monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

How The Right Has Lost Its Mind

...If nothing else, the book is a triumph for this reason alone: though he clearly views Donald Trump’s election as a catastrophe (both for conservatism and for America), Sykes manages to discourse on the problem for 274 pages without allowing the Mogul to hog the spotlight. It’s refreshing to find a discussion of right-wing politics that doesn’t veer into yet another attempt to chart the murky waters of Trump’s fevered brain. Instead, Sykes wants to understand how the party of Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley could have degenerated to the point where a frivolous attention-seeker ducked out of a Democratic Party fundraiser just in time to take the GOP on a cosmic joyride.

Here’s the core of Sykes’ answer: Right-wing media created a fever swamp of misinformation, fanaticism, and resentment, which ultimately derailed the party and American politics.

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There's a crack I never expected from the enlightened feminist blatham, but I guess it's OK to be a sexist when you strongly disagree with someone.

Luckily we have a white knight around here to defend "sacred" womanhood and enforce political correctness. Good boy!

NBC News‏Verified account
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Three men supporting white nationalist Richard Spencer charged for allegedly opening fire on protesters https://nbcnews.trib.al/2AkXjag

Matthew Yglesias‏Verified account @mattyglesias 16h16 hours ago
More Matthew Yglesias Retweeted NBC News
It’s possible that neo-Nazis’ attachment to free speech doctrine is not entirely sincere.

...Gorsuch’s path to the Supreme Court was facilitated by dark money. The JCN is kept afloat by one donor, the Wellspring Committee, which is in turn funded primarily by one single anonymous donor. Wellspring is little more than a dark-money conduit—but as a “social welfare” 501(c)(4) group, it is not required to disclose its donors. Ann Corkery, a Koch-affiliated conservative fundraiser, runs Wellspring; her husband, Neil Corkery, serves as JCN’s treasurer. For years, Wellspring has poured money into JCN, which spends the cash promoting conservatives in both state Supreme Court elections and federal confirmation battles.

A Montana Republican official on Thursday said she “would have shot” the reporter Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-MT) body-slammed a day before he was elected to office.

“If that kid had done to me what he did to Greg, I would have shot him,” Karen Marshall, the vice president of programs for Gallatin County Republican Women, said on the “Voices of Montana” radio program.

Former top Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, who left the network in April amid accusations of sexual harassment, in January struck a $32 million settlement agreement with a former analyst for Fox News, months before his contract was extended, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The New York Times reported, citing two unnamed sources briefed on the matter, that O’Reilly made the agreement to settle allegations “of repeated harassment, a nonconsensual sexual relationship and the sending of gay pornography and other sexually explicit material” to the analyst.

Despite the settlement, and others the New York Times reported in April totaled $13 million to five women over the last 15 years, 21st Century Fox extended O’Reilly’s contract in February, according to the report.

21st Century Fox said in a statement to the New York Times that O’Reilly’s settlement with Lis Wiehl, a former legal analyst at Fox News, was a personal matter between the two, and said O’Reilly “was the biggest star in cable TV.”

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway insisted Wednesday that while she doesn’t always like how the media covers her boss, she still has the utmost respect for the news business.

“I’m a person in the West Wing who’s actually never uttered the words ‘fake news,’ ‘enemy of the people,’ ‘opposition party,’” Conway said at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. “I don’t speak that way. I think we need a full and free press in our nation, of course.”

“My grievance,” she added, “is never about fake news. I talk about incomplete coverage.”

But a quick search shows that she has, indeed, used the term “fake news,” albeit certainly less frequently than President Donald Trump

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account
@realDonaldTrump
Keep hearing about "tiny" amount of money spent on Facebook ads. What about the billions of dollars of Fake News on CNN, ABC, NBC & CBS?
1:06 PM - 21 Oct 2017

Evan McMullin‏Verified account @Evan_McMullin 4h4 hours ago
More Evan McMullin Retweeted Donald J. Trump
The President is an active participant in Moscow’s information warfare against the United States.

