Friday, November 30, 2018

They All Lied. They’re All Guilty.

TPM composite

Sometimes it’s worth stepping back and stating the obvious. Over the course of these thirty months of cover-ups, every player in the Trump/Russia story has lied about their role in the conspiracy. And not hedging and spinning fibs but straight up lies about the core nature of their involvement, their overt acts. Most – though here what we know is a bit more tentative – seem to have lied under oath, whether to congressional committees or a grand jury. Not a single one of them told a story that wasn’t eventually contradicted and disproved. Not a single one.


Who? Well, let’s see. Donald Trump, Jr., Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Donald Trump, Jerome Corsi, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Carter Page, Jared Kushner.

These are ones who lied, the ones we can state definitively. I’m not including the marginal players, folks like Dutch lawyer Alex van der Zwaan. I’m not including those who just never spoke at all – at least not in public.

We can now see documentation and confessions that outline some of what has always seemed probable. During the campaign – for roughly the first year of the campaign! – Donald Trump was actively trying to strike business deals in Russia with the help of Vladimir Putin’s government and working closely with members of the Russian intelligence services. Felix Sater was working with all these people. Trump’s deal-maker and Russian money channel handler, Michael Cohen, literally reached out to Putin’s press office and spoke to a member of the staff to enlist the Russian government’s assistance. This was while Trump was already the clear front runner for the nomination.

As this was happening, Putin’s intelligence services were stealing emails and documents from various arms of the Democratic party. They were mounting various information operations within the United States. As this was happening a bankrupt and desperate political fixer who’d been working for a Putin loyalist for a decade showed up wanting to work for the campaign for free. That’s Paul Manafort, a longtime business partner of Roger Stone, another member of the conspiracy.

Did they work with Wikileaks? Yes, there was a back channel between Trump and Wikileaks murkily conducted through Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi and likely others – requests for help in one direction, information and assistance in the other.

resident Trump has been at war with the Russia investigation from the get-go for an obvious and totally logical reason: the depth of his personal involvement in and knowledge of the conspiracy amounts to a devastating indictment of him and his residency. It all makes perfect sense.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Historian finds German decree banishing Trump's grandfather from Germany


Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith Is A Shit Human

Posted by Rude One

Look, I have no doubt that Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi believed she was joking when she praised a supporter by saying that "if he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row." (She had started her remarks with the bizarrely bloody compliment "I would fight a circle saw for him.") I have no doubt that she never thought twice about the history of lynching of black people in her state. I have no doubt that she saw nothing wrong with what she was saying, that it was one of those things that she's heard and perhaps repeated a few times. We have a lot of phrases and sayings that are based on appalling shit. You wanna know the history of "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo"? The word "gyp"?

Of course, Hyde-Smith, being Southern and white and a Republican, refused to acknowledge there was something fucked up with what she said, aside from the anodyne bullshit of "Sorry if I offended you." She could have quickly come out and made a statement like, "I understand that some of the things we say come from a time when we did terrible things to people. I apologize for saying it, and we all need to learn to do better." But, you know, she didn't. She couldn't. She dug in her heels and said that anyone who thought she was racist was a damn liar.

It was a signal to those Southern, white Republicans who will vote for her that she has their racist, Confederacy-humping backs. "You don't have to move beyond your barbaric prejudices, you dumb fucks," she's telling them. "Your bigotry and ignorance is safe with me."

And thus, their economic anxiety soothed, the white working class went about its business of telling everyone how the Civil War wasn't about slavery.

We have learned since that moment that Cindy Hyde-Smith is not only a racist piece of shit (even if we pretty much knew that prior to the lynching remark) but that she's a shit human all around. For instance, the rest of that little talk in Tupelo on November 2 is filled with stuff that shit humans say.

