Chilling
 

https://www.courant.com/politics/hc-...hey-story.html

Records: Connecticut congressional candidate Robert F. Hyde had U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under ‘physical surveillance'

“Mr. Hyde … sent a series of text messages suggesting that he had Ambassador Yovanovitch under physical surveillance in Kyiv and that ‘They are willing to help if we/you would like a price,’ ” according to a letter sent by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam B. Schiff.

Business as usual, a slide starting with Reagan. :(

You misspelled "Nixon". His Southern Strategy was the beginning of all of this.

You're right, 59 years ago today Ike said...

I don't believe Reagan and Bush 1-2 were anti-American. I believe they had different ideological visions for the country. Bush 2 most obviously fell for the neo-con nonsense. The current occupant's corruption is not ideological. Ideology is how he keeps his believers in line but his corruption is personal and against the interest of the United States.

Emphasis: I believe Reagan loved this country.

"Emphasis: I believe Reagan loved this country." Griff
And So do I. I did exceptionally well during the Reagan years.

Watch this man, he's stealing democracy...

Nixon's Southern Strategy was promoting racism, Reagan's strategy was pushing down the organization of the working men so robber barons could make a comeback in control of the government as well as commerce and industry.

Mind you, the stock market is over 29000 regularly -- Wall Street's happy times are not confined to Wall Street alone. That's a spiral up, except among those with a superstitious objection to seeing it. Or who simply cannot do stocks or 401k's through an incapacity or an inanition.

Anti-wealth is anti-liberty, and hence suxxors moistly maximally. I don't do it.

And what's a Parscale, ironically?

Not so ironically, it is manifest, and blatantly so, that Donald J. Trump loves America much more than his so-snotty fanatic detractors do. They superstitiously object to him thinking like that. They disapprove of loving the free Republic. That leaves them susceptible to fascism and other Godwin's Law syndromes. Happily, I do not suffer from these. (I don't even enjoy them.)

Trump loves America in the same way John Dillinger loved banks.

No.

People I distrust say so, though.

Could anyone make a believable case for, hmm, successfully grafting, grifting and looting about somebody whose net worth has dropped by over a billion while he's not tending his hotel and real estate business, roughly halving it? I don't think so.

Fanatic detractors are prejudiced, and the prejudiced are dullards. I'm the soul of unprejudiced. When you're Left, you can't be right. Or you would become non-Left. Which would free your mind.

Believe me, that's a prospect that's about as good as good sex. Lasts a while longer into the bargain. It beats the life of discontent you are living now.

Is there a believable case for his net worth ever being a billion, let alone two?

If the millions he got from Dad was in the bank he'd have a billion by now, just the taxes he didn't pay through fraud would add up to a hundred million. We in the Northeast have had a front row seat to this scumbag fucking people over in NY and NJ for a very long time. Just following the court cases is revolting.
He's the male Leona Helmsley.

This almost qualifies as Zen.

He and Leona also went at it. There cannot be two Satans in the room. NYC was not big enough for the two of them.

Might be, Luce; it's not original with me. Got the idea from Erich von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Austrian poli-sci writer. Twentieth-century, and very very European, which lent a distinct color to his political thinking. That didn't stop him from quite impressing me.

Something determinedly never ever ever acknowledged by the fanatical and dubious, perhaps diabolical as well, antiTrumpkins is that whatever his misbehaviors in NYC, they have not impaired his executive capacity as POTUS. He seems capable of learning -- a Chapter Eleven seems to have lessoned him well enough to profit by it, and that was a good many years back, now. It should be noted, as I note, that he' s not stiffing contractors now, nor is he likely to start.

Not at any rate in an environment where when Donald Trump inhales, a confederacy of dunces leap up to assure us he did it wrong -- before he gets to the exhale part of the cycle. Feh! to these Usual Suspects. Double Feh! to anyone influenced by them; you are following false gods.

I think he's done with Trump U students too, stiffing the taxpayers keeps him too busy.

Nah... he hasn't got time to stiff the taxpayers. Quite the opposite, what with that regulatory-reduction thing that is creating boom times because taxpayers' expenses doing business are now much lighter, with the prospect of getting lighter still. This is what running government like business looks like, and it looks good. (Fascists don't like the view... beg to return to the bad old ways.)

Apparently you can't feel the boom. Inattentive of you.

That doesn't oblige me not to feel it. That does not hide from my sight all the Help Wanted signs I see all over Oxnard -- where I didn't see any before -- that would be during the time of that Obama guy I didn't ever vote for. I'm a smart fellow, and pat myself on the back for it, after doing some suitable stretches to limber up. Need 'em at my age. Really I do.

Really Bruce, you patronizable wreck of a wannabe pundit, it will help ever so much if you stop getting the Democratic Party confused with America. The two are quite distinct. Real America, not your dumbunny bubble, is swollen even larger, while Team Democrat is lame and impotent. (Sexually undesirable too.)

I am uncomfortable with how the Democrats have forgotten how to American, and how in their group folly they push socialism. And for that matter how to even be democratic, what with that "impeachment first, offense later if ever" attitude of our precious Dem national leadership. Might Public Enema No. 1 help cure their syndrome? Or do we allot them to traveling sideshows under canvas -- and the heading of "grotesqueries?"

He owes Arizona and some contractors for his last visit.

I hear we are not alone in this.

Doesn't matter.

Zen doesn't imply good, in any case.

That is what Trump supporters most love. Lies. Trump's entire history has been scamming contractors. And everyone else. Clearly an extremist did not live where Trumps's antics were routinely reported even in local news. Trump was a benchmark in screwing everyone. He did it so routinely. Even publicly admits he could murder someone on Fifth Ave and still get elected president. He has been that corrupt his entire life. Which is why extremists who post hate also love Trump.

So contemptuous that no bank, except one, would do any business with him. Deutsche Bank compliance officers repeatedly wanted to report his corrupt activities to the Feds. And were constantly obstructed by top bank management because they wanted Trump's illicit business.

Trump's 'screw everyone else so that I profit' operations in 2003 resulted in his intentional defaulting of casino bonds. We all know his four casinos never made a profit. He dumping massive losses even on Deutsche Bank. That bank publicly announced they would never do more business with Trump. But the bank, like Trump, is all about enriching top management. Top management was flowered with gifts such as free, expensive vacations in Mar-a-lago. So in 2004, Deutsche again financed him.

That is what corrupt people do. Only a corrupt extremist would ignore that reality.

The purpose of every corrupt operation is only profits - to enrich the Central Committee of Communists - corrupt top management. The corrupt routinely do business with the corrupt - to screw everyone else. And so Deutsche Bank financed Trump's $640 million loan in 2004 for a Chicago Tower. As usual, in 2008, the anti-American, nazi-like scumbag defaulted. Since that is the purpose of business when you are a Don.

What does Deutsche Bank do? In 2011, another branch of that bank loans him more money. Including $40million to pay interest on that defaulted $640million loan from the same bank. Strangely, top bank management never reviewed those loans - or so they say. People such as Josef Ackermann got rich by scamming his own bank, to enrich Trump, and to enrich himself. That is what Trump counterparties do when Trump is defaulting on paying his contractors. Another routine habit by scumbags such as Trump.

Next top Deutsche executive, Anshu Jain, says Trump had surprisingly low debt levels. Of course, he routinely does not pay contractors. Routinely defaults on bonds and loans. And his books are not audited. Classic symptoms of corruption all but publicly endorsed by that top bank executive. The executive saw what he was suppose to see. And so Deutsche again finances Trump.

From the NY Times of 18 Mar 2019: Exactly the type of person that a wacko extremist and anti-American would praise.

At one point, Trump's close friend and Deutsche Bank officer, Mike Offit, apparently even forged signatures for loans to Trump when lower level loan officers refuse to approve those loans.

Worse are liars who deny what Trump really is. It is called brainwashing. It targets extremists. And is demonstrated by the above quoted post.

A decent or honest person would never write that quoted and intentionally lying sentence. Trump's entire life has been scamming America. The quoted extremist loves it.

The Don is so corrupt that, during a cement workers strike, only he got concrete for his NYC Tower. But he was not corrupt. The mafia was. And accidentally provided cement to Trump. You cannot be that dumb to not see Trump for what he has always been. The word is blunt honest - ALWAYS.

Trump has a long history of defaulting. Only a wacko extremist would deny reams of paragraphs. Trump is what despicable extremists love. Even Putin is campaigning for Trump. And our local wacko extremist also approves of that - or will deny it like any good brainwashed extremist must do.

We only know about some 3,500 lawsuits for non-payment of bills or wages over the past three decades. He even staffed his many domestic construction projects with illegal immigrants. Quickly identified because they did not wear hard hats. And then stiffed even them of wages. Trump routinely stiffs contractors and employees. Funny how an extremist could not even find one example. Extremists are that easily brainwashed.

Plenty of examples of Trump doing what he has always done. Only a wacko extremist, Nazi, or white supremacist accidentally could not find 3,500 examples.

An honest person would apologize for lying to everyone in The Cellar. He will not. That is his extremist nature. And why he loves Trump.

He certainly does.
Conservatives love to complain about liberals condescending to them, but no ivory tower liberal elite avocado-eating college professor will ever come up with a phrase that is more condescending than calling one subset of America "real America".

Yet they do all the time

"Deplorables"

And what was the history of that term? Clinton explicitly defined it as the "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic" subset of Trump supporters, while simultaneously saying that the rest of them were "people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but — he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

It was conservatives who insisted that the term "deplorable" applied to all of them.

"all the time"

four years ago

Yeah, well...

...

...

Yeah.

It's worth mentioning, though, that the right has been talking mad shit about the left since 1979.

So I am slightly less than sympathetic to calls for civility now.

half, she said

FTFY

We could find people tweeting it today with 15 second's worth of search

We could find much more and everybody in this thread knows it

She apologized for saying half, and then the conservatives insisted that it was all.

I'm genuinely curious, let's hear some more examples of--Nobody even needs to have said them--just, can you IMAGINE something more condescending than that?

This is why you don't apologize to republicans for anything ever.

Sub-human is more condescending than sub-American.

Do you have any examples of sub-human? Or was that a response to Flint?

Oof, that's one.

Key and Peele had a bit about a racist celebrity quote, referring to a "pack of [n-words]" and how saying "a pack of" was the worst part.

I don't have examples in this forum. A friend of mine has said sub-human and similar terms for his various enemies on the right. We can easily find them from both sides over time. It's the culture war in action

I thought the dude what said it, used the word "tribe".

Mighta a different part of the quote.

Which calls are not heard from our Democratic solons in the House at all. The best we've got is that Representative Jeffries has ceased his robotic recitals of Dem impeachment-speak, delivered dead-eyed and with the body language of one who no longer believes a word of what he's reciting, but recites as rehearsed nonetheless. No wonder people leave politics.

The concern for rights and liberties has not lain with the Left since about the mid 1950's. It dwells with the center-Right, which is about the biggest bloc American politics has. The left-leaners are a minority; the hard left is the abode of cranks, slavemongers, and believers in the anti-economics of Marxism. (One wonders what fortunes they might gain if they spent that degree of mental effort on earning a living and providing! -- as Marx did not.)

It's only the right that is concerned with civil rights these couple decades -- and the only ones in that time that seem actually to like them. Does the left advertise its devotion to rights? Certainly it does; gives them a great deal of lip service. But their advertising rings hollow when you see what it is that they claim as a right, and being shamefully denied -- this month. Three months ago they were advertising something else as an unfulfilled right. Theirs is the inconstancy of convenience; their ill-hidden agenda is to lord it over you, wherein they get the rights and you get bupkis.

Socialism is a bad religion, much hewed to by bad-religion sorts who seem to have been born evil, just evil. Perhaps we can only rid ourselves of such bad religion by treating the capital-S Socialists as the Cathars were.

But we still can out-argue these followers of the lesser, more enslaved, less free and liberal way. I do that to Bruce as often as I care to. He's not altogether a bloviating barrel-fish who's easy to shoot, which keeps it interesting, but there's a lot of my education in liberty that he profoundly lacks. Leaves him with a non-free statist mentality. I could recognize an attempt to play catch-up as an intelligent action; haven't seen one yet.

The arguments above about how Trump simply must be an evil cheater against motherhood, apple pie and the American way (uttered by poseurs who wouldn't know what that is) because, um, Trump -- fail to persuade. Note how abstract they are, how singularly and severally lacking in detail or corroboration: no names of the defrauded, no dates, no places, no amounts, no particular lawsuits specified. Indeed, not one of the people posting have been defrauded of anything. Just these opprobrious generalities that address more the utterer than his target. That isn't thought. It is mindless prejudice. Of course. It's the outpourings of personalities that are only the sum total of their resentments, which outpourings are analogous to toxic waste.

Apologize for your prejudice, Luce.

Are you, on the uncapitalized strength of "republicans" written just like that, perhaps a monarchist whose philosophy of governance is the divine right of kings? Such a sentence says you don't even make a syndicalist.

Exhibit thought, not shuck-and-jive.

What Happy Monkey is doing believing and being gratified by Washington's Least Convincing & Least Ethical Blonde remains to be explained.

Do you self-declare you are (perhaps self-) excluded from this, ah, subset? Jealous, much?

I like avocados, either halved and eaten lightly salted out of the rind with a spoon, or beat up into killer guac. And avocado toast with a fried egg.

I am free of invidiousness as well as of prejudice. Emulate me and feel, even be, both happier and more intelligent. Beats bouncing on a Pilates ball to fuck yourself the deeper.

LOL, no.

Condescention is your only trick.

Well, other than being really impressed with himself.

You miss the point. The Central Committee of the Communist Party has ordered us what to think. He is simply reciting the incantation. Another allegory that we should all know to be truth. He told us. How can you deny it? ( A few dozen facts and citations must be wrong.)

Clearly we are all reading the wrong books.

We were ordered what to believe. Last Mar in Michigan: We must be fools to deny that logic.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party has ordered us what to think.
 

Bernie ain't president...yet.

It begins to look like it is ideological. The anti-deep state bullshit just seemed like an appeal to Alex Jones' fruit cakes. It is a lot worse. Hyper-partisanship will make our country ungovernable.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substac.../april-22-2020

The change from Cabaniss to Rigas at the head of OPM transpired just as the novel coronavirus pandemic hit the nation hard.

Rigas has said he believes the 1883 Pendleton Act is unconstitutional. Congress passed the Pendleton Act, also known as the Civil Service Act, after a mentally-ill office seeker shot President James Garfield in 1881. Until then, government positions had been handed out to political loyalists, regardless of their capacity to do the job, but the assassination created a public outcry. Charles Guiteau shot Garfield with the expectation that, once elevated to the presidency, Garfield’s vice president would give Guiteau the position his delusions made him think he deserved. The assassination built momentum behind the idea that government should be non-partisan, and that positions should be filled by people actually equipped to do the job. This sentiment has ruled the nation ever since.

Non-partisan civil service has proved a blessing to the nation in two ways. First of all, over time, as more and more positions came under the act, the government got much more efficient. Second, a non-partisan corps of officials has kept the nation stable since they give their loyalty to the country’s government, rather than to any particular president. Administrations come and go, but government bureaucrats keep the nation on an even keel.

Now, Rigas, the man at the head of the federal government’s 2 million workers, wants to get rid of that system and make all employees of the executive branch political appointees, loyal not to the country but to Trump. Rigas is working with McEntee at the PPO. As of a few weeks ago, agencies now have to submit job openings to the PPO to see if they have anyone they want in the position before they can submit their own choice for it. PPO is filling positions with keen regard for their loyalty: recently it has hired four college seniors to become administration officials.

OPM is the office that is refusing to tell Congress what it’s up to.

From Google: Example of rancid:Even The Don does not recommend his cures. But many buy them only because he orders them what to believe.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...m_npd_nn_tw_ma


Speaking of Chilling

Good. Lord.

You realize Trump's to-do list includes killing off the post office.

Apparently unknown: Trump was always this criminally ignorant even 40 years ago. He still has not paid the $70 milllion to contractors who built his Taj Mahal casino. Taj then went bankrupt in 1991 - which is how The Don (like any good mafia Don) does business.

Science said air and water pollution were killing us. They were correct. Then science addressed this problem. Science said the ozone layer was being destroyed. Science created a solution. Science said it was unsafe to launch Challenger. They ignored science to murder seven astronauts. Science said Saddam did not have WMDs. We ignored science to massacre 5000 American servicemen for no purpose. Science says global warming does exist and is created by humans. Adults who are still children still deny reality. A British scam doctor claimed that vaccines were causing autism. A blond bimbo with big tits (without even a college education) promoted that lie. Many of us, with contempt for kids, America, and mankind, then believed those lies. Ignored science to even kill kids.

One would think by now that every adult learned; thought like an adult. And yet Alex Jones (and GNC) can sell scams to extremist adults who are still children. Who still ignore science.

Science said a pandemic was coming. A fool with a 30 second attention span did what every Nazi and Communist does. Ignore science. Even called it a hoax. Even promoted hate. As a result, economic damage is severe. And people died uselessly.

Science said hydroxychloroquine is irresponsible science. Originally promoted by a French doctor (Didier Raoult) and promoted by a Fox News type propaganda machine - RT News. Many, who have contempt for science and the world, believed that lie. Including a scumbag with a 30 second attention span. Alex Jones could not have done any better by selling pig urine cures to Trump supporters.

The scumbag and people as dumb or dumber still believe hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin lies. Classic of any extremist with contempt for science and for America.

The 30 second attention span has now subverted science by doing the only thing he understands. "Your fired". Dr Rick Bright accurately (as any patriot would do) wrote: That was too accurate for someone who has contempt for science, who loves Nazis, White Supremacists, and the KKK, and who has lied repeatedly every day of his life. Dr Bright was fired.

His latest cure for coronaviruses: bright lights. Who in the Cellar is still so extremist, mentally deficient, and brainwashed as to not recognize his latest lie?

Not that you could name three -- or point out four, bubble boy.

The Annoying Orange is what running government in a businesslike fashion looks like. Some twits view this with such an extremity of dread they are reduced to foaming at the mouth -- and the ears, and the roots of their hair -- though that might be the suds of that mental masturbation they thought was scalp massage. Don't listen to the twits, don't believe what twits believe, but instead increase your society's greatness, your health and your wealth, the purity of your essence, the diminishment of antidemocratic sluttiness until it's quite gone, and enhance your sexual desirability.

Assume the Democrats, demagogues that they are, are this time's confederacy of dunces.

...And that's enough. It's been a point of pride with me that I've never put anyone on Ignore. I can meet and beat anyone in debate. Tw has exhausted -- and it took him about ten years -- my patience, and he is now on Ignore. I'll only be reading his neurotic utterance when I damn well want to and click the button. Time to seal him in bubble wrap.

All that really has to happen is all the other mailing services have to get first-class mailing -- which I understand is happening even as we speak.

The reduction of the Federal establishment is not the bad thing statists and chickenhearts make it out to be... and of course such a course trends to balance the federal budget, a topic of singular unconcern.