian hacking of the 2016 election are accelerating as we speak.
The "positive GDP growth Wyatt/Regina referred to had been declining and at this point is at or below zero.
The consensus of rational economists is that the global and American economy is slowing due to Trump's ill-advised trade war with China.
The U.S. economy is in negative GDP growth, the backward looking statistics will report that soon.
Trump has never had an approval rating above 50% His prospects for 2020 look very dim indeed, assuming he can even stay out of jail until then.
Trump Supporter He Once Called ‘My African-American’ Leaves GOP
It’s not a secret – of any president in US history, Trump’s approval rating among minorities, especially black men and women, is probably the lowest (or very close).
Nevertheless, despite his penchant for making racially insensitive comments on Twitter and during nationally televised speeches, there’s a small cluster of African-Americans who voted for Trump in 2016, and they will likely vote for him again in the 2020 presidential election.
Gregory Cheadle used to be one of Trump’s most outspoken and unapologetic cheerleaders. As a successful businessman and avid supporter of the Republican Party, Cheadle’s brown skin, horn-rimmed glasses, and conservative appearance make him an ideal political prop.
During a rally in 2016, Trump took inventory of his predominately white audience and noticed Cheadle’s smiling face sticking out like a sore thumb.
“Look at my African-American over here. Look at him. Are you the greatest? You know what I’m talking about,” Trump said.
At the time, Cheadle was thrilled, defending the quip in a CNN interview. Had it happened today, he said he might have responded differently.
“When you do things retrospectively, it’s almost unfair,” Cheadle explained. “When that thing happened, everyone was laughing. I mean, it was funny. … Since then, it’s turned into a nightmare for me.”
Cheadle – who is running in 2020 to be the U.S. representative of the 1st Congressional District in far Northern California – says his recent decision to leave the Republican party is partly because of his disappointment with the president’s approach to racial issues, reports CNN.
During an interview, Cheadle openly criticized the president’s attacks on former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the National Anthem.
“I was really hurt (by that) because I was in favor of him taking the knee,” he said. “The overwhelming majority of Republicans in my congressional district were against me, and that was disheartening because no one really gave a rip about the plight of Blacks.”
After hearing that the Trump Administration had proposed cuts to Social Security and food stamps, Cheadle decided to change his party registration from Republican to independent about a month ago, he said...
Good anonymous said ""fiscal responsibility" is a only a phrase Republicans use to undermine Democratic efforts to fix the economy - not something they actually do themselves."
Hear! Hear!
Clinton left Bush with a surplus, Bush ran up the deficit and unemployment to 11%. With his 1 trillion dollar stimulus in year one of his presidency Obama started the U.S. on the path to recovery and an economic boom that has saw the unemployment rate under Obama drop 6 percentage points. Obama brought the trillion dollar deficit he inherited down from Bush to 300 billion and it was on pace to a balanced budget when Trump took over.
Trump is running Trillion dollar plus deficits and the deficit is forecast to above 1 trillion and growing through out however long he has president.
Like Good anonymous says, the pattern is clear over the past 40 years. Republicans blow up the deficit when they are in power and when Democrats take over Republicans suddenly get religion and rant about how the deficit is an unacceptable burden on future generations, its a crisis and government not only can't spend to implement policies to improve the economy, it must be cut to nothing.
So Democratic president's are trapped into cleaning up Republicans fiscal mess (amazing that Obama did that and created an 11 year recovery and economic boom while lowering the deficit) while Republicans lie and claim the deficit they created is Democrats' fault and they keep gaslighting America into believing they're the "fiscally responsible" party when in reality that's always been the Democrats.
"How quickly Republicans forget that shortly after they got control of Congress, they put the budget under "sequestration" to stifle growth that Obama would be credited for after saving the economy from the disastrous Bush collapse. They said sequestration was necessary to keep the debt from exploding."
Obama added more debt than all other Presidents combined. How much debt would he have racked up without sequestration?
also, you keep saying Obama produced a great economy that Trump is still benefiting but now are saying he couldn't because Repubs wouldn't let him.
Could you make up your mind which lie you want to push?
"As soon as a Republican got in the White House, there was magically no need for fiscal restraint anymore and they went on a spending spree, exploding our national debt."
actually, we needed to spend more on the military but Dems blocked it unless they got more domestic spending. Trump, being the responsible adult compromised. in the 2020 election, the GOP will seek an electoral mandate to slash domestic spending and close the deficit. Dems have a number of ideas to explode the deficit
"Our economy is on a sugar high right now, spurred on by tax cuts that have never paid for themselves."
actually tax revenue is way up since the cuts were passed and spending is up much more
sorry, your assertion is wrong
"It is only a matter of time before the interest on that debt becomes a noose around the US economy, and drags us down. That outcome is entirely avoidable,"
yes, it is. Dems need to stop resisting the reform of entitlement programs.
"No country in history has been able to into debt ad infinitum. But that is what Republicans are pushing for."
this is ignorant comment
all Dem candidates have massively expensive proposals and no plan to reduce the deficit
Tortured in Chechnya for being gay, this man found refuge and safety in Canada
Tony Perkins and Wyatt/Regina Hardiman and their church want to turn the USA into something much more like Russia and Chechnya. Trump will help them do it once he (with their help) liquidates all power and authority of the co-equal branches of government (Congress and the Judiciary) into his own dictatorial hands.
Trump and Mitch McConnell are furiously stacking the Judiciary with Trump aligned partisans. The seizing of dictatorial control of the Unites States is well under way and the march is on. Don't let them do it!
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "also, you keep saying Obama produced a great economy that Trump is still benefiting but now are saying he couldn't because Repubs wouldn't let him."
He DID produce a great economy despite all the Republican efforts to prevent him from doing anything to help Americans (and even forcing things that hurt the economy).
Obama took a trillion dollar deficit in 2009 and lowered it to a 300 billion dollar deficit. He lowered the unemployment rate six percentage points. Now, riding Obama's coat tails the unemployment rate drops a further one percent under Trump (and the deficit rises to 1 trillion) and bullshitters extraordinaire Wyatt/Regina are claiming Trump is vastly better on the economy than Obama. Obviously its the other way around.
But Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous thinks their god is perfectly fine with them lying left, right, and centre. Wyatt/Regina think the 10 commandment against lying should only be interpreted in the most narrow of ways possible - "I can tell any lie I want as long as I don't lie about what I saw my neighbour do and my god, the vessel of morality is fine with it."
You're going to need a new god if you really do want to behave morally, Wyatt/Regina.
It truly is amazing the economic recovery and boom Obama was able to lead America to despite Republicans fierce effort to keep him from doing anything to help Americans.
At the very beginning of Obama's presidency, Republicans had a meeting and decided their highest priority was not helping the American people but instead doing everything possible to stop Obama from doing so.
Obama belongs on Mount Rushmore for his amazing achievements in the face of massive systematic attempts by Republicans to keep anything good from happening and to even to harm the public.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "yes, it is. Dems need to stop resisting the reform of entitlement programs.".
Another Broken Trump Promise:
"I won't touch Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security!".
Instead, as Wyatt/Regina is demanding, the Republicans have slashed funding to Medicare and Medicaid and they have the elimination of them and Social Security in their sights.
The Republican attitude towards Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is summed up by Paul Ryan who bragged about how he and his republican college buddies would get drunk and fantasize longingly about eliminating all three of these "entitlement" programs as they pejoratively refer to them.
If you like your Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, never doubt that Republicans are drooling at the prospect of taking them away from you - just as Wyatt and Regina Hardiman acknowledged in their last post.
Hey Wyatt/Regina, how much do you two get paid to do all this trolling here and elsewhere as "Northdallasthirty"?
I'm thinking of changing sides and working for the Russians/Tony Perkins in order to get some of that sweet, sweet subversion cash!
President Trump lashed out Sunday night at the news media for reporting that he would meet with Iranian leaders with “no conditions” — something Trump has said on camera at least twice and that senior administration officials repeated to reporters just last week.
In fact, Trump said as much during a June 23 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” after host Chuck Todd asked if he had a message to deliver to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, about his country’s potential development of a nuclear weapon.
“You can’t have a nuclear weapon. You want to talk? Good. Otherwise you can have a bad economy for the next three years,” Trump said.
“No preconditions?” Todd asked.
“Not as far as I’m concerned. No preconditions,” Trump replied.
Let's go to the videotape:
Meet the Press Verified account
@MeetThePress
WATCH: Trump tells Chuck Todd that he wants to talk with Iran with “no pre-conditions.” #MTP #IfItsSunday
8:43 AM - 23 Jun 2019
July 30, 2018:
Asked about a potential meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Trump said: “I believe in meeting. I would certainly meet with Iran if they wanted to meet. I don’t know if they’re ready yet.”
“I’m ready to meet anytime they want to,” Trump added. “No preconditions. If they want to meet, we’ll meet.”
And then these two guys just last week:
CNN Politics Verified account
@CNNPolitics
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin say President Trump is ready to meet with Iran's leader “without preconditions” https://cnn.it/2Lnkgui
10:52 AM - 10 Sep 2019
It's good to keep the record straight. Trump is lying. As usual.
Last week, congressional budget experts warned that the Trump administration's trade war is impacting the U.S. economy and cutting household income. The analysis was released last Wednesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and it projected that the federal budget deficit will reach $960 billion for the 2019 fiscal year before growing to $1 trillion in 2020. That's higher than the CBO's previous estimates of $896 billion for 2019 and $892 billion for 2020.
Debt held by the public as a percentage of GDP is also projected to rise rapidly over the coming decade. It currently stands at 79% and it's forecast to increase to 95% by 2029, its highest level since just after the Second World War. Debt held by the public is all debt owed by the federal government to those outside the federal government including individuals, businesses, banks, insurance companies and foreign governments.
CBO Director Phillip Swagel stated that "the nation's fiscal outlook is challenging" before adding that "federal debt, which is already high by historical standards, is on an unsustainable course, projected to rise even higher after 2020 because of the aging of the population, growth in per capita spending on health care and rising interest costs". On the campaign trail, President Trump frequently criticized the level of government spending and in 2016 he vowed to eliminate the national debt over a period of eight years. Despite that, the deficit has continued to expand under Trump, primarily due to a $1.5 trillion tax cut bill and spending packages that have not been balanced by spending cuts.
"Despite that, the deficit has continued to expand under Trump, primarily due to a $1.5 trillion tax cut bill and spending packages that have not been balanced by spending cuts."
The hypocrisy of Republicans knows no bounds.
Throughout the entire Obama presidency they furiously proclaimed again and again and again that the government had to cut spending to balance the budget. "The national debt is a crisis that must be addressed for the sake of our children!!!!".
Republican children don't matter when the president is a Republican. When a Republican is president its suddenly a 180 degree reversal and "Deficits don't matter.".
Obama added more debt than all other Presidents combined. How much debt would he have racked up without sequestration?
actually tax revenue is way up since the Trump tax cuts were passed but spending is up much more
that's called a fact: the tax cuts netted a decrease in the deficit
we needed to spend more on the military but Dems blocked it unless they got more domestic spending. Trump, being the responsible adult compromised.
in the 2020 election, the GOP will seek an electoral mandate to slash domestic spending and close the deficit.
Dems have a number of ideas to explode the deficit
Dems need to stop resisting the reform of entitlement programs.
all Dem candidates have massively expensive proposals and no plan to reduce the deficit
let's hope they want to debate it!!
Breaking from NYT: State prosecutors in Manhattan have subpoenaed President Trump's accounting firm to demand eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
If Trump had nothing to hide, he wouldn't be fighting tooth and nail to prevent the public from seeing his tax returns he promised to reveal before the 2016 election.
Every week, the prophecies become more frightful.
“As Earth faces climate catastrophe, US set to open nearly 200 power plants,” a USA Today headline warns.
In the UK, The Guardian proclaims, “World 'gravely' unprepared for effects of climate crisis.” For the New Yorker, it’s already too late: “What if We Stopped Pretending the Climate Apocalypse Can Be Stopped?”
Activists, politicians and many in the media have stopped heralding the benefits of a cleaner, greener policy. No time to promote clear skies, green hills or a better quality of life. Instead, it’s all fear, all the time.
Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, chose fear as a centerpiece of her message.
“I don’t want your hope,” she told the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. “
Davos attendees dutifully applauded as aircrews refueled their fleet of private jets.
For some reason, voters aren’t eager to feel fear every day. Sure, they claim that climate change is important, but not if it requires changing their lifestyle, even a little.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that 69% of Americans want aggressive action to combat climate change.
So far, so good.
How many would support a rate hike of $100 a year to tackle the problem? Only 29%.
The years-long fear campaign hasn’t worked; any Marketing 101 student would change the messaging. Instead, progressive politicians just ramp up the panic.
Throughout our lives, eco-fearmongering has been a constant. My first-grade teacher handed out maps showing how a pollution-caused ice age would soon cover our Chicago suburb with a glacier. Mom eased the panic with a reminder we were moving to Phoenix that summer.
After that, acid rain was going to kill us, then the ozone hole, then global warming, then “global weirding,” and now, climate change. Granted, the climate has always changed, but progressives think it started about a century ago.
Despite the wildly different scenarios, from freezing oceans to boiling ones, the solution is always the same: curtail capitalism and let government control more of our lives.
This was the main message coming out of CNN’s seven-hour climate town halls, featuring all the major Democratic presidential primary candidates.
Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed using federally funded abortions as a means of population control. Mayor Pete Buttigieg called climate change “a kind of sin” but defended his private air travel “because this is a very big country.”
Former vice president Joe Biden promised to "take millions of vehicles off the road” via high-speed rail. The next day, he held a fundraiser co-hosted by a fossil fuel magnate.
The hypocrisy is galling, but it reveals that so many environmental doomsayers don’t actually believe we’re in a crisis at all.
To Thunberg’s credit, at least she avoids air travel. The same can’t be said for her audience or those grasping for power parroting her message.
Rising sea levels are threatening to destroy coastal communities, yet former President Barack Obama just bought a $15 million estate on Martha’s Vineyard. Leonardo DiCaprio, Prince Harry and others in the top 0.1% flew to a Google Camp in Sicily, requiring 117 separate flights. Seems like a Google Hangout would be better for the planet.
Fear is a good motivator, but it hasn’t worked for those seeking action on climate change. Voters aren’t willing to sacrifice for Gaia, and neither are the politicians demanding their votes.
Until the alarmists start behaving like there is a crisis, they shouldn’t expect everyday Americans to believe them.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "Obama added more debt than all other Presidents combined."
So did Ronald Reagan. How come he's a hero and Obama's a zero in your book? Double standards much?
"How much debt would he have racked up without sequestration?"
Nothing more.
His 1 trillion dollar stimulus raised the deficit over a trillion and then he cut it to 300 billion over the next few years. The stimulus paid for itself in taking America out of a recession.
If it weren't for Republicans handcuffing Obama with sequestration, he would have implemented the American Jobs Act, an infrastructure program that economists, including John McCain's former economic advisor for his 2016 presidential run said it would create over 2 million jobs. But of course, Republicans couldn't have Obama repeating the success of his 1 trillion stimulus in 2009,so they blocked the American Jobs Act and the 2 million jobs it would have created.
And like the hypocrites Republicans are, Trump has been promising the same sort of infrastructure program Obama put forward in 2010 with the American Jobs Act. Yet again, Republicans position on any policy depends on which party controls the presidency - they oppose infrastructure spending when Obama is president and now that Trump is president the falsely claim to be in favour of an infrastructure program but Democrats have offered to work with Trump on it, but Trump does nothing on it other than falsely proclaim how he wants to do it.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "Throughout our lives, eco-fearmongering has been a constant. My first-grade teacher handed out maps showing how a pollution-caused ice age would soon cover our Chicago suburb with a glacier. Mom eased the panic with a reminder we were moving to Phoenix that summer.".
More Republican propaganda. While a minority of scientists were predicting a comming ice age due to the position of the earth's rotational axis at the time was in the same position as had previously resulted in ice ages. However, the consensus of scientists, since it was first proposed around 1900 it might happen, has consistantly been that burning fossil fuels will result in the earth's long term climate heating up. Republicans like Waytt/Regina have been telling this lie for decades - they have no shame.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "After that, acid rain was going to kill us, then the ozone hole, then global warming, then “global weirding,” and now, climate change."
The acid rain problem was solved by a Canada/USA agreement to put emissions restrictions on coal fired power plants (which Trump is now removing). So of course you heard what a problem acid rain was and at some point stopped hearing that because the problem was solved.
Same with the Ozone hole. It was a serious problem that threatened to harm humanity and then the world got together and signed The Montreal Protocol, banned CFC's from spray cans and the hole they had caused in the ozone started to close up. So, again, of course you heard what a problem the ozone hole was and then at some point you no longer heard about it.
Wyatt/Regina is trying to deceive readers into believing scientists have been crying "Wolf!" when the reality is that scientists warned of a problem, the world met, and the problem was resovolved through science, not "thoughts and prayers"
Wyatt/Regina/anonymous said "Granted, the climate has always changed, but progressives think it started about a century ago."
Another lie from Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous, but then what can you expect from someone who says he feels no concern whatsoever about taking a news story, changing key sentences to make it say the opposite of what it originally did, and then posting his deception here.* Wyatt/Regina say that's perfectly ethical on their part.
But I digress. Progressives are well aware the climate has been changing over the past 4 billion years...but very, very, very slowly. Since 1900 the climate has been changing 50 times as fast as it did in the previous 12,000 years, getting warmer and warmer just as was predicted in 1900. Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous would have you believe that this sudden, drastic increase in the rate at which earth's climate is changing merely coincidentally is happening at the same time as humans have been burning fossil fuels on a massive scale, that anything, just anything else must be responsible for the 50 fold increase in the rate of climate temperature change, why it could be that people started sending radio signals that is causing the warming, or maybe the appearance of television is responsible, or maybe the 2 degrees of warming since 1900 is due to women getting the vote. Anything, but anything other than the documented greenhouse effect of CO2 must be causing our planet to warm they say.
That's what I call willful stupidity, people. Wyatt/Regina are unconditionally committed to lying about Human Caused Global Climate warming.
Yawn.
Wyatt/Regina, we've seen all those lies many times before, time for some new lies okay? I'm getting bored.
