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Francisco 2.0

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Francisco 2.0

  1. 9 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

    I just can't fathom living in a reality where I read that letter, or more likely, have Fox News read it to me, and think, "yep, that's my guy.  that makes sense and I'll follow him to the ends of the earth".  

    Well, you see, winning.  

    Somehow, someway the faithful see all this as "winning" and anything/everything else that Lord Trump does not care for is a loser.

     

  2. 4 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

    the scariest part is that letter is likely AFTER it got work. i want to see the first draft.

    But it's perfect.  A perfect letter.  The most perfect letter ever.  It did not need any work to get more perfect.

     

  3. 21 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

    The letter itself is grounds for impeachment. Rantings of a lunatic. 

    Sheeeeit.  That letter will be celebrated to by the faithful.  Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if someone gets it inked on their back.

     

     

  4. 3 hours ago, GRHorn said:

     

     

    56 minutes ago, Bruh Man said:

    Also, eventually down the line something is going to have to be done about Fox News. I don't know what the remedy is but this rot of the brain cannot co-exist with a prosperous nation. It's obvious from those comments they have been indoctrinated by that network's lies. 

     

    16 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

    Good lord that is fucking awful.  Those fucks get what they deserve; too bad the rest of us have to try to pick up the pieces.

     

    5 minutes ago, SimonBolivar said:

    It's on all of us. Our culture gets what our culture deserves. I'd assume that low information voters make up around most of the voters on both sides and that Americans lack an ability to decipher bullshit.

    https://www.journalism.org/2018/06/18/distinguishing-between-factual-and-opinion-statements-in-the-news/pj_2018-06-18_fact-opinion_0-27/

    How the study asked Americans to classify factual versus opinion-based news statements

    PJ_2018.06.18_fact-opinion_0-01.png

     

    This is what happens when the value of your education is only geared towards what job you're going to get when you graduate.

     

     

     

    This is from two years ago.  Pretty fair to assume that this percentage has only gone up since:

     

    https://marketingland.com/pew-research-center-says-45-americans-get-news-facebook-228001

     

    Quote

    Because of its overall reach, Facebook is the most popular social platform for US adults who get news from a social media site. With 66 percent of Americans using Facebook, Pew Research Center says 45 percent of US adults get at least some of their news from the site.

    The survey found that of the 45 percent turning to Facebook for news content, half claim it is the only social platform they are using for news.

    Following Facebook, the second leading social media site for news was YouTube, with 18 percent of Americans getting their news from Google’s video platform.

     

    • Like 2
  5. 24 minutes ago, Thiefery said:

    Anyone actually go to Hooter's anymore? Figured the crowd just moved onto Twin peaks over 10 years ago

    Drove by the local one the other night mid-week and the lot was packed.  Figured it was free BJ night or something. I've not stepped into one in close to 25 years.

     

  6. 4 hours ago, LTtxfan said:

    Starting to wonder where Baby Briles is headed??

    Ole Miss: Lane Kiffin has zeroed in on UCF offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Jeff Lebby for the same post, according to ESPN’s Chris Low. Also, contrary to a report from The Athletic earlier today, Lane has not offered Scott Cochran a job per AL.com, who reports it’s “unlikely” that Cochran or Tosh Lupoi wind up in Oxford.

    So, Briles son in law instead of his son.

     

  7. A 20 year old Instagram "personality" and Trump superfan spokesperson.  What could possibly go wrong.

     

    https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/10/christianne-allen-giuliani-079762

     

    Screen-Shot-2019-12-10-at-8.17.54-AM.png

     

    Quote

    The gatekeeper to the lawyer for the most powerful man in the world is a 20-year-old conservative activist with a thin resume, an inflated biography and an impossible job.

    For the past three months, Trumpworld has been both abuzz and baffled by Christianné Allen, a little-known Instagram personality who became Rudy Giuliani’s director of communications in September. She accompanies him wherever he goes, recently appearing by his side in Ukraine, where he’s working on a documentary defending himself against accusations that he ran a malicious campaign to get a U.S. ambassador fired. She’s his media strategist, technology consultant and the employee who helps field reporters’ daily onslaught of inquiries — or, at least, tries to do so.

     

    Quote

    Allen’s boss, described as a “hand grenade” in congressional testimony, is famous among reporters for his unguarded text exchanges, rambling phone calls and butt dials at odd hours. His bumbling efforts to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine are likely to result in the third impeachment in U.S. presidential history. He’s under federal investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office he once headed. And his ostensible client, President Donald Trump, muses openly about whether Giuliani is, in fact, his attorney.

    In sum: Allen’s assignment would be tough sledding for the most seasoned of PR professionals, let alone a distinctly unseasoned Trump superfan who is still pursuing a communications degree online.

     

    Quote

    “For a 20-year-old college student to be the communications director to one of the country’s most talked-about men is quite something,” said Kelly Jane Torrance, a conservative journalist who met Allen while interviewing Giuliani.

    Numerous people POLITICO spoke with, from her family to her friends to the people who’ve met her, praised Allen’s remarkable maturity and poise, a trait they said she exhibited in her early teenage years.

     

    Spoiler

    Her value to Giuliani goes beyond the media, however. Allen, now an employee of the consulting firm Giuliani Partners, has been prospecting for her boss, reaching out to at least one foreign company to pitch them on Giuliani’s power to “bring much value” to their business.

    In an email interview, Allen said that she got the job after several rounds of interviews “that included incredibly challenging questions and multiple phone calls with his staff,” with Giuliani himself “expressing that I had the necessary skills and leadership to fill the position.”

    She did not elaborate further, but Allen’s Twitter bio, LinkedIn, and old personal website list an array of suitable credentials: representative of the Trump Victory Finance Committee, the official joint fundraising committee for the re-election campaign; and video columnist for the Daily Caller. Spokeswoman for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Executive director of the Middle Eastern Women’s Coalition.

    According to representatives of these entities, these titles are embroidered at best, and completely untrue at the most. She is, however, an “ambassador” for both Turning Point USA and Liberty University’s Falkirk Center, titles she gained this year. And there’s no question she enjoys Giuliani’s confidence.

    After POLITICO asked Allen and Giuliani about her resume and biography on Friday, he tapped out several tweets before responding privately. “Politico is about to write a malicious hit-piece on a Comms Director of mine,” Giuliani wrote. “Not just because she’s pro-Trump but because she’s lined up one witness after the other, proving just how corrupt the Democrat party is. Politico has assisted this cover up for years. It’s a shame!”

    He later said in a text, sent before this article was published: “Your article is so filled with lies and misinterpretations, it stands out as a [sic] now an almost routine left wing hit piece on an exceptionally talented and really fine Christian Conservative woman and strong supporter of President Trump. I’m disappointed that Politico is now joining the [sic] destroy the reputation of those the Left believes should not be entitled to support President Trump.”

    At the moment, Giuliani’s friends and associates believe he needs an experienced communications veteran, capable of defending him against charges that he led Trump into an impeachment briar patch. But Giuliani now relies on a woman who stands accused of being a serial exaggerator and who struggled to answer basic questions about how she became the communications and right-hand woman of the lawyer and fixer for the president of the United States.

    ***

    Christianné Allen, or Anné, as she was known by some in high school (pronounced “On-ee”), first appeared in Trump’s outer orbit in October 2015. A 16-year-old from Midlothian, Virginia, she volunteered to help Trump’s campaign as an intern.

    “She got the gig because she went around telling everybody that she was George Allen’s niece,” said a former Trump Virginia campaign official, referring to the former Virginia governor and senator.

    The official discovered later that this was completely untrue. “I would introduce her to other people as George Allen’s niece, and then I guess she got in front of someone who was actually related to George Allen and she corrected herself then.” Two other former campaign officials corroborated that she made these claims or played along.

    Asked if she was related to his family, George Allen said no. “If there’s some way that I’m related to her, I’d be happy to know how,” he said, and joked that if she could prove herself, “I look forward to meeting an unknown relative.”

    Asked for comment, Christianné Allen denied that she ever claimed she was related to George Allen. “I never once implied or said I was George Allen’s niece,” she said in an email. “There were a few officials on the campaign who thought we were related based on our last name. I was asked one time in a public setting if I was related to him and I laughed and said no.”

    Allen remained on the campaign. The shoestring operation needed all the help it could get, and according to her father Lee Allen, she was a hard worker who had devoted herself to Trump early on in the campaign.

    In an interview, he described his daughter as a relentless self-advocate who, at the age of 14, once called the president of Harvard University to ask for advice on how to get into the school and ended up speaking with her for 10 minutes before being referred to the admissions office. (A person familiar with the matter said Harvard has no records of the call and that the former president, Drew Gilpin Faust, also had no recollection of it.)

    That boldness emerged again in October 2015, when Allen went to a Trump rally in Richmond, Virginia. Even though, as her father said, she “didn’t even know who [Trump] was” before the event, she told him: “‘I want to meet him. ... What do you think I should say to him?’ So I kind of laughed, joking, and said ‘Tell him you’d like to be his apprentice.’”

