“READERS FORUM” MARCH 28, 2018

1. Trump Is Now Demanding That President Barack Obama Be Investigated

   Trump went to Capitol Hill and suggested that President Barack Obama was behind the Russia investigation and demanded an investigation

   Reports stated to Trump “You’ve accused the people who launched the investigation into your campaign of “treasonous” acts. How high up do you think it went”

   “I think it went very high up. I think what happened is a disgrace. I don’t believe our country should allow this ever to happen again. This will never happen again. We can never let it ever happen again. It went very high up, and it started fairly low, but with instructions from the high up. This should never happen to a president again. We can’t allow that to take place” was Trumps nonsense reply

   When Trump was asked if he personally thought it reached the West Wing of the Obama White House he gave his usual BS obfuscation of “I don’t want to say that, but I think you know the answer”

   Donald Trump is pulling all of the old tricks out of his playbook. After his lies and refusing to release documents in a stunt related to the Mueller report, Trump has moved to trying to distract by calling for an investigation into former President Obama. This is a stunt that Trump used to try to distract from his own problems in the past

   Trump has convinced himself and he is trying to sell the rest of the country on the idea that President Obama is the real criminal. Trump is in full cover-up mode, and he is trying to distract the country by calling for a baseless investigation into President Obama that isn’t fooling anyone

   http://bit.ly/2OsHqzj

2. Trump “Incompetent” And “Lousy” President Even Without Russia Drama

   On Wednesday, conservative columnist Max Boot ripped Trump as “lousy” in a column for The Washington Post

   Attorney General Barr released his findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and concluded that Trump and his campaign did not conspire with Russia. However, that did not change Boot’s mind about Trump as he scrutinized the way Trump reacted to the report

   “Trump was venomous and vengeful. He repeated his Stalinist assertion that the media are the “Enemy of the People” and vowed to exact revenge against the assorted traitors and evil-doers who had probed his connections with Russia. Trump is reminding us that he lacks even an iota of the dignity or decorum that we used to take for granted in the Oval Office. He is guilty of being a lousy president”

   He called out Trump for being “petty” and said that even despite his relationship with Russia Trump is still an “incompetent” president

   “Trump stands out among our presidents not just for being so petty, bitter and mean-spirited but also for being so incompetent. He came to office promising to eliminate the budget deficit and the trade deficit. Both are now bigger than ever”

   “Whatever Mueller found will not change the fact that Trump simply lacks the intellect and integrity, the gravitas, for the most important job in the world”

   https://wapo.st/2FAEEE2

   • The Resistance Media Weren’t Ready for This

     After years of accruing retweets and Patreon donations with fevered speculation about Mueller, anti-Trump internet personalities are scrambling to figure out what’s next.

     https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/muellers-conclusion-scrambling-resistance-media/585721/

     • Republicans Hate The Truth and News Media

       The hallmark of prejudice is that you don’t have to prove it: You just know it.

       For Republicans, the existence of a media bias is an established “fact” like the temperature at which water freezes. Attacks by Trump that he constantly makes resonate. A Cato Institute survey found that 63 percent of Republicans believe that journalists are an “enemy of the American people” just like Trump

       Academics and others have long sought to understand why this prejudice has taken root with the right wing. Maybe it’s simply a case of blaming the messenger for bringing bad news. Republican media haters don’t want to hear about the bad press Democrats have received, or other evidence contrary to their position. To bolster this selective perspective, the haters frequently skew poll findings

       In a time of increasing partisanship, where more and more Americans believe you’re either with us or against us, lack of devotion to the Republican line (as disseminated by programs by Fox) is proof enough of bias for media haters. A defining characteristic of the right wing is a sense of grievance, as the Fox perennial year-end coverage of the supposed “war on Christmas”

       In a four-part documentary program about the New York Times, right-wing hate-monger Steve Bannon is shown at a political rally condemning the “fake news” media. He actually slams the Times, but then he shares a car ride with Times political correspondent Jeremy Peters, and it’s clear the two have an amicable relationship

       Call it hypocritical, call it love-hate, call it pragmatic. For whatever reason, elite Republicans, namely those in national office and their high-level staffers, court the media

       Maybe someday Republicans will tire of press bashing and face reality

       http://bit.ly/2FDIGNf

3. And these clowns think they will beat Trump in 2020?
   ………………………………………………………………………..

   Abrams Adviser Rips ‘Exploitative’ Biden’s ‘Entitlement’: ‘He Wants Her to Save His Ass’

   An adviser to failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on Wednesday evening ripped former Vice President Joe Biden for his “entitlement” for wanting Abrams “to save his ass” in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

   In a BuzzFeed report that details the blowback from Abrams’ supporters that even surprised Abrams after various outlets reported that Biden was considering naming Abrams as his vice presidential pick when he announces his candidacy, an Abrams adviser told the outlet that the stories were “particularly exploitative” because “Biden couldn’t be bothered to endorse Stacey in the gubernatorial primary.”

   “Now he wants her to save his ass. That’s some serious entitlement,” the adviser reportedly added….

   On Tuesday, Biden apologized for his treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings when Bided chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. Biden said he regrets “to this day” that he could not give Hill “the kind of hearing she deserved” and also argued that the “white man’s culture” has “got to change.”…

   https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/27/abrams-adviser-rips-exploitative-bidens-entitlement-he-wants-her-to-save-his-ass/

   • Trump Has “Turned Bigotry Into Policy” in Puerto Rico

     The federal government has utterly failed in its response to Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico, and that negligence appears to be based in bigotry, per a scathing Washington Post editorial that scorches Trump on Puerto Rico

     A new Washington Post editorial lambasted Trump and congressional Republicans for visiting hardship and indignity upon American citizens on the island, where about 43 percent of residents have seen cuts to their food-stamp assistance after Congress missed a deadline for reauthorization

     “A searing report by The Post’s detailed the impacts of the cuts. Patients made to sit in soiled diapers that health-care workers can’t afford to replace, families forgoing meat and vegetables, worrying if they can afford milk and eating less. A significant portion of those receiving food stamps, research shows, are children, elderly or disabled”

     The newspaper called upon Congress to take action to restore those benefits as part of a broader disaster-relief package and highlighted the starkly different and unfair treatment Puerto Rico received from the federal government, which has only gotten worse under Trump

     “Mr. Trump’s empathy deficit is well known by now, as is the favoritism he displays toward states that tend to vote Republican. But for the government to turn its back on the more than 3 million American citizens who have made Puerto Rico their home is essentially turning his bigotry into official policy. And that is a travesty”

     https://wapo.st/2FCfrcq

4. This poll came out before AG Barr’s letter of no collusion with the Ruskies:

   Majority say they’re open to re-electing Trump

   A majority of registered voters in a new poll say they would consider voting President Trump into a second term.

   Fifty-four percent in the Hill-HarrisX survey released Monday said they would think about voting for Trump, though 46 percent of registered voters said they would not even consider casting a ballot for the president.

   The polling was conducted before a summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusions was released on Sunday by Attorney General William Barr. That summary reported that Mueller did not find evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, a huge win for the president.

   People who said they backed Trump in 2016 are likely to back him again.

   Ninety-five percent of respondents who said they had picked Trump in his first run for office said they could find a reason vote for him again in 2020.

   https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/435659-a-small-majority-of-americans-say-theyre-open-to-the-idea-of-re

   • Most Voters Say They Definitely Won’t Vote For Trump in 2020

     Polling released TODAY shows that Trump is in trouble. According to the highly respected Quinnipiac University poll the majority of American voters have already made up their minds that they will NOT vote to reelect the president in next year’s election

     The poll showed that a majority (53 percent) of all voters say they definitely will not vote for Trump in the 2020 general election if he is the Republican candidate

     “The loyal base stays the course, but 53 percent of all American voters say they’ve had enough and will not vote for Trump”

     This latest poll confirms what has been known for a long time: Trump’s reelection chances in 2020 are in deep, deep trouble. He and his supporters in the Republican Party are clearly blind to this, and act like Trump is the frontrunner who will definitely be reelected

     As more information comes out about Trump crimes and corruption, it’s only a matter of time until more Republicans wake up and realize that the Trump reelection effort for 2020 is a lost cause

     http://bit.ly/2OwMhiU

   • Majority Of Americans Find No Exoneration For Trump On Collusion

     Trump may be doing a victory lap now that the special counsel’s Russia investigation has concluded, but most Americans don’t think Trump has been cleared of anything, according to a new CNN poll

     On the question of colluding with the Russians, 56 percent say Trump and his campaign have not been exonerated even though it perhaps couldn’t be proven. Notably, only 1 percent of people didn’t have an opinion.

     57 percent of respondents say Congress should “hold hearings to investigate the findings in the report”

     However great Trump might feel, the Barr report doesn’t seem to have moved the needle at all. 56-57 percent is the number of people who have already pledged to vote against Trump in two separate polls in the last several months

     The CNN poll even asked respondents if they had changed their minds about 2020 in the wake of the Russia probe’s conclusion. Almost no one had

     So while many in the media may have fallen hook, line, and sinker for the faux report issued by Attorney General William Barr, the public has not

     http://bit.ly/2Ot4HkE

     • A CNN poll reported from KOS? How metaphoric of derangement syndrome.

     • Dude, the Daily Kos? Really? Over and over and over?

   • After this past weekend’s Democrat meltdown, polling is probably no longer needed. The Democrat candidate in 2020 will be an old white guy named Bernie or Joe, with absolutely no chance of winning. If perchance they do nominate one of the numerous wacky far out liberals who have thrown their name in the ring, Trump’s odds are even better to win. Maybe Pocahontas or the table jumper from Texas, please?

5. Any word when the ERC has to post their agenda for the April 2, 8:30 am meeting??

   • No. We are working on it.

     Editor

6. If Joe Biden and Ronald Reagan are going to be on here for two more years and possibly six years yammering about Donald Trump this website is doomed.

7. March 28, 2019
   The Vainglorious NeverTrumpers

   “What a great term to describe NeverTrumpers! They are smug in the certainty and righteousness of opposing President Donald Trump and his agenda. They happily point it out every chance they get, whether on a CNN panel or on Twitter, as they look down their proud beaks on those who support Trump.

   Never mind that most NeverTrumpers are or were members of the Republican Party, and that most Trump supporters are Republican. They view Trump and his fans as lepers, unworthy to breathe the same rarefied air as the woke NeverTrumpers who see through the Trumpian smoke and mirrors.

   Trump is a charlatan, they say, destroying the conservative movement and the Republican Party. This must mean that everything NeverTrumpers have been advocating for on the pages of the late Weekly Standard or the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, like conservative judges, lower taxes, fewer regulations, immigration reform, better international trade deals, and fewer foreign military entanglements, are part of the charade. Perhaps it has all been talk, without principle or conviction”….

   Religious freedom is tossed out the window if one happens to be a Christian baker, standing on principle, not creating a same-sex wedding cake. Yet if a Muslim baker chose to do the same, and anyone dared criticize this, they would be labeled a racist and hater. Any critic’s freedom of speech on social media platforms would disappear, as a matter of principle. Yet NeverTrumpers think it’s Trump who has “gone off the moral rails.”

   The principle of a sovereign nation with a border is racist and xenophobic, while giving illegal immigrants US taxpayer dollars and societal advantages are principles seemingly acceptable to the NeverTrumpers. Allowing criminal aliens free run of our cities, committing murder and mayhem, is acceptable based on some principle of tolerance or diversity. Yet it’s Trump who has “gone off the moral rails.”

   https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/03/the_vainglorious_nevertrumpers.html

   • White & Right Terrorism – Ignored By Racist TrumpSuckers

     Americans should react to violence from religious and ethnic minorities with the same sense of proportion they reserve for far-right extremists

     Trump regularly invokes violent crises perpetrated by scary foreigners. His campaign began with the declaration that Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists” as he called for a ban on Muslims coming to the United States. In his border-wall lies, he pointed to crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants, whose victims were bludgeoned to death, beheaded, or stabbed, to argue for the necessity of the wall. But there’s one spike in violence that the president rarely acknowledges or even mentions, and it’s the rise in far-right terror that has accompanied Trump

     Last month the Anti-Defamation League released a report finding that attackers with ties to right-wing extremist movements killed at least 50 people in 2018. That was close to the total number of Americans killed by domestic extremists, meaning that the far right had an almost absolute monopoly on lethal terrorism in the United States last year

     The number of fatalities is 35 percent higher than the previous year, and it marks the fourth-deadliest year for such attacks since 1970. According to the ADL white supremacists are responsible for the majority of such attacks “almost every year” per data and research. The 2018 attacks include the one at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue by a man who blamed Jews for the migrant caravan, the mass shooting at a yoga studio by an “incel” obsessed with interracial dating, and the school massacre in Parkland carried out by a student who wished that “all the Jews were dead”

     From 2009 through 2018, right-wing extremists accounted for 73 percent of such killings. In other words:

     MOST TERRORIST ATTACKS IN THE UNITED STATES AND MOST DEATHS FROM TERRORIST ATTACKS ARE CAUSED BY WHITE EXTREMISTS

     When white extremists kill, politicians do not demand that they be racially profiled. They do not call for bans on white people coming to the United States. They do not insist that white people’s freedom of movement be restricted, their houses of worship are surveilled, their leaders be banned from holding public office, or their neighborhoods be “secured” and occupied by armed agents of the state. And they do not demand that taxpayers foot the bill for a massive, symbolic monument that will register America’s official disdain for white people in perpetuity

     It would be immoral to collectively punish white people for the actions of a few extremists, and it would only raise the stature of those extremists, partially legitimize their grievances in the eyes of potential followers, and strengthen their ability to recruit future operatives for further attacks. But that’s not the reason none of those things happen. They don’t happen because as America’s largest demographic group, white people have the political power and influence to prevent such proposals from even being contemplated. This is a form of political correctness so powerful that it shapes behavior without being mentioned or publicly acknowledged. It is simply the way things work

     By contrast, when religious or ethnic minorities commit such acts, they are seen not as individual extremists, but as representative of the groups to which they belong. As such, collective punishment is believed to be justified. This is how American bigotry works: White Christians are simply individuals, while everyone else is vulnerable to demonization by demagogues prepared to exploit the fear of those who are different in exchange for political power

     The correct response to the rise in right-wing terrorism is not a panic that mirrors those that accompany terrorist attacks by religious or ethnic minorities. It is to extend the same benefit of the doubt, the same proportionate, measured response with which Americans meet attacks from right-wing extremists, to attacks of all sorts. It is to recognize that the constitutional rights of minorities are no less inviolable than the constitutional rights of white Americans and that anyone who would run on a platform of disregarding those rights is not fit to hold public office

     http://bit.ly/2OBxgNb

8. Like Clockwork Conservatives Are Reacting To The Barr Letter In Bad Faith

   As far as the country’s conservatives are concerned the special counsel investigation can be neatly summed up in the four-page letter Attorney General Bill Barr put out Sunday afternoon. Never mind that we still have no idea what Robert Mueller found

   The dispatch from Trump’s handpicked attorney general, who has already established that he doesn’t believe the president can obstruct justice, is the only proof they need that the entire Russia probe was the witch hunt Trump claimed it was

   Everyone from congressional leaders to Fox anchors to Trump Junior is taking gleeful victory laps. Getting out ahead of Mueller’s actual report which the special counsel explicitly said “does not exonerate” Trump on the obstruction question is a self-serving way of shaping the media narrative. Conservatives are pointedly ignoring information that doesn’t support their case (like always)

   Trump campaign manager Manafort is looking at 7.5 years behind bars and Trump’s personal attorney Cohen is set to start a three-year prison term in May. Investigations into the Trump inaugural committee, Trump Organization, and various influence-peddling allegations CONTINUE. But never mind that!

   In their view, anyone still interested in getting a full account of what Mueller uncovered is an obsessed liberal out to get Trump. Yet some of these same voices are now calling for the media to face a “reckoning” for their Russia coverage and for a new special counsel to investigate “the other side of the story”

   Below are some of the most egregious (and asinine) bad faith reactions to the Barr letter from those who have never shied away from an anti-Democratic conspiracy theory as conspiracy-stoking conservative media

   Sean Hannity – Trump’s nightly phone date is out for blood. In a series of apoplectic tweets fired off just after the Barr letter came out Hannity called the investigation an attempt to “take down a duly elected President of the people” and swore “every deep state official” and “fake news media liar member” and “liar in Congress” would be held accountable. The career media moron, who appeared on stage at a Trump rally during the 2016 campaign and is an unofficial adviser to the administration, declared that the media’s coverage of the investigation proved they were hopelessly compromised

   Tucker Carlson – It’s difficult to pick which other Fox pundits delivered the most absurd spin on the Barr letter (honorable mention to Lou Dobbs and Laura Ingraham) but Tucker Carlson earned extra points for bringing Little Donnie on to dish. He has falsely referred to Barr’s letter as “Mueller’s summary” and likened the investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to the Bush administration falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion of Iraq

   The Federalist – Fox News was far from the only conservative media morons to direct their outrage at their fellow journalists. Editor David Harsanyi wrote that “after being accused of sedition for two years, conservatives have every right to be “sore winners and pouncers” and is the same outlet that has published op-eds hinting that former DNC staffer Seth Rich’s murder was part of a broader Democratic conspiracy

   The Daily Caller – They start off with their op-ed that any influence Russia may have had in the 2016 election is actually Barack Obama’s fault. But as Obama administration officials have explained, they spent the final months of the 2016 election frantically investigating the source of hacks while trying not to reveal information that could jeopardize the presidential campaign. Even when they became confident that Russia was behind the influence effort, they were rebuffed by McConnel and the right-wing from pursuing it (next bullet point)

