Orange Duce

[Trinity]

Ratcliffe discovered the Secret Society in the FBI we didn’t learn about in the Nunes Memo. Who can forget Sen Ron Johnson trying to explain the off-site meetings. Low comedy in high places.

[a fan]

Did Baltimore receive ~16 Billion since Trump has been in office...Yes or No?

If No --> Then I am wrong

No. Because the vast, vast majority of the "Federal Grants" (her words, not mine ) that the people of Baltimore received are not managed or disbursed by the City of Baltimore. It goes to the State, and decisions on how to spend that money is made by State elected officials using Federal guidelines.

She's saying that Trump cut a check for $16 Billion, handed it to Bernard Young and said "have fun".

Young never sees or controls much of this funding. Spending on Medicaid, WIC, SNAP, CHIP, Child support enforcement, TANF, Social Services Block Grant, etc. for example, is controlled by Larry Hogan. Whoops. Ruins the whole "Dems ruin everything" narrative, and we can't have that, right?

Same goes for things like Public safety grants (cops, drug trafficking funds, etc.). Those monies go to the State, and are doled out from there.

She's misleading viewers, while at the same time, she's too stupid to know she's misleading viewers .

And it works every time. R's=Good. D's= bad. And vice versa.

[old salt]

Here's what Patton said. The fact checkers have been slow to respond.

[a fan]

I will say this much, repeating what I wrote a couple of posts up: Trump did indeed sign three massive spending bills that increased handouts---socialism---to the tune of $2Trillion. I'm 100% certain that some of this money will make its way to Baltimore.

So yes, Trump sent more money to Baltimore, as well as every other city in our great nation, than Obama did.


I find it hilarious that FoxNation is so preoccupied with throwing stones at Baltimore and the Dems, that it completely and utterly escaped their attention that Trump is a lefty. More borrowing. More spending. More socialism.

With more to come. Trump's fourth massive spending bill should be the cherry on top. And Republicans are cheering.

[MDlaxfan76]

So it is true, that they have recieved just under 16Billion with a B. From your linked article.

Cummings' district received just under $15.7billion in grants, benefits, and other aide from the federal government during fiscal year 2018, according to the Baltimore Sun.

The district, which includes just over half of Baltimore City, most of the majority African American areas of Baltimore County, and most of Howard County, is more well off than the administration claims.

This is a bit misleading, but let's assume it's not.

You understand other States get quite a bit more funding, yes?

Trump and his cronies want you to think that Maryland is the only State in the Union to get aid, and Baltimore simply wastes it all.

Its okay to say she was correct and that Baltimore did indeed receive funds to help them.

Interesting comment from Lynne Patton HUD Administrator. I am not sure how to validate this, but maybe some else can. She is saying this administration HAS provided 16 Billion with "B" in grants to Elijah Cummings district...more than any other city.

VERY, very silly, stupid claim. False on its face.
Total HUD budget, total, is 44B.

Prove her wrong with a link please; the sound of the Jeopardy jingle just started...

Would you care to change your answer now? Did or did not Baltimore receive ~16 Billion in Federal funding?

I've been away from the forum doing some actual work, so have missed some of this.

No, she used the word "grants". Not a chance. Not remotely.

Now, if you want to include Medicare, and Medicaid, and food stamps, and university research 'grants', and the cost of running the Social Security Administration (happens to be here), etc ... and ...sure, it mounts up in any jurisdiction with an actual population. Baltimore too.

But it's grossly misleading for her to suggest that checks were written to the district Cummings represents, and darn few even to Baltimore City directly.

The implications being made by these low life sycophants and worse Trump himself is that these monies were squandered through corruption, including outright theft by Cummings. Disgusting lie by disgusting people.

You needn't sign onto it.

[MDlaxfan76]

The biggest part? She's implying---and so are you---that Baltimore is getting Billions, and other cities aren't. This is nonsense.

I never implied or even wrote a single letter about any other city receiving money. My original post with the video link was "asking" if this was all true, to which it was implied she is essentially a dumb-dumb, fake and can not be true. Then an article in a follow up post stated with fact, corroborated by the Baltimore Sun, that Baltimore has in fact received ~16 Billion. But because you and others hate Trump so much, you simply can not accept that Baltimore has received plenty of money from the Feds and that local politicians have dump it away where it is needed.

Did Baltimore receive ~16 Billion since Trump has been in office...Yes or No?

If No --> Then I am wrong
If Yes --> You are wrong
If Maybe/Not really --> Then we are on Fan Lax

No..Baltimore does not receive that sort of money.
It would be false to claim otherwise.

Residents in all jurisdictions do. The City never touches it.
The State does receive some federal grants directly, very little goes directly to Balt City.
Johns Hopkins and UMD do receive funds directly.

ETC.

