monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

You follow a common pattern in Trump's behavior and in the behavior of much right wing media. You justify/excuse Trump's behavior through casting aspersions on the targets of Trump's behavior.

No President in our lifetimes and longer has ever attacked females in the manner of Trump. No one comes close. Very few politicians of any sort have behaved this way. He openly describes them as ugly, sexually unappealing, too old to be attractive. He uses sexual metaphors regularly and he uses them in a sexist framing always.

His personal degradation is degrading the office he holds to an extent none of us thought possible. He is degrading his party. He is degrading your nation's reputation and standing around the world. He is degrading you.

Following Roy Moore loss, Sean Hannity attempts to distance himself from Moore after defending him from sexual assault allegations
Hannity: "When I interviewed him, I was shocked by his answers as I've told you"

TheBeat w/Ari Melber‏Verified account
@TheBeatWithAri
"I was a Republican for my entire adult life until last November, but now I have to say I devoutly hope that every single Republican running for election next November loses" - @MaxBoot

Fox News‏Verified account
@FoxNews
.@TomFitton: "I think the FBI's been compromised. Forget about shutting down Mr. Mueller. Do we need to shut down the @FBI because it was turned into a KGB-type operation by the Obama administration?"

After we published a list of President Trump’s lies this summer, we heard a common response from his supporters. They said, in effect: Yes, but if you made a similar list for previous presidents, it would be just as bad.

We’ve set out to make that list. Here, you will find our attempt at a comprehensive catalog of the falsehoods that Barack Obama told while he was president.

We applied the same conservative standard to Obama and Trump, counting only demonstrably and substantially false statements. The result: Trump is unlike any other modern president. He seems virtually indifferent to reality, often saying whatever helps him make the case he’s trying to make.

In his first 10 months in office, he has told 103 separate untruths, many of them repeatedly. Obama told 18 over his entire eight-year tenure. That’s an average of about two a year for Obama and about 124 a year for Trump.

Who among us ever expected to see so many Republicans find solace in a Russian authoritarian's propaganda?

Quote:

It was a four-minute fire-and-brimstone video about abortion, same-sex marriage, school prayer, sodomy and “the right of a man to claim to be a woman and vice versa.”

Did he mention the evils of planting two consecutive crops of alfalfa??

It's incredibly damaging how many Democrats - in the name of opposing Trump - have not only venerated the FBI, CIA, and NSA, but equate any resistance to them or even questioning of them as immoral or even treasonous. "Attacking FBI = being a Putin lackey" is insane.

White Christians who identified as “evangelical” or “born again” (a term common in the evangelical community) made up 44 percent of Alabama voters, and a full 80 percent voted for Moore (overall, 68 percent of white voters chose Moore). This was unsurprising, given that nearly all — 94 percent — of Moore voters reported not believing the allegations against him. For them, Moore’s alleged misdeeds were the product of a biased liberal media smear campaign and nothing more.

Instead, Jones’s victory came down to a number of other factors, one being the high turnout of black voters (they composed about 30 percent of Alabama voters, exceeding turnout in previous elections, according to early data), who voted overwhelmingly — 96 percent — for Jones. The Democrat also won over nearly two-thirds of voters ages 18 to 44, while 51 percent of 45- to 65-year-olds and 59 percent of those 65 and older voted for Moore. In other words, the election was decided more by the demographics of voter turnout than, say, white evangelicals being swayed by accusations of Moore’s alleged sexual misconduct.

Of course, some of Jones’s victory is likely due to the white evangelical voters who stayed home, or to the 23,000 write-in votes for other candidates — a number that exceeded Jones’s margin of victory. But by and large, white evangelicals who voted still voted for Moore.

“What we have on display is this very vivid picture of how far apart black and white Christians are,” Robert Jones said. And he doesn’t see that changing anytime soon. Before Trump’s election, he says, the evangelical community had been very focused on racial reconciliation, with major evangelical leaders — like the Southern Baptist Convention’s Russell Moore — performing outreach across color lines. But, Jones said, "Trump has been a polarizing force between white and black Christians,” just like among white and black Americans in general. He added, “You see it in the data. You see it among leaders. And those divisions promise to get worse.”

He’s likewise less than optimistic about the possibility that younger evangelicals — who are more socially liberal than their older counterparts — will help bridge that gap. Rather, he says, white evangelical churches “are losing their younger members. If their younger members were to stay in the fold, they would play a role in shifting the view of the whole,” but all too often, younger evangelicals choose to leave their churches — if not religion itself — behind. “What we would expect of a normal generational effect [of young people’s influence] has been muted."

White, older evangelical voters may keep voting for Moore — or, at least, those with similar values and ideals. Nothing may change their minds. But the numbers are against them — especially if younger white evangelicals keep emptying the pews.

Why the heck were high-level officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation discussing an “insurance plan” in case of Trump’s victory?

In a text from August 15, 2016, Peter Strzok tells Lisa Page: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office” — an apparent reference to Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe — “that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

Page does not appear to have responded, according to records reviewed by CNN. As the former No. 2 official in counterintelligence, Strzok helped lead the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server and was involved in opening the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, but he was reassigned to the human resources division this summer. Page was also briefly on Mueller’s team before returning to the FBI, but she completed her detail before the special counsel’s office was made aware of the texts.

Was “the path” an investigation into Trump with a lot of leaking, designed to impede his presidency from day one? A couple of days ago, in response to the not-terribly specific descriptions about these figures sending texts that were political and critical of Trump, our Andy McCarthy — former federal prosecutor — urged everyone to wait and see the full details.

“If you’ve made up your mind that Peter Strzok is responsible for tanking the Hillary Clinton case, and that he was putting his thumb on Mueller’s scale against the Trump administration, you are way out ahead of what we actually know — and you’re probably wrong,” he wrote.

Now McCarthy is significantly more troubled. On Twitter, he wrote, “ Obviously, this is not political banter. Clearly indicates professional duties infected by political viewpoints, which is disqualifying.”

This morning, he elaborates on the problem of perceived partisanship in the Washington Post: It is not enough to be fair. Things must appear fair — even more so when a special counsel, appointed precisely to avoid the appearance of bias, is concerned.

In Mueller’s case, there are various grounds for worry. The investigative team Mueller has assembled includes Democratic donors and supporters, including one lawyer who represented the Clinton Foundation and one who represented a subject in the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Personally, I am not much alarmed that several of Mueller’s staffers have anti-Trump political views. But as more evidence emerges, I have become increasingly disturbed about whether those views will taint perception of the Mueller investigation, particularly in the case of Andrew Weissmann, a key Mueller deputy. A gifted career Justice Department lawyer, Weissmann sent former acting attorney general Sally Yates an effusive email shortly after Yates was fired for insubordinately defying Trump on enforcement of the so-called travel ban.

The obstruction aspect of Mueller’s investigation calls for an objective evaluation of how much independence law-enforcement officials have from the chief executive. Weissmann’s lauding of Yates suggests he is not objective on this point.

Racism is as bitter and internalized as Christian/Jew/Muslim and Sunni/Shia hatreds. It just is not going to change in our life time or probably the next. In fact, I predict it will someday it will once again split the USA into regional countries for perpetuity!