Harshing your mellow since 2004.
Is this just going to become “normalized?” (Story here.)
Click the image to read the Washington Post article by Zephyr Teachout. The President of the United States is on the take. He could have set up a blind trust. He could have begun selling off his companies. He could have NOT RUN FOR PRESIDENT if he didn’t want to comply with the Constitution.
I note with sadness the passing today of the great Clyde Stubblefield, for 50 years the funkiest cat in the world. Catch you on the other side, Clyde.
For those who were scratching their heads in December,
…wondering why Vladimir Putin did not respond in kind to President Obama’s expulsion of Russian diplomats as part of the sanctions leveled for Russia’s meddling in the presidential election, here’s your answer: Mike Flynn.
In his illegal phone conversations with Russian officials he apparently let them know that they need not worry about those sanctions, once Donald Trump was sworn in. Wink, wink.
Flynn was forced to resign over this but, as I predicted last night, Republicans in Congress are not the least bit interested in investigating this scandal, or making any effort to answer the question “What did Donald Trump know and when did he know it?”
The Associated Press and New York Times are reporting that General Michael Flynn has resigned as National Security Adviser. (Story here.)
This comes just a couple of hours after he had “the full confidence of the president.” Given his obvious criminal and unethical behavior both before and 
after he (and Trump) took office, this turn of events was inevitable, and I’m sure he was ordered to resign. Trump’s inner circle is no doubt hoping that, now that he’s gone, there will be no investigation, as that would surely implicate others in the new administration. They’ll be saying “It’s over, nothing to see here, let’s move on, the nation has more important problems, blah, blah, blah.”
But can you imagine how this would go down had Hillary Clinton been president? Every committee in Congress would open investigations, and they would continue for eight years. Of course, Republicans control both houses of congress, and run all the committees, so there won’t be any investigations of the Flynn scandal.
It’s time for the mainstream press to hitch up their big girl pants and look into this, no matter how long it takes or where it leads.
The Trump Administration is looking less like the second coming of the German Nazi Party every day, and more like a Keystone Kops comedy. Their barrage of Executive Action signings are mostly just photo ops, and the one they really got behind — the Muslim Ban — has now been stayed by a federal judge and the stay has been upheld by a panel of the 9th Circuit. This is not to say that they won’t hurt a lot of people before it’s over, but at least there is hope that they won’t bring down the Republic.
But Donald Trump’s refusal to divest himself from his businesses, create a blind trust and stop hiding his financial dealings from the American people remains the most serious of his betrayals. While the president gets some legal leeway in this matter, there is a reason all previous presidents have taken steps to separate themselves from business activities while in office. Doing a good job at being president should be the only thing on Trump’s agenda. Instead, he remains the owner of his company, and stands to benefit WHILE IN OFFICE from income generated from it.
He has tweeted in support of his daughter’s clothing line. Ivanka herself has
advertised jewelry she is selling as having been worn on a 60 Minutes interview. Melania has recently admitted in court that she plans to enhance her own wealth as a result of being First Lady. The whole family, not to mention Trump’s sycophantic staff (see Kellyanne Conway article), is trying to cash in.
Trump has serious ethical and criminal issues. He must address them now. We need a president focused on the nation, not on getting richer. If he wanted to remain in the business world he should not have run for president.
This is an IRS rule that prohibits churches and non-profits from politicking from the pulpit. The current batch of radical Republicans think that is an infringement on their freedom of speech.
Fair enough. Let them exercise their First Amendment right. Cancel the rule and let them tell their parishioners how God wants them to vote. But they must disclose their donors (*cough* Koch Bros. *cough*), and NO TAX EXEMPTION FOR YOU!!!!
This has always been the plan: to enrich himself and his family at the expense of the taxpayers. To gain more for himself he is likely to compromise the security of the country. Yes, he’s an incompetent, narcissistic sociopath, but THIS IS SERIOUS.
He is hiding his financial dealings, but now it comes out that “The president is the sole beneficiary of the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust, which is tied to his social security number as the taxpayer identification number, according to documents published online by the investigative nonprofit ProPublica.”
Read the article at The Guardian.
Donald Trump, two weeks ago: “Pharma has a lot of lobbies, a lot of lobbyists, and a lot of power. And there’s very little bidding on drugs. We’re the largest buyer of drugs in the world, and yet we don’t bid properly.”
Donald Trump, today, after meeting with Pharma lobbyists: “I’ll oppose anything that makes it harder for smaller, younger companies to take the risk of bringing their product to a vibrantly competitive market. That includes price-fixing by the biggest dog in the market, Medicare, which is what’s happening.”
*car dealer talk for a pushover
Holy shit, what a crazy dream I was having.
There was a TV game show host running for president against 16 nincompoops. The game show host was like, the head nincompoop: loud, obnoxious, insulting, racist, misogynistic, vindictive, and ignorant. Of course, in my dream, he gets the nomination, and ends up running against a really accomplished candidate from the other party.
Nobody, including the game show host, thinks he’s going to win, but he’s so needy for attention that he plows ahead, improvising his campaign and preening before his supporters. Somewhere along the way it comes out that Russian computer hackers are helping him get elected by humiliating his more qualified rival for the job. Totally not believable, right? And then — you know how the weirdest things happen in dreams? — the game show guy — get this — wins the election! Nuts, huh?
Of course he has no idea how the government works, but he’s shot off his mouth for months about all the outrageous and hurtful things he’ll do when he’s the prez, so he has to go through the motions of “transitioning.” He spends the first month letting everybody know that he’s planning to renege on every single one of his campaign pledges except one: he’s going to take away everybody’s medical coverage! And his fans, for some reason, love it! Then he blows off daily presidential briefings because, he says, they’re too boring. “Oh oh,” I think in my dream, “he’s going to improvise his presidency, too!” I mean, I told you it was a crazy dream, right?
After a while he starts picking who he wants in his cabinet. He likes this part, because on TV he played a “boss,” who was powerful and smart and fired people on every episode. Here’s his chance to do it for realz! But remember, this is just a nutty dream — for each department he chooses somebody who’s made a career of destroying the very department they are now in charge of! If I were not sleeping, I could never make this stuff up!
Anyway, my dream starts to feel more like a nightmare as the game show host goes on Twitter day after day — and sometimes in the middle of the night — to attack people he hates for one reason or another, or to take credit for things that are happening around him that he had nothing to do with. It’s beginning to look like I’m about to descend into some kind of bizarre political hell for at least four years. I mean, a revenge-minded, petty, narcissistic sociopath is about to be handed the nuclear codes! Seriously, I must need psychiatric counseling or something, to be dreaming shit like this, right? This nightmare seems to last all freakin’ night, and finally, just as the obnoxious game show host is about to be inaugurated, I cry out and wake up in a cold sweat.
Thank God it’s only a dream.