Trump 29: Divider In Chief or Liar In Chief? WHY NOT BOTH?

[Destiny]

5 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

He probably thinks it has something to do with the sort of movies Mother won't let Pence watch. 

 

OH NO! OH NO! I'll be sending you the bill for my therapy for the mental images this comment is giving me. 

[AmazonGrace]

This Valentine's Day, may you all have someone in your life who would give a porn star $130.000  out of their own pocket for you.

 

[fraurosena]

15 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

This is such a good plan. It will change our country! I wonder what the hotel chains will do with their properties. Because if states have to maintain their highways without help from the federal government, every road will be a toll road. And every state will have to raise gas taxes. So a trip from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh will cost $1200. You could fly instead but if the Koch brothers own the airport, it will cost you $2000 in entrance and use fees. And that's not even the ticket.

After we let one of Dump's rich friends take over the air traffic controllers you're not going to want to risk flying anymore. There will be lots of small print when you purchase the ticket, to include a statement that says you agree that your estate won't sue if you die in a crash.

And depending on who owns the bridges, well it might not be a good idea to try to cross that river.

So we'll all be spending a lot of time at home. Hang on to your books, you won't be able to afford cable TV anymore. But Faux News will be available to all homes for free! Great plan.

The stupidity of this is mind-boggling. They're going to make it so expensive to travel that nobody will want to travel anymore. That's absolutely detrimental for the economy. Because who do you think will be paying for all that expensive transport? Yes, you, the consumer. Are you willing, or even able to pay for all that? I don't think that $1.50 pay raise will be adequate, do you? The economy will implode because of it. Nobody will be able to afford anything, companies will go bust, followed by lay-offs, so people will be able to afford even less, even more companies will go bust.. and so on and on and on. 

But what I really don't get is that they just can't see that it's also bad for their own pockets. Because who owns all that expensive infrastructure? The states and private companies. Who owns those private companies? Exactly. The rich 1%, who may believe their tax cut will line their pockets so very bigly. But guess what? If nobody can afford your product or service, you won't have any income. No income means that tax break adds no value. Your companies will be among those who go bust because of your overpriced, greedy, money-grabbing tactics. 

Tell me, how's that going to make America great again?

 

[Howl]

4 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

This Valentine's Day, may you all have someone in your life who would give a porn star $130.000  out of their own pocket for you.

 

Nobody believes this. Nobody.  What it will do is make journalists dig much, much deeper into this entire thing and they already headed out deep in the weeds.  This is a Hail Mary pass that reeks of flop sweat and desperation.  And yes, I truly regret mixing metaphors like wearing plaids with floral prints. 

That said, Trump is truly the Teflon Don.  It doesn't matter what oozes up from the primordial slime that is our president, it won't stick.  OK, maybe a graphic sex tape.  I think a sex tape would do it.  However, if the Russians have kompromat of that type, I don't think they will release it.  Why?  Because it would be the last straw for US voters, and where are they without SCROTUS?

[AmazonGrace]

I feel fairly confident that if evangelical voters are able to tell themselves that running a fraudulent university, swindling contractors, thousands of documented lies, and multiple accusations of sexual assault and abuse don't matter they'll be able to tell themselves that a graphic sex tape doesn't matter.

 

 

 

 

 

[fraurosena]

In fact, I feel fairly confident that a graphic sex tape will simply be labeled as "FAKE", and that will be the end of all argument.

[formergothardite]

At this point I think that there could be a video of him personally performing an abortion and his evangelical base would label it FAKE or say that it was in the past so it doesn't matter. 

[AmazonGrace]

As far as I can tell Trump thinks China sells USA steel for free and this is a bad thing because  it's shipped through countries that don't manufacture steel.

[Botkinetti]

@AmazonGrace you do a much better job than I could translating his gibberish into coherent English. 

[Howl]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

I feel fairly confident that if evangelical voters are able to tell themselves that running a fraudulent university, swindling contractors, thousands of documented lies, and multiple accusations of sexual assault and abuse don't matter they'll be able to tell themselves that a graphic sex tape doesn't matter.

