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u.s. politics: abortive cure for labor pains


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No worries.  Only reason I said anything is cuz I think someone else said upthread they begrudgingly liked something about Sessions for some reason, and I though tthis whole thing was getting a little too like when Bilbo reaches Rivendell.  Anyway, :cheers:

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Sessions needs to stay for now because if Sessions goes a more Trump-friendly (i.e., corrupt) AG can be appointed who will summarily fire Mueller. Such a candidate would require confirmation, but does anyone really believe the GOP wouldn't rubber-stamp it?

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Yes, Republicans and conservatives are trash talkin’ clowns. Some Republican guy had one good year (due to the Volcker Fed”) around 1984, and Republicans can’t shut the fuck up about it. Take for instance sorry ass Newt Gingrich’s when Mitt Romney ran comments that if Obama had been like Reagan everything would have been awesome. It would have been mornin’ in America according to Puke Gingrich.

But, the Obama years was demand side problem, full stop. Everything else was a side show. That includes the so called “skills gap”. Just remember, back few years ago, we had people running around saying the high unemployment rate was "structural", that includes Trump's recent appointment to the FED Marvin Goodfriend. They were wrong.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/28/no-obamasclerosis-wasnt-a-real-problem-for-the-economy/

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The Wall Street Journal's Greg Ip, reviewing the Trump administration’s first Council of Economic Advisers report, finds credible its claims that President Barack Obama’s policies, particularly in his second term, materially slowed economic growth, even though Ip acknowledges that the CEA’s assertions regarding magnitudes are likely exaggerated.

I have no idea after a financial bust, how anyone in their right mind, would think the main problem would be on the supply side, unless you're just being a real, real, conservative clown. To make this very simple, if supply side issues were really the problem, then the FED wouldn’t have problem hitting it’s inflation target after the FED expanded the monetary base by about 5 times.

Sorry ass Republicans, gonna sorry ass. Just pathetic. I wouldn't let a bunch of Republican clowns run a kool aid stand and certainly wouldn't take any of their pontificating about recent economic matters seriously.
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What does it mean to have “conservative values”? 

Evidently it means gleefully fucking people out of health insurance.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/28/17064444/obamacare-aca-lawsuit-mandate-voxcare

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Twenty state attorneys general have filed a new lawsuit that — like the many lawsuits before it — aims to take down the Affordable Care Act.

The suit, filed in a Texas district court on Tuesday, makes a new legal argument that relies on Congress’s recent repeal of the individual mandate penalty.

Sorry ass Republicans gonna sorry ass.

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2 hours ago, Inigima said:

Sessions needs to stay for now because if Sessions goes a more Trump-friendly (i.e., corrupt) AG can be appointed who will summarily fire Mueller. Such a candidate would require confirmation, but does anyone really believe the GOP wouldn't rubber-stamp it?

Actually yeah. McCain doesn't seem likely to come back to DC for any more votes (I think there's a decent chance he will for the omnibus so he can give a speech about the extra military funding as one last hurrah and that'll be it), so Republicans effectively only have a 50-49 majority. It's pretty easy to see 2 Republican senators blocking any AG nominee who is clearly just a crony; plus there's Cory Gardner's ongoing blockade of all important DOJ nominations over the administration's marijuana policies (which are being pushed by more than just Sessions).

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32 minutes ago, Fez said:

Actually yeah. McCain doesn't seem likely to come back to DC for any more votes (I think there's a decent chance he will for the omnibus so he can give a speech about the extra military funding as one last hurrah and that'll be it), so Republicans effectively only have a 50-49 majority. It's pretty easy to see 2 Republican senators blocking any AG nominee who is clearly just a crony; plus there's Cory Gardner's ongoing blockade of all important DOJ nominations over the administration's marijuana policies (which are being pushed by more than just Sessions).

Assuming McCain is an abstention, wouldn't they only need 1 Republican Senator?  I could easily see Flake or Collins being winnable votes if the AG is just the President's lackey. 

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Just now, Maithanet said:

Assuming McCain is an abstention, wouldn't they only need 1 Republican Senator?  I could easily see Flake or Collins being winnable votes if the AG is just the President's lackey. 

You're right. I was doing absentation math, but if a Republican senator flips rather than doesn't show up only 1 is needed. And it's even easier to see one Republican deciding to block a full-on lackey.

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15 hours ago, Kalbear said:

No, it isn't. They should be based on what they talk about and say, and even a few of them might do that - but LaPierre? Fuck no, he won't. He won't fucking care a bit. He'll just say that we want to be tough on criminals and sane, upstanding Christians, and if you're one of them you'll be just fine. 

What makes you and others say that? Take a half hour to scroll through the comments section on Breitbart and other far right sites. The second amendment absolutists are losing their minds, and the NRA will pay attention to that. They’re already playing defense against even further right second amendment organizations. They can’t afford to be seen supporting Trump’s statements, or even being ambivalent towards them.

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The most likely scenario is nothing comes from Trump's gun statements, just like nothing came from his original "bill of love" DACA statements. But there is one key difference: Trump seemingly formed all his political opinions in the '80s, based on what was in the NYC tabloid media at the time, and has not changed since. Being a racist bigot is a core part of his identity, so it's easy to see his original DACA statements as him just agreeing to the sentiments of the room and not something he believes in/cares about. But as a guy who lived in NYC when gun violence and crime was extremely high, and seems to think the entire country is still like it, it's entirely possible that he legitimately does not like guns and may try to follow through on his statements.

Of course, he doesn't know how to actually do that, so it probably won't change much; especially since most of his administration seems to be actively working against him on this. But if he publicly backed something more piecemeal like the revisited Manchin-Toomey bill, or the new Feinstein-Flake bill, and didn't waver, I think it could get through.

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On a more serious note, CNBC is interviewing former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.

He is warning stagflation is on the way.

The good part of the tax cut was the reduction in corporate taxes. Everything else in the tax bill is irrelevant.

The short term reaction is unfolding and has been positive, but the long term is being impacted by rising interest rates, which will seriously impair productivity.

He said something in a slightly different way than what I have been saying - do not look at price:earnings ratios, look at earnings:price. Earnings have been propped up by low interest rates, and will fall as rates go up and stock prices will fall along with the fall in earnings. As I have said before, low interest rates have been a fantastic transfer of wealth to corporations.

He's not making any predictions of when this will happen, he merely says "in the long term".

Said another way, there is a Great Unravelling To Come. I capitalize that to get all you geeks paying attention, as if it were a an event in The Wheel of Time. Trillions of dollars in debt are being held by governments around the world and that debt has to be dealt with. The shit will hit the fan one day.

Once CNBC posts a story I'll link it. It was a brief interview.

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10 minutes ago, Fez said:

The most likely scenario is nothing comes from Trump's gun statements, just like nothing came from his original "bill of love" DACA statements. But there is one key difference: Trump seemingly formed all his political opinions in the '80s, based on what was in the NYC tabloid media at the time, and has not changed since. Being a racist bigot is a core part of his identity, so it's easy to see his original DACA statements as him just agreeing to the sentiments of the room and not something he believes in/cares about. But as a guy who lived in NYC when gun violence and crime was extremely high, and seems to think the entire country is still like it, it's entirely possible that he legitimately does not like guns and may try to follow through on his statements.

Of course, he doesn't know how to actually do that, so it probably won't change much; especially since most of his administration seems to be actively working against him on this. But if he publicly backed something more piecemeal like the revisited Manchin-Toomey bill, or the new Feinstein-Flake bill, and didn't waver, I think it could get through.

Totally agree!

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15 hours ago, Teng Ai Hui said:

Trump creates his political beliefs the same way James Joyce creates his books. Everything is just stream-of-consciousness with him. He has no other gear.

That's a smear on Joyce, who performed endless research to be certain that every location was correct in connection with every other location, that every place name was correct, that the phonetically spelled pronunciations were correct, etc.  He got people to send him directories of Dublin, he wrote endless letters of inquiry to his friends still living there. He asked people to help him recreate conversations they had. He never stopped with his research.  The orange soda jerk doesn't do anything like this for any of his extrusions, spasms, expectorates or peristalsises.

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5 hours ago, Inigima said:

Sessions needs to stay for now because if Sessions goes a more Trump-friendly (i.e., corrupt) AG can be appointed who will summarily fire Mueller. Such a candidate would require confirmation, but does anyone really believe the GOP wouldn't rubber-stamp it?

 

3 hours ago, Fez said:

Actually yeah. McCain doesn't seem likely to come back to DC for any more votes (I think there's a decent chance he will for the omnibus so he can give a speech about the extra military funding as one last hurrah and that'll be it), so Republicans effectively only have a 50-49 majority. It's pretty easy to see 2 Republican senators blocking any AG nominee who is clearly just a crony; plus there's Cory Gardner's ongoing blockade of all important DOJ nominations over the administration's marijuana policies (which are being pushed by more than just Sessions).

Sessions replacement doesn’t necessarily have to face a new confirmation hearing by the Senate. The president can use the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 to install an acting AG for 210 days. The only requirement is that the individual in question needs to already hold an office or position that requires Senate confirmation. They don’t have to be at the DOJ, so Trump could appoint a number of different people to kick start his own Saturday Night Massacre.

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So this is fun:

Lotta stuff here:

1. Burr continues to have integrity when it comes to congressional oversight.

2. He and Warner agree that the House Intelligence Committee (Nunes!) leaked Warner's texts.

3. They told Paul Ryan, and he completely passed the buck (I'm not the chair of the committee).

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There is so much going on right now that is so bad for this country that it's hard to keep up. Fez's thing above is insane. The fact that Kushner is getting half a billion dollars in loans shortly after meeting with those officials is corruption to the core. And now this...

 

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48 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Oh and there of course was this...

 

 

Quote

 

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/02/27/trump-hotel-standoff-escalates-in-panama-city/

A day earlier, Panama’s federal prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into the Trump Organization, after Fintiklis complained that he had been unlawfully blocked from his own property.

With that, this bizarre standoff turned a theoretical concern about the Trump administration – that, someday, the president’s private business might be investigated by a foreign government – into a reality.

“The fear has always been that there would be an international incident involving the finances of the president, and the president would have his loyalties questioned,” said Jordan Libowitz of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“What kind of pressure would he be willing to place on them?” Libowitz asked, referring to foreign authorities.

The White House press office has not responded to questions sent about the standoff at Trump Panama. The U.S. Embassy in Panama City and the Panamanian Foreign Ministry declined to comment, saying they were not involved.

Fintiklis has also declined to provide detailed comments.

 

 

Quote

The incident represents an early test for U.S. diplomats navigating international relations in places where the president’s family manages properties or conducts other business ventures, and it comes just days before the scheduled resignation of the U.S. ambassador to Panama over his personal disagreements with the Trump administration.

At the heart of the dispute is an effort by the building’s new majority owner to remove Trump’s name from the property and oust the U.S. president’s family firm from managing the hotel. Trump disclosed bringing in $810,000 in management fees from the property in 2016, according to figures listed on the president’s 2017 financial disclosure form.

In addition to battling each other in the building’s lobby, the owner has been fighting Trump in a U.S. District Court. In a case filed in January, majority owner Orestes Fintiklis accused the Trump Organization of trying to bully the property’s owners into abandoning a plan to terminate the management agreement with the Trumps.

According to the complaint, Trump was trying “to create a circus by threatening Plaintiffs (and others) with baseless fraud and conspiracy claims that entirely lack merit and have already been rejected by the Panamanian courts.”

http://abcnews.go.com/International/management-dispute-trump-hotel-panama-leads-violent-clashes/story?id=53437297

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/02/24/world/americas/ap-us-trump-panama-hotel.html

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7 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

And the Dow drops 500 points immediately after Trump announces the new tariffs.  It's almost as if people don't think trade wars are good for business.

Yep, first thing I did when I saw Mexal’s post was check the Dow. It actually went close to 600 points down for a bit. I’m curious what will happen next week when the tariffs kick in.

I also wonder if some of the cabinet members will bail, especially Cohn. Reports are everyone but Ross and Navarro was against this.

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