Mr Nance

Malcolm Nance is that guy in the meeting who knows what's going on, and has the balls to tell us, even while we go merrily along blabbering about anything we can think of if it keeps us from having to face up to what Malcolm knows is going on.

To stay strictly inside the parameters of not jumping the gun, we can only go so far with what we know so far, but Malcolm's a pro - and Malcolm knows Trump knows.

It's hard not to think this means Trump is on the down side of the bell curve.

Today's Tweet

The delirious dope of Trump Tower is a big fan of Breitbart & InfoWars conspiracies, not a fan or evidence on #wiretap. #saturdaymorning pic.twitter.com/dkBx49B5Ns

— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) March 4, 2017

Resistance Report

Today's Podcast

driftglass and Blue Gal

Episode 378 - We Won't Get Gaslighted

The Professional left

Amazon link

Late Night News

Seth Meyers on Jeff Sessions and a few good WTFs.

Away Again

In about 6 weeks, 45* has spent more tax dollars on leisure travel than Obama spent in a year. 

And why does he feel the need to take a 3-day break every fucking week?

PR Photo Op featuring adorable grandbabies and Armored Personnel Carriers - the Daddy State's wet dream. 

But it feels better if we can go on pretending it was purely by happenstance.

Today's Tweet

Trump was right. America is becoming a laughingstock pic.twitter.com/QHZgvxfLBK #Sessions #Putin #TRUMPRUSSIA

— Richard Hine (@richardhine) March 3, 2017

That Creepy Feeling

"Checks and balances is a metaphor, not a mechanism."

There are some holes in this of course, but the adage holds true: "I'm not trying to describe what I see happening in the future so much as I'm trying to prevent it"

David Frum's take on Trump World:

Local Kid

One of my daughter's good buddies - Clara Day

Accompanied by Ian Gilliam (Clara's dad)



This morning on local station Z95.1

Intercepted

Jeremy Scahill

Clever Me

Let's try this one on:

It's Almost That Bad

Going Going

Julia Ioffe at The Atlantic

The flags in the lobby of the State Department stood bathed in sunlight and silence on a recent afternoon. “It’s normally so busy here,” marveled a State Department staffer as we stood watching the emptiness. “People are usually coming in for meetings, there’s lots of people, and now it’s so quiet.” The action at Foggy Bottom has instead moved to the State Department cafeteria where, in the absence of work, people linger over countless coffees with colleagues. (“The cafeteria is so crowded all day,” a mid-level State Department officer said, adding that it was a very unusual sight. “No one’s doing anything.”) As the staffer and I walked among the tables and chairs, people with badges chatted over coffee; one was reading his Kindle.

“It just feels empty,” a recently departed senior State official told me.

This week began with reports that President Donald Trump’s budget proposal will drastically slash the State Department’s funding, and last week ended with White House adviser and former Breitbart head Stephen Bannon telling the attendees of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that what he and the new president were after was a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” At the State Department, which employs nearly 70,000 people around the world, that deconstruction is already well underway.

Defend the institutions or see them topple like dominos.

Today's Tweet

Follow as much of this thread as you can. The basic premise of civilian control over the military is mildly important to the care and feeding of our little democracy here.

This ain't about saving time. It's a dangerous desire to pass the buck. Let me lay this out in a few tweets. https://t.co/MlFuVM6rnb

— Jason Kander (@JasonKander) March 1, 2017

Read Your Charlie

...it's a lot better'n eatin' vegetables.

Charlie Pierce at Esquire:

Presidential, was it?

Even I didn't believe they could lower the bar far enough that an otherwise sensible fellow like Van Jones would take the indecent exploitation of a war widow's fresh sorrow and turn it into Lincoln's Second Inaugural. Even I didn't believe they could sink the bar far enough into Middle Earth that otherwise critical observers would look at a pile of deceptive leaves and see a coherent tree. Every day in every way, this administration and this president* taxes the far limits of even my cynicism. For example, it is not true that nobody profits from "lawless chaos." How do you think Vladimir Putin created the gangster's paradise that helped Rex Tillerson and Wilbur Ross get even more wealthy?

When one calls that speech "presidential," whose presidency are you summoning? Pierce? Buchanan? Rufus T. Firefly? Jesus, people, at least try to sound like you graduated middle school.