Arm the Teachers?

     Remember about a week or so ago when Donnie Dumbo got the brilliant idea (an NRA trope) to arm the nation's school teachers? Yeah, well, uh...
     ...no.
     That idea only works for 90's action film fans looking for semi-plausible scenarios of teachers and principals who go to school packing. And some teacher in Dalton High School just northeast of  Atlanta got it into his head today to whip out a gun and fire at least one shot, making his students take to the hallways in a blind panic. I'm sure Donnie Rambo will go rushing into Dalton High as soon as someone tells him it's safe and that he owns a golf course nearby.
     There are many reasons why arming teachers is a horrible idea. And as for the reasons to do so? Honestly, I can't think of one.
     What happened today in Dalton High is one reason. You can't just give carte blanche to all teachers to carry because, obviously, some of them aren't all there.
     Plus, having teachers packing, with their guns in plain sight, will be a distraction for the students. Imagine what would go through their minds, worrying if they'll get shot for giving the wrong answer or making a sudden move or being caught passing notes. Schools are supposed to be Switzerland, neutral safe zones for kids trying to get an education that will prepare them for college. They do not need to live and learn in fear of fellow students, random gunmen or their own instructors.
     If there is a shooting (and if this time the police actually have the balls to enter an active shooter situation), how will they be able to tell who are the good guys with guns and who are the bad guys with guns? (Especially if the bad guy, as in today's case, turns out to be a teacher?) Well, then you could easily be talking about what soldiers and cops heartlessly refer to as "collateral damage."
     Teachers aren't trained for tactical engagement and giving them a free gun lesson, as they're doing in Ohio, or handing out concealed carry permits to teachers in Pike County, KY is not going to make them eligible for Seal Team Six any time soon. Innocent kids could get shot not just by the actual perpetrator but even their own teachers. How we think we'll react to a tactical situation and how we do are two entirely different things even if we have experience in firearms usage.
     One of my Facebook friends wrote a lengthy post recently about her experience at Quantico. She's a crime novelist like me and she took advantage of what's known as F.A.T.S.- Firearms Training Simulator. It's open to civilians, obviously, and even those with experience and training in firearms generally embarrass themselves.
     Out of all the people at the simulator that day, my FB friend was the only one who scored 100%. The simulator is computer-generated, a more high tech version of the dueling range in Hogan's Alley at the FBI Training Academy at Quantico. The instructors can change the simulation on a dime, adding or subtracting virtual people at will. They give you a realistic-looking weapon that fires infrared beams, sort of like Lazer Tag.
     After running through her simulation, my friend overheard the instructors talking to some of the "firearms experts" after their own runs. She heard things such as:
     "You think you fired only six shots, sir? You fired 23."
     "Congratulations. You just killed one of our undercover agents and seven innocent civilians."
     And, in one horrifying exchange, she heard an instructor tell a woman that not only did she not hit anything she fired at, she aimed at and missed a building.
     These were self-described gun experts.
     Places like Butler County, Ohio and Pike County, Kentucky have long since fallen in with the NRA's ridiculous mantra of "More guns!" Such thinking is like claiming if you pour enough gallons of gasoline on a gas fire, eventually the liquid will extinguish the flames. Of course, the NRA will say anything to that effect as long as it leads to more guns being sold to the real people they represent: The gun and ammo manufacturers.
     Because passing out guns and bullets like Halloween candy is going to make law enforcement's job that much harder as they enter a highly emotional and chaotic active shooter scenario and may not be able to distinguish the good guys from the bad ones.

No, We'll Talk Now

(By American Zen’s Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

If Dana Loesch, who once had the wisdom to block me on Twitter, didn't get her tires slashed after the NRA Town Hall last week, then it was a miracle. As it was, it was a minor miracle the spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association even had the guts to show her face and answer pointed questions from the same high school students who'd survived the massacre at their school.

     The virtually non-existent gun control lobby finally had a face and a name in Emma Gonzalez and during the testy exchange at the Town Hall, Loesch looked as if she wanted to bite that face right off Gonzalez's skull. The sentiment was apparently shared.

     From his laughably diminished perch, Bill O'Reilly, of all people, asked if the media should be giving emotionally overwrought teenagers air time. Gun nuts and other conspiracy theorists are so desperate not to lose their firearms they've even yeasted up a fantastic story that the Parkland students were nothing more than paid crisis actors. The pro gun lobby has even taken to hating on the students who, unlike most of the NRA's 5,000,000 members, actually stared down the barrel of a semi automatic rifle and lived to tell the harrowing tale.

     Donald Trump, predictably, had the most bottomlessly despicable line when on Twitter, of course, he started by talking about the Parkland shooting then, within the space of 280 characters, somehow managed to turn the true subject of his tweet back to himself and Russia. (Check out his latest tweet from 1:54 this afternoon, which calls for armed teachers in a tweet that reads like a Craigslist ad written by a brain-damaged chimp).

     Yes, Donald fucking Trump, the Tangerine Shitgibbon, metaphorically stomped on the dead bodies of those 17 students while ragging on the FBI again. For added measure, after the obligatory photo ops were over, he also played golf at the Trump International Golf Club while the families began laying their children to rest just miles away.

     The conclusion that all sane American adults have reached is these kids are smarter, classier and more mature than the psychopaths we elect. By their very poise, maturity and presence, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students made their own case as to why we need to protect these children, our very future. It ought to be remembered that the high school that had been sullied and put in national headlines on Valentine's Day was named after a progressive activist.  Douglas, who passed away nearly 20 years ago at the remarkable age of 108, would've been so proud to hear these students who attend the school named after her.

Shut the Fuck Up and Listen

Not to downplay the horror of what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, but it's amazing that more horrendous school shootings hadn't had the catalytic effect that Parkland has had. 33 were killed at Virginia Tech over a decade ago. Sandy Hook saw 26 fatalities, including 20 first graders. Yet for some reason, Parkland was the tipping point where people, and the media, have had enough. This time, television networks such as CNN were smart enough to stick microphones in front of kids' faces and let them talk.

     And they did. Passionately. Eloquently. They were media darlings, good for ratings and great for shareholders, sure, but their message was finally getting out. And the kids were smart enough to keep the momentum going and not be content with their 15 minutes. And the more the kids talked, the more the adults listened. Impromptu interviews turned into a rally and a protest at the Florida state house in Tallahassee, also heavily televised, which in turn was rapidly succeeded by a nationally televised Town Hall that saw Dana Loesch and Marco Rubio have their feet put to the fire.

     And the more the adults listened, the more they closed their wallets or threatened to and then corporations began to listen and rapidly distanced themselves from contracts with the NRA. Again, as with the students and their newly minted status as ratings gold, these corporations are just protecting their bottom lines and that of their shareholders. But, at the end of the day, these companies are nonetheless doing the right thing.

     At this time, the exodus began with the First National Bank of Omaha, the largest privately-owned bank in the US, pulling their NRA Visa cards. Then followed Delta and United Airlines, then the Hertz, Avis and Enterprise car rental companies, Then insurance giant Chubb, Symantec, Wyndam and Best Western Hotels also backed out.

     Like Harvey Weinstein, it's a classic Domino Effect. Just as the Weinstein accusations multiplied and eventually claimed countless careers, reputations and businesses in the entertainment industry, so the Parkland shooting survivors are having a Domino Effect on a massive gun lobby that buys and sells Republicans as easily as guns at a Dallas gun show. As with Weinstein, who'd had his toxic way with women for decades with impunity, so the NRA's time has come and gone. Their only solution will be to roll with the punches and begin evolving.

     But if Wayne LaPierre's appearance at the toxic clown shit show known as CPAC and Dana Loesch's shocking performance at the Town Hall were any indications, it's safe to conclude that day, to say the least, will be very long in coming.

Lucky 13

     Everything about this was predictable.
     It was predictable that, according to DC tradition, the news of Mueller's grand jury handing down indictments for 13 Russians would be dumped on Friday.
     It was predictable that Mueller's Justice League would find and present enough evidence to sway the grand jury to indict.
     It was predictable that Donald Trump's response would engage in more lies in rebuttal. The roar could be heard all the way from Air Force One 35,000 feet in the air as Trump headed for another weekend of golf in Mar-a-Lago, followed by the sounds of stubby little fingers typing on a cell phone.
     It was predictable that Trump would drag Hillary's name into it.
     It was also predictable that Trump would lash out against his own national security advisor, Gen. H.R. McMaster for his comments in Germany last Saturday about the indictments.
     And it was all too predictable, not to mention bottomlessly despicable, that later that same night Trump would use the deaths of the 17 Floridians in Parkland to blame the FBI for spending too much time investigating him over Russia.
     For the first time since his improbable "election", Donald Trump has to confront the reality that the Kremlin and not the love and adulation of the American people, that Russian dirty tricks and collusion got him in the Oval Office and not his personal charm and dashing good looks.
     Here's what the "failing" NY Times said right below the lede:

The Russians stole the identities of American citizens, posed as political activists and used the flash points of immigration, religion and race to manipulate a campaign in which those issues were already particularly divisive, prosecutors said.

      Agitprop, in other words.
     The indictment takes up 37 pages, essentially refuting everything Trump has said regarding Russia's role in meddling with our last election. Now, in the spirit of fairness, keep in mind the grand jury's indictment does not conclusively prove collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign. But this is just another wave of charges in what will prove to be many. And keep in mind the truism that the FBI doesn't go after individuals: They go after organizations. And if anyone will sniff out that smoking gun, it's Robert Mueller.
     And Trump's assertion that the Russians began plotting to help him before he'd ever decided to run for the presidency is pure bullshit. He ran in 2012 and signaled for quite a few years before and after that he wanted to be president. And wow, how coincidental is it that the Russians launched their campaign two years before Trump launched his own, starting the very same year (2013) he went to Moscow to host the Miss Universe pageant? It makes far less sense that the Russians decided to help Trump before he'd declared his candidacy than it is to conclude that the Russians, starting with Putin, TOLD him to run, making him literally a Manchurian Candidate.

The Russians Aren't Coming. They Done Came.

     When asked about Robert Mueller charging 13 Russians from the "Internet Research Agency" for meddling in the 2016 election, Trump said, "Нет! Никакого сговора! Поддельные новости!"
     Much more on this over the weekend. And what a way to kick it off.

The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre 2.0

     (If I'd known Tuesday night when I wrote yesterday's post that the very next day Nikolas Cruz would shoot up a high school in Parkland, Florida, I never would've used that title. As it is, somewhat using the same title is inevitable.)
     Well, we can't prove Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer but we do know the guy who shot up Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is a Cruz. And he also trained with a White Nationalist militia group called the Republic of Florida (which seems curiously blase about his mass murder of 17 people).
     The 19 year-old, before he was expelled from the school he shot up, was also known to wear a Trump MAGA hat to class. Which, in the eyes of our Commander in Chief, makes him "a very fine person."
     Gov. Rick Scott (R-NRA) in 2014 signed into law five very NRA-friendly bills into law, including those that put that AR-15 into the hands of Cruz. After the Orlando nightclub shooting, he said that every time something like this happens, we want to have that talk and that we were going to have that talk very soon. That was 613 days ago and we're still waiting to have that talk.
     So far as of yesterday, according to the Gun Violence Archive, 2018 has seen:
     •6626 gun-related incidents
     •1,835 gun deaths
     •3,165 gun injuries
     •69 children shot or killed
     •347 teenagers shot or killed
     •181 incidents of defensive gun use
     •216 unintentional shootings
     •30 mass shootings
     •11 school shootings with injury or death
     ...and we're still barely halfway through February.
     The 10 Senators (almost all Republican) who have vacuumed up the most bribes from the NRA had collected $42,822,711, with no end in sight. That's enough to pay for 6117 full funerals with a $7000 average.
     The 10 Congressmen who had accepted the most bribe money from the NRA took in another $4,292,241, enough to pay for another 613 funerals, making a grand total of $47,114,952 just to 20 lawmakers. Imagine how much more the 515 other members of Congress have raked in during their "public service" careers.
     The original St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929 killed seven people, 10 fewer than Cruz, back in the good old days when thugs with guns showed some restraint.
     And still, America reels when weapons designed to kill human beings are once again used to kill human beings then we inevitably throw up our hands and say we can't do anything about civilian mass gun violence that occurs nowhere else in the world.

The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of Rational Thought

“Please get me up, my friends... No payrolls. No wells. No coupons. That would be entirely out. Pardon me; I forgot I am plaintiff and not defendant. Look out. Look out for him. Please. He owed me money; he owes everyone money.” - Last words of Dutch Schultz, 1935

(By American Zen’s Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

Yes, I know it's Valentine's Day. My wife keeps having to remind me why everything in America turns pink starting the day after Christmas. But I'm a political writer. Deal. And I have something else to say that doesn't involve forced declarations of love through processed sugar and questionably aromatic, rotting vegetation.

     Aside from Donald Trump getting "elected" President of the United States, the 2016 general election should be remembered for one thing if nothing else: It was an extraordinary case of 127,000,000+ voters who were willing to overlook or be blind to the palpably obvious corruption and unsuitability of both major candidates. I hate to be the one to break it to you, folks but there is no either/or. We had, once again, forced upon us the choice between two elderly crime waves masquerading as humans.

     But for one brief shining moment, it looked as if we at least had a choice between an actual intelligent human being and a gibbering buffoon. That was the night of the first presidential debate between wedding buddies Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

     Aside from screaming about 400 pound guys on their beds hacking into the DNC's servers in a transparently pathetic attempt to deflect and distract attention away from the real culprits (i.e. the little bastard sons of Vlad Putin), Trump even used the first of the three presidential debates to give himself a pat on the back for being the powerful wealthy white man who racially profiled the President of the United States. Essentially, Trump was Sheriff Joe and the president a Hispanic motorist pulled over and asked to turn over proof of his citizenship and still not being believed.

     Because Trump is never wrong, even if he always is. Just as he's still right in calling for the death penalty of the Central Park Five 28 years ago after taking out $85,000 in full-page newspaper ads calling for their immediate execution (In kind of a mini pre-Facebook moment when the greed of the largest newspapers in New York City, in an attempt to look nonpartisan and disinterested, got the better of them despite the recklessness of the message.).

     You old farts 40 and older remember the Central Park Five, don't you? They also said they were innocent. For over a decade. Only, unlike Rob Portman and David Sorenson, the most beloved serial wife beaters who ever walked into the White House, they were. Take away the money, fine clothes and gilded trappings of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and you'd have an episode of COPS.

     You see, Dear Reader, the problem with Donald Trump isn't so much the presentation, which is adolescent on a good day: It's the fact that he's a true believer of his own bullshit. Like David Chadwick, Israel's most admired stalker and no-talent bum, earnestly believing he is "superior in every conceivable way" to the proprietor of this blog, Trump honestly and earnestly believes to this day that the Central Park Five should have been executed without even the benefit of due process. This results in his belief that all white men and conservatives deserve the benefit of the doubt while biracial Presidents free of personal scandal are lying about their birthplace even when such evidence to the contrary was released way back in 2013. White nationalists and neonazis are "very fine people" but all-around good guys like Colin Kaepernick are "sons of bitches" for kneeling during the anthem to protest black people getting killed by plainly racist cops.

     Birth certificates and DNA evidence be damned! I said it, I believe it, that settles it!

     And such delusion and an inability to admit to being at fault and to apologize for making rash statements gives us things such as Charlottesville, San Juan, outlandishly elaborate combovers that fall apart with a puff of wind and clownishly long ties that he still won't tie properly.

I am plaintiff and not defendant.

This attitude, and Trump's phantasmic grip on sanity, are why Trump's legal counsel are feverishly trying to negotiate with the Mueller team, which is in a very strong position and doesn't have to negotiate with anyone, not even the Oval Office: During this nine month-long ordeal of the Mueller investigation, Trump has been positioning himself as a victim and even a possible plaintiff, rather than a defendant in a very serious federal probe. Paul Manafort tried that and crashed and burned like the Hindenburg. His old boss personally released the Nunes Memo, which actually implicated the FBI moreso than it exonerated Trump.
     He still believes he won the popular vote (if one arbitrarily removes 3-5 million votes from illegal aliens), his inauguration crowd was the biggest on record, that he's accomplished more than any first year president, that the Dow was doing great until recently because of him, that 2017 being the safest year for air travel on record was because of him doing nothing about it, that he's a stable genius and that black people love him.
     As New York Magazine concluded last year- Trump's no liar: He's simply delusional and is not grounded in reality. His public and private statements sound like the incoherent ramblings of a dying Dutch Schultz after he was gunned down in 1935- They're a bunch of non sequiturs not even tenuously strung together with even a gossamer thread of thematic unity. Trump tells these falsehoods even in private when he doesn't have to.
     He still believes Obama was born in Kenya, that the Central Park Five are guilty, that he won the popular vote if you assume massive and unsubstantiated voter fraud, that Hillary conspired with the Russians to sell them 20% of our uranium and that it wasn't him on that Access Hollywood tape in which be bragged about sexually assaulting women.
     Perhaps now you'll understand why Trump's lawyers are hoping that he won't have to open his pie hole to Robert Mueller. It would be like opening Pandora's Box in a JPL wind tunnel. And the only thing that's scarier than Trump honestly believing these things is that 25% or more of his 2016 voters believe it. But no one's fact-checking them. And they will be left behind for us to deal with long after Trump's buried under the ash heap of history.
     Because if there's just one lasting legacy Trump will leave behind after this abomination of a presidency, it's this: He will be the first "president" who so completely convinced so many to hate the truth when it merely becomes inconvenient, to con so many tens of millions of people to jettison whatever tenuous notions they ever had about basic logic and cognitive thinking as long as doing so promises to piss off liberals. Like all great con men, Trump's indelible impact on America will be in his faithful singing his praises long after their pockets have been picked clean, in lovingly remembering when company's over that nice man in the nice suit who took their life savings for a Bible he never had or ever will have to sell.

Good Times at Gotham City, 2/12/18

Sturm und Drang

     (By American Zen’s Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

"This memo totally vindicates 'Trump' in probe. But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!" - Donald Trump on Twitter, 2/3/18

Sturm und Drang. Colloquially translated from the German, it means "storm and stress." It was used to describe a late 18th century proto-Romantic literary movement in Germany. It was an emotional reaction to the constraints seemingly placed upon it by the Age of Reason and Enlightenment. It was, in essence, scenery chewing, with much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments with the objective intellect and cognitive functions taking a back seat.

     ...which is a perfect description of the current kabuki shit show at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue from the start.

     The memo that Donald Trump referenced was, of course, the Nunes Memo, the political version of Capone's vault. When it was at last released by, of course, Donald Trump, James Comey asked on Twitter, "That's it?" Bill Maher called it a Facebook conspiracy theory post you'd briefly skim before hitting the unfriend button. It was essentially, a big let down that Trump's addled mind had somehow yeasted up into a huge conspiracy regarding the FBI's alleged partisan witch hunt that still, even were it true, doesn't equate with an official vindication of wrongdoing.

     The Mueller investigation is thought of as some shadowy animal, a blur of glacial movement in the distance, and this is largely because of the hermetic security of the probe. But perhaps we should think of it more like an octopus, a legal leviathan with at least five tentacles slowly but surely wrapping around this comically listing ship of state and relentlessly exerting its pressure. Because, as far as those of us on the outside looking in can see, the Mueller probe has at least five fronts.

    

Dirty Deeds Done Not so Dirt Cheap

 

Money laundering and pre-campaign business deals is one of the longest and thickest of the tentacles. This may have originated with suspicions of money laundering on the parts of Paul Manafort and his old running buddy Rick Gates, the first two Trump staffers to be indicted. Last October, Manafort was handed a list of charges longer than War and Peace. Among them: conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, false statements to the FBI, acting as an unregistered agent as a foreign principal, making misleading statements in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act and seven counts of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. That's an even dozen, in case you lost count. Among those bland-sounding charges are the millions Manafort had made partly lobbying for the Ukraine's then pro-Putin puppet government. And with Rick Gates having presumably agreed to a plea deal, that could lead to what's known as a "superceding indictment" that could actually add charges on to Manafort's already cracking plate. Then there are the financial documents magnanimously coughed up by Deutsche Bank (after they were subpeonaed by Mueller) could show Trump got a significant loan from the very German bank that had been stiffed by Trump to the tune of $300,000,000 at the same exact time Deutsche was caught money laundering Russian money funneled in from London then to New York.

Cozy and Fancy, the Careless Bears

Given Russia's national symbol of the bear, it was inevitable that two different Russian intelligence outposts would be named Cozy and Fancy Bear. To show how careless these idiots were, the Dutch intelligence service AIVD pinpointed Cozy Bear's den to a place near Red Square and even hacked into their cameras and got screengrabs of some of the operatives. The WSJ and the WaPo reported that at least six of the Cozy Bears were Russian intelligence operatives, nothing like Trump's 400 pound guy in a bed. They hacked not only into John Podesta's and the DNC's emails at about the time Trump invited them to but also into Republican servers. They were surely a conduit to the now-revealed evil entity Wikileaks to act to both discredit the Democrats and the DNC but doing so in the interests of helping Trump get elected.

Troll Farms

These Russian douchebags, probably the real 400 pound guys who piss and shit through holes cut into their computer chairs, couldn't have been predicted even by Orwell on his best day. If during the election you found yourself arguing on Twitter and Facebook with someone you thought was a deplorable redneck Trumper, you were in all likelihood actually going back and forth with a mindless bot or troll from Russia. I had gotten an email from Twitter a couple of months ago informing me I had interacted with one or more of them. It was entities such as these that put the phrase "troll farm" into the popular American lexicon. And they were well-financed, to judge by Facebook's own admission that one of them had paid Mark Zuckerberg $100,000 in rubles to put their propaganda on Facebook. Now, you might be wondering right about now why Mueller is investigating this and what it could possibly have to do with Trump and/or his administration. The answer's simple. Two words: Cambridge Analytica, the company of which Steve Bannon was an officer. Cambridge had coordinated with not only these Russian troll farms but had definitely contacted Julian Assaange's Wikileaks in order to have him disseminate Clinton's hacked emails that Trump had asked the Russians to hack.

     Oh, and Cambridge Analytica was also the Trump campaign's data arm as well as that for a pro-Trump Super PAC.

From Russia With Love of Trump

Of all the five tentacles, this one is the sexiest and gets my vote for the hottest anime tentacle rape. Or for those of you not into Japanese animated porn, think of this as a lightning-fast Sicilian Trap in a legal game of chess that seductively jiggles out the possibility of quickly establishing illegal collusive ties between Kremlin-linked Russian officials and Trump. One of the most damning pieces of evidence, obviously, is Donald Trump Jr's meeting with Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-linked attorney/spy. That now-infamous June 2016 30 minute meeting at Trump Tower, also attended by Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, as well as a former Russian intelligence agent, lured the stupid and gullible Trump Jr with vague promises of dirt on Hillary Clinton. When Junior finally realized in the dim recesses of his greasy, reptilian brain that there was no dirt and that all Veselnitskaya wanted to talk about were easing or eradicating Russian sanctions was the meeting terminated. Later, on Air Force One, after the scandal had broken 13 months later, Trump Sr. tried to provide cover for his namesake Fredo by dictating the now-official narrative that the meeting was really all about adopting Russian children.

     Last October, George Papadopoulos admitted to lying to the FBI about those same Russian contacts. As did Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his Senate confirmation hearings (those contacts, still denied by him to this day, are the reason why he had to recuse himself from any DOJ probes involving Russia which, in a sane world, would've mandated his immediate resignation). As did Michael Flynn, who lied about talking to the Russians about lifting sanctions to Mike Pence (the reason for his ouster). As did Kushner when applying for his security clearance and its two subsequent revisions. As did Donald Trump, Jr. As did... Oh, you get the hint. The entire Trump team is lying about their contacts with Russia. You do the math.

And Finally...

Drum roll, please...

     The Ed Armbrister Award winner hasn't been announced, yet, but Trump seems to be a shoe-in for his palpable attempts at obstruction of justice. This started about a year ago when Trump fired Acting AG Sally Yates while Jeff Sessions was busy before the Senate slapping his little forehead and vainly trying to remember meeting with the Russians during the campaign. Yates was terminated from her post immediately after her third trip to the White House to warn the Trump administration through White House Chief Counsel Don McGahn that Michael Flynn could be compromised by the Russians. Suspicion of obstruction was then ramped up to stratospheric levels when Trump rashly fired FBI Director James Comey on May 9th when he was just starting his own investigation into Trump. During a now well-known private dinner, Trump asked Comey to swear a loyalty oath and requested he lay off Flynn because he was "a good guy."

     As far as we know, this is the only tentacle that stretches directly into the Oval Office but it may be enough if it's proven obstruction was committed. To judge by the nothing burger that was the Nunes Memo, one cobbled and cherry-picked to discredit the FBI and making unsubstantiated charges of partisan influence, the same Nunes Memo that, again, Trump personally had released, then there is indeed a lot to hide and many reasons for this attempted distraction and deflection.

     These are just the known knowns, and they're damning enough as it is. Obviously, there's a lot that the 4th and 5th estates are not aware of and perhaps never will be. But if what we do know looks damning to Trump and his fascist junta, imagine how damaging the classified facts will prove to be.

UnAmerican Psycho

     This was the Dow Jones Average at the last trading bell. Rounded off, this means the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 666 points today, which perhaps isn't a coincidence considering the Lord of Dankness in the White House.
     Don't go looking for Trump to take credit for this one, because he can only take credit for the actual achievements of others. And I'm sure this is the black guy's fault. It can't be a result of the Papadopoulos indictment being unsealed today or the Nunes/FISA Nothingburger Memo being released by Trump the same time in a transparent non-attempt to deflect and distract or any of the other assclownery going on at Capitol Hill.
     It's just a lot easier to blame the black guy when things go south these days.

We Join You Live Now...

     ...with this shot of Michael Flynn, Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in Robert Mueller's office.
     Just so you know, the timing of the release of the cherry-picked Nunes Memo wasn't coincidental.

Groundhog Day

     MAGA maggots on Twitter are laughing themselves sick as they tell the same joke over and again, that Punxsutawney Phil saw his own shadow, meaning seven more years of Trump.
     No, actually, Phil saw Robert Mueller's shadow, meaning several more months of grand juries, testimonies and investigations.
     Laugh at that, assholes.