Archives 2019

Ivanka Trump attends G20 Summit as though she had diplomatic qualifications. Embarrasses herself.

"Trump Blew Up The Iran Nuclear Deal. Now He Wants Allies To Help Him Get An Iran Nuclear Deal"
So, a commenter who's writing about one of the pieces in the paper is waxing eloquent about how Our Glorious Leader the President is handling various policies. He mentions "increased sanctions on Iran," suggesting that this is a good policy. Problem is, while his aides hope that the President will "...engage with a number of different international leaders, among our closest partners and allies, to obtain their support...", he's busy antagonizing those same allies by throwing around wild charges about them taking advantage of the US on trade matters.

When the DNC tweets out the RNC's interview, you know it didn't go well. RNC Chairwoman tried to suggest that

On the Democratic debate, I have to say I was very impressed by Senator Warren's wonkish command of the details of the issues, but Senator Harris can really do the face-to-face confrontations really well.

A reasonably good SCOTUS decision on the Census citizenship question. President very upset as this was a major setback.

"Tulsi Gabbard Wins Russia Bot Drudge Poll"
Well, there we go! Representative Gabbard's da winnah! On a serious note, I was disappointed by her answer to the question of whether she'd include Hezbollah in a new nuclear deal with Iran. She answered the question she wanted to answer instead of the question she was asked. That happens a lot, but the obviously correct answer was "No." The Obama/P5+1 deal with Iran worked for both sides precisely because it was limited to just a few issues. It did not try to solve every single problem the P5+1 had with Iran.

"GOP congressman voted for tax cuts, now says America is too indebted to pay for appropriations bill"
As with the President's policy on Iran, a Republican is dealing with a largely self-created problem. “Our nation is more than $20 trillion in debt..." Yes. Yes, it is. And Republicans bear a really large share of the blame for that, starting with the War on Terror, launched after 9/11. That's now $5.9 trillion.
The tax cut of 2017, pretty much the only legislative achievement of Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Trump, cost the Treasury $1.5 trillion. The deficit grew by $1 trillion. Meaning that some of the money was profitably re-invested, but not nearly enough to pay for the tax cut.

A look at news coverage of the President's reelection rally. 500 journalists for this? No news "hook," nothing meaningful to report, nothing but him reviving all of his "greatest hits."
Reminds me of the race between the elder George Bush vs Michael Dukakis (Governor of Massachusetts). Near the end, a TV newswoman cheerfully chirped that she was going to review the campaign, going over all of the highlights. In the meantime, the independent paper The Boston Phoenix reviewed all of the important stuff the campaign didn't cover! The Phoenix was engaged in real journalism!

Trump official tries to argue that detained children don't need toothpaste or soap. Man who was held by Somali pirates for 32 months received toothpaste and soap. Here's the video where she argues this.

Four Severely Ill Migrant Toddlers Hospitalized After Lawyers Visit Border Patrol Facility: unresponsive, feverish and vomiting, yet receiving no medical care. One 2-year-old’s eyes were rolled back in her head, she was “completely unresponsive” and limp.

James Comey thought he was telling brand-new President Trump about the "pee tape" for the first time in January 2017. Actually, Hope Hicks tells us that Trump knew about it several months prior.

"During this difficult climate in which police officers are constantly under attack, the FOP will continue to support" officers, police union president John McNesby said in a statement.

Heh! No, "free speech" doesn't enter into this and yes, the speech of public servants matters. When I was in the Navy, we were strictly forbidden from using disparaging terms for other genders, ethnicities, etc. There's good reason for that as speech encourages attitudes in both positive and negative ways.

An important detail is that the shoot-down occurred over the Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf where the borders on the sea between Iran and international waters are very close to each other. Iran says the drone was in their airspace, the US says it was over international waters.

Reporter April Ryan takes a position I strongly agree with and yeah, if anything constituted a reason to do a press briefing, a shoot-down in the Strait of Hormuz where technical details like the exact location of the US drone in the hour before and during the shoot-down is extremely important, was a very good reason to open up the press briefing room.

Good! Trump Administration has suggested it can use the 2001 AUMF to conduct a war against Iran. Congress is saying "No, you need a proper declaration of war. Dragging that old one won't do!"

The problem with one-man rule. The President didn't think through his Iran policy, didn't develop any fall-backs or alternatives and his advisers are all neo-conservatives, who don't know any tactic except escalation. There's nobody who advises the President except for yes-men and sycophants. That's part of the reason I'm cheering on the Democrats in Congress so much!

The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claims that the child porn found on his computer was just unopened email. The piece doesn't say exactly how the child porn was on his computer. If it was indeed just in unopened emails, it's hard to see why it was even mentioned as I'm sure celebrities of any kind get all sorts of unwanted emails! If it was opened or saved, that would warrant prosecution.

Okay, this says he was sending child porn to Sandy Hook parents, in which case he would definitely have had to have opened it up and to have saved it to his hard drive. Was he trying to get off on it? Doesn't sound like it. Would I bust his sorry ass for being a pervert anyway? Oh, Hell yeah!

Found a paragraph here that sums up the Trump Administration's entire Iran policy in a nutshell:

To the extent that the maximum pressure campaign has gained international compliance, it has been achieved through threats and coercion, not buy-in.

"Pompeo vows proof coming of Iran attack"
Y'see, this is not the kind of headline we should ever see from any competent bureaucrat! When you prepare to come out with an accusation against a foreign country, you assemble your evidence, you "get your ducks in a row," you perform "due diligence," you make sure you have a case. The Trump Administration's actions here are those of a banana republic, not those of a mature, great power.

Senator Tom Cotton says that if Iran attacked those ships in the Gulf of Oman, then it was an "unprovoked" attack. That may be true in a strictly military tit-for-tat sense, but the US has been sanctioning Iran so as to squeeze it economically, so I'm not quite sure that "unprovoked" is correct.

In his introduction to this post, our blogger points out that no one can recall the names of the Obama Press Secretaries because they just did their jobs. They did press conferences on a regular basis, they gave out good, solid information and no one has recalled them ever lying about anything.
Now personally, when someone has died, I'll be a bit circumspect about dissing them for at least a suitable interval. I feel no such hesitancy about someone who simply leaves office. Sanders was an absolutely horrible Press Secretary who seriously degraded and diminished the office.

Thinking of the soon-to-be-departed Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, in late March, she posted a set of brackets where people could vote for “which of the angry and hysterical” Trump haters “got it most embarrassingly wrong” about the Mueller Report. This was when all we had to go on was AG Barr's four-page summary-not-a-summary. No one was "proven wrong" by such flimsy and incomplete evidence and no one/s been proven wrong since.

Secretary of State “Benghazi Mike” Pompeo seems to put everything in the Middle East into two categories, pro-US and pro-Iran. Kind of a problem with that is that the Afghani Taliban is neither. His analysis is straight out of the Vietnam War era, when everyone was either pro-US or pro-Communist, an analysis that ignored the growing rift between Red China and the Soviet Union. My own analysis of the Vietnam War was that opponents of US occupation were driven by nationalism and desire to own the land that they worked on.

The President was asked what would happen if a foreign source offered him dirt on a campaign rival? "Trump campaign: We'll handle foreign info on a 'case by case basis'"
This "solution" comes far, far short of adequate. The Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee had it right the first time. Someone offered Representative Schiff dirt on Trump, Schiff replied that, sure, bring your information in, but the FBI will be informed you're doing so and they'll be sitting alongside me as you present your information.

"Russia is Calling Trump's Bluff on Iran and Syria, and Winning Big"
After two-plus years of bluffs, bluster, tariffs and sanctions, Russia and Iran know that the President is a paper tiger and will never initiate war. Russia and Iran have different interests, but are united in opposing the US.

In the first video, at the 2:25 mark, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff asks Andrew McCarthy how the Steele Dossier is relevant to the Mueller Report. McCarthy can't come up with any way in which it's relevant. Note that at the 3:18 mark in the second video, Sean Hannity makes it sound as though the Dossier was extremely important to the numerous investigations of Donald Trump and company. Sorry, but the political left simply doesn't engage in this kind of flat-out dishonesty.

It's interesting that Sean Hannity accuses Rachel Maddow of being an extreme, untrustworthy radical. The interesting part is when he presents four clips that supposedly prove what wild, hysterical, radical charges she makes. Having watched Maddow for quite awhile, I can assure you she doesn't just come out and make a charge. She walks her viewers through the evidence, showing each step she takes in getting to her point. Nope. Sorry. None of Hannity's examples pass muster as a wild, unsubstantiated charge.

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders accuses Democrats of not wanting to work with the President on projects of national significance. 1. The President spent two years with a Republican House and Senate and essentially spent most of that time twiddling his thumbs and playing golf and 2. Democrats have passed bill after bill after bill, only to see them dying in the legislative graveyard of the Senate.

So former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is again telling us that he's deeply, deeply concerned about immigration reform and the federal budget deficit. Which would be very impressive if he hadn't actively worked to make both problems worse!!!

"Jon Stewart breaks down in emotional testimony at 9/11 Victims Fund hearing"
The First Responders to 9/11 did their jobs, they did them well, they acted without hesitation or concern for their own safety. Why, why, why is Congress so lackadaisical and unconcerned about providing funding for them?!?!?!?!

"Nikki Haley: Backers Of Abortion Rights Are Forcing Their Values On America"
Her case is just as weird and confusing as it sounds. Nikki Haley insists that pro-choicers must not force women into having a wide range of choices concerning their own bodies. Keep in mind while reading this paragraph that Haley is anti-choice:

“The idea that women must adhere to a particular set of values is one of the most anti-women ideas in today’s culture,” she said. “It is a rejection of the ideas of equality and tolerance that the women’s movement is supposed to be about.”

I guess it says something about today's peace movement that I went to Philadelphia's Gay Pride March today and didn't see any sign of the Veteran for Peace. They used to be a real presence in that march.

"Trump caved to Republican pressure on Mexico tariff threat: Democratic lawmaker"
The President puts out a view of reality that no one else can see. He touts some extremely modest accomplishments as earth-shakingly important. Very interestingly, "this is the one place that the Republicans decided to take a stand.”

And actually, it was the former DHS Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, who deserves all the credit for the deal with Mexico.

"How Trump's phony Mexico trade deal duped the press"
This is why I pretty much never trust the "breaking news" from mainstream sources. They pretty much always just take the Administration's word for everything without doing any analysis or fact-checking. The blogger goes into AG Barr's summary-not-a-summary of the Mueller Report as a particularly egregious example of the mainstream media really falling down on the job by rushing their stories.

So we apparently do have a winner in the credibility contest! Seems the President is right and Laura Ingraham held up 12,000 people for her interview with the President.

Iowans are starting to realize that caucuses are really terrible and need to be replaced with plain old elections.

*Sigh* It's just amazing that an ambassador can say something so blockheadedly stupid! Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the US, compared the Israeli occupation of the West Bank to the US occupation of Germany and Japan after World War II. Germany and Japan never had to deal with US colonies in their midst, pushing native-born peoples aside!

