Comments on: Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation…and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 22 Jul 2017 02:46:51 +0000

Nice, liked the quote enough I wanted to see it on the page. (For those successfully attracted by the text, see meme above).

We don’t appreciate the good things until they’re gone, and our free press has been battered and starved to within an inch of its life. I agree it’s a matter of patriotism to wake up fast and put real support behind the press. My news palette includes NYT and Wapo and The Guardian, Politico and The Hill, HuffPo…a liberal core, but I’m pushing myself to graze around for new sources constantly, exploring new sites I find via links, etc. Some sources come and go; just added the the NY Daily News for a short tour of duty, for something off the elitist beaten path.

The abuse of the free press is deliberate, as we all know, designed to unmoor voters from reality and make them easy marks for anti-democracy snake oil; one of the pillars of the anti-democracy movement. Seriously deliberate: Just finished “Democracy in Chains” by Nancy MacLean, the story of James Magill Buchanan, who was, it turns out, Charles Koch’s first and most serious economist-crush. More after I absorb it and fit it into my “Story of The Conservative Movement”–I feel like one of the blind guys feeling up the elephant, painstakingly fleshing out the picture of the beast, one fragment at a time. As MacLean documents, the obscurity itself is deliberate, because they know full well that most Americans would be repulsed by their “Public Choice” economics, which is the formal argument that democracy is the enemy of capitalism, and must be restrained before it’s too late. These are the people trying to orwell the language to define “freedom” as strictly economic freedom, all other freedom be damned.

What lovely people they are.

By: BuckGalaxy

BuckGalaxy — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 06:42:05 +0000

The Washington Post is essential reading. It’s my first stop online every day. That said, it’s hard to argue that the NYT is not the best news organization in the country. Thousands of investigative journalists who do amazing in-depth reporting on wide ranging issues. The Hill is a good place to get breaking political news. Politico is generally good information. I really enjoy Vox.com as well.

I agree it is a matter of patriotism to support the free press.

By: RL

RL — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 03:19:53 +0000

Trump legal team spokesman resigns

The chief spokesman for President Trump’s personal legal team, Mark Corallo, has resigned. According to a new report by The Washington Post, Corallo resigned Thursday for reasons not immediately made known. Politico reported Thursday that his resignation was due to growing frustration with operation and warring factions, as well as concerns over whether he was being told the truth. Corallo, a veteran GOP operative, was working on the White House defense against special counsel Robert Meuller's probe into Russian election interference in the 2016 election. According to reports, Corallo had never met Trump or Trump's attorney Marc Kasowitz before taking the job defending the president.

By: RL

RL — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 03:11:35 +0000

Naaah

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 02:41:03 +0000

Once again all evidence points to Trump being a very stupid man. Most rich people understand that the price of running for public office is scrutiny, the more intense the higher the office, and most stay away, preferring to skulk in the shadows and pull the levers (e.g. Koch network).

He can’t bluster his way out of it. There’s a logical progression from the question of collusion to the question of undue influence, and Trump’s large-scale entanglements with Russia compel Mueller to investigate.

Journalists have made casual reference to comparing the sale price of real estate Trump and family sold to Russian oligarchs, against fair market value. To put it bluntly, they’re dancing around the possibility of money laundering, on a grand scale that, AFAIK, can only be accomplished with real estate transactions. Transactions whose existence would leave the participants open to blackmail. Hell yes Mueller will investigate if the trail takes him into apex corruption like that. Potential Russian leverage over Trump is an effin national security matter.

Trump being a Dunning-Krueger-afflicted political neophyte, I wonder: Did he not think to run opposition research on himself?

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 02:25:05 +0000

Funny story: I’m fighting with them to take my money. They have two tiers, and the digital-only tier requires you to use the crappy “blue” Android app, the one styled like a magazine, that requires you to swipe left one article at a time to read the paper, like some kind of Tinder for news. Hate it, wouldn’t use it even when I got six months free through Prime. The “premium” tier, with a useless dead-tree edition, gets the “grey” app that resembles a newspaper front page, with all its virtues honed over centuries of usage, like random access and executive summaries. But nooooooo, they insist I use the crap app.

I’ve exchanged several emails with them, pointing out the absurdity of the policy, practically begging them to take my money, to no avail. They’re nuts.

Too bad. I decided a while back I had a duty to subscribe (actually pay for) real journalism; subscribed to the Guardian, and I’ve been shopping for a second. Flirted with the idea of the NYT for a while, but nah, too neoliberal/corporatist/apologist. And you know, I keep coming back to the Washington Post. I wish I could subscribe.

By: RL

RL — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 02:09:57 +0000

https://www.habitablezone.com/2017/03/12/just-one-little-factoid-taken-in-isolation/ We are at month 6 and he is looking into pardoning himself and his 'family'... He has divulged secrets to the Russians, while bragging to them about how he fired Comey in order to obstruct justice. The conflicts of interest in this administration are many orders of magnitude worse than we have ever seen... Jared Kushner's White House connection still being used to lure Chinese investors Members of this administration have repeatedly lied about their ties to Russia to the public, congress, and on their security forms... Trump uses the office to increase his profits... MOST of us saw this coming- only a minority was stupid enough to believe that electing this man was anything but insane... Congratulations- once again you chose to be on the wrong side of history.