US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer

he was obviously talking about RBG. watch it ginsburg, flake is keeping an eye on your tone

Other biota will survive and nature will say "well THAT species didn't work out!"

In other words, hurry down doomsday, the bugs are taking over

https://youtu.be/fyAyUxMvMXk

Ra-di-ation. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too.

I preefer Talking heads "Nothing but Flowers"

MEANWHILE AT SCOTUS

https://www.pressherald.com/2018/10/01/frog-divides-supreme-court/

flakes very much in character

It’s only Tuesday??

Two pieces of mail delivered to the Pentagon mail facility on Monday have initially tested positive for ricin, according to a US defense official. The two suspicious envelopes were addressed to Secretary of Defense James Mattis and to Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson, the official told CNN.

It’s only Tuesday??

Sen. @JeffFlake on Judge #Kavanaugh: "The interaction with the members was sharp and partisan and that concerns me. And I tell myself you give a little leeway because of what he's been through. But, on the other hand, we can't have this on the Court. We simply can't." pic.twitter.com/0horDp9iGn

— CSPAN (@cspan) October 2, 2018

And David Brock has a few things to share

Brett and I were part of a close circle of cold, cynical and ambitious hard-right operatives being groomed by GOP elders for much bigger roles in politics, government and media. And it’s those controversial associations that should give members of the Senate and the American public serious pause.

Call it Kavanaugh's cabal: There was his colleague on the Starr investigation, Alex Azar, now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Mark Paoletta is now chief counsel to Vice President Mike Pence; House anti-Clinton gumshoe Barbara Comstock is now a Republican member of Congress. Future Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson were there with Ann Coulter, now a best-selling author, and internet provocateur Matt Drudge.

At one time or another, each of them partied at my Georgetown townhouse amid much booze and a thick air of cigar smoke. In a rough division of labor, Kavanaugh played the role of lawyer — one of the sharp young minds recruited by the Federalist Society to infiltrate the federal judiciary with true believers. Through that network, Kavanaugh was mentored by D.C. Appeals Court Judge Laurence Silberman, known among his colleagues for planting leaks in the press for partisan advantage.

When, as I came to know, Kavanaugh took on the role of designated leaker to the press of sensitive information from Starr's operation, we all laughed that Larry had taught him well. (Of course, that sort of political opportunism by a prosecutor is at best unethical, if not illegal.)
Another compatriot was George Conway (now Kellyanne's husband), who led a secretive group of right-wing lawyers — we called them "the elves" — who worked behind the scenes directing the litigation team of Paula Jones, who had sued Clinton for sexual harassment. I knew then that information was flowing quietly from the Jones team via Conway to Starr's office — and also that Conway's go-to man was none other than Brett Kavanaugh.

That critical flow of inside information allowed Starr, in effect, to set a perjury trap for Clinton, laying the foundation for a crazed national political crisis and an unjust impeachment over a consensual affair....

etc

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/409483-suspicious-substance-discovered-in-envelope-sent-to-pentagon

man they're recycling plot points from earlier seasons now, getting lazy programmers

Another onetime senior employee at Renaissance recalls hearing [Robert] Mercer downplay the dangers posed by nuclear war. Mercer, speaking of the atomic bombs that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, argued that, outside of the immediate blast zones, the radiation actually made Japanese citizens healthier. The National Academy of Sciences has found no evidence to support this notion. Nevertheless, according to the onetime employee, Mercer, who is a proponent of nuclear power, “was very excited about the idea, and felt that it meant nuclear accidents weren’t such a big deal.”

xxxpost
Flake probably referring to the behavior, not to the man

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/why-i-wouldnt-confirm-brett-kavanaugh/571936/

OMG alfred I read that as “David Brooks” and had a heart attack and died.

David Brock is a weirder guy than David Brooks

Mercer: that which does not kill me makes me a moron

And a worse person. He wrote a book defaming Anita Hill. Almost forgot

He apologized for it. Brooks has never apologized for anything.

He never did anything as bad—he just writes columns and gets interviewed on NPR. Brock is an extremely untrustworthy character. Switching from a hard right political mercenary to an equivalent position on the left is very strange. If you really had that radical a change of heart you’d leave politics because you’d recognize that your judgment isn’t to be trusted.

