2020 American Political Scene

[DOR]

DOR when do I directly demean members of this board?

Is that a trick question?

[JRT]

He is now the face of the Republican Party, a Party that was once a proud party in the 70s but not anymore. Damn, I even voted for Nixon and Reagan! It is now a party of the shortsighted and stupid ( Nixon wasn't by the way) in what they advocate.

I see many of them as taking the longer view, willing to sacrifice near term pride for longer term gains. Their biggest wins will come from SCOTUS decisions. The best way to make that happen is to replace SCOTUS Justices Ginsberg and Breyer with Republican nominated Justices.

SCOTUS has already decided the existance of the right of individuals to defend themselves against violent attack, and the existence of their right to keep and bear arms (of types in common use) for personal defense within their home. A future SCOTUS may decide to extend that right that outside of the home, and perhaps extend that across state boundaries. Ultimately, a future SCOTUS may extend that to eliminate licensing to keep and bear arms, because a state's license is a state's precarious permission (from English common law of prescription), and precarious permission is not an enduring right, and an enduring right does not require any state's permission to exercise.

SCOTUS has already decided on individuals right to privacy in their medical care with doctors and licensed medical professionals in practice of medicine, and separately in a women's right to privacy in her medical decision to abort her pregnancy. A future SCOTUS may extend their consideration to include the rights of the unborn child, extending rights described in the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment of the US Constitution to all human life including prenatal human life. Note that a child born in the 22nd week of gestation has less than 10% chance of survival in the care of a level IV NICU, and that rises to exceed 50% in the 23rd week of gestation, and that well exceeds capabilities in earlier generations as medical science continues to advance.

[tbm3fan]

You misunderstood what shortsighted and stupid meant. In my context it means in relation to what is best for the country and the population as a whole and not for a narrow slice of people to maintain their personal control. You are referencing the narrow slice and not the whole.

[TopHatter]

Fox News Catches Kellyanne Conway Lying for Trump About Cutting Entitlements


“Oh, we’ll be cutting.”

Those four words—spoken in response to a question about entitlements during a Fox News town hall on Thursday—are likely to haunt President Donald Trump for the rest of his re-election campaign.

But don’t worry, Kellyanne Conway said Friday morning on Fox News, the president didn’t actually say what you heard him say.

Fox News host Ed Henry brought those comments, referring to them as something Trump “seems to be trying to clean up this morning,” during the White House counselor’s latest appearance on the network.

“Kellyanne, the president this morning promising he’ll protect Social Security and Medicare,” Henry said. “You were there at that town hall, he said the opposite. He said that he, in a second term, would cut Social Security and Medicare and he would cut entitlement programs. Why did he say that?”

“He didn’t say that,” Conway replied with a straight face. “You’re misquoting him, respectfully.” She went on to explain that when she brought up the reaction to the comments with Trump directly, he told her, “No, I’m talking about cutting deficits.”

Henry could have let it go at that, but instead he played the video clip of the moment, which clearly contradicts that explanation.

At the town hall, Fox host Martha MacCallum told the president, “If you don’t cut something in entitlements, you’ll never really deal with the debt.”

“Oh, we’ll be cutting,” Trump said in response. “But we’re also going to have growth like you’ve never had before.”

“So Martha MacCallum said right there, but you’re going to have cut entitlements to cut the deficit and he said, ‘We’ll be cutting,’” Henry said after the clip finished.

And yet, in the face of video evidence, Conway maintained her spin. “But that wasn’t what he was talking about, he wasn’t talking about cutting entitlements,” she insisted, pointing to a statement from Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham that similarly tried to clean up those comments.

She then deftly pivoted to blaming President Barack Obama, and the show moved on to the coronavirus.

But despite Conway’s misleading protestations, Trump’s words have already become a major issue in the 2020 presidential campaign with both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders tweeting their respective vows to protect entitlements on Thursday evening.

Now, The Daily Beast has learned that American Bridge 21st Century will become the first Democratic Super PAC to use the clip against Trump, launching a five-figure digital ad buy highlighting the president’s “promise” to cut entitlements and targeting to older voters in counties surrounding Scranton, Pennsylvania, where the town hall took place.

“We want to ensure that local voters who didn’t catch Trump’s town hall see Trump’s most important answer of the night and know what’s in store for a second Trump term—cuts to Social Security and Medicare,” American Bridge President Bradley Beychok said in a statement. “This made-for-TV moment exposed Trump for who he really is—someone willing to play with seniors’ lives.”

