@jjstraka34 I'm not saying that we shouldn't be concerned, its a real issue. But citing religious freeodm is just a smokescreen. They would be pushing this stuff anyway, religion is just a convienant justification.
It seems to me we have sort of given up on actual human exploration of space in the last few decades. We went to the Moon in 1969. I'm sure most people would have guessed that we would have already been to Mars by now if you asked them 50 years ago in the wake of that accomplishment. But it doesn't seem we have made any progress on that front whatsoever. I doubt it will even happen in the lifetime of the great-grandchildren of those posting now.
Yeah. Maybe. A large part of the reason why we were so determined to make it to the moon was it was another facet of the cold war. As a scientific endevor, it had it's own intrinsic value... but add to that the idea that it was of significance to "national security", and it's not hard to image why we funded it so significantly.
We dont really have that right now with Mars, so there's not a huge desire by the community at large to pay for that kind of enterprise.
The Wells Fargo fine of 1 Billion sounds impressive but then you realize Republicans increased their profits by an estimated 3.7 Billion with the tax cut bill and the government (and tax payers) are still getting screwed here.
Thanks for unilaterally shoving that corporate and rich guy tax cut down our throats.
North Korea has announced a freeze on nuclear testing and missile testing. This is a very unusual move for them.
I wonder if this is about Trump. It wouldn't surprise me if the North Koreans felt that Trump was the one president who might actually attack them despite the cost to South Korea, and that the only way to ensure North Korea could survive to the next American administration was to lay low and avoid provoking Trump.
Alternatively, this could just be because North Korea no longer needs to conduct further nuclear and missile tests, and its arsenal is already roughly as complete as they need it to be. This move isn't necessarily good news.
Hedi Heidkamp and Joe Manchin are going to support Pompeo as Secretary of state. Those two are among the worst as far as supporting the Republican agenda. I guess DINO (Democrat in name only) is really a thing.
They are facing Re-election in states Trump won. So the hell what, that does not mean you have to sell out your party. If given a choice between a Republican and a Republican why wouldn't voters just pick the real Republican. I hope they either lose in a primary or the general. If they lose the general in 6 years maybe voters will get a chance at a "real" Democrat with progressive democratic values. These blue dogs bring the whole party to the the right and the party holds back support from policy the rest if the country wildly supports.
Hedi Heidkamp and Joe Manchin are going to support Pompeo as Secretary of state. Those two are among the worst as far as supporting the Republican agenda. I guess DINO (Democrat in name only) is really a thing.
They are facing Re-election in states Trump won. So the hell what, that does not mean you have to sell out your party. If given a choice between a Republican and a Republican why wouldn't voters just pick the real Republican. I hope they either lose in a primary or the general. If they lose the general in 6 years maybe voters will get a chance at a "real" Democrat with progressive democratic values. These blue dogs bring the whole party to the the right and the party holds back support from policy the rest if the country wildly supports.
Are representatives NOT supposed to support the views of the people in their district? I get tired of hearing about the Rino's and Dino's BS. You know what, if you vote against the will of your constituents you will get voted out sooner or later and there is nothing wrong with not towing the party line on every vote anyway. Blind group think is moronic in my opinion...
Heitkamp only got elected in this State the first time because the Republican she was running against was the owner of an apartment rental company that everyone despises (at least in this city). Voting for Pompeo won't net her a single vote. But Trump's tariffs causing Chinese retaliation to cut soy bean profits by up to 25% sure will.
Heitkamp only got elected in this State the first time because the Republican she was running against was the owner of an apartment rental company that everyone despises (at least in this city). Voting for Pompeo won't net her a single vote. But Trump's tariffs causing Chinese retaliation to cut soy bean profits by up to 25% sure will.
None of which explains not voting for Pompeo. I'm pretty sure the Secretary of State doesn't pass tariffs on his/her own.
