Where's Dildo?

He has posted this tweet at 7:00 pm Eastern time.  Apparently we're doing everything much faster than anyone thought possible.

We're with them

But they can't come here.  They're Muslims.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Helping the middle class

Hope you have your wealth in stocks.

2017: The bottom line

Or the 'take home" message, in a phrase I am sick to death of.

Anyway, this is it:

Republicans can never again be allowed to control

two branches of government simultaneously,

much less all three.

It was the "coffee boy"

If [George] Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and is now a cooperating witness, was the improbable match that set off a blaze that has consumed the first year of the Trump administration, his saga is also a tale of the Trump campaign in miniature. He was brash, boastful and underqualified, yet he exceeded expectations. And, like the campaign itself, he proved to be a tantalizing target for a Russian influence operation.

[...]

The information that Mr. Papadopoulos gave to the Australians answers one of the lingering mysteries of the past year: What so alarmed American officials to provoke the F.B.I. to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign months before the presidential election?

[...]

It was not, as Mr. Trump and other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by a rival campaign. Instead, it was firsthand information from one of America’s closest intelligence allies.

[...]

Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said [during a night of heavy drinking] at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear. But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role.

  NYT

So all that GOP/Trumpette squealing about "the dossier is fake! the dossier was paid for by Clinton!" is just more distraction and hopeful muddying of the waters in an attmpt to discredit Mueller's investigation. The Steel dossier is only one bit of information that was brought into the mix after the investigation had already begun.

I assume Mr. Downer has long since been interviewed by Mueller, and I suppose the worthless Congressional committees investigating the deal will be asking to see him now.

F.B.I. officials disagreed in 2016 about how aggressively and publicly to pursue the Russia inquiry before the election. But there was little debate about what seemed to be afoot.

[...]

Interviews and previously undisclosed documents show that Mr. Papadopoulos played a critical role in this drama and reveal a Russian operation that was more aggressive and widespread than previously known.

[...]

Mr. Papadopoulos, then an ambitious 28-year-old from Chicago, was working as an energy consultant in London when the Trump campaign, desperate to create a foreign policy team, named him as an adviser in early March 2016. His political experience was limited to two months on Ben Carson’s presidential campaign before it collapsed.

The company you keep, right? I don't think it was Carson who foisted Papadopoulos off on the Trump campaign. At any rate, it was Sam Clovis who actually brought him on board. (Clovis also brought on Carter Page. I imagine Clovis, who had to withdraw as the nominee for heading the Dept. of Agriculture earlier this year, is persona non grata in Trump circles these days.)

[D]uring his job interview with Sam Clovis, a top early campaign aide, he saw an opening. He was told that improving relations with Russia was one of Mr. Trump’s top foreign policy goals, according to court papers, an account Mr. Clovis has denied.

Clovis was interviewed by Mueller's team and testified before the grand jury at the end of October. Is he still denying that assertion? Do they make orange jumpsuits that large?

In a May 4, 2016, interview with The Times of London, Mr. Papadopoulos called on Prime Minister David Cameron to apologize to Mr. Trump for criticizing his remarks on Muslims as “stupid” and divisive. “Say sorry to Trump or risk special relationship, Cameron told,” the headline read. Mr. Clovis, the national campaign co-chairman, severely reprimanded Mr. Papadopoulos for failing to clear his explosive comments with the campaign in advance.

From then on, Mr. Papadopoulos was more careful with the press — though he never regained the full trust of Mr. Clovis or several other campaign officials.

If this comes up in trial, I assume the Trump lawyers will be painting Papadopoulos as a loose cannon who went off without permission in whatever attempts he made to work with the Russians.

In late April, at a London hotel, [Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who had valuable contacts with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs] told Mr. Papadopoulos that he had just learned from high-level Russian officials in Moscow that the Russians had “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” according to court documents. Although Russian hackers had been mining data from the Democratic National Committee’s computers for months, that information was not yet public. Even the committee itself did not know.

Whether Mr. Papadopoulos shared that information with anyone else in the campaign is one of many unanswered questions. He was mostly in contact with the campaign over emails. The day after Mr. Mifsud’s revelation about the hacked emails, he told [Trump aide Stephen] Miller in an email only that he had “interesting messages coming in from Moscow” about a possible trip. The emails obtained by The Times show no evidence that Mr. Papadopoulos discussed the stolen messages with the campaign.

And yet, he told an Australian diplomat? Seems a little unlikely.

It is also not clear why, after getting the information in May, the Australian government waited two months to pass it to the F.B.I. In a statement, the Australian Embassy in Washington declined to provide details about the meeting or confirm that it occurred.

It isn't unreasonable to think that the Australian diplomat passed the information to his counterpart -  an American diplomat - not the FBI. And now we're getting into some deep water where, if true, the question would have to be: why didn't the American diplomat immediately pass the information to the FBI? Who would an American diplomat report to? State, right? And who was Secretary of State at the time? John Kerry. Did they huddle with Clinton about the information? (Remember that Clinton accused Trump of being a Russian puppet during the debates.)

I'm off on a slight speculating tangent here, but I don't think it sounds unreasonable. In fact, I think it sounds more reasonable than that the Australian diplomat had the information and held it for two months and then told it to the FBI. I don't think that's how it would work. He wouldn't go directly to the FBI.  He's in the diplomatic system.  That's where he'd go.

Once the information Mr. Papadopoulos had disclosed to the Australian diplomat reached the F.B.I., the bureau opened an investigation that became one of its most closely guarded secrets.

[...]

Issuing subpoenas or questioning people, for example, could cause the investigation to burst into public view in the final months of a presidential campaign.

It could also tip off the Russian government, which might try to cover its tracks.

[...]

Senior agents did not discuss it at the daily morning briefing, a classified setting where officials normally speak freely about highly sensitive operations.

