Where's Kiefer!

I heard the AG from American Sonoma was bringing some great vintages for the President to try.

White House typo names attorney general of 'American Sonoma'

Did the clapping for the widow sound like it had some processing effects to it? Maybe it's my imagination but it didn't sound natural. I even flipped channels but it was still there.

I sort of accidentally room-surfed through at the part you're talking about I think. If so, it did sound a little odd & cause me to listen for a half-second or so but more like someone cranked up the ambient mics to catch the applause than any sort of processing.

maybe same you heard, maybe not, dunno.

That may have been the best speech I've heard out of Trump since his entire political career started.

(I mean the speech itself, as an artifact. We can argue about the merits of the policies/substance and whatever later.)

I mean...it was like an actual political leader giving a speech. No, he's not ever going to be a great orator, but it was a least competent in the scope of the genre.

I really hope it turns out the EPA and Department of Education are actually trillion dollar agencies or else that trump agenda might be expensive.

I was traveling this evening and didn't see it, but my wife--who dislikes Trump so much she seriously considered voting for a candidate she can't stand--conveyed a very similar sentiment to me--that he sounded like a real President and not a buffoon.

I watched the first bit and then got bored (e.g. I'm sticking to my belief its not what he says, its what he does/proposes that really matters).

But I thought he did well in the speech. Heard the vision on the Wall, Immigration Reform, $1T on Infrastructure, and lowering Healthcare costs with credits and HSA ... all sounds good to me

You just covered pretty well the reason I didn't intentionally watch any of it myself.

Don't tell me Mr. President, show me.

If he sticks to the script I'm sure he's as good as anyone else. Trump's problem is when he ad libs, especially in a Q&A environment.

repurposing from my FB. Easier to paste here than to try to rewrite the same premise

you know what I do kind of enjoy watching these days? Newt Gingrich when he talks about Trump.
I've not always agreed with Newt on everything but I've long described him as the single most charismatic & people-smart person I ever met in person. He knows how to work a small room better than anyone I've ever seen.
That's why I find him pontificating on Trump so interesting I think, I get a sense that he's a genuine fan & that there's a legitimate respect for Trump's often unorthodox yet uncannily effective communication style. Basically, I think Gingrich probably "gets" Trump about as well as anyone doing any talking.

Actions are what matters.

I love the "Buy American and Hire American" motto but he doesn't believe it.

That was a weird mix of Bannon and Ivanka.

America is a hellish landscape of criminal cartels and murderous immigrants. We must answer this challenge with universal child care!

Found the lobbying bit interesting.

5 yr delay (or "ban" as he called it) on elected officials being able to lobby. And permanent ban on lobbying for foreign governments.

Not going to please everybody with that but its a start to dismantling the oligarchy.

Except it isn't what it seems. The EO doesn't ban people from lobbying, it only bans them from lobbying the agency they worked for. It also weakens some rules from the Obama admin.

I think that Trump will build on the momentum of this speech. He's at his worst when he feels unloved. The positive vibes from this speech will keep him out of Crazy Racist Uncle Twitter mode for a while. Which will lead to more good press, which will lead to less crazy, etc.

Now, can the Dems attack the GOP when the GOP's leader isn't shooting himself in the foot? Or (as I suspect), had they figured that their whole "strategy" for the next 4/8 years would be "Trump says stuff that liberals don't like on Twitter. That's good enough."

The Dems better get on board. Trump us a deal maker. He will approach them to make deals. If they slap his hand away, they will have a tough time winning elections.

Norman L. Eisen, the ethics lawyer when Mr. Obama arrived in the White House and the chief author of the rules that Mr. Trump is now replacing, commended much of Mr. Trump’s order.

But Mr. Eisen and other ethics experts noted that rules banning lobbyists from taking any job with an agency they had tried to influence in the past two years had been removed. Also, the new rules allow departing executive branch employees to take private sector jobs and then informally lobby the administration, as long as they are not registered as a lobbyist, a type of activity previously prohibited for two years. Registration is required once a person does a certain amount of work for a client.

“There is much to like,” Mr. Eisen said of the new executive order. “But it gives nonlobbyists too much leeway when they leave. That is where the biggest problem in the system is: unregistered, shadow lobbyists. They should be getting more regulation, not less.”


Seems like he is pretty okay with most of it.

If Trump can't get his own polices through its on him and the GOP. The Dems don't stand in his way at all really.

re: lobbyists (in general)

Presumably the "average American" has no idea how little of legislation is actually written by Congresscritters ... right?

Quite right.

No he's not. His first deal was sitting down with the health insurance industry who made him do a 180 on his campaign promise in a matter of an hour.

Just like the GOP had so much trouble in 2010.

The GOP discovered that the best way to make the president unpopular is to refuse to work with him, and the popularity of the president effects races all the way down to the state level at least.

Okay with some of it.

Understood, but isn't it better (in lieu of both) to ban officials from lobbying after rather than before?

I concede its all probably theater at the end of the day anyway.

The media's reaction to this speech reminds me of the audience reaction to Captain Hammer's speech at the end of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.

I think it's mostly oversold window dressing. The kind of thing Trump has done for decades.

I'd like some serious lobbying reform, but that would take legislation, and I don't see any way currently to even a majority, nevermind a Senate 60 vote threshold.

Well, he tweeted "Thank You" 5 hours ago... Thank you for what is unkown, I guess just congratulating himself. So while not quite Crazy Racist Uncle, it again shows he has no concept of why people clapped so loudly for a moment in his speech.

Also, if we're creating tasks forces in every department, how is there a hiring freeze?

I prefer 2 years to 1 year, but this seems like wishcasting. If the pool of effective lobbyists is smaller, firms will be willing to wait longer & pay more. There's just too much money at stake in the bigger bills.

He is not a deal maker. His "deals" are when he has the upper hand. Like what he did to many small businesses in Atlantic City that in turn failed because they signed large "exclusive" deals with him and then his properties declared bankruptcy leaving these businesses unable to survive as they were out hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Put him in a negotiation where the field is level (or where he has the weaker position) and he will resort to his "taking my stuff and going home" tantrums.

I'm so old I remember when the GOP said bills should be made public for days before votes.

Didnt your guy, Obama, run saying transparency inb government? Then shoved Obamacare down our throats without allowing anyone to see it?

Yet even though nobody was allowed to see it, conservatives could tell you exactly what was wrong with it.

Nope. The bill was posted for several weeks before the vote happened.

Right. All 20,000 pages. I guess it was easy reading.

The bill was introduced in Oct. 2009, voted on by the House in Nov. 2009, and voted on by the Senate in June 2010, signed by the President in June 2010. I'm not sure an 8 or 9 month period between introduction and signing into law constitutes "shoving down the throat".

Are you pretending you didn't just claim he didn't let anyone see it?

They should have started with tax reform or infrastructure. If Republicans vote to repeal Obamacare the Democrats will just filibuster the replacement and nothing will get done. I don't see enough Democrats voting for the replacement if it's just tax credits and HSA's.

I agree with this. Go with tax reform, infrastructure and start the Wall. If the market continues the way its going, he'll be forgiven.

At least he'll be able to claim victory on getting the Wall started and wait on Trumpcare in year 2 or 3.

Republicans have been campaigning on getting rid of Obamacare since it was passed. If it hasn't been repealed by the midterms, their base is going to crucify them.

Are you seriously saying that 20,000 pages is transparent?

The house had a month to look it over. If I remember correctly, there was a real push to get this through the house. So, yes, it was shoved down their throats. 20,000 pages to be read and studied in a month? I guess your D congressmen are all geniuses.
And is 6 months really enough time? And how would it have been stopped? The House had already approved it.

Yes, it was shoved down our throats. And no, it was not transparent.

That's like saying parsecs is a measurement of time.

The original Obamacare bill was 906 pages. More pages were added as part of reconciliation that was required to get the bill to pass after the dems lost the supermajority in the senate in 2010. These additions pushed the bill up to ~975 pages.

http://housedocs.house.gov/energycommerce/ppacacon.pdf

This is the full act that was passed. You can see how long it is yourself. Any of us can.

The 20,000 page stuff was posted by Mitch McConnell in 2013. He was referring to regulations that had been laid out to explain how obamacare was intended to be enforced.


Whether any of this is reasonable or ridiculous, how it compares to other major laws I am not immediately sure.

But you claim that the democrats rammed 20,000 pages of legislation down everyone's throats with no time. You're wrong. The entire premise of your argument is wrong at its core.


Fact check your shit people. There is an unbelievable amount of misinformation out there and its being used like this all the time. Not intentionally, I'm not accusing anyone of that. But everyone went along with this.



Exactly why we're discussing Obama right now i have no idea. But if we're going to, check your fucking facts.

Guys, reset the counter.

"It has been 0 days since someone lied about contact with Russia."

At a minimum, Sessions has to go, right. He lied under oath to Congress.

They're not going to do shit to an ex-Senator.

I love how the stock market goes up every time Trump can manage to be normal for a few minutes. It's like a weird text sim cheat.

Repeal ... without replacing.

Gosh, that would just break my fn heart.

#briarpatch

So both Sessions and Pruitt lied to Congress during their confirmation hearings. Maybe the Senate should take a little longer with confirming Trumps cabinet so these things can come out before a vote.

They already have the defense out that he spoke with the Ambassador in his capacity as a member of the Armed Services Committee and when he made his denial, he was denying that he did it as a surrogate for the Trump campaign. It's a bullshit rationalization, but it will be repeated 1000 times until people get tired of attacking him and move on to something else.

