TomCat

Open Thread – 5/21/2017

Posted by TomCat at 12:56 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 212017

83° is forecast today, and the humidity is now 88%. The sun hit my window at 7:00, and by 8:00, the wall had heated up enough to make me turn on the AC for the day. Wendy will be here in about 30 minutes, so before I finish writing, I’ll be breaking from this until after lunch. Tomorrow, please expect no more than a Personal Update. I will be consulting with an Oncologist about annual exams to make sure my malignant choroidal melanoma, now in remission after radiation, did not metastasize to other parts of my body. I expect that he will set up thoracic and abdominal Cat Scans with contrast. That’s where they inject the dye and make me drink half a gallon of cat pee.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:55 (average 7:30). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (SNL Channel): Hallelujah Cold Open

Apologies to Canadians. Laugh. Then RESIST!!

From The New Yorker: In a notable shift of public opinion, a substantial majority of Americans now favor a travel ban on a person who has recently visited a Muslim country, a new poll shows.

According to the poll, if such a person travelled to a country in the Middle East, for example, he should be subjected to extreme vetting before he is allowed to return to the United States.

If, in the course of such vetting, the person is found to have recently engaged in activities to undermine or even destroy American democracy in collaboration with a foreign enemy, he should be barred forever from entering the U.S., poll respondents agreed.

Amen Andy! What a fabulous idea! RESIST!!

From The Washington Post: Democrats are heading into the homestretch of three special elections over the next month amid a national frenzy over the investigation into the possible connections of President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian interference in the election.

Yet in all three races, Democrats have made a tactical decision not to turn the contests into a referendum on Trump’s alleged scandals and instead are focusing on policy decisions by the president and congressional Republicans.

Democratic strategists privately say that this might be the recurring theme through the November 2018 midterm elections. Democrats say that they have learned a lesson from the 2016 elections, in which House Democratic candidates relentlessly focused their campaigns on trying to tie Republican incumbents to the personal scandals of Trump or some of his more outlandish policy statements.

Trump is just the worst symptom of the Republican disease. Therefore, I think this is a good strategy, with the caveat that demonstrating what Republicans are doing wrong is not enough. We must also present our own policy alternatives, and convince voters that those alternatives are the best ones possible. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

Bill Maher from May 19

Posted by TomCat at 1:54 pm Politics

May 202017

It’s that time of week again, and I’m happy to share three excellent video clips from Bill’s show last night. Enjoy!!

President Batshit At It Again

That’s right! LOL! Even Monica Lewinski wants to tell Batshit that he blew it in the Oval Office,

I Don’t Know if For a Fact

I don’t know it for a fact, but Bill’s Republican interview was to kind for me to embed it.

New Rule: Orange Sphincter to the Rescue

May all the idiots who believe in Orange Sphincter find themselves between him and a full Russian prostitute. You be a superhero. How?

RESIST!!

Open Thread – 5/20/2017

Posted by TomCat at 1:53 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 202017

I had another night with very little sleep. The humidity is extreme, and it will take time to get used to the noisy AC again. Tomorrow it will reach 85°, and on Monday, the day of my Oncologist appointment, 90°. The last time I was out of my building, I was bundled up with a heavy shirt, a sweater and my hoodie. I also have a Prosthetist appointment on Thursday, so I’ll be a bit scarce next week.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:02 (average 4:39). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Robert Mueller, the former F.B.I. director named to investigate the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, will have broad discretion to prosecute any crimes he uncovers. But an equally important part of his mandate is lesser known: his duty to write a report on his findings.

In this respect, Mueller, as a special counsel designated by the Justice Department, differs from other federal prosecutors. Most U.S. Attorneys operate by a rule of put up or shut up—that is, they either bring criminal prosecutions or say nothing at all.

Click through for much more. That’s one report I can’t wait to read! RESIST!!

From NY Times: President Trump told Russian officials in the Oval Office this month that firing the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, had relieved “great pressure” on him, according to a document summarizing the meeting.

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

Mr. Trump added, “I’m not under investigation.”

He bragged about it to his owners. How little the fool knew. He’s under far more investigation now than before. RESIST!!

From The Rachel Maddow Show: How might Donald Trump try to end the special investigation?

Rachel Maddow looks at some ways by which Donald Trump could try to get in the way of the Trump-Russia special investigation or eliminate it entirely.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all. Stay tuned. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

Can science survive in the US?

18 New Russian Contacts

Posted by TomCat at 11:48 am Politics

May 192017

Back in the old days, Pence put on his very best pseudo-Christian disguise and lied with pretended piety that there had been absolutely no contacts between the Trump Campaign and Russian operatives. It’s not so easy for him to tell that lie today, because example after example of both Russian contacts and Pence’s lies about them have surfaced. Jonathan Landay just reported eighteen new ones.

The previously undisclosed interactions form part of the record now being reviewed by FBI and congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election and contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Six of the previously undisclosed contacts described to Reuters were phone calls between Sergei Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, and Trump advisers, including Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, three current and former officials said.

Conversations between Flynn and Kislyak accelerated after the Nov. 8 vote as the two discussed establishing a back channel for communication between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that could bypass the U.S. national security bureaucracy, which both sides considered hostile to improved relations, four current U.S. officials said…

From <Reuters>
Photo credit: politico

Rachel Maddow covered the story in two segments.In the first she sets up the background, as only she can, and expands on Pence’s lies.

