A California city is launching the first US experiment in basic income — meet the 27-year-old mayor behind it

Via John

Stockton, California made national news last October when it announced it would host the first US experiment in basic income, a system of wealth distribution in which people receive a standard salary just for being alive.

The plan, spearheaded by Stockton's 27-year-old mayor, Michael Tubbs, will likely begin sometime in August 2018 and involve at least 100 people of varying income levels getting $500 a month for three years.

Ever since it declared bankruptcy in 2012, Stockton has been in recovery-mode, and Tubbs sees basic income — a growing topic of discussion around the world over the past couple years — as one way to rehabilitate the city.

More @ AOL

Donald Trump Jr mocks Hillary Clinton's Grammys appearance: 'Great consolation' for losing election & ratings hit all time low

Via Billy

Donald Trump Jr. mocked Hillary Clinton’s appearance at the Grammys reading an excerpt of controversial book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House as “a great consolation prize for losing the presidency.”

“Getting to read a #fakenews book excerpt at the Grammys seems like a great consolation prize for losing the presidency. #GrammyAwards,” Trump Jr. tweeted Sunday night.

More @ Washington Examiner

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Grammy Ratings Hit All-Time Demo Low; Draws 19.8M Viewers

New Book: McCabe Initiated White House Meeting That Led To Leak

 

This story gives a glimpse into how the original Russia narrative may have been spread around to overly compliant journalists and other members of the 'resistance.'

The FBI’s top brass initiated conversations with a White House official that were quickly leaked to CNN, according to a new book.

Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe asked to speak privately with White House chief of staff Reince Priebus following a February 2017 intelligence briefing. The scene is described in “Media Madness,” Howard Kurtz’s new book on the press and its relationship with the Trump administration. McCabe said he asked for the meeting to tell Priebus that “everything” in a New York Times story authored by Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo was “bullsh-t.”

More @ The Federalist

The FBI's deputy director is stepping down

ABC

Two government officials familiar with the matter confirm to ABC News that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is stepping down immediately. 

He had long been expected to retire from government in March, when he was eligible to receive his benefits for his years of service. Now, he is vacating his post atop the FBI and taking time away from the agency — but he will technically remain an employee of the bureau until his official retirement in March.

And the award for most sexist, misogynist bunch of vile hypocrites goes to… the Grammys

Via Billy

There was no doubting the highlight of last night’s Grammys.

It came when Kesha gave an emotional performance of her single “Praying”, about the alleged sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her former producer ‘Dr Luke’ Gottwald.

She was introduced by Janelle Monae who delivered a powerful speech to the star-studded audience.

‘We say time’s up for pay inequality, discrimination or harassment of any kind,’ Monae declared, ‘and the abuse of power.’

More @ Daily Mail

Golden boy Robert Mueller's forgotten surveillance crime spree

Via Billy

When Robert Mueller was appointed last May as Special Counsel to investigate Trump, Politico Magazine gushed that “Mueller might just be America’s straightest arrow — a respected, nonpartisan and fiercely apolitical public servant whose only lifetime motivation has been the search for justice.” 

Most of the subsequent press coverage has shown nary a doubt about Mueller’s purity. But, during his 11 years as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mueller’s agency routinely violated federal law and the Bill of Rights.

More @ The Hill

Trump Trolls The Fools For Fools Once Again

Via comment by JWMJR  on Trump: Amnesty Offer Intended to Expose Democratic...

 

Recall if you will the psychic meltdown in the conservative blogosphere when the President said he would sign a bi-partisan immigration bill during the White House meeting with staff and Congressional leaders. The screams of "betrayal" were all but deafening. Recall also how those concerns disappeared in the wake of little Dickey Durbin's "shithole countries" accusations.

If Trump did say it or something like it, it was a rhetorical move that was played perfectly. Twits like Durbin and the talking head fools were guaranteed to jump on it and totally miss that their phony outrage exposed their total lack of interest in finding any real solution to the immigration problem. In short Trump trolled them.

Subsequently there was of course no actual bi-partisan proposal to come out of Congress. The extremest elements would never have allowed one to come to a vote never mind pass. The President cast out the bait.

More @ Joe Martin's Ghost

10 Things You Don't Know About The M1 Carbine

The End Of A Republic (My Citroen)

Intolerance at Cornell: After my Fox News appearance, bullying and threats began. It got so bad I sought counseling.

Many found it acceptable to be hateful toward me because they perceived me as ‘hateful’

It is difficult to express conservative views as a college student without being called names, attacked personally, or even threatened by peers. I know because I’ve lived it.

The worst came after I appeared on Fox News in May to voice alarm over a new course at my Ivy League institution that deeply criticized Donald Trump while venerating Barack Obama.

“Based on the syllabus it doesn’t seem like a fair conversation,” I said about the new government course offered this past fall at Cornell called “America Confronts the World.” The syllabus accused Trump of xenophobic nationalism while describing Obama as a pragmatic cosmopolitan

.More @ The College Fix

Air Force Colonel Jacksel ‘Jack’ Broughton & Air Force General John D. ‘Jack’ Lavelle: Testing the Rules of Engagement During the Vietnam War

Via comment by Reborn on We lost lost our country last fall.

Jacksel (Jack) Markham Broughton

Battles/wars Korean War, 114 missions Vietnam War, 102 missions Awards Air Force Cross Silver Star (2) Legion of Merit Distinguished Flying Cross (4) Air Medal (10) Dated

The war in Vietnam was a strange war, indeed. It was a conflict that should not have been lost. But the men who ran that war were politicians and bureaucrats, not military professionals. Men like Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara and President Lyndon Baines Johnson, along with Department of Defense bureaucrats, civilian and military, called all the shots.

America lost her first war ever because bureaucrats 10,000 miles away from the fighting played a kind of ‘war monopoly’ game, in which the stakes were not play money but the lives of men sent out to die in the rice paddies and skies of Vietnam. Called to testify in a civil suit after the war, McNamara said under oath that he had decided as early as December 1965 that ‘the war could not be won militarily.’

During the war, President Johnson would talk by telephone to then Air Force Major John Keeler about what to say during the ‘Five O’Clock Follies,’ the daily press briefing held every afternoon in Saigon. As Keeler put it, Johnson called so that the press officer could ‘get the party line.’ The political agenda in America was obviously more important than the bloodshed on the hills around Khe Sanh. Johnson often bragged, ‘Those boys can’t hit an outhouse without my permission.’

More @ History Net