Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

You cannot shame the shameless.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

This fight is for everything.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

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Just a Soul Whose Intentions Are Good

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Unbelievable:

Just after President Trump’s defense lawyers ended arguments in their Senate trial Tuesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein suggested she could vote to acquit him, despite serious concerns about his character.

“Nine months left to go, the people should judge. We are a republic, we are based on the will of the people — the people should judge,” Feinstein said Tuesday, after the president’s team finished a three-day presentation in his defense. “That was my view and it still is my view.”

[…]

After those remarks were published, Feinstein issued a statement saying she had been misunderstood.

“Before the trial I said I’d keep an open mind. Now that both sides made their cases, it’s clear the president’s actions were wrong. He withheld vital foreign assistance for personal political gain. That can’t be allowed to stand.”

Misunderstood! After the discipline of Schiff spending hours laying out his case in the most precise language, she makes a stupid off-the-cuff remark like that and has to walk it back. And it is so stupid, because the fundamental reason for impeaching Trump is that he’s meddling with the next election with the purpose of thwarting the will of the people.

Jesus, a child could understand that argument.

Just to be clear, I’m not just upset that she made a dumb comment that she had to walk back. What’s really scary is that that she might be reflecting what some other “institutionalist” Democrats in the Senate really think. Also, “Well if even San Francisco liberal DiFi has concerns about impeachment, how can I explain my vote to the voters of <purple or red state>”.

There isn’t enough alcohol in the world, there just isn’t…

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You know what to do

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The Senate switchboard number is:(202) 224-3121

Politely give your opinion on the value of witnesses to your Senators and thank the ones who are making good choices for having made those choices.

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Media, Welcome To Your Separate Hangings

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Pompeo has escalated the war against NPR by barring a different NPR reporter (Michele Kelemen) from covering his trip to Europe and Central Asia. Here’s the strongly worded statement from the State Department Correspondents’ Association:

“The removal of Michele, who was in rotation as the radio pool reporter, comes days after Secretary Pompeo harshly criticized the work of an NPR host. We can only conclude that the State Department is retaliating against National Public Radio as a result of this exchange,” Shaun Tandon, the association’s president, said in a statement.

Let’s just file that under “N” for “No Shit, Sherlock”, or perhaps “G” for “Get a Fucking Clue”, and move on.

Of course, as far as we know, every other reporter is staying on the trip. I gotta go set up my positive pressure room so I can hunker down through the coming plague that will be spread by McDonald’s Happy Meal toys and contaminated dog food, so I’ll just bullet point this one (as Mayor Pete would say):

  1. No major news that isn’t predictable will be generated on this trip. Sending a couple of pool reporters and photographers to transcribe the lies and cover the protests and photo ops, would keep us as informed as we need to be about this event. (cf. Jay Rosen, mutadis mutandis)
  2. Therefore, the right response is to send a pool and let Pompeo pack the plane with Fox News, Breitbart and similar scum, but the press won’t because of a few reasons:
    1. The press is addicted to “scoops” that are regularly spun off from the leaky scow that is Pompeo’s State Department. What counts as a scoop is generally a lie reported first and/or gossip that has no real news value, generated by people who would be on this trip and drunk in the hotel bar at night. The value of the scoop is to help the scoop recipients to attain the aura of a “connected insider” so they can get Twitter followers and clicks from people who give a shit about what just happened 5 minutes ago, i.e., not normal people.
    2. Reporters and their editors are under massive financial pressure to get clicks and eyeballs, blue checks, and all that shit, but in the current Internet environment, it’s not clear that clicks, being a “thinkfluencer”, etc. is really worth anything. The new working model for media is subscriptions and a tight paywall, and it’s not at all clear that the kind of gossipy scoops that fuel the Twitter fire translate into subscribers.
    3. To be fair to the media, it’s hard for competitors to join together to fight an existential thread, so if Fox gets on the plane, and predictably is the recipient of tons of bullshit “scoops”, other outlets would perceive that as a competitive loss. This ignores the fact that that Fox and mainstream media compete for a completely different set of eyeballs. Fox et. al. has a lock on ~40% of the population. The rest of the media is fighting for the other 60%.
  3. Whether or not the “scoops” that would be gotten on this trip would actually help the publications sending reporters on the trip, it is fucking lunacy for the press not to clap back hard at stuff like this, because it’s clear that any press outlet connected with the real world is an enemy of Trumpland, and the Trumpers will continue to pick off “lieberal” outlets like NPR whenever they need to make noise with their base. Perhaps a really strong response would help, probably not, but a weak-ass response definitely won’t do shit. So, fucking fight.

If that all makes sense or not, it doesn’t matter, because no organization venerates bullshit traditions and status quo like the DC media, and they’ve all convinced themselves that things will be back to normal once the Trump storm blows over.

In conclusion, we’re all going to die. Thank you for your time, and don’t miss the snacks on the buffet table on your way out of the auditorium.

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Can I get a witness?

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I’m curious to see what happens with the witnesses in the Senate trial. I still think there won’t be any but if there are, it will be bullshit anyway, where John Bolton talks for five minutes then they grill Hunter Biden for a week.

Anyway, fuck all these assholes. Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado.

Goal Thermometer

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No recollection…

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In the “Lumpy rug” thread below, valued commenter Sab pointed out that one reason GOP senators are so reluctant to hear from John Bolton and other witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial is that they’ve got their own dirt to conceal. Right on cue, The Tampa Bay Times published a story about a conversation Trump had with Lev Parnas about Florida Senator Rick Scott.

The story is based on the 80-plus minute recording where Trump was heard making a thuggish-sounding order to “take out” a U.S. ambassador. At the same event, Trump also talked to Parnas about then-Governor Rick Scott, who was running against a long-time incumbent Democrat for the senate seat:

About halfway through the recording, Parnas mentioned he lived in Florida, prompting Trump to ask how Scott, then Florida’s governor, was faring in his U.S. Senate campaign.

“Rick Scott’s good,” said Parnas, who was indicted in October on charges that he and his business partner, Igor Fruman, steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors. Both are now key figures in Trump’s impeachment proceedings.

“Is he going to win?” Trump asks.

Parnas responded: “It’s going to be close, but I think we’re going to pull it out.”

He repeatedly referred to Scott’s election effort as “we,” suggesting an intimacy or involvement with the campaign. Parnas also told Trump: “We’re doing a fundraiser” for Scott in May and mentioned having lunch with former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, now one of Trump’s impeachment defense lawyers.

The article reviews the federal indictment of Parnas and fellow Giuliani-adjacent goon Fruman for illegally dropping hundreds of thousands of foreign-sourced dollars on Republican candidates. It recounts how the pair also contributed heavily as individuals and through their company to Scott and the current GOP governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.

Coincidentally, DeSantis also had “no recollection” of meeting Parnas when the feds scooped Rudy’s pals up. DeSantis donated the funds he received from the pair to charity, as did Scott in the wake of the indictment. The article notes recent WSJ reporting that indicates Parnas turned over texts between himself and DeSantis to the House Democrats. I mean, who among us hasn’t carried on text conversations with complete strangers, right?

Meanwhile, Parnas’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, is tweeting out photos of his client with various GOP bigwigs and encouraging Republican senators to vote for witnesses and a fair trial. Here’s one from this morning:

Parnas, the Forrest Gump of Republican corruption, seems to have a lot of receipts. So yeah, good point, Sab. Any guesses on which Republican will get the next attack of amnesia?

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Impeachment Trial – January 28, 2020

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Let’s see what kind of lies and smears the Republicans can come up with today. And whether they take note of John Bolton’s book. The commentary from lawyers yesterday on my Twitter feed was that a good lawyer incorporates new material into their argument. Once again, I probably won’t be watching most of it.

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One corner of a very lumpy rug…

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As the Ukraine scandal was blowing up a while back, Kay pointed out that given Trump’s well-documented greed and corruption, we can be certain he abused his power for personal gain in interactions with other countries besides Ukraine. She suggested the exposure of Trump’s malfeasance in Ukraine is lifting just “one corner of a very lumpy rug.”

The Times got its mitts on further excerpts of Bolton’s book, which lifts other corners and implicates AG William Barr:

WASHINGTON — John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, privately told Attorney General William P. Barr last year that he had concerns that President Trump was effectively granting personal favors to the autocratic leaders of Turkey and China, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Barr responded by pointing to a pair of Justice Department investigations of companies in those countries and said he was worried that Mr. Trump had created the appearance that he had undue influence over what would typically be independent inquiries, according to the manuscript. Backing up his point, Mr. Barr mentioned conversations Mr. Trump had with the leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Xi Jinping of China.

Mr. Bolton’s account underscores the fact that the unease about Mr. Trump’s seeming embrace of authoritarian leaders, long expressed by experts and his opponents, also existed among some of the senior cabinet officers entrusted by the president to carry out his foreign policy and national security agendas.

Barr’s spokeswoman denied the conversation ever happened and accused Bolton of projecting his own views onto Barr. Why did Bolton go to Barr in the first place? Was it not obvious to him Barr is up to his neck in Trump’s fuckery? Maybe it’s harder for wingnuts to accept that Barr is a corrupt Trump flunky with his own agenda because he’s been a DC fixture for so long?

You’d think the cautionary tale Bolton sees in the mirror while trimming his iconic mustache would be a clue, but oh well. Or maybe this is Bolton’s opening salvo in a bid to discredit Barr with fellow Republicans should the entire Trump scam collapse? If so, I wish him godspeed, the warmongering shit-stain.

Anyhoo, The Times article cites Bolton’s earlier allegation (in a private speech) that Trump’s eagerness to curry favor with Turkish President Erdoğan by torpedoing an investigation into a Turkish bank is related to Trump’s business interests in the region. (The investigation was restarted when the corrupt move to quash it attracted unwanted attention — shades of the aid release in Ukraine!)

Bolton also alleges that Trump gushes over China’s President Xi and relaxed sanctions on a Chinese telecom over Republican and national security agency objections because Trump required Xi’s assistance after painting himself into a corner with the trade war.

Outside Bolton’s claim that he raised concerns with Barr, this isn’t new information — the bank investigation and telecom sanctions removal always looked fishy as hell. And Trump’s gonna Trump, so I’m confident any investigation into Trump’s behavior in any interaction with a foreign or domestic entity, including a Girl Scout cookie sale, would reveal a cesspool of self-dealing and fraud.

But it’s good that the topics have been reintroduced in the middle of the impeachment trial, if only to remind the Republican senators currently engaged in a massive cover-up of just how lumpy the rug they’re standing on is — and how quickly it could be snatched out from under them.

One corner of a very lumpy rug…Post + Comments (142)