U.S. Politics: Feelings Trump Facts

[TheKitttenGuard]

Check out @realDonaldTrump's Tweet:

So, there was a hack.

[Mexal]

9 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

So Newsweek bad, Tweets good? 

I read the tweets. He barely debunks any of it, just says things he doesn't agree with. He doesn't really show any examples of bad logic or provide any more proof that what Epstein said is false. 

Doesn't matter to me. I have a few people I trust who has the clearance and some idea of what happened and they both say he's a traitor. 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Mexal,

Trump?  A traitor (or at least someone so narcissisticly self interested that there is little difference)? Say it ain't so.

[Mexal]

9 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Mexal,

Trump?  A traitor (or at least someone so narcissisticly self interested that there is little difference)? Say it ain't so.

No. Snowden. I don't think Trump is a traitor, I just think he's a narcissist who's unwell.

In other news that should surprise no one, three liens have been filed against the Trump Hotel worth over $5 million for failing to pay the electricians, plumbers and construction workers who worked their asses off to get his hotel ready for the Sept 16th opening.

Quote

Workers from AES Electrical apparently went all out to make sure Donald Trump could open his luxury hotel on the day he wanted.

In the frenzied final six weeks of work at the hotel, while Trump touted the project on the campaign trail, AES of Laurel, Md., claims it assigned 45 members of its staff to work 12-hour shifts for nearly 50 consecutive days to get the lights, electrical and fire systems prepared on time.

“We had people there well over 12 hours a day for weeks because they had a hard opening of Sept. 12 and you can’t open if the lights don’t work and the fire alarms don’t work and the fire marshal can’t inspect it,” said Tim Miller, executive vice president of AES. “There is a lot of work that went into that hotel, and it didn’t happen by accident.”

Trump got his wish: The hotel was ready enough that on Sept. 16 he held a campaign event there honoring veterans, which was carried live on national television. He touted the hotel as having been completed “under budget and ahead of schedule” and said that when it opened officially the following month it would be “one of the great hotels anywhere in the world.”

But around the same time, Miller said, the Trump Organization and its construction manager, Lendlease, stopped paying AES. Three days before Christmas, AES filed a mechanic’s lien with the D.C. government alleging that it was out almost $2.1 million. “Merry Christmas and a happy new year to us,” Miller said. 

The AES filing brings the total of allegedly unpaid bills on the hotel to more than $5 million. Washington-area plumbing firm Joseph J. Magnolia Inc. and Northern Virginia construction company, A&D Construction, are seeking $2.98 million and $79,700 respectively.

 

[OldGimletEye]

http://angrybearblog.com/2017/01/i-still-think-thomas-is-a-hack.html

Quote

Thomas Sowell recently announced his retirement.

Well, Sowell decides to retire.

Goodbye and good riddance. The world’s collective IQ probably will spike.

Just looking at a real howler by Sowell:

Quote

“Tax rates were cut. Tax revenues were not. More tax revenue was collected during every year of the two Reagan administrations than had ever been collected in any previous year in the history of the country.”

Okay, Sowell should have known if you are going to compare tax revenues over two periods of time you need to 1) deflate the data, 2) make adjustments for the state of the business cycle, and 3) detrend the data. But, I guess that was against Sowell’s “conservative values” or whatever.

And I guess, Sowell didn’t bother to read Martin Feldstein’s paper about the reasons for the recovery under Reagan. That too, was probably against his “conservative values”.

Sorry for the rant.

Carry on.

[OldGimletEye]

4 hours ago, LongRider said:

So Trump has Mexico pissed off now, China not too happy either.  How about Canada, Brazil or South Africa too?  Hell, why not.

Bullying a smaller and weaker nation to pay for a wall it doesn't want is just repugnant.

[Dr. Pepper]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

Bullying a smaller and weaker nation to pay for a wall it doesn't want is just repugnant.

I'm sure Trump and his supporters believe that the US is the smaller, weaker nation.  That's what the whole #maga thing is about.  It's like how a bunch of christians in the US think they are oppressed.  They feel it, so it's true.

Gods this thread title is just too perfect.

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

Well, Sowell decides to retire.

Goodbye and good riddance. The world’s collective IQ probably will spike.

Just looking at a real howler by Sowell:

Quote

“Tax rates were cut. Tax revenues were not. More tax revenue was collected during every year of the two Reagan administrations than had ever been collected in any previous year in the history of the country.”

Wait, didn't Reagan raise taxes after he cut taxes?  If that is correct, then what he says here is bullshit for that reason as well. 

Quote

. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

Something else to look forward to if the R's get their tax cutting wishes done if history is any guide.

Quote

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level.

https://thinkprogress.org/10-things-conservatives-dont-want-you-to-know-about-ronald-reagan-7a87723a4f68#.9qppxb7jg

[Martell Spy]

Trump Finds That Attack-Dog Strategy Has Its Limits

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/politics/donald-trump-intelligence.html?action=click&contentCollection=The Upshot&module=Trending&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article
 

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

For the record, I don't hope that Trump's fight with the CIA results in him being deposed, but rather that it absorbs all of his political capital and results in his administration being completely ineffective for 4-8 years.

[OldGimletEye]

24 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

I'm sure Trump and his supporters believe that the US is the smaller, weaker nation.  That's what the whole #maga thing is about.  It's like how a bunch of christians in the US think they are oppressed.  They feel it, so it's true.

Gods this thread title is just too perfect.

I'm going to plagiarize here a little from what Major Reisman (played by Lee Marvin) says to Colonel Breed (played by Robert Ryan and in reality a pretty good liberal for his day I might add) in the Dirty Dozen:

I always thought conservatives were just cold, calculating and unimaginative.

But they are really quite emotional, aren't they*?

[Tempra]

2 hours ago, Mexal said:

No. Snowden. I don't think Trump is a traitor, I just think he's a narcissist who's unwell.

In other news that should surprise no one, three liens have been filed against the Trump Hotel worth over $5 million for failing to pay the electricians, plumbers and construction workers who worked their asses off to get his hotel ready for the Sept 16th opening.

 

Eh, why is this news? Mechanics liens for unpaid services are commonly filed against property owned by corporations of all sizes.  The liens appears to have been perfected, and if they are valid, the lienholders have a bankruptcy-proof secured asset to recover money owed to them.  The mere fact that these liens involve the Trump brand hardly make this newsworthy.

[Mexal]

26 minutes ago, Tempra said:

Eh, why is this news? Mechanics liens for unpaid services are commonly filed against property owned by corporations of all sizes.  The liens appears to have been perfected, and if they are valid, the lienholders have a bankruptcy-proof secured asset to recover money owed to them.  The mere fact that these liens involve the Trump brand hardly make this newsworthy.

Because it's been a pattern of his business to screw the little guys, the same people he courts with promises. He's been sued hundreds of times for unpaid services and this is a more recent example, especially given his "on budget, on schedule" brag. Easy to be on budget when you stop paying the guys getting the lights on and toilets working.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Because it's been a pattern of his business to screw the little guys, the same people he courts with promises. He's been sued hundreds of times for unpaid services and this is a more recent example, especially given his "on budget, on schedule" brag. Easy to be on budget when you stop paying the guys getting the lights on and toilets working.

This would be the hotel that as  soon as Trump is sworn in will make him have an immediate impeachable offense, right? 

[Mexal]

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

This would be the hotel that as  soon as Trump is sworn in will make him have an immediate impeachable offense, right? 

Yes sir.

[Mexal]

In other news, doesn't seem like OGE is happy with the way things are going. Not only was there a FOIA request for their emails to see what type of contact there is with the transition team (hint: almost none since election) but they just sent this note to some senators.

 

[Tempra]

24 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Because it's been a pattern of his business to screw the little guys, the same people he courts with promises. He's been sued hundreds of times for unpaid services and this is a more recent example, especially given his "on budget, on schedule" brag. Easy to be on budget when you stop paying the guys getting the lights on and toilets working.

And water's wet.  Politicians routinely court voters whom their actions have screwed.  I believe Hillary called this having a "private vs public" position.

Large corporations are being sued or threatened with suit every single day for very similar issues. If you impose some artificial requirement that a prospective president "not have screwed the little guy," then you are disqualifying most businessmen and a whole host of other people.  If your gripe is simply that Trump doesn't truly represent the people he courted, then, again, water's wet. He's done to us what politicians have been doing forever.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

11 hours ago, TheKitttenGuard said:

Check out @realDonaldTrump's Tweet:

So, there was a hack.

 

[Mexal]

More fun. Trump's national security pick Monica Crowley plagiarized her 2012 book from 50 different sources. Lots of examples listed in the article.

Quote

The review of Crowley’s June 2012 book, "What The (Bleep) Just Happened," found upwards of 50 examples of plagiarism from numerous sources, including the copying with minor changes of news articles, other columnists, think tanks, and Wikipedia. The New York Times bestseller, published by the HarperCollins imprint Broadside Books, contains no notes or bibliography.

In one instance, Crowley lists a variety of so-called "pork" items she claimed were part of the 2009 stimulus package. Many of the instances were copied wholesale from a conservative list of pork barrel spending, with some items dating back to the 1990s. Most of the copied instances were listed on a website for a podiatrist dating back to 2004.

A section on organized labor appears largely copied from a 2004 article by the libertarian think tank the Mises Institute. Another portion of her book on torture is copied from a Fox News article.

Sections of her book are repeatedly lifted from articles by National Review author Andrew C. McCarthy, who is a friend of Crowley’s. Lines in her book also match word-for-word the work of other columnists, including National Review’s Rich Lowry, Michelle Malkin, conservative economist Stephen Moore, Karl Rove, and Ramesh Ponnuru of Bloomberg View.

Crowley also lifted word-for-word phrases from the Associated Press, the New York Times, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the BBC, and Yahoo News.

Crowley has been accused of plagiarism before. In 1999, Slate reported a column by Crowley in the Wall Street Journal mirrored a 1988 article in Commentary, the neoconservative magazine.

"Had we known of the parallels, we would not have published the article," a Journal editor’s note said at the time. Crowley denied the charge at the time, saying, "I did not, nor would I ever, use material from a source without citing it."

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 hour ago, Tempra said:

And water's wet.  Politicians routinely court voters whom their actions have screwed.  I believe Hillary called this having a "private vs public" position.

Large corporations are being sued or threatened with suit every single day for very similar issues. If you impose some artificial requirement that a prospective president "not have screwed the little guy," then you are disqualifying most businessmen and a whole host of other people.  If your gripe is simply that Trump doesn't truly represent the people he courted, then, again, water's wet. He's done to us what politicians have been doing forever.

It's not a requirement so much as a reasonable criticism. This guy has put small family contractors out of business since the 80's with this bullshit. The only reasonable defense at this point is why any contractor at this point would do business with this guy without being paid up front.