January 31, 2019

Obama, When Are U Coming Home? The Babysitter is Weird...

this is a sign from a march...I can't do pics...if someone can post the sign...thanks.

January 31, 2019

Someone tell Sarah Sanders that Putin ain't God.

Scott Dworkin
?
Someone tell Sarah Sanders that Putin ain’t God.

January 31, 2019

Republicans want answers on 'excessive show of force' in Roger Stone arrest

Republicans want answers on ‘excessive show of force’ in Roger Stone arrest
GOP lawmakers also ask in letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray whether bureau tipped off media

Posted Jan 30, 2019 6:31 PM
Griffin Connolly

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray asking why the bureau executed an armed, pre-dawn raid to arrest Roger Stone. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/POOL file photo)

Republican lawmakers demanded answers on Wednesday from FBI Director Christopher Wray on the arrest of former Donald Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone last week.

In separate letters to FBI Director Christopher Wray, House Judiciary ranking member Doug Collins and Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham expressed concern that the FBI agents who made the arrest, armed with M4 rifles, used an “excessive show of force” to arrest an “elderly man” with no history of violent crimes and who had made known that he would voluntarily surrender.

“Although I am sure these tactics would be standard procedure for the arrest of a violent offender, I have questions regarding their necessity in this case,” Graham wrote in his letter to Wray. “The American public has had enough of the media circus that surrounds the Special Counsel’s investigation. Yet, the manner of this arrest appears to have only added to the spectacle.”

Current and former federal law enforcement officials have speculated that the FBI arrested Stone in an armed pre-dawn raid because special counsel investigators led by Robert S. Mueller III might have believed that Stone would try to destroy evidence in his home.

Stone, in accord with his trademark political theatrics, compared the raid of his Florida home to the arrest of Mexican druglord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and the Navy SEALS raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.

Graham and Collins also demanded that Wray produce documents detailing any communication between the FBI and CNN, or any other media outlet, alerting them beforehand of the arrest plans.

Conservative pundits and media organizations have suggested that someone at the FBI or on Mueller’s team tipped off the network, which caught the arrest on camera.

CNN has explained that it anticipated the raid through “good instincts, some key clues, more than a year of observing comings at the DC federal courthouse and the special counsel’s office — and a little luck on the timing.”

https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/republicans-question-wray-over-excessive-show-of-force-in-roger-stone-arrest

January 30, 2019

Did you hear what Schmidt just said...Dems are doing to Schultz what Trump did to Dems..demonizing

What the hell??? His former bud Nicole Wallace grilled him good...is it so disheartening..he is such a brilliant man..and straight talker...it is like he has been brainwashed..he made absolutely no sense....

January 30, 2019

MSNBC Breaking: Mueller says info was shared by defense attnys. with Russia

In the fall...Bad Guys' Defense shared with Russian officials...it appeared online...Mueller says this was an effort to discredit their investigation. Info was non sensitive.


here...GUARDIAN fleshes it out a bit...

Russians leaked Mueller investigation evidence online, prosecutors say
Source: The Guardian

Evidence gathered by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, was obtained by Russians and leaked online in an attempt to discredit his inquiry into Moscow’s interference in US politics, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

A court filing by Mueller’s office said more than 1,000 files that it shared confidentially with attorneys for indicted Russian hackers later appeared to have been uploaded to a filesharing site and promoted by a Twitter account.

“We’ve got access to the Special Counsel Mueller’s probe database as we hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case,” a tweet from the account said. “You can view all the files Mueller had about the IRA and Russian collusion. Enjoy the reading!”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/30/mueller-evidence-leaked-online-russians?CMP=fb_gu

January 30, 2019

BRAVO!! Democrats Are About to Give Big Pharma the Big Tobacco Treatment

Democrats Are About to Give Big Pharma the Big Tobacco Treatment

The House of Representatives' first oversight hearing of 2019 wasn't about Trump. It was about skyrocketing drug prices.
By David Dayen
January 30, 2019

Since flipping the House of Representatives in last year’s midterms, Democrats have been waiting to see real oversight return to the halls of Congress. That arrived on Tuesday, with the Committee on Oversight and Reform’s first hearing of 2019. But the subject at hand may have disappointed those who were hoping for a dramatic broadside against the Trump administration.

“Our first witness today is not President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen,” said chairman Elijah Cummings. “It’s not someone from the White House or even the Trump administration... The first witness is Antoinette Worsham.”

Worsham, a working mother from Cincinnati wearing a T-shirt reading “Patients Over Profits,” told the committee about her two daughters, both of whom were diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. When the oldest, Antavia, turned 21, she was kicked off the Bureau for Children of Medical Handicaps, a state program that helped pay for her insulin. Unable to afford the medication, Antavia began to ration it. Eventually, she died. Worsham’s second child, Antanique, a freshman at the University of Toledo, fears the same fate.

“In two years my daughter will be 21,” Worsham told the committee, her voice cracking. “I am crying out and asking for you to review the pharmaceutical drug gouging and make healthcare affordable for all.”

Cummings has been working on the issue of high drug prices for a decade. Tuesday’s hearing was the first of what looks to be his signature investigation, an analogue to Henry Waxman’s investigation of the tobacco industry when he ran the Oversight Committee in the 1990s. It’s a reminder to Democrats of the importance of overseeing more than just the Trump administration—of the power of Congress not just to check the president, but make a difference in people’s lives.

