.
Sen. Pat Toomey on why it’s so hard to draft a new health care bill: “Look, I didn’t expect Donald Trump to win.”https://t.co/W9U0ZtwaL3
— Taegan Goddard (@politicalwire) July 6, 2017
.
Apart from waiting to see how much damage one malign idiot can accomplish at the G20 meeting, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the week?
NEW: From researchers at George Washington University: Senate Trumpcare would cost 1.45 million jobs by 2026.https://t.co/OK4YzJGeM8
— Topher Spiro (@TopherSpiro) July 7, 2017
The GOP's new healthcare plan is to just print out copies of Hillary's emails and stack them into a protective fort to keep germs away.
— OhNoSheTwitnt (@OhNoSheTwitnt) July 6, 2017
2 camps forming for if BCRA fails:
–Work with Dems on fix
–Go for straight repeal
Either way, lots of GOP sens talking about BCRA failing https://t.co/cooeZGdGEJ— Peter Sullivan (@PeterSullivan4) July 7, 2017
To the GOP Christianists, Galatians 6:7…
For Trump & Republicans in Congress, the political pain over the next few months will be excruciating & unrelenting. https://t.co/3x7sdjNbtj
— Stan Collender (@TheBudgetGuy) July 5, 2017
Baud
By “germs,” they mean voters.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Bernie Woulda Found Amelia Earhart
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ? ??
debbie
It’s not being said loudly enough or often enough that the GOP had 7 years to come up with a plan. The GOP must be called out for the hollow, desiccated shell it has become.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
The meme for our times.
I made it this morning.
It is finally dawning on the Morning Joe crew that Trump is transactional and a moron, something they missed over the course of the previous year.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
FDR was a neoliberal corporate shill. Bernie would have fixed the Depression faster.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Given that the Repub plan was nothing more than a massive redistribution of wealth upward, where is anyone on that side of the aisle who’s actually interested in health care reform? As best I can tell, no such Republican exists. As such, there ain’t gonna be any “work with Dems on fix”.
stibbert
Good morning, rikyrah et al.
Iowa Old Lady
There was a raccoon on my deck at 4am and it climbed up into my attic and I WANT IT DEAD!
ThresherK
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Bernie woulda saved Amelia Earhart, ya neoliberal sellout.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
It’s true. It’s true. He is so different today than the person who mocked disabled people, incited hatred of mexicans and mooslims, and spent years pushing birtherism and sexually assaulting women.
That was okay. But criticizing plastic surgery so crossed line.
rikyrah
@debbie:
7 phucking years!??
rikyrah
@Iowa Old Lady:
I feel you. Good luck.
Patricia Kayden
@debbie: And keep in mind all the times Republicans voted to repeal the ACA in the House (over 50 times). So all the time they were voting to repeal the ACA, they obviously had no plan to replace it. Let that sink in. They don’t care about ordinary citizens getting access to healthcare. Period. This is who they are. And now they have full control of the government. Sigh.
OzarkHillbilly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: “something they missed over the course of the past several decades.”
FTFY, you’ll get my bill in the mail.
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
Plus, weren’t they supposed to be the Party of Grownups? Frauds!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
There is zero difference between Donald Trump 2 years ago and now. Hell, he’s the same guy he was 30 years ago. The issue is the fact that he constantly got granted a pass.
Patricia Kayden
@Iowa Old Lady: That happened to me a couple of years ago. A pregnant raccoon had three babies in our attic. It was a nightmarish experience because the people we paid to remove them took a long time to get them all out. The mother was caught first and the third baby came down by itself when it got lonely. Hope you get yours out quickly with not too much expense.
I had to admit that the babies were cute though.
Patricia Kayden
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Moaning Joe is just trying to weasel out of the fact that he and Mika heartedly supported Trump during the election cycle. They’ve joined the “Trump is horrible” party way too late.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
dmsilev
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: You forgot to mention the birtherism.
That one rankles, especially when the Trumpkins complain about being ‘unfairly’ attacked.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
But, we always knew that they didn’t care. The people who voted for them, but didn’t believe them, they are the phucking idiots. We told them that this is who they were. We asked them, what the phuck did you think that the 50 votes for repeal were?
They didn’t mind the CARE. It was the OBAMA part that bothered them…so PHUCK THEM- putting Everyone at risk.
ThresherK
@Patricia Kayden: Of course they’re cute. Ergo, in New England it seems to be law that every critter removal service have a logo with a raccoon on it.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Bernie Woulda Got the Racoons Øut
rikyrah
@dmsilev:
Never forget the birtherism. Always pull that receipt. Especially when they talk about “having respect for the office.”
The reply is:
He will receive the same amount of respect that he gave 44.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Patricia Kayden:
It is the American media culture where figure X is propped up, lionized, made larger than life. We do it with celebs, sports figures, businessmen and politicians. The majority of them burn to a cinder.
In Trump’s case, they kept putting his face in front of us because he was “interesting” and he actively sought the constant attention and megaphone. They rately addressed the stunning failure rate on his businesses, the hundreds of shafted investors and vendors. His penchant for lies was ignored, his marriage failures and lack of involvement with Barron forgotten.
No, he was “interesting”, something akin to a Kardashian.
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah:
He hasn’t earned that much respect.
JPL
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Where is Barron? He is the forgotten one.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Getting close to turn this off – Mornings no Joe had some RT twit on, and some grinning succubus who could have come from the set of Entertainment Tonight.
I want my journalists to subsist on whiskey, cigarettes and cynicism.
Oldgold
According to Trumpelstiltskin, this morning at the G-20 meeting the topic “everyone is talking about” is why Podesta refused to give the DNC servers to the FBI and CIA.
Syria, North Korea, Russian hacking and climate change – not so much.
bystander
@Patricia Kayden: What’s interesting is how Joe and Meeka have focused on how Trump, and by consequence the US, is being shunned by the other nations and shoved to the side. It’s as if they deny the axiom about you broke it, you buy it. No one is supposed to remember the daily phone-in tonguebaths.
satby
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I just did my bit to try to make it go viral! Well done!
