User-Supported News Commentary Hosted by Craig Crawford
Non-Voters Rising
All across America traditional non voters are showing up. Hit ’em where they ‘aint. You rule. Get on it.
Author: craigcrawford
Trail Mix Host. Lapsed journalist, author & retired pundit happily promoting nothing but the truth for Social Security checks.
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36 thoughts on “Non-Voters Rising”
the guardian:
Ayanna Pressley ousts 10-term Massachusetts Democrat in latest primary upset
Insurgent challenger will be state’s first black female member of Congress
In the latest upset during the 2018 Democratic primaries, Ayanna Pressley beat a veteran 10-term Democrat in Massachusetts in a House race being watched nationally as an indicator of the future of the Democratic Party.With Michael Capuano conceding and no Republican opponent on the ballot in November, Pressley will be become the first African American woman to represent Massachusetts on Capitol Hill. The night also marked another victory for insurgent candidates within the Democratic Party, who are demanding a more strident political posture in the era of Trump. In her victory speech, Pressley said: “These times demanded more from our leaders and from our party. These times demanded an approach to governing that was bold, uncompromising and unafraid. It’s not just good enough to see the Democrats back in power but it matters who those Democrats are.”
[…]
Although Pressley gained renewed national attention in the wake of Ocasio-Cortez’s shock win against longtime incumbent Joe Crowley in New York City in June, she is a far more orthodox figure. Long heralded as a rising star in the Democratic Party, Pressley was first elected to the Boston City Council in 2009. The former staffer for Senator John Kerry and Congressman Joe Kennedy has been touted by national progressive groups for years. A former Clinton surrogate, Pressley was awarded a rising star award by the Democratic activist group Emily’s List in 2015.
The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, eased up slightly on his demands to question President Trump in the Russia investigation, a shift that came as the president’s lawyers, who have advised him against sitting for an interview, are fighting his desire to answer investigators’ queries.
Mr. Mueller will accept written answers from Mr. Trump on questions about whether his campaign conspired with Russia’s election interference, Mr. Mueller’s office told the president’s lawyers in a letter, two people briefed on it said on Tuesday.
On another significant aspect of the investigation — whether the president tried to obstruct the inquiry itself — Mr. Mueller and his investigators understood that issues of executive privilege could complicate their pursuit of a presidential interview and did not ask for written responses on that matter, according to the letter, which was sent on Friday.
Mr. Mueller did not say that he was giving up on an interview altogether, including on questions of obstruction of justice. But the tone of the letter and the fact that the special counsel did not ask for written responses on obstruction prompted some Trump allies to conclude that if an interview takes place, its scope will be more limited than Mr. Trump’s legal team initially believed, the people said.
[.continues…]
also in ny times:
The Rev. Al Sharpton sat at a table at the Loews Regency hotel on Park Avenue one morning last week, his shoulders hunched as he prayed with an unlikely dining companion: Michael D. Cohen.
Mr. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, had asked Mr. Sharpton to meet him for breakfast not long after he pleaded guilty in a federal court in Manhattan to an array of charges. Those included a campaign finance violation related to payments that Mr. Cohen made to women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump.
“He seemed to be resolved that he was facing some time,” Mr. Sharpton said of his second meeting with Mr. Cohen in recent months. “He even asked me to pray with him, and we did at the table.”
And so there they were, a Jewish ex-fixer to the Republican president seeking redemption from a Baptist preacher and Democrat at a see-and-be-seen breakfast spot on the East Side of Manhattan.
[….continues…]
“It seems like change is on the way,” Pressley said to raucous applause at her election night party. “Ours was truly a people powered, grassroots campaign. … that dared to do what Massachusetts Democrats aren’t supposed to do.”
“The decision to challenge him was not an easy one,” she said.
However, Pressley, who was Capuano’s first primary challenger since he took office, argued that leadership wasn’t just about one’s voting record. As she said often on the campaign trail, the Chicago native repeated Tuesday night that “the people closest to the pain should be closest to the power.” Pressley called for an “equity agenda” centering around public health, reducing violence, transportation, housing, and advocacy for women. She also called for “Medicare-for-all” health insurance and the defunding of ICE — the latter of which she said was “irrevocably broken agency” and was one of the biggest disagreements in the campaign.
