All entries by this author

There was so much gunfire, you couldn’t get up and run

Jun 14th, 2017 11:22 am | By

And now this.

A lone gunman opened fire on Republican members of the congressional baseball team at a practice field in a Washington suburb Wednesday, using a rifle to shower the field with bullets that struck five people, including Steve Scalise, the majority whip of the House of Representatives.

The first I knew of it was a Facebook post by a friend wondering wtf just happened in the park a block from where he lives. A torrent of gunfire, it sounded like. It turned out that’s exactly what it was.

The suspect was killed.

Law enforcement authorities identified him as James T. Hodgkinson, 66, from Belleville, Ill., a suburb of St. Louis.

Two members of Mr. Scalise’s protective

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


It’s all so easy

Jun 13th, 2017 5:22 pm | By

Gwyneth Paltrow is still doing her home-made medical consultation thing. There was a GOOP health expo in LA last weekend.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments


23 million people

Jun 13th, 2017 4:23 pm | By

The Senate is still huddled in its reeking cave working on its Top Secret annul health care bill that no one will have time to read before it’s passed.

A coterie of Republicans is planning to have the Senate vote before July 4 on a bill that could take health insurance away from up to 23 million people and make changes to the coverage of millions of others. And they are coming up with the legislation behind closed doors without holding hearings, without consulting lawmakers who disagree with them and without engaging in any meaningful public debate.

Well naturally. When you’re fucking over 23 million people you don’t do it where they can see you.

There is no mystery why

… Read the rest

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Shan’t tell you

Jun 13th, 2017 3:44 pm | By

Sessions is stonewalling.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions offered an indignant defense on Tuesday against what he called “an appalling and detestable lie” that he may have colluded with the Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 election, showcasing his loyalty to President Trump in an often contentious Senate hearing but declining to answer central questions about his or the president’s conduct.

Sounding by turns defiant and wounded, Mr. Sessions, a former senator from Alabama, often infused his testimony with more emotion than specifics. He insisted repeatedly that it would be “inappropriate” to discuss his private conversations with the president, however relevant they might be, visibly frustrating senators who have been conducting their own inquiry into Russia’s election meddling.

This … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 9 comments
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Amazing, miraculous, resplendent, stupefying

Jun 13th, 2017 11:13 am | By

… Read the rest

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Women don’t get to count as human

Jun 13th, 2017 10:50 am | By

Sarah Ditum asks why abortion rights are brushed aside while LGBT rights are front and center in discussions about the Tory-DUP coalition.

[S]enior politicians were making it clear that the DUP’s regressive social agenda would be staying in Stormont. Same sex marriages remain unrecognised in Northern Ireland, and the 1967 Abortion Act (which permits abortion under certain conditions in England, Scotland and Wales) still doesn’t apply there. The DUP has blocked legislative efforts at liberalisation on both counts.

Over the weekend Ruth Davidson, the Conservative’s leader in Scotland, demanded – and got – assurances from Theresa May that LGBT rights would not be up for debate. Soon after, Jeremy Corbyn gave an interview in which he declared: “LGBT rights are

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 8 comments


No need to hire a lawyer yet

Jun 13th, 2017 10:25 am | By

It’s tricky, having a private lawyer working out of the White House.

Marc E. Kasowitz, a New York civil litigator who represented President Trump for 15 years in business and boasts of being called the toughest lawyer on Wall Street, has suddenly become the field marshal for a White House under siege. He is a personal lawyer for the president, not a government employee, but he has been talking about establishing an office in the White House complex where he can run his legal defense.

His visits to the White House have raised questions about the blurry line between public and private interests for a president facing legal issues. In recent days, Mr. Kasowitz has advised White House aides

… Read the rest

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The poison fruit

Jun 13th, 2017 9:05 am | By

Trump is thinking about firing the special counsel. Well of course he is, he’s Trump. But everyone around him is advising him not to. That means he will.

Newt Gingrich agrees with Trump though.

“I think Congress should now intervene and they should abolish the independent counsel,” the former House speaker said. “Because Comey makes so clear that it’s the poison fruit of a deliberate manipulation by the FBI director leaking to The New York Times, deliberately set up this particular situation. It’s very sick.”

Yeah, boy, that crazy Commie weirdo flake FBI director, that’s scary stuff man.

Adam Schiff urges time-thrift.

… Read the rest

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Conspiracy bullies

Jun 12th, 2017 4:42 pm | By

Someone in Florida was sentenced to five months in prison this week for threatening the father of one the children killed at Sandy Hook elementary school. There’s a whole big conspiracy theory about Sandy Hook.

[Leonard] Pozner has spent years using every tool at his disposal to scrub the online record of his son’s memory clean of videos suggesting that Noah and his surviving siblings and his parents are actors perpetrating a massive conspiracy against the American public. Pozner has made some progress in defending his family against these lies, but he said that countering hoaxers is still an uphill battle. Big tech companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook are doing far too little to deter the conspiracies,

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments


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

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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

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments
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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

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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

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments
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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

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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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