monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

In 27 years, Republicans have passed one popular conservative law and spent most of that time voting against things that clear majorities of Americans wanted. If they weren’t serving Americans, whom were they serving? And how have they gotten away with it?

The answers to both questions, alas, are depressingly familiar. They are serving their megarich donors and the most extreme elements of their base. And they get away with it because of the way they’ve gerrymandered House districts, because of an ideological right-wing media that obfuscates facts and because the one thing they’ve done astonishingly well is to make a big chunk of the country hate liberals.

Yeah, it's been great for sociopaths, terrorists, and wannabe Rambos

but in general I don't think firearm ownership is the keystone in the arch of civic life.

Top attorney sought paydays for Trump accusers from media outlets, Clinton donors:

A well-known women’s rights lawyer sought to arrange compensation from donors and tabloid media outlets for women who made or considered making sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump during the final months of the 2016 presidential race, according to documents and interviews.

California lawyer Lisa Bloom’s efforts included offering to sell alleged victims’ stories to TV outlets, arranging a donor to pay off one Trump accuser’s mortgage, and attempting to secure a six-figure payment for another woman who ultimately declined to come forward after being offered as much as $750,000, the clients told The Hill.

The women’s accounts were chronicled in contemporaneous contractual documents, emails and text messages reviewed by The Hill, including an exchange of texts between one woman and Bloom that suggested political action committees supporting Hillary Clinton were contacted during the effort.

Bloom said her goal in securing money was not to pressure the women to come forward....She declined to identify any of the donors.

Bloom, who is the daughter of famous attorney Gloria Allred,...worked for four women who were considering accusing Trump. Two went public, and two declined.

Bloom, who has also represented accused sexual harasser Harvey Weinstein, in addition to women who've accusing Bill Cosby and Bill O’Reilly, acknowledged her standard terms require clients to pay her commissions, which may be as high as 33 percent if she sells their stories to media outlets.

Documents also show Bloom’s efforts to get alleged victims of sexual assault or harassment to come out against Trump intensified as Election Day 2016 approached.

[One woman] went back and forth for weeks with Bloom in 2016 about going public with an allegation of an unsolicited advance by Trump on the 1990s beauty contest circuit.

“Give us a clear sense of what you need and we will see if it we can get it,” Bloom texted the woman a week before Election Day.

The woman then texted back demanding to know why there was a deadline. “What does time have to do with this? Time to bury Trump??? You want my story to bury trump for what? Personal gain? See that 's why I have trust issues!!”

The woman said Bloom initially offered a $10,000 donation to the woman’s favorite church, an account backed up by text messages the two exchanged.

“Please keep the donation offer confidential except to your pastor,” Bloom wrote the woman on Oct. 14, 2016.

By early November, the woman said, Bloom’s offers of money from donors had grown to $50,000 to be paid personally to her, and then even higher.

The woman responded that she wasn’t impressed with a new offer of $100,000 ....The figured jumped to $200,000 in a series of phone calls with Bloom that week, according to the woman. The support was promised to be tax-free ...

“She asked to be compensated, citing concerns for her safety and security and over time, increased her request for financial compensation to $2 million...no one was willing to offer more than a number in the low six figures, " Bloom told The Hill.

The woman who ultimately declined to come forward with Bloom told The Hill that she stayed silent for an entire year afterward because she did not want to call attention to her family.

She said she supported Trump in 2016, and that he she held no resentment about the early 1990s advance because Trump stopped it as soon as she asked him.

The woman said, however, no one associated with the Trump White House or the president forced her to come forward or made any offers to induce her to talk to The Hill. She said she agreed to do so only after she became disgusted.... all the money stuff I knew about. I just became frustrated,” she said.