Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

We still have time to mess this up!

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Republicans don’t trust women.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

A consequence of cucumbers

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

You are here: Home / Absent Friends / Monday Morning Open Thread

Monday Morning Open Thread

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Props to Google for reminding us that activism has a long tail!

What’s on the agenda as we buckle in for another week?
***********


.

Commentary for the time capsule — John Oliver’s always good, but this is particularly sharp:

Reader Interactions

227Comments

  1. 1.

    mai naem mobile

    In Netanyahu’s little speech at the airport he keeps on talking aboit piss in the Middle East,piss here and piss there. I think he’s watched the pee tapes. And Dolt 45 is sitting there with folded arms. Not good body language at all. Also WTF with Ivanka
    She is not Jackie Kennedy and she never will be. She’s just a nouveau rich grifter daughter of a conman.

  3. 3.

    Elizabelle

    The FTF NY Times has Cole’s number.

    There’s More than One Way to Shave a Cat.

    … The first time Felix, my black longhaired cat, got groomed, Howard Bedor, a premier cat groomer, came to the apartment. Mr. Bedor, who died in 2014, was the official groomer for five Madison Square Garden cat shows. When he wasn’t working with shows, he made house calls. He specialized in uncooperative clients.

    He brought a small suitcase on wheels to my apartment, unwrapped his equipment and dressed himself: three sets of sleeves for his forearms, two pairs of gloves and a pair of scratched-up yellow mitts, along with a white plastic apron covered with cat drawings. “My hands are extremely quick from the wrist down, almost as fast as a martial artist,” he said of the protective gear in a video about him called “Pure Fluff.” “But I’m still not quicker than a cat.”

    [tips from the trade about other groomers, who use towels, masks, muzzles, cones, and even sedation (by a vet). Unfortunately for cats, lion cuts are in style.]

    …. Most cats fight back. Dogs look to their masters for approval. Cats prefer to disobey.

  9. 9.

    mai naem mobile

    Did anybody else notice Dolt 45 was doing the coke sniffling in his speech in Saudi Arabia that he did during the debates? Also he seemed less fidgety. Makes me wonder if he’s on adderall.

  13. 13.

    p.a.

    @rikyrah: good morning. mediocre? are you getting soft? he aspires to mediocre (or would aspire if he had any self-awareness.)

    Baud wins… just not elections…

  14. 14.

    Immanentize

    Hello folks. Thinking good thoughts for Watergirl’s meeting with the CEO and Board Pres.

  17. 17.

    JAFD

    Dumb question:

    Sometime in this past week, I saw a link to a story – could’ve been in the NYT or WashPost, or maybe somewhere else – headlined “To Escape Poverty, Everything Has To Go Right For Twenty Years”. Or something like that.

    Which link I was too distracted to click at the time, and while I thot I’d copied it into ClipMate, couldn’t seem to find it therein. Can anyone point me to it ?

    Thanks very very much.

  18. 18.

    Aleta

    A company founded by one of President Trump’s top supporters and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund announced plans Saturday to invest $40 billion in infrastructure projects, mostly in the U.S.
    …
    Blackstone, which was founded by Trump supporter Schwarzman, signed a non-binding memorandum with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) for the project.

    Blackstone said PIF had committed $20 billion to the project. Blackstone and PIF expressed optimism about the fund.

    The project “reflects our positive views around the ambitious infrastructure initiatives being undertaken in the United States as announced by President Trump,” PIF’s managing director Yasir al-Rumayyan said.
    …
    Blackstone is not the only American company to strike a business deal with the Saudis. General Electric and Lockheed Martin have both announced business deals with the Middle Eastern kingdom, which is working to diversify its economy.

    -The Hill

    Toll roads to cas in os?

  20. 20.

    Elizabelle

    Reading the FTF NY Times’ story on the Fyre festival aftermath this morning.

    In Wreckage of the Fyre Festival, Fury, Lawsuits and an Inquiry

    … Ja Rule was Fyre’s famous face, but at the center of the controversy is Mr. [Billy] McFarland, a brash, 25-year-old entrepreneur with a gift for networking and buzzy social media. In his short career, he has persuaded people, over and over, to buy or invest in whatever he was selling, leaving behind a trail of aggrieved customers and business partners. He could be the Wolf of Wall Street for the selfie set, or Gatsby run through an Instagram filter.

    …. Raised in Short Hills, N.J., by real estate developer parents, Mr. McFarland was already starting technology companies as a teenager. With the creation of Magnises in 2013, he took on the profile of a budding New York entrepreneur, with bottle service tastes.

    …. Still, he had a way of engendering trust.

    Mr. McMullan said that he paid Mr. McFarland almost $100,000 for a website, which was never delivered. “I was told he had made this big company, he had made millions of dollars,” Mr. McMullan said. “I thought he was smarter than he was.”

    Hmmm. Real estate developer parents, you say? Not delivering on promises? We have discussed before how much this “entrepreneur” reminds us of a certain fearless leader.

  21. 21.

    Elizabelle

    @Immanentize: Yes indeed. You go, Watergrrrrrl.

    And hoping so that greennotGreen’s family pops by sometime to give us a hello and maybe an obit.

  22. 22.

    Aleta

    @Aleta:
    Feb 13, 2017

    Blackstone billionaire Stephen Schwarzman threw himself a multimillion-dollar 70th birthday party in Palm Beach, Fla. — complete with camels, Mongolian greeters, a custom-built temple and a performance by Gwen Stefani.

    Schwarzman, who is President Trump’s economic adviser, was fêted by 400 guests at the epic Silk Road-themed bash, rumored to have cost over $10 million.

    A guest described the party as arriving “to a desert scene with camels and Mongolian greeters, and girls in Japanese dress.”

    Guests were led to a tiered stadium for fireworks, then into a three-story temple for dinner, with acrobats dangling from the ceiling. During dinner, there was a performance by Chinese dancers.

    Finally, guests were led through a tunnel into another temple, where stars from “Jersey Boys” and Stefani performed.

    Guests included Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, moguls Woody Johnson, John Paulson, Pepe Fanjul, Louis Bacon, Ronald Lauder and Lord Jacob Rothschild, as well as Donatella Versace and Princess Firyal of Jordan.

    -Page Six

  25. 25.

    OzarkHillbilly

    It’s tough being a kid in STL:

    Two men and a woman who were inside a car with a 5-year-old boy when he was shot Saturday told police they had just bought marijuana when shots rang out. The adults, in their 20s and 30s, told police they were driving in the area of West Florissant and Genevieve avenues after buying marijuana when shots rang out from an unknown direction, police said.
    ……..
    Earlier in the day, a 5-year-old boy fell and scraped his wrist when someone opened fire in the 1400 block of Peabody Court. A man, 30, was hit in the arm. The circumstances were still under investigation.

    On Wednesday a 13-year-old boy was shot in the chest in the 5900 block of Lalite Avenue. He was in critical condition. Police initially said ti appeared accidental, but officers were conducting a criminal investigation. Another 13-year-old boy who had fled the scene later turned himself in.

    On Tuesday night, an 8-year-old boy was shot in the abdomen in the 4900 block of San Francisco Avenue. Police believe he may have accidentally shot himself. He was stable but his medical condition was not available.

    On May 6, a 14-year-old boy was hit in the abdomen as he and an older cousin played with a gun. The boy was in critical after the shooting.

  29. 29.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Aleta:

    and girls in Japanese dress.

    I guess nobody told him the Silk Road didn’t go to Japan.

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: I was thinking she should bring her AK-47 to the meeting, and ask, “Any questions?”

  32. 32.

    Aleta

    @Aleta:
    Feb 7, 2017

    Perhaps, after Friday’s meeting, traveling together aboard Air Force One to Mr. Trump’s club in Florida, Mr. Schwarzman explained to Mr. Trump that he could make America great again by employing the same tactics Blackstone used after its $4.1 billion acquisition in 2006 of Travelport, a travel-reservations business that within a year of the purchase had laid off 841 workers, or 10 percent of its work force.

    The story of this fiasco is enough to make anyone weep: Laid-off workers were forced to sell their homes; others lost their health insurance and postponed plans to start a family; some were stuck on unemployment lines. Even more brazenly, Blackstone, seven months after its investment, layered more debt on Travelport, which it used to pay itself back for the original purchase. Travelport subsequently underwent two restructurings of its debt.

    Firms like Blackstone will, with a straight face, argue that they are making American companies more efficient and that we are all better off as a result. Were that it were so. They do not advertise the fact that their principals benefit from an indefensible quirk in the United States tax code that allows them to pay lower taxes on their capital gains.
    …
    In 2010 Mr. Schwarzman denounced an attempt to remove this loophole as comparable to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, a remark for which he later apologized. You will also not find any mention on Blackstone’s website that for the past 14 years all of its buyout funds — which together generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year for Mr. Schwarzman and his partners — have ranked among the top 25 percent of such funds.
    ”’
    This then was the backdrop for the agenda for the inaugural meeting of Mr. Trump’s business council. Little wonder that the agenda appeared to center on deregulation, the loosening of restrictions of the financial industry and stepped-up protectionism. No surprise either that missing from the menu was the abolition of the carried-interest loophole (a loophole Mr. Trump vowed to close during his campaign) and the deductibility of interest payments. It is wishful thinking that this group will ever contemplate anything so daring as to make private equity principals personally liable for the loans they assign to companies — a move that, with the stroke of a pen, would curb many abuses and protect American workers and others whose standard of living has barely budged in a couple of decades.

    -NYT

  33. 33.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Woodward was on Morning Blow friday morning. He called on NYT and WaPo to “dial back on their reporting”.

    Pathetic.

    I realize that he’s an old man, that he’s always been a republican, and that his fame is accidental (as a rookie reporter he was assigned to weekend duty and the break-in was on a weekend), but a life long member of the media calling on the media to bury the news is the height of personal corruption.

    Sad!

  34. 34.

    Elizabelle

    Stephen Colbert, being shrill (and channeling Kay, on norms and standards and principles):

    NY Mag/vulture.com: Colbert: Trump is a ‘Redolent Turd’ who will probably quit

    Stephen Colbert is feeling a little overwhelmed these days. “It feels like things are on fire, and I’m not a fireman,” the Late Show host told Frank Rich at the Vulture Festival today. “I’m a guy who dances next to the fire and says, ‘Let’s all admit this is on fire. Do you think this should be on fire? Is that something we want to burn today for one man’s ego?’”

    …. If Trump doesn’t toss in the towel, Colbert hopes that Democrats will get it together for the midterms. “If he stays on, and doesn’t go anywhere, but is just hamstrung, it seems like the best thing you could hope for is this grinding status quo that gets you to the 2018 midterm elections,” he said. “And then, if the Democrats have just two Saltine crackers in their skull to rub together and can get control of either house of Congress, then you can have a serious investigation that is public.”

    He believes the appointment of former FBI director Robert Mueller as an independent counsel in the investigation of the Trump campaign’s Russian ties is a good idea, but also thinks there need to be an honest evaluation of Trump’s time in office. “Mueller is going to be great, but there needs to be a public coming-to-Jesus on what Trump means and what we are willing to accept as governance or as our standard,” Colbert said.

    “Because the fire we are dancing next to is really our norms and our standards and our principles. And are we willing to burn everything for a golden calf — who is Donald Trump — just for vindictiveness’s sake? Because our politics have become a bastion of vindictiveness,” Colbert said. “People who felt they were being treated cruelly decided to respond with an act of cruelty, and Donald Trump is an act of cruelty. But there needs to be a reckoning.”

    But again. Notice how the word “Republican” is never mentioned. It’s not in the entire short article. Just “vindictiveness.” And Democrats being the opposition.

  35. 35.

    MomSense

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Remember when we had a president who skipped down the AF1 steps, jogged across the tarmac, and looked like a billion bucks the whole time?

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    @Aleta: the link (and, OT, how is your partner doing today?):

    NY Times, Stephen Schwarzman’s Bad Business Advice, February 7, 2017, op ed by Michael Moritz

    and the last sentence of the op ed:

    The lower- and middle-income Americans who voted for Mr. Trump in droves would do well to listen hard to what Mr. Schwarzman is advising. They’ll hear the sound of dollars being sucked out of their pockets and slipped into the wallets of the 1 percent.

    Michael Moritz is a partner of Sequoia Capital.

  39. 39.

    amk

    @Elizabelle:

    “And then, if the Democrats have just two Saltine crackers in their skull to rub together and can get control of either house of Congress, then you can have a serious investigation that is public.”

    amen.

  41. 41.

    Phylllis

    @Elizabelle: Read ‘Glass House’ by Brian Alexander. All about how private equity firms hollowed out Anchor Hocking and killed Lancaster, OH. All in the name of efficiency & return to shareholders.

  42. 42.

    Elizabelle

    @amk: Indeed.

    Although I think we’re going to see some serious investigating by the FBI, and by New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman in the meantime.

    Think about it. The FBI no doubt skews Republican. If you’re not one of the Clinton Derangement assholes in the NYC FBI office, you can see what a clear and present danger Trump is, to both your country, its norms, and your political party. There are a lot of good career feds in the agency. Who know what to look for.

    There will be a lot of kabuki articles, and fools like Bob Woodward complaining, but the wheels are turning in the background.

  43. 43.

    Elizabelle

    @Phylllis: Thank you. I will. We should do a “Predators Book and Long-form Article Club” feature here. Get the word out, through our social networks.

  47. 47.

    gene108

    @Aleta:

    Third World countries welcome foreign investment to help build out infrastructure. I’d never thought the USA would put itself in that position, where we need foreign investment to build basic infrastructure.

    Good job Republicans!!!!!!! ???

    ***************************

    Also, remember how Trump and right-wing media kept slamming Hillary for not having stamina? It is always projection with these fuckers.

  54. 54.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense:

    and looked like a billion BLACK bucks the whole time?

    You left out the key descriptor. In fact, the only descriptor that 27% of Americans ever noticed.

  58. 58.

    Aleta

    So when Blackstone says it has received 20 billion from the Saudis to “invest $40 billion in infrastructure projects, mostly in the U.S” does this mean it will be selling off half the girders of our bridges?

  59. 59.

    amk

    At what point the twitler’s minions will realize that twitler and his spawns are going to get richer and richer via pay to play many times over and these numbnutz will have nothing to themselves?

  60. 60.

    Kay

    Dana Stevens‏ @thehighsign 17h17 hours ago
    Our domestic & international policy on women’s issues is literally now just Ivanka appearing & saying the word “women” & then drifting away.

    This trip is the re-launch of Jared and Ivanka. The initial product reveal didn’t go well so they’re doing another one.

  65. 65.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Aleta: This business of “passing debt to the company” is something I will never understand.

    Strip away all the stuff about efficiency and whatnot. Here’s what these guys do. They go to the bank and borrow a shitload of money to buy ACME inc. Now in control of ACME they pay themselves (read:steal) every piece of ACME that isn’t nailed down, then “transfer” the original debt, which let us not forget, they used to buy ACME in the first place, to ACME.

    At that point, ACME can go bankrupt for all they care. They’ve already pocketed all its former value. It astounds me that this shit is legal. It astounds me that banks continue to make the initial loan.

  66. 66.

    gene108

    @Phylllis:

    Den of Thieves looks at the 1980’s Wall Street scandals of people like Michael Milken. Also goes into how the modern M&A culture, which leads to firms like Blackstone, developed as a result of Reagan-era deregulation.

  67. 67.

    Baud

    @debbie:

    It’s like the financial crisis never happened.

    No, it’s like they realized the voters were never going to punish the party responsible for it.

  69. 69.

    Aleta

    @gene108: As plundering 3rd world countries got riskier, they realized it’s much easier to plunder US funds for defense, education, infrastructure, urban repair.

  70. 70.

    Aleta

    @Lurking Canadian: Most astounding to me is the heartlessness toward employees and their pension funds, and that we let this happen to them. And then taxpayers help pay for extended unemployment and some retraining programs (though Tr’s budget cuts a lot of those).

  72. 72.

    Keith P.

    At a briefing with reporters a WH official said POTUS is “exhausted.”

    I predicted last week that Trump drops dead of a heart attack by Tuesday. He’s already exhausted by day 3 on a nine day overseas trip.

  75. 75.

    Kay

    This is true where I live, too and it’s been true for at least three years:

    Stephanie Pappas and her brothers built their roofing supply company in this fast-growing region by promising next-day delivery, but lately they’ve been forced to tell some customers that tomorrow is impossible.
    Their company, Roofers Supply, employs 28 drivers across Utah, and Ms. Pappas said she would need at least 15 more to meet the exploding demand for shingles and tiles. The company has raised its starting wage by 10 percent since the beginning of the year to $17.50 an hour, but it’s not enough.
    “We never want to have to say, ‘We can’t do it,’ but we need people,” Ms. Pappas said.
    After eight years of steady growth, the main economic concern in Utah and a growing number of other states is no longer a lack of jobs, but a lack of workers. The unemployment rate here fell to 3.1 percent in March, among the lowest figures in the nation. Nearly a third of the 388 metropolitan areas tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics have an unemployment rate below 4 percent, well below the level that economists consider “full employment,” the normal churn of people quitting to find new jobs. The rate in some cities, like Ames, Iowa, and Boulder, Colo., is even lower, at 2 percent.

