Cliven Bundy follower gets 68 years for role in armed Nevada standoff

By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) - One of two men convicted in the first of several trials stemming from a 2014 standoff led by renegade rancher Cliven Bundy against federal authorities in Nevada was sentenced on Wednesday to 68 years in prison for his role in the armed confrontation.

Gregory Burleson, 53, of Phoenix, was found guilty in April of eight felony counts, including charges of threatening and assaulting federal officers, obstruction of justice, interstate travel in aid of extortion and firearms offenses related to a crime of violence.

The uprising at Bundy's ranch near Bunkerville, Nevada, 75 miles (120 km) northeast of Las Vegas, grew out of a dispute in which federal agents seized Bundy's cattle over his refusal to pay fees required for grazing his livestock on government land. 

The standoff became a flashpoint in long-simmering tensions over federal ownership of vast tracts of public lands in the West, and a rallying point for right-wing militants who challenge the U.S. government's authority in the region. 

Burleson was the first of 17 defendants from the Bundy revolt to be tried, convicted and sent to prison. A co-defendant found guilty by the same jury faces sentencing in September. 

Four others granted a mistrial in April are being retried in Nevada. Two more groups of defendants, including Bundy and his sons, are scheduled to stand trial later this year and next.

Two others charged in the case pleaded guilty separately. One received a seven-year prison term, the other will be sentenced in January, said Trisha Young, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Las Vegas.

Two of Bundy's sons and four followers were acquitted of conspiracy charges in a separate trial in October stemming from their armed takeover of a federal wildlife center in Oregon in early 2016.

Wednesday's sentencing came days before various militia groups plan a weekend rally near Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

Burleson and the five others with whom he was tried were described by prosecutors as Bundy's "gunmen and followers," who showed up at his ranch from neighboring Western states armed with assault rifles and other weapons. 

Prosecutors said all six were among hundreds who descended on Bunkerville in April 2014 for a showdown with federal officers providing security during a court-ordered roundup of Bundy's cattle.

Outgunned by Bundy's supporters, authorities released the cattle and left the area. Although no shots were fired, prosecutors said Burleson and his five co-defendants aimed rifles at law enforcement.

Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Grant McCool and Lisa Shumaker

D.L. Hughley On John McCain's And Ted Kennedy's Actions At The End Of Their Lives

Fuck You, John McCain

Posted by Rude One

I know there are people who are more responsible than Arizona Senator John McCain for the passage of the motion to proceed to dismantle health care coverage for millions of Americans and give a big ass tax cut to the wealthiest in the country. I know that there is still a long, long way to go before any actual legislation that does all that passes, although it really just seems like a fait accompli at this point. And I know, I know, Christ, fuck, I know that in some cosmic sense it's wrong to attack someone who has an aggressive form of brain cancer and just had a blood clot removed from behind his eyeball, that such suffering ought to be given respect. But fuck all that.

Fuck you, John McCain, you petulant, pissant son of a bitch. Fuck you, fuck your legacy, fuck your pain, fuck your recovery, fuck your family, and fuck, fuck, fuck you. And I feel free to say that because, with his vote today to allow debate on some bullshit new health care plan, he said, "Fuck you" to hundreds of thousands of his state's constituents who will lose Medicaid coverage or be priced out of insurance or be pushed into some worthless policy.

The saddest response to McCain's announcement yesterday that he was returning early to Washington to vote on the motion-to-proceed was the hope that the mythical maverick McCain would show up and, likely having no more elections to run, would do the right thing by voting "No." That McCain never existed, and, except for issues like torture, he has been as loyal a Republican as any flea on the hairs on Mitch McConnell's waxy balls. Of course he was coming back to dick people over. It's what he does. He's a motherfucker, like every other Republican motherfucker. Motherfuckers fuck mothers. How many times do I have to say this? They fuck mothers. It's right there in the word. If they get a chance to fuck a mother, they will fuck that mother because they are motherfuckers. And the repeal of the Affordable Care Act is like a sticky blood orgy of motherfuckery. By the time the process is over, Republicans will fuck every hole and carve some new ones to fuck.