Especially if it features missionary position....i'll see myself off to the prayer closet. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yeah, this would be a great use of taxpayer dollars. They could cut more of the safety net to pay for it. (end sarcasm): "Trump’s military parade would cost between $10 million and $30 million, White House budget director says"

Spoiler

Trump’s military parade would cost between $10 million and $30 million, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said on Wednesday.

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney offered the estimate during questioning at the House Budget Committee. He said the White House hasn’t yet budgeted for the parade and would either rely on Congress to appropriate funds or find other funds that have already been appropriated.

“The estimates I’ve seen, they’re very preliminary, is between 10 [million dollars] and 30 [million dollars] depending upon the length, Mulvaney said. “Obviously an hour parade is different from a five-hour parade in terms of the cost and the equipment and those types of things.”

It was the first cost estimate of the military parade Trump has directed the Pentagon to plan later this year.

 

[GrumpyGran]

7 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Yeah, this would be a great use of taxpayer dollars. They could cut more of the safety net to pay for it. (end sarcasm): "Trump’s military parade would cost between $10 million and $30 million, White House budget director says"

  Reveal hidden contents

Trump’s military parade would cost between $10 million and $30 million, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said on Wednesday.

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney offered the estimate during questioning at the House Budget Committee. He said the White House hasn’t yet budgeted for the parade and would either rely on Congress to appropriate funds or find other funds that have already been appropriated.

“The estimates I’ve seen, they’re very preliminary, is between 10 [million dollars] and 30 [million dollars] depending upon the length, Mulvaney said. “Obviously an hour parade is different from a five-hour parade in terms of the cost and the equipment and those types of things.”

It was the first cost estimate of the military parade Trump has directed the Pentagon to plan later this year.

 

Yeah, he doesn't want to let this go. What a wonderful time to be working for him. It's like trying to get a bone away from a pit bull. Does no one have to balls to tell him "Look, if you insist on doing this it will be the end of you"? Clearly NO ONE wants to do this. Except the spoiled little boy who didn't get his parade for passing the tax bill. And then didn't get to go to his party for the inauguration anniversary. He's suffering from severe praise deficit.

Can't they just take him out on a campaign tour and let the Trump-loving "Christians" in small-town America give him parades? Let them fund it from those massive tax breaks they got. Can't they put something on the official web site asking his worshipers to contribute to a fund for the parades? Those of us who don't contribute promise not to come and enjoy it.

[fraurosena]

Seth Abrahamson's dug up something vewwy, vewwy intewesting that just might be connected to those payments to Stormy Daniels, supposedly from Michael Cohen.

(Don't worry it's a teeny tiny threadling)

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump won’t stop trying to keep America white"

Spoiler

The efforts by President Trump to keep America white are getting increasingly dark.

Make no mistake: What’s happening on Capitol Hill this week, at Trump’s behest, is nothing other than an attempt by Republicans to slow the inexorable march toward that point at midcentury when the United States becomes a majority-minority nation.

In the long run, they are merely putting a finger in the dike. But in the short term, the Trump-backed immigration proposal, combined with other recent moves by the administration and its allies — support for voter suppression, gerrymandering and various other schemes to disenfranchise minority voters — could extend the white hegemony that brought Trump to power and sustains Republicans.

For ages, Republicans said that their beef was with illegal immigrants and that legal immigrants should be embraced and welcomed. No longer. In the immigration fight on the Hill, there is broad bipartisan consensus to legalize the “dreamers” — illegal immigrants brought here as children — and to fortify border security. The dispute is really about the Trump proposal to rein in legal immigration by undoing the family-based approach, in which immigrants petition to bring over immediate family, that has always been at the heart of U.S. immigration.

Though details aren’t yet known, estimates are that the legislation would cut legal immigration, currently 1.1 million per year, by 300,000 to 500,000 annually. A previous version of the “chain migration” proposal by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) would have cut legal immigration by half a million a year, by their own account.

