Ginni Thomas, Spy Hunter!

Rightwing lobbyist, Supreme spouse, and Tea Party cultist Ginni Thomas is making a list, checking it twice, and ridding the Trump White House of spies, snakes and traitors, those professional civil servants more devoted to the Constitution than personal loyalty to Donald Trump. That sounds better to conspiracy nuts when they call the Civil Service the “Deep State.”

Since 2013 Ginni Thomas has been part of the ad hoc Groundswell group, a rightwing cabal opposed to GOP centrists as much as liberal Democrats. In January she and other Tea Party survivors met with President Trump in the White House with a belated Christmas gift, their Naughty/Nice List. The Goundswell goons called for the firing of qualified federal government professionals and the hiring of Trump toadies, hard right wingnuts, Fox News talking heads, and other incompetents in their stead.

After getting her fringe-group friends into high White House places, Ms. Thomas plans to defend the Trump-archy in the 2020 election through her own MAGA-supporting PAC.

More:

“Trump’s ‘Deep State’ hit list,” Jonathan Swan, Axios

“Among Those Pressing Trump to Weed Out Disloyalty: Clarence Thomas’s Wife,” Maggie Haberman, New York Times

“Clarence Thomas’ Wife Is Helping Trump Purge ‘Snakes’ From the White House — and Replace Them With Fox News Regulars,” Travis Gettys, The New Civil Rights Movement

“Ginni Thomas’ White House Meeting Was Just Another Grift,” Mark Joseph Stern, Salon

Updates:

“Trump acknowledges lists of disloyal government officials to oust,” Jacob Knutson, Axios

“Trump Claims Purging Officials Who Are ‘Disloyal’ To Him Is Good For America,” Cristina Cabrera, TalkingPointsMemo

“Baby-faced assassin: the 29-year old at the heart of Trump’s ‘deep state’ purge,” Tom McCarthy, The Guardian (also “A new senior leader at the White House personnel office: A college senior,” Daniel Lippman and Meridith McGraw, Politico).

___________________
Short Link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-uty

Image (“Ginni Thomas, Spy Hunter!”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

NRA speaks 7 Days After Florida School Shooting

The National Rifle Association has been silent on Twitter since the Parkland school shooting, but NRA VP Wayne LaPierre is listed as a speaker at this week’s Comic-Con for Conservatives, the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference. CPAC is being held at the Gaylord Convention Center at National Harbor, near DC but closer to a casino. While Mr. LaPierre is a staunch foe of gun-free zones, the Gaylord is one.

Wayne LaPierre isn’t on the CPAC agenda, but since the NRA is CPAC’s biggest sponsor and the biggest donor to GOP campaigns, he’s certain to deliver his usual demagoguery. There’s a half-hour slot on Thursday’s agenda at 10 AM marked “Special Programming,” so that’s our bet. Mike Pence will bless the gathered wingnuts afterwards, at 10:30.

The rest of the 2018 CPAC is a cavalcade of conservative celebs, not just The Apprentice‘s Donald Trump, but disgraced former Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., talk radio ranters Dana Loesch and Mark Levin, Fox flakes Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, and Sebastian Gorka, and that guy from Pawn Stars.

But CPAC 2018 is not all “America First.” France’s holocaust denier and National Front pin-up person Mademoiselle Marion Maréchal-Le Pen and the UK Independence Party spokesmodel, and Brexiteer Nigel Farage will add European élan to the conservative conclave.

More:

“Less Intellectual and More Salacious”: Commercialized, Trumpified, CPAC Is Adrift.” Tina Nguyen, Vanity Fair

Related:

“Five types of gun laws the Founding Fathers loved,” Saul Cornell, The Conversation

“The NRA’s step-by-step playbook for responding to a mass shooting,” Heather Timmons, Quartz

________________________

Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-rgJ

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Charles Koch: Horrified By His Own Creation

“To the extent that the Tea Party is a centralized movement, it is so because it has been mobilized by the groups Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, both of which are Koch-financed. As it happens, these groups were formerly a single organization, called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 by, you guessed it, the Koch Brothers.

The Tea Party, from the very beginning, was designed for disruption, and it was a pet project of the Koch brothers (they actually created the first national website for the movement). Charles Koch says he’s interested only in advancing ‘free-market, small-government ideals,’ but what he’s done is manufacture a faux-populist movement that has whipped the conservative base into an anti-government frenzy.”

— “Charles Koch’s Frankenstein problem: He created the Tea Party monster — and now he’s horrified with the results,” Sean Illing, Salon

_____________

Short Link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-mmK

Image (“Be Careful What You Wish For, after l’atelier de Disney”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine