Mystery Behind Suicides And Jason Chaffetz Resignation

Why did four people raided by the agency Jason Cheffetz is trying to shut down kill themselves? Why is he suddenly stepping down?

It's Heartbreaking

By KentuckyWoman

I'm over 70 yrs old. Being a citizen of these United States has been my good fortune and privilege.

We've had our finer moments, and our embarrassments. I've spend my lifetime advocating for "the little guy" and for a government that exists for our collective good. I've had elected representatives that performed well and with honor, and reps who used the office for the sole purpose of enriching themselves and their rich friends. I thought I'd seen it all.

I was wrong. Lady Liberty is still holding her hand high but I don't see how. 30+ years ago we opened the doors to "conservative talk radio" and now we've progressed to open hatred in the streets.

We are a nation that elected a buffoon whose idea of political discourse is in sentences short enough to fit on a bumper sticker. Even if we drum them all out of public view, it will take generations of hard work to simply regain the little bit of ground we gained in my lifetime before everything started falling apart again.

We worked SO hard to turn our local police departments into a group of people who protect and serve rather than turn the fire hoses and attack dogs on citizens exercising their constitutional rights of free assembly. We made so little headway and now we are to a point where the police all over this country feel free to beat up women, shoot unarmed children with no consequence whatsoever.

Donald Trump embodies everything that was ever wrong in America - well with humanity in general. He is all 7 of the deadly sins. The sheer pettiness, greed, sloth, gluttony, wastefulness, frivolousness, disrespect. Just the fact our society gave such a person the limelight at all is an embarrassment. But to exalt him to the highest office in the land is beyond all understanding.

His presidency underscores the fact we, as a group, have had our priorities all wrong for decades. President Obama did his damnedest to try and pull us back to some sort of sanity, but we would have none of it. Pigs at the trough under Whistle ass got put on a diet, and now put a man in office that is literally the rich flipping us all the bird.

I really don't know where I'm going with all this....except to say that I'm heartbroken for America and what she's become.

Need A Pick Me Up In This Terrible Time? Here's Lynched Jefferson Davis

Posted by Rude One

That statue of a white man dangling from a crane is of Jefferson Davis, who was the president of the defeated nation of racist traitors known as the Confederate States of America. For all the world, it looks like a well-deserved lynching. 

 

His monument in New Orleans used to be on the median (or "neutral ground," in New Orleans parlance) where Canal Street meets the still-stupidly-named Jefferson Davis Parkway. New Orleans is in the midst of taking down four monuments to the Confederacy because, apparently, it only takes 150 years and a few massacres to realize that celebrating the legacy of the enemies of the United States is fucking ridiculous, especially when those enemies were fighting to keep slaves and the majority of the city's citizens are African Americans. Seem kind of fucking obvious, doesn't it? Would you want to walk by a statue of someone who wanted to keep the literal rape of your ancestors legal?

The slave rapist supporters turned out, too, flying their loser flag of rapists and slave owners and poor dumb asses who just went along with the rapists and slave owners. Or, you know, Trump voters. Because blah, blah, blah heritage, history, and who the fuck cares. Whatever their reasons are for keeping the monuments up, they're wrong.

As for what will be done with the statues and plaques and pedestals, for now, they will go into storage. After Davis, they'll be taking down General Beauregard and Robert E. Lee, both scum fucking pigs, no matter what "noble" justification Lee claimed to have. They might end up at a museum to contextualize them better than they are now.

But I've got an idea. Get a giant furnace on site. Melt down the statues right in front of the protesters. Then pour the liquid into cock-shaped molds. When they cool and harden, hand them out to the white supremacists, neo-Confederates, and one-toothed yahoos there and tell 'em to shove it up their assholes and go fuck themselves with it.

Unbelievably brazen dirty trick: WH working on sabotaging the 2018 election...

By Judy

Donald Trump made good on a promise to investigate alleged vote fraud with an executive order on Tuesday, White House officials told NBC News.

The order will establish a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression throughout the American election system. Vice President Mike Pence will head the group, called the "Presidential Commission on Election Integrity." Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will serve as vice chair.

The panel will be tasked with studying "vulnerabilities" in the voting system, as well as potential impacts on "improper voting, fraudulent voter registrations, and fraudulent voting."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-to-establish-vote-fraud-commission/ar-BBB0RhB?OCID=ansmsnnews11

As maybe a lot of you know, Kris Kobach is the infamous Trump adviser behind "Interstate Crosscheck", which helped take many minority voters of the rolls to ensure a Trump victory.

For more info about Crosscheck:
http://www.gregpalast.com

Edited to add this article:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-w435890

This "commission" is just a trick to worsen the integrity of the voting system and making sure that Republicans are elected in spite of their recent fall from grace...

I will write my senators and rep about this, but this doesn't bode well at all...who can stop this??! I have no idea... 

The Dark Timeline Gets Darker: Brief Thoughts On The Comey Firing

Posted by Rude One

Let's lay out some brief thoughts here on the fuckery that's occurred today in the firing of FBI Director James Comey by President Donald Trump.

1. Comey should have been fired by President Obama for his interference in the 2016 election. He was a completely vindictive bastard to Hillary Clinton in his letter about...oh, fuck you know all this shit. Fuck that guy. Hard.

2. The Deputy Attorney General said that Comey's dismissal was recommended because of his handling of the Clinton investigation, including his press conference announcing no charges and his statements close to the election about the emails on Huma Abedin's computer. Comey has lied his ass off since about that latter action.

3. But there is no fucking way that that is the reason that Trump fired Comey. The FBI is anal-probing the connections between the Trump campaign/administration and Russia. And if Trump gave a happy monkey fuck about Comey's handling of the Clinton email case, well, who the fuck keeps such an incompetent prick on the payroll, running a giant intelligence-gathering and law enforcement agency, for months?

4. No, fuck that. The Clinton shit is an obvious cover story. Comey was fired because he's dangerous. He's fired because Trump wants heads to put on the White House fence to threaten others. He can line up Comey's next to the noggins of Sally Yates and Preet Bharara. Trump's letter of dismissal said, in part, "I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation." Jesus, how pathetic to shiv a man while you talk about how awesome you are. How frightening that Trump seems to be discrediting anything that comes out of the FBI against him now that Comey is gone.

4a. And Trump had been ordering Jeff Sessions to find a reason to fire Comey since at least last week. These fuckin' fascists.

5. Not scared yet? We no longer have a functioning Justice Department. We don't have a Congress that will check or balance the president in even the smallest ways. We have a president who doesn't care about anything other than protecting his orange ass and centralizing all power within him and his small cadres of hellspawn and spunk monkeys. And he's gonna appoint someone from that cadre to erase the investigations so he can gallivant on with his awful presidency.

6. Yeah, fuck Comey for what he did. But fuck anyone who thinks this is okay, that it's all cool just because Trump can fire the people he's fired. And fuck us, again and again, for allowing this mongrel age to happen.

6a. Fuck us even harder if an independent investigation isn't launched on this and everything else.

7. Somewhere, the corpse of Niccolo Machiavelli is laughing its bony ass off.

8. In Hell, Richard Nixon rolled his eyes and wondered where the fuck this GOP was back in the 1970's. And then he was dipped back into the shit pit.

Obama Accepts Courage Award With Straight Face

To All Elected Republicans...

By NanceGreggs

Last year, you nominated, supported, and ultimately elected Donald Trump.

Throughout his campaign, Trump’s statements and behavior made it abundantly clear that he was unfit for the office of the presidency.

Had there been any doubt in your mind about his qualifications at that at the time, certainly you have come to know that now-president Trump is a liar, is ignorant of how the government operates, is using his office to enrich himself and his family, and whose incoherent “tweets” and public statements are demonstrative of mental instability.

Donald Trump’s closest advisors are under investigation for possible collusion with our enemy, Russia, in order to undermine our election process – an investigation that possibly could point to the involvement of Trump himself. And Trump’s response to these extremely serious allegations has been to call them a “hoax” based on “fake news”. He has done everything in his power to derail said investigations, and has fired those who have shown any determination to get to the facts of the matter.

Trump’s firing of James Comey – the man who was heading-up that investigation – is, for all intents and purposes, a de facto admission of guilt. Any president wrongly accused of colluding with our sworn enemy would be anxious to clear his name, and the names of his associates, by fully cooperating with any investigation into his and their behavior. Instead, this president has done everything possible to thwart any attempts to uncover the truth, and the underlying facts that support that truth.