The current strategy of the Trump Administration, to deny that global warming is even taking place, is utterly unsustainable. 215 of the world's largest 500 corporations have identified $1 trillion in future losses via climate change.

The Trump borthers Don Jr. and Eric stopped off at an Irish pub, called for a round for the house on them. They didn't have any cash on them at the time, but told the pub to ask the local Trump golf course to pay for the round, which it did. The initial story was that the Trump brother welshed on the tab and left it unpaid. The brothers were upset at this, but seriously, it's not like their dad always paid his debts. The brothers just don't have any credibility to fall back on.

US deaths on D-Day: 2501
Allied deaths on D-Day: 4414
US deaths from gunfire this year: 6000

A short while ago, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner praised the President, saying that he "...came in, brought in a ton of people who never would've been in Washington before who were not 'qualified' by conventional standards..." (Example #28)
The President apparently likes this picture of himself as he declared to someone writing about him that "There are those that say we have one of the finest Cabinets." As with Kushner's remark, it's far from clear what's so awesome about the people Trump brought to Washington DC.

"Don’t forget how the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler"
The Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942-February 1943) was the turning point on the Eastern Front. The Battle of Kursk (August 1943) sealed the fate of the Wehrmacht and the Soviets just kept advancing after that. The Battle for Italy bogged down in September 1943, but they Allies didn't just sit around until D-Day in June 1944. The bombing campaign against German industries took an enormous toll in that time period.

The blogger for this site, Informed Comment, is a History Professor and he provides a look at the many Muslims who fought against the Axis powers.

Good summary of the past month or so of reports on Iran. A dhow is a small ship, less than 100 feet in length, mostly made of wood. It can carry small infantry weapons, but would be very quickly blown to bits if it tried to attack a US or allied warship. Interestingly, what the report leaves out is that the Trump Administration is peeved at Democrats for warning Iran not to do anything aggressive.

"Team Trump keeps taking the climate conversation backwards"
Hard to say what the real motivation in the Trump Administration's climate change policy is. Even if the President was so clueless as to believe his own rhetoric on climate change, what's everybody elses excuse?

GOP screams and hollers about Senator Warren wanting to "raise taxes," ignoring the question of "cui bono?" (Who exactly benefits? Which demographic groups will gain or lose?) Turns out she wants to raise taxes on the 1%.

I'm angry and disappointed that Biden has affirmed the anti-choice Hyde Amendment, but it's very clear how he came to support the Green New Deal. He wet his finger, put it up to the wind, saw that it was blowing in favor of renewables and said "I'm a renewables kinda guy!" That means Democrats don't have to worry about having to elect any candidate who will be wishy-washy on climate change. Everyone will be on the same page!

The Kennedys have long occupied the American political culture as the unofficial royal family, but this week, the Trumps appeared to present themselves as the 2019 version…

Uh, no. The Trumps will never be anything even remotely close to the Kennedys in US popular culture.

Jared Kushner is asked what his father-in-law will be remembered for: "What this President did is he represented an outsider who came in, brought in a ton of people who never would've been in Washington before who were not 'qualified' by conventional standards." All very fine and well, but then he goes on to suggest that that was a good thing!!!! I think of people like Ben Carson, who's been working on a plan to improve the Department of HUD but who, after 2 1/2 years, still hasn't mastered really basic aspects of his job. I think of Betsy DeVo, who has never visited a school that she thought was doing poorly because she just visits schools where she can have a cheerful, feel-good celebration of them. She's simply deleted many pro-LGBTQ guidances and has taken the side of sexual abusers.

The President visits Britain. Crowds usually line the streets to see a US President. Not this time.

So it appears the news on the US relationship with Iran is that it's actually very, very good! The President appears to have realized that he hired an insane warmonger in NSC Adviser John Bolton and has decided that going to war with Iran isn't what he wants to do! Of course, that blows to pieces any strategy the US might have had to get concessions from Iran, but it's good to see the President is not completely insane.

Personally, I agree that in 2016, Wikileaks acted more like a hostile foreign intelligence service than it did like a press outlet, but as it never formally assumed such a role and as the current Trump Administration extradition request does enormous damage to press freedoms, I advocate dropping any case against Wikileaks. Assange is now serving a 50-week sentence for jumping bail, so extradition might have to wait until that sentence is served.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is running a good, solid, pro-active campaign. She takes the initiative by reporting on her own events rather than waiting for reporters to ask her questions about them.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo makes amazing admissions about Jared Kushner's "Deal of the Century." His last point is: "4. It stacks the deck for Israel so heavily that the Palestinians will refuse to play. Only an Israeli, Pompeo admitted, could love it." Which is entirely true, but it's amazing to hear Pompeo admit that.

Supreme Court Justice Thomas writes a dissent that seeks to characterize abortion as a “tool of eugenic manipulation.”
1. Yes, there was a eugenics movement back in the 1920s, but there is no such movement today. "[E]ugenic manipulation" can't occur today bcause there's no one around to do the manipulating.
2. To say that forced sterilization and abortion are the same is ridiculous. Abortion is an un-coerced choice made by the woman as doctors can easily interview the woman to verify that she's making the choice herself.

"Without Evidence, John Bolton Blames Iran for Oil Tanker Sabotage"
See, the problem here is that NSC Adviser Bolton doesn't have to prove things to us regular citizens. He does have to prove them to elected Democrats with security clearances and to foreign diplomats! Not for legal purposes, but for the sake of his own credibility. He has to do a whole lot better than: “Who else would you think is doing it? Somebody from Nepal?” That answer just isn't going to cut it.

A random voter is interviewed. What she says about right-wing media is important and disturbing. She shows an active interest in politics, but inside the Fox News bubble, she hadn't heard that the Mueller Report had contained anything negative about the President.

May

Our local paper gives this story the soft-shoe treatment. Nah, this story shows without any doubt that the proposed addition of a question to the 2020 Census was clearly and specifically designed to serve the purpose of denying Democratic-leaning states their rightful share of federal representation and money.

Evidence appears to be that the Navy was not ordered to hide the USS McCain during a presidential visit, that officers on the scene volunteered to hide the ship and to also refuse to permit sailors from the ship to attend the President's visit as they would have been wearing the name of the ship on their ballcaps. Wow! How incredibly sad is it that we have such a volatile, easily-triggered Commander in Chief?!?!?!?!

Update: It wasn't the Navy's idea to cover over the name of the USS John McCain. The President's people felt that seeing the dead Senator's name would "trigger" the President to say something stupid.

The NY Times decided two years ago that they no longer needed a public editor and that Twitter users were sufficient to keep the paper in line. If they were serious, then they should follow the advice coming from Twitter users now. That clearly, the entire department or division within the NY Times that deals with regular, daily reporting on the President, and that includes ALL of the editors and managers as well as ALL of the reporters, needs to either be reassigned to non-political reporting jobs like hockey or gardening or they just need to be discharged. They have all very clearly been hopelessly compromised and corrupted beyond any possible hope of redemption. The recent story on Hope Hicks is just the latest and most egregious violation of reporting standards.

Update: A great many Twitter users agreed that the NY Times should toss out their whole presidential reporting department. The reaction of the NYT was very angry and defensive!

Media Matters argus that the NY Times very badly needs to reinstate their Public Editor.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao (and wife of Senate Majority Leader McConnell) still has stock that she should have sold off a long, long time ago. Her investment in a construction company netted her $40k recently.

Deputy White House spokesperson, Hogan Gidley bemoans the fact that the media "take whatever [Speaker Pelosi] says, you know, lock, stock and barrel, I mean, it would be so nice if we had a complicit, compliant media the way the Democrats do, and we don’t."
Hmm, could this "media bias" exist because the Trump Administration lies all the time and Pelosi doesn't?!?!?!

The President gives the North Korean dictator a pass on a missile test because otherwise he'd have to admit that his diplomatic strategy was a complete bust.

Former Trump aide Hope Hicks is subpoened. The NY Times tells us how she's considering how to respond. They say for her it's an "existential question." %&$*#@!!!! No, dammit!!! It's a question of law and order and of obeying the entirely legitimate instructions of Congress! They also supplied a glamourous photo of her when there are perfectly good ones available showing her being all buddy-buddy with the President.

More on the NY Times selling a kid-gloves approach to questioning the rich, pretty, white, connected woman who enabled Trump Administration crimes. Interesting quote from the NYT: "The likeliest possibility would be a compromise..." Why? Hope Hicks doesn't have any sort of legal leg to stand on. There's absolutely no principled reason for Congress to make any sort of compromise with her.

"Shanahan, Pompeo didn't convince House Democrats that Iran poses any new threats"
The President says he wants to make sure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. That was already achieved in 2015. He says he wants Iran to return to the negotiating table. Iran has absolutely zero interest in doing any such thing as there's a 100% probability that the result will be worse for them. The President has offered absolutely nothing that they din't already have or weren't scheduled to receive.
A very serious problem for the Trump Administration is their credibility. Democratic senators and/or representatives or allied diplomats must be persuaded that Iran poses a real and imminent threat. If the administration can't do that, there is not the slightest chance that the American people can be persuaded to take any warnings at all seriously.

Saudi Arabia is perfectly willing to fight to the last American in order to defeat Iran.

MSNBC's Chuck Todd has always been a poor interviewer and remains consistently bad here. To me, the question is not "When does life begin?" but "When does the life of the baby take priority over the welfare of the mother and other family members?"

Carl von Clausewitz was a Prussian cavalry officer who served during the Napoleonic wars. His book "On War" was published posthumously and put out the thesis that war was "a continuation of politics through other means." Our blogger makes use of Clausewitz's theories to show that declarations of war serve very useful purposes for those who declare wars.

"Dozens walk out before Mike Pence's commencement address at Taylor University"
I can fully undersand why controversial speakers enjoy speaking at commencement exercises, they get a large, well-dressed crowd that can't speak back or ask questions. But it's an entirely one-sided deal and doesn't serve any educational purpose for the students or their parents.

Yeah, we used to be concerned about the majority oppressing less popular people/viewpoints. Anti-choicers are very much a minority in this country, but appear to have the levers of power when it comes to the abortion issue.

Needs saying. This morning I heard Andrea Mitchell basically say how wary the press is about repeating their Iraq mistakes and then go into a segment where much of the Trump administration Iran charges were taken at pretty much face value.

I saw this piece last night. The anti-choice legislator offered up a wildly incoherent defense of his position.

"I’ve been to countries where governments either forced women to have abortions like they used to do in China or forced women to bear children like they used to do in Romania,” she added. “And I can tell you the government has no business in the decisions that women make with their families in accordance with their faith, [and] with medical advice and I will stand up for that right."

This is a very interesting legal theory by the President' lawyer, that the perp can decide when he's been investigated enough. Kinda like Al Capone telling Elliot Ness "All-righty, that's quite enough with these annoying and bothersome investigations!"

Basic problem here is that it's nowhere near enough to say: "Don't have an abortion!" Anti-choicers have to consider the whole picture! Okay, so we insist that women have more kids. Then what?!?!?!

Good! Georgia's near-total abortion ban has resulted in a strong backlash from Georgia's highly profitable film industry.
Huh! I wasn't aware that Alyssa Milano has been featured in two seasons of a Netflix show called "Insatiable." She's refusing to do a third season as long as the show is produced in Georgia.

"Palestinians: US is Imposing a Surrender Plan on us, not a Peace Deal"
A core disagreement over illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank is dismissed by the US Special Envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt as merely being an obsession by opponents of Israel and a "farce." Greenblatt noted, “The Trump administration has drastically cut its support for the Palestinians to try to spur their return to negotiations.” As though this was an effective or workable tactic to produce Palestinian compliance.

To show obstruction of justice, one must show corrupt intent. That bar was arguably crossed with the President's instructions to the then-White House Counsel Don McGahn. This is what the multiple hundreds of former federal prosecutors are pointing to when they say they'd bust the President on obstruction charges if he wasn't, as the president, protected by an OLC opinion that a president can't be indicted.

"Sanders' dubious claim: Trump admin 'takes election meddling seriously'"
Simple question in response: Who is the "Czar" or "Field Marshal" that's in charge of the response to Russian cyber-meddling? If the Trump Administration appoints someone to direct the overall response, then I will believe that they're serious about defeating this!

Awwww! Candace Owens is out of a job! Yeah, it seems her comment on der Fuhrer was what did it.

House Judiciary Chair "Nadler likens Trump to 'dictator,' threatens Barr with contempt after hearing boycott"
Fox News piece. Interesting in that it repets what Nadler calle the President, but doesn't explain why. The result is that it makes Nadler look unhinged. Why was Nadler upset? AG Barr boycotted the hearing and the AG has a wild and extreme theory that a president should be able to cancel an investigation based on nothing more than his own personal theory that the investigation is biased against him or that his opponents are dishonorable. Barr's theory throws the whole concept of checks and balances out the window.

The NY Times uses very genteel, restrained language. Usually, that's fine. When the President openly uses the language of the Holocaust to smear a group, that's very, very wrong!!! Problem with soft-pedaling outright lies to say that they're "inaccurate statements" is that it becomes hard to describe genuinely outrageous statements when he or his people make them.

April

Why did a group of sailors appear to so enthusiastically greet VP Pence? They were ordered to act "like we're at a strip club."

Very, very interesting! Seems Mueller (Who is still a DOJ employee) was really, really annoyed at how his findings were characterized. The AG didn't have much credibility before, he now has zilch!

Joe Biden was in charge of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 for the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearing. If Biden were in charge of the same committee during the 2018 Brett Kavanaugh-Christine Blasey Ford hearing, would he have done it any better? The piece suggests no, as Biden doesn't appear to have learned anything during the intervening years.

For some reason, the President doesn't seem to take the threat of Russian interference in our election seriously.

The lone Democrat does well here, battling four Fox News people. She's right, of course. It is massively hypocritical for Republicans to complain about AG Barr being questioned by lawyers when GOP Senators did the same during the Kavanaugh hearing.

Yep, the Dirty effin' Hippies were right...again! The NSA has conceded that mass phone data collection is useless, but the Republican Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee seems inclined to renew the program anyway.

The logic of white supremacy means that the worse Trump is, the better. After eight years of Barack Obama, the message to people of color by the majority of white people who voted was simple: "I'd rather let the worst of us run this country than the best of you."

Jared Kushnr was "Asked why the Trump campaign didn’t reject Russia’s attempts to swing the election toward the president, Kushner said, 'The notion of what they were doing didn’t even register to us as being impactful.'" I don't buy this explanation at all. Even if Russian interfernce had no impact, it was still traitorous to use their assistance. Also, given the previous history of attempted foreign interference in US campaigns, it was incumbent on the Trump campaign to at least check with the government to assess the possible impact of Russia aiding and assisting them in 2016.

Lara Trump (Wife of younger son Eric) states that Germany's influx of immigrants in 2015 was a disaster. Ehh, not so sure about that. It certainly resulted in some strains and stresses, but the terms "disaster" and "crisis" overstate the problems there. According to the Migration Policy Institute, what's impressive about Germany and immigration was the clear-eyed, common sense reforms that Germans undertook as early as 2001.

One of the big chrages that Mueller makes in what we have of his report is that of obstruction of justice. Senator Lindsey Graham scoffs at this. Funny, but 20 years ago when he was talking about President Clinton obstructing justice, he demonstrated a very diffferent attitude.

Very interesting! Instead of working forwards, declaring the President is guilty and them proving it, Special Counselor Mueller appears to have been working backwards, eliminating possible innocent explanations.

"Trump Sues To Hide His Financials? Good Luck With That"
The President is personally suing the head of the House Oversight Committee to keep his finances a secret from Congress. Saw the Rachel Maddow show later and she and the Fox News legal analyst are in complete agreement. Congress has a pretty much unlimited right to get the President's financial records. This is not a gray or fuzzy area of the law.

Redacted Mueller Report released. Rolling Stone has a good round-up of videos and statements from both sides. Seems the President spiked the football and did a victory dance just a wee bit early.

Yeah, these are very seriously inadequate answers. The first set of questions concerns the Trump Tower meeting with Russians, including Natalia Veselnitskaya and the President claims not to recall anything about the meeting. Yah. Okay. Sure.

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was amazed that the public wasn't celebrating the lack of active coordination/conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. Problem is, they very clearly had the same goal, making Donald Trump the president.

Donald Trump's strategy to discredit negative journalist stories about him was to complain early and often about how their stories were always inaccurate. A comparison between Mueller's Report and the stories that the Trump Campaign/Presidency and the press corps put out shows that the press very largely got their stories right.

Lengthy YouTube where Representative AOC questions Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. AOC very clearly does her homework and knows exactly what she's talking about. Ross just sits there looking and sounding confused.

Notre Dame went up in flames. A French billionaire has promised to get it rebuilt. Americans, needing somewhere to send money, remembered that several black churches have recently been torched, so some good has come out of this.

Woo hoo! As I said before, I favor Bill Weld running for president for the exact same reason I oppose Howard Schultz doing so. A split ticket generally means defeat, unity often means success. Besides, Weld was a good governor for Massachusetts. I think America in general could live with a Weld victory in 2020 far better then it can another term of Trump

As with the elder George Bush in 1992, Republicans today simply have no legislative agenda to run on. If they regained the House and retained the Senate and the Presidency, what would they do? They don't know.

Congress has long had the right to examine anyone's taxes. Press Secretary Sanders makes an hysterical asserton that, by trying to get the President's tax returns, this "would lead to a 'dangerous, dangerous road' for all Americans."

Ah! This is why Senator Sanders has been so slow to release his taxes! He's a millionaire.

As expected, his railing against "millionaires and billionaires" rings a bit hollow now that he's a millionaire as well. Personally, I've never thought someone had to be poor in order to criticize the rich.

Chris Cuomo of CNN made the argument for having the President's spokespeople on air even though they lie a lot. Basically, these people make what the President considers to be his best, most compelling case. To Cuomo's credit, he's pretty good on pushing back on the BS. Here's another CNN host who has liars on his show, but does a good job of pushback.

A celebration of the scientist who took the lead in getting a photograph of a black hole. A side-by-side comparison of what it takes to get something complicated like this done.

Now that AG Barr has thrown some red meat to the wolves ("spying," Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, et al), they're going to be putting pressure on him to come out with a whole series of indictments.

"In Iowa, Bernie Sanders says states should allow felons to vote from behind bars"
Hmm, I dunno. As much as I hate to agree with the Fox News commenter Tomi Lahren on anything, she's kinda got a point here. I certainly agree that ex-felons should get voting rights immediately upon being free again. That brings them back into society and gives them a good motivation to brief themselves on the issues of the day through the news. But give voting rights to those currently serving time? Ehh, not so sure about that.

A blogger I frequently agree with makes a couple of good points about Assange, the past history of Wikileaks and Assange's arrest. Not a simple up-or-down decision. In 2010, Wikileaks acted as a reporting service and exposed something really bad about the Iraq War. In 2016, Wikileaks acted as a hostile foreign intelligence service and helped to put the current president into office. These two things are both true.

Back when Paul Manfort was busted (He had been Trump's campaign manager fo a few months during the 2016 campaign), people around the President pretended that Trump barely knew the guy. Julian Assange (Wikileaks) is now getting the same treatment.

Woo hoo! New Zealand passes gun reform, specifically against the type of gun that causes the most damage to human beings, in under a month after the Christchurch massacre!

Treasury Secretary effectively says "Eff y'all." He of course used more polite language than that, but there's no question that he really should just hand over the information that Congress has requested.

Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange is arrested at Ecuador's embassy in London. There are some freedm of the press issues involved, but I lost all sympathy for this guy when it was revealed that he was a tool of Russia's foreign policy. Lost respect for Chelsea Manning when she decided to stand by him. Was Ecuador wrong to let him go? Maybe, but seven years is a long time to put up with an unwanted guest. I give them enormous credit for putting up with Assange for as long as they did.

I saw people making a comment yesterday that I found very puzzling. They said that Stephen Miller was accused of being a white nationalist. This is an entirely accurate description of Miller. It's not even slightly controversial. Yes, Miller is also Jewish. One has nothing to do with the other. Nixon was a Quaker yet he was also a warmonger. People claimed that because someone accused a Jewish person of being something that he very clearly was, they were being anti-Semitic. This shows a lack of understanding of what anti-Semitism is.

The last point here got a lot of commentary. AG Barr doesn't seem to be at all concerned about the consequences of killing off the ACA/Obamacare without having an adequate replacement ready to go. He gave that a very casual, quick dismissal.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is planning to annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank, not the whole West Bank. Of course, as settlements have the West Bank split up into bantustan-like pockets, this would leave Palestinians in something that in no way resembles an independent state.

Georgia's extreme anti-choice law has alienated the film industry. GOP State Representative Ginny Ehrhart whistles past the political graveyard as she says she doesn't see a contradiction between being anti-choice and being pro-film industry. Piece that discusses foster care vs being "pro-life."

With news that some players on Mueller's normally tight-lipped team are privately grumbling that Barr has misrepresented the Russia report to the public, and that the report may contain far more ”alarming” evidence of obstruction of justice than Barr first suggested, journalists once again stand exposed, guilty of na�vely accepting the word of an official working for an administration that lies about everything.

"Kirstjen Nielsen Out As DHS Secretary"
Eh, no loss.
Couple of interesting footnotes on Neilson's resignation.
Yeah, just as many of us thought. Kirstjen Nielsen was fired by the President because she wasn't enough of a Nazi. Stephen Miller was not a supporter of Neilsen and called on her to find more effective ways to seal the border. As is his usual schtick, the President often called Neilsen early in the morning to holler at her for not having gotten the problem solved. "She apparently responded with attempts to explain the rule of law, which undoubtedly enraged the authoritarian-minded president further still."

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is kind of like the American Marine Corps in that it's a component of the Iranian state. It is not an organization that's independent of the state of Iran. It's been recommended that they be declared a terrorist organization. That would be an incredibly stupid thing to do.

Here's some positive news for y'all! As they said back during the Obama Presidency, "We are the solution we've been waiting for!" When horrified liberals realized Donald Trump has been elected President, we got busy and worked on taking back the House. The result is that we are far more likely to see the results of the Mueller Report than we ever would have been had we not re-taken the House!

Sadly hilarious! Fox News reporters wears bulletproof vest in border area in order to make it look like a dangerous combat zone. Real reporters Jacob Soboroff and Soledad O'Brien have reported from the same areas for years and have never worn such vests.

So, first the former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz blames Democrats for the failure of the younger George Bush's immigration plan. I knew at the time that the Democrats had open minds on immigration, but the issue didn't lend itself to demonizing anyone and would have instead required listening to all sides and coming up with a real solution. That obviously wasn't within Bush's limited governing skills set.
The idea of bringing everybody into a room and having them not leave until a problem is solved is exactly the sort of idea that Ross Perot of the 1992 campaign was fond of suggesting. Funny thing is, no one's actually tried this idea, probably because it's a stupid and unworkable one.

In an MSNBC interview, it becomes apparent that the problem here is that the former Starbocks CEO Howard Schultz just spouts one vague, woolly generalization after another. Ali Velshi, on the other hand, is a very good interviewer.

Attorney General Barr has a very deeply serious credibility problem here. It seems that Mueller's investigators wrote chapter introductions that were specifically screened so that they wouldn't need to be redacted. They were designed for release to the general public. The AG needs to release them NOW!

I think Adam Schiff is 100% correct here. I find it highly doubtful that the Mueller Report even needs any redactions in the first place. We haven't seen the report because the Trump Administration feels it has a lot to hide.

Mar-a-Lago isn't properly screening visitors. But that's not the Secret Service's job. The President either needs to spend more time at Camp David or working in the White House or he needs to spend his own money to upgrade security at Mar-a-Lago.

Former FBI Director James Comey revealed that he's kept awake at night by the possibility that he helped Trump secure the 2016 election.

President claims he will soon unveil a new Republican health care plan. Very important to keep this in mind. There is no Republican health care plan to unveil. They had nearly a decade and failed to produce one that even their own party could pass in good conscience.

Very cool! A company that had dumped major amounts of coal ash must clean up those pits at their expense! The ash was placed into unsecured pits, from which they've leaked into the drinking water supply and have overflowed during floods.

The bad news: Media has assisted the Attorney General and the President by asserting that Mueller Report contains only good news for the President.
The good news: The needle of public opinion hasn't moved a millimetre because people are aware that the Mueller Report has been embargoed by the AG.

Fox News runs a chyron that states "Trump cuts U.S. aid to 3 Mexican countries." AOC comments on that.

March

"Mick Mulvaney Tells Shameless Lie: No One Will Lose Coverage If Obamacare Is Overturned"
Interviews like this are much worse than merely useless. It was made clear during the 2017 debate over replacing the ACA/Obamacare that millions of people would be thrown off of their plans without an adequate replacement. It was clear that the GOP hadn't figured out how to cover pre-existing conditions (that was also made clear before the 2018 midterm). Charging people a penalty for not getting an ACA plan is a feature, not a bug. That's part of how the ACA covers costs. The interviewer simply moves on to the next subject without challenging his subject in the slightest, thereby giving viewers the impression that they were just told the truth. They weren't.

"Will Rachel Maddow face a reckoning for her Trump-Russia coverage?"
This was posted by a radical leftist Russagate skeptic. It contained this sentence: "Still, it’s abundantly clear now that many liberal outlets overdid it in their fervor."
Erm, actually, it's far from clear as we only have the word of a Trump partisan that the Mueller Report says any such thing. All we have so far is the Attorney General's summary that he now claims isn't a summary. We will need much more detailed evidence of specific errors in the Russiagate coverage before we can agree with what the writer claims.

"Trump cuts aid for Central American countries, threatens border shutdown"
[What they must have been thinking]
"Hmm. So if people are coming to the US because their own countries are in desperate shape...what to do? What to do? Ha! I got it! We'll make their home countries even more desperate!"
The President's analysis of the situation:: “They set up these caravans,” Trump said at an event in Canal Point, Florida, on Friday. “In many cases, they put their worst people in the caravan; they’re not going to put their best in."

A deep dive into the President's negotiating style. It might work IF the other party is really, really anxious to make a deal and is willing to give up just about anything. If the situation is anything like normal diplomacy where the two sides both have good reasons to come to the table, his style is worthless.

The Director of the President's National Economic Council, who isn't particularly well-qualified for his post, decided on the strength of a single editorial that a Republican pundit named Stephen Moore would make a splendid member of the Federal Reserve Board. Yeah, still more of the usual Trump cluster$%#@.

This bum (The President decided to appoint him to Federal Reserve Board position after seeing him give an interview on TV) also owed $18k in child support payments. For some reason, he thought he could take that off of his taxes.

Wow! A poll says 36% of the population believes the President was cleared by Robert Mueller. How can people believe such a crazy assertion? Well, the blogger here points out that the media has done a very poor job of pointing out that the Barr 3 1/2 page summary is not the 300-1000 page Mueller Report.

Presidential candidate "Donald Trump on Friday "[in late August 2016] continued his outreach to African-American voters, presenting them with a stark question: 'What the hell do you have to lose?'" Trump was of course speaking to an audience that was about 99% white, but his question made him look as though he cared about African-Americans.
I was reminded of this when I heard the question about what Democrats will do, attack him with "partisan investigations" or "join us to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure."
The President has, of course, done absolutely zip about infrastructure for his entire term as 1. Republicans don't want to do anything that involves spending a lot of money and 2. Democrats want to use an infrastructure plan to do something about climate change.
The two offers are alike in that they convince the followers of the President that he's serious about doing the work that a president is expected to do. They're alike in that we can reasonably expect that this work will never get accomplished.

Very good Rachel Maddow show last night as she details the history of how Special Counsel reports have been relayed. We have never had an Attorney General delay a report for any reason. Chairman Adam Schiff responds with righteous outrage to a demand that he step down and details the reasons as to why we think the President has been compromised by a foreign power.

Experts and research indicate that 15 students is a good class size. Larger classes means students don't get enough attention. Education Secretary DeVos is certain though, that students can thrive in al sorts of conditions. She's asked what research she has to back that assertion up and it's clear from her answer that she's got nothin'.

Research confirms that DeVos is mistaken. Larger class size does not result in better learning.

"US-Mexico border 'at breaking point'"
This is 100% a self-created problem. If there is a tragedy, the Trump Administration will be wholly and completely responsible.

I completely agree with Brian Kilmeade, who said: "The Democrats are not buying the [Barr] summary. They still think the president colluded just about to a person."
Right, because the Starr Report of 1998 was released wholesale and the current Attorney General has not provided a good reason as to why he provided a summary to the Mueller Report and why the report is being delayed.
It's rather unreasonable for Senator Rand Paul to ask for an investigation of "the Obama era officials that got this thing started." As we don't know what Mueller found, on what basis would we investigate the investigators?

The big tax bill of December 2017 promised major returns in the form of repatriated money. Companies were supposed to bring profits back from overseas because that money was being taxed at a lower rate. Problem is, the younger George Bush promised exactly the same thing back during 2004. In both cases, the returns to the US were far less than advertised.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway is very, very upset that anyone could make accusations against the current White House and lists a whole series of charges. Hmm. Yeah, problem is, all of those charges are made on solid evidence.

Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams sounded like a great match-up until he started talking about Anita Hill.

Poor, poor Biden, wishing he could help Anita Hill but blocked by the Judiciary Committee chairman [checks notes]...Joe Biden

I'm sorry, but I agree with the blogger. Biden gave what is absolutely and unequivocally the wrong answer. He needs to stop using weasel words and the passive voice as though he was just a helpless bystander at the Anita Hill hearing.

Okay, let's say the President's coordination with Russian election interference didn't happen. That still leaves the fact that they DID attempt to sway the 2016 election and are ramping up to sway the 2020 election. What's the Trump Administration plan? What do they intend to do about that?

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders claimed that Democrats were calling for the President's execution, but Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s Communications Director, came up with a list of Democratic criticisms. And y'know what? Those criticisms fall considerably short of "Hang him!"

Interesting to see that poll results on the President haven' changed. Yes, it's still early and next week may see big changes. But seems to me that the ambiguity of the Mueller findings is a big factor. If people more or less have their minds made up, that doesn't mean they're unpersudable, but it does mean it will take specific evidence to change those minds and there's just nothing specific yet.

Sanders asked ‘which of the angry and hysterical’ Trump haters ‘got it most embarrassingly wrong’ about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation...

I agree with one of the twitter posts. The Press Secretary's tweet is no way to unite the country. And no one got the story on Russian inerference "embarrassingly wrong."

Sorry, I've read a lot of good reporting by Glenn Greenwald, but for him to compare Rachel Maddow to Judith Miller and to compare Maddow's reporting on Russian interference with the 2016 election to Miller's reports on pre-Iraq War WMDs is just plain silly. No specific reporting by Maddow has been disproven and the piece in the comment shows Miller got the aluminium tubes story very, very wrong.

Is the President still nursing a grudge against the mayor of San Juan who dared to criticize him, over the canceling of the sweetheart deal for a crony of his to fix the island's electricity or does he just hate brown people in general?

For people who say the President is innocent, they sure do act like guilty people! If the Justice Department is going through a process of deciding what can be made public, why aren't Democratic senators and/or representatives being made part of the process? Remember, the Attorney General has absolutely zero credibility!

"Trump's Personal Lawyer Will 'Aggressively Fight' Release Of Trump's Written Answers To Mueller"
The President took a "take-home test" as opposed to answering questions from the stand or at a deposition. His lawyer has no intention of ever releasing those answers! Funny, but for innocent people, Donald Trump and his lawyers sure don't act innocent! Why would a non-guilty person hide this sort of evidence!?!?

Some journalists are taking a look back at pre-war Iraq coverage to say about th AG Barr summary of Mueller's findings: "Hey, you guys should accept a poorly-sourced, vague, government document as the absolute truth!" 'Cause hey, that worked so well back in 2003!

Tensions around Venezuela escalate. "Moscow has also vowed to step in and prevent 'any provocations to shed blood.'”

Representative Adam Schiff is amused by Rudy Giuliani saying President is owed an apology.

What's behind the President's uncharacteristic twitter silence? My own guess is that the Mueller news is really, really bad. But that may be wishful thinking on my part.

Attornet General Barr drops his four-page memo on the Mueller Report. It says the President is exonerated, but doesn't provide the underlying evidence and there are many questions. Now, the AG simply hasn't been in his position long enough, we haven't seen him pursue any other cases, for anyone to give him the benefit of the doubt.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) has many questions about the AG's summary of the Mueller report.

