The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, but Akhilleus found this new one that he says is easy to use.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

Contact Marie

Click on this link to e-mail Marie.

Page Links
Saturday
Feb092019

The Commentariat -- February 10, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Emily Cochrane, et al., of the New York Times: "Bipartisan talks to reach a border security agreement have stalled, lawmakers and aides said on Sunday, imperiling efforts to prevent another government shutdown days before the Friday deadline. Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the Republican chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee..., confirmed the impasse on Sunday, saying that he was 'not confident we're going to get there.'... The 17 House and Senate lawmakers negotiating, known as a conference committee, had set an informal deadline of Monday to reach a deal, because Congress would need that much time to consider the legislation without waiving procedural rules and still pass it by Friday, when funding for several departments and agencies expires. But an aide familiar with the talks said lawmakers had stopped communicating. The hang-up was ... a Democratic effort to force Immigration and Customs Enforcement to focus on detaining migrants with criminal records instead of people who have overstayed their visas by limiting the number of beds it has in detention centers."

Emily Tillett of CBS News: "Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam says he considered resigning in the wake of the ongoing controversy embroiling his office, but told 'CBS This Morning' co-host Gayle King he's 'not going anywhere.'... The governor said in an interview with The Washington Post published Saturday that he would spend the remainder of his term working toward advancing racial equality. The governor has been speaking with black political and community leaders over the past week, but the Virginia Black Legislative Caucus has called for Northam's resignation more than once." ...

... Jenna Portnoy, et al., of the Washington Post: "Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax said Saturday that his encounters with the two women who have accused him of sexual assault were consensual, and he called on authorities -- including the FBI -- to investigate. His statement came as calls for his resignation grew from former allies, including the Democratic Party of Virginia, which had reserved judgment until a second woman came forward Friday to say he sexually assaulted her.... He said he knew both women during the time they allege the assaults occurred. He said that he also knew them afterward and that they never told him their interactions were not consensual or caused 'any discomfort.'"

*****

The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Daniel Lippman & Eliana Johnson of Politico: "The White House is aggressively investigating several leaks of ... Donald Trump's private schedules, a source of repeated embarrassment to the White House and the president himself. West Wing officials managing the hunt have enlisted the help of the White House IT office, and believe they are making progress in narrowing the search for potential suspects.... The search has been approved by the office of acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and Trump himself -- who has been infuriated by leaks from within his White House -- is aware of the mole hunt and supports the effort, according to one of the officials." (Also linked yesterday.)

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "President Trump underwent his annual medical exam Friday, and ... his doctor appears to have contracted a highly contagious disease that has afflicted all of Trump's recent doctors. Trumpitis.... In a brief letter released Friday by the White House, [Dr. Sean] Conley promised fuller results to come, but he wanted to make something clear right away. 'While the reports and recommendations are being finalized, I am happy to announce that the President of the United States is in very good health and I anticipate he will remain so for the duration of his Presidency, and beyond,' the memo from Conley states. Whatever the actual state of Trump's health is, that's quite the prediction. Trump ... could be president for six more years, and would end his second term at 78.... Suffice it to say, that's a very long period of time over which to be predicting nothing impacting Trump's 'very good health' -- about one-tenth of Trump's entire life span to this point, in fact. Things can happen that all the medical tests in the world could never ' see coming, and they're much more likely to happen when you are in your 70s."

Dan Friedman of Mother Jones: "In an interview aired Friday, Ivanka Trump told ABC News that she knew 'literally almost nothing' about her family's secret pursuit of a deal to build a Trump-branded tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. Her claim ... is contradicted by various sources.... [I]n November 2015 she emailed [Michael] Cohen to suggest he contact Dmitry Klokov, a Russian weightlifter who said he could help secure a meeting for Donald Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to help facilitate a Trump Tower-Moscow deal.... In late 2015, Ivanka also suggested an architect for the Moscow project in an email to Cohen.... Under the preliminary deal, she received the right to have a spa under her name in the building.... [A]ccording to Felix Sater..., Ivanka herself visited Moscow in 2006 as part of the Trump Organization's long-running pursuit of a deal there. 'I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin's private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin,' Sater boasted in a 2015 email to Cohen." --safari: Can we get the Presidunce*'s daughter under oath ASAP, please?

