Kick, when I began posting again a couple of weeks ago, I all but admitted that some of what I would post was trolling. Not all, but some of it is. Think of it as michale Light. I'm comfortable that I can count on you and others to call it out, and don't expect to be given any more leniency than is afforded the Master.

It's more important than ever that everything is reviewed critically and set aside if it doesn't work in the defense of the rule of law.

This! Exactly right, Russ.

While Pelosi might consider training the next generation of leaders and then handing over the torch for other reasons, the GOP demonization of her shouldn't garner any merit in her decision whatsoever.

The Greed Over People party is simply throwing out red meat to the misogynists in their pathetic base of predominantly men in their regular exercise of playing white male identity politics... keeping them scared and afraid of women and "others." #SSDD

The Democratic candidate in OH-12 got just about enough votes that if they had gone to the Green Party candidate then the Green Party candidate could have won.

This is a sentence that is just screaming: "This tool DH actually believes his own ridiculous bullshit!"

Give it up, Don. When you insist on typing out bullshit like this, you're just conceding you're genuinely full of it. :)

People cast what Allysa Milano referred to as a protest vote because they want better than the false choice the Democrats are trying to fool them with.

You mean like if Bernie Sanders became the Democratic nominee and then he lost because people like you had convinced people that Democrats are "trying to fool them" with a "false choice"?

Do you ever think anything through before you endlessly drone on about it? :)

Pelosi should retire.

Perhaps she should for other reasons but certainly not because of the GOP perennial whining about her. Surely you can see through all that, LB.

If she does, it'll be a way bigger wave, because the Republicans will have lost their biggest Boogie-person*.

There are an infinite number of women the Greed Over People party can use in her place. Democrats running in districts all across the United States should just ignore their perennial BS about Pelosi and refuse to be baited and stick to the real issues.

If she stays, sewn to the pincushion, and too many districts go like OH-12 just did, it'll be on her.

Wrong. There are nearly 70 seats that are more competitive than OH-12, and... mathematically speaking... if they "go like OH-12 just did," about 60-64 of them are going to flip blue, and I don't believe Nancy Pelosi will deserve the credit, LB. The credit will go to those who realize that all politics is local and who refused to take the Pelosi bait and kept talking about the issues that mattered to the constituents in their respective districts from sea to shining sea. :)

That flat earther stuff is funny as hell.

Do the flat earthers think we need a space force?

Do the flat earthers think at all? If they believe we actually need a space force to govern the vast and infinite universe, you'd think it would at least occur to them somewhere in all that "thinking" that all those other planets and various heavenly bodies are indeed round. :)

TRUMP ECONOMIC ADVISORY COUNCIL

1. Tom Barrack. Thomas J Barrack Jr. is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Colony Capital, NYSE (CLNY). Colony is one of the oldest and most well-recognized private equity firms in the world. Prior to forming Colony, Mr. Barrack was a Principal of the Robert M. Bass Group and had served in the Regan administration as a Deputy Undersecretary of Interior.

2. Andy Beal. Beal is the founder and chairman of Beal Bank and Beal Bank USA as well as other affiliated companies including, CSG Investments, Inc., Loan Acquisition Corporation, and CLG Hedge Fund, LLC. Mr. Beal has been recognized as “one of the smartest investors in the country” by Forbes magazine and in 2000, American Banker named Beal Bank the most profitable bank in the USA.

3. Stephen M. Calk. Calk is the Founder, Chairman and CEO Federal Savings Bank, and National Bancorp Holdings, which is primarily focused on increasing home ownership among veterans of the Armed Forces. He is a commissioned Army Officer and received his M.B.A. from Northwestern University. Under his leadership, the Federal Savings Bank was named the most profitable bank in America in its class by the American Bankers Association Journal….

[remainder of document can be viewed at link]

https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/TRUMP_ECONOMIC_ADVISORY_COUNCIL_FINAL.pdf

Anybody still want to whine endlessly to the rest of us how the Manafort trial has "nothing to do with" Trump or the Trump campaign? We'll wait. :D

I prefer "EX"-productive!

LOL.

How about ex-voter? ;)

Obama: No Joe.

Biden: Uh-oh ... nobody could be that stupid, right?

I’m not so sure. Pelosi is an incredible task master for the Democrats when they need votes on legislation. I think the Dems should point out that the Republicans cannot run on their policies but instead have to create the image of a scary liberal she-beast (all 5’5” of her) to battle in order to get votes.

One of my favorite stories about Pelosi came from an article her daughter wrote about George W. Bush. In the article she described how after her mom won the Speaker of the House position, Bush left her a note telling her how proud of her mother he was. Bush said that he had tried to convince Pelosi years earlier that she needed to switch parties because she was just what the Republican Party needed. It was a very sweet letter that the president did not have to write, but that he wanted Pelosi’s daughter to know how impressive her mother was in his eyes. It’s one of my favorite GW Bush stories, too.

She's been minority leader. She's been Speaker. She put through the landmark legislation of President Obama. She'll go down in history as one of the most effective Speakers. The money she can raise can be matched by organic Silicon Valley contributions.

