Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

NAFTA's long road to completion
Politico | Megan Cassella | 05/23/18

The Trump administration must meet a series of statutory deadlines to get NAFTA 2.0 passed through Congress. How far along is it?

But it's no small task: Besides working with Canada and Mexico to reach a deal that all three countries find reasonable, U.S. negotiators must also work with Congress to adhere to a series of strict statutory guidelines. Following those rules, laid out under the Trade Promotion Authority law, allows the president to submit the final deal to Congress for a straight up-or-down vote without any amendments, greatly increasing the chances of quick passage. ... Read more

The 315 people connected to the Russia probes
Politico | Darren Samuelsohn | older 05/02/18

A POLITICO analysis of court documents, congressional letters, public testimony and media reports reveals that the investigations into the 2016 election and its aftermath now involve hundreds of people in Washington, Moscow and around the world.

Ivanka and Jared's long game
Axios | Mike Allen | 05/31/18

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who dominated coverage early on with their unparalleled Oval Office access and various business and political controversies, now are out of the spotlight for long stretches.

What's happening: Leaks of their views, feuds or demands have abated. A talkative enemy, Steve Bannon, is gone -- as are allies Dina Powell and Gary Cohn. And they have largely lived by Chief of Staff John Kelly's check-in-with-me-first rules. Inside the White House, their abnormal roles are accepted as reality, though the eye rolling and concerns of conflicts of interests persist. ... Read more
Ivanka and Jared's long game | Axion | 05/31/18 | 4:10

GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy Contradicts Trump On 'Informant' Claim
HP | Igor Bobic | 05/29/18

"I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got," Gowdy said.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the FBI acted appropriately when it used an informant to gather information about Donald Trump campaign advisers who allegedly had suspicious contacts linked to Russia prior to the 2016 election.

"I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump," Gowdy said Tuesday during an interview on Fox News. ... Read more
GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy Contradicts Trump On 'Informant' Claim | FoxNews | 05/29/18 | 5:50

How Two House Democrats Defended Helping the GOP Weaken Dodd-Frank Financial Regulations
TheIntercept | Lee Fang | 05/26/18

LEGISLATORS FROM BOTH parties came together this week to put the finishing touches on a sweeping measure to weaken bank regulations put in place to respond to the 2008 financial crisis.

In a shock to some observers, 33 House Democrats and 17 Senate Democrats ultimately joined with nearly every Republican to send the bill to President Donald Trump's desk. Only one GOP legislator, Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., voted against it. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., a co-author of the bill, stood next to Trump at the signing ceremony on Thursday. ... Read more

Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill | White Fear: As the GOP veers toward fascism, establishment Democrats face a grassroots insurgency. | TheIntercept | 03/30/18 | 1hr

Trump says Mueller's team is 'meddling' in upcoming midterm elections
PBS & AP | author | 05/29/18

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump is accusing special counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team of "MEDDLING" in the upcoming midterm elections and blames Democrats for "Collusion."

Mueller is leading the probe into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election with help from Trump campaign aides. So far, four Trump associates have been charged in Mueller's investigation; three have pleaded guilty to lying to the authorities.

Trump has repeatedly referred to Mueller's team as "13 angry Democrats," although Mueller is a Republican. Mueller was appointed by Trump's deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. ... Read more
Trump's New Conspiracy Theory | TYT | 05/29/18 | 11:40

Steyer: Pelosi Is 'Normalizing' Trump By Not Talking Impeachment
Politico | Edward-Isaac Dovere | 05/29/18

The billionaire California activist says Democratic leaders who don't take up the cause are writing off millions of potential voters.

Tom Steyer says the Democrats telling him to call off his impeachment crusade are like those who told civil rights activists to be patient, and says Nancy Pelosi and others holding back on calling for impeachment are "normalizing" Donald Trump's presidency.

Steyer doesn't care that Democratic leaders are worried that he could blow their chance at winning the House by talking up impeachment around the country and in his TV ads--though he argues he's actually helping Democrats. He says he's the only person willing to tell the truth. And the thing about a self-made billionaire with nothing to lose: it's hard for anyone to convince him he might be wrong, or to get him to stop. ... Read more
Off Message | Edward-Isaac Dovere with Steyer Steyer: Pelosi Is 'Normalizing' Trump By Not Talking Impeachment | Politico | 03/21/18 | 14:55

Stories Tagged Under "Donald Trump - Swamp Diary"
Politico| multiple | range

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates: Trump has raised assault on rule of law | CNN | 05/26/18 | 10:44

Stunning Oval Office leak: Aides fight in front of Trump -- about leaks
Axios | Jonathan Swan | 05/27/18

Shortly after word leaked that Kelly Sadler had taken a nasty shot at John McCain, President Trump convened a meeting in the Oval Office for a tiny group of communications staffers, according to sources familiar with the gathering. Sadler, Mercedes Schlapp, Raj Shah, and John Kelly all gathered in front of the Resolute Desk for a conversation with Trump about the leaking problem. They were the only people in the room, though the door to the outer Oval was open.

What happened: The president told Sadler she wouldn't be fired for her remark. He added, separately in the conversation, that he's no fan of McCain. Then Trump, who had grown obsessed with the leaking problem, told Sadler he wanted to know who the leakers were. Sadler then stunned the room: To be completely honest, she said, she thought one of the worst leakers was Schlapp, her boss. ... Read more
Stunning Oval Office Leak | Axios | 05/29/18 | 4:27

White House announces tech tariffs, investment restrictions on China
Axios | Jonathan Swan | 05/29/18

The White House announced this morning a plan to levy a 25% tariff on $50 billion worth of Chinese tech goods -- with the exact list to be announced next month -- as well as tech investment limits for Chinese nationals and entities. It also plans to pursue litigation at the World Trade Organization relating to Chinese intellectual property abuses. ... Read more

President Trump Is a Better Dealbreaker Than Dealmaker
NewYorker | Susan B. Glasser | 05/24/18

At 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, I was speaking with a senior Administration official involved in the preparations for President Trump's summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un. The chances, the official told me, were still "seventy-thirty" that the summit would happen, in Singapore, on June 12th, despite increasingly jittery statements from both sides in recent days. By the time we talked again, after dinner, however, the prospects seemed to be dropping by the minute. The North Koreans had released a new statement in the hour since we had first spoken, calling remarks by Vice-President Mike Pence "ignorant and stupid" and threatening to cancel the meeting and, instead, proceed with a "nuclear-to-nuclear showdown." "I saw that," the official said, referring to the bellicose new statement. "Well, maybe it's down to sixty-forty, but the point is we are planning for it."

Already, though, it was clear that the summit, which so recently had Trump openly musing about his prospects for a Nobel Peace Prize, was in serious doubt, and the official repeatedly returned to the question of the blame game that could ensue if the talks collapsed. He had been reviewing the long history of unsuccessful nuclear negotiations with North Korea, spanning three generations of the Kim family, and had concluded that, no matter what the facts, there was always an aggressive fight to affix responsibility. "Whenever talks have failed with North Korea," the Administration official observed, "it's been because of North Korea."

On Thursday morning, Trump called off the summit, writing in a testy letter to Kim that he was cancelling the meeting, "based on the tremendous anger and hostility displayed in your most recent statement." The blame game, it seemed, had already begun. ... Read more

The Chilling Effect of Trump's War on the FBI
TheAtlantic | Natasha Bertrand | 05/25/18

As the president ramps up his attacks on the law-enforcement and intelligence communities, long-standing damage to key agencies seems inevitable.

President Trump spent his early Wednesday morning, as he does many mornings, on Twitter. This time, he chose to weigh in on the "Criminal Deep State" and the claims that it embedded a spy in his presidential campaign as part of the federal investigation into Russia's election interference.

"They go after Phony Collusion with Russia, a made up Scam, and end up getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before!" he wrote.

Much has been written in recent days about Trump's "new" strategy to discredit the Russia investigation. The president has been attacking both the investigators in the Russia probe and the news organizations that cover the investigation, all in an attempt to persuade the public that the probe has been tainted by bias from the start. The frequency of these attacks may be climbing, but Trump's tactics have actually remained remarkably consistent--beginning before he even took office. "Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to 'leak' into the public," Trump tweeted on January 11, 2017, referring to a dossier published by BuzzFeed that alleged collusion between his campaign team and Russia. "One last shot at me," he added. "Are we living in Nazi Germany?" ... Read more

Edward Snowden on Privacy in the Age of Trump and Facebook | TheIntercept | 05/25/18 | 1hr

Elliott Broidy | wikipedia website

Reporter Tells Of Persian Gulf Rivalries, Hacked Emails And A Mueller Subpoena | NPR Fresh Air | 05/23/18 | 1hr

Trump calls off historic meeting with Kim Jong Un
Politico | Cristiano Lima | 05/24/18

The president reminds the North Korean leader of the United States' 'massive and powerful' nuclear arsenal.

"Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting," Trump wrote in a letter to Kim that was released by the White House.

The cancellation of the meeting -- scheduled for June 12 in Singapore -- appears to be a major blow to Trump's desire to land a legacy-making deal with North Korea to denuclearize and throws foreign relations into potentially dangerous territory. ... Read more

President Donald Trump Cancels June Singapore Summit With North Korea | Velshi & Ruhle | MSNBC | 05/24/18 | 3:26

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean

Behind today's headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect -- the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan -- and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority.

In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite's power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us.

Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan's work in teaching others how to divide America into "makers" and "takers." And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan's strategy.

US Mass Shootings, 1982-2018: Data From Mother Jones' Investigation
MotherJones | Mark Follman | 05/18/18

Trump's torch-it-all strategy | AXIOS | 05/24/18 | 4:36

The Schools That Are Bringing Poor Kids Into the Middle Class
TheAtlantic | Adam Harris | 05/24/18

Strategies for recruiting and retaining low-income students aren't particularly novel, though they can be tough to implement at scale.

The evidence is clear: A college degree is, in most cases, the key to more money and a more comfortable standard of living. But that pathway to higher earnings is more available to some than others: A lot of elite colleges do not enroll a lot of low-income students, and as a result they're not boosting very many students from low-income households into the middle and upper classes.

Dozens of top colleges and universities have more students from the top 1 percent of the income scale than the bottom 60 percent, as The New York Times pointed out last year. And that's a problem if colleges hope to escape the common critique that they are little more than a finishing school for the elite. ... Read more

Cohen Partner Sings
HP & Reuters | staff | 05/22/18

Evgeny Freidman has been Cohen's partner in the taxi business for years.

Evgeny Freidman, a Russian immigrant who is known as the Taxi King, will avoid jail time and will assist government prosecutors in state or federal investigations, the newspaper report said, citing a person briefed on the matter. ...

... Freidman has been Cohen's partner in the taxi business for years, even after New York City regulators barred Freidman last year from continuing to manage taxi medallions, the New York Times said. ... Read more
BREAKING: Cohen's Partner Flips, Trump Sweating Bullets | TYT | 05/22/18 | 8:24

Elliott Broidy's Company Got Its Biggest U.S. Government Contract Ever While He Pitched Trump Administration
Daily Beast | Justin Glawe | 05/21/18

The GOP mogul didn't just get rich off defense contracts in the Middle East in 2017. He also scored a record haul for his company from the Pentagon.

At the same time Elliott Broidy was cashing in on his access to President Trump by pitching him on behalf of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, he was also receiving the biggest payouts in the history of his company from the U.S. government.

Monday, the Associated Press reported on the months-long 2017 lobbying effort carried out by Broidy and George Nader that brought the pair close to securing nearly $1 billion in contracts with the Saudis and the Emiratis in exchange for lobbying against their enemy, Qatar. Also during the pair's lobbying blitz in the fall of 2017, Broidy's company received its largest payouts to date from the federal government on contracts it had been seeking to secure for years, The Daily Beast has learned. ... Read more
Trump Donor Just Drained His Swamp All Over America's Face | TYT | 05/22/18 | 11:48

Trump's Unsecured IPhones Make Clinton's Basement Server Look Like Fort Knox
VanityFair | Maya Kosoff | 05/22/18

Cyber-security protocols, the president has complained, are "inconvenient."

During a June 2016 campaign speech, Donald Trump turned yet again to one of his favorite topics: Hillary Clinton's e-mails. "Her server was easily hacked by foreign governments, perhaps even by her financial backers in communist China," he said, "putting all of America and our citizens in danger, great danger." Yet when it comes to "the cyber," Trump and his minions seem to have adopted a stance that's equally blasé. Not only have myriad reports emerged of officials using encrypted, disappearing-message services like Confide, in potential violation of federal record-keeping laws, but Steve Bannon, Gary Cohn, Jared Kushner, and Reince Priebus all occasionally relied on private e-mail and electronic devices to conduct government business. Chief of Staff John Kelly's personal cell phone was reportedly compromised for months while he served as secretary of homeland security, under a president who didn't bother to secure his Android phone or the Wi-Fi networks on his many properties. And it seems the president's willful neglect of cyber-security has continued well into his time in office. Read more
Trump: Secured Phone Would Be "Too Inconvenient" | TYT | 05/22/18 | 7:44

Fahrenheit 451, HBO (trailer) (2018) | 2:10

Trump Reportedly Rejects Phone Security Measures As 'Too Inconvenient'
HP | Dominique Mosbergen | 05/22/18

The president is said to use a cellphone that lacks top security features and ignores advice to regularly swap his Twitter phone.

Trump's attitude toward his own communications security contrasts with Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state ? something Trump and his allies have assailed for years.

Politico said Trump has gone for as long as five months without getting his Twitter phone checked by security experts. The GPS trackers on both of Trump's devices have reportedly been deactivated. ... Read more

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book written by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, in which the authors propose that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication. The title derives from the phrase "the manufacture of consent," employed in the book Public Opinion (1922), by Walter Lippmann (1889--1974).

Chomsky credits the origin of the book to the impetus of Alex Carey, the Australian social psychologist, to whom he and co-author E. S. Herman dedicated the book.[3] Four years after publication, Manufacturing Consent: The political Economy of the Mass Media was adapted to the cinema as Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992), a documentary presentation of the propaganda-model of communication, the politics of the mass-communications business, and a biography of Chomsky.  Wikipedia website

Trump May Be The Most Fiscally Reckless President In American History
Forbes | Stan Collender | 05/20/18

I have no doubt that your first response to the headline above is some combination of "Duh!," "You just realizing this now?" and "This is what we get from someone whose Twitter handle is @thebudgetguy?"

... As someone who has railed about this administration's and Congress's lack of attention to appropriations and budget process deadlines, seeing Trump demand action before the start of the fiscal year was refreshing.

But think about why Trump is asking for rapid action on the 2019 appropriations: He wants even more spending. Even though his policies have spiked the annual budget deficit to a new normal of a $1 trillion (with $2 trillion definitely within view) and interest rates are now starting to go up in large part because of his out-of-sync-with-the-economy stimulative fiscal policy, Trump is demanding that federal spending and the government's red ink be increased even further. ... Read more

The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression by Peter Joseph

In our interconnected world, self-interest and social-interest are rapidly becoming indistinguishable. If current negative trajectories remain, including growing climate destabilization, biodiversity loss, and economic inequality, an impending future of ecological collapse and societal destabilization will make "personal success" virtually meaningless. Yet our broken social system incentivizes behavior that will only make our problems worse. If true human rights progress is to be achieved today, it is time we dig deeper -- rethinking the very foundation of our social system.

The FBI Informant Who Monitored the Trump Campaign, Stefan Halper, Oversaw a CIA Spying Operation in the 1980 Presidential Election
TheIntercept | Glenn Greenwald | 05/19/18

AN EXTREMELY STRANGE EPISODE that has engulfed official Washington over the last two weeks came to a truly bizarre conclusion on Friday night. And it revolves around a long-time, highly sketchy CIA operative, Stefan Halper.

Four decades ago, Halper was responsible for a long-forgotten spying scandal involving the 1980 election, in which the Reagan campaign -- using CIA officials managed by Halper, reportedly under the direction of former CIA Director and then-Vice-Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush -- got caught running a spying operation from inside the Carter administration. The plot involved CIA operatives passing classified information about Carter's foreign policy to Reagan campaign officials in order to ensure the Reagan campaign knew of any foreign policy decisions that Carter was considering. ... Read more

*Trump's Spying Claims; Don Jr's Meeting with Gulf Emissaries | 05/21/18 | 7:17

There Is Only One Trump Scandal
TheAtlantic | Adam Serwer | 05/21/18

The sheer volume of Trump scandals can seem difficult to keep track of. There's the ongoing special-counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign aided a Russian campaign to aid Trump's candidacy and defeat his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton; there's the associated inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey, whom he had asked not to investigate his former national-security adviser; there are the president's hush-money payments to women with whom he allegedly had extramarital affairs, made through his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, and facilitated by corporate cash paid to influence the White House; there is his ongoing effort to interfere with the Russia inquiry and politicize federal law enforcement; there are the foreign governments that seem to be utilizing the president's properties as vehicles for influencing administration policy; there's the emerging evidence that Trump campaign officials sought aid not only from Russia, but from other foreign countries, which may have affected Trump's foreign policy; there are the ongoing revelations of the president's Cabinet officials' misusing taxpayer funds; there is the accumulating evidence that administration decisions are made at the behest of private industry, in particular those in which Republican donors have significant interests. ... Read more

Santa Fe school shooting: 10 dead and 10 wounded in Texas
BBC | author | 05/19/18

Ten people have been killed and 10 others injured after a student opened fire at a Texas high school, the state governor said. The attacker, who was arrested and charged with murder, was identified as Dimitrios Pagourtzis, a 17-year-old pupil at Santa Fe High School.

He allegedly used a shotgun and a revolver taken from his father, who legally owned the weapons. Most of the dead are students, police said. ... Read more
Ten Dead In Texas School Shooting | TYT | 05/20/18 | 16:50

Rehab: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) | 05/20/18 | 19:06

An Equifax and Facebook Lawyer Will Now Run The FTC'S Bureau of Consumer Protection
TheIntercept | David Dayen | 05/17/18

IN A RARE party-line vote, the Federal Trade Commission appointed a corporate lawyer who has represented Uber, Equifax, Facebook, and a jailed payday lender to run its Bureau of Consumer Protection. The appointment was one of the first moves of the new five-member panel, all of whom were confirmed by the Senate last month. ...

... As the New York Times explained last week, while Smith once worked at the FTC, he was most recently a partner with the financial services practice at Covington & Burling, a leading white-collar defense firm. His clients included dozens of financial institutions, credit-reporting agencies, and tech firms, including players in some of the most notorious corporate scandals of the past several years. For example, Smith represented convicted payday lender Scott Tucker, from whom the FTC won a $1.3 billion judgment for deceiving and exploiting consumers. Tucker faces 16 years in prison. ... Read more

'Killing Gaza': A New Documentary on Palestinians Under Siege | TRNN | 05/18/18 | 23:15

"Killing Gaza," journalists Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal (trailer) | 05/13/18 | 1:02

"Trump, Inc." Live: From "The Art of the Deal" to the Dossier
ProPublica | TRUMP, INC. | 05/18/18

The hosts of "Trump, Inc." held a live show in New York City to discuss Donald Trump's businesses. And we had a trivia contest.

A few days ago, we held a live taping of the "Trump, Inc." podcast at The Greene Space in New York City. Tony Schwartz, the co-author with Donald Trump of "The Art of The Deal," talked with Ilya Marritz from WNYC and Jesse Eisinger from ProPublica about what Schwartz does and does not recognize in President Trump now.

Then, ProPublica's Eric Umansky and WNYC's Andrea Bernstein spoke with BuzzFeed's Investigations Editor Mark Schoofs. Schoofs explained why BuzzFeed was the first to post the Russian "dossier," and what we've learned since. ... Read more
ProPublica | Trump, inc
"Trump, Inc." Live: From "The Art of the Deal" to the Dossier | ProPublica | 05/18/18 | 1hr

How The Trumps Screwed Palestine
TheIntercept | Mehdi Hasan| 05/18/18

ON MONDAY JARED Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and other members of the Trump administration celebrated the opening of a new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem while, at the same time and just a few miles away, Israeli snipers shot at hundreds of unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza. More than 60 people were killed in a single day, including children. Predictably, the U.S. media went into pro-Israeli propaganda mode, blaming all of the violence and killing on Hamas, which for all its many sins, didn't actually kill anyone this week. On this week's episode of Deconstructed, two Palestinians join Mehdi Hasan to discuss U.S. coverage of Palestine and how to get prominent Democratic politicians to take the Palestinian struggle for freedom seriously. Rula Jebreal was raised in East Jerusalem and is an academic and foreign policy analyst. ... Read more
Deconstructed | Mehdi Hasan
Deconstructed Podcast: How The Trumps Screwed Palestine | TheIntercept | 05/18/18 | 1hr

Acclaimed Director Rob Reiner Joins Morning Joe | Morning Joe | MSNBC | 05/18/18 | 11:03

Shock and Awe: When WMDs and Hollywood Collide | National Press Foundation | 06/06/17 | 1:01:00

NEWS & POLITICS Is Sarah Sanders About to Be Fired? Washington Insiders Believe So
AlterNet | Martin Cizmar / Raw Story | 05/18/18

... On MSNBC's Hardball, Karni revealed that many members of Trump's communications team are worried "the axe may be coming for them" following the leak of a repulsive joke about "dying" John McCain's opinion on torture not mattering. Already, the White House has scrapped its regular staff meetings over fears that the contents will be leaked. ... Read more

GOP builds massive shadow army in fight for the House
Politico | Rachael Bade | 05/17/18

A super PAC bankrolled by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson tears up the standard playbook of drowning voters in ads.