Health care was the top issue in the midterm elections, making drug company price-gouging a natural subject of inquiry. Prescription drug prices are expected to go up to $610 billion by 2021, and for every price that gets cut, another 96 increase. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects prescription drug spending as a primary driver of overall health care inflation.
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Innovation, in the form of new advances in medicine, is not the cause of this steady price rise. It mostly comes from existing medications. Insulin, for instance, is a 100-year-old drug that companies have “evergreened” through incremental changes to the makeup of the drug, which resets the 20-year patent clock. Insulin costs per patient doubled from 2012 to 2016, and at the beginning of the year, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk raised their insulin prices again.

Cummings’s Oversight Committee is taking on the industry in a systematic fashion. Two weeks ago, he sent letters to twelve major drug companies, asking for internal communications about price increases and preserving market share, as well as estimates of investment in research and development. Repeatedly in the hearing, Democrats made the point that pharmaceutical companies spend more on advertising than researching new drugs.

The hearing featured several researchers and experts on the drug supply chain, as well as Worsham. Future ones will undoubtedly include CEOs of the leading drug companies, contrasting the personal stories of dying patients with the cold financial calculus of Big Pharma executives. Maybe Cummings will end up with a picture as famous as the shot of the tobacco CEOs with their hands raised, testifying under oath that they had no idea their product was addictive.

There’s no shortage of legislative ideas to prevent skyrocketing prices. Prescription drugs are currently organized through patent monopolies that give 20 years’ exclusivity to treatments. Congressman Ro Khanna and Senator Bernie Sanders would break those monopoly contracts and license medications for generic competition if the prices exceeded an international benchmark. Senator Elizabeth Warren would create an Office of Drug Manufacturing to manufacture generic versions of excessively priced or inaccessible drugs. And that’s on top of more common proposals, like having Medicare directly negotiate with drug companies over prices or importing lower-price drugs from overseas.

Most consumers know that drug prices are high and getting higher. But a congressional investigation that yields real information from inside the executive suites of pharmaceutical companies can build momentum. It can spur legal action, as it did in the tobacco case. It can set a roadmap for legislation, like the series of reports from former Senator Carl Levin’s subcommittee on shady financial practices that informed what became the Dodd-Frank Act.

It can even lead to bipartisan support. At yesterday’s hearing, Mark Meadows, the head of the Freedom Caucus who is seen as a close confidant of Donald Trump, said that he was “conveying a message from the President… he is serious in working in a bipartisan way to lower the cost of prescription drugs.” Trump’s actions thus far on drug prices have been limited and fairly ineffective, but even he has proposed some solid ideas, like eliminating rebates that push up list prices and forcing certain drugs to conform prices to international benchmarks. Good oversight makes it impossible to ignore pressing problems and can cut through the partisan fog.

Congress has lost a lot of institutional memory over the years, and perhaps the greatest deficiency has been in the area of oversight. Congress’ role should not be limited to overseeing the executive branch, although that’s certainly important. Committees can use oversight as a kind of field study for the challenges facing Americans outside of Washington, to identify and inform priorities. And in doing so, Congress can get closer to the people by showing its interest in the people’s business. As Cummings raged at the end of the hearing, “The cost of doing nothing is never nothing. I am going to paint Ms. Worsham’s face in the DNA of every cell of my brain to try and make sure that her other daughter, who’s facing the same thing, does not die.”


https://newrepublic.com/article/153005/democrats-give-big-pharma-big-tobacco-treatment?utm_source=TNR+Newsletters&utm_campaign=48ea8ed4e5-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_09_04_daily_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_50cc843886-48ea8ed4e5-64727245

January 30, 2019

The top marginal tax rate: 1945 94% Roosevelt 1957 91% Eisenhower 1964 77% Johnson 1973 70% Nixon

For the last time, a 70% top marginal tax rate is not a "far-left idea." It was the longstanding American tradition until Reagan.

The top marginal tax rate:

1945: 94% (Roosevelt)
1957: 91% (Eisenhower)
1964: 77% (Johnson)
1973: 70% (Nixon)
1986: 50% (Reagan)
2018: 37% (Trump)

In the 50s our Dad came home from WW2 went to college on GI bill, got a loan for a house, married Mom had 7 kids...we had roads, we had public schools, the country worked and folks thrived.

January 30, 2019

Trump wants Bible classes in schools? According to the Bible you should be put to death for adultery

@realDonaldTrump

Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!

rabia O'chaudry Retweeted Donald J. Trump

According to the Bible you should be put to death for adultery

January 30, 2019

electoral college demanded by dead slaveowners who didn't want to count their human property as full

Phil Shifley

Does Romans 13:1 help you live with Trump being our president? I did not think he would win the election.
But I won’t second guess Gods hand in this.

John Fugelsang Retweeted Phil Shifley

You're confusing "God" with "an electoral college demanded by dead slaveowners who didn't want to count their human property as full people."

(And I don't recall anyone on the right invoking Romans 13 when Obama was POTUS.)

January 30, 2019

Wisconsin Update: Minus 27 now Minus 35 tonite...windchills - 60 to -70

Stevens Point, WI...everything closed until Friday....no mail, buses running and Mayor said they are free..I am on my way to Doc appt...I am praying electric does not go off with these winds...my bldg has many wheelchair folks and if elevators go out, trouble...June 2017 our whole town was out of power for 4 days..but it was June...

Jokester Don could not survive half an hour in this...