In the second, she discusses the Russian contacts with Jonathan Landay.

One thing is clear. As the noose around the Trump Residency (He NEVER was or will be President) tightens, replacing him with coconspirators like pseudo-Christian Pence or Lyin’ Ryan is moving America out of the frying pan and into the fire.

RESIST!!

Vivian Birdwell Has Another Big Mouth! ;-)

Posted by TomCat at 11:48 am Blog News, Politics

May 192017

89-VivianB

This is Vivian’s third award. She earned her first on 4/23/2015 for the 63,000th comment, and her second was last month for the 88,000th comment. Vivian is a denizen of Care2. A resident of Oklahoma, she must face horrible frustration politically, but she has great humor in spite of it. She has a huge heart. She supports Native American rights, the environment, animal causes, peace, LBGT marriage rights, prison reform, and much more. She describes herself as a “hillbilly hippie”. She’s also a hard charger in our fantasy football league. She an almost daily regular, and this site is still far better due to her presence here. After two in a row, is she trying to take over the Big Mouth department?

Please join me in showering her with kudos and hugs. She’s still a keeper.

Open Thread – 5/19/2017

Posted by TomCat at 11:47 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

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:

Open Thread – 5/18/2017

Posted by TomCat at 12:16 pm Personal, Politics

May 182017

The Comcast tech was on time, and I’m most pleased with the job he did here. He worked for almost two hours setting up a network that is rated at 200 Mbps, but is actually performing at 298 Mbps, over three times the speed of the old modem. He configured my computer, laptop, printer, phone, Kindle Fire, and Roku devices, and he tested them all. He cancelled the $40.00 I had been charged for the setup because of my disabilities. And for the time I had the old modem, he gave me 3 months of HBO. I was surprised to receive such excellent service. After I broke for lunch, Neighborhood House arrived. I wish I had had the time to do research, considering all the scandalous news that Trump and the Republican Rectum Reich have caused lately.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:27 (average 5:20). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: While Washington insiders and most of the American press are falling over themselves and each other trying to keep up with the latest Trump scandals (for the love of God, it’s only Tuesday), you might wonder how the nation’s worst major news network is handling the news that Donald Trump accidentally or on purpose leaked information to Russian diplomats that is considered so sensitive that no United States newspapers are willing to detail exactly what it is.

You needn’t wonder—because at newly Ailes-less, O’Reilly-free Fox News, it’s been business as usual.

While CNN and MSNBC provided wall to wall coverage of the breaking news, Fox News defended Trump before returning to coverage of such hard hitting stories as the “Romper for men,” Miss USA’s comments about healthcare, Michelle Obama’s comments about school lunches, “Media Hysteria,” and “leftists” on college campuses

What else would you expect from the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise? RESIST!!

From Washington Post: A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy. [emphasis added]

Read the transcript here. Lyin’ Ryan and the Republican leadership knew about these crimes all along and instituted a cover-up! RESIST!!

From NY Times: The Justice Department appointed Robert S. Mueller III, a former F.B.I. director, as special counsel on Wednesday to oversee the investigation into ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials, dramatically raising the legal and political stakes in an affair that has threatened to engulf Mr. Trump’s four-month-old presidency.

The decision by the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, came after a cascade of damaging developments for Mr. Trump in recent days, including his abrupt dismissal of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, and the subsequent disclosure that Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey to drop the investigation of his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.

Mr. Rosenstein had been under escalating pressure from Democrats, and even some Republicans, to appoint a special counsel after he wrote a memo that the White House initially cited as the rationale for Mr. Comey’s dismissal.

By appointing Mr. Mueller, a former federal prosecutor with an unblemished reputation, Mr. Rosenstein could alleviate uncertainty about the government’s ability to investigate the questions surrounding the Trump campaign and the Russians.

Frankly, I’m quite surprised that Rosenstein has done this. It was the only way to begin to repair his own credibility, after the ridiculous memo he signed on the reasons for firing Comey, since Trump threw him under the bus by bragging about the real reason. Remember, since a sitting President may not be charged with a crime, Muller’s only remedy is to refer his evidence to the House for possible impeachment. Will they impeach? Also, the investigation will take months. If Republicans have decided not to save Trump, they will use the time strip the cupboard bare and create huge deficits providing welfare for billionaires. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

0518Cartoon

More Obstruction of Justice

Posted by TomCat at 2:16 pm Politics

May 172017

I had no doubt that Putin’s Puppet, Fuhrer Donald Trump, was obstructing justice, when he fired Sally Yates to stop her investigation into his treason. It became even more clear when he fired James Comey for the same reason. When admitted that it was because of "the Russia thing", he removed all doubt. Nut now, it is so obvious that even some Republicans are taking notice.

President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The documentation of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia. Late Tuesday, Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanded that the F.B.I. turn over all “memoranda, notes, summaries and recordings” of discussions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey.

Such documents, Mr. Chaffetz wrote, would “raise questions as to whether the president attempted to influence or impede” the F.B.I.\

Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. It was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter… [emphasis added]

From <NY Times>

Here is Rachel Maddow interviewing Mike Schmidt the reporter who broke the story in the above article.

If Republicans don’t take action, and I still seriously doubt that they will, their failure to do so, given the existence of clear documentation, may just be the final gasp of the Republican Party. If they Dump Trump now, it will put the kibosh on the Republican tax agenda. They are way too greedy to risk that.

RESIST!!

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