Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

I don't know what percent tax Schultz pays. Romney and Buffet paid around 15% a while back; maybe less now. In some years we know Trump paid 0. In 2017 Lucie and I paid FIT 22% of AGI on my teacher's salary + SS + retirement (24% FIT on Taxable Income). Romney's income is something like 100 times mine and Buffet's much more than that.

Our tax system is disgusting.

Buffet is paid a very small salary, $100,000 if I'm not mistaken, which puts him in a low tax bracket. His BRK stock keeps going up but he only pays 20% on the profits when he sells. He lives quite a modest life and pledges to give most of his wealth away when he passes. I think he is being disingenuous when he says his secretary pays a higher rate than he is, he probably pays her more than $100k, but short of a wealth tax, I don't see how he would pay a higher tax rate.
Romney manages a hedge fund, most of his compensation is probably going to a pass through entity, same as every hedge fund manager out there. Then these billionaires donate school buildings and hospital wings and every one thanks them for their charity, generosity and philanthropy. You're right Stefan, absolutely disgusting.
I think Schultz' case is different though, sure, he's a billionaire but I haven't seen anything to make me believe he didn't pay his fair share and I have heard nothing about him lobbying or sheltering his wealth from taxes. If I'm proven wrong, then I will admit it. In the meantime I agree that he seems unqualified, but again, I'd like to see who the other candidates are before dismissing him.

AKR: What did you think of Orange Head's CPAC speech?
I watched the first 40 minutes or so.
I couldn't decide whether it was brilliant or clown-like.
Both, I guess.

I'm beginning to like Amy Klobuchar:

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/ ... 19-1199537

And with John Hickenlooper running, maybe the Democrats do have a chance of getting a decent candidate to oppose Trump.

I’ve been following Amy Klobuchar for years but a couple years ago Marcs told me the word was that she was abusive to her staff. That always stuck in the back of my mind. And then these reports came out about her weird behavior with her staff. That eating the salad with a comb story seems pretty weird to me.

JimHow wrote:AKR: What did you think of Orange Head's CPAC speech?
I watched the first 40 minutes or so.
I couldn't decide whether it was brilliant or clown-like.
Both, I guess.

Brilliant only in that his dark world view continues to be sustained by sheer will despite lacking a basis in objective reality.

JimHow wrote:I’ve been following Amy Klobuchar for years but a couple years ago Marcs told me the word was that she was abusive to her staff. That always stuck in the back of my mind. And then these reports came out about her weird behavior with her staff. That eating the salad with a comb story seems pretty weird to me.

That's why I thought that last story was funny, it was humanizing her in a way. Best lines:
About the salad, "I thought it was OK, but it needed just a little more scalp oil and a pinch of dandruff."
"So when Jerry [Seib] called about tonight he asked, 'Do you need a microphone or do you just prefer to yell at everyone?' I said, 'microphone.'"

JimHow wrote:AKR: What did you think of Orange Head's CPAC speech?
I watched the first 40 minutes or so.
I couldn't decide whether it was brilliant or clown-like.
Both, I guess.

I know this is sad, but I much prefer to wait til Alec Baldwin does a rendition of the speech.

The American classicist Victor Davis Hanson (of Stanford) seems to have written a book in favor of Trump.

I've been reading him for decades and he's a unique perspective.

Who else can weave the Peloponnese wars into our daily lives?

Also I see that the Democratic herd for 2020 is thinning out a bit - both Michael Bloomberg and Michael Avenatti have dropped their soft campaigns.

Here DJT is guarding our banner keeping it safe from flag burning America haters like AOC

I see over 70% think the US economy is doing great, and trump's poll numbers are rising again.
The JimHow Trump Re-Election Quotient as of March 18, 2019: 90% (chance of Orange Head being reelected).

No new indictments...
Ho hum, nothing to see here, let's move along.

Stocks Fall as Bond Market Flashes a Recession Warning
When long-term interest rates fall below short-term rates, it’s called a yield curve inversion. It’s one of Wall Street’s favored predictors of a recession, and it happened on Friday:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/busi ... e=Homepage

A recession will doom The Don to one-term loser-dom.

Eh, recession. Just academic mumbo jumbo.
In Lewiston, Maine, we look at unemployment (very low), inflation (very low), gas prices (very low).
People are working. It "feels" like the economy is healthy here in Lewiston, Maine.
The checkout lines at Walmart are long.
Donald Trump... as promised, making America great again. Especially for the angry white guy.
Four more years of Orange Head, I'm telling ya. It's not even gonna be close.

That’s some pretty profound stuff there.

