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Post by papercrafteradvocate on Nov 8, 2019 20:35:17 GMT
Paula White another con artist.
"I want you to hear from God. God already spoke to me what I'm going to write out. You're going to write your checks to Paula White Ministries," White preached. "If God tells you to give $12.99, do it. Whatever the Holy Spirit speaks to you. If you need to give by credit card, do so."
Apparently this was recently and while she has been working for the administration.
Trump told her that she has the “it” factor.
Seems that all the Grifters gave similar traits, and gravitate to each other.
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Post by artgirl1 on Nov 8, 2019 21:24:27 GMT
"I want you to hear from God I already heard from my God. He told me we do not put children in cages, that we show kindness to all, but especially those that have less, that all efforts should be made to improve the good for many and not just a few chosen, that all should be treated with kindness and respect, that all people are entitled to love, in whatever version they choose, that honesty and integrity count more than personal gain, that all people are my family. My God told me that you are the devil's spawn, as is the idiot you support as President.
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Deleted
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Sept 28, 2024 23:48:43 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2019 21:27:43 GMT
Jennifer Rubin - Washington Post - 11-1-2019
“The eight big problems with Warren’s Medicare-for-all plan”
“Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released her spending plan to finance Medicare-for-all, a single-payer health-care scheme that would eliminate private insurance. The Post reports:
The plan is designed to hit corporations and the wealthy, including a provision requiring companies to send most of the funds they currently spend on employee health contributions to the federal government. It also expands Warren’s signature wealth tax proposal, cuts military spending and takes advantage of what she says would be significant savings from eliminating private insurance’s vast bureaucracy. ...
The proposal comes on top of roughly $5 trillion in new taxes that Warren had already advocated to cover a range of new programs, including through a levy on those with more than $50 million in assets. It doubles down on Warren’s strategy of winning the Democratic nomination by consolidating support from the party’s liberal wing, rather than reaching out to more centrist Democrats.
The plan, as one would expect, was roundly criticized by former vice president Joe Biden’s campaign, which put out a statement that said it “hinges not just on a giant middle class tax hike and the elimination of all private health insurance, but also on a complete revamping of defense, immigration, and overall tax policy all at once in order to pay for it — a hard truth that underscores why candidates need to be straight with the American people about what they’re proposing.” About the only thing all the Democratic candidates might agree upon is that this is the most sweeping proposal we have seen from any major-party candidate, one which would revamp the entire federal budget and the health care of every American.
There are (at least) eight problems she will have to contend with:
First, her plan raises a purported $20.5 trillion, around $10 trillion less than independent cost estimates for the plan from progressive groups such as the Urban Institute. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) concedes it would cost $30 trillion or more. Perhaps voters’ eyes will glaze over, and they will decide that everyone can find an economist to justify anything, but others might see the sort of standard sleight of hand — trillions in administrative savings! stronger tax enforcement! — as confirmation that it really is impossible to come up with a plan this extensive and not further burden the middle class.
Moderate Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) blasted Warren’s plan in a written statement. “Voters are sick and tired of politicians promising them things that they know they can’t deliver,” he said. “Warren’s new numbers are simply not believable, and have been contradicted by experts. Regardless of whether it’s $21 trillion or $31 trillion, this isn’t going to happen, and the American people need health care.”
”Second, there is not much of a justification as to why we need this when Affordable Care Act premiums are decreasing and other issues (e.g. extending coverage, premium costs) can be addressed through much cheaper proposals, such as the public option. (As Biden’s campaign put it, “Most voters want to protect and strengthen the Affordable Care Act.”)
Third, it is pretty clear to all but the horribly naive that this is never going to happen. An $800 billion cut in defense? What’s the justification for that, and what national security concerns does it raise? What moderate Democrat is going to sign on to this? The bigger and more complicated it is, the more obvious it becomes a fantasy — one that could prevent more modest and achievable ends such as prescription drug cost containment. Warren is relying, for example, on a wholesale immigration reform plan (something that frankly does not seem politically attainable) to generate hundreds of billions of dollars (above and beyond revenue going to state and local governments). At some point, this fails the straight-face test.
Fourth, eliminating all private insurance has real-world impacts on health-care providers. The New York Times reports: “Ms. Warren’s plan would put substantial downward pressure on payments to hospitals, doctors and pharmaceutical companies. ... Payments to hospitals would be 10 percent higher on average than what Medicare pays now, a rate that would make some hospitals whole but would lead to big reductions for others. She would reduce doctors’ pay to the prices Medicare pays now, with additional reductions for specialists, and small increases to doctors who provide primary care.” Do rural hospitals survive by protecting against the uninsured or go bust without the much higher reimbursement rates that private insurers provide? If doctors’ salaries get chopped, how will this affect time with patients and the availability of specialists?
Fifth, her proposal tests the limits of her electability argument. The Times observes: “Although she is not proposing broad tax increases on individuals, her proposal will still allow Republicans to portray her as a tax-and-spend liberal who wants to dramatically expand the role of the federal government while abolishing private health insurance. Her plan’s $20.5 trillion price tag is equal to roughly one-third of what the federal government is currently projected to spend over the next decade in total.” Simply put, this really is the sort of plan President Trump would use to scare voters into sticking with him rather than plunging into a “socialist” abyss.
Sixth, Warren winds up handing the health-care issue right back to the Republicans. Andy Slavitt, who headed the Medicare and Medicaid trust funds under President Barack Obama, tells me: “In my view, 90 percent of the Democratic focus on health care should be on Trump’s lawsuit and his other plans to get rid of the ACA and pre-existing condition protections.” He suggests, “The other 10 percent can be on policy differences between the candidates on how they would ideally make universal coverage happen.” He warns, “Doing the reverse is like spending 90 percent of the time on environmental issues debating the Paris Accord vs. the Green New Deal instead of spending 90 percent of the time remembering they are running against a climate denier.”