The idea that Trump fired Comey due to the very things that Trump praised him for – i.e. the way Comey handled the HRC emails – is simply not credible. All politics aside, it defies common sense. It is an obvious attempt to waylay any investigation that would serve to prove the guilt of this president and his cohorts – which one could clearly interpret as an admission of guilt. And many of us see it as exactly that.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid – not of their party, but the aid of the democracy they have sworn to serve and protect. Now is the time for Republicans to stop defending “alternative facts”, and start acknowledging that the man they put in the Oval Office is deliberately shutting down any attempts to look into his and his colleagues’ ties to Russia, and their possible collusion with a foreign adversarial government to undermine our own government.

Now is the time for ALL citizens, regardless of party affiliation, to stand up for our country, for the rule of law that guides us, for the Constitution that defines us.

You are either on the side of what is morally and ethically right – or you are on the side of a man who is determined to abuse the power of his office in order to silence those who are raising legitimate questions about his involvement in collusion with our sworn enemy.

You are either on the side of your countrymen who want answers to that question, or you are on the side of a man who has repeatedly refused to answer that question.

You are either on the side of the citizens you have sworn to serve and protect, and whose interests you were elected to represent, or you are on the side of a man who is clearly determined to quash any facts that may point to his own guilt or that of his colleagues.

The ball is in your court – and it is a big fuckin’ ball. If you choose to defend your incompetent, proven liar of a president rather than stand up for your fellow citizens, that’s on you. If you persist in aiding and abetting a man who is taking every step possible to stop any investigations into his own actions and those of his colleagues, that’s on you.

The midterm elections will soon be upon us. Many of you will be out of office as a direct result of your defense of the Idiot-in-Chief, and your refusal to acknowledge his efforts to divert attention away from any facts that raise questions about his involvement in collusion with the Russians.

And don’t believe for a second that voters are unaware of your own collusion with the Russians, by virtue of your insistence that any investigation into your boy’s ties thereto should be shut down.

This isn’t over. Not by a long-shot. Your boy will be brought down – and you will be brought down with him.

Now is your last chance to stand up for your country. And all of us - Democrats and Republicans alike - will be watching whether you do or you don’t.

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

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

By David Corn May 8, 2017 5:39 PM

Carolyn Kaster/AP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eric Trump Is Staggeringly Stupid

Did Eric Trump actually think wealthy Russians were dumping money into his dad’s golf courses during a recession because they’re big golf fans? Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.

A Confederacy Of Sociopaths

Kurt Eichenwald: 'and they smiled and high-fived'

https://www.facebook.com/kurt.eichenwald.1/posts/1448157071889590

In 1986, I left a job I loved for one I hated. I had been desperately sick for seven years, with medical bills no one could possibly cover. But I was approaching the dreaded age of 25, when I would be forced off of my parent’s insurance policy. Everyone knew, without insurance, I would die. I was frequently hospitalized. My treatments were very expensive. But the job I loved offered no insurance. The one I hated did.

This was the second time insurance chose the direction of my life. I applied for the job of my dreams a year before. The boss told me he wanted to hire me, but theirs was a small company. They already had a person with high medical costs on salary. If they hired me, he said, their insurer would drop them. Insurance companies could do that back then.

But with the job I hated, I thought I was safe. Then I found out, even the group policy had a preexisting condition clause: I would not be insured for nine months. I could not stay. I would go bankrupt. And so, I went to find another job. All I wanted was insurance. It didn’t matter the job. Insurance would decide my career.
 
I had been a political writer at CBS, an associate editor at National Journal. Very successful at my age. But I only had a few weeks until I was uninsured. I begged a friend at the New York Times to help me. He offered to help me land a position as a copy boy. It was a terrible job, he knew, but it had insurance. At first, I was turned down for the job – I was way too overqualified, the HR person said. But my friend intervened and, after years of personal success, I agreed to take a job fetching people’s coffee.

There was a two-week period before I began my job when I was completely uncovered. I ended up hospitalized. By the time I was conscious, I had rung up a bill in excess of $10,000. That was almost half my expected full-year salary. I called my parents, in tears. I didn’t know what to do. They told me they would take care of it.