Besides the information from the Australians, the investigation was also propelled by intelligence from other friendly governments, including the British and Dutch.

Curiouser and curiouser. What did those countries' spies come up with?

There's some really strange shit going on. This is going to be the mother of all stories when it's finished.

UPDATE 1/2/18:

The ambassador to the United States Joe Hockey personally steered Australia's dealings with the FBI on explosive revelations of Russian hacking during last year's presidential campaign in a sign of how politically sensitive the Australian government regarded the bombshell discovery, Fairfax Media understands.

It is also understood there is now annoyance and frustration in Canberra that the High Commissioner to Britain Alexander Downer has been outed through leaks by US officials as the source of information that played a role in sparking an FBI probe into the Trump campaign's dealings with Moscow.

[...]

Mr Downer conveyed the conversation to Canberra via an official cable, though apparently not immediately – perhaps because he did not take the 28-year-old adviser's claims altogether seriously until the hacked emails were released by Wikileaks in late July.

  Sydney Morning Herald

I suppose that is an alternate explanation to mine. But mine makes more sense. [Laughing emoticon]

Mr Hockey is believed to have been involved in discussions with the FBI, indicating the Australian government was keenly alive to its political sensitivity.

[...]

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is planning a trip to the United States in February, Fairfax Media understands. Mr Turnbull said on Monday he was "not at all" worried that Australia's role in sparking the investigation that has become a consuming headache for Mr Trump would damage his relationship with the President. Beyond that he refused to comment.

UPDATE 1/5/18:

Along with the Aussies and the Brits, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, France and Estonia also provided intelligence to the Top Secret investigation.

  Chicago Sun Times

Don't count on China to save us from nuclear war

Team Trump probably thinks threatening war will motivate the Chinese to do … something. Trump isn’t the kind of guy who gives thoughtful answers to foreign-policy questions, but there is a single idée fixe to which he always returns on the subject of North Korea: that China could solve the North Korea problem if it warned to. To be fair, it isn’t just Trump who says this. The thought that China can solve the problem with North Korea is one of the more tiresome bits of Washington wisdom.

But China isn’t about to solve the problem for us. For one thing, the North Koreans have systematically executed pro-Chinese elements inside North Korea and out. When Kim ordered his uncle arrested and executed, his business dealings with China were cited as a major reason. And it was likely because he feared China might try to install his half-brother in power that Kim ordered the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, who was living in Macau under Chinese protection. If the Chinese could order Kim Jong Un around, his uncle and half-brother wouldn’t be sleeping with the fishes.

  Foreign Policy

I believe Xi has already acknowledged he can't control KJU.

None of which is to say Trump won’t end up talking himself into the punch-him-in-the-nose nonsense. After all, the Joint Chiefs of Staff spent the Cuban missile crisis pressing John F. Kennedy to attack the island, even though we now realize that the Soviet Union had a lot of nuclear weapons on the ground there. Human beings make mistakes.

[...]

Frankly, I worry even about containment strategies. You can’t beat something with nothing, so my guess is that the U.S. Defense Department isn’t satisfied with bluffing a punch in the nose and really is developing containment strategies as an alternative. But even those can go wrong. When Ronald Reagan came into office, he ordered a series of psychological operations against the Soviets. These operations consisted of naval and air probes of Soviet defenses. “It really got to them,” one Reagan official later recalled. “They didn’t know what it all meant. A squadron would fly straight at Soviet airspace, and other radars would light up and units would go on alert. Then at the last minute the squadron would peel off and return home.”

The result was that the jumpy Soviets shot down a civilian airliner en route to Seoul, triggering the most dangerous Cold War crisis since Cuba.

[...]

The most likely scenario is still that we’ll muddle through without a nuclear war in 2018, and I’ll crow that McMaster and others were bluffing all along. And it will only be years later that James Mattis or someone writes a memoir letting us know that every day was a battle to stop McMaster from starting a nuclear war or that Trump kept asking for the launch codes.

Your daily reminder: It can still get worse

No surprise here

I wonder why they thought they had to put that in writing.

Three months into his tenure as secretary of state, Rex Tillerson alarmed veteran diplomats with remarks that sounded like a potential shift in American foreign policy: The U.S., he said, should be careful not to let values like human rights create "obstacles" to the pursuit of its interests.

  Politico

"Shift in American foreign policy"? Where have these people been?

Two weeks later, a top Tillerson adviser wrote up a short tutorial, in the form of a confidential memo to his boss, recapping “the debate over how far to emphasize human rights, democracy promotion, and liberal values in American foreign policy.”

He thought he had to spell that out for Tillerson? An Exxon Mobil CEO?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Advancement for Iranian women

Don't hold your breath waiting for Old Lard Ass's tweet commending Iran.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Coming to a census near you

Because people in this climate are going to turn themselves in as illegals?  What's the point?  Just to foment fear would be my guess.

Or they're really as ignorant as Jeff Sessions looks.

But, here's their stated excuse..

DOJ needs better citizenship data to better enforce the Voting Rights Act “and its important protections against racial discrimination in voting.”

  ProPublica

Yeah, literally unbelievable.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sad!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

John Kelly will lead negotiations on DACA

Yeah, I know. He's Trump's Chief of Staff. Since when did that job include major negotiations?

The White House will soon start bipartisan talks on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, with the hopes of avoiding a government shutdown, but this time Chief of Staff John Kelly will lead the meeting instead of President Trump, sources told Politico.

  Axios

Because they don't trust Trump? Because Trump couldn't care less what actually happens? What in the wide world could be the reason for such an inappropriate move? Where's Pence? Surely there's an actual political operative and not just a staff member who should be appointed in Trump's place.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Pot meets kettle

Demonstrators chanted anti-government slogans in several cities across Iran on Friday, as protests against alleged corruption and rising prices turned into the largest wave of demonstrations since nationwide pro-reform unrest in 2009.

