Fear! They Must Fear!

Tucker Viemeister.

Conservative allies are now poking and pushing the Tiny Tyrant to indulge in more firings, because naturally, the fault of the current mess lies with them! And them! Oh, and them too! One GOP operative even managed to blurt out a tiny bit of conservatruth, the importance of fear, because what good is a regime without that?

President Trump’s allies are pushing him to make drastic changes as the White House deals with persistent leaks and a communications strategy they believe has spun out of control.

There is a broad sense among Trump’s media boosters and early supporters that his staff is failing him, beginning with chief of staff Reince Priebus and extending to press secretary Sean Spicer, whose job security has been the subject of endless speculation.

Now, some of the most influential figures in conservative media are openly auditioning for Spicer’s job, calling for the ouster of communications director Mike Dubke or pushing the White House to fight back against the media by ending press briefings altogether.

Some of those measures — in particular the measure to freeze out the press — are catching on among Trump’s conservative base.

“I have always been against the White House doing daily press briefings and agree that an overhaul of how the communications team deals with the media is in order,” said Mark Meckler, cofounder of the Tea Party Patriots. “We are dealing with a media that is, by and large, hostile to conservatives, hostile to Republicans, hostile to ideas of limited government, fiscal responsibility and constitutionalism, and certainly hostile to this president. So the president and his staff should act accordingly.”

Why yes, of course, people being generally hostile to such ideas, that has nothing at all to do with ideas, no. Instead, stomping all over media and attempting to restrict information, that’s the ticket, yeah!

Hannity accused reporters of seeking publicity for themselves through public combat with the White House.

He said the White House should strike back by having reporters submit questions in writing, “giving the White House time to respond with clarity and specificity.” Following that, Spicer or deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders could then take a handful of questions from reporters on prearranged topics, Hannity said.

“If the White House follows this plan, I think the destroy-Trump propaganda media will have a much harder time misrepresenting the Trump administration positions and you, the American people, will be better served,” he said.

Oh my, just look at that radiating pile of wrong. We certainly wouldn’t want a president and spokespeople who were capable of actually thinking before talking, no, that would be bad. Instead, we’ll quash media by treating them like naughty kindergartners. Trump administration positions are not being misrepresented. They are being represented, which is why you’re all in such a stew. Can you imagine the reaction if anyone suggested such a plan with an earlier president? The cries of “Unamerican!” would roll like thunder across the land. As for being better served, count me out on being an American people.

Trump’s allies blame the uproar on a failure of Trump’s chief of staff to assert authority inside a White House bitten by daily leaks to the press that paint a chaotic and unflattering picture of the president.

“It all comes back to the chief of staff,” said one GOP operative with close ties to the White House.

“Nobody respects him; nobody is afraid of him,” the operative said of Priebus. “You need someone in there who makes people feel their career in Washington would be ruined by running afoul of the president.”

Ah, and there we have it, the core attitude of the Plutocrat Party™.  Fear! Fear is the key. Sounds Regime to me.

The Hill has the full story.

Satanists. Again.

Curtis Ellis, screengrab.

The Tiny Tyrant is more than a little too fond of Curtis Ellis, a former writer for that bastion of batshit, WorldNetDaily. Ellis is now being considered to head up the Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs. [Bloomberg].

“The little-known deputy undersecretary position at ILAB is considered an essential piece of the White House push to restore U.S. manufacturing jobs by cracking down on labor abuses overseas,” Penn writes. “Ellis is currently part of the Labor Department’s beachhead team and is overseeing the department’s trade policy. He has already been attending ILAB meetings and representing the bureau to foreign governments as a temporary political appointee.”

This is a serious problem for all the regular reasons, but in the case of Ellis, there’s so much more. He is convinced that multinational elites are out to run the world, installing a small, hidden, anonymous cabal of elites. All these nefarious elites, of course, are in turn run by … Lucifer! This is just so old anymore. They need a new villain.

Elite.

noun

1. (often used with a plural verb) the choice or best of anything considered collectively, as of a group or class of persons.