To the average Joe at Walmart, the economy seemed dandy the morning of Oct. 24th, 1929 and Sept. 15th, 2008 too. Predicting when recessions will actually start is of course hard; observing when the economy and markets and home prices and trade and global growth and the job market and so on (all far more valuable metrics than things like the price of gas, which is a symptom of those mumbojumboey things, and which of course goes down in a recession) is what the economists are doing and the signs have been pointing to a slowdown for the last 6 moinths at least.

But no one is saying, even all those blowhards in academia who clearly lack the common sense of everyday Mainers, that a recession is here. The election is a year and a half away, and they are saying the signs are pointing that way.

And if it happens, even the good folk of the heartland will notice and judge the Donald accordingly.

I'll bet you a 750 of 2016 Pichon Baron that Donald Trump gets re-elected.

JimHow wrote:I'll bet you a 750 of 2016 Pichon Baron that Donald Trump gets re-elected.

That’s a gutsy bet, Jim...

But I will tell ya... Orange head’s re-election/rejection in 2020 is not predicated upon Mueller investigation’s outcome. Nor with the strength of the economy...

Agreed.

I hope I lose the bet!

JimHow wrote:I hope I lose the bet!

I too hope....

And you might... It’s not a given yet that Orange will win...

A bet, now we’re talking!

I’d bet something big that Trump loses if we are in a recession by the fall of 2020 or sooner. But if the economy stays up that long, I think who the Dems nominate will have a huuuuge impact (said in my best Brooklyn scent) on the odds. Let’s face it, Trump “won” as much because of Hillary’s negatives as anything else.

But even money right now, I’d take the field over Trump given that his favorable rating at best have never gone above 42-43% while his unfavorables have never dropped below 51-52%. If it weren’t for the skew that is the Electoral College, he really wouldn’t have a prayer. His odds look long even with it.

My favorite DJT news of the week: He is demanding that the election commission investigate Alec Baldwin and SNL over the constant skits. His interpretation of the equal access laws are that Hilary (or whoever) should also be getting satirized. (Legal analysts have yet to discover the chapter & verse in the statue that supports this)

I should remind everyone that absent the dread Electoral College this country would not exist.

How many wars have been fought in Europe since 1789?

Nothing the US Media says about Trump from now on will be believed by the US Public. And it shouldn't be. Trump will be reelected in 2020 unless somehow Bernie Sanders is the Democratic candidate; however, that is a fantastic long shot because the establishment Democrat leadership fear Sanders and the progressive Left much more than they fear Trump, as they should.

--Gary Rust

Gary, I think you have stated it exactly the way I feel.
I think Bernie is the only one who could beat him because he has the cult of personality on the left that Trump does on the right, and could win those rust belt states.
And you are spot on about the media. I'm not saying the mainstream media is as bad as Fox, but it is pretty damned bad.
And you are right that the establishment Democrats will fight a Bernie candidacy as zealously as they did last time.

The coastal urban elites have always hated Vermonters, whether it was Calvin Coolidge or Bernie Sanders.

JimHow wrote:Gary, I think you have stated it exactly the way I feel.
I think Bernie is the only one who could beat him because he has the cult of personality on the left that Trump does on the right, and could win those rust belt states.
And you are spot on about the media. I'm not saying the mainstream media is as bad as Fox, but it is pretty damned bad.
And you are right that the establishment Democrats will fight a Bernie candidacy as zealously as they did last time.

Wondering if that assertion about the media is based on quality, coverage, assertions or any other?

For answers on how completely unhinged the USA's mass media became in pushing "Russia Gate," search out Matt Taibbi's appropriately titled -- "It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD." In it he describe's the mass media's spectacular failure to ask the questions that needed to be asked and demand the evidence that needed to be demanded for the claims advanced in the Russiagate narrative.

As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. Although far less deadly than the WMD scandel (a million dead?), Russiagate showed that the sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time around dwarfed the last WMD mess. Worse, it’s led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission -- they've become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction. MSNBC, CNN, The NY Times, The Wash Post -- all put aside completely their critical thinking because they wanted SO BAD to dump Trump, so they relied on their lizard brains to concoct Russiagate, and the Democrats piled on, and are still trying.

The press and the democrats who gave us Trump in 2016 will keep on giving in 2020.

Funny that Russiagate is the term used, considering that in the original case, ie. Watergate, the president stepped down rather than be impeached and removed for corruption and the coverup associated with a relatively minor political misdeed.
I think Trumpgate makes more sense since one of the misdeeds being investigated took place in Trump Tower.

johnz wrote:For answers on how completely unhinged the USA's mass media became in pushing "Russia Gate," search out Matt Taibbi's appropriately titled -- "It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD." In it he describe's the mass media's spectacular failure to ask the questions that needed to be asked and demand the evidence that needed to be demanded for the claims advanced in the Russiagate narrative.

As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. Although far less deadly than the WMD scandel (a million dead?), Russiagate showed that the sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time around dwarfed the last WMD mess. Worse, it’s led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission -- they've become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction. MSNBC, CNN, The NY Times, The Wash Post -- all put aside completely their critical thinking because they wanted SO BAD to dump Trump, so they relied on their lizard brains to concoct Russiagate, and the Democrats piled on, and are still trying.

The press and the democrats who gave us Trump in 2016 will keep on giving in 2020.

This was a great article. Russiagate was an over the top conspiracy theory jammed down the throats of the American public by the media. It functioned to protect the Democratic party from real self-examination about how they had let a clown like Trump win. DON'T LOOK AT ME, EVERYTHING IS PUTIN'S FAULT!

And now down with the ACA. Trump certainly gave the Speaker a nice birthday present. What a guy!

In general Trump (and Nunes) are clowns and nobody should pay attention to the things they say they will do until they do it, unless they materially need to prepare for litigation about it. Brennan, for example, still has his security clearance. Anything else just gives him airtime for no reason.

"There is a Russia investigation without a dossier."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trey-gowdy ... sia-probe/

marcs wrote: Russiagate was an over the top conspiracy theory jammed down the throats of the American public by the media. It functioned to protect the Democratic party from real self-examination about how they had let a clown like Trump win. DON'T LOOK AT ME, EVERYTHING IS PUTIN'S FAULT!

Well...
Back in 2016 I warned that Russiagate would help Trump. Because Democrats and their media allies invested so much political capital in the now-discredited Russia collusion theory, they have not only failed to topple Trump. Rather than focusing on Trump’s very real crimes and corruptions — conflicts of interest posed by his sprawling global real estate empire, his clear indebtedness to the Republican donor class he once maligned, his obsequious deference to repressive foreign states like Saudi Arabia and Israel, the US becoming the world's largest offshore financial centre —they instead chose to push this groundless Russiagate fever for nearly three straight years!

Except WMD was a lie and Russian interference in the US election was true. How much difference it made vs. Clinton's campaign strategy vs. Comey vs. cable news can be debated ad nauseum. That’s not the point. The election is over.

Trump perseverated on "no collusion" as if falling back to his castle's keep as the walls closed in on him and lie after lie was exposed. Whether Trump himself was orchestrating it or it was his campaign managers taking the Russian bait is only one part of it. Given the number of convictions and guilty pleas that have come out of this, you’d have to be delusional to think the Mueller investigation was a massive conspiracy theory based on nothing. That’s the kind of thinking that will get Trump re-elected.

Karl Rove: "Mr. Sanders is a real contender."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bernie-san ... _opin_pos1

I agree! If Hillary, Debbie, Chelsea, et al hadn't cheated him out of the nimination in 2016, he probably would be in office today, far from perfect, not enacting anything near as much as he'd like, but a hell of a lot better than Orange Head.

I think sooner rather than later the Democratic Party is going to need to have a come to Jesus moment about Bernie. The sooner, the better.
He is white, nasty, and old, and he is the only personality that can take on Godzilla.

and then there's Joe. Supposedly throwing his hat into the ring next week.

I keep waiting to run into a public appearance by this Buttigieg fellow that disappoints. Hasn't happened yet. He may be legitimite.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?460512-1/ ... ub-chicago

Beto, on the other hand, not so much....

My favorite news this week came from Howard Stern, who has started giving interviews to NPR (of all places).

Stern's (outraged) claim is that HE first came up with the idea of an electoral run as a publicity stunt, when he made an abortive bid for Governor based on a) more death penalties and b) no more tolls on bridges and tunnels. So he believes Trump stole the idea from him, the King of All Media. He mused on about the unjustness of this all.

He also relays that he is now in therapy and confesses that sometimes he attacked people on his radio / satellite shows because of his own insecurity. Apparently he has even apologized to Rosie O'Donnell (some of you might remember her for LBGTZ activism) for cruel comments.

Forgiveness for the FCC and CBS still seems to be a bridge he has yet to cross though.

Some pundits say that Trump gains an advantage by marginalizing opponents by giving them nicknames (Lying Ted, Crooked Hillary, Pocahontas,..). It is strange that none of the 350 democrats who are running for president have done that to him. Maybe they cannot come up with an appropriate epithet. Traitorous Trump? Fat MacDonald?

Very true indeed. If I were running for president I would refer to him as Orange Head.