Heitkamp only got elected in this State the first time because the Republican she was running against was the owner of an apartment rental company that everyone despises (at least in this city). Voting for Pompeo won't net her a single vote. But Trump's tariffs causing Chinese retaliation to cut soy bean profits by up to 25% sure will.
None of which explains not voting for Pompeo. I'm pretty sure the Secretary of State doesn't pass tariffs on his/her own.
Yeah I'm not a fan of DINO and RINO or whatever but Manchin and Heidkamp and other blue dogs are just being those blind followers but to Republicans not even to their own party. There's plenty to vote no on pompeo about. There's nothing to gain here.
Given his record, Mike Pompeo’s Senate confirmation hearing to be secretary of State should never have happened. Because he never should have been put forward as the nominee. Over his six years as a member of Congress, Pompeo built a record of embracing mass surveillance practices, promoting bigotry, championing extreme restrictions on women’s rights, promoting islamaphobia and supporting the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture. What's Democratic values about any of those things? If he any different today when he tries to pretend for one hearing that he's not those things?
Why vote for this lunatic extremist? Make Trump put someone who's not a religious extremist pro-torture guy forward. No these guys shouldn't have to toe the party line every time. But here's the thing- the Republicans aren't doing the right thing.
No Republican will stand up to Trump. They've had a million and one chances to stand up and do the right thing and they have totally and completely failed every single time. No one forced them to push these tax cuts for the rich in the middle of the night with no hearings. No one's forced them to approve Betsy Devos and the myriad of other Senate approved grifters some of whom have been fired, some of whom will be fired later. No one forced them to approve a non-scientist climate change denier religious extremist as head of NASA. You'd think Republicans would see that they were doing the wrong thing, and they probably do, but they do it anyway I guess because they are incredibly weak and afraid Trump might tweet at them or something. So you can't count on them to do the right thing, and you can't count on the blue dogs either and that's irritating because they are supposed to be Democrats but they're not.
The party in power gets to nominate whoever they want. If they have the votes, they can also give Senate approval to any candidate put forth for an office, whether that candidate is actually qualified for the job or not. Ideally, it would be nice to nominate candidates who can actually handle the administrative duties which come with being made the head of a Federal agency but, truthfully, all the head of an agency does is attend conferences and sign papers--the *real* work is done by the people in mid- and upper-management who are beneath them in the organizational chart.
Heitkamp only got elected in this State the first time because the Republican she was running against was the owner of an apartment rental company that everyone despises (at least in this city). Voting for Pompeo won't net her a single vote. But Trump's tariffs causing Chinese retaliation to cut soy bean profits by up to 25% sure will.
None of which explains not voting for Pompeo. I'm pretty sure the Secretary of State doesn't pass tariffs on his/her own.
I wasn't claiming it did, I don't know what her calculation is. Local right-wing radio here will portray her as a radical liberal no matter what she does, despite that being the furthest thing from the case. I don't even like her, but I can't say she doesn't represent North Dakota on farm, gun, and oil issues because she does. The only things I agree with her on are combating sex trafficking (which she has actually taken the lead on) and her support of the ACA. I'm not remotely enthusiastic about her. That said, I'm not voting to give Trump another Republican Senate seat.
A while back in the thread, we had the story here regarding the Jaywalking case in Asheville, NC. Guy going home for work was beat, choked, n tazed. The body cam footage is pretty hard to watch but at least the officer is no longer there now, although he resigned before he could be fired. At the moment, it looks like the former officer may wind up being acquitted of felony assault by strangulation, and misdemeanor assault inflicting serious injury and communicating threats, in June when the trial continues. These rogue signs showed up in March around town. The town may call it vandalism but I say "Ain't that the truth though". The fine print on the sign reads, "Abuse may include, but not limited to, punches, kicks and billy club strikes to the head, torso and extremities, electroshocks administered by taser gun, and gunshots to the body and head."
No Republican will stand up to Trump. They've had a million and one chances to stand up and do the right thing and they have totally and completely failed every single time. No one forced them to push these tax cuts for the rich in the middle of the night with no hearings. No one's forced them to approve Betsy Devos and the myriad of other Senate approved grifters some of whom have been fired, some of whom will be fired later. No one forced them to approve a non-scientist climate change denier religious extremist as head of NASA. You'd think Republicans would see that they were doing the wrong thing, and they probably do, but they do it anyway I guess because they are incredibly weak and afraid Trump might tweet at them or something. So you can't count on them to do the right thing, and you can't count on the blue dogs either and that's irritating because they are supposed to be Democrats but they're not.
Speaking of how you can't count on Republicans to do the right thing EVER after weeks of saying he'd opposed Pompeo, Sen. Rand Paul announced Monday that he will support the nomination of Mike Pompeo to be secretary of state. Cowards and bootlickers.
So, Sean Hannity says that the journalists' code of ethics don't apply to him because he's not a journalist, he's “an opinion journalist or advocacy journalist”. Is it wrong that mind immediately leapt this way?:
So, Sean Hannity says that the journalists' code of ethics don't apply to him because he's not a journalist, he's “an opinion journalist or advocacy journalist”. Is it wrong that mind immediately leapt this way?
My response to that would be, "So you admit you are unethical?
"When you speak truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and public accountability should not be applied to the words that are coming from your mouth?"
Well the first of those five we already knew he never followed, does it really, really matter that he doesn't follow the sixth?
I'd like to know why Hannity is getting multi-million dollar bailouts from HUD. Besides that, he is a rich vulture feeding like a pig at a trough on the foreclosure of people's homes. In other words, it confirms what I've know for 15 years, which is that Sean Hannity is a monumental scumbag. There is no way Carson didn't help facilitate this. The professional conservative grift is bottomless:
Well, to be honest, I can't fault someone for taking advantage of a lower priced foreclosed home, even having been foreclosed upon myself (unless they were in bed with the banks...). I put that on the banks unscrupulous practices of not allowing people to refinance at a lower rate, or being allowed to miss or be forgiven a few payments due to the economic problems we had. However, if HUD was being used in combination through the FHA loan process to give loans to people not really qualified to have one in the first place, that would be another matter. If foreclosure was rushed through in order for some rich person (inside knowledge) to buy up alot of them, it would be an even worse practice. The banks really got into trouble during the early 2000's with handing out loans left and right. They then got a bailout after the housing market went bust (along with alot of contractors like me) in 2008-9, while builders and homeowners got zip for help.
9 dead in Toronto after another van attack on pedestrians. The driver has been taken into custody after pleading with police to kill him.
It's interesting (and praiseworthy) that in this case a police officer confronted with an apparently armed man, who was asking to be shot, refused to do so. One advantage of that is that there's a much better chance of understanding what led up to this attack - and possibly learn lessons about how to reduce the numbers of such attacks in future.
I don't know about whether the HUD business with Carson is illegal or not. It seems to have started in 2013 right which is before Carson although the article mentions Carson's HUD rewrote the terms to be more favorable or whatever. At any rate HUD isn't supposed to be for multimillionaires but I don't know enough about what happened there to really fault him - yet.
What is a problem is Hannity interviewing several people he has a pre-existing relationship with and not mentioning it. I don't care if he pretends to be a not-journalist or whatever. It's not right to go on your TV show and praise a guy you know well and viciously attack their enemies and not mention you have multimillion dollar ties and pre-existing relationships. I haven't seen the interviews but I imagine Hannity interviews Cohen who is his lawyer and pretends he doesn't know him very well (or at all?). And of course all these pre-existing relationships sheds a new light on things like his attacks on the Mueller investigation. You can't not mention that the reason that you are against something is because you are in bed for millions of dollars with the targets of the investigation.
Ethics don't apply to you? Then you should have no place on a TV news station. Fox News has a crisis of credibility here. They are already considered a blatant biased right wing propaganda machine. It's been shown that one of their hosts has been lying and is blatantly unethical. Will they do anything about it?
The kicker is, Sean Hannity already makes $30 million dollars a year from his radio and TV show. Apparently not enough to satiate his appetite for cash.
The trickiest part here will be proving that the foreclosure auctions were rigged. Unless the auctions are closed, allowing only certain people to bid, then you cannot rig an action--you cannot possibly bribe everyone who may show up and bid on a piece of property.
Privately-held LLCs allow the people who actually make money using them shield themselves from all sorts of public and regulatory scrutiny. I would suggest that Congress needs to amend those laws to force more visibility on those corporations but that would negatively impact many Members of Congress who are enjoying similar invisibility. They will never vote to air their own dirty laundry.
Hannity has never been a journalist. His show has never been anything more than a video op-ed, even back in the early days when he still had Alan Colmes (the most right-of-center liberal in the world).
Welp, this just keeps getting juicier and juicier.
I love Sean Hannity saying "The fact is, these are investments that I do not individually select, control, or know the details about", while throwing down tens of millions of dollars.
I call BS.
It's a poor investor who doesn't know details about their investment. Otherwise, how would you know how it's doing? Is it going great and you should invest more? Is it losing money and you need to bail?
For someone with a strong ethical sense in a public position it would be entirely possible that they didn't know the details of their investments - for instance because they had put them into a blind trust in order to avoid conflicts of interest. In this case though @Quickblade I wouldn't argue with your call of BS .
I love Sean Hannity saying "The fact is, these are investments that I do not individually select, control, or know the details about", while throwing down tens of millions of dollars.
And if that was true, it would make the statement that he wasn't really a client of Cohen an even bigger lie. "I'm not his client. He's just some guy I hardly know who handles tens of millions of dollars of my money."
So, we all remember a few weeks ago when Trump picked his personal Presidential physician to head the VA. Well, lo and behold, his instinct to literally pick the closest doctor in the vicinity isn't going to work out, as it seems like he is going to have to withdraw amid allegations of overperscribing medication and being drunk on the job. You know, I think one thing is pretty standard among all professions, which is that you don't drink at work. This is such an incompetent clown show it defies belief.
So, we all remember a few weeks ago when Trump picked his personal Presidential physician to head the VA. Well, lo and behold, his instinct to literally pick the closest doctor in the vicinity isn't going to work out, as it seems like he is going to have to withdraw amid allegations of overperscribing medication and being drunk on the job. You know, I think one thing is pretty standard among all professions, which is that you don't drink at work. This is such an incompetent clown show it defies belief.
Source? I would love to read more about this but don't have time to search for myself right now...
So, we all remember a few weeks ago when Trump picked his personal Presidential physician to head the VA. Well, lo and behold, his instinct to literally pick the closest doctor in the vicinity isn't going to work out, as it seems like he is going to have to withdraw amid allegations of overperscribing medication and being drunk on the job. You know, I think one thing is pretty standard among all professions, which is that you don't drink at work. This is such an incompetent clown show it defies belief.
Source? I would love to read more about this but don't have time to search for myself right now...
Trump knows this is a losing fight but doesn't want to admit he screwed up, so he's trying to get Jackson to withdraw himself from consideration while Trump takes zero responsibility for the decision. Pathetic.
“I don’t want to put a man through a process like this,” Mr. Trump said, calling the allegations about Mr. Jackson “ugly.” The president said, “The fact is, I wouldn’t do it. What does he need it for? To be abused by a number of politicians?”
“It’s totally his decision,” Mr. Trump added, saying that he had talked with Dr. Jackson earlier in the day. Mr. Trump angrily accused his adversaries on Capitol Hill of going after Dr. Jackson because they have failed to block Mike Pompeo, the president’s nominee to become the next secretary of state.
Comments
We dont really have that right now with Mars, so there's not a huge desire by the community at large to pay for that kind of enterprise.
Which I think is terribly sad.
Thanks for unilaterally shoving that corporate and rich guy tax cut down our throats.
