;)
The Commentariat -- February 25, 2018
Afternoon Update:
Senate Race. Adam Nagourney of the New York Times: "Senator Dianne Feinstein suffered a setback in her effort to win a sixth term representing California as the state Democratic Party declined this weekend to endorse her re-election bid. Ms. Feinstein is way ahead in most polls, and has a huge fund-raising advantage over her main opponent, Kevin de León, the California State Senate's Democratic leader. Still, the vote here, at a raucous and well-attended party convention, is the latest indication of disenchantment with Ms. Feinstein, 84, among the party's grass-roots advocates. A candidate must garner the support of 60 percent of the delegates to win the party's nomination. None of the candidates running for statewide election met that threshold. Still, Ms. Feinstein's showing was particularly stark given her status as a Democratic institution. Mr. de León drew 54 percent of the vote..., compared with 37 percent..., for Ms. Feinstein."
Stan Collender of Forbes: "In one of the most frightening stories I've read since the start of the Trump presidency, The New York Times reported on Saturday that the administration is seriously considering paying for the new U.S. embassy it wants to build in Jerusalem with funds provided by casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.... Spending these funds would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution, a violation of federal law, an end run around Congress and a big step toward presidential anarchy."
Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "Russian military spies hacked several hundred computers used by authorities at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, according to U.S. intelligence. They did so while trying to make it appear as though the intrusion was conducted by North Korea, what is known as a 'false-flag' operation, said two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.... Officials in PyeongChang acknowledged that the Games were hit by a cyberattack during the Feb. 9 Opening Ceremonies but had refused to confirm whether Russia was responsible. That evening there were disruptions to the Internet, broadcast systems and the Olympics website. Many attendees were unable to print their tickets for the ceremony, resulting in empty seats. Analysts surmise the disruption was retaliation against the International Olympic Committee for banning the Russian team from the Winter Games due to doping violations." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Yeah, Russians did the same thing in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but they made it look as if "a 400-pound guy sitting on his bed in New Jersey" did it. (Paraphrase -- Trump's actual claim was ungrammatical.)
*****
Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "Tentative plans for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to make his first visit to the White House to meet with President Trump were scuttled this week after a testy call between the two leaders ended in an impasse over Trump's promised border wall, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.... Both countries agreed to call off the plan after Trump would not agree to publicly affirm Mexico's position that it would not fund construction of a border wall that the Mexican people widely consider offensive.... One Mexican official said Trump 'lost his temper.' But U.S. officials described him instead as being frustrated and exasperated, saying Trump believed it was unreasonable for Peña Nieto to expect him to back off his crowd-pleasing campaign promise of forcing Mexico to pay for the wall." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Yet another way in which the insane fantasy world of Donald Trump impinges upon the interests of the U.S. And of course Trump's fantasies are not even consistent: he insists that Mexico will pay for a wall, but he uses Democrats' refusal to pay for the same fucking wall as an excuse to send Dreamers back to countries they don't recognize. ...
... Yes, But Things Are Going Well in Panama. Ana Cerrud, et al., of the Washington Post: "The majority owner of President Trump's only hotel in Latin America abruptly ordered Trump employees out of the property on Thursday, triggering a confrontation in which Trump employees refused to leave and asked police to intervene, according to the Trump Organization an local news reports. This attempt at a takeover by Orestes Fintiklis -- a Cypriot businessman based in Miami -- marked a sharp escalation in his months-old effort to re-brand the Trump International Hotel Panama and replace the Trump Organization as its manager. Fintiklis blames Trump's brand and Trump's company for declining revenue and empty rooms."
This Russia Thing -- Is Blowing up in Trump's Face
Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "The House Intelligence Committee released a redacted Democratic memorandum on Saturday that counters Republican claims that top F.B.I. and Justice Department officials had abused their powers in spying on a former Trump campaign aide. The document, which underwent weeks of review by President Trump and his national security team, was intended by Democrats to offer a point-by-point refutation of what it called the 'transparent' attempt by President Trump's allies on the committee to undermine the investigations into Russia's election meddling and what role, if any, Trump associates played in it.... The Democratic memo paints a more expansive and detailed picture of the surveillance of the former aide, Carter Page, than the Republican memo it was meant to rebut. It also undercuts key Republican assertions about political bias in the origins of the broader investigation into Russia's election interference.... Representative Adam B. Schiff, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said on Saturday that the Democratic memo should 'put to rest' Republican assertions of wrongdoing in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process. ...
