Tuesday Thought #4

The Funny Papers

Ed Hall, Clay Bennett, Mike Smith, Nick Anderson, Darrin Bell, John Cole, Jim Morin, Ed Wexler, Bill Day

If It Looks Like Collusion Or Little Donny Is A Liar ... Bigly

So, last year, Little Donny _____ Jr, along with _____ son-in-law Jared Kushner, and campaign chairman Paul Manafort, met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, in June 2016 during the election campaign.

At first they said the meeting was about a program that allowed Americans to adopt Russian children; Russia’s parliament voted to disband the program in December 2012 after the US Congress placed sanctions on corrupt Russian officials known as the Magnitsky Act. Veselnitskaya was involved in Kremlin’s efforts to kill the next iteration of the Magnitsky Act.

Little Donny said he did not know who he would be meeting with beforehand and described it as a “short introductory meeting” but, um, yeah, that was a lie we now know. Now, Little Donny is saying that he went to the meeting because the lawyer because she "might have information helpful to" his father's campaign.

Not at all about adoption.

Still, nothing wrong, really,: I mean, I imagine every campaign looks for dirt on the other side, but in light of the fact that we all know—and by “all” I mean anyone other than people in that family or that administration—that the Russians hacked, meddled, whatever, the 2016 to help _____ so the lie seems especially telling.

Even more so when you hear the _____ team of spokes-morons saying for months and months that no one from the campaign ever met with Russians regarding the campaign, and then find out that all sorts of _____ players did just that.

It appears Little Donny’s “little donny” was hard with excitement that he "was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet" with Veselnitskaya .

And after failing to ever mention meeting any Russians during the campaign, especially with the intent of asking their help against Clinton, now Little Donny has come clean and, like the rest of that family, lawyered up so, you know, if it looks like collusion, and smells like collusion, and involves a _____, who, at first, lied and lied and lied, well then there’s something there.

Lastly, because it’s really good, CNN’s Jake Tapper looked through the lies of _____ and Junior in regards to Russia, after Junior Tweeted this lie:

“Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent... went nowhere but had to listen.”

Tapper showed a clip of Little Donny Jr. from last year feigning outrage over Democrats’ “exact moral compass [about Russia] I mean, they’ll say anything to be able to win this. I mean, this is time and time again, lie after lie ... It’s disgusting, it’s so phony—“

Tapper said:

“That is quite a bit of moral outrage, from someone who, just weeks beforehand, had met with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton.”

And then Tapper showed video of both Vice President Mike Pence and President _____ personally denying any involvement by their team with any Russian official, and Tapper reminded us of the “five former or current members of President Trump’s team [who] have not only had some contact with the Russians, they have lied, changed their stories, or not been forthcoming with information about those contacts with Russia;” people like former national security adviser Mike Flynn, Carter Page, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner, and, now, Little Donny Jr.

Tapper—and I love that it’s CNN who isn’t laying down to the _____’s given the president’s vendetta against them—ended with the one question that no one on the _____ can answer:

“If these contacts and conversations with Russians were so innocent as is being claimed, the obvious question: why so many lies about them?”

And that’s the killer; if you’ve done nothing wrong, while continually, blatantly, lie?

Oh yeah, it’s that family and that administration.

Towleroad

The Hill
NPR

The Russians Had The Help Of The GOP In Stealing The Election

In an effort to cast doubt on someone other than himself in RussiaGate, _____ keeps asking the question ... if President Obama knew that Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 election, why didn’t he say something sooner? Good question, I guess ... so let’s see what the answer might be:

One, President Obama was trying to do the right thing and ...

Two, the Republicans stopped that from happening.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testified last week that the Russian activity in the election went beyond just hacking emails, beyond distributing those emails through Wikileaks, and beyond creating a stream of fake-news stories for alt-right websites and wackjobs on social media.

Russia took unprecedented “active measures” to penetrate state databases and alter or delete voter rolls, and many, including Johnson, viewed that as a kind of declaration of war by Russia.

Last August, the hacking information was sent from the CIA to the White House with “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to four people—President Barack Obama and three senior aides—and be returned to the CIA once read.

In fact, the material was so sensitive that CIA Director John Brennan kept it out of the President’s Daily Brief, concerned that even the Brief’s restricted distribution was too broad; to further guard against leaks, subsequent meetings followed the same protocols as the planning sessions for the Osama bin Laden raid.

It was that sensitive. But, it was still early in the hacking story and the White House couldn’t tell the full extent of the Russian attack, and couldn’t tell who in this country might be cooperating with the Russians, but, the intelligence made one thing clear: Putin’s specific instructions on the objective of the operation were to defeat or at least damage Hillary Clinton, and help elect Donald ______.

The intelligence community went to work on the story and Obama kept quiet because if he had revealed the intelligence, and it turned out to be false, he might have been seen as guilty of interfering in the election himself.  So Obama proceeded with caution, working to confirm the CIA’s intelligence and searching for ways to respond to the hack. He had to build a case that would hold up in front of Republican leaders in Congress and the American people.

Only in his final weeks in office did Obama tell the public, in a declassified report, what officials had learned in August: that Putin was working to elect Trump. And today, ______ plays up that delay as “proof” that he is innocent. But then, think of what he might have done if the story was released in August; he’d have Tweeted it, again and again, because he has, before and since, Tweeted the most ridiculous of stories and downright lies without so much as a thought.

Obama didn’t do that; he followed the law, protecting the nation, and trying to ensure his actions didn’t make the situation worse. He did the right thing but then ... The GOP.

Obama instructed aides to seek bipartisan support from members of Congress on a statement condemning Moscow and urging states to accept federal help. But that never happened; some GOP leaders in Congress put off even meeting with intelligence officials, delaying the process by weeks perhaps because they saw this as their shot to take the White House, our elections be damned.

Jeh Johnson then attempted to designate election infrastructure as “critical” in order to give it the same protection provided defense contractors, but Brian Kemp, the GOP secretary of state of Georgia, used Johnson’s call to denounce the proposal as an assault on state’s rights:

“I think it was a politically calculated move by the previous administration.”

To this day Kemp remains unconvinced that Russia waged a campaign to disrupt the 2016 election.

In short: Republicans were—and are—more concerned with hurting Obama, and Hillary, and taking the White House, than they were in stopping Russia.

So, let’s be queer: it’s not just _____ who colluded with Russia to steal an election, it’s the entire Republican Party who sat their fat asses on their fat hands and did nothing while a foreign country stole an election out from under We The People; and  it wasn’t just random state level officials like Brian Kemp, it was also Congressional leaders.

After meeting with the intelligence community for a briefing the Democrats wanted to release the information to the public but the Republicans resisted, arguing that to warn the public that the election was under attack would further Russia’s aim of sapping confidence in the system. Or, you know, allow Hillary to win. Senate Majority Leader Mitch “Chinless Owl”* McConnell actually voiced skepticism that the intelligence supported the White House’s claims because, you know, Obama.

So, there you have it: the information came out, and was investigated, but the GOP tried to block it from being revealed to the public because they put the party, and their own personal interests, over country.

Chew on that.

*Special thanks to The Prairie Home Companion show on Sunday for giving me another apt description of McConnell besides McTurtle.

Daily Kos

The Funny Papers

RJ Matson, Adam Zyglis, Nick Anderson, David Horsey, Walt Handelsman, Clay Bennett, Michael Ramirez, Tom Stiglich

The Funny Papers

Taylor Jones, John Cole, Bill Day, Chan Lowe, Jim Morin, Nick Anderson, Drew Sheneman, Darrin Bell, Nate Beeler, RJ Matson

The Funny Papers

Jim Morin, Mike Luckovich, David Horsey, Steve Breen, David Fitzsimmons, Clay Bennett, Mike Smith, Bill Day, Steve Sack

It Really Was Just Twenty Minutes

I really love my Dad, and somewhat more importantly, I really like my Dad, so I was very happy to be able to head out west to help him before and after his knee replacement surgery.

That said, I did go all Seinfeld with Carlos about how long I’d be gone ...

“Look, subtract the travel time to and from, the sleeping time, the time he’s in the hospital, the driving time around Toledo, Oregon, and I’ll be gone, what, about twenty minutes or so.”

I don’t like being away from home—I’m a nester—for too long and I really don’t like being without Carlos because I’m a very needy queen or, and this is more likely, I truly love that man and need to see him every day, always.

Still, I left; usually we fly into Portland and then drive the three-plus hours south and to the west to my Dad’s house, but this time I checked into flying into Eugene, which cuts the drive time to Dad’s to about ninety minutes. The price seemed comparable so I thought I’d go the Eugene route, except ...

Columbia is not a major airport—there are literally twelve gates—and Eugene is even smaller, so any kind of direct flight is out. I flew from Columbia to DC, and then from DC to San Francisco, and from San Francisco to Eugene. It would be a long travel day—about twelve hours with plane changes and such—but it still seemed like less of a hassle than heading to Portland until ...

The flight to DC was smooth; I had a row to myself so I didn’t have that stupid airplane chatter—Where you going—to contend with; then came DC. The airport there, we landed at Dulles, is a nightmare. I headed up two escalators to a third level and then down an escalator to a second level, across a bridge into a tunnel onto a train just to get to my gate; that seemed longer than the flight ... I am that impatient.

At the gate there was a huge crowd and I thought, “Crowded Plane.” I hate crowded planes ... airplane chatter. God! And then the pilot appeared and introduced himself and told us we would have  a smooth ride cross country ... why did he say that?

Onboard the plane we sat and sat and sat until Friendly Pilot announced that we couldn’t leave because one of the Non Smoking lights was on and they needed to figure out why; that took an hour. No, I understand you don’t want mechanical problems when you’re 35,000 feet up but, because we stayed in DC an extra hour, you guessed it, I missed my flight from San Francisco to Eugene.

I was calm, but ready to rage at the United official I spoke to, but she was so nice and so calming, telling me that the next flight to Eugene would be at 7:30 ... AM ... the next day! But they put me up in a hotel and gave me meal vouchers to use to get something to eat, gave me a seat upgrade and told me I would forever and ever be Pre-Approved at the TSA; yup, no more shoes off, or toiletries out, or removing rings and wallets and belts and such for me.

