Republicans on Parade – 8/23/2020

Posted by TomCat at 10:45 am Politics

Aug 232020

Here is the one hundred eighty-first article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s winner is the de facto head of the US Republican Party, Vladimir Putin [R-RU]. He is so honored for giving his brown-nose sycophant protégé, criminal Fuhrer Trump*, a lesson on how to best deal with a political opponent.

Russia’s most prominent Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny, was in critical condition in a German hospital Saturday, suffering from suspected poisoning, as doctors conducted tests after an emergency flight from Russia.

A statement from the Charité hospital in Berlin said a “comprehensive medical exam” was underway on Navalny, 44, who has been in a coma since collapsing early Thursday aboard a plane from the Siberian city Tomsk to Moscow.

His spokeswoman and others suspect he was the target of a deliberate poisoning — a method used before by Russian agents — possibly in tea he drank at an airport cafe. Russian doctors said they did not find toxins in Navalny’s system.

“Once that is complete, and after speaking with the family, the medical staff will provide further details about the sickness and the next steps,” the Berlin hospital statement continued, noting that “the exam will take some time.”…

Inserted from <Washington Post>

Hat Tip to Mitch for sending me How Alexei Navalny revolutionized opposition politics in Russia, before his apparent poisoning. You need to need to read it to understand just how big a threat Navalny is to Putin and his Russian Republican Reich.

Although the proof is not yet set in stone, Putin, aka Daddy Vladdy, as Trump* calls him in bed, has so many poison priors that not to act on it would be insane.

‘Poison is part of Putin’s policy,’ says Alexei Navalny associate

See what I mean?

Committing political murder is nothing new for the Republican Reich. Consider JFK, MLK, RFK and Kent State. More recently, look how they targeted Gabby Giffords, almost killing her. Since criminal Fuhrer Trump* admires his Daddy Vladdy so much and emulates him so often, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris need to add official food tasters to their security staff!

RESIST!!

Open Thread – 8/23/2020

Posted by TomCat at 10:42 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 232020

It’s a crazy Sunday, here in the CatBox. I overslept by over 90 minutes, so that was my AM nap. Have a fine Sunday!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:19 (average 4:37). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

Click for Interactive Map

US Cases: 5,844,432
US Deaths: 180,228
Plus all the GOP plague murder victims Republicans are hiding from us.

The Showdown at Chicken Liver Gulch:

Yesterday, there was some hilarity here. At my request WWWendy sautéed and gooped some chicken livers. Now Wendy’s opinion of liver is considerably worse than my opinion of Trump*. It was delicious, and I had some for lunch with guacamole, aka goopamole. I often feed her bites of goopamole, when I eat it, so I did so yesterday. I had teasingly asked her if she’d like a bite of liver to see the strength of her NO! So when I offered her the goopamole, she decided that I was using goopamole to hide the liver underneath. Although I have never done anything mean to her, it took me several minutes to convince her that I would not do such a thing, and she enjoyed the goopamole. In fact, I was so considerate that I gargled with Listerine, so I could hug her goodbye without liver on my breath. It was so good, I had more for breakfast.

Short Takes:

From CNN: Maryanne Trump Barry bitterly criticized her brother, President Donald Trump, saying, “Donald’s out for Donald,” and appeared to confirm her niece Mary Trump’s previous allegations that he had a friend take his SATs to get into college, according to audio excerpts obtained by CNN.

The Washington Post first obtained the previously unreleased transcripts and audio from Mary Trump, author of a recent bombshell book about the President and one of his most outspoken critics. Mary Trump, who has said that Donald Trump is unfit to be president and has voiced support for his rival Joe Biden, revealed to the Post that she had secretly taped 15 hours of face-to-face conversations with Barry in 2018 and 2019.

In one of the conversations revealed by the Post, Trump’s sister called him “cruel.”

Among the some of the more critical comments made by Barry was commenting on how her younger 74-year-old brother operated as president. “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said, according to the recording. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”

This is nothing new to us, but it might influence those few, who are still on the fence. RESIST!!

From NY Times: Tropical Storms Marco and Laura continued to churn in the Caribbean on Saturday, prompting a wave of warnings and watches for several countries, and leading the governor of Louisiana to declare a state of emergency.

