Author: patd

“Any single Democrat running today — and I may not be able to enumerate every single one of them — would be far better than the current occupant of the White House. So let’s keep this in mind, and we can conduct ourselves in this way every single day for the next 11 months until voting begins here in Iowa.”

“Ultimately, we all have to get on board with the same person, because it is fundamental to our chances of success…”

As Sedaka sang:
Do do do
Down dooby doo down down
Comma, comma, down dooby doo down down
Comma, comma, down dooby doo down down
Breaking up is hard to do
Don’t take your love away from me
Don’t you leave my heart in misery
If you go then I’ll be blue
‘Cause breaking up is hard to do

The Guardian:
In an attempt to prevent a £9bn price shock to business and consumers while “supporting farmers and producers who have been protected through high EU tariffs”, the government on Wednesday set out its long-awaited pricing regime in the event that the UK crashes out of the EU on 29 March.
Among the consumer goods that will be hit are imports of beef, which will go up by almost 7%, cheddar cheese, up by about £20 per 100kg, and imported “fully finished” cars, which would attract a 10.8% levy, or about £1,500 for an average new car.
Tins of tuna could go up by 24%, imported men’s wool jackets by 12% and men’s, women’s and girls’ underpants made of synthetic fibre by 12%.
The announcements were made in a last-ditch attempt to concentrate the minds of MPs who will be voting later on Wednesday to reject a no-deal Brexit after Theresa May’s 149-vote defeat. [continues]

Last night LastWeekTonight righteously ranted on robocalls. In addition to his usual colorful language and visuals which those of tender years and ears should ignore, John Oliver suggests some solutions to this viscious, vile villainy.

Robocalls are a growing problem. If only we could make the FCC care a little bit more about fixing it.

New York Times:
Paris has the Eiffel Tower. St. Louis is inseparable from the Gateway Arch. Seattle boasts the Space Needle. Washington has its Monument.
Silicon Valley wants its own universally recognized landmark, something that symbolizes its power and reach. If the San Jose City Council gives final approval to the project this month, an international design competition will be announced this spring. The winning entry could be built on a city park as soon as 2021.
Capturing the tech world in one sculpture or structure or art installation will be a difficult job.

Trail Mixers, any bright ideas out there? here’s mine:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/grab-that-record-how-trumps-high-school-transcript-was-hidden/2019/03/05/8815b7b8-3c61-11e9-aaae-69364b2ed137_story.html?utm_term=.548f2e093652

In 2011, days after Donald Trump challenged President Barack Obama to “show his records” to prove that he hadn’t been a “terrible student,” the headmaster at New York Military Academy got an order from his boss: Find Trump’s academic records and help bury them.

The superintendent of the private school “came to me in a panic because he had been accosted by prominent, wealthy alumni of the school who were Mr. Trump’s friends” and who wanted to keep his records secret, recalled Evan Jones, the headmaster at the time. “He said, ‘You need to go grab that record and deliver it to me because I need to deliver it to them.’ ”

The superintendent, Jeffrey Coverdale, confirmed Monday that members of the school’s board of trustees initially wanted him to hand over President Trump’s records to them, but Coverdale said he refused.
“I was given directives, part of which I could follow but part of which I could not, and that was handing them over to the trustees,” he said. “I moved them elsewhere on campus where they could not be released. It’s the only time I ever moved an alumnus’s records.”

The former NYMA officials’ recollections add new details to one of the allegations that Michael Cohen, the president’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, made before Congress last week. Cohen, who told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that part of his job was to attack Trump’s critics and defend his reputation, said that Trump ordered him “to threaten his high school, his colleges and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.”

Trump has frequently boasted that he was a stellar student, but he declined throughout the 2016 campaign to release any of his academic records, telling The Washington Post then, “I’m not letting you look at anything.” [continues]

While reading the above, keep in mind this quote:
The fact of the Watergate cover-up is not nearly as interesting as the step into making the cover-up. And when you understand the step, you understand that Richard Nixon lied. That he was a criminal.

– Bob Woodward