I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: everyone who gets involved with Donald Trump gets slimed. The latest example is Admiral/Doctor Ronny Jackson who had a reputation as a competent doctor and a nice guy during the Bush and Obama administrations. That began to change when he gave a preposterous briefing about Trump’s health. Then came his nomination to run the Veterans Administration, which is a nearly impossible job given the competing interest groups and the size of the agency.
The ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs committee is reviewing allegations he’s hearing about Ronny Jackson, the White House physician and President Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. It was unclear late Monday whether the Senate panel would postpone Jackson’s confirmation hearing, which was scheduled for Wednesday, in light of stories about the nominee told by current or former White House medical staff.
Sources familiar with the tales say that Tester’s staff is reviewing multiple allegations of a “hostile work environment.” The accusations include “excessive drinking on the job, improperly dispensing meds,” said one of the people familiar, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the situation. The other people familiar with the stories also confirmed those details.
If proven true, “it’ll sink his nomination,” said one of the sources.
This is what happens when you nominate someone without any vetting. There was no interview, no nothing, just a presidential* gut instinct that he liked Admiral/Doctor Jackson and that somehow made him qualified to run a massive bureaucracy. Trump’s gut may be large but his instincts are terrible. The incompetence, it burns.
I considered stealing a line from a tweet by Steven Beschloss, brother of historian Michael, but decided that was too Trumpian:
I’m not defending Ronny Jackson, but if I worked in the Trump White House I’d be likely to drink excessively and be pretty hostile. https://t.co/NPOwDZhGub
Excessive drinking can definitely make one hostile. The irony is that none of the post-Nixon presidents have been known as heavy drinkers. The last presidents to drink with their White House physician were FDR and Harry Truman and they were only occasionally hostile. Hostility is Trump’s speciality.
It looks as if Admiral/Doctor Jackson is the latest Trump dignity wraith. Stay tuned.
A former Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with Donald J. Trump sued on Tuesday to be released from a 2016 legal agreement requiring her silence, becoming the second woman this month to challenge Trump allies’ efforts during the presidential campaign to bury stories about extramarital relationships.
The model, Karen McDougal, is suing the company that owns The National Enquirer, American Media Inc., which paid her $150,000 and whose chief executive is a friend of President Trump’s. The other woman, the adult entertainment star Stephanie Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels, was paid $130,000 to stay quiet by the president’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. She filed suit earlier this month.
Both women, who argue that their contracts are invalid, are trying to get around clauses requiring them to resolve disputes in secretive arbitration proceedings rather than in open court. Mr. Trump has denied the affairs.
Ms. McDougal, in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims that Mr. Cohen was secretly involved in her talks with A.M.I., and that the media company and her lawyer at the time misled her about the deal. She also asserts that after she spoke with The New Yorker last month after it obtained notes she kept on Mr. Trump, A.M.I. warned that “any further disclosures would breach Karen’s contract” and “cause considerable monetary damages.”
In an email to The New York Times, her new lawyer, Peter K. Stris, accused A.M.I. of “a multifaceted effort to silence Karen McDougal.”
She wants everyone to know she’s a pig who screws married men. I don’t have a problem with the president. That’s between him and his wife.
44 posted on 3/20/2018, 3:03:44 PM by Peeps47 (Democrats are as corrupt as they are incompetent)
Ah, the Freeperati – always ready to forgive and forget.
Well, ALMOST always…
Let the Bimbo Eruptions Commence! Is Bill Clinton back in predatory mode? NY POST ^ | 10/13/06 | Richard Johnson Posted on 10/13/2006, 8:48:49 AM by MAD-AS-HELL
Hillary Fans Took No Chances
SAVVY Democrats pushing Sen. Hillary Clinton for president were so worried last year about a possible “bimbo eruption” involving Bill Clinton, they had his friend, former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, confront him, according to a new book. In “The Way to Win,” authors Mark Halperin of ABC News and John Harris of the Washington Post report that rumors swept political circles last year that Clinton had resumed the wayward habits that nearly brought down his presidency in 1998. Concern among his allies grew so intense that McAuliffe was tapped for the delicate assignment of confronting him at his Chappaqua home, according to Democrats briefed on the awkward encounter. “The former president assured McAuliffe that there was nothing to the rumors, although Clinton had been known to make such promises in the past,” Halperin and Harris write. They add that others around the senator believe her husband “has learned from his errors” and is so determined that she become president that he’ll “bring only support and good behavior to a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.”
*******
Oh how I would love to see an avalanche of woman come out and accuse Bill of unwanted advances
Yeah – that would really suck, wouldn’t it?
on the eve of the Democratic National Convention where Hitlery is to accept the nomination. Or even better, Hillary and her goon squad intimidating those same women in order to keep them quiet about the BENTONE.
Maybe Michael Cohen is available?
To: MAD-AS-HELL
“The former president assured McAuliffe that there was nothing to the rumors”
Yea, right. Once a whorehound, always a whorehound. Bubba is as addicted to chasing women as an alcoholic is to booze.
17 posted on 10/13/2006, 9:01:28 AM by Polyxene (For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel – Martin Luther)
Yeah – but is she hot?
To: MAD-AS-HELL
In the past Hillary was in charge of putting down “Bimbo Eruptions”. Now who’s going to do it?
Comeypalooza 2018 rolled on with his interview with my diminutive countryman, George Stephanopoulos, last night. My evil side wished they’d done it standing up since Comey is 6’8″ and George is 5’7′. Of course, such interviews are filmed with the participants seated but I can dream. This day after kinda sorta instant analysis is *not* a dream.
Watching Comey reminded me of how complex life is. I was every bit as mad at Comey as most Clinton supporters in October 2016. I excoriated him in a post entitled Easy Comey Easy Go. I even unfavorably compared his FBI to one of America’s most distinguished prosecutors, Robert Jackson. I still think he fucked up with his ham-fisted intervention in the election BUT unlike many powerful people he’s willing to admit the possibility that he made a mistake. Comey is not the “untruthful slimeball” of Trumpian tweets but a flawed human being capable of doing fine things but also capable of screwing up. Bigly.