    As Allen recalled, his daughter hustled to be near Trump’s motorcade, where she met an “elderly Filipino lady” named Angelica George, a local enthusiastic campaign volunteer.

    Trump soon walked by and spotted them. “He said, ‘Angelica, what are you doing here?’”, Allen said. “So he comes over and she introduces Anné to Trump and it’s a very quick thing. And then the lady says, ‘Look, I know the chairman in charge of the Trump campaign in Virginia. I want you to contact him and tell him I sent you.’”

    But a former Virginia Trump campaign official disputed Allen’s Trump origin story as told by her father, who said he heard it from his daughter.“It’s just nonsense. The candidate did not personally know George. There was no Virginia campaign chairman at that point. Allen just walked into the Richmond office and said she wanted to be a volunteer.” In a follow-up interview, Lee Allen stood by the account and said: “That story never changed from Day 1, but whatever.” (George didn’t respond to requests for comment and Christianné Allen also said that the story was inaccurate and she had tried to correct her father before.)

    This much is undisputed: Allen soon left public high school to work for the campaign without pay, enrolling in Liberty University Online to complete her high school degree.

    But she quickly gained a reputation for inflating her importance.

    “I forget all the titles she told me she had. She was ‘millenials for something’ or ‘teens for this,’” one former official said. At one point, her social media accounts claimed she was an official spokeswoman for the Trump campaign. She was not, according to these officials. (In a text, Allen explained that she referred to herself as a campaign spokesperson “only because I spoke at a couple rallies.”)

    “I think she made it to a point where she made [volunteering] untenable,” said one of the former Virginia campaign officials, citing Allen’s apparent disinterest in performing basic campaign tasks. “She wasn’t productive, but she was attempting to insert herself into everything. If there’s an event, she’s showing up to help whether or not she was invited to [it].”

    Lee Allen described one speech she gave at a Trump rally in front of an old battleship in Norfolk with a crowd of thousands of people. “Hats off to my daughter. She has made her opportunities,” he said.

     Allen’s involvement with the Trump Virginia campaign effectively ended the night Trump won the primary in March 2016. But she still found ways to express her loyalty to Trump, becoming close to Alice Butler Short, the president of Virginia Women for Trump, who became a mentor figure of sorts and also let Allen stay at her home in Fairfax Station for several months.

    “She was like my goddaughter. I was very fond of her,” Short said, recalling how she’d met Allen at a campaign event in 2015. “She cared about the Constitution. She cared about the Judeo-Christian principles on which our country was founded.”

    The campaign quickly disassociated itself from Virginia Women for Trump, and the Trump campaign eventually sent Short a cease-and-desist letter because they said the group had used Trump’s image without permission in connection with fundraising activities. Short said that top Trump campaign lawyer Don McGahn later rescinded the cease-and-desist but a current Trump 2020 campaign official said the group is “not sanctioned by Trump Pence 2020” and the campaign sent the group a fresh cease-and-desist letter on Monday.

    In response to the letter, Short said: “VWT has acted with the utmost integrity over four years. I can only conclude that they are trying to destroy the grassroots organizations. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of organizations around the country using the Trump name, and there are hundreds of vendors all over the country selling Trump merchandise. Why pick on me?”

    Allen continued to ally herself with other entities the Trump campaign blacklisted, such as Students for Trump, which was shunned for improperly sharing Social Security numbers of young voters; and Corey Stewart, the former Virginia Trump campaign co-chairman who was ejected from the campaign for staging an unsanctioned protest against the RNC and eventually fell from grace due to his association with white nationalists.

    Her most important relationship, however, would be with the lawyer Charles Gucciardo, whom she said she met while attending a law seminar for high school students at Stanford University, prior to her involvement in the Trump campaign. He eventually offered her an internship at his Long Island law firm. Allen’s connection to Gucciardo was first reported by Salon.

    Years later, Gucciardo would be pulled into the Ukraine scandal when he invested $500,000 into a company started by Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, the two men who went to Ukraine to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden, based on Giuliani’s involvement in said company. (Unlike Parnas and Fruman, who were arrested in October, Gucciardo has not been accused of wrongdoing in any investigation involving Giuliani, and he told POLITICO in a comment: “Christianné is a phenomenal young lady with tremendous potential in her career.”)

    At the time, Allen attended some of the same events as Gucciardo, according to Instagram posts and videos from that time, all the while burnishing her brand along with her backstory.

    During one appearance at a “Moms 4 Trump” event in October 2016 at the Trump hotel in D.C., Allen gave a speech about how she had been hounded out of high school “due to controversy over my Trump internship.”