... The article contains a copy of the redacted memo. The Washington Post has an annotated version here. ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Read the memo. Even with extensive redactions, it is clear the title of the Democrats' memo should have been more like, "Devin Nunes Is a Moron, a Liar & a Trumpian Stooge." ...
... Chas Danner of New York provides a summary of the chief points of the Democratic memo. ...
... Charlie Savage of the New York Times now also has an excellent summary of the rebuttal memo. Key points: "The F.B.I. used only a small part of the information provided by [Christopher] Steele.... The surveillance court knew that Mr. Steele's clients had a political motive.... The Yahoo News article was not used to corroborate Mr. Steele.... Republican-appointed judges approved the surveillance of [Carter] Page.... The wiretap of Mr. Page generated useful intelligence."
... Kyle Cheney of Politico: "The FBI team investigating the 2016 Trump campaign's contacts with Russians had already opened inquiries into multiple people connected to the campaign when it received a controversial dossier alleging illicit ties between then-candidate Trump and the Kremlin, a Democratic memo released by the House Intelligence Committee revealed Saturday. The dossier, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, wasn't provided to the FBI's counterintelligence team until mid-September 2016, according to the memo. By then, the counterintelligence investigation into Trump's campaign was seven weeks old. 'The FBI had already opened sub-inquiries into ... individuals linked to the Trump campaign,' according to the findings of the committee's nine Democrats.... Trump on Saturday called the memo a 'bust,' tweeting: 'The Democrat memo response on government surveillance abuses is a total political and legal BUST. Just confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!'" Mrs. McC: Which is funny because you know Trump could not read an 11-page doc, redacted or not. ...
... John Bowden of the Hill: "The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee [Adam Schiff] on Saturday responded to President Trump calling the release of the Democratic memo rebutting claims made by Republicans on the committee a 'total political and legal bust.' 'Wrong again, Mr. President. It confirms the FBI acted appropriately and that Russian agents approached two of your advisors, and informed your campaign that Russia was prepared to help you by disseminating stolen Clinton emails,' Schiff responded." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "The Democratic memo lays waste to every important accusation made by Nunes. (Or, to put it more accurately, made by Trump via Nunes.)... Nunes is Trump's leading goon in Congress. By the standards of the conservative movement, this renders him a champion of freedom, defined as protecting Trump from any accountability before the law.... Amusingly, the redactions to the memo are not all effective. One passage, meant to be blacked out, reveals that no fewer than four Trump-linked figures were under investigation for covert ties to Russian intelligence." ...
... Zack Beauchamp of Vox: "Having now read both memos, I can say with confidence: Schiff makes his case. Schiff quotes key FBI documents that explicitly contradict the Nunes memo's core arguments. Any fair-minded observer who reads these two documents side-by-side can only conclude one thing: Nunes is either deeply misinformed or straight-up lying. 'This is a pretty thorough demolition,' Julian Sanchez, an expert on surveillance at the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote on Twitter after reading Schiff's memo." Beauchamp gives a blow-by-blow account of the demolition.
... MEANWHILE, at CPAC, where the Trumpenproletariat were gathered, Devin Nunes received "the American Conservative Union's Defender of Freedom Award, conferred on him because of his 'lonely pursuit of truth on behalf of the American people,'" Dave Weigel of the Washington Post reports. "'We actually wanted [the Democratic memo] out,' said ... Nunes ... [at the conference]. 'It's clear evidence that the Democrats are not only covering this up, but they're also colluding with parts of the government to cover this up.'" ...
... "Democrats Shred Devin Nunes' Surveillance Memo." Scott Bixby of the Daily Beast: "Moments after [Devin Nunes] was fêted as a conquering hero at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the memo's release on Saturday was a body blow to his credibility as a government watchdog. The Schiff-authored memo undermines many of the claims made in Nunes' document." ...
Brent Griffiths of Politico: "Saying there were 'no phone calls, no meetings, no collusion'..., Donald Trump on Saturday pushed for an investigation of 'the other side' amid the FBI probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, while claiming 'we need intelligence that brings our country together.'" The interviewer was Fox "News" weekend host & Trump cheerleader Jeanine Pirro. Trump is pissed off at JeffBo for not interrogating the black guy & the woman for something. Trump will no longer even name Sessions, whom he reduced to one Session earlier this week. Now Trump calls JeffBo "you know who." "Whatsizface" is coming. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: It's well-worth reflecting on the real danger packed into Griffiths' lede (and his headline). Trump insists (again) that his political adversaries be "investigated" (and we presume jailed) for "crimes" that "intelligence" -- that is, the FBI & perhaps other intelligence agencies -- cooks up. By imprisoning the leaders of "the other side" on false charges & intimidating lesser critics, Trump believes he will "bring our country together"; i.e., frighten the rest of us into pledging fealty to him. He already has succeeded in part of this goal by putting out carrots for easily-compromised GOP weasels, Now he's moved on to beating his adversaries with sticks. And some pundits were wondering this weekend how Trump could have hired a guy like Manafort who made his career puffing up vicious dictators. Please. Trump saw Manafort's vile past as an asset, not a liability. He needed Manafort's "expertise." Now he stuck with Pirro & Hannity.
... Steven Erlanger & Jason Horowitz of the New York Times: "Former European leaders who tried to bring Ukraine closer to Europe before a 2014 uprising there reacted with shock on Saturday after a federal indictment accused Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman, of secretly paying former European officials some two million euros in 2012 and 2013 to lobby on the country's behalf. Ukraine at the time was led by Viktor F. Yanukovych, who first agreed to closer ties to Europe and then reneged under Russian pressure and was toppled in the uprising. The indictment, released on Friday by Robert S. Mueller III ... did not name the former officials, but it set off furious speculation about who they might be." An ex-chancellor of Austria, Alfred Gusenbauer, & Romano Prodi, a former prime minister of Italy, former President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, & former president of the European Union Patrick Cox said that to their knowledge, it was not Manafort who paid them & that they had been working to bring Ukraine closer to the E.U., not as apologists for Yanukovych. ...
... Franklin Foer of the Atlantic: "There's one primary reason that Manafort appears so unwilling to reconcile himself with the unimpeachable reality [that the Mueller investigation will bring him down]. For his entire career, he has taken audacious risks and managed to get away with them. His friends describe him as wired to take chances that most rational creatures would avoid. Such is the temperament that leads a person to allegedly launder millions, in a long series of batches, each one a fresh opportunity to get busted by the feds. And it has led him to spend much of his career working on behalf of murderous autocrats, capricious dictators and vengeful oligarchs, like the Angolan insurgent Jonas Savimbi and the Filipino president Ferdinand Marcos.... To live with the constant threat of personal peril requires a healthy dose of denial.... With the next turns of the Mueller's screw, Manafort will be forced into an ultimate reckoning with all the witnesses, all the evidence, all the sentencing guidelines arrayed against him, a belated, harsh reunion with reality." ...
... Michael Wolff, the author of Fire & Fury, predicts that when push comes to shove in This Russia Thing, Trump & Kushner "will throw each other under the bus." Mrs. McC: Sounds like a reasonable prediction.
Ha! Timothy Cama of the Hill: "A West Virginia judge dismissed a coal mogul's defamation lawsuit this week against cable television host John Oliver and HBO. In a decision dated Wednesday, West Virginia Judge Jeffrey Cramer accepted HBO's argument that Bob Murray, CEO of coal mining giant Murray Energy Corp., failed to show that Oliver had defamed him according to the law. Oliver dedicated an extended segment in June to criticizing the coal industry, with a focus on Murray, including his frequent criticisms of former President Obama's 'evil agenda,' his lawsuits challenging regulations and his closeness with President Trump.... Murray's company slammed the ruling and said it will appeal it the decision to West Virginia's Supreme Court immediately."
Lindsey Bever, et al., of the Washington Post: "Delta and United -- two of the largest airlines in the world -- have joined a growing list of companies cutting ties with the National Rifle Association amid a growing boycott movement inspired by the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with a legally purchased AR-15 rifle." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Eric Lipton & Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "... the N.R.A. derives its political influence [not so much from buying politicians as] from a muscular electioneering machine, fueled by tens of millions of dollars' worth of campaign ads and voter-guide mailings, that scrutinizes candidates for their views on guns and propels members to the polls. 'It's really not the contributions,' said Cleta Mitchell, a former N.R.A. board member. 'It's the ability of the N.R.A. to tell its members: Here's who's good on the Second Amendment.' Far more than any check the N.R.A. could write, it is this mobilization operation that has made the organization such a challenging adversary for Democrats and gun control advocates -- one that, after the massacre at a school in Parkland, Fla., is struggling to confront an emotional student-led push for new restrictions." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Carol Morello & Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "The United Nations Security Council on Saturday unanimously called for a 30-day cease-fire in Syria, with Russia agreeing to the temporary hiatus only after forcing two days of delays that critics said allowed ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to pursue a renewed bombing campaign blamed for hundreds of recent deaths in a rebel-controlled area. The nationwide truce would begin 'without delay,' a victory for the United States and other nations that resisted Russian efforts to push back the start or soften the terms. It came after intense negotiations to persuade Russia not to use its veto power in the Security Council. Moscow had blocked 11 previous Syria resolutions." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
David Richardson of the Observer: "Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) communication director Ian Walters sparked controversy with a racially charged insult hurled at former RNC chair Michael Steele on Friday night. 'We elected Mike Steele as chairman because he was a black guy, that was the wrong thing to do,' Walters told hundreds of conservatives during the conference's Ronald Reagan dinner as guests at tables gasped in shock.... Michael Steele was near the back of the room, and addressed Walters' remarks. '... If he feels that way I'd like him to come say that to my face. And then I'd like him to look at my record and see what I did....'" Mrs. McC: "Racially charged"? It's just flat-out racist. Surprised he didn't use the N-word. ...
... Gabby Morrongiello of the Washington Examiner: "A conservative columnist was escorted out of the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday after slamming President Trump and conservatives for behaving like 'hypocrites' when it comes to women's issues. Mona Charen, a National Review writer and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, was asked during a panel about the Left's treatment of women what has left her most fired up in the Trump era. 'I'm actually going to twist this around a bit and say that I'm disappointed in people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women who are in our party, who are sitting in the White House, who brag about their extramarital affairs, who brag about mistreating women,' she said. Declining to mention Trump by name, Charen said conservatives are guilty of 'look[ing] the other way' when it comes to the president and other Republican men who have faced allegations of sexual misconduct. 'This was a party that was ready to ... endorse Roy Moore for Senate in the state of Alabama even though he was a credibly accused child molester,' Charen said. 'You cannot claim that you stand for women, and put up with that,' she told the crowd, as several members of the audience shouted, 'Not true!' Charen's comments were met with heavy boos inside the conference hall, and she was later spotted leaving the conference with a three-person security detail." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Wow! I'm very, very surprised that CPAC TPAC officials & attendees are racists & misogynists.
Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker: "Instead of even defending the N.R.A.’s peculiar reading of the Second Amendment, which literally excises the 'well-regulated militia' part as though it had never been written, [NRA chief Wayne] LaPierre ranted against Democrats [at CPAC]. The villains included Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, and by implication, Barack Obama — as though the Republican Party wasn't fully in control of all the levers of the federal government. He also warned against the F.B.I., Saul Alinsky, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and Tom Steyer.... What LaPierre seemed to be saying was that true Americans need a right to a lethal weapon in order to show that they can't be intimidated by their political opponents.... On Friday morning, Donald Trump spoke at CPAC, where he persisted in propagating his sick vision of a future America where heavily armed kindergarten instructors mow down determined psychopaths.... A world divorced from reality, completely unlike the one we inhabit, is the place where Trump and the N.R.A.'s leaders now live, and from which no amount of kindly cajoling apparently will persuade them to emerge."
Mrs. McCrabbie: If you don't agree with me (and I know many of you don't) that Democrats need new leadership, read Nancy Pelosi's response to Trump's false claim that Democrats don't care about Dreamers. Democrats need leaders who will stand up to Trump, not ones who buck him up: "I continue to tell people that the President cares about Dreamers because he has said repeatedly that he does." I realize that Pelosi's fake support for Trump is a political calculation; I think it's a self-defeating miscalculation.
Anna Fifield of the Washington Post: "The North Korean delegation to the Closing Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics said that Pyongyang was 'willing to have talks' with the United States, South Korea's presidential Blue House said Sunday night. North Korea agreed that inter-Korean relations should 'improve together' with relations between North Korea and the United States, the Blue House said after an hour-long meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korea's chief representative, Kim Yong Chol, in PyeongChang, on the sidelines on the Games." Mrs. McC: Great! Glad we have Ivanka Trump -- whom Steve Bannon described as "dumb as a brick" -- to handle the U.S. end of things.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Paul Campos in LG&$: "The NYT opinion page decided that a good use of its space would be to pay David Brody to run a 900-word ad for his facially preposterous new book 'The Faith of Donald Trump: A Spiritual Journey.'... What exactly is the rationale for running this sort of garbage The short answer is some nonsensical concept of promoting 'intellectual diversity' instead of 'censoring' ideas, even if those ideas are both completely idiotic (Donald Trump embraces Judeo-Christian [sic] values) and transparently self-serving (buy my book if you want to put down your decaf latte and understand The Heartland....)... The New York Times has to engage in massive 'censorship' every day of the year, by deciding who does and doesn't get to publish in its pages. Part of that decision process should be guided by various considerations of quality control and indeed simple decency that ought to make the publication of something like this op-ed in the newspaper of record impossible."
Beyond the Beltway
Kurt Erickson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "The process of deciding whether to impeach scandal-plagued Gov. Eric Greitens will begin as early as Monday in the Missouri House of Representatives. House Speaker Todd Richardson, R-Poplar Bluff, spent Thursday and Friday reviewing which members of the Legislature's lower chamber would be named to a special committee to investigate the charges against the embattled chief executive."
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Reader Comments (12)
If both trump and kushner wind up under the bus, I may send flowers.
I hope they give me a turn at the wheel, NiskyGuy...oooh, that's ugly. But desperate times...
Jeanne,
When you feel the bumps, stop! Put it into reverse and back up. When you feel the bumps a second time, stop. Put it into drive. Go forward until you feel the bumps again. Stop! Put it into reverse...repeat until done.
Paul Manafort should have stayed where he was, servicing evil rat bastards and laundering their money along with their dirty shorts. As soon as he hitched his wagon to the ptomaine express, AKA the Trump campaign, he was sure to show up on multiple radars as the cheap crook he’s always been. Had he kept his distance, he might, like his old partner in ratfucking, Roger Stone, been able to end his life a free man. But nooooo...he had to be a big shot. He had no understanding that in Trump’s circle, the meerkats who stick their heads up to protect the boss are the first to lose them.
I missed this one. Junior, over in India looking to rake in a billion dollars using daddy’s position as POTUS*, collecting $38,000 from each sucker who wants to shake the hand of POTUS* Jr., is crying that he has “sacrificed so much” and gets no credit for “doing the right thing”. He asserts that he and his family of crooks and con artists could have been making real money if they weren’t, ya know, like patriots or sumpthin.
The fact is, Junior, the Trump name was in the toilet before daddy hooked up with the Russians to steal the election. Trump “real money” projects, working with shady backers and local criminals, were blowing up all over the world. You guys couldn’t get a loan from a legitimate bank in the States to buy a 1976 Chevy hatchback with 400,000 miles on it and bailing wire holding the bumpers in place. So spare us this “oh, we get no credit for all our sacrifices” bullshit.
Oh, and by the way, here’s a $300,000,000 check for the condos you just sold in Infia using your family’s new status as poor beggars.
What an asshole.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/donald-trump-jr-sacrifices?intcid=inline_amp
WaPo: "After call with Trump turns testy over border wall, Mexico’s president shelves plan to visit White House"
Another unique POTUS event. I wonder if there is a count on the number of countries we have pissed off.
And I have proof that I do not support Trump. I read the Dem. memo.
Bea, I support your view of the Dem. leadership. Pelosi and Schumer are just an occasional blah, blah, blah.
On these pages, we do love to bash and ridicule the people who inhabit the Republican Party. I, too, am part of the choir. But D.C. today is a - perhaps even inevitable - outcome of our so-called democratic institutions, institutions created by and for a bunch of intellectual capitalist elites whose world-view included slavery, misogyny, racism, and, of course, genocide. But that did not include a world-connected population walking around with little AIs in their pockets, nor some of the other multiple disruptions like climate change, soil depletion, complexes of introduced chemical cocktails and nanoparticles permeating every square centimeter of the globe's surface, comparatively free and instantaneous transportation, and, of course, most devastating of all, a population size far, far in excess of what is needed for any conceivable purpose.
