More than 1,800 US newspapers have closed since 2004, leaving expanding ‘news deserts’ with little or no local reporting on public affairs

“More than one-fifth of local dailies or weeklies had been shuttered in a decade and a half. As a result, ‘thousands of our communities (are) at risk of becoming news deserts,’ the report said. Half of the 3,143 counties in the United States now have only one newspaper, usually a small weekly, and almost 200 counties in the country have no newspaper at all. ‘The people with the least access to local news are often the most vulnerable—the poorest, least educated and most isolated.'”

Yeah, that’s right. I remember reading that law that makes it illegal to appoint a special counsel.

After a while, there just no more to say about Trump’s crazy pronouncements. Obviously there’s something seriously wrong with him, but I’ve given up trying to figure out what it is beyond the obvious pathological narcissism. Is he scared of the walls closing in? Is he mentally challenged? Is he senile? Is he totally delusional? Perhaps he really knows what’s going on, but just lies about everything? I have no idea. I’ve never seen anybody like him.

“Mueller’s keen interest in (the Trump/Stone) relationship was laid out in a draft court document revealed this week in which prosecutors drew a direct line between the two men — referring to Stone as someone understood to be in regular contact with senior Trump campaign officials, ‘including with then-candidate Donald J. Trump.’

The inclusion of the president by name in the draft filing rattled his legal team and indicated how closely the special counsel is scrutinizing what Trump may have learned from Stone about WikiLeaks’ release of emails that prosecutors say were hacked by Russian intelligence operatives.”

That’s not all Trump could have gotten from Stone. Stone was a direct conduit to Russian intelligence, although he probably didn’t realize it. Stone claimed to be in touch with Guccifer 2.0. He claims that he was unaware that Guccifer 2.0 was an identity assumed by Russian intelligence. That’s probably true because: (1) he’s not the brightest bulb on the tree; (2) before we knew that Guccifer 2.0 was just a front for Russian intelligence, Stone wrote a long article for Breitbart arguing that it was Guccifer 2.0, not the Russians, who hacked the DNC.

Yup, Guccifer 2.0, but not the Russians!

In the immortal words of B. Bunny, “What a maroon!”

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Stone also wrote, “The original Guccifer famously hacked Hillary’s home email server, you might remember.” The original Guccifer, who was a single person and was not Russian, claimed to have done that, but investigators found no evidence to support such a claim, and Guccifer never presented any evidence that he had done so. Guccifer later admitted in FBI questioning that he had lied to Fox News when he made this claim. Apparently Stone never got the memo.