"All the Best People." The Washington Post features profiles of several of Trump's "best people." Here's the one on Michael Cohen, by Paul Schwartzman. At the top of the page are links to the other profiles -- Donnie Junior, Roger Stone & Paul Manafort, and Michael Flynn. The Cohen profile is new; the others were published late last year. "In his decade at the center of Trump's inner circle, Cohen styled himself as the tycoon's pugnacious man Friday, an indefatigable loyalist who aped his boss's husky-voiced bluster. In Cohen, Trump found a fellow New Yorker who had also grown up at the city's suburban edges, a one-man cheering section who hailed Trump as an infallible 'patriarch' worthy of protection 'at all costs.' Yet, even while doting on 'Mr. Trump,' as he called his boss, Cohen was squarely focused on his own ambitions. Trump was Cohen's ticket to greater wealth, TV appearances and Page Six, the New York Post's daily serving of intel about Manhattan's jet set."

The second-worst decision in the last 12 months was the world's wealthiest man sending out pictures of his genitalia. The worst decision was A.M.I. deciding to attempt to blackmail the wealthiest man in the world via email. Dumb and dumber. -- Scott Galloway, to Maureen Dowd ...

... Maureen Dowd: Jeff "Bezos said there may be another rotten international conspiracy akin to the Russians and the Trump campaign -- this one connecting Pecker, Trump and the Saudis. Just before Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman came to America, Pecker -- who wanted the Saudis to help finance the purchase of Time magazine -- published an absurd piece of checkout-aisle propaganda, a glossy magazine treating the prince like Beyoncé and calling his repressive, misogynist nation the 'Magic Kingdom.' It highlighted the special relationship between the Saudis and Trump, who was also lavished with puff pieces in The Enquirer during the 2016 campaign. The crown prince has formed a tight bond with princeling Jared Kushner, one that proves ever more embarrassing as the evidence piles up that bin Salman ordered the horrendous murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi." ...

... Chuck Todd finally has a show with some meat:

Mrs. McCrabbie: What would you do if you were a dimwitted jerk & had just humiliated yourself & your country on national teevee by insulting half the members of an oversight committee, dodging or refusing to answer questions, lying (probably), filibustering, repeating meaningless memorized phrases ("as I sit here today"), but you thought you had killed? Why, of course you'd go, um, celebrate at Emoluments, D.C. the Trump Hotel. Who paid the tab, Matt? (Also linked yesterday...

I am not kidding when I say I have interviewed terrorists who were more cooperative and respectful than Matt Whitaker was today. The attorney general's role is America's lawyer; we are his client.... He treated us with utter disdain. -- Frank Figliuzzi, on MSNBC ...

... Matt's All-Day Job Interview. Natasha Bertrand of the Atlantic: Matt "Whitaker, with just days remaining in his legally dubious role as the interim head of the Justice Department, appeared to be playing to an audience of one [during his turn at a House Judiciary Committee hearing: Donald Trump].... Whitaker presented himself to [Committee Chair Jerry] Nadler, a 13-term congressman, with the same aloofness and disdain for tradition that often seems typical of the Trump White House. And that may have been on purpose. Whitaker, whose tenure ends when Bill Barr is confirmed as attorney general next week, will need a new job.... And in contrast to his testimony that he had not discussed the Mueller investigation with Trump, Whitaker dodged questions about whether he had discussed the Cohen probe with the president.... The acting attorney general's obfuscation when asked simple yes-or-no questions seemed reminiscent of Trump's own tendency to filibuster his way out of uncomfortable confrontations." ...

