Stopping the Runaway Train
The November election is the last opportunity for reasonable Americans to stop the runaway train of fascism. Trump's support hangs around forty percent no matter what, and that is a beatable mark. Of course the electoral college distributes the impact of votes, overweighting unpopulated areas, but that is all just a matter of strategy. The party leaders and the candidate, whoever it might be, need to have a plan to win key electoral-college states, and they know what those are.
We are currently in the chaos of primary season, and Democrats have a gang of wannabes striving to win the nomination. They range along many dimensions, including some interestingly unique choices, each has a set of priorities and favorite policies, each brings a personal history of decision-making and acting and old videos of them saying things they wish they hadn't said, and they vary in charisma, speaking styles, the ability to listen. You know this, everybody understands this. You might have a favorite right now but many people do not. There is some nastiness going on as candidates maneuver to reach the top of the pyramid, but basically all are on the same page.
There is a bumper sticker: "Any adult in 2020."
I don't know how they will pay for universal health coverage, or whether we should support the Kurds or the Palestinians or anything else. I just want somebody who will get the facts, listen to the experts, consider what America stands for in the world and what the country needs, and make a good rational decision. Maybe they will declare or end a war, or sanctions, and maybe they will penalize Wall Street, or subsidize them. I don't care, as long as they are taking all the facts into account and making decisions based on the country's best interests. Any adult.
Sometimes politicians make promises and fail to deliver. Sometimes they say something palatable even when they plan to do something that might be controversial. Sometimes they nod and seem to agree with people when they don't really. I don't like any of that, but it's okay, it's normal, the world is dynamic and crazy and sometimes you gotta float and adapt to unanticipated changes. But normal, non-fascist politicians do not lie when everyone can see the truth, they do not steal from the populace like we are a bunch of suckers, normal politicians are held to an ethical standard and are censured or removed when they violate it. The Republicans are trying to establish a new normality, a system where oligarchical leaders have unquestionable power, and we have to stop that. This sham impeachment trial proves that the problem exists across the party, it is not just Trump. The whole bunch of them denied reality in order to support him, poked their own eyes out so they wouldn't see the truth. Forty percent of Americans prefer a dictatorship over democracy.
I do not want a travel ban based on religion. I do not want federal diplomacy, policies, and funds used to boost the president's political support and profits. I don't want the president's unqualified family members put into important roles. I don't want a cabinet full of donors and scam artists who are ignorant about their Department's responsibilities and are getting rich off the job while they plunder our nation's natural resources and human capital. I don't want tens of thousands of outright lies and moronic tweets, I don't want the president calling people names and interfering in court cases and trying to promote his own businesses from the Oval Office. I don't love dictators and I don't think my kind of people are superior to black people or gay and transgender people, or women, or Chinese people, or Mexicans, I want to see fair and equal treatment for everyone. I want to see sensible international policies that increase our national security and standing in the world order, that benefit our businesses and spread freedom and democracy to places that have never had it. I'd like to see the temperature drop a degree or two, clean water in American cities, gun violence controlled somehow.
You get that already. I am pretty much the same as everybody in these ways.
All of the Democratic candidates meet that standard. We can fight among ourselves now, we have our favorite and our person will probably not win the nomination. You might think the DNC is crooked and maybe it is, but all of the people running right now would be great in the presidency. You might want to focus on winning Senate seats, and that's a good idea too, it does not conflict with presidential goals. Reasonable people have to stop this train at all levels of government, top to bottom.
I am not concerned right now about "unification." We will have to stand together when the time comes, but now we have a sifting process where we need to pick a candidate. This is the time to argue among ourselves, to select a candidate who we think will best serve the country. If they are called a "socialist" or an unprincipled centrist, well, if that's our candidate then that's the choice; you and I might have a preference but either kind of candidate can lead the country back to freedom, democracy, stability.
We are currently in the chaos of primary season, and Democrats have a gang of wannabes striving to win the nomination. They range along many dimensions, including some interestingly unique choices, each has a set of priorities and favorite policies, each brings a personal history of decision-making and acting and old videos of them saying things they wish they hadn't said, and they vary in charisma, speaking styles, the ability to listen. You know this, everybody understands this. You might have a favorite right now but many people do not. There is some nastiness going on as candidates maneuver to reach the top of the pyramid, but basically all are on the same page.
There is a bumper sticker: "Any adult in 2020."
I don't know how they will pay for universal health coverage, or whether we should support the Kurds or the Palestinians or anything else. I just want somebody who will get the facts, listen to the experts, consider what America stands for in the world and what the country needs, and make a good rational decision. Maybe they will declare or end a war, or sanctions, and maybe they will penalize Wall Street, or subsidize them. I don't care, as long as they are taking all the facts into account and making decisions based on the country's best interests. Any adult.
Sometimes politicians make promises and fail to deliver. Sometimes they say something palatable even when they plan to do something that might be controversial. Sometimes they nod and seem to agree with people when they don't really. I don't like any of that, but it's okay, it's normal, the world is dynamic and crazy and sometimes you gotta float and adapt to unanticipated changes. But normal, non-fascist politicians do not lie when everyone can see the truth, they do not steal from the populace like we are a bunch of suckers, normal politicians are held to an ethical standard and are censured or removed when they violate it. The Republicans are trying to establish a new normality, a system where oligarchical leaders have unquestionable power, and we have to stop that. This sham impeachment trial proves that the problem exists across the party, it is not just Trump. The whole bunch of them denied reality in order to support him, poked their own eyes out so they wouldn't see the truth. Forty percent of Americans prefer a dictatorship over democracy.
I do not want a travel ban based on religion. I do not want federal diplomacy, policies, and funds used to boost the president's political support and profits. I don't want the president's unqualified family members put into important roles. I don't want a cabinet full of donors and scam artists who are ignorant about their Department's responsibilities and are getting rich off the job while they plunder our nation's natural resources and human capital. I don't want tens of thousands of outright lies and moronic tweets, I don't want the president calling people names and interfering in court cases and trying to promote his own businesses from the Oval Office. I don't love dictators and I don't think my kind of people are superior to black people or gay and transgender people, or women, or Chinese people, or Mexicans, I want to see fair and equal treatment for everyone. I want to see sensible international policies that increase our national security and standing in the world order, that benefit our businesses and spread freedom and democracy to places that have never had it. I'd like to see the temperature drop a degree or two, clean water in American cities, gun violence controlled somehow.
You get that already. I am pretty much the same as everybody in these ways.
All of the Democratic candidates meet that standard. We can fight among ourselves now, we have our favorite and our person will probably not win the nomination. You might think the DNC is crooked and maybe it is, but all of the people running right now would be great in the presidency. You might want to focus on winning Senate seats, and that's a good idea too, it does not conflict with presidential goals. Reasonable people have to stop this train at all levels of government, top to bottom.
I am not concerned right now about "unification." We will have to stand together when the time comes, but now we have a sifting process where we need to pick a candidate. This is the time to argue among ourselves, to select a candidate who we think will best serve the country. If they are called a "socialist" or an unprincipled centrist, well, if that's our candidate then that's the choice; you and I might have a preference but either kind of candidate can lead the country back to freedom, democracy, stability.
posted by JimK at 12:24 PM
216 Comments:
Thanks for the chuckle, Jim.
TTF is nothing if not very amusing!
now that it's clear (like it hasn't always been clear) that Dems have lost on their impeachment farce, I wonder if that political genius, Nancy Pelosi, will do her brilliant clap at the State of Union address on Tuesday night....
Emails Show How Trump’s Sharpie Lie Roiled NOAA
<a href="The Washington Post reports:</a>
A trove of documents released on Friday evening provide the clearest glimpse yet into how President Trump’s inaccurate statements, altered forecast map and tweets regarding Hurricane Dorian’s forecast path rattled top officials along with rank and file scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in September.
Wyatt and Regina Hardiman think its funny that Republicans have put Trump above the law.
That's because they look forward to a dictatorship that attacks harmless lgbt people.
Here's the link I left out by mistake in my above post.
Late into Wednesday’s session of the Senate impeachment trial, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) asked a question of President Trump’s defense team: did they think foreign involvement in U.S. elections was illegal?
The Trump team’s reply: nope.
To many senators listening, these arguments flung open the doors for Trump, or any future president or candidate for office, to engage in that kind of behavior again, knowing that it had been defended by White House lawyers on the Senate floor. Earlier that day, Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz had already gone even further, arguing that Trump could justify his actions with the belief/claim that his re-election would be in the country’s interest. Taken to its necessary conclusion, that means Trump could round up those who would vote against him in 2020 by merely asserting its in the countries best interests. Throughout the sham trial the President's defence team argued that Trump has absolute power to do whatever he wants.
“This trial,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), “may be seen as a vindication of those very dangerous ideas that foreign interference can be accepted… that the president can do anything as long as his motives are to re-elect himself, and he thinks it’s in the public interest.”
The Founding Fathers would be aghast at the prospect of one man's judgement and morality having complete control of the government.
The created three co-equal branches of government. The Presidency, the Judiciary, and Congress.
Republican Congress members are re-writing the constitution to cede absolute control to a man we all know puts his self-interest ahead of everything and is a prolific liar.
The corrupt confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court led Trump to brag he could do whatever he wants "because I've got the Supreme Court".
Trump obviously believes he can do anything he wants as president and Republican Senators have told him they agree.
"a man we all know puts his self-interest ahead of everything"
let's see, Bill Clinton was such a selfless soul
he and his horrific wife left the White House penniless because of the massive legal bills resulting from his taking advantage of an entry-level intern IN THE OVAL OFFICE
during his reign, and yes he thought he was above everyone else, he reduced welfare and signed a crime bill sentencing swaths of young blacks to a life in prison
but he took care of his banker buddies
and he and Hillary are gazillionaires from selling influence
the rich got richer and the poor poorer
and, now, we have Donald Trump
supposedly so above-and-beyond, self-centered
and yet,
he's hated by the bankers and lawyers
and minorities have the the lowest employment ever, with rising wages and growing opportunity
Dems have tried to get him thrown before he can run for re-election
they know they're toast
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Jim's latest post is so chockful of howlers, it's hard to know where to start
let's start at the very beginning
it's an excellent place to start
we'll do a paragraph a day:
"The November election is the last opportunity for reasonable Americans to stop the runaway train of fascism"
that train is an illusion
no one really supports the Dem vision of having the government control every aspect of our lives
"Trump's support hangs around forty percent no matter what, and that is a beatable mark."
not by the oodles of poodles the media is laughingly referring to as Democratic candidates for President
what you guys never seem to understand is that elections aren't endorsements, they are choices
what choice have the Dems presented as an alternative to the best economy in a generation?
a bumbling and senile former VP who has already lost twice and whose family has become wealthy selling access to for shady characters and is very famous for saying stupid things
an elderly socialist
the gay mayor of a small town in Indiana that looks like Alfred E Neuman
some lady who pretended to be an American Indian throughout her career to get preferences and wants to confiscate all wealth in the country
why would America choose to throw out a capitalism that is working for everyone with a socialist economic model that has never succeeded anywhere?
"Of course the electoral college distributes the impact of votes, overweighting unpopulated areas,"
none of America is unpopulated
the electoral college is a brilliant system designed by the founding fathers to protect the rights of areas with less crowding from abuse
without it, those states would have never joined the union
"but that is all just a matter of strategy. The party leaders and the candidate, whoever it might be, need to have a plan to win key electoral-college states, and they know what those are."
here's some ideas:
1. make America's working class a higher priority than illegal immigrants
2. protect the life of the unborn
until you can bring yourself to do that, you have no hope
go ahead, nominate Biden or Bernie
make my day!
PEWAUKEE, Wis. — Katrina Goetz is fully invested in her community. A wife, mother of three and volunteer, she is also an executive overseeing 65 employees at TLX Technologies in suburban Milwaukee. And yet, in 2016, she did something she’d never done before in her adult life: She refused to vote for president.
Goetz did go to the polls, choosing a candidate for every office on her ballot except the highest one in the land. Though she says she has always voted for Republican candidates since she was 18, she found Donald J. Trump’s rhetoric too off-putting to pull the lever for him.
“I went to the election. I chose not to vote for president. I signed the everybody sucks campaign,” she deadpans.
But in the years that followed, Goetz, 40, has gradually moved from “never Trump” to “probably Trump” for two reasons: 1) She says she likes the results of the president’s economic policies, which have resulted in Wisconsin’s low unemployment rate at 3.3 percent; and 2) She says the current field of Democratic presidential candidates hasn’t persuaded her to choose any of them.
“The platform that they all seem to be running on is, ‘Well, I’m not Trump.’ And it’s like, that’s not winning me,” she said.
“Given all of the known factors right now,” she added, “I would lean towards voting for Trump.”
While a single person does not a trend make, Goetz shows that the Democrats have failed to connect with one voter who falls into one of their target audiences: an educated, suburban woman who is repulsed by Trump’s demeanor.
Trump beat Hillary Clinton by just 22,000 votes in Wisconsin — giving him the second smallest margin of any state that voted for him. (Michigan’s margin was the tiniest with just 10,704 votes.) Neither party can afford to lose any voter in the Great Lakes states, and especially not here in Wisconsin or in Michigan or even Pennsylvania.
“We stand right at the pivot point as the state that could push one candidate or the other across the Electoral College finish line,” said Charles Franklin, political science professor and renowned Marquette University Law School pollster. A win in Wisconsin translates to 10 Electoral College votes, while Michigan has 16 and Pennsylvania 20.
And, according to the latest poll by Marquette University, Wisconsin voters are warming to Trump. In January 2019, 44 percent gave the president a positive job-approval rating; by January 2020, that number had grown to 48 percent.
“His job approval has inched up over the course of the last 12 months, and his disapproval rating has worked its way down,” said Franklin.
There’s a reason the Democrats chose Milwaukee as the venue for their nominating convention in July, planting a symbolic flag in the state they hope to wrest back from Trump.
Trump, meanwhile, has made the Badger State a favorite rally stop. As the latest Democratic debate was unfolding in Iowa on Jan. 14, Trump fired up Milwaukee crowds with talk of his strike on Iran’s Qassem Soleimani — and the inefficiency of new dishwashers and light bulbs.
Kathleen Grissom — a self-described Trump “super-supporter” who live-streamed the rally at home — said his riffs are partly humorous, partly on point about the little things that matter to voters.
As a landlord managing 27 units, Grissom said Trump’s comments on light bulbs struck home for her.
“I totally agreed with him. I have to purchase so many bulbs for my units — what, at $6 a pop? Give me a break. They say good for 13-plus years [but it] is so untrue,” said the 58-year-old Kenosha resident.
One day after the rally, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted out data gathered from people who registered for the Milwaukee event: Of the 20,395 registered, 15,738 said they were voters from Wisconsin, 57.9 percent said they were not Republican and 4,313 said they didn’t vote in 2016.
Some of those 4,313 nonvoters will be people just like Goetz, who didn’t like either candidate four years ago, but have since edged toward Trump. And these voters could make the difference not just for Wisconsin, but the entire nation
Benedict Arnold, John Wilkes Booth, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Chuck Schumer: some of the worst villains in American history.
They are enemies of our Constitution, enemies of democracy, enemies of the people.
For the first time in history, they filed articles of impeachment against a President without citing criminal charges, without the support of a single Congressman from the opposite party, to try to prevent the wildly successful President from running for re-election.
They want to take away the choice of the people for their own personal political benefit.
This attempt to undermine and abuse our Constitution will live in infamy.
Why were the leaders of this criminal insurgency all from California or NY? Any other voters would throw them out!
On Friday, as all rational people predicted, the Senate voted against calling yet more witnesses in the make-believe, 100 percent certified partisan impeachment fiasco run by the Democrats and their media cheerleaders.
That vote brought this lucrative entertainment to an end, de facto if not de jure. The official, signed-sealed-and-delivered end will come Wednesday, we’re told, when the Senate will vote on whether to acquit the president of the two charges on which he was impeached by the House. Spoiler alert: They will.
A quick refresher. Those two charges were “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress.”
Let’s take them in order. The alleged abuse of power charge stemmed from President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Zelinsky. Trump was keen to have Zelinsky look into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He was also keen to have him look into allegations that Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, who is campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, was knee-deep in corrupt activities.
“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son,” President Trump said, “that Joe Biden stopped the prosecution of Burisma, the corrupt company on whose Board Hunter sat and from which he collected more than $50,000 a month and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.”
Was that an abuse of power? Opinions vary. I do not think so. Nor do I think the president erred when he went on to tell Zelinsky that Joe Biden “bragged” he had stopped the prosecution of Burisma. He did so, and was gracious enough to be filmed doing it.
As Peter Schweizer has shown in meticulous detail in his new book, the Bidens’ corruption, like Falstaff’s dishonesty, is “gross as mountain, open, palpable.” This was not an abuse of power. Far from it. Indeed, I believe that Ted Cruz was right: President Trump, confronted with credible allegations of Hunter Biden’s corruption, had a “responsibility” to investigate Biden’s activities.
So much for “abuse of power.” What about “obstruction of Congress”? Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of that. I hadn’t either. In essence, the House alleged that President Trump was guilty of this newfangled tort because, rather than instantly capitulating to their demands, he asked the court to review the case. In other words, he asked for the same due process that protects you and me to protect him.
Not much to build an impeachment case on is it? No treason. No bribery (though the House tried furiously to fabricate such a case). No high crimes or even misdemeanors.
But according to the Constitution (Article II, Section IV) those are the only impeachable offenses: “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Those are the reasons, and the only reasons, for which a president may be impeached.
I know, I know: Alexander Hamilton, writing about impeachment in Federalist 65, said that “The subjects of impeachment’s jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” That concern is in the background for the Framers. But the fact is that the Constitution does not mention such scruples. Moreover, I do not believe that, in the case of President Trump’s phone call, there was any “misconduct” or “abuse or violation of some public trust.”
So, as many observers have been predicting since the impeachment clown show began, the president will be officially acquitted in a few days. According to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate trial was “the greatest cover-up since Watergate” and hence the acquittal will be “meaningless.” It pains me to disagree, but I feel constrained to point out to Schumer that President Trump’s acquittal will have at least this irrefragable meaning: Donald J. Trump will still be president of the United States.
It is obvious to anyone who is paying attention that “cover-up” is the new phrase of the month and I predict that the Democrats will run with it all the way to November 3. I predict, further, that the charge will have zero effect on the election.
Still, Schumer’s contention that the president’s acquittal (which he now implicitly acknowledges is a foregone conclusion) will be “meaningless,” coupled with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s insistence that the “stain” of impeachment will “forever” be attached to the name of Donald Trump, prompts me to suggest a few courses of action the president might take in his second term (some parts of which might be started even now).
First, to discourage such frivolous, wholly partisan efforts to overturn the results of a free, open, and democratic election, people who have committed felonies by leaking classified material or lying under oath should be prosecuted. A dozen or so indictments would have a clarifying and salutary effect.
I’d start with a few of the women who perjured themselves when lying about Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. I’d follow up with some people involved in the “Russian collusion” hoax. And I’d finish by looking into Representative Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman’s claim that they did not know the “whistleblower” (Eric Ciaramella) and also into who leaked information from John Bolton’s memoir and revenge drama.
Second, as for removing the “stain” of impeachment, I propose that when the House flips to the Republicans again next year, a bill be introduced rescinding President Trump’s impeachment and publicly exonerating him of any and all wrongdoing.
Third, since the media as well as the Democrats (pardon the pleonasm) clearly enjoy the spectacle of impeachment, I suggest that Barack Obama retroactively be impeached, not for anything as mealy-mouthed as “obstruction of Congress” but for aiding and abetting America’s enemies by shoveling billions of dollars to the Iranian mullahs.
Other charges doubtless will be forthcoming when U.S. Attorney John Durham begins handing down indictments in the “Russian collusion” ruse and we have hard evidence that the attempted soft coup against Donald Trump was an explicit creature of Obama’s Administration. I’ve bought stock in popcorn companies in anticipation of this entertainment.
According to data released this week by the United States Courts, family farmers filed 595 Chapter 12 bankruptcies in 2019, up from 498 filings a year earlier. The data also shows that such filings - known as “family farmer” bankruptcies - have steadily increased every year for the past five years.
Farmers across the nation also have retired or sold their farms because of the financial strains, changing the face of Midwestern towns and concentrating the business in fewer hands.
“I just had a farmer contact me last week, telling me he can’t get financing for his inputs this year and he doesn’t know what to do,” said Charles E. Covey, a bankruptcy attorney based in Peoria, Illinois.
Chapter 12 is a part of the federal bankruptcy code that is designed for family farmers and fishermen to restructure their debts. It was created during the 1980s farm crisis as a simple court procedure to let family farmers keep operating while working out a plan to repay lenders.
The increase in cases had been somewhat expected, bankruptcy experts and agricultural economists said, as farmers face trade battles, ever-mounting farm debt, prolonged low commodity prices, volatile weather patterns and a fatal pig disease that has decimated China’s herd.
Even billions of dollars spent over the past two years in government agricultural assistance has not stemmed the bleeding.
Nearly one-third of projected U.S. net farm income in 2019 came from government aid and taxpayer-subsidized commodity insurance payments, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The court data indicates those supports did help prevent a more serious economic fallout, said John Newton, chief economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Some of the biggest bankruptcy rate increases were seen in regions, such as apple growers in the Pacific Northwest, that did not receive much or any of the latest round of trade aid from the Trump administration.
The bankruptcy data “signals that things have not turned around,” said John Newton, chief economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation. “We still have supply and demand uncertainty. If we see prolonged low prices, I wouldn’t expect this trend to slow down.”
https://www.livescience.com/frogbots-living-robots.html
What happens when you take cells from frog embryos and grow them into new organisms that were "evolved" by algorithms? You get something that researchers are calling the world's first "living machine."
Though the original stem cells came from frogs — the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis — these so-called xenobots don't resemble any known amphibians. The tiny blobs measure only 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) wide and are made of living tissue that biologists assembled into bodies designed by computer models, according to a new study.
These mobile organisms can move independently and collectively, can self-heal wounds and survive for weeks at a time, and could potentially be used to transport medicines inside a patient's body, scientists recently reported.
"They're neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal," study co-author Joshua Bongard, a computer scientist and robotics expert at the University of Vermont, said in a statement. "It's a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism."
Algorithms shaped the evolution of the xenobots. They grew from skin and heart stem cells into tissue clumps of several hundred cells that moved in pulses generated by heart muscle tissue, said lead study author Sam Kriegman, a doctoral candidate studying evolutionary robotics in the University of Vermont's Department of Computer Science, in Burlington.
"There's no external control from a remote control or bioelectricity. This is an autonomous agent — it's almost like a wind-up toy," Kriegman told Live Science.
Biologists fed a computer constraints for the autonomous xenobots, such as the maximum muscle power of their tissues, and how they might move through a watery environment. Then, the algorithm produced generations of the tiny organisms. The best-performing bots would "reproduce" inside the algorithm. And just as evolution works in the natural world, the least successful forms would be deleted by the computer program.
"Eventually, it was able to give us designs that actually were transferable to real cells. That was a breakthrough," Kriegman said.
The study authors then brought these designs to life, piecing stem cells together to form self-powered 3D shapes designed by the evolution algorithm. Skin cells held the xenobots together, and the beating of heart tissue in specific parts of their "bodies" propelled the 'bots through water in a petri dish for days, and even weeks at a stretch, without needing additional nutrients, according to the study. The 'bots were even able to repair significant damage, said Kriegman.
"We cut the living robot almost in half, and its cells automatically zippered its body back up," he said.
Great article about Prince's 2007 halftime show. Pure Magic: The Oral History of Prince’s Super Bowl XLI Halftime Show
Bloomberg Plan: $5 Trillion In New Taxes On Wealthy
Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York unveiled a plan on Saturday that would raise an estimated $5 trillion in new tax revenue from high earners and corporations, a proposal that would almost certainly raise his personal tax bill but is less aggressive than those from his most liberal rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The proposal includes a repeal of President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for high earners, along with a new 5 percent “surcharge” on incomes above $5 million per year.
It would raise capital gains taxes for Americans earning more than $1 million a year and maintain a limit on federal deductions of state and local tax payments set under the 2017 law, which some Democrats have pushed to eliminate.
Trump's tax cuts have only benefited the wealthy, like everything he's done.
The average white family's net worth is ten times what the average black family's net worth.
The gap between the rich and poor has greatly escalated since Trump took office. The economy is only working for the rich and most Americans are struggling to get by, living pay check to pay check.
Its time the obscenely rich started paying their fair share instead of forcing the majority of Americans into virtual serfdom with low paying jobs.
OJ Court Filing Reveals It Has Trump/Ukraine Emails
The Department of Justice revealed in a court filing late Friday that it has two dozen emails related to the President Donald Trump’s involvement in the withholding of millions in security assistance to Ukraine — a disclosure that came just hours after the Senate voted against subpoenaing additional documents and witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial, paving the way for his acquittal.
The filing, released near midnight Friday, marks the first official acknowledgment from the Trump administration that emails about the President’s thinking related to the aid exist, and that he was directly involved in asking about and deciding on the aid as early as June. The administration is still blocking those emails from the public and has successfully kept them from Congress.
hmmmm....farm bankruptcies, frankenstein frogs, Prince's halftime show
it seems like Dems are changing the subject because there's something they'd rather not discuss
wonder what...
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
John Roberts saw his shadow today
that means six more weeks until Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires and the Dems have to start making up lies about Amy Coney Barrett
"it seems like Dems are changing the subject because there's something they'd rather not discuss"
You're not here for a discussion, just to pollute the blog with your Cult of Trump propaganda.
The most import thing I have to say (and many more) will come this November.
Looking forward to it.
what you will say in November is: I guess we'll have to impeach him again
the Dems' impeachment farce is like a pebble thrown at a battleship
fifty years from now, no one will remember much about it
they will remember Trump's growing list of achievements:
rebuild the US military
start the Space Force
appointed two (so far) Supreme Court judges who believe in the Constitution
remade the rest of the judiciary similarly
a massive tax cut
3.5% unemployment
exit from Iran deal and Paris accord
clarified that China is our chief strategic competitor, not Russia
renewed the alliance with Israel and opened an embassy in Jerusalem
destroyed the Islamic State caliphate
killed the two most wanted terrorists in the world
significant immigration reform
justice reform
built wall
eliminated Obamacare mandate
USMCA
all this despite massive obstruction from the Mueller investigation and the impeachment farce
and what did Dems say they accomplished?
they showed up and voted for the USMCA
yeah, who's gonna win that November thing?
"The most import thing I have to say (and many more) will come this November."
yeah, you will say "waaaaaaaah!!!!!!!"
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday that it is "remarkable" that some in the GOP have been saying the House "proved its case," but still do not think the president should be removed from office.
"What's remarkable is you now have Republican senators coming out and saying, yes, the House proved its case," Schiff, the lead House impeachment manager, told CBS's "Face the Nation." "The House proved the corrupt scheme that they charged in the articles of impeachment. The president did withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from an ally to try to coerce that ally into helping him cheat in the next election."
"That's pretty remarkable when you now have senators on both sides of the aisle admitting the House made its case and the only question is, should the president be removed for office because he's been found guilty of these offenses?" he continued.
It's amazing that Schiff claims to have "proved" the case. Everyone has always pretty much agreed on the facts. The same applies to the whining about witnesses. Trump's defense allowed Schiff to show testimony on video from 17 witnesses, cherry-picking the words, without cross-examining.
So, Mr. Eyes-wide-shut was "amazed" that the only question was whether the actions were impeachable.
He's a liar.
"The president did withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from an ally to try to coerce that ally into helping him cheat in the next election."
The Obama administration also withheld aid for a time, conditioning it on Ukraine cracking down on corruption. Biden bragged about it publicly. Yeah, Joe Cool.
Obama, as always, made things easy for the Russians by not providing Ukraine with military hardware.
Trump, alternatively, actually provided military assistance.
So, asking Ukraine, in a perfect conversation, to look into Hunter Biden was not "cheating." His father is running for President and the America people need to know what Joe will do if his family tries to sell access to the Oval Office, like they did the VP's office.
Joe Biden tries to sell himself as "electable."
He's run and lost twice before. Both his son and brother received payments from foreign sources that look suspiciously like influence-peddling. Joe laughed along.
That's what's "remarkable". Adam!
Take your mind back there. Miami. June 2019. Two nights, 20 candidates. A portrait of the Democratic Party in miniature assembled onstage, mics on, ready to debate.
They are U.S. senators and House members, governors and a mayor, a refreshingly human economic futurist and a self-help guru best known as Oprah’s spiritual adviser. They are young and old, black and white and Asian and brown, wealthy and in debt, gay and straight, war veterans, hailing from all parts of the country. They are, as Democratic chairman Tom Perez proudly points out, “the most diverse field in our nation’s history.”
Feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?
There was a sense of possibility and optimism on that stage. Fast forward six months. The leading Democratic candidates are all white. Three are men, and three are older than 70. Meanwhile two old white billionaires are buying their way into contention by spending hundreds of millions of their personal fortunes. At this point four years ago, the top candidates for the Republican nomination were more diverse than the Democratic frontrunners today. Many politicians hailed as the Future of The Party — Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Julián Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Beto O’Rourke — are gone, exiting the race before a single vote was cast.
“They wanted a big, fluid, multicultural field — they didn’t get it,” says Jeff Roe, a Republican political consultant who ran Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign. “They wanted a new generation of leadership — they didn’t get it. They didn’t get any of the things they wanted.”
What happened? Why did the Democratic primary get so white? Why have known brands and familiar faces led the pack? Why are so many Democratic voters undecided after a year of campaigning? How did the Democratic National Committee screw this up?
I know, I know.
TTFers feel desperate and sad this week.
But step back and look it objectively.
I think you'll realize how funny it all is.
Try and gat a little enjoyment out of the demise of the gay agenda.
Democrats are frantic. Not only has their zealous drive to impeach Donald Trump flopped with voters – even in their own party – but the president will soon deliver a barn-burner of a State of the Union speech and there’s nothing they can do to stop him.
To top it off, a cranky Socialist with zero chance of beating Donald Trump is currently leading in their primary contest.
Addressing the nation in his State of the Union speech, President Trump will rightly take credit for signing new trade deals, building up our military, pushing our allies to carry more of our mutual defense burden, stemming illegal immigration, supporting our ally Israel, boosting incomes and jobs, confronting China’s malignant cheating and spying, taking out villainous terrorists, ditching cumbersome regulations, soaring homeownership, raising our energy capabilities, and so many other initiatives that somehow overcame the furious resistance of Democrats.
In short, making America safer and more prosperous.
President Trump can boast of so many successes and initiatives … that they have gone unheralded by a liberal press breathlessly covering the Adam Schiff show.
Rep. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii is so alarmed that the president will win over the country on Feb. 4 that she is already blasting his still-unwritten remarks, warning a reporter at The Hill that “I expect he'll use the State of the Union to lie about everything he's doing."
Sorry, Mazie; Trump doesn’t need to lie.
His excellent record speaks for itself.
A recent WSJ/NBC poll showed that only 41 percent of Democratic primary voters want their party to focus on impeaching Trump; a solid 51 percent prefer that they try to beat him at the ballot box in November. That’s a big slide in enthusiasm for impeachment since December; given the weakness of the case Intel Chair Schiff presented and how badly he mangled the secretive House investigation, the drooping support is not surprising.
It is also not surprising that the endless arguments about Trump’s delaying aid to Ukraine led nowhere. The Senate, ultimately, declined to call witnesses and a vote to acquit is all but certain. Indeed, the outcome of this ugly proceeding was never in doubt.
Americans might wonder, then, what it was all about.
They might rightly question why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues dragged the country through such a destabilizing ordeal, which will likely hurt our democracy by severely lowering the bar for impeaching future presidents.
If the effort was simply political – meant to tarnish President Trump – it failed. Most polling shows his approval ratings at or approaching all-time highs.
Meanwhile, his fund-raising has been extraordinary, hauling in unprecedented campaign dollars and thousands of new supporters.
But the most damaging result of the impeachment mess for Democrats is how it has scrambled their primary race. Surely Pelosi and her colleagues anticipated that highlighting the president’s dealings in Ukraine would damage Joe Biden, the front-runner candidate thought most able to beat Trump. They must have known that every story chasing Trump’s alleged abuse of power would link Joe and Hunter Biden to unsavory activities in a corrupt country.
That may account for the dip in Biden’s lead over his closest rival, Bernie Sanders, in recent weeks. The day the House voted to impeach the president, Biden led by eight points and before the entire undertaking began, back in September, he was on top of then second-place Elizabeth Warren by 10 points.
There are other reasons Biden has faltered, but there is no question that daily reminders of Hunter Biden’s money haul in Ukraine have ruptured Joe’s reputation as a straight shooter.
How stupid.
Biden’s slip has opened the door for Sanders, the candidate establishment Democrats most fear. They know that the septuagenarian Socialist is unlikely to win back those critical swing states full of union voters that defected to President Trump in 2016.
A country in which only 24 percent of the populace views themselves as “liberal” is not ready for President Sanders.
Especially when the nation is flourishing.
That, of course, is the message that Trump will deliver in his State of the Union address, and the main challenge for Democrats. Not only is unemployment at a 50-year low but wages are finally rising, and they are moving up fastest for people at the bottom of the income spectrum. Ditto for homeownership, rising most rapidly for those with income below the median level. It’s hard to paint Trump’s policies as benefiting only the wealthy when the entire country is thriving.
Trump will also point out that the strong jobs market has helped minorities, with African American and Hispanic unemployment also at record lows. That’s one reason African American support for Trump has doubled over the past year. A new Rasmussen survey finds 42 percent of black voters approve of the president, up from 21 percent a year ago. The poll echoes recent findings by Marist and Emerson, which also report the president’s popularity among blacks increasing.
To be clear: pollsters do not expect President Trump to win 30 percent of the black vote. He doesn’t need to. Just as he unexpectedly won in 2016 by wooing blue-collar workers long taken for granted by Democrats, Trump’s prospects this November are measurably improved by any significant increase in minority approval. He got an estimated 8 percent of the black vote in 2016; an increase to 15 percent would mean an easy victory this time around.
President Trump will make his case in the State of the Union address.
Democrats will peevishly sit in their seats when he talks of protecting our borders, lowering drug prices, defeating ISIS, increasing black wages, killing anti-American terrorists, Bloomberg’s “Consumer Comfort” index at a near-record high, and so many other signs of success.
Most Americans will stand and cheer
"TTFers feel desperate and sad this week."
Sad yes, desperate no.
Sad because Republicans have set a dangerous precedent that undermines our Constitution and sets the stage for the US to be run by a dangerous autocrat with no means to stop him.
While this could be referring to Trump, the Republican sycophants twisting themselves into pretzels trying to defend Rump's actions have clearly never stopped to consider the dangers of what might happen when the shoe is on the other foot.
"But step back and look it objectively."
Indeed.
If a Democratic president in the future does the same thing Rump did, Republicans will be storming the gates to get him impeached. That Democratic president will be able to hide all the evidence, and Democrats in the Senate will then deny any witnesses to testify. They will be able to point to what Rump and McConnell did to justify their illicit behavior.
Trials have witnesses - cover-ups don't.
Republicans are setting the stage for single party rule. Right now they're all for it because it's their party. They see no problem with running our country the same way Russia and China do - as long as its Republicans in control. What could possibly go wrong with single party rule?
The damage they've done to our system of checks and balances will not become apparent to them until the Democrats retake control of the White House and Congress.
It wasn't a Democrat who started #ILeftTheGOP
Can't wait 'till November.
German Bishops Declare Gayness Is “Normal”
The Catholic News Service reports:
Following consultations in Berlin last week, the chairman of the Marriage and Family Commission of the German bishops’ conference declared that the bishops agreed that gayness is a “normal form” of human sexual identity.
“The sexual preference of man expresses itself in puberty and assumes a hetero or gay orientation,” Berlin’s Archbishop Heiner Koch [photo] asserted in a statement released by the bishops’ conference. “Both belong to the normal forms of sexual predisposition, which cannot or should be be changed with the help of a specific socialization”.
Koch went on to say that “developments” made possible by Amoris laetitia, Pope Francis’ exhortation of marriage and the family, the Church must consider the latest scientific and theological insights on human sexuality.
Even many in the Catholic Church wants to be on the right side of history
Trials have witnesses - cover-ups don't.
#GOPCoverup
If you don't fear Trump now, you don't fear dictatorship.
Wyatt and Regina Hardiman want the U.S. to become a dictatorship like Russia because they can't convince the majority of Americans lgbt people should be persecuted.
Climate Change Models Are “Running Very Hot”
There are dozens of climate models, and for decades they’ve agreed on what it would take to heat the planet by about 3° Celsius. It’s an outcome that would be disastrous—flooded cities, agricultural failures, deadly heat—but there’s been a grim steadiness in the consensus among these complicated climate simulations.
Then last year, unnoticed in plain view, some of the models started running very hot. The scientists who hone these systems used the same assumptions about greenhouse-gas emissions as before and came back with far worse outcomes. Some produced projections in excess of 5°C, a nightmare scenario.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous, I hope you two live a long life so you can experience the disaster yourselves that you told everyone to ignore.
For the 11th straight year, we're seeing above zero temps here in January and each year, the frequency of "hotter" days in winter increases. We can see the change in real time and it can't simply be ignored any longer. Again this year, flora was found growing north of the arctic circle; that isn't supposed to happen, period.
Bad NEWS for Trump's re-election campaign:
YouTube Bans Birtherism And Political Deepfake Videos
YouTube is making clear there will be no “birtherism” on its platform during this year’s U.S. presidential election. Also banned: Election-related “deepfake” videos and anything that aims to mislead viewers about voting procedures and how to participate in the 2020 census. The Google-owned video service clarified its rules ahead of the Iowa caucuses Monday. The company is mostly reiterating content guidelines that is has been putting in place since the last presidential election in 2016.
Trump is the first president in history to have never had a positive job approval rating. Its been one damning revelattion after another that has slowly but surely pressed his numbers even lower. This is going to continue through election day - Trump can't win without illegal foreign interference, that's why he extorted Ukraine to help him get re-elected.
Anti-gay Bigot Franklin Graham Clutches Pearls Over Halftime Show
“I don’t expect the world to act like the church, but our country has had a sense of moral decency on prime time television in order to protect children. We see that disappearing before our eyes. It was demonstrated tonight in the Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show—with millions of children watching.
“This exhibition was Pepsi showing young girls that sexual exploitation of women is okay. With the exploitation of women on the rise worldwide, instead of lowering the standard, we as a society should be raising it."
-------------
As we see in the middle east, prudishness about what women wear and their sexuality is what raises the exploitation of women. No where in the world is the plight of women worse than in Muslim countries that rigidly control what women can wear while punishing displays of female sexuality.
Graham may lament the sexual display at the Super Bowl, but in this #metoo era, women have never been more empowered to fight back against their exploitation.
We all know Bill Clinton was a despicable creepy sexual predator who took sexual advantage of an entry-level intern IN THE OVAL OFFICE.
Much less is discussed about his horrific and callous criminal justice bill that condemned millions of minorities who committed petty non-violent crimes to life in prisons.
Trump is fixing it.
Another reason blacks increasingly support him.
President Trump's Super Bowl campaign ad featured Alice Marie Johnson, the woman who was freed from prison after serving 21 years for a nonviolent drug offense.
After Kim Kardashian West learned about Johnson's story, she met with Trump in 2018 to discuss helping the 64-year-old and criminal justice reform as a whole. A week later, the president commuted her sentence.
"While this administration will always be very tough on crime, it believes that those who have paid their debt to society and worked hard to better themselves while in prison deserve a second chance," the White House said in a statement at the time.
The commercial featured Johnson and included a clip of her after she was released from prison, crediting the president for her release.
"Alice Johnson was sentenced to serve life in prison for a nonviolent drug offense," the commercial said. "Thanks to President Trump people like Alice are getting a second chance. Politicians talk about criminal justice reform. President Trump got it done. Thousands of families are being reunited."
Johnson tweeted the ad Sunday, saying: "Two Super Bowls ago I was sitting in a prison cell. Today I am a free woman and my story was featured in a Super Bowl Ad. I will spend the rest of my life fighting for the wrongly and unjustly convicted! God Bless America!"
The average white family's net worth is ten times as much as the average black family's net worth.
Trump hasn't done anything for blacks or anyone other than the super wealthy.
Trump's effing over the poor in favour of the rich.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "We all know Bill Clinton was a despicable creepy sexual predator who took sexual advantage of an entry-level intern IN THE OVAL OFFICE."
That's a lie of course. What else could it be coming from the keyboard of Wyatt or Regina.
Monica Lewinsky says Clinton did not take advantage of her, she was a willing participant in sex with Bill.
Bill has three accusers, its plausible that all could be lying.
Trump has 26 women who've accused him of sexual assault/rape, its NOT plausible that all of them are lying.
Trump is another Bill Cosby evangelical Americans are happy to have as one of their own.
Christian Activist Plans “Faggots Are Maggots” World Tour “Inspired By The Work Of Donald Trump” [VIDEO]
February 3, 2020 Christianists, Hate Groups
Kyle Mantyla reports at Right Wing Watch:
Mike Heath, a long–time anti-LGBTQ activist in Maine who now runs Helping Hands Ministries, has been a regular participant in Dave Daubenmire’s daily program. On Friday, Daubnemire turned the mic over to Heath so that he could announce his plans.
“I’m going to do a world tour,” Heath announced. “The theme is ‘Faggots are Maggots.’ The tour is inspired by the work of Donald Trump. This isn’t satire. I’m serious. I started supporting Donald Trump early in the 2016 primary for one reason: He insults his enemies. He makes things personal that deserve to be personal.
“The decades of leftists being the only ones allowed to make everything personal are over. It’s long past time for WASP manners to take a back seat to the truth. Long past time. Faggots are indeed maggots. Maggots consume the rancid flesh of rotting dead things. Faggots are no different.”
He seems nice.
Note how American evangelical christians are using language that dehumanizes harmless lgbt people just like the Nazis did with the Jews.
Trump's being put above the law by Senate Republicans has emboldened not just Trump, but his right wing authoritarian followers as well.
Well I am just shocked! shocked! that Mike Heath's doing this in Trump's name! Remember how Donnie Dipwad was going to be the very best president EVER for teh gays?
I went to Mike Heath's web site. I thought I' go there and have an argument with him, but everything is "You are not authorized to view this" and so forth.These bigots sound bold and sure of themselves, but given their rigid enforcement of one sided arguments they clearly are neither.
It was just a short spot during a first-quarter commercial break during Sunday night’s Super Bowl, but the criminal justice reform advertisement President Trump ran featuring Alice Johnson was brilliant. The commercial touted his criminal justice reform record, a significant bright spot where Trump truly has delivered what no other president in recent history could.
With the landmark, bipartisan criminal justice reform bill, the First Step Act, signed into law during his tenure, Trump can claim a major accomplishment heading into 2020. He’s right to make it into a prime-time Super Bowl advertisement, too, because support for criminal justice reform is bipartisan and spans voters from all walks of life and backgrounds. It's a much better, more unifying issue to focus on for an event such as this than a highly divisive issue such as immigration or abortion.
The president tweeted the advertisement out in real-time as it aired, along with commentary, saying, "I promised to restore hope in America. That includes the least among us." It was a powerful, unifying message and moment. Trump deserves credit nonetheless.
The commercial focuses on Trump’s commutation of Johnson's sentence. Johnson is a now-famous prisoner who faced a draconian life sentence for nonviolent drug crimes. Trump’s pardon deserves praise. Johnson was featured in the Super Bowl advertisement, and the sheer emotion of it rings true: President Trump truly gave her a second chance at life. For both that and his broader criminal justice reforms, he deserves major credit.
let's see...
there's Hunter's drooling Dad
there's the craaaazy Bern
there's Pete "guess-what-my-spouse-is-a-boy-too" Butt-chug in Muncie
there's Pocahontas Warrin' wants aaaall yer money
and there's Amy if-only-I-didn't-have-jury-dooty Kubla Khan
remind me
which is the electable one?
great news for Trump!
Dems vow to not do any real work until November
they will just point to their accomplishment of showing up to approve Trump's Mexico-Canada deal
that's all they need
then, they can sit back at the hotel with a nice glass of Chardonnay, like Hillary did in 2016
and smash the room up!!
President Trump's looming acquittal in his Senate trial doesn't mean he'll be off the hook in the Democrap-held House that impeached him.
If anything, say House Dumbocratic lawmakers, investigations are likely to ramp up in the nine months before Election Day. That means the Senate impeachment acquittal set to happen Wednesday concerning charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to the Ukraine military aid affair will be just a midpoint rather than an end of clashes between the Dimocratic House majority and the Trump White House.
The impeachment trial of Trump, 73, is set to end Wednesday. The only lingering question in its outcome is whether any Democrazed senators will defect and vote for Trump.
The House Financial Services Committee, led by Chairwoman Maxine Waters (hahahahaha), is expected to continue its investigation into Trump’s banking lenders when he was in private business, including Deutsche Bank AG and Capital One Financial Corp.
And House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (who's that?) is still looking to compel the Treasury Department to release Trump’s tax returns.
The House Judiciary Committee is also in the midst of a lawsuit that its chairman, Jerry Nadler (doofus), filed to obtain the grand jury transcript of former White House counsel Don McGhan from special counsel Robert Mueller's (senile) investigation.
Additionally, the House Oversight Committee is the focus of a Supreme Court case related to whether Trump's accountants at Mazar USA LLP should be mandated to turn over his financial information to the government (which is the problem, not the solution).
Trump touts oil boom as he tries to turn New Mexico red
“I think we have to continue and make sure that we continue proper oversight," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said between tokes. "This isn't an isolated incident. And what he's being referred to for impeachment right now simply is just a fraction of many of the offenses that this president has committed. I know, because my palm reader told me. So, I think continuing to conduct proper and appropriate oversight is an important duty that we have to commit our crystal balls to.”
Senator Lisa Murkowski said of Trump's crimes "a careless media cheerfully tried to put out the fires with gasoline."
Yes, Lisea, the media made Trump engage in attempted extortion and obstruction, and then you had to vote to acquit because journalists wouldn't stop reporting on stuff.
You hear that a lot of places like Turkey and Russia, too,
Tom, the media has relentlessly lied
we have a free press
we also have the freedom to criticize the press
unlike Russia and Turkey and the government Bernie Sanders wants to create
btw, Mr Elect-ability, the guy with the resourceful son named Hunter, is in fifth place in Iowa
and since he's a card-carrying member of the deep state, they've halted voting to make sure Russia didn't say something mean about Joe Cool on facebook and TOTALLY INTERFERE WITH THE CAUCUSES !!!!
"there's Hunter's drooling Dad
there's the craaaazy Bern
there's Pete "guess-what-my-spouse-is-a-boy-too" Butt-chug in Muncie
there's Pocahontas Warrin' wants aaaall yer money
and there's Amy if-only-I-didn't-have-jury-dooty Kubla Khan"
So... do any more 4th graders have such insightful political commentary to share with the class?
I do
turns out that Joe Biden is not so electable after all
in the Iowa caucuses last night, he coming in fifth place
so, he got his buddies in the deep state to declare an emergency and suspend reporting the results, hoping to make a comeback in New Hampshire before the Iowa results are official
of course, it's all rhetorical since his finish is already well-known
but, it will give him a way to avoid answering questions about his losing campaign
he's getting testy, just like Hillary and Al Gore did
Joe Biden snapped at NBC's Savannah Guthrie in a Monday interview, saying she didn't know what she was talking about after Guthrie asked the former vice president if his son Hunter Biden was hired by a Ukrainian energy company to gain access to the Obama administration.
“No one’s found anything wrong with his dealings in Ukraine," Biden said when Guthrie asked whether the Hunter Biden controversy was impacting his campaign.
"Do you think it was wrong for him to take that position, knowing it was really because that company wanted access to you?" Guthrie asked.
"Well, that's not true," Biden retorted. "You are saying things — you do not know what you are talking about. No one said that. Who said that? Who said that?"
"Don't you think that it's just one of those things where people think, well, that seems kind of sleazy," Guthrie said. "Why would he have that job if not for who his father was?"
Biden responded, that his son is a "grown man" who can "speak for himself."
btw, the GOP caucuses went off without a hitch last night
the competence of the Republican Party is just as notable at the local level as on the national level
Trump trounced Weld
looks like he's going to be the nominee against Sanders
watch out, Bernie
I heard he can get nasty
hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Joe Biden's campaign team is setting expectations low for the Iowa caucuses Monday night.
While some campaign aides pretended they were unsure how the results would turn out hours before the caucuses would begin, they expressed some apprehension about the outcome.
"Most aides feel it's not going to be great," one longtime Biden ally who has had conversations with top aides inside the campaign, acknowledged Monday.
Biden's aides and allies said they were hoping to place in the top three.
(note: oops!)
But even if they fall short, the campaign is "built for the long haul," one Biden confidant said, to the amusement of all.
Biden said in an interview with NBC that "my gut tells me things are going well."
(note: oops!)
Still, he added, that the results would be "close."
(note: oops!)
Since the results weren't official, the gay guy decided he could get away with declaring victory. Who can prove him wrong?
Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, took to the podium late Monday night to declare himself the winner of the Iowa caucuses, despite the fact that zero percent of the vote had been reported.
"Tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality," Buttigieg told a cheering crowd. "So we don't know all the results, but we know by the time it's all said and done — Iowa, you have shocked the nation. Because by all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious."
Buttigieg's official Twitter account also sent out some tweets in which the former mayor declared victory.
"The skeptics said 'not now,'" said one tweet. "'Not this time.' All this talk of 'belonging,' of bridging divides, is too naive. Too risky. So tonight I say—with a heart filled with gratitude—Iowa, you've proved those skeptics wrong."
Iowa is the first state to hold a contest in the Democratic primary. The caucuses began at around 7 p.m. CT, but the night ended without any official vote totals because of technical difficulties with the reporting process that resulted in widespread delays.
The Iowa Democratic Party later said it was performing "quality control" checks on the results because of those irregularities before releasing them out of an "abundance of caution."
Media reports later cited Democratic officials who said the delay was connected to the party's use of a new app to report precinct results, but the party denied that the app crashed.
Instead, the Iowa Democratic Party said in a statement that it found "inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results" and emphasized that it was merely a "reporting issue" and wasn't linked to any hacking or improper intrusion.
The Sanders campaign responded to Buttigieg's declaration of victory on Monday by telling reporters it would release its own internal polling numbers that would show Sanders as being ahead.
If you’re the type of person who thinks the Democratic party is a creaking, incompetent entity whose leadership needs overthrowing, the Iowa caucuses certainly validated your point of view.
None of us knew who would win, but we had at least expected a result.
We didn’t get one, at least not on caucus night.
State Democratic party officials announced that due to “quality control” issues, release of the result would be indefinitely delayed.
On a conference call with representatives of the candidates, party officials hung up the phone when asked when the totals would be released.
So what do we know?
Well, one thing we can say confidently is that “frontrunner” Joe Biden flopped.
There were places where Biden didn’t even meet the 15% threshold needed to maintain viability from the first round to the second round – at one caucus site, the attorney general of Iowa had to switch from Biden to Buttigieg when Biden was disqualified.
It explains why Biden’s surrogate John Kerry was heard on the phone the other day asking whether it would be possible for him to enter the race at the last minute to save the Democratic party from being conquered by Sanders.
Polling results from 40% of caucus sites, showed Sanders winning with approximately 30% of the vote, Pete Buttigieg coming in second with 25%, Elizabeth Warren third with 21%, and Joe Biden a very distant fourth with 12%.
Those numbers are great for Sanders and absolutely horrific for Biden.
Sanders kicked the crap out of the frontrunner, Barack Obama’s former vice-president and the man most favored to win the nomination.
It is a stunning upset.
With the party not releasing the actual result, Biden sent a letter demanding that the result be suppressed until such time as the “quality control issues” were resolved.
If it takes long enough to get the official count, Biden may hope that Iowa is old news, or that the issues surrounding the caucus are discussed far more than the actual result.
If you’re a Sanders supporter, you have reason to be suspicious.
We had already seen the Des Moines Register suppress the results of its “gold standard” poll on the eve of the election.
And with 0% of caucus results in, Buttigieg declared himself “victorious”, praising the “incredible result” and saying Iowa had “shocked the nation”.
The only thing that had shocked the nation at this point was Iowa’s total inability to perform the relatively simple task of counting people’s votes.
For Sanders supporters, being denied a rightful victory in Iowa gives feelings of déjà vu.
In 2016, Sanders may well have won Iowa, possibly by a lot, but the state party did not release the vote totals.
Instead, it only released delegate numbers, which showed Bernie narrowly losing the state “701-697” to Hillary Clinton.
If the vote totals had been known in 2016, it might have been clear Bernie had won. With his New Hampshire victory shortly after, Clinton would have been seen as losing the race, and the whole election might have turned out differently.
If polls are close to accurate (bear in mind, it was only 40% of caucus sites), Sanders had the night he needed to have.
The progressive vote is still being split between Sanders and Warren, but at least Biden hasn’t managed to capitalize on that so far.
All of the results remain speculative, since the Iowa Democratic party seemed determined to prove that we need a political revolution that overthrows the party establishment.
TTFers feel desperate and sad this week.
The future looks so grim for the gay agenda.
Last time out, the Clinton Foundation bribed the DNC to rig the nomination against Bernie. Now, they are working for Hunter Biden's sleazeball Dad.
President Donald Trump's adult sons and campaign suggested the Iowa caucuses were "rigged" as the state Democratic Party said it found "inconsistencies" and delayed releasing results, leading to widespread confusion in the Hawkeye State.
"Mark my words, they are rigging this thing ... what a mess," Eric Trump, one of Trump's sons, tweeted. "This is why people don’t want the #Dems running our county."
"The fix is in... AGAIN," tweeted Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. "And we get to watch it play out on live TV. Incredible."
The confusion that followed Monday's caucusing was met with a steady flow of theories online as to what exactly was going on.
Early Tuesday, the state party said it would release results from the Democratic caucuses later in the day after "manually verifying all precinct results."
Mandy McClure, communications director for the Iowa Democrats, said Monday night there were "inconsistencies" in reporting the three sets of results.
"In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report," McClure said, adding, "This is simply a reporting issue. The app did not go down, and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results."
Earlier in the night, the state party said it was conducting "quality control checks, making sure the numbers are accurate."
"Quality control = rigged?" tweeted Trump's campaign manager Brad Parscale.
Kayleigh McEnany, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, questioned whether the results were "being rigged against [Sen.] Bernie Sanders?"
In recent weeks, Trump and his allies have suggested the Democratic Party is conspiring against Sanders, who was leading in the RealClearPolitics polling average of Iowa surveys heading into the caucuses.
That echoes claims made about the Democratic primaries in 2016, where both Sanders and Trump said at different points that the party establishments were "rigging" the process.
Last summer, Sanders told MSNBC of the 2016 race that "some people say that if maybe the system was not rigged against me, I would have won the nomination and defeated Donald Trump.
In his own analysis of the chaos, Trump did not go quite as far as his children and campaign, simply calling it "an unmitigated disaster," adding in a tweet that "The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is 'Trump.''
Trump also vowed that as long as he is president, the Iowa caucuses would remain the first nominating contest in the nation, despite criticisms of the process.
Trump was NBC News' projected winner in the Republican caucuses, getting about 97 percent of the vote.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous seem particularly aroused/aggravated today. Perhaps this is why:
"A series of studies recently published in the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found higher levels of homophobia in individuals with unacknowledged attractions to the same sex, particularly when they grew up with authoritarian parents who also held homophobic attitudes. In the university press release, Netta Weinstein, the study's lead author said, "Individuals who identify as straight but in psychological tests show a strong attraction to the same sex may be threatened by gays and lesbians because homosexuals remind them of similar tendencies within themselves." In the same release, study co-author Richard Ryan added, "In many cases these are people who are at war with themselves and they are turning this internal conflict outward.""
That's what I've been saying for 30 years now based on my own experience.
It is my belief that a small percentage of men are exclusively attracted to men and a much larger percentage, perhaps the majority of men are bisexual but strongly preferring women. Like 70% or 80% attracted to women and 20% or 30% attracted to men.
http://fairnessfirst2.blogspot.com/2019/09/why-gayness-can-never-be-eliminated-or.html
I don't think its any coincidence that in religious social circles that give members a sense of deep trust and confession we keep hearing supposedly heterosexual men having gay sex on the side and then the religious social circle trying everything to change him into an exclusive heterosexual.
It is partially their needing a punching bag. But LGBT people really cut straight to the way that their belief system is fundamentally bankrupt.
The mere existence of LGBT people puts the lie to so much of what the right wing believes. That men and women are fundamentally different not just in body but in mind and are suited for fundamentally different roles. Two men happily forming a family and adopting a child shows them that their belief that women are only supposed to bake and raise babies while the man brings home the bacon just doesn't work.
I don't believe it's really about their being self hating gays, I think that's a shallow, reflexive response that promotes ignorance in a much broader phenomenon. The self hating gays thing does exist, but there's just so many reasons for straight people to feel threatened by LGBT people as well.
To put it crudely, our culture is still massively messed up when it comes to sexuality. I mean, I'm having to try to obscure that very word because our fundy overlords get the vapors every time someone uses it. LGBT people basically demand that we grow up a bit as a culture. sex exists, they demonstrate, and it's about time we get over the fact that it does and that it's enjoyable.
This is a fundamental threat to right wing Christianity in particular because it uses people's sex drives to control them. They insist that it's only for marriage, and only for making babies, and that pregnancy is a curse on women by God himself, and all sorts of other messed up things. They know their followers won't adhere to these rules, and that when they break them they'll be racked with guilt and will come right back to their religious leaders, begging for forgiveness. You can see this only too well in the purity culture, where even lustful thoughts are viewed as cheating. They really layer on the levels of guilt and paranoia to keep people constantly worried and constantly needing reassurance from their leaders. I've read writings from some people that believe in that kind of thing, to them a beach is a kind of theological minefield, simply seeing a single bikini clad body could cause them to sin.
LGBT culture is the polar opposite to this. A pride parade is basically an antidote to that kind of thinking. It says this is the way you are, you're allowed to be this way, it's fine, you deserve to be happy, to hell with all the people who want to judge you and tell you how you're supposed to live. Queer culture has had to become sex positive, there was just no way to be a part of the predominant sex-negative culture when it denies your very existence.
In short, it's really a kind of culture shock, or culture war. It's not, fundamentally, that the bible says X or Y about LGBT people. It can be flexibly interpreted one way or the other. It's not about rejection of one's own attraction to the same gender, there's plenty of things to keep homophobia going without that. The problem is that LGBT people reject the chains that members of sex-negative culture have either willingly taken up or been forced to wear. They are free in a way those people will never be. And they HATE that.
Nomad, I think its both of these. Anti-gay bigots are both self loathing bisexuals but as well others motivated for the reasons you bring up.
I'd say the far bigger group of bigots is self-loathing bisexuals. As I wrote in my link above, it is my empirical belief that a large percentage (40% and up) of humans are 75% opposite sex attracted and 25% same sex attracted.
Class-Action Lawsuit: The Catholic Church Is Hoarding Donations to Charity
David O’Connell, a Rhode Island native, is suing the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for what he’s calling charity fraud. The USCCB has long promoted its Peter’s Pence charity to help people affected by “war, oppression, natural disaster or disease.”
But O’Connell, a donor to that charity, says as little as 10% of the donations to the organization are actually funding the people who need it. A recent Wall Street Journal article said “two-thirds of the money has been used to help cover the budget deficit at the Holy See.” In the interests of justice, the USCCB must disgorge the funds that were not spent as it promised.
The entire lawsuit is reminiscent of the Mormon Church’s own alleged hoarding of donations, though there hasn’t been a lawsuit filed in that case. There’s an open question of whether anyone can even “look at the books” of any religious charity, and no one’s expecting religious groups to do the right thing and be transparent on their own.
Perhaps the most intriguing footnote in the lawsuit is the part that explains where the charity’s money is allegedly going, if not to people who need it. According to an Italian newspaper quoted in the lawsuit, more than $1 million was invested in the film Rocketman (about Elton John), another $3.6 million was invested in Men in Black: International. $200 million was invested in luxury apartments in London. And “millions” of dollars went to the Malta-based Centurion Global Fund; the guy who runs it earned millions in commissions despite losing 4.61% of the fund.
Churches don't have to pay taxes because they allegedly do things in the interest of the public good. That's not remotely true for the vast majority of churches.
Its time churches were taxed like everyone else. The people shouldn't be subsidizing this corruption.
Whistleblower: The Mormon Church is Hoarding $100 Billion Meant for Charity
It’s always a problem when a so-called non-profit charity rakes in money… and then doesn’t use it for charitable purposes. It’s not just an ethical breach. It’s flat-out illegal. The IRS must respond by revoking that group’s tax exemption since the group isn’t following the rules.
Now imagine the charitable “war chest” contains $100 billion.
That’s apparently what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has in its “just for charity” bank account — thanks to donations, tithes, and investments over more than two decades — and a whistleblower has now told the Washington Post that none of it is being used properly.
Earlier this week, right-wing radio host and former candidate for Lt. Governor of Virginia E.W. Jackson claimed it was a punishable offense to call Donald Trump a “dictator”… even though there was video proof of Jackson doing exactly that to Barack Obama.
Jackson is now responding to that glaring hypocrisy by apologizing.
Hahahaha, I’m just kidding.
He’s blaming atheists for pointing it out.
A man in Arizona has been accused by federal authorities of threatening to kill Congressman Adam Schiff, the lead prosecutor in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
Court records show that Jan Peter Meister, a 52-year-old registered sex offender, told investigators he drunkenly left the threatening voicemail at Schiff’s Washington, D.C. office after watching Fox News.
Clearly we shouldn't allow people to both drink and watch Fox "News" - one or the other people!
To my Republican colleagues who've complained that there's no new evidence in this impeachment trial:
You voted more than ten times to block relevant witnesses and evidence. Don't bury your head in the sand and then complain that it's dark.
Vote like it's the last fair election in the last days before a former free democracy turns into a fascist state, and only YOU have the power to change that outcome.
"To my Republican colleagues who've complained that there's no new evidence in this impeachment trial:
You voted more than ten times to block relevant witnesses and evidence. Don't bury your head in the sand and then complain that it's dark."
Kirsten, you're a liar. As you know, there is no substantial dispute over any fact and no one is complaining "that there's no new evidence"
The only thing in question is whether the "offenses" cited are impeachable, as impeachment was intended by the Founding Fathers.
The answer is clearly no, as Democratic Senator Doug Jones stated this morning.
Honestly, Kirsten, this impeachment farce may be the end o the Democratic Party.
In order to give us viable elections in the future, the GOP will split into two parties, moderate and conservative.
If you want a continued career, you might want to consider which you are joining.
A glimpse at how the voters have responded to the election farce:
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Donald Trump's job approval rating has risen to 49%, his highest in Gallup polling since he took office in 2017.
The new poll finds just 1% expressing no opinion. The average percentage not having an opinion on Trump has been 5% throughout his presidency.
Trump's approval rating has risen because of higher ratings among both Republicans and independents. His 94% approval rating among Republicans is up six percentage points from early January and is three points higher than his previous best among his fellow partisans. The 42% approval rating among independents is up five points, and ties three other polls as his best among that group. Democratic approval is 7%, down slightly from 10%.
The 87-point gap between Republican and Democratic approval in the current poll is the largest Gallup has measured in any Gallup poll to date, surpassing the prior record, held by Trump and Barack Obama, by one point.
The Jan. 16-29 poll was conducted in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial that will result in the president's acquittal.
First Lady Melania Trump awarded conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh the President Medal of Freedom on behalf of President Donald Trump at the State of the Union address Tuesday evening.
"Almost every American family knows the pain when a loved one is diagnosed with a serious illness. Here tonight is a special man, someone beloved by millions of Americans who just received a Stage 4 advanced cancer diagnosis. This is not good news, but what is good news is that he is the greatest fighter and winner that you will ever meet," President Trump said to the broadcaster.
"Rush, in recognition of all that you have done for our nation, the millions of people a day that you speak to and you inspire and all of the incredible work that you have done for charity, I am proud to announce tonight that you will be receiving our country's highest civilian honor: The Presidential Medal of Freedom," Trump said Tuesday night.
WASHINGTON – From start to finish, President Donald Trump's State of the Union address was marked by partisan tension created by Democrats.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore his speech up and tossed it aside as soon he was done.
Even before the president uttered the first word of his State of the Union address, the political and personal friction created by the House speaker, who has been leading his impeachment, was palpable.
Pelosi omitted the customary language about it being a "high privilege and distinct honor" to introduce the president. Trump then handed the traditional copies of his speech to Vice President Mike Pence and to Pelosi.
When Trump took the dais Tuesday, the House chamber erupted with chants of "Four more years."
The tension created by Democrats lasted much of the night.
Most of the time, as GOP lawmakers stood up and lustily cheered the president’s words, Democrats sat quietly, shaking their heads.
Pelosi was dressed in white and wearing the golden Mace of the Republic brooch she wore on the day she opened impeachment proceedings against Trump. The pin is a historic symbol of the legislative authority of the House, and Pelosi often wears it at high-profile events.
To the chagrin of Democrats, the president had plenty to crow about: The Senate is about to acquit him on impeachment charges, his polls numbers are up, the strength of the economy was punctuated by Tuesday's 408-point surge in the Dow Jones industrial average, and the glitches surrounding Monday's Iowa Democratic caucus made a bad night for his opponents.
Despite the shadow of impeachment, some lawmakers put on a show of bipartisanship and fence-mending.
About two dozen House members from both sides of the aisle wore purple to promote unity during the president’s address.
The color – a mix of red and blue – is one of several worn by lawmakers sitting in the audience as Trump addressed the nation one day before the Senate was set to render a not guilty verdict in his impeachment trial.
After Trump finished, Pelosi stuffed what remained of Trump's ripped-up speech into a blue envelope. She showed it off to fellow Democrats, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, one of the House managers prosecuting the impeachment case. After she left the dais, she took the ripped pieces of paper from the envelope and waved them in the air to those left in the chamber and those in the public viewing gallery above the chamber.
As she waved the document, those in the audience could see the large and prevalent signature of the president.
As she left the the Capitol, a reporter asked her why she tore up the speech.
“Because it was the courteous thing to do considering the alternatives,” she said.
The White House responded in a tweet that Pelosi was ripping up more than a speech. Her act, it tweeted, belittled the people Trump championed in it, including Charles McGee, one of the last surviving members of the Tuskegee Airmen, and Kayla Mueller, a humanitarian aid worker tortured and killed by Islamic State militants.
"Her act, it tweeted, belittled the people Trump championed"
If there's one thing Rump is an expert at, it's belittling people. That's one of the things Republicans like most about him - especially when it involves liberals / Democrats.
I did notice however, that the sniveling whine above didn't mention anything about Rump refusing to shake Pelosi's hand when he gave her the script.
Her ripping up Rump's speech is nothing though compared to how Moscow Mitch and Putin's Bitch have been shredding the Constitution with their sham "trial" with no witnesses.
Can't wait 'till November.
Happy Acquittal day TTF'rs :-)
have a really wonderful Wednesday...
I will be back to congratulate you on election day ... but the economy is so fabulous that I am really, really busy
#KAGA
Theresa
"shredding the Constitution"
the Constitution was shredded by the same Dems that tore up the SOTU message
they tried to overturn the result of the election by misusing the Constitution
the ignored the separation of powers by refusing to let the courts settle a dispute on executive privilege and feigning that disagreeing with them was an impeachable offense
no one seriously thinks Trump should be the first President impeached based on such slender justification
if the Senate had convicted, impeachment would become a routine, destroying the democracy the Constitution created
"with their sham "trial" with no witnesses"
actually, the prosecution presented the testimony of 17 witnesses and the evidence was so weak, they didn't have to cross examine to get an acquittal
"Can't wait 'till November."
hope you won't hurt yourself then
remember, life is more than politics
"they didn't have to cross examine to get an acquittal"
Correction:
They didn't have to cross examine to get an acquittal from people who said things like "I'm not going to be an impartial juror."
They know there was a crime. They're so cynical that they just don't give a damn. They're utterly blind to their shredding of the Constitution because they're so elated that they've "owned the libs."
The only remedy for this is a painful shellacking at the polls in November. That YUGE crowd that wasn't at his inauguration, but at the Women's March instead will be there too.
Can't wait for your bubble to burst.
"They know there was a crime."
correction:
no crime was committed so they couldn't have possibly known that
this was not the first political impeachment, the Johnson impeachment was
but this is the only impeachment in history to not cite a criminal offense and to not be supported by a single Congressman of the President's own party
the founding fathers made sure such a partisan impeachment would never succeed in removing the President by requiring a two-thirds vote of the Senate for conviction
the Senate saved our democracy from a cynical attack by desperate Dems
"They're so cynical that they just don't give a damn."
just keep repeating this mantra so the Dem base will deflect and not reflect on how dastardly the actions of the House of Representatives were
"They're utterly blind to their shredding of the Constitution because they're so elated that they've "owned the libs.""
part of the reason they "own the libs" is precisely because they have ceaselessly defended the Constitution from lib attempts to destroy it by reinterpretation
while the Dem House has chased endless conspiracy theories about the President, the Senate and the President are replacing judges who reinterpret the Constitution with judges who will uphold
the days when abortion and homosexual "marriage" are read in between the lines of the Constitution are coming to an end
so, please start up a new investigation of Trump
go ahead
make their day
"The only remedy for this is a painful shellacking at the polls in November."
so sad
you don't even know what awaits in November
the President's approval rating has reached an all-time high because of the impeachment
and he has solid leads in all the swing states he used to crush Hillary in 2016
enough minorities are moving his way to make a significant dent in Dem margins
further, his long list of achievements includes increases in employment, opportunity, and wages for all Americans
best of all, the Dems seem poised to nominate someone who describes himself as a "socialist"
it's McGovern City, baby!
"That YUGE crowd that wasn't at his inauguration, but at the Women's March instead will be there too."
yeah, the latest "Women's March" a couple weeks ago was a morose and dwindled group
a few days later the pro-life march was as robust as ever
"Can't wait for your bubble to burst."
you might want to stock up on ganja
you're gonna need a lot of it in November to cope with your grief as you mourn the demise of the gay agenda
it's hard to overstate what a pathetic individual Mitt Romney is
Mitt came to Trump Hotel back in December 2016 and grovelled before Trump, hoping to get nominated as Secretary of State
Trump enjoyed the spectacle and allowed Romney to fawn all over Trump
then, Trump humiliated Romney by choosing someone else
since then, Romney has been looking for a way to get revenge
but now, Romney political influence and ability to get anything done are over
he can support the GOP agenda but he won't have any accomplishments of his own when he's up for re-election in 2024
and don't expect Pence to help him
Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are in a tight race for first place as Iowa continued reporting the last of its Democratic presidential caucus results early Thursday morning.
With 97% of Iowa's precincts reporting, the former mayor remained the leader of the race, with 26.2% of state delegates. He's closely trailed by Sanders , with 26.1%.
They're followed by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 18.2%, former Vice President Joe Biden at 15.8% and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar at 12.2%.
Now that the impeachment farce is finished, and the president is acquitted, the Democratic Party has nothing left but futile gestures to mask its fatal political miscalculation.
All that’s left is a broken Nancy Pelosi shredding her remaining dignity by ripping up the president’s State of the Union speech.
All that’s left is poor Joe Biden limping from a catastrophic fourth-place finish in Iowa to another looming rout in New Hampshire, as the ascendant socialist wing of the party goes rogue.
Biden has collapsed as the moderate hope of the Democrats and all that’s left is the unelectability of 78-year-old Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders and 38-year-old gay left-wing Indiana ex-mayor Pete Buttigieg.
Only a mutual loathing of Donald Trump preserved a façade of unity and purpose for Democrats during impeachment.
But all that did was deliver the president record high approval ratings and unite Republicans around him, reborn as street brawlers.
Even Republicans skeptical of Trump’s tweets and combative tone now see clearly what he’s been up against.
“People are starting to understand now that the swamp has names,” says Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, a late convert to Trump’s cause.
“People are starting to intuitively understand how deep and how vicious that swamp is,” he said. “They see what he has to do in order to combat the swamp and go around the media.
“When you analyze this and you see the forces that are against him, you can’t go in shake hands, sit down, have a cocktail and then talk out a deal. That’s not how you deal with Bernie Sanders or Jim Comey.
“You have to elbow hard, raise hell and be prepared to have a verbal fight.
“And it’s about time. We’re not going to take to the streets like Bernie’s rather naive young people, but I tell you what, we’re not going to take any more s–t.”
Iowa is a swing state that backed Barack Obama but swung to Trump in 2016 by 10 percentage points.
“We slowly, intellectually, methodically analyzed the situation and said this is the person we need to drain the swamp, this is the person that’s followed through on his promises and this is the populist that our farmers and small businesspeople need,” the chairman said.
The president won the hearts of farmers by abolishing inheritance taxes, says Kaufmann, a seventh-generation Iowa farmer.
(It’s not just Iowa: Entire Democratic race looking like giant dumpster fire)
“In a real, fundamental way, he preserved the family farm . . . I don’t even know if he ever talked to a farmer before he ran for president but he just tapped right into that rural, populist notch . . . He knows how to read hearts and he has read the heart of rural populists in this state.”
While “tariff man” Trump waged trade war, farmers held tough until he delivered deals with Mexico, Canada, Japan — and stage one of a China deal.
“An Iowa farmer is inherently independent and skeptical — they extended their necks for the president for well over a year and then they saw him deliver,” Kaufmann said. “There is no political rhetoric, no spin, nothing that can solidify support as much as that.
“Now that he’s delivered, there’s no penetrating that bond.”
Kaufmann senses the same mood across the Midwest, having talked to counterparts in South Dakota, Arkansas and Minnesota.
“It’s about delivering on promises,” he said. “In 2016, Iowa was skeptical and he has turned it into trust. We analyzed the results of this president and decided results matter over a potential offensive tone.”
Little noticed on caucus night, Trump scored the highest turnout in history for any president of any party in the runaway that was the Republican contest in Iowa, slaying a couple of never-Trumpers with 97 percent of votes cast. It was the trial run of the president’s 2020 ground game, an asset he lacked in 2016.
What have the Democrats to offer in place of Trump’s optimistic message of the “great American comeback”?
With Biden sinking and impeachment over, the party establishment has to face up to an existential nightmare of a house divided.
Sanders’ socialist ally, charismatic Bronx/Queens Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, summed up the division when she said, “In any other country Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party.”
Without Biden, it’s hard to see how Democrats stop a takeover by Sanders and unelectable radical socialists, and avoids a debilitating civil war at the July nominating convention in Milwaukee. Michael Bloomberg’s billions won’t be enough.
see also
Lawmakers say NYC elections should learn from Iowa caucus debacle
The debacle of their failed caucus phone app, designed by Clintonistas, was the perfect metaphor for this creaky, crooked Democratic machine in its death throes.
They could have regrouped after their 2016 defeat, humbly acknowledged error and worked out how to win again another day.
Instead, they wasted their energy denying they lost the election and creating pre-alibis for why they’ll lose the next.
Bloomy can’t buy victory
Michael Bloomberg wants to capitalize on the Democratic implosion in Iowa by doubling his already eye-watering advertising budget. Bloomberg has laid out $300 million and reportedly is willing to spend upwards of $1 billion to buy the presidency.
But, as President Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, says, if money were all that mattered, “Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016” because she outspent Trump by 4 to 1.
House Judiciary Committee member Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said Wednesday he will be filing ethics charges against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., over her "temper tantrum" following President Trump's State of the Union address the previous evening.
Gaetz said he will join two other Republicans and file the charges with the House Ethics Committee on Thursday. Reps. Lee Zeldin of New York and Kay Granger of Texas will join him, he said.
"Pelosi disgraced the House of Representatives, she embarrassed our country and she destroyed official records. The law does not allow the Speaker of the House to destroy the records of the House and the rules of the House do not permit some little temper tantrum just because you don't like what the president of the United States says," he said.
Gaetz said that he is one of many Republicans who are tired of political double standards on Capitol Hill. He pointed to Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican who was reprimanded in 2009 for yelling out "You lie!" when then-President Obama claimed illegal immigrants would not be covered by ObamaCare.
"The Democrats really brought the heat down on him," Gaetz said, adding: "By the way, Joe Wilson was right. We ought to apply the same standards to the Democrats that they want to apply to us and there will be an ethics investigation to Nancy Pelosi and we will start the ball rolling to have her censured."
"From the inside out, Nancy Pelosi has been a poison," added Zeldin.
"She is now poisoning the House of Representatives and Congress and our country because they start off with her getting rolled by her far left, which is basically taken over the Democratic Party."
To that effect, Gaetz said the 79-year-old lawmaker has "some real impulse control problems."
The White House also reacted to Pelosi tearing the speech earlier.
The Trump administration had quickly responded to Pelosi's act of tearing up the speech.
"Speaker Pelosi just ripped up: One of our last surviving Tuskegee Airmen. The survival of a child born at 21 weeks. The mourning families of Rocky Jones and Kayla Mueller. A service member's reunion with his family. That's her legacy," the White House tweeted, referencing individuals whom Trump mentioned during his address.
Any future history of the decline and fall of the American Republic ought to include a page or two on the Iowa caucuses of February 3, 2020.
It’s a meltdown story for the ages.
The Democratic party, desperate to undo the victory of Donald Trump in 2016, somehow managed utterly to cock up its first meaningful vote in 2020.
The calamity is so great that it may turn the whole Democratic primary — and therefore this presidential election year — into a farce.
That suits President Trump.
‘Big WIN for us in Iowa tonight,’ he tweeted, on Tuesday night, as news of the Democratic imbroglio spread. ‘Thank you!’
He then retweeted Piers Morgan, who had responded to his tweet with a ROFL (Rolling on the Floor Laughing) emoji.
Fun times.
We’ll hear lots of conspiracy theories about what really happened, but the Iowa disaster was probably just a result of good old-fashioned human error combined with newfangled app crap software.
In an attempt to drag the archaic caucusing system into the 21st century, the Democrats employed Shadow Inc, a suspiciously well-connected tech company, which created a snazzy and totally unnecessary app to tabulate the caucus results. The app failed. So did the back-up phone system. Nobody knew what was going on.
As the night progressed, no winner emerged, so each candidate claimed victory: Pete Buttigieg, the squeaky-faced mayor of South Bend, Indiana, went furthest fastest.
He gave a well-rehearsed victory speech before a single precinct had been counted.
It soon emerged that his campaign had also paid Shadow Inc $42,500 for ‘software services’.
This raised concerns, especially when — some 20 hours later — the first results showed Buttigieg in the lead against the odds.
Buttigieg is a married gay man, and his gayness is the only thing that makes him acceptable to identity-obsessed Democrats.
His other characteristics — elite education, centrist politics, military veteran — offend radical sensibilities.
LGBTQ activists say he isn’t gay enough to be America’s first openly gay president.
But the low-key nature of Buttigieg’s homosexuality also means that so far he has been able to win over traditional voters.
On Monday night, a widely shared video showed an elderly woman who had voted for Buttigieg changing her mind.
‘Are you saying he has a same-sex partner?’ she asked. ‘Pete? Are you kidding? Then I don’t want anybody like that in the White House…can I have my card back?’
Millions of Americans will feel the same way, even if it horrifies modern liberals; and Buttigieg’s polling among black voters is abysmal.
Buttigieg may just about claim victory over Bernie Sanders in Iowa — as of this morning, with 71 percent of precincts declared, the result is still too close to call.
But Mayor Pete’s success will forever be tarnished by the great bungling of these caucuses.
Sanders supporters now call him ‘Mayor Cheat’.
Sanders, the old radical, is now indisputably the most powerful force in the race.
He has outperformed Elizabeth Warren, supposedly his rival on the left, and won the popular vote in Iowa.
He is the strong favorite to win the first Democratic primary next week in New Hampshire.
Bernie, 78, had a heart attack in September, but still seems more energetic than his rivals.
He leads the polls nationally and now, at last, threatens to destroy the Democratic establishment in the way that Trump destroyed the Republican elite four years ago.
The big loser of the night was Joe Biden, the national poll leader for most of last year.
He finished fourth.
The shambles of the Iowa results may give him a temporary reprieve.
But Iowa has shown his campaign to be badly organized and lacking enthusiasm.
He can’t draw big crowds.
He sounds disengaged, too, though that may be dementia.
And Trump was able to draw attention to the corruption of his family.
The Democratic success story of the week is arguably not Sanders but the third very old white man in the race: Mike Bloomberg, who won by not competing in Iowa.
He has adopted the unusual strategy of skipping the first four states in the nomination process.
But as the ninth richest man in the world, he is willing to spend up to $2 billion to win the presidency.
His gargantuan advertising splurge ahead of Super Tuesday — March 3, when 16 states vote — is starting to pay off.
He is now polling at around 8 percent nationally, which puts him in fourth place.
But Bloomberg is the ultimate anti-populist.
The only thing he hates more than Brexit is Donald Trump.
He seems to get his understanding of the world from those plutocratic la-la land conferences at which he spends much of his life speaking.
Last month, the New York Times asked him which foreign leader he most admired. ‘President Macron,’ he replied. ‘He’s the strongest leader at the moment in Europe. France has the most stable government.’
Whatever you say, Mike.
If he continues to emerge as the most formidable centrist candidate for the Democratic nomination — and Buttigieg, Biden and Warren fade — Bloomberg will find himself in a battle with Bernie Sanders.
The Democratic race will then become a clash between two septuagenarians who weren’t Democrats five years ago. It will be the billionaire vs the socialist, a choice that at least offers some clarity.
For now, though, it’s all a big muddle, and President Trump can’t quite believe his luck.
He’s enjoying his best week since taking office.
As the Democrats embarrassed themselves in Iowa, the media largely ignored the fact that Trump won his own caucus in the same state by an enormous margin.
He’s destroyed the last remaining NeverTrumpers in his party.
Trump’s impeachment has fizzled out — the dampest of squibs — with his inevitable acquittal.
The whole saga has made him look invincible and the Democrats foolish.
The American economy keeps defying gravity, and Trump’s approval rating just hit 49 percent, his highest score so far.
Barack Obama was on 46 percent towards the end of his first term.
On Tuesday night, Trump delivered a very upbeat State of the Union address. ‘The American age, the American epic, the American adventure has only just begun,’ he said. ‘Our spirit is still young. The sun is still rising. God’s grace is still shining.’
It’s easy to see why Trump might think that the Almighty is on his side.
Standing behind the president, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, tore up her copy of Trump’s speech — an act that summed up her party’s impotent rage at his success.
The video will be used in Republican attack ads for the rest of the year.
The party of Pelosi feels cursed.
The president just got impeached, yet it’s the Democrats who find themselves in hell.
Wow, someone sure is desperate to try and trash talk Dems today!
They must be getting worried.
Clearly they have never heard of "quiet confidence."
yeah, I'm worried
maybe America will decide they like a shouting elderly socialist better than a healthy economy
I'm reeeeeal nervous
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Romney is the first senator in the nation’s history to vote to convict a president of his own party.
So pathetic....
Trump refused his groveling request to be Secretary of State
now, he hopes the press can save him
The Democrats want impeachment to disgrace President Donald Trump "for life" and tilt the 2020 election. Not if Senator Lindsey Graham has his way. Graham is proposing post-impeachment investigations by the Senate to "get to the bottom" of the Democrats' impeachment hoax. That will pin the disgrace where it belongs -- on the party that dragged the nation through an unwarranted ordeal.
Meanwhile, Vice President Pence is urging the country to "acquit and move on." The Washington Post reports many Republican Senators feel the same.
Not so fast. It's not time to move on. These Senate investigations will be essential both to uncover House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff's intrigue in engineering the whistleblower complaint and to expose the solid reasons Trump had for asking the president of Ukraine to help the U.S. investigate the Bidens.
Graham said it's "important" to bring the whistleblower in for questioning to see "if the whistleblower was working with people on Schiff's staff that wanted to take Trump down."
What has already come to light is that on July 26, one day after Trump's controversial call with the Ukrainian president, Schiff hired a friend of the alleged whistleblower to join his staff. Shortly afterward, Schiff's staff met with the whistleblower and guided him on how to file a complaint.
Media outlets have identified the whistleblower as Eric Ciaramella. He doesn't deny it.
A series of State Department emails shows Ciaramella met with Ukrainian prosecutors at the White House in January 2016, when he served on the National Security Council as a Ukraine expert. The prosecutors were concerned about Hunter Biden's lucrative board position on the corrupt energy company Burisma, which was a target of an investigation.
Ciaramella isn't an unbiased informant like whistleblowers should be. He was aware of the Bidens' dealings in Ukraine in 2016 and now he has a leading part in the Democrats' playbook to protect them.
Graham's investigation also needs to examine why intelligence community inspector general Michael Atkinson rated the suspect whistleblower complaint "credible" and sent it to Congress -- the trigger required for Schiff to launch an impeachment investigation.
Whistleblower regulations say that "secondhand or unsubstantiated assertions" are not sufficient, but that's all Ciaramella could provide. He wasn't on the July 25 call. Atkinson testified to the intelligence community behind closed doors, and probably offered answers. But Schiff refused to release Atkinson's testimony, even to the Senators during the trial. A stunning concealment.
Schiff shuts down any questioning about the whistleblower. Don't be fooled. That's Schiff protecting himself. No law shields whistleblowers from a congressional inquiry.
Weeks ago, Senate Finance Committee staff interviewed an IRS whistleblower who says he heard secondhand that senior Treasury officials meddled in the IRS audit of the president or vice president's tax returns.
That IRS whistleblower also lacked firsthand knowledge of misdeeds. Yet House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, a Democrat, used that whistleblower complaint to make his case for the release of Trump's back taxes. Concocting phony whistleblower complaints is the Democrats' new weapon of choice. That's why Graham is right to insist the whistleblower who launched impeachment be grilled in front of the Senate.
The post-impeachment inquiry also needs to dig into the Biden family's corrupt Ukraine dealings -- precisely what Trump asked Ukraine for help doing. Democrats claim allegations of Joe Biden's wrongdoing have been "discredited." Not true.
On Monday's "Today" show, he lamely tried to defend his son. But the issue is not just Hunter Biden's cash haul. Biden himself, as vice president, handed out millions in taxpayer dollars in Ukraine, including a $20 million loan to a longtime campaign donor to open a luxury car dealership there.
Graham insists: "I am going to bring in State Department officials and ask them why didn't you do something about the obvious conflict of interests Joe Biden had? Joe Biden's effort to combat corruption in Ukraine became a joke."
What isn't a joke is putting the nation through impeachment to cover it all up
"Romney is the first senator in the nation’s history to vote to convict a president of his own party."
Romney has proven he is the only Republican Senator left with a conscience, self-respect, and respect for the Constitution.
It's a shame Republicans haven't nominated him to run for President.
"Romney has proven he is the only Republican Senator left with a conscience, self-respect, and respect for the Constitution."
could you explain that?
conscience?
how?
if everyone voted like him to overturn the 2016 election on such a flimsy pretext, we might never recover from the resulting divisiveness
even RINOs like Andrews and Murkowski recognized that
if that happened, how could Mitt sleep at night
self-respect?
seriously?
this is a guy that attacked Trump viciously when he ran, then traveled to Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Ave during the transition and told the world how wonderful Trump is, kowtowing in hopes of being named Secretary of State and now makes a petty attempt at revenge
lot of self-respect there
RESPECT FOR THE CONSTITUTION?
that's risible!
the Constitution says a President should be selected by an Electoral College, whose members were selected by voters
Dems weren't happy with the result of that Constitutional process and began seeking ways to twist the impeachment clause that, if successful, would become a new template for the opposition to every President
the Constitutional election process would always be under a cloud
at least Romney didn't endorse the other attack on the Constitution: "obstruction of Congress"
instead of taking disputes about subpoenas to the judiciary branch, the House tried to have itself declared above the other two branches
this a direct attack on the Constitution
-----
it's amazing how intense hatred for Trump is that absolutely anyone who opposes him becomes a socialist saint
TTF ranted about how evil Romney was just eight years ago
-----
impeachment was intended to remove Presidents who betrayed the public trust
but he has operated exactly as he said he would when he campaigned
no one who voted for him has been surprised
this is exactly what America intended to elect
if Dems don't like it, they better scramble to come up with come achievements and ideas before November
voters will tend to vote again for a President who kept his promises
that doesn't happen often
"It's a shame Republicans haven't nominated him to run for President."
actually, they did once upon a time
it was a grim fairy tale
i think we have a winner !!!!!!
