Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

I mean I'm not really sure what else has to be said here, but the notion of a Trump regime quid pro quo with Russia is looking very, very damning right about now.

A week before Michael T. Flynn resigned as national security adviser, a sealed proposal was hand-delivered to his office, outlining a way for President Trump to lift sanctions against Russia.

Mr. Flynn is gone, having been caught lying about his own discussion of sanctions with the Russian ambassador. But the proposal, a peace plan for Ukraine and Russia, remains, along with those pushing it: Michael D. Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer, who delivered the document; Felix H. Sater, a business associate who helped Mr. Trump scout deals in Russia; and a Ukrainian lawmaker trying to rise in a political opposition movement shaped in part by Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul D. Manafort.

At a time when Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia, and the people connected to him, are under heightened scrutiny — with investigations by American intelligence agencies, the F.B.I. and Congress — some of his associates remain willing and eager to wade into Russia-related efforts behind the scenes.

Mr. Trump has confounded Democrats and Republicans alike with his repeated praise for the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, and his desire to forge an American-Russian alliance. While there is nothing illegal about such unofficial efforts, a proposal that seems to tip toward Russian interests may set off alarms.

It's hard to ignore the stench of corruption here, given what else we know about Russia and its interference in US elections in favor of Trump. And the Ukraine story only gets worse.

The amateur diplomats say their goal is simply to help settle a grueling, three-year conflict that has cost 10,000 lives. “Who doesn’t want to help bring about peace?” Mr. Cohen asked.

But the proposal contains more than just a peace plan. Andrii V. Artemenko, the Ukrainian lawmaker, who sees himself as a Trump-style leader of a future Ukraine, claims to have evidence — “names of companies, wire transfers” — showing corruption by the Ukrainian president, Petro O. Poroshenko, that could help oust him. And Mr. Artemenko said he had received encouragement for his plans from top aides to Mr. Putin.

“A lot of people will call me a Russian agent, a U.S. agent, a C.I.A. agent,” Mr. Artemenko said. “But how can you find a good solution between our countries if we do not talk?”

Mr. Cohen and Mr. Sater said they had not spoken to Mr. Trump about the proposal, and have no experience in foreign policy. Mr. Cohen is one of several Trump associates under scrutiny in an F.B.I. counterintelligence examination of links with Russia, according to law enforcement officials; he has denied any illicit connections.

The two others involved in the effort have somewhat questionable pasts: Mr. Sater, 50, a Russian-American, pleaded guilty to a role in a stock manipulation scheme decades ago that involved the Mafia. Mr. Artemenko spent two and a half years in jail in Kiev in the early 2000s on embezzlement charges, later dropped, which he said had been politically motivated.

This story is rotten to its core, and it keeps coming back to Trump and his deals with the Russians.  They have serious leverage over him and have used that leverage at every stage of Trump's campaign. They continue to exercise it now.  Trump has surrounded himself with people tied to Putin.  At this point the corruption is getting too bad to ignore.

We'll see if anyone acts.

One Night In Sweden Makes An Orange Man Stupid

Attacks are made up but the cost ain't free.

You'll find the fake news and the orange man looped it
And if you're lucky you're an okay Swede,
I can feel a story sliding up to me.

Swedes reacted with confusion, anger and ridicule on Sunday to a vague remark by President Trump that suggested that something terrible had occurred in their country.

During a campaign-style rally on Saturday in Florida, Mr. Trump issued a sharp if discursive attack on refugee policies in Europe, ticking off a list of places that have been hit by terrorists.

“You look at what’s happening,” he told his supporters. “We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?”

Not the Swedes.

Nothing particularly nefarious happened in Sweden on Friday — or Saturday, for that matter — and Swedes were left baffled.

“Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound,” Carl Bildt, a former prime minister and foreign minister, wrote on Twitter.

Mr. Trump did not state, per se, that a terrorist attack had taken place in Sweden.

But the context of his remarks — he mentioned Sweden right after he chastised Germany, a destination for refugees and asylum seekers fleeing war and deprivation — suggested that he thought it might have.

“Sweden,” he said. “They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what’s happening in Brussels. You look at what’s happening all over the world. Take a look at Nice. Take a look at Paris. We’ve allowed thousands and thousands of people into our country and there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing. So we’re going to keep our country safe.”

Contrary to Mr. Trump’s allegations, nearly all of the men involved in terrorist assaults in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, in Brussels on March 22 last year, and in Nice, France, on July 14, were citizens of France or Belgium.

As the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet noted, Twitter users were quick to ridicule Mr. Trump’s remark, with joking references to the Swedish Chef, the “Muppets” character; Swedish meatballs; and Ikea, the furniture giant.

And so Trump embarrasses the country internationally yet again, because he has the ignorance of Dubya and none of the self-control.  It's amazing what this man doesn't know and doesn't choose to learn, and he's surrounded himself with people just as ignorant and incurious.

But hey, this is who we elected: a man with no public office experience whatsoever, and we thought it would be a good idea somehow.  Well, I take that back: more than 70 million of us though it was an abysmal idea, but apparently that wasn't enough.

Sunday Long Read: The Lost Treasures Of Princess Pamela

This week's Sunday Long Read comes from Mayukh Sen at Food52, the story of Princess Pamela and her tiny apartment soul food restaurant in Manhattan in the late 60's and 70's, how she became a word-of-mouth legend, and how she vanished into that legend.  Decades later her recipes are being republished in their full glory.