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The did the same thing, point by point, when schwarzenegger ran for governor. They ignored his gibberish, his lack of qualifications, his dad’s nazi past (imagine the hysteria if Hillary’s dad was a member of the nazi party), and when charges of sexual assault emerged, they called it locker room talk.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
By gum, I may have stumbled onto the answer – our journalism sucks because they’re healthier, live longer and thus stay in jobs long into their dotage. Bring back smoky newsrooms and a water cooler of whiskey in the corner so they can keel over before they’re 60….
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Yet Davis had been mortally wounded by fucking Enron, so the other GOP options to Arnold were worse. Imagine, if you will, Governor Tom McClintock.
MattF
@Oldgold: Trump’s auditory apparatus is topic-selective.
aimai
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Jesus christ over at Kos the Bernie bros are all excited that he is “busting his hump” to hold two rallies in red states–and they are convinced that democratic politicians are doing nothing to block trump care, just as they presumably did nothing to bring the ACA into existence, so of course bernie “woulda won” and of course there is simply no use supporting the democratic party at all because “I don’t see ANY democratic politicians out there speaking to red staters.”
Baud
@aimai: If one does not look, one cannot see.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@aimai:
Clearly, Kentucky is on the cusp of voting for free college and single payer, and goes GOP only out of disgust with neoliberal corporate sellout shills.
Patricia Kayden
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
And now, partially thanks to the lame MSM, we have the first Reality Star President. This is not normal.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@aimai: This is the same guy who said red states don’t count.
satby
@aimai: I wish that stupid old goat would bust his hump right into oblivion. Though his idiot fanboys will just go back to being Paulites or LaRouchies, or whatever until the next messiah shows up.
Hunter Gathers
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Bernie Woulda Saved The Confederacy
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: This is a Paultard gimmick. You know how Papa Doc and Baby Doc got the gullible media to give them attention by going to Berkeley and Howard University. Sanders does the same cheap trick in reverse: hence his speech to Jerry Falwell’s university rather than going to a black church.
satby
@
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: my journalist former friend said as much to me. They all were pretty positive Clinton would win, they were bored by policy, they didn’t like her voice (you know how screechy women get), and Drumpf was the more interesting, entertaining phenomenon to cover. I unfollowed him on FB (and he’s well known in Chicago media) pretty much after his shattered little soliloquy after the election. Because I would have killed him with my bare hands had I been in the same state.
satby
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: it’s also proof he’s just in it for the continued grift.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Hunter Gathers: Bernie and Andrew Jackson Woulda Prevented the Civil War
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@satby:
Reporting on politics is treated like a meaningless sports event, “wins” and “losses” ignore the human cost.
satby
Thunderstorms rolling through South Bend right now,and I think I’ll skip today’s market. I only made $7 profit yesterday and promptly blew it on lunch and fresh blueberries. Saturday is my big day, so I’ll stay home and make doggie shampoo bars.
d58826
I’m not very good at the body language thing but looking at the clip of Der Fuhrer shaking hands with Putin is worry some. He leaned in toward Putin, right hand to shake hands, left hand under Putin elbow. He then patted Putin on the back all with big smiles. As opposed to the awkward meetings with Merkel. Der Fuhrer looked like he was greeting a long lost friend.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Bernie would have executive ordered the US into the League of Nations.
Patricia Kayden
@bystander: Many of us haven’t and never will forget the Mika/Joe tongue baths of the Orange Bigot. For some strange reason, Mika and Joe were fascinated by Trump’s every move and allowed him to call into their program almost daily during his campaign. The man cannot countenance any criticism so what did they think he was going to do once they started pointing out his shortcomings?
What I find so interesting is that Kushner’s attempt to blackmail Joe and Mika into apologizing to Trump have largely been forgotten. Sounds illegal to me but the media has moved on. Somehow the media couldn’t let go of Secretary Clinton’s email server but easily let go of multiple Trump-related scandals.
Patricia Kayden
@d58826: Because Trump was greeting a long lost friend. No surprises there. It’s a wonder he stayed on his feet instead of prostrating himself at Putin’s feet.
satby
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: agree, but it infuriated me when I would caution him about the huge thumb the media were putting on the scale and he would argue they weren’t doing that at all. I would ask why they didn’t cover Drumpf’s many negatives and be told that was all “out there” and people could easily find it so covering it was unnecessary.
Seriously, I would be blind with rage after an exchange with him. Oh, yeah, he also supported he who must not be named in the primary, though I assume he went for Clinton in the general.
aimai
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: exactly! exactly what they all think.
Kathleen
@aimai: Makes you wonder what Bernie is beaming from his secret decoder ring to make them think that. Have Rodent Procreators created their own Klingon language? Or is it 1’s and 0’s?
OzarkHillbilly
@Patricia Kayden: I expected him to get on his knees and give Putin the best bj ever.
schrodingers_cat
@OzarkHillbilly: In public? That’s reserved for their private meeting.
Ohio Mom
@Patricia Kayden: My favorite exhibit at the Tel Aviv zoo was the exotic North American Racoon.
There were a lot of them, obviously they do well in captivity.
Laura
@rikyrah: Good morning, Happy Friday!
bemused
@satby:
I was very upset when people I know, people who should have known better weren’t more horrified the most miserable human being in the country became the R candidate. Even now I don’t want to know how they feel. Unless they confess they were blind fools and ashamed, I don’t really want to be around them anymore.
Cheryl Rofer
Good morning all. The Twitter machine tells me that the Trump-Putin meeting has started, and the time stamps on Trump’s tweets suggest he is having no problem with jet lag.
Vhh
@d58826: Actually, he is greeting the guy who has his gonads in vice and can turn the handle any time.
bystander
@Patricia Kayden:
In all fairness, the perpetrator of the Trump scandals is vaginafree.
zzyzx
@Patricia Kayden: That’s the one thing that Trump discovered (perhaps accidentally) in the election. One scandal will destroy a candidate. 1000 scandals are so many that no one can keep up and they all get forgotten.
BruceFromOhio
On the local fascist AM radio, the AARP is running 30-second spots on what BCRA would do to Ohioans, and urges listeners to call Senator Portman and tell him to vote no. The spot I heard ran in prime morning drive-time.
So and what, the two-bit soulless ratfuck criminals can use their tax payer-funded health care plan to see a doctor, maybe even get therapy and meds to ease the discomfort. Getting their asses voted out of office forever would work, too.
NorthLeft12
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Yep, it’s easy to pass off vicious verbal attacks as humour or hyperbole when it is directed at other people or groups, and it is somewhat easy to rationalize that the victims actually deserve this treatment when those groups or people are somewhat unpopular amongst a substantial minority of the public.
But when those cruel tweets and sound bites are directed at you, or people you care about, it sure is different, isn’t it Joe?
OzarkHillbilly
@schrodingers_cat: Why not? He’s already proven a complete inability to feel anything akin to embarrassment and he’s already been giving Putin verbal tongue baths ever since the election.
d58826
@Vhh: Yep. As Tweetie kept saying last night whatever the facts are in the Russian connection, Putin knows ever last one. Even if it is only financial from before Der Fuhrer was elected.
Kathleen
@Kathleen: @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Funny but I saw more Bernie bumper stickers on No Ky cars which really didn’t surprise me since I see more Rand Paul stickers as well. I cannot stand people from No Ky with some exceptions.
Baud
@zzyzx:
Do you think if Hillary had 1000 scandals, she would have been better off? Your rule only applies to the GOP.
Cheryl Rofer
What everyone’s been waiting for: Video and analysis of the first Trump-Putin handshake.
The arm- and back-pats are a dominance move, so Trump was ahead by a hair before they went into that room.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby:
I would have helped you.
schrodingers_cat
@Cheryl Rofer: I am so not interested in the handshake or the so called analysis.
O. Felix Culpa
@Patricia Kayden:
Excellent observation. What could the defining difference between the two be?
gvg
@rikyrah:
I have to disagree, they DID mind the care, that’s why they sabotaged Bill Clinton’s attempt to help us 20+ years ago and I believe they were against the idea before that. Now they also did have an ugly hatred of Obama, but their viciousness predated him by quite a piece and still goes on. I saw my first impeach Clinton billboard about a week after he was elected, and at the time it startled me. I was like”why, he hasn’t done anything yet” followed by years of bogus investigations to my increasing annoyance. I would say that was the time my Democratic identity was solidified because they were obviously malign and nuts then. It’s gotten worse and stupider since.
Amir Khalid
@Ohio Mom:
I’ve seen a few YouTube videos of raccoons kept (surreptitiously) as pets. Apparently they’d also do well in a human household if that were legal over there.
d58826
Trump & Mex. Pres. Pena Nieto’s first visit since election. (Pena Nieto canceled WH mtg in January.)
MomSense
@Patricia Kayden:
They were just lying and grandstanding about the ACA for 7 years. They knew they couldn’t keep the promises they were making to their constituents. It was all a big fraud.
@Patricia Kayden:
It is like the gish gallop of scandals. A month or so ago there was a tv writer/producer on the podcast Lovett or Leave It. He recounted a story of asking an MSNBC producer what the hell they were doing with all the trump coverage and the MSNBC producer told him not to worry that they would build trump up early on but bring him down before the election.
The media were playing chicken with the election and we all lost.
NorthLeft12
I am not understanding why Deadbeat Donald’s “western civilization” word salad is not getting more attention. Frankly, the whole idea of “western civilization” is antiquated, colonial, and chauvinistic.
This is just further proof [as if it was needed] that Trump’s brain is owned by the Alt Right internet sites.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid:
Ummmmm, no. Wild animals do not make good pets even when raised in captivity. Unless one thinks 10 fingers is a few too many.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@d58826:
Anybody know if Fox can run again? I’d love to see a Trump-Fox meeting.
schrodingers_cat
@NorthLeft12: Next up, he is going to talk about the white man’s burden.
rikyrah
Trumpcare Is Having a Very Bad Day
By Jonathan Chait
Last week, just as the Senate appeared to be racing toward the stealth repeal of Obamacare, it came to a screeching halt. Mitch McConnell has tried to use the July Fourth recess to regroup and find a way to assemble the 50 votes he needs to roll back the Affordable Care Act. But today appears to be another turning point: His plan suddenly looks like it’s on the verge of death. It is not one single development that indicates the sharply worsening outlook for Trumpcare, but several.
The most damaging development is a new statement by Mike Lee, one of the arch-conservative holdouts. Lee has been angling to make McConnell include provisions in the bill to weaken Obamacare’s protections for people with preexisting conditions. Lee’s ideas are a complete nonstarter for many, perhaps most, members of the Republican Senate. Today his spokesman told Axios reporter Caitlin Owens, “The entire bill is unacceptable without the Consumer Freedom Option.”
Lee’s position makes it almost impossible for McConnell to find his 50 votes. Blue-state senators Susan Collins and Dean Heller already appear irretrievably opposed to anything resembling McConnell’s plan. If Lee demands that the bill let insurers charge higher prices for coverage of treatments needed by sicker people, then he drives away at least one more vote on the party’s opposite wing: Lisa Murkowski or Shelley Moore Capito, among others, have expressed reservations about yanking coverage away from people who have obtained it through Obamacare.
That is not the only indication of trouble for McConnell. Kansas senator Jerry Moran, the only Republican senator who has held a town hall meeting during the recess, is nobody’s idea of a swing-state vote. But Moran faced a packed audience, and advocated a bipartisan approach in health care: Health care would be “almost impossible to try to solve when you’re trying to do it with 51 votes,” he told the audience, instead proposing this chamber “figure out where there are 60 votes to pass something.”
Bipartisanship might sound like a mom-and-apple-pie concept that a nervous Republican could throw around to mollify angry constituents without committing himself to anything specific. But in this case, 60 votes has a clear meaning. McConnell’s plan has been to use a 50-vote procedure to avoid the need for Democratic support. Indeed, he has threatened his caucus with the prospect that he will resort to bipartisan negotiations if the 50-vote strategy fails.
Tokyokie
@OzarkHillbilly: I strenuously disagree. The fellatio is a given, but I can’t imagine der Trumpenführer performing any task well that involves providing pleasure to someone else.