[...]

An official said a few protesters had been arrested in Tehran, and videos posted on social media showed a heavy police presence and demonstrations in a number of othercities.

The US State Department said it “strongly condemns” the arrests and was monitoring the protests.

  Guardian

That's pretty rich coming from a country who just put a half dozen people on trial (who fortunately beat the charges) with the threat of decades in jail who merely witnessed and recorded a protest against the inauguration of a would-be despot who lost the popular vote by over a million.

The world has a hard time seeing anything with your fat ass hogging up all the publicity.

And 'fat ass' is not a slander.  It's a sad fact:

I call that second picture 'Lard Ass in Elevator Shoes'.

Is he going to use that wacko "doctor" for his January 12 annual physical that he had write him an excuse going into the job?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Sad!

He's just going to keep getting worse

President Donald Trump fired the remaining members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) Wednesday, reportedly informing them without explanation with a letter delivered by FedEx.

The mass dismissal of the advisers marked another nadir in the administration’s dealing with the council. In June, six members resigned from PACHA writing in an open letter, published in Newsweek, saying the Trump White House was pushing for legislation that would harm people living with HIV.

Scott A. Schoettes, a Chicago-based HIV/AIDS activist and one of the members of the advisory panel who resigned over the summer, tweeted yesterday that the remaining council members had been fired for calling President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence “dangerous.”

[...]

Gabriel Maldonado, CEO of the LGBT and HIV/AIDS group Truevolution and a remaining member of PACHA said the reasons for the firings remain unclear but may have been borne of a desire by the Trump administration to clear out appointments made by his predecessor Barack Obama.

  Newsweek

Either reason would fit Trump's M.O.

Let's see if he hires any replacements.

Just under a year into his first term, Trump has yet to appoint an HIV/AIDS chief, the first time since Bill Clinton created the position in 1993 that a president has failed to do so.

[...]

In the 2018 fiscal year budget Trump has sought huge cuts to programs including $150 million on HIV/AIDS at the Centers of Disease Control. The administration has also sought more than than $1 billion in cuts from global programs like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

And take away health insurance. Food will be next.

Sources close to the decision explained they suspect the charter for PACHA will be re-written with renewed focus on abstinence and religious, non-evidence based public health approaches.

Jesus wept.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

White supremacist intern

And George Washington himself is calling him out.  Or is Washington praising him?

A fellow intern told DailyMail.com: 'Jack's a good kid and is probably doing it as a joke. Some people do consider it a joke because it is the OK sign.'

  Daily Mail

Sure. That's it.

[Jack] Breuer, an Emory University alum in his early 20s, worked for Stephen Miller, the president's senior advisor for policy for four months starting in September.

Stephen Miller, Trump's ultra-alt-righter in the White House.

Jack Breuer, who graduated from Emory University in Atlanta this year, is clearly bucking orders — personally given by the president — to give a thumbs-up in the picture that was taken in the White House in November.

[...]

It is the same sign that white nationalist Richard Spencer gave on the steps of the Trump International Hotel on election night and that right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos posed with in front of the White House.

It was also seen at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August - the same day an alleged Nazi sympathizer accelerated his car into anti-protesters, killing one and injuring several others.

[...]

The gesture [...] is said to depict the letter 'W' with the outstretched middle, ring and little fingers, and a 'P' with the circle made by the thumb and forefinger stretching down to the wrist. Together 'WP' stands for White Power.

[...]

Breuer's controversial stand was only spotted when other interns were mailed the picture from the White House earlier this month — just in time for Christmas.

'Context is everything,' one fellow intern told DailyMail.com. 'Jack is pictured with President Trump, one of the most controversial leaders we've had.

'It is a distinct symbol known in alt-right circles [...] '

The joke's on Trump, eh?

He got his pound of flesh.

The intern said Breuer's placement in the picture would not have been Breuer's decision because all the interns were marched in one-by-one and carefully positioned by height to improve the aesthetics of the photograph. They then waited for nearly 90 minutes before the president arrived.

Let the peasants know where they stand.

The fellow intern added: 'When President Trump arrived he spoke for a while about how beautiful we all are — and even mentioned some of the interns being fired.

What?

'He joked for a bit then asked us all to do his signature thumbs up pose then went on his way.'

UPDATE:

Now you have another reason to stay healthy

If it's not enough for you that Puerto Ricans (who are still not able to recover on their own from Hurricane Maria) are our American brothers and sisters, I hope you don't have to have an operation.

Dr. Gottlieb says the F.D.A. is watching the supply of about 30 drugs that are made on the island, in addition to medical devices. Most companies are still running on diesel generators, and manufacturers that have been able to connect to the power grid are still encountering an unpredictable supply of electricity, he said.

[...]

Dr. Gottlieb said some companies had gotten down to a 24-hour supply of diesel fuel, and representatives for the medical-device industry had said some generators were beginning to break down, requiring emergency repair.

[...]

Now, hospital pharmacists across the country are racing to find alternatives (to saline drip bags) — which themselves are becoming scarce — after Hurricane Maria halted production at the factory in Puerto Rico where Baxter, the manufacturer, makes the product.

[...]

The impact has rippled throughout the clinic’s normal operations. Alternatives, such as injecting some drugs into an IV — known as an “IV push” — take more time for nurses, which divert them from attending to other needs. And the method is not appropriate for some drugs. “This has repercussions,” Mr. Knoer said.

[...]

Some device and supply companies have already begun limiting shipments of certain items from the island, ranging from mesh for repairing hernias to surgical scalpels and tools used in orthopedic surgery.

[...]

The bag shortage is the most significant to be directly linked to the effects of the hurricane but others are likely to follow. In addition to creating a humanitarian crisis on the island, the storm knocked out production at the Puerto Rican factories that make vital drugs, medical devices and medical supplies that are used around the world.

