WhatTheBuck

She’s the most powerful VP in history. More powerful than Dick Cheney.

This isn’t anything new. It was reported by people working with him early on in his administration. There are just things that Trump thinks. Whether they’re true or not isn’t a consideration. Also, as Trump’s first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “He’s a fucking moron.”

Here’s a change of pace:

I didn’t think so given my experience watching MASH. But I wanted to make the joke and Google’s generative AI provided me with the misinformation necessary to make it possible: ”Yes, enlisted personnel in the US military, such as corporals, are expected to salute all officers, including sergeants, as a sign of respect and recognition.”

If only there were some context provided to help answer that question.

The Daily Montanan says it will be indoors at the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse at Montana State University. It also says Trump still owes the city for his last visit. Apparently Mike Pence and Don Jr also made visits that resulted in public expenditures that were not reimbursed. The taxpayer burden Trump’s campaign has been notorious for flaking on bills for security. According to a 2019 report from the Center for Public Integrity, Trump owed more than $840,000 to various city governments, and likely more, as Trump’s campaign does not acknowledge a single one of these city governments as debt in his federal campaign financial disclosures. In Billings, the protective measures put in place for his September 2018 rally resulted in 1,362 overtime hours between Billings PD and the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s office: 951 hours from the former, and 411 hours from the latter, bringing the total cost to $58,830. While the Yellowstone Sheriff’s office did not bill Trump’s campaign for the $12,930 cost it incurred – a standard practice the office follows for all political campaigns – Billings PD did, and as of the publication date of this article, that $45,900 bill has been left unpaid. Earlier that year, Vice President Mike Pence and Donald Trump Jr. also made stops in Billings. The vice president spoke at a public rally on July 25, also at MetraPark, organized by America First Policies. Donald Trump Jr. spoke at the Republican Convention in Billings on June 22. According to an internal memo sent to city council on Sept. 13, 2018, Vice President Mike Pence’s July 25 visit required 647.50 hours of overtime pay, totalling $31,200. Donald Trump Jr.’s visit ran $5,000 in overtime pay, bringing the total amount spent by the Billings Police Department alone on security for Trump’s campaign rallies in Billings in 2018 to $82,100. Billings isn’t alone. Missoula county commissioners also sent a billto the Trump campaign in 2018 for nearly $13,000 for public safety staffing costs. The county requested $10,835.41 for officer salaries, $1,059.26 for dispatcher salaries, $693.72 for Office of Emergency Management salaries, and $334.43 for miscellaneous expenses. According to Missoula County Communications Manager Allison Franz, that bill has also not been paid. Some municipalities, like Great Falls, don’t submit requests for payment, instead eating the cost from their own budgets. The Great Falls Tribune reported Trump’s July 5 visit to Great Falls cost the city, Cascade County and Montana Highway Patrol a total of $57,236, none of which was submitted for payment to Trump’s campaign. In total, in 2018 alone, Trump’s campaign cost various city and state departments – whether they billed for reimbursement and weren’t paid, or never billed at all – at least $150,000 in taxpayer money. “It’s a lot for a budget,” Lennick said. “It’s not something that’s built into our initial budget that we plan every year.” https://dailymontanan.com/2024/08/08/when-trump-comes-to-town-he-brings-excitement-leaves-unpaid-bills/

Imagine how Barron is going to turn out.

I know that’s what you’re saying and the justification you gave is that Israel hasn’t killed all the Palestinians. Hitler didn’t kill all the Jews in Europe. Does that mean the Nazis weren’t engaged in genocide?

They haven’t finished the job yet so it’s not genocide? That’s you’re defense?

Rush Limbaugh said it about Obama.

At the VP debate, will Walz instruct Vance that he should salute a superior officer?

