OPEN THREAD WEDNESDAY.

It's open thread Wednesday people, and I need your thoughts about a few things.

Is  Conor Lamb possibly winning a race in a district that went for trump by 20 points a big deal?

Which one of trump's staffers d you think will be fired next?

How much longer do you think this Stormy saga will last? 

Is this latest wave of student activism a good thing?

Some of MSNBC's shows now have better ratings than FOX. Is this a big deal? 

Why do you think that the president is afraid to speak out against what Russia did in Great Britain, recently? 

Who do you think will win the college basketball championship?

Night off.

 I'm off tonight field hands, I have some work to do.

Hey, but at least I have a job. Just imagine if I worked for Donald trump. I would be worried about my job security right about now.

Holla at you tomorrow.

 

"Melania knew"?

I really don't want to keep talking about this Stormy Daniels story, but the trump White House just can't seem to get their act together when it comes to what went on between trump and this "adult film actress".

Now we are hearing that there might actually be sex tapes. I said this on twitter, and I will repeat it here: If there are in fact sex tapes, there better be a warning about the graphic nature of the contents before airing it on cable and network television.

Anyway, Charles Blow has an interesting take on this issue.

"Dear America: Come on, you can’t be serious.

The ongoing saga over a president, a porn star and a payoff is so lewd and tawdry that it can’t simply be added to the ever-expanding list of horrible misbehaviors of a womanizing misogynist.

It’s not even the infidelity that most bothers me. I view that as an issue between spouses and with the other person involved. I contend that we on the outside never really know what understandings may exist in a marriage, unless the two parties within reveal it.

In this case, Melania knew exactly the kind of man she was getting.

When Donald first meets Melania, they are at a New York Fashion Week party to which Donald has been invited by the wealthy Italian businessman who brought Melania to America on a modeling contract and work visa. According to GQ, sometimes, to promote his models, the businessman “would send a few girls to an event and invite photographers, producers, and rich playboys.”

Trump is on a date with another woman that night. He is also in the process of divorcing Marla Maples, his second wife, with whom he had had an affair while still married to his first wife, Ivana Trump.

According to GQ, “He sent his companion to the bathroom so he could have a few minutes to chat up the model he’d noticed. But Melania knew of Trump’s reputation — which was immediately confirmed by the fact that he had come to the party with a date and was now asking for her number.”

That’s right, Melania knew.

In April 2004, Donald proposes to Melania at the Met Gala.

By the way, just to underscore how vile this man is, in September 2004, Trump goes on Howard Stern, and while discussing with Stern how beautiful they both find Trump’s daughter Ivanka, Stern says, “Can I say this? A piece of ass.” Trump responds, “Yes.”

Trump marries Melania in January of 2005. They had signed a prenuptial agreement. Nine months later, in September, “Access Hollywood” records Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women — kissing and groping them without prior consent — and claiming: “When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”

Six months after the tape is recorded, on March 20, 2006, Mr. and Mrs. Trump’s son Barron is born. (That means that Melania was pregnant when Trump was making his lewd remarks about assaulting other women.)

Four months after Barron is born, porn star Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, alleged that she and Trump initiated a consensual, sexual relationship after meeting at a golf tournament.

Clifford alleges that the “intimate relationship” began in July 2006 and continued “well into the year 2007.”

Trump also goes on “The View”  in 2006 and says of Ivanka: “She does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” His daughter! And remember, he is newly married to Melania, who will give birth to Barron just 14 days after his appearance on the show.

And through it all, Melania has remained. So, that’s their marriage. They clearly have some sort of understanding, some emotional elasticity — or financial dependency — that is beyond my comprehension.

So that part is what it is.

As for the present news, it is not clear to me if the money paid by Donald Trump’s personal attorney to Clifford, to prevent the disclosure of a sexual affair Clifford says she had with Trump, will be found in violation of federal campaign finance laws. Neither is it clear to me if the courts will allow Clifford to get out of her nondisclosure agreement.

Those are all legal issues. What matters most to me about this sordid tale is the way it fits into a pattern of behavior and a Trump worldview about women: that they are mere objects and opportunities, a reward owed to men of wealth, and that objections and protestations are invalid.

This is about the defamation of, silencing of, and shouting down of women.

At the very same time that the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have given voice to women, and led to men being held accountable, particularly in the private sector, Trump has almost single-handedly aided in the numbing of America’s sympathies for women who speak up about the sexual exploits, misdeeds and assaults of elected officials.

Yes, there have been some political resignations, but primarily among people who have confessed to their sins. But among the men like Trump who deny the accusations, little has been done. Indeed, Trump has made a habit of defending such men, using the forcefulness of their denials as proof of innocence. Trump himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by 19 women.

America, this is not about partisanship; this is about principle. Each of us must proclaim that this situation is over the line, that women matter, that their voices and their stories matter, that propriety, honor and character matter." [Source]

*Pic from youtube.com

  

The death of right-wing intellectualism.

The following excerpts are from some brilliant tweets I read earlier from Vox writer, David Roberts. 

It sums up perfectly the current state of conservatism and trump's takeover of the right in America.  

"All right, this controversy over conservative columnists in @nytopinion is bugging me. Everyone is dancing around the central point! (The same central point everyone dances around in *numerous* contemporary controversies.) So I'ma lay it out.

Here's the main point: the contemporary right-wing in the US has become, in Lionel Trilling's immortal words, a bundle of "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." It's just a tangle of resentments & bigotries, driven by the erosion of white privilege.

There's always been that element, but for decades it was overlain by a class of DC conservatives who code switched, spoke the Very Serious language of ideas & policies. This is the conservatism that white moderate libs still imagine: an actual ideology, with arguments.

Trump's rise has shown that purported principles of conservative ideology meant virtually NOTHING to the conservative masses. Trump abandoned the Very Serious script & the RW base didn't care, at all. He voiced their anger & resentments. That's all the RW base is any more.

Trump has swerved this way and that on immigration, taxes, healthcare, guns ... and the base doesn't care. They follow him this way, they follow him that way. It is the resentment, the aggrieved sense of persecution, that they respond to. That's what US conservatism IS now.

So @nytopinion faces a dilemma. It claims to want to expose its readers to the perspectives of the conservative masses. It claims to want to connect liberals to the heartland. But there's a problem.

If NYT printed the *actual, real-life* sentiments of today's conservative masses, it would print a bunch of paranoid, Fox-generated fairy tales and belligerent expressions of xenophobia, misogyny, racism, and proud, anti-intellectual ignorance.

The people who work at NYT & the vast majority of its readers would find those sentiments ... what's the word? oh, yes ... deplorable. They would recoil. The truth of what's going on on the right today is worse than virtually anyone in the political mainstream acknowledges.

The NYT's commitment to "intellectual diversity" doesn't go THAT far -- not far enough to expose its readers to that reality. It is too invested in America's own Noble Savage myth, the idea that conservative Heartland Americans are more authentic & in touch w/ simple virtues.

So NYT needs "a voice from the right," but not a voice from the ACTUAL right (which is oriented around white resentment, not any discernible governing philosophy). They need a voice from the Conservatism of the Mind, the noble, principles-base conservatism they imagine.

That's what conservative columnists on mainstream opinion pages have been for years now: voices who will present conservatism as a coherent intellectual argument, what liberals desperately want it to be.

It is no coincidence that these guys - Gerson, Douthat, Brooks, Stephens - have little voice or influence inside actual conservatism, or that they're all anti-Trump (unlike 95+% of Republicans). They are anomalies, idiosyncrasies, not representative of anything broader.

And notice, even those invested in pretending that contemporary conservatism is a governing philosophy have thrown up their hands lately. Claim something for conservatism today & Trump could disavow it in a tweet tomorrow. It's become impossible to even maintain the pretense.

And so what do the mainstream "voices of conservatism" have left? Wan, half-ass whataboutism. "Sure Trump & the GOP are terrible but whatabout that time that one person on the left said that one bad thing?"

That explains why everyone on the right has suddenly fixated on Farrakhan. It explains why every conservative columnist is writing (again and again) about campus speech intolerance. It's not much, but it's *all they have left*. There's nowhere left to go, intellectually." [Read more here.]

Conservatives have always offered a cover for the racists and more crass folks in their movement. That uneasy political truce worked just fine until Obama came along and made them (the trumpbots) restless. After Obama they got tired of playing pretend, and so, much to the surprise of the intellectuals in their gang, they elected trump. Now it's their movement. And sadly for conservatives, there is no political place to call home.  

CAPTION SATURDAY.

I need a caption for this pic.

Example: trump is going to meet with us. I can't wait to see if that thing on his head is real.   

*Pic from cnbc.com

Walking while black in North Carolina.

Tonight my racism chase takes me to Asheville, North Carolina. And for those of you who don't know, this is supposed to be one of the most progressive cities in the Tar Heel state.

"Federal authorities are investigating body camera footage from August that shows two white police officers Tasering and beating a black man whom they accused of jaywalking in Asheville, N.C.

The footage, obtained by The Citizen Times, has created an uproar in town. One of the officers has resigned, and the police chief has offered to follow suit.

“The city is in outrage,” Councilwoman Sheneika Smith said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “Facebook was flaming. It was on fire.” The beginning of the video, which was taken last year, shows  Johnnie Jermaine Rush being approached by Verino Ruggiero, an officer in training, shortly after midnight on Aug. 25 at a street corner near a baseball stadium in Asheville, about 120 miles west of Charlotte. 

“You didn’t use the crosswalk four times in a row,” Officer Ruggiero says in the video.

“All I’m trying to do is go home, man. I’m tired!” Mr. Rush says. “I just got off of work.”

“         I’ve got two options, I can either arrest you or write you a ticket,” Officer Ruggiero says.

“It doesn’t matter, man. Do what you got to do besides keep harassing me, man,” Mr. Rush responds.

The episode quickly escalates from there. Officer Chris Hickman, who was training Officer Ruggiero and wearing the body camera, orders Mr. Rush to put his hands behind his back. Mr. Rush runs, and the officers chase him, eventually tackling him to the ground.

During the arrest, Mr. Rush was shocked with a Taser, choked and beaten by Officer Hickman, according to police records.

At several points, while pinned to the ground, Mr. Rush cried, “I can’t breathe!”

The camera footage also shows Officer Hickman hitting Mr. Rush on the head over and over with a closed fist, and Mr. Rush crying out in pain as he is shocked with a Taser.

Mr. Rush could not be reached for comment.

When Councilwoman Smith first saw the video, she said she was “immediately disturbed.”

She recognized Mr. Rush, she said, from her work last year with the nonprofit Green Opportunities, a work force development organization that provides training programs to people in marginalized communities.

She described him as a hardworking man who was eager to learn and who had expressed an interest in construction and carpentry. “He was looking for opportunities to gain more skills so he could qualify for higher-paying jobs,” she said." [Source]

Hang on, people. It's only going to get rougher from here on out in trump's America. 

*Pic from thegrio.com 

“

Open Thread Wednesday.

It's open thread Wednesday folks, and I need your thoughts on a few things.

Do you believe Stormy or Donald? 

Do you believe Mark Cuban? 

Is trump speaking to witnesses about what they told Robert Mueller a big deal?

There was another shooting in a school in America today. Did we really think that Parkland was going to be the last one? 

Will white folks ever learn that black face is NEVER cool?

Is a ten day suspension without pay a sufficient punishment for a teacher who calls his students the n- word?

If you are here on the East Coast have fun digging out of the white stuff tomorrow.   

More Storms ahead.

There is a new storm looming here on the East Coast, and Stormy sues trump.

Poor Donald, you just can't find good porn star help these days. Who knew that $130,000.00 wouldn't be enough to buy Stormy's silence? Then again, maybe Donald should have just signed on the dotted line.

"The "hush agreement," as it's called in the suit, refers to Trump throughout as David Dennison, and Clifford as Peggy Peterson. The side letter agreement reveals the true identities of the parties as Clifford and Trump.

Each document includes a blank where "DD" is supposed to sign, but neither blank is signed.
According to the lawsuit, Clifford and Trump had an intimate relationship that lasted from summer 2006 "well into the year 2007." The relationship allegedly included meetings in Lake Tahoe and at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

The 2016 hush agreement directed that $130,000 be paid into the trust account of Clifford's then-attorney. In return, Clifford was not to disclose any confidential information about Trump or his sexual partners to anyone beyond a short list of individuals she'd already told about the relationship, or share any texts or photos from Trump.

The suit alleges that Cohen has tried to keep Clifford from talking about the relationship as recently as Feb. 27, 2018.

"To be clear, the attempts to intimidate Ms. Clifford into silence and 'shut her up' in order to 'protect Mr. Trump' continue unabated," says the suit. "On or about February 27, 2018, Mr. Trump's attorney Mr. Cohen surreptitiously initiated a bogus arbitration proceeding against Ms. Clifford in Los Angeles." Binding arbitration is specified as a means of dispute resolution." [Source]

Get your popcorn out people, the next few days should be fun.

Finally, it has been leaked that trump's economic adviser, Gary Cohn, will be leaving the White House shortly. Apparently this tariff thing was just too much for the economist, and it was enough for him to part ways with his leader.  Gary, you see, in economic parlance, is a globalist, not a protectionist. So off he will go. This is the same Gary Cohn, mind you, who threatened to quit after trump chose to side with white supremacist over every one else after Charlottesville. Apparently he had even drafted his resignation letter. But yet he stayed. Why? Because he wanted to see the tax cuts through.

Let's think about this for a minute. Mr. Cohn stays with trump after he sides with Nazis and white supremacist, but decides to leave because he doesn't like trump's trade policies.

That, my friends, tells you all you need to know about the morality of our American leaders. 

*Pic from thewrap.com   

The racists next door.

Racism in trump's America is really off the hook. So much so that racists don't even hide their racism anymore. I guess they feel that they no longer have to. 

There are two recent stories in the news that really drive this point home.

This one:

"A Citrus County schoolteacher has been secretly hosting a podcast that espouses racist views, and she used it brag about being a teacher, the Huffington Post reports. The website identified the teacher as Dayanna Volitich, 25, who teaches social studies at Crystal River Middle School. It said she hosts the "Unapologetic" podcast under the pseudonym "Tiana Dalichov." A photo on the Dalichov Twitter account (now deleted) matches Volitich's staff photo on the school's website, down to the earrings being worn, the Post noted. It also noted the names "Dayanna Volitich" and "Tiana Dalichov" are almost anagrams. In the most recent episode of the podcast, Volitich agreed with a guest who criticized the . kid from Nigeria and a kid who came from Sweden are supposed to learn exactly the same” and have the “same IQ.” She also argued that "science" has proved some races are smarter than others.

Volitich also bragged in the podcast about being a teacher, and said she lied to a principal after parents complained she had introduced her political views into her classroom, the website said. She also said more white nationalists need to become teachers.

The Post said it had tried to contact Volitich and "Dalichov" for comment but got no response. Social media accounts under both names had been deleted.." [Source] 

And this one:

"OVERLAND PARK, KS (KCTV/CNN) - A Kansas man is accused of calling a pre-school aged boy a racial slur and spitting at him inside a restaurant.

The child’s family was celebrating a birthday at Hooters with about 20 to 30 guests when the boy wandered away from the party.

The n-word started to get thrown around," said one man who did not reveal his identity. The witness was interviewed by Parkland police.

The witness said he is still stunned after hearing the man openly use a racial slur toward the child.
Making matters even worse, is the man said he was a first responder.

"He basically said, 'Hey, get that little blank up off the floor,' " the witness said.

The man told police he was a first responder.

“I didn't catch what the officers said to him but his immediate response was, 'It's ok, I'm a fireman.' “according to the witness. “Like that was supposed to blanket cover everything for him.”

Police said there were several witnesses and that the firefighter could face criminal charges.
The case has been turned over to the district attorney." [Source]

Lot's more where those came from. But a middle school teacher and a firefighter? Kind of makes you wonder about this whole 2018 thing.