[...]

In a recent interview, Dr. Gottlieb said he was worried that if conditions don’t improve, more shortages — of both drugs and medical devices — might follow by early next year.

  NYT

Pointing out the obvious

And I'm not saying it's not necessary to point it out.

MY FATHER IS CONVINCED that his dog is embarrassed.

[...]

My dad understands his dog’s shame as a more fraught and sorrowful thing, which is why he has taken to removing his dog’s protective cone before taking her outside. He thinks that she (the dog) thinks the other dogs are laughing at her.

[...]

[D]ogs are inarguably inconvenienced by these cones, which is their purpose: the cones are prescribed by veterinarians because saying things like “I’ll need you to try avoid licking these stitches for a week” or “I’m going to ask you to stop gnawing on that bacterial infection on your ass” is not going to work. The dogs do not like this, and they also may not like engaging with their peer-dogs while wearing a goofy blunderbuss that keeps them from their habitual introductory b-hole assessments and self-administered kamikaze junk ablutions. But at some point there’s no real sense in guessing. You have probably gathered that this is about Donald Trump.

[...]

Among the segment of the population that’s put off by things like a president refusing to forcefully condemn Nazi rioters, this has raised some uncomfortable questions about Trump’s beliefs. Does he really share any or many of the beliefs with the racists and nationalists and racist-nationalists who made his campaign their cause, or is this a political calculation against criticizing a small but important part of his base? Was his decision to defend statues of famous slave masters a reflection of his perspective on history, or maybe a darkly strategic reading of the national political mood? Did he not know that what he said was historically incoherent and obviously wrong? It’s right to wonder, but we should be past asking these questions about this man at this point. The most significant thing to know about Donald Trump’s politics or process, his beliefs or his calculations, is that he is an asshole; the only salient factor in any decision he makes is that he absolutely does not care about the interests of the parties involved except as they reflect upon him.

[...]

It is not quite fair to say that Donald Trump lacks core beliefs, but to the extent that we can take apart these beliefs they amount to Give Donald Trump Your Money and Donald Trump Should Really Be on Television More.

[...]

[H]is worldview amounts to the sum of the dumb shit he saw on the cover of the New York Post in 1985, subjected to a few decades of rancid compounding interest and deteriorating mental aptitude. He watches a lot of cable news, but he struggles to follow even stories that have been custom built for people like him—old, uninformed, amorphously if deeply aggrieved.

[...]

There’s a reason for this. Trump doesn’t know anything or really believe anything about any topic beyond himself, because he has no interest in any topic beyond himself; his evident cognitive decline and hyperactive laziness and towering monomania ensure that he will never again learn a new thing in his life. He has no friends and no real allies.

[...]

What his intransigent admirers like most about him—the thing they aspire to, in their online cosplay sessions and their desperately thirsty performances for a media they loathe and to which they are so helplessly addicted—is his freedom to be unconcerned with anything but himself. This is not because he is rich or brave or astute; it’s because he is an asshole, and so authentically unconcerned.

[...]

Trump is not the only one in his business, or our culture, who insistently bends every incident or issue back towards his sour and jealous self. Some of the people who do this even care at some level about the broader world, but because they are assholes believe that the solution to that world’s problems lies in paying more attention to one particular asshole and his or her ideas. Trump is not one of those people. The rest of the world is an abstraction to him, a market to exploit; there is no other person in it who is real to him.

[...]

There is no room for other people in the world that Trump has made for himself, and this is fundamental to the anxiety of watching him impose his claustrophobic and airless interior world on our own. Is Trump a racist? Yes, because that’s a default setting for stupid people; also, he transparently has no regard for other people at all. Does Trump care about the cheap-looking statue of Stonewall Jackson that some forgotten Dixiecrat placed in a shithole park somewhere he will never visit? Not really, but he so resents the fact that other people expect him to care that he develops a passionate contrary opinion out of spite. Does he even know about . . . Let me stop you there. The answer is no.

[...]

History matters only insofar as it brought him to this moment; the roaring and endless present in which he lives matters because it is where he is now; the future is the place in which he will do it all again. Trump’s world ends with him.


[...]

This is the horror at the hole of every asshole, and it is why Trump will never get better as a president or a person: it will always and only be about him.
  David Roth @ the Baffler

Come to think of it, the defining characteristic of any narcissist could well be assholeness.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

MAGA

And here in the US, we're trying to restore coal power.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

About that tweet

On his holiday break in Florida, President Donald Trump took aim Thursday at Vanity Fair for apologizing for a video that was critical of his former rival Hillary Clinton.

In the process, he mocked well-known magazine editor Anna Wintour, who is not Vanity Fair's editor.

  CNBC

Vanity Fair, Vogue.  They both start with V. 

 But, there's more. Here's Trump's tweet from yesterday (which is still up):

And here's one from December 5, 2012:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What an embarrassment this whole admin is

U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley assured the prime minister of Poland last week that the United States was aware of Russia’s covert attempts to influence the elections in Binomo (which does not exist), a small island in the South China Sea that had recently declared independence.

[...]

In [a new video from the Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus], a woman who sounds an awful lot like Nikki Haley takes a phone call from a man she believes to be new Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki. The alleged interaction came hours after the United Nations voted to reject America’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Poland abstained from that vote, and Haley opens the conversation by expressing America’s gratitude for its abstention.

“Yes, this is Nikki. How are you Mr. Minister?” Haley (ostensibly) says. “Let me start with very much thanking you for the support we’ve received on the vote today. We will never forget it.”

[...]

“You know Binomo?” he asks.

“Yes, yes,” Haley assures him.

“They had elections and we suppose Russians had its intervention.”

“Yes, of course they did, absolutely,” Haley agrees. “Let me find out exactly what our stance is on that, and what if anything the U.S. is doing or thinks should be done and I will report back to you on that as well.”

  NY Magazine

Will be waiting for the USG to deny that's actually Haley.

In previous prank calls, Vovan and Lexus duped Energy Secretary Rick Perry, congresswoman Maxine Waters, and Senator John McCain. In the call with Perry, the pranksters tricked the secretary into engaging in an extended discussion of pig-manure-based biofuels.

Asked about the veracity of the recording, Haley’s spokesman John Degory told the Post and Courier, “We have nothing to share on that at this time.”

Which is going to make it harder to deny.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Cock-a-doodle-doo-doo

The Most Notable Loser is back on the 2020 campaign trail.

“Another reason that I’m going to win another four years is because newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes,” Mr. Trump said, then invoked one of his preferred insults. “Without me, The New York Times will indeed be not the failing New York Times, but the failed New York Times.”

[...]

“So they basically have to let me win."

  NYT

They have to LET him win? What an interesting way to look at an election.

But, you know what? They earned that.

"And eventually, probably six months before the election, they’ll be loving me because they’re saying, ‘Please, please, don’t lose Donald Trump.’”

[...]

During an impromptu 30-minute interview with The New York Times at his golf club in West Palm Beach, the president did not demand an end to the Russia investigations swirling around his administration, but insisted 16 times that there has been “no collusion” discovered by the inquiry.

[...]

Asked whether he would order the Justice Department to reopen the investiga
tion into Hillary Clinton’s emails, Mr. Trump appeared to remain focused on the Russia investigation. “I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,” [...] “But for purposes of hopefully thinking I’m going to be treated fairly, I’ve stayed uninvolved with this particular matter.”

If you're not counting all the tweets slamming the FBI and calling the investigation a witch hunt.

"For the purposes of thinking [he's] going to be treated fairly." What happens when he thinks he hasn't been?

Then the question of China and North Korea came up.

“Oil is going into North Korea. That wasn’t my deal!” he exclaimed, raising the possibility of aggressive trade actions against China. “If they don’t help us with North Korea, then I do what I’ve always said I want to do.”

Which is what? Pre-emptively nuke North Korea?

Despite saying that when he visited China in November, President Xi Jinping “treated me better than anybody’s ever been treated in the history of China,” Mr. Trump said that “they have to help us much more.”

"Better than anybody’s ever been treated in the history of China." God what a collosal cock.

“We have a nuclear menace out there, which is no good for China,” he said.

On the other hand, China might be able to influence the direction of North Korea's nukes. It can't do anything about nukes in The Most Notable Loser's hands. So which menace is truly no good for China?

No aides were present for the interview, and the president sat alone with a New York Times reporter at a large round table as club members chatted and ate lunch nearby.

I wonder if John Kelly ages another ten years every time Trump goes away without him.

Mr. Trump disputed reports that suggested he does not have a detailed understanding of legislation, saying, “I know the details of taxes better than anybody. Better than the greatest C.P.A. I know the details of health care better than most, better than most.”

Later, he added that he knows more about “the big bills” debated in the Congress “than any president that’s ever been in office.”

A legend in his own mind.

Insufferable twat.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Free business advice from the President

Now he's attacking the post office.  And Amazon (which owns the Washington Post).

I don't know that I'd take business advice from a guy who failed at so many businesses.

Who's dumber? 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Traitors

Earlier this month, Novatek, one of the largest Russian gas producers, said that it sold the cargo of 170,000 cubic meters of LNG to Petronas LNG UK Limited (PLUK), the UK branch of Malaysia's Petronas.

[...]

The Yamal project is not directly sanctioned by the EU, but in support of US sanctions Brussels and London have imposed various restrictions on Russia that deprive its energy companies of finance and technology. The measures inevitably affect innovation and the development of new fields and supply mechanisms, which may ultimately compromise Russia’s ability to deliver gas to the rest of Europe.

[...]

The UK was forced to turn to Russia due to shortages in gas supplies and a deep freeze that settled over the country at the time. Temperatures in central England fell to minus 13 degrees Celsius, which is nearly 15 degrees colder than the usual average December low.

The UK suffered gas shortages after the shutdown of the North Sea’s most crucial fuel transport route. Ineos, a private company which owns a key refinery near Aberdeen, said it found a crack in a vital 42-year-old oil and gas pipeline. The firm said that it would take two weeks to fix it.

  RT

Fair weather friends.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

WHY won't you love him?

Fox & Trump Friends says he's "approximately" as popular as Obama.

It's historic, all right.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

When will our long national nightmare be over?

You read something into it that he didn't put there

He doesn't say it's time for HIM to get back to work.  He was telling the rest of us - the plebes, the workers - that we should be enjoying Christmas because it ends tonight.  Chop. Chop.  Back to work, slaves.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Interesting lawsuit

Eight northeastern states said on Tuesday they sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force it to impose more stringent controls on a group of mostly Midwestern states whose air pollution they claim is being blown in their direction.

  Reuters

I'm thinking they should have sued before Trump became president.

Oh, wait. They did. They're just adding to it.

In the latest development of a legal saga that began during Barack Obama’s presidency, the lawsuit by New York and seven other states challenges a Trump administration decision to allow nine upwind states to escape tighter smog pollution controls.

[...]

The lawsuit was filed by the attorneys general of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont, which in late 2013 originally asked to have nine upwind states added to the “Ozone Transport Region.”

[...]

The coalition urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to overturn the EPA’s decision not to add the nine upwind states to the congressionally created “Ozone Transport Region,” which requires stricter pollution controls.

They'll probably suggest large fans to blow it further east. And they know some GOP congressmen who have stakes in such a company.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Settling scores this morning

Or...trying to.




And always with the "last legs" bit.  "Failing badly."  "Losing readers."  Etc.  Pretty sure none of that is happening to Vanity Fair.

