Showing posts with label Irony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irony. Show all posts

Friday, September 8, 2017

Paul Ryan Struggles To Explain Trump's Deal With Democrats

Paul Ryan is a practiced liar, but when he knows he’s about to say the exact opposite of what he said one day prior, even he squirms a bit. Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.

"Republican resistance to a deal to raise the national borrowing limit — struck by President Donald Trump and Democratic congressional leaders — is straining GOP unity just as Congress enters the most politically treacherous stretch of the legislative calendar. The leaders of the Republican Study Committee, an alliance of more than 150 conservative House members, panned the deal Thursday, even as Speaker Paul Ryan — who initially opposed it as well — praised Trump for seeking a bipartisan approach. The measure is expected to be attached to a bill that would send billions of dollars worth of disaster aid to Texas for its recovery from Hurricane Harvey.”



Read more here: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/07/key-conservatives-oppose-trump-debt-ceiling-deal-242445

Trump’s betrayal of the Republican leaders should surprise no one







Donald Trump meets with Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
 

Opinion writer

Chuck and Nancy and Donald and Ivanka seemed to thoroughly enjoy their meeting at the White House the other day. Mitch and Paul, not so much.

Does it really surprise anyone that President Trump betrayed the Republican leaders who have been trying their best to carry water for him on Capitol Hill — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) — and is playing footsie with their Democratic rivals? It shouldn’t.

One thing that should be blindingly obvious by now is that political loyalty, for the president, is a one-way street. Yes, McConnell and Ryan embarrassed themselves and squandered precious political capital in a long, fruitless attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Yes, the Republican leaders have held their tongues time and again when Trump has manifested his unfitness for office. Yes, they have pretended not to notice the glaring conflicts of interest between Trump’s private business affairs and his public responsibilities.

Still, there was something brazen about the way events unfolded Wednesday. First, Ryan tells reporters that a short-term, three-month extension on the debt ceiling, tied to relief funds for Hurricane Harvey — an idea supported by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — was “ridiculous and disgraceful.” Then, in the Oval Office meeting, Trump stuns everyone by endorsing the Schumer-Pelosi plan — and agrees to work with the Democrats on repealing the debt ceiling altogether, according to The Post. Later, on Air Force One, Trump goes on about what a productive meeting he had with “Chuck and Nancy,” not bothering to mention the GOP congressional leaders by name. Ouch.

Some shell-shocked attendees said they believed the meeting went off the rails when the president’s daughter Ivanka, who has an office in the West Wing, cheerily dropped in and disrupted the conversation’s focus. But this sounds to me like nothing more than a search for a scapegoat. Ryan and McConnell have no one to blame but themselves.


Trump is many things, but he is not, nor has he ever been, a committed Republican. He seized control of the party in a hostile takeover. His campaign positions on trade, health care, entitlements and other issues bore no resemblance to GOP orthodoxy. He has instincts — some of them odious, from what we can intuit about his views on race and culture — but his worldview is transactional and situational, not ideological.

Ryan, McConnell and many of their Republican colleagues in Congress convinced themselves that Trump could be a useful instrument — that he would sign whatever legislation they sent him, and therefore they would be able to enact a conventional GOP agenda of tax and entitlement cuts.
Trump might have gone along with this scenario, at least for a while. But Ryan and McConnell utterly failed to hold up their end of the bargain.

Look at the health-care fiasco from Trump’s point of view. His campaign position was that Obamacare had to be repealed, but that the replacement should be a system offering health care for “everyone.” What Ryan and the House delivered, however, was a plan that would make 23 million people lose health insurance and cut nearly $800 billion from Medicaid.

Trump called that legislation “mean” but was so desperate for a big win that he backed it anyway. In the Senate, however, McConnell wasn’t able to deliver anything at all — not even a stripped-down measure to repeal the ACA now and replace it later. Trump was humiliated and angry. “Mitch M” and “Paul R” became frequent targets of his barbed tweets.

So on Wednesday, Trump dished out a little humiliation of his own. At the White House meeting, the president reportedly cut off Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — who supported the Ryan-McConnell approach to raising the debt ceiling — in mid-sentence to announce that he was siding with Schumer and Pelosi.

The stunning slap down almost overshadowed a surprise that Trump had delivered Tuesday evening: After sending Attorney General Jeff Sessions out to announce the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Trump tweeted that if Congress did not act within six months, he would “revisit” the question.