Story of the investigation is far from over. Lots of information needs revealing.

A right-winger fears that for New Zealand to ban assault-type weapons so quickly means they're "authoritarian." The historical record is that taking away people's guns is the last thing a dictatorship does. Taking away guns is never the prelude to anything. It's either the only thing the government does and it doesn't lead anywhere or it's the final step in a long political campaign.

Directly after the Kristallnacht, the possession of any weapons by Jews was prohibited through the Verordnung gegen den Waffenbesitz der Juden, enacted on 11 November 1938 (RGBl. I, 1573).

"Kamala Harris plans an 'unprecedented federal investment' in teachers with a nationwide pay raise'"
Good! It just amazes me that people think that they, as citizens, can get something for nothing. Everybody wants to share our society with educated citizens, right? It ain't gonna happen by paying teachers as though they did work that doesn't take skills or brains. You need to pay for that kind of performance!

The Trump Administration's habit of simply running ahead of the diplomatic process may excite Trump's electoral base, but does vastly more to legitimize our foes and de-legitimize the US as an "honest broker."

Woo hoo! Special Counsel's report has dropped! Heh! Reminds me that a few well-known scientists posed a few years ago as though they were a rock band. "Man, this group looks like they're about to drop an album so hot, it's temperature has to be measured in kelvin!"

Now that Mueller has submitted his report but before it’s made public, let’s take a moment to express gratitude for his public service. He and his team have worked tirelessly for nearly two years to find answers and bring to justice those who threaten American liberty. Kudos.

Very true!
Also, someone points that if the report was exonerating, the President "would have already had a press conference, three dozen tweets, and made the report public."

The President's deadline for the disappearance of ISIS has come and gone. How we doin' on that? Ehh, not so good.

Our blogger is absolutely mystified by the failure to ensure that safety features were standard on Boeing 737 MAX jets.

1.) What the fuck are you regulating if you have decided the safety features are… optional.

Ari Fleischer tries to whitewash the Bush Administration's WMD and other lies that got us into the Iraq War. As the piece here points out, there was quite a bit of evidence at the time that showed the Bush Administration was completely full of %$#@. It wasn't the intelligence agencies that messed up. It was the younger George Bush and the people who worked under him that lied.

Good, lengthy discussion on eliminating the Electoral College. Senator from North Dakota feels his state would be overlooked entirely with its three Electoral Votes, but that would change his state from those three EVs to 350k-plus regular votes, which once you eliminate the "base" votes, can mean up to 150k votes for either side.

Whether or not Senator Warren gets close to winning, she'll make a mark on the race anyway by bringing up good ideas and taking a womkish, policy-heavy approach.

Huh! Wow! Really? [Eye roll] When you delegate safety decisions to a profit-making company, those decisions may not be well-made? Naaaawwwww!!!!!

"Why Obama Didn't Cure White Supremacy, Explained "
Final bullet point here is "It’s hard to dismantle white supremacy." Reminds me of the statement regarding President Bill Clinton. He wanted a Cabinet that "Looked like America," as the current Cabinet-equivalent of Canada looks today, "If the job wasn't a back-breaker, it would have been done decades ago." Clinton deserves credit for trying and his efforts were not in vain, but the job is hard.

This is the President of the United States suggesting that the FCC should look into *checks notes* late night TV shows. If Obama did this, the GOP would launch hearings. The reason nothing happens is because no one takes the most powerful man in the world seriously.

The problem that the President doesn't appear to understand that has to do with late-night comedians is that comedians pay close attention to polls. They don't care about overall approval ratings. They care about the demographics that are 1. likely to be watching their show in the first place and 2. are likely to be valuable to advertisers. Republicans are likely to not fall into either category, so there's no point in a comedian trying to please them by telling pro-Trump jokes.

No matter how many times acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney laughingly dismisses the idea that the President is a white supremacist, liberals didn't just pick up the idea out of nowhere. No one just irrationally dislikes the President for reasons they don't understand. We dislike him because, among other things, he's a white supremacist.

A vote to override the President's veto probably won't get the 2/3rds majority necessary to override, but it will get Republicans on record as people who chose fascist tyranny over Constitutional democracy.

The Republican Party, and especially the President, appears to have this remarkably dumb take on the Jewish people and the President's policy towards Israel.

A lasting political fight in which Jews figure mostly as a passive, monolithic, two-dimensional, heavily stereotyped object doesn’t make me at all nervous because history has shown that this always ends well.

The New Zealand massacre was prompted by whaite nationalism. The President's Wall is prompted by white nationalism. During the same ceremony, he condemned white natioanlism in the case of New Zealand and praised in the case of the Wall.

The President and the New Zealand gunman sounded eerily similar when describing "invasions."

Trump Administration comments on New Zealand Christchurch massacre. From a blogger at Balloon Juice: "There seems to be a lot of online radicalization of white supremacists too, and they telegraph and now live-stream their terrorist attacks. The New Zealand terrorist is just the latest. The white supremacist who carried out the Pittsburgh synagogue terrorist attack was also active online. So was the deranged Coast Guard officer who was apprehended before he could carry out his massacre. So was Dylann Roof, etc.
"It’s a real problem. But right now, the POTUS has a pinned tweet of his interview with Breitbart News, a racist hate site that has 'black crime' tag."

"Candace Owens LOL's After Being Named As Influence For New Zealand Massacres "
The distinction between regular violence and "stochastic" violence is that regular violence can be explicitly directed. Stochastic violence is more in the nature of stating "Those gosh darn bloody [ethnic group]!!! This would be a nice place if not for them!!!" Random people get it into their heads that "If I commit a horrific act of violence, [some group or person] will consider me a hero!"
Candace Owens, along with President Trump and Donald Trump Jr., was named in the New Zealand shooter's manifesto. The Left didn't make anything up and didn't just draw her name out of a hat at random.

Hmm...okay. Let me get this straight. The President is complaining because Congress didn't send out enough subpoenas to catch Hillary Clinton performing her nefarious deeds? Huma Abedin was an important aide of Clinton's. Now granted, she's a brown-skinned Muslim, so that apparently made her a target. So she was called upon to testify on Benghazi. She spent six hours in testimony. According to Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD) "[Abedin], based on other testimony we have gotten, has no policy responsibilities, no operational responsibilities, was not with Secretary Clinton on the night of this phenomenal tragedy." Not surprisingly, her testimony was completely unenlightening. So if the Benghazi Committee was reduced to subpoenaing a person who had no direct connection to what they were investigating, I think the President is exaggerating just a bit on the question of subpoenas.

Disturbing comment to get right before the President issues his first vetoes. Surprising? No, I've seen him as a wannabe fascist since way back when.

“I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad,” Trump told Breitbart

Pretty hilarious that Paul Ryan can't stand behind the words he posts and needs to "clarify" his comment. Yeesh! It's not like he's in any sort of rush these days.

I was looking at Senator Toomey's website to see if he had arrived at a position on the President's desire to build a border wall by using emergency powers. Nope. We still need to call him to have him support our democratic and Constitutional Republic.
But this particular proposal below on emergency tariffs is a good one. The problem, of course, is not tariffs. The current problem with trade policy is a completely incompetent President who doesn't have a clue as to how to conduct trade policy. The proposed bill addresses that problem well.

@LoriLoughlin & @FelicityHuffman indicted for lying and buying spots in college. They worried their daughters are as stupid as their mothers.

Yeah, the Trump Administration has a serous glass houses/throwing stones problem. Jared Kushner's dad gave $2.5 million to Harvard. Amazingly enough [/snark], Harvard accepted Jared as a student shortly afterwards.

"Trump pledged to protect Medicare and Medicaid, but his 2020 budget calls for major spending cuts"
In 2015, presidential candidate Donald Trump's promise that he wouldn't touch Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid as president was big news. Yeah, yeah, we'll squeeze the waste, fraud and abuse out of the system. We've been hearing that since the early 80s. Usual result is that some efficiencies can be made and some money saved, but it's never anywhere near enough to make up for the cuts.

So while the blogs were (correctly, IMHO) seeing the President's rambling two-hour CPAC speech as a sign of mental deterioration, the WaPo apparently saw signs of genius. The media is not our friend, never has been, never will be.

Wow! I'm in complete agreement with Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY)!!! She feels that no, allies do not wish to pay more to keep American troops in their country. I served for two years as a sailor in Gaeta, Italy (Halfway between Rome & Naples), We got along okay with the townspeople, but if we offered "Give us more money or we'll withdraw our base from your town!" The response would be "Oh, okay. See ya!" They would have had zero problems seeing us depart. It's hard to pass your town off as rustic and romantic to tourists when you've got an American warship smack in the middle of your harbor!

“What the United States offers the world in terms of energy is that our fossil fuels are extracted and produced in a more environmentally conscious manner than anywhere else in the world.”

Well, yeah. I'm sure it's the most "environmentally conscious" fossil fuel around, but that's kind of like calling someone the most honest member of the Trump Administration, or a drink the most satisfying decaffeinated coffee, or the best-tasting lite beer.

#CaptainMarvel has surpassed BLACK PANTHER's global debut of $430M last year by earning an impressive $455M this weekend.

Kathy Kraninger, the latest Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, proves that she really isn't the slightest bit qualified to lead the bureau. Hooray for Representative Porter! for making that clear!

I posted a piece yesterday wherein the President claimed that he was his own best press secretary, that is, he didn't really need Sarah Sanders. Yeah, hmm, kind of a problem with that. Trump's underlings keep having to "explain" that "What the President really meant was..."

I heartily and cheerfully agree with Judge Dana Sabraw! "But the Trump administration immediately fought back, essentially claiming it would be too much work to track them all down," is not a legitimate excuse to refuse to reunited families that were separated at the border!

*Sigh* Okay, the problem with the "infanticide" charge is that Democrats are just saying that the woman always takes priority over the baby when it comes to any birthing complications. The President has turned that into a wild, hysterical accusation that Representative Cheney is now repeating. Why is Chuck Todd incapable of pushing back on this?

As you can see in these messages, we're getting super-duper, top-notch information from Senator Marco Rubio. who is "the top Venezuela congressional point man for the Trump administration." [/snark]

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, requested copies of all of Bernhardt’s schedules and calendars, stating that over 100 hours of official government time on his schedule did not include details or list non-agency attendees. Bernhardt replied last week that he can’t provide a calendar because he doesn’t keep one.

Back during the 80s, it was actually news that Reagan zeroed out money for Legal Services (It often supported people who wanted to take legal positions against the government). Nowadays, the proposed budget just says "Ahhh, eff y'all!"

A Republican refers to the investigation launched by the House Judiciary Committee with the sending out of 81 letters requesting documents as a "fishing expedition."
Hmm, after the Obama Administration was required to produce hundreds of thousands of documents to respond to GOP requests on Fast and Furious, the IRS denial of 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status to political groups, Benghazi, etc., all of the sudden the GOP has spun on a dime and has abruptly decided that fishing expeditions are no longer good things!

Problem for the GOP and HR1 is that it is in the self-interest of Democrats to push for a more open voting system, that is, as system more compatible with democracy. Republicans benefit from a constricted voting system, a system that permits less voting.

Yeah, very interesting how the Senate committees that were so terribly, deeply concerned about Hillary Clinton's email protocols and Benghazi have now decided that, even as the House committees have gotten really busy on investigating the Trump Administration, that gee, they're really tired of investigating a president's activities.

David Gregory plays into the classic "Both Sides" narrative that benefits the misbehaving side far more than it ever does the law-abiding side. He acknowledges some sensible points, such as that the GOP essentially twiddled its thumbs and put their feet up on the desk as far as oversight went, but he returns to the "optics" angle and complains that it looks as though Democrats are overreaching. But Democrats are really just playing catch-up to two years of very little oversight.

I very much appreciate that Speaker Pelosi didn't do that in the case of Representative Ilhan Omar and her allegedly anti-Semitic comment. Pelosi kept cool, took the temperature of her caucus on the issue and hasn't made a public statement yet. Reportedly, her people are busy re-writing the resolution.

And in still more evidence that Democrats listen to their people, the DNC was prepared to hold a Democratic debate hosted by Fox News. The grassroots said "Aww, hell no!!!!" and now that won't happen.

Some of the President's supporters noticed angrily that Republican Congresspeople did nothing to support Trump personally during the hearing with Cohen. Does the Press Secretary do so? No, not really.

Kind of interesting that the President is asked about Jared Kushner's security clearance and he immediately turns it into a question of politics, as though Democrats had no legitimate national security interests on the line.

North Korea apparently decided soon after the failed meeting with the President to start conducting nuclear tests again.

Back during 2015, anti-choice groups said they wanted to de-fund Planned Parenthood. PPFA said they were providing pregnancy-related health care to low-income women. A study was done to see if existing hospitals and other health care providers could pick up the slack. It was found that they couldn't as they were already working at full capacity. Nothing prevents anti-choice groups from starting up health-care providers that could replace PPFA clinics. Only problem is, PPFA is a non-profit organization that needs Medicare reimbursements to keep operating. Producing an alternative set of clinics to serve these clients would be a guaranteed money loser. Vox confirms that the situation hasn't changed. If PPFA is run out of town, low-income women who depend on PPFA clinics will simply be left without that health care.

Let me say something about the Ken Starr investigation. To this day, Bill Clinton called it a witch hunt. There were 14 convictions.

Very true. Ken Starr was trying to "climb the ladder," to move from the "low level" people in Arkansas to the "bigwigs," Bill and Hillary Clinton. Problem was, there was no ladder, no conspiracy. Starr gave up after awhile and then latched onto the completely unrelated matter of Paula Jones and then eventually found Monica Lewinsky.

"Students, Faculty Blacklisted by Canary Mission for pro-Palestine Views"
Up in Michigan, it's not a dating app, though it looks like one at first glance. It's an app that identifies people who show pro-Palestinian sympathies. A real problem with the site is that if delivers dossiers on otherwise-anonymous people.

In the history of the United States Congress, has there ever been a broad investigation into a sitting President's personal business and finances literally just looking for crimes? It's obscene.

Why yes. Yes there was just such an investigation. It was called "Whitewater." C'mon guy! It wasn't that long ago!

Don't know if there are interviewers that do well at interviewing* what a lawyer would call a "hostile witness," but Chuck Todd does an incredibly crappy job of interviewing Representative Jim Jordan here. Jordan's answers really did call for incredulous double-takes and "What are you babbling about?" looks.
One thing Jordan said: "Think about the two years under President Trump's leadership..." and then he went on about how marvelous the last two years were. That really, really seriously called for a "WTF?!?!?" reaction from Todd.

Excellent overview/update on diplomatic situation between Israel, Palestinians and Iran.

Senator Rand "Paul Indicates He'll Vote Against Trump's Emergency, Forcing President's First Veto"
This is very good news! With Senator Paul being a firm "No" for the Wall, the House bill will now get confirmed by the Senate. President can still veto it, but that will make it absolutely crystal clear that the President is acting as a tyrant who's overriding the clearly-expressed will of the people.

"Chris Wallace Calls North Korea Meeting A 'Failed Summit' To John Bolton's Face"
What Ntional Security Adviser John Bolton defends here is a classic example of an under-resourced diplomatic effort carried out in a huge rush. As they say, a good lawyer never asks a question he doesn't already know the answer to, The President shouldn't have even considered having a meeting with the head of another state unless there are already a set of papers all ready and waiting to be signed. As far as I'm aware North Korea has still not even defined what they mean by de-nuclearization!

It was obvious from the very beginning that for the First Lady to take up hatefulness in social media was going to be a real problem as her husband was someone who expressed lots of hatefulness on social media. Over two years later, she still hasn't figured out how to deal with the complete and utter hypocrisy of ignoring her husband's use of social media.

At CPAC, the President gives a rambling, ***TWO-HOUR*** speech (bleaugh!!!) Audience members leave in droves after awhile. President claims no one left.

This reminds me of someone a year or so back commenting on Byzantine emperors and how they'd ramble on and their courtiers would have to pretend they were so fascinated by all these pearls of wisdom that were being dropped. The President's comments on North Korea shows a really disturbing disconnect from reality.

"I just returned from Vietnam, where I had very productive meetings with Charman Kim Jong Un. We get along. We’ve developed a good relationship, very good, and made great historic progress. … One administration gave billions of dollars to him and got nothing. We haven’t given him anything yet."

This is a non-story. The President was elected Commander in Chief, not John Kelly. Like it or not, as a constitutional matter, the President, and not his subordinates, is the final authority on what's classified and what's not--and who gets to see it.

"RNC Chair Says Government Did Not Create The Internet"
Not only was the early internet pretty much entirely a government thing, but her two other examples, the car and the airplane, both got very significant government enhancements. Cars and airplanes are independent, but roads and airfields are usuallt built by the government.

I was around and paying attention during Reykjavik (1987). Don't think the comparison does Trump any favors. Reagan walked away from a good deal so that he could preserve "Star Wars," a missile defense system. The “Star Wars” concept sorta, kinda works these days because it's very downsized and is used on much smaller, short-range rockets. Did the US gain any great benefit from Reagan’s walking away? Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev wanted to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely, so no, I don’t think it was better for Reagan to have walked away.

So March 16th is the deadline by which the Senate must either pass a bill to support what the House has done on the Wall or it must pass a bill that rejects it. Filibuster isn't an option and they're counting calendar days, not days the Senate is in session. The House appear to have the four Republican Senators needed to agree with them. Yes, the President can veto a bill that rejects the Wall, but polls are already clear that about two-thirds of the American people oppose the Wall and a veto will then make it crystal clear that the President is acting as a tyrant who is brushing the Constitution aside

Congressmen during the Cohen hearing didn't rally to the President's defense. .Problem was that Cohen described a lot of really terrible behavior.

Commander in Chief is within his authority to grant security clearances even when subordinates disagree, but there were good reasons why intelligence agencies had to be pushed into giving the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner a security clearance.

Media is, was and always will be biased against the political left. The 2010 Republican take-over of the House got much more coverage than the 2018 Democratic one did. Also, 2006 was good for Democrats and 1994 was good for Republicans, but pattern of bias still holds.

Representative Mark Meadows is the one who had a black HUD employee stand behind his as he talked about Michael Cohen.

Mia Love on CNN is doing a terrible job of trying to defend Mark Meadows. You can have family members/friends of the opposite race and still be, say and do racist things.

Thomas Jefferson had black children. He held them in slavery. Strom Thurmond had a child with his family’s black maid. He opposed every civil rights bill that came up during the 60s and 70s and was openly segregationist. So trotting put a black employee ain’t, excuse me, ish.

February

How far out does the Sun's gravity have an effect? It may go out to nearly 20 light-hours or 13.02 billion miles. Back in the old days, we thought our solar system extended to Pluto, 3.162 billion miles or 2.93 light-hours away.

A HUD official, who by total coincidence, just happened to be a black woman, stood behind one of the Republican Representatives at the Michael Cohen hearing when Representative Rashida Tlaid accused her of being a prop.

At that same hearing, if the Trump Administration and Congress were represented by teams of samurai, it was the Aonisaibushi, the youngest ones on the side of Congress, who made the deepest, most fatal cuts.

Hmm. So apparently, the real fear of the Green New Deal on the part of the GOP is that people on their side of the aisle might adopt a "Green New Deal-lite," which would of course, in their view, quickly become “Karl Marx’s Christmas list.”

Interesting commentary from Eric Trump. What exactly is so "historic" about the current talks between the President and the North Korean dictator? There's a reason other presidents refused to meet with any of the Kims prior to this.

Talks break down due to unacceptable demand that the US lift all sanctions in return for nothing. Well, one cheer out of three for the President not being a complete "light touch," patsy, "hat trick," etc.

"Voter fraud" is a very specific term. It means that someone approaches a voting station with the intention of pretending to be someone they're not. That's not what happened in North Carolina. What happened there was "electoral fraud," which was an organized effort to not only "harvest ballots," but to "help" voters fill them out. Simply bringing in a lot of filled-in ballots in sealed envelopes is not bad by itself. In NC, voters testified that the harvester collected their ballot before it was completely filled out. The harvester filled in the ballot pretending to represent the voter.

In the Trump Administration's battle against the Green New Deal sponsored by Senator Ed Markey and Representative AOC, it's difficult to think of a worse, more irrelevant spokesperson than the third-generation rich person Ivanka Trump. Gotta love her comment about "I've spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years." Well yes, but she spent he whole time talking to fellow wealthy people or her father's most hard-core, fanatical supporters, so it's hard to say that she learned anything.

President draws false equivalence between unproven allegations of voter fraud and a real live, actual case of election fraud. No, the two are not the same.

Filmmaker Spike Lee made a simple statement: "Make the moral choice between love versus hate. Let’s do the right thing,” President took that as a challenge. Hmm.

Just as with the Bill Clinton/Paula Jones case biting Republicans in the ass today, the release of thousands of Hillary Clitnon's emails is biting them as well. Justice Department can't claim confidentiality as they've already violated that. Many people pointed out at the time that for FBI Director Comey to comment on the Clinton not-guilty decision was a terrible idea that set an awful precedent.

House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) claimed the Green New Deal — a plan to rapidly decarbonize the entire economy — would 'outlaw plane travel.'

The President finally comments on the Coast Guard Lieutenant who was stockpiling weapons and had a hit list of liberals to kill. Refuses to take responsibility for having provoked and encouraged the Lieutenant.

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says: "I certainly don’t think that the president, at any point, has done anything but condemn violence – against journalists or anyone else..."
The President has still not commented or tweeted about the Coast Guard Lieutenant who had stockpiled weapons and had a list of Democrats he wanted to kill. Right before the midterm election, the President seemed highly irritated that the attempted mail bomb killer was taking press attention away from The Caravan down in Mexico. Yeah, as the blogger wonders, has Sanders ever met the President?!?!?!

