Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Yeah, and that has all the illegality of buying tic tacs. So, I mean, if your standard is legality (Susan Rice) be concerned with that. If your standard is tangential appearances (anything to do with DJT) then don't give me dog and pony bullshit about 'was it legal' for Susan Rice.

If there's no collusion, there's no collusion. The investigation will have at the very least forced the Trump people to not cozy up to Russia in an alliance against Iran (or whatever they had planned). Every indication up to Election Day was that this was the planned direction of a Trump administration. That plan has been blown up.

But I'll say again that for an investigation that perhaps you and definitely Geezer and Hannibal ridicule, it's cost an NSA his job and forced two high-profile figures to recuse themselves. All for a matter that has, according to Trumpists, no 'there' there...

[Dr. Strangelove]

And the Ds will fillibuster Gorsuch. LOL.

Forced to by the base.

They should have pocketed this for the next one. But hey, the sinking of Garland was embarrassing as well.

Yeah yeah...the cherished Biden rule...I know...

[Wild Hoss]

KCMO is hosting the ceremony commemorating the 100th anniversary of US entry into WWI.

https://www.theworldwar.org/explore/...-commemoration

Sad to say that even as a resident, I haven't visited the museum yet. I put it on the to-do list for this summer, with the kids.

"Lafayette, we are here."

[Da Geezer]

Is the first supposed to be Adam Smith or did you get your history education at a charter school? Heh

My mistake. Das Kapital was 1867.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Dubya's ethics lawyer, Richard Painter, is reportedly one of the 'left-wing activists" who submitted the ethics complaint against Nunes

[Da Geezer]

Have you read the actual complaint, DSL?

CNN is reporting that it centers on the phrase "FISA surveillance" that Dunes used in his news conference on March 22. The simple existence of FISA surveillance is classified.

Having a Bushie file the complaint is no surprise.

I agree that Nunes' recusal looks bad, and, so far, looks are what matters most in this whole Russian thing.

I tend to agree with CNN's special on Putin. I think Putin hated Hillary and saw no downside in trying to hurt her since he expected her to win. That is a long way from "collusion" by the Trump campaign.

[iam416]

Forced to by the base.

They should have pocketed this for the next one. But hey, the sinking of Garland was embarrassing as well.

Yeah yeah...the cherished Biden rule...I know...

Eh, I mean, it was dead either way. But, politically I would have waited until a less appealing nominee came up. I mean, if you're going to do a first ever filibuster of a Supreme Court justice, I'd want it to be for something other than "I think he's a conservative justice."

In any event, Kennedy will retire soon and DJT (or Pence, heh) will have free reign!

I'm also not entirely sure how this plays long-term. It seems to me that the Senate will be R-controlled more often than not. I have a hard time finding 25 reliably D states. I can get to 23-24 very reliably R states pretty easily. The filibuster helps the minority party against a majority executive. It may be that the Ds are considerably more likely to control the executive, but they won't often have both the executive and the Senate.

Anywho, I'm glad the filibuster is gone for judges and cabinet members. On this issue I agree with Harry Reid!

[hack]

Geezer you make a somewhat valid point about the US having a large and diversified internal market. That explains why the numbers are what they are...

[hack]

...but as long as you carry on like this:

Hack, that is why you cannot tolerate a partly-free economy. Anything market related, by definition, involves winners and losers. But you are committed to equal outcomes

as if you know what I think, you're not gonna learn shit. We've gone over this enough. You should know better. You have the ability to know what I think because you asked and I answered. Stick to that rather than guessing, or lumping me in with people whose objections you'd rather argue against.

My beef with Cheney is that he was the loudest proponent for a war for which there was no clear justification, but from which he got rich. You, as a self-professed free-marketeer who is against those feeding at the government trough, should be just as angry as I am about Cheney. If you were true to your stated principles you would be.

[hack]

The latter is a fantasy anyway....one of the Russians' most profitable generators of foreign cash is weapons sales. They aren't giving that up, especially not in the current petroleum environment. Allies like France are historically prolific arms producers as well. It might be noted that we sell the occasional M4 too.


Hoss, I took ent to mean sales to terrorists, not state-to-state. I agree that nobody's giving up their defence contracting. And they all know that some of the state-to-state sales end up in the wrong hands. But if they were serious about choking off terrorists' ability to use the global financial system, they wouldn't be attacking Dodd-Frank or FATCA.

[Wild Hoss]

The latter is a fantasy anyway....one of the Russians' most profitable generators of foreign cash is weapons sales. They aren't giving that up, especially not in the current petroleum environment. Allies like France are historically prolific arms producers as well. It might be noted that we sell the occasional M4 too.


Hoss, I took ent to mean sales to terrorists, not state-to-state. I agree that nobody's giving up their defence contracting. And they all know that some of the state-to-state sales end up in the wrong hands. But if they were serious about choking off terrorists' ability to use the global financial system, they wouldn't be attacking Dodd-Frank or FATCA.

Terrorism takes a back seat to big business, except around election time.

[hack]

Correct.

[Da Geezer]

Hack, that is why you cannot tolerate a partly-free economy. Anything market related, by definition, involves winners and losers. But you are committed to equal outcomes

as if you know what I think, you're not gonna learn shit. We've gone over this enough. You should know better. You have the ability to know what I think because you asked and I answered. Stick to that rather than guessing, or lumping me in with people whose objections you'd rather argue against.

My beef with Cheney is that he was the loudest proponent for a war for which there was no clear justification, but from which he got rich. You, as a self-professed free-marketeer who is against those feeding at the government trough, should be just as angry as I am about Cheney. If you were true to your stated principles you would be.

Well, you have
1) said you would favor increasing government regulation of the private sector.
2)you defend all manner of PC language
3) you defend failed government programs, or at least you blame their failure on inadequate funding (think VA or government schools)
4) you agree with Marx's analysis of the flaws in capitalism
5) you favor government intervention in cases of "disparate impact", but only when the alleged impact affects certain "sacred victim groups"
6) you claim man is evil, and that government is more powerful than any corporation, but you want the government to regulate corporations.

None of this made sense to me until I read that article. Are you denying you want more equal outcomes? And that would include on a global scale, I presume.

As to Cheney, I just don't know the facts, but I doubt that the US went to war in Iraq to line his pockets. I think the Iraq war was precipitated by a failure of intelligence.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Eh, I mean, it was dead either way. But, politically I would have waited until a less appealing nominee came up. I mean, if you're going to do a first ever filibuster of a Supreme Court justice, I'd want it to be for something other than "I think he's a conservative justice."

In any event, Kennedy will retire soon and DJT (or Pence, heh) will have free reign!

I'm also not entirely sure how this plays long-term. It seems to me that the Senate will be R-controlled more often than not. I have a hard time finding 25 reliably D states. I can get to 23-24 very reliably R states pretty easily. The filibuster helps the minority party against a majority executive. It may be that the Ds are considerably more likely to control the executive, but they won't often have both the executive and the Senate.

Anywho, I'm glad the filibuster is gone for judges and cabinet members. On this issue I agree with Harry Reid!

Why do you think the Senate is more likely to be controlled by R's than Dems? I tend to think the opposite. The Dems are more likely to take a Senate seat in NC eventually than win a majority of NC's House seats, as an example. Highly Republican states like North Dakota, Alaska, and Montana have produced Dems in the Senate recently. Not too many liberal states do the opposite.

[iam416]

Why do you think the Senate is more likely to be controlled by R's than Dems? I tend to think the opposite. The Dems are more likely to take a Senate seat in NC eventually than win a majority of NC's House seats, as an example. Highly Republican states like North Dakota, Alaska, and Montana have produced Dems in the Senate recently. Not too many liberal states do the opposite.

And Rs have won recently in Colorado, Massachusetts and Illinois.

Mitt Romney won 24 states. That doesn't include ANY B10 states other than Indiana, nor does it include Florida and New Hampshire. I consider those states reliably R in a macro sense. If you want to rely on Ds winning seats in North Dakota and Montana, then fine. Knock yourself out.

It's simple math. Now, if your assumption is Ds UBER ALLES!!! then, ok. If you think the Ds will control North Carolina (and retain control of all B10 states except Indiana and partially Ohio), then so be it.

Recent elections suggest that the Rs control more states than Ds and thus have more of a margin of error. It's certainly not unassailable. Ds will control the Senate periodically. But, on average, I think the Rs will control it basically 2 out of 3 cycles (I actually think more like 3 out of 4, but 2/3 is appropriate for the way Senators are elected).

I'm not as optimistic about the Ds chances of flipping states and retaining states as you are.