Ohio Mom
@Amir Khalid: I can see raccoons as a zookeeper’s dream: they don’t need a special diet, they are easy to collect, they are very hardy and fecund. The Tel Aviv zoo was not going to win any awards so racoons fit their approach perfectly.
But why people want to make pets out of raccoons (or other wild animals), I will never understand. Almost every winter, mice move into my basement and that’s bad enough.
rikyrah
These are not criminals. That’s how the immigration ‘crackdown’ was sold – they were going to go after all those CRIMINALS.
These are the most vulnerable.
And, you have ICE, acting like phucking vultures. This seems to be a pattern with them – going after the vulnerable. Women. Children. Seniors.
They’re supposed to be all big and bad…when the phuck are they going to go after the CRIMINALS…oh, that’s right, the Criminals would fight back against their fraudulent behinds.
………………………………..
A judge said these kids get a green card. ICE says they get deported.
July 06, 2017 · 2:45 PM EDT
By Bernice Yeung
J R in WV
@Cheryl Rofer:
Got to say, I can and will live forever without seeing Trump sucking Putin’s parts. Will never forget Stephen Colbert calling Trump Putin’s Cock Holster one night. So true. Hurt myself laughing at that. Better to laugh than to piss and moan.
JMG
Somewhere east of the Urals, a factory with a wall-sized map of North Dakota on one side is busy making road signs in Cyrillic, just in case today’s meeting goes extra well.
rikyrah
Hobby Lobby Meets Indiana Jones
How stolen art fuels Middle Eastern terrorism.
by Mike Lofgren
July 7, 2017
By now, everyone has heard of Hobby Lobby and its founder, Dave Green. Green is a fake Christian who uses his business as a vehicle to bully women and generally make a public nuisance of himself.
Aside from lending credence to the notion that employers may dictate to their female employees what sort of health care they may access (a suit by Hobby Lobby against the Affordable Care Act was decided in the company’s favor by a business-compliant Supreme Court), Green resolved to go show-biz by opening the Museum of the Bible just off the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Far from being the usual combination of Disney World and a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum—just think of the ludicrous Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky—Green plans to give us the genuine old-timey experience from the Holy Land. Already, Hobby Lobby has amassed some 40,000 items of antiquities, artifacts, and bric-a-brac, all of them the real McCoy. At last, the Faithful would be able to visit the nation’s capital and see something to counter the pernicious atheist propaganda on display at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History.
There was just one problem. According to a complaint lodged by the U.S. Court of the Eastern District of New York, Hobby Lobby engaged in a years-long effort to smuggle Iraqi artifacts disguised as tile samples. Their provenance may be considered doubtful given that the company persistently caused the shipments to be misleadingly labeled for customs and sent to multiple addresses, tactics routinely used by dealers in stolen artifacts.
………………..Given the possibility that their decade-long trafficking in illicit Iraqi artifacts may have contributed to the ability of terrorists to finance their activities, shouldn’t we consider whether the Greens should be investigated under statutes prohibiting material aid to terrorism? After all, U.S. citizens have been prosecuted for donating to charitable organizations ostensibly delivering humanitarian relief in Palestine and Somalia, a more ambiguous circumstance than dealing in antiquities looted from a war zone. And that also raises the question of whether Hobby Lobby became a front for an ongoing conspiracy to traffic in illicit goods. If so, it could be subject to forfeiture under federal RICO laws. Or, at the very least, shouldn’t those of us who are put off by the antics of monstrous hypocrites like the Greens be publicly calling for such an investigation?
Were the shoe on the other foot, and, say, Richard Dawkins or Bill Nye the Science Guy engaged in criminal shenanigans with a terrorism angle, we would have no difficulty guessing the response of the great Right Wing Noise Machine.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 7/6/17
Maddow to news orgs: beware of forged Trump Russia documents!
Rachel Maddow explains how an ostensible top secret NSA document submitted through the show’s inbox is likely a fake, and points out the perils of such forgeries to news organizations trying to report out important stories like the Trump Russia story.
arielibra
@satby: @satby:
The hookers and blow of the new millennium?
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 7/6/17
Tillerson will be Trump’s only chaperone at Putin meeting
Rachel Maddow reports on the protests in Hamburg, Germany on the first day of the G20 summit and points out that Donald Trump’s only chaperone for his Friday meeting with Vladimir Putin will be former Exxon CEO, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: In T’s telling, immigrant==criminal.
JPL
Because of the political climate, Trump will bring up the election hacking, but then agree with Putin that it was nothing. Just a little game.
I don’t understand why Trump hasn’t closed down the investigation yet.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 7/6/17
Justice Department pushes states on voter roll purge
Rachel Maddow reports on a letter from the Department of Justice to states about a review of voter registration maintenance procedures, which many are seeing as a precursor to a nationwide voter purge.
Kay
This is a good point and goes to how sloppy and unprofessional they are:
States don’t have any obligation to go along with some vague “search for fraud” that was cobbled together in 2 weeks. Trump/Kobach are supposed to have specific objectives and THEN ask for the minimum amount of information they need to accomplish the task. They didn’t do the work they were supposed to do first so they’re asking for everything. Why would they need Party ID, for example, if one of the objectives is to look for people registered in 2 states?
There also should be actual data experts on this panel. People who understand false positives and all the other issues that come up with a huge national database. This entire panel is composed of politicians/lawyers. Election officials don’t do the actual work with the state databases- they hire professionals.
bemused
@Cheryl Rofer:
Putin probably had him in a nose ring within 5 minutes and Trump beaming with joy Putin loves him so much.
Bruce K
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Bernie wouldn’t have let the Titanic sink…?
germy
Two competing narratives seem to be arm wrestling right now:
Chyron HR
@Bruce K:
He would have let the Titanic sink, but only so he could keep the millionaires and billionaires out of the lifeboats.
bemused
@d58826:
Trump has exact same pose and expression in photo with Angela Merkel at WH. Gigantic pouting baby.
low-tech cyclist
@satby:
It’s the “bored by policy” part that really rankles me. (And this is far from the first time I’ve heard this about the national political press.) Policy is what the political process is ultimately about, and if they find it boring, they should damn well find another line of work.
