Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[Karl Henning]

Jeff Sessions' refusal to answer the question put to him by the House Intelligence Committee: Did Trump ask you to do anything to hinder the Russian investigation?, suggests two things: Trump did ask. Sessions needs to be subpoenaed, asked the question again, and jailed for contempt if he refuses to answer.

I consider this a matter of time.

[milk]

I consider this a matter of time.

Wouldn't others, already interviewed by Mueller, be privy to this information? No one up in there is going to lie about it. I mean none of those career mopes. It's the Trump chumps that lied about it. Pence maybe too. They'll all be caught in that. I wonder though, what is it that causes people like Flynn to give in? I know it's tremendous pressure and his son...but don't they figure they'll all be pardoned?

[Karl Henning]

Wouldn't others, already interviewed by Mueller, be privy to this information? No one up in there is going to lie about it. I mean none of those career mopes. It's the Trump chumps that lied about it. Pence maybe too. They'll all be caught in that. I wonder though, what is it that causes people like Flynn to give in? I know it's tremendous pressure and his son...but don't they figure they'll all be pardoned?

I suppose it depends on whether the United States pulls back from the moral brink, or instead presses on into complete conversion to the world's most economically robust Banana Republic.

[Todd]

Ending earmarks may not have been the best move where it comes to coalition building.

True.  Though I'll take that in exchange for sequestration.

I reviewed my 2016 taxes and 2017 taxes paid to date to get a sense of the impact.  (I'm assuming the next few years will be roughly on par with the last few.)  If brackets stay the same, I get a minor tax cut, probably enough to buy a few extra box sets.  If brackets are changed and I end up in a lower bracket, I get a slightly bigger tax cut.  I'm good.

[Karl Henning]

We can identify three core principles President Reagan championed with conviction, passion, and resolve. They represented wisdom gleaned from his lifetime of experience and studying America's economy, politics, and history, set on course by the brilliance of the Founders. All are missing from the current legislation.

[Todd]

We can identify three core principles President Reagan championed with conviction, passion, and resolve. They represented wisdom gleaned from his lifetime of experience and studying America's economy, politics, and history, set on course by the brilliance of the Founders. All are missing from the current legislation.

[snyprrr]

Sometimes I wonder if Trump is directly trolling this Thread. giggle


However, I wooould like to see the guilty go to jail...


Looks like Flynn will be spilling the beans on Obama? ooooo, shiver...

[Todd]

Two senior FBI officials on Clinton, Trump probes exchanged politically charged texts disparaging Trump

[nodogen]

All these women....all these liars....

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/nov/30/donald-trump-sexual-misconduct-allegations-full-list

[SimonNZ]

Matt Lauer and the emails: How accused harassers conjured a fake Hillary scandal.
Men accused of harassment and abuse shared a bizarre obsession with Clinton's emails. This is not a coincidence

The Men Who Cost Clinton the Election

[SimonNZ]

Hello to you too.

[Daverz]

This is funny!  Typical of the Left..."oooh, look over there".

I'd like to point out that, over a year later, Hillary Clinton is still not president.

[milk]

Such hate-fuelled rants

Hmm...

[Todd]

ABC News reporter Brian Ross suspended for 'serious error' in Flynn reporting

Oopsy.

[Karl Henning]

Looks like Flynn will be spilling the beans on Obama? ooooo, shiver...

You know, you are nearly as delusional as El Tupé.

[BasilValentine]

ABC News reporter Brian Ross suspended for 'serious error' in Flynn reporting

Oopsy.

Ross's error will likely be proved to have been essentially correct, with Jared Kushner acting as the intermediary in conveying the message.

[drogulus]

Ross's error will likely be proved to have been essentially correct, with Jared Kushner acting as the intermediary in conveying the message.

     It's easier for a reporter get in trouble for violating standards when there are standards. Woodward and Bernstein got a story wrong and were lambasted by the President's defenders. The story continued to unfold and Nixon eventually resigned. It would be strange indeed if we treated those elements of the story that have passed the tests of mainstream editors as though they had failed the tests. These editors are the ones that give us our standards. If we quote ABC or NBC about how a reporter violated their editorial policy we are accepting the validity of the standards by which we learn this regrettable incident actually took place. This is exactly what we don't do with Trumpist media. If Fox or Breitbart say something we have to confirm it. It might be true, but the chances that it's true if the mainstream says it isn't are very low. At the operational level it's Fox reports, WaPo and the NYTimes decide.

     The details of how Trump passed instructions to Flynn will be in the final report. Flynn is well motivated to tell the truth about the meetings with Kushner and the Veep ("He lied to me!"). And he will be truthful about the meetings Trump attended. Also, I doubt that Flynn will be the only one at the transition team meetings caught in the Mueller vise.

   

[drogulus]

     I'm a Depression historian. The GOP tax bill is straight out of 1929.

     They all are, all supply side tax bills bloat savings that are uninvested because "supply creates its own demand" is false. Reagan got away with it because spending boomed. Bush made the unforgivable error of a broad based tax cut. It helped the economy to recover partially from the Clinton crash.

     I look at a tax bill as a distributional balance question. It doesn't specify dollar amounts or how big the government is. The rates and even more the effective tax is a distribution.

     At my investment website an article was written stating that tax changes won't grow the economy because no matter the rates if you smooth away the cycle you get the same percentage of tax/GDP. Here is my reply, which doesn't hinge on the exactitude of the thesis but accepts it provisionally:

"Taxes collected as a percent of GDP have remained flat for over 60 years despite different tax polices."

There's a clue there. :-)

Taxes should target GDP so both go up. That's done through the tax balance. Policy makers are so indifferent to the growth factor that they don't seem to be even aware of how taxing savings differs from taxing spending.

So we know that as growth goes up taxes will keep pace. My slogan "the tax will always come back with a lag" fits here. The lag is the growth policy. The tax balance is the tool. Tax savings less and tax/GDP slows, tax spending less and tax/GDP grows.

Now its clear that the tax return at various growth levels can be roughly the same percentage wise. Therefore the goal should be optimal balance for growth, not forcing the economy to be more/less taxed.

     I'm doing a 180 on the thesis, saying that if the percentage of tax/GDP is roughly constant that implies that the growth rate can't be fixed, too. It has to be where the change shows up. So if you push the tax burden up on savings the economy will grow according to that distribution, and likewise if you push it down on the spending classes it will slow growth accordingly. In either case you will be taxing the economy at about the same aggregate rate through the cycle, the difference being the size of the economy you're taxing.

     I muddled it a bit by saying tax/GDP grows and slows when what I meant was they stay the same while it's GDP that grows and slows.

[Turner]

"Trump Attacks The FBI On Twitter, Urges Followers To Sue ABC News - just another Sunday morning for the president on social media."
- "FBI-s reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness"
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-attacks-the-fbi-on-twitter-urges-followers-to-sue-abc-news_us_5a2413a5e4b03c44072e3038

"Trump's lawyer: I wrote the president's 'sloppy' tweet about Flynn's dismissal"
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-lawyer-wrote-presidents-sloppy-tweet-flynns-dismissal/story?id=51541650

"Emails Dispute White House Claims That Flynn Acted Independently on Russia"
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/us/russia-mcfarland-flynn-trump-emails.html

[Todd]

Dianne Feinstein stated this morning that the Judiciary Committee is pursuing an obstruction of justice investigation.  Woo doggie!  2018 is gonna be great.