Deep State or Deep Doo Doo?

 Posted by at 11:58 am  Politics
Jan 122019
 

To me, it has been obvious for a long time that Resident Donald Trump, aka Putin’s Puppet, sold out to Russia in return for Russia installing him in the White House.  I kept asking myself why it wasn’t being investigated.  Unbeknownst to me, it was.  Shortly after the Comey firing the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Trump, as they suspected that he had been working for Russia, against American interests.

0112TrumpRussia

In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.

Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. But the president’s activities before and after Mr. Comey’s firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <New York Times>

Please click through to read this article in it’s entirety.  It contains considerable detail.

When this came out, the Tangerine Traitor came unglued.

TrumpPuppetPresident Trump on Saturday morning called his firing of former FBI Director James Comey “a great day for America.”

The comment came in a tweetstorm voicing outrage over a recent New York Times report saying days after the May 2017 firing, the FBI opened an inquiry into whether Trump was “secretly working on behalf of Russia.”

“Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey, a total sleaze!” the president tweeted [sphincter delinked].

Inserted from <NY Post>

In short, Trump and the the Republican Reich say this is fake news from what they call the "deep state".  This could not be further from the truth.

Filling in for Lawrence O’Donnell, Ali Velshi analyzed some of the implications with David Corn, Glenn Kirschner and Frank Montoya.

 

I disagree with one point. Russia is not the chief threat to American democratic values. The Republican Reich is.

Now we know that when Mueller went to work, he already had ample evidence of treason dropped in his lap. 

If this story had come out as fiction five years ago, most of us would have dismissed it as too fantastic to consider.

This is not Deep State.  Trump is in Deep Doo Doo.

RESIST!!

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Open Thread – 1/12/2019

 Posted by at 11:57 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 122019
 

Yesterday my technician stood me up.  I rushed through my blogging and prepared the area.  I waited for him for four hours, before I gave up.  I feel pretty angry at him, but I’d like to hope that he had an emergency so extreme that he could not even call.  I’ll listen to his explanation, before I put him on my do not use list.  Today is a High Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  It’s Division Playoffs Weekend.  My Broncos are not playing, because they stink.  If your team is still going, may the Orb bless them with its holy light.  Tomorrow is a WWWendy day.  After destinking a rancid TomCat, we have a ton of tasks.  Please expect no more than a Personal Update or an Open Thread, and I will not be sending links messages on Care2.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:07 (average 5:38).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (NSNBC Channel): Senator Chris Van Hollen: Mitch McConnell Has Been ‘AWOL’ In Shutdown

 

Bought Bitch Mitch [R-KY] is a total coward. RESIST!!

From YouTube (Media Matters Channel): Fox News on a Democrat swearing vs Fox News on a Republican embracing white supremacy

Barf Bag Alert!!

 

Well, you didn’t expect integrity from the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, did you? RESIST!!

From Alternet: Evangelical activists demand LGBTQ protections be removed from anti-lynching bill.

Incredibly, the United States has no law that makes lynching a federal crime. Now, decades after the Civil Rights Movement, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to correct this. The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act would give federal prosecutors the power to charge people for bias-motivated mob killings. It passed the Senate unanimously and by anyone’s reckoning should be a slam dunk.

But according to PinkNews, the fundamentalist legal group Liberty Counsel is now lobbying the House to change the bill. Why? Because lynchings of LGBTQ persons are included as crimes — and that just might be a slippery slope to federal laws that would protect all LGBTQ civil rights.

“The old saying is once that camel gets the nose in the tent, you can’t stop them from coming the rest of the way in,” said Mat Staver, the group’s president. “And this would be the first time that you would have in federal law mentioning gender identity and sexual orientation, as part of this anti-lynching bill.”

Liberty Counsel has previously compared homosexuality to pedophilia, attacked bans on abusive “conversion therapy,” and defended the infamous former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis as she defied the Supreme Court’s orders to allow same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists it as a hate group.

This is the 4th in the author’s list of the week’s 5 worst Republican outrages. Click through for the rest. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

If they could, Republicans would repeal it.

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Open Thread – 1/11/2019

 Posted by at 10:03 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 112019
 

It’s another busy day here in the CatBox.  I have a computer technician coming to resolve some connection and network issues.  Therefore this is today’s only article.  TGIF!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:14 (average 4:13).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Trump A.G. Pick Advocated Pardons By George H.W. Bush; Bashed Mueller Probe (17:28)

 

The Republican Reich has a long history of using sleazy tactics to evade responsibility for their crimes. There they go again! RESIST!!

