Betting Website Gives Trump 4-1 Odds Of Being Impeached Within 6 Months

There are also 5-1 odds of the golden shower video leaking.

By Brad Reed / Raw Story

Photo Credit: Christopher Halloran/Shutterstock

Donald Trump isn’t officially president yet, but some online gamblers are already thinking about his prospective impeachment.

Per the Houston Press, Irish betting website Paddy Power is now putting 4-1 odds on Trump getting impeached within the first six months of his presidency. Additionally, the website thinks it’s even more likely that Trump will not finish his first term, as it gives him just 7-4 odds of completing four years in the White House.

Other popular Trump-related bets on Paddy Power right now include video of his “golden shower” incident leaking onto RedTube (5-1 odds); splitting with wife Melania Trump (15-1 odds); and painting the entire White House gold (500-1 odds).

For what it’s worth, Paddy Power lost a gigantic chunk of money last year after it prematurely paid out money to bettors who picked Hillary Clinton to win the presidency. In total, Trump’s upset victory cost the website $4.5 million, which it said was its “biggest political payout ever.”

Brad Reed is a writer living in Boston. His work has previously appeared in the American Prospect Online, and he blogs frequently at Sadly, No!.

Putin: Obama trying to undermine Trump

Hardball's round table has a heated debate on the state of U.S./Russia affairs and the post-cold war order.

Trump has skin thinner than his wife and an ego bigger than my ass.

By Margaret and Helen

 HELEN:

Margaret, somebody called me an elitist because I think Trump and his supporters are morons.   I wasn’t’ quite sure what being an elitist means these days and I am pretty sure most people using that as an insult probably don’t either so I looked it up. After all, I’m just a little ole’ gal born in Georgia and I am not sure I qualify to be an elitist.

Now the Oxford Dictionary says an elitist is someone who supports the view that a society or system should be led by an elite.  Well that just begged the question: What is an elite?  I got confused at first because evidently an Elite is a size of letter in typewriting, with 12 characters to an inch. Of course, for this particular scenario it also means a select group that is superior in terms of their ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society such as an elite athlete or an elite armed forces. My favorite definition of elite, however, is from Merriam-Webster:  the choice part or the best of a class.  So I guess I am an elitist after all, because I want the best candidate for the job and I know for damn sure I want an elite President and not this orange man-child who is about to take office.

And I am in good company. They said Meryl Streep was an elitist after her speech at the Golden Globes. You remember, don’t you?  That moving speech she gave where she dared to say that we shouldn’t mock the disabled and a free press was vital to our democracy…  What an elitist that Meryl is.  How dare she make speeches about standing up for the disabled and defending the Constitution!

Wait… what’s an elitist again?

You know Margaret, I was feeling lower than a snake’s belly in a ditch after a rain shower about this election.  Kellyanne Conway is so good at lying… I mean telling us what is in Donald’s heart.  And I thought to myself that maybe I should give the man a break.  Maybe Trump deserves a second look.

Maybe I should show some respect for the office to which he has been elected.   But then I thought, nah he’s a moron and I’m an elitist who doesn’t think a society or a system should ever be led by a moron.

For goodness sakes, he’s not even trying to rise to the occasion.  The man is tweeting about national intelligence agencies one minute and Saturday Night Live the next.  And shockingly he is paying attention to the latter and ignoring the former.  Damn right I’m an elitist because I actually do think society should be run by someone with superior abilities instead of an idiot who can’t prioritize security briefings over comedy sketches.

And he is surrounding himself with idiots too. Are you really telling me that of all the people he could have nominated for Attorney General, he didn’t know even one without racist attitudes? What does that say?  Think about it.  What does that say about this man?  He appointed a known plagiarist to be a senior communications strategist.  And then he asked Omarosa to be… actually I don’t know what he asked her to be.  But Omarosa for anything?  What does that say? And incoming Press Secretary Sean Spicer actually whined  to the media, that Saturday Night Live wasn’t being funny, they were being “mean-spirited”.  Oh Really?  You know what’s mean-spirited, Sean?  Mocking a disabled person. You know what else is mean-spirited?  Laughing about sexually assaulting women.  You know what else is mean-spirited? Suggesting most immigrants from Mexico are rapists and drug dealers. Also, mocking a disabled person.  And yes.  I know I said that already.

An elite athlete knows how to win a game.  An elite army knows how to win a war.  An elite President knows how to put down his smart phone and look the nation in the eye and apologize for his inappropriate behavior.  Hell.  You don’t even have to be elite.  You just have to be decent.

Decent enough to admit that it was wrong to make fun of the disabled.  Admit that it was wrong to have disrespected and then denigrate women that way. Decent enough to tell the American people that you’re not perfect but you’ll strive to be a better president than you were a man.   But we don’t have an elite as President-elect. We don’t even have a decent person about to hold the highest office in the land.  We have a buffoon, man-child with skin thinner than that size 2 model/pin-up immigrant he’s married to.  And even she doesn’t want to live in the same house with him.

Call me an elitist.  It’s a badge I will wear proudly.   I’d rather be an elitist than the racist, misogynist, mouth-breathers who voted for Trump.  That’s right.  I said it. I insulted Trump voters and I won’t apologize for it.  We all knew what he did and what he said and what he stood for.  There was no mistaking what you were voting for.  I have no intentions of pulling punches.  You people elected a moron and the rest of us “elitists” get to look down our noses and point our fingers and ask you to explain yourselves.   Is it OK to make fun of the disabled? Yes or no?  Is it OK to sexually assault women?  Yes or no?  Is it OK to commit fraud?  Is it OK to discriminate against minorities? Is it OK to refer to your daughter as a nice piece of ass?  Is it OK to vote for someone who did?  If you answered yes to any of those questions, you can kiss my elitist ass.

Trump is not my president. I will challenge him at every turn.  I will hold him accountable for every ignorant, vapid tweet. I will hold him to the very highest of standards and ridicule him when he comes up short.  Why? You ask.  How dare I? You say.  Because he made fun of a disabled person and that’s all I ever needed to know about Donald J. Trump.  I mean it.  Really.

