How Young Donald Learned To Weaponize His Racism

Over the weekend, a tweet from Ro Khanna alerted me to a favorite Trump shenanigan-- a roll back to an Obama housing desegregation rule. The very first time the name "Donald J. Trump" appeared in the New York Times, a thrill for the young publicity hound, was in connection to a government law suit in which he and his crooked, racist father were charged with violating a civil rights act in regard to housing. In short, they were refusing to rent apartments to blacks and hispanics even though the properties were built with government loans that prohibited racial discrimination. When the Trumps were able to worm their way out of it with countersuits and by making themselves unbearably annoying it set Trump on a path of action about how to get away with criminal behavior that is apparent today-- and in every phase of his miserable life.

A few months before he managed to steal the 2016 election, the New York Times reprised that episode: 'No Vacancies' For Blacks: How Donald Trump Got His Start, And Was First Accused Of Bias. Jonathan Mahler and Steve Eder reported on the Trumps' "practice of turning away potential black tenants [which] was painstakingly documented by activists and organizations that viewed equal housing as the next frontier in the civil rights struggle."

The Justice Department undertook its own investigation and, in 1973, sued Trump Management for discriminating against blacks. Both Fred Trump, the company’s chairman, and Donald Trump, its president, were named as defendants. It was front-page news, and for Donald, amounted to his debut in the public eye.

“Absolutely ridiculous,” he was quoted as saying of the government’s allegations.

Looking back, Mr. Trump’s response to the lawsuit can be seen as presaging his handling of subsequent challenges, in business and in politics. Rather than quietly trying to settle-- as another New York developer had done a couple of years earlier-- he turned the lawsuit into a protracted battle, complete with angry denials, character assassination, charges that the government was trying to force him to rent to “welfare recipients” and a $100 million countersuit accusing the Justice Department of defamation.

When it was over, Mr. Trump declared victory, emphasizing that the consent decree he ultimately signed did not include an admission of guilt.

But an investigation by the New York Times-- drawing on decades-old files from the New York City Commission on Human Rights, internal Justice Department records, court documents and interviews with tenants, civil rights activists and prosecutors-- uncovered a long history of racial bias at his family’s properties, in New York and beyond.

...[Fred Trump's] establishment as one of the city’s biggest developers was hardly free of controversy: The Senate Banking Committee subpoenaed him in 1954 during an investigation into profiteering off federal housing loans. Under oath, he acknowledged that he had wildly overstated the costs of a development to obtain a larger mortgage from the government.

In 1966, as the investigative journalist Wayne Barrett detailed in “Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth,” a New York legislative committee accused Fred Trump of using state money earmarked for middle-income housing to build a shopping center instead. One lawmaker called Mr. Trump “greedy and grasping.”

By this point, the Trump organization’s business practices were beginning to come under scrutiny from civil rights groups that had received complaints from prospective African-American tenants.

People like Maxine Brown.

Mr. Leibowitz, the rental agent at the Wilshire, remembered Ms. Brown repeatedly inquiring about the apartment. “Finally, she realized what it was all about,” he said.

Ms. Brown’s first instinct was to let the matter go; she was happy enough at the Y.W.C.A. “I had a big room and two meals a day for five dollars a week,” she said in an interview.

But a friend, Mae Wiggins, who had also been denied an apartment at the Wilshire, told her that she ought to have her own place, with a private bathroom and a kitchen. She encouraged Ms. Brown to file a complaint with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, as she was doing.

“We knew there was prejudice in renting,” Ms. Wiggins recalled. “It was rampant in New York. It made me feel really bad, and I wanted to do something to right the wrong.”





Mr. Leibowitz was called to testify at the commission’s hearing on Ms. Brown’s case. Asked to estimate how many blacks lived in Mr. Trump’s various properties, he remembered replying: “To the best of my knowledge, none.”

After the hearing, Ms. Brown was offered an apartment in the Wilshire, and in the spring of 1964, she moved in. For 10 years, she said, she was the only African-American in the building.

Complaints about the Trump organization’s rental policies continued to mount: By 1967, state investigators found that out of some 3,700 apartments in Trump Village, seven were occupied by African-American families.

Like Ms. Brown, the few minorities who did live in Trump-owned buildings often had to force their way in.

...Unlike the public schools, the housing market could not be desegregated simply by court order. Even after passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited racial discrimination in housing, developments in white neighborhoods continued to rebuff blacks.

For years, it fell largely to local civil rights groups to highlight the problem by sending white “testers” into apartment complexes after blacks had been turned away.

“Everything was sort of whispers and innuendo and you wanted to try to bring it out into the open,” recalled Phyllis Kirschenbaum, who volunteered for Operation Open City, a housing rights advocacy organization. “I’d walk in with my freckles and red hair and Jewish name and get an apartment immediately.”

...Donald Trump said he had first heard about the lawsuit, which was filed in the fall of 1973, on his car radio.

The government had charged him, his father and their company, Trump Management Inc., with violating the Fair Housing Act.

Another major New York developer, the LeFrak Organization, had been hit with a similar suit a few years earlier. Its founder, Samuel LeFrak, had appeared at a news conference alongside the United States attorney, trumpeting a consent agreement to prohibit discrimination in his buildings by saying it would “make open housing in our cities a reality.” The LeFrak company even offered the equivalent of one month’s rent to help 50 black families move into predominantly white buildings.

Donald Trump took a different approach. He retained Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting counsel, Roy Cohn, to defend him. Mr. Trump soon called his own news conference-- to announce his countersuit against the government.

The government’s lawyers took as their starting point the years of research conducted by civil rights groups at Trump properties.

“We did our own investigation and enlarged the case,” said Elyse Goldweber, who as a young assistant United States attorney worked on the lawsuit, U.S.A. v. Trump.

A former Trump superintendent named Thomas Miranda testified that multiple Trump Management employees had instructed him to attach a separate piece of paper with a big letter “C” on it-- for “colored”-- to any application filed by a black apartment-seeker.

The Trumps went on the offensive, filing a contempt-of-court charge against one of the prosecutors, accusing her of turning the investigation into a “Gestapo-like interrogation.” The Trumps derided the lawsuit as a pressure tactic to get them to sign a consent decree like the one agreed to by Mr. LeFrak.

