Please join us this evening as the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally gathers for an evening of free speech, with no obstruction but plenty of collusion in using the words “resistance” and “impeachment” in prose, song, chants, and slam poetry.
We meet every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the room at the rear of the tavern beginning about 8pm.
Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out one of the 260 chapters of Living Liberally, including 22 in Washington state, eight in Oregon and three in Idaho. Find a chapter near you. Or you might consider starting your own chapter!
The markets don’t think much of Trump’s trade truce with China. Dow futures are sinking tonight, and bond yield curves are inverting.
@ 1
Yeah, the markets always respond on the second day after a significant news event. I’m sure that nice pop on Monday had nothing to do with Sunday’s news. ’cause it always takes two nights to sleep on it before responding.
You’re a fucking clown, Roger Dumbfuck Rabbit.
When I think about this chick and her illiterate progressivism, I envision a younger, prettier YLB:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s $21 trillion mistake
Ocasio-Cortez claimed on Twitter that $21 trillion in “Pentagon accounting errors” could have paid for 66 percent of the Medicare-for-all proposal. Her tweet references an article in the Nation, a left-leaning magazine. The specific line about the missing $21 trillion comes from research by Mark Skidmore, an economics professor at Michigan State University.
…
Ocasio-Cortez is not the first Twitter user to mangle information from a news report. But it’s unconvincing to try to pass this off as a rhetorical point being misread. She cited the $21 trillion figure and said “66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.”
That’s a direct comparison. It’s badly flawed. The same article she referenced on Twitter would have set her straight. The tweet is still up, probably causing confusion. So we will award Four Pinocchios to Ocasio-Cortez.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/04/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-trillion-mistake/?utm_term=.2a15dcde0452
Her tin cup is shinier than YLB’s, too.
Not sure what godwin is enraged about, but the china trade truce euphoria seems to have evaporated. The bounce didn’t last long.
godwin, you gonna also post when republicans make errors?
Chick? Your fragile masculinity is manifesting.
5,
After the first early strikes from N.K. have obliterated most of Texas, Teh Dumbfuck will crawl out of his back yard bunker in his urine soaked Wranglers and get to his Pornstation to shit post about how it’s all The Bitch’s fault. That’s really all that animates these people anymore.
Turns out Ivanka deleted some emails.
Big surprise.
They went from this…
…directly to phony charges of TREASON!!!!! at precisely the moment it becomes abundantly clear that the President, his family members, his companies, and his campaign have all broken the law many, many times.
It will be BENGHAAAZIIII!!!!! all over again. And always eager for a simple, binary conflict to motivate the “fanbase” most of the corporate media will buy into it.
The only binary conflict in play here is between those who support democracy and the rule of law, and
Republicansthose who oppose democracy and the rule of law.This is really who Republicans are now.
What fucking Trade Deal with China….as I posted two days ago, it’s all bullshit…..just like Bob is Bullshit or horseshit.
Anyone that believes for 1 second, heck give them even 1 minute for fairness, that The Hump is ever truthful should be put on a firing line and shot dead.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/12/jpmorgan-warns-investors-trumps-tweets-purported-china-deal-appear-completely-fabricated/
@2 you’re a dumbfuck.
Please tell us all about the specifics of this Trade Desl that you know all about or at least believe in.
People from the world of criminal defense assure me that any time a criminal defendant claims corruption on the part of judges, prosecutors, and police as the jumping off point for their claims of innocence it is not an encouraging sign.
Alibis are good. Alibis supported by alibi witnesses are very good. Positive, credible character witnesses are good. Actual exculpatory evidence offered by the defendant is fantastic.
The guy who at the first interview claims that the cops planted the gun, staged the murder, scattered his DNA throughout the crime scene and put the victims blood all over the bag of his clothes they dug out of his dumpster, and that the prosecutor and judge are all in on it, is not a promising candidate for trial in front of a jury of actual people. On the other hand, they may be an excellent candidate for a book deal. So there’s that.
Once again, I am here to tell everyone that I have a 13″ penis. Sure hell beats Trump’s Weird Penis!
oooopsssy! Don’t look now. The shit is hitting the fan!
For those of you following along at home, any “non-written, ad-hoc, joint defense agreement” between two or more lawyers involved in a criminal investigation is otherwise known throughout the legal profession as a conspiracy to obstruct.
Of course, it all hinges on what information you’ve agreed to share in privilege, and what information you’ve agreed to hold in confidence. And guess what? That’s why these things are always written down in advance. To protect the lawyers mostly, but also their clients, from any possible charges that they sought to obstruct by “fixing the facts”
We now have not just serial fabulist and world champion capillary farmer Jerry Corsi claiming that such a “non-written” JDA exists, and not just his crackpot lawyer Larry Klayman, and not just President StrongBad. Now two of President StrongBad’s lawyers are making the same claim (admittedly the two worst).
This could not be any more transparent. It has almost no chance of succeeding in court as a way of protecting the parties, including the lawyers. And perhaps worst of all, it puts all the parties entered into it at the mercy of any of the others.
Can you imagine having your license to practice depend upon the character of Larry Klayman?
According to OKCupid, their members are more likely to consider having voted for Trump a dealbreaker than golden showers.
I’ll save you guys the trouble. I checked, and OKCupid actually does not have a question about getting fucked in the ass by a horse. Weird, right?
Let me guess:
User name: admin
Password: 1234
And now…
federal witness tampering.
Hearings and testimony on impeachment can be scheduled for summer of 2020 with the final vote to be taken after the election.
What do we do as a society, when republicans use Rule of Law, to cheat?
@ 18
What do we do as a society, when republicans use Rule of Law, to cheat?
Well, first we acknowledge that both sides are guilty, asshole.
18,
capitalize the word “Republican” and make it very clear that this goes well beyond any individual republican, that it is a Republican Party policy, that it is an integral element of Republican Party strategy, and that it is increasingly their best and in many cases their only chance for any Republican obtaining and keeping authority over other people.
In order to crush Republicanism we must crush bothsiderism.
And we must crush Republicanism if we want to stop the torture of sobbing Guatemalan toddlers, as but one example.
Here’s a pretty good example of bothsiderism that demonstrates why it has to be crushed.
In August of this year immediately after Mr. Safety School, Esq. entered his first set of felony guilty pleas connected to the 2016 Presidential campaign, President Strong Bad tweeted the following:
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Michael Cohen plead guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. President Obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled!
97.2K
5:37 AM – Aug 22, 2018
Now, despite the fact that the President is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government, the chief legal officer of the federal government, and his views on legal matters should normally be binding on the agencies, the Department of Justice is ignoring this and other stupid idiot tweets, and is continuing to enforce the laws and criminal codes regulating campaign finance.
The President at this point certainly recognizes that the criminal acts Mr. Safety School, Esq. has pleaded guilty to are connected directly to his campaign, directly to his companies, directly to his family charity foundation, and more recently directly to his Presidency. So he has an overwhelming motivation to draw false equivalency to other non-criminal acts in order to protect himself, his family, and his co-conspirators.
But agreeing to entertain this kind of bothsiderism seriously weakens the rule of law. It may be comforting to beer drunk impotent meat puppets in their never ending search for ways to reconcile their abandonment of national loyalty for lulz. But the purpose of civic debate is not to give comfort to, or self-actualize the parties engaged. And to do anything other than dismiss these kinds of idiot claims (as the entirety of the Department of Justice most certainly has) is to agree that the butt-hurt “feels” of racist nationalists are more important than the rule of law.
Fuck their feelings. Some things are more important. We have a democracy to save.
@2- It’s gonna take a hell of a bounce to recover from today’s drop. Between the fact Trump’s aids don’t know what was “agreed” to, China’s silence and Trump’s blathering, the market is not happy.
“Both sides” don’t do this.
But maybe it’s time we did. I admit some dismay when I see that overwhelmingly the states that rely for example on independent, bi-partisan commissions to re-district following the census are educated, healthy, prosperous, progressive states dominated by Democrats. We voluntarily give a fair, and representative proportion of access and authority to rural, aging, predominantly klownsurvaturd constituencies in our states.
What if the three coastal states re-drew our districts, either to concentrate the remaining arthritic, balding, impotent, deeply disappointed, fearful, and generally poorly educated old white men and their obedient spouses into frozen sage gulags, or to strategically dilute them into a crushed minority painfully straddling the mountains and deserts?
California’s 53 seats could be limited to perhaps no more than five asshole Republicans. Washington’s 10 seats could be limited to no more than two. And Oregon could be entirely cleansed of the stain.
@2 That nice pop on Monday might have lasted a couple days longer if Trump had kept his fat mouth shut, although today’s 800-point drop really has more to do with the market interpreting three yield curves inverting as a harbinger of a recession.
The market probably is wrong about that, the economy is only slowing back to trendline growth, so this may settle down by the end of the week as a minor dip on account of the market realizing that Trump’s happy talk about trade over the weekend was just hot air.
The market would be pleased with one more rate hike in December followed by the FOMC taking a year-long vacation. That’s where the real action is. Trump is a carnival freak show.
@3 Bleat all you want about Ocasio-Cortez, but she’s only 1 of 233 House Democrats, not the whole caucus, and she can’t pass legislation as a Causus of One. Think of her as the Kshama Sawant of Congress, except with proportionately less influence in that proportionately larger legislative body.
You have your freaks in Congress, too, not least among them Rep. Steve King and Sen. Loves Public Hangings. You don’t see us dwelling on them, though. We’re more concerned about the Orange Freak in the White House. Frankly, I suspect you obsess over Ocasio-Cortez because you think she’s hot.
