Lazy Saturday Reads: Some Positive News (Except for the Tornadoes)
Posted: August 4, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics 30 Comments
Lady in Blue – Medard Verburgh
Good Afternoon!!
I woke up to tornado warnings this morning. We didn’t get hit here, but some towns had severe damage. I guess there were some warnings in New England last night too.
Nothing to see here, folks. Just tornadoes in Massachusetts as Trump fights to get rid of fuel efficiency regulations. The Washington Post:
The Trump administration announced plans Thursday to freeze fuel-efficiency requirements for the nation’s cars and trucks through 2026 — a massive regulatory rollback likely to spur a legal battle with California and other states, as well as create potential upheaval in the nation’s automotive market.
The proposal represents an abrupt reversal of the approach during the Obama administration, when regulators argued that requiring more-fuel-efficient vehicles would improve public health, combat climate change and save consumers money without compromising safety.
President Trump’s plan also would attempt to revoke California’s long-standing legal ability to set its own, more stringent tailpipe standards and restrict the ability of other states to follow its lead.
During the Obama administration, the federal government worked with California and the auto industry to craft a uniform set of national fuel-economy standards. The White House’s latest proposal threatens to blow up that delicate compromise.
If California were to prevail in the likely legal clash to come, the state could set tougher standards than the federal government, leaving automakers with the prospect of manufacturing vehicles that meet different rules in different states — something the industry has said it does not want.
Good. I hope that happens, because Massachusetts also has strict emissions rules.
LeBron James interviewed by Don Lemon on CNN
In other news, late last night the fake “president” attacked LeBron James and Don Lemon, claiming they are unintelligent. CNN: Trump attacks LeBron James and Don Lemon over CNN interview; Lemon responds.
CNN’s Don Lemon has a question for everyone now that President Donald Trump has called him the “dumbest man on television” again.
Trump’s insult led Lemon to ask in a tweet Saturday morning: “Who’s the real dummy? A man who puts kids in classrooms or one who puts kids in cages?”
Lemon added the hashtag #BeBest, a reference to first lady Melania Trump’s initiative to support kindness and respect.
Trump insulted both Lemon and his guest, basketball star LeBron James, in a tweet on Friday night.
The interview focused on James’ contributions to his hometown of Akron, Ohio, including a new public school for at-risk third- and fourth-graders there. But the two men also discussed politics. James said Trump has used athletics and athletes to divide the country.
But here’s real reason Trump freaked out about the interview.
The reason for the interview was the school James has opened in his hometown of Akron, Ohio.
Time Magazine: Inside LeBron James’s New $8 Million Public School, Where Students Get Free Bikes, Meals, and College Tuition.
The unusual school is a public school formed in collaboration between James’ philanthropic foundation and Akron Public Schools. Its out-of-the-box offerings include a long school day (eight hours); a “support circle” for students after lunch; and GED courses and job placement for parents. All are driven by James’ mission to help kids overcome what he faced as a low-income student in Akron, he says….
The school selected area students from among those who trail their peers by a year or two in academic performance. “We did a random selection of all students who met that criteria, and got to make these awesome phone calls to parents and say, ‘How would you like to be part of something different, the I Promise School,’” Keith Liechty, the Akron Public Schools’ liaison to James’ foundation, told USA Today.
The school is launching with third- and fourth-graders, but plans to add grades each year until it houses first through eighth grade in 2022….
Forty-three staffers will help run the I Promise School — including not just teachers but also a principal, assistant principal, four intervention specialists, plus a tutor, English as a second language teacher, music instructor, and gym teacher, USA Today reports. Classrooms will hold 20 students per teacher….
the school is far from traditional. Its lengthy school day runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., along with an extended school year that runs from July through May. During a seven-week summer session, the school will provide STEM-based camps. Students will spend time each day on social-emotional learning, and participate in a “supportive circle” after lunch aimed at helping them refocus on work, Cleveland.com reports.
Nutrition is also central to the school’s mission. Every day students will receive free breakfast, lunch, snacks and drinks. They will have access to a fitness trainer. James says that, as a kid, he used his bicycle to explore different neighborhoods of Akron — so he gave one to every incoming student.
Since the school considers education to be not just for the pupil but for the whole family, it will offer GED classes and job placement assistance for parents and guardians. “It is about true wrap-around support, true family integration and true compassion,” Brandi Davis, I Promise principal and Akron native, told USA Today.
Students get one other notable benefit: If they successfully complete the school program and graduate from high school, James will cover their full tuition at the local public college, University of Akron.
That story brought tears to my eyes. Every underprivileged child in America should have access to school like that.
The Akron Beacon Journal: LeBron James puts on show for first day of I Promise School, makes first appearance since signing with Lakers.
Hard as administrators tried, 240 students had anything but a normal first day of school when doors to the I Promise School opened Monday.
By the afternoon, music blared from speakers outside the school’s windows. Professional athletes roamed the halls. A parade of people lined up outside and a horde of media surrounded the school. More than a dozen armed security guards and police officers covered the building grounds.
But when the doors opened at 8:45 a.m. that morning and students stepped into the building curated just for them, they had clues to expect something different — starting with the gray shirts they were given to wear instead of what they arrived dressed in as a first step to starting anew.
First day at the I Promise School
“It was magical,” said Angela Whorton, an intervention specialist, about the first day. “Just to see how genuinely excited they were to start a new chapter of their life with a clean slate was beyond great.” [….]
The curriculum aims to adopt the “We Are Family” philosophy of the LeBron James Family Foundation, infuse it with STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and take into account the struggles and traumas in students’ lives to provide “social-emotional learning.” It implements a year-round education for kids to retain what they learn.
LeBron James, who made his first public appearance Monday since deciding to join the Los Angeles Lakers, spearheaded the effort more than a year ago as a way to consolidate his existing I Promise Network into one building to create a lasting impact on the community.
“I think one of my long-term goals is that every kid who walks through those doors, they feel empowered, they know they have a support system, they know there’s someone that cares about them,” James said in an exclusive interview with the Beacon Journal/Ohio.com. “I think that’s what it ultimately comes down to is that someone cares about their future. We want the next great police officer, the next great politician, the next great doctor, the next great nurse, the next great musician … Whatever the case may be, we hope it comes out of this school.”
