Jenny Nicholson

Warning, Infinity War Spoilers.

Dr. Strange v. Thanos

Shuri is Dusted!

No, really. The promotional posters include a variety of characters in solo portraits. The living ones like Cap and Tony (and most importantly Natasha Romanoff) are in color, the others in Black and White.

Shuri is in Black and White.

Adjust your Reddit speculations.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

An accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant; Former President Dwight Eisenhower dies; The Spanish Civil War ends; Maria von Trapp of ‘Sound of Music’ fame dies; Singer Reba McEntire born.

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!

Tennessee Williams

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Republicans can’t destroy the safety net. So they’re making it an instrument of misery.
By Paul Waldman, Washington Post
March 27, 2019

Americans, it turns out, think very highly of Medicaid and were extremely resistant to the Republicans’ idea of kicking millions of people off the program.

They haven’t stopped trying, but in the absence of a repeal of the ACA, they’re pursuing an alternate tack to undermining Medicaid, one that has the added benefit of making the lives of poor people more stressful even if they manage to stay on the program. And it’s part of a broad Republican effort at both the national and state levels, one that amounts to a veritable war on poor Americans.

To see what that war produces, I refer you to an absolutely brutal account by Amy Goldstein of a program Arkansas has instituted with the blessing of the Trump administration to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients.

Work requirements sound good to many people on first glance — after all, shouldn’t people work if they’re able? — but in practice, they amount to the creation of a bureaucratic maze that recipients have to navigate, with the slightest misstep threatening to cost you your health coverage.
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Last year, the administration sent a letter to every state Medicaid director, urging them to enact work requirements so they could do the same thing to their own poor citizens that Arkansas has done to theirs. Kentucky’s work requirements have been held up by a lawsuit, Indiana’s are getting started, and programs in Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Michigan and Arizona are on their way. Other Republican-run states can’t wait to join.

The likely result will be hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Americans losing health coverage. And the president signed an executive order instructing agencies to create as many work requirements as possible to impose on low-income Americans who use food stamps, housing subsidies and other kinds of assistance.

We have to say a word about the philosophy that drives these kind of steps. On one level, if we’re talking about health care, it gets to whether you think it should be something everyone gets without questions asked — like an education through high school — or whether it’s something that should be a function of how much money you have, not just what kind you get but whether you’re allowed even a basic version.

Conservatives plainly see it as the latter. But more to the point, if it’s politically impossible to just take all government health care away from people, they’ll do what they can to make sure it comes with a dose of suffering and shame. You’ll have to navigate a bureaucratic maze to prove you’re worthy of the benefit, with the possibility of losing it always there — which adds stress and anxiety to people whose lives are already saturated with both.

And some would even like to impose drug testing on recipients, not because there’s some kind of drug problem among people on Medicaid but just to say that if we’re going to give you the privilege of health coverage, you’ll have to endure some humiliation along with it, just so it’s clear what society thinks of you.

You may say that’s a harsh caricature of conservative beliefs. But I’d encourage you to see it through a broader lens. One way to do that would be to tune into Fox Business any day, where you’ll hear panegyrics to the noble “job creators,” those who amassed their billions through nothing but hard work and pure hearts. If you truly believe that wealth is a sign of virtue — and conservatives certainly seem to — then the flip side is that those who don’t have any must be morally unworthy, their station in life the product of only their own sins and sloth.

So of course when government deals with those people, it should shower them with the contempt they deserve. That’s what drives these policies: If they can’t destroy the safety net, Republicans will add as much misery to it as they can muster.

So, Calvinist Pre-Destination and the Protestant Work Ethic.

If Yahweh is omniscient then he’s known since the beginning of time who are the Elect 144.000 who will be spared the Fiery Lake of Eternal Damnation (seems like a large number if you live in the Bronze Age but not much in comparison with the roughly 8 Billion people alive today).

Mortals are not blessed with omniscience, how then are they supposed to know if they’re living a virtuous life and will be spared at Judgement?

Simple. Yahweh is known to reward the Righteous, therefore if you are materially prosperous it is a sign of Yahweh’s favor.

But ek, what about all the Jesus stuff? Camel through the Eye of a Needle, That which you did for the Least of these, those kinds of things.

Socialist propaganda by Atheists looking to destroy your faith in the name of Satan.

I’m telling you, I did 10 years in a Fundamentalist Evangelical (Methodist) Sunday School and I remember my lessons better than some. My teachers hated me, couldn’t wait to see me leave.

Most people I know who are on Medicaid work very, very hard just getting through the day without dying.

Reports of the demise of the Mueller Russia Treason Plot Investigation are somewhat exaggerated.

The case against Trump’s corruption will continue to build
By Greg Sargent, Washington Post
March 27, 2019

One glaring analytical error we’re seeing in the coverage of Robert S. Mueller III’s findings is the idea that we’re suddenly in a “post-Mueller” political world. The suggestion is that there’s been a sudden, clean break from a rapidly-receding past in which the special counsel’s activity threatened President Trump, to a new future in which it does not.

The reality is quite different. In fact, while Mueller’s no-conspiracy finding does close one chapter of this affair, the Mueller probe and its spinoffs added substantial new material to the building case against Trump’s corruption, and it has spawned other investigations that will keep that process moving forward.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is hoping to seize this moment to redouble the focus on Trump’s corruption. As a top-tier Democratic presidential candidate, Warren is well positioned to try to ensure that this is central to the case against Trump’s reelection in 2020.

On Wednesday, Warren will introduce in the Senate a sweeping measure called the Presidential Conflicts of Interest Act, which requires the president, vice president, and their close family members to divest in all financial interests that create conflicts of interest, and place them in a blind trust.

The bill would also bar presidential appointees from participating in matters involving the president’s financial interests, and would require the president and major party presidential nominees to release three years of tax returns.

“Corruption has always been the central stain of this presidency,” Warren said in a statement emailed to me. “This bill would force President Trump to fully divest from the same Trump properties and assets that special interests have spent two-plus years patronizing to try and curry favor with this administration — all while lining the President’s pockets.”
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Trump’s corruption provides a natural focal point for Democrats going forward after the conclusion of the Mueller investigation. That’s because this conclusion does not mean “total exoneration” for Trump in the slightest.

Due all these investigations and their consequences, Trump has been implicated in a criminal hush-money scheme to pay off women alleging affairs, and we’ve learned he tried to negotiate an enormous real estate deal with the Kremlin’s help while Republican voters were picking their 2016 nominee — and lied to America about both.

We have also learned from Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen that Trump may have gamed his assets for insurance and tax fraud purposes — and that clues to these potential crimes may lie in his tax returns. Cohen also says those returns might shed light on his family’s extensive history of tax fraud.

All that has led to a plethora of other investigations into multiple Trump organizations, which largely grew out of the Mueller investigation. Some of what we learned has created new avenues of inquiry for House Democrats, who are looking into everything from Trump’s role in the hush-money scheme, to whether Trump’s lawyers coached Cohen to lie to Congress about his Moscow project, to his financial entanglements with Russia. What we’ve learned should also spur Democrats to press for Trump’s tax returns.

For all the triumphalism among Trumpists right now, it’s at least possible that if more is released on what Mueller actually found — or if Democrats can pry that loose by subpoena — it could add fodder for those inquiries.

Given that the White House is resisting all Democratic subpoena requests — something that we should remember in tandem with likely Trump efforts to keep Mueller’s findings buried — it’s hard to say where all this will end up. But one thing that’s clear is that the focus on Trump’s corruption will continue to intensify and broaden.

‘Undoubtedly there is collusion’: Trump antagonist Adam Schiff doubles down after Mueller finds no conspiracy
By Karoun Demirjian, Washington Post
March 26, 2019

“Undoubtedly there is collusion,” Schiff said in an interview this week, after Attorney General William P. Barr submitted a four-page letter to Congress summarizing key aspects of Mueller’s report. “We will continue to investigate the counterintelligence issues. That is, is the president or people around him compromised in any way by a hostile foreign power? . . . It doesn’t appear that was any part of Mueller’s report.”
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This week, the Trump campaign singled out Schiff, along with Intelligence Committee member Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), on a list of people it urged media outlets to avoid booking for interviews after Barr announced Mueller’s findings, according to reports. The list includes House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and former CIA director John Brennan, both of whom, like Schiff, have infuriated the president with their public scrutiny and criticism.

Though Barr’s summary has cast doubt on the premise of the Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe, at least among Republicans, Democrats maintain that Schiff is not wrong in saying there was evidence of collusion even if Mueller determined that the matter did not rise to a level that warranted prosecution.

“It doesn’t mean there wasn’t an enormous amount of smoke there,” said Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a member of the Intelligence Committee. “This was a fine legal distinction Mr. Mueller had to make.”

Still, Schiff has taken steps to put the panel’s investigation on hold, pending the release of Mueller’s findings. On Monday, he announced that the committee had indefinitely postponed a planned hearing with Felix Sater, a former business associate of the president’s who was involved with the pursuit to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Schiff said the pause is temporary, adding that the intelligence panel might still uncover “deeply compromising” evidence in its counterintelligence investigation that falls outside the scope of Mueller’s criminal probe. He pledged that his panel, in partnership with the House Financial Services Committee, would continue to explore allegations of money laundering involving Trump’s properties and loans his business sought through Deutsche Bank.

Mueller grand jury ‘continuing robustly,’ prosecutor says
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN, Politico
03/27/2019

The special counsel’s grand jury investigating Russian collusion into the 2016 presidential election is “continuing robustly” despite the end of Robert Mueller’s probe, a federal prosecutor said in court Wednesday.

David Goodhand, an assistant U.S. attorney, acknowledged the grand jury’s active status during a hearing in federal district court over a push to unveil the identity of a foreign-owned company that has been held in contempt for defying a Mueller subpoena.

The mystery company’s case was denied a hearing earlier this week before the Supreme Court, and in the meantime the open government group Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press has sought access to all materials in the clandestine litigation, including the company’s identity.

During a brief open hearing Wednesday, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court, Beryl Howell, pressed Goodhand to say if the grand jury Mueller had been using in the case remained active.

“It is continuing,” the prosecutor replied. “It’s continuing robustly.”

The fact the grand jury is continuing its work adds a new layer of uncertainty to the Mueller probe, which Attorney General William Barr announced on Friday was finished.

Barr also released a four-page summary explaining the special counsel had not found a conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia to sway the election. But Barr also noted that Mueller had not reached a conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice.
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Mueller’s office in recent days has been handing off a series of its cases to federal prosecutors across the government as it closes up shop, including the mystery subpoena fight that’s been ongoing since last year.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., where Goodhand works is now leading the subpoena fight, as well as Mueller’s upcoming trial in November against longtime Trump associate Roger Stone.

Mueller spokesman Peter Carr declined to comment on the federal prosecutor’s statement in court about the active grand jury.

Though every Versailles Villager is pretending that this represents some kind of “normal” end, to me it resembles the contingency plans put in place to thwart a “Saturday Night Massacre” by Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio.

Bos Taurus

I’ve been to Louis’ Lunch by the way (in Connecticut State History, which I had a Semester of, it is the one and only original burger as recognized by the Library of Congress).

It’s not much to look at, a tiny square building between two parking lots which emphasizes it’s diminutive size. Inside there’s a Counter with a Closet behind it on the extreme left, a Grill at a right angle going back to the wall, a Corridor to the Bathroom with Coat Hooks on the right hand wall, and the Bathroom itself. In the Front of the House there are 3 Round Tables, one on the left in front of the Counter, two on the Right near the Window. Just before the Bathroom Corridor is a slightly larger Rectangular Table jammed kind of underneath the Coat Hooks (what can I say, it’s a teeny tiny place). There’s Booth Seating built into the front exterior walls and a narrow Counter on the outside of the grill with 5 or 6 stools. That’s it. It’s incredibly claustrophobic and if you could squeeze 35 people in it they’d all have to hold their breath.

There are not a lot of options. You can have a Burger. You can have a Cheese Burger (Kraft Yellow American). You can add Tomato and Onion. You can ask for either Tomato OR Onion and the Counterperson will give you the stink eye, but they’ll do it. Not that they’re overtly hostile as part of some schtick like the Waitstaff at Durgin Park mind you, most of the customers are regulars and they know what they’re getting. NO lettuce, pickles, bacon, ketchup, mustard, mayo, secret sauce. There are places that serve that, but not here. No Buns- Toast, and not that Artisanal Bread kind, Wonder Bread or a Balloon equivalent.

How is it? Surprisingly ok. The meat is well seasoned, juicy, and Medium Rare, the Tomato mitigates the Onion though I do recommend the Cheese because the Toast is quite dry.

The restaurant is traditionally closed during the month of August (for annual spoon-counting).

This is funny because there’s not a scrap of cutlery in the place.

If you’ve never been it’s worth trying. Certainly a unique experience.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s son meets James Earl Ray in prison for assassinating his father; Comedian Milton Berle dies; the FDA approves Viagra; Quentin Tarantino is born.

Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we’ll find it.

Sam Levenson

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Since the last time we checked in on Brexit a mere 6 days ago, Britain has gotten a 2 week extension (with about 5 more for implementation if they can come to an agreement), the Democratic Unionist Party, May’s essential coalition partners, has said they will never accept a Customs Border between Northern Ireland and the UK, Brexiteers have made it clear that they will never accept an indefinite Irish Backstop…

And Parliament has voted to hold a series of votes on alternate, Parliament proposed plans which is a big deal because it’s normally a very “top down” institution.

Vox has a look at some of the suggested changes which are being tested in public to see if any can command a majority.

How the UK Parliament will try to break the Brexit impasse
By Jen Kirby, Vox
Mar 26, 2019

Here’s how these indicative votes are expected to work: MPs will put up a menu of Brexit options — a softer-style Brexit, such as membership in the EU customs union or single market; a second referendum; May’s deal; no deal; and so on. (The full slate hasn’t been agreed on yet.)

Indicative votes can play out a few ways, according to the UK’s Institute for Government. MPs can vote on Brexit options individually, supporting as many options as they might want, or they could be asked to rank their choices. The hope is that at the end, Parliament will rally around one option, which might offer a breakthrough on Brexit.

There are no guarantees, though. Parliament is divided, and has been throughout the Brexit process. Hardline Brexiteers desperately want to leave, and now. Remainers are seeking for a way to either reverse Brexit — through a second referendum, for example — or mitigate Brexit by seeking very close ties with the EU post-breakup. The rest of the MPs all exist somewhere in between.

But Monday marked a real turning point. Members of May’s party rebelled against the prime minister to support this measure, and joined with Labour members to seize the agenda. Parliament failed to approve a similar indicative votes measure by just two votes during that marathon vote week in March. Its win on Monday shows just how much May is losing her hold on her party, and her power.

A spokesperson for the government’s Brexit department expressed their displeasure in a statement after the vote, saying the amendment “upends the balance between our democratic institutions and sets a dangerous, unpredictable precedent for the future.”

“While it is now up to Parliament to set out next steps in respect of this amendment, the government will continue to call for realism — any options considered must be deliverable in negotiations with the EU,” the statement continued. “Parliament should take account of how long these negotiations would take, and if they’d require a longer extension, which would mean holding European parliamentary elections.”

May has lost some of her authority — but only up to a point. That’s because these indicative votes are nonbinding, so even if Parliament can rally around a brand new Brexit approach, the prime minister is not bound to honor the result.

May indicated as much ahead of the vote on Monday, saying that she was skeptical of the process and wouldn’t make any promises to act on the results of the indicative vote except to “engage constructively” with the outcome. Health secretary Matt Hancock echoed this on Tuesday, saying May’s government “can’t pre-commit to following whatever the Commons votes for because they might vote for something completely impractical.”

May also warned that just because Parliament agrees to something doesn’t mean the EU will go for it — although she left out the part where she tried multiple times to renegotiate her Brexit deal after the EU told her it was nonnegotiable.
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But it’s not clear if May herself will get behind such a strategy, as it violates her Brexit “red lines” — essentially the UK’s starting point for negotiations — which included an end to its membership in the permanent customs union and the single market. And if she hasn’t budged yet, it’s doubtful she ever will.