On Tuesday night, Pressley said that the conditions that made the 7th District — the state’s only majority nonwhite district, which runs from Milton through most of Boston and up to Chelsea, Everett, Randolph, Somerville, and part of Cambridge — one of the most unequal in the country were “cemented through policies long before [Trump] ever descended the escalator at Trump Tower.”
“Some of those policies were put in place with Democrats in the White House and in control of our Congress,” she said. “Policies that have become so engrained in our daily lives as to almost convince ourselves that there wasn’t anything we could do about it.”
“But as we now know, change can’t wait,” she added, calling Tuesday “but just the first step.”
And the district itself looks a lot different now than 20 years ago
Yeah… they’re all bums. But I will not be distracted… I will vote a straight Democratic ballot.
More people need to be like RR
People need to realize…this is about getting rid of the goopers and what they represent -lies, hypocrisy and selfish behavior that wants to punish the poor but are perfectly happy to accept hand-outs for themselves
IMPOTUS is the best spokesman they have ever had (and also the worst personification)
President Trump is livid at the betrayal and stunning allegations in Bob Woodward’s forthcoming “Fear,” but limited in his ability to fight back because most of the interviews were caught on hundreds of hours of tape, officials tell Jonathan Swan and me.
The book, out Tuesday (9/11) from Simon & Schuster, re-creates — verbatim — page after page of private conversations with him.
The 420-page portrait is all the more damaging because many of the scenes concern foreign policy and national security — truly heavy stuff.
In one emblematic passage, Woodward writes: “The operations of the Oval Office and White House were less the Art of the Deal and more often the Unraveling of the Deal. The unraveling was often right before your eyes, a Trump rally on continuous loop. There was no way not to look.”
After the Washington Post posted excerpts yesterday, administration officials did little to deny specific revelations in the book, and instead spent the day speculating about Woodward’s likely sources.
One reason that few passages are being disputed: Woodward based the book on hundreds of hours of tapes of his interviews with current and former West Wing aides and other top administration officials.
Nevertheless, several top officials issued denials:
White House chief of staff John Kelly: “The idea I ever called the President an idiot is not true, in fact it’s exactly the opposite.”
Defense Secretary James Mattis: “The contemptuous words about the President attributed to me in Woodward’s book were never uttered by me or in my presence.”
Some choice cuts, reflecting the way administration officials and alumni depicted Trump to Woodward:
Trump to James Clapper, then Director of National Intelligence, who briefed him at Trump Tower during the transition on the intelligence community’s findings that Putin had interfered in the election: “l don’t believe in human sources … These are people who have sold their souls and sold out their country … I don’t trust human intelligence and these spies.”
Defense Secretary James Mattis, to laughter, a month after Trump took office: “Secretaries of Defense don’t always get to choose the president they work for.”
Trump to Tom Bossert, the president’s adviser for homeland security, cyber security and counterterrorism, who asked Trump if he had a minute: “I want to watch the Masters. … You and your cyber … are going to get me in a war — with all your cyber shit.”
“Trump was givena Reader’s Digest version of the Hezbollah briefing.”
Stephen Miller to Reince Priebus after Trump had ordered his first chief of staff to get the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “We’re in real trouble. Because if you don’t get the resignation, he’s going to think you’re weak. If you get it, you’re going to be part of a downward-spiral calamity.”
“Trump was editing an upcoming speech with [then-staff secretary Rob] Porter. Scribbling his thoughts in neat, clean penmanship, the president wrote, ‘TRADE IS BAD.'”
Former White House economic adviser Gary Cohn told Trump: “You have a Norman Rockwell view of America.”
“Several times Cohn just asked the president, ‘Why do you have these views [on trade]?’ ‘I just do,’ Trump replied. ‘I’ve had these views for 30 years.’ ‘That doesn’t mean they’re right,’ Cohn said. ‘I had the view for 15 years I could play professional football. It doesn’t mean I was right.'”
The book’s last paragraph: “[I]n the man and his presidency [former Trump lawyer John] Dowd had seen the tragic flaw. In the political back-and-forth, the evasions, the denials, the tweeting, the obscuring, crying ‘Fake News,’ the indignation, Trump had one overriding problem that Dowd knew but could not bring himself to say to the president: ‘You’re a f@#$ing liar.'”
Not sure if this will work but stolen from a friend currently touring the UK, if you aren’t quite awake yet, this should to the trick.
The Braemar Gathering morning parade, with Ballater & District Pipe Band leading members of the Royal Highland Society from The Invercauld Arms Hotel through the village to start the 2018 Gathering. Visit Braemar . VisitCairngorms . VisitAberdeenshire
Posted by Braemar Media on Saturday, September 1, 2018
Let’s see…the opposite of saying the “idea” that he “ever” called Trump an “idiot” would be that Kelly ALWAYS called him one, or, that’s not an idea, but a FACT. Of course he’s gonna CYA, but Kelly has no credibility.
Mr. Mueller will accept written answers from Mr. Trump on questions about whether his campaign conspired with Russia’s election interference
How will they know who wrote the answers? The man seems incapable of a coherent sentence with a vocabulary level above a ten year old.
I think 3 Sticks doesn’t care what IMPOTUS says …..he’s got him
agree KGC, if Mueller does not want or need Trump’s live testimony that’s the worst sign of all for our idiot president.
question for the special counsel: is he a useful one or just plain useless? according to wiki:
In political jargon, a useful idiot is a derogatory term for a person perceived as a propagandist for a cause of whose goals they are not fully aware and who is used cynically by the leaders of the cause. The term was originally used to describe non-Communists regarded as susceptible to Communist propaganda and manipulation. The term has often been attributed to Vladimir Lenin, but this attribution is controversial
and another goper critter scandal
wapo:
RICHMOND — A Richmond Circuit Court judge on Wednesday ordered independent candidate Shaun Brown removed from the ballot in Virginia’s 2nd District congressional race, finding that her qualifying petition was tainted by “forgery” and “out and out fraud.”
Many of those signatures were gathered by staffers working for the incumbent Republican, Scott Taylor, who is seeking a second term. Five current or former staffers for the congressman declined to answer questions in court, pleading the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. A separate criminal probe into the matter is ongoing and a state police investigator attended the civil hearing.
[…]
The Democratic Party had subpoenaed Taylor to appear at the hearing, charging that he wanted to get Brown on the ballot to siphon votes from his Democratic opponent, retired Navy officer Elaine Luria.
But Judge Gregory L. Rupe granted a motion to quash Taylor’s subpoena under state law that shields sitting members of Congress from being compelled to attend civil court proceedings while the U.S. House is in session.
[….]
The question of Taylor’s involvement with the petition drive remained murky at Wednesday’s hearing.
Lawyer Jeffrey Breit, arguing for the Democratic Party, said the affidavits signed by Taylor’s staffers could be presumed, under case law, to signify that they were afraid to incriminate themselves by answering certain questions.
Several of the staffers invoked the Fifth at the prospect of answering whether it was Scott Taylor himself who directed them to mount the signature-gathering effort.
[…continues…]
I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration
I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
Image
President Trump at an event in August at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.CreditCreditTom Brenner for The New York Times
The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.
In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.
Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.
But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.
“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.
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The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.
The result is a two-track presidency.
Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.
Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.
On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.
This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.
The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion).
morotonie, here’s the entire article from today’s ny times cite for the picture you posted:
The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.
In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.
Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.
But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive
rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.
The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.
The result is a two-track presidency.
Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.
Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.
On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.
This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.
The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.
coward
it would mean more if you stood up
So what if you have to leave your job as hand maiden to the worst president ever
kgc, his/her answer from the op ed:
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
They should all quit. Instead they are protecting their personal turf.
Typical gooper behavior me first and biggest!
