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Maybe because they're WWII literate and know how it ended for Hitler?
American Democracy Needs More Cowbell, Cleavage
Thursday, July 25th, 2019
by Shower Cap | American Madness Journal
http://showercapblog.com/
Yeah, things remain shitty, here in the Inception sequel where we break into David Duke’s mind to…wait, what? This is real life? Fuck. You mean Rutger Hauer really died?
Born January 23, 1944 in Breukelen, Utrecht, Netherlands
Died July 19, 2019 in Beetsterzwaag, Netherlands
Since his Big Stupid Trade War isn’t pushing Americans into despair and poverty quick enough for his liking, President Liposuction Clinic Dumpster proposed a new rule that would kick more than 3 million people off food stamps.
Look, America’s not gonna be truly great again until our children are fighting each other in the streets over vending machine candy, and I think we need to be adult enough to recognize that.
We enjoy a lot of rights as U.S. citizens, but it turns out the right to not be locked up for more than three weeks, without access to showers or adequate food, is a little less inalienable than your grade school history textbooks led you to believe.
For extra oh-it-can’t-happen-here-can-it fun, you can even literally be carrying documents proving your citizenship, and law enforcement can just go “whatever, that’s fake” for no reason beyond a whim and the adrenaline rush of power, and throw you into an American concentration camp anyway.
Anyway, don’t worry about it. It couldn’t possibly happen to YOU, right?
Oh, and a 44-year-old Mexican man died in ICE custody, too. Are we even gonna bother trying to make Republicans care about dead adults? Like, baby steps, first we agree that migrant children are people, and we build from there?
What we really need is some sort of conference of evangelical “pastors” to determine the precise age (and skin tone) at which a human being becomes fair game for torture. Just for clarity’s sake.
FBI Director Christopher Wray says the bureau has arrested 100 white supremacist domestic terrorists, or would-be terrorists, in just the past 9 months. 100. Wow. Personally, I think Wray should try for one more, and make a coat.
You could point to any of the innumerable failures of the Shart Administration, from health care to the still-not-built-no-matter-how-hard-you-lie-about-it wall to the humiliating midterm blowout, and conclude that Orange Julius Caesar isn’t good at anything, but that would be unfair!
In the field of stochastic terrorism, he’s a goddamn innovator. Take for example Cesar Sayoc, who shoved his head so far up the Fux Nooz propaganda machine’s ass*, he sent 16 mail bombs out to those he perceived as his Turd Emperor’s enemies. By the way, I almost skipped this one because I assumed at first it was the OTHER guy this week who wanted to kill for Trump.
So I guess Boris Johnson is new King of England or something? I don’t pay a lot of attention to shit over there, since Morrissey went crazy. Wait, I think I have that wrong, I guess he’s the Prime Minister of the United Kingston, at least according the Princess Ivanka. It’s that kind of attention to detail that keeps me up at night, wondering if a typo on a birthday card might not set off WWIII.
Larry Kudlow practically had a fainting spell over the dastardly incivility of the reporter who confronted him about his dirtbag boss’ latest lie, because “the president doesn’t make things up.” Heh. John Barron was unavailable for comment.
Hey, I bet you chumps probably thought Bob Mueller’s testimony before the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees was about some shit like “uncovering the truth about the Trump cabal’s crimes” or “protecting the United States from ongoing attacks by a hostile foreign power.” BOY ARE YOU DUMB.
It was actually an audition for a new American Idol spinoff, So You Think You Can Defend the Nation From Election Interference.
God knows Chuck Todd saw the whole thing as an opportunity to snack on some Milk Duds (which frankly should be considered cannibalism) and offer his vapid little thoughts on the OPTICS. “Well golly, Mueller sure did lay out a whole bunch of treasonous crimes, but couldn’t he have flashed a little leg or somethin’? Just to jazz things up a bit?” Substance? I’m sorry, sir, we don’t have THAT here.
That’s the REAL problem, y’see. Rugged Robert wasn’t telegenic enough. When congressional Democrats asked him if the President obstructed justice, he shoulda gone, “Well, he sure didn’t obstruct your mom last night!” with a roguish grin.
Couldn’t even muster an “I’m getting too old for this shit,” and that woulda gotten a huge laugh! Just boring ol’ “The President accepted help from Russia during the 2016 election and lied to cover it up.” GEEZ IT’S LIKE A BLACK AND WHITE FILM. WITH SUBTITLES, EVEN.
Weirdly, nobody’s discussing the “optics” of Bachmann-eyed loons like Devin “Pigfucker” Nunes, Matt Gaetz, Gym Jordan, and Louie Gohmert, vomiting up whatever conspiracy theories they read on the bathroom walls at Alex Jones’ house.
When did we all agree on a standard where any effort that fails to convert the most deeply brainwashed drone on Allen West’s mailing list constitutes disaster? As the great Bill Hicks would say, I must’ve missed that meeting.
Naturally, when Senate Republicans hear, “hey, just as a heads-up, the Russians are still interfering in our elections, right this very minute actually, even as Marco Rubio is selecting the next Bible verse he doesn’t live by to tweet,” from someone who absolutely knows what he’s talking about, their immediately response is to…block some election security bills! And that’s even as their own Intelligence Committee released a report detailing more-widespread-than-initially-thought fuckery. Can I just say, it kinda sucks having fifth columnists in charge of this shit.
You sort of have to wonder what Mitch McConnell”s limit might be. Would he helpfully hold Elizabeth Warren’s lunchbox open while a Russian agent seasoned her pastrami with a dash of polonium-210? So long as there’s a case of shell wax and a few federal judgeships in it for him, I don’t imagine he’d think twice.
Projecting confidence at his Total Exoneration™?, the Velveeta Vulgarina shit his pants on the South Lawn, screeching “YOU ARE FAKE NEWS” at any reporter and/or lawn gnome in the immediate vicinity. Chuck Todd assured us the optics of the American President melting down like a spoiled child who didn’t get the Happy Meal toy he wanted are terrible…for Democrats.
And the Marmalade Shartcannon vetoed three bills designed to force him to stop selling weapons to the Saudis for use in their genocidal war on their southern neighbor. Look, our president holds very few sincere political positions, and maybe he can’t be bothered to learn how NATO, or health insurance, or umbrellas, work, but starving and slaughtering Yemeni children is obviously very important to him, and I think we should respect that.
Despite his awesome, limitless, Article 2 might, Hairplug Himmler lost in court again, this time over his attempt to completely ignore asylum law, like it’s a Pookah or some shit. The administration is expected to appeal, on the grounds that No You Don’t Understand, We Really Really Really Hate Brown People.
Speaking of court defeats, another judge ruled the Grand Wizard Grifter and his shitty kids must face a lawsuit relating to…wait, is this a brand new swindle? How’d I miss this one? Or did I? Have I actually written paragraph upon paragraph about this particular scam, and completely lost track of it in the fog of sexual assault allegations and thinly-veiled calls to violence? Trying to keep track of this cheap crook’s many, many, crimes is like trying to vacuum up cat hair; you’re never gonna get it all.