    I’m on a school committee with a candy company CFO. He told me they could run one more entire line every evening if they had workers. They’re not bad jobs. They’re Teamsters and they have a good hourly wage and really good benefits. They’re getting their own primary care walk-in clinic next year because health care is a monopoly in this town- one provider bought up all the medical practices. The company is clever about health care costs- they try all kinds of things.

    I know Democrats had to acknowlege income inequality and stagnant wages but I can’t help but think they should have trumpeted the Obama recovery more. It took a really long time but it was fully evident by ’16. It really doesn’t get much better than this in the rust belt unless you go back to 1955 or something. It’s as good as it was under Clinton and GWB.

  78. 78.

    Elizabelle

    @Keith P.: Hmmm. What happens if he returns to the US unconscious? Or on life support?

    He does not look good, and he’s under more stress than he ever should be, given that he’s completely unqualified and under 24/7 scrutiny.

    Meanwhile, sounds like Barack Obama was golfing in Tuscany on Saturday. Looking lithe and fit. After eight years in office, der Trump. Who’s coding on his first foreign trip.

    The Hill:

    Former President Obama was spotted golfing at a resort Tuscany, Italy, over the weekend.

    TMZ reports that Obama was spotted golfing at the Castiglion Del Bosco Resort in Tuscany. It’s unclear who the former president was playing with, but TMZ video shows Obama driving a golf cart around the course.

  79. 79.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I know Democrats had to acknowlege income inequality and stagnant wages but I can’t help but think they should have trumpeted the Obama recovery more.

    Don’t get me started. Any attempt to do this was met with derision and hostility, precisely because of the income inequality and wage issue.

  82. 82.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay:

    They’re getting their own primary care walk-in clinic next year because health care is a monopoly in this town- one provider bought up all the medical practices.

    Aleta was telling us that her partner needs medical care (they do have insurance), and the local ER has gotten prohibitively expensive, even with insurance, due to a sale.

    Our government should be protecting us against this shit. Not encouraging the monopolies.

    Air rage at 30,000. Medical costs going up, not in an unforeseen manner, either.

  85. 85.

    efgoldman

    @rikyrah:

    The curve for unqualified mediocre White Men continues

    I wouldn’t call him mediocre; he has a long way to go to get up that high.

  86. 86.

    amk

    @Kay: Dems, both the cong critters and “the base”, kneecapped themselves on obamacare and obamanomics. It was always not good enough.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    Latta didn’t hold a town hall so we protested outside his office. It went great. I counted 48 people when I got there at noon – that is a big enough crowd for this area that people were slowing their cars and gawking at us. His office is right beyond a bridge that sort of dumps into the (narrower) street that fronts the office so they had to put a cop there with flashers to warn people traffic slowed ahead.

    They did call and response chants and a lot of drivers were blowing their horns and waving at us. The local paper sent a reporter and he did an interview with the organizer and a young woman in a wheelchair who protested with us- I don’t know who she is. He also took a group photo of us. Ted, the guy who organized it, is retired UAW and just a very nice man in general. He was pleased so I was glad for him. It’s a lot of work to put things like that together and they often flop, so it’s risky.

  92. 92.

    Elizabelle

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    The NY Times article addresses that:

    Companies in Utah, as in the rest of the country, were slow to raise wages in recent years. At first there were plenty of available workers. But by the end of 2015, a report by Utah’s Department of Workforce Services concluded that inadequate wages had become a key reason companies were struggling to find employees.

    “It was as if employers hadn’t adjusted their approach to the labor market” as the economy recovered, said Carrie Mayne, the department’s chief economist.

    Now there are signs the logjam is breaking. Adam Himoff, the president of Xemplar Skilled Workforce Solutions, a recruiting firm hired by Roofers Supply to find drivers, said he had seen an increase this year in the willingness of clients to raise wages.

    “Labor has become the constraint on their growth goals, and they’re recognizing that they’re going to have to increase wages to achieve what they want to achieve,” he said.

    …. But the share of Utah adults who have withdrawn from the labor force remains higher than before the recession. Last year, 31.7 percent of adults in Utah were neither working nor looking for work, up from 28.2 percent in 2006. That is part of a broad national trend.

    And a 3.1 percent unemployment rate still means that about 50,000 people in Utah were trying to find jobs in March.

    Some, like Monica Von Strahl, expect to find work quickly. Ms. Von Strahl, 44, moved to Utah from Oregon in April for family reasons. She left a job as a caregiver for adults with disabilities that paid $16 an hour; so far, the most she has been offered in Utah is $10 an hour. She plans to keep looking a little longer. (Scholars at M.I.T. estimate that a living wage in Utah for a single person is $10.71 an hour.)

    But even in a red-hot market, some of the people who are looking for work struggle to find the right fit. …

    In less lucrative industries, labor shortages may remain an intractable problem.

    Ron Gibson, a fifth-generation dairy farmer, tends 1,500 cows on family land outside Ogden. Last month, he placed an ad in local papers seeking three workers at wages starting around $12 an hour. It did not draw any responses.

    Mr. Gibson cannot afford to chase workers by raising wages. The price of milk, adjusted for inflation, is lower now than in the 1980s. Instead, he is producing less milk. Each cow is milked three times a day; only 15 percent get a fourth milking.

    He also laughed at the idea that Americans might move from other states to milk cows in Utah. He relies primarily on immigrant labor, communicating with his two dozen workers in the Spanish he learned as a young Mormon missionary in Argentina. And since Mr. Trump’s election, he said, workers are harder to find.

    “We are either going to import workers or we are going to import milk,” Mr. Gibson said.

    The work “is dirty, stinky and hard,” he added. “It’s not what we teach our young people to do.”

    But there is another solution on the horizon: automation.

    Mr. Gibson won’t automate (the machines are $500,000 each), but predicts that his kids will have to.

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @amk:

    The reporting and “narrative” nationally is always a tot behind reality so I don’t know that they could have turned it around in time.

    They got some bad advice, too. The “skills gap” is bullshit. People are moving around from worse jobs to better jobs because wages are rising. The companies who have a “skills gap” need to raise their wages and they’ll miraculously find welders. Arne Duncan is sort of my touch-stone for bullshit. If Democrats sound like him they will lose. He LOVED the “skills gap”.

  94. 94.

    raven

    @Kay: I guess the call and response is needed to keep people engaged but it can get pretty dopey.

  95. 95.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay: Link to the article re the Latta demonstration?

    And good on you for being out there. People passing by take note of that.

  96. 96.

    Iowa Old Lady

    A while back, I read that the labor force participation rate is going to drop for a few years no matter what you do because baby boomers are hitting retirement.

  98. 98.

    Kay

    @amk:

    Also they knew it. Working people knew it. They are incredibly sensitive to wages and hours. They may not understand the estate tax but most of them can take apart their pay stub in elaborate detail. They knew they were working a lot of hours and “working a lot of hours” is what happens right before companies start hiring. They all know this. Employers wait until it overtime becomes more expensive than a new hire, then they hire.

    The recession went on so long that they almost clung to the idea that the economy was bad. I saw a child support hearing judge lose patience with it last year – she mentioned the billboards we have on US 6 advertising for workers. If they’re putting up billboards they are desperate. They were also hiring felons. They dropped that bar quietly around here.

  99. 99.

    ArchTeryx

    @Elizabelle: I’m a little surprised he didn’t use the clothespin method.

    You get clothespins on the back of a cat’s neck in just the right spots and pressure, you can turn them off like light switches. It triggers the ‘ball up and go limp’ reflex they had has kittens, when mama cat had to carry them from place to place. Doesn’t work with all cats, but I’ve seen serious fighters reduced to a ball of limp in an instant by that technique. Nearly as good as sedation without the risks or drugs required.

  101. 101.

    SFAW

    @Aleta:

    Guests included Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, moguls Woody Johnson, John Paulson, Pepe Fanjul, Louis Bacon, Ronald Lauder and Lord Jacob Rothschild, as well as Donatella Versace and Princess Firyal of Jordan.

    Fuck Woody Johnson. [Jets fans know what I mean.]

  102. 102.

