May 21, 2017

UPDATED: Rant: Really? Trump is exhausted?

UPDATE: I was so annoyed by Agent Orange that I forgot to mention that this rant is not about me as the millions of Americans who WORK themselves into exhaustion before we even get home to take care of our responsibilities as parents, children, spouses and partners.

My wife is out of the country handling some business for her family. I am working a tough new job with more demands than hours in the day. I have an overactive kid who has school, STEM Club, basketball and violin. I keep my job up. I keep his schedule up. I take him to school and pick him up from the babysitter (no nannies for us). I make dinner, help him with his homework, make/pack lunch, get him to bed, do additional office work, clean and start all over again. Meanwhile, Orange Julius walks his bloated carcass up the stairs into Air Force One, rolls into hotel rooms, eats dinners, does a sword dance and gives a 30-minute speech.....and he's exhausted.

May 21, 2017

Ivanka Trump praises Saudi Arabia's progress on women's rights

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Ivanka Trump advocated for the greater inclusion of women in the Saudi Arabian workforce on Sunday as the World Bank announced that Arab countries had contributed $100 million toward a global women's initiative she has championed.

“Saudi Arabia’s progress, especially in recent years, is very encouraging but there’s still a lot of work to be done and freedoms and opportunities to continue to fight for," Trump said at a women's roundtable in Riyadh as her father, President Trump, met separately with Arab leaders.

“In every country around the world women and girls continue to face unique systematic, institutional, cultural barriers, which hinder us from fully engaging in and achieving true parity of opportunity within our communities," she said. "Each of you know this to be true. And yet the stories of Saudi women, such as yourselves, catalyzing change, inspire me to believe in the possibility of global women’s empowerment.”

Women in Saudi Arabia are prohibited from driving or travelling alone, and society imposes strict segregation of the sexes in public places. Reporters were escorted out of the event before those issues could come up.

But there have also been reforms, including curbs on the enforcement power of religious police and the king's grant of voting rights in local elections.


https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/05/21/ivanka-trump-praises-saudi-arabias-progress-womens-rights/101978218/

May 21, 2017

Travis - All I Want To Do Is Rock

May 21, 2017

Flogging Molly - The Worst Day Since Yesterday (VIDEO)

PERSONAL NOTE: I watched Flogging Molly blow the doors off Detroit's Saint Andrews Hall when they opened for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. In fact, they made the 'tones look so weak by comparison that I went home early.

May 21, 2017

Roger Stone now taking a shot at Kushner.

https://twitter.com/RogerJStoneJr/status/865963547314073601

May 21, 2017

FBI Director Candidate Joe Lieberman connected to Trump Benghazi attack ringleader.

As President Donald Trump escaped Washington on Friday for his first overseas trip, the White House announced that he wasn't yet ready to reveal his pick to replace James Comey, the FBI director he brazenly fired the previous week. But one name on his list appeared to be ahead of the others: former Sen. Joe Lieberman, the onetime Democrat who was Vice President Al Gore's running mate in the 2000 presidential campaign.

Lieberman may not be an odd choice for Trump. He finished up his Senate career as an independent. [b]Perhaps more important, since leaving the Senate in 2013, Lieberman has been a senior counsel at the Kasowitz Benson Torres law firm, which has defended Trump in numerous disputes over the years. But as a member of that law firm, Lieberman also had the unusual job of promoting and representing a Libyan businessman and politician who tried to court an alleged terrorist accused of leading the 2012 attack on the Benghazi compound that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

In Lieberman's final days as a senator, a reporter asked him if he would become a lobbyist. "No, I'm not going to do that," he replied. But in November 2013, as Politico reported at the time, his law firm signed up as a foreign agent for Basit Igtet, a Libyan businessman and activist who was considering running for prime minister in Libya. Igtet made his money through assorted ventures in Switzerland, where his family had sought exile. He married Sara Bronfman, the daughter of Edgar Bronfman, who had been the billionaire chairman of Seagram and the president of the World Jewish Congress. The foreign agent registration form filed at the Justice Department noted that Lieberman would be part of the team handling this $100,000 project that would provide "government relations services" to Igtet.


http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/joe-lieberman-benghazi-trump-fbi

May 21, 2017

Detroit's DIY Cure for Urban Blight

The sheer scale of abandonment in Detroit is unmatched in America. A city of 1.8 million people in 1950, Detroit’s population has plummeted by almost two-thirds. A once-teeming city that defined America’s middle class aspirations has become a surreal patchwork of still-dense neighborhoods separated by nearly empty expanses of land. In 2014, the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force, appointed by President Obama, counted 40,000 blighted houses in the city and 38,000 more homes heading in that direction. They’ve wounded property values, leading to a loss of tax dollars for a city struggling to pay its bills and social deterioration that discouraged all but the bravest from moving in. The national surge of interest in urban living has reached only a few Detroit neighborhoods. Mortgages are rare in the city. Dilapidated houses in tougher neighborhoods sell—for cash—for as little as $500 or $1,000.

Duggan was elected mayor in November 2013 on a 10-point platform for rebuilding the city’s neighborhoods after the largest municipal bankruptcy ever filed in the U.S. “If we act now,” his platform read, “we still have time to save the large stretches of this city that are still filled with residents who want to stay in their homes.” He wanted to bring people back into the city, increase the tax rolls and save Detroit, which has the highest concentration of poverty of any large city in America. One of the keys to his plan was to radically enlarge the city’s tiny land bank program.

Land banks are the Swiss Army knives of urban reclamation efforts, wielding an array of powers to make abandoned, tax-foreclosed properties useful again. They demolish unwanted houses, sell houses to new owners who’ll fix them up, sell vacant lots, and assemble land for future development. They’re an alternative to unloading tax-foreclosed land in highest-bidder auctions, which often attract irresponsible speculation.

By most measures, Duggan’s plan for the land bank has worked. Almost four years later, Detroit’s land bank has grown into the largest in the country, about seven times bigger than the next largest. It now has 135 employees and owns 98,000 parcels, covering some 10 percent of the city. It has demolished more than 8,800 houses and sold 1,500 of the newly vacant lots to neighbors. It’s also sold a couple of thousand more houses to people like Clement Wright and 130 vacant lots for economic development projects. It has launched an innovative effort to sue owners who have left houses vacant and neglected.


http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/18/how-detroit-is-beating-its-blight-215160

May 21, 2017

Melania spends her days watching cable news and alerting her husband to negative stories.

Melania Trump’s spent her first few months as first lady in New York, only rarely appearing in Washington or speaking at events. Yet friends and aides say she’s keeping a close watch from her gilded apartment in Trump Tower on how her husband is portrayed in the press—and that she’s growing increasingly worried about the anonymous sniping from West Wing staff.

Like President Donald Trump, these people said, Melania Trump is an avid consumer of cable news, and often tracks the news of the day and will alert her husband to stories she thinks make him look bad.

She has raised concerns that some on his communications and press team aren’t doing enough to defend him, according aides and sources close to the president. She’s been especially troubled by background quotes in which West Wing aides criticize the president, and she’s called the president to discuss it.

Her quiet role as private watchdog is at odds with her public persona. Melania Trump has been seen as generally aloof and removed from her husband's political operation since he announced his campaign in 2015, but as his administration has been consumed by infighting and outside investigations, she's grown increasingly vocal about the perceived shortcomings of staff surrounding the president.


http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/20/melania-trump-white-house-leaks-media-238620

May 21, 2017

Donald Trump Sword Dance in Saudi Arabia (VIDEO)

May 21, 2017

Ex-FBI official withdraws name from consideration to replace Comey: report

Former FBI official Richard McFeely has reportedly withdrawn his name from consideration to replace James Comey as FBI director, according to a report by a Washington ABC affiliate.

Sources told WJLA that McFeely withdrew his name from President Trump's FBI director shortlist. Three potential candidate left include Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), former Republican Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating and acting FBI chief Andrew McCabe.

Trump has been searching for a replacement director since he dropped the bombshell news last week that he had fired Comey.
The president pledged last week that he would move quickly to name a new FBI director, suggesting he would name a new bureau chief before leaving for his first foreign trip.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn was on Trump's list, but said in a statement that the upper chamber is his top priority. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said Monday that he is “not the right person” to replace Comey, despite Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the head of the Justice Department, speaking with him about running the agency.


http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/334422-ex-fbi-official-withdraws-name-from-consideration-to-replace