We might wonder why he's striking out for an article dissing Hillary, but I guess at this point, he'll take anything he can get, since Vanity Fair is the magazine that wrote about Melania having been a high priced call girl.  On the other hand, Melania sued and won, so this Trump tweet is still quite strange.  That's holding a grudge way past usefulness.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.



UPDATE:

On his holiday break in Florida, President Donald Trump took aim Thursday at Vanity Fair for apologizing for a video that was critical of his former rival Hillary Clinton.

In the process, he mocked well-known magazine editor Anna Wintour, who is not Vanity Fair's editor.

  CNBC

She's not even the magazine's editor.  Vanity Fair, Vogue.  They both start with a V.

Pretty good. But, there's more. Here's Trump's tweet from yesterday (which is still up):

And here's one from December 5, 2012:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

There's a smart lad

A jailed Russian who says he hacked into the Democratic National Committee computers on the Kremlin’s orders to steal emails released during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign now claims he left behind a data signature to prove his assertion.

[...]

Konstantin Kozlovsky provided further details about what he said was a hacking operation led by the Russian intelligence agency known by its initials FSB. Among them, Kozlovsky said he worked with the FSB to develop computer viruses that were first tested on large, unsuspecting Russian companies, such as the oil giant Rosneft, later turning them loose on multinational corporations.

[...]

He placed a string of numbers that are his Russian passport number and the number of his visa to visit the Caribbean island of St. Martin in a hidden .dat file, which is a generic data file.

[...]

Kozlovsky’s claims include an assertion that for the past seven years he was under the control of Major Gen. Dmitry Dokuchayev, who he said gave him orders to breach the DNC servers to interfere in the U.S. election process. A federal court in San Francisco in February issued an arrest warrant for Dokuchayev for his alleged role in a hack of Yahoo accounts. A month later the FBI put the former hacker-turned-spy on a Wanted poster for his alleged role in directing hackers. He was arrested in Russia in late 2016 on treason charges in a high-profile incident that included the arrest of another FSB cyber leader.

[...]

In written answers from jail made public Wednesday by RAIN TV, a Moscow-based independent TV station that has repeatedly run afoul of the Kremlin, Kozlovsky said he feared his minders might turn on him and planted a “poison pill” during the DNC hack.

  McClatchy

Apparently his fears were founded if we're hearing from him in jail.  But, since he's in a Russian jail and has been permitted to communicate with a TV station at odds with the Kremlin, you have to wonder if his account is reliable, don't you?

But, to me, this is the mysterious part, that we already knew about, and which caused me to doubt the whole Russian hacking thing back when it first came out.

The DNC initially did not share information with the FBI, instead hiring a tech firm called CrowdStrike, run by a former FBI cyber leader. That company has said it discovered the Russian hand in the hacking, but had no immediate comment on the claim by Kozlovsky that he planted an identifier.

Why would the DNC hire its own tech firm and not allow the FBI to investigate instead? 

Somebody should easily be able to verify Kozlovsky's claim about leaving a digital signature if they find his passport number in the file. That should be an easy number to ascertain.

On the other hand, how would knowing Kozlovsky was the one who did the hacking prove that the Kremlin directed him to do it?

If the FSB did in fact direct Kozlovsky, then it debunks Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assertion that his government had nothing to do with hacking that all major U.S. intelligence agencies put at his feet.

 [...]

Kozlovsky says he worked largely from home, with limited knowledge of others and that the political hack was just part of larger relationship with the FSB’s top cyber officials on viruses directed at other countries and the private sector.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Rising levels of carbon dioxide as it affects plant nutrition study

IN AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH, it’s been understood for some time that many of our most important foods have been getting less nutritious. Measurements of fruits and vegetables show that their minerals, vitamin and protein content has measurably dropped over the past 50 to 70 years. Researchers have generally assumed the reason is fairly straightforward: We’ve been breeding and choosing crops for higher yields, rather than nutrition, and higher-yielding crops—whether broccoli, tomatoes, or wheat—tend to be less nutrient-packed.

In 2004, a landmark study of fruits and vegetables found that everything from protein to calcium, iron and vitamin C had declined significantly across most garden crops since 1950. The researchers concluded this could mostly be explained by the varieties we were choosing to grow.

Loladze and a handful of other scientists have come to suspect that’s not the whole story and that the atmosphere itself may be changing the food we eat. Plants need carbon dioxide to live like humans need oxygen. And in the increasingly polarized debate about climate science, one thing that isn’t up for debate is that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising.

[...]

As best scientists can tell, this is what happens: Rising CO2 revs up photosynthesis, the process that helps plants transform sunlight to food. This makes plants grow, but it also leads them to pack in more carbohydrates like glucose at the expense of other nutrients that we depend on, like protein, iron and zinc.

  Politico

And yet, people are living much longer.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oops

Actually, I don't see the problem there per se.  Perhaps it's a good thing if people check to see what false news is being spread around in case they come upon it somewhere other than Facebook.

The problem, for me, with the whole idea, is that Facebook should be the decision maker of what is and isn't fake news.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Can't help himself

It's pathological.

“You know, one of the things that people don’t understand — we have signed more legislation than anybody,” the president said [yesterday] in remarks to roughly four dozen first responders at a firehouse in West Palm Beach, Florida. “We broke the record of Harry Truman.”

It is true that Trump had signed more bills in his first 100 days than any president since Truman, but as Trump nears the anniversary of his Jan. 20 inauguration, he is far removed from his 100th day. And he has now signed the fewest number of bills into law of any first-year president dating back to Dwight Eisenhower, according to a recent report from the website GovTrack.

[...]

And, according to GovTrack, Trump has signed fewer bills at this point in his presidency than George W. Bush had — and less than half as many bills as Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush had at this point.