@4 Probably got his heinie reamed in some options trades. Betting on Trump is never a good idea.
@19 “Well, first we acknowledge that both sides are guilty, asshole.”
Sorry, doc, but you can’t turn Democrats into Republicans no matter how hard you try. Alchemy doesn’t work with lead and gold, either. On an elemental level, they’re not the same.
@24 I’ve argued for years that Democrats should act more like Republicans. After all, if Doctor Dumbfuck is going to accuse us of that anyway, then we might as well be guilty.
This is one of those things that probably bears further monitoring. But if ICE doesn’t take real, meaningful steps to mend its relationships soon, they may find themselves at the center of a constitutional conflict over state’s rights without a Congressional minority to protect them.
For the second time now, ICE’s top spokesassholes have issued threats to large, influential states that refuse to
suck their dicksrespond to their baseless and constitutionally improper administrative detention orders. Last summer it was California being threatened with ramped up military style “raids” by jack booted paramilitary forces in armored vehicles. This time it’s New Jersey.NJ’s Attorney General recently announced a policy revision directing the state’s law enforcement to generally ignore warrant-less detention orders issued by untrained federal bureaucrats – the kind of detention order that have recently resulted in multiple cases of not only legal residents being kidnapped and held without charge or access to counsel, but even full citizens being “disappeared” without a trace. Because of the utter and complete failures of ICE to fulfill their obligations under the law to protect legal citizens and legal residents from these abuses many states have had no choice but to decline to work in cooperate with ICE operations.
How does ICE respond? With threats of increased military style violence aimed at those communities which don’t cooperate. Their NJ spokesman, who not incidentally has lengthy and ongoing ties to radical, racist, extremist groups, promises stepped up midnight door busting raids in residential neighborhoods and workplaces throughout New Jersey. Most of these assholes have very limited civilian law enforcement experience. The bulk of them are ex active duty military. With any luck at all nobody will get injured or killed. But it’s a solid lock that many people’s civil rights will be violated with impunity, peaceful family homes will be turned upside down, and plenty of infants and toddlers will be led sobbing into the rain soaked darkness. FREEDUMB!
If things get bad enough it may be necessary for state law enforcement to intervene on behalf of their citizens in order to protect them from violence and to enforce the laws that ICE seems unable to understand. That could become very sticky. But if it were to come to that one easy and peaceful remedy would be for Congress to cut the agency’s funding through the appropriations process.
If anyone ever pounds on your door at home or at work demanding entry and they don’t show you a warrant from an independent court of law signed by a judge get away from the door and call the real police immediately. Then call your lawyer.
That was one hell of fart, this time with real methane gas this time by The Hump.
“Well, first we acknowledge that both sides are guilty”
I thought about this and I agree with you. Republicans are guilty of cheating and democrats are guilty of acting like republicans. Democrats used to do a lot more dirty tricks back when more people who switched to be republicans were in the Democratic party.
That the problem now, Through self selection, the people want the world to be fair and good for everyone are in the Democratic party and the people who want power and money by any means are in the republican party. Democrats keep bringing PowerPoint slides to a gun fight.
Dow Jones Industrial Average
−799.36 (3.10%)
Dang. What a day. Hope it’s not a trend. That would reflect badly on the republican economy
@33 As I’m continually recycling dividend cash back into the stock market, I don’t mind cheap stocks a bit. It’ll be fine with me if they get even cheaper.
Over the last eight years the No Labels/Problem Solvers caucus spent twice as much money defending incumbent Republicans as it spent helping Democrats. As far back as the beginning of this year the group, through its staff and senior leadership as revealed through leaked internal documents, were invested in a plan to try to use Minority Leader Pelosi as an identity wedge to help Republicans retain the House, and in the event that they lost, to mount a challenge to her leadership as a way to divide and weaken the Democrats going into the new Congress. Backed by a small handful of dark money Super PACs fronted by Joe Lieberman, under the current leadership of the group they began pursuing a series of secret political vendettas exclusively targeting more progressive Democrats, sometimes on behalf of centrist Democrats facing primary challenges. Despite pushback from key strategists the leadership insisted on going ahead with an effort to scuttle Pelosi’s Speakership as payback for paranoid imaginings. In the eight years since it’s founding the No Labels/Problem Solvers have been only supportive of Republican Congressional leadership and have never challenged or advocated for any alteration of proposed rules in either chamber under Republican control.
Presented as a polished, well organized, well funded, and highly professional movement advocating for governance and bi-partisanship, No Labels/Problem Solvers is in fact a subversive mole program intended to sew division among Democrats and to strengthen Republicans on behalf of its billionaire financial backers.
The time for Real Democrats is now. That doesn’t mean a mole hunt. But it does mean the new Congress should take measures to limit No Labels/Problem Solvers role. And they should make it absolutely clear to Democrats who choose to participate that doing so will limit them. If they want the help of their fellow Democrats they have to first stop working against us with Republicans.
@33 and 34
Too bad Doctor Dumbfuck didn’t short GE
So here’s what Michigan Republicans did. When minimum wage and paid sick leave initiatives received enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, the GOP legislature preempted them by enacting similar bills into law. And now, in the lame duck session, they’re repealing those laws.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/12/michigan-republicans-minimum-wage-sick-leave-lame-duck-rick-snyder-gretchen-whitmer/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: No, Republicans don’t respect the will of the people. Yes, they’re evil. Push people hard enough, though, and they’ll find some way to push back.
Who ever wrote this – “Yeah, the markets always respond on the second day after a significant news event. I’m sure that nice pop on Monday had nothing to do with Sunday’s news. ’cause it always takes two nights to sleep on it before responding.”
must really, or should, feel stupid.
Poor Bob, all he’s got is – “well both sides do it”. If you feel that way then why the fuck do you complain if a Democrat does it? You should be familiar with it already.
Well, Daddy, Jenny did it too.
@37 Resist!
How about what they are doing in Wisconsin…..bunch of sore losers. Un-American.
Michigan Republicans: We are making Libs cry!
@26 ” Frankly, I suspect you obsess over Ocasio-Cortez because you think she’s hot.”
That’s priceless. She is way out of Dr. Dumbfuck’s league. Dumbfuck is too obsessed with Clinton to look at another woman.
An excellent take on the American economy, based on The Gatsby Curve (the statistical phenomenon, not the book). The real winners: the 9.9%. Collectively, we own 60% of the wealth, and we’re the most socially stable of the lot.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Doctor Dumbfuck just can’t stand the fact that I’m as much a part of the 9.9% as he is. Of course, if social status was measured by brains instead of dollars, it wouldn’t be close, because he’s a dumbfuck.
Fwiw: “The counties that supported Hillary Clinton represented an astonishing 64 percent of the GDP, while Trump counties accounted for a mere 36 percent.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Of course, there’s a cohort of educated white trash with money, too, and Trump got a large share of those (see, e.g., Doctor Dumbfuck), which skews these statistics even more. Subtract them out, and I’m guessing Trump’s political base accounts for something like 20% of GDP, with half of that coming from reselling part of their oxy pill supply.
AOC vs a Ghomert, a King (the Austrian tourist) or Jordan (obtuse, raging asshole and sex abuse enabler)?
no contest on the brains front.. She’ll serve her district well. It’s a lock.
And check out the voter fraud that voter id laws couldn’t stop:
https://abovethelaw.com/2018/12/good-time-to-point-out-voter-id-would-not-stop-republican-election-fraud/
Republican vote fraud.. In a blood red state.. Perfect.
It’s not just me
State Republicans Are Refusing to Honor the Peaceful Transition of Power
https://www.thenation.com/article/wisconsin-michigan-republican-lame-duck-power-grab/
@ 47
You do not recall what Wisconsin Democrats attempted just prior to Walker coming in as governor? (One Democrat legislator stood up for what is right, and the Dems effort failed.)
You do not recall what the Massachusetts legislature did, twice, regarding Mitt Romney’s gubernatorial powers?
Does history not exist to you prior to 2016?
@47. Not familiar with what you are referencing. Got details?
One Democrat legislator stood up for what is right, and the Dems effort failed.
vs.
Not a single republican legislator stood up for what is right, and the republican effort was a success.
Republicans cheat successfully.
And the SCO will be issuing their “report” and shutting down any day now.
And PornAbortion made China his bitch.
And impotent, balding old white guys like you are good at Teh Internet.
49,
It’s a new world for Republicans, and their rules have changed again.
We’re a demographic identity in decline now, and when we rage-Tweet, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll rage-Tweet again, creating other new realities, which you can study too”
For West County Restaurants, the Jobs Are Plentiful, But the Workers Are Few
https://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/for-west-county-restaurants-the-jobs-are-plentiful-but-the-workers-are-few/Content?oid=28335451
The restaurants cannot or will not pay enough for their workers to live within a commuting distance of the work. Many suburb restaurants point to lack of public transportation as a primary reason for the shortage. The suburbs don’t want to pay for, or have, public transportation in their areas.
They gave an example of a restaurant moving closer to st Louis, inside the area of public transportation, As to the staffing side of the equation, Kandel says, the response to any job ad is “50-fold” what he got in Ellisville.
@ 47-49
Took a bit to find the Wisconsin stuff. In 2010 Gov. Jim Doyle did not stand for re-election and Walker beat Barrett. After the election, the WI legislature attempted to ram through last-minute legislation to extend things like collective bargaining agreements between teachers’ unions and the state, in order to delay what everyone knew Walker and the new legislature, just elected but not installed, would put into place. Doyle was pushing hard for this to happen.
One legislator, a Democrat whose name I still cannot find, refused to go along with the effort because the voters had chosen Walker knowing what was coming if he was seated. The effort failed because one vote was enough to defeat it.
See # 2 in the following letter:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5410839-201812031816.html
…
Regarding Massachusetts, legislature Dems stripped Romney of his ability to appoint a replacement to the US Senate in the event that Kerry had won in 2004. Under a new governor, after Ted Kennedy croaked, the legislature restored the ability of a Democrat governor to appoint a replacement.
In 2004, legislators changed state law to strip Republican Governor Mitt Romney of his power to appoint a replacement — just in case Kerry won the White House as the Democratic presidential nominee. The new law called for a special election to fill such an opening.
The death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 2009 led Beacon Hill Democrats to tweak the law yet again. This time, they authorized Patrick to appoint a temporary replacement until a special election could be held…
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2012/12/04/massachusetts-democrats-shouldn-change-laws-senate-openings/EySECF1XbycCfrCw9dtUKP/story.html
You’re welcome. No need to thank me.
Now someone step up and tell me I provide nothing useful to the discussion and that I’m just a useless troll.
“..strip Republican Governor Mitt Romney of his power to appoint a replacement.. . The new law called for a special election to fill such an opening.”
Gadzooks! Elections! The very idea. That’s absolutely shocking!
Next thing you’ll be telling us about how they tore premature infants out of incubators. Or how they flew airliners overhead spraying Madison with LSD.
BENGHAAAZIIII!!!!
Not “useless”. The laughs alone are worth the price of admission.
@ 56
The Democrats will control the House for two years.
The GOP will control the judiciary for a generation.
Laugh all you want, QoS McHillbilly.
And Hawaii isn’t the United States. And tax cuts for billionaires stimulate huge payroll increases. And the Korean Peninsula is now nuclear-free. And the SCO and DOJ investigations are all set to wrap up before Christmas too. YUP! Duhr. YUP!
If he keeps posting, I’ll keep laughing.
Also just for laughs:
TTDL* that a President Mike Pence would have no constitutional authority to pardon the various corporate entities known as The Trump Organization. And a key statutory element in any federal prosecution of conspiracy is the legal requirement that all parties to the conspiracy be named in the indictment.
So before President PornAbortion StripperSweat can even contemplate a Nixonesque escape hatch he has to be prepared for a future in which he holds no position in any corporate structure. Now imagine Jay Sekulow trying to deliver that briefing – one page, double spaced, with bullet points.
That one’s a real side splitter.
*Today Teh Dumbfuck Learned
Another example of “Hey, We are Repukes and we are righteous and we want others to play by the rules unlike us”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/long-island-election-workers-party-leaders-charged-with-forging-signatures
Thou shall not fuck like I.
Thou shall not kill like I.
Thou shall not steal like I.
Thou shall not lie like I.
Thou shall not breath like I.
Part of the Repukes 10 Dictates
60,
But see, what you’re forgetting here is that Alex Jones, and Mike Cernovich, and Laura Loomer (who shit her pants) and Jim Hoft, and mobs of pimply Moldovan script kiddies have been falsely accusing filthy lesbian hippie Democrats of that exact thing for years now.
So, bothsidesdoit and samey same!
@54 So you think electing, instead of appointing, a U.S. senator is equivalent to what Republicans are up to in Wisconsin and Michigan? You’re complaining about electing a senator? What a dumbfuck!
I think we can all guess pretty well who YLB’s gonna support in the primary.
Kirsten Gillibrand✔
@SenGillibrand
Our future is:
Female
Intersectional
Powered by our belief in one another.
And we’re just getting started.
4:06 PM – Dec 4, 2018
Sisters before misters. Ain’t that right, girlfriend.
@57 “The Democrats will control the House for two years.”
Subject to renewal, potentially indefinitely, and meanwhile the next two years is enough to ensure that Trump will never again have a Republican-controlled House of Representatives while he is president.
64,
extending the gains will ultimately depend on being in a position to control redistricting in 2022. And that means wiping out trailerbillies in state races in 2020. So trumpeting Child Molester depravity in Wisconsin and Michigan during this lame is useful.
And for Child Molesters, pretending it’s “politics as usual” is a survival tactic.
@ 64
…the next two years is enough to ensure that Trump will never again have a Republican-controlled House of Representatives while he is president.
Yeah, that’ll curb the Republican remaking of the judiciary.
@53 One of the corporate poobahs quoted in that article decried a lack of workers willing to ride buses 4 hours a day, yet he opposed raising Missouri’s $7.85/hr. minimum wage. Who’s going to spend 4 unpaid hours on a bus for the privilege of earning starvation wages?
@ 67
Restaurants are closing in Napa because they can’t find employees. CA minimum wage is $11/hr. Higher minimum wage doesn’t do it.
@66 “the Republican remaking of the judiciary”
Into what? An impartial judiciary that decides cases according to the law? Yeah, what if Trump’s appointees do their jobs, then what are you gonna do? And if they don’t, there’s this option:
http://www.centerforpolitics.o.....or-judges/
@68 What we have here is capitalism in action. If $11 isn’t enough, then try $15, and if that isn’t enough, pay $20. Capitalism, doc, capitalism. Free market. Invisible hand. Price discovery. Let the market tell you how much you have to pay for labor, because it most assuredly will.
Remember, minimum wage laws are not maximum wage laws.
Good thing the Markets are closed today….I’m pretty sure The Hump’s fart of a Trade Deal wouldn’t have produced good results today.
I’m pretty sure Tomorrow and Friday will suck….how’s that for a prediction. Bob – what do you think? 27,000 tomorrow?
I think The Hump should probably see if the Markets will remain closed until Monday.
69,
Essentially it is Klownsurvaturds running a victory lap before empty stands after losing the big game.
Same sex marriage? Check.
Abortion by mail? Check.
No Bibles in school? Check.
Votes for The Blacks? Check.
No prior restraint? Check.
Pity Teh Dumbfuck. He really needs this. After all, he traded his patriotism, his character, his credibility, and thanks to President GoodBrain, a substantial chunk of his retirement for it.
@72 Has to sweep out the horse barn himself, too, because no guest workers are available.
70,
don’t worry. The folks dining out in Napa can afford to pay a whole helluvalot more for dinner. As for closings, we see the very same pattern in hundreds of overpriced, downtown retail cores where demographics have shifted demand. Wealthy olds are spending more on durable luxury goods and less on dining and entertainment out. High end delivery and meal services are eating away at demand. Aging boomers teeth hurt and their stomachs are sensitive. And Bay Area millennials are working such long hours and being fed so well on campus that they have neither the time nor the inclination to dine out. Napa County unemployment is below 3 %. Things change.
Utah won’t pass hate crime legislation because the Mormon Church opposes it because Mormons don’t like LGBT people.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/utah-hate-crime-laws_us_5c058719e4b066b5cfa4b005
A certain group of Americans is being swept up in Bush nostalgia today, celebrating the life of 41 as if he made some kind of unique and consequential mark on the Presidency in four short years. Among them plenty of Never-Trumpers see this as a celebration of an elite family of breeding and lineage in contrast to the family of President StupidBrain. But I disagree.
A lot of Americans will fall for this bullshit. But overall, and across a broad cross section of lifestyle and socio-economic circumstances, it probably has less to with elite lineage and more to do with family structure. That’s a more universal metaphor. The Bush brood is a strict father structure. The Bush daddies may be portrayed as “benevolent” and appropriately “kind”. But their perceived role in the family and its success arises from establishing expectations and accountability through rewards and punishments that they should “live up to” their origins or roots and “earn” the place that has been prepared for them.
Compare that family model and resultant metaphor to Clinton and Obama, whose own fathers played almost no role in their upbringing and ultimate successes. Their life stories place an emphasis on some grounding in family origin or “roots” along with a nurturing family structure encouraging them to reach beyond those origins.
So we really shouldn’t be at all surprised if anyone like Maureen Dowd (a woman with very obvious daddy issues) is overcome with emotional nostalgia at a time like this. But moreover, we also should not be surprised if many people in media and politics just like her transfer some of that emotional nostalgia to the image of President PornFuck – a man who also was brought up in and projects a strict father family structure and metaphor.
I think it’s very important to remember at times like these that every time this kind of strict father moral structure has been applied to running the country the results have been ruinous. And Never-Trumpers are responsible for the rise of President PornFuck precisely because they reflexively honor that strict father moral structure above everything else.
This orgy of nostalgia isn’t about honoring an elite traditional American family. It’s about fucked up people with serious daddy issues.
I found it fascinating that the one restaurant moved to where they could attract employees for the salaries they wanted to pay. The people who could afford to dine out would drive that extra 10 minutes to eat at that particular restaurant.
Verdict Is In: Food Stamps Put Poor Kids on Path to Success
Long-term evidence starting in the 1960s now shows that government support in childhood reduces the need for welfare in adulthood.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-04/verdict-is-in-food-stamps-put-poor-kids-on-path-to-success
This is great news. I look forward to conservatives like Godwin encouraging his taxes be spent on food stamps as a wise investment in the futures of low-income young children to help reduce overall welfare costs in the future! Look at it this way, it’s a much safer investment than GE stocks.
“I look forward to conservatives like Godwin encouraging his taxes be spent on food stamps as a wise investment in the futures of low-income young children to help reduce overall welfare costs in the future!”
Check one:
☐ I prefer the pay the higher overall welfare costs in the future in order to avoid the “moral hazard” in the present.
☐I prefer to pay neither the higher overall welfare costs in the future, nor the lower current costs for nutritional support, in favor of paying the much higher insurance costs, law enforcement costs, prison costs, and personal arsenal and compound fortification costs to withstand the unraveling of society.
☐I don’t give a fuck. I don’t plan to be alive. And I don’t care about anyone else.
☐Either way, whatever you do, absolutely positively DO NOT provide low cost birth control and reproductive health care services to low income women. Never, ever, ever. Because dirty sluts.
Enjoy prison.
Leslie McCrae Dowless is the central figure in the uncertified race in NC. They have now looked at five elections over the last decade where in Bladen County the candidate he worked for received an unusual, statistically near impossible, share of absentee votes including a GOP three way primary where the count was 200-4-3.
I don’t need to rehash the affidavits being filed. It’s all out there.
Huh, who would have imagined that the GOP runs elections feloniuosly?
Certainly not forgers in Long Island.
@68
Conveniently ignoring natural disasters that dispersed the population of potential labor but RR is right. Supply and demand. If the business is to survive the’ll need to take steps to secure enough of the dwindling supply.
@80 Well, now they’ve got some election fraud to prove their point that there’s election fraud going on.
@77 “It’s about fucked up people with serious daddy issues.”
Basically correct.
@71
But he said China is sending signals of a great capitulation.
And when has he ever lied?
84,
Under these circumstances, I certainly don’t envy China. Their economy is far more dependent on trade and access than ours. Two hundred committee members ruling over 1.5 billion people with an exploding appetite for consumer goods, facing a period of economic and political instability even without having to deal with President BrainDamage. But the Central Committee and its leaders have some ruling political advantages that are unavailable to western democracies. They can do as they please with their exchange rates, they don’t have to tolerate any political dissent, and they can dictate the pace of growth in any economic sector.
I worry that even if President PornLube gets some of the petty concessions he is looking for in the short term, the long term consequences for everyone could be quite perilous. And most of those perilous consequences pertain regardless of whether concessions are made. These are people very used to working on ten year plans after all. I won’t be very surprised if they give President FingerProbe enough of what he needs to declare a “win” and then proceed to embark on a long term effort to destabilize certain sectors of the US economy – such as real estate.
80,
I think it’s fairly noteworthy that so far, most of this investigating is being done by media and outside election monitoring and transparency groups. Even the initial statistical analysis that prompted a closer look was done outside. And that statistical analysis was itself only prompted by the close results. Had the child molesters simply done a more thorough job of election fraud none of this would have ever come out.
Democrats probably have to understand that this is the world we are living in for the foreseeable future. Probably every near loss in trailer country needs to be analyzed for statistical red flags and gum shoe follow up where appropriate. That means an entirely new and separate stream of funding and expenditure focusing on the period immediately after the election results become available.
The Dow Jones Index fell by nearly 800 points yesterday, and I certainly took advantage of that drop.
Buy low, sell high!
The QAnons were absolutely certain there would be a Red Wave. Now they know for sure that the Red Hammer is coming, the mass arrests of Trump’s political foes. Hillary in chains! Finally! In fact, it was supposed to happen today!
“Trump-loving conspiracy nuts are convinced the president will conduct mass arrest of foes at Bush funeral”
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/12/trump-loving-conspiracy-nuts-convinced-president-will-conduct-mass-arrest-foes-bush-funeral/
It must really suck to always be so totally fucking wrong all the time.
@87 Yep, it gave up the previous 4 days’ gains.
Yesterday: 25,027
Nov. 27: 24,748
Nov. 19: 25,017
Oct. 29: 24,442
You didn’t buy low, my friend.
Moreover, if yesterday is the beginning of a rout — today’s Dow futures are down 253 points as I type this — you grabbed at a falling knife.
Wall Street has quit buying dips. This decline is unlike this year’s previous declines, including October’s and November’s. They had different, mostly technical, causes. This one was triggered by a recession signal.
I happen to think it’s a false signal and the economy is only slowing, not shrinking, but that’s not a recipe for loading up on still-expensive stocks.
I wouldn’t buy the market at this point, because it’s going to go lower in coming months, but I think you can buy individual oversold stocks if you spot any, as when I snapped up 3M for $187 on Oct. 30.
If you want a short-term strategy, for now weakness is concentrated in cyclicals, which is where I’d look. Staples, which had trailed all year, have already gone up because the big fund managers are shifting to safe havens. That, too, should tell you something about the economy and future market direction.
The smart money is building up cash positions, not loading up on stocks, because they expect the economy and market to weaken into the new year. While I will buy opportunities if they arise, I did nothing on Tuesday, and my default option is to accumulate cash, same as what the big boys are doing.
Anyone not avaricious, racist and misogynist, thank you very much.
Anything else to address re: the always wrong wing shit show?
Hmmmm. Nothing I can see. Later all.
87,
Or as you had it when you went all in for the GOP in 2016,
Buy low, sell out for permission to tell racist jokes again!
Quite the bargain. After all, it only cost you everything.
88,
They are never wrong, as they see it.
For more, see Heaven’s Gate.
It’ll probably end the same way, too.
This is deeply confusing as a nuclear free North Korea and Peace in our time was declared just in June.
91
“Or as you had it when you went all in for the GOP in 2016,”
For hopefully the LAST time: In the 2016 election I did not vote for Donald Trump. Also, in that election, I did not vote for Hillary Clinton.
89
About 70% of the time, buying after a big downward move works out. It isn’t perfect, but the strategy has some merit.
“It must really suck to always be so totally fucking wrong all the time”
We should just ask Bob how it feels to find out.
“because they expect the economy and market to weaken into the new year. ”
In case it was missed by any here, Construction spending has gone down for the last 3 consecutive months. Reading ENR Magazine from months ago – Professionals of the Construction industry were speculating at the time that things would drop and it looks like they were right.
Construction spending is one of the leading indicators of the economy.
But I also read the following from the November 19/26 ENR issue, page 18 – “Industry Sector Winners, Losers Prepare to Spend or Try Again”: “Transportation funding fared well in the 2018 election, with voters approving 80% of a record 346 state and local ballot measures set to generate $31 billion in new spending, say the Eno Center for Transportation and the American Road Transportation Builders Association.”
Now I would imagine that this money will be spent over many years and not in 1 year, but The Humps Transportation Bill funded $200 Billion over 10 years ($20 Billion/year) of federal funds. And I thought that that passed but I read something recently that seemed to contradict that, but regardless, the voters approved more monies than the Humps Transportation Bill.
Hopefully some of these voter approved projects help keep the economy going and partly keep us from a recession.
I know – I’m no economist, but that’s my viewpoint.
https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/388071-trumps-infrastructure-plan-hits-a-dead-end
Not sure why I thought that this had passed, but I guess not.
The Hump can’t do anything right.
94,
It’s really not very important what, if even anything, you did with your ballot. What matters forever and ever after is that you bought into all of it. The Moldovan script kiddies own you today every bit as much as they own the GOP.
Maybe there was a moment during the primaries. Maybe it was a moment in the summer. But whenever that moment came you made a choice. Maybe you had your widdle heart set on Marco. Or perhaps it was Bernie. But honestly, the truth is none of that matters. Ultimately at the moment of truth you put your country last. And that is all that will ever matter.
98,
But, but… Infrastructure Week!
@95 Dip buying doesn’t work when the decline isn’t a dip but the start of a downward trend.
Stocks still have some support from low interest rates and strong earnings, but interest rates are rising and earnings growth is slowing. On top of that, valuations are still somewhat elevated, so you’re probably going to see some P/E compression, too.
In other words, stocks aren’t a bargain, and probably will get cheaper. That’s why Wall Street is selling, not buying, now. Generally speaking, you should wait for the market to go lower before you go hunting. That’s what the pros are doing.
@99 I think it’s deeper. This troll has been popping in and out of this blog since long before Trump. He’s a conservative believer, and that’s his basic problem.
If conservative ideology worked, I’d be a conservative, because I’m a pragmatist. I’m not because it doesn’t. Even the architect of Reagan’s economic policy called it “voodoo.” Reagan ended up raising taxes. Bush41 raised taxes after promising not to. The Kansas and Wisconsin experiments failed miserably. History proves the economy does better under Democrats. That’s a big part of why I vote the way I do.
Conservatives are wrong, period, and not just about economics, although their belief that capitalism can work without traffic cops is at the heart of their many failures.
These idiots have talked themselves into believing that liberals are “socialists” and regulation is “socialism.” They’re wrong on both counts. The fact we don’t put our faith in economic anarchy doesn’t mean we believe in command economies or that government should own the means of production. Regulated capitalism works best. In addition, the competing interests of capital and labor must be balanced for the system to keep working over the long haul.
Liberals also understand that humans aren’t adapted to surviving alone. We have to function in communities. We all need each other. The strength of the community is the source of all your freedoms and rights. With rights come obligations, because the community can’t exist if individuals don’t help it exist. We get something, we give something; we give to get.
Go it alone, with no community or obligations to others? Nonsense. Sheer nonsense. You can’t even reproduce and keep the species going without pairing up. Any technology beyond stone tools requires the efforts of many. To coordinate those efforts, you need some sort of community with rules. Liberalism has evolved from that basic concept. I’m a liberal because it’s what works.
102,
Not about classic “conservatism” anymore. Time to let that go forever.
Not even PaulRyan belives in any of that shit anymore. And Bill Kristol just went banko.
Trump is who they are now. Elections have consequences, etc.
The GOP is all about the grift and building the perfect kleptocracy. And the GOP is all klownsurvaturds have got. They traded it all away for one more season in the sun. So whatever the fuck that piece of shit troll might have been at one time, as of 2016 he’s a fucking traitor who delights in the sounds of sobbing infants.
The choice really couldn’t have been any easier. And klownsurvaturds chose tribe over nation.