The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[David Andrews]

Trump's Xmas pardons for Papadopoulos, former congressmen:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-grants-clemency-to-20-people-including-three-former-gop-members-of-congress-and-two-men-convicted-in-the-russia-probe/ar-BB1c9HsL?li=BBnb7Kz

[James DiEugenio]

Trump is now screaming 2000 bucks!  

Where was the the last two weeks?

Oh, on the golf course.

[David Andrews]

Now Trump's trying to scuttle the stimulus bill by insisting on $2000 checks:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-calls-on-congress-to-approve-dollar2000-stimulus-checks-hinting-he-might-not-sign-relief-bill-without-changes/ar-BB1c9PCY?li=BBnb7Kz

If the bill fails, people may lose even their rock-bottom state unemployment insurance in December 31.

Am I too dystopian, or is all this - including Trump - Deep State politics?

EDIT: And then, at 9 PM Capitol time, the DEM rejoinder, like a game of ping-pong played by mimes:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pelosi-responds-to-trump-lets-push-for-dollar2k-checks-this-week/ar-BB1c9Rjr?li=BBnb7Kz

Edited December 23, 2020 by David Andrews

[Sandy Larsen]

 

Quote

Sandy said:

One of my reasons for asking Dennis and Jim D. for their top 10 presidents is because it seemed to me that they'd be unable to pick that many whose presidencies they could stomach.

 

Quote

Dennis Said:

Is this you admitting you were wrong Sandy?

 

I don't think so, Dennis. After all, you had to throw in James Garfield to complete your list of ten. He served only six months before being assassinated... perhaps he wasn't in office long enough for you to learn to hate.  

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Introducing Joe Biden, aka Obama Part 2:

 

https://www.dailyposter.com/p/bidens-austerity-zealotry-cut-the

 

Here's the political reality. Trump's been so obsessed lately with throwing out the election, that even a grifter like Trump somehow missed the opportunity of bribing his base for more political influence by advocating a $2000 check. This would seem unforgivable for a character like Trump, especially because he reversed himself and did the very same thing 2 months ago in the earlier covid negotiation! Which proves he's so isolated, that there wasn't some aide around that would have told him that was an obvious thing to curry favor with his base, and proves hes too burned out to even remember he did it and learn anything from it!. But for whatever lame, self serving  reason in Trump's case, it's obvious $600 isn't going to make near the difference $2000 is. So now Pelosi's is in a last minute attempt to try to take him up on the threatened veto and get the $2000!

 

Despite Jims article.Fact: Every Democrat would vote for at least a $1200 check, and probably a $2000 check including Joe Biden. Why wouldn't he? The more stimulus thrown at the problem, the easier Biden's path is. As far as Biden's apparently aiding the stripped down bill. He obviously, like Pelosi and Schumer wasn't aware that Trump could be an ally because Trump was off in space!

 

What smelled a little fishy in Jim's article was that it stated that there were Republicans that want the $1200 check, while specifically naming no one, which is quite an omission!  In this article I found, they talk of one Senator from Missouri. Ok,  maybe there are others.  This article does have a series of related articles about the covid bill that may be of interest.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/22/trump-demands-congress-raise-second-stimulus-check-from-600-to-2000-under-new-covid-relief-bill.html

 

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Kirk Gallaway

[Joe Bauer]

Millions of unemployed ( on the rolls and not ) are behind in their rents, car payments and probably many other basic need payments.

$600 for a single head of household or $1200 for a married couple won't touch the amounts they owe. 

Like me the last stimulus check. My 2007, 185,000 mileage car broke down the day I received my check. $1,400 repair bill the next day. $1,400 I didn't have before the check.

Yes, the check covered 85% of the car repair bill and I was grateful to get it.

But times are 3,4 and 5X more dire financially for millions of covid income loss Americans now versus 8 months ago ( my wife and daughter lost their jobs due to Covid by the summer ) and they ( the McConnell Republicans ) cut these checks in half?

Even people who voted for Trump ( must be millions as well ) are in this covid lost income stress and they don't care that the people they supported and voted for are screwing them like this...with their own money?

Wall Street, millionaire farmers, race horse owners, Tom Brady ... no problem giving them big chunk bailouts. But millions of super stressed working class and lower Americans?  $600?

That wouldn't cover McConnell's monthly housekeeper costs.

From our very own Marie Antoinette minded Mitch McConnell .... "Let them eat cake!"

