May 192017
 

I had almost no sleep last night.  The building overheated yesterday, and I had to turn on the AC.  The noise bothered me.  In addition, Stumpy had a severe bout of phantom nerve pain, so please accept my apology in advance for typos and brain farts.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:42 (average 5:13).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: House Speaker Paul Ryan has set a Google News alert to notify him of the instant that Donald Trump becomes unpopular enough to turn against, Ryan revealed on Thursday.

The news alert, which Ryan said was set to the phrase “Trump approval rating falls below fifty per cent among Republican voters,” will inform the House Speaker of the precise moment “that I can bail on President Trump at no political cost to me,” Ryan explained.

“There’s this sense out there in the media that Washington is consumed by drama and nothing is getting done,” Ryan told reporters. “I think it’s important for people to know that important things are, in fact, getting done, and setting this Google News alert is one of those things.”

Asked by a reporter when he anticipated turning on Trump, Ryan dismissed that as a hypothetical question, adding, “There is no timetable for my inevitable betrayal of him. Once I receive that Google News alert, it will most likely happen a split second after that.”

Dang Andy! That sounds like you know Lyin’ Ryan personally! RESIST!!

From NY Times: President Trump called the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, weeks after he took office and asked him when federal authorities were going to put out word that Mr. Trump was not personally under investigation, according to two people briefed on the call.

Mr. Comey told the president that if he wanted to know details about the bureau’s investigations, he should not contact him directly but instead follow the proper procedures and have the White House counsel send any inquiries to the Justice Department, according to those people.

After explaining to Mr. Trump how communications with the F.B.I. should work, Mr. Comey believed he had effectively drawn the line after a series of encounters he had with the president and other White House officials that he felt jeopardized the F.B.I.’s independence. At the time, Mr. Comey was overseeing the investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

Those interactions included a dinner in which associates of Mr. Comey say Mr. Trump asked him to pledge his loyalty and a meeting in the Oval Office at which Mr. Trump told him he hoped Mr. Comey would shut down an investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. Mr. Trump has denied making the request.

The day after the Flynn conversation, Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, asked Mr. Comey to help push back on reports in the news media that Mr. Trump’s associates had been in contact with Russian intelligence officials during the campaign.

More kudos to Mike Schmidt!  Drip… Drip… Drip… RESIST!!

From CNN: There are people in Washington who would be happy to see Joe Lieberman return to public life. They just don’t happen to be members of the party that once nominated him for the second highest office in the land.

That’s what happens when you commit partisan treason.Lieberman, a longtime Democratic senator, became a pariah in his own party in 2008 when he not only endorsed the presidential bid of his GOP buddy, John McCain, but lambasted his own party’s nominee, Barack Obama, during a speech at the Republican Convention.

Now, it’s Republicans, rather than Democrats, who are welcoming the news that President Donald Trump might nominate Lieberman to head the FBI. And it is Republican senators, and possibly a smattering of Democrats, who would most likely vote to confirm him.

OMFG!! LIEberscum?!!? AAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! RESIST!!

Cartoon:

0519Cartoon

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  8 Responses to “Open Thread – 5/19/2017”

  1. 4:20  Please don't fricassée Wishbone!

    From Daily Kos Election Digest: "• AL-Sen: On Wednesday, candidate filing closed in Alabama for this year's special election for the final three years of Jeff Sessions' Senate term, and Al.com has a list of candidates here. Both parties will hold their primaries on Aug. 15, and in contests where no one takes a majority of the vote, there will be a runoff Sept. 26. The general election will be held Dec. 12, and the winner will be up for re-election in 2020."  One Senator would make a real difference at this point.  Not that it would be easy, but might be worth it, and even well worth trying and failing.

    TNY – Is Ryan competent to set up a Google alert?  Ah, well, he might be – another reason to get him OUT of the line of succession!

    NYT – And there you have it.  "Chain of command," "proper procedures," "drawing the line" are just meaningless words to the Pumpkin Pinochet.  "The Art of the Deal" means circumventing every legitimate restraint on the misuse of power.  Always.

    CNN – Well.  See what I said above about Alabama.  Of course that could not be accomplished in time for this vote, but my opinion stands.

    Cartoon – Good prediction.

  2. New Yorker: Ryan is just the quietest of the scum, at this moment.  

    NYT: Which hunt?  "Comey,? I never heard of the man, from which fake phone book did you drag a name like that?"

    CNN: Just the fact (if it's not alternate) that Rumpy is thinking of him is enough to disqualify him, no other grounds needed!

    Cartoon: As i've said elsewhere, this POS makes me wish that the idea of a Hell were not just an ancient myth!

  3. NYer: Ewwww…he's a loathsome man!

    NYT: Who ever heard of that, demanding 'loyalty', wth? Comey was just doing his job. Maybe dt should be the one to hide in the curtains of the Oval Office.

    CNN: u.g.h.!!!!

    Cartoon: POS!

    You did very well today, considering you're running on almost no sleep. Hope that you get a chance to rest/relax this evening. Take care, and Thanks, Tom.

  4. Puzzle — 3:30  No Wishbone fricassée tonight!

    The New Yorker — "… when he anticipated turning on Trump, Ryan dismissed that as a hypothetical question …" — It is so "hypothetical" that it is planned!  Lyin' Ryan is a lying little weasel!  My apologies to the Fraternal Order of Weasels to putting  Ryan in your numbers.

    NY Times — Reading through, I could just feel the disgusting slime that is Drumpf.  Makes my skin crawl.  Protocols are in place for a reason and those reasons need to be respected.  If roles were reversed, you can bet that Drumpf would be calling out Clinton on such actions.  This primordial ooze needs to be impeached and quickly.

    CNN — From NY Magazine

    "But the even bigger problem for Democrats — and really, for anyone who’s not in the tank for Donald J. Trump — is the abundant evidence that Lieberman is temperamentally unsuited for a position that requires tough-minded independence from the man who appointed him."

    There you have it — a Trump 'yes' man.  To boot, he's 75 freaking years old, too old in my opinion.

    Cartoon — RIH  (Rest in Hell!)

     

    Resist and Persist!!!

  5. There seems to be no end to your ordeal, TomCat. I hope the phantom pain has diminished by now and allows you to catch up with some of the sleep you lost.

    TNY: I got an Error 405, Not Allowed, on Andy's page so I'm glad you put most of it in a short take, TomCat. Of course Andy is wise to all those Republicans who hitched a ride on Drumpf's popularity to get as much as possible done from their own agenda before bailing out on Drumpf when the time is ripe and blaming him for everything that went wrong and taking the credit for everything that is to their master's and their own advantage. But if Ryan think's he can escape the investigations into the Russian Thing and his role in it, he has another one coming.

    NYT: Although much of what is reported here doesn't come directly from Comey himself, but from a confidential of his, Benjamin Whittes, it seems very much to be in line with what is already known about the troubles Drumpf took to get Comey into his sphere of influence. Let's hope this will be substantiated by Comey's hearing on Memorial day.
    The article also gives some insight into how Comey viewed the trustworthiness of Rosenthal:

    [Comey] said, ‘I don’t know. I have some concerns. He’s good, he’s solid but he’s also a survivor and you don’t survive that long without making some compromises and I’m concerned about that.’Weeks after his confirmation, Mr. Rosenstein wrote a memo that Mr. Trump initially cited as the justification for firing Mr. Comey. Mr. Rosenstein told members of the Senate on Thursday that Mr. Trump had already decided to fire him when he wrote it.

    It seems clear from this statement and the way things have gone down, everything Rosenthal does needs to remain closely scrutinized

    CNN: Seems that Joe Lieberman has damaged his own political career so badly that he is now willing to sel his soul to Drumpf and the GOP to be able to return to the limelight one more time in his dotage. A man like Lieberman will be only to happy to become friends with the Resident and sell out the FBI to comply with Drumpf's wishes. If Lieberman accepts, it will be clear that he has sunk so low in the bog that he can no longer see that Drumpf is about to go down and will take him with him as soon as their "friendship" becomes too apparent. Perhaps at his age he no longer cares.

  6. Thanks all!  Hugs!

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