There's one Planned Parenthood in all of Mississippi, in Hattiesburg, and it doesn't do abortions, but Hyde-Smith still whined, "Planned Parenthood is one of the worst things that has ever happened to us." She praised "distant relative" Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois (now quite gratifyingly dead) for the budget amendment that prevents any federal funds from being used for abortion, except the way she described him: "Many of you may have heard of Sen. Henry Hyde from Oklahoma."

And she's totally willing to use a closer relative for a political prop: "My daughter, on her second birthday, got a lifetime membership to the NRA." Yes, that's what every toddler wants. Fuck Tickle-Me-Elmo with the barrel of a shotgun. Baby loves 2A, motherfuckers.

You throw in the other things we've learned about and heard about Hyde-Smith - like dressing up like a Confederate soldier while visiting Jefferson Davis's house and declaring it "Mississippi history at its best" or "joking" again that there are "liberal folks" at historically black colleges and universities "who maybe we don’t want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult" to the revelation that she attended an all-white school that was created to get around integration laws (the fucking school mascot was a Confederate officer and that fucking flag of the defeated traitors flew there) to the fact that she sent the aforementioned NRA member daughter there - and she's just fucking awful, with a fucked up, constantly degrading and violent sense of humor, like every heinous stereotype of the dumbass, racist, hateful Southerner wrapped into one cynical package of the polite Southern belle who sounds kind and moral but is secretly poisoning the sweet tea she serves to her husband so she can get the life insurance.

How cynical? As pointed out by a whole bunch of Republicans who wanted her to lose in the primary, she was a Democrat until 2010. Yeah, she won election twice as a Democrat in the state senate in a once-Democratic district. When she decided to run for statewide office, Commissioner of Agriculture, she switched to the GOP.  Republicans are so fucking terrible in Mississippi that they accused Hyde-Smith of voting for Hillary Clinton in 2008, a scarlet H that she denied.

But the worst Republican is often a born-again Republican, and Hyde-Smith has embraced the most virulent, hurtful side of the party. Wait...that's the whole party. Anyways, she has essentially become another one of Donald Trump's ass remoras, suctioned on to his corpulent buttocks and hanging on no matter how erratically he moves. Want us to vote against pre-existing condition coverage? Sure, suck, suck, suck. Want me to degrade women by voting for Brett Kavanaugh? You bet, suck, suck, suck. She's just devouring away on Trump's ass, downing dead skin scraps and parasites that she hopes will get her a few more votes.

Jesus fuckballs Christ, tonight's rally with Trump is gonna be a sight, with Hyde-Smith just stuck on Trump's pants as he bitches and preens and yells and does the rest of his tiresome shtick.

C'mon, Mississippi. You don't have to be this anymore. You can step into the goddamn light of the present with Mike Espy. You can follow Alabama, which, at least for one brief election, demonstrated that the past can fucking die. You don't have to vote for a shit human like Cindy Hyde-Smith. You can evolve.

(Note: Don't hold your breath.) 

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Hey, Democrats – Don’t Try To Play Nice With Republicans!

Now that Democrats will be the majority in the House of Representatives they have to remember one very important thing – Republicans will NEVER agree to any progressive ideals and compromise is no longer an option. The American public put Democrats back in the House for a reason, and if the Party forgets this, they can kiss 2020 goodbye. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.



https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/11/13/democrats-dont-compromise-trump

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Trump's Completely Batshit And Evil Statement About Saudi Arabia And The Murder Of Jamal Khashoggi

Posted by Rude One

(Note: There were about 20 other things I was thinking of writing about today, but when you're living in times of fast-paced dumbfuckery, sometimes the newest, shittiest object has to be discussed.)

The White House released a statement today that is the rhetorical equivalent of resident Donald Trump performing analingus on Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince (seriously, fuck that title) Mohammad bin Salman while bin Salman jacks off on Stephen Miller's bald head. Essentially, Trump is telling the world that Saudi Arabia and bin Salman have bought their way out of any culpability. And he's telling the intelligence agencies of the United States that they can go fuck themselves with their assessments.

