With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea...Trump originally tweeted back on May 12th:
...whether there are "tapes" or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings.
James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!A couple weeks ago, after Comey's testimony, Trump said that he'd tell us soon whether there were tapes and reporters were "going to be very disappointed with the answer." We did a poll back then about why he was being coy and not just telling us whether or not there were recordings. Here are the poll results:
Some readers observed that the first and third responses could both be true. I think that's probably right. It certainly did restrict Comey's testimony. At one point, Comey said "Lordy, I hope there are tapes," and some people took that to mean I hope there are tapes because they will prove me right, but I thought that statement could just as well mean I hope there are tapes because otherwise I'm unnecessarily restricting myself.
At the time of Trump's May 12th tweet — the original "Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes'" — I thought it was interesting that he put "tapes" in quotes and said:
Is that to fend off inquiry into whether actual tape is used in making recordings? I remember when he famously tweeted that Obama "had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower," and later he — and others — made much of the quotation marks.In today's tweet, he put "tapes" in quotes again but doesn't leave us wondering if he's hedging somehow. He makes it "'tapes' or recordings," with "recordings" not in quotes.
But Trump does leave some ambiguity with respect to whether there could be tapes that someone else made. He's not always so scrupulous about distinguishing between what he knows personally and what he has heard. For example, a few days ago, Trump tweeted that he's under investigation, but (according to his lawyer) he only meant that he saw that The Washington Post report that an anonymous source said that. Trump didn't personally know. Today's tweet acknowledges the strict factual reality that there could be recordings that Trump doesn't know about. I don't know if he wrote like that because he's become more precise and lawyerly in his use of language. Another motive to write that way is that he wanted to take a jab at the overreaching deep state. He succumbed to the temptation to insinuate that there are intelligence people who might record him without his knowledge.
By succumbing like that, he left open a loophole that a truly lawyerly writer would have seen and plugged. Today's tweet leaves open the possibility that he knows of recordings that he didn't make — because someone else did — and he doesn't have those recordings, but either: 1. Someone else is preserving those recordings or 2. Those recordings have been wiped (like with a cloth or something).
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 235 of 235I think there was essentially one party in DC. I think both parties were working together for the wealthy and dividing the voters against each other. That is why nothing really changed when either side took power. I think Trump changed that.
The city/urban thing has to do with Democrats caring more about infrastructure. They played a large part in building it under FDR and afterward. Eisenhower made his contribution, too, with the federal highway system. But Republicans were different back then - playing catch-up with the left instead of going on this Goldwater-Reagan kick.
And after that happened they've been very anti-infrastructure. Trump talks different; he probably won't bring his party along, though. He's from NYC and worked in real estate and understands that the private sector doesnt' have enough incentives to build entire networks like roads, fiber cables, utility lines and water pipes from scratch. Those are natural monopolies where you need to start with a single provider first before you can allow competition, if you even need to at that point.
But it doesn't matter. The Republican philosophy is so anti-government that they refuse to acknowledge that point. They only want the government monopoly when it comes to killing foreigners - and other "enemies." They are so far removed from the basics of building and maintaining infrastructure that they can never really govern a major city, unless they are moderate and left-leaning enough to do so, like Giuliani was. They can be socially conservative but will never get a vote by doing all the things that lead to water shortages, power outages and other things that result from a "hands-off" approach to infrastructure. And what they want to do know by ending net neutrality will be horrible.
They're too far out of the game. Their donors are all private sector hawks, and that's pretty much all they know. Notwithstanding a realtor-president's understanding that cities can't be built with developers alone.
"We aren't even agreeing on the need for universal access, let alone single payer."
Universal access to what?
Emergency Room services?
Heart valve transplants?
Primary care?
I am asking this not really to get into the nitty gritty policy details because I am one person. That is the point I want to make. I don't mind a "single payer " emergency room service system that is limited and serves as a safety net. I am also still in support of turning the Medicare/Medicaid system into a form of catastrophic insurance.
I want more than anything to make sure as many people have access to what is coming over the next 20 years in health care. The treatments that will be cheap and available will blow people's minds. I fully expect us to advance more in the next 20 years than we have up to this point. The only thing that will hold that back is a government serving the redstones and disneys and kochs etc.
@The Toothless Revolutionary says "And Achilles is far from the most abusive person on here. He's actually complimentary and civil and nice from time to time - at least before retreating into an alternative fact. I want to treat him nicely."
These are Trumpski's. Even if Trump is indicted on money-laundering (again), obstruction of justice and treason, the Trumpski's will stick with the man. Trump's indictment will be seen as a plot by the elites (read the hated liberals) to remove the greatest President who has ever lived.
There is no rhyme or reason to the Trumpski's ... they are their own breed.
Don't be nice to the Trumpski's ... stick it to them every single time.
The treatments that will be cheap and available will blow people's minds.
But provider access won't be. I keep telling you that the supply of doctors is limited and will always be important and I don't understand why you keep disagreeing with me. It doesn't mean there won't be greater "care extenders" with cheaper PAs and nurses to oversee more routine and less risky care, but it will keep physicians busy overseeing the most dangerous and risky procedures, of which there will still be as many of those as there will be less risky procedures. That's just the way the whole history of medicine works. Some things become less risky and then new advances also bring about more risky ("high reward") treatments.
The rest of what you say makes a lot of sense. I think the basics laid out by the ACA IIRC were as decent a starting point as any when it comes to expectations of base care procedures/access and quality.
BREAKING NEWS: "Carrier, the heating and air-conditioning manufacturer, is laying off more than 600 employees from its Indianapolis plant next month, the same plant Trump vowed to keep on American soil, per CNBC. Those manufacturing jobs will go to Mexico, where labor is significantly cheaper." Axios (2/22/2017)
Search to find multiple news articles on subject.
And there you have it Trumpski's. Your man Trump talks BIG but delivers s m a l l ... just like his tiny hands.
This is on top of the news this week that Ford is moving production of a Ford Focus plant from Michigan to China (instead of Mexico).
You've been had Trumpski's by the biggest con-man there is.
"Carrier, the heating and air-conditioning manufacturer, is laying off more than 600 employees from its Indianapolis plant next month, the same plant Trump vowed to keep on American soil, per CNBC. Those manufacturing jobs will go to Mexico, where labor is significantly cheaper."
Well, he tried to pick winners and losers in the free market. Which the free market doesn't allow you to do, no matter how presidential you proclaim yourself to be.
Trade and immigration are one thing. With Carrier, Trump thought he could bully them into doing something they didn't find profitable. So they did the politically expedient thing: They agreed with him long enough to mollify his infinitesimally short attention span, and then once he distracted himself with a thousand other trivialities - as usual - they too reverted to business as usual.
Trump and his Republicans will soon find out that bullying is not an effective strategy for any social policy. Only so much can be done with his preferred form of "negotiation." Eventually mutually beneficial agreements will have to be sought, but you can't explain that to someone who always believes it's either me or him!
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
The treatments that will be cheap and available will blow people's minds.
But provider access won't be. I keep telling you that the supply of doctors is limited and will always be important and I don't understand why you keep disagreeing with me.
I keep having this conversation. It is funny when I hear people claim we will never have driverless cars too. Or they claim it wont happen for decades. Within the next 10 years there will be an overwhelming political movement to quarantine human piloted vehicles because of how many people die in car crashes caused by human error. It amazes me people can't see that coming and soon.
The same thing will happen to doctors. AI is already being used to diagnose ailments and is rapidly becoming the primary method. Machine learning is taking over and it is sucking up data at an incredible rate. Many surgeries are done remotely with robotics. Just like welding and manufacturing applications robots are far more precise and consistent than humans. They will also be much cheaper to build, train, and maintain than doctors are. It is inevitable that doctors will be relegated to research and programming/consulting roles soon.
I don't understand why you keep disagreeing with me.
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
Trump and his Republicans will soon find out that bullying is not an effective strategy for any social policy.
I agree with you there.
The Ctrl-Left bemoans bullying.
You can't make this stuff up.
Toothless wrote." The city/urban thing has to do with Democrats caring more about infrastructure."
Right. Have you been stuck on a NY subway? Driven on an Atlanta street? Observed the condition of Detroit overpasses? They may "care" more about infrastructure, they just don't "do" anything about it.
"Don't lie, Comey. Tapes may exist."
Says the same thing, less text.
But not nearly as fun!
Ritmo demonstrates that it is possible to be bright and remain a Democrat. You just have ignore everything the Democrats do and say.
Unknown Dumski says: "Don't be nice to the Trumpski's ... stick it to them every single time."
That's working so well for you! Such dazzling results you're getting at the ballot box!
It's sad that you are so poorly armed. Sure, you can try to "stick it to us" but with your brain, it's like being attacked by someone armed with a plastic butter knife.
Which is why leftists are resorting to shooting and stabbing people with real knives - because you fascist thugs are too witless and stupid to win over anybody with words.
Speaking of which - What would have happened if a Trump supporter had shot Democratic congressmen?
"It is not possible to understand the Left — and, therefore, the media and the current state of American life — without understanding how the Left uses and relies on hysteria. Hysteria is to the Left what oxygen is to biological life. From the moment Donald Trump was elected president, America has been drowning in left-wing hysteria, all fomented by the media and the Democratic party."
When is the Democratic Party going to be declared a terrorist organization? How many death threats do you have to issue?
Reagan tried the Southern Strategy in 1984 and managed to hold the south. In fact, only Minnesota was able to call itself not southern. 49 state victories prove a Southern Strategy exists. Damn you, Minnesota!
Meanwhile most state legislatures took TWO GENERATIONS to flip across the South.
(And Leftists believe Robert Byrd renounced racism? That was an amazing howler!)
you should ask why people who are more vulnerable to racism's effects are preferring them. And if you can't do that without making them feel talked down to,
TTR, that's a really good question. Now, can you answer it? (hint: sophisticated demagoguery)
I agree the Ds are sheer magic at pulling this wool over. Have ling since been. FDR was cosmic at managing a coalition of, in his own words, "team of horses," all of which were naturally at one another's throats, but which he managed to harness and induce to pull in one direction. (Upton Sinclair treats this admirably in the Lanny Budd series.)
The Ds have no unifying principle - please if you can spare me the highfalutin odes - except to calculate and operate an optimax grouping of pressure or interest groups who can be amassed to reach 51% with the promise of feeding on the 49%. This is their superpower and has been since the days of Tammany Hall.
I give 'em this. They're fighters. They never quit even if and when they have been defeated. I hearken back to the early days of the GWOT, when bleeding hearts complained of the orange jumpsuits, the shackling and hooding if the prisoners. It had to be explained to them that we were dealing with die-hard fanatics who, left to their own devices, would be delighted to chew through an exposed hydraulic line (which would simply shred their skulls, BTW) if only it might bring down the C-17 transporting them to Guantanamo Bay. Yon Democrats could still teach them a thing or three.
So a big part of the D edge is superior mastery in the operation of the political machinery. And the unified will of the hive mind. These are advantages not to be despised.
Leftists believe Robert Byrd renounced racism
Don't harp on Byrd, he was far from alone. What of Sam Fulbright, Clinton's mentor? What of Gore Sr.? Strom Thurmond was more the exception than Byrd was.
One can easily look up the name of segregationist congresspeople and check their careers. Less than 5 went Republican. Most remained Dems to the end.
Ritmo: "these GOP guys disagree with you"
No, they don't. And this is where your pattern and history of dishonesty bites you in the ass.
You've distorted what they said twisted it into something it's not. You have no credibility, and no one wants to waste time arguing with you over the definition of "is", Sophist.