From YouTube (Media Matters Channel): Protesters speak out on the shutdown and why media should talk about its human impact

 

Furlough all the Secret Service agents that protect high ranking Republicans. That would end the Republican government shutdown today. RESIST!!

From The New Yorker: In a bid to end the government shutdown, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said on Thursday that he would recycle his empties to pay for a wall with Mexico.

Speaking to reporters from his office at the Court, Kavanaugh said that the inspiration came to him while he was building a beer-can pyramid in his basement rec room on Wednesday night.

“I was in my man cave, building this rad beer pyramid, and I was, like, I bet if I recycled all the beer cans down here plus the ones out in the garage, I’d have enough to pay for that freaking wall,” the Supreme Court Justice said.

Andy, I have a better idea. Instead of a wall that won’t work, Injustice Pervert KavaNazi should use that money to buy himself a chastity belt. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

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Friday Fun: The Sweet Smell of Success

 Posted by at 9:59 am  Politics
Jan 112019
 

Well, the Kossacks (of which I count myself a proud member) over at Daily Kos outdid themselves in sending a sweet smell of success to newly-elected Speaker Nancy Pelosi – and she deserves it!

At the suggestion of Daily Kos founder, Markos Moulitsas, they raised enough money to send 25,000 long-stemmed roses to her!  And at her request, to share them with other Democrats and the largest bulk to patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

This was not the first time Kossacks have flooded the office of Speaker Pelosi with roses.  Back in 2010 they delivered 2,600 roses to her, other Democratic staffs and patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on her birthday as a “Thank You!” for her efforts in getting the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) passed.

This time the original goal was to raise enough money to send 10,000 roses, estimating that $10 would provide 3 roses.  But they far outstripped their goal raising enough money to send 25,000!

Obviously, no office could hold that many roses, so at Speaker Pelosi’s suggestion, 8,000 were delivered to her office and other Democrats’ offices around the Capitol – and the remainder sent to patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

 

As you no doubt can imagine, you don’t just trot into the Capitol offices with 8,000 roses.  It took the planning of military precision to accomplish that feat, with coordination between Daily Kos and Speaker Pelosi’s staff.  And in fact, Moulitsas himself flew to Washington, DC and spent the morning helping carrying crate after crate up to Pelosi’s second floor office – which he described as “A great workout”.  (I’d be drenched in sweat.)

But it did not only involve coordination between the Daily Kos and Pelosi staffs, it took the Herculean efforts of a wholesale supplier and florist preparer to get the job done.

There have been some people who point out that the money could have been better used – and as someone who donated both times, I really can’t quibble with that too much.  But I will also point out that the people at DK raised over $200,000 at ActBlue just for Democratic candidates during the past 2018 election.  So I would say they have a history of being generous donors – as witnessed by the fact that it only took an hour and a half after posting to raise the money for the original goal of 10,000 roses.

The order for the 25,000 long-stemmed roses was placed at the wholesale florist Potomac Floral Wholesale in Silver Spring.  Jeff King, a sales team manager and public relations specialist for the floral wholesaler said, “It was the largest single rose order that we’ve ever received.”

King explained that red roses come in 20-50 different varieties with names like “Red Paris” and “Sexy Red” – but by coincidence, all 25,000 long-stemmed roses were the “Freedom” variety.  A nice happenstance!

They ended up sending 25,000 roses at 89 cents a stem, or $22,000.  BUT that does not include the cost of a local florist processing the shipment for delivery.

When you place a huge order like this, they don’t show up arranged in cute little vases.  The blooms come straight from the fields, wild and packed into large cardboard boxes.  That means someone is hired for picking them up, unpacking them, cutting the stems, removing excessive foliage, arranging them in vases, and delivering them.

That mammoth undertaking of processing 25,000 roses was handled by Angela Brunson of Blue Iris Flowers in Eastern Market.

As anyone who’s ordered flowers knows – it’s the middle-man that takes the biggest cut.  I have no idea how many thousands of dollars it cost to have the florist pick up 25,000 roses, unpack 25,000 roses, cut the stems of 25,000 roses, remove excess foliage from 25,000 roses, arrange 25,000 roses and deliver 25,000 roses – but I’m sure it was a huge sum!

With 8,000 roses in the Longworth House Office Building, it was reported that you could smell them just on entering the building.  Surrounded on all sides by the virtual garden of flowers, Speaker Pelosi exclaimed, “I’ve never seen so many roses in my life.”

At a time when Trump has cast a tumultuous dark cloud over America – and the World – Paul Hogarth, who managed the DK end, said: “We wanted to express our love for all the work she does and how hard Speaker Pelosi worked to get a Democratic majority.”

