Yah know, though it seems ages ago it was only two weeks. Get your head out of the spokes of the news cycle.
You want time travel? 2018-
Mar 05 2019
The Breakfast Club (Rebellion)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The Boston Massacre; Winston Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech; The Soviet Union’s dictator Josef Stalin dies; Comedian John Belushi found dead; Country singer Patsy Cline killed in a plane crash.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
Mar 04 2019
Fox News All-In For Trump. And?
OMG!!! the media and the internet is all agog over The New Yorker‘s investigative reporter Jane Mayer’s article on how Fox News was all in for Donald Trump in 2016.
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel knew about Donald Trump’s illegal hush money payment to a pornographic film actor ahead of the 2016 election but killed the story because the media mogul wanted him to win, it was reported on Monday.
Fox journalist Diana Falzone “had obtained proof” of Trump’s alleged extramarital affair with Stormy Daniels, as well as emails that showed his lawyer, Michael Cohen, planned to buy her silence in nondisclosure agreement, according to the New Yorker.
But the report, a potentially huge scandal that could have damaged Trump at the polls, never saw the light of day. Fox News executive Ken LaCorte reportedly told Falzone: “Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go,” the New Yorker article says.
The magazine adds that LaCorte denied the comment, but one of Falzone’s colleagues confirmed having heard the account. Falzone was later demoted, sued Fox and reached a settlement that includes a nondisclosure agreement preventing her from speaking about the matter.
The symbiotic relationship between Trump’s White House and America’s most watched cable news network has become well established, with one amplifying the message of the other, for example by fanning fears of illegal immigration at the US-Mexico border. The president is a frequent Fox News viewer, often live-tweeting his reactions to the channel during his so-called “executive time”, and he has given it more than 40 interviews (compared to none for CNN).
This and the news that Trump, in an attempted abuse of power, tried to have White House advisors order the DOJ to block the Time Warner/CNN merger because he was mad at CNN, was also reported in Mayer’s piece.
In the late summer of 2017, Trump asked Gary Cohn, then Trump’s chief economic adviser, to pressure the Justice Department to file a lawsuit to block a planned $85 billion merger between the two companies, according to the magazine.
“I’ve been telling Cohn to get this lawsuit filed and nothing’s happened!” Trump reportedly fumed to Cohn and White House chief of staff John Kelly during an Oval Office meeting. “I’ve mentioned it 50 times. And nothing’s happened. I want to make sure it’s filed. I want that deal blocked!”
As they walked out of the meeting, Cohn reportedly told Kelly not to call the Justice Department, saying, “We are not going to do business that way,” according to the source.
While Donnie Doll Hands has CNN in his sites, CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, is playing the “both sides do it” game and has consistency hired right wing commentators and managers that push, as Trump likes to call it, fake news. Take CNN latest hire, Sarah Isgur Flores, a GOP operative and former spokesperson for the Trump Department of Justice, as the new political editor. CNN has had a bad habit of hiring discarded Trump staff and GOP propagandists like former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Jeffrey Lord, Kayleigh McEnany, Jason Miller and Steve Cortes, giving them a platform for outright lies and misinformation almost without challenge. CNN seems to be fixated on hearing White House spokesperson Kellyanne Conway filibuster their hosts with her litany of White House lies. If this is Zucker’s idea of “fair and balanced” to win over ill informed Trump supporters, he’s missing by more than a country mile.
Telling us something we already know, that Fox News has been an arm if the Republican Party for years, is an necessity. We need to remember that most Americans can’t remember what they ate yesterday and need to be reminded a they are being fed propaganda by the corrupt Trump administration aided by a news media looking for ratings. While it may seem like we are hearing news we already knew, it is important that when new information and facts are found it be reported to reinforce the truth exposing the criminals and the corrupt.
Mar 04 2019
Wacky Crazy MMT!
To me what’s significant about this presentation is how mainstream and reasonable it is.
Remember MMT is about what, not how. What is about Money and not only can we just print what we need, we already do. How? Well, we spend tons of it on useless things like F 35s and it’s certainly arguable that fixing our highways, bridges, and sewers, ensuring universal health care (not just insurance), and education are more important to a robust and prosperous future than a plane that won’t fly when it rains.
It’s an argument I’m happy to engage, but will you quit caviling about Debts, Deficits, and how we can’t afford nice things? Until you can demonstrate hyper-inflation it’s just an invisible boogey-man you’re using to frighten the children into compliance.
Mar 04 2019
Pondering the Pundits
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Paul Krugman: How Goes the Trade War?
Consumers, not foreigners, are paying the Trump tariffs.
Say this for Donald Trump: He’s provided us with many iconic quotations, which will surely be repeated in histories and textbooks for decades if not generations to come. Unfortunately, they’ll be repeated because they are extremely clear examples of bad ideas.
In economics, the line you hear most is Trump’s declaration that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” Coming in second is his assertion that “I am a Tariff Man,” coupled with the claim that foreigners pay the tariffs he has been imposing.
Now, that last claim is something you can test. Over the course of 2018 Trump imposed tariffs on about 12 percent of total U.S. imports, and many of those tariffs have been in effect long enough that we can get a first read on their consequences.
On Saturday economists from Columbia, Princeton, and the New York Federal Reserve released a paper, “The impact of the 2018 trade war on U.S. prices and welfare,” that used detailed import data to assess the tariffs’ impact. (The paper, by the way, is a beautiful piece of work.) The conclusion: to a first approximation, foreigners paid none of the bill, U.S. companies and consumers paid all of it. And the losses to U.S. consumers exceeded the revenue from the new tariffs, so the tariffs made America poorer overall.
How did they get this result? The U.S. government collects data on the prices and quantities of many categories of imports. Many of these categories faced new tariffs, but many others didn’t. So you can compare what happened to the tariffed imports to the de facto control group of untouched imports; this tells you the impact of the tariffs.
Robert Reich: If Trump loses, we know what to expect: anger, fear and disruption
The United States is now headed by someone pathologically incapable of admitting defeat. This doesn’t bode well for the 2020 presidential election
Among the most chilling words uttered this week by Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, were “given my experience working for Mr Trump I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power, and this is why I agreed to appear before you today”.
Cohen should know better than anyone, but we already had reason to worry. In 2016, when polls showed Hillary Clinton with a wide lead, Trump claimed the election was rigged against him.
He refused to commit to honoring the election results if he lost, warning that he’d “reserve my right to contest or file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable result.” He added that he’d accept the results of the election “if I win”. [..]
We should take seriously Michael Cohen’s admonition that if Trump is defeated in 2020, he will not leave office peacefully.
Republican leaders as well as supreme court justices and civic and religious leaders across the land must be prepared to assert the primacy of our system of government over the will of the man who refuses to lose.
Mar 04 2019
What do you want to be when you grow up?
I frequently remark, at least privately, on how different my life could be had I chosen this or that path instead of drifting along my current one (which suits me just fine) and I find I am now what I ever wanted to be, a writer who writes for people rather than machines (pretty equally good at either and I have table manners too). It’s a 1 in 14,000,605 shot at least.
It is a labor of love and a piece of art from which I expect exactly nothing in revenue, a trifle of photon amusement I’m generously indulged in by my patrons whom I suspect are most of my readership, no need to contribute anything except content.
Yet it takes effort to make it look easy. And I am not some kind of AI ‘bot who can read traffic signs the way you’d expect an autonomous vehicle to be able to, yah Morans.
Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
On the other hand you’ll probably never get paid either.
Mar 04 2019
The Breakfast Club (Lawyers)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Franklin D. Roosevelt is sworn in as president and vows to lead America out of the Great Depression; President Ronald Reagan takes responsibility for the Iran-Contra affair; The AAA is founded.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.
Mar 03 2019
Felis silvestris catus
Mar 03 2019
To Have And Have Not
Look, I only say Casablanca is better to be polite. Pretty close and I like the underdog.
Hmm… SNL-
Slim is not anywhere near that desperate. She came out of no place and can vanish right back. She doesn’t need nothin’ from Harry, he’s just another Mark who happens to be in denial that he’s an addlebrained romantic (which happens to be her type, go figure).
Anyway, kind of ruined my enjoyment.
Cold Ben Stiller
Feinstein Cut For Time
Jokes About Toilets
More Jokes About Toilets
Pete Davidson Is Still Alive Despite Being HARD Dumped by Ariana Grande Who Licks Donuts And Sticks Them Back For People To Buy Because It’s Funny
Hah hah, Ick. And I apologize in advance to those who suffer depression as I do and may be triggered by this grim joke.
Professional Courtesy- Cellino & Barnes Personal Injury Attorneys
More Game Shows
Indiana Woke
Oh, you want news.
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