Wow, did you see where Little Donnie Two-Scoops spoke in front of a fake presidential seal, with golf clubs and a double-headed Russian eagle? Oh man, I laughed so hard I forgot about the kids in concentration camps for like, 1/10th of a second.
As if there isn’t enough tragedy to process these days, I guess Cousin-Fucking Insect Shield Rudy Giuliani is having financial problems in the wake of his latest divorce? HOW MANY TIMES CAN ONE HEART BREAK, GOD?
Facing plummeting approval ratings and a popular challenger, Susan Collins is suddenly teasing that she may not run at all in 2020, denying the good people of Maine their richly-deserved opportunity to fire her over her decision to make the Supreme Court all gross n’ Kavanaughty. Dammit Senator, I already bought the bottle I’m planning on opening the moment they call your race for Sara Gideon, you fucking owe me this!
There’s a whole lotta economic anxiety in our poor, divided, nation these days, from the trio of heavily-armed Ole Miss students posing in front of the shot-to-hell Emmett Till memorial, to the jewel of white womanhood who simply had no other choice but to puke up some hate speech in a total stranger’s lap. She was forced, forced I say! Ne’er have I seen such economic anxiety.
And massive protests in Puerto Rico forced the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló. So um, if anybody from that movement feels like giving, I dunno, lessons, or seminars, on ousting corrupt chief executives, I think there would be a market for that.
The Clinton Murder Machine failed in their attempted assassination of Jeffrey Epstein, probably because Hillary has some sort of deliberating old lady disease. See, sometimes you have to mash up your batshit right wing conspiracy theories, like, why can’t it be lizard people running the child sex slavery ring pizza shop?
(I know it’s well within your power, dear reader, to link me to some godforsaken message board where thousands of people do, in fact, believe just that…I humbly request that you spare me, it’s been a long week.)
Look out, y’all, Redactor General William Barr is gettin’ the federal government back into the state-sponsored homicide business! I’m starting to think Bronco Billy has actually been waiting his whole life for an immoral authoritarian goon to serve, and I’m not particularly eager to see what other horrors he’s got on his Xmas list.
And would-be Treasury Department Spokesdemon Monica Crowley, in addition to being a plagiarizing imbecile, turns out to have a lengthy history of writing paranoid, squirrel poop nutty, Obama-is-a-Muslim-and-probably-eats-babies-too blather, and in any normal administration, her appointment would now be withdrawn in shame, but I’m sure this news only serves to land her on the shortlist to replace Mike Pence.
Well, I think that just about covers it. If you don’t need me for anything else, I’ll just wander off and scream into a pillow for, oh, about seven hours or so. Enjoy your weekend, but please keep our brave infantroopen in your thoughts.
*Obviously, you’ll have to visualize a machine with an ass here. You’re imaginative, so I trust you. Maybe it even has two asses.
I'll be happy to join you in tag-teaming the ignorant mfr. He can neither think nor write worth a shit, so it will hardly be fair.
But like you I no longer give a flying fuck.
And that fire is why doors in commercial buildings opened, by law, outward thereafter.
New documentary brings to life Chicago's deadliest day 104 years later
On Ch 11 @ 8:00 tonight. This was the excursion that 20 year old George Halas luckily arrived too late to board.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/bears/ct-bears-george-halas-eastland-disaster-20190723-g5cnduzrzvcurfilnw2h5addpi-story.html
George Halas was late.
The 20-year-old had a summer job with Western Electric, and on Saturday, July 24, 1915, he planned to join his coworkers aboard the SS Eastland to cross Lake Michigan for the telephone company’s picnic in Michigan City, Ind.
But by the time Halas reached the Chicago River dock, the Eastland was overturned.
Three days later in the Chicago Tribune, in a list under the headline “Western Electric employees missing and possibly dead,” Halas’ name was included: “Halas, G.S., Dept. 4110."
Listings of the names of the "missing and possibly dead" from the Eastland Disaster, which ran in the Chicago Tribune on July 27, 1915. (Chicago Tribune archives) (Chicago Tribune)
“Two of his fraternity brothers from the University of Illinois read the newspaper with his name in the list, and they came to my grandfather’s home to express condolences to my grandfather’s mother,” McCaskey said. “They were very delighted and surprised when my grandfather answered the door.”
According to the Eastland Disaster Historical Society, Halas played on Western Electric’s sports teams and was going to play in the picnic baseball game. His plan was to meet his best friend, Ralph Brizzolara, and Ralph’s brother, Charles. Both boarded the Eastland and survived.
https://abc7chicago.com/new-documentary-bring-to-life-chicagos-deadliest-day-104-years-later/5417208/
Thursday, July 25, 2019 6:40AM
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Wednesday marks the anniversary of the deadliest day in Chicago's history.
More than 800 people drowned when the steamship Eastland capsized in the Chicago River 104 years ago.
Descendants of survivors and victims of the Eastland Disaster gathered below the Clark Street Bridge Wednesday to honor where this sad history was written.
The 104th anniversary of the disaster brings with it a new television documentary that makes clear the ship's owners knew beforehand that the Eastland had serious problems, and that justice was never served for those who died.
"Of all the stories that take place in Chicago, this is the one that we need to make sure the people know," said Harvey Moschman, co-executive producer of documentary "Eastland - Chicago's Deadliest Day."
Apart from a computerized recreation of what happened, the documentary also digs into the tragedy's before and after. It shows the owners of the ship were nearly bankrupt. They knew the Eastland was unsafe, did nothing, and afterward, they fled to Michigan where a trial was held before a pro-business judge. No one was held accountable. The victims' families got nothing.
"This was a terrible, terrible miscalculation by inexperienced ship owners who gambled with 2,500 lives and took greed over public safety," said Chuck Coppola, the documentary's co-executive producer.
But many also remember fearless acts. Young Reggie Bowles, later dubbed the "Human Frog," kept jumping in the water - roughly 40 times - to recover bodies.
"He was traumatized by it. He would talk about the mother with her arms wrapped around the infant that he brought up together from the hull," said David Bowles, Reggie Bowles' grandson.
David Bowles said so many people don't know the story.
But those who do are determined to make sure the "full story" lives on.
Congress quietly removes security clearance process from White House and transfers it to the Pentagon
Quietly as a mouse pissing on cotton. If it had happened in the Obama WH? Sound of chimps banging cymbals. Many, many of them.
But now we live in Hypocritistan.
Source: Raw Story
Published 4 hours ago
on July 25, 2019
By David Cay Johnston, DC Report @ Raw Story
Congress Forced Move After Putin’s Friend in the Oval Office Interfered in Clearance Process for Jared and Ivanka
The Trump Administration, after making a mess of security clearances for federal workers and contractors, is about to hand off to the Pentagon the biggest change in the clearance system in a half-century.
Concern about the security clearance system is not new, but the Government Accountability Office documents serious deterioration since Trump took office. The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress.
The Trump Administration did such a poor job with security clearances that in 2018 the GAO put the entire security clearance system on its High-Risk List.
That’s not surprising given Donald Trump’s continual attacks on our national intelligence agencies as he praises the integrity of Vladimir Putin.
Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/2019/07/congress-quietly-removes-security-clearance-process-from-white-house-and-transfers-it-to-the-pentagon/
The President Held an Extremely Normal HeliPresser After Robert Mueller's Testimony
The world's most powerful man jabbed his finger in people's faces, screaming, "You're Fake News!" He also said Wikileaks was a "hoax."
Garlic, crucifix's, mirrors and sunlight too. Particularly the sunlight we'd like to shine on Trump's tax returns.
Link to WAPO article...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/04/03/a-new-study-suggests-fake-news-might-have-won-donald-trump-the-2016-election/?utm_term=.d04f0fcb5e54
Notably missing from the article?
Pizzagate: From rumor, to hashtag, to gunfire in D.C.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pizzagate-from-rumor-to-hashtag-to-gunfire-in-dc/2016/12/06/4c7def50-bbd4-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.c37024350fb4
By Marc Fisher
December 6, 2016
What was finally real was Edgar Welch, driving from North Carolina to Washington to rescue sexually abused children he believed were hidden in mysterious tunnels beneath a neighborhood pizza joint.
What was real was Welch — a father, former firefighter and sometime movie actor who was drawn to dark mysteries he found on the Internet — terrifying customers and workers with his assault-style rifle as he searched Comet Ping Pong, police said. He found no hidden children, no secret chambers, no evidence of a child sex ring run by the failed Democratic candidate for president of the United States, or by her campaign chief, or by the owner of the pizza place.
What was false were the rumors he had read, stories that crisscrossed the globe about a charming little pizza place that features ping-pong tables in its back room.
The story of Pizzagate is about what is fake and what is real. It’s a tale of a scandal that never was, and of a fear that has spread through channels that did not even exist until recently.
Pizzagate — the belief that code words and satanic symbols point to a sordid underground along an ordinary retail strip in the nation’s capital — is possible only because science has produced the most powerful tools ever invented to find and disseminate information.
What brought Welch to the District on a crisp Sunday afternoon in early December was a choking mix of rumor, political nastiness, technological change and the intoxicating thrill that can come from running down a mystery.
His actions Sunday in one of Washington’s wealthiest neighborhoods reminded Americans that last month’s election did not quite conclude the strangest political season in the nation’s history. Welch did not shoot anyone in the disturbance on Connecticut Avenue NW, but he delivered a troubling message about the shattering of trust in a troubled time.
On Oct. 28, FBI Director James B. Comey told Congress that he was reopening the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. New emails had been found on a computer belonging to disgraced former New York congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Two days later, someone tweeting under the handle @DavidGoldbergNY cited rumors that the new emails “point to a pedophilia ring and @HillaryClinton is at the center.” The rumor was retweeted more than 6,000 times.
The notion quickly moved to other social-media platforms, including 4chan and Reddit, mostly through anonymous or pseudonymous posts. On the far-right site Infowars, talk-show host Alex Jones repeatedly suggested that Clinton was involved in a child sex ring and that her campaign chairman, John Podesta, indulged in satanic rituals.
“When I think about all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped, I have zero fear standing up against her,” Jones said in a YouTube video posted on Nov. 4. “Yeah, you heard me right. Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children. I just can’t hold back the truth anymore.” Jones eventually tied his comments about Clinton to U.S. policy in Syria.
According to YouTube, that video has been viewed more than 427,000 times.
Over the next couple of days, the wild accusations against Clinton gradually merged with a new raft of allegations stemming from WikiLeaks’ release of Podesta’s emails. Those emails showed that Podesta occasionally dined at Comet Ping Pong.
On Nov. 7, the hashtag #pizzagate first appeared on Twitter. Over the next several weeks, it would be tweeted and retweeted hundreds or thousands of times each day.
An oddly disproportionate share of the tweets about Pizzagate appear to have come from, of all places, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Vietnam, said Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University in North Carolina. In some cases, the most avid retweeters appeared to be bots, programs designed to amplify certain news and information.
“What bots are doing is really getting this thing trending on Twitter,” Albright said. “These bots are providing the online crowds that are providing legitimacy.”
Online, the more something is retweeted or otherwise shared, the more prominently it appears in social media and on sites that track “trending” news. As the bots joined ordinary Twitter users in pushing out Pizzagate-related rumors, the notion spread like wildfire. Who programmed the bots to focus on that topic remains unknown.
The best satire is deft, and the Duffleblog is nothing if not that.
It's a satire from Duffleblog. How else the reference to Taylor Swift?
Hey asshole, I never responded one way or another to that moronic question, so you've projected your own cowardice on to the wrong guy.
A new study suggests fake news might have won Donald Trump the 2016 election
By Aaron Blake
April 3, 2018
Screenshot from 2016 Donald Trump campaign ad, “Dangerous.”
President Trump has said repeatedly that Russian interference didn't matter in the 2016 presidential campaign, and he has suggested — wrongly — that the intelligence and law enforcement communities have said the same.
His overriding fear seems to be that Russian interference and the “fake news” it promoted would undermine the legitimacy of his election win.
Trump won't like this new study one bit.
The study from researchers at Ohio State University finds that fake news probably played a significant role in depressing Hillary Clinton's support on Election Day.
The study, which has not been peer-reviewed but which may be the first look at how fake news affected voter choices, suggests that about 4 percent of President Barack Obama's 2012 supporters were dissuaded from voting for Clinton in 2016 by belief in fake news stories.
Richard Gunther, Paul A. Beck and Erik C. Nisbet, the study's authors, inserted three popular fake news stories from the 2016 campaign into a 281-question YouGov survey given to a sample that included 585 Obama supporters — 23 percent of whom didn't vote for Clinton, either by abstaining or picking another candidate (10 percent voted Trump, which is in line with other estimates).
Here are the false stories, along with the percentages of Obama supporters who believed they were at least “probably” true (in parenthesis):
1.Clinton was in “very poor health due to a serious illness” (12 percent)
2.Pope Francis endorsed Trump (8 percent)
3.Clinton approved weapons sales to Islamic jihadists, “including ISIS” (20 percent)
Overall about one-quarter of 2012 Obama voters believed at least one of these stories, and of that group 45 percent voted for Clinton. Of those who believed none of the fake news stories, 89 percent voted for Clinton.
This alone does not prove that fake news made a difference, of course. A recent Princeton-led study of fake news consumption during the 2016 campaign found that false articles made up 2.6 percent of all hard-news articles late in the 2016 campaign, with the stories most often reaching intense partisans who probably were not persuadable. And it wouldn't be surprising if Obama voters who weren't reliable Democratic supporters were more apt to believe fake news stories that affirmed their decision not to vote for Clinton.
So the researchers sought to control for other factors such as gender, race, age, education, political leaning and even personal feelings about Clinton and Trump using multiple regression analysis, a method to measure the relative impact of multiple independent variables.
According to the researchers, all of these factors combined to explain 38 percent of the defection of Obama voters from Clinton, but belief in fake news explained an additional 11 percent.
For those defecting from Clinton, believing fake news had a greater effect than anything except being a Republican or personally disliking Clinton. Obama voters who believed one of these fake news stories “were 3.9 times more likely to defect from the Democratic ticket in 2016 than those who believed none of these false claims, after taking into account all of these other factors,” the researchers write.
