GooberMcNutly wrote:

But unless they can wield that brickbat for political reasons no elected gerrymanderer will unleash something like that lest it bite their personal golden calf on the ass.

So, when will Republicans take on money-grubbing defense contractors?

square wrote:

So, when will Republicans take on money-grubbing defense contractors?

The reality is we are witnessing the biggest money grab since Teapot Dome perhaps the greatest of all time. 


Answers, I have none.

Obama left office a multi-millionaire if not a billionaire by just keeping his nose clean, the breadth of what Trump might manage is mind blowing.

Smudge wrote:

Are you suggesting that Trump's cutting the EPA budget (either generally, or in the case of specific projects) is in response to fraud, waste or abuse?

No, not at all. My point, admittedly buried a little deeply in hyperbole, is that simply giving money to a government agency and decreeing what your goal is is insufficient to bring it about. Then, when the stated goal is not achieved, throwing more money at the problem is almost certainly not the answer.

Taxpayers have been sold the line that if they want something nice, like clean water or well educated children or peace in the mideast, then their only solution is to give "enough" money to the bureaucrats, then get out of the way and let professionals  handle the details.  We are supposed to ignore that those professionals are either 1) incompetent or 2) working in someone else's interest. Our only input is to give more money in case "enough" isn't enough. Any comments from the peanut gallery are to be ridiculed and any watchdogs that point out when the money is being wasted or spent orthogonality to the intended direction get pilloried.

Look at NASA for example. I love space, most Americans do and we, as a species, should make it a focus. But if we kept pumping money into NASA to do the same thing year after year it would just do less with more money and nothing new would come of it. Same thing with the Dept of Education. Or renewable energy. Ethanol in our gas has been their only answer, though everyone agrees it's a shit solution, so the answer must be twice as much of it. Did the Dept of Transportation invent the Tesla?

Think of this as the autoerotic asphyxiation of government. Choke it until it all becomes clear...

It's hard to believe anything on April 1st in this country but this sure looks to be true, especially considering it's Drumpf.

Trump tells NBC to stop covering Russia story

Who the fuck is this Kushner guy and why is Trump his sock puppet?

Emmeran wrote:

Who the fuck is this Kushner guy and why is Trump his sock puppet?

His Heir to the Throne son-in-law.

whosasailorthen wrote:

it ain't Boy Wonder Kushner who is the heir to the throne, it's His Girl Friday, Ivanka.  I'd bet good money she'll be the next woman to run for prez... and she may well get it.

Then it's about time we saw her "birth certificate" and a DNA test to prove she isn't a Boston Dynamics Real Doll.

choad wrote:

whosasailorthen wrote:

it ain't Boy Wonder Kushner who is the heir to the throne, it's His Girl Friday, Ivanka.  I'd bet good money she'll be the next woman to run for prez... and she may well get it.

Then it's about time we saw her "birth certificate" and a DNA test to prove she isn't a Boston Dynamics Real Doll.

Yeah, well...

whosasailorthen wrote:

Baywolfe wrote:

Emmeran wrote:

Who the fuck is this Kushner guy and why is Trump his sock puppet?

His Heir to the Throne son-in-law.

I got news for you... it ain't Boy Wonder Kushner who is the heir to the throne, it's His Girl Friday, Ivanka.  I'd bet good money she'll be the next woman to run for prez... and she may well get it.

Nah, that whole family will probably get "Kennedy'ed" within the next few years.

Smudge wrote:

Boy, did you guys have it all wrong. This is actually what success looks like:

Most successful presidency in world history...


Also, please don't share this story with my horse, because there's enough irony in the article to choke one:

Trump supporter's husband deported..!

I've been enjoying "Trumpenfraude" as his minions start to realize that they've been betrayed.  It seems like daily there is an article in the paper about, "Wait... they took away MY benefits!"  Delicious, just delicious.

LATimes: Rust, mold, parasites: Trump's Mar-a-Lago cited for 78 health violations in the last three years

Donald's closet aristocracy is showing.

choad wrote:

https://cruelery.com/sidepic/angrypumpkin.png

~ click ~

If it's good enough for the Mexican President...

Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

Whoopsie

Smudge wrote:

I't makes you wonder how we managed to win WWII.

Roosevelt, Nimitz, Marshall and Eisenhower were smarter than who we have now.

Although this seems to be mostly the Administration's fuckup.  Donald doesn't read the daily briefings so he has no idea what's really going on.

Smudge wrote:

Oh, I know. I believe the fault is all with the administration. The military can't very well point fingers at the guy the report to, so they remain silent.

To quote a poster I used to own in the Sixties; your problem is obvious.

https://image.spreadshirtmedia.com/imag … -shirt.jpg

Well, I know it's not the job of the military to monitor President Dumbass' texts, tweets, and Twitter account, but you'd think somebody at the Pentagon would have notified the White House that Donald was more full of shit than usual.

Let's be clear:  Super Carrier == Maginot Line

Time has moved on don't figure it out too late.

IVANKA’S NOTES FOR THE BABYSITTER



Hi Sarah,

First of all, Jared and I can’t tell you how grateful we are that you were available to babysit for us tonight on such short notice. When Alexandra called in sick and recommended you, we knew you’d be super. Jared is very honored to be receiving this year’s Friend of Friends of the Enemies of Israel’s Enemies Award, and would have been devastated if I couldn’t attend the banquet with him.

