March 3, 2019

What kind of ratings did the Cohen hearing get?

You know that’s probably the one thing Trump knows about that hearing.

It’s hard for daytime dramas to get those kinds of numbers anymore.

March 2, 2019

Here's what will happen on DU when the Mueller report is released

Whenever it is available, whatever it says, and whatever might be redacted, its failure to include your pet theory will only mean one thing - that it was rigged, a “whitewash”, etc.. The “really good stuff” is in the redacted part. They never interviewed some person who has inside knowledge of the whole thing. They didn’t inspect the voting machines in Kalamazoo...

Because a failure to include your pet theory could not be that it was out of scope, or just plain didn’t happen that way.

One of the most irritating things in my work is when the facts refuse to cooperate with my argument. I start out with a killer argument, and by the time I’m drilling down into the details, the damned facts turn on me and engage in mutiny!

But with the Mueller report - which will in fact lay out a cavalcade of corruption and disregard of the law - you don’t have to blame the facts for betraying you. Instead, you can blame the people. Someone on Mueller’s staff perhaps, or a successful confederacy of perjurers, will be responsible for the fix. Also, a “whistleblower” will be dug up - some person who saw it all and will speak to your group about it for a reasonable fee.

It will all be clear to you “what really happened.” Not only that, but you’ll find out that DU is populated by paid shills who are all here to aid in the cover up by expressing skepticism about the unprovable facts you know to be true.

It will be important to make sure to get every Democratic candidate on the record about your pet theory. If they are also shills for TPTB, you’ll then come to realize the whole system is rigged, and that you should instead not support any Democratic candidate. Instead, you should stay on DU in order to fight the trolls and “official conspiracy theorists” get others to realize how they’ve been deceived again by “The Official Story”.

All of which will be a wonderful distraction from the actual cavalcade of corruption and criminality which the report will actually disclose.

February 28, 2019

Beto O'Rourke is on a ROLL!

February 27, 2019

This is what Roger Stone is prohibited from doing......

Among other things:

"...the conditions of defendant's pretrial release 21 are hereby modified to include the condition that, and the February 15, 2019 media communications order 36 is hereby modified to provide that, the defendant is prohibited from making statements to the media or in public settings about the Special Counsel's investigation or this case or any of the participants in the investigation or the case. The prohibition includes, but is not limited to, statements made about the case through the following means: radio broadcasts; interviews on television, on the radio, with print reporters, or on internet based media; press releases or press conferences; blogs or letters to the editor; and posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other form of social media. Furthermore, the defendant may not comment publicly about the case indirectly by having statements made publicly on his behalf by surrogates, family members, spokespersons, representatives, or volunteers."

Roger Stone sent a one sentence text to Buzzfeed stating:

"Mr. Cohen's statement is not true."

So the question is:

Is that text a statement "about the Special Counsel's investigation or this case or any of the participants in the investigation or the case"?

When you talk about locking people up for things, there have to be unambiguous reasons for doing that. The order does not prevent Roger Stone from making public comments in general. The order does not prevent Roger Stone from making comments to reporters. The order prevents him from doing that if the comments are "about the Special Counsel's investigation or this case or any of the participants in the investigation or the case".

In order to lock him up, you have to show that "Mr. Cohen's statement is not true" is a statement "about the Special Counsel's investigation or this case or any of the participants in the investigation or the case".

Is it:

1. About the Special Counsel's investigation? No.
2. About any of the participants in the investigation or the case? No.

So that leaves open the remaining possibility:

3. Is it about "the case"?

It seems to be a comment about Michael Cohen's statement, which is not about "the case" if that is meant to refer to the criminal prosecution of Roger Stone.

February 27, 2019

Sekulow is now undadabus

Sekulow used to leak a lot of stories in which Sekulow was the hero battling Trump’s darker impulses.

He’s now been specifically identified as having participation in perjury.

February 27, 2019

Boom! Obstruction continues

The exchange with Rep. Krishnamoorthi revealed that there is an obstruction investigation into Trump’s people attempting to engineer Cohen’s cooperation or lack thereof with the SDNY, and to determine just what the SDNY may have obtained in the raid.

February 25, 2019

I know UR, but what am I?

http://twitter.com/Berryhillj/status/1099825899841703936

They had a whole mess o’ Potamia in there!

February 22, 2019

Score 1 point for each item you eat

Elmer’s glue

Crayons

Fingernails

Toenails

Boogers

Tissue paper

Bugs

Dirt / mud pies / clay

Chalk

Rubber bands

Paint chips

Pens / pencils / erasers

Hangnails / epithelial skin

Soap

Toothpaste

Candy corn

Candles / wax

Dog / cat food / treats

Leather

Toe jam

Ear wax

February 21, 2019

Avenatti FINALLY Going To Be Responsible For Someone Going To Prison?

Well, we now know where Avenatti got those Suspicious Activity Reports from the US Treasury FINCEN system, which he disclosed during the Cohen proceedings in New York.

The SDNY prosecutors and Mueller's office, of course, had direct access to all Treasury records and bank records relating to Cohen long before Avenatti published the ones he did. There will also, of course, be folks who don't realize that this was just another grandstanding move by Avenatti to draw attention to himself, and who will instead believe that because the prosecutors and Mueller don't release their findings on Twitter that Avenatti is somehow the "cause" of the Cohen prosecution.

The good news is that Avenatti did not get them due to any leak from the USAO-SDNY or Mueller's office.

The bad news is that Avenatti took advantage of an IRS analyst who is now going to pay the price for it.

Is Avenatti going to arrange this guy's defense? Unlikely, now that Avenatti's access to funds has been severely limited by the recent receivership placed over several of his income streams he had been hiding from the bankruptcy court.

The summons is here:

http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/02/21/fry.complaint.and.summons.pdf

Of note:

11. Immediately after downloading the five SARs, John FRY placed two outgoing calls from his personal cellphone to (***) ***-4118. The first phone call at 3:11 p.m. lasted approximately four minutes. The second phone call at 3:15 p.m. lasted approximately seven and a half minutes. A records check revealed that the phone number was associated wih Michael Avenatti, an attorney based in Newport Beach, California.

So, Avenatti basically set this poor schmuck up.

CNN coverage here:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/21/politics/michael-cohen-tax-returns/index.html

February 15, 2019

"Yesterday, December 7, a date which will live in infamy...

...or it could have been next month, but I wanted to do it sooner...”