Trump and Qaddafi: Housemates and Business Partners?

Trump and Qaddafi: Housemates and Business Partners?

If this Buzzfeed story has legs, then perhaps the Donald's may get cut off.
Overlooking terrorism that killed Americans, including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Donald Trump sought investment partnerships with Muammar al-Qaddafi and the Libyan regime. He rented his Westchester estate to the dictator, tried to set up a face-to-face meeting, and took the Libyan ambassador golfing.
I can't make this stuff up. Qaddafi was to be a house guest at one of Trump's opulent estates. Or, more accurately, he would pitch his opulent tent on Trump's opulent lawn. And sacrifice a lamb. Trump would get $200K. A bunch of Libyans had already moved in.  All went well until helicopters recorded what was going on. Trump later claimed that he had no idea that this was going on, and that he threw Qaddafi out. As if all these Libyans were squatting on the Trump grounds w/o permission. Uh, read the story. You decide who is telling the truth. More importantly, the story reports that Trump made every effort to strike various business deals with the Libyan dictator. Please. Read it.  I'm gonna stand by my prediction from earlier this week.  I don't think Trump gets the nomination.

Crane Courted Atkins to Pose as a Dem

I have to admit, this makes me a little angry. Mitch Crane is an honorable guy, who works his ass off trying to elect Democrats. He did himself and the party a grave disservice entertaining this nonsense. When Gilligan pulled this shit, I was like, "Oh Well" Gilligan is a fop and a party functionary. But Crane... Jesus. With "Democrats" like Atkins, what, at long last, is the fucking point?

What Hillary Clinton sounded like 47 years ago

This is an interesting and enlightening digital artifact. The introduction alone is worth a listen:
In 1969, Hillary Rodham, at age 21, was the first student ever to give a commencement speech at Wellesley College, and the college has just released excerpts of it. I would not have recognized her voice, which was higher-pitched and had a faster rhythm, but she had the same intensity and self-assuredness then as she does now.
Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tues., June 7, 2016

Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tues., June 7, 2016

It's shaping up as a quiet June as the Joint Finance Committee has pretty much finished up their work. Bottom line: State employees get a raise (!) but teachers don't, other stuff gets cut, no new revenue sources added to mix, corporations extort millions, which is why other stuff gets cut. Here's the News-Journal story. We discussed this last year.  There appeared to be a legitimate chance then that additional revenue could be raised via corporate franchise fee increases and/or creating a couple of additional tax brackets for wealthier citizens.  Instead, Pete Schwartzkopf cut his own deal with the Senate Rethugs, and gave the finger to progressive members in his own caucus.  That essentially doomed any new revenue streams for this year, as the legislators/lemmings were not going to raise taxes in an election year. However, they were more than willing, desperate even, to throw tens of millions of dollars at DuPont and Chemours, allegedly to 'save' jobs and Chemours' corporate headquarters.  I know it's redundant for me to point out that the sole reason for Chemours' existence is to enable serial world-class polluter DuPont to get out from  under clean-up liabilities.  The invevitable Chemours bankruptcy ('Hey, we'd love to clean up this toxic environmental disaster, but sadly we don't have the money to do it') inches ever closer to reality.  A sharp-eyed tipster shared this video account with us.  It is must viewing.  Hey, we all knew it at the time and wrote about it at the time. Doesn't bother the Generous Assembly.  This should be a crime of the highest order, but it's likely legal thanks to a bought-and-paid-for Congress.  Markell, Levin, and the General Assembly are rewarding and enabling this activity by throwing tens of millions at it.  The Delaware Way, ladies and gentlemen. But, I digress. 

Tuesday Open Thread [6.7.2016]

13344584_10154217470043899_1435946865325820684_n The AP, and all the news organizations that followed their lead, did us a disservice. The stupid superdelegates who could not keep their damn mouths shut for another 24 hours did us a disservice. Hillary was deprived of a clinching victory party tonight. The early call may depress Hillary's vote in California, allowing Sanders to win and sending him off on a longer yet angrier (if that is possible) quixotic journey. The early call makes both Bernie and his supporters angrier and more irrational than they already are, and more difficult to reason with, and more difficult to get them to accept reality and to stand down. Neither campaign is happy now, and if you think Hillary is happy with this call on a Monday night rather than a Tuesday night, you are very new to politics and know nothing. The early call presents us with a solution that may diffuse some tension on the Bernie side: pushing reform to the process so that we eliminate super delegates.

John Oliver Becomes a Debt Buyer to Forgive Debt.

On Last Week Tonight last night, John Oliver shocked pretty much everyone, including himself, by having the biggest giveaway in television history. Oliver’s segment this week was about debt buyers and how ridiculous the entire industry is. Central Asset Recovery Professionals is a debt acquisition firm that Oliver and some associates began for a mere $50. Oliver was then offered debt to buy for almost $60,000. How much was that debt? Close to $15 million. And then Oliver bought the debt and promptly forgave it. Warm and fuzzy, man. The entire segment is worth watching, but Oliver’s surprise begins around the 17:09 mark.

Candidate Questionaire Season

Are your liberal groups getting their questionnaire's together?  I would be, but I don't have any of the candidate's email addresses, and I'm too lazy to go to everyone's web…
Monday Open Thread [6.6.16]

Monday Open Thread [6.6.16]

Josh Marshall on the meltdown of Trump:
But after two rallies and a flurry of interviews there's no question Clinton has gotten to Trump in a big way. As she said, he is very thin skinned. (Emphatically denying that you're thin-skinned is not a credible rebuttal.) Given who he is, being denigrated by a strong woman must cut deeply. Underneath the angry talk, he appears befuddled and uncertain about just how to respond. That is mainly because even before her assault he'd maxed out his invective. She was crooked, a liar, untalented, a lightweight, a sexual predator by proxy. How exactly do you escalate from there? His furious effort to wring more aggression out of the English language has proved a rather unconvincing rebuttal to her central charge that he is temperamentally unfit, too emotionally unstable to serve as President. He now says flatly that she should be in jail, says he'll find an Attorney General who will imprison her. He now also calls her a "thief" which somehow is the reason she set up her own email server. Overshadowed by the "my African-American" stumble in Friday's speech in Redding was a bizarre interlude in which Trump gave a glowing evocation of the supporter who cold-cocked and beat a protester in Tucson on March 20th as an example of his little-heralded but purportedly expansive support among African-Americans. He's trying to escalate but has little room to go. He's maxed out. The transcripts of the two speeches read like compressed literary spittle. His affect is also different. Both rallies struck me as significantly hotter than anything we've seen before from Trump, more sweat, more chopping hands, more yelling - simply more electric, frenzied and angry. As Clinton and her team certainly anticipated, hitting him hard as mentally unstable and unfit for the presidency has placed Trump in a sort of Chinese finger puzzle of his own creation. The only mode of response he knows - an escalating and bellicose round of personal attacks with increasingly hyperbolic accusations - only confirms Clinton's diagnosis. The harder he fights the tighter the charge sticks.