    In a video of her speech, Allen described telling her principal, counselors and friends about her decision to support Trump. “And I can’t even begin to tell you, the controversy that got stirred up, and the hate that was sent my way, not just through social media, but through--just…” She trailed off for several seconds. “It was really hard for me, especially when all of your friends just dropped out of your life, all at once.”

    But asked if anti-Trump bullying was a major factor in her leaving her high school, her father said: “I don’t think so. She’s a fighter. … [On social media] she would counter everybody that was negative towards Trump. Did she run from it? No. But she got fed up with it.”

    “She didn’t find the school setting rewarding enough, even though she captained her lacrosse varsity team, won the Nationals with her team in competitive cheerleading, [and] had wanted to run for class president,” he continued.

    “I never heard of any anti-Trump bullying or political bullying of any kind for that matter” at Allen’s high school, Clover Hill, said Becky Conner, whose son Evan was a classmate of Allen’s and was her partner in driver’s ed. Conner also said that Evan didn’t “remember her ever complaining about being bullied.” A spokesman for the school district didn’t respond to requests for comment.

    Somehow, during all this time, Allen put even more bona fides on her resume. According to an old bio on her website, she was going to launch a beauty line called “Christianné Lorraine,” and a PR firm called Allen Strategies, neither of which seemed to get off the ground.

    In a text, Allen also mentioned that she was the executive marketing director for a subscription box service for CBD products called Discovery Club—a business that actually did exist, if only for a short period of time.

    Sadrina Ward, a CBD distributor based out of Las Vegas, worked on Discovery Club with the Allens starting in September of 2016, after they moved to Nevada to launch the venture. While Lee kept trying to convince investors to join him in the company, Allen filmed testimonials and reached out to social media influencers in an attempt to get them to link to their subscription page.

    “She’s really good with being in front of the camera and speaking and everything,” said Ward, who sensed that Allen’s interests lay elsewhere. “She was trying to help her father get it off the ground but she was more interested in the Trump campaign.”

    From start to finish, the Vegas endeavor — which contemplated a reality TV show, “High Stakes,” chronicling their attempt to launch the business — lasted for three months. “It was a startup that tanked on me, simple as that, because I couldn’t get the rest of the capital together,” said Lee. The business soon ran out of money and they left Las Vegas, breaking a year-long lease on a seven-bedroom house where they’d planned to shoot the show. “That’s just business, my friend,” he said.

    Lee attempted to start the business again, but the Discovery Club’s websites and e-commerce stores have gone dark. Ward said she and her Vegas colleagues were never paid.

    ***

    Following her Nevada adventure, Allen spent most of 2017 and 2018 on the outside looking in. She continued taking online courses at Liberty to get her high school diploma and start on her undergraduate degree. She appears to have attended every possible Trump event and conservative party she could get into, while at the same time running a few events with Virginia Women for Trump. At one point, she was paid for her work on social media for ananti-immigration California Republican who ran unsuccessfully for the House, according to campaign finance filings.

    Her personal social media accounts, meanwhile, were soaring. Allen garnered tens of thousands of followers for her carefully-curated pro-Trump content: portraits of her attending right-wing galas, wearing MAGA hats, posing with guns, including a semiautomatic AR-15, and repeatedly visiting the White House — at least four times in April 2018 alone, including for the Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn — according to her Instagram account.

    Much of the account shows a gallery of a young influencer living her best life: posing in a helicopter, staying in luxury hotels, trailing Trump in Paris as he visited Emmanuel Macron, flaunting a $5,800 Chanel handbag, and posting the occasional inspirational quote. (Shortly after POLITICO began reporting this story, several photos began disappearing from her accounts.)

    Trump’s downtown D.C. hotel — a mainstay of those hoping to hobnob with administration officials and other Trump-friendly folks — soon became the center of her social life. Allen was spotted frequently at the bar with Fox commentator Stephanie Hamill and was a mainstay of the MAGA-centered networking event First Fridays. She often posted photos from the gilded lobby, posing with minor conservative celebrities like Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and fashion designer Andre Soriano, whose dress for pro-Trump singer Joy Villa sparked controversy at this year’s Grammy Awards.

    In February 2019, Allen took a paid position as executive director of the Middle Eastern Women’s Coalition, run by Turkish author and women’s rights activist Rabia Kazan. Kazan and Allen had met through Virginia Women for Trump, and after Kazan launched her organization, Allen, who has never been to the Middle East, offered to run PR for her.

    “I know that she’s going to be somebody,” Kazan said.