Princess Pamela didn’t let just anyone into her restaurant. She ran her Little Kitchen out of her railroad apartment in an Alphabet City walkup, one floor above a Chinese takeout joint with an eleven-fingered delivery boy.

This was the Manhattan of 1965. Would-be patrons would buzz apartment 2A and Princess Pamela, who claimed her real name was Pamela Strobel, would creak the door open, revealing little more than her eyes. She would accost her prospective clientele with questions: Who were they? Were they from the South, like she was? Sometimes, she didn’t have to ask; she just had a feeling about them the minute she saw their face.

If she knew you, though, chances were you’d be able to shout her name from the ground outside and she’d just throw a key down. And getting in was like scoring drugs. The joint was far from spacious; it was no bigger than 120 square feet, and capacity didn’t exceed 15. But she treated it like her hamlet. Inside were corrugated ceilings, black fridges, checked shamrock green tablecloths, Jewish memorial candles, and derelict chairs donated by do-gooders she knew in the neighborhood. Over time, the restaurant’s cerulean walls would be decorated with the portraits of those who’d passed through, from Gloria Steinem to the Rothschilds, Ringo Starr to Diana Ross.

Once you sat down, Ada Spivey, the Little Kitchen’s meek and spindly cook, would come take your order before retreating to the backroom to make some dishes, likely sweet potato and collards. The menu fluctuated according to Princess Pamela’s mood. You weren’t a customer at her restaurant; you were a guest in her home. She certainly expected you to behave as such. If you went up to use the bathroom without asking, she’d walk right into the stall and drag your ass out. Did you think the chairs were wobbly? If you complained, Princess Pamela, firm and irate, would hiss to Ada, instructing her to feed you and get you out immediately. If you gave Princess Pamela lip, she’d banish you entirely.

If you stayed deep into the night, she’d lock the door and turn away anyone else who buzzed in, telling them that the restaurant was closed. She’d exit to a back room and emerge wearing a red wig and tight, gold lamé dress. The lights would dim, and this cramped room would turn into a jazz salon. Surrounded by a group of male percussionists, including her sometime lover Bobby Vidal, Princess Pamela would sing with a voice that sounded like a nightcap.

Whatever food the restaurant did serve didn’t suggest the encyclopedic breadth of her 1969 cookbook. Princess Pamela’s Soul Food Cookbook, originally published by Signet Books before falling out of print for 45 years, was a tome of 147 recipes sourced from the life she’d led for four decades. She was a mettled, plucky girl from the South Carolina town of Spartanburg who was orphaned at 10, left home on her own when she was 13, and worked in restaurants until she reached New York in her early 20s, when she decided to start a business of her own.

The book’s recipes are tenaciously, unrepentantly Southern. It's a compendium of pork spoon bread and peanut butter biscuits, ham hocks and oxtail ragus, catfish stews and giblet gravies, pickled pig’s feet and roast opossum. For decades, though, the only prints of Princess Pamela’s Soul Food Cookbook were pumiced paperbacks that would dissolve in your hands.

It has taken nearly half a century for this to be rectified. Next week, Rizzoli is set to release a handsome hardcover reissue of the book. The rehabilitation effort has been spearheaded by Matt and Ted Lee, two siblings better known as the proprietors of the Lee Bros. They first encountered her cookbook in 2004, when they bought it from a used bookstore. The Lees fell in love with the book, considering it a manuscript of integrity and poetry.

And anyone who says food cannot be art or history or culture, well you've never had collard greens and chitlins.  More power to Princess Pamela to see her work endure for a new generation.

Maybe If We Were Nicer To The People Okay With Racism

That's the argument that NY Times Sunday columnist Sabrina Tavernise is making.  Once again Republicans are pretty upset that despite total control of the government, that liberalism still exists and that mean ol' those people are still trying to make them feel bad for electing Trump.

Jeffrey Medford, a small-business owner in South Carolina, voted reluctantly for Donald Trump. As a conservative, he felt the need to choose the Republican. But some things are making him feel uncomfortable — parts of Mr. Trump’s travel ban, for example, and the recurring theme of his apparent affinity for Russia.

Mr. Medford should be a natural ally for liberals trying to convince the country that Mr. Trump was a bad choice. But it is not working out that way. Every time Mr. Medford dips into the political debate — either with strangers on Facebook or friends in New York and Los Angeles — he comes away feeling battered by contempt and an attitude of moral superiority.

“We’re backed into a corner,” said Mr. Medford, 46, whose business teaches people to be filmmakers. “There are at least some things about Trump I find to be defensible. But they are saying: ‘Agree with us 100 percent or you are morally bankrupt. You’re an idiot if you support any part of Trump.’ ”

He added: “I didn’t choose a side. They put me on one.”

Liberals may feel energized by a surge in political activism, and a unified stance against a president they see as irresponsible and even dangerous. But that momentum is provoking an equal and opposite reaction on the right. In recent interviews, conservative voters said they felt assaulted by what they said was a kind of moral Bolshevism — the belief that the liberal vision for the country was the only right one. Disagreeing meant being publicly shamed.

Protests and righteous indignation on social media and in Hollywood may seem to liberals to be about policy and persuasion. But moderate conservatives say they are having the opposite effect, chipping away at their middle ground and pushing them closer to Mr. Trump.

“The name calling from the left is crazy,” said Bryce Youngquist, 34, who works in sales for a tech start-up in Mountain View, Calif., a liberal enclave where admitting you voted for Mr. Trump is a little like saying in the 1950s that you were gay. “They are complaining that Trump calls people names, but they turned into some mean people.”

Mr. Youngquist stayed in the closet for months about his support for Mr. Trump. He did not put a bumper sticker on his car, for fear it would be keyed. The only place he felt comfortable wearing his Make America Great Again hat was on a vacation in China. Even dating became difficult. Many people on Tinder have a warning on their profile: “Trump supporters swipe left” — meaning, get lost.

He came out a few days before the election. On election night, a friend posted on Facebook, “You are a disgusting human being.”

“They were making me want to support him more with how irrational they were being,” Mr. Youngquist said.

Conservatives have gotten vicious, too, sometimes with Mr. Trump’s encouragement. But if political action is meant to persuade people that Mr. Trump is bad for the country, then people on the fence would seem a logical place to start. Yet many seemingly persuadable conservatives say that liberals are burning bridges rather than building them.

So, I guess I should shut the blog down or something, because we made "moderate Trump voters" feel bad and they would totally vote for Democrats if we were much nicer about having our rights stripped, our families split up, our neighborhoods dismantled, our drinking water polluted, our places of worship damaged, our lives taken by police and our bodies monitored.

But guys named Bryce can't wear their MAGA hats, so I guess we got what we deserved.  Don't worry Bryce, there will be several fewer million liberals who will be allowed to vote in 2020, so keep on being you. 

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

The FBI has apparently launched not one, not two, but three separate investigations into Russian interference in November's election.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is pursuing at least three separate probes relating to alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential elections, according to five current and former government officials with direct knowledge of the situation.

While the fact that the FBI is investigating had been reported previously by the New York Times and other media, these officials shed new light on both the precise number of inquires and their focus.

The FBI's Pittsburgh field office, which runs many cyber security investigations, is trying to identify the people behind breaches of the Democratic National Committee's computer systems, the officials said. Those breaches, in 2015 and the first half of 2016, exposed the internal communications of party officials as the Democratic nominating convention got underway and helped undermine support for Hillary Clinton.

The Pittsburgh case has progressed furthest, but Justice Department officials in Washington believe there is not enough clear evidence yet for an indictment, two of the sources said.

Meanwhile the bureau’s San Francisco office is trying to identify the people who called themselves “Guccifer 2” and posted emails stolen from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s account, the sources said. Those emails contained details about fundraising by the Clinton Foundation and other topics.

Beyond the two FBI field offices, FBI counterintelligence agents based in Washington are pursuing leads from informants and foreign communications intercepts, two of the people said.

This counterintelligence inquiry includes but is not limited to examination of financial transactions by Russian individuals and companies who are believed to have links to Trump associates. The transactions under scrutiny involve investments by Russians in overseas entities that appear to have been undertaken through middlemen and front companies, two people briefed on the probe said.

I'm betting very strongly this is directly related to FBI Director Comey's meeting with Senate Intelligence Committee members Friday afternoon.

Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, along with ex-officio member and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, huddled for a total of more than two hours on Friday with Comey.The FBI director’s visit was not announced publicly, and it’s possible members of the Capitol Hill press corps only found out because he was spotted in the hallways and entered a secure room used for intelligence briefings.

But leaving that secure room in the Capitol Visitor Center, senators declined to even confirm the presence of the FBI director, much less the substance of the meeting. Those who did talk generally only gave “no comments” or referred questions to Intelligence Chairman Richard M. Burr and ranking member Mark Warner.

Both Burr and Warner proved just as loquacious.

“I think we made our non-statement statement,” Warner told reporters after repeated questions about the briefing.

“I won’t talk about it at all,” said Burr.

Whatever was in that Friday briefing has Senate Republicans shaken badly.  No wonder Trump was holding a campaign rally this weekend in Florida.

The Free Press Is Now The Enemy

Less than a month in, and the Trump regime is already declaring the press to be an Enemy of the People.

President Trump further escalated his attacks on the news media Friday afternoon when he tweeted that outlets such as the New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN are not his enemy but “the enemy of the American People.”

Although Trump has long colorfully criticized news coverage and sparred with reporters who question him, he had not yet labeled the fourth estate as being an enemy of the country. On the campaign trail, some of Trump’s supporters would heckle and threaten reporters who covered his rallies, and his tweet Friday came 24 hours before his first political rally as president.

It took the president two tries to properly post his message, which came soon after he arrived at his luxury oceanfront estate for the weekend. The first tweet, which was quickly deleted, contained a number of extra spaces and listed the Times, CNN and NBC, ending with this conclusion: “SICK!” The second tweet added ABC and CBS to the list, while removing “SICK!” Both tweets labeled those organizations as being “the FAKE NEWS media.”

The media has been credited with breaking stories about Trump’s administration that have prompted action this week, including the resignation of his national security adviser Monday and his nominee for labor secretary withdrawing from consideration Wednesday. Meanwhile, the president has accused the press of distorting facts and berated it for not painting a rosy portrait of the country under his leadership. At a news conference at the White House on Thursday, Trump uttered the words “fake news” seven times.

“Much of the media in Washington, D.C. — along with New York, Los Angeles, in particular — speaks not for the people but for the special interests and for those profiting off a very, very obviously broken system,” Trump said early in the news conference, which lasted over an hour and 15 minutes. “The press has become so dishonest that if we don’t talk about, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. Tremendous disservice. We have to talk to find out what’s going on, because the press honestly is out of control. The level of dishonesty is out of control.”

And Trump is mobilizing support to attack the press, in order to exterminate it.

Thursday night, the Republican Party and Trump’s campaign websites posted a 25-question “Mainstream Media Accountability Survey.” The survey formalized Trump’s attacks and his insinuation that media outlets are working against the American people. It’s unclear what, if anything, the data will be used for, and participants are required to give their name, email address and Zip code.

The first question asks: “Do you believe that the mainstream media has reported unfairly on our movement?” It then asks whether the survey-taker believes that MSNBC, CNN or Fox News “report fairly on Trump’s presidency,” allowing for answers of “yes,” “no” or “no opinion.” Those surveyed are also asked their primary source of news, with options limited to those three cable networks, along with “local news.” There is no mention of specific newspapers, websites, magazines or non-cable networks.

Other questions ask whether the survey-takers think the media does “due diligence fact-checking before publishing stories on the Trump administration,” whether it fairly reported on the rollout of Trump’s travel ban, whether “political correctness has created biased news coverage on both illegal immigration and radical Islamic terrorism” and whether the media has been “far too quick to spread false stories about our movement.” Participants can also indicate which issues the media does “the worst job of representing Republicans” on, with the option to pick as many topics as they like.

The final question: “Do you believe that our Party should spend more time and resources holding the mainstream media accountable?”

The social-media ads driving people to the survey were paid for by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising committee that splits its proceeds between Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee. Since Trump’s victory, the fundraising committee has continued to pepper supporters with appeals for money, helping keep a steady stream of contributions flowing to the party and Trump’s campaign. By the end of December, Trump had already socked away $7 million into his campaign account, money that officials said they are stockpiling for his 2020 reelection effort.

This is what dictators and tyrants do: declare any outlets of dissent to be enemies of the state.

The next step is the incarceration or murder of journalists.  That I fear is coming a lot sooner than people think.

Meet The Corruption Club

Boy it's a good thing we didn't elect that horrible Clinton woman, otherwise we might have gotten a president that freely sells access to the White House.

President Donald Trump, living alone inside the White House, often hungers for friendly interaction as he adjusts to the difficult work of governance. At his clubs, he finds what’s missing.

That showed last November at a cocktail and dinner reception celebrating longtime members of his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club. Deep into the process of meeting potential Cabinet nominees, the president-elect invited partygoers to stop by the next day to join the excitement.

“We’re doing a lot of interviews tomorrow — generals, dictators, we have everything,” Trump told the crowd, according to an audio tape of his closed-press remarks obtained by POLITICO from a source in the room. “You may wanna come around. It’ll be fun. We’re really working tomorrow. We have meetings every 15, 20 minutes with different people that will form our government."

"We’re going to be interviewing everybody — Treasury, we’re going to be interviewing Secretary of State,” he continued. “We have everybody coming in — if you want to come around, it’s going to be unbelievable….so you might want to come along.”

As he prepares to spend the third straight weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, the tape provides a window into how Trump conducts himself away from the prying press and among the loyal faces of his club.

The special people who can afford access...and the rest of the suckers.  That's all of America now.

Guess which category you fall into?

Congressman Crackpot

I'm sorely disappointed in my Representative, Republican Thomas Massie.  He's gone from a mostly harmless crank to a growing national embarrassment, and it's time for him to be removed from office in 2018.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie unleashed some theories about Russia, dark forces and President Trump that left CNN anchor Kate Bolduan stunned.

Northern Kentucky's congressman said he sees dark and powerful forces in the military and intelligence community, which he called the "deep state," pushing Trump into a war with Russia.

In the interview on CNN on Friday, Bolduan seemed at a loss for words.

Then, at the end, Massie, a Lewis County Republican, suggested President Barack Obama covered up Saudia Arabia's involvement in 9/11.

"I'm concerned that it's an effort on those who want a provocation with Russia or other countries to sort of push the president in the direction," Massie said in the interview. "So I don't think it's Trump vs. Obama. I think it's really the deep state vs. the president, the duly elected president."

Bolduan asked Massie to clarify whether he thinks there's a concerted effort to provoke Russia. Massie said it's the same military industrial complex that pressured Obama to get involved in Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

"I think he got pulled by the military-industrial complex and the intelligence community into these positions, he even helped cover up Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11," Massie said.

Massie is lost in the hall of mirrors that is tinfoil Infowars land, full of juicy conspiracy theories and calls to get rid of entire government agencies.  What he's not doing is his job of representing the people of KY-4, and he's a laughingstock on national television.

Actually I take that back.  He really does represent the people of KY-4, because they're uninformed crackpots too.

Creationist and Christian fundamentalist Ken Ham believes that in ancient times humans and dinosaurs co-existed with a race of giants and they all did battle with each other in gladiator-style combat.

Huffington Post’s Ed Mazza said Friday that Ham tweeted an image of a new diorama in Kentucky’s “Ark Encounter” theme park that features humans, giants and dinosaurs battling to the death in a Roman-style arena.

We're already a national joke here in NKY.  Why would our Representative not be a nutjob?

Last Call For Obama Makes The Grade

Now out of office, Barack Obama can officially be ranked by C-SPAN's tabulation by presidential historians, and the man from Hawaii ends up in the 12 spot, maybe not Mount Rushmore territory, but certainly one of the better chief executives we've had.

Former President Barack Obama was ranked 12th best among 43 former presidents in in C-SPAN’s third-ever survey of dozens of presidential historians.

The network asked 91 presidential historians to rank every former president on 10 leadership attributes. C-SPAN also performed the survey in 2000 and 2009. 

Obama ranked favorably compared to his immediate predecessors: George W. Bush ranked at No. 33 (up from 36 in 2009), George H.W. Bush was No. 20 (down from 18), and Bill Clinton held steady at No. 15. 

Ronald Reagan was judged the ninth best president of all time, up from No. 10 in 2009.
In a press release accompanying the results, historian Richard Norton Smith, an academic adviser for the project, noted that five of the top 10 judged presidents in the American pantheon served between 1933 and 1969. 

“It reinforces Franklin Roosevelt's claim to be not only the first modern president but the man who, in reinventing the office, also established the criteria by which we judge our leaders,” he said.

The full list:

So yeah, for those of you playing at home, Dubya moved up a few notches into "C-plus Augustus" territory, and James "Oops I accidentally The Civil War" Buchanan still sets the nadir for the office. Reagan, still silly overrated, and Big Dog's still hanging at 15. Jimmy Carter is in the middle of the pack at 26, and Poppy Bush rounds out the top 20.

One has to wonder where The Donald will end up on this list.  I'm betting south of Hoover.

A DREAM Deferred

Meanwhile, the Trump regime's wacky antics are providing plenty of cover for the rest of the GOP to start denying rights to people as the regime plans to gear up for mass deportations, and soon.  Of course, part of that means excluding Democrats from knowing what's going on.

Two members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) were asked to leave a meeting between lawmakers and the country's top immigration enforcement official Thursday. 

Reps. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) and Norma Torres (D-Calif.) were asked to leave the room, while several other members of the CHC were not allowed into the meeting with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting Director Tom Homan. 

The meeting was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but ICE canceled, saying too many attendants had signed up. ICE then coordinated with House leadership, setting up a bipartisan meeting with a limited guest list. 

Several Democrats, including House and CHC leadership, did attend the meeting.
Gutiérrez was the first to be asked to leave. Outside the room, he met Reps. Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.) and Juan Vargas (D-Calif.), who had not been allowed in. 

"I was expecting to get let in. We're the ones who were asking for this meeting, now we've been barred from the meeting," said Vargas. "I want to know what they're doing, and now we've been barred from this meeting that we called for."

Vargas, a former member of the Jesuit order, then led a prayer with Gutiérrez and Napolitano. Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.) arrived and joined the prayer circle. 

Gutiérrez said Speaker Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) spokeswoman had asked him to leave the room. Ryan was not at the meeting. 

"It was the Speaker's staff that came to me, and I know her very, very well, and she said she was speaking on behalf of the Speaker, that there were a limited number of seats," Gutiérrez said.

Of course, only Democrats were kicked out of the meeting, and they all happened to be members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, but that was the whole point. So what was so bad that Democrats had to be thrown out of a meeting with ICE?

Like I keep saying, those ICE privately-run detention facilities won't make any money unless they're filled with deportees.  The job of filling them will get underway very shortly.

BREAKING: Trump administration considers mobilizing as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants.

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 17, 2017

This is America now, about to have a deportation force of 100,000.  The great purge begins soon.

Better have your papers.

A draft memo obtained by The Associated Press outlines a Trump administration proposal under consideration to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants. Millions of those who would be affected in 11 states live nowhere near the Mexico border. 

The 11-page document calls for the unprecedented militarization of immigration enforcement as far north as Portland, Oregon, and as far east as New Orleans, Louisiana. If the proposal is implemented, governors in the affected states would have final approval on whether troops under their control participate.

Hell of a Friday news dump, huh. Fear will keep the undocumented in line.  Fear of this deportation army trial balloon.

But He Hires The Best People

Trump hires the best people, folks. The best!

Unfortunately it doesn't look like he vets those people.

Several White House staffers were dismissed Thursday morning after failing FBI background checks, according to sources familiar with the matter. 

Some of the aides were "walked out of the building by security" on Wednesday after not passing the SF86, a Questionnaire for National Security Positions for security clearance. 

Among those who won't be working at the White House was President Donald Trump’s director of scheduling, Caroline Wiles, the daughter of Susan Wiles, Trump’s Florida campaign director and former chief of staff to Governor Rick Scott. Wiles, who resigned Friday before the background check was completed, was appointed deputy assistant secretary before the inauguration in January. Two sources close to Wiles said she will get another job in Treasury. 

She's among others who failed to pass the intensive background check, which includes questions on the applicant's credit score, substance use and other personal subjects.

These are people who can't pass the most basic security clearance background checks.  One of them would have been the person making Trump's daily schedule.

This is the most incompetent group of idiots in White House history.

StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime will be rolling out Crossroads Media founder Mike Dubke as White House Communications Director, possibly as early as today.
• Vice President Mike Pence will head to Germany for a European security conference this weekend and to assure nervous EU leaders that the US is still committed to NATO.
• Trump's choice to fill the job of National Security Adviser, Vice Adm. Robert Harward, has declined the job for family and financial reasons.
• Government prosecutors in the Philippines have charged a vocal opposition critic of President Rodrigo Duterte with drug trafficking during her time as justice secretary. 
• Samsung vice chairman Lee Jae-yong has been arrested on bribery, perjury, and embezzlement charges over what South Korean prosecutors say are $37 million in Samsung corporate bribes.

