Wednesday Open Thread | But, I thought the GOP didn’t believe in ‘Big Government’.

Posted on August 16, 2017 by rikyrah

DOJ orders company to turn over 1.3 million IP addresses of resistance website visitors

BY
Jessica Chia
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, August 15, 2017, 5:03 AM

The Justice Department is ordering a web-hosting provider to turn over the IP addresses of people who visited a website organizing protests against President Trump’s inauguration, the company claims.

DreamHost, which hosts the resistance website disruptj20.org, is fighting the DOJ’s search warrant demanding it hand over “every piece of information it has about every visitor”, according to a blog post on the company’s website.

Citing a D.C. law regarding rioting or inciting to riot, the purported search warrant encompasses 1.3million IP addresses, along with the contact information, email content, and photos of thousands of visitors, the blog post states.

“That information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment,” the blog posts reads.

“This is, in our opinion, a strong example of investigatory overreach and a clear abuse of government authority.”

Just one week after inauguration, DreamHost received a Grand Jury subpoena forcing the company to turn over information about the person who registered the Disruptj20 website.

Inciting to riot?

No dear.
The people protesting you, because you are illegitimate and wrong are not rioting.

That was the White Supremacists that you refuse to investigate and label a domestic terrorist group.

This entry was posted in Democracy, Department of Justice, Domestic Terrorism, Open Thread, Politics and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

97 Responses to Wednesday Open Thread | But, I thought the GOP didn’t believe in ‘Big Government’.

  4. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:38 pm

    Listening to the 11th hour, and Brian Williams is being harsh.

    The White Supremacist groups finally getting the respect that they’ve yearned for since the first person donned a hood all those years ago.

    Damn.

    Reply
    • Liza says:
      August 17, 2017 at 9:17 am

      As far as I’m concerned, that is like a warning of a tsunami when the surge is already 30 feet high. Lots of folks warned voters about Trump.

      Reply
  14. eliihass says:
    August 16, 2017 at 9:06 pm

    I’d gladly trade this opportunistic idiot, the other hollow self-loathing twerp Paris Dennard, and the whole lot of these shameless, greedy coonsters for one Rachel Dolezal…

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Y_ruXfg-A

    Reply
  17. eliihass says:
    August 16, 2017 at 8:44 pm

    “…Trump is reportedly “nervous” about potentially firing his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, as the White House deals with the fallout from the recent exits of several top officials.

    The ongoing battle between Bannon and national security adviser H.R. McMaster is causing disruption among top White House aides, according to a Tuesday Reuters report that cited three senior officials.

    “The president obviously is very nervous and afraid of firing him,” one source told the news outlet.

    The same source suggested Trump could demote Bannon rather than fire him in order to avoid fallout from getting rid of Bannon, who is supported by many on the far right…”

    http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/346818-trump-could-demote-bannon-nervous-about-firing-him-report?amp

    Reply
  18. eliihass says:
    August 16, 2017 at 8:32 pm

    “…KIEV, Ukraine — The hacker, known only by his online alias “Profexer,” kept a low profile. He wrote computer code alone in an apartment and quietly sold his handiwork on the anonymous portion of the internet known as the dark web. Last winter, he suddenly went dark entirely.

    Profexer’s posts, already accessible only to a small band of fellow hackers and cybercriminals looking for software tips, blinked out in January — just days after American intelligence agencies publicly identified a program he had written as one tool used in Russian hacking in the United States. American intelligence agencies have determined Russian hackers were behind the electronic break-in of the Democratic National Committee.

    But while Profexer’s online persona vanished, a flesh-and-blood person has emerged: a fearful man who the Ukrainian police said turned himself in early this year, and has now become a witness for the F.B.I.

    “I don’t know what will happen,” he wrote in one of his last messages posted on a restricted-access website before going to the police. “It won’t be pleasant. But I’m still alive.”

    It is the first known instance of a living witness emerging from the arid mass of technical detail that has so far shaped the investigation into the election hacking and the heated debate it has stirred. The Ukrainian police declined to divulge the man’s name or other details, other than that he is living in Ukraine and has not been arrested.

    There is no evidence that Profexer worked, at least knowingly, for Russia’s intelligence services, but his malware apparently did.

    That a hacking operation that Washington is convinced was orchestrated by Moscow would obtain malware from a source in Ukraine — perhaps the Kremlin’s most bitter enemy — sheds considerable light on the Russian security services’ modus operandi in what Western intelligence agencies say is their clandestine cyberwar against the United States and Europe.

    It does not suggest a compact team of government employees who write all their own code and carry out attacks during office hours in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but rather a far looser enterprise that draws on talent and hacking tools wherever they can be found.

    Also emerging from Ukraine is a sharper picture of what the United States believes is a Russian government hacking group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 28 or Fancy Bear. It is this group, which American intelligence agencies believe is operated by Russian military intelligence, that has been blamed, along with a second Russian outfit known as Cozy Bear, for the D.N.C. intrusion.

    Rather than training, arming and deploying hackers to carry out a specific mission like just another military unit, Fancy Bear and its twin Cozy Bear have operated more as centers for organization and financing; much of the hard work like coding is outsourced to private and often crime-tainted vendors…”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/world/europe/russia-ukraine-malware-hacking-witness.html

    Reply
  19. eliihass says:
    August 16, 2017 at 7:59 pm

    https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/rexfeatures_8343778k.jpg

    “…The day after a Donald Trump press conference flew wildly off the rails in New York, the President is getting a new White House Communications Director — temporarily. Hope Hicks, who started as an agency publicist working on Ivanka Trump’s fashion line in 2012, and rose to become White House Director of Strategic Communications, has been tapped for the post in an interim capacity.

    The 28-year-old former press secretary for Trump’s presidential campaign will, for the time being, replace Anthony Scaramucci, who had the job for 10 days last month. Fox News cited a senior White House source saying Hicks will fill the role until a permanent replacement can be found.

    She did make headlines back in May when, in a statement to the Washington Post, she defended Trump’s penchant for teasing members of his staff, describing POTUS as “magnetic” and someone who “exudes positive energy” with “a great sense of humor… and an amazing ability to make people feel special and aspire to be more than even they thought possible.”

    WaPo likened the statement to the stuff of an SNL parody.

    A former model and face of Gossip Girl‘s spinoff book series, The It Girl, she once read for an acting role with Alec Baldwin.

    During the campaign, the New York Times called Hicks “arguably the least credentialed press secretary in the modern history of presidential politics.” Today, the paper notes that she has “the most sway over who in the news media gets interviews with the president” and will hold a post whose main function is to set a clear and direct message from the White House each day…”

    http://deadline.com/2017/08/hope-hicks-interim-white-house-communications-director-donald-trump-1202149977/

    Reply
    • eliihass says:
      August 16, 2017 at 8:08 pm

      “…Hicks, a Connecticut native, was a fixture throughout the Trump campaign, serving as Trump’s campaign press secretary. She weathered candidate Trump’s scandal in October 2016 over the Access Hollywood tape in which he was recorded bragging about groping women, as well as accusations of sexual assault against Trump from nearly a dozen women.

      She also crafted Trump’s rebuttal to Pope Francis after he criticized Trump’s campaign pledge to build a border wall, saying “a person who thinks only about building walls … and not building bridges is not Christian.” Hicks also spun accusations against former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski after he allegedly grabbed Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields’s arm. Immediately after the incident in March 2016 Hicks called Fields a liar and attention seeker before video of the incident emerged.

      Hicks is a true Trump insider. She joined the Trump Organization as a PR in October 2014. She got the job after working with Ivanka Trump who had hired the New York PR firm Hiltzik Strategies that Hicks worked at to help with with her fashion line expansion. At the time Hicks was just two years out of her English degree at Southern Methodist University.

      According to a 2016 profile of Hicks in GQ, she began dressing like Ivanka and soon won over Donald Trump.

      In June a White House release of top staff salaries showed Hicks makes $179,700 a year, placing her among the highest paid White House aides, including Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon.

      As director of communications Hicks will now be tasked with overseeing the White House communications strategy, dealing with the fallout from the Russia investigation, President Trump’s response to white supremacists in Charlottesville, and working closely with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders…”

      http://www.newsweek.com/hope-hicks-trumps-new-communications-director-651294

      Reply
  20. eliihass says:
    August 16, 2017 at 7:49 pm

    Here’s that ‘respectable’ and very well-respected ‘apolitical’ D.C. attorney John Dowd..

    “…Trump’s personal lawyer on Wednesday forwarded an email to conservative journalists, government officials and friends that echoed secessionist Civil War propaganda and declared that the group Black Lives Matter “has been totally infiltrated by terrorist groups.”

    The email forwarded by John Dowd, who is leading the president’s legal team, painted the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in glowing terms and equated the South’s rebellion to that of the American Revolution against England. Its subject line — “The Information that Validates President Trump on Charlottesville” — was a reference to comments Mr. Trump made earlier this week in the aftermath of protests in the Virginia college town.

    Mr. Dowd received the email on Tuesday night and forwarded it on Wednesday morning to more than two dozen recipients, including a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security, The Wall Street Journal editorial page and journalists at Fox News and The Washington Times. There is no evidence that any of the journalists used the contents of the email in their coverage. One of the recipients provided a copy to The New York Times.

    “You’re sticking your nose in my personal email?” Mr. Dowd told The Times in a brief telephone interview. “People send me things. I forward them.” He then hung up…”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/politics/trump-lawyer-email-race-charlottesville.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&rref=politics&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&pgtype=article

    Reply
  22. eliihass says:
    August 16, 2017 at 7:19 pm

    The power of greed..

    “…(CNN)Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao stood shoulder-to-shoulder Tuesday with President Donald Trump, the same man who railed against her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, last week and demanded that the lawmaker “get back to work” on health care.

    “I stand by my man — both of them,” Chao said, when asked by reporters what she thought of her boss’s criticism of her husband…”

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/15/politics/elaine-chao-stands-by-man/index.html

    Reply
    • sunshine616 says:
      August 16, 2017 at 9:08 pm

      Just so ewwwww!!! No backbones, no heart just a whole bunch of self protection. Not a patriotic lot in the bunch

      Reply
  23. SouthernGirl2 says:
    August 16, 2017 at 7:15 pm

    Keith Kallie: Time to flip a coin on #45. On one side is Impeachment, on the other, Military Coup. There are no other civilized options! #Hegotstago

    Reply
    • Liza says:
      August 16, 2017 at 7:19 pm

      To be very honest, this is the first time in my entire life when I have thought that a military coup would even be possible in this country.

      Reply
    • Liza says:
      August 16, 2017 at 7:44 pm

      She’s crying because she can’t say anything without being judged?

      Maybe she should cry for this kid. He damn near lost his life. And God knows what the future holds after that kind of head injury. Decent folks have collected close to 140K for him on gofundme. I pray that he’s okay and that there will be enough for a college education or whatever else might help him succeed in life after he pays the hospital.

      Reply
    • sunshine616 says:
      August 16, 2017 at 9:10 pm

      It’s amazing how just the mere discomfort of answering a question with the truth brought this woman to tears. Melting snowflake

      Reply
  26. Ametia says:
    August 16, 2017 at 6:27 pm

    as promised

    Reply
  27. Ametia says:
    August 16, 2017 at 6:14 pm

    #45 RIGHT HERE

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lrmxkF-UKM

    Bobby 3 Sticks take this bitch down!

    Reply
  28. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 5:25 pm

    Watching CNN at the hospital . playing video of the march. not talking over it-letting it speak for itself

    Reply
    • yahtzeebutterfly says:
      August 16, 2017 at 4:10 pm

      Well, there it is.

      Reply
    • sunshine616 says:
      August 16, 2017 at 4:34 pm

      So….again….where is everybody?? What’s the plan to remove him? Has anyone spoken about the plan to remove him cuz I may have missed it? Are all of the senators and congress people holed up somewhere plotting the impeachment? I’m sure there is more than twitter platitudes from our electeds. Please tell me there is more than just words on the horizon.

      Reply
  34. SouthernGirl2 says:
    August 16, 2017 at 4:00 pm

    bwa ha ha ha ha ha Melissa Francis catching the vapors

    https://twitter.com/ErickFernandez/status/897918839891136512

    Reply
  35. SouthernGirl2 says:
    August 16, 2017 at 3:09 pm

    check your email, ladies

    Reply
  37. majiir says:
    August 16, 2017 at 2:32 pm

    I am glad to hear your sister is better, Rikyrah. I’ll keep the prayers going for ya’ll.

    Reply
  38. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 1:28 pm

    I have tears. Guess who just called me? My sister. Her voice was raspy, but they took the tube out of her throat. We didn’t talk long, but, we talked.😥😥😥
    Thank you for all your prayers. Please keep them coming.