    The Middle Eastern Women’s Coalition appears to have collapsed. “There [were] no activities for that organization,” said journalist Arwa Sawan, who’s listed as chairman of the group on the group’s website, and told POLITICO that she was only chairman because they put her photo on the site. “‘I told [Kazan], ‘Wow, what’s happening? What’s going on?’ and she told me ‘ah, I’ll let you know later,’ and she never said anything.”

    Allen describes herself on Twitter as being part of the Trump Victory Committee but a person familiar with the matter said that anyone can sign up online to become a volunteer fundraiser for the committee. Allen, who said she had already raised almost $30,000 for the committee, hasn’t raised enough to hit the committee’s “member” level, said the person. (An RNC spokesman declined to comment when asked to confirm that she had raised that amount.)

    In May of 2019, Allen’s influencing hustle paid off when she was appointed an unpaid Turning Point USA ambassador, a coveted title among pro-Trump activists that opened doors for her career and allowed her to meet high-profile conservatives and administration officials.

    “That’s how she came across our radar,” Richie McGinnis, the chief video editor of The Daily Caller, said in an interview. “She just had a valuable perspective as a competent intelligent Gen Y female conservative, so she basically offered to do an opinion video.”

    Allen ended up publishing two videos: one about socialism in the 2020 election, and the other about a college admissions controversy that was hot on the right, neither of which she was paid for.

    In her Twitter bio, she labels herself as an official “Daily Caller Video Contributor,” or, as she was quoted in an OANN article published last month, a “Daily Caller columnist.”

    McGinnis declined to comment on her current status as a contributor but said that “the word ‘columnist’ or ‘contributor’ in the cable news world is different than in digital media. We have hundreds of contributors who come in to provide their opinion on video in an unpaid capacity. Maybe Christianné will do a new video to set the record straight about this article.”

    ***

    Allen likely would have remained a small-time conservative talking head and MAGA social fixture if Giuliani hadn’t entered the picture.

    In an email, Allen said she met Giuliani through a woman, though did not go further into describing precisely how they met and didn’t respond when asked who the woman was. Allen’s father said he didn’t know any details about how that relationship began, and neither did Giuliani’s friends.

    “Nobody can figure out who the eff she is or how she got in there,” a friend of Giuliani told POLITICO. (Giuliani responded to the quote by calling the person “an anonymous ‘enemy’ jealous of me and probably her because he could never have been able to operate at her level, now and or in the past.”)

    By July, she was having regular meals with Giuliani, according to texts she sent friends, and people who spotted them together at the Trump hotel. A July 9 tweet from the New York Post’s Jon Levine contains video of Allen and Giuliani hanging out on a boat, and sharing cake and ice cream at Anthony Scaramucci’s Hunt and Fish Club in Manhattan.

    One person who attended an after-party for a Trump fundraiser in August spotted Allen with Giuliani and Hamill later that night walking out of the high-end restaurant Le Bilboquet in Long Island’s Sag Harbor. Allen went to the fundraiser, held at real estate developer Joe Farrell’s mansion in Southampton, and came home with a photo of herself posing with Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump, Jr. (Farrell said he didn’t remember her or know how she got in, but added that he didn’t handle all the invites.)

    In August, Mediaite reported that Allen and her friends, Hamill and Daily Caller fellow Maranda Finney, had posted photos of themselves with Giuliani and huddled in a corner table during a book party for Judge Jeanine Pirro.

    According to Allen, she began interviewing with Giuliani for her current job in September, which entailed a vague set of duties. “The position I currently hold requires you to wear many hats. Each day is incredibly fluid and is never the same twice,” she said in an email. She did not reply when asked to elaborate.

    Torrance, a journalist who unexpectedly scored an interview with Giuliani for Spectator USA when the former New York mayor ended up sitting next to her on the Acela, recalls that Allen, who was also aboard, seemed “a little bit overwhelmed at times.”

    Nor did Allen stop Giuliani as he gabbed to Torrance, on the record, during a train ride of more than three hours. Torrance observed that Allen appeared to be more of a “body man” than a communications strategist. “He would say to her ‘remind me tomorrow to do this’ — personal assistant kind of stuff.”

    In her private dealings, Allen also happened to promote Giuliani’s foreign business ventures. “Hi beautiful!” she messaged Kazan’s sister, who with her husband runs a major Turkish plastics manufacturer, in an Instagram DM in late August. “I want to introduce you to Mayor Rudy Giuliani. I believe he can bring much value to Plastmore!” She capped it off with a heart emoji.

    The meeting never took place, but according to Kazan, Allen continued to “desperately” call her and her sister over the next several weeks, attempting to set up a meeting. “What she’s doing is basically selling access,” said Kazan.

