monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Bannon to leave Breitbart

The President of the United States is a deranged liar who surrounds himself with sycophants. He is also functionally illiterate and intellectually unsound. He is manifestly unfit for the job. Who knew? Everybody did.

So why has a poorly written book containing this information, padded with much tedious detail, become an overnight sensation, a runaway best-seller, and the topic of every other political column, podcast, and dinner conversation? It seems we are in bigger trouble with reality perception than we might have realized. [...]

Wolff’s writing is a rehashing of gossip. What the Times’ and Washington Post’s White House teams have been doing through painstaking reporting—producing stories in which the account of every absurd incident in the life of the Trump Administration is based on conversations with several sources—Wolff accomplishes by absorbing the ambient noise, the self-aggrandizing statements, the overheard (or surreptitiously recorded) conversations, and reshaping them as a narrative all his own. This tone, more than the substance, is what gives the book the flavor of a peek behind the curtain, the sense of someone finally putting words to an “open secret.”

Early tidbits, released ahead of the book itself, have, predictably, proved to be the tastiest morsels. Trump didn’t expect to win! Trump is semi-literate! Ivanka wants to be the first female President! Samantha Bee has done segments on all three of these topics. Anyone with access to Twitter or a television has also been able to observe the President’s uncertain relationship to the English language and his daughter’s unbounded political ambition. [...]

If the comedians bring reality into sharper focus, Wolff just slaps on broad, sloppy strokes. His writing is comically bad: “a crooked real-estate scam” is a typical phrase [...]. But, worst of all, Wolff’s reporting is not reporting. The book’s most resonant revelation so far concerns comments Wolff attributed to Steve Bannon, who supposedly called the June, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer “treasonous,” said it should have been reported to the F.B.I., and expressed certainty that the Russians had been taken up to meet Donald Trump himself. Of these three assertions, one is stating the obvious—the Russian overture should have been reported to the F.B.I.—and two are false. It is not treason to meet with representatives of a country with which the United States is not in a state of war. And, according to my reporting, the Russians who met with Trump’s campaign team were not in fact taken up to meet the candidate himself. Wolff doesn’t bother with corroboration.

Wolff’s book seems to occupy a middle ground: between the writing of White House newspaper reporters, who exercise preternatural restraint when writing about the Administration, and the late-night comedians, who offer a sense of release from that restraint because they are not held to journalistic standards of veracity. That middle ground [...] shouldn’t exist. That “Fire and Fury” can occupy so much of the public-conversation space degrades our sense of reality further, while creating the illusion of affirming it.

I'm very gratified to see that no one here has fallen into a "Oprah for 2020!" frame of mind.

Is this really what most Americans want or what the United States government needs? Another clueless celebrity in possession of the nuclear codes? Another billionaire mogul who doesn’t like paying taxes in charge of the economy? And how would it be anything other than sheer hypocrisy for Democrats to offer [such] an unqualified, inexperienced presidential candidate to the American electorate in 2020, given all that they said about Trump in 2016?

Granted, Oprah isn’t a raging narcissist or a racist bigot; she doesn’t have ties to white nationalists, isn’t accused of colluding with a foreign government, and hasn’t been caught on tape admitting to sexual assault. Oprah would be a far superior, smarter, and more stable president than Trump in every imaginable way. But that, of course, is a low, low bar. [...]

Prior to Trump, the only presidents to never have served in public office prior to being elected to the White House were Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower. The first won the Mexican-American War; the second, the Civil War; and the third, the Second World War. Does Oprah have anything on her resume to compare with that? Is emoting on TV and handing out free cars — even if it is, admittedly, part of building an impressive multi-billion-dollar media empire from scratch — really an acceptable substitute for political or military experience? Is that how debased the political culture has become? [...]

Well, the Oprah fans might argue, she could surround herself with big brains. But isn’t that the argument that Trump supporters make, too? Do we really want another president deferring to unelected generals and Goldman Sachs? And do we think a talk-show host who promoted the careers of hucksters Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz, while also giving a platform to the anti-science lunacy of actresses Jenny McCarthy and Suzanne Somers, is capable of constructing a Lincoln-esque “Team of Rivals”? A political and economic “Justice League?” Come. Off. It. [...]

Oprah’s supporters — rightly — might point to her strong record on standing up to racism and misogyny, not to mention her inspirational oratory and backstory. Her record on Iraq is better than Clinton’s; she once even hosted a show on universal health care with Michael Moore. It might also seem like an act of divine justice if Trump, hero to white nationalists and neo-Nazis, was replaced by a strong black woman.

Oprah’s critics — also rightly — might point to her fronting for global corporations and her role as “one of the world’s best neoliberal capitalist thinkers.” They might ask: What is Oprah’s position on drone strikes in Pakistan? On supporting the Saudi war in Yemen? On cap and trade? Single-payer? Tax reform? Does she have a plan for Middle East peace? Could a person who once seemed surprised that Indian people still “eat with their hands” really defuse a nuclear crisis on the Indian subcontinent?

But we have to go beyond the pros and cons of an Oprah presidency — I can’t believe I just typed that line — and consider some broader questions: How much damage is U.S. celebrity culture doing to U.S. politics? Why don’t ideologies, or even ideas, seem to matter anymore? Shouldn’t progressives be making the case for the virtues of government and collective action and, therefore, the importance of electing people of ability, experience, and expertise to high office? Shouldn’t they be arguing that billionaire TV stars have no business running for the most powerful job on planet Earth, regardless of whether they are an orange man called Trump or a black woman called Oprah? [...]

If five different senators plus a Generic Democrat can beat this Republican president [according to the polls], then why the liberal excitement over a talk-show host? And why draw the line at Oprah? What about Mark Zuckerberg? Mark Cuban? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? Kanye? Where, oh where, does it end?

The liberal response to the rise of Trump cannot and should not be “let’s find our own bigger, better version of The Donald.” [...] Let’s get a grip, folks.

migrants are highly entrepreneurial and create jobs. While immigrants represent about 15 percent of the general U.S. workforce, they account for around a quarter of this country’s entrepreneurs and a quarter of inventors.

Moreover, over one-third of new firms have at least one immigrant entrepreneur in its initial leadership team. The amount of jobs created by these firms are significant. Firms founded exclusively by immigrants have an initial size of just below five employees, whereas firms with a mixed founder team (immigrants and non-immigrants) have an average initial size of 17 workers.

immigration and diversity foster economic growth. More diverse countries perform better economically and migrants create business networks with their home countries that foster trade and investment.

in 2016, cannabis was on the ballot in nine states—Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada for adult use, and Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota for medical.

The initiatives passed in eight of the nine states (except Arizona) and in eight of those nine states (except Arkansas) received a higher percentage of support than did President Donald Trump.

Cannabis is more popular than Congress; Cannabis is more popular than the president.

Cannabis reform is popular, and a policy like the one the Attorney General issued today is not.

The president disagrees with federal intervention

During the presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump voiced support for medical cannabis and stated that adult-use cannabis should be left up to the states. The Attorney General’s decision to rescind the Cole Memo flies in the face of Mr. Trump’s own words.

It suggests one of two things is happening in the administration. Either the Justice Department is issuing memoranda with nationally-significant policy implications without consulting the White House, or the president has changed his mind since the campaign and has given the Attorney General the authority to remove state-level discretion around adult-use cannabis.

Either way, this policy is born from an administrative problem: an out-of-control Attorney General or a president reneging on his promises.

It's been one long, loud, hysterically screaming temper tantrum, replete with hyperbolic hyperbole, cheap insults, irrational assertions, and manifestly unwarranted hope followed by nihilistic assessments of chaotic disaster, from the left ever since election eve. They are like children, babies in most instances.

And they have the chutzpah to pretend that Trump is childish?

Go figure, eh?

A panel of federal judges struck down North Carolina’s congressional map on Tuesday, declaring it unconstitutionally gerrymandered and demanding that the Republican-controlled General Assembly redraw district lines before this year’s midterm elections.

The ruling was the first time that a federal court had blocked a congressional map because the judges believed it to be a partisan gerrymander, and it deepened the political chaos that has enveloped North Carolina in recent years.