There are just a few key things to know:

My daughter is five, and should go to bed at eight-thirty. She can watch a half hour of TV beforehand, but that’s it. And you have to watch her to make sure that she actually brushes her teeth.

The three-and-a-half-year-old will go down pretty easily around seven. If he asks for Cheerios be sure to give him the plain kind, and not the apple-cinnamon ones—those are for his grandfather.

For the youngest, I’ve left a bottle of formula in the fridge, but be sure to warm it up (test it on your wrist before you give it to him). Diapers and wipes are in his room.

Donald is seventy. His normal bedtime is two or three in the morning, but don’t worry, we’ll definitely be back by then. He can watch Fox News as much as he wants. If he starts yelling at it (smh), just ignore him. The kids are used to it and their rooms are soundproofed.

But here’s the most important thing: There is to be no tweeting after 9 p.m. When you tell him that, he’ll yell stuff like “People have said that I’m a tremendous tweeter!”; “It’s only eight—all the clocks are fake!”; and “I’m not tweeting, I’m sending a text message to 26.4 million people!” Don’t bother arguing. Just make him hand over his phone. If he whines that “you’re being very unfair,” remind him that if I find out he’s been bad he’ll be sorry.

Sometimes, while he watches Fox News, he has “really brilliant ideas,” and he thinks he can just command you to execute them. Three weeks ago, he told Alexandra—in a single night—to “order a team of skywriters to write ‘islam sucks’ above Kabul”; to “use eminent domain to have the government take over Hollywood”; to “have the Pentagon require all U.S. servicemen to wear Trump ties and Trump combat boots”; and to “get Eric started on a Trump combat-boot line.” Alex promised she’d look into it in the morning. Of course, by then he’d totally forgotten about everything :-)

If Donald’s friend Steve calls, tell him to call back tomorrow. If Steve says that it’s urgent and concerns dismantling the administrative state, preempting the deep state, or hollowing out the State Department, tell him to call their friend Reince.

Kind of important: make sure that Donald reads the thirty-two-page brief “Ecosystem Breakdown and Habitat Collapse Due to Saline Incursion in Southeastern Everglades” (or at least the important parts, which I’ve highlighted) and the Fed’s “Thirty-Year Projection of M-1 Growth.” If he says he’s already read them—which he will, but he hasn’t—tell him that if he skims them one more time he can play Legend of Zelda for an extra hour and have a Nutty Buddy. They’re in the freezer. but just one.

We should be back around one or one-thirty. If Donald says that he wants to go out and “have some laughs,” remind him that he has a busy day tomorrow: meeting with the Ethiopian Ambassador, trying to fire the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and pitching “Live from the Oval Office” to ABC.

Thanks a ton, Sarah! If you get hungry, help yourself to anything you want to (but, whatever you do, don’t let him see you eating his Nutty Buddies).

XOXO,
Ivanka

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-sh … babysitter

Trump furious that we're holding him to the standards that he set for himself.

Or, "Hey, I meant the first 100 days of my next Term."

With friends like these...

It's more fun to read Fox these days for Trump drama...

http://www.impeachthemotherfuckeralready.com/

German crowd boos Ivanka Trump for calling her father a ‘champion’ for families



Trump was taking her first crack at diplomacy abroad in her new role as assistant to the president, vowing at an economic conference in Berlin to create “positive change” for women in the United States.

“He encouraged me and enabled me to thrive,” she said on a panel with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “I grew up in a house where there was no barrier to what I could accomplish beyond my own perseverance and my own tenacity.” (insert  "...and several hundred million dollars of inherited wealth"; Smudge's editorial note.)

[...]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won … rk-harder/

Working out at the gym they have a big wall of 20 TVs that you can watch while on the treadmills. I've learned to tell which networks are on which TVs solely on how bad the pictures of Trump are.

Smile and thumbs up: FOX
Pursed lips and a slight sneer: MSNBC
Back lit and bad hair with mouth open: CNN
Actively yelling at someone or caught reacting to something: ABC

Doesn't matter what the story is about. They are all talking about some legislation being signed and CNN has him looking smug at the golf course and ABC has him scowling into the sunshine at a golf course. There must be a bustling market in separating out the right single frame from an event to show just the goofy look they want.

So far as I know, however, Fox is alone is going past merely making editorial selections, and into the realm of image manipulation for emotional effect. It was alleged (and I had no problem believing it) that Fox intentionally altered skins tones, and ADDED the circles under the eyes on the images of opponents. Basically, opponents were made to look like ghouls.

Fox is  not really in the news business, of course, but rather in the propaganda business. Their broadcasts are designed to elicit specific emotional responses connected to news items and trigger words, using sophisticated techniques of behavioral modification. In the Fox universe, Pavlov's bell is always ringing, and the darkies are always coming for your daughters. But our candidate (leg shot), our candidate (camera moving higher up the leg shot) has only your best interest (looking right into the shadow area above the skirt shot)...

Fox is no longer alone in this, but it's still the leading force. If you don't think this stuff works, then how else can you explain the fact that Trump voters continually elect candidates who work against the economic interests of those same voters. Not once or twice, but over and over again. It's pretty powerful stuff if you can get a guy to hurt himself repeatedly, just by pushing the right buttons at the right time.

One of the lessons of the early 21st Century is that we are much easier to manipulate, psychologically, than we had any idea. Orwell got it right. As did Freud. As did I (leg shot)...