______________

I just realized (finally) that she's just as much a sociopath as Donald Trump.

[astralis]

she's -worse- of a sociopath. Trump lies without thinking, about stuff big and small -- sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes deliberate, other times for no reason at all. it's compulsive with him.

she KNOWS full well what she's saying is not just spin but a straight out, deliberate lie. and if someone calls her out on it, she pivots to another lie, or accuses the person of sexism.

[DOR]

Mick Mulvaney -> Mark Meadows … M&M for brains?

Mark Meadows will make a fine White House Chief-of-Staff. He won’t challenge POTUS intellectually (he only has two years of college under his belt, but has said it was four), and most certainly won’t let any kind of compassion get in the way of GOPer needs (he voted against financial aid following Hurricane Sandy). As for effectiveness, this guy was one of the main architects of the anti-Obama government shut-down shenanigans of 2013.

Consistency is also unlikely to be a problem, given that he not only signed the Tea Party Contract on America demanding a balanced budget, he also has repeatedly voted for GOPer deficit inflating budgets.

Did I mention consistency? When Red states get hit by hurricanes, like Harvey (Louisiana, Texas), he’s all for federal relief funding. When the Congressional Budget Office pointed out that the two bills (Harvey and Sandy) were almost identical, any credibility went right down that well-clogged drain that is GOPer world view. Oh, and he’s against Obamacare, but in favor of federal financial support for people with pre-existing conditions (as in, a couple of his own family members).

Meadows won’t have too much trouble sounding like POTUS, either. Regarding a bill to tighten controls on financial institutions activities with Hezbollah, he said, “we must pass this legislation to make sure we can do is cripple their ability to finance and put people out of harm’s way.” No, I have no idea what he means, either.

Partisanship won’t be a problem, either. Meadows has it in spades. He was part of the “Dump Boehner” faction that thought the former House Speaker was too willing to work with Democrats. He tried to tell Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that when Democrats are in charge of the House, members need more time to prepare for meetings than they do when GOPers are mis-managing the place.

No problem with ethics, either. He was forced to remove his chief-of-staff, Trey Gowdy, for sexual harassment, but managed to keep him on the House payroll, illegally.

But, it isn’t all bad news. The only way Meadows managed to win a congressional seat at all was by running in the single most heavily GOPer seat in heavily redistricted North Carolina.

Oh, and he’s a climate denying, bigoted, flat-taxing birther who voted against the Violence Against Women Act!

[TopHatter]

she's -worse- of a sociopath. Trump lies without thinking, about stuff big and small -- sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes deliberate, other times for no reason at all. it's compulsive with him.

she KNOWS full well what she's saying is not just spin but a straight out, deliberate lie. and if someone calls her out on it, she pivots to another lie, or accuses the person of sexism.

And what's even worse is that Trump's followers support it/agree with it/excuse it/dismiss it.

[TopHatter]

Oh, and he’s a climate denying, bigoted, flat-taxing birther who voted against the Violence Against Women Act!

Sounds like he'll fit right in with this Neanderthal-packed & Shariah Law-by-another-name-loving "Administration".

[Oracle]

This was on my youtube feed, don't know how.

It reminded me of Dr. Evil, lol, in a funny way.

[JRT]

This was on my youtube feed, don't know how.

It reminded me of Dr. Evil, lol, in a funny way.

Are you suggesting that much like Dr. Evil, that Donald J. Trump is merely extorting the world, and that perhaps we should take up a collection and pay him $100,000,000 to not run for re-election? If so, then yours is an interesting observation.

$100,000,000 would have been a modest fraction of the money that Bloomberg spent, and might have been a better use of that money.

[TopHatter]

Trump Campaign Chief Is Funneling Pay To Eric Trump's Wife, Don Jr.'s Girlfriend

President Donald Trump’s campaign manager is quietly channeling money to Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump, and Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, The New York Times reported Monday.

The payments are hidden from public view because they’re made through campaign manager Brad Parscale’s private company, Parscale Strategy, based in San Antonio, sources told the Times. Typically, such payments would be part of public filings required by the Federal Election Commission so that donors can find out how their contributions are being used — in this case, to pay members of the president’s family.

The family benefits are linked to a network of politically connected private companies — operating with the support and help of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner — that have charged roughly $75 million since 2017 to the Trump reelection campaign, the Republican National Committee and other Republican clients, according to the Times.

Guilfoyle last year angrily confronted Parscale about late checks owed to her, two witnesses told the Times. He reportedly promised that the situation would be rectified by his wife, Candice Parscale, who often handles his company accounts.

