January 31, 2017

General Strike on Friday February 17

Who is down for it?

https://twitter.com/NatParkUndrgrnd/status/826310038939639808

January 30, 2017

"The Inevitability Of Impeachment"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-inevitability-of-impeachment_us_588e8d52e4b0b065cbbcd09f

CONTRIBUTOR
The Inevitability Of Impeachment
After just one week.
01/29/2017 08:57 pm ET | Updated 1 hour ago
21k

Robert Kuttner Co-founder and co-editor, ‘The American Prospect’
X

Trump has been trying to govern by impulse, on whim, for personal retribution, for profit, by decree ― as if he had been elected dictator. It doesn’t work, and the wheels are coming off the bus. After a week!

Impeachment is gaining ground because it is the only way to get him out, and because Republicans are already deserting this president in droves, and because the man is psychiatrically incapable of checking whether something is legal before he does it.

Impeachment is gaining ground because it’s so horribly clear that Trump is unfit for office. The grownups around Trump, even the most slavishly loyal ones, spend half their time trying to rein him in, but it can’t be done.

They spend the other half fielding frantic calls from Republican chieftains, business elites and foreign leaders. Trump did what? Poor Reince Priebus has finally attained the pinnacle of power, and it can’t be fun. It is one thing to live in your own reality when you are a candidate and it’s just words. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time maybe even to get elected. But when you try to govern that way, there is a reality to reality—and reality pushes back.

Heehee! Love it!

January 29, 2017

Parliament committee calls on Baghdad to 'reciprocate' travel ban on Americans

Source: Al Jazeera

Muslim ban: MPs call for reciprocal measures. Parliament committee calls on Baghdad to 'reciprocate' travel ban on Americans as Iraqis express sense of betrayal.

Iraq should "reciprocate" the United States' discriminatory travel ban on Iraqis and citizens from six other Muslim-majority countries, the parliament's foreign affairs committee told the Baghdad government.

The committee issued the call on Sunday following a meeting in the capital to discuss US President Donald Trump's ban.

"We ask the Iraqi government to reciprocate to the decision taken by the US administration," said the committee in a statement read to Reuters by one its members, Hassan Shwerid. "Iraq is in the frontline of the war of terrorism ... and it is unfair that the Iraqis are treated in this way."

Iraq's Popular Mobilisation force also called for a ban, and for Americans already in the country to be expelled.

Read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/muslim-ban-officials-call-reciprocal-measures-170129094948075.html

---

keep in mind we have troops fighting there right now!

January 27, 2017

Trump smirks and scoffs when a BBC reporter takes him to task about torture, abortion and banning Mu

Source: Fusion

"There goes that relationship." Trump smirks and scoffs when a BBC reporter takes him to task about torture, abortion and banning Muslims:



Read more: https://twitter.com/Fusion/status/825068505812844545

---

so disgusting to see him laugh off the question. Also check out Conway's glare at the reporter.

January 26, 2017

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer presidents who aren't certifiably insane.

This interview was freaking bonkers.

Trump insisted that he could have “very, very easily” won the popular vote in the election — which concluded more than 11 weeks ago — had he simply tried. He again suggested that Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote because of widespread voter fraud, of which there is no evidence. He hinted that he thinks voter fraud might have also helped elect former president Barack Obama, whose favorability ratings were higher than his on Inauguration Day. He justified some of his unsubstantiated claims by saying that millions of his supporters agree with him. He did acknowledge that his own approval rating is “pretty bad,” but he blamed that on the media.

Trump plugged an “extraordinary poll” that he said found that people “loved and liked” his inaugural address. He again claimed to have “the biggest crowd in the history of inaugural speeches” and accused the media of demeaning his supporters by underreporting turnout. Trump also took credit for the Dow Jones industrial average closing above 20,000 for the first time on Wednesday, referred to a former rival as “one of the combatants that I fought to get here” and said that a recent visitor told him that their meeting “was the single greatest meeting I've ever had with anybody.”

Even some of the discussion of policy seemed to come back to the fight for popularity, with Trump summing up his plan to replace the Affordable Care Act in this place: “Millions of people will be happy. Right now, you have millions and millions and millions of people that are unhappy.”

Four times, the president referred to himself in the third-person.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/26/in-his-first-major-tv-interview-as-president-trump-is-endlessly-obsessed-about-his-popularity/?utm_term=.44354bb90226

Fuck. Where are the men in the white coats???

On the other hand, he has taken the Russian treason story out of the news...

January 25, 2017

"Oh we have a madman in the presidency because the Democrats forced Hillary on us"

I STILL keep seeing this argument-- "Oh we have a madman in the presidency because the Democrats forced Hillary on us".

It is such complete obnoxious bullshit I can hardly maintain my composure when I see it.