    Kay

    @raven:

    That’s funny because I like it. I’m not much of a chanter but people seem to really respond to it. I forgot what they said as the second part of “we want a congressman, not a …something”. I can’t imagine what word rhymes with “congressman” but something did! It’s been driving me crazy since the march :)

  104. 104.

    Jager

    @Lurking Canadian:
    I got involved with a venture firm 18 years ago, I had 11% of the deal. We sold it for a 4 million dollar profit in less in 18 months. I was looking forward to my 11% of the 4 mil. When the final accounting was finished and checks were being cut. My “partners” deducted all the expenses including their $600 dinners, their stays at big buck hotels, airline tickets, etc, from my 11%…when the dust settled I walked away with less than 5%. I thought they were nice guys who out of the goodness of their hearts were ordering town cars to take me from Manhattan to LaGuardia to catch the damn shuttle. I had no idea I was actually paying for the ride. I had a meeting with the principle in NY one afternoon and he was getting a haircut in his office, I probably paid for that too.

  105. 105.

    Baud

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: One of the early things he did to turn me off was during a debate with Clinton when he talked about the “real” unemployment rate. (He meant U5 or U6.) Given how the right was peddling lies about Obama manipulating the unemployment rate, it really rubbed me the wrong way, but it fits into this larger picture that Dems aren’t allowed to take credit for anything.

  106. 106.

    amk

    @Kay: Just imagining what all shit that could have been achieved if the effing voters hadn’t literally given away their houses to the rethugs in 2010, 12, 14 and the worst, 16. So many infraprojects, improving ocare, escalating the employment and all with rich peeps’ god given money.

  107. 107.

    Honus

    @gene108: and who owns our bridges and highways? Black Stone? The Saudis?
    For a lesson in private infrastructure google Bellaire Bridge.

  109. 109.

    BlueDWarrior

    @Baud: starts to make me think we have a lot of trolls on the nominal left who spread FUD on our own side; that and people who honestly believe we must be in a constant state of sackcloth penance.

  111. 111.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:
    I am glad that you got local media coverage.this is the kind of story that’s self explanatory, and easy to cover, so I hope everyone out there in the Resistance puts in contact with the local media.

  116. 116.

    aimai

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I will never forgive Wilmer for that–and I’m white. I was and remain furious about that and about the white/male left’s continued attacks on both Obama and HRC.

  118. 118.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    These people care a lot about local media. They all read the newspaper because it’s a small enough place that they will always know someone who is covered. They also LOVE high school sports and that’s where you get coverage of that.

    I still tease my middle son because they put him on the front page when he was 5 at a “Larry the Lion” library event –
    huge photo- he was smiling at Larry- and he told his sister he was “famous” :)

    It’s easy to be famous :)

  121. 121.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay: Ah. I see why you did not link to the article. It’s behind a paywall. For one article. That’s harsh!

  122. 122.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    Local media make me more sympathetic to national media because you realize with them that it’s just a job- it’s a business. It’s a daily newspaper and they need X number of pieces to fill X number of pages. They also make next to nothing.

  123. 123.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud:

    that Dems aren’t allowed to take credit for anything.

    But we have to take the blame for everything, including Trump.

  126. 126.

    gene108

    @Baud:

    Don’t get me started. Any attempt to do this was met with derision and hostility, precisely because of the income inequality and wage issue.

    Lack of dedicated media lick-spittles, for Democrats, to promote the Party line really hurts.

    The Republicans and their media enablers slammed everything Obama did, from being courteous on foreign trips (i.e. “bowing”, “world apology tour’) to any legislative accomplishment, while the rest of the media took their cues from right-wing media and framed everything in an accusatory manner.

    And what media presence Democrats do have is tempered by “the base”, which lives in a dream world, where jailing Bush, Jr, Cheney, bank CEO’s, etc. would be just the first step in a popular uprising to usher in the rule of the proletariat and the workers’ paradise.

  128. 128.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: BS is full of crap regarding economics. All he has achieved is putting T in the WH. There is a disconnect between his actions and his lofty rhetoric. All he has done is strengthened Rs by giving them verbal sticks to beat the Democrats. During the election and now. Since we haven’t seen his taxes we don’t know whether its just his ego that has expanded like a gas giant.

  129. 129.

    gene108

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    @Baud: I don’t understand why wages are stagnant when unemployment is so low (although the roofing supply company Kay refers to has raised theirs

    Wages started ticking up last year. It takes time to correct for the stagnant Bush, Jr years and the drop in wages from the Great Recession.

    But it isn’t enough to totally off-set the 45 years of stagnation the 99% have endured to really close the income inequality gap.

  130. 130.

    Kay

    @amk:

    should be happy.

    Should be but is not :)

    I always get greedy with these things. I want 24/7 bad-for-Trump news every moment. It’s addictive.

    There’s this thing that people who are lying do when you interview them or they are in court. They widen their eyes at the kind of apex of the lie in the story they’re telling – like a comic book idea of “innocent”. Ivanka does it. It’s always a little petulant and self-pitying too, the look, which makes it doubly infuriating.

  131. 131.

    Elizabelle

    Paul Krugman is — surprise — shrill this morning. Talking about noncompetes. And those of us yoked to employers, for the healthcare. While those who would make us serfs shout Freedumb!

    FTF NY Times: The Unfreeing of the American Worker

    American conservatives love to talk about freedom. Milton Friedman’s famous pro-capitalist book and TV series were titled “Free to Choose.” And the hard-liners in the House pushing for a complete dismantling of Obamacare call themselves the Freedom Caucus.

    Well, why not? After all, America is an open society, in which everyone is free to make his or her own choices about where to work and how to live.

    Everyone, that is, except the 30 million workers now covered by noncompete agreements, who may find themselves all but unemployable if they quit their current jobs; the 52 million Americans with pre-existing conditions who will be effectively unable to buy individual health insurance, and hence stuck with their current employers, if the Freedom Caucus gets its way; and the millions of Americans burdened down by heavy student and other debt.

    …. At this point … almost one in five American employees is subject to some kind of noncompete clause. There can’t be that many workers in possession of valuable trade secrets, especially when many of these workers are in relatively low-paying jobs. [Kay’s been pointing this out forever.]

    …. in other words, noncompete clauses are in many cases less about protecting trade secrets than they are about tying workers to their current employers, unable to bargain for better wages or quit to take better jobs.

    … Until 2014, there was basically only one way Americans under 65 with pre-existing conditions could get health insurance: by finding an employer willing to offer coverage.

    …. But what if you wanted to change jobs, or start your own business? Too bad: you were basically stuck (and I knew quite a few people in that position).

    …. Trumpcare — the American Health Care Act — would drastically reduce protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions. And even if that bill never becomes law, the Trump administration is effectively sabotaging individual insurance markets, so that in many cases Americans who lose employer coverage will have no place to turn — which will in turn tie those who do have such coverage to their current employers.

    You might say, with only a bit of hyperbole, that workers in America, supposedly the land of the free, are actually creeping along the road to serfdom, yoked to corporate employers the way Russian peasants were once tied to their masters’ land. And the people pushing them down that road are the very people who cry “freedom” the loudest.

    Shrill. All true.

    ETA: And brownie points to Krugman for working in “Russians.”

    I think all articles about the Republicans and Trump these days should include the word “Russians.”

  132. 132.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Ugh. Like how Hillary lost Wisconsin entirely of her own accord but Russ Feingold lost Wisconsin because he was sabotaged by the DNC. Even though he outspent Ron Johnson.

    One darkly comedic thing about the election was that pretty much everyone that Wilmer endorsed ended up losing.

  135. 135.

    Immanentize

    @Elizabelle: so is there any way that Chris Christie can receive an appointment as Special US Attorney so he can do to Jared what he did to his Dad? Delicious.

  136. 136.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    Good summation of the situation. I think in some sense people don’t understand the difference between advocacy and reality. Politicians do both. Obama bridged this gap all the time- “while it is TRUE…”

    Advocates push. That’s literally their job. They aren’t reciting the year’s events. They are MOVING something and to move you have to demand more and more. Both are necessary but you have to know the difference.

  138. 138.

    D58826

    A few random item,s from Twitter today:
    1.BREAKING: Turkey summons US ambassador to protest ‘aggressive’ action against Turkish bodyguards in Washington

    2. the catering requirements for Der Fuhrer –

    The catering requirements for #TrumpInIsrael seem kinda OCD: 6 boxes of Double Stuffed @Oreo cookies—unwrapped & stacked in rows of 8…

    The rest ofthe list is just as weird https://twitter.com/AAhronheim/status/866634891861086208

  139. 139.

