A bunch of JFK files have been recently declassified and they paint a strange picture; not what you’d expect. However, many more are still secret and intelligence agencies are lobbying Trump to keep them so. (thanks y!)
Via Funkaoshi. Looks like I picked a heck of a ten days to go on vacation and then get sick. My favourite part is “Pickle”.
Wow. Trump hires the top people.
Goodnight, sweet wince.
Jeet Heer on Chapo and how they want moderate Democrats to “bend the knee” to the Sanders wing. He ties it to Trump-style dominance politics and argues it’s doomed to fail for the left. It’s an interesting take, but I’m not sold. I think some measure of browbeating could work well if paired with a more inclusive outreach effort. Which obviously should not be left to Chapo. (And is it me or is Chapo getting a lot of press these days?)
After lobbying from nice organizations like the major telecoms, advertisers, Facebook and Google, while everyone else was distracted by the Trump shitshow, Republicans gutted Obama-era laws preventing ISPs from selling your browsing history. Because clearly what the world needs is more creepy microtargeted psychometric manipulation
You can marry a child in 38 US states. WTF
This makes me happy
This is an article from January about Cambridge Analytica using psychometrics for the Trump in 2016 – the same company that worked for the Brexit campaign, and is tied to both Bannon and Robert Mercer.
That number is 84 percent, Trump’s job approval rating among Republicans in the most recent weekly average from Gallup.
This will keep Hill Republicans behind him until those numbers start to sag.
He could be disbarred for being involved in the Comey firing after he refused himself.
Impeachable offence
If Trump fired Comey to impede the Russia investigation, he possibly engaged in obstruction of justice. That is a crime. That is a case for impeachment. In fact, the first of the three articles of impeachment filed by the House judiciary committee against Richard Nixon in 1974 was for obstruction of justice.
Jeet Heer:
By firing Comey, Trump has created the biggest political crisis in American politics since Watergate. The Democrats have very few weapons to wield against Trump right now, but they can continue to poke and prod him, using the ensuing controversy to rally opposition to Trump. American democracy is in real danger, and the Democrats now have a duty—one that transcends partisan politics—to make those stakes clear to the electorate.
Not suspicious at all
Missed that this also happened yesterday, before the Comey firing.
Senate Russia investigators have sent a request to the Treasury Department’s criminal investigation division for any information related to President Donald Trump, his top officials and his campaign aides, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee told CNN Tuesday.
Oh man.
There is only one reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the decision to fire Comey: that there is grave wrongdoing at the center of the Russia scandal and that it implicates the President. As I write this, I have a difficult time believing that last sentence myself. But sometimes you have to step back from your assumptions and simply look at what the available evidence is telling you. It’s speaking clearly: the only reasonable explanation is that the President has something immense to hide and needs someone in charge of the FBI who he believes is loyal.
Pretty good overview. My takeaway is that it’s unlikely to be anything other than impeachment, which would require Dem control of the House, and theoretically a supermajority in the Senate. This was kinda great though:
The White House maintains that it was unaware of any links to the Kremlin, and the details of the investigations are classified. But select members of Congress who oversee the intelligence agencies have access to the findings. Recently, one of them, Senator Mark Warner, of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, privately told friends that he puts the odds at two to one against Trump completing a full term.
Big data meets military psyops meets the far right.
Crazy, alarming story.
The Republican health-care bill is an act of monstrous cruelty. It should stain those who supported it to the end of their days.
Re: emoluments clause
Under cross-examination, he spoke not only about George Soros and overly potent marijuana, but also his taste for zebra meat and canned exotic game hunts, and confirmed that a big bowl of hot Texas chili caused him to forget details about his kids’ lives.
The FBI gathered intelligence last summer that suggests Russian operatives tried to use Trump advisers, including Carter Page, to infiltrate the Trump campaign, according to US officials.
I’d say they were quite successful.