US Politics: Follow the Money!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

27 minutes ago, Mexal said:

 

Was it Manafort's daughter that said he was a bad guy?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

The best part about this whole ordeal with the lawyer is that if you look at his website, he offers work in Spanish. So I guess it's only white people that can speak foreign languages while on the job. 

[Mexal]

44 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Was it Manafort's daughter that said he was a bad guy?

Yea though not sure if this was that daughters ex.

[LongRider]

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Andrew Brown, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, had been overseeing an investigation into Yohai’s real estate and bank dealings in California and New York several months before Mueller was appointed to his post in May 2017.

Yohai’s agreement, which was concluded early this year, included him pleading guilty to misusing construction loan funds and to a count related to a bank account overdraft.    

While the deal was cut with Brown’s office, the federal government “can ask for help at any time,” said one of the people familiar with the matter.

From the article it looks like the son in law is being prosecuted in Calif. on a federal charge, the prosecutor is open to working with the Mueller's office.   Also from the article:

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Mueller sent a team of prosecutors to interview Yohai last June, asking him about Manafort’s relationship with Trump, his ties to Russian oligarchs, and his borrowing of tens of millions of dollars against properties in New York, Reuters reported in February, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Wonder if Mueller's team will talk to him again now that he's cut a deal.  

[Bonnot OG]

Any Dem that voted Gina Haspel needs to be voted out of office. Gina Haspel is a torturer. She participated in the program that resulted in beating an (innocent) pregnant woman's stomach, anally raping a man with meals he tried to refuse, and freezing a shackled prisoner until he died. She personally wrote the order to destroy 92 tapes of CIA torture.

Shes fucking scum. She should be in a prison cell in the Hague, not in any position of power. Those Dems should be ashamed of themselves.

[DireWolfSpirit]

2 hours ago, Sword of Doom said:

Any Dem that voted Gina Haspel needs to be voted out of office. Gina Haspel is a torturer. She participated in the program that resulted in beating an (innocent) pregnant woman's stomach, anally raping a man with meals he tried to refuse, and freezing a shackled prisoner until he died. She personally wrote the order to destroy 92 tapes of CIA torture.

Shes fucking scum. She should be in a prison cell in the Hague, not in any position of power. Those Dems should be ashamed of themselves.

And here are those 6 pieces of shit-

Six Democrats helped Republicans in confirming Haspel: 

• Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, 
• Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, 
• Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, 
• Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, 
• Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and 
• Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia – 

[Holy Sith!]

On a lighter note ...

 

[OldGimletEye]

Businesses whining about the “skills gap” and just generally being full of crap.
 

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-17/-skills-gap-can-be-narrowed-with-higher-wages

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Predictably, businesses are expressing concern. The National Federation of Independent Business survey reports that over one-third of small businesses have a job opening they can’t fill. Nearly one-quarter of all small-business owners claim that finding qualified workers is their “single most important business problem," surpassing their objections to tax or regulatory burdens. Reflecting these worries, press reports are popping up about labor shortages.

How serious are these concerns?

First, this is a good problem to have. A labor market in which businesses complain about the difficulty of finding workers is welcome news following the hardships suffered by workers in the Great Recession and its aftermath. If employers are chasing employees rather than the other way around, fantastic.

 

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A frequent complaint among businesses that would cost more money to address is that they can’t find workers with the right skills.

This complaint is perennial. You’re hearing it now, when unemployment is 3.9 percent. But you also heard it in the summer of 2014, for example, when unemployment was more than 6 percent. The Manufacturing Institute surveyed manufacturers and found that over 80 percent reported a shortage of skilled workers available for hire — in 2011, when the unemployment rate hovered around 9 percent.

Good help. It's just so hard to find.

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Yeah, I think I remember Paul Ryan running around saying the Democratic Party had no new ideas unlike the so called “Young Guns”, which Ryan was allegedly the intellectual leader.

Except, you know, dusting off old ideas from about the 1880s or 1890s doesn’t make those ideas new.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/opinion/americas-dismal-turning-point.html

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What Frakt points out is that it was not always thus. The dismal U.S. combination of high costs and poor results only began to emerge around 1980, which poses a mystery:

 

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What changed? In a subsequent post, Frakt suggests that U.S. exceptionalism may be related to income inequality. And it’s true that income inequality began its huge rise just about the same time that U.S. health care apparently went off the rails:

 

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But it’s not just income inequality. Lots of things had an inflection point around 1980. For example, regional convergence – in which poor states closed the gap with rich states – also came to a dead halt or even went into reverse around the same time. Incomes in Mississippi relative to Massachusetts:

 

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A good guess, surely, is that the whole story is connected with the rise of modern movement conservatism, which brought with it unequalizing economic policies, retreat from antitrust, financial deregulation, and more.

 

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 But here’s the thing: conservatives don’t see it that way. Not only do they continue to regard Reagan as America’s savior; they haven’t changed their ideas, or indeed come up with any significantly new ideas, for the past 35 years.

 

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I don’t often praise Republicans. But today, I’m more with Rand Paul and John McCain than I’m with some Democrats.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/17/17366134/gina-haspel-cia-director-confirmed-senate-vote-torture

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Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump’s controversial pick to be the next CIA director, has officially been confirmed by the Senate in a 54-45 vote.

Despite facing a tough confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week over her role in a Bush-era torture program, Haspel apparently convinced enough senators that she was the right woman for the job.

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Today in:  Like really, white people, seriously take a chill pill.

https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/5/17/17362100/starbucks-racial-profiling-yale-airbnb-911

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Most white Americans have little doubt about the distorted responsiveness likely to occur when they call the police on black people. They know, without having read the scores of studies on the subject, that whites are seen as more law-abiding by officers of the state, and that blackness itself is construed as suspicious and threatening. (“Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime,” W.E.B. Du Bois wrote bluntly, many decades before the Yale incident.) The odds are not in black people’s favor if they contest police requests for ID or submission, as the examples of Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, and too many other Americans attest.

 

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Perhaps it’s time that white people using police to remove black people from their metaphorical comfort zones get a little less responsiveness, and frivolous requests that make a crime out of black people’s mere presence get challenged more aggressively by law enforcement.

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Trump and the Party of Business. Give 'em a chance and they'll show them libs how it's done.

Uh, yeah, not so much.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/05/17/trump-lags-behind-his-predecessors-on-economic-growth/

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 In recent months, President Trump has tweeted that economic growth under his presidency “is better than it has been in many decades,” “the Economy is raging at an all-time high, and is set to get even better,” and “It has been many years that we have seen these kind of (economic) numbers.”

While some hyperbole is a matter of opinion, Trump’s claim that his stewardship of the economy puts his predecessors to shame can be checked by public information that is readily available to all. In fact, the data show that compared to his predecessors, Trump’s record so far falls somewhere between unremarkable and substandard. Moreover, other economic data suggest that the current expansion will likely wind down before his term ends, and his boasting will ring hollow once the economy slips into recession.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Congratulations to the 53% of white women who voted for Trump:

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The White House will announce Friday that it is reviving a rule similar to one proposed during the Reagan administration barring groups that provide abortions or refer patients for the procedure from receiving federal funding, a Trump administration official speaking on background tells NPR.

The proposed regulation would apply to Title X, the federal program that provides at least $260 million annually for contraception, screenings for sexually transmitted diseases, and other reproductive health services to millions of low-income people, according to the official, who asked not to be named.

The rule change would put Planned Parenthood back in the cross-hairs after repeated attempts by congressional Republicans to de-fund the family planning group, which also provides abortions, but says the federal money it receives does not go toward paying for the procedures.

Under current law, federal funding for abortions is prohibited in most cases. However, anti-abortion rights advocates have long made cutting funds to any group providing abortions or referring patients for abortions a high priority.

The new rule, expected to be announced by the Department of Health and Human Services, would also bar federal funds for any group that refers patients for abortions.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/18/612222570/white-house-to-ban-federal-funds-for-clinics-that-discuss-abortion-with-patients

[Mexal]

34 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Congratulations to the 53% of white women who voted for Trump:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/18/612222570/white-house-to-ban-federal-funds-for-clinics-that-discuss-abortion-with-patients

Don't think a lot of those women actually care. They're anti-abortion.

[DanteGabriel]

15 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Don't think a lot of those women actually care. They're anti-abortion.

And as long as they're still able to get their daughters discreet trips to blue states when abstinence-only education fails, the comfortable 53% don't give a shit about other people's access issues.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

31 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Don't think a lot of those women actually care. They're anti-abortion.

It’s just one PEW poll from a Google search, but both a majority of women and white people believe abortion should be legal, so I’d say some of these women care. But PP, as you well know, is about far more than abortions. Free STD checkups, yep I’ve used those before, and I’ve always been handed a GIANT bag of condoms on the way out. Practically every girl I dated in HS and college went there for cheap to free birth control, and because of that, I don’t have 20 kids running around from 15 different women. Punishing family planning services because a small portion of their work goes to abortions is disgusting.

17 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

And as long as they're still able to get their daughters discreet trips to blue states when abstinence-only education fails, the comfortable 53% don't give a shit about other people's access issues.

I was listening to a couple of NPR podcasts yesterday that you can find here and here, and it was really insightful about how anti-choice people think. One of the podcasts was focusing on Ireland’s Constitutional ban on abortion, and the person arguing in favor of it really tipped her hand when she said people can go to other European countries if they want to kill babies.

[DMC]

On 5/16/2018 at 10:03 AM, Tywin et al. said:

I’m surprised you’re taking this absolutist position given that you study the Executive Branch. What you’re arguing is that anything a president does consistently will therefore be normal. That’s a rather odd hot take in my opinion.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, and I don't know why it's surprising or odd.  People get desensitized and outrage-fatigued.  It is inevitable.

Example from yesterday:  Trump promised "total decimation" if he doesn't get a deal with North Korea.  Any other president that's all we'd be talking about.  Trump?  Barely a headline.  Note this remark is also during an exchange in which he confuses his own NSA's remarks of using Libya as a model by confusing the 2011 ousting of Gaddafi when Bolton was clearly referring to the 2003 disarmament.  Such a gaffe would not only be incredibly embarrassing for any other president, but basically any avid political observer over the age of 30.

[Mexal]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, and I don't know why it's surprising or odd.  People get desensitized and outrage-fatigued.  It is inevitable.

Example from yesterday:  Trump promised "total decimation" if he doesn't get a deal with North Korea.  Any other president that's all we'd be talking about.  Trump?  Barely a headline.  Note this remark is also during an exchange in which he confuses his own NSA's remarks of using Libya as a model by confusing the 2011 ousting of Gaddafi when Bolton was clearly referring to the 2003 disarmament.  Such a gaffe would not only be incredibly embarrassing for any other president, but basically any avid political observer over the age of 30.

This also applies to the massive corruption and lies within the Trump Administration. It's the new normal so it barely registers these days.

[Mexal]

The President of the United States has pushed the head of the Postal Service, multiple times, to raise rates on Amazon, a domestic country that employs hundreds of thousands of Americans. And no one bats an eye. On the plus side, the institutions are holding and Trump doesn't yet have enough power to force the rate raise.

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President Trump has personally pushed U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brennan to double the rate the Postal Service charges Amazon.com and other firms to ship packages, according to three people familiar with their conversations, a dramatic move that probably would cost these companies billions of dollars.

Brennan has so far resisted Trump’s demand, explaining in multiple conversations occurring this year and last that these arrangements are bound by contracts and must be reviewed by a regulatory commission, the three people said. She has told the president that the Amazon relationship is beneficial for the Postal Service and gave him a set of slides that showed the variety of companies, in addition to Amazon, that also partner for deliveries.

Despite these presentations, Trump has continued to level criticism at Amazon. And last month, his critiques culminated in the signing of an executive order mandating a government review of the financially strapped Postal Service that could lead to major changes in the way it charges Amazon and others for package delivery.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, and I don't know why it's surprising or odd.  People get desensitized and outrage-fatigued.  It is inevitable.

Example from yesterday:  Trump promised "total decimation" if he doesn't get a deal with North Korea.  Any other president that's all we'd be talking about.  Trump?  Barely a headline.  Note this remark is also during an exchange in which he confuses his own NSA's remarks of using Libya as a model by confusing the 2011 ousting of Gaddafi when Bolton was clearly referring to the 2003 disarmament.  Such a gaffe would not only be incredibly embarrassing for any other president, but basically any avid political observer over the age of 30.

I feel like that’s kind of contradictory though. If any other president would have been lambasted for the comment except Trump, that means what the president does doesn’t necessitate that it becomes the new norm.

1 hour ago, Mexal said:

This also applies to the massive corruption and lies within the Trump Administration. It's the new normal so it barely registers these days.

It’s not normal though. It’s a stark divergence from the real norms. Accept it as the new norm is accepting defeat.

Anyways, it other news, Bill Gates’ leaked comments are hilarious.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/bill-gates-says-trump-asked-difference-between-hiv-hpv-n875286

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I feel like that’s kind of contradictory though. If any other president would have been lambasted for the comment except Trump, that means what the president does doesn’t necessitate that it becomes the new norm.

It seems we interpret norm/normalizing different.  There are very few norms or standards across presidents.  In the four presidents I can remember, each one established his own standard.  And Clinton could get away with things Bush couldn't, and vice versa, and so forth.  What I think we all can agree on is Trump has degraded the standards of the presidency more than anyone since Nixon.  But that doesn't mean the next president will not develop her own standards, norms, whatever.

[Mexal]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It’s not normal though. It’s a stark divergence from the real norms. Accept it as the new norm is accepting defeat.

Anyways, it other news, Bill Gates’ leaked comments are hilarious.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/bill-gates-says-trump-asked-difference-between-hiv-hpv-n875286

I didn't say it was normal. I said it's the new normal. I clearly don't accept it as I keep posting links here on shit I read and find interesting/terrible but it's pretty clear from what I do read, from the polling, from the TV news (local and cable) that I watch, that this crap registers with people who are already against it and barely registers with people who just don't care or don't pay attention. There is massive fatigue right now on one side and propaganda on the other.

[Zorral]

53 minutes ago, Mexal said:

The President of the United States has pushed the head of the Postal Service, multiple times, to raise rates on Amazon, a domestic country that employs hundreds of thousands of Americans. And no one bats an eye. On the plus side, the institutions are holding and Trump doesn't yet have enough power to force the rate raise.

 

It's not about the post office, about which dumbster gives not even a micro of a flying eff.  It's about Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post.  Also Bezos is much much much richer than agent orange.

[Zorral]

By the way, why Prince Harry's buddy, Obama, won't be at his wedding:

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a15044938/donald-trump-prince-harry-meghan-markle-wedding-invitation/

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"If the Obamas turned up and Donald Trump was snubbed, then that would cause problems for the British government in terms of foreign diplomacy and the special relationship [between the U.S. and the U.K]," Larcombe explained. "Harry and Meghan wouldn’t want their wedding overshadowed by that."