ewsieg

I feel like your comments on Aunt Becky are foreshadowing a means to dismiss any legitimate complaints that may arise from your question as 'everyone does that'. For one, you're right, unfortunately the grift in Washington and likely even worse in State and Local governments is real and too many people, regardless of party affiliation, do it. The Hunter/Burisma/Ukraine thing comes down to the fact that Burisma hired Hunter not because of any expertise he had, but just because of his name and the hopes it would keep some heat off of the Oligarch's company. Joe Biden led a US delegate, which was part of a global delegate, that wanted to remove a corrupt attorney general (equivalent) for Ukraine. In part because he was bribing some Ukrainian companies and letting them get away with corruption themselves. Even the Obama administration fought internally if it was a conflict of interest and if Joe should be involved. There is no evidence that Joe did anything illegal, nor Hunter, but I think even if you're a dem, you only need to take off your rose colored glasses to see the grift. I personally don't believe Joe Biden pushed to get rid of this AG because Hunter asked him too, but as I've said before, if I'm the new AG and I know Joe Biden, the VP of the most powerful country on the earth, at the request of his president, the most powerful man on this earth, pressured my country to fire the guy that held the job before me because he wasn't investigating companies diligently enough, when that Burisma file comes in front of me and I see Hunter Biden is on the board, I probably am going to be a little hesitant in putting a lot of effort into that specific business. The laptop issue I have is that so many media outlets went along with the dem/intel talking points instead of investigating it. Trump, rightly so, has had exhaustive investigations into any Chinese/Russian deals/accounts/investments. We know Joe Biden was at minimum pursuing Chinese business deals. The now legitimatized laptop proved that. I have seen no pressure on Biden as he ran, after the laptop story broke, after the laptop story was determined to be real, or even now speak to any foreign business deals he may have been in. Apparently when Trump was in question, that was a serious deal. Instead we had the intel department use unidentified sources to say the laptop was 'earmarks of Russian disinformation' and the dem party delegitimizing it by saying it was nothing but 'dick picks' Those aspects led to some social media suppressing it altogether.

debt limit is going to be an absolute shitshow. I'm sure McCarthy reached out to Dem leadership about getting some votes and or presents. I am interested in what a deal there would have looked like. I saw where someone believed the famous AOC/Gaetz talk was based on an attempt to get some Dems to walk out, making the threshold achievable for McCarthy and i'm assuming giving Gaetz the ability to still symbolically vote against him.

Trump has been trying for days to get the votes for McCarthy. He simply has no pull anymore.

FYI, Season 11 is about to start on CSPAN. No idea if they are going to follow the same writing that has made Seasons 1-10 so enjoyable or if they are going to try something different. Either way, get the popcorn out and remember what they say, 11th time's a charm.

Remember what they say, if you don't succeed the first time, try at least 8 more times, even if you show no improvement whatsoever.

I believe it was Socrates that said "7th time is a charm".

If the Feds don't screw it up, Duggan may be in play although I could see him aiming for Governor.

It was always sad and pathetic, just not as humorous now.

You know what they say, 6th times a charm.

Everyone knows 5th time is a charm.

Deflect, nice move.

Sorry about that quote, consider that disinformation. The full quote adds much more context Only 1 day notice. Horrific!! These are human beings, can't believe these like minded Governors think all alike. Read the article to listen to this governors excuse on why he thinks this is OK. Don't let him off the hook, vote him out!!!!

Biden needs to step in and stop all of these hitler'esqe Governor's from violating all these human rights. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/03/colorado-migrants-new-york-00076115

I can't agree more with Chuck about Tomei in My Cousin Vinny. She also gives Brittany Murphy a run for her money for hottest white trash character in a movie with her performance in The Wrestler.

Hey, be a good American and look the other way.

I came out ahead this year. My wife just visited her brother in Seattle earlier this month for less than 20 bucks in fee's. Last year I put some big purchases on it and than we had some unexpected bills come in. Even with a heavily discounted trip to Texas for the family I ended up losing about 100 bucks. In thinking about it now, can't remember if I took the fee into consideration either.

Or, I am freely admitting that he may have no role in this recent debacle and that blame could be solely on Southwest software combined with both of their major hubs having weather related issues, but pointing out that some past issues might get scrutinized more. Note, Tom Price resigned from his cabinet position over private flights and he didn't take that many more than Buttigieg has. That was not a big story against Buttigieg when it broke. Could something like that change though?

The only semi-argument you'll get out of me based on your response is in regards to the 180 degree political split. Publicly, yes, I agree it appears to be. Privately, unfortunately I feel there is not much of a split at all and it's pointed in a direction that doesn't benefit the average citizen.

I'm fine with the government not running the details of their business. But the airlines took a bailout during the pandemic and used some legal, but grey areas, to adhere to the rules while going against the ideas that established those rules. Here is a decent write up detailing some of that. https://www.mercatus.org/research/policy-briefs/2020-bailouts-left-airlines-economy-and-federal-budget-worse-shape#:~:text=How Big Were the Bailouts,billion%2C and %2414 billion). Even if there is no legal means for DoT to reclaim or force them to pay back some of the loans they got which will otherwise be forgiven, government should have a way to deal with big business. Maybe after the first time all the airlines had trouble over the summer, instead of writing a letter asking them to get better, maybe advocate for an updated Passengers Bill of Rights which would put more financial incentive on providing reliable service. Southwest specifically had Additionally, even if this specific issue is something that Buttigieg had zero ability to proactively deal with, it wouldn't be the first time an issue has blame unjustly put on someone and opens up some other legitimate issues. I wonder if that's what we'll see here.

I still believe Buttigieg is the Dem's 'next person up' to Biden. But similar to "that's why you don't elect a businessman to run government", how much of this recent Southwest Airlines debacle might tarnish Buttigieg and start a "that's why you don't put a small town mayor in charge of something big"? The airlines got a huge bailout with the caveat that they couldn't lay off workers. Instead they used the money to pay for buyouts and still wrangled around with some non paid furloughs where they would still some benefits. We all knew it and DoT did nothing but publicly admonish the airlines to get their shit together back last summer, which if you remember, Buttigieg's himself found his flight cancelled the next day. No teeth from the DoT. The railroad 'strike' certainly isn't a win for him. The ports issue got out of control before we started to see movement on that as well. Now we're back to the airlines again, or at least Southwest. At the same time we're learning he likes to fly private quite a bit. Obviously much of this is dealing with the side effects of the pandemic, but at some point, does the tarnish wear off?

My wife and kids still like Wendy's for some reason. I don't even bother checking the bag anymore. If you send me there, I'll come back with what they gave me. You get what you get and you don't throw a fit.

The Jack White / White Stripes talk had me thinking about Lazaretto, loved that album.

Does anyone know where you can find the Hutchinson transcript and if you can, confirm this is part of it? I've heard reports from it and today the Meadows burning classified documents, but I happened across this on Twitter. Burning classified documents is pretty clear cut case for a Felony, but this seems much more interesting to me.