October 26, 2019

Six Things Your Idiot Uncle Walter Doesn't Understand About The Impeachment Of Donald Trump

Six Things Your Idiot Uncle Walter Doesn't Understand About The Impeachment Of Donald Trump
Evan Hurst
October 24, 2019 04:19 PM


It's nigh the end of October, and before we know it, you'll be sitting down to eat green bean casserole and fried turkey (yes, fried if you know what is good for you) and drink one hundred bottles of wine with your family, including your dumbass Fox News-obsessed Uncle Walter, who will go on and on to the point that you become viciously angry with the rest of your family for leaving you there so long with Uncle Walter.

And surprise, your Uncle Walter is going to be saying a lot of #WrongShit about the impeachment of Donald Trump, which despite what you might be hearing in the news, will most likely not have moved to the Senate at that point. So in light of the fact that it is decorative gourd season, motherfuckers, and since we are only 24 hours removed from Matt Gaetz and pals leaving skidmarks and pizza crusts all over the impeachment inquiry in the House, we thought it might be a nice time to briefly tick through six very stupid things your idiot right-wing Uncle Walter thinks about impeachment, and why he is



Feel free to store these as ammunition. Or just throw turkey legs at your right-wing Uncle Walter's face instead, we don't care.

SECTION ONE: The Crimening!

1. Everybody Does Quid Pro Quos In Foreign Policy! They Are The Hottest Thing, Quid Pro Quos!

Here is a stupid idiot on Fox News saying "all this discussion of quid pro quo is really misleading, because all foreign relations is quid pro quo" and it is a "staple of all negotiations."
https://twitter.com/i/status/1187013938430521345
Yes, well, this is true, sort of, except for go fuck yourself.

Absolutely in the course of normal foreign policy, there are deals made and quids exchanged for quos when one country wants one thing that is in that country's interest and another country wants another thing that is in that country's interest, and they make a deal and say "We will do that thing if you do this other thing." Hooray!

However, nothing in the Trump Ukraine scandal involves America getting anything for America. Ukraine is over here desperately needing continued military aid and support for its war against Russia, which invaded in 2014 and has been occupying the Crimean peninsula ever since. Meanwhile Donald Trump wants things that are for his benefit, not America's benefit. Trump was demanding, in exchange for already-appropriated military aid and the honor of a White House visit, that the president of Ukraine announce fake investigations on CNN into his political rivals, in order to help him win re-election in 2020, and to re-write the narrative of the 2016 election, thereby legitimizing his presidency and absolving our adversary Russia of guilt.

Sure, your right-wing Uncle Walter might think it is in the best interests of the country for Trump to be re-elected, but that's his opinion, because he is dumb. Clearly it's in America's best interests to kick the motherfucker out of the White House and lead him away in chains.

more...

https://www.wonkette.com/six-things-your-dumbass-right-wing-uncle-walter-doesnt-understand-about-the-impeachment-of-donald-j-trump

October 26, 2019

This Is Not America

https://www.wonkette.com/this-is-not-america

This Is Not America
Evan Hurst
October 25, 2019 12:33 PM


The New York Times reported Thursday night that Attorney General Bill Barr's jaunt around the globe to chase down every weird conspiracy theory about the origins of the Russia investigation that falls out of Donald Trump's ass is now a criminal investigation, which means John Durham, the US attorney ostensibly leading the investigation, now has power to impanel a grand jury, issue subpoenas, and yes, bring criminal charges.

Against people who investigated Russia's attack on the 2016 election that helped install Donald Trump in office.

If this news is what it seems like it is, then America is on thin ice. This is Kremlin shithole banana republic stuff, which shouldn't surprise us, because a Kremlin shithole banana republic guy is president of the United States.

snip//

So on one hand, if Durham were taking his job seriously and for real investigating Donald Trump's fever dreams (if only to eliminate them as suspects), then one way for him to definitively conclude there is no "there" there (because there's not) would be for him to impanel a grand jury and interview every witness and cross every T and dot every I, then finally say "ALL FINISHED!" and close his criminal investigation without producing any criminals. (He's done it before!)

That's the best-case scenario. All the other scenarios are very bad, because all the "on the other hands" we can think of involve Bill Barr turning the Justice Department into an AR-15 and committing a mass shooting attack against the United States Constitution.

So ... who knows!

Of course, we're not actually worried they're going to find something legitimate to discredit the Russia investigation. They would literally have to make something up, and everybody in America with two brain cells to rub together knows this is some banana republic bullshit and doesn't trust a goddamned word Bill Barr has to say about anything.

So as Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said last night on Maddow, "BRIIIIIING IT." He did not add FUUUUUUUUUUCK THESE CLOWNS, but we are pretty sure he was thinking it.

We're not scared of the truth. They are.

Never forget that.

