Oct 31, 2017
Arguing The Real Shit
We need an honest debate, and we need to know how to conduct ourselves in an honest debate - a debate that stands a chance of moving things forward - we can expand a little on the rules and the weird shit we need to watch out for.
Here's a taste:
Here's a taste:
Let It Percolate
129 million of them got at least a few Facebook memes from a ghost account that most likely originated in Russia.
100 million eligible voters stayed home.
45* "won" by less than 250,000 votes in a small handful of states.
Get up off your ass and go vote.
Today's Tweet
Oct 30, 2017
This Week's Amy Siskind
Amy Siskind is keeping the list.
Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.
1. Axios reported Trump pledged to spend at least $430k of his own money to pay some of the legal bills for WH staff due to the Russia investigation. The RNC has paid roughly $430k to cover Trump’s and Donald Jr.’s lawyers.
2. Reuters reported Canada is granting asylum to people who fear being deported by Trump. More than 15K people crossed the U.S.-Canadian border to claim refugee status this year. Many were in the US legally.
3. The US Air Force responded to Trump’s executive order in Week 49 which allows them to recall retired pilots, saying the Air Force did not know about it in advance and does not “currently intend to recall retired pilots.”
4. Defense One reported the Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended in 1991.
5.On Sunday, on the same day the Kremlin added him to the Interpol list, the State Dept revoked a visa for British citizen Bill Browder, a hedge fund manager turned human rights activist responsible for the Magnitsky Act.
6. On Monday night, the US cleared Browder to enter. The explanation given anonymously by a Trump regime member is the initial action blocking had been taken automatically in response to an Interpol notice filed by Russia.
7. Veselnitskaya detailed the Kremlin’s gripes with Browder in a memo she brought to the June 9 meeting with Donald Jr., Kushner and Manafort.
8. POLITICO reported that four officials at three different federal agencies are doing substantially similar work to the position for which they have been nominated, despite not having been confirmed yet.
9. Atlantic reported Trump is rush-shipping condolences to Gold Star families following his false claim he had called “virtually all” of the families. Four families received next-day UPS letters from Trump.
10. McCain took a swipe at Trump on C-SPAN3 saying those “at the highest income level” avoided the draft by finding a doctor who “would say that they had a bone spur.”
A Widening Loop
Just off-stage, while the big drama of Manafort is going on, this is almost lost in the shuffle.
Josh Marshall, TPM:
George Papadopolous, another of those first five campaign advisors announced in March 2016 (Carter Page was another), pleaded guilty on Oct. 5, 2017, to making false statements to FBI. Unsealed this morning.
More soon.
Remember, days after being appointed, Papadopolous went to work trying to set up meetings between the Trump campaign and “Russian Leadership – Including Putin.”
We’re reading through the Papadopolous charges now. They are pretty bad and go directly to the Russia issue. More soon.
Don't assume the Papadolpolous plea wasn't intended to come in under the radar. This 45*-Russia thing has more moving parts than a high-end German sports sedan.
I thought they'd start with the little fish, using them as bait for the lunkers. Leading off with Manafort could be an indication of low-hanging fruit, which in turn could indicate either a target-rich environment, and/or the degree of difficulty tying the whole thing together.
Today's Tweet
Hoping for the best with today's indictment.
I would not only buy tickets to see this in theatre, but I would go on and choose my seats beforehand. pic.twitter.com/8Sz0vjuEkZ— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) October 28, 2017
Oct 29, 2017
What Does It Take?
"Fact: Donald Trump is a feckless racist catastrophe who would gladly light the world on fire just to see his name printed in the last newspaper ever published."
You have to wonder what Jeff Flake and Bob Corker are thinking today. I'm sure neither were expecting their Sunday to be this quiet. These two stalwart bedrock pillar Senate Republicans dropped a couple of building-sized bricks on the White House last week, and all that came of the resulting DONK was yet another hashtagged rhetorical victory lap by Donald Trump.
According to normal political gravity, this was the sun rising in the West. Flake and Corker took Reagan's 11th Commandment -- "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican" – and fed it to the bears. Two major figures within the GOP brutally attacked a sitting Republican president on national television, using phrases like "debasing the nation" and "flagrant disregard for truth or decency," and in any other time in US history, it would have been a nine-days wonder.
It should be noted that Flake and Corker’s words assailing Trump do not bump them to the head of the line for beatification. Their profile in courage is shorter than the flyers you find on your windshield. Flake happily voted several times to strip millions of Americans of their health insurance not long ago, and Corker just voted to blow up a major consumer protection regulation. Both have voted with Trump 90 percent of the time.
The smiling hyena will still eat your children.
Job Hunting Tip
Interviewer:
What did you like best about your last job?
Candidate:
Sometimes people had birthdays and they'd have free cake.
Today's Tweet
Gotta love a good Twitter Poem
Resentment (#poem)— Sue Stone (@knittingknots) October 28, 2017
Heigh-ho resentment,
the magic elixer
lovingly
brewed
by the greedy,
tweaked
and spiced
and stirred
until
the right moment,
sprayed over a country
to free the last
bits of money out,
leaving the dregs
in a useless,
bloody ruin.
Oct 28, 2017
How Green Was My Campaign Fund
Playing both ends against the middle - and vice versa
Those bills again are:
Those bills again are:
- 2013: HB 2261
- 2014: SB 459 and HB 848
- 2015: SB 1334 and SB 1349
- 2017: HB 1760 and HB 2291
I didn't check all the bills mentioned, but the ones I did check were all passed by percentages in the 90s - like a couple of votes short of unanimous.
The old saw holds that sausage-making is an ugly thing.
And the closer you look, the uglier it gets, especially when big corporations have government locked in a grip that seems unbreakable.
But it's not any worse now than it was in the early 20th century.
That doesn't mean we just sit on our asses and wait for shit to get better - that should be obvious, but that's exactly what an awful lot of us seem to be doing.
Anyway, it's not easy; it's not supposed to be easy; the fact that it's hard to do is partly what makes it worth doing.
"We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win."
--JFK
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