Marco on Saturday was about 110 miles northwest of the western tip of Cuba, with maximum sustained winds of 65 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said on Saturday night.

Mr. Cline said it was possible that both storms would become hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico as early as Monday. He added that it would be “pretty unusual” and that the last time it happened was in 1933. The last time a hurricane and a tropical storm were both in the Gulf of Mexico was in 1959, he said…[emphasis added]

Note that for the second time, criminal Fuhrer Trump* has stolen FEMA funds to pay for his scams. First, he did so in 2019 to pay for the wall that never happened. Second, he did so to pay for the Unemployment relief that nobody received. I doubt that he will put the money back, even though hurricanes are on the way. RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast of protest): “He’s Got Bone Spurs” a Roy Zimmerman song parody

So true! Kudos to left wing protestors. RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

Personal Update – 8/22/2020

Posted by TomCat at 7:41 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 222020

It’s a busy WWWendy day here in the CatBox. JD, Bill is up. I’ll be back in the saddle tomorrow. Have a fine weekend, everyone!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:04 (average 5:14). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

Short Take:

From YouTube (a blast of protest): Old Man Fibber – a parody of “Ol’ Man River”

Barf Bag Alert!!

Hilarious! Like Mississippi River mud, may Bought Bitch Midnight Moscow Mitch be swept out to sea. Kudos to left wing protestors. RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

Un Voto del Odio

Posted by TomCat at 11:17 am Politics

Aug 212020

In 2018, Stephen Miller called a meeting of the cabinet in the White House and carried out the vile orders of criminal Fuhrer Trump* to separate the children of refugees from their parents and torture those children in cages.

White House senior adviser Stephen Miller forced a vote among Trump cabinet officials in May 2018 to push for the administration’s highly controversial family separation policy, overruling concerns from then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen that the agency could lose track of children removed from their parents.

The previously unknown meeting was part of an exclusive NBC News story from Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff, who discussed their reporting with MSNBC Ayman Mohyeldin on Thursday afternoon. According to the pair, Miller, a die-hard nativist who has long attacked immigration, convened a meeting in the White House Situation Room with nearly a dozen high-ranking administration officials with the express intent to have the Department of Homeland Security begin enforcing its zero-tolerance immigration policy.

“There were 11 officials invited to the meeting. They were allowed to bring deputies. Stephen Miller got angry and pointed his frustration towards Kirstjen Nielsen, ” Ainsley explained. “He said it’s your fault that the policy hasn’t been carried out. He said the Justice Department stood ready to prosecute. DHS needed to do the separating so that any immigrants with children would be separated. Nielsen said there was not enough resources to do this and it would result in separation and possibly losing children in this chaotic and clogged system. Miller said forget that. Forget logistics. Let’s put this to a vote. A sea of hands went up. Nielsen’s was not among them. She was out-voted.”

Soon after that meeting, Nielsen signed a memo that authorized the family separation policy, which ultimately removed 2,800 children from the custody of their parents—and soon had myriad problems keeping track of where they were detained, just as Nielsen had predicted.

“We know what happened,” Soborofff added. “Physicians for Human Rights, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization said the U.S. Government and the Trump administration engaged in a campaign of torture of these children. The American Academy of Pediatrics said it was government sanctioned child abuse… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Mediaite>

Note how quickly Nielson fell into line and goose stepped with the Reich, even trhough she knew how wrong the policy was.

Trump Cabinet Officials Voted In 2018 Meeting To Separate Migrant Children, Say Officials

If Third Reich officials Goering, von Ribbentrop, Frick, Himmler, Goebbels, Hess and Bormann held a vote on how to persecute Jews, would that have made the holocaust a democratic institution? In the same way, this vote by officials of the Fifth Reich does nothing to justify this heinous crime.

This demonstrates how the problem is not just Trump. Every Republican must go!

RESIST!!

Open Thread – 8/21/2020

Posted by TomCat at 11:16 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 212020

It’s a better day here in the CatBox. I’m never pain free, but I’ve recovered sufficiently from my trip that the pain is back to a manageable level. I still have no side-effects from the infusion. Tomorrow please expect no more than a Personal Update from me. It’s a WWWendy day and we did so little on Wednesday, after she got me home from the hospital, that we have more gooping and chores to do than normal, in addition to the routine flea bath and patch change for the TomCat. JD, if Bill Maher puts a show up tonight, would you please cover it tomorrow? TGIF!!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:03 (average 8:58)(?!!?). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

0821TrumpVirusMap

US Cases: 5,747,604
US Deaths: 177,457
Plus the many GOP plague murder victims Republicans are hiding from us.

Long Take:

Watch: Democratic National Convention: Day 4

Magnificent speech! Elect the first President since Barack Obama! RESIST!!

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) isn’t conducting raids or offering weapons training to individuals [Republican Ammosexuals] on how to arrest [murder] immigrants, it is treating immigrants in its detention centers wrongfully. In another incident of violating religious rights and plain human indecency, advocates and lawyers are demanding that ICE stop feeding Muslim detainees pork. Last year, agents allegedly fed a man only pork sandwiches while he was in their custody, despite knowing his religion restricted him from eating pork. In a similar case, attorneys representing Muslim detainees at the Krome Service Processing Center in Miami-Dade County are demanding federal agents stop forcing Muslims in custody to choose between eating rotten meals or pork-based options.

In partnership with civil rights organizations Muslim Advocates and Americans for Immigrant Justice, attorneys from King & Spalding LLP sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE with their request Wednesday. According to the letter, ICE officials have allegedly been forcing Muslim detainees to choose between eating rotten halal meat or pork sausage, pork ribs, and other pork-based ingredients. The letter demands that ICE and DHS officials immediately provide non-rotten, edible food that does not violate one’s faith. Advocates noted that the pre-plated expired food has caused detainees to suffer stomach pain, vomiting, and diarrhea amongst other health issues. Despite this ICE continues to ignore their pleas.

You can be sure that this hateful policy comes from the top. RESIST!!

From NY Times: Late last month, as the Texas Republican Party was shifting into campaign mode, it unveiled a new slogan, lifting a rallying cry straight from a once-unthinkable source: the internet-driven conspiracy theory known as QAnon.

The new catchphrase, “We Are the Storm,” is an unsubtle cue to a group that the F.B.I. has labeled a potential domestic terrorist threat. It is instantly recognizable among QAnon adherents, signaling what they claim is a coming conflagration between President Trump and what they allege, falsely, is a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile Democrats who seek to dominate America and the world.

The slogan can be found all over social media posts by QAnon followers, and now, too, in emails from the Texas Republican Party and on the T-shirts, hats and sweatshirts that it sells. It has even worked its way into the party’s text message system — a recent email from the party urged readers to “Text STORM2020” for updates.

The Texas Republicans are an unusually visible example of the Republican Party’s dalliance with QAnon, but they are hardly unique.

Here is the complete list of Republican officials who are not nut-jobs: [list starts here

list ends here]. RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast of protest): I Think My Dog’s a Democrat Bryan Lewis Official Video

If the owner is a Republican, than that dawg is a hell of a lot smarter than the owner! Kudos to left wing protestors! RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

So Much for "No Collusion"

Posted by TomCat at 12:17 pm Politics

Aug 202020

The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on Russian interference in the stolen 2016 Residential election, and the cooperation of criminal Fuhrer Trump* and members of his campaign staff with that interference. So much for “No Collusion”!

IT’S WORTH wondering what the impact might have been had the Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election appeared six months ago, before the report of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the twisted account of it provided by Attorney General William P. Barr. On their own terms, the Senate’s findings, released Tuesday after a bipartisan investigation, are explosive: that then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort “formed a close and lasting relationship” with “a Russian intelligence officer,” with whom he shared inside information from the president’s campaign and collaborated to concoct a false narrative that Ukraine, and not Russia, was behind the election interference.

Further, the Senate report states that the Trump campaign “sought to maximize” the impact of leaks of Democratic documents by WikiLeaks, knowing the original source was the Russian military intelligence agency, GRU. The campaign’s intermediary was Roger Stone, whose prison sentence for lying about his involvement and tampering with witnesses was commuted last month by Mr. Trump; the president, the committee “assesses,” lied when he said he never talked to Mr. Stone about WikiLeaks.

Then there is what the Senate investigators glimpsed but could not nail down. The report cites “fragmentary” evidence that Mr. Manafort’s Russian associate Konstantin Kilimnik “may have been connected to the GRU’s hack and leak operation,” and two pieces of information linking the campaign chairman himself. The full truth is unknown in part because Mr. Manafort chose to incur an extended prison sentence rather than tell prosecutors the truth about his relationship with the Russian spy.

It is a sad tribute to Mr. Trump’s skill at obfuscation and disinformation that these revelations will likely be ignored by many voters already sated by conflicting accounts of what the president calls the “Russian hoax.” He did it again Tuesday, and on cue, his Senate sycophants — including, contemptibly, the acting Intelligence Committee chairman, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — rushed to assert that the report shows “no collusion” between Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

That may be true, in the narrow sense of a criminal conspiracy. Yet the report leaves no doubt that, on instructions of Mr. Putin, Russian intelligence sought to aid Mr. Trump’s election; that Mr. Trump and his campaign welcomed and sought to exploit that aid; and that the president, Mr. Manafort, Mr. Stone and several other key campaign officials then lied about the affair… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Washington Post>

Click through for more. This is certainly worth reading!

‘Devastating’: Revelations From Senate Intel Report

If that isn’t bad enough, criminal Fuhrer Trump’s* response to the report is to seek advise from his boss, the holder of the tapes, Vladimir Putin [R-RU].

Defiant Trump Seeks Putin Meeting After Report Finds He Lied To Mueller About Russia

The bottom line is this. Trump* and Putin are still colluding to steal YOUR White House from YOU again. What are YOU going to do about it?

RESIST!!

Open Thread – 8/20/2020

Posted by TomCat at 12:16 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 202020

It’s a busy, tired, painful day, here in the CatBox. My infusion yesterday went well, and I’ve had no side-effects, so far. However, except for an hour in the infusion recliner, I had to be in my wheelchair from 9:30 AM until 8:30 PM, and that’s so hard on my back that maximum pain killers barely takes the edge off the pain. Store to Door delivered groceries today so I had to unpack them and put them away. In addition, I spent over an hour on the phone on medical mayhem. JD, would you please cover Sam Bee, as I’m doing something else. Have a great day, everyone!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:18 (average 6:24). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

0820TrumpVirusMap

US Cases: 5,702,837
US Deaths: 176,396
Plus all the GOP plague murder victims Republicans are hiding from us.

Long Take:

Watch: Democratic National Convention: Day 3

Kamala was magnificent. Barack Obama actually called criminal Fuhrer Trump* a threat to democracy. Such a statement by a former precedent. That and the nomination of the first African American and Asian American for VP make this a historic event! RESIST!!

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Sen. Susan Collins has, of course, expressed her concern about the sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) at the hands of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. What Collins doesn’t want all of her constituents—the people for whom she calls the USPS “a lifeline,” the “seniors, veterans, and those in rural areas who are depending on reliable mail delivery for essential goods and services”—to find out is that she’s the person most responsible for this mess.

DeJoy can say he’s making all of the cuts to services because of the dire financial situation of the USPS. Yes, we know he’s doing it to try to right the election for Trump, but the financial crisis at the post office has given him the opportunity to do so. And Collins, more than anyone else, is responsible for that. She’s the one who engineered this crisis. In 2005, Collins introduced the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), which required the USPS to prepay the next 50 years’ worth of health and retirement benefits for every postal service employee. It is the only federal agency that is saddled with this requirement. At the time, she was the chair of the Senate government oversight panel, and she got the bill through her committee and onto the floor in 2006. It passed on a voice vote on Dec. 20, 2006 in the lame duck session before Democrats took back control of the Senate.

What the legislation required of the USPS was to calculate the entirety of its pension costs for the next three-quarters of a century—75 years—and spend the next decade putting away enough money to cover the majority of them. Which is insane. And has accounted for nearly 90% of the service’s red ink in the past decade. Right now, the USPS is $160.9 billion in debt for what it owes to prepay retirees, and has years’ worth of operating deficits because it can’t generate revenue under the restrictions placed by the law.

Collins is great at pretending she’s a center-left moderate, but she’s more like Goose Step Gordon Smith, the Senator I worked to help Jeff Merkley [D-OR] defeat. She’s always with us, when we don’t need her, but against us, when we do. RESIST!!

From YouTube (Raw Story Channel): Sandra Smith grills Kayleigh McEnany about Trump’s praise of QAnon