October 26, 2019

Susan Collins had a very bu$$$$y week

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/26/1895177/-Susan-Collins-had-a-very-bu-y-week

Susan Collins had a very bu$$$$y week
Joan McCarter for Daily Kos
Daily Kos Staff
Saturday October 26, 2019 · 11:00 AM EDT


Sen. Susan Collins had a big week. She had to work herself up to being extremely disappointed that an actual constituent wanted to talk to her about issues. She had to negotiate with her boss, Mitch McConnell on whether she could avoid signing on to his and Sen. Lindsey Graham's stand by your man resolution for Trump (as of this writing, she's off the hook). But she also had to raise some dough. Lots of it.

But for her, that part was easy, because McConnell and millionaire Trump donors stepped up. She started out the week with an evening with Mitch at a dinner for everyone who responded to his invitation to max out to her campaign last quarter, that's $10,000 for PACs and $5,600 for individuals. It was a hush-hush dinner, though. No one, except the attendees, even knew where it was. So we don't know how many people took Mitch and Susan up on that invitation.

She rounded out the week Thursday night at a private fundraiser held by millionaire Trump donor Stephen Schwarzman. He's already maxed out to Collins and then dumped $500,000 into a Super PAC—1820 PAC—to support her and her alone. With this fundraiser, he's bundling more money for her campaign, though she also had to share the takings on this one with fellow desperate Republican Sen. Cory Gardner.

According to the most recent FEC filings for the current election cycle, over 96% of Collins' campaign contributions came from outside of Maine, and she has collected over $1.1 million from corporate PACs. The lesson from this week in Susan Collins? You can't have a conversation with her at a town meeting or at an airport, but you can buy your way into a room with her.

October 26, 2019

Senior Chinese official says Pence speech was "full of arrogance" and "lies"

https://www.axios.com/china-economy-mike-pence-arrogance-lies-03f304da-adc8-497e-9ee3-1c4873bac512.html


Rashaan Ayesh
23 hours ago
Senior Chinese official says Pence speech was "full of arrogance" and "lies"

October 26, 2019

Trump Administration Stops All Flights to Cuba Except Havana

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-administration-stops-all-flights-to-cuba-except-havana?ref=home

GROUNDED
Trump Administration Stops All Flights to Cuba Except Havana
Barbie Latza Nadeau
Correspondent-At-Large
Published 10.26.19 7:54AM ET

October 25, 2019

We Can't Keep the Oil

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/trump-syria-oil-kurds-graham.html

We Can’t Keep the Oil
Trump’s new rationale for keeping troops in Syria makes no sense.
By Fred Kaplan
Oct 25, 20192:17 PM


President Donald Trump’s new rationale for keeping troops in Syria—that they’re needed to protect the nation’s oil—is, not to mince words, preposterous.

First, Syria doesn’t even rank among the world’s top 60 oil producers, pumping out only about 0.05 percent as much petroleum as Iraq—just half as much as Cuba, which isn’t known as an oil power.

Second, its oil fields aren’t America’s to protect. They are owned by the Syrian government, with some venture capital provided by China, Russia, and India. No American oil companies are keen to step into the fray. In any case, the cease-fire agreement that Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed with Turkey—the deal that Trump has touted so proudly—pretty much removes the United States as a political, economic, or military power in the entire area. As Joshua Landis, editor of the Syria Comment website, notes, the Russians and Turks will in effect control the oil.

Third, the new rationale—even if it had merit—contradicts Trump’s claim that his abandonment of the Kurds in northern Syria was the first step of a broader pullout from the “endless wars” of the Middle East. He had already reversed that policy a few days later, when he announced the deployment of 1,800 troops to Saudi Arabia, saying that the Saudis would pay for their expenses in full, as if that meant the U.S. government wouldn’t be involved in the mission. (Everything to Trump is a monetary transaction; in this case, he was basically declaring the U.S. military to be a mercenary force.) Then the Pentagon announced that the troops withdrawn from Syria won’t be coming home; rather, they’ll redeploy to western Iraq, at least for a while. And now, Trump is saying that some of the troops will stay in Syria too—not to protect the Kurds or to keep ISIS from recovering territory or to help stabilize that corner of an incendiary region, but to preserve oil.

Fourth, as a result, he has to reinforce the notion that the United States is a rapacious imperial power—and a feckless one at that, since the oil, for which he’s willing to send troops to fight and die, doesn’t belong to America in the first place.

snip//

Graham, Keane, and many others wanted to keep some U.S. troops in Syria. Trump did not. So they made up a phony argument to get him to change his mind. It worked. Now even Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is going along with the game. At some point, will Trump ask how the campaign to defend the oil fields is going? Esper, Graham, Keane, and the others probably assume he won’t. They know, from experience, that, ultimately, he doesn’t care.

October 25, 2019

Joe Conason: Now House Republicans Hate The Rules They Made

https://www.nationalmemo.com/now-house-republicans-hate-the-rules-they-made/?fbclid=IwAR1U9kr25JMo_ZS5NY5HdELRLIaSXrZLZQG42wHeHuu_vcieMTW9JFn7Xi8&cn-reloaded=1


Congress Editor's Blog Featured Post Impeachment
Now House Republicans Hate The Rules They Made
Joe Conason October 24, 2019

snip//

According to the Democratic members present in those closed hearings, the Republicans on the relevant committees hardly ever show up. Whenever they do drop in, most of them waste time on conspiracy theories and other nonsense — which isn’t doing the president any favors, but fully displays their intellectual laziness.