Founder Moulitsas added, “People wanted to do something nice for once.”

RESOURCES

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/1/10/1825079/-So-we-delivered-soooo-many-flowers-to-Nancy-Pelosi

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/01/09/nancy-pelosi-gets-delivery-roses-thanks-an-online-fundraiser/?utm_term=.d31ccf9b31ca

https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/01/10/nancy-pelosi-freedom-roses/

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/1/3/1823278/-Join-our-Roses-for-Pelosi-effort-and-thank-our-new-House-Speaker-for-her-incredible-leadership

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/03/bloggers-send-nancy-pelosi-260.html

BONUS

As you know, Paul Manafort’s “crack” legal team posted their latest filing on line with the parts documenting he was getting paid for the colluding he was doing while on the Trump campaign “redacted” – well, sort of redacted.

You can view a PDF of their failed filing here:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5677512/Manafort-20190108-Dc.pdf

All you had to do was copy/paste it into a word document – and voilà – the whole thing shows up.

It was a pain to reformat it, because it was in  that weird legal formatting, but it did it.  But if you want to see what Manafort didn’t want you to see, you can view it as my Word document on the OneDrive cloud here:

https://1drv.ms/w/s!AvRxVTeLcrBWtPg7S97c6HYuzRomjw

 

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Wall Unwanted

 Posted by at 12:27 pm  Politics
Jan 102019
 

I don’t want to write about the wall.  Sadly, it is dominating the news, and there’s not much else.  However, there are people less interested in having the wall than I.  They are the American citizens whose lives it would disrupt.  Democrats must not cave in.  The more Trump fights, the fewer support him  All we have to do is wait and inform the people of the US.

0110wall

The serene National Butterfly Center in Hidalgo County, Texas, occupies a 100-acre preserve steps away from the U.S.-Mexico line, where President Donald Trump is expected to visit on Thursday to push for a southern border wall

But for Marianna Trevino-Wright, the center’s director, it is the barrier itself – not an influx of criminals – that poses the greatest risk to the sanctuary, given that current plans call for the wall to bisect its property.

“Why on earth would me and my husband live here, and work here, and rear six children here, if it wasn’t safe?” she said.

In McAllen, the county’s largest city, several officials and residents interviewed by Reuters expressed skepticism over Trump’s claim that a wall is required to end what he described as a “crisis” in an Oval Office address on Tuesday.

Seby Haddad, a commercial lender at a regional bank, said he watched this binational community grow for decades because of immigration, not in spite of it.

He rejected the notion that a border wall would help stem the flow of illicit drugs, noting that most narcotics are smuggled in vehicles at official checkpoints, according to government data.

“It doesn’t fix any problem,” said Haddad, 38. “It’s an archaic solution.”…  [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Reuters>

Even Republicans are sick of it, as Chris Hayes demonstrates.

I don’t know what Trump will do next, but whatever it is, it will be wrong.

RESIST!!

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Open Thread – 1/10/2019

 Posted by at 12:26 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 102019
 

It’s another busy day here in the CatBox.  I slept well last night, but still feel tired and groggy  Tomorrow I have a computer technician coming, so I may have no more than a personal update or an Open Thread to publish.  I will not be sending links messages on Care2.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:01 (average 6:57).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Rep. Jerry Nadler: ‘The Walls Are Closing In On The President Donlad [sic] Trump’

 

Under no circumstances may Republicans be allowed to hide the contents of Mueller’s report. RESIST!!

From Vox: Democrats who want to speak with William Barr, President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, ahead of his confirmation hearing say they’re having a harder time doing so than normal. And the Justice Department’s excuse for why he’s unavailable — the partial government shutdown — doesn’t add up.

Barr will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing in Washington, DC, on Tuesday to replace former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and current acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker. Some committee Democrats have complained that ahead of the hearing, Barr is declining invitations to meet, which is generally customary.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said on Wednesday that he learned he wouldn’t get a meeting with Barr ahead of the hearing, calling Barr’s refusal “entirely unprecedented and unacceptable.” He said he was offered a meeting after the hearing, but obviously, he’d much rather meet before.

“The Department of Justice’s attempt to excuse this gross break in the norms by citing a ‘truncated schedule’ is galling when they are the ones who have rushed it,” he said in a statement. “My Republican colleagues should share my outrage at this appalling violation of the Senate’s independent authority.”

He’s had plenty of time to meet with Republicans. I suspect he’s giving them the criminal assurances they want, so they don’t worry when he lies and promises integrity during the hearings. RESIST!!

From Raw Story: Republican U.S. Congressman Steve King of Iowa, in a lengthy New York Times profile, expressed dismay and concern that “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” are offensive.

