United States Congress of Fail (Part 3)

[AnywhereButHere]

Oh look, he's speaking again. Someone shut him up. Please.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-north-korea-feud-fire-fury-not-tough-enough-n791561

Quote

 President Donald Trump said Thursday that his previous statement promising "fire and fury" in response to North Korean threats may have not gone far enough and he promised "trouble" for the country if its actions don't change.

"If anything maybe that statement (about "fire and fury") wasn’t tough enough," Trump told reporters from the steps of his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. "We're backed 100 percent by our military."

"I will tell you this...if North Korea does anything in terms of even thinking about attack of anybody that we love or we represent, or our allies or us, they can be very, very nervous," Trump said. "They should be very nervous because things will happen to them like they never thought possible. North Korea better get their act together or they are going to be in trouble like few nations have ever been in trouble."

And we're continuing to piss off China. Grand plan there.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-says-us-destroyer-in-south-china-sea-violated-its-security/ar-AApPC6q?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=msnbcrd

Posted this in the wrong thread. Sorry!

[GrumpyGran]

12 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

Oh look, he's speaking again. Someone shut him up. Please.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-north-korea-feud-fire-fury-not-tough-enough-n791561

And we're continuing to piss off China. Grand plan there.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-says-us-destroyer-in-south-china-sea-violated-its-security/ar-AApPC6q?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=msnbcrd

Isn't there someone there to distract him? He's going to get us all killed. 

[candygirl200413]

So another reminder, Lindsey Graham is trash (do we have a nickname for him?)

Graham on North Korea: 'If we have to, we'll go to war'

Quote

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Thursday that "if we have to, we'll go to war" with North Korea, adding he supports President Trump's fiery rhetoric against the country.

"If we have to, we'll go to war. I don't want to, but if we have to, we'll go to war. And I'll tell you who'll win that war, we will," Graham said in an interview with a South Carolina CBS affiliate.

"I think he's trying to put China and North Korea on notice that the game has changed," Graham said of Trump's vow to unleash "fire and fury" should North Korea threaten the U.S.

"President Trump is rejecting the doctrine of strategic patience which has has failed for 25 years. He's told me, and I think he's gonna tell China and North Korea, that he's not going to allow North Korea to develop a missile with a nuclear weapon on top that can hit America, that if he had to use military force to stop that from happening, he would."

"I think that's the right call because we can't live as a nation under the threat of nuclear attack from a crazy man in North Korea," Graham added.

Trump has engaged in a war of words with North Korea's leader this week amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missiles programs.

Trump ramped up his rhetoric against North Korea on Thursday, saying his warning of "fire and fury" against the rogue nation "may not be tough enough."

Graham emphasized that China could put an end to the current situation by using its considerable influence over the North Korean regime.

The GOP senator said he is "convinced that Donald Trump would use military force to protect the homeland" against a nuclear weapon from the country, adding that every previous president has "failed miserably" in dealing with the issue.

 

[Audrey2]

6 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

So another reminder, Lindsey Graham is trash (do we have a nickname for him?)

Graham on North Korea: 'If we have to, we'll go to war'

 

Dear Lindsey,

Coming from South Carolina, I realize that it is popular to rattle your sables against North Korea. They are behaving in a war-like way, and you do have a continent between your state and the consequences. Those of us who live in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, and California have a different perspective. From a U.S. perspective, we're closer to the front lines then we've been in years, and we're not okay with that. I realize you'd be happy to lose four of the five States as we are liberal Democratic States, but we love our flag and country, too, and we pay taxes. Please cease and desist your sable rattling.

Sincerely,

A terrified and disgruntled American.

[GreyhoundFan]

I can't stand Lindsey Graham. He is sooooooo two-faced.

 

"At raucous town halls, Republicans have faced another round of anger over health care"

Spoiler

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — The long August congressional recess, which Republicans hoped would begin a conversation about tax reform and must-pass budget measures, has so far seen another round of angry town halls focused on President Trump and the stalled effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Over just one day, in three small towns along Georgia’s Atlantic coastline, Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-Ga.) spent more than four hours answering 74 questions, many of them heated. Just three focused on tax reform; nearly half of all questions focused on health care.

“We did our job in the House,” Carter said at the top of a town hall at Brunswick’s College of Coastal Georgia. “It got over to the Senate, and it hit a stumbling block there. Now it’s in their court, and they need to get something done. Folks, we’re not giving up.”

Carter’s town halls — he is hosting nine total, more than any member of the House — mirrored what was happening in swing and safe Republican districts across the country. The failure of the repeal bill kick-started a tax reform campaign, backed by Republican leaders and pro-business groups, who have booked millions of dollars in TV ads to promote whatever might lead to an “uncomplicated” tax code.

In the first spots, paid for by the American Action Network, a laid-off steelworker worries that without “lower taxes for working families,” more jobs will be “lost to China.” At rallies and forums in several states, Americans for Prosperity has pitched tax reform as a way to “unrig the economy.” And in a polling memo made public this week, the AAN found 65 to 73 percent of voters responding favorably to reform if it was pitched as a way to “restore the earning power” of the middle class and “save billions of dollars per in year on tax preparation services.”

But at town-hall meetings since the start of the recess, tax reform has hardly come up; health care has dominated. At a Monday town hall in Flat Rock, N.C., Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) pitched a plan to devolve ACA programs to the states, then found himself fending off constituents who backed universal Medicare.

“You can take the top one percent and tax them fully, and it still won’t pay for Medicare,” said Meadows.

At a town hall in Chico, Calif., in the most Democratic portion of a deep red district, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) found himself fending off furious complaints about the repeal vote, with constituents accusing him of acting to bring about their death.

“I hope you suffer the same painful fate as those millions that you have voted to remove health care from,” one constituent told LaMalfa. “May you die in pain.”

Carter’s town halls did not reach that boiling point, but they revealed what the tone of congressional listening sessions has become — angry, wistful and loaded with progressive activists.

The 1st congressional District, stretching from Savannah to the Florida border, has been held by his party since 1993. In 2016, the Trump-Pence ticket carried the district by 15.5 points, while Democrats could not find a candidate to run against Carter.

But on Tuesday, the constituents who signed up for the meetings on Eventbrite and walked past local police officers to take their seats seemed to skew left. Two groups founded after the 2016 election, Speak Up Now and Savannah Taking Action for Resistance, had members at town halls in Darien and Brunswick.

Carter, who peppered his answers with self-deprecating jokes, sometimes called on activists who’d dogged him before. In Brunswick, he quickly pivoted from a question about “Zionist influence in our foreign policy” by promising to “put America first.” After three different constituents asked him to say whether he supported the president’s decision to ban transgender men and women from military service, he went from deferring “to our commander in chief” to saying what he believed.

“I don’t want ’em serving in the military,” Carter said, as dozens of constituents booed and more than a dozen walked out. “I’m sorry.”

At each town hall, Carter provided fact sheets to advance two messages — one about how much work Congress had done in 2017, and one about how his party would not give up on repealing the ACA. A one-pager titled “Health Care Reform: Myth vs. Fact,” with citations from the Department of Health and Human Services, revealed just how much the party had suffered from Democratic attacks. Instead of rebutting the line that the AHCA would cut Medicaid, it framed the ACA’s Medicaid expansion as a departure from the program’s mission that denied “choice” to the working poor.

“Medicaid was designed to provide a vital health care safety net for elderly, children, pregnant women, and individuals with disabilities,” it read. “Low and middle-income adults capable of holding down a job should have health care choices.”

Behind the microphone, Carter found himself making that same point repeatedly, about a slew of ideas for expanded government programs, as Democrats cheered and Republicans simmered. In Brunswick, after Carter told a college student that free tuition was a pipe dream — “we’ve got a $20 trillion” debt — an older man took the mic and advised the student to get a job.

It wasn’t the only time Carter stood back and watched as his constituents argued among themselves. Mary Nelson, 73, used her question time at Carter’s Darien town hall to insist that Republicans were all wrong about single-payer health care. She walked through an experience that her Australian relatives had gone through, and described a cheap system “with no hoops to jump through” that could be copied in America.

“They are taxed out the wazoo in Australia,” interjected Adrienne Stidhams, 48, a Trump supporter.

“How much do we pay for premiums?” Nelson asked rhetorically.

Like Meadows, Carter suggested that Democrats and Republicans could work together on health-care bills while the repeal effort stalled. When multiple constituents asked if he would let the probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election play out, Carter defended the president and suggested that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, “a good man,” would likely “find out the facts” before long.

“I’m worried about some of the people he has around him,” Carter said, apparently referring to lawyers hired for the probe who have been attacked in conservative media for donating to Democrats.

There were no questions about the debt limit, which must be raised when Congress returns to avoid default. The three questions about tax reform focused on the possibility of the “Fair Tax,” a national sales tax to replace taxes on income, about whether companies keeping profits overseas could be taxed, and about tax fairness in general.

Carter jumped at the opportunity to talk about it. “What’s being proposed right now is to bring our corporate tax down from 35 percent — one of the highest in the world — down to 15 percent,” he said, citing a tax reform blueprint released this spring and a positive analysis from the conservative Tax Foundation. “That will create jobs.”