“We agree with plaintiffs that a wealth of evidence proves the General Assembly’s intent to ‘subordinate’ the interests of non-Republican voters and ‘entrench’ Republican domination of the state’s congressional delegation,” Judge James A. Wynn Jr. wrote in a 191-page opinion that another judge joined in full.

Later in the ruling, Judge Wynn, an appointee of President Barack Obama, added that the judges believed that Republicans in the Legislature had been “motivated by invidious partisan intent.”

Although the judges said that the state could not conduct its 2018 congressional elections with the existing map, they said they would allow the General Assembly to try again.

The judges gave lawmakers until Jan. 24 to propose a “remedial plan,” but cautioned that the court would begin preparations to issue a map of its own if it found the new district lines deficient.

despite encouragement from their Democratic colleagues, Senate Republicans have refused to release Glenn Simpson’s sworn testimony on these subjects.

So, on Tuesday, Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein unilaterally released it for them. And now, it’s easy to see why the GOP preferred demanding answers over providing them — their alt-collusion narrative does not benefit from sunlight.

Here are three <> claims in Simpson’s newly released testimony:

1. The FBI was looking into Trump’s Russia ties before they got wind of the Steele dossier — because a whistle-blower from the candidate’s inner circle had already snitched to them.


In June 2016, Steele’s sources (allegedly) told him that the Kremlin was regularly passing intelligence on Hillary Clinton to the Trump team through then–campaign manager Paul Manafort — and that Putin might be in a position to control Trump through blackmail material (the pee tape). Steele decided to alert the FBI to this information.

When he did, according to Simpson’s testimony, the bureau “believed Chris’s information might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing, and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization.” Simpson suggested that, in his understanding, this source was moved to share information for reasons of conscience.

However, all available evidence suggests that Simpson made a faulty presumption. Recently, the New York Times reported that the FBI first began investigating the Trump campaign after one of its aides, George Papadopoulos, “made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain” during “a night of heavy drinking” — “Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.”

If that reporting holds up, then the “human source from inside the Trump organization” did not know that he was a human source. It’s possible, however, that Simpson was referencing a second, intentional informant.

Regardless, the linchpin in the GOP’s conspiratorial case against the Russia investigation is that it was triggered by opposition research funded by Hillary Clinton. It’s unclear why this would discredit the investigation, even if it were true — multiple members of the Trump campaign, including the president’s son and son-in-law, have admitted to accepting ostensible aid from the Russian government.

But we no longer need to quibble about the implications of the GOP’s premise, because that premise is false.

2. Steele stopped cooperating with the FBI in late October, out of fear that the bureau was biased in Trump’s favor.

On October 31, 2016, the New York Times published a (now infamous) story, “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.” The fact that the FBI would leak a story so useful to the Trump campaign — despite all of the evidence contradicting its premise — led Steele to feel that “he didn’t know what was happening inside the FBI and there was a concern that the FBI was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump people and that we didn’t really understand what was going on. So he stopped dealing with them,” according to Simpson.

The GOP’s alt-collusion theory rests on the idea that the FBI and mainstream news media are so biased against Trump, they’ve made a mountain out of a molehill. Simpson’s testimony suggests that, at least when it really mattered (during the 2016 campaign), the opposite was true.

3. Simpson’s lawyer claimed that “Somebody’s already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work.”

The claim has few implications for the GOP’s conspiracizing, and it’s unclear who, or what he’s referring to. But the implication seems to be that a source was killed.

And then, in 2024, if president Bernie Sanders is looking deathly — or President Kirsten Gillibrand’s favorability numbers take a turn for the worse — Democrats could throw the most popular governor in America onto the ticket as a running mate or standard-bearer. An utterly unqualified Oprah would probably be unbeatable in 2020; one with political experience could secure Team Blue’s grip on the Oval Office in even the most unfavorable of cycles.

The problem with this plan is, of course, that becoming governor of Wisconsin would put a real dent in Oprah’s quality of life. But so would becoming president. And if Winfrey actually wants to dedicate the next chapter of her life to making positive change in American politics, it’s in Wisconsin (or Maryland, or Michigan, or Ohio, etc. …) where she could make the biggest difference.

"Winston! You are drunk," said Lady Ashley. His reply was "Yes madam, but in the morning I shall be sober and you will still be ugly."