Month: October 2017

 
From The Borowitz Report:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Attempting to pour cold water on reports of a rift between him and Donald Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters on Wednesday that he remains “fully committed to this moron’s agenda.”

“There will always be people in Washington eager to stir controversy when there is none,” Tillerson said, at a hastily called press conference at the State Department. “I am standing here today to tell you that I am on the same page as this idiot.”

– More –
 

 
From Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post:

I wish to devote this post to someone I believe to be more than worthy of praise.

The noted economist, professor, and author Richard D. Wolff comes to mind as one who is truly on-the-ball when it comes to correct analyses of our economy.

– More –
 

Presidents once had the ability to communicate on an adult level
 
Wondering why a few conservative friends are less than impressed.

 
From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

But we know there’s always going to be a trickle-down effect [from his tweets about NFL players refusing to stand for the National Anthem] with Trump – and indeed, now students are paying the price. Within the last two weeks, a high school football coach in Tennessee told his players they have to stand for the national anthem, a Louisiana principal threatened to remove student athletes from their teams if they didn’t stand during the national anthem and the superintendent of the entire parish, who supervises almost three dozen schools, then said he supported this policy and suggested it would apply to all of his schools.

Before more students’ rights are threatened, this needs to stop. Not only does it go against basic American principles to threaten students about speaking up – it’s also blatantly unconstitutional for a public school to do this. The Supreme Court made this clear in 1943 when it decided the landmark case of West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. In that case, school children who were Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to salute the flag because it was against their religion to do so, and as a result they were expelled or threatened with expulsion.

The Supreme Court very forcefully declared that punishing students for not participating in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional. The decision had nothing to do with the students’ religion and everything to do with their constitutional right to freedom of speech.

– More –
 

 
From Jonathan Bernstein:

Almost three weeks since Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, the island is in terrible shape. Most people do not have electricity. Almost half do not have access to safe water. Dozens of Americans have perished. By any measure, this is an extraordinary tragedy for the nation. And yet, Trump instead has constantly signaled business-as-usual.

Is it clear that the federal government is making a serious commitment to the relief effort? Absolutely. Do we know all of what Trump is doing behind the scenes? No, although early reports were not promising. But what the president says in public is important as well.

The executive branch bureaucracy is large and unwieldy, and will not automatically shift to do anything a president might want it to do — there are thousands of routine tasks to be completed, and all sorts of competing priorities to attend to. If presidents want the government to turn to a single purpose, they need to send clear, consistent signals that what they want to happen is now the highest immediate priority. That is simply not happening:

– More –
 

 
From Frances Langum:

RUHLE: Well, freedom of speech is part of our country.

ROONEY: Oh, sure. But these are employees. If they’re my employees, they’d be gone by now.

So the obvious first question is, does Francis Rooney hang out with his “close friend Jerry Jones” in hotel rooms with hookers?

The multiple hookers that Jerry Jones had in his hotel seem to be missing the Flag .. Explains the Trump friendship 🤦🏼‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/gKBlV1lXSe

— Olga_Lautman NYC ✨ (@olgaNYC1211) October 9, 2017

(Yes, the Trump cabal of rich old white men is clearly a bunch of society-excused perverts.) But I digress…

Stephanie Ruhle doesn’t bring up the hookers.

She brings up the so-called president. And it’s delicious. Watch Rooney sputter and pivot:

– More –
 

 
From Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson:

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Friday that Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin just completed building an $8 million facility in Milwaukee. The first new abortion facility in more than a decade, the newspaper reports.

“The move comes despite state Republican leaders’ efforts to limit access to the procedure,” reporter Mary Spicuzza wrote.

Heather Weininger, Executive Director of Wisconsin Right to Life, has an important question about the new abortion facility.

“Despite constantly begging for taxpayer dollars, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin plans to open a glitzy, $8 million new facility in Milwaukee,” said Weininger in a statement Friday. “This leaves us with just one question – why does Planned Parenthood need taxpayer money, again?”

The newspaper reports that Planned Parenthood built the $8 million abortion facility using private donations. Dan Miller, Executive Director of Pro-Life Wisconsin, points out, “[Planned Parenthood has] proven once again that you don’t need taxpayer funding when you have the likes of Edie Brengel- Radtke, Lynde Uihlein and Marianne Lubar offering their ‘volunteer leadership’ to help secure funds for the project.”

– More –
 

 
Wondering why a few conservative friends are less than impressed.

 
From Tommy Christopher:

One of the most annoying media narratives of the Trump era has been the notion that Donald Trump is some sort of alien life form who beamed into Republican politics to suddenly marshal racism, misogyny, and general white male resentment, rather than simply being the one who has best exploited them.

Among the many illustrations of that fact is the long, long Republican political career of Kellyanne Conway née Fitzpatrick, who has been around long enough to have marveled twice at a billionaire rooking white working class people into thinking he’s one of them. What’s important to know about Conway is that before she sold her sense of cleanliness to become Donald Trump’s campaign manager, she was a highly respected and very mainstream Republican operative for decades.

I mention that to set up this 1995 clip of Conway (then Fitzpatrick) holding forth on affirmative action, not with radical fringe space-alien ideas, but with the mainstream Republican view of addressing institutionalized racism and discrimination, one which describes the 2016 Trump voter to a tee:

– More –