US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9621

On January 03 2018 08:25 farvacola wrote:
Romney being consistently anti-Trump basically makes him a de-facto Democrat anyway

On January 03 2018 08:27 Mohdoo wrote:


Abortion makes this impossible. It always all comes down to abortion.

On January 03 2018 08:20 RenSC2 wrote:
The Democrats could try to recruit Mitt Romney in Utah. Be the big tent with a variety of ideas and just leave the Republicans with the crazies. More than just the seat, it would indicate that Democrats are willing to work with real conservatives against the bullshit populists with no actually sound ideas. I don't think Romney would go for it, but perhaps his loathing of Trump would help flip him.

Obamacare is just national Romneycare after all.

The Department of the Interior (DOI) says it made a mistake by trying to use wildfire preparedness funds to pay for an unrelated helicopter tour of Nevada taken by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke this summer.

Officials initially said Zinke’s July 30 helicopter trip could be covered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the National Interagency Fire Center, a hub for the organization of response to wildfires—even though the secretary did not visit any fire zones that day, according to internal emails obtained by Newsweek.

But after Newsweek questioned the line item, an Interior Department spokeswoman said this week that the chopper—listed in an accounting of Zinke’s travel as costing $39,295—“was charged to the account in error.” She added that the BLM would pay for the helicopter from “a more appropriate account.”

Asked why the original billing was in error, the spokeswoman, Heather Swift, replied, “There are different accounts for different functions, and it’s the department’s position that there are more appropriate accounts to fit this particular expenditure.”

She declined to comment further.

Zinke, a former Montana congressman and Navy SEAL, was criticized last month by his own agency’s inspector general for an incomplete accounting of his travel through September 30, the end of the fiscal year.

The secretary has also been questioned for combining official trips with political activity, including attending a Republican party fundraiser in the Virgin Islands in March and taking a $12,000 flight from Las Vegas to Montana, where he spoke to a hockey team owned by a political donor.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the group Democracy Forward and shared with Newsweek show that on July 10, Swift emailed a group of colleagues, saying, “I think we should get the Secretary to a fire line in Nevada while he is there. The BLM is point on a couple fires out there. May have to leave a day early but I think it’s worth it.”

Swift also requested and received information on wildfire sites in the state.

In a July 17 exchange, a staffer said Zinke would probably not be able to get to a Nevada fire line because his schedule wouldn’t allow it. Nonetheless, shortly afterward another planner emailed that “it looks like BLM will be able to pay for the helicopter out of the national fire office in Boise,” and organizers cited a specific billing code.

In response to Newsweek questions about the trip and billing, Swift said in a December 21 email that “everything was scheduled in full compliance of all federal regulations.”

Zinke, she said, “used a helicopter to do an aerial survey of more than 700,000 acres of land which has extremely limited road access.”

Swift added that the Interior Department had made footage of and information about the Nevada trip available on its website. She added that “the only newsworthy item is that this secretary has sharply curbed the use of chartered airplanes compared to the previous administration, which spent over a million dollars on chartered airplanes.”

Details of Zinke’s Nevada journey appear in a summary of his noncommercial air travel compiled at the request of Utah Representative Ron Bishop, chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources. The round trip from Las Vegas is listed with the purpose of “aerial survey of objects and boundaries pertaining to the 704,000 acres in Basin and Range National Monument and the 300,000 acres in Gold Butte National Monument.”

“Zinke’s visit to Nevada started early,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal said in a roundup of the secretary’s day, which ran with a photo gallery of him speaking to a gaggle of reporters with a cowboy hat shading his face from the sun. “After his flight landed in Las Vegas at about 7:30 a.m., Zinke flew by helicopter to Gold Butte’s Whitney Pocket, where he hiked with several local officials.”

According to the itinerary cited by the Review-Journal, that was to be followed by a helicopter tour of Basin and Range, lunch with land management staff and other stops.

This July, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information, 9,000 fires burned more than 2.6 million acres around the country. That ratio of more than 295 acres burned per fire was the fourth highest on record, the agency reported.

In September, the Agriculture Department announced that due to fires that had “ravaged states in the West, Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies” over the summer, wildland fire suppression costs for the fiscal year had surpassed $2 billion, “making 2017 the most expensive year on record.”