What Trump clearly has already revisited is his belief in the ability of the conservative GOP congressional majorities to get anything meaningful done. He seems to be at least flirting with the idea of working instead with Democrats and GOP moderates — working not with but around the House and Senate leadership.

I just hope Schumer and Pelosi know not to trust him the way Ryan and McConnell did.

Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.

Thursday, August 31, 2017

Is Joel Osteen A Bad Guy For Reasons Beyond Failing To Act During Hurricane Harvey?

In this episode of "The Conversation", Jesse Dollemore discusses Joel Osteen and his bizarre Americanized version of Jesus' Gospel message.

His inaction in the face of the suffering caused by Hurricane Harvey was bad, but are there more reasons his actions should be questioned and scrutinized?

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Mike Pence is trying to make people forget his heartless response to Hurricane Katrina





Mike Pence is on a self-serving blitz of radio appearances this week, touting the Trump administration’s response to Hurricane Harvey. That includes promises to have federal funds ready to go for relief — something he cruelly opposed when he was in Congress.

Pence had the nerve, during his several radio interviews Monday, to repeatedly refer to his time in Congress as proof he understands the importance of passing legislation to provide for disaster relief.

“We’re very confident that the Congress of the United States is going to be there to provide the resources necessary,” Pence told the host at Houston’s KHOU. He added that he will work with legislators to “make sure that the disaster assistance that already some 22,000 Texans have signed up for is available and is there.”

But when thousands of citizens affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 needed Pence’s help, he had other priorities. He was instead focused on bludgeoning those citizens by attaching his extremist political ideology to disaster relief bills, holding up vital support that was urgently needed.

Pence said that funding for Katrina relief should be paid for with cuts to Social Security and Medicare, ideas that the right has championed for decades, even though they have proved to be unpopular and destructive again and again.

Justifying his cruelty, Pence told reporters at the time that Katrina relief and the rebuilding of devastated areas like New Orleans just had to wait, because “it is not acceptable to take a catastrophe of nature and turn it into a catastrophe of debt.”

He also said on the floor of the House, “When a tree falls on your house you tend to the wounded, you rebuild and then you figure out how you are going to pay for it.”

Ignoring the dire situation in the region, Pence lectured victims and offered up right-wing talking points.

“Let’s pay for the cost of Katrina by reducing the size and scope of government,” he said.

Pence even said that legislators should have considered delaying a $40 billion prescription drug benefit for seniors, and use that money for Katrina relief — instead of approving new funding in Congress.

Those statements, in contrast to his platitudes during Hurricane Harvey, show how Pence and his fellow Republicans have often instigated mealy-mouthed concerns about “debt” when they are out of power, only to disregard them when they are in charge.

Pence is not alone in his hypocrisy. Other Republicans have argued that disaster relief must be “offset” by cuts to necessary programs. It’s a despicable way to exploit a national disaster to target programs Republicans have long sought to dismantle.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is pushing for hurricane relief now, but when Superstorm Sandy hit New York and New Jersey, he voted against the emergency aid package to help the victims. He complained at the time that the bill had been loaded up “with billions in new spending” unrelated to the storm. Like Pence, he also invoked worries about “debt” to justify his stance.

The claim was also untrue. Cruz recently made the same claim while defending his Sandy spin, and it was fact checked by the Washington Post, which awarded him “three Pinocchios” for his ugly lie.

“The bill was largely aimed at dealing with Sandy, along with relatively minor items to address other or future disasters,” the Post noted.

Mick Mulvaney, currently serving as Trump’s budget director, was in Congress during Sandy as well, and he was among those who also called for budget cuts to offset storm relief.

It is unlikely he will do so now from inside the White House.

Pence, Cruz, and Mulvaney have been exposed as hypocrites. When they were out of power, they didn’t think twice about holding up disaster relief so they could engage in political experimentation for the right.


But now, when the storm is on their watch, all the hand-wringing about “debt” has evaporated into thin air. As if it was always a cynical and callous ruse all along.

Best Buy apologizes for big mistake of price-gouging Texans for water - after their stock tanks


Electronics retailer Best Buy is apologizing to outraged consumers after a social media storm of complaints against a Houston area store charging $42 for a case of case of bottled water.

The image, which raced across the internet, shows $42.96 cases of Dasani bottled water, next to a “limited supply” of “Smart Water” for $29.98 a case.

“As a company we are focused on helping, not hurting affected people,” Best Buy told Business Insider. “We’re sorry, and it won’t happen again.”

The company claims the “big mistake” was caused by an employee multiplying the price of a single bottle. The company says the price-gouging signage was only up on Friday and that the Cypress, TX store in question is now closed due to Hurricane Harvey.

Best Buy stock fell 11 percent Tuesday, in heavy trading.

Below is a sampling of social media criticism:

By Bob Brigham

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Donald Trump's Plans For A Russian Trump Tower In Moscow Just Revealed

In this ‘Dollemore Daily’ Jesse Dollemore addresses the just revealed plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow, Russia which were previously concealed by Donald Trump.

Add to the mix, Felix Sater, who has deep mafia ties and connections to heavy hitters in the Russian government.

Saturday, August 26, 2017

People dumping Ivanka Trump products at Goodwill

Social media users proudly confess to dumping Ivanka Trump fashion items at Goodwill - many with the tags STILL ON - as one staff member reveals huge surge in donated items from her brand.



Friday, August 25, 2017

Trump is acting like he is running out of time



Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman said Thursday that Donald Trump is acting in regards to the Russia collusion investigation as if he knows "time is running out."

"What we're finding is, as time goes on, we keep learning new, additional facts. But we don't know what [special counsel Robert] Mueller's staff knows. For all we know, we may just have the tip of the iceberg on this," Akerman told MSNBC's Ari Melber.

Akerman referenced a The Washington Post report that Trump had pushed back on legislation proposed in July that would block him from firing the special counsel investigating his campaign's ties to Russia without a federal judge's approval.

"Now it appears he's directly lobbying congress to try and ensure that he has a way to get rid of this investigation," Akerman said.

CNN reported this week that congressional investigators had unearthed an email from now-White House aide Rick Dearborn to campaign officials last year relaying information about a person who was trying to connect top Trump officials with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Federal and congressional investigators had already shown an interest in a meeting that Trump's eldest son Donald Jr. set up last summer between campaign officials and a Russian lawyer promising damaging information on his presidential rival Hillary Clinton.

"At the same time that we keep getting more evidence, we also learn that Donald Trump has consistently, from day one, tried to stop this Russia investigation," Akerman said.

Trump harshly criticized and later fired James Comey as FBI director amid the escalating Russia probe, and slammed Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the ongoing investigation.

"All of this comes down to one simple fact," said Akerman. "You have someone who is acting extremely guilty, someone who is acting in a way that he realizes that time is running out, and he's taking all kinds of desperate moves to try and stop this investigation."

Millions Willing To Work For Mueller For Free If That Would Speed Things Up

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/millions-willing-to-work-for-mueller-for-free-if-that-would-speed-things-up

Sunday, August 20, 2017

Fleeing Trump, Charities Cancel Events At Mar-A-Lago

Three different charities have cancelled scheduled events at Mar-A-Lago after Trump’s refusal to denounce the attacks that took place over the weekend and by aligning himself with the alt right. This is a lot of money lost for Trump, but importantly, shows that these charities understand that some money just isn’t worth it, and they’ll find new venues to host their events. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Link – http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/347068-third-charity-cancels-mar-a-lago-event

Friday, August 18, 2017

HEY, STEVE BANNON, YOU WHITE SUPREMACIST COCKSUCKER...YOU'RE FIRED...HA HA HA

FUCK STEVE BANNON - YOU LIVER SPOT COVERED MOTHER FUCKER

WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU DOING IN THE WHITE HOUSE  IN THE FIRST PLACE - YOU NO TALENT, COUPON CLIPPING, COPENHAGEN SNUFF DIPPING, CORN COB PIPE SMOKING, BISCUIT AND GRAVY SOPPING REDNECK

http://www.inquisitr.com/4438850/steve-bannon-fired-trump-reportedly-axed-bannon-for-leaking-information-from-the-white-house/

Fox News Admits They Can’t Find Republicans Willing To Defend Trump On The Air Anymore

After a string of disastrous press conferences – and an overall tanking of his presidency – Fox News host Shepard Smith admitted Wednesday that his team of producers were unable to find a single Republican willing to come on the air and defend Donald Trump’s disaster of a week.

When Fox News can’t find a pro-Trump Republican, you know things are getting bad in Trumpland.

Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.