Seventh, Warren doesn’t seem to consider the downsides from slashed reimbursement (nurses pay?), elimination of private insurance companies (jobs for all those white-collar workers?) and/or mammoth tax hikes (growth? jobs?). This embodies one of the major criticisms of the super-progressive wing of the Democratic Party: blind faith in centralized federal government with little or no regard for unintended consequences.
Eighth, the plan does damage to her brand. Warren’s plan is a reminder of how far to the left of the rest of the field she really is. The notion that she is a “compromise” between Sanders and center-left candidates will be harder to sustain. Moreover, she was supposed to be the straight-shooter, the candid progressive who could tip the scales in favor of working-class Americans. There are plenty of voters (including more moderate African American voters with whom she has struggled to connect) who might regard this as akin to Trump’s magical health-care plan (better! cheaper!) or other snake oil peddled by politicians. People have become a bit too savvy to think you can have everything for nothing.
Warren will have ample opportunity to defend her plan at the next debate. In the meantime, Democratic voters can mull over whether this makes it easier or harder to defeat Trump.”
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Deleted
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Sept 28, 2024 23:48:43 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2019 21:34:11 GMT
Henry Olsen. - Washington Post - 11-4-2019
“If you’re scared of Trump’s foreign policy, Warren’s should terrify you”
“Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) long-awaited plan to pay for her Medicare-for-all proposal will be justly attacked for its unrealistic assumptions regarding how to cut health-care costs and raise new revenue. Even more seriously, however, her plan includes an element that shows she approaches national security issues without sufficient care or thought.
That element is her proposal to eliminate spending on the Overseas Contingency Operations fund. This fund, appropriated each year by Congress, was initially used to pay for the Iraq War. In subsequent years, it has become the vehicle to pay for U.S. military operations in the war on terrorism and for ongoing military spending in excess of budget caps on defense spending. Since major military activities in Afghanistan ended earlier this decade, contingency operations funding has ranged from $62 billion to $92 billion a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Citing figures from the fiscal 2019 “People’s Budget” proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Warren says she thinks she can obtain $798 billion over 10 years for her health plan by eliminating the fund.
Doing this, however, would place severe strains on the United States’ ability to conduct responsible foreign policy and maintain a credible global military posture. To start, eliminating the fund would either require us to withdraw our forces without first obtaining a reasonable peace settlement with the Taliban, the Islamic State and Syria, or it would require further cuts to the regular defense budget to offset ongoing expenditures on those operations while deals are being negotiated. The first idea has been widely condemned by foreign policy experts in both parties; the latter would require reducing the size or modernization of the U.S. military.
These are important decisions that have long-range consequences for our security and our relations with our allies. They deserve extensive analysis and consideration in their own right. By blithely using this money to pay for her health-care plan without a serious discussion of these considerations and trade-offs, Warren shows disdain for and lack of understanding of foreign policy intricacies.
It’s simply not enough to say, as she does in her plan, that some military spending programs “merely line the pockets of defense contractors.” By setting an implicit ironclad goal of cutting the overall defense budget by 10 percent within one year of taking office, Warren doesn’t force the Defense Department to “prioritize or live within its means.” She forces it to rapidly reduce military personnel, deployments and weapons procurements to meet her own priority.
That means an immediate cut of $68.8 billion, roughly 10 percent of all discretionary defense spending, potentially taken exclusively from non-war on terrorism expenses. Personnel costs alone take up nearly a third of the military budget, so meeting this target would probably require extensive layoffs of civilian and on-duty employees. It could also require cancellation of or changes to existing military weapons contracts. It could force reductions in forces deployed overseas or push the United States to force its allies to pay more for their deployment in those host countries. Any one of these changes would be highly contentious. Doing all of them at once, under an artificial deadline adopted for non-defense reasons, would be simply irresponsible.
Defense spending would probably have to increase, not decrease, in coming years. China’s and Russia’s militaries are growing, while ours is at best staying about the same size. To use just one measure of this, by the 2030s, Russia and China could field as many as eight aircraft carriers, up from one in 2001. The United States, on the other hand, is projected to field the same 11 carriers it has now. That’s down from the 16 it possessed when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. That’s not going to work, at least if we care about credibly maintaining our global alliance structure.
Trump’s conduct of foreign policy often scares serious foreign policy thinkers. Warren’s cavalier treatment of U.S. security needs, however, should scare them as much — or more.”
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Deleted
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Sept 28, 2024 23:48:43 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2019 21:41:34 GMT
Jennifer Rubin - Washington Post - 11-8-2019
“Elizabeth Warren misses the biggest cost of all”
“Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been confronted with an avalanche of criticism regarding her Medicare-for-all funding pattern. She should have expected no less. The Post’s Editorial Board observes that “there are the potential economic consequences of the taxes Ms. Warren proposes to raise to meet her fantasy $20.5 trillion price tag. Former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers warns that Ms. Warren would so clobber upper-income Americans that she would risk a stock market crash and a recession.”
She suffered an embarrassing blow when economist Mark Zandi who signed off on Warren’s math calculations came out against her plan. He said, "I’m skeptical the wealth tax will generate the same amount of revenue after considering all her plans together. . . . I am not a fan of Medicare for All. We have 160 million people who have private insurance and are pretty happy with what they have. Why change that?” Yikes.
