TLD:

 

Fred99:

 

The "stable genius" wins dog of the show:

 

 

That's a good read, but shouldn't we expect America to be better than the likes of Turkey, Russia, Myanmar, China and Egypt?  It's vaguely possible that UN sanctions against North Korea has driven it to apparently scale back its rhetoric, so why haven't equally stringent sanctions been imposed on Myanmar for its blatant ethnic cleansing?  I somehow can't imagine sanctions working with China

 

Yes - I agree - and there's no doubt that press freedom is much greater in the US than the examples given.

This however in context that on balance, I expect (or hope) you'd take "facts" expressed by a state controlled media site with a large grain of salt, possibly "fact-checking" what's being stated by reviewing news on the subject from more free sources - many of those from the US.  Those institutions in the US are under constant attack by the POTUS, and a very large number of people agree with him. This isn't based on accusations of "bias" - but that the indisputable core facts being presented are not the truth.

I suspect that if DPRK is "scaling back" anti-US rhetoric, it'll be back to normal business after the winter olympics.  I do love the way pro-Trump movement is trying to claim credit for resumption of dialogue - when from what I can see, DPRK called all the shots including separating resolving of "the" issue (nukes) as a prerequisite for resumption of talks.  An afterthought to that, perhaps sporting sanctions are as (or more) effective in forcing change in rogue regimes, than economic sanctions.

Rikkitic:

 

And Bannon is out of here!

 

Perhaps he wants to spend more time with family.

The testimony of Fusion GPS (originators of the Steele dossier) to the Senate Judiciary Committee was released today. As always, Seth Abramson is doing an excellent job dissecting it by cutting through the political BS and concentrating on the actual legal ramifications.   

 

(THREAD) BREAKING: In an extraordinary move, Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) has *unilaterally* released the transcript of Fusion GPS's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

What follows is a live-read of the transcript by a former criminal defense attorney. Hope you'll share. pic.twitter.com/6R40eHmYqM

 

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 9, 2018

4 scary numbers for Republicans in 2018

 

• 40:  That's the average - AVERAGE - seat loss for the president's party in midterm election since 1962 when the president's approval rating is under 50%.
             Trump's approval rating in the Gallup weekly tracking poll released Monday afternoon? 37%.
  
  
• 12:  That's the average Democratic lead in the generic congressional ballot as of late December. ("If the election were today, would you vote for a Republican or a Democrat to represent you?")
  
  
• 3:    There have only been three midterm elections -- 1934, 1998 and 2002 -- in the last century where the president's party didn't lose House seats.
  
  
• 0:    Exactly none of the past five presidents have seen their job approval numbers go up in the year before their first midterm election.

dclegg:

 

As always, Seth Abramson is doing an excellent job dissecting it by cutting through the political BS and concentrating on the actual legal ramifications.   

tl;dr summary of the potentially most explosive aspect below. I predict 2018 will be the year that US democracy either rises above this or flickers out.

 

171/ So, to sum up where we are: everything the GOP said about the Dossier post-August 2017—to American voters—was a lie. They knew full well the Dossier had *corroborated* what a whistleblower in the Trump campaign told the FBI *before* July of 2016. This is goddamned explosive.

 

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 10, 2018

 

172/ House and Senate GOP allies of Trump are revealed, today, as being damn near complicit in a cover-up of epic proportions. Grassley trying to block the release of this transcript is him trying to keep Americans from finding out that the Dossier *wasn't* the FBI's main source.

 

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 10, 2018

 

173/ But *far more important* than the GOP smearing the dossier when they knew it had corroborated information the FBI already had is that the GOP was trying to *hide the fact that the FBI had a whistleblower on Trump-Russia ties within the Trump campaign*. Process that a second.

 

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 10, 2018

 

174/ What this means is the GOP *knew* the Trump-Russia story was legitimate—as it came from a whistleblower in *Trump's own campaign*—in August 2017. That's over four months ago. They've been lying this whole time. This is an *unspeakable* act of disloyalty to the United States.

 

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 10, 2018

 

175/ This means every time Trump said the Russia story was a "hoax" that originated with the *Democrats* there were many Republicans in Congress who knew it was a lie. And they let him say it. They let him lie, and mislead, and thereby aid the Russian effort to destroy our unity.

 

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 10, 2018

(Apologies for the double posting in the embedded tweets)

dclegg:

 

tl;dr summary of the potentially most explosive aspect below. I predict 2018 will be the year that US democracy either rises above this or flickers out.

 

I'm guessing they don't "rise above" at this stage. They've gone too far already to "rise above". 

So will the rats go down with the sinking ship, or should we have bets on how wet their feet get before they bail?

 

Wow! I didn't know they did this sorta thing in America. You know, collect effluent from the milking sheds and spray it over the paddocks?

Donald Trump Announces Successful Delivery of Fictional Call of Duty Fighter Jet

Yesterday, President Donald Trump announced a delivery of F-52 fighter jets to Norway as a gesture to bolster defense in Northern Europe.

 

There’s only one problem: the F-52 is a fictional plane from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

 

President Trump made the announcement on Wednesday during a conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, claiming that the United States started delivering the fictional aircraft, along with the very real Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, to Norway last November.

 

“In November we started delivering the first F-52s and F-35 fighter jets,” Trump said. “We have a total of 52 and they’ve delivered a number of them already a little ahead of schedule.”

 

When contacted by the Washington Post, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not return comment on the matter or confirm whether Trump is secretly the world’s most powerful Call of Duty fan.