Taro T

Guess the Mayor doesn't buy the arguments that nothing possibly could've been done to prevent or at least mitigate the damage from the wildfires. Durn democrat hating partisan hack. 😉

Nah, the powers that be in that party know that's not the reason. But they still hope to keep the plebes believing that, so they keep shouting it.

Well, considering his task force expires on July 4, 2026, probably not.

Seriously, you think if 45/47 is on that list that that particular tidbit wouldn't have come out by now? He flew on one of Epstein's planes from FLA up to NY once. If he ever flew on the Lolita Express it would've come out if not when Crossfire Hurricane were in full operation then during one of the several other investigations into him during 46's term.

Minor quibble, it was engineers that figured out how to power the space shuttle.

No, tax cuts in and of themselves aren't loans from the future. "Tax cuts" which are actually tax rate cuts pretty much always end up resulting in more revenue in government coffers within a year of taking effect. So, they actually end up reducing the amount of money the government takes from future generations by not having to issue as many bonds as otherwise necessary to cover current government expenses. And the last round of tax cuts DID increase government revenues as growth increased. The problem isn't "tax cuts" the problem is they are ALWAYS accompanied by additional spending and almost always by more additional spending than the rate cuts bring in thus increasing the budget deficit and further increasing the national debt. While in principle, targeted tax incentives can work, one needs to remember that they're typically enacted by politicians that aren't particularly proficient in the "science" of economics; and those politicians are heavily influenced by lobbyists who definitely have skin in the game to choose incentives that aren't necessarily targeted to the right places. So these typically end up counterproductive. As for the details of what will end up getting cut, you might be right that it'll be from Medicaid; but if the vast bulk of it is from fraud and waste then it won't be causing rural hospitals to close. MHO, YMMV. Personally am waiting to see what actually gets recommended for cutting before getting too upset or too happy about what will actually get cut. Fully expect Medicaid to be under the microscope as will the military and ALL other executive departments and agencies. But that, in and of itself, is a good thing. In theory, what DOGE is doing - finding where the government is wasting money and ferreting out fraud is excellent and is significantly overdue. Heck, if all they do is make all government spending auditable, that in itself would be a win. Am hoping that they do far more beneficial than that, but again, will wait to see what actually gets accomplished (both good and bad) before moving beyond simply being hopeful about it. And honestly didn't expect that we'd even see THIS level of attempting to bring accountability back to Washington.

A big chunk of the reason for the need to raise the debt ceiling is to, at a minimum, keep the 2021 tax cuts from sunsetting. Because regardless of how pretty much every past tax cut resulted in an increase in tax revenue, as the economy grew and the feds took in a smaller piece of a larger pie resulting in more revenue, the CBO continues to score all tax cuts, and tax increases btw, as purely stand alone events with no effect on the economy other decreasing or increasing revenues by exactly what those tax cuts/ new taxes would bring with no other changes. 47 is trying to cut taxes further than where they were in '24. With no debt ceiling increase, no tax cuts are possible. And, yes, the budget deficit and the national debt also routinely go up when tax cuts are enacted. But that's due to the typical spending blowout that accompanies the legislation providing for the tax cuts. Should they hold the line on spending, they shouldn't be raising the deficit by nearly a full $4T as last year's deficit was "only" $1.8T. So, without any signigicant changes to the budget from what it was in 2024, they'll increase the national debt by ~$2T. Personally, would really like to see that go down and expect a good way to move in the right direction is to significantly reduce fraud and waste so spending at worst holds steady and at best actually goes down and to also grow the economy. Work both sides of the financial equation for the 1st time since at minimum when the former Soviet Union broke up and we could reduce military spending significantly resulting in the so called "peace dividend." One final note, contrary to popular belief, ALL government spending is a tax. Whether it's paid by taxes, levies, whatever other word one would like to use for current taxes or by taking on debt; eventually every penny of it will have to be paid for and the way that happens is through taxes.

Umm, THAT ship sailed when 44 and the rest of the West turned a blind eye to Russia annexing Crimea. The question now isn't will Ukraine cede additional territory but rather how much. Would guess that it'll be more than it would've ceded had it accepted the ceasefire proposed in the first months of the conflict that Boris Johnson (in one of his last acts as PM and acting on the behalf of both the UK and the US) talked Zelensky out of accepting. But we shall see.

And THAT is why IIRC the RI judge (there's so many lawsuits currently in play, hard to keep track of them all) ordered DOGE and the Treasury Secretary to not just not access any files/servers/databases but also to delete anything they've currently obtained. And THAT in a TRO is truly d*mning of the judge's intentions. To tell them not to do anything with the data while the lawsuit is in motion seems reasonable. To tell them to get rid of it all which allows any bad actor an ability to delete potentially without any records of what they're deleting should they also manage to delete items from the current archives, seems rather shortsighted and premature at a minimum and rather nefarious in itself in a worst case.

You should've specificied a bit more precisely to "(h)ow anyone that isn't in a position considered to be "overhead" at one of these reseasrch institutions has a problem with it ..." as pretty sure those people have a BIG problem with it. 😉

You thought he was investigating Burisma for nepotism? 🤨

That's the stated reason for why 44's administration in general and 46 in particular wanted him gone. The fact he was investigating Burisma for corruption and then that investigation ended after he was removed was purely coincidental, right?

Then you should be happy as SoS Rubio who now directs USAID said that's exactly what he plans to do. Keep the actual charitable work open and shut down the grift that doesn't align with US Foreign Policy.

Or the cognitive dissonance it creates hits a little too close to home.

In NYS the mandates to get the latest boosters to attend a state university weren't lifted until shortly after classes begain in September 2022. Thanks, Kathy. (Hoping there aren't a lot of myocarditis injuries courtesy of that little gift to our students.) Pretty much the rest of the country had gotten rid of mandates by then, but not NYS. Of course, NYS also had the mandates requiring nursing homes to accept residents with Covid back into them until almost the end of May 2020 and was asking retired (aka those individuals most at risk of death should they get infected) doctors and nurses to come back to work in the Spring of 2020 to help alleviate the workload of the healthcare workers early in the crisis.

Far more likely an accidental lab leak. Which was then run with because in the words of Rahm Emanuel "never let a crisis go to waste." Makes extremely little sense for the CCP to intentionally release the virus into their own populace rather than in a foreign nation if they were releasing it intentionally. (And it could EASILY be released into a foreign nation via a scientist from the lab being "accidentally" infected and then immediately traveling to an international conference held somewhere else or from a worker in the lab "accidentally" getting infected then immediately traveling internationally for vacation or whatever. And they did quite a number on Italy via essentially that route; but well after they were already dealing with the crisis domestically.) Yeah, China has a demographic problem as they have a very large elderly population relative to the overall population, but can't believe their leadership saw releasing a manufactured virus into their own population (and literally in the same city the lab that sure seems to have created the virus is located) as being the solution to that problem. Occam's razor says accidental lab release is most likely.

Imagine how much better off we'd be as a society if the basics of finance were required to be taught in middle and HS. So many people are absolutely clueless which makes it real easy for politicians to say stuff that sounds good but has no basis in reality whatsoever. And people really need to understand that every $ government spends is a tax. It's either paid today via direct (and indirect) tax payments or tomorrow via debt. But either way, it eventually ends up due to be paid and it is all a tax.

It's not so much that a particular source is Right/Left/Center/Whatever, it's that most all the sources have a horse in the race and if you understand which horse they back you can get an idea of what it is they're trying to leave out of the story. WSJ & Fox - RNC; OAN - 45/47; NYT & CNN - mainstay DNC; WaPo - the IC; MSNBC - progressive wing of DNC; etc. And realize if they are talking about their team, things likely aren't quite as rosy as they were conveyed and if they're talking about another team, things likely aren't quite as dire as they seem. And it isn't so much that any / all of them "lie"; it's a matter of what they cover and what they omit from what they cover. And even within a particular source, there are individual reporters / journalists that are better than most from that source. Catherine Herridge worked across the full spectrum and is working independently now - she is one of the few good ones. And even she and the other good ones will get stuff wrong on occassion. There are other good ones as well and a ton of really bad ones. Your are right in looking for actual quotes and 1st hand source material. But beware of snippets of quotes - they can and often are used to convey a totally different meaning to something someone said than what they meant. Also, beware the headline of the article that misstates what the article ACTUALLY says. And, lastly, you can have the exact same event reported by different reporters and both can truthfully report what just happened but the article will make it seem like something completely different happened. Based off an old joke but appropriate here - two different reporters were there watching the events of the parable where Jesus hopped out of the apostles' boat and went to shore striding on the top of the water; one's headline was "Jesus walks on water - it's a miracle" the other's was "Jesus can't swim." Both witnessed the same event; both "truthfully" reported what happened; but 1 gives a much more accurate image to the reader of what happened than the other did.

She's not wrong.

E.g., Persian Gulf vs Arabian Gulf. Which you're in depends upon which shore you enter it from. (And most (all?) nations not bordering it call it the Persian Gulf.)

Likely more accurately: Medal of Freedom now included with every thank you letter for a 7 figure donation.

To your 1st point, true. But the VP didn't come anywhere close to that, so we already know her numbers weren't correct. As an orange tinted former and future Prez would say "she missed hugely." The question becomes 'why?' To your 2nd point, doubtful. People apparently LOVE to be on the winning bandwagon. So, the idea is more independents will be drawn to the side they expect is going to win and far more of the partisans will be drawn in because they want to be able to say that they voted for the 1st woman ever to be elected president (or from the other side, they want to vote for the 1st person to have two presidential terms separated by at least 4 years in over 100 years). Putting her finger on the proverbial scale is far more likely to have helped than to have hindered the VP's candidacy. To your 3rd point, as she is generally proclaimed to be "the best" by the pundits and she'd presumably want to maintain that title on the way out and with our also knowing that Harris' own polling never showed her in the lead; the simplest explanation would be one of the following: she's lost her fast ball (your explanation, which if she messed up a lot of other races this year would be plausible), she REALLY wanted Harris to win and thought helping to elect the 1st female president was worth the potential hit to her reputation (also, potentially plausible; how closely she come to calling the Clinton-45 race could help to auger whether this may be likely), or somebody paid her off thinking that her reputation was so stellar that she might help Harris pull off the hail Mary (and considering the campaign had $1.5B to piss away and the DNC pumped in another $1B; would also seem plausible). Don't know how much her integrity was worth to her, but have to believe there was enough money there for her to at least think about putting a thumb on the proverbial scale. She wouldn't be the 1st and she won't be the last. Where you sit on the partisan scale likely colors your choice of which of those is the most plausible reason for only her 2nd major miss in the last 8 or so "big" elections.

Thanks for the history lesson. Have never made it for a tailgate (would always attend games with wifey and dad and they were not in tailgating mode) but have had the pleasure of meeting Kenny several times as I was a long time regular to the WNYTBDGPS pre-home opener annual lunch at Nick Tahoe's. Kenny, Jay, Jack, Rich, Rockpile, Aussiew, & Dan Gross were regulars to almost all of them. And there'd usually be a couple others at that. Haven't done one of those in a couple of years as attendance was down a lot post-lockdown. Never asked Kenny about the origins of the tailgate rituals, but did ask about why he was "Pinto Ron." Knew it was a reporter doing an article that messed up the names. Forgot the guy was from Athlon (is that even still around?). Kenny really is a great guy. Hopefully he gets to another 500 games. Happy New Year.

She was the Solicitor General for less than 18 months when she joined the SC and had barely been the SG for a full year when she was nominated to the court. And regardless of how much you say her being a judge prior to joining the SC didn't matter; she had never heard a single case before joining the highest court in the land.

Were you as upset about 44 nominating as a justice on the Supreme Court a person who had never served as a judge ever before being nominated to the Supreme Court?