“We cannot prove that belief in fake news caused these former Obama voters to defect from the Democratic candidate in 2016,” they write. “These data strongly suggest, however, that exposure to fake news did have a significant impact on voting decisions.”
Exactly how that translates into raw votes and whether it swung the election is the big question — and the one that seems to preoccupy Trump. It's difficult to know how fake news played specifically in the three states that delivered him the presidency: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
But the fact that Clinton lost each of these divisive states by less than one percentage point means that even a slight impact by Russia and/or fake news — or even then-FBI Director James B. Comey's announcement about Clinton's emails or some other factor — could logically have changed the result.
But we can use this study to glean clues and even rerun a hypothetical 2016 election. The Washington Post's polling director, Scott Clement, ran a predictive probability analysis using the OSU team's data and compared the existing 2016 election to a hypothetical election in which these fake news stories didn't exist. The result: Clinton lost 4.2 percent more of Obama's votes in the race with fake news vs. the hypothetical race without it.
If we multiply that 4.2 percent drop-off by Obama's 2012 vote share in the three key states that delivered the presidency to Trump, it suggests that fake news cost Clinton about 2.2 or 2.3 points apiece in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And Clinton lost Michigan by just 0.2 points and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by 0.72 and 0.76 points, respectively.
These are rough estimates, to be clear. But notably, Clinton's estimated drop-off in each state would be about three times bigger — or more — than the study's impact of fake news. That would mean that, for fake news not to have made the difference (according to these data), Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would have had to be uniquely impervious to the effects of fake news, compared with the rest of the country.
The survey also notably doesn't measure what effect fake news might have had on increasing Trump's support, instead only focusing on how it depressed Clinton's. That could increase the shift. But even with this limited purview, it suggests it made a significant difference.
And it suggests it may well have cost Clinton the presidency.
That's the usual response from morons who understandably can never post the 'why' for their inane statements.
Greenpeace supports Iran’s seizure of oil tankers
Published
July 25, 2019
By 29ReasonsWhy
British oil tanker
WASHINGTON—Greenpeace released a statement today lauding the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy for its “courageous and necessary” decision to seize two British-operated oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
The environmentalist group thanked its fellow ecoterrorists for taking direct action to disrupt the oil trade that is responsible for “destroying the ocean’s ecosystems, causing global warming, and providing a distribution channel for Taylor Swift.”
At the same time, Greenpeace called on the United States to resist calls for restraint amid mounting tensions in the Middle East.
“We finally have enough pretext to obliterate the source of roughly 60 percent of the world’s oil,” the statement noted. “This could be America’s greatest contribution to the environmentalist cause since they used nuclear weapons to stop Japan from hunting whales.”
FARS News, Iran’s semiofficial state media outlet, broadcast Greenpeace’s statement in prime time. Analysts interpreted this as a move by the government to shore up support among the country’s liberal opposition groups, who feel the nation has not done enough to invest in alternative sources of energy, specifically nuclear power.
https://www.duffelblog.com/2019/07/greenpeace-supports-irans-seizure-of-oil-tankers/?utm_source=Normal+Subscribers&utm_campaign=c17cf6ea1c-Duffel_Blog_Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6d392bc034-c17cf6ea1c-23791221&goal=0_6d392bc034-c17cf6ea1c-23791221&mc_cid=c17cf6ea1c&mc_eid=cc8af7284a
Oh I don't know. That as usual you are simply and completely full of shit?
Action would have included support for the legislation described.
GOP blocks election security bills after Mueller testimony
Your certitude is unwarranted,
Source: The Hill
Senate Republicans blocked two election security bills and a cybersecurity measure on Wednesday in the wake of former special counsel Robert Mueller warning about meddling attempts during his public testimony before congressional lawmakers.
Read more: https://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/454635-gop-blocks-election-security-bills-after-mueller-testimony
The Mueller Hearings and The Stench in Washington
Some House members seemed more loyal to party than to country.
By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
July 24, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/opinion/mueller-hearings-congress.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190725?campaign_id=2&instance_id=11094&segment_id=15528&user_id=4598f2b6c0cd59a7a59daee9f650852d®i_id=222124460725
Robert Mueller speaking Wednesday on Capitol Hill.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
Robert Mueller seemed to be hoping during congressional hearings on Wednesday that SEAL Team 6 would rush in and rescue him from his interrogators.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans got the sound bites they were looking for. Mueller declined even to read from his own report, apparently to avoid providing made-for-television clips, and he sometimes came across as muddled.
Yet the hearings still offered a window into the state of our presidency at a time when our political system is being grievously tested. I was transported back to my days as a teenager on an Oregon farm in the early 1970s, watching hearings about Watergate and President Richard Nixon.
We had just bought our first television — black-and-white — so that we could follow the national crisis. While there were many facts and laws in dispute, the backdrop seemed indisputable: Our president was dishonest and had egregiously abused his powers.
There were no huge revelations on Wednesday, but there was a similar sense of a stench in Washington that might have far-reaching consequences. Here was one exchange that might offer a glimpse of the future:
Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado: “Could you charge the president with a crime after he left office?”
Mueller: “Yes.”
Buck (sounding startled): “You believe you could charge the president of the United States with obstruction of justice after he left office?”
Mueller: “Yes.”
I wonder how that went over in the Trump family. This shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it creates one more reason Trump will be desperate to win re-election: Winning might keep him out of prison.
Somewhat reluctantly, Mueller seemed to acknowledge that Trump acted in ways that sound like obstruction of justice. In an exchange with Representative Cedric Richmond, Democrat of Louisiana, Mueller amplified this:
Richmond: “So it’s fair to say the president tried to protect himself by asking staff to falsify records relevant to an ongoing investigation?”
Mueller: “I would say that’s generally a summary.”
None of this should seem surprising to anyone who read the Mueller report. After all, more than 1,000 former federal prosecutors, serving under Democrats and Republicans alike, signed a letter stating that if it weren’t for a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion, Trump would face “multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”
The letter outlines the evidence for those charges, including “witness-tampering” and creation of “false evidence.”
We should all be wary of our own selection bias and tendency to cherry-pick, and just because a president can be indicted after leaving office doesn’t mean that Trump will be in jeopardy. But at the broadest level, the hearings underscored the stink captured in the Mueller report.
Attorney General Bill Barr initially fumigated the report, claiming that the evidence it presented effectively exonerated Trump; that was inaccurate but was seized upon by Trump himself. The president repeatedly claimed that the Mueller investigation (“the greatest witch hunt in U.S. history”) found “no collusion, no obstruction.”
In the hearings, Mueller directly contradicted that line of defense, stating bluntly: “The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed.”
In his opening statement before the Judiciary Committee, Mueller also flatly challenged Trump’s repeated efforts to downplay Russia’s interference in the election. Mueller noted that the Russians had interfered in an attempt to help Trump win, and he declared: “Our investigation found that the Russian government interfered in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion. … Over the course of my career, I’ve seen a number of challenges to our democracy. The Russian government’s effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious.”