It's an honestly stunning document, one that actually seems as if Trump was involved in writing because of its psychotic combination of ignorance, blindness, and apathy, like a bunch of his tweets strung together. Also, it reads like fucking moron dictated it to Stephen Miller, who added his special sauce of dickishness.

For one, it's got sentences that end in exclamation points. Who the fuck does that in an official release about anything, let alone a murder? The thing is titled (or epigraphed - who can tell?), no shit, "America First!" That's followed by the idiot bray of "The world is a very dangerous place!" Thanks for that update.

Trump starts by saying that Iran is the worst of the worst of the worstest worsts that every worsted worstness. It's a paragraph filled with easily proven lies, like "the Iranians have killed many Americans." No, they haven't. And then Trump goes on about how Saudi Arabia is a peace-loving nation that just wants to end the war in Yemen if only those mean Iranians would let it happen: "Saudi Arabia would gladly withdraw from Yemen if the Iranians would agree to leave." The Iranian military is not in Yemen. There is some support of the Houthi rebels. But when the Houthis wanted to calm shit down, Saudi Arabia responded by bombing the fuck out of them some more with U.S.-made weapons, which they are gonna need to buy more of from us.

Hey, did you know that Saudi Arabia has promised to spend shit-tons of money, according to Trump? Yeah, he repeats the lie that the Saudis are gonna "invest $450 billion in the United States" which "will create hundreds of thousands of jobs." What are we gonna do? Let China and Russia get all that filthy lucre? How can a motherfucker get a kickback if that happens?

Getting down on his knees and Chapstiking up his lips, Trump finally gets to the savage murder of American resident Jamal Khashoggi's murder at the Saudi embassy in Turkey. Trump shits all over Khashoggi, who, one might be reminded, can't defend himself since he's in multiple pieces somewhere. See, though, it's not Trump saying it. He's just quoting the Saudis, who are saying Khashoggi "was an 'enemy of the state' and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood" and, what else, a werewolf, that's right - a fuckin' werewolf. Can you blame anyone for killing a werewolf?

Once again, though, Trump goes to his usual postmodern take on truth (with another fucking exclamation point, the vape pen of punctuation): "It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!"

Who can ever know truth in a crime? What kind of magic would that involve? It's unpossible. Besides, Trump says, fuck you: "The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region." And if anyone, like, say, some dickhole members of Congress, wants to do something about it, well, "As President of the United States I intend to ensure that, in a very dangerous world, America is pursuing its national interests and vigorously contesting countries that wish to do us harm. Very simply it is called America First!" (Yes, one more exclamation point because goddamn imbeciles only understand you when you yell.)

There you go. The resident of the United States told a country of medieval barbarians that everything's cool as long as Donald gets paid. "America First!" means we are no longer going to even pretend to be a beacon for freedom and justice. We are fine with the extra-judiciary murders of legal residents as long as it's done by someone who Trump wants to curry favor with for whatever obscene project Don, Jr. or Jared are working on. American capitalism first, really.

The rule of law has always meant nothing to these awful people. It merely gets in the way of grotesque profit-mongering. These fuckers would sell the kidneys of their children if they thought it would net them a buck. The rest of us don't stand a chance. This is evil shit right here.

The pathetic hope I have now is that the IC is so fucking pissed off at this fucker that they finally go apeshit on him. "You wanna see the Deep State in action, motherfucker? Buckle up, buttercup!" 

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Ivanka Trump used a personal email account to send hundreds of emails about government business last year


Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails last year to White House aides, Cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many of them in violation of federal records rules, according to people familiar with a White House examination of her correspondence.

White House ethics officials learned of Trump’s repeated use of personal email when reviewing emails gathered last fall by five Cabinet agencies to respond to a public records lawsuit. That review revealed that throughout much of 2017, she often discussed or relayed official White House business using a private email account with a domain that she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner.

The discovery alarmed some advisers to resident Trump, who feared that his daughter’s prac­tices bore similarities to the personal email use of Hillary Clinton, an issue he made a focus of his 2016 campaign. He attacked his Democratic challenger as untrustworthy and dubbed her “Crooked Hillary” for using a personal email account as secretary of state.

Some aides were startled by the volume of Ivanka Trump’s personal emails — and taken aback by her response when questioned about the practice. She said she was not familiar with some details of the rules, according to people with knowledge of her reaction.

The White House referred requests for comment to Ivanka Trump’s attorney and ethics counsel, Abbe Lowell.

In a statement, Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Lowell, acknowledged that the resident’s daughter occasionally used her private email before she was briefed on the rules, but he said none of her messages contained classified information.

20 Brutally Hilarious Memes Mocking Trump’s Raking Solution


Monday, November 19, 2018

Trump Calls Adam Schiff ‘Schitt’ After Criticism Of Whitaker Appointment

Criticism Of Whitaker Appointment

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Group

resident Donald Trump on Sunday referred to Rep. Adam Schiff, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee “Adam Schitt” after Schiff criticized the appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general.

“Good one,” Schiff responded.
Speaking to Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “This Week” earlier Sunday, Schiff said he thought Whitaker’s appointment was “unconstitutional”: “He’s clearly a principal officer, and the fact that he is a temporary principal officer doesn’t mean that that is any less subject to Senate confirmation. Constitutionally, it has to be subject to confirmation.”
“There’s a succession statute for the Justice Department, which makes it different from other departments,” Schiff asserted.
The state of Maryland has argued that Whitaker’s appointment is unconstitutional. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel put out a memo defending the appointment. 

In Pathetic Op Ed, Mitch McConnell Begs For Bipartisanship After Years Of GOP Obstruction

Mitch McConnell – maybe even the entire Republican Party – appear to be completely immune to the concept of irony.

This week, McConnell penned an op-ed for Fox News where he begged the Democrats to work with Republicans in the spirit of bipartisanship.

This is coming from the man who once said that the goal of his Party after regaining power in 2010 was to make Obama a one-term President.

There is no honor in working with a liar and cheat like Mitch McConnell, as Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

Hillary Will Run Again!


Rep. Mia Love, trailing in her race, sues to stop vote count


By Felicia Sonmez | Washington Post

Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, is filing a lawsuit against the Salt Lake County Clerk in a bid to stop the counting of votes until her campaign is allowed to challenge whether signatures on ballot envelopes match those on file, a move that Love’s Democratic opponent said Wednesday “smacks of desperation.”

Love is trailing Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, D, by about 1,200 votes, or a little more than half a percentage point, in the race in Utah’s 4th Congressional District. That margin is narrower than the 6,700 votes by which McAdams was leading Nov. 8. Utah law allows candidates to request a recount when the margin of victory is 0.25 percentage point or less.

In the lawsuit, news of which was first reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, Love’s campaign argues that the Salt Lake County Clerk has allowed poll monitors to observe the ballot-counting process but has denied them the ability to challenge signatures on ballot envelopes.

Voting by mail is popular in Utah; in the state’s primary elections earlier this year, 90 percent of ballots were cast by mail.

The lawsuit states that Love and her campaign “do not anticipate a large number of challenges” but claims that poll monitors “have observed myriad instances where a county worker verified a signature on a ballot envelope that did not appear to match the signature on file with the County.”

The Salt Lake County Clerk’s office did not respond to a request for comment. County clerks have until Nov. 20 to finish counting ballots, and the state’s election results are set to be finalized on Nov. 26.

In a tweet Wednesday afternoon, McAdams denounced Love’s move, saying “Utah voters deserve better than this.” He took aim at the fact that Love’s lawsuit targets Salt Lake County, McAdams’ home base.

