23 days since the National Day of Patriotic Devotion
(Morning Edition)
“This weekend, the president hosts the prime minister of Japan at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort. The president says he will pay the prime minister’s hotel bill to avoid profiting from the Japanese prime minister’s visit. But Kathleen Clark of Washington University in St. Louis says that by using his own resort, the president still profits. “Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago establishment is a commercial establishment, and he has a financial interest in promoting that business. [This is] free publicity … this is just yet another example that we don’t know whether he was motivated by his own financial interest or his concern about the American public.” National Public Radio, 10 February 2017
“The two world leaders and their wives headed straight to Mar-a-Lago, where they enjoyed a late dinner at the crowded patio restaurant. Joining them under a white-and-yellow striped canopy were Robert Kraft, the owner of the Super Bowl-winning New England Patriots, and several interpreters. Paying members and their guests took in the scene and mingled with Trump and Abe into the night.
Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said Trump and Abe don’t need to meet at Trump’s commercial property, where the membership fee recently was doubled to $200,000. “Hosting a foreign leader at the president’s business resort creates impossible sets of conflicts,” Weissman said. “Fine, you want to go to a resort in Florida? Don’t go to one Trump’s family owns.” The Associated Press (via Global News), 11 February 2017
“On Saturday, as Trump and Abe spoke about North Korea, a wedding reception was in full swing in a building less than 100 yards away connected by a walkway and canopy.” The Washington Post, 12 February 2017
“On Wednesday, a Tarrant County, Tex., jury convicted 37-year-old Rosa Maria Ortega on two felony charges of illegal voting, for casting a ballot as a noncitizen in 2012 and 2014. Ortega is a green-card holder who was brought to the United States from Mexico when she was an infant, her attorney said.
Ortega was a registered Republican who had been voting for more than a decade … On her voter application, Ortega was faced with only two options – to mark herself as a ‘citizen’ or a ‘noncitizen’ … “She doesn’t know. She’s got this [green] card that says ‘resident’ on it, so she doesn’t mark that she’s not a citizen,” [defense attorney Clark] Birdsall said. “She had no ulterior motive beyond what she thought, mistakenly, was her civic duty.”
Birdsall said Ortega has voted in five elections since 2004, each time casting only a single ballot. Ortega voted for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election and then — somewhat ironically — for Ken Paxton for Texas attorney general in a 2014 Republican primary runoff. Paxton would go on to win and, less than three years later, deal the eight-year sentence to Ortega.” The Washington Post, 11 February 2017
“The crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign promise. Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!” Donald Trump, via Twitter, 3:34 am, 12 February 2017
“Republicans have gained power rapidly in the states since the 2008 presidential election, winning 33 governorships and in many instances entrenching themselves in power through legislative redistricting. Riding to office on a wave of discontent with the Obama administration, headstrong governors in states like Wisconsin and Ohio embarked on a ferocious quest to transform their states, repeatedly battling powerful unions and popular backlash. Sidelining Democratic lawmakers and grinding down liberal interest groups, these Republicans may have helped pave the way for Mr. Trump’s victories in a string of traditionally blue Midwestern states last year.
Acting fastest at the moment, though, are four states where Republicans won total control of the government only in November. In addition to Kentucky, Missouri and New Hampshire became one-party states with the election of Republican governors, and Republicans in Iowa snatched away the State Senate, where Democrats had held their last grip on power. In all four states … [t]he Republican agenda … goes well beyond limiting unions. Party leaders in Kentucky, New Hampshire and Missouri have signaled that they plan to expand school-choice and charter school programs and, in some instances, to pursue tort reform and to place new regulations on voting. Beleaguered Democrats see each policy as devised to undercut one of their core political constituencies: teachers, trial lawyers, minority voters or young people.” The New York Times, 12 February 2017
“Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire Mark Cuban warned American CEOs to be careful in their dealings with President Trump in comments published Friday by The Star-Telegram, a newspaper in Fort Worth, Texas. “Do what you think is right,” Cuban said. “Be an American citizen first. In the bigger scheme of things, our country benefits from peaceful activism a lot more than it benefits from one more shoe being sold, or one more basketball ticket being sold, for that matter.” The Week, 12 February 2017
“I know Mark Cuban well. He backed me big-time but I wasn’t interested in taking all of his calls.He’s not smart enough to run for president!” Donald Trump, via Twitter, 5:23 am
This Is Drivel 