“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” Rep. King asked the Times. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

King, a nine-term Congressman who represents a district that is more than 95 percent white, is perhaps best-known for accusing undocumented immigrants of having “calves the size of cantaloupes” from “running drugs across the Mexican border.”

The Times says that “Mr. King, in the interview, said he was not a racist.”

The paper notes that Rep. King “has used racist language in the past, promotes neo-Nazis on Twitter and was recently denounced by one Republican leader as a white supremacist.”

King is not a racist, the Pope is not a Catholic, and bears never, ever shit in the woods. How would he feel about the terms black nationalist and black supremacist? He’d shit his pants! RESIST!!

Cartoon:

For Trump, she would only need a very small knife!

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Fleecing the Sheeple

 Posted by at 12:31 pm  Politics
Jan 092019
 

Last night I watched Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten give his Oval Office speech.  The effect was extreme.  I filled all my barf bags, my trash cans, my pocket, and George, my artificial leg.  I was expecting him to declare a state of emergency.  He did not.  He regurgitated the same old tired lies.  I wondered what the point was until later.  Then I discovered what he was up to.  He was fleecing the sheeple.

President Trump doubled down on one of the biggest gambles of his presidency on Tuesday night with a televised appeal to pressure Congress into paying for his long-promised border wall, even at the cost of leaving the government partly closed until lawmakers give in.

Embarking on a strategy that he himself privately disparaged as unlikely to work, Mr. Trump devoted the first prime-time Oval Office address of his presidency to his proposed barrier in hopes of enlisting public support in an ideological and political conflict that has shut the doors of many federal agencies for 18 days.

In a nine-minute speech that made no new arguments but included multiple misleading assertions, the president sought to recast the situation at the Mexican border as a “humanitarian crisis” and opted against declaring a national emergency to bypass Congress, which he had threatened to do, at least for now. But he excoriated Democrats for blocking the wall, accusing them of hypocrisy and exposing the country to criminal immigrants.

[Read our fact checks of Mr. Trump’s speech.]…  [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

Here is the complete list of everything valid, honest, or even decent Trump said:

[end of list]

If you wish to watch it, click here.  I did not include the video out of care for you.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Here is the response by Pelosi and Schumer.

They did a fair job of debunking Trump, but in addition to explaining why Trump is wrong, they should have explained how Democrats word provide border security without the wall.

Rachel Maddow added good analysis.

Why didn’t Pelosi or Schumer say that native born Americans commit crimes at a higher rate than undocumented immigrants?

But it was Lawrence O’Donnell that, in addition to providing more analysis, showed us that sheeple fleecing was Trump’s real goal.

And if he does not run in 2020,he gets to keep the money.

If you are one of the Republicans, who was stupid enough to donate to the so-called "Secure the Border Fund", bend over, grab your ankles, and say…

BAAA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A!!!

RESIST!!

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Open Thread – 1/9/2019

 Posted by at 12:30 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 092019
 

It’s another busy day here in the CatBox.  I’m feeling a bit queasy, because I watched the speech last night.  I’m waiting for Store to Door to deliver my groceries.  WWWendy comes this evening.  Before we destink the TomCat, we’re going to lower my ears.  I woke up at Midnight and could not go back to sleep.  Groceries are now put away.  Happy Hump day to all.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:10 (average 5:05).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Rips Trump For Systematic Attack On Immigrants

 

In theory, this segment wasn’t about Trump’s speech, she rebutted it more effectively than Pelosi and Schumer. RESIST!!

From Daily Kos: How can you tell when Mike Pence looks ashen? Does his complexion change 10,000 shades of white, all the way from ecru to ivory to eggshell to scared-shitless-Mike-Pence*?

Regardless, he sure doesn’t look comfortable here as he swears in a bisexual woman who’s opted to take her oath with her hand on a law book. (I suppose the only way this could have been worse for him is if she’d brought her own table and bowl of pasta and forced him to sit down to dinner.)

0109PenceSinema

Oh my! Does that hateful, pseudo-Christian homophobe look like he just ate a bad clam or what! RESIST!!

From The New Yorker: MSNBC will preëmpt Donald Trump’s national address on Tuesday night by airing Barack Obama’s keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, network officials have confirmed.

Harland Dorrinson, an MSNBC spokesperson, said that the network elected to air the Obama speech “in order to best serve our audience.”

“Based on the data gathered by our research department, the number of MSNBC viewers who were planning to watch the Trump speech was approximately zero,” Dorrinson said. “This seemed like a better way to go.”

Dang Andy! I sure wish they had! RESIST!!

Cartoon:

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