Meanwhile the “president” started a fraudulent “university” and had to pay $25 million in damages to the people he cheated and conned.
Trump is facing more losses in the courts right now.
NBC News: Judge calls Trump administration family reunification efforts ‘unacceptable.’
LOS ANGELES — The federal judge overseeing the court-ordered reunification of the 2,551 migrant children separated from their parents at the border blasted the Trump administration Friday for lacking a plan to reunify the remaining 572 children in its custody with their parents and the slow pace of progress.
In a Thursday night status report filing, the Trump administration said only 13 of the parents had been located by the American Civil Liberties Union, which U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California called “unacceptable at this point.”
Judge Dana Sabraw
The parents of 410 children are currently outside of the United States, likely having been deported before reunification, according to the court filing.
The Trump administration had proposed the ACLU take the lead in locating and identifying what the judge had called “missing parents” of children still in government custody. Sabraw said that plan was not acceptable and placed that responsibility squarely on the government.
“Many of these parents were removed from the country without their child,” Sabraw said. “All of this is the result of the government’s separation and then inability and failure to track and reunite. And the reality is that for every parent who is not located there will be a permanently orphaned child. And that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration.”
Sabraw said the government must identify a person or team to oversee the remaining reunification process, potentially from the State Department or the Department of Health and Human Services, and produce a plan as to how reunification would be accomplished.
Read the rest at the link.
One more from Politico: Judge orders full restart of DACA program.
A D.C.-based federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to restart in full the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Judge John Bates of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The decision is the latest legal blow against President Donald Trump’s decision to phase out the Obama-era program, which offers deportation relief to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.
The restart won’t be immediate. U.S. District Judge John Bates said Friday that the order would be delayed until Aug. 23 to allow the government to appeal, but he denied a Justice Department motion to reconsider his earlier decision, saying there were still deficiencies in the administration’s rationale for rescinding DACA.
“The court has already once given DHS the opportunity to remedy these deficiencies — either by providing a coherent explanation of its legal opinion or by reissuing its decision for bona fide policy reasons that would preclude judicial review,” said Bates, “So it will not do so again.” [….]
He also threatened to vacate the memo ending DACA — and thereby restore the program in full — if Trump officials could not present an adequate reason for ending it.
Right now the courts are the only thing standing between us and a Trumpian authoritarian state.
What else is happening? What stories are you following today?
Friday Reads: Tales from a Tsundoku
Posted: August 3, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Trump attacks on the Media 26 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
I don’t know how I’m going to fare if we have to endure more televised rallies all the way to election day on TV. I truly believe that the media should issue trigger warnings before clips are shown and that none should be shown live. There have been suggestions that the major news outlets join in supporting an AP pool reporter and only broadcast material that’s ‘newsworthy’. Since each of these events are basically a roll out his most bigoted and autocratic inner voices, he rarely makes news or discusses actual policy. Why make journalists props to propaganda?
UN experts condemn Trump’s attacks on the media which are central to whipping up the crowd and central to authoritarian drumbeats.
President Donald Trump’s media attacks raise the risk of violence against journalists, UN experts have warned.
In a statement, David Kaye and Edison Lanza of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called the attacks “strategic” and said they undermined press freedom and “verifiable facts”.
The comments follow hours after Mr Trump’s daughter Ivanka distanced herself from her father’s attacks.
Mr Trump has repeatedly criticised the media before and during his presidency.
He has declared journalists to be “enemies of the people”, drawing condemnation from across the political spectrum.
CNN’s Jim Acosta asked the Huckabeast if she personally believed that the media was the enemy of the people. The question was repeated several times and was dodged an equal number.
That set the stage for Thursday, when Mr. Acosta, breaking from the usual sober style of White House reporters, framed his question to Ms. Sanders as a moral choice.
“It would be a good thing if you were to state right here, at this briefing, that the press — the people who are gathered in this room right now, doing their jobs every day, asking questions of officials like the ones you brought forward earlier — are not the enemy of the people,” Mr. Acosta said in his newscaster’s baritone. “I think we deserve that.”
Ms. Sanders deflected — and then mirrored Mr. Acosta’s tone.
“It’s ironic, Jim,” she said, “that not only you and the media attack the president for his rhetoric, when they frequently lower the level of conversation in this country.”
Ms. Sanders, without much evidence, went on to accuse the news media of using “personal attacks without any content other than to incite anger.” She also cited her experience at this year’s White House Correspondents Association dinner, during which the comedian Michelle Wolf mocked Ms. Sanders’s “smokey eye” makeup and compared her to “an Uncle Tom” for “white women.”
“You brought up a comedian to attack my appearance and call me a traitor to my own gender,” Ms. Sanders said. “As far as I know, I’m the first press secretary in the history of the United States that’s required Secret Service protection.”
Her answer did not directly address the question, so Mr. Acosta tried again, with more oomph.
“This democracy, this country, all the people around the world watching what you are saying, Sarah, and the White House for the United States of America — the president of the United States should not refer to us as ‘the enemy of the people,’” he said. “His own daughter acknowledges that, and all I’m asking you to do, Sarah, is to acknowledge that right now and right here.”
Ms. Sanders replied: “I appreciate your passion. I share it. I’ve addressed this question.”
At that, Mr. Acosta promptly walked out.
He repeated his performance in a corner of Pennsylvania. We will undoubtedly hear it endlessly unless the media spares us and themselves from this abuse. Amie Parnes writes this for the Hill.
Trump has been a president like no other, bending the truth as he sees fit and talking to supporters and bypassing the media with his Twitter account.
Still, he’s been a boon to the media, raising ratings for cable networks that are both supportive and critical of his actions.
Coverage of Trump has become a 24-hour affair with no precedent, as the White House constantly stirs up stories that can both feed outrage about Trump, and fuel anger among the president’s supporters over how he is treated by the press.
Trump, while sometimes offering evident frustration with the media, also has used this dynamic to his benefit, constantly complaining about “fake news” and picking fights with perceived enemies in the press.
Trump has shown no sign of pulling back or urging his supporters to lessen the hostility. And some say it’s been an effective political strategy.
“If you would have asked me two years ago, I would say it’s a bad strategy and he’s not going to win because in previous times it wouldn’t work,” Robert Thompson, the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, said of Trump’s media strategy. “But we’re consistently seeing more and more people for whom that message is working.”
The rising anger has fed worries in some quarters about the possibility of attacks on the press or violence between Trump critics and supporters.
“We can’t shrug off Trump’s attacks on the press. Ever,” Dan Rather, the former CBS News anchor, wrote Thursday on Twitter. “They’re undemocratic and invite, even incite, violence. This bears repeating. It demands repeating.”
Things are likely to just get more heated with the midterm elections approaching. And after that, the nation can look forward to a divisive presidential campaign as Trump seeks reelection against a large cast of Democrats who hope to unseat him.
Meanwhile the looting and grift continues.
The Interior Department’s inspector general is investigating whether Zinke colluded to have Halliburton’s chairman build him the microbrewery he’s always wanted in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana.
And, we still have children separated from their parents in inhumane and dangerous conditions. It appears the administration has handed them to the ACLU for help. From WAPO we get this headline: ‘Trump administration puts burden on ACLU to find deported parents separated from children’
Justice Department lawyers wrote in a court filing Thursday that the ACLU should use its “considerable resources,” its network of advocacy groups, and information from the government to locate parents removed to foreign countries. The Trump administration added, however, that the State Department has made contact with foreign governments to assist in facilitating family reunions.
In Thursday’s court filing, a joint status report requested by Judge Dana M. Sabraw of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, both the Trump administration and the ACLU laid out their plans for the continued reunification of families. The report gives a sense of the complex challenges ahead for both U.S. officials and immigration lawyers in locating the parents who are no longer in the United States.
In the six weeks before President Trump reversed his “zero-tolerance” policy at the border, immigration officials removed more than 2,500 children from their parents and sent them to government shelters. Sabraw, a Republican appointee, ordered the government to return the children as quickly as possible, setting a deadline of late last month.
The administration has since reunited more than 1,800 children with their parents, but hundreds of children remain in government shelters because their parents have criminal records, their cases remain under review or their parents are outside the country. More than 450 mothers and fathers have been deported without their children.
If you’re into dancing on graves, we could jam on top of the possible death of the NRA. Between this and the Kochs bailing on Republicans, we could possibly see some candidates go begging for funds again. Oh wait, they’d probably just ask Mother Russia.
The National Rifle Association warns that it is in grave financial jeopardy, according to a recent court filing obtained by Rolling Stone, and that it could soon “be unable to exist… or pursue its advocacy mission.” (Read the NRA’s legal complaint at the bottom of this story.)
The reason, according to the NRA filing, is not its deep entanglement with alleged Russian agents like Maria Butina. Instead, the gun group has been suing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state’s financial regulators since May, claiming the NRA has been subject to a state-led “blacklisting campaign” that has inflicted “tens of millions of dollars in damages.”
In the new document — an amended complaint filed in U.S. District Court in late July — the NRA says it cannot access financial services essential to its operations and is facing “irrecoverable loss and irreparable harm.”
Specifically, the NRA warns that it has lost insurance coverage — endangering day-to-day operations. “Insurance coverage is necessary for the NRA to continue its existence,” the complaint reads. Without general liability coverage, it adds, the “NRA cannot maintain its physical premises, convene off-site meetings and events, operate educational programs … or hold rallies, conventions and assemblies.”
The complaint says the NRA’s video streaming service and magazines may soon shut down.
“The NRA’s inability to obtain insurance in connection with media liability raises risks that are especially acute; if insurers remain afraid to transact with the NRA, there is a substantial risk that NRATV will be forced to cease operating.” The group also warns it “could be forced to cease circulation of various print publications and magazines.”
In addition to its insurance troubles, the NRA court filing also claims that “abuses” by Cuomo and the New York State Department of Financial Services “will imminently deprive the NRA of basic bank-depository services … and other financial services essential to the NRA’s corporate existence.”
Bye Bye you miserable POS murder enablers!
If you want me you can find me hiding among the towers of books in my little kathouse by the Mississippi. I practice Tsundoku. I need to thin the herd before showing my house.
The Japanese word describes piling up books to save for later … even if you’ll never actually read them.
“Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity.” – A. Edward Newton, author, publisher, and collector of 10,000 books.
Are you one of us? A master of tsundoku? Mine takes the shape of the aspirational stack by my bedside table – because I am going to read every night before bed, of course, and upon waking on the weekends. Hahaha. My tsundoku also takes shape in cookbooks … even though I rarely cook from recipes. And I think I most fervently practice tsundoku when I buy three or four novels to pile in my suitcase for a five-day vacation. Sometimes not even one sees its spine cracked.
Thank heavens the Japanese have a word to describe people like us: tsundoku. Doku comes from a verb that can be used for “reading,” while tsun “to pile up.” The ol’ piling up of reading things.
“The phrase ‘tsundoku sensei’ appears in text from 1879 according to the writer Mori Senzo,” Professor Andrew Gerstle, a teacher of pre-modern Japanese texts at the University of London, explains to BBC. “Which is likely to be satirical, about a teacher who has lots of books but doesn’t read them.” Even so, says Gerstle, the term is not currently used in a mocking way.
Or it’s possible I trip out to hear a few of these people just for fun. Corey Booker, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren are all giving speeches.
While Democratic leaders in Washington push forward with a midterm campaign agenda focused on health care and the economy, activists are embracing sanctuary cities, gay rights and other social issues igniting the Democratic base.
The conference opened with a panel calling explicitly for a “litmus test” on Democrats supporting abortion rights — a direct rebuke of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Luján’s comments last year that the party would impose no such test.
Decrying Trump’s immigration policies, Angelica Rubio, a Democratic state representative from New Mexico, described herself to a small crowd Thursday as “someone who feels incredibly saddened at times, with even my own political party, when it comes to issues of militarization of the border.”