So it was kind of a win. Plus, since we left in the morning, and it was one of those rare San Francisco fog-free mornings, I had the most spectacularly views of my old stomping grounds ... The City. The wide swath of green that is Golden Gate Park, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio, the Bay Bridge, Giant’s stadium ... if only I’d taken my phone or camera from my bag ...

We arrived safely in Eugene and then it was short drive to Toledo and my Dad’s house. He was ready for surgery, had everything planned and all my instructions and we chatted and joked and then went to sleep because we had to be at the hospital at 6:30 AM where we were told his surgery would be about 2-3 hours and an hour in recovery. That seemed short to me; I mean, cutting open the leg, snapping out the old knee, putting in the Belgian upgrade and attaching it and then closing everything up in two or three hours?

Nope; it was about eight hours and me, with my overactive imagination instantly began fearing the worst. At the three hour mark I checked the board in the waiting room—patients are assigned numbers and you can track their progress by their number on the board—and Dad was still in surgery. Four hours, still in surgery; six hours ... seven hours .... eight hours.

My Dad was dead and they were afraid to come tell me; yes, that’s where my mind went. Luckily, the man at the desk in the waiting room was a calming influence, or else that slap he gave me settled me down, but finally my Dad was out of surgery and in recovery and then into his room.

At a little after 5 PM I was able to go in and see him and he was woozy, of course, but awake and alert and seemingly fine. Then he threw up; luckily a nurse’s assistant was in the room with a handy barf bag and I was able to suppress my own urge to vomit ... I am a Sympathy Puker.

Dad seemed to get better and then he started vomiting again but this time I was in the room alone ...

Side story: years back I had moved into a new apartment ... I was probably twenty ... and had a Housewarming Party. One of my friends had too much to drink and was very clearly about to hurl. Someone said, “Bob, Stacie’s going to hurl, you better do something,” so I did. I took her to the front door and put her outside. I cannot be near the vomit.

... so I went to the nurse’s station and told them my Dad was getting sick again and they all looked at me like I was a loon and one said she’d be right in ... except she sat there. So, I went all Shirley MacLaine Term’s of Endearment Debra Winger is dying on their asses ... or at least a more subdued version ... and said, again, “My Dad’s throwing up, can someone please come help him.”

And they did, and he was fine, and he was doing very very well. That same night he was able to bend the New Knee and the next day he was able to take fifteen steps with it, using a walker; his doctor was very impressed, his physical therapist, too.

Still, he stayed in the hospital for  four days and was released on Saturday. He came home and his German Shepherd, Foxy, was thrilled to see him—she’d been giving me the Who-Are-You-Stink-Eye for four days—and that was my Dad’s best medicine.

He saw a physical therapist for a home visit on Monday and was again doing much better than people expected, and we planned out all his trips to the doctor’s and therapy and things he needed for the next couple of weeks.

My brother arrived Monday night to take over as Home Health Aide and the next day my twenty minute stay at my Dad’s was over and I was back in Eugene and ready to head home.

Eugene to San Francisco; short flight, row to myself, no airplane chatter. San Francesco to DC, long flight, row to myself, sleeping to avoid any airplane chatter. Then came Dulles ...

As I said yesterday, I got off the plane Wednesday morning and was hoping to see Madam President signs everywhere and instead saw President-elect_____. I was sickened ... see that post HERE.

I went up three escalators and down two, across a bridge and through a tunnel and onto a train and up three escalators and down four until I came to my gate where I could hear _____ speaking on TV. I fled to a cafe for some yogurt and granola and orange juice and then boarded my last flight ....

It was one of those tiny planes; the ones where a person over five-feet-eleven cannot stand up in the aisle, so being six-foot-two, I was a stoop-shouldered ogre headed to my seat in a full to the rafters flight. Narrow aisles, narrow seats, no leg room and then ... the pilot tells us the navigation system isn’t working so they shut off all the power to the plane for a few moments and see if they can reboot it; they did use an outside power source to keep the cabin lights on but it as a full plane, small plane, no air ... I had my very first, and hope, very last, panic attack. It was hot and crowed and there was no air and I couldn’t breathe and ____ was elected president; I was about ten seconds from getting out of my seat and running to the front of the plane and screaming to be let off and then the plane backed up ... oh, not to leave, mind you, but to see if maybe the navigational system issues could be fixed away from the gate .. so we sat on the tarmac with no air and me screaming on the inside until I heard my Dad’s voice saying Count it down.

So I counted  1...2...3...4...5...4...3...2...1.. and so on.

Seriously, that calmed me down because it kept my mind from racing toward the front of the cabin, throwing open the door and hurling myself out of the plane.

Then we moved back to the gate and were told to go inside and wait until, they could get another plane, which they did, and it was fine, though still small and crowded. But this one worked and we flew home, albeit it three hours later than scheduled.

Like I Seinfeld’d it at the beginning, it really was just a twenty minute trip out to Oregon and back, though the flights seemed to drag on for twelve days.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it ... thanks for listening.