Essentially, Trump and the Republicans are threatening to make nearly 700,000 dreamers subject to deportation unless Democrats agree to close the door to tens of millions of future legal immigrants.

This won’t stop the loss of a white majority; the youthful Hispanic population already here, with its higher fertility rate, makes that inevitable. “It’s almost impossible to become whiter as a country,” the Brookings Institution demographer William H. Frey tells me. “It’s like a demographic tsunami. There aren’t enough people in Norway to migrate here.”

But the GOP might delay by a few years the point at which the United States becomes majority-minority, now expected in 2044. Minorities vote at lower rates than whites (52.7 percent in 2016 vs. 65.3 percent for whites), so, if Republicans can sustain that disparity, the white voting majority that the party relies on could last several years beyond 2044.

Republicans may be acting out of self-interest rather than any racial animus. But if one were to devise a diabolical plan to suppress nonwhite votes, it would look much like what they are doing.

The administration asked to include a question about citizenship in the 2020 Census, which will determine the apportionment of House seats. This would suppress census participation among the 7 percent of residents who are not citizens — even those here legally — thus causing Latinos to be undercounted.

The administration argued last month before the Supreme Court in favor of an Ohio practice of purging voters from registration rolls if they fail to vote over two federal election cycles. Because of minority voters’ lower participation rates, they would be purged from the rolls in higher numbers.

The administration has given tacit support to other voter-suppression efforts in the states, in the form of voter ID laws and restrictions on early voting. Trump nominated, and the Senate Judiciary Committee has approved, a district court nominee, Thomas Farr, who helped draft and defend the most egregious voter-suppression and gerrymandering laws in the country. Farr unsuccessfully argued for North Carolina’s voter ID law, which was struck down by an appellate court because it targeted African Americans “with almost surgical precision.”

The Republican National Committee, which is under Trump’s authority, also weighed in on a current Supreme Court case in favor of political gerrymandering, often used to dilute minority votes.

Trump’s voter-fraud commission, based on the fallacy that millions of illegal immigrants voted in 2016, has collapsed, but not before an ugly attempt at stigmatizing Latinos. As The Post’s Spencer S. Hsu and John Wagner reported, documents show that a commission representative asked for Texas voter records and requested a “Hispanic surname flag notation.”

Trump himself has continued to stir up fears, often based on falsehoods, of a crime wave caused by illegal immigrants, and he has requested billions of dollars to step up deportations. (At the same time, he has proposed a 5 percent cut to federal education funding, much of it for programs benefiting the urban poor, disproportionately minorities.)

This is, of course, what you would expect from an administration whose chief law enforcement official, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, just hailed “the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.” This phrase — an ad lib while reading from a prepared text — would be easier to excuse as an innocent reference to common law if Sessions didn’t carry so much racial baggage, and if his boss hadn’t just referred to “shithole” African countries.

Republicans can’t keep America white, but they can stop sullying themselves in the attempt.

Taking America back to 1950 seems to be their goal.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Third White House official resigns after being told he wouldn’t qualify for full clearance"

Spoiler

A senior official on the National Economic Council resigned on Tuesday after being informed that he would not receive a permanent security clearance, as the White House faces increasing scrutiny over the number of high-ranking officials allowed to work on interim clearances.

George David Banks, who had served since February 2017 as special assistant to the president for international energy and environmental policy, told POLITICO that he was informed by the White House counsel’s office Tuesday that his application for a permanent clearance would not be granted over his past marijuana use.

Like an estimated three dozen others in the White House, Banks had been working on an interim security clearance while the administration determined the status of his full clearance.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Banks is the third White House official to leave the administration over the last week. White House staff secretary Rob Porter resigned last Wednesday amid allegations of verbally and physically abusing his two ex-wives. Speechwriter David Sorensen, who worked at the Council on Environmental Quality, stepped down on Friday over domestic abuse allegations. Both Porter and Sorensen deny the allegations.