2. (used with a plural verb) persons of the highest class: Only the elite were there.

3. a group of persons exercising the major share of authority or influence within a larger group: the power elite of a major political party.

It’s beyond me, the constant talk of elites among the religious reich, and uber-conservatives. How do they manage to forget they have the major share of wealth and power? They are the elite, alright, the elite baddies.

Along with WorldNetDaily, Ellis also has ties to Breitbart, the outlet formerly run by Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon.

In an interview last year with “Trunews” host Rick Wiles, Ellis reflected many of Bannon’s ultranationalist views and Trump’s love of Vladimir Putin, and expressed his view that a group of satanic elites is intent on gaining world domination.

Multinational elites, Ellis said, want to create “global tyranny where a small cabal of anonymous, hidden elites rule the world.”

Ellis added that this secret global cabal is a “Luciferian” and “satanic” group that elevates materialism over the spiritual world, pointing to the installation of a replica of the Arch of Baal, which was destroyed by ISIS, in New York.

“ISIS, they did destroy the archway to the temple of Baal,” Wiles said. “I guess if there’s any redeeming value to ISIS, I guess you can credit them for bringing down the Temple of Baal.”

Oh yes, Baal, the godthorn in the side of the psychopathic Yahweh. Lots of people in the bible died because they preferred Baal, God of Ekron, over Yahweh, and that bloodthirsty shit didn’t like competition, no. So not only does this idiot believe in one god of the bible, he believes in one of the other ones, too. Great.

RWW has the full story.

Like A Cat Covering Shit.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Susan Walsh.

By now, most people are aware that the Tiny Tyrant divulged classified information to the visiting Russians, and Mr. Tweet has had a whirlwind of justifications over it all, he can do whatever the fuck he wants because president! Yeah. The whole mess, and the tweets, are detailed at Think Progress, along with the standard problems in what passes for thought in Trump. The Fucking Idiot not only undercut all his aides by admitting to leaking all over the place, he’s been bragging about it, even to the point of referring to said leakage as humanitarian. Trump wouldn’t know humanitarian if it jumped up and gnawed his face off.  Why on earth anyone would be surprised by this, I don’t know. It’s all too standard behaviour on the Tiny Tyrant’s part. Nathan also has a good piece on the leaking of classified material.

Of more concern, I would say, is the journalistic rush to report that rethuglicans are pulling away from the wannabe dictator now, but unfortunately, that is not so, and this is no time to become complacent, and think they are going to kick his plush arse to the curb.

Source: NYT.

“Questions and concerns” do not mean jack shit when it comes to rethuglicans. It’s a handy, shopworn phrase tossed out to make them sound like they have the same concerns as all us peons, but they don’t. They are interested in two things: covering their asses, and more importantly, protecting their wallet and the various things which feed it. Think Progress has a breakdown of the actual sentiment right now.

And, Politico reports on the shambolic mess that is Trump House, where people are running about like chickens with heads cut off, not having the slightest idea of what is going to happen. Also per usual, Trump is like a cat jumping in a box, furiously digging in an attempt to cover up stinking shit, spraying sand and shit particles all over the place. There will be a shake up! There will be a reorganization! Oh hey, we have a trip coming up, and everyone will forget about Comey and leakage, you betcha!

Republicans Never Change.

In fairness, most political parties change reluctantly, the the republican track record in that regard is particularly dismal. In the midst of common repub refrains, such as “no one ever died from not having access to healthcare” and the more recent “health care systems shouldn’t help someone who “sits at home, eats poorly and gets diabetes.”

Mulvaney said he agreed with the idea in principle, but with one a very specific caveat: taxpayers shouldn’t help people who fall ill because of, ostensibly, their own actions.

“That doesn’t mean we should take care of the person who sits at home, eats poorly and gets diabetes,” Mulvaney said. “Is that the same thing as Jimmy Kimmel’s kid? I don’t think that it is.”

