Kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss

Jun 12th, 2017 4:29 pm | By

Now people are laughing at Trump for holding a Kiss the Ring or Perhaps the Ass ceremony at his first “Cabinet Meeting” today.

Donald Trump opened a cabinet meeting Monday by bragging about the “record-setting pace” of his legislation, which is his fantasy as opposed to fact. Then things got weird, as Trump invited members to introduce themselves. They knew what to do.

Watch the full 11-minute video

Tell him he’s awesome. Did I guess right?

The cabinet responded with appalling enthusiasm, viz: “we thank you for the opportunity and the blessing that you’ve given us to serve your agenda”; “great honor to serve you”; “my hat’s off to you”; “privilege of my life”; “thank you, great honor”.

Oh god … Read the rest

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Entanglements

Jun 12th, 2017 12:17 pm | By

Then there’s that lawsuit filed today by the AGs of Maryland and DC:

The attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia have announced they’ve filed suit against President Donald Trump, alleging he violated the Constitution by retaining ties to a sprawling global business empire.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh made the announcement at a jointly held news conference in Washington, confirming the suit has been filed in federal court in Maryland. Frosh and Racine cited Trump’s leases, properties and other business “entanglements” around the world as the reason for the suit, saying those posed a conflict of interest under a clause of the Constitution.

“The president’s conflicts of interest

… Read the rest

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9th Circuit to President Liar: Nope

Jun 12th, 2017 11:55 am | By

Oh dear, poor Lying Don, another harsh blow. 9th Circuit says a big no to Don’s Excellent Travel Ban.

Another federal court has ruled against President Donald Trump’s revised executive order limiting travel from six predominately Muslim countries — and like other courts, used his tweets against him.

The ruling from a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is yet another stinging loss from a court that similarly refused to reinstate Trump’s original executive order on travel in February.

“We conclude that the President, in issuing the Executive Order, exceeded the scope of the authority delegated to him by Congress,” the three judges, all appointed by President Bill Clinton, wrote. “(I)mmigration, even for the President, is not

… Read the rest

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When backed into a corner, lie like a rug

Jun 12th, 2017 11:41 am | By

Amber Phillips notes there’s this pattern President Liar has of throwing out criminal accusations whenever the heat gets too close to his bum.

We know that James B. Comey is a leaker. It’s doubtful that he’s a criminal; legal experts have said that even though the former FBI director shared his memos of conversations with President Trump with the media, if the information wasn’t classified, that probably wasn’t a crime.

Do we know that Comey is a leaker? I don’t feel as if I know that. He shared his own notes with a friend with a request to read portions to the Times. The notes were typed on a fed machine on fed time, true, but is that by itself … Read the rest

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Act One scene 7

Jun 12th, 2017 10:57 am | By

So what might happen next? Don could fall a few more flights.

but how much worse could this get? The chatter on the Sunday shows hinted at where we may be headed. Here are a few things to watch for:

The tapes Trump hinted at turn out not to exist. On ABC’s “This Week,” Jay Sekulow, a member of Trump’s legal team, said Trump will make a decision very soon on whether to release the tapes he may have made of his conversations with then-FBI Director James B. Comey.  After the news broke that Trump may have demanded a “loyalty” pledge from Comey, the president tweeted that Comey had better hope he doesn’t have tapes of their conversations. Trump

… Read the rest

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Viciousness is it?

Jun 12th, 2017 10:29 am | By

Aaron Blake collects some of Don’s viciousness in response to his children’s complaints about the viciousness of people who dislike Don:

For the second time in a week, one of President Trump’s children took to the Fox News airwaves to complain about just how rough-and-tumble our political system is.

A few days after Eric Trump decried the political left as “not even people” over its “hatred” and treatment of his father, Ivanka Trump went on “Fox and Friends” on Monday morning and decried the “viciousness” of Washington.

“There’s a level of viciousness that I was not expecting,” she said. “I was not expecting the intensity of this experience.”

I guess she must think that her loathsome bullying … Read the rest

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Sweating, are ya, Don?

Jun 12th, 2017 10:06 am | By

Poor Donnie. Sad!

He’s not at all worried about any of it. Not at all. He’s chill and happy and focused and at peak performance. Definitely.… Read the rest

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The guy won’t pay and he won’t listen

Jun 11th, 2017 4:39 pm | By

Unsurprisingly, Lyin’ Donnie is having a hard time finding top lawyers willing to take him on. Gee I wonder why.

