Trump 17: James Comey and the Goblin of "You're Fired"

[sawasdee]

@47of74And Chaffetz signed it!

On another subject, I think US politics started to go to hell in a handbasket when the 'Fairness Doctrine' of tv news reporting - in force since 1949 -  was repealed in 1989. Reagan enforced the repeal.

This basically allowed opinion to be reported as news, and jettisoned the previous doctrine of of equal time for opposing views.

This allowed outgrowths like Fox, Breitbart, Infowars etc to report not only onesidedly, but also their particular viewpoint as judgment as to what was in the news - and what news to report.

To say this has influenced eledctions is to understate it.

[JMarie]

One thing I don't understand:  Comey asking Trump if he could stay on as FBI director.  I thought the director job is a ten year term, and is independent of presidential appointments.  Wouldn't Comey have been secure in his job?

[sawasdee]

@fraurosenaIf Comey doesn't testify, he loses all credibility as an impartial observer. He also betrays both his agency and his country if he doesn't shed light on what is happening - whether it be a storm about nothing, or a bushfire.

ETA I've just worked out why I am so engaged and so upset about the Tangerine Toddler. I don't want to live in a world where Russia and China are the unopposed dominants - which is where he is heading us.

Neither has any regard for the rule of law or human rights. Both stifle any opposition. Both are totalitarian. And he is in the process of handing it all over to them by completely disrupting the US, so internal fears overwhelm the larger picture. When you are busy defending the Constitution - which you must - what's happening elsewhere is allowed to slide by.

G-d help us.

[GreyhoundFan]

2 hours ago, sawasdee said:

If tRump really does have tapes of Comey, they fall under the Presidential Records Act of 1978 - and must be preserved, unless the US archivist agrees to deletion. It applies to all presidential records, whether written, taped, electronic or digital.

This was a protection put in after the notorious Nixon '18 minutes' deletion, and renewed by Obama. It has been ignored in the past: GW deleted over 22 million emails as he left office (makes Hillary's 30,000 look like an amateur).  But someone should be asking about this now - even though there is a five year block on release. The preservation of these records is in the remit of the archivist - a civil servant - and ONLY THEY may legally delete them. If it is done by anyone else, it is a crime.

ETA Don't you think, after 8 Congressional and 1 FBI investigations have found nothing illegal, that most Americans are bored rigid by 'But Hillary's emails'....

 

But, @sawasdee, you are operating under the belief that Agent Orange obeys the law. He thinks that, especially as presidunce, he is above the law.  And, since the weasels in charge of the DOH party in congress won't hold him accountable, sadly, at this point, he is right. I just keep hoping and praying that the dam breaks loose and washes all these idiots down the drain.

 

 

1 hour ago, JMarie said:

One thing I don't understand:  Comey asking Trump if he could stay on as FBI director.  I thought the director job is a ten year term, and is independent of presidential appointments.  Wouldn't Comey have been secure in his job?

The Director of the FBI serves a 10 year term (with a one term limit after Watergate), but it's at the pleasure of the president, so he can be let go at any time by the president.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump has a long history of secretly recording calls, according to former associates"

Quote

Throughout Donald Trump’s business career, some executives who came to work for him were taken aside by colleagues and warned to assume that their discussions with the boss were being recorded.

“There was never any sense with Donald of the phone being used for private conversation,” said John O’Donnell, who was president of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in the 1980s.

For O’Donnell and others who have had regular dealings with Trump through the years, there was something viscerally real about the threat implied by the president’s tweet Friday morning warning that fired FBI director James B. Comey “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

“Talking on the phone with Donald was a public experience,” said O’Donnell, author of a book about his former boss, “Trumped: The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump.” “You never knew who else was listening.”

...

“The president has nothing further to add on that,” Spicer said three times. He refused to say whether the White House still has an active taping system.

It has for most of the past 70 years. In the popular imagination, White House taping started and ended with President Richard M. Nixon’s incriminating recordings of his plotting to cover up the Watergate burglary and other crimes. Nixon’s presidency was ultimately undone in 1974 by the revelation of Oval Office recordings.

But tape recording has been an important and aboveboard part of presidential procedure since a voice-recording system was first installed under President Franklin D. Roosevelt to capture the content of news conferences. The recording mechanism was disabled under Dwight Eisenhower and reinstalled by John F. Kennedy, who recorded Oval Office conversations with hidden microphones, securing intimate exchanges about the Cuban missile crisis and other signal moments of those years. Oval Office recordings of Lyndon B. Johnson’s colorful, cursing chatter and Nixon’s dark scheming have entertained and appalled generations of history students.

More recently, the White House did not have recording devices automatically taping Barack Obama’s phone calls or private meetings, according to a former Homeland Security official familiar with White House security and audio countermeasures. The source said it was unlikely that the Trump administration has changed this, but verbatim records of some private presidential meetings and phone conversations are nonetheless kept in two ways.

The White House Communications Agency, a military office that works with the Secret Service to assure secure communications for the president, video-records some closed presidential meetings and events. And the president’s phone calls have been transmitted since 2011 using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), an Internet technology that sends voice messages as packets of digitized data. The technology allows for retrieval of a text record of presidential conversations.

Trump may have been referring to that technology when he put the word “tapes” between quotation marks in his tweet. The president has sharply criticized people who take literally the words he surrounds with quotation marks in his tweets. When Trump accused Obama of “wire tapping” his Trump Tower office, Spicer said that the president’s use of air quotes implied that he was talking about “a whole host of surveillance types of options.”

...

A post-Watergate reform measure, the Presidential Records Act of 1978, requires presidents to preserve and archive recordings made in the White House. The act is built on the 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision that led to Nixon’s resignation. The justices unanimously ruled that the president could not claim “executive privilege” against a subpoena seeking audiotapes made in the Oval Office.

Trump’s warning tweet to Comey appeared to be a response to a New York Times report that said Trump had twice asked the FBI director at a White House dinner for the two men if he would promise the president his loyalty. Comey reportedly said that he would offer the president only his honesty.

Trump’s fascination with recording his conversations reaches back to the early years of his real estate career, when he installed in his 26th-story office in Trump Tower a “system for surreptitiously tape recording business meetings,” according to an eyewitness account in Harry Hurt’s 1993 biography, “Lost Tycoon.” And BuzzFeed News reported last year that Trump listened in on calls made by staff at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Trump sometimes informed reporters who were interviewing him by phone that he was recording their conversation.

“By the way, you don’t mind that I’m taping this conversation?” Trump asked a Washington Post reporter last spring.

“No, we’re taping it as well,” the reporter replied. “That’s fine.”

“Okay, good,” Trump said. “And so we are all on this, because I’m taping it also.”

Through the decades, Trump’s top secretaries, Norma Foerderer and Rhona Graff, were upfront about the fact that they listened in on conversations taking place in Trump’s office.

Last May, as three Washington Post reporters interviewed Trump by phone about his finances, Trump pushed back against a question regarding his use of the pseudonym “John Miller” when he talked to some reporters in the 1980s.

Suddenly, the line went dead. The Post reporters called back and reached Graff, Trump’s executive assistant.

“Yeah, I heard you got disconnected,” Graff said. “I heard some of it, though. Boy, those were really negative questions. Do you have any good questions to ask him?”

...

Visitors to Trump’s office have often recounted moments that indicated that someone outside the office was listening to their conversations.

Last spring, when two Post reporters visited Trump in his office for another interview, Trump, in the middle of telling a story about how he demolished the Manhattan landmark that had stood where Trump Tower is now, asked his guests if they would like something to drink.

In the same quiet voice in which he’d been conducting the interview, Trump said, “Okay, two waters and a Coke.” The interview resumed and less than a minute later, a secretary walked in with the drinks. No one other than the reporters and Trump had been in the office. And Trump never signaled the drink request to anyone outside the office.

Yeah, pretty much what I'd expect

[GreyhoundFan]

"Acting FBI director McCabe, Sen. John Cornyn among four who will interview for FBI director job"

Quote

Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), the second-ranking Senate Republican who has in recent weeks become a more outward defender of President Trump, and acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, who on Thursday contradicted the Trump White House on a range of topics, will interview Saturday to serve as the FBI’s permanent director, according to people familiar with the matter.

The men are two of at least four people who will interview to replace James B. Comey, whom Trump suddenly fired earlier this week, the people said.

The others are Alice Fisher, a white-collar defense lawyer who previously led the Justice Department’s criminal division, and Michael J. Garcia, a judge on the New York State Court of Appeals who previously served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

All four will be interviewed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the two top officials in the Justice Department.

The list is not a comprehensive accounting of finalists for the FBI director positions. It is possible other candidates could be considered, officials said, and the ultimate decision falls to Trump. Justice Department officials also have interviewed four other candidates to serve as interim FBI director, though it is possible McCabe could stay on in that role if he were not selected for the permanent job.

The job also requires Senate confirmation. Whoever is selected is appointed to a 10-year term, though they can be removed by the president.

...

Cornyn, 65, is a former Texas attorney general and state supreme court justice and is serving his third term in the Senate. He serves as Senate majority whip, making him the second-ranking Republican in the chamber. But GOP senators set term limits for leadership posts and his ends at the start of 2019.

Cornyn is not expected to challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is not term-limited and is widely respected among Republican senators. That means Cornyn is on the verge of hitting a professional ceiling, so the 10-year term of FBI director might be a logical next move.

If Cornyn were selected, there likely would be Democratic concern about handing over the nation’s premier law enforcement agency to a Republican who — despite being considered an affable senator — has served as a prominent partisan attack dog.

Cornyn has in recent weeks become more of an outward defender of Trump. Earlier this week, he dismissed the idea that Trump fired Comey to impede the FBI’s Russia probe, terming it a “phony narrative.”

“If you assume that, this strikes me as a lousy way to do it,” he said. “All it does is heighten the attention given to the issue.”

The senator’s confirmation would be assured because of Democratic rules changes in 2013 that only require a simple majority. But Democratic strategists have already put senators on notice they would hold their feet to the fire in voting against Cornyn.

...

Cornyn was scheduled to deliver the commencement address Saturday at Texas Southern University in Houston, but university officials on Friday canceled his appearance at the historically black college after a petition signed by hundreds of students protested his appearance.

The university said it asked Cornyn to visit at a later date. The senator’s office said Friday that he respected the decision and looked forward to visiting in the future.

McCabe, who had been the FBI deputy director before Comey was fired, might be a more palatable choice for Democrats. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday, he heaped praise on his former boss and did not hesitate to rebut narratives advanced by the White House, including its attempt to minimize the Russia probe. He is a longtime FBI agent who led the Washington Field Office before he was elevated to the bureau’s No. 2 post in 2016.

Through an FBI spokesman, he declined to comment.

Fisher and Garcia are both alumni of the George W. Bush administration. Garcia served as assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and as the U.S. attorney for the Souther District of New York, where he led the investigation into a prostitution ring that ultimately forced New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to resign.

Fisher served as an assistant attorney general, and, if selected, would be the first woman to run the FBI.

Efforts to reach both of them were not successful Friday night.

I wonder how many more names will be floated.

[GreyhoundFan]

YES! "Trump’s top aides must go"

Quote

Are you searching for a common thread for all the craziness emanating from President Trump’s White House during the past week? To review:

On Monday, the American people received the stunning disclosure that on Jan. 26, acting attorney general Sally Yates warned White House Counsel Donald McGahn that national security adviser Michael Flynn had been seriously compromised by his communications with the Russian ambassador and subsequent lies about those communications.

Armed with that information, the president, the White House counsel and the White House chief of staff did precisely nothing. They permitted Flynn continued access to the most sensitive operations and highly classified information possessed by the U.S. government. They allowed Flynn to staff the executive branch and listen in on his first official call with Vladimir Putin. More than two weeks after Yates’s meeting with McGahn, the president continued to deny knowledge of Flynn’s deceit.

On Tuesday, Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey with the laughable excuse that he had lost confidence in Comey because of his gross mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. The firing of the FBI director was done so hastily that he received his pink slip via cable news.

On Wednesday, the vice president and a slew of top White House aides went out and forcefully and consistently told the American people that the firing had nothing to do with the Russia investigation and was the result of the recommendation of the deputy attorney general, who believed agents in the bureau and the American people had lost faith in Comey.

On Thursday, Trump threw his vice president and key aides under the bus by admitting that their explanation of the firing was a lie, but added in a tweet the next day that you can’t hold anyone in the Trump White House responsible for misinformation because so much is being done by a “very active president.”

On Friday, in a crazy tweet rant, Trump tried to intimidate the former FBI director by saying that Comey had better hope there were no tapes of their conversations.

The common thread here, besides a president with exactly zero impulse control, involves senior White House aides checking their judgment at the door and indulging the president’s impulses. The job of senior White House officials is not to bend to the president’s whim, but to protect the Office of the President of the United States. Failure upon failure to carry out that obligation can no longer be tolerated.

...

This is a White House, starting with the president but including his top aides, that collectively has an utter disregard for leveling with the American people. When former White House press secretary Scott McClellan lamented about the Valerie Plame affair in his memoir, writing, “I had unknowingly passed along false information and five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so,” it was viewed as an aberration in the George W. Bush White House. In the Trump White House, high-level subornation of deceit is an everyday occurrence.

Yet rather than building a team of professionals who can check the president’s impulsive behavior and worst instincts, the president has surrounded himself with a squad of enablers. There are talented individuals working at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, such as National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and his deputy, Dina Powell. But too many key roles are filled by people whose talent seems to be damage enhancement rather than damage control.

The combination of the mismanagement of the Flynn episode, the disastrous oversight of conflicts of interests in the White House, and the summary dismissal of Comey while he was in the middle of overseeing the Russia investigation have, to use Yates’s words, “created a compromise situation” for Trump’s top aides, including McGahn and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. It is time not only for McGahn and Priebus to go, but also for a clean sweep of White House officials who cannot say no to the president. Speaking truth to power must begin with a commitment to the truth and not to convenient “alternative facts.”

As for the president himself, his credibility has long ago been shredded. But Trump’s decision to fire Comey in the wake of the director’s request for more resources to investigate the Russian connection has cast a dark cloud over the rule of law and the administration of justice in our country. The need could not be clearer for a special counsel to investigate Russia’s interference in our election, possible collusion by the Trump campaign, and Trump’s ongoing attempts to interfere in the investigation.

Sadly, not going to happen. Presidunce Cheeto only wants sycophants around him.

[GreyhoundFan]

"A theory: Trump fired Comey because he’s taller"

Quote

Facts aren’t facts; truth isn’t true; reality isn’t real.

This is where we are.

It’s no wonder that “Orwellian” is the most widely used adjective derived from the name of a writer. We are living in the most surreal of times.

But Orwell’s days may be numbered as “Trumpian” has swiftly emerged to describe the president’s apparent intent to de-fictionalize Orwell’s dystopian vision. Either that, or he’s just plain addled. Or, it must be considered, the alien being that has inhabited the former Donald Trump’s body has been slow to absorb the intricacies and nuances of the spoken word.

Trump’s daily scrimmages with the English language make Bushisms seem like “Bartlett’s Best.” When not syntactically challenged, they’re jaw-droppingly mystifying. What possibly could Trump have intended when he suggested to NBC’s Lester Holt that he doesn’t know for sure if there’s an FBI investigation into “this Russia thing”? So the president doesn’t believe what every intelligence agency has said and what he has personally been told in briefings?

Choosing one’s truth is the essence of Trumpian logic. But the emanations from the White House can no longer be dismissed as mere incompetence. Something is very wrong at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Inside the Oval Office’s golden walls, where even flies dare not land, democracy rocks perilously between the forces of light and darkness.

How perfectly evocative one recent night when press secretary Sean Spicer huddled with staffers behind a bush after news broke of FBI Director James B. Comey’s firing. The beleaguered Spicer finally agreed to come out and speak to the gathered media, but only if they extinguished their lights.

“Democracy Dies in Darkness,” reads the Washington Post banner, seeming ever more apt by the day.

So what are we to make of Trump’s constantly shifting facts and truths? Is he lying? Pretending? Or is he so certain of America’s abbreviated attention span and willing self-delusion that he can speak nonsense with the same impunity as when he claimed he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his base wouldn’t care?