And, TTR, given how shitty NYC subways are, and DC subways...I wouldn't boast about how great the Dems are at infrastructure.
Dems love infrastructure because that is where they make their money. As always, follow the money. Their biggest players and donors get the contracts, skimming their cut off the top, then organized labor gets their cut by building the projects, and, in the case of municipal infrastructure in particular, it is most typically operated by govt employees. All traditionally big Dem constituencies. And the latter is a big part of the reason why the DC subway is so bad. Escalators that break down and would be fixed overnight otherwise, stay closed for weeks before finally being fixed.
Fen said:
"Wai- what? We can actually block these assholes now?
How?"
An extension for Chrome (and possibly other browsers, I don't know) called KillFile. Install it, and when you reading blogs/websites that support it, when you mouse over a commenter's username, the option to [hush][hide comment] will appear. Click on it.
"Which is perfect, for my purposes. It's such a great thing, that Trump lawyers have issued the blanket denial that Barron is autistic. Because that fact won't ever allow Trump to deal with it in a humane way. He will have transparently denied the truth because of his own personal egomaniacal shame."
Seriously Chuck, kill yourself.
“He has appointed a Supreme Court justice.”
Oh wow. Something a dog could do. Let alone any and pretty much every president.
Garbage. The self-declared “reasonable” guy tried to make much the same point in an earlier thread — and both your and his points are simply idiotic.
Every president, to be sure, does appoint Supreme Court justices (along with any number of appeals and lower court judges) if he has the opportunity. But your typical president does not rigorously stick to a policy of only appointing distinguished jurists to those magistracies — instead all too often dispensing such appointments as mere sinecures for his or her political chums.
Thus, Trump could be doing a hell of a lot worse. To act as typical president might, he could, for instance, have appointed one high visibility, high-quality justice — Neil Gorsuch — and then begun dispensing sinecures as favors to low-quality political donors.
But that's not what's happening. Jonathan Adler of Case Western University school of law, writing in the libertarian-leaning legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy at the Washington Post, points out that Trump continues to nominate very high quality candidates for federal judicial positions.
Such a policy reliably carried out will distinguish Trump among historic presidents.
The Myth of the Southern Strategy: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10Section2b.t-4.html\
@Bad Lieutenant
I've deleted some of your comments. You need to stop calling other commenters by name and antagonizing them. That is the kind of boring back and forth I have asked people to refrain from.
"It was a process" that required two generations of Democrats to die of natural causes.
I think Trump is tweaking the FBI and Mueller by sarcastically implying that they might be spying on him.
@Ann
My chase has a beast in view.
I am not sure what you have done, I don't recall the players in this instance, but it would be helpful, and IMHO ultimately beneficial to the blog, if you maintained consistency in not interfering. You don't delete the posts of people I am criticizing, for instance.
You have wished people here not to tangle with the persons we find disagreeable; I am trying to, what is the saying, "weaponize" your excellent tactic, to take it to its logical extreme. I think this will have a desirable result.
In any case, paraliptically, it's your blog, to be sure, but I am not sure your participation is helpful in this case. Or perhaps you are deleting something else. Anyhoo, the moving finger having deleted passes on.
Oh, I think you're talking about someone else. Well, I had thought I was walking the line. If you deleted what I was responding to, I guess it's fair enough.
How is saying "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” a lie? He said right in that tweet "there are no 'tapes' of our conversation".
Toothless wrote." The city/urban thing has to do with Democrats caring more about infrastructure."
Having driven on the expressways in both Chicago and LA, two bastions of democrat rule , I can safely say horseshit.
Illinois, through decades of democrat rule, is one more tax hike away from becoming Venesuela.
251 billion dollars in unfunded pension mandates.
Illinois. No1 in how to turn an industrial powerhouse into a shithole.
Thank you Micheal Madigan.
New York used to be a stupendous badass at infrastructure. We put up the Empire State Building in 11 months. The technology is better now. What happened to us?
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