Charles Blow wrote an important article Day about the Trump campaign’s breath-taking lies.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/opinion/birth-of-the-biggest-lie.html
“A few things are clear after the congressional testimony of James Comey, the F.B.I. director, this week:
“First, Donald Trump owes Barack Obama and the American people an apology for his vituperative lie that Obama committed a felony by wiretapping Trump Tower. It was specious, libelous and reckless, regardless of the weak revelations of “incidental collection” that the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and Trump transition team member Devin Nunes outrageously made public, briefing the president without first briefing his fellow committee members. Nunes’s announcement was a bombshell with no bomb, just enough mud in the water to obscure the blood in the water for those too willfully blind to discern the difference.
“Second, Donald Trump will never apologize. Trump’s strategy for dealing with being caught in a lie is often to tell a bigger lie. He seems constitutionally incapable of registering what others would: shame, embarrassment, contrition. Something is broken in the man — definitely morally and possibly psychologically.
“Third, and to me this is the biggest, Comey confirmed that the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to the Russians who tampered with our election is not “fake news” manufactured by Democrats stewing over a bitter loss but a legitimate investigation that has been underway for months and has no end in sight.
“Individuals who were associated with the president of the United States’ winning campaign are under criminal investigation. That is an extraordinary sentence and one that no American can allow to be swallowed up by other news or dismissed by ideologues.
“Depending on the outcome of this investigation, we could be facing a constitutional crisis. Oddly, it is likely that the reason Trump is even in the Oval Office is Comey’s original, extraordinarily inappropriate and unprecedented action. The Trump machinery then used that action to scare Americans about Clinton, in one of the most astonishing acts of deflection and hypocrisy in American history.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I like “hung on own petard” better than karma. I think it’s very accurate when the bomb that blows up in one’s face (Comey)is the same one set for another (Comey)!
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CNN reports about a grieving father who went all out for Trump. The former supporter and still grieving father says, “I don’t play Trump songs anymore.”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/21/health/opioid-trump-supporter-medicaid-health-care-reform/
If anyone takes a shot at the Malignant Narcissist in the White House, I do not think it will be someone that voted against him. It will be someone who voted for him and then found out they were lied to and betrayed.
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Maybe the government has been suspicious of Trump all along, because they have access to his tax returns and attachments, and contrary to his recent denials, both Trump and Jr. previously made public statements indicating they were making a lot of money in Russia…
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I think there is a new endangered species. Every Russian with a connection to the Trump campaign is turning up dead..
Circumstantial evidence is what most people get convicted on . Your DNA and fingerprints are found at the seen of the crime . It is assumed you were there .
Vs direct evidence a confession or an eye witness . The eye witnesses are being taken out 1×1 and 2×2
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Wise words from Charles Blow, again.
When I think about all the help that Trump received from progressives who refused to move past their Hillary hating (and still do) I honestly wonder how we move forward from here.
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Anyone want to rethink the emphasis on STEM? On “college and careers?” On Advanced Placement courses and tests? On the ACT and the SAT?
Isn’t it far past time that public education is permeated by an emphasis on democratic citizenship?
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One can argue that the impetus behind the reform movement was alarm that higher education was moving in just that direction.
“The campuses from which much of the criticism emanates are supported by (i) tax funds generated largely from American business, and (ii) contributions from capital funds controlled or generated by American business. The boards of trustees of our universities overwhelmingly are composed of men and women who are leaders in the system ” Lewis Powell
Argue that elementary education had to be brought in line with an illiberal vision of higher education. Establishing a feed back loop . Thus Coleman goes from Common Core to the College Board. But what has to be remembered is that he doesn’t start with education experience or credentials . He is hired by McKinsey & Co. with its revolving door to corporate board rooms and the Business Roundtable. The education research divisions of each also a revolving door.
Nothing to think about here . It is not about education but power and control .
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But at the same time, key Democratic figures are warning us not to expect evidence of Trump-Russia collusion: https://theintercept.com/2017/03/16/key-democratic-officials-now-warning-base-not-to-expect-evidence-of-trumprussia-collusion/
(If Greenwald is not your cup of tea, please follow the embedded links he uses to support his argument.)
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Dienne,
There must be an independent prosecutor or commission. This matter won’t be resolved by me or the Intercept.
There is no question that an unusual number of Trump campaign officials were in communication with Russian government officials. His campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked for the pro-Putin party in Ukraine. Mike Flynn was fired because he did not honestly acknowledge his contacts with Russian officials, and he was the guest of honor (with Jill Stein) at Putin’s table at a dinner celebrating RT, the Russian propaganda outlet.
I can’t recall a candidate in history with so many Russia connections.
You seem to think we should not care.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/23/the-united-states-of-cognitive-dissonance/
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So Duane are we saying that Trump is not a malignant narcissist who uses demagoguery to advance his goals. Who is intent on destroying the lives of millions of undocumented immigrant families in pursuit of those goals who from the Central Park five to the endless Muslim bashing has demonstrated a willingness to prey on Americans irrational fear of crime and terrorism . Are we saying that his rallies resembled anything in the normal experience .From his attacks on the press,to his chants of lock her up , to his singling out of protestors with calls to kick the shit out of him.
All of the above and much more aimed at pursuing policy to returning us to the 1920s in terms of oligarchical power.
Are we saying that he did not collude with a foreign power who rightly or wrongly is considered a hostile threat , to release documents stolen in a magnitude many times greater than Nixon ever envisioned in Watergate .
Are we saying that the bodies pilling up in Moscow of people with connections to investigations into the matter are just coincidence.
Two things:
Putin is a ruthless vile authoritarian murderer
Thing two :
That has never stopped us before from having excellent relations with other ruthless vile authoritarian murderers .
But I choose to have the people elected to the congress and the presidency, who will determine my economic future and my children’s future , not elected by colluding with a foreign hostile power .
To:
Scuttle the peace talks in Vietnam.
Delay the release of hostages in Iran
Or release a constant drip of damaging information about their opponent obtained through an electronic break in to that opponents offices,.
There is no denying two more things.
The the election was so close that it is undeniable that the results in several key states and key senate and congressional districts were not affected by the constant drip of negative headlines. Because few actually read the allegations in the emails .
Thing Two:
There is so much smoke that it is beginning to resemble a pyroclastic flow. Which requires an independent prosecutor and investigation.
This is not about whether Hillary and Barrack would also have been serving the puppet masters . It goes far beyond.
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One commenter seems to think there is no case that Agent Orange was helped by Russian intelligence in the election. That is not so. It’s been well-established that Russian intelligence agencies intervened in the election to hurt Clinton and help Trump. There were multiple connections between Agent Orange’s campaign and the Russians, and connections between right-wing media sites (InfoWars, Breitbart) and the Russians.
All of this came from one day in the recent news cycle, and there’s more to come.
“The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign…the report, if true, is big. According to CNN, the FBI is still reviewing the info, which ‘includes human intelligence, travel, business and phone records and accounts of in-person meetings.’… collusion between Trump associates and Russian officials is now a large focus of the FBI investigation.”
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/15030702/fbi-trump-russia-investigation
“Ross’ decision to inject €400m into the bank put him at the centre of the biggest financial institution in a country that was widely considered to be a tax haven for Russian oligarchs, even as the US and EU were imposing sanctions on Russia. In 2014, the year he made his investment, the US State Department considered Cyprus an area of “primary concern” for money laundering (pdf), according to its official assessment…Ross was appointed vice-chairman at the bank after his investment in 2014, a post he shared with a deposit holder-turned-shareholder, Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, referred to in Russian media as a former KGB official and Putin ally.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/23/wilbur-ross-russian-deal-bank-of-cyprus-donald-trump-commerce-secretary
“Exxon Mobile can’t locate a year’s worth of emails from an alias account used by former CEO Rex Tillerson, now the secretary of state…the company’s lawyers said the emails disappeared due to computer issues. The correspondence was sent between 2008 and 2015 under the name ‘Wayne Tracker.’ Tillerson’s middle name is Wayne and he used the account to communicate more easily with others in the company on ‘a broad range of business-related topics.’…Judge Barry Ostrager demanded Exxon deliver sworn statements from staff associated with the Wayne Tracker account to help state investigators determine how they disappeared. He said the documents must be delivered by March 31.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article140201238.html
“Through Manafort, Gates is tied to many of the same business titans from Ukraine and Russia, including Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with strong ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin…Gates acknowledged a role in at least two recent, controversial deals involving separate Putin-connected oligarchs, including one other with Deripaska…”
“Gates and Manafort are two of many Trump associates with connections to Russia, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn; Carter Page, a former Trump foreign policy adviser; and Roger Stone, a Trump ally who claimed to have communicated indirectly with WikiLeaks before emails hacked by Russian agents were published last summer…Manafort proposed in 2005 a plan to influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government…According to a 2007 account in the Wall Street Journal, Deripaska had been denied admission [to the U.S.] by the Justice Department because of alleged ties to organized crime.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/manafort-is-gone-but-his-business-associate-remains-a-key-part-of-trumps-operation/2017/03/22/6ecbaa96-0f0f-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_manafort-840pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.fe3032c3129a
“I’m president, and you’re not,” [Trump] told Time’s Washington bureau chief, Michael Scherer…Trump was unrepentant about his charge that former President Barack Obama ‘wiretapped’ his phones at Trump Tower during the 2016 election — an allegation soundly refuted by FBI Director James Comey in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee earlier this week…If he saw it on TV, it’s real (unless it’s fake news)…Presented with a litany of other falsehoods and mischaracterizations, Trump offered this nonchalant rebuttal to his critics: ‘What am I going to tell you? I tend to be right.’ “
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/23/politics/trump-time-interview-wiretaps-falsehoods/index.html
Seth Meyers, on the whole sordid mess. Humor helps. Damn, he’s good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElRVvIWQbCY
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