Elections have consequences, and one of the very basic jobs of the press during a campaign should be informing their viewers/readers/etc. of what those consequences are likely to be. IOW, how the candidates’ proposed policies differ.
Even worse, one obvious thing about Trump last year was that he really didn’t have any policies, just vague claims about how easily he could do this or that. But the press was too bored by policy to even notice that.
rikyrah
ICYMI,
Fox Business Channel’s Resident Slave Catcher has been accused of sexual harassment.
Don’t feel sorry for him one lick.
………………………………………………..
Fox Business Network host Charles Payne suspended amid sexual harassment allegations
BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Friday, July 7, 2017
A Fox Business Network host has been suspended amid sexual harassment allegations brought up against him by a former female commentator.
Charles Payne, who hosts “Making Money,” admitted he had a “romantic relationship” with a political analyst, who had worked for CNN, for about three years, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“We take issues of this nature extremely seriously and have a zero-tolerance policy for any professional misconduct,” a Fox Business Network spokesman said in a statement to the newspaper. “This matter is being thoroughly investigated and we are taking all of the appropriate steps to reach a resolution in a timely manner.”
The allegations against Payne are being investigated by Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison — the same firm that had probed the network’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, in previous sexual harassment claims against other personalities and executives.
rikyrah
Rachel Maddow receives fake classified info in attempt to discredit her. Democracy under dark arts attack. DT refuses to protect us. #FIGHT!
— Rob Reiner (@robreiner) July 7, 2017
schrodingers_cat
@bemused: Babies are cute.
germy
@rikyrah: He’s got this as a pinned tweet:
Kay
@rikyrah:
There’s going to have to be the equivalent of the Trump DOJ on the voting rights side, funded by donations or staffed with volunteers- like a private sector “department” to equal and counter the Trump public sector suppression crew.
The effort has to be that big and that coordinated and that organized. What we’ve done in the past, where the ACLU sues, or the NAACP sues, or the League of Women Voters sues, each org following their own objectives and plan, won’t work.
It pisses me off to pay for two huge groups of lawyers, but someone is going to have to pay the lawyers on the voting rights side if the publicly-funded Trump DOJ is now on the suppression side. This idea that we can just cobble together a national effort with the ACLU and the rest of the non-profits is fantasy.
Democrats raise piles of money. They need to commit some portion of each campaign’s funds to voting rights protection- a percentage. If it’s a state candidate it can go to state orgs and if it’s a federal candidate it can go to national orgs but it should be a set-aside. With a small percentage set aside you could hire a damn army on a contract basis.
rikyrah
@gvg:
I wasn’t talking about the GOP Legislators…you are absolutely correct about them..
I’m talking about the GOP’s voters….who, to a one, keep on coming up with this bunny in the headlights reaction when someone asks them as they whine about THEIR healthcare being taken away…
” What the phuck did you think the 50 Obamacare repeal votes meant?”
” Oh, they didn’t mean it.”
To.a.ONE….
That’s what these phuckers say, when confronted with – why the phuck would you vote for the people who TOLD you they would take away your healthcare.
schrodingers_cat
@low-tech cyclist: They cover politics like sports, a horse race for President.
JPL
@germy: Poor guy. Trump told him that if you are a star you can grab them by the pu**y.
danielx
Promise? Does it have to be only the next few months, or can it last longer, say until November 2018 – at the very least?
bemused
@schrodingers_cat:
Yes unless they are 71 year olds who throw tantrums.
rikyrah
@Kay:
You are absolutely on point, Kay.
Chris
@Baud:
This.
rikyrah
Meet the grandchildren spreading photos of ‘banned grandmas’ to protest Trump’s travel ban https://t.co/BatIJWyuyO
— TIME (@TIME) July 6, 2017
rikyrah
Five innocent teens of color. Coerced confessions. Unjust incarceration. Demands for their death by the man who would become President. #CP5 https://t.co/Tzw2fFBTZa
— Ava DuVernay (@ava) July 6, 2017
rikyrah
TOMORROW 7/7 – 6:30pm. Free healthcare Town Hall. Lots of info, lots of experts. @RepRubenGallego agreed to step in for missing @JeffFlake ? pic.twitter.com/OZmtBF4t7Q
— AZIndivisible (@AZ_Indivisible) July 6, 2017
tobie
@low-tech cyclist: Since Reagan, political coverage in this country has been all about optics. He made it easy for them since he himself couldn’t talk at any length about policy. If he couldn’t, the press didn’t have to either. The rise of populism this past election cycle cemented the trend. Now it wasn’t only Republicans running on sound-bytes but Democrats too. Bernie ran the first Republican style campaign on the left: short on substance, long on grievance. If that’s the recipe for the future, then we as a republic will sink fast.
MattF
@rikyrah: Looks like Lee has decided that the Senate bill is dead, so he can take whatever position will appeal most to the base– without inflicting pain on his constituents.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Part of it has to be education/information. People move a lot. I have been registered to vote in the following states- GA, NC, IN, MI and OH. Being registered in 2 (or more) states is not at all unusual. Virtually no one cancels their registration in their prior state before registering in their new state. Those people are likely to be flagged and they should know they’re likely to be flagged so they can straighten it out well before election day. People think “residency” is cut and dried under state law but it isn’t at all. It can be as vague as “intent to return”- there are 5 day trials on whether someone “resides” in OH or IL.
These public info campaigns can work- they work for public health. You have to drill it into people’s heads that they have to police their own registration status.
germy
Smart!
Major Major Major Major
@Chris: I think we should definitely focus more on how to keep Republicans from being mean to us. I’ll bet, somewhere out there, is an until-recently obscure first-term senator with zero scandals to his name and a thin enough voting record that you can’t make any issues out of it… no way they could smear that guy.
Cheryl Rofer
It’s about dogs.
dr. luba
@Baud:
As always, IOKIYAR.
Chris
@rikyrah:
They won’t be, of course. Chiquita, HSBC, and various other corporate entities have been caught financing or laundering money for terrorism before even more brazenly than this, and they get off with a slap on the wrist. Money is free speech, or something.
MattF
@germy: And don’t forget the Shkelri Rule ‘Set the price at whatever you can get away with’.
