Dow dropped 500 points at one time today, now recovered slightly.

Wild day and not yet over; Dow could go in any direction - currently over 2,000 points below this years high point.

Meanwhile

1 sentence that explains the wacky and super dysfunctional world of Donald Trump

Source

Hotel California

Erm, I think that's a federal district court, not the SCOTUS (yet).

Supreme Court denies GOP request to block new Pa. congressional map

Source

Tsk, tsk, you know me better than that

Jared Kushner was the senior leader in Trump's campaign dealing with Cambridge Analytica

It is alleged Jared Kushner, who was charged with overseeing Trump’s digital operations, is the reason Cambridge Analytica joined the Trump campaign.

For emphasis: this isn't just a random employee of Cambridge Analytica claiming to have used bribes and Ukranian sex workers on videotape to entrap politicians, IT'S THEIR FOUNDER AND CEO Alexander Nix. https://www.channel4.com/news/cambri...-investigation

Worth noting as well that a story broke earlier this week stating that Cambridge Analytica had been in talks with a Russian "oil company" interested in influencing American voters:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/u...pgtype=article

PS Golly gee, I wonder why they might have a resource of Ukranian sex workers... http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handl...tion=journals#

Thanks and not to forget

Cambridge Analytica had an arrangement with a company called (GSR), owned by Cambridge-based academic Aleksandr Kogan, on the harvesting and processing of Facebook data. Collected 50 million US user profiles from Facebook (Facebook claim the data had been illicitly obtained)

Kogan is also an associate professor at St Petersburg University and he’s received grants from the Russian government

I wonder where all this will lead...

https://news.sky.com/story/informati...rvers-11297541

How Trump threw Canada's refugee system into turmoil

The Canadian government was forced to set aside C$173 million in its latest budget to pay for extra patrols at border crossings to cope with the influx, as well as security screening and processing of refugee applications.

Certainly gerrymandering isn't exclusively/mostly a republican thing? Or do you know of some data or study that show it is? Otherwise it may well be a zero sum game.

Moreover, as the decision appears to base on the state's constitution, the outcome on such a case may well differ in other states, no?

Apparently, Channel 4 News are showing the second part of their investigation into Cambridge Analytica tonight, and this part concentrates on their role in American politics...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6bhmr0

No. Likely not a zero sum game since most US States are GOP led, see picture (to make it easy for you)

It's a Republican thing lately, simply because Rs controlled more state houses after the 2010 census than Ds and therefore got to draw the maps. In some places, it's been done in such a way that the Rs win a substantial majority of seats even when getting 50% or fewer of the total votes.

Ds have done their own gerrymandering over the years as well, but not to the extent Rs have recently.

Indeed. Michigan is a prime example (scroll down this page to see a table of gerrymandered seats in the November 2012 (?) election).

Michigan

D vote: 52.7%
R vote: 47.3%

D seats: 5
R seats: 9

The same article shows that Republican gerrymandering is far more prevalent (and blatant) than Democrat efforts in this area.

The dysfunctional Congress seem to be inching towards another Govt. shutdown as they try to iron out differences in the $1.2 Trillion spending bill.

They seem to have given up on including DACA but GOP are not giving up on Wall funding. There are also open promises on fixing Obamacare which need resolving.....

Meanwhile an ex-playboy model, Karen McDougal, is suing the company that owns the National Enquirer so she could break her silence about an alleged affair she claims she had with President Trump.

A Manhattan Supreme Court judge rules Trump must face defamation lawsuit from former "Apprentice" contestant Summer Zervos. Zervos alleged in the lawsuit that she and her business were damaged after Trump's derogatory statements about her in the wake of her sexual misconduct allegations against the president. The decision is likely to be repealed.

Great minds think alike
Source

Cambridge Analytica, has suspended its CEO, Alexander Nix, in the wake of undercover reports showing him discussing potential bribery and entrapment.

The Channel 4 News report on Tuesday featured undercover footage of Nix claiming he met Trump "many times" and that the company was responsible for a wide swath of the Trump campaign's activity.

"We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting," Nix said. "We ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign, and our data informed all the strategy."

Alex Tayler, labeled as the chief data officer for Cambridge Analytica, is recorded separately as saying the firm's analysis was responsible for Trump's Electoral College performance.

"When you think about the fact that Donald Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million votes, but won the Electoral College, that's down to the data and the research," Tayler said. "That's how he won the election."

Source

It is like something out of science fiction

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018...ca-states.html

IMO, the main scoop in today's undercover Cambridge Analytica segment is that they disregarded campaign laws.

Cambridge Analytica claimed to handle all of Trump's campaign ads, running positive ads with Trump's funds directly and negative/shady ads with SuperPACs that couldn't be traced back to them. The thing is, SuperPACS are required by law to be independent of campaigns. It's a line that's probably crossed quite a bit, but you never get the baldfaced admission of violations on video tape.

Don't know if they'll be reprecusions directly on this but this could be another excuse to investigate deeper and from an additional angle.

WaPo goes into this at more depth: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...lections-work/

It's almost like he's somehow indebt or aware of kompromat...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.5ffbad81e598

Well, knowing Trump, he and Putin have probably already worked out a deal on who gets which parts of Europe.

"The best deal ever, I'm telling you! The best deal!!".

This NIX and those surrounding him look like slime bags.Send them all to work in the coal mines in the US for a few years