US Politics - Trump - Making America Grate!

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

10 minutes ago, WinterFox said:

I've just received the video of his private eye reporting his findings just months after the story broke. Be warned, the footage is... hard to watch

When Killer Snark goes undercover to investigate Pizzagate, he goes balls deep...

 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

Nervous conservatives? You should be.

Thanks. That's a very important story. It's pretty common for conservatives to tell Democrats that protest doesn't work. You see it on this board sometimes. And it usually means you are talking to some kind of conservative trying to convince you to sit on the sidelines. With the Muslim ban, it is definitely not the time to sit this one out.

[Martell Spy]

WATCH LIVE: Democrats' Last Stand Against Betsy DeVos

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/02/06/24852605/watch-live-democrats-last-stand-against-betsy-devos

[Ice Queen]

10 hours ago, Zorral said:

They will provide the list 'later,' presumably that same later in which the public will see little hands' tax returns.

 

And Obama's birth certificate. I clearly remember Trump saying that he had explosive news about Obama and he'd release it soon. 

[Ice Queen]

10 hours ago, Mexal said:

They provided the list. On it is Paris, Orlando, San Bernardino, Brussels and Nice which got zero coverage. Also, random Japanese civilian killed by unidentified gunmen in bangledesh. 

Also spellcheck is needed.

 

"Not enough attention" isn't "covering them up", which is what Trump said. The man can't open his mouth without some lie coming out of it. 

[Ice Queen]

10 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I reported on the Jeff Sessions one about two weeks ago, and I thought that was a sign they were worried.

They've been airing here, too. Bizarre. I think they are worried--some people are really regretting voting for Trump, and I guess the Reeps figure that they need a groundswell of grassroots support for Trump's nominees. On the other hand, it's like the sign in 1984: Obey! Reeps tend to march in lockstep with whatever their party tells them, like a Unimind or hive mind. Party before country, always.I read it as a sign that they're terrified rank and file Republicans are going to at long last break ranks. 

[denstorebog]

37 minutes ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

They've been airing here, too. Bizarre. I think they are worried--some people are really regretting voting for Trump

What is this based on? I mean, we can find the occasional #trumpregret tweet here and there, but do you have anything to support that any meaningful number of Trump voters are regretting, to the point where the administration needs to react to it?

[OldGimletEye]

"The Party of Business":

http://www.moneyandbanking.com/commentary/2017/2/5/an-open-letter-to-congressman-patrick-mchenry

Quote

Dear Vice Chair McHenry,

We find your January 31 letter to Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen both misleading and misguided.

 

Quote

Your letter is filled with false assumptions and assertions. We will focus on three: (1) that the Federal Reserve is negotiating “binding” standards that are not subject to domestic review and do not “prioritize America’s best interests;” (2) that past agreements "unfairly penalized the U.S. financial system;" and (3) that higher capital requirements (arising from the application of mutually agreed international standards) are “leading to slower economic growth here in America.”

 

Quote

Third, contrary to your assertion, by making our financial system safer, higher capital requirements lead to faster and healthier, not to slower, economic growth. The equity capital of intermediaries is not an idle, wasted resource. Like deposits, bonds and other forms of debt, it is a source of funding for the assets on the balance sheet. Plentiful capital means that the risks banks and others take will be borne principally by their shareholders, as should be the case in a market-based, free-enterprise system.

 

Quote

A range of research supports the conclusion that well-capitalized banks are inclined to lend more and to make higher-quality loans than other banks. International evidence is compelling: better-capitalized banks experience lower funding costs, higher growth of debt funding, and higher growth of lending volumes. In other words, countries with better-capitalized systems can grow faster. In contrast, regulatory forbearance in Japan in the 1990s and in the euro area more recently resulted in the evergreening of poor loans to zombie firms, dragging growth down. This is all consistent with the U.S. experience, where increases in the level of equity capital in the commercial banking system are positively associated with the level of credit as a share of GDP.

 

[Mexal]

This is nuts. Melanie Trump is suing because she was unable to capalize on her brand as FLOTUS, launch new product lines and make $150 million due to disparaging remakes from the Daily Mail.

 

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Mexal said:

This is nuts. Melanie Trump is suing because she was unable to capalize on her brand as FLOTUS, launch new product lines and make $150 million due to disparaging remakes from the Daily Mail.

Now that is really sad. I'm sure she'll living on skid row now. Hopefully,  Trump won't take away her health insurance and won't be opposed to raising her wages.

[OldGimletEye]

She's gonna be down and out in the Hamptons.

[LongRider]

1 minute ago, OldGimletEye said:

She's gonna be down and out in the Hamptons.

She and Ivanka can cry into their margaritas about how cruelly the market has treated them. 

[LongRider]

Portland had a rally to support Prez Tweeter and look!  The rally was YUGE!* It required so much crowd control and took up bigly space!*  People wore funny hats!**  It was mocked reported widely on twitter!  Click the link to see!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/portland-sad-trump-rally_us_5897fab9e4b09bd304bc1242

* alternative fact

**OK, true

[Tywin et al.]

50 minutes ago, Mexal said:

This is nuts. Melanie Trump is suing because she was unable to capalize on her brand as FLOTUS, launch new product lines and make $150 million due to disparaging remakes from the Daily Mail.

 

So much for the Trumps not trying to profit in any way on him being President.....

[Commodore]

Other than some federal grant money, not sure what power DeVos would have to impact education. It's mostly controlled at the state/local level (a good thing the left should learn to embrace).

[Mexal]

4 minutes ago, Commodore said:

Other than some federal grant money, not sure what power DeVos would have to impact education. It's mostly controlled at the state/local level (a good thing the left should learn to embrace).

Federal grant money matters. They could expand her powers too if they wanted right?

Fact is she's unqualified with zero understanding of education issues in this country. That should be enough.

[LongRider]

11 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Federal grant money matters. They could expand her powers too if they wanted right?

Fact is she's unqualified with zero understanding of education issues in this country. That should be enough.

Plus, the DeVos family are big donors to Trump and the Republican Party.   #drainingtheswamp

[OldGimletEye]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/07/larry-summers-trump-administrations-grousing-more-like-an-east-hampton-cocktail-party-than-a-serious-policy-discussion

Quote

The concerns of those who worry about business dominated government have been demonstrated all too clearly by the Trump administration’s roll-out of plans to scale back financial regulation. There are surely areas where regulation is too burdensome, particularly involving bureaucratization and small banks. But much of what was said by the president and his advisers sounds more like grousing at an East Hampton cocktail party than a serious basis for public policy reform.

 

Quote

The president suggested that it was a problem that many of his good friends could not get as much credit as they wanted. We do not travel in the same social circles, so I am not sure who he means. But if he is saying that real estate developers cannot get all the credit they want, that would seem a good thing. Indeed, I would submit that the financial history of the last 40 years demonstrates that often when real estate operators are thrilled about credit availability, financial crisis is only a few years away.

Indeed. It would seem that real estate or housing bubble crises are particularly troublesome.

Quote

Gary Cohn, the former number two at Goldman Sachs now heading the NEC, asserts that “ we are not going to burden the banks with literally hundreds of billions of dollars of regulatory costs every year.” I would challenge him to document that such costs exist today, which feels to me like an “alternative fact. Note that total bank profits last year were about $170 billion so the claim is that without excessive regulation profits would more than double.

Conservatives just don't have "alternative facts", it would seem they have "alternative math".

Quote

There is room for reasonable argument about the fiduciary rule requiring that financial advisers act in the best interest of their clients. I think the case made in the Obama Council of Economics Advisers report is very strong, but I can see counter arguments. Cohn's analogy that “this is like putting only healthy food on the menu, because unhealthy food tastes good but you still shouldn’t eat it because you might die younger” is bizarre. We do after all require food labeling, inspect food processing, and no one is suggesting that financial products be banned, only that the economic interests of advisers be disclosed.

Heaven forbid people make decisions under a full set of information.

Quote

I would rather live with even a very bad knee than let a carpenter operate on me. On the evidence of statements so far by those in the executive branch, the safest posture is to resist changes in the financial regulatory framework until there is proof that they have been thought through carefully. If and when this happens, there will be room to promote the flow of credit, reduce bureaucratic burdens, and make the financial system safer.

You know on things like Dodd-Frank and the ACA, it isn't so much that I see them as being perfect pieces of legislation or that there isn't improvements that could be made, it's more like the Republican alternative plans are a boatload of effing nonsense.

[denstorebog]

Wait, what. Isn't Daily Mail pretty pro-trump in general? At least the readers are ferociously right-wing in the comments section without exception. Is Trumpworld suing a sympathetic British newspaper?

[mormont]

13 hours ago, Mexal said:

They provided the list. On it is Paris, Orlando, San Bernardino, Brussels and Nice which got zero coverage. Also, random Japanese civilian killed by unidentified gunmen in bangledesh.

And also this incident, which Australian police have said was not a terror incident at all:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-38893253

Some other entries on the list seem to be confusing: it's unclear what incident they even refer to, according to the BBC. One, they think, refers to a fire at a community centre in Sweden that caused only minor property damage. Clearly that should have had YUGE international media coverage. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38890090

The main qualification for inclusion on this list appears to have been 'attacks featuring people who might conceivably have been Muslim'. No checking, no thought. All too typical.