Likewise, Mueller directly denied that he had been interviewed for the job of F.B.I. director and that he had been turned down, as Trump claimed. “I was not applying for that job,” Mueller said. Not surprisingly, he also denied that the investigation had been a “witch hunt” and he sharply criticized Trump’s praise for WikiLeaks’s release of emails hacked by Russia.
There was partisanship on both sides, of course, but I was struck and saddened by the way some Republicans lashed out at Mueller and tried to discredit him. After all, Mueller is a lifelong Republican, a decorated veteran and a longtime law enforcement leader — precisely the kind of person one might expect Republicans to show respect for.
It seemed that once Republicans had gauged Mueller’s refusal to push back hard, they chose to toss out conspiracy theories about the origins of the investigation. They didn’t contest the specific points made about Trump trying to foil the justice system, but they did try to distract from them.
When I was a teenager watching hearings about Nixon’s abuses, I was struck by the willingness of some Republicans to defend Nixon and argue that Watergate was vastly overblown.
Soon enough, this was shown to be a triumph of loyalty to party over loyalty to country. History won’t reward obfuscation or blind party loyalty this time, either.
Politico: On 2016 Russian interference and what Obama tried to do
By Eric Black | 04/29/2019
MinnPost readers are smart and well-informed and I often benefit from reading the comment threads under my posts.
Which explains why you never landed here...
https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2019/04/politico-on-2016-russian-interference-and-what-obama-tried-to-do/
LOL!
This morning’s post mocked a certain current POTUS about a recent attack by the Trump political operation blaming former President Barack Obama for allowing the Russians to influence the 2016 election in favor of well – that same current POTUS. This is not a joke. See the Black Ink post of this morning,
I had forgotten the details about whether and why Obama might have done such a thing. But in reading the comments just now, I got a reminder, which I’m hereby passing along for the benefit of those who may not read the discussion threads.
President Obama had intelligence indicating that Russia was using various efforts to help Donald Trump win. He wanted to make it public, but was concerned that, as a Democrat himself but also the POTUS and the most important recipient of such intelligence, it would look partisan and unseemly to make the intelligence finding public unless he had backing to do so from congressional leaders of both parties.
Mitch McConnell, the leader of Senate Republicans, refused to sign a statement condemning the Russian efforts. Obama, for good or ill, chose not to go public.
Politico ran a recent piece that goes over the matter. It quotes then-Vice President Joe Biden, who was in the middle of the effort to get bipartisan condemnation.
Biden said that soon after Election Day, more intelligence clarified how extensive the Russian effort had been, and suggested that if that intelligence had been available sooner “we may have done something more,” to expose what the Russians were doing.
Thank you, commenter Brian Mann for alerting me to that piece of the story.
Mitch McConnell should explain why he obscured Russian ...
https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/editorials/article120718538.html
Now McConnell's pre-election move to obscure Russian interference will .... Obama and the Democrats should have gone ahead with the statement, .... Ex-UK football player mailed $8,000 connected to drugs, feds allege in claim for cash.
Mitch McConnell tries gaslighting on Obama, Russia | MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/mitch-mcconnell-tries-gaslighting-obama-russia
Mar 26, 2019 - That said, for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ... McConnell argued that the report shows that Obama was ... Obama White House's attempts to call out the Russia interference efforts ahead of the 2016 election.
Dumb-ass doesn't understand that defending oneself in a legal/criminal investigation does not allow 'feelings of innocence' to justify obstructing that investigation.
This amoral ignorant mfr is the avatar, the repository of stupidity, for everyone just as dumb and willfully ignorant as him.
I don't forget that. Neither do I forget the principle of 'not mutually exclusive' or:
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Charles P. Pierce: The President* Is a Crook and Everyone in Congress Knows It
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a28496494/robert-mueller-testify-donald-trump-crook/
Robert Mueller wasn't Richard Pryor at the mic, but he confirmed it in his own way.
By Charles P. Pierce
Jul 24, 2019
snip//
(An aside: if Chuck Todd uses the word "optics" ever again in connection with American politics, I am going to raise William Allen White from the dead and make him put Todd on the night rewrite desk until Jesus comes home.)
In this instance, however, Todd was on the money.
Otherwise, the hearing was a matter of having Democratic members of the committee soliciting damaging, "Yes," answers while Republicans yelled at Mueller, called his actions un-American, waved at him so the folks at home got the notion that Mueller was doddering, and basically loosed all the pent-up soundbites that they hadn't yet gotten to deliver on Sean Hannity's program.
There even was a citing of Hillary Rodham Clinton's email procedures. I mean, when you can line up Louie Gohmert, Padishah Emperor Of The Stupid People, Jim Jordan, and Gaetz, you have firmly set up headquarters in the Land of the Lost.
snip//
The Democratic approach was best exemplified by Rep. Karen Bass of California, who led Mueller through a damning yes-no litany regarding the president*'s attempts to get Mueller fired through his then-White House counsel Don McGahn. Bass asked:
COMMUNICATING THROUGH HIS PERSONAL ATTORNEY, McGAHN REFUSED, BECAUSE HE SAID, QUOTE, THAT THE TIMES STORY WAS ACCURATE IN REPORTING THAT THE PRESIDENT WANTED THE SPECIAL COUNSEL REMOVED. ISN'T THAT RIGHT?
ON PAGE 113 IT SAYS, QUOTE, THE PRESIDENT THEN DIRECTED PORTER TO TELL McGAHN TO CREATE A RECORD, TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THE PRESIDENT NEVER DIRECTED McGAHN TO FIRE YOU, END QUOTE. IS THAT CORRECT?
AND TO BE CLEAR, THE PRESIDENT IS ASKING HIS WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL, DON McGAHN, TO CREATE A RECORD THAT McGAHN BELIEVED TO BE UNTRUE WHILE YOU WERE IN THE MIDST OF INVESTIGATING THE PRESIDENT FOR OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE. CORRECT?
OKAY. BUT THE PRESIDENT STILL DIDN'T GIVE UP, DID HE? SO THE PRESIDENT TOLD McGAHN DIRECTLY TO DENY THAT THE PRESIDENT TOLD HIM TO HAVE YOU FIRED. CAN YOU TELL ME EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED?
WELL, ON PAGE 116, IT SAYS THE PRESIDENT MET HIM IN THE OVAL OFFICE, QUOTE, THE PRESIDENT BEGAN THE OVAL OFFICE MEETING BY TELLING McGAHN THAT THE "NEW YORK TIMES" STORY DIDN'T LOOK GOOD AND McGAHN NEEDED TO CORRECT IT. IS THAT CORRECT?
Mueller answered, "Correct," or "True," or, "I refer you back to the report," to all of these. And if that isn't plainly an obstruction of justice, I don't know what you'd call it.
And the fact that Mueller wasn't exactly Richard Pryor while delivering his answers doesn't matter a damn. He said the president* is a crook. Everyone in Congress knows it, and they knew it before Wednesday even had dawned. But now there's video.
Aw Jeez, imagery I really didn't need. The very definition of a bell that can not be un-rung.
Those tighty-whiteys are too small by several sizes though. Looks more like an exercise band.
Thanks for slapping that post-it-note on my visual cortex.