Nothing was more depressing than having to have given up everything for insurance, to take a job where everyone was younger than me, everyone was far less experienced than me. And I knew, if I lost my job, I would lose my insurance. And if I lost my insurance, I could die. So I worked – seven days a week, 12-18 hours a day. If nothing else, that helped me believe I would not be fired from my lousy job. But it also gave me the chance to write for various sections of the paper. I would do my copy boy job eight hours a day, then start reporting and writing. This went on for two years – no vacations, no break, terrified every day.

Then, I was offered a junior reporter’s job at the Times. One-year tryout. I worked almost every day. I rarely left the office. I knew the stakes. For me, this wasn’t about being a reporter. This was about keeping my insurance.

In my late 20's, I married. My wife is a doctor. At that point, I had greater freedom. Even if I lost my job, I could be on her insurance. Because of that freedom, I began to write books. If the Times got mad at me for it, it would be ok. But still, I could never shake the belief that I could never say no. I took every assignment. I did not take book leaves. We rarely vacationed.

I finally started to relax around 2008. I had never lost insurance for 12 years. Then, a miracle: the rules keeping people with preexisting conditions from being insured were ended under ACA. I listened to blowhards like Rush Limbaugh rage that people like me – and people with asthma and cancer and cystic fibrosis – were leeches, demanding charity. It amazed me how stupid he and his followers were, not understanding that, without private insurance, people like me would all be on government disability. We would have to stop working in order to survive. People were instilled with rage about a topic they didn’t even understand.

No matter. I knew I would never have to face that problem again. More important, I knew the millions and millions of others like me – young kids, middle aged, whatever – would never again be forced to make decisions about their lives giving up their dreams solely for the insurance. I would hear every day from my wife about people who came to her office in horrible medical shape, people who had gone without treatment or sought their medical care at emergency rooms. People who could only get care in the ER rang up giant medical bills, so expensive no one could pay them. And so the taxpayers picked up the cost. Now, those same people were getting care from my wife with insurance they purchased. Opponents raged about their taxes paying for the subsidies, so ignorant they had no idea their taxes had been paying for the far more expensive emergency room care before.

Last week, the House passed a bill that would push everyone with preexisting conditions back into the same situation. The representatives billowed and cooed that high-risk pools would protect us, fooling the same uneducated ones who didn’t know they paid for the uninsured. High risk pools had been tried before. They failed. But these members of congress probably didn’t even know that. They didn’t care enough to hold hearings to find out whether high-risk pools would work. They didn’t wait to find out how many people would lose their insurance. They had to rush it through. Then they cheered for themselves.

Meanwhile, those of us with preexisting conditions were plunged back into fear. Foundations for people with chronic diseases began receiving phone calls from panicked people. My wife and I reviewed our options if this bill became law. We are middle aged now, which presented new issues. She is four years older than me. She hits retirement age in five years. If she retired and was on Medicare, I would be clinging to a slender thread to keep my insurance. I could never write another book. It would be too dangerous. My wife said she would work until she was almost 70 to keep me safe. Guilt overwhelmed me. She was born in Britain, and we discussed her citizenship and, if necessary, we could move there if I lost my coverage. We would have to burn through our savings for a long time, but eventually I might be able to get onto national health insurance.

But I don’t want to leave America. I don’t want my wife to work until she’s almost 70. I don’t want to be guilty. And most important, I don’t want all the other people with preexisting conditions to be forced to make their life decisions based on where they can get group insurance. Or worse, to not be able to obtain group insurance, be denied private insurance and die.

I watched Fox News. They giggled and laughed that people were being hysterical about preexisting conditions. There were high-risk pools, they sneered, that states could participate in unless they didn’t want to. I watched the clip, over and over, of those self-congratulatory members of Congress, high-fiving and smiling, as I knew the situation at my house was playing out at millions of houses where talking points and rationalizations didn’t change the realities of what we would face. I commented about how terrible this was. And then I saw comments from people deriding those with preexisting conditions as wanting charity.

I thought of members of Congress who wanted prisons as brutal as possible, until they themselves were jailed; then, they became advocates for prison reform. I thought of the ones who screamed about gays until their child came out, then they became tolerant. I thought about the members of Congress who happily sent other people’s children off to fight in Vietnam, while getting their own kids deferments and spots in the National Guard or reserves, making sure they wouldn’t see battle. And then I thought of the child whose parents home I visited, who told me of their boy dying of suffocation in his mother’s arms as they rushed to the hospital. They hadn’t been able to afford his inhaler that week. They had no insurance. They planned to buy it the week that followed. Their son died two days after they decided to take the risk.

And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived.

More people’s children would die. And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived. People would be forced to take jobs they did not want or marry people they did not love. And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived. For millions, every day would be terrifying as they wondered if they would they run up bills that day that would bankrupt them or would they be unable to get treatment? Would they live through the week? And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived.

My anger exploded. I wanted them to feel the consequences of what they thought was so wonderful. Why should they be exempt from the damage they would inflict on others from their vote, votes they cast with so little concern about others that they didn’t hold hearings to find out what damage they might cause?

And so I tweeted, “As one with a preexisting condition, I hope every GOPr who voted for Trumpcare get a long-term condition, loses their insurance, and die.”

Harsh? You bet. I wanted the words to be blunt, to lay out the reality of what real people would face, people who didn’t have the ability of members of Congress to avoid the consequences they voted to inflict on real people.

Conservatives broke out the fainting couches. I was wishing Republicans to die, they moaned. I forgot we live in an era where fools will interpret it the way they are told. One of the propagandists at the Daily Caller, after emailing me for comment at 3:00 in the morning, posted a story proclaiming I wanted my political opponents to die. And the conservative trolls descended, screaming for my death.

I remain angry. I remember the tears of that woman whose son died in her arms. I remember my struggles. I remembered my fears. I remembered the fears of so many others I have spoken to over the years who struggled with preexisting conditions.

I deleted the tweet. Apparently, confronting people with the reality of what they have chosen is just too inappropriate. Voting to let people die is fine, rubbing the fact that they voted to do that is just wrong.

Do I regret what I said? No. I want those words to sink in. My tweet won’t kill anyone. But the vote from those members of Congress will.

And if they are not forced to confront what they are doing, they will just keep smiling and high-fiving.

This Monologue Goes Out To You, Mr. Trump

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

Under The Dome

In Brief: Pricks and the Wall

Posted by Rude One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Jimmy Dore Show is a hilarious and irreverent take on news, politics and culture featuring Jimmy Dore, a professional stand up comedian, author and podcaster.

With over 5 million downloads on iTunes, the show is also broadcast on KPFK stations throughout the country.

It is part of the Young Turks Network-- the largest online news show in the world.

Ted Cruz, You Fucking Hypocrite, Shut The Fuck Up!

By ESME CRIBB Published APRIL 26, 2017, 10:40 AM EDT

Sen. Tex Cruz (R-TX) on Wednesday claimed that Democrats are trying to provoke a government shutdown by refusing to pass a spending bill by midnight Friday to keep the lights on.

“I think Chuck Schumer and the Democrats want a shutdown, I think they’re trying to provoke a fight,” Cruz said on “Fox and Friends,” referring to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

He said Senate Democrats are “terrified” of “a radical left base.”

“Schumer’s just trying to put more and more unreasonable demands, trying to force a shutdown to appease those who want total resistance, total opposition, who don’t want the Trump administration to succeed,” Cruz claimed.

Says the guy who instigated a government shut down because Obama wouldn't defund The Affordable Care Act.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-claims-democrats-want-a-shutdown

HEY, TED CRUZ!

Trump Son In Law Jared Kushner Was Just Told To Lawyer Up Because He Committed A Crime

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) told Trump son in law Jared Kushner that he better hire a lawyer, because he committed a crime when he lied about having contacts with foreign governments on his security clearance form.

http://www.politicususa.com/2017/04/25/trump-son-law-jared-kushner-told-lawyer-committed-crime.html

Tuesday Toon Roundup

How government works now

Why Is Chaffetz Resigning? It Will All Come Out In The Laundering

Soon we hope to bid a gleeful farewell to Jason Chaffetz (R-Disgraced). To say that he’ll be leaving under a cloud would be to understate the case. He’s in trouble with both his religion and the Law which is quite an accomplishment for a mediocre House republican.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/4/21/1654905/-Why-Did-Chaffetz-Resign-It-Will-All-Come-Out-in-the-Laundering