caulfield12

White House says Republicans who oppose the health care bill "will probably pay a price at home" Spicer said Republicans who vote against the GOP's health care bill "will probably pay a price at home." He didn’t rule out Trump campaigning against those Republicans. "You can’t go promise over and over again" and not deliver, Spicer said. "This was a major component in the last election, and I think there was not a single Republican member who went out and talked about this." www.cnn.com http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/201...ep-state-214935 Why Steve Bannon Wants You To Believe In the Deep State http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/21/world/electr...trnd/index.html Fallout from electronics ban...with stories of affected families. Can't imagine having young kids used to traveling with their iPad games on a 10+ hour flight and having that taken away as an option...or all the complaints we'll see about electronics being stolen from checked baggage in processing.

http://www.businessinsider.com/carter-page...-dossier-2017-1 One obvious area (besides Manafort and Flynn) is this Carter Page issue with the brokerage over a supposed 19% sale of Rosneft (Russian state oil monopoly) A dossier with unverified claims about President Donald Trump's ties to Russia contained allegations that Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russia's state oil company, offered former Trump ally Carter Page and his associates the brokerage of a 19% stake in the company in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions on Russia. The dossier says the offer was made in July, when Page was in Moscow giving a speech at the Higher Economic School. The claim was sourced to "a trusted compatriot and close associate" of Sechin, according to the dossier's author, former British spy Christopher Steele. "Sechin's associate said that the Rosneft president was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered Page and his associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft," the dossier said. "In return, Page had expressed interest and confirmed that were Trump elected US president, then sanctions on Russia would be lifted." The sale of that 19.5% share in Rosneft to Qatar (sovereign wealth fund) and Glencore (Australia) was for $11.3 billion (in December)...so just 3% of that total would be $339 million dollars going to Carter Page and his Republican associates, in exchange for assurances from Page that the new Trump administration would eventually lift the sanctions on Russia (which would be a VERY cheap price to pay, especially when considering the total amount in damages to the Russian economy since the Obama admin put those sanctions in place, AND since SOMEONE had to broker the deal anyway and EARN a massive commission) Meanwhile, Paul Manafort is wanted for questioning by the FBI and in KIEV, UKRAINE. And Ivanka's finally getting her own West Wing office but won't be a government employee...raising more thorny ethics questions http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/ivan...te-house-236273 Trump’s role, according to her attorney Jamie Gorelick, will be to serve as the president’s “eyes and ears” while providing broad-ranging advice, not just limited to women’s empowerment issues. Last week, for instance, Trump raised eyebrows when she was seated next to Angela Merkel for the German chancellor’s first official visit to Trump’s White House. As her role in the White House grows — a role that comes with no playbook — Trump plans to adhere to the same ethics and records retention rules that apply to government employees, Gorelick said, even though she is not technically an employee. But ethics watchdogs immediately questioned whether she is going far enough to eliminate conflicts of interest, especially because she will not be automatically subjected to certain ethics rules while serving as a de facto White House adviser. People close to Ivanka Trump said that she sees nothing unusual about the arrangement — it’s simply how she has worked with her father for years, as a senior official at the Trump Organization and as Donald Trump’s partner on “The Apprentice.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/201...-for-11-billion

