Showing posts with label Funny Shit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Funny Shit. Show all posts

Monday, June 26, 2017

Screw You

By rpannier

Yes, SCREW YOU! F@CK YOU! And EVERYTHING ELSE YOU
I swear the next sob story I hear about some jackass who voted for il douchebag whining and crying about how they feel betrayed by the Clown Prince of Idiocracy I'm going find them and hurl a bushel full of rotted apples at their stupid, whining, jerk face.

I have no sympathy, NONE, for the vast majority of the denizens of the political wasteland who want us to feel their pain because their fucking job went to Canada, or Mexico, or China, or was just fucking closed so some vulture capitalist pig whom you admire so much for their grit and monetary know-how can buy that new ivory covered back scratcher (my obligatory Simpsonism)

Guess what, oh Servant of the Lord of the Dung, you got took and I don't give a damn.

You voted not just for the Grifter-in-Chief, but then you turned around and voted for his Merry Band of Criminals. Yeah! I'm looking at YOU Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida. You who re-elected the odious Republikkan senator from your state for some reason that only someone with several advanced degrees in Behavioral Science focusing specifically on the Stupid, the Lame, the Ignorant, the Bat Shit Moron could possibly hope to comprehend.

Screw you, oh Joe Six-Pack and Sally Housecoat (Another Simpsonism) who are getting on TV and singing your sad tale of how Carrier is really, actually sending the jobs you held elsewhere... and YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND. I mean, "HE TOLD US THOSE JOBS WERE SAVED!"
So some (probably most) of you vague-witted harlequins happily tossed away your vote on a man whose whole history has been one of, and get this, 'NOT GIVING A FUCK ABOUT ANYONE BUT HIMSELF!' A simple ixquick (shameless plug), google or whatever search engine you use, would have shown you this.
But, Nooooooooooooo!!! Now, we're treated to seeing a half dozen of you Swamp Creature rejects on TV telling us how betrayed you feel. The funny part is... You really look surprised.
Weeeeeeeeellllllllll... screw you! Screw the person who was standing to your left and to your right. Screw everyone who worked at Carrier who voted for Trump.
My sympathies lie with those of you who didn't vote for the Swinish Lout that presently claims the title of President.
They deserve our sympathies.
But here's the thing, you won't see them on TV all glazy eyed, drooling, shaking their heads, saying, "I...I just don't get it."
That's probably why they don't get interviewed. They ought to send a reporter to your town and do a segment on every Carrier employee who voted Clinton beating the shit out of the Trump voters with padded clubs.
But that would be too violent... maybe. And, if it were me who had lost my job and they gave me a club, it'd take 15 people to pull me away from you nit-witted trolls.

Moving on to another location in the Midwest, but still smack-dab in the heart of Doofania (Phineas and Ferb), Fox6 and Money reports that GE is closing their plant in Waukesha and move its 300-plus jobs to Canada.
And yes... Yes... YEs... YES, the addlepated dwellers of Swale of Stupid are SHOCKED! DISAPPOINTED! and SADDENED! this is happening.
I'm sure the DUH-nizens are all of those things and more.
Maybe... and just maybe now... YOU SHOULD HAVE F@CKING THOUGHT OF THAT WHEN YOU NOT ONLY VOTED FOR THE ORANGE SWINE, BUT ALSO VOTED TO RE-ELECT JOHNSON TO THE SENATE AND RYAN TO CONGRESS.
By a hefty margin of over 2:1 You Butt-Clowns voted for the poor man's Mussolini. By over 2:1 you voted for the reject from the Movie Leprechaun Paul Ryan (rejected because he was too sociopathic for the part).

You want a good laugh. It's pathetic, but I laughed.
“Doesn’t he realize that we voted for him? He should have been there and saw my wife crying. He should have been there,” Kenneth Olsen said (of Ryan).
Poor... poor Kenneth Olsen. You voted for Truquemada and IT and now you and your wife (who also likely voted for them) has a sad.
And why should Ryan show up? Do you have a hefty campaign donation for him. Or, do you just want to sit there while he laughs at your stupidity?
SCREW YOU!
Screw Bret Mattice, who voted for the first time...EVER! And guess for whom the dimbulb voted? If you guessed the least qualified person on the ballot, any ballot, in any country, at any time in history, you'd be correct.
Do us all a favor Bret Mattice, don't ever vote again... please
Oh... and screw you!

Then there's this primary school refuse, Joe Barlow. In an interview, supporter of the Annoying Orange reject, Joe Barlow, said this....
Note... pay careful attention to your jaw. It may drop so hard and so fast you could hurt yourself. My suggestion is to tie it off like Jacob Marley in a Christmas Carol
“I don’t believe there’s hope for our plant. My hope is, companies like that, that offshore all the work, I hope he follows through on his 35% tax and punishes those businesses,”
You see that? "I hope he follows through on his 35%...blah." Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! He hopes Trump follows through on a campaign promise.
Screw You Joe. You and your Trumpists screwed over your fellow employees, the one's who didn't vote for the squalid-one. The one's who didn't just say, "How fucking stupid a vote can I cast? Hmmmmm. I know. I'll vote for all three. Because what could possibly go wrong?"

Here's the difference between you People Under the Stairs and say, some out of work guy, who is surfing through garbage dumps hoping to find enough scrap metal that he can sell to survive. I can almost understand them. They had nothing to lose. But... you... you F@CKERS had good paying jobs. At the time, your plant in Wisconsin was NOT... I repeat NOT in danger of closing. In fact, it was his election and the inane rantings of the Evil Elf about the Import-Export Bank that got it closed and moved on to Canada.
You had money! You had a House! You had something! You pittered it away for some unknown reason.
Write a book titled. "How NOT to be a squirrel brained jack-ass!"
Tell us what you were thinking, so we know what NOT to do

To my niece in Minnesota (still in the Midwest) who voted for Trump, for one reason and ONE REASON ONLY.... (dum... er... drum roll. I'm sure you already know the answer) "I did it for the babies."
Yes! Yes! Yes, ladies and gentlemen... Abortion! Abortion was the reason why she voted for the Fake Tanned Ogre! Abortion!
Now... now... she's all concerned because his policies could hurt the children. You know... the boys and girls that are NOT little growing pieces of tissue, that if removed from the womb would die within a few hours. Actual living, breathing HUMAN BEINGS.
SCREW YOU! Screw you and Your fucking Abortion fixation

Slogging back to Indiana and a revisit to dimwit Helen Beristain and her undocumented husband.
Ms. Helen Beristain actually thought her husband would not get deported.
Laugh along with me folks. She's as jaw dropping stupid as the guys in Wisconsin.

Ms. Helen Beristain somehow believed her husband would not be deported because only the 'Bad Hombres' would go. She said (before her husband was shipped off to Mexico) "I don't think ICE is out there to detain anyone and break families, no,"
She was, of course, shocked that her husband was kicked out.
How does she feel now? Don't know. According to CNN, she won't answer calls from any news sources.
Screw You Ms Helen Beristain. And screw Granger, Indiana... the very Republican Town of Granger, Indiana. The shocked citizenry of the town who thought Roberto would not be sent back because he was a good person, 'A Good Hombre'. Screw You

I could go on. There are so many of these stories. The dumb twerp in Florida who was afraid of losing his insurance, but felt it would be best to vote for the groper because he was certain it would be best for the whole country to do so, even if it hurt him.
Good job, Buttercup! You lost out. And... here's the part you somehow missed... They're SCREWING everyone over.
Oh.. unless you're a millionaire.

The oxygen thieves, the simpletons who voted for his Assness, or at the very least, wouldn't vote for Clinton because somehow... someway... there was 'NO ACTUAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO.'
HYSTERICAL isn't it? Because if she were president right now, Gorsuch, or someone worse would be on the Court... I guess. Oh... and we'd be looking at selling off National Park Land. And of course, we'd have a President beholden to the closest thing to a real-life Ernst Stavro Blofeld, in Putin. And, of course, she'd have insulted half the leaders of our allies by whining about electoral votes and actual votes and her inauguration attendance and some other rubbish. And lied about taping conversations in the White House (or did trump lie?)
Screw You! Screw You! Screw You!

(And for the sake of transparency; 1. I voted for Sanders in the primary. 2. I did belong to the Clinton Group on DU. 3 I belonged to every Democratic President Group for 2016 on DU. 4. I voted for Clinton in the GE. Just in case you're thinking, "I wonder who rpannier voted for?")

Or the countless stupid people across the country, male and female, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, African American, western Asian, Protestants, Jews, Catholics, Muslims (yeah, I'm perplexed by that as well) who, for some inexplicable reason got up out of bed and said to themselves, "I'm going to do the FUCKING STUPIDEST THING I WILL EVER do in my entire lifetime."
They somehow found a polling station and voted for that thing that sits in the White House, in a bathrobe, screaming at a television set and finding new and different ways to enrich his family and friends, while screwing over everyone else.

Well... Screw You (he says calmly). You're an idiot. I cannot fix this problem. Most of my family cannot fix this problem. Many of my friends cannot. They got out and voted. They didn't vote for the orange-faced fake-haired charlatan.

****************
I am finished. I have said my piece. I am still not at piece with the low wattage loser in the WH.
And... one last thought....
Screw You if You voted for Trump

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Trump's Bizarre Kiss Ass Cabinet Meeting

Donald Trump opened a cabinet meeting by inviting the media in to hear the important business of the country.

What did the country hear?

First, Trump took time to praise himself, saying that “nobody would have believed” how many jobs were created in the last seven months … which was less than the jobs created in the previous seven months.

And that the papers were full of “big stories” about new mines opening.

There was also a self-celebration of Trump’s great achievements as a signer of legislation. Which are the greatest. The most ever.

It may be hard to think of a single piece of substantive legislation that bears Trump’s scrawl, but that’s because you’re not thinking hard enough. Besides, every tweet now counts as legislation.

What’s passing that Lilly Ledbetter Act next to calling Comey a coward from the toasty comfort of your bed?

 Once Trump got tired of hearing himself explain how great he was, it was time to share the duty with others. That big smacking sound was each Trump appointee taking his or her turn at telling Trump what a wonderful man he is, how right he is about everything, and how much everyone loves him.



Full story: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/6/12/1671049/-Donald-Trump-turns-a-cabinet-meeting-into-a-butt-kissing-ritual

Monday, May 29, 2017

‘Tiny hand clenched on top’: Internet hilariously mocks Trump for plagiarizing his family coat of arms

                
News broke Monday that President Donald Trump appears to have plagiarized his family coat of arms that appears outside of the Trump National Golf Club outside of Washington. This weekend the Senior PGA Championship was hosted at the golf club and the “Trump family coat of arms” was featured on signs all over.

The actual emblem features three lions and two chevrons on a shield with a gloved hand gripping an arrow or spear, The New York Times reported. The coat of arms was originally granted by British authorities in 1939 to Joseph Edward Davies. He was the third husband of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the man who built the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Ironically, he once served as the ambassador to the former Soviet Union.

The Trump Organization staged a hostile takeover of the coat of arms and replaced the Latin word for “integrity” with “Trump.”

Davies grandson Joseph D. Tydings, a former U.S. state senator from Maryland, admitted there are members of his family who are ready to sue Trump, but he cautioned against it. Tydings once worked for a large firm that managed Trump. He told his family that the suit would end up costing generations after them money.

“This is the first I’ve ever heard about it being used anywhere else,” Tydings said of the coat of arms placement at the northern resort.

When Trump tried to bring the American version to Scotland for his new development the authorities refused to allow the usage.

The Internet was not necessarily surprised by Trump stealing the coat of arms. Instead of encouraging the lawsuit, the Internet sought mockery instead:

Kushner's Charmed Life Comes To A Screeching Halt

By Taegan Goddard

Walter Shapiro: “Even under the benign theory that Kushner thought that a secret back channel was like a small boy’s tin-can telephone, his life in the coming months and maybe years will be a study in misery. He will probably spend more time with his personal lawyer, Clinton Justice Department veteran Jamie Gorelick, than with Ivanka or his children. Whether it is an appearance under oath on Capitol Hill or the inevitable FBI interview, every sentence Kushner utters will bring with it possible legal jeopardy.”

“Kushner may have once thought that he established his tough-guy credentials when he stared down angry creditors and impatient bankers over his ill-timed 2007 purchase of a $1.8bn Fifth Avenue office building. But the worst thing that can happen to an over-leveraged real estate investor (as Trump himself knows well) is bankruptcy. When the FBI and special prosecutor Robert Mueller get involved, the penalties can theoretically involve steel bars locking behind you.”

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Saturday, May 20, 2017

‘People Here Think Trump Is A Laughingstock’

On Trump's ill-timed world tour.


“Chaos.”
“Circus.”
“Laughingstock.”

Those were just a few of the comments I heard in Berlin this week from senior European officials trying to make sense of the meltdown in Washington at just the moment when a politically imploding President Trump embarks on what he called “my big foreign trip” in this morning’s kickoff tweet.

For months, the American president has raised unprecedented questions about the future of the American-led alliance that has persisted since the end of World War II. He has slagged off NATO, evinced skepticism about the European Union, cheered for like-minded right-wing populists, boosted antidemocratic strongmen like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and vowed to rip up free trade deals—and Europe’s political class has been outraged, confused and even terrified.

Trump’s tumultuous last two weeks—from firing his FBI director to allegedly sharing highly classified information with Russian officials even as a formidable special counsel was being named to investigate his campaign team’s possible collusion with the Kremlin—has them still confused about his foreign policy. But now they are more appalled than afraid of the man with whom they have no choice but to partner.
 
Many I spoke with said they had made a fundamental mistake of viewing Trump primarily as an ideologue with whom they disagreed rather than what he increasingly appears to be: an ill-prepared newcomer to the world stage, with uninformed views and a largely untested team that will now be sorely tried by a 9-day, 5-stop world tour that would be wildly ambitious even for a seasoned global leader.

“People are less worried than they were six weeks ago, less afraid,” a senior German government official with extensive experience in the United States told me. “Now they see the clownish nature.” Or, as another German said on the sidelines of a meeting here devoted to taking stock of 70 years of U.S.-German relations, “People here think Trump is a laughingstock.”
 
“The dominant reaction to Trump right now is mockery,” Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of the conservative journal the National Interest, told the meeting at the German Foreign Office here while moderating a panel on Trump’s foreign policy that dealt heavily on the difficulty of divining an actual policy amid the spectacle. Heilbrunn, whose publication hosted Trump’s inaugural foreign policy speech in Washington during last year’s campaign, used the ‘L’ word too. “The Trump administration is becoming an international laughingstock.” Michael Werz, a German expert from the liberal U.S. think tank Center for American Progress, agreed, adding he was struck by “how rapidly the American brand is depreciating over the last 20 weeks.”

Of course, Americans have had presidential scandals before, and Europe has a long history of substantive clashes with U.S. presidents over everything from the Vietnam war and confronting the Soviets to the widely opposed 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Even Trump flying off on a poorly timed international tour isn’t entirely unfamiliar territory: Many embattled U.S. leaders have hit the road for a dose of statesman-like pageantry, red-carpet receptions and global superpower-style pomp to compensate for pressing investigations and congressional uproar back home. Bill Clinton toured Russia and Northern Ireland after testifying to the grand jury in the Monica Lewinsky affair and was in Israel when he learned the House of Representatives had the votes to impeach him. Ronald Reagan summited with Mikhail Gorbachev as the congressional Iran-Contra hearings threatened to derail his second-term agenda.
But Trump’s tribulations have confounded the world, and especially America’s closest allies here in Europe, in a whole different way. Never has a U.S. president flailed so early in his tenure at a time when he is still such an unknown quantity in the world. In Trump’s case, he will arrive in a skeptical Europe with an inexperienced or nonexistent staff appointed to deal with global problems and a record of wildly contradictory statements even on matters of core principle. Does he think NATO is still “obsolete” or not? Is he prepared to offer the Russians anything more than the symbolism of his recent, chummy Oval Office visit with its foreign minister? Want to blow up carefully negotiated agreements with Europe on climate change and trade?

No one knows.
***
 
When European diplomats meet these days, they often swap stories about Trump—and how to manage their volatile new ally. “The president of the United States has a 12-second attention span,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a former senior official in April after meeting Trump in the Oval Office. Not only that, this person told me, the president seemed unprepared and ill-informed, turning the conversation to North Korea and apparently unaware that NATO is not a part of the ongoing North Korea saga.

Such anecdotes have shaped how Europe’s anxious leaders are preparing for Trump’s trip this week – he will come to Brussels for a NATO session on Thursday—and for another one planned for early July, when he visits Germany for a G-20 summit at which he is expected to meet Putin face to face for the first time. 

Some of the reported preparations for the NATO session in Brussels this week suggest just how much the volatile-clown theory of the American president has now taken hold.

NATO has downgraded the May 25 session to a meeting from a summit and will hold only a dinner to minimize the chances of a Trump eruption. Leaders have been told to hold normally windy remarks to just two to four minutes to keep Trump’s attention. They are even preparing to consider a “deliverable” to Trump of having NATO officially join the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Syria, as Trump has said his priority is getting NATO to do more in combating terrorism. 
 
“It’s a phony deliverable to give to Trump, a Twitter deliverable,” said a former senior U.S. official, pointing out that the individual NATO member states are already members of that coalition.
A Trump photo-op with a chunk of the World Trade Center has been choreographed in hopes of convincing the president who called NATO “obsolete” to reaffirm the basic principles of an organization committed to the mutual security of its members. The World Trade Center wreckage is part of a memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks at NATO’s new headquarters that Trump is set to officially open (though the building is not in fact finished), and NATO observers hope he will use the occasion to finally endorse the principle in Article V of the NATO Treaty that requires countries to treat an attack on one NATO country as an attack on all – an article that has only been invoked once in the organization’s history: after 9/11. “The purpose of the 9/11 memorial opening is to try to get Trump to mention the Article V commitment, since how can he get around it? It’s the only time Article V was ever used,” the former official said.

This is viewed as an especially crucial moment for Trump to do so, given his stated goal of working more closely with Russia even as Russia threatens neighboring states like the three Baltic countries that are now NATO members. But Trump has resisted it, and as Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution has reported, “Trump’s failure to endorse Article V is not an oversight. Members of his cabinet have unsuccessfully tried to insert this language into his remarks, including at his meeting with Stoltenberg.”

Now, they are finally hoping he will do so – but have no promise.

No promises might well be the theme of Trump’s trip. Consider Trump’s original campaign-trail threat to blow up NATO if member states don’t live up to their commitment to put 2 percent of the budget into defense; even that, it appears, might now might be back on the table. Trump has publicly claimed victory on that score, crowing that he had already forced allies to comply, but in fact, few countries have actually raised their spending – and an anonymous senior White House official told a reporter this week that “he is not going to stay in NATO if NATO does not make a lot more progress.”
No doubt jittery officials have reason to be nervous. In an interview as Trump departed, Stoltenberg told Bloomberg TV that “Trump has clearly stated to me in several conversations … that he’s strongly committed to NATO.” As for Thursday’s meeting in Brussels? “I hope and expect that he will reiterate his strong commitment to NATO.”

But will he? And what would it mean if he does?

The question of Donald Trump’s real views on NATO might not be as entertaining as the political spectacle unfolding in Washington, but the answer is just as uncertain.
***
 
On Tuesday night, Germany Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel opened the conference on U.S.-German relations, sponsored by the American Council on Germany and the Atlantik-Brucke think tank here, with a lengthy, serious speech on the Marshall Plan’s legacy, a paean to American leadership in Europe and a rebuttal to Trump’s “America First” mantra.

“We associate the United States with the idea of freedom and democracy,” he said, before warning of the erosion of the global order that America made. “A recalibration of the world is in full swing.”
An hour later, former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile was taking questions over dinner from a largely German group of current and former government officials and international business leaders.

What did they want to know? 

How does impeachment work? Did James Comey’s last-minute reopening of the Clinton investigation swing the election to Trump? Did the Russians? Oh, and once again: Will Trump be impeached? 

“Well, people seem to think he’s just going to be removed. I don’t know,” Brazile said, after telling the Europeans that she thought Democrats, not Russians or the ousted FBI director, bore more blame for the Trump victory. “He’s the president, he was elected.” Brazile said she prayed for Trump in church. “I want my president to succeed,” she said, before adding, “But no one is above the law.”

A few minutes after she finished speaking, the New York Times posted the latest revelation of a week filled with them: that Comey had kept contemporaneous notes of his meetings with Trump, including the allegation that the president asked him to shut down the investigation of his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

The Europeans, just like their American counterparts, were glued to their phones.


Susan B. Glasser is POLITICO’s chief international affairs columnist. Her new podcast, The Global Politico, comes out Mondays. Subscribe here. Follow her on Twitter @sbg1.

Friday, May 19, 2017

Rep. Joe 'You Lie' Wilson (R-SC) Destroyed By CSPAN Caller


Rep. Joe 'You Lie' Wilson (R-SC) Destroyed By CSPAN Caller

The 2009 State of the Union address by the newly inaugurated (and last duly elected) President, Barack Obama was rudely and historically interrupted by SC Republican Congressman Joe Wilson, something many of us will never forget. This same man has the nerve to insist that Democrats need to give Trump a chance, after months of horrifically…

Republicans Wanted To Impeach Obama Over Something, Anything, But Avoid It For Trump

Posted by Rude One

In 2013, then-Senator Tom Coburn mused at a town hall meeting, "I don’t have the legal background to know if that rises to ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ but I think you’re getting perilously close." Coburn, a Republican (obviously) brought up impeachment of President Obama as a possible response to unspecified things that Obama had done. Mostly, presidenting while black, but probably Coburn would have said, "Something, something, something, immigrants."

Around the same time, Republican Representative Blake Farenthold, 100 pounds of shit in a fifty pound bag from Fuck If I Care, Texas, told his constituents, who totally believed that Obama was born in Africa, "If we were to impeach the president tomorrow, we would probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it." Walking cold sore Ted Cruz bemoaned to a bunch of his drooling maniacs, "To successfully impeach a president you need the votes in the U.S. Senate." Neither Farenthold nor Cruz, in course of making Texas even dumber, gave any grounds for impeachment, just a general sense of something not right (see above, "presidenting while black").

In 2013 and 2014, the Tea Party plague rats kept demanding to know why that goddamn Muslim Kenyan who was making us all into healthy gay Communists wasn't being impeached. And their members of Congress were more than willing to indulge their idiot fantasy for a few whoops at rallies and a bunch of votes.

At least pubic hair-topped Rep. Jason Chaffetz wanted to impeach Obama for a reason: the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya (which, as you know, was worse than 100 9/11s times a dozen Pearl Harbors). And skeevy shitworm Steve King was hyped to impeach over Obama not being a complete dick to undocumented immigrant kids.

There's a fuckin' Wikipedia page devoted to all the reasons why Republicans talked about impeaching Obama, eight years worth. And not a goddamned one of them rises to the level of a single thing Donald Trump has done in the last four months.

A couple of Republicans are hinting at being open to impeachment. But the best representation of the cowardice and cravenness that is the GOP right now is that the Republicans in the House just blocked a vote on establishing an independent commission to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 election.

It's not just hypocrisy by many of the same Republicans who wanted to lynch Obama for every fake scandal they could conjure. Now, with Trump, they are likely aiding and abetting a pile of high crimes and a shit load of misdemeanors.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Why The Sally Yates Hearing Was Very Bad News For The Trump White House

The president just lost his favorite piece of spin for countering the Russia scandal.



The much-anticipated Senate hearing on Monday afternoon with former acting attorney general Sally Yates and former director of national intelligence James Clapper confirmed an important point: the Russia story still poses tremendous trouble for President Donald Trump and his crew.

Yates recounted a disturbing tale. She recalled that on January 26, she requested and received a meeting with Don McGahn, Trump's White House counsel. At the time, Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials were saying that ret. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's national security adviser, had not spoken the month before with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, about the sanctions then-President Barack Obama had imposed on the Russians as punishment for Moscow's meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. Yates' Justice Department had evidence—presumably intercepts of Flynn's communications with Kislyak—that showed this assertion was flat-out false.

At that meeting, Yates shared two pressing concerns with McGahn: that Flynn had lied to the vice president and that Flynn could now be blackmailed by the Russians because they knew he had lied about his conversations with Kislyak. As Yates told the members of the Senate subcommittee on crime and terrorism, "To state the obvious: you don't want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians." She and McGahn also discussed whether Flynn had violated any laws.

The next day, McGahn asked Yates to return to the White House, and they had another discussion. According to Yates, McGahn asked whether it would interfere with the FBI's ongoing investigation of Flynn if the White House took action regarding this matter. No, Yates said she told him. The FBI had already interviewed Flynn. And Yates explained to the senators that she had assumed that the White House would not sit on the information she presented McGahn and do nothing.

But that's what the White House did. McGahn in that second meeting did ask if the White House could review the evidence the Justice Department had. She agreed to make it available. (Yates testified that she did not know whether this material was ever reviewed by the White House. She was fired at that point because she would not support Trump's Muslim travel ban.) Whether McGahn examined that evidence about Flynn, the White House did not take action against him. It stood by Flynn. He remained in the job, hiring staff for the National Security Council and participating in key policy decision-making.

On February 9, the Washington Post revealed that Flynn had indeed spoken with Kislyak about the sanctions. And still the Trump White House backed him up. Four days later, Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump White House official, declared that Trump still had "full confidence" in Flynn. The next day—as a media firestorm continued—Trump fired him. Still, the day after he canned Flynn, Trump declared, "Gen. Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he has been treated very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it, the fake media in many cases. And I think it is really a sad thing that he was treated so badly." Trump displayed no concern about Flynn's misconduct.

The conclusion from Yates' testimony was clear: Trump didn't dump Flynn until the Kislyak matter became a public scandal and embarrassment. The Justice Department warning—hey, your national security adviser could be compromised by the foreign government that just intervened in the American presidential campaign—appeared to have had no impact on Trump's actions regarding Flynn. Imagine what Republicans would say if a President Hillary Clinton retained as national security adviser a person who could be blackmailed by Moscow.

The subcommittee's hearing was also inconvenient for Trump and his supporters on another key topic: it destroyed one of their favorite talking points.

On March 5, Clapper was interviewed by NBC News' Chuck Todd on Meet the Press and asked if there was any evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. "Not to my knowledge," Clapper replied. Since then, Trump and his champions have cited Clapper to say there is no there there with the Russia story. Trump on March 20 tweeted, "James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia. The story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!" White House press secretary Sean Spicer has repeatedly deployed this Clapper statement to insist there was no collusion.

At Monday's hearing, Clapper pulled this rug out from under the White House and its comrades. He noted that it was standard policy for the FBI not to share with him details about ongoing counterintelligence investigations. And he said he had not been aware of the FBI's investigation of contacts between Trump associates and Russia that FBI director James Comey revealed weeks ago at a House intelligence committee hearing. Consequently, when Clapper told Todd that he was not familiar with any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, he was speaking accurately. But he essentially told the Senate subcommittee that he was not in a position to know for certain. This piece of spin should now be buried. Trump can no longer hide behind this one Clapper statement.

Clapper also dropped another piece of information disquieting for the Trump camp. Last month, the Guardian reported that British intelligence in late 2015 collected intelligence on suspicious interactions between Trump associates and known or suspected Russian agents and passed this information to to the United States "as part of a routine exchange of information." Asked about this report, Clapper said it was "accurate." He added, "The specifics are quite sensitive." This may well have been the first public confirmation from an intelligence community leader that US intelligence agencies have possessed secret information about ties between Trump's circle and Moscow. (Comey testified that the FBI's counterintelligence investigation of links between Trump associates and Russian began in late July 2016.)

So this hearing indicated that the Trump White House protected a national security adviser who lied and who could be compromised by Moscow, that Trump can no longer cite Clapper to claim there was no collusion, and that US intelligence had sensitive information on interactions between Trump associates and possible Russian agents as early as late 2015. Still, most of the Republicans on the panel focused on leaks and "unmasking"—not the main issues at hand. They collectively pounded more on Yates for her action regarding the Muslim travel ban than on Moscow for its covert operation to subvert the 2016 election to help Trump.

This Senate subcommittee, which is chaired by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), is not mounting a full investigation comparable to the inquiry being conducted by the Senate intelligence committee (and presumably the hobbled House intelligence committee). It has far less staff, and its jurisdiction is limited. But this hearing demonstrated that serious inquiry can expand the public knowledge of the Trump-Russia scandal—and that there remains much more to examine and unearth.

Sunday, May 7, 2017

This Monologue Goes Out To You, Mr. Trump

'Face the Nation's' 'John Dickerson had the willpower to ignore the Trump's insults during their conversation in the White House. Luckily, Stephen doesn't have that same constraint.

Thursday, April 27, 2017

In Brief: Pricks and the Wall

Posted by Rude One

Even though President Donald Trump has rolled over on his back and surrendered on funding for the Great Wall of Stupid on the Mexican border for now, every day, he or his administration or some damn surrogate is out there telling us how that wall will end illegal drug importation, human trafficking, undocumented immigration, and, hell, psoriasis. And every day, I get some yutz emailing or messaging me to tell me how full of shit I am because I don't want a wall to end the crisis of opioid addiction. Putting aside that, except for heroin, most opioids are from prescription meds, every one of these people is lying and/or dumb.

For one thing, despite the fondest wishes of Rep. Steve King, drugs ain't getting into the United States strapped to the luscious cantaloupe calves of immigrants. Here's how it happens, according to a 2015 report from the DEA: "Mexican criminal networks 'transport the bulk of their goods over the Southwest Border through ports of entry (POEs) using passenger vehicles or tractor trailers.' In passenger vehicles, the drugs may be held in secret compartments; while in tractor trailers, the drugs are often comingled with other legitimate goods. Less commonly used methods to move drugs include smuggling them through crossborder underground tunnels and on commercial cargo trains, small boats, and ultralight aircraft."

You got it? The drugs come in by vehicles through the goddamn border wall that's already there. More wall ain't gonna stop that. Or drones. Or tunnels. Or boats. Walls don't work that way. Say it together: The wall won't do shit to stop drugs. It's not even worth a talking point.

And while a big wall might slow human trafficking for at least a brief period, one thing is for damn sure, and that's that Trump's deportation policies are hurting the effort to stop human trafficking. Yeah, if you might be deported for going to the cops to report on sex slaves in your neighborhood, you'll probably stay silent so you're not ripped away from your family with a hearty "thanks" from the United States government.

In his ad for Trump steaks, the future president promised, "Believe me, I understand steaks." The ad shows a number of the beef slabs, and, when they're cut open, they are inevitably medium rare. Not a single steak is shown well-done, which is how Trump is said to prefer his steak, because if he did show them that way, all grey and dry, no one would trust the person flogging the steaks.

Trump's dishonesty is part and parcel of his pitchman patter. If he's gonna build a wall, then that motherfucker is gonna be the wall of your dreams, man. Not a boondoggle of epic proportions. And Trump's gonna build it because he is one egotistical dickhead. About the Trump Taj Mahal, he said, "Nobody thought it could be built. That was the biggest risk - just getting it built. But I love proving people wrong." Yeah, he got to say it got off the ground, but so did the makers of the Hindenburg.

Obama Gives Finger To Country—Takes $400,000 From Wall Street

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