Can’t wait to hear the tapes confirming both Kelley and Mattis statements. This is not the first time these statements have been reported. And of course there is the Tillotson “Fucking Moron”
These two are on the highway to hell along with Slanders Suckabee.. I think even the devil isn’t interested in the Condom
I y’all, just surfacing from a few days having fun on a boat at a marina. Would have stayed longer, but I do need to show up in the office tomorrow.
There is limited access to communication at the marina I have a boat at. It goes away at low tide as the cell phone tower goes over the horizon which is roughly twice each day. I have not bothered putting in the hardware for television which further reduces my knowledge of the daily stuff outside of my little bubble. WI-FI is non-existent.
That said, I am deep in SFB country. Most noticeable is how many of the SFB/supressedgay 2016 signs and bumper stickers have disappeared. Driving this area in 2016 was to see the most hate and SFB love you can imagine. Only a handful of those remain, and mostly on businesses which are closed.
It is harvest time for the corn. Those who planted early and survived the three week drought did okay. Those who waited and planted a few weeks later have lost the crop, either not growth or stunted ears. Not good because they are not sure if their crop will sell anyhow. Soybeans are another loss leader. With SFB and China going at it, that harvest is going to be on the bottom of the silo, and will stay there.
Do the people “love” SFB? A few still do. But a tiny portion are beginning to realize the guy is nuts, senile, low intelligence, suffering from stuff that might be Alzheimer’s like his family has, dementia, or just plain lost in space.
Let’s hear it for Chesapeake Bay blue crabs and yummy oysters.
Dear anonymous Official who thinks the tax ripoff is a bright spot:
Too little, too late.
Stick it.
Jamie,
It’s like discovery – the lawyers write the answers.
BB, IT!!
patd, re your question, “question for the special counsel: is he a useful one or just plain useless? ” I would put your question for the special counsel slightly differently : “Is he a useful one or just an idiot?
Sturg, well put. When the price of gasoline and increased healthcare premiums (and don’t talk to me about food and anything that has steel and aluminum in it) do not erase the teeny weeny net pay increase some got as a result of the Trillion and a half dollar tax bill, they can legitimately claim that as a marginal bright spot. That is not the case yet.
Huffington Post is calling the Anonymous Official “Deep Gloat”…. BWAHAHAHA!
crackers – If that person’s name comes out, they’re gone (and possibly those he/she has regular contact with)…and then there are fewer folks between Trump and his access to unbridled power.
Bobby does not tweet, nor does he spin.
what he does is convict.
was Mr Anonymous out to get Mueller to cut him some slack?
It’s sounds like Trump has dementia. I wonder if that’s how he’s always behaved or if his rants, etc., are worsening?
I bet he’s ( or she’s )in pretty deep.
BID
These folks aren’t keeping him from doing anything
They didn’t stop him from stealing children so they must be ok with that. This person is not a hero just protecting his tax cut And trying to rehab his image as another gooper coward
my theory (for what little it’s worth) is that mr/ms anonymous wanted his/her words to be read and digested and understood and then regurgitated over and over to underline the serious danger we (globally) are all in before he/she steps out of the shadows….
at which time that person — not the deranged dictator wannabe— will be the story. he/she will be torn to bits and the mad man will still be there doing more harm
unless those words motivate congress to address them appropriately.
New drinking game. Take a shot, make it a double, every time Kavanaugh says hypothetical. Betcha don’t make it until noon able to walk to the can to take a piss … or throw up.
He didn’t want to answer hypotheticals, but why didn’t they question him about his positions that are already public? His positions already known, so hammer the little prick with his own words.
the guardian:
Ayanna Pressley ousts 10-term Massachusetts Democrat in latest primary upset
Insurgent challenger will be state’s first black female member of Congress
In the latest upset during the 2018 Democratic primaries, Ayanna Pressley beat a veteran 10-term Democrat in Massachusetts in a House race being watched nationally as an indicator of the future of the Democratic Party.With Michael Capuano conceding and no Republican opponent on the ballot in November, Pressley will be become the first African American woman to represent Massachusetts on Capitol Hill. The night also marked another victory for insurgent candidates within the Democratic Party, who are demanding a more strident political posture in the era of Trump. In her victory speech, Pressley said: “These times demanded more from our leaders and from our party. These times demanded an approach to governing that was bold, uncompromising and unafraid. It’s not just good enough to see the Democrats back in power but it matters who those Democrats are.”
[…]
Although Pressley gained renewed national attention in the wake of Ocasio-Cortez’s shock win against longtime incumbent Joe Crowley in New York City in June, she is a far more orthodox figure. Long heralded as a rising star in the Democratic Party, Pressley was first elected to the Boston City Council in 2009. The former staffer for Senator John Kerry and Congressman Joe Kennedy has been touted by national progressive groups for years. A former Clinton surrogate, Pressley was awarded a rising star award by the Democratic activist group Emily’s List in 2015.
[….continues…]
ny times:
The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, eased up slightly on his demands to question President Trump in the Russia investigation, a shift that came as the president’s lawyers, who have advised him against sitting for an interview, are fighting his desire to answer investigators’ queries.
Mr. Mueller will accept written answers from Mr. Trump on questions about whether his campaign conspired with Russia’s election interference, Mr. Mueller’s office told the president’s lawyers in a letter, two people briefed on it said on Tuesday.
On another significant aspect of the investigation — whether the president tried to obstruct the inquiry itself — Mr. Mueller and his investigators understood that issues of executive privilege could complicate their pursuit of a presidential interview and did not ask for written responses on that matter, according to the letter, which was sent on Friday.
Mr. Mueller did not say that he was giving up on an interview altogether, including on questions of obstruction of justice. But the tone of the letter and the fact that the special counsel did not ask for written responses on obstruction prompted some Trump allies to conclude that if an interview takes place, its scope will be more limited than Mr. Trump’s legal team initially believed, the people said.
[.continues…]
also in ny times:
The Rev. Al Sharpton sat at a table at the Loews Regency hotel on Park Avenue one morning last week, his shoulders hunched as he prayed with an unlikely dining companion: Michael D. Cohen.
Mr. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, had asked Mr. Sharpton to meet him for breakfast not long after he pleaded guilty in a federal court in Manhattan to an array of charges. Those included a campaign finance violation related to payments that Mr. Cohen made to women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump.
“He seemed to be resolved that he was facing some time,” Mr. Sharpton said of his second meeting with Mr. Cohen in recent months. “He even asked me to pray with him, and we did at the table.”
And so there they were, a Jewish ex-fixer to the Republican president seeking redemption from a Baptist preacher and Democrat at a see-and-be-seen breakfast spot on the East Side of Manhattan.
[….continues…]
“It seems like change is on the way,” Pressley said to raucous applause at her election night party. “Ours was truly a people powered, grassroots campaign. … that dared to do what Massachusetts Democrats aren’t supposed to do.”
and from boston.com
“The decision to challenge him was not an easy one,” she said.
However, Pressley, who was Capuano’s first primary challenger since he took office, argued that leadership wasn’t just about one’s voting record. As she said often on the campaign trail, the Chicago native repeated Tuesday night that “the people closest to the pain should be closest to the power.” Pressley called for an “equity agenda” centering around public health, reducing violence, transportation, housing, and advocacy for women. She also called for “Medicare-for-all” health insurance and the defunding of ICE — the latter of which she said was “irrevocably broken agency” and was one of the biggest disagreements in the campaign.
On Tuesday night, Pressley said that the conditions that made the 7th District — the state’s only majority nonwhite district, which runs from Milton through most of Boston and up to Chelsea, Everett, Randolph, Somerville, and part of Cambridge — one of the most unequal in the country were “cemented through policies long before [Trump] ever descended the escalator at Trump Tower.”
“Some of those policies were put in place with Democrats in the White House and in control of our Congress,” she said. “Policies that have become so engrained in our daily lives as to almost convince ourselves that there wasn’t anything we could do about it.”
“But as we now know, change can’t wait,” she added, calling Tuesday “but just the first step.”
And the district itself looks a lot different now than 20 years ago
Yeah… they’re all bums. But I will not be distracted… I will vote a straight Democratic ballot.
More people need to be like RR
People need to realize…this is about getting rid of the goopers and what they represent -lies, hypocrisy and selfish behavior that wants to punish the poor but are perfectly happy to accept hand-outs for themselves
IMPOTUS is the best spokesman they have ever had (and also the worst personification)
remember we are the majority
from Axios Mike Allen
President Trump is livid at the betrayal and stunning allegations in Bob Woodward’s forthcoming “Fear,” but limited in his ability to fight back because most of the interviews were caught on hundreds of hours of tape, officials tell Jonathan Swan and me.
After the Washington Post posted excerpts yesterday, administration officials did little to deny specific revelations in the book, and instead spent the day speculating about Woodward’s likely sources.
Nevertheless, several top officials issued denials:
Some choice cuts, reflecting the way administration officials and alumni depicted Trump to Woodward:
“Trump was editing an upcoming speech with [then-staff secretary Rob] Porter. Scribbling his thoughts in neat, clean penmanship, the president wrote, ‘TRADE IS BAD.'”
The book’s last paragraph: “[I]n the man and his presidency [former Trump lawyer John] Dowd had seen the tragic flaw. In the political back-and-forth, the evasions, the denials, the tweeting, the obscuring, crying ‘Fake News,’ the indignation, Trump had one overriding problem that Dowd knew but could not bring himself to say to the president: ‘You’re a f@#$ing liar.'”
Not sure if this will work but stolen from a friend currently touring the UK, if you aren’t quite awake yet, this should to the trick.
Let’s see…the opposite of saying the “idea” that he “ever” called Trump an “idiot” would be that Kelly ALWAYS called him one, or, that’s not an idea, but a FACT. Of course he’s gonna CYA, but Kelly has no credibility.
How will they know who wrote the answers? The man seems incapable of a coherent sentence with a vocabulary level above a ten year old.
I think 3 Sticks doesn’t care what IMPOTUS says …..he’s got him
agree KGC, if Mueller does not want or need Trump’s live testimony that’s the worst sign of all for our idiot president.
question for the special counsel: is he a useful one or just plain useless? according to wiki:
In political jargon, a useful idiot is a derogatory term for a person perceived as a propagandist for a cause of whose goals they are not fully aware and who is used cynically by the leaders of the cause. The term was originally used to describe non-Communists regarded as susceptible to Communist propaganda and manipulation. The term has often been attributed to Vladimir Lenin, but this attribution is controversial
and another goper critter scandal
wapo:
RICHMOND — A Richmond Circuit Court judge on Wednesday ordered independent candidate Shaun Brown removed from the ballot in Virginia’s 2nd District congressional race, finding that her qualifying petition was tainted by “forgery” and “out and out fraud.”
Many of those signatures were gathered by staffers working for the incumbent Republican, Scott Taylor, who is seeking a second term. Five current or former staffers for the congressman declined to answer questions in court, pleading the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. A separate criminal probe into the matter is ongoing and a state police investigator attended the civil hearing.
[…]
The Democratic Party had subpoenaed Taylor to appear at the hearing, charging that he wanted to get Brown on the ballot to siphon votes from his Democratic opponent, retired Navy officer Elaine Luria.
But Judge Gregory L. Rupe granted a motion to quash Taylor’s subpoena under state law that shields sitting members of Congress from being compelled to attend civil court proceedings while the U.S. House is in session.
[….]
The question of Taylor’s involvement with the petition drive remained murky at Wednesday’s hearing.
Lawyer Jeffrey Breit, arguing for the Democratic Party, said the affidavits signed by Taylor’s staffers could be presumed, under case law, to signify that they were afraid to incriminate themselves by answering certain questions.
Several of the staffers invoked the Fifth at the prospect of answering whether it was Scott Taylor himself who directed them to mount the signature-gathering effort.
[…continues…]
Opinion
I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration
I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
Image
President Trump at an event in August at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.CreditCreditTom Brenner for The New York Times
The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.
In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.
Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.
But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.
“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.
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The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.
The result is a two-track presidency.
Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.
Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.
On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.
This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.
The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion).
morotonie, here’s the entire article from today’s ny times cite for the picture you posted:
The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.
In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.
Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.
But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive
rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.
The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.
The result is a two-track presidency.
Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.
Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.
On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.
This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.
The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.
coward
it would mean more if you stood up
So what if you have to leave your job as hand maiden to the worst president ever
kgc, his/her answer from the op ed:
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
They should all quit. Instead they are protecting their personal turf.
Typical gooper behavior me first and biggest!
Can’t wait to hear the tapes confirming both Kelley and Mattis statements. This is not the first time these statements have been reported. And of course there is the Tillotson “Fucking Moron”
These two are on the highway to hell along with Slanders Suckabee.. I think even the devil isn’t interested in the Condom
I y’all, just surfacing from a few days having fun on a boat at a marina. Would have stayed longer, but I do need to show up in the office tomorrow.
There is limited access to communication at the marina I have a boat at. It goes away at low tide as the cell phone tower goes over the horizon which is roughly twice each day. I have not bothered putting in the hardware for television which further reduces my knowledge of the daily stuff outside of my little bubble. WI-FI is non-existent.
That said, I am deep in SFB country. Most noticeable is how many of the SFB/supressedgay 2016 signs and bumper stickers have disappeared. Driving this area in 2016 was to see the most hate and SFB love you can imagine. Only a handful of those remain, and mostly on businesses which are closed.
It is harvest time for the corn. Those who planted early and survived the three week drought did okay. Those who waited and planted a few weeks later have lost the crop, either not growth or stunted ears. Not good because they are not sure if their crop will sell anyhow. Soybeans are another loss leader. With SFB and China going at it, that harvest is going to be on the bottom of the silo, and will stay there.
Do the people “love” SFB? A few still do. But a tiny portion are beginning to realize the guy is nuts, senile, low intelligence, suffering from stuff that might be Alzheimer’s like his family has, dementia, or just plain lost in space.
Let’s hear it for Chesapeake Bay blue crabs and yummy oysters.
Dear anonymous Official who thinks the tax ripoff is a bright spot:
Too little, too late.
Stick it.
Jamie,
It’s like discovery – the lawyers write the answers.
BB, IT!!
patd, re your question, “question for the special counsel: is he a useful one or just plain useless? ” I would put your question for the special counsel slightly differently : “Is he a useful one or just an idiot?
Sturg, well put. When the price of gasoline and increased healthcare premiums (and don’t talk to me about food and anything that has steel and aluminum in it) do not erase the teeny weeny net pay increase some got as a result of the Trillion and a half dollar tax bill, they can legitimately claim that as a marginal bright spot. That is not the case yet.
Huffington Post is calling the Anonymous Official “Deep Gloat”…. BWAHAHAHA!
crackers – If that person’s name comes out, they’re gone (and possibly those he/she has regular contact with)…and then there are fewer folks between Trump and his access to unbridled power.
Bobby does not tweet, nor does he spin.
what he does is convict.
was Mr Anonymous out to get Mueller to cut him some slack?
It’s sounds like Trump has dementia. I wonder if that’s how he’s always behaved or if his rants, etc., are worsening?
I bet he’s ( or she’s )in pretty deep.
BID
These folks aren’t keeping him from doing anything
They didn’t stop him from stealing children so they must be ok with that. This person is not a hero just protecting his tax cut And trying to rehab his image as another gooper coward
my theory (for what little it’s worth) is that mr/ms anonymous wanted his/her words to be read and digested and understood and then regurgitated over and over to underline the serious danger we (globally) are all in before he/she steps out of the shadows….
at which time that person — not the deranged dictator wannabe— will be the story. he/she will be torn to bits and the mad man will still be there doing more harm
unless those words motivate congress to address them appropriately.
New drinking game. Take a shot, make it a double, every time Kavanaugh says hypothetical. Betcha don’t make it until noon able to walk to the can to take a piss … or throw up.
He didn’t want to answer hypotheticals, but why didn’t they question him about his positions that are already public? His positions already known, so hammer the little prick with his own words.
NEW THREAD