“It is the job of election officials to decide what votes count, not political candidates,” McAdams said. “Rep. Love’s decision to sue only in [Salt Lake County] as she continues to trail in this race is unfortunate and smacks of desperation.”

Robert Harrington, the attorney representing Love, said in a statement that the campaign is “not accusing anyone of anything” but submitted the petition with the goal of improving the election process.

“We have great respect for the critical and at times, complex, ballot counting process,” Harrington said. “As we’ve spent hours observing these efforts, we’ve found a few instances where increased transparency and scrutiny are needed.”

The race is one of a handful across the country that remain unresolved more than a week after Election Day. Others include Florida’s Senate and gubernatorial contests as well as the race for the Georgia governor’s mansion.

Monday, November 12, 2018

DISGRACEFUL!!! Donald Trump Is A NO SHOW At Event To Honor Fallen Marines!

Jesse Dollemore talks about Veterans Day and the United States Marine Corps birthday which coincided with Donald Trump's trip to France where he disrespected WWI Marines in a cowardly act!

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Watch Lindsey Graham Own Himself While Pandering To Trump

By KelleyKramer

This includes a nice little montage of Huckleberry being the most epic hypocrite.....

Senator Lindsey Graham said there would be “holy hell to pay” if Jeff Sessions was fired. Ari Melber breaks down how Graham has reversed so many of his positions on Trump that it has descended into a “hollowing out” of Republican leadership.



Fox News STUNS Lindsey Graham By Reminding Him He Defended Jeff Sessions

Lindsey Graham was left confused and startled after a recent appearance on Fox News where they reminded him that he had once said that firing Jeff Sessions would mark the beginning of the end of the Trump administration. 

Obviously he doesn’t feel this way anymore, but his stupid face when they showed him the clip apparently reminded him that everything online lives forever. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.


 

Friday, November 9, 2018

Spreadsheet fans! All of Matt Whitaker's tweets before he locked his account: Get em here!

blogslut (32,480 posts)

Spreadsheet fans! All of Matt Whitaker's tweets before he locked his account: Get em here!

THE DANDY WOHLHOLES
‏ @fiondavision

Members of the Press! Especially you, @Acosta & @CNNPR: since @MattWhitaker46 locked his account, here is a nice Google Spreadsheet of every tweet he has ever made! Please also share with the DOJ Ethics Department, and Members of the Judiciary Committees!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-k41kbn0agdzJ-O575Vofl0Xf6trLQIpwWRw4c4tqVY/edit?usp=drivesdk

H/T @RVAwonk

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Cornered and raging, Trump begins his coverup. Here’s how Democrats can respond.

Opinion writer
We don’t know whether Matthew Whitaker, Trump’s replacement for Jeff Sessions, will go through with these things. But here’s something we can conclude right now: Trump surely picked Whitaker, Sessions’s chief of staff, expressly to put him in the position of being able to do any and all of them.

Unlike Sessions, who recused himself from the probe, Whitaker will oversee it, whereas before, that had fallen to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. Whitaker can theoretically fire Mueller by invoking some rationale that fulfills the relevant regulations’ requirement for “cause,” or he can revoke those regulations. Or he can severely limit the scope of the investigation, or starve it of funds.

Ask yourself: What would this look like if Republicans had held the House? We would be concluding that Trump is taking steps to close down or limit the probe, or keep its findings covered up, in the full knowledge that congressional Republicans will let him get away with it. Which is why it’s a good thing that Democrats did capture the House.

At his news conference on Wednesday in the wake of the Democratic victory, Trump raged over the investigation. He said that if House Democrats investigate his administration — an activity known as congressional oversight —  that the White House can retaliate by investigating Democrats. Trump vowed a “warlike posture.” This lays the groundwork to dramatically resist whatever Democrats do in response to Trump’s moves against the Mueller probe.

So what can Democrats do in these scenarios, once they’re in the majority? Here’s a rundown:

House Democrats can investigate the firing of Sessions. The question of whether Trump fired Sessions or whether Sessions merely resigned is critical. If Trump fired Sessions, it might not be legit that Trump replaced him with an acting attorney general (Whitaker) who didn’t require Senate confirmation (which Trump may have wanted to do to insulate the replacement from questioning from senators about his intention toward the Mueller probe). Mueller could conceivably challenge the appointment in court if Whitaker does try to shut down or severely constrain the probe.

Though the White House claims Sessions resigned at Trump’s “request,” it seems obvious that Trump did fire him. The Post reports that Sessions thought staying would protect “the investigation’s integrity,” which would leave the country “better served,” as its findings will be “more credible to the American public.” So House Democrats can try to investigate the circumstances leading up to Sessions’s “resignation,” to determine whether Sessions did resist it and was fired.

“The rationale would be that they were investigating to determine whether Sessions was fired as part of a conspiracy to obstruct justice,” Josh Chafetz, a professor at Cornell Law School, told me. “This could entail requests for documents and witness testimony.”

Subpoena Sessions himself. House Democrats can try to question Sessions himself, both about the circumstances surrounding his firing and, more broadly, about the repeated private meetings in which Trump raged at him for failing to protect him from the investigation. Sessions would likely assert executive privilege regarding his conversations with Trump.

But Democrats have recourse. They can “haul Sessions in and make him refuse to answer questions live, on TV,” Chafetz told me. “Then, after some arguing back and forth, if Democrats decide that the assertion of privilege is improper, they can hold him in contempt.” Whether that would do much is anybody’s guess, but at least the spectacle of Sessions refusing to say whether Trump forced him out and why would be dramatized for the country.

Subpoena Mueller’s findings. Under the regulations governing the special counsel, he is to provide a “confidential” report explaining his conclusions to the person overseeing the probe — who would have been Rosenstein but now will be Whitaker. It is Whitaker who is then supposed to provide a report to the bipartisan leaders of the House and Senate judiciary committees, which gives him a great deal of discretion to decide how much to put in that report.

Whitaker could theoretically report little to nothing, in effect covering up what Mueller learned. “Democrats could subpoena Mueller’s findings,” Chafetz tells me. “But expect the White House to put up a fight in response to the subpoena.” Other legal experts think that if the White House defied such a subpoena, the courts would rule against them, meaning Congress would get Mueller’s findings.

As Chafetz has written elsewhere, one key thing Democrats must think hard about is how to use such proceedings to inform the public about what’s happening, both for political and substantive reasons.

Impeach the acting attorney general. This is a far-fetched scenario, but it’s not an impossibility. As it is, Whitaker has publicly opined that Mueller has gone too far in probing Trump’s finances and has openly suggested that one option is to de-fund the investigation. On these grounds, Democrats have called for his recusal.

Here an irony kicks in. A handful of House Republicans loyal to Trump tried to impeach Rosenstein earlier this year on grounds so specious that even many Republicans, including the leadership, rejected it. It’s hard to say what circumstances might justify such a move against Whitaker, if any, but if he shuts down the Mueller probe without good cause, that might be seen as extremely serious misconduct — far more serious than what Republicans alleged against Rosenstein.

Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western University, points out that there are other forms of misconduct Whitaker could commit. Whether or not his public opinions merit recusal, he should still solicit a Justice Department ethics opinion on whether he should oversee the probe. “Rosenstein did this, and some Republicans still called for his impeachment,” Adler notes. “If Whitaker fails to take the same prudent step, it would be inexcusable.”

It seems obvious that once Democrats take over the House, we are headed for a major escalation in hostilities. Trump is already testing to see what he can get away with, so it’s good that leading Democrats just responded with a letter calling on Republicans to hold emergency hearings on Trump’s move, arguing that the appointment of Whitaker is precipitating a “constitutional crisis.” 

Republicans will shrug, but this suggests Democrats recognize the gravity of the moment and are organizing to respond accordingly.