Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

So it turns out the Russians hacked the GOP too, but only released information negative about the Democrats to sway the election to Trump.

Between the Russian interference, the rogue FBI, and the results of the popular vote, I can honestly consider the election results to be illegitimate.

And the witch hunts are just beginning. This could get really, really ugly before its through. But hey, at least Hillary and her criminal email behavior was thwarted.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us ... times.com/

The American public is too ignorant for this country to survive and be successful.

I heard DJT called up the Phillipines president to talk shop, and perhaps inveigle them back into the US orbit.

They are experimenting with some new emergency police procedures there.

I agree with Tim.
And Jim.
And Patrick.

He's exceeding even my expectations for Trumpistry.

DavidG wrote:I agree with Tim.
And Jim.
And Patrick.

He's exceeding even my expectations for Trumpistry.

+2 more at my home.

and I get to see my employee posting on facebook that he can't wait for Jan 20th.

Just think what could happen if DJT figures out the next thing on the interwebs, and opens up The Facebook page, so that he can link it to his Twitter.

He'll be trying to 'friend' all of you.

And sending you cat videos.

This will be like when my mom first got email.

Rex Tillerson + John Bolton for State. Good grief.

Bolton is one of the most evil men on the planet.

Do all of these "middle class workers" in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maine, etc., who voted for Trump know that he wants to gut Social Security and Medicare?

JimHow wrote:Do all of these "middle class workers" in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maine, etc., who voted for Trump know that he wants to gut Social Security and Medicare?

But Jim, these programs don't work, can't work by definition, because they're government programs, right?

"Keep your government hands off my Medicare". As funny and sad quote about the state of politics as I can think of.

The United States of America is hopelessly broken.
Donald Trump, a fool, was elected president.
He received more than s million LESS votes than his opponent.
The election was indeed "rigged"… by the Russians.
Rather than "emptying the swamp" -- which in many ways I would have invited and would have been curious to see how it played out -- he is filling his administration with the most severe of right wing hacks… the OPPOSITE of emptying the swamp.
A large majority of Americans voted for Democrats in House races but, because of gerrymandering, the Republicans still control the chamber by wide margins.
The electoral college system gives huge advantages to small conservative rural states.
Trump will soon be enacting laws that will crush or erode health care, education, social security, will bust the budget on defense and increase debt, and yet his "working class supporters" will believe every one of his lies.
Gun laws will become even more relaxed, and there will be murders, suicides, and mass killings.
A woman's right to choose what to do with her own body will be infringed upon by old white men in congress, state legislatures, and the courts.
Voting rights will be curtailed even more severely.
Civil rights and the fourth and fourteenth amendments will continue to be under attack, and the sixth amendment right to counsel will be further eroded.
An era of Mike Pence religiosity will invade our public lives.
Our foreign policies will make the world an even more dangerous place.
Trump will continue to spew big lie after big lie and the vast majority won't care.
The public will grow even more ignorant, angry, and filled with hate and discrimination.
Our infrastructure will continue to erode.
Global warming will continue at exponential, irreversible rates.
Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid will be gutted.
Prison systems will continue to be privatized.
More women and children will live in poverty.
Big banks, big oil, the credit industry, will continue to walk all over the little guy.
College and graduate students will continue to be suffocate themselves with crushing, life altering debt.
Heroin, meth, coke, and other drugs, already a generational problem, will continue on.
The war on immigrants will be upon us soon.
There will be terrorist attacks in the homeland, resulting in lockstep "patriotic" responses that will further diminish our freedoms.
There will be punishment and censorship of the free press, and a majority of the public will enthusiastically support it, perhaps even with violence.
Hillary Clinton will be subjected to four years of harassment by Republican House committees.
And this crazy, narcissistic, egomaniacal, insomniac, bully, blowhard will have his finger on the button.
We are a failing society. Our problems are too great to be solved. Our system of government is hopelessly broken.
We are a hopelessly divided country.
We are doomed. America has been in decline for decades now, but the fall is coming more precipitously than I think most of us expected.
The Ted Nugent crowd has won.
Good luck, everybody!

Where did we put that Bat-signal?

I have some friends in Beijing.
I don't know how much this is being covered in other parts of the world.
Here in the US it is getting zero coverage.
The smog in Beijing right now is at unbelievable levels.
Two billion people in China and they can't stop the cancer-causing toxins seeping through their masks as they walk to work.

Did you see the latest on the lack of probable cause in the Weiner search warrant.
there was zero probable cause.
This was a violently political action by a criminally partisan FBI director.
The US presidency was just the subject of a coup and like nobody in the country realizes it.

The two "greatest" countries in the world:
China, the people can't breathe.
USA, their government has been hijacked and nobody realizes what just happened.

We are so fucking doomed.

Drink up dreamers,
you're running dry.




(credit to Peter Gabriel for that line, from Here Comes the Flood)

Presidents come and presidents go, but BWE lives on.

I just hope Trump doesn't impose crushing import tariffs on fine wine.

He's a teetotaler, and I've long held that if you can't drink with a man, you can't trust the man.

When we visited Sweden I saw the despair that unfair alcohol taxes can cause.

Agreed, Jim.

Comey should be prosecuted. Won't happen.

Say what you will about Clinton's flaws, real or manufactured, but without Comey's blatant interference I believe she would have won. No way to know for sure, but I don't consider Trump to be our legitimately elected President. I'll just have to live with that and pray that he doesn't plunge us into another war or 2008-level recession.

Say what you will about Clinton's flaws, real or manufactured, but without Comey's blatant interference I believe she would have won.

I think you're right.
I think she was peaking on that day, two Fridays before the election, going into the final week.
I also think his campaign was becoming fatalistic.
What the Comey letter did was give more bounce in the steps of Trump and his legion, at an absolutely critical time.

The ignorance of the public just makes it no fun.
Why even care when all these ignorant people voted for a man whose policies are going to cut their throats.
If they voted on the basis of policy positions is one thing.
But voting out of ignorance just tells me there is truly no hope left in this country, that a demagogue can just come in and take over.
And I'm not just saying that because my side lost.
In fact, it's the first time I've ever said it. Republicans have won in the past fair and square.
But this election was something different.
It truly exposed how fragile our democracy is.
I truly believe it is irreversibly broken.

JimHow wrote:

Say what you will about Clinton's flaws, real or manufactured, but without Comey's blatant interference I believe she would have won.

I think you're right.
I think she was peaking on that day, two Fridays before the election, going into the final week.
I also think his campaign was becoming fatalistic.
What the Comey letter did was give more bounce in the steps of Trump and his legion, at an absolutely critical time.

The ignorance of the public just makes it no fun.
Why even care when all these ignorant people voted for a man whose policies are going to cut their throats.
If they voted on the basis of policy positions is one thing.
But voting out of ignorance just tells me there is truly no hope left in this country, that a demagogue can just come in and take over.
And I'm not just saying that because my side lost.
In fact, it's the first time I've ever said it. Republicans have won in the past fair and square.
But this election was something different.
It truly exposed how fragile our democracy is.
I truly believe it is irreversibly broken.

The seeds were sown by Lee Atwater and his boogie-man politics in the modern era. The right wing and left wing cable networks took it and ran with it.

I am sorry to say, but majority of people in this country are no different than those in developing countries in understanding the true meaning of democracy.

I agree wholeheartedly Jim.

I don't blame Trump. Although I somewhat blame Comey, the real issue was that people were willing to vote for someone like Trump, both in the Primary and in the General. The United States is no longer on a pedestal, as a role model it is dead. And it is due to the fools that voted for an ignorant, petulant narcissist. I have absolutely zero empathy for those that voted for him. For all I care, they can lose their health insurance and wallow in poverty while the rest of us bear the fruits of a wealth-driven government.

Tim has it right. I am a West Coast Elite. My portfolio is going up and I'll do fine until my citizenship is threatened and I have to flee the country. It's the folks in the center of the country who are going to be the most screwed by the coming kleptocracy, not the coastal elites.

SF Ed

The ironic thing is that I think he will end up vexing his supporters and putative allies, while pleasantly surprising Democrats.

He really isn't beholden to any policies, and doesn't have any ideological lodestar (other than naming things for himself), so one could easily see him modifying Obamacare slightly, and then giving it a full throated endorsement, if it gets renamed TrumpCares.


"I'm going to have a beautiful program. We will name it after me. It's going to be great"

The drug companies are waking up to the danger he poses to them, now. Standard GOP line would be opposed to all kinds of patent adjustments, reimportation, price negotiation etc. I think he's going to blow all that up.

It promises to be a crazy 4 years. Ray Dalio - the philosopher king of Wilton CT - thinks DJT will be as disruptive as Lady Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and that German PM whose name eludes me, combined.

If one ever feels like their work place doesn't have enough indoctrination/education, consider reading Dalio's Principles, which guides the way he expects his employees to think. It's pretty awesome.

Interesting article:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/op ... times.com/

I read yesterday that BHO is offering to rename the ACA program to TrumpCare, if the program will be retained. Never underestimate the shallow warmth seeking narcissism that motivates all the reptiles of the White House.

This short speech from Keith Olberman is interesting.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kei ... mg00000063

It will be interesting to see if Congress refuses to approve Trump's appointees in the absence of the required paperwork. This goes beyond rhetoric. It's the first real test of power between them. Congress is not typically keen on ceding power to Presidents, even when they are of the same party.

I'd laugh if I didn't feel like crying.

Wow, the latest allegations against Trump are pretty explosive. If more substantive details are produced about direct coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, about bribes and sex tapes of the Donald with prostitutes in a Russian hotel, etc, watch out.

We are so fucked.

JimHow wrote:We are so fucked.

I'm beginning to think you're right. I don't want to believe the worst case scenario would happen, but it is looking increasingly probable.

Great speech tonight but curious why the other daughter is not on stage.

Liked the speech, some wow parts, some was a bit snoozy.

JimHow wrote:We are so fucked.

This country is about to experience a bad case of the DTs.

How does "President Pence" sound? It just gives me the chills

That is worse than President Trump.

What happens if the FBI investigation reveals there is some degree of truth to what has been claimed? I'm left to wonder how bad this could get?

Constitutionally, if Trump has to go, are we too far down the tracks in terms of the election requiring the impeachment process be followed?

My greatest fear is if it is proved Trump knew the Russians had dirt on him and went along thus making a deal with the devil? Would his potential failing to disclose this rise to the level of criminal charges against him?

It's called treason.

JimHow wrote:It's called treason.

That's the word. At the very least, members of his campaign team committed treason coordinating with Russia. Hard to believe he didn't know this was going on too. We know that Bannon and Tillerson are both pro-Russia, how much of this is being directed from Moscow?

My lord, we've elected a real life Manchurian Candidate, except it's a magic thong that induces the trance not a keyword.

JimHow wrote:It's called treason.

Yes, that's what I thought but was afraid to say the word.

Here's one for you, if the FBI does investigate wouldn't you think it's highly probable they would try and subpoena his tax returns?