“You have never, ever in your career seen a serious adult who’s wealthy, independent, has been a presidential nominee, suck up at the rate that Mitt Romney is sucking up.”

— Newt Gingrich, quoted by the Daily Beast


https://politicalwire.com/2016/12/01/bonus-quote-day-56/

Former Gen. David Petraeus is reportedly one of President-elect Donald Trump's finalists to be secretary of State.

If he's chosen, he'll have three days to notify his probation officer.
Petraeus was sentenced to two years of probation on April 23, 2015, for giving his mistress classified information.

"The defendant shall not leave the Western District of North Carolina without the permission of the Court or probation officer. Travel allowed for work as approved by U.S. probation office," says a court judgdment, reported first by Brad Heath of USA Today.


http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/308198-petraeus-would-have-to-notify-probation-officer-if-named-secretary-of

It’s very rare to find yourself wanting more of anything on the last day of New York Comic Con. The four-day pop culture bonanza is a sensory overload. Casting announcements are made. Trailers, teasers, sizzle reels, and sneak peeks are shown. Panel discussions are held to examine every detail of every comic book topic imaginable. By the end of the convention, it all bleeds together, and nothing feels fresh.

FX’s upcoming TV show Legion beat the odds and changed that, by offering an early look at what stands to become the most visually evocative and inventive — and perhaps even the best — superhero show on television.

The series is an adaptation of Marvel’s Legion comic book character, a powerful mutant whose powers are intertwined with his dissociative identity/multiple personality disorder and mental illness. The show has been in the works since last October, and I’ve had my reservations about it since its announcement — even with Noah Hawley, the talented writer and producer behind FX’s acclaimed series Fargo, at the helm. My reasoning: It’s too ambitious, because the character of Legion and his origin story are too sprawling to capture on screen.

But after seeing a 30-minute slice of the show’s pilot — in which we meet Legion, a.k.a. David Haller (played by Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens) a man living (perhaps trapped) in a mental institute (or his own mind) — I’ve never been more thrilled to be wrong. So far, what Marvel, FX, and Hawley have accomplished looks awesome.



http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/11/13230420/fx-legion-pilot-screener-spoilers

The CW’s four-night superhero crossover event got a solid lead-off with “Supergirl.”

Monday’s episode of “Supergirl” pulled in a 1.1 rating in adults ages 18 to 49 and 3.51 million viewers. The numbers are up compared to last week and rival the successful numbers earned by the show’s season premiere in October.

CW’s superhero crossovers have been a staple ever since “The Flash” expanded the network’s DC universe established in “Arrow.” This year’s crossover will span all four of the CW’s DC TV shows — “Supergirl,” “The Flash,” “Arrow” and “DC Legends of Tomorrow” — over four nights, pitting the superheroes against alien invaders to save the Earth.

Of course, fans who tuned in hoping to dive right into the “Heroes v. Aliens” event were probably disappointed considering the episode did not get to the crossover part until the its final minutes. “Supergirl” diehards who have spent all season rooting for a specific romantic coupling to progress, on the other hand, were likely pleased with how the episode played out. The crossover event continues tonight with “The Flash.”


http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-cw-dc-crossover-supergirl-ratings-20161129-story.html

If you care about whether the Democratic Party can rebuild itself anytime soon out of the smoking wreckage left behind by the disastrous 2016 elections, something very important is happening a lot sooner than you think.

There are more than three dozen gubernatorial races taking place in the next two years. And they could do a tremendous amount to set the party on the path out of the wilderness in the Age of Donald Trump — with potentially significant national ramifications that could stretch well into the next decade, for instance by having a substantial influence over the redistricting of House seats, which could help determine control of the Lower Chamber in the 2020s.

Of course, the current state of affairs is dire indeed. Not only has the Democratic Party been shut out of Washington, where the GOP controls both the White House and Congress, but the carnage is widespread on the state level, too: Next year, Republicans will control more than 30 governors’ mansions nationwide, and have total control (meaning GOP governors and GOP control of both state legislative chambers) in some 25 states. By contrast, Democrats will have total control in all of five states. The 2018 Senate map looks grim for any prospects of a Dem takeover, and the House is all but certain to remain out of reach in 2018 as well.

But the other part of the story is that, in 2017 and 2018, there will be a total of 38 gubernatorial contests. Here, courtesy of the Democratic Governors Association, is the 2017-2018 gubernatorial map:

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484


https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/11/25/can-the-democratic-party-rise-again-yes-and-heres-the-first-big-thing-to-watch/

The North Carolina state elections board on Monday directed county election boards to dismiss any ballot protests that questioned a voter's eligibility, effectively tossing most protests filed by Republicans.

The ruling is a blow to Gov. Pat McCrory, who has seized on a flurry of ballot protests filed by Republicans to decry widespread voter fraud as he refuses to concede to his Democratic challenger, state Attorney General Roy Cooper. McCrory is currently trailing Cooper by about 9,800 votes, according to the board of elections website, although ten counties still have not certified their vote totals.

In its Monday order, the state elections board distinguished between a protest and a challenge: A protest "must prove the occurrence of an outcome-determinative violation of election law, irregularity, or misconduct" and a challenge contests the eligibility of a voter. Republicans submitted dozens of protests alleging that ballots were cast by people who were dead, who were felons or who had voted elsewhere, but the order states those "protests" should be considered challenges. The deadline to submit such challenges was 25 days before Election Day.

