Andrew C. McCarthy on the absurdity of the Trump obstructionism charges
McCarthy writes:
What [Trump] told Comey, in substance, was that Flynn had been through enough. A combat veteran who had served the country with distinction for over 30 years, and who had not done anything wrong by speaking with the Russian ambassador as part of the Trump transition, Flynn had just been cashiered in humiliating fashion. The one who had done the cashiering was Trump, and he was still upset about it.
That, obviously, is why he lobbied Comey on Flynn’s behalf. And as I have pointed out before, it was an exercise in weighing the merits of further investigation and prosecution that FBI agents and federal prosecutors do hundreds of times a day, throughout the country. That matters because, as their superior and as the constitutional official whose power these subordinates exercise, Trump has as much authority to do this weighing as did Comey ”” who worked for Trump, not the other way around.
…This appears to be the one and only time that Trump advocated on Flynn’s behalf. If Trump was obstructing an investigation, he was awfully passive about it.
…Moreover, at the time these events actually happened, Comey took no action consistent with someone who understood himself to be under a directive by the president of the United States. He and the FBI continued the investigation. Trump not only did not stop them from doing that. He never asked about the matter again…
You cannot act corruptly ”“ as the obstruction statute requires the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt ”“ if you do not believe what you are doing is against the law. Since Trump had as much authority as any prosecutor or FBI agent to weigh the merits of prosecuting Flynn, he cannot have acted corruptly in doing so.
Please read the whole thing. It’s written with McCarthy’s usual clarity and ability to cut to the chase. The sad thing, though, is that nearly the only people who will ever read it are people on the right, and that its simple truths would be ignored by those who wish to believe that Trump did whatever awful things he’s accused of.
It probably does not need repeating, but I never was a Trump fan prior to the election, and I still have plenty of reservations about him and consider some of his actions and words intemperate, obnoxious, and offensive. Nevertheless, he’s been a better president than I expected, and has kept his word on some important subjects such as judicial appointments. But the way the left and the press have distorted his actions in this matter is inclined to make me more sympathetic to him than before, not less. I cannot be alone in this.
[ADDENDUM: And here’s McCarthy on the latest collusion story.]
‘But the way the left and the press have distorted his actions in this matter is inclined to make me more sympathetic to him than before, not less. I cannot ne alone in this.’
This is pretty much me and it’s not just this whole Russia thing it’s all the other things like the so called ‘travel ban’ and some of the other immigration issues where the left has so hysterically overreacted that have moved me to defend him. And also all the ridiculous claims of racism and sexism and anti Semitism and on and on are just so tiresome because in most cases they have no basis in reality only in the crazed, hysterical minds of the left and the media.
Well said Neo…
Above and beyond anything President Trump might have been or may yet be…the fact that it has become fashionable & acceptable for the Progressives to advocate open warfare (and calling it ‘resistance’ is just BS) to rid themselves of him means the rest of us, supporters, detractors & fence-sitters all, must be more vigilant & diligent in our defence of our system of government.
He is the legally elected President of the United States. We have shed hundreds of years of blood to establish & protect our unique place on this earth. The rabid left must not be permitted to undo what our forebears have given us to sustain.
IDK the finer points of the legal system, but this quote caught me eye…
“You cannot act corruptly … if you do not believe what you are doing is against the law”
I keep hearing that ignorance of the law does not absolve one for breaking it.
Not to say trump has broken any law here, but it is quite plausible that he is ignorant of even any ethical boundary here, let alone the specific laws.
He’s probably not the first president to walk that edge.
I keep telling myself that we will reach a point at which there is no more jello to throw against the wall to see if any of it will stick. But the other side seems not to care how ridiculous they appear.
Big Maq,
That gave me pause as well. Indeed, ignorance of the law does not absolve one for breaking it. However in breaking the law, one cannot be accused of corruption as one’s motivation, of knowingly being dishonest … if one actions are believed to be legal. At least, I think that’s what McCarty means.