    When reports emerged in late September that Giuliani had run a shadow campaign to persuade Ukrainian officials to fire then-ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and investigate the Bidens, Allen initially took to Twitter to defend him and threaten lawmakers with legal retribution.

    “A potential lawsuit could be brought against members of Congress, individually, for violating constitutional rights and civil rights. They are interfering with the President’s duty to conduct the foreign policy of the US. Go @RudyGiuliani, go!” she wrote on Oct. 2.

    As Giuliani’s implication in the Ukraine scandal deepened, Allen’s social media accounts pivoted away from chronicling her own Insta-worthy life to attacking Giuliani’s foes.

    “Adam Schiff is making a mockery out of our system of justice!” she posted on Oct. 4. “He blatantly lied to the American public by saying he had no knowledge of the complaint. He then used his media appearances to put the complaint on a pedestal, while withholding it from Congress. Then finally read aloud to Congress a recreated, fabricated, and preposterous version of the phone call between POTUS and the Ukrainian President. Pretty much tells you how the Dems got their nickname, CROOKED!”

    Whatever her strategy to defend her boss, it seems to be the exact opposite of keeping him disciplined and on message—something that struck one person who worked for Giuliani for years as odd.

    “You didn’t as much handle Rudy but you just made sure he had information,” this person recalled. “He wanted facts, he would want to present a cogent argument with facts, so a lot of it was just making sure he had facts.”

    As mayor, this person said, no reporter usually ever contacted Giuliani directly on his personal cell phone.

    Things are distinctly different now. Furious, impulsive texts with reporters at odd hours, frequent accidental phone calls, and increasingly self-destructive appearances on television, angering top Republicans and sometimes even Trump himself: that’s the Giuliani of today, and the Giuliani that Allen is letting onto the airwaves.

    Asked why he hired her, Giuliani said Allen “has already established a very strong and exceptional record as a very talented strategist, spokesperson, technology consultant and person of very mature judgment. She just finished a very grueling assignment in three different countries in four days. This assignment was accomplished flawlessly and is well beyond the abilities of your anonymous and otherwise unquestionably jealous sources.”

    Countless Republicans, including people close to Trump himself, have aired their complaints about Giuliani, openly wishing that he would stop sabotaging the president. One Fox News host even demanded on live TV that Trump fire Giuliani, whom he called an “unethical disaster” threatening to “derail” Trump’s presidency.

    Even Trump has begun distancing himself from his own attorney, telling former Fox personality Bill O’Reilly that he didn’t know why his favorite “warrior” had started poking around Ukraine. “Rudy has other clients, other than me. He’s done a lot of work in Ukraine over the years,” the president said. And on Monday, Stephen Castor, the counsel for House Republicans in the impeachment inquiry, testified, “There is evidence that Rudy Giuliani did not speak on behalf of the president” in the course of his Ukraine work.

    It’s telling that as others abandon Giuliani, Allen traveled with him to Ukraine on his latest quest to clear his name. According to The Washington Post, Trump officials involved with the impeachment process were not notified of the trip and found it “not helpful,” and Republican mega-donor and Trump supporter Dan Eberhardt expressed his surprise. “The fact that Giuliani is back in Ukraine is like a murder suspect returning to the crime scene to live-stream themselves moon dancing,” he told the Post.

    Perhaps a more experienced hand could have restrained him. But Allen might be the best he can get at this juncture, theorized the person who used to work for Giuliani, given his volatility and toxicity.

    “It’s funny in a sad kind of way,” this person said.

     

  8. 28 minutes ago, pearlandhorn said:

    I understand why Young was invited. But really, why was he invited? The Heisman won’t go to a defensive player again in my opinion.

    They always invite at least 3.  Anyone after that is so many points behind within a margin gets invited as well.

     

    https://www.heisman.com/about-the-heisman/balloting-info/

     

    4. How are the finalists determined?

    This is one of the most misunderstood parts of the Heisman process. You will often hear media or fans complain that a certain player was snubbed by not being invited to the Heisman ceremony. But the finalists are not determined arbitrarily. Starting from the understanding that there will always be a minimum of three finalists, whether or not more will be invited is determined by how close the fourth-place finisher’s point total is to that of the third place finisher’s, how close the fifth-place finisher’s is to that of the fourth-place finisher’s and so on.

    In the 2008 Heisman vote, for instance, Florida’s Tim Tebow finished third with 1,575 points. The fourth-place finisher, Graham Harrell of Texas Tech, totaled 213 points. Because of the huge gap between those totals, Harrell was not invited to the ceremony, which featured just three finalists. In 2010, Kellen Moore’s fourth place finish of 635 points brought him much closer to LaMichael James’ third-place finish of 916, so Moore was included as one of the four finalists. The fifth-place finisher in 2010, Justin Blackmon of Oklahoma State, had just 105 points. There was a clear demarcation of support between him and Moore, so the finalists were capped at four.

    In other words, the closeness of the point totals determines the final number of finalists. Where major gaps exist, that’s where you get a cutoff.

    Screen_Shot_2015_12_01_at_3_31_54_PM.png

     

  9. Just now, kevwun said:

    What's worse is that the contract will end up going to a Trump donor who's company is completely unqualified and unprepared for the job.

    The contract went to Microsoft.  So, yeah, part of your statement is true.

    • Like 1
  10. 1 hour ago, Barry said:

    I like Kiffin but I don't know why he keeps getting these good jobs. what has he done? 

    Ole Miss could be a good job.  But they are saddled with being in that murderers' row of a division that is the SEC West, their roster is depleted, and the sanctions are due to come off the books in the next year or so.

    Other than that, he's a good coach who does assemble good staffs, and his teams compete.  And he's served under Carrol and Saban...and been an head coach in the NFL.  His resume is legit.

    Maturity (maybe he has it now?) has always been his weakness.

     

     

  11. Grifting.  Who in this administration doesn't do it?

    https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/07/medicare-chief-asked-taxpayers-to-cover-stolen-jewelry-077761

    Quote

    A top Trump health appointee sought to have taxpayers reimburse her for the costs of jewelry, clothing and other possessions, including a $5,900 Ivanka Trump-brand pendant, that were stolen while in her luggage during a work-related trip, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

     

    Quote

    Seema Verma, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, filed a $47,000 claim for lost property on Aug. 20, 2018, after her bags were stolen while she was giving a speech in San Francisco the prior month. The property was not insured, Verma wrote in her filing to the Health and Human Services department.

     

     

    Quote

    The federal health department ultimately reimbursed Verma $2,852.40 for her claim, a CMS spokesperson said. 

    Verma’s claim included $43,065 for about two dozen pieces of jewelry, based off an appraisal she'd received from a jeweler about three weeks after the theft. Among Verma's stolen jewelry was an Ivanka Trump-brand pendant, made of gold, prasiolite and diamonds, that Verma’s jeweler valued at $5,900. 

     

     

    Quote

    Verma’s claim also included about $2,000 to cover the cost of her stolen clothes and another $2,000 to cover the cost of other stolen goods, including a $325 claim for moisturizer and a $349 claim for noise-cancelling headphones. 

    A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes CMS, said the department has a longstanding policy of paying for certain goods when they are lost during a work trip, so long as they “are not inherently for other uses,” which is why Verma was partially reimbursed.

    Spoiler

    "When paying for such goods, the department pays a discounted rate based on age for the items that were lost," the spokesperson said. "It’s perfectly appropriate that the administrator filed a personal property loss claim for goods stolen while on work travel and this is not an unusual practice for federal employees." 

    But the department is expressly prohibited from reimbursing staff for lost items like jewelry, the spokesperson said. 

    The news of the large request for stolen luxury items comes at a time of unusual scrutiny for Verma, who formerly served as a consultant to then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence in Indiana and has led CMS since March 2017. The $1 trillion health agency administers Medicare, the nation’s health insurance program for seniors; Medicaid, the program for low-income Americans; and Obamacare, among other programs. 

    Verma has been engaged in an acrimonious feud with HHS Secretary Alex Azar that has spilled over into policy matters and prompted separate closed-door meetings for each official with Vice President Pence. Her spending of taxpayer money has also been under scrutiny by the HHS inspector general, after POLITICO reported in March about her extensive use of outside public relations consultants, some of whom worked to burnish Verma’s personal brand. 

    The $2.25 million public relations contract was put on hold pending the probe, and Verma has been under investigation from congressional Democrats. 

    Verma’s luggage was stolen out of her rented Chevrolet Tahoe SUV on July 25, 2018, while she was giving a speech at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, according to statements she gave to the local police and HHS. Verma initially estimated the cost of her lost property as $20,000, according to the police report, before later revising the cost upward when filing her claim to the health department. 

    POLITICO last month filed a Freedom of Information Act request about Verma’s claims for personal damages and separately obtained the documents and confirmed their authenticity with multiple sources. 