    J R in WV

    @JAFD:

    From Google, I suspect it was a TED talk about how, for a family to escape from poverty, nothing can go wrong (must all go correctly!) for 20 years. Your quote sounded more like we need 20 years of right wing nonsense to save the nation, which is so far from the truth I cannot measure that distance, Infinity to the gogleplex power maybe.

  140. 140.

    Elizabelle

    Decided to look up “Russiagate” and see what comes up this fine day.

    Nj.com: Trump’s Russia-gate is Watergate on amphetamines | Opinion

    …. Most Washington scandals (Iran-contra, Watergate, Monica Lewinsky) evolved over many months and years. In the case of the Trump fiasco, one senses we will have a full accounting far sooner than that. Witness interviews, depositions, document requests and grand jury testimony will need to take place, but we can imagine this all coming to a head this year.

    Forget the overly ambitious GOP agenda (healthcare, tax reform, trade renegotiation). It is hard to see how the White House will manage less august tasks (keeping the government open, completing a fraction of the political appointments). A chief executive who never understood the dimensions of the job will find it hard to function at all for very long under such conditions, especially when he does not trust his staff.

    We face the prospect, a dangerous one, of an immobilized White House. A wounded president and paralyzed government pose a great enticement for foreign aggressors to strike. The chaos Trump creates will begin to affect markets, which abhor uncertainty. In short, Congress, the Justice Department and the FBI need to work diligently and quickly. The country requires a functioning chief executive and commander in chief. We will not have one as long as Trump remains in office.

    It’s Jennifer Rubin. Syndicated by the WaPost.

  141. 141.

    rikyrah

    I love that social media has brought up all the bullshyt that Dolt45 whined about 44 during his Middle East trips. And, the precious Snowflakes trying to defend him, while the receipts are brought on their azzes too.

  142. 142.

    Elizabelle

    @rikyrah: Let’s put some up! Demanding pics of Former POTUS and FLOTUS, gracing it up in Europa.

    Since der Trumps arrive this week, I wonder if they will travel on to a different country (come to Spain!!), or just be a few regions away …

  143. 143.

    amk

    BREAKING: AP Source: Michael Flynn to decline Senate Intel committee subpoena, invoke 5th Amendment later today.— The Associated Press (@AP) May 22, 2017

    so, what now?

  144. 144.

    rikyrah

    Goldman Sachs exec ends bid to join Trump administration
    05/22/17 09:20 AM
    By Steve Benen
    Two months ago, James Donovan, a longtime Goldman Sachs executive, became Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as deputy to the Treasury secretary, serving just below Steve Mnuchin. On Friday afternoon, that nomination came to a rather abrupt halt.
    James Donovan, the Goldman Sachs executive who was poised to become deputy Treasury secretary, is backing out of consideration.

    Mr. Donovan, 50, recently told administration officials that he could not take the job because of unexpected family matters that required more of his attention.

    While Donovan is hardly a household name, and his nomination wasn’t considered a major development, his withdrawal is a story with a fairly broad reach.

    For example, Trump, after having used Goldman Sachs as a punching bag for much of the campaign, had chosen seven veterans of the Wall Street giant to work on his team. With Donavan stepping aside, and Anthony Scaramucci also walking away from an administration job offer, there are now five prominent Goldman Sachs executives remaining on Team Trump.

  145. 145.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    I wasn’t a big fan of the praise blurb he gave the book “Buyer’s Remorse” about President Obama. All those wicked smart white guys who loved that book didn’t see a problem with that title?

    Fuck Wilmer.

  146. 146.

    rikyrah

    @amk:

    BREAKING: AP Source: Michael Flynn to decline Senate Intel committee subpoena, invoke 5th Amendment later today.— The Associated Press (@AP) May 22, 2017

    hmmmmmmmm

  148. 148.

    Immanentize

    @amk: either they grant him immunity and force him to talk, or they leave his testimony out and let Mueller do his job. The Senate should stay the hell out of it. If, however, the Senate wants to ruin the investigation, they will grant immunity (See, Oliver North),

    ETA. Shit’s getting real, real fast.

  152. 152.

    rikyrah

    Saudi Arabia, UAE pledge $100 million to fund backed by Ivanka Trump
    05/22/17 08:40 AM
    By Steve Benen

    About a month ago, Ivanka Trump boasted about a new initiative: in addition to her White House duties, the president’s daughter is helping raise money to “benefit female entrepreneurs around the globe.” As part of the endeavor, Ivanka Trump had already begun soliciting contributions from international donors.

    It wasn’t long before legal and ethical questions arose – when the president of the United States’ daughter starts asking for money from prospective donors abroad, scrutiny is inevitable – prompting Ivanka Trump to make clear that the World Bank would manage the investment fund; she was merely championing the worthy cause.

    The story took an interesting turn over the weekend with new “pay-to-play” concerns. NPR reported:

    Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will donate a combined $100 million to a World Bank fund for women entrepreneurs that was the brainchild of Ivanka Trump.

    The announcement by World Bank President Jim Young Kim came during a visit to Saudi Arabia by President Trump, who was accompanied by his wife, Melania, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

    Some context is in order. It was just last year, for example, that Donald Trump said he was outraged that the Clinton Foundation accepted charitable contributions from Saudi Arabia, which, the Republican said, wants “women as slaves” and to “kill gays.” He added at the time, “Hillary must return all money from such countries!”

    And yet, here we are, watching Trump’s daughter raising money accepting a sizable charitable contribution from Saudi Arabia.

    What’s more, it’s important to consider the motivation behind the donation. The Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum noted, “The announcement that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will donate money to her fund was a ‘pay to play’ far more blatant than anything Hillary Clinton ever dreamed of.”

  154. 154.

    rikyrah

    In Saudi Arabia, Trump retreats from years of posturing
    05/22/17 08:00 AM—UPDATED 05/22/17 08:12 AM
    By Steve Benen
    There was a fair amount of interest in Donald Trump’s speech in Riyadh yesterday, with the American president addressing dozens of Muslim leaders from the region. The ambiguity surrounding the purpose of the remarks only heightened the curiosity: what exactly would Trump – with a record of hostility towards Islam in general and Saudi Arabia in specific – do with this platform?

    As it turns out, not a whole lot. The Republican’s speech in Saudi Arabia, by any fair measure, turned out to be pretty conventional, which inadvertently told us something important about Trump.

    The speech during the initial stop of the president’s first foreign trip was a stark contrast to his previous comments on Islam. As a candidate, Trump frequently criticized the religion, saying, “I think Islam hates us” and “there’s a tremendous hatred there.”

    In Riyadh, Trump said, “This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations. This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it.”

    Perhaps the most provocative portion of the speech came when Trump strayed from the prepared text: he was supposed to reference “confronting the crisis of Islamist extremism,” but he instead said “confronting the crisis of Islamic extremism.” A senior administration official said soon after that the slip was not deliberate, but rather, was the result of the president being “exhausted” on his first full day abroad.

    Regardless, the story here is less about a conventional speech and more about the fact that Trump retreated from his previous postures. Remember, Trump rose to prominence in Republican presidential politics by attacking Islam relentlessly, including his call for a notorious Muslim ban, which his White House tried and failed to implement a few months ago.

  155. 155.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @rikyrah: Can’t say as I blame him. Trump has a long track record of throwing people under the bus to save his own ass. Flynn knows he’ll be next if it comes to that.

  158. 158.

    Immanentize

    @amk: well, if he is granted immunity and forced to testify, he has to tell the truth and can be later tried for perjury — but perjury only.

  164. 164.

    rikyrah

    From Facebook:
    https://www.facebook.com/douglas.a.blackmon/posts/10155079495445269

    “RussiaGate” has become a catastrophic failure of leadership—and a debacle from which the Trump presidency will not recover

    —“Trump is a suicide vest strapped around the body of the Republican Party”—-

    #trumprussia

    By Douglas A. Blackmon

    A little more than a week ago, I said on CNN and wrote here that—based on reporting I’d just completed in Washington D.C.—it was clear that the controversy surrounding Russian contacts with advisors to President Donald J. Trump and his campaign team was about to become much more serious, much more directly focused on the president himself, and have deeply troubling consequences for our democracy.

    The revelations of the past seven days have confirmed all that, and will be remembered as the point when an extraordinary but perhaps still manageable political embarrassment for the Trump administration mushroomed into the most serious controversy to engulf a presidency since Watergate.

    Based on what we know already, and new revelations that will soon illuminate more key events in this sequence, our country faces a dramatic constitutional exigency. This crisis now is directly about the President himself, and one for which he now bears complete responsibility. Bluntly stated, it has become a catastrophic failure of conduct and leadership—and a debacle from which the Trump presidency will not recover.

    What I couldn’t say last week was that, earlier the same day, I spent more than four hours conducting Sally Yates’ first media interview since being fired by President Trump as acting U.S. Attorney General. With me in the interview was The New Yorker magazine’s White House correspondent, Ryan Lizza, whose profile of Yates will appear on Monday, May 22. (I have known Yates for more than 25 years. To read a profile I wrote of her in February, look here: http://slate.me/2l1ROhR)

    During our interview, and subsequent conversations in the following days, Yates never disclosed any classified details of the ongoing investigation or specific new bombshells. But by the end of that long series of questions, answers and clarifications, important contours of the scandal—the boundaries of what is known or not known and the enormous scale of the stakes involved—became much more clear to me. Combined with that and other reporting, it became apparent that the Trump-Russia scandal was far more serious than understood when the first revelations of the investigation occurred, and since then have only grown more ominous. These observations are my own, based on my interviews with Yates, national security experts, and other people close to these events, as well as close reading of congressional testimony, publicly available documents, and disclosures by trusted fellow journalists.

    To understand why this is so serious, it’s important first to realize what is truly important to the inquiry—and escape some of the distractions of the past six months. Why Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in November, or exactly how Russian interests attempted to disrupt and influence our electoral process is important, but ultimately not what matters most. Whether former Trump campaign officials and advisors failed to disclose past business dealings with interests in Ukraine, Russia and Turkey is a question that will be answered, but not a defining one. That President Trump and his family have had past business dealings or allegedly engaged in personal hijinks in Russia is hardly important at all.

    No, this is an investigation about one thing: the now undeniable fact that a Russian espionage conspiracy accomplished an objective that has never previously occurred in American history—compromising the highest levels of U.S. government, penetrating the White House, establishing influence and leverage over the president’s National Security Advisor, and planting false information with the Vice-President of the United States—who then unwittingly repeated those fictions to the American people.

    Read the rest at the link above. Please share.

  165. 165.

    clay

    @D58826:

    The replies seem to indicate that it’s a joke list. The fact that it’s hard to tell says something…

  167. 167.

    rikyrah

    Trump Is Ignoring America’s Looming Cybersecurity Threat
    Our federal agencies are woefully underprepared to withstand a major cyberattack.

    by Anne Kim
    May 19, 2017

    The “ransomware” attack that crippled computer systems around the globe last week shows once again just how vulnerable the world’s computer systems are to criminals and hackers.

    The so-called “WannaCry” virus — which threatened to delete a victim’s files absent a $300 ransom — exploited a weakness in the Windows operating system that a simple software update could have blocked. Government computer systems were among the hardest hit, including Russia’s Interior Ministry and Britain’s National Health Service, which had to shut down 16 hospitals. Reports are already circulating of a second potential global cyberattack, Adylkuzz, which works by stealing processing power from victims’ computers.

    So far, U.S. government systems seem to have been spared – but how ready are federal agencies to withstand a cyberattack?

    The answer: Not as much as they should be.

    After the 2015 discovery of a massive breach at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which compromised the personal information of 21.5 million people, President Barack Obama tasked a 12-member presidential commission with devising a national cybersecurity plan. The commission’s report, issued last December, included a long list of to-dos for the next Administration, citing an urgent need for “ambitious measures to put the federal government’s cybersecurity house in order.”

  168. 168.

    Corner Stone

    @Kay:

    Dana Stevens‏ @thehighsign 17h17 hours ago
    Our domestic & international policy on women’s issues is literally now just Ivanka appearing & saying the word “women” & then drifting away

    That’s a pretty good twit feed. I love this idea, though. I can see Ivanka, as played by ScarJo, emerge from the darkness. She’s very well-lit, slowly lifts her arms and in her perfectly modulated manhusk voice tells the audience, “Women”. She then does not retreat, but is more pulled back into the darkness and disappears.
    [end scene]

  170. 170.

    PPCLI

    @Just One More Canuck: This holiday pisses me off. Québec has the right idea: Why don’t we celebrate the people who fought for the independence and character of the country? The Lower Canada Rebellion, why not the Upper Canada Rebellion at the same time. Yes, Papineau, but why not William Lyon MacKenzie? Instead, we celebrate the monarch in whose reign MacKenzie was exiled.

  172. 172.

    rikyrah

    Flynn’s Job Was to Set Up Back Channel Access Between Putin and Trump
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    May 18, 2017 10:01 AM

    The bombshells dropping on the Trump presidency are coming at a fast and furious pace right now. I’d like to focus on the latest one from the New York Times.

    Michael T. Flynn told President Trump’s transition team weeks before the inauguration that he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign, according to two people familiar with the case.

    Despite this warning, which came about a month after the Justice Department notified Mr. Flynn of the inquiry, Mr. Trump made Mr. Flynn his national security adviser. The job gave Mr. Flynn access to the president and nearly every secret held by American intelligence agencies.

    Mr. Flynn’s disclosure, on Jan. 4, was first made to the transition team’s chief lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, who is now the White House counsel. That conversation, and another one two days later between Mr. Flynn’s lawyer and transition lawyers, shows that the Trump team knew about the investigation of Mr. Flynn far earlier than has been previously reported.

    If you’ve been paying attention to this story all along, the first thing that should grab your attention is that Flynn told White House Counsel Don McGahn that he was under federal investigation on January 4th. That was not only a full two weeks before Trump’s inauguration, it was three weeks before Sally Yates told him that Flynn could be compromised because of his lies about meetings with the Russian ambassador. That puts some of his reaction to her in a whole different context.

  174. 174.

    rikyrah

    Trump’s Ship is Going Down
    There aren’t enough life rafts on this boat to save anyone but the women and children.
    by Martin Longman
    May 20, 2017 7:00 AM

    I don’t remember a time when someone on President Obama’s staff said something like this about their boss:

    “Every day he looks more and more like a complete moron,” said one senior administration official who also worked on Trump’s campaign. “I can’t see Trump resigning or even being impeached, but at this point I wish he’d grow a brain and be the man that he sold himself as on the campaign.”

    Or this:

    “If Donald Trump gets impeached, he will have one person to blame: Donald Trump,” one of those administration officials said.

    Trump spent the hours before leaving on his nine-day foreign adventure screwing every pooch in the Western Hemisphere. And he left his administration shell-shocked, distraught, and downright angry. He also made a pretty iron-tight case for removing him from office.

    David C. Gomez, a former FBI assistant special agent in charge, said Trump’s comments demonstrated a profound inability to grasp the potential consequences of his words.

    “In terms of potential criminal activity, it’s amateur night at the White House,” Gomez told The Daily Beast. “These guys—and Trump especially—don’t know how to not implicate themselves.

  177. 177.

    mike in dc

    Melania slapped Trump’s hand out of the way when he tried to hold hands with her, getting off the plane in Israel. Hmm.

  178. 178.

    Corner Stone

    @rikyrah:

    said one senior administration official who also worked on Trump’s campaign. “I can’t see Trump resigning or even being impeached, but at this point I wish he’d grow a brain and be the man that he sold himself as on the campaign.”

    Tired of these morans getting their self-serving quotes in anonymously, the F’ng cowards. If this one is “senior” and also “worked on Trump’s campaign” then they knew *exactly* what the deal was. There is not Better Trump. There is no Other Trump.
    I hope this one rots in jail, also too.

  179. 179.

    clay

    @rikyrah:

    “I can’t see Trump resigning or even being impeached, but at this point I wish he’d grow a brain and be the man that he sold himself as on the campaign.”

    ‘Sold himself as’ is right, but he was never that man, and it was obvious to anyone who had grown a brain that he was never that man.

    Seriously, how has his behavior changed from the campaign to the transition to now? It hasn’t, not one bit. You helped sell the country a pile of flaming garbage, and now you’re complaining that everything stinks and is on fire.

  181. 181.

    Kay

    @mike in dc:

    She knows better than anyone how horrible he is. I don’t hold her responsible for him. My overwhelming sense is she didn’t want this job. She looks miserable. I’m not worried about her- I don’t hold her responsible but I also don’t waste any sympathy on her, but boy it’s awkward looking. The thing where he goes ahead of when they walk is just weird.

    Trump’s weirdness is under-covered. He’s a weirdo and he surrounded himself with misfits.

  182. 182.

    clay

    @mike in dc: That is the behavior of a couple who just had a big fight, and the guy wants to put on a good face in public but the woman is having none of it.

    Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to!

  184. 184.

    Corner Stone

    @clay:

    That is the behavior of a couple who just had a big fight

    Think he was mumbling about Ivanka in his sleep? Maybe that’s why he’s “exhausted”, because he hasn’t had his snuggle time for a few days now.

  185. 185.

    rikyrah

    Trump is Being Taken Apart, Step By Step
    by Martin Longman
    May 17, 2017 1:30 PM

    ………………..

    It’s obviously not just Comey who is crippling the president with leaks. There are leakers very close to the president, perhaps even in his inner circle. There are people leaking throughout the intelligence community and the Justice Department. They are doing so, most of them, because of sincere alarm and for patriotic reasons. And the result is this:

    In interviews, multiple White House officials indicated they feel under siege — unsure who in the intelligence community was leaking, how much damaging information was out there, when the next proverbial shoe would drop and what Trump might say.

    Staffers shuttled back and forth among West Wing offices debating what to say without divulging confidential material or getting anything wrong. A deflated and exhausted Sean Spicer, who continues to read reports that his job is in jeopardy while he works 12 hours every day in his office, huddled in his office with chief of staff Reince Priebus.

    There was a pervasive sense, another official said, that “we are kind of helpless.”

  186. 186.

    glory b

    @Kay: I agree, but I don’t think it was that easy. I remember the Elkton IL (I think) workers who got mad at Obama after their plant stayed open instead of closing as announced(after Obama promised to help them). I know there was contact between the corporation and the white house and the announcement that they were staying.

    I saw stories where they said Obama didn’t actually do anything for them and they resented him saying it was a victory for his white house.

    Then they voted majority for Romney and then Trump.

    I don’t know, I kind of think it might have been the Black thing.

    I remember someone here linked to a 19th century, post slavery editorial cartoon of a poor white man being carried away by a river rather than grabbing the hand of a black man on shore who was trying to save him. I’d appreciate it if anyone could find it, I couldn’t. Seems appropriate here.

  187. 187.

    Kay

    @mike in dc:

    They analyze Trump too much. A big chunk of his problems come from the fact that he has really bad manners. Manners are tied to empathy. You literally put the other person first and most of the time that works out better for you, too. There was no reason to denigrate Comey to the Russians. It’s just pure nastiness.

    He’s rude. He doesn’t know how to treat people. The grabbing people who don’t want to be touched is all of a piece with his horrible personality. He’s an aggressively bad person.

  188. 188.

    rikyrah

    How Cities Can Protect Immigrants in the Age of Trump
    Cincinnati’s new ID program could be a model for other progressive cities.

    by Timothy Broderick
    May 22, 2017

    Heavy rain loomed on the horizon, but the crowd standing outside Woodward High School in Cincinnati, Ohio was unfazed, wearing smiles that could weather hurricanes. Showers wouldn’t drive them away. People had already waited hours for the ID drive to begin, some arriving before dawn, others camping overnight. The line started at the school’s double glass doors, wound around the entire building, and stretched out onto the street.

    “It was incredible,” said Margaret Fox, director of Metropolitan Area Religious Coalition of Cincinnati (MARCC), a nonprofit that has spent decades fighting on behalf of the city’s marginalized communities. “I cry each time because it’s kind of like a scene at Ellis Island. Men, women, and children. Babies in strollers.”

    MARCC, with the help of Catholic Charities of Southwest Ohio, sponsors the MARCC ID, an identification card rolled out last August that serves as valid identification for any Cincinnatian. While target populations for the ID include former felons and homeless individuals, most cardholders are undocumented immigrants hoping to insulate themselves from the rising xenophobic policies and rhetoric of the Trump administration.

    For undocumented immigrants, living without identification is a dangerous prospect. A simple run-in with the police can initiate the deportation process, even for non-criminals. Since public offices and services in Cincinnati — law enforcement included — recognize the MARCC ID as valid identification, obtaining the ID curtails the risk of deportation.

    Municipal IDs like the MARCC ID are a new tool cities are employing to defend the rights of the undocumented. “The MARCC ID does not allow any holder to obtain any services or benefits that are not available to the holder under federal, state, or local laws,” said Fox. The ID helps immigrants access those benefits.

  189. 189.

    rikyrah

    Dirty Deeds: The Trumpist Threat to Clean Air and Water
    by D.R. Tucker
    May 22, 2017 8:00 AM

    Presumably, Donald Trump didn’t bring the hack he hired to run the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, along with him to Saudi Arabia because the fossil-fuel fetishist wouldn’t want to leave that petrostate.

    The New York Times, presumably trying to reduce the public’s contempt towards its decision to hire climate-change denier Bret Stephens to foul its op-ed page, has tried to repair the damage by focusing on the damage Pruitt’s policies will inflict upon our planet:

    In just the last three months, with Mr. Pruitt in charge, the E.P.A. postponed a long-planned rule requiring companies like Devon [Energy] to retrofit drilling equipment to prevent leaks of methane gas — a major contributor to climate change — and to collect more data on how much of the gas is spewing into the air.

    The Interior Department, meanwhile, announced this month that it would reconsider a separate rule limiting the burning of unwanted methane gas from wells drilled on federal and Indian lands, a process called flaring. That announcement came the same day the Senate narrowly rejected industry calls to repeal the same rule.

    Interior officials have also announced their intention to repeal or revise a contentious rule requiring companies like Devon to take extra steps to prevent groundwater contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, a drilling technique in which chemicals and water are forced into rock formations.

    Environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund are outraged by these moves, and have vowed to fight any rollbacks in court.

    “Devon is doing to the oil and gas industry what Donald Trump did to the Republican Party, pushing the whole agenda into a world of extremes,” said Mark Brownstein, a vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund.

  192. 192.

    clay

    @SiubhanDuinne: Huh. One district was struck down 8-0. The other was 5-3, with Thomas(!) joining the majority. So, uh, thanks Clarence Thomas! (Not words I’d ever think I’d type…)

  194. 194.

    rikyrah

    BREAKING: Justice Kagan has the #SCOTUS decision in Cooper v. Harris, affirming the lower court decision against two NC districts.

    — Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) May 22, 2017

  195. 195.

    rikyrah

    Mississippi Republican faces pushback following ‘lynching’ comment
    05/22/17 10:40 AM
    By Steve Benen

    Local officials in New Orleans last week finished removing Confederate-era monuments from prominent positions in the city, which, not surprisingly, was the subject of some debate. But the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, highlighted a Republican lawmaker who made clear what he intends to do if a similar effort is launched in his home state.

    State Rep. Karl Oliver, R-Winona, in a Facebook post wrote that Louisiana leaders removing Confederate monuments should be “lynched” and compared their actions to Nazis.

    The GOP representative of District 46 wrote the following in a Facebook post: “The destruction of these monuments, erected in the loving memory of our family and fellow Southern Americans, is both heinous and horrific. If the, and I use this term extremely loosely, ‘leadership’ of Louisiana wishes to, in a Nazi-ish fashion, burn books or destroy historical monuments of OUR HISTORY, they should be LYNCHED! Let it be known, I will do all in my power to prevent this from happening in our State.”

    I’ll gladly concede that random state lawmakers say ridiculous things with some regularity, and as a rule, turning each incident into a national news story is a Sisyphean task.

    But there’s a legitimate conversation underway about the future of Confederate monuments in much of the South, and the fact that sentiments such as Karl Oliver’s still exist – from an elected lawmaker, publishing online for the public to see – are a reminder about the state of the debate in some corners.

    The fact that this Mississippi Republican represents the community of Money – the same town in which Emmett Till was lynched in 1955 – makes Oliver’s statement that much more striking.

  197. 197.

    Kay

    @glory b:

    Oh, I agree. It’s not just in the south, either. Rural midwesterners are really racist. Chicago is really racist.

    I was thinking about this, this conundrum with race and class and how Democrats are trying to navigate and address both things and I was thinking that maybe the people to ask about this are black people because they had to incorporate class issues WITH civil rights issues, always. It came up again and again in the civil rights movement- both class issues within African American activists and class issues with white people who joined. Black activists probably know how to do this better than white people.

    I live in a predominantly white working class area so I feel I have a handle on class, but I never had to operate incorporating BOTH but I think I know who might have! :)

  198. 198.

    The Moar You Know

    …. At this point … almost one in five American employees is subject to some kind of noncompete clause. There can’t be that many workers in possession of valuable trade secrets, especially when many of these workers are in relatively low-paying jobs.

    @Elizabelle: Love my state (CA). They won’t enforce them. Period. Not even if warranted, which is occasionally a problem, but not for the employee.

  200. 200.

    The Moar You Know

    It’s not just in the south, either. Rural midwesterners are really racist. Chicago is really racist.

    @Kay: My family comes from Alabama, so I know a bit about racist jerkwads and places they live, and the most racist/segregated place I’ve ever lived (by a long shot) was San Francisco.

    It’s never overt but you learn the rules real quick: stick with your own kind. Everyone else thinks you’re inferior.

    At least it’s equal opportunity there. A white guy is just as likely to have the shit kicked out of him and thrown out of a Chinese bar as the other way around.

  201. 201.

    randy khan

    Local news radio in D.C. is reporting that Mike Flynn will not provide documents in response to a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee and is invoking his 5th Amendment rights.

  202. 202.

    Aleta

    Don’t mess with the orb.

    Sinkhole in front of Mar-a-Lago
    A 4′ x 4′ sinkhole has formed on Southern Boulevard directly in front of Mar-a-Lago. It appears to be in the vicinity of the newly installed water main. West Palm Beach Utilities distribution crews have secured the area and will most likely need to do some exploratory excavation today.

  204. 204.

    Corner Stone

    I had it on mute but just watching Trump he is clearly confused, stumbling and not in charge of his faculties. He just walked away from Bibi before they could take the money shot. Then had to walk back when told.

  205. 205.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    I was thinking about this, this conundrum with race and class and how Democrats are trying to navigate and address both things and I was thinking that maybe the people to ask about this are black people because they had to incorporate class issues WITH civil rights issues, always. It came up again and again in the civil rights movement- both class issues within African American activists and class issues with white people who joined. Black activists probably know how to do this better than white people.

    I live in a predominantly white working class area so I feel I have a handle on class, but I never had to operate incorporating BOTH but I think I know who might have! :)

    I’m Black, and I honestly don’t care. And, maybe I’m an extreme outlier, but I don’t think so.

    I think 2016 was a watershed vote that snapped the collected Black nerve, and we no longer give a shyt about the White working class, and White folks in general, and their feelings.

    I know I don’t.

    We look at those articles being written about them, and WHY we’re supposed to ‘understand’ why they voted for Dolt45.

    Don’t give a shyt WHY you voted for him. Your vote for him condemns you as a person. It defines who you are.
    Everything that has come to this country, not only internally, but our lowering in the international community….take responsibility for that.

    You thrust people like Attorney General White Citizens Council upon me and mine and I’m supposed to give two shyts about your feelings?

    I don’t believe that I should have to be fighting for clean water, and clean air, and education, and healthcare, because muthaphuckas couldn’t handle a competent Black man in the job as President of the United States – because, that IS the bottom line here as to what happened.

    There’s a poster on another blog, that gives me what I call a ‘Daily Affirmation.’

    You foisted that unqualified, low-rent joker on this world..
    For now, and forever …
    Fuck You, Mayo Nation.

    I feel it to the bottom of my soul everytime I read it.

  206. 206.

    Fester Addams

    @rikyrah:

    Flynn’s Job Was to Set Up Back Channel Access Between Putin and Trump

    Seems to me the newspapers are being a bit charitable terming this “back-channel.” If the intent was to avoid U.S. intelligence services hearing what Big Cheeto was saying to the Russians, wouldn’t “covert” be more accurate?

  207. 207.

    germy

    @rikyrah:

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Republicans in North Carolina unlawfully took race into consideration when drawing congressional district boundaries, concentrating black voters in a bid to diminish their overall political clout.

    Justice Neil Gorsuch, who had not yet joined the court when arguments in the case were heard, did not participate in the ruling.

  208. 208.

    Julia Grey

    Trump’s Russia Scandal Is Becoming a Corruption Scandal

    Actually this is kind of a problem. His base doesn’t mind if he runs cons and scams for money. They sort of admire that kind of thing. It’s the “controlled by Putin” business that would hurt him with them, if it could be proven to their satisfaction.

    Which come to think of it, never will be. Proven. To their satisfaction, I mean.

  209. 209.

    Corner Stone

    @Julia Grey:

    It’s the “controlled by Putin” business that would hurt him with them, if it could be proven to their satisfaction.

    What would lead you to believe this? Have you seen the radical change in approval numbers for Putin among R voters?

  210. 210.

    Origuy

    @rikyrah: As I understand it, these weren’t “Confederate-era monuments”. They were erected during Jim Crow to commemorate the end of Reconstruction and the return of white supremacy.

  211. 211.

    amk

    @Julia Grey: They might be pissed off they are not part of the graft. The scum has not thrown even a bone in their direction. We will see.

  216. 216.

    Immanentize

    @clay: Thomas seems to be ‘evolving.’ He did the right thing on the Texas license plate case, now this? He did grow up in Georgia and maybe some of the shit he enabled is looking too real at this point.

  217. 217.

    clay

    @Immanentize: I know the old joke was that Thomas just did whatever Scalia did, but maybe there’s some truth to it, and Scalia’s death has allowed Thomas to reach some atypical conclusions on his own?

  218. 218.

    Immanentize

    @clay: I hope Scalia’s death freed Thomas from his chains, but I am not sure that’s the answer. Thomas hates affirmative action in employment and in all societal contexts. He hates the idea inside him that maybe he is not where he is strictly on merit….

    But maybe he is distinguishing between what he perceives as any thumb on the scale. In the North Carolina case, he is holding onto his idea that race in never a proper basis for governmental action….

    I’m still trying to figure out the Confederate flag
    Part.

  219. 219.

    El Caganer

    @Kay: Last year I retired to Bradenton, FL after about 50 years in Philadelphia, PA. A black couple who are friends of mine in Philly asked what it was like here; in turn, I asked a friend who’s lived in Sarasota for 25 years, but is also from Philly. Her reply startled me a bit: she said that in her opinion Philly was a whole lot more racist. She felt the reason was that most of the people who live here moved from other parts of the country and other parts of the world, so there was a mixture of all kinds of different cultures that didn’t have the opportunity to harden into one specific set of attitudes. She also said this was NOT typical of FL as a whole. I don’t know how true that is, but so far the people I’ve met all seem to get along – I certainly haven’t had any whites give me the old wink-and-nod-when-nobody’s-looking, which I got in Philly. Then again, Manatee County is something like 85% white.

  220. 220.

    Bishop Bag

    @Kay: Kay!!! Where do you live? I live in Bishop, CA where Hwy 6 starts in the West and then goes all the way across the country to Cape Cod!

  221. 221.

    patrick II

    @Aleta:

    That is what the republican white working class doesn’t get. When you see a ruthless acts of the powerful against foreigners, those same powerful people will be just as ruthless here at home when not constrained by law. The white working class see the oligarchs as being in the same tribe because they are also white, so they think it won’t happen to them. The Oligarchs couldn’t care less about ethnicity if it stands in the way of profit; they will ruin your company, leave you without healthcare, cut your food stamps, and let you live in a cardboard box under the bridge if it is profitable. Then, as the last profitable, soul destroying act they will sell their poor white dupes a gun and encourage them to keep the black/brown/islamic people away so they’ll stop stealing their stuff.

  222. 222.

    Julia Grey

    I can’t see Trump resigning or even being impeached, but at this point I wish he’d grow a brain and be the man that he sold himself as on the campaign.”

    …that YOU sold him as, jerkwad.

    (Why doesn’t my dictionary know the word “jerkwad” by now? Surely I’ve used it enough in the last few months.)

  223. 223.

    Julia Grey

    @Corner Stone:

    What would lead you to believe this? Have you seen the radical change in approval numbers for Putin among R voters?

    Uh, no. I just ass-umed.

    I still say a financial scandal won’t faze them. First of all, they won’t understand the details, and second, there’s that billionaire admiration thing. They all wish they could get away with some kind of get rich scheme, legal or not, and in fact a significant number probably assume they’re going to someday.

    These are basically dishonest, money-worshipping people who consider themselves incomprehensibly unremunerated for their specialness. They DESERVE to have money, so the way they get it is not any kind of moral question. These are the folks that sign up their mentally handicapped Aunt Thelma for their pyramid schemes.

  224. 224.

    sm*t cl*de

    @Fester Addams:

    Seems to me the newspapers are being a bit charitable terming this “back-channel.”

    Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

  225. 225.

    No One You Know

    @Aleta: Could God/Yahweh/Allah/Goddess love us so much to let Gaia swallow it all whole? I can’t be the only one thinking this.

  226. 226.

    No One You Know

    @Elizabelle: Oooooh. Like! Are Barbarians at the Gate and Bad Company on the list too? The first is about KKR and the second about McKinsey, IIRC.

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