Useful idiots aside, they know it’s all “a nothing burger”. So what? All that matters to them is if it works… throw enough caca at the wall and you end up with “Quantity has a quality all its own” Joseph Stalin
The law is the law. The law is defined in language, usually very precise and redundantly stated, though sometimes not. It behooves those of us who know not the law, or a specific law, or the interstices thereof to remain silent rather than offer an opinion and remove doubt as to ignorance.
“The law is the law.”
What a wonderfully quaint point of view 😉
The law is the law for you and me but not for they… if you doubt it, just look to the Clintons. Enough money, enough influential ideological ‘friends’ and you’re bullet proof.
GB: Boils down to prosecutorial discretion. Cowardly prosecutors do not rise to challenges, a long pattern in dealing with the Clintons. Billy Boy is impeached, and the result is two leading GOP congressmen lost their seats for relatively minor sexual misconduct committed decades before, and his perjury is allowed.
From Wiki: “The trial in the United States Senate began right after the seating of the 106th Congress, in which the Republican Party began with 55 senators. A two-thirds vote (67 senators) was required to remove Clinton from office. Fifty senators voted to remove Clinton on the obstruction of justice charge and 45 voted to remove him on the perjury charge; no member of his own Democratic Party voted guilty on either charge.”
The pattern we find revolting today was clearly present then: Democrats en bloc, and many Republicans cowardly.
Democrats like their baby hunts.
The law is the law but nobody knows what the law is anymore. There are over 3,000 federal felonies now. See the book by Harvey Silverglate.
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229
The left is going to regret this intemperate behavior they have indulged for the past six months. Their only possible salvation would be the US Congress and the GOPe members who seem to think their donors are more important than voters.
This whole argument is predicated on the assumption that Trump–a person who has insisted for years that he views all relationships as transactional–would get it into his head to innocently help out Flynn, in the absence of evidence that this is true. (“This, obviously, is why he lobbied Comey…”) If it turns out that he didn’t, in fact, just want to help a buddy but instead was trying to close off an avenue of investigation into Trump’s own behavior–something like, say, Trump instructing Flynn to say, I don’t know, I suppose it’s possible, attempt to contact Russian hackers for access to Clinton’s deleted emails, maybe possibly–then the rest certainly doesn’t follow. The president’s standing in the executive branch doesn’t absolve the president of obstruction, as both Nixon and Clinton found out.
And that’s the problem with articles and blog posts like this–people without access to the details of the investigation attempting to infer or deduce or divine their way to the conclusion–usually the conclusion that accords with their partisan political position–in a way that feels very satisfying but doesn’t really tell you anything about what’s going to happen next. Liberals do this all the time (“surely Trump will be impeached because of his latest violation of the constitution”), so it’s at least good to know this is universal human self-delusion masked as erudite analysis and not a partisan thing.
But I will say, I’m really befuddled by this Paul Ryan line that the president is having so many problems because shucks he’s just so new at this, the latest iteration being “he can’t have committed corruption if he’s too stupid to know that being corrupt is a crime.” Low bar, folks. Demand better of your public servants.
And here’s the weirdest part of that article: this notion that Trunp asked Comey to help out Flynn because Flynn has just been humiliated after being fired…by Trump. Now, Flynn is a genuinely tragic figure, in the classically Greek sense, a great man and a genuine war hero undone by his own flaws. But let’s be honest: Flynn really did commit a real crime by lying in his security investigation and to the FBI, a real crime that carries real jail time that he really committed (there’s sufficient public evidence–my favorite is his 2015 trip to Saudi to sell Russian nuclear plants–that he failed to disclose an array of foreign trips and employment). You don’t ask for immunity if you’ve done nothing wrong (just ask Trump and Flynn!), and it’s silly to assert that Flynn did nothing wrong. Or else, why did Trump fire him?
The left and their media accomplices have reached the point of utter absurdity. Trump serves as their mirror, if they would only have the introspection to think about it.