And, invoking former first lady Michelle Obama’s 2016 campaign message, “when they go low, we go high,” Monica Roberts, a transgender rights advocate from Texas, told fellow progressives, “The Democratic Party needs to get some balls … There are some times in political life that you have to go World Wrestling Federation on people.”
There’s also a big insider fundraising party at Carville’s uptown house tonight I may attend if I can. However, one of my cousins is in town for a convention of independent record store owners and I really want to spend some time with him and his wife.
Choices choices … and all involve turning that damned TV off. Please enjoy the photoshopping talents of Matt Johnson @HotPockets4All.
https://twitter.com/HotPockets4All/status/1022577328038322176
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Trump Anxiety, QAnon, and the Manafort Trial
Posted: August 2, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Barnes & Noble, Bernie Sanders, books on anxiety and stress, House of Bijan, JFK Jr., ostrich jacket, Paul Manafort, QAnon, Rick Gates, Tad Devine, Trump anxiety disorder 27 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
Ever since my mom had her stroke, I’ve been struggling more than ever in dealing with Trump news. When I sit down to write a post, I feel paralyzed by feelings of fear, dread and disgust. The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that I’m not alone. I think the majority of Americans are feeling something like this even if they’re not following the news as closely as we do.
NBC News: Barnes & Noble says sales of books related to anxiety are soaring. Here’s why.
Shoppers are increasingly looking at workbooks that help them cope with anxiety, Barnes & Noble senior director of merchandising, Liz Hardwell, said in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon. Although times may be tough, wrought with political tension, “the good news is that book buyers across the country are also looking for solutions to their stress,” she said.
Top-selling titles, based on the bookseller’s sales data, include “The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook” by Edmund Bourne, “The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points” by Alice Boyes, and “The Anxiety and Worry Workbook: The Cognitive Behavioral Solution” by David Clark and Aaron Beck.
New York-based Barnes & Noble…said the state of California has had the largest increase in interest in anxiety books in stores over the past year. The next largest increases were in Michigan and Massachusetts. Meanwhile, shoppers in Texas, North Carolina and Florida had the biggest decrease in interest in anxiety books, according to the bookseller’s sales data.
That has to be related to Trump, right? The highest interest books about anxiety is in blue states and the lowest in red states.
Of course the Trumpists have their own sources of anxiety, but their fears are based on fake “news.” I tried to read this Washington Post article yesterday, and had to stop for fear my head would explode: The mystery of ‘Q’: How an anonymous conspiracy-monger launched a movement (if the person exists).
From somewhere in the vast and mysterious “deep state,” a dissident agent rises up to give the people cryptic clues about how their heroic president will push back the forces of evil and make America great again. The renegade informant is known only as “Q,” and if such a person actually exists, it’s not in a movie, but somewhere in the Washington bureaucracy.
Energized by Q’s complex web of conspiracy notions about the forces aligned against President Trump, Q’s followers have spread virally both online and now out in real life, too, forming a movement known as QAnon that is making itself visible at Trump’s rallies and other public gatherings.
QAnon is something old — the latest in a string of conspiracy ideas that take hold of the public’s imagination in times of social stress and technological change. And QAnon is something new — a leaderless popular movement made up of people who believe in no one and therefore are willing to believe almost anything.
Apparently, these Q people think they are getting secret messages from things Trump says or does.
To believers, Q is a pseudonym for a well-placed U.S. government agent who is posting online distress messages and bits of intel, known as “bread crumbs,” in an effort to save the country — and Trump — from hostile forces within the government. Q’s missives started appearing last October on 4chan, the mostly anonymous website where fringe ideas incubate and blossom.
In messages written in a telegraphic, cryptic style, Q called on Americans to rally behind Trump as he planned a counteraction against forces that would investigate him and remove him from office. Some QAnon followers believe Trump himself inspired their movement with a comment he made last October at a photo session with military leaders. The president pointed to the officers’ uniforms and said, “You know what this represents? Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.”
In far-flung corners of the Internet, some speculated that that storm was a counterstrike against the deep state. Then along came Q to turn that speculation into concrete predictions — of the arrest of Hillary Clinton, of a roundup of anti-Trump liberals, of a crackdown on child-sex-trafficking rings.
There’s much more at the link, if you can manage to wade through all the crazy. These people are turning up with their Q signs and T-shirts at Trump rallies, as you could see in the news coverage of the Tampa rally this week.
This story at the Daily Beast is really wacky: QAnon, the Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theorists, Now Believe JFK Jr. Faked His Death to Become Their Leader.
Believers in the bizarre pro-Trump conspiracy theory called QAnon were out in force at the president’s rally in Tampa, Florida on Tuesday, waving signs and cut-outs of the letter “Q” in front of the television cameras.
Trump points at a man in a Q shirt at a Duluth, MN rally.
The surprisingly large number of Trump supporters who believe in the off-the-wall conspiracy theory and the attendant media attention marks a new height for QAnon, which grew from the internet swamps of 4Chan and 8Chan….
For QAnon believers, special counsel Robert Mueller isn’t really investigating the Trump campaign—he’s actually working with Trump to take down a cabal of deep-state plotters and pedophiles. Soon, QAnon fans believe, Trump will team up with the military to throw top Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama into Guantanamo Bay.
But what QAnon believers actually believe is constantly changing. After taking advantage of the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich and promoting dangerous ideas like Pizzagate, QAnon supporters have found a new tragedy to exploit: the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., son of the late president.
Until July, QAnon supporters believed that “Q,” the anonymous online forum poster whose cryptic clues make up the conspiracy theory, was a high-ranking Trump administration official, or maybe even Trump himself. But now, a good portion of QAnon believers have become convinced that Q is none other than JFK Jr, even though he died in a plane crash nearly 20 years ago.
Click on the link to read the rest.
In other news, today is day three of the first Paul Manafort trial. Some interesting reads:
Franklin Foer at The Atlantic: A Hell of a Performance by Paul Manafort.
A week ago, while lawyers futzed with pretrial motions, Manafort arrived in court wearing a green jumpsuit. But the trial is the show of his lifetime. His oversize frame is once again permitted to occupy a suit—a fact that everyone in the courtroom incessantly noticed, given how much of the afternoon’s testimony came from his former clothiers, one of whom described submitting Manafort invoices that exceeded $800,000.
