Octopus Overlords

LawBeefaroni wrote:

Holman wrote:And here's a new Trump tweet with two and a half minutes of declaring the media the enemy of the American people.

We are living a nightmare.

By "dishonest" he means "free" and "media" he means "press."

Still trying to figure out "GREAT AMERICAN PEOPLE." "IMMEDIATE FAMILY" maybe?

President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating heating aid for low-income Americans, claiming it's no longer necessary and rife with fraud. People needn't worry about being left in the cold, he says, because utilities cannot cut off customers in the dead of winter.

But he is wrong on all counts.

The heating program provides a critical lifeline for people like Perkins, and officials close to the program don't see any widespread fraud. Guidelines for winter shutoffs by utilities vary from state to state and don't apply to heating oil, a key energy source in the bitter New England winter.
...
The proposal to kill the program, which has distributed $3.4 billion to about 6 million households this fiscal year, will face strong opposition in Congress.

Forty-three senators from mostly cold-weather states already signed a letter urging the Republican chairman and ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee to ensure funding for the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program, known in many states by its acronym, LIHEAP.

In Maine, the poorest state in New England, the program helped nearly 77,000 people over the past winter, and those numbers represented less than a quarter of eligible households, said Deborah Turcotte of MaineHousing, which helps to run the program.
...
Mark Wolfe, of the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association, said that the Trump administration is relying on an old General Accounting Office report on the fraud claim, and that improvements have been made since then. In Maine, for example, only 100 cases - 0.3 percent of all submitted applications - are being investigated for potential fraud, according to MaineHousing.

And programs aimed at preventing utilities from being turned off wouldn't protect everyone. Utility regulations vary, with some states preventing shutoffs during the entire winter and others doing so only on exceptionally cold days.

And there's absolutely no requirement for heating oil and propane dealers, which are not regulated like electric and natural gas utilities, to make deliveries to customers who cannot pay. That's a big problem in the Northeast, which accounts for more than 80 percent of the nation's residential heating oil consumption.

Health and Human Services Secretary Thomas Price, who contends the LIHEAP program doesn't demonstrate "strong performance outcomes," said difficult decisions are necessary to streamline the government to focus on the administration's goals of defense and public safety.

The LIHEAP program already has undergone substantial cuts.

The average benefit has been reduced by $100 from 2010 to 2015 as funding was slashed during the Obama administration. That coincides with Venezuela's Citgo Petroleum Corp. ending participation in a free-oil program run by a Massachusetts-based nonprofit.

Nationwide, the average home heating cost last winter was $1,448 for propane, $1,227 for heating oil, $902 for electricity and $577 for natural gas.

Many observers refuse to accept that the program will be eliminated altogether.

It's just too popular in Congress, and it also distributes aid to poor people in states like Florida and Arizona to keep cool on blazing hot summer days.

But CNN is a journalistic enterprise. Or, at least, it plays one on TV. And so when a politician spews vicious, obvious lies on a near-daily basis — and directs a good portion of that venom at the free press itself — CNN’s anchors and reporters feel compelled to correct and condemn such mendacity. And that makes the president feel “betrayed.”

So, now, his administration is openly threatening to punish the network by sending the Justice Department after its parent company. As the New York Times reports:

Mr. Trump’s allies argue that it is CNN’s conduct that is unbecoming. Starting on last year’s campaign trail, the president and his aides have accused the network of bias and arrogance, an offensive that heated up again in January after CNN reported on the existence of a secret dossier detailing a series of lurid accusations against Mr. Trump. The network’s reporters now routinely joust with Mr. Trump’s press aides, and Jim Acosta, a White House correspondent, recently denounced the administration’s use of off-camera briefings as an affront to American values.

White House advisers have discussed a potential point of leverage over their adversary, a senior administration official said: a pending merger between CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, and AT&T. Mr. Trump’s Justice Department will decide whether to approve the merger, and while analysts say there is little to stop the deal from moving forward, the president’s animus toward CNN remains a wild card.

South Park is to make fewer jokes about Donald Trump, its co-creator has said.

Trey Parker told The Los Angeles Times the show had fallen into the "trap" of mocking the US president in its episodes every week.

"We're becoming: 'Tune in to see what we're going to say about Trump.' Matt [Stone, co-creator] and I hated it but we got stuck in it somehow," he said.

Parker added he and Stone want the show, which has been running for 20 years, to return to its roots.

He said the series should stick to the "bread and butter" of "kids being kids and being ridiculous and outrageous".

Recently, the show has seen teacher Mr Garrison campaign for president on the basis he would build a wall to keep out Canadians - a reference to the wall President Trump wants to build on the Mexican border.

Parker said: "We probably could put up billboards - 'Look what we're going to do to Trump next week!' - and get crazy ratings. But I just don't care."

"We fell into the same trap that Saturday Night Live fell into, where it was like, 'Dude, we're just becoming CNN now'."

Obsessive Loser wrote:Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!

Isgrimnur wrote:If you can't get them to die of sickness, maybe just let them freeze to death:

President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating heating aid for low-income Americans, claiming it's no longer necessary

Jeff V wrote:Of course not, Global Warming is making it unnecessary. Or, as the Republicans describe it, "a proliferation of heat fairies caused by restrictive gun and hunting laws."

YellowKing wrote:I'd argue CNN helped him win as much as it hurt him. They were the ones blasting every little headline about Hillary's emails, and giving him an inordinate amount of coverage over his opponent. No such thing as bad press, as they say.

El Guapo wrote:Also, I just want to say that I am not at all concerned that Trump met with Putin in private, with only Friend of Russia medal winner Rex Tillerson (and Russian officials).

El Guapo wrote:Also, I just want to say that I am not at all concerned that Trump met with Putin in private, with only Friend of Russia medal winner Rex Tillerson (and Russian officials).

$iljanus wrote:

El Guapo wrote:Also, I just want to say that I am not at all concerned that Trump met with Putin in private, with only Friend of Russia medal winner Rex Tillerson (and Russian officials).

Yuck, I have this youtube video of a bunch of Russians screaming, ASS TO ASS!, to Trump and Rex...

WASHINGTON, D. C. - Ignoring President Donald Trump's suggested elimination of federal money for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, U.S. House of Representatives budgeters on Tuesday announced they plan to allocate $300 million for the program.

In addition to giving the Great Lakes cleanup program the same amount of money it got most years before Trump took office, a 2018 budget draft unveiled Tuesday by the House Appropriations Committee took other steps sought by Ohio's congressional members.

The proposed budget contains language seeking prompt release of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study on how to keep invasive Asian Carp from spreading into the Great Lakes and damaging native fisheries. In February, the Army Corps indefinitely postponed the study's release, saying it needed to allow "further coordination" among interested parties.

LordMortis wrote:I did not see this coming.

http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.s ... ump_b.html

We may survive the next four years yet and my complete contempt for one side of aisle may get dampened.

WASHINGTON, D. C. - Ignoring President Donald Trump's suggested elimination of federal money for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, U.S. House of Representatives budgeters on Tuesday announced they plan to allocate $300 million for the program.

In addition to giving the Great Lakes cleanup program the same amount of money it got most years before Trump took office, a 2018 budget draft unveiled Tuesday by the House Appropriations Committee took other steps sought by Ohio's congressional members.

The proposed budget contains language seeking prompt release of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study on how to keep invasive Asian Carp from spreading into the Great Lakes and damaging native fisheries. In February, the Army Corps indefinitely postponed the study's release, saying it needed to allow "further coordination" among interested parties.

Octavious wrote:Trumps budget proposal was so batshit crazy that there isn't any way they could follow it.

The inverted Rumsfeld

Remember how former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was fond of saying that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”? Though controversial in Rumsfeld’s application to the more discretely measurable question of whether Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq 15 years ago, the age-old observation contains the tautological truth that there might be stuff we haven’t learned yet.

Trumpists have replaced the inherent humility of this proposition with a premature, pugnacious certainty that all wrongdoing has been definitively ruled out. "I don't know what else the mainstream media can talk about other than the fact that there was no collusion" between Russia and Trump, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said as recently as Saturday. "There was no coordination. Now, the president is taking this issue directly to the president of Russia and raised it, so now I think the issue is officially dead."

Having serially failed to produce full public exonerations from Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, National Security Agency chief Michael S. Rogers and former FBI Director James B. Comey, Trump and his underlings just keep stating his innocence as fact. It is less true by the day.

Dyne Suh had driven in a snowstorm to the Airbnb rental near Big Bear, California. The host canceled the reservation as Suh was close to arriving and texted her: "I wouldn't rent to u if u were the last person on earth. One word says it all. Asian," according to the department.
Suh responded that she would report the host to Airbnb for being racist.
"It's why we have trump," the host wrote back. "And I will not allow this country to be told what to do by foreigners."

While at the Institute, Jackson provided editorial assistance on a book of collected essays by the institute’s co-founder, economic historian Murray N. Rothbard. A charismatic figure who devoted his life to ideas, Rothbard died a few years before Jackson’s fellowship. Mark Thornton, an economist and a senior fellow at the Mises Institute who vaguely recalled Jackson but did not specifically remember her role at the center, said that her editorial assistance may have involved proofreading.

Rothbard’s 1999 book, “Education: Free and Compulsory,” advocated for a voluntary education system, denouncing government-mandated schooling. Currently, all U.S. states require students to attend school until they are at least 16 years old.

“To force these children to be exposed to schooling, as the State does almost everywhere, is a criminal offense to their natures,” wrote Rothbard. “In any case, the instruction has almost no effect on these children, many of whose hours of life are simply wasted because of the State’s decree.”

This was not Jackson’s only connection to Rothbard’s work. She also wrote two papers analyzing his theories. One essay compared his philosophy to that of libertarian novelist Ayn Rand. In the other, she wrote that his 1982 book, “The Ethics of Liberty,” “shines as a monumental achievement, meeting Rothbard’s goal of setting forth ‘a positive ethical system … to establish the case for individual liberty.’”

In other essays, published on a former colleague’s website, Rothbard called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “monstrous,” and lambasted one provision of it, which prohibited employment discrimination, as “a horrendous invasion of the property rights of the employer.”

Chaz wrote:And it seems pretty likely that they're going to get there by internally sabotaging it so that their narrative comes true for everyone,

Pyperkub wrote:I find it hard to believe that laughter = willful conduct:

Kurth wrote:How is this possible? Support for Trump at 50% in counties he won

gilraen wrote:

Kurth wrote:How is this possible? Support for Trump at 50% in counties he won

That's actually a drop from the previous poll. So...baby steps?

Kurth wrote:How is this possible? Support for Trump at 50% in counties he won