The election board's order directed counties to dismiss any challenges filed after the deadline unless they would change the outcome of a local election. Pat Gannon, a spokesman for the state elections board, told TPM that if the "protests" would not change the outcome of a local election, the county board should count those votes and then notify the state board of the number of "protests." The state board would then aggregate the "protests" from county boards and determine whether there are enough to potentially change the outcome of the governor's race, according to Gannon.


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/north-carolina-mccrory-protests-dismissed

WASHINGTON ― About a week after Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke visited the Fox News set in New York to appear on the shows “Outnumbered” and “Fox and Friends,” but before he set sail on a National Review cruise, a court-appointed medical monitor visited the jail Clarke is charged with running.

From Oct. 31 to Nov. 4 ― as Clarke was calling former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “Mrs. Bill Clinton” on the Kelly File, writing a blog post defending his use of that term, and tweeting that the “renowned” U.S. justice system doesn’t need reform ― Dr. Ronald Shanksy was interviewing staffers at Clarke’s Milwaukee County Jail.

Four people, including a newborn baby, have died at the Milwaukee County Jail since April. One man, a 38-year-old with mental health issues, died of “profound dehydration.” For a facility with a population cap of 960 that previously averaged a couple of deaths per year, the string of deaths is concerning.

During his visit, Shanksy said he was alarmed by the “extremely large number of vacancies” at the facility, particularly for medical positions.

“Questions certainly can be raised about the occurrence of these four recent deaths and the relationship to officer shortages ... as well as the health care staffing vacancies and the adequacy of oversight of staff,” Shanksy wrote.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/david-clarke-donald-trump-jail-deaths_us_583ca27de4b0860d6116183c

The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino has done us all the good service of leafing through Ivanka Trump’s The Trump Card, a 2009 self-help book that allows readers to understand how to get ahead in life with nothing more than a millionaire father and a world-famous surname.

Tolentino’s story is filled with eyebrow-raising anecdotes straight from the mouth, or pen, or laptop, or ghostwriter, of an Ivanka Trump who, on the day of the book’s release, was weeks away from turning 28 years old. But one paragraph in particular stands out as especially, er, quite something.

When Ivanka was a kid, she got frustrated because she couldn’t set up a lemonade stand in Trump Tower. “We had no such advantages,” she writes, meaning, in this case, an ordinary home on an ordinary street. She and her brothers finally tried to sell lemonade at their summer place in Connecticut, but their neighborhood was so ritzy that there was no foot traffic. “As good fortune would have it, we had a bodyguard that summer,” she writes. They persuaded their bodyguard to buy lemonade, and then their driver, and then the maids, who “dug deep for their spare change.” The lesson, she says, is that the kids “made the best of a bad situation.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ivanka-lemonade-stand-trump-tower_us_583df339e4b0ae0e7cda76f3

Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) on Tuesday said that he would oppose Donald Trump's nomination of Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) to lead the Department of Health and Human Services over Price's support for privatizing Medicare.

"Tom Price has led the charge to privatize Medicare, and for this reason, I cannot support his nomination," Donnelly said in a statement. "I am ready to work with anyone who wants to improve access to quality health care for Hoosier families and seniors, but the nomination of Tom Price would put us on a direct path to end Medicare as we know it, which would raise health care costs and break a fundamental promise to seniors. I have fought to protect Medicare, and I will continue to oppose efforts to privatize Medicare or turn it into a voucher program."


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donnelly-oppose-price-nomination

One of Donald Trump’s latest picks for his administration outed her gay brother to her parents before he died of AIDS in 1995, refusing to see him in his dying days and blaming his condition on paternal abuse her family said never happened.

On Friday, President-elect Trump announced he has selected as his deputy national security adviser Kathleen Troia “KT” McFarland, who works as a Fox News commentator and unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in New York to challenge Hillary Clinton for her U.S. Senate seat in 2006.

“I am proud that KT has once again decided to serve our country and join my national security team,” Trump said in a statement. “She has tremendous experience and innate talent that will complement the fantastic team we are assembling, which is crucial because nothing is more important than keeping our people safe.”

A Pentagon official in the Reagan administration, McFarland in 2006 sought to run against Clinton for her Senate seat and was considered a moderate in her bid for the Republican nomination.

A profile piece for New York Times Magazine in 2006, however, reported she “couldn’t abide” her brother being gay. The article unearthed a 1992 letter to her parents in which she reportedly outed her brother, Michael Troia, shortly after she discovered he had AIDS, blamed her family’s troubles as a result of childhood abuse.

“Have you ever wondered why I have never had anything to do with Mike and have never let my daughters see him although we live only fifteen minutes away from each other?” McFarland reportedly wrote. “He has been a lifelong homosexual, most of his relationships brief, fleeting one-night stands.”

Pressed about her brother by New York Magazine for the 2006 profile piece, all McFarland would reportedly say about him was “Ummmm. He was sick and then he died.” According to the article, McFarland said her memory of her father’s behavior toward her family surfaced as a recovered memory and a therapist put her up to writing the letter.


http://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/11/28/trump-natl-security-team-outed-gay-brother-dying-aids/