I want this to be true. I just see a consolidation and subversion of power going on. Trump is the tinsel to distract while the damage is being done.


Bold emphasis is mine.

Fox Business interview with Trump ended with the question, why are you so popular?

lol

This, this, this. Wide spread voter suppression in key states back by a legal system that is totally in Trump's back pocket. I have a hard time seeing how anybody feels good about the chance to beat Trump. I will not believe he will lose till he does.

It's not a coincidence Trump is pushing Obamagate as a thing now

The top 7 private health insurance companies made $35 billion last year in profits.

Trump has a cult following and whoever he tells his flock to vote for, they will. If he throws all his support behind his son or daughter, do you really not think they would be the favorite? He's made every Republican but Romney bend the knee and I imagine would scare off many people who would challenge his kid.

Don Jr has the better chance because he's male and more obnoxiously stupid. Ivanka is fairly quiet and I just don't see her doing well in a demographic that doesn't care much for women or Jews.


Their politics are near polar opposites.

I mean we did recently elect the dullard son of a previous President, based largely on their collective adjacency to a man in mental decline, who became famous by making movies with monkeys. Let's not give ourselves too much credit.

Here's a super fun report from the National Association of Insurance Companies, which shows health insurance profits dropped every year from 2011 to 2015. Quite significantly actually. Profits rebounded in 2016, but then positively skyrocketed in 2017 and 2018 (and has continued - and this is before the ending of the individual mandate).

https://naic.org/documents/topic_ins...ind_report.pdf

Hmm, I wonder what happened in early 2017.

(Also to note that insurance companies actually lost money on Comprehensive Hospital and Medical plans in 2014, 2015, and 2016.)

This kinda fits with that: Results | International Survey on Coronavirus

(yes, limited sample, online, from early April, yadda yadda. Still, interesting to see. )

Good luck with that.

McCain, Amash, and various others on multiple issues say hello. So does literally every election held since he took office.


That only matters - practically, it matters constitutionally, moraly, etc. in all cases - in an extremely close election, which is historically rare. Such efforts simply cannot effect major swings, which is what Trump would need unless what happens in November is markedly different than what has happened in every.single.other.election.

Anyone notice how the GOP has had to walk back "Obama didn't leave Trump a pandemic plan" to "Obama left Trump an inadequate pandemic plan" because Trump was so unprepared that he didn't even realize that there was a plan that he ignored until he starting talking about it not existing and then people pointed out that it did?

Anyone also notice how GOP approval of the President remains high and unchanged, so I'm really just wasting electrons by posting here about his gobsmacking incompetence that is killing tens of thousands of Americans and made the entire two months of social distancing we all did pointless?

Is Ron DeSantis deciding at the last minute to close down polling places in Democratic neighborhoods for "public health" reasons and the Supreme Court 5-4 saying that's fine really that much of a stretch? It seems more likely than not to me at this point.

And it also looks like this will be a close election. Biden is polling slightly better than Hillary did. That's not the makings of a landslide either way--even if things were fairly contested.

I know it’s Sportsdigs level old but how did all that Katie Hill stuff never garner a mention here. Home girl was banging a paid staffer girl among other nonsense

Honestly, that's a pretty awesome story. Not really sure, other than a lot of personal drama and interpersonal baggage, what the big deal is.

Wait, what? At the very least she was in a position of power of the staffer she was having the affairs with (while the Kelly thing was not true, the Morgan thing was).

What happened to her was ridiculously fucked up, but let's not act like she did nothing wrong here:


https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/601198/

And yet, they were all adults. She showed some very poor judgement regarding her ambition and her personal life, and she fucked up mixing things up. Yet, so much of what she did, has been done by men before, and she's paying the price for some of it by being a woman. There is a certain double standard here. I ended up marrying a woman who was my employee at one point. It's common, it happens, it was still against the rules. It did work out for me in the end. The staffer was knowingly putting herself in that position as well. Still, they simply showed the sort of judgement that we see everywhere up and down the spectrum of rich to poor of people who end up doing ID (as in Freud's ID) related things and fully believe that they will never pay the price for them. Plus, from my own perspective, my wife has already said that any public office runs are strictly out the question for us.

Yes. I don't think we've seen anything close to that. Terrible, illegal stuff, but nowhere near that level.

On it being a close election; 2016 was the only time in modern history that a candidate won as much as Hillary did in the popular vote and lost. Nothing else has even come close. At least Michigan and Wisconsin - I don't know as much about Pennsylvania - aren't nearly as friendly to Trump as they were. As in, the GOP has been getting their clock cleaned hard. And without those states, Trump has no chance.

Which is exactly the reason it's not ok anymore. Male politicians abused their power and position for decades and centuries. Which is why the acceptance of the practice was changed.

It doesn't make it ok that men used to get away with it. The whole point is that it should not be acceptable anymore. If we are going to acknowledge unequal power dynamics we should do it for all folks.

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Certainly haven't seen anything like closing a bunch of voting locations and then forcing people to stand in line for hours to vote during a pandemic.

The multiple standards track is so intriguing to me. One group can literally get away with almost anything (with time) and the other has to be a saint. I hate it both ways.

But the aide was also in a relationship with the man too wasn't she? He wasn't her boss.

Now, here, I'm being a bit purposely obtuse. I know they were a 'married' package, and one could conclude that the two could be perceived as one, but it doesn't necessarily mean that either.

It's always a complicated situation they either should have dealt with before they decided a life in the public was the way they wanted things to go. Unless, they were all going the same direction all along and they all thought they were going to benefit from it, which is completely understandable too. We don't really know the depths of that. Guys boinked and continue to boink their secretaries all the time. Pilots and flight attendants. Each person needs to be held to the appropriate standard for their line of work, but again, that doesn't necessarily mean that people were abusing their situation either.

Another IG down. Trump fires the state department IG.

It's a shame that Dems aren't allowed to do anything more than write angry tweets.

The horrible thing about the Katie Hill situation was the revenge-porn angle. I wonder if she would have had to resign without. Having the picture gave it the national attention that forced action.

It'll be really fun when the Supreme Court starts dismantling the administrative state starting in the summer session so a unitary executive will have even more unchecked power to do something like this

SI

Bingo

I'm pretty sure she would have. This was a year after the Me Too rules on sexual affairs with Congressional staffers was enacted. Now Hill's conduct wouldn't have fallen under this since it was a Campaign staffer instead, but was still seen as unethical among Democrats at the time.

Remember she resigned the same year as Franken did due to Me Too concerns. I'm positive she'd be pressured to stepped down.

Amash announced he isn't going to run after all.

Weird how the President keeps retweeting white supremacists.

Great news for Biden.

Is he going to throw his support to Vermin Supreme?

A well written and examined piece about Q anon, where it came from, and where it's going. Doesn't seem worth your time at first glace, but it raises some thoughts in ones head.

QAnon Is More Important Than You Think - The Atlantic

Interesting article PM, I did not realize how much of their movement is centered around the evangelical right. I clicked one of the links there to see the current list of Q candidates that are running/have run for Congress. All but one Republican or independent/Libertarian. Thankfully most of them have lost or dropped out already.

So Trump retweets and shows support for a Neo-Nazi. One son posts that Biden is a pedophile. And the other goes on Fox News claiming this virus is all a hoax.

Wonderful day in America.

Obama: “Do what you think is right. Doing what feels good—what’s convenient, what’s easy—that’s how little kids think. Unfortunately a lot of so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way, which is why things are so screwed up.”

— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) May 17, 2020

Eric Trump says the virus is a hoax.

When will we ever hit the bottom of the morality expected or accepted from the greatest and highest office in the world (or used to be)?

If and when someone else claims the office I'm certain the GOP and the cult of personality around Trump will raise the bar of expectations dramatically.

When the Senate voted to acquit, people were saying things like "now they will feel like they can just do anything they want," and it was genuinely hard to imagine what that would look like.

Pompeo recommended Trump remove State Dept inspector general: reports https://t.co/V34ADbWkR1 pic.twitter.com/j2FpyUwxei

— The Hill (@thehill) May 17, 2020

No reason to think this is as bad as it could get, but the picture is coming together. Just shameless. And I realize this isn't news, nor is this story going to change the mind of anyone in the cult.

Susan Collins is concerned.

Every time Trump does something since his impeachment trial, people retweet Susan Collins' "I'm sure he's learned his lesson" quote. Took two years to go from "Lean GOP" edge that she had for a decade to probably the 3rd most vulnerable Senator behind Jones and Gardner this November

Just pray that no one in the Supreme Court announces retirement

I’m sure McConnell would never put through a nomination in an election year


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If only the Obama administration had left them instructions on what to do if that does happen.

Well, you mean, put it into a binder, right?

They were just loose pages. How could you hold on to them all?

Reminds me of the videos of white people struggling in infomercials.

What is awesome/horrifying is that I'm sure it was effective, for their purposes.

WH: Oh sure, we got caught in a complete lie saying they didn't leave us a plan, but seriously, look at these papers, that doesn't even count.

Cult45: Damn that Obama, But Her Emails, Lock Her Up, whatever we're doing now...

They are just going full carnival barker on Obamagate. A crime so obvious and significant that we're still waiting for someone, anyone to define it.

Trump selling his own snake oil is one thing, but to see talking heads repeatedly try and frame this entirely undefined fart as "the biggest political scandal in American history!!" with a straight face is not entirely surprising, yet still somehow feels like a new low.