The GOP has become the party of white nationalism

By Michael A. Cohen

Scott Olson/Getty Images/File
Representative Steve King of Iowa spoke to guests at the Iowa Freedom Summit in January 2015.

There is no greater challenge in covering national politics these days than simply trying to keep up with the daily outrages emanating from Washington. Take, for example, the fact that, two weeks ago, all we were talking about was the fact that Jeff Sessions, the attorney general and nation’s highest law enforcement official, lied to Congress. This week you hear only crickets on Sessions.

But here’s one story that should not fall through the cracks: Representative Steve King of Iowa.

Earlier this week King shared an article on Twitter offering his support for the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who has based his political ascendancy on bashing Muslim immigrants. King added the words, “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

These comments are catnip to white nationalists.

In fact, former Ku Klux Klan imperial wizard David Duke retweeted King with the words “GOD BLESS STEVE KING.”

Not surprisingly, the reaction from Democrats was one of revulsion and demands for an apology.

King, however, was undeterred.

On Monday, King repeated his offensive words and added, “You’ve got to keep your birth rate up and that you need to teach your children your values and, in doing so, then you can grow your population and you can strengthen your culture, you can strengthen your way of life.”According to King, he wants to see an America that is “homogenous” and one where “we look a lot the same.”

This is not King’s first time at the racist rodeo. Back in July he raised questions about the contributions of nonwhite people to “civilization.”

A virulent opponent of immigration, King has called for an electrified fence to be built on the US-Mexico border to give electric shocks to those trying to enter the country. Back in 2013 he said that for every successful child of an undocumented immigrant there are 100 more drug mules with “calves the size of cantaloupes” from hauling drugs. King also has been photographed with a Confederate battle flag in his congressional office.

To put it simply, Steve King is a racist.

And yet, it seems that being a racist — one who has repeatedly made prejudicial comments about blacks and Hispanics — is not the kind of thing that gets you drummed out of the modern Republican Party. Indeed, it seems to have no impact at all.

After King’s cantaloupe comment, then-House Speaker John Boehner called the congressman’s words “deeply offensive and wrong.” Current Speaker Paul Ryan’s reaction to King’s latest remarks was more muted. “I disagree with that statement,” Ryan said. He added, “I’d like to think that he misspoke and it wasn’t really meant the way that that sounds and hopefully he’s clarified that.”

But when it comes to mealy-mouthed condemnations of blatantly racist and xenophobic comments, Ryan can’t hold a candle to White House spokesman Sean Spicer, who said, “The president believes that this is not a point of view that he shares.”

Several Hispanic Republican congressmen condemned King’s remarks, but most Republicans have been silent. Calls to censure King or strip him of his chairmanship of the House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Rights have been ignored.

While some might be inclined to dismiss King as a fringe figure, the very fact that so few Republicans are willing to criticize him speaks volumes. They clearly don’t want to alienate those voters who agree with King’s racist remarks. It’s yet one more reminder of the extent to which white nationalism and open racism have become normalized within the modern Republican Party.

Indeed, earlier this month, the Huffington Post ran a disturbing piece on the grotesque, virulently racist book “The Camp of the Saints,” which top White House advisor Steve Bannon has used to describe the influx of nonwhite, Muslim refugees into Europe. The book describes the destruction of white, Christian Europe, by nonwhite immigrants led by an Indian demagogue. In the book, Europe is overrun by poor, nonwhite migrants.

Bannon’s endorsement of this grotesque piece of literature is at pace with the policies he’s promoted since becoming the president’s top strategist: from the travel-ban executive order that specifically targets Muslims to its focus on building a wall on the US-Mexico, all to keep out nonwhite immigrants.

Guess who else recently plugged “The Camp of the Saints.” Yup: Steve King.

Even after a campaign in which Donald Trump ran on an unambiguous platform of racism, xenophobia, and intolerance, it has, somehow, become inappropriate to identify the role that white nationalism plays in defining and uniting the modern Republican Party. Yet when people like Steve King continue to play leadership roles in the GOP and avoid condemnation for racist remarks, what more evidence do we need that many GOP voters, rather than being turned off by the open embrace of race-based appeals from Republican leaders, find them attractive. Steve King is not some fringe figure — he’s the mainstream of the modern Republican Party.

That’s one story that cannot be ignored.

Michael A. Cohen’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @speechboy71.

Trump Is The Biggest Failure In History As His Disapproval Rating Skyrockets To 58%

Donald Trump has set a record that has never been reached before in the history of polling as his disapproval rating has reached 58% - two months into his time in office.

By Jason Easley 

Donald Trump has set a record that disapproval rating that has never been reached before in the history of polling as his disapproval rating has reached 58% two months into his time in office.

Here is the latest Gallup Daily Tracking Poll of Trump’s approval rating:


Trump’s approval rating has plunged to 37% as his disapproval rating has soared to 58%.

Never in US history has a president been this unpopular so early in his first term. Trump has lost 2 points in approval and gained three disapproval points since the CBO revealed that 24 million people would lose their health insurance under Trumpcare.

Trump has the worst job approval numbers since Gallup began tracking presidents in 1945. At this same point during his first term, President Obama’s job approval rating was in the low 60's. George W. Bush’s approval rating was in the low 50's. It took Ronald Reagan a year to have an approval rating as bad as Trump’s, and it was a year into Richard Nixon’s second term before he hit the low that Trump is at.

The practical political lesson for Democrats is that they should not shy away from linking Congressional Republicans to their unpopular president. What should be frightening for elected Republicans is that things will probably get much worse for Trump in the future. The first few months of his term are supposed to be the most popular point of his presidency.

How low can Donald Trump go? It is possible that he may set records for unpopularity that will stand for decades.

Trump promised to make America great, but instead, he has been a complete failure as president.

Young Americans: Most see Trump as an illegitimate president

By LAURIE KELLMAN and EMILY SWANSON, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Jermaine Anderson keeps going back to the same memory of Donald Trump, then a candidate for president of the United States, referring to some Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers.

"You can't be saying that (if) you're the president," says Anderson, a 21 year old student from Coconut Creek, Florida.

That Trump is undeniably the nation's 45th president doesn't sit easily with young Americans like Anderson who are the nation's increasingly diverse electorate of the future, according to a new poll.

A majority of young adults — 57 percent — see Trump's presidency as illegitimate, including about three-quarters of blacks and large majorities of Latinos and Asians, the GenForward poll found.

GenForward is a poll of adults age 18 to 30 conducted by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

A slim majority of young whites in the poll, 53 percent, consider Trump a legitimate president, but even among that group 55 percent disapprove of the job he's doing, according to the survey.

"That's who we voted for. And obviously America wanted him more than Hillary Clinton," said Rebecca Gallardo, a 30 year old nursing student from Kansas City, Missouri, who voted for Trump.

Trump's legitimacy as president was questioned earlier this year by U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.: "I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton."

Trump routinely denies that and says he captured the presidency in large part by winning states such as Michigan and Wisconsin that Clinton may have taken for granted.

Overall, just 22 percent of young adults approve of the job he is doing as president, while 62 percent disapprove.

Trump's rhetoric as a candidate and his presidential decisions have done much to keep the question of who belongs in America atop the news, though he's struggling to accomplish some key goals.

Powered by supporters chanting, "build the wall," Trump has vowed to erect a barrier along the southern U.S. border and make Mexico pay for it — which Mexico refuses to do. Federal judges in three states have blocked Trump's executive orders to ban travel to the U.S. from seven — then six — majority-Muslim nations.

In Honolulu, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson this week cited "significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus" behind the revised travel ban, citing Trump's own words calling for "a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

And yes, Trump did say in his campaign announcement speech on June 6, 2015: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best ...They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." He went further in subsequent statements, later telling CNN: "Some are good and some are rapists and some are killers."

It's extraordinary rhetoric for the leader of a country where by around 2020, half of the nation's children will be part of a minority race or ethnic group, the Census Bureau projects. Non-Hispanic whites are expected to be a minority by 2044.

Of all of Trump's tweets and rhetoric, the statements about Mexicans are the ones to which Anderson returns. He says Trump's business background on paper is impressive enough to qualify him for the presidency. But he suggests that's different than Trump earning legitimacy as president.
 
© The Associated Press Graphic shows results of GenForward poll on younger Americans attitudes toward Donald Trump and his presidency.

 "I'm thinking, he's saying that most of the people in the world who are raping and killing people are the immigrants. That's not true," said Anderson, whose parents are from Jamaica.

Megan Desrochers, a 21 year old student from Lansing, Michigan, says her sense of Trump's illegitimacy is more about why he was elected.

"I just think it was kind of a situation where he was voted in based on his celebrity status verses his ethics," she said, adding that she is not necessarily against Trump's immigration policies.

The poll participants said in interviews that they don't necessarily vote for one party's candidates over another's, a prominent tendency among young Americans, experts say. And in the survey, neither party fares especially strongly.

Just a quarter of young Americans have a favorable view of the Republican Party, and six in 10 have an unfavorable view. Majorities of young people across racial and ethnic lines hold negative views of the GOP.

The Democratic Party performs better, but views aren't overwhelmingly positive. Young people are more likely to have a favorable than an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party by a 47 percent to 36 percent margin. But just 14 percent say they have a strongly favorable view of the Democrats.

Views of the Democratic Party are most favorable among young people of color. Roughly six in 10 blacks, Asians and Latinos hold positive views of the party. Young whites are somewhat more likely to have unfavorable than favorable views, 47 percent to 39 percent.

As for Trump, eight in 10 young people think he is doing poorly in terms of the policies he's put forward and seven in 10 have negative views of his presidential demeanor.

"I do not like him as a person," Gallardo says of Trump. She nonetheless voted for Trump because she didn't trust Clinton. "I felt like there wasn't much choice."
___
The poll of 1,833 adults age 18-30 was conducted on Feb. 16 through March 6 using a sample drawn from the probability-based GenForward panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. young adult population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The survey was paid for by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago, using grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.

Trump budget cuts meals on wheels to fund defense contractors

"The preliminary outline for President Donald Trump's 2018 budget could slash some funding for a program that provides meals for older, impoverished Americans.

The budget blueprint suggests cutting funds for the Department of Housing and Urban Development by about $6.2 billion, a 13.2% decrease from its 2017 funding level.

Here's what Trump wants cut

Almost half of those savings will come by eliminating the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which provides money for a variety of community development and anti-poverty programs, including Meals on Wheels."

Mick Mulvaney defends meals on wheels cuts

"At a news conference Thursday, Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s budget chief, defended proposed cuts to the Meals on Wheels program, which provides food aid to needy senior citizens, by saying the program is one of many that is “just not showing any results.”



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/16/trump-budget-chief-says-meals-on-wheels-is-not-showing-any-results-hes-wrong/?utm_term=.076df1fe6814

Jaws Drop As Trump WH Claims Starving Seniors By Killing Meals On Wheels Is Compassionate

Trump Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters today that eliminating food for senior citizens via the Meals On Wheels program was the compassionate thing to do because if a program can't demonstrate results, it should get cut. 

By Jason Easley



When Mulvaney was asked about the elimination of funding for Meals On Wheels, he answered, “I think you know that Meals On Wheels is not a federal program. It’s part of that Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that we give to the states, and then many states make the decision to use that money on Meals On Wheels. What I can tell you about CDBG's is that’s what we fund. Right? So we spend $150 billion on those programs since the 1970's. The CDBGs have been identified as programs since I think the second Bush administration as ones that we just not showing any results. We can’t do that anymore. We can’t spend money on programs just because they sound good. Meals On Wheels sounds great. Again, that’s a state decision to fund that particular portion, but to take the federal money and to give that to the states, and say look we want to give you federal money for programs that don’t work. I can’t defend that anymore.”

Later Mulvaney was asked if this is a hard-hearted budget. He answered, “I don’t think so. In fact, I think it is one of the most compassionate things we can do to. You’re only focusing on half of the equation. Right? You’re focusing on recipients of the money. We’re trying to focus on both the recipients and the folks who give us the money in the first place, and I think it’s fairly compassionate to go to them and say look, we’re not going to ask you for your hard earned money anymore.”

In other words, screw the starving elderly and the kids who are going to go without afterschool programs, people like Donald Trump aren’t giving you their “hard earned” money anymore.

Meals on Wheels helps 2.4 million seniors have access to food while being able to stay in their own homes. The results for the program can be seen in both nutritional terms and increased independence for millions of Americans. Meals on Wheels saves taxpayers $34 billion a year in healthcare costs.

This is a vital program for America’s communities, and anyone who claims otherwise is not telling the truth. The selfish argument about taxpayers isn’t going to fly in this case.

The Trump administration has gone from being out of touch with America to trying to starve Americans.

Russia, Russia, Russia!

Everything fishy in Trump World—everything!—leads back to Russia.

Russian bank w/ alleged server in Trump Towers helped "facilitate" financing for 4 Trump properties

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028798687

Texans Receive Notices To Sell Or Have Their Land Taken

By Rika Christensen on March 15, 2017 1:44 am

Texas landowners along the U.S.-Mexico border have begun receiving notices from the federal government saying that they’re coming to either buy, or take, parcels of land for Trump’s pointless border wall. According to the Texas Observer, landowners are receiving “Declarations of Taking” notices that offer a price for the piece that the government wants. If the landowners refuse that, then they may see those parts of their property taken via eminent domain.

One landowner, Yvette Salinas, got her notice back in January. She’d been dreading it for a while because of George W. Bush’s focus on a border fence. Under Obama, she’d been able to relax a bit because he focused on patrolling and monitoring the border in ways that didn’t include taking land and building a wall.

Now, with Trump in office, this shit has just gotten real. Whether any of these preparations happened while Obama was still in office or not, it’s Trump who is pushing the wall forward as quickly as he can. It’s one of his focal points, and it will be his government that buys up or takes the land.

The introduction in Salinas’ letter reads like this:

“The United States of America is acquiring property along its border with Mexico in order to construct a fence and related improvements designed to secure the border, as required by the Secure Fence Act of 2006.”

