kpete
kpete's Journal
Luckovich draws: General Spongebob.
https://twitter.com/mluckovichajc/status/961393936462962689
NBC Confirms: Kushner is the 'very senior member' of Trump transition team mentioned in Flynn plea
https://twitter.com/TomthunkitsMind/status/961572940553834496Boycotting Republicans Isn't Enough.
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After years of engaging enthusiastically in corruption and fiscal profligacy, Obama-era Republicans adopted a pose of rectitude and austerity. Anyone who had been paying attention knew these were just poses. Their immediate jettisoning of Dick Cheney’s “deficits don’t matter” ethos and overnight embrace of hawkish budget rhetoric was nakedly insincere, but was nevertheless accepted in good faith by nearly the entire political elite. Just this week, in an otherwise astute assessment of Republican base voters, Axios’ Jonathan Swan asserted that Trump “has moved the party away from decades of orthodoxy on…deficits,” as if such an orthodoxy has existed in the post-Reagan era. As if Republicans’ re-embrace of expansionary fiscal policy after reclaiming power weren’t completely foreordained.
Republicans spent the full eight years of the Obama presidency making arguments they didn’t believe, claiming to be outraged about things that didn’t really outrage them, fabricating controversy out of things they knew to be uncontroversial. They spent four years pretending to believe an attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans was a historic scandal, eclipsed only by the revelation (which they also didn’t really care about) that Obama’s secretary of state used a private email account to do work. When they were rewarded for this plain-as-day bad faith with control of the entire federal government, they immediately forgot about Benghazi, ignored botched operations for which Trump bore responsibility, and continued to use private email and encrypted third-party communication applications with impunity.
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After Trump, Democrats could adopt a more aggressive approach than they have in the past, on the fool-me-twice principle. They could abolish the filibuster, expedite legislation to widen the franchise and reform campaign finance laws, right Mitch McConnell’s theft of a Supreme Court seat, and conduct oversight of the institutions of government Trump corrupted. They could set up a commission to examine, the role of propaganda in American media, and report out how and why, under Trump, the Republican Party entered a de facto partnership with hostile foreign intelligence to influence American politics.
I think they can and should do all of these things and more, so long as they can be done on majoritarian and representative bases.
But to truly marginalize the GOP’s political style would require a level of cooperation from many conservatives that doesn’t exist, and a level of buy-in from generally non-partisan institutions—the media, the bureaucracy, corporate America, and civil society—which have proven ill-equipped to defend themselves from Republican efforts to coopt or discredit them.
Corporate America has giddily joined a banana republic-style public relations campaign to thank dear leader Trump for his corporate tax cuts, and portray them as a boon to workers. Mainstream journalists are so petrified of bad-faith accusations of liberal bias that many of them genuinely can’t grasp how hostile the American right is to the vocation of journalism, or how to report on bad-faith in the public square more generally.
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MORE:
https://crooked.com/article/boycotting-republicans-isnt-enough/
via: https://www.balloon-juice.com/2018/02/08/to-hear-the-lamentations/#comments
Jennie Willoughby (Rob Porter's ex-wife) Heartbreaking Post From - April 2017: "Why I Stayed"
If you haven't seen this anonymous blog post by Rob Porter's ex-wife Jennie Willoughby, make sure your sitting down before you click.
https://twitter.com/dmartosko/status/961410520078307332
APRIL 24, 2017
WHY I STAYED
The first time he called me a "fucking bitch" was on our honeymoon. (I found out years later he had kicked his first wife on theirs.) A month later he physically prevented me from leaving the house. Less than two months after that, I filed a protective order with the police because he punched in the glass on our front door while I was locked inside. We bought a house to make up for it. Just after our one year anniversary, he pulled me, naked and dripping, from the shower to yell at me.
Everyone loved him. People commented all the time how lucky I was. Strangers complimented him to me every time we went out. But in my home, the abuse was insidious. The threats were personal. The terror was real. And yet I stayed.
When I tried to get help, I was counseled to consider carefully how what I said might affect his career. And so I kept my mouth shut and stayed. I was told, yes, he was deeply flawed, but then again so was I. And so I worked on myself and stayed. If he was a monster all the time, perhaps it would have been easier to leave. But he could be kind and sensitive. And so I stayed. He cried and apologized. And so I stayed. He offered to get help and even went to a few counseling sessions and therapy groups. And so I stayed. He belittled my intelligence and destroyed my confidence. And so I stayed. I felt ashamed and trapped. And so I stayed. Friends and clergy didn't believe me. And so I stayed. I was pregnant. And so I stayed. I lost the pregnancy and became depressed. And so I stayed.
Abuse is indifferent to education level, socio-economic status, race, age, or gender. And no one can ever know the dynamics of another's relationship. My cycle continued for four more years. Afterward, I let go and welcomed the hard work of healing and forgiveness. My experience made me stronger and able to love more deeply. But my heart breaks for him. In the end, who is the real victim of his choices?
http://www.bornebackceaselessly.com/journal/2017/4/24/why-i-stayed
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-house-rob-porter-resigns-abuse-allegations/
Stephen Colbert Trolls Trump Jr....
$130,000 is also good.
https://twitter.com/StephenAtHome/status/961450148143476744
@DonaldJTrumpJr
When roses just won't cut it...#ValentinesDay @TrumpStore http://TrumpStore.com
https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/961280949018341382
NBC - Russians SUCCESSFULLY PENETRATED - U.S. voter Systems, top U.S. official says
Two amazing things in this underreported article.
- "The US official in charge of protecting elections from hacking". The *ONE* US official. Singular. Ok.
- confirmation Russian GOVERNMENT successfully hacked US election systems. And paid no price.
POLITICS FEB 8 2018, 7:28 AM ET
Russians penetrated U.S. voter systems, top U.S. official says
by CYNTHIA MCFADDEN, WILLIAM M. ARKIN and KEVIN MONAHAN
The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said she couldn't talk about classified information publicly, but in 2016, "We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated."
Jeh Johnson, who was DHS secretary during the Russian intrusions, said, "2016 was a wake-up call and now it's incumbent upon states and the Feds to do something about it before our democracy is attacked again."
MORE:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/russians-penetrated-u-s-voter-systems-says-top-u-s-n845721
https://twitter.com/MollyMcKew/status/961412871149314048
Christopher Steele met with Muellers team for two days: report
The former British spy behind a controversial dossier about Donald Trump’s Russian links has spent two days talking to US investigators, it was reported on Wednesday.
Christopher Steele met behind closed doors with colleagues of Robert Mueller, the special counsel looking into Russian election meddling, according to The Washington Post.
It means that investigators will be able to judge firsthand whether they think claims reported by Mr Steele in the dossier are trustworthy.
MORE:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/07/ex-british-spy-christopher-steele-interviewed-russia-election/
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Member since: Fri Sep 17, 2004, 03:59 PMNumber of posts: 72,066
