Wednesday Open Thread |Phoebe Snow Week

Posted on October 4, 2017 by rikyrah

Happy Hump, Day, Everyone.

This entry was posted in Media, Music, Open Thread, Politics and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

30 Responses to Wednesday Open Thread |Phoebe Snow Week

    • yahtzeebutterfly says:
      October 4, 2017 at 5:34 pm

      Excerpt from article linked in above tweet:

      “John Edgar Rust, 24, has been charged and faces a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison if he’s convicted, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said on Wednesday…

      “Rust is in custody and is set to appear before a federal judge Thursday afternoon.”

      Reply
  7. SouthernGirl2 says:
    October 4, 2017 at 2:52 pm

    Dear Rex Tillerson

    Just tell Trump

    Reply
  9. SouthernGirl2 says:
    October 4, 2017 at 2:17 pm

    Trump trying to dismiss the media about #RexTillerson by calling it fake news. He knows it’s true. Tillerson called him a fucking moron.😂😂😂

    Reply
  10. rikyrah says:
    October 4, 2017 at 11:56 am

    ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES 10/3/17
    Congressman’s emotional response to Trump Puerto Rico visit
    Rep. Luiz Gutierrez calls Donald Trump’s behavior in Puerto Rico, where he lavished praise on his administration, ‘disgraceful.’

    Reply
  11. rikyrah says:
    October 4, 2017 at 11:43 am

    Best tweet of the day:
    REX STANDS BY TRUMP, MORON THIS LATER
    — TheYukster (@SetagayaGirl) October 4, 2017

    Reply
  13. rikyrah says:
    October 4, 2017 at 9:47 am

    Lips pursed.

    White House says Puerto Rico must fix its debt problem: CNN interview

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House budget director Mick Mulvaney on Wednesday backed away from U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments a day earlier calling for the storm-hit island’s debt to be wiped out.

    In an interview on CNN, the Office of Management and Budget director said Trump was referring to Puerto Rico’s need to fix its own debt issues through its oversight board.

    “I wouldn’t take it word for word,” Mulvaney said of Trump’s comments late Tuesday.

    Reply
  14. Liza says:
    October 4, 2017 at 9:40 am

    No words for this…

    Reply
  15. rikyrah says:
    October 4, 2017 at 9:27 am

    How America has silently accepted the rage of white men | Opinion by @naazmodan https://t.co/YW99KgEqhN pic.twitter.com/OT70MFLLU4
    — CNN (@CNN) October 4, 2017

    Reply
  16. rikyrah says:
    October 4, 2017 at 9:23 am

    2 questions angry people should ask:
    What have I done to help win in Virginia on Nov. 7?
    What will I do to help win in Virginia on Nov. 7?
    — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 4, 2017

    Reply
  17. rikyrah says:
    October 4, 2017 at 9:14 am

    The Republican Party Has No Heart
    The party’s dog-eat-dog mentality threatens our democracy.

    by James Bruno
    October 4, 2017

    ……………………………………

    “Somehow, one of our nation’s two great parties has become infected by an almost pathological mean-spiritedness, a contempt for…‘losers,’” Paul Krugman wrote in 2013. “If you’re an American, and you’re down on your luck, these people don’t want to help; they want to give you an extra kick.”

    Americans’ sense of community has been giving way to a growing sense of selfishness. Mitt Romney’s telling remarks at a 2012 campaign fundraiser with fat cats about the “47 percent” of Americans who are “dependent upon government” encapsulates this mindset. And so does a resurgence of interest in pop iconoclast-philosopher Ayn Rand. A woman in the supermarket line struck up a conversation with me the other day. “Have you read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand?,” she asked. “She has all the answers for what ails our country.” A friend reports his millennial daughter is enraptured by Rand, as are a growing number of the young. Sales of her books have surged since Trump, a self-proclaimed Rand admirer, was elected. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, CIA director Mike Pompeo, and Speaker Paul Ryan are also self-admitted Rand fans—as are many of the callous conservatives that Trump has tapped to fill out his Cabinet.

    Rand, who died in 1982, preached “the virtue of selfishness,” “egoism” and an extreme version of laissez-faire capitalism that has become popular with libertarians. Society, in her view, consists of a minority of talented winners, and broad masses of losers. And she rejected altruism as “immoral.” Historian Jennifer Burns describes Rand’s writings as a “gateway drug” to right-wing politics.

    I believe much of the class rancor manifesting itself in meanspiritedness stems from growing wealth and income inequality. Trump’s “forgotten men and women” increasingly resent the elites that have monopolized wealth and power. Between 1979 and 2015, income of the top 1 percent surged over 156 percent. The average income of the bottom 90 percent of earners, on the other hand, has grown just 21 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. And the Congressional Budget Office reports families in the top 10 percent of wealth distribution possess more than three-quarters of America’s total family wealth, while those in the 51st to 90th percentiles owned less than a quarter. The bottom half of Americans, meanwhile, own just one percent of the wealth pie.

    President Trump’s sketchy tax reform plan would serve to shift yet more wealth and income to the very rich.

    Reply
  18. rikyrah says:
    October 4, 2017 at 9:11 am

    Why Don’t Moderate Democrats Want Susan Collins to Leave?
    by Martin Longman
    October 3, 2017

    I don’t know if Senator Susan Collins of Maine is going to give up her seat to run for governor in Maine. I don’t know because even she doesn’t seem to know. But here’s what I do know. The Democrats would stand a damn good chance of winning her seat the next time it came up for election, and they ought to be hoping against hope that she takes her ball and goes home.

    But that’s not the reaction I’m seeing. Here’s the reaction of endangered Democrat Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota:

    Sen. Heidi Heitkamp was watching TV recently when she saw a report that Susan Collins was considering a run for Maine governor and soliciting advice on the decision.

    The North Dakota Democrat quickly shot a text message to her Republican colleague: “Don’t do it.”

    …“She is [up in the air]. And I think she had hoped to make a decision before this,” said Heitkamp, who herself weighed retirement before announcing this year she’d run for a second term. “I desperately hope she doesn’t run.”

    …………………………

    I understand that moderate Democrats don’t relish the prospect of working in an environment where there are absolutely no moderate Republicans left, but the trade off here seems obvious.

    It’s enough to make me think that these Democrats feel safer in the opposition than they do in the majority. And they could be right about that. As it stands, they don’t have to explain away their votes for controversial Democratic legislation. They can oppose a mostly unpopular administration and a very unpopular Republican congressional leadership without a whole lot of risk to themselves.

    So, is that what this is? They’d rather have a modestly safer seat than be in a position to actually hold hearings or write legislation?

    Reply
  19. rikyrah says:
    October 4, 2017 at 8:55 am

    Uh huh
    Uh huh

    Curious, don’t you think?

    In the spring of 2012, Donald Trump’s two eldest children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump, Jr., found themselves in a precarious legal position. For two years, prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office had been building a criminal case against them for misleading prospective buyers of units in the Trump SoHo, a hotel and condo development that was failing to sell. Despite the best efforts of the siblings’ defense team, the case had not gone away. An indictment seemed like a real possibility. The evidence included e-mails from the Trumps making clear that they were aware they were using inflated figures about how well the condos were selling to lure buyers.

    https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-ivanka-trump-and-donald-trump-jr-avoided-a-criminal-indictment/amp

    Reply
    • rikyrah says:
      October 4, 2017 at 9:57 am

      From a regular front pager at BJ:

      Adam L Silverman says:
      October 4, 2017 at 10:45 am

      So I’ve just read the New Yorker piece on this:
      https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-ivanka-trump-and-donald-trump-jr-avoided-a-criminal-indictment

      Here’s what the fallout will be:
      1) Vance is done. Expect a mounting call for his resignation. Followed by a resignation. His public service career is over. He’ll likely be taken care of at some white shoe law firm, but by and large he’s done.
      2) AG Schneiderman will now pick this up and roll it into the investigations he’s quietly running into the Trump Organization, the campaign’s, and the transition’s activities within his jurisdiction in New York. If he hasn’t already done so.
      3) Once again the Trump SoHo rears its head. This was the project done with Felix Sater (shocked, I’m shocked…). Mueller will now add this to his inquiries as part of the pattern of corruption and obstruction of justice by the President and his associates he’s investigating.

      Jr. and the Princess are in more jeopardy now than 2012 when the President got his legal fixer to intervene on their behalf to get them out of trouble.

      Reply
  20. rikyrah says:
    October 4, 2017 at 8:53 am

    uh huh
    uh huh

    The share of white millionaires in the United States has doubled in the past quarter-century, with 1 in 7 white families now worth more than $1 million, according to new Federal Reserve data.


    Fifteen percent of white families reported being millionaires, compared with 7 percent in the Fed’s 1992 Survey of Consumer Finances.

    
The dramatic growth in white millionaires reflects a widening economic gulf, with the top 1 percent of households holding 24 percent of income in 2016, a record high.
It also highlights a deepening racial disparity.

    The percentage of black and Hispanic households worth more than $1 million has remained around or below 2 percent since 1992.

    Reply
  21. rikyrah says:
    October 4, 2017 at 8:52 am

    Willie Geist‏Verified account @WillieGeist 11m11 minutes ago
    More
    Willie Geist Retweeted NBC News
    NBC News: Secretary of State Tillerson called @POTUS “a moron” in a July meeting with senior administration officials.

    Reply
  22. rikyrah says:
    October 4, 2017 at 8:51 am

    Now, this is Go Big, or Go Home.
    If you’re gonna be a criminal….REALLY be a criminal…

    A gang of industrious and audacious robbers was arrested on Tuesday after digging a 500m long tunnel to try and steal $405m from a bank vault in Sao Paulo.
    [snip]
    A lead detective said the gang had spent $1.6m building the tunnel.

    http://www.9news.com.au/world/2017/10/04/08/30/brazil-police-foil-tunnel-crews-plot-to-pull-off-biggest-bank-robbery-in-history

    Reply
  23. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    October 4, 2017 at 6:20 am

    “The Most Serious Challenge to Gerrymandering in Modern Times Reaches the Supreme Court A Wisconsin case could break the grip of partisans on the process that defines whether elections are competitive.”
    Excerpt:

    The focus on gerrymandering is essential, and the Supreme Court will take up the issue Tuesday, hearing oral argument on a Wisconsin case that could ultimately transform elections nationwide. The legal scholars and voting-rights activists who brought the case, now dubbed Gill v. Whitford, have asserted that Wisconsin’s state Assembly and state Senate district maps were rigged by Governor Scott Walker’s hyper-partisan legislative allies to lock in the majorities they gained in the wave election of 2010. Republicans gerrymandered legislative district lines so aggressively that in the next election, even as Wisconsin Democrats won 174,000 more votes than Republicans in races for state Assembly seats, Republicans won a 60-39 majority in the chamber.

    The democratic disconnect illustrated by those numbers has strengthened the argument that the gerrymandering of district lines denies voters their right to participate in fair and competitive elections. And jurists have begun to accept that something must be done to make elections more reflective of the popular will. As the lead plaintiff in the Wisconsin case, longtime University of Wisconsin law professor William Whitford, says: “In a democracy citizens are supposed to choose their legislators. In Wisconsin, legislators have chosen their voters.”

    Reply
  24. rikyrah says:
    October 4, 2017 at 6:03 am

    Good Morning, Everyone 😐😐😐

    Reply

Leave a Reply