Paul Manafort’s $15,000 ostrich jacket
Whatever the outward signs that Paul Manafort is experiencing public torment, the presence of other men in tailored suits seems to have allowed Manafort to elevate himself into a strange sense of ease. The most compelling drama of the trial so far is watching Manafort comport himself. And the spectacle is pure Manafort.
He stands trial for abusing money he received as a world-renowned political consultant. Jurors have heard from witnesses who have described him as a master craftsman of public image; old colleagues have testified to his narrative gifts. These talents were so often used to smooth over the reputations of awful men—the kleptocrats, strongmen, and oligarchs whom he ingratiated with the American elite. Now, it’s his own image and his own narrative that he must manage, with an audience of expressionless jurors tucked away at the side of the room. And as the jury of his peers comes and goes from the room, Manafort makes a point of flashing his well-buffed smile. It’s the look of a man projecting confidence. It’s kind of convincing.
Foer, who has followed Manafort’s corrupt career for many years, describes a man who may believe he’ll get away with his criminality one more time:
When Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors laid out their case in opening arguments, they correctly diagnosed Manafort’s sense of impunity. He’d kept right on scheming, they argued, because he believed that he would get away with it. Today, the presiding judge in the case, T. S. Ellis III, made a point of constantly chiding the government. He blamed prosecutors for describing Manafort’s clients as “oligarchs,” a term he called unfairly “pejorative.”
Manafort paid $12,000 for this suit from House of Bijan.
The Republican-appointed judge warned Mueller’s team against trying Manafort for “his lavish lifestyle.” As Manafort heard these arguments, I watched him from across the room. I saw him gazing ever so thoughtfully and detected a flicker of something else, too. In that moment, it wasn’t” hard to imagine him believing that he might just get away with it one more time.
Read the whole thing at The Atlantic.
TPM has posted photos of Manafort’s Fancy Clothes, Including The Ostrich Jacket.
If there was anything prosecutors at Paul Manafort’s trial were trying to impress on the jury Wednesday, it’s that he liked to spend money wired from his foreign bank accounts on fancy things — items that could not conceivably be considered business expenses and thus tax deductible.
Things like a $21,000 Limited Edition black titanium Royal Way watch with crystal, a Mercedes Benz for his wife, and a $15,000 jacket made of ostrich. Judge T.S. Ellis was not a fan of the prosecution’s focus on Manafort’s lavish lifestyle, and would often cut off questioning if it delved too into the details of the luxury items Manafort was purchasing, allegedly with income he failed to discloAse on federal tax forms and money he wired from foreign bank counts that he didn’t report to the U.S. government….
Luckily, photos of Manafort’s high-end apparel, taken during a FBI raid of his home last summer, were made public by Special Counsel Robert Mueller Wednesday.
Check out the photos at TPM.
Yesterday, prosecutors said they weren’t sure they would call Rick Gates as a witness. Today they announced that he will appear. Again, from TPM:
A day after giving a coy answer to the judge about whether it would call Rick Gates as a witness, the prosecution confirmed Thursday that the plan remains for Gates to testify in the ongoing Virginia trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Rick Gates
“We have every intention to call him as witness,” prosecutor Greg Andres said in court before the jury was ushered into the room.
For months, Gates has been shaping up to be the key government witness in the case, after he agreed in February to cooperate with investigators. Gates was a longtime protege of Manafort’s, and was originally indicted with him by separate federal grand juries in Virginia and Washington, DC.During opening statements, Manafort’s lawyer signaled his defense would largely be built on not only tearing down Gates’ credibility but pinning the blame for alleged financial misdeeds on Gates, including claiming that Gates embezzled money from Manafort.
One more Manafort-related article by Dana Millbank: The deep cynicism of Bernie Sanders’s chief strategist.
Tad Devine, during his run as chief strategist for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, railed against the corrupting influence of money in politics.
He repeatedly echoed the Sanders message that “our economy is rigged,” that “special interests” buy politicians, that “all of the new wealth is going to the top of America,” that there is a “corrupt system of campaign finance” of which Hillary Clinton offered an “egregious” example. Sanders, by contrast, “supported the little guy.”
Bernie Sanders and Tad Devine
Those who heard Devine’s interviews and watched his Sanders TV ads therefore may be surprised to know that, in the years and months leading up to the Sanders presidential campaign, Devine was making gobs of money to secure the election of one of the world’s most corrupt political figures and then his allies.
Thanks to Robert S. Mueller III’s prosecution of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman and sometime business associate of Devine, we now have an unusual glimpse into the role the Democratic ad man had in electing and preserving the power of Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych, a crooked pro-Putin autocrat. Though American political consultants routinely rake in cash from foreign leaders — even shady ones — Devine’s seamless pivot from advocate for antidemocratic thug to champion of a principled democratic reformer shows extraordinary flexibility.
Of course we all knew Bernie was fraud all along; I wonder if the media will ask him to rationalize his choice of Devine to run his 2016 campaign?
What else is happening? What stories are you following today?
Tuesday Reads: Paul Manafort Goes On Trial In Virginia
Posted: July 31, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, morning reads, U.S. Politics 26 Comments
Protesters line up to welcome Manafort to the court.
Good Afternoon!!
Today is the first day of jury selection for Paul Manafort’s trial for fraud against the U.S. This one won’t be about the 2016 Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia. In fact, the judge ordered the prosecution to limit mention of Manafort’s role in the campaign; the second Manafort trial in DC will deal with that. However, the information that comes out in the fraud trial will reveal unsavory facts about the GOP’s financial dealings.
NPR: Manafort Trial Begins, Ushering In New Phase In Mueller Probe.
Most tax and bank fraud cases are built on stacks of bland business documents and Internal Revenue Service paperwork — hardly the stuff of international intrigue.
But the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, which began Tuesday in a suburban Washington, D.C., courthouse, promises to upend those low expectations.
Lawyers working for special counsel Robert Mueller plan to call witnesses they say demonstrate where Manafort spent his allegedly ill-gotten gains: custom-made suits; Persian rugs; landscaping fees; Land Rovers and Mercedes-Benz vehicles; and season tickets to the New York Yankees, among other items.
It’s what may not come up much during the trial in Alexandria, Va., that will draw attention from all over the world: Manafort’s work for candidate Donald Trump for a critical period in 2016 when Trump clinched the Republican nomination for president.
In pretrial arguments, prosecutor Greg Andres told the court the government would only bring up Manafort’s campaign work in the context of a witness from a bank who gave him a loan, with the expectation that the banker would win consideration for a post in the Trump administration.
“I don’t anticipate that a government witness will utter the word ‘Russia,’ ” Andres said.
Manafort’s defense team has argued any mention of Trump could be seized on by jurors who have an unfavorable view of the president.
Natasha Bertrand at The Atlantic: Paul Manafort’s Trial Won’t Be All About Russia.
Instead, prosecutors will outline the alleged financial crimes committed by Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort while he worked as an adviser to Ukraine’s pro-Russian former president Viktor Yanukovych—work that earned Manafort more than $60 million over the course of a decade, according to court documents filed by Mueller on Monday, which he allegedly laundered and concealed from the IRS. Jurors will be presented with evidence of Manafort’s lavish lifestyle, including multimillion-dollar homes, expensive cars, Major League Baseball tickets, and antique carpets. The government could call as many as 35 witnesses to testify, including Manafort’s longtime business partner Rick Gates.
Additionally, Manafort was reportedly in debt to pro-Russian interests by as much as $17 million by the time he joined the Trump campaign, which he ran at the height of the 2016 presidential election. One of the biggest outstanding questions in the Mueller probe is whether Manafort gave a Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch access to the campaign in exchange for debt relief. But Mueller may also have other ambitions—like flipping Manafort.
Experts disagree about whether that is likely to happen once the trial begins.
Trump and his allies have sought to downplay the trial, claiming that it has nothing to do with either the president or a conspiracy with Russia to win the election. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani told CNN on Monday that because Manafort was only with Trump “for four months,” he had no special insight that would incriminate the president. Manafort was forced to step down as Trump’s campaign chairman in August 2016 after reports surfaced that he was allocated millions in off-the-books payments by Ukraine’s pro-Russian Party of Regions, but his work with Trump did not end there: He continued to give Trump “pointers” on how to handle the WikiLeaks dump of the Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails, according to Politico, and his deputy, Rick Gates, stayed and worked on Trump’s transition team. Manafort “insinuated himself” into the transition through Gates, CNN reported at the time.
Manafort may be hoping Trump will pardon him after discovery in the first trial becomes public.
“It makes no sense for a defendant to choose two trials because the prosecution is the only party that benefits from two bites at the apple (since one conviction is all it needs),” [former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York Daniel] Goldman said. “So the only sensible explanation for the course Manafort has chosen is that he is playing the long game and hoping for a pardon, because he can claim that Mueller exceeded his authority in charging him with crimes that preceded the campaign and he was therefore ‘treated unfairly,’ which has resonated in the past with the President in granting pardons.”
Read the whole thing at The Atlantic. Bertrand is one of the most knowledgeable reporters on the Russia investigation.
I suggest reading this Twitter thread by Teri Kanefield on why the trial is important even though it won’t address Russia collusion.
https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1024250196853575681
Read the rest on Twitter.
CNN: Manafort trial begins in biggest test yet for special counsel Robert Mueller.
The trial on Manafort’s financial dealings will hang over the White House and show just how deeply federal authorities have looked into the private business of Trump associates.
It comes as the President continues to rail against Mueller’s investigation, calling it a “witch hunt,” and some congressional Republicans are looking to impeach the Justice Department official overseeing the Muller probe, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Trump weighed in on the Mueller probe Tuesday morning, reiterating a defense made by his attorney Rudy Giuliani that “collusion is not a crime,” even though actions such as conspiracy can be criminal.
The trial in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, is expected to last three weeks. Jury selection will begin Tuesday, with opening arguments likely later this week. Manafort is also scheduled to face trial in Washington, DC, on related charges in September.
The case against Manafort doesn’t focus on his time as chairman of the Trump campaign in 2016. Manafort is charged with 18 violations of tax and banking laws. Prosecutors claim he hid millions of dollars in income from lobbying for Ukrainian politicians, all while failing to pay taxes and spending the money on US real estate and personal luxury purchases.
When his Ukrainian political work dried up in 2015, prosecutors say Manafort lied to banks to take out more than $20 million in loans. They accuse him of hiding his foreign bank accounts from federal authorities. Manafort also allegedly received loans from the Federal Savings Bank after one of its executives sought a position in the Trump campaign and administration, prosecutors say.
If found guilty, Manafort could face a maximum sentence of 305 years in prison.
CBS will provide live updates on the trial:
Before Manafort attorney Kevin Downing entered the courtroom Tuesday morning, he told CBS News’ Paula Reid that there is “no chance” Manafort will cooperate with prosecutors or enter a plea deal. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters Tuesday morning that there has been no discussion of a potential pardon by President Trump of Manafort. Still, Reid points out that the pardon power is broad enough for Mr. Trump to pardon Manafort at any time for the crimes he has been charged with in Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Jury selection is underway this morning. Twelve jurors will be selected this week. The pool of potential jurors is being questioned by both sides and by U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis III at the bench. There are 65 potential jurors — 32 men and 33 women — and the vast majority of the pool is white, CBS News’ Clare Hymes and Kristine Guillaume note. During the questioning, Judge Ellis asked if any in the pool had affiliations with the Justice Department. Nine out of the 65 said they did, but they all said that this affiliation would not cause bias for them….
Prosecutors have lined up 35 witnesses and over 500 pieces of evidence they say will show how Manafort earned more than $60 million from his Ukrainian work and then concealed a “significant percentage” of that money from the IRS. Prosecutors will also argue that Manafort fraudulently obtained millions more in bank loans, including during his time on the campaign.
And they plan to introduce evidence that a chairman of one of the banks allowed Manafort to file inaccurate loan information in exchange for a role on the Republican campaign and the promise of a job in the Trump administration that never materialized.