Link – http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/346867-foxs-shepard-smith-we-couldnt-find-a-republican-willing-to-come

Thursday, August 17, 2017

PREDICTION: Trump Will Resign In Disgrace...Soon

Trump’s days in office are numbered. Cenk Uygur, the host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.

Moment Of Truth Coming For Trump

Trump’s response to the Charlottesville aftermath is earning him scorn from even his own party. Cenk Uygur, the host of The Young Turks, tells you how the moment of truth is coming.



“(CNN)Republican lawmakers and administration aides found themselves again Wednesday weighing the costs and benefits of remaining loyal to President Donald Trump, whose equivocal statements about neo-Nazis and white supremacists marked a dramatic shift in presidential rhetoric.

By Wednesday afternoon, most appeared to have made their calculation: deserting Trump now could only harm — and not help — their agendas or political fortunes.

Republican leaders in Congress, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, released statements affirming their disavowal of white supremacist groups and neo-Nazis — but not explicitly condemning Trump, who said Tuesday there were "very fine people" protesting in Charlottesville amid the torch-bearing marchers.

Within the White House, Trump's aides privately expressed indignation at the derailed news conference, which unraveled on cable television Tuesday afternoon and has been replayed endlessly since.

But they, too, stopped short of declaring their consternation publicly, determined instead to remain focused on their agenda and keep the President occupied.

Trump himself has remained largely silent on the matter. But inside the glassed-in confines of Trump Tower — where he remained inside for nearly two days straight — the President was defiant in the wake of the ensuing backlash, according to two people who visited the building on Wednesday.”

Read more here: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/16/politics/republican-reactions-donald-trump/index.html

Monday, August 14, 2017

Ex-KKK Leader David Duke Has A Meltdown After Trump Condemns White Supremacists In Charlottesville

By Hayley Miller

Former KKK leader David Duke was none too pleased that President Donald Trump on Monday finally got around to condemning extremist groups by name ― including including neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan ― for the deadly weekend protest in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Minutes after Trump’s speech, Duke lashed out in a series of tweets, claiming Trump had been manipulated by the media.

“It’s amazing to see how the media is able to bully the President of the United States into going along with their FAKE NEWS narrative,” Duke tweeted. 

Soon after that, in an anti-Semitic, racist Periscope video rant, Duke spoke directly to Trump, claiming white nationalists abhor violence. He said “it’s just ridiculous” that the president felt he had to make Monday’s statement.

“President Trump, please, for God’s sake, don’t feel like you need to say these things,” Duke admonished in the video. “It’s not going to do you any good.” 

Duke also stuck up for James Alex Fields, 20, the white nationalist motorist accused of ramming his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer, 32. “When you’re under attack ... you panic and you do things that are stupid and you do things that are wrong,” Duke said.

Trump made an address to the nation on Monday, after two days of withering criticism for a vague Saturday statement that criticized hatred and bigotry on “many sides.” 

“Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, Neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,” Trump said.

Lawmakers from both parties had called Trump out for not specifically denouncing hate groups in the wake of a white nationalist rally that left three people dead, including two state troopers, and at least 19 injured.

Some white supremacist organizations, such as the Daily Stormer, praised Trump’s vague weekend statement. Duke at the time appeared to warn the president against calling out white nationalists, a group that has largely embraced Trump.

Duke said on Saturday that the rally would help fulfill Trump’s “promises.”

“This represents a turning point for the people of this country,” Duke said. “We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

Donald Trump Signs Congress Russian Sanctions Bill Quietly And In Private

In this ‘Dollemore Daily’ Jesse addresses Donald Trump's departure from his usual trait of bluster and bragging, where he signed the tougher Russian sanctions bill sent to him from Congress in private rather than with a public ceremony.

Steve Bannon To Be Fired Because Of Too Many Donald Trump Jokes?

In this ‘Dollemore Daily’ Jesse addresses the sideways NON-ANSWER Donald Trump gave when directly asked about whether or not he still has confidence in Steve Bannon.

Friday, August 11, 2017

Trump bowing and scraping...on bended knee...to Vladimir Putin

In this ‘Dollemore Daily’ Jesse Dollemore addresses Donald Trump and his THANKS and APPRECIATION to Vladimir Putin after having retaliated against almost 800 U.S. State Department employees working in Russia. 

Why Can't Donald Trump Say a Single Bad Thing About Vladimir Putin?