You know, when I first embarked on “Freak Out Friday,” I thought it would be around for far shorter a time than it has been. I personally gave Trump six months, tops. How could I have foreseen that the GOP would be so desperate to hang onto power that they would flush away virtually every policy that they ever claimed to govern by and made everything subservient to Trump and his idiot minions. What’s truly impressive is that for almost every schmuck that Trump put into place when he first began, he has managed to blow through them and replace them with someone indisputably worse. I’m positive that sooner or later he’s going to decide to end the Russian investigation and get rid of Robert Mueller. When (not if) he does, the Republicans are then going to be in a really interesting situation, because a number of highly placed ones have flat out stated that if Trump does that, it’s “the beginning of the end” of his presidency. Of course when I heard that, my reaction was the same as yours: The BEGINNING of the end? Trump has already told so many lies, screwed up so many times, the subject of so many law suits, that if he’d been a Democrat the GOP would have launched impeachment proceedings months ago.
1). Dear John: I have to admit, I am a huge fan of John Bolton. I was first introduced to his work when he did a lovely and unappreciated comic book series called “Marada,” written by Chris Claremont. Readers largely ignored it because it wasn’t X-Men, but I really liked it.
Now it might be that John would be able to do a worthy job of National Security Advisor if Trump had chosen him, but no. He selected John R. Bolton, the dìçk that George W. Bush selected to be our ambassador to the United Nations back in 2005. You remember the United Nations: that would be the organization that Bolton claimed, if it vanished tomorrow, that would make no difference to the world. Bolton is a half-assed warhawk who believes an unprovoked first strike nuclear assault on North Korea, which would establish the US as a rogue state and would likely trigger World War III, is a perfectly okay idea. He’s also anxious to get rid of the Iran nuclear deal, which most experts say is an extraordinarily bad thing to do. And now this guy is going to be counseling the other guy who has his fingers on the nuclear football. We are in a truly horrific situation, and I’m thinking the only way to stop it is to pray that within a few months, Bolton is shown the door just as so many of his predecessors have done. But I fear that won’t be the case.
2). Oh, sure. That’s the reason.After panicking his staff with his threat to veto the spending bill, he finally signed off on it ostensibly because it did so much for the military. Astoundingly–no, wait, wrong word. Typically–that’s better–he blamed the complete lack of support for the DACA dreamers squarely on the party that was actively advocating for helping them, the Democrats. The Dems eventually wound up being blamed for “abandoning” the Dreamers by not making legislation supporting them part of the spending bill, which is certainly true enough. But it ignores the fact that the only reason for the Dreamers being screwed was because Trump did away with the Obama-era declarations that helped them, and the Republicans are the ones who have studiously avoided discussing or supporting the fates of the 800,000 immigrants that Trump hung out to dry. It’s just remarkable that the Democrats manage to find new ways to be blamed for the horrific, unfeeling actions of Trump and the GOP.
3). Don’t worry, everything is safe. I mention this even though Trump had nothing to do with it because, actually he had everything to do with it. Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels’ suit against Trump, posted on Twitter a photo of what looked like a CD in a safe, saying “If ‘a picture is worth a thousand words,’ how many words is this worth???” The obvious insinuation is that the CD has proof of Daniels’ claims to have had an affair with Trump. It still remains utterly amazing–no, wait, typical again–that the GOP impeached Clinton for getting a bløw jøb but continues to let Trump, who had an extended affair with God knows how many women, keep sitting in the Oval Office.
Did he do anything right? Well, yes, though I hate to admit it. Calling Putin and congratulating him despite his staff explicitly saying he shouldn’t, was the correct move. At the end of the day, he’s the dámņëd POTUS, and that sometimes involves calling up bášŧárd dictators on the phone and congratulating them on rigging yet another vote. Yes, we know the Russians also helped rig ours. Yes, we know that Trump did collude with them, if for no other reason than he keeps saying “There was no collusion” with the same vehemence that Nixon said he was not a thief, and Clinton said he didn’t have sex with that woman. He’s fooling exactly one person, and that person is himself. The rest of us know how this thing is likely going to end, with Trump trudging off on a helicopter as President Mike Pence waves good-bye and then pardons him.
Jesus, there really is no good end to this, is there.