Dicken's Scrooge reincarnate ... "Are there no workhouses?"

 

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Steve Thomas]

Donald Trump is very big on revenge.

He is deliberately scuttling the Stimulus Relief Bill.

He's going to get back at Mitch McConnell for McConnell not helping him to overturn the election.

He's also going to get back at the American people for voting him out of office.

Steve Thomas

[Joe Bauer]

40 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

Donald Trump is very big on revenge.

He is deliberately scuttling the Stimulus Relief Bill.

He's going to get back at Mitch McConnell for McConnell not helping him to overturn the election.

He's also going to get back at the American people for voting him out of office.

Steve Thomas

Steve, I agree.  I seriously think this is the Revenge In Chief's thoughts and motivation.

As Michael Cohen ( his consigliere and closest confidant for 10 years ) stated in his tell-all book about Trump, he likes to get back at those who contested, criticised or caused him to not get anything he wanted.

Vindictive to the point of sadistic pleasure.

[Steve Thomas]

Flynn: Trump Needs To Seize Voting Machines, Could Use "Military Capabilities" To "Rerun" Elections In Swing States

Posted By Ian Schwartz December 17, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/12/17/flynn_trump_needs_to_seize_voting_machines_could_use_military_capabilities_to_rerun_elections_in_swing_states.html

“Flynn said President Trump could use "military capabilities" and place them in swing states to "re-run an election." Flynn said while he is not calling for Martial law, the general said he is not opposed to the tactic.”

 

Notice that Flynn did not call for the U.S. Army to get involved. He only wants Trump to use "military capabilities". That sounds like a private army of "little green men".

Trump just pardoned four guys from Blackwater.

The country would never stand for something like that, of course. But, I agree that Flynn should be recalled to Active Service and court martialed for inciting an armed insurrection.

Steve Thomas

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

1 hour ago, Steve Thomas said:

Donald Trump is very big on revenge.

He is deliberately scuttling the Stimulus Relief Bill.

He's going to get back at Mitch McConnell for McConnell not helping him to overturn the election.

He's also going to get back at the American people for voting him out of office.

Steve Thomas

Could be Steve, Trump could be saying "Either I get to be a hero, or I'm taking everybody down with me!".

You remember in October, it was in reverse. He first said he'd veto  any relief bill  because he was mad about something. I thought "What politician in October seeking re election, wouldn't choose to do a relief stimulus bill?' 

Then sure enough, a few days later, he completely reversed himself. Somebody must have told him something.

[David Andrews]

If you can’t imagine that there could be bipartisan congressional collusion to scuttle a stimulus bill in October through December 2020, here’s an account of a similar operation concealing NSA surveillance contradicting the tenets of the Patriot Act and the FISA courts during the Bush administration, provided by former New York Times reporter James Risen.

The backstory: By 2005, Risen and fellow Times reporter Eric Lichtblau were under pressure from the White House and Times management to quash a story exposing NSA’s Stellar Wind program, which monitored Americans’ international phone calls and e-mails, and perhaps committed worse violations of citizens’ privacy.  Risen picks up the story from here; the punchline is in his final paragraph.

“Meanwhile, the White House decided to enlist members of the ‘Gang of Eight,’ the handful of congressional leaders who had been secretly briefed on the program while the rest of Congress was kept in the dark. Then-Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called [Times editor Philip] Taubman and made the case that the New York Times should not run the story. […]

“Barred by his editors from working on the NSA story, [Lichtblau] was instead assigned to cover the debate in Congress over the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. But Lichtblau knew that the debate over how to strike the proper balance between national security and civil liberties was a charade so long as the existence of the NSA’s domestic spying program was hidden from public view. The White House allowed Congress to publicly debate the balance, even while George W. Bush had already secretly decided what that balance would be. […]

“While covering one congressional hearing, Lichtblau listened as Harman called for tighter restrictions on the Patriot Act to prevent abuses of civil liberties. Lichtblau knew that Harman had been briefed on the NSA program and had called the Times to kill our story, so he followed her out into the hall to talk about it. But when he asked her how she could square her demands for limits on the Patriot Act with what she knew about the NSA program, Harman chided him for raising the matter. ‘Shooing away her aides, she grabbed me by the arm and drew me a few feet away to a more remote section of the Capitol corridor,’ he wrote in his book. ‘“You should not be talking about that here,” she scolded me in a whisper. “They don’t even know about that,” she said, gesturing to her aides, who were now looking on at the conversation with obvious befuddlement. “The Times did the right thing by not publishing that story.”’”

https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-times-reporter-in-the-shadow-of-the-war-on-terror/

A charade.  In a post above, I described this fall’s irresolute back-and-forth over the stimulus bill as “a game of ping-pong played by mimes.”  I see now the meaning of the dumbshow tennis game that closes one of Jim Di Eugenio’s favorite films, Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) – a pantomime of justice and political change, played without real balls.

