y66 Posted March 6, 2018 Report Share Posted March 6, 2018 From the trade war chronicles: Perhaps the most vital contributor to American homebuilders’ success is their ability to keep the so-called affordable homes they build, well, affordable. Donald Trump is making that difficult. In the coming issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, Jen Skerritt reports on how the president’s tariffs on Canadian softwood timber has created fresh challenges for the homebuilding industry: “Framing lumber, including installation costs, accounts for about 18 percent of the average home’s selling price, according to the National Association of Home Builders. The rising price of timber comes at a bad time for U.S. builders, which are already contending with labor shortages and scarce supplies because of summer wildfires that wiped out some timberland in British Columbia. ‘You’ve got the kind of perfect storm brewing for the homebuilder,’ says Jim Barbes, vice president for national sales at 84 Lumber Co., one of the nation’s largest building-supply chains. “On Nov. 2 the U.S. Department of Commerce announced average import duties of 21 percent on shipments of timber from Canada, which supplies more than a quarter of what American builders use each year. The price of one type of lumber futures contract that’s a widely watched industry metric has surged 31 percent in the past 12 months, and it’s trading at the highest level in at least 32 years. ‘So we’re talking about the potential not just for a record-setting year, but one that is unprecedented,’ says David Logan, director of tax and trade policy analysts at the National Association of Home Builders. “The import duties leave companies paying $1,360 more to build a single-family home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al_U_Card Posted March 6, 2018 Report Share Posted March 6, 2018 From the trade war chronicles:Aren't immense amounts of US softwood being pulverized and shipped to England where they can be burned in eco-"friendly" biomass electricity generating plants? (That this produces ever more CO2 seems secondary to the point...) Perhaps growing lumber-producing softwood might be more beneficial all round? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cherdano Posted March 6, 2018 Report Share Posted March 6, 2018 Only the best people.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/03/05/ex-trump-aide-trump-may-very-well-have-done-something-during-the-election-with-the-russians/?utm_term=.4c4360f94d50 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
y66 Posted March 6, 2018 Report Share Posted March 6, 2018 From the NYT's Daily Briefing: Stephen Colbert went to town about how Sam Nunberg, one of President Trump’s former advisers, gave numerous interviews on Monday on whether he would comply with a grand jury subpoena from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller. Nunberg told The Washington Post that he planned to tear up the subpoena live on Bloomberg Television, to which Colbert said: “Smart thinking. Do it on Bloomberg, no witnesses.” Nunberg, at one point, told Katy Tur of MSNBC that his lawyer was about to “dump” him. Colbert quipped, “Sam, I think your dentist is going to dump you right now.” “Nunberg took over cable news like a car chase. He was on MSNBC at 2:45, CNN at 3:30, and CNN again at 4 o’clock. I believe at 5, he called into HGTV to incriminate himself on ‘Flip or Flop.’ I’m pretty sure after Mueller gets done with him, it’s going to be flip.” — STEPHEN COLBERT Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjbrr Posted March 6, 2018 Report Share Posted March 6, 2018 The Nunberg episode was sponsored by Jack Daniels and lasted approximately 0.6 decimooches. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes I suppose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barmar Posted March 6, 2018 Report Share Posted March 6, 2018 The latest: Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act by promoting Roy Moore last year. https://www.axios.com/office-of-special-counsel-finds-conway-violated-hatch-act-cd9dddad-fd56-4712-bca2-028f289d4398.html The above article also managed to find a really unflattering picture of Conway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted March 6, 2018 Author Report Share Posted March 6, 2018 The Nunberg episode was sponsored by Jack Daniels and lasted approximately 0.6 decimooches. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes I suppose. Anyone happen to notice how the Nunberg spectacular drowned out the Jane Mayer story that the Kremlin had nixed Romney for Secretary of State. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted March 6, 2018 Author Report Share Posted March 6, 2018 The latest: Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act by promoting Roy Moore last year. https://www.axios.com/office-of-special-counsel-finds-conway-violated-hatch-act-cd9dddad-fd56-4712-bca2-028f289d4398.html The above article also managed to find a really unflattering picture of Conway. You mean there are flattering pictures of her? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjbrr Posted March 7, 2018 Report Share Posted March 7, 2018 Anyone happen to notice how the Nunberg spectacular drowned out the Jane Mayer story that the Kremlin had nixed Romney for Secretary of State. I don't think that's entirely fair. We haven't had a day free of scandal in a long, long time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barmar Posted March 7, 2018 Report Share Posted March 7, 2018 You mean there are flattering pictures of her?Of course, she's a pretty woman. She looks like my 70-something aunt in that picture. But I guess working in the Trump White House will age anyone. Obama started going grey in his second term, it's taken just a year for Conway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted March 7, 2018 Author Report Share Posted March 7, 2018 Of course, she's a pretty woman. There's no accounting for taste. :lol: Myself, I think Margaret Hamilton should be grateful that Kellyanne wasn't around when the casting call went out for Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted March 7, 2018 Author Report Share Posted March 7, 2018 Lawfare blog has an interesting article how "collusion" could be prosecuted as a crime, and it doesn't bode well for anyone who helped contribute to the Russia's "fraud of the U.S.", whether or not they knew they were Russians. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrothgar Posted March 8, 2018 Report Share Posted March 8, 2018 Oh look, Erik Prince perjured himself in front of Congress https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mueller-gathers-evidence-that-2016-seychelles-meeting-was-effort-to-establish-back-channel-to-kremlin/2018/03/07/b6a5fb8c-224b-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html?utm_term=.dbc36f48eb77 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjbrr Posted March 8, 2018 Report Share Posted March 8, 2018 Oh look, Erik Prince perjured himself in front of Congress https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mueller-gathers-evidence-that-2016-seychelles-meeting-was-effort-to-establish-back-channel-to-kremlin/2018/03/07/b6a5fb8c-224b-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html?utm_term=.dbc36f48eb77 I'm admittedly ignorant of all law, but what exactly binds congress to do anything about this? genuinely curious in some sources. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted March 8, 2018 Author Report Share Posted March 8, 2018 Oh, gee, the president is saying, "Trust me," concerning whether his real estate deals are on the up and up. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/01/10/trumps-secretive-real-estate-sales-continue-unabated/1018530001/President Trump’s companies sold more than $35 million in real estate in 2017, mostly to secretive shell companies that obscure buyers’ identities, continuing a dramatic shift in his customers' behavior that began during the election, a USA TODAY review found. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted March 8, 2018 Author Report Share Posted March 8, 2018 I'm admittedly ignorant of all law, but what exactly binds congress to do anything about this? genuinely curious in some sources.This might help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted March 8, 2018 Author Report Share Posted March 8, 2018 From Yahoo: Once more, it’s clear that the working assumption of the Mueller investigation is that the entire Trump presidency*, and the Trump campaign that preceded it, is a vast corrupt empire, and that the roots of that empire are to be found in the Trump Organization, which was a slightly less vast, but no less corrupt, empire built on deceit and incompetence, bailed out by its lawyers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrothgar Posted March 9, 2018 Report Share Posted March 9, 2018 So, Trump has just agreed to go mano-on-mano with Kim Jong-un. Wonder whether there is any way that we can convince the two of them that the best way to settle this is with a duel. Say, IEDs at 10 paces.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
y66 Posted March 9, 2018 Report Share Posted March 9, 2018 How many 5 year olds could DT and KJU take on in a tag team sumo wrestling format? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
y66 Posted March 9, 2018 Report Share Posted March 9, 2018 Sessions is suing California over its “sanctuary” laws. Sean Illing at Vox asked 8 legal experts who will win. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al_U_Card Posted March 9, 2018 Report Share Posted March 9, 2018 To paraphrase Steven Colbert from back in the day: "Donald Trump, great President or greatest President?!" Well, based on US history, either Trump will be assassinated (a number of you will be happy...) or a third party country will soon be attacked by their new coalition. Iran? Venezuela? Who knew? (Well, Scott Adams seems to have been pretty prescient...) ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted March 9, 2018 Author Report Share Posted March 9, 2018 Gee, I wonder where the cabinet members got the idea that the U.S. government was their personal piggy bank?Yahoo news:The Interior Department plans to spend more than $139,000 on new doors and repairs for Sec. Ryan Zinke's office at the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C., the agency confirmed to ABC News on Thursday. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedSpawn Posted March 9, 2018 Report Share Posted March 9, 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/us/politics/north-korea-kim-jong-un-trump.html Is it just me or did South Korea do most of the diplomatic legwork with North Korea? Or is this a result of our gunboat diplomacy? Hmmmm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjbrr Posted March 9, 2018 Report Share Posted March 9, 2018 Refresh your internet. WH saying this isn't happening. It was, as usual, Trump shitting the bed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cherdano Posted March 9, 2018 Report Share Posted March 9, 2018 Does the NYT read too much watercooler? When Smug Liberals Met Conservative Trolls 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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