... Steve M.: "Beltway journalists love to use the phrase 'an audience of one' in the Trump era. It's often argued that Fox & Friends and various Fox evening shows customize their programming for the same 'audience of one."... But [Big Dick Toilet Salesman* Matt] Whitaker didn't focus on gratifying Trump's ego. He focused on carrying out Trump's strategy.... Whitaker's insolence wasn't just aimed at 'an audience of one.' It was aimed at audience of 63 million -- the people who voted for Trump in 2016.... I say that because the president's approval numbers are bouncing back.... Trump still has a large base of support.... They'll dismiss all investigations as overreach, no matter how shocking the revelations seem to us. And they vote, so we have to outvote them. It's not at all certain we'll manage to do that." *cudos to Marcy Wheeler for the perfect title. --s

** Butina Hid in Plain Sight. Mark Follman & Hannah Levintova of Mother Jones: "Mother Jones has uncovered a trail of activity showing that during the same period when top NRA leaders welcomed [Marina] Butina into the fold -- meeting with her extensively in Moscow and the United States -- Butina actively supported Russian President Vladimir Putin's military takeover of Crimea. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion and annexation in March 2014, Butina denounced retaliatory sanctions by the Obama administration and traveled to Crimea to promote the arming of pro-Russian separatists.... Butina's role in Crimea raises additional questions about why the NRA -- known historically for its hawkish 'freedom loving' image -- spent years getting close with a Russian national who was doing work hostile to US national security interests." --s


Samantha Michaels of Mother Jones: "On Monday, President Donald Trump will hold his first rally of the year in Texas at the El Paso County Coliseum, just a few blocks from the US-Mexican border. But it turns out he'll have some competition. Former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke, now weighing a Democratic presidential bid, announced that'll he'll speak at about the same time at his own rally, less than a quarter-mile a way." --s

** How Kleptocracy Came to America. Franklin Foer of The Atlantic: "For two years, in the early 1990s, Richard Palmer served as the CIA station chief in the United States' Moscow embassy.... Much of the rest of the world wanted to shout for joy about the trajectory of history [and the fall of the Soviet Union], and how it pointed in the direction of free markets and liberal democracy.... In the fall of 1999, he testified before a congressional committee to disabuse members of Congress of their optimism and to warn them of what was to come.... What was at stake could well be systemic contagion: Russian values might infect and then weaken the moral defense systems of American politics and business.... While everyone else was heralding an emergent globalist world that would take on the best values of America, Palmer had glimpsed the dire risk of the opposite: that the values of the kleptocrats would become America's own. This grim vision is now nearing fruition. The contagion has spread remarkably quickly[.]"--s


Jessica Goldstein of ThinkProgress: "Americans who were counting on hundreds of dollars in tax refunds last week found themselves coming up short. Some 30 million Americans are going to end up owing the IRS money this year, which is three million more people than owed the IRS money before the Trump administration's tax law went into effect.... The Internal Revenue Service reports that the average refunds last week were down 8.4 percent for the first week of the tax season..., down almost $200 from this same time last year." --safari: Can anyone get Lyin' Paul Ryan on the record about he how he managed to fuck up his only life goal so bad? ...

... Eric Levitz of New York explains why Trump's tax cuts are probably about to become a political disaster. "... just to be sure that voters noticed all the good Paul Ryan had done for them, the Trump administration reportedly pressured the IRS to err on the side of withholding too little from Americans' paychecks 'so people will see big increases in their take-home pay ahead of [last] year's midterm elections.' This did not work out as planned. Even with (allegedly) light withholding..., the tax bill’s breaks for middle-class people weren't large enough to attract much notice. Between changes in salaries, health-care premiums, and 401(k) contributions, most Americans didn't detect much tax relief in their paychecks.... Now, the bill for the GOP's (reported) withholding shenanigans is coming due: The average American's tax refund was 8.4 percent lower in the first week of 2019 than it was one year ago (under the pre-Trump tax code). And while Americans have trouble noticing tax changes when they're dispersed across 12 to 24 separate paychecks, they do typically pay very close attention to the size of their refunds."