This morning, Manfort lost his final appeal asking to be freed before his trial in DC in September. Bloomberg:
Paul Manafort will have to stay in jail ahead of his money-laundering and obstruction of justice trial in Washington, which is scheduled to start Sept. 17.
The U.S. Court of Appeals on Tuesday rejected Manafort’s appeal of a judge’s order sending him to jail before the trial, after Special Counsel Robert Mueller accused Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman of attempting to tamper with witnesses.
Yesterday he dropped another appeal leading up to the Virginia trial. Bloomberg: Manafort Drops Case Challenging Mueller on Eve of Fraud Trial.
Just a day before his fraud trial was set to begin in Virginia, Paul Manafort dropped his civil lawsuit challenging the authority of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to charge him with crimes unrelated to his role as President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman.
Manafort, 69, abandoned his appeal late Monday of a judge’s dismissal of his lawsuit in federal court in Washington. The judge ruled in April that Manafort’s criminal case, and not a civil lawsuit, was the proper venue for challenging the Justice Department’s appointment of Mueller to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The civil lawsuit ended when Manafort filed a stipulation of voluntary dismissal with Justice Department attorneys, who were defending Mueller and the official overseeing his work, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
So that’s a bit of a primer on the first Manafort trial. One thing I heard yesterday is that Manafort’s lawyers will get discovery of the entire prosecution case against him and that means there could be leaks of evidence to be present in the second trial in D.C.
What stories are you following today?
Monday Reads: Gas Lit Nation
Posted: July 30, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Gaslighting, Rudy Giuliani 12 Comments
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
Do you remember the good old’ days of last year when the likes of White House Mommy advanced the concept of ‘alternative facts’ and Sean Spicer announced “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration period!” ?
Well, Gas Lighting never goes out of style in Drumpflandia. Rudy Giuliani has picked up where not even the Huckabeast dares go. And of course the Alt Facts Team at Faux News explored each conspiracy is with zest this morning with him. The bigger zesty bang came later on CNN. This is just psychologically exhausting. When will it end?
Zesty Rudy! Atta Boy!
Gas light, Paris
It’s really hard to explain exactly how much Rudy just told us collusion doesn’t matter, isn’t a crime or whatever because you know, D’oh Hair Furor can’t even use a computer let alone hack one. This is pretty fresh off the keyboard of Aaron Blake of WAPO.
President Trump’s defense in the Russia investigation has been a study in goal-post moving — constantly watering down previous denials and raising the standard for what would constitute actual wrongdoing.
But rarely has it been so concentrated in one morning.
Trump’s lawyer/spokesman Rudolph W. Giuliani appeared on Fox News’s and CNN’s morning shows on Monday to downplay the idea that colluding with the Russians would have even been illegal and to argue against strawmen.
The most notable portion of the interviews was when Giuliani rekindled the idea that collusion isn’t even a crime. Trump’s defenders have occasionally noted that the word doesn’t appear in the criminal code — which is a misnomer — but Giuliani took it a step further: He basically suggested Trump would have had to pay for Russia to interfere on his behalf.
“I don’t even know if that’s a crime — colluding with Russians,” Giuliani said on CNN. “Hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack. He didn’t pay for the hacking.”
Oskar Rabin (b. 1928) ;”Gaslight”;oil on canvas
46 x 55 cm.;Painted in 1982
So let’s just look at this for what it is.
Rudy Giuliani made two TV appearances this morning, one on Fox and one on CNN. Both are pretty convoluted and a bit hard to follow. So they’ve led to various interpretations. But there’s what I believe is one pretty big admission that is at least very new to me and I think a pretty big problem for Trump and Giuliani.
As I’ve mentioned a few times before, one of the oddities of Giuliani’s rolling defense of Trump in response to Cohen’s accusations is this: Giuliani says that the meeting where Trump allegedly learned about the Russia meeting never happened and he (Giuliani) has talked to the participants and they agree it never happened and Trump didn’t attend the meeting or know about the Russian offer. Now, there’s sort of a problem here. Cohen never said just what meeting he was referring to. And how can you be a witness to a meeting that never happened about what was said in that meeting?
This makes no sense. But from the start, I’ve had the sense that Giuliani does know specifically what Cohen is talking about but is denying the specifics.
Now let’s get to what Giuliani said this morning. In a back and forth with CNN’s Alisyn Carmerota, he appears to say that two days before the meeting with the Russian lawyer there was a planning meeting to prepare for that meeting. This prep meeting would have been on June 7th, 2016. Giuliani says that meeting included Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Manafort, Rick Gates and others.
Now, I’ve had some off the grid moments in the last ten days. But I don’t think I’d ever heard of this planning meeting. If nothing else, it suggests that the Trump team took the planned encounter with the Russian government emissary much more seriously than they’ve suggested to date. And then there’s Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy. As we know, Gates is now a cooperating witness. Big problem for the Trump Team, if he was at such a planning meeting.
Giuliani’s key aim throughout is to insist that Trump was not in that meeting. He seems to allow that Cohen was in the meeting, just that Cohen’s lying about Trump’s presence. But that point (Cohen’s presence) is less clear to me. Again, watch the video.
Gas lighting at Lincoln’s Inn
… it’s hard for people to cast informed ballots if President Trump is overtly and boldly lying without fear of repercussion. Some say he’s trying to gaslight us into believing the reality he wants more than the one that exists.
We saw it this weekend when New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger felt the need to correct the record after President Trump tweeted an inaccurate version of what was said in their off-the-record meeting.
Last week, President Trump asked people at a rally in Kansas City, MO to “…stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.” He went on to say “what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
An Op Ed at Teen Vogue explains the technique of gaslighting and argues that we should care about what’s happening to us. Here’s the term applied by Lauren Duca on what we’re being told on the Seperation of Familes policy.
Gaslighting is a tactic of psychological abuse in which the victim is made to doubt their own sanity, only here the abuser is the White House, and the victim is the American people. The Trump administration is sending up so many conflicting versions of reality that they make us doubt what is and is not real. The past week alone has provided one of the most gruesome examples of this, as it seeks to confuse and distract us from the plight of about 2,300 immigrant children separated from their families with no plan for being reunited. Those children are being held in detention centers, or flown across the country, with no guarantee that they will ever see their parents again. On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order which he claimed would end family separation; it does so only in name. The so-called “zero-tolerance” policy will still be enforced, but now the Trump administration plans to hold families in detention centers together and indefinitely. They have made no statement on efforts for reuniting the families who have already been torn apart — but it doesn’t look like it will be happening anytime soon.
Gas lighting in the historical center of Wrocław, Poland is manually turned off and on daily.
Tina Nguyen at Vanity Fare argues that Trump is gaslighting his staff on Russia.
This sort of opacity toward the press isn’t unusual for the Trump administration, nor is the internal, in-the-dark scramble exactly a novelty—Trump caught his entire communications staff off guard in March, when he almost unilaterally agreed to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. The more worrisome possibility is that the president, who has consistently and deliberately lied to the American public regarding Russia, is beginning to employ the same tactics with his own staff. A New York Timesreport published Wednesday reveals the extent of Trump’s obfuscation; per the Times, two weeks before his inauguration, Trump was presented with overwhelming evidence by former C.I.A. director John Brennan, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, and former F.B.I. director James Comey, among others, that Russia had meddled in the presidential election, and that Putin himself had very likely ordered the attack. This evidence reportedly included texts, e-mails, and intel from a source close to Putin, as well as the contents of the controversial Steele dossier. According to those present for the briefing, Trump seemed “grudgingly convinced” of its veracity.
Of course, even if Trump was convinced, he’s shown no sign of it. Moreover, he’s repeatedly trashed the very people who briefed him that day, firing Comey months later, and criticizing Clapper and Brennan. He kept up the tirade as recently as Wednesday night, telling CBS’s Jeff Glor, “Certainly I can’t have any confidence in the past . . . I have no confidence in a guy like Brennan. I think he’s a total lowlife. I have no confidence in Clapper. You know, Clapper wrote me a beautiful letter when I first went to office, and it was really nice. And then, all of a sudden, he’s gone haywire because they got to him and they probably got him to say things that maybe he doesn’t even mean.” He continued, “But no, I certainly don’t have confidence in past people. You look at what’s happened. Take a look at all of the shenanigans that have gone on. Very hard to have confidence in that group.”
Trump also told Glor that in his meeting with Putin, he was “very strong on the fact that we can’t have meddling . . . I let him know we can’t have this, we’re not going to have it, and that’s the way it’s going to be.” Whether or not—and to what extent—he was telling the truth, of course, is impossible to divine.
Now, we’re getting it on the economy. “Team Trump touts GDP growth with gaslighting and brazen lies.” This is from Think Progress’ Aaron Rupar.
President Trump on Friday morning held a press event that amounted to a victory lap for the Gross Domestic Product growing by 4.1 percent in the second quarter of this year.
Trump gave himself all the credit for economic growth, while discrediting the record of his predecessor, Barack Obama.
“We have accomplished an economic turnaround of historic proportions,” Trump said. “Once again we are the economic envy of the entire world.”
Trump went on to tout jobs numbers in particular.
“We have added 3.7 million new jobs since the election,” Trump said. “A number that is unthinkable if you go back to the campaign. Nobody would have said it. Nobody would have even in an optimistic way projected it.”
Trump was fibbing. Though he claimed to have “added 3.7 million new jobs since the election,” 3.2 millions jobs have been created since his inauguration.And it is simply not the case that Trump’s jobs record would have been “unthinkable” during the campaign. In fact, Obama’s jobs record during the final 17 months of his administration — a period of time encompassing Trump’s campaign — outperformed Trump’s during his first 17 months.While Trump attempted to gaslight people, his eldest son touted the GDP number with a brazen lie.
“Incredible numbers,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted. “I remember when ‘the experts’ laughed about breaking 3%. Just because Obama never broke 2% doesn’t mean that someone with great policies can’t. Let’s keep this going.”
Baltimore first U.S. street gas light
What exactly does it mean when an entire Administration provides “alternative facts” and bobs and weaves to keep up with a continual series of lies and exaggerations?
Now for another random event which happened yesterday. The White House has said that it will no longer provide information about when the president holds conversations with foreign leaders, as it has always done hitherto.
The accounts of the chats may have been anodyne and terse, but they were a useful tool to keep track of foreign policy priorities. And it was always useful to compare and contrast what, say, the Kremlin would have to say about the conversation compared to the White House. Now we will no longer be able to do that.
And so to the final thing. Donald Trump was speaking at a rally in Kansas City. And he came out with a memorable phrase that sounded as though it had been lifted straight from George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984. He said: “Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening.”
Or it is. There is just a concerted – and sometimes it would seem – systematic effort to make you think otherwise.
Forget alternative facts. This is rewriting history.
Maybe Stephen Colbert says it best.
“I’m so happy to be with you, you not crazy people,” Stephen Colbert said in his Late Show monologue Tuesday night. “Because you’ve got to remember that you’re not crazy, no matter what Donald Trump says.”
After playing the clip of Trump’s remark, the host feigned relief. “Oh good,” he said. “I was worried, because what I’m seeing and reading is that the president is a racist, horny old burger-goblin who literally steals children from poor people.”
“Oh, I’m being told he’s lying,” Colbert added, “which makes sense, because that’s another one of the things I’m seeing and reading.”
“Every day, just like that, Donald Trump gets a little more brazen,” the host continued, pointing to the announcement that the president wants to revoke the security clearances of several former Obama administration intelligence officials who have criticized him.
“Now, I don’t know if we’ve arrived at dictatorship,” Colbert said. “But we’ve definitely made it to dick.”
Meanwhile, I’m exhausted from all of this. It’s tiring to be continually told stuff that you know is not true and then watch the media go over it and over it. I need a Drumpfcation. I’m not sure if that means he goes some where and there’s a press black out for a week or so or I stay home and watch 1984 over and over and over …
I’m sure it’s not going to get any better when we start getting stuff coming out of the Manafort Trial. Buckle up Sky Dancers! It’s going to be a bumpy ride! Oops! Wrong movie reference! Or is it?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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