No constituents followed up with questions. Instead, there was more skepticism about the president and his plans, countered by constituents who asked Carter to defend the president from media attacks.

“I tell ya, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a president that’s been disrespected by the media like this,” said Carter. He had more to say, but drowned out by booing, he moved on.

I went to a telephone town hall for my Rep, it was pretty civil, but he's a Dem who voted against the Repug healthcare mess.

[GrumpyGran]

10 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

So another reminder, Lindsey Graham is trash (do we have a nickname for him?)

Graham on North Korea: 'If we have to, we'll go to war'

 

I'm starting to think he's suffering from the same illness as Trump-dementia. He's all over the map lately. And this is a break from his bestie, McCain. Geography matters?

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump is torturing Mitch McConnell for sport. Here’s how McConnell can get revenge."

Spoiler

For many liberals, the spectacle of President Trump publicly tormenting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) over his failure to pass health-care repeal surely carries a whiff of poetic justice or perhaps even schadenfreude. During the election, McConnell pocketed a Supreme Court seat for Trump and helped scuttle bipartisan condemnation of Russian meddling, even though he likely knew Trump was unfit for the presidency and, worse, an untrustworthy ally of the GOP — ideologically, perhaps, but more to the point, temperamentally.

Now McConnell is being targeted by the sort of pathological abuse that Trump has directed at other flunkies who have failed him, such as Jeff Sessions and Sean Spicer. But instead of relishing this moment, we should hope and push for another resolution to this saga — one in which McConnell gets his revenge by helping shore up the Affordable Care Act’s individual markets, thus deftly undercutting Trump’s similarly pathological threats to sabotage the law.

As crazy as that sounds, there’s actually a good case for it. First, a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll out today finds that large majorities want Republicans to do this. The key findings:

• Sixty-nine percent of Americans want Republicans and Trump to fix the remaining problems with the ACA to improve the marketplaces.
• Seventy-eight percent want the Trump administration to do what it can to make the law work, while only 17 percent want the administration to make the law fail to build the case for a replacement later, which is Trump’s threat.
• Sixty-three percent say Trump should not use tactics that could disrupt the individual markets, such as cutting off funding for the cost-sharing reductions (CSRs) that subsidize out-of-pocket costs for lower-income customers, which could cause premiums to soar and more insurers to exit.

Now, the last two of those findings concern what the public wants Trump to do, and he can’t be persuaded to act with that in mind, but McConnell surely knows that if Trump goes through with his threats, it would create a major political problem for congressional Republicans in the looming 2018 elections. Another recent Kaiser poll found that 61 percent say congressional Republicans and Trump are now responsible for any future problems with the ACA, meaning they now own whatever happens with the markets.

McConnell himself knows this. In July, McConnell explicitly said that if the GOP repeal push failed, Republicans would have to work with Democrats to shore up the markets, because doing nothing is “not an alternative.” This was a tacit admission that for Republicans, doing nothing is not an option politically.

What’s more, other Republicans are now moving forward with bipartisan efforts to shore up the markets, in direct defiance of Trump. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee has announced that the health committee, which he chairs, will work this fall on legislation to boost the markets. Alexander has also said that Trump must continue funding the CSRs, which Trump continues to threaten to cut off, a move that could leave many millions without coverage options. A pair of House Republicans has joined with Democrats to push an effort that would legislatively fund the CSRs. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who chairs the House Energy Committee, has also called for them to be legislatively funded, suggesting he, too, knows House Republicans will be held responsible in 2018 for sabotage.

Remember, the mere uncertainty Trump is fomenting by not saying whether he’ll continue the CSRs is itself undermining the markets — and if that gets worse, Republicans could bear the blame. If this continues, at some point GOP leaders — including McConnell — will be pressed to support a more formal bipartisan process to stop it. Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at Kaiser, emails:

Uncertainty about insurance market rules and underlying fragility in certain markets around the country are driving premiums up significantly and causing insurers to exit. These are problems that can be fixed pretty easily by Congress, for example by appropriating funds for cost-sharing subsidies and providing funding to help pay for the care of high-cost patients. The industry will be closely watching the bipartisan hearings in the Senate in September for a possible way forward.

I don’t know what McConnell will do — surely there are pressures that make it hard for him to back efforts to shore up the markets, and who knows if this could pass the House. But so doing would amount to an elegant way to give Trump the middle finger. Trump went all in with McConnell’s repeal push, but now Trump is heaping all the blame for failure on McConnell and again demanding Republicans get repeal done, putting them in an impossible position for sport. As part of this effort to distract his voters from his role in repeal’s collapse, he is threatening further ACA sabotage to prove to them that his toughness remains undiminished.

McConnell, by acting to boost the markets, could move to take that weapon out of Trump’s hands, undercutting the chance that Trump’s craziness further damages congressional Republicans in 2018 while simultaneously leaving Trump sputtering ineffectually on the sidelines. And don’t say Trump’s voters would rage at the GOP, because no matter how angrily Trump tweeted about this outcome, they won’t want collapsing insurance markets, either.

It would be nice if McTurtle did the right thing, but I'm not holding my breath.

[fraurosena]

23 hours ago, Gobsmacked said:

 Thankyou onekidanddone. 

How many people have to be present/ hold keys or codes to start a nuke strike? 

It depends on how you look at it. Here's how it works according to the Bloomberg article I posted earlier:

Step 1. 
The presidunce decides to nuke something.

Step 2.
Before initiating military action, the presidunce convenes a conference with military and civilian advisers in Washington and around the world to talk through options. In the White House, the call takes place in the Situation Room. If traveling, the presidunce is patched in on a secure line. A key participant in the meeting: the Pentagon’s deputy director of operations, an officer in charge of the National Military Command Center, also known as the “war room.” This around-the-clock operations center is responsible for preparing and ultimately transmitting a launch order from the presidunce. The head of all U.S. strategic nuclear forces at Strategic Command in Omaha would probably also be asked for a briefing on strike options.

Step 3.
The consultation lasts as long as the presidunce wishes, but if enemy missiles are heading toward the U.S. and the presidunce must order a counterstrike, the consultation may last just 30 seconds. The tight time line raises the risk of launching hastily on a false warning.

Step 4.
The presidunce decides to launch. Some advisers may try to change the president’s mind or resign in protest—but ultimately, the Pentagon must comply with the commander-in-chief’s order.

Step 5.
The senior officer in the Pentagon war room must formally authenticate that the person ordering the strike is indeed the presidunce. The officer reads a “challenge code,” often two phonetic letters from the military alphabet, such as “Delta-Echo.” The presidunce retrieves the “biscuit,” a laminated card the president or military aide carries at all times, and finds the matching response to the challenge code: “Charlie-Zulu,” for instance.

Step 6.
The war room prepares the launch order, a message that contains the chosen war plan, time to launch, authentication codes and codes needed to unlock the missiles before firing them. The encoded and encrypted message is only about 150 characters long, about the length of a tweet. It is broadcast to each worldwide command and directly to launch crews.

Step 7.
The submarine and ICBM crews receive the message within seconds of the broadcast. Just a few minutes have passed since the initial conference call.

Step 8.
Launch message in hand, the crews open locked safes to obtain sealed-authentication system (SAS) codes prepared by the National Security Agency and distributed throughout the military’s nuclear chain of command. They compare the SAS codes in the launch order with those in their safes. The captain, executive officer and two others authenticate the order. The launch message provides the combination to an on-board safe holding the “fire-control” key needed to deploy the missiles. Missiles are ready for launch about 15 minutes after receiving the order. Five launch crews in various underground centers control a squadron of 50 missiles. Each crew consists of two officers. The individual teams are spread miles apart. Each receives the orders, opens safes and compares their SAS codes to those sent by the war room. If they match, the crews enter the message’s war plan number into their launch computers to re-target missiles from their peacetime targets in the ocean to their new targets. Using additional codes in the message, the crews enter a few more keystrokes to unlock the missiles before turning launch keys retrieved from their safe. At the designated launch time, the five crews turn their keys simultaneously, sending five “votes” to the missiles.

It takes just two “votes” to launch the missiles. So even if three two-officer ICBM crews refuse to carry out the order, it won’t stop the launch. About five minutes may elapse from the president’s decision until intercontinental ballistic missiles blast out of their silos, and about fifteen minutes until submarine missiles shoot out of their tubes. Once fired, the missiles and their warheads cannot be called back.

So, to answer your question, it takes just one: the presidunce. He can act all alone and against any advice anyone may give him, no matter who they are. The only chance, and that chance is very slight, that a nuclear launch could be deterred is when four or more of the five launch crews refuse to carry out the orders. 

Scary, huh?

[fraurosena]

Patti Davis (Ronald Reagan's daughter) has a post up about the 'Short Road to War'.

http://booksbypattidavis.com/the-short-road-to-war/#more-2177

Quote

Before a war erupts, it is a thought in the minds of men. That thought is then sent into the world through words, threats, and ultimately commands. Then the horror begins. This world is armed with enough nuclear weapons to literally destroy the planet, and if that doesn’t scare you enough, consider this quote that has traveled down through the years (I was unable to find who authored it): “Man has never invented a weapon that he didn’t ultimately use.”

The man who occupies the White House has apparently thought about war for a while. During his campaign he questioned why we have nuclear weapons if we aren’t going to use them. He claimed to know more about military strength than generals who have been in the military half their lives. This man, who dodged the draft, whose knowledge of history is embarrassingly lacking, whose thoughts are a dark tangle of narcissistic musings, who plays the perpetual victim mired in paranoia, who lies incessantly, and who is incapable of keeping his mouth shut, is leading us into a war with North Korea. He began with “fire and fury” and is now onto “locked and loaded.” It’s like watching a Clint Eastwood wanna-be, except the consequences of Trump’s I’m-so-tough game could lead to annihilation.

There are differing theories on how stable Kim Jong-un is; his secrecy allows people to fill in the blanks. But we know this: Kim Jong-un likes bluster and bullying as much as Donald Trump does. He has told the North Korean people that they need to go without food and often electricity because money must be spent on weapons to defend the country from the United States. Donald Trump is now playing right into that scenario.

Words are never inconsequential, particularly when bandied about on the world stage between two unreliable bullies with nuclear weapons between them. It’s remarkable to me that Congress has been so silent this past past week. They clearly take their vacation time very seriously, but aren’t they supposed to still represent America, even in August?

It’s always fascinating to see what leaders do who are placed onto the world stage at the same time. My father and Gorbachev created a more peaceful relationship between America and Russia because, on that stage, in the spotlight of history, they relied on the better angels of their nature. Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un may never have become acquainted with their own better angels; they might not even know they exist. The sound the rest of us hear is the angels in Heaven weeping over the foolishness of men.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Bernie Bros and sisters are coming to Republicans’ rescue"

Spoiler

Things could go well for the Democrats in next year’s midterm elections — if they don’t Bern out.

President Trump is woefully unpopular, feuding with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other Republicans. The GOP can’t manage to repeal Obamacare or do much of anything. Voters say they’d like Democrats to run Congress.

But here come the Bernie Bros and sisters to the Republicans’ rescue: They’re sowing division in the Democratic Party and attempting to enact a purge of the ideologically impure — just the sort of thing that made the Republican Party the ungovernable mess it is today.

Bernie Sanders’s advisers are promoting a “litmus test” under which Democrats who don’t swear to implement single-payer health care would be booted from the party in primaries. Sanders pollster Ben Tulchin penned an op-ed with a colleague under the headline “Universal health care is the new litmus test for Democrats.” Nina Turner, head of the Sanders group Our Revolution, told Politico this week that “there’s something wrong with” Democrats who won’t “unequivocally” embrace “Medicare-for-all.”

That notion — not just taking a stand but excommunicating all who disagree — is what Republicans have done to themselves with guns and taxes, and it would seriously diminish Democrats’ hopes of retaking the House next year.

At the same time, Our Revolution has stepped up its attack on the Democratic Party. Turner this week sent an email to supporters complaining that she and others attempted to deliver a petition to Democratic National Committee headquarters but “were shut out.” In a follow-up interview with BuzzFeed, Turner expressed particular outrage that the DNC offered her . . . donuts. “They tried to seduce us with donuts,” she said, calling the gesture “pompous” and “arrogant” and “insulting.”

It’s not just about breakfast confections. The Bernie crowd has begun accusing freshman Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), a rising Democratic star, of being beholden to corporate money. Also in California, Kimberly Ellis, who ran for state Democratic chairman with the support of Sanders and lost in a close race to a former Hillary Clinton delegate, is refusing to concede and threatening to sue. Ellis told Adam Nagourney of the New York Times that the “Democratic Party is in many ways right now where the Republican Party was when the tea party took over.”

And that’s a good thing? Republican fratricide, instigated by tea- party purity police, made Trump possible and left the GOP unable to govern. This is what Sanders’s people would emulate.

Fortunately, Sanders seems to have lost clout. Candidates backed by Our Revolution have lost 31 races in 2017 and won 16 — and the victories include “Portland Community College Director, Zone 5” and “South Fulton (Ga.) City Council 6.”

Candidates endorsed by Sanders have struggled in high-profile races. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) lost the DNC chairman race (he was appointed deputy chairman). Sanders-backed Tom Perriello lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Virginia, and a Sanders campaign official was blown out in a California congressional primary . Neither did the Sanders magic get the job done for Democrats in special congressional elections in Kansas, Georgia or Montana, and his candidate lost the Omaha mayoral race.

Yet the attempt by the Sanders movement to impose a health-care litmus test on Democratic candidates shows its destructive potential within the party. Support for single-payer health coverage has been growing, and it would become a real possibility if Republicans sabotage Obamacare but don’t help the tens of millions who would lose insurance.

But to force Democrats to take some kind of single-payer purity oath would set back the cause. Democrats need to pick up 24 seats to take control of the House, yet there are only 23 Republicans in districts won by Clinton — and only eight of those were won by President Barack Obama in 2012. There are a dozen Democrats in districts Trump won. In such swing districts, it would be suicidal to pledge support for something Republicans will brand as socialism.

A Pew Research Center poll in June found that while a majority of Democrats (52 percent) favor single-payer health care, only 33 percent of the public does overall. A Kaiser Health Tracking poll in June had better results: 53 percent of the public favored single-payer coverage. But Kaiser found that opinions were “malleable,” and that if, for example, respondents heard single-payer coverage would increase taxes, a majority opposed it. Also, midterm voters are older, and that group is hostile to “Medicare for All.”

If recent trends continue, and particularly if Republicans undermine Obamacare without an adequate replacement, the time for single-payer will come, and soon. But the litmus test distracts Democrats from protecting Obamacare, diminishes their chances of retaking the House and chops up the party over something that has zero chance of becoming law under Trump.

That Berns.

This is why we need more than two political parties. Let the "Bernie Bros" be off in their far left wing party and the teabaggers in their far right wing party, with the bulk of the country in more moderate left and right of center parties. It also chaps my hide that Bernie can try and take over the Democratic party when he isn't even a freaking Democrat. Kind of sounds like Agent Orange's takeover of the Repugs. I know many people adore Bernie, and he has some good ideas, but his sowing of division and discord is upsetting.

[GreyhoundFan]

No. Just No. "Kid Rock gains GOP backing for U.S. Senate run"

Spoiler

Kid Rock is gaining some establishment GOP support for a Senate run.

Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC formed during the 2016 election that has Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s backing, expressed support Friday for Kid Rock taking on Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) in 2018.

“We’d be actually very interested in his candidacy,” Steven Law, the group’s president, said on C-SPAN on Friday. “I certainly wouldn’t count him out.”

In a poll conducted July 25-27 by RealClearPolitics, Kid Rock — whose real name is Robert Ritchie — trailed Stabenow by 8 points, and Law said it is “not a bad place to start.” Although Kid Rock has not officially declared his candidacy, social media blew up when the musician linked kidrockforsenate.com from his official Twitter account and tweeted campaign-related images: political stances, lawn signs and even apparel.

“I believe if you work your butt off and pay taxes, you should be able to easily understand and navigate the laws, tax codes, health care and anything else the government puts in place that affects us all,” one image read.

Kid Rock endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2016 and Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, and Law said the “superficial” idea of Kid Rock as an entertainer and as a “wild redneck” should not deter people from seriously considering his candidacy.

“The truth of the matter is that he’s done a lot in his home state philanthropically, he’s a pretty smart guy, he thinks about policy and he’s a shrewd businessman,” Law said. “If you’re watching, Kid, we hope you run.”

Oh yeah, because we need another idiotic juvenile in power. <end sarcasm>

[WiseGirl]

22 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

This is why we need more than two political parties. 

I could not agree more about this. It needs to happen and soon, like yesterday.....

[GreyhoundFan]

Wow: "The agonizing, 8-page memo on how to chauffeur a congressman"

Spoiler

Empty his trash. Always have hand sanitizer and gum at the ready. And don’t bother with “unnecessary conversation” — the congressman doesn’t have time for your chit-chat.

Demanding, high-maintenance bosses are notorious on Capitol Hill. The late Sen. Ted Kennedy's staff had to walk his dog, poop pick-up and all. Former Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison made her male aides carry her purse.

The latest addition to the list: Rep. Todd Rokita, an Indiana Republican running in one of next year's most competitive Senate races.

Who knew it could take eight pages of instructions on how to properly escort a member of Congress around his district? Yet there it is, laid out in mind-blowing detail, in a memo obtained by POLITICO that's sure to make any young, eager-beaver political aide shudder.

Tasks listed in the document, entitled “Instructions on Staffing and Driving — District Version,” include handing Rokita a cup of black coffee upon picking him up at his home, acting as a physical barrier between him and trackers looking to capture embarrassing footage of the congressman, and “avoid[ing] sudden acceleration or braking” while driving.

“The goal is to provide as smooth a ride as possible,” reads the instruction manual, co-authored by a former chief of staff to the congressman and Tim Edson, Rokita’s ex-communications director turned campaign spokesman.

Drivers are expected to transport not only Rokita’s toothbrush and toothpaste but also stock and tote around the district a nearly 20-item supply box that Rokita’s staffers call “the football.” The contents include gum, hand sanitizer, business cards, bottled water, napkins and Kleenex, Lozenges-brand cough drops, a stapler and stapler remover, Post-it notes and Shout wipes, among other items.

...

Rokita needs a hanger in the car for his jacket. Never allow him to be photographed with a drink in his hand. And never forget, the memo states multiple times in boldface, underlined letters, to remind the 47-year-old to bring the essentials.

“When TER enters the car, check to ensure he has his phone and wallet,” the instructions say, referring to Rokita by his initials.

Asked about the memo, Rokita’s campaign spokesman Tim Edson wrote in an email that “there is nothing embarrassing about always being prepared.” Edson blamed the leaked memo on his boss' longtime nemesis, Rep. Luke Messer (R-Ind.), who's running against Rokita for the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic incumbent Sen. Joe Donnelly.

The missive opens by listing basic details any driver would need to know before a day of district events: locations, times, directions and points of contact on the ground. But it quickly morphs into a full-stage production, tasking drivers with doing in-depth research on each event, including knowing each events’ “greeter” and how Rokita will recognize him or her. Also make sure Rokita has “at least 10 percent more handouts than we anticipate attendees.”

Drivers are expected to know when each event was approved in Rokita’s scheduling office, whether reporters will be there and the best locations for interviews, as well as the layout of each event and where Rokita will be standing.

“A successful day begins in advance,” the memo reads. “If you cannot answer ALL of these questions, you are not prepared for the day.”

Picking up Rokita from his home is a chore, to say the least. Drivers are asked to “please have a cup of black coffee available for him” and to “empty the trash bin if there’s anything in it.” They’re also instructed to “back the vehicle out of the garage and turn it around so you can exit the driveway when Representative Rokita gets in the car.”

...

“Make sure you pull the car far enough forward that exhaust fumes won’t get in the garage,” the memo adds.

Only when a lengthy checklist of must-have items is completed should drivers email Rokita, who needs a 10-minute heads-up, to alert him that they’re there and ready to go.

Rokita should be informed of any turns and sudden stops while driving, according to the manual. The less talking, the better, it says: “He often uses the travel time to make phone calls, catch up on email, read and prepare for the day’s meetings and events. Please do not interrupt his prep time with unnecessary conversation.”

Staffing Rokita's events seems to be a task made for Superman. Drivers are expected to collect contact information from “as many people as possible” and ensure the information is “quickly entered in to the relevant databases.” At the same time, they're supposed to be taking pictures for social media, “notes of all interactions” Rokita has with constituents, identifying reporters and sending Rokita’s communications director a summary of exchanges he has with the press.

Another must-do: Keep Rokita hydrated.

“When you arrive at the event, get Todd a non-alcoholic drink that he can carry with him as he visits (water, diet soda, and coffee are best),” the manual reads.

Tips of the trade in the instructions manual include, faking it — “The best way to make a good first impression is to look like we know what we are doing” — and ensuring that Rokita doesn’t talk to too many reporters.

As for dealing with reporters, “Generally less is more,” the document reads, later adding: “TER should not be allowed to talk to any reporters for more than the allotted time.”

Drivers are also expected to protect Rokita from any attendees who they suspect are there only to gather opposition footage of him. The instruction manual warns that trackers could try to catch him in an awkward moment or embarrassing moment.

...

The driver is told to “maintain a physical position between TER and the tracker” but warned “do not touch, bump, punch, choke or verbally attack the tracker.”

“This is the type of behavior they are hoping to provoke,” the manual reads.

Drivers are also responsible for keeping Rokita on schedule — but there are guidelines even for that.

“Do NOT say to TER, ‘Todd we have to go,’ or ‘You have an appointment with XYZ,’” the manual reads. “Instead, politely tell the person/people TER is speaking with that you need to get TER on the road.”

The day ends for a Rokita driver ends much as it began: with the "football" and the trash.

“When you arrive at TER’s house at the end of the day … empty the trash bin … and go over the football checklist and make sure all items are there,” the instructions read. “If anything needs replenished, report those to the next day’s driver ASAP.”

The documents are linked in the article. You know, some of the stuff is sensible, but good grief, some of it is too much. Who does he think he is, Mariah Carey? The whole idea that the driver has to remind the presumably adult Rep to bring his wallet and cellphone when leaving the house for the day is just ludicrous.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an interesting graphical representation of Repug senators and where they stand on the orange menace. There are quotes to back up the placements.  Because of the graphics, I can't quote here.

[GreyhoundFan]

"After Charlottesville, Republicans remain stymied over what to do about Trump"

Spoiler

In the aftermath of the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Republican lawmakers and leaders face the most unpalatable set of choices yet in their relationship with President Trump. They are caught between disgust over his failure to unequivocally condemn neo-Nazism, a desire to advance a conservative agenda and fears of rupturing the Trump-GOP coalition ahead of the 2018 elections.

Recent condemnations of the president by Republican lawmakers have been harsher, more frequent and sometimes more personal than in previous moments when Trump went beyond what is considered acceptable behavior. Many GOP leaders are now personally wrestling with the tradeoffs of making a cleaner separation with the president, while finding no good options.

To some in the party, the hesitancy to act more boldly in response to Trump’s handling of the Charlottesville violence — specifically his angry news conference Tuesday — falls short of what they believe this moment demands.

“At what point does a principled party stand up for its principles?” Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania and homeland security secretary under former president George W. Bush, asked in a midweek interview.

Ridge, a longtime critic of the president, added, “You can’t be afraid of losing an election because you stood up for what was right. A party of principle requires leadership. But at this time, we’re kind of rudderless. We need a chorus [of opposition] and we didn’t get it. . . . And frankly, if we did that, I think most Americans would applaud.”

What Ridge is calling for publicly is what some Republicans are asking themselves privately, which is whether a more direct break with the president is either advisable or possible. There are indications of private conservations underway within Republican circles about the president’s behavior and whether, after seven months in office and a new chief of staff who many GOP officials hoped would temper the president’s behavior, there will ever be a change. Many are concluding that the answer is no. The next question is what to do.

It’s clear that, as of now, many Republicans — lawmakers, leaders and strategists — have reached a pair of uncomfortable conclusions. First, whatever they and a majority of the public believe about the repugnancy of the president’s comments, they believe Trump was duly elected as president on the Republican ticket and that he retains a deeply loyal following within the party. They are reluctant to go against that Trump base.

Second, however personally upset they are by the president’s remarks, many lawmakers believe they must maintain a working relationship with the president if they are to accomplish their legislative goals — including tax reform and even health care. So far, they have little to show for their work this year and see progress on that agenda as crucial to keeping grass-roots conservatives and Trump loyalists energized ahead of the 2018 elections.

Interviews with Republicans around the country since Charlottesville highlight the dilemma elected officials now face. Few were willing to talk about what comes next, even anonymously, and most elected officials and party leaders contacted declined requests for interviews altogether.

Many of these leaders know that in their states, Trump retains considerable support from Republican voters. Among those attending the Iowa State Fair this week—a place where he made waves two years ago when he landed his personal helicopter at the fairgrounds—there appeared to be no significant dampening of support among his followers.

A large banner reading, “Stand With Trump” hung behind the Iowa Republican Party’s booth inside the Varied Industries Building. By Wednesday afternoon, it was covered in signatures, with few spots left for anyone else to add their name. Every few minutes, people would stop by to take a photo with a cardboard cutout of the president.

Althea Cole, a member of the state GOP, worked the booth during the week, talking to people who stopped by. “Iowans like Trump. Of course, we had the occasional person come up to us and say, ‘How could you?’” she said Friday.

Notably, Cole said that several people stopped by the GOP booth to inquire about the state’s two U.S. senators, Charles E. Grassley and Joni Ernst. “They want Iowa’s two senators, they want Iowa’s federal representatives, to be behind Trump 100 percent,” she said.

In another Midwest state, a group of golfers watched Trump’s Tuesday news conference from the clubhouse of their country club — and vocally expressed their support for him and agreed with his characterization that both sides bore responsibility for the violence that took place in Charlottesville.

A GOP strategist working campaigns in red and purple states said that while support for Trump generally declined slightly since Charlottesville, support rose among his base, after a decline last month because of the failure on health care and revelations about the Russia investigation. This strategist said many Trump supporters applaud the president’s continuing desire to shake up Washington, favor his economic priorities and admire his willingness to speak his mind.

But he said Trump has nonetheless created a longer-term risk. “What he’s doing that’s harmful is he’s removing people from the persuadable audience, and that’s dangerous,” he said. “He’s taken an event where he could have added 5 percent of people to the persuadable universe and [instead] he’s dumped out 10 percent of them.”

For many Republicans, this has become a look-in-the-mirror moment, a time for taking stock about their own actions, perhaps equal to or even beyond that which took place in the days after the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” video in October. This time the personal criticisms of the president started more slowly but after Tuesday built to a crescendo as the week unfolded.

Sen. Cory Gardner (Colo.), who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was one of the first to state his displeasure after Trump’s Saturday statement, which made no mention of neo-Nazis or white supremacists. He implored the president to “call evil by its name.” Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), who faces reelection next year and who dueled with Trump for the 2016 presidential nomination, was similarly caustic in calling out white supremacists.

On Monday, Trump delivered what many Republicans had hoped to hear Saturday. Reading from a teleprompter, he criticized “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear.” Had he stopped there, he might have avoided what was to follow. But the next afternoon, during an angry news conference at Trump Tower, the president once again sought to blame “both sides” and defended the neo-Nazi marchers.

That evening, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said the march organizers were “100 percent to blame,” adding, “Mr. President, you can’t allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame.” Rep. Patrick J. Tiberi (R-Ohio), accused the president of deflecting attention from the killing of Heather Heyer “by a bigoted follower of the white supremacist movement.” Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, another 2016 primary rival, tweeted that this was a time for moral clarity. “I urge @POTUS to unite the country, not parse the assignment of blame.”

On Wednesday, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) told the Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., that the president’s moral authority has been complicated by his response to Charlottesville. Saying Trump had tried to draw “moral equivalency” between the white supremacists and the counterdemonstrators, he told the paper, “I think you are either missing four centuries of history in this nation or you are trying to make something what it’s not.”

On Thursday, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, took it another step by questioning the president’s “stability” and “competence.” He said Trump has not shown that he understands “the character of this nation” and without that understanding, “Our nation is going to go through great peril.”

Then, on Friday, Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, posted a lengthy statement on his Facebook page calling on Trump to undertake “remedial action in the extreme” to atone for remarks that he said, “caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn.” Romney said Trump should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong and apologize.

Four magazines — the New Yorker, Time, the Economist and Der Spiegel — rushed out covers that showed imagery of Trump and some version of a Klansman’s hood or a Nazi salute. The Economist declared that Trump had shown himself to be “politically inept, morally barren and temperamentally unfit for the office.”

The Spectator, a conservative British magazine, echoed part of that sentiment but with a caveat that highlighted the box in which Republican officials find themselves. “Yet again, Trump has demonstrated the extent to which he is unsuited to be president,” the magazine wrote in an editorial. “But yet again we can also see the forces at work that led him to power.”

Defenders of the president believe Trump’s base will only intensify its anger toward the president’s critics. Saul Anuzis, the former Republican chair in Michigan, said Trump had been goaded by the media into the statements he made Tuesday. “I believe there are media folks trying to put him in a position to create forced errors — and he does,” he said.

He added, “I think it’s an uncomfortable situation [for the party] that unfortunately is not easily walked back because there are a whole lot of people trying to stir it up.” Saying he did not believe Trump was a racist or neo-Nazi sympathizer, he said, “We’ve got a communications issue rather than a political problem [that] is going to be a challenge throughout his presidency.”

One strategist said he had just seen the numbers from a survey in a battleground state and that the president’s approval among GOP primary voters stood at a still-impressive 85 percent. For elected officials, political survival remains paramount, and they are reluctant to get crosswise with that base.

“Elected officeholders have to speak to everyone in their constituency,” said the strategist, who, like many, declined to speak on the record to offer a candid assessment. “They’re very concerned about the people who will vote for him next time and right now they still [like him].”

Another strategist said that, despite the concerns about the president, there are any number of Republicans who see the party in good shape. “They say the Republican Party’s never been stronger,” he said. “We have more governors, we have more state legislators, fundraising is great. What are you complaining about?”

He added that Republican elected officials “either have to feel punished or be punished” before they will break significantly with the president. “There has to be some sense that there is a price to be paid for this,” he said.

A party activist noted that, by many traditional metrics, Republicans are strong. “Then there’s the worst of times,” he said. “What happened in Charlottesville . . . reinforces our biggest problem as a party, which is one word, the perception of intolerance . . . Whether true or not doesn’t matter. This reinforced that in a big way.”

The internal concerns go well beyond that, however. Party leaders and elected officials more closely tied to the establishment wing of the GOP see a succession of discouraging actions by the president, from his public criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to the firing of former Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus as White House Chief of Staff and especially his attacks on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

“What does the party do if it appears as though the president doesn’t support the leadership in the party?” said a Republican activist, who would not agree to be identified. “How does the party run if the person who supposedly runs the party doesn’t embrace the party? That is a big question. That is a conversation that is out there right now.”

The answer is there is no obvious one, as many Republicans underscored in interviews. Some lawmakers anticipate that individual Republicans will maintain greater distance from the president in public settings and in their rhetoric while focusing more intently on a legislative agenda that remains largely unfulfilled. In essence, that would mean they would begin to chart the party’s course without particular regard for Trump’s priorities.

Trump has made that easier for congressional Republicans with his attacks on McConnell, which deeply offended McConnell’s Senate colleagues. His more recent attacks on Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and earlier ones aimed at Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) only add to the impetus to operate more independently.

A Republican strategist directly engaged in 2018 politics said progress on the GOP agenda, particularly tax cuts, could help to diminish some of the anguish that has been on display this past week. “Cutting middle-class taxes and improving the economy?” the strategist asked. “A lot of people will forgive a lot of sins if that happens.”

But he conceded that the week’s events could complicate that path to success. “I would be very hesitant to say [Charlottesville] has real meaning six months from now,” he added. “I think where it hurts the most, it’s just another thing that makes it harder to get the middle-class tax cut done.”

One alternative to charting their own course would be for Republicans collectively to issue a sharper rebuke of the president. But that seems challenging, even in the assessment of Republican detractors of the president.

“What does it mean to ‘break’ with the president?” asked William Kristol, editor at large of the conservative Weekly Standard and one of Trump’s most vocal critics. “It’s a pretty big move in effect to go into opposition to a president of your own party. It’s a very unnatural mode for an elected congressman or senator.”

Another GOP strategist put it bluntly: “I’m not trying to justify what he said, but there’s the practical issue. What you’re asking is, do Republicans break with him fundamentally? He’s the president. What are you going to do, impeach for this?”

Speaking with reporters on Friday morning, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) described the position in which Republican lawmakers find themselves. “I have a responsibility to do what I do, he has a responsibility to do what he does, and I don’t have the constitutional position to be able to challenge him,” he said. “We’re both in the same party, and so I can push on people within my own party, which I think is entirely appropriate, but the president’s the president, and he can make his own statements.”

Too bad they won't grow spines and stand up for what is right.

[Cartmann99]

On 8/18/2017 at 7:20 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

The documents are linked in the article. You know, some of the stuff is sensible, but good grief, some of it is too much. Who does he think he is, Mariah Carey? The whole idea that the driver has to remind the presumably adult Rep to bring his wallet and cellphone when leaving the house for the day is just ludicrous.

If his mommy is still alive and has studied martial arts, they should hire her to drive him around, make sure he flushed and washed his hands, fix his chicken nuggets and lime Jello, and take down any attackers. 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good analysis: "‘We can and must do better’: Paul D. Ryan just took a big step back from Trump on Charlottesville. But, why now?"

Spoiler

Nine days after deadly white supremacy protests in Charlottesville, six days after President Trump reissued blame on “both sides” for the violence, four days after the third White House advisory board resigned over Trump's reaction, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has something to say beyond the three tweets he previously issued about it.

“The immediate condemnations from left, right, and center affirmed that there is no confusion about right and wrong here. I still firmly believe this hate exists only on the fringes. But so long as it exists, we need to talk about it,” Ryan said in a Facebook post Monday morning. “We need to call it what it is. And so long as it is weaponized for fear and terror, we need to confront it and defeat it. That is why we all need to make clear there is no moral relativism when it comes to neo-Nazis. We cannot allow the slightest ambiguity on such a fundamental question.”

The bolded emphasis is his, not mine. Speaking of emphasis, the statement appears carefully formatted to highlight sentences like this:

...

So what is this? Part lecture to Trump? An attempt to steady the nation after its racial wounds were ripped open last week?

One thing's for sure: Even though he didn't mention the president once, Ryan went out of his way to let the world know he doesn't approve of how Trump handled Charlottesville last week. But that only opens more questions, like: Why? And why now? And why not call out the president directly?

Here are a few possibilities for why Ryan has calculated now is the best moment to take a step back from Trump.

1) He's hours away from a CNN town hall in his district

And thus, probably hours away from facing some tough questions from voters and journalists for standing by Trump when much of the business community has not. He's already set the tone for that to happen with this statement.

But Ryan has not been the most vocal Republican leader to criticize Trump.

Before this, Ryan had sent out the equivalent of 67 words — three tweets — condemning the white supremacists and slighting the president, again not by name, for not doing the same.

...

Compare that to Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), who questioned Trump's fitness to be president. Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) specifically demanded Trump acknowledge white supremacists' role.

...

When he inevitably gets asked why he hasn't challenged the president nearly as strongly, Ryan can pivot by pointing to this statement, conveniently issued this morning.

2) He’s trying to distance himself from Trump in preparation for other big fights

September brings some serious potential policy conflicts between Congress and the Trump administration. When Congress comes back in two weeks, it has just a couple of weeks to raise the debt ceiling and pass a budget so the government doesn't shut down by Oct. 1.

Republicans are expected to clash with Trump on how to handle both those problems. Some conservative Republicans will only vote to raise the debt ceiling if Congress also cuts back federal spending. The White House has said they just want to raise the debt ceiling. The White House may want Congress to fund Trump's U.S.-Mexico border wall, which Ryan doesn't want to touch with a 10-foot-pole.

Ryan will likely be caught in the middle of all this. If he chooses to side with his fellow House Republicans, maybe it won't be as big a shock now that Ryan has distanced himself from the president on Charlottesville.

2b) But he'd still like Trump as an ally

Despite his uber-public declarations that there can be no moral equivalency when it comes to condemning Nazis, Ryan has never once mentioned Trump by name in his public statements on Charlottesville.

So maybe Ryan is trying to have the best of both words, said Molly Reynolds, a congressional expert with the Brookings Institution. He wants to let Americans offended by Trump's response to Charlottesville know he's on their side. But he also wants to keep the president on his side when it comes to the debt ceiling and the budget and health care and infrastructure and tax reform and the list of Ryan's priorities goes on and on.

It's almost as if Ryan issued this nameless statement to tell Trump to just stop with the culture wars and get back to policy.

“At this point, given Trump’s weaknesses, it’s more about Ryan hoping Trump doesn’t dig in on an untenable position and make the intraparty divisions in the GOP worse than it is,” Reynolds said.

3) He’s trying to be the moral conscience of the party

Trump has made pretty clear through his Charlottesville response that he doesn't want to or doesn't see his job as a guiding star of morality for the country.

Ryan is the total opposite kind of politician. He has worked hard to frame himself as a Republican leader who cares just as much about lifting up poor people as tax cuts for businesses, styling himself after conservative economists like former GOP congressman Jack Kemp.

...

Ryan is one of the top-ranking Republicans in Washington. After thinking about it for a week, he may have decided he's going to give Republican voters another path beside the one Trump paved when he equivocated on the racially tinged deadly violence in Charlottesville.

A sentence Ryan bolded: “The notion that anyone is intrinsically superior to anyone else runs completely counter to our founding principles.”

Whatever Ryan's true motives on taking a step back from Trump now, we'll find out more Monday night. The last sentence of his statement suggests he plans on elaborating more when the cameras are on: “I look forward to talking more about this tonight at my CNN town hall in Racine, Wisconsin.”

I disagree that Lyan "cares just as much about lifting up poor people as tax cuts for businesses". Such a person wouldn't have been quoted as saying he dreamed of taking healthcare away from people.

[JMarie]

A state rep, not the U. S. Congress, but still stupid

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/idaho-state-rep-shares-conspiracy-theory-accusing-obama-of-staging-charlottesville/ar-AAqtC3q?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp

Quote

An Idaho state lawmaker is facing backlash for sharing a conspiracy theory that former President Obama helped to orchestrate the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., as part of a plot to take down President Trump.

Idaho Rep. Bryan Zollinger on Friday posted a story on Facebook that suggested Obama and other top Democrats like billionaire George Soros and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe were part of a conspiracy to set up the rally, the Post Register reported.

"I'm not saying it is true, but I am suggesting that it is completely plausible," Zollinger wrote on Facebook.

The story claims that Obama has set up a "war room" to fight against the Trump administration - a claim that has largely been debunked - and that Charlottesville was a part of his plan.

The lawmaker later told the Idaho Statesman that it was "maybe a mistake" to share the story but doubled down on his statement that the claims were "plausible."

The Charlottesville rally turned violent when white supremacist groups, including neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members, clashed with counterprotesters. A woman was killed when a car was driven into counterprotesters. The alleged driver has ties to white supremacist groups.

Trump faced harsh criticism for his initial response to the violence, when he blamed "many sides" for the violence. Days later, he criticized white supremacists, but then later reverted to his initial stance, blaming "both sides" and specifically accusing the "alt-left" of provoking violence.

 

http://www.localnews8.com/news/idaho/e-idaho-lawmaker-boasts-of-donations-after-conspiracy-post/607989815

Quote

An eastern Idaho lawmaker says donors are offering him contributions for every scolding comment he receives for posting a link to a conspiracy theory suggesting the recent tragedy in Charlottesville, Virginia might have been organized to undermine President Donald Trump.

Republican Rep. Bryan Zollinger of Idaho Falls said Monday five donors have promised to contribute various amounts for any tweet, Facebook comment and email critical of his decision to share the wild and unconfirmed claims from a far-right website.

Zollinger says he's received thousands of negative comments from people across the United States since sharing the link on Friday. Zollinger says having donor support makes receiving the criticism fun.

Zollinger posted the conspiracy theory article after Trump drew bipartisan criticism for saying "both sides" were responsible for the deadly clash between white supremacists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville.

What's going on in Idaho??

[GreyhoundFan]

John Oliver has said more than once that Ryan proves it's possible to live without a spine: "Paul Ryan made it clear: He’s gone as far as he’s willing to on Trump and Charlottesville"

Spoiler

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has not hidden the fact he disapproves of President Trump equating white supremacists in Charlottesville with counterprotesters. But on Monday night he also made clear he’s not going to do much about it beyond a 500-word tsk-tsk Facebook post that doesn’t even mention the president by name.

Nine days after a woman died when an alleged white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd, Ryan posted a statement on Facebook saying: “There is no moral relativism when it comes to neo-Nazis.”

The aim was to set the tone for a CNN town hall in his Wisconsin district later Monday. When Ryan got in front of the cameras, he didn't do much more than put a name to his nameless criticism on Facebook.

“I do believe that he messed up in his comments Tuesday,” Ryan said at the town hall, “when it sounded like moral equivalency, or at the very least, moral ambiguity, when we need extreme moral clarity.”

Okay then, asked constituents and CNN host Jake Tapper. Will you ask the president to apologize, like Mitt Romney said the president should?

Ryan said he doesn’t think Trump needs to: “I think just he needs to do better and I think he just did.”

Would you support a censure of the president by the House? That’s a hard no. Ryan: “That would be so counterproductive, if we descend this issue into some partisan hackfest.”

Is a Facebook post and three tweets enough to set the country straight? No, but we “all need to do better,” Ryan said vaguely.

Ryan briefly allowed that he’d consider bills to limit white supremacists’ reach on the Internet. But he quickly followed up by saying the ugly sewer of racism that burbled to the surface in Charlottesville is “beyond a bill in Congress.”

“This is our society. This is our culture. This is our values,” Ryan said, by way of explaining that he thinks Congress getting involved would probably only politicize it.

Ryan has gone about as far as he’s willing to go to stand up to this president on Charlottesville. While some of his colleagues in the Senate are questioning Trump’s fitness to lead, other party leaders are directly calling on the president to apologize for giving cover to white supremacists, and business leaders ditched Trump’s advisory boards en masse, Ryan is ready to move on.

From Ryan’s point of view, that makes sense. There are tax changes to pass and sign. Maybe health care to take up again. A budget to pass and a debt ceiling to raise. Ryan will need Trump for all of that, and it doesn’t make sense to kick a president while he’s down, said Molly Reynolds, a congressional expert with the Brookings Institution.

“I think it’s pretty clear how weak Trump is, especially in a legislative context, and a specific statement from Ryan — even one that is strongly worded — doesn’t do much more to illustrate that,” she told The Fix earlier Monday.

Polling suggests Ryan may be making a politically safe move. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 56 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s response to Charlottesville but finds no noticeable change in Trump’s approval ratings.

...

But when it comes to Trump’s approval rating staying the same after Charlottesville, that’s not saying much. At 37 percent, his approval rating is already the lowest in history for a president at this point.

Ryan’s decision to move on carries with it a giant risk that the president himself hasn’t. Trump’s condemnations of bigotry, delivered this Monday and last Monday, were scripted. They were written by his staff, and he delivered them after overwhelming criticism for staying silent.

When Trump was left to his own devices — specifically at a news conference supposedly on infrastructure last Tuesday — he took it all back.

Ryan has got to be asking himself: Which Trump is the real Trump? In more or less deciding to stand with the president on this, it sounds like he’s gambled it’s not the one who gave cover to white supremacists.

Ryan said "we all need to do better." Um, you know who needs to do better? The citizens of his district. They need to vote for a better candidate, so this bozo isn't forced on our anymore. And, if (per the last paragraph), Ryan doesn't know which TT is the real TT, he's more of an idiot than I thought.

[CTRLZero]

9 hours ago, JMarie said:

Zollinger says he's received thousands of negative comments from people across the United States since sharing the link on Friday. Zollinger says having donor support makes receiving the criticism fun.

This whole thing is totally disgusting.  I'm interested in the identity of the five donors.  On the one hand, I'd like the negative comments to bankrupt them.  On the other hand, I don't want this unacceptable behavior by a representative rewarded.  And I'd like to slap him with my third hand!  I wonder if Obama can sue his crazy ass. 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Rep. Gianforte must get fingerprinted and photographed for assaulting reporter, judge says"

Spoiler

Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) wasn’t arrested after he slammed a news reporter to the ground on the eve of his special election in May. Nor did he get jail time when he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault in June.

But a county judge has ruled that the Republican congressman still has to come in to be photographed and fingerprinted for his crime, despite objections from his defense team.

In a one-page order, Justice Court Judge Rick West said Gianforte has until Sept. 15 to report to the Gallatin County Detention Center to provide booking information, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

If Gianforte doesn’t comply, West wrote, it “shall be treated as contempt of court and a warrant will be issued for [his] arrest.”

The order was handed down last week and first reported by the Daily Chronicle on Monday.

Gianforte spokesman Travis Hall said the congressman’s attorneys were considering an appeal of the judge’s decision, which would open the door for Democrats to use his mug shot against him in his reelection bid next year.

“Greg remains focused on meeting with Montanans from all of the state’s 56 counties and being a strong voice for Montana in Washington,” Hall told the Associated Press.

An attorney for Gianforte didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment Monday.

Gianforte admitted to assaulting Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs at his campaign headquarters on May 24, the night before he won a special election to fill Montana’s vacated U.S. House seat.

Jacobs said Gianforte “body slammed” him and broke his glasses after he asked a question about the Congressional Budget Office’s score of the American Health Care Act. Audio posted by Jacobs captured the sounds of the altercation, along with Gianforte screaming “I’m sick and tired of you guys!” and “get the hell out of here!”

Prosecutors charged Gianforte with assault the following day. He initially portrayed Jacobs as the aggressor, but later apologized to the reporter and pleaded guilty at a June hearing. “I am sorry for what I did and the unwanted notoriety this has created for you. I take full responsibility,” he said.

As punishment, Gianforte was given a six-month deferred sentence and ordered to complete 40 hours of community service and 20 hours of anger management sessions. He paid $385 in fines and court costs, and pledged to donate $50,000 to the Committee to Protect Journalists to stave off a lawsuit.

Gallatin County Attorney Marty Lambert called the sentence “just” and said he didn’t think Gianforte “had to go to jail to reinforce the need for him not to engage in that type of behavior again.”

But he still needed to be booked, Lambert said. He wrote in a court filing that fingerprinting and photographing were a “reasonable condition needed for rehabilitation or for the protection of the victim or society,” according to the Daily Chronicle.

Gianforte’s attorneys contended such measures were unwarranted because he was charged with a misdemeanor, not a felony, and because he was never formally arrested. They also said it was outside the court’s purview to order him to appear for booking.

“Mr. Gianforte’s prosecution does not fall within the narrow group of prosecutions for which courts have the authority to order fingerprinting and photographing,” they told the court, as reported by the Daily Chronicle. The judge disagreed.

Gianforte will be under court supervision until late November, when his deferred sentence ends. At that point he can petition the court to have his record cleared as long as he doesn’t violate his sentence conditions.

I bet if it was a Dem who had committed the crime, Gianforte would be screaming for him to be fingerprinted and pictured and he'd wave the picture all over the public arena.

[GreyhoundFan]

I thought this was an interesting perspective piece: "Keep Confederate statues in Congress: They let us know some states are proud of racism"

Spoiler

The march by white supremacists in Charlottesville this month has intensified a discussion that’s been developing for some time: Do statues passively represent the past, or do they actively inform present-day politics? As a tour guide in D.C., this is what I work with daily. Who we are as Americans and the quest for a “more perfect union” are constantly being redefined and are reflected in the statuary and other memorials in our nation’s civic space.

No other place brings this discussion into a sharper focus than the epicenter of American democracy, the U.S. Capitol. More than 100 statues in the Capitol depict famous Americans, each selected by a state legislature to stand in the Statuary Hall and throughout the building; a rough dozen of those celebrated Americans are former Confederates. A conversation that I’ve quietly had with other guides and visitors for more than a decade has now shifted to the public sphere.

As I bring visitors to the Capitol and ask them to find the statues that represent their state, I’ve had to wrestle with some of the states’ choices. I distinctly remember working with a group of largely white middle-school boys from Jackson, Miss. Without much conscious thought, I asked them to find out who represented their state, as I generally do. Mississippi is represented by two Confederates, including Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. I pointed out the irony of the leader of a rebellion that explicitly rejected the stated values of the Capitol having a statue in that same building.

But for these students, there was no irony. They, and their teachers, responded that a lot of people were still proud of Davis and that he defended their home from Northern aggression. Sensing a storm brewing, the head teacher gently directed me away from the topic with a, “Well, we’re all Americans now.” Not wanting to argue with a client, I let the matter drop, leaving my “only because he lost” retort unspoken.

For me, this was a largely whimsical mild frustration. Then I caught the eye of one of the handful of African American students on the trip. He said nothing, but I would have very much liked to know what he was thinking. The few of my ancestors who were in America at the time helped defeat the Confederacy and returned home to build their lives. Obviously, his ancestors’ experience would have been different, but he didn’t have the same liberty to laugh the subject off.

Since then, as I’ve guided, it’s become increasingly intolerable to me that people who fought against our nation on behalf of an ideology that denied the humanity of millions of other Americans get to be honored in the same way as Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and, yes, slaveholders like Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Democrats in Congress are bothered by it, too. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has called upon House Speaker Ryan Ryan (R-Wis.) “to join Democrats to remove the Confederate statues from the Capitol immediately.” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) announced that he will introduce a bill to do the same.

But while I would love to send these statues packed up, congressional lawmakers shouldn’t be the ones to do it.

Each state, through its legislature, chooses to send two statues to the Capitol. Only the simplest guidance is given: They must be made of marble or bronze, and the subject must be deceased. This is a state’s chance to examine its history and ask some tough questions. Which two people incorporate the values that New York, California or Mississippi hold dear? What accomplishments do we venerate? And what compromises with an often-troubled past must we make? In short, who are we?

It’s an elegant challenge, and it’s evocative of how we govern. Power doesn’t derive from Washington; it is sent by the people to Washington to (ideally) govern well. Likewise, Congress doesn’t choose who represents America’s history; the American people do through their state legislatures. It’s representative democracy in marble and bronze.

The two-statue restriction forces an economy not often present in a park or in front of a county courthouse. If a state chooses a traitor who fought a bloody war to preserve slavery, then that removes an opportunity to celebrate someone else. It’s not a consequence-free decision. I grew up in the South, albeit as a transplanted Yankee. A persistent criticism from white Southerners is that the rest of the nation views them as backward, as a bunch of racist rednecks. This is entirely fair criticism, but I ask to be met halfway in addressing it. If you don’t wish to be viewed as racist, don’t choose racists to represent you.

Take Georgia, represented by Confederate Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens. He explicitly articulated slavery as the cornerstone of his new country, proclaiming their “foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”

I can’t begin to imagine the feelings of a descendant of slavery visiting the Capitol who looks upon the face of a man who proudly referred to the visitor’s ancestors as an inferior race, consigning them to brutality and humiliation. I wouldn’t tell the visitor to accept it. But this is who Georgia is; this is who Georgians think best represents them. If they’re better than this, it’s up to them to actually be better than this.

Congress has already moved to save these states from some of the consequences of their decisions, but it’s time to stop. King is proudly displayed in the Capitol Rotunda, not as a representative of Georgia but rather directly commissioned by Congress. This means Georgia, as a state, said that the words of Stephens spoke for them, not the words of King. Similarly, Parks sits in Statuary Hall, but not as an Alabamian. That honor is reserved for Confederate Gen. Joseph Wheeler. Georgia and Alabama get to keep their Confederates without hard questions as to why famous civil rights leaders are left out.

It was right and proper that federal power was used to end slavery on American soil. And it was right and proper to use that power again to advance the new birth of freedom promised by Abraham Lincoln and all too often reneged on. But today, Southerners need to decide if they want to be represented by a legacy of hate. We, as a country, can’t save them from themselves. Only they can decide who they are.

It would be a powerful statement if the same state legislatures that seceded from the Union and enacted Black Codes chose to repudiate that history. It would be equally powerful if they resisted and fought that repudiation. The choice, by law, is theirs. And we are watching.

 

[candygirl200413]

McConnell, in Private, Doubts if Trump Can Save Presidency

This POS will go down in history as letting the nation fall apart to try to push his failed and horrible agenda.

Quote

The relationship between President Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has disintegrated to the point that they have not spoken to each other in weeks, and Mr. McConnell has privately expressed uncertainty that Mr. Trump will be able to salvage his administration after a series of summer crises.

What was once an uneasy governing alliance has curdled into a feud of mutual resentment and sometimes outright hostility, complicated by the position of Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine L. Chao, in Mr. Trump’s cabinet, according to more than a dozen people briefed on their imperiled partnership. Angry phone calls and private badmouthing have devolved into open conflict, with the president threatening to oppose Republican senators who cross him, and Mr. McConnell mobilizing to their defense.