Now, what the heck are they planning to do about North Korea? This time, an engine/thrust test was successfully run in the last 24 hours that theoretically puts them in the ballpark of being able to deliver an ICBM in the general vicinity of the West Coast. All done while Tillerson's in China to meet with the leadership there. REAL NEWS: Trump/Bannon secretly hope to kill two birds with one stone, DPRK nuclear attack taking out multitudes of Democratic voters in California while simultaneously giving the administration cover to go to war in Asia. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/tru...ing-break-aspen Over the weekend, the Trump Kids flew to Aspen, Colorado. In tow were Don Jr., his wife, and their five kids; Ivanka and her three kids (her husband, Jared Kushner, who serves as a senior adviser to her father, stayed behind in Washington. It was this week, after all.) Eric and his wife joined, too. Unfortunately, unlike trips past, the extended Trumps now require a great deal of Secret Service protection. Over the weekend The Aspen Times reported that about 100 Secret Service agents were expected to travel with them. As a matter of protocol, the Secret Service would not comment on the number of agents it sent to protect the First Family. A representative told me I would have to file a Freedom of Information Act request in order to find out how much the government spent on sending agents on a Trump spring break. Bill Linn, an assistant chief of police in the town of Aspen, said that the Secret Service had been in touch with the police department and had not asked for any kind of support. Another New York mom who took her kids to Aspen for the week said that with so many agents about, it is hard to get around the mountain. Because the Trump group is so big, and security is so tight, it’s harder to score tables at the few local restaurants at which New Yorkers normally dine. Traffic, too, they said, is a nightmare. (Linn said that there were no reports filed about traffic related to a dignitary visit, but that traffic has been challenging). About 40 or so locals threw together a last-minute protest on Main Street—for “All That Is Right and Good”—when they heard about the First Family’s visit. Trump advisor Roger Stone a hot topic of conversation Monday at the hearings... “Director Comey, are you aware that Roger Stone played a role in the Trump campaign?” Schiff asked. “I’m not going to talk about any particular person here today, Mr. Schiff,” Comey responded. But Schiff pressed. “Are you aware that he has publicly acknowledged to have communicated with Guccifer 2.0, someone the intelligence community has assessed was a persona of Russian intelligence?” Schiff continued. “I’ve read media accounts to that effect. I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings in the media, I don’t know if that is accurate or not,” Comey said. Guccifer 2.0 is believed to be the Russian hacker who stole DNC emails and released them through Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. SCHIFF: “Mr. Stone, on August 17th, received a communication from Guccifer 2.0 that said ‘I’m pleased to say that you are great. Please tell me if I can help you anyhow. It would be a great pleasure to me.’ Are you aware of that communication from essentially Russian GRU through Guccifer to Mr. Stone?” COMEY: “I have to give you the same answer.” SCHIFF: “Are you aware that Mr. Stone also stated publicly that he was in direct communication with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks?” COMEY: “Same answer.” SCHIFF: “Are you aware that Mr. Stone also claimed he was in touch with an intermediary of Mr. Assange?” COMEY: “Same answer.” SCHIFF: “In early October, are you aware Mr. Stone tweeted I have total confidence that my hero Julian Assange will educate the American peoples soon. Are you aware of that tweet?” COMEY: “Back to my original same answer.” http://miami.cbslocal.com/2017/03/20/roger...ring-on-russia/

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/220027096/ra...ealing-catches/ That Gary Matthews, Jr., play to me is the best...some cool videos to remind us of the recent past. Hawk's excitement was crazy there.

Yeah, Sing Street was really good. Of course, the main character's a bit annoying, but the supporting characters like his brother and g/f make up for that. For someone who grew up really enjoying New Order/Joy Division and the music that came out of the UK in the 1980's, it's always fun to watch retro-feeling movies like that.