Top lawyers with at least four major law firms rebuffed White House overtures to represent President Trump in the Russia investigations, in part over concerns that the president would be unwilling to listen to their advice, according to five sources familiar with discussions about the matter.

…

The president’s chief lawyer now in charge of the case is Marc E. Kasowitz, a tough New York civil litigator who for years has aggressively represented Trump in multiple business and public relations disputes — often with threats of countersuits and menacing public statements — but who has little experience dealing with complex

… Read the rest

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Just to shoot the breeze

Jun 11th, 2017 3:15 pm | By

Good god.

CNN:

“When I’ve been reading the stories of how the President has been contacting (former FBI Director) Jim Comey over time, felt a little bit like deja vu,” [Preet] Bharara said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Trump invited Bharara to Trump Tower in New York a few weeks after the election, and Bharara said Trump asked him to stay on at the time.

Bharara said Trump called him twice during the transition “ostensibly just to shoot the breeze.”

“It was a little bit uncomfortable,” Bharara said. “But he was not the President. He was only the President-elect.”

The former US attorney said Trump called him one more time — in March, after Trump had taken office.

“I refused

… Read the rest

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When he tells you to do something, guess what?

Jun 11th, 2017 11:57 am | By

Don Junior carelessly confirmed the truth of what Comey testified, in his eagerness to sneer at and defame him.

Donald Trump Jr. — the president’s eldest son — seemed to confirm Comey’s version of events in a Saturday interview on Fox News as he tried to emphasize the fact that his father did not directly order Comey to stop investigating Flynn.

“When he tells you to do something, guess what? There’s no ambiguity in it, there’s no, ‘Hey, I’m hoping,'” Trump Jr. said.

He says dogmatically, but of course he wouldn’t know what Trump does when it’s a matter of being president and wanting to bully the head of the FBI into closing an investigation while also wanting not to … Read the rest

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Trump is a hostile, dangerous power

Jun 11th, 2017 11:38 am | By

The Observer offers a crisp take on Trump’s suitability for a state visit to the UK.

Donald Trump is not a fit and proper person to hold the office of president of the United States. That is a view widely held in the US and among America’s European allies, by politicians and diplomats in government and by rank-and-file voters repelled by his gross egoism, narcissism and what Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has rightly termed his “stupefying ignorance”. It is a view we wholeheartedly share and have repeatedly expressed, before and after Trump’s narrow election victory last November.

Trump is an habitual liar, as evidenced again in last week’s sworn congressional testimony by his sacked FBI

… Read the rest

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They’re waiting for the queen to phone

Jun 11th, 2017 11:28 am | By

Patrick Wintour at the Guardian reports that Trump is having doubts about that visit to the UK, but the White House has issued a statement saying Nuh-uh.

Donald Trump has told Theresa May in a phone call he does not want to go ahead with a state visit to Britain until the British public supports him coming.

The US president said he did not want to come if there were large-scale protests and his remarks in effect put the visit on hold for some time.

The call was made in recent weeks, according to a Downing Street adviser who was in the room. The statement surprised May, according to those present.

May’s people refuse to comment.

“We aren’t going to

… Read the rest

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Project much?

Jun 11th, 2017 10:37 am | By

Don the Bully has been active this morning.

I suppose what he meant by “prevalent” is that there are more of them than the one non-leak of Comey sharing his notes with the Times via a friend. There is of course little reason to “believe” any such thing, and quite a lot of reason not to. One compelling reason is simply that Comey wasn’t a stifled underling, he was the head of the organization, so he generally didn’t need to “leak.” The special case would be if he needed to leak information … Read the rest

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Many waves

Jun 10th, 2017 6:02 pm | By

Carol Tavris on feminism and misogyny, which she could also have called feminism and reaction or feminism and backlash.

Feminism and misogyny have been locked in a painful, inextricable embrace for centuries: The ascendance of one enrages, provokes and energizes the other. Each seeks justifications for its premisses and goals in religion, culture, tradition – and that most solemn of authorities, science.

No they don’t. Anti-feminism does, but feminism is deeply rooted in resistance to religion, culture, tradition. Until very recently religion, culture, tradition have been centrally about keeping women subordinate and silent.