A BLM official confirmed to Newsweek on Wednesday that the codes cited for the Zinke flights meant they were billed to the National Interagency Fire Center under the category of preparedness. Those funds are earmarked for such uses as worker pay and to purchase equipment.

He added that neither Zinke’s use of the helicopter nor the billing of the trip to the fire center negatively affected ground workers’ response to “three large fires” in Nevada on the day of the secretary’s visit.

Zinke ultimately recommended shrinking not only Gold Butte in Nevada but other Western national monuments, including Bears Ears in Utah and Cascade-Siskiyou in Oregon and California. His Gold Butte recommendation angered conservationists but was hailed by Nevada Senator Dean Heller and the head of a local water district.

On January 03 2018 08:39 zlefin wrote:

politically infeasible; the democrats are having issues with fraying between its own wings already; it can't expand enough to include republicans like romney without losing the progressive/sanders-esque groups.

On January 03 2018 07:49 sc-darkness wrote:
Why can't this guy shut up for once and not call him Rocket-man? North Korea might do the opposite to show they're not threatened. Not that I'm a fan of them, but reverse psychology isn't uncommon.

On January 03 2018 08:50 Danglars wrote:

The fact that people like you get upset about his use of rocket man perpetuates his use of rocket man. Compare with Pocahontas. His twitter feed lives to enrage others (when he isn’t pandering to his base and self-congratulating). The worst response is getting triggered.

On January 03 2018 08:51 Gahlo wrote:

Enraging others is pandering to his base.

On January 03 2018 08:56 Simberto wrote:


Yes, i guess one really can not expect the president of the united states to act in a different way than a 4chan troll.

On January 03 2018 09:03 Danglars wrote:

Just remember, the government became the puritanical despots first. Then the 4chan troll got elected to slaughter a few sacred cows. Oops, shouldn’t have run Hillary. Condolences and better luck next time.

On January 03 2018 09:07 Simberto wrote:


Neither did i run Hillary, nor did i elect the 4chan troll.

But you seem to be happy to have a 4chan troll as a president. That is the weird thing. Why would you be happy about that?

On January 03 2018 09:14 micronesia wrote:
Danglers is there anything in this universe that you don't blame the liberals for? It's the liberals' fault Trump was elected (vice the people who voted for him). It's the liberals' fault Trump calls Kim Jong Un little rocket man (because they get triggered by it). What happened to the principle of personal responsibility?

Perhaps you would say it's Trump's fault he made the tweet, but the liberals simply have the power to prevent it too... I guess that would be a bit more reasonable... not sure if that's where you were going then.

On January 03 2018 09:28 Danglars wrote:

If I had blinked, I would’ve missed all the nuance being thrown out the window. Yes, if you narrowly focus Trump with your permanent horse blinders, he’s ridiculous and blameworthy. But the overall arc of history doesn’t allow for a reality TV star to accidentally ascend to the presidency. Oops. Better focus in on how his behavior proceeds from his will to that behavior!!!

I say you’re pathetic and you’re better than this. And you can spell my name properly lol.

Are you at all interested in more than the trollish “Trump’s bad, let’s all chant it until 2020” until it’s all gone. Because I’ve twice insulted Trump in past posts today and maybe that’s internet invisible ink to you.

Furthermore, I’ve half a mind to adopt your own myopic focus until smelling salts revive your broader understanding. Why are you so intent on ignoring history to blame Trump for the worlds ills? Is it deliberate or accidental?

On January 03 2018 09:38 micronesia wrote:
Funny how this doesn't address my thought that the blame may lay more with the people who voted for him than the liberals who presumably didn't. You turned it on to me being at fault, presumably because you think I'm a liberal...?

I just did it to trigger you. If you stop getting triggered perhaps I won't do it. It is clearly your fault, not mine.

This has nothing to do with ignoring history. I'm not saying the democratic party doesn't also have their share of blame in whatever you are talking about. I'm just saying you are acting like the liberals are more to blame than others who should quite obviously be more to blame.

Calling me pathetic is also rather telling, even if you hedged a bit with "you're better than this."