Kay
@rikyrah:
They have to take it seriously. It has to be PART of Party functions and campaigns. I get the frustration- there’s an entire government section that is supposed to be doing this work but if Republicans have adopted this fucked up, backwards belief that every voter is treated as a presumptive felon until proven otherwise then it’s broken and the ordinary frame that election process isn’t about excluding voters but is instead about serving voters has to be replicated- replaced- with private funding.
It’s like setting up a private sector regulatory or records process regime. It has to be that big and comprehensive or you’re just playing wack a mole.
d58826
Back a bit someone asked about a reaction to Der Fuhrer’s Warsaw speech. Here is one in a tweetstorm :
https://twitter.com/dandrezner/status/883300425566433282
BruceFromOhio
@germy: Rick! Rick! I have a tanker of snake oil in the parking lot! Come on, take a look! The demand is gonna bust WIDE OPEN on this, so get in while the getting is good.
Cermet
@Baud: When you answered
I think what you meant was “By germs, they mean black voters (and brown.)”
Major Major Major Major
A Slate writer interviews a voting rights expert about Kobach’s long game… this sounds like it’s quite possibly Kobach’s plan, and unlike most such theories we’ve actually seen voter suppression people do this on the state level… but like most of the Trump admin’s plans it will suffer from the fact that the people trying to pull it off are fucking idiots:
Kay
Democrats could BE the voting rights Party, and I do mean “the” as in “one”. If they start with the principle that they protect voting rights and really commit to that then it shouldn’t matter if the voter is in a swing state or is in Alabama or New York City- EVERY voter gets protection. They’re on the right side of this. There’s no question it’s the right thing to do and it may pay political benefits. There’s no political downside- there is a tiny section of potential Democratic voters who might object to Democrats aligning strongly with voting rights and many, many more potential Democratic voters who would be thrilled if they took it up- and by “took it up” I mean devote time and money to it on the ground. OF COURSE they should fight it in Congress but that’s not nearly what they COULD do. They could do a lot.
schrodingers_cat
@bemused: 71 year olds are not babies. He is an adult who knows what he is doing. Calling him a baby or mentally impaired minimizes his culpability for his inexcusable actions.
Kay
@Major Major Major Major:
Propublica got confirmation from Pence’s office that they intend to do database matching and comparisons so that’s no longer “suspected”- it’s what they’re planning. That gets them to the next question which is “what databases?”
They will have to reveal more. I think it was a poorly-planned fishing expedition so they will look more and more incompetent because the objectives will be constantly shifting. They’ll have to add staff- a lot of people- to handle this giant database. Supposedly “Pence’s office” is handling this. “Pence’s office” can’t drop everything and manage a huge national voter data initiative. That will make them look bad too- like they’re flailing around.
germy
@MattF:
And then sit in court and smirk at the judge.
bemused
@schrodingers_cat:
However we look at it, the guy just aint right in the head. Obviously mentally dysfunctional.
Kay
@Major Major Major Major:
It’s fatally flawed as work because they didn’t start with what (real) problem they’re trying to solve. The problem they’re trying to solve is Donald Trump made shit up about millions of voters unlawfully voting to cover the fact that he lost the popular vote. That’s not a real problem. Voter rolls won’t solve their problem. It’s going poorly because it’s grounded on lies. It will always be grounded on lies. No matter how many layers they stick on top it will always be a lie at the bottom.
SenyorDave
Political pain? I want actual physical pain for these mf’ers. If there is karma, Ryan, McConnell, et. al. will return in a future life as someone who is poor and has a pre-existing condition (hopefully painful) and have to depend on Obamacare. Maybe there is a 1% chance that some of them will develop a shred of compassion.
These people can rot in hell along with their real bosses, the Koch brothers, Adelson and the other soulless billionaires.
schrodingers_cat
@bemused:
I am not interested in psychoanalysis. Calling him impaired gives him a pass. He may not behave like the average person, his behavior has worked for him so far. He won the Presidency. He knows fully well what he is doing.
Impaired implies he is not responsible for his actions. I don’t buy that.
Kay
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m thrilled it’s getting so much coverage. I’m in Michigan listening to AM radio news and it was the first sentence in the news run-down. This could actually help the voting rights cause.
J R in WV
@low-tech cyclist:
These “journalists” aren’t interesting in policy, or the political future of the nation.
They’re interested in being wealthy and famous, and on TV every day. And in getting lots of sex with their minions, evidently. None of that’s part of the job description. They should all go back to the College TV station in rural Oklahoma and take another swing at learning the rules of real journalism.
Or join the Merchant Marine to get the hell out of here.
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: like many of the things they do it’s hard to tell if the extremely poor, in this case blatantly overbroad, implementation is intentional or if they’re just that incompetent. I have no doubt for instance than Bannon thought the Muslim ban being blocked by courts and riling up coastal elites to reveal their pro-mudblood ways was a feature. But they’re all idiots, so.
As for the actual suppression they have planned, yeah, been clear for a while, especially with those documents.
Kay
It amazes me that politicians on the Trump commission but also just in general aren’t more plugged in to privacy concerns, because I hear them all the time both in my law practice and in the context of public schools (I’m on a school committee).
People absolutely do care about who has their information and what is done with it. They care a lot. Now maybe they are kidding themselves and since everything is online they should just give up but they feel there are or should be all kinds of rules protecting the release of information. I used to get questions on this regularly at the post office- did we give anyone who asked an address- the answer is “no”- we don’t even give law enforcement an address without an order but they’re not idiots- they just use the technique where they send the mail piece and then we correct the address if we had it :)
But I’m reading the responses from the Trump commission members and they’re SHOCKED that people object to this? I mean, Jesus, how did these people ever get elected? Do they talk to anyone in their “campaigns”? They care a lot. I get questions from public school parents on whether the school is “allowed” to put student photos in a newsletter that they send to everyone in the district, like it’s top secret that their kid attends the school.
kd bart
@David Canadian Anchor Baby Koch: He’s a modern day Tom Joad. “Wherever there’s a cable remote that needs a talking head, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cable talk show booker screaming mad because someone backed out at the last moment, I’ll be there.”
