Pretty much anybody willing to get on the Trump train early should be assumed either a Russian agent or a spineless idiot now, I think. pic.twitter.com/zTKsrfmfPu
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 27, 2017
Spicer doesn't deny Nunes possibly received his information from sources inside the Trump administration
"Anything is possible," he says
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) March 27, 2017
Nunes looks like a guy worried about getting near any upper story window. pic.twitter.com/LXx8aM1uVq
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 28, 2017
Totally the face of someone who knows it's all just a silly hoax. pic.twitter.com/yRb7wwykVj
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 28, 2017
EBT
On paper Nunes is almost as poor as me. 52K net worth, 50K of which is his Bratva winery.
Major Major Major Major
Are we reëvaluating our take on Mattis yet?
CM
There are two relevant words in the Constitution: “emoluments” and “treason”.
piratedan
ahhh if only we had a large enough batch of veriteraserum….. in a way, its like watching a multi-car crash in slow motion… you know there’s going to be damage, what remains to be seen is how much and if there will be any fatalities….
Considering the players, would you be shocked to find the entire Trump team corrupt? I wouldn’t. They strike me as all thinking that they’re all SUPERGENIUSES because no one has ever stopped them before.
jmw
To The Point was pretty good on this today too:
http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/to-the-point/further-revelations-into-russian-involvement-in-2016-election
Major Major Major Major
@piratedan:
Nope. As Frum says, there are many secrets but few mysteries.
TriassicSands
@CM:
Asshole must be in there somewhere.
Tomorrow (today now), Donnie “Man Boobs” Trump is going to begin his all-out assault on the environment. It’s no longer enough for reporters and media to call Trump a liar; they have to start calling him stupid, too. The man is an idiot.
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: Which take would that be? “Mad Dog with teeth and claws pulled”?
Clearly a matter of time before he quits; or maybe he’s hanging around b/c he wants his relatives’ children to have an Earth to inherit. Every time he does something seemingly indicative of sanity, Dampnut, Bannonazi, or somebody else follows it up with lunacy. And they all outrank him.
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: That Mattis is the sane one, there out of duty to country, untainted by the shit-Midas touch of Trump. Was thinking about the tweet at the top, “Pretty much anybody willing to get on the Trump train early should be assumed either a Russian agent or a spineless idiot now, I think. “
EBT
@Major Major Major Major: To be fair, I believe that Carson isn’t compromised.
Major Major Major Major
@EBT: Ha, fair enough. Perry neither.
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
I wouldn’t have voted to make an exception for him to be eligible to be Sec Def. He’s turning out pretty much as I expected.
CM
Here are fuller versions of two key Constitutional phrases.
First, emoluments: “(N)o person holding any office of profit or trust under them (the United States), shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, … , of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”
Second, treason: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”
And then there is the clause that combines the two:
“The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
Sab
@TriassicSands: My family has been wondering if Trump wears diapers.Old out of shape guys guts get bigger but their butts get smaller due to lack of muscle tone. Trumps big ass suggests padding.
EBT
@Sab: His GP is a gastro, I assume he has a colostomy bag and the poorly tailored suits are to hide that as much as his huge stomach.
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: Ah, -that- take. Honestly, I don’t think he’s part of the conspiracy. If nothing else, he came onboard too late. But it doesn’t matter. He’s window dressing, and if he doesn’t already know it, he’s finding out fast.
I -do- think he’s staying partially out of duty to the country. To keep the missiles from flying. He might think there’s other “good work” he can do. He’ll find out he’s mistaken.
EBT
@Chet Murthy: If he keeps donnie from starting an atomic war then that has to be the best work he could ever hope to accomplish.
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: @EBT: Everything Trump touches that isn’t already shit turns to shit, so he’ll almost certainly find he’s mistaken.
Sab
@Major Major Major Major: Still hoping Mattis is the sane one. Willing to risk his life in his youth to protect the country. Now willing to risk his reputation to keep our President* from doing nutz stuff. Naive of me but that’s all I have.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Major Major Major Major:
Carson is a nonentity as far as I’m concerned. Too dense to be compromised, utterly clueless.
I’ll confess to having a soft spot for Perry- he’s an American politician out of central casting in the looks and deportment area, seems to be genial enough, probably lazy enough to defer to senior staff (and knows what he doesn’t know). He’s probably the least offensive member of the cabinet, and doesn’t want to see the world blow up.
Chet Murthy
@Sab:
I sure hope that the only thing he’s waiting for (to take that risk) is the nuclear (or peer-competitor war) order. B/c anything less …. well, he won’t be able to stop it; he’ll just get fired. But if he stops one of those first two, he’ll be a national hero. No reputational risk there. The wingnuts love their children too.
opiejeanne
@Sab:I would guess because of his age he’s had surgery for prostate cancer.
Surgery for prostate cancer tends to leave men a little incontinent, just a few drops now and then but needing help to avoid embarrassment.
My husband had a very aggressive form of prostate cancer, fast-moving, so the doc did surgery. It’s a nuisance but having an occasional leak is preferable to being dead.
As the surgery for this condition improves this will be less the case but for most who have had the surgery it’s just part of life.
patrick II
Nunes said he had to go to eh white house to use a classified computer security link the day before his second and more public trip to the white house. There are also secure com links at the capitol building which is less than 2 miles from the white house (I have walked it). It would have taken 2 or 3 minutes or less to drive to the capitol building. Unless there was an icbm on the way, there is no reason that Nunez had to see the data he claims to have found a couple of minutes earlier.
The necessity of using the white house com link because he had to access the information quickly is just one more lie among many that keep piling up.
opiejeanne
@EBT: That would be hell, having to live with a colostomy. I hadn’t thought of that.
patrick II
Line of succession: Trump, Pence (also implicated for lying about Flynn), Ryan, Orrin Hatch, Rex Tillerson, Steve Mnuchin, Mad Dog Mattis (who I though to be pretty sane, but now wants to up the stakes in Yemen), Jeff Sessions, Ryan Zinke and then, finally Mike Young, temporary agriculture secretary.
We cannot impeach enough guys.
opiejeanne
@patrick II: Portugal is not sending us their best.
Joyce H
Has anyone checked Gorsuch for Russian ties? Just asking, because this administration sure doesn’t do any vetting, so I hope somebody is…
ThresherK
That second photo makes him look like Michael Scott from The Office.
OzarkHillbilly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
He’s a Republican. That fact alone puts your last very much in doubt.
Balconesfault
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: As a Texan who suffered under a decade plus of Perry’s Governorship … I’d welcome him back in a heartbeat if we could get rid of Greg Abbott.
Perry’s an opportunist … Abbott’s a True Believer.
Perry’s also capable of supporting Government doing good big things if they have business community support. His pushing the CREZ power grid system paved the way for a second boom in wind and solar power generation in Texas … Before the CREZ lines were completed renewable energy projects in West Texas were being choked off by lack of transmission capacity.
And while his appointments were too conservative and Good Old Boyish for my taste … None of them came in to take a crowbar to the agencies they ran.
Sam
We should not disregard the role of vicious stupidity and cupidity in all of this. I am beginning to think it is determinative. That is, Trump’s mentality is that of a thug, and he is finding out slowly but surely that it doesn’t play in Peoria. The question is really what happens when he is completely stymied politically? Does he focus on making money, or does he try to blow something up? I could go either way.
TriassicSands
@opiejeanne:
Surgery is not the only treatment for prostate cancer. It seems that many men who get prostate cancer want it OUT of their bodies — not an unusual response to cancer. However, there are two forms of radiation treatment that have success rates similar to indistinguishable from surgery. The possibility of incontinence and or impotence exists for all three treatments, but may be better for the non-surgical treatments.
External beam radiation is non-invasive but it requires treatment five days a week for 8-1/2 weeks (actual regimens may vary by facility — but it’s a lot of relatively short treatements). Brachytherapy involves inserting many radioactive seeds (about the size of a grain of rice) in the prostate. Specialists carefully map out the prostate and the location of each seed to offer maximum exposure to the radiation. The procedure is done in a hospital, but on an outpatient basis. There is little or no pain involved and the recovery time is
virtuallynonexistent. Some care has to be taken over the course of several weeks not to expose young children or pregnant women to the radiation from the seeds, but that exposure requires close proximity. For example, it would be a bad idea to have a grandchild sit on one’s lap. Potentially vulnerable people have to stay several feet away from the source.Any man with prostate cancer that needs to be treated should discuss the pros and cons of all three treatments with the relevant specialists — urologist for surgery and radiation oncologist for radiation. It’s also worth talking to a medical oncologist — they deal with hormone therapy — to see if a specific case might benefit from the addition of hormone therapy to one of the three main treatments.
And, as with all cancers, get to the very best facility you can manage — it makes a real difference in survival rates for most cancers. Don’t go to your local hospital just because it’s close and convenient.
Lurking Canadian
@piratedan: They are all corrupt. I think Kay has it exactly right. Their entire business model depends on the rules applying to everybody else, but not to them.
Sign a contract, then don’t live up to your end. Don’t like it? Sue me.
Appoint my daughter and son-in-law to responsible positions in the White House. Don’t like it? Fuck you, I’m the President.
To use a basketball metaphor, they’ve figured out that they can get the referees to call fouls exclusively against the other guys.
Under those circumstances, you’d foul at every opportunity. You’d be a fool not to.
Ron
I would suggest that Nunes and Kush don’t get on any small planes anytime soon.
JCJ
@TriassicSands:
To nitpick a little with your description of radiation treatments I would add that a course of external beam radiation for prostate cancer can usually be done in 5½ weeks rather than 8 to 8½ weeks. Hypofractionated radiation done in 28 treatments has essentially the same results as standard fractionation done in 40 – 43 treatments. It is necessary to have image guidance to do hypofractionated radiation, but I imagine most clinics have that now (in my clinic we have had it for 17 years.)
Another way to treat prostate cancer with radiation is stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT.) This entails five treatments done over one to two weeks. Not every clinic does this. There is data showing it to be quite efficacious, but it is somewhat newer. In my clinic my colleague has been doing it for about seven years. Interestingly we are now affiliated with the University of Wisconsin so we have seen them start doing this as well but with a more standard linear accelerator. We use CyberKnife.
Calouste
@Major Major Major Major: Mattis was on the board of directors of the fraud that is Theranos. My take on him has always been that he is in it for the grift.
sigaba
@Ron:
Or any big ones. Russian airliners have this nasty habit of crashing with a hundred bystanders and one problem general on board.
Chris
@EBT:
Ben “pyramids are grain storage containers” Carson? Ben “I am not qualified to do this job, but what the heck, I’ll do it” Carson?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Russians were paying him to not work for them.
Elie
@Major Major Major Major:
Mattis wants to expand the war in Yemen — while still being wholly understaffed (because they won’t “let” him get the people he needs to help). The dude is a fool or yes man. I don’t trust him any more than the others. The whole crew is shit and will take us down the toilet if somehow not deactivated. I never dreamed that it would be this bad but here we are, eh?
TenguPhule
@EBT: Swiss Bank Accounts, Dirty Russian money in the safe, blood diamonds under his wife’s name.
/It would be irresponsible not to speculate. And at this rate, all of the above will turn out to be true!
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: Probably traitor, certainly incompetent.