Today's Burning Questions

Overheard on Twitter:

Why would a billionaire need his lawyer to front him $130K to keep the coochie quiet?

And why would a billionaire need an installment plan to pay his lawyer back?

WaPo looks into 45*'s "wealth":

In the nine years before he ran for president, Donald Trump’s company spent more than $400 million in cash on new properties — including 14 transactions paid for in full, without borrowing from banks — during a buying binge that defied real estate industry practices and Trump’s own history as the self-described “King of Debt.”

Trump’s vast outlay of cash, tracked through public records and totaled publicly here for the first time, provides a new window into the president’s private company, which discloses few details about its finances.

It shows that Trump had access to far more cash than previously known, despite his string of commercial bankruptcies and the Great Recession’s hammering of the real estate industry.

- and -

Trump’s lavish spending came at a time when his business was leaning largely on one major financial institution for its new loans — Deutsche Bank, which provided $295 million in financing for big projects in Miami and Washington.

- and -

“He always used other people’s money. That’s for sure. Not cash,” said Barbara Res, who was a top executive for Trump throughout the 1980s and continued to work for him for most of the 1990s. “He always got somebody to put up funds for him. To put up the money. And he’d put up the brilliance.”

There's always the possibility that we're falling into the Argument From Ignorance fallacy - that it's all perfectly legit, and we just haven't come up with a good explanation yet.

There's also the possibility that a squadron of alien space monkeys will come flying out of my ass tomorrow morning at precisely 7:15.

There is nothing "perfectly legit" about Donald Trump.

Today's Tweet

I guess we can file this one under "Look Who Just Caught Up"

A commentary by @dalehansen of @wfaa in Dallas on the #NRAConvention featuring dangerous cowards, liars / traitors Trump & Pence ... of course no guns are allowed.

Watch: pic.twitter.com/Uk0ZqtEX5c

— ☇RiotWomenn☇ (@riotwomennn) May 4, 2018

One More Podcast

Teddy Roosevelt was my kinda Republican.

He was too cute by half with the whole Gunboat Diplomacy thing, but three things:

1. His forceful attitude on pushing back against corporations - the necessity of regulation in order to keep too much power and too much money from consolidating in too few hands.

2. Trying to balance the interests internal to the US against US National Interests outside our borders.

3. He was a man of his times. That doesn't mean some of the shitty things he did - or were done on his watch - are excusable, or that anybody should approve of them now.

We muddle thru and we stumble forward.

Another Podcast

"Accountability" is something the Dems can own in the 2018 midterms if they want it.



Nobody who votes D most of the time is uninterested in impeachment, but that's not the platform you should run on - you might not lose, but you'll almost definitely not win as big as we need you to win.

Podcast

The Professional Left with driftglass and Blue Gal.

Don't stand aghast at nothingness - a pretty good Bible Bitch segment.

And today's stats, illustrative of the root problem we're starting to understand a bit better:

61% of Americans believe 45* lies regularly.

76% of Republicans believe he tells the truth all or most of the time.

And we continue to go along with the Press Poodles as they work hard to placate us with bullshit tropes like "tribalism" - which is little more than a new(ish) version of Both-Sides.

Fight back.

There's nothing wrong with looking for ways to meet somewhere in between when there's reason to think we can find some commonality. Compromise is a good thing when it moves us towards "a more perfect union".

Just be careful not to get caught up in the Fallacy of The Middle Ground.

eg: There's nothing ideological about the fact of AGW-Driven Climate Change. We can compromise on what we think is a good approach to dealing with it, but the fact of it is not in doubt and we're wasting time if that's what we continue to allow to be at the center of the debate.

As the Press Poodles and their handlers continue to pimp the Both Sides nonsense, we have to turn up the heat and do everything within reason to make that Forever-In-The-Middle position as uncomfortable as possible.

Today's Today

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”

--Edward Abbey

May 4, 1970

And not to be too obvious...

A Podcast

Ana Marie Cox, With Friends Like These



Money Quote (at the break, about 24:30): If you're paying attention to everything, you're not paying attention to anything.

And that ties into my post from yesterday - 45* throwing all that weird shit up in the air, intending for us not to see all the truly bad shit he's doing right out in the open. 

Today's Tweet

In the Trump era, "diplomatic communications" is very different thing.

Cowardly Press Corps toadies to Propanganda Minister to maintain status as Idiot piglets suckling at the shriveled teat of a sow who hates them. pic.twitter.com/h3uxCJ4CgG

— DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) May 1, 2018

It's The Salesmanship, Stupid

I'm always on about what a lousy salesman 45* is - and he is.

But he isn't a lousy magician. He's a pretty good one. Or rather, he's been good at it for quite a while, but now he's playing to an audience that includes people who aren't here wanting to be fooled.

Inside The Hive with Nick Bolton - interviewing David Kwong:



It's not just the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Sometimes, under certain circumstances, your "audience" wants to believe; needs to believe; and that desire can be so intense they go way out of their way help you. They go along with the illusion to the point where they fool themselves.

It's about giving the audience something that seems it be of greater value to look at - a different trick - while you do what you're really trying to do.

Today's Tweet

Calling the president an idiot isn't nearly as disrespectful as calling an idiot the president.

— Middle Age Riot (@middleageriot) May 1, 2018

Today's GIF (via Twitter)

Bless you, Dr Mandelbrot.

Rolling a circle inside another three times its size - three times - by matthen pic.twitter.com/S3Lcu4tDnr

— Science GIFs⚛️ (@Learn_Things) April 26, 2018

 

Today's Chart

As expected - and for the 20th year in a row - a coupla things come into pretty sharp focus.