[youthathletics]

Glad we can now agree Trump continued to help Baltimore and its citizens, to the tune of just under 16 Billion and more so than Obama.

And as Afan has reminded us all time & again. Trump is a closet democrat, which by support of Trump, makes us righties more center/center left. We are closer than we think.

[MDlaxfan76]

Glad we can now agree Trump continued to help Baltimore and its citizens, to the tune of just under 16 Billion and more so than Obama.

And as Afan has reminded us all time & again. Trump is a closet democrat, which by support of Trump, makes us righties more center/center left. We are closer than we think.

You're going to have to work hard to demonstrate how anything Trump has done "to help Baltimore and its citizens" is beyond exactly what was required by law. His Administration has attempted to cut lots of programs, been thwarted by the law in a number of situations, and been successful in some such cuts (eg food stamps), but that's not exactly 'helping'!

Actually, there's some basis for claiming that the Opportunity Zones is a tax break (not grant) that could be beneficial, but they haven't kicked in yet. And there are those who would argue, legitimately so, that these are really just tax giveaways to the already wealthy and well-connected.

[a fan]

Glad we can now agree Trump continued to help Baltimore and its citizens, to the tune of just under 16 Billion and more so than Obama.

True.

And as Afan has reminded us all time & again. Trump is a closet democrat, which by support of Trump, makes us righties more center/center left. We are closer than we think.

Yes. And if voters can ignore D's and R's and focus on actual policies? To quote the Godfather: "and there we will have the peace"

[youthathletics]

Glad we can now agree Trump continued to help Baltimore and its citizens, to the tune of just under 16 Billion and more so than Obama.

True.

And as Afan has reminded us all time & again. Trump is a closet democrat, which by support of Trump, makes us righties more center/center left. We are closer than we think.

Yes. And if voters can ignore D's and R's and focus on actual policies? To quote the Godfather: "and there we will have the peace"

+1

[MDlaxfan76]

Glad we can now agree Trump continued to help Baltimore and its citizens, to the tune of just under 16 Billion and more so than Obama.

True.

And as Afan has reminded us all time & again. Trump is a closet democrat, which by support of Trump, makes us righties more center/center left. We are closer than we think.

Yes. And if voters can ignore D's and R's and focus on actual policies? To quote the Godfather: "and there we will have the peace"

Ahhh, you peace maker you...except it's with a knowing wink about how that turned out for heads of all the families...

Unfortunately, Trump will never 'make the peace', only division serves his purpose.

Hopefully this too shall pass.

[youthathletics]

You just can't make this stuff up. circa.1999

Elijah Cummings must now be called a racist by all those that called Trump a racist for using the word "infested" https://twitter.com/OliverMcGee/status/ ... 62722?s=20

[Brooklyn]

Trump is just ratcheting up the dialog even more - now using the term "infested" (as in rat infested or crime infested) to describe urban areas that are predominately minority... You don't see him calling rural areas with loads of opiate addiction issues fentanyl infested, or oxy infested...

Gee, when was that terminology used before? Maybe by those talking about Jews in WWII? By the Nazis?

Rat city!

[seacoaster]

I am hopeful that RRR won't mind my posting this here:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com ... to-be-dni/

"One important objection to this nomination is that Trump has chosen someone who clearly doesn’t meet the minimum requirements for the position. Garrett Graff compares Ratcliffe’s record with those of previous DNIs:

Ratcliffe’s experience pales in comparison to any of his would-be predecessors. He served as the mayor of Heath, Texas—population 8,000—for a decade, and while he did a brief stint as a politically appointed US attorney in Texas in the final months of George W. Bush’s administration, his résumé on national security matters is practically nonexistent.

There are also concerns that Ratcliffe is too much of a partisan and Trump loyalist to do the job properly. Trump wanted to get rid of Coats primarily because Coats kept telling him things he didn’t want to hear, and Coats also kept telling Congress and the public things that contradicted the president’s fantasies. Perhaps Ratcliffe could do the same thing that Coats did, but that seems unlikely. He isn’t being chosen for his relevant expertise, since he doesn’t have any, and so that tells us he is being chosen to act as Trump’s yes-man. Graff continues:

Ratcliffe seems to appeal to Trump for the same reason most of the sycophants around him do: Loyalty first and foremost to No. 1. But the DNI is not supposed to walk through the door of the Oval Office attempting to please the president—he is supposed to tell the president whatever he needs to hear, consequences be damned.

Trump wants nothing of the kind. Instead, as he told reporters Tuesday afternoon, “We need somebody strong that can really rein it in. Because as I think you’ve all learned, the intelligence agencies have run amok. They’ve run amok.”