QUOTE (ChiliIrishHammock24 @ Mar 19, 2017 -> 01:06 AM) Get Out was good and worth seeing, but I think it's a bit overrated. Not some amazing film that is a "run to the theater ASAP" type film for me. Yeah, after reading all the reviews, expected a bit more. Obviously, the social satire/commentary part got a lot of the credit, but it's not like that movie is decidedly much better than The Purge series, for example.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/19/opinions/tru...llah/index.html Donald Trump: America's Marie Antoinette https://www.yahoo.com/gma/trump-approval-ra...topstories.html Trump Gallup approval rating down to 37%, 58% disapproval (lowest ever for a new president at this early point) President Bill Clinton hit the 37 percent rating about five months into his first term, in June 1993, and Ronald Reagan dipped below it in January 1983, about a year after he took the oath of office. It took George H.W. Bush more than three years to fall to 37 percent, which he did in June 1992. And Richard Nixon, who resigned at 24 percent, first sunk below 37 percent in the first year of his second term, in August 1973, as the Watergate scandal raged. The lowest job approval ever recorded by Gallup was 22 percent, the public's assessment of Harry Truman's performance in February 1952, nearly 7 years into his presidency. https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-arrested-str...-174013563.html Strobe light attack via Twitter causes life-threatening seizure to former NYT anti-Trump reporter The authorities also found an altered Wikipedia page in Rivello's iCloud account that showed a fake obituary for Eichenwald with a death date of December 16. Eichenwald's lawyer Steven Lieberman said the use of a strobe light against a known epileptic was "no different than a bomb sent in the mail or anthrax sent in an envelope," according to The New York Times, where Eichenwald spent years as an investigative reporter. That made the incident different from other cyberstalking cases, where the intent is to cause psychological -- not explicitly physical -- harm. Eichenwald, 55, has some 319,000 Twitter followers. He had been critical of Trump throughout the presidential campaign last year. When his wife found him on the floor on December 15, she first called 911, and then alerted the authorities to the message from "@jew_goldstein." Eichenwald was incapacitated for days, lost feeling in one hand, and had trouble speaking for weeks, his lawyer told The Times. Since the attack, Eichenwald said, 40 more accounts have sent him strobe lights messages. He has passed their information to the FBI.

Fulmer's fastball was at 93 today...but that's not good enough without his secondary stuff and location. Still not convinced he will last as a starter, but he'll certainly get plenty of opportunities to prove everyone wrong. And, at least we have Kopech, Lopez and Burdi whose stuff is as good or better than advertised.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/rex-...-reports-236214 Tillerson disputes reports of being "low energy" in South Korea https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldvi...m=.826627604af9 Trump apparently didn't realize deadline for Germany to raise military spending to 2% of GDP was actually 2024. But, Germans argue, they make up for this in other ways. As Merkel argued in a speech last month, mutual security goes beyond military spending. International development aid on things like hospitals and schools does as much for peace as warheads in Europe. “When we help people in their home countries to live a better life and thereby prevent crises, this is also a contribution to security,” Merkel said in Munich. “So I will not be drawn into a debate about who is more military-minded and who is less.” She and other German leaders also point out that they’re bearing the brunt of the Syrian refugee crisis, spending 30 to 40 billion euros a year. If that was included in the tally, they say, they’d be putting more than 2 percent of their budget a year toward security. (They’re also quick to note that U.S. military interventions are one reason there are so many displaced people from the Middle East.)

Beauty and the Beast is an exact replica of the 1992 animation with essentially thirty minutes of added scenes, songs and characters. Definitely worth taking the kids too because of the cinematography, but the original cartoon is still my preference...or the 1940's version. Emma Watson, just doesn't quite fit in that role...enjoyed seeing Kevin Kline, and the whole Luke Evans/Josh Gad subplot though. Here in China, they cut the most controversial scene between them for it apparently.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/medicare-ins...WQDBHNlYwNzcg-- Medicare insolvency to move up from 2025 to 2023 under AHCA.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Mar 16, 2017 -> 10:39 PM) He's not meant to broadcast games for a team that is going nowhere. There will be so many meaningless games the next 5-10 seasons. His heart can't be in it, especially doing only road games. The Sox might not even have a winning road trip period in the next 5 seasons. He'll be Mr. Grouch broadcasting meaningless ballgames IMO. Well, there's no hyperbole here!...coming from a frequent purveyor back when everyone used to care about all 162 Sox games during a given season. (Fwiw, 2018 better at least be entertaining...and a competitive, close to .500ish team.)

