TomCat

Two Turds in the Bowl!

 Posted by at 12:32 pm  Politics, Religion
Jul 162018
 

This article is based on research I did early this morning.  Subsequent events are as extreme as they are horrid, but except for a brief segment at the end, I will let that pass for now and cover them in depth tomorrow, after I have time to research them.  So please understand this article covers only what happened right after the two turds were dropped into the bowl.

0716TrumpPutinTurds

President Donald Trump met and shook hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday to kick off their long-anticipated meeting in Finland, but made no mention of thorny issues like election meddling, Syria or Crimea in his opening remarks.

The two leaders began the summit by walking quietly into a room in the Presidential Palace in Helsinki. Against the backdrop of six U.S. and Russian flags, Putin broke the silence with brief remarks.

But when Trump spoke, he didn’t address some of the issues vexing politicians back home, in Europe and the Middle East, such as the federal indictments last week of Russian military intelligence officers, Russia’s defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or the annexation of Crimea.

Instead, he started his remarks by congratulating his counterpart on hosting the World Cup… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <ABC News>

Here’s a clip of their opening remarks from BBC.

Even then, their body language made it clear that Putin was in control.

It went from bad to worse.

The joint press conference with Donald Trump and Vladmir Putin after their one-on-one meeting, a meeting in which Donald Trump insisted there be no note-takers to record their conversation, has been nothing short of a disaster for America and democracy. Before the pair even got started, a reporter was forcibly hauled out by security. Trump and Putin eventually took their respective podiums to begin taking questions and Donald Trump’s responses were shocking, chilling, unpatriotic and downright dangerous. Former CIA Director John Brennan called the performance “nothing short of treasonous.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

Until tomorrow, stay tuned please.

RESIST!!

VOTE BLUE!!

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Open Thread – 7/16 2018

 Posted by at 12:30 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 162018
 

The heat wave continues here in Portland with an excessive heat warning still in place.  Here in the CatBox, my AC is barely holding its own.  I am exerting myself as little as possible, but listening to the Fuhrer commit treason makes it hard for me to keep from screaming.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:01 (average 4:42).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (NY Times Channel): President Trump: Don’t Be Putin’s Puppet

Amen! But Trump has been Putin’s Puppet at least since inauguration day, if not before. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From BBC: The US has rejected pleas from the EU to grant exemptions to European firms from the sanctions on Iran that will start to be reinstated next month.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wrote in a letter that they wanted to exert “unprecedented” pressure on Tehran.

Waivers will only be given on national security or humanitarian grounds.

President Donald Trump ordered that the sanctions be re-imposed in May after abandoning a nuclear deal with Iran.

The UK, France and Germany – which were also parties to the 2015 accord, along with Russia and China – pledged to continue abiding by their commitments.

How absurd! The Republican Reich is punishing Europeans for abiding by an international agreement that Republicans violated. I bet Russia gets exemptions! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From Think Progress: President Donald Trump met with Finnish president Sauli Niinistö Monday, ahead of his scheduled summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

According to reporters, Trump thanked the Finnish president for his support and said the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) has never been stronger.

“I enjoyed being with you a couple of days ago. NATO has, I think, never been stronger. It was a little bit tough at the beginning, but it turned out to be love. I appreciated your support,” Trump said in his opening remarks.

Finland, however, is not in NATO.

Unfortunately for Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten and the Republican Reich, the world is watching his perfect example of Republican competence. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

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For Helping the Reich

 Posted by at 11:59 am  Politics
Jul 152018
 

A group of Misrepresentatives in Congress call themselves the House Freedom Caucus.  With members like Louie "Go-Go Goosestep" Gohmert [R-TX], they should be called the House Oppression Caucus.  These fascists are moving to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as revenge for indicting a group of loyal Republicans, working to elect their Fuhrer, Donald Trump.

0715HouseBaggers
Trump’s Republican allies in the House of Representatives are preparing to oust Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and could file paperwork to impeach him as soon as Monday, Politico reports.

Although Republicans have wanted to get rid of Rosenstein for weeks, they appear to be seriously ramping up their efforts in preparation for an imminent move.

The news comes just as Rosenstein announced the Department of Justice is charging 12 Russian intelligence operatives for conspiring to interfere in the 2016 elections.

According to Politico, “House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, in fact, had the impeachment document on the floor of the House at the very moment that Rosenstein spoke to reporters and TV cameras Friday.”…

Inserted from <Share Blue>

I expect that the Republican Reich will grant the twelve indicted GRU officers formal membership in the Freedom Caucus for helping the Reich.

RESIST!!

VOTE BLUE!!

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Open Thread – 7/15/2018

 Posted by at 11:57 am  Open Thread, Plus, Politics
Jul 152018
 

It’s the hottest day of the week with forecast high in the low 100°s.  UGH!!  I’ll stink soon after my shower.  WWWendy is coming this morning.  I expect her in 30 minutes.  The plan is to exert myself as little as possible.

Wendy just left.  Most of my shower was cold water by choice.  The AC is barely holding it’s own.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Todays took me 3:48 (average 4:59).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Robert Reich Channel): Robert Reich: The Fog of Trump

 

The Reich on the left, Robert Reich, is partially right. Trump’s antics distract from what the Reich on the Right, The Republican Reich, are doing to damage our nation. They have been trying to do all the awful things Robert listed for years, before they put Trump on the pedestal. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From LA Times: California Democratic Party leaders took a step to the left Saturday night, endorsing liberal state lawmaker Kevin de León for Senate in a stinging rebuke of Democratic icon Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

De León’s victory reflected the increasing strength of the state party’s liberal activist core, which was energized by the election of Republican President Trump.

The endorsement was an embarrassment for Feinstein, who is running for a fifth full term, and indicates that Democratic activists in California have soured on her reputation for pragmatism and deference to bipartisanship as Trump and a Republican-led Congress are attacking Democratic priorities on immigration, healthcare and environmental protections.

De León, a former state Senate leader from Los Angeles, received 65% of the vote of about 330 members of the state party’s executive board — more than the 60% needed to secure the endorsement. Feinstein, who pleaded with party leaders meeting in Oakland this weekend not to endorse any candidate, received 7%, and 28% voted for “no endorsement.”

Kudos to CDP! I add my endorsement of DeLeon! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From Alternet: It’s all right there in the indictment — day by day, hack by hack, theft by theft — how agents of the Russian intelligence service, the GRU, set out in the spring of 2016 to steal the election for Donald Trump. When you track the actions taken by Russian intelligence in the indictment with statements made by Trump and actions taken on his behalf by members of his campaign, the picture is as clear as an iPhone photo. Agents of the Russian government coordinated with members of the Trump campaign and took cues from Trump himself in order to influence the election of 2016.

In announcing the indictment, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may have refused to point to a victim of the Russians’ crimes other than to say it was America itself, but the intent of the Russians was clear. They took active measures over a period of at least nine months to aid the campaign of Donald Trump and to damage the campaign of Hillary Clinton. They stole the election for Donald Trump, and he helped them do it.

The author concludes that the evidence in the indictment renders the Trump Presidency illegitimate. I fully agree. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

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Personal Update – 7/14/2018

 Posted by at 12:14 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 142018
 

Friday the 13th was a day late.  This morning, I was trying to hard boil some eggs in the microwave, something I have done without incident in two previous ovens over fifteen years.  This oven seems to be much hotter .  One minute thirty seconds before the cycle was done, all six eggs exploded simultaneously, blowing the oven door open, and spewing hard boiled egg pieces, tiny shell fragment, and boiling water all over the table and floor.  Cleaning up the mess from my power chair took the entire morning, leaving no time at all for research.  Therefore, this is my only article today.  RESIST!!  VOTE BLUE!!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:01 (average 4:51).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon:

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The Piñata Hit Back!