    A CMS spokesperson said that Verma was one of three staffers whose luggage was stolen, and HHS lawyers instructed them to file detailed claims for all missing items, including Verma’s jewelry. "At her own expense the administrator travels to Washington, DC, from Indiana each week to work at CMS, which was why she was traveling with her personal collection of jewelry," the spokesperson said. Verma‘s family lives in Indiana. 

    Staff were unaware of a federal health employee previously filing a claim as large as $47,000. 

    Verma was in San Francisco as part of a scheduled three-day trip to Northern California that included a speaking engagement in Napa Valley and a visit to Palo Alto-based Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. The trip was approved by ethics counsel, a CMS spokesperson said. 

    Verma’s San Francisco speech marked a notable point in her tenure: It was the first time the nation’s Medicare chief had publicly attacked “Medicare for All” proposals, arguing that Democrats’ ideas for single-payer health care would destroy the federal health program for older Americans and lead to “Medicare for None.” 

    Verma won plaudits for the speech inside the White House, POLITICO reported, and she touted it online as part of a months-long campaign against Democrats’ proposals. A watchdog group later filed a complaint that Verma’s continued attacks on Medicare for All allegedly violated the prohibition on federal officials engaging in political activity. 

    According to Verma’s lost property claim, the stolen items included 11 pairs of earrings, five necklaces and three pendants. Verma appeared to have worn the Ivanka Trump pendant on multiple public occasions, according to a POLITICO review of her appearances, including meetings with the president and at a November 2017 speech when she announced her plan to let states impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients and crack down on other program spending. The government spends approximately $5,700 per Medicaid patient. 

    Medicaid is too vital a program to let fraud and inappropriate spending threaten it,” Verma said that day.

     

  12. 25 minutes ago, achooloco said:

     

    so...whats the brand?

    Had to look it up, here you go:

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073451HTY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

    Interestingly, it's cheaper now than when I bought it. And I stand corrected; I purchased her a 15lb blanket, not a 20.

    Oh, weight recommendations.  They are all over the place; my wife weighs 125, and some recommendations say that is too much blanket for her, while other recommendations state that is the correct weight.  I do know this; once you get under it it's a heavy bitch.  I tried it out myself, but didn't care for it.

  13. https://footballscoop.com/news/nuggets-the-playoff-field-is-set-but-lets-talk-about-it-anyway/

     

    Quote

    Oregon’s season shows the tragic beauty of the 4-team Playoff system. If you read enough people in the know, it’s a when, not if, the College Football Playoff expands to eight teams, most likely in 2026. Your milage will vary on whether or not it’s a good thing, but there’s no denying it will be different. An 8-team playoff would, most likely, award guaranteed berths to each Power 5 champion, thereby turning college football’s non-conference season into something that isn’t quite the NFL preseason, but is still fundamentally different than the sport we’ve known for the past 150 years. Again, I’m not here to tell you if that’s good or bad, but it will be different.

     

    Quote

    Case in point: the 2019 Oregon Ducks.

    Oregon crushed Utah 37-15 for the Pac-12 championship on Friday night. The 11-2 Ducks will head to the Rose Bowl, and the only reason Mario Cristobal’s team isn’t Playoff-bound is because of what happened on the first Saturday night of the season.

     

    Quote

    As you’ll recall, the Ducks gagged away a game unlike any team gagged away a game all year against Auburn in Dallas:

    — A dropped touchdown pass turned a 14-0 lead into 10-0
    — Leading 14-3, Justin Herbert fumbled at the Auburn 9, which Big Kat Bryant returned 83 yards the other way
    — Leading 21-20 in the fourth quarter, Oregon failed to convert a 4th-and-1 at Auburn’s 41, then failed to stop an Auburn 4th-and-3 at the Tigers’ 47 with 1:21 to play.

     

    Quote

    Bo Nix threw a 26-yard touchdown for a 27-21 Auburn win, and a game Oregon did not trail until 00:09 showed on the clock on Aug. 31 irreparably altered the three months that came after.

    That’s what separates college football from every sport in this country, and that fabric will be lost when the Playoff expands. It’s up to you whether that’s a good thing or not.

    (Of course, the argument against the current system is that, had Oregon played Akron instead of Auburn, we’re not even having this conversation because the 12-1 Ducks are in the Playoff.)

     

    • Like 2
  14. Bought one for my wife a year ago; she had issues sleeping.  Picked up a Queen size (we have a King bed) so she could use it and I wouldn't have the blanket on my side of the bed.    They come in different weights (hers is a 20 lb model).

    She absolutely loves it.

    Oh, as posted above, make sure it's the beaded blanket with the small square quilted thing to keep the beads from settling in one area.  

     

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