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) declared a “very strong victory” in the Iowa caucuses on Thursday.
Speaking at a press conference in New Hampshire, Sanders pointed to the initial “alignment” of caucusgoers that showed him leading in the raw count by about 6,000 votes.
“What I want to do today, three days late, is to thank the people of Iowa for the very strong victory they gave us at the Iowa caucuses on Monday night,” Sanders said.
“Even though the vote tabulations have been extremely slow, we are now at a point with some 97 percent of the precincts reporting where our campaign is winning the popular initial vote by some 6,000 votes,” he added. “And when 6,000 more people come out for you in an election than your nearest opponent, we here in northern New England call that a victory.”
love it!
loooOOOOooove it so much!!
you guys sure have a job ahead
somehow, you have to have to convince Americans that an elderly socialist who yells a lot is the perfect person to lead the free world
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Democratic anxiety about the 2020 presidential election is edging upward sharply after a some real bad days for the party.
Monday’s Iowa caucuses, expected to be a showpiece for Democrats, turned into a debacle. Results were badly delayed, and the final outcome was still not known late Wednesday afternoon.
The months-long impeachment process came to an end on Wednesday, with President Trump’s acquittal by the Senate.
The president is trumpeted his exoneration in a public appearance at the White House on Thursday in a carnival-like atmosphere with cheering supporters.
Earlier in the week, Trump used his third State of the Union address on Tuesday night to lay out his case for reelection. Nancy Pelosi made a fool of herself, ripping up the speech and waving the pieces around the floor of the House.
On the same day, his job approval rating hit its highest-ever mark in a Gallup poll.
Put it all together, and the clouds are darkening for the Dems.
The results that have trickled out from Iowa increase the chances of a prolonged battle for the Democratic presidential nomination — something that has the potential to be divisive and damaging.
One Democratic strategist who asked for anonymity to talk candidly described the delay in releasing results from the caucuses as a “clusterf---.”
The strategist added, “It confirms the Republican talking point that we can’t get our act together. The bottom line is, if you can’t run a caucus well, how can you run a government?”
Or, like, take over health care?
The party’s internal divides should become even starker in New Hampshire. The two leaders in Iowa — former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — represent very different wings of the party.
Democratic strategist Joel Payne told The Hill, “I think there is certainly some discomfort within the ranks of the Democratic establishment. Trump is coming off some good news for him — he was just acquitted. I think a lot of Democrats feel unsettled because there is no obvious Democratic standard-bearer.”
The progressives who have flocked to Sanders believe the nation needs fundamental change — and they worry the party apparatus has been too slow and unreceptive to this desire.
But Buttigieg, and other centrist voices within Democratic ranks, fret that left-wing candidates like Sanders could hand reelection to Trump in November.
James Carville, best known for his prominent role in former President Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign, argued during an MSNBC appearance on Tuesday that a party that moved to the left risked suffering the same fate as the United Kingdom’s Labour Party, which suffered a catastrophic defeat under left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn in December.
“I am scared to death. Let’s get relevant here, people,” Carville said. “Do we want to be an ideological cult, or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct to be a majority party?”
The former Clinton strategist also expressed alarm at Trump’s standing in the polls.
“Frankly, we got to snap back and get this thing going,” he said. “Think about what would happen if we had four more years of Trump? This is, so far, not so good.”
Other prominent liberal voices have also sounded the alarm.
Van Jones acknowledged on CNN Tuesday night that Trump’s State of the Union address was “a very strong speech” in terms of laying out the president’s case.
Jones added that “the last 24 hours have been a big wake-up call for Democrats.”
Trump is seen by Democrats as an existential threat to American democracy, so the possibility of him winning a second term sparks horror.
What a mess!
The Dems started with dozens of candidates.
How did they wind up with such crap?
Joltin' Joe has left and gone away..
Turns out Mr Electable was always just bumbling, corrupt, and senile....
hey, a light bulb just went off
I had a BRAINSTORM!
what if we call up Hillary and ask her to run again
talk about electable, she won the Popular vote
we gotta stop the runaway train !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"it's amazing how intense hatred for Trump is that absolutely anyone who opposes him becomes a socialist saint"
No one ever referred to him as either a socialist or a saint. Try reading it again when you're sober.
"TTF ranted about how evil Romney was just eight years ago"
"Evil" is an adjective used predominantly by the Christians here. I doubt any of the TTF folks actually called him "evil" even though the don't like him or his policies.
It's amazing how quickly the Cult of Rump has turned to chewing up and spitting out its own (former) conservative members. 8 years ago frantic conservatives were obsessively spamming this blog with propaganda about his "inevitable win." Seeming to believe that if they overwhelmed liberal blogs with enough of their insipid bumper sticker slogans, their wildest wishes would come true. But politics isn't prayer - it doesn't come "true" just because you wish for it really, really hard.
No one here believes Romney is a saint. And I hope I'm never stuck in a position where I have to vote for the lesser of two evils, and one of them is Mittens.
Unlike the Christians here who seem to only be able to categorize people as either pure evil or absolute saints, liberals are able to recognize that there is a spectrum of great-to-good-to-bad-to-worse.
It's doesn't take much to realize that although Romney is far from many people's ideal candidate, anyone who still has 3 working brain cells knows he'd be a far better president than the cancerous pustule whose favorite "executive time" is rage tweeting from the Oval Orifice.
Wake up and smell the covfefe.
... they interfere with the voting process.
Yeah, that doesn't sound fascist at all...
Right-wing backers of President Donald Trump posted the number of the Iowa caucuses reporting hotline on 4chan and encouraged flooding the lines, exacerbating problems already disrupting the caucuses, NBC and Bloomberg reported.
“Clog the lines,” several participants urged on the often-extremist internet message board after the caucuses’ voting reporting app malfunctioned and forced precinct chairs to report results via the hotline.
Soon, the phone volunteers who were supposed to be recording caucus results from precinct chairs on Monday night were also fielding calls from trolls attacking Democrats and expressing support for Trump. Other callers simply tied up the lines, then hung up when volunteers answered.
Democratic Party leaders were told of the phone attack in a conference call Wednesday night, Bloomberg reported.
The communications director for the Iowa Democratic Party, Mandy McClure, confirmed in a statement that there was an “unusually high volume of inbound phone calls to its caucus hotline, including [by] supporters of President Trump.” The “unexplained and at times hostile” calls “contributed to the delay in the Iowa Democratic Party’s collection of results,” she added.
Some 4chan users boasted online about their impact by posting increasing wait times on the message board, while others continued to urge more phone calls. “Make the call lads,” said one. “Uh oh, how unfortunate it would be for a bunch of mischief makers to start clogging the lines,” another reportedly mocked.
Participants on 4chan, who are anonymous, have a reputation for political trolling and online harassment campaigns. They often swarm online polls or flood comments to skew results. It wasn’t immediately clear if a deliberate disruption of the Iowa election reporting process could be prosecuted as a crime.
"No one ever referred to him as either a socialist or a saint"
they don't have to use the specific word
the socialists are indeed treating him as a saint
you must not have access to mass media
I've seen many references to him as a "profile in courage" and describing his deep and reverent faith and refusal to compromise his moral standards
he's actually a craven politician trying desperately for media attention to make himself relevant again
history won't be kind to him
""Evil" is an adjective used predominantly by the Christians here."
not really
"I doubt any of the TTF folks actually called him "evil" even though the don't like him or his policies."
go back and read the posts
this blog clearly demonized him
"It's amazing how quickly the Cult of Rump has turned to chewing up and spitting out its own (former) conservative members. 8 years ago frantic conservatives were obsessively spamming this blog with propaganda about his "inevitable win." Seeming to believe that if they overwhelmed liberal blogs with enough of their insipid bumper sticker slogans, their wildest wishes would come true. But politics isn't prayer - it doesn't come "true" just because you wish for it really, really hard."
well, at that time, the Dems won a very close election by using the IRS to harass political opposition groups from forming
it's the kind of thing that China and Russia do routinely
"No one here believes Romney is a saint. And I hope I'm never stuck in a position where I have to vote for the lesser of two evils, and one of them is Mittens."
I thought you wonderful people never used the term "evil"
you just referred to Romney as one of two evils
"Unlike the Christians here who seem to only be able to categorize people as either pure evil or absolute saints, liberals are able to recognize that there is a spectrum of great-to-good-to-bad-to-worse."
there is zero basis for the first part of that statement
liberals have been canonizing anyone who opposes Trump since before he was elected
it's become a joke
"It's doesn't take much to realize that although Romney is far from many people's ideal candidate, anyone who still has 3 working brain cells knows he'd be a far better president than"
tell that to lower income Americans and minorities who finally have jobs and even wage growth
think that would be true if Romney or Hillary or any other bank buddies were President?
"Right-wing backers of President Donald Trump posted the number of the Iowa caucuses reporting hotline on 4chan and encouraged flooding the lines, exacerbating problems already disrupting the caucuses, NBC and Bloomberg reported."
from the folks who spent years claiming Hillary only lost because of Russian interference, we now have a conspiracy theory to explain why the Dems screwed up so badly on Monday night
even if there were any truth to this, the Dems were supposed to designing a system that was safe from attack
if they ever are in the White House again, Americans will expect them to keep America safe not blame others for their failure to do so
what a bunch of losers!
I knew it, I knew
Hillary will come back and save us and nominate me for the Supreme Court!
Even if she doesn't win, she'll get the popular vote!
She's the Queen of California!!
Former losing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton furthered her comments discrediting Sen. Bernie Sanders as a viable presidential candidate on Thursday, insinuating that his potential failure to "deliver the moon" would detract from efforts to rebuild public trust.
When asked by talk show host Ellen DeGeneres if she wanted to address her prior remarks about the Vermont independent, Clinton noted, "I have a pretty clear perspective about what it's going to take to win, and as I said earlier, that's what I think the key calculation for any voter has to be."
"You've got to be responsible for what you say, and what you say you're going to do," Clinton added. "We need to rebuild trust in our fellow Americans and in our institutions, and if you promise the moon and you can't deliver the moon, then that's going to be one more indicator of how, you know, we just can't trust each other."
"He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done," she says in a new documentary, reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter. "He was a career politician. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it."
Clinton has hinted repeatedly over the last few months that Sanders was unfit to be the Democratic nominee.
For years Mitt Romney had a reputation as a flip-flopper, an opportunist, a politician who would tailor his beliefs to fit whichever group he was trying to please.
Running for office in deep-blue Massachusetts in 1994 and 2002, he pronounced himself strongly pro-choice. Running for the Republican presidential nomination in pro-life Iowa and South Carolina, he became just as strongly pro-life.
As governor of Massachusetts, he produced a universal health care program that prefigured Obamacare. Appealing to GOP voters deeply opposed to Obama, Romney renounced his signature accomplishment.
Running for office in Massachusetts, Romney backed away from the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Running in the Republican primaries, he embraced the GOP's favorite president.
Running for office in Massachusetts, Romney eschewed the label of conservative Republican. "My views are progressive," he said in 2002, pronouncing himself a "moderate." Ten years later, running in the GOP primaries, he famously declared himself "severely conservative."
And so on. Romney could never escape the opportunist label, mostly because it fit.
Until now. As the junior senator from Utah, on Wednesday Romney voted to convict and remove President Trump from office, becoming the first senator in U.S. history to vote to remove a president of his own party.
To hear some mainstream journalists tell the story, Romney's years of opportunism just melted away, replaced by a profile in courage.
"A profile in courage," declared the Washington Post.
"A profile in courage," declared the Atlantic.
"A profile in courage," declared CNN.
Romney meticulously prepared the media rollout of his new profile in courage. Before he announced his intention to vote against Trump, he arranged for interviews with the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, and Fox News -- all embargoed until he made his decision public on the Senate floor.
"Romney's media plan around this is really a wonder to behold," noted Buzzfeed's Ben Smith.
"His career...is littered with examples of moments where it seems like he wanted to be on both sides of an issue, or he 'evolved' in ways that felt opportunistic," the Times' Michael Barbaro said. "Yet at this moment, he becomes a senator of conscience."
But Barbaro, who covered Romney's 2012 presidential run, wondered whether it might not be that simple, whether all might not be exactly as it seems, whether there might still be a bit of Old Romney at work. "But it's a moment where his vote to convict the president on one of two counts has no impact whatsoever on the process," Barbaro said. "Romney is the lone dissenting voice in a case that he can have no influence over."
Now, Romney will take plenty of hits from the Trump side, and from the president himself. But there are clearly benefits as well. So, just as it was in the old days, the question is: Who is Romney trying to please?
It is often remarked that Donald Trump, at 73 years of age, is not going to change. That certainly appears to be true. And what about the 72 year-old Mitt Romney? A career in politics led to his vote Wednesday. Although he is a man with some undeniably good qualities, those who have watched him over the years will wonder whether the vote was truly something new or the Romney they have known for a long time.
NASHUA, N.H. —Outside the castle-themed Radisson Hotel where Joe Biden has been staying, his campaign bus was parked and ready for events.
But on Thursday, just five days before the crucial primary here, the candidate was nowhere to be found.
Biden spent Thursday gathered with his top advisers at his home in Wilmington, Del., seeking a last-ditch effort to save his candidacy, beginning with a debate Friday night.
He held no public events.
Following dismal results in the Iowa caucuses that have rattled many in his orbit, his campaign is now simultaneously trying to lower expectations here — with some suggesting they would consider a finish as low as third place a victory — while also bracing for a second straight difficult Election Day.
In one troublesome sign for the financially strapped campaign, it canceled nearly $150,000 in television ads in South Carolina, which votes Feb. 29, and moved the spending to Nevada, whose Feb. 22 contest follows New Hampshire’s.
The move seemed to acknowledge that Biden’s campaign cannot sustain a continued run of bad news.
Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) finished at the top in Iowa, continued his media blitz, appearing on shows from ABC’s “The View” to the gossip site TMZ, where he argued that he — not Biden — was the most electable Democratic candidate.
“If your focus is on electability . . . the best way, I think, to demonstrate you’re a candidate who can win is to go win,” he said on TMZ.
Some of Biden’s supporters were growing agitated with the campaign, struggling to point to any one piece of it that has been successful. His organizing operation struggled in Iowa, his fundraising numbers have never been impressive, and his message is often muddled.
Biden’s desperation showed Wednesday when he dedicated a third of a speech to criticizing his rivals — after long insisting he would not attack others.
Re-election, here we come !!!!!!!
(Bloomberg) -- U.S. employers ramped up hiring in January and wage gains rebounded, providing fresh evidence of a durable jobs market that backs the Federal Reserve’s decision to stop cutting interest rates and hands President Donald Trump an early election-year boost.
Payrolls increased by 225,000 after a 147,000 gain in December, according to a Labor Department data Friday that topped all estimates of economists. The jobless rate was 3.6%, still near a half-century low, while average hourly earnings climbed 3.1% from a year earlier.
The report shows the economy has retained strength, which Trump has heralded as a key tenet of his re-election campaign and this week in his State of the Union address. The solid hiring defies expectations for a step down to a slower pace of job growth as businesses delay investment, and exceeded the 175,000 average monthly gain for 2019.
re-election, here we come !!!!!!!!!!!!
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' views on their personal financial situation have been climbing since 2018 and are now at or near record highs in Gallup's trends. Nearly six in 10 Americans (59%) now say they are better off financially than they were a year ago, up from 50% last year.
The current 59% of Americans who say they are better off financially than they were a year ago is more than the all-time high of 58% in January 1999. That was recorded during the dot-com boom, with conditions similar to the current state of the economy -- a stock market rocketing to then-record highs and unemployment at multidecade lows.
In addition to U.S. adults' highly positive report on their current financial situation, Americans are also expressing peak optimism about their future personal financial situation. About three in four U.S. adults (74%) predict they will be better off financially a year from now, the highest in Gallup's trend since 1977
damn, that economy be good !
I was slightly surprised when Greta Thunberg announced at Davos that we had eight years left to save the planet.
As long as that?
Admittedly, that’s four years less than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who put it at 12, although, come to think of it, that was last January, so presumably she now thinks we’ve got 11 years left.
But some doomsayers have been much less optimistic.
According to Peter Wadhams, a Cambridge professor interviewed in the Guardian in 2013, Arctic ice would disappear by 2015 if we didn’t mend our ways, while Gordon Brown announced in 2009 that we had just 50 days to save the Earth.
Then again, playing the long game can also catch up with you.
In 2004, Observer readers were told Britain would have a ‘Siberian’ climate in 16 years’ time.
We’re supposed to be in the midst of that now.
On the face of it, we should be grateful that these gloomsters make such oddly precise predictions.
It’s like putting a sell-by date on their credibility.
After all, when the soothsayer in question is proved wrong, they just shuffle off with their tail between their legs, never to be heard from again, right?
In eight years’ time, when the planet hasn’t disappeared in a cloud of toxic gas, presumably Greta will throw up her arms and say: ‘Sorry guys. Looked like I was wrong about you ruining my childhood. I’m now going to become a flight attendant.’
But, weirdly, that never happens.
No matter how often these ‘experts’ are shown to be no better at forecasting than Paul the Octopus — worse, actually — they just carry on as if nothing has happened.
Take Paul Ehrlich, author of the 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb. ‘We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years,’ he told the New York Times in 1969.
Ehrlich also predicted America would be subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980.
Ehrlich’s ‘bomb’ failed to explode, but his career didn’t.
On the contrary, he’s now the Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford and the president of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology.
All I can say is, it’s lucky he didn’t become a bookmaker.
The fact that Ehrlich is still an eminent environmentalist — and Prince Charles can pose alongside Greta Thunberg in Davos in spite of claiming we had eight years left to save the planet 11 years ago — helps explain why these Mystic Megs have no hesitation about making these forecasts.
It’s a great way of drawing attention to their cause and there’s literally no cost to getting it wrong.
The panjandrums of the mainstream media forgive them for spinning these yarns because they know they’re doing it ‘for the right reasons’.
They’re not peddling alarmist nonsense — no, they’re just exaggerating the risk.
In any case, they might be right and doesn’t the ‘precautionary principle’ dictate that we should change our behavior just in case?
Oddly, these same secular humanists don’t apply the logic of Pascal’s Wager to believing in God.
That would be unscientific.
But is there also something else going on?
I’m generous enough to think that these activists are not cynics trying to grab headlines, but are sincere in their prophecies of doom.
For instance, when George Monbiot predicted a ‘structural global famine’ in as little as 10 years’ time if we didn’t start eating less meat — this was in 2002 — he genuinely believed it.
And when that famine failed to materialize, he didn’t abandon his apocalyptic environmentalism, but doubled-down, as readers of his Guardian column can testify.
It’s a textbook example of cognitive dissonance — of not abandoning your beliefs when they run aground on the shore of reality.
I am reminded of the members of the Heaven’s Gate cult who believed there was a spaceship flying in the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet that would beam them up and transport them to a distant planet.
When the comet came and they remained on Earth, they didn’t conclude they were wrong about the spaceship.
No, it must be concealed by some clever cloaking device, and the way to get on board was to commit suicide so their spirits could float upwards through the atmosphere.
Sure enough, on March 26, 1997 the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department found 39 bodies in the cult’s headquarters in Rancho Santa Fe.
I’m not wishing a similar fate on the current crop of doomsday cultists.
But I do wish we would take them a smidgen less seriously when they turn out to be wrong — as they always do.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal appeals court in Washington on Friday dismissed a lawsuit charging that President Donald Trump has illegally profited off the presidency.
The lawsuit the court dismissed was filed by Democratic members of Congress in 2017.
The lawsuit had charged that the president violated the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting benefits to his businesses from foreign governments without congressional approval.
A lower court had allowed the lawsuit to go forward.
Trump, speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday, held a copy of the decision and called it a “total win” on “another phony case.”
"Ehrlich also predicted America would be subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980.
Ehrlich’s ‘bomb’ failed to explode, but his career didn’t."
Ehrlich was born in 1932, at the end of the Great Depression, and was a young teenager at the end of WWII. No one had a full idea of the technological progress that would occur over the next few decades - not the least of which were better farming practices that would avoid another Dust Bowl that caused thousands of starving families to leave Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
Our country had already experienced the problems Ehrlich wrote about, and it was not difficult to see that if we kept on doing things the same way, we'd be in a world of hurt.
Fortunately, books like his and Rachael Carson's "Silent Spring" motivated people to take actions to help avert disasters. While conservatives were denying there were even any problems, college educated liberals went on to invent new technologies, outlaw the most dangerous of pesticides, and work to preserve biodiversity. That work continues to this day, with notable achievements like avoiding acid rain from destroying our forests and reducing ozone depleting HFCs.
All of this was done while corporations were screaming that these efforts would "destroy our economy" with "job killing regulations."
Obviously they didn't destroy our economy, the ozone hole has shrunk, and forest die offs from acid rain are no longer an issue. Oh, and the Cuyahoga River doesn't catch on fire every few years anymore. (Thank you EPA.)
"Oddly, these same secular humanists don’t apply the logic of Pascal’s Wager to believing in God."
It's not odd at all. Despite religious folks insisting all sorts of different gods are real, and predicting things like Jesus' second coming and a massive zombie apocalypse, they've never actually been able to provide any hard evidence for a god.
Scientists since the seventies have been warning us about warming temperatures, melting glaciers, and rising sea levels for decades now. In fact, we now know that oil companies paid for scientists to create counter-factual arguments to undermine legitimate science.
And for the past few decades we've watch global average air and water temps rise, glaciers shrink, and islands starting to disappear into the sea.
Fox Island is in the Chesapeake Bay - at least for a little while:
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/environment/ac-cn-fox-island-bay-foundation-1018-20191018-wgac7b26ejaadl4g34q6o5tmfi-story.html
A snip: "After analyzing historic aerial photos, the foundation estimates the bay has swallowed up more than 70% of the island’s land in the last 50 years."
Tangier Island won't be far behind:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tangier-island-disappearing-sea-level-rise-2017-6
https://www.rei.com/blog/news/chesapeake-bays-vanishing-island
If we make it through the climate crisis, it will be because scientists and liberals worked to fix the problems.
Meanwhile, I fully expect conservatives to completely deny that there even is a problem.
Once we get past it though, conservatives will claim "See! I told you! There wasn't really a problem!"
The highest temperature ever recorded on the Antarctic continent was 18.3 °C (64.9 °F) at Esperanza Base, on the Antarctic Peninsula, on 6 February 2020, beating the previous record of 17.5 °C (63.5 °F) at the same location on 24 March 2015.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/fossil-fuels/carbon-capture-power-plant-co2-concrete
On a vast grassy field in northern Wyoming, a coal-fired power plant will soon do more than generate electricity. The hulking facility will also create construction materials by supplying scientists with carbon dioxide from its exhaust stream.
A team from the University of California, Los Angeles, has developed a system that transforms “waste CO2” into gray blocks of concrete. In March, the researchers will relocate to the Wyoming Integrated Test Center, part of the Dry Fork power plant near the town of Gillette. During a three-month demonstration, the UCLA team plans to siphon half a ton of CO2 per day from the plant’s flue gas and produce 10 tons of concrete daily.
“We’re building a first-of-a-kind system that will show how to do this at scale,” said Gaurav Sant, a civil engineering professor who leads the team.
Carbon Upcycling UCLA is one of 10 teams competing in the final round of the NRG COSIA Carbon XPrize. The global competition aims to develop breakthrough technologies for converting carbon emissions into valuable products. Four more finalists are demonstrating projects in Wyoming, including CarbonCure, a Canadian startup making greener concrete, and Carbon Capture Machine, a Scottish venture focused on building materials. (Five other teams are competing at a natural gas plant in Alberta, Canada.)
Worldwide, hundreds of companies and research groups are working to keep CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it someplace else—including in deep geologic formations, soils, soda bubbles, and concrete blocks. By making waste CO2 into something marketable, entrepreneurs can begin raising revenues needed to scale their technologies, said Giana Amador, managing director of Carbon180, a nonprofit based in Oakland, California.
The potential global market for waste-CO2 products could be $5.9 trillion a year, of which $1.3 trillion includes cements, concretes, asphalts, and aggregates, according to Carbon180. Amador noted the constant and growing worldwide demand for building materials, and a rising movement within U.S. states and other countries to reduce construction-related emissions.
Cement, a key ingredient in concrete, has a particularly big footprint. It’s made by heating limestone with other materials, and the resulting chemical reactions can produce significant CO2 emissions. Scorching, energy-intensive kilns add even more. The world produces 4 billion tons of cement every year, and as a result, the industry generates about 8 percent of global CO2 emissions, according to think tank Chatham House.
The cement industry is one that’s really difficult to decarbonize, and we don’t have a lot of cost-effective solutions today,” Amador said. Carbon “utilization” projects, she added, can start to fill that gap.
The UCLA initiative began about six years ago, as researchers contemplated the chemistry of Hadrian’s Wall—the nearly 1,900-year-old Roman structure in northern England. Masons built the wall by mixing calcium oxide with water, then letting it absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. The resulting reactions produced calcium carbonate, or limestone. But that cementation process can take years or decades to complete, an unimaginably long wait by today’s standards. “We wanted to know, ‘How do you make these reactions go faster?’” Sant recalled.
The answer was portlandite, or calcium hydroxide. The compound is combined with aggregates and other ingredients to create the initial building element. That element then goes into a reactor, where it comes in contact with the flue gas coming directly out of a power plant’s smokestack. The resulting carbonation reaction forms a solid building component akin to concrete.
Sant likened the process to baking cookies. By tinkering with the ingredients, curing temperatures, and the flow of CO2, they found a way to, essentially, transform the wet dough into baked goods. “You stick it in a convection oven, and when they come out they’re ready to eat. This is exactly the same,” he said.
The UCLA system is unique among green concrete technologies because it doesn’t require the expensive step of capturing and purifying CO2 emissions from power plants. Sant said his team’s approach is the only one so far that directly uses the flue gas stream. The group has formed a company, CO2Concrete, to commercialize their technology with construction companies and other industrial partners.
After Wyoming, Sant and colleagues will dismantle the system and haul it to Wilsonville, Alabama. Starting in July, they’ll repeat the three-month pilot at the National Carbon Capture Center, a research facility sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The UCLA team will learn in September if they’ve won a $7.5 million Carbon XPrize, though Sant said he’s not fretting about the outcome. “Winning is great, but what we’re really focused on is making a difference and [achieving] commercialization,” he said.
"I am not concerned right now about "unification.""
no kidding..
"We will have to stand together when the time comes, but now we have a sifting process where we need to pick a candidate."
well, what you've done is shift out all the minorities before voting even began
"This is the time to argue among ourselves, to select a candidate who we think will best serve the country."
and illegal immigrants
in addition to the white elites, you'd also looking who will best serve illegal aliens
Trump has cracked down on illegal aliens and suddenly lower class minorities have the lowest unemployment in history
coincidence?
Dems obviously don't seek what's best for the country, as a whole
"If they are called a "socialist""
you mean if that's what they call themselves
"or an unprincipled centrist,"
oh, I'd say Biden has been dispensed with
permanently
"well, if that's our candidate then that's the choice; you and I might have a preference but either kind of candidate can lead the country back to freedom, democracy, stability."
right now, we have all three
Dems want to replace freedom with excessive regulation
they want to replace democracy with a partisan misuse of impeachment to overturn an democratic election
they want to replace stability with a destabilizing takeover of swaths of the economy by government and moral relativism
think of a country run like the Iowa democratic causcuses
that's right!
the Iowa caucuses
Why Reverend O'Neal Dozier Left The GOP and Denounces Donald Trump
Some quotes from Reverend Dozier, 30 year Republican, in the video link above:
"I can no longer be in the party that is headed up by Donald Trump. I left him because of his stupidity."
"And secondly, I left the Republican Party because the Republican Party is now walking in the steps of Donald Trump."
"I held my nose and I voted for Donald Trump to stop Hillary Clinton. I wish that I would not have voted for the presidential election, because I hate the whole thought that I voted for Donald Trump."
"He does things that sane people don't do."
"The Republican Party has taken on the characteristics of Donald Trump."
"He seems to go after people of color. He goes after the NBA players, Mexicans, the Muslims. He was feeding red meat to his base when he attacked the NFL players, when he said what he said, when he called them "son of a bitches." He knew what he was doing. He knew that his base would love that."
"I am also appalled at the fact that the Church of Jesus Christ is not standing up against Donald Trump."
"The Republican Party looks bad now. It's fallen. It has fallen morally, it has fallen politically, socially, and in every other way."
All this from a man who preached against gay marriage from the pulpit.
here's what morally outstanding Dems are up to:
SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — Republican Sen. Susan Collins says she's getting death threats after her vote to acquit President Donald Trump at his impeachment trial, saying three of them were deemed “credible” and are being investigated.
Collins made the disclosure Friday while addressing the Maine Chiefs of Police Association winter conference.
“I just want you to know that I’ve always loved you and appreciated you. But now I have a real personal appreciation for all that you do to keep us safe,” Collins told the group in South Portland, Maine.
Collins also received threats before when she voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In October 2018, a threatening letter was sent to her Bangor home that claimed to contain deadly ricin. Her husband and the couple's Labrador retriever, Pepper, were both quarantined for a time
Triggered Trumpers call for violence against Michigan Democrats and Muslims in vile Facebook page
An anti-Gov. Gretchen Whitmer group on Facebook devolved into a vile platform that promoted violence against Democrats and Muslims and churned out degrading comments about women.
But on Friday afternoon, the group's creator deactivated the page in response to questions from Metro Times.
The public group, “People vs Gov. Gretchen Whitmer,” was rapidly growing, attracting nearly 9,000 conservatives of all kinds – elected officials, veterans, firefighters, law enforcement officers, educators, pastors, business owners, political candidates, militia members, blue-collar workers, and your garden variety trolls.
Metro Times identified dozens of recent posts promoting or threatening violence, primarily against Whitmer, U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Elissa Slotkin, American Muslims, and Dearborn. Hundreds of comments were posted each day, and many included vulgar insults against women, Muslims, Democrats, and LGTBQ+ communities.
Tlaib, who is a Muslim American from Detroit, was a common target of the vitriol.
“She needs a bullet between her eyes,” Spencer Hayward wrote.
Carl Wilhelm Sr. posted, “How many teeth you figure you could knock out with one swipe with a baseball bat.”
Mike Nixon suggested, “set that bitch on fire.”
In an exchange about a photo showing Tlaib posing with the Palestinian flag, group members called for the congresswoman’s death.
“Die bitch,” Gerald Carter wrote.
Jeannie Percy added, “I wish someone would find this b**** in a dark alley.”
Tommy D’avignon followed up: “Death to this bitch and her voters.”
These are just a few examples of the hostile comments that fill the grammar-challenged page every day.
“We overflood them with imminent death threats, until it stops, one way or another,” Michael Dearing explained to the group.
Created in March 2019, the group was intended to “stand up against” Whitmer, arguing she’s “tanking our economy” and “ruining small business.” But as more people joined and shared deceptive memes and propaganda masquerading as news, the tone of the page became more sinister, conspiratorial, and hateful.
One story from the conservative site Outraged Patriot falsely suggested Slotkin “admits her full allegiance to Qassam Soleimani,” the Iranian general who was killed in a U.S. airstrike.
Member Merek Smith suggested Slotkin “should be burned and raped.”
“Off with her head,” wrote Joe Hackett, whose main Facebook image is a handgun.
“She needs to be hung in the streets for treason,” Mike Repke responded.
Many of the threats are very specific. More than a dozen members, for example, called for violence against Tlaib at an event that she was expected to attend this weekend in Livonia. (She is not attending the event.)
“I hope someone is waiting for her a few hundred yards away with a scope ready to make that pink mist spray from her skull,” Michael Buschert posted on Wednesday.
Dan Hester responded, “we should hang out, i will train you…..”
Robert Heidorf chimed in, “Dame like your thinking and many more in them cross hairs to.”
Members also raised the specter of violence at the Iraqi Consulate in Southfield, where Muslims were gathering this week to mourn Iraqi victims of a recent U.S. bombing of an Iranian general and others.
“This is the type of shit they should shoot up instead of churches lolol. Yeah I said it,” Coterie Chapel wrote.
Nellie Snookie Detwiler responded, “You say what many of us think but bit our tongues lol.”
Danny Stray chimed in, “Burn them and their mosques!”
Lonnie E. Root agreed: “Just kill them all.”
Fred Thornell went even further: “Fuck it blow them and Detroit up doesn’t bother me none if we loose them both.”
One of the group’s members is state Sen. Peter Lucido, a Republican from Shelby Township who shared at least seven anti-Whitmer posts since Nov. 29. His office did not respond to Metro Times’ request for an interview.
Other members include at least three Republican congressional candidates (Mike Detmer, Alan Hoover, and Earl Lackie), retired Livingston County Deputy Sheriff Dave Loar, Michigan GOP field director Kipp Welch II, and employees for the state of Michigan and numerous towns and cities.
One of the common themes of the group is sexism. Common names used to refer to women in politics are “fat bitch,” “cunt,” “skank,” “twat,” “hag,” “bimbo,” and “whore.”
“A womans place is in the house not the Senate,” Doug Lewis declared. “This is what happens when you put women in positions of authority.”
James G. Sarah III said “women shouldn’t be in a political position.”
LGBTQ communities also were targets of hate.
“People that are gay have a mental sickness and should be treated,” Zach Eddy posted. Brian Schulz added, “Them lgbtqp queers have the highest suicide rate cuz they’re so confused. If we leave them alone they will follow their own demise.”
Members were furious about a news story about Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson considering adding a third gender option on driver’s licenses.
“I really don’t know how much more i can take of this bullshit,” Sarah Loach of Flint wrote. "Bloodpressure rises every day. I am about to go postal.”
Muslims are the most common target of threats and calls for violence.
“Bomb Dearborn!” Chad Kenworthy posted on Friday. Bruce Botwright agreed: “Blow the fuck out of dearborn now.”
Under a video showing Muslims praying at a Six Flags theme park, group members expressed outrage.
“Umm BOOM, rebuild 6flags .…. simple,” wrote Rick A. Steele, whose Facebook profile says he’s the CEO and owner of Mill Creek Taxidermy in Redford.
Albert Viotti added, “So long Six Flags! A big bomb would be bad ass.”
President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade wars are expected to cost the average American family $1,277 this year, according to a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The figure is based on the negative impact of tariffs on economic growth, as well as higher prices to consumers as American manufacturers and retailers are forced to pay tariffs on imports.
Trump has boasted that trade wars are “easy to win,” and has repeatedly falsely insisted that China is paying tariffs directly into the U.S. Treasury. In fact, American companies importing goods or supplies pay tariffs enacted by Trump, and typically pass on those costs to consumers. In addition, U.S. industries are hurt by retaliatory tariffs enacted by other nations when American companies try to sell their products abroad.
The CBO also warns in its report that uncertainty about the future and trading relationships can cause companies to delay or drop investments in their operations, further dampening American economic growth.
“Tariffs are expected to reduce the level of real GDP by roughly 0.5 percent and raise consumer prices by 0.5 percent in 2020,” the report says. “As a result, tariffs are also projected to reduce average real household income by $1,277 (in 2019 dollars) in 2020.”
The extra costs would effectively wipe out savings from Trump’s tax cut enacted in 2017 for the average taxpayer, estimated by JP Morgan as $1,300 a year.
The U.S. and China signed a Phase One deal in their trade war in January, but many of the tariffs are expected to remain in place until a final agreement is reached.
"President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade wars are expected to cost the average American family $1,277 this year, according to a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office."
unfortunately, electing a Dem would cost the average American family about 4 times that annually
the CBO doesn't have a particularly impressive record for economic predictions
one of Trump's key achievements is to recognize that our main strategic competitor is not Russia but China
to not take action would be treason
The chairman of the Conservative Political Action Conference warned in an interview Sunday that he would be “afraid” for the “physical safety” of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) if he attempts to attend this month’s annual convention in Maryland.
The ominous warning follows Chairman Matt Schlapp’s Twitter attack on the senator last month after Romney went against the party line to call for witnesses in Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, subsequently voted last week to convict Trump of abuse of power, the sole member of the GOP to do so. The senator cited his oath to God and the dictates of his religion to do “my duty.”
Schlapp’s tweet notified Romney that he was “not invited” to CPAC — though it was unclear if the senator ever planned to attend. The tweet included an unflattering, almost frightening, image of Romney.
Schlapp told Greta Van Susteren on “Full Court Press” Sunday that Romney might be allowed to attend the conference — as a “nonconservative” — at some point “in the future.” But he noted that it could be too dangerous for Romney to do so now.
“We won’t credential him as a conservative. I suppose if he wants to come as a nonconservative and debate an issue with us, maybe in the future we would have him come. This year, I would actually be afraid for his physical safety because people hate him so much,” Schlapp said.
Romney has been the subject of nonstop attacks from Trump and other Republicans since he voted to convict last week. The president has retweeted inflammatory and unfounded conspiracy theories about the onetime GOP standard bearer, and at least one member of his party has called for Romney to be expelled from the Republican caucus.
Schlapp called the political atmosphere in Washington “cancerous.” Ironically, he also told Van Susteren: “We actually need political leaders that can help all of us get to a better place.”
New York (CNN Business)President Donald Trump says he is particularly pleased with the jobs created during his three years in office.
"We're producing jobs like you have never seen before in this country," he said during a recent speech in Michigan.
But you don't have to go back far to find three years of better job growth. Just to back to the previous three years under Barack Obama.
During Trump's first 36 months in office, the US economy has gained 6.6 million jobs. But during a comparable 36-month period at the end of Obama's tenure, employers added 8.1 million jobs, or 23% more than what has been added since Trump took office.
The average monthly gain so far under Trump is 182,000 jobs. During the last 36 months under Obama, employers were adding an average of 224,000 jobs a month.
On Friday, the Labor Department reported that employers added a fairly robust 225,000 jobs in January. But it also made some revisions to past data, which lowered many previous job growth estimates. While some of the revisions go all the way back to the last century, most of the changes to data took place during 2018 and 2019. So the revisions reduced the gains during Obama's final three years by 47,000 jobs, but it reduced the gains during Trump's tenure by a total of 354,000 jobs.
And Trump's job record is not unique. A gain of more than 6.6 million jobs during a 35-month period has been common during the 80 years that the Labor Department has counted jobs. There are hundreds of overlapping 36-month periods of better growth on record.
At this point in his first and only term, Jimmy Carter had enjoyed a gain of about 10.1 million jobs. Employers added 8.5 million jobs during the first 36 months of Bill Clinton's term and 7.8 million jobs during the first 36 months of Lyndon Johnson's tenure, even though the labor force at that time was less than half the size of what it is today.
An interesting article from Nov 2018...
There has been a great deal of political and media attention paid to the rate of economic growth under the Trump administration during 2017 and 2018. President Trump has often called the results under his administration unprecedented. His statements are unfounded: while wage growth has been strong, most other measures of economic growth under the current administration are less impressive than they were during the tail end of the previous administration, Barack Obama’s second term.
As Election Day nears, we’ve dug into the last four years, spanning the end and the beginning of two different sets of executive leadership, and now let the facts speak for themselves. By comparing the rate of growth of key economic variables in the last years of the Barack Obama administration to the record thus far in the Trump administration, we present a report card on results under the two presidents.
1. GDP Growth Was Higher on Average under Obama in 2014 and 2015 Than Compared to Trump in 2017 and 2018
2. Monthly Job Growth Was Higher under Obama Than in Trump’s First Two Years
3. The Unemployment Rate Was Falling Faster under Obama in 2014 and 2015 than in Trump’s First Two Years
4. Growth in the Employment-to-Population Rate Has Slowed under Trump
5. Wage Growth Grew Sharply in 2016 and 2017—Until 2018, When It Slowed
6. The Racial Pay Gap Declined in Obama’s Final Years—It Has Widened Under Trump
7. Adult and Child Poverty Rates Have Fallen—But Much Faster under Obama
8. The Federal Deficit Is Growing Rapidly under Trump
9. Growth in Worker Productivity Rose Slowly under Both Trump and Obama—But Remains Weak under Trump
10. Despite Trump’s Massive Corporate Tax Cuts, Business Investment Isn’t Growing “Like Never Before”
11. It’s True Stocks Are at Their Highest Levels—But Stock Prices Grew Faster after the Reelections of Both Clinton and Obama
"An interesting article from Nov 2018.."
anything more recent?
Trump's now been in office 36 months and has, on a monthly basis, confounded the predictions of economists
indeed, his is the only economic boom in decades where the lower income and minorities citizens have enjoyed increasing growth and opportunity
Dems have been reduced to arguing that, yeah, the economy is doing great under Trump but could be even better if not for Trump's trade war
unfortunately for Dems, Americans now perceive that they are hoping for a recession to increase their odds of election
the spectacle last summer when they told America we were beginning a recession because of some inverted interest rates, only to be contradicted by more stats within 24 hours, was a catastrophe for Dems
btw, Trump is favored to win the election by odds-makers in Vegas
last week was arguably the worst for Dems since Trump took office
I always thought the election was going to be a riot but I had no idea the hilarity would begin so early
the Keystone Cops routine in Iowa was priceless
what could they possibly do for an encore this week?
prediction: Sanders will win New Hampshire
Biden will rebound in Nevada and South Carolina
then, the Super Tuesday states will divide evenly between Bloomberg, Biden, Buttagieg, and Sanders
total chaos at that point
they'll be savaging each other like mad and Trump will tweet along joyfully
the House will start new investigations of Trump
Trump will continue to add achievements
and he will continue his push for minority support, much like his push into union workers in 2016, and minority support for Trump will grow enough to seriously threaten any vague chance the Dems have
in November, Sanders wins California, Vermont, Massachusetts, and DC
the rest go to Trump
it's surprising that Tulsi Gabbard isn't doing better since Hillary says the Russians are interfering in the election to help her
and you know how honest Hillary is
If she says it, it must be true !!
only one scenario would be better for Trump than Sanders winning: a brokered convention that turns to dark horse Adam Schiff !!!!!!!!!!!
NASHUA, N.H. — The chance of a contested Democratic convention has increased after the muddle of the Iowa caucuses, raising anxieties ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
Iowa’s delayed results left five top-tier candidates soldiering on, even as New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg blankets television airwaves with advertisements ahead of his contesting of delegates in March.
This has all raised the likelihood of a longer primary fight where none of the candidates might win the 1,990 delegates needed to clinch the party’s presidential nomination.
“It’s possible, it’s quite possible,” said Chris Spirou, the former New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman and veteran political operative in the state. “I think Bloomberg entering into this thing provides a much greater possibility of a brokered convention.”
A brokered convention, which would increase the power of the party officials known as super delegates, would be good news for President Trump, since those who lose such a contest might be even more angered over the process.
“It would be much better if we had a candidate win a sufficient number of delegates going into the convention,” Spirou said.
Iowa appears to have ended with a near tie between former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
The two of them and three others — former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), all have reason to continue on after Iowa. The field still consists of 11 candidates in all, including two billionaires in Bloomberg and Tom Steyer.
The latest forecast model from FiveThirtyEight put the chances of no candidate winning a majority of delegates at high.
No candidate reached the 30 percent mark in Iowa or dropped out after the caucuses, which have traditionally winnowed the field.
The centrist vote is deeply divided at the moment between Buttigieg, Biden and Klobuchar, who is getting a burst of momentum heading into Election Day after raising $2 million in the hours after the New Hampshire debate.
Sanders appears to have galvanized the left, but Warren has a lot of money, a top-notch organization and an energized base of supporters eager to see the first woman elected to the White House.
Steyer found little support in Iowa but is running strong in South Carolina. And businessman Andrew Yang and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) have their own pockets of support in New Hampshire.
“There’s a real possibility of a brokered convention and that in itself may be enough to serve as motivation for some who might have otherwise dropped out, to hang around longer to see if they can’t have a place in this thing and play a part in determining the nominee,” said Jim Demers, a veteran Democratic strategist in New Hampshire. “Resources will be key.”
EXETER, N.H. ― As the other presidential candidates crisscrossed the state trying to consolidate support from Democrats in the final weekend before the New Hampshire primary, Bill Weld was on a far more elusive hunt: a search for pre-Trump Republicans.
At stops up and down the state Saturday and Sunday, Weld warned Republicans that if they believed in what the party stood for in the decades before Donald Trump won the nomination and then the presidency, they needed to mobilize now to stop him.
“It’s crunch time for the New Hampshire primary, which is Tuesday. But I’m here to say that it’s also crunch time for the country,” he told some 130 attendees at a town hall he held at the Keene Public Library, predicting that Trump would behave in an even more authoritarian manner in a second term.
He pointed to Trump’s frequent line at his rallies: “‘You have no choice. You have to vote for me,’ and everyone laughs, because they know, of course, they do have a choice, and that’s what elections are all about. But Mr. Trump is absolutely serious when he says, ‘You have no choice.’ And all of us, if we vote to reelect Mr. Trump, we better get used to hearing those words, because we’re going to be hearing them a lot more.”
Weld was a top Justice Department official under President Ronald Reagan and then a two-term governor of Massachusetts. Yet that seems to carry little currency in a party where about 9 in 10 primary voters are solidly behind an incumbent president whose demeanor and guiding philosophy have little in common with the party’s most iconic names.
“Will the party survive? I don’t know,” said Claira Pirozzi Monier, a former Reagan administration official and now a top Weld supporter in New Hampshire.
Weld, for his part, has been pushing that theme hard ― that if Trump wins a second term, it will mean the end of the Republican Party. He predicted an end similar to that of the Whig Party, which fractured in the 1850s.
He told an audience of about 75 at the Whipple Free Library in New Boston that “half of that split” came to be called the Know Nothing Party. “They also were anti-immigrant, held violent rallies and were given to conspiracy theories. Does that sound familiar?” he said.
“I see trouble for the Republican Party unless this boil is lanced, soon. And I think the latest this boil can be lanced is this November 2020,” he said, predicting that if Trump winds up as the nominee, he will take the Republican Senate down with him. “When they lose the Senate, there will be a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and, unless I’m the nominee, there will be a Democratic president, I hope, if the alternative is Mr. Trump.”
"Weld warned Republicans that if they believed in what the party stood for in the decades before Donald Trump won the nomination and then the presidency, they needed to mobilize now to stop him."
and what did the party stand for that is different now?
"Weld was a top Justice Department official under President Ronald Reagan and then a two-term governor of Massachusetts."
that's so sad
being the GOP governor of Massachusetts pretty much messes up a person for life
"Weld, for his part, has been pushing that theme hard ― that if Trump wins a second term, it will mean the end of the Republican Party."
oh yeah, any moron knows that winning the White House is the end for any political party
It's good to know Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is on the job today.
yeah, that guy that just insults trump without giving any specifics is ridiculous
let's see if he ever replies
One of President Trump’s few Republican challengers in the 2020 presidential race has dropped out — but not without a few parting shots.
Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) ended his presidential bid on CNN Friday morning, and said he would be throwing all of his support toward the eventual Democratic candidate, as “any Democrat would be better than Trump in the White House.”
He added that, “I would rather have ... a socialist in the White House than a dictator, than a king, than Donald Trump.”
Walsh also wrote in a post on Twitter TWTR, -3.00% that, “I’m suspending my campaign, but our fight against the Cult of Trump is just getting started.”
He claimed that the GOP as it stands today is “not my party,” writing on his campaign page that “It’s incumbent on us as a country — and as citizens — to reject the current direction of the Republican Party and work to elect Democrats who are closest to our values.”
Walsh revealed in an op-ed for the Washington Post published late Thursday afternoon that getting booed at the Republican caucus in Iowa was the final slap in the face that convinced him to drop out. Trump won about 97% of the vote in the Republican Party’s Iowa caucuses earlier this week. Walsh and former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld each claimed about 1%.
“But leaving the caucus that night, I realized once and for all that nobody can beat Trump in a Republican primary. Not just because it’s become his party, but because it has become a cult, and he’s a cult leader. He doesn’t have supporters; he has followers. And in their eyes, he can do no wrong.”
He detailed becoming increasing disillusioned by the “mis and disinformation I’d heard” in calls with potential Republican caucus-goers in the run-up to the primary, such as people believing that hundreds of miles of the new wall between the U.S. and Mexico had been built, and that Mexico was paying for the wall.
And he blamed conservative media — and Fox News political commentator Sean Hannity in particular — for spreading “B.S.” He also accused right-wing journalists of denying him airtime, and said that his party had made it harder for him to run against Trump by canceling Republican primaries in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas.
“They’re [voters] being spoon-fed a daily dose of B.S. from ‘conservative’ media. They don’t know what the truth is and — more importantly — they don’t care. There’s nothing that any Republican challenger can do to break them out of this spell. (Thanks, Hannity.)”
Nancy Pelosi looked like a malfunctioning Stepford wife as she sat behind President Trump during his State of the Union address last week. Her lower face twitched, she muttered to herself, shook her head, smiled inappropriately, gazed around, chewed her lip or remained glued to her seat during standing ovations in honor of special guests.
It was a bizarre enough performance before she rose to her feet and dramatically ripped up her copy of the president’s speech in what will go down in history as the most unseemly display of partisanship in this partisan era.
That moment was when the myth of the “master political strategist” was busted, and we saw Pelosi, 79, for what she is. Pretending to be classy and prayerful when she is full of petty hatreds and is incapable of holding her party together, a woman who parades her Catholicism while advocating no-holds-barred abortions, feigning to pray for the president while deriding him as “sedated.”
As the leader of the Democrats until they select a presidential candidate, Pelosi is everything that is wrong with the party.
She told reporters that ripping up the speech was “a very dignified act … the courteous thing to do, considering some of the other exuberances within me.”
But her petulant vandalism was the opposite of courteous, quite obviously.
It only underscored the desperation of a party that has lurched to the left in pursuit of Bernie Sanders’ supporters, as the president reaps the reward of a booming economy and his opponents’ continual miscalculations.
Pelosi showed no contrition for ripping up the speech, nor for the political catastrophe of her failed impeachment drive.
That failure is the albatross around the neck of her party’s presidential candidates as they flail their way through icy New Hampshire.
Bereft of economic ideas, they are reduced to espousing electorally unpalatable policy positions: radical abortion, gender quotas in the cabinet, wholesale drug legalization and the kind of criminal justice reform that has turbo-charged crime in New York.
If Pelosi meant to delay handing over the impeachment articles to the Senate as a strategic masterstroke to tie up ascendant socialist Sanders in the Senate and give Joe Biden three weeks on his own in Iowa, that, too, backfired big-time.
The more Iowa saw of Biden, the less they wanted him, and the candidate who benefited most from those moderate votes was Pete Buttigieg, who has done a good job of disguising his radical views on the campaign trail.
The former South Bend, Ind., mayor said last month that there’s no place for pro-lifers in the Democratic Party, and claimed the Bible says a baby’s life begins with “breath.”
In Concord, NH, Saturday, he was vaguer when asked about the comment.
“We’re a big tent … What I’m not going to do is get someone’s vote by tricking them.”
But Sanders was less coy: “Being pro-choice is an absolutely essential part of being a Democrat.”
Like Biden, Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang, Sanders wants to enact a “litmus test” for judicial appointments:
“I will never nominate anybody who is not 100 percent pro-Roe v. Wade.”
But most Democrats don’t share these intolerant views. As Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, who challenged Buttigieg in a live Fox News town hall last month over his pro-abortion stance, points out, 59 percent of Democrats support restrictions on abortion.
With Mike Bloomberg waiting in the wings, maybe the candidates in New Hampshire have thrown caution to the wind in the hope of stopping Sanders.
But there’s one metric that tells you why Democrats are so morose: the president’s job approval ratings among nonwhites, according to Gallup.
That group, thought to be a lock for Democrats, is coming loose. Approval of Trump by all voters is at 49 percent, the highest of his presidency and higher than for Barack Obama (45 percent) at the same point in his presidency.
Trump has gained 10 points since impeachment began in October.
Nice one, Nancy.
But nonwhites’ approval of Trump also is at a high: 28 percent, up 10 points in a year.
When it comes to Trump’s handling of the economy, he gets 67 percent overall job approval and a resounding 49 percent among nonwhites, the beneficiaries of lower unemployment and higher wages.
So almost half of all black and Hispanic voters think Trump is doing a good job with the economy. That makes him hard to beat.
As well, 23 percent of nonwhites say Trump deserves to be re-elected, and 36 percent will decide once they see whom the Democrats choose.
The Democrats’ counteroffer is unpalatable social policy and tantrums from Pelosi.
Hating Trump is not enough, as you can tell from the subdued applause in New Hampshire when candidates rip into the president.
Andrew Yang may be lagging behind the field of Democratic presidential candidates in New Hampshire, but he is the only one with a clear-eyed view of his ultimate potential opponent.
“Why is Donald Trump our president?” he asked 7,000 Democrats on Saturday night at the McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club gala dinner in Manchester.
“It’s not Russia. He is our president because we lost 4 million manufacturing jobs in Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Those towns have never recovered.
“We make a mistake when we say Donald Trump is the source of all our problems. He’s not. ”
Elizabeth Warren, who launched her academic career by falsely posing as a Native American to get favorable treatment at Harvard, would make Martin Luther King roll over in his grave with her push for “race-conscious laws.”
No surprise, then, that she is in denial about race problems in her own campaign. Asked about why six “women of color” quit her Nevada campaign, complaining of tokenism and a “toxic work environment,” Warren told MSNBC it was the fault of America’s “long legacy” of “racism and oppression [which] creates the kinds of toxicity where … people take advantage of other people.” Huh?
Oh, the fun has just begun.
The comedy troupe called the Democrats will now entertain America until they blaze out in November.
A college gymnasium in Keene, N.H.is the room that scares the crap out of the Democratic establishment, packed to the rafters with nearly 2,000 Bernie Sanders fans joyfully noodle-dancing to a Vermont-based jam band playing a raucous cover of the Talking Heads song “Burning Down the House.”
A little while later, Sanders takes the stage, accompanied by his wife, three children and two grandchildren. “Thank you, Twiddle!” he says. Then he stops to reflect on how far he’s come since his ragtag campaign surprised everyone in 2016. When he presented his agenda four years ago, he says, “the corporate establishment said, Too radical!” Boo! the crowd yells.
“And the political establishment said, Too radical!” Boo!
“And the media establishment said, Too radical!” Boo! “But you know what the people of New Hampshire said?” And the crowd erupts into cheers and applause.
For all anyone knows at this point in the primary season, this man is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, as likely as any candidate to be the party’s representative against President Donald Trump in November. Sanders got the most votes in last week’s bungled Iowa caucuses and leads the polls for Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. While the other candidates strain to persuade waffling voters to take a chance on them, Sanders commands the deep loyalty of his adoring base of young people and the far left. As his rivals squabble about experience and electability, Sanders is cruising by unscathed.
If Sanders wins here, will he be unstoppable? And if so, then what? The party mandarins are sure he’s a disaster in the making, a recipe for re-electing Trump—that American voters will never go for a 78-year-old democratic socialist with an expensive, disruptive agenda. That, in the words of the celebrity consultant James Carville, who’s been stumping in New Hampshire for the long-shot moderate Michael Bennet, “we don’t have time for left-wing fantasies in this country.”
It’s up to the Democratic Party to rescue America from Trump, but instead, Carville says, it’s “out in some goofy la-la land.”
Dems are busted flat in New Hampshire
waiting for a train
feelin' near as faded as Tom Steyer's jeans
oh well
freedom is just another word
for nothing left to lose
so, Dems, you have the freedom to say whatever you want
what have you got to lose?
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Latest 2020 General Election Polls
Monday, February 10
Race/Topic (Click to Sort) Poll Results Spread
General Election: Trump vs. Biden Quinnipiac Biden 50, Trump 43 Biden +7
General Election: Trump vs. Sanders Quinnipiac Sanders 51, Trump 43 Sanders +8
General Election: Trump vs. Warren Quinnipiac Warren 48, Trump 44 Warren +4
General Election: Trump vs. Bloomberg Quinnipiac Bloomberg 51, Trump 42 Bloomberg +9
General Election: Trump vs. Buttigieg Quinnipiac Buttigieg 47, Trump 43 Buttigieg +4
General Election: Trump vs. Klobuchar Quinnipiac Klobuchar 49, Trump 43 Klobuchar +6
"Remember what the doorknob"
don't want to imagine why you guys are fixated on doorknobs
"Latest 2020 General Election Polls"
so what are Dems so worried about?
maybe it's because polls always show them winning by a landslide until about a week before the election
or maybe because it is utterly ridiculous to imagine Bernie Sanders beating anyone in a presidential general election
but you seem to suffer this delusion
reminds of an old Dylan line:
"all he believes are his eyes
and his eyes just tell him lies"
Justin Stapley
@JustinWStaple · Feb 7
The Republican Party no longer adheres to Reagan's admonition to trust our values and hold leaders responsible for living up to those values. That's why #ILeftTheGOP.
Shannon Joy
@ShannonJoyRadio · Feb 7
I’m getting sick & tired of conservative talkers/pundits viciously attacking conservatives who decline to support Trump. Be it Christianity Today, @WalshFreedom @justinamash or @MittRomney. This is a free country not a dictatorship & Trump is not entitled to universal support.
Justin Stapley
@JustinWStapley · Feb 6
I will plant myself like a tree beside the river of truth and, since the Republican Party no longer resides there, I must stand there alone and independent.#ExGOP #ILeftTheGOP
Dea🐂🐖🌽
@Bryantfarms1983 · Feb 5
Today I called our local courthouse and told them I would no longer serve as a #Republican election judge. I can not support a party that glorifies @realDonaldTrump any longer. #ILeftTheGOP
The Liberty Hawk
@RealLibertyHawk ·Feb 8
In the News:
"The Constitution Party of Virginia will be at CPAC, sponsoring an #ILeftTheGOP booth and explaining the ways the Republican Party has abandoned the US Constitution."
🇺🇸American Patriot🇺🇸•🌊2020🌊
@_USAPatriot_ · Feb 9
Replying to @glamelegance and @realDonaldTrump
Exactly! America IS and ALWAYS HAS BEEN great. It will be even greater once IMPOTUS is drained from the swamp. As a conservative, I left the GOP years ago. I can’t support high tariff taxes, high deficit spenders, or high criminals that the GOP RINOs have become.
#ILeftTheGOP
Transcript SUMMARY with redactions
@1010hopeful · 2h
Replying to @DonaldJTrumpJr
From the guy who said he couldn't remember or didn't know 186 times in his Trump Tower testimony.
Trumps lie alot.
Trumps don't care about America!
Trumps care about Trump
#VoteThemOut2020
#RIPGOP
#ILeftTheGOP
Citydweller
@Citydweller3 · Feb 9
All the Republicans are about now is power and money $$$ above Country, Constitution, and duty! Real Republicans have been leaving the party in droves! #ILeftTheGOP
interesting that you like polls sometimes and, if that won't promote your lies, you try to cherry-pick anecdotal verification of your predetermined view
If you stick to polls, Trump has record support among Republicans
it's not because anyone considers him their new best buddy
it's because he's fulfilled his promises to them
the policies affect more people than his personal disposition
the election will be a choice not an endorsement
Dems are right to be chagrined
they are doomed
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/11/biden-pac-2020-democrats-113684
Check this out. Biden's PAC says it's "doomsday" for the Dems if Biden doesn't win the nomination.
Remember that when he comes in fifth tonight!
Although, based in last week, maybe we'll hear the results by Friday...
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President Trump’s 2021 Budget: Promises Made, Promises Broken
February 10, 2020
President Trump has kept only one of his promises–his pledge to lower taxes for corporations and their investors.
The budget plan he released today again breaks his promise to reject cuts in Medicaid that would affect millions of people. His budget once again fails to eliminate the deficit, much the less the national debt, during his presidency as he promised. It cuts trillions from safety net programs and student aid programs despite his pledge to stand for forgotten Americans.
Who benefits from these fiscal policies? The 91 profitable Fortune 500 corporations that paid no federal income taxes in 2018, their first year under the GOP-Trump tax law. These companies include Amazon, Chevron, FedEx, Halliburton, IBM, Netflix, and others.
Who benefits from this administration’s fiscal policies? The investors in these companies, who are mostly well-off households that also receive most of the personal income tax cuts and estate tax cuts in the GOP-Trump tax law. (See ITEP’s latest estimates of who benefits in 2020).
The 2017 tax law added $1.9 trillion to the budget deficit over ten years. It provided permanent cuts in the corporate income tax, which mostly benefits the owners of corporate stocks in the United States and abroad. The 2017 law also made temporary cuts in the personal income tax and estate tax, which expire after 2025. The President’s budget again proposes to make those temporary tax cuts permanent.
While the budget document states, “All administration policies will pay for themselves, including extending tax cut provisions expiring in 2025,” a close look at the tables included in the budget documents reveals that even the administration knows this is not true.
The administration’s “baseline” revenue estimates (its projections of revenue before any new proposals are enacted) is about $1.4 trillion lower over the coming decade than the current law baseline for revenue.
In other words, administration officials know that extending the temporary tax cuts would cost $1.4 trillion over 10 years but hide this fact by embedding the cost in their baseline.
Again, it is clear who benefits from these policies. ITEP estimated that if the tax cuts are extended, almost two-thirds of the benefits would go to the richest 20 percent in 2026.
Americans have long wanted higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations, but elected officials have continually cut taxes for the nation’s highest-income households. From 2001 through 2018, significant federal tax changes have reduced revenue by $5.1 trillion. Nearly $2 trillion of this amount went to the richest 1 percent.
Americans are ready for a dramatic course correction on how lawmakers think about taxes and the budget.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/#
Rump's
Promises Kept: 17%
Compromise: 10%
Broken: 17%
Stalled: 26%
In the Works: 27%
Mexico paying for the wall?
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"so what are Dems so worried about?"
"but you seem to suffer this delusion"
"Dems are right to be chagrined
they are doomed"
"Dems obviously don't seek what's best for the country, as a whole"
"it seems like Dems are changing the subject because there's something they'd rather not discuss"
"it's breakfast on America and the Dems are toast"
"Dems vow to not do any real work until November"
Psychological Projection: Dealing With Undesirable Emotions
Psychological projection is a defense mechanism people subconsciously employ in order to cope with difficult feelings or emotions. Psychological projection involves projecting undesirable feelings or emotions onto someone else, rather than admitting to or dealing with the unwanted feelings. Have you ever disliked someone only to become convinced that the person had a vendetta against you? This is a common example of psychological projection. Luckily, there are methods you can use to identify why you are projecting your emotions and put a stop to this coping mechanism.
How to Stop Projecting
Unfortunately, most people do not realize that they have succumbed to psychological projection until it is too late. However, there are steps you can take to identify whether you are engaging in psychological projection in order to avoid doing it in the future.
A good place to start is to examine the negative relationships in your life. Who don’t you get along with at work or in your family? Do you feel as though someone is out to get you? Try to determine where the animosity began. In some cases, you may find that speaking with a therapist will help you examine these relationships more honestly and openly than you are able to do by yourself.
Once you have identified that you are engaging in psychological projection, you will become more aware of this tendency during future interactions. Try to face problems and disputes head on rather than becoming defensive. The key is to be able to recognize when you are using a defense mechanism and learn how to respond in a more positive manner.
A conservative group is hitting President Donald Trump with another attack ad on one of his favorite TV shows, this time declaring that “our country deserves better.”
Republicans for the Rule of Law blasts Trump’s decision to fire Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a key witness in the House’s impeachment investigation into the Ukraine scandal, in its latest spot that will air on Fox News’ flagship morning show “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday.
The promo calls out Trump for ousting Vindman, a decorated Iraq War veteran who served on the National Security Council as an expert on Ukrainian affairs, and his twin brother, Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, who reportedly had no link to the impeachment investigation.
“As a penalty for telling the truth, President Trump fired him and his twin brother and had them escorted from the White House,” says the voiceover in the ad.
“This isn’t how the president is supposed to treat military heroes who obey the law,” the spot continues. “Our military deserves better. Our country deserves better. Lt. Col. Vindman deserves better.”
“Ordering subordinates not to comply with duly authorized Congressional subpoenas is an offense to the rule of law,” Sarah Longwell, the anti-Trump group’s executive director, said.
“President Trump’s treatment of Lt. Col. Vindman undermines the very values that make the American military great,” Longwell added. “The military and the country deserve better leadership.”
Republicans for the Rule of Law, which is led by conservative commentator Bill Kristol, last week hailed Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) as a “patriot” after he became the only Senate Republican to vote to convict Trump during the impeachment trial.
After 16 years in the NBA, Dwyane Wade is focused these days on his off-the-court role as the father of a transgender child.
Appearing on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” Tuesday, Wade recalled the moment when his 12-year-old child came out to him as trans and said she wanted to be called Zaya and addressed by the pronouns “she” and “her.” Describing himself and wife Gabrielle Union as “proud allies,” he said the discussion left him determined to give Zaya “the best opportunity to be her best self.”
“We take our roles and our responsibility as parents very seriously,” said Wade, who is also dad to Zaire Blessing Dwyane, 18, Xavier Zechariah, 6, and Kaavia James, 15 months. “When our child comes home with a question, when a child comes home with an issue, when a child comes home with anything, it’s our job as parents to listen to that, to give them the best information that we can, to give them the best feedback that we can.”
Watch the full interview at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=AG9-Q6UabfQ&feature=emb_logo
well, looks like we are going to have either a socialist or a homosexual running against Trump in November
HOW SWEET IT IS !!!!!!!
If you think the news industry’s credibility problem is bad now, you haven’t seen anything yet.
It is going to get much, much worse the closer we get to Election Day, if Tuesday’s slipshod news reporting and commentary is any indication.
Here are four major reporting errors in the span of just 10 hours.
1. The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman, for example, tweeted the following falsehood at around 5:30 p.m. Monday evening: “Republican voter registration in NH is down roughly 20k voters from 2016 to now. It’s a reminder that Trump’s increased GOP popularity is in part because in some places, the GOP registration rolls have shrunk.”
This is not only false, but it has been debunked several times. At some point, repeating the lie becomes a choice.
2. Earlier than that, MSNBC’s Katy Tur, who hosts a politics news show, sought to throw cold water on the strong economic numbers touted by the Trump White House, arguing that the economy is not working for the individual who spends up to 360 months paying off his car loan.
“When I ask people if they’re voting for Donald Trump, I hear about their 401(k)s a lot,” she said during a live broadcast from New Hampshire, “but there are those out there who don't have a 401(k), and there are those out there who this economy is not really working for them.”
Tur added, “They might have a job, but it's not a job that pays their bills. They can get a car, but it's a loan that will take 30 years.”
I have no idea what she is talking about. I don’t think even she knows. (What else is new?) Car loans can take anywhere between 12 and 84 months to pay off. Who are these people agreeing to 30-year car loans?
3. Earlier that morning, CNN’s Cristina Alesci warned viewers to be wary of recently surfaced audio of 2020 Democratic candidate Mike Bloomberg proudly promoting the stop-and-frisk policies he championed as mayor of New York City. After all, the CNN reporter claimed, as we don’t have the full audio of the former mayor’s remarks, we don’t have the full context. But this is not true. The full audio of Bloomberg’s comments has been available online since 2015.
“So, here's the thing, important context here," she said. "We don't have the full tape."
Alesci, who, by the way, is an alumna of the Bloomberg News empire, continued, “So, this is obviously snippets that have been released, the podcaster and the writer that released this sound is clearly a Bernie supporter, if you look at his twitter feed, he's very anti-Bloomberg. He's promoting a hashtag ‘#BloombergIsARacist.'"
A simple Google search brings up the full audio, which was posted shortly after Bloomberg delivered his address in 2015 at the Aspen Institute. Also, all that stuff about the alleged political affiliations of the person who posted the audio online Monday evening is irrelevant to the content of the surging 2020 candidate's past remarks.
4. Lastly, and relatedly, there is NBC News’s Heidi Przybyla. She shared a conspiracy theory at around 7:30 a.m. alleging that the Kremlin is responsible for making the hashtag “#BloombergIsRacist” a top-trending news topic on social media. The hashtag, which is definitely organic, cropped up Tuesday morning following the release of the Bloomberg audio. Przybyla later deleted her tweet promoting the conspiracy theory, which she had not even bothered to double-check before sharing with her 145,000 Twitter followers.
For many in this industry, the lesson of the 2016 election does not appear to be “Do better.” It appears to be “Resist harder, by any means necessary.”
Beating Trump has been the monomania of the Democrats for over three years. It’s the first and last thing out of all the candidates’ mouths when they speak, and one of the few things they agree upon.
Manias in general are not good things. Occasionally a smart or extremely lucky maniac reaches his objective. Much more often mania sidetracks its victim by severely narrowing his focus, depriving him of necessary context and a broader and more realistic picture of reality.
That’s what’s happened to the Democrats. The Iowa caucus disaster is one symptom. The failed impeachment of Trump another. The stable of unstable Democrat candidates yet another.
Which bring us to George Orwell’s 1984, but not in the usual way. Big Brother is usually the focus of such commentary, the putative leader of dystopic totalitarian Oceania, a fellow both Comrade Sanders and tribal chief Warren can easily admire.
Often forgotten is Big Brother’s antagonist, Emmanuel Goldstein. He is the subject of a daily “two minutes hate,” which is where the novel opens. The “two minutes hate” is part of Oceania’s political regimen, required of all citizens. It’s not clear at all in the novel that Goldstein is real, or just an invention of regime propaganda, yet it doesn’t matter. The two minutes hate is designed to deflect the population’s anger and fear away from the regime to this supposed enemy of the people.
It’s a sick regime, which is the point of the story.
And it’s pretty easy to see in the modern Democrat party the same dynamic taking hold, albeit before they have actually achieved total political control. Trump in almost every respect is the Dems' Emmanuel Goldstein, a subject of such mindless animus and vituperation that the party can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s been three years of hate, and way more than two minutes a day.
Modern therapeutic psychology would suggest an intervention, and in the United States such a role has often been played by the press. Historically, when a party or politician went off the deep end, there was a vibrant press to point it out, mock it, and return things to semblance of rationality. That has not been the case in America for a generation or two now, with the mainstream media having lost most all semblance of objectivity to become the Democrats' great enabler. And indeed, the mandarins of the modern media are, if anything, even more Trump-afflicted than the party that they supposedly cover.
Very much like a schizophrenic, neither the Dems nor the media can recognize the pervasive objective truth about American today -- things are going pretty well. The economy is doing great, unemployment is low, and the markets are confident. We are ending a China trade war with some gains. Borders are more secure. Unemployment is at historic lows. With the exception of small military commitments to Afghanistan and Syria, we are at peace. We are energy self-sufficient, and even climate-change doomsayers must now admit things are not so bad.
The Democrats have a lot of problems. But their biggest one is their grip on reality. As long as that’s the case, whoever they pick in 2020 is not likely to be any more successful than Emmanuel Goldstein.
I voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. I thought he would shake up Washington and help fix the system that so many of us across the country know is broken. I thought people on both sides of the political aisle could benefit from his presidency.
I was hesitant, as there were aspects of his rhetoric and behavior on the campaign trail that I found objectionable. But I thought that his policies and judicial nominations would ultimately reflect my values, at least more than Hillary Clinton's would, so I chose to look past his faults. I hoped that once in office he would rise to the occasion and become more presidential. But that didn't happen.
I won't, under any circumstances, vote for Trump again. After more than three years under his administration, our country is more divided and isolated than at any time in my memory. He's supported some causes that I support, but overwhelmingly he's proven himself a cruel, dishonest and self-serving man who lacks concern for the U.S. Constitution. Because of his character he is unwilling to humble himself enough to learn and grow. His presidency doesn't reflect my values and I don't want four more years of it.
That's why I started writing letters to my senators—Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst—to express my outrage at the Republican Party's unwavering support for Trump. They don't question him and they make excuses for him. Instead of holding him accountable, they enable him to act like a dictator.
As an evangelical Christian, I'm called to try and protect and preserve life, to treat my neighbor as I would like to be treated and to serve those in need. Despite the continued support of evangelicals for Trump, it's been refreshing to see other members of the faith community speak out and reject the cynical arrangement some have chosen to make with Trump. Namely, when Christianity Today took a bold stand in an editorial before Christmas calling for Trump to be removed from office, and they were shamed for it.
As a voter in Iowa, I have the option to participate in the many political activities around the state's caucuses this year, the first contest of the 2020 election. As the 2019 campaign season picked up, and Democratic presidential candidates spent more and more time in Iowa, I knew I wanted to be more engaged and seek out candidates who speak to voters of faith like myself. I knew I wanted to do something that would make a difference, not something that would simply cause my many friends and family who continue to support Trump to double-down.
I learned about Vote Common Good, an organization that is mobilizing voters of faith against Trump and training candidates how to engage religious voters more effectively, when I read an op-ed in The Hill written by VCG's Executive Director Doug Pagitt, an evangelical pastor from Minneapolis. Doug and VCG came to Iowa at the start of January to host a candidates forum in Des Moines and launch their 50-state bus tour. I decided to go, not thinking much of it but curious enough to check the event out.
What I saw gave me renewed hope and solidified my resolve to help defeat Trump this year. Doug and VCG are doing the hard work of organizing voters, meeting them where they stand and challenging them to put the common good ahead of political parties this year. They didn't ask for people to vote for a certain candidate or change party registration—just that we consider voting for a Democrat this year. As a lifelong Republican, but one who refuses to vote for Trump again, I found that message reassuring.
It's a message that I think will resonate with other evangelical voters, and I hope it will give them the comfort they need as they grapple with the difficulty of admitting they don't have to vote for Trump again. Evangelicals don't have to change who they are, they just need to reaffirm who they are by voting for someone who truly reflects Christian values.
As a registered Republican, I can't participate directly in the Democratic caucus in my state. At VCG's candidate's forum I met Republican challenger and former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, and I plan to cast my vote for him in the Republican caucus.
I do have thoughts on who among the Democratic candidates is most electable in the general election, and who is most likely to represent my values in Washington. But no certainty. At least the way former Vice President Joe Biden speaks about his faith resonates with me. And I think he is a person who can bring peace and common decency back to this country.
What I am certain about is that Trump won't get my vote this year. He doesn't represent my values or those of other voters of faith like me—he disregards and disrespects them time and time again. This election, I refuse to give Trump a pass on his behavior. As it says in Proverbs 17:1—"Better a dry crust eaten in peace than a house full of feasting – and conflict."
Sandy Orth is an evangelical Christian and life-long Republican voter from Iowa
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh made comments while discussing Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg’s electability if he were to face off against President Trump in the coming election, that made the lunatic fringe gay advocates apoplectic.
During his nationally syndicated program on Wednesday, Limbaugh took aim at Buttigieg while sounding off on the leading Democratic presidential candidates and their performances in the primary race thus far.
“You’ve got Fauxcahontas way back there in the background barely out of the tepee bringing up the tail end,” Limbaugh said, referring to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) “Biden’s gone. So you’re faced with a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who’s not even a Democrat [and] a gay guy, 37 years old, loves kissing his husband on debate stages,” he continued, referring to former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Buttigieg, respectively.
"Can you see Trump have fun with that? And [Sen.] Amy Klobuchar [D-Minn.]" he added.
"You’re looking at your options today, and you’re asking, 'OK, can we win with Klobuchar? We don’t want to put Klobuchar up there because she doesn’t have a prayer,'" he said before shifting gears back to Buttigieg, saying, "Then they’re sitting there, and they’re looking at Mayor Pete, a 37-year-old gay guy, mayor of South Bend, loves to kiss his husband on the debate stage. And they’re saying, 'OK, how’s this gonna look, a 37-year-old gay guy kissing his husband onstage next to Mr. Man Donald Trump? What’s gonna happen there?'"
“They gotta be looking at that,” Limbaugh continued, “They’ve gotta be saying that despite all the great progress and despite all the great 'wokeness' and despite all the great ground that’s been covered, America’s still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage president. They have to be saying this, don’t they?"
Buttigieg's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Limbaugh's remarks come less than a week after he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address.
it's hard to overstate what a mess the Dems have on their hands
Bernie is not that popular, even among Dems
but he has a solid 25% core
the problem is that the rules say that the candidates don't get any delegates unless they get 15% of vote
with 5 other candidates pushing hard (Buttjig, Pocahontas, Kublakhaness, Hunter's Dad, Stop-and-frisk-berg), none may get 15%
giving Bernie 100% of the delegates
even though few of the 75% would make Bernie their second, third, fourth, or fifth pick
it's like Dems' biggest nightmare
it just keeps getting worse and worse
for all you kids out there, get out your history books
1972: it's like Deja Vu all over again
back then, a very unpopular and dislikable and petty guy named Richard Nixon was running for re-election
sounds like Trump
the Dems nominated an extreme leftist, George McGovern
sounds like Bernie
result: McGovern won only one state
Millennials, and TTFers, love socialism. They like redistributive social policies. They want everyone “taken care of.” The purveyors of current American socialist policy are a communist, Bernie Sanders, and current “democrat socialists” aka “the Squad.” Millennials haven’t connected the totalitarian means being used to achieve socialism’s ends. They either ignore or don’t know the evil necessary to create a socialistic/communistic state.
It’s tough to blame this generation for their rosy view of a murderous ideology. They didn’t live through the Cold War. They didn’t see Stalin’s gulags. The story they hear about Mao is that he was, as a self-assured friend of my kid said, “good for women’s rights.” This generation was taught that communism was good, if misapplied. Public school teachers see themselves as aggrieved workers and spread their miserable worldview to their ignorant charges. It gets worse in college. So the millennials are ignorant.
Millennials have also grown up during a time of technological transformation that puts a world of knowledge at their fingertips. The power that they wield — to buy immediately, to share their lives, to play, to photograph, to stay connected — can lead to arrogance. It’s as though the world has always been this rich, this knowledgable, this immediate. With no way to compare, and being woefully uneducated, it’s easy to be ignorant and arrogant: a perfect storm making socialism and communism seem reasonable. Decadent wealth (their own) can make one dismissive of true want.
Maybe China’s totalitarian actions attempting to stop the coronavirus will wake up the younger generations. The small leaks out of China (communist regimes tend to dislike the truth) are horrifying. The images include soldiers dragging citizens away to who-knows-where, public health officials boarding people into their homes, brick walls built to keep people in cities, bars on hospital rooms, people dropping dead on the street, people being turned away from multiple hospitals, images of what looks like mass burials.
Then there are the constant lies. The numbers of infected are clearly false. No one knows for sure who is sick and how many have died, meaning no scientists can get their arms around real numbers and expectations for the spread of the illness. Age distribution? Modes of transmission? It’s all conjecture. The all-powerful Chinese government has ceased sharing real data. As Vox notes,
"That’s not all. Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University, pointed out that while China deserves credit for sharing 2019-nCoV’s genetic sequence shortly after announcing the outbreak, it “has not been forthcoming with additional information about the virus from different samples at different times in different regions.”
Nor have Chinese scientists shared the virus itself with other national labs. And yet this information is crucial for understanding “whether the virus mutated, how, and also about its transmissibility,” Gostin explained."
What’s more, China refused weeks of offers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and WHO to send experts to China, according to a February 7 report in the New York Times. (Only on February 9 did the WHO announce that a mission for China was finally departing — but it’s not going to Wuhan yet.)
New data seems to indicate that the virus can be transmissible for 24 days. In one case, it took 42 until diagnosis (the person could have been sick a week or two before.) The problem? No one knows the true answer. Chinese leaders aren’t sharing it.
At the beginning of this new virus, the Chinese authorities should have told the world so that scientists could help stop the spread of the disease. Instead, they punished the doctor who brought attention to the disease.
Right now, European officials are hunting down the hundreds of people who came in contact with a “super spreader” businessman who had travelled from Singapore. And this woman describes the lax standards at both U.S. and Canadian airports after being on the cruise ship now quarantined off the coast of Japan.
Back in communist China, the citizen journalist who has been covering the coronavirus outbreak has disappeared. His family fears that he is either sick or has been taken by the government.
To deal with the terrible public relations threat to the regime, Xi Jinping (president for life) has sent 300 propagandists to Wuhan to “strengthen public opinion guidance“:
Cheng Yizhong, a former editor of Southern Metropolis Daily who was removed from the job in part due to the paper’s coverage of the 2003 SARS outbreak, told The Australian that the Chinese Communist Party had worsened the current crisis with its control of the media. “All Chinese are suffering the bitterness of CCP monopoly over power, resources and truth,” said Mr Cheng.
There have been reports — first on social media and later in rare pockets of the Chinese media — that local officials in Wuhan suppressed case numbers from mid-December to early last month.
Disinformation, obfuscation, and authoritarian suppression: it’s all a day in the life of a communist. How dangerous is this ideology? As dangerous as starving farmers, mass graves, famines, and now disease.
Communism is a fragile edifice. It is built on deceit and manipulation. As the civilization starts to fray, the leaders take more extreme action to control the populace and its view of itself. Dissent is extinguished.
It’s astonishing, in this modern age with social media, how Western media, public health officials, scientists, and doctors have been credulous regarding the numbers and medical data coming out of China. They should know better.
Do tech-savvy young people who get their information from social media notice that no direct sourcing or scant sourcing is coming out of China? Do they notice what’s missing?
Maybe now millennials and those younger will wake up to the reality of totalitarian, communist regimes. Even supposedly advanced ones like China revert to type when under stress. A people’s paradise is created through force. Through the regime’s desire to save face, their hiding of information and punishing the truth-tellers may have inflicted a new, deadly virus on the world.
Will younger people wake up to the dangers posed by the tyranny needed to produce socialist/communist governments? Unlikely. The only thing wrong with socialism, it seems, is that it hasn’t been done right. Bernie Sanders will save them, they believe, and bring a world of fairness and equality. Like China, but better
The Democratic Party belongs to Bernie Sanders now. It’s a stunning statement to write.
When the Vermont senator and self-described “democratic socialist,” who wasn’t even a registered Democrat, first announced his 2016 primary challenge against establishment favorite Hillary Clinton, he was written off as an outsider, a long-shot, a fringe candidate. Socialist healthcare? Free college? Canceling student debt? These far-left policy proposals were dismissed at the time by Clinton and the Democratic establishment. Now, they’re widely held positions among elected Democrats.
And after Sanders’s successful performance in the Iowa caucuses and narrow victory in New Hampshire, he’s now the Democrats' 2020 front-runner. That’s right: In just three years, Sanders went from a fringe radical to one of the leaders of the Democratic Party. That should terrify every person who believes in capitalism in any form, supports the limits of our constitutional system, and fears unchecked executive power.
Sanders’s policy platform truly is, by his own admission and design, revolutionary.
According to calculations from the Manhattan Institute’s Brian Riedl, Sanders’s total proposed spending amounts to a whopping $60 trillion to $85 trillion over a decade. The scale of this expenditure is almost impossible to capture. But the entire federal budget for 2019 was $4.5 trillion. And when Clinton, nobody’s idea of a small-government conservative, ran for president in 2016, she campaigned on just roughly $2.8 trillion in added expenditure. (I say just, but that's still ... a lot.)
Sanders would have the government take an almost unprecedented role in controlling our economy. Were his full agenda ever to be enacted, federal spending would account for roughly half of the economy. Sanders would nationalize entire industries, from healthcare to the internet. The half of the economy that would remain in private hands under his proposed agenda would still be subject to heavy regulation, government control, and taxation.
Of course, those who seek to quiet the alarm bells ringing in every sane person’s head are quick to point out that, thankfully, much of Sanders’s agenda would never pass a Republican-controlled Senate, or even a Democratic-controlled one for that matter. They’re not wrong. But what they discount is both how much can be accomplished through unilateral leveraging of executive power and just how openly contemptuous Sanders is of the Constitution’s constraints.
Imagine, for a moment, the nightmare that would be a Sanders administration.
Perhaps it’s socialist darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who gets tapped for commerce secretary, what with her well-demonstrated ample economic knowledge. (She recently cited the imaginary economist “Milton Keynes.”) Maybe Sanders appoints his longtime aide David Sirota to a major economic role — you know, the same aide who praised former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s “economic miracle” and glowingly reviewed the socialist policies that have turned Venezuela into an economic nightmare. And we all know there would be a job in his administration for Sanders’s longtime ally, Elizabeth Warren, who has simply never met a regulation she didn’t like and has a long list of companies she is ready to subdue with federal power.
The idea of what Sanders and his allies would do with the expansive power of our federal bureaucracy is frightening. There’s little doubt that even with a stubborn Congress, they could reshape the country irreparably, especially considering the extra-constitutional lengths Sanders has already declared himself willing to go.
Sanders … has drafted a document containing a series of sweeping executive orders that he would use to kick-start a revolution, with or without Congress’s consent. This list is Sanders's answer to left-leaning skeptics who question the senator’s ability to actually implement his radical agenda in light of a Republican-controlled Senate and conservative-majority Supreme Court. It’s disturbing, if not surprising, that Sanders’s answer is simply that he would bulldoze around Congress with wide-ranging executive orders on climate change, marijuana legalization, border security, and more.
No Congress could completely thwart Sanders’s revolution, that much is clear. Our only hope would be the court system keeping his power in check.
Then again, Sanders idolizes President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, glowingly praising his New Deal, big-government agenda. And of course, FDR pushed this agenda through by threatening to pack the Supreme Court. Sanders may respect the courts' independence even less than Roosevelt did.
And Sanders’s true beliefs are almost certainly even more radical than what he lets on. He claims to be a “democratic socialist” yet has an affinity for socialists both authoritarian and elected alike.
His true ideology is likely much closer to communism than he would ever let on. From honeymooning in the Soviet Union to defending communist Cuba’s dictator, Fidel Castro, the senator’s actions belie his lip service to democracy. For Sanders, the ends undoubtedly justify the revolutionary means.
And if voters usher him into office, well, no one can say they didn’t see it coming.
But everyone knows they won't usher him into office.
Which is why Trump's re-election looks more sure by the day and Dems are in full, screaming panic!
The fervent speculation in the media — Bernie Sanders or Pete Buttigieg? — misses the point. There was, in fact, a clear winner of both the Democrat Iowa Caucuses and the Democrat New Hampshire primary: It was President Trump.
The catastrophic breakdown that prevented the Iowa Democratic Party from reporting the complete results for the better part of a week allowed both Sanders and Buttigieg to claim victory in Iowa, but the lack of an official outcome also prevented either of them from enjoying the momentum boost that an Iowa victory normally confers.
Not that a victory in this year’s Iowa caucuses would be much to brag about. A mere 170,000 voters participated— about one-third fewer than in 2008, and barely over half the 300,000 voters some Democrat leaders were expecting. Another troubling sign for Democrats.
The highly anticipated rematch between Sanders and Buttigieg in New Hampshire hardly went any better. The results didn’t do anything to clear up the divide within the Democratic Party, since Sanders and Buttigieg once again emerged with an equal number of delegates.
Meanwhile, Republican voters once again rallied behind the president in New Hampshire, handing him an overwhelming victory that underscores the unprecedented degree of unity within the GOP. Donald Trump racked up about 10 times as many votes as the second-place candidate — and even though the outcome was a foregone conclusion, he still managed to draw an astounding 120,000 voters to the polls. That’s more votes than any incumbent president has received in the New Hampshire primary in the past four decades.
The main takeaway from the first two Democrat primary contests, therefore, has very little to do with which candidate received the most votes. Iowa and New Hampshire revealed that none of them inspire any real enthusiasm among voters, while all of them alienate at least one major faction of the Democrat base.
Radical leftists such as Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren terrify moderate Democrats almost as much as they enrage Republicans and independent voters with their socialist policy agendas. So-called “moderate” candidates such as Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden, meanwhile, are still well to the left of the American electorate, yet they’re also reviled by far-left extremists who view them as traitors to the progressive cause.