Good! This scum is going to jail! The perp, Jeffrey Epstein, operated a sex ring for underage girls. The question is why a current Trump Administration official gave Epstein such a light setence.

The Trump Administration's Labor Secretary reached an illegitimate deal back in 2008 and the judge has denounced that.

Yike! Coast Guard Lieutenant was planning a hit on lots of Democrats and liberals!

I don't have a problem with this person being a member of CNNs reporting team, but don't see why she's being made an editor. CNN shared the media-wide problem of having over-emphasized Trump speeches and of having seriously under-emphasizing Clinton's policy proposals during the last presidential campaign, so it's not at all clear why they feel the need to make sure right-wingers are represented.

Sarah Isgur is a Republican political operative who was hired as a "political editor." Various people at CNN have said this is no big deal, but all of the examples of people being brought over from politics have been people brought over to be reporters not editors. The viewing public needs a much better explanation as what exactly Isgur will be doing at CNN.

"Ms. Isgur wouldn’t be making decisions about political coverage." So if she's not going to be makin decisions on political coverage, what is she, as a political editor, going to be doing?!?!?!

In 1976, the elder George Bush started up "Team B" to challenge intelligence agency assertions about Soviet nuclear weapons. In 2002, the younger George Bush started up a pressure campaign on intelligence agencies to agree that Iraq had WMDs. In neither case was the attempt to go around the existing agencies successful. In both cases, the competition to the intelligence agencies simply told policymakers what they wanted to hear. Now, the President wants to start up a competing committee to report on climate change.

So how is that "War on Terror," that was started in September 2001, doing lately?

To sum up: our completed map indicates that, in 2017 and 2018, seven countries were targeted by U.S. air strikes; double that number were sites where American military personnel engaged directly in ground combat; 26 countries were locations for joint military exercises; 40 hosted bases involved in the war on terror; and in 65, local military and security forces received counterterrorism-oriented 'training and assistance.

Back when I was a young'un, I read a number of paperbacks by and about the German generals of World War II. General Guderian had a serious problem for der Fuhrer's plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union. The effort lacked what Guderian called a "schwerpunkt," a main focus of concentration. Guderian's leader wanted to seize Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev (later Stalingrad). The German Wehrmacht was very powerful and capable, but it tried to do too much.
Same problem with Senator Bernie Sanders. He wants to tackle "Wall Street, the health insurance companies, drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, and the large multi-national corporations..." Were I in charge of his campaign, I'd focus on climate change, I'd show voters how tackling that problem would require that we get people employed and productive. We'd have to move lots of money to those who actually need it. Everything would follow from that.

Update: This is precisely the strategy that Jay Inslee, Washington State Governor, is running on. Climate change is the whole point of his candidacy.

The House Freedom Caucus guy makes a poor case that we need to toss aside the normal appropriations process for this "emergency."

Turns out there was another moment of silence, when VP Pence spoke with great apparent emotion about how the Trump Administration cared so deeply about the Iranian people. No one brought it.

So I puttered around a bit on the internet to check on Finland's "free money" experiment (Yes, I checked out the right-wing Bretbart News, among others). The woman pictured here did indeed take a job that otherwise would have provided insufficient income (and was desperate for what to do when the experiment came to an end), but no, there was no real effect on unemployment, meaning that people look for more than just money when they look for work. As my mom said, work "gets people out of the house each day."

The essential fact of the matter that Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) dances around, is that there is a long ago-established procedure for getting more money for a project. The President can't get "enough" through that procedure, so he is taking an un-Constitutional shortcut that completely betrays everything that Jordan allegedly stands for!

Fox Newsperson Chris Wallace asks an extremely good question that Trump Administration spokesperson can't answer. It was whether a national emergency really, truly had to be declared.

Not too happy about the fellow replacing Heather Nauert as the UN Ambassador, but very pleased to see Nauert won't be taking that position. At least Nikki Haley was a governor for a considerable period.

It's impossible to look at Trump Administration preparations for securing the 2020 election in any sort of innocent light.

There’s no way to avoid seeing this DHS move as a treacherous betrayal of American democracy by President Trump. He’s inviting hostile foreign powers to invade our elections, the heart of our sovereignty. His oath of office meant nothing to him.

What's amazing about a WaPo piece they quote extensively from here is how much of his policy work the President delegates.

Heh! Oh yeah! The Munich Security Conference is off to a real good start! Bwah-hah-hah! The Vice-President delivered greetings to the conference from the President and got a few seconds of dead silence.

Fox News was controlled by the younger George Bush, but the combination of eight years of a Democratic president, followed by two years of a weak Republican one, means Fox News has taken the initiative and has assumed command of the Republican Party.

Ahhh! Very, very good to hear this! Europe is fed up with the President trying to undermine the perfectly-satisfactory Iran deal.

"How Trump's Off-The-Rails Presser Will Play In The Court Fight Over His Border Move"
The President cites: “People that should have stepped up, did not step up.” As I said over a year ago, the President appears to see himself as a restaurant customer and the Speaker of the House as a ma�tre d' who's there to deliver bills to the Oval Office to be signed. He doesn't appear to recognize that he has a role in getting bills passed.

I support Bill Weld's campaign for president for exactly the same reason I oppose Howard Schultz, the Starbucks executive who wants to run as a liberal independent. Both of them threaten to split the vote, Weld on the conservative/Republican side, Schultz on the liberal/Democratic side. Besides, Weld was a popular Governor of Massachusetts who foolishly gave in to the then-fashionable notion of term limits and thereby bowed out of running for several more terms.

Lou Dobbs, a Fox Business Network host who frequently speaks to the president both through the screen and on the phone, expressed the premise of using a emergency order to circumvent democratic debate. "I really believe that the way forward here is for him to declare a national emergency, and simply sweep aside the recalcitrant left in this country," he said on air last month. "They have obstructed, resisted, and subverted for far too long.” (emphasis added)

So the President is being counseled to choose between the country's version of what would keep us safe, that is, to defend the Constitution, or "Trump’s version of it invests in his own office unlimited authority to define security and carry it out as he alone sees fit."

A look back at the Obama presidency, when Republicans engaged in a lot of silly, overheated, hysterical language about Obama being "lawless" and an "imperial" president and engaged in Constitutional overreach. Yeah, good times!

This constitutes a rather serious legal problem, the President's admission that he really didn't have to make an emergency declaration, but just found it was more convenient that to go through the usual procedures of, y'know, building support, carefully designing the Wall so that it would cause as little disruption, etc.

Just because a Bedouin village is officially "unrecognized" doesn't mean that it hasn't been in existence since at least the time when the land of Palestine was part of the Turkish Empire. .

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly said this morning, “You can’t achieve peace and stability in the Middle East without confronting Iran.”
No, I don't agree with that statement at all. The Trump Administration is engaging in a lot of baseless scaremongering.

Is the President really 6'3"? It would make him seem a bit healthier and in better shape, but Jeb Bush is 6'3" and if you look at pictures of the two of them together, Trump is clearly shorter than Bush. In any event, the President is now officially "obese." That is not a sign of good health!

Republicans are trying really hard to embarrass Democrats over Representative Ilhan Omar, but Democrats and she have long since dealt with her statement and the Rs have a really serious hypocrisy problem over them.

With about 630 days to go until the election, the press is off to a poor start. It reminds me of a piece I read back in the 90s about celebrities and their wearing "day off" clothing. Back during the early days of movies, celebrities would appear in public as indistinguishable from their movie characters. During the 90s, they adopted comfortable, casual clothing to wear in public as these were their "days off" (Actually, they were still "on duty" and always ready with good quotes). No, you can't learn anything meaningful about a candidate by observing their personal quirks during campaign season.

Hoo boy! 630 days until the 2020 election and we're getting So stupid SO early! A radio host asks Senator Harris a question and gets the audience confsed as to when she smoked pot and when she listened to Tupac. These two things did not occur at the same time. If one follows the conversation carefully, she didn't claim they did!

Update: So in a conflict between facts and evidence and what the President wanted to hear, what he wanted to hear won out

Republicans will pile on all kinds of horse**** in order to keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere. The fellow who talks at the very end is good but Representative Cheney (Daughter of Dick) proves the strength of the case aganst taking action on climate change by putting out lots of disinformation.

Many people from both parties criticized the remarks of Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as anti-Semitic, but six Republicans had some serious hypocrisy problems in doing so.

The two-year period of time when Republicans held the Presidency, the Senate and the House saw one big legislative achievement, a tax break that mostly benefited the wealthy. That one achievement is in serious public relations trouble right now.

Slurring candidate Elizabeth Warren with the name of a famouu Native American is seen as okay,

Some seem to think this is harmless, like Native Americans disappeared in the 1880s or something. There are over 5 million Native Americans today, roughly equivalent to the number of Jewish Americans.

With Virginians split 47% to 47% on the governors 80s blackface photo, he isn't going anywhere.

Heh! President tries to put himself on the side of African-Americans and against Virginia's Governor Northam. It does not go well!

MSNBC just gave a precise explanation of Trump's thinking: 'He views The Rule of Law as presidential harassment' To comprehend this, remember Trump's life is built on the premise that there are no rules that apply to him. He even cheats at golf Everything follows from that

Representative David Cicilline (D-RI) teaches a master class in how to interrogate a hostile witness.
And the Representative is correct. There is "Executive Privilege," which is a very specifically-defined area where the president can keep certain conversations confidential, but AAG Whitaker is claiming a general, sweeping right of confidentiality that does not exist.

The President accuses Democrats on yesterday's committee of acting with "hatred and scorn" towards AAG Whitaker. I'd say they were severely provoked by Whitaker's insulting conduct.

Saw people on TV discussing this case last night. This is exactly how you'd describe the American idea of religious non-discrimination to a 3rd-grader (8-9 years old). People about to be executed should get their choice of religious representatives to comfort them in their final hour. That's just such a basic concept and so easy for everyone to understand!

Very happy to see that some conservatives are upset by the Ray decision. This is a very, very basic and fundamental legal principle, that all religions are equal under the law.

Very interesting. The former FBI agent figures Matt Whitaker was auditioning for the President to take on another role in the administration.

Republican Congresspeople make an extremely underwhelming case for presidential privacy. The Executive Branch is subordinate to the Legislative Branch, especially when the Chief Executive is suspected of having committed crimes. No, there's no "dangerous precedent" being set by insisting on transparency.

Wow! Candace Owens, a very, very deeply confused young woman says that Hitler would have been fine had he just stayed in Germany! Part of the problem is that she doesn't define nationalism versus globalism versus the Third Reich's nationalism versus what the marchers in Charlottesville were standing for.

Update: Candace Owens says: "first, they ignore me and then they left laughed at me now they're fighting me."
Heh! I can assure Ms. Owens we're still very much in the laughing stage and are not going to leave there anytime soon!
But the most gobsmacking, amazing statement of all was that "I said the word nationalism is wrongly attributed to Hitler because he was not a nationalist." Erm, yes. Yes, Hitler most certainly was a nationalist*! She was right about that in her initial statement that she's trying to walk back here.

*From Robert Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism: "the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's historical destiny." This is about as far from Globalism as one can possibly get.

remember how Hillary freaked the fuck out and threw a twitter shit-fit because the House was investigating her? of course you don't. she sat and calmly answered questions for eleven hours, because she hadn't done anything wrong and she's not an erratic whiny-ass bloated man-child

Speaker Pelosi gives a hilarious "Oh, he's so cute!" response to the claim of "ridiculous partisan investigations."

Huh! Wasn't aware of this. President's big line of the speech was very similar to that of Nixon's: “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just doesn't work that way.”
Yeah, investigation and legislation, it's a bit difficult to have both at the same time, but war has nothing to do with anything.

Very impressive! Stacey Abrams delivered the SOTU response and clearly wrote it all out beforehand, didn't change anything. Nice touch with having the people in the background. Lots of good ol' American sentiment.

Speaker Pelosi said it would take DAYS to fact-check all the lies in the SOTU. A factchecker: “Not much was new. We were done by 11:30."

Interesting criticism, reflective of the fact that the SOTU was written in a rushed manner. It was supposed to be about charging ransom for reopening the government. Lot of good critiques:

Good summary of the SOTU. Our local paper headlined: "Bipartisan call amid rancor," and there was a bit of softening, but lots of areas where the President let his partisan flag fly.

"Howard Schultz Has A Sad About Being Called A Billionaire"
Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz insists that just because he's a billionaire, that doesn't mean he's beholden to "the two parties." Perhaps not, but he is beholden to conservative financial ideas that most billionaires have in common. So yes, the "label" of billionaire is an entirely accurate one.

More evidence that the President's a wannabe dictator. Why, with a rubber-stamp Republican majority in the Senate, does he need "flexibility" for his appointments?!?!?!?!

I was just short of being 30 years old when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. During the time before then I was very much aware that for a person to escape from Eastern Europe was a PR problem for that region as it made it impossible to portray the people on that side of The Wall as living happy, fulfilled lives. Saudi Arabia now has that problem, compounded by the fact that the recently escaped Saudi teenager, Rahaf Mohammed, is transmitting pictures of her new, happy life in Canada.

Whoo wee! This is a "Baghdad Bob" level of obliviousness! What's the Press Secretary talking about "most productive Pesident in modern history"?

“BREAKING: Gov. Ralph Northam yearbook page shows blackface and Klan photo."
Yes, it was many, many years ago, the mid-80s. But major problem here, it was two decades after the Civil Rights Movement and he was 25, not just a stupid young fellow in his late teens.

Governor Northam will try to stay in office. Democrats have zero motivation to keep him there as he has a good Lieutenant Governor who would make a perfectly decent replacement.
Northam's failure to reveal his blackface/KKK photo many years ago shows a lack of good judgement and foresight. Had he revealed it himself many years back, there wouldn't be a problem today.

As a newsperson said the other day, this isn't just amazingly unprecedented. We've never had a president who showed so little interest in such an important presentation as the conclusions of all of the intelligence heads. It's clear from reading these other posts that the President is getting all of his information on this second and third-hand.

January

Long-time political journalist Ron Fournier has long been the punchline for "Both Sides," the idea that most political disagreements are unnecessary squabbles that can and should be settled by the "grown-ups in the room." Hey, whaddaya know? Fournier was a Republican all along!

Sure looks as though, as the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell just plain hates democracy. I sort of understand where he's coming from. When voting is light, that favors Republicans. When everybody and his brother votes, that favors Democrats. So the GOP is stuck with the bad optics of appearing to be against democracy.

Wow! The actor James Woods has some serious problems with misogyny! Also, this piece goes into the rumor that, before her political career started, Kamala Harris went out with a much older man. He probably did help her career a bit, but it was ultimately her own qualities that got her the first political position she ran for.

You know that someone's case is really weak when his examples are “Huey Long in Louisiana” and “the Black Panthers in Philadelphia.” Long was a prominent figure from the 1920s and 30s. The New Black Panthers (The old Black Panthers of the 1970s considered them to be pathetic jokes) were a really tiny group that was featured far more more on Fox News than anywhere else.

Speaker Pelosi is trusted more than the President is. Historically speaking, for a Speaker of the House to be more popular than a President is utterly unprecedented.

The last three leaders of the Soviet Union before Gorbachev were all really old men whose thinking was stuck back in the 1930s. Likewise, the US is now being run by really old men whose thinking is still stuck on fossil fuels, as though renewable energy didn't exist.

Congratulations to the new CIA Director Gina Haspel and frankly, all of the intelligence agency heads for telling it like it is and not confirming any of the President's talking points.

Fred Kaplan's a long-time military writer for Slate. I agree. Getting involved in Venezuela could be a really bad idea.

"Fox's Jeanine Pirro Attacks Mueller For Supposedly Tipping Off CNN On Stone Arrest"
Erm, the Rachel Maddow Show knew that something was up before the raid occurred. It was pretty common knowledge that something was about to happen. And we know from court filings that Mueller was concerned that Roger Stone might try to destroy evidence if he was given any sort of official warning.

Well yeah. Fighting for children is a great thing, but as people here point out, the First Lady's crusade suffers from serious problems of hypocrisy and double standards.

"Remarkably there's a group of female physicians and nurses who have come out very hard, trying to threaten my career," Hamada explained. "I've gotten some death threats, which I don't really take seriously."

Sorry, but I find it very, very highly unlikely that any doctor, woman or man, would make a death threat to another doctor over an abstract disagreement. I just don't find that this guy is the slightest bit credible.

Concerning the confrontation between the Native American drummer and the high school kids, people say that we should watch the whole set of tapes. I know people who did and bloggers have commented on them. No, Pink is right. The rest of the tapes don't tell us anything that wasn't already obvious. The punks who jeered at the Native American veteran were also witnessed yelling at women earlier because they were involved with the anti-choice march.

The President is acting to protect natural gas pipelines at the very moment when we really should be building fewer of them. Natural gas is fine as long as it doesn't escape into the atmosphere prior to having been burned. Problem is, when it does escape, methane is an even worse greenhouse gas than carbon is. Enough escapes on an annual basis that we're really better off not using it at all. We need to replace all fossil fuels with wind, solar, etc.

Hmm. I don't think what the President complains about is so much that Democrats are all loyal to their leader and Republicans were a bunch of "rats," but that Speaker Pelosi was able to convince her members that the President was playing a very weak hand and all they had to do was wait him out.

Very interesting. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was asked to brief the House Ways and Means Committee on the impact that the shutdown was having and failed to show up. But it appears that the shutdown was very expensive.

If it wasn't obvious before, the appointment of Elliot Abrams makes it quite clear that US action in Venezuela have nothing to do with democracy or the will of the Venezuelan people.

Whether you think the 2016 campaign coverage was excessively focused on "Her Emails" or not, Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information and email protocols was absolutely sterling and highly professional compared to the Trump Administration's security clearance process. Some guy in the administration essentially just rubber-stamped at least 30 clearances for people who probably should not have gotten them. This is especially glaring for the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner. Fortunately, we now have a Democratic House and this will be looked into.

"Those prime-time personalities [on Fox News] for the most part have proven themselves over time to be more trouble than they’re worth."

Seeing more of the "they are being arrested for lying, not for X crime" line. One, it's a start. Two, why lie about so many things if they weren't crimes? They lied because they knew the truth would get them in deep shit—and it probably still will.

A few weeks ago, the blog Daily Kos delivered a huge amount of roses for Speaker Pelosi. In this blog post, bloggers explain why. She gives off a flighty, confused appearance. Believe us, it's ALL appearance! Any appearance that she doesn't know what she's doing is all smoke and mirrors.

Nice, clear picture of Ultima Thule. That 20-mile long rock that's about six hours away at light speed.

Any appearance that Speaker Pelosi doesn't know what she's doing is all appearance.

See, here's the problem. Immediately after World War II and for a substantial period afterwards, the US reigned supreme and was unchallengeable. That's no longer the case. Russia is warning the US not to try and overthrow the government of Venezuela. Besides which, it's just as wrong for the US to change the government of Venezuela by force as it was for Russia to change ours by stealth and guile. It's now no longer the case that the US can simply do as it pleases. Other countries "have a dog in that fight" and will no longer watch helplessly as the US does what it wishes.

A short while ago, a group of three people, Senate Majority Leader Mitchell, VP Pence and Jared Kushner, tried to come up with a solution to the shutdown. Democrats rejected their ideas out of hand. Now, the Trump Administration is trying to do in foreign policy what it did in domestic policy, to have a conference where only friendly participants are invited. It's working about as well as the previous proposed all-Republican working group did.

Lara Trump (Second son Eric's wife) says: "the president is trying every single day to come up with a good solution here"
Problem is, the "solution" the President has come up with is supported by only about four out of 10 voters. 60% of us consider a wall to be a really stupid waste of money. And like a pirate who has taken hostages, he's bypassing democratic procedures.
Like Ann Coulter, who also feels hey, going without a paycheck or two is a little bit of an inconvenience, Lara is a person who's been wealthy for, if not her entire life, then at least for several decades and has absolutely no conception of what it's like for people of modest income to miss a paycheck.

Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, puts herself on the correct side of the issue by visiting the place where furloughed federal workers are being fed. No one on the Republican side showed anywhere near as much common sense. Wher was Mitch? Trying to pull a bait-and-switch.

The "Both Sides" framing of the shutdown is very helpful to the hostage-taking President. No one else is helped by it. This is one of those things that appears to be neutral, but only the side that's plainly in the wrong is helped by it.

The blogger watches all the video on the confrontation involving Native American activist and elder Nathan Phillips and a crowd of high school students from Covington, Kentucky. He concludes that the detailed picture drawn from all of the videos is a bit different from the picture drawn by the initial viral video, but not by all that much. Mostly, the whole incident shows a complete failure of chaperoning.

Sometimes, when I see someone in the media, I wonder a bit as to their ethnicity. I never worry too much about it. The "cosplay socialist" here gets all deep and serious about Senator Kamala Harris, who has just declared she's running for President. Is she an African-American? Ehh, close enough. I think when people meet her they assume she's black, so I just don't see much of a point in getting all specific about exactly what her ancestry is.

Sorry, I know that Representative Tulsi Gabbard gets lots of love from fellow progressives, but the blogger is right. Gabbard is a Joe Lieberman-style Fox News Democrat with a bad case of "Both-sides-ism."

Situation for furloughed federal workers on 30th day of shutdown. Not good. Not good at all.

Fox News person Tomi Lahren makes a really stupid comment about how "useless" marches and rallies are. Twitter user responds "I would really like to know how you, a woman, think you got the right to work and vote."
My own experience was that the marches against the Iraq War obviously didn't prevent the war, but by making it clear that the war didn't have all that much support, Bush never tried to start up a draft. That crippled the ability of the US to expand the war and ultimately meant that US had to pull out.