July 6, 2019

Trump Begins Long Golf Weekend, Bringing Taxpayers' Tab To $108 Million

Source: Huff Po

President Donald Trump began a three-day golf weekend Friday, making his 16th visit to his New Jersey golf club since entering office and pushing his total travel and security costs for his hobby to $108.1 million.

The president’s Marine One helicopter touched down at Trump National Golf Club, Bedminster around 12:45 p.m. Trump is not scheduled to return to the White House until Sunday, giving him three more golf days at his resort 45 miles west of New York City.

Heading into Friday, Trump had spent 60 days at his course in Northern Virginia, 59 days at Bedminster and 57 days at his resort in West Palm Beach. He has also visited his courses in Los Angeles; Doral, Florida; Jupiter, Florida; Scotland and Ireland ― all on the taxpayer dime.

Trump’s use of Air Force One, even the smaller version he used Friday, and Marine Corps helicopters both in Washington and New Jersey drive up costs to taxpayers, and the long weekend will add at least $1.1 million to his grand total, according to a HuffPost analysis.

Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-golf-new-jersey_n_5d1fa60ee4b04c481413d77f

July 2, 2019

The glory of war

On my last trip to D.C., I was struck by how much this city is a monument to war. Everywhere you go there is a statue, plague, wall, memorial, or museum to the victorious dead. There's even a museum to the permanently disabled and of course, our national cemetery. What might a visiting alien think of what we've valued in our history?And Trump getting his tanks makes me especially sad. There's just something wrong with the way we celebrate our freedom.

July 1, 2019

Continuing the theme of I fucking hate Chuck Todd . . .

Sunday he said that Democrats are becoming too liberal.

"NBC host Chuck Todd suggested on Sunday that Democrats are abandoning their base by supporting "far left" policies like Medicare for All, which 70 percent of Americans support."

https://crooksandliars.com/2019/06/chuck-todd-suggests-dem-candidates-are-too

June 28, 2019

Carter says Trump didn't really win

I don't believe it either. Never did. Never will.




https://www.fastcompany.com/90371216/jimmy-carter-says-trump-didnt-really-win-the-2016-election?partner=feedburner

June 19, 2019

I fucking HATE Chuck Todd

His entire show has been curating Biden bashers and AOC bashers. He does nothing but stir muck pots.

June 8, 2019

In the spirit of Gay Pride Month,

I'd like to say how proud I am of our gay and lesbian family members and how SUPER proud I am to be part of a family that embraces them.

June 4, 2019

What god looks like

Interesting study on what American Christians think God looks like. I'm shocked at the notion of rainbow-colored flip flops. Everyone knows God wears Birkenstocks!

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59qqp5/this-is-what-god-looks-like-according-to-american-christians-study?utm-source=vicefbus&fbclid=IwAR0puQ0L0WwGDHhitRyiY3CM34CrMX2QAhdOs-o74_3ufSzd2frCYIpIy-I

June 1, 2019

Any book collectors out there?

Yesterday was Walt Whitman's 200th birthday and not coincidentally I suppose I sold on eBay last night a Deathbed Edition of Leaves of Grass that I had forgotten I'd even listed. Today I want it back and am in deep mourning. I know I'd already read it more than once. I know I hadn't touched it in years. But it want to HAVE it, you see, and go through this every time I sell a book I had originally bought for an "investment." Possibly all collectors of any kind are a little sick? But I know I'd never feel this badly if my Kindle died.

May 16, 2019

My Abortion Story

While on my first real job after high school in Memphis, Tennessee, I was asked to do a “favor” for my supervisor, a woman in her early thirties who had become a mentor and friend. The favor she asked was that I accompany her to get an abortion. She had become pregnant by her own boss, the married Vice President of the company. This woman, I’ll call her Martha, was going through a divorce at the time and was terrified of losing custody of her two young children. I believe this was 1970. Abortions were legal in some states but not anywhere in the Mississippi Delta.

On a Friday after work I accompanied Martha across the Tennessee state line into rural Mississippi. I have no idea where we actually were, but I recall our driving down a long unpaved road, deep in woods, to a small frame house. We were met by a bent old lady (straight out of Disney casting for “witches”) who immediately asked for money and then told Martha to take off her underwear and get up on the table. It was white. Enamel. Dents and rust around the edges. I was told to wait in a back room. In perhaps half an hour I was called. Martha was a little ashen, but standing, dressed, ready to go. She got into the back seat of her car. (I remember it as a Cadillac; it probably wasn’t.) I began to drive us back to Memphis.

Before we’d been too long on the road Martha became very irritable, complaining about my driving, even swearing—something I’d never heard her do. By the time we’d arrived back at her house, this had become moaning and sobbing. Somehow, I got her into the house, into a nightgown, and into her own bed. She wanted coffee. I went to make it. When I returned I found her white as a ghost and almost the entire bed soaked in blood.

I called an ambulance, even while she cried and begged me not to, and Martha was taken to the hospital. She was there slightly under a week and recovered with the exception that she was rendered permanently sterile by whatever that old witch had done to her. About two weeks after she returned to work she was dismissed by the company. Her husband, of course, learned the details of her hospitalization. She lost custody of her kids. I lost touch with Martha.

After all this time I sometimes have dreams about this incident. You can’t tell me that overturning Roe won’t take us back to this. For the sake of our daughters, our granddaughters, all the Marthas we might know, we CAN’T let that happen

May 8, 2019

10 Years Of Trump's Tax Information Released By New York Times

Source: Huffington Post

President Donald Trump’s tax filings from 1985 to 1994 show that he had accumulated more than a billion dollars in business losses over the course of the decade, according to newly revealed tax information obtained Tuesday by The New York Times.

In the 10-year stretch, Trump racked up nearly $1.2 billion in core business losses, according to the Times’ analysis of the president’s federal income tax information from those years. The loss paints what the Times called a bleak picture of Trump’s businesses, which he has always touted as successful.

The news comes as the president continues to feud with House Democrats over the release of his federal tax returns from 2013 to 2018.


Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee working to get Trump’s tax returns, said in response to the Times report that the president’s “entire tenure is built upon the most colossal fraud in American political history.”



Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-tax-returns-nyt_n_5cd2105be4b0a7dffcce31f0