Or is it just possible that his campaign really is guilty of collusion with Russia? Does Vladimir Putin have something on the American president? There may, indeed, be nothing, as Trump insists, but the president goes out of his way to appear guilty. How difficult is it to say why he fired Comey? The variety of explanations over a matter of days was obviously a flailing for justification. Trying to track them felt like trying to solve a maze where the cheese keeps moving.

First, it was Comey’s handling of Hillary Clinton’s email investigation. Next it was the Justice Department’s recommendation. Then it was neither. Trump was always thinking about firing Comey, he himself said. (Note to staffers: Trump is always thinking about firing everyone.)

The latest to slip Trump’s tongue was that Comey was a “showboat ,” which the showboat in chief would see as competition. Also, Comey had lost the confidence of the bureau, said Trump, despite FBI testimony to the contrary. Finally, Comey wasn’t good at his job, which would be a rational basis, if only he’d thought of it sooner. Most agree that Comey exercised poor judgment in issuing Clinton investigation updates that could have affected the election outcome.

Several months forward, however, what could have prompted Trump to take action? In a Trumpian world, stalled somewhere between second grade and a prep school locker room, even the ridiculous seems plausible. So, let’s try a wild one: Maybe Trump fired Comey for being taller, at 6 feet, 8 inches. In light of his infatuation with size, one can easily imagine that a 6-foot-3-inch Trump would resent having to look up to the guy who was investigating possible collusion between his campaign and Russia.

In the adult world, however, the eye tends to land on other likelihoods, as in Comey’s Trump campaign/Russia investigation, his recent request for more resources for the investigation, his denial of Trump’s claim that President Barack Obama had wiretapped his office and his refusal during a dinner with Trump to pledge loyalty.

Trump disputes all of the above, surprising no one.

...

Yeah, sadly, I can see that. I didn't realize Comey is so tall.

[AuntK]

How much longer will the Republicans in Congress allow this shitshow to go on? Trump and the Kushners are selling this country to the Russians and the Chinese, blatantly obstructing justice right and left, damaging this country's standing in the international community, jeopardizing our national security, enriching themselves at the expense of U.S. taxpayers, damaging our natural environment and resources, and may eventually plunge this country into the WORST recession in history. Or, even more frightening, plunge us into the last war of humankind.

What is it going to take? Haven't they seen enough already?

 And on another note - Can you imagine this traveling circus visiting Great Britain, as they have planned to do in the coming months? This glorified huckster and his posse visiting Her Majesty, the Queen? I'm embarrassed for my country!

Oh geez - they just said "shitshow"  on MSNBC! Oopsie!  LOL! I needed that!

26 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"A theory: Trump fired Comey because he’s taller"

Yeah, sadly, I can see that. I didn't realize Comey is so tall.

And I have read that Trump is not actually 6'3", although he claims to be. And, not surprisingly, he is very sensitive about his height (and weight).  He is, after all, almost 71 so he has probably lost some height, if he was even that tall to begin with.

[onekidanddone]

10 hours ago, JMO said:

This gave me a juvenile laugh:

http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/05/president-donald-trump-demands-two-scoops-of-ice-cream-with-dessert.html

 

"The waiters know well Trump’s personal preferences. As he settles down, they bring him a Diet Coke, while the rest of us are served water, with the Vice President sitting at one end of the table. With the salad course, Trump is served what appears to be Thousand Island dressing instead of the creamy vinaigrette for his guests. When the chicken arrives, he is the only one given an extra dish of sauce. At the dessert course, he gets two scoops of vanilla ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, instead of the single scoop for everyone else. The tastes of Pence are also tended to. Instead of the pie, he gets a fruit plate."

To say he acts like a four year old is an insult to small children everywhere.

[FloraKitty35]

On 5/10/2017 at 6:30 PM, 47of74 said:

That's why I don't watching news all that much because I'd probably wind up putting my fist through the TV or throwing my TV out the window listening to these fuckheads speak.

I understand where you're coming from, watching these assholes makes me want shoot my TV,

[JMarie]

Looks like Melania and Barron really are moving to D. C.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/12/report-barron-trump-to-attend-st-andrew-s-episcopal-in-marylan/22084335/

 

[47of74]

25 minutes ago, FloraKitty35 said:

I understand where you're coming from, watching these assholes makes me want shoot my TV,

Along with chucking my laptop out the window and seeing what happens when it hits the ground.  Of course I don't feel like shelling a couple grand for a new MacBook Pro, even though it would have the cool touch bar.

[JMarie]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/is-trump-unfit-to-serve-this-congressman-has-a-bill-for-that/ar-BBB4x1v?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp

Quote

In the nearly four months since President Trump took office, many Democrats have questioned his ability to run the country. But only Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) has authored legislation to address those concerns.

His bill, called the “Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity Act” would invoke a never-before-used part of the 25th Amendment to determine if the president is capable of doing his job.

Raskin, a constitutional law professor, said he started thinking about the bill as soon as he was elected to his first term in November. He said the issue has become increasingly relevant as constituents in his liberal Montgomery County district clamor for action in the Trump administration’s bumpy first months.

“This is a president who has insisted that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and that Barack Obama was born in Indonesia and he has uttered blatant lies and never retracted them,” Raskin said in an interview Friday. “And that is a sign of a serious mental disturbance.”

White House spokesman Michael Short declined to comment on Raskin’s bill, saying in an email that he was “not going to dignify this with an official response.”