According to this story, the nuclear plants were American and he was working on a plan to coordinate with the Russians to handle the waste. Actually a fairly innovative way to introduce nuclear power without the concern that the waste would be improperly used.
“Michael Flynn, the now-infamous former national security adviser to President Trump, was involved in a plan to build U.S. nuclear power plants in the Middle East as a safety measure, Newsweek reports. Flynn was forced to amend his financial disclosure forms, and, according to the new filing, he was an adviser to a group that appears to be a Pentagon consultancy in 2015 and 2016. He traveled to Egypt and Israel on behalf of the group, X-Co Dynamics Inc./Iron Bridge Group, to determine attitudes toward a plan for a U.S.-Russian program aiming to control the Arab world’s rush to acquire nuclear power and assess the ability of the Middle East to handle radioactive waste securely. Russia would be responsible for securely removing the waste, and Iran would not be involved in the plan. The plan was to be funded entirely by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, and would therefore help the U.S. become involved in the nuclear industry without costing taxpayers.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/flynn-planned-to-build-nuclear-plants-in-the-middle-east
Cool! That’s cool. That won’t, however, erase the perjury. He even made up the hotel where he claimed he stayed!
Like I said, Flynn is a tragic figure. He was brilliant at killing terrorists and, as a result, was thrust into a position where he had no business. And when it became apparent he didn’t belong there, instead of letting him retire quietly, ODNI humiliated and fired him. And everything since then is a product of that betrayal. Flynn is a mess, and he’s left a trail of bad decisions all over the world. And he’s in a mess of trouble. Congress didn’t accept his immunity offer, but I’m guessing FBI might be interested in what he has to say.
“He was brilliant at killing terrorists and, as a result, was thrust into a position where he had no business.”
What is your source? Did you work in the Obama administration?
Here’s what Flynn had to say about his firing as DNI chief while during the Obama administration:
Two years ago, I was called into a meeting with the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and the director of national intelligence, and after some “niceties,” I was told by the USDI that I was being let go from DIA. It was definitely an uncomfortable moment (I suspect more for them than me).
I asked the DNI (Gen. James Clapper) if my leadership of the agency was in question and he said it was not; had it been, he said, they would have relieved me on the spot.
I knew then it had more to do with the stand I took on radical Islamism and the expansion of al Qaeda and its associated movements. I felt the intel system was way too politicized, especially in the Defense Department. After being fired, I left the meeting thinking, “Here we are in the middle of a war, I had a significant amount of combat experience (nearly five years) against this determined enemy on the battlefield and served at senior levels, and here it was, the bureaucracy was letting me go.”
Now if you have another account of why he was fired, I’d like to know.
As to the rest of your speculations– it looks to me like the classic moving the goalposts. The Russia collusion story has fallen apart, so it’s on to finding another story that might stick.
That should have been DIA chief, not DNI chief.
Eli Lake, a Bloomberg View columnist and veteran national security reporter well sourced in the White House, told the Free Beacon that Flynn earned a reputation in the Obama administration as one of its top detractors.
“Michael Flynn was one of the Obama administration’s fiercest critics after he was forced out of the Defense Intelligence Agency,” said Lake, who described “the political assassination of Michael Flynn” in his column published early Tuesday.
“[Flynn] was a withering critic of Obama’s biggest foreign policy initiative, the Iran deal,” Lake said. “He also publicly accused the administration of keeping classified documents found in the Osama bin Laden raid that showed Iran’s close relationship with al Qaeda. He was a thorn in their side.”
In case you don’t want to take Flynn’s word on why he was fired.
I have learned not to trust the media. As some call it, the enemedia.
And just to put a bow on “Flynn and the Nuclear Deal”– Obama nixed the idea to build American reactors and partner with Russia to handle the waste. So the Saudis inked a deal with Russia for 16 nuclear plants. Hmmmm. So much collusion going on. But isn’t the guy that gives the deal to the Russians usually they guy that’s colluding? That would be Obama.
plus; Trump aside… the hysteria makes me nervous since the left projects so much. Trump a fascist and major campaign to discredit his legitimacy? What are you planning lefties?
if I am a colluder with Russia, if I make the first move to accuse my opponents of colluding with Russia, there will be two benefits for me.