Mulvaney was attempting to defend the AHCA, which was narrowly approved by House of Representatives this month without a single Democratic vote. In its current form, the bill would essentially allow insurance companies to price people with pre-existing conditions out of the health insurance marketplace. Meanwhile, so-called “Trumpcare” includes a $880 billion cut to Medicaid, which stands to result in roughly 24 million Americans losing their health insurance because of premium increases.

There’s simply so much fucking wrong there. It’s all wrong. Naturally, republicans don’t give a shit about human nature, or the problems of poverty and a dirty marketplace, which allows for high food prices, food deserts, and the lure of cheap food which is not all that good for you. Republicans have never been fans of the big picture, nor do they care about indulging in such “bad” behaviour themselves, they always have a fucktonne of excuses for any hypocrisy on their part. It’s gosh darn wonderful all these aging, white, wealthy rethugs are so glowingly healthy. I expect that has a great deal to do with privilege, money, and of course, health care coverage. But you won’t find a rethug admitting to that.

There’s been this sense of nagging familiarity with the current effort to kill off a good portion of the uStates population (what a good way to kill off all those irresponsible poor people!), and it finally dawned on me: the righteousness of prohibition and the chemist’s war, in which the federal government spent a great deal of time coming up with ways to murder all those citizens who just wouldn’t stop drinking. They deserved it, oh yes they did! Naturally, those who had money weren’t as likely to be served up the poison concoctions, and there was more than a great deal of hypocrisy to go around. Herbert Hoover, who ran successfully at the time for office of president, had been pro-prohibition on his platform, even though it had been shown to be a mess, not only increasing the amount of people dead from alcohol, but successfully creating alcoholics out of novice drinkers, who prior to prohibition, may have simply had a beer or glass of wine. In prohibition, the only option was for the hard stuff. (Unless you were brewing beer at home, of course.) Hoover called prohibition a noble experiment. He didn’t believe in it though, as he often managed to wander into the Belgian Embassy on his way home, which, being foreign territory, he could enjoy fine, safe liquor.

The New York papers – those wet publications so despised by the Anti-Saloon League – promptly embraced Norris’s report as evidence of a government policy gone haywire. “Prohibition in this area is a complete failure,” the Herald Tribune’s editorial page declared, “enforcement a travesty, the public a victim of poisonous liquor.” Columnist Heywood Broun wrote in the New York World, “The Eighteenth is the only amendment which carries the death penalty.” And the Evening World described the federal government as a mass poisoner, noting that no administration had been more successful in “undermining the health of its own people.“

I think we’re there again, with the stripping of healthcare.

The impact of Norris’s report ripped outward beyond his city. U.S. Senator James Reed of Missouri told the St. Louis Post that the New York medical examiner had convinced him that Prohibition supporters were uncivilized: “Only one possessing the instincts of a wild beast would desire to kill or make blind the man who takes a drink of liquor, even if he purchased it from one violating Prohibition statutes.” The St. Paul Pioneer Press called the government “an accessory to murder when it uses deadly denaturants.” Even the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which had supported the Eighteenth Amendment, said that sympathy for the cause did not mean “we wish to inflict punishment upon those who persist in violating Prohibition laws.”

And the Chicago Tribune put it like this:

Normally, no American government would engage in such business. It would not and does not set a trap gun loaded with nails to catch a counterfeiter. It would put “Rough on Rats” on a cheese sandwich even to catch a mail robber. It would not poison postage stamps to get a citizen known to be misusing the mails. It is only in the curious fanaticism of Prohibition that any means, however barbarous, are considered justified.

Dry newspapers found Norris less persuasive. Alcohol killed thousands of people long before Prohibition was enacted, they pointed out. “Must Uncle Sam guarantee safety first for souses?” asked Nebraska’s Omaha Bee. The Springfield Republican of Southern Illinois dismissed the whole outcry as “wet propaganda.” And the Pittsburgh Gazette Times pointedly raised a question that puzzled even opponents of the law: why would people persist in drinking white mule and Smoke, paint shop hooch and bathtub gin, when they must know that it could kill them? Didn’t the obstinate guzzler bear some responsibility? Wasn’t it possible that “the drinker himself is to blame for the ills that befall him as a result of his libations?” the Pittsburgh editors wrote plaintively.

The endless quest to point a finger at every person who does not manage to conduct themselves in the purest and most saintly manner. Again, human nature. We are there again, too. Not only is there a drive to remove access to health care, but with the rollback of anti-pollution regulations, people will, once again, become sicker, many of them with dangerous, chronic diseases, such as asthma, with children being most vulnerable. Then we have Sessions, who is determined to fuel the slavery industry of private prisons, and put even more people in prison for minor drug offenses. There was move towards sanity, with lightening of marijuana laws, and along with that, an increase in the economy, but Sessions doesn’t like that, oh no. Much better to be draconian assholes, yes. I wouldn’t be surprised if paraquat was brought back.

In early 1927, wet legislators in Congress tried to pass a law to halt the extra poisoning of industrial alcohol. They had failed, overwhelmed by dry legislators’ declarations that no one would be dead if people simply obeyed the law and tried to live in a morally upright fashion.

Why, doesn’t that sound familiar?

Norris, in response, argued that this imposition of one group’s personal beliefs on the rest of society could not be justified as moral. Further, he said, the experiment of the Eighteenth Amendment proved his point. Yes, the law had changed the old ways of life, the old style of drinking. But it had created another drinking lifestyle and another kind of immorality: “It has failed to reduce, moderate, or control heavy drinking. It has created a new social order of bootleggers, and its blunders have protected an infant industry until it is now so secure in the law and the profits as to be a real menace to our national security and integrity.

“And,” Norris concluded, “death follows at its heels.“

We are there again, too. In particular, the awful stew of the current regime, if they get their way, will see an increase in ill health, imprisonment, and death, primarily among the poor, and women and children, and they are fine with that.

All quotes about the prohibition are from The Poisoner’s Handbook, by Deborah Blum.

UPDATE: Oh, and look at this – there’s a move to gut the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. Poisons and explosions for everyone!

Game of Influences.

Politico has a very interesting article on all the game playing in the Tyrant House, and just how easy it is to play the Unpresident. This is a man who does not actually read (Yes, he skims newspapers, primarily for mentions of himself), and doesn’t use the internet for anything handy, like finding things out. So, anything can be slipped under his nose, and he often predictably reacts, not caring whether or not what was slipped under his nose is in any way true. The Tiny Tyrant’s “policy” of having open doors all over, and allowing for haphazard, um, information land on his desk not only results in idiocy and chaos, it allows for staffers to stab other staffers in the back quite efficiently. Back stabbing becomes surprisingly easy when there’s a reactionary idiot at the helm.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus issued a stern warning at a recent senior staff meeting: Quit trying to secretly slip stuff to President Trump.

Just days earlier, K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security adviser, had given Trump a printout of two Time magazine covers. One, supposedly from the 1970s, warned of a coming ice age; the other, from 2008, about surviving global warming, according to four White House officials familiar with the matter.

Trump quickly got lathered up about the media’s hypocrisy. But there was a problem. The 1970s cover was fake, part of an Internet hoax that’s circulated for years. Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it.

The episode illustrates the impossible mission of managing a White House led by an impetuous president who has resisted structure and strictures his entire adult life.

While the information stream to past commanders-in-chief has been tightly monitored, Trump prefers an open Oval Office with a free flow of ideas and inputs from both official and unofficial channels. And he often does not differentiate between the two. Aides sometimes slip him stories to press their advantage on policy; other times they do so to gain an edge in the seemingly endless Game of Thrones inside the West Wing.

The consequences can be tremendous, according to a half-dozen White House officials and others with direct interactions with the president. A news story tucked into Trump’s hands at the right moment can torpedo an appointment or redirect the president’s entire agenda. Current and former Trump officials say Trump can react volcanically to negative press clips, especially those with damaging leaks, becoming engrossed in finding out where they originated.

[…]

When Trump bellows about this or that story, his aides often scramble in a game of cat-and-mouse to figure out who alerted the president to the piece in the first place given that he rarely browses the Internet on his own. Some in the White House describe getting angry calls from the president and then hustling over to Trump’s personal secretary, Madeleine Westerhout, to ferret who exactly had just paid a visit to the Oval Office and possibly set Trump off.

Priebus and White House staff secretary Rob Porter have tried to implement a system to manage and document the paperwork Trump receives. While some see the new structure as a power play by a weakened chief of staff – “He’d like to get a phone log too,” cracked one senior White House adviser—others are more concerned about the unfettered ability of Trump’s family-member advisers, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, to ply the president with whatever paperwork they want in the residence sight unseen.

“They have this system in place to get things on his desk now,” the same White House official said. “I’m not sure anyone follows it.”

Priebus has implored staff to do so in order to abide by presidential record-keeping laws, which require cataloguing what the president sees for the archives.

Lisa Brown, who served as White House staff secretary under President Barack Obama for two years, said it can be “dangerous” when people make end-runs around paperwork procedures, leaving the president with incomplete or one-sided information at key junctures.

“It’s even more important with someone like this,” she said of Trump, a president notoriously influenced by the last person he has spoken to, “but the challenge is he has to buy into it.”

“You know that people are going to go around the system. But then it’s up to the principal to decide how to handle it,” Brown added. “You need the president to say ‘thanks, I appreciate it’ [when he receives stories] and to hand it off to get it into a process.”

The article is dismal facepalm material, but we need to be aware of the compleat clusterfuck which is the Tyrant House. Recommended Reading, full story at Politico.

And The Hole Gets Deeper…

The Unpresident returning from Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster.

And a whole lot more batshit. The Tiny Tyrant is now what could be charitably described as wholly unglued. He seems to have decided that open threats are good, because hey, why not piss off the FBI? Even staunch rethuglicans are now cringing and diving for cover, as Donnie’s, um, swamposity goes full court florid.

James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

Jesus. Dude, everyone knows you’re doing a bit of “leaking” over the investigations, because you’re guilty. This sort of shit isn’t going to help. Well, it may help most of us here in uStates, because you’re doing an actually good job at getting the impeachment train going. So congrats on that one, I guess.

Naturally, the Twitterati are busy weighing in on this one, too. You can see more here.

More in the ongoing clusterfuck:

‘It’s complete bananas’: FBI agents rushing to complete Russia probe before ‘orange blob’ can kill it.

‘The president is not correct’: FBI sources dispute Trump claims about dinner meeting with Comey.

Trump whines it’s ‘not possible’ for busy White House to give information ‘with perfect accuracy’.

REVEALED: Trump demanded Comey’s loyalty one day after Yates informed the White House of Flynn’s FBI interview.

Trump demanded loyalty from FBI director James Comey — ‘Comey demurred’ and then he was fired: NYT.

What a fun way to start your Friday, eh?

Aaaaaaand, a bit more:

Comey furious over Trump team’s smear campaign — and he’s prepared to respond: report.

Comey eager for Trump to release those tapes: ‘There’s nothing he’s worried about’.

They Tricked Us!

The photo of Sergey Lavrov, Donald Trump, and Sergey Kislyak you weren’t supposed to see. CREDIT: Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP.

In a stark illustration of the sheer idiocy of the regime, the Tiny Tyrant is having an overwrought tantrum over Russia publishing photos of the “secret” meeting yesterday, in which uStates press was barred, but Russian press was allowed. There was a cameraman there. With a camera. What did they think they were going to do with the photos? Paste them in their fan book? The incoherent scream tumbling from the white house is “they tricked us!” I have news you for ya, fellas. If that’s tricking you, you deserve it, with bells on.

On Wednesday, President Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the White House. Now the administration is “furious” that TASS, the Russian state-owned news agency, has published photos of the meeting.

There’s no shortage of theatrics leading up to the White House’s reactions.

First, the meeting was only supposed to be with Lavrov. Only Lavrov was scheduled to be in attendance, and only Lavrov was mentioned in the official White House readout of the meeting. Thus, it’s only because of the Russian agency’s photos that the public knows Kislyak was also present.

The White House shrugged off Kislyak’s presence, noting there’s nothing suspicious about meeting with an ambassador in the Oval Office.

Jim Acosta: Official pushed back on critics who slammed Kislyak in Oval: “It is ridiculous to say that an ambassador can’t meet with the president…”

But this ignores a significant amount of context. The meeting took place the morning after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who was investigating alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. That firing came at the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had supposedly recused himself from the investigation because he didn’t disclose meetings he had with Kislyak while he was serving as a Trump campaign surrogate.

With little believable explanation available for why Trump fired Comey except for his role the Russian investigation, it’s particularly conspicuous that Kislyak would then be in the Oval the very next day. Moreover, an ambassador meeting with the President is far more suspicious when the White House seems to intentionally try to hide it. And now the administration is “furious” that TASS published photos that are the only way anyone even knows Kislyak was present for the meeting.

A second aspect of the theatrics is the fact that when journalists were eventually invited into the Oval, neither Lavrov nor Kislyak were present. Instead, Trump was unexpectedly meeting with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

The optics of this are rather incredible. Many lawmakers and pundits had spent much of the previous 24 hours comparing Trump’s firing of Comey to President Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre,” when he fired an attorney general and a deputy attorney general because they wouldn’t remove the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal. Kissinger was not implicated in Watergate, but it was still rather surprising Trump would have a surprise meeting with the man who served as Nixon’s Secretary of State and National Security Adviser. They discussed “Russia and various other matters,” according to the pool report.

The rest of this most interesting story of incompetent stealth and tantrums is at Think Progress.

What A Fuckin’ Mess Roundup.

U.S. President Donald Trump looks up during a meeting about healthcare at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.

What a clusterfuck the regime does weave. This isn’t the proverbial web woven by lies and deception, it’s more like the spit-cement cocoons in Alien. There’s a whole lot of clusterfuck out there, here’s some of it.

If you haven’t quite figured out WTF yet, a good run down of recent events is here: James Comey, Donald Trump, Russiagate and the Mother’s Day Massacre.

Going with the theme of highly suspicious timing: Trump to meet Russia’s Lavrov day after Comey firing.

Naturally, Mr. Tweet appeared in a whirlwind to blame Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for, well, everything.

‘They fired Sally Yates. They fired Preet Bharara. And they fired James Comey.’ Yes, they certainly did, and that should make the need for an independent prosecutor clear, but I expect that will be another fight all on its own.

Kellyanne Whatsherface is back with “inappropriate to question the almighty Trumpety” and alternative facts, upsetting both Chris Cuomo and Anderson Cooper.

Conservative Rick Wilson begs GOP to get off the ‘mindless, soulless Trump Cult Train’ after Comey firing.

Trump advisers at heart of Russia probe celebrate Comey’s firing: “Somewhere Dick Nixon is smiling.”

The most powerful reactions to Trump’s abrupt firing of the FBI director: “We are in a full-fledged constitutional crisis.”

The two things you need to know about the Comey firing: Trump is an authoritarian. But Comey is a rank incompetent.

I think that’s enough Alien spit cocoons for now.

Oh, I guess not, a few more to add to the spit pile:

BOMBSHELL: Comey sought ‘significant increase’ in resources for Russia probe days before firing.

Trump excludes US media from meeting with Russian ambassador — but Russian state news allowed in.

‘Game of Thrones for morons’: Bannon-McMaster feud reaches new heights.

‘President Putin can fire anybody’: Federal official says Comey ouster is absolutely about Russia.

What Clapper actually said…

The Unpresident returning from Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster.

The Tiny Tyrant was utterly creamed in the Russia hearings, and he has reacted by firing James Comey. As everyone on the planet will note, yes, Comey needed firing, ages ago, but the timing here is rotten all the way through. It seems the Tiny Tyrant’s method of dealing with the landslide of shit is simply going to be firing people. Naturally, Mr. Tweet has appeared once again, with yet another blatant lie, the only thing which seems to reside in our wannabe dictator’s skull. So, a Pants On Fire! check…

…President Trump took to Twitter to try and tamp the whole thing down.