PAD
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Apparently his Trumpeteers are claiming that his affairs are “totally different” from Clinton because they’re “in the past”. (Or somehow magically, retroactively “paid” by the Democrats to entrap him). Let’s leave aside the frightening implications of him demanding all staff sign non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from EVER saying anything about what they see him do in office, even after his tenure. Never mind the logical assumption that he probably has CURRENT mistresses similarly under gag orders. What’s truly staggering is the selective “in the past, let it go” argument; Clinton couldn’t be trusted in office because he “ may have smoked pot” in the past and they didn’t want a “drug addict” in the White House. But Bush’s documented cocaine use was “off limits” and “was in the past, it has no bearing on who he is NOW”. Remember when, according to the GOP, just the HINT that you may have had an extramarital affair was enough to keep you OFF the presidential ticket? (Cough*Gary Hart*cough*Hamilton) Now apparently anything that was a “fault” in past Democratic candidates, like inexperience and infidelity, are somehow not only a positive boon, apparently “just what this country needs right now”.
Lesson? All sins will be forgiven as long as you run against Hillary
“demanding all staff sign non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from EVER saying anything about what they see him do in office, even after his tenure”
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Completely non-enforceable NDAs that listed no penalty for talking. So I’m sure we’ll be hearing from those who signed them before too much longer.
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he won’t still try to lawyer up and sue anyway. One of his favorite tactics is to try and tie everything up in a prolonged legal battle where he tried to just wear down his opponents until they quit or settle. I can’t tell you how many contractors here in New York he’s put out of business with his antics; he waits until foundations and frameworks are done, then just reneges on the contract and refuses to pay, usually claiming “shoddy work” if he says anything at all. Then he hires a different, cheaper company to put the walls up. Meanwhile, the owners of the contracting firm go broke paying their workers out of their own pocket. When they try to collect and sue Trump for breach of contract, he sends in the lawyers who threaten to file bankruptcy, tying up everything in the courts long enough to ensure these guys would lose more money than they’d ever recoup. One person’s “smart businessman” is another person’s white collar crook.
Trump’s tactics are well known. I imagine they would be well known within NYC’s contractors. Why any would agree to work with him escapes me.
Yeah, it’s totally different.
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Or they just ignore the parts that aren’t convenient for them.
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I’ve seen any number of people- family, friends, strangers -online slamming Stormy Daniels and calling her a tramp and saying that we should call her what he chosen profession makes her- a cheap šlûŧ and a prostitute.
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Of course, point out that means Donald Trump essentially paid the person they’re calling a tramp, a cheap šlûŧ, and a prostitute $130,000 for sex and thus made a horrible deal given what most men who frequent prostitutes pay…
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But then they just pretend it’s all lies.
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There was a poll mentioned in passing on a news report the other day. It said that out of those people describing themselves as conservative or Republican, only something around 15% (it was in the mid-teens, but I don’t remember the exact number) believed that Stormy Daniels claims had merit or truth behind them.
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Think about that for a minute.
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That means that roughly 85% of people describing themselves as conservative or Republican- Trump supporters -are claiming to believe that Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000 by Trump’s lawyer for no reason at all other than just because, and Trump is now threatening to sue her for over $20 million for breaching a NDA written to have her say nothing publicly about something that never happened and Trump had no knowledge of anyhow.
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These people have serious mental issues.
Blockquote>I’ve seen any number of people- family, friends, strangers -online slamming Stormy Daniels and calling her a tramp and saying that we should call her what he chosen profession makes her- a cheap šlûŧ and a prostitute.
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Of course, point out that means Donald Trump essentially paid the person they’re calling a tramp, a cheap šlûŧ, and a prostitute $130,000 for sex and thus made a horrible deal given what most men who frequent prostitutes pay…I trfer you to this cartoon from 6 February: http://www.gocomics.com/nickanderson/2018/2/6
That’s funny.
This is what my previous post was SUPPOSED to say {if a moderator could delete that one, i’d appreciate it}:
I refer you to this cartoon from 6 February: http://www.gocomics.com/nickanderson/2018/2/6
Regarding the Clinton Impeachment, the excuse that the GOP used was that Clinton lied about the affair under oath. Although it was ridiculous that Starr’s investigation was questioning him about it, the fact that he lied under oath was the nominal reason he was impeached. The real reason was that they didn’t consider any Democratic President legitimate.
You may have noticed that Trump’s legal team is bending over backwards to keep him from being question under oath. They’re terrified that he’ll perjure himself because he doesn’t believe he can face any consequences now that he’s president. With our current Congress, I’m not even sure he’s wrong. He’s already done blatantly impeachable things since he took office and I think you could optimistically count the number of GOP Senators that would vote him out on one hand. We’re never going to get to the 67 that would be needed to convict on impeachment even if the House gets a majority that will vote for impeachment.
I’m also aware that you thought he’d be out of office really fast. I’ve been of the pessimistic opinion that a GOP Congress wouldn’t impeach him if he shot a baby on live TV (I exaggerate slightly…I hope). So although I chose Dec 7 of this year when you set up you’re when will he be out poll of when he’d leave, I have always thought he’d finish out his term, barring death or debilitating illness. Our only other hope of getting rid of him early is if he just quits, I don’t think his ego will let him do that.
“When (not if) he does, the Republicans are then going to be in a really interesting situation, because a number of highly placed ones have flat out stated that if Trump does that, it’s “the beginning of the end” of his presidency.”
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And I’m sure no Republican would ever make a clear declarative statement about what they’ll do and then, when the time actually comes, fail to do it.
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“and that sometimes involves calling up bášŧárd dictators on the phone and congratulating them on rigging yet another vote”
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I cannot begin to express how much I disagree with that idea. He didn’t have to excoriate Putin. Diplomacy and all. But, gods!!, he certainly didn’t have to congratulate him.
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PAD, I honestly wonder: How vile does a dictator have to be, how much out to harm America does he have to be before you’d think he doesn’t have to be congratulated on successfully oppressing his own people by stealing an “election”?
AAAAAAAAND he’s trying to ban transgender people from the military AGAIN. Because why NOT sprinkle some bigotry in to end the week?
“Oh, sure. That’s the reason.After panicking his staff with his threat to veto the spending bill, he finally signed off on it ostensibly because it did so much for the military. Astoundingly–no, wait, wrong word. Typically–that’s better–he blamed the complete lack of support for the DACA dreamers squarely on the party that was actively advocating for helping them, the Democrats.”
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All of the other stuff aside, the noise he makes about the budget bills and other such matters means nothing. He’s putting on a show for the suckers because he knows at least that he has to put on the show. But he also knows the people who voted for him don’t care. They’ll give lip service to caring, but they don’t care.
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As I posted on Facebook a bit ago-
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Trump and crew were big into bragging about how they deserved credit for the national debt decline of $102 billion, And, in one of those rare occasions, Trump and crew weren’t lying when talking. The national debt did decline by $102 billion.
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Of course, they still weren’t honest about it. Here’s the part they never talked about and didn’t want anyone to pay attention to. They had nothing to do with it.
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The decline of $102 billion occurred between 20 January and 27 July 2017. That six-month period was still fiscal 2017 under the Obama budget.
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You know what else Trump and crew aren’t talking about? They’re not talking about the last six months and what has happened now that we’re actually in a fiscal year under Trump.
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In six months of Trump economic policy, the national debt grew $1 trillion. This isn’t a surprise to anyone with a brain and the ability to do math who looked at what Trump said he wanted to do with spending and taxes, and what the Republicans were thrilled to let him do so far. What’s worse, if he spends as he hopes to, Trump will at the very least add almost as much in his first term as Obama did in two terms.
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From the article I’m lining to- “In a report published March 2, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said the national debt “is rising unsustainably.” It added that “recent tax and spending legislation have made a bad situation even worse.”
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But do you know what Trump knows about the vast majority of conservative voters and Republicans?
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He knows they don’t actually care about the debt or the deficit. He knows they never really did. He knows they only ever cared about giving lip service to caring about it when it was convenient.
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Oh, they’ll say they do, and, certainly, when called on their hypocrisy on the matter they’ll pound their chests and claim they really, really do and OMG how concerned and upset they are about it.
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But not really. Because, frankly, we’re seeing under Trump exactly what we saw under W Bush. Conservative voters and Republicans supported Bush policies on taxes and spending that everyone else said was going to add huge amounts to the debt and deficit, but conservative voters and Republicans told everyone else to shut up. It wasn’t until W Bush was about to leave office (and especially after he did) that they large groups of them started talking about how W Bush was never a real conservative and his policies were never really conservative and, gosh darn it, they were really upset (despite what they said when the policies were being debated both in Washington and online) about those gosh darned unconservative policy of that never really conservative W Bush.
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Of course, once W Bush was gone and several of his debt and deficit busting policies were up for repeal they suddenly again fought to keep them just like before.
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That’s what we’ll see with Trump, just on steroids. Trump’s policies will trash the debt, the deficit, and the economy. And while that happens, when challenged about it, those same conservative voters and Republicans will give lip service to their concern, but they will back and fight for every policy that helps to trash the debt, the deficit, and the economy.