He’s an opportunist.

where's the

A YEARLONG @NYTIMES INVESTIGATION INTO TRUMP’S TAXES JUST DROPPED https://t.co/22oWnOa0LK

— Sam Dolnick (@samdolnick) October 2, 2018

Oh man, i want to read this right now so bad. Tempted to just wuit my job and run to the nearest coffee shop.

before the NY Times fails

The Times’s findings raise new questions about Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his income tax returns, breaking with decades of practice by past presidents. According to tax experts, it is unlikely that Mr. Trump would be vulnerable to criminal prosecution for helping his parents evade taxes, because the acts happened too long ago and are past the statute of limitations. There is no time limit, however, on civil fines for tax fraud.

i don't think it will amount to anything beyond trump being upset that everyone now knows he got his money from daddy

Love to know who exactly they're dragging here:

“I built what I built myself,” Mr. Trump has said, a narrative that was long amplified by often-credulous coverage from news organizations, including The Times.

But a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Charles J. Harder, provided a written statement on Monday, one day after The Times sent a detailed description of its findings. “The New York Times’s allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory,”

ah, yes, this piece of shit again

100%, huh?

more and more the old man seems like King Lear - will ivanka or Baron be the first to instigate war?

Gosh, imagine if the Times had been able to spare a couple of reporters for this assignment back in late 2015 and early 2016.

How long have they been working on it?

President Trump: "It's a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of."

Full video here: https://t.co/eIalSfbn4x pic.twitter.com/QOIB2tE8DF

— CSPAN (@cspan) October 2, 2018

Here is what can be said with certainty: Had Mr. Trump done nothing but invest the money his father gave him in an index fund that tracks the Standard & Poor’s 500, he would be worth $1.96 billion today. As for that $1 million loan, Fred Trump actually lent him at least $60.7 million, or $140 million in today’s dollars, The Times found.

none of these tax returns are recent, correct? the interesting bit isn't so much how he "built" his empire but how he managed to recover after going broke over and over again

Yeah thats where the dodgy russian mob stuff is supposed to come in

By age 3, Mr. Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire. He was a millionaire by age 8. By the time he was 17, his father had given him part ownership of a 52-unit apartment building. Soon after Mr. Trump graduated from college, he was receiving the equivalent of $1 million a year from his father. The money increased with the years, to more than $5 million annually in his 40s and 50s.

Fred Trump’s real estate empire was not just scores of apartment buildings. It was also a mountain of cash, tens of millions of dollars in profits building up inside his businesses, banking records show. In one six-year span, from 1988 through 1993, Fred Trump reported $109.7 million in total income, now equivalent to $210.7 million. It was not unusual for tens of millions in Treasury bills and certificates of deposit to flow through his personal bank accounts each month.

I really can't more of this

otm

absolutely unthinkable that the illegal behavior between Fred and Donald Trump described in the NY Times article is not happening with Donald Trump and his own children

— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) October 2, 2018

In an interview, Mr. Von Ancken said that because neither he nor The Times had the working papers that described how he arrived at his valuations, there was simply no way to evaluate the methodologies behind his numbers. “There would be explanations within the appraisals to justify all the values,” he said, adding, “Basically, when we prepare these things, we feel that these are going to be presented to the Internal Revenue Service for their review, and they better be right.”

The I.R.S. determined that the Trumps’ assets were worth $57.1 million, 38 percent more than the couple had claimed. From the perspective of an I.R.S. auditor, pulling in nearly $5 million in additional revenue could be considered a good day’s work. For the Trumps, getting the I.R.S. to agree that Fred Trump’s properties were worth only $57.1 million was a triumph.

Cool fucking system.

"That makes me smart"

this all reminds me of that The State sketch, where the warden says the only way out of prison is to walk out the open gate, but that the open gate is "off limits", and is shocked when an inmate escapes that way for the first time.

tbf every super-rich american family does this estate tax-avoidance stuff (and i'll bet the scheme to fuck over new york city renters is not unique either)

the longest of the long cons.

SCHUMER: of Dems take over the Senate, we will have to look at setting the SCOTUS nominee requirement back up to 60 votes

— Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) October 2, 2018

smdh

he should promise to only do that under a Democratic president just to be extra fair

any chance of him being challenged for his leadership position?

in other "failing to read the room" news:

Nancy Pelosi Not On Board With Impeaching Brett Kavanaugh “That would not be my plan.”

I like the artful use of the passive voice though. "It's not my plan, but, hey, if y'all are considering it, I might play!"

ha, true