If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. -- Benjamin Franklin
The company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday it would co-operate with Schnatter to find a mutually acceptable independent director, who would not be affiliated with Schnatter or hedge fund investor Starboard Value LP, which owns a nearly 10 percent stake.
Schnatter, who owns about 30 percent of the company’s shares, would resign from the board if the independent director is appointed before the annual stockholder meeting slated in May, Papa John’s said.
The deal comes after the founder stepped down as chairman last summer, following reports he had used a racial slur on a media training conference call.
Schnatter has filed several lawsuits against the company in a bid to regain control. In January, he claimed a victory when a court ordered the board to give him some internal documents, including text messages related to his firing, which Papa John’s had until then refused to share.
As part of the agreement, Papa John’s has agreed to share with Schnatter all of the company’s records, giving him the option to sue if those documents revealed wrongdoing by the company, Schnatter said in a statement.
Schnatter, in return, has agreed to dismiss two lawsuits.
“(I am) thankful that I’ve been able to resolve these important issues, and that we can all focus on the Company’s business without the need for additional litigation,” Schnatter said.
The company also said it would remove an “acting in concert” provision of a “poison pill” adopted by the board to thwart previous takeover attempts by Schnatter, suggesting that the founder could engage with bidders that had expressed interest in speaking with him.
Still, the bad press has taken a toll on the pizza chain, which said last week North America same-restaurant sales fell 7.3 percent in 2018 and that sales would lag into the first half of 2019.
They will continue to fall, would be my guess. The damage to the brand has been done. Oh yeah, and the pizza is still garbage, I used to make it out of college.
The defining political fact of our time is not polarization. It’s the inability of even large bipartisan majorities to get what they want on issues like these. Call it the oppression of the supermajority. Ignoring what most of the country wants — as much as demagogy and political divisiveness — is what is making the public so angry.
Some might counter that the thwarting of the popular will is not necessarily worrisome. For Congress to enact a proposal just because it is supported by a large majority, the argument goes, would amount to populism. The public, according to this way of thinking, is generally too ill informed to have its economic policy preferences taken seriously.
It is true that policymaking requires expertise. But I don’t think members of the public are demonstrating ignorance when they claim that drug prices are too high, taxes could be fairer, privacy laws are too weak and monopolies are too coddled.
Others remind us that the United States is a democratic republic, not a direct democracy, and that the Constitution was designed to modulate the extremes of majority rule. Majorities sometimes want things — like bans on books, or crackdowns on minorities — that they should not be given.
This is true. It is also true that a thoughtful process of democratic deliberation and compromise can yield better policy outcomes than merely following the majority’s will. But these considerations hardly describe our current situation. The invocation of constitutional principle has become an increasingly lame and embarrassing excuse. The framers of the Constitution, having experienced a popular revolution, were hardly recommending that the will of the majority be ignored. The Constitution sought to fine-tune majoritarian democracy, not to silence it.
No one single person has done more to silence that then my state's senior senator, Mitch McConnell. He has personally made sure that legislation -- bipartisan legislation, mind you -- on all of these issues and more, have never passed the Senate and will never pass the Senate as long as he remains GOP leader.
Attorney General William Barr said he won’t recuse himself from being in charge of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, a major development affecting the fate of the politically charged probe into President Donald Trump.
“Following General Barr’s confirmation, senior career ethics officials advised that General Barr should not recuse himself from the special counsel’s investigation. Consistent with that advice, General Barr has decided not to recuse,” Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman.
Kupec confirmed that the office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who intends to leave the department in the coming weeks, continues to be the primary liaison between the special counsel and Barr.
The question of whether Barr, who was confirmed as attorney general last month, should oversee Mueller has become a political flashpoint.
Under Justice Department regulations, the attorney general has sole authority over Mueller and has the power to decide how much of Mueller’s final report is provided to Congress and made public. With Mueller believed to be close to completing his work, Democrats in Congress are vowing to force the release of his report and the evidence underlying it.
The president repeatedly attacked and ridiculed his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself based on his role in Trump’s campaign. Trump removed Sessions in November and named Matthew Whitaker acting attorney general.
And speaking of Matt Whitaker...
Whitaker, who had criticized Mueller’s investigation before joining the Justice Department, decided not to recuse himself from overseeing the investigation in December, even though a senior department ethics official said a formal review would likely recommend a recusal.
Whitaker never asked for a formal ethics recommendation. He and a small group of advisers decided there was no precedent for him to recuse under these circumstances. Whitaker left the Justice Department on March 2.
Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker left his position at the Justice Department on Saturday, a department spokeswoman said.
Whitaker had been serving as a senior counselor at the Justice Department since Attorney General William Barr was sworn in last month.
His next career move is unknown, but Whitaker has told friends that he will remain in Washington because there are "many opportunities here," according to sources who have spoken with him in recent days.
Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul says as many as ten Senate Republicans could vote against Donald Trump's emergency declaration from last month, but the bill would still face a Trump veto.
Everyone is coming down hard on Rep. Ilhan Omar, who pretty much gets accused of being anti-Semitic if she gets up in the morning. Apparently House Democrats, or the powers that be around them, are sick of her and Nancy Pelosi is giving her a stern warning.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top Democrats will take floor action Wednesday in response to controversial remarks by Rep. Ilhan Omar about Israel, the second such rebuke of the freshman Democrat from party leaders in recent weeks.
Pelosi and other senior Democrats have drafted a resolution to address the controversy, which ballooned over the weekend following a public clash between Omar and senior Jewish lawmakers.
The resolution, which began circulating to members Monday night, comes after a backlash from top Democrats who accused Omar of anti-Semitism for referring to pro-Israel advocates’ “allegiance to a foreign country.” The draft measure is four pages that largely details the history and recent rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S. but does not specifically name Omar, which had been an internal dispute among Democrats.
Instead, it condemns the "myth of dual loyalty," using the same language as top Democrats, like House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey, who have condemned Omar in recent days.
If the House moves ahead with the vote on Wednesday as planned, it would be an unprecedented public rebuke of Omar, who was sworn into office just over 60 days ago. Omar's office declined to comment about the Democratic resolution on Monday.
Yet these efforts by Pelosi and other Democratic leaders won't be enough for Republicans, who want a more serious punishment for Omar.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other senior Republicans are considering offering a censure motion against Omar, according to GOP sources. Republicans may also formally demand that Democrats strip Omar of her seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, a move that Pelosi and other senior Democrats won't take at this point.
It's the "at this point" that gives the game away. House Republicans saw Steve King stripped of his committee assignments six weeks ago for his decades-long white supremacist views, since Omar is a Muslim woman Democrat who wears a hijab, she gets about 1% of that time before she becomes the trade-off that Democrats have to accept for Steve King, and for doing far less.
Omar is right that it is entirely legitimate to criticize U.S. policy towards Israel, but that’s not the issue here. The issue is her repeated suggestion that support for the current policy toward Israel is the product of Jewish money buying support and/or Jews who are more loyal to Israel’s interests than they are to those of the United States. Those claims are false and bigoted.
Republicans learned the hard way with King that where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire. His repeatedly bigoted statements about immigrants were condemned but otherwise ignored by House Republican leadership. Clearly, they hoped that they were aberrations, or that the congressman would come to his senses and keep whatever bigotry he harbored in his heart to himself.
But that approach proved too lenient. Earlier this year, King finally made indisputably clear what many had long suspected during an interview with the New York Times, in which he said: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” He had finally crossed the line, and Republicans — who could not expel him from their caucus under party rules — removed him from all committee assignments. (King has argued that the quote was mischaracterized.)
Democrats need to do the same thing with Omar. They might hope that she will straighten up, but as the GOP learned with King, bigotry can be a deep-rooted plant.
What does Rep. Ilhan Omar have in common with President Trump? Sadly, more than you would think.
The Democratic freshman from Minnesota is perhaps the most prominent victim of the anti-Muslim hatred that Trump spews. The president appeared to be referring to Omar, a Somali American, when he told a conservative audience Saturday that certain members of Congress “hate our country.” She has also been the target of regular death threats and vile displays such as a poster at a GOP-sponsored event in the West Virginia Capitol on Friday linking her to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Yet Omar herself is doing something akin to what her disgusting opponents are doing to her: She has suggested that Americans who support Israel — by implication, Jews — are disloyal to the United States. At an event in Washington last week, Omar said, in the context of the pro-Israel lobby, that “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
The NY Times on the other hand asks the correct question, which is the exact point which has been lost in the screaming racist Islamophobia here: AIPAC does have a lot of influence in Congress in a way that almost no other lobbying organization has.