1st my political opponents would be too busy defending themselves of the accusations they wouldn’t have time to dig up my dirt with Russia to use against me.
2nd in politics, it is very difficult to accuse your accusers of the same charges that they are accusing you of, perhaps it is the copycat factor or something. Leftists understand that and that is why they make accusations very often and casually because being the first to accuse someone of something give them the exclusive use of that fighting word and put them into a strategic advantage.
Trump counter-claiming the word fake news marks the first time liberals have lost control of a fighting word they have coined, don’t know if it was just luck or trump was truly playing4d chess but he in fact did something right there that no conservatives have done before.
Get dumped by Trum, get dumped on by Comey, then having to ask the Deep State for salvation.. makes sense.
Trump counter-claiming the word fake news marks the first time liberals have lost control of a fighting word they have coined, don’t know if it was just luck or trump was truly playing4d chess but he in fact did something right there that no conservatives have done before.
Trum is copy catting the rest of us, who told you all that the media wasn’t the 4th estate, that there is no 4th estate in the US Constitution, and that there is no class of humans called the “free press”.
The main sewer media was always propaganda. But you only jumped on the band wagon when your AUTHORITY LEADERS told you to jump on the wagon.
That’s a human problem, not a Demoncrat problem.
Media is not the 4th estate when they try to dethrone an legitimately elected president with fabricated leaks, lies and conspiracy, they are acting as the emperor trying overturn the democracy, it was treason, period.
Exposing wrongdoings of government and falsifing nonexistent evidence to falsely accuse a legitimately elected president, such as knowing full well he was not under any investigation why lying to the public he was, are two different things. We have enough lying untrustworthy politicians, do we really need a lying untrustworthy fourth estate too? To protect the fourth estate the right is weeding out the bad seeds.
No one says to shut down CNN with government power or something, we are not anti free speech like democrats, but when they lie or being inconsistent it needs to be called out or their lies will become the truth when it gets repeated long enough, like the saying that conservatives are racists. I am Chinese living in America I can attest to the fact that conservatives are No more racist than liberals
“No, we can’t expose CNN’s lies because we need people to trust the media”. Why do we want people to continue to trust an agency with a track record of lying? We need to teach people to be sceptical with everyone, both government and news, and both politicians you love and hate.
Hey Dave, apropos of our conversation about sexual perversion among liberals, I coincidentally came across this sad article I thought you’d be interested in:
https://newrepublic.com/article/142999/silence-lambs-protestants-concealing-catholic-size-sexual-abuse-scandal
It even contextualizes your comment about the Duggars:
Allegations of sexual misconduct have also engulfed four of fundamentalism’s most venerated patriarchs. Doug Phillips, a prominent leader of the Christian homeschooling movement, was forced to step down in 2013 from his nationwide ministry, Vision Forum, after he was sued by a former nanny who claimed he groomed her as a teenager to be his “personal sex object.” The following year, Bill Gothard, founder of the influential Institute in Basic Life Principles, resigned amid more than 30 allegations of sexual harassment and molestation by former staffers, interns, and volunteers. In the first case to cross over into the cultural mainstream, Josh Dugger, the beloved eldest son of reality TV’s favorite fundamentalist family, fell into disgrace in 2015 with the revelation that he had molested five underage girls, including four of his sisters. And this July, the chief of another fundamentalist reality-TV clan, Toby Willis, is scheduled to stand trial on four counts of child rape.
Republicans are full of perverts, democrats are full of perverts, but democrats is the only party accusing the other party of raging wars against women, do you understand what hypocrisy is? When Democrats weaponize identity politics to attack the other party as sexist and claimed the moral high ground as champions for women to win votes from people who voted for them because they believed Democrats respect women better they should start behaving better themselves or they are crooks guilty of false advertisement
remember how rachel Maddow in her show defended Anthony Weiner? I wasn’t saying there wasn’t perverts among republicans, I was saying when a pervert republican is exposed republicans were usually quick to denounce him, contrary to that Liberals they would keep on defending this pervert and give him chances after chances.