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: Was screwing up the tourism sector also a part of their grand design?
d58826
May be reading to much into the sequence
But he certainly sounded like he was talking to an ally rather than adversary. He looked a lot happier in that clip than he did with the Pres. of Mexico.
https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/883329194079420416
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: Bannon? Probably, but he’s insane.
@Kay: what legislative remedy would you suggest? Better disclosure, treating large information companies (Facebook, google) more like public services…?
Kay
@Major Major Major Major:
Kobach is hugely ambitious. I think it’s a huge over-reach but putting him in charge guaranteed that. He absolutely has national ambitions and this is his big shot at moving out of the far Right fringe and into the mainstream nationally. He’s already mainstreamed in the GOP- they follow his template on state law regarding immigration but he wasn’t a known national figure and he wants to be one. Mitt Romney thought Kobach was fringe enough that Romney denied Kobach was an adviser in 2012. Mitt Romney is much smarter than Donald Trump.
Patricia Kayden
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m trying to stay clean because BJ is a classy joint but yeah.
Villago Delenda Est
Pass the popcorn.
bemused
@schrodingers_cat:
Of course he should be held accountable for his actions. Plenty of “impaired” people like him are in prison with lengthy sentences which is what I think he deserves.
Aleta
Time to play Did Trump actually say this?
“”We look forward to very good things happening for Russia and the United States.”
Something’s on his mind and it’s not America First.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: he definitely knows what he’s doing, but it could be both. He sure has a lot of senior moments. Which aren’t always a sign of incipient dementia, of course. I think many people just don’t want to believe that all this could be the result of intentional action.
Patricia Kayden
@schrodingers_cat:
Trump has done an excellent job of hiding this though because he certainly doesn’t look as if he knows what he’s doing at all. So far, his administration has been highly incompetent and he has a practice of contradicting his supporters. But yeah, of course, he’s not a baby. He’s an old man prone to temper tantrums, rage tweeting and lies.
Villago Delenda Est
@gvg: Clinton was the usurper in Ronald Reagan’s sacred office. Any Democrat is an usurper. These people are monarchists. They are not Americans.
Barbara
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: It’s worth recalling that politicians who are buddy buddy with the press and treat them well get better coverage. It’s one of the reasons John McCain gets such soft coverage in spite of his obvious flaws (selecting Sarah Palin to be his running mate was the ultimate expression of what I would refer to as narcissistic chauvinism — that the choice of running mate was inconsequential and that women would view any female candidate as equivalent to any other). McCain made a point of being nice to the press in various ways and was well-rewarded for it.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I’m involved with local elections, and one thing I hear from people when I’m trying to convince them to get a Mail Ballot is
” I know you have to sign it, and I don’t want my actual signature out there. ”
Tis true. They DO have to sign the returned ballot envelope and send it in the mail. For some, that’s a deal breaker.
There are also people in our database who, honestly, haven’t updated their voter information since they registered in the 1960’s through the 1980’s. Back then, you didn’t need to give any identification information for a voter application. So, we have people, who have been voting for years, that don’t have a DOB or any identifiable ID information in our database. They haven’t moved, so they had no need to update their voting info. Trying to get them to give that ID information is quite difficult, and involves back and forth.
Kay
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh, God, I don’t know. It’s an issue in public schools though because Google has moved into public schools very aggressively. It was all Apple and then Google came on like a freight train with Chromebooks. Chromebooks are ideal for schools. It’s the perfect tool for students- they’re cheap, they’re easy to use and they’re light. Schools are buying boat loads of them and then all the students use Google docs- they use the whole suite- Google classroom. My son attends an ordinary Ohio public school and it’s all Google-driven. There’s a whole education division of Google. They will absolutely dominate and that’s 50 million students- that’s how many there are in public schools. Facebook just launched a philanthropic move to get into public schools but Google was there first and they aren’t “philanthropic”- schools are spending billions on just the laptops. I don’t get into this with parents who are concerned about privacy because 1. don’t really understand it and 2. don’t want to be the person who says “this is futile- just turn your kid over- too late!” but if Google wanted to they could probably collect info on tens of millions of public school kids.
rikyrah
@Villago Delenda Est:
WHY?
They control the WH and both houses of Congress.
Why is this difficult?
Oh yeah…because they are sociopaths, and everything that they want to do is repulsive, which is why they’ve always tried to hide their true intentions.
Because, we you see their goals laid out, bare for all to see…
They are as disgusting and inhuman as we’ve been telling you all these years.
The Moar You Know
@bemused: I appreciate the excuse-making, but it doesn’t wash. There’s nothing wrong with Trump.
As my Psych 101 professor said (he was my favorite prof because of this one statement): “There’s no diagnosis for asshole.”
Trump is simply an asshole.
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: Google already is, if the students sign in on chrome, unless they have special educational accounts. We use Google Drive for our community college programs at work because it’s free and a lot of people already know how to use it; those of our classrooms that can afford computers all have chromebooks. They are perfect for classrooms, you’re right, but that’s not a need the government is currently equipped to supply computers for either.
The Moar You Know
@Villago Delenda Est: A lot of the younger folks won’t understand this, but every word is true. The sheer outrage when Bill Clinton was elected among Republicans was something you had to live through to believe. I honestly didn’t think he’d survive his first year in office.
Chris
@Barbara:
LGM brought up this general tendency, in the context of Comey, about a month ago. Sadly, since the transition to Disqus, all conversations at the link have disappeared, but the money quote –
[…] people with reputations for integrity often cultivate them. That’s not to say that they lack integrity. But it is to say that Comey and Wittes might have it somewhat backwards. Making at least small compromises is what people of good will who are not trying to impress everyone with their integrity do all the time.
[…] How does someone who is not widely perceived as a gadfly or an asshole develop a reputation for being a person of great principle and integrity? Essentially by curating his reputation.
[…] To be clear, I’m not arguing that Comey did not act honorably and with integrity back in 2004, when he blocked the effort of Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card to reauthorize an illegal surveillance program. He acted honorably. What I am saying is that Comey seems like the sort of person who pays a great deal of attention to his own reputation. And that accounts for his worst sin: Because he didn’t want to look like he had acted unfairly to influence the election by sitting on the Anthony Weiner material, he in fact unfairly influenced the election. The cultivation of the appearance of integrity can sometimes be inconsistent with actually acting with integrity.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
As near as I can tell, Trump is a guy who was born into obscene wealth and privilege, essentially spent his entire life facing no consequences for anything he’d done, and reached the obvious conclusion.