Ratcliffe isn’t qualified to be DNI. He doesn’t even meet the statutory requirement to hold the position. It seems that he nominated because he was a vocal defender of the president and for no other reason, and that makes it even worse. If they take their responsibilities seriously, the Senate can’t confirm Ratcliffe in this position."

So, it appears that this is a real moment for the GOP Senate, concerning the appointment of and consent to one of the principal national security jobs and portfolios in the federal government. Anyone want to make a bet on what Mitch does with this one?

[Trinity]

PJ and Squee will vouch for the guy and Pence breaks the 50-50 tie.

[seacoaster]

But wait, there's more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 646ae61485

"The president has announced that he will nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.) to replace Coats as director of national intelligence, or DNI, a post created after 9/11 to coordinate the work of the entire intelligence community (IC). Ratcliffe is not yet midway through his third term in Congress, where he represents Texas’s 4th District. Ratcliffe serves on the Intelligence, Homeland Security, Ethics and Judiciary committees. Before Congress, Ratcliffe served as a U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas and as the mayor of a small town there.

As the Senate decides whether to confirm Ratcliffe to this post, it should measure him against clear criteria. What should those be? It is not clear to us that the Trump administration has thought through that question. It needs to do so.

As longtime intelligence officers, we would recommend that the president set three priorities for the DNI: One, be the president’s primary intelligence adviser, bringing together all the IC’s information and analysis to inform his decision-making; two, aggressively manage and drive collection efforts against the key intelligence gaps that need to be filled to protect the country (and there are many); and three, set long-term strategy to ensure the IC will be effective against the threats our country will face in the future.

With these responsibilities in mind, what does the DNI need to be successful? To do the first job, the DNI must have the trust and confidence of the president, Congress (particularly those who serve on the Intelligence committees) and the other national security principals, especially the secretary of defense, the secretary of state and the national security adviser. The first job also requires both a deep understanding of foreign policy and national security issues and an analytic and intellectually curious mind.

Most important, the first job requires speaking truth to power, not pulling punches or rushing to the president’s defense when the facts and analysis do not warrant it.

In private, the DNI must defend the independence and objectivity of the IC. This includes being willing to privately inform the president and his national security team if or when they mischaracterize intelligence, and it includes holding the rest of the IC leadership to the same standard.

In public, the DNI must convey the IC’s view of the issue, not the views of policymakers.

There are also questions of management experience. The DNI oversees a large, complicated and vast enterprise — 17 intelligence organizations with a $63 billion budget and more than 100,000 people for national intelligence. The DNI also oversees sensitive intelligence collection and counterintelligence operations as well as covert action programs. In short, no national security or intelligence amateurs should be considered or confirmed, nor should anyone who has not run large organizations.

Of the five DNIs who have served since the office was established, four were career national security professionals who had risen to the top of their profession. The fifth, Coats, also had extensive senior national security experience as a senator with service on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees and as ambassador to Germany. James R. Clapper Jr., widely considered the most effective DNI to date, had deep experience in intelligence, serving as the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, the director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the chief of Air Force Intelligence before becoming DNI.

Ratcliffe has some national security experience from his service in Congress and in the U.S. attorney’s office, but he would come to the job with by far the least experience in foreign policy and intelligence of any DNI in two decades.

Most important, Ratcliffe has taken political positions on important national security issues — he has said, for example, he knows the Obama administration broke the law in investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to the Russians.

As DNI, he will have to leave the politics — and coming to the president’s political defense — behind. The Senate will have to determine if he can do that.:

[runrussellrun]

I am hopeful that RRR won't mind my posting this here:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com ... to-be-dni/

"One important objection to this nomination is that Trump has chosen someone who clearly doesn’t meet the minimum requirements for the position. Garrett Graff compares Ratcliffe’s record with those of previous DNIs:

Ratcliffe’s experience pales in comparison to any of his would-be predecessors. He served as the mayor of Heath, Texas—population 8,000—for a decade, and while he did a brief stint as a politically appointed US attorney in Texas in the final months of George W. Bush’s administration, his résumé on national security matters is practically nonexistent.

There are also concerns that Ratcliffe is too much of a partisan and Trump loyalist to do the job properly. Trump wanted to get rid of Coats primarily because Coats kept telling him things he didn’t want to hear, and Coats also kept telling Congress and the public things that contradicted the president’s fantasies. Perhaps Ratcliffe could do the same thing that Coats did, but that seems unlikely. He isn’t being chosen for his relevant expertise, since he doesn’t have any, and so that tells us he is being chosen to act as Trump’s yes-man. Graff continues:

Ratcliffe seems to appeal to Trump for the same reason most of the sycophants around him do: Loyalty first and foremost to No. 1. But the DNI is not supposed to walk through the door of the Oval Office attempting to please the president—he is supposed to tell the president whatever he needs to hear, consequences be damned.