The Democrats is f**k up party. Democrats never care about upward mobility that is the only way to truly lift a person out of poverty. the goal of democrats is to give a thousand dollar of entitlement not from their pockets but from the taxpayers to keep a poor person alive to win his vote for eternity but not enough to get him out of poverty. The welfare destroy any incentive for this person to improve himself to get a better job with better prospect and salary because he is complacent with what the democrats gave him and forever obliged to vote democrat worrying if democrats don’t win he would lose his livelihood not knowing that inside he has the ability to do better. Its insane that there are still people like Somebody who still can’t seems to see through what the democrats have been doing for the last 60 years. I am still a registered democrat on my voter card because I still don’t see myself as republican, I only support Trump, and even i can see through it. Have democrats ever talked about the debt or upward mobility? it is always about minimum wage and entitlements or women not talking responsibility to prevent unexpected pregnancy and demanding the government to pay for her abortion after a foolish night with a stranger.
I don’t have time to double check my grammar so please excuse all my grammatical mistakes. I started learning English late so I accepted that my English will never achieve native level.
Hey man, your English is fantastic. No need to apologize. I wish I could speak another language as well as you write in English.
I think the key difference regarding the “hypocrisy” issue is that Democrats have staked out policy positions that are more conducive to the interests of women as women, so when they’re critiquing Republicans, they’re taking about policy differences, not about the behavior of politicians as politicians.
I think people, in general, are prone to acting terribly when given the chance. That is, the common thread isn’t republican or democrat, it’s “people with money, power, and fame” who do things like this, regardless of affiliation. We should be suspicious of all powerful people, whether they’re on our “side” or not.
If I am conservatives i would reframe the abortion issue as this, should women shoulder the responsibility to prevent unexpected pregnancy? If they do, and an unexpected pregnancy is her failing to commit to her responsibility to protect her body from unexpected pregnancy, why should the taxpayers be punished by her mistake? If there is no punishment for her mistakes, and the taxpayers pay for everything to get her out of her trouble, how do we slow the trend of women making foolish decisions and discourage this vile behavior? The real answer is democrats don’t want unexpected pregnancy to decrease, because the abortion doctors are all liberals and their profits and luxurious lifestyles are all tied to giving abortion to women as many as possible. They hijacked breast cancer and other female disease treatment with abortion and put it all under planned parenthood and give the illusion to the public that if you get rid of abortion you get rid of all other treatments as well, why can’t planned parenthood eliminate the abortion practice only while keeping all other treatments to keep government funding, no because the other treatments was provided only as a cover to protect planned parenthood’s true intent and only real purpose, to give abortion to women because abortion is a big business with millions of operations per year and they can’t make a living but providing nonabortion treatments only, its all about money for democrats, they are the most greedy people while pretending to be compassionate, will they still be compassionate if abortion doesn’t make them money?
Re: welfare, I do think that welfare has an effect on productivity at the margins. What I mean by that is: take a look at, for example, the Persian Gulf states, which are welfare states taken to the extreme and which have produced populations that are unwilling and unable to do anything productive at all. But I think it’s a mistake to confuse our fairly small welfare state with theirs, and I think the negative effects are dramatically outweighed by the positive benefits.
This isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, a liberal-conservative thing. It’s possible to have a discussion about “a welfare state that ensures a basic level of x for its citizenry by maximizing y benefit and minimizing z cost” without having it be apocalyptic. My favorite conservative in history, Otto von Bismarck, implemented a generous welfare state in imperial Germany precisely because he was trying to turn impoverished workers, who might otherwise turn into revolutionary socialists, into stakeholders of the status quo. )if anyone wants to see what happens to a polity when a significant mass of the working class is marginalized and alienated from the status quo, see: Donald Trump.)
