I have no idea why Donna Brazile decided to write her new book, or why she decided to release it at this particular moment.  I have, however, heard several people propose alternative explanations.  1) She is just blatantly trying to promote a book and make money.  She has purposefully written a sensational book designed to sell.  And, she is getting the media coverage for sure.  2) She is trying to make herself relevant again.  Evidently, though, she was still being paid by the DNC.  I certainly got fund-raising emails with her photograph on them, some of them signed by her.  3) Something happened with the Clintons or the campaign since the election that has prompted her to lash out.  4) She is positioning herself behind the faction she thinks will take control of the Democratic Party, the Sanders people.  5) She is trying to ingratiate herself to Cory Booker and Joe Biden, thinking they are going to be the front runners in the 2010 campaign.

 

  Sen. Al Franken asked:  What would you do if anyone in the administration “communicated with the Russian government during this election?”  Sessions answered: “I am not aware of any of these activities.”  “I did not have communications with the Russians.” 

As a Southerner I will say that I think we should get rid of all these relics of the Confederacy, starting with this one.

At 5 AM, a story was released by Politico, written by Donna Brazile.  The article is supposedly an excerpt from Brazile’s new book.  In it, Brazile details her discovery (I”m shocked, shocked that gambling is going on in here) that the Clinton campaign had hijacked the finances of the Democratic Party early in the process, long before she had secured the nomination.  Brazile throws Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Shutlz under the bus.  There are so many things wrong with this story, I don’t even know where to begin.  I see no coverage on cable news.  All Chris Hayes had to say was: “This is nuts.”

This one deserves following…

 

NEW YORK

CNN and MSNBC are still giving the attack in New York full-time coverage this morning.  As far as I can determine, there’s not one thing new or enlightening being covered.  Everybody in New York and Washington is being interviewed, saying the same thing they have said every time this has happened before.  There is nothing, nothing new to say about this or at least nothing that the cable news media is reporting.  Rachael Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell gave half their shows last night to going over details of the attack that had been reported all day.  There is a whole world out there, but everybody and their brother had to be shown commenting on the details of this particular attack.

It seems to me that there is a bad combination of things wrong with the coverage of terror attacks like this.  First, the obsessive coverage gives more power to the people who have perpetrated the attack.  It creates the impression that the threat is more serious in terms of probability than it is.  Second, by sanitizing the coverage the media argues that it is taking power away from the terrorists.  But, when the public is given a sanitized version of the event, there is no real recognition of the true horror of these attacks.  I think if the media is going to give hours and hours of coverage, they should at least allow the public to see the reality of what has happened.  This includes dead bodies.

I don’t remember seeing one dead body after the Las Vegas attack.  There’s something wrong with this.

Instead of covering the true horror of these attacks, increasingly what is happening is a sort of pep rally.  The press conferences given by officials immediately turn into a kind of awards ceremonies for first responders and politicians.  It’s just not appropriate to start congratulating ourselves on how great our first responders are when there’s been a terrorist attack.  Is this happening just because nobody has anything useful to say?  Is it because it somehow makes us feel better if we have something great (first responders) in the middle of this confusing, perplexing problem?  It reminds me of a time when I phoned up and asked the head of a death row unit how his officers dealt with living with men sometimes for decades and then having to see them put to death.  “We have the cleanest death row in the world.”  The guy responded.  He went on for at least 5 minutes in the same vein.  I thought he was crazy.  But this is what’s going on in these press conferences.  They spend most of the update press conferences congratulating everybody in sight.  It also provides a political photo op for every politician to demonstrate their supposed public concern.

I also don’t understand why these government officials have to uniformly act as if the press is the enemy.  There is this ill-tempered, impatient attitude toward people doing their job and trying to give information to the public.

Also, why is it necessary to define every terrorist attack as “cowardly.”  Why is this important?  Why is it relevant?  As I remember, Bill Mahrer lost his job years ago for saying that there was nothing “cowardly” about the 9/11 attack.  It might be a lot of things, but why “cowardly.”

RUSSIA

Rachael Maddow did do an analysis of the documents released last night explaining why the government thought Paul Manafort was a flight risk. If you missed it, it’s worth looking at.  Joyce Vance, former federal prosecutor, pointed out that Manafort had a number of passports with different numbers as well as a cell phone registered under an alias.  On Morning Joe, Clint Watts, also pointed out the same thing.

And it’s just 7 AM.

 

 

 

   The Young Turks podcast is hosted by former MSNBC host Cenk Uygur and Anna Kasparian.  I started listening to Uygur when he did a progressive radio program with TCM host Ben Mankowitz.  Uygur later hosted a news program on MSNBC 2010 – 2011.

On the October 27 podcast, Uygur and his panel talk about the awarding of a $300 million contract to Whitefish Energy, a company owned by a buddy of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, to do work in Puerto Rico.  Only a few months ago, this company had two permanent employees.

There were charges of cronyism when the no-bid contract was awarded and now, as if it couldn’t be worse, details of the contract between the company and FEMA have been leaked.   According to an article in the Hill, the deal between the Trump headed government agency and the small Montana company prohibits the “government from reviewing labor costs or profits related to the company’s relief efforts in Puerto Rico.”   According to the contract, the government is not allowed to “audit or review the cost and profit elements” of the work.