There’s this. Michael Luttig and Jeh Johnson appeared on Deadline White House yesterday to talk about it. I’m not filled with confidence by it, just reporting what I saw. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/01/us/politics/american-bar-association-democracy.html Bipartisan Legal Group Urges Lawyers to Defend Against ‘Rising Authoritarianism’ An American Bar Association task force of prominent legal thinkers gestures at former President Trump without naming him. By Charlie Savage Aug. 1, 2024 A bipartisan American Bar Association task force is calling on lawyers across the country to do more to help protect democracy ahead of the 2024 election, warning in a statement to be delivered Friday at the group’s annual meeting in Chicago that the nation faces a serious threat in “rising authoritarianism.” The statement by a panel of prominent legal thinkers and other public figures — led by J. Michael Luttig, a conservative former federal appeals court judge appointed by President George Bush, and Jeh C. Johnson, a Homeland Security secretary during the Obama administration — does not mention by name former President Donald J. Trump. But in raising alarms, the panel appeared to be clearly referencing Mr. Trump’s attempt to subvert his loss of the 2020 election, which included attacks on election workers who were falsely accused by Mr. Trump and his supporters of rigging votes and culminated in the violent attack on the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. “For the first time in our history, we did not have a peaceful transition of power in our last presidential election,” says the lengthy statement, an advance copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Trump told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in May that he would not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. “If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results. I don’t change on that,” Mr. Trump said. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.” In a joint interview, Judge Luttig and Mr. Johnson said their panel, called the Task Force for American Democracy, has been working for the past year, including meeting with election officials around the country, and developed what they described as a 90-page report proposing structural changes to strengthen elections on matters like the Electoral College and state voting systems. But after the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump last month, they said it was too volatile a time to unveil that broader work. Instead, they decided to save it until 2025 and make a shorter statement at the annual meeting of the A.B.A. about what matters most for democracy in the next three months. Mr. Johnson said the statement does not mention Mr. Trump by name because protecting democracy should be a bipartisan effort. Judge Luttig — who has harshly criticized Mr. Trump, including in testimony before the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 riot — said concerns about the state of American democracy stemmed from the actions of Mr. Trump and “his Republicans,” but that it was important “not to paint all Republicans with the brush of Donald Trump.” The statement specifically urges the more than 1.3 million Americans with law degrees to see it as their responsibility to help defend democracy and the rule of law at a time of misinformation, extreme polarization and the “normalization of political violence” including threats against “elected officials, members of the judicial branch and election workers.” “Too many of us have taken our democracy, our rule of law, our civic norms and our freedoms for granted and have not done the hard work required to keep a free and fair democratic republic. The threats we are facing are real and they are existential,” it says, suggesting steps like volunteering to serve with the Election Official Legal Defense Network. The A.B.A. describes itself as the largest voluntary association of lawyers in the world. While its democracy task force includes a number of liberals, it also includes conservatives mainly associated with the Republican Party before Mr. Trump transformed it. Other conservative-associated members include Thomas B. Griffith, a retired federal appeals court judge; Maureen O’Connor, a former Ohio Supreme Court chief justice; Carly Fiorina, a businesswoman who ran in the 2016 G.O.P. primary; Bill Kristol, a commentator and former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle; Larry Thompson, a former deputy attorney general; and Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer.

They just can’t get Hunter’s dong off their minds.

Nice crowd.

Lol. Oops. I guess I go a little carried away. I was thinking hey, instead of writing “million,” I’ll type out the 0’s to make it more impactful. Then I fell victim to unbridled enthusiasm.

Biden was novel? He’d been in the public eye for 50 years. I think one thing that worked for Biden was that everyone did know him. He was that guy who rode the Amtrak train to work. He was a good, decent fellow prone to verbal gaffes. Trump wasn’t able to make a label stick to him because everyone already knew who he was. Cultists excepted, of course. I don’t know what methodology they used to suggest that anti-Biden messages worked when the fact that he won the election by 8,000,000,000 votes suggests that they didn’t.

It would be fun to watch her tell him he’s not white, he’s orange. “When did you decide to become orange, Donald?”

No. It’s fake.

Exactly. According to the polls, most people thought Hillary won the debates. I was surprised anyone could watch Trump’s despicable behavior and come away thinking he was even remotely fit for office. But I guess it’s just a sorry statement about the electorate. Hillary comes off looking even better in hindsight because all of her predictions about a Trump presidency turned out to be true, starting with him being Putin’s puppet.

Lulz. Yep, that’s the list that Nicolle read on Deadline White House today.

Did you think Trump fared better in the debates than Hillary did?

I was kind of surprised they bothered covering him at all today since I didn’t think it was going to be anything worthwhile. During his administration they stopped carrying Huckabeef’s pressers entirely because she just lied so consistently. They probably showed today’s address because he announced it like it was going to be something meaningful. And yes, they addressed his lies. I can’t find a video clip but before they went to a commercial break, Nicolle Wallace read through a long list of falsehoods delivered by Trump. I didn’t catch the name of the group that put it together. And they frequently talk about the difficulty of fact-checking him in real time because of the firehose of bullshit that he spews

Where did Walz serve, and what did he do in the National Guard? During his service, Walz responded to natural disasters, including floods and tornadoes in Minnesota and Nebraska, and was deployed overseas for months at a time, according to MPR. In 2003, he was sent to Italy, where he served with the European Security Force to support the war in Afghanistan. He was also stationed in Norway for joint training with other NATO militaries. Walz told MPR that he reenlisted in the National Guard after the September 11 attacks but never saw active combat in his years in the military. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/08/06/tim-walz-military-career-national-guard/74685414007/

That explains why they turned him off before it was over.

I’m gonna go with please no, God no, and Hell no. In any order.