monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

The Trump Organization's premiere Florida property, The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, has doubled its initiation fee for new members to $200,000, according to CNBC sources.

CNBC notes that there's no way to know if the price increase is due to rising demand for memberships, but there's no doubt the club has enjoyed a higher profile as of late. The changes went into effect January 1.

President Donald Trump visited the club multiple times as both candidate and president-elect. He will use the resort as his winter White House, and is planning a trip there as soon as February 3, according to The New York Times.

The initiation fee was previously $200,000 up until 2012, when it was cut down to $100,000 following the Bernie Madoff scandal. To retain access to the resort, members must also pay $14,000 in yearly dues.

Steve Bannon’s styrofoam balls

For a moment there I thought these guys were serious about treating the news media as “the opposition party” and trying to remove it as a check on power. That seemed to be the plan. They had the pieces in place. But when Michael Flynn was vanquished from the White House they revealed to us that for now at least they’re unable go through with it.

Here’s Greg Sargent:

Quote:

Trump’s top adviser Stephen K. Bannon has offered up sublime bluster about how the news media has “no power,” arguing that its aggressive reporting on the Trump White House reflects nothing more than panicked media elite shrieking about the “new political order” that Trump is raising out of the ashes of the corrupt old order. As I’ve argued, the Trump White House has established — as an explicit, actionable doctrine — the goal of trying to obliterate the possibility of agreement on the news media’s legitimate institutional role in informing the citizenry, and even on facts and reality itself.

I agree: That’s what they’re trying to do. But...

Michael Flynn, General Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he's been treated very, very unfairly by the media – as I call it, the fake media, in many cases. And I think it's really a sad thing that he was treated so badly.

...I think it's very, very unfair what's happened to General Flynn, the way he was treated, and the documents and papers that were illegally – I stress that – illegally leaked. Very, very unfair.

Quite an astounding article published this afternoon in The Financial Times.

Russian government officials say President Trump is the target of an information war and a purge of pro-Russian officials on a par with the Great Terror of the 1930s when Stalin purged vast numbers of party officials and military officers. No, I'm not kidding.

Nikolai Kovalev, former head of the FSB, the successor to the KBG told Interfax: "This is disinformation. There’s an information war against Trump in which, as we can see, all means are [considered] necessary. These political games will continue as long as anti-Russian sentiment has a serious presence in the American establishment."

Makes sense. The Russians are only trying to protect Trump from the evil and dangerous American left.

On Wednesday, Lindsey Graham said in a statement, “If in fact there are campaign contacts between Trump officials and Russian intelligence officers that would be a very serious event and would justify the Senate forming a Select Committee to look at all things related to Russia.” Graham went on, “The accusations regarding the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia are creating a cloud over the White House. They should be fairly investigated by the Congress in a bipartisan manner.”

Graham doesn’t speak for the Republican leadership, however. Appearing on MSNBC on Wednesday, Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House of Representatives, said, “There’s no secret here—Russia tried to meddle with our elections. This is why I’m a fan of the sanctions. This is why I’m a Russia hawk and a Russia skeptic, because their interests don’t convene with our interests.” But Ryan fell well short of calling for the establishment of a select committee, and he also pooh-poohed the suggestion that some of Trump’s associates may have colluded with the Russians during the campaign.

The White House will be content if it can confine the Russia inquiries to the congressional intelligence committees, which have already said they will look into Russian hacking. But make no mistake: Trump is facing some dangerous developments, including the sight of Senator Corker, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spelling things out bluntly. “The basic issue is getting to the bottom of what the Russian interference was, and what the relationship was with associates of the Trump effort,” Corker said, appearing on “Morning Joe” on Wednesday. “That is the big elephant in the room that has to be dealt with in the most appropriate way.”

And notice they are also attacking the GOP establishment which means, I think, that very soon our resident RW chappies will be posting in Cryillic.

First of all, we are wiretapping the Russian Ambassador's private phone?

Secondly, we are recording conversations of American citizens?

Third(ly), who had access to it and who leaked that ****?

US President Donald Trump's choice for labour secretary has withdrawn from consideration on the eve of a long-delayed confirmation hearing.

Andrew Puzder lost the support of several Republican senators after he admitted employing an illegal immigrant as a former housekeeper.

The fast-food billionaire had been criticised for his remarks on women and employees at his restaurants.

He was the first Trump cabinet pick to fail to secure a nomination.

The fallout from Mr Puzder's rancorous 1980s divorce had also returned to dog him.
It recently emerged that his ex-wife, Lisa Fierstein, appeared in disguise as a victim of domestic violence in a 1990 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, titled High Class Battered Women.

They split in 1987, but she later dropped the abuse claims in a child custody agreement.

I know a lot of you were saying in December that this administration wouldn’t last a month. But I’ll bet you didn’t actually have “worry about collapse of the government” written down on your schedule for February.

...Things are so dire, people are feeling sympathy for Kellyanne Conway. Did you see that poor woman trying to answer questions about Flynn on the “Today” show? She looked as though she’d been hit over the head with a skillet.

After Election, Trump’s Professed Love for Leaks Quickly Faded