Anyway, it gets better after that.

Whenever women sought to enter these or any other male-dominated fields, they would get the sneering question that Angela Saini,

… Read the rest

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Who gets the extra ice cream?

Jun 10th, 2017 3:18 pm | By

A couple of weeks ago there was an evangelical Christian conference in Sydney “devoted to what it means to be a godly woman.” Oooh I know this one! It means to be obedient, submissive, subordinate, compliant, complaisant, “sweet,” deferential, self-effacing, and not at all in any way challenging to the Authority and Superiority of Men.

During a talk about the meaning of Bible verses on male headship — where men are leaders in the home and the church — an image of newly-shorn actress Kristen Stewart flashed onto an overhead screen.

Was this platinum blonde buzz cut, asked the speaker, Carmelina Read, appropriate for a woman? Was it feminine and submissive, or instead flagging independence and rebellion?

Women should have … Read the rest

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Morrison v Olson

Jun 10th, 2017 10:47 am | By

Alan Dershowitz has been telling the world that Trump can’t be charged with obstruction of justice. Rick Pildes at Lawfare explains what he’s ignoring.

The reason, according to Dershowitz, is that the Constitution gives the exclusive power to the President to control all federal law-enforcement investigations—and  thus to shut any of them down for any reason the President sees fit.  In other words, the President can never commit obstruction of justice by shutting down a criminal investigation or prosecution.

But Dershowitz fails to take into account that the Supreme Court has decisively rejected this view.  In Morrison v. Olson (1988), a 7-1 Supreme Court turned back constitutional challenges   to Congress’ creation of the Act that gave us the office

… Read the rest

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At his core a dishonest and untrustworthy man

Jun 10th, 2017 10:02 am | By

At this point the people who don’t think Trump is a confirmed resolute habitual liar would fit comfortably inside a boutique coffee shop in Sausalito. Dana Milbank won’t be sharing a table with them.

In the three hours I sat transfixed in Room 216 of the Hart Building, 15 feet behind the fired FBI director, the line that chilled me more than any other was Comey’s account of why he wrote extensive, real-time notes of his conversations with Trump. “The nature of the person,” Comey explained in part. “I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, and so I thought it really important to document.”

The nature of the person.

This was the

… Read the rest

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The most explosive aspect

Jun 10th, 2017 9:40 am | By

Asha Rangappa writes that the real shocker in Comey’s testimony is Trump’s total indifference to the damage Russia did to us and continues to do.

[A]s a former FBI counterintelligence agent, what I saw as the most explosive aspect of the testimony didn’t involve any legal violation of the U.S. code or questions about whether Comey had broken established Department of Justice protocols. Instead, it was the prima facie evidence that Comey presented that Trump appears unwilling to uphold his oath “to preserve, protect, and defend” the country — which puts the security of our nation and its democracy at stake. In the nine times Trump met with or called Comey, it was always to discuss how the investigation into

… Read the rest

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Senators rush to take health care away from millions

Jun 10th, 2017 5:07 am | By

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are stealthily pushing through the no health care for you bill without hearings.

Republican senators are quietly moving toward something that has been their party’s goal for nearly eight years: dismantling the Affordable Care Act. The question, of course, is how they plan to replace it.

Republicans in the Senate will need 50 votes to pass their version of the American Health Care Act. Several senators have expressed reservations about the House version of the bill, which withdraws federal support for Planned Parenthood and rolls back the Medicaid expansion accomplished by the A.C.A.. Despite the lack of consensus within the party, Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, on Wednesday began the process of fast-tracking the bill

… Read the rest

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When the subject is spilling beans

Jun 10th, 2017 3:53 am | By

There’s another likely explanation for why Comey didn’t tell Trump he was being inappropriate:

During the hearing, several senators pressed Comey about why he didn’t ask obvious follow-up questions, as when Trump allegedly said to the director, “We had that thing.” What thing? Comey also might have queried, “Mr. President, what do you mean when you say you ‘hope’?” Or, as various commentators have suggested, why didn’t Comey say, “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but this is highly inappropriate and I’m going to have to excuse myself”?

Ask any reporter, whose skills are essentially investigative, and the answer is: You don’t ever interrupt when the subject is spilling beans.

Ohhhh. Of course. Comey’s the head of the FBI and there’s Trump … Read the rest

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