Not only did McCain vote, but then he saw fit to stand there and give a sanctimonious goddamned speech decrying how the Senate has become "more partisan, more tribal." He called for a return to some kind of era of comity, and he blamed both parties for what he sees as a breakdown in "regular order" in the Senate and the ability to work together. And all over the media, people acted like fuckin' Lancelot had just come riding in to save the day when it was really just a filthy one-eyed poodle with a chip on its shoulder and ankles to bite.

Let's contextualize: "Regular order" was stabbed to death by Republicans during the Obama presidency when the Senate GOP decided that every bill would be filibustered when they were in the minority and any idea of the President's would be blocked when they got the majority. John McCain barely squeaked a single fart of protest out from between his saggy ass cheeks. In fact, again, except for torture (sometimes), he went along every single fucked up time that Republicans threw themselves in the way of legislation passed by the House. And then he blew shit up like a common terrorist when Republicans got the Senate back. "Regular order," motherfucker? Suck a pig dick.

Shit, in his little vomit of a speech today, he smirked when he criticized Democrats for not engaging Republicans on the Affordable Care Act: "The Obama administration and congressional Democrats shouldn’t have forced through Congress without any opposition support a social and economic change as massive as Obamacare." Bitch, there were ten months of hearings and 160 Republican amendments got into the bill. So make a dildo out of your complaint about regular order and shove it up your worn out sphincter.

And let's contextualize further: What McCain voted for today was a phantom bill. It was a sham to get something out there so that the amendment process could start on the House bill. It was as far from regular order as having monkeys fuck on the floor of the Senate, although that's a fair analogy for what actually occurred.

The final fucking insult from McCain today was that he once again pretended like he might be a maverick. He said, "Why don’t we try the old way of legislating in the Senate, the way our rules and customs encourage us to act. If this process ends in failure, which seem likely, then let’s return to regular order." If you think that McCain will do anything noble, if you think he will put country over party or compassion over ideology, then you have no idea who John McCain really is: a shitty human being who tricked everyone into thinking he was better than that, a false idol, and a sad, miserable fool who deserves to be pissed on by everyone he passes. He had a chance to be a hero to the vast majority of Americans today, but he didn't care. Not even after receiving the government-paid health care he has gotten his entire life. And he gives a win to Donald Trump, who mocked McCain being a POW during the Vietnam War.

Fuck him.

Besides, he gave us Sarah Palin, whose stupidity, vapidity, and cruelty arguably paved over the gravel road and made the ride easier for Donald Trump.

So fuck him forever.

How Much Degradation Can We Stand? The Most Embarrassing Things Trump Said In Three Speeches

Posted by Rude One

Donald Trump, a man who wouldn't know honor if it bit his ass and screamed, "I'm honor," gave a speech to the annual Boy Scout Jamboree. During it, he unzipped his fly and pulled out his little dick, stretched it until it was near ripping and said, "Check out that dick, boys. Not bad. Not bad, if I say so myself. And you know I do." When he wasn't shaking his dick at the children, he was making jokes like he was starring in Hell's version of Catch a Rising Star, riffing and then stepping away from the microphone and swinging his Yeti-like arms for emphasis. It was like watching a brain-damaged ape trying to imitate Rodney Dangerfield.

The next night, last night, Trump had another one of his Nuremberg Rallies (yeah, I'm comparing him to Hitler - Do we have to wait until he's gassing people to do that?), this time in Ohio. An asshole in defeat, he is a throbbing, distended sphincter in victory. So he dropped his pants in front of the gathered 6,000 people and said, "I'm gonna make Democrats and Jeff Sessions and Lisa Murkowski kiss my fat ass!"

Well, not really. But it was two days of utter degradation, an embarrassing display put on by our goddamned president. You've heard some of the shitty things he said, but, believe me (as he would say), there was line after line of shame and shamelessness and dickishness and brazen fuckery. For instance,

At the Boy Scout Jamboree:

- "I am thrilled to be here. Thrilled. And if you think that was an easy trip, you’re wrong." Trump is acting like he personally hiked through the mountains of West Virginia to get to the event when he was brought there on a golden throne. Probably there was no golf cart go from the holding area to the stage. But he wants the kids to be grateful he made the effort.

