This school teacher was arrested for challenging a pay raise for a school Superintendent.
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- Robert Reich pointed out in a tweet that with the $18 billion they are talking about spending on the wall, we could end homelessness for 500 thousand Americans.
- Christopher Steele briefed reporters about his findings regarding the Trump/Russia scandal before the election.
- It has been reported that a person died due to the release of the Steele documents. Who was this?
- Is Steve Bannon just the first to try to distance himself from an administration riddled with corruption? Everybody in the White House is going to be pointing and saying: He’s Spartacus.
- Why hasn’t Rosenstein recused himself? The memo he wrote was used as a cover story for firing Comey. Rosenstein will be a witness regarding the firing of Comey. Some have argued that Mueller et. al. are just conveniently ignoring the conflict here. Others have mused that Muller isn’t going after obstruction.
- Why can’t Nicole Wallace stop talking? She’s getting to be just like Chris Matthews. Every question she asks is four paragraphs long.
- What difference would it make if the investigation had been initiated by the Steele memos? Why are the Democrats trying so hard to argue that the investigation was not initiated by the Steele memos? What difference does it make? They are so intimidated by Republican arguments.
- Joe Scarborough and others are repeatedly advancing the argument that Trump is suffering from dementia. This argument (that Trump has changed, deteriorated) seems especially self-serving coming from Scarborough. He can try to justify his own slavish support for Trump up until Trump dumped him as an advisor. Also, the danger of this argument (aside from the face that it’s probably untrue and almost impossible to prove) is that it forms a convenient out for Trump. He can resign, claim that he if suffering from dementia, and get to keep all his ill-gotten gains and cover up his criminal, and (if we were in a war) treasonous behavior.
- Why is everybody in the media constantly apologizing for calling out Trump’s behavior? You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to see that somebody’s behavior is erratic, impulsive, out of the ordinary. You would say that about your neighbor if he behaved like Trump. You don’t have to have a formal medical diagnosis to know that somebody is off-kilter (to put it mildly). Just say it and stop wringing your hands.
- Diane Feinstein has released the Senate Judiciary Committee testimony of Fusion GPS founder, Glenn Simpson. Let’s hope this is an indication of Democrats growing some kind of spine.
Just saying…
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- The Hill is reporting that Nancy Pelosi’s son partied with the Trumps at Mar-a-lago on New Year’s Eve. These folks in the Democratic Party are going to have to decide which side they are on.
- Morning Joe and Mike started off talking about how the country was going to survive the Trump Administration, how institutions are going to hold and save us from the threat to democracy. This only reinforces my notion that we are not going to survive at least not as a democracy. My bet is that it’s going to be a spiral toward autocracy from here on out.
- Scarborough is also talking about the dementia defense for Trump. He has been pushing this one for months. At least one journalist has proposed that this is likely to be the out for Trump and his minions – claim dementia and then resign and therefore be allowed to get away with treason, money laundering and god knows what else.
- The hypocritical pair (Joe and Mika) also were talking again this morning about “poor” Hope Hicks, and “poor” Reince Priebus. There was also comment on what a decent human being Priebus is. These people are adults, they have been part of one of the most corrupt administrations in history. I have no, I repeat no, sympathy for any of them.
- Steve Bannon is now trying to say his comments about treason were not about Donald Trump Jr, they were about Manafort.
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Jimmy Carter, the Republican Tax Bill and Citizen’s United
This is a quote from an interview with Jimmy Carter after the Supreme Court decision in Citizen’s United
“As the rich people finance the campaigns, when candidates get in office they do what the rich people want. And that’s to let the rich people get richer and richer and the middle class get left out. All the statistics show that the middle class are stagnant or going down in their income for the work that they do.”
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It’s me, Little Neal. Mom and I are making a list, checking it twice, writing down who’s been naughty and nice. Bob Corker has been really naughty, sleazy as well.
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Bob Corker says he has no idea how a provision that would benefit him financially got into the new Republican Tax bill. Really? That’s the best he can come up with?
Also, he says he hasn’t read the bill. Congresspersons who haven’t read the bill shouldn’t be voting on it. Do you think perhaps Bob Corker and the rest will stay in Washington over the Christmas holiday and read the bill? I don’t think so.
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Roy Moore
It is highly possible that the State of Alabama will vote today to send Roy Moore to the Senate. Whenever I hear people say: “Do they think the people in the state of Alabama are stupid?” I want to scream. “People in the state of Alabama are stupid.” And, I know. I am from Georgia. I grew up in a cotton manufacturing town right on the Georgia/Alabama line. Even in the 1950s my mother was saying that we should push the state of Alabama off into the ocean and abandon it. Roy Moore is not the exception to the rule in Alabama. He is the rule.
As an adult, I again lived in Alabama for a while, when I moved back to the South to take care of my aging parents. The legal system in Alabama has progressed little since the 1940s. If you ask questions or speak as if you had a brain and any sense of the rights of citizens in a civilized society, legal officials get immediately suspicious and ask if you are a lawyer, or worse, an outside agitator.
It is time to stop whining about the poor southern working class, left behind by the economy, alienated. It is time to stop planning to reach out to these people, to make concessions to bring them back into the fold. We don’t want them in the fold. They are bigots. They are racists. They are ignorant. They are gleefully uninformed. They have no interest in facts or truth, and they live in an ideologically closed world. We must leave them behind, not cater to them.
Fox News and the Republican party helped create them and we must leave Fox News and the Republican party behind with them.
Fox News
While I’m on the subject of Fox News, the state propaganda channel, Fox News is putting their pundits out full force to defend Trump against the tightening net of the Russia investigation. Jeanine Pirro has even gone so far as call for the “cleansing” of law enforcement agencies who are daring to investigate Trump. She called for the whole bunch of law enforcement officials investigating Trump to be arrested. She even called Comey a “political whore” on her show.
Pirro: “There is a cleansing needed in our FBI and Department of Justice — it needs to be cleansed of individuals who should not just be fired, but who need to be taken out in cuffs!”
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This is a great podcast by journalist for VOX, Ezra Klein. He is making the case for using impeachment. He is arguing that people have an almost superstitious fear of impeachment and that the consequences in this instance of NOT impeaching are dire.
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Summary from the Intercepted Podcast site:
Erik Prince is the most infamous mercenary in modern U.S. history. The Blackwater founder has also served as Donald Trump’s shadow adviser and secret emissary. This week on Intercepted, an exclusive interview with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who has fought a decadeslong battle against Erik Prince. Host Jeremy Scahill, who wrote the book on Blackwater, analyzes the news that Prince established a back channel for Trump and Vladimir Putin and, as Trump meets with China’s leader at Mar-a-Lago, outlines Prince’s latest venture with Beijing. On the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s militant speech against the Vietnam War, television host and author Tavis Smiley talks about the “Santa Clausification” of Dr. King and explains why he would not be allowed to speak at his own memorial events today. Rep. Barbara Lee reflects on her own historic speech, delivered three days after 9/11, when she was the only member of Congress to oppose the blank check given to Bush and Cheney to wage an unchecked war on the world. And Vice President Mike Pence, who says he can’t be alone in a room with a woman who is not his wife, gets the Norman Bates treatment.
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If you’re not familiar with Eric Prince, this is a great book.
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- The anchor on MSNBC is asking whether Democrats should get credit for forcing Al Franken out of the Senate because their motives were political. What? What? The Democrats were being criticized for not forcing Franken out and now they are being criticized for not having pure enough motives for doing so? Has absolutely everybody gone bat shit crazy?
Law, Power, and Justice 