J R in WV
@Kay:
Google already has all the data they need on all of those school kids if they’re using Google products. I picked up my tablet last night to take to bed. It had the searches I had done yesterday afternoon on my Android phone while running errands. I put it down and picked up an actual paper book.
I guess if they’re under 13 they might have some protection, but really, if you need to protect those under 13, you need to know their name/address/age in order to treat them differently from other profit margin individuals.
rikyrah
I think that I have been talking politics a lot.
Peanut asked me last night if Dolt45 was “Putin’s HO”.
I had to tell her the truth – yes.
I was curious if she actually knew who Putin was…and, she did know.
I didn’t think she was listening to us talk about politics.
Kay
@J R in WV:
Oh, I agree. Anyone who wants it has everything on them and if they didn’t have a Chromebook they’d just get it from their phones :)
But these are good parents and I’m sympathetic to their (perhaps futile!) efforts to protect their 4th grader from the giant data machine that no one knows how to regulate or control, so I say things like “you signed a waiver for photos in the packet at the beginning of the year” and I don’t mention that their kids are posting every fucking thing on Facebook and Twitter and the rest anyway. The flattering and upbeat photos the school carefully chooses and publishes are the least of their worries.
Watching Apple get trounced in the public school market was something, though, I must say. They were offering tablets with wireless keyboards to schools. That’s a crap tool to give to kids if they’re writing. It was a no-brainer to pick the Chromebook. No one else was even in the running. I feel like Apple didn’t take what kids do seriously- they gave them a bad tool for what they do in school- it’s real work and they should have a proper tool.
When we started with our program we made parents purchase insurance (if you can’t buy you don’t have to- it’s a public school) and we’re now realizing we’re over-insured. The devices are cheap enough (and the kids are careful enough with them) that they rarely lose or break them- the models they sell to schools have strong cases- they’re tougher. We may drop the insurance. It’s an absolute money machine for the insurance company, there are so few claims.
gvg
@Kay: Do states HAVE to actually purge the voters this “commission” claims are fraudulent? I don’t see the authority. I know the
gop may want to for their own reasons, but I think the ones that choose to, can ignore this commission unless Congress actually passes a law requiring something. We need to get better legislators in all levels of government stat. If a state is too red to swing democrat, then just a better set of republicans would help.
gvg
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t CARE if he isn’t responsible. I CARE that he can’t do the job and I may get blown up in a nuclear flash or the economy may melt down in a way that means I have a poor starving old age if I am lucky or he may gut regulations so that I die of poisoned food, unsafe cars, or my house falls on me. Also I fear the same for my friends and family and even strangers. He really may be “not responsible”. So what if it gives him a pass, he needs to be fired.
Then we need to have a lot of teaching conversations with a lot of stupid voters who are mostly responsible for their own fuck up.
I’d like to see him punished, but it’s urgent that he be removed from power.
catclub
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
This reminds me of Joe Klein, who can write well, but only if he is personally insulted.
glory b
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The other day, Tweety had a retrospective show, “Twenty Years of Donald Trump,” where he had a whole hour of old interviews with Trump.
I was surprised at how many times he was on his show and wondered why he thought Trump’s opinion was so valuable. It’s not like he was the only intermittently successful businessman in New York.
bemused
I know we are all stressed out but what difference does it make whether the thugocrat is mentally ill or deliberately being an asshole? He’s a miserable excuse for a human being. Everything he has touched in his life has been skeevy and sleazy. He’s turning our country into shit and has to be ousted from WH one way or another.
gvg
I am trending toward wanting legislation that companies AND government offices that collect private info, need to be held responsible for protecting it. It costs people money when their data is stolen, it costs banks and sellers and credit card companies too. When all these companies are collecting every little drop of info they can but don’t know how to protect it (if it can be), they are free riding costs on the rest of us. They need to be monetarily discouraged from collecting too much info and learn to purge older data. I don’t know how to get there, but want to. Maybe insurance costs required based on how much of the key data and how long? Privacy laws on some data they can’t collect? Fines on agencies and companies (hospitals and pharmacies) that turn out to still have SS#’s and aren’t supposed to? Insurance that rates their privacy practice effectiveness and charges sliding scales? Taxes based on privacy practices?
gvg
@The Moar You Know: But the narrative Trump ain’t right in the head is I think getting somewhere with more people than just an asshole. I think the payoff is better though I am not certain. results matter to me and I want him gone.
Also everyone has known many assholes….they have never been the kind of threat to us that Trump is perceived as so people aren’t satisfied with that explanation. Over 30 years ago I encountered one compulsive liar. It was such a surreal experience that all of my fellow employees were slow to react effectively and i have mentioned the anecdote in conversations over the years because nothing like it ever happened again, until Trump. I can’t count the number of assholes I have encountered. Trump is more than that.
glory b
@germy: But a hearsay statement isn’t a false one, it just can’t be used at trial to be the basis of a finding of fact. Investigators use hearsay all the time, but they use it to lead them to evidence that can stand up in court.
Besides, there are a whole array of exceptions to the hearsay rule, so many that some legal scholars say the rule itself is almost meaningless.
glory b
@rikyrah: I saw an interview with ne of them that reminded everyone that this was the time when a phone number and address were readily available in the phone book.
AND, the police coerced the lab folks into not testifying that there were no DNA matches.
Lots of death threats after Trump’s ad. Never an apology, instead a protest when the state paid them for the time they spent in jail.
Laura
@OzarkHillbilly: my gtandparents kept a couple of racoon as pets when we were wee and it went as well as one could hope . . . Until maturity. It went rapidly downhill and they released them. How they fared in the wild is unknown.
TenguPhule
@debbie:
They did come up with a plan.
Tamper with the votes and kill the opposition.
TenguPhule
@satby: You sound shrill.
TenguPhule
@bystander:
Wrong, Trump has had to pay for every single one. Never free for him.