Former auto-industry czar Steven Rattner adds his voice to the chorus of critics. We spend an awful lot already on health care, he says about $52 trillion over the next decade, “currently split among the federal government, the states and the private sector, with the federal government making up only about 29 percent of the total.” Rattner explains nearly all of that plus about $7 trillion more to cover all Americans would shift to the feds under Warren’s plan.
Rattner makes a point few others have identified: “Warren’s plans (mostly health care, but including education and other proposals) would change that historic relationship dramatically. New taxes and other revenues that would be imposed would increase Washington’s share of the economy to around 27 percent, a more than 50 percent increase from current levels.” It would behoove Warren and her supporters to consider how that may affect growth, job creation, wages and a host of other critical economic factors.
Rattner, as others, also finds fault with the math. He counts up the $12.6 trillion in new corporate taxes; $4.4 trillion of added taxes on wealthy Americans; a $800B military spending cut; and “savings” from immigration reform. Rattner finds: “That leaves $15.9 trillion, which includes a variety of the gimmicks that many other public officials have used futilely to try to make their budget math work, like tougher Internal Revenue Service tax enforcement.”
Rattner is being generous since there is every reason to doubt that a President Warren would get the military cuts or comprehensive immigration reform. It is even more far-fetched to think the rich won’t evade a good chunk of the $4.4 trillion in wealth taxes.
Aside from the math, Warren avoids the biggest and most consequential cost: The opportunity cost. Instead of selling and, if elected, trying to enact an unattainable plan, she could be building consensus and then fighting to enact much needed, attainable and significant reforms.
Rattner points out, “We can improve the Affordable Care Act. Spending on infrastructure and research and development — two critical government functions — should be increased.” Warren, however, will be out panning for gold, chasing after riches (from a tiny segment of the population, whom we better hope doesn’t lose money or give it away and leave health care without a funding source) and dreaming up elaborate scheme when winnable fights are delayed. (When during the fight for Medicare-for-all is she going to carve out space to fight for comprehensive immigration reform, which itself might be impossible?)
Instead of a tax on the wealthy that will never pass, will be open to constitutionally suspect and will be reduced by clever accountants (gifts to children, overseas transfers, etc.), she could be pushing for feasible changes such as narrowing or eliminating the difference between wage and capital-gains tax rates or ending the “step up” on assets at death. Instead of losing a Medicare-for-all fight, she could be winning on extending Medicaid to the remaining states and passing a workable drug-cost-control measure.
Warren likes to say Democrats should nominate someone who will “fight” for “big, structural change." Actually, they should run from a candidate who is going to lose to Trump and/or waste political capital tilting at windmills.
The more vulnerable someone is — a "dreamer," a chronically ill child, a mother living in poverty — the less patience he or she may have with someone shooting for the moon and the stars. These Americans have heard extravagant promises before; they deserve someone who is going to improve their lives as much as possible and as quickly as possible. For them, these issues can be matters of life and death, not fodder for an abstract debate.”
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Post by papercrafteradvocate on Nov 8, 2019 21:42:34 GMT
Triggered. Of course it’s not about the “unhinged left” it’s all about trump...
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Deleted
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Sept 28, 2024 23:48:43 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2019 21:56:25 GMT
Tim Reid - Reuters - 11-7-2019
“Exclusive: Economist who backed Warren healthcare plan has doubts about her wealth tax”
“LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A leading economist who vouched for Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s healthcare reform plan told Reuters on Thursday he doubts its staggering cost can be fully covered alongside her other government programs.
”Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, also voiced skepticism that the wealth tax provision in Warren’s plan - a key funding mechanism - will produce predicted levels of revenue because those targeted by the tax will seek to dodge it.
“It’s not hard to believe billionaires are going to use every resource to avoid paying the tax,” Zandi said.
Taken in isolation, Zandi said, Warren would be able to find the revenue necessary to cover the massive cost of reform. “I stand by the funding estimates, as a standalone plan,” Zandi said.
Even if the wealth tax projections fall short, Zandi believes Warren may still be able to make up the difference through other taxes in her plan, including those on corporations and employers.
Yet Zandi warned the wealth tax revenue predictions may not hold up if she also simultaneously tries to fund her proposed expansion of government programs, including free child-care and student debt forgiveness.
“I’m skeptical the wealth tax will generate the same amount of revenue after considering all her plans together,” he said.
Warren, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, estimates her healthcare overhaul will cost an additional $20.5 trillion in federal spending over 10 years without the need to raise middle-class taxes, a claim questioned by some of her rivals in the 2020 White House race.
Zandi said despite signing a highly touted letter last week backing the calculations for Warren’s Medicare for All plan, he does not support shifting Americans off the private health insurance they have in favor of a single-payer, government-run regime.
“I am not a fan of Medicare for All,” said Zandi, who is not affiliated with any Democratic presidential campaign and does not speak for the Warren campaign. “We have 160 million people who have private insurance and are pretty happy with what they have. Why change that?”
“A Warren campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said other leading economists who did not sign last week’s letter have defended the wealth tax’s revenue estimates and its enforcement mechanisms.
The official said the wealth tax will be straightforward to administer because it applies to only 75,000 ultra-wealthy families who typically already keep careful track of their wealth.
The wealth tax revenue estimates factored in significant discounts for evasion, and the plan includes measures to sharply strengthen IRS enforcement, the official said.
At a campaign stop in North Carolina on Thursday, Warren was asked to respond to criticism that her Medicare for All plan is a “pipe dream” and “fairy dust.”
Warren replied: “You don’t get what you don’t fight for.”
