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Or, How the Media Continues To Say “No Thank You” to the First Amendment   Yesterday, CNN “broke” a story about the possible blackmailing of our president by a foreign government. It now seems more and more likely that the story just simply wasn’t true. So, how did it become such an explosive story so quickly? Let’s take a trip down memory lane for a moment to help us understand how this might have happened. In October, 2009, CNN cut into their regular programming to report some breaking news. It seemed that a large helium balloon had broken free and was floating above the Colorado countryside.Read More →

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That was the length of the synopsis appended to the intelligence briefing on Russian interference in the 2016 election that was presented to both President Obama and president-elect trump on Friday. It was leaked today that those two pages contained allegations that Russian operatives possess embarrassing and compromising information about president-elect trump’s personal and financial life. It was also revealed in those two pages that trump surrogates routinely met with intermediaries of the Russian government during the 2016 campaign. Information is still coming in, and nothing has yet been verified, but is it unlikely to, at this point, assume that Russia is blackmailing our incomingRead More →

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Throughout history, presidents have always been judged by their words and by their actions, but that is about to change. Enter president-elect donald trump, who should be judged not by what he says or what he does, but by what’s in his heart, according to his consigliere, Kellyanne Conway. In the wake of trump predictably being unable to resist a famous person criticizing him, Conway appeared on CNN to complain, “Why is everything taken at face value? You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this and he’s telling you what was in his heart, you always want to go with what’s comeRead More →

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Before we begin, let’s get some truths out of the way. You are not going to have a discussion with a right-wing troll because they are not there to have a discussion. They are there for one reason only: to disrupt. Their dishonesty is not a character flaw, it is a deliberate strategy to gaslight you. (Gaslighting is a method people use to “win” an argument by getting you to question your own reality by denying things you both know to be true just for the sake of denying them.) Their outrage is entirely duplicitous. They will pretend to earnestly demand proof of right-wing racism,Read More →

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President-elect donald trump blamed the hacking of DNC computers by Russian operatives on the DNC itself, tweeting “Gross negligence by the Democratic National Committee allowed hacking to take place.The Republican National Committee had strong defense!” On Saturday, trump continued his Putin love-fest, tweeting, “Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing.” He further concluded that only “stupid” people don’t want good relations with Russia. While it is arguable that good relations with all nations is a good thing, those good relations should not be based on us ignoring the bad things those nations do. Meanwhile, in trumpland, where plagiarismRead More →

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Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died February 13, 2016. On March 16, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill Scalia’s vacant seat. At the time, Senate Republicans continued their then-7-year-long strategy of refusing to do their jobs. They decided it was better to sabotage the Supreme Court for 11 months and place their hopes in winning the White House and the ability to pick a right-wing justice to fill Scalia’s vacancy. Keep in mind this was after numerous Republican senators had publicly stated that Merrick Garland was probably the most qualified candidate for the Supreme Court. With donald trump’s electoral victory, Senate Republicans celebrated theirRead More →

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The GOP Congress voted to reverse their earlier secret vote to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) after being surprised that the public was incredibly unhappy with the idea that the political party that now controls all three branches of government seemed to want to do away with any ethical oversight, especially in light of the many ethical questions being raised regarding the incoming president. Many people are crediting the president-elect for shaming Republican lawmakers into rejecting their desire to eliminate ethical review, but we should not be so quick to give the president-elect credit for the decision. Here is what president-elect trump had to sayRead More →

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It all began with an innocent-enough tweet on Thursday, December 22. “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes [sic]” It continued with Kellyanne Conway appearing on Rachel Maddow’s show Thursday evening to tell us all that president-elect trump didn’t mean that he wanted to increase the number of nuclear weapons, but he didn’t not want to increase them, either. Then, in typical trump fashion, he spent the next morning making his apologist look like a fool (calling Mr. Gingrich?) by telling Mika Brzezinski “Let it be an arms race”Read More →

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“You’re not a wartime consigliere.” These famous words were spoken in The Godfather: Part II to Tom Hagen by Michael Corleone when Michael decides that Tom his not equipped to counsel him as the family prepares for war. Today, president-elect donald trump rewarded his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway by naming her his wartime consigliere counsel to the president. It leaves one wondering if Kellyanne is a wartime consigliere. Meanwhile, in news that should concern us all… Here’s what our incoming president tweeted today: “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regardingRead More →