Maybe if I take a bike ride I can pedal/aerobicize if out. Doubtful though.
Yeah, this is fucking hilarious....
SCHIFF: “Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged Russian interference?”
MUELLER: “Yes.”
SCHIFF: “And then Trump and his campaign lied about it to cover it up?”
MUELLER: “Yes.”
Climb out of your trailer and go tend your still.
The two big Mueller exchanges that capture the Russia scandal
The smoking gun moment of the hearings: MUELLER: "Yes." & Yes."
SCHIFF: “Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged Russian interference?”
MUELLER: “Yes.”
SCHIFF: “And then Trump and his campaign lied about it to cover it up?”
MUELLER: “Yes.”
Adam Schiff
@RepAdamSchiff
Here’s what Mueller said:
?? Russia interfered in our election to help Trump.
?? Russians made numerous contacts with the campaign.
?? Campaign welcomed their help.
?? No one reported these contacts or interference to FBI.
?? They lied to cover it up.
I guess I missed the defense, aside from Gingrich's lame attempt at defending his hypocrisy.
As I stated IL is not uniquely corrupt and the biggest political crimes in history belong to the GOP.
Mueller gives Nunes a toothache?
I make no brief for the GOP tactics, we've seen them deployed often enough. But Mueller was asking for repeating of questions from the Dems as well.
He should have recognized the words from his report, when the Dems were citing chapter and verse, sooner than he did
Let's see if Mueller rouses himself in response to Nunes' disgraceful opening remarks about the 'conspiracy theory report.'
WHAT an asshole.
There's a fine line between calm and professional and distracted and befuddled.
I just think he needed to be more of a forecful advocate than he was for a report, HIS baby, that has been badly misrepresented by the target and by his stooge AG.
Maybe he's a quick learner and we'll see a sharper witness in round 2.
Worse than that, I'm afraid.
He dithered too much and was too passive for my tastes. He roused himself in defense of his staff but pushed back on little else.
The looking through his briefing book and asking for repeating of questions made it cringeworthy, for me.
We'll just have to take, settle for, the confirmations of the DOJ guideline as determinative in the non prosecution decision, the obstruction of justice citations as a basis for an article of impeachment and the frequent confirmations by him of the accuracy of what was in his report.
Ok, I just did. If the author wins by the slimmest of margins I'll give you the into to send me an autographed copy.
If the 3 bringing up the rear finish with their present share of the votes, they are aptly titled. LOL!
Thanks. You voted for Ask Again, Yes.
Poll Results
Ask Again, Yes
49%
The Chain
47%
Fleishman Is in Trouble
1%
The Gone Dead
1%
The Silent Patient
Unfair...……….to cabbages.
Impeachment Is Not Just About Mueller
07/23/2019
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2019/07/impeachment-is-not-just-about-mueller.html
Unless something extraordinary and unexpected happens at these hearings, like that former Special Counsel Robert Mueller actually answers the question about whether or not Donald Trump would have been indicted had he not been president, then the Democrats have already fucked up by placing so much emphasis on what the Mueller Report told us about Trump's behavior.
Yeah, it's true that the report pretty much says that Trump obstructed justice in the investigation and that some hinky shit was going on with Russia, but, fuck, that's complicated and it doesn't involve blow jobs, so most people don't even want to understand.
Mostly, though, you can count on Mueller constantly referring to the report as Democrats try to get something out of him and Republicans yell at him about nutzoid conspiracies. (For the record, I think it's bullshit cowardice and a dereliction of duty that Mueller hasn't said, "Yeah, I'd've arrested the motherfucker if I could have.")
Democrats in Congress have made a strategic error in not making Trump's gross racism and sexism a centerpiece in a concerted attack on him. And it's a goddamn tragedy the way that credible allegations of rape and other sexual assault and misbehavior have been pretty much ignored.
And that's all incredibly frustrating and outright enraging because there is more than enough to impeach without Mueller, but by hyping first the report and now Mueller's appearance before congressional committees, Democrats have given themselves very little wiggle room and little time to build a case for impeachment on everything (and I mean fucking everything, from emoluments to misuse of intelligence to disrespect of Congress to incompetence to being a danger to the nation) else.
Donald Trump isn't a politician who fucked around with an investigation to stay in power. He's an entirely corrupt entity, a spreading cancer, a hatemongering beast who needs to be ejected from the body politic in the firmest, angriest legal way possible.
In an amazing thread on Twitter, author and former political consultant Tim Wise lays out why it's horseshit that Democrats are trying to fight Trump on policy grounds. Wise was a staffer for a PAC that opposed David Duke in both his statewide runs, for Senate and governor, in Louisiana, and he saw how bothering to argue tax policy with Duke made the white supremacist part of things so normal.
As Wise puts it, "It allowed people to say 'well if he's really this racist, white supremacist, why are they talking about all this other stuff?'" The same goes for Trump's indecencies.
Every fucking day should be a barrage of Democrats saying that they refuse to work with a racist and an accused rapist who pals around with child rapists (and, yeah, may be a child rapists himself). That's how you don't normalize this shit. Don't dignify him. Don't meet with him. Don't attend his events. Don't act nice and polite. Fuck him up.
And start the goddamned impeachment hearings because he's a racist and an accused rapist. For fuck's sake, we have a tape now of him literally grabbing a woman and patting her ass where no consent at all is involved. This ain't a bunch of conspiracy theories. It's the actual words and actions of the president, both now and in the past.
Every Democratic debate should be how fucking pathetic it is that greedy, shitty Republicans defend a a racist and an accused rapist who pals around with child rapists. Notice how you don't even have to mention Russia or obstruction of justice or Mueller. And no one can accuse you of socialism because, well, fuck, it's not even in the mix.
Yes, Democrats have botched the hell out of all of this, except, you know, the Squad and a few others, but they are working in a vacuum without leadership behind them. Democratic leaders have botched the reaction to the Mueller Report, they have botched all the revelations about Trump, they have botched it all in favor of some forgotten notion of comity, some false belief in the power of policy.
It's as if Democrats still believe that they can convince white racists to give up their racism for Medicare-for-all and free college. You really think voters in Kentucky are gonna give two shits that thousands and thousands of people will lose their health care if Republicans succeed killing the Affordable Care Act? They sure didn't in 2016.
So the Mueller hearings will happen and we might learn something, but more than likely we won't, and because Democrats fumbled the initial spin, it'll have no effect on public opinion. But they can still get things going on all the other fronts in the mistake that is the presidency of Donald Trump.
Jesus fuck, the man ranted and lied to a bunch of teenagers today about "illegal immigrants" and voter fraud: "You got people voting that shouldn’t be voting. They vote many times, not just twice, not just three times. They vote — it’s like a circle. They come back; they put a new hat on. They come back; they put a new shirt.
And in many cases, they don’t even do that." He is a fucking animal, a fucking plague dog, and he needs to be dealt with as such. That motherfucker won't let you pet him if you put your hand out gently. He'll bite the shit out of you while pissing on your shoes and then lunge at your throat.