"Pay for Play". Rachel Cohen of The Intercept: "Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire Republican casino mogul, is associated with a singular political project: his long-running mission to uproot the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and plant it in Jerusalem instead. But there's a second project -- lower profile, but no less of a passionate priority -- that Adelson has long been gunning for, and that's his war against online gambling.... Adelson says he is at war with online gambling for the good of society: Gambling in casinos is one thing, but gambling online is a public health nightmare.... Adelson's crusade against online gambling ... culminated with an extraordinary reversal of policy in the middle of the government shutdown, when the Trump administration issued the legal opinion against online gambling that Adelson had long sought."

Meet the Future of the GOP. Mehdi Hasan of The Intercept: "The 36-year-old [Matt] Gaetz, elected to the House of Representatives from Florida's 1st Congressional District in 2016, is a favorite of Fox News and a rising GOP star. He represents, however, everything that is wrong with the modern Republican Party: from racism, anti-Semitism, and white nationalism; to conspiracism and anti-intellectualism; to a slavish and sycophantic loyalty to Donald Trump. Consider his record." Hasan goes on to list why Gaetz is such a deplorable human being. --s

Presidential Race 2020. Max Greenwood of the Hill: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has officially kicked off her 2020 bid for the White House, formally joining a Democratic primary field that promises to be among the largest and most diverse in the party's history. Warren quickly took aim at the Trump administration in her announcement speech Saturday in Lawrence, Mass., accusing the administration of lacking 'a conscience' with its immigration policies while portraying herself as a fighter willing to pursue 'structural reform.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

... In case you missed the references to Liam Neeson, here's some background. And yeah, he's a racist.

Beyond the Beltway

Ohio. Voting Rights, Little by Little. Laurel Wamsley of NPR: "... last week city leaders took steps that could make Sandusky[, Ohio,] known as a leader of democracy...: They declared Election Day a paid holiday -- by swapping out Columbus Day. 'A lot's happened in the last three years that had us thinking a lot about voter access and democracy, and so we thought it was a really natural switch,' Sandusky City Manager Eric Wobser tells NPR.... The change so far only affects Sandusky's 250 city workers."

Virginia. Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "Last weekend, Virginia state Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment (R) joined other legislative leaders in calling on Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to resign over [his "blackface"] revelations.... On Thursday, the Virginian Pilot revealed that Norment himself had been managing editor of a college yearbook of his own that featured racial slurs and images of people in blackface.... Now former students in a college course Norment taught at the William & Mary say that he routinely made racially insensitive and transphobic comments, forced students of color to defend Confederate iconography, and even defended the university's defunct Brafferton Indian School that educated Native American kids -- often without their family&'s consent -- in the 1700s." --s

Way Beyond

Ma'an News Agency, via Juan Cole: "Saudi Arabia has created an application that allows male guardians to track and prevent women from travelling due to the rise in the number of women recently fleeing the ultra-conservative kingdom. The app, called Absher, meaning 'Good Tidings' in Arabic, has been in operation for several years.... The app allows males to track their female 'dependents,' such as wives and daughters, and receive a message whenever they use their passport to travel outside of Saudi Arabia.... The Saudi Ministry of Interior ... runs the app.... In 2018, Saudi Arabia was elected as a new member to the Executive Board of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and will started its term in January 2019." --s

Comments Off

Reader Comments (5)

This from Bob Burnett, who contrasts the SOTU presentations I fortunately missed in my absence from Trumpland.

Bob is a Quaker and so it's no surprise that the essay's stated and implied elements neatly track those in Akhilleus' Sunday piece above.

BTW, see the Pretender's poll numbers have risen in the last couple of weeks, so may have to begin planning our next trip....and, truth to tell, the ice and snow we encountered Friday night on our return weren't all that inviting either.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/2/6/1832702/-State-of-the-Union-2019-Two-Visions?