But the swirling debate not only around Ms. Omar but also around broader currents buffeting the Middle East has forced an uncomfortable re-examination of the questions that she has raised: Has Aipac — founded more than 50 years ago to “strengthen, protect and promote the U.S.-Israel relationship” — become too powerful? And with that power, has Aipac warped the policy debate over Israel so drastically that dissenting voices are not even allowed to be heard?
Those questions have grown louder with the controversy around Ms. Omar and will grow louder still in the run-up to this month’s annual Aipac policy conference — a three-day Washington confab that is expected to draw more than 18,000 people, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and leaders of both parties in Congress. To critics, Ms. Omar had a point, even if it was expressed with unfortunate glibness. Aipac’s money does have an outsize influence.
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper on Monday announced he is running for president, launching a 2020 campaign in which he will lean on his Western roots and decades of executive experience.
He made the announcement in a video titled "Standing Tall," which tracks Hickenlooper's life from laid-off geologist, to owner of a brew pub, to mayor of Denver and to governor, and touts the Democrat's experience in a variety of fields as a key reason he should be the person to take on President Donald Trump in 2020.
Hickenlooper casts the President as a "bully" in the more than two-minute video.
"I'm running for president because we're facing a crisis that threatens everything we stand for," Hickenlooper says in the video as images of Trump play. "As a skinny kid with coke bottle glasses and a funny last name, I've stood up to my fair share of bullies."
He adds: "I'm running for president because we need dreamers in Washington but we also need to get things done. I've proven again and again I can bring people together to produce the progressive change Washington has failed to deliver."
Hickenlooper is the second governor to enter the crowded 2020 race after Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee announced a run last week. The field of Democrats is now at 14 candidates, including six senators.
Hickenlooper will follow up the video with an appearance on Good Morning America on Monday.
He will then headline a "hometown send-off" in Denver on Thursday at the city's Civic Center Park. Hickenlooper will be joined at the event by Colorado leaders throughout his time in the state, as well as Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats, a band based in Denver.
Hickenlooper will then make his first post-announcement trip to Iowa on March 8 and March 9. He will then cap his announcement week with an appearance at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.
Hickenlooper has been teasing a 2020 run for months, telling CNN in January that he would bet on the fact that he was going to run for President.
"I've been known to play a little cards," Hickenlooper said during the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C. "Given that there is still uncertainty in the future, I probably would take the bet that I would run for President."
Hickenlooper is pretty popular in Colorado, but outside Four Corners states, he's pretty much nobody. On top of that, we're waaaaaay past portraying Trump as a "bully" and not, you know, as an immediate threat to American democracy.
I mean I guess he's as welcome as any other Dem to make his case, but I don't see many of these recent entries even making it to 2020.
A bit of a Monday Long Read for you this morning, but it's a vital piece. New Yorker reporter Jane Meyer takes a hard look at FOX News and its parasitic relationship with the Trump regime as the network has shed any pretense of objectivity and comfortably settles into its role as state media.
The death of former FOX News head Roger Ailes and the White House hiring of Ailes's right-hand man, Bill Shine, as Communications Director has completed the network's transformation into the Trump Network, the kind of organ that you find in any autocrat's airwaves. The two have fed off each other to the point where they are inseparable.
In January, during the longest government shutdown in America’s history, President Donald Trump rode in a motorcade through Hidalgo County, Texas, eventually stopping on a grassy bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. The White House wanted to dramatize what Trump was portraying as a national emergency: the need to build a wall along the Mexican border. The presence of armored vehicles, bales of confiscated marijuana, and federal agents in flak jackets underscored the message.
But the photo op dramatized something else about the Administration. After members of the press pool got out of vans and headed over to where the President was about to speak, they noticed that Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, was already on location. Unlike them, he hadn’t been confined by the Secret Service, and was mingling with Administration officials, at one point hugging Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security. The pool report noted that Hannity was seen “huddling” with the White House communications director, Bill Shine. After the photo op, Hannity had an exclusive on-air interview with Trump. Politico later reported that it was Hannity’s seventh interview with the President, and Fox’s forty-second. Since then, Trump has given Fox two more. He has granted only ten to the three other main television networks combined, and none to CNN, which he denounces as “fake news.”
Hannity was treated in Texas like a member of the Administration because he virtually is one. The same can be said of Fox’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch. Fox has long been a bane of liberals, but in the past two years many people who watch the network closely, including some Fox alumni, say that it has evolved into something that hasn’t existed before in the United States. Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor of Presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the author of “Messengers of the Right,” a history of the conservative media’s impact on American politics, says of Fox, “It’s the closest we’ve come to having state TV.”
