Thursday, July 20, 2017

Observations On Trump's Interview With The New York Times

Posted by Rude One

At this point, any new batshit thing that President Donald Trump says comes across less as a shock and more like another punch to the face in a boxing match. If you're an experienced fighter, you know exactly how it's gonna feel when that glove pounds your chin, but, goddamnit, it still hurts and, goddamnit, you want it to stop. So this latest New York Times "interview" (if by "interview," you mean, "a lunatic scrawling in shit on his rubber room walls") with Trump is the usual serving of blithering, dithering, and withering, all tossed into a word salad that sounds like it might be English but is a colloquial bowl of chopped ideas that we could call "Trumpese."

The usual things that crop up any time Trump speaks were in full effect here:

1. Self-fellatio - Trump praises himself endlessly for doing the most, having the most, being the most, even if it's a goddamned lie. Here he is on his speech in Poland: "Enemies of mine in the media, enemies of mine are saying it was the greatest speech ever made on foreign soil by a president...You saw the reviews I got on that speech." Or on the rollback of Obama-era regulations: " I’ve given the farmers back their farms. I’ve given the builders back their land to build houses and to build other things." Can you imagine the hategasm that would splooge all over the airwaves if President Obama had said, "I gave people health insurance"? We'd be cleaning up that goo for years. But Trump's voters love that he acts like he's the king. They want a king. They want to be ruled. They want discipline. Shit, basically, he's their Dom and they're his loyal Subs, except the rest of us have been dragged into it without a safe word or, you know, consent.

2. Shitting on others - Yeah, Trump just sprayed scat all over Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and the Justice Department in general. In addition to questioning the motives of Robert Mueller (as well as threatening to fire him) and bizarrely saying that Sessions shouldn't have taken the job if he was going to recuse himself from Russia matters (remember: Sessions tried not to do so until it was revealed he lied under oath about his meetings), Trump says of his firing of James Comey, "I think I did a great thing for the American people." The American people just want someone who'll do the goddamn job. It's mighty strange, by the way, to say that you did nothing wrong but wanting the investigation shut down.

2a. Shitting on Hillary Clinton - Because of course he did.

3. Cornered rat babbling - Asked about the conversation with Vladimir Putin that wasn't reported until well after the G20 summit, Trump was like a tween caught with weed in his dresser. He wove an elaborate tale about how the chat came to be, setting the scene at the dinner all the leaders attended, who was seated where, who was talking to whom, who else might have been there, the fucking opera they watched. Then Trump said what he and Putin discussed: "Actually, it was very interesting, we talked about adoption." The fuck? (I wish Maggie Haberman had said that instead of "You did?") Trump continued, "We talked about Russian adoption. Yeah. I always found that interesting. Because, you know, he ended that years ago. And I actually talked about Russian adoption with him, which is interesting because it was a part of the conversation that Don [Jr.] had in that meeting." That means they talked about the lifting of the sanctions in the Magnitsky Act, which is pretty fucking important. But a cornered rat will do that. Amid the lies and distractions, they will squeak out some truth.

4. Paranoid ranting - Everyone is out to get Trump, according to Trump. The news media, of course, but, more significantly, Barack Obama creeps into his head and he can't help but go nutzoid insulting his beloved White House predecessor. "Don’t forget, Crimea was given away during Obama. Not during Trump," he said, speaking of himself in the third person, which is so disconcerting. He then went incoherent until he got back to Obama: "In fact, I was on one of the shows, I said they’re exactly right, they didn’t have it as it exactly. But he was — this — Crimea was gone during the Obama administration, and he gave, he allowed it to get away. You know, he can talk tough all he wants, in the meantime he talked tough to North Korea. And he didn’t actually. He didn’t talk tough to North Korea. You know, we have a big problem with North Korea. Big. Big, big." Jesus, calm down there, big fella. "You look at all of the things, you look at the line in the sand. The red line in the sand in Syria. He didn’t do the shot. I did the shot. Had he done that shot, he wouldn’t have had — had he done something dramatic, because if you remember, they had a tremendous gas attack after he made that statement. Much bigger than the one they had with me." Ah, finally he can let Obama win one: Syria gassed more people under Obama than under Trump. Such a humble man, our president.

5. Just weird shit - Every interview with Trump is guaranteed to have some bizarre notes, those moments when Trump sounds like a Hollywood producer in the 1970's. You could go with his description of the Bastille Day parade in Paris ("You know what else that was nice? It was limited. You know, it was two hours, and the parade ended. It didn’t go a whole day") or even when he jumped subjects like a weasel on meth ("The Russians have great fighters in the cold. They use the cold to their advantage. I mean, they’ve won five wars where the armies that went against them froze to death. It’s pretty amazing. So, we’re having a good time. The economy is doing great.") But I'm gonna go with the saga of French President Macron and his love of holding Trump's hand: "He’s a great guy. Smart. Strong. Loves holding my hand...People don’t realize he loves holding my hand. And that’s good, as far as that goes...I think he is going to be a terrific president of France. But he does love holding my hand." Every night, Macron touches the hand that held Trump's, and a single tear runs slowly down his face as he remembers those soft, small fingers interlaced with his.

Keep in mind that these were easy questions because the reporters know that if you ask Trump something about policy, like "Can you explain a single fucking thing about how the ACA exchanges work?" or if you challenge him, like "Why did you lie about Medicaid cuts?" he'll just shut down like an overstimulated toddler. Even on the softball questions, he got basic facts wrong and he didn't know when to shut the fuck up. Sure, Trump ought to be interviewed like anyone would Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or, fuck, Mitt Romney, but we all know that he's fucking stupid so get the stupid people to talk about the one thing they feel comfortable with: themselves.

It's not shocking anymore. And we need to be careful about that. The thing about a boxing match is that the fighters can never let it get boring and rote. It might be exhausting or excruciating. But you gotta stay in the moments or you'll find yourself flat on your ass, without health care, with your country at war, with your voting rights gone, and with your environment collapsing.

Trump Voters Were Wrong, So Fuck Their Opinions

Posted by Rude One

In just six short months, it's become absolutely clear: Everyone who didn't vote for Donald Trump was right and everyone who voted for him was wrong. Yeah, yeah, they weren't wrong in that Trump won the election, just as someone isn't wrong for supporting a shitty baseball team. But it's incredibly clear now that the poor suckers and greedy fuckers who wanted to nuzzle up to Trump's man-teats for a suckle were wrong on just about every account regarding who he is and what he'd do.

They were wrong that he's a man of his word, they were wrong that he would look out for working people, they were wrong that he would make the nation respected "again" (as if it wasn't before), they were wrong that he wouldn't have scandals, and they were just wrong about him being a human being worthy of the office. They were wrong and we who voted against him (and I'm tossing anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, and Deez Nutz into the category of "voted against him") were right.

Trump voters fucked the goat, and so everything they say should be framed within the fact that they are goatfuckers. "Oh, you have an opinion on health care? Sorry, you fucked a goat. I don't give a shit about your goat-fucking opinion," we should think. But that's not what we do. We don't shun the goatfuckers, no matter how savagely they fucked that goat. We see that most clearly by the fact that the news networks and other media outlets still entertain the opinions of people who supported the Iraq war and never said they were wrong about it. Goatfuckers get away with it.

So we're treated on an almost daily basis to articles and stories about Trump voters and what they think about some issue and whether or not Trump's evil, batshit incompetence is enough for them to bail on the Orange King. Every single one of these stories is the same: Here are some assholes who voted for Trump. Let's treat them with reverence, as if they have hard-won wisdom because they shovel shit or work at Wal-Mart. Let's tell them about all the fuckery that Donald Trump has been up to and see what they think. Oh, look, they don't give a shit because he still hates the Mooslems and Messicans. And what might change their minds about Trumpochet? "I don’t know what he would have to do...I guess maybe kill someone. Just in cold blood."

That's an actual quote from an actual person in a Tennesseean article on Wayne County, Tennessee, an almost entirely white rural area with less people than my neighborhood. The thrust of the piece is that Trump voters couldn't give a happy monkey fuck about the Russia scandal. In fact, they think Trump is being maligned and Don Jr. is awesome. This is the newest wrinkle in the genre: What do stupid people think about something they don't understand at all? In the last week, Vox has done a story on Michigan Trump voters, who don't think the Russian connections are any big deal. The BBC sent a reporter to the Nebraska State Fair to get some American color (yes, ironic, I know) and some video of deluded shit heels sharing their delusions.

As Newsweek's Alexander Nazaryn wrote, "The real story here is how thoroughly Trump supporters have been deceived, both by Trump and tireless boot-lickers like Hannity and Jones. Every quote from an Ohioan who declares the Russia investigation is irrelevant is a testament to the delusive brand of Republicanism that now reigns supreme." Joshua Green said much the same in the New York Times.

Each of the Trump voter pieces generally has a token interview with someone who doesn't support Trump. But they are presented as curiosities, the two-headed cow that shouldn't exist but somehow does. But the reality is, obviously, people who think Trump is full of shit vastly outnumber the aforementioned suckers and fuckers who stand by their man. How about interviewing some of us? How about asking us, "How did you know?" And we can say, "Anyone with a fuckin' brain knew." Ask us, "What do you think about the Russia dealie?" And we can say, "Either we do something about it or we're fucked."

Hell, you don't even have to stick to the cities, where the majority of the country lives. Since you've got a rural jones, you can head to Bolivar, Tennessee, a town in the ass-crack of nowhere, near to the Alabama border, as Deep South as you can get. They went for Hillary Clinton, as did nearby Whiteville. Of course, those are majority African American towns, so you'd have to change the whole goddamned narrative away from the mighty white working class.

Or, here's an idea, why not go to the communities that went for Trump and find the people who didn't. Talk to them. See if they're feeling smug or sad or angry. See what their ideas are for getting us out of this or through this goddamn bullshit time. Find out how they're feeling about Trump's relationship with Russia. Ask them because they, like the majority of the country, were right.

Let's spend a little time and energy, dear, sweet reporters, on people who aren't barking mad or madly barking.

(Note: If you didn't vote at all, go suck a donkey's dick.)

(Note: If you wanna write to me about "goatfucker shaming," I hate you already. Same for "donkey-dick sucker shaming." Some things are just fucking shameful. Sucking a donkey's dick, fucking a goat, and voting for Donald Trump, for examples.)

Weary Trump supporters desperate to tune out bad news

By Brad Reed
 

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Trump's 'Made In America Week' Backfires BIGLY

Twitter had a field day with this one. Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.


"President Donald Trump is set to declare this week “Made In America” week to help promote products manufactured in the United States, according to The Hill.

But he’s already coming under fire for the move, given that Trump-branded products are often manufactured overseas.

Many of Trump’s clothing items have been made in Mexico and China. During the campaign last year, his use of steel and aluminum from China became a campaign issue.

And just last week, The Washington Post reported on the fashion line of first daughter and White House aide Ivanka Trump, finding that much of it is made by low-wage workers in countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and China.

White House spokeswoman Helen Aguirre Ferre was asked on Sunday if the president would use “Made in America” week to push his daughter to make those products in the United States.”*

Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-made-in-america_us_596c391ce4b03389bb1878e1

Don’t Trust Joe Scarborough’s Phony Awakening – He Isn’t Leaving The Republican Party

MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough announced on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last week that he was leaving the Republican Party.  I don’t buy it, and you shouldn’t either.  Scarborough wants to capitalize on anti-Trump viewership.  He has always been a loyal Republican, pushing for privatization and elimination of social safety net programs during his days in Congress, and that’s exactly what today’s GOP is all about. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/morning-joe-scarborough-leaving-republican-party/

Sean Spicer Says It Is “Inappropriate” To Ask If Trump Will Make His Goods In The U.S.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer returned to the podium on Monday – though off camera – to address reporters on the first day of “Made In America Week.”  One of the questions asked of Spicer was whether Donald Trump would begin to manufacture the goods for his brands in the US, which Spicer deemed an “inappropriate” question.  If you can’t ask that questions during Made In America Week, then when would it be appropriate? Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.



https://www.axios.com/spicer-inappropriate-to-say-whether-trump-goods-will-be-made-in-americ-2460971257.html

Trump Is Still Lying About How Much His Administration Has Accomplished

On Monday, Donald Trump told reporters that his administration has now passed more legislation than any other administration in US history at this point.  Not only is that completely untrue, but most of what Trump has signed are bills to just undo what President Obama did.  That isn’t progress, that’s regression. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.



https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/us/politics/trump-laws-bills.html?_r=1

Trump Whines On Twitter About Healthcare Bill Failure, Vows “We Will Return!”

Donald Trump took to Twitter to blame Democrats and “a few Republicans” for the failure of the GOP healthcare bill in the Senate.  He then ended his infantile rant with an ominous threat that “we will return.”  Does he not understand that people don’t want the GOP’s healthcare “fix” and that the entire Republican Party needs to simply move on? Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.



Link – http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/342465-trump-blames-dems-few-republicans-for-collapse-of-healthcare-bill

The Republican Party Is Hilariously Incompetent

With the recent collapse of their healthcare bill in the Senate, the Republican Party has shown us that they are incapable of leading this country.  Obviously, the death of their healthcare bill is a good thing, but you have to wonder how these people can control so much of this country without any clue how to lead. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.



Link – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-republican-party-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place_us_596c2c1be4b09e26b6d7693b?section=us_politics

Monday, July 17, 2017

The True Story


Six Long Months Of Trump

By Frank Bruni

From the beginning, people around me talked nonstop about the end.

How long could Donald Trump’s presidency possibly last? Would impeachment or the 25th Amendment undo him? Before Trump, few of us even knew of the 25th Amendment, which allows the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to decree the president unfit. But suddenly everybody was up to speed, and no sooner had Trump been inaugurated than the “would you rather” question du jour became him versus Mike Pence. All-purpose lunacy or religious zeal: Choose your governance. Pick your poison.

Part of this, yes, reflected the company I keep. It doesn’t brim with Trump enthusiasts. But more of this came down to Trump himself — the lidless grandiosity, the bottomless vulgarity, the lies atop lies upon lies. I’ll never forget his second day in office, not just because he used an appearance at the C.I.A. to crow at great length about his many Time magazine covers and to insist, despite ready evidence to the contrary, that any beef of his with intelligence agencies was a media invention. It stays with me because of a text message I received from a journalist who covers him as well as any other, understands him better and was utterly flabbergasted by that display.

“We’re all going to die,” it said. While there was jest and hyperbole in that, there was also genuine alarm and the dark realization that Trump would not be transmogrified by the oath of office into anything approaching a dignified, responsible statesman. No, his extra power was just making him extra mean, and what we saw before Nov. 8 was what we got from Jan. 20 onward: a child in a man’s suit, a knave in a knight’s armor, a dangerous experiment with unforeseeable consequences.

They’re more seeable now. As of Thursday, July 20, Trump will have inhabited the presidency for a full six months, and we can reach certain conclusions with a measure of confidence.

No one can yet say how or when it ends. His dim namesake’s antics, evasions and omissions have reinvigorated talk of impeachment, but Republican lawmakers’ statements last week don’t support that scenario. With rare exception, the sternest words came from the most predictable quarters and hardly rose to the level of revolt. Maybe that’s a relief. Can you imagine Trump, with his thin skin and martyr complex, in the throes of impeachment? He’d wail and thrash and tear down everything around him. I mean, more than now.

We have to stop rolling our eyes when he brags about how much he has done, because he’s right. He has done plenty.

With his stances on climate change, trade and refugees and with all the air kisses blown at Vladimir Putin, he has altered our place in the world and splintered its postwar framework. 

Don’t be reassured by the recent pleasantries between him and Emmanuel Macron: Much of Western Europe is reeling from what it considers a surrender of American leadership. This, post-Trump, may be reparable. But I wonder if our sturdiest allies will ever feel quite the same way about this country again.

With his first Supreme Court appointment, he showed what he would almost surely do with a second and third: fully indulge the social conservatives who are one of the most dependable components of his base. If he lasts a full term and the Senate remains, as is likely, in Republican hands after the 2018 midterms, he could leave behind a court that leans sharply to the right for a generation to come.

With his sloppiness, scandals and inner circle of arrogant neophytes, he is frittering away time. That’s hardly a singular accomplishment, but we can’t afford more government paralysis and procrastination. Infrastructure that’s no longer competitive (or safe), a tax code crying out for revision, a work force without the right skills: When do we fix this? How far behind do we fall?
And what, in the meantime, happens to Americans’ already shriveled faith in Washington? Trump’s election reflected many voters’ exasperation with the status quo and sense of permanent estrangement from some gilded clique of winners. He was their pyrrhic retort. How much hotter will their anger burn when they realize they got played?

I’m more likely to win a season of “The Bachelorette” than he is to build that incessantly promised wall. His professed disdain for Wall Street was a campaign-season pose, abandoned the minute he started assembling his administration. Health care that’s better, cheaper and more universal? Oh, please.

It’s possible that Trump’s fans will never blame him, because of one of his most self-serving and corrosive feats: the stirring of partisanship and distrust of institutions into the conviction that there’s no such thing as objective truth. There are only rival claims. There are always “alternative facts.” Charges of mere bias are the antiquated weapons of yesteryear; “fake news” is the new nullifier, and it’s a phrase so dear to him that his unprincipled acolytes are building on it. Last week a Trump adviser, Sebastian Gorka, lashed out at the “fake news industrial complex.” Trump reportedly swooned.

What happens to a democracy whose citizens not only lose common ground but also take a match to the idea of a common reality? Thanks in part to Trump, we may find out. He doesn’t care about civility or basic decency, and even if he did, he lacks the discipline to yoke his actions to any ideals. The Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik expressed it perfectly, telling me, “His presidency is what happens when you have road rage in the Oval Office.”

I was just 9 when Richard Nixon resigned and a teenager during the Jimmy Carter years. I began paying close attention only with Ronald Reagan. He and every one of his successors bent the truth, to varying degrees. He and every successor had a vanity that sometimes ran contrary to the public good. But none came close to Trump in those regards.

None shrugged off conflicts of interest the way he does. None publicly savaged women (and men) based on their looks or supposed cosmetic surgery. None made gloating a trademark of his public discourse. Two scoops for Trump, one for everybody else. He’s president and you’re not. The pettiness radiates outward, as does the viciousness and lack of ethics — to his lawyers, to his kin

And it’s more than just coarse spectacle. It’s an assault on what it means to be president and what the presidency means. The injury to the office won’t be quick to heal.


I can’t shake two incidents in particular. A few weeks before his inauguration, Trump tweeted a New Year greeting that was, instead, a spitball thrown at anyone who hadn’t genuflected before him. Last month, he coaxed his cabinet members to kiss his ring as the television cameras rolled. Those grotesque bookends affirmed that he is changeless and that he rules as he lives, for Trump and Trump alone.

Still I try for optimism: We won’t all die.

But suffer? Count on it.


Trump using donors' campaign cash to pay for his idiot son's legal defense

By Hunter
Donald Trump, Jr., son of Donald Trump, speaks on the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland on July 19, 2016..The Republican Party formally nominated Donald Trump for president of the United States Tuesday, capping a roller-coaster campaign that saw the billionaire tycoon defeat 16 White House rivals. / AFP / JIM WATSON        (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)
Donald Trump Jr., campaigning
In Trump's defense on this one, the meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and a Russian team sent to offer Russian government "support" for the Trump campaign was a campaign meeting, not a personal one. So this is fine.
President Donald Trump appears to have used more than half a million dollars in campaign funds to pay legal fees over the last three months, new campaign filings show. The spending included $50,000 in legal expenses to lawyer Alan Futerfas, who is now representing Donald Trump Jr., on June 27th.
That's why Trump quickly launched a "re-election" campaign immediately after entering office, of course. So he could collect a half-million dollars from his brigade of red-hat-wearing morons to pay for his legal defenses out of their own pockets.

As we said, it would be a real problem if Donald Trump were siphoning off cash from his own campaign for the personal benefit of his wealthy but incredibly stupid son. But Trump is fully acknowledging that the meeting with a Russian team set up under the explicit declaration that it was "part of" the Russian government's support for the campaign, a mere week before the Russian government began to leak thousands of files stolen from Trump's campaign opponent, was a campaign meeting involving his campaign staff to hear the provided information in their capacity as leaders of the Trump campaign.

So it's fine.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Hypocrisy And The Name Trump Go Hand In Hand

Being a HYPOCRITE is just part of being a TRUMP. How is that fight against cyber-bullying coming Melania? Or what about women's rights Ivanka? Hosted by Francis Maxwell. See more TYT Facebook Originals at http://fb.com/theyoungturks/videos

Saturday, July 15, 2017

The Intercept Discloses Top-Secret NSA Document On Russia Hacking Aimed At US Voting System

The report details an operation targeting voter registration in 2016.

By Ben Dreyfuss

On Monday, the Intercept published a classified internal NSA document noting that Russian military intelligence mounted an operation to hack at least one US voting software supplier—which provided software related to voter registration files—in the months prior to last year’s presidential contest. It has previously been reported that Russia attempted to hack into voter registration systems, but this NSA document provides details of how one such operation occurred.

According to the Intercept:
The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the US election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed US government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.
While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A US intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.
The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into US voting systems than was previously understood. It states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the document:
Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions. … The actors likely used data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.
Go read the whole thing.

Friday, July 14, 2017

Unlike Most of the GOP, the Trumps Are Shitty Liars

Posted by Rude One

Let's be clear here: The Republican Party holds the power it does because it is unafraid to lie. From the overhyped fear of Communism to the overhyped fear of crime to the overhyped fear of terrorism, the GOP has jumped from lie to lie to lie in order to maintain power, often pivoting back to ones that work so well, like welfare fraud and, time and again, crime. They recovered from their near dismantling in 2006 and 2008, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 washed away the Bush bullshit, by going big with the lies about Barack Obama and, especially, about the Affordable Care Act. And as Republican leaders in the Senate desperately try to come up with a way to squeeze out one more turd of a Trumpcare bill, they are lying with abandon, and not just about what's in the aforementioned turd.

Obamacare markets aren't "collapsing." They're stabilizing. People on the Medicaid expansion aren't desperate to get rid of it. They are satisfied with the care they are getting. Over two-thirds of the country, including a majority of Republicans, support the birth control mandate in Obamacare, the subject of another fake controversy just to appeal to yahoo religious nutzoids.

And the reason that they've gotten away with lying is that they are so fucking good at it. They are so fucking good at playing the media, playing their constituents, playing the Democrats, playing everyone. They are master bullshitters. They get away with it because conservative ideas in a political context are so fucking simple to understand. What's easier on the brain? "We should provide decent education, housing, job-training, and anti-poverty programs to help combat crime"? Or "Lock 'em up"? Democrats can't compete until they come up with a better story than the lies that have worked so well for so long.

It was going along so well for the GOP until the Trumps, this family of outsiders, came along and fucked it all up. Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, and Junior have lived on a privileged plane of existence, where having a cadre of brutish dickhead attorneys on retainer is enough of a deterrent for anyone who would dare question them or try to get paid fairly. They could intimidate people into silence or, if that fails, settle any lawsuits with the handy provisions that they admit no guilt and the plaintiffs can't talk about it. They could be bumblefuck corrupt business shitheels and get away with it.

The biggest problem in getting into the public arena is that, all of a sudden, the Trumps have to deal with the federal government, an entity that doesn't just have lawyers but entire goddamned bureaus devoted to investigating just the kind of fuckery that the Trumps have regularly been involved in. Throw in a media that realizes it had better make itself relevant again or just fucking give up, and a group of people as boisterously, unashamedly moronic as the Trumps don't stand a chance. You don't want to be probed and pilloried? Then either don't be corrupt (except in the usual way of sucking up to Wall Street and other rich fucks - that's just sadly acceptable now), like Obama, who could take all the shit and toss it back, or don't fucking run for office.

We'll never know what toxic combination of hubris, narcissism, and lickspittlism got Donald Trump to run for president to win. But we do know that another toxic combination got him elected, and one of the primary ingredients in that poison was the interference of the Russian government. We also know that we are learning all this because the Trump family was too fucking dumb to cover it up well. They're shitty liars as well as being shitty human beings.

You can imagine Karl Rove slapping his bloated forehead when he saw the emails between cartoon louche Richie Gallstone or whatever the fuck that guy's name is and Donald Trump, Jr. You can imagine Rove getting on the phone with John Boehner and the two of them, liars of the first order, screaming with laughter, "The subject line...the subject line is 'Russia-Clinton.'" You can imagine them both calling Mitch McConnell and taunting him about having to deal with this shit. You can imagine McConnell slowly cursing the fact that he worked so hard to get all these lies working, all the cocksucking and ratfucking that went into them, and now they're being brought down by these Trump assholes.

You can be corrupt. You can be stupid. You can't be stupid and corrupt. Otherwise, you don't know when to shut the fuck up. You don't know when to keep your head down. You don't know when to not fucking tweet out the evidence that, at the very least, reveals the very thing everyone has been trying to pin on you.

So now it falls to the professional liars, the liars with experience, to try to unfuck this fucked up situation. You are going to see a hard-press from the right-wing attack dogs about how this is nothing, how the Democrats are more corrupt and destructive, how it was just a Washington naif's error. It's happening already, and they're saying that it's essentially treasonous to not support the president, a hypocrisy that they have no problem with. They'll say it's about bringing down the great man Trump, it's about sour grapes over the failure in the election, and it's about the mighty flag-waving patriots who don't want to see the country dragged down by what they don't even see as a scandal.

Which brings us back to the top of this here post. The Trump lies and power-at-any-cost actions are part and parcel of what the Republican Party does. The GOP is filthy with masterful sleaze merchants. They can fuck your ears and tell you it was God's blessing. It's going to be up to the Democrats to come up with a simple, straightforward narrative here that can slap the Republicans down until they scurry back to the gutter.

How this turns out will reveal who gives a shit about the nation. Who is enraged that this has happened. Who the real patriots are.

(Note: Sure, Democrats went along some of the time with GOP lies because they can get swept up in a lie as much as anyone, but they rarely have been the originators of a big lie in the last 50 years. And, yeah, the country ain't perfect. No shit. Patriots work to make it better.)

Random Thoughts on Trump(s) and Russia

Posted by Rude One

1. Let's do this one more time, President Pussygrabber McCrazy. Consider this a lesson in the law.

James Comey could have leaked all the classified information he could get his large hands on.

Hillary Clinton could have mishandled classified emails and done something something with uranium and Russia.

Bill Clinton could have told Loretta Lynch exactly what to say about Hillary.

Every news channel that isn't Fox could be totally fake.

Barack Obama could have done nothing about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Democrats could have colluded with Russians or Ukrainians or another foreign country during the election.

All the intelligence agencies could be leaking to do damage to the administration.

All of those things can be true, but none of them change the fact that you can still be guilty of obstruction of justice.

A murderer cannot use as a defense that his neighbor is a murderer, too. But both Trump and his son constantly tweet out what they say others are guilty of, as if to say, "If you let them get away with it, you have to let us get away with it." It's like neither of them understand that Hillary Clinton isn't the president and that Barack Obama is out of office.

2. Speaking of Pussygrabber McCrazy, Jr., he is still insisting there was nothing untoward about his meeting, along with Paul "Eyes That Have Seen Trump Nude" Manafort and Jared "Would Gladly Fuck a Dead Raccoon If His Father-in-Law Told Him To" Kushner, with a Russian lawyer. His explanation for having giving two seemingly contradictory statements about the meeting is "No inconsistency in statements, meeting ended up being primarily about adoptions. In response to further Q's I simply provided more details." No, motherfucker, you lied and thought you could get away with it. It's just like the campaign lied from the start about hookups with Russians in general.

3. First off, this "adoption" thing is a bullshit excuse. It has to do with the Magnitsky Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in 2012 in order to punish Russian government officials and oligarchs who are involved in human rights abuses and fraud. It froze the assets of some really rich Russian dicks, and Putin had a hissy, so he banned Americans from adopting Russian babies. Putin hates the Act and wants it repealed. The lawyer who Junior met with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is involved in an effort to get it repealed. Adoption is part of it, but this is about cold fuckin' cash and power.

4. But the really fucked-up part of this is that when a Russian associated with the Kremlin wanted to get together at Trump fuckin' Plaza because she had dirt on Hillary Clinton, Junior's response was, "Well, sure" when it should have been "I better call the FBI." But he couldn't do that because Junior is cut from the same scuzzy cloth as his father and the Trumps likely owe the Russians a metric fuck-ton of money and jump when told to.

4a. One fun part that hasn't gotten much discussion: Veselnitskaya "recalled that after about 10 minutes, either Mr. Kushner or Mr. Manafort left the room." She makes it seem that it's because nothing significant was discussed. But it could have been that they thought, "Oh, crap, this is illegal" and got the fuck out of Dodge. (Or they were rushing to tell Daddy about what they learned. He was in the building that day, June 9, 2016.)

5. Look, I'm not running around with my hair on fire and game theorizing the shit out of all this on Twitter. I've been circumspect, definitely leaning towards the "this is hinky" side of things with Russia. But at some goddamned point, if you keep sucking dicks for money for meth, you're a meth whore. Sure, sure, you suck one or two dicks and get paid and then go buy meth, maybe we can let it slide as tweaker shit. But if you're doing it every day, then you, my friend, have a problem with meth. And handling your finances. But mostly meth.

It's becoming more difficult to deny that the Trump administration is a meth whore. And we know who the john is.

Why You Don't Get Too Close To Glaciers


73 percent of Democrats would give up drinking for Trump impeachment



Over 73 percent of Democrats would give up alcohol for the rest of their life if it meant President Trump would be impeached tomorrow, according to a survey released on Thursday by a drug and alcohol rehabilitation group.

Only 17 percent of Republicans would give up alcohol for Trump’s impeachment. The poll also found that nearly 31 percent of Republicans would give up drinking if it meant the media stopped writing negative things about President Trump.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) formally introduced an article of impeachment against President Trump on Wednesday, accusing the president of obstructing justice during the investigation of Russia’s 2016 election interference. It was the first time a lawmaker had offered an impeachment article against Trump.

Detox.net surveyed 1,013 active alcohol drinkers on March 14 and asked questions related to what they would be willing to sacrifice in exchange for alcohol. Forty-one percent of those surveyed identified as women, 58 percent as men and 1 percent identified as a gender not listed on the survey.

As for political affiliation, 21 percent identified as Republican, 43 percent as Democrat and 36 percent as other.

The minimum amount of money the Americans surveyed would accept to quit drinking for a year is at least $4,700 and to give up alcohol for life they would expect at least $365,458.

There was a 5 percentage point margin of error when asking about the average minimum amount of money respondents would be willing to give accept to give up alcohol.