Of course new ideas go against the evolutionary psychology of conservatives like Wyatt/Regina. They're hardwired to unconditionally oppose anything that doesn't benefit only them and their Republican tribe and to unconditionally oppose any change, period.
Conservatives are going to prevent the world from making sufficient cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to prevent us from reaching an irreversible tipping point in ten years which will see the world continue to warm until it is uninhabitable in 300-1000 years (a blink of the eye on the geological time scale).
This is why there is no sign of technological life elsewhere in our galaxy - every technological species discovers the prolific short term benefits of burning fossil fuels and in a cosmic blink of an eye they and their planet dies. To read in more detail, click here.
I was going to address this but it got lost in the shuffle:
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "then global warming, then “global weirding,” and now, climate change."
All referring to the same 50 fold increase in the rate at which global climate temperatures are changing.
The phrase "Climate change" was originally proposed by the oil industry as focus groups were more afraid of "global warming" than they were of "climate change".
So folks, lets make sure everyone is aware of what it is and its implications. Don't refer to it as "climate change", refer it to it accurately - Human Caused Global Climate Warming (HCGCW)
Calm down everyone, its not like we have a deranged imbecile with his finger on the red button.
Late the night before illegitimate supreme court judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination hearing Republican committee members gave Democrats the thousands of pages of documentation on Brett Kavanaugh they were supposed to get to judge his candidacy.
It was a sham nomination process and Kavanaugh must be impeached.
Deborah Ramirez gave the FBI 25 names of people who could corroborate her allegation that Kavanaugh shoved his penis in her face. The FBI refused to interview any of them.
With these new allegations of sexual predation by Brett Kavanaugh we need a real investigation into this, an investigation that should have been done before Senators voted on his confirmation.
Every day, Trump puts his self interest ahead of the interests of the American people.
How to remove Brett Kavanaugh without impeaching him
The bar for removing Justice Brett Kavanaugh by impeachment is high. But there may be another way.
In 2006, years before Christine Blasey Ford publicly accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her when they were both in high school, the Yale Law Journal published a provocative paper.
The paper, “How To Remove a Federal Judge” by law professors Saikrishna Prakash and Steven D. Smith, lays out a road map for, well, how to remove a federal judge without resorting to the impeachment power. It argues that a provision of the Constitution stating that federal judges and justices “shall hold their offices during good behaviour” is widely misunderstood.
Contrary to the “virtually unquestioned assumption among constitutional law cognoscenti that impeachment is the only means of removing a federal judge,” Prakash and Smith argue that the term “good behavior” is a legal term of art that would have been understood by the founding generation to allow judges to be removed by “judicial process.”
Prakash, a professor at the University of Virginia, is a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas. Smith, a professor at the University of San Diego, is a frequent contributor to conservative and libertarian publications. So even if the paper did not precede the Kavanaugh hearings by more than a decade, it would be difficult to argue that it was published in order to lay the groundwork for a liberal victory over a conservative Supreme Court justice.
The paper, which was published in one of the legal academy’s most prestigious journals but has had little impact on public policy so far, could wind up becoming important if Democrats capture Congress and the White House in the 2020 election
On Saturday, the New York Times published a report bolstering the allegations against Kavanaugh...
We did computer modeling on various population growth scenarios in college. All of them, regardless of the controls employed, showed exponential growth followed by massive die-off, followed more moderate exponential growth... it was depressing forty years ago, but unfortunately still rings true.
Incredibly, when President George W. Bush was stampeding the Iraq invasion in 2003, he told French President Jacques Chirac that the attack was needed to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.
Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in invading Iraq as a mission from God.
This bizarre — seemingly deranged — episode happened while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call, and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”
Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who told the tale in his book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released by the publisher Plon.
Oddly, mainstream media ignored this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it, so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure… which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, on-line commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.
The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush’s renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim “absurd.”
For years, Americans really hadn’t known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, after all, and wasn’t in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq’s oil — or to protect Israel — or to complete Bush’s father’s old vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.
Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that arcane, supernatural Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that killed more than 4,000 young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.
There are many, many Republican politicans that think like George Bush did, for example, corrupt Attorney General Bill Barr, Tony Perkins and Mitch McConnell. Trump will happily give them the theocracy they want in exchange for his own enrichment of which he'll share some with them.
Forgot the link for my prior post. Get the whole story there.
"The fact remains that Kavanaugh suddenly cleared at least $60,000 and as much as $200,000 in mysterious debt over one year."
That's the cost of seats to the Washington Nationals baseball team.
Justice John Roberts retired unexpectedly just as his son was about to be investigated for his role at Deutschebank. And Kavanaugh's debt disappeared shortly after that. Kavanaugh's salary at the time wasn't enough to manage that big a repayment in that short a time.
DeutscheBank was fined massive amounts for laundering money for Russia. You know Russia, where Trump's sons said Trump Inc gets all its financing?
Trump's financial empire collapsed in the 80's when bankrupted several Casinos. Trump stuck his investors with the loss and declared their loss against his own income to reduce his income tax.
After that no American banks would lend to Trump. His income took unaccountably large swings in value and then suddently Deutsche bank started lending him tens of millions. Trump then defaulted on his Deutschebank loan and sued Deutschebank for his failure to make his payments.
After Trump defaulted on the first loans Deutsche bank gave him, they violated their fiduciary duty and lent Trump mega millions more.
So, Trump is desperate to keep the American public from seeing his income tax returns, because you know what that's going to expose.
Obama added more debt than all other Presidents combined. How much debt would he have racked up without sequestration?
actually tax revenue is WAY up since the Trump tax cuts were passed but spending is up much more
that's called a fact: the tax cuts netted a decrease in the deficit
the Dems are lying when they say the tax cuts didn't pay for themselves
we needed to spend more on the military but Dems blocked it unless they got more domestic spending. Trump, being the responsible adult compromised.
in the 2020 election, the GOP will seek an electoral mandate to slash domestic spending and close the deficit.
Dems have a number of ideas to explode the deficit
Dems need to stop resisting the reform of entitlement programs.
the suggested reforms won't be a hardship to anyone but simply adjust retirement age to align with current actuary tables
all Dem candidates have massively expensive proposals ("free" college, "free" health care, the New Green Deal, a thousand a month for everyone, bread and circuses) and no plan to reduce the deficit
meanwhile, Trump has delivered jobs and wage growth to the Dems' base of minority voters that Dems have promised to help for years
minorities to Dems: you haven't done nothing and Trump has done something!
there's a reason there was no mention of the economy at last week's Dem debates!!
Among the most enviable and least recognized qualities of a presidential candidate is something they share with lottery winners and bowling champions: a talent for dumb luck. And for those politicians blessed with this wholly undeserved and unearned gift, the most valuable form of it, the lucky break coveted over all others, is a lousy opponent.
President Donald Trump demonstrated such talent in abundance in 2016 when he faced the widely despised Hillary Clinton. For anyone who had trouble voting for Trump because of various concerns about his character, the alternative of punching a chad for Clinton made things much easier.
Trump looks all set to get lucky again once Democrats decide which of the current forlorn crop of candidates they want as their nominee in 2020.
Trump looks all set to get lucky again once Democrats decide which of the current forlorn crop of candidates they want as their nominee in 2020. One, Andrew Yang, stooped so low during Thursday night’s Democratic debate in Houston that he decided to start buying votes, saying his campaign would shell out $1,000 a month for a year to 10 families.
Trump is but the latest in a history of presidential candidates bestowed by fortune with the perfect foil.
The handsome John F. Kennedy drew Richard M. Nixon, an untelegenic candidate who found himself in the first televised debate in history looking pale and tired from a recent hospital stay, sporting a five o’clock shadow — and refusing makeup. Lyndon B. Johnson faced off against Barry M. Goldwater, whom he was able to easily cast as an extremist.
Ronald Reagan had Walter Mondale, who promised to raise taxes, the political equivalent of a hockey team putting the goalie on offense. George H.W. Bush had Michael Dukakis, a diminutive, robotic individual who offered a dispassionate answer about the death penalty when asked about his wife being raped and murdered and who staged a ludicrous photo op swallowed up by an M1 Abrams tank. Bill Clinton had ... George H.W. Bush, an awkward campaigner who’d broken his promise not to raise taxes. The list goes on.
This is not to say Trump won’t earn the presidency. Or that he did not in 2016, either. He adroitly tapped into a gold mine of discontent with the established order, understanding the anger in the hinterland far better than the professional politicians and pundits who couldn’t see the problems with the establishment because they were part of it. But he also got lucky with his opponent.
As if to ensure his re-election, the Democrats have come up with former Vice President Joe Biden as the alleged front-runner — at least according to current polls — anointing him the most electable of the lot. This, however, is a theory deeply in want of evidence. Biden has already proven himself unelectable twice, during runs for the 1988 and 2008 Democratic presidential nomination that went exactly nowhere.
What’s more, he offsets Trump’s most glaring weakness — questions about whether his cerebral cortex is functioning smoothly. Already during the current campaign, Biden has forgotten what state he was in, referred to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker as the president, called the actual commander in chief “President Hump,” proclaimed a preference for truth over facts and briefly relocated mass shootings that had occurred in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, to Houston and Michigan.
On Thursday, while sharper than he has been, the vice president was still unable to get through his opening statement without repeatedly glancing down at his notes. He again referred to a debate opponent as president, this time Sanders. Former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro blew the dog whistle on Biden’s mental state as loudly as possible. “Are you forgetting already what you said just two minutes ago?” he demanded after the former VP denied he had said people would have to buy into his health care plan.
Last month, Biden unreassuringly proclaimed, “I want to be clear, I’m not going nuts.”
Biden also is poorly positioned to capitalize on another Trump weakness — the president’s incessant lying. This is because the former vice president has been veering from the truth himself, including recent claims that he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning, that he didn’t oppose busing and a story about pinning a silver star on a service member in Afghanistan, which had most of the truth stripped out of it. To be fair, the latter could also speak to Biden’s potentially deteriorating memory.
Neither of the two leftist Democrats running not too far behind Biden, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, holds much chance of winning the presidency in a country where, according to the 2018 Election Day exit polls, a significant portion of voters consider themselves moderates.
Warren supports "Medicare for All," repealing the law criminalizing illegal entry, banning fracking, assessing a carbon tax, canceling most student loan debt, making public colleges and universities free, raising taxes — and spending the revenues — and providing universal child care. Also problematic: She claimed to be Native American despite no clear evidence that this was anything other than a family legend.
Sanders agrees with her on most counts, but with the added general election drawback of being an avowed socialist with the charm of a grumpy uncle. Red faced, scowling and howling hoarsely as if he had been yelling all day, Sanders angrily dismissed criticism on Thursday of his $30 trillion health care plan, which he somehow calculated would save Americans $20 trillion. “I wrote the damn bill,” he growled.
California Sen. Kamala Harris at least seems more reasonable and might do better in a general election. But she has so far been unable to sustain momentum, and her equivocating on issues like health care hasn’t helped. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg has appeal as a clear-thinking, steady personality but runs roughly the 300th largest city in the United States and has shown little ability to appeal to black voters, who are so critical to gaining the Democratic nomination.
Meanwhile, Booker and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, once touted as charismatic incarnations of the Democrats’ future, revealed themselves to be man-children the minute they jumped into the race. They’re nowhere in the polls. Andrew Yang’s candidacy is centered on his promise to give every American $1,000, no doubt planning to task the agriculture department with developing the seeds for the trees the money will grow on. Other assorted candidates are at about 1 percent or less in the polls and deserve to be there.
Granted, Trump’s luck may run out elsewhere. The economy could tank, or some foreign policy disaster could engulf us. But he will always have his future Democratic opponent to fall back on.
Political evangelical leader, dedicated Trump supporter and Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. has recently been generating more headlines than usual, and each additional report makes it harder to keep up with the scandals.
Falwell, one of America’s most prominent right-wing Christian leaders, is under scrutiny after a string of news stories accusing him of shady real estate deals, hypocritical personal choices, alleged self-dealing to profit his family and creating what employees call a culture of fear at his Lynchburg, Virginia-based school.
Last week, nearly a decade’s worth of email exchanges with university colleagues that were reviewed by Reuters revealed that Falwell had disparaged students and staff at the Christian university, referring to one student as “emotionally imbalanced and physically retarded” and calling the campus police chief a “half-wit.” Liberty’s general counsel, David Corry, told Reuters that the school wouldn’t respond “without knowing the details or seeing email chains in their entirety.”
Just days earlier, Politico published an exposé in which more than two dozen current and former unnamed Liberty officials described “a culture of fear” at the school, with various individuals alleging that Falwell would discuss his sex life with employees in graphic detail and that he improperly diverted school resources to projects in which his friends and family would make personal financial gains.
Unnamed school officials said in the Politico story ― written by Liberty alumnus Brandon Ambrosino ― that Falwell’s behavior does not match the standard of conduct that they expect from someone leading one of the world’s largest conservative Christian universities.
Politico’s Sept. 9 story also included allegations that Falwell and members of his family visited a Miami Beach nightclub in 2014. Falwell denied the visit and said the photos were “photo-shopped,” but one day after the Politico story appeared, the owner of Miami photography firm World Red Eye published even more photos of such an incident. Liberty University does not allow students to engage in co-ed dancing or drinking.
Seth Browarnik
@worldREDEYE
Statement in response to yesterday's @politico story on Jerry Falwell Jr. that included our photographs. Additional photographs of Mr. Falwell and his son are posted here: https://worldredeye.com/2019/09/rebuke-jerry-falwell-jr-s-comment-politicos-someones-gotta-tell-freakin-truth-jerry-falwells-aides-break-silence-article/ …
9:36 AM - Sep 10, 2019
Falwell told The Associated Press that he wasn’t going to “dignify the lies that were reported” in Politico’s piece and dismissed the reporter as a “little boy.” He also said he’s asking the FBI to investigate what he claimed was a “criminal” smear campaign against him by disgruntled former employees as part of an “attempted coup,” which he further claimed was at least partially motivated by his support for President Donald Trump.
He is an ardent supporter of Trump, who has divided the evangelical community, with progressive evangelicals and evangelicals of color speaking out against a president they believe doesn’t fit their moral standards...
that Falwell story is endlessly fascinating...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley ripped Democratic calls to impeach Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during a recent interview.
"You know, they want to impeach Justice Kavanaugh, they want to pack the Supreme Court, I mean talk about destroying any institution they can’t control. It's really unbelievable. This is a Democrat party that increasingly is at war with the American constitution," Hawley said.
Hawley, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was responding to a number of Democratic presidential candidates and members of Congress who have called for Kavanaugh's impeachment in recent days. The calls come after a since-corrected report in The New York Times alleging sexual misconduct by the Supreme Court justice when he was a student at Yale University.
The report was adapted from a story in a soon-to-be-published book by New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly. It was based on the account of a witness and did not initially disclose that several friends of the alleged victim of the misconduct, who did not speak to The Times, said she did not recall the incident.
Hawley did not address the specifics of the Kavanaugh report, instead focusing his ire on what he called the broader assaults against the Judiciary.
"I mean they’re willing to destroy an entire branch of government, the independent judiciary they want to destroy it why? Because it won’t rule the way they want it too. I mean is there anything more dangerous to constitutional government than that way of thinking."
The Missouri senator continued, "My message to my Democrat colleagues would be look its an independent judiciary, sooner or later you’ll have your chance to appoint judges to the bench and you should appoint qualified judges to do so but don’t destroy people and institutions in order to try and get your way. I mean that’s just not who we are as Americans."
"You know, they want to impeach Justice Kavanaugh, they want to pack the Supreme Court"
How dare they! Don't they know that only Mitch McConnell is allowed to do that??!?!
"I mean they’re willing to destroy an entire branch of government, the independent judiciary they want to destroy it why? Because it won’t rule the way they want it too. I mean is there anything more dangerous to constitutional government than that way of thinking."
Oh, I don't know, how about leaving an empty seat on the court for nearly a year until you can get an unbalanced, electoral college elections to go your way?
"My message to my Democrat colleagues would be look its an independent judiciary, sooner or later you’ll have your chance to appoint judges to the bench and you should appoint qualified judges to do so but don’t destroy people and institutions in order to try and get your way. I mean that’s just not who we are as Americans."
Tell that to Merrick Garland.
We know who you are as Americans. You're just upset that after being taken advantage of for years, Democrats have finally grown a spine and started fighting back to block some of your treachery. Unfortunately being nice doesn't work when the other side plays dirty. So get ready to take what you've been giving out.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "actually tax revenue is WAY up since the Trump tax cuts were passed but spending is up much more that's called a fact: the tax cuts netted a decrease in the deficit"
Another typical absurd lie from Wyatt/Regina. They make this stuff up on the fly and have no reservations whatsoever about doing so.
The truth is USA posts $14 billion budget deficit as revenuse sag after Trump tax cuts
Obviously no one should believe anyone who believes "everyone lies all the time" anyway, but this lie is so absurd its time to call the guys in the white suits with the butterfly nets.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said ""I mean they’re willing to destroy an entire branch of government, the independent judiciary they want to destroy it why?"
Because they want to help Trump seize dictatorial power. That's why they're rushing to appoint as many Trump partisans to the court - they couldn't care less that they are destroying the independence of the judiciary, its an acceptable sacrifice in Republican's blind pursuit of power over democracy and the rule of law.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "homosexuality doesn't yield life and shouldn't be preferenced"
Giving gays the same rights everyone else has, is not "preferring" gays over anyone. Wyatt/Regina's animus is a classic example of unconstitutional christian privilege.
You still haven't answered the burning question raised by your desire to ensconce in law christian superiority -
Why promote uncontrolled heterosexuality when our exponential population growth will destroy us?
You're making the problem of overpopulation worse. Wyatt/Regina are recommending we blindly rush back into a burning house.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "Obama added more debt than all other Presidents combined."
Your hero Ronald Reagan did the same thing but of course being the prime example of the hypocrite you are, the national debt and deficit don't concern you in the slightest when Republicans triple it.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "we needed to spend more on the military but Dems blocked it unless they got more domestic spending. Trump, being the responsible adult compromised."
Nonsense. Trump refused to compromise. And if you're so worried about your bloated military, ten times the size of the next largest foreign adversary's military, why are you bitching non-stop about Trump seizing military funds to build his pointless and destructive vanity wall that he adamantly insisted Mexico would pay for?
Republican lies and hypocrisy know no bounds.
Poor, poor Wyatt/Regina and their church. Their propaganda campaign is not going well. Not going well at all.
Don't be dispirited guys, you've got an impossible job of convincing people you're telling the truth when its really all lies.
You're doing a fine job despite that.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Republican Rep. Paul Cook (Calif.) will retire from Congress at the end of this term and run for a seat on the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.
He is the 17th House Republican lawmaker to announce they will not seek reelection in 2020.
Cook was first elected to his House seat in California's 8th Congressional District in 2012, and sits on both the House Armed Services Committee and Natural Resources Committee.
Prior to his time in Congress, Cook served in the California State Assembly, taught courses at both Copper Mountain College and University of California, Riverside, and served as an infantry officer in the Marine Corps.
President Trump won Cook's district by more than 15 points in 2016. Cook won his last election there against another Republican with 60 percent of the vote.
The California Republican has already endorsed Assemblyman Jay Obernolte in the race to be his successor, according to Obernolte’s website.
Jerry Falwell Jr. - one of America’s most prominent right-wing Christian leaders, is under scrutiny after a string of news stories accusing him of shady real estate deals, hypocritical gay party animal sex life, alleged self-dealing to profit his family and creating what employees call a culture of fear
Top Oil Producer Alberta Challenges Investors Willing to Embrace Despots
I gotta say, Alberta Conservative Premier Jason Kenney (an anti-gay bigot) makes a very good case that it is better to put Canada's dirty tar sands oil on the market rather than the cleaner Arab oil, given that Saudia Arabia killed an American journalist with no repercussions from Trump. Saudi Arabia, Iran and other Arab oil producing countries are a human rights disaster and a threat to democracy around the world.
Yes indeed, there's a very strong case to be made for preferring Alberta tar sands oil over oil from the middle east.
And while Justin Trudeau builds a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific, dishonest Canadian conservatives rant about how he refuses to build that pipeline.
Canadian conservatives are modeling their propaganda after that of American Republicans - gas light the public.
Speaking of the self-dealing of Trump's reluctant supporter Jerry Falwell Jr, Trump is making the U.S. military fly well out of its way to land at an airport in the U.K. with an agreement to service Trump's nearby golf resort.
And of course the military stays at Trump's resort on the needless layover, paying outrageous prices for food and lodging, lining Trump's pockets and keeping the airport afloat for his profit, in violation of the Constitution's ban on using the presidency to enrich or otherwise benefit oneself.
Trump said in regards to the Chinese dictator "President for life, I like that, maybe we'll have to try that here."
He had a big smile on his face when he said it. Those who've studied authoritarian dictatorships say "When a wannabe dictator tells you what he wants to do - believe him."
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxylK6fR81rckQxWi1hVFFRUDg/view
Trump saying he wanted to be president for life was a trial balloon to see how him as president for life would go over with the American public. There was no major blowback to his announcement, that tells Trump he has support for his desire to end American democracy in his name.
Mitch McConnell, Illegitimate Attorney general and illegitimate Supreme court Judges Bill Barr, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch respectively and the disgraceful Lindsey Graham want to use Trump to implement a christian theocracy.
Let's pause to remember Lindsey Graham's shameful betrayal of the American public during Brett Kavanaugh's supreme court nomination hearing.
Republicans wanted to feign objectivity so they brought in a Republican lawyer to do their questioning and also to distance themselves from any suggestion they weren't 100% behind him.
When the Republican attorney started asking Kavanaugh about the entry in his personal Calendar back from the time Christine Ford says he tried to rape and almost killed her, which corroborated her story the jig was almost up about Kavanaugh's shockingly corrupt behavior.
So lying Lindsey Graham came to Kavanaugh's rescue. He used a standard "bad faith argument" tactic of conservatives - use aggression and anger to promote a lie and discourage any liberals from challenging that lie. Graham launched into a spittle flecked rant of bull shit about how Kavanaugh "had nothing to be ashamed of!" when everyone there including the disgrace Lindsey Graham knew Kavanaugh had a great, great deal to be ashamed of and every reason why he should not be allowed on the supreme court, or any court of any sort.
And it worked. Because liberals are meek and thoughtful by nature and conservatives are angry and agressive in the pursuit of their own self-interest above anyone they don't like.
Lindsey Graham - a modern day Benedict Arnold.
Hey Wyatt/Regina, I bet you're regretting spilling the beans by telling me several months ago you post about assaulting lgbt school children, calls for gays to be imprisoned and executed just to anger me.
Things haven't gone so well for you two since I realized you're completely insincere about everything you post and that you're unconditionally opposed to admitting the truth, no matter how much you ask for explanations for this and that.
Now that I've caught onto your game after two decades, I'm much better at dealing with you trolls, wouldn't you say?
If we are to address the existential problems that face us as a species we must unite and act globally. Society will never be united under religion, regardless of what Wyatt/Regina's church leadership thinks.
If we want to unite humanity we have to start it from a bedrock foundation that every rational person can agree comes before any of their religion's dictates:
To have the healthiest and happiest earth possible, our highest priority has to be maximizing the happiness for all in an equal and fair way.
Our sense of morality doesn't come from any religion, it comes from others violating our bodily autonomy against our will. We learn at a very young age that its wrong to hurt someone who isn't hurting you.
That's the foundation of human morality, not the grotesque infinite injustice that is the "moral" foundation of Christianity and Islam.
It’s now been three days since The New York Times corrected — er, retracted — its attack against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Turns out the “new allegation” isn’t supported by the victim, a fact conveniently left out of the story.
And still TTF, Kamala Harris, Liz Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Julian Castro and Pete Buttigieg have not apologized or reversed their calls for Kavanaugh to be impeached.
How long will it be before at least one of them shows the basic decency and fairness to take back the impeachment demand? We’re waiting.
The recent fiasco at the New York Times and TTF, which last weekend publicized the latest uncorroborated sexual assault accusation against Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh, was a monument to hearsay and a travesty of journalistic ethics.
The story, since modified to include crucial information, was an adapted excerpt from a book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh.” In it, the authors reported allegations by a Yale classmate that Kavanaugh was at a “drunken dorm party” where “friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student.”
Setting aside the logistics of such a feat, more eye-popping was the omission from the Times and TTF that the alleged victim refused to be interviewed for the book — and, according to friends, doesn’t remember any such incident .
Such an oversight is inexcusable.
These details were added to the story by the Times after they were flagged by the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, but TTF has yet to correct anything. The Times writers, who said the details had been in the excerpt’s initial draft, made media rounds Monday and Tuesday to explain the omission, and essentially blamed editors, who, they said, “in the haste” of trying to close out production, had deleted the reference.
The facts that the alleged victim refused to be interviewed by the authors, and apparently told friends that she doesn’t recall any such incident, amount to the very definition of a non-story. For the record, the Washington Post learned of the accusation last year but declined to publish it because the alleged witnesses weren’t identified and the woman said to be involved refused to comment.
Indeed, the books’ only sources for the claim were two unnamed officials who spoke to Washington attorney Max Stier, who last year apparently told the FBI and various senators that he witnessed the alleged incident. But Stier refused to talk to the Times writers himself.
Some Democratic contenders for the presidency immediately called for Kavanaugh’s impeachment. They include Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, and Pete Buttigieg.
But let’s rewind the reel a bit. The reason the Times writers likely included the penis-in-hand accusation at all is because it added context to the accusations by both Deborah Ramirez, who alleged last year that she experienced sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh at another boozy Yale party, and Christine Blasey Ford.
Ramirez, for her part, initially wasn’t quite sure of events. She has admitted to time lapses and also to having been drunk, but told the New Yorker and the Times writers that she remembers brushing away a penis thrust in her face, allegedly by Kavanaugh.
If these stories are true, then Kavanaugh could have been a creepy, perhaps monstrous, drunk in his youth. But all we have to go by are alleged victims who also were drinking at the time, and comments from former classmates — who may also have been inebriated — some of whom corroborate the Ramirez accusation and others who dispute it. The Times writers reported finding seven people who they say corroborated Ramirez’s story, but much of what they documented were second- and third-hand reports, things overheard and, yes, Ramirez’s mother, to whom she apparently said, “Something happened at Yale.”
Not exactly a wrap for justice.
The truth is, Kavanaugh has been the target of a media siege since his name was announced for consideration for the high court. Ramirez’s story was first reported by the New Yorker just days before Ford’s congressional testimony, which, frankly, was flimsy at best. None of the other four people Ford named as attending the high school party where she claimed Kavanaugh groped her recalled any such gathering. One of them, a close friend and the only other female, Leland Keyser , not only doesn’t remember the party but says she’s never even met Kavanaugh.
What’s all too clear is that America’s privileged youth had a serious drinking problem in the early 1980s, and boozy memories from high school and young adulthood are unreliable. Far more troubling is that several presidential candidates seemingly would impeach a Supreme Court justice on nothing more than hearsay — and impeachable journalism.
The Dems might have had an issue in 2020 with Trump's deficits. Unfortunately for them, they've already checkmated themselves. However irresponsible Trump has been, they've committed to doubling down.
The Green New Deal, free college, free universal health care, universal basic income, the elimination of student debt, bailouts for unfunded government worker pensions and other ideas animating the new socialist wing of the Democrat Party leave most Americans scratching their heads: Where could they possibly get the money for that?
Trillions upon trillions of dollars in proposed new spending, without any apparent regard to financing. Many people ask: Are these candidates and their young supporters deluded?
The answer may surprise you: No, at least not in the way you are probably thinking. Recent government financial maneuvers provide an empirical and intellectual basis for the energized socialists of the 2020 Democrat party. The new left even has a name for their theory: Modern Monetary Theory.
The Democrats’ MMT may not be completely delusional, but it is rooted in disdain for the public, and it is profoundly dangerous to the viability of the dollar and our national prosperity. MMT works only to the extent that the government is able to take advantage of billions of people who don’t understand what the U.S. dollar is today.
Most people around the world don’t give any thought to this key fact about the dollar: It’s nothing. It’s literally not a thing. It’s an idea — and like other creations of human imagination, the supply, existence and value of the dollar is only a function of what people think.
This was not always so. As an anthropological matter, money arose organically out of human interaction. Ancient humans who started to trade things with each other would sometimes trade for shiny rocks too — metals that people liked to have and, because people liked them, the rocks or metals were valuable to hold for trade.
Money was a commodity standardized by government, not created by it. It’s easier to trade anything according to accepted standards, so humans developed objective measures such as the size, weight and quality of everything that humans sought to trade, including the shiny rocks/metals. And so, thousands of years ago, man started to develop coins, the size and standards for which were established by a commonly recognized authority. Stamping these new units of the shiny metal with the name or image of the fearsome warrior/leader served multiple purposes, including conveying a guaranty of the measure, a threat to those that might tamper with it and advertising the strength and wealth of the leader.
For thousands of years, money was a thing, the desirability of which was independent of the leader whose image or name was stamped upon it. The stuff from which money was minted came from the ground or from other people; it was scarce, and the leader’s governing organization had to get the stuff from somewhere or someone else.
A few hundred years ago, there was another innovation with respect to money. Some people offered to hold gold or silver coins for others in order to keep the coins secure and lessen the burden of carrying them and issued claim checks for the coins being held. Paper money was born.
But people only accepted paper money if and to the extent they were confident that the “real” money existed and they trusted the holder of the “real” money to keep it safe.
Then, in the 1930s, the U.S. and other governments started issuing paper money that purported to be the money itself, not a claim check. The bearer could no longer approach the issuer of the paper money and trade it for gold and silver — although the issuer of the paper money pledged that indeed it really did have tons of gold and silver to “back up” the paper.
Confidence and faith of the people in the issuer thus became a more important component of money’s value to people. The full faith and credit of some issuers (such as the United States) was good, while that of others (such as Germany’s Weimar Republic) was not so good.
Then, in the 1970s, the U.S. and paper money issuers announced that the value and amount of minted or printed currency would not be linked to the gold and silver held by the issuer. Money issuers assured money users that they still held tons of gold and silver, but also governed large economies rich in properties, some of which the issuers could take through taxation to “back up” the money.
With this innovation, money’s value would depend on the relative supply and demand for each currency, which in turn depends on people’s faith and confidence in the different issuers and the vitality of the economy associated with that currency. The value of these new “fiat currencies” fell relative to the original “real” money, but our Federal Reserve Bank proved in the 1980s that it would take painful actions to regulate the supply of money and keep the value of the dollar from plummeting.
Fiat currencies work, until they don’t (see: Venezuela). The United States dollar has been universally desired and valued since the 1980s because people have faith in the United States, its economic prospects, its safety from military conquest, and the prudent management of its money supply.
Due to the electronic data revolution, bookkeeping for money went from tangible ledgers and paper form to an array of invisible electrons at about the same time the dollar disconnected from “real” money. In this electronic form, money was infinitely easier to trade — and easier to create.
Over time, less and less money existed in the tangible form of rocks or coins or paper and more and more existed only as invisible electrons in a computer, to the point where today some issuers of money are now actually seeking to do away with tangible money altogether in a preference for intangible electronic forms.
Billions of people the world over will trade what they have for the U.S. dollar. They will hide dollars in the tangible form of $100 bills, but want it in electronic form too, if that’s permitted by their government. Despite being largely invisible, the dollar is real because people believe in it.
Why does this matter? The U.S. dollar is now purely a creature of the federal government. The United States can create more dollars without getting anything else from anywhere or anyone else. And because almost no U.S. dollars exist in tangible form, any amount can be created nearly invisibly.
This is a power greater than that of Caesar or Louis the Sun King — each of whom had to have more gold or silver to mint and issue more money. There is at any time a finite amount of gold and silver — and to get more, one had to mine it, trade for it or steal it. Many dreamed of being able to convert other plentiful metals like lead into gold, but this alchemy was beyond human reach.
Until now — because not only is government the sole supplier of its currency, it can create an endless supply invisibly at the touch of a button. With this power, in the midst of the financial crisis of 2008, the U.S. government started to explore new frontiers of money management by launching “Quantitative Easing.”
Quantitative Easing is government-speak for “push a button to create electronic dollars and buy stuff.” Offsetting the trillions of dollars in debt issued by the Obama administration Treasury Department with the trillions acquired by the Obama Fed, the government acquired trillions of dollars of goods and services for literally nothing but electrons. Money from nothing enables the government to buy stuff for free.
As a member of the Fed at the time said to me: “Yes! It’s the miracle of modern central banking!”
Quantitative Easing drove up demand for financial assets, but didn’t destroy the dollar, in part because of other actions taken by the Fed — but also because very few people understood what Quantitative Easing meant. QE’s success spawned this Democrat Modern Monetary Theory: The government can create tens of trillions more than it created in Quantitative Easing and pay for all the needs and wants of every American. For “free.”
MMT is catnip for socialists — and it reflects a remarkable disdain for ordinary people the world over. Is it conceivable that folks wouldn’t systematically notice that the U.S. is acquiring $50 trillion, $60 trillion, or more in services and goods for … nothing? Consider what happens to the value of the dollar itself, and of all that is valued in the dollar, upon the growing realization that the government is playing its counterparts as fools.
Consider what happens to our nation once the dollar is treated by its creator as nothing -- the supply of which is infinite. Trust in the U.S. government’s prudence is the ultimate coin of our realm, trust that it will value its own currency as if it were “real” money. This trust is what the 2020 Democrats wish to exploit with their grand plans: just make the money to make the world we imagine. Voila!
But can the government make money from nothing, give it to people for nothing and still expect people to trust and rely on the money for their savings and transactions?
Trust is intangible and mutable; trust derives from assessment of the behavior and character of the other. Trust takes ages to develop but can be lost in an instant. The dollar is intangible; its sole source of value is trust in the U.S.; and therefore its value depends on, and changes with, how the government manages itself and the money it creates.
Ask yourself: Can you trust any of the 2020 Democrats with a button that instantly and invisibly creates infinite amounts of money? While Quantitative Easing worked for a variety of reasons in the wake of the 2008 crisis, it would be foolish to bet our dollar and our prosperity that money from nothing empowers Democrats to achieve socialism for free.
Although an instrument of the US Government, the Federal Reserve System considers itself an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by Congress, and the terms of the members of the board of governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms.
It is largely controlled by private bankers, and does not have to follow the whims of presidents or congress.
Central bankers, seeing that Obama was not going to be able to inject enough federal dollars into the economy (the normal response to a major economic downturn)
because a Republican-controlled congress thwarted him at every turn, even sequestering spending to limit any potential for pushing the economy out of the recession, screaming about how large the deficits would be. (A problem that could have been solved by raising taxes on the uber-rich.)
The bankers, watching a Republican congress hell bent on keeping the economy poor to undermine Obama's presidency, did the only thing private bankers in our country are allowed to do at times like that - print all the money they want to get it circulating through the system and help keep their customers solvent, and their loans out of default.
Bankers don't care about inflation when they're the ones loaning the money - the FED (the same ones who printed the money) get to raise interest rates to keep inflation in check. Boom, they make even more money. They don't need congressional approval to print the money, or to raise the interest rates. It's good to be a banker.
There were plenty of people warning that QE would eventually, inevitably, lead to inflation, and that it was not a good policy. It would be better for congress to raise (taxes on the rich) and spend the money, to avoid the risk of future inflation. But everyone knows as long as Republicans have a vote, they are never, ever, ever going to raise taxes, and would instead prefer to see us to crashing into a full blown debt crisis.
After a flood of cut&pastes intended to bury the comments of mine they are so afraid of, Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous posted "t’s now been three days since The New York Times corrected — er, retracted — its attack against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Turns out the “new allegation” isn’t supported by the victim, a fact conveniently left out of the story."
No surprise here, its another gross distortion of reality - a standard bad faith argument tactic by conservatives.
The New York Times stands by its story that there is yet another credible allegation that a drunken Kavanaugh stuck his penis in yet another woman's face while he was at college becoming the fine upstanding role model he is today.
There's a grain of truth to what Wyatt/Regina said, the victim does not remember the incident. But multiple witnesses reported seeing and hearing about it and said the victim was heavily inebriated and it would be no surprise if she didn't remember it.
So, there you go, another standard tactic in the bad faith arguers toolkit to suppress the truth - take a grain of truth and stretch it into a claim that almost entirely contradicts reality - Kavanaugh has a habit of getting blind drunk and him and his frat boys sexually assault women and attempt to rape them.
If we are to address the existential problems that face us as a species we must unite and act globally. Society will never be united under religion, regardless of what Wyatt/Regina's church leadership thinks.
If we want to unite humanity we have to start it from a bedrock foundation that every rational person can agree comes before any of their religion's dictates:
To have the healthiest and happiest earth possible, our highest priority has to be maximizing the happiness for all in an equal and fair way.
Our sense of morality doesn't come from any religion, it comes from others violating our bodily autonomy against our will. We learn at a very young age that its wrong to hurt someone who isn't hurting you.
That's the foundation of human morality, not the grotesque infinite injustice that is the "moral" foundation of Christianity and Islam.
I see Wyatt/Regina posted all those cut&pastes under "anonymous" rather than their usual declaration of how they love the illegitimate Supreme Court Trump has in his pocket or about how gays should be punished and oppressed.
They're scared of me so they want to be more careful about not announcing its Wyatt/Regina making those posts in the vain hope I won't see through their charade and call them out for their constant bad faith arguments.
Whoops, excuse me, I didn't mean to suggest Wyatt/Regina and their church's highest priority for society is to "punish and oppress" gays. No, no, no, they're people of faith and sinners too. They don't want to "punish and oppress" gays as their highest priority, its that they want to "not privilege gayness".
Two sides of the same coin guys. Just like the fight to "protect marriage" made not the slightest effort to help any heterosexual married couple, instead they devoted their millions and dedication to harming gays as much as possible, a total waste of resources at best, beating down lgbt people doesn't benefit heterosexual married couples in any way, regardless of what Tony Perkins and the "family" christian groups say.
The "fight to protect marriage" has nothing to do with benefiting married heterosexual couples, its entirely about having someone to look down on and punish.
When Christians like Wyatt/Regina and their church tell you they want to "privilege man/woman marriage" what they really mean is they don't care diddly squat about helping any married heterosexual couple, they're entirely about punishing gays for seeking the same rights they have.
Religion is a divider, not a uniter.
The Clergy Project Has Now Helped 1,000 Pastors Walk Away from the Pulpit
Since 2011, The Clergy Project has helped priests who no longer believe in God navigate that journey out of faith in anonymity. The website’s online forum allows them to discuss their concerns without the fear of being “outed” before they’re ready.
What began as an academic paper about five preachers who were no longer believers quickly became the subject of a lot of media attention, especially as members “graduated” by coming out of the closet. Just the idea that your own pastor might secretly be an atheist is unbelievably compelling. Some members have gone on to write books or give interviews about their journey on national television. More than anything, though, the site’s very existence has been a testament to the fact that there is a path out of religion — even for those who have built their entire lives on christianity's foundation of infinite injustice.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "billions upon billions of dollars in proposed new spending, without any apparent regard to financing.".
Elizabeth Warren detailed out exactly how it will be financed, by demanding billionaires like Jeff Bezos, rich on slave labour, pay a fraction of the tax rate percentage on his income that someone earning 50K a year does. Its all costed out, this will easily pay for universal health care, subsidized college and a universal basic income of 10k per year.
If the top four richest Americans paid a small fraction of their trillions in income taxes each year they would take the 30% (or whatever the exact number is) of Americans who live in poverty out of poverty.
We can't have a society that increasingly takes the productivity of the working class, which has increased ten fold over the years, takes all the wealth they create while constantly pushing to minimize how much they get paid. The wealthy who take trillions out of the economy to simply stuff under the mattress, or waste on the penis waving contest of space travel are not the job creators the actual job creators are the slaves on Jeff Bezo's computer monitored production line. Amazon's workers create Amazon's vast income, not Jeff Bezos.
So, Democrats aren't proposing helping Americans without having a plan as to how to pay for it, that's Republican's schtick.
Bush Jr. gave massive tax cuts to the wealthy and with no way to replace the goverment funding took Bill Clinton's surplus and turned it into a massive deficit. Then Bush lied to start a war in Iraq because he thought his bible wanted him to and he never made any allowances to pay for the trillions wasted in that war. So, up went the deficit again, until Obama took over and after stimulating the economy out of the recession, started paying down the borrowing until now Trump is in power and deficits have gone from 300 billion under Obama to 1 trillion + for ever year Trump is president.
Its Republicans who go on wild spending sprees when they have the presidency and then Democrats who clean up their mess when they are in power.
Democrats are the fiscal conservatives, not Republicans. Republicans have been gas lighting you since the 1930's about "trickle down economics". That's where goverment maximizes the wealth of the rich, the rich take the money out of the economy rather than spending it as the poor would do and by some voodoo magic this is supposed to benefit the common man. It doesn't. It concentrates wealth at the top with the workers creating the wealth getting the bare minimum in wages business owners can force on them.
Its economics 101, when the national economy is a downturn, the goverment should borrow money and spend it on the public to stimulate the economy and get it going again.
That's what Obama's 1 trillion dollar stimulus package of 2009 was. It was the historically accepted correct response to the Bush recession of 2007/2008. And it worked. The 11% unemployment rate Obama inherited from the Bush Recession started dropping and the economy started growing and at the end of his term Obama had created more new jobs than any president since 1950 and dropped the unemployment rate six percentage points. Then Trump becomes president and riding Obama's coatails the unemployment rate drops 1 percent more and Republicans are trying to gas light America into believing Trump is responsible for today's low employment rate and good economy (up until recently).
Its been the Obama economy up until now folks, Trump is just getting his destruction of the recovery really rolling now. Manufacturing jobs declining, farm bankruptcies at record levels, and record wildfires in the Amazon as farmers there rush to try and fill the void in Chinese soybean imports now that the USA can no longer sell the crop in China.
Trump's trade ill advised trade war isn't just taking down the United States, its beating down the global economy as well.
"How long will it be before at least one of them shows the basic decency and fairness to take back the impeachment demand? We’re waiting."
Oh, poor baby. What's it been, three days now? Waaaaah.
How soon they forget there was a sham "investigation" of Kavanaugh before he was put on SCOTUS.
As usual, Rump vilified Kavanaugh's female accusers in much the same way he vilified his own.
Kavanaugh got the vapors when he testified before Congress, as did Sen. Graham.
Kavanaugh was rammed through to SCOTUS in October 2018, by the GOP-controlled Congress right before the GOP lost their majority in the House of Representatives.
Rump's always bitching about fake news.
He should check his own house.
Corey Lewandowski tells the truth (gasp!) about lying to the news media
"How soon they forget there was a sham "investigation" of Kavanaugh before he was put on SCOTUS."
there were no credible allegations to investigate
Ford's father even met Kavanaugh's father on a golf course here in Monkey County and apologized for his daughter's blatant lies
the lies told by Christine Blasey Ford and the media embrace of them were always about one thing: saving abortion
the Times story last week was an attempt to bury a story emerging about the sick practices of an abortion provider in Chicago
Just a few days before The New York Times and Democratic presidential candidates engaged in an outrageous smear of Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh, there was a gruesome discovery in a suburb south of Chicago.
Out in a garage in Crete, authorities found the remains of 2,246 babies on property owned by the late Indiana abortionist Dr. Ulrich Klopfer. His family had been going through his possessions when they discovered the stuff of nightmares.
The Times’ Kavanaugh smear was deliciously exposed in a series of tweets by journalist Mollie Hemingway, senior writer for The Federalist. The panic of the Times sucked up most of the prominent media/political oxygen over the weekend.
And if Klopfer’s demonic cache of human bodies wasn’t ignored, exactly, it was consigned to the far edge of things, where we keep our monstrosities at bay.
What, if anything, connects these seemingly unrelated events?
Abortion.
Abortion is what Klopfer engaged in, as did many others before him, including the infamous Kermit Gosnell, of Philadelphia, who snipped the spines of infants with scissors and kept his trophies and was sentenced to life in prison.
And abortion is what this smearing of Kavanaugh has always been about.
The left lost control of the Supreme Court through the 2016 election of President Donald Trump, who has nominated two conservative justices and will nominate more when he’s reelected in 2020. Since 2016, the left has waged cultural war, delegitimizing all institutions that may stand in their way.
Theirs is a dangerous game with far-reaching implications, but the left reveals itself, clearly, as determined to destroy Kavanaugh’s credibility, and that of the Supreme Court itself, to protect past gains. Unhindered, in fact aided and cheered on by many in the media, the left proceeds on its scorched-earth strategy.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wore brownface at a 2001 party that was documented in a yearbook photograph obtained by Time magazine.
The photo, which Time reported on Wednesday, was reportedly taken at an “Arabian Nights” gala at West Point Grey Academy, a private school where Trudeau was teaching at the time. The photo appears in the school’s 2000-2001 yearbook.
Zita Astravas, a spokesperson for the Liberal Party of Canada, confirmed to Time that Trudeau is in the picture.
In a briefing Wednesday night with reporters, Trudeau acknowledged he was racist to pose in brownface.
“I’m pissed off at myself,” he said, adding that the incident calls for “important conversations” with Canadian citizens. He declined to say if resignation was on the table. He also disclosed that as a high school student he once dressed in costume and makeup and sang “Banana Boat Song (Day O).”
The brownface photo was taken at the school’s annual dinner.
Time reported that many people at the gala dressed in costume for the dinner, but according to the yearbook’s six photographs of the event, Trudeau appeared to be the only attendee to paint his skin dark.
Jagmeet Singh, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party and the country’s first visible minority federal leader, called the photo “really insulting,”.
“We see one Mr. Trudeau in public. I’ll be honest with you, he seems pretty nice, right? Very friendly. Very warm in public,” Singh, who is Sikh, said at a Toronto town hall on Wednesday evening, according to HuffPost Canada. “But behind closed doors he seems like a very different Mr. Trudeau.”
this is not the first time for Trudeau
in addition to the blackface when he sang Day-O and the brownface at the Arabian nights dinner, he went to India a couple of years ago and dressed in stereotypical clothing, insulting his hosts
he's an embarrassment to Canada
he needs to go!
otherwise, Trump will have to impose sanctions on Canada and talk to the Queen about the behavior of one of her Commonwealth subjects
Michael Mann, global warming alarmist extraordinaire, has been suing people who disagree with his "hockey stick" graphic
he lost:
https://www.steynonline.com/9742/michael-e-mann-loser
Mistakes happen in all fields but in the corridors of elite journalism, certain types of mistakes have become all too common and even predictable. Otherwise fastidious news outlets keep making unthinkable blunders, and their one common denominator is that they always involve attacks against President Trump or conservatives.
The pattern is clear. An attack on the right target is too alluring for journalists to get bogged down in fairness, fact checking, or decency. The latest New York Times debacle is a prime example of this journalistic phenomenon. Under the title “Brett Kavanaugh fit in with the privileged kids. She did not,” the paper printed an essay adapted from a forthcoming book on the vicious Kavanaugh confirmation battle.
Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, two New York Times reporters and authors of the essay and the forthcoming book, claim they discovered a new allegation about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh from his college days. The authors write that Max Stier, a classmate of Kavanaugh, witnessed a genitalia in hand incident more than 30 years ago that is eerily similar to what another classmate and accuser, Deborah Ramirez, claimed only “after six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney” that Kavanaugh did to her.
The New York Times essay is a thinly disguised screed against Kavanaugh that fails on every level. It is a baseless smear, wrapped entirely in partisan misdirection, topped off with a wildly irresponsible omission of fact. The “new information” about the Ramirez allegations is not really new, and the information about another incident is certainly not fit to be published in anything resembling a reputable paper.
In what may be the most egregious reporting blunder of the Kavanaugh saga, the New York Times issued a correction: “An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book’s account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party. The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article.”
So the woman who Stier alleges Kavanaugh assaulted her with his genitals does not remember the incident, according to her friends. Stier, who was on the defense team for President Clinton during his proven sexual misconduct debacles in the 1990s, does apparently remember the incident. How could this detail, that the victim has no memory of it, have been left off the essay? How could any honest observer think that the victim not recalling the incident is anything other than a disqualifier of this obvious smear against Kavanaugh?
But for the broader purpose of the essay, this enormously consequential omission makes perfect sense. What the Times published was always an exercise in narrative creation meant to bolster an ongoing character assassination against a Supreme Court justice that the left believes is a threat to abortion rights. Against that hyperpartisan backdrop, none of the overtly propagandistic editorial decisions in the essay are surprising.
No amount of “new reporting” from partisans on the left can change the basic facts about Kavanaugh. Christine Blasey Ford had so many holes in her Senate testimony that Rachel Mitchell, a career sex crimes prosecutor, found her claims weak, with zero corroboration. Deborah Ramirez apparently remembered a genitals in the face incident from decades ago only after plenty of pressure and assistance from liberals frothing at the mouth to stop the Kavanaugh nomination.
Democrats in Congress, not to be troubled with the facts, are calling for his impeachment. This is, and always was, about bare knuckles partisan politics for them. The ritualized humiliation and torture session of Kavanaugh on national television was unfortunate to Democrats only in that it ultimately was unsuccessful. If they could give it another try, they would, and the liberal activists posing as members of the mainstream media enabled them all along.
Nothing has changed. James Dao, deputy editorial page editor for the New York Times, said in a statement about the Pogrebin and Kelly essay that it was “a well reported and newsworthy account that sheds new light on a matter that provoked significant national debate.” Pravda would be proud. Justice Kavanaugh is a manifestly innocent man. The only debate now is whether the New York Times, among other supposed journalistic enterprises, will make any effort to hold onto their last shreds of professional integrity before the 2020 election.
What will Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s latest investigation reveal? Will Congress hold hearings about it? Will former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe actually get indicted? After all, it’s said that a motivated prosecutor can “indict a ham sandwich” if he really wants to.
We’re so wrapped up in the daily tick-tock, we could be losing sight of a big picture that’s come into focus over the past two years. For the first time in our nation’s history, an inspector general — one appointed by President Obama — has determined that at least two men who sat in the top spot at the FBI committed multiple violations that warrant possible prosecution. That in itself is a scandal with national implications deserving of headlines, congressional hearings and promises to overhaul a broken system.
Of course, the complicating factor in the whole mess is that the government entities responsible for addressing any wrongdoing are the same ones inextricably tied to the alleged wrongdoing.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI employ enough people to populate a mid-sized city — more than 113,000. Both agencies are much more than the top men or women in charge. Even as certain personalities are divested, tentacles run deep; ties cross administrations and party lines. The recent past provides little reason to think this behemoth can always be neutral when it comes to its own. The machine has proven it can move swiftly when it comes to criminal cases against certain politically connected figures for relatively small infractions — but it has shown less commitment when it comes to others.
By way of a few examples, we can start with the scathing 2016 election-year ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). It found the National Security Agency (NSA) guilty of “institutional lack of candor” in its spying on U.S. citizens. The court also said the NSA’s practices raised serious constitutional issues. It sounds pretty serious but, as far as we know, the FBI pursued no investigation into any responsible officials. And after years of surveillance abuses well-documented by the FISC and others, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that there have never been any.
Also during the 2016 election year, administration officials conducted rampant “unmaskings,” revealing protected names of incidentally surveilled U.S. citizens. But after President Obama’s United Nations ambassador, Samantha Power, testified that someone else made unmasking requests using her name, there seemed to be a conspicuous lack of curiosity. As far as we know, the FBI did not move to expose who was responsible for any possible violations of national security and privacy protections.
When the FBI lost thousands of text messages, sought by the inspector general, between FBI official Peter Strzok and bureau attorney Lisa Page, it was chalked up to a technical snafu and the case was closed. There was no announcement at the FBI about steps being taken to ensure such a major blunder won’t happen in the future; there was only what amounted to a symbolic shrug. The chaser to that debacle was Strzok and Page’s text messages from their time working for special counsel Robert Mueller also ended up somehow deleted.
There’s been no swift, public action that we know of on eight criminal referrals that two House Intelligence Committee Republicans, Reps. Devin Nunes of California and John Ratcliffe of Texas, sent to the Department of Justice more than five months ago. There’s no word of any action more than eight months after Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a criminal referral to the DOJ against Christopher Steele, author of the anti-Trump political opposition research “dossier.”
The Department of Justice took a pass on filing charges against ex-FBI Director James Comey for alleged violations that the inspector general documented with precision in more than 70 pages of a report last month.
Finally, there have been no FBI apologies offered to former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page after the FBI wiretapped him for more than a year. No post-mortem launched into how the FBI could have been so wildly wrong when swearing to the court, over and over, that Page was a Russian spy.
So, as Americans wait to see if a shoe is about to drop in McCabe’s case, the adage about indicting a sandwich is true. But the calculus may be different when those in charge of indicting the sandwich are the same ones making it.
New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly claim that they have seven sources who "more fully [corroborate]" Deborah Ramirez's allegation that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party.
Yet of those seven, only one even claims to have heard that Kavanaugh was the person in the story at the time, as they admit in their book, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation. And even he is only a third-hand source of information, not having actually been there himself, and having heard it from a source whose identity he does not disclose.
Kenneth Appold, who had previously spoken to the New Yorker, claimed to have heard at the time that Kavanaugh was the person who had exposed himself to Ramirez.
"Within a couple of days of the party, Ken Appold stood in a Lawrance Hall entryway and was told by two Stiles freshmen (whose identity he can't recall) what Kavanaugh had done to Ramirez," write Pogrebin and Kelly in their book. "'It was fresh in their recollection,' Appold said. 'One person saw it; the second person was hearing the story from him for the second time.'"
The only other of the seven who claim to have heard about the story in its immediate aftermath was fellow Yalie Richard Oh, who the book reports "overheard a female student emotionally describing making contact with a fake penis, saying 'It's not real,' and then realizing it was real." There is no indication, however, that Oh identified Kavanaugh by name as the culprit.
A few years after the alleged incident, Ramirez's mother claims her daughter told her, "Something happened at Yale." She did not go into any further detail or provide a name.
Another person supposedly proving that the story is "more fully corroborated" is Michael Wetstone, who claims to have heard "about the incident" from Appold, his graduate school classmate, "within a few years of when it allegedly happened." The book does not make clear if Appold identified Kavanaugh by name.
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