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Back in July I wrote this post fearing something like November 8th would happen, but assuming it wouldn’t. I’ve been returning to the argument in my head basically every day for the last three weeks.
At the tail end of a just published Washington Post story on Jared Kushner (seemingly Donald Trump’s most trusted adviser) we learn that as the Bridgegate scandal was blowing up back in December 2013, Kushner emailed David Wildstein to tell him that he thought the bridge closure was a “badass” move.
Wildstein, the mastermind of the bridge shutdown, had actually worked for Kushner as the anonymous blogger behind PolitickerNJ.com. He later agreed to plead guilty to charges stemming from the bridgegate scandal and testify against his fellow conspirators.
From the Post …
It would be entirely normal for someone like Mitt Romney, who had excoriated the incoming president in such blistering and personal terms, to be passed over when it came to putting together a new administration. Some criticisms and breaches are just too hard to get past. But the current drama over Mitt Romney’s possible nomination to be Secretary of State points to something quite different: the ritual humiliation of opponents, critics and all who have resisted that Trump yoke that is central to the Trump world. We saw it repeatedly during the campaign and it continues into the transition.
I am not going to try to assess Fidel Castro’s historical significance. I’ll leave that to people who know the history of Latin America better than I do. But I want to make one historical and a personal comment.
The New York Times subheads its decent story about Castro, “The Man Who Brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere.” That’s entirely untrue. Well before Castro and Che Guevara stepped on the world stage, the U.S. was involved in overthrowing governments in Latin America on the grounds that they were too close to “communism.”
We’ve got another. A long-stalled Trump building project in Georgia (the country) is back on track and ready to go just days after Donald Trump’s election. That’s major new nugget in a WaPo round up of how Trump’s election less than three weeks ago is already turbocharging Trump building projects around the globe.
As you emerge from your food comas I wanted to remind you that we are getting close to hitting our end of the year goal for expanding our membership numbers and thus our reporting ambitions for 2017. We are currently at 17,776 members; our goal is 20,000. We only have about five weeks left but we signed up 2112 new members so far in November. So it’s doable, if still a very steep climb.
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Thank You. We hope you enjoy the rest of your holiday.
This morning it was announced that KT McFarland, a Fox News national security analyst [Ed. note: Fox News terminated McFarland’s contract in the wake of the appointment] and Reagan administration official will serve as Donald Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor. Well, she also tried to run against Hillary Clinton when Clinton ran for reelection to the Senate in 2006. She lost the GOP primary to John Spencer. But along the way she … well, I don’t quite know what to call it. But in addition to a seemingly lifelong penchant for dubious self-promotion and resume inflation McFarland claimed that Clinton was so worried about her candidacy that she sent secret helicopters to spy on her house in the Hamptons and also cased her apartment Manhattan. “Hillary Clinton is really worried about me, and is so worried, in fact, that she had helicopters flying over my house in Southampton today taking pictures.”
In the first days after President-Elect Trump was elected, a lot of Democrats didn’t even seem to know what was coming down the pike with Paul Ryan’s plan to phase out Medicare and replace it with private insurance and vouchers. But that seems to be changing. Sen Joe Donnelly (D-IN) released this video statement on Monday. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke to former TPMer Greg Sargent at The Washington Post about Medicare. Now Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has released a similar statement. Meanwhile Kellyanne Conway is signaling that Trump is on board with phasing out Medicare.
Meanwhile here are a group of Republican Members of Congress and Senators who appear to be wobbly on the Ryan Phaseout plan. We’re very curious to hear more about their positions and whether they will state clearly whether they’re for or against. Reps. Lance Leonard (NJ), Charlie Dent (PA), Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA), Pat Meehan(PA) and Sens. John Boozman (AR), Mike Rounds (SD), Marco Rubio (FL) and Shelley Moore Capito (WV). We will update you on others soon.
Both Carrier and the Trump transition have confirmed that they are in talks about the fate of the Carrier air conditioner factory in Indianapolis which Carrier has said it plans to relocate to Mexico. This has sounds a lot like the Ford plant in Kentucky where Trump spun a minor but real change in one factory line into his saving a whole factory from being moved to Mexico. The factory was never slated to be moved to Mexico. But here’s the backstory which is important to understand.