- "By the way, what do you think the chances are that this incredible, massive crowd, record-setting is going to be shown on television tonight? One percent or zero?" Trump is obsessed with setting records. He could just become a professional hot dog eater and call up Guinness, but, no, he's gotta fuck with all of us.

- "I saw him at a cocktail party, and it was very sad because the hottest people in New York were at this party." In the midst of a rambling tale about William Leavitt, Trump dropped in that he went to a cocktail party with the "hottest people." Because of course he did. Because why would he waste his time with less than the hottest? Because what the fuck else would you tell a bunch of children and teenagers eager to race wooden block cars? A story about camping? He'd've had to have fucking camped to do that.

- "Do you remember that incredible night with the maps and the Republicans are red and the Democrats are blue, and that map was so red, it was unbelievable, and they didn't know what to say?" He told the Scouts about his election victory. Because of course he did. He also shit on Hillary Clinton. Because of course he did.

- "By the way, under the Trump administration, you’ll be saying, Merry Christmas again when you go shopping. Believe me. Merry Christmas. They've been downplaying that little, beautiful phrase. You're going to be saying, merry Christmas again, folks." It's fucking July. It's. Fucking. July. Anyone saying, "Merry Christmas" now is a fucking loser.

And then at his speech "Saluting American Heroes" in Ohio:

- "It's great to be back in Youngstown. It was an incredible time we had. And you know the numbers, and you saw for many, many years Democrats -- and they're really great -- but Democrats, they win in Youngstown. But not this time." Election victory. Because of course.

And then at his rally in Youngstown later:

- "Boy, he's a young one. He's going back home to mommy. Oh, is he in trouble. He's in trouble. He's in trouble. And I'll bet his mommy voted for us, right?" This was a reaction to a protester, bullying him and deriding him for doing what Trump did for years on Twitter when Obama was president.

- "We're gonna have it so that Americans can once again speak the magnificent words of Alexander Hamilton, 'Here the people govern.'" This was weirdly sandwiched between his proclamation that he was going to bring back factory jobs and his assertion that only the "late, great" Lincoln was more presidential than him. As usual, Trump gets history wrong. Hamilton was talking about Congress, especially that Congress was a check on the power of the presidency. In other words, "Here, sir, the people govern: Here they act by their immediate representatives" is a direct rebuke to Trump's desire to run roughshod over Congress.

- "So they'll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we've been protecting for so long." This was shortly after Trump praised police brutality towards people arrested as gang members. It's fear-mongering in its purest, most sinister form, a kind of propaganda that will get people worked up.

- "We will buy American and will hire, finally, American." Trump's own businesses are seeking visas to hire foreign workers. So, you know, fuck that lie.

At each of these occasions, the crowds, even most of the Scouts, cheered and chanted wildly.

This vertiginous ride we're on has gotten sickening. Trump has degraded the language, the laws, the nation, and us, all of us. How far into the dirt will he drag us before we finally either give up or fight back?

Talking About Pardoning Yourself Makes You Sound REALLY Guilty

Donald Trump takes to Twitter and emphasizes that he has the "complete power to pardon," drawing suspicion that his top advisers and even he himself might be facing criminal charges in connection to the Russia scandal.

Russian Mob Money Helped Build Donald Trump Business Empire - Trump’s Russian Laundromat

A stunning report in The New Republic alleges that, whether Donald Trump knew it or not, for decades he made a large portion of his personal fortune from Russian mobsters & oligarchs.



Trump's Russian Laundromat

Ron Perlman Talks President Donald Trump Speech Patterns

Joy Reid is joined by actor and author Ron Perlman, and Columbia University professor of linguistics John McWhorter, on the bombshell statements and run-on sentences from Donald Trump’s recent New York Times interview.

John McCain Is The Perfect American Lie

By Drew Magary

Seventeen years ago I gave John McCain’s Presidential campaign five bucks. It was my first time donating to a political campaign, much less a Republican one. But like a lot of people, I marveled at his backstory of surviving years and years in Viet Cong captivity (I even read, like, three pages of that big David Foster Wallace story about him), and—more important—I eagerly took all his Straight Talk Express horseshit to heart. Hey, that Republican is saying stuff about other Republicans! He seems like a real rebel!

Back in 2000, McCain scratched that itch for anyone like me who enjoyed pretending to be politically independent, and who happily latched onto McCain as a talisman of that independence. You see, guys! I can vote for a Republican when it’s the RIGHT Republican! And over the course of this century, McCain has dined out on his reputation as The Good Conservative. He’s the senator who gives thunderous copy to reporters, and does SNL, and issues bipartisan reports on the military giving the NFL promo money, and does the occasional cameo on Parks &Rec. He fulfills every Brokawian wet dream certain members of the press still have about politicians setting aside their differences and doing the RIGHT THING, by God.

Today, Senate Republicans moved one step closer to dismantling Obamacare, potentially leaving millions of people uninsured, jacking up their premiums, and letting insurance companies cover only what they feel like covering. John McCain voted for that bill because of course he did. He has always been a big talker, but when it comes to the actual meat-and-potatoes voting process, he falls in line.

He didn’t do the right thing. He didn’t even come within 500 yards of doing the right thing. For the past two decades, he has never done the right thing. He’s a fraud. Alex Pareene had him nailed ages ago. In fact, it’s “nice” Republicans like McCain who provide cover for evil swine like Mitch McConnell, allowing them to gut the American security net and fuck over anyone who doesn’t live behind an iron gate.

But that didn’t stop McCain from having the gall—the unmitigated, repulsive GALL—to stand up in front of the Senate today and put on his Maverick jammies and deliver a sermon bashing the very non-legislation that, only minutes earlier, he had flown cross-country to help will into being:

https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/889928867468775424

This is the part where I point out that McCain has brain cancer and is likely dying. And while I wouldn’t wish brain cancer on my worst enemy, McCain’s illness shouldn’t act as some magical shield that absolves him from abetting—no wait, LEADING—a GOP whose appetite for brazen monstrousness grows by the day. And yet, there were Senate Democrats giving our man a standing O right after he gleefully fucked their constituents, because Democrats would happily set aside differences with Godzilla for the sake of gentility. There was scumbag opportunist Cory Booker, hugging McCain and acting like this was some kind of heartwarming meeting of the minds. And of course, there were the usual political access merchants who were more than happy to line up and shine McCain’s boots:

https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/889927208646701058

https://twitter.com/abbydphillip/status/889923333982232576

This is vile. John McCain was never anyone’s white knight. This is the man who ushered in the age of troll candidacies by tapping Sarah Palin as his running mate. This is the man who caved to Donald Trump even after Trump had the audacity to mock his time as a POW. This is the man who called his own wife a cunt in public. This is a man who has spent all this time acting as if all the Bad Republicans were forcing him to go along with their nefarious deeds while voting in lockstep with them. He is not a reluctant Republican. He’s a shitbag, same as the rest of them.

If you’re some Pollyanna offering your support to John McCain as he hollows out Medicaid, you’re a naïve dupe. As this guy said, The West Wing wasn’t real. It was never real. The twin illusions of bipartisanship and decorum have always provided handy cover for anyone looking to willfully ignore the fiendish inequalities of the American political infrastructure and the GOP’s rapturous thirst for cruelty; a thirst that has only recently emerged in the foreground thanks to the existence of President Trump.

"John McCain is the perfect American lie, a man who professes to be noble and fair and just while being none of those things."

I was duped when I gave McCain my pitiable little sum all those years ago, but I know better today. Everyone should know better. Everyone should realize that John McCain is the perfect American lie, a man who professes to be noble and fair and just while being none of those things. He served his country honorably in combat, but in no other fashion. And he serves out his time in the Senate, and here on planet Earth, as a pathetic enabler. Never the lion; always the sheep. For seventeen years, gullible people have been waiting for him to make his face turn, to make some grand defiant move for the sake of God and country. But that was always just clever branding on his part, and today should serve as a cold slap in the face to anyone who still thought he might have that kind of political courage left in him.

He's a fucking disgrace.

John McCain Is Neither A Maverick Nor A Hero - He's A Coward

Another Big Republican Lie On The ACA: They Can Give You Something Better

Posted by Rude One

We know that Republicans have lied nonstop about the Affordable Care Act ever since it was passed into law by a Democratic-led Congress and signed by the Negro President.

We know that Republicans are stuck because the ACA is mostly based on Massachusetts's Romneycare and both come from plans from the conservative Heritage Foundation.

We know that Republicans lied and continue to lie about the effects of the AHCA and then the BCRA, the House and Senate versions of their "repeal and replace" bills.

But there is one more thing, one more set of lies, that is responsible for sticking a shiv into the GOP's dream of murdering a bunch of poor people so rich people can be richer.

See, Republicans keep trying to put the blame for the fix they're in on American voters. "We have to keep our promises to the American people," Republicans say. "We won the last three elections by promising to repeal and replace Obamacare," they whine like a dog that caught a cat only to realize it was a fucking mountain lion. Yeah, they're right. Voters did put Republicans in power over the promise of getting rid of the Obamacare horror and torture or whatever drama queen word you wanna use. But, and this is important, they only wanted to get rid of it because Republicans said they'd do better. Or, to put it another way, they lied about what they could do for people if the Affordable Care Act was overturned.

Senator after senator told you how you were enslaved by Obamacare and that the GOP would set you free. John McCain proclaimed, "Families in Arizona and across the country should have the power to make their own medical decisions – not Washington bureaucrats. This bill puts patients and doctors back in charge of their health care by fully repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a free-market approach that strengthens the quality and accessibility of care." John Thune promised, "It’s time to repeal this law and replace it with something that works. And that’s precisely what we’re going to do."

Others got even more explicit. For instance, here's Wyoming Senator John Barrasso (campaign slogan: "If you can't trust a man whose name includes the phrase 'bare ass,' who can you trust?"), from a speech he gave on the floor of the Senate in November, shortly after the election: "First of all, nobody is talking about taking people off of insurance without a replacement plan in place." Except that's exactly what they talked about. While Republicans will constantly mention how President Obama said, "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" (which, to be fair, was an absurd promise), they simply aren't owning that they got voters all excited about this new fantasy health care plan where they wouldn't lose coverage despite repealing the very law that gave them coverage.

In fact, when you get to what President Donald Trump said, Republicans were promising something amazing. Put aside that Trump repeatedly said he wouldn't cut Medicaid and then, immediately after inauguration, put out a plan to cut Medicaid. Trump and his people consistently promised that Americans would have better health insurance coverage, that all Americans would be covered, and that it would cost them less in premiums and deductibles. He literally said this: "You will end up with great health care for a fraction of the price." And he told Americans that we would have a "beautiful picture" in the future of health care.

Republicans like to say that Democrats promise that they'll give people "free stuff" and that people on government programs like Medicaid are "moochers." But Republicans didn't win on the Obamacare issue because people didn't want free stuff. They didn't win because they said they would take away their health insurance. They won because they promised people more free stuff and better free stuff.

In other words, they lied. But voters believed them. They wanted to mooch more.

And the vast majority of Americans realize now that it was a lie because the Trumpcare plan that the Senate may vote to move forward tomorrow does none of the things they promised other than get rid of the health insurance they have now or make it worse and more expensive. So, of course, now we get articles like "These Americans Hated the Health Law. Until the Idea of Repeal Sank In." In that New York Times piece, Pennsylvania dumb shits who once thought Obamacare was the worst thing since the theory of evolution say things like "I can’t even remember why I opposed it" and "Everybody needs some sort of health insurance." One stupid fuck went from opposing the law to "Now that you’ve insured an additional 20 million people, you can’t just take the insurance away from these people. It’s just not the right thing to do."

But we knew all along that people liked the Affordable Care Act. They liked the elimination of spending caps and of pre-existing conditions determining premiums. They liked keeping their kids on insurance until age 26. And a shit-ton of people got to live because of the Medicaid expansion. Yeah, the ACA was fine. What they hated was Obamacare, which is exactly what Republicans wanted people to think of for a very simple reason:

Most Republican voters don't hate the ACA. They hate that their white asses were saved by a black man.

They resented the shit out of that fact. It put a lie to all the racism they've clung to for generations. The GOP used that racism for years. Now that the black man is gone, though, they're totally fine with the law and its benefits. They gave Republicans a chance to give them more stuff, but they don't want their stuff taken away. Especially when that "stuff" is the right to live a healthy life.

Be careful this week, dear dumb shits and dearer smart asses. Republicans are going to keep coming after the Affordable Care Act, no matter how many shivs you stick in it. Stay on the phones. Keep the pressure up on the few Republican senators who can make the difference. Don't let the liars win. It's life and death, motherfuckers, life and death.

And once we finally put this beast down, let's turn our attention to single payer.

(Fun extra part of Barrasso's speech: "Democrats promised that they would listen to other people’s ideas, and then they went behind a closed door in an office back there, and they wrote the law ignoring all of the suggestions by Republicans, and without any Republican support at all. We’re not going to make that same mistake. We will be looking for Democrats’ help, we will be looking for Democrats to work with. We will be listening to Democrats’ ideas, and we will be working very hard to win Democrat votes for any new law." Insert your own rolling-with-laughter emoji here.)

Case Closed. Collusion Has Been Proven

And now there’s a coverup underway.

Penn Jillette on Donald Trump, “However bad you think he is, he’s worse”

Comedian and magician Penn Jillette discusses Donald Trump and his time on the Apprentice.

Trump's Been Laundering Russian Mob Money For Decades, Allegedly

Russian mobsters needed a lot of property from a sleazy businessman who never asks questions... Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.

"In 1984, a Russian émigré named David Bogatin went shopping for apartments in New York City.

The 38 year old had arrived in America seven years before, with just $3 in his pocket. But for a former pilot in the Soviet Army—his specialty had been shooting down Americans over North Vietnam—he had clearly done quite well for himself.

Bogatin wasn’t hunting for a place in Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn enclave known as “Little Odessa” for its large population of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Instead, he was fixated on the glitziest apartment building on Fifth Avenue, a gaudy, 58 story edifice with gold plated fixtures and a pink-marble atrium: Trump Tower.”

Read more here: https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate

First Contact

GOP trashes Trump’s plan to end dozens of government programs

By William Douglas and Anshu Siripurapu
wdouglas@mcclatchydc.com
asiripurapu@mcclatchydc.com

WASHINGTON 
 
President Donald Trump’s plan to eliminate dozens of federal agencies and programs has collapsed, as a conservative Republican Congress refuses to go along.

Among the programs spared are agencies promoting rural business development and the arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Community Development Block Grants and the National Wildlife Refuge Fund. Those and many others are getting money in bills approved by the GOP-run House appropriations committee. The House plans to vote on spending bills throughout next week, and the Senate is expected to consider spending plans shortly.

Trump unveiled his $4.1 trillion budget plan in March, pledging to “reduce the federal government to redefine its proper role and promote efficiency.”

But in the House, where all 435 members face voters next fall, budget legislation has far more money than Trump had sought for a host of programs. The spending bill for agriculture contains $4.64 billion beyond what Trump requested, an increase of about 30 percent. For interior and the environment, the bump was $4.3 billion or 16 percent. For transportation, housing and urban development, the committee approved $8.6 billion, about 18 percent, more than the budget request.

"There’s that old saying in Washington that the president proposes and Congress disposes," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog.

Indeed, after many House and Senate Republicans complained to Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney in hearings about the impact of some of Trump’s cuts, congressional budget-writers quickly made sure they don’t happen.

For example, instead of slashing the Appalachian Regional Commission, the House Appropriations Committee last week approved $130 million for the independent agency, created 52 years ago, that helps fund infrastructure and job-training projects in Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Missouri, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and other Appalachian states that Trump won in 2016.

Lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., vowed that doing away with the ARC wasn’t going to happen.

"I am very proud that the House Appropriations Committee approved a bill that includes important funding for the ARC, an organization that does a great deal of good in East Tennessee and rural Appalachia," Roe said.

Even agencies and programs conservative Republicans purport to dislike are avoiding the Capitol ax.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been on the list of programs many conservatives and Republicans have wanted to defund since Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., was House Speaker in the 1990's.

Trump wants it off the federal books, too, but House appropriators instead included $445 million for the agency.

The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities have also been favorite conservative targets, and got a death sentence in Trump’s budget plan. That didn’t stop the House Appropriations Committee from approving $145 million for each endowment last week with plenty of Republican help.

"Throughout this year, we’ve seen some of the Republican members of that committee saying that they were working hard to make sure that the NEA would be receiving significant funding and certainly rejecting the administration’s termination proposal," said Narric Rome, vice president for government affairs for the Americans for the Arts, an advocacy group.

All this still enrages plenty of conservatives.

"The problem with the Republicans is that so many of them aren’t team players," said Chris Edwards, director of tax policies studies at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute and editor of DownsizingGovernment.org. "They’re parochial or, with appropriators, it’s just a single-minded devotion to increase spending on the programs that they fund."

Edwards said he was stunned when leading Republicans railed against Trump’s budget plan to eliminate the Community Block Grant Development program, which allocates funds initiatives from affordable housing to after school programs.

House appropriators approved $2.9 billion for CDBG, $100 million less than its Fiscal 2017 funding level.

"Appropriators and other Republican congressmen, they love to give speeches about fiscal responsibility, they love to complain how Obama was a big spender, but now’s the real test," he said.

"Trump has given them the way forward here with some reasonable cuts. Can they rise above their parochial interests and do something that’s good for the overall budget here?."

Other budget-watchers note that the real money issues aren’t even being addressed. Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director for the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said that even Trump’s cuts ignore the fastest growing parts of the federal budget, entitlements like Social Security and Medicare.

"To me, it just doesn’t seem to make much sense to be focusing all our energy on cutting the slowest growing part of the budget," he said.

Pond scum moonlighting as a human being

By Walter Einenkel

During President Obama’s administration, useless hedge fund managers cried big boy tears about how persecuted they were being. President Obama had to frequently attempt to remind them that they made way too much money to be crying over anything.

Sadly, President Obama did not have the will to send them all to jail where many of them deserve to be—to this day.

In 2010, after President Obama helped to navigate our country out of the largest economic disaster since the 1929 Wall Street crash, he held a televised Town Hall. During it, a younger and equally craven Anthony Scaramucci got to ask a question.

The question sounded something like “WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH, my feelings!”



To which President Obama replied.

I think it'd be useful to go back and look at the speeches that I've made, including a speech by the way I made back in 2007, on Wall Street, before Lehmans had gone under. In which I warned about a potential crisis if we didn't start reforming practices on Wall Street. At the time I said exactly what you said, which is Wall Street and Main Street are connected. We need a vibrant vital financial sector that is investing in businesses investing in jobs investing in our people providing consumers loans so they can buy products all that's very important and we want that to thrive but we've got to do so in a responsible way. 

I have been amused over the last couple of years this sense of somehow meet beating up on Wall Street. I think most folks on Main Street feel like they got beat up on; and I'll be honestly there's a big chunk of the country--hold on--I was like there's a big chunk of the country that thinks that I have been too soft yet on Wall Street and that's the majority—not the minority. 

Now, what I've tried to do is just try to be practical. You know I'm sure that at any given point over the last two years there have been times where I have been frustrated, and I'll give you some examples—I mean when I hear folks who say that somehow were being too tough on Wall Street, but after a huge crisis the top 25 hedge fund managers took home a billion dollars in income that year. A billion!

For what it’s worth, Scaramucci is exactly like the rest of this administration—pond scum moonlighting as human.

H/T Rawstory

Anthony Scaramucci’s business card seals the deal

By Paul Chandler

The moment Anthony Scaramucci presented his business card to President Trump, the deal was a good as done. Sean Spicer was on his way out, with Mr. Smooth installed as White House communications director.Scaramucci checks all the boxes for Trump: Goldman Sachs background, ties to Russia, Wall Street insider, enormous amounts of hair product, prepared to say anything and most importantly, in love with himself and the President. Truly a match made in heaven

Photo of Spicer immediately after he tendered his resignation

By DemocratSinceBirth

Meet Trump's Newest Scumbag Anthony Scaramucci

Anthony Scaramucci talks a tough game, until he doesn’t.

John Iadarola, Ben Mankiewicz, and Mark Thompson, hosts of The Young Turks, discuss.

The Media Must Fight Back

The press is playing by its old rules while Trump laughs at those rules.