clair070

As I've been saying for a very long time, the collusion between the Trump Regime and the Kremlin has always happened right out in the open. Despite whatever else may be going on behind closed doors, there's been plenty of evidence right before our eyes, ever since then-candidate Donald Trump, at a speaking engagement on the campaign trail, publicly invited Russia to hack the State Department to access Hillary Clinton's emails. That was two years ago next month, and, in the interim, the open collusion has continued as Trump has obstructed justice to derail the Russia investigation; has denied Russia intervened in the election; has unilaterally overruled the legislative branch to Russia's benefit; has removed staff that don't toe his line on Russia; has refused to enforce sanctions on Russia; has called for Russia to be reinstated to the G-7/8; has blamed Obama for Russia's annexation of Crimea, but not Putin; has repeatedly praised Putin and sought a meeting wit...

The salient fact about US politics is that the right has been going steadily more crazy for decades -- breaking the law, disregarding norms, sinking into a hermetically sealed media bubble filled with paranoid conspiracy theories, seeking to disenfranchise opponents, etc. At every stage, it gets worse. Norms & values we thought inviolate are crapped on, lawlessness becomes more brazen, ugly prejudices we thought buried, or at least suppressed, roar back to the surface. And with every increment, the question re-presents itself: What should the rest of us do? The ~25% of Americans who believe & want horrible, illiberal shit ("deplorables," you might call them) have taken over the GOP. They are driving it toward fascism as fast as the system will allow them. What's the right response? For years, lefties have been warning about this devolution of the GOP, going back to Reagan. They have been dismissed as crazy partisan hippies, condemned as "uncivil," tol...

The Mueller investigation is, I suspect, coming to a head. I don’t claim I know how it will turn out. The president has an enormous amount of power and his flunkies in Congress promise they’re about to end Rod Rosenstein’s bend-don’t-break defense by impeaching him (though Rosenstein and Chris Wray have just thrown more documents out to slow the Republicans). It’s certainly possible that Trump will make a last ditch effort to undercut the Mueller investigation and that effort will be competently executed and none of the secondary fall-back defenses Mueller has put into place will work. For now, though, the Trump team seems intent on a delay and discredit strategy, which won’t stave off any imminent steps. So we shall see whether Trump succeeds in undercutting the investigation. I keep thinking, “that’s why they play the game,” but this is no game. There are a number of reasons I think Mueller’s investigation is coming to a head. But consider one detail. I’ve long explained that Muelle...

It's all a show... PR and no real steps towards denuclearization. Legitimizing a truly murderous and brutal dictator. Nothing mentioned on human rights. And those hairstyles... both are disgusting. But check out this mad video the White House played for KJU: Kind of creepy all the way around. But what's most disturbing is at 1:48 in, the narrator says "One destiny" and the video shows a missile/rocket flare rising up from planet earth. WTF is that? Is that hinting at a quarantine breakout, perhaps?

We have a president determined to piss off our allies, even Canada for Christ's sake, over delusional claims of unfair trade practices, while clearly beholden to Russia, and the party in power does NOTHING. That this is TREASON by Trump and the GOP cannot be emphasized enough. Oh and look here : Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s daughter and son-in-law, brought in at least $82 million in outside income while serving as senior White House advisers during 2017, according to financial disclosure forms released Monday. It's just so wrong. A true kleptocracy . What's really depressing is how for now at least, Trump is getting away with the biggest political scandal is US history. On the lighter side, there does seem to be a semi-amusing historical precedent for Trump: Kaiser Wilhelm II.

There are countless horror stories about what’s happening to immigrants under Trump. Just last week, we learned that a teenager from Iowa who had lived in America since he was 3 was killed shortly after his forced return to Mexico. This month, an Ecuadorean immigrant with an American citizen wife and a pending green card application was detained at a Brooklyn military base where he’d gone to deliver a pizza; a judge has temporarily halted his deportation, but he remains locked up. Immigration officers are boarding trains and buses and demanding that passengers show them their papers. On Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions decreed that most people fleeing domestic abuse or gang violence would no longer be eligible for asylum. But what really makes Trump’s America feel like a rogue state is the administration’s policy of taking children from migrants caught crossing the border unlawfully, even if the parents immediately present themselves to the authorities to make asylum claims. “Th...

For sale! Reports of the United States Government Sponsored Psi Program, 1972–1995. Volume 1: Remote Viewing, 1972–1984 $95.00 During the Cold War, the U.S. government began testing paranormal claims under laboratory conditions in hopes of realizing intelligence applications for psychic phenomena. Thus began the project known as Star Gate. The largest in the history of parapsychological research, it received more than $20 million in funding and continued into the mid–1990s. This project archive includes all available documents generated by research contractor SRI International and those provided by government officials. Remote viewing (RV) is an atypical ability that allows some individuals to gain information blocked from the usual senses by shielding, distance or time. Early work benefited from a few “stars” of RV who were successful at convincing investigators of its existence and its potential as a means of gathering intelligence. Research focused on determining the parameters of...

Suffice it to say, without going into the details, I'll say the evil PTB had him killed. The bigger question is why? In the words of the great Charles Pierce: Ultimately, the great unknowable is whether the country would have taken the turns it took in the 1970s and 1980s, the dangerous detours that have brought us to our present moment, if there had been no guns in the kitchen that night. The reactionary forces against the gains of the Civil Rights Movement already were gathering force, and it’s not unreasonable to conclude that the Republicans would have formed their dark alliance with the remnants of American apartheid even more swiftly had Nixon been defeated by yet another Kennedy. I would like to think that Robert Kennedy would have been able to stand against the foul gales that were then rising. I prefer to think that he would have, because I prefer to think of this country as perpetually redeemable. So many of our wounds are self-inflicted, and, by and large, through our hi...

Melissa McEwen feels my pain: I am totally fed up with press coverage of Donald Trump that is rooted in failing to understand, still, who he is. Or conspiring to pretend that he is something other than what he decidedly, demonstrably is. And has been. For decades. In some cases, it's just an unwillingness to accept the reality that he is actually as terrible and as dangerous as he actually is, either because it's too painful to contemplate or because that would mean facing up to their own complicity in his ascension to power by having treated him like a joke and failing to take him seriously far sooner. In other cases, it's an active attempt to enable and protect him, and abet his vile agenda. (I'm looking at you, New York Times. ) In any case, it's fucking depressing. And enraging. And scary. Even the outlets and/or individual reporters who are doing a decent job of reporting accurately on what he's doing, day in and day out, are still just documenting, w...

This is a good example of a manufactured 33, and a disturbing story overall: A 64-year-old Cleveland man is suing U.S. Customs and Border Protection after agents strip-searched him at an airport in October and took more than $58,000 in cash from him without charging him with any crime, according to a federal lawsuit filed this week in Ohio. (snip) The Kazazi family did not hear anything about their cash or why it was taken until more than a month after it was seized, when Customs finally sent a seizure notice to their home. “This is to notify you that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) seized the property described below at Cleveland, OH on October 24, 2017: $57,330 in U.S. Currency,” the notice states. “Enforcement activity indicates that the currency was involved in a smuggling/drug trafficking/money laundering operation.” The first thing the Kazazis noticed was that the dollar amount listed was $770 less than the amount that Kazazi said he took with him. The family said that th...