  Politico

Well, that's a record of its own.

“I believe we have — and you’ll have to ask those folks, but I think they know the real answer,” Trump said, apparently referring to the media. “We have more legislation passed, including — the record was Harry Truman. That’s a long time ago. And we broke that record. So we have a lot done.”

I'm confused. I thought the media were liars. Fake News?

Trump’s visit had not previously been announced — the president’s schedule had no public events listed. He spent about five hours at Trump International Golf Club, where he presumably hit the links on Wednesday.

[...]

Trump had tweeted Monday night that he hopes “everyone is having a great Christmas,” adding that “tomorrow it’s back to work in order to Make America Great Again (which is happening faster than anyone anticipated)!”

[...]

On Tuesday, Trump spent about four hours playing golf with Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau and former pro golfer Dana Quigley.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

So now, the Republican Party itself is under investigation

According to Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff, Mueller’s team is examining whether the joint digital operation between the RNC and President Trump’s campaign “was related to the activities of Russian trolls and bots aimed at influencing the American electorate.”

[...]

In public interviews, representatives from social media companies have played coy when asked the question and merely have confirmed that they were handing all the relevant data to congressional investigators. The tech companies in question have reportedly also been cooperating with Mueller’s probe.

Cambridge Analytica, a data company that also worked with the Trump campaign, has come under the scrutiny of the congressional investigations. Company CEO Alexander Nix reportedly offered to help Wikileaks founder Julian Assange organize the hacked Democratic emails the website had been publishing, but Assange has denied accepting Nix’s entreaty.

  TPM

I don't think that will matter. It's the attempt that counts.

Should it be proven that the RNC committed criminal (and virtually treasonous) acts, what would be the punishment?  I think it should be dismantled.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Here's a poll they'll be hiding from him

And Fox News won't be broadcasting it.

Americans named former President Barack Obama the most admired man in the world for the 10th year in a row, making President Donald Trump one of a handful of sitting presidents who have fallen short of that accolade, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.

  TPM

Surely Americans don't admire Obama more than anyone.

Obama narrowly beat current Trump by three percentage points, with 17 percent of respondents naming him the most admired man in the world to Trump’s 14 percent.

Okay, that looks a little more like it.

According to Gallup, only a few incumbent presidents have not been named the most admired man in the world since the research company began asking the question in 1946. Trump joins a list that includes Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush.

What does it say about Americans that the person they most admire is their current president? Nothing good.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was Americans’ most admired woman in the world, according to the poll. She beat former first lady Michelle Obama by two percentage points, with 9 percent of respondents choosing Clinton. Only one percent of respondents did the same for current first lady Melania Trump.

According to Gallup, Clinton has retained her title for 16 consecutive years, while Obama has retained his for 10 years, including the current year, all eight years he was in office as president and the year he was first elected, in 2008.

Are they just asking the same people every year?

Gallup conducted its survey from Dec. 4–11, 2017, via cell phone and landline interviews, from a random sample of 1,049 adults living in the United States, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

If you say so.

Deny, deny, admit

Same old story from the US military/government decade after decade. White phosphorus, depleted uranium, torture, you name it. If it's a war crime, we're there. And sooner or later - whenever the American public seems okay with it - we'll admit it.

Despite vowing not to use depleted uranium (DU) weapons in its military action in Syria, the U.S. government has now admitted that it has fired thousands of the deadly rounds into Syrian territory. As Foreign Policy Magazine reports:

“U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesman Maj. Josh Jacques told Airwars and Foreign Policy that 5,265 armor-piercing 30 mm rounds containing depleted uranium (DU) were shot from Air Force A-10 fixed-wing aircraft on Nov. 16 and Nov. 22, 2015, destroying about 350 vehicles in the country’s eastern desert.”

Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman John Moore said in 2015 that:

“U.S. and coalition aircraft have not been and will not be using depleted uranium munitions in Iraq or Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve.” Now we know that is not true.

[...]

We should remember that the United States is engaged in military activities in Syria in violation of international and U.S. law. There is no Congressional authorization for U.S. military action against ISIS in Syria and the United Nations has not authorized military force in violation of Syria’s sovereignty either.

The innocent citizens of Syria will be forced to endure increased risks of cancer, birth defects, and other disease related to exposure to radioactive materials. Depleted uranium is the byproduct of the enrichment of uranium to fuel nuclear power plants and has a half-life in the hundreds of millions of years. Damage to Syrian territory will thus continue long after anyone involved in current hostilities is dead.

  The AntiMedia

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The spirit of American Christ is alive and well

Or, sometimes we call him Republican Jesus.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No doubt

But, speaking of Orin Hatch...

The senator from Utah got a big write-up today in the Salt Lake Tribune, having been chosen their Utahn of the Year.

[T]his year, as many times in the past, The Tribune has assigned the label to the Utahn who, over the past 12 months, has done the most. Has made the most news. Has had the biggest impact.

[...]

The selection of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch as the 2017 Utahn of the Year has little to do with the fact that, after 42 years, he is the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, that he has been a senator from Utah longer than three-fifths of the state’s population has been alive.

It has everything to do with recognizing:

• Hatch’s part in the dramatic dismantling of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
• His role as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in passing a major overhaul of the nation’s tax code.
• His utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power.

  Salt Lake Tribune

Well then.

To all appearances — appearances promoted by Hatch — this anti-environmental, anti-Native American and, yes, anti-business decommissioning of [Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante] national monuments was basically a political favor the White House did for Hatch. A favor done in return for Hatch’s support of the president generally and of his tax reform plan in particular.

[...]

The fact remains that tax reform has been talked about and talked about for decades and only now has anything been done. And Hatch, as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has his fingerprints all over it.

But perhaps the most significant move of Hatch’s career is the one that should, if there is any justice, end it.

