Chaotic Friday Reads

The frozen Josephine Shaw Lowell Memorial Fountain located at Bryant Park in New York is viewed on January 2, 2018 as New Yorkers return back to work after the holiday break. TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!

Well, it’s another week in Drumpfistan where most of us–including the news media–can’t keep up with all the craziness that’s going on because there’s an insane person wankering his way through the presidency.  How could any one not see this man is a moron with more personality disorders than listed in DSM-5.    The weather is crazy too but don’t blame climate change whatever you do if you want to be a good Republican Stooge and justify opening up all the coasts and national parks of the country to massive extraction exploitation.

While Americans on the East Coast are battling a bomb cyclone, a recent NASA image shows quite a different weather scenario out west—one bathed in excessive heat. Comparing the current scenario to the past eight years—which is exactly what this striking new image does—shows just how drastically the weather has changed.

The image was taken by NASA’s terra satellite and is based on data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), an instrument onboard the satellite that takes readings of the Earth’s surface. To create the visual map, NASA used land surface temperatures from December 26, 2017, to January 2, 2018, and compared these with average temperatures of the same time period over the past 8 years ago.

Red represents areas that were hotter than average and blue areas were colder than average. (White represents normal temperatures and gray represents inadequate data.) The vast amount of color on the map show just how distinct this year’s temperatures are compared to that of the past.

Well, that explains why we’re colder down here in the South than Alaska.  The oldest living confederate widow has laid claim to her new priorities.  We must see that state’s rights only apply when we’re talking taking rights away from Black Americans, the GLBT community, and women.  States must follow his lead on weed.  Also, the FBI must go back to investigating the Clintons at any cost!!!  

The Justice Department sent a shiver of uncertainty through the now-thriving legal marijuana industry Thursday by rescinding Obama administration policies not to interfere with state laws allowing people to use pot for medical and recreational uses.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions characterized the dramatic policy shift as a “return to the rule of law” in a memo outlining the change. But federal officials could not answer whether people selling or using marijuana – in certain states where it’s considered legal – would now be more at risk of prosecution.

Senior Justice officials said the previous administration’s position, mainly drafted by former Deputy Attorney General James Cole, had provided a “de-facto safe haven” for a now thriving weed industry.

“This (Sessions) memo has no de-facto safe haven in it,” said the officials, who briefed reporters under condition of anonymity because the memo had not yet been circulated to U.S. attorneys across the country.

The probe may also examine whether any tax-exempt assets were converted for personal or political use and whether the foundation complied with applicable tax laws, the officials said.

One witness recently interviewed by the FBI described the session to The Hill as “extremely professional and unquestionably thorough” and focused on questions about whether donors to Clinton charitable efforts received any favorable treatment from the Obama administration on a policy decision previously highlighted in media reports.

The witness discussed his interview solely on the grounds of anonymity. He said the agents were from Little Rock and their questions focused on government decisions and discussions of donations to Clinton entities during the time Hillary Clinton led President Obama’s State Department.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting for the White House to denounce this act of terror in Nebraska.  I doubt it’s coming because this dude is undoubtedly part of Trump’s White Supremacist base.  How on earth do you board a train carrying an arsenal?  Why are guns allowed?

The FBI says an armed 26-year-old Missouri man who breached a secured area to stop an Amtrak train in southwest Nebraska in October has links to a white supremacist group and expressed an interest in “killing black people,” according to court documents unsealed Wednesday.

Taylor Michael Wilson, of St. Charles, Missouri, is charged in U.S. District Court in Lincoln with terrorism attacks and other violence against railroad carriers and mass transportation systems.

In an affidavit attached to the criminal complaint, FBI Special Agent Monte Czaplewski said there was probable cause to believe that electronic devices possessed by Wilson and firearms owned by him “have been used for or obtained in anticipation of engaging in or planning to engage in criminal offenses against the United States.”

Just before 2 a.m. on Oct. 22, an assistant conductor felt the train braking, searched for what was causing it and found Wilson in the engineer’s seat of the follow engine “playing with the controls,” Czaplewski wrote.

The conductor, and others, subdued Wilson, then held him and waited for deputies from Furnas and Harlan counties to arrive in Oxford, 23 miles southwest of Holdrege, where the eastbound California Zephyr with about 175 people aboard stopped.

No injuries were reported.