 Posted by at 1:06 pm  Politics
Jul 132018
 

Yesterday Conspiracy Theorist Trey Gowdy [R-SC] and his Republican mob of Benghazi bullshitters in the House of planned a massacre of Peter Strzok, former Chief of Counterespionage at the FBI.  They expected an easy time.  They would bust him up like a piñata to discredit the Mueller investigation and protect their Fuhrer, Putin’s Pervert, from his criminal conspiracy to steal the 2016 Presidential election with Russian help.  The piñata hit back.  Not only did Peter Strzok hold his own, he also left Gowdy and his lackeys looking like the fools they are.

0713PeterStrzok

TEMPERS BOILED over on Capitol Hill Thursday as Peter Strzok, the FBI official at the center of President Trump’s attempts to discredit special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, testified before a joint meeting of two House oversight committees. With all its yelling and interruptions, the hearing was a fitting coda to the hyperpartisan farce of an investigation that House Republicans have conducted into the FBI and Mr. Mueller’s Russia probe.

Republicans spent hours parsing text messages and waving documents in the air. But all of it, just like most of the broader House investigation, was a distraction from this central point about the conspiracy narratives the president and his defenders have been cooking up about the FBI: If the agency had been trying to harm Mr. Trump’s campaign, agents could have released damaging information on pro-Trump Russian interference before Election Day — and they did not.

The investigators certainly had a lot they could have spilled. “In the summer of 2016, I was one of a handful of people who knew the details of Russian election interference and its possible connections with members of the Trump campaign,” Mr. Strzok said. “This information had the potential to derail, and quite possibly, defeat Mr. Trump. But the thought of exposing that information never crossed my mind.”

Whether you believe Mr. Strzok’s account of what he was thinking, the fact is that the FBI said little about Russian meddling before Election Day 2016. There simply was no effectuated plot to harm Mr. Trump’s electoral chances.

For his part, Mr. Strzok could not argue his way out of responsibility for his now-famous 2015 and 2016 text messages expressing strong anti-Trump views, as well as criticisms of other 2016 presidential candidates. Yet the messages are not proof of anything other than Mr. Strzok’s personal feelings — and, in committing them to writing on company equipment, his poor judgment. Republican arguments presumed that Mr. Strzok’s opinions were tantamount to corrupt behavior. As Lawfare’s Susan Hennessey, a former National Security Agency lawyer, put it, “What is actually on display here is House GOP members demonstrating that they cannot even conceive of the possibility someone could place duty and institutional integrity over base political and personal interests.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Washington Post>

The story would not be complete without the extremely thorough coverage Rachel Maddow provided.  It’s almost 19 minutes long and worth every second.

Could Gowdy and his vile minions have looked more absurd?

RESIST!!

VOTE BLUE!!

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Open Thread – 7/13/2018

 Posted by at 1:05 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 132018
 

Here at the CatBox the heat wave continues.  It’s so bad I smell like Saturday night on late Thursday morning.  TGIF, and I get to cross your path today.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:40 (average 4:07).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Was John Kelly Really Just Hangry [sic] At NATO Breakfast?

 

Dang! Who stole Kelly’s breakfast? Or could it be that Upchuckabee-Sanders was, as usual, lying? RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From YouTube (Robert Reich Channel): Robert Reich: 7 Truths About Immigration

 

The Reich on the left, Robert Reich, is right. The Right on the Right, the Republican Reich, is full of racist Trump crap! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From The New Yorker: Queen Elizabeth II has cancelled a scheduled Friday meeting with Donald J. Trump after complaining of a “flare-up of bone spurs,” Buckingham Palace has confirmed.

The announcement took many royal watchers by surprise, because in her sixty-six-year reign the Queen had never before complained of bone spurs.

But, according to the Queen’s spokesman, Peter Rhys-Willington, Elizabeth had intentionally kept her chronic bone-spur condition a closely guarded secret until now.

Oh Andy! The poor Queen! I suggest that she flush one Trump and get lots of bed rest. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

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