I know, preaching to the choir here, but still--

First, it was clear from when he first announced that Trump would be EXACTLY like this, and I warned everyone as much as I possibly could. It wasn't that hard to see either. We had countless articles warning us of this, in fact.

Second, to say that "oh Hillary didn't excite people enough" is complete patronizing bullshit. Everyone who votes has agency to see the difference, and if anyone refused to believe that Trump was a madman and Hillary was just as bad as him, then they are to blame for our current situation. Period.

Third, this argument also ignores the three ways the election was actually stolen from Hillary which are actually separate from the media bias against her. 1) Republican voter ID laws and other efforts to suppress the African-American vote. 2) Russian hacking of Democratic emails that led to spread of disinformation about Hillary. 3) Comey's October surprise bullshit news release.

Fourth, we really need to deal with the madman.

January 20, 2017

Obama's Last Interview as president

https://getcrookedmedia.com/here-have-a-podcast-78ee56b5a323#.sbcibto2g

On this new podcast from the "Keeping it 1600" guys (former Obama admin speechwriters and press guys).

Really good interview.

The podcast looks like it's worth keeping up with, during these weird times of the Trump admin.

January 20, 2017

Wayne Barrett, Fierce Muckraker at The Village Voice, Dies at 71

Source: NYTimes

Wayne Barrett, the muckraking Village Voice columnist who carved out a four-decade career taking on developers, landlords and politicians, among them Donald J. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 71. His wife, Fran Barrett, said the cause was complications of lung cancer and interstitial lung disease. A self-proclaimed country boy from Virginia and a lapsed seminarian, Mr. Barrett spent 37 years at The Voice, the alternative newsweekly based in Greenwich Village.

There he exposed the misdeeds that ensnared appointees and supporters of Mayor Edward I. Koch a trail of serial corruption that he recapitulated in 1988 in City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York, a much-praised book written with his mentor and fellow Voice mainstay Jack Newfield.
Continue reading the main story

A 1992 book, Trump: The Deals and the Downfall, was, as Mr. Barrett acknowledged, a flop at first. Thanks to his subjects improbable political ascent 25 years later, it was successfully republished and expanded in 2016 as Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention.

Mr. Barretts voluminous background files from the Trump biography, and his professional courtesy, made his Brooklyn home a mecca for investigative reporters during the recent presidential campaign.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/business/media/wayne-barrett-dead-village-voice-columnist.html?_r=0

---

freaking insane... what is going on? Such irony. I guess he couldn't stomach Trump as POTUS.

January 19, 2017

Trump's 2020 presidential slogan is tagline of mass homicidal horror film "The Purge"

Donald Trump's 2020 presidential slogan is the tagline of mass homicidal horror film The Purge: Election Year
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/donald-trump-2020-presidential-slogan-keep-america-great-the-purge-election-year-inauguration-a7534676.html

President-elect Donald Trump, while being a day away from his inauguration, has already announced the slogan he'll use for the 2020 presidential campaign - and it has one very sinister comparison.

The Republican will run for reelection in three years time and believes he has the perfect hook to re-ignite the passion of his voters: "Keep America Great" - the tagline of 2016 horror film The Purge: Election Year.

When asked what the slogan would be, he told The Washington Post: "Are you ready?" 'Keep America Great,' exclamation point.

"Get me my lawyer," he adds in the recording before telling someone in the room to trademark the line.

Holy crap. Not a joke.

January 19, 2017

CIA pick Mike Pompeo is a religious freak who might bring on the Rapture

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/01/mike_pompeo_trump_s_pick_for_the_cia_wants_a_holy_war.html

In June 2015, Rep. Mike Pompeo, a Kansas congressman, headlined a “God and Country Rally” at Wichita’s Summit Church. “To worship our lord and celebrate our nation at the same place is not only our right, it is our duty,” he began. Pompeo’s speech was a mishmash of domestic culture war callouts and dark warnings about the danger of radical Islam. He cited an inflammatory prayer that a pastor named the Rev. Joe Wright once delivered before the Kansas State Legislature: “America had worshipped other Gods and called it multiculturalism. We’d endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.” He lamented government efforts to “rip faith from our schools” and then segued immediately into a discussion of the jihadi threat: “This evil is all around us.” Pompeo concluded by describing politics as “a never-ending struggle … until the rapture.”

Donald Trump has appointed Pompeo to head the CIA; his confirmation hearings begin on Thursday. If a normal Republican president had nominated a figure like this to head the country’s major foreign intelligence agency, there likely would have been a lot of attention paid to his apocalyptic religiosity and Manichaean worldview. Amid the fire hose of lunacy that is the Trump transition, however, Pompeo’s extremism has been overlooked. It’s worth pausing to appreciate the fact that America’s CIA will shortly be run by a man who appears to view American foreign policy as a vehicle for holy war.