They are facing Re-election in states Trump won. So the hell what, that does not mean you have to sell out your party. If given a choice between a Republican and a Republican why wouldn't voters just pick the real Republican. I hope they either lose in a primary or the general. If they lose the general in 6 years maybe voters will get a chance at a "real" Democrat with progressive democratic values. These blue dogs bring the whole party to the the right and the party holds back support from policy the rest if the country wildly supports.
Given his record, Mike Pompeo’s Senate confirmation hearing to be secretary of State should never have happened. Because he never should have been put forward as the nominee. Over his six years as a member of Congress, Pompeo built a record of embracing mass surveillance practices, promoting bigotry, championing extreme restrictions on women’s rights, promoting islamaphobia and supporting the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture. What's Democratic values about any of those things? If he any different today when he tries to pretend for one hearing that he's not those things?
Why vote for this lunatic extremist? Make Trump put someone who's not a religious extremist pro-torture guy forward. No these guys shouldn't have to toe the party line every time. But here's the thing- the Republicans aren't doing the right thing.
No Republican will stand up to Trump. They've had a million and one chances to stand up and do the right thing and they have totally and completely failed every single time. No one forced them to push these tax cuts for the rich in the middle of the night with no hearings. No one's forced them to approve Betsy Devos and the myriad of other Senate approved grifters some of whom have been fired, some of whom will be fired later. No one forced them to approve a non-scientist climate change denier religious extremist as head of NASA. You'd think Republicans would see that they were doing the wrong thing, and they probably do, but they do it anyway I guess because they are incredibly weak and afraid Trump might tweet at them or something. So you can't count on them to do the right thing, and you can't count on the blue dogs either and that's irritating because they are supposed to be Democrats but they're not.
These rogue signs showed up in March around town. The town may call it vandalism but I say "Ain't that the truth though".
The fine print on the sign reads, "Abuse may include, but not limited to, punches, kicks and billy club strikes to the head, torso and extremities, electroshocks administered by taser gun, and gunshots to the body and head."
"When you speak truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and public accountability should not be applied to the words that are coming from your mouth?"
Well the first of those five we already knew he never followed, does it really, really matter that he doesn't follow the sixth?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/apr/22/michael-cohen-sean-hannity-property-real-estate-ben-carson-hud
EDIT: A most interesting article.
depressing...
What is a problem is Hannity interviewing several people he has a pre-existing relationship with and not mentioning it. I don't care if he pretends to be a not-journalist or whatever. It's not right to go on your TV show and praise a guy you know well and viciously attack their enemies and not mention you have multimillion dollar ties and pre-existing relationships. I haven't seen the interviews but I imagine Hannity interviews Cohen who is his lawyer and pretends he doesn't know him very well (or at all?). And of course all these pre-existing relationships sheds a new light on things like his attacks on the Mueller investigation. You can't not mention that the reason that you are against something is because you are in bed for millions of dollars with the targets of the investigation.
Ethics don't apply to you? Then you should have no place on a TV news station. Fox News has a crisis of credibility here. They are already considered a blatant biased right wing propaganda machine. It's been shown that one of their hosts has been lying and is blatantly unethical. Will they do anything about it?
The kicker is, Sean Hannity already makes $30 million dollars a year from his radio and TV show. Apparently not enough to satiate his appetite for cash.
Privately-held LLCs allow the people who actually make money using them shield themselves from all sorts of public and regulatory scrutiny. I would suggest that Congress needs to amend those laws to force more visibility on those corporations but that would negatively impact many Members of Congress who are enjoying similar invisibility. They will never vote to air their own dirty laundry.
Hannity has never been a journalist. His show has never been anything more than a video op-ed, even back in the early days when he still had Alan Colmes (the most right-of-center liberal in the world).
I love Sean Hannity saying "The fact is, these are investments that I do not individually select, control, or know the details about", while throwing down tens of millions of dollars.
I call BS.
It's a poor investor who doesn't know details about their investment. Otherwise, how would you know how it's doing? Is it going great and you should invest more? Is it losing money and you need to bail?