PRAWN
Philadelphia Regional Anti-War Network
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"Pharma chief defends 400% drug
price rise as a ‘moral requirement’" Mr Mulye compared his decision to increase the price to an
art dealer that sells "a painting for half a billion' dollars” and
said he was in 'this business to make money". Okay, in this sentence, Mr. Mulye reveals a deep confusion between consumer goods and medical necessities. You buy a consumer good, in this case a painting, because you want that good. You purchase a medical necessity, in this case a drug, because you're literally going to die if you don't get that item. What he demonstrates here is why business and medicine don't mix and why medicine should be treated as a different category entirely. Latest update on sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kevanaugh.
"During Gas Emergency, Mass. State
Police Reveal They're Keeping Tabs On Activist Groups" What struck me about the President's talk here was the repetition of stuff that's simply untrue. He ran out of talking points and then just repeated himself to fill up airtime. Yes, Puerto Rico's power companies had financial troubles. That did not mean there was no power. There was a short-lived bubble of enthusiasm to have Oprah Winfrey run for president because of a speech she made. What Woodward points out is why it's an extremely bad idea to raise up a complete amateur to one of the toughest jobs in the world. Trump is simply unqualified to do the job. The job requires years of relevant experience. "Facebook’s idea of ‘fact-checking’: Censoring ThinkProgress because conservative site told them to" Facebook uses the Associated Press, Factcheck.org, PolitiFact, and Snopes, all of which are fine and reputable fact-checkers. Problem is, they also use the Weekly Standard,
which is not a fact-checker at all and is instead a highly partisan
outfit. Further, there's no appealing any fact-checking decision. The problem for "Anonlymous," the author of the NY Times editorial, is that he or she gets it coming and going. Yes, it's improper to frustrate the desires of the President. Don Jr. is right about that. But those who frustrate the President are also really pretty $%#@ing useless, so liberals are right abut that! As someone said, the NY Times op-ed wasn't a DOJ problem, it's an HR problem. It's a problem for the personnel office, not for law enforcement.
Dana Loesch uses an obviously irrelevant example to make a
deceptive point. (emphasis added) “If I see somebody coming into my
house and I’m not expecting them and they’re walking in like they
own the place … I would act to defend myself." Review of Woodward's book. An incompetent president with strong authoritarian inclinations and a well-meaning, but generally pretty useless staff. Documenting Saturday's Climate March. I'm in 100% agreement with VIPS here. Getting involved in Syria is just a really, really bad idea! Excellent answer to the Trump people's argument that the economy is doing well, so everybody should be happy. Nobody should “like the way the country is going,” for example, when the national deficit is allowed to explode so that the richest Americans can enjoy yet another tax cut. Or when steadfast international alliances are trashed in favor of cozying up to thugs like Vladimir Putin of Russia and Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Or when the president works to derail special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Supporters of Judge Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court have a hard time justifying his frequent untruthfulness.
"'The United States will always stand with our friend and
ally, Israel,' Bolton's draft text says."
"Colin Kaepernick just schooled Donald Trump on how capitalism works" Thinkpiece on diversity. Why it's a unique America strength. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is a clever guy. He kept missiles out of sight during his 70th anniversary parade, earlier sent a message of solidarity to our President and before that, closed down a site in a way that's not terribly difficult to re-open. He's making low-cost moves that seem to be very effective at convincing the President that he's disarming. My own suspicion is that we won't see any further nuclear testing for awhile.
"Trump: If soldiers were ‘real
patriots,’ they wouldn’t take a pay raise" "Kellyanne Conway Snaps At Chuck Todd For Suggesting Anti-Trump Essay Not Illegal" Media's really good at covering scandal when Democrats are doing something bad. But we've got a judge being nominated for the Supreme Court where only a small portion of his written record is being made available (Republican senators are absolutely correct that the total number of documents that were made availlabe is very large, it's the percentage that's very small). Democrats might very well have agreed to not examine some of the judge's million or so documents, but the GOP made an arbitrary and unilateral judgement on which documents to hold back without even an attempt to get Democratic agreement. This should be front-page, top-of-the-hour news! The fact that Democrats appear to have uncovered perjury by Kavanaugh should have been made even more prominent! And Florence kicks off the hurricane season! It's a tropical storm now and is expected to make landfall Wednesday or so. Wow! Fox News guy takes entirely reasonable and sensible stand on the 100k+ papers that the younger George Bush says can all be released. Oh, good heavens! Delusions of grandeur much?!?!?! Fifty years after [President Lincoln's] death they said [the Gettysburg Address] may have been the greatest speech ever made in America. Pretty good. Pretty good. I have a feeling that’s going to happen with us. And no, the piece describes the reaction to the Gettysburg Address. It was nowhere near as negative as the President suggests. But just because a political decision was unpopular, I'm thinking here of moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, does not automatically mean that it was the right thing to do. Sometimes, when everybody opposes an idea, that's because it's a really bad idea. About a month ago, I did a quickie analysis of a US invasion of Iran. I've expended that into a full blog post with maps and links. Did Judge Kavanaugh receive stolen materials while working for the younger George Bush? Looks like it. Question is: Was he aware they were stolen? At the 1:20 mark, Sean Hannity says liberal heads are exploding because of the positive things that Dr. Loudon is saying about the President. No, my reaction is "What is her evidence?" She speaks of pleasant personal interactions with the President, which I'm sure she has indeed experienced, but I'm curious as to how she explains the time back in May, reported by both the NY Times and the WaPo, when "Trump went on a half-hour rant at [DHS Secretary] Nielsen during a recent Cabinet meeting — an unusually long tantrum even for him (and one that reportedly made other officials in the room uncomfortable)." Update: Not at all surprised to learn that "[Dr. Loudon's] degree looks non-clinical which would preclude assessment of mental health.” In other words, she isn't qualified to make any sort of diagnosis. Aww! That's too bad! Burt Reynolds dies at 82 years old. On the importance of the midterm election coming up. More good, heartening stuff
Had Republicans followed procedure and had the National Archives
been permitted to have done their job, the files produced by Judge
Kavanaugh would not be available until late October.
"No White House Senior Staffers
Had Copy Of Woodward’s Book When Excerpts Published" The blog Daily Kos is considerably less than impressed by the op-ed that is
"anonymously pretending at heroism." Far better to have
simply invoked the 25th Amendment than to engage in back-stabbing like this. Earlier today, the President tweeted: "Isn’t it a shame
that someone can write an article or book, totally make up stories
and form a picture of a person that is literally the exact opposite
of the fact..." "Sen.
Grassley says withheld
Kavanaugh documents are 'irrelevant to his being a judge'" Do Democrats have any realistic chance of stopping Kavanaugh? Nah. Are they putting up a fight anyway? Oh. yeah! The right-wing Daily Caller says the President is not terribly upset about Kaepernick deal. “I think it’s a terrible message. Nike is a tenant of mine. They pay a lot of rent.” To the President then, it's clear that money is all that matters. Good! Democratic Senators made it clear from the first minute of the hearing on Judge Kavanaugh that they considered the hearing to be illegitimate. Not only have well over 100k documents been kept from the hearing by either being restricted to the Judicial Committee or by Executive Privilege, but over 40k documents were released just last night, meaning they couldn't possibly have gotten vetted. Gotta love it! First day of questioning and Judge Kavanaugh turns away from the father of one of the Parkland students who was shot at school a few months ago. Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh and current Justice Gorsuch both used the term "seetled law" to describe Roe vs. Wade. What exactly to they mean when they said "settled law"? Ehh, not much. Bashar Assad moves to stomp out the last remaining rebels in Syria. As not even the Kurds stand with the extremist militias of Idlib, the US has pretty much zero influence here. For those who thought the McCain love was overdone and that there really wasn't that much difference between the President and his Republican critics, Jeet Heer agrees with you. And yeah, by choosing Sarah Palin to be his VP. McCain seriously cost himself a lot of gravitas points. Huh! So the New Yorker thought Steve Bannon remained even vaguely relevant these days? They thought Bannon was a real audience drawer?!!?! The fellow who run the New Yorker tried to jam in Steve Bannon at the festival at the last minute. *Beep* Sorry! Wrong answer! His other guests made it clear that it was him or them. We are basically at the point where if someone says, “we need to put country over self, rise above petty name-calling and division” people think “oh sick burn on Trump.” And they’re right. The holding back of 100,000 documents from examination by Congress in the hearings on Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh is not being done as the result of any sort of consultative or negotiation process, but simply by dictatorial fiat. "Germany
to raise funds for
Palestinian refugee agency" Update: Canada also chipped in. Yeah, I agree with the blogger. I greatly sympathize with Meghan McCain for having lost her father, but have never felt that her high public profile was ever due to anything more than nepotism. I worked in a department store when I was younger and she'd fit right in with the salespeople there. She'd do a perfectly decent job, but I don't think she'd ever get promoted to executive. Very interesting, the President allegedly has 54 million Twitter followers, Alyssa Milano has 3.3 million. Trump usually gets 20k retweets, her latest tweet got over 50k. Hmmm. "Billionaire
Village Voice owner
tells staff he’s closing the paper because it doesn’t earn
enough" Israel's far right wing was absolutely thrilled by the cut-off of US aid to UNRWA. No one else was. Heh! Our historian here was just...suddenly reminded of this event when observing the President playing golf all by himself while every power player in Washington was at Senator McCain's funeral. For MLK’s funeral, national leaders from both parties came to Atlanta to honor him. Nearby, Governor Lester Maddox — a segregationist who had used his opposition to civil rights to win his position — hid inside his office, peeking out at the crowds through the closed blinds. "Stop
trying to rehabilitate the
reputation of George W. Bush" The President's son, Don Jr. suggested conservatives should have their own version of Facebook. Eh, Gab's been around for well ove a year. There's a reason it hasn't gone anywhere and the problem isn't a technical one. With no liberals using it, conservatives can't "own the libs." "Ron
DeSantis can't explain away
'monkey this up' comment on Andrew Gillum" "Trump
declares mission
accomplished in his bid to make America great again" Singer Lana Del Ray pulls out of Israeli music festival Ordinarily, for a "bad guy" nation to stick with an agreement is good news. But when the Trump Administration wants an excuse for a war, it really isn't. Disputed someone's post on whether the President has head problems or is following a strategy. Granted, the movies and TV shows I watch tend to have focused, clear-minded heroes and villains who all have discernable goals and thought-out plans on how to get to those goals, so for me, the burden of proof is on those who feel that politicians are actually acting irrationally. August Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets some stuff wrong occasionally (though I agree with her on Israel-Palestine) but so do lots of other people in Congress! Nah, she should continue to speak out and should do so without embarrassment. The Library of the younger George Bush has made 367,000 pages from Judge Kavanaugh's time working for them available. President Trump has decided to withhold 100,000 pages of those papers. Democrats feel, of course, that the administration has absolutely zero business withholding any papers! 4 Americans died in Benghazi. Our Republican government investigated @HillaryClinton for 2 years. 2,975 Americans died in Puerto Rico. Our Republican government has done nothing. They have said nothing. They have asked no questions. They have pointed no fingers. Why? Ever
wonder why the Republicans refer to themselves as being in the “Party
of Lincoln?” On the cancelled pay raise. A $1.1 trillion deficit due to the tax break? Not a problem! Doesn't need to be paid for. A raise of 1.9% for almost 2 million workers? Horrors! Think of the deficit!!! "Trump
Warns Rallygoers Dems 'Want To Raid Medicare To Pay For Socialism'" The Abigail Spanberger case. It's funny how an entity that received her unredacted security file containing all sorts of personal information went to "a super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI)" and gee, strangely enough, none of the reports I've seen mention any reaction by Speaker Ryan. Hmm. Wonder why that would be? Update: Good! 200+ security professionals have
signed a letter demanding
to know the full story behind the release of former CIA
operative
Abigail Spanberger's SF-86 or her security application. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos appears to be trying to put the burden of proof on the shoulders of sexual assault survivors. Problem is, of course, that she has absolutely zero credibility in this field. She has not prove that she can be taken seriously as someone who has a deep understanding of any issue. It is not good news for anybody that Iran's President Hassan Rouhani is weakened by the sanctions that the US re-imposed. That makes anti-American radicals stronger. It's rare for the FBI to make a declaration like this. No evidence that Hillary Clinton's server was ever hacked. New tax data shows, yes, the #GOPTaxScam was quite good for the wealthy. For everybody else? Ehh, not so much. My assessment of the Jared Kushner Israel/Palestine peace plan. Basically, Kushner appears to really, really hate the Palestinians. Yeah, I had never heard the term "monkey
up" something.
As a commenter on TV said "That's not a racist dog-whistle,
that's a racist bullhorn." Took 10 months, but we finally got a more realistic-sounding estimate of the death from Hurricane Maria. Spoke with a fellow Democrats who agrees that getting supplies from the ports to the countryside was a big problem initially, but as the roads have been cleared, that's not so much of a problem any more. Good! The Saudi Crown Prince, Mohamed Bin Salman, appears to be losing power as he's screwed up so badly lately. A little while ago, we saw that the Secretary of HUD, Ben Carson, is supposed to get 80-year old buildings in Cairo, IL back into liveable shape with a fraction of the money he needs. He should resign and blast the Trump Administration as this fellow does. Our top student loan official blasts the Trump Administation for abandoning students. Eh, I'll give the President one cheer out of three for eventually having lowered the flag over the White House to half-staff. He had to be pushed into it. SMDH!!! Black person gets arrested with injuries. Why? He was sitting in his car. Update: Happy to say, the "Courtesy Office" James Reynolds, was let go soon afterwards. The Southport Police Department put out a statement saying they thought Reynolds was within his authority to ask Dean for an ID. A few days ago, the President wondered aloud if he shouldn't do something nice for the Palestinians to compensate them for moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. This move here is simply another attack. To any schoolteachers seeking to get across the idea of
