monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Trump just tweeted that John Kelly was in, and Priebus was out

“One of our real stars. Truly, one of our stars. John Kelly is one of our great stars.”

Passed by Congress May 13, 1912, and ratified April 8, 1913, the 17th amendment modified Article I, section 3, of the Constitution by allowing voters to cast direct votes for U.S. Senators. Prior to its passage, Senators were chosen by state legislatures.

Dave Weigel‏Verified account @daveweigel 3h3 hours ago
Reince Priebus was the shortest-serving White House chief of staff in American history, edging out Ken Duberstein.

Well we'll just have to agree to disagree. Casting aspersions on any aspect of the service of a man who endured any time in the Hanoi Hilton is to me "vicious."

Scaramucci is already showing signs that he won’t worry too much about whether stories are true before he attacks them. Less than a week after his kissy debut at the White House lectern, he blamed the press for capitalizing on “leaks” that were in fact on-the-record quotes he himself had made. Then he demanded an FBI investigation over how Politico obtained his financial disclosure form — which is public information . On Thursday night, he tweeted that he’d “made a mistake in trusting a reporter,” Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, who had quoted his on-the-record comments about White House colleagues. “It won’t happen again.”

So forget the pleasant tone and the cheerful smiles that Scaramucci brought at first. The White House press corps now faces a much more aggressive, much more personal fight than the Beltway is used to. It’s not crazy to believe that a few more journalists may lose something beyond their access to the White House — they may lose their beats or even their jobs.

Well we'll just have to agree to disagree. Casting aspersions on any aspect of the service of a man who endured any time in the Hanoi Hilton is to me "vicious."

This has been quite a week in Washington, a week full of terror, intrigue, suspense, backstabbing and outright chaos. While we might not have been able to predict the particular contours of the catastrophe that complete GOP rule has been, we should have known it would turn out something like this.

Guess what, America: This is what you get when you elect Republicans.

It goes much further than their repugnant and disastrous effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but all the contemporary GOP’s pathologies could be seen there: their outright malice toward ordinary people, their indifference to the suffering of their fellow citizens, their blazing incompetence, their contempt for democratic norms, their shameless hypocrisy, their gleeful ignorance about policy, their utter dishonesty and bad faith, their pure cynicism, and their complete inability to perform anything that resembles governing. It was the perfect Republican spectacle...

I send this one to the judges panel...

ATTENTION, A2K JUDGES!

Finn will not answer the question "What has Trump gotten done that you wanted him to do?"

Is it:
A) because such a list would be exhaustive, and Finn doesn't want to bore us with a tedious screed?
B)because the question is below someone of such elevated perception and wisdom as Finn, and he can't be bothered?
C)because he knows like everyone else knows, that Trump hasn't accomplished jack squat, and he knows his list would look ridiculous?

Use the button panel placed under your seat before the show, to vote.

their outright malice toward ordinary people, their indifference to the suffering of their fellow citizens, their blazing incompetence, their contempt for democratic norms, their shameless hypocrisy, their gleeful ignorance about policy, their utter dishonesty and bad faith, their pure cynicism, and their complete inability to perform anything that resembles governing.

ChuckGrassley‏Verified account @ChuckGrassley 5h5 hours ago
@realDonaldTrump I'm always happy to go to WhiteHouse to discuss w u Tell Scaramucci not to use that filthy language around me he toldmedia

A very good piece on press tactics employed by Wall Street/finance persons and entities (the world Scaramucci comes from).

Quote:

Scaramucci is already showing signs that he won’t worry too much about whether stories are true before he attacks them. Less than a week after his kissy debut at the White House lectern, he blamed the press for capitalizing on “leaks” that were in fact on-the-record quotes he himself had made. Then he demanded an FBI investigation over how Politico obtained his financial disclosure form — which is public information . On Thursday night, he tweeted that he’d “made a mistake in trusting a reporter,” Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, who had quoted his on-the-record comments about White House colleagues. “It won’t happen again.”

So forget the pleasant tone and the cheerful smiles that Scaramucci brought at first. The White House press corps now faces a much more aggressive, much more personal fight than the Beltway is used to. It’s not crazy to believe that a few more journalists may lose something beyond their access to the White House — they may lose their beats or even their jobs.

WP Re the bolded part, at one point in that interview, Scaramucci stipulated that what he was about to say was "off the record" (and Lizza obliged) which means that everything else not so stipulated was available for Lizza to quote.

So let's just assume this is all going to get worse.

Trump Tests the F-Bomb Policy at The New York Times

The New York Times likes to think of itself as a family newspaper. It is also the self-described paper of record. It may not be either, but it’s definitely not both all the time.

Take, for example, the moment when the Times had to choose whether to quote the new White House communications director in a particularly colorful tirade against his colleagues.

Many publications try to avoid gratuitous foul language, even in quotes, unless the meaning of the thing being conveyed depends on it. Plenty of people curse in casual conversation; rarely is it actually meaningful.

The Times published Scaramucci’s profanity only after top editors, including the executive editor Dean Baquet, “discussed whether it was proper,” Clifford Levy wrote. “We concluded that it was newsworthy that a top Trump aide used such language."

There was the Access Hollywood tape last fall, which featured Trump bragging about being able to grab women without their consent.The Times repeatedly printed the vulgar terms h e used. It also published an offensive term—uh, rhymes with “blunt”—that a Trump adviser had used to describe Hillary Clinton, only to remove the word from an op-ed after the fact with a brief editor’s note flagging the change.

“I made a mistake in trusting in a reporter,” Scaramucci tweeted on Thursday night. “It won’t happen again.”

Returning from a speech on Long Island—both Scaramucci and Priebus had flown on Air Force One with him—Trump told reporters at Andrews Air Force Base, “Reince is a good man. John Kelly will do a fantastic job. General Kelly has been a star, done an incredible job thus far, respected by everybody. He’s a great, great American. Reince is a good man.”

Priebus then got into a waiting car and departed, separate from the president’s motorcade. He later told The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender that he had resigned on Thursday.

The bland Wisconsinite was always a somewhat strange fit for the job. Though he’d proven himself a fairly able administrator at the RNC, he had none of the characteristics common to successful chiefs of staff: experience in government and especially the executive branch, a hard-headed ability to get his way, and an unshakeable bond with the president.

In fact, Priebus had been wary of Trump’s candidacy all along, and when a tape was released in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, Priebus urged him to drop out of the race—a slight Trump reportedly never forgot.

Priebus was also held responsible for failing to stop leaks, although given that he was a frequent target, he was clearly in no position to do that.

The departures of Spicer, who resigned over Scaramucci’s appointment, and Priebus leave the GOP establishment almost entirely cleaned out of the White House.

In El Salvador, political leaders have held emergency meetings to discuss what they will do if the Trump administration follows through with its promise of mass deportations. “Probably we won’t feel the symptoms today or tomorrow or the next week,” San Salvador Mayor Nayib Bukele told The Washington Post in May. “But probably in six months or a year we’ll be feeling the symptoms … ”

If that does happen, it could very well destabilize the country more and lead to increased migration to the United States. Trump, then, will have undermined his own strategy.

Enforcing the Constitution is the job of the federal courts in our system of checks and balances.

Random and unsourced? Not hardly.

“Deidre has left him and has filed for divorce. She liked the nice Wall Street life and their home on Long Island, not the insane world of D.C. The source said, “Deidre is not a fan of Trump, and she hasn’t exactly been on board and supportive of Anthony and his push to get back into the White House.” “I don’t know who Deidre thought she was marrying but anyone who knows Anthony knows he’s an ambitious man.”