Here’s Kansas governor Jeff Colyer getting confronted time after time about his refusal to expand Medicaid for 150,000 Kansans. He gets increasingly more agitated as person after person asks about Medicaid. Finally he just says it – “I’m not going to debate this with you.”
The video is pretty telling and the real reason most super conservative Republicans refuse to have open meetings with normal people.
I wrote this in the summer of 2016 for a magazine where I work. It was just after the last unspeakable horror in Florida, the Pulse nightclub.
I continue to scream.
News is breaking that a high school in Parkland Florida is on lock down with an active shooter still at large. Broward County sheriff is reporting 20 to 50 casualties. Welcome to the new normal in America where the NRA has purchased the Congress, and gun lickers control the debate.
Words to live by —
Thanks to Brian for the Twitter watch!
During a congressional hearing yesterday, director of national intelligence Dan Coats testified that the “United States is under attack by the Russians to meddle in the 2018 elections after their successful meddling in the 2016 election. The White House and congressional Republicans are silent on any action that could prevent (or at least disrupt) these efforts. Why? That’s easy. The Russians are working to help the Republicans stay in power even though their voter base is shrinking. You can be sure that if a foreign country, say Kenya, was conducting regular cyber attacks on the US to help Barack Obama stay in office, we would be bombing Nairobi right now. Since this unprecedented attack on US sovereignty is helping them, Trump and Republicans are more than happy to allow it to continue.
That’s called, at the minimum gross negligence. What it really is? Treason.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney, has now admitted that he indeed paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000. He’s just not saying for what, except that he paid it out of his own pocket and was not reimbursed. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, had previously claimed to have had an affair with Trump, then denied it, and now refuses to answer any direct questions about it. Cohen has also denied the affair and now won’t answer questions about it. So…
One has to ask – Why in the world would a New York lawyer with a celebrity client who’s famous for sexual escapades just give $130,000 to a porn star, who just happened to claim she had an affair with said celebrity client? Oh, and why would he pay that out of his own pocket without reimbursement? The answer is obvious, and Cohen’s explanation of the whole sordid episode doesn’t pass the straight-faced test. He claims the “transaction” was legal and had nothing to do with Trump’s campaign. I wish him luck with that argument in court over the complaint filed with the FEC that the $130,000 was not an in-kind donation to the Trump campaign. I can’t wait to hear the reason he paid a porn start that kind of cash if it wasn’t for the obvious reason.
Next, Cohen must think his audience is stupid. He paid for the bribe legal transaction out of his own pocket? Right. Money is fungible. Here’s the definition of fungible:
Money is interchangeable, and difficult to trace. Over the last 10 years, Cohen has likely been paid millions of dollars in graft legal fees. $130,000 is pocket change in Cohen’s and Trump’s world. Which leads to one last question – why didn’t little Stormy settle for such a piddly amount since she held serious sway over the election? Maybe she realized that Trump voters simply don’t care that their candidate is a complete waste of oxygen and would vote for him anyway, so she settled for what Trump offered.