Zandi said he prefers the less far-reaching healthcare plan being pushed by Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and one of Warren’s chief competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Buttigieg’s plan is similar to other moderate Democrats’ healthcare proposals, because it does not eliminate private insurance. Instead, it seeks to set up competition between a public, government-run option and private plans to lower costs and potentially move Americans onto a Medicare for All system over time.
WEALTH TAX
A key part of Warren’s revenue calculations to pay for her healthcare overhaul comes from a new tax on the wealthiest 1% of U.S. individuals, or a “wealth tax”.
Warren initially proposed a tax that would impose a 2% federal tax on every dollar of a person’s net worth over $50 million and an additional 1% tax on every dollar in net worth over $1 billion. She upped the “billionaire’ s surcharge” to a total of 6% when she released her plan to pay for Medicare for All.
Zandi, and the other economists who signed the letter, estimated the tax would generate an extra $3 trillion in revenue between 2020 and 2029, part of $20.5 trillion they say can be generated overall through additional taxes, but without raising middle-class taxes.
Zandi said a wealth tax would be hard for the government to enforce. “There will be more avoidance and IRS enforcement may not be up to the task,” he said.
Wealth taxes have been tried in many European countries, with limited success. Many affluent people moved assets abroad and the tax resulted in far less revenues than predicted.
Betsey Stevenson, an economics professor at the University of Michigan and another of the signatories on the Warren funding letter, said Warren’s plan shows it is possible to pay for Medicare for All without raising middle class taxes.
“The point of the letter was to show whether it is possible, rather than if it is desirable,” Stevenson said.”
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DEX
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,394
Aug 9, 2014 23:13:22 GMT
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Post by DEX on Nov 8, 2019 22:00:17 GMT
I shared this this on the trump Jr. thread but, I just love it so much. It always makes me laugh.
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Deleted
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Sept 28, 2024 23:48:43 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2019 22:12:31 GMT
AlterNet 11-6-2019
“Bill Barr is racing to deliver a report that blows up the impeachment inquiry”
“Attorney General William Barr is racing to complete a new “report” before Thanksgiving. And if Barr’s very poor summary of the Mueller report threw Trump a lifeline by distorting the real findings of the special counsel investigation, this new report looks to be more like an atom bomb, designed to incinerate Washington by putting the whole Justice Department behind a conspiracy theory that rewrites history and declares open warfare on political opponents. And Republicans are already meeting with Barr to plan a “roll out” for this supposedly classified report in order to maximize its impact.
Barr appears to have taken the results of an inspector general report that was expected to end weeks ago, rolled it together with the investigation-into-the-investigation that he launched under the nominal control of prosecutor John Durham, and capped it all with the “findings” of a world tour that included attempts to get the Australian government, the Italian government, and the U.K. government to participate in attacks on U.S. intelligence agencies. What’s going to come out the other end could be a dud, but it could launch an effort to derail the impeachment process—and more.
Barr’s effort to create a comprehensive, all-conspiracy-theories-combined report seems to have delayed delivery of the long-expected findings from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Republicans were generally thrilled by Horowitz’s earlier report in which he was critical of former FBI director James Comey for his handling of some classified materials. That report had right-wing news outlets clamoring over potential charges against Comey. But despite claims that the findings justified Republican attacks on the entire Russia investigation, the actual complaints were minor and led to nothing.
That seems unlikely to be the case this time. As The Washington Post reports, Barr has subsumed Horowitz’s work because “the inspector general does not have the authority to declassify information” and Barr apparently intends to release information that dips into classified documents at both the FBI and CIA to tell his story of how the Russia investigation was unjustified from the start.
Barr is having advance meetings (including one on Wednesday with Senate Judiciary chair Lindsey Graham) so that talking points and presentations can be ready in advance of an official release.
Interestingly enough, Michael Horowitz does not appear to be attending the meetings on how to release information supposedly based on the material he assembled. But then, the investigation Barr is conducting has moved far beyond the sort of internal chastisement that might be delivered by Horowitz. The investigation he and Durham are conducting is now a criminal investigation, and is “pursuing potential crimes.”
But not crimes in the sense of the hundreds of connections between the Trump White House and Russia. Or crimes in the sense of Trump’s obstruction of the Russia investigation. Certainly not crimes in the sense of Trump directly lying to investigators in the written answers he provided to the special counsel’s office.
Instead, Barr is directly attempting to put some proof behind the claims that Donald Trump was trying to extort out of Ukraine: That there was never any real contact between Russia and the Trump campaign, that the DNC servers were not in fact hacked by Russia, that Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud was a CIA plant put in place to lure George Papadopoulos, that Australian official Andrew Downer was an instrument of U.S. intelligence, and that Ukrainian hackers conspired with Hillary Clinton to make it seem as if Russia stole data from the DNC and presented it to WikiLeaks, when all the while it was a scheme to justify launching an investigation into the Trump campaign.
Barr and his associates have been racing to complete this report so that it can be dropped on the impeachment inquiry before the holidays. Major parts of the report apparently remain unwritten, but the fact that the publicity campaign is getting underway in advance of the report’s completion is not exactly a sign that this is going to be a contrite “nothing major found” report. And Barr has been at the center of forwarding Trump’s conspiracy theories and supporting attacks on the intelligence community. He’s already said, “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. I think spying did occur, but the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.”
The report coming back could declare no evidence to support Trump’s conspiracy theories and say that Barr found that “spying” to be “adequately predicated.” Don’t count on it. And don’t count on there not being indictments.
Barr did not shift to a criminal investigation because he doesn’t intend to arrest someone. There are going to be claims of serious wrongdoing. They are going to be aimed at not just creating a distraction to derail the impeachment hearings, but to provide “evidence” that Trump’s requests for investigations by Ukraine were justified. The question is going to be whether they are merely awful and damaging to the nation, or absolutely incinerate the rule of law.