   Mitch McConnell – “Thanks, Obama” was Mitch McConnell’s position on the matter in a speech he delivered on the Senate floor, where he said that “it is deeply disturbing that the Obama administration was apparently insufficiently prepared to anticipate and counter these Russian threats” and yet, in October 2016 (as the Russian interference campaign was at its peak) McConnell comported himself completely differently. He refused to sign off on a bipartisan statement about the Russian interference, which would have stated that it was occurring to the general public. He reportedly told Obama that if the White House released a statement on the matter, he would consider it an example of executive interference in an ongoing election

   Kellyanne Conway – White House advisor Kellyanne Conway tried to shift the narrative to opening a wide-ranging meta-investigation of the Mueller probe itself. Conway has spent years questioning Mueller and the Russian probe, but now calls the Mueller investigation “the gold standard” suggesting that it was a gold standard of a witch hunt that simultaneously besmirched the honor of thousands of FBI agents

   The Robert Mueller fetishization cottage industry fueled by right-wingers is a monster of their own making

   http://bit.ly/2FEv7NK

9. Just think, if Ronald Reagan and JoeBiden could pool their collective hot air together they could propel some electrical energy generating wind turbines for so long Vectren would go broke.

   • RR posting the Daily Kos? Most ridiculous cult blog there is. The Kos cult is so delusional they still fantasize the Muller report is going to help impeach Trump. It’s not drinking the Kool-aid, it’s drowning in the Kool-aid.

     • Why The Right Embraces Ignorance As A Virtue

       Being belligerently ignorant and offended that anyone dares suggest ignorance is less desirable than knowledge has become the go-to position for many conservative politicians and pundits

       But for modern Republicans, being downright proud of their ignorance has become a badge of honor, a way to demonstrate loyalty to the right-wing cause while also sticking it to those liberal pinheads who think there’s some kind of value in knowing what they’re talking about before offering an opinion

       The problem here is that someone who is not only so catastrophically wrong but downright proud of being an ignoramus is not going to actually bother to listen to an explanation. When you have nothing but contempt for the facts, attempts to educate you will only make your pride in your own ignorance grow stronger. The more you try to educate the proudly ignorant, the dumber they get

       At the end of the day, the problem is one of identity. The conservative identity is one of being opposed to everything liberal, to the point of despising anything even associated with liberalism. To be a “conservative” increasingly means taking a contemptuous view of reality

       And so the proudly ignorant grow more belligerent, day after day

       http://bit.ly/2HEjibB

     • Take a drink of this Radar.

       “The Republican Party is going to be the Party of healthcare.” And Mexico is going to pay for it.

       Just thru that last sentence in for effect.

       But if Trump says it, you can bet your ass the nitwits will believe it.

       Especially shar pie.

       By the way, word on the street has it Trump’s hair was born and raised overseas and SHOULD NOT have been allowed at his inauguration even if it WAS only attended by bikers and Russians.

       But since trade wars are easy to win, and loving dictators and shaming allies is the going thing with Trump’s base who are convinced a Muslim lives under their bed and Mesker Amphitheater is the only place left to masturbate safely, our only hope is for the nitwits to demand they only want to fly on Boeing 737’s.

       And if the most lying human being I have observed in my lifetime, (Mop Head), told them to, they no doubt would be first in line….

       • A muslim living under my bed is not as scary as having one president of this great country. Anytime Trump says anything a liberal disagrees with he’s a liar or a racist. A good look at the liberal loonies running for president ensures Trump another 4 years and this is driving liberals crazy. He is a better president than even the never Trumpers thought he would be. Great man doing his best to make America great again, America was great before that Obama disaster. Hopefully we will be able to trust our institutions again. It will be a shame when Trump is no longer eligible to run in 2024.

10. It will be interesting to watch the politics around the new jail, think there will be a lot of money changing hands under the table. Democrats didn’t have a lot of interest in the County Commissioners until the possibility of a new extension was put on the table. Back in the early 2000’s the dems went all out to get Kathleen Fanello elected as a county commissioner, they put out a lot of money to get her elected. We ended up with an inadequate jail that was over priced by 5-10 million dollars. Ms Fanello ended up resigning and marrying one of the key jail contractors, the jail contractors wife and family were not pleased with this turn of events. When Hatfield changed parties and became a democrat there was no doubt he would win and democrats and bankers went all out to see it happen. Hope they build an adequate extension to the jail that will increase the capacity to at least 2000 inmates, it would take at least 400 additional spaces to handle the current requirements. The current jail population is near 800 and there are nearly 200 inmates in other local jails at taxpayers expense. If we could get most democrats to leave Evansville we could get by with the old jail built in 1890 that would house about 30 inmates. Maybe a new city council person in the 4th ward will help decrease criminal activity in Evansville, most of the crime in Evansville occurs in or emanates from the 4th ward or the area immediately surrounding the 4th.

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