It only takes a Hateful Eight in Congress to play...

 

Notice how, at the finish, David Hemmings imagines the sound of the ball in play.  Hadn't caught that till they played the game on me.

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by David Andrews

[Joe Bauer]

Isn't it obvious that when Trump stalled on any stimulus action before the election he was trying to figure out how to use the package to his advantage politically.

It seems he wasn't sure how to do this with a guaranteed result in his favor.

I sense he (Trump) kept thinking that the huge majority of Americans stressed the most by the Covid crush were lower income people and including blacks and Hispanics. Ethnic groups he knew were not going to vote for him in the majority anyway and not at all with black voters.

Trump has always tried to block federal aid to Democratic party favoring states.

Especially states with large black population cities. 

If Trump could, he would only allow federal aid to states that vote Republican.

This 8 month long cut off of "any" direct financial assistance to 10's of millions of super stressed Covid citizens has been a national travesty, if not a crime against humanity. 8 long months! 

Many top economists were publicly saying such and pleading for more direct stimulus help to these millions months ago, not just to prevent these millions of hurting Americans from falling deeper and deeper in stressing debt, but to also help the overall business economy of the entire country.

Trump and McConnell and all the other Republicans simply ignored these pleas and warnings. 

This 8 month long cut off while 40 to 50 million Americans (or maybe even double that ) have been financially and even socially stressed more than at any times in their lives is the essence of government malfeasance, "purposely initiated" which makes it the essence of cruelty as well.

This latest Trump publicity stunt with his phony caring promotion of a larger direct payment stimulus check amount is a shameless act of disingenuous desperateness that no one believes is born out of sincere empathy for the millions of Americans who needed this kind of help every month for the last 8!

It's far too late presentation makes it the ultimate act of cynical cruelty.

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

56 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Could be Steve, Trump could be saying "Either I get to be a hero, or I'm taking everybody down with me!".

You remember in October, it was in reverse. He first said he'd veto  any relief bill  because he was mad about something. I thought "What politician in October seeking re election, wouldn't choose to do a relief stimulus bill?' 

Then sure enough, a few days later, he completely reversed himself. Somebody must have told him something.

Kirk,

      Two things come to mind here, in addition to your earlier point about Trump's general cluelessness and inept executive management skills.

1)   He has always been utterly contemptuous of the working poor (while, nevertheless, playing to their racism, bigotry, cultural divisions, etc., as a pseudo-populist.)

2)  He was demonizing Biden and the Democrats as left-wing "socialists" in October-- a propaganda strategy that was, apparently, very effective in Florida.

[Kirk Gallaway]

1 hour ago, David Andrews said:

If you can’t imagine that there could be bipartisan congressional collusion to scuttle a stimulus bill in October through December 2020, here’s an account of a similar operation concealing NSA surveillance contradicting the tenets of the Patriot Act and the FISA courts during the Bush administration, provided by former New York Times reporter James Risen.

The backstory: By 2005, Risen and fellow Times reporter Eric Lichtblau were under pressure from the White House and Times management to quash a story exposing NSA’s Stellar Wind program, which monitored Americans’ international phone calls and e-mails, and perhaps committed worse violations of citizens’ privacy.  Risen picks up the story from here; the punchline is in his final paragraph.

“Meanwhile, the White House decided to enlist members of the ‘Gang of Eight,’ the handful of congressional leaders who had been secretly briefed on the program while the rest of Congress was kept in the dark. Then-Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called [Times editor Philip] Taubman and made the case that the New York Times should not run the story. […]

“Barred by his editors from working on the NSA story, [Lichtblau] was instead assigned to cover the debate in Congress over the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. But Lichtblau knew that the debate over how to strike the proper balance between national security and civil liberties was a charade so long as the existence of the NSA’s domestic spying program was hidden from public view. The White House allowed Congress to publicly debate the balance, even while George W. Bush had already secretly decided what that balance would be. […]

