Day 513 Saturday June 16, 2018 1,065 Days to Go
This seems like it should be a catch up day for another insane week. Let’s review, in no particular order, what I think happened this week. I have to ask myself, “Was this only this week?”
1 – The president’s campaign manager went to jail.
2 – The president lied.
3 – The president’s lawyer lied.
4 – The Speaker of the House lied or hasn’t read or heard the news in the past three months.
5 – The president’s press secretary lied, insulted a reporter, and then refused to answer whether she lied.
6 – The Attorney General lied, quoted the Bible to justify his lie, and was called out for it.
7 – The Secretary of State lied, and contradicted what he was so adamant about when he was a Congressman.
8 – Shockingly, Fox News’ Sean Hannity lied and like the Secretary of State contradicted what he had said when the previous administration was in office.
9 – We as a country are now incarcerating people for coming to this country seeking asylum and we are separating them from their children. In a throw back excuse used by the Nazis our agents are telling parents the children are being taken for a shower. On the bright side, at least the kid isn’t being killed outright, just scared for life.
10 – A new set of charges was brought against Trump and the three kids active in this administration. Charges were filed by the State of New York against the Trump Foundation. A supposed not for profit entity that was really a front for campaign contributions, whether the contributors knew it or not.
11 – Ivanka Trump posted another picture of her with her kid, showing a level of cluelessness we’ve come to expect from the feckless woman. (No, I didn’t use that other word. Shows what a nice guy I am. Maybe we need a new word to describe her “wunt” combines “Woman” and “Won’t.” As in “Woman who Won’t do anything to help yoU.” Have to use the “u” so folks don’t think one forgot the apostrophe in “won’t.” And the “U” as in yoU, shows she ain’t helping you! … Why? What were you thinking? Feckless Wunt. )
12 – The Inspector General (IG) released his report on the FBI handling of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation. The president, his lawyer, and various high level ranking Republicans have seized on this to show there was no collusion by them (Trump, Republicans, I dunno Stormy Daniels?) with the Russians, and that Clinton is a criminal and should be investigated some more. There are a few problems with their assertions. They are all wrong, false, and lies. The report was about the FBI investigation into the Clinton emails, not Russian collusion. (For anyone jumping up and down screaming, “No Collusion!” based on this report please go back and read the subject line of the report. Let me explain: If I am talking about A, that proves nothing about B.) As to Clinton needing to be investigated the point made in the report was that there was nothing to charge Hillary with. That didn’t stop James Comey from dragging her name in the dirt on two separate occasions, which changed the outcome of the presidential election, which for a guy worried about integrity and transparency ya gotta wonder what was he thinking to talk about things that an uncharged person, accused of things that were found to be groundless?
Details, you want details?
The president lied about, well, everything. To be more specific, he only lied about the things he talked about. Let’s concentrate on the lies he told about Paul Manafort. Trump said Manafort worked on the campaign “for a very short time … only 49 days,” and that the special counsel “had to go back twelve years” to find something on Manafort. According to news reports Manafort worked on the campaign for one hundred days more than Trump stated, whether you consider that long or short might depend on how you view the various charges and pattern of behavior that Mr. Manafort has been engaged in. Yes, it’s been going on for at least twelve years, his money laundering and racketeering, but that is not what got him thrown in jail. What got him thrown in jail was witness tampering. He did that as recently as May. His lawyers tried to argue, “How did he know who the witnesses would be? If only there was a list of whom he shouldn’t talk to…” Sounds sort of reasonable doesn’t it? Except, except … See the charges against Manafort specify a particular company and he was talking to the people who run the company. Not only that but he tried to hide his trail by using an encrypted program. He also did a scheme, which has a name that I don’t recall at the moment, but what it involves is an email account. Manafort wrote emails but never sent them. He left them in the “Drafts” folder. Then the other person, knowing the account name and password would go in and read what was in the Drafts folder. Paulie could claim he never sent the emails! Plausible deniability! Hum, where have we heard that term before? Oh, right, with the Russians.
Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, stated that he really hasn’t been following, or is aware, of what EPA Director Scott Pruitt has been doing. Ryan doesn’t seem to know, I guess, that Pruitt has been using his office to try and enrich himself and his wife, that he has been doing the bidding of oil and gas concerns, and not protecting our air, water, and land. In fact, he’s been busy doing the opposite. Oh gee, what about government oversight? Paulie said he’d like reporters to refer those kind of questions to the appropriate oversight committees. Do you believe that Ryan has no clue? If he has no clue, what’s he doing in Congress? Oh right, he’s leaving.
Rudi Giuliani is lying, but like the old joke goes about salesmen and lawyers, “only when his lips are moving.” He has shown an amazing misunderstanding of the law, of the job of investigators and justice. Why? The only conclusion one can come to, and he’s admitted, is that he’s trying to change public opinion about Trump, in the hopes that enough people will believe his BS or that he will sufficiently muddy the water so that people aren’t sure and that Trump can withstand a vote on impeachment if and when it comes, and he seems to believe it’s coming. He also has been busy obstructing justice, or at least hinting at it. He stated, and the president has hinted – strongly, that the president might use his power to pardon to let people who might testify against him off the hook.
Sarah “yuckabee” Sanders was asked a simple straight forward question by a reporter. It was a tough one. Basically, the reporter asked, “Are you lying now, or were you lying then?” She wasted no time in telling the reporter that she knew he could only understand simple sentences. I guess like, “Are you lying now, or were you lying then?” She didn’t answer the question.
The Attorney General (AG) and the administration has instituted a bizarre policy of separating children from their parents. The president has taken to blaming the Democrats for his policy. The AG has justified it by saying he is enforcing the law, which he is not. There is no law that says police in this country should lie or use force to take their children away from their parents. Some folks are shocked by this. I wonder why? I mean it was the little Kebler elf himself, Jeff Sessions, that gave Trump that hateful immigration policy when Trump came to Alabama. Now, it wasn’t Sessions who wrote it. No that was Stephen Miller, a much more openly hateful and disgusting person than Sessions. Miller of the “why should I pick up my own trash? That’s what we have janitors for” fame while at Duke.
Mike Pompeo, who had terrible things to say about the Iran deal when he was a Congressman, is proud of the great deal he got with Trump and Kim. Of course, the deal is a piece of paper with no limits on nukes in it, no inspections of nuke sites in North Korea, no timetables (other than “in the future”.) He went to South Korea to sell them on it. I don’t know the specific lies he will have to tell, but he’ll have to lie his butt off. Stay tuned.
Fox, Sean, and what a difference a change in administration makes. Barrack Obama was the great appeaser, pictures of Neville Chamberlain with Hitler were posted when talking about the Iran deal. But now? The president gave away so much in his meeting with Kim, and to top it off said afterwards that we’d stop our military exercises with South Korea. And yet, there hasn’t been one reference by Fox to Chamberlain and appeasement.
The charges brought against the Trump Foundation are at the state level and are civil, not criminal. The evidence for crimes has been referred to the feds. The defense here seems to be “aw shucks, we didn’t know,” and “we did nothing wrong.” Okay, let’s break this down.
First, one needs to know that a foundation like the Trump Foundation is a non profit organization. It’s a 501-C3 in the tax code, which by definition is an organization set up for charitable work (or religious, scientific, literary, or educational). These organizations are specifically prohibited from conducting a political campaign or intervening in “elections to public office.” This is by definition. There is no debate about this. Period. Full stop.
The Trump Foundation took in money from people and used it to buy things, pay bills associated with business and legal dealings, and to give money to charities just before an election to help sway the electorate. None of this is legal, by definition, under the law. Also, many of the donors are the same people who gave to Trump’s campaign. One has to ask if this was just a dodge so they didn’t have to pay taxes? The claim by New York State is that the Trump Foundation did not act like a 501-C3 and therefore isn’t. If this holds up in court then the money donated is taxable, i.e. that means the people giving the money can’t claim it as giving to charity. It also means the income is taxable, both on the individuals’ accounts (i.e. they can’t write it off as a charitable donation) and on the Trump Foundation as income – taxable income. btw Trump has not given any money to the organization since 2008. What a guy.
A quick look at the Mueller probe: Trump, collusion, etc. etc. etc.
The president strolled out of the White House the other day and lo and behold he just happened to run into Steve Douchebag or whatever his name is at Fox and Fiends. Total coincidence. (Yeah, right.) He got cornered by reporters who had the nerve to ask him questions. The president being the Donald did what he does best. He lied. Now let’s not forget that Trump and Republicans were all over the Dems if and when they didn’t give a news conference every week. Trump hasn’t had one since before his last interview with Lester Holtz. The interview where he said he fired Comey because of Russia.
1,065 Days to Go
PS Lost in the jungle.
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