monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Feb. 8 (UPI) -- A pair of Democratic Congressman introduced legislation to block federal funds from being used for President Donald Trump's proposed military parade.

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas, introduced bills in their respective chambers to prevent federal money from being used to fund the demonstration of military strength proposed by the president.

Pentagon spokesman Charlie Summers said Tuesday that the planning process for a parade long-desired by Trump has entered its "infancy."

Millions of dollars would likely be required to ship Abrams tanks and high-tech military hardware to Washington, D.C., for the proposed event.

"We have the best armed forces in the world. We don't need to flex our muscles to showcase our military hardware," Cardin wrote in a letter to his Senate colleagues. "Our brave military men and women flex their might around the world every day on behalf of our nation."

Cardin said his bill would prevent grand-scale parades as a "show of force" as well as limit the impact of national military parades on military readiness.

Veasey shared a series of tweets introducing the PARADE Act, short for "Preventing Allocation of Resources for Absurd Defense Expenditures," and suggested potential parade funds instead be allocated to other military causes.

"The PARADE Act ensures that [POTUS] cannot spend millions amd millions of taxpayer dollars on a military parade that strokes his big ego and his authoritarian wish list," Veasey wrote.

Buried in this CBS News story detailing an actual wall that is being built to seperate House Intel’s Democratic and Republican staff, there’s a nugget suggesting that the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) is investigating allegations of leaks coming from Committee Republicans. The revelation came from Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL), who has taken a prominent role in the committee’s Russia investigation.

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Rooney said one reason for the tension is an erosion of trust, exacerbated by an ongoing ethics investigation into the “entire Republican staff,” including “the woman up front that answers the phone” for alleged leaks. He later added that the matter was being handled by the Office of Congressional Ethics.

The OCE would not comment to me on Rooney’s remark, and Rooney’s office did not return my inquiry for more details. But because of how OCE works, we may eventually learn what’s going on here.

It’s important to note that the OCE is seperate from the House Committee on Ethics, which is made up of House members. The latter oversaw the investigation into House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes’ alleged disclosure of classified information (for which he was cleared). The former was formed in 2008 and is made up of private citizens, both on its staff and board. It can refer allegations of wrongdoing to the House Ethics Committee but is not authorized to make determinations of wrongdoing, nor can it sanction wrongdoers. (You can read more about its process and role here.)

Three former employees of the famed Cato Institute say they were sexually harassed by Ed Crane, the 73-year-old co-founder and president emeritus of the think tank and one of the most recognizable figures in the libertarian movement.

One former employee said Crane asked her to take off her bra. Another said he compared her breasts to pornographic images on his computer. A third said he sent her an email on breast augmentation. Crane also settled an additional sexual harassment claim by a former employee in 2012, her lawyer confirmed to POLITICO.

Shares of Chinese companies have fallen heavily amid the sell-off, a drop that analysts said had been long coming thanks to sharp run-ups in recent months.

For some years, the main political project of the right has been to take control of the government while denigrating the government. President Trump drew this strategy to its logical conclusion during his campaign, asserting as a kind of refrain: “Our politicians are stupid.”

Which came to mind following the revelation that Chief of Staff John F. Kelly had kept Rob Porter in a sensitive position (White House staff secretary) after being informed by the FBI that there was a protective order against him. As it came to mind when Michael Flynn was elevated to national security adviser following repeated FBI warnings that he might be compromised by the Russians. As it came to mind after the elevation of Anthony Scaramucci to, well, any position of public trust.

I have to admit that the Trump administration has acted with a certain consistency in these matters. Trump and his team accused the government of being corrupt — and have proved it beyond reasonable doubt...

Did Hillary Clinton collude with the Russians to get ‘dirt’ on Trump to feed it to the FBI?

Finally, there is no evidence that Clinton was involved in Steele’s reports or worked with Russian entities to feed information to Steele. That’s where Nunes’s claim goes off the rails — and why he earns Four Pinocchios.

Fox News’ John Moody, who serves as the network’s executive vice president and an executive editor, criticized the diversity of Team USA in an op-ed a day before the 2018 Winter Olympics were scheduled to open in PyeongChang, South Korea.

Moody decried the strides Team USA has made toward diversity of its athletes in a February 7 op-ed published on FoxNews.com. Though this is Team USA’s most diverse delegation of athletes ever, as The Washington Post reported, the U.S. Olympic Committee still has a lot of progress to make: Out of 243 athletes, two men are openly gay, “10 are African American — 4 percent — and another 10 are Asian American. The rest, by and large, are white.” Moody suggested without basis that the focus on diversity may cost Team USA medals, and speculated that athletes were given spots on the team that they didn’t earn during their trials, because of their race

That's a really good, concise breakdown.

I also have no doubt that they have meddled in every presidential election since Calvin Coolidge ran what might have been the most civil campaign in US history and crushed the Democrat challenger John H. Davis.

It is, therefore, entirely reasonable to accept and acknowledge Russian meddling without signing on to hyperbolic claims of election rigging, corruption or any suggestions that their meddling resulted in an outcome that was different than it would have been had there been no meddling at all. This, of course, is the implicit or explicit claim of the Resistance, that but for Russian meddling, HRC would be president.

The strategy of the Resistance is clear: Equate meddling with manipulation so that any acknowledgment of meddling seems to be an acknowledgment that the Russians (with the aid and assistance of the Trump campaign) stole the election from Clinton, and that the Trump presidency is illegitimate.

What is both pathetic and hypocritical is the Resistance's tactic of asserting that anyone who won't go along with its narrative on this has a minimal and cavalier regard for American democracy; that they are carrying water for Vladamir Putin.

The practice of hypocrisy is a relief in itself, a secret triumph of the vilest sort, no doubt, but still a way of getting even with the common morality from which some of us appear to suffer so much.

The Dow plummets more than 1,000 points for the second time this week

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"Chomskys response to Osama bin Ladens calculated strike on a building

OBL had nothing to do with 911. There was never any evidence provided by the US government or the UK government. OBL denied his involvement a number of times. Had he actually been involved he would have said so.

There is also zero evidence for the existence of the alleged hijackers.

In fact there is no evidence for any of the alleged planes to be the ones that allegedly crashed at the four sites the USGOCT says.

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