January 30, 2018

These honking memos! Is your intelligence insulted enough yet?

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One memo is pure, contrived, partisan republican-written propaganda, basically a four page list of all of the lies republican defenders of Trump have been trying to insert into the national debate which they hope will discredit the FBI and the investigation of the President of the United States.

The other is a Democratic attempt to keep the discussion in the realm of reality.

Thing is, this Nunes campaign to publicize this self-generated memo only serves to deepen that impression that Carter Page (who a FISA court approved a wiretap on, and renewed it) is complicit in something Russian-related. Most people (who bother to care) aren't going to cast more suspicion on the FBI than on Russian-connected operatives like Page.

I have to stop hollering at the television every time newscasters bring up these 'memos' like they're some kind of bombshell sitting behind some fortress just waiting to explode the second they're revealed. The contents is not only old news, it's a basket of old and widely discredited lies dressed up as a legitimate investigative committee finding, all in the interest of diverting the FBI away from investigating the president and those around him (including from investigating Nunes, perhaps, as a member of Trump's transition team).

The fact that the Democratic rebuttal of the claims in the republican document was not approved for release by the republican-controlled committee makes this a partisan farce, almost identical to the last stunt with Nunes standing in front of the White House with documents they fed to him, looking even more bewildered than the rest of us looking on, trying to distract from and discredit the FBI early on in the investigation.

It was that stunt, in fact, that forced Nunes to recuse himself. Nunes breezed through the compromised House ethics committee, however, which cleared him of wrongdoing in the stunt, despite having been denied access to the underlying documents he was trying to manipulate.

Now he's back with another weak and bizarre diversion. It is absolutely infuriating listening to these media folks giving this dirt-dumb, hamhanded attempt at a smear of our intelligence agencies a whiff of credibility, but here we are, expecting us to be on the edge of our seats to read the contents of what's clearly nothing more than republican spin; most of their party complicit in obstruction of the investigation with this stunt, if you get down to the meat of the matter.

It's a dog and pony show, and it's been an uneven rollout by most of the press, who already have enough information to refute or define every stale point made in the republican document. Still, it's actually a good day for a Trump shitshow, on the day of his SOTU, with Trump and the Russia investigation front and center, thanks, almost entirely, to this simpleton's self-incriminating stunts.

January 30, 2018

The 'memo' House republicans wrote and voted to 'release' is just another step on the rake

HuffPo :

Andrew McCabe, Comey’s former deputy, stepped down Monday after weeks of pressure from Trump and Republicans. Republicans have charged that McCabe was biased against the president because his wife ran for a Virginia state Senate seat as a Democrat, but FBI documents released earlier this month indicate he followed bureau recusal rules. The day after Trump fired Comey, the president called McCabe to complain about Comey being allowed to take a government-funded plane back to Washington, NBC reported Monday. When McCabe said he wasn’t asked to authorize the flight but would have approved it, Trump told McCabe to ask his wife — who lost her race for state Senate — how it feels to be a loser, and hung up the phone, according to NBC.

The president, Republicans in Congress, and the right-wing media have spun tales of a dark conspiracy involving Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, two FBI officials who were having an affair and exchanged text messages critical of Trump and other politicians from both parties. The evidence suggests Page and Strzok were actually driven more by loyalty to the FBI than partisan political considerations.

The memo the House voted to release Monday reportedly focuses on criticizing Rod Rosenstein, a Republican Trump appointee at the Justice Department who now has responsibility over the Mueller probe. The memo, The New York Times reported, accuses Rosenstein of approving an application to surveil a former Trump campaign official last spring. Trump has long resented Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller as special counsel after Trump fired Comey. Trump reportedly considered firing Rosenstein last summer, but instead ordered Mueller’s firing — only to back away the decision after his lawyer threatened to quit.

The memo reportedly suggests that FBI agents obscured their reliance on a controversial dossier about Trump’s ties to Russia when they sought a warrant to spy on Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser. Republicans have long sought to discredit the dossier, which was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

read more: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/release-memo-trump-mueller_us_5a6fa783e4b0a52682fecdc7?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

...these are all republican talking points, most of them already thoroughly refuted, dressed up in a partisan republican-written memo as some shockingly new evidence that's begging to be made public.

Not only is it going to be a huge flop, it's going to look to most of the public like just another republican stunt to cover for Trump. House republican are going to cement their role as fellow obstructionists of justice, along with Trump, in the minds of anyone paying attention.