Last Call For Skinned Like Flynn

And now we see if anyone in the Trump regime will actually do anything about the felons and traitors running the country, as it seems Michael Flynn is now facing possible charges.

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn denied to FBI agents in an interview last month that he had discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States before President Trump took office, contradicting the contents of intercepted communications collected by intelligence agencies, current and former U.S. officials said. 

The Jan. 24 interview potentially puts Flynn in legal jeopardy, as lying to the FBI is a felony, but any decision to prosecute would ultimately lie with the Justice Department. Some officials said bringing a case could prove difficult in part because Flynn may attempt to parse the definition of sanctions. 

A spokesman for Flynn said he had no response. The FBI declined to comment.

But remember, there's nothing to investigate, and most likely AG Jeff Sessions won't lift a finger. Neither will any other Republicans choose to do so.

Less than a month and we already have what, like a half-dozen government-breaking scandals piling up?  Besides Russian, there's Trump's China pay-for-play, the Cabinet of Billionaires, Sessions is worth one by himself, frankly.  Conway and Spicer are still employed, and of course the Muslim ban.

This is a disaster full of con artists, crooks, and criminals.  And nobody will do a thing about it, it seems.

Orange You Glad It's Over

Trump just gave the most insane press conference the world has ever seen a US President give, and it was outright bonkers.

I ran for president to present the citizens of our country. I am here to change the broken system so it serves their families and their communities well. I am talking -- and really talking on this very entrenched power structure, and what we're doing is we're talking about the power structure; we're talking about its entrenchment. As a result, the media is going through what they have to go through too often times distort - not all the time - and some of the media is fantastic, I have to say - they're honest and fantastic. 

But much of it is not a - the distortion -- and we'll talk about it, you'll be able to ask me questions about it. But we're not going to let it happen, because I'm here again, to take my message straight to the people. As you know, our administration inherited many problems across government and across the economy. To be honest, I inherited a mess. It's a mess. At home and abroad, a mess. Jobs are pouring out of the country; you see what's going on with all of the companies leaving our country, going to Mexico and other places, low pay, low wages, mass instability overseas, no matter where you look. The middle east is a disaster. North Korea - we'll take care of it folks; we're going to take care of it all. I just want to let you know, I inherited a mess. 

Beginning on day one, our administration went to work to tackle these challenges. On foreign affairs, we've already begun enormously productive talks with many foreign leaders, much of it you've covered, to move forward towards stability, security and peace in the most troubled regions of the world, which there are many. We have had great conversations with the United Kingdom, and meetings. Israel, Mexico, Japan, China and Canada, really, really productive conversations. I would say far more productive than you would understand. 

We've even developed a new council with Canada to promote women's business leaders and entrepreneurs. It's very important to me, very important to my daughter Ivanka. I have directed our defense community headed by our great general, now Secretary Mattis. He's over there now working very hard to submit a plan for the defeat of ISIS, a group that celebrates the murder and torture of innocent people in large sections of the world. It used to be a small group, now it's in large sections of the world. 

They've spread like cancer. ISIS has spread like cancer - another mess I inherited. And we have imposed new sanctions on the nation of Iran, whose totally taken advantage of our previous administration, and they're the world's top sponsor of terrorism, and we're not going to stop until that problem is properly solved. And it's not properly solved now, it's one of the worst agreements I've ever seen drawn by anybody. I've ordered plan to begin building for the massive rebuilding of the United States military. Had great support from the Senate, I've had great from Congress, generally. 

We've pursued this rebuilding in the hopes that we will never have to use this military, and I will tell you that is my - I would be so happy if we never had to use it. But our country will never have had a military like the military we're about to build and rebuild. We have the greatest people on earth in our military, but they don't have the right equipment and their equipment is old. I used it; I talked about it at every stop. Depleted, it's depleted - it won't be depleted for long. And I think one of the reason I'm standing here instead of other people is that frankly, I talked about we have to have a strong military. 

We have to have a strong law enforcement also. So we do not go abroad in the search of war, we really are searching for peace, but its peace through strength. At home, we have begun the monumental task of returning the government back to the people on a scale not seen in many, many years. In each of these actions, I'm keeping my promises to the American people. These are campaign promises. Some people are so surprised that we're having strong borders. 

Well, that's what I've been talking about for a year and a half, strong borders. They're so surprised, oh, he having strong borders, well that's what I've been talking about to the press and to everybody else. One promise after another after years of politicians lying to you to get elected. They lied to the American people in order to get elected. Some of the things I'm doing probably aren't popular but they're necessary for security and for other reasons.

Now, he went on for over an hour like this.  Just rambling on and on to the press.  He finally did take some questions about half-an-hour in, but it was a disaster.

Mike Flynn is a fine person, and I asked for his resignation. He respectfully gave it. He is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to Vice President Pence, who is with us today. And I was not happy with the way that information was given. 

He didn't have to do that, because what he did wasn't wrong -- what he did in terms of the information he saw. What was wrong was the way that other people, including yourselves in this room, were given that information, because that was classified information that was given illegally. That's the real problem. 

And, you know, you can talk all you want about Russia, which was all a, you know, fake news, fabricated deal, to try and make up for the loss of the Democrats and the press plays right into it. In fact, I saw a couple of the people that were supposedly involved with all of this -- that they know nothing about it; they weren't in Russia; they never made a phone call to Russia; they never received a phone call. 

It's all fake news. It's all fake news. The nice thing is, I see it starting to turn, where people are now looking at the illegal -- I think it's very important -- the illegal, giving out classified information. It was -- and let me just tell you, it was given out like so much.
I'll give you an example. I called, as you know, Mexico. It was a very, very confidential, classified call. But I called Mexico. And in calling Mexico, I figured, oh, well that's -- I spoke to the president of Mexico; I had a good call. All of a sudden, it's out there for the world to see. It's supposed to be secret. It's supposed to be either confidential or classified, in that case. 

Same thing with Australia. All of a sudden, people are finding out exactly what took place. The same thing happened with respect to General Flynn. Everybody saw this. And I'm saying -- the first thing I thought of when I heard about it is: How does the press get this information that's classified? How do they do it? 

You know why? Because it's an illegal process and the press should be ashamed of themselves. But more importantly, the people that gave out the information to the press should be ashamed of themselves, really ashamed.

It just got worse from there, but the point is that Trump is well beyond Nixon's "bunker mentality" and "enemies list" phase in 1974.

And it's been less than a month.

Mad Dog's NATO Shakedown

Defense Secretary James Mattis is once again leading the Trump regime's military posturing to our NATO allies, saying that if European governments don't start paying up for protection from Russia, the Trump regime will start pulling out.

Defense Secretary James Mattis used his first NATO meeting to warn European governments that the U.S. could scale back its pledge to defend Europe if ally nations don’t increase military spending. 

“America will meet its responsibilities, but if your nations do not want to see America moderate its commitment to the alliance, each of your capitals needs to show support for our common defense,” according to a transcript of his remarks at the gathering in Brussels. 

A month after President Donald Trump described the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as “obsolete,” ministers from the 28 alliance countries met on Wednesday to suss out what role the new administration will play in the allies’ common defense. Mattis’s strong words will echo into Thursday as foreign chiefs assemble in Bonn, Germany, for the Group of 20 meeting, which will be Rex Tillerson’s inaugural European foray as secretary of state. 

During his election campaign and in interviews since his victory, Trump demanded that European nations contribute a larger share to their defense. Currently, the U.S. accounts for about 70 percent of the alliance’s overall defense expenditure. 

In a bilateral meeting on Wednesday with French Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian, Mattis discussed “how allied commitments to NATO contribute to the unity of the alliance,” according to an e-mailed statement from his spokesman. France’s military spending falls short of NATO targets.

To be fair, 70% of NATO's spending is a hell of a lot of leverage, but it looks like Trump wants to use that leverage as loudly and as inelegantly as possible.   This is an ugly shakedown, and the problem with bullies who do that is once you start giving in to them on that, they'll keep shaking you down. I'm fairly sure there will be lots of resistance to this from more nationalistic forces in Europe, ironically it might help elect the kind of European leaders who think NATO is obsolete as well.

Of course...maybe that's the point.

StupidiNews!

• A rash of anti-Semitic bomb threats made at Jewish Community Centers across the country last month are under investigation by the Justice Department and FBI.
• Texas is siding with the Trump regime over wanting immediate reinstatement of a Muslim immigration ban from seven countries.
• Activists across the country are protesting the Muslim ban with "A Day Without Immigrants", walkout actions from schools, places of business and more are expected nationwide.
• Malaysian police have now arrested three suspects in connection with the apparent murder of the exiled half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un on Monday.
• The newest entry into the Mars colonization race is the UAE's "Mars 2117" project, as Dubai believes humanity can colonize the red planet in a "more realistic timeline" of a century hence.

Last Call For Trump's Syria's Business

The Trump Regime is staggering across the landscape right now facing the Flynn/Russian disaster and a growing movement to impeach.  What better way to get back in the game by throwing a rally in Florida?

Trump will appear at a rally in Melbourne, Fla., on Saturday. The event details were posted to his website, and Trump later tweeted the news.

Trump rallies were a constant presence during the 2016 presidential campaign. He often held multiple events per day, dominating the cable news airwaves. 

He held a series of campaign-style thank-you rallies after Election Day. Saturday’s event will be Trump’s first rally as president. 

It will also mark the third straight weekend Trump is spending in Florida. Last week, Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.

Of course, Trump's going to need some "good" news to counter the endless stupidity coming out of the White House, and here's what I think will be formally announced this weekend at that rally: we're going to war, kids!

The Defense Department might propose that the US send conventional ground combat forces into northern Syria for the first time to speed up the fight against ISIS, CNN has learned. 

"It's possible that you may see conventional forces hit the ground in Syria for some period of time," one defense official told CNN. 

But the official emphasized that any decision is ultimately up to President Donald Trump, who has ordered his defense secretary to come up with a proposal to combat ISIS before the end of the month. 

The move would significantly alter US military operations in Syria if approved and could put troops on the ground within weeks. 

Until now, only small teams made up largely of Special Operations forces have operated in Syria, providing training and assistance to anti-ISIS opposition groups on the ground.
Conventional units operate in larger numbers and would require a more significant footprint of security protection both on the ground and in the air. 

US officials are characterizing the concept of deploying ground troops as a point of discussion, stopping short of saying it's a formal proposal. 

What their exact mission would be is not yet clear, but one goal of their their presence would be to help reassure Turkey that Kurdish forces are not posing a threat to Ankara's interests. It's possible some troops would deploy first to Kuwait and then move into Syria.

Forget the "might" part.  Trump needs a war to rally the country *now*.  If we don't get the announcement that we're sending in troops to Syria at this rally this weekend, he'll move it down a few days, but yeah, this was always going to be in the cards of a Trump regime military plan.

We've just moved the timetable up.

Stay tuned.

A Nowhere To Bridge

Meanwhile here in Cincy, the Brent Spence Bridge is running out of time and nobody has a plan to actually replace the damn thing yet.

A bridge that carries highway traffic across the Ohio River near Cincinnati has been serving tens of thousands more vehicles a day than it was designed to handle.

Time and traffic are wearing on the Brent Spence Bridge, which is frequently cited as a location where major infrastructure upgrades are needed, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported. 

It is increasingly showing rust and cracks, but maintenance officials maintain that it remains structurally sound. 

"And we are committed to keeping it that way," said Bob Yeager, chief engineer for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet's District Six, which oversees maintenance of the 53-year old bridge. "But you've got two interstates converging and diverging at one end and that creates issues and traffic patterns we just can't fix overnight. 

The Brent Spence was made to handle 80,000 vehicles in 1963, and the addition of a fourth lane in 1985 brought that capacity to 120,000. But the most recent data indicate the bridge had daily traffic of over 185,000 vehicles in 2015, nearing a record amount.
That has meant more crashes there, too — usually at least two per week. 

Accidents reached an all-time high in 2015, when there were 121 collisions along the span. Crashes on the Brent Spence were up 52 percent between 2010 and 2015 in comparison with the previous six years.

And it'll be $2 billion to replace.  Ohio doesn't want to pay for it.  Kentucky doesn't want to pay for it. And lawmakers aren't about to make local residents pay for it, I guarantee you it'll cost them their jobs, particularly GOP Reps. Thomas Massie and Steve Chabot (the Senators involved wouldn't do much better.)

So, nobody has a plan yet and the Brent Spence is at 150% capacity on a near daily basis.  And the reason is because of the GOP.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

So the Flynn/Russia story has gone from "nobody talked to Russia, are you nuts" to "OK, so maybe Flynn had a conversation but he's only being fired because he lied about that" to today, where the story is now "OK, so several Trump camp officials besides Flynn had multiple conversations with Russian intelligence officers before the election".

Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.

The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.

But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.

The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump. On the Russian side, the contacts also included members of the government outside of the intelligence services, they said. All of the current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the continuing investigation is classified.

The officials said that one of the advisers picked up on the calls was Paul Manafort, who was Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman for several months last year and had worked as a political consultant in Ukraine. The officials declined to identify the other Trump associates on the calls.

The call logs and intercepted communications are part of a larger trove of information that the F.B.I. is sifting through as it investigates the links between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russian government, as well as the hacking of the D.N.C., according to federal law enforcement officials. As part of its inquiry, the F.B.I. has obtained banking and travel records and conducted interviews, the officials said.

The other folks besides Manafort?  Carter Page and Roger Stone. Oh, and Flynn.  Again.  Multiple times.  In other words the FBI has known about this investigation for months and yet FBI Director Comey still pulled his little October Surprise stunt with Clinton's "investigation" and assured America that there were no Trump/Russia links before the election.

We now know that's all a lie.  Oops.

The F.B.I. investigation is proceeding at the same time that separate investigations into Russian interference in the election are gaining momentum on Capitol Hill. Those investigations, by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, are examining not only the Russian hacking but also any contacts that Mr. Trump’s team had with Russian officials during the campaign.

On Tuesday, top Republican lawmakers said that Mr. Flynn should be one focus of the investigation, and that he should be called to testify before Congress. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the news about Mr. Flynn underscored “how many questions still remain unanswered to the American people more than three months after Election Day, including who was aware of what, and when.”

Mr. Warner said Mr. Flynn’s resignation would not stop the committee “from continuing to investigate General Flynn, or any other campaign official who may have had inappropriate and improper contacts with Russian officials prior to the election.”

So now things are getting very interesting.  Meanwhile, House Republicans are scrambling to make this look like the real problem are the people who leaked the investigation, and not the fact our government is compromised by a foreign power.
 

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) says he won’t open an investigation into President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, citing executive privilege.

But the committee will investigate who leaked the story that led to Flynn’s resignation and why Trump's national security adviser was being recorded, CNN reported Tuesday.

Good luck with that, kids.  This just turned into a real scandal that makes Watergate look like a middle school production of the Phantom Tollbooth, and these guys want to go after Woodward and Bernstein.

I've said for months the Russia story was important and wasn't going anywhere, and what do you know.

StupidiNews!

• A woman in Malaysia has been arrested in connection with the death of the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un earlier this week.
• Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is threatening his own cabinet with polygraph tests after leaks from Israel's latest cabinet meeting over Netanyahu's visit to the US this week.
• With the end of the Humana-Aetna merger of health insurance giants earlier this week, it now seems competitors Anthem and Cigna are parting ways over their planned merger as well.
• Arctic oil drilling off the coat of Norway could reach record numbers in 2017 as both oil companies and the Norwegian government are looking for a big payoff in the Barents Sea.
• The Air Force's uncrewed X-37b space plane could be coming home this week after a long-haul mission orbiting the earth beneath the International Space Station.