One of Lara Trump’s most notorious contributions to her father-in-law’s campaign early this year was to mock rival Joe Biden’s stutter, which he has grappled with since he was a child.

She was initially hired as a senior consultant in early 2017 by another Parscale company, digital vender Giles-Parscale, also based in San Antonio, The Associated Press reported. Lara Trump was to serve as a liaison between the company and Donald Trump’s campaign, headquartered in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, which is owned by the president’s Trump Organization. Parscale was named Trump’s reelection campaign manager the following year.

The Trump campaign announced in January that Guilfoyle, a former Fox News personality who stated dating Trump Jr. two years ago, would lead the joint fundraising drive between the campaign and the RNC.

Guilfoyle left Fox News in 2018 following a human resources investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior, including sexual misconduct, HuffPost reported at the time. An attorney for Guilfoyle denied all accusations as “unequivocally baseless.”

HuffPost could not immediately reach Parscale for comment.

Parscale declined to comment to the Times “in detail” on the article, the paper reported. He has, however, said in the past that private companies provide greater flexibility in a campaign, given campaign finance law requirements, noted the Times.
____________

And the grifting continues...

[TopHatter]

Trump’s Plan to Fill Oil Reserve ‘Right Up to the Top’ Lifts Prices

President Donald Trump said Friday afternoon that the U.S. will buy oil “at a very good price” to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. “We are going to fill it right up to the top,” he said.

The move helps oil prices because it creates new demand at a time when the coronavirus outbreak is reducing economic growth and consumption of both jet fuel and gasoline. The buying is especially critical because Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries are ramping up output as they fight for market share.

The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, has been cut in half this year, but it regained some ground after Trump spoke. Brent jumped 7% to $35.04 around 4:35 p.m. ET. West Texas Intermediate crude, or WTI, was up 6.1% to $33.43.

The U.S. established the reserve after the 1973-74 oil embargo to make sure the country had enough supplies if there was another threat to imports.

The latest data from the Energy Department indicates that the reserve had 635 million barrels as of Jan. 30. It is authorized to hold as much as 713.5 million.

That would leave a gap of 80 million barrels that the U.S. could fill. At today’s prices, that much crude would cost taxpayers about $2.6 billion. “It puts us in a position that’s very strong and we’re buying it at the right price,” Trump said.

The exact amount in the reserve right now isn’t clear, because the government sometimes sells oil to raise money for government projects. Trump was proposing to sell oil from the reserve as recently as last month.

The U.S. imports about 10 million barrels of petroleum a day. Depending on how long it takes for the government to fill the reserve, the move could replace some of the demand now being lost as people hunker down to control the spread of the coronavirus.
______________

I...I think I'm having a heart attack...no, a brain aneurysm: I actually with agree with something that Donald Trump is doing. Wholeheartedly AGREE!

*hits the ground with a dull thud*

[Oracle]

Are you suggesting that much like Dr. Evil, that Donald J. Trump is merely extorting the world, and that perhaps we should take up a collection and pay him $100,000,000 to not run for re-election? If so, then yours is an interesting observation.

$100,000,000 would have been a modest fraction of the money that Bloomberg spent, and might have been a better use of that money.

Actually I was thinking both the characters are so similar.

But, what you thought was my observation, is actually your observation, and I should say is a very very interesting one. Should be in the what if thread.

What if Trump is paid a gazillion dollars not to run for re-election?

[Bigfella]

I...I think I'm having a heart attack...no, a brain aneurysm: I actually with agree with something that Donald Trump is doing. Wholeheartedly AGREE!

*hits the ground with a dull thud*

Deep breaths, deep breaths.

It does make sense to buy it at current prices. The US has also just signed a deal giving Australia access to the US strategic reserve, so adding to it at today's prices with the possibility that we will buy it at higher prices later also makes sense.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/fede...07-p547t1.html

A stopped clock moment.

[TopHatter]

Deep breaths, deep breaths.

Trying...to...breathe...must...be...rational...exp lanation....

A stopped clock moment.

AHHHH....there it is, that explains it. Thank you, I'm breathing again.

Apparently there are some adults left in the Trump "Administration" because I don't see how this could possibly benefit Trump's bank account in the short term*, therefore it's virtually impossible for him or any of his fellow criminals to have thought of it.




*Unless of course he's heavily invested in oil companies and is trying desperately to stop the bleeding. That's probably it lol.