Hemmer argues that Fox—which, as the most watched cable news network, generates about $2.7 billion a year for its parent company, 21st Century Fox—acts as a force multiplier for Trump, solidifying his hold over the Republican Party and intensifying his support. “Fox is not just taking the temperature of the base—it’s raising the temperature,” she says. “It’s a radicalization model.” For both Trump and Fox, “fear is a business strategy—it keeps people watching.” As the President has been beset by scandals, congressional hearings, and even talk of impeachment, Fox has been both his shield and his sword. The White House and Fox interact so seamlessly that it can be hard to determine, during a particular news cycle, which one is following the other’s lead. All day long, Trump retweets claims made on the network; his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, has largely stopped holding press conferences, but she has made some thirty appearances on such shows as “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity.” Trump, Hemmer says, has “almost become a programmer.”
Fox’s defenders view such criticism as unfounded and politically biased. Ken LaCorte, who was in senior management at Fox News for nearly twenty years, until 2016, and recently started his own news service, told me, “The people at Fox said the same thing about the press and Obama.” Fox’s public-relations department offers numerous examples of its reporters and talk-show hosts challenging the Administration. Chris Wallace, a tough-minded and ecumenical interviewer, recently grilled Stephen Miller, a senior Trump adviser, on the need for a border wall, given that virtually all drugs seized at the border are discovered at checkpoints. Trump is not the first President to have a favorite media organization; James Madison and Andrew Jackson were each boosted by partisan newspapers. But many people who have watched and worked with Fox over the years, including some leading conservatives, regard Fox’s deepening Trump orthodoxy with alarm. Bill Kristol, who was a paid contributor to Fox News until 2012 and is a prominent Never Trumper, said of the network, “It’s changed a lot. Before, it was conservative, but it wasn’t crazy. Now it’s just propaganda.” Joe Peyronnin, a professor of journalism at N.Y.U., was an early president of Fox News, in the mid-nineties. “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” he says of Fox. “It’s as if the President had his own press organization. It’s not healthy.”
It's not healthy, but it's what FOX News was always destined to become in the post-Obama era. I have no doubt that Trump would have his own nightly hour show on FOX News if Clinton had won, denouncing the same investigation as a witch hunt. All of Manafort's campaign wrongdoing would still be sending him to jail, along with Roger Cohen and Roger Stone's dirty tricks, and Trump would be screaming for his followers to all but start shooting liberals.
It's what Trump expected after he lost. He didn't, and the monster and the creator have become one.
House Democrats continue to move forward with investigations into the Trump regime, and the new heavy hitter in this game is House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jerrod Nadler. It's Nadler's committee that would begin any impeachment proceedings against Trump, and Nadler says that process of looking into that begins Monday.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that his committee will be issuing document requests on Monday to “begin the investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power.”
“Tomorrow, we will be issuing document requests to over 60 different people and individuals from the White House to the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, Jr., Allen Weisselberg, to begin the investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power,” Nadler said on “This Week” Sunday.
“Do you think the president obstructed justice?” asked ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos.
This is super important. Expect Nadler and the House Judiciary to begin their investigation into Trump tomorrow. That's on top of Rep. Elijah Cummings and the House Oversight Committee. That's on top of Rep. Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee. And that's on top of Rep. Maxine Waters and the House Financial Services Committee.
Expect devastating testimony like Cohen's on a regular basis going forward, in public, televised, and gruesome for Trump and his family. One of the topics that needs to be thoroughly investigated is Jared Kushner's relationship with Saudi Arabia. Nick Kristoff:
Jared Kushner slipped quietly into Saudi Arabia this week for a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, so the question I’m trying to get the White House to answer is this: Did they discuss American help for a Saudi nuclear program?
Of all the harebrained and unscrupulous dealings of the Trump administration in the last two years, one of the most shocking is a Trump plan to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia that could be used to make nuclear weapons.
Even as President Trump is trying to denuclearize North Korea and Iran, he may be helping to nuclearize Saudi Arabia. This is abominable policy tainted by a gargantuan conflict of interest involving Kushner.
Kushner’s family real estate business had been teetering because of a disastrously overpriced acquisition he made of a particular Manhattan property called 666 Fifth Avenue, but last August a company called Brookfield Asset Management rescued the Kushners by taking a 99-year lease of the troubled property — and paying the whole sum of about $1.1 billion up front.
Alarm bells should go off: Brookfield also owns Westinghouse Electric, the nuclear services business trying to sell reactors to Saudi Arabia.
GQ gives us the story of prolific master art thief Stephane Breitwieser, a man whose career in crime has netted him more than a billion in art, sculture, and paintings from around the world, and like most master thieves, he does it for the challenge, and for the love of the art he "collects".
All his life, inanimate objects have had the power to seduce him. “I get smitten,” Breitwieser says. Before artwork, it was stamps and coins and old postcards, which he'd purchased with pocket money. Later it was medieval pottery fragments he'd find near archaeological sites, free for the taking.
When he covets an object, says Breitwieser, he feels the emotional wallop of a coup de coeur—literally, a blow to the heart. There are just things that make him swoon. “Looking at something beautiful,” he explains, “I can't help but weep. There are people who do not understand this, but I can cry for objects.”
His interactions with the world of the living were far less fulfilling. He never really understood his peers, or almost anyone else for that matter. Popular pastimes, like sports and video games, baffled him. He's never had any interest in drinking or drugs. He could happily spend all day alone at a museum—his parents often dropped him off—or touring archaeological sites, of which there are dozens in the area where he grew up, but around others he was sometimes hotheaded and temperamental.
Breitwieser was born in 1971 in the Alsace region of northeastern France, where his family has deep roots. He speaks French and German and a little English. His father was a sales executive in Switzerland, just over the border, and his mother was a nurse. He's an only child. The family, for most of his youth, was well-off, living in a grand house filled with elegant furniture—Louis XV armchairs, from the 1700s; Empire dressers, from the 1800s. His parents had hoped he'd become a lawyer, but he dropped out of university after a couple of years.
His first museum heist came shortly after a family crisis. When he was 22 years old, still living at home, his parents' marriage ended explosively. His father left and took his possessions with him, and Breitwieser and his mother tumbled down the social ladder, re-settling in a smaller place, the antiques replaced by Ikea.
Cushioning the trauma was a woman Breitwieser met through an acquaintance, a fellow archeology buff. Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus was the same age as Breitwieser, and similarly introverted, with a kindred sense of curiosity and adventure. She had a sly smile and an irresistible pixie cut. They shared a passion for museums, thrilled to be immersed in beauty. Breitwieser finally experienced a coup de coeur for an actual person. “I loved her right away,” he says. Soon after Breitwieser's father departed, Kleinklaus moved in.
A few months later, the couple were visiting a museum in the French village of Thann when Breitwieser spotted an antique pistol. His first thought, he recalls, was that he should already own something like this. Breitwieser's father had collected old weapons but had taken them when he'd left the family, not bothering to leave a single piece for his son. The firearm, exhibited in a glass case on the museum's second floor, was hand-carved around 1730. It was far nicer than anything his father had owned.
He felt an urge to possess it. The museum was small, no security guard or alarm system, just a volunteer at the entrance booth. The display case itself, Breitwieser noted, was partially open. He was wearing a backpack and could easily hide the pistol in there.
One must resist temptation, he knew. It even says so in the Bible, not that he was particularly religious. What our heart really wants, we must often deny. Maybe this is why so many people seem conflicted and miserable—we are taught to be at constant war with ourselves. As if that were a virtue.
What would happen, he wondered, if he did not resist temptation? If, instead, he fed temptation and freed himself from society's repressive restraints? He had no desire to physically harm anyone or so much as cause fright. He contemplated the flintlock pistol and whispered a few of these thoughts to his girlfriend.
Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus has never spoken to the media about her relationship with Breitwieser and any possible role in the crimes, and neither has Breitwieser's mother, Mireille Stengel. Though there exist supporting documents and reported accounts, much of this story is based primarily on interviews with Breitwieser. While he was in the museum, in front of the pistol, Kleinklaus's response, the way Breitwieser remembers it, made him believe that they were destined to be together.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Take it.” So he did.
The Ocean's Twelve character of Francois Toulour is based on Breitwieser's history, of course. But like all great thieves, he eventually gets caught, because he cannot stay away from the game. It's still a hell of a story though.