What the Republicans also know — but aren’t telling their bamboozled voters — is that the Democrats are conducting the impeachment inquiry under rules that the Republican majority approved in January 2015.

For instance, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), today insists the impeachment inquiry shouldn’t proceed unless the Republicans are permitted to issue subpoenas — but the rule that awards subpoena power exclusively to the majority is precisely what he and his cronies approved four years ago. Minority Whip Steve Scalise compares the inquiry’s closed hearings to “the Soviet Union,” a bit of demagoguery in which he conveniently forgets his own role in approving that rule.

No doubt McCarthy and Scalise can recall, but hope everyone else will forget, how they used those rules in 2016 to engineer an inquisition into Benghazi that was — as the dim McCarthy admitted on television — designed to drive down Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers. As the last in a dozen inquiries into that Libyan tragedy, it could have had no other purpose.

They may also recall how Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), chairing the committee that handled the Benghazi inquiry, abused those secrecy and subpoena provisions in an ugly attempt to bully one of Clinton’s advisers, the journalist and historian Sidney Blumenthal. Although Blumenthal volunteered to testify, Gowdy sent armed federal marshals to his home with a subpoena. When Blumenthal did testify, Gowdy held the deposition behind closed doors — and then selectively leaked and distorted portions of the transcript in an attempt to smear the witness and Clinton.

Gowdy’s behavior was so prejudicial that the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), then the committee’s ranking member, apologized personally to Blumenthal. The Republicans never agreed to release the complete transcript of his testimony, despite repeated requests from Blumenthal and his attorney. They seemed to fear Gowdy, Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., and other Republicans on the committee would look very stupid when their interrogation techniques were revealed.

And now they whine about a process they created while the president and his aides urinate on the Constitution. How do these fakers rise up every day and act out their hypocrisy?

October 25, 2019

Rudy Giuliani butt-dials NBC reporter, heard discussing need for cash and trashing Bidens

The gang who couldn't shoot straight!


Rudy Giuliani butt-dials NBC reporter, heard discussing need for cash and trashing Bidens
“The problem is we need some money,” Giuliani says to unidentified man during accidental call to NBC News writer.
Oct. 25, 2019, 2:42 PM EDT / Updated Oct. 25, 2019, 3:02 PM EDT
By Rich Schapiro


Late in the evening on Oct. 16, Rudy Giuliani made a phone call to this reporter.

The fact that Giuliani was reaching out wasn’t remarkable. He and the reporter had spoken earlier that night for a story about his ties to a fringe Iranian opposition group.

But this call, it would soon become clear, wasn’t a typical case of a source following up with a reporter.

The call came in at 11:07 p.m. and went to voicemail; the reporter was asleep.

The next morning, a message exactly three minutes long was sitting in his voicemail. In the recording, the words tumbling out of Giuliani’s mouth were not directed at the reporter. He was speaking to someone else, someone in the same room.

Giuliani can be heard discussing overseas dealings and lamenting the need for cash, though it's difficult to discern the full context of the conversation.

The call appeared to be one of the most unfortunate of faux pas: what is known, in casual parlance, as a butt dial.

more...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/rudy-giuliani-butt-dials-nbc-reporter-heard-discussing-need-cash-n1071901?fbclid=IwAR3Etro0OIwQLzWfxEfNeA9JykILpT3Sk30wROIvFY8ATFYYbvsgT9xplew

October 25, 2019

Trump dismisses need for impeachment team: 'I'm the team'

Trump dismisses need for impeachment team: 'I'm the team'
By Brett Samuels - 10/25/19 12:59 PM EDT


President Trump on Friday dismissed the need for a bolstered team to defend him against House Democrats' impeachment inquiry.

"Here’s the thing. I don’t have teams. Everyone’s talking about teams. I’m the team. I did nothing wrong," Trump told reporters outside the White House before leaving for an event in South Carolina.

The comment came as part of a lengthy rant against the impeachment inquiry, which Trump derided as a "phony deal" focused on a "perfect" call he had with the Ukrainian president. He went on to say that if anything came of this inquiry, he thinks it could plunge the country into economic downturn.

"I will say this: If anything ever happened with this phony witch hunt that the Democrats are doing ... I really believe you’d have a recession, depression the likes of which this country hasn’t seen," Trump said, questioning how Democrats could impeach "one of the most successful presidents."

more...

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/467473-trump-dismisses-need-for-impeachment-team-im-the-team

October 25, 2019

Feds Blow Door Off Safe In Probe of Giuliani Associates

https://politicalwire.com/2019/10/25/feds-blow-door-off-safe-in-probe-of-giuliani-associates/

Feds Blow Door Off Safe In Probe of Giuliani Associates
October 25, 2019 at 12:04 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard