monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Tucker Carlson labels Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, Louis Farrahkan, and Milo "prominent conservatives"

ROVANIEMI, Finland — Under pressure from the United States, the Arctic Council issued a short joint statement on Tuesday that excluded any mention of climate change.

It was the first time since its formation in 1996 that the council had been unable to issue a joint declaration spelling out its priorities. As an international organization made up of eight Arctic countries and representatives of indigenous groups in the region, its stated mission is cooperation on Arctic issues, particularly the protection of the region’s fragile environment.

According to diplomats involved in the negotiations, at issue was the United States’ insistence not to mention the latest science on climate change or the Paris Agreement aimed at averting its worst effects. The omission is especially notable because scientists have warned that the Arctic is heating up far faster than the world average because of rising greenhouse gas emissions.

[...]

Tuesday morning, as the foreign ministers met for their official session, speaker after speaker warned about climate change.

“The effect of climate change is being felt most acutely here,” Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland of Canada said, referring to the Arctic.

“It’s happening as we speak,” the Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, said, expressing regret that “we did not manage to agree on joint declaration.”

Speakers from the indigenous groups that belong to the council offered the most sustained testimony about living with climate change, speaking of how deteriorating permafrost, wildfires, coastal erosion and melting sea ice had affected communities that have lived in the Arctic for centuries.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the final speaker, said the United States was committed to protecting the “fragile ecosystem” of the Arctic. But he focused much of his speech on concerns about expanding Chinese influence in the region.

I may need to read the book now.

Longtime Obama adviser Benjamin J. Rhodes -- and not Peter Baker from the New York Times as improperly reported in that Daily Mail article Lash linked a few days back -- authored the memoirs "The World as It Is", recently updated with a vivid account of Obama's reactions to Trump's election.

This means the info in there comes from a trustable and well informed source inside the Obama White House. It's serious work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/us/politics/obama-reaction-trump-election-benjamin-rhodes.html

It was reviewed by Baker in the NYT (see link above), and that was apparently enough to confuse the Daily Mail...

WASHINGTON — FBI Director Chris Wray said Tuesday that he does not consider court-approved FBI surveillance to be "spying" and said he has no evidence the FBI illegally monitored President Donald Trump's campaign during the 2016 election.

His comments at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing broke from Attorney General William Barr, who said last month that he believed the Trump campaign had been spied on during an investigation into potential collusion with Russia. Trump seized on that comment as part of his allegation that the investigation was tainted by law enforcement bias.

The book by Peter Baker The Call of History is what I was talking about.

More details about editions to Barack Obama’s memoir A Call of History.
——————————
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mediaite.com/online/book-obama-took-2016-election-as-personal-insult-blamed-hillarys-soulless-scripted-campaign/amp/

A newly-updated biography of Barack Obama describes the former president’s anger toward Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election.

New York Times White House Correspondent Peter Baker is releasing a new edition of his 2017 biography, Obama: The Call of History. The new version described Obama as being full of confidence on Election Day, saying there was “no way Americans would turn on him” and that Clinton would be able to build
upon his legacy after assuming office.

Baker writes that when it became clear that Trump was going to win against public expectations, Obama was flabbergasted the country was going to “replace him with a buffoonish showman whose calling cards had been repeated bankruptcies, serial marriages, and racist dog whistles.” After Obama spoke to Clinton and told her to concede defeat, Baker says the former president and his team put the blame on her for running a “scripted, soulless campaign” that failed to turn his presidency into a winning message.

“Obama may not have been on the ballot, but it was hard not to see the vote as a ‘personal insult,’ as he had called it on the campaign trail,” Baker writes. “‘This stings,’ [Obama] said. ‘This hurts.'”


The book goes on to describe how Obama tried to maintain a straight face in public after the race, but after meeting his successor at the White House, he went off in front of his former speechwriter Ben Rhodes and seethed that Trump “peddles in bullsh*t.” When Rhodes compared Trump to the conmen characters from Huckleberry Finn, Obama replied: “Maybe that’s the best we can hope for

Another Trump term will be catastrophic and there is a very real possibility that the US will never recover from it.

