January 8, 2018

BIllionaire Dem donor to spend tens of millions to boost 2018 turnout to flip control of the House.

BIllionaire Dem donor to spend tens of millions to boost 2018 turnout to try to flip control of the House

Billionaire Democratic donor and environmentalist Tom Steyer will not run for any political office in 2018, instead outlining plans to sink tens of millions of dollars into an aggressive effort to flip the House majority to the Democrats.

"I'm willing to do whatever it takes to help save our country. And I believe the most important task for me, the task which I feel called to do, is organizing and mobilizing America’s voters," Steyer said during a Monday morning press conference in Washington, D.C., at an office space overlooking the Capitol.

"I'm not going to run for office in 2018, that's not where I can make the biggest difference."


He plans to channel at least $30 million toward his advocacy group, NextGen America, in order to build out a massive army meant to boost millennial voter turnout across 10 states. Democrats will need to flip at least 24 seats in 2018 to win back the majority.



MORE:
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/367906-billionaire-donor-steyer-says-he-wont-run-for-office-in-2018

January 8, 2018

Yes! Stephen Miller was disowned by Duke alumni.

Open Letter to Stephen Miller
To Stephen Miller, Duke University Class of 2007,
Our class’s upcoming ten-year reunion serves as an occasion to reflect on how much has changed since we left campus. After graduation, some of us remained in Durham and some of us moved to Dar es Salaam. Some embarked on medical school and some started novels. We can now be found in every type of professional field in every corner of the globe—but no matter who or where we are, we’ve striven to embody the ideals instilled in us by our Duke education.

You have also accomplished much. As a Senior Advisor to President Donald J. Trump, you have ascended to the very peak of American policy-making and have gained the power to influence not just hundreds of millions of Americans, but the lives of people around the world. And yet we find it impossible to see in your words and actions any glimmer of the university values we so cherish, nor the slightest suggestion that you spent four of your most formative years at the same dynamic, diverse institution of higher education we did.

Surely you lived, as we did, in the same Duke quads as migrants and refugees, people who came to our school after childhoods of horrific hardship, people who sought American shores for the promise of safety and opportunity their native homes could not deliver. How is it, then, that as a global refugee crisis continues to unfold you can play such a central role in the executive order banning innocent refugees and the citizens of seven majority Muslim countries?

Surely you had classes where young women were the leading lights of seminars and discussions, women who have now gone on to achieve success in the law, in business, in academia, in the arts, in medicine, in politics. How, then, can you contribute to an administration that overlooks women for cabinet posts, advisory roles, and judgeships, that speaks and acts as though women lack sufficient agency to make decisions about their own families and bodies?

Surely you rode the campus bus with members of the LGBTQ community, some of whom were proudly public, others of whom remained in the closet due to fear and stigma, all of whom were entitled to the same basic protections you were, not to mention dignity and happiness. So how is it that you are contributing to an agenda that seeks to strengthen stigma, undercut protections, and abridge rights?

Surely you ate lunch alongside students of color, people from all manner of socioeconomic backgrounds and locales. How, then, can you condone rhetoric that reduces African Americans to people who hail only from crime-infested, drug-ridden neighborhoods and that insults Hispanics by asking them to support the construction of that most divisive of political symbols—a wall separating them from their heritages, and often their families?

Surely as a columnist for the Duke Chronicle you saw the invaluable benefits of a rigorous, open-minded newsroom, just as you saw how integral the student press was to promoting free, vigorous discourse on campus. So how is it that you can now help lead an administration that seeks to bully and muzzle the press, that views journalists as good for nothing more than serving as mouthpieces for your political agenda?

We, the undersigned members of Duke’s Class of 2007 and beyond, see nothing in your actions that furthers the values of intellectual honesty, tolerance, diversity, and respect that we seek to promote in the world. But you can rest assured we will continue to champion those very values and serve as representatives of the Duke we want the world to see—for the next ten years and for the decades to follow.

(3,454 signatures)


https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf9JDRbGYhkAEMJ3hFlypzanVEi9lFEYQfDXD1XX3g_3RInDw/viewform
https://twitter.com/MillieLou5/status/950198380667572224

January 8, 2018

Sen Graham: Whoopi isn't laughing & either am I.