The rupture between Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell comes at a highly perilous moment for Republicans, who face a number of urgent deadlines when they return to Washington next month. Congress must approve new spending measures and raise the statutory limit on government borrowing within weeks of reconvening, and Republicans are hoping to push through an elaborate rewrite of the federal tax code. There is scant room for legislative error on any front.

A protracted government shutdown or a default on sovereign debt could be disastrous — for the economy and for the party that controls the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Yet Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell are locked in a political cold war. Neither man would comment for this article. Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, noted that the senator and the president had “shared goals,” and pointed to “tax reform, infrastructure, funding the government, not defaulting on the debt, passing the defense authorization bill.

Still, the back-and-forth has been dramatic.

In a series of tweets this month, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. McConnell publicly, and berated him in a phone call that quickly devolved into a profane shouting match.

During the call, which Mr. Trump initiated on Aug. 9 from his New Jersey golf club, the president accused Mr. McConnell of bungling the health care issue. He was even more animated about what he intimated was the Senate leader’s refusal to protect him from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to Republicans briefed on the conversation.

Mr. McConnell has fumed over Mr. Trump’s regular threats against fellow Republicans and criticism of Senate rules, and questioned Mr. Trump’s understanding of the presidency in a public speech. Mr. McConnell has made sharper comments in private, describing Mr. Trump as entirely unwilling to learn the basics of governing.

In offhand remarks, Mr. McConnell has expressed a sense of bewilderment about where Mr. Trump’s presidency may be headed, and has mused about whether Mr. Trump will be in a position to lead the Republican Party into next year’s elections and beyond, according to people who have spoken to him directly.

While maintaining a pose of public reserve, Mr. McConnell expressed horror to advisers last week after Mr. Trump’s comments equating white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., with protesters who rallied against them. Mr. Trump’s most explosive remarks came at a news conference in Manhattan, where he stood beside Ms. Chao, the transportation secretary. (Ms. Chao, deflecting a question about the tensions between her husband and the president she serves, told reporters, “I stand by my man — both of them.”)

Mr. McConnell signaled to business leaders that he was deeply uncomfortable with Mr. Trump’s comments: Several who resigned advisory roles in the Trump administration contacted Mr. McConnell’s office after the fact, and were told that Mr. McConnell fully understood their choices, three people briefed on the conversations said.

Mr. Trump has also continued to badger and threaten Mr. McConnell’s Senate colleagues, including Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, whose Republican primary challenger was praised by Mr. Trump last week.

“Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate,” he tweeted last week. “He’s toxic!”

 

At a campaign rally in Phoenix on Tuesday, Mr. Trump alluded to Mr. Flake unfavorably, referring to him as “weak on borders” and “weak on crime” without mentioning him by name. He referred to Mr. McConnell only in passing, calling on him to abolish the Senate filibuster.

Senior Republican officials said before the rally that they would stand up for Mr. Flake against any attacks. A Republican “super PAC” aligned with Mr. McConnell released a web ad on Tuesday assailing Ms. Ward as a fringe-dwelling conspiracy theorist.

“When it comes to the Senate, there’s an Article 5 understanding: An attack against one is an attack against all,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who has found himself in Mr. Trump’s sights many times, invoking the NATO alliance’s mutual defense doctrine.

The fury among Senate Republicans toward Mr. Trump has been building since last month, even before he lashed out at Mr. McConnell. Some of them blame the president for not being able to rally the party around any version of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, accusing him of not knowing even the basics about the policy. Senate Republicans also say strong-arm tactics from the White House backfired, making it harder to cobble together votes and have left bad feelings in the caucus.

When Mr. Trump addressed a Boy Scouts jamboree last month in West Virginia, White House aides told Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from the state whose support was in doubt, that she could only accompany him on Air Force One if she committed to voting for the health care bill. She declined the invitation, noting that she could not commit to voting for a measure she had not seen, according to a Republican briefed on the conversation.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told colleagues that when Mr. Trump’s interior secretary threatened to pull back federal funding for her state, she felt boxed in and unable to vote for the health care bill.

In a show of solidarity, albeit one planned well before Mr. Trump took aim at Mr. Flake, Mr. McConnell will host a $1,000-per-person dinner on Friday in Kentucky for the Arizona senator, as well as for Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, who is also facing a Trump-inspired primary race next year, and Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska. Mr. Flake is expected to attend the event.

Former Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a Republican who is close to Mr. McConnell, said frustration with Mr. Trump was boiling over in the chamber. Mr. Gregg blamed the president for undermining congressional leaders, and said the House and Senate would have to govern on their own if Mr. Trump “can’t participate constructively.”

“Failure to do things like keeping the government open and passing a tax bill is the functional equivalent of playing Russian roulette with all the chambers loaded,” Mr. Gregg said.

Others in the party divide blame between Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell. Al Hoffman, a former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee who has been supportive of Mr. McConnell, said Mr. McConnell was culpable because he has failed to deliver legislative victories. “Ultimately, it’s been Mitch’s responsibility, and I don’t think he’s done much,” Mr. Hoffman said.

But Mr. Hoffman predicted that Mr. McConnell would likely outlast the president.

“I think he’s going to blow up, self-implode,” Mr. Hoffman said of Mr. Trump. “I wouldn’t be surprised if McConnell pulls back his support of Trump and tries to go it alone.”

An all-out clash between Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell would play out between men whose strengths and weaknesses are very different. Mr. Trump is a political amateur, still unschooled in the ways of Washington, but he maintains a viselike grip on the affections of the Republican base. Mr. McConnell is a soft-spoken career politician, with virtuoso mastery of political fund-raising and tactics, but he had no mass following to speak of.

Mr. McConnell, while baffled at Mr. Trump’s penchant for internecine attacks, is a ruthless pragmatist and has given no overt indication that he plans to seek more drastic conflict. Despite his private battles with Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell has sent reassuring signals with his public conduct: On Monday, he appeared in Louisville, Ky., with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, for a discussion of tax policy.

Mr. McConnell’s Senate colleagues, however, have grown bolder. The combination of the president’s frontal attacks on Senate Republicans and his claim that there were “fine people” marching with white supremacists in Charlottesville has emboldened lawmakers to criticize Mr. Trump in withering terms.

Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee rebuked Mr. Trump last week for failing to “demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence” required of presidents. On Monday, Senator Susan Collins of Maine said in a television interview that she was uncertain Mr. Trump would be the Republican presidential nominee in 2020.

There are few recent precedents for the rift. The last time a president turned on a legislative leader of his own party was in 2002, when allies of George W. Bush helped force Trent Lott to step down as Senate minority leader after racially charged remarks at a birthday party for Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina.

For the moment, Mr. McConnell appears to be far more secure in his position, and perhaps immune to coercion from the White House. Republicans are unlikely to lose control of the Senate in 2018, and Mr. Trump has no allies in the Senate who have shown an appetite for combat with Mr. McConnell.

Still, some allies of Mr. Trump on the right — including Stephen K. Bannon, who stepped down last week as Mr. Trump’s chief strategist — welcome more direct conflict with Mr. McConnell and congressional Republicans.

Roger J. Stone Jr., a Republican strategist who has advised Mr. Trump for decades, said the president needed to “take a scalp” in order to force cooperation from Republican elites who have resisted his agenda. Mr. Stone urged Mr. Trump to make an example of one or more Republicans, like Mr. Flake, who have refused to give full support to his administration.

“The president should start bumping off incumbent Republican members of Congress in primaries,” Mr. Stone said. “If he did that, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan would wet their pants and the rest of the Republicans would get in line.”

But Mr. McConnell’s allies warn that the president should be wary of doing anything that could jeopardize the Senate Republican majority.

“The quickest way for him to get impeached is for Trump to knock off Jeff Flake and Dean Heller and be faced with a Democrat-led Senate,” said Billy Piper, a lobbyist and former McConnell chief of staff.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I would love to have heard that screaming phone call on August 9. I bet it was a doozy. McTurtle always tries to present himself as Mr. Genteel, but I can see the TT working him up into screaming.

[Cartmann99]

10 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

During the call, which Mr. Trump initiated on Aug. 9 from his New Jersey golf club, the president accused Mr. McConnell of bungling the health care issue. He was even more animated about what he intimated was the Senate leader’s refusal to protect him from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to Republicans briefed on the conversation.

So, Trump Insults McConnell and then throws a hissy fit because McConnell's not doing everything in his power to help Trump with the Russia investigation. My cats have better interpersonal relationship skills than Orange Foolius.

11 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Mr. Trump’s most explosive remarks came at a news conference in Manhattan, where he stood beside Ms. Chao, the transportation secretary. (Ms. Chao, deflecting a question about the tensions between her husband and the president she serves, told reporters, “I stand by my man — both of them.”)

Sometimes, it's hard to be a woman. Giving all your love, to just one man...

Elaine, honey, trying to be Switzerland is not going to end well for you.