The administration has tried to crack down on the use of interim clearances in recent months. POLITICO reported Tuesday that the White House imposed a ban on new interim security clearances for anyone in the executive office of the president last fall, but let existing employees with interim clearances stay on.

Banks said he was told that his clearance would not be granted because he admitted to smoking marijuana in 2013. Banks said he subsequently offered his resignation, which the White House accepted. “It was an honor to serve the president at the White House and I look forward to supporting the president in the future,” he said.

A former CIA analyst who also previously worked at the State Department and the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Banks emerged last year as the administration’s lead policy expert on the Paris climate change agreement, and he played a key behind-the-scenes role in the months-long internal debate over whether to remain in the pact.

A former Obama administration official who worked on personnel and vetting issues said the Obama White House usually only denied clearances when there was both past drug use and a lack of full disclosure.

White House officials say they have been left largely in the dark about how chief of staff John Kelly intends to address the interim clearance issue going forward.

“The whole thing is just demoralizing,” a White House official told POLITICO, arguing that Banks was a victim of the Porter firestorm. “I think a lot of us are scratching our heads.”

The White House official said the administration’s inability to clearly explain what senior officials knew about Porter and when is causing widespread frustration among staff.

“It seems to be more chaos as opposed to taking control of the situation and saying we made a mistake and are going to fix it in the future,” the official said. “Just put out a clear statement about what happened and let’s try to put it behind us.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

Quote

We have steel coming into our country from countries that don't even know what steel is, they don't make it, they never made it, and it's trans shipping, it's coming from China, and some others but mostly from China and they send it through countries that don't make steel, and it comes pouring into our country, And it's free, free, and it's a very bad, very bad situation.

Anyone care to guess what countries don't know what steel is? Still in bronze age? Or stone age?

 

[AmazonGrace]

In the same event, Trump bragged about a factory that he made up:

 

Happy Valentine's Day to Mekanismi, from Stormy

 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump won’t stop trying to keep America white"

Taking America back to 1950 seems to be their goal.

Oh dear. I guess they will have a series of fainting fits when they find out that...

First modern Britons had 'dark to black' skin, Cheddar Man DNA analysis reveals

Quote

The first modern Britons, who lived about 10,000 years ago, had “dark to black” skin, a groundbreaking DNA analysis of Britain’s oldest complete skeleton has revealed.

The fossil, known as Cheddar Man, was unearthed more than a century ago in Gough’s Cave in Somerset. Intense speculation has built up around Cheddar Man’s origins and appearance because he lived shortly after the first settlers crossed from continental Europe to Britain at the end of the last ice age. People of white British ancestry alive today are descendants of this population.

It was initially assumed that Cheddar Man had pale skin and fair hair, but his DNA paints a different picture, strongly suggesting he had blue eyes, a very dark brown to black complexion and dark curly hair.

The discovery shows that the genes for lighter skin became widespread in European populations far later than originally thought – and that skin colour was not always a proxy for geographic origin in the way it is often seen to be today.

Tom Booth, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum who worked on the project, said: “It really shows up that these imaginary racial categories that we have are really very modern constructions, or very recent constructions, that really are not applicable to the past at all.”

Yoan Diekmann, a computational biologist at University College London and another member of the project’s team, agreed, saying the connection often drawn between Britishness and whiteness was “not an immutable truth. It has always changed and will change”.

The findings were revealed ahead of a Channel 4 documentary, which tracked the ancient DNA project at the Natural History Museum in London as well as creating a new forensic reconstruction of Cheddar Man’s head.

To perform the DNA analysis, museum scientists drilled a 2mm-diameter hole into the ancient skull to obtain a few milligrams of bone powder. From this, they were able to extract a full genome, which held clues about this ancient relative’s appearance and lifestyle.

The results pointed to a Middle Eastern origin for Cheddar Man, suggesting that his ancestors would have left Africa, moved into the Middle East and later headed west into Europe, before eventually crossing the ancient land bridge called Doggerland which connected Britain to continental Europe. Today, about 10% of white British ancestry can be linked to this ancient population.