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And then, once Trump is gone, it’ll be like when W left office but likely X10. Because those same people will then be telling you how Trump and his policies were never really conservative or Republican and, oh, gosh darn it, they were so upset with what he did with regard to all that; really, truly, and with a cherry on top.
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But, just as they did after W left, when the next administration moves to undo any of the Trump policies that trashed the debt, the deficit, and the economy, they’re suddenly be big supporters of that policy all over again.
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And the reality is they will do this because- like so many other things they whined and cried about for eight years under Obama -they never actually cared about any of the things they claimed they cared about. They only cared about being able to say it was something important to them, something being done wrong by the man in the White House then, or something they cared about it.
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http://www.newsweek.com/us-national-debt-adds-1-trillion-six-months-surpassing-21-trillion-mark-855946
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You know why nothing anyone says will matter? Because the people that support Trump don’t actually care about anything they say they care about. All they care about is having their team in charge while they turn a blind eye to reality, and, then, when it blows up in their face, they’ll declare that the other side did it and they never really supported what they spent years telling you they supported.
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Wash, rinse, repeat when the next W, Palin, or Trump comes along and they decide that this person is the real conservative they’ve been waiting for.
Pat Garofalo: Trump knows what too many Democrats don’t: Voters don’t care about the federal deficit
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Criticizing the president about the national debt isn’t a winning strategy. Campaigning on what he spent it on could be.
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https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-knows-what-too-many-democrats-don-t-voters-don-ncna858496
This is somewhat Trump related.
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Oh, this is going to be fun watching conservatives twist themselves into knots and doing mental gymnastics on an Olympic level.
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The NRA confirmed it has been receiving large foreign donations, including from Russian interests seeking to support the election of Donald Trump, but claim no foreign contributions were used to fund campaign donation efforts; something that would be illegal.
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Why is this going to be fun? Because of watching the mental gymnastics conservatives will put themselves through to defend the NRA and claim that they were getting foreign money funding- even foreign money funding from pro-Trump sources -but used none of it during the campaign efforts the NRA engaged in to support Trump and get him elected.
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To some degree, this is a simple claim to at least superficially prove. If, say, 85% of all funds donated were US based, all they would have to do is show that their campaign contributions and election efforts used significantly less than the funds collected by US based sources, and they therefore never touched the foreign based contributions that made up all or part of the other 15%.
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Why is this going to be fun mental gymnastics by conservatives? Because, in order to make that argument, they, unless they wish to be totally dishonest about it, have to admit they’ve been full of šhìŧ for years now about Planned Parenthood and that they’ve known they were full of šhìŧ for years now about Planned Parenthood.
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How’s that you ask? Planned Parenthood received some federal funding for multiple services that helped women. One of the services they did not use the federal funds for was abortion. Planned Parenthood was fairly good about keeping their books up with regards to this. They could show that the amount of money spent on abortions in Planned Parenthood clinics did not reach the point where it crossed over into federal funds.
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But conservatives claimed, math and financial proof be dámņëd, that was a lie. There was no way, they claimed, that Planned Parenthood could receive federal funding and not use federal tax dollars to pay for abortions because if they didn’t have the federal funding they would have to either reduce other services or reduce abortion services and thus it was all one fund and all the same.
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An argument that totally applies here.
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So they either pretend to be intellectually honest and declare that the NRA has violated federal law or they admit they were full of šhìŧ about their claims about federal funding and Planned Parenthood.
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But, hey, who are we kidding here. They’ll pretend that Russian financial donations given to the NRA specifically so that the NRA could assist the election of Donald Trump is just fine and dandy and obviously not against the law because the NRA had enough money to use their own funds for that and used the Russian money they took to do other things while still declaring that any federal funding to Planned Parenthood meant that every abortion was paid for with taxpayer dollars and thus try to have it both ways while claiming these things are just totally different in every way.
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“The National Rifle Association accepts foreign contributions, it told the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee in a recent letter, but the gun rights group insists none of it goes towards elections and is all raised and spent “within the bounds of the law.”
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“The NRA is under pressure after the Parkland shooting and its response to it. A recent McClatchy report also claimed the FBI had looked into whether a Russian banker funneled funds to the NRA to help Donald Trump’s campaign. The NRA acknowledged that it allows for the transfer of funds in between its various entities, making it difficult to track its funding entirely.”
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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nra-accepts-foreign-donations-but-not-for-election-purposes-it-claims/