Then again, she may not have a choice. The prime minister admitted Monday that she doesn’t have enough support to get her deal through Parliament right now — though she’s likely to try for a third vote this week, after the indicative votes.

May could be betting that the outcome of the indicative votes will scare the hardline Brexiteers and her allies in Northern Ireland enough to finally get behind her deal, or risk much closer ties with the EU — and possibly a much, much longer Brexit delay.

It’s unlikely that any proposal can muster a majority which leaves but a few possibilities- crash out April 12th, seek a longer extension, May resigns.

I must say that I don’t quite see the objection to a longer extension except that Britain could be forced to hold Elections for Members of the European Parliament in May (the month not the Prime Minister) and for some reason that infuriates the Brexiteers. Maybe because they’d suffer embarrassing losses, they’re all huffy about a Second Referendum being some kind of “betrayal of Democracy” too.

The DUP has indicated they’re good with a year or more so you’d think it would be case closed.

“They came on in the same old way, and we saw them off in the same old way” – Arthur Wellesley on Waterloo

Republicans really hate Obamacare a lot. Perhaps they feel they owe it to Zombie St. Ronnie who, as you’ll recall, got his political start crusading against the creeping socialism of Medicare/Medicaid-

Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio has never given up his hatred of all things Obama, even the ones that are Republican-Lite, and both Racist Republicans and those who pretend to have principles are still fighting to roll back Reagan’s loss in 1961 because Poor == Black and also Takers. I mean it’s not like things are so much better or that Parasitic Insurance Companies are not still rolling in dough.

Originally this current effort extended only to Pre-Existing Conditions which sucks if you happen to have Diabetes or Asthma or are Left Handed (it is well known that Left Handers are more accident prone and therefore a greater actuarial risk).

Now they simply want to send all the sick or potentially sick people out on an Ice Flow to die because they’re too Poor and might be Black.

Trump Officials Broaden Attack on Health Law, Arguing Courts Should Reject All of It
By Robert Pear, The New York Times
March 25, 2019

The Trump administration broadened its attack on the Affordable Care Act on Monday, telling a federal appeals court that it now believed the entire law should be invalidated.

The administration had previously said that the law’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions should be struck down, but that the rest of the law, including the expansion of Medicaid, should survive.

If the appeals court accepts the Trump administration’s new arguments, millions of people could lose health insurance, including those who gained coverage through the expansion of Medicaid and those who have private coverage subsidized by the federal government.

“The Justice Department is no longer asking for partial invalidation of the Affordable Care Act, but says the whole law should be struck down,” Abbe R. Gluck, a law professor at Yale who has closely followed the litigation, said on Monday. “Not just some of the insurance provisions, but all of it, including the Medicaid expansion and hundreds of other reforms. That’s a total bombshell, which could have dire consequences for millions of people.”

The new position is also certain to reignite a political furor over the Affordable Care Act, ensuring that it will figure even more prominently in the 2020 elections. Democrats have been saying that President Trump still wants to abolish the law, and they can now point to the Justice Department’s filing as evidence to support that contention.
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The health insurance industry has invented a new business model selling coverage to anyone who applies, regardless of any pre-existing conditions.

The law also includes dozens of provisions that are less well known and not related to the individual mandate. It requires nutrition labeling and calorie counts on menu items at chain restaurants. It requires certain employers to provide “reasonable break time” and a private space for nursing mothers to pump breast milk. It improved prescription drug coverage for Medicare beneficiaries, and it created a new pathway for the approval of less expensive versions of biologic medicines made from living cells.

Lawyers said invalidation of the entire law would raise numerous legal and practical questions. It is, they said, difficult to imagine what the health care world would look like without the Affordable Care Act.

The Trump administration’s new position was harshly criticized by the insurance industry and by consumer advocates.
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The Trump administration’s new stance appears to put Republicans in Congress in an awkward position. They have repeatedly tried to repeal the health law. But in the last year, they said over and over that they wanted to protect coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, and those protections are among the law’s most popular provisions.

The lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act, Texas v. United States, was filed last year by a group of Republican governors and state attorneys general. Officials from California and more than a dozen other states have intervened to defend the law.

Yeah Republicans. You do you.

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