The real scandals

Trumpworld loves a scandal – especially an invented one that allows the Dear Leader to play victim while distracting the world from the harmful actions he is taking. And that’s exactly what we saw this week, with the faux outrage over a post from former FBI director James Comey depicting seashells forming the numbers “86 47.” As some people pointed out on social media, some of the same prominent Trumpists who have claimed Comey was calling for the assassination of President Trump - that’s not what 86 means! - and now want him imprisoned, have themselves posted some version of “86,” including in relation to Joe Biden. Oh, the hypocrisy!

This fake scandal didn’t distract us here at Zeteo – below, we continue to document and highlight a litany of awful actions the Trump administration has taken that harm democratic values, undermine the constitutional order, and hurt free societies in the US and around the world.

From threatening the arrest of House Democrats to rampant corruption to increased attacks from the president on the press and those who oppose him, here’s ‘This Week in Democracy – Week 17’:

  Zeteo

Continue reading.

"Christian millionaires"

For decades, [Michael]Farris — a conservative Christian lawyer who is the most influential leader of the modern home-schooling movement — had toiled at the margins of American politics. His arguments about the harms of public education and the divinely endowed rights of parents had left many unconvinced.

[...]

No single figure has been more instrumental in transforming the parental rights cause from an obscure concern of Christian home-schoolers into a GOP rallying cry.

[...]

Now, speaking on a confidential conference call to a secretive group of Christian millionaires seeking, in the words of one member, to “take down the education system as we know it today,” Farris made the same points he had made in courtrooms since the 1980s. Public schools were indoctrinating children with a secular worldview that amounted to a godless religion, he said.

The solution: lawsuits alleging that schools’ teachings about gender identity and race are unconstitutional, leading to a Supreme Court decision that would mandate the right of parents to claim billions of tax dollars for private education or home schooling.

[...]

Farris assured the conservative donors, their money would be well spent on this legal campaign. A conservative supermajority reigned on the nation’s highest court. In statehouses and at school boards, political activism over parental rights had reached a fever pitch.

“The time is right.”

  WaPo

Matthew 6:19
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

Matthew 6:20
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

Luke 18:22

So when Jesus heard these things, He said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

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

Who's "the Congressman" here?

"If we're going to lose because of him, we might as well impeach the motherf**ker," said the congressman as we roamed the aisles of a Safeway grocery store together. [...] He was never a die hard Trump supporter. He supported him in the general and never expected him to win. But he did. So the congressman, whose district Trump won, has been a regular supporter on Fox News and elsewhere defending the President. He is happy to be quoted, so long as I don't name him. He says he just needs to vent. I suggest what we're doing is one of the reason's Trump won -- a congressman says nice things in public and bad things in private.

"Everybody does this sh*t," he says.

[...]

"I read you writing about this, about wanting to say nice things when you can and criticize when you need to. He may be an idiot, but he's still the President and leader of my party and he is capable of doing some things right," he says before conceding it's usually other people doing the right things in the President's name. "But dammit he's taking us all down with him. We are well and truly f**ked in November. Kevin [McCarthy] is already circling like a green fly circling sh*t trying to take Paul's [Ryan] job because nobody thinks he's sticking around for Nancy [Pelosi]. She's going to f**k up the cafeteria again too. [Lord's name in vain], at least I'll probably lose too and won't have to put up with that sh*t." He won't lose. His district is very Republican.

[...]

"It's like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really f*cking stupid Forrest Gump. He can't help himself. He's just a f**king idiot who thinks he's winning when people are b*tching about him. He really does see the world as ratings and attention."

[...]

"Judiciary is stacked with a bunch of people who can win re-election so long as they don't piss off Trump voters in the primary. But if we get to summer and most of the primaries are over, they just might pull the trigger if the President fires Mueller. The sh*t will hit the fan if that happens and I'd vote to impeach him myself. Most of us would, I think. Hell, all the Democrats would and you only need a majority in the House. If we're going to lose because of him, we might as well impeach the motherf**ker. Take him out with us and let Mike [Pence] take over. At least then we could sleep well at night," he said before going off on a tangent about how the situations with Russia and China scare him. Then, "You know having Mike as President would really piss off all the right people, too. They think they hate Trump. Mike is competent."

  Erick Eriksen @ The Maven

How can you tell? Competent at what? I think he's a phony to beat all phonies. He's just as self-concerned as Trump without the over-the-top buffoonery, which makes his evil perhaps even more dangerous.

"I say a lot of shit on TV defending him, even over this. But honestly, I wish the motherf*cker would just go away. We're going to lose the House, lose the Senate, and lose a bunch of states because of him. All his supporters will blame us for what we have or have not done, but he hasn't led. He wakes up in the morning, sh*ts all over Twitter, sh*ts all over us, sh*ts all over his staff, then hits golf balls. F*ck him. Of course, I can't say that in public or I'd get run out of town."

[...]

It was a funny conversation with a few additional remarks about the President's personal life I dare not print.

And yes, I agree, it is bad form to say all this in private while publicly praising the President. Welcome to Donald Trump's Washington. Everybody does this sh*t here.

Yes, and it's hard to defend journalists from the "fake news" accusations when all we ever get is "sources say" and anonymous quotes.

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

Business as Usual

House has only so far approved $9 billion of the $60 billion relief bill, and will take up the rest of it next week, because as [Daily Show host Jon] Stewart put it, “what’s another week when you’ve been fucked for months?” He scolded the sixty-seven House Republicans who voted against the bill and wondered why they would vote against the bill, asking, “What would Jesus, or any other human being that isn’t an asshole, do?”

As for the argument that the bill was loaded with pork, Stewart shot back by saying that there were only two [...] paragraphs in the entire bill, about as much pork as in a PETA staff fridge. He said their reasoning was “bullshit,” and in particular called out a Mississippi Republican [Steven Palazzo] for voting against the bill while also, last year, requesting money for the national flood insurance program this past year for his constituents [for 2005 Hurricane Katrina reparations].

  Mediaite

Typical politician. Here's another Republican vote against the $9 billion in flood relief:

MSNBC host Martin Bashir called out former future Vice President Rep. Paul Ryan on his show Friday for voting against $9.7 billion in Hurricane Sandy relief, when, in 2008, Ryan was happy to pass flood relief as part of a $162 billion supplemental appropriations bill.

[...]

[Mike] Viqueira explained that “They voted against it for the reasons Paul Ryan said. They said it wasn’t paid for, that the flood insurance program is essentially a bankrupt program. They’re essentially raising the debt ceiling on that, they object to that.” Bashir then noted, of Rep. Ryan, that “in 2008 he voted in favor of additional disaster response funding for the flood ravaged Midwest. It was called roll call vote 432, to be precise. He touted it in his own press release. Has he lost all compassion in the last four years, or does he just not like people in the Northeast?”

[...]

Viquiera responded, “Well, Martin, I cannot look into the man’s heart, but we can look at the fact that his own district around Racine, Wisconsin, Janesville was affected by some of that flooding in 2008. That was an enormous bill. [...] That was a $162 billion catch-all of the old school in Congress, that had all kinds of stuff in it. There was money there for overseas operations. there was money for military construction.

  Mediaite

Ummm....pork?

Eighteen of the 67 dissenters are first-term members, sworn in just a day earlier. But of the 49 Representatives with a prior House record who opposed Sandy aid, at least 37 had previously advocated for or touted emergency aid services following other disasters that affected their own constituents.

  Think Progress

The list of 37, along with their requests for relief in their own areas, is in that Think Progress article if you're interested.

And let's give those 18 newbies the benefit of the doubt.  Let's see what they do when their constituents are faced with a natural disaster.

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

P.S.  Alan Grayson called the 67 "the bath salts caucus - they'd rather eat your face than raise taxes on the rich."  At which point, they were rechristened "the zombie caucus" by radio host Stephanie Miller .

Awaking from the Big Money Hangover

This is becoming something of a theme today. Republicans who were prospering when the party was riding high, and who stood by when all the forces that have produced an incredible week of inhuman cruelty and ignorance from Wingnuttia were gathering, and who were not shy about using those forces to their political advantage, now would like the world to know how really badly they feel about the whole thing, and how much they'd like to be allowed back into respectable company. If it's not David Frum, ex-warmonger, it's Steve Schmidt, former Sarah Palin enabler soon to be immortalized on film as The One Honest Man in the McCain campaign. Or, now, it's Ken Mehlman, who came out of the closet, and now feels really, really bad about all the gay-bashing that helped his old boss win re-election in 2004.

  Charles Pierce

Yes, he's not the first. It seems money is in inverse relation to conscience.

In other words, I'm an opportunistic 'ho who would have done anything, including flog myself atop Karl Rove's desk, to win an election, but, now that the winds seem to have changed, and I have to make a living, I would like to be forgiven for having been a self-loathing 'ho for a party that I helped gain for political advantage the hatred of people who would have broken my head with a brick if they'd known the truth of who I am.

Tell your story walking, pal.

(I think most people knew.)

Or as Water Tiger puts it, the apology is good:

Unless, of course, some other powerful, monied, hypocritical jackwagon offers you a seven-figure salary. Then all bets are off.

  Dependable Renegade

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