I'm shitting all over Democrats here, but the real villains are, of course, Republicans, who have let Trump get away with all of it, who created the circumstances for Trump to be president, who are complicit in every crime, in every immoral act, in every ass-fucking of tradition and ethics, in every tearing up of the Constitution.
They must be driven out of politics, and you're not gonna do that by debating Trump on trade with China. You do that by getting a majority of Americans frothing and outraged and revolted at the idea of Trump as a human being. It really shouldn't be this hard.
This is life and death. If that's not clear by now, then all the time in the world with Mueller ain't gonna change it.
Read this again, an article dated 3 years after the one you posted and thusly benefiting from a perspective not available in '08.
The story of the 2008 financial crisis
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/22/5086/#67d745def92f
The driving force behind the crisis was the private sector
Looking at these events it is absurd to suggest, as Bloomberg did, that "Congress forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp."
Many actors obviously played a role in this story. Some of the actors were in the public sector and some of them were in the private sector.
But the public sector agencies were acting at behest of the private sector. It’s not as though Congress woke up one morning and thought to itself, “Let’s abolish the Glass-Steagall Act!” Or the SEC spontaneously happened to have the bright idea of relaxing capital requirements on the investment banks.
Or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of its own accord abruptly had the idea of preempting state laws protecting borrowers. These agencies of government were being strenuously lobbied to do the very things that would benefit the financial sector and their managers and traders. And behind it all, was the drive for short-term profits.
Now which political Party do you suppose is most receptive to being 'strenuously lobbied to do the very things that would benefit the financial sector and their managers and traders.'?
So let’s recap the basic facts: why did we have a financial crisis in 2008? Barry Ritholtz fills us in on the history with an excellent series of articles in the Washington Post:
•In 1998, banks got the green light to gamble: The Glass-Steagall legislation, which separated regular banks and investment banks was repealed in 1998. This allowed banks, whose deposits were guaranteed by the FDIC, i.e. the government, to engage in highly risky business.
•Low interest rates fueled an apparent boom: Following the dot-com bust in 2000, the Federal Reserve dropped rates to 1 percent and kept them there for an extended period. This caused a spiral in anything priced in dollars (i.e., oil, gold) or credit (i.e., housing) or liquidity driven (i.e., stocks).
•Asset managers sought new ways to make money: Low rates meant asset managers could no longer get decent yields from municipal bonds or Treasurys. Instead, they turned to high-yield mortgage-backed securities.
•The credit rating agencies gave their blessing: The credit ratings agencies — Moody’s, S&P and Fitch had placed an AAA rating on these junk securities, claiming they were as safe as U.S. Treasurys.
•Fund managers didn’t do their homework: Fund managers relied on the ratings of the credit rating agencies and failed to do adequate due diligence before buying them and did not understand these instruments or the risk involved.
•Derivatives were unregulated: Derivatives had become a uniquely unregulated financial instrument. They are exempt from all oversight, counter-party disclosure, exchange listing requirements, state insurance supervision and, most important, reserve requirements. This allowed AIG to write $3 trillion in derivatives while reserving precisely zero dollars against future claims.
•The SEC loosened capital requirements: In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission changed the leverage rules for just five Wall Street banks. This exemption replaced the 1977 net capitalization rule’s 12-to-1 leverage limit. This allowed unlimited leverage for Goldman Sachs [GS], Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch (now part of Bank of America [BAC]), Lehman Brothers (now defunct) and Bear Stearns (now part of JPMorganChase--[JPM]).
These banks ramped leverage to 20-, 30-, even 40-to-1. Extreme leverage left little room for error. By 2008, only two of the five banks had survived, and those two did so with the help of the bailout.
•The federal government overrode anti-predatory state laws. In 2004, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency federally preempted state laws regulating mortgage credit and national banks, including anti-predatory lending laws on their books (along with lower defaults and foreclosure rates). Following this change, national lenders sold increasingly risky loan products in those states. Shortly after, their default and foreclosure rates increased markedly.
•Compensation schemes encouraged gambling: Wall Street’s compensation system was—and still is—based on short-term performance, all upside and no downside. This creates incentives to take excessive risks. The bonuses are extraordinarily large and they continue--$135 billion in 2010 for the 25 largest institutions and that is after the meltdown.
•Wall Street became “creative”: The demand for higher-yielding paper led Wall Street to begin bundling mortgages. The highest yielding were subprime mortgages. This market was dominated by non-bank originators exempt from most regulations.
•Private sector lenders fed the demand: These mortgage originators’ lend-to-sell-to-securitizers model had them holding mortgages for a very short period. This allowed them to relax underwriting standards, abdicating traditional lending metrics such as income, credit rating, debt-service history and loan-to-value.
•Financial gadgets milked the market: “Innovative” mortgage products were developed to reach more subprime borrowers. These include 2/28 adjustable-rate mortgages, interest-only loans, piggy-bank mortgages (simultaneous underlying mortgage and home-equity lines) and the notorious negative amortization loans (borrower’s indebtedness goes up each month). These mortgages defaulted in vastly disproportionate numbers to traditional 30-year fixed mortgages.
•Commercial banks jumped in: To keep up with these newfangled originators, traditional banks jumped into the game. Employees were compensated on the basis loan volume, not quality.
•Derivatives exploded uncontrollably: CDOs provided the first “infinite market”; at height of crash, derivatives accounted for 3 times global economy.
•The boom and bust went global. Proponents of the Big Lie ignore the worldwide nature of the housing boom and bust. A McKinsey Global Institute report noted “from 2000 through 2007, a remarkable run-up in global home prices occurred.”
•Fannie and Freddie jumped in the game late to protect their profits: Nonbank mortgage underwriting exploded from 2001 to 2007, along with the private label securitization market, which eclipsed Fannie and Freddie during the boom. The vast majority of subprime mortgages — the loans at the heart of the global crisis — were underwritten by unregulated private firms.
These were lenders who sold the bulk of their mortgages to Wall Street, not to Fannie or Freddie. Indeed, these firms had no deposits, so they were not under the jurisdiction of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp or the Office of Thrift Supervision.
•Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac market share declined. The relative market share of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dropped from a high of 57 percent of all new mortgage originations in 2003, down to 37 percent as the bubble was developing in 2005-06. More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions. The government-sponsored enterprises were concerned with the loss of market share to these private lenders
— Fannie and Freddie were chasing profits, not trying to meet low-income lending goals.
•It was primarily private lenders who relaxed standards: Private lenders not subject to congressional regulations collapsed lending standards. the GSEs. Conforming mortgages had rules that were less profitable than the newfangled loans.
Private securitizers — competitors of Fannie and Freddie — grew from 10 percent of the market in 2002 to nearly 40 percent in 2006. As a percentage of all mortgage-backed securities, private securitization grew from 23 percent in 2003 to 56 percent in 2006.
Looking at these events it is absurd to suggest, as Bloomberg did, that "Congress forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp."
1. No post to others has some kind of immunity from responses from other posters. You may not like that, but it is a far more common practice than it is a rare one.
2. I've read enough of DD's posts to feel confident that he will not contradict anything in my response to you.
So I'm not worried. You?
On Wednesday, the former special counsel will first testify for three hours before the House Judiciary Committee at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, and then before the House Intelligence Committee at noon.