CAPTION SATURDAY.

I need a caption for this pic.

Example: If his hands move one inch closer I swear....

More lies and an "extraordinary" immigrant.

Remember how some of these trump bots were saying that trump is really brave because he stopped a mugging in New York City in the early nineties?

Well....

"Donald Trump has been lying for decades about his much-discussed role in a New York City mugging incident, according to a witness who says they were at the scene of the crime.

The New York Daily News recently spoke with 43-year-old Kathleen Romeo-Nunez, who was apparently there to see it all when the attack occurred in 1991.
In no uncertain terms, Romeo-Nunez rubbished Trump’s bravado-laced claim. She said:

He came at the tail end of the event. There was no opportunity.

To hear Trump tell it, one only need confer with the New York Daily News‘ own archives. Under the headline “Mugger’s Trumped” the formerly Trump-friendly tabloid took the future president more or less at his word.

While on the way to see Paula Abdul perform at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, Trump was in a limousine with Marla Maples and two others when the passengers noticed a crime already in progress.

Trump described his version of the event like this, “Someone in the car looked over and said, ‘Gee, look at that, it’s a mugging,’ I said to my driver to stop the car because it was brutal-looking.” Then, he says, he jumped out and confronted the man, who was wailing on someone with a baseball bat. Trump continued:

The guy with the bat looked at me, and I said, ‘Look, you’ve gotta stop this. Put down the bat,’ I guess he recognized me because he said, ‘Mr. Trump, I didn’t do anything wrong.’ I said, ‘How could you not do anything wrong when you’re whacking a guy with a bat?’ Then he ran away.

An anonymous source, alleged to have also witnessed the crime and its abrupt conclusion, verified Trump’s story at the time, noting that the real estate mogul said, “Put that bat down. What are you doing?” before the assailant spoke with Trump and fled.

Not so, said Romeo-Nunez, who was 16-years-old at the time. She described what she saw as she exited a store near midtown Manhattan, “A car pulls up, he gets out, people acknowledge his presence. He’s looking around, seeing what’s going on. Then he got back in and left.”
The incident was never reported to authorities.

As for Trump’s recent claim that he would have personally entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida last month, Romeo-Nunez said, “I highly doubt that he would do that.”' [Source]

Finally, it would appear that the First Lady came to this country on an Einstein visa. That means that she is really really smart, and has some special skills that very few native Americans have. *Please stop laughing long enough to read the rest of this.* Anyway, it's hard to understand trump's detestation for immigrants considering how his own wife came to this country.

"How hard was it for the first lady to obtain a visa reserved for immigrants of "extraordinary ability"?
On Thursday, The Washington Post explored the subject in some detail, and questioned whether Melania Trump, then Melania Knauss, was really qualified for a visa through the EB-1 program. The visas, according to the Post, were "designed for renowned academic researchers, multinational business executives or those in other fields, such as Olympic athletes and Oscar-winning actors, who demonstrated 'sustained national and international acclaim.'"

"We called it the Einstein visa," former Rep. Bruce Morrisson, who helped write the bill that created the EB-1 program in 1990, told the Post.

However, according to a lawyer who specializes in obtaining EB-1 and EB-2 visas for her clients, the visas don't just go to the Albert Einsteins of the world. In fact, they're "not that difficult" to obtain, immigration lawyer Merrill R. Cohen told CBS News.

Cohen has helped squash players, a colored-pencil artist, a "classical music whistler," and an "instructor of magicians" get EB-1 visas. Melania Trump never held any of those jobs, but she was a relatively well-known model, in part due to her relationship with President Trump, when she began petitioning the government for an EB-1 in 2000.

In January 2000, for example, she appeared nude and draped in a fur rug on the cover of British GQ. "Sex at 30,000 feet – Melania Knauss earns her air miles," said the headline. She was also a runway model who appeared on a billboard in Times Square and in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. "[Source]

I will say this for Melania, she must have some "extraordinary abilities" to stay married to Donald trump for all these years. 

*Pic from the nytimes.com