So the new AG committed perjury about his contact with a Russian spy.

Why do so many of these people have contact with Russian spies and lie about it? Like if it's on the up and up, no need to lie.

Have you ever heard of a non-CIA type American citizen having contact with a Russian spy and been on the up and up? My question is why are they coming into contact with Russian spies, period? Just more of the same BS cloak and dagger shit.

I would have more respect if the admin just came straight out with their shady shit, say why they're doing it and own it. So long as it's not illegal (or at least quasi-legal) and is arguably in the interests of the country, I can at least accept the actions, even if I may not agree with them.

and then the folks who lose their access to health care after the Medicaid expansion goes away (never mind red state folks who have been getting subsidies the last 7 years) revolt, elect Democrats, and we wind up with single payer health care.

Is an actual, literal, government takeover of the health care industry what you want?

Because giving insurance access to folks who were previously prevented from getting anything like affordable health care because of pre-existing conditions and then taking that access away is how you get single payer health care.

And possibly also deaths due to lack of access to health care that needn't have happened otherwise, but we all know how few fucks you give about THAT.

Numerous reports that sources inside the White House indicate that the new version of the immigration ban is ready, but signing is delayed so that Trump can enjoy the positive news cycle from his speech and so that the new order can have its own publix "moment." If this is true, it kinds undermines that whole "urgent national security" thing...

On the Sessions thing, does anyone have a link to video of the actual question he was asked (and perhaps the few minutes immediately beforehand?) I'm asking because it sounds like the his defense of the answer is "I met with him as a Senator, not a campaign surrogate."

That's very definitely the defense.

Here's the description of the exchange with Franken, which is generally consistent across publications (this from WaPo):

If you or I used any kind of defense like that in the workplace we'd be held accountable. The boss would see through that line of defense and reject it immediately.

I'm so old I remember when Sessions voted to impeach a president for lying under oath.

Yeah, but that was about sex outside of marriage. Way more germane to national security than speaking with spies.

Jeff Sessions Calls For Bill Clinton's Prosecution Over Perjury Allegations in 1999 - YouTube

Trump can now claim credit for Kaepernick's announcement that he'll stand during the national anthem.

Senior administration official says White House learned of Sessions’ contacts with Russian ambassador from press reports

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 2, 2017

Is there anyone that trusted Trump that hasn't eventually been fucked over?

So Sessions said he and his staff decided Monday that they were going to discuss the probes today if needed. It just so happens that last night the story about his contacts with Russia broke. That seems likely.

And why has he been saying for a month that he saw no reason to recuse himself and would reconsider if necessary. He knew about these contacts presumably before the press did, you know, when they happened.

Ryan Zinke won the day.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/02/politi...ill/index.html

This is one of the times I like Rand Paul.

However that said I am not a fan of his particular plan to repeal and replace the ACA.

In the past 24 hours or so we've learned Sessions met with Kislyak twice during the campaign. Carter Ash and JD Gordon met with Kislyak at the RNC. And Kushner and Flynn met with Kislyak at Trump Tower after the election.

Maybe someone should ask Paul Ryan about his statement from a couple of days ago:

Sessions was pretty tough on Russia a year ago. Said there would be a high price to pay for their actions. Now says the opposite. Russia turned him into their bitch awfully quick.

You must be real pissed about this I guess.

Log In - New York Times

Yep. Not a way to do these things. Why play these silly games? I am getting tired of the oneupsmanship of these idiots in congress.

I wish regular people could run for national offices. While I know they can, it is difficult if they are not part of the system. Or have deep pockets.

And that huge loophole is going to kill this act.

So disappointed in this. When do the citizens of our country come first? All of us, not the illegals, not the rich, just us regular old middle class working stiffs.

I don't know how we can blame politicians on this one. We elected them. Republicans were clear they wanted to repeal Obamacare. They were clear they wanted to give massive tax cuts to the rich. They were clear they wanted to raise expenses on the middle class.

The bill is secret because people are going to be paying more or flat out losing their coverage. They know it's going to make people angry. But the tax cuts for the rich were the priority in this. Everything happening is exactly what they told us they wanted to do.

Everything is a con.

That would be the widow of his dead brother.

Ewww.

Ehhhh. I saw something on Extra about that and it wasn't nearly as creepy as it sounds.

As a reward to the loyal voters of Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that delivered him the election, Trump's proposed budget cuts the amount of money spent on Great Lakes pollution clean-up from $300M to $10M.

No getting around it, still pretty ewww.

That $290 million should cover his weekend vacations for the next 4 years.

I doubt many of Trump's supporters are disappointed he's not protecting the environment more.