    Reply
  41. sunshine616 says:
    August 16, 2017 at 12:26 pm

    Ther refusal of facts has become the standard of the GOP. What in the world can these people defend?

    Reply
  43. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 12:00 pm

    Trump claims with a straight face he needs ‘facts’ before speaking
    08/16/17 11:20 AM
    By Steve Benen
    It was hardly the most important thing Donald Trump said at yesterday’s press conference, but when the president was asked why it took so long for him to denounce white supremacists after Saturday’s violence in Charlottesville, he launched a rant about the value he places on accuracy.

    ………………………

    How reporters in attendance didn’t burst into immediate laughter remains something of a mystery.

    Look, I’m not even going to talk about the astonishing number of lies Donald Trump tells on a nearly daily basis, contradicting the idea that he “likes to be correct” when speaking. In this case, we can instead narrow the focus to instances in which the president rushed to make statements in response to violence and suspected attacks – often without having any idea what he was saying, occasionally pointing to attacks that didn’t actually happen.

    In June, for example, Trump told Americans about his concerns regarding a “terrorist attack in Manila,” when in reality, that’s not what happened.

    In February, the president told a group of supporters about an “attack” that he said had happened the night before in Sweden. There was no such attack.

    In April, Trump talked to reporters about a terrorist incident in France before it had been confirmed by local officials, and before the president had relevant details.

    As we discussed last week, Trump’s rhetoric in response to suspected terrorism has been so profoundly irresponsible that the Associated Press published a fact-checking piece a couple of months ago that said the president “can’t be counted on to give accurate information to Americans when violent acts are unfolding abroad.”

    The president seems to take his time in response to violence when the suspects appear to be right-wing Americans.

    Reply
  44. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 11:25 am

    He bragged at inexperience- turns out he’s unqualified. He mocked/shamed/groped – turns out he’s a bully. He embraced racists- turns out…
    — shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) August 16, 2017

    Reply
  45. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 11:24 am

    I’m working on Russia’s response now for @theroot, so give me a second…
    — Terrell J. Starr (@Russian_Starr) August 16, 2017

    Spoke with the press secretary at the Russian Embassy in DC. Said he’s just learning about the Daily Stormer ru domain. I’ll keep you posted
    — Terrell J. Starr (@Russian_Starr) August 16, 2017

    Reply
  46. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 11:23 am

    The other Charlottesville outrage: the open display of weapons to intimidate and menace political opponentshttps://t.co/BiovZZZLHg
    — David Frum (@davidfrum) August 16, 2017

    Reply
  47. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 11:21 am

    @nowviskie

    Moments after posting, I learned a dear friend & @UVaLibrary staffer who took a Nazi torch to the neck that night suffered a stroke today +
    17 replies 333 retweets 215 likes

    Reply
  48. sunshine616 says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:55 am

    Hello chicas. Long time no speak. I have a question…so…what now? We can not just talk about this anymore. How do we get rid of him? Where are our elected leaders on saving our country? Is this really gonna disappear into the next news cycle. Is it really just up to us? Do we all not go to work and park ourselves wherever he is and demand that he resigns or America stops! No work, no shopping, no$ for the system that enables this. We need our elected to stand up and demand that he go. No more tweets, no more we are better than this speeches, no more! Stand up and demand that he step down and go away. Our country demands it, has fought for it.

    Reply
    • SouthernGirl2 says:
      August 16, 2017 at 12:19 pm

      Good to see you, Sunshine. The country can’t move forward with Trump. He can’t come back from this. Not ever. He needs to be gone. We must demand it! If he stays there will be more violence. These racist thugs are emboldened now! Nothing is stopping them.

      Reply
      • Liza says:
        August 16, 2017 at 4:59 pm

        That’s what I was thinking, SG2. This can’t be reversed. Trump is done. He doesn’t believe it yet, but he’s done.

        Reply
  49. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:49 am

    “We Just Feel Like We Don’t Belong Here Anymore”
    Think it’s hard for the white working class in rural America? Try being a person of color.
    BECCA ANDREWSAUG. 16, 2017 6:00 AM

    …………………………………….

    Since Trump’s election, there has been ample coverage of white people—the rise of white nationalism, the white working class that makes up Trump’s core constituency, the 53 percent of white women who voted him into office. Much less has been written about the people of color who live and work amid the rising tide of white nationalism in rural red states.

    I grew up in a town called Bells, one of the five small towns that make up Crockett County in West Tennessee. The county is 83 percent white—I am also white—14 percent black and 10 percent Hispanic. (For comparison, according to 2016 Census data, Tennessee’s population is only 17 percent black and 5 percent Hispanic.) The median household income is $35,000, and 19 percent of the county’s 14,411 residents live below the poverty line. Most of the people I went to school with are still there. The area is deeply rural—the main highway that winds through the county is framed by cotton fields and pastures where cows keep a lazy watch over passing cars. Friday night football reigns supreme; game attendance is only second in importance to church. Many families have been here for generations, passing down their farmland and businesses to their children and grandchildren.

    It can be a lovely place to live, but in counties like Crockett, it’s hard to be anything other than white. So I decided to go back home, and talk to the people I should have been talking to all along—people of color who live and work and go to school with white Trump supporters. They told me how it feels to live among neighbors who voted against their best interests, and—worst case—their basic existence.
    ………………………………………………………

    Madyson Turner: “With the way it’s going now, I’m actually scared that I won’t make it.”

    I remember high-school Madyson Turner as a vibrant young black woman with a sense of humor that could dissipate tension in any room. (Turner’s name has been changed here to protect her privacy.) But when we meet up in a Subway sandwich shop in Alamo, there’s a new weight to her shoulders, and her infectious laugh doesn’t come quite so easily.

    When she first began to see reports about the violence in Charlottesville, Turner thought it was a tasteless joke. Then she saw videos of the clash on Saturday, and her phone rang—her boyfriend was calling to check on her and process what was happening. He sounded upset. What he said tore at her: “I would rather the world end instead of us having to keep dealing with this stuff.” What hurt her more was the realization that she agreed with him.

    “With the way it’s going now, I’m actually scared that I won’t make it,” she said to me in a text message.

    Turner tells me in the past year, life for her family has changed. She hints that her parents have been in West Tennessee long enough to know which families fought against civil rights “back in the day.” Since Trump’s election, they’ve warned her to steer clear of a list of people that is too long for comfort.

    The day after the November presidential election, Turner went with her mother to the store, and they both kept their heads down. “We just feel like we don’t belong here anymore,” she says.

    Turner’s mom, who cleans houses in town for a living, went to work a couple days after that, and her employer, an older white woman, brought up the results of the recent election. The two had talked politics before—Turner’s mom is a Democrat, and her employer is a Republican. “Well, you might as well come and live with me now,” the employer said. “You gonna be mine eventually.”

    She called her daughter in tears. Turner immediately got in her car and picked her mother up to bring her home.

    Last year before the election, a young woman Turner described as one of her best friends casually mentioned she hoped for a Trump victory so that he might “do away with some of these African-American people.” She quickly clarified that she wasn’t referring to Turner’s “type,” but when Turner sharply asked her what she meant, she couldn’t answer. Another friend assured her that it would be OK if Trump won the election because she would convince her parents to purchase Turner’s family as their new slaves. In a place where a few large plantation-style houses remain scattered through the county, the “joke” feels a lot like a threat.

    “I saw a lot of true colors from a lot of people since the election—down with African Americans, down with Hispanics, build the wall, even for the legal ones,” she says. “It really hurts.”

    Reply
  50. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:32 am

    Trump Just Left Me Speechless With Grief for Our Country
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    August 15, 2017

    can’t even count how many times I’ve written about the fact that our current president is a mentally unstable man with a long history of doing and saying vile racist and sexist things. But honestly, I have no more words after this rant from Trump at the press conference today.

    This WHOLE exchange is a MUST WATCH:

    Trump: “What about the alt-left that came charging at them … the alt-right?” https://t.co/bSQB9aCyCc

    — Daniella Diaz (@DaniellaMicaela) August 15, 2017

    In case you have any doubts on what that was all about, here’s a clue:

    Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa https://t.co/tTESdV4LP0

    — David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) August 15, 2017

    After that, I’m frankly speechless for the moment. It’s not that I am surprised or shocked. It’s that I am overwhelmed with grief that the leader of our country is such a vile human being. And I want to assure anyone who feels the same way that you’re not crazy…nor are you alone.

    Reply
  51. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:27 am

    Why Governor’s Races Will Be Crucial in 2018 and 2020
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    August 16, 2017

    Those of us who live in Minnesota got a great reminder a few years ago about how a governor’s race can be crucial to a state.

    Back in 2010, the entire country experienced a wave election that favored Republicans at both the national and state level. Like many states across the Midwest that had traditionally been blue (or purple), that meant that Republicans gained control of both houses of the Minnesota legislature. But Tom Emmer, a right wing extremist who went on to win Michelle Bachmann’s seat in Congress, was the Republican nominee for governor, prompting a more moderate Tom Horner to run as an Independent. That meant a three-way race with Mark Dayton as the Democratic nominee. The election was decided by the tiniest of margins with Dayton winning by 0.4%…and it determined the fate of our state over the next eight years.

    Shortly after the election, Republicans went to work all over the country to gerrymander legislative districts at both the state and federal level in their favor. Minnesota was no exception. But Governor Dayton vetoed their plans—sending the redistricting efforts to a neutral court to decide. In 2012, Democrats regained control of both the state House and Senate. In U.S. House races, Democrats picked up one seat, but it wasn’t related to redistricting.

    What that meant for the state is that during his first two years in office, Governor Dayton had to deal with a Republican legislature. You might remember that it led to a short government shutdown when they failed to agree on a budget. But two years later, with a Democratic legislature, a lot of positive things happened for the state. Here’s how Patrick Caldwell summed it up in 2015:

    Over the past several years, Minnesota has become a testing ground for a litany of policies Democrats hope to enact nationally: legalizing same-sex marriage, making it easier to vote, boosting primary education spending, instituting all-day kindergarten, expanding unionization, freezing college tuition, increasing the minimum wage, and passing new laws requiring equal pay for women. To pay for it all, Dayton pushed a sharp increase on taxes for the top 2 percent—one of the largest hikes in state history.

    Reply
  52. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:25 am

    @stealthygeek
    The Nazi site Daily Stormer, formerly of godaddy, kicked off of google, is now being hosted in Russia, in case it needed to be more obvious.

    Reply
  53. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:23 am

    An important ‘Obamacare’ problem starts to disappear
    08/16/17 10:00 AM
    By Steve Benen

    Republican opponents of the Affordable Care Act thought they’d finally identified a serious problem with the current system: several U.S. counties found themselves without a private insurer participating in exchange marketplaces. Some began calling it the ACA’s “bald spot” problem: consumers in those areas might be ready to buy coverage, but their options no longer exist.

    As of yesterday, however, what was poised to be a big problem became a much smaller one. The New York Times reported:

    A few months ago, it looked as if large swaths of the country might end up without any insurers willing to sell Obamacare insurance in 2018. But in the last few weeks the “bare county” problem, which President Trump had cited as a sign the markets were failing, has nearly solved itself.

    On Tuesday, Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada announced that Centene would offer insurance in 14 rural counties of Nevada that had been bare.

    Reply
  54. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:22 am

    What Trump struggles to understand about Confederate statues
    08/16/17 09:20 AM
    By Steve Benen

    Donald Trump unleashed several tirades yesterday in defense of racist protesters, but he seemed especially interested in expressing support for torch-wielding activists who rallied in support of a Robert E. Lee statue. From yesterday’s unhinged press conference:

    “[Y[ou take a look at some of the groups and you see – and you’d know it if you were honest reporters, which in many cases you’re not – but many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.

    “So this week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you all – you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

    This president doesn’t just draw an equivalence between racists and their opponents, he also draws an equivalence between America’s founders and those who went to war against the United States.

    Reply
  55. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:21 am

    On Primary Day in Alabama, things don’t go GOP leaders’ way
    08/16/17 08:40 AM
    By Steve Benen

    Republican leaders, including Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, had a plan for Alabama’s U.S. Senate special election: go all in for appointed Sen. Luther Strange and propel him to victory on Primary Day.

    GOP voters in the state had a different plan.

    Sen. Luther Strange, R-Ala., and former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore will meet in a runoff next month to determine who will earn the GOP nomination to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Senate seat, the Associated Press projected Tuesday.

    Moore cruised to a first-place finish in the Republican side of the special Senate primary, getting 39.8 percent of the vote with 86 percent of the state’s precincts reporting. Strange, the incumbent who received the backing of President Donald Trump, came in second, with 32.1 percent of the vote.

    Moore and Strange will face off again in six weeks, in a Sept. 26 primary runoff.