The contract also prohibits the government from making “any claim against Contractor related to delayed completion of work.”

When San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin called for the deal to be voided, the company threatened in a tweet to stop work.

“They are threatening not to do their job which frankly is quite irregular for a company hired to the work for the public sector,” Yulin tweeted in response.

Two House committees and a federal watchdog have all opened investigations into the deal.

As one of the panelists on The Young Turks asked: “Why bother going into organized crime when you can go into politics?”

See The Hill, “Whitefish Energy contract bars government from auditing deal.”  By John Bowden, 10/27/17

The Young Turks Podcast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jack Kingston is a former Congressman from Georgia.  He gave up his House seat in 2014 to run for the Senate and lost.  Not even Georgia would elect him.  Now, he has a lift as a CNN commentator.  His tweet this morning was about doing away with  the Mueller “witch hunt.”

According to reporting by NPR, even before Trump had been inaugurated, Kingston was in Russia briefing American businesspeople about what they might expect from the incoming administration  “Trump can look at sanctions.”  Kingston told NPR in Moscow.  “They’ve been in place long enough.”

Kingston described his role in the Trump campaign as “an active soldier in the foxhole…”  Kingston was in Moscow at the same time as another Trump operative, Carter Page.  (NPR.  Lucian Kim “Trump‘s Men in Moscow” 12/14/16).

 

After taking a principled stance against Trump, Flake and Corker voted to strip consumers of the right to join in class action suits against exploitative banks and predatory lenders.  This is about more than Trump.  This is about the Republican Party and Fox News and Sinclair.  We have to fight all three of them.

In the vote last night, the Republicans sided with Wall Street bankers, protecting them from lawsuits and forcing customers who have been defrauded to sue individually, which is impossible for most people.  Forced arbitration is forced loss.  Only about 9% of arbitration cases find for the consumer.  As Chuck Schumer said, this is “helping the powerful against the powerless.”  As Elizabeth Warren said: This act is to “hand big banks their biggest win” since the financial crisis.

I’m not in love with the Democratic Party myself, but every Democrat voted to preserve the right of consumers to collective lawsuits.  Every Republican but two sided with the big banks – their donors.  You choose which side you’re on.  Veterans groups opposed this move, the AARP opposed it.  The fricken American Legion opposed this vote.  Shelton Whitehouse called the Republican vote “donor maintenance.”

The Tax bill being written in the House raises the tax rate on those at the bottom of the economic scale.  Your Republican Party at work for you.

Fox News is evidently wall-to-wall outrage about the Clinton campaign partially funding opposition research.  The Trump campaign at least tried to collude with a foreign government to get hold of opposition research.

If Flake and Corker think Trump is a danger to democracy, they have a moral obligation to support impeachment.  If not, their moral outrage means nothing.

Republicans are bowing out of the political system to cash in outside the formal political arena.  They’ve never had to run for office before.  They are the product of gerrymandering and voter suppression.  Just think abut how they reacted when they had to confront some hard questions at town hall meetings.  They had never had to do this before and now they’re running for the hills.

 

Rick Stengel from Time Magazine stopped Nicole Wallace’s show this afternoon on MSNBC to point out the idiocy of broadcasting Sarah Huckleberry Sanders’ press conference.  He called it exactly what it is “propaganda” and “disinformation.”  The questions are useless, the answers lies.  Thanks to Rick Stengel. 

John Kelly didn’t just make a mistake.  He covered for Donald Trump.  He lied about a Congressperson for political purposes.  These guys are not the “adults in the room.”  They are not the answer.  They are not what is going to save us from the destruction of Trump and the Republican Party.

It Didn’t Just Start Now: John Kelly Has Always Been a Hard-Right Bully

https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=+Young+US+woman+recruited+by+ISIS+grandmother&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001

  Rep. Tom Morino withdraws from consideration as Drug Czar after a Washington Post/ 60 Minutes expose about a bill he shephered through Congress that hampered the ability of the DEA to effectively move against pharmaceutical companies who were flooding the market with drugs. 

What would be going on without the press?

Quote from Manchurian Candidate:

“There are people who think of Johnny as a clown and a buffoon. But I do not. I despise John Iselin and everything that Iselenism has come to stand for. I think if John Iselin were a paid Soviet agent he could not do more harm to this country than he is doing now.”

– The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon

  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just ousted Harvey Weinstein.  Here is their statement in part:

“We do so not simply to separate ourselves from someone who does not merit the respect of his colleagues but also to send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over,” the statement read.

Are they kidding?

“…predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over.”

I don’t think so.  If the Academy ousted every man who behaved like Harvey Weinstein, there wouldn’t be many men left in power.  Every woman I know has dozens of stories about the Harvey Weinsteins in their lives.  Almost all of the men did very well and are doing very well indeed.  The women, largely, left jobs, lost jobs, weren’t supported, were retaliated against.

There is a new seriousness in the news discussions of sexually predatory behavior, but this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.

Voters in this country elected as President a man who had admitted to sexually assaulting women.

I just woke up to talk of “instability” and Trump “unraveling.” Great.  Just great.  I

couldn’t even finish listening to the news last night.

10 Books about Authoritarianism

https://www.bustle.com/p/10-books-about-authoritarianism-to-educate-yourself-on-the-political-ideology-38076