Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

White House officials made the unusual decision Tuesday to allow cameras to film a nearly hour-long immigration meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers. They probably wish they hadn't.

For a moment, Democrats thought they had struck an unexpected deal with President Trump. Trump had previously insisted that any deal protecting "dreamers" — undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children — should also include border security and/or a border wall. But he now says that he would support a “clean” bill protecting dreamers, and then take up comprehensive immigration reform later.

“What about a clean DACA bill now, with a commitment that we go into a comprehensive immigration reform procedure?” asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Trump responded: “Yeah, I would like to do that. I think a lot of people would like to see that.”

The problem? Trump didn't know what “clean DACA bill” meant. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) quickly interjected and made clear that Trump believes a “clean” bill would include border security. Except that's not at all what a clean bill is; that's a compromise bill. A clean bill, by definition, only has one component to it.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Trump's ABC
Artists :: Ann Telnaes :: Trump's ABC

The Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Ann Telnaes has over the last 20 years skewered injustice, inequality, sham, hypocrisy, racism, misogyny, and corruption with her incendiary combination of elegance, wit, and moral suasion. Indeed, from the Clinton years on, no administration has been spared her fierce line and fiery indignation.

One Clinton, two Bushes, and an Obama were mere warm-ups for a President who is truly worthy of her excoriating satirical skills. The election of Donald Trump has inspired Telnaes to create a fitting response, her first original book — Trump’s ABC, a children’s board book for adults that chronicles the high points (or low points, if there’s a difference) of Donald Trump’s first six months in office.

Featuring sing-songy rhymes and beguiling watercolor drawings, Trump’s ABC is a miniature critique and exposé of Donald Trump and his janissaries, poltroons, and dissemblers, illustrating his public policies, his personal defects, his ethical dysfunction, and the consequences of his Presidency on the lives of Americans — in a format that is cleverly designed to reflect the commander-in-chief’s attention span and mental level.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

It’s often said that the coverup is worse than the crime. To the extent that this coverup includes character assassination and the attempted prosecution of whistleblowers, it’s pretty ugly. But in another sense it is simply lying and misdirection, undertaken by partisans, to smear those doing the best they can to find the truth. Viewed in that light, the crime in this case is far, far worse than the coverup.

Simpson’s testimony is a challenging read, but it is also an acid test for determining who is engaged in the former project, and who is engaged in the latter. That makes it a critical tool, because our power as reporters and citizens to hold the guilty accountable now turns on our ability and willingness to sort good faith from bad.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has added a veteran cyber prosecutor to his team, filling what has long been a gap in expertise and potentially signaling a recent focus on computer crimes.

Ryan K. Dickey was assigned to Mueller’s team in early November from the Justice Department’s computer crime and intellectual-property section, said a spokesman for the special counsel’s office. He joined 16 other lawyers who are highly respected by their peers but who have come under fire from Republicans wary of some of their political contributions to Democrats.

Dickey’s addition is particularly notable because he is the first publicly known member of the team specializing solely in cyber issues. The others’ expertise is mainly in a variety of white-collar crimes, including fraud, money laundering and public corruption, though Mueller also has appellate specialists and one of the government’s foremost experts in criminal law.

...

Legal analysts have said that one charge Mueller might pursue would be a conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, if he can demonstrate that members of Trump’s team conspired in Russia’s hacking effort to influence the election.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

If there is no collusion, and no obstruction of justice, and no money laundering, why wouldn't TrumPOS sit for an interview?

TrumpChickenShit ...



President Trump on Wednesday declined to say whether he would grant an interview to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team, deflecting questions on the topic by saying there had been “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump said when asked directly about meeting with the special counsel.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WTFU ...



Two political scientists specializing in how democracies decay and die have compiled four warning signs to determine if a political leader is a dangerous authoritarian:

1. The leader shows only a weak commitment to democratic rules. 2. He or she denies the legitimacy of opponents. 3. He or she tolerates violence. 4. He or she shows some willingness to curb civil liberties or the media.

“A politician who meets even one of these criteria is cause for concern,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, both professors at Harvard, write in their important new book, “https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/9781524762933/” which will be released next week.

“With the exception of Richard Nixon, no major-party presidential candidate met even one of these four criteria over the last century,” they say, which sounds reassuring. Unfortunately, they have one update: “Donald Trump met them all.”

We tend to assume that the threat to democracies comes from coups or violent revolutions, but the authors say that in modern times, democracies are more likely to wither at the hands of insiders who gain power initially through elections. That’s what happened, to one degree or another, in Russia, the Philippines, Turkey, Venezuela, Ecuador, Hungary, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Poland and Peru.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

President Donald Trump—who boasted over the weekend that his success in life was a result of “being, like, really smart”—communicates at the lowest grade level of the last 15 presidents, according to a new analysis of the speech patterns of presidents going back to Herbert Hoover.

President Donald Trump has the worst vocabulary of any modern president, a new analysis found.