Lindsey Graham on Trump calling himself 'a very stable genius':
"If he doesn't call himself a genius, nobody else will." (via ABC)

VIDEO:
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/950410618670080001

January 8, 2018

The cover of this week's New Yorker: "In Creative Battle"

by Mark Ulriksen




https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/950370306258079745

January 8, 2018

EJ Dionne: "The dam of denial has broken"

By E.J. Dionne Jr. Opinion writer January 7 at 7:07 PM
The most astonishing aspect of the response to Michael Wolff’s book is that anyone is surprised. President Trump’s unfitness for office was obvious long before he was elected. Once he moved into the White House, the destructive chaos of his administration was there for all to see. Future historians will scratch their heads to figure out why it took this particular book to break the dam of denial.

None of this takes anything away from Wolff’s achievement in “Fire and Fury.” On the contrary, he deserves our thanks for creating Trump’s “emperor has no clothes” moment, even if this point should have been reached before, say, Nov. 8, 2016. Trump’s tweets on Saturday pronouncing himself “a very stable genius” only underscored the damage Wolff has done and Trump’s dumbfounding insecurity.

But Wolff alone cannot bring this presidency crashing down, given how many Republicans still seem determined to protect Trump. Even as the news was dominated by Wolff’s revelations, Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley and Lindsey O. Graham made a criminal referral to the Justice Department on Friday — and not against anyone who might have colluded with Russia. Instead, they urged investigation of Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored an explosive dossier including information that Trump may have been compromised by Moscow.

.................


The first key is his phony populism, with an emphasis on both words.

Trump will continue to try to rally what base he has left with tweets about kneeling NFL players, immigrants, law and order and “political correctness.” He will keep attacking Hillary Clinton, the surest sign of his weakness, since his own record has done little to draw Americans his way. He needs targets to make his enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend approach work.


................


What might be called the Wolff Effect will thus be paradoxical. It could strengthen the bonds between Republican politicians and Trump at the very moment when everyone else is coming to terms with how dangerous it is to have a president who is so uninformed and unstable. In the meantime, more traditional journalists will carry on their painstaking work, piling up evidence that Trump did all he could to block a legal accounting for the methods that helped get him to the White House in the first place.

We should have gotten here sooner. But far better late than never.


the rest:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-dam-of-denial-has-broken/2018/01/07/1e29d85a-f330-11e7-b390-a36dc3fa2842_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.11b79f7fc7fa

January 8, 2018

Sen. Tim Kaine's pic with "a very stable" man

@timkaine:
The most important characteristic of any good cardboard cutout is that it’s very stable. All these years later, this one of @BarackObama is still standing strong. Whoever designed it must’ve been, like, really smart!




https://twitter.com/timkaine/status/950043873333702656

January 8, 2018

LOL --- Stephen Miller REFUSED To Leave CNN Set --- Security Had to Escort Him Out

http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-miller-escorted-off-cnn-2018-1





For context:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210069522
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210069522



what Joy says:
@JoyAnnReid
His life is pure farce and he doesn’t even know it.
https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/950179073552248832



UPDATE:


‘That’s why they don’t put you on TV’: Leak reveals Tapper torched Miller again after interview shut down

MORE:
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/01/thats-why-they-dont-put-you-on-tv-leak-reveals-tapper-torched-miller-again-after-shut-down-interview/

January 8, 2018

Im gonna start calling my naps Executive Time.

Trump is starting his official day much later than he did in the early days, often around 11am, and holding far fewer meetings, per Axios.

This is largely to meet Trump’s demands for more “Executive Time,” which apparently means TV and Twitter time.

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/950145275909189632

January 7, 2018

"Midvale School For The Really Smart & Very Stable Genius"

January 7, 2018

OMG! Look at this sign someone put up on the 15 Freeway between LA and Las Vegas!

It reads :
Welcome to California. Official Sanctuary State.
Felons, Illegals and MS13 Welcome
Democrats need the Votes!

https://twitter.com/KamVTV/status/947958082281148416