Yes, the music was a bad production choice!
Good read, thanks for spreading the word.
Thanks for listing this again (trump requesting help from Russia). Why this hasnât been stated over and over in the televised news has always made me wonder why. Ditto on the wall and the request for $5B when Trumpâs budget request was ONLY for $1.5B⌠it seems obvious that this should not be made more of than just the beating he got from righ-wing media.
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I think Tâs focus on the Wall is tied up in his hatred of non-whites. Thatâs how I explain the non logic of it.
Not sure where to put thisâŚreflects who in the GOP is compromised as well, and will go out of their way to protect T. Based on an opinion piece by Richard Painter, Former GOP Lawyer under GWB, and Leanne Watt, a psychologist.
But some anti-Trump Republicans increasingly believe thereâs more to it than extreme party loyalty â and theyâre increasingly being vocal about it. They worry that some GOP congressional members defend Trump while also believing heâs a danger to both U.S. economic interests and national security.
These Trump critics believe, in short, that at least a handful of prominent congressional Republicans are compromised by Russia, just like Trump.
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Richard Painter, University of Minnesota law professor and former chief ethics counsel for President George W. Bushâs White House, and psychologist Leanne Watt argue that itâs not a conspiracy theory at all.In an opinion essay penned as voters went to the polls last November, they say they applied âpolitical and psychological insights, as well as Occamâs razor â the reasoning principle used by scientists and academics that states that the most obvious explanation is usually the correct one â [to make] an evidence-based caseâ against some of the foremost Republican members of Congress.
Below are the U.S. representatives and senators who Painter and Watt fear are compromised:
Lindsey Graham
Long an institutionalist, Graham began to mimic Trumpâs criticism of a âDeep Stateâ and a corrupt FBI out to get the president.
We know that Senator Grahamâs emails were stolen by the Russians
Mitch McConnell
They add that between 2015 and 2017, McConnellâs Super-PAC received $3.5 million from "a Russian-American oligarch with close ties to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin."
Devin Nunes
Write Painter and Watt: "There is no logical reason for Nunes to go so far in trying to obstruct the Russian investigation unless he has something personal at stake."
Note: there is a family vineyard that he owns, and I believe it is funded by some Russians.
Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Steve Scalise
Ryan, McCarthy and Scalise continued to back Nunes as House intelligence committee chairman despite Nunesâ questionable actions. They also sidestepped legislative efforts to shore up election security for the 2018 midterms and protect the Mueller investigation.
Plus, write Painter and Watt, âRyan was instrumental in stalling and weakening the Russia sanctions bill ⌠doing a solid for Putin, rather than doling out the appropriate consequences and protecting the United Statesâ interests against an enemy combatant.â
Still, they point out that the continued support of these prominent Republicans for Trump simply makes no sense, considering the damage Trump is doing to the âGOP brandâ and that âVice President [Mike] Pence would be Trumpâs inevitable successorâ if Congress removed Trump via impeachment and Senate conviction.
âOn the surface,â they write, âushering in a President Pence would appear to be both a brilliant and logical move for the Republicans. ⌠[Congressional Republicansâ] failure to create this change suggests that something outside the realm of normal politics cements Republican leaders to Donald Trump.â
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@dragonfly9 Thanks â that is a thought provoking op-ed. And coincidentally, Nunes is back in the news â Mueller is looking at a breakfast meeting he had with Flynn and representatives from several countries just before the inauguration.
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A compelling read. Max Boot succinctly lays out the incriminating evidence that is piling up against Trump.
As a follow-up, hereâs Max Boot and Susan Glasser on a panel with Don Lemon, discussing Giulianiâs extraordinary admission that Trumpâs campaign colluded with Russia â and the real possibility that our President could be a Russian asset.
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Jezzz, the rats have invaded.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin has written a lot on the character and life of various Presidents. She compares our current one against the robust character, Teddy Roosevelt, who was equally outspoken, and wealthy but tempered by a sense of fairness and a sense of duty to uphold all people and institutions.
Interesting articleâŚI liked reading the last two paragraphs in particular where she decries the things we have lost along the way - belief and trust in someoneâs word and the institutional necessity of a three-pronged government and a robust press.
The Square Deal, the slogan that would come to characterize Rooseveltâs entire domestic program, was predicated upon this fellow feeling and a determination to be fair to all. âI believe in rich people who act squarely, and in labor unions which are managed with wisdom and justice. But when either employee or employer, laboring man or capitalist, goes wrong, I have to clinch him, and that is all there is to it.â
The Square Deal, like all deals, hinged upon intention, promises, pledges, and execution. All deals are based upon stability and coherence. The words that make up a durable deal cannot be granted one day and walked back the next. Roosevelt called words that were emptied of meaning âweasel words,â as if a weasel had sucked out the nourishment of truth and left behind an empty shell.
Today, a pattern has emerged of misspoken statements, half- truths, invented distractions, and outright fabrications. Critical analyses and disagreements are termed fake. Blatant falsehoods are repeated again and again. Yet constant repetition of an assertion does not make it trueâexcept perhaps in the nonsense realm of Lewis Carrollâs The Hunting of the Snark: âJust the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.â
This is beyond simply winning or losing. There is a terrible danger in growing accustomed to the erosion of meaning in our political discourse. Serious, perhaps lasting, damage is being done to our identity as Americans and to our democracy. We are moving in a direction in which trust will be vaporized and truth becomes a fugitive.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, the presidential historian, is the author of the newly published Leadership in Turbulent Times
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Garrett Graff makes a good point in this Op-Ed from Wired magazine. Read the whole thing. 
IT WOULD BE rather embarrassing for Donald Trump at this point if Robert Mueller were to declare that the president isnât an agent of Russian intelligence.
â
In short, weâve reached a point in the Mueller probe where there are only two scenarios left: Either the president is compromised by the Russian government and has been working covertly to cooperate with Vladimir Putin after Russia helped win him the 2016 electionâor Trump will go down in history as the worldâs most famous âuseful idiot,â as communists used to call those who could be co-opted to the cause without realizing it.
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Useful idiot, hmm do we get to vote on which? Oh yes in 2020 if not for impeachment prior to 2020.
Rep Ted Lieu asks this week for for Kushnerâs security clearance to be revoked. This opinion piece is all about Kushner having just skated by, given passes on his documents, business relations and his âplaying government,â as noted by John Kelly. He may be stopped by Congress or Mueller or both.
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Sorry, Republicans. You canât call out Northam for racism and give Trump a pass.
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Great Senate floor speech by Senator from Colorado
This speech is worth watching IMO, itâs great when someone with passion for what they do puts logic and rationale thought into what they say.
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Some remarks on the SOTU from a Republican
President Trump, in soaring rhetoric, has told us that itâs his way or the highway, and that he wants national unity behind his way or we will suffer the consequences. If they hit you, he has said repeatedly, hit them back harder. If everybody acted this way, what a fine mess weâd be in. So just the president can act this way. Unity.
And this is not just empty talk from us. We have led by example. We have acted, as a party, like complete and shameless slithering invertebrates in our subservience to our leader. Slithering, by example, is our partyâs national message, and we call on all Americans to slink and creep beside us into the future. Thank you, and Donald Trump bless America.
Opinions galoreâŚno such thing as unity.
President Trumpâs senior adviser Kellyanne Conway previewed the State of the Union address as a âcall for more comity.â
Perhaps she meant âcomedyâ?
The notion that this president, who governs by insult, leads by division and delights in inflaming grievances, would be associated with comity is, well, funny.
Each year, around Groundhog Day, Trump emerges to give a one-night bipartisan appeal, and Tuesday nightâs rendition was, by Trumpian standards, generous. But then he spends the next 12 months throwing shadow.
âTogether we can break decades of political stalemate,â Trump inveighed Tuesday. âWe can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions.â
Another example of why we need to drastically limit the amount of money that can be contributed to PACs.
⌠From the looks of it, GOP politicians got what they wanted⌠From the time the tax bill was first introduced on Nov. 2, 2017, until the end of the year, a 60-day period, dozens of billionaires and millionaires dramatically boosted their political contributions unlike they had in past years, giving a total of $31.1 million in that two months, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics found.
A compelling info-graphic is also included.
Hats off to Mother Jones and their intrepid correspondents for the huge amount of research they did on this piece â it must represent hundreds of hours of dogged investigative reporting. And kudos as well go to the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Responsive Politics. 
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Stacey Abrams wrote a beautiful piece in Foreign Affairs about âidentity politicsâ.
She nails it right here.
Beyond electoral politics, Fukuyama and others argue that by calling out ethnic, cultural, gender, or sexual differences, marginalized groups harm themselves and their causes. By enumerating and celebrating distinctions, the argument goes, they give their opponents reasons for further excluding them. But minorities and the marginalized have little choice but to fight against the particular methods of discrimination employed against them. The marginalized did not create identity politics: their identities have been forced on them by dominant groups, and politics is the most effective method of revolt.
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From the NY Times editorial board.
Opinion
Saudi Arabiaâs Threadbare Cover-Up of Khashoggiâs Killing Unravels FurtherThe crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was overheard threatening to silence the self-exiled Washington Post journalist âwith a bullet.â
The latest have come from American intelligence agencies, a United Nations investigator and a coalition of nongovernmental organizations, sources that in their diversity and breadth should serve notice on Prince Mohammed that all his oil wealth and powerful friends will not wash away the blood of the slain journalist.
A report in The Times on Thursday said the National Security Agency and other American spy agencies have uncovered an intercepted conversation in which Prince Mohammed tells a top aide more than a year before Mr. Khashoggiâs murder that if the self-exiled journalist cannot be enticed back to Saudi Arabia, he should be brought back by force. And if that didnât work, the prince is heard to say, he would go after Mr. Khashoggi âwith a bullet.â
Whether Prince Mohammed meant that literally or figuratively, the quote reveals a young, ruthlessly ambitious autocrat furious that a one-time insider dared criticize him as he sought to impose his will on the kingdom, including the repression of all who dare speak their mind. It was shortly after that conversation that Mr. Khashoggi produced his first column for The Washington Post, where he wrote: âI have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice. To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison.ââWe Saudis deserve better,â he concluded.
Despite Mr. Trumpâs efforts to blunt the allegations against Prince Mohammed, who had cultivated a close relationship with the president and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, an assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency weeks after the killing concluded that the crown prince had to have ordered it.
At the United Nations, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnes Callamard, reported Thursday that her initial findings âshow prime facie case that Mr. Khashoggi was the victim of a brutal and premeditated killing, planned and perpetrated by officials of the state of Saudi Arabia.â Though that essentially confirmed what is already widely accepted, the very fact of the independent United Nations investigation under a respected human-rights expert (Ms. Callamard, of France, is also director of Columbia Universityâs Global Freedom of Expression project), whose team includes a British barrister and a Portuguese forensics expert, is a welcome escalation of the pressures on Saudi Arabia to come clean. The panel will report its full findings in June.
A coalition of prominent nongovernment organizations, meanwhile, issued a joint statement accusing the Saudi government of continuing to persecute dissidents, activists, journalists and independent clerics. The group â the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, Open Society Justice Initiative, PEN America and Reporters Without Borders â also accused the Trump administration of a âcover-up on behalf of the Saudi governmentâ and called the trial of 11 Saudi individuals accused of killing Mr. Khashoggi âa sham.â
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