The judge dismissed both the countersuit and the contempt-of-court charge. After nearly two years of legal wrangling, the Trumps gave up and signed a consent decree.

As is customary, it did not include an admission of guilt. But it did include pages of stipulations intended to ensure the desegregation of Trump properties.

Equal housing activists celebrated the agreement as more robust than the one signed by Mr. LeFrak. It required that Trump Management provide the New York Urban League with a weekly list of all its vacancies.

This did not stop Mr. Trump from declaring victory. “In the end the government couldn’t prove its case, and we ended up making a minor settlement without admitting any guilt,” he wrote in The Art of the Deal.

Only this was not quite the end.

A few years later, the government accused the Trumps of violating the consent decree. “We believe that an underlying pattern of discrimination continues to exist in the Trump Management organization,” a Justice Department lawyer wrote to Mr. Cohn in 1978.

Once again, the government marshaled numerous examples of blacks being denied Trump apartments. But this time, it also identified a pattern of racial steering.

While more black families were now renting in Trump-owned buildings, the government said, many had been confined to a small number of complexes. And tenants in some of these buildings had complained about the conditions, from falling plaster to rusty light fixtures to bloodstained floors.

The Trumps effectively wore the government down. The original consent decree expired before the Justice Department had accumulated enough evidence to press its new case.

This past October, ACLU staffers Linda Morris and Alejandro Ortiz, warned that Trump was about to slam the door on fair housing: Trump Administration's new rule would dismantle critical housing protections for the most vulnerable and marginalized communities. It's as though Trump was looking for revenge against a government that called him and his family out on their racism. "Fifty years after the enactment of the Fair Housing Act (FHA), housing discrimination remains a national disgrace in the United States. Across the country, a growing tide of housing providers, perhaps emboldened by Trump’s anti-“other” rhetoric, discriminate against the very communities the FHA was designed to protect. In 2017 alone, there were nearly 29,000 reported complaints of housing discrimination across the country. Despite growing diversity in population, residential segregation persists at alarming rates hurting local schools, property values, and much more. Just this year, Black homeownership rates dropped to a record low of 40.6% which is the lowest level recorded by the Census Bureau since 1950. Despite this ongoing crisis, the Trump Administration proposed a new rule that will dismantle critical housing protections for the most vulnerable and marginalized communities.

In one of this administration’s most outrageous attacks on civil rights yet, the proposed rule will make a mockery of one of the FHA’s most critical enforcement tools: the Disparate Impact Rule. The Rule allows potential victims of housing discrimination to challenge unjustified policies or practices that disproportionately harm them. Courts have recognized disparate impact liability under the FHA for decades, culminating in the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision affirming disparate impact liability in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project.  There, the Court explained the significance of disparate impact liability: “[H]ousing restrictions that function unfairly to exclude minorities from certain neighborhoods without any sufficient justification . . . reside at the heartland of disparate-impact liability.” Under the Obama administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) acknowledged this principle by formally codifying the Disparate Impact Rule in 2013, and consistently affirming the existing Disparate Impact Rule through its fair housing enforcement and guidance as recently as 2016.

...Why does Trump want to undermine this rule? Because it works. Disparate impact liability is a tool like none other in the law with numerous examples of how it has helped dismantle the many systemic barriers to fair housing. The Disparate Impact Rule has been critical in challenging covert or disguised forms of housing discrimination that otherwise escape easy classification. Advocates have invoked the Disparate Impact Rule in challenging discriminatory zoning regulations, predatory mortgage lending practices that charge excessive rates to people of color or people with disabilities, overly restrictive occupancy requirements that shut out families with children, and policies that threaten housing for survivors of gender-based violence and women of color.

By early January, HUD was proposing a rule that would redefine the way jurisdictions are required to promote fair housing and scrap a key assessment tool used to map racial segregation under the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. The 2015 rule-- which the Obama administration introduced as a way to beef up enforcement of the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968-- required local governments to track patterns of poverty and segregation with a checklist of 92 questions in order to gain access to federal housing funds.

Lisa Rice, executive vice president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, said the proposal is "a step in the wrong direction. It would weaken fair housing enforcement and basically abdicate jurisdictions and public housing authorities from their fair housing responsibilities. It’s even weaker than the scheme that HUD had before the 2015 rule was implemented …That’s the system that the [Government Accountability Office] found to be completely inept and ineffective."

“The Obama administration’s fair housing rule made the strongest effort in decades to reverse harmful patterns of segregation and discriminatory practices in communities across the country,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Carson, the only black member of President Donald Trump's cabinet, “is scrapping years of extensive input and intensive work that went into the fair housing rule and essentially reverting to the agency’s previous flawed and failed system,” Yentel said.

Boston progressive congressional candidate, Brianna Wu told me that affordable housing is the single biggest issue for many voters in her district. "Of course Trump would reverse any protections to end segregation and discrimination of affordable housing," she said. "Any initiative from the Obama Administration that actually works and helps people is on Trump’s hit list. This is yet another example of Trump’s blatant racism and trying to line his pockets. Affordable housing and gentrification is a significant issue in Boston and other areas of my district. My opponent, Stephen Lynch, has been silent on the issue to appeal to his donors from the real estate industry. I know this has been said many times before, but it bears repeating-- elections have consequences. If we keep electing real estate 'moguls' and representatives who are owned by the real estate industry, change will never happen. We have a lot of work to do, and truly affordable housing for all will be a top priority for me when I get to Congress, both for my district and the nation."

Congress Needs More Members In The Squad But That Isn't The Only Way To Make A Valuable Contribution: Katie Porter

The CNN.com headline yesterday, Katie Porter isn't part of 'The Squad.' But the freshman House Democrat is stirring up trouble for Trump, was... meh. True, Katie Porter isn't part of The Squad. And true, Katie is "stirring up trouble for Trump." But... there's a lot more to it. Each member of The Squad can boast a ProgressivePunch crucial vote record of "A"-- three of them, perfect 100% scores, in fact. Katie's ProgressivePunch crucial vote score isn't as robust. And instead of their A, hers is F. Here are their raw scores plus the PVI of their districts:

• Ayanna Pressley- 100 (D+34)
• Rashida Tlaib- 100 (D+33)
• AOC- 100 (D+29)
• Ilhan Omar- 97.50 (D+26)
• Katie Porter- 72.50 (R+3)

Let's put that another way. Republicans didn't bother running candidates against Ayanna or Rashida. AOC beat Republican Anthony Pappas 110,318 (78.2%) to 19,202 (13.6%). Ilhan beat Republican Jennifer Zielinski 267,703 (78.0%) to 74,440 (21.7%). Katie had a more series problem. She ran against entrenched Republican incumbent Mimi Walters (after beating a DCCC-preferred New Dem in the primary). Walters spent $5,244,605 (+ $7,758,258 town in against Porter by Republican outside groups). In the end-- Porter managed to beat Walters 158,906 (52.1%) to 146,383 (47.9%). Trump did badly in all 5 districts-- 11.9% in Ayanna's, 18.1% in Rashida's, 18.5% in Ilhan's, 19.8% in AOC's... and 44.4% in Katie's. I'm not making an excuses for her voting record, but it's a lot easier to vote straight down the line progressive in a district where only 12% of the people back Trump that in one where 44% do.

On the other hand, few freshmen have been as valuable in their committees as Porter has been in the House Financial Services Committee, where she has used her expertise to hold banksters' and Trump appointed regulators' feet to the fire. And, as Katie Lobosco, the CNN.com reporter put it, "she's emerged as a viral star when it comes to how banks and the government treat the working poor and puncturing Trump's claims about the economy. She's carving out a Warren-esque role for herself that's included asking top officials do basic math under oath. Her targets so far have included major Wall Street players like JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Equifax CEO Mark Begor and now-former Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan."

It was March when Porter grilled Sloan-- who was already facing calls from Warren and others to step down-- at a House Financial Services Committee hearing about Wells Fargo's numerous scandals over fake accounts, inappropriate mortgage fees, and charging borrowers for auto insurance they didn't need.

When it came her turn, Porter began by asking why the public should trust Sloan's promises that Wells Fargo was changing its ways. Then, she ducked under the table to bring up a poster board printed with huge text, displaying what Wells Fargo attorneys had said in court.

"Why Mr. Sloan, if you don't mind me asking, are your lawyers in federal court arguing that those exact statements I read are quote 'paradigmatic examples of non-actionable corporate puffery, on which no reliable investor could rely,'" she asked.

"I don't know why our lawyers are arguing that," Sloan responded.

Porter kept going.

"It's convenient for your lawyers to deflect blame in court, and say your rebranding campaign can be ignored as hyperbolic marketing, but when then you come to Congress, you want us to take you at your word," she said. "And I think that's the disconnect, that's why the American public has trouble trusting Wells Fargo."

Two weeks later, Wells Fargo announced Sloan was out.

Porter has targeted top Trump administration officials, too. She whipped out a copy of the text book she wrote, "Modern Consumer Law," to quiz Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief Kathy Kraninger. She then posed a hypothetical math problem: A single mom takes out a two-week $200 payday loan with an origination fee of $20, at a rate of 10%. What is the APR? One of Porter's aides handed Kraninger a calculator.

She didn't do the math, even after Porter repeated the question, asking her to ballpark the calculation.

"I understand where you're getting. At the end of the day, the issue is certainly: When you actually are able to repay that loan and whether or not you take out an additional loan," Kraninger said.

"This is not a math exercise, though. This is a policy conversation," she added.

This week, in her office, Porter said she hopes the video clip gets people thinking about the issue.

"Like, what does it mean that calculating the APR is so hard that the vast majority of us can't do it? I guess it means that those disclosures that do it for you are pretty useful," she said.

In June, Porter asked Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson why the Federal Housing Administration is "lousy at servicing mortgages." When Carson said he had not had any discussions about that issue but that he would "look it up," Porter pushed further, asking him to explain the rate of foreclosures among those with mortgages backed by his department. She used the term REO-- which stands for real estate-owned, and refers to properties owned by a lender after an unsuccessful foreclosure-- an acronym she didn't expect to stump the head of the agency tasked with monitoring them.

"Do you know what an REO is?" Porter asked Carson.

Carson replied, "An Oreo?"

"No, not an Oreo," Porter said. "An R-E-O. REO."




Video of the exchange went viral and Carson attempted to laugh it off by sending the Congresswoman a box of the cookies.

Porter says her goal isn't to highlight incompetence, but instead to make esoteric topics more accessible-- like she did in the consumer finance law classes she taught at the University of California, Irvine.

"What I did as a professor is not that different than what I do in hearings," Porter said this week.

An average voter might not be able to articulate their position on payday loans, she said, "but when you start talking about that hypothetical exchange I had with Kraninger, people began to engage."

Like Warren, she believes that debates about protecting the ability to make a living, buy a home, and afford college are really conversations about the "heart and soul of America."

Her back-and-forth with Dimon, she said, was meant to highlight the issue of CEO pay disparity. Porter ran through a hypothetical Chase bank employee's budget, this time with a white board.

"She's short $567, what would you suggest she do?" asked the bank CEO.

"I don't know, I'd have to think about that," Dimon said.

Whether or not the professor-turned-congresswoman can turn her unique way of questioning government officials and Wall Street executives into making real legislative change remains to be seen. A bicameral bill she brought forth with Democratic Sens. Warren, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Tom Udall of New Mexico would bolster the power of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau so that it could oversee student loan servicers. Porter has also introduced legislation with Harris that would strengthen the power of state attorneys general to monitor banks.

So far none of these bills have major support from Republicans. But a bill she introduced that would raise the civil penalties assessed to security law violators was marked up by committee last week and a similar Senate bill is cosponsored by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. Two of her other bills-- one on mental health and the other addressing homecare for seniors-- have some support from across the aisle.

The Democrat could be vulnerable in her reelection bid. When she won in 2018, it was the first time her Southern California district had gone blue since its creation in 1983. That was in part because two-term incumbent Republican Mimi Walters was consistently voting in line with Trump in a district Clinton won by five percentage points.

But last month, Porter became one of the first Democrats who won Republican districts in 2018 to come out in support of impeaching Trump. The move seemed to win her some support. Her campaign brought in more than $1 million in the second quarter, out-fundraising many other vulnerable Democrats.

Porter said she is working to be a voice for families concerned about how they're going to pay the bills, something she believes Trump's candidacy also tapped into.

"The financial instability and sometimes insecurity that families feel, deeply motivates how they respond politically," Porter said last week.

"I think one thing he (Trump) played into was fear about 'Am I going to be able to make ends meet, and is there going be a job for my kids?' Those are real concerns, and as a mom I have them, too."

So far Katie has half a dozen GOP opponents running against her in the open primary, alphabetically Deputy District Attorney Ray Gennawey, Yorba Linda City Councilor and Deputy Attorney General Peggy Huang, random person Julie Proctor, Mission Viejo City Councilman Greg Raths, Laguna Hills City Councilman Don Sedgwick, Orange County Board of Education Member Lisa Sparks ad a second random person, Brenton Woolworth. And some of them are raising real money:

• Don Sedgwick: $621,120
• Peggy Huang (self-funder)- $263,791
• Greg Raths (self funder)- $209,770
• Lisa Sparks Triggers- $151,251
• Ray Gennawey- $73,210
• Brenton Woolworth- $8,845

But, speaking of The Squad, with the Republican Party having nothing to run on, they've decided to take their racism and xenophobia and turn it into an issue, an issue that shows the public exactly who and what they are. This is from the Illinois Republican Party. I have a feeling the California GOP is going to back away from using it, but... who really knows for sure. It looks like the kind of thing that Don Sedgwick and Greg Rath would absolutely love.

2017 In Review: A Hell Bound Train Of A Year (Part 6)-- Republican Words As Windows To Their Souls, Round 1

-by Noah

OK. I know the title is misleading. Republicans show no evidence of having souls.

I often wonder if today’s Republicans ever did. Or, were republicans just born the way they are. Do they come out of the womb as full-blown sociopaths or, even worse, psychotics? They say you have to be taught to hate, but… I wonder.

The old saying is that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Unfortunately, when I look at the eyes of republicans, well, I see dead people. Sometimes, if you say the word ‘Obama’ in the presence of a Republican, the eyes go glassy and their mouths start to sputter. It’s sad, but it does tell me that there’s life there. Alas, though, it is alien life. They do walk among us. Who needs the X-Files when we have people like these?

The following are things that actually came out of the mouths of Republicans in 2017:

1. Ben Carson, Trump’s Secretary Of Housing And Urban Development:

It will not be my intention to do anything to benefit any, any American.

Carson said this at his confirmation hearing in response to a question from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Freudian slip? Just being honest? Whichever, it was all republicans needed to hear. Confirmed!

2. $enate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell:

She was warned. Never the less, she persisted.

McConnell was referring to that same Sen. Elizabeth Warren who Republicans always see as an “uppity woman” and a thorn in their sides. Sen. Warren had wanted to read a letter by Coretta Scott King, widow of the late Martin Luther King. Mere mention of the Kings drives republicans up a wall. The occasion was the confirmation hearing of Alabama racist Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. McConnell got his knickers in a twist and forbade it.

The letter was once “lost” by segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond in 1986 when it was supposed to be entered into the Congressional Record when Sessions was nominated for a Federal judgeship.

What a surprise. McConnell and his fellow KKK Krew in the Senate just can’t bear to hear the words of the widow of MLK spoken on the Senate floor. Talk about revealing what’s inside republicans. In defending Sessions, they have shown us all what Sessions is all about and what the Republican Party is all about. What is so disturbing about those words? Should we be surprised that republicans will fight so hard to get a racist Attorney General in place for a president that built his campaign on racism? Nope.

The response was swift, as it should be. “Never the less, she persisted” is a rallying cry. Fuck you, McConnell. Go back to Kentucky and drink you bourbon, cut with water from a whites only water fountain, of course.

3. Kellyanne Conway, White House Spokeswacko:

There are many ways to surveil each other now, unfortunately. There was an article this week that talked about how you can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets, any number of different ways. And microwaves that turn into cameras, etc. So we know that that is just a fact of modern life.

Yep. I don’t know about you, but my microwave is watching me right now. So is my toaster, and damn, the refrigerator just keeps laughing at me!

Is there anyone in the Trumpanzee White House that’s sane? Even a little bit? Conway was talking to her hometown newspaper, the Bergen Record. She was trying in vain to justify her boss’s claim that Obama had government eyes spying on him in his home at the Trump Tower. Nothing like sending a total nut to justify the actions of a total nut. Yo! Kellyanne, the clock on the wall says it’s time to go!

4. Missouri State Rep. Rick Brattin:

There is a distinction between homosexuality and just being a human being.

At first, I thought Brattin was just submitting this as his entrant for a contest among Republicans to pick a new motto for the party. He probably felt “Hey why not? It’s catchy. It’s true. And, it’s something almost all my party can agree on”. But, no. Brattin was just mouthing off on the floor of the Missouri state legislature as they debated an amendment to a state discrimination law. that would ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. He was even using religion, all religions, in his crazy mind, to back his vehement argument against banning discrimination. You see, in Missouri, like in other places where republicans rule, a boss can still fire you if you’re gay. And, Republicans like that just fine.

Sign The Petition To Allow GOP Convention Goers To Shoot Each Other

Paul Ryan figured it out before most Republicans did-- and way before Trump began threatening to provoke a riot if the Republican Establishment steals the nomination from him at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland in July. Ryan moved quickly to have guns banned from the arena, even though Ohio is a proud open-carry state, where homicidal Republicans can go to a bar and get drunk and shoot everyone in it. The theory is that everyone in the bar is safer if they all have guns. But not at a Republican convention. We looked at it closely back in early February once it became obvious-- at least to non-Beltway types-- that Ryan was going to steal the nomination.

Remember the Republican gun nut/Trump petition we told you about? It's closing in on 40,000 names now, heavily supported by NRA types and by Democrats who love the idea of a televised GOP shoot-out at the convention. (You can sign it at the link.)

In July of 2016, the GOP will host its convention at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. Though Ohio is an open carry state, which allows for the open carry of guns, the hosting venue-- the Quicken Loans Arena-- strictly forbids the carry of firearms on their premises.

According to the policy on their website, "firearms and other weapons of any kind are strictly forbidden on the premises of Quicken Loans Arena."

This is a direct affront to the Second Amendment and puts all attendees at risk. As the National Rifle Association has made clear, "gun-free zones" such as the Quicken Loans Arena are "the worst and most dangerous of all lies." The NRA, our leading defender of gun rights, has also correctly pointed out that "gun free zones... tell every insane killer in America... (the) safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk." (March 4, 2016 and Dec. 21, 2012)

Cleveland, Ohio is consistently ranked as one of the top ten most dangerous cities in America. By forcing attendees to leave their firearms at home, the RNC and Quicken Loans Arena are putting tens of thousands of people at risk both inside and outside of the convention site.

This doesn't even begin to factor in the possibility of an ISIS terrorist attack on the arena during the convention. Without the right to protect themselves, those at the Quicken Loans Arena will be sitting ducks, utterly helpless against evil-doers, criminals or others who wish to threaten the American way of life.

All three remaining Republican candidates have spoken out on the issue and are unified in their opposition to Barack HUSSEIN Obama's "gun-free zones."

Donald Trump said "I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools—you have-- and on military bases on my first day. It gets signed my first day...you know what a gun-free zone is to a sicko? That's bait." (Jan. 8. 2016)

Ted Cruz has accurately pointed out "shooting after shooting after shooting happens in so called gun-free zones." He continued, "look, if you're a lunatic ain't nothing better then having a bunch of targets you know that are going to be unarmed." (Dec. 4, 2015)

And Ohio Governor John Kasich has been a leader in this movement to eliminate deadly "gun-free zones" starting with his brave decision to fight the Democrats and end "gun-free zones" at National Guard facilities in Ohio. (Dec. 18, 2015)

We are all too familiar with the mass carnage that can occur when citizens are denied their basic God-given rights to carry handguns or assault weapons in public. EVERY AMERICAN HAS THE RIGHT TO PROTECT AND DEFEND THEIR FAMILY. With this irresponsible and hypocritical act of selecting a "gun-free zone" for the convention, the RNC has placed its members, delegates, candidates and all US citizens in grave danger.

We must take a stand. We cannot allow the national nominating convention of the party of Lincoln and Reagan to be hijacked by weakness and political correctness. The policies of the Quicken Loans Arena do not supersede the rights given to us by our Creator in the U.S. Constitution.

THEREFORE, WE ARE CALLING TODAY FOR THE FOLLOWING FIVE POINTS OF ACTION:

1. From the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland: A suspension of their policy preventing the open carry of firearms on the premises of the arena from July 18-21, 2016 to coincide with the Republican National Convention.

2. From the National Rifle Association: An immediate condemnation of the egregious affront to the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution constituted by the "gun-free zone" loophole to the state law.

3. From Ohio Governor John Kasich: A concerted effort to use his executive authority to override the "gun-free zone" loophole being exploited by the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.

4. From Reince Priebus and the Republican National Committee: An explanation of how a venue so unfriendly to Second Amendment rights was chosen for the Republican Convention. Further, we demand a contingency plan to relocate the convention to another location should the Quicken Loans Arena refuse to honor the constitutional rights of the RNC guests to open carry firearms during the convention.

5. From all Republican candidates for President: You have been brave in raising awareness about the immense dangers posed by "gun-free zones." In order to ensure the safety of your supporters, delegates and all attendees at the convention in July, you must call upon the RNC to rectify this affront to our Second Amendment freedoms and insist upon a suspension of the Quicken Loans Arena's unconstitutional "gun-free zone" loophole. Every American is endowed with a God-given Constitutional right to carry a gun wherever and whenever they please.

One of the Ten Commandments of the Republican Party, after all, is "The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." So why is Ryan being so hypercritical about allowing guns into the convention? Even if a few dozen patriots get shot... it's all about watering the roots of liberty anyway, right? No? Early this month, Andrew Tobias reported in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that the city's law enforcement agencies are hitting up the stressed federal budget for significant purchases of riot gear in time to great the Republican conventioneers. They've asked for the money to equip 2,000 control officers, including 2,000 sets of state-of-the-art riot-control suits.

The convention, scheduled for the week of July 18, is expected to attract 50,000 visitors to Cleveland. As part of its security plan, Cleveland is organizing a police force of 5,000 officers-- the city is in the process of recruiting officers from surrounding suburbs and elsewhere to bolster its existing force of about 1,200. Previous conventions also have attracted political demonstrators, ranging from more than 100,000 for the 2004 RNC in New York City to less than 1,000 for the 2012 RNC in Tampa, Florida.


Because the RNC has been designated as a National Special Security Event, it is eligible to receive federal funding. Cleveland is planning convention security under the direction of the Secret Service.


City officials largely are not commenting on their convention-planning efforts.


However, Mayor Frank Jackson's administration told City Council last month that the city plans to spend roughly $30 million of the federal grant on personnel, and $20 million on equipment.

Neither the Philly police nor the Wells Fargo Center Center expects any street violence from disgruntled Hillary Clinton fans if Bernie wins the Democratic Party nomination there the week after the GOP shootout Paul Ryan coronation (July 25-28). I wonder if Ryan, a bow-and-arrow enthusiast, will try to compromise by allow bows and arrows into the convention instead. Will that include crossbows? Dr. Ben wants to know. He was back on Fox and Friends this morning sound apocalyptic and threatening mayhem if Trump doesn't get the nomination. (Trump has promised him a job.) "If there are shenanigans, if it's not straightforward, all of those millions of people that Donald Trump has brought into the arena are not going to stay there. The Republicans are going to lose, and it's going to be not only the presidency, but it's going to be the Senate, and it could even be the House. It's going to be absolute destruction." He didn't repeat his prediction of "turmoil" today.

Dr. Ben-- A GOP Darwinian Racket To Separate The Naive From Their Cash

A bowl of Fruit Loops floating in a sad lethal pond of gasoline

I've always assumed that many of Dr. Ben's followers are also in a medicated state. And they are certainly ripe for the plucking by a campaign being run by slick, unscrupulous hustlers. This week Reid Epstein of the Wall Street Journal took a deeper dive into the inner workings of the small-contribution-funded Dr. Ben campaign. Dr. Ben is already on the road to being just a footnote but before being exposed as a crackpot, he looked, at least superficially, like he could actually be a contender. He's raised over $38 million, much of it in small contributions-- more like the Bernie model than the Jeb or Hillary model that depends of people in the business of systemic corruption. 63% of the contributions that have come directly to Dr. Ben's campaign, rather than to his relatively small superPACs, comes from small donors. How does that compare with other candidates? I know it's a tangent, but I'm off and running now. These are the candidates who have raised serious money and what percent comes from small contributions (not even counting the tens of millions flowing into SuperPACs for the sordid Establishment candidates) :

• Bernie- 74%
• Dr. Ben- 63%
• Rand Paul- 48%
• Herr Trumpf- 48%
• Fiorina- 47%
• Cruz- 42%
• Huckabee- 40%
• Rubio- 21%
• Hillary- 17%
• Kasich- 12%
• O'Malley- 7%
• Jeb- 5%
• Christie- 3%

OK, as you see, unlike the establishment candidates at the bottom of the chart who are getting big contributions from the wealthy, Dr. Ben is almost in Bernie territory in terms of lots and lots of true believers scraping together small contributions. In Bernie's case, they believe in his policy agenda and his vision of a progressive agenda. What do they see in Dr. B? A snake oil salesman? A lot of small contributions were flowing in but, unlike Bernie's campaign, these were contributions that were costing the campaign a lot of money to get. "Carson’s team," wrote Epstein, "raised $8.8 million in October and spent $9.5 million-- putting the retired neurosurgeon’s effort under water months before the first early-state voters caucus and cast ballots."

The Carson budget documents reveal a campaign spending almost all of its financial resources to reach new donors. In October alone, the campaign listed $7.4 million of finance costs, including $1.9 million for social media, $1.9 million for direct mail, $1.3 million for telemarketing and $608,000 each for “email marketing” and “search display advertising.”

Although expensive, the spending on social media and small-dollar fundraising has shown some tangible results. Mr. Carson has more than 5 million Facebook followers, more than Republican front-runner Donald Trump and twice as many as the Democratic front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Some of Mr. Carson’s biggest donors, for weeks furious about the rate at which his campaign has spent money, have begun to air their grievances publicly.

Earlier this month, Bill Millis, a sock-manufacturing heir who sat on the campaign’s board, quit after failing to install new leadership. Harold Doley, a former Reagan administration official who hosted an Oct. 4 Carson fundraiser at Villa Lewaro, his Irvington, N.Y., home, accused Carson campaign aides of working solely to enrich themselves in a Wall Street Journal interview this month.

“They didn’t want to hear any strategy other than their own, which is a very expensive strategy,” Mr. Doley said. “It costs 55 cents in the Carson campaign to raise a dollar. So if you look at, ‘Oh, he raised $20 million, what is the net to the campaign?’ Most of that is going out every month in consulting fees to these guys.”

And Jeff Reeter, a former Carson finance chairman who now runs the large-donor Carson super PAC Our Children’s Future PAC, was circumspect when asked about his confidence in the current Carson campaign hierarchy.

“I seek to be highly positive and supportive of everything that’s happening in the entire Carson campaign,” Mr. Reeter said. “But my certainty is about Ben Carson and his heart and his character.”

The fish rots from the... well, we don't know. Dr. Ben could be the crooked mastermind or he could be as much a victim as his contributors are. Someone-- many someones-- is making a lot of money for themselves. It's an even more direct kind of rip off scheme than the corrupt Beltway organizations like the DCCC use to steal from the true believers, but at least it aligns ideologically with what the Republican Party base believes.

Nothing he says is true or even mostly true, so integrity... maybe not

Meanwhile, in case you missed it today, George Will wrote an OpEd for the Washington Post about how a Trumpf nomination will sound the death knell of the Republican Party. How dramatic! And let's hope he's right! "Conservatives’ highest priority," he insists, "now must be to prevent Trump from winning the Republican nomination."

If you look beyond Donald Trump’s comprehensive unpleasantness-- is there a disagreeable human trait he does not have?-- you might see this: He is a fundamentally sad figure. His compulsive boasting is evidence of insecurity. His unassuageable neediness suggests an aching hunger for others’ approval to ratify his self-admiration. His incessant announcements of his self-esteem indicate that he is not self-persuaded. Now, panting with a puppy’s insatiable eagerness to be petted, Trump has reveled in the approval of Vladimir Putin, murderer and war criminal.

In 2016, a Trump nomination would not just mean another Democratic presidency. It would also mean the loss of what Taft and then Goldwater made possible-- a conservative party as a constant presence in U.S. politics.

It is possible Trump will not win any primary, and that by the middle of March our long national embarrassment will be over. But this avatar of unfettered government and executive authoritarianism has mesmerized a large portion of Republicans for six months. The larger portion should understand this:

One hundred and four years of history is in the balance. If Trump is the Republican nominee in 2016, there might not be a conservative party in 2020 either.

UPDATE: Happy New Year, Dr. B, The Party's Almost Over

Dr. Ben's campaign manager, Barry Bennett, Deputy Campaign Manager Lisa Cohen and Communications Director, Doug Watts, all suddenly quit the crackpot campaign without notice. Hate Talk Radio nut Armstrong Williams, a long-time crony of Carson's seems to have been behind the shakeup in the campaign which really is nothing now but a desperate rush to suck up as much money as it can before Republican donors realize Carson is a fraud.

The Establishment Plot To Insert Paul Ryan As The Republican Party Presidential Nominee

Few of the growing number of Republicans opposing Trumpf say their opposition is rooted in what's good for the country. It's about what's good for the fucked-up political party they share with him-- albeit uneasily-- that spawned him in the first place. I don't recall ever seeing so many elected officials from a party saying they will not support a candidate if he's their party's official nominee. Miami-Dade walking dead freshman Carlos Curbelo comes right out and says he "wouldn’t support Donald Trump for president if he were our nominee. I would support any reasonable idea to find a better nominee." That's the brokered convention idea we've been talking about for the past two days in which the GOP will seek to thwart their own bigoted, ignorant base and sell them Paul Ryan.

Another Florida Congressman, David Jolly, who represents the Pinellas County district but finds it too blue-leaning now and is giving it up to run for the Rubio Senate seat, said that he has "broad disagreement with Donald Trump. If he is our nominee, I think he loses, I think Republicans lose the Senate. He puts the House at risk and sends the party into the wilderness for the next decade... If there is a mechanism to make sure somebody other than Donald Trump wins the nomination, I think that is a good thing for Republicans." Again, "good for Republicans." What about America? Do any of them care?

Establishment goon, Steve Chabot, who represents a severely gerrymandered district that allows him to win in Cincinnati-- remember Obama beat Romney in Hamilton County 208,508 (52%) to 188,653 (47%) and Sherrod Brown beat Josh Mandel there 208,611 (53%) to 171,718 (44%), while the state legislature redrew the district to include blood red/all white Warren County northeast of the city, where Romney took 69% and Mandel took 65%-- thinks the GOP establishment can trick the idiot Trumpf followers. He advocates feigning "respect" for them while doing what the establishment feels is best for the party. "Whatever it is that makes that more likely to happen, I’m for it. I don’t know if it’s a brokered convention or not. But it would be unrealistic for us not to at least have that in the back of our minds that that is a distinct possibility this time."

Many of the Republicans in Congress-- Chabot and Luke Messer (R-IN) are two examples-- are already laying the groundwork for what amounts to an Establishment coup d'etat against their own base in favor of Ryan. The editorial board of Ryan's hometown newspaper, the Janesville Gazette was setting it up Friday, much the way establishment editorial boards will be doing all over the country:

If Donald Trump defects and runs as an independent because leading Republicans won't accept this egomaniac as their presidential nominee, so be it.

The sooner the better.

So far, he has denigrated women, Hispanics and those with disabilities. On Monday, he fanned the flames of fear in suggesting we ban Muslims from entering our country.

Let's see, are we missing anyone? Is there any group Trump hasn't disparaged?

Seemingly every time he opens his mouth, he stoops to a new low, and his poll numbers rise. Too many Americans who are fed up with politics as usual and Washington gridlock appreciate Trump as the ultimate outsider, the anti-establishment candidate who's willing to say what's on his mind, regardless the law or consequences. It matters not whether he can unilaterally act and fulfill his promises. It's disturbing that Trump's hateful positions are embraced by so many.

New polls show Trump is backed by twice as many Republican voters as his nearest competitors. Yet every fresh statement from this bombastic “carnival barker”-- as one Gazette letter writer put it this week-- leaves Republicans one step closer to handing Hillary Clinton the keys to the White House. That's because Trump's comments further cast Republicans as an exclusive rather than inclusive party.

Republicans can blame themselves. Other candidates, feeling poll envy, have been too tempted to join in this rhetorical cesspool, this caldron of poor taste in which Trump says whatever outrageous thing will fuel media and public attention, regardless of accuracy and credibility.

Blame the national media for playing into Trump's hands. As Charles Haynes of the Religious Freedom Center pointed out in a column in Thursday's Gazette, CNN makes “breaking news” of every Trump move and comment. Trump gets more airtime on network evening news programs than the entire Democratic field.

Into this fray steps a voice of relative reason in House Speaker Paul Ryan of Janesville. On Tuesday, he urged fellow Republicans to steer clear of Trump's Muslim message.

...If anyone can unite and save the Republican Party, it might be Ryan. While he didn't want the speaker's role, he answered the call to duty. And while he has taken a tough tone with President Obama, in a few short weeks he also has forged bipartisanship too seldom seen in Washington. He helped usher through a five-year transportation bill and a replacement for the No Child Left Behind education law.

On Dec. 3, in his first major address as speaker, Ryan again advocated conservative, free-market solutions to America's ills. He pledged to craft a plan “to replace every word of Obamacare,” as well as rewrite and simplify the tax code and propose a “bold, pro-growth agenda.”

If only presidential candidates would follow Ryan's lead and outline a meaningful and constructive reform agenda rather than join Trump in verbal assaults and the rhetorical gutter, the GOP might have a chance to win next November.

This morning on ABC-TV's This Week, Dr. Ben reiterated that if the party bosses try to fix the convention in favor of an insider-- no one is mentioning the beloved Ryan by name you'll notice-- he would quit the Republican race. Asked about the GOP establishment's brokered convention plot, he said "one of the reasons that I got into this is because I heard the frustration in the people who are so tired of back-room deals, of subterfuge, of dishonesty... if that is the case, then you know I’m out of here."

If, as many Republicans believe, Trumpf is a Bill Clinton false flag operation, the Clintons may well be hoist on their own petard by Hillary winding up having to run against Ryan. Of course the newest polling from Iowa could put a spanner in the Republican establishment's plans to insert Ryan as the candidate without him having to compete for the lunatic fringe base voters. I kind of think Cruz would be able to make mincemeat out of Ryan if this whole thing doesn't get shut down.

I guess It Sounds Better To Say Dr. Ben Is An Idiot Savant Than Pointing Out That He's Just Incredibly Dumb

But, man is this guy an idiot. And you thought Trump was a moron? Well, Trump is moron, of course, and just about as ignorant as Dr. Ben. They are both representin' though. This is exactly what the dumbed down, Foxified Republican Party base wants. Remember, according to a PPP survey released yesterday, 79% of Republican primary voters-- despite 9/11-- think George W. Bush kept us safe. And that is 79%, not 7.9%. But, if normal people aren't careful the Democrats will nominate a fatally flawed establishment shill that no one wants to vote for and we could actually wind up with something like Trump or Cruz or Dr. Ben in the White House. Yeah, so back to Dr. Ben... before he completely disappears from the presidential stage (today's NBC poll confirming his slowly but steadily disintegrating poll numbers), his brand enhanced and if he made $10 million catering to the suckers last year-- he did-- he can rake in $15 next year.



Trevor Noah should team up with Trumpy for a Ben Carson marathon on the Gaza Strip Club and how to utilize experts. Yeah, that expert who the NY Times quoted the other day as a top Carson foreign policy advisor, Duane Clarridge. Now this is a walking freak show. He did so much damage to Carson this week-- pointing out that they can't "make Carson smart" and that he doesn't know the first thing about foreign policy or the world-- that the campaign was reduced to claiming he's senile.

“Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East,” said Duane R. Clarridge, a top adviser to Mr. Carson on terrorism and national security. He also said Mr. Carson needed weekly conference calls briefing him on foreign policy so “we can make him smart.”

As the deadly assaults in Paris claimed by the Islamic State reframe the presidential race, the candidates’ foreign policy credentials are suddenly under scrutiny. And Mr. Carson has attracted extra attention because his statements give rise to questions about where, as a retired neurosurgeon without government experience, he turns for information and counsel on complex global issues. What is unusual is the candor of those who are tutoring him about his struggle to master the subject.

In last week’s Republican debate, speaking of the turmoil in Syria, Mr. Carson said that “the Chinese are there.”

Both the White House and China denied that China had intervened militarily in Syria.

This week, Mr. Carson’s advisers said that his source for claiming Chinese involvement in Syria was a telephone conversation he had had with a freelance American intelligence operative in Iraq.

According to notes of the briefing kept by a Carson aide who was also on the line, the operative said, “Multiple reports have surfaced that Chinese military advisers are on the ground in Syria, operating with Russian special operations personnel.”

Mr. Clarridge, 83, a former C.I.A. agent who had connected Mr. Carson with the operative in Iraq, said on Monday that the information was wrong. The operative in Iraq had “overleaped” in suggesting that Chinese troops are in Syria, Mr. Clarridge said, adding of the operative, “You know how it goes when people are desperate for some headline.”

So who's Carson-crony Duane Clarridge? Someone who should be rotting in a prison cell for his part in Iran-Contra, but escaped with a presidential pardon from George H.W. Bush to protect the guilty before a public trial could commence. Clarridge, who well may be as fuzzy in the brain as the Carson campaign says he is, was a cloak-and-dagger crackpot working for the CIA starting 50-60 years ago and wound up as Reagan's man-on-the-ground when Reagan, who whoever was running the White House when Reagan was debilitated with severe Alzheimer's (according to Bill O'Reilly's new book on the subject) was trying to use Iranian and Israeli assets to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. Sounds perfect for Dr. Ben. This deranged freak in the video:

Clarridge’s commitment to U.S. intervention is well documented. It has led him to defend the CIA’s tactics in Chile in the 1970s and the mining of Nicaraguan harbors in the 1980s.

“We will intervene whenever we decide it is in our national security interest to intervene,” Clarridge told Australian-born journalist John Pilger in a 2008 interview. “And if you don’t like it, lump it. Get used to it world. We are not going to put up with nonsense.”

In an interview archived by George Washington University, Clarridge divulged how he finally came up with the idea to place mines in Nicaraguan harbors. He told the interviewer, he was getting a lot of frustration from Washington to do something but he recounted that he had limited resources.

“Guerilla warfare experts will tell ya don't hit the economic targets you make enemies of the people you need. I don't believe, that's not true, it maybe true in certain circumstances, but it is not an all encompassing rule, and everything needs to be looked at,” he said. “I knew we had 'em, we'd made 'em outta sewer pipe and we had the good fusing system on them and we were ready. And you know they wouldn't really hurt anybody because they just weren't that big a mine, alright? Yeah, with luck, bad luck we might hurt somebody, but pretty hard you know?”

In 1991 he was indicted in the Iran-Contra scandal for lying to Congress. His trial was never completed. In 1992 he was pardoned before George H.W. Bush left office.

From a Cold War spy, Clarridge transitioned into self-made operative in the war on terror.

The New York Times reported as recently as 2011, that Clarridge was conducting a Middle East private spy ring from his home in Southern California.

Back then, the New York Times characterized Clarridge’s tips from spies on the ground from Pakistan to Afghanistan as “an amalgam of fact, rumor, analysis and uncorroborated reports” that he pushed “to military officials who, until last spring at least, found some credible enough to be used in planning strikes against militants in Afghanistan.” Once funded by money from the military, Clarridge managed to keep his network afloat with private donations after officials lost interest. He used the money to try and investigate “Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, in hopes of collecting beard trimmings or other DNA samples that might prove Mr. Clarridge’s suspicions that the Afghan leader was a heroin addict,” The Times reported.

In 2004, the Los Angeles Times reported Clarridge was using his own money to look at Saddam Hussein's money ties to countries like France and Russia.

"It will be a huge bombshell if we can pull it off," Clarridge said at the time.

In national security circles, Clarridge is seen as an off-beat privateer who walks the tightrope between sanctioned spy and citizen security activist. Still, he has taken on some high-profile clients, including the New York Times, who hired the company he worked for-- American International Security Corporation-- to help find and free kidnapped reporter David Rohde in 2008. Rohde managed to eventually escape from Taliban captivity, but according to a report from Gawker, someone who worked with him said "Clarridge was inflating his role in facilitating Rohde's escape in an effort to justify AISC's enormous fees."

Carson’s reliance on Clarridge as an adviser-- no matter how limited-- speaks to the former neurosurgeon’s newness to politics. While Clarridge confided in The Times that Carson “need[s] to have a conference call once a week” to “make him smart,” the Carson campaign immediately rushed to downplay Clarridge’s role in the campaign, going so far as to portray him as a old man who was being taken advantage of by the Times.

But that doesn't answer who gave Carson the advice to compare Syrian refugee families fleeing ISIS terrorists to rabid dogs. He told reporters in Mobile, Alabama yesterday that "We must balance safety against just being a humanitarian. For instance, if there's a rabid dog running around your neighborhood you're probably not gonna assume something good about that dog, and you're probably gonna put your children out of the way. Doesn't mean that you hate your dogs, by any stretch of the imagination, but you're putting your intellect into motion, and you're thinking, 'How do I protect my children?' At the same time, I love dogs, and I'm gonna call the humane society. Hopefully they can come and take this dog away and create a safe environment once again. By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanism that allow us determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly. Who are the people who want to come in here and hurt us and want to destroy us? Until we know how to do that-- just like it would be foolish to put your child out in the neighborhood knowing that that was going on-- it is foolish for us to accept people, if we cannot have the appropriate type of screening." Ha, ha, ha? Just remember this-- some of these people could be your neighbors or, worse yet, sitting at your Thanksgiving dinner table next week: