Open Thread Dec. 4: Your President Is Not a Crook

Filed in Delaware, National by on December 4, 2017

Oh, what a weekend it’s been. Turns out having a belligerent ignoramus in the Oval Office leads to lots of legal liability. After Ol’ Stubby Fingers tweeted out that he knew Mike Flynn lied to the FBI, about a million lawyers pointed out that he had just admitted to obstructing justice. The White House then went into disaster-confinement mode. First they thew lawyer John Dowd under the bus, claiming he wrote the memo. When that didn’t work — lawyers pointed out that Dowd could get disbarred by doing something that stupid (which of course he didn’t do) — Dowd switched to the old Nixon defense, the president is above the law. When you’re trotting out explanations that didn’t work a much smarter, more devious guy like Nixon, you’re getting barrel-bottom with what you’ve just scraped up.

Whatever happened to John Kelly imposing order on the chaos? Turns out that, like any misbehaving child, Trump has found away around the rules, which of course don’t apply to him because — ask John Dowd why.

Remember when Republicans wanted Roy Moore to drop out of the Alabama special Senate election? Good times, but they’re long gone: Tower of integrity Mitch McConnell now says the voters should decide, a position he reached by the simple route of noticing Moore is likely to win. The Republican “principles” are simple ones: It’s all about the money, and we don’t get the money unless we win. So winning is everything.

When asked what he would do with his World Series money after the Phillies won it in 1980, Tug McGraw said he would spend 90% on booze and women, and just waste the rest. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley thinks that’s what all of us who aren’t rich do –and he says that’s why we shouldeliminate the estate tax. Because, lord knows, the rich never drink or fuck or waste their money. Ever.

How clueless are Trumpkins? This clueless: Wall Street dipshit Gary Cohn last week asked a CEO panel how many would use their tax cuts to increase investment. Few hands went up, and Cohn couldn’t understand why. Video of the day.

This story about Doc Magrogan’s restaurant closing at Dover Downs contains some interesting material. Apparently management played hardball over the lease terms, but that’s not what’s interesting. Here’s a quote from chiseling weasel Denis McGlynn:

“It should be apparent that the state’s gaming revenue sharing formula is unsustainable when considering that the company has paid out $56.4 million to the state and the horsemen, while incurring a pretax loss of $366,000 through the first nine months of the year,” company President and CEO Denis McGlynn said in a statement. “We will continue to pursue a more equitable approach to this industry.”

You see what’s absurd here, I hope. A legitimate company that was running at the break-even point, as Dover Downs has for several years now, would trim a few executives and return to profitability. This is all for show — why manage your business responsibly when you can make a big show of losing money, the better to steal more from taxpayers.

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  1. nathan arizona says:

    Just read that 58 percent of millennials believe in astrology. I hope these are not the millennials some of you are counting on to lead us out of the wilderness. I guess science doesn’t make them feel empowered.

  2. Alby says:

    You just read it? Get with the program. Here’s a story about it from 2014.

    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/public-opinion-astrology-dumb/

    OTOH, if you’re just googling around, check out how many of them believe in God compared with earlier generations. Neither one is any more reality-based than the other.

  3. mouse says:

    Science is liberal biased

  4. Ben says:

    100% of millennials base their answer to surveys around what will upset dim Gen Xers and Boomers.
    Nathan, how old do you think Millennials are?

  5. Ben says:

    by the way, if “most” 18-24 year olds are uneducated or under-educated, guess who’s fault it ISNT.

  6. nathan arizona says:

    this new article focused on Philadelphia millennials in the present time. But, yeah, this came as no surprise. Astrology and the sky god are both anti-science, but it would nice not to trade one superstition for another.

    Let’s see, how old do I think millennials are? Sometimes it seems like the 12-14 range. And Ben, who’s fault do you think it is?

  7. nathan arizona says:

    “Whose” fault.

  8. Alby says:

    “Astrology and the sky god are both anti-science, but it would nice not to trade one superstition for another.”

    Hitler and Reagan are the only two world leaders I know of who made decisions based on astrology, and those were usually just picking propitious days for previously-made decisions.

    The Sky Guy, on the other hand, influences far more bad decisions by far more people in high places. So yeah, if I get to choose which con the gullible fall for, I’m willing to trade one for the other. Rick Wise for Steve Carlton worked out pretty well.