    And that makes Republican leaders nervous for a reason. Roy Moore, who was twice removed from the state bench for ethics violations, would be a constant source of annoyance for the Senate GOP, which is largely why McConnell and his team have worked so hard on Strange’s behalf. Nevertheless, the former state Supreme Court chief justice now looks like the favorite.

    Reply
  56. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:18 am

    Trump creates a ‘moral reckoning’ for his Republican Party
    08/16/17 08:00 AM—UPDATED 08/16/17 08:08 AM
    By Steve Benen

    The lede in the New York Times’ report on Donald Trump’s press conference yesterday reads like a dystopian nightmare.

    President Trump buoyed the white nationalist movement on Tuesday as no president has done in generations – equating activists protesting racism with the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who rampaged in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend.

    Never has he gone as far in defending their actions as he did during a wild, street-corner shouting match of a news conference in the gilded lobby of Trump Tower, angrily asserting that so-called alt-left activists were just as responsible for the bloody confrontation as marchers brandishing swastikas, Confederate battle flags, anti-Semitic banners and “Trump/Pence” signs.

    This is the world we live in now – one in which a sitting president of the United States publicly praises racist activists as “very fine people” who’ve been treated “unfairly” by journalists.

    It’s a moment of national shame, but it’s also the basis for a challenge to Donald Trump’s partisan allies: what exactly does the Republican Party intend to do with its president in the face of such a scandal?

    Reply
  57. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:15 am

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/15/17
    Dodgy development deal in Georgia exposes Trump to legal risk
    Adam Davidson, staff writer for The New Yorker, talks with Rachel Maddow about why a sketchy Donald Trump real estate deal in the nation of Georgia could expose Trump to legal problems, not to mention Russian “Kompromat.”

    Reply
  58. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:12 am

    Schmidt was ON FIRE.

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/15/17
    Trump remarks on racist rally force moral reckoning for GOP
    Steve Schmidt, veteran Republican adviser and strategist, talks with Rachel Maddow about how Donald Trump’s comments about the racist rally in Virginia disgrace a generation of Americans who fought Nazis and force Republicans to speak out against their own leader.

    Reply
  59. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:11 am

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/15/17
    Trump gives emboldening ‘green light’ to white supremacists
    Congresswoman Karen Bass, part of the leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus, talks with Rachel Maddow about how Donald Trump’s coddling of racist extremists emboldens white supremacist actions in the future.

    Reply
  60. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:10 am

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/15/17
    Trump fails on moral leadership with embrace of hate groups
    Michael Beschloss, NBC News presidential historian, talks with Rachel Maddow about how far afield Donald Trump is from the American president’s function as a role model of responsible, moral leadership.

    Reply
  61. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:09 am

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/15/17
    Donald Trump remarks aid white supremacists’ political ambitions
    Rachel Maddow looks at the history of Ku Klux Klan in American politics and its quest for power and points out that it was no accident that Donald Trump helped give racists legitimacy with his remarks about the deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

    Reply
  62. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 10:08 am

    CBO: High costs if Trump follows through on ACA sabotage threats
    08/15/17 04:18 PM
    By Steve Benen

    For health care advocates, congressional Republicans’ difficulties in passing regressive health care legislation have brought some comfort, but the threats haven’t gone away. Not only are many GOP lawmakers committed to returning to the issue, but systemic sabotage from Donald Trump remains a real possibility.

    Indeed, as we’ve discussed many times, the president has made repeated threats to cut off cost-sharing reductions (or CSRs) – a component of the Affordable Care Act that helps cover working families’ out-of-pocket costs – which Trump has effectively turned into a political weapon. The mere threat has already pushed consumers’ costs higher.

    But what if the president followed through on the threat and decide to use this weapon? NBC News’ Benjy Sarlin noted the latest findings from the Congressional Budget Office.

    Health care premiums will spike, insurers will exit the market, and deficits will increase if President Donald Trump follows through on his threats to cut off government payments to insurance companies, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report.

    The cost of a “silver” insurance plan under Obamacare would be 20 percent higher in 2018 and 25 percent higher by 2020 compared to current law, according to the report. About five percent of the population would not be able to buy insurance through Obamacare at all next year, the CBO predicted, because companies would withdraw plans in response to the “substantial uncertainty” created by the move.

    Reply
  63. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 9:20 am

    Pence says he ‘never witnessed’ campaign collusion with Russia
    08/15/17 12:43 PM
    By Steve Benen

    Mike Pence has stuck his neck out for the White House, and on plenty of instances, it hasn’t turned out well for the vice president.

    For example, Pence said Donald Trump firing then-FBI Director James Comey had nothing to do with the Russia scandal, and as regular readers know, that turned out to be untrue. We also know that Pence’s claims about when he learned of Michael Flynn’s work as a foreign agent clearly aren’t true. The vice president’s claims about Flynn’s communications with Russia were also proven to be false. And, of course, when Pence said no one from Team Trump spoke with Russian officials before Election Day, that wasn’t even close to being true.

    It’s apparently dawned on the Indiana Republican that he should be a little more circumspect when issuing blanket denials, especially when it comes to Team Trump and the Russia scandal. CBS News reported this morning:

    Vice President Mike Pence says he “never witnessed” any evidence of collusion between the Russian government and Trump campaign officials during the 2016 campaign, and reaffirmed his commitment to cooperating with the special counsel’s investigation into Russian election interference and possible Russian ties to the Trump organization.

    During his visit to a Christian mission in Cartagena, Colombia on Monday, Pence told reporters “during all of my experience on the campaign, I never witnessed any evidence of collusion or any of the allegations, I’m not aware of that ever having occurred.”

    Note the caution and the caveats. Months ago, when Pence was asked whether campaign officials communicated with Russian officials during Russia’s espionage operation, the vice president said, “Of course not.” We now know, of course, that the truth is the exact opposite.

    And so, phrases such as “of course not” have been replaced with lawyerly phrasing such as “I never witnessed” and “I’m not aware of.”

    Reply
  64. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 9:10 am

    The problem is not that he went rogue, but that he spoke from his heart. And that is a very dark place. https://t.co/snn4QTUd6R
    — David Corn (@DavidCornDC) August 16, 2017

    Reply
  65. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 9:00 am

    OH is in court taking away voting rights for minorities – a key perpetuation of white supremacy; stop talking a good game & act #JohnKasich
    — Linda Kyambadde (@globalcitizenln) August 16, 2017

    Reply
  66. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 8:59 am

    Obama’s post-Charlottesville message most-liked tweet ever https://t.co/q2w6rgVXPH pic.twitter.com/7cMkj6S4hO
    — Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) August 16, 2017

    Reply
  67. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 8:18 am

    ‘Theresa May, either take a stand or get the hell out of office – Britain doesn’t want a PM who won’t condemn Trump’ https://t.co/iAxwsu7ELr
    — The Independent (@Independent) August 16, 2017

    Reply
  68. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 8:17 am

    Read whole article & RT. It’s from BEFORE election. Trump’s words & actions are deliberate. By @intelwire @politico https://t.co/SjlHMhYQTr pic.twitter.com/CUDP7PPCFD
    — rob delaney (@robdelaney) August 16, 2017

    Reply
  69. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 8:10 am

    Hat tip: BJ

    The president of Congregation Beth Israel, Charlottesville:

    On Saturday morning, I stood outside our synagogue with the armed security guard we hired after the police department refused to provide us with an officer during morning services. (Even the police department’s limited promise of an observer near our building was not kept — and note, we did not ask for protection of our property, only our people as they worshipped).

    Forty congregants were inside. Here’s what I witnessed during that time.

    For half an hour, three men dressed in fatigues and armed with semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the temple. Had they tried to enter, I don’t know what I could have done to stop them, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them, either. Perhaps the presence of our armed guard deterred them. Perhaps their presence was just a coincidence, and I’m paranoid. I don’t know.

    Several times, parades of Nazis passed our building, shouting, “There’s the synagogue!” followed by chants of “Seig Heil” and other anti-Semitic language. Some carried flags with swastikas and other Nazi symbols.
    […]
    When services ended, my heart broke as I advised congregants that it would be safer to leave the temple through the back entrance rather than through the front, and to please go in groups.
    […]
    Soon, we learned that Nazi websites had posted a call to burn our synagogue. I sat with one of our rabbis and wondered whether we should go back to the temple to protect the building. What could I do if I were there? Fortunately, it was just talk – but we had already deemed such an attack within the realm of possibilities, taking the precautionary step of removing our Torahs, including a Holocaust scroll, from the premises.

    Reply
  70. rikyrah says:
    August 16, 2017 at 5:21 am

    Good Morning, Everyone 😐😐😐

    Reply

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