The analysis also ruled out an ancestral link with individuals inhabiting Gough’s Cave 5,000 years earlier, who appear to have performed grisly cannibalistic rituals, including gnawing on human toes and fingers – possibly after boiling them – and drinking from polished skull cups.

Britain was periodically settled and then cleared during ice ages until the end of the last glacial period about 11,700 years ago, since when it has been continuously inhabited.

Until now, though, it hasn’t been clear whether each wave of migrants was seeded from the same population in mainland Europe; the latest results suggest this was not the case.

The team homed in on genes known to be linked to skin colour, hair colour and texture, and eye colour. For skin tone, there are a handful of genetic variants linked to reduced pigmentation, including some that are very widespread in European populations today. However, Cheddar Man had “ancestral” versions of all these genes, strongly suggesting he would have had “dark to black” skin tone, but combined with blue eyes.

Scientists believe that populations living in Europe became lighter-skinned over time because pale skin absorbs more sunlight, which is required to produce enough vitamin D. The latest findings suggest pale skin may have emerged later, possibly when the advent of farming meant people were obtaining less vitamin D though dietary sources like oily fish.

Cheddar Man would have lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, making sharp blades from flints for butchering animals, using antlers to whittle harpoons for spear fishing and carving bows and arrows.

Here's a picture of the reconstructed head of Cheddar Man:

 

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

In the same event, Trump bragged about a factory that he made up:

Just quoting that to continue the thought. Making up stuff about how great he is, referring to himself in the third person, vague innuendo about the media not praising him. I think his shoes are getting tight. And all of this was probably before he found out that Cohen may have opened the door to Story Hour with Stormy.

It's only Wednesday! I'd really give anything to be a fly on the wall.

[fraurosena]

COWARD in Chief should be added to his titles.

 

[JMarie]

Did anyone else notice the avoidance of Valentine's Day by the Trumps?  Yes, I know there was a mass shooting yesterday, but that didn't occur until mid-afternoon.  POTUS, Jr, Eric, Ivanka, even Tiffany, none of them posted anything.  FLOTUS did mention spending the day with kids, but forgot about her husband.

[GrumpyGran]

39 minutes ago, JMarie said:

Did anyone else notice the avoidance of Valentine's Day by the Trumps?  Yes, I know there was a mass shooting yesterday, but that didn't occur until mid-afternoon.  POTUS, Jr, Eric, Ivanka, even Tiffany, none of them posted anything.  FLOTUS did mention spending the day with kids, but forgot about her husband.

Remember, DJT, Jr told us to buy Trump junk for our valentine. And Ivanka did make cookies with her kids(bullshit) before she went to work. Haha, we've seen this before. The cook and nanny made the cookies with the kids Tuesday afternoon and yesterday, as she cruised through the keeping room, she stopped for a photo op with the kids and the cookies. Honestly I wonder why she bothers. I guess because she trying to brand herself as a working mother. 

[fraurosena]

49 minutes ago, JMarie said:

Did anyone else notice the avoidance of Valentine's Day by the Trumps?  Yes, I know there was a mass shooting yesterday, but that didn't occur until mid-afternoon.  POTUS, Jr, Eric, Ivanka, even Tiffany, none of them posted anything.  FLOTUS did mention spending the day with kids, but forgot about her husband.

When they're all anxiously trying to get rid of that pesky Mueller investigation whilst also trying to appease their Russian blackmailers at the same time, it's no wonder they're too preoccupied to think of something as mundane as Valentine's Day.

[Audrey2]

Valentine's Day is a pretty sucky holiday when you hate your spouse (or when you've got an eye on Mrs. Trump 4.0 while still married to 3.0).

Plus, we were spoiled for eight years with the obvious love and connection of the Obamas. The Trump offspring are either much less demonstrative or much less enamored with their spouses.

[47of74]

My parents had the radio on for lunch when fuck face came on to spout off.

I actually said out loud I don't want to hear that orange fuck in front of my parents as I walked out of the kitchen.