Russia's generals are openly bragging at this point that their info ops can bring down any country in the world. After all, they've already owned the US presidency and all but destroyed the UK with Brexit, so why wouldn't they be doing victory laps as they continue to win unabated in Ukraine and Syria?
The chief of Russia’s armed forces endorsed on Saturday the kind of tactics used by his country to intervene abroad, repeating a philosophy of so-called hybrid war that has earned him notoriety in the West, especially among American officials who have accused Russia of election meddling in 2016.
At a conference on the future of Russian military strategy, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, said countries bring a blend of political, economic and military power to bear against adversaries.
The speech outlined what some Western analysts consider the signature strategy of Russia under President Vladimir V. Putin — and what other experts call a simple recognition of modern war and politics.
General Gerasimov said Russia’s armed forces must maintain both “classical” and “asymmetrical” potential, using jargon for the mix of combat, intelligence and propaganda tools that the Kremlin has deployed in conflicts such as Syria and Ukraine.
And he cited the Syrian civil war an example of successful Russian intervention abroad. The combination of a small expeditionary force with “information” operations had provided lessons that could be expanded to “defend and advance national interests beyond the borders of Russia,” he said.
The speech was noteworthy for echoing themes General Gerasimov laid out in an article published in 2013 in The Military-Industrial Courier, a Russian army journal, and which many now see as a foreshadowing of the country’s embrace of “hybrid war” in Ukraine, where Russia has backed separatist rebels and used soldiers in unmarked uniforms to seize Crimea.
Though definitions of the term vary, some analysts see a progression from the blend of subversion and propaganda used in Ukraine to the tactics later directed against Western nations, including the United States, where Russia’s military intelligence agency hacked into Democratic Party computers during the 2016 election. Russia denies interfering in the election.
An American interagency report on the Russian election meddling blamed the intelligence agency, known as the G.R.U. and at least formally subordinate to General Gerasimov, for hacking the Democratic National Committee servers and releasing documents to damage the campaign of Hillary Clinton and support her opponent, Donald J. Trump.
They're basically telling us that they will strike again in 2020, and that Donald Trump will make sure that they are allowed to, he's all but thrown the doors wide open and publicly stated that he trusts Putin more than our own intelligence agencies.
Trump is just as much a danger to America as Putin is.
President Donald Trump on Saturday delivered a scorched-earth speech to conservative activists, calling the Russia investigation "bullshit," adopting a southern accent to mock his former attorney general, and asserting that some members of Congress "hate our country."
The rollicking two-hour-plus appearance at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland offered the president a brief respite from an otherwise miserable week in which his much-touted summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un ended in failure and his former personal lawyer delivered explosive testimony to Congress.
Trump, basking in the adoration of the crowd, largely glossed over the North Korea summit's collapse, instead reviving several of his greatest hits, from rehashing the 2016 election to obsessing over the crowd size at his inauguration.
The speech amounted to a boatload of red meat for conservatives, with Trump promising he’ll protect them from undocumented immigrants, socialism and liberal Democrats he claims are dead set on bankrupting the country with proposals like the Green New Deal.
“You know I’m totally off script right now,” Trump said at the beginning of his speech. As his meandering speech continued, it became clear that his assessment was an understatement.
At one point, Trump regaled the crowd with a story about a general he said was named "Raisin Caine" (it wasn't immediately clear who he was referring to). He said he always sits with the pilots when airplanes are landing: "They know what we’re doing." He said he has good eyesight and later added, "I don’t have white hair." He derided a Hawaii senator as a "crazy person." And he accused Hollywood of discriminating against conservatives.
He even revisited his campaign kickoff speech from June 2015. "From day one, I mentioned the word rape. If you look at that first speech, that was very innocent compared to what’s happening," Trump said. Trump came under fire for his 2015 comments, which appeared to broadly assert that Mexicans were rapists.
Throughout, Trump revealed himself to be a president deeply scorned by what he views as unfair media coverage and a lack of recognition from many in Washington. "I get no credit," he said multiple times throughout the lengthy speech.
But the crowd gave him credit. It was a malignant narcissist's wet dream, Trump basking in the adoration of his hateful fans while he pumped them full of vitriol, screaming about how he has been persecuted and by inference, all of his voters.
And he dared them to get out there and to stop his enemies, promising he would force colleges to give conservative "free speech" or lose all federal funding, declaring Democrats to be enemies of the country who hate America, attacking Robert Mueller as a traitor, and worse, declaring America is "one people, one family and one nation."
This was a disturbing, demented, and dangerous speech. We've now reached the point where Trump knows he's not going to make it to a second term, and he's going to see this country and millions burn on the way down.
E pluribus Unum went right out the window. Trump's America is what Dear Leader Donald says it is. And anyone else will be dealt with...
The Republican Party knows it lost the House in 2018 because of Trump, so now it is trying to demonize House Democrats by whatever means necessary in order to enrage its base to take action against them. The GOP will tell you of course that the action they prefer is "voting" but, you know, whatever works to stop the Democratic party.
The reverberations of an anti-Muslim poster on display at the West Virginia Capitol rotunda continue, with the House Sergeant at Arms resigning and talk of possible discipline against a lawmaker who allegedly injured a doorkeeper Friday.
Sgt. at Arms Anne Lieberman resigned Friday afternoon after delegates accused her of using an anti-Muslim slur. "The sergeant of arms of this body had the nerve to say to us 'all Muslims are terrorists' that's beyond shameful and that's beyond freedom of speech," Del. Michael Angelucci, D-Marion, said.
The poster that sparked the controversy consisted of two photos. The upper photo was a picture of the World Trade Center towers during the 9/11 attack. A caption read, "'NEVER FORGET' - YOU SAID.."
Below it was a photo of Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, wearing a hijab. Omar is Muslim, and was one of two Muslim women elected to Congress. That picture's caption said, "I AM PROOF - YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN."
The anti-Muslim display was outside the House of Delegates chamber as part of a “Republicans Take the Rotunda” event.
A lawmaker told us Friday evening that the House Rules Committee will meet at 8 a.m. Saturday to decide if Del. Mike Caputo, D-Marion, will face repercussions for allegedly injuring a doorkeeper during an angry outburst regarding the poster. Caputo is the minority whip in the House.
Caputo admitted to kicking the door because he wanted to get into the chamber and he said he was being blocked. "We have created an anger that I have never witnessed in 23 years in this body and it sickens me. It absolutely sickens me. So yeah, I kicked the door open I'll own it," Caputo said. The doorkeeper was taken to the hospital for evaluation.
Democrats in the House spoke out against the poster, saying it is the second hateful event to happen in that legislative body during this session. They referred back to when Del. Eric Porterfield, R-Mercer, compared the LGBTQ community to the Ku Klux Klan.
West Virginia Republicans essentially accusing Rep. Ilhan Omar and American Muslims of causing 9/11 is just expressing the vile hatred in their hearts. They know that in the era of Trump they don't have to hide it anymore, they can freely post Facebook memes as recruitment posters for their two-minute hate sessions.
And if something happened to Rep. Omar, not a one of them would lose a wink of sleep.
Kentucky lawmakers sided with a powerful gun-rights organization Friday in approving a bill to let people carry a concealed handgun without a permit or training.
The measure, backed by the National Rifle Association, sparked impassioned debate in the House that veered between gun ownership rights and fears of more gun violence. The bill won final passage on a 60-37 vote and goes to Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.
"This comes down to a constitutional right. We have a right in this country to own and bear arms," Republican Rep. John Blanton said in supporting the measure.
Under the legislation, Kentuckians able to lawfully possess a firearm could conceal their weapons without a license. A gun-carrying permit in the state now carries a fee and a gun safety training requirement. Objections from opponents included dropping the training requirement as a condition for carrying concealed weapons.
"The right to carry a weapon in our society — as with all rights — comes with responsibility," Democratic Rep. Maria Sorolis said. "And this bill provides no protection for responsibility by gun owners to know their weapon, to be able to use them well."
Bevin's office did not immediately respond to an email asking if the governor will sign it into law. Bevin, a staunch conservative, is seeking re-election this year.
If Senate Bill 150 becomes law, Kentucky would become the 16th state to allow adults statewide to carry concealed firearms without permits, according to the NRA.
Kentucky now requires people to get a permit before they can carry a concealed firearm in the state. To do that, they have to undergo a background check, complete some gun safety training and pay a $60 fee.
The legislation would allow people who are at least 21 years old and meet other legal requirements for gun ownership to carry a concealed firearm without a permit.
Supporters said the measure makes no changes regarding where and when people can possess concealed weapons.
The bill sailed through the Republican-led Senate on a 29-8 vote last month.