  9. Ben says:

    So, since you don’t know the answer without looking it up….. A commonly agreed range from 1982-2002 would make the oldest of us able to run for president. All of us are over 18 and there are more of us than any generation that is older. GenZ is MASSIVE and they are the “kids” you’re likely thinking about when you sneer through your bifocals…. They also aren’t at fault for the shitty world their parents created for them, btw.

    It certainly wasn’t the fault of people too young to vote or make any decisions about what education was while they were in school. I hesitate to even blame the teachers for having the resources plundered by smash-and-grab boomers. It is the fault of “democrats” like Carper for making education more about passing a test (from a for-profit testing company) than actually preparing children with skills they need for the real world. It isnt a goddamn child’s job to know what skills they will need.

  10. nathan arizona says:

    @Ben. Of course I know the real age range. And “more” millennials doesn’t necessarily comfort me. And of course it’s somebody else’s fault (not that I don’t realize that public education is pretty bad). But they’re adults now. They can learn things if they want to. In fact, a lot of millennials have.

    By the way, it’s impossible to sneer through eyeglasses.

  11. Alby says:

    Bifocals are so 20th century.

  12. Dave says:

    I do hope everyone keeps in mind that when it comes to science that the fundamentalist right does not speak for any and all religion.

    The Vatican Observatory has been in continuous operation since 1774. Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope in Arizona, was built in 1981. Georges Lemaître was a Belgian Catholic Priest, astronomer and professor of physics. He derived Hubble’s Law and Constant and proposed the Big Bang Theory. A Catholic, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was the first to develop coherent evolutionary theory. Friar Gregor Mendel was the founder of the modern science of genetics and rules of heredity, referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance.

    There were also such noted Catholic scientists, such Galileo (physics), Mersenne ( acoustics), Agricola (mineralogy), Lavoisier (chemistry), Vesalius (modern anatomy) (), Steno, Kircher, Pasteur, Descartes, Copernicus, and Boscovich, for atomic theory.

    The Catholic Church sees no conflict between science and faith. Although biblical literalists find conflict, the Catholic Church rejects literal creationism as if there were a temporal beginning of everything.

    The point is, belief in a “sky god” is not in conflict with, nor does it preclude the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Fundamentalists seem to need to assign a human construct to the words “In the beginning…” Binary thinking, that lumps all faith together does a disservice to liberals own objectives. Even Buddhism advocates sound logical reasoning arguments seeking truth, wisdom and knowledge whether or not it pertains to religion.

    A lot of so-called Christians, lost their ability to reason, but that doesn’t mean everyone of faith has done so.

  13. nathan arizona says:

    Do Catholics believe (or teach that) “God” created the Earth? I rest my case.

  14. Ben says:

    #notallcultists. Dave, I hope you spend more time trying to improve those who you share a supposed faith with that piping up to point out that you are ‘better’ than them.

  15. Alby says:

    “The Catholic Church sees no conflict between science and faith. ”

    One of its many areas of blindness. Ask them about using fetal tissue in stem cell research and get back to me.

  16. bamboozer says:

    In Atheism there is strength, and a near total lack of bull shit. No sky guy, no astrology and for hard core nay sayers like me no UFO’s or ghosts. But I digress. Millenials will not be our saviors, just as the we Boomers crashed and burned from our promising start to our current retched state so too will they be far from perfect. It’s human nature to screw up and none are immune. As for education the war has been raging longer than any of us have been alive and will continue long after we’re dead. The problem is we don’t do a good job of it despite many examples from many countries that consistently blow us away. The answers are there, we’re just to damn dumb to see it.

  17. lebay says:

    “Dave, I hope you spend more time trying to improve those who you share a supposed faith with that piping up to point out that you are ‘better’ than them.”

    Ben- I am not religious, and I have no ax to grind.

    That said, remove the beam from your own eye before you worry about the splinter in your neighbor’s eye.

    Also, grow a set. You are the most vocal pussy whipped MAN I’ve ever experienced…and I lived through the era when Alan Alda was a star.

  18. RE Vanella says:

    “Probably, my life would be easier, and yours too, if I smoked a joint.” — Hunter S Thompson