As the dust settles, it’s clear that President Trump is the only presidential candidate who can credibly claim victory in the first two primary contests. While the Democrat candidates jockeyed for position amid the botched Iowa results and vilified each other throughout the lead-up to the New Hampshire primary, Donald Trump remained above the fray, reminding voters that there is a competent, trusted alternative to the radical Democrats vying to run against him.
President Donald Trump made history last Friday as the first U.S. president to attend March for Life, the annual anti-abortion rally held in Washington, D.C. For that he received widespread praise from conservative political and religious leaders and voters around the country, including many, unsurprisingly, from my home state of Arkansas.
Trump’s decision to attend was motivated by politics. He wasn’t against abortion until he started running for President, and yet he has heard mounting questions raised about the sturdiness of his support among evangelicals, whose backing in 2016 was key to his victory. The kerfuffle around Christianity Today’s December editorial calling for Trump’s removal sparked a reexamination of the durability of that support. Enter March for Life, an opportunity to double down on what Trump knows is the linchpin of his appeal to many religious voters.
The transactional nature of Trump’s relationship with evangelicals and other religiously motivated voters is a two-way street. He doesn’t live by nor ostensibly even aspire to the values of most of these voters. They see his flaws but support him anyway because he helps advance elements of their policy agenda, namely, anti-abortion judges and legislation.
Although Arkansas’ Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson was the first governor of a solid red state to voice support for the congressional impeachment inquiry last September, Arkansans overwhelmingly support Trump, with over 60% of us voting for him in 2016. Much of that support came from Arkansas’ large evangelical community, which makes up no less than 46% of adults in the state. Naturally, the state’s two Republican senators – Tom Cotton and John Boozman – have voted in line with Trump’s position 87% and 93% of the time respectively.
I was raised in a home where being an evangelical Christian and voting Republican were inseparable. I live in Northwest Arkansas, practice my faith as the co-pastor of Vintage Fellowship in Fayetteville and even ran for Congress in the 3rd Congressional District as a Republican in 2018.
Given all this, you are forgiven if you’re somewhat surprised to hear that I helped organize a rally for voters in Fayetteville against Trump and in support of Democrats this week.
When I’m not preaching, I work with a group called Vote Common Good, which aims to get evangelicals and other voters of faith to make the common good – not political parties – their primary voting criteria. And this year, voting for the common good means getting Trump and his enablers out of office.
Trump is an anathema to everything I was taught to love about Jesus, everything I was taught about how to live out my faith. His disdain for decency, disrespect toward basic tenets of right and wrong and complete disregard for the most vulnerable among us could not be more fundamentally un-Christian. To vote for him because he sees the political expediency of supporting restrictions on abortion is a Faustian deal with the devil that is ultimately more likely to exact greater cost than reward. Case in point: the astounding about-face in evangelical support for refugee resettlement since Trump took aim at the program.
The unholy alliance some religious voters have struck with Trump is part and parcel of the one the Republican Party as a whole has embraced. The GOP has become the party of Trump, most recently exemplified by the number of Republican senators who have expressed a willingness to abandon their responsibility as part of a co-equal branch of government and vote against allowing witnesses to appear in the president’s impeachment trial. Tribalistic, blind loyalty to Trump because of the power he is able to confer as President has led both evangelicals and the GOP to abandon previously held values.
Now more than ever, at a time of unprecedented polarization, it’s important that voters think beyond political party. Republicans don’t have to become Democrats — they should just consider voting for one this year. Voters of faith should set aside their personal interests and predilections and instead prioritize the common good for all.
Traveling across the United States on VCG’s 50-state bus tour, which launched in Iowa at the start of January and has hit six other states since, I’ve met voters of faith who are looking for an alternative to Trump. They voted for him in 2016 but can’t bring themselves to do it again. We are working to mobilize them and train Democratic candidates to engage religious voters more effectively.
If a critical percentage – say 5% – of evangelicals who voted for Trump in 2016 don’t this year, he can’t win. That’s why I’ve decided to dedicate much of my time and efforts in 2020 to reaching those voters. Because a deal with Democrats is better than a deal with the devil.
whenever TTFers get worried that someone will notice that nothing they say adds up, they start pulling out the anecdotal argument
but, the truth is, it's a seriously large country
one where you can find someone somewhere who says whatever you want somebody to say
but, how about the country as a whole:
WASHINGTON – A Gallup poll has encouraging news for President Donald Trump as his battle for reelection heats up: Six in 10 Americans say they are better off than they were three years ago when he took office, and about the same number credit him for the improvement.
No other incumbent president in the past three decades has enjoyed such a high percentage of people saying they feel better about their situation. In 2012, when President Barack Obama was in the White House, 45% of Americans told Gallup they were better off than they were three years ago. In 2004 (George W Bush), 1996 (Bill "sexual predator" Clinton) and 1992 (George HW Bush), the number was 50%.
So, Trump is the best, Obama the worst.
In the latest survey, 61% say they are better off.
A strong majority of Americans (62%) say Trump should get credit for improving the economy.
In the middle of historical progress being made for blacks in America, this should be the most celebrated Black History Month of our generation. Instead, we are in a fight against labeling as the words racist and white supremacy have poured into our politics and become normalized in our American culture.
New York City’s billionaire former mayor Michael Bloomberg implemented stop and frisk policies which, as he said in 2015, would take guns out of minority kids’ hands by throwing them up against the wall and frisking them. Bill Clinton and Joe Biden’s 1994 crime bill is responsible for the mass incarceration of too many in the black community over the last 25 years. But some way and some how the Democrats have shielded their leaders like Bloomberg, Biden, Clinton and others by creating the illusion that all Democrats are allies to black people, regardless of their policies.
Unfortunately, some Americans and many blacks have been brainwashed to automatically associate President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” with a dog whistle for “Make America White Again.”
Even Van Jones, who famously called Trump’s 2016 presidential victory a “whitelash,” has now reversed course and given credit to the president for his historical accomplishments for black Americans.
So when Trump asked black Americans in 2016 “what do you have to lose?” I was listening. Since then, Trump has been writing himself quite the legacy with his policies that are helping black Americans:
By now many black Americans are aware that President Trump has taken bold steps to repeal the Democratic lead 1994 crime bill. After almost three decades of mass incarcerating far too many blacks across America, the First Step Act is resulting in scores of blacks being let out of prison for nonviolent crimes. Now it’s time to use the energy that we are putting into calling the president racist and redirect it to continue lobbying the local and state governments to follow President Trump’s lead to end mass incarceration for nonviolent crimes.
Can anyone guess which U.S. president has given the most money in history to American black colleges? Yes, that would be Donald J. Trump. Trump’s executive order to give more money to our historically black colleges and universities than any president in history is something that was muted by most liberal media and sadly ignored by even the most prominent alumni of HBCUs. Several of these schools were closing down and facing bankruptcy before Trump.
“Opportunity Zones” are leading the way for the Trump revolution to bring real dollars back to black inner cities across America. Despite the rhetoric from the left about the Trump tax cuts only benefiting the rich, this program can literally help resurrect the most underserved communities in America.
After securing a massive donation of billions in AIDS medication, President Trump then went on to place $291 million in the FY2020 Health and Human Services budget focused on ending the HIV epidemic. Through blacks represent only 13 percent of the overall population, we represent 42 percent of new HIV diagnoses.
The Second Chance Act incentivizes American businesses to hire our former prison population and offers states millions of dollars to help ensure success transitions post-release. I’ve personally worked to help address this issue by creating a tailored business program for inmates. I guess it’s pretty hard to deny progress for black America when we see unemployment drop to 5.4 percent.
My goal is to highlight the need to unify the country around the idea of standing up for one of the most underserved segments of the American population -- our black brothers and sisters. We need Americans of all races to stand up for the basic principles that the Bible teaches us in Proverbs 31:8-9, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
I have been a Republican my whole life. No more.
Not while Donald Trump remains the head of the party, and the Senate’s Republicans have stood nearly united behind him, rejecting patriotism to protect him.
As an attorney admitted before the illustrious Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court, I cannot associate myself with conduct so cowardly, craven, and unpatriotic, so brazenly partisan and so disrespectful of the Constitution’s impeachment powers. The arguments made by the president’s defense team require us to suspend reality and twist the Constitution. Yet, tragically Professor Alan Dershowitz’s argument that as long as the president has a belief that he is acting in the public interest to get re-elected, he can not abuse his power, seems to have worked and pulled a once-admirable man like Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander over to the dark side.
I cannot associate myself with a party that is more loyal to Donald Trump than to the U.S.
This is not the first time I have wanted to bolt from the GOP, but each previous time I’d walked myself back as I remembered why I became a Republican in the first place. I liked the ideals of freedom, economic growth, a strong national defense, family values, faith, and guarding our liberties including the Second Amendment.
I joined the party in 1988 after hearing former NFL great and then GOP congressman Jack Kemp speak as he ran for president in the Republican presidential primary. It was the first presidential election I could vote in and I was taken by his passion, his words, his extended hand up to communities of color, and most of all his sunny optimism about America. He was authentic. He was conservative. And he was a man on a mission to create a Republican party that was open and welcoming to people of color.
I attended college in San Diego, and I had the privilege of being the first African-American intern to ever work for then U.S. Senator Pete Wilson (R-CA) in his Washington, D.C., office in the Senate Hart building. At that time, only two women were in the U.S. Senate, Nancy Kassenbaum (R-KS) and Barbara Milkuski (D-MD). It was a powerful experience for a young black woman from humble roots. My mother would drive down on weekends from New Jersey to get me because I could not afford to stay in Washington all week as an unpaid intern. I knew then I wanted a life in public service.
It was an unlikely journey for a young black girl who grew up in largely Democratic suburbs in southern New Jersey. I knew nothing but Democrats—Bill Bradley was my U.S. senator. Rep. Jim Florio was my congressman. State Assemblyman Wayne Bryant, who worked with President Bill Clinton on welfare reform, was a close family friend. I was supposed to grow up a Democrat. Yet, when I could choose, I chose a different path. When Christie Todd Whitman (R-NJ) almost defeated Bill Bradley for the US Senate in 1990, I was inspired. She would go on to become the state’s first female governor in 1994, and I would go on to work for her when I graduated law school later that year.
I liked what Whitman and Kemp were offering: self-determination; along with urban revitalization, entrepreneurship, wealth creation, strong military defense, Second Amendment rights, religious liberty rights, and family values. It was everything I had been taught in my family and in my church.
That Republican party is gone. This new Republican Party is beholden to a lawless, immoral, godless man. I have watched people I have known for decades twist themselves into human pretzels to defend him, excuse him, exalt him.
The current state of the GOP is not good for anyone in our two-party system that breaks down without lawmakers who can work together, and move legislation forward. The Democratic Party has problems of its own, but that is not my fight. I am not a Democrat, and will never be one. But the party of Trump is shrinking, whitening and aging as it tries to hold onto power in a more diverse America.
I am one of many high-profile black Republicans, like Michael Steele, Kay Coles James and Shermichael Singleton, who have tried for years to educate, inform, engage, and assist our party to become more inclusive and attentive to voters other than white men. Cheri Jacobus—my friend and a longtime GOP strategist who sued Trump and his ilk as they ran her out of the party, blackballed her, sued her and stalked her—started the hashtag #IlefttheGOP, which was trending on Twitter for days.
I cannot belong to a party of grievances, versus optimism, and one that is fueled by anger and demographic fears. The Republican Party is no longer fiscally conservative or socially compassionate. It is a party that promotes crazy “deep state” theories and embraces militia-nationalist fringes that carry guns in the open to intimidate others from expressing their 1st amendment rights. And worst of all, it is a party that tolerates, defends and celebrates a racist, sexist and lawless president.
There’s no place for me in what is no longer Mr. Lincoln’s party. This Republican Party is now Mr. Trump’s.
the most gay-friendly President ever is at it again
yesterday, he told Geraldo Rivera he would vote for a gay guy for President
according to the latest Gallup poll, 76% of Americans would too
evangelicals are slightly ahead: 80% would vote for them
but blacks, Catholics, Jews, Hispanics, and females are ahead of both at 90%
there are many groups that people say they are less likely to vote for than gays: Muslims, atheists, socialists, people over 70, people under 40
what the heck?
I thought Dems said America is full of bigotry
While Rump fiddles around, claiming climate change is a Chinese hoax!
No doubt his degree in meteorology is from Rump U and thereby worthless.
"A potentially unprecedented scenario is unfolding in the North Atlantic on Friday, as a bomb cyclone batters Iceland with hurricane-force winds and blizzard conditions, just as another bomb cyclone, known as Storm Dennis, rapidly intensifies behind it. Ultimately, the two storms will enter into a complex dance around each other before combining into one atmospheric behemoth, with a minimum central air pressure that could rank among the top three most intense storms ever observed in the stormy North Atlantic Basin.
Already on Friday morning, the first bomb cyclone, which has a minimum central air pressure of 929 millibars, roughly equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane, is slamming Iceland with blizzard conditions, mixed precipitation and heavy rain. Winds have been clocked at about 70 mph in the capital city of Reykjavik, and 90 mph at the international airport in Keflavik. The forecast called for gusts of higher than 120 mph in a few locations, particularly on the western coast of the island, though conditions were improving early Friday afternoon local time.
The Icelandic Meteorological Office issued rare red warnings for parts of the country into early Friday, with orange warnings continuing into Friday night due to the strong winds and heavy precipitation, and travel was not recommended anywhere.
The National Weather Service’s Ocean Prediction Center reported that a satellite passing over the storm detected a significant wave height of 64 feet west of Ireland. This means individual waves in that area were potentially as high as 128 feet! Significant wave height is defined as the average of the highest one-third of waves in a particular period, and tends to run about half the height of single waves.
Buttressing the satellite observation, a buoy northwest of Ireland recorded a significant wave height of 41.3 feet Friday morning, which means individual waves were about twice as high, or nearly 80 feet, in that location.
This storm, and the one to follow it that are combining to form Storm Dennis, will turn the entire North Atlantic into a wave machine, with battering waves reaching Western Europe.
This storm battering Iceland underwent the process of bombogenesis, or rapid intensification, with its air pressure plummeting more than 24 millibars in 24 hours. Over the course of 48 hours, its pressure dropped by 67 millibars as it moved from near Nova Scotia early Thursday morning to near Iceland early Friday morning..."
what he global warming alarmists don't want you to know is that Arctic Ice has fully recovered this winter ad is back to the historic norm.
oh well, the apocalyptic predictions were fun while they lasted
NOAA confirmed we are in a record HIGH Atlantic Oscillation Index.
*Basically, the cold has been locked around the North Pole. So it continues to build on itself instead of spreading southward to us.
Arctic Sea Ice has made a dramatic recovery and expansion this winter."
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In 2 hours on Feb 7, 2020, more tornadoes hit Maryland than in the previous SEVENTY Februaries combined.
An historic tornado outbreak swept across the Mid-Atlantic during the early morning hours of Friday, February 7th, 2020.
As of early the next morning, over 220 preliminary reports of severe weather had been received from Virginia northeastward into Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including six confirmed tornadoes.
In just over two hours, five of the confirmed tornadoes struck the state of Maryland, unprecedented for the month of February. Prior to this outbreak, only four tornadoes had ever been reported in the state of Maryland in the month of February since 1950, according to National Weather Service Storm Data. An F1 tornado touched down in Frederick County on February 13th, 1966; an EF0 tornado tracked across parts of St. Mary's and Calvert Counties on February 21st, 2014; another EF0 tornado briefly touched down in St. Mary's County on February 24th, 2016; and an EF1 tornado swept through parts of Charles County on February 25th, 2017.
Unusually warm and humid conditions hugged the region south of a warm front across northern Virginia and north-central Maryland just after daybreak, the product of several days of winds pushing toward the area from the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, extreme winds in the jet stream several thousands of feet above the ground (nearly 200 MPH at 35,000 feet) and a rapidly deepening area of low pressure at the surface tracked directly over the area. The result was a tremendous amount of wind shear and lift caused by feedback between the surface low and the jet stream. The temperature gradient and wind shift across the warm front provided the necessary convergence and spin to initiate and intensify the storms, even in the presence of low convective instability (a more traditional precursor to severe thunderstorms and tornadoes).
Despite the quick moving storms hitting during the morning commute, no fatalities were reported. There was one injury in southern Maryland when straight line winds removed the roof from a small building at a business near Redgate.
At the link above are summaries of the five tornadoes that were confirmed in the area served by the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Sterling, Virginia. The sixth was in Cecil County, Maryland, which is covered by the Weather Forecast Office in Mount Holly, New Jersey (www.weather.gov/phi). These summaries are preliminary, pending further data analysis and quality control, and ultimately certification and entry into the official National Weather Service Storm Data Archive, which is typically available after 60 days.
The normal tornado season for Maryland is May through November: https://www.ustornadoes.com/2013/03/19/monthly-tornado-averages-by-state-and-region/
oh, dear
a tornado?!?
must be glowbull warmin' !!!
Extreme Weather and Climate Change
One of the most visible consequences of a warming world is an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. The National Climate Assessment finds that the number of heat waves, heavy downpours, and major hurricanes has increased in the United States, and the strength of these events has increased, too.
A measure of the economic impact of extreme weather is the increasing number of billion-dollar disasters, which is shown below. The map shows all types of weather disasters, some of which are known to be influenced by climate change (floods, tropical storms) and some for which a climate influence is uncertain (tornadoes).
Click on any circle (at link above or below) to learn about one of the billion-dollar weather events, or any state to learn about billion-dollar droughts, between January 2000 and June 2019. Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center. The Top 10 costliest events are listed at the bottom of this page, along with a description of major U.S. droughts since 2000.
Climate change is expected to worsen the frequency, intensity, and impacts of some types of extreme weather events. For example, sea level rise increases the impacts of coastal storms and warming can place more stress on water supplies during droughts.
That’s why many cities, state, and businesses are taking steps to prepare for more extreme weather.
Learn more about the links between climate change and:
Drought
Extreme Heat
Extreme Precipitation
Hurricanes
Tornadoes
Wildfires
Links at:
https://www.c2es.org/content/extreme-weather-and-climate-change/
"Climate change is expected to worsen the frequency, intensity, and impacts of some types of extreme weather events. For example, sea level rise increases the impacts of coastal storms and warming can place more stress on water supplies during droughts."
fortunately, what's expected by climate warming alarmists never seems to occur
go back to the days after Katrina
they assured us this was only the beginning
what followed after that year was the most placid period in history on the Eastern seaboard
then, there's the California drought
heard anything about it recently?
the Arctic was going to be ice-free
it's returned to normal this winter
how about the glaciers that should be gone by now?
it's all a bunch of malarkey
yes, the planet has become somewhat warmer over the last couple of centuries
the wild predictions of apocalypse are delusional
anyway, here's something really funny:
Presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is considering Hillary Clinton as a vice presidential running mate after positive internal polling about the potential pairing, according to sources close to the Bloomberg campaign.
Bloomberg would change his official residence from New York to Colorado or Florida. The constitution forbids both members of a presidential ballot residing in the same state.
That's the classic Dem move to circumvent the Constitution!
A spokesperson for Clinton did not respond to a request for comment.
Former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, suffering electoral loss to Donald Trump 304-227. Trump’s victory was assured by his wins in key industrial and Rust Belt states, that formerly voted Dem, -- Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. Those states are the key in the 2020 election as well, and Trump retains his popularity in and gratitude from those states.
Clinton was asked earlier this year by talk show host Ellen DeGeneres if she would consider running as vice president in the 2020 presidential election.
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Clinton said at the time.
Clinton has been less coy when addressing the current field of Democratic candidates. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Hillary Clinton slammed Sen. Bernie Sanders, her main competitor in the 2016 Democratic primary, saying “nobody likes him” and accusing him of supporting sexist attacks against his rivals.
Bloomberg has recently has been asked to answer for accusations the company he founded, Bloomberg LP, was discriminatory toward women.
Bloomberg, a late contender in the presidential race, has been pouring money into ads and online memes to support his run. Those efforts appear to have born fruit, with him rising in the polls.
"Bloomberg has recently has been asked to answer for accusations the company he founded, Bloomberg LP, was discriminatory toward women."
perfect match for Hillary
she always supports those who abuse women
bill clinton, anthony weiner, jeffrey epstein....
"fortunately, what's expected by climate warming alarmists never seems to occur"
You keep talking about "climate warming alarmists" and make broad generalizations about what they say and never provide actual quotes, or even who they are. They are straw men men that you set up so you can easily knock them down.
And why you keep listening to "global warming alarmists" begs the question, why do you avoid actually reading the science that's out there?
As far as I can tell, all you do is read some attention grabbing headlines, and years later have some fuzzy recollection of what they said.
The actual scientific papers are full of caveats, error analysis, and ranges, typically covering best, worst, and nominal case scenarios.
"go back to the days after Katrina
they assured us this was only the beginning
what followed after that year was the most placid period in history on the Eastern seaboard"
Katrina was in 2005.
"The 2006 Atlantic hurricane season was the least active since 1997 as well as the first season since 2001 in which no hurricanes made landfall in the United States..."
So 2006 was the least active in 9 years, and the first in 5 years in which none made landfall in the US. Those aren't record breaking statistics.
And it simply wasn't the "most placid in history."
That honor belongs to the 1860s. See the "Frequency of North Atlantic Hurricanes" plot about half way down the page here:
https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters
To believe "most placid" you have to narrow the focus to only those that actually make landfall in the US, while completely ignoring the large increase in Major North Atlantic Hurricanes - i.e. the ones that don't make landfall in the continental US. Note that Hurricane Sandy did not technically make landfall as a hurricane despite causing billions of dollars of damage - behind only Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey in $ amount. Back in the 1860s, there was roughly 1 N.A. hurricane per year. Since 2000, that average appears to have gone up to about 4.
"then, there's the California drought
heard anything about it recently?"
Apparently you don't understand what a drought is:
"a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall, leading to a shortage of water."
Droughts come and go. The fact that one ends rather than continuing on ad infinitum is what makes it a drought. Climate change is expected to make them last longer and be more extreme, not change the definition of them.
You don't even understand basic weather terminology. What makes you think you can understand climate? Much less make a convincing argument about it? You are a textbook example of the Dunnig-Kruger Effect.
In recent years scientists have made inroads on estimating how much of various events are due to normal variation and how much due to climate change:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-affects-extreme-weather-around-the-world
But these correlations are not perfect, and there are still uncertainties in the data, and some of the short-term studies can even appear contradictory. But the long-term trends scientists have been warning us about since at least the 1970s are coming true all around us.
"You keep talking about "climate warming alarmists" and make broad generalizations about what they say and never provide actual quotes, or even who they are."
oh. I provided many actual quotes before and identified the speakers
it's alarmists, like you, who make broad generalizations
saying that scientists are all in agreement and that the most extreme view is a given
"And why you keep listening to "global warming alarmists" begs the question, why do you avoid actually reading the science that's out there?"
because the alarmists are the ones advocating "solutions" that would cause massive economic devastation and suffering
these people distort science for the purpose of political advocacy
"The actual scientific papers are full of caveats, error analysis, and ranges, typically covering best, worst, and nominal case scenarios."
thanks for pointing that out
I agree, as a matter of fact I have often pointed that out here
so why do ignorant alarmists like Al Gore on to every Hollywood actor and ending up with some bratty kid named Greta get all the attention and scientists with more nuanced views get none?
"And it simply wasn't the "most placid in history."
That honor belongs to the 1860s."
oh no, how could I have been such a fool?
it's actually just the most placid since the 1860s
okaaaay...
still, the global warming alarmists were wrong
as usual
instead of addressing each item of the rest of your absurd rationalization
it's enough to point out that the planet is warmer than was 150 years ago
in that time, poverty has sharply decreased and life expectancy has close to doubled
why should we halt that progress based on the claims of doomsdayers whose claims have a history of not actually happening?
"it's actually just the most placid since the 1860s
okaaaay..."
I see you didn't bother to actually look at the graph. Things were pretty tame through the early 1900s.
"it's alarmists, like you, who make broad generalizations"
Really? Where?
I make a point of having some data to back me up. Your problem is you think everyone who is concerned about climate change is an "alarmist." As far as I can tell, there is no recognition on the part of right-wingers that what humans are doing to the environment is bad and it is in our own interest to minimize the damage.
"instead of addressing each item of the rest of your absurd rationalization"
Why don't you just admit you don't have the first clue about how to respond with actual facts and data, and that's why you have to resort to name calling, cherry picking, and bogus strawman arguments?
"oh. I provided many actual quotes before and identified the speakers"
OK, Al Gore and Greta... one of whom has never passed a law and another who hasn't been a significant politician in two decades. As far as I can tell, they're getting the attention they do because right-wingers like to hold them up as easy targets, rather than actually contest the facts, the reports, the analysis, and the data.
"I agree, as a matter of fact I have often pointed that out here"
Yeah, right before you disregard all their conclusions and say it's all a hoax. That doesn't really help you sound any more rational.
"in that time, poverty has sharply decreased and life expectancy has close to doubled
why should we halt that progress based on the claims of doomsdayers whose claims have a history of not actually happening?"
No one of consequence is saying we should halt all that progress. Conservatives seem entirely unable to think in any terms beyond "ALL ON" or "ALL OFF."
No one of consequence is saying shut down all the coal plants tomorrow, or stop drilling for all oil right now. That's simply not going to happen. Be f'ing realistic.
But that doesn't stop us from building more PV, solar concentrators, wind turbines, and even battery backup, which surprisingly, is already turning out to be more cost effective already than a lot of people predicted.
Liberal elites are already building and flying battery-powered airplanes.
Meanwhile, conservatives are chanting "drill baby drill" and saying "climate change is a Chinese hoax."
In the meantime, China built itself into the world's largest supplier of solar panels, supplying countries all around the planet with solar power that is now cheaper than coal.
That money could have been coming here instead, you know, since solar cells were invented here in the US at Bell Labs. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on top of the White House. Ronald Raygun took them off. They are now sitting in a museum in China, and they are laughing at us all the way to the bank.
My house uses 1/4 of the electricity it did 30 years ago, and I am far more comfortable in it. That came about because of careful investments in insulation, lighting, windows, siding, and a heat pump. I save THOUSANDS of dollars every year. These improvements have paid for themselves. Those kinds of gains can be replicated throughout our economy. Most of it with technology we already have.
It's not about halting our economy - it's about making it better. There are tangible health costs to all the fossil fuels we burn, but conservatives never bring those up when the "costs" of going green come up. Apparently, life is only important while it's still a fetus. After that, you're on your own. If coal ash poisons your well with mercury, well, that's just the cost of progress.
"I see you didn't bother to actually look at the graph. Things were pretty tame through the early 1900s."
no, I didn't
I made a risky move and took your word for it
but, the period after Katrina had zero hurricanes hit the US, even in areas where it's so common that they have a "hurricane season" and name their sports team the "Hurricanes"
nothing from nothing leaves nothing and the alarmists were wrong, as usual
"Your problem is you think everyone who is concerned about climate change is an "alarmist.""
I don't think I've said that
but the alarmists are the ones who get the attention and threaten drastic governmental intervention
so, that's the problem that needs addressing
"As far as I can tell, there is no recognition on the part of right-wingers that what humans are doing to the environment is bad and it is in our own interest to minimize the damage."
and you accuse others of "broad generalizations"...
corporations and the military are hard at work on ways to deal with global warming
in ways that will not damage our economy
"Why don't you just admit you don't have the first clue about how to respond with actual facts and data, and that's why you have to resort to name calling, cherry picking, and bogus strawman arguments?"
I've long said here that it is clear that the planet has become warmer since 150 years ago but said that the extent is exaggerated, the cause is unclear, and the potential effects are inappropriately extrapolated. This current apoplexy of yours began when I pointed out that scientists are reporting that the Arctic is staying very cold this year and sea ice has returned to normal levels. I also pointed to the the sharp decline in poverty and the sharp increase in life expectancy during this period of global warming. True, i didn't go grab exact stats. I might, if any of you had the temerity to dispute these well-established facts.
"OK, Al Gore and Greta... one of whom has never passed a law and another who hasn't been a significant politician in two decades. As far as I can tell, they're getting the attention they do because right-wingers like to hold them up as easy targets,"
Here, you completely go off the deep end. You think the "right-wing" gave Al Gore a Nobel Prize and invited Greta to rant in front of a session at the UN and the Dems to devise the Green New Deal?
"Yeah, right before you disregard all their conclusions and say it's all a hoax. That doesn't really help you sound any more rational."
the hoax is when the most extreme possibilities are treated like foregone conclusions
like the many dates set when it all becomes irreversible and extinction is assured
"No one of consequence is saying shut down all the coal plants tomorrow, or stop drilling for all oil right now. That's simply not going to happen. Be f'ing realistic."
actually, there are many Dem politicians saying we need to end the use of fossil fuel
"But that doesn't stop us from building more PV, solar concentrators, wind turbines, and even battery backup, which surprisingly, is already turning out to be more cost effective already than a lot of people predicted."
no one of the straw men you've set up has suggested banning any of that
if something is cost effective, it will happen
no need for government intervention
"Liberal elites are already building and flying battery-powered airplanes."
someone tell Al Gore
Here's an article with real examples of how capitalism is doing more to reduce carbon output than any governmental intervention
https://issuesinsights.com/2020/02/18/jeff-bezos-blows-10-billion-with-his-climate-change-pledge/
hope that gives you a clue, Mr Alarmist
President Trump has done almost everything he can to anger Latino voters. And yet, his support among this crucial portion of the electorate remains surprisingly consistent. After the 2016 election, exit polls analyzed by the Pew Research Center showed that 28 percent of Latino voters supported Trump; today, 30 percent support him.
This percentage may not seem high. But consider what the number means for the Democrats: Displeasure with the president over the past three years has not led to an increase in support for the opposing party.
Democrats lost the 2016 election with about 66 percent of the Latino vote. Today 65 percent of registered Latino voters who are Democrats have a positive view of the party’s presidential candidates.
Based on exit polling from the past three election cycles, it is estimated that Democrats need about 70 percent of this vote to take back the White House.
Given the power of the Latino vote, and Dems are watching these numbers with alarm.
When Democrats reach out to Latino voters, they are too focused on immigration, and say too little about other issues these voters prioritize. If they want to win over enough Latino votes to retake the White House, Democrats must continue to fight for the immigrant community, but they must also offer a positive, aspirational narrative that embraces Latinos as a vibrant part of America.
In an election that will likely come down to the smallest margins of victory, the consistent support for Trump from a small, but vocal, subset of Latino voters is a real threat to Democrats.
The president’s treatment of immigrants at the border is inhumane and wildly unpopular with Latinos.
And yet, his support among this voting bloc is not cratering.
In fact, he enjoys more support from this electorate than Mitt Romney did in 2012, and about the same level that John McCain did in 2008.
Being able to provide for one’s family is one of the main reasons many people—from any country—immigrate to the United States, so the fact that Trump’s rhetoric on a growing economy has found an audience is not surprising.
In Florida, for example, a poll by Equis Research showed that 57 percent of Latinos supported the way the president handled the economy. If you look at only Cuban voters from the state, that number jumps to 71 percent.
Trying to steal a Senate seat is no problem so I will pardon the ex-governor and grab a pussy or two along the way.
"Trying to steal a Senate seat is no problem so I will pardon the ex-governor"
he already served enough time, you hypocritical pig
"and grab a pussy or two along the way."
yeah, you'd never catch Hillary's chubby hubby doing anything like that, you hypocritical pig
Whether Roger Stone, the loopy, self-aggrandizing political operative, deserves nine years in Supermax for obstructing an investigation into Russia–Donald Trump “collusion” is debatable. Whether the powerful men who helped create the investigation that ensnared Stone have been allowed to lie with impunity is not. They have.
Only a few days after prosecutors melodramatically left the DOJ after Trump tweeted a defense of Stone and the DOJ subsequently revised its sentencing recommendation to be more lenient, former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe was informed that he wouldn’t face charges. McCabe faced an inquiry into whether he broke the law when he denied to investigators that he had leaked information concerning a Clinton Foundation probe to the press.
McCabe went on CNN, where he is now paid to lecture citizens about the decaying state of American democracy, and claimed that being branded a liar was “one of the most sickening and demeaning experiences of my life.”
It’s a confusing statement — not merely because the IG report found that McCabe, once entrusted with immense power, had repeatedly lied under oath, but because McCabe himself had admitted to lying and apologized for it.
Was he lying about lying? Maybe he’ll tell us more in his next book.
As McCabe cozies up with his new colleagues, think of Michael Flynn, a decorated general and former national-security adviser, still mired in a four-year legal battle for allegedly misleading the FBI — not under oath — in the Russia-scare investigation that went absolutely nowhere.
No, the two cases aren’t connected. But they will surely will be in minds of millions of Americans. Because, as Andrew C. McCarthy notes, there’s a pattern:
George Papadopoulos was convicted of making a trivial false statement about the date of a meeting. Roger Stone was convicted of obstruction long after the special counsel knew there was no Trump–Russia conspiracy, even though his meanderings did not impede the investigation in any meaningful way. And in the case of Michael Flynn’s false-statements conviction, as McCabe himself acknowledged to the House Intelligence Committee, even the agents who interviewed him did not believe he intentionally misled them.
Now, if your contention is that misleading the authorities is wrong regardless of the outcome, I concur. The question then becomes: Why didn’t McCabe, James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey, or others who pushed Russia-criminal conspiracy theories, ever face any consequences for their own lying?
Former director of national intelligence James Clapper was likely the first Obama official to pass on the fabulist Steele dossier to the media. He had famously lied under oath to the Senate about warrantless surveillance.
Clapper was asked, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?” There is no ambiguity in that question. Clapper could have answered, “That’s not something I can discuss” or “That’s not something I should discuss.” Instead, he declared, “No, sir. . . . Not wittingly.”
That was a lie, under oath, about an issue far more relevant than anything Stone or Flynn or Papadopoulos could ever have even spoken to. It did nothing to slow Clapper’s career. In fact, Clapper was able to parlay his position into a media gig, where he helped fuel destructive paranoia about our elections.
The same goes for former director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan, who first lied to Americans about there not being “a single collateral death” in covert U.S. drone strikes in 2011, and then wrapped up his term by trying to cover up an illegal CIA spying operation against an office in the legislative branch of the United States government in 2016.
The CIA was spying on the Senate, viewing drafts and emails of a report on torture that the administration didn’t want published. It was a truly dangerous attack on “democracy” (though I can’t recall many columnists lamenting the rise of authoritarianism).
Brennan first blamed the Senate and tried to get Senate staffers fired. Only after the inspector general definitively established that the CIA had indeed spied did he begin negotiating with senators about privately owning up to the scandal. In public, though, he kept saying such things as, “I mean we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the — you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.”
Brennan relied on the same false earnestness, and the gravitas afforded to him because of his former title, to feed wild speculation over the 2016 election. When no evidence emerged from the Mueller report to justify his rants — as he almost surely knew it would not — Brennan explained that he had probably been given some “bad information.”
Whoops.
Then, of course, there is Comey, whose machinations have put him at the center of so many of our political disturbances over the past five years. Comey, we recently learned, oversaw an FBI investigation that relied on fabricated evidence and altered emails used in a warrant application that would form the “basis” of a sworn statement in court and allow the government to spy on Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page. We still don’t know what Comey knew. We still don’t know who was involved.
Perhaps prosecuting the former heads of intelligence agencies would be needlessly corrosive. But equally corrosive is transforming these liars into paragons of patriotism. That only feeds the perception that there are two types of justice in Washington. And if your goal is to destroy trust in our institutions, you couldn’t have hatched a better plan.
The mainstream Left is in serious trouble in the West. In the December 2019 election, the UK’s Labour Party was trounced by Boris Johnson’s Conservatives 365-203 in seats, and 44-32 percent in the popular vote. This was the worst result for Labour since 1935.
Yet, as Matthew Goodwin recently noted on Twitter, the most recent election was also the worst result ever for the French Socialist Party of Benoît Hamon, and for the Left in Italy and the Netherlands. It was the second-worst performance since 1949 for the German Social Democrats, the worst finish for the Austrian Social Democrats since 1945, and the worst for the Finnish socialists since 1962. In Sweden, the Social Democrats sunk to their lowest level since 1908. This is more than a coincidence.
Underlying the trend is a wider realignment of politics away from the economic conflicts of the 20th century toward the cultural battles of the 21st. Instead of just talking about state redistribution versus free markets, elections increasingly revolve around questions of immigration, national identity, and domestic security. This disadvantages the Left.
Why? Because, as David Goodhart remarked in an interview, it’s easier for right-wing parties to move left on economics than for left-wing parties to move right on culture.
That is, left-wing parties cannot move to the vote-rich zone of most electorates where the median voter—typically somewhat conservative on culture and centre-left on economics—resides. Conservatives can do so more easily as they are less beholden to libertarian economic orthodoxy than left-wing parties are to progressive cultural values.
Identity politics and multiculturalism are central motivating forces for the highly-educated activists who have dominated left-wing parties since the ’68 generation rose to prominence. These ideas tend to be considerably less popular than the Left’s economic offer, hence the bind the Left finds itself in.
Yet this alone cannot explain the inflexibility of left-wing parties. To do so requires an additional ingredient: the rise of political correctness. Political correctness functions as an emergent system that can push new ideas even when few people actually believe in them. Like the emperor’s new clothes, no one dares violate a taboo which may cost them dearly.
To be blunt, left-wing political correctness is more powerful than the right-wing variant. For instance, many social conservatives may dislike environmentalist candidates in their ranks, but dissidents on the left of a conservative party won’t have their character questioned and reputation trashed. By contrast, a left-wing politician who moves right on culture—calling for lower immigration or abolishing female-only shortlists, for instance—is likely to be accused of racism or sexism by radical online activists. This causes them intense embarrassment and, by triggering a social taboo, may lead others to pile on them to signal virtue. This can damage a person’s reputation well beyond politics. Something of this fate has befallen the patriotic leftists of Blue Labour in the UK, who are no longer welcome in Labour circles. Brexit-supporting Paul Embery, for instance, was kicked out of the Fire Brigades Union for criticizing the union’s position on Brexit. This, they alleged, made him an accomplice of the “nationalist Right” and thus a “disgrace to the traditions of the Labour movement.” No wonder few on the Left are willing to move right on culture.
The catalyst for the change has been the post-1960s “cultural turn” of the intellectual Left, away from class issues toward the problems of disadvantaged race, gender, and sexual identity groups. Social sanctions accompanied this change of sensibility.
A NPR reporter asked a top Dem party official we they are so worried when all the polls show Dems beating Trump in the general election. His answer: at this point in 1984, Walter Mondale had similar numbers against Ronald Reagan
No one should be above the law, Republican or Democrat. Nor should our elected leaders undermine equal justice under the law.
Okay, now that these obvious statements have been made, what should we make of the 1,100 signatures to a letter calling on Attorney General Barr to resign amid all the debate regarding the Department of Justice (DOJ)?
First, consider that the DOJ resides in the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Department of Justice Building. Bobby Kennedy was his brother’s closest political ally and advisor. Does the media suggest we should re-name the building or raise a fuss because the younger Kennedy was political?
Don’t believe it? Go back to February 1962, in U.S. News and World Report: “Bobby is forever putting out political brush fires. If something goes wrong somewhere, Bobby will take a look at his list of friends scattered through the Government. He will get someone on the phone, maybe a high official, and ask him to do a political job for him.”
More from the same article: “One day in January, more than a dozen young men trooped into Bobby’s office. Most of them were in their 30s. They came from the Defense Department, the State Department, from various agencies of the Government… Most of these men had worked closely with Bobby when he engineered his brother’s election campaign. They developed great loyalty and affection for the Attorney General, became his trusted lieutenants.”
Is this a problem? It depends. As Jack Kennedy quipped, he wanted his brother to “have a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law.”
What about an attorney general who politicizes the DOJ at the expense of adherence to the rule of law, packs the department with activists, is repeatedly struck down by the Supreme Court, and acts in direct conflict with well-accepted policies and procedures, then hides it? What if that attorney general is Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch?
Put aside the fact that Holder was held in contempt in the U.S. House—let’s chalk that up to politics and overlook the 17 Democrats who voted for contempt. Even a cursory review of the record shows that Holder, and his successor Lynch, abused power in the Department of Justice for a full eight years while carrying out hatchet work for President Obama.
After all, in an interview with Juan Williams, Holder proudly declared himself “an activist attorney general,” and acknowledged that he turned the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division into a political weapon, saying he was “proud of it.”
How soon leftists and media flacks forget they engaged in “community organizing” for left-wing activism at the highest levels of the Department of Justice. For just several major examples:
Under Holder, the notorious “Fast and Furious” operation was carried out. In it, guns were run to Mexican drug cartels, resulting in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. Holder refused to cooperate with House investigators to turn over information.
Holder encouraged President Obama to use executive power to unconstitutionally and illegally give status and benefits to both children and parents illegally present in the United States after failing to pass legislation. In other words, the chief law enforcement officer encouraged an end-run of the Constitution and the law, one of which courts have already struck down, while the other is being litigated.
Holder effectively dismissed the Lois Lerner Internal Revenue Service’s clear targeting of conservative groups and refused to carry out a true investigation into this corruption.
Holder corrupted the Civil Rights Division, turning it into a radical political organization—led once by Tom Perez, who is now the head of the Democratic National Committee. DOJ’s own inspector general concluded in a report that the division was guilty of “deep ideological polarization” and a “disappointing lack of professionalism.”
That same radical Holder-Perez Civil Rights Division was repeatedly smacked down by the courts for its egregious positions and overreach. For example, the division was rebuked in a Florida case where the DOJ abusively prosecuted peaceful abortion protesters. It argued that the First Amendment did not protect the hiring decisions of a church in the Hosanna-Tabor decision. There were similar decisions involving voter ID and immigration issues, among countless others.
Holder used race as a political weapon. He declared voter ID a racially charged “poll tax,” and used immigration and cases like the tragic events in Ferguson and Sanford, Florida, as political events to whip up President Obama’s base while completely ignoring the constant terrible gang violence in Chicago, for example, all while leaving law enforcement (of all races) dangling in the wind.
Holder used civil rights as a hammer to prevent states from trying school choice to help move children out of poverty.
And books will long be written about the politicization of the DOJ, the FBI, and countless government officials in the Obama administration all through the 2016 elections involving Russia collusion and targeting Donald Trump and his campaign.
No matter what political party is in power, the DOJ should not be used to advance policy contrary to the Constitution, or to carry out policy contrary to law, or to undermine the core principles of equal justice under law, among other things.
If there are allegations of true wrongdoing, Congress should look into it.
The president does, in fact, make Barr’s ability to do his job much more difficult by constantly tweeting about decisions in real time. Moreover, Roger Stone is hardly a sympathetic figure, making his own bed in this situation.
But is the attorney general correct to review a seven- to nine-year sentence recommendation for a first-time offender who admittedly engaged in witness tampering but in the context of a politically charged situation? With a jury foreperson with questionable objectivity? Of course he is, and a review up the chain of command about sentencing is not something that in and of itself should draw alarm, as these are legitimate questions. Also, lost in all the controversy is that this is just a recommendation that does not control! The final decision about Stone’s sentencing is still completely up to the judge on the case, not the DOJ.
So let’s keep a little perspective. Far from “whataboutism,” there are very clear differences here. With the current situation and no matter what has been tweeted, the conviction stands, the judge controls, this is just a recommendation, and there are reasonable questions that would lead to Barr or his team moving the recommendation downward.
We should not let the media and a bunch of left-wing activists drumming up former prosecutors to complain and obfuscate the facts, nor allow them to ignore the unbelievably rampant abuse at the DOJ under the most recent Democrat administration
Recent actions by several Utah Republican leaders reminded me why I left the party years ago.
It is definitely not a place where free-thinking people with original thoughts and ideas are welcome. Members are told what to think, say and how to act. If they fail to fall in line, consequences are quick to come and very severe.
After all, this worked really well for the Nazis in Germany, the Communists in the Soviet Union, and the radical Muslims in Iran. No reason it won't work for Republicans here.
Watching President Trump hurl insults at Gov. Gary Herbert at the recent governor’s conference in Washington was embarrassing. Did Herbert stand up for Utah, his constituents, or his good friend Sen. Mitt Romney? Nope. He sat there meekly and took it. It was hard to watch.
Romney has my respect. He stood up for his beliefs regardless of the consequences. His legacy will be remembered long after Phil Lyman, Stuart Adams and Greg Hughes are trying to explain to their grandchildren why they thought Romney’s actions were wrong.
I’d like to see them play Romney’s speech on the Senate floor while they are trying to reconcile their actions toward him. Even a 10-year-old would understand that hypocrisy.
Jim Pedler, Salt Lake City
What happened to our Republican Party?
I MET Bill Weld this winter at the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester. He sat down at my table while I was eating breakfast and said, “You look like the kind of guy that likes to hike in the mountains of New Hampshire, as I do.”
I gave him my best smile and said, “Governor Weld, I don’t climb mountains.... I’m 73 years old... I like to watch TV.” We exchanged business cards and I told him to have his people contact my people. Reporters were there and they laughed.
We just had an election in my state and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to understand what it meant. Donald Trump represents a celebration of ignorance, bombast, sociopathy, vanity, dishonesty, egomania, narcissism and criminality... and he’s openly corrupted the Department of Justice, Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency, which is now run by a coal lobbyist.
Bill Weld, on the other hand, is a respectful, kind, intelligent, thoughtful Harvard and Oxford graduate, who was a popular governor of Massachusettes and a U.S. Attorney from the same state. President Reagan appointed Bill Weld to head up the criminal division of the Department of Justice in Washington DC.
Governor Weld campaigned for eight months in New Hampshire and held numerous town halls and political events all over the state with his message of decency, intelligence and the rule of law. He wryly complained that Republicans in the House and Senate suffered from a Trumpian brand of Stockholm syndrome as they rubber-stamped Trump’s outrageous, vindictive, and increasingly lawless, vulgar behavior.
This past Tuesday we had the Republican primary and Donald Trump won an overwhelming victory, with Bill Weld receiving just under 10% of the vote. Donald Trump barely campaigned in the state but was a national figure who every single day sought to be the lead story in the news media he claims is fake and dishonest.
This disturbing and horrifying result means the Republican Party in New Hampshire prefers an obnoxious, lying, despicable, vindictive loudmouth to an ex-governor from a neighboring state who comported himself with dignity, kindness and thoughtfulness.
I attended the Weld reception that evening and after a few hours watched the election results on a large TV at the front of the room. I know Bill Weld and his wife, but I was so shocked by what my fellow Republicans from New Hampshire had just done, I left the event quietly without saying anything to either one of them. Even now, two days later, it’s still sinking in and I’m unable to explain what has happened to America and the Republican Party. We have an obvious sociopath and cheat in the White House and millions of Americans cheer him on, attend his rallies, wear his idiotic MAGA hats and can’t wait to vote for him again in the general election.
In 2016, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said it much better than I ever could. He called Trump a jackass and race-baiting, xenophobic bigot who was a danger to the country.
While Sen. Graham is now singing another song, in this digital age we have a record of what he really thinks of Trump, who has become the Svengali of the American Republican Party, mesmerizing the masses and overflow crowds at his rallies as he practices his political vandalism. I saw them lining up 24 hours in advance to make sure they got a good seat and it was 25 degrees outside the arena the night before Trump flew in and spoke.
Even more terrifying than Trump himself, are his Trumpanistas, his political cult, who worship this embarrassing, frightening political spectacle...and these misguided rubes honestly believe that Trump is making America great again.
What is even more astonishing is there are tens of millions of them. They are impressed by a vulgarian who puts on a political burlesque show and they cheer him on as he turns America into a depressing international joke.
Let me just hand to you Dems
that debate last night was the most entertaining since Trump told Jeb, "yeah, you're tough"
and what can you say about a Party when its most presentable candidate is a gay guy who loves loves doing PDA with his hubby in public
this is just gonna keep getting better and better
"why I left the party years ago.
It is definitely not a place where free-thinking people with original thoughts and ideas are welcome. Members are told what to think, say and how to act. If they fail to fall in line, consequences are quick to come and very severe."
this is really warped
quite the opposite is true
the biggest problem the Dems have is that because of identity politics and political correctness, they have no room to maneuver and move to the center in the general election
the opposite is not true of Republicans
"After all, this worked really well for the Nazis in Germany, the Communists in the Soviet Union, and the radical Muslims in Iran. No reason it won't work for Republicans here."
and, what worked well?
"Watching President Trump hurl insults at Gov. Gary Herbert at the recent governor’s conference in Washington was embarrassing. Did Herbert stand up for Utah, his constituents, or his good friend Sen. Mitt Romney? Nope. He sat there meekly and took it. It was hard to watch."
Trump insulted some pompous governor?
yeah, sounds just like Hitler...
"Romney has my respect. He stood up for his beliefs regardless of the consequences."
he doesn't have any beliefs
he was hoping to get some great press and revenge against Trump for not making him secretary of state
"His legacy will be remembered long after Phil Lyman, Stuart Adams and Greg Hughes are trying to explain to their grandchildren why they thought Romney’s actions were wrong."
yeah, he'll be remembered as the guy who blew an election against Obama by giving a dumb speech to a bunch of rich fat cats
he was the original target of the phrase "the 1 percent"
"What is even more astonishing is there are tens of millions of them. They are impressed by a vulgarian who puts on a political burlesque show and they cheer him on as he turns America into a depressing international joke."
they aren't laughing as their economies languish and ours booms
vulgar politicians are usually Dems: think Harry Truman and LBJ
we'll survive
the Dem Party may not
Forget Lincoln and Douglas. Forget Nixon and Kennedy. Hell, forget the Athenians and the Melians back during the Peloponnesian War. Last night’s Democratic primary slagfest in Nevada was the greatest debate in all of human history.
Oh, was it glorious — the sheer raging hostility spraying across the stage as every campaign besides the Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg bids faces the desperate possibility that each might fade into the woodwork against the Bernie surge and the Bloomberg billions.
It’s not that the gloves were off. No, my friends, everybody was wearing steel-tipped boots and going right for the crotch. Those weren’t snowflakes. They were nunchucks.
Some priceless highlights:
Pete Buttigieg wagging his finger at Amy Klobuchar after she said she’d made an error by forgetting the name of the president of Mexico in an interview.
Klobuchar wheeling on Buttigieg and demanding to know if he was trying to say she was dumb. “Are you mocking me here, Pete?”
Joe Biden saying he’s the only one on stage who has met all kinds of Mexican presidents — whose names he clearly couldn’t remember.
Bloomberg saying he was too rich to release his returns because he can’t do Turbo Tax like all of you losers.
Sanders fuming that Bloomberg would dare mention he has a summer house.
And then there was Elizabeth Warren, desperately trying to get back in the game and spraying fire at everyone else on stage like Machine Gun Kelly. She spared no one, and by the end, she had yelled herself hoarse and seemed like she needed an oxygen tank.
Warren’s signature moment came at the very beginning, when she went right for the jugular.
“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against — a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians,” Warren said. “No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.”
So how was Bloomberg? At the midpoint, it seemed like he had just spent the past three months lighting half a billion dollars on fire, given just how disastrously he had performed.
Everybody took a turn beating him up, and his responses were painfully clueless — especially when he said that his company struck nondisclosure agreements with ex-employees to protect them.
He apologized unconvincingly for stop-and-frisk, and when he was asked a second time to explain himself, he got huffy and basically said, hey, he’d already apologized!
In that first hour, Bloomberg wasn’t just a Not Ready for Prime Time Debater. He was Mr. Monopoly stripped naked on the Community Chest card.
He staged a bit of a comeback in the second half when he got an opening to face off against Bernie Sanders and offer the stark rationale for his own campaign.
After listening to Sanders offer a passionate defense of his Democratic socialism, Bloomberg said, “I can’t think of a better way to elect Donald Trump than for people to listen to this conversation.”
The thing is, even if the entire night had been the epic disaster the first hour suggested it would be, Bloomberg isn’t going anywhere — and he is likely only to increase his insane level of spending to do what he can to erase memories of his performance.
Buttigieg, who appears to have won Iowa and came basically within a point of winning New Hampshire, nonetheless didn’t quite seem like a formidable player. Once again he focused his strangely calm scorn on Klobuchar, who’s crowding him. Her loathing for him, in turn, was so palpable, it’s lucky she didn’t have a stapler or something on her podium that she might have launched at his head.
Klobuchar wouldn’t do that, of course, because she’s actually disciplined and controlled and rose to the occasion with a second great performance … that may not do anything for her. Biden had his good moments and his bad moments, but just didn’t seem like he was even a serious part of the discussion.
The free-for-all on the stage had, I think, the effect of leaving Bernie Sanders pretty much unmolested at the summit of the race. Bloomberg didn’t really lay a glove on him when it comes to the politics that will govern the caucus voting in Nevada on Saturday.
And if he wins there convincingly, as the cognoscenti think he will, his path forward as the national poll front-runner and the King of the Bros will be secure as the major contests land over the 10 days that follow Nevada.
And in Bloomberg, he’ll have the un-woke billionaire of his dreams to serve as a continual punching bag as he charts his course for Milwaukee.
And the commentary on the Republican primary debate?
Oh wait, I forgot, that didn't happen! THe RNC has squashed debates and Trump's cronies are shutting down primaries in multiple states so he doesn't have any competition. Who needs a choice when you've got a wanna-be king?
What could possibly go wrong for the democracy when the voters don't have a chance to choose?
Hillary Clinton Benghazi Investigation
4 years
0 indictments
0 convictions
Hillary Clinton Email Investigation
2 years
0 indictments
0 convictions
Trump-Russia Investigation
15 months
34 Indictments/Charges (and counting)
5 GUILTY pleas (and counting)
5 CONVICTIONS (and counting)
Indicted: Paul Manafort
Indicted: Rick Gates
Indicted: George Papadopoulos
Indicted: Michael Flynn
Indicted: Michael Cohen
Indicted: Richard Pinedo
Indicted: Alex van der Zwaan
Indicted: Konstantin Kilimnik
Indicted: 12 Russian GRU officers
Indicted: Yevgeny Prigozhin
Indicted: Mikhail Burchik
Indicted: Aleksandra Krylova
Indicted: Anna Bogacheva
Indicted: Sergey Polozov
Indicted: Maria Bovda
Indicted: Dzheykhun Aslanov
Indicted: Vadim Podkopaev
Indicted: Irina Kaverzina
Indicted: Gleb Vasilchenko
Indicted: Internet Research Agency
Indicted: Concord Management
Found Guilty: Roger Stone
Guilty Plea: Michael Flynn
Guilty Plea: Michael Cohen
Guilty Plea: George Papadopolous
Guilty Plea: Richard Pinedo
Guilty Plea: Alex van der Zwaan
Guilty Plea: Rick Gates
Over 191 Criminal Charges (and counting): Conspiracy against the USA (2 counts)
Conspiracy to launder money (2 counts)
Bank fraud (8 counts)
Bank fraud conspiracy (10 counts)
Subscribing to false tax returns (10 counts)
Making false statements (6 counts)
Failure to file reports of foreign bank accounts (14 counts)
Unregistered agent of a foreign principal (2 counts)
False FARA statements (2 counts)
Subscribing to false tax returns (10 counts)
Assisting in preparation of false tax documents (5 counts)
Conspiracy to defraud the United States (13 counts)
Conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud (2 counts)
Aggravated identity theft (24 counts)
Recent actions by several Utah Republican leaders reminded me why I left the party years ago.
It is definitely not a place where free-thinking people with original thoughts and ideas are welcome. Members are told what to think, say and how to act. If they fail to fall in line, consequences are quick to come and very severe.
After all, this worked really well for the Nazis in Germany, the Communists in the Soviet Union, and the radical Muslims in Iran. No reason it won't work for Republicans here.
Watching President Trump hurl insults at Gov. Gary Herbert at the recent governor’s conference in Washington was embarrassing. Did Herbert stand up for Utah, his constituents, or his good friend Sen. Mitt Romney? Nope. He sat there meekly and took it. It was hard to watch.
Romney has my respect. He stood up for his beliefs regardless of the consequences. His legacy will be remembered long after Phil Lyman, Stuart Adams and Greg Hughes are trying to explain to their grandchildren why they thought Romney’s actions were wrong.
I’d like to see them play Romney’s speech on the Senate floor while they are trying to reconcile their actions toward him. Even a 10-year-old would understand that hypocrisy.
Jim Pedler, Salt Lake City
Republicans know demographics are against them so they are raping the country to get everything they can while they're still in power.
Jim, you already posted that crap before
here's the response you got:
"why I left the party years ago.
It is definitely not a place where free-thinking people with original thoughts and ideas are welcome. Members are told what to think, say and how to act. If they fail to fall in line, consequences are quick to come and very severe."
this is really warped
quite the opposite is true
the biggest problem the Dems have is that because of identity politics and political correctness, they have no room to maneuver and move to the center in the general election
the opposite is not true of Republicans
"After all, this worked really well for the Nazis in Germany, the Communists in the Soviet Union, and the radical Muslims in Iran. No reason it won't work for Republicans here."
and, what worked well?
"Watching President Trump hurl insults at Gov. Gary Herbert at the recent governor’s conference in Washington was embarrassing. Did Herbert stand up for Utah, his constituents, or his good friend Sen. Mitt Romney? Nope. He sat there meekly and took it. It was hard to watch."
Trump insulted some pompous governor?
yeah, sounds just like Hitler...
"Romney has my respect. He stood up for his beliefs regardless of the consequences."
he doesn't have any beliefs
he was hoping to get some great press and revenge against Trump for not making him secretary of state
"His legacy will be remembered long after Phil Lyman, Stuart Adams and Greg Hughes are trying to explain to their grandchildren why they thought Romney’s actions were wrong."
yeah, he'll be remembered as the guy who blew an election against Obama by giving a dumb speech to a bunch of rich fat cats
he was the original target of the phrase "the 1 percent"
"What is even more astonishing is there are tens of millions of them. They are impressed by a vulgarian who puts on a political burlesque show and they cheer him on as he turns America into a depressing international joke."
they aren't laughing as their economies languish and ours booms
vulgar politicians are usually Dems: think Harry Truman and LBJ
we'll survive
"I’d like to see them play Romney’s speech on the Senate floor while they are trying to reconcile their actions toward him. Even a 10-year-old would understand that hypocrisy."
speaking of hypocrisy, your fellow TTFer said this:
"Who needs a debate when you've got a king? said...
And the commentary on the Republican primary debate?
Oh wait, I forgot, that didn't happen! THe RNC has squashed debates and Trump's cronies are shutting down primaries in multiple states so he doesn't have any competition. Who needs a choice when you've got a wanna-be king?
What could possibly go wrong for the democracy when the voters don't have a chance to choose?"
no Democrat that polled as low as William Weld did in the GOP race was allowed in any Dem debate
meaning you are a hypocrite
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