Czaplewski said Wilson, who has a permit in Missouri to carry a concealed handgun, had a loaded .38-caliber handgun in his waistband, a speed loader in his pocket and a National Socialist Movement business card on him when he was arrested.

He also had a backpack with three more speed loaders, a box of ammunition, a knife, tin snips, scissors and a ventilation mask inside.

Michael Wolff’s book has been released early.  The DC crowd lined up at midnight in bookstores every where.

The wind chill hit minus-3 degrees the night “Fire and Fury” came to town.

But neither polar vortex nor “bomb cyclone” nor gloom of night could keep Washington’s political gossipmongers from lining up at Kramerbooks Thursday night for the midnight sale of Michael Wolff’s newly published romp through the Donald Trump White House.

“This is a D.C. moment, and I wanted to be a part of it,” said Steve Dingledine, a fifth-grade teacher who showed up shortly after 11 p.m. and now held the pole position in a line that snaked through the Dupont Circle bookstore/cafe. And it was definitely a D.C. moment: Dingledine found himself flanked by a cluster of cameras — the BBC, Fox News, someone conducting interviews in Turkish, and emissaries of various local TV channels. Reporters from BuzzFeed, HuffPost, the Weekly Standard and Vice News hovered nearby.

Dingledine was not fazed. This was not his first D.C. moment.

“Mark Halperin came to my classroom last year to film his show, ‘The Circus,’ ” he said, laying down two tens and a twenty before tucking his purchase under his arm and exiting into the cold night air.

Meanwhile, back in the craziest wing of the party of crazy, Bannon is as much a target as Wolff.  He’s a man without a country or sponsor or friends. Here’s some delicious words from Never Trumper Rick Wilson.

Steve Bannon’s spectacular fall from gracein Trump World is a big, salty, delicious bowl of schadenfreude from the political gods in celebration of the new year.

Bannon wasn’t just one of Trump’s most senior aides and an architect of the destruction of the Republican Party; he was the multi-shirted, red-eyed White House troll, leaking tales of his brilliance to a constellation of reporters in the ostensibly hated mainstream media. His house organ Breitbart and a host of Trump-right websites and news outlets sang praises to his dank genius. Bannon, they proclaimed, was Trumpism in its distilled essence: revanchist, ahistorical, racially inflected, and consumed with an imaginary war on the media and America’s broader society.

Now, like two rats in a bag, Trump and Bannon are tearing at one another in a delicious public spat that has every possible bit of drama, except Bannon drunkenly bellowing for a round of fisticuffs with all comers and Trump offering to compare the length of their relative manhoods on live television. They deserve one another in so many ways.

Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury (President Postliterate Bestwords is waiting on either the audio book or for Kellyanne to organize tableaux vivants of the various chapters) is blowing Washington apart today, and the biggest rift is between Trumpism and Bannonism. I’ve written before about the inevitable, tragic dynamic of this brokeback bromance; Trump needs a mindless cheering section screaming hosannas no matter how often he stumbles toward the nuclear and political precipice. Bannon needs an avatar for his Alt-Reich national socialist—oh, sorry, I meant populist—fantasies.

Speaking of White Nationalists and other full blown racists and Trump, here’s another bit from the book via The Daily Beast, Oh, and don’t forget the misogyny!

Michael Wolff’s infamous Fire and Fury alleges that President Donald Trump privately rationalized “why someone would be a member of the KKK.” According to Wolff’s reporting: “As [Trump] got back on Marine One to head to Andrews Air Force Base and on to JFK and then into Manhattan and Trump Tower, [after addressing the Charlottesville murder,] his mood was dark and I-told-you-so. Privately, he kept trying to rationalize why someone would be a member of the KKK—that is, they might not actually believe what the KKK believed, and the KKK probably does not believe what it used to believe, and, anyway, who really knows what the KKK believes now?” The book, which is still making waves after three excerpts and its release at midnight Friday, contends the White House is particularly hostile toward what it calls “D.O.J. women”—women who work in the Justice Department. Earlier this week, an excerpt revealed that Trump specifically reviled former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. Wolff wrote that Trump at one point called her “such a c—t.”

So, I could go on about a bunch of stuff but frankly my fingers are still quite cold, stiff, and sore and I’d rather head back to bed to read what you’ve come up with.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Stay warm!!!!!