So we fund things like Medicare and Headstart to try to ensure that our children and our grandparents aren’t living in the gutter, and I think that’s ok. We also fund things like the mortgage interest tax deduction, which amounts to welfare for people wealthy enough to invest in real estate. If you’re mad about welfare for the poor, then I hope you are also mad about the parts of our system that amount to welfare for the wealthy, even if we don’t usually talk about them in terms of welfare.
cancer is unpreventable, unexpected pregnancy is, why should taxpayer pay for an expensive mistake that was easily preventable. Rape abortion is fine, so is birth defect, but cease all fundins for abortion as birth control and baby is free of detectable defects. Lets do an exchange, we agree to provide free contraceptive to women in exchange for government cease all funding for birth control abortions, how’s that?
Oh wow, the abortion thing is a little nuts. Abortion doctors are all liberals and liberals like abortions because it makes abortion doctors rich? Cite your work, please.
And you realize that the federal government cannot fund abortions, right? It’s illegal?
Anyway, framing abortion access as welfare vs personal responsibility is an interesting way to look at our system of subsidies. If you enjoy employer-provided health insurance, then you receive subsidies in the form of tax breaks on the employer’s costs, tax breaks on the money you spend on premiums, and tax breaks on any money you set aside for an HSA (if you use one), on top of which are any subsidies you receive through the ACA. That’s a lot of money being spent by tax payers to fund health insurance for people with jobs that offer health insurance! You could even call it “welfare” for people with jobs that provide benefits, since, just like Medicaid or food stamps, it represents the transfer of money from some people to others. That we don’t talk about wealth transfers to the middle and upper classes through heath insurance and mortgage subsidies is both a) distorting any reaonablr discussion our country could have on welfare and b) a huge privilege we enjoy, that we DON’T have to think of ourselves as welfare recipients the way poor people do.
Veritas has already exposed the satanic blood sacrifices of the abortion for profit PP ring.
Trying to “out debate” evil here, is not just a waste of time, but it is falling for the Left’s con. Congratulations, how many cons are humans going to fall for before they grow up and wake up?
No wonder conservatives need to elect and worship their god king trum to save them from the Left.
Look at how their “instincts” “fight” here. No wonder they need a Trum to do their fighting for them, obviously they can’t fight worth a beans against the Left.
We have enough lying untrustworthy politicians, do we really need a lying untrustworthy fourth estate too? To protect the fourth estate the right is weeding out the bad seeds.
Congratulations on being fooled, since you actually talk as if the 4th estate exists in the US Constitution and is legal except when it is traitorous. The very concept of a 4th estate in the US is treasonous.
The media has always been deceiving people like you, and it wasn’t all that hard for them. Everything they ever told you was a lie. Vietnam. Tet. Nixon. All of it.
As for the Catholics, part of their problem is that they are a corrupted form of 1st century AD apostles and churches. The other part of their problem is that they were told Leftists were infiltrating their seminaries as early a 1930s by Bella Dodd, but they ignored the problem or embraced it, now their archbishops are part of Lavender mafia pedo child hunter rings.
There is also the Lucifer angle as exposed by their own exorcists like Martin. So the Left always blames you ,for what they themselves set up, 99% of the time that is so.
I think the biggest problem with the left as least to me is they buy into this notion that there is a group of people making right wing policies because they are evil greedy Vampires with no redeemable qualities and their intention is to enslave every minority in the world. On the right they mostly don’t think like that, most of them agree liberals are good people with too much compassion, and their good intentions were taken advantage of by sweettalks tailored by some truely greedy people with meticulous intents. What happens is Left believe the right are evil people while the right believe the left are misguided people, big difference. That is why the Left is more willing to resort to violence because they believe using violence on truly evil people is perfectly moral, but the right are more willing to engage in discussion because they still believe they can take some senses into the leftists since they are only misguided.
I mean, that sounds really wonderful if true but my actual experience on this actual blog suggests that many conservatives believe liberals are stupid, evil, or some combination of the two.