It's time for her to go. If she does, it'll be a way bigger wave, because the Republicans will have lost their biggest Boogie-person*. If she stays, sewn to the pincushion, and too many districts go like OH-12 just did, it'll be on her.

*If anyone wants to impune non-politically correct meaning to this term, well, STFU.

It's worth giving Michael Gerson's column in WaPo last night a read. Spoiler: if you're a Republican who can't vote for the party of Shumer/Pelosi, vote Republican for the Senate, and Democrat for the House.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-only-way-to-save-the-gop-is-to-defeat-it/2018/08/09/dc70b75a-9c10-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html

We get rid of the threat posed by the breakdown of check and balance in the House, and conservatives get to keep their court appointments and general legislative agenda.

Here's the problem, C.R. All those terms are comparatives. Younger than what age? Poorer than what income? Or is the threshold some level of net worth? Browner than whom? You? Or maybe my son's Mexican-origin friend, who has a M.Sci from U. Texas and earns 6 figures a year to design and program Spanish language websites?

In the early days of the US, in many states, only white male landowners could vote. That didn't last, for very good reasons, beyond a few Amendments and landmark voting legislation.

Maybe, as you say, your suggestion would work if there were an omniscient being that could process millions of voting approvals simultaneously from individual's personal information, which the Being would know since She, by definition, would be all-knowing. Absent that, it can't work. Period.

I share more of your concern about the young, poor, and non-white/non-orange people of this country than I would admit in public. But the problem is not their age, income, nor heritage. It's more legitimate to place blame at the door of our education system. In too much of this country, even middle class white kids don't receive decent education in anything, let along civics. What chance do the more disadvantaged have?

I prefer "EX"-productive!

Which was exactly the point of the Russian interference: to divide Democrats both ideologically and generationally, to discourage the black and hispanic vote in swing states, and to move younger voters over to third party candidates like Stein and Johnson.

Republicans in those states backed that up with gerrymandered districts and voter suppression efforts.

And it worked. More depressingly, it's still working: Green Party candidate Joe Manchik got 1,129 votes in Ohio's 12th the other night - which almost exactly equals the number of votes the Democrat O'Connor needed to win, prompting actress Alyssa Milano to tweet:

You know what sucks?

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) August 8, 2018

There have been a few institutional fixes proposed, ranging from a ranked-choice voting scheme to setting a higher bar for third party candidates to appear on a ballot, but none of these ideas is expected to be in place nationwide by 2020.

We have to send one coherent and constant message to our youth and friends on the left: a vote for any third party candidate is a vote for Trump. Period. Full stop.

You beat me to it!

Obviously you are trolling, but didn't you say you were retired and thus non-productive. Like all other retirees?

So younger, poorer, browner people are not productive.

Hmm.

So your idea of an 'ideal political system' is both elitist and apartheid?

There's a certain inherent irrationality in allowing the non-productive to have any sayso in how we distribute the production of the productive.

So, it would appear that we're trending that direction sort of by default!!!

Click thru the twitter link form Bob who is asking where the curvature is - the replies are entertaining :)

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/i-watched-an-entire-flat-earth-convention-for-my-research-heres-what-i-learned/

http://www.people-press.org/2018/08/09/for-most-trump-voters-very-warm-feelings-for-him-endured/#in-march-2018-modest-gender-gap-in-views-of-trump-among-supporters

Basically the younger, poorer, and browner eligible voters stayed at home losing the electoral college for Hillary.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/08/09/new-data-makes-it-clear-nonvoters-handed-trump-the-presidency

The downside to the Dems assuming the mortgage is, Trump will have a full 22 or so months to sell his impending failures as left-wing obstructionism, and thus gain momentum for his one true goal...his own re-election.
Trump isn't exactly a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. He's nutter, wrapped in a delusion, inside a cretin. It's apparent to even a casual observer that Trump thinks this is his world and we are merely squatters.

Two words...Space Force.

Ok, fair enough, why not indeed. Except of course, America has all but washed it's hands, for the time being, of all things 'space.' America relies on Ruskie rockets to get its contingent to and fro the ISS! Now Trump's imagination encompasses some kind of 'Moonraker-esk' future where, no doubt, a group of super humans, with coiffed, straw-like blond hair, retire to the heavens to look down. with contempt, on the wretched below.

If Elon Musk wants to fire another dummy into the inky vastness of space, I vote we suggest Trump for the task...he can reconnoiter for 'Trump Space Station and Grill'

LL&P

Anybody else think it would likely resemble a giant leathery balloon bursting, a steaming whoosh of hot air rising, a carcass identical to "Fat Bastard" toppling over, with the only thing left standing being the orange rodent that heretofore functioned as a hairpiece?

https://tinyurl.com/y98l6xbk

Sadly, Trump fails to mention when he brags about the number of jobs that he has saved is that the vast majority of those jobs are in China!

As for the investigations that the Dems will open on Trump, you can bet that will lead to Trump offering to sign Democratic legislation into law in exchange for better outcomes!