Not defending nor do I know how it is related to Trump's presidency, but I think this probably occurs more often than you might thing (though still not frequently). You can see it develop from a legitimate need a shoulder to cry on, help around the house, etc. Still a little uncomfortable for sure.

If nothing else he's a supreme twitter troller.

We should start an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite! pic.twitter.com/Ik3yqjHzsA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2017

Actually, most people are better.

Chuck Schumer on Twitter: "Happily talk re: my contact w Mr. Putin & his associates, took place in '03 in full view of press & public under oath. Would you &your team? https://t.co/yXgw3U8tmQ"

Nah, he gets reactions and drives the narrative, which is the point of his trolling, regardless of the truth. It's childish but he's really good at it.

Sad!

I remember reading about how there were a ton of NYC firefighters getting divorced in the years after 9/11. What happened is that they were assigned (not sure if that's the right word here) a widow to look after. A lot of them ended up leaving their wife for the widow.

The only government officials who seem to be competent in any of the news stories lately are the Russians.

Log In - New York Times

I get this and also the firefighters but this is the sister-in-law.

This Russia stuff needs to be laid to rest.

Face it, all politicians lie. All politicians are crooked. All politicians will do whatever it takes to remain in power.

Until the people do something nothing will change.

What exactly should the people do?

Man, I dont know. We are in such a weak position. Clinton or Trump? Thats the best we got?
I voted 3rd party. But not enough of the people agreed to get a 3rd party in the mix.

Do you have any ideas?

Clearly uniting around something begins by laying it to rest.

Honestly, the only thing that will create legit change is a straight up rebellion. The logistics of that are far beyond me, because it is abundantly clear that the country is far too fractured to organize and effectively protest anything anymore. It always turns into a bunch of fringe nutjobs screaming about shit that has nothing to do with the original intent of the protest they are involved in. Then the "news reporters" step in and sensationalize it all, which results in a perpetual cycle of unacceptable behavior blown out of proportion.

It'll take an incredible change of heart among the elites to fix things but I'm not holding out hope. I've decided to just live as happy a life as I can and teach my son that his generation is potentially doomed because our generation and those before it allowed ourselves to be used and mislead because we were too stupid to pay attention. It won't make any difference most likely, but if he ever finds himself in a position to influence, my goal is to ensure that he does it benevolently.

I think there are two main things the people need to do.

1. Give a Crap. When barely a majority vote, it's obvious that a significant part of the country will put up with anything.

2. Vote Unselfishly. By this I mean putting the interests of the nation's above their own; choose the candidate(s) who will do what's best for the country. If there were a nobler citizenry than what happened this last election would be impossible. We the People still have the power; there's absolutely no reason that a random guy off the street from some completely unremarkable small town couldn't be elected president -- but this requires people to stop behaving like sheep. Only a few candidates were able to get any kind of significant traction. Among these, we made the choices of who would really have a chance and who wouldn't. It could have been the case that in primaries across the country, the voters said 'these are unacceptable' and chose someone else entirely, third-party or whatever.

We didn't do that, and in a free country you always get the government you deserve. That's a painful reality to reflect on in these times.

I don't agree. All humans have these tendencies to one degree or another, but some are far worse than others. There are some politicians who generally conduct themselves with integrity. That's become rare, but those people are not gone completely. And again, it's the case because we the people tolerate it.

I think it helps to realize too that the value of the country is not who the president is or what stupid shit he does. Washington doesn't have to define us. Everybody can make their own difference.

Agree. All politicians may lie, but all people lie to varying degrees. Painting everyone with the same broad brush isn't fair to those that do try to do good.

True. I like Trey Gowdy a lot. He seems to be a straight shooter. I am just frustrated. And tired.
I should not have used a brush. But the loudest voices seem to be the most untrustworthy.

We disagree 100% on that contention.

Which isn't news, but it isn't my point either.

My point is that "We the People" exercised our power. That's why this last election miracle was possible. We chose, in the primaries of both parties, what WAS acceptable.

By & large, the masses ARE sheep. And they're not particularly capable of being much more than that, if for no reason other than being unwilling to do so. (I don't believe that's the only reason, but you could go there with it).

That leaves the wolves to make the decisions but ... if the sheep became wolves then it seems entirely possible that they would also act as wolves. Their change would not make the active wolves suddenly turn more sheep like.

In both parties, voters chose from the only rational options they had available. The system worked perfectly to present the best each party had available.

Thank God that in the end the system also worked to at least give a dying nation a last chance to be salvaged.

The delusions run deep.

:lol:

So this morning, in multiple Tweets, the current President is accusing the previous President of having wiretapped Trump Tower.

Happy Saturday!

It seems he read Breitbart articles someone printed out for him.

Plus, this was reported at least a month ago in real news places; since, you know, the government was investigating ties between Manafort, Page, ... to Russia.