Thursday Reads: Politics News Improved by Fat Cat Art

Good Afternoon!!

I was going to illustrate this post with photos of Donald Trump pinatas, but I changed my mind and decided to highlight fat cat art again. Lately I feel as if I’m living in a chaotic world, but I don’t know if the chaos is really worse than ever or if its just me. I’ve been having horrible nightmares again. My family members inhabit the dreams, and I guess they are still part of the aftermath of having someone in my family having been murdered. Even writing those words is painful. Anyway, seeing fat cats inhabiting famous paintings feels comforting to me somehow.

The big news today is that the filibuster in the Senate forced the GOP to allow votes on gun control. NBC News reports:

Senate Democrats ended a nearly 15-hour filibuster early Thursday after Republican Party leaders reportedly agreed to allow votes on two proposed gun control measures.

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said that a compromise had been reached. Votes would be held on whether to ban people on the government’s terrorist watch list from obtaining gun licenses and whether to expand background checks to gun shows and internet sales, he added.

“We did not have that commitment when we started today,” Murphy said.

The nonstop series of speeches stretched 14 hours and 50 minutes. It followed the shooting massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando.

In addition, the family of the man who invented the AR-15 has spoken out. NBC News:

“Our father, Eugene Stoner, designed the AR-15 and subsequent M-16 as a military weapon to give our soldiers an advantage over the AK-47,” the Stoner family told NBC News late Wednesday. “He died long before any mass shootings occurred. But, we do think he would have been horrified and sickened as anyone, if not more by these events.”

The inventor’s surviving children and adult grandchildren spoke exclusively to MSNBC by phone and email, commenting for the first time on their family’s uneasy legacy. They requested individual anonymity in order to speak freely about such a sensitive topic. They also stopped short of policy prescriptions or legal opinions.

But their comments add unprecedented context to their father’s creation, shedding new light on his intentions and adding firepower to the effort to ban weapons like the AR-15. The comments could also bolster a groundbreaking new lawsuit, which argues that the weapon is a tool of war — never intended for civilians.

Eugene Stoner would have agreed, his family said.

The ex-Marine and “avid sportsman, hunter and skeet shooter” never used his invention for sport. He also never kept it around the house for personal defense. In fact, he never even owned one.

In the political world, Donald Trump’s campaign is sinking fast. From The Hill:

Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House is teetering amid dismal poll numbers, racially tinged controversies and a rising chorus of criticism from within the GOP.

After knocking Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) out of the primary in May, Trump picked up momentum and made strides in unifying the party. But the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has failed to pivot to general election mode and is now in his third straight week of bad headlines.

Not surprisingly, the angst in the Republican Party is intensifying.

“I think the tailspin could be really bad — historic proportions bad,” said Tony Fratto, who served as deputy White House press secretary during former President George W. Bush’s administration. “I think it’ll be a historically bad loss. I’ve said that from the very beginning.”

A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to a request for a comment on this story, but Trump and his aides often note that the former reality TV star confounded every Beltway prediction to win the nomination in the first place. After that emphatic victory, the businessman might well believe he can repeat the same feat in a general election.

But it’s not looking good at the moment. Check out the article for mucho bad news for Trump and the GOP.

Politico: Trump’s relationship with RNC sours.

Donald Trump is relying heavily on the Republican Party to bolster his skeletal operation, but his campaign’s relationship with the Republican National Committee is increasingly plagued by distrust, power struggles and strategic differences, according to sources in both camps.

In recent days, RNC chairman Reince Priebus has privately grumbled that his advice doesn’t seem welcome with Trump, according to one RNC insider. Other party officials have expressed frustration that Trump’s campaign is trying to take too much control over a pair of fundraising committees with the party while adding little to the effort, according to campaign and party officials familiar with the relationship.

While Trump had promised Priebus that he would call two dozen top GOP donors, when RNC chief of staff Katie Walsh recently presented Trump with a list of more than 20 donors, he called only three before stopping, according to two sources familiar with the situation. It’s unclear whether he resumed the donor calls later.

Meanwhile, there’s deep skepticism on Trump’s campaign about the RNC’s commitment to the presumptive GOP nominee, with some campaign officials questioning how hard the RNC is working to help Trump and to raise money for his campaign’s joint committees with the party.

Indeed, faced with suggestions that party leaders are unhappy with Trump’s incendiary rhetoric about the Orlando shooting and the judge presiding over a lawsuit against the candidate and his Trump University, campaign insiders scoffed.

“I don’t think we are going to take a lot of political advice from Priebus,” a campaign official said. “From my perspective, we should not be relying on the RNC for much, because I’m not sure they are fully supportive yet,” the campaign official said, adding “but we hope and expect to soon be on the exact same page.”

Lots more good stuff at the link. It’s not looking good at all. Is it possible that Trump will either drop out or be overthrown by GOP leaders? It’s going to be interesting to watch.

In a Vanity Fair exclusive, Sarah Ellison suggests that Trump’s campaign for President could really be a PR campaign to support his latest moneymaking project: Is Donald Trump’s Endgame the Launch of Trump News?

Trump is indeed considering creating his own media business, built on the audience that has supported him thus far in his bid to become the next president of the United States. According to several people briefed on the discussions, the presumptive Republican nominee is examining the opportunity presented by the “audience” currently supporting him. He has also discussed the possibility of launching a “mini-media conglomerate” outside of his existing TV-production business, Trump Productions LLC. He has, according to one of these people, enlisted the consultation of his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who owns the The New York Observer. Trump’s rationale, according to this person, is that, “win or lose, we are onto something here. We’ve triggered a base of the population that hasn’t had a voice in a long time.” For his part, Kushner was heard at a New York dinner party saying that “the people here don’t understand what I’m seeing. You go to these arenas and people go crazy for him.” (Both Kushner and Ivanka Trump did not respond to a request for comment.)

Trump, this person close to the matter suggests, has become irked by his ability to create revenue for other media organizations without being able to take a cut himself. Such a situation “brings him to the conclusion that he has the business acumen and the ratings for his own network.” Trump has “gotten the bug,” according to this person. “So now he wants to figure out if he can monetize it.”

How would he run a cable network if he were POTUS? Maybe he just figures running and losing will make him more millions?

In more bad news for Trump, Gawker thinks they have obtained the DNC’s hacked oppo research file on him.

A 200+ page document that appears to be a Democratic anti-Trump playbook compiled by the Democratic National Committee has leaked online following this week’s report that the DNC was breached by Russian hackers. In it, Trump is pilloried as a “bad businessman” and “misogynist in chief.”

The document—which according to embedded metadata was created by a Democratic strategist named Warren Flood—was created on December 19th, 2015, and forwarded to us by an individual calling himself “Guccifer 2.0,” a reference to the notorious, now-imprisoned Romanian hacker who hacked various American political figures in 2013.

Check it out at Gawker.

Final Trump link from the Daily Beast: Donald Trump Accused of Using His Charity as a Political Slush Fund.

Meanwhile Hillary is running a serious campaign.

Politico: Hillary Clinton to Unleash Hill on Trump.

Just hours after the votes were cast in the final Democratic primary, the Clinton campaign started reserving advertising blocks in eight battleground states on Wednesday, marking the presumptive Democratic nominee’s first significant attempt to define Donald Trump….

By reserving time in key swing states — at least Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia — the Clinton camp is sending an unmistakable message to the presumptive GOP nominee that it intends to press into traditionally Republican territory without spending too much time worrying about defending traditionally Democratic destinations where Trump insists he will compete, said a handful of high-level Democrats close to the Clinton effort.

The ad barrage — slated to start on Thursday — will combine with a weeks-old onslaught from the major pro-Clinton super PAC, Priorities USA Action, which has already blanketed swing states with its own blistering negative spots and plans to stay on air until Election Day.

She’s also vetting VP candidates, and Bernie Sanders isn’t one of them. NY Magazine:

Hillary Clinton’s last interaction with Bernie Sanders may have been “positive,” but that doesn’t mean she’s willing to join forces with the Vermont senator for good. Although there has been some speculation Sanders could be in the running for a spot as Clinton’s running mate, on Wednesday, her campaign quashed the rumor by revealing that he isn’t even being considered.

According to TheWall Street Journal, the vetting is still in its early stages, but Sanders’s name isn’t on the short-list. Those under consideration are reportedly:

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (duh),

Labor Secretary Tom Perez,

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro,

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia,

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio,

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey,

Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti,

Representative Xavier Becerra of California, and

Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio.

And while Bernie has been being his nasty self, declining to concede and/or endorse Hillary, his big name supporters are switching to her.

MSNBC: Major Labor Group to Endorse Clinton as Sanders Holdouts Dwindle.

The AFL-CIO is set to endorse Hillary Clinton Thursday, but a handful of unions within the massive labor federation are holding out support for the presumptive Democratic nominee and instead backing Bernie Sanders – with some even vowing to stick with her challenger until the bitter end.

The executive committee of the AFL-CIO, which represents more than 12 million active and retired workers, will vote on a presidential announcement during a meeting at its headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Sanders has refuses to concede the race, but Clinton is expected to easily secure the necessary support from the federation’s 56 affiliate unions to win the endorsement — including from several that had previously backed Sanders.

The president of the largest labor union to support Sanders, the Communications Workers of American, told his members this week that it was time to unify the Democratic Party around Clinton.

“Bernie is not going to be the nominee. Hillary Rodham Clinton will be,” CWA President Chris Shelton said in a speech. “And whatever you think of Secretary Clinton — I happen to think she was a damn good senator from New York and that a lot of the hostility against her is attributable to out-and-out sexism and to the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ — she is the candidate who is running against Donald Trump. And brothers and sisters, we must stop Donald Trump from becoming president.”

Bernie could have ended up with quite a bit of influence in the Party and in the Senate, but he decided he liked sour grapes better. I can’t wait till the Democrats kick him to curb.

So . . . . what stories are you following today?