So I agree with Mrs. McC. The Dems' party leadership is almost as resistant to new ideas for achieving equality and high quality of life as are the Republicans. Off with the Queen's head! Off with the Kings' heads! Long live the ?
Just who is it who represents a fount of new ideas that are compelling enough to convince the risk averse, frightened, and huddled masses yearning for a stability they believe used to exist? Masses who panic at the suggestion of even more, even faster change. Perez, Pelosi, Schumer, and, yes, even Sanders and Warren have little or nothing new to offer. They all promote variations of old and comforting ideas, they all timidly nibble at the edges. I'm for replacing the Democratic Party leadership, but with whom? And where is the support such voices would need? Among the readers of RC? In Boston? On the Left Coast?
Color me skeptical.
Listening to the teenagers in Florida after the slaughter there, I
would say there is hope for the future after all. I just don't like the
fact that they are being intimidated and harassed by certain groups,
and that they don't give up before voting age.
But who are they going to vote for? No one in either party that I
know of will bend to the demands of the public, even with threats
of being voted out of office. Money and greed.
I was struck with the reporting of Ian Walters' remark at the CPAC conference about Micheal Steel (see story above). What a grace note to utter especially during Black History Month not to mention that Steel was IN the room!
And since I'm reading about Paul Robeson here's something I'd like to send to those fuckers whose argument for certain immigation policies are geared ONLY for those immigrants who have skills.
Robeson's father, a former slave with NO education managed to get a BA, then an MA, and finally a degree in theology: it meant mastering Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, geometry, chemistry, trigonometry, mineralogy and political economics––typical nineteenth-century classical education. What a fierce, heroic work ethic this man passed down to his son. He never spoke about his experience as a slave but the lesson was clear:
"The only way out of poverty and humiliation was hard, hard work––working harder than any white man would have to, to achieve a comparable result."
and here's what Paul Robeson said himself:
"Even when demonstrating that he is really an equal ...climb up if you can––but don't act "uppity." Always show you are grateful –-even if what you have gained has been wrested from unwilling powers, but be sure to be grateful lest "they" take it all away."
Jeff Sparrow, the author of this bio, brilliantly connects this dialogue between past and present. He cites for example the elegant British black actor who is currently playing Othello at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Hugh Quarshie, who tells Sparrow that sometimes he finds himself talking to some patron of the arts, expatiating on Mozart and Bunuel, and then suddenly I wonder if what they are actually seeing are thick lips and a bone through my nose."
Early in the Obama administration I received an email that was a picture of Obama with thick lips and a bone through his nose sitting on top of a watermelon.
And today many wait––the Dreamers, and the "others," to find out whether "they" will take it all away. It's a situation that is almost incomprehensible––but we're getting used to this, aren't we?
P.S. My views on Nancy P. are mixed–-she has a long shelf life and manages to rally her troops around an issue pretty well. In this instance she is obviously trying to call Trump's bluff–-or shame him –- ( I tend to agree with Marie––the time for footsie play is over) it might work but Fox is apparently his barometer––wrestle down a bunch of those animals and make them say "Uncle" ––and point out how mama's and papa's are crucial to family structure––and point TO Melania's parents–- here on a visa? Oh, chain migration, link to one another and sing a song of togetherness.
Maybe "the Rainbow Connection"? Sesame street long ago was singing this song––again, our children speak. We need to listen!
Jared under the bus...I'm not buying it. Face trumps family trumps party trumps American people (sadly we'll never ever be able to use that card playing analogy the same way again). I think Jared might secretly be intimidated by is father-in-law's designated obligations, and being officially excluded will allow him and Donny to save face. He won't be able to be called a Trump (surrogate) loser, and he will remain loyal to the family brand.
Ah, Cleta Mitchell. She was a scourge in OK politics long ago, so naturally she pops up as an NRA ghoul.
HuffPost reporting Trump has sent out a mailer fundraising off the Parkland shooting.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-fundraises-off-parkland-school-shooting_us_5a922484e4b03b55731ccea9
Even for him, that's disgusting. Not just ringing the bell for donations bur also "visit our store.