February 10, 2019 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

re. Richard Palmer: This piece by Seymore Hersh digs a little deeper into the deep state of the Reagan/Bush years:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n02/seymour-m-hersh/the-vice-presidents-men

February 10, 2019 | Unregistered CommenterWhyte Owen

And. something else Richard Palmer (and Whyte) prompted me to remember.

A hortatory (what else?) piece I wrote during the Pretender's first month in office in which I didn't blame Russia's kleptocrats for our our sad state. Thought we already produced too many of our own. A Sunday Sermon from the archives.

"I’m pretty sure it was titled 'Edit with Lead.' It was the first western I read, and my sixth or seventh grade self pronounced it a humdinger.

I don’t remember much of it beyond its immediate appeal. A western setting conveying a vague sense of my geographic roots, peril aplenty in the conflict between the white and black hats, and a country newspaper editor who combined his expertise with the pen and the gun to prevail over the forces of ignorance, violence and greed.

Now I see how that dimly remembered novel laid down the template for an understanding of the Western literature and the West itself that regardless of prose quality or psychological depth has not changed much since.

Whether the conflict depicted is between rustlers and ranchers, between ranchers and farmers, between settlers and Indians, between the unlettered and the schooled, between violence and peace, or between individual greed and a developing sense of social conscience, most western literature moves in fits and starts from barbarity toward civilization.

If the Wild West was in any sense something to be won, it was the successful struggle to create civil communities in its midst that marked its winning.

It makes a nice story.

But the conflicts so neatly disposed of in all those thousands of pages are hardly over. In fact, there are many signs that here in the American West and nationally we’re experiencing a great reversal of fortune.

Here in the West no penalty is exacted for the armed men and women who occupied an Oregon wildlife refuge for months. Some local western sheriffs publicly defy the laws they are elected to uphold. Long-simmering tensions between races and social classes are out in the open, and a movement is building to expropriate mineral and water rights granted by treaty to Native Americans.

Instead of the East’s civilizing influence taming the Wild West, the still untamed West appears to be exporting a festering and resurgent reservoir of ignorance and greed as far east as the nation’s capital.

It’s already become a litany.

So far, the President-elect’s appointees include an EPA head who hates the EPA, a Labor Secretary who thinks the minimum wage is too high, an Education Secretary who would like to replace public with private schools, a HUD Secretary who thinks poverty is the fault of the poor, and an Interior head from Montana whose words sound green but whose actions support the corporate Right’s extraction mania.
.
In fictional terms, it appears all the black hats in the old westerns, the ignorant and greedy bullies, will soon be in charge of everything from sea to shining sea, and the country editor of fiction who introduced me to western stories with such satisfying endings isn’t around to do a thing about it.

If we didn’t know it already, there’s no denying it now. Life isn’t fiction. In this grim time our fictions won't save us.

Harsh reality demands that we in the West forge a new western trope, this one not composed on a keyboard but written moment to moment in the lives of those who care for the land, for the people who inhabit and love it, and who still believe that by their actions they can create a civil future for everyone.

It’s time we awakened, shook off our dreams and got to work. It’s far past time we measured up to our stories, and we don’t have much time to do it."

February 10, 2019 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

I found the following comment of interest from a NYTimes Reader,
EJ from NJ:

“As for fake news, let's start adhering to the analysis and wisdom of Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the Director of the Annenberg School Public Policy Center at the Univ. of Pennsylvania. She observes that "fake news" is an oxymoron, and prefers to label the concept as "viral deception", which retains the pristine image of "news" in a positive, evolving, forward-moving, trustworthy, informative and enlightening manner.”

While most often unable to access or contribute, I am always grateful for Marie’s RC and her Fsithful Marauders whenever I can.
Merci Beaucoup

February 10, 2019 | Unregistered CommenterAuntHattie

Revolt in Cairo at American University where Pompeo addressed the Middle East:

Smiling Mike in his speech criticized Obama's Middle East policies, emphasized his own Christian beliefs, (of course) and "offered warm support to harsh autocrats" who are loyal to Washington.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/world/middleeast/american-university-cairo-pompeo.html

February 10, 2019 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.