Just to let you know…

I won’t be around for a while. I don’t know how long. My older sister died today. I’ll be fine, but I don’t think I’ll be in the mood for politics for a short while. I didn’t want my Raisinettes worrying about where I was. ❤

A Barrel of Gaffes

From the Sun Sentinel:

On her fourth day at the center of a struggle with President Donald Trump and his chief of staff, Congresswoman Frederica Wilson said Friday she has no regrets about anything she’s done or said this week — and said she’s amazed at what’s transpired.

Wilson received major vindication Friday with video showing White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was completely wrong about claims he made about the South Florida congresswoman.

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It goes from bad to Twitterverse

From the DAILY BEAST:

Kellyanne Conway and Donald Trump Jr. pushed messages from an account operated from Russia’s ‘troll farm’—including allegations of voter fraud a week before Election Day.

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Sham Artist

From artnet news:

Watching Donald Trump being interviewed on 60Minutes shortly after Election Day 2016, eagle-eyed art lovers might have noticed what looked like a painting by French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir hanging on a wall behind the president-elect. The especially astute might have noticed that it looked suspiciously familiar.

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Cooking up a rigged election

From The Daily Dot:

A man known as Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “chef” was reportedly behind the financing of the Russia-based “troll factory” that used social media to spread fake news and disinformation ahead of the 2016 election, according to reports.

CNN reports that a company owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been dubbed Putin’s “chef,” was a “main backer” of the Internet Research Agency, which was allegedly responsible for buying at least more than $100,000 worth of ads meant to stir division about divisive issues on Facebook ahead of the election.

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The Lobbying Epidemic

From The Charlotte Observer:

The drug epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s was horrific.

…snip…

That period is no longer considered the worst drug epidemic in the nation’s history. The ongoing opioid crisis has, unfortunately, taken that title – because no one was lobbying Congress on behalf of crack cocaine dealers the way they have for large drug companies. That’s the devastating finding from a joint investigation by “60 Minutes” and The Washington Post released last weekend. Between 2014 and 2016, the drug industry spent $106 million lobbying Congress for a law that makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies.

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Boy wonder? Boy, I wonder.

From BUSINESS INSIDER:

The top government official tasked with clearing background checks said at a congressional hearing that he’s “never seen that level of mistakes” that he saw on White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s security clearance application, which has had to be amended on several occasions.

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Influence sold separately

From NBC NEWS:

Paul Manafort, a former campaign manager for President Donald Trump, has much stronger financial ties to a Russian oligarch than have been previously reported.

An NBC News investigation reveals that $26 million changed hands in the form of a loan between a company linked to Manafort and the oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire with close ties to the Kremlin.

The loan brings the total of their known business dealings to around $60 million over the past decade, according to financial documents filed in Cyprus and the Cayman Islands.

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