Next week, open hearings are set to begin in the House impeachment inquiry, and it seems very likely that actual articles of impeachment will be getting a vote before the end of the year. So far, the best defense that Republicans have dreamed up is claiming ignorance—not attending meetings, not reading transcripts, and openly declaring that they’re not about to start.
But when Barr speaks, they’re all going to be listening.”
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Post by artgirl1 on Nov 8, 2019 22:12:40 GMT
Triggered. Of course it’s not about the “unhinged left” it’s all about trump... Here is a clue donnie jr. You will never, ever, ever get daddy's love and attention. You will always be secod or third behind daughter wife Ivanka and eric. Nothing you can do will ever please daddy. Give it up and stop being a whiny baby. What you and your family has given up is nothing compared to what this country has given up under daddy's presidency. Honor, integrity and humanity. Just shut the f*ck up.
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Post by lucyg on Nov 8, 2019 22:20:36 GMT
AlterNet 11-6-2019 “Bill Barr is racing to deliver a report that blows up the impeachment inquiry”“Attorney General William Barr is racing to complete a new “report” before Thanksgiving. And if Barr’s very poor summary of the Mueller report threw Trump a lifeline by distorting the real findings of the special counsel investigation, this new report looks to be more like an atom bomb, designed to incinerate Washington by putting the whole Justice Department behind a conspiracy theory that rewrites history and declares open warfare on political opponents. And Republicans are already meeting with Barr to plan a “roll out” for this supposedly classified report in order to maximize its impact. Barr appears to have taken the results of an inspector general report that was expected to end weeks ago, rolled it together with the investigation-into-the-investigation that he launched under the nominal control of prosecutor John Durham, and capped it all with the “findings” of a world tour that included attempts to get the Australian government, the Italian government, and the U.K. government to participate in attacks on U.S. intelligence agencies. What’s going to come out the other end could be a dud, but it could launch an effort to derail the impeachment process—and more.Barr’s effort to create a comprehensive, all-conspiracy-theories-combined report seems to have delayed delivery of the long-expected findings from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Republicans were generally thrilled by Horowitz’s earlier report in which he was critical of former FBI director James Comey for his handling of some classified materials. That report had right-wing news outlets clamoring over potential charges against Comey. But despite claims that the findings justified Republican attacks on the entire Russia investigation, the actual complaints were minor and led to nothing. That seems unlikely to be the case this time. As The Washington Post reports, Barr has subsumed Horowitz’s work because “the inspector general does not have the authority to declassify information” and Barr apparently intends to release information that dips into classified documents at both the FBI and CIA to tell his story of how the Russia investigation was unjustified from the start. Barr is having advance meetings (including one on Wednesday with Senate Judiciary chair Lindsey Graham) so that talking points and presentations can be ready in advance of an official release. Interestingly enough, Michael Horowitz does not appear to be attending the meetings on how to release information supposedly based on the material he assembled. But then, the investigation Barr is conducting has moved far beyond the sort of internal chastisement that might be delivered by Horowitz. The investigation he and Durham are conducting is now a criminal investigation, and is “pursuing potential crimes.” But not crimes in the sense of the hundreds of connections between the Trump White House and Russia. Or crimes in the sense of Trump’s obstruction of the Russia investigation. Certainly not crimes in the sense of Trump directly lying to investigators in the written answers he provided to the special counsel’s office. Instead, Barr is directly attempting to put some proof behind the claims that Donald Trump was trying to extort out of Ukraine: That there was never any real contact between Russia and the Trump campaign, that the DNC servers were not in fact hacked by Russia, that Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud was a CIA plant put in place to lure George Papadopoulos, that Australian official Andrew Downer was an instrument of U.S. intelligence, and that Ukrainian hackers conspired with Hillary Clinton to make it seem as if Russia stole data from the DNC and presented it to WikiLeaks, when all the while it was a scheme to justify launching an investigation into the Trump campaign.Barr and his associates have been racing to complete this report so that it can be dropped on the impeachment inquiry before the holidays. Major parts of the report apparently remain unwritten, but the fact that the publicity campaign is getting underway in advance of the report’s completion is not exactly a sign that this is going to be a contrite “nothing major found” report. And Barr has been at the center of forwarding Trump’s conspiracy theories and supporting attacks on the intelligence community. He’s already said, “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. I think spying did occur, but the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.” The report coming back could declare no evidence to support Trump’s conspiracy theories and say that Barr found that “spying” to be “adequately predicated.” Don’t count on it. And don’t count on there not being indictments. Barr did not shift to a criminal investigation because he doesn’t intend to arrest someone. There are going to be claims of serious wrongdoing. They are going to be aimed at not just creating a distraction to derail the impeachment hearings, but to provide “evidence” that Trump’s requests for investigations by Ukraine were justified. The question is going to be whether they are merely awful and damaging to the nation, or absolutely incinerate the rule of law.Next week, open hearings are set to begin in the House impeachment inquiry, and it seems very likely that actual articles of impeachment will be getting a vote before the end of the year. So far, the best defense that Republicans have dreamed up is claiming ignorance—not attending meetings, not reading transcripts, and openly declaring that they’re not about to start. But when Barr speaks, they’re all going to be listening.” Holy crap. I’ve said all along, when they start arresting political opponents and critical media, we are finished. Looks like it’s just around the corner. Next stop, Panem.
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Deleted
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Sept 28, 2024 23:48:43 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 1:04:43 GMT
I don't ever EVER want to hear another right-winger call for 'respecting law and order'.
We preach clean government to other countries and we have a cesspit at the tippy top of our government.
We must demand laws to stop Presidents acting like lawless thugs. NOW. Work the process and STFU until the process is complete. You know, like it used to be when we had normal human beings in office.
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Sept 28, 2024 23:48:43 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 1:11:00 GMT
Holy crap. I’ve said all along, when they start arresting political opponents and critical media, we are finished. Looks like it’s just around the corner. Next stop, Panem. Trump is getting desperate about justice, just as the billionaires (Gates, Zuckerberg, Bloomberg) are getting desperate about equity. Ugly days ahead all around.
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Post by revirdsuba99 on Nov 9, 2019 1:32:43 GMT
Stones trial. Bannon testifying. Did the trump campaign have a direct line to wikileaks/Assange ....... "I don't think we had" ..prosecutor from the Mueller Grand jury transcript.... Bannon testified that yes we did, through Roger Stone. Not direct quotes but the gist.
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Heathen
Full Member
Posts: 427
Feb 12, 2017 6:05:44 GMT
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Post by Heathen on Nov 9, 2019 1:50:57 GMT
Melania's expression: "At least he's groping her and not me." It's a tossup who's had more plastic surgery, Melania Trump or Paula White.
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Post by revirdsuba99 on Nov 9, 2019 1:57:27 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 2:57:18 GMT
linkPolitiFact “5 ways Warren’s Medicare for All math could fall short”From the article. Assumption No. 5: Medicare for All rolls out fully on Day OneThe concern: No one buys this premise.What we’re talking about here isn’t so much an assumption as it is a convenient way for talking about the numbers. But if nothing else illustrates why all these estimates should be taken with a grain of salt, this is it. All of the savings, and all of the revenues, are calculated as if every policy were in force Jan. 1, 2020. Warren’s experts are blunt with this major caveat: "While it is of course the case that any shift to Medicare for All would require a significant transition period, because Urban estimates the costs of a single-payer proposal as if it were fully implemented and at steady-state starting in 2020, we use the same approach in our analysis for ease of comparison." The Medicare for All bill itself has a four-year transition period. But given that no other current study can match the computer modeling behind the Urban Institute estimate, Warren’s team followed suit.John Holahan, a key architect of the Urban Institute’s study, said their goal was to compare a variety of health care reform plans, not give a road map of how they would unfold. As a result, the timing of the all the dollars is off. Some costs tied to enrollment would be lower than expected at the start. "You could enroll the people on Medicare and Medicaid right away," Holahan said. "That would save you money, because you’re not covering everybody. But your costs increase over time as you cover more people." Some costs would be higher. "A lot of this works because you have lower provider payment rates," he continued. "You can’t do that on Day One — you have to cut gradually, so you are spending more money in the early years." Warren may have said she had provided the "true, full" cost of her plan. What she provided, for all its details, was a hypothetical sketch.” Question. If Warren wins, by the time she takes office the ACA will be in shambles. With a four year transition period, what are people suppose to do until they are “transitioned” into Medicare for healthcare coverage? Even if the first to be transitioned are folks in the individual markets, if will take a fair amount of time to get the program to the point where it can take in these folks because it will require changes to the current Medicare program.
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Post by revirdsuba99 on Nov 9, 2019 4:22:07 GMT
The more I hear tonight it seems the GOP may make Mulvaney the fall guy in this mess. They keep saying it is Mulvaney, Sondland and ?. But Mulvaney is the one who told OBM(?) to hold the funds for Ukraine, although Sondland said direction came from the president.
ETA: Mulvaney, Sondland, and Giuliani, GOP leaning toward they are/were freelancing, not working for the president. Heavy duty risk there, Giuliani has been with dt for years, oh what he could tell. But of course his credibility is down the tubes.
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Sept 28, 2024 23:48:43 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 12:56:15 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 13:00:39 GMT
Henry Olsen. - Washington Post - 11-4-2019 “If you’re scared of Trump’s foreign policy, Warren’s should terrify you”Author: Henry OlsenWashington, D.C. Columnist focusing on politics, populism, and American conservative thought Education: Claremont McKenna College, BA in political science; University of Chicago Law School, JD
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 13:04:54 GMT
The Billionaires Are Getting Nervous Bill Gates and others warn that higher taxes would lead to lower growth. They have their facts backward. By The Editorial Board The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom. www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/opinion/bill-gates-warren-tax.html"When Bill Gates founded Microsoft in 1975, the top marginal tax rate on personal income was 70 percent, tax rates on capital gains and corporate income were significantly higher than at present, and the estate tax was a much more formidable levy. None of that dissuaded Mr. Gates from pouring himself into his business, nor discouraged his investors from pouring in their money. Yet he is now the latest affluent American to warn that Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plan for much higher taxes on the rich would be bad not just for the wealthy but for the rest of America, too. Mr. Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, suggested on Wednesday that a big tax increase would result in less economic growth. “I do think if you tax too much you do risk the capital formation, innovation, U.S. as the desirable place to do innovative companies — I do think you risk that,” he said. Other perturbed plutocrats have made the same point with less finesse. The billionaire investor Leon Cooperman was downright crude when he declared that Ms. Warren was wrecking the American dream. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, complained on CNBC that Ms. Warren “uses some pretty harsh words” about the rich. He added, “Some would say vilifies successful people.” Let’s get a few things straight. The wealthiest Americans are paying a much smaller share of income in taxes than they did a half-century ago. In 1961, Americans with the highest incomes paid an average of 51.5 percent of that income in federal, state and local taxes. In 2011, Americans with the highest incomes paid just 33.2 percent of their income in taxes, according to a study by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman published last year. Data for the last few years is not yet available but would most likely show a relatively similar tax burden. The federal government needs a lot more money. Decades of episodic tax cuts have left the government deeply in debt: The Treasury is on pace to borrow more than $1 trillion during the current fiscal year to meet its obligations. The government will need still more money for critical investments in infrastructure, education and the social safety net.This is not an endorsement of the particulars of Ms. Warren’s tax plan. There is plenty of room to debate how much money the government needs, and how best to raise that money. The specific proposals by Ms. Warren and one of her rivals, Senator Bernie Sanders, to impose a new federal tax on wealth are innovations that require careful consideration. But a necessary part of the solution is to collect more from those Americans who have the most."
