This evening it was reported by the Washington Post, and then confirmed by the New York Times, that Donald Trump gave code-word classified information to the Russians last week when he met with them in the White House. Now the Republican Party majority in the House of Representatives must decide whether it’s willing to begin impeachment hearings against Trump as a matter of national security. If they refuse, here’s what we do next.
Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s Frankenstein monster. If they refuse to use their Constitutional power to end him, we use our Constitutional power to end them. Every single Republican in the House, and several in the Senate, are up for reelection in November of 2018. That’s too long to wait, considering the immediate danger that Trump now represents to the United States. So we move on the Republicans now.
We take over every town hall that every Republican in Congress holds from here on out. When it comes to the cowards who refuse to hold town halls, we peacefully march on their offices in Washington DC. We occupy the National Mall out front of the Capitol, or wherever else we can get permits. We use every legal means possible to take over DC, to the point that nothing happens until these coward Republicans realize their careers are over in 2018 if they don’t do something about Trump now.
If you can’t go out and protest right now, call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and start by asking for the House Republican who’s closest to your district. Then call back and ask for the next House Republican. Light up all of their phones, nonstop, until they understand that there is no American priority other than dealing with Donald Trump – and that if they don’t act now, we’ll act in November 2018 to make sure that there is no more Republican Party.
“In wake of Jordan Edwards’ shooting death, a leaked body cam video from 2016 was sent to FOX 4 that shows a Balch Springs officer tasing a handcuffed suspect. The police chief is concerned about the timing of the leak and how it might affect the perception of his officers.”
https://www.facebook.com/Fox4DFW/videos/10154436498402093/
https://twitter.com/WoaAnimals/status/859715599932325889?
So funny!
https://twitter.com/ylanmui/status/864504008295280640?
Highly classified information leaked b/c people chose to vote for an ignorant racist buffoon to the WH to outdo the black Potus! Major fail.
The Birther King.
We don’t have a competent president at the helm, leaving America CITIZENS ETREMELY VULNERABLE & IN DANGER
Who else in our government is benefitting from #45 remaining in our White House?
GOP, DEMS, MAFIA, RUSSIA? Enough of these breaking news shows.
impeach that bitch
I’m totally psyched for Still Star-Crossed.
5 Things Everyone Will Talk About in ABC’s Still-Star Crossed
By Jamie Broadnax
– May 15, 2017
Shondaland TV has done it again with changing the game in how we see diversity on the small screen in her latest project Still-Star Crossed. The story of this new innovative take on William Shakespeare’s classic play Romeo and Juliet begin
after the tragic deaths of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. Sharing
bits and pieces of what happens in Shakespeare’s play shouldn’t be a
spoiler since we all know how the story of Romeo and Juliet went down.
Rosaline Capulet played by the alluring English actress Lashana
Lynch is our protagonist in this dramatic tale, and she is betrothed
against her will to Benvolio Montague by Prince Escalus. The Prince
wishes to end the bad blood between the Montagues and the Capulets.
However, this arranged union is what leads to a series of events that
begins to tell the tale of the stories of these characters in the new
ABC drama Still-Star Crossed.
After viewing the pilot episode, I want to share five things everyone will be talking about when the pilot debuts May 29th:
1. A Black Woman Is Our Heroine
Our hero and lead protagonist of this story, Rosaline Capulet sets
the tone and is the launchpad for this story. The TV series is based on a book of the same name by author Melinda Taub. We’re grateful to Shonda Rhimes for making Rosaline a beautiful dark skinned character played none other than by actress Lashana Lynch who is just divine! If you remember in the Shakespeare story, Rosaline is Lord Capulet’s niece, Romeo’s first love at the beginning of the play. However, when Romeo meets Juliet, his world dramatically changes, and he falls in love. In Still-Star Crossed,we see the story from her perspective as she is entangled within many story arcs including Romeo’s, Benvolio’s, Lord Capulet’s, the Montagues,and Prince Escalus.
WTF is this, y’all?
https://twitter.com/juliettekayyem/status/864444661729046528
MAKE IT STOP‼️
https://twitter.com/AFP/status/864512345074225153
SG2, what does the following tweet mean and do you understand all of the different comments under it when you click on the tweet? —>
https://twitter.com/juliettekayyem/status/864444661729046528
Hi, Yahtc! I have no idea but it sounds scary as everything. What in the hell is up?
It sounded scary to me also.
Copy-cat behavior and theatrics that won’t yield any substantial positive results in the long term..
No matter that some around the world, including in the Muslim world, are at the moment, so eager to please the ‘superior’ white buffoon …falling all over themselves sucking up and currying favor …Laying out the red carpet, complete with lavish banquets…Eagerly extending the utmost respect and benefit of the doubt they denied the black president and his black wife, to the vile, lying, ignorant, shallow, racist buffoon and his hollow, imported, lying, bare-it-all tacky naked ‘model’, 3rd wife, who incited hate against muslims, and maintains a close circle of anti-Muslim alt-right cohorts and supporters ..
“…In an ancient city, America’s still-new president aimed to heal a rift that has endured for decades, if not centuries. Barack Obama stood before a crowd of 3,000 in the great hall of Cairo University to deliver a speech that demonstrated not only his trademark eloquence but also the sheer ambition of his purpose – nothing less than bridging the divide between Islam and the west…”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/04/barack-obama-speech-islam-west
The Fallout From Trump’s Leak to the Russians: A Question of Competence
by Nancy LeTourneau
May 16, 2017 10:19 AM
Last night we learned that Trump revealed classified information to the Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador during his meeting with them in the Oval Office last week. Before discussing the fallout from that leak, it is important to be clear about exactly what happened.
First if all, what the president shared with the Russians wasn’t U.S. intelligence, it came from an unnamed ally.
The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.
The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump’s decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State.
Secondly, the Washington Post describes what the president leaked as “code-word information.” Amy Zegart explains:
There are three basic levels of classified information. Confidential information is defined as anything that could reasonably be expected to “cause damage” to American national security if shared without authorization. Secret information is one step up, considered to have the potential to cause “serious damage” if revealed. Top Secret information is a higher classification level still, comprising anything that could reasonably be expected to cause “exceptionally grave damage” to U.S. national security if revealed.
Code word is beyond Top Secret. It limits access to classified information to a much narrower pool of people to provide an extra layer of security.
Why Trump Looks So Compromised by the Russians
by Martin Longman
May 16, 2017 11:36 AM
Less than a week ago, Politico Magazine published Susan Glasser’s piece: Russia’s Oval Office Victory Dance. At the time, there were three main narratives. First, there was the timing. Coming the day after the president unceremoniously fired FBI director James Comey for (many suspected) investigating his ties to Russia, it seemed a little inopportune to meet with Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in the White House. Second, since the American press was barred from the meeting there were no photographs. Yet, a Russian photographer was allowed in and his pictures quickly appeared on the Russian wire services, which even top Trump officials admitted was a boneheaded blunder, especially because it revealed that the controversial Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak was also in attendance. And, third, there was the question of why the meeting was happening at all, since it isn’t customary for our head of state to meet with another country’s foreign minister. Glasser explained this last part:
The chummy White House visit—photos of the president yukking it up with Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak were released by the Russian Foreign Ministry since no U.S. press was allowed to cover the visit—had been one of Putin’s asks in his recent phone call with Trump, and indeed the White House acknowledged this to me later Wednesday. “He chose to receive him because Putin asked him to,” a White House spokesman said of Trump’s Lavrov meeting. “Putin did specifically ask on the call when they last talked.”
The meeting was Lavrov’s first in the White House since 2013—and came after several years of the Obama administration’s flat-out refusal to grant him an Oval Office audience, two former senior White House officials told me. “The Russians were begging us for years to do that,” one of the former officials said. “They were constantly pushing for it and we were constantly saying no.”
This was interesting on several levels. Even before Russia was caught breaking into our political parties’ virtual filing cabinets and trying to affect the results of our presidential election, our government’s policy was to shun Sergey Lavrov. But Trump quickly granted the request. Originally, Lavrov was planning to come no closer to DC than Fairbanks, Alaska where he and Kislyak did in fact attend the Arctic Council. But suddenly he was being welcomed into the inner sanctum of the Oval Office with a photographer in tow.
‘Looks’…🤔
LOL..
May 16, 2017
Health Care Puts House in Play
PPP’s new national poll finds that Republicans are facing significant backlash over the health care bill that’s having the effect of firing up Democrats and putting them in position to make major gains in the House next year.
Democrats now have a 49-38 lead overall on the generic Congressional ballot, up from 47-41 a month ago. Even more notable though is that among voters who say they’re ‘very excited’ to turn out in the 2018 election, the Democratic lead balloons to 27 points at 61-34. The outcome of lower turnout midterm elections often hinges on which side is more engaged, and Democrats have the clear advantage at this point on that front- 63% of their voters say they’re ‘very excited’ about voting in next year’s election, compared to only 52% of Republicans who say the same.
The American Health Care Act has been a complete disaster politically for Republicans. Only 25% of voters support it, to 52% who are opposed. Even among Republican voters there’s only 49% support for the measure, while Democrats (76%) are considerably more unified in their opposition to it. Voters say by a 20 point margin that they’re less likely to vote for a member of Congress who supported the AHCA- just 27% say they’re more likely to vote for a pro-AHCA candidate, compared to 47% who are less likely to vote for one.
The health care debate has left Congress with a 15% approval rating and 68% of voters disapproving of it. Paul Ryan (25/59 approval) and Mitch McConnell (21/55 approval) are both very unpopular individually as well.
The current health care debate is also stoking new found respect for the Affordable Care Act. By a 53/27 spread, voters say they prefer the current ACA to the new AHCA. And just 29% of voters say they want to repeal the Affordable Care Act at this point, to 64% who would prefer to keep it and make fixes as necessary.
https://twitter.com/ppppolls/status/864486706690625537?
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/864133545769525250
Black folks don’t vote race, we vote REASON.
If that were the case, after we got the right to vote, and voted for the past 43 white presidents… GOT IT?
Now RUNTELLAT!
https://twitter.com/GMA/status/864448827125776384?
Quote of the Day
May 16, 2017
“Their credibility is completely shattered. They’ve engaged in serial lying to the American people on issues big and small –beginning with the crowd size photos. It’s unprecedented for an administration, from the top on down, to embrace a strategy of deception and lying. Even people who have built up reputations for integrity over a lifetime of public service, they risk squandering it in this administration.”
— GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, quoted by Politico, on the Trump White House.
True…but Steve Schmidt in his role as a GOP ‘strategist’, has also been a huge part of the problem..
For most of the GOP, it’s not the treasonous stuff that the buffoon and his alt-right cohorts have done, it’s that they have been so brazen and sloppy about it, and have as Rikyrah always says, failed to use the preferred Frank Luntz lingo in selling and covering the racist and treasonous crap…
https://twitter.com/Russian_Starr/status/864475912477319168?
THIS X’S 1,000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
https://twitter.com/juliettekayyem/status/864444661729046528?
https://twitter.com/DavidNakamura/status/864508461681434624?
Unless they’ve coordinated with Putin and the Russian bots have been pre-programmed to dominate twitter during said ‘forum’, the buffoon is in for a seriously traumatic, ego-shattering experience..
https://twitter.com/IsiahWhitlockJr/status/864270239843921920?
https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/864493090152865792?
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/864475565935534080?
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/864462838429102080?
another good one from POU:
https://twitter.com/GideonResnick/status/864488458009559044?
https://twitter.com/gkfahnbulleh/status/864478708345651201?
https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/864505275088334848
It takes a village …
To enjoy a lavish tax-payer funded vacation spanning 9 days..
To cover-up bullshit…
To sell bullshit…
To self-promote…
To contain the dubious proclivities and disastrous tendencies even when extensively ‘prepared’ and choreographed, of an ignorant, un-curious, insecure, shallow, hollow, flippant, bloviating, show-boating, glib megalomaniac with an incurable case of verbal diarrhea ..
Administration Scales Back Obamacare Options For Small Biz
Published MAY 16, 2017 9:39 AM
Small businesses will no longer be able to use a platform on the HealthCare.gov Obamacare exchanges to offer their employees insurance plans, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
The move to scale back the enrollment portal, known as the Small Business Health Options Program (or SHOP), has minimal practical import — it was used by some 8,000 employers to cover a cumulative 40,000 employees, according to the Journal — but symbolically it represents the Health and Human Service Department’s efforts to wind down certain administrative aspects of Obamacare, while Republican lawmakers seek to repeal parts of the law.
The roll back of the SHOP exchanges was announced by the Trump administration Monday in a statement in which Seema Verma, the director of Centers for Medicare/Medicaid, said that the “goal is to reduce ACA burdens on consumers and small businesses and make it easier for them to purchase coverage.”
How Trump Hurts the Spying Business
New York Times
May 16, 2017
The man seated across from me had been a spy for the United States for several decades. Recruited by a C.I.A. officer, this man, at great risk to his and his family’s lives, had provided critically important intelligence that formed the basis of innumerable raw intelligence reports, some of which found their way into the President’s Daily Brief.
We met because he wanted to tell me something. With tears in his eyes, he explained that he was drawn to work for us by the idea of America — that America stood for justice, decency and freedom and against tyranny, oppression and injustice. He said that he agreed to divulge critical secrets about his government’s leaders and his country’s capacities — not because the agency had compromising material on him (it did not) and not for money (he was paid, but not much), but because he believed in America.
This man’s story is hardly unique. Many people agree to become spies for the C.I.A. because they see a stark difference between our ideals and the repressive and brutal regimes of their own countries.
A friend told me recently about one of his best recruits, a full-fledged member of a terrorist organization. This person was captivated by the prospect that after his days of spying against terrorists were over, he might be able go to the United States and pursue the American dream. He, too, viewed America as embracing the world’s downtrodden and dispossessed, not their oppressors, and offering everyone the opportunity to succeed.
Both of these men romanticized America, and no doubt the C.I.A. officers who recruited them played on their somewhat exaggerated image of this country. But that image of the United States as the “last best hope of earth,” proclaimed by our leaders for decades, is an enormously effective recruiting tool, not least because it has always had a ring of truth.
I am reminded of these recruits, and many others like them, when I hear the Trump administration lavish praise on autocrats, when it tries to close our borders to refugees from war-torn countries and when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson proclaims that the United States must de-emphasize human rights.
This departure from decades of bipartisan foreign policy is rightly criticized for ignoring the critical role that “the American idea” plays in promoting our interests abroad, particularly when it comes directly from the president and the secretary of state.
Trump’s Leak to Russians Was Worse Than Reported
May 16, 2017
By Taegan Goddard
Erick Erickson says he knows one of the sources who told the Washington Post that President Trump gave classified information to the Russian foreign minister and “the source is solidly supportive of President Trump, or at least has been and was during Campaign 2016.”
“But the President will not take any internal criticism, no matter how politely it is given. He does not want advice, cannot be corrected, and is too insecure to see any constructive feedback as anything other than an attack. So some of the sources are left with no other option but to go to the media, leak the story, and hope that the intense blowback gives the President a swift kick in the butt. Perhaps then he will recognize he screwed up. The President cares vastly more about what the press says than what his advisers say. That is a real problem and one his advisers are having to recognize and use, even if it causes messy stories to get outside the White House perimeter.”
“I am told that what the President did is actually far worse than what is being reported.”
https://twitter.com/ErnestMoniz/status/864500186810372096?
My Family’s Slave
She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.
Alex Tizon passed away in March. He was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self. For more about Alex, please see this editor’s note.
The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.
Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived. Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.
I saw this story this morning. This is deeply disturbing.
When I was growing up in Jax and going to a Catholic school in the 60s, there was a very prominent Filipino family in our parish. The father was some kind of physician and the mother was often a substitute teacher at our grammar school. Just as an aside, she was useless as a substitute teacher. She would disregard whatever subject she was supposed to be teaching and talk about World War II in the Philippines, but not in a way that gave us a sense of history. It was just her boring anecdotes that were meaningless to little kids.
So this woman and her husband left the Philippines after WWII and brought their slave, a young girl, with them. They said she was their oldest child who they adopted but everyone knew she was a slave. No one ever tried to do anything about it and just looked the other way because these folks were such well to do “good” Catholics.
The mother had a nasty temper as I recall, and I would imagine that her slave had a pretty hard life. The mother is still alive and I’ve seen some of her children who I went to school with on Facebook. Her husband left the family while I was still in high school. I have tried to find out what happened to the woman who was their slave but there is no trace of her. They must have worked her to death.
There was so much hypocrisy back then. I remember this so well. It’s interesting how children know when things aren’t right.
I have a few similar stories..
The idea that so many engaged in such inhumanity to others are actively religious and held up as pillars of their church and their society, and everyone turns a blind eye to the evil they perpetrate/actively participate in, has always disturbed me..
Quite a surprise and a relief, and remarkable, that Alex felt her pain and publicly told her story …choosing to take her side and recognizing her humanity…over covering for his parents…and protecting his family name and shame..
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/864480842973839361?
https://twitter.com/johnson_carrie/status/864493565434634240
So disrespectful..
May God flog Mitch McConnell…
And the rest of these evil republicans..
Seriously, I envision reports of McTurtle choking to DEATH on his own VILE vomit.
DON’T JUDGE ME
I won’t … LOL..
FROM POU:
Absolutely spot on…
The GOP’s Morally Repugnant Argument About the ‘Undeserving Sick
by Nancy LeTourneau
May 16, 2017 7:02 AM
For decades now the Republicans have leaned on the idea of the “undeserving poor” to garner support for their attempts to do away with the social safety net. We’ve seen it in everything from Ronald Reagan’s reference to “welfare queens” to Romney’s attempt to define almost half the country as simply voting for Democrats because they give people “free stuff.”
We are now witnessing that same kind of argument being employed in order to defend Republican attempts to repeal Obamacare. Arguments are starting to surface about the “undeserving sick.” The groundwork for that was laid by Paul Ryan in his power point presentation about how those with pre-existing conditions are driving up the costs of insurance for those who are healthy.
It was first and foremost a ridiculous claim in which Ryan demonstrated that he either doesn’t understand how insurance works or thinks he can fool the rest of us into not understanding. But underlying the argument is the idea that those who need medical care can/should be cordoned off from the rest of us who are healthy, as if any of us at any given moment might not face the reality of a change into which group we belong. That set up the “us vs them” way of framing things.
As I wrote recently, Rep. Mo Brooks took it the next step.
In other words, the Republican health care bill protects “people who lead good lives” from those who don’t. The latter are the “undeserving sick.”
Preet Bharara is on the Warpath Against Trump
by Martin Longman
Mon May 15th, 2017 at 01:20:33 PM EST
Preet Bharara is the inspiration for the character played by Paul Giamatti on Showtime‘s hit program Billions. I’m not sure how he feels about that since the portrayal isn’t entirely sympathetic, but it’s an indication of Bharara’s reputation in certain powerful circles, as well as of the importance of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. As the show indicates, the Southern District covers Wall Street, and investigating the richest people in America for possible indictment is not a job for the weak kneed.
After coming into office, Trump quickly asked for the resignations of the currently serving U.S. Attorneys, but he made an exception in Bharara’s case. He explicitly asked Bharara to stay on, which may have been an acknowledgement of his reputation or simply admiration for his status as a fellow celebrity. I don’t know.
What was more significant was that the president quickly changed his mind and fired Bharara, and that this decision came at a time when rumors were circling that Bharara might be investigating him or his cabinet.
At first, Bharara expressed his astonishment and displeasure but was fairly muted about it. That’s changing now.
Over the weekend, he had a piece published in the Washington Post that called for “a truly bipartisan investigation in Congress” of Russian interference in our election. It also called for “an independent and uncompromised special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation.”
And then today, Bharara took to Twitter to comment on rumors that Trump is thinking about firing a bunch of his senior staff.
Candidate Trump on classified information:
We Must Impeach This Clown NOW!
this clown must go now!!
So, Dolt45 has already thrown McMaster under the bus.
Uh huh
Uh huh 😒😕😒
Good Morning, Everyone 😐😐😐