They offered Salinas and her family $2,900 for 1.2 acres of land – the same amount for the same land that the government offered her under George W. Bush years earlier. The tiny community in which she lives—Los Ebanos—lies entirely within the floodplain of the Rio Grande. That land is protected by a treaty with Mexico that forbids the building of structures that could force floodwaters into other communities, and has been an obstacle towards border wall construction.

Under Trump, though, Los Ebanos seems to have become a focal point. The government has already completed surveys and planning for a wall there. Despite increasing problems with costs, the fact that crossings are down, and the fact that Republicans are voicing their discomfort with the idea, Trump keeps hammering the wall as the way to secure the border.

It’s impossibly stupid. People who live along the border prefer the technological surveillance and the presence of the U.S. Border Patrol to a wall because they believe that’s more effective and costs a hell of a lot less. And they don’t have to give up pieces of land that have been in their families for generations for that.

They also know people will still cross whether there’s a wall or not.

Salinas doesn’t want to sell that bit of land but she doesn’t know what to do. The community doesn’t want to allow the wall to be built through there, either, but neither can they afford to have the U.S. government sue them, and they risk having their land taken without compensation if they try to fight.

Rachel Maddow Stands Tall And Refuses To Back Down When Threatened By Donald Trump

By Sarah Jones on Tue, Mar 14th, 2017 at 10:46 pm

Rachel Maddow refused to bow to Donald Trump's baseless threats. After the Trump White House had threatened her, the MSNBC host reported on a leak of Trump's 2005 tax return. 

Maddow said, “The White House confirmed to us tonight that this return is real. They threatened us and said it is illegal for us to publish it. It is not illegal for us to publish it.”

It’s true that the unauthorized release of federal tax returns is a criminal offense, however Maddow argued on the air that releasing the tax returns was a matter of public interest, given that every single president has done so since Nixon except for this one, who just so happens to be under scrutiny for his foreign ties. Thus MSNBC was exercising its First Amendment right.

Trump promised to release his tax returns if elected, and then once elected had his surrogates announce that no one cared. Polls disagree with the Trump administration’s claims on the matter of his tax returns. Americans think they do matter and they want to see them.

“You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago” and said it was “totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns,” a statement from the White House charged oddly, given that Rachel Maddow’s ratings are skyrocketing right now given her coverage of Trump’s Russia scandal.

Maddow discussed a 2 page 1040 tax filing said to be Trump’s and confirmed by the White House, produced by David Cay Johnston, who noted that it could have been Trump himself who leaked the documents to him because Trump has a habit of doing that.

The Trump White House picked the worst enemy in Rachel Maddow. They seem to have a real feel for making enemies of media outlets – like the New York Times and Washington Post – that will not back down to them.

Rachel Maddow is the last person Donald Trump should want to get into any kind of pissing match with, and if he’s looking for a “liberal” to kick around, an easy foil if you will, he picked the wrong one. Maddow is way, way, way too smart and knowledgeable to be intimidated by Donald Trump’s White House.

Rachel Maddow Terrifies Trump By Warning That The Tax Return Leaked To Her Won’t Be The Last

Rachel Maddow had a terrifying message for Donald Trump. The 2005 tax return that was leaked to her may be the first, but it won't be the last.

By Jason Easley



Maddow said, “The greater concern. The worry that this president may be financially beholden to an individual, to an institution, to a country, and now that he’s president we won’t know if he tries to use the resources and power of our country to pay off that entity to whom he is beholden. We can’t know any of that without getting his tax returns. That’s why presidents release their tax returns. That’s why there will continue to be unrelenting pressure to find Donald Trump’s tax returns, to expose Donald Trump’s tax returns, and that pressure will remain every single day that he is president and until he releases them that pressure will never let up, and that’s why somebody has decided to leak this portion of his 2005 tax return, which is how and why we got it tonight, and I am sure it is only the start, but it’s a start.”

The news isn’t what is on Trump’s 1040 from 12 years ago. The big story is that a tax return was published. Every news organization in the United States and others around the world have been trying to get their hands on Trump’s tax returns.

The fact that somebody was able to get one of Trump’s returns out to the public suggests that there are more of them out there, and it is only a matter of time before others reveal the secrets that this president has worked so hard to keep hidden.

Maddow got a 1040, but eventually, a whole tax return or returns will be made public. Trump isn’t worried about the details of what Rachel Maddow made public. What terrifies Trump is that his tax return secrecy has been shattered and the real damage is yet to come.

Trump Freaks Out After Rachel Maddow Shows His Tax Returns To The Country

By Sean Colarossi on Tue, Mar 14th, 2017 at 10:22 pm

Trump said Rachel Maddow's reporting on Tuesday night was "totally illegal." 

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, with the help of Daily Beast contributor David Cay Johnston, revealed a portion of Donald Trump’s 2005 tax returns on Tuesday night – and the White House is freaking out about it.

In a statement released a short time ago, the White House said this:

You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago.

Before being elected President, Mr. Trump was one of the most successful businessmen in the world with a responsibility to his company, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required. That being said, Mr. Trump paid $38 million dollars even after taking into account large scale depreciation for construction, on an income of more than $150 million dollars, as well as paying tens of millions of dollars in other taxes such as sales and excise taxes and employment taxes and this illegally published return proves just that. Despite this substantial income figure and tax paid, it is totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns. The dishonest media can continue to make this part of their agenda, while the President will focus on his, which includes tax reform that will benefit all Americans.

First of all, with or without this exclusive reporting by Maddow, her ratings would have been just fine. As Jason Easley wrote yesterday, her audience is rapidly growing and even beat Fox News last week among key viewers.

What was particularly striking, though, is that the White House accused Maddow of breaking the law by revealing this portion of Trump’s tax documents. Or, as they called her reporting, “totally illegal.”

But as Maddow pointed out during Tuesday’s program, sharing the returns – which were lawfully obtained – is part of a journalist’s first amendment rights, though we probably shouldn’t expect Trump to know anything about those since he has spent nearly every day of his first two months in office either attacking the press or avoiding them.

Still, Maddow fought back:

“For the record, the first amendment gives us the right to publish this return. It is not illegally published, nor are we fake,” Maddow said.

It’s clear that the MSNBC star hit a nerve in the Trump White House by revealing something that no one in the media has yet been able to – his tax returns, even if it was just a portion.

Perhaps the president is just angry because he’s afraid this is only the beginning of what could be more leaks into his financial background, which could show more than Trump’s earnings – but where the money came from.

Rachel Maddow Shatters Trump’s World By Exposing His Tax Returns On Live TV

By Sean Colarossi on Tue, Mar 14th, 2017 at 9:45 pm

Maddow's exclusive reporting on Tuesday finally gave the American people a much-deserved glimpse behind the curtain when it comes to Trump's finances.

Rachel Maddow’s show on Tuesday night was one for the ages, as she shattered Donald Trump’s world by revealing a portion of his 2005 tax returns on live national television at a time when her audience is larger than it’s ever been.

Maddow revealed just some of Trump’s tax documents from 2005, which were acquired by David Cay Johnston.

Video:



The tax returns Maddow exposed on Tuesday showed that Trump made $150 million in 2005 and paid $36.5 million (or 24 percent) in taxes when those in his income bracket were required to pay 35 percent that year.