 MARGARET:

I understand some folks are planning to wear black on Friday in protest of the inauguration.  I will be in black as well as Howard, but we will be attending a funeral of another kind.

Open letter to Trump: You won't set the rules for us

By Kyle Pope

Dear Mr. President Elect:

In these final days before your inauguration, we thought it might be helpful to clarify how we see the relationship between your administration and the American press corps.

It will come as no surprise to you that we see the relationship as strained. Reports over the last few days that your press secretary is considering pulling news media offices out of the White House are the latest in a pattern of behavior that has persisted throughout the campaign: You’ve banned news organizations from covering you. You’ve taken to Twitter to taunt and threaten individual reporters and encouraged your supporters to do the same. You’ve advocated for looser libel laws and threatened numerous lawsuits of your own, none of which has materialized. You’ve avoided the press when you could and flouted the norms of pool reporting and regular press conferences. You’ve ridiculed a reporter who wrote something you didn’t like because he has a disability.

All of this, of course, is your choice and, in a way, your right. While the Constitution protects the freedom of the press, it doesn’t dictate how the president must honor that; regular press conferences aren’t enshrined in the document.

But while you have every right to decide your ground rules for engaging with the press, we have some, too. It is, after all, our airtime and column inches that you are seeking to influence. We, not you, decide how best to serve our readers, listeners, and viewers. So think of what follows as a backgrounder on what to expect from us over the next four years.

Access is preferable, but not critical.

You may decide that giving reporters access to your administration has no upside. We think that would be a mistake on your part, but again, it’s your choice. We are very good at finding alternative ways to get information; indeed, some of the best reporting during the campaign came from news organizations that were banned from your rallies. Telling reporters that they won’t get access to something isn’t what we’d prefer, but it’s a challenge we relish.

Off the record and other ground rules are ours—not yours—to set.

We may agree to speak to some of your officials off the record, or we may not. We may attend background briefings or off-the-record social events, or we may skip them. That’s our choice. If you think reporters who don’t agree to the rules, and are shut out, won’t get the story, see above.

We decide how much airtime to give your spokespeople and surrogates.

We will strive to get your point of view across, even if you seek to shut us out. But that does not mean we are required to turn our airwaves or column inches over to people who repeatedly distort or bend the truth. We will call them out when they do, and we reserve the right, in the most egregious cases, to ban them from our outlets.

We believe there is an objective truth, and we will hold you to that.

When you or your surrogates say or tweet something that is demonstrably wrong, we will say so, repeatedly. Facts are what we do, and we have no obligation to repeat false assertions; the fact that you or someone on your team said them is newsworthy, but so is the fact that they don’t stand up to scrutiny. Both aspects should receive equal weight.

We’ll obsess over the details of government.

You and your staff sit in the White House, but the American government is a sprawling thing. We will fan reporters out across the government, embed them in your agencies, source up those bureaucrats. The result will be that while you may seek to control what comes out of the West Wing, we’ll have the upper hand in covering how your policies are carried out.

We will set higher standards for ourselves than ever before.

We credit you with highlighting serious and widespread distrust in the media across the political spectrum. Your campaign tapped into that, and it was a bracing wake-up call for us. We have to regain that trust. And we’ll do it through accurate, fearless reporting, by acknowledging our errors and abiding by the most stringent ethical standards we set for ourselves.


We’re going to work together.

You have tried to divide us and use reporters’ deep competitive streaks to cause family fights. Those days are ending. We now recognize that the challenge of covering you requires that we cooperate and help one another whenever possible. So, when you shout down or ignore a reporter at a press conference who has said something you don’t like, you’re going to face a unified front. We’ll work together on stories when it makes sense, and make sure the world hears when our colleagues write stories of importance. We will, of course, still have disagreements, and even important debates, about ethics or taste or fair comment. But those debates will be ours to begin and end.

We’re playing the long game.

Best-case scenario, you’re going to be in this job for eight years. We’ve been around since the founding of the republic, and our role in this great democracy has been ratified and reinforced again and again and again. You have forced us to rethink the most fundamental questions about who we are and what we are here for. For that we are most grateful.

Enjoy your inauguration.

—The Press Corps

Joe Scarborough Rips Trump: This Needs To Stop, You Need Message Discipline; "There Is A Breaking Point"

Posted By Ian Schwartz

Sarcasm by dlevere

 President-Elect Trump continues to engage in fights against everyone and anyone who doesn't agree with him, is this really a wise move?

Morning Blow host Joe Scarborough lashed out at Donald Trump for calling out Rep. John Lewis, CIA Director John Brennan and the Republican party over the weekend. On Monday morning's show, Scarborough warned "this does not continue; there is a breaking point." He said this is not like running for president and that Trump needs "message discipline."

From Monday's broadcast of Morning Blow:

SCARBOROUGH: It's exhausting. Speaking of my rules, I also have another rule. We can fight one battle at a time. Don't come at me and tell me that you want to take on this. I tell myself, one battle at a time. Alright? And we clear the decks of that. This weekend alone, I'm sorry. I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say. This does not -- this does not last long. This does not continue. There is a breaking point. It is. He's not even sworn in yet. His numbers will collapse into the 20's if this continues.

Just like Mika and I predicted, we have said it, as you know, just like we predicted he could win the Republican nomination, I'm telling you this will not last. This weekend alone, Harold, he is in fights right now. We have the preeminent civil rights leader in America with the entire intelligence community, perhaps the most important community to have on your side as president, and the most dangerous to cross politically. The single most important military alliance of our time, according to his own Secretary of Defense, NATO, and the single most important leader in all of Europe, Angela Merkel. That's just on this holiday weekend. This will not last. This will not continue. Somebody around him better tell him to focus.

Also, I'm sorry. And he told the Republicans he was going to run them over if they didn't follow whatever he did. This will not continue indefinitely...

If anybody thinks around Donald Trump that he can succeed as president of the United States with no message discipline -- he has no message discipline -- the same way he succeeded when he was running against people like Ben Carson, then they're kidding themselves. They're just kidding themselves... There is no message discipline and there has to be because it matters.

The Unbelievable Baby Man By Tom Tomorrow

Let's Just Pretend the Russian Dossier Is True Because Fuck That Trump Guy

Posted by Rude One

If you were unfortunate enough, you got to watch or listen to the freak show this morning where President-Elect and human/gila monster hybrid Donald Trump sputtered and free-associated his way through what you might consider answers to the questions in a press conference. It was one of those embarrassing moments for the entire nation that we all better get used to.

At some point, Trump is going to be at a gathering of world leaders and one of them is going to say, "What the fuck are you saying, you fucking brain damaged moron? Fuck, I thought Bush was dumb."

And most of us in the United States will just look away, ashamed of Trump, like he's our boyfriend's racist grandpa who can't stop talking about what "the blacks" need to do.

What Trump said today doesn't matter because he's a filthy liar who traffics in the kind of hyperbole that'd make P.T. Barnum go "Whoa, there, man, calm that shit down." He's lying about the extent of his separation from his business. He forced his tax lawyer to lie about the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Essentially, he said, "You should be so fortunate to have me as president that I shouldn't have to do anything that every other modern president has done, but here's a couple of bones so you can shut the fuck up." Motherfucker, you ran for president. You asked for the office. Divest or get the fuck out. But he won't because truth and honesty don't matter.

What does matter is that he is so obviously deranged, so blatantly incapable of complex thought, that he more or less just repeated everything from his campaign, layering on extra degradation for members of the press that he didn't like. When Jim Acosta of CNN tried to insist on getting in a question because Trump kept attacking his network, I wanted him to keep going until Trump went into a full-blown Captain Queeg-like strawberry-seeking paranoid fit.

Meanwhile, so many questions surround the dossier prepared by a former UK spy as oppo research for some campaign (maybe JEB!'s). It's sopping wet with allegations of Russia trading DNC email releases through Wikileaks in return for Trump backing off criticism of the annexation of Crimea, as well as the desire for Trump to criticize NATO's expansion, both of which he did. There's the corruption, with the allegations of bribes and kickbacks in deals with China. Then there's all the hookers and golden showers and other possible blackmail material, most of which would fall on deaf ears like drops of urine running down Trump's manboobs. God, how the media are flagellating themselves and each other over the material, over whether it should have been released, how it hasn't been corroborated, no matter how reliable the sources are, what it means for future allegations and...

You know what? Fuck it. Let's act like Republicans for a little while and just state everything as if it's true. In fact, even if it's proven to be 35 pages of utter fantasy, let's just keep saying it's true. Because, see, Trump made his political career, fuck, much of his entire career, on lies, and almost all Republicans didn't have the honor to say, "No, sorry, that's just something he's pulling out of his ass."

The mainstream media had no problem doing story after story about whether or not Barack Obama was born in the United States, a lie that Trump fingered and humped like it was the American flag with a pussy. Facts are dead, as Reince Priebus and Newt Gingrich and other Trump surrogates told us. We create our own reality, real reality be damned. So fuck it all.

Trump can say he won in a "landslide" (he didn't), he can say he didn't say things that he said on video or that he tweeted, he can push a voter fraud fable like it's beyond reproach, he can claim that inner cities are hellholes of crime, and he can say that his political opponents are doing, have done, or will do things that are not even in the realm of actual. And he just doesn't care if you tell him he's wrong or there are facts that contradict him. It doesn't matter.

And I haven't even gotten into the sea of Republican and nutzoid conservative lies over the decades that drowned Hillary Clinton, up to and including the email controversy and the completely bug fuck insane Pizzagate.

So fuck it. It's time for Democrats to have some fun. Let's not even allow the idea that the Russian dossier isn't true. Let's just go with that it's totally true. It's right there in writing. Page 27: Trump "paid bribes to further his interests" in doing business in St. Petersburg, where he "participated in sex parties. Or page 2: "The Kremlin had been feeding Trump and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, for several years." Let's just repeat it over and over and demand investigations and more investigations if those don't turn up what we want and let's force the media to keep talking about it and make it the only talking points so that all we can think about with Trump is that he is a corrupt loser who watches hookers piss.  It feels like it's true, so let's go with the truthiness instead of the truth. Why should we be left behind in the rush to jump off the cliff of reason?

Trump force-fed us his nonsense. He's still doing that now. Instead, make him choke on this dossier.

(Note: Of course, we won't do it. Because at the end of the day, we sadly still have some sense of devotion to facts. It is our tragic flaw as liberals.)

Donald Trump Is A Liar And You're A Chump If You Listen To Him

Posted by Rude One

Today, President-Elect and bloated basketball of buffoonery Donald Trump finally made some kind of statement about what he'd like to see happen with the Affordable Care Act. He wants it repealed and then quickly replaced - not at the same time, but "Long to me would be weeks...It won’t be repeal and then two years later go in with another plan." As the New York Times points out, essentially Trump is telling House Speaker Paul Ryan to suck his tiny bleached and bare balls. Ryan, who looks like he jacks off to tumor porn, wanted to take a couple of years after sowing immediate chaos into the health care system. Or so he says this week.

Either way, both Trump and Ryan are pretty much guaranteeing that once the ACA is repealed, it won't be replaced by anything that is close in comprehensive coverage because that's how shit goes.

Remember the sequester? That was supposed to be a budget threat that would force Congress to come up with something before automatic funding cuts kicked in. Instead, they just said, "Ah, fuck it" and let it stand.

But, really, who the fuck cares what Trump has to say? Motherfucker is such a compulsive liar that he probably tells Barron that all the stylish 10 year-old boys wear suits like they're Richie Rich. Ask Senator Rand Paul. In one of those moments that really is like the apocryphal Neville Chamberlain/Hitler story, Paul tweeted just a couple of days ago that "I just spoke to [Trump] and he fully supports my plan to replace Obamacare the same day we repeal it."

And now, today, Trump pretty much just said that either he lied or Rand Paul lied. That'd be fuckin' hilarious if it wasn't so goddamn pathetic. Peace in our time, eh, Senator?

There is no promise Trump will not break, no opinion he will not reverse when convenient. Ask his contractors. Ask his ex-wives. On his ludicrous border wall, now he's saying Mexico will pay for it in the future but we'll pay for it now. Whatever the fuck that means. We're all still awaiting his revelations about the Russian hacking that he supposedly was going to tell us a week ago. When he holds his press conference tomorrow, it's gonna be a fucking farce of overstated promises, lies, and masturbation, so much masturbation.

So when you hear "Democratic" Senator Joe Manchin claim that "Today, I spoke with President-Elect Donald Trump and he assured me that he will help fight to secure a permanent health care solution for our retired miners, as guaranteed in the Miners Protection Act," you can pretty much be sure that the sick miners are fucked. Trump won't do shit for them unless there's an angle, like he can get wheezing black lung sufferers to gasp out song praising him before he signs any legislation. What a fucking credulous goon Manchin is.

Back to the Affordable Care Act, in that drama queen/Willie Loman way of his, Trump declared, "We have to get to business. Obamacare has been a catastrophic event." You got that? According to the incoming president, providing people with access to health insurance despite pre-existing conditions is akin to a meteor hitting the earth, a tsunami, or an ignorant madman becoming our leader. You know, the real catastrophes.

This Is Why You Don't Kiss The Ring Of Donald Trump

By

Hamilton Nolan

 

Ethical guidelines exist for a reason. Norms exist for a reason.

The reason is not “Jerks who think they’re smarter than us trying to control our lives from on high.”

The reason is that human history is long, and all of the mistakes that could possibly be made have been made, and at a certain point people figured out that following some common sense rules could prevent us from making the same dire mistakes over and over again. Mistakes that come from human nature. Mistakes like: allowing powerful people to use their powerful positions to make money for themselves, or allowing powerful people to use their powerful positions to squelch legitimate dissent, or allowing powerful people to use their powerful positions to flout the very ethical guidelines and norms that prior people in powerful positions established to keep people in powerful positions in check.

Today we saw a “press conference” by our incoming president at which he put forth a farcical plan to allow his own sons to continue running his vast business empire while he is president, and spoke at length about his belief that as president it is impossible for him to have meaningful conflicts of interest, which is why he felt comfortable presenting his decision to turn down a $2 billion business deal with a Middle Eastern real estate mogul as something noble, rather than as an obvious decision that would be made as a matter of course under a normal presidential administration. He dismissed serious reporting that reflected poorly on him as “fake news,” and promised to retaliate against news outlets that displeased him. These things are not normal. These things are not okay. These are actions that flout well-established ethical and civil norms. Admittedly, there is something thrilling about watching him do this. What will he do next? It always keeps us tuning in, in the same way that a violent alcoholic father will always keep his children on his toes. But we should not fool ourselves about what is happening in front of our eyes. We are all coming to realize that our civil society institutions may not be strong enough to protect the flawed but fundamentally solid democracy that we thought we had. We are witnessing the rise to power of a leader who does not care about norms. Since these norms were created to prevent political, social, economic, and cultural disasters, we do not need to wonder how this will end. It will end poorly.

This is why you don’t kiss the ring of Donald Trump. This is why you don’t visit him in his golden tower and sit stiffly in a spacious conference room to hear his nonsensical thoughts about “innovation.” This is why you don’t tousle his hair playfully on late night television, or allow him to hold off-the-record meetings with your news organization. This is why you don’t pose in smiling pictures with him, or defer to him out of some misplaced sense of decorum or respect for the office he is soon to occupy. This is why there was so much fear over the “normalization” of what he is and what he represents. Our society and our institutions are simply not set up to deal with someone who is fully prepared to flout all of our norms of good behavior. Our system, to a large degree, relies on social sanction rather than laws to prevent powerful people from getting too far out of line. When our most powerful person is willing to ignore all of that, there is not much in place to stop him. The normalization process is well underway. The pomp and circumstance and deference will only increase after the inauguration. The press and the Congress are the only two institutions standing between a dangerous man and total power. They must both realize this is not the time to salute and grovel. This is not the time to fall into familiar patterns of default respect for someone who does not himself respect the responsibility to the public that he has been given. This is the time for them to rise to the occasion. And the occasion is a fight for civil society.

This is not going to be a free and fair exchange of ideas. This is going to be a fight. If you have not absorbed that fact yet, you are already losing.

This is only going to get worse.

INTEL CHIEFS PRESENTED TRUMP WITH CLAIMS OF RUSSIAN EFFORTS TO COMPROMISE HIM PER CNN

By DemocratSinceBirth

 Suggestion they have compromising information on him !!!

Communications between Trump and Russian officials.

This is beyond huge !!!

Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him

By Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein, CNN
Updated 5:15 PM ET, Tue January 10, 2017

(CNN) Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump. 

The classified briefings last week were presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers. 

One reason the nation's intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington, multiple sources tell CNN. 

These senior intelligence officials also included the synopsis to demonstrate that Russia had compiled information potentially harmful to both political parties, but only released information damaging to Hillary Clinton and Democrats. This synopsis was not an official part of the report from the intelligence community case about Russian hacks, but some officials said it augmented the evidence that Moscow intended to harm Clinton's candidacy and help Trump's, several officials with knowledge of the briefings tell CNN. 

The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials. 

Sources tell CNN that these same allegations about communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians, mentioned in classified briefings for congressional leaders last year, prompted then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to send a letter to FBI Director Comey in October, in which he wrote, "It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government -- a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States." 

CNN has confirmed that the synopsis was included in the documents that were presented to Mr. Trump but cannot confirm if it was discussed in his meeting with the intelligence chiefs.
The Trump transition team declined repeated requests for comment. 

CNN has reviewed a 35-page compilation of the memos, from which the two-page synopsis was drawn. The memos originated as opposition research, first commissioned by anti-Trump Republicans, and later by Democrats. At this point, CNN is not reporting on details of the memos, as it has not independently corroborated the specific allegations. But, in preparing this story, CNN has spoken to multiple high ranking intelligence, administration, congressional and law enforcement officials, as well as foreign officials and others in the private sector with direct knowledge of the memos.

Some of the memos were circulating as far back as last summer. What has changed since then is that US intelligence agencies have now checked out the former British intelligence operative and his vast network throughout Europe and find him and his sources to be credible enough to include some of the information in the presentations to the President and President-elect a few days ago. 

On the same day that the President-elect was briefed by the intelligence community, the top four Congressional leaders, and chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees -- the so-called "Gang of Eight" -- were also provided a summary of the memos regarding Mr. Trump, according to law enforcement, intelligence and administration sources. 

The two-page summary was written without the detailed specifics and information about sources and methods included in the memos by the former British intelligence official. That said, the synopsis was considered so sensitive it was not included in the classified report about Russian hacking that was more widely distributed, but rather in an annex only shared at the most senior levels of the government: President Obama, the President-elect, and the eight Congressional leaders.

CNN has also learned that on December 9, Senator John McCain gave a full copy of the memos -- dated from June through December, 2016 -- to FBI Director James Comey. McCain became aware of the memos from a former British diplomat who had been posted in Moscow. But the FBI had already been given a set of the memos compiled up to August 2016, when the former MI6 agent presented them to an FBI official in Rome, according to national security officials. 

The raw memos on which the synopsis is based were prepared by the former MI6 agent, who was posted in Russia in the 1990s and now runs a private intelligence gathering firm. His investigations related to Mr. Trump were initially funded by groups and donors supporting Republican opponents of Mr. Trump during the GOP primaries, multiple sources confirmed to CNN. Those sources also said that once Mr. Trump became the nominee, further investigation was funded by groups and donors supporting Hillary Clinton.

Spokespeople for the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment. Officials who spoke to CNN declined to do so on the record given the classified nature of the material.
Some of the allegations were first reported publicly in Mother Jones one week before the election.

One high level administration official told CNN, "I have a sense the outgoing administration and intelligence community is setting down the pieces so this must be investigated seriously and run down. I think concern was to be sure that whatever information was out there is put into the system so it is evaluated as it should be and acted upon as necessary."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-report-russia/index.html

Trump Vodka - Hand crafted by Trump himself

Farewell Address

Mitch McConnell makes his supreme hypocrisy

Chris Matthews and his round table discuss Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., criticizing Democrats for potentially challenging a Trump Supreme Court nominee.

How To Spot Trump's Big Fat Intelligence Briefing Lie

By Hrafnkell Haraldsson

If you are curious how to spot Trump’s Russian hack lies for yourself, Rachel Maddow tells you how.

Just two ingredients are required: First, you need the declassified version of The Office of the Director of National Intelligence report available to literally everybody who wants to read it (here) and Donald Trump’s own words.

As Maddow said, this report “taught us all a great deal about what the Russians did to influence our election this past year and why they did it.” Specifically, a 2011 grudge against Hillary Clinton.

“What we learned today…is that our new president will flat out lie to us. To our faces. And even put it in writing. Even when we can check for ourselves and see for ourselves that he is blatantly lying about a really big thing. He apparently will just bracingly lie to us even about really important national security stuff. And we learned that today if we didn’t believe it before.”

Watch courtesy of MSNBC:



It is important to observe, as Maddow points out, that the conclusions of this report are identical in every way to the classified version of the report that Donald Trump was given. It says so on every page at the top:

This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment; its conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment but this version does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.

“Right after Trump came out of that briefing,” Maddow says,
“He put out a written statement about what he learned in the briefing. And he blatantly, and overtly, bluntly, simply lied about what is in this report. Right before this report got publicly released so we could check ourselves and see that he was lying. I have to say I don’t get weirded out by a lot of stuff in the news but this puts a shiver down my spine.”

Here is the second piece of evidence you require for your detective work: Trump’s statement.

“I had a constructive meeting and conversation with the leaders of the Intelligence Community this afternoon. I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation.

“While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful.

“Whether it is our government, organizations, associations or businesses we need to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks. I will appoint a team to give me a plan within 90 days of taking office. The methods, tools and tactics we use to keep America safe should not be a public discussion that will benefit those who seek to do us harm. Two weeks from today I will take the oath of office and America’s safety and security will be my number one priority.”

The important line here is this: “There was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.”

Which is not at all what the report says. Certainly, Trump must know we can read this report for ourselves, yet he came out of his meeting and told a bald-faced lie. This is what the report says (emphasis added):

“We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.”

The New York Times, by the way, does not mention this lie in their coverage of Trump’s statement. Yet, as Maddow shows, Donald Trump stated very publicly that the report we can all read says something it does not, in fact, say.

“So, our president-elect is lying to us,” concludes Maddow, “and that’s a big lie.” And yes, Trump also lied about Russia attempting to hack the RNC. It did not. The report does not conclude that, and in fact states,

“Russia collected on some Republican-affiliated targets but did not conduct a comparable disclosure campaign.”

As Maddow says, Trump thinks we’re idiots or didn’t realize we’d be able to immediately fact-check his statements. We can’t know Trump’s motivations because he has yet to speak even a word of the truth on any subject. All that matters is that he lied, and about something that directly affects our national security for the benefit of his Russian friends.

Russian hack of US election

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/politics/us-formally-accuses-russia-of-stealing-dnc-emails.html?_r=0

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/12/politics/russian-hack-donald-trump-2016-election/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/stop-trying-to-hush-up-the-truth-about-election-hacking/2017/01/04/bf8c286a-d2ac-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html?utm_term=.63e20e26680f

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/politics/russia-hack-report.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/russian-hacking-trump/510689/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-officials-to-testify-as-senate-examines-russian-hacking-1483612205

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-cyber-idUSKBN14Q1T8

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-intelligence-report-russia-unclassified-hacking-report-donald-trump-us-election-read-a7513986.html

https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/06/intel-report-on-hacking-says-russian-interference-with-us-election-was-boldest-yet/

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/politics/russian-hack-report.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-intelligence-report-russia-unclassified-hacking-report-donald-trump-us-election-read-a7513986.html

https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/06/us-releases-report-linking-russia-to-election-hacks/

http://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/6/14194986/russia-hack-intelligence-report-election-trump

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/politics/donald-trump-wall-hack-russia.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38528329

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/intelligence-chiefs-expected-in-new-york-to-brief-trump-on-russian-hacking/2017/01/06/5f591416-d41a-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html?utm_term=.13425e9ebf6e

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/06/508520414/on-intelligence-and-election-hacking-trump-and-his-team-continue-to-miss-the-poi

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-russia-cyber-hack-vladimir-putin-president-barack-obama-fbi-cia-intelligence-briefing-a7513966.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-06/u-s-says-putin-ordered-russian-hacking-during-the-2016-election

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38538002

Still Supporting Donald Trump? This Message Is For You

http://video.gq.com/watch/the-closer-with-keith-olbermann-still-supporting-donald-trump-this-message-is-for-you?c=series

Your Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama discusses his upcoming farewell address to the nation.

Ex-Mexican President Reminds Trump He's Not Paying For That 'Fucken' Wall

By Karoli Kuns

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox sent Donald Trump a message about his wall. He didn't hold anything back.

TRUMP, when will you understand that I am not paying for that fucken wall. Be clear with US tax payers. They will pay for it.

— Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) January 6, 2017

Fox pinned this one to the top of his profile, in order to give it special prominence.

Trump may ask whoever he wants, but still neither myself nor Mexico are going to pay for his racist monument.
Another promise he can't keep.

— Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) January 6, 2017

I think his position is clear, don't you?
Update:
A new, even more harsh tweet:

Sr Trump,the intelligence report is devastating.Losing election by more than 3M votes and in addition this.Are you a legitimate president?

— Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) January 6, 2017

Latest guides for 3DS hacking up to firmware 11.2

By Dark Nightmare · January 5, 2017

With the recent 33c3 concluding at the end of last year, came numerous exploit announcements for the 3DS scene, many of which have since been implemented and are in working stable condition. Two of those exploits being soundhax and fasthax, both developed by Ned Will, a prominent hacker of the 3DS scene.

Alongside these many exploits and developers, the 3DS scene also consists of many involved and active community members, which can be noted from the active discussions on their sub-reddit along with the rapid development rate of recent releases.

As of this writing, it is now possible to downgrade all current N3DS models and most O3DS models based on firmware version, using the combos of waithax/svchax/safefirmhax or fasthax/safefirmhax, keep in mind fasthax is still in alpha, well technically beta, though not officially beta as of this writing, but it should be soon, thanks to an active community, many users have implemented and compiled their own versions of the exploit and have had great success for many users in the process of downgrading/installing a9lh+cfw of choice.

Starting with 3DS models firmware 11.1 and lower, fasthax doesn’t support firmwares below 11.2, but there is waithax, which provided you have the patience as the name says, to wait, works flawlessly. A guide for 3DS models below firmware 11.2 can be found here:

Plailect’s Guide

Since Plailect has both updated links and instructions.

For 3DS models on firmware 11.2, things get a little complex. Users of these systems can follow reddit user Aurolei’s guide, using a custom fasthax/safefirmhax compiled binary file, that works with any entry point, same as prior.

---

---

Keen warning that this current implementation may be unstable as it is not an official stable release, but a community release for those eagers users who would like to downgrade and install the a9lh exploit alongside Luma3DS/NTR or whichever customer firmware of choice is preferred. I have personally downgraded two of my own systems using both exploits and their respectful guides, with absolutely no trouble, exact step by step instructions must be followed, or user errors are likely to cause unnecessary conflicts and errors.

Custom guide can be found here:
Aurolei’s Guide

Downgrades can take around 2+ hours, so time and patience are key.

Bernie Sanders Erupts On The Senate Floor And Calls Out Trump Lies On Cutting Healthcare

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) took on president-elect Donald Trump and called him for lying when he claimed that he would not take healthcare away from millions of Americans. 

By Jason Easley



Highlighting a May 2015 tweet Trump sent where he claimed he was the only potential GOP presidential candidate against cuts in Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, Sanders wanted Trump to stand up to Congressional Republicans and Paul Ryan or admit he was “lying” and just trying to get votes. I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Huckabee copied me. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2015

The former Democratic presidential candidate also brought up Trump’s statements hammering Ryan on the campaign trail for wanting to make cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

The Senate is currently debating the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Watch the clip above of Sanders pulling out his visual aid, via C-SPAN2.Bernie Sanders Senate Floor Speech On Affordable Care Act 1/4/17

Sanders said, “What we are looking at right now is a budget process whose ultimate goal is to remove health insurance from tens of millions of Americans.”

Sen. Sanders continued, “Let us be very clear, the Republican plan, their budget plan, lays the groundwork for ending the Affordable Care Act, which will remove tens of millions of Americans from the health insurance they get.”

He demanded that Republicans come down and tell the Senate what their new plan is.

Sanders called out Trump and the Republicans for wanting to end Medicare as it currently exists by turning it into a voucher program.

Later in his speech, Sen. Sanders took direct aim at the president-elect’s lies about not cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, “Mr. Trump right now has got to do one of two things. Number one, if all that he was talking about was campaign rhetoric then what he is obliged to do now is to tell the American people, ‘Yeah, I was lying. Yeah, I said I would not support cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid but I was lying. It was a campaign ruse. I just said what came to my mind to get votes. I have no intention of keeping my word.’

Sanders said that if Trump was sincere about not cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, “I would hope that tomorrow or maybe today he could send out a tweet and tell his Republican colleagues to stop wasting their time … [and] tell the American people that he will veto any proposal that cuts Medicare, that cuts Medicaid and the cuts Social Security.”

The speech from Sen. Sanders was a barn burner, and it was the loudest shot yet from Senate Democrats in their resistance movement against the Republican agenda.

Bernie Sanders has been one of the staunchest supporters of expanding the beloved programs in the Senate. What the Republicans have done is nothing less than an act of war against decades of social safety net progress.

Senate Democrats are going to make Republicans regret their efforts to dismantle Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

When It Comes To The Filibuster, No Hypocrisy Is Too Far For The GOP

Posted by Rude One

Today, Senate Majority Leader and bespectacled squirrel nutsack Mitch McConnell went on the attack at the suggestion that Democrats would try to block any Donald Trump-nominated shit-tossers from the Supreme Court. "[T]he American people simply will not tolerate" such an action, said the man who made obstruction and filibuster the twin pillars of GOP fuckery for the last eight years and who continues to justify blocking President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, on a vague, made-up rule about when a president gets to decide who is on the court.

Not only that, but it was literally just two months ago that Republican senators were literally saying that they would not confirm any Supreme Court justice nominated by a presumptive President Hillary Clinton. Literally: "If Hillary becomes president, I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court," said terrible Senator Richard Burr, since reelected in the terrible state of North Carolina.

And the typical response from the festering dick holes on social media when someone on the left points out that Democrats are just doing something that Republicans either have done or have said they were totally gonna do? A whiny "Oh, you hated it when Republicans did it. Aren't you just hypocrites?" No, fucko, what's hypocritical is all of a sudden acting pissy when someone else does the exact same shit you did. Goddamn, it doesn't even fucking occur to these sphincter mites. If Republicans sacrificed their virgin children to Ba'al in order win elections and all of a sudden Democrats decided to get in on the unholy action, Mitch McConnell would be making a statement against using children in ancient blood rites while he was still holding a dripping knife.

In an interview yesterday, Senator Chuck Schumer said of the Democrats' elimination of the filibuster for cabinet picks in 2013 that he wishes "it hadn't happened." But that puts the blame for the rule change on Democrats when, clearly, it belongs with Republicans. In four years, Republicans had filibustered 30 Obama nominees for positions in the Executive Branch. That compares with 20 in all of the previous history of the United States. Instead of bemoaning the action the Democrats took so that President Obama could have a functioning cabinet, Schumer should be saying that the motherfuckers of the right wouldn't stop fucking mothers unless someone stepped in and smacked their hard-ons away.

The filibuster is about to become the Democrats' biggest ally and the GOP's greatest nemesis. They will screech and cry about how Democrats won't let the "historic mandate" that President Trump has be fulfilled. And Trump's idiot hordes will weep and rend garments, even as they die in the streets from lack of health care, demanding that their slobbering mad king be allowed to run riot. Democrats will have to gird their loins and hike up their pants to get ready for the shit storm that's coming their way for the crime of just trying to desperately prevent the whole country from sliding off the mountain on a hill into the wasteland below.

The greatest hypocrisy will come when the GOP votes to eliminate the filibuster completely. And then the reign of the shit heels and the bumble fucks can begin in earnest.

(Oh, and, by the way, Senator McConnell, if the American people gave two shits about who is blocking Supreme Court nominees, your ass would be on the street right now. It ain't a winner of an issue.)

Lingering questions

How Ed Schultz transformed from MSNBC lefty to the American face of Moscow media

By Paul Farhi


Ed Schultz has gone from liberal commentator on MSNBC to RT anchor. (Associated Press)

 

Ed Schultz used to be the bombastic lefty host of a syndicated radio show and daily MSNBC program. He befriended Hillary Clinton, called Donald Trump “a racist” for his birther views, and once beseeched God to take Dick Cheney “to the promised land.”

In 2014, he ripped Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s “nasty” human rights record. He also torched American conservatives for siding with the Russian president as a counter to President Obama. “Putie is their new hero,” sneered Schultz.

But the times have changed. And so has Ed Schultz.

In mid-2015, MSNBC handed Schultz his last paycheck. After six years on the air, the ratings of his daily program, “The Ed Show,” were soft and MSNBC was going for more news in Schultz’s time slot, not opinion. His daily radio show had ended the previous year.

So Schultz went back to his lakefront home in Detroit Lakes, Minn., and took stock. At 61, after a lifetime in broadcasting, he concluded he wasn’t done. In early 2016, he returned to television, albeit in an unlikely place and role for a guy who once styled himself as a “prairie populist.” He became the lead news anchor for RT America, the domestic network of what was once known as Russia Today, a globe-spanning multimedia organization funded by the Russian government.

Schultz, in other words, went to work for “Putie.”

The transition would require a bit of adjustment.

Schultz now hosts RT America’s signature evening newscast, “News With Ed Schultz,” produced in a studio located three blocks from the White House. Schultz is the American face — ruddy, beefy, with a megaphone voice — of a Moscow-based media organization that reports the news a little differently than CNN or NBC.

“Good evening, friends,” Schultz boomed on his program one recent evening before swiftly segueing into “the alleged hacking” of the presidential election by Russia. Schultz skipped the latest details, such as President Obama’s views on the matter or the consensus among American intelligence agencies about the extent of Russian meddling. Instead he went straight to Ed Schultz’s view of the matter: “This has become a lifeline for Clinton supporters in an effort to reverse the outcome of the election. . . . In the meantime, the story has entered the arena of outrageous.”

Schultz quickly threw to a recorded package, in which RT America reporter Alexey Yaroshevsky wondered how long the “spiraling downfall of sanity” over hacking in the U.S. media would continue. “Until the public sees forensic evidence, if such exists at all, these accusations should carry as much weight as online humor,” Yaroshevsky reported.

Next up: A Schultz-led panel discussion of Trump’s appointment of ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and Tillerson’s ties to Putin.

“Why is [Tillerson’s] business relationships and successes with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the business world and in the energy industry, why is that a negative on Capitol Hill?” he asked the panel, almost pleading. “Isn’t that a positive thing that he knows Putin?”

***

RT, whose slogan is “Question More,” arrived in Washington in 2010, five years after being launched in Moscow by its founder, Margarita Simonyan, at the time a 25 year old state journalist. Simonyan, who remains RT’s editor in chief, was also a member of Putin’s re-election staff in 2012.

Schultz, now 62, is one of several Americans who appear on the domestic channel. Others include former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, who hosts “On Contact,” a weekly interview show featuring “dissident voices”; Max Keiser, who has a financial program; and Tyrel Ventura, co-host of public-affairs show called “Watching the Hawks” and the son of former Minnesota governor and RT personality Jesse Ventura.

RT America has broad distribution via the Internet, but virtually no presence on cable; only 19 cable systems (out of 5,208 nationwide) carry the channel. Nevertheless, RT claimed this year that it had a weekly TV audience of more than 8 million in the United States , a questionable figure given its limited cable carriage.

Schultz, who once said on MSNBC that Putin is “crippling” his country, now has a Russo-friendly, or perhaps American-skeptical, viewpoint on any number of issues on his RT program. So do most of the guests he interviews.

The crisis in the Syrian city of Aleppo, besieged by Syrian and Russian military forces? Apparently, it’s the United States’ fault: “You’ve got [Secretary of State] John Kerry supposedly trying to find the peace while the U.S. is being an arms dealer right into the city of Aleppo,” said Schultz on Dec. 8.

Fake online news, allegedly generated by Russian sources? Schultz, a North Dakotan who once considered running for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, thinks it’s all “fear and hype” by the American news media and a smear by the Democratic Party, especially Clinton.

“If they [the American media] want to go after fake news, they can start with the Clinton campaign and their accusations” about Russian involvement, he said on a broadcast in September.

RT America’s approach to the news makes some American officials and foreign-policy observers wonder: Is it merely “an alternative voice,” as it likes to say, or something more sinister?

Stanford professor Michael McFaul, the former American ambassador to Russia, calls RT “an instrument of the Russian state. Their mission is to advance the mission of Mr. Putin and the [Russian] government.”

By mimicking the look and feel of an American newscast — even to the extent of permitting an occasional dissent from the Kremlin-centric line — RT is trying to “disguise” its real intent, he said.

And Schultz is part of the strategy, says McFaul. “They put on a lot of Americans as hosts and journalists,” he said. “The idea is to obfuscate and confuse people about it being a government entity.”

Schultz, a former college quarterback and sportscaster, rebutted the notion that he or RT America were mouthpieces for the Kremlin. He blamed the news media — and Clinton.

“The Clinton camp is trying to do all it can to connect Donald Trump to Putin,” he said during a phone interview in early September. “They’re trying to cast anyone on RT in a negative light. I think it’s deplorable. We’re journalists. We’re fair. We have correspondents all over the world. Yes, part of our funding comes from the government. But so does the BBC. So does the Canadian Broadcasting Network. The mainstream depiction of RT is a travesty. It’s dishonest.”

A follow-up question: How does Schultz square his liberal résumé with his current embrace of a Kremlin-friendly outfit like RT?

That question will have to wait. Schultz agreed to another interview in mid-October, and even sounded eager about it. But when a reporter came to RT’s Washington office on the appointed day, he was intercepted in the lobby by a network representative. The interview, she said without explanation, was off.

Reporters from Politico and the Daily Beast got the same treatment this year. Their interviews with Schultz were canceled at the last minute, too.

Fast-forward to early December. Schultz sounded eager about talking again but deferred final approval to an RT spokeswoman, Tiffany Evans. A few days later, Evans declined via email.

***

The RT gig marks another twist in Schultz’s long and winding broadcast career.

Schultz began as a radio and TV sportscaster on stations in North Dakota after his days as a football player culminated with tryouts with the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets. In the mid-1990's, he began a second line, hosting a political-talk show on a Fargo radio station. Schultz was no liberal then. As the Los Angeles Times once described it, “Big Eddie,” as he was known, would scoff at local Democratic officials and deride the homeless. “How about getting a job?” he’d ask on the air.

But the budding Rush Limbaugh underwent a stunning political conversion a few years later, switching from conservative talk-show host to a fiery liberal one.

Schultz attributed the conversion to his wife, Wendy Noack, a psychiatric nurse who worked in a Fargo homeless shelter and later became his radio producer. Schultz’s longtime friend from Fargo, Don Haney, thinks the transition was sincere. “The change was gradual, but Ed really meant it,” says Haney, an anchor and reporter at KFGO-AM, Schultz’s old station.

But others suspected that Schultz merely smelled an opportunity for counter-programming in a field dominated by conservatives.

In any case, Schultz-the-liberal was no less subtle than his conservative persona. He taunted Limbaugh for his drug addiction and tore into President George W. Bush as an enemy of “the working stiff” (later on, in 2011, he apologized after calling conservative radio host Laura Ingraham “a right-wing slut” on his radio program).

But this second guise was Schultz’s most successful. Backed by donations from Democrats, Schultz took his radio program into national syndication in 2004. “The Ed Schultz Show” eventually reached about 100 stations, including those in big cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington.

Among those who came calling was the senator from New York, Hillary Clinton; she sat for several interviews with him and described him as “a personal friend.”
 
MSNBC hired him in 2009, just as President Obama took office.

Brent Budowsky, a columnist for the Hill newspaper and an irregular guest on Schultz’s program, says he still views Schultz “as a strong voice for progressive populism.” Even so, he says, RT promotes the interests of the Russian government, sometimes moving into outright “propaganda.”

Budowsky calls Schultz “a good man in a difficult spot.”

But perhaps a comfortable one, too. In October, Haney saw his old friend again when they traveled to Des Moines to interview Bernie Sanders. They flew there on Schultz’s newly purchased jet, whose previous owner was golf legend Arnold Palmer.