But the first of four tweets Trump published about the hearing made a claim that was undermined earlier in the day by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who testified alongside Yates.

“Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows- there is ‘no evidence’ of collusion w/ Russia and Trump,” the president tweeted.

This, however, is not what Clapper said on Monday.

On March 4, Clapper went on Meet the Press, and was asked by Chuck Todd if he’s aware of evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

“Not to my knowledge,” Clapper replied.

Just over two weeks later, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia. That same day, Trump seized upon Clapper’s Meet the Press remark to try and undercut the notion he’s involved in a scandal.

[…]

On Monday, however, Clapper clarified that his Meet the Press comment wasn’t meant to give people the idea he had direct knowledge of Comey’s investigation and had concluded it hadn’t uncovered evidence of collusion. Instead, he said he just wasn’t aware that Comey was investigating.

From Mother Jones:

At Monday’s hearing, Clapper pulled this rug out from under the White House and its comrades. He noted that it was standard policy for the FBI not to share with him details about ongoing counterintelligence investigations. And he said he had not been aware of the FBI’s investigation of contacts between Trump associates and Russia that FBI director James Comey revealed weeks ago at a House intelligence committee hearing. Consequently, when Clapper told Todd that he was not familiar with any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, he was speaking accurately. But he essentially told the Senate subcommittee that he was not in a position to know for certain. This piece of spin should now be buried. Trump can no longer hide behind this one Clapper statement.

Instead of reassuring Trump, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) said Clapper being kept in the dark about the FBI investigation should worry the president.

There’s much more at Think Progress. It’s important to spread this far and wide, because in spite of everything, Trump is still tweeting that Clapper cleared  him, contrary to all evidence and facts.

*Strikeouts are mine.

“The roadblocks end where the white people start.”

Madison County Sheriff Randall Tucker. CREDIT: AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis.

Oh my, segregation and a demand to show “papers”, along with the constant milking of people of colour for cash, which helps to keep them in a cycle of poverty as well. Anyone surprised this is going on in Mississippi in 2017?

Madison County, Mississippi, is among the most segregated places in America. Past court decisions have made note of its “racial isolation” and “confluence of…geography and demography.”

Part of the reason the state’s wealthiest county remains so divided, according to a new class-action lawsuit filed Monday, is that county leaders want it that way — and are willing to use local law enforcement to enforce an unofficial cordon around the county’s roughly 40,000 black residents.

The Madison County Sheriff’s Department (MCSD) “has implemented a coordinated top-down program of methodically targeting Black individuals for suspicionless searches and seizures,” the suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and pro-bono lawyers from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett says. The suit names 10 individual plaintiffs but seeks injunctive relief on behalf of “thousands of victims” of the county’s policies.

The roadblocks and checkpoints MCSD allegedly maintains are not like the random DUI stops many motorists have encountered here and there. Plainclothes deputies typically wait in unmarked cars, giving the stops an ambush feel at odds with the sirens-and-orange-cones officialdom of a typical checkpoint.

What’s more, the complaint says, the department locates these camouflaged identification inspections in and around the few communities in Madison County where there is a concentrated black population.

The alleged system requires African-American residents submit to unconstitutional searches and seizures as part of the normal course of going to and from their homes, which the suit argues is a violation of the Constitution as well as of their personal dignity.

“Forcing citizens of the United States to ‘show their papers’ in this fashion runs afoul of the law as well as the most basic norms of decency in domestic policing,” the suit says.

There’s much more to the story, click on over to Think Progress.

Mr. Tweet Rides Again.

Mr. Tweet has once again gotten loose, and has been saying deranged and nasty things about Sally Yates now. Once again, an unfounded accusation is made, and people are wasting no time smacking back, hard.  UPDATE: Huh. When I posted this, Trump’s tweet was included, as it was at the source. That’s now gone. It has been disappeared! Oh no, let’s cook up a conspiracy!