narcissism, I think it's hard to improve on the President's
"tributes" to Senator McCain. So how are Republican Senators reacting as their late colleague John McCain gets trashed by the President? Yeah, pretty much nothing. Yeesh! Compare and contrast how our former enemy deals with the late Senator McCain with how our President deals with him. A monument on the
shores of the
Hanoi lake where McCain was captured has turned into a de facto
shrine to the late senator since news of his death reached Vietnam
early on Sunday morning. Fight the organizational rot of the Roman Catholic church by bringing females into power? They've tried other ideas since 2002 and pedophilia is still a major problem. I came into the Navy in the 90s, when females were being let into more areas and got the impression that the changes were very largely positive. Yes, I believe the Church needs to start promoting females into positions of authority. Looking for females within the Roman Catholic church to promote? Start here! I agree. Democrats are going to have a lot of difficulty impeaching the President as we need a 2/3rds majority in the Senate to make that happen. Doesn't appear we're going to get Republicans to go along with that. Investigations, though! Woo hoo! Representative Maxine Waters will be in charge of the Financial Services Committee!!!! Ya know those tax returns we've been trying to get ahold of? Yeah!!!! Hmm. Yeah, kind of a problem with saying the President's policy towards North Korea has been "tough." The President basically gave NK everything it could possibly have wanted, got a page of vague promises and is now upset that NK hasn't made unilateral concessions. Our President's objections to the Iran nuclear deal would have been perfectly satisfactory, if he just needed to make his complaints specific enough to stir up his crowd at a rally. But the Hague doesn't appear to be impressed. Democrats plan to make extensive use of the subpoena if, more likely when, they take the House. Senator John McCain, American statesman and POW survivor, has died at age 81. Just because Senator John McCain and the blogger and myself were all Navy guys. The government plans on spending $1.5 billion in Puerto Rico over the next 20 years. That would be great news if the plan took anyone other than the wealthy into account. Hmm, so does the President resemble a mobster as this tweet and this whole blog entry suggest, or is he more like Macbeth, an unloved tyrant whose imperial suits "Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe / Upon a dwarfish thief." Woo hoo! "Georgia Republicans fail in attempt to close nearly all polling places in a majority-black county" Hey, but it's not like the Trump Administration has any sort of self-interest in refusing to stop Russian interference in the upcoming midterm election or anything. Status or remaining separated children and parents. Not much better than it was a month ago. The President thinks maybe compensating for the Israeli embassy move might be a good idea. If so, Gaza needs action right now. If the President is serious, he can act right away. "Trump
tweets about South Africa, sparks new international incident" "Wind
Farms Kill Birds, Trump Gripes, As DOI Relaxes Regs On Wind Farms
Killing Birds" Rudy Giuliani says "US citizens would stage a revolution against their own government if the commander-in-chief were to be impeached" Uh, actually [YouTube of] "Martha & The Vandellas - 'Dancing In The Street'" The author explains how the President has a very sincere, deeply felt gangster ideology. The President spent a paragraph of a recent interview on his possible impeachment. The blogger makes an interesting point: "At no point in his response did the president make the case that he didn't do anything wrong." Ann
Coulter on Russia hacking of US election. "NFL
and ESPN attempts to appease Trump on player protests are a
lose-lose-lose situation" Right-wing commenter Michelle Malkin sheds copious crocodile tears over prosecutorial discretion that, gee, somehow when Kenneth Starr was exercising it, didn't seem to bother anyone on the right wing. Another hypocritical right-winger: "Trump: 'Flipping' To Get A Plea Deal 'Almost Ought To Be Illegal" A three-week prison strike began on Tuesday over forced labor. Alan Dershowitz suggests ways to regulate the granting and withdrawing of security clearances, but there already is a procedure for revoking security clearances. It was established under Clinton and changes were made under the younger George Bush. We don't need a sympathetic figure to initiate making any changes, we need for the President to obey the %$#@ing law!!!! John Brennan is not the problem, the problem is that the President took arbitrary and unilateral action. Boo! Hiss! "Verizon throttled fire department’s “unlimited” data during Calif. wildfire" Amazingly, the President stayed on message last night. "He's got message discipline when he wants it.” Still more good legal
news! Michael Cohen pleaded guilty on same day as Maafort was found guilty. Haven't heard this term applied to anyone since Watergate, but "Trump is now officially an unindicted co-conspirator to the crime committed by Cohen." "Paul Manafort Guilty On 8 Counts; Jury Deadlocked On 10 Others" The only reason Manafort wasn't convicted on all counts is because of a single juror. I never watched the film "On Golden Pond,"
but I read a review that said the tensions in the film were
resolved when the wife stopped protecting the husband. When the wife
simply got out of the way and allowed the husband to get the full
force of the disapproval of all the people he was annoying, he saw
the light and reformed. "As
deficit grows, GOP leaders eye cuts to Medicare, Social Security" Archive - sidebar items
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