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Mar 16, 2017 -> 10:08 PM) When does Trump get his Nobel Peace Prize? I was hoping my genitals would win this year but I understand I can't beat out a new President with only a couple hundred days under his belt. "In this case, he (Trump) has no opponent," Santorum said. "And who he's hurting is not a rival, he's hurting himself, because he's now the president and it doesn't matter whether he blames Barack Obama or not. People don't care about Barack Obama anymore. They care about one person. They care about the president, and he's the president." cnn.com Well, it's also more likely that Kate McKinnon, Alec Baldwin or Melissa McCarthy will win Emmy Awards for portraying real people than Conway, Trump or Spicer will win any type of award for their contributions to the country. Actually, now that I think about it, Trump does deserve an award from the Netherlands for scaring their electorate away from going populist/nationalist. In fact, the same exact thing might happen in France, Germany and Italy over the course of this year...so Trump is NON-INTENTIONALLY contributing more than anyone else in the world (not named George Soros, who has to be the 2nd choice here) to reunifying the EU and foiling Steve Bannon's plans for meddling like a Scooby Doo villain in the New World Order. So Trump should get one as well, why not? Mockery is fun. (Then again, nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula or war with China over Pacific...yea vote cancelled.) Meanwhile, perhaps the GOP should secure someone who has ACTUALLY won the Nobel Prize in Economics to explain why their budget and health care initiatives won't work and how to fix them? http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/201...-resigns-236147 REPORTER QUITS IJR NEWSITE OVER OBAMA CONSPIRACY STORY The last straw, they said, was a post published earlier on Thursday connecting former President Barack Obama's visit to Hawaii with a Hawaiian federal judge's ruling against President Donald Trump's revised travel ban. The since-retracted post meticulously pointed out all the possible connections between Obama's visit and the judge, including that they attended Harvard at the same time, that Obama appointed the judge, and that a restaurant Obama ate at during his trip was close to the federal courthouse. "This is not to allege the former president met with Judge Derrick Watson, but merely to point out the timing and the opportunity was there ahead of a controversial court ruling," the story states. The theory of Obama having a connection to the federal judge's ruling was also promoted on sites with a conspiracy theory bent including InfoWars and Gateway Pundit. Shortly after the story was posted, it received an editor's note that said: "This story has been updated to remove unnecessary speculation about the timing of the visit. We apologize for any undue conclusions that might have been drawn from the report."

QUOTE (raBBit @ Mar 16, 2017 -> 07:44 PM) Not sure why you question if I have a straight face when your opinions don't line up with reality. I'm glad you respect President Obama but that doesn't make it as if he can do no wrong. Obama's administration got caught targeting conservatives through the IRS, journalists with the AP scandal, political opponents abroad in Merkel and others, journalists like James Rosen and Michael Hastings. Illegal surveillance was started by Bush's administration but normalized, expanded and abused throughout the Obama years. These are facts not opinions. Everything Obama did set a precedent for Trump. Obama even expanded surveillance reach on his way out. IRS scandal: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washington...dal-in-one-FAQ/ AP scandal: https://www.google.com/amp/www.nydailynews....ticle-1.1349443 Merkel: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardia...erman-newspaper Rosen: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.yahoo.com/...-134204299.html Obama'a administration surveillance makes Nixon'a administration look like children putting their ears against walls to eavesdrop. Obviously that's due to technology but your comment is totally off base regardless. Who knows what Obama's administration did behind the scenes with instances where they had the competence to keep their internal investigations, you know, internal. (Disclosure: This reporter counts Rosen among his friends.) Sounds like a completely objective, unbiased source of info. and the New York Daily News? Might as well be the Observer, the Kushners' paper. Okay.

Surely Ronald Reagan spent his first 100 days in office comparing himself to Jimmy Carter...at a certain point, you've got to just DO SOMETHING. The Trump administration has been completely dead in the water ever since the immense wave of criticism to the initial immigration ban hit. It's like they haven't been able to recover from that blow to their momentum. Since then, the only "good/positive" (from a GOP standpoint) things they have done are Gorsuch and McMaster. The AHCA has been an unmitigated disaster...and has ripped the Republicans into three factions, those loyal to Trump, the extreme right/fiscally conservative side (the ones who want all Medicaid expansion phased out IMMEDIATELY, and they number around 35+ in the House) and then the moderate/centrist side, such as Republican governors like Kasich in states where they're happy with the expansion program and have seen marked cost decreases by covering so many in the pool (the only losers there are the insurance companies, whose profits are limited by taking Medicaid patients). There's just no way to reconcile those positions and pacify both sides to get a bill through the Senate. And now the House doesn't even want to vote out of (justifiable) fear that they'll be providing the Democrats 2018 campaign material when the legislation doesn't even have a snowball's chance in hell of getting through the more moderate Senate. But they can't let Obamacare wither on the vine since they promised to repeal it...and have now assumed responsibility for everyone's health care, since they have complete control of the levers of government (except certain courts/judges and the evil left-wing media, haha).

