Politico puts it well. Indeed, a Rorschach test depending on whether you are a Trump sycophant or anyone else who sees reality clearly.
↔↔↔↔↔↔My morning post↔↔↔↔↔
Rachel Maddow's show was more extraordinary than some of her other extraordinary shows which broke news as it was breaking. In fact, watching Chris Hayes in the hour before hers I saw him break the news that the AP had just released the Comey memos. (If you don't know what they are you haven't been paying attention for the last year.) She had Comey in her studio waiting for his much-anticipated interview.
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Then Rachel, her staff, and Comey had only 25 minutes to review the memos. As the show progressed most of her questions had to do with what she just learned from the memos. She even was reading them during the commercial breaks.
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Here are the actual memos.
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You will no doubt learn more about the memos today. As usual, Trump's woman problem emerges and will be one of the primary focuses of the media attention because a previously unknown phone conversation Trump said he had with Putin, one which would have been his first, included Putin saying Russia had the most beautiful hookers in the world.
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Comey doesn't think this conversation happened. Instead, he thinks Trump made up the story after seeing a video of Putin saying this on Russian TV. By the end of the day if you watch the non-Fox news you will probably have seen this clip of Putin.
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Excerpt:
What stands out in this book is Dr. Lee’s cri de coeur: “[T]he only people not allowed to speak about an issue are those who know the most about it.” I wish I believed that psychiatrists did in fact know the most about cases of dangerousness, but the totality of the empirical evidence available today refutes that. Lee claims in a crucial footnote that “dangerousness” is more about the situation, and not so much about the person. If that were so, on this view, there would be less need for a psychiatrist to have known or personally examined Donald Trump. But does anyone believe that psychiatrists know more about the presidency and the situation in the White House than other professionals?
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The last chapter of the book carries the title, “He’s Got the World in His Hands and his Finger on the Trigger.” In it, two psychiatrists urge Congress to appoint a panel of experts to examine the president. Their proposed panel is to include three “non-partisan” neuropsychiatrists (not just plain-vanilla psychiatrists). Obviously, none of the contributors to this book could now claim to be “non-partisan.” More ironically, however, of the psychiatrists who opine about Trump as the “dangerous case,” none identify themselves as “neuropsychiatrists,” and none are recognized as such by our profession.
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Still, there is an epilogue to this book written by the redoubtable Noam Chomsky. The two greatest threats to the planet, he tells us, are global warming and nuclear holocaust, and Trump is a menace on both counts. You do not have to be a psychiatrist to believe that.