Red Mosquito

Following Trump’s short and dire speech, Bush departed the scene and never offered public comment on the ceremony.

But, according to three people who were present, Bush gave a brief assessment of Trump’s inaugural after leaving the dais: “That was some weird shit.”

BurtReynolds wrote:

On Wednesday — about 18 hours before Mr. Trump’s Twitter attack — senior officials from the White House invited two dozen leaders from conservative groups for a closed-door session to plot a path ahead.

Participants, who were instructed by the organizers of the event not to divulge details of the meeting, or even the groups attending, described the hourlong sit-down as a welcome, but long overdue, policy discussion. It included a candid, polite airing of complaints that they have been largely left out of the loop on major administration decision-making, according to people who attended.

The meeting, put together by Mr. Trump’s conservative outreach director, Paul Teller, at the request of conservatives, included representatives of the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Limited Government and Judicial Watch, all of whom were critical of some administration policies, including the health bill.

Thomas Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch — a conservative legal advocacy group that successfully sued the Obama administration for the release of Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails — made a pointed pitch for the release of all documents pertaining to the Russia controversy, according to people who attended the session in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House.

Mr. Fitton, the participants said, told Mr. Teller that Mr. Trump needed to be committed to a policy of extreme transparency about contacts between Russian government officials and Trump associates during the 2016 campaign, including Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law.

He also asked Mr. Teller and other administration officials present to more rapidly approve bottled-up Freedom of Information requests about Russia and other topics — likening the foot-dragging on legally mandated disclosure to what he said was the Obama administration’s flouting of immigration laws.

Mr. Teller nodded, took notes and was noncommittal, an activist in attendance said.

Rick Manning, a longtime conservative activist and former lobbyist, had worked on setting up the meeting for weeks, but it took on a greater urgency after the health care debacle.

This map tells many particularly interesting stories on which I’ll elaborate in future posts, but suffice to say that most of the precinct swing can be explained by one variable: education level, perhaps augmented somewhat by race and ethnicity. While we can’t conclusively say anything about the nature of underlying voter preference changes due to the ecological fallacy, the data is certainly suggestive of broader themes. As they say, “correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’.”

Strat wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:

That's actually a horrible reply if one has strong any reading comprehension skills

theplatypus wrote:I feel like I missed 3 episodes in the middle of a season. What is this all about?