You can see more choice responses at Raw Story.

Sunday Facepalm.

artika.info.

Yesterday, I briefly mentioned the stupidity of Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID). Rather than just admitting his “no one ever died from not having access to health care” was extraordinarily wrong and stupid, he is, of course, doubling down, and blaming the media for focusing on a “5 second clip”. I think they are focusing on the stupid which fell steaming from your mouth, Mr. Labrador, especially in light of your history of saying equally stupid things in regard to health care.

On Saturday, Labrador posted a statement on the exchange, saying that his response “wasn’t very elegant” and criticizing the media coverage.

“In the five-second clip that the media is focusing on, I was trying to explain that all hospitals are required by law to treat patients in need of emergency care regardless of their ability to pay and that the Republican plan does not change that,” he said. “It certainly doesn’t help that the media is only highlighting a five-second video, instead of the entire exchange.”

Labrador’s longer explanation, however, also doesn’t hold up.

No kidding it doesn’t hold up. One of the reasons the Affordable Care Act was so necessary was because those without coverage would go to the ER, usually waiting until they were in a dire state. People taking care of their health in such a way drives up cost all the way around, for everyone. Mr. Labrador is also woefully ignorant of the fact that hospitals do come looking for their money, and they are quite serious about that, too. So, a really stupid, ineffective way to have a healthy citizenry, but that’s good, because you still have that option! I mean, if you don’t feel well, just go park yourself in a busy ER for 10 hours or so, you don’t need to work, right? Then, after you’ve been treated, and realize you can’t afford medicines or aftercare, you had best gather up all your stuff, get a new identity and move, because a big damn bill will be chasing you. Yeah, excellent choice, that. Well, as the rethugs have pointed out time and time again, there are options: there’s Jesus, or you could just die.

Think Progress has the full run down, with all the necessary numbers and links.

The Only Way To Stop Killers: More Guns!

A boy looks at guns during the NRA’s annual meeting in Atlanta. CREDIT: Kira Lerner.

How many words are there to express disgust, loathing, and contempt? Consider every single one of them applied to the absolute fucking drivel to follow. According to a self-described Professor of Killology, all the parents are raising horrible, sick, demented monsters, not children. And the only way to deal with this generation of sick, horrible, demented monsters? Why, more guns of course! Everyone should rush out and buy, buy, buy, buy more guns, because that will make everything better.

Dave Grossman, a self-described professor of “killology” who published a book in November called Assassination Generation, claimed that violent video games and movies are turning children into monsters capable of committing worse mass shootings than those we have seen in recent decades.

“Can anyone deny that we’ve raised the most vicious generation of killers the world has ever seen?” he asked the NRA audience. “They’ve given us crimes that children have never dreamed of. They’ll give us crimes as adults in our darkest nightmares we never imagined.”

Like other speakers throughout the NRA’s three-day convention, Grossman refused to recognize the link between the high number of guns and gun deaths in the United States. Instead, he tried to use outside forces to explain the violence, to drive fear and paranoia, and to convince people to purchase more firearms.

“The one factor the killers have in common: every one of them dropped out of life and immersed themselves in the sickest movies and the sickest video games,” he said. “The guns have always been there. The sick movies and the sick video games are creating sick, sick kids.”

[…]

He also focused on mass school shootings, occurrences that are rare and make up a tiny percentage of all gun deaths. An average of 12,000 people are killed each year by guns, but more than half are suicides and most of the others occur during domestic disputes. In an average month, 50 women are shot to death by an intimate partner.

Grossman made no mention of the dangers of having a gun in the home. Instead, he focused on children and deranged “lone jackals” being the problem.

Oh yes, the refuge of every obsessed gun fondler: the lone wolf. Of course guns having nothing to do with gun deaths, no, no, it was, it was, gimme a minute, I’ll pull something out of my ass. The one thing this fucked up mess of a country does not need is more guns.

Think Progress has the full story.