More winning, I for one am getting sick of it now

[flatandy]

Hahaha! I hadn't seen that they'd launched an inquiry into it.

Of course Mnuchin never ran the numbers. Unlike Paul Ryan, he's not a complete and utter idiot. He's out of touch, and an arsehole, but not a moron. So he knows that this Randian bollocks doesn't work; he knows that we've long been on the backside of the Laffer curve. If he'd run the numbers it would only come out as bad news. He just uses the language of supply side trickle down bollocks as a fig-leaf, but he knows he's just basically borrowing from future generations to give to himself and his wealthy friends. He's fully aware that he's running a kleptocracy.

It's only idiots like Paul Ryan who are actually still True Believers in this nonsense, in the face of all evidence.

[flatandy]

Oops. Michael Flynn has been charged with a felony for lying to the FBI.

He's in a lot of trouble for all kinds of naughty things, but Mueller has only charged him with a single offence so far. Good move from Mueller - it means (a) he has a ton of leverage so he can choose which other offences to add on, later, if Flynn doesn't cooperate; and (b) if Trump decides to pardon Flynn (and Manafort) all the other offences can still be prosecuted at state level in NY or DC by their AGs.

The noose is tightening. It may not get Trump himself - who may be just too stupid to have actually been involved in anything nefarious - but it's getting very close to the Whitehouse now.

[voice]

Guilty plea, and its reported he's signing like a flock of canaries, explains why Trumps lawyer reported last week Trump was no longer contributing to Flynn's defense fund.

With Kushner being put to the question this week it is looking like members of the Trump crime family may well be caught and charged.

[flatandy]

ABC are now reporting that Flynn will testify that Trump told him to talk to the Russians. (There are links to Israel, too, with Israel trying to get the President elect to get other countries to help them).

Flynn reported to have flipped because he had millions of dollars in legal bills and was in massive financial sh*t; I suspect also because Mueller had enough to lock Flynn's son up, and Flynn probably is willing to throw Trump under the bus to protect Flynn Jr...

[flatandy]

This feels like a pretty big deal now.

[voice]

I flicked onto Faux news earlier for a laugh, for once they are reporting on this (when Manifort was indicted they did this big piece on the cheese burger meme controversy instead cos, you know, nothing else was happening in the news at the time), and the spin was hilarious to behold. All about how this stuff was either before Trump inducted Flynn as a "Made Man" or that obviously Flynn was a maverick and had to fired cos he was out of control so Trump acted decisively to trim the rot. Brilliant stuff, right out of a cheap pulp novel.

[flatandy]

Yeah. They (and the Whitehouse) have hilariously been describing him as an "Obama era official" and have said they're "not surprised he lied to the FBI, given that they already know he lied to Pence, so this is no biggie"

[voice]

sadly no one in the echo chamber is gonna be saying Obama fired Flynn cos he's a bit of a loon and that they warned the Trump trasition against hiring Flynn cos he was a bit of a loon and also had ties to foreign, often hostile foreign, powers.

and as the man child has said many times

[voice]

bookmakers aren't ruling out impeachment with the latest odds from Coral showing that there is a 40 per cent chance Trump will fail to make it to the end of his first term in office.

Their latest odds are as follows:

Impeachment or resignation before 2020: 6/4 (40 per cent chance)
To serve full first term: 4/6 (60 per cent chance)

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/donald-trump-latest-approval-rating-impeachment-odds/

[Marshall]

Here's what we've been told by the GOP:

"We had nothing to do with Russia!"
"There were no meetings with Russia!"
"The meetings with Russia were about adoptions!"
"Those meetings with Russia had nothing to do with sanctions!"
"Talking to the Russians about the sanctions was Flynn's job!"
"Flynn worked for Obama!"

[voice]

[jimboky]

So who, besides loyal democrats is going to believe anything Flynn says about anything? He would tell that Trump shot JR if it would keep him out of jail,



meanwhile:
Senate passes major tax reform package
www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/02/senate-passes-major-tax-reform-package.html


I admit I had my doubts, but the Reps finally got something done, not a great improvement but a good start

[flatandy]

Well, the Senate passed a bill that was different to the House bill. They've not actually made their terrible law yet (although they will, in the end).

[jimboky]

this terrible law looks like will save me close to 200/mo, could be better but I can live with that

[flatandy]

For the first 4 years. Then after that every individual's taxes will go up and it's only shareholders who'll benefit. As I've said before, I really don't mind borrowing $1.5tn (although the Republicans show themselves to be monstrous hypocites about it). But the fact that they're eliminating the individual mandate and putting millions off healthcare, and taxing education, along with targeting all this money at people who don't need it, along with complicating the tax code massively by adding all kinds of weird exemptions for their particular favourites like certain classes of colleges and oil-drilling in Alaska and publicly listed partnerships, that's what makes it terrible. (And, from a personal perspective, elimination of SALT deductions fucks me up, and that seems to be a deliberate attack on the independence of states and their ability to function independently of central government).

There could be a relatively good way to spend all that money on tax cuts. This isn't it.

[auldhippy]

Well that's the swamp duly rewarded.

[jimboky]

4 years? there will be 4 more tax plans by then, who knows what will happen, I have learned long ago that on these things it is the first, maybe the second year that are affected

[voice]

I just came across the best right wing cospiracy about Flynn ever, that Trump hiring Flynn was all Obama fault really cos he used reverse pycology at their meeting and told Trump not to hire Flynn knowing Trump would to the opposite cos you can never trust a black man a Democrat to tell you the truth, so this who,e thing is actually Obama's fault cos of his use of the dark art of politics.

Brilliant, wonder how long it takes to become mainstream right wing dogma?

[Marshall]

So this is how congress legislates now.

A few of them go behind closed doors to draft a 500-page tax bill, then only release it to the rest of the Senate two hours before the vote.
No time to read it of course (it even has ineligible cursive scrawled in the margins), so a motion is made to delay the vote.
Having a majority, the Republicans quash that and vote along party lines to pass the thing, which most of them never even read.

Sounds like fascism to me.

[voice]

They know the more time people have go read it the less they are liking it, they want to avoid the mass protest they saw on their plans to get millions thrown off their healthcare.