Martell Spy Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 Quote The purest supply-siders, like Kudlow, go further and deeper in their commitment. Kudlow attributes every positive economic indicator to lower taxes, and every piece of negative news to higher taxes. While that sounds absurd, it is the consistent theme he has maintained throughout his career as a prognosticator. It’s not even a complex form of kookery, if you recognize the pattern. It’s a very simple and blunt kind of kookery. In 1993, when Bill Clinton proposed an increase in the top tax rate from 31 percent to 39.6 percent, Kudlow wrote, “There is no question that President Clinton’s across-the-board tax increases … will throw a wet blanket over the recovery and depress the economy’s long-run potential to grow.” This was wrong. Instead, a boom ensued. Rather than question his analysis, Kudlow switched to crediting the results to the great tax-cutter, Ronald Reagan. “The politician most responsible for laying the groundwork for this prosperous era is not Bill Clinton, but Ronald Reagan,” he argued in February, 2000. Trump’s New Economic Adviser Lawrence Kudlow Has Been Wrong About Everything for Decades http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/new-trump-economist-kudlow-has-been-wrong-about-everything.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martell Spy Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 I believe there were board predictions to this effect... Quote President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the final outcome of the Pennsylvania special election would have been much worse for Republicans if he had not campaigned in the district. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know [Republican candidate Rick Saccone] came up a lot in the last few days,” Trump told donors during a closed-door speech in Missouri, according to audio obtained by POLITICO. “We went there. We made a speech. The place was packed and we’ll see what happens.” Noting that Democrat Conor Lamb, the apparent victor, will only serve in Congress for the rest of this year and that the district map is being redrawn, Trump said “it was a lot of work” for a lawmakers who is only guaranteed to be in office for a short time. Trump also suggested Lamb won by pandering to GOP voters. “He said very nice things about me. I kept saying, ‘Is he a Republican?’ He sounded like a Republican to me,” the president aid. “But I guess when you’re popular in a certain area, that’s probably a good tactic. ” Trump says he helped Republican in Pa. special election https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/15/trump-pennsylvania-special-election-trudeau-465418 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldGimletEye Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 Normally, I’d think that conservative and supply side idiot Larry Kudlow would severely drag down the average IQ of any group. But, in the Trump administration, he might actually raise it a bit. That’s where we are at. https://www.vox.com/2018/3/14/17120558/larry-kudlow-national-economic-council Quote Multiple media outlets reported early Wednesday afternoon that Larry Kudlow, the columnist and CNBC commentator, has accepted Donald Trump’s invitation to serve as Gary Cohn’s replacement as the head of the National Economic Council. Quote He also has highly questionable judgment as a prognosticator, publishing a column titled “The Bush Boom Continues” on the inauspicious date of December 7, 2007, right as the economy was tumbling into the deepest, longest recession in decades. At this time, I'd invite conservatives to brag about the "Bush Boom". Don't be shy or modest conservatives. Tell us about how the true conservatism helped to bring about the Bush Boom. And then when your done with that, you can tell us about the Brownback Boom. .............................................................................................................. Paul Ryan claims that Lamb won because he remained true to the conservatism. Ryan ends up showing though that he is a true conservative idiot. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/14/17119662/paul-ryan-conor-lamb-pennsylvania-spin Quote The Pennsylvania special election should be a wakeup call for Republicans, but all House Speaker Paul Ryan has is some excuses. On Tuesday night, Republican House candidate Rick Saccone failed to secure a win in a special election for a Pennsylvania district that went for Donald Trump by 20 points in 2016. The race stretched into Wednesday afternoon, when Democrat Conor Lamb, a 33-year-old former Marine, officially won the race in a stunning upset. Pennsylvania law does not mandate a recount in district-level elections. Yet Ryan said he wasn’t surprised by the results. Lamb ran as a “conservative,” he said. .......................................................................................... https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/kerner-commission-report-50-years-later-by-joseph-e--stiglitz-2018-03 Quote W YORK – In 1967, riots erupted in cities throughout the United States, from Newark, New Jersey, to Detroit and Minneapolis in the Midwest – all two years after the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles exploded in violence. In response, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a commission, headed by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, to investigate the causes and propose measures to address them. Fifty years ago, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (more widely known as the Kerner Commission), issued its report, providing a stark account of the conditions in America that had led to the disorders. Quote Beyond this, discrimination is rampant, if often hidden. America’s financial sector targeted African-Americans for exploitation, especially in the years before the financial crisis, selling them volatile products with high fees that could, and did, explode. Thousands lost their homes, and in the end, the disparity in wealth, already large, increased even more. One leading bank, Wells Fargo, paid huge fines for charging higher interest rates to African-American and Latino borrowers; but no one was really held accountable for the many other abuses. Almost a half-century after the enactment of anti-discrimination laws, racism, greed, and market power still work together to the disadvantage of African-Americans. Quote There are, however, several reasons for hope. First, our understanding of discrimination is far better. Back then, the Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker could write that in a competitive market, discrimination was impossible; the market would bid up the wage of anyone who was underpaid. Today, we understand that the market is rife with imperfections – including imperfections of information and competition – that provide ample opportunity for discrimination and exploitation. Becker's argument sounds like some real libertarian nonsense. And I'd imagine it partially under girded the thinking of somebody like Rand Paul when he blurted out he wouldn't have supported the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. Generally, I like models that can at least ball park or plausibly explain historical events. It was about 100 years between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Bills in the 1960s. So, I really have no idea what Becker was thinking when he made his argument. It sounds like he was overly influenced by Robert Lucas, who helped to create models that were utterly useless in explaining the Great Depression or the GFC. ...................................................................................................... I think somebody ought write a TV show about the Trump administration and call it the Sorry Ass Bunch. And that's the way we became the Sorry Ass Bunch! https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/03/team-trump-is-getting-worse-and-worse/ Quote Gabriel Sherman reports that Donald Trump met with John “Let’s Bomb Iran!” Bolton a few days ago to discuss hiring him as National Security Advisor: Sources added that Trump spent much of the time with Bolton fuming that McMaster was speaking privately with Barack Obama’s former national security adviser Susan Rice. “Trump kept saying, ‘Can you believe it? To Susan Rice? Can you believe it?’ ” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fez Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 5 hours ago, lokisnow said: well shit, if blue slips no longer matter, then Obama and Harry Reid got so royally fucked it isn't even funny. this is what respecting worthless traditions gets you, a nice murdering by the right and proper people. jolly good. (but don't worry, dmc and tywin will tell us everything is normal and dandy and Collins will save us because reasons). Republicans already abolished the blue slip tradition in 2003 to get more Bush nominees through. It only came back in 2006 because Pat Leahy is absurdly traditionalist and was the new judiciary chariman when Democrats retook the senate. Grassley immediately signaled he'd abolish the blue slips again if needed when he became chairman in 2014, but there was no need to because it was just another tool to block Obama nominees. And once Trump came into office, blue slips were promptly ignored again; at least if they came from Democrats. (Although honestly, the blue slip tradition is barely a thing anyway. It's only existed since 1917, and has only been a true, hard-stop for around 30 years throughout that time, depending on who the judiciary chairman was.) The lesson is, fuck Pat Leahy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongRider Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 8 minutes ago, Fez said: Republicans already abolished the blue slip tradition in 2003 to get more Bush nominees through. It only came back in 2006 because Pat Leahy is absurdly traditionalist and was the new judiciary chariman when Democrats retook the senate. Grassley immediately signaled he'd abolish the blue slips again if needed when he became chairman in 2014, but there was no need to because it was just another tool to block Obama nominees. And once Trump came into office, blue slips were promptly ignored again; at least if they came from Democrats. (Although honestly, the blue slip tradition is barely a thing anyway. It's only existed since 1917, and has only been a true, hard-stop for around 30 years throughout that time, depending on who the judiciary chairman was.) The lesson is, fuck Pat Leahy. Thanks for explaining that. buch of crooks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongRider Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 One porn star and one, make that two lawyers. Quote (CNN)New documents obtained by CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" on Wednesday suggest a deeper link than previously known between the Trump Organization and the company that Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, established in 2016 to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for silence about her alleged affair with Trump. The documents also offer the first evidence of an individual employed by the Trump Organization -- other than Cohen -- being involved in an ongoing legal battle regarding Daniels' alleged affair with Trump. A "demand for arbitration" document dated February 22, 2018, names Jill Martin, a top lawyer at the Trump Organization based in California, as the attorney representing "EC, LLC." "EC, LLC" is Essential Consultants, according to Daniels' lawsuit, a company that Cohen established in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Daniels. Coast to coast lawyers, makes one wonder, what is he hiding? Perhaps that old caveat should apply; it's not the affair, it's the cover up that get's one in trouble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IheartIheartTesla Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 It strikes me that this Trump Administration is like a pilot experiment in libertarianism; a foreshadowing of what is to come if the US does actually elect one. I mean, its almost as if we dont have a department of education or state. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 14 hours ago, Kalbear said: Maybe; they only blocked two candidates that were wholly unqualified, while letting a whole lot of others through. My quibble is that you said they'd go more moderate, and that's hogwash. They'd happily take someone ultraconservative as long as their bona fides were fine. They might stop people if they're grossly incompetent or hugely polarizing, but they're not going to stop for a second on super conservatives, unless you are meaning by super conservative to be a fascist or something like that. OK, take what I said and cross out moderate and insert normal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 7 hours ago, Fragile Bird said: <sighs> The WAPO is reporting Trump was bragging at a fundraiser last night that he lied to Prime Minister Trudeau at their meeting in Washington, telling Trudeau that Canada had a trade deficit with the US. Trudeau assured him we don't, but Trump, he told his audience, made claims without knowing what the facts were. He just made them up. You may or may not be a fan of Trudeau, but you can be sure that he was fully briefed on the facts of US-Canadian trade and had them at his fingertips. What the hell do you do when you are meeting with the POTUS and he sits there across from you and lies to you with a straight face? Was this also covered in The Art of the Deal, alongside the advice to start negotiations by punching as hard as you can so that the eventual results don't seem so bad in the end to your adversary? Why tf would you brag about it at a fundraiser? Do you not realize at least half a dozen people (if not all) are recording your speech? I point out at the same time the top US trade negotiator made claims that Canada had a huge trade deficit with the US, showing figures no one in Canada could understand. Turned out that the US team was counting goods that had landed in Canada from other countries for transit to the US in their trade figures. Talk about smashing up your relationship with one of your closest allies in the world, the one your economy is intertwined with. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/15/trump-says-he-made-up-information-when-speaking-with-trudeau.html Hearing the audio that’s making the rounds this morning only makes it worse. Trump’s lasting legacy, assuming he doesn’t start a calamitous war, which is a gargantuan assumption, will be the destruction of our strategic allegiances and the political norms in the U.S. What a time to be alive….and young….. ETA: Looks like he’s doubling down: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 On 3/13/2018 at 10:05 AM, ljkeane said: I've seen a couple of article suggesting the point of this attack, which it seems was always going to be traced back to Russia, was to test NATO unity. If the US is going fail to back what is supposed to be it's closest ally in a situation like this (after not really doing anything about Russian interference in the US elections) it looks like the lesson is going to be that Russia has a hell of a lot of license to do whatever it wants. At first I kind of dismissed this line of thought, but after reading more about the story I think it’s entirely possible. It sounds like the nerve agent used in the attack is only made in Russia and is entirely traceable to them. If they wanted this to be done stealthy, why would they do that? It’s almost like they wanted to be caught. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maithanet Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said: At first I kind of dismissed this line of thought, but after reading more about the story I think it’s entirely possible. It sounds like the nerve agent used in the attack is only made in Russia and is entirely traceable to them. If they wanted this to be done stealthy, why would they do that? It’s almost like they wanted to be caught. There's no question the Russians want to send a message, just like using Polonium to kill someone. They want it to be a method of murder that can't possibly be misconstrued as an accident or random violence. The only question is who the message is for. It could be either to the West (we are willing to kill your citizens with impunity) or to their agents (if you cross us, we will kill you. We'll do it in broad daylight in a London park.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 26 minutes ago, Maithanet said: There's no question the Russians want to send a message, just like using Polonium to kill someone. They want it to be a method of murder that can't possibly be misconstrued as an accident or random violence. The only question is who the message is for. It could be either to the West (we are willing to kill your citizens with impunity) or to their agents (if you cross us, we will kill you. We'll do it in broad daylight in a London park.) I’m not sure that sending a message is the primary motivation here. It feels more like they’re doing the same thing that Trump does all the time, probing to see what you can and can’t get away with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said: I’m not sure that sending a message is the primary motivation here. It feels more like they’re doing the same thing that Trump does all the time, probing to see what you can and can’t get away with. I think it's a bit of both. Russia has long seen Britain as toothless and weak, and likes to continue to show them how weak they are by doing somewhat outrageous things and daring Britain to do something meaningful - and Britain has so far failed. The one thing that Britain could do that would utterly fuck over Russia is to freeze the accounts of several Russian billionaires who own tons of property and assets and banking in Britain. There is nothing Russia could really do to counter this, either, and it would seriously piss them off. Britain has so far shown very little sign in carrying this out, but a chemical terrorist attack on British soil that harmed 20 people might do the trick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guy Kilmore Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 4 minutes ago, Kalbear said: I think it's a bit of both. Russia has long seen Britain as toothless and weak, and likes to continue to show them how weak they are by doing somewhat outrageous things and daring Britain to do something meaningful - and Britain has so far failed. The one thing that Britain could do that would utterly fuck over Russia is to freeze the accounts of several Russian billionaires who own tons of property and assets and banking in Britain. There is nothing Russia could really do to counter this, either, and it would seriously piss them off. Britain has so far shown very little sign in carrying this out, but a chemical terrorist attack on British soil that harmed 20 people might do the trick. Honestly, I think that is the only way you could hurt Russian leadership at this point, hit them in their pocket books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Week Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said: Hearing the audio that’s making the rounds this morning only makes it worse. Trump’s lasting legacy, assuming he doesn’t start a calamitous war, which is a gargantuan assumption, will be the destruction of our strategic allegiances and the political norms in the U.S. What a time to be alive….and young….. ETA: Looks like he’s doubling down: [snip tweet made by idiot] Fake news? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 1 hour ago, Kalbear said: I think it's a bit of both. Russia has long seen Britain as toothless and weak, and likes to continue to show them how weak they are by doing somewhat outrageous things and daring Britain to do something meaningful - and Britain has so far failed. The one thing that Britain could do that would utterly fuck over Russia is to freeze the accounts of several Russian billionaires who own tons of property and assets and banking in Britain. There is nothing Russia could really do to counter this, either, and it would seriously piss them off. Britain has so far shown very little sign in carrying this out, but a chemical terrorist attack on British soil that harmed 20 people might do the trick. That’s entirely possible. Regardless, the UK needs to respond and respond harshly, but if you listen to the people in the UK thread, that doesn’t appear to be the case. 50 minutes ago, Week said: Fake news? Jokes? Anyways, the remarks about lying about trade weren’t even the worst thing he said: Quote President Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared to threaten to withdraw US troops from South Korea if he can't get a better trade deal with Seoul. In a fundraising speech in Missouri, Trump told donors South Korea had become rich but that American politicians never negotiated better deals, according to audio obtained by The Washington Post and confirmed to CNN by an attendee. "We have a very big trade deficit with them, and we protect them," Trump said. "We lose money on trade, and we lose money on the military." "We have right now 32,000 soldiers on the border between North and South Korea. Let's see what happens," Trump said. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/15/politics/trump-us-troops-south-korea/index.html And this clown wants to negotiate with Kim? Good grief….. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jace, Extat Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 Meuller subpeona's Trump Org. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongRider Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 7 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said: Meuller subpeona's Trump Org. He wants to see Russian documents among other things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 8 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said: Meuller subpeona's Trump Org. *Takes sunglasses off* This $#@& just got real! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongRider Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said: *Takes sunglasses off* This $#@& just got real! Jace drops the mic, again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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