Trump wants nothing of the kind. Instead, as he told reporters Tuesday afternoon, “We need somebody strong that can really rein it in. Because as I think you’ve all learned, the intelligence agencies have run amok. They’ve run amok.”

Ratcliffe isn’t qualified to be DNI. He doesn’t even meet the statutory requirement to hold the position. It seems that he nominated because he was a vocal defender of the president and for no other reason, and that makes it even worse. If they take their responsibilities seriously, the Senate can’t confirm Ratcliffe in this position."

So, it appears that this is a real moment for the GOP Senate, concerning the appointment of and consent to one of the principal national security jobs and portfolios in the federal government. Anyone want to make a bet on what Mitch does with this one?

Since when would I give a flying F........ this IS the tRump thread after all.

btw, No politician demanded loyalty, until tRump came along. Was Timmy Geithner picked, all those years ago... because he really understood the basic tax laws? you betcha.

[wahoomurf]

And as Afan has reminded us all time & again. Trump is a closet Democrat, which by the support of Trump, makes us righties more center/center-left. We are closer than we think.

Interesting. Obviously, Afan was privy to observations/conversations that I didn't have. Trump used to brag at our NYCMBC meetings that he was THE ONLY DEMOCRAT IN THE ROOM. TRUMP IN THE CLOSET? HARDLY. No flaming way. Every few months, Koch asked TRUMP to explain to we Republicans on the Council, precisely what makes a person a DEMOCRAT. His answers were hilarious. So were Ed's eye rolls.

When Bloomberg was elected, Trump resigned from the Council. Guess he had no use for a Republican mayor.

Perhaps Afan and I can swap notes.I'm curious why he thought Trump is closeted.

[old salt]

seacoaster -- what specific statutory rqmt does Ratcliffe not meet that Coats did ?

[MDlaxfan76]

I am hopeful that RRR won't mind my posting this here:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com ... to-be-dni/

"One important objection to this nomination is that Trump has chosen someone who clearly doesn’t meet the minimum requirements for the position. Garrett Graff compares Ratcliffe’s record with those of previous DNIs:

Ratcliffe’s experience pales in comparison to any of his would-be predecessors. He served as the mayor of Heath, Texas—population 8,000—for a decade, and while he did a brief stint as a politically appointed US attorney in Texas in the final months of George W. Bush’s administration, his résumé on national security matters is practically nonexistent.

There are also concerns that Ratcliffe is too much of a partisan and Trump loyalist to do the job properly. Trump wanted to get rid of Coats primarily because Coats kept telling him things he didn’t want to hear, and Coats also kept telling Congress and the public things that contradicted the president’s fantasies. Perhaps Ratcliffe could do the same thing that Coats did, but that seems unlikely. He isn’t being chosen for his relevant expertise, since he doesn’t have any, and so that tells us he is being chosen to act as Trump’s yes-man. Graff continues:

Ratcliffe seems to appeal to Trump for the same reason most of the sycophants around him do: Loyalty first and foremost to No. 1. But the DNI is not supposed to walk through the door of the Oval Office attempting to please the president—he is supposed to tell the president whatever he needs to hear, consequences be damned.

Trump wants nothing of the kind. Instead, as he told reporters Tuesday afternoon, “We need somebody strong that can really rein it in. Because as I think you’ve all learned, the intelligence agencies have run amok. They’ve run amok.”

Ratcliffe isn’t qualified to be DNI. He doesn’t even meet the statutory requirement to hold the position. It seems that he nominated because he was a vocal defender of the president and for no other reason, and that makes it even worse. If they take their responsibilities seriously, the Senate can’t confirm Ratcliffe in this position."

So, it appears that this is a real moment for the GOP Senate, concerning the appointment of and consent to one of the principal national security jobs and portfolios in the federal government. Anyone want to make a bet on what Mitch does with this one?

Since when would I give a flying F........ this IS the tRump thread after all.

btw, No politician demanded loyalty, until tRump came along. Was Timmy Geithner picked, all those years ago... because he really understood the basic tax laws? you betcha.

RRR, can you really not help yourself?
Your first sentence was right on point, we're talking about Orange Duce's appointment, not yours.

But this silly comparison of 'loyalty' demanded obscures the reality that OD is way, way outside the norm...which is why he's been so surrounded by so many lowlifes instead of highly competent, honest professionals.

Acknowledging that reality, and its pertinence to the ridiculous nomination of Ratcliffe as DNI, in no way means that appointments of various Cabinet officials over the years haven't had an element of affinity with the boss in many cases. After all, these are intentionally political choices.

But we've never had nominations in the defense and security area with the virtually sole criteria being toadying loyalty, at the expense of experience, expertise, and basic competence to 'protect and defend the Constitution' and the people of the United States.

Nope, this is new.