... and, speaking of 'paying attention,' what better backdrop could republicans have chosen to bring all this up than the eve and day of the SOTU? I'm baffled why they think having everyone talking about republicans, Trump, Page, and Russia tomorrow, with 30 million or so Americans looking on, is a winning strategy, but hitting themselves in the head is what this crop of republicans do best.

January 22, 2018

Republicans lose all the way around on this shutdown

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...their entire calculation that Democrats would be blamed for shutting down government for protecting Dreamers, or whatever, is based on their belief that the public is going to react by blaming one side or the other, and the winner runs the table.

There's a question of how much the public will really notice or care, but right now republicans are taking the most heat, because of the obvious fact that they are in charge of all three branches of government. It strains credulity to blame Dems (as republicans have) for choosing 'illegal immigration' over Americans affected by the shutdown, because people can see Trump pulling the rug from under the Dreamers, manufacturing a crisis where there was already a productive solution in place. They can see Trump immorally risking making these young folks into criminals with his reversal of DACA - children of immigrants who were promised there would be no repercussions from registering under the immigration order.

People can see Trump and the republican party arbitrarily refusing to extend health benefits to children under CHIP. They can see republicans refusing to put the extension to a vote - that is until it was convenient to use children's health as a bargaining chip in their cynical scheme to short-fund the government with these costly continuing resolutions.

Thing is, republicans need government to open, more than Democrats. There's little reason for Democrats to grease the skids for republicans to further tear away at the benefits and protections the middle-class and working poor rely on to survive. There's no reason to open the door to more attempts to eviscerate health benefits, or stand aside so republicans can further loot the treasury for their wealthy friends - no reason to remove obstacles to business as usual for republicans if they're not willing to include Democrats in the decision-making process, and willing to allow votes on Democratic amendments.

If republicans aren't willing to, at least, keep their promises to Dreamers and children's health, there's no reason at all for Democrats to budge. The burden of responsibility for keeping government running in the interest of the American people is on the party in power, no matter who republicans blame for their ineptness and incompetence in allowing this shutdown to come to pass.

It won't be long before the public remembers how negligent this republican Congress and their president have been in producing and delivering anything of substance or value. If they think about it long enough they're going to realize these republicans haven't succeeded in anything more than feathering their own wealthy nests; republicans throughout government encouraged in their graft by the grifter-in-chief whose family flaunts their limitless wealth in front of our struggling workers - much of that wealth enhanced by exploiting and trading on their positions in our government.

Democrats have very little to lose by holding firm as the republican party soaks in this hot water they've drawn for themselves. Their dystopian fantasy ends here. They've thrown themselves, headlong, into this boiling kettle, curiously demanding that Democrats stop throwing more logs onto the fire. Time to watch them burn.

January 21, 2018

Republican Party has become the Klan

...every action is anti-women, anti-black, anti-immigrant, anti-minority.

The republican party is a good-old boys club which not only resembles the Klan, it's actually gone full-on racist, advancing policies and practices which are, essentially, revived and expanded Jim Crow with brown-skin immigrants targeted out of opportunity, residence, security, citizenship, and well-being.

Trump is the defacto Klan leader with republicans around the nation comprising a network of racism and discrimination, adopting all of the divisive rhetoric and demagoguery of the past under his umbrella of bigotry and hate.

This generation's Klan, unlike their forefathers, are on their own insular islands projecting all of their bigotry on a rapidly diversifying society. They're surrounded, and that may be the thing which makes them all the more insidious and malignant.

It's funny, here's a sizable swipe of America racing headlong into a storm of resistance which would, if successful, ensure these racist dinosaurs' descent into obscurity - a fate the Klan has been trying to engineer for women and minorities for centuries.

The Grand Wizard in the White House and his minions are under siege. Starving them out and banishing them from government and society is our moral and material imperative.

January 19, 2018

This poll is heartbreaking, says so much about the state of our nation

CBS This Morning @CBSThisMorning Jan 18

A new @CBSNews poll shows most Americans would let young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children stay in the U.S. http://cbsn.ws/2ri3fJY




For me, this poll is a no-brainer. Most Americans are compassionate and caring enough to understand that children should not be separated from their families and sent to countries many have never known; no roots, nowhere to live, no future. We are not as cruel and heartless a nation as Trump and most republicans who are threatening these children.

But we're locked in a dilemma over a president and party who are determined to ignore the wishes of the vast majority of the nation to do the bidding of an ignorant and selfish few.

It's heartbreaking to watch these assaults by the federal government on people living and working here, and to be unable to just end the nightmare. I look at our nation through the eyes and hearts of those who are struggling to survive and prosper. It's painful to watch my own government be so deliberately hurtful to so many good people.

We are living under an increasingly autocratic Executive branch, aided and supported in that tyranny by the overwhelming majority of republican legislators. The will of the people has been abandoned for the narrow self-interest of a fraction of our population.

Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than watching our government rounding up men, women, and children - jailing them and railroading them out of the country. The land of the free!

Home of the brave president whose fear and hatred is projected on the nation weekly with unbridled slurs and assaults on people of color, here at home, and around the globe. His weakness is our national shame.

January 15, 2018

Maya Angelou, the Dalai Lama & Stevie Wonder recite "I have a dream

BBC News (World) ‏@BBCWorld 1h
Maya Angelou, the Dalai Lama & Stevie Wonder recite "I have a dream" http://bbc.in/17latYY #MLK pic.twitter.com/mlte7EeSQ4



To mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech, BBC Radio 4 asked notable figures to record a recital of the celebrated text.

Listen to it in full, and see striking images from a period of American history which became a tipping point for social change.

Listen to interviews with the I Have a Dream programme contributors. Below is a full list of the contributors, in addition to Dr Martin Luther King Jr:


Congressman John Lewis: last surviving member of the big six leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement, who spoke at the March on Washington on 28 August 1963; Dr Maya Angelou: American author and poet, Northern coordinator for Dr King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Professor Muhammad Yunus: Nobel peace laureate, and Bangladeshi microcredit economist; Doreen Lawrence: soon to become Baroness Lawrence, the mother of murdered British teenager Stephen Lawrence; Wei Jingsheng: Chinese human rights and democracy campaigner, imprisoned for more than 18 years; Mary Robinson: former UN high commissioner for human rights and the first female president of Ireland; John Hume: awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Martin Luther King Award and jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to the peace process in Northern Ireland; His Holiness the Dalai Lama: Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader; Albie Sachs: anti-apartheid campaigner, appointed by Nelson Mandela to serve as a judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa; President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia: first female head of state in Africa, Nobel peace laureate and campaigner for women's rights; Raja Shehadeh: Palestinian lawyer, novelist and political activist; Ndileka Mandela: first granddaughter of Nelson Mandela, reading on his behalf; Ariel Dorfman: Chilean-American novelist, playwright, journalist and human rights activist; David Grossman: Israeli author and peace campaigner; Dr Shirin Ebadi: human rights lawyer, one of Iran's first female judges, first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize; Malala Yousafzai: Sixteen-year-old student and education activist from Swat in Pakistan, shot by the Taliban for going to school; Satish Kumar: Indian peace campaigner and environmentalist; Maestro Jose Antonio Abreu: Venezuelan economist, educator and musician, founder of the El Sistema project which harnesses classical music to the cause of social justice; Joan Baez: American songwriter, musician and activist who performed at the 1963 March on Washington; Stevie Wonder: American musician, singer and songwriter, campaigned for Martin Luther King's birthday to become a national US holiday.


The speech in full - text

January 9, 2018

Good God, They're Starting Talk About 'Preparedness' for Nuclear War

Carter Gaddis‏ @DadScribe
How is THIS abomination not @theonion? Good God, @CDCgov. Do you think it's 1958? HOW IS THIS A REAL THING IN 2018? https://www.cdc.gov/cdcgrandrounds/archives/2018/January2018.htm

CDC
Public Health Response to a Nuclear Detonation
January 16, 2018 at 1:00 p.m. (ET)

While a nuclear detonation is unlikely, it would have devastating results and there would be limited time to take critical protection steps. Despite the fear surrounding such an event, planning and preparation can lessen deaths and illness. For instance, most people don’t realize that sheltering in place for at least 24 hours is crucial to saving lives and reducing exposure to radiation. While federal, state, and local agencies will lead the immediate response efforts, public health will play a key role in responding.

Join us for this session of Grand Rounds to learn what public health programs have done on a federal, state, and local level to prepare for a nuclear detonation. Learn how planning and preparation efforts for a nuclear detonation are similar and different from other emergency response planning efforts.

CDC’s Public Health Grand Rounds Presents:

“Public Health Response to a Nuclear Detonation”
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (ET)
Global Communications Center (Building 19)
Alexander D. Langmuir Auditorium
Roybal Campus

https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/950744408537706496

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/950764541977288705