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/16/opinions/wor...nion/index.html The Ten Cruelest Proposed Budget Cuts

Amash was one of the few Republicans who excelled in his "ambush" town hall environment as well...

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Mar 16, 2017 -> 08:50 AM) Don't forget education. No Supreme Court Justice in this case. Going by the Brett Rule, since the 2020 campaign is underway already with two campaign rallies already...quite clear the Gorsuch nomination should be tabled.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 15, 2017 -> 02:35 PM) Netherlands Election exit polls are filtering out, and it looks like Geert Wilders' far-right anti-Islam party fell into a three-way tie for 2nd place with 19 seats in parliament. As recently as last week. his party was leading the incumbent VVD party. It's a possible sign that the tide of right-wing populism has been stemmed in Europe, but the big one to watch is still the upcoming French elections. http://www.dw.com/en/dutch-pm-ruttes-vvd-e...poll/a-37937959 If you like multi-party systems, the Dutch elections have several dozen parties running and over a dozen will get seats in parliament. They have a proportional representation system with a parliament, so you're voting for a given party rather than a particular candidate, and seats are allocated to a party based on their percentage share of the electorate. Turnout in the Netherlands will be well over 70%. Anti-Trumpism is actually working against Wilders and Le Pen, at least for the moment. That said, all it takes is another major terrorist attack on EU soil to reverse the tide again. Saw on CNN the turnout was in the low 80's, at least from their polling. The other positive with the Netherlands' form of government is that it would have been impossible for his Freedom Party to even form a ruling coalition, even had they ended up with more seats. On the other hand, it's pulling the ruling parties more and more to the center right in response to the populist movements, but that's perhaps not the worst thing in the world...because those countries are still significantly more liberal-leaning than the US in recent years.

https://www.yahoo.com/style/ivanka-trump-ex...-032823047.html Ivanka Trump a notable exception to the Buy American Rule Same with American steel for the pipelines.

While serving as the House Budget Committee chairman, Price had a role in appointing the current head of the CBO who is a conservative economist. There's your key sentence.

The numbers would have been very accurate had those hold out states taken the Medicaid expansion monies. Do you see any of those GOP governors saying it was a failure, didn't work in their states (it has actually succeeded in lowering costs for those risk pools) and how they'd just love to give the money back to D.C.? How can you create a projection/model where governors act in ways that are completely antithetical to best interests of the poor in their states...? As noted, there were five different agencies/foundations that provided an array of predictions on ACA, and the CBO numbers were most accurate in all categories but one...in that, they finished second. So we should expect and trust all the Senators and Reps to give us their objective opinions to us? All voting aging Americans should be required to read the bill in its entirety (something nobody in even Congress does, it gets farmed out to staff dividing that responsibility into sections)...and make their own informed projections? Waiting for someone to provide a better answer than the CBO, which has tended, if anything, to be a bit conservative over all these years. Oh yeah, dynamic scoring, that's the solution ...just pencil in 4% or higher growth every year, all the problems are solved. There we go. If you can find anyone who believes Trump anti-free trade policies will actually stimulate the economy. Because taking almost all of the disposable income away from those in their last ten years away from retirement will surely help to stimulate spending, and we know how the rich will just go right out and spend those tax cuts.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning...m=.5ec09a09e5c8 Trump supporters angered by "Resistance" radio network actually promoting Netflix's The Man In The High Castle

http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2017/03/12/ne...uson-newday.cnn

Did Clinton also have only one State Department position filled at this point...who essentially has been neutered already because other countries are learning to go to Jared Kushner instead? Can't imagine if the Clinton's did the same with Chelsea's husband, it would an impending international catastrophe of Biblical proportions.