A little sunshine in the Russian military indictments among the Trump cloud

Indictments of Russian military spies that were announced today by the U.S Justice Department give a direct link to President Vladimir Putin and efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 elections.

The 29-page document spells out how 12 Russian military members of the federation intelligence service, GRU, hacked Democratic National Committee as well as Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee computers. In addition, the e-mail accounts of some state and local election officials, and voting machine contractors were infiltrated. Information of about a half-million voters was stolen by the Russians.

Pssst, comrade. Would you like to buy the 5,000 Trump votes under my huge hat?

President 45, who was in England today, had been briefed on the indictment by Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein but still called the Mueller investigation a “witch hunt” and “an obstacle” to a good relationship with Russia. The orange-hued U.S. president is set to meet with Putin on Monday, July 16, in Helsinki, Finland. Some Democrat and Republican lawmakers both are pushing for the president to cancel the summit with the Russian president in light of today’s indictments.

The announcement by Rosenstein today was good news to me as I feel the Special Counsel is making some progress in determining whether President 45 is directly involved with Putin in election meddling in 2016. The U.S. president won the all-important electoral college vote although his opponent Hillary Clinton had some 3 million more popular votes. The news is certainly uplifting compared to that ugly display yesterday in Congress when joint committees questioned and many badgered former FBI Agent Peter Strzok.

Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page were removed from the Special Counsel after anti-Trump emails between the two, who had a one-time extra-marital affair, were discovered. Strzok had previously testified in a closed hearing before the two committees for some 11 hours. His televised testimony on Wednesday also lasted 11 hours.

The hearings was no more than a beat-down of the agent by Republicans who are seeking to discredit the investigation of the Trump campaign and its ties with Russia. Some former Trump officials including former National Security Advisor and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort have been charged with crimes in the Mueller probe.

Flynn has been charged  with lying to FBI agents and has pleaded guilty in exchange for providing the Mueller team with criminal information in their investigation. Manafort has been charged with money laundering conspiracy, not registering as a foreign agent and lying. A superseding indictment against Manafort and a Russian cohort was filed in June.

The circus that was the Strzok hearings was both disgusting and an embarrassment to anyone who cares about our government. It was especially a forum for the certified assholes and generally worthless human beings in the House to show what substance they are not made of. This included an exchange between Strzok and Rep. Trent Gowdy,  R-S.C. in which an objective (and nonobjective viewer) could conclude that the dickweasel Gowdy had his ass handed to him by the FBI official.

Rep. Gowdy, Rep. Gohmert, are you guys inside that pachyderm. Photo LOC.gov

A stunningly angering display was shown by House goofball  Rep. Louie Gohmert. The northeast Texas Repubilcan asked Strzok how many times did he look into his wife’s eyes and lie to her about his affair with Page.

Several lawmakers shouted at Gohmert over his uncalled for “question.” One member, Rep. Bonnie Coleman, D-N.J, shouted: “You need your medication!”

That is what life has become in these United States — only worse — under the imbecilic, narcissistic prick of a President. I will take today’s success by Mueller and his team over our dark days. Perhaps there will be some happiness if 45 is indicted or impeached. While that will make me happy, it will also make me sad. The sadness is for our nation and how family and friends have become divided over Trump. How they will react, one only knows.

*EFD Note: Because the current president of the U.S. is a lying, corrupt, immoral piece of detritus, his name will not be mentioned while he is in the White House.

 

The chickens come home to roost for Lying No. 45

The policy of “no tolerance” for immigrants illegally crossing the U.S. that has led to thousands of children caged like laying hens is just one more instance of a stupid president surrounded by sycophants.

President 45 caved to pressure and signed an executive order today that supposedly ensures those adults arrested for illegally crossing the border are not to be separated from their children. Thousands of children are stuffed inside a number of buildings, caged like laying hens, many of those  babies and toddlers with no idea why their parents are not around to pick them up.  Like 45’s co-signature on a communique with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un allegedly will result in “de-nuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula, the order signed today is short of specifics. For instance: How will children snatched from their parents be reunified with those mothers and fathers and where will they stay?

The constant pictures and audio recordings in the news media of children wailing as federal authorities separate families have created a s*** storm among more than a majority of Americans. Traditional supporters of this president including some evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham and all living First Ladies — including at least in some measure Melania 45 — have  criticized this policy. Kirstjen Nielsen, who as Homeland Security secretary, has played a major ass-kisser in this matter and among the other ass-kissers has proven to be as big a liar as the president. Nielsen was paid back last night for her loving support of baby-snatching as she was loudly accosted by protesters while she was dining in a Mexican restaurant. Talk about your pot calling the kettle black!

During this whole screwup the president and his mighty band of ass-kissers lied that the causation of the federal baby-snatching was due to laws and court cases, but he mostly laid the blame on congressional Democrats. That is totall bulls***, of course. With daughter Ivanka and First Lady Melania nipping at the president’s butt, his caving was in no doubt hasten by GOP lawmakers who see a blue wave in their future.

Secretary Nielsen didn’t even finish her avocado. Too bad. So sad. Photo by EFD

Even Pope Francis was critical of this most recent lack of moral action by the administration of President 45.

Speaking of moral clarity, I recently emailed the state leader of a mainstream religion in Texas and asked him about the single most-puzzling aspect of this president’s actions. I speak of his compulsive lying. It isn’t that No. 45 misrepresents this fact or another. He is a bald-face liar and now, more and more, those around him feel compelled to lie for him.

My question to this holy man was this: Lying, or bearing false witness as it appears in the Ten Commandments, is a sin. So, how can people who purport devotion to their faith put up with the constant whoppers this a**hole president spins? Many folks I know who support 45 shrugs this off with the “all politicians lie” excuse.

But if someone lies to their friend or relative on a constant basis, would that person eventually throw up their hands and keep their distance from these liars? No matter that a biblical admonition to tell the truth might be a spiritual imperative, it like other Commandments, are a moral and social guideline for getting along in this world.

The religious guy whom I e-mailed wrote me back, unable to attempt an answer to my question as to how can the devout put up with this prevaricator-in-chief. He even gave me the impression that there was something ill with my asking such a question.

Such a moral force our nation has become under President 45. I can only hope the President 45 faithful will not choose to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid at some point in time.

*Note: Because of his innate repugnancy, I refuse to use the president’s name anymore.

Hell of a thing, I tell you

Photo by Jeff Kubina through Creative Commons.

With nothing to do but think, President Lincoln thinks that the neighborhood is going to hell in a hand-basket. Were he not a momentous mass of marble and almost 209 years old, he might well get up and traipse back up to Illinois or Kentucky and split logs for a cabin.

Happy New Year! Stick it up your a**!

This is my first post for 2018. So, I took a month off. Sue me.  Remember this:

“If we don’t change it, let’s have a shutdown,” Trump said of the nation’s immigration laws. “We’ll do a shutdown and it’s worth it for our country. I’d love to see a shutdown if we don’t get this stuff taken care of.”

Yeah President Money Bags, you don’t face sleeping in your van if a have a shutdown, like me. Yes sir, Cadet Bone Spurs (that’s a great nickname, thanks to Sen. Tammie Duckworth, Illinois Democrat. You do know how to screw a lot of things up. Take, perhaps, like the economy. The Dow Jones Average took another big nose dive today — 1033 points. Is that the Orange One’s doing? Why not? Whenever something good happens, he claims credit for it. Why shouldn’t he take the good with the bad?

How much 45 has do with the Dow good and bad is speculation. The market seems to live in this territory of gravity. You know, what goes up must come down. The last couple of days find the market in a “correction.” That is what people say when they, like me, don’t have a f***ing clue as to what is happening. It’s like the price of gasoline, you may have an increase in crude somewhere of $1 a gallon. It could be the weather. It could be global warming. It might just be two squirrels in a death match over an acorn located somewhere in the oil patch.

We, I, dodged a bullet last month with that long-weekend shutdown. We even got the furloughed four hours back without missing a beat.

But why? Why live and die with the whims of congress and that straw-headed orangutan?

It’s a hell of a thing, I remember hearing someone say one time. Yes. It definitely is a hell of a thing.

 

 

To paraphrase “Harper Valley PTA” we should sock it to the hypocrites

The past week or so reminds me of the summer of 1968. It wasn’t because of the tumultuous Republican National Convention held in August of ’68 in Miami. That convention ended with the nomination of Tricky Dick Nixon and Spiro “the Crook” Agnew.  Still, some similarities were seen in the Summer of 2016.   The later Democratic Primary during August 1968 in Chicago, during which local police launched a beat-down against anti-war protesters was even worse. But neither Chicago, Miami nor even Prague –during the Warsaw Pact crackdown with 750,000 troops marching in to curb Czechoslovakian liberalism — bring any particular memories. That was 49  years ago. I was almost 13 years all.

Instead, it was a song from August 1968 that seems so appropriate these days what with “Gropegate,” the unearthing of dirty deed allegations against many prominent and not-so-prominent men.

It would be 10-to-15 years before I came to fully appreciate story-telling-songster Tom T. Hall for the genius of his writing. A song he wrote and performed was best well-known by the version recorded by Jeannie C. Riley. Her version of “Harper Valley PTA” became a No. 1 Billboard “Hot Country” single, as well as that publication’s No. 1 “Hot 100.” For me, it was from that song that I learned the meaning of and the harm from the word “hypocrite.”

The song, “Harper Valley PTA,” tells how a daughter came home from school with a note from the PTA demanding her mother, the Widow Johnson, appear before the parents-teachers group. The note accuses:

” … Mrs. Johnson, you’re wearing your dresses way too high
It’s reported you’ve been drinkin’ and runnin’ round with men and goin’ wild
And we don’t believe you oughta be a bringin’ up your little girl this way.
And it was signed by the secretary, Harper Valley PTA.”

It happens that the PTA was meeting that very afternoon:

” … And they were sure surprised when Mrs. Johnson wore her mini-skirt into the room … ”

The widow Johnson commenced to launch a verbal whupass into some of those members assembled.

“Well, there’s Bobby Taylor sittin’ there, and seven times he’s asked me for a date. And Mrs. Taylor seems to use a lotta ice, whenever he’s away.
And Mr. Baker can you tell us why your secretary had to leave this town?
And shouldn’t Widow Jones be told to keep her window shades a pulled completely down. Well Mr. Harper couldn’t be here cause he ‘s too long at Kelly’s Bar again. And if you smell Shirley Thompson’s breath you’ll find she’s had a little nip of gin. And then you have the nerve to tell me, you think that as a mother I’m not fit.
“Well this is just a little Peyton Place, and you’re all Harper Valley hypocrites.”
The Hall-written lyrics lay it all out there for all to see, the very obvious examples of hypocrisy.

 

Recent allegations of sexual abuse by prominent people beginning with Harvey Weinstein, to former president George H.W. Bush, to Alabama Christian Right Wing GOP senate candidate Roy Moore, to sitting liberal Democrat, Sen. Al Franken, and many in between has made one wonder: Who’s next?

The Twitter #Me Too phenomenon may continue to produce more and more men to be confronted with past sexual abuse. President 45 has a multitude of such accusers. So, it is quite hypocritical for 45 to blast Franken’s indiscretions, for which the Senator apologized, and yesterday the complainant accepted the apology. That didn’t stop that asshole 45 from making one of his stupid Tweets against Franken.

And it is likely our 45th president, who may have been helped in winning his election in November 2016, by the subject of his bromance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, will not apologize for his alleged sexual abuse and his hidden tape recording during which Trump bragged about his ability to grab a woman’s crotch without any ramifications.

Hypocrisy has been ignored as a sin by the Republicans for many years as well as some Democrats. The bar has been placed way, way too low. This seems, perhaps, on the cusp of change. But I will see it when I believe it.

Lyrics of “Harper Valley P.T.A.” written by Tom T. Hall and the You Tube video are presented under the Fair Use doctrine.

Read up! We have a democracy that needs help

I have been neglectful in the care and feeding of my site. Oh well, it isn’t as if anyone has come forward to say “why haven’t you updated your blog lately?” So I must be doing something right, just kidding, kinda sorta.

One thing is for sure, plenty of topics are out there in no small part due to that orangutan that millions will not admit  is the 45th president of the U.S.

The devastating storm that battered the Texas coast, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands all have a tie into 45. Even if the president is taken out of these disasters our U.S. citizens, including myself, encountered is often unimaginable.

Then there was the mass shooting in Las Vegas. There are so many stories there. Too many questions remain. Here is my question — and I am not certain whether it has or hasn’t been answered — why hasn’t any information been unearthed or released about those hotel guests who were staying on the same floor as the shooter?

As for No. 45 alone, it seems as if more and more Republican officials are beginning to realize what most of us who voted against Old Orange Man have known from the start. The president is incompetent and has an extreme and even dangerous type of narcissism. I am sure that one day experts will want a look at his postmortem brain. Both Democrats and Republicans are discussing, mostly in an anonymous fashion, the two legal means of ridding the White House of Old Orange Man. These manners of booting 45 are impeachment and removal from office, and exercising the 25th Amendment. Barring some dramatic and/or dangerous event involving the president first occurs, impeachment seems a  more likely avenue. That would require the Republicans coming together in Congress so if the impeachment process rolls forward, one would be assured that the reasoning for trial is a serious event.

The 25th Amendment also is an option, but hopefully that would be employed as a very, last option. Too much would be involved with such a solution not least at what is the slippery slope it would create for our democracy.

Yes, there is much to be learned and too much to digest all of the above as well as other concerns — North Korea chief among those.

So, if you haven’t already, get to reading about the news and if you find something that doesn’t sound right — which are most of 45’s actions and speech — read some more. Our democracy depends on you.