Raskin quietly filed the bill in early April, but alerted reporters to it on Friday, hours after Trump, in a tweet, implied to fired FBI Director James B. Comey that he had “tapes” of their private conversations.

“This is a president who seems increasingly at odds with everyone and everything around him,” said Raskin, who skipped Trump’s inauguration.

In the GOP-controlled House and Senate, the bill has little chance of passing or getting a hearing, but Raskin said he filed the bill to put a framework in place in case Trump’s party turns on him.

The bill has 20 Democratic co-sponsors, including Rep. Anthony Brown (Md.) and, the District’s nonvoting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and no Republicans.

Rep. Andy Harris, the only Republican representing Maryland in Congress, called the bill a cheap shot at Trump.

“To properly evaluate someone’s mental and physical health requires years of schooling, and it is an insult to the entire medical profession to assume that unqualified, agenda-pushing, partisan politicians would be able to make such a critical professional judgment,” said Harris, an anesthesiologist who specializes in obstetrics. “This legislation is a thinly veiled attempt by Democrats to undermine a legislative agenda they disagree with.”

Parts of the 25th amendment that provide for temporary transfer of power from the president to the vice president have been invoked when Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush underwent surgery.

But Raskin’s bill would activate Section 4 of the 25th amendment to create an independent, nonpartisan commission to determine if the president is physically or psychologically unfit for office.

Once created, the 11-member commission would be permanent. But it would not have roving power to diagnose the president. Congress would have to pass a resolution empowering the commission to examine the president and his conduct and report back its findings. If the president were found to be incapacitated, the vice president would immediately become acting president.

Under Raskin’s bill, the speaker of the House, House minority leader, Senate majority leader, and Senate minority leader would each select one physician and one psychiatrist to serve on the commission. The Republican and Democratic parties would each select a retired statesperson. And those 10 appointees would choose an 11th member to lead the commission.

“It certainly doesn’t feel like the ship is on an even course right now,” Raskin said. “We are careening all over the place.”

If the Republicans can go nuclear and get Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, the Democrats can also use obscure rules, right?

[47of74]

Here's a real douche cannon fuck nugget Branch Trumpviidian;\

heavy.com/news/2017/05/alex-alexander-jennes-downing-south-padre-texas-anti-muslim-video-mugshot-trump-racist/

Quote

A drunken 35-year-old Trump supporter went on a vicious and vulgar tirade against a Muslim family at a South Padre Island, Texas, beach earlier this month, but was left crying in his mugshot after being arrested on a public intoxication charge.

Alexander Jennes Downing, of Waterford, Connecticut, shouted at the family, “Donald Trump will stop you,” during the May 3 incident, which was recorded by 19-year-old Noria Alward, and posted to Youtube.

South Padre Island Police told KVEO-TV officers responded to a disturbance at the Pearl Resort and found Downing “intoxicated in a public place and was a danger to himself and others.”

Downing has previously lived in New Hampshire, Florida and Spring, Texas, and has been arrested several times since 2003, court records show.

And as the article goes on to show, he's quite the fucking loser too.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

2 hours ago, AuntK said:

snip

 And on another note - Can you imagine this traveling circus visiting Great Britain, as they have planned to do in the coming months? This glorified huckster and his posse visiting Her Majesty, the Queen? I'm embarrassed for my country!

Oh geez - they just said "shitshow"  on MSNBC! Oopsie!  LOL! I needed that!

And I have read that Trump is not actually 6'3", although he claims to be. And, not surprisingly, he is very sensitive about his height (and weight).  He is, after all, almost 71 so he has probably lost some height, if he was even that tall to begin with.

I shudder to think of the drumpvidian circus hitting Great Britain. It's not fair that the Brits have to be subjected to him. He'll probably pitch a hissy fit if The Queen doesn't let him have his normal junk food instead of the lovely meal I'm sure they will serve.

I have little doubt that he wears lifts in his shoes. He wants to tower over everyone. And, you are right, with age, he has probably lost some height, especially since I'm sure he hasn't consumed adequate dairy to keep his calcium and vitamin D up.

 

To go along with that: "Michelle Obama on Trump rollback: ‘Think about why someone is okay with your kids eating crap’"

Quote

A fiery Michelle Obama vigorously defended the healthy eating initiative that was her biggest legacy as First Lady on Friday, telling a public health summit in Washington D.C. that something was “wrong” with an administration that did not want to give consumers nutrition information or teach children to eat healthily.

“We gotta make sure we don’t let anybody take us back,” Obama said. “This is where you really have to look at motives, you know. You have to stop and think, why don’t you want our kids to have good food at school? What is wrong with you? And why is that a partisan issue? Why would that be political? What is going on?”

In a 43-minute conversation, peppered with sarcastic remarks and veiled references to the Trump administration, Michele Obama discussed topics from life since her husband left the presidency to her Let's Move! initiative.

“Take me out of the equation -- like me or don’t like me,” Obama added. “But think about why someone is okay with your kids eating crap. Why would you celebrate that? Why would you sit idly and be okay with that? Because here’s the secret: If someone is doing that, they don’t care about your kid.”

The comments were Obama’s first public remarks on the Trump administration’s assault on nutrition policy, which has already seen the delay of rules meant to reduce sodium and refined grains in school lunches and provide calorie counts on restaurant menus. The former First Lady championed many of those programs.

...

Kass and Obama discussed a range of topics, including the Obamas' move to a new D.C. residence and the sorts of meals Obama ate as a child. (Of life since her husband's presidency, Mrs. Obama said: “Being former is alright.") But by far her most pointed comments were about the recent delays to the menu-labeling rules and the changes to the school lunch program.

The former First Lady appeared to take issue with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s defense of the school lunch rollbacks, which he justified in part, in his May 1 announcement, by saying many kids didn’t like the foods.

“That to me is one of the most ridiculous things that we talk about in this movement -- ‘the kids aren’t happy,’” Obama said. “Well you know what? Kids don’t like math either. What are we gonna do, stop teaching math?”

A spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture declined to comment on Mrs. Obama's remarks, and said that "Sec. Perdue has nothing but the utmost respect for Michelle Obama."

Obama also objected to the proposed delay of new nutrition labels that were scheduled to go into effect in 2018. The new labels would feature information about calories and added sugars more prominently, but the packaged food industry has requested the compliance deadline be pushed back until at least 2020.

“Keep families ignorant. That’s all I’m hearing,” Obama said. “You don’t need to know what’s in your food. You can’t handle that, mom. Just buy this, be quiet, spend your money -- don’t ask us about what’s in your food.”

The sharpness of Obama's remarks are unusual for a former First Lady: There is an unwritten rule that they do not criticize their successors, said Kati Marton, the author of a best-selling book on presidential marriages. It's also a shift for Obama, who tended to tread cautiously during her husband's tenure.

But Marton said the rules, such as they are, were made for different times.

"It impossible to compare her to any prior first ladies, because it's impossible to compare the Trump administration to any prior one," she said. "I think it would be a mistake for the Obamas to play by rules that Trump doesn't play by, himself."

The past four months have seen the food industry seize onto President Trump's anti-regulatory agenda, arguing for the delay or suspension of rules that Mrs. Obama encouraged. In recent weeks, the National Association of Convenience Stores, the National Grocers Association and the American Bakers Association have all cited the Trump administration's regulatory rollback as reason to delay the menu-labelling rules and new nutrition labels.

On April 27, the Food and Drug Administration announced its intention to delay the menu-labelling rules and take additional comment from industry.

Four days later, on May 1, Secretary Perdue told reporters at the Virginia elementary school that his department intended to delay planned sodium reductions in school meals and grant waivers for schools who said they couldn't meet higher whole-grain requirements.

At the time, Perdue praised the former First Lady and her work on public health, and insisted his policies were not a "rollback."

But it's clear, based on Obama and Kass' remarks on Friday, that they have not arrived at the same conclusion.

“We've already seen them try to ensure there's tons of salt, there's less whole grains," Kass said. "The core of our work is intact, but it makes no sense."

Mrs. Obama's work on nutrition was often controversial during her husband's time in office. While her reforms to school meals were initially embraced by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, as well as the school-food industry and public health advocates, many conservatives and school-food workers bolted when they saw the extent of the new regulations.

Critics said that the former First Lady overstepped her public role by becoming so involved in policy, and frequently panned measures like the school lunch standards as examples of government overreach. Some schools and parents accused the First Lady of making school meals unpalatable for children, while imperiling the finances of cafeterias and increasing food waste.

But Mrs. Obama was undeterred on Friday, making several joking references to "the nanny state." And the former First Lady said that she and her husband planned to make children’s health and nutrition a pillar of their future advocacy work, once they’d had some time to “breathe.”

“You take your eye off the ball on things, you let other people determine what you’re eating, what you’re feeding, how you’re moving -- and before you know it your kids have type 2 diabetes and you’re confused and shocked and hurt,” Obama said.

In that situation, the former First Lady added pointedly: "I hope you have healthcare."

You go, Michelle!!

[GreyhoundFan]

This is great: "Nixon’s lawyer says Trump should be afraid of tapes; Woodward explains why"

Quote

...

There have already been comparisons made between Trump's decision to fire Comey and President Richard Nixon's 1973 decision to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was investigating the Watergate break-in. When The Fix sat down with The Washington Post's Bob Woodward earlier this week, the journalist who covered the Watergate scandal with fellow reporter Carl Bernstein and won The Post a Pulitzer Prize urged caution in making Watergate comparisons. The key difference, he said, was the overwhelming amount of evidence that prosecutors had uncovered before Cox was fired.

But now it appears Trump himself is getting in on the comparison. In the video above, Woodward explains why Nixon's secret taping at the White House was so explosive and why the investigation into Russian interference in the election should be done deliberately and carefully.

“In the Trump case, there's a lot of suspicion — genuine, well-founded suspicion,” Woodward said. “But no John Dean testifying … no comparable evidence trail where there'd be suggestions of a secret taping system or a source of absolutely foolproof evidence.”

Dean was Nixon's White House counsel, and his testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee helped lead Nixon to resign – and he decided to weigh in on Twitter on Friday, saying Trump is the one who should be worried about tapes.

...

Nixon's taping system provided that foolproof evidence of the president's involvement in the scandal to investigators in 1973. The existence of the tapes was revealed by one of Nixon's aides, Alexander Butterfield. In the video below, Woodward asks Butterfield about his decision to reveal the tapes and the effect it had on the Watergate investigation.

 

I love John Deal's tweet in the article: "Obviously, President Trump is confused. He is the one who must hope there are no tapes. Honest people don't have problems being taped."

[apple1]

9 hours ago, AuntK said:

And I have read that Trump is not actually 6'3", although he claims to be. And, not surprisingly, he is very sensitive about his height (and weight).  He is, after all, almost 71 so he has probably lost some height, if he was even that tall to begin with.

In that video that keeps being replayed in which Trump beckons Comey across the center of a wide empty floor and then shakes hands, you can see obviously that Comey is much taller than Trump, and that the difference is far more than 5 inches (6-3 to 6-8). Plus other various videos and photos -- there is no way Trump is 6-3.

[47of74]

You go, Michelle!!

The way Teresa May buried her nose in Donald McFucknugget's hindquarters (yeah I know that's a pleasant mental image) they'd probably make her an honorary Branch Trumpvidian.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good opinion piece: "Clapper’s remarks constitute the third strike for Trump"

Quote

Strike one was the Lester Holt interview in which President Trump alleged (confessed?) that he fired former FBI director James B. Comey with the Russia investigation in mind and asked about his own legal status while discussing Comey’s job with him. Then came the tweet in which the president threatened the former FBI director and suggested conversations were being recorded. That was strike two.

Now we have former director of national intelligence James Clapper telling NBC’s Andrea Mitchell in an interview that he never exonerated Trump of collusion, as Trump claimed. Morale at the FBI was high, contrary to Trump’s claim. And he could not conceive of Comey telling Trump about the status of an investigation while discussing his job. “I would find that very inconsistent with what I know of Jim Comey,” Clapper said.”Moreover, anyone who’s in a position that’s subject to Senate confirmation — presidential appointment and Senate confirmation, which his is, mine was — understands that you serve at the pleasure of,” Clapper said, trailing off.  “And it would really be, I think, inappropriate, and certainly in Jim’s case, out of character, for him to ask to stay on,” he continued. “I couldn’t imagine doing that myself, nor can I imagine him doing that either.”

Clapper made clear that Comey was uncomfortable since “he had been invited to the White House to have dinner with the president, and that he was uneasy with that because of even compromising the — even the optics, the appearance of independence, not only of him, but of the FBI.”

Trump’s telling of the dinner now appears to be the sort of lie one would concoct if you didn’t know enough about how government works to come up with a credible story.

There are two problems coming together at once. First, the president is blabbing about actions (real or not) that would constitute abuse of power, if not obstruction of justice. It is coming from his mouth. He does not even have the excuse of “fake news.” Second, because the Comey firing sent events spinning out of control, the president now appears to be irrational, if not ill. No one in control of his emotions or taking counsel from sober advisers would behave as he is.

Former White House adviser Peter Wehner remarks, “The problem for Republicans is that given who Trump is — given that his problems are temperamental and characterological and therefore won’t be cured — I think it’s quite likely that at some point many of them will be forced to break with him; that his actions will be so transgressive, so problematic, so embarrassing and so unpopular that it’ll become in their self-interest to distance themselves from a president who clearly is not a well man.” We don’t know when that will be. One imagines that they cannot function in this mode for very long. “What we’re seeing can be compared to the metaphor of the frog in the water that begins at a tepid temperature but get hotter and hotter and eventually boils the frog to death,” Wehner observes. “Right now Republicans are in the water, it’s beginning to boil, and if they don’t jump soon, this will have a very bad ending for them.”

Now would be a good time for the adults — former presidents, secretaries of state and defense, former FBI and CIA directors and past heads of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee — to speak up in unison. The president has either confessed to a pattern of conduct that is unacceptable or he is so out of it that he would make up facts that suggest a pattern of conduct that it is unacceptable. There are options here, including commencement of bipartisan impeachment hearings, legislation passed by a veto-proof majority to enlist an independent prosecutor and/or a decision that, aside from national security matters, the Congress will devote itself full-time to the resolution of this entire matter over the next few weeks. Vice President Pence, who has been repeatedly lied to in service of actions to deceive the public, needs to remember he serves the country, not the president.

Action needs to be taken before too much damage is done to the republic. The GOP is lost, but the country can be protected.

The author of this piece, Jennifer Rubin, is a conservative writer. I often disagreed with her in the past, but she has consistently written thoughtful pieces since Agent Orange invaded the 2016 election. She has been unsparing in her criticism of Agent Orange and the DOH party who allowed him to take over.

[GreyhoundFan]

Two tweets from George T. The retweet of Chris Murphy's is eye-opening:

[fraurosena]

Yes, this is Louise Mensch. But oh, I really, really, really, really hope this is true!

Sources: Russia probe means president Hatch; RICO case against GOP

Quote

Several separate sources with links to the intelligence communities of more than one nation, and with links within the US state and federal justice systems, have outlined evidence that exists against multiple men in the line of succession to the US Presidency, as it relates to Russia’s hack on America. [...]  a RICO case is being considered against the Republican party for laundering Russian money.

These sources say that Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who was the ‘Designated Survivor’ at the inauguration of Donald Trump (yes, really) is likely to become President if charges are pursued, according to the evidence, of illegal collusion with Russia, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.

On Donald Trump there is voluminous evidence he knowingly colluded with the Russian state in the hacking of the U.S election, and laundered Russian money through shell companies. This evidence is both data-based, for example, based on the way the server he registered laundered stolen voter registration databases with the DNC’s Vertica database in order to target Russian propaganda at voters.

He has additionally both directly obstructed justice and conspired with others to do so. [..].

On Mike Pence, there is evidence that he obstructed justice, conspired to obstruct justice, and knew that General Mike Flynn was co-ordinating Russia’s propaganda message on behalf of a foreign power. Pence also violated the Logan Act and obstructed justice when he conspired with Donald Trump to order General Flynn illegally to discuss the removal of sanctions while Barack Obama was still President, and that Pence, Trump and Flynn did so to undermine the action a sitting President was taking against a foreign adversary, as President Obama was expelling Russian spies. [...]

On Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, normally third in the line of succession [...] sources say that Ryan has been legally intercepted, and is on tape, admitting that he knew Russian money was being laundered into the Republican party. Without co-operation pending resignation Ryan may find himself swept up into a RICO prosecution involving the apparatus of the Republican party who accepted laundered Russian money.

[...] It was, they say, Reince Priebus who was taped talking to Sergei Kislyak and other Russians at the convention, agreeing to accept laundered or disgused Russian contributions, and Speaker Ryan is on a later intercept admitting that he knew of this plot, which places him at risk of a large number of criminal charges. A RICO case is being examined against the GOP itself, sources say.

The fourth person in the line of succession is Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, as President pro-tem of the Senate. Sources with links to the intelligence community say they do not know of any collusion by Hatch in either money-laundering or in accepting Russian intelligence; this does not mean, they warn, that such evidence does not exist. 

[...]

 

[formergothardite]

Trump is dumber than dumb if he really used Russia's Law Firm of the Year to try and convince folks he isn't connected to Russia. 

@fraurosena, how accurate is that source typically because that would just make my next couple of years if they all went down. I've always thought that there is no way Pence has clean hands in all this. You can't be that close to Trump and not know what is going on just because he is simple too stupid to hide things well. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is true: "President Trump Craves Loyalty, but Offers None"

Quote

It is often at moments of crisis that Americans get the clearest glimpses of a president’s character, and this week they had the chance to learn a good deal about the true Donald Trump after his abrupt decision to fire James Comey, the F.B.I. director.

Mr. Trump’s actions and the disclosures by those close to him revealed this president to be an insecure, fearful man who can’t eat or place a phone call without a backdrop of fawning aides. Rather than cultivate experienced, strong-minded advisers who might challenge his views, Mr. Trump prefers to govern by impulse and edict, demanding absurd pledges of “loyalty.”

Americans learned that Mr. Trump gave his bodyguard’s opinion on the Comey matter as much weight as any adviser’s, if not more. They saw that he was comfortable humiliating aides by flatly contradicting their accounts of his decision-making.

...

Yes, I can imagine Jared has to hold his hand for every phone call. Also, I'm sure he gets a sick pleasure from publicly contradicting his sycophants.

 

Quote

They saw, as many of them had no doubt suspected, that he has a limited understanding of, or respect for, the constitutional responsibilities of public officials. During a January dinner in the White House, in which Mr. Trump apparently tried and failed to extract a vow of loyalty from Mr. Comey, the president gave no sign of grasping the federal statute binding both men: “Public service is a public trust, requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws and ethical principles above private gain.” To Mr. Trump, “loyalty” meant abandoning an investigation into foreign interference in the last election.

...

Agent Orange doesn't think laws apply to him, so why would he grasp the federal statute in question? Don't even get me started on ethics.

 

Quote

Americans were also presented with a president obsessively watching cable television news and attacking imagined enemies. On the day before he fired Mr. Comey, according to Time magazine journalists who were in the White House with him, Mr. Trump surfed through recorded clips of Senate testimony about the Russia investigation, playing and replaying segments that he insisted backed up his false claims of Obama administration wiretapping, as Vice President Mike Pence and several aides stood by silently. Scouring testimony by Sally Yates, the acting attorney general he fired, and James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, Mr. Trump gloated that they were choking “like dogs.” Later, over a dinner in which he got two scoops of ice cream to everyone else’s one, he marveled without irony at his critics’ “meanness.”

Americans read about Mr. Trump ranting at his big-screen TV, demanding that reporters stop focusing on Russia and that the F.B.I. focus not on foreign meddling but on leaks to the media. On NBC, they watched Mr. Trump belittle Mr. Comey as a “showboat.” They witnessed his bizarre effort to silence Mr. Comey by threatening to release “tapes” of their White House dinner — this from a man who has railed about imagined efforts by the Obama administration to “tapp” him.

...

This is a man who is the embodiment of irony.

 

Quote

And Americans were treated to yet another portrait of ineptitude so surreal as to qualify as a kind of performance art, or maybe slapstick. What other White House would schedule a visit by the Russian foreign minister and ambassador on the day after Mr. Trump fired the man in charge of investigating his campaign’s ties to Russia? What other White House would bar the American media while admitting a Russian state photographer? What other White House would be astonished that the Russians would then distribute photos of their officials backslapping the grinning Mr. Trump inside the Oval Office?

It was a potent demonstration that Moscow has this president’s measure. Let’s hope that’s all it’s got on him.

I think I speak for many Americans who would like this shitshow of performance art to close permanently.

[fraurosena]

Just now, formergothardite said:

Trump is dumber than dumb if he really used Russia's Law Firm of the Year to try and convince folks he isn't connected to Russia. 

@fraurosena, how accurate is that source typically because that would just make my next couple of years if they all went down. I've always thought that there is no way Pence has clean hands in all this. You can't be that close to Trump and not know what is going on just because he is simple too stupid to hide things well. 

I'm not quite sure exactly how accurate she is, but so far most of her predictions have been true or very close to the truth. I know she uses multiple sources to back up what she says, but they are mostly anonymous, so how much they can be trusted is not quite clear to me. @RoseWilder knows more about her, I believe.

Because of the truthfulness of her past predictions, I tend to believe what she says in my post, but I do have to admit to some wishful thinking on my part as well. 

But I am keeping my fingers crossed!