The last time the senator was up for re-election, in 2012, he promised that it would be his last campaign. That was enough for many likely successors, of both parties, to stand down, to let the elder statesman have his victory tour and to prepare to run for an open seat in 2018.

Clearly, it was a lie.

[...]

It would be good for Utah if Hatch, having finally caught the Great White Whale of tax reform, were to call it a career. If he doesn’t, the voters should end it for him.

"His utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power."

Could actually be a tribute to many a politician.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Apparently, he didn't actually read it.  Now they can add one more item to the list.

Pretty lame attempt to make the SOB look like he's on top of things.  That would be the subtlest tongue-in-cheek tweet I ever saw.  And I'm not new to Twitter.  

UPDATE 1/2/18:

"It would be good for Utah if Hatch, having finally caught the Great White Whale of tax reform, were to call it a career."

And, there he goes.  He's looking forward to spending more time with his family.  How many times have we heard that one?  What's he trying to hide from?  Or is he just afraid he couldn't win again?

Aw, poor baby

His New Year, I'm afraid, isn't going to go very well.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

How Bob Corker was outed on the tax scheme

As the House and Senate moved toward approving the final version of the GOP tax bill, the International Business Times (IBT) revealed in an explosive story Friday that a loophole slipped into the bill in the final minutes will directly enrich President Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as wealthy senators and key members of Congress, including the provision’s writers.

[...]

Controversy swirled around the timing of the measure and the fact that deficit hawk Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee abruptly switched his vote in favor of the bill, whose tax cuts the Congressional Budget Office estimated will add $1.4 trillion to the deficit by 2027. Corker had been the lone Republican holdout in the Senate and had previously voted with Democrats against the bill. [...] [Reporter] David Sirota’s IBT reporting quickly went viral as Corker’s apparent cushy accommodation was splashed across social media under the hashtag #CorkerKickback.

[...]

IBT had been closely following the debate over how the tax measure would treat income passed through a tax shelter known as an LLC, a “pass-through” tax entity because profits pass through to its owners who report them on their personal tax returns.

[...]

Which version of the pass through would end up in the final tax bill would be determined by the joint House and Senate conference committee. At 5:30 p.m. on Friday, the committee released a final version that appeared to follow the Senate approach, the more rational version, according to tax experts Sirota spoke to. “At 5:45 we were sort of like, ‘Okay, I don’t think there’s much to really write,’” Sirota said. “‘It looks like they kind of got it out.’ But I said, ‘I’ll talk to a couple of tax lawyers who have been following this.’ And what do you know? One of them comes back to me at 6:15 and is like, ‘You know, they added this one extra line that’s not in either of the bills. It talks about depreciable assets. This is the loophole.’ He said something along the lines of, ‘It’s narrow enough that it shows intent for a specific kind of investment vehicle.’”

[...]

The original House tax cut on pass-throughs, Sirota explained, was broad enough to argue that it was merely an ideological, across-the-board tax cut rather than something that picked specific winners and losers. But the additional line was included with one intent in mind. That line carved out a particular tax windfall for owners of rental-income generators like apartment buildings or commercial office complexes, depreciable property with few or no employees.

“That’s when we realized this is an absolutely enormous story,” Sirota said.

[...]

When asked to comment on the pass-through for a followup story, Corker didn’t seem to be familiar with it, Sirota said. “He called it ‘ridiculous,’” Sirota said. “But then he called back — he must have talked to somebody — and he said, ‘You know, I’m not sure I want to criticize it that way. You know, I need more information. I haven’t really read it. I’ve only read a summary of the bill. I haven’t read the bill.’ Which is, of course, another story: You’re the key vote on a $1.5 trillion [deficit] bill, and you’re announcing your support for it, admitting that you didn’t even read it. So your defense is, ‘I didn’t know about the provision because I didn’t read the bill that I’m voting for.’

[...]

To take the heat off Corker, [Utah Republican Orin] Hatch replied on Monday, insisting that he had authored the loophole.

[...]

However, the Hatch alibi could not withstand new reporting that revealed Corker’s chief of staff, Todd Womack, had been investing heavily in a real estate LLC in the run-up to the bill and also stood to profit from the provision. Worse, Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, in a Sunday appearance on ABC’s This Week, admitted that the decision to include the pass-through came from an effort to “cobble together the votes we need to get this bill passed.”

[...]

Republicans have been redistributing the country’s wealth upwards since the days of Ronald Reagan. What actually is precedent-setting about this tax bill, [Sirota] said, is how explicit it is.

“There’s no pretense in this bill,” Sirota said. “There was a thing the Republicans put out in their summary when the bill came out. I tweeted out the graphic. It was sort of in a section about trying to prevent people from using their LLCs to put their wage income into their LLCs. They called it ‘safeguards’ — and I’m paraphrasing here — ‘We have put safeguards in to make sure that the business income taxes not go to wage earners.’ They are very crystal-clear that this is a tax bill not for workers. This is a tax bill for corporations and business owners."

  Capital and Main

A big fuck you to the people they supposedly represent. Of course we all know who they actually represent, and they don't give a shit if we do.

In all, 14 Republican senators (see list below) hold financial interests in 26 income-generating real-estate partnerships — worth as much as $105 million in total.

[...]

While Republicans have argued the House version of the bill contained the controversial provision, experts have told IBT the provision appeared in the legislation only after the bill was finalized during House-Senate Conference Committee deliberations.

[...]

Beyond Republican senators, other major beneficiaries of the provision could be President Donald Trump, who owns or directs over 560 companies, most of which are LLCs or LPs. Democrats in recent days have seized on the provision — and its potential benefits to Republican lawmakers.

  Zero Hedge

Come on. NO Democrats stand to benefit? I find that hard to believe.

Anyway...here are the Republicans:

I can see how that provision might be a game changer for Corker.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.