“While covering one congressional hearing, Lichtblau listened as Harman called for tighter restrictions on the Patriot Act to prevent abuses of civil liberties. Lichtblau knew that Harman had been briefed on the NSA program and had called the Times to kill our story, so he followed her out into the hall to talk about it. But when he asked her how she could square her demands for limits on the Patriot Act with what she knew about the NSA program, Harman chided him for raising the matter. ‘Shooing away her aides, she grabbed me by the arm and drew me a few feet away to a more remote section of the Capitol corridor,’ he wrote in his book. ‘“You should not be talking about that here,” she scolded me in a whisper. “They don’t even know about that,” she said, gesturing to her aides, who were now looking on at the conversation with obvious befuddlement. “The Times did the right thing by not publishing that story.”’”

https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-times-reporter-in-the-shadow-of-the-war-on-terror/

A charade.  In a post above, I described this fall’s irresolute back-and-forth over the stimulus bill as “a game of ping-pong played by mimes.”  I see now the meaning of the dumbshow tennis game that closes one of Jim Di Eugenio’s favorite films, Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) – a pantomime of justice and political change, played without real balls.

 

If that's a stimulus Dave, It's a stimulus involving Defense spending with a Republican President (Bush) and Republicans controlling both houses (2005). So it's their very typical, skullduggery, an attempt to sacrifice Civil Liberties for National Security. Yet the star of the article is minority Democrat Jane Harmon, who was a very globalist Democrat from New York who I believe still works as pro international trade lobbyist.

This is involving an economic stimulus, with the Democrats controlling the House. 1+1 is pretty much 2, Dave. If we don't get a $600 check , it's because Trump vetoed it, in what he started as a frantic search to find some means to ingratiate himself to the public as an added ploy to somehow overthrow the election and keep in office and out of court.

*******

Joe said:I sense he (Trump) kept thinking that the huge majority of Americans stressed the most by the Covid crush were lower income people and including blacks and Hispanics. Ethnic groups he knew were not going to vote for him in the majority anyway and not at all with black voters.

Yes, he is contemptuous of the working poor, and he was painting the Democrats as "Socialist", as you say "W'..  But despite his base always claiming  the polls are rigged. Trump was very much into polls, and that's why he switched.  He realized there was no way he was going to win so he knew he had to expand his base. Besides, Joe, it's not just blacks and hispanics, as you have personally attested.

As for the  contradiction about  painting the Democrats as "Socialists,." and then advocating a stimulus, that sort of contradiction Trump can ram down his base's throat in a second, any day of the week, and has done many times before!

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Kirk Gallaway

[Joe Bauer]

The Stock market is going up again today!

Furthering it's mercurial climb to all time record levels.

Most of the country is in the most severe lockdown status ever.

California is a state wide ghost town!

It looks like Super Bowl Sunday on the freeways and in every downtown.

Reminds me of the day JFK was shot. Everybody staying home to watch TV.

Every travel and tourism related business is either shut down completely or darn close to it. 80+% of our areas restaurants are closed and the rest are just barely staying afloat with take out. Only our fast food drive through and Pizza delivery ones are still doing well. 20 out of 2 to 300?

Every hotel and motel is almost empty. Our largest hotel ( The Lodge at Pebble Beach) is completely shut down. A month ago they let go almost 1,000 employees.

Just read where the Cruise line business may never come back and if so not until 2030.

Car sales are dead. No one has any money to buy. Which means car insurance companies and finance companies are taking 50% loss hits as well.

Probably 80% or more of every type of business in this country are taking hits they have never even imagined being possible and this has been going on for almost a year now.

Yet the stock market has exploded to levels beyond even the so-called record low unemployment and high job creation greatness Trump publicly bragged about 5 times a day for years?

Yes, some can give all the reasons why the stock market is immune to the almost  unbelievable entire national business and job market collapse. The opposite of Trump's excuse as to why it was so high before.

Oh, the new vaccines will turn it all around in 6 months. That's it!

Also the massive increase in stay at home, watching TV and binge eating food sales?  

Home movie rentals? 

Anti-depressant drug sales?

No.

Even all of those areas of consumer need fulfillment interests are not enough to explain the record stock market explosion and we know it.

It will take several hard time years for American business and job markets to get even close to pre-pandemic levels. 

The stock market is being manipulated imo, BIG TIME.

To keep Wall Street and the largrest corporate interests safe from the same fate as half our nation's citizens whose lives have never been so devastated financially and socially.