... The initiative by the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), now includes 34 offices running mini-campaigns for vulnerable Republicans throughout the country. It has built its own in-house research and data teams and recruited 4,000 student volunteers, who have knocked on more than 10 million doors since February 2017.

The operation far eclipses the group's activity in any previous election, when CLF didn't have a single volunteer or field office. At this time last election cycle, the group had raised $2 million. As of Tuesday, CLF -- which markets itself to donors as a super PAC dedicated to saving the House majority and can collect contributions with no dollar limit -- had hauled in more than $71 million. ... Read more

Norman Finkelstein: Outrage over Israeli Massacre Shows Power of Nonviolent Palestinian Resistance | DN | 05/26/18 | 14:14

The Shocking Doomsday Maps Of The World And The Billionaire Escape Plans
Forbes | Jim Dobson | older 06/10/17

... In the early 1980's, spiritual visionaries and futurists provided clues to our changing planet. Often dismissed as crazy prophets, their thoughts for a new world were quickly ignored and laughed at. Gordon-Michael Scallion was a futurist, teacher of consciousness studies and metaphysics and a spiritual visionary. In the 80's he claims to have had a spiritual awakening that helped him create very detailed maps of future world, all stemming from a cataclysmic pole shift. The result, while not based on any science, nonetheless provides a vivid and compelling picture of an Earth ravaged by flooding.

Scallion believed that a pole shift would stem from global warming, nuclear activity, and the misuse of technology. Another theorist and psychic Edgar Cayce predicted a 16 to 20 degree shift, while Scallion predicted a 20-45 degree shift. Cayce predicted that when both Mt. Etna volcano in Italy and Mt. Pelee in Martinique erupt together, there will be approximately 90 days to evacuate the west coast before the massive flood claims the coastline. ... Read more
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Whistleblower Leaked Michael Cohen's Financials Over Potential Cover-Up: Report
HP | Carla Herreria | 05/17/18

The whistleblower said two files about Cohen's business dealings are missing from a government database.

Banks are required to file suspicious activity reports (SARs) whenever transactions that may violate federal law are detected, or if certain activities may be linked to money laundering. These reports are stored on a database, which is managed by the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and can be accessed by law enforcement agents and federal officials.

The unnamed whistleblower, who reportedly spent a career in law enforcement, told New Yorker reporter Ronan Farrow he grew worried when he was unable to find two SARs on attorney Michael Cohen's financial dealings in the database. "I have never seen something pulled off the system," the official told the magazine. ... Read more

The Birth of a New American Aristocracy
TheAtlantic | author | date

The gilded future of the top 10 percent -- and the end of opportunity for everyone else.

... By any sociological or financial measure, it's good to be us. It's even better to be our kids. In our health, family life, friendship networks, and level of education, not to mention money, we are crushing the competition below. But we do have a blind spot, and it is located right in the center of the mirror: We seem to be the last to notice just how rapidly we've morphed, or what we've morphed into.

The meritocratic class has mastered the old trick of consolidating wealth and passing privilege along at the expense of other people's children. We are not innocent bystanders to the growing concentration of wealth in our time. We are the principal accomplices in a process that is slowly strangling the economy, destabilizing American politics, and eroding democracy. Our delusions of merit now prevent us from recognizing the nature of the problem that our emergence as a class represents. We tend to think that the victims of our success are just the people excluded from the club. But history shows quite clearly that, in the kind of game we're playing, everybody loses badly in the end. ... Read more

Makers and Takers: How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street by

In looking at the forces that brought our current administration to power one thing is clear: much of the population believes that our economic system is rigged to enrich the privileged elites at the expense of hard-working Americans. This is a belief held equally on both sides of political spectrum, and it seems only to be gaining momentum.

A key reason, says Financial Times columnist Rana Foroohar, is the fact that Wall Street is no longer supporting Main Street businesses that create the jobs for the middle and working class. She draws on in-depth reporting and interviews at the highest rungs of business and government to show how the "financialization of America" -- the phenomenon by which finance and its way of thinking have come to dominate every corner of business -- is threatening the American Dream.

Now updated with new material explaining how our corrupted financial sys­tem propelled Donald Trump to power, Makers and Takers explores the confluence of forces that has led American businesses to favor balance-sheet engineering over the actual kind, greed over growth, and short-term profits over putting people to work. From the cozy relationship between Wall Street and Washington, to a tax code designed to benefit wealthy individuals and corporations, to forty years of bad policy decisions, she shows why so many Americans have lost trust in the sys­tem, and why it matters urgently to us all.

This Is Why Evangelical Christians Love Israel | VICE | 05/15/18 | 12:28

The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics by Salena Zito

The history of the American electorate is not a litany of flukes; instead it is a pattern of tectonic plate-grinding, punctuated by a landscape-altering earthquake every generation or so. Donald Trump's electoral coalition is smashing both American political parties and its previously impenetrable political news media.The political experts called the 2016 election wrong and in the wake of the 2016 election surprise, the experts have continued to blow it - looking to predict the coming demise of the President without pausing to consider the durability of the trends and winds that swept him into office.

The Great Revolt delves deep into the minds and hearts of the voters the make up this coalition. What emerges is a group of citizens who cannot be described by terms like "angry," "male," "rural," or the often-used "racist." They span job descriptions, income brackets, education levels, and party allegiances. What unites them is their desire to be part of a movement larger than themselves that puts pragmatism before ideology, localism before globalism, and demands the respect it deserve from Washington.

Zito and Todd have traveled on over 27,000 miles of country roads to interview more than 300 Trump voters in 10 swing counties. What they have discovered is that these voters were hiding in plain sight--ignored by both parties, the media, and the political experts all at once, ready to unite into the movement that spawned the greatest upset in recent electoral history.

Gaza begins to bury its dead after deadliest day in years
BBC | author | 05/15/18

Funerals were held on Tuesday in Gaza for 58 Palestinians reported killed on Monday when Israeli troops opened fire during protests, in the deadliest day of violence there since a war in 2014.

... Monday's violence came as the US inaugurated its first embassy in Jerusalem, a controversial step by the Trump administration that broke with decades of US policy and incensed Palestinians. ... Read more
*When You Grew Up In An Open-Air Prison And Are All Out Of F*cks To Give | TYT | 05/15/18 | 11:08

Populist Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr Likely To Win Iraq's Parliamentary Election
Reuter/HP | Ahmed Aboulenein | 05/14/18

Sadr has led two uprisings against U.S. forces in Iraq and is one of the few Shi'ite leaders to distance himself from Iran.

Populist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a long-time adversary of the United States, has all but won Iraq's parliamentary election, the electoral commission said, in a surprise turn of fortune for the Shi'ite leader. In the first election since Islamic State was defeated in the country, Iran-backed Shi'ite militia chief Hadi al-Amiri's bloc was in second place, while Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, once seen as the front-runner, trailed in third. Read more

Breaking the Deal: Live Town Hall on the Iran Nuclear Agreement | Sen. Bernie Sanders | 05/14/18 | 1:06:27

Breaking the Deal: A Town Hall on Trump's Iran Decision | TYT | 05/14/18 | 13:36

Ivanka Trump Opens U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem During Israeli Massacre of Palestinians in Gaza
TheIntercept | Robert Mackey | 05/14/18/span>

... More than two-thirds of the Palestinians confined to Gaza are refugees from towns and cities in what is now Israel. The protests along Israel's perimeter fence that began on March 30 -- and were immediately met with lethal force -- are intended to draw attention to what Palestinians refer to as the "nakba," or catastrophe, of Israel's founding, which led to the forcible displacement of some 750,000 Palestinians.

"Choosing a tragic day in Palestinian history shows great insensibility and disrespect for the core principles of the peace process," said Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in a statement. ... Read more

Ross losing sway with Trump on China
Politico | Andrew Restuccia | 05/14/18

Backpedaling on ZTE shows the divide between the Commerce secretary and the White House.

The Commerce secretary's standing took another hit this week when the president tweeted criticism of the department's recent decision to block the Chinese phone-maker ZTE from accessing U.S. technology, according to a current administration official and a former official familiar with the internal discussions. "He's not a primetime player here," said one trade strategist closely tracking the ... Read more

Is Trump Trying to Start a War With Iran?
TheIntercept | staff | 05/11/18

WHEN ISRAELI PRIME Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a presentation purporting to reveal new intelligence on Iran's nuclear program last week, many suspected he had an audience of one in mind: Donald Trump. And on Tuesday, the president cited the Israeli intel as one of the key justifications for his decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Does this move us one step closer to war with Iran? Has John Bolton taken the helm of U.S. foreign policy? On this week's Deconstructed podcast, Tommy Vietor, who served as spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council under President Obama, breaks down Trump's latest and scariest political gambit.

Tommy Vietor: I mean, there's just no case I can understand that explains why he did this on the merits. So that to me leads to the second option for why he did it, which is that he hates Obama. ... Read more
Deconstructed: Is Trump Trying to Start a War With Iran? | TheIntercept | 05/13/18 | 6:42

Is the United States becoming more belligerent? | Inside Story | 03/23/18 | 24:25

Why is Washington reactivating its Second Fleet? | Inside Story | 05/07/18 | 24:45

The Coming War on China by John Pilger | John Pilger | 2017 | 1:24:45

Rudy Giuliani Quits Law Firm After Wild Week Of Interviews
HP | Antonia Blumberg | 05/10/18

Partners at the law firm reportedly were displeased at Giuliani's suggestion that payoffs like Michael Cohen's deal with Stormy Daniels were common practice.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who has become one of President Donald Trump's personal attorneys, abruptly resigned from his law firm following a string of unhinged media appearances.

Giuliani and the firm, Greenberg Traurig, released a joint statement on Thursday saying that the resignation was effective a day earlier. Giuliani took a leave of absence from the firm in April to represent Trump, but, he said, "the pressing demands" of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation led him to decide to permanently resign. ... Read more
Law Firm Dumps Giuliani After Train Wreck Interviews | TYT | 05/10/18 | 9:01

Sheldon Adelson cuts $30 million check to help House Republicans win the midterms
Vox | Matthew Yglesias | 05/10/18

House Republicans have lagged consistently in the generic ballot and performed even worse than those poll numbers would suggest in special elections. Their hopes for holding a majority in the US House of Representatives remain fairly bright, however, because thanks to gerrymandering, Republicans can almost certainly hold their majority while losing the popular vote by 3 or 4 points and could very possibly hold it while losing by 5 or 6 points.

The other edge they'll have, of course, is money. GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson announced Thursday morning that he'll cut a $30 million check to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Super PAC that helps House Republicans. Money alone is no guarantee of victory, of course.

As Axios's Alexi McCammond wrote yesterday, Republicans have been drastically outspending Democrats in every House special election and badly underperforming the partisan tilt of the districts nonetheless. Conor Lamb's big win in the Pennsylvania 18 special election came in the face of a particularly large spending disadvantage. ... Read more
Did Sheldon Adelson Just Buy A War With Iran? | TYT | 05/10/18 | 8:48

Michael Cohen Was Selling Access To Trump, Says Group That Paid Into His Shell Company
HP | Amanda Terkel | 05/10/18

Corporations were looking to get closer to the new administration, and Trump's lawyer offered to help.

Shortly before Trump became president, Michael Cohen set up Essential Consultants LLC, a shell firm that eventually paid porn star Stormy Daniels to stay quiet in the run-up to the 2016 election about her alleged affair with the president.

But this week, it was revealed that the financiers for Cohen's company included major corporations, including Korea Aerospace Industries, the pharmaceutical company Novartis and AT&T. Significantly, it also received money from Columbus Nova, a New York investment firm with close ties to billionaire Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, who has been questioned by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The payments were significant. Novartis paid $1.2 million for "healthcare policy matters." KAI said it needed help on U.S. accounting standards, and Columbus Nova said it paid a "consulting fee" that had nothing to do with Vekselberg. ... Read more

California Just Became the First State to Require Solar Panels on New Residential Construction
MotherJones | Amy Thomson | 05/09/18

California just became the first state to mandate solar panels on nearly all new residential homes.

The mandate is part of California's "Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan," which includes the goal that both residential and commercial construction be zero net energy by 2030--meaning the buildings' annual energy usage is either less than or equal to the renewable energy generated onsite. California was also the first state to require net zero energy through building code. ... Read more

Plainclothes NYPD Cops are Involved in a Staggering Number of Killings
TheIntercept | George Joseph | 05/09/18

On April 4, Saheed Vassell was shot and killed on the southwest corner of Utica Avenue and Montgomery Street, in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The first police officers on the scene -- and the ones who appeared to fire the first shots -- were three members of an anti-crime unit dressed in plainclothes and one uniformed officer from another unit. Responding to 911 calls about a man with a gun, they had arrived in a black Chevrolet Impala.

Footage from the moments after the shooting, initially obtained by the Village Voice, shows that at least nine plainclothes officers were on the scene. Several of the plainclothes cops were taking aggressive action to clear the area of onlookers. One of the officers in the video is wearing a hat emblazoned with a large white skull. Another, who pushes his way through the intersection with sirens blaring, wears a shirt with the symbol of the vigilante comic book character, the Punisher. ... Read more

Trump Has Now Opened the Door to War Against Iran
AlterNet | Vijay Prashad / Independent Media | 05/09/18

So, there it goes. Trump did what he promised. He took the United States out of the "Iran deal." It was possible that Trump was merely bluffing. He has done this before. He has suggested a policy and then done the very opposite. But on Iran, all the signs pointed toward this madness. For it is, indeed, madness.

Just after he did so, the Israelis bombed an Iranian facility inside Syria. This is not Israel's first attack on Iranian assets inside Syria. Nonetheless, it was very provocative that Israel attacked just two hours after Trump's dramatic withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 Iran deal.

What do Trump and his allies hope will happen with this withdrawal? Already, as uncertainty gripped Iran and its creditors over the past several months, the Gross Domestic Product fell from 12.5 percent (from 2015 to the start of this year) to 4 percent. During the period of full-scale sanctions before the 2015 deal, Iran's economy shrank by around 7 percent. Economic suffering as a result of the sanctions will intensify. ... Read more

Makers and Takers: How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street by

In looking at the forces that brought our current administration to power one thing is clear: much of the population believes that our economic system is rigged to enrich the privileged elites at the expense of hard-working Americans. This is a belief held equally on both sides of political spectrum, and it seems only to be gaining momentum.

A key reason, says Financial Times columnist Rana Foroohar, is the fact that Wall Street is no longer supporting Main Street businesses that create the jobs for the middle and working class. She draws on in-depth reporting and interviews at the highest rungs of business and government to show how the "financialization of America" -- the phenomenon by which finance and its way of thinking have come to dominate every corner of business -- is threatening the American Dream.

Now updated with new material explaining how our corrupted financial sys­tem propelled Donald Trump to power, Makers and Takers explores the confluence of forces that has led American businesses to favor balance-sheet engineering over the actual kind, greed over growth, and short-term profits over putting people to work. From the cozy relationship between Wall Street and Washington, to a tax code designed to benefit wealthy individuals and corporations, to forty years of bad policy decisions, she shows why so many Americans have lost trust in the sys­tem, and why it matters urgently to us all.

Eric Schneiderman Resigns as New York Attorney General Amid Assault Claims by 4 Women
NYTimes | Danny Hakim | 05/07/18

Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general who rose to prominence as an antagonist of the Trump administration, abruptly resigned on Monday night hours after The New Yorker reported that four women had accused him of physically assaulting them.

"It's been my great honor and privilege to serve as attorney general for the people of the State of New York," Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement. "In the last several hours, serious allegations, which I strongly contest, have been made against me. ... Read more
NY Attorney General Resigns Amid Domestic Abuse Scandal | TYT | 05/08/18 |13:09

*Blankenship's Insane Ad; Giuliani's Confusion Campaign - The News With Dan Rather | TYT | 05/07/18 |30:32

Matt Taibbi on Trump, Russia, and the liberal embrace of authoritarianism. Sarah Jaffe on the teachers' strikes. Nomi Prins on her book, "Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World." | TheIntercept | 05/09/18 | 1hr

These Are the Top Jobs Chosen by Serial Killers and Psychopaths
AlterNet | Michael Arntfield / The Conversation | 05/09/18

The recent and startling arrest of the elusive Golden State Killer, aka the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker/Diamond Knot Killer/Visalia Ransacker in what was arguably the most vexing and disturbing constellation of interlinked cold cases in American history, has raised more questions than answers. ...

Trump grows frustrated with Giuliani as Stormy Daniels drama rages on
Politico | Eliana Johnson | date

The recent shakeups of the president's personal and White House legal teams have done little to calm things down.

The president has been griping to associates that Rudy Giuliani, his new personal attorney, has failed to shut down the Stormy Daniels hush money saga. And he has expressed frustration that Giuliani's media appearances are raising more questions than they are answering, turning the story into a days-long drama capped by the admission Sunday that the president may have made similar payments to other women.

For now, White House aides said, Giuliani still has a direct line in to Trump -- the two speak almost daily -- and nobody in the West Wing is eager to insert themselves between the two irascible New Yorkers by yanking Giuliani off TV. But some aides said they expect the president to fire Giuliani if his behavior doesn't change.

In a phone interview Monday, Giuliani pushed back against the notion that the president is unhappy with his performance. "If I'm not up to it, I don't know who is," he told POLITICO. "I know the Justice Department better than just about anyone." ... Read more

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Points Out a Key Part of Mueller's Team's Fraught Day in Court that People Missed
AlterNet | Cody Fenwick | 05/04/18

Everyone focused on the fact that the judge was critical of the special counsel -- few noticed the crucial part of Mueller's team's response.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team appeared to have a tough day in court on Friday as Judge T.S. Ellis was sharply critical of the prosecutors' grounds to bring their case against Paul Manafort -- but perhaps the most important and informative part of the exchange went largely unnoticed.

The judge pushed the prosecutors on why they were bringing the case focusing on bank and tax fraud and against Manafort, President Donald Trump's one-time campaign chair, when it was so far afield of the original mandate that led to the creation of the special counsel. ... Read more

New York Attorney General Schneiderman resigns in wake of bombshell report
Politico | Laura Nahmias | 05/07/18

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a frequent antagonist of President Donald Trump, resigned his post following an explosive report that detailed allegations against him of physical abuse by four women.

Schneiderman, who had been a rising star in the Democratic Party, said he will resign effective Tuesday at the close of business. He challenged the accusations of abuse by women with whom he had romantic relationships. ... Read more

The 10 Biggest Revelations from the Massive Trove of Internal EPA Emails
Mother Jones | Rebecca Leber | 05/07/18

The emails, first reported by the New York Times, reveal his staff going to great lengths to limit most press access to his events--save for those that they determined were "friendly" media. They also show staff preventing questions from the public at his events and exerting more control over the FOIA process.

Pruitt's troubles with transparency are well-documented. In the past, his staff defended his unusual practices, such as not advertising his schedule, as "security concerns." But these emails detail more preoccupation with avoiding distractions at events than any real worries about his personal security. ... Read more

*President Donald Trump's Real Estate Spending Spree Raises Questions | AM Joy | MSNBC | 05/07/18 | 14:48

Rudy Giuliani: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver | John Oliver | 05/06/18 | 15:36

The Contributions of Karl Marx (Part 1) | TRNN | 05/06/18 | 16:57

200th Anniversary of the Birth of Marx and a Revolution in Understanding History | TRNN | 05/05/18 | 21:20

Amazon Gets Tax Breaks While Its Employees Rely on Food Stamps, New Data Shows
TheIntercept | Claire Brown | older 04/19/18

LATER THIS YEAR, Amazon will begin accepting grocery orders from customers using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal anti-poverty program formerly known as food stamps. As the nation's largest e-commerce grocer, Amazon stands to profit more than any other retailer when the $70 billion program goes online after an initial eight-state pilot.

But this new revenue will effectively function as a double subsidy for the company: In Arizona, new data suggests that one in three of the company's own employees depend on SNAP to put food on the table. In Pennsylvania and Ohio, the figure appears to be around one in 10. Overall, of five states that responded to a public records request for a list of their top employers of SNAP recipients, Amazon cracked the top 20 in four.
Read more

Billionaire Bezos and the Warehouse Workers
Boomberg | Barry Ritholtz | older 04/20/18

His net worth might be as much as 100 billion times that of many Amazon workers.

We have just learned that the median salary of employees at Amazon.com Inc. is $28,446, excluding its chief executive officer and founder, Jeff Bezos. That pitiful number raises an intriguing question: Is Amazon a high-paying tech company or a low-wage retailer?

The proxy also disclosed that Bezos was paid $1.68 million, making the ratio of what Bezos was paid and the median pay 59-to-1. What does that ratio tell us? Really, not very much. Bezos, according to the proxy, had a salary of $81,840 in 2017. The rest was in the form of perks, much of it for "security arrangements" and travel.

So that ratio, although accurate, means next to nothing. If you really want to understand the gap between CEO and worker, consider instead the ratio between the net worth of the boss and his employees: I did, and it's beyond measure. Seriously, 100 billion-to-1 is not an outlandish estimate. ... Read more

‘He can't just lie his way out of every single box'
Politico | Christopher Cadelago | 05/03/18

As a private businessman, Donald Trump managed to skate past bankruptcies and scandals, but as president he's finding it's harder to contradict his own statements.

anything, emerging from each consecutive bankruptcy and scandal ever more famous and with his brand ever more marketable. As a candidate, he declared he could shoot someone in the middle of New York's Fifth Avenue and not "lose any voters."

But as president, Trump is running up against the limits of saying or doing whatever he wants.

The revelation by Rudy Giuliani that his client reimbursed his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen for a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels contradicted Trump's own previous denials that he knew anything about the deal -- and, despite Giuliani's intent to tamp down concerns that the October 2016 payment violated campaign finance laws, raised a whole new set of questions about whether Trump failed to disclose a personal loan. ... Read more

*Does anyone care when Trump lies? | Anderson Cooper | CNN | 05/02/18 | 7:35

Trump blindsides Sarah Huckabee Sanders -- again
Politico | Jason Schwartz | 05/03/18

"We give the very best information that we have at the time." That was White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders' response when ABC reporter Jonathan Karl asked her during Thursday's press briefing how the American people could trust a president and White House that "show what appears to be a blatant disregard for the truth."

Not just in Thursday's briefing, but overall, "the best information we have at the time" has become something of a go-to line for Sanders -- her version of apparently throwing up her arms in the face of a president who has proved not only impulsive and prone to changing his mind, but who has exhibited an unprecedented propensity for falsehoods ... Read more

*Cavuto: Is Trump giving the media very real ammunition? | Cavuto | FoxNews | 05/03/18 | 4:19

Europe Just Banned the Chemicals That Lay Waste to Honeybees. But They're Still Everywhere in the US.
MotherJones | Tom Philpott | 05/03/18

In late April, the European Union banned a blockbuster trio of neonicotinoid insecticides, marketed by chemical giants Syngenta and Bayer. The decision, motivated by mounting evidence of harm to bees exposed to the chemicals, entrenches a temporary moratorium the EU placed on them back in 2013.

Here in the United States, use of neonicotinoids continues unabated. They're widely applied to corn, soybean, and cotton seeds before planting. The chemicals suffuse the resulting plants, including their pollen and nectar, poisoning crop-chomping insects.

Imidacloprid, one of the three neonics banned by the EU, first hit US farm fields in 1994. The other two, thiamethoxam and clothianidin, debuted here in 2000 and 2003, respectively. In 2008, the declining health of honeybees and other pollinators prompted the US Environmental Protection Agency to reassess its decision to approve these chemicals. ... Read more

Butler: Giuliani "Offering Jared Kushner's Head" To Save Ivanka | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC | 05/03/18 | 4:16

Rudy Giuliani Made 'Hannity' Watchable | Stephen Colbert | 05/04/18 | 10:19

Rudy Giuliani Fuels Trump's Stormy Daniels Scandal | Trevor Noah | 05/03/18 | 8:14

Rudy Giuliani Says Trump Lied About Stormy Daniels | Seth Meyers | 05/03/18 | 10:26

Rudy Giuliani Contradicts Donald Trump | Jimmy Kimmel | 05/04/18 | 5:26

Giuliani is the Lawyer Trump Deserves - The Opposition w/ Jordan Klepper | Comedy Central | 05/03/18 | 5:24

The nation's cartoonists on the week in politics
Politico | Staff | 05/04/18

White House leaps into Giuliani damage control
Politico | Louis Nelson | 05/03/18

Rudy Giuliani joined Donald Trump's legal team with a mandate to quickly and aggressively stamp out the various investigations dogging his presidency. Instead, he's causing new migraines for the White House.

Giuliani appeared to stun Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday night by revealing that Trump reimbursed his personal lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment Cohen had made to the porn actress Stormy Daniels for her silence about an alleged affair. The statement -- along with Giuliani's comment that Trump "did know about the general arrangement" -- appeared to contradict the president's denial of any knowledge of the deal. ... Read more

Trump's fixers revolt
Politico | Annie Karni | 05/02/18

The president's preference for people who look like they came from "central casting" has become a well-known part of how Trump makes personnel decisions. The president said as much when he nominated Ronny Jackson -- the square-jawed White House physician with a full head of hair thick enough to hold a side part -- to be secretary of Veterans' Affairs.

But behind the scenes, there's another set of characters who populate Trump's world: loyal fixers who lie for Trump, and clean up his messes in the shadows, where their looks count less than their loyalty. It's a dichotomy that's well-known in Trump's inner circle. One former adviser described it succinctly:

"Central casting for 'front porch' jobs, trolls for the real work."

But in recent weeks, there has been tension in the natural order of Trump's world, because his not-made-for-prime-time "fixers" have been basking in the national spotlight where they don't belong. And they're doing something else very out of character for the aides picked solely for their loyalty and willingness to bend the rules: They're falling out of line. ... Read more

Cambridge Analytica Just Went Out of Business. Don't Worry, Its Owners and Executives Have Already Started a New Company.
MotherJones | Andy Kroll | 05/02/18

Cambridge Analytica, the data company at the center of an international controversy over how it used Facebook to obtain personal data from tens of millions of people, is shutting down.

The company, which had consulted on Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, released a statement announcing it had begun legal proceedings to wind down its operations in the UK and the US. Cambridge released a report it commissioned from Julian Malins, a prominent UK lawyer, that absolved the company of any wrongdoing. ... Read more

Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer by Dean Baker

There has been an enormous upward redistribution of income in the United States in the last four decades. In his most recent book, Baker shows that this upward redistribution was not the result of globalization and the natural workings of the market. Rather, it was the result of conscious policies that were designed to put downward pressure on the wages of ordinary workers while protecting and enhancing the incomes of those at the top. Baker explains how rules on trade, patents, copyrights, corporate governance, and macroeconomic policy were rigged to make income flow upward.

Here Is the Psychological Condition That Best Explains Trump's Twisted Worldview
AlterNet | Jeremy Sherman | 04/30/18

Think of our president as a hoarder. But instead of objects, he collects victories and vendettas.

Trump's ghostwriter put these words in the president's mouth: "Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game."

I believe it about the money, though not about playing the game being his real excitement. If that were true, Trump wouldn't be such a sore loser. He wouldn't have said, on the last days of the campaign, that if he loses, "this will be the greatest waste of time, money and energy in my lifetime, by a factor of 100." He wouldn't have said of John McCain, "He's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured." And he wouldn't have said, "That makes me smart," when Hillary Clinton accused him of not paying taxes for 18 years. ... Read more

The real reason Mueller hasn't called Ivanka Trump
Politico | Annie Karni | 05/01/18

The special counsel seems to be leaving the president's children for last.

She was in Bedminster, New Jersey, with President Donald Trump the rainy May 2017 weekend when he decided to fire FBI Director James Comey.

She was a passenger on the plane flying home from the G-20 conference in Germany the next month, strategizing about how to manage the fallout of her brother Don Jr.'s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer peddling "dirt" about Hillary Clinton.

Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and West Wing adviser, also spoke briefly at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer and a lobbyist who was present for that meeting during the campaign.

Yet the family member closest to the president -- and the woman who as a key campaign figure helped lobby her father to hire Paul Manafort, a man who is now under indictment on money laundering and fraud charges, as campaign manager -- has yet to be called in for questioning by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation. ... Read more

Comic Michelle Wolf Responds To Backlash: 'I'm Glad I Stuck To My Guns' | NPR Fresh Air | 05/01/18 | 1hr

Intercepted Podcast: War Games
TheIntercept | Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill | 05/02/18

JOHN BOLTON WAS ecstatic with Benjamin Netanyahu's dangerous stunt about Iran and nukes, but he is clearly worried Trump will ruin his regime change plans in North Korea. This week on Intercepted: Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council confronts the lies and propaganda emanating from Israel and the White House on Iran and nuclear weapons. He also talks about how Israel and Iran worked together to attack Iraq in the 1980s. Jeremy goes through the case of a nuclear whistleblower who spent more than a decade in solitary confinement for telling the world that Israel had the bomb. As Trump prepares his Nobel Peace Prize tweets and the afterparty for his upcoming summit with Kim Jong-un, Christine Ahn looks at U.S. war crimes in Korea, Pyongyang's strategy, and the quiet revolution that swept Moon Jae-in into power in South Korea. The CIA continues to wage a domestic propaganda campaign on behalf of Gina Haspel, Trump's nominee to head the agency. Mark Keam, a former top Senate lawyer and current delegate to Virginia's legislature, talks about the CIA spying on the Senate, Haspel and torture, and the growing movement to block her confirmation. ... Read more

Intercepted Podcast: War Games | TheIntercept | 05/02/18 | 1hr

Another Attorney Is Leaving Trump’s Legal Team. He’ll Be Replaced by Bill Clinton’s Lawyer.
MotherJones | Dan Friedman | 05/02/18

In a move emblematic of his increasingly confrontational approach to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, President Donald Trump is once again shaking up his legal team.

The White House on Wednesday confirmed that Trump is hiring Emmet Flood, a veteran attorney who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment, to replace Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer who oversaw dealings with Mueller’s office. Whereas Cobb was as an advocate for cooperation with Mueller, Flood is expected to back the more aggressive approach Trump seems to favor, according to the New York Times. ... Read more

Trump hires Clinton impeachment lawyer as Ty Cobb exits White House | CNN | 05/02/18 | 15:09

What Kim Jong Un Wants From Trump
Politico | Van Jackson | 04/30/18

hy has Kim Jong Un suddenly sought high-level diplomacy after years of bearing any burden to obtain nukes and a diversified missile arsenal capable of striking the United States? The Trump administration and its surrogates have interpreted the North Korean leader's diplomatic turn as buckling to maximum pressure--in their narrative, unprecedented sanctions and the looming threat of war have brought Kim to heel. To many South Koreans and Korea watchers sympathetic to the Moon Jae-in government in Seoul, Kim has sought dialogue because of Moon's diplomatic acumen; Moon has been able to broker peace and reconciliation between the two Koreas while keeping the United States from attacking the North.

Both narratives give far too much credit to the United States and South Korea, and too little to Kim's strategy. So far, everyone is playing Kim's game. Failing to recognize that generates huge unnecessary risks to the U.S.-South Korea alliance and U.S. interests in the region. ... Read more

Condoleezza Rice's advice to Trump: Leave the details of Kim negotiations 'to people who understand all the nuance'
Politico | Quint Forgey | 05/01/18

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has a message for President Donald Trump ahead of his planned summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: Don't sweat the details.

"Don't try to negotiate the details with Kim Jong Un," Rice told the hosts of "Fox and Friends" in a Tuesday interview. "Leave that to people who understand all the nuances of this situation." ... Read more

John Kelly Has Repeatedly Referred To Trump As An 'Idiot,' NBC Reports
HP | Dominique Mosbergen | 04/30/18

The White House chief of staff has denied the allegations, calling them "total BS."

White House chief of staff John Kelly has often called President Donald Trump an "idiot" in front of aides and has portrayed himself as a "savior" who has singlehandedly rescued the country from disaster, according to an NBC News report published Monday that cited comments from eight current and former White House officials. Four of the officials said they'd personally witnessed Kelly using the disparaging term to describe Trump.

"He doesn't even understand what DACA is. He's an idiot," Kelly allegedly said during a meeting about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and overall immigration policy. "We've got to save him from himself." ... Read more

Workers Strike at San Francisco's All-Male Bohemian Club -- a Haughty Hangout For Rich Neocons
AlterNet | Nicole Karlis / Salon | 04/29/18

The average initiation fee is rumored to be $40,000 per member. Then there's a quarterly fee--if you don't spend it, you're charged for it anyway. Women aren't allowed to join or step on the premise--with a few exceptions, such as the occasional "ladies' night."

This is the elite Bohemian Club, a male-only private club in the heart of San Francisco, and an infamous haunt of many a prominent American neoconservative. Past members have reportedly included some of the country's most conservative and wealthy men -- including Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, and former presidents such as Richard Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower, and George H. W. Bush -- yet little is known about what goes on behind its closed doors, and at its annual Bohemian Grove summer retreat, due to its exclusivity. The club's secrecy have prompted many on the right and left to forge conspiracy theories about what goes on behind closed doors, and what is the symbolism behind the many owl statues and reliefs on its premises. ... Read more

Big Guns: A Novel by Steve Israel

When Chicago's Mayor Michael Rodriguez starts a national campaign to ban handguns from America's cities, towns, and villages, Otis Cogsworth, the wealthy chairman and CEO of Cogsworth International Arms worries about the effects on his company. In response he and lobbyist Sunny McCarthy convince an Arkansas congressman to introduce federal legislation mandating that every American must own a firearm. Events soon escalate.

Asabogue's Mayor Lois Leibowitz passes an ordinance to ban guns in the town--right in Otis Cogsworth's backyard. Otis retaliates by orchestrating a recall election against Lois and Jack Steele, a rich town resident, runs against her. Even though the election is for the mayor of a village on Long Island, Steele brings in the big guns of American politics to defeat Lois: political consultants, Super PACs, and celebrities. Soon, thousands of pro-gun and anti-gun partisans descend on Asabogue, along with an assortment of heavily armed rightwing militias and the national news media. Bucolic Asabogue becomes a tinderbox. Meanwhile, Washington politicians in both parties are caught between a mighty gun lobby whose support they need for reelection and the absurdity of requiring that every American with waivers for children under age four carry a gun. What ensues is a discomfiting, hilarious indictment of the state of American politics.

Former Long Island Congressman, Steve Israel has firsthand knowledge of the cynicism and corruption at the heart of our political system. Big Guns will make you laugh, will make you angry, and will make you think as you flip the pages faster and faster to find out what happens next.

The population bomb by Paul R Ehrlich

Seminal work in population theory. Overpopulation is now the dominant problem in all our personal, national, and international planning. No one can do rational personal planning, nor can public policy be resolved in any area unless one first takes into account the population bomb. Schools, politicians, and mass media only touch the edge of the major problem. Ehrlich clearly describes our crisis in all respects--air, food, water, birth control, death control, and environmental impact. He also provides a realistic evaluation of our remaining options.