As Johnston also noted on MSNBC, Trump made $418,000 a day in 2005.

Unfortunately, while the documents showed how much Trump earned in income and paid in taxes, it still doesn’t show the source of that income – which is the most important part of this story, due to Trump’s questionable ties to Russia.

Throughout the campaign and during his first two months in the White House, Trump and his team have stubbornly refused to release any of his tax returns – unprecedented for a presidential candidate and, now, president.

Maddow’s exclusive reporting on Tuesday finally gave the American people a much-deserved glimpse behind the curtain when it comes to Trump’s finances. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of more to come.

Campaign Flashback

69

INDIVISIBLE

A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR RESISTING THE TRUMP AGENDA

Former congressional staffers reveal best practices for making Congress listen.

Donald Trump is the biggest popular-vote loser in history to ever call himself President. In spite of the fact that he has no mandate, he will attempt to use his congressional majority to reshape America in his own racist, authoritarian, and corrupt image. If progressives are going to stop this, we must stand indivisibly opposed to Trump and the Members of Congress (MoCs) who would do his bidding. Together, we have the power to resist — and we have the power to win.

We know this because we’ve seen it before. The authors of this guide are former congressional staffers who witnessed the rise of the Tea Party. We saw these activists take on a popular president with a mandate for change and a supermajority in Congress. We saw them organize locally and convince their own MoCs to reject President Obama’s agenda. Their ideas were wrong, cruel, and tinged with racism— and they won.

We believe that protecting our values, our neighbors, and ourselves will require mounting a similar resistance to the Trump agenda — but a resistance built on the values of inclusion, tolerance,
and fairness. Trump is not popular. He does not have a mandate. He does not have large congressional majorities. If a small minority in the Tea Party could stop President Obama, then we the majority can stop a petty tyrant named Trump.

To this end, the following chapters offer a step-by-step guide for individuals, groups, and organizations looking to replicate the Tea Party’s success in getting Congress to listen to a small, vocal, dedicated group of constituents. The guide is intended to be equally useful for stiffening Democratic spines and weakening pro-Trump Republican resolve.

We believe that the next four years depend on Americans across the country standing indivisible against the Trump agenda. We believe that buying into false promises or accepting partial concessions will only further empower Trump to victimize us and our neighbors. We hope that this guide will provide those who share that belief with useful tools to make Congress listen.

https://www.indivisibleguide.com/web 

Talk to your doctor to see if this medicine may help with symptoms of T.I.A.D.

Trump likely fired US Attorney Bharara to sabotage ‘troublesome’ investigations

By David Ferguson

Saturday evening, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin appeared by phone to discuss the firing of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara with anchor Ana Cabrera.

Mediaite.com said that Toobin believes Bharara was axed because he was pursuing lines of investigation that would prove “troublesome” to the Trump administration.

“The question arises,” Toobin said, “Is there something either that the Trump administration doesn’t want Preet Bharara to pursue, or are there things he knows that he might disclose later that could be troublesome for the Trump administration?”

Bharara was fired by Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions after he refused to comply with a Justice Department order for 46 U.S. Attorneys appointed by the Obama administration to vacate their posts immediately.

The call for the resignations came less than 24 hours after Fox News host and indefatigable Trump booster Sean Hannity called for a “purge” of federal officials appointed by the Obama administration.

Bharara has a reputation as a Wall Street enforcer and was looking into criminal allegations against Fox News. In 2012, Bharara’s office successfully extradited and prosecuted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was known as “the merchant of death.”

He is believed to have been investigating connections between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government. In his statement after the firing, Bharara said, “I did not resign. Moments ago I was fired. Being the US Attorney in SDNY will forever be the greatest honor of my professional life.”

Prominent US Attorney Preet Bharara says he was 'fired' after not resigning

https://gma.yahoo.com/justice-department-seeks-resignations-46-obama-era-us-173303853--abc-news-topstories.html

'I Might As Well Have Not Voted': Details Of GOP Health Plan Leave Trump Voter Appalled

By Brad Reed

Donald Trump this week signaled his support for the House Republicans’ new health care bill — but it looks like that legislation is going over like a lead balloon with his base.

Not only are the Trump diehards at Breitbart News bashing the plan as “Obamacare 2.0,” but even some casual voters are worried about the president’s plan.

ABC News this week talked with North Carolina resident Martha Brawley, a 55 year old woman who cast a ballot for the first time in her life for Donald Trump. Brawley says that she voted for the president on the hopes that he could bring down the cost of health care — but she’s been appalled so far by what she’s seen from the Republican Congress.

“I voted for Trump hoping that he would change the insurance so I could get good health care,” she told ABC News. “I might as well have not voted.”

Brawley was particularly upset when she learned that, under Trumpcare, she would receive a paltry $3,500 tax credit to buy insurance. At the moment, she gets a federal subsidy of around $8,688 to buy insurance from Obamacare.

“All these people who talk in politics have insurance,” she told ABC News. “People like me don’t.”

One Brief Example Of The Insane Hypocrisy Of The GOP On The Health Care Bill

Posted by Rude One

It's really one of the weirdest things in the American Health Care Act, the bullshit bill that bullshit Republicans rolled out so their bullshit president could declare that he was St. Donald fighting the Affordable Care Act dragon. From pages 10-16, the bill's authors lay out the conditions by which MegaMillions and Powerball and other winners would have to pay for their own damn health insurance. That new part takes up a tenth of the length of the entire 66 page bill that escaped Mario Kart character Sean Spicer jigged around and pointed at for its brevity, contrasting it with the monstrously huge stack of pages that make up Obamacare (yeah, the black guy's was bigger and you could do more with it).

And the lottery section is just bizarrely precise in talking about the conditions when a lottery winner wouldn't be able to get Medicaid: "a State shall, in determining such eligibility, include such winnings or income (as applicable) as income received— (I) in the month in which such winnings or income (as applicable) is received if the amount of such winnings or income is less than $80,000; (II) over a period of 2 months if the amount of such winnings or income (as applicable) is greater than or equal to $80,000 but less than $90,000; (III) over a period of 3 months if the amount of such winnings or income (as applicable) is greater than or equal to $90,000 but..." You get the idea.

Obsessively detailed, no?

This is easy to mock in a "God, how fucking dumb are they?" kind of way. Except, instead, looking at why this language is in the bill reveals something just a little more sinister about the hypocrisy under which the GOP is operating to commit this health care fuckery.

One of the reasons that Republicans are desperately trying to cram the bill through like a limp cock on an unlubed asshole is because the Congressional Budget Office hasn't finished its scoring of the bill to see what its effects might be. When the CBO is done, it will likely reveal that the AHCA is, as previously mentioned, a bullshit bill that will cost a ton of money and kick millions of people off health insurance. Republicans in the House, at least, are trying to maintain the illusion that they're not just complete twat mites who want to straight up murder people to give the wealthy a tax cut, but, yeah, that's pretty much what's going on.

A cynical reader might be thinking, "Well, sure, everyone loves the CBO when it gives them the numbers they want. What's the big deal?" But that's not quite cynical enough.

See, the lottery exclusion up there was actually first brought up in 2016 because, apparently, there are enough winners to make a big damn difference: "Using the typical per capita cost for Medicaid adults, this provision would reduce direct spending by $475 million over the 2016-2026 period." You know who came up with that nearly half-billion dollars in savings because of a seemingly odd provision? The Congressional Budget Office.

That's the depth of hypocrisy occurring here. The Republicans need the CBO's figures to write their goddamn bill, but they are running scared from the CBO when it comes to the final bill's effects on Americans. That's the incredible dickishness involved here.

Trump Fires All 46 Remaining US Attorneys Out Of Fear That Obama's Out To Get Him

By Jason Easley 

Less than a week after President Trump made his allegation that President Obama wiretapped him, he has fired all 46 remaining US attorneys that were appointed by Obama. 

The New York Times reported:

Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in an email that all remaining holdover United States attorneys had been asked to resign, leaving their deputy United States attorneys, who are career officials, in place in an acting capacity.

“As was the case in prior transitions, many of the United States Attorneys nominated by the previous administration already have left the Department of Justice,” she said in the email. “The Attorney General has now asked the remaining 46 presidentially appointed U.S. Attorneys to tender their resignations to ensure a uniform transition.”

Before Trump made his wiretap allegations against the former president, he blamed Obama for the leaks that have plagued his administration.

The mass firings come less than a day after Sean Hannity viewer Trump watched the Fox News host call for a purge of everyone who worked against him in government. Fox News and conservative websites are fueling Trump’s paranoid mentality.

It is not unusual for presidents to replace the US attorneys with their own appointees, but most presidents outside Clinton in 1993, do this gradually. They also don’t gut the attorneys at the Justice Department days after accusing the former administration of wiretapping them.

The Friday massacre style dismissal reeks of Trump administration paranoia. The Trump administration believes that holdovers from the previous administration are the problem.

The mass firing isn’t unprecedented, but it a sign of the mounting instability within with the White House.

Moscow's work didn't end on Nov. 8, 2016

Rachel Maddow Says Helping Trump Become POTUS Was Only The Beginning Of Russia’s Operation
 

Maddow says there is growing evidence that Moscow's work didn't end on Nov. 8, 2016 – that was only the opening act. 

By Sean Colarossi 

The MSNBC star said events that have unfolded during Trump’s time in office show that “Russia may now be reaping its reward, maybe getting what it wants out of the United States government as payback for running the successful op that helped install the new head of the American government.”



During the opening of her show, Maddow said that it’s one thing for the Trump campaign and its officials to meet and seemingly work with the Russians during the campaign – but it’s becoming apparent that the election may have just been the opening act of Moscow’s operation.

The new developments that Wikileaks – the same folks that worked with the Russians to expose hacked DNC emails last year – released a trove of classified CIA material is further proof, Maddow says, that the Russians are likely still trying to meddle in U.S. affairs at the direction of Vladimir Putin. Instead of influencing an election, the goal now seems to be disrupting and undermining U.S. intelligence agencies.

Like usual, there is a connection between the latest WikiLeaks release and the President of the United States.

As Maddow pointed out, Trump supporter Nigel Farage, who recently had dinner with Trump, met with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange just two days after the classified CIA information was reportedly released by the organization. When asked why he was visiting Assange, Farage said he “couldn’t remember.”

While the focus is rightfully on Russia’s involvement in last year’s election and what connection the Russians had with the Trump campaign, it’s also important to consider that Moscow now may be influencing our government. In other words, the election may have just been the beginning.

Maddow brings that point home:

The Russian government attacked our election. The Russian government was in contact with multiple Trump campaign sources while they were doing it. Russian nemeses in the American government – U.S. State Department, CIA – are not faring well since Donald Trump came to power. Is the operation that Russia started during the campaign, is it over? Or are they still running it? Are we still in this now?

It’s unsettling to consider the possibility that Russia, after helping put Donald Trump in the White House, is still influencing U.S. affairs. But there is mounting evidence that Moscow’s work didn’t end on Nov. 8, 2016 – that was only the beginning.

Rednecked, Racist Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III Won't Rule Out Using Mafia Law To Go After Legal Marijuana

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/attorney-general-sessions-rule-out-using-mafia-law-go-after-legal-marijuana

Bernie Sanders rips ‘phony billionaire’ Donald Trump: ‘We have a president who is a pathological liar’

By Travis Gettys      

Bernie Sanders (Good Morning America)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) accused President Donald Trump of lying in an effort to undermine democracy and gather authoritarian powers for himself.

“What he wants, I think, is to end up as leader of a nation which has moved in a significant degree toward authoritarianism where the president of the United States has extraordinary powers, far more so than our Constitution has provided for or the values of the American people support,” Sanders told The Guardian.

Sanders pointed to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the chairman of the House Science Committee, who urged Americans to get “unvarnished” news directly from the president instead of trusting the media.

“That is unprecedented in American history,” Sanders said. “George Bush was a very conservative president, I opposed him every single day. But George Bush did not operate outside of mainstream American political values.”

Sanders faulted the Democratic Party for ignoring the economic displacement of the working class to focus on Wall Street and liberal elites, which he said allowed a “phony billionaire” to win election to the White House.

“There needs to be a fundamental acknowledgement that the model of the Democratic party has been a horrific failure — no ifs, buts and maybes,” Sanders said. “Democrats have lost over 900 legislative seats in states all over this country. There are states where there is virtually no Democratic party at all. When an election takes place the Democrats can’t even put up a candidate for the US Senate.

That’s how pathetic it is.”

Those failures have left the Republican Party as the last defense against Trump’s authoritarian ambitions, Sanders said.

“These are very scary times for the people of the United States and, because the Unites States is the most powerful country on Earth, for the whole word,” he said. “The bad news, the very bad news is that we have a president who is a pathological liar.”

Paul Ryan: "Did You Know Insurance Works Like Insurance?"

Posted by Rude One

Blithering ass pimple Paul Ryan, a man who looks like he's perpetually contemplating how he can get away with getting fucked by a horse dick, said one of the stupidest things anyone in politics has said recently, and that's even counting every word out of Donald Trump's dumb, leathery, old man mouth.

Using the filmstrip of the damned that is PowerPoint, Ryan attempted to explain what is so bad about the Affordable Care Act's insurance mandate, and, in doing so, demonstrated that you can make anything seem sinister with a colorful pie chart.

"The fatal conceit of Obamacare is that we’re just gonna make everybody buy our health insurance at the federal government level. Young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older, sicker people. So the young, healthy person’s going to be made to buy healthcare, and they’re gonna pay for the person, you know, who gets breast cancer in her 40's, or gets heart disease in his 50's," Ryan said.

You following that so far? Now let's have some motherfuckin' pie: "So take a look at this chart. The red slice here are what I would call people with pre-existing conditions, people who have real healthcare problems. The blue is the rest of the people in the individual market, that’s the market where people don’t get health insurance with their jobs, or they buy it themselves. [For the record, the blue is about 80% of the pie] The whole idea of Obamacare is the people in the blue side pay for the people on the red side. The people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick. It’s not working, and that’s why it’s in a death spiral."

In other words, the insurance works, well, just like fuckin' insurance works. Exactly like insurance works. Every kind of insurance. Your car insurance? Homeowner's? Yep. But, hell, let's put insurance aside for a moment.

By Ryan's reasoning, there is no reason for there even to be a society, let alone a government. Some of you don't have children and you pay property taxes, which, in most states, goes to fund schools, which you don't use because, hey, you don't have any fuckin' children.

Jesus fuckballs, this is even more of a scam than health insurance because there's a good chance you're gonna go to a doctor some day. If you never have kids, you never take advantage of the school system. Why the fuck should you have to pay for it?

You know why we pay for schools for other people's kids? Because that's what the fuck you do or your entire society turns to shit (unless we start sending kids back to work all those coal mine jobs that Trump has promised). And that's why you pay for other people's health care. Because if you don't, you will end up paying, through emergency room visits, lost productivity, and more.

My insurance that I've paid during this relatively healthy time of my life is a hedge against the time when I get cancer from the soon-to-be poisoned water or have a heart attack from watching cock knobs like Ryan attempt to explain why the basic model for the existence of insurance is wrong. I'm not gonna forego insurance because I'm paying for someone's chemo now. What a fuckin' tool I'd be.

And, look, we shouldn't even be talking about fuckin' health insurance. We should be talking about a national health care system that eliminates the profiteering corporations. But we're Americans, and, goddammit, we want people to suffer because we think it's better that people have a fantasy idea of "freedom." Motherfucker, we have jobs and shit to do. And Ryan wants you to take the time to figure out how to get the best price on that stent surgery that you need. That's not freedom. That's fucking with people's lives and making them believe they are free when they are just slaves in your chains of market forces.

Towards the end of his TED-talk from hell, Ryan gave away the game, the real reason why the House GOP is attempting this nonsense: "We, as Republicans, have been waiting seven years to do this. We, as Republicans, who fought the creation of this law and accurately predicted that it would not work, ran for office in 2010, in 2012, in 2014 and in 2016 on a promise that we would -- if given the ability, we would repeal and replace this law. How many people running for Congress and the Senate did you hear say that? How many times did you hear President Donald Trump, when he was candidate Donald Trump, say that? This is the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare. The time is here. The time is now. This is the moment. And this is the closest this will ever happen."

We're all just victims of a tautology that has ensnared the GOP. They swore up and down that they would repeal the Affordable Care Act, and now that they can repeal the ACA, they have to repeal the ACA because they said they would repeal the ACA and now they can repeal...

Except they can't unless they get a critical number of Americans to think, "Wait, I shouldn't pay for shit I'm not using right this second," which, sadly, is probably a convincing argument to the selfish pricks who voted for these assholes like Ryan.

(By the way, the ACA isn't in a "death spiral." Premiums have gone up for just 3% of all Americans with health insurance. That's what we're arguing about here. It's all a fucking game.)

Rachel Maddow Drops Major Reality Check: Trump-Russia Collusion Looks Increasingly Likely

By Sean Colarossi

The MSNBC host told America to "get back to the main point," which is that it's slowly looking like the Trump campaign was working with Russia to topple Hillary Clinton.

On MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show on Tuesday, the liberal superstar dropped another Russian reality check on viewers, telling America to “get back to the main point,” which is that it’s slowly looking like the Trump campaign was working with Russia to topple Hillary Clinton last year.

In her opening segment, Maddow focused on a so-far unsubstantiated dossier released in January that details damning links between Trump and high-ranking Russian officials. While Trump and his apologists try to muddy the waters, point fingers, and deny any wrongdoing, more and more of that controversial dossier has become verified as truth.

As Maddow said, pieces from that document continue to fall into place, which is slowly raising the likelihood that Russia and Trump’s campaign worked together.

Rachel Maddow notes that while the dossier of intelligence about Donald Trump ties to Russia remains unconfirmed, pieces of it have checked out upon investigation by the press, though the primary government investigators are former Trump campaign officials.



Maddow said:

Forget all the salacious personal stuff. Forget all the stuff that made the White House so mad when this was published. The bottom line of this dossier, the bottom line allegation, the point of it is that the Trump campaign didn’t just benefit from Russia interfering in our presidential campaign. The point of this is that they colluded, they helped, they were in on it. The money quote from this dossier is, “The operation had been conducted with the full knowledge of Trump and senior members of his campaign team.” That’s basically what this whole dossier alleges – that the Trump folks were in on it.  There were multiple people close to Trump, involved in the Trump campaign, who were in contact with the Russian government about the Russian government’s attacks on Hillary Clinton, while those attacks were happening, while Russia was waging these attacks. Overall, yes, we still have to describe this as a sheaf of uncorroborated allegations, but little pieces supporting that bottom line thesis really do keep falling in line.

Maddow then listed the series of Russian revelations – and secret meetings between Trump associates and the Russian officials – that have come out over the past several weeks, despite initial claims from the president that nobody on his team met with the Russians during the campaign.

It turns out that more than a half-dozen Trump associates are linked to Russia, including Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, Carter Page, J.D. Gordon, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Michael Cohen.

As Maddow noted in her coverage, it was reported by Politico on Tuesday that one of those associates, Carter Page, was given permission by the Trump campaign last year to make a visit to Russia in the heat of the 2016 election cycle.

The president himself even met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak before giving a campaign speech last year.

All of these bits of information are turning what was previous an unverified dossier into a credible document implicating Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in what would be the biggest political scandal in U.S. history.

Even though there is so much going on in our politics right now, much of it disturbing and distracting, we must not lose focus on this scandal.

'A Low, Low Moment For Washington' | Morning Blow | MSNBC

Over the weekend in a Saturday tweet storm, Trump accused President Obama of tapping his phones during the 'sacred election process' and saying it was 'Nixon/Watergate.'

The Return Of Baby Man

Katt Williams TOTALLY DESTROYS DONALD CHUMP!!

Katt Williams destroys Donald Trump in this 2017 stand up - jokes on how Donald Trump won the 2016 election, Trump's campaign promise of Mexican paying for the wall, Katt talks about trump speech and behavior, Katt also talks about Trump's hair and groping women/sexual assault and Melania Trump.

Without mentioning directly, Katt made a reference to the Katt Williams fight hinting why he could not wait to start a new year.

Keith Ellison's E-Mail Asking For $ Stuns Progressives

Jimmy Dore breaks it down.

Welcome to Trumpcare™

Democrats Double Down On LOSING: Elect Corporate Tool DNC Chair

Tom Perez wins the DNC Chair.

Jimmy Dore breaks it down.

Bannon-Trump Are Taking America From The People

By Rmuse

Bannon is a "dangerous person driven by an authoritarian ideology. This is a mean, vicious, intolerant group. I’ve never seen anything like this."

*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*

It really is a shame, a travesty, a disaster that so many Americans are fundamentally stupid. Because if they were just a little more aware of anything other than their religion, their guns and their ignorant racism and bigotry, America may not be facing the serious threat in the White House. Actually, that threat includes Republicans in Congress and state legislatures, but without that angry fascist in the Oval, the terrifying assault on America may not deliver the results the Trump and his administration are planning.

One of the things too many Americans don’t understand is that without a functioning government, their lives would be very similar, if not identical, to people living in third world places like Somalia and Yemen. Republicans have intimated their intent to completely dismantle the government to give the rich, corporations and religion free rein to trample the people  underfoot, but they have never openly called for destroying the government like the Trump and his ultimate superior Steve Bannon.

And make no mistake, when Bannon calls for “dismantling the administrative state,” he means completely destroying the government that fundamentally protects Americans from a dictatorship. A dictatorship, by the way, that Sean Spicer accidentally admitted is what the Trump and his administration really is. More on that later.

If Americans weren’t inherently stupid, they would know that the “administrative state” is not a terrorist cabal out to kill off white people, steal their bibles and guns, or drive them into poverty.

What the “administrative state” entails is fundamentally laid out in the Constitution and is precisely what keeps Americans from being ruled by a dictator and enslaved by oligarchs. The administrative state includes things like the separation of powers, regulatory oversight of predatory corporations and financial institutions, agency rules that keep Americans’ food, medicine, and water safe, and a variety of domestic social programs affecting every American alive; all of the things that Trump, Bannon, the Kochs and no small number of Republicans want or have wanted  eliminated.

This week at the CPAC meeting, Trump’s chief strategist Bannon explained that Trump’s agenda and ultimate goal is really taking apart every aspect of the government; save its ability to wage war on anyone or any nation that fails to abide Trump’s tyranny. He said, that “deconstruction of the administrative state”  means eliminating the system of taxes, regulations and trade pacts that infringe upon one’s  sovereignty. If you look at these [Trump] Cabinet nominees, they were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction.”

Now, too many Americans actually believe that everything Trump intends in “deconstructing the administrative state” is going to make them incredibly wealthy, give them everlasting life in American Heaven, and make America an Aryan Christian Utopia. It is a stupid mindset and one Republicans have counted on to stay in power for the past eight years.

However much Republicans want to “dismantle” the United States government, including everything that protects the people, Bannon said the Trump White House is digging in for a long conflict to transform Washington and upend the world order. He said to all Americans that, “If you think they’re going to give you your country back you are sadly mistaken. Every day, it is going to be a fight.”

Bannon was not implying that “the media” would never give “your country back,” he meant the Trump administration. It is baffling, and a complete mystery, why anyone would think or believe that the “media” owns the country, or is so in control as to fight to avoid having to give it back to the people.

That one statement is even more telling, and terrifying, than admitting Trump appointed Heritage Foundation nominees to “deconstruct” the agencies they are now running. Bannon, like his underling Donald Trump, fully intends to “reorder” America, and the world, in his own image. It is curious indeed that no-one at CPAC questioned “who” is not going to give “your country back.” Thus far it is only the Trump waging a daily fight to keep America out of the hands of the people; including stupid conservative people.

What Bannon is really saying is that there indeed is a dictator in the White House and that America must be transformed by the Trump-Bannon; not the people. Press secretary Sean Spicer said something similar a couple of months ago when he said only a dictatorship would ever consider subduing the press; this week the Trump dictatorship barred journalists from press briefings in a blatant suppression of the free press. Trump, with valuable assistance and instructions from Bannon is intent on fulfilling his most cherished role of “authoritarian” dictator that any sane human being knew was his plan all along; Bannon just expedited Trump’s ascension as a vicious authoritarian tyrant faster than even Trump imagined possible.

That assessment is precisely what Ohio’s former governor, Ted Strickland (D), said about Bannon.  He is a “dangerous person driven by an authoritarian ideology who, I fear, has more influence than anyone in the administration. This is a mean, vicious, intolerant group. I’ve never seen anything like this in my political life.”

Maybe Mr. Strickland has never seen it in America, but history is replete with examples of the Trump-Bannon partnership whether it was Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, Italy under Benito Mussolini, or Russia under Trump’s facilitator Vladimir Putin. However, it is Bannon’s intent on “upending the world order” that makes Trump closer to Adolf Hitler than Putin or Mussolini.

According to Steve Bannon, America is now Donald Trump and he has no intent of ever giving it back to the people. Republicans have long worked to restrict the federal government’s oversight of anything remotely related to keeping the people safe, economically or health wise, but even they never openly claimed their overarching goal was destroying the government; and that is what Bannon means in “deconstructing the administrative state.”

The real tragedy, and it is incredibly tragic, is that there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop the Trump Bannon. Democrats are powerless to do much more than rant and rave about the injustice of allowing a tyrant to take down the government, and the people can resist, but at the end of the day Republicans run the government Bannon and Trump will “deconstruct” according to their stated purpose, and wild applause from stupid conservatives at CPAC.

That is what happens when stupid people, stupid racist people, think purging Mexicans and Muslims from America is more important than defending “their” democracy and “their” country. A once proud nation that will die a premature death because a bonafide dictator, Steve Bannon, is in the White House with his pet Trump on a very short leash with a very powerful “shock collar” in case he gets out of line.

**The above article is commentary by R Muse**

Right-wing pundit Laura Ingraham bounced $42,000 check to AP trying to save her floundering website

By David Ferguson

Right-wing radio host and author Laura Ingraham is facing a lawsuit filed by the Associated Press after she bounced a check to the wire service for unpaid fees and lost revenue on her website LifeZette.com.

 Mediaite.com reported on Saturday that the AP is suing Ingraham and LifeZette for $50,000 in a suit filed Friday in Washington, D.C. Superior Court.

In July of 2015, LifeZette reportedly signed an agreement with the AP to pay $4,200 per month for the rights to run AP content on its homepage. In February, 2016, the AP canceled the deal due to non-payment.

Ingraham’s company, Ingraham Media Group Inc., sent the AP a $42,611 check last month, but it was returned by the bank over insufficient funds. It was then, Mediaite said, that the wire service chose to take legal action.

“Per the filing, the AP is looking for a total of $49,267. That amount includes $24,937.21 for unpaid fees and $17,674.50 for the revenue AP claims it lost after it was forced to suspend LifeZette’s account. (These two totals equal the amount of the bounced check.) AP is also seeking additional funds in interest and attorney fees,” wrote Mediaite’s Justin Baragona.

Ingraham launched LifeZette in late March of 2015 with the goal of providing conservative readers a one-stop news source in a field already crowded by other outlets like the Daily Caller, the Washington Free Beacon and Breitbart.com.

The website came under fire last year for its perpetuation of “fake news” conspiracy theory stories about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

In spite of its credibility issues, LifeZette was one of the first media organizations called on by Press Secretary Sean Spicer in early press conferences in the White House briefing room, which raised hackles among professional journalists.

Ingraham herself said in late 2016 that she was briefly considered for the position of White House press secretary before the job when to Spicer, formerly a high-ranking official in the Republican National Coalition (RNC).

Talk show host Stephen Colbert accused Ingraham of racism over controversial passages in her book The Obama Diaries, which came out in 2010 and featured racially-charged digs at President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

In addition to being abominably written, Colbert told Ingraham that the book relies on “hideous, hackneyed racial stereotypes.”

Colbert asked Ingraham during a notoriously uncomfortable interview, “What are the odds that Barack Obama’s private musings would completely and perfectly match up with the narrative that the right is trying to push about him?”

The book portrayed Michelle Obama as a glutton who ate barbecued ribs at every meal and Obama himself as a selfish egomaniac with a grudge against white Americans.

Donald Chump = "The Tiger Woods Of Hypocrisy"

Seth Meyers nails Trump for golfing after criticizing Obama for it

 By Sarah K. Burris

While President Donald Trump is golfing, Republican officials are being forced to face difficult crowds at town halls across the country.

In his “Closer Look” segment Thursday, “Late Night” host Seth Meyers noted that many members of Congress would probably prefer to be outside in the sunshine instead of in the hot seat at a town hall.

“You played golf six times in one month,” Meyers said. “Are you the president or a San Diego dentist? Now, some of you are asking, ‘But didn’t he criticize [President Barack] Obama for playing golf. What about that?’ Well, you would be forgetting that when it comes to being a hypocrite, Donald Trump has a zero handicap. He’s the Tiger Woods of hypocrisy!”

Meyers said that most people probably don’t care but it seems that Trump seems embarrassed because his team has worked hard to hide the fact that he’s golfing as much as he is. He cited the White House schedule as announced to the media, which stated Trump would be attending meetings over the weekend. A professional golfer blew his cover, however, when he revealed he was golfing with Trump. The spokeswoman said that Trump played a couple of holes, golfer Rory Mcilroy revealed Trump played all 18 holes.

“No one plays a ‘few holes’ of golf,” Meyers said. “Anyone up for four holes?”

Meyers reported that Trump’s team has been “so shady” that they refuse to even let the press watch the games or even know who he’s playing with. He assumed it has to do with unflattering photos of Trump that surface after he’s seen playing.

“If you looked like this when you golfed, you’d ditch the cameras too,” he said.

Meanwhile, Republicans are contending with angry constituents. A New York Times story cited one man that brought his Congressman a bottle of Tums saying that he’d be needing them over the next several months.

“We’re all going to need Tums because I’m pretty sure it’s the closest things Republicans have to a replacement for Obamacare,” Meyers joked.

Even when Rep. Jason Chaffetz mentioned Vice President Mike Pence he was booed. Meyers noted that Pence has the honor of being booed at a Broadway performance of Hamilton as well as a town hall in Utah.

See Meyers’ full video below:

Republicans Could Be Heroes On Obamacare (And Liberals Should Let Them)

Posted by Rude One

Let me be honest: I'd rather have my prostate checked by Wolverine on a vengeance rampage than help an elected Republican in Congress. But if you are one, chances are you're either facing crowds of angry constituents (and, really, and, c'mon, you can lie to your Twitter followers all you want, but it's mostly your constituents who are showing up) at town hall meetings where they force you to defend the idiot president and your own campaign promises, the ones that really promise to hurt them or their familes, or you're cowering like a beaten puppy in a corner of your local office, avoiding anyone who might tell you to your face what you know is true: "You're full of shit."

Face it, GOP scum. Now that the black guy and that Clinton woman are out of the way as a lightning rod for all the misdirected hatred you could foster, you have nothing between you and the voters. There is no buffer. And anything you do is something you own. Yeah, motherfuckers, acting is a whole lot harder than obstructing. It's a lot easier to talk about killing something than to actually drown the cat or bludgeon the milk man.

But when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, you have painted yourself into a corner and then placed landmines all around the floor. For seven years, it's been a constant chant of "repeal," followed by "repeal and replace," which was already a retreat, an admission that you needed to do something about the uninsured in the United States, that the government had to be involved to some degree, even if it was just with bullshit tax credits.

Now, since the election and certainly in the town halls, what you're hearing, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Rep. Jason "Little Rat-Faced Bitch" Chaffetz of Utah, Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee, and so many more, is that the ACA or, you know, Obamacare, is doing what it was supposed to do: give people who previously didn't have access to health insurance a chance to go to the doctor and get treatment without having to choose between medicine or food. People who previously didn't have that access, those who got policies through the exchanges and through expanded Medicaid, have learned that they like being treated like human beings whose lives have worth.

And when you, the GOP Congress men and women, tell them that you are gonna come up with a plan that'll be even better, that you can't give your constituents all the details because it's "still being worked out" or some such shit, that someone's cancer treatment might be interrupted while you attempt to figure out what "replace" is supposed to mean, that to get cancer treatment under the Affordable Care Act is to not want "freedom" or have "individual responsibility," as Vice President Mike Pence alluded to in a tweet, then you are telling those voters that they do not deserve to be treated like human beings. You're saying, senators and representatives, that their cancer treatments and medicine and other health care, their lives, aren't worth the effort to save.

So, yeah, they're pretty fuckin' angry. You've lost on this issue. You can be jerks about it and dick people over. Or you can admit you lost.

Here's the deal, though. I've got a solution. It's so easy that you will come out of the whole thing looking like the most democracy-loving motherfuckers in history, like goddamned heroes. Listen. No, shut the fuck up, GOP assholes, and listen:

You tell the voters that you heard them. Tell your constituents that you understand how important the Affordable Care Act has been. And tell them that because they have spoken so passionately and made so much sense that you are now going to listen to them. You can make a big fuckin' show about it. "Republicans want to take care of all Americans," you can say. Hell, you can even remind us all about how the ACA was a Republican idea to begin with (which, let's be honest, is the reason you can't come up with a replacement).

You don't have to admit error. You can say that you "evolved," which seems to be the term now for "Boy, I was a fucking prick about that. Sorry." And then you can say that instead of "repeal and replace," you're going to "reform and repair" Obamacare.

And you can essentially do nothing. No, really. You can do absolutely nothing except for a few tweaks that it needs to help out the marketplace in some states. Then you can say, "See? We fixed it. Republicans fix things." Hell, Democrats might go along with it, and you can claim a bipartisan victory, that phantom of something that we used to think was important. Your idiot president can make one of his barely coherent speeches about how he fixed the ACA and now it's "Trumpcare."

Now, sure, sure, you're wondering, "Won't people think we're liars and hypocrites?" To which I can only say, "What the fuck do you think people think you are now, GOP?" But, to put it another way, right now, Republican voters are fucking nuts. They honestly believes that millions of people voted illegally. They really think that Donald Trump is doing a good job. A good many of them are convinced that kids are being raped in the basement of a DC pizzeria because "cheese." You just say that this was what you wanted all along. You wanted to hear from your constituents and you listened. And if Trump tweets that out, you're golden. The stupidity of your voters will be your cover.

As for us liberals, we'll gnash our teeth. But, ultimately, we're liberals. We want people to have access to health care. Democratic members of Congress and candidates will likely campaign on, "Oh, c'mon, we were right all along." As well they should. And maybe they'll win with that. However, GOP, you will definitely be losing a lot of races if you take away Daddy's heart surgery and Mommy's chemo.

Oh, dear, sweet, terrible GOP, you have lost Obamacare as an issue. Because Obamacare without "Obama" is just "care," and do you want to be the party that takes that away from millions of Americans?

(Note: Yeah, they probably do.)