Check your local listings. :)
Nothing in his post warrants the erroneous inference you've drawn.
Unregulated, insufficiently regulated capitalism is the issue, the problem.
The following applies no less to capitalism than it does to government. If anything, more so.
https://mises.org/library/if-men-were-angels
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.1
Clinton Impeachment House Speakers’ Sex Scandals
A tweet claiming that all Republican Speakers of the House involved with Bill Clinton's impeachment experienced sex scandals was mostly accurate.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/republican-impeached-clinton-scandal/
Kim LaCapria
Published 4 May 2016
Claim
All three Speakers of the House involved with the impeachment of President Clinton later had sex scandals of their own.
There's a meme making the rounds on Facebook that says in essence that every Republican who has been involved in the Clinton impeachment has since been involved in a sex scandal. It quotes Will McAvoy of Network News who is, of course, fictional but who may have his facts right. Or not.
Collected via e-mail, May 2016
Rating
Mostly True
What's True
Three politicians (Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, and Dennis Hastert) served or nearly served as Speakers of the House during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton; all three men experienced public sex scandals of varying severity.
What's Undetermined
Whether Gingrich's 2007 admission of an affair during the 1998-1999 impeachment qualifies as a sex scandal.
Origin
On 27 April 2016, the popular Twitter account @WillMcAvoyACN published the above-reproduced tweet, which said that every Republican Speaker of the House involved with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton was subsequently felled by a sex scandal:
The impetus for the tweet was probably the recent sentencing of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who was accused of sexually abusing at least four teenaged boys while working as a wrestling coach, then subsequently convicted of illegally structuring bank accounts to pay off accusers.
A 2 May 2016 New York Times profile of Hastert’s fall from grace pointed out that his appointment to the Speaker position was a result of cascading sex scandals:
It was a sex scandal that put Mr. Hastert into the top House job in the first place. Robert Livingston, a Louisiana Republican in line to replace Newt Gingrich, was forced to step aside after accusations of marital infidelity as the House impeached President Bill Clinton in 1998.
Republicans settled on Mr. Hastert, then a deputy to the feared House whip, Tom DeLay of Texas, a figure so polarizing he could not move into the speaker’s chair.
As accusations against Hastert emerged in mid-2015, the Chicago Tribune reported that he was “dubbed the ‘Accidental Speaker,’ plucked from a junior position in the GOP leadership in December 1998 during the chaotic moments after newly nominated Republican Speaker Bob Livingston of Louisiana disclosed an extramarital affair and turned down the post”:
As House speaker from 1999 to 2007, the husky, gray-thatched Illinoisan was just two heartbeats away from the presidency. At 73, he has been in recent years working mostly behind the scenes as a Washington power broker.
The arc of Clinton’s impeachment was long, arguably commencing with the President’s appearance in front of a federal grand jury on 18 August 1998 (during Newt Gingrich’s tenure as Speaker). By November 1998, Gingrich resigned from his post as Speaker, facing a challenge from Rep. Bob Livingston:
Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the charismatic soul of the Republican Revolution whose members turned on him after unexpected losses in Tuesday’s election, announced yesterday he will quit as speaker of the House.
His stunning exit came only hours after longtime friend Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) told reporters he intended to challenge Gingrich when House Republicans meet Nov. 18 to pick their leaders for the 106th Congress.
President Bill Clinton’s impeachment was complicated by sex scandals affecting House leadership at the same time, but he was formally impeached on 19 December 1998:
Mr. Clinton became only the second President in history to be impeached, in a stunning day that also brought the resignation of the incoming Speaker of the House, Robert L. Livingston.
At 1:22 P.M., the House of Representatives approved, 228 to 206, the first article of impeachment, accusing Mr. Clinton of perjury for misleading a Federal grand jury last Aug. 17 about the nature of his relationship with a White House intern, Monica S. Lewinsky … American politics seemed to be descending into the very cannibalism that Speaker Newt Gingrich had warned of when he was toppled a month ago.
Hours before Mr. Clinton was impeached for his efforts to cover up his affair with Ms. Lewinsky, [then-incoming Speaker of the House, Robert L.] Livingston, who had been chosen to succeed Mr. Gingrich, shocked the House by announcing he would leave Congress because of revelations of his own adulterous affairs.
Still, it was Mr. Livingston today who called for Mr. Clinton’s resignation from the House floor. Charging that Mr. Clinton had undermined the rule of law and damaged the nation, Mr. Livingston said, “I say that you have the power to terminate that damage and heal the wounds that you have created. You, sir, may resign your post.”
As some Democrats shouted back, “You resign,” the Louisiana Republican said, “I was prepared to lead our narrow majority as Speaker and I believe I had it in me to do a fine job. But I cannot do that job or be the kind of leader that I would like to be under current circumstances. So I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow.”
With a sex scandal now consuming one of their own, the House’s impeachment debate turned more than ever into a discourse on sin and morality in politics.
Hastert assumed the role of Speaker in the vacuum left by Livingston’s swift downfall, and his tenure began on 6 January 1999. In February 1999, Clinton was acquitted:
Five weeks later, on February 12, the Senate voted on whether to remove Clinton from office. The president was acquitted on both articles of impeachment. The prosecution needed a two-thirds majority to convict but failed to achieve even a bare majority. Rejecting the first charge of perjury, 45 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted “not guilty,” and on the charge of obstruction of justice the Senate was split 50-50.
After the trial concluded, President Clinton said he was “profoundly sorry” for the burden his behavior imposed on Congress and the American people.
Three people could be considered Speaker of the House during Clinton’s impeachment: Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, and Dennis Hastert. Livingston’s sex scandal took place at the same time as the impeachment, and Hastert’s came to light years after he left office.
Whether Gingrich was technically involved in a “sex scandal” was more of an issue of semantics. In a March 2007 interview, Gingrich (then mulling a run for President) admitted to participating in an extramarital affair at the time of Clinton’s impeachment:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.
“The honest answer is yes,” Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. “There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There’s certainly times when I’ve fallen short of God’s standards.”
Those are the times, you hypocritical, sanctimonious, asshole, when you should NOT be casting the first, second or third stones.
It's in the book.
Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton’s infidelity.
As only a real stone cold hypocrite WILL argue, however unpersuasively.
“The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge,” the former Georgia congressman said of Clinton’s 1998 House impeachment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.
“I drew a line in my mind that said, ‘Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept … perjury in your highest officials.”
Gingrich’s dalliances weren’t necessarily a “sex scandal” in that his dalliances didn’t dominate headlines, and he readily admitted (after the fact) that he had been having an affair at the same time that he was pursuing the impeachment of President Clinton for similar reasons.
It is technically true that the Speakers of the House during Clinton’s impeachment eventually had public sex scandals. Hastert was criminally charged and sentenced to prison, House Speaker-designate Livingston’s bid to assume the role failed when his own infidelities were exposed, and Gingrich later admitted to extramarital affairs of his own.
• Published 4 May 2016
• By
o Kim LaCapria
• Filed Under
o bob livingston
o clinton impeachment
o dennis hastert
• Sources
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