The first is re-affirmation that the reason DumFux News and "conservatives" bitch about liberal bias is almost solely because they're way off to the right.

click to embiggen

The second item is that DumFux news has extended its losing streak to 22 years.

No Pulitzer
No Peabody
No Polk
No Hillman

Zero Zip Zilch Nada

This Week's Amy

Week 76, 04-28-18

Amy Siskind at Medium

In some ways this week felt normal as leaders of France and Germany visited the White House, and the leaders of North and South Korea met for a historic summit and spoke of the denuclearizing the peninsula. In the days Macron was in America, the country seemed relatively calm with less news breaking and Trump refraining from his typical banter and tweets.

But beneath the veneer, the dysfunction and chaos of the Trump regime continued. Amid the firing and attempted nominations of top officials, Trump continues to unilaterally pick from a small circle of unqualified sycophants. This week the country was shocked when Speaker Ryan fired the House chaplain for speaking up for the less fortunate — symbolic for Republicans in the era of Trump who have joined in the weekly attacks on “the others” and those who would advocate for them. As the week ended, the country endured another fallen norm: a functional House Intelligence Committee.
Some hi-lites:

1. The National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group, held a rally in Draketown, Georgia on Saturday. Approximately two dozen people participated in the event, which included burning swastikas 12–18 feet high.

9. The co-owner of Grandview Golf Club in Pennsylvania and his son called the police to complain that a group of black women were playing too slowly and refused to leave the course.

10. The five women golfers, who call themselves Sisters in the Fairway, have been around for over a decade, have golfed around the country and world, and are very familiar with golf etiquette. The golf club apologized.

11. A senior at Riverview High School in Sarasota, Florida asked a girl to the prom by holding up a sign which read, "If I was black, I’d be picking cotton, but I’m white so I’m picking u 4 Prom?”

17. A new in-depth study released by University of Pennsylvania political scientist Diana Mutz examining data from 2012 to 2016 revealed agrowing body of evidence that the 2016 election was not about economic hardship.

18. Mutz found “dominant groups that felt threatened by change” voted for Trump and he took advantage of the trend. Mutz noted “For the first time since Europeans arrived in this country,” white Americans are told they will become the minority race.

21. Intercept reported the US Border Patrol has faked statistics to make it appear there was a dramatic increase in assault on agents, up 73% from 2016 to 2017, when in reality, the number of assaults was down.

22. The Border Patrol has made up cases, like the death of Agent Rogelio Martinez which the FBI ruled was death caused by a fall. The calculation methodology has also changed, so each attack is multiplied agents by number of attacks by number of objects.

39. On Monday, when asked about Mike Pompeo’s nomination, press secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News that “Democrats have to decide whether they love this country more than they hate” Trump.

40. On Monday, in a letter to the Senate, 109 retired generals and admirals said they were “deeply troubled” by Trump’s pick of Gina Haspel for CIA director, citing her links to a former US torture program.

63. Macron was critical of Trump’s opposition to the Paris climate accord — calling for the US to “make our planet great again,” and said Trump’s attacks on international trade agreements was short-sighted.

64. Macron got a standing ovation when he said we must “protect our democracies” against “the ever-growing virus of fake news, which exposes our people to irrational fear and imaginary risks.”

75. On Tuesday, Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, provided a closed-door briefing to the House Judiciary Committee on how the company obtained data on tens of millions of Facebook users.

76. Not a single Republican on the committee attended the briefing. Wylie told reporters after that he hopes Congress will investigate whether the company, which worked for the Trump campaign, broke US law.

91. On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 14–7 to advance legislation that would protect Mueller. Committee chair Chuck Grassley said he is working to change Mitch McConnell’s position of not bringing a bill to the floor.

92. The committee’s legislation would delay any action to fire a special counsel by 10 days, and guarantee the ousted special counsel a chance to have three federal judges swiftly review the decision.

93. Grassley added an amendment which was adopted by the panel which would require that Congress be notified 30 days in advance of any special counsel being terminated. Four Republicans voted along with Democrats.

105. On Friday, the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released a report called “Minority View,” citing, “the Committee’s Majority has shattered its commitment by rushing to end its investigation prematurely.”

106. The Democrat’s report also claims Republicans “failed to meet the mandate given to the HPSCI” and “engaged in a systematic effort to muddy the waters, and to deflect attention” away from Trump.

107. Among the revelations in the minority report is that the Agalarovs and Trumps have a relationship dating back to 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, and were in regular contact before and after the Trump Tower meeting.

108. The minority report also points to a strong possibility that Trump himself was communicating with Donald Jr. as he worked to schedule the June 9 Trump Tower meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Today's Tweet

History doesn't repeat itself - but it sure as fuck rhymes.

All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again. pic.twitter.com/s0W3ysilab

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) April 25, 2018

 

Today's Poodle-ry

Press Poodles continue to pimp the myth that says the history of the Republican Party began with an escalator ride in Trump Tower in 2015.

Michael Edison Hayden, Newsweek:

Overt anti-Semites have been slowly creeping into Republican politics in the aftermath of President Trump’s successful, populist candidacy, and now one of them has a fighting chance of representing the Republican Party in a Senate race.
No, doofus - shit-heels like Patrick Little have felt very much at home in the GOP for decades. 45* just pried up the rock they live under, gave them a sense that they're not really the inveterate racist assholes they are, and turned 'em loose.

This is not Trumpism. He has not remade the GOP in his image. 

45* is the near-perfect reflection of what the GOP is now - and has been for a good long time.

hat tip = driftglass