Sunday, January 27, 2019

Trump Uses Texas Election Investigation to Falsely Claim 58,000 People Voted Illegally - Todd Niekirk


Trump Tweeted this morning that, “58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas.” This is categorically FALSE!

Texas found that over 22 years, 58,000 who eventually voted MAY not have been, at some time in their lives, citizens. These people may have become citizens or their data was incomplete.

The full article is available here

Monday, January 21, 2019

Context Of MLK's Seminal "Letters From Birmingham Jail" - Broderick Greer

The white Alabama clergymen who wrote the letter, to which MLK was responding when he penned Letters from Birmingham, urged black protesters to "observe the principles of law order."

MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail was written in response to "A Call for Unity", an open letter published by white Alabama clergymen, who called the civil rights efforts of 1963 "unwise and untimely."

The clergy called on black protesters to leave the streets and take their struggle to the courts (as if they couldn't and weren't doing both).   They urged black protesters to "observe the principles of law order."

This should serve as a reminder that "calls for unity" and appeals for respectability can silence calls for reparations, justice, and actual peace.

History never occurs in a vacuum. Dig a bit and you’ll see.

The full article is available here

Friday, January 18, 2019

President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project

“President Trump personally directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in order to obscure his involvement.

Trump supported a plan to visit Russia during the presidential campaign in order to personally meet President Vladimir Putin and jumpstart the tower negotiations.

‘Make it happen,’ two law enforcement sources say Trump told Cohen.”

The full article is available here

Thursday, January 17, 2019

Michael Cohen Doesn't Dispute Report He Paid Liberty University Official's Tech Firm To Rig Polls For Trump - Washington Post

“Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, did not dispute a new Wall Street Journal report that he hired a technology company - run by the chief information officer at Jerry Falwell Jr’s Liberty University - to help rig online polls in his boss’s favor ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Cohen said that he carried out these actions at Trump’s direction.”

The full article is available here

Sunday, January 13, 2019

Trump Has Concealed Details Of Face-to-face Encounters With Putin - Washington Post

“Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to hide details of talks with Putin, such as confiscating the interpreter’s notes, U.S. officials say.”

That doesn't like the way that an innocent person would act.

The full article is available here

Saturday, January 12, 2019

FBI Investigated Possibility That Donald Trump Is A Russian Agent - Think Progress

The concern by the FBI coalesced around two equally jarring possibilities: (1) that Donald Trump was acting on behalf of Russia, either willingly or as a result of blackmail ... and that (2) Trump posed a national security risk to the United States by trying to end the agency’s probe into Russian interference.

That there was enough suspicion for the FBI to launch a counterintelligence operation on a sitting US president ... is as astonishing as it is unsettling.

The full article is available here

Thursday, January 10, 2019

Libertarian Cato Institute = "Why Trump's Wall Won't Work"


"For those who are not nationalists, the wall is a problem. The direct harms are easy to document: the spending, the taxes, the eminent domain abuse, and the decrease in immigrants’ freedom of movement.

In one sense, the wall represents the Trump administration’s worst instincts and desires.

But wall is also much more than just a symbol. It will harm the lives of thousands of border residents and immigrants while wasting billions of tax dollars.”

The full article is available here





Tuesday, January 8, 2019

No, Mexico Isn't Paying For Trump Wall Thanks To Trade Deal - Politifact

Trump claimed, "Mexico is paying for the Wall through the new USMCA Trade Deal."

USMCA is the name for the renegotiated NAFTA. USMCA is not in effect yet. Even then, there is no provision in the free trade agreement about Mexico directly paying for the wall.

The new USMCA deal does not add new tariffs on goods coming from Mexico to the United States, an expert told us. It’s unclear how the deal will impact U.S. businesses revenues. If U.S. tax revenue increases in response to increased revenues of U.S. firms, then Congress would still have to allocate that money for the wall. That’s questionable.

The full article is available here

Friday, January 4, 2019

Trump's Cracked Afghan History - Wall Street Journal

“Mr. Trump ridiculed other nations’ commitment of troops to fight alongside America’s in Afghanistan. He said, ‘They tell me a hundred times, Oh, we sent you soldiers. We sent you soldiers.’

This mockery is a slander against every ally that has supported the U.S. effort in Afghanistan with troops who fought and often died. The United Kingdom has had more than 450 killed fighting in Afghanistan.

As reprehensible was Mr. Trump’s utterly false narrative of the Soviet Union’s involvement there in the 1980s. He said: ‘The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there.’

Right to be there? We cannot recall a more absurd misstatement of history by an American President. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with three divisions in December 1979 to prop up a fellow communist government.”

The full article is available here

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

The Steele Dossier: A Raw Intelligence Document That Has Held Up Over Time - Lawfare

"As a raw intelligence document, the Steele dossier holds up well over time. While much that is in it remains uncorroborated, none of it, to our knowledge, has been disproven.

The Mueller investigation has produced public records that confirm pieces of the dossier. And even where the details are not exact, the general thrust of Steele’s reporting seems credible in light of what we now know about extensive contacts between numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russian government officials."

The full article is available here