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Sept 28, 2024 23:48:43 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 13:12:15 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 13:13:42 GMT
"Warren says she wants to tax Bezos more...Washington Post begins putting out 5 anti-Warren opinions a day. Coincidence?"
Funny, right? Or just another day in America where billionaires buy the laws and now the opinions that keep them in power.
Plutocracy beats Democracy. And it's only going to get worse. Trump is the beginning, not the end.
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Post by revirdsuba99 on Nov 9, 2019 14:56:51 GMT
The wealthiest Americans are paying a much smaller share of income in taxes than they did a half-century ago. In 1961, Americans with the highest incomes paid an average of 51.5 percent of that income in federal, state and local taxes. In 2011, Americans with the highest incomes paid just 33.2 percent of their income in taxes, according to a study by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman published last year. Data for the last few years is not yet available but would most likely show a relatively similar tax burden. The federal government needs a lot more money. Decades of episodic tax cuts have left the government deeply in debt: The Treasury is on pace to borrow more than $1 trillion during the current fiscal year to meet its obligations. The government will need still more money for critical investments in infrastructure, education and the social safety net. HUMmmmmmmmmm!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 16:26:51 GMT
First, yes trump is a walking disaster when it comes to foreign policy. The world is a lot less safe since he took office. Replacing him with someone who sees foreign policy as an afterthought is just as destructive. And in my opinion both Warren and Sanders see foreign policy as an afterthought. And I say this as someone who doesn’t have boatloads of money to hide. Curious what parts do you specifically think this conservative who wrote this piece has wrong? “These are important decisions that have long-range consequences for our security and our relations with our allies. They deserve extensive analysis and consideration in their own right. By blithely using this money to pay for her health-care plan without a serious discussion of these considerations and trade-offs, Warren shows disdain for and lack of understanding of foreign policy intricacies.It’s simply not enough to say, as she does in her plan, that some military spending programs “merely line the pockets of defense contractors.” By setting an implicit ironclad goal of cutting the overall defense budget by 10 percent within one year of taking office, Warren doesn’t force the Defense Department to “prioritize or live within its means.” She forces it to rapidly reduce military personnel, deployments and weapons procurements to meet her own priority. This part?That means an immediate cut of $68.8 billion, roughly 10 percent of all discretionary defense spending, potentially taken exclusively from non-war on terrorism expenses. Personnel costs alone take up nearly a third of the military budget, so meeting this target would probably require extensive layoffs of civilian and on-duty employees. This part? It could also require cancellation of or changes to existing military weapons contracts. It could force reductions in forces deployed overseas or push the United States to force its allies to pay more for their deployment in those host countries. Any one of these changes would be highly contentious. Doing all of them at once, under an artificial deadline adopted for non-defense reasons, would be simply irresponsible.Defense spending would probably have to increase, not decrease, in coming years. China’s and Russia’s militaries are growing, while ours is at best staying about the same size. To use just one measure of this, by the 2030s, Russia and China could field as many as eight aircraft carriers, up from one in 2001. The United States, on the other hand, is projected to field the same 11 carriers it has now. That’s down from the 16 it possessed when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. That’s not going to work, at least if we care about credibly maintaining our global alliance structure. This part?
Or are you dismissing what this guy is saying solely because “gasp” he is one of those dreaded conservatives?
If you have thoughts about what this guy is saying, I would be interested in what you have to say. But if all you got is a ridiculous tweet and a post pointing out this guy was a conservative, then its meaningless.
And I did know the guys history, that’s why I put his name as author as full disclosure.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 16:41:36 GMT
Yes, @fred, I disagree w/all the parts you highlighted. We can shrink defense spending by 10% as many have laid out in economics pieces. www.thenation.com/article/military-industrial-complex-green-new-deal/And if you're worried about job losses, retrain those military industrial complex folks into other service jobs. We're always going on about how important retraining is (and it is). Move those b/trillions out of arms merchants pockets and into more mental health care, more child care, more law enforcement, more safety inspections. I've laid this out hundreds of times in posts all over this board. Money needs to be spent where it helps SOCIETY most , where it helps THE MOST PEOPLE FLOURISH. Not on $50 million dollar weddings and not on more ICBMs when we can already nuke the entire world into human oblivion. So, yes, I disagree with it all. Does that help clarify my position more than the hundreds of previous posts (most of which were well-cited that I don't have time for today and that don't seem to matter anyway)?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 17:42:02 GMT
Yes, @fred , I disagree w/all the parts you highlighted. We can shrink defense spending by 10% as many have laid out in economics pieces. www.thenation.com/article/military-industrial-complex-green-new-deal/And if you're worried about job losses, retrain those military industrial complex folks into other service jobs. We're always going on about how important retraining is (and it is). Move those b/trillions out of arms merchants pockets and into more mental health care, more child care, more law enforcement, more safety inspections. I've laid this out hundreds of times in posts all over this board. Money needs to be spent where it helps SOCIETY most , where it helps THE MOST PEOPLE FLOURISH. Not on $50 million dollar weddings and not on more ICBMs when we can already nuke the entire world into human oblivion. So, yes, I disagree with it all. Does that help clarify my position more than the hundreds of previous posts (most of which were well-cited that I don't have time for today and that don't seem to matter anyway)? Then you are being awfully shortsighted. You, and other progressives, try and make everything black and white either forgetting or purposely ignoring all those pesky shades of grey between the black and the white. And those grey shades matter and need to be taken into consideration when presenting a complete picture. Sorry, I don’t read many of your posts because with all the tweets and links mixed together , it makes it hard to navigate your posts. Half the time I don’t if it’s you or part of a tweet. There is a reason I take the time to post the entire article or distance my comments from the tweets I post and that to make it easy to read for those who chose to do so. There are a lot of problems in this country that need to be addressed , no question. But there is not just one way to solve these problems. Solving these problems in a responsible way. The debate should be how to achieve what needs to be done without cutting off our noses to spite our faces.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 19:03:53 GMT
Then you are being awfully shortsighted. You, and other progressives, try and make everything black and white either forgetting or purposely ignoring all those pesky shades of grey between the black and the white. And those grey shades matter and need to be taken into consideration when presenting a complete picture. Sorry, I don’t read many of your posts because with all the tweets and links mixed together , it makes it hard to navigate your posts. Half the time I don’t if it’s you or part of a tweet. There is a reason I take the time to post the entire article or distance my comments from the tweets I post and that to make it easy to read for those who chose to do so. There are a lot of problems in this country that need to be addressed , no question. But there is not just one way to solve these problems. Solving these problems in a responsible way. The debate should be how to achieve what needs to be done without cutting off our noses to spite our faces. I have the ultimate respect for shades of grey and abhor black and white thinking (as dozens of my posts will attest to). But thanks for the shots. How about you just put me on ignore?
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Post by Merge on Nov 9, 2019 22:44:12 GMT
Yes, @fred , I disagree w/all the parts you highlighted. We can shrink defense spending by 10% as many have laid out in economics pieces. www.thenation.com/article/military-industrial-complex-green-new-deal/And if you're worried about job losses, retrain those military industrial complex folks into other service jobs. We're always going on about how important retraining is (and it is). Move those b/trillions out of arms merchants pockets and into more mental health care, more child care, more law enforcement, more safety inspections. I've laid this out hundreds of times in posts all over this board. Money needs to be spent where it helps SOCIETY most , where it helps THE MOST PEOPLE FLOURISH. Not on $50 million dollar weddings and not on more ICBMs when we can already nuke the entire world into human oblivion. So, yes, I disagree with it all. Does that help clarify my position more than the hundreds of previous posts (most of which were well-cited that I don't have time for today and that don't seem to matter anyway)? Then you are being awfully shortsighted. You, and other progressives, try and make everything black and white either forgetting or purposely ignoring all those pesky shades of grey between the black and the white. And those grey shades matter and need to be taken into consideration when presenting a complete picture. Sorry, I don’t read many of your posts because with all the tweets and links mixed together , it makes it hard to navigate your posts. Half the time I don’t if it’s you or part of a tweet. There is a reason I take the time to post the entire article or distance my comments from the tweets I post and that to make it easy to read for those who chose to do so. There are a lot of problems in this country that need to be addressed , no question. But there is not just one way to solve these problems. Solving these problems in a responsible way. The debate should be how to achieve what needs to be done without cutting off our noses to spite our faces. I don't want to get into this argument again, but I've been wanting to say for a long time that your propensity for posting articles in their entirety - especially those behind a paywall - is potentially a violation of copyright, and I wish you'd stop for that reason (and because it makes the thread very difficult to read, for those of us who post on our phones). Journalists and news organizations deserve to be paid for their work, whether that's by subscription to get past a paywall or by the ad revenue generated from clicks. It's much more respectful of the journalist's work to post an excerpt and a link, and it also complies with the concept of "fair use."
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Sept 28, 2024 23:48:43 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 23:18:26 GMT
Then you are being awfully shortsighted. You, and other progressives, try and make everything black and white either forgetting or purposely ignoring all those pesky shades of grey between the black and the white. And those grey shades matter and need to be taken into consideration when presenting a complete picture. Sorry, I don’t read many of your posts because with all the tweets and links mixed together , it makes it hard to navigate your posts. Half the time I don’t if it’s you or part of a tweet. There is a reason I take the time to post the entire article or distance my comments from the tweets I post and that to make it easy to read for those who chose to do so. There are a lot of problems in this country that need to be addressed , no question. But there is not just one way to solve these problems. Solving these problems in a responsible way. The debate should be how to achieve what needs to be done without cutting off our noses to spite our faces. I have the ultimate respect for shades of grey and abhor black and white thinking (as dozens of my posts will attest to). But thanks for the shots. How about you just put me on ignore? What I’m seeing is someone who does not have the ultimate respect for the various shades of grey. That the only way is the progressive way in your mind. Your post about not being a “real” Democrat gave you away. As to putting you on ignore, why would I? We both want the same thing but have different views on how to accomplish it. Is that what we do now, put folks who disagree with us on ignore? No wonder this country is so screwed up if we can’t listen to what the other folks have to say just because we don’t like it. When we put our opinions “out there” one of three things will happen. It will be ignored, folks will like and agree with it, or folks will disagree with it and aren’t shy in letting you know. I’ve voiced my opinion on a variety of things and on more than one occasion I’ve had my ass handed to me about it. But putting someone on ignore just because they don’t agree with me I don’t get.
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