Kentucky is already an open carry state on top of all this, but again, it's up to Matt Bevin. This didn't pass the General Assembly by a veto-proof margin, although it was close. Bevin I'm sure will sign the bill, he loses re-election for sure if he doesn't.
There will be consequences though, and those consequences will be deadly.
Fish populations are declining as oceans warm, putting a key source of food and income at risk for millions of people around the world, according to new research published Thursday.
The study found that the amount of seafood that humans could sustainably harvest from a wide range of species shrank by 4.1 percent from 1930 to 2010, a casualty of human-caused climate change.
“That 4 percent decline sounds small, but it’s 1.4 million metric tons of fish from 1930 to 2010,” said Chris Free, the lead author of the study, which appears in the journal Science.
Scientists have warned that global warming will put pressure on the world’s food supplies in coming decades. But the new findings — which separate the effects of warming waters from other factors, like overfishing — suggest that climate change is already having a serious impact on seafood.
Fish make up 17 percent of the global population’s intake of protein, and as much as 70 percent for people living in some coastal and island countries, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
“Fish provide a vital source of protein for over half of the global population, and some 56 million people worldwide are supported in some way by marine fisheries,” Dr. Free said.
Inslee, who is the chief executive in Washington state, served as the chair of the Democratic Governors Association during the 2018 midterms. In a field where the biggest names are almost all US senators, Inslee is planning to lean heavily on his executive experience and talk about how progressive politics can turn states like his into economic juggernauts.
“We are, according to CNBC, the best place to do business this year. And the reasons for that in part are because of our progressive policies,” Inslee told Vox last year. “We welcome computer scientists and geneticists who are helping to cure cancer instead of denying them because they’re Muslim. We have policies that protect our environment so we have a great place to live, clean water and clean air; as a result, it’s a great way to recruit people to come here.”
Inslee is making climate change his No. 1 priority, but he doesn’t want to be a single-issue candidate. Instead, Inslee is treating climate change like an umbrella issue under which other issues like the economy, health care, and national security also fit.
The Washington state governor plans to tie each issue to the broader theme of using the power of the presidency to dramatically lower America’s carbon output and scale up renewable energy.
“He’s going to use the full power of the presidency to defeat climate change,” an Inslee aide told Vox. “This is different than saying you support the Green New Deal.
Inslee is originally from Seattle and has lived in Washington for much of his life. He’s held a number of roles in politics, serving in the Washington state legislature and a brief term in the US House in the early 1990s. After a failed run for governor in 1996, he served as a regional director for President Bill Clinton’s Department of Health and Human Services.
Inslee returned to the US House late in that decade, where he served until he was elected governor in 2012. He’s presided over a time of economic growth; Washington is consistently in the top 10 state economies, according to rankings from US News & World Report and USA Today.
Washington’s governor has argued the progressive policies he’s embraced have had a big hand in attracting people to his state. That’s been especially prescient during the Trump administration, where the federal government has made its opposition to transgender people, Latinos, and Muslim immigrants well-known. Inslee has made it a point to push back against Trump’s policies and underscore that his state is a welcoming place for all.
“A lot of people over the years have argued that environmental laws or laws involving equity and who you can marry are inimical,” Inslee said. “In fact, they’re actually crucial to economic development. Some of the hottest economies are places with these progressive policies.”
It's a good idea. Inslee's argument is that climate change is so important that it affects every other major Democratic platform plank: racial equality, criminal justice reform, women's rights, LGBTQ equality, national security, jobs and the economy, public infrastructure, universal health care, child care, affordable housing, sustainable agriculture, public education, you name it, and he's got a solid point.
Climate change is going to make all of these other issues more difficult and more expensive because it will be hurting everyone, adding a growing cost to everything the federal government tries to do. Therefore, Inslee argues, the federal government should be doing everything it can in a way to fight back as it's the only sensible and moral course of action.
It's a strong argument. How well it will resonate with an American populace where half of us have been trained for decades to laugh at climate change, I don't know.
Even with the Biden Administration adults in charge and Democrats in control on Congress (barely), there remains an increasingly crumbling global economy imperiling the world, rising nationalism and deadly racism across Europe and Asia, a seemingly endless war against terror, a federal government nobody trusts or believes in, global climate change putting us on the brink of destruction and a Village media that barely does its job on even the best day.
Needless to say there's a lot of Stupid out there when we need solutions. Dangerous levels of Stupid.
Into the fray, dear Reader. Tray tables, crash helmets, arms inside blog at all times.
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