TS Don, small, not particularly well organized

LOTS OF HOT AIR! COINKEYDINK?!

https://twitter.com/AP_Politics/status/887100059728347137

if a building on Fifth Ave. is used for an illegal conspiracy with foreign agents

seize the whole building. YES

https://twitter.com/RWPUSA/status/887317281222651904

Washington Law Will Alert Survivors When Domestic Abusers Try to Buy a Gun

On July 23, Washington will require survivors of domestic violence, stalking, or sexual assault be notified if their abuser fails a background check when attempting to purchase a firearm. According to The Trace, Washington will be the first state to enact this form of gun control.

The requirement is part of a broader bill that requires gun dealers to alert the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs after someone fails a background check. That information goes into a database shared with law enforcement, and a statewide notification system will share the news with survivors of domestic or sexual violence with court protections. The bill also dedicates a new grant to fund investigations into anyone who attempts to illegally purchase a firearm.

According to Everytown USA, a gun control advocacy group, more than 50 percent of mass shootings are related to domestic violence. And in cases of domestic violence, if the abuser has access to a gun, the chance that a woman will be fatally shot increases by five times. Federal law prohibits anyone convicted of a felony, anyone under a domestic violence protective order, or anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence from possessing a firearm. However, most states have several loopholes in the law, including one that allows abusers with a non-legally recognized relationship to the victim (a boyfriend or former partner, for example), to purchase guns from unlicensed or private sellers. In states that require background checks on all handgun sales, Everytown notes, “47 percent fewer women are shot by intimate partners.” In 2014, Washington became the first state to require universal background checks on firearm sales.

http://theslot.jezebel.com/washington-law-will-alert-survivors-when-domestic-abuse-1796997467

Why Trump Loyalists Should Care About the Russia Scandal

The president has proven he'll sell out members of his own tribe. He won't hesitate to do the same to his supporters.

There’s a famous line in President Donald Trump’s real estate manifesto, The Art of the Deal, where he posits an incompatibility between public ethics and the kind of personal loyalty his McCarthyite mentor Roy Cohn supposedly exhibited. Cohn, Trump wrote, would “go to bat for you, even if he privately disagreed with your view, and even if defending you wasn’t necessarily the best thing for him.... Just compare that with all the hundreds of ‘respectable’ guys who make careers out of boasting about their uncompromising integrity but have absolutely no loyalty. They think only about what’s best for them and don’t think twice about stabbing a friend in the back if the friend becomes a problem.”

In the real world, the tension Trump hints at between playing by the rules and playing for a team aren’t nearly as severe as he implies. But the idea that integrity and tribalism are mutually exclusive moral codes is an enormously powerful one. I believe it is the source of Trump’s greatest strength and weakness in his unexpected stint at the highest level of public service. It speaks to one of the questions bedeviling American politics as the Trump-Russia collusion scandal boils over: Why do his core supporters not seem to care about conduct that is so obviously beneath the standards we have set, through law and custom, for the presidency?

https://newrepublic.com/article/143906/trump-loyalists-care-russia-scandal?utm_content=bufferd91ea&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Ron Johnson Accuses McConnell of 'Significant Breach of Trust'

Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, a Republican wildcard in the upper chamber’s health reform discussions, accused majority leader Mitch McConnell Friday of being duplicitous in his struggle to assemble 50 yea votes to pass the Better Care Reconciliation Act.

Johnson told the Green Bay Press-Gazette that the legislation’s changes to Medicaid were reasons for uneasy conservatives to support the bill. But he said that McConnell was representing the Medicaid overhaul as a façade, though he didn’t cite examples. “If our leader is basically saying don't worry about it, we've designed it so that those reforms will never take effect, first of all, that's a pretty significant breach of trust, and why support the bill then?” Johnson asked.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/ron-johnson-accuses-mcconnell-of-significant-breach-of-trust/article/2008883

Insurer UnitedHealth's quarterly profit beats estimates

UnitedHealth, the largest U.S. health insurer, reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit, driven by growth across its businesses and raised its full-year earnings forecast.

The insurer's results comes after a second attempt to pass a health-care legislation in the Senate collapsed late on Monday, with U.S. President Donald Trump calling for an outright repeal of Obamacare and others seeking a change in direction toward bipartisanship.

UnitedHealth, which sells employer-based insurance as well as Medicare and Medicaid, said net earnings attributable to shareholders rose to $2.28 billion, or $2.32 per share, in the second quarter ended June 30, from $1.75 billion or $1.81 per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, UnitedHealth earned $2.46 per share, beating average estimate of $2.38, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/18/insurer-unitedhealths-quarterly-profit-rises-30-percent.html

If a drunk Trumpster cornered you in a bar

(over-enunciating every word to sound “sober”), it would sound like this:

https://twitter.com/BettyBowers/status/886633224826441729

If only EVERYONE was packing

Story of Varn brothers' killings at family's Plant City (FL) ranch reads like Old West shoot-em-up

SNIP

Milton pulled up near Perry's Polaris and got out of the Escape. He wore a camouflage-patterned Columbia shirt and dirty blue jeans rolled up over brown cowboy boots. He held a rusty black Ruger .44-caliber revolver in one hand and a green Kel-Tec 22-caliber semi-automatic pistol in the other.

Perry Varn reached for a Ruger rifle he had with him in the Polaris, but there was no time. Milton fired at least twice.

Long pulled his .38 caliber Ruger pistol from his pocket and Joanne drew her Smith and Wesson .22-caliber revolver. The couple ran around to the back side of Long's pickup.

Long, 72, said he stood up to peer over the truck's bed.

"When I did, he shot me," he told Remia later. "And I went down."

Joanne Varn said Milton pulled the Escape around the other side of the pickup and pointed both guns at her. He reminded her he had told her stay away.

Fearing for her life, Joanne Varn pulled the trigger on her .22 caliber, but it didn't fire. Hammer marks on the rounds indicated she pulled the trigger six times. She threw the gun to the ground.


The whole sordid tale:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/story-of-varn-brothers--killings-at-familyas-plant-city-ranch-reads-like/2330492

In case you were wondering when it IS appropriate to say, "You're in such good shape...beautiful,"..

TRUMP VOTERS WHINE THAT THEYRE SCARED TO DEATH OF TRUMPCARE

FORGET THEY GOT EXACTLY WHAT THEY ASKED FOR (VIDEO)

More and more Trump voters are feeling buyer’s remorse after they let their desire to ban Muslims from entering the country and build a gigantic wall to keep those inferior brownish people to the south from coming into their pristine white country.

Sure, it was all fun and games when it was all Muslim bans this and MAGA that — but now shit is getting real for the “poorly educated” people who voted for The Donald.

On Thursday, “FAKE NEWS” (or whatever mean hashtag Trump is tweeting these days) CNN hosted a panel of people who have been betrayed by Donald Trump after they trusted him to lead the country — and now that their healthcare is threatened, they suddenly think there might be a problem with putting a kakistocrat in office because he caters to the worst in all of them.

“I have bipolar disorder, it’s a pretty severe case,” Colleen England Byrd — a woman who is suddenly “scared” now that Trump has made good on his promise to do his everything to ruin healthcare. “And if he takes that away — Medicaid people, Medicare people, no medications, no doctors — it’s going to be like the zombie apocalypse, really running-through-the-streets crazy.”

http://oppositionreport.com/trump-voters-whine-that-theyre-scared-to-death-of-trumpcare-forget-they-got-exactly-what-they-asked-for-video/