Peter Thal Larsen‏Verified account @peter_tl Oct 20
More Peter Thal Larsen Retweeted Donald J. Trump
Reminder: More people died in the Las Vegas shooting than in UK terror attacks this decade.

Rob Reiner‏Verified account @robreiner 5h5 hours ago
Price of sexual assault. Weinstein fired from company/thrown out of Academy. O'Reilly settles/gets job back. Trump becomes president.

The five living former US presidents have gathered for a concert in aid of victims of the hurricanes which ravaged the US this year.
Barack Obama, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, George HW Bush and Jimmy Carter appeared in Texas on Saturday.
The three Democrats and two Republicans came together behind The One America Appeal, set up to help those caught up in the devastating trails of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.
It has raised $31m (£23.5m) so far.
The politicians launched the appeal in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, which caused billions in damage after it made landfall in Texas in August.
However, it has since been expanded to include the communities in Florida, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands which were hit by the storms which followed.
"As former presidents, we wanted to help our fellow Americans begin to recover," Mr Obama explained to concertgoers in a pre-recorded message.
His immediate predecessor added: "People are hurting down here but as one Texan put it, we've got more love in Texas than water."
All five presidents appeared on stage for the anthem, before taking their seats to watch acts including Lee Greenwood, who opened with Proud to be an American, and Lady Gaga.
They were not joined by sitting President Donald Trump, who sent a message ahead of the show praising their "wonderful" work and expressing his "deep gratitude".
Both Mr Obama and the younger Mr Bush have made speeches in the last week which have been seen as veiled criticism of the former reality TV star's tenure in the White House.

Former Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly was handed a new contract with the network, despite the parent company knowing he had recently settled a sexual harassment case.
The $32m (£24m) settlement was paid to former Fox legal analyst Lis Wiehl, according to the New York Times.
In a statement, 21st Century Fox admitted it knew of the settlement when it signed a new contract but not the financial terms.
O'Reilly has denied any wrongdoing.
He was forced to resign in April after a raft of sexual harassment allegations.
The settlement with Wiehl - which was "extraordinarily large" for such cases, according to the Times - is one of six involving O'Reilly that are in the public domain, totalling $45m.
Several of those suits also involved former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, who stepped down in 2016 amid accusations of harassment.
Wiehl had worked for Fox for 15 years at the time of the settlement with O'Reilly and appeared regularly on his show The O'Reilly Factor. She left at the time of the settlement.
"When the company renewed Bill O'Reilly's contract in February, it knew that a sexual harassment lawsuit had been threatened against him by Lis Wiehl, but was informed by Mr O'Reilly that he had settled the matter personally, on financial terms that he and Ms Wiehl had agreed were confidential and not disclosed to the company," 21st Century Fox said in a statement.
The company signed a $25 million-per-year deal with the commentator, but added corporate protections against future allegations of harassment against him.
O'Reilly denied the allegations to the New York Times. "I have never mistreated anyone," he said, adding that he had resolved matters with Wiehl privately because he wanted to spare his children from controversy.
The commentator was forced to resign in April after a string of smaller settlements was reported by the Times and advertisers pulled out of his programme.
In a statement to Reuters, Mark Fabiani, a spokesman for O'Reilly, criticised the Times for printing "leaked information... that is out of context, false, defamatory, and obviously designed to embarrass Bill O'Reilly and to keep him from competing in the marketplace".
He also denounced newspaper for not printing what he said was an affidavit signed by Wiehl withdrawing her allegations following the settlement.
The disclosure of the Wiehl settlement follows a string of sexual assault allegations against Hollywood film mogul Harvey Weinstein, including accusations of rape, that sparked a international conversation about harassment in the film industry and beyond.
Weinstein, 65, who was sacked by production company Miramax and suspended by the board of the Oscars, has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone.

Joe Scarborough‏Verified account @JoeNBC 17h17 hours ago
More Joe Scarborough Retweeted Eli Lake
A California Republican shouted for the hanging of John McCain at the state party gathering last night. The GOP's sickness has metastasized.