Not sure where you’re getting the notion that liberals or conservatives are more violent than each other. Violence is an intrinsic part of every human society throughout all of human history.
I think your cancer argument above is interesting, because it suggests that people could expect government support for things that aren’t their fault and “take personal responsibility” for things they choose to do. Setting aside the question of lifestyle vs dumb chance in cancer (how would you distinguish between deserved and undeserved cancer?), I could think of a variety of medical conditions that happen to people through no fault of their own, but still require condition specific care: being young and getting old. If you’re ok with government coverage of people who have medical conditions they didn’t want, then I think we’re getting closer to common ground!
“So we fund things like Medicare and Headstart to try to ensure that our children and our grandparents aren’t living in the gutter” – Somebody
Headstart is a liberal make work program and babysitting service.
Recently released results from the Head Start Impact Study indicate that the benefits of participating in Head Start almost completely disappear by first grade…Congress and the Obama Administration should focus on terminating, consolidating, and reforming existing preschool and child care programs to better serve children’s needs and to improve efficiency for taxpayers.
http://www.heritage.org/education/report/head-start-earns-f-no-lasting-impact-children-first-grade
I give you’re assertion that Headstart keeps people out of the gutter three pinocchios.
—–
Insurance premiums pre-tax–“That’s a lot of money being spent by tax payers to fund health insurance for people with jobs that offer health insurance! You could even call it “welfare” for people with jobs that provide benefits, since, just like Medicaid or food stamps, it represents the transfer of money from some people to others.”- Somebody
Paying less taxes on an essential item (health insurance) is not “welfare” like Medicaid or food stamps that is a direct transfer of money to people that may pay no income taxes.
I give that four pinocchios.
——-
“And you realize that the federal government cannot fund abortions, right? It’s illegal?” – Somebody
That’s not exactly true anymore, thanks to the ACA. People on exchanges that receive taxpayer subsidies to purchase policies that cover elective abortions do pay a surcharge that ostensibly pays for the abortion. But to say that a person receiving a taxpayer subsidized insurance policy but then using their private money to pay for the abortion through the tax surcharge is disingenuous. And everyone that purchases one of those plans pays the surcharge.
I give it two pinocchios.
http://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/obamacares-many-loopholes-forcing-individuals-and-taxpayers-fund-elective
Somebody:
In the interests of clarity of communication, you should say who you are addressing when you are responding to a particular comment—as I just did with you.
People here talk about the Rule of Law as salvation the same way the Pharisees talked about the Law of Moses when accusing Jesus of Nazareth as being a demon empowered false prophet.
There is nothing new under this sun.
On the right they mostly don’t think like that, most of them agree liberals are good people with too much compassion, and their good intentions were taken advantage of by sweettalks
To Dave, people used to believe that for the most part. But as Some boy noticed, some of them, especially here, no longer do.
Let’s try to put that into perspective with a thought experiment: “Ymar believes most liberals are…” can’t even finish that line.
Some boys can’t claim ignorance of the evils of Planned Profit, since Veritas has shown them the videos. It is their choice to watch, not watch, accept, or reject the truth of their own evil cult and messianic transhumanistic socialist satanic nazi cult.
Brian,
My children have both been through an exceptional headstart-run preschool program that’s sufficiently better than other options that people will maintain multiple addresses in order to count in our jurisdiction to participate in the program.
Somebody,
How do low income folks keep multiple addresses to qualify for a particular Headstart program?
If Headstart helps poor adults to be better parents, that may be a more significant achievement than any transient benefits to the children and could certainly be done more efficiently at less cost.
We spend a boatload of money on school programs that have done little to nothing to improve student outcomes.
One that Obama initiated, the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program shoveled money ($7 billion) to failing schools and the report after 5 years by Obama’s own education department gave it an F.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/obama-administration-spent-billions-to-fix-failing-schools-and-it-didnt-work/2017/01/19/6d24ac1a-de6d-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html?utm_term=.d85d6d2faaa2