Even if he doesn’t explicitly say that he’s trying to make up for that epic mistake in 2016, it’s obvious that he regrets any role he played in electing Donald Trump. Some of the language he used in the interview with my diminutive countryman was eye-popping. This is the money quote on Trump’s fitness to be Oval One:
A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds. And that’s not a policy statement. Again, I don’t care what your views are on guns or immigration or taxes.
There’s something more important than that that should unite all of us, and that is our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country. The most important being truth. This president is not able to do that. He is morally unfit to be president.
On balance, Comey’s role in the rolling dialogue as to whether Trump is fit to be president* is a useful one. He can be on the annoying side when he’s tending the Comey Myth but his insights into Trump’s personality are fascinating. These two men were destined to clash. They’re not just from different worlds but from different solar systems.
Watching Comey I kept thinking this guy must have been a great trial lawyer. He’s a stellar wordsmith and story-teller. Plus juries love a lawyer with a sense of humor, especially a prosecutor. Nobody expects a prosecutor to be funny. The same qualities will make him an outstanding witness for the prosecution.
We resume our regularly scheduled programming after my Wag The Dog Incoherently post. Somebody’s gotta be normal in these abnormal times.
It’s been an interesting week in New Orleans. A 4,200 gallon oil spill isn’t huge by oil industry standards but it’s stinky enough that residents are raising a stink about it. A good thing: minor oil spills are way of life on the Big Muddy, which could be re-nicknamed the Big Oily or Big Greasy. Either way it’s not good. It’s actually diesel fuel. Vin Diesel was unavailable for comment…
The big local story this week was the sale of Gambit Weekly to the Advocate. Because of savvy management by owners Margot and Clancy DuBos, Gambit is one of the few alt-weeklies that has thrived in the internet era. The deal includes retention of Gambit’s crack editorial team including my friend Kevin Allman as editor. (In the interests of full disclosure, Clancy is also a friend.) Kevin helped bring the publication into online era, which made it an attractive proposition to the Advocate. One reason for the staff retention is that Advocate publisher Dan Shea was purged by the Picayune and has some empathy for other journalists. Imagine that. Besides, the Gambit staff is as talented as all get out. As far as I’m concerned, this is good news as it will allow Gambit to survive in a tough environment for alt-weeklies. Here’s hoping that the Advocate people will keep their word about letting Gambit be Gambit. So far, the signs are good.
This week’s theme song is the title track of one of the greatest break-up albums of all-time. It’s eerie to hear Linda Thompson sing sad songs written by her soon-to-be ex-husband. Shoot Out The Lights has developed into one of the signature songs of Richard Thompson’s live set. We have two versions for your listening pleasure: the original and a swell cover by Los Lobos.
Now we’ve shot out the lights, let’s take a shot at jumping to the break.
11 days ago Donald Trump said he wanted to be out of Syria within a matter of months. Tonight American, British, and French forces bombed Syria. I guess that earlier statement is, to quote Nixon flack Ron Ziegler, inoperative.
All week long the fog of scandal has enveloped the White House. The Michael Cohen investigation in New York may prove to be more devastating to Trump than anything Team Mueller can come up with. And now the president* is bombing Syria after a chemical weapons attack that his inability to keep his mouth shut may have caused.
It’s bad enough that we’ve entered the wag the dog phase of the Trump regime, it’s even worse that it’s being done in an ad hoc, incoherent, and chaotic manner. Of course, that’s how they do everything. An alternate title for this post could have been Winging It With The Kaiser of Chaos.
With John Bolton and his mustache on board at the NSC, we can expect more late night bombing raids. Perhaps they’ll even come up with a coherent strategy next time. Who am I kidding?
There are some in the MSM who believe that bellicose rhetoric aimed at the Russians means that Putin doesn’t own Trump. Wrong. The gap between the Syrian attack, Trump’s bloodthirsty tweets, and the bombing raid gave the Russians plenty of time to move their military assets and personnel around to minimize their losses. The same thing happened with the delay in imposing sanctions: Putin and his cronies had time to hide their money. It’s all for show. It’s what happens when a scandal plagued administration has its wag the dog moment.
Just think, earlier today everyone was speculating about Rod Rosenstein getting shitcanned. Holy Instant Nostalgia, Batman. Instead I’m writing an instant analysis of Trump wagging the dog. As Jim Comey would surely say at this moment,LORDY.
I only hope this post is more coherent than president* Trump’s national security policies. Repeat after me: LORDY.
The F.B.I. on Monday raided the office of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, seizing records related to several topics including payments to a pornographic-film actress. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, who called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but likely resulted from information he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York. “Today the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York executed a series of search warrants and seized the privileged communications between my client, Michael Cohen, and his clients,” said Stephen Ryan, his lawyer. “I have been advised by federal prosecutors that the New York action is, in part, a referral by the Office of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.” Mr. Cohen plays a role in aspects of the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He also recently said he paid $130,000 to a pornographic-film actress, Stephanie Clifford, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. Ms. Clifford is known as Stormy Daniels. Mr. Ryan said Mr. Cohen has cooperated with authorities and turned over thousands of documents to congressional investigators looking into Russian election meddling. The payments to Ms. Clifford are only one of many topics being investigated, according to a person briefed on the search. The F.B.I. also seized emails, tax documents and business records, the person said.
4 posted on 4/9/2018, 3:12:50 PM by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here of Citizen Parents__Know Islam, No Peace-No Islam, Know Peace)
All righty! I’m now one “Tehran John” away from a Bingo!
.
To: gathersnomoss
Time to fire Mueller, this is nothing more than harassment.
Can’t wait to see the Qanon-believers, Sundance-supporters, and Gateway-Pundit-guys all coming out of the woodowrk to tell us how this is really a great 4-D chess move by Trump, and that the Military Tribunals will be starting any day now.
Beat me to it.
.
Like I said, “One little problem with that: ”
Mueller is working hand-in-hand with the New York Attorney General, so it’s not clear that even firing Mueller could stop this investigation.
Andy Cuomo is in the driver’s seat and has the means and intention to bring Trump down.
Simple solution : fire every NY State prosecutor and judge!
Whaddya mean, “he can’t do that” ??
By “means” I include:
aggressive, partisan Attorney General
all the records from Trump’s lawyers office and home
a loving, complicit press
a porn star to play a reprise of the Paula Jones role
lots of Deep State operatives helping out
A Special Counsel to feed him information
the FBI willing to lend a helping hand
Trump’s associates all under indictment or worried about it.
probably transcripts of the NSA intercepts of Trump and his associates.
All-in-all, it’s a powerful arsenal.
Only if you’ve broken the law(s).
Team Trump has no real weapons.
(insert “shooting blanks” joke here)
We pro-Trump observers are waiting patiently for an IG report. But even when that comes it isn’t the same caliber of weapon as what Cuomo and Mueller are firing at Trump.
We already knew that Steve Bannon was an extremist and looks like an unmade bed at a thrift shop, but last night we had proof positive that he’s a moron, or as my man Rex would say: A FUCKING MORON.
The first step, these people say, would be for Trump to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the work of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and in recent days signed off on a search warrant of Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen.
Bannon is also recommending the White House cease its cooperation with Mueller, reversing the policy of Trump’s legal team to provide information to the special counsel’s team and to allow staff members to sit for interviews.
And he is telling associates inside and outside the administration that the president should create a new legal battleground to protect himself from the investigation by asserting executive privilege — and arguing that Mueller’s interviews with White House officials over the past year should now be null and void.
This is a hare-brained scheme worthy of Wile E. Coyote and is apt to work as well as this:
If Bannon were a lawyer, which he most assuredly is not, he’d know that our legal system disfavors ideas such as “retroactive” executive privilege. If Team Trump refused to allow staffers to grant witnesses, prosecutors would simply issue grand jury subpoenas to compel their testimony. If they declined, they’d be held in contempt, fined, and clapped in jail. This White House is sufficiently incompetent without having staffers in the slammer.
Bannon is, of course, pandering to the Insult Comedian by proposing a “plan” that gives him an excuse do what he wants to do anyway. It is not, however, as simple as the feeble minds of Bannon and Trump would have you believe. If Rosenstein and Mueller were removed tomorrow, the investigation would continue. The press and public tend to view these things as duels between individuals when the battle is institutional in nature. The referral of the Cohen search to New York proves that. Repeat after me: the investigation would continue.
A quick sidebar. I wish the press would stop asking Trump if he’s going to “fire Mueller.” It comes off as a taunt, dare, or challenge to his manhood. And we all know that arrested adolescents are insecure about their teeny, tiny wangers.
I have no idea where this thing is going or what will happen next. Anyone who says they do has been smoking weed with former Speaker Boehner. We can dream that there are more like this anonymous Republican Congressman whose hilariously profane grocery store rant was quoted by Erick Erickson.
“It’s like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really fucking stupid Forrest Gump. He can’t help himself. He’s just a fucking idiot who thinks he’s winning when people are bitching about him. He really does see the world as ratings and attention. I hate Forrest Gump. I listen to your podcast and heard you hate it too. What an overrated piece of sh*t movie. Can you believe it beat the Shawshank Redemption?”
<SNIP>
“I say a lot of shit on TV defending him, even over this. But honestly, I wish the motherfucker would just go away. We’re going to lose the House, lose the Senate, and lose a bunch of states because of him. All his supporters will blame us for what we have or have not done, but he hasn’t led. He wakes up in the morning, shits all over Twitter, shits all over us, shits all over his staff, then hits golf balls. F*ck him. Of course, I can’t say that in public or I’d get run out of town.”
The cowardly Congresscritter *claims* many House GOPers would vote to impeach *after* their primaries but who the hell knows? As entertaining as this rant is, I agree with former Republican Congressman David Jolly:
Memo to the growing number of GOPers speaking on background about Trump's increasing instability and his destruction of the party:
It means nothing if you won't go on the record; it actually makes you look weaker in the shadow of Trump, not stronger.
Back to Steve Bannon. His trial balloon was leaked so that it could be shot down. The worst possible thing Trump could do is to make like the Queen of Hearts and chop off everyone’s head. It would make today’s feverish and overheated environment look like a garden party. Of course, Trump loves disorder and confusion. That’s why I call him the Kaiser of Chaos.
Steve Bannon is a moron in a party of morons and the president* is the biggest moron of all.
Repeat after me: the investigation will continue even if Bannon pinky swears that it won’t.
This New Yorker cartoon by Pat Byrnes *might* be slightly dated since the Insult Comedian woke up today lashing out at his pal Putin. He seems to have finally discovered that the Assad family business in Syria has been a Russian client for almost 50 years.
I still love the notion that Boris and Natasha are Trump advisers. It could explain everything.
There’s been a feeding frenzy over the raid on Michael Cohen’s office, apartment, hotel room, and hot tub. I made the last bit up. There’s even been some tut-tutting about Cohen being Trump’s “lawyer.” At the risk of sounding like a broken record: Cohen is not a lawyer in the usual sense. He’s a fixer/gangster. He’s more like a caporegime in the Trump crime family than a “personal lawyer.” It looks as if the fixer is fucked. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
More alarming was Trump’s latest public meltdown, which may be the creepiest one yet. He was surrounded by the military brass and his national security peeps including John Bolton and his mustache. The meeting was ostensibly about Syria. Instead of refusing to comment on Cohen, the Kaiser of Chaos lost his shit:
So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys — a good man. And it’s a disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long time.
<SNIP>
And it’s a disgrace. It’s, frankly, a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.
Like a Good Banana Republican, the Insult Comedian conflates his own legal woes with the problems of the nation. The presence of men in uniform evoked a cabinet meeting in Peron’s Argentina, Pinochet’s Chile, or better yet, Noriega’s Panama.
Trump keeps setting firsts. No previous president has ever ranted in public like this. Even Tricky Dick only did it in private. The world was privy to Trump’s unhinged internal monologue this afternoon. I usually find him annoying, this tirade was scary and like the Tom Petty/Mudcrutch song, I don’t scare easy.
As an opponent of Trump’s I’m glad he keeps lighting his own house on fire. His fatal inability to shut the fuck up will be his eventual downfall. The only question is timing. It can’t come soon enough for most of us, but it may take years. We’ve had bad presidents before but only Nixon approached this level of lunacy. The immediate future looks bleaker than it did when Tricky left office. Solid, sensible, mainstream conservative Jerry Ford succeeded him. Mike Pence is no Jerry Ford. He’s more like Spiro Agnew on steroids.
Shorter Adrastos: the fixer is fucked and the country is fucked up. Fuck that shit.
Donald Trump seems to be surrounded by a magnetic field that attracts greedy and venal people. The greed field seems to repel anyone with integrity and even an ounce of human decency. The schlemiel phase of the regime ended with the departures of Reince, Gum Spice, and the cameo appearance of the Mooch. It’s in the full-tilt cartoon villain phase as names such as Pruit, Zinke, Devos, Carson, Ross, Mnuchin, and Kudlow continue to make headlines for all the wrong reasons.
In addition to the greed field, the Trump regime is encased in a permanent fog of scandal. It’s a fog as dense as the Insult Comedian’s intellect and nearly as impenetrable. The people around Trump are the sort of rich people whose only goal in life is to further enrich themselves now that they’re in public office. As I said in a different context the other day, they can’t help themselves. I’m reminded of one of the cornerstone lies of the Trump campaign:
“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” declared Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.”
In addition to good old-fashioned plundering and theft, Team Trump and its allies are trying to turn the clock back to the early 1880’s. That was before the civil service was introduced to the federal government by, of all people, a legendary grifter, Chester Arthur. Arthur was a hack placed on the 1880 GOP ticket by New York Senator Roscoe Conkling whose picture is still in the dictionary next to the word corrupt. Welcome to the New Gilded Age.
The dread Newt Gingrich has been trying to eradicate and/or erode the civil service for decades. He appears to be making some headway since Trump’s idea of “draining the swamp”is to eliminate non-partisan experts and bring on the greedheads and lackeys. Believe me.
“Small episodes of corruption can play an outsize role in American politics, since the human scale of petty self-dealing is often easy to understand. And in Trump’s case, the smaller and larger scandals reinforce each other. Why is Trump giving rich people and corporations a huge tax cut? Why has he been threatening to take away your health insurance? Why is he letting Wall Street and Big Oil write their own rules? Above all, if Trump supposedly believed that “if I become president, I couldn’t care less about my company — it’s peanuts,” why are his children still running it? For the same reason he has let his Cabinet secretaries run up large travel expenses, and why his son-in-law met with oligarchs in China and the Gulf States whose money he was trying to get his hands on.”
Chait argues at the beginning of the piece that Kremlingate is:
“…substantively important, but it is also convoluted and abstract and removed from any immediate impact on voters’ lived experience.”
I agree with Chait that Krelimgate is complicated and foggy in its own way. BUT it’s the spoke on the wheel of scandal that’s driving the country over the cliff. I may need some anti-metaphor medicine, I seem to be wheeling them out left and right…
The only way people can prevent the Trump regime from driving the country into a ditch is to organize and vote in such great numbers that the voter suppression mechanisms devised by Republicans will be overwhelmed. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker appears to be terrified of a blue wave that could wash away the fog of scandal both in Washington City and the state capitals. The good news is that the Kaiser of Chaos is oblivious, basking in the applause of his supporters and staff of sycophants. It’s what happens when you live inside the bubbly right-wing echo chamber. Believe me.
The last word goes to Todd Rundgren and Utopia’s cover of the theme song of Trump’s shitty reality show:
In the spirit of the week after Holy Week, I thought I’d write about the disgusting attacks on the Parkland kids by adults. The attacks keep backfiring, leading to apologies from Frank Stallone, Laura Ingraham, and others. Ingraham famously apologized in the “spirit of Holy Week.” Does that mean she wouldn’t apologize for sliming David Hogg on another week? All Ingraham and her lorons care about is saving advertisers and her shitty show.
Attacking teenagers, tweens, and even younger chirren is not a good look for grown ass adults, but it’s not uncommon on the right. Fox News is a repository (suppository?) of attacks on younger Americans. (It’s particularly weird for those of us who experienced the young conservatives of the 1980’s who saw Reagan as their political grandpa and became tribal Republicans.) And it’s not just in the more out of sorrow than anger”kids today” manner, it’s out-and-out hostility:
In the month and a half since the shooting in Parkland, FL, Ingraham herself has said the Parkland students should not be given “special consideration” on gun policy; told her viewers that the March 14 student walkout wasn’t some sort of “organic outpouring of youthful rage,” but rather “nothing but a left-wing, anti-Trump diatribe”; and complained that anti-abortion protesters didn’t get the same attention. Two of Fox’s other primetime hosts, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, both dismissed the students as pawns being manipulated by gun control advocates. Carlson went a step further, calling the students “self-righteous kids” who “weren’t helping at all” and comparing them to Mao’s Red Guards. The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, who is also a Fox News contributor, dismissed the students as just “children, not founts of wisdom,” and Fox & Friends Weekend host Pete Hegseth responded to the student-organized March For Our Lives by angrily commenting, “Spare me if I don’t want to hear the sanctimoniousness of a 17-year-old.” Fox’s sustained and hostile attacks on students in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting fit right into the network’s years-long pattern of insulting and belittling students and children.
Wingnuts have only one mode: attack mode. They do it when it won’t work and when it will backfire with anyone *outside* the bubbly right-wing echo chamber. Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, and their ilk don’t understand how they sound to average Americans because they seem to only talk to people who agree with them. They certainly only care about those people. It’s why they can’t help themselves.
The 24-hour (minute? second?) news cycle and social media can be wonderful things. They can also be dangerous when used by people with no impulse control who don’t seem to realize that what they say and/or tweet is public and archivable. It’s getting harder and harder to trash talk people behind their backs because slurs live forever on the interweb. Impulse control is out of fashion because of the Current Occupant who was born in a bubble and basks in the glow of the bubbly right-wing echo chamber. The Insult Comedian sets the tone for his acolytes, which is why it’s ugly out there and getting uglier every day.
Remember when we had a president who thought before speaking and didn’t trash everyone who disagreed with him? It wasn’t that long ago. It can happen here again.
When I say that the wingnuts and gun nuts can’t help themselves, I’m not excusing their malakatude and verbal diarrhea. It’s a feeble attempt to explain why they do the things they do. Attacking the Parkland kids is not going to work. It would be better for the flying monkeys of the far right to say something like, “I’m sorry they’ve been traumatized but I disagree with them.” How hard is that? Too hard for them, apparently. Since they live inside the bubbly right-wing echo chamber, they can’t help themselves.
Though the adult film star previously denied the affair, she’s now arguing that she should be released from the agreement and be free to speak publicly of her former relationship with Trump as the president did not sign the document.
Cohen has admitted to paying Daniels $130,000. Trump’s lawyers are threatening to make her pay $1 million every time she violates the nondisclosure agreement. The White House has denied any affair occurred.
“He knows I’m telling the truth,” Daniels said of the president.
The adult film star and her lawyer Michael Avenatti have claimed before she has photographic evidence of her affair with Trump.
Just so you know the latest MSM ploy.
So now The Darnold fucking a porn star while his wife sits home with their young son is a “ploy”. Good to know.
I don’t care if he did.
Yeah – we’ve kinda figured that out already.
I don’t care if he didn’t. But we have to keep abreast of all the latest sleazoid tactics, so we know what not to give a sh!t about.
Well, when you vote for a reality show schmuck, exactly what did you expect?
To: Eleutheria5
Do I care if she slept with the President?
So you don’t care if she did?
Except he wasn’t President when it allegedly happened.
So you do care if he did, but you don’t because the election hadn’t happened yet?
If I want to watch porn, I’ll go to Pornhub.
Apparently, you’re not the only one.
.
.
Stormy Daniels’ account is yesterday’s news. Yawn.
7 posted on 3/25/2018, 6:34:05 PM by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
Nope. I just looked, and it’s still today’s news. Even on FOX.
To: Eleutheria5
This issue is not what did or did not happen
The whore sold her story for $130K and now wants to break the contract If courts let this happen, NDA’s are useless
11 posted on 3/25/2018, 6:36:33 PM by silverleaf (A man who kneels for the national anthem doesn’t stand for much of anything)
“The NDA took my baby away…..”
To: Eleutheria5
Her story is preposterous. She had to have sex because she made a bad decision going to his room alone.
She HAD to have sex? Or he HAD to ask her to?
The woman is a PORN star.
32 posted on 3/25/2018, 6:44:56 PM by Williams (Stop tolerating the intolerant.)
How dare you! She’s a porn-again christian.
To: Bogie
I’m not buying a word she says.
So you don’t believe her?
She’s worried about her daughter?
So you DO believe her?
Maybe she should of(sic) thought of her daughter when she chose her career,
Her career wasn’t fucking The Darnold, as I recall. Nobody from the porn industry came up to her and threatened her family if she ever made another film.
I originally considered giving this post the sub-head, The Legal Docket. But given that it’s partially Trump related, I think Merry-Go-Round is more suitable. Trump’s legal woes do make me dizzy, and when I contemplate Stormy/Stephanie spanking him with a magazine with his face on the cover, I feel like puking. Somebody pass the barf bag. Please.
Let’s start with the funniest legal story of the week thus far.
The di Genova Fiasco: So Trumpy decided to hire Fox News legal big mouth, Joseph di Genova after seeing him on teevee. He *thought* he liked the cut of his jib, not that the Insult Comedian knows what a jib is. What could possibly go wrong? Everything.
The announcement was made *before* the president* met di Genova in person. What could possibly go wrong? Everything.
The senior administration official said the couple also looked disheveled when they came to meet with the president on Thursday, which helped convince Trump they weren’t the right fit for the team.
That trumped their obvious conflicts of interest. It’s always appearances with the Kaiser of Chaos. He hired Tillerson because he looked distinguished and Mattis because of his nickname, Mad Dog. The good news is that , unlike his boss, the general isn’t one.
So, Trump’s teeevee watching cost him his lead lawyer, John Dowd, and he’s still scrambling to find a decent replacement. We’ve come to a weird moment: no reputable lawyer wants to represent the Current Occupant. The reasons are manifold:
He’s known to stiff people who work for him.
Taking him on as a client would piss-off female partners at large law firms and hurt efforts to recruit women associates.
There’s an excellent chance that Trump would ask them to do something unethical and/or illegal in defending him. Who the hell wants to be disbarred because of an Insult Comedian with a dead nutria pelt atop his head?
Life’s too short to have a raging, gaping asshole as a client.
No wonder nobody wants to work for him, not even tribal GOPers like Ted Olson. Maybe Michael Cohen can help, uh, fix the Trump defense team. If they settle the Stormy/Stephanie case, maybe Michael Avenatti can rescue Trump’s leaky legal ship. #sarcasm
The Stevens Bombshell: You’ve all read or heard about retired Supreme John Paul Stevens’ op-ed piece in the Failing New York Times. Justice Stevens advocates repealing the Second Amendment. I’m certain that Stevens knows how difficult it is to repeal an amendment. I think he dropped this bombshell to get our attention and make us focus on the lunacy of the NRA/GOP’s absolutist position on guns in the post District Of Columbia vs. Heller world.
Stevens also wanted to remind us of conservative/Nixon appointed former Chief Justice Warren Burger’s view of the Second Amendment:
During the years when Warren Burger was our chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that amendment. When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
I’m glad Stevens has lobbed a hand grenade into the gun control/safety conversation. It’s also an excellent time to revisit his scathing dissent to Scalia’s fakakta majority opinion in Heller.
Let’s move on to another legal eagle op-ed in the FNYT. This piece comes from Duke Law Professor and former Clinton administration Solicitor General, Walter Dellinger.
Indict The Fucker Now, Try Him Later: Dellinger, of course didn’t refer to the president* as a fucker but I like to be direct. Dellinger was the lead government lawyer on the Clinton-Paula Jones case when the Justices ruled that a sitting president *could* be sued. He believes that the logic of the case applies to Trump:
In Clinton v. Jones the entire court agreed that the fact that a federal court’s exercising of its constitutional power to hear a case “may significantly burden the time and attention of the chief executive is not sufficient to establish a violation of the Constitution.” Mere indictment of a president would not meet the stringent standard in Clinton v. Jones for presidential immunity from ordinary legal processes.
Read the whole thing. It’s clear that current DOJ guidelines *only* bar trying a president while in office. An indictment is a whole ‘nother thing.
Repeat after me:Indict The Fucker Now, Try Him Later.
That concludes this brief ride aboard the Legal Merry-Go-Round, which is a term I prefer to carousel since it’s infinitely more evocative.
The last word goes to the Waterboys whose song, Room To Roam, has a merry-go-round feel to it. I hope it doesn’t make you dizzy.
The tweeter tube was wild before Anderson Cooper’s interview with Stormy Daniels aired. They were impatient with the Kansas-Duke overtime whereas I was thrilled to watch Coach Buy-A-Vowel suffer after screwing up at the end of regulation by not calling a time-out. Coach K struck out.
The hype over AC/Stormy was overwhelming. There was no way it could have lived up to expectations greater than Pip’s and it did not. I was underwhelmed by the hype. I hate hype and always view it with skepticism.
People were hoping that the Stormy/Stephanie interview would be the magic bullet that would slay the monster. It was not, unless that is, Michael Cohen is the monster you had in mind. CBS has reported Trump and his Fixer dined at the White House the night before the interview. Presumably, Cohen ate well-done steak and kissed Don Donaldo Il Insulto Comico’s ring as well as his copious rump. Cohen will continue to maintain his Don had nothing to with the hush money. Nobody will believe him. He’s the perfect patsy.
As to the interview itself, not much new news was made but Stormy/Stephanie was very impressive. She came off more like the madam in a Western than a stripper/porn actress. I’m not sure if she was more Joanie Stubbs in Deadwood or Miss Kitty in Gunsmoke:
Whatever she is, Stormy/Stephanie was impressive and, more importantly, credible. Her portrayal of Trump as a buffoonish blowhard rang true and she didn’t overstate. I suspect some people hoped that she’d denounce him as a monster and the worst president* ever but that would not have been as effective.
Trump comes off as pitiful. He’s definitely got the worst and creepiest pickup line of all-time: “You remind me of my daughter.” He deserved the spanking he got from her just for that line.
I admit to hoping that Stephanie/Stormy would show a bill from an abortion provider that was paid for by Donald Trump. The only new news was this description of the wise guy style threat she received in Vegas, baby:
Daniels said she was on her way to a fitness class with her infant daughter in Las Vegas when she was accosted in the parking lot.
“A guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.’ And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone,” she said.
This sounds like something Cohen would hire someone to do but he’s denied it and she, quite rightly, did not tie it to Trump’s Fixer. The Fixer’s lawyer sent a cease and desist letter to Stormy/Stephanie, which will be ignored. Along with flawed non-disclosure agreements, cease and desist letters are a dime-a-dozen in Trumpworld,
I’m not sure where this story goes next. Team Stormy was wise to put her on 60 Minutes, which shows that she’s not in it for a quick pay-off. I don’t think it’s going to cost Trump the support of the horny louts who comprise a slice of his base base. It’s part of the steady drip, drip, drip of scandal. It’s certainly easier for people to understand than Kremlingate. Up to now, the volume of scandals has helped Trump but in the long run, the fog of scandal may prove to be his undoing.
I’m pretty sure Trump identifies with the shark. The problem for him is that the real shark in this case is Team Stormy’s Michael Avenatti, not Michael Cohen who is a fixer, not a litigator. This brings to mind a classic lawyer joke:
Why won’t a shark attack a lawyer swimming in the ocean?
Professional courtesy.
For the better part of the last month, Donald Trump has been winging it. His standoff with his chief of staff, John Kelly, appears to be resolved for the time being, with Trump having decided to return to the seat-of-the-pants decision-making that he believes won him the presidency. That doesn’t mean he has fully given up the idea of firing Kelly, though. One outside adviser to the White House said Trump has recently mulled the concept of creating a new West Wing structure without a chief of staff, one that would instead have four co-equal principals reporting directly to him. Trump seems to be loving his new freedom. “He was fucking excited and jubilant,” said one Trump friend who spoke to him in recent days. “He was like, everything’s great and these fuckers in the media are beside themselves.”
Everything’s great? Who knew? I certainly didn’t. This is what happens when the dumbest guy in the room thinks he the smartest.
All presidents live inside a bubble but for Trumpy to think everything’s great as the Mueller probe closes in, Stephanie/Stormy is slated to appear on 60 Minutes on Sunday, and he maniacally fires people is crazy even for him. The March madness mantra at the White House is let Trump be Trump.
John Dowd is out as Trump’s personal lawyer to be replaced by a married pair of Fox News contributors and the possible return of Marc Kasowitz. It’s the legal equivalent of going to the mattresses and preparing for a PR war against the Special Counsel and his crack team. In contrast, Trump’s team is full of crackpots. Believe me.
I’ll miss mocking Dowdy, which is why I’m posting this Separated at Birth-style tweet:
There’s nothing funny about Thursday’s other big news. The McMaster baiting finally ended and he was fired. His replacement is the war monger’s war monger, John Bolton. Trump purportedly decided not to give Bolton a job before this because he didn’t like his mustache. I am not making any of this up. I wish I were, but March madness is in the air.
The Bolton appointment is a reminder of how bad the Bush Junior administration was. Bolton and his mustache came to public prominence during the Beavis-Duce years. He was unconfirmable as UN ambassador and was given a recess appointment. At the UN, he alienated friends, poured gasoline on fires, and made Dick Cheney look like a peacenik.
Bolton has inverted the Churchillian aphorism to “better war, war, war than jaw, jaw, jaw.” He makes John McCain look like George McGovern.
Long-time readers know that I’m usually a glass half full kind of guy. The Bolton appointment makes that well-nigh impossible. Bolton never met a war that he didn’t like or a treaty that he didn’t want to tear up. The Iran nuclear deal is dead and war with Iran is more than just Bibi Netanyahu’s wet dream. It’s a possibility.
The Trump presidency* seems to have reached its Hitler in the bunker moment. It’s March madness on the Potomac writ large. The ascendancy of Bolton and Pompeo means that the country is fucked unless Trump decides to ignore their advice in the same way he’s ignored the so-called national security “grown-ups.” That means we’re subject to the whims of the Kaiser of Chaos, which is not a place any of us wants to be.
The last word goes to the usually calm national security/foreign policy writer Fred Kaplan:
It's time to panic now. John Bolton's rise to power puts us on a path to war–and, since Trump appointed him while knowing his views, it means Trump wants to be on that path. My @Slate column: https://t.co/7Rv7Gn5mVS
There’s something about Surrealist art that fits our moment in time. Surrealism came of age during the 1920’s and ’30’s in Europe. They were crazy times with rampant political instability after what one historian called TheFall of Eagles, I’d call it the overthrow of stupid hereditary monarchies who lost the Great War. Of course, what followed was worse: Nazism in Germany and Bolshevism in Russia. Things can always get worse, y’all. They can also get better. It’s why I’m a political surrealist nowadays. It’s a survival tactic.
Surrealism was not an overtly political movement: there were right-wing surrealists-Dali and di Chirico-and left-wing surrealists such as Max Ernst who came to America as a political refugee from Nazi Germany. That’s a long-winded explanation for why I’ve used an Ernst collage as the featured art for this feature in the past, and today am using a Magritte painting that I’ve nicknamed the Dumbbell Caveman, which is perfect for the Current Occupant. Believe me.
I should apologize for going down that rabbit hole but I enjoyed it too much to grovel in the gravel as it were. Or was it a Bungle In The Jungle? Now that we’ve reached daylight, let’s get on with it. We begin by kinda sorta explaining the post title.
Carrey On, Wayward Son: I’ll explain the plural “sons” in the next segment. Jim Carrey won the tweeter tube this week. The boneless comedian turns out to be a pretty good artist: human toon as cartoonist. His caricature of dread White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, raised some hackles on the right:
This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous! pic.twitter.com/MeYLTy1pqb
Carrey captured Huck’s horrible spawn’s inner ugliness quite well. Wingnuts and the flying monkeys of the right were not amused. Fuck them sideways, they’re the ones who are forever commenting on people’s appearances.
It’s a pity that the body politic can’t melt its way out of this mess. Alas, Trumpy still has the ruby slippers on or, in his case, the overlong red tie. I guess Fred Trump was too busy practicing housing discrimination to teach Donald how to tie a necktie. Dude, it’s way too long and points at your teeny tiny weenie. Not a good look.
Before ending this segment, let’s take a trip to Kansas:
I always thought the title of this tune was Carry On My Wayward Son. My, my, my. Unlike the Insult Comedian, I learn something new every day. My, my, my.
It’s time to explain the plural “sons” in the post title, as if anyone but me gives a shit. Hint: it involves the Biden-Trump mishigas. They’re the wayward sons in question. My, my, my.
Septuagenarian Smackdown: The president* was in full-tilt WWE wrestling villain mode this morning in response to comments by former Veep Joe Biden:
Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me, for the second time, with physical assault. He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Don’t threaten people Joe!
Mr. Biden, speaking at a University of Miami rally to combat sexual assault, said, “A guy who ended up becoming our national leader said, ‘I can grab a woman anywhere and she likes it,’ ” according to an Associated Press report. Mr. Biden was referring to an Access Hollywood audio recording in which Mr. Trump is heard boasting about kissing and groping women without their consent. Mr. Biden continued, “If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”
The back-and-forth blustering between two men in their 70s comes a day after Mr. Trump criticized two of his predecessors, Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, for not being able to improve relations with Russia. And Mr. Trump is facing revived sexual misconduct accusations after a New York state judge ruled that a defamation lawsuit from a woman who has said Mr. Trump made unwanted sexual advances could go forward.
Remember when the right-wing media called Barack Obama’s tan summer suit unpresidential? Not only is this tirade unpresidential, it’s straight out of Dumb and Dumber or is that Stupid and Stupider?
It’s not exactly presidential for Joey the Shark to talk about opening a can of whoop ass on Trumpy but he’s *our* grumpy old man. I guess that makes him Jack Lemmon. That means Walter Matthau is Trump. I’d like to apologize to the late actor’s family for that analogy. Perhaps I can make up for that by re-posting this image from The Sunshine Boys:
Speaking of unvicepresidential, this 1976 picture of Nelson Rockefeller still floats my boat:
I believe the MSM referred to this as an “untoward gesture.” Rocky was flipping off right-wing hecklers. And now we have a cartoon villain for president* who panders to the folks who hated his fellow wealthy New Yorker. Oy, just oy.
Let’s circle back to my wee essay on Surrealist artists and give Paul Simon, Rene and Georgette Magritte and their dog the last word:
I’ve considered starting a regular feature: the scandal of the week. The problem with that notion is that it’s more like the scandal of the day, hour, or second. There are so many Trump administration* scandals, that my head is spinning like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist:
We’ll skip the projectile vomiting GIF even though Team Trump makes me wanna hurl.
One of the funnier minor scandals is brain-dead retired brain surgeon Dr. Ben Carson’s $31K table at HUD. He’s acting like a character in a sitcom and blaming his wife. You cannot make this shit up, y’all.
This tweet from a Herriman biographer and Laissez Boy Michael Tisserand sums it up:
Of course, Ralph Kramden was smarter than Ben Carson. I’ve decided Dr. Ben is a surgical savant. The man is a blithering idiot in the rest of life. He should heed my advice in this post from 2015: Brain Surgeon, Heal Thyself. I lied about the advice thing. I mocked him relentlessly in that piece. Trumper mendacity appears to be contagious.
Looks like I got sidetracked by what is best described as a brain surgeon fart. The focus of this post is *supposed* to be the two scandals that are consuming the president*: Kremlingate and the Stephanie Clifford Shitstormy. You can tell that Trumpy has retreated to the panic room of his mind when he attacks Hillary Clinton and tweets WITCH HUNT, WITCH HUNT. Insult Comedian meet Kaiser of Chaos.
Trump knows from witch hunters, his mentor the dread, as well as dead, Roy Cohn was Tailgunner Joe McCarthy’s sidekick. Cohn may have been an evil asshole but he was an excellent lawyer as opposed to the misfits, has-beens, never-wases, and wannabes Trump has assembled. There’s been tremendous turmoil and tumult on Trump’s legal team: they’re playing T-Ball while Team Mueller is playing hardball. It’s been hilarious to watch Dowdy, the Mustache Man, and company bumble. Making matters worse, Trump has added Fox News conspiracy theorist Joseph diGenova to the team; mostly because he saw him lying on Fox and Friends or some such shit. Shit meet storm.
In the Stormy Daniels case, Trump’s mouthy fixer, Michael Cohen, is up against a superb lawyer, Michael Avenatti. Cohen and his idiot client have stumbled into every trap laid by the cunning Avenatti. The non-disclosure agreement was supposed to keep Trump out of it by calling him David Dennison: chili magnet. Instead, Trumpy filed a massive counter-suit thereby outing himself. Dumbass.
Like Putin, Stormy/Stephanie must have some serious dirt on Trump or he wouldn’t be fighting back so hard. We all know that the overgrown, brain addled frat boys who make up much of Trump’s base envy his affairs with porn stars and Playboy playmates. My hunch is that he’s one of those rich guys who’s submissive and likes his bum bashed. That would not go down well with his debased base who mysteriously think this whiny baby man is a stud. Once again, weak lawyering makes Trump’s situation worse: Michael Cohen is a fixer, not a litigator. He’s in quite a fix right now.
The Stormy/Stephanie shit storm is a mere sideshow to the main event: Kremlingate. Trump is thrashing about, threatening people, and acting like a methy teenager. For the moment, he seems to have abandoned the “be nice to the wolf at your door” approach preferred by Cobby and Dowdy. That does not mean he plans to fire Bobby Three Sticks. Plan is a word that is not in the Insult Comedian’s vocabulary. Anyone who tells you that the Kaiser of Chaos is either going to fire or not fire Mueller is talking through their hat as a character in a Thirties Warner Brothers film would surely say at this pont. Nobody knows. Deranged people are unpredictable. He’s likely to do anything. Right now, he’s dangerous because he’s cornered. I have studied this president* very closely and cannot say for certain what will happen next. Believe me.
We had something confirmed last week with the firing of Andrew McCabe. In addition to liking blondes with big boobs, Donald Trump is a sadist and Jeff Sessions is a weakling. Firing McCabe at 10PM right before he planned to retire is an act of petty vengeance that will backfire. It’s called witness tampering and it’s something that Roy Cohn and your basic mob lawyers are adept at. Cohn would not have done it openly and never would have bragged about it on twitter. Of course, he died in 1986 but maybe they have social media in hell.
The Congressional Republican leadership continues to pretend all is well and that Trumpy is normal and worthy of defending. If the president* were not guilty, he would not be trying to derail the Mueller investigation both publicly and privately. He’s acting guilty because he is. The good news is that his efforts are clumsy and stupid. The bad news is that this criminal was elected at all.
Watching scandals collide is not pretty. It’s what Gret Stet Senator John Neely Kennedy would call “as ugly as boiled sin.” Stay tuned. The worst is yet to come.
First of all, I know that tea is slang for gossip, I watch, to my everlasting shame, the Real Housewives of Atlanta, after all. I’m seeking to expand the word’s meaning to include advice. Anybody buying that? I just want to fit it into my running Tea for the Tillerson joke.
Second, I’d like to thank my colleague and fellow Gret Steter Michael F for letting me use his image. I’m the world’s worst photoshopper so I gave it up in favor of memes years ago.
Michael and I discussed the irony of having *any* sympathy for the former Exxon-Mobil CEO. It’s the whole “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” thing writ large. I don’t have a lot of sympathy, just enough to fit into an album cover sized teacup.
Here’s my unsolicited advice for Rex: spill all the tea you have on Trumpy and spill it loud, proud, and immediately. You’re richer than God so you don’t have to wait to put it in a book: DO IT NOW. It’s a way to restore your good name post Rexit. Burn it down.
Think about it, Rex: before your trip to Trumplandia, the headline on your obit would have been “Former Exxon-Mobil CEO dies.” Right now it would be “Weak Secretary of State fired by President he called a fucking moron dies.” Is that how you want to be remembered? Another dutiful lamb to the Trump slaughter? The latest dignity wraith humiliated? What more can the fucker do to you? He’s already destroyed your reputation, so it’s time to fight back. Do the Sunday shows and fry the unfit fucker. It’s your patriotic duty, and it would be fun to burn it down. Make Rexit matter.