Here’s what congressional Republicans said about holding the attorney general in contempt in 2012

...The 2012 contempt effort was spearheaded by then-House oversight chair Darrell Issa (R-CA). “I always believed that in time we would reach an accommodation sufficient to get the information needed for the American people while at the same time preserving the ongoing criminal investigations,” he lamented. But without the administration turning over the subpoenaed documents about the ATF program, he said, a contempt vote was necessary.

Issa even quoted 2008 comments by once-and-future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to buttress his argument:

Quote:

She said, “Congress has a responsibility of oversight of the executive branch. I know that members on both sides of the aisle take the responsibility very seriously. Oversight is an institutional obligation to ensure against abuse of power; subpoena authority is a vital tool of that oversight.”

Then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) also recounted the process that had brought the chamber to that point — first a “lawful and narrowly tailored subpoena” by a congressional committee, then time for the Justice Department to comply, and finally the determination that they were left with “no other options” but to hold Holder in contempt.

The current Congress’ request for the unredacted Mueller report follows a similar pattern: Congress first asked for access to the unredacted document; Barr offered limited viewing of a less-redacted version for some members only, with the understanding they would not talk to anyone about what they’d read; Congress responded by subpoenaing the full report; and Barr rejected that subpoena.

“The House is focused on jobs and the economy,” Boehner told his colleagues back in 2012. “But no Justice Department is above the law and no Justice Department is above the Constitution, which each of us has sworn an oath to uphold.”

Then-Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-PA), who resigned last year after settling a sexual harassment case, noted a “famous quotation in the Department of Justice about the responsibility of the Attorney General not being to win cases but to assure that justice is pursued and retained.”

Other members speaking on the floor in support of the 2012 measure included multiple House Republicans who are still in Congress today.

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) termed the Holder contempt motion as about “accountability” against an administration that would “rather play politics than uphold Congress’ right to investigate.”

“The Department [of Justice],” he complained, “has stood in open defiance of Congress’ moral and constitutional obligation to conduct oversight of this affair.”

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) said the move was “long overdue.”

“Mr. Holder has shown his contempt and utter disdain for our constitutional rights, our border, Arizonans, and all Americans,” Gosar opined. “115 members of Congress agree that Americans lack confidence in Mr. Holder and his Department. Every member of Congress should do their constitutional duty and hold the attorney general in contempt today.”

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) put it in moral terms. “This isn’t about politics. This is about the constitution. And it’s about Congress’ mandate to do oversight over both the executive and judicial branches of government,” he said.

Sensenbrenner noted that while the Obama administration had asserted executive privilege to shield the requested documents, “in 1997 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote, in part, ‘Moreover the privilege disappeared altogether when there is any reason to believe that there is government misconduct that has occurred.'”

Even Sen. Jim Lankford (R-OH), then serving in the House, endorsed the effort. “This is a moment to get all the facts, to get it on the table, find out what happened, and to get it done.” The motion passed, 255 to 67, with only two Republicans voting against.

Lash wrote:

More details about editions to Barack Obama’s memoir A Call of History.

All of the pertinent information was here.

The book goes on to describe how Obama tried to maintain a straight face in public after the race, but after meeting his successor at the White House, he went off in front of his former speechwriter Ben Rhodes and seethed that Trump "peddles in bullsh*t."

some large portion of blame has to fall to the losing candidate in any race. But that's a simplistic (meaning greatly false) explanation for the complexities of any race. The obvious example is Gore v Bush where a right leaning SC inserted itself into the final results.

And anyone who claims to have certainty that the election would have gone to Dems only if Sanders had been the nominee is searingly stupid. Any claim, now, that Sanders or any other Dem candidate is the only one who could beat Trump is equally stupid.

“Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”