SNL could hire Sean Spicer to play himself. Cheaper than Melissa McCarthy and just as funny.
Whenever I watch Sean Spicer hostage videos in WH briefing room I see Trump behind him face covered holding a meat axe.
Next Trump tweet: “Just saw Obama under Lincoln’s bed wearing Google headset. Netanyahu tipped me off.”
Next Trump tweet: “When I look at Obama’s official WH portrait his eyeballs turn into laser beams that turn Steve Bannon gay. So Sick!”
“Yes, the president stands behind me, umm I mean his statements that Obama wiretapped, umm I mean surveilled, dump tower. [turns] Right, sir?
“Lunch, Steve?”
The headline says it all, but still worth reading
Trump Budgets for a Dumber Dirtier America
Poor Sean Spicer. It may be his own fault for staying in a totally thankless and morally deficient job, but I still feel sorry for him and his obvious whine for mercy from the ravening pack of those demanding accuracy and information.
Craig…. ROFLMAO!
and the drinking hasn’t even started yet….
hasn’t it occurred to anyone that when he said on faux interview wednesday “I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks” he’s knows of more WikiLeaks sh*t about to hit the fan? remember Julie-anni and roger stone’s to-be-announcements during the campaign? most likely vlad or bibi or both have fed him some of their trash tower wiretapped goodies and told him Assange will release them next week.
not surprising that rt has rolled out their peeps snowden and assange
https://youtu.be/FPgrCIawPKM
Edward Snowden Vault 7 ” Wikileaks” Obama Targeting Trump Tower Live from Russia Stream 14 03 2017
from Bloomberg:
Behind Trump’s Russia Romance, There’s a Tower Full of Oligarchs
Down on his luck, the mogul found help from émigrés from the old Soviet empire.
On the 78th floor: a Russian who once was accused of mob ties and extortion by an oligarch. On the 79th, an Uzbek jeweler investigated for money laundering who was eventually executed on the street in Manhattan. And four floors higher, a pro-Moscow Ukrainian politician whose party hired a Donald Trump adviser.
When Trump World Tower at 845 United Nations Plaza began construction two decades ago as the tallest residential building in the country (90 stories), its most expensive floors attracted wealthy people getting their money out of what had been the Soviet Union. Trump needed the big spenders. He was renegotiating $1.8 billion in junk bonds for his Atlantic City resorts, and the tower was built on a mountain of debt owed to German banks. As Trump wrote in The Art of the Comeback, “It crushed my ego, my pride, to go hat in hand to the bankers.”
Trump’s soft spot for Russia is an ongoing mystery, and the large number of condominium sales he made to people with ties to former Soviet republics may offer clues. “We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” says Debra Stotts, a sales agent who filled up the tower. The very top floors went unsold for years, but a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states, a Bloomberg investigation shows. The reporting involved more than two dozen interviews and a review of hundreds of public records filed in New York.
The 1990s were a sobering period for Trump, and it’s noteworthy that among those who helped him exit the decade are people to whom he’s shown deep loyalty. Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway and Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer, bought units. Cohen got his Ukrainian in-laws to buy, too. Most of the units were bought before the tower was built, and prices weren’t disclosed. Trump World Tower ended up as a model for future developments—with money drawn from sales in Moscow.
Two months before Trump broke ground in October 1998, Russia defaulted on $40 billion in domestic debt, the ruble plummeted, and some of the biggest banks started to collapse. Millionaires scrambled to get their money out and into New York. Real estate provides a safe haven for overseas investors. It has few reporting requirements and is a preferred way to move cash of questionable provenance. Amid the turmoil, buyers found a dearth of available projects. Trump World Tower, opened in 2001, became a prominent depository of Russian money.
[…. detail naming names…. ]
In 2008, his oldest son, Donald Jr., said, “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” What he was referring to has never been clarified, nor has its significance in explaining Trump’s friendly attitude toward Moscow. But part of the answer may lie in the hundreds of millions of dollars that salvaged Trump’s apartment buildings at a time of financial vulnerability.
—With Michael Smith, Alexander Sazonov, and Polly Mosendz
The bottom line: Trump was heavily leveraged when he built World Tower in Manhattan, which Russians flocked to.
given the above trash tower must be infested with bugs….
noted last night on pbs newshour:
SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, D-Md.: Well, this budget tells me that Donald Trump is already getting very out of touch with the American people.
It’s the kind of budget you might expect from somebody who jets off to Mar-a-Lago every other week. And, by the way, that costs taxpayers $3 million each time, which is the amount usually in the budget for the Meals on Wheels program to help feed over two million elderly.
Thanks RR, Spicer’s briefing yesterday inspired me, entertaining in the car wreck sense, hard to watch but couldn’t stop. Highly recommend catching some clips. I’d feel sorry for him if weren’t being such jerk.
It’s St. Paddy’s Day. There is no such thing as too early to start drinking …
White House Apologizes to Britain over spying Claims
“The White House has apologized to the British government after alleging that a UK intelligence agency spied on President Donald Trump at the behest of former President Barack Obama.”
Fugging idiots.
Hah, Jamie – you beat me to it.
Poobah, referring to SpLIARcer as a jerk shows admirable restraint on your part. I tend to refer to him in a more anatomical manner.
My background is communication – communication degree – advertising – public speaking – teaching, and you know what? Spicer probably has the hardest job on the planet. His job is to defend the un-defendable; in front of the world press. Geez – you couldn’t pay me enough to do his job. How on earth can you ‘spin’ Trump? You can’t. You can’t spin a lying jackass of a beast.
93% of all communication messages are non-verbal (Albert Mehrabian – UC Berkley). If you want to have some fun, watch yesterdays press conference without the volume – look at body posture, eye movement, hand and arm movement. You can easily see the level of ‘disgust’ from the reporters as the level of both anger and frustration from Spicer.
BTW – the 93% thing combined with kids texting on smart phones 14 hours a day is turning our kids stupid.
What annoys me even more is that the press usually treats these ridiculous briefings as the Comedy Hour! Yes, that’s what they are but the press should be rising above that and nailing these idiots to the wall, NOT LAUGHING!!!
Happy St Patrick’s Day to everyone!
Pat: Very interesting piece on trump tower. Also love the Danny Boy vids yesterday. I have a Danny and used to sing it to him when he was a babe and in 2003 when he was unconscious in intensive care after a motorcycle accident.
I shared this on twitter so I thought I share it here.
It’s dedicated it to the cult of trump:
“dedicated it to the cult of trump”
granny, good one…. pure schadenfreude with a beat.
singing “danny boy” to your comatose son danny …wow, must have been hard for you to get thru those lyrics. brings a tear to my eye just to imagine it.
yeah the trash tower story should get more coverage in light of the campaign cast of thousands contacts with mother Russia coming to be known. bugged errant oligarchs wherever they go seems a non-brainer.
bink, here’s another one from Bloomberg today just for you:
Tillerson Doesn’t Rule Out Preemptive Strike on North Korea
here we go again
The Dirty Word: Mandate
My latest on the healthcare front
Nice article Jamie! Thank You!
When the day reaches a point where it is calm and peaceful I go to the news sites and Twitter. That upsets me and irritates me and I am able to return to the state of fear and nausea brought about last November.
I ask myself ‘why does that fool spicer stay?’ every day. It is a good question. He apparently has held real jobs at some point in his life, why put up with a real life in the Hieronymus Bosch Garden of Earthly Delights? The only conclusion I can come up with is he is as much a fruitcake as his boss.
Passing the Day 50 and without any severe damage which cannot be reversed is hopeful. Again a question arises, will the con man make it to Day 100?
Pat: Yes it was hard but I figured he could hear me. He woke up a couple days later. I’ll be forever grateful to Orlando Medical Center for saving his life.
I bet Spicer is taking some very comprehensive notes for his post-impeachment book.
Jamie: Very interesting look at health care and insurance options around the world. At the rate we’re going we should just eliminate the word care from the equation in the US. Our system really only “cares” for the health of the insurance companies, their executives and stock holders.
This might be a good time to start talking about single payer and or medicare for all
Republicans = you are too poor to live
I find it painful to observe spicer reel off one screaming lie after another. The man acts as though he has no ancestors, and not an atom of self-respect.
Why any actual reporter would pay attention to spicer or conway is beyond me. Way beyond.
and now a word from our sponsor….
The US can no longer afford the tax break mandate for the top 10%. All income should be subject to the FICA tax.
The whole point is that without a mandate, the possibilities become absolutely clear. Costs for insurance go sky high because the pool is too small and costs to taxpayers skyrocket to cover the uninsured.
If you are unwilling to cover the uninsured, then the outcomes are simple. Stack up the sick and injured until such time as either some charitable service picks them up off the street or they shuffle off the mortal coil and the city can turn them into fertilizer.
Healthcare simply doesn’t fit into market forces. It’s either insure or die for everyone. How to form the pools is open to negotiation and the patterns between public/private vary around the world, but pools for everyone must exist or we all get shafted in some way.
There’s gonna be a lot of green in soylent green. monsanto will kill off the undesirables using their subtle poisons, and conagra will turn the cadavers into breakfast.
Just don’t eat the brains !
They’ll ‘roll out’ the Soylent Green breakfast sausages on St Patrick’s Day.
Watch for purina People Chow !
I’d like to know where is the evidence that school anti hunger programs don’t work since there is plenty of evidence that hungry kids have a harder time learning
Do they not work because of the way they are implemented -?????
The theme dejour for Pussy Grabber is we are ending all programs that don’t work except only
Pussy Grabbers can see the failures – it must be some kind of special powers
time for a break
KGC
It depends on the measuring stick used. In the case of the evil one spouting the Trump doctrine, it used whether or not the whole school system improved not whether the children receiving food improved. Sneaky way to hide the positives. There is a whole lot of evidence that feeding children definitely improves both their lives and school attendance.
Thanks Jaime
To me, all the little children suffer
–twump
he heard it wrong
Speaking of programs that don’t work – isn’t he giving a giant raise to the dept most likely to abuse
ProPublica now reporting something very interesting
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fired-us-attorney-preet-bharara-said-to-have-been-investigating-hhs-secretary-tom-price_us_58cc2b1ee4b0be71dcf4a17b?
No food for public school children means more food for the gilded deadbeat.
Hmmm Soylent Green supplement for survival … Maybe I should start backing Trump for overpopulation. Give up on gradual and trot out all four horsemen at once in a hurry. Conquest (Korea, Iran?) Pestilence (Cancel Disease Control) Famine (Cancel Food Services & Refugee assistance), and death (anybody we missed with the first three).
Make work programs with kickback: Trump Grave Digging Incorporated
dv, thanks for that huffpo link on preet. here’s what the new republic said about it in more colorful terms:
Preet Bharara was reportedly investigating HHS Secretary Tom Price when he was fired.
The timing of Bharara’s firing was always strange. While it’s not abnormal for an incoming administration to ask for U.S. attorneys to resign after taking office, it is abnormal to do so 50 days into a term and with practically zero notice. It’s even weirder to do so after telling an attorney—Bharara, in this case—that he would be kept on, as recently as two days before he was canned.
As with most things Trump-related, Occam’s razor has always pointed to incompetence. The Trump administration has not been here before and does not know how things are done; in the hands of Trump and his aides, even simple maneuvers are badly mishandled. But in this caser, smoke is beginning to point to fire.
Bharara had been asked to investigate potential violations by Trump of the Emoluments clause two days before he was asked to resign. And on Friday, ProPublica reported that Bharara was in the middle of investigating Health and Human Services chief Tom Price for insider trading and for trading health stocks while introducing health legislation as a congressman. It is unclear exactly which transactions Bharara was looking at—though there are many possibilities! But Bharara’s firing already raised more questions than it answered, and this additional information only makes the timing more suspect.
just so no one misses the real story, I repeat for emphasis:
Bharara had been asked to investigate potential violations by Trump of the Emoluments clause two days before he was asked to resign
back on march 8, npr reported:
With Congress showing no signs of taking action, a group of ethics watchdogs is turning to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara to look into whether President Trump’s many business interests violate the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“Published reports indicate that the Trump Organization and related Trump business entities have been receiving payments from foreign government sources which benefit President Trump through his ownership of the Trump Organization and related business entities,” according to a letter sent to Bharara. It went on:
Pussy Grabber is boring. Everything he touches is guaranteed to turn to shit
This story just might have legs if the press has the gonads to cover it like they should.
Appears that things may be beginning to close in on him.
Aren’t they planning on voting on the AHA next Thursday? Wonder if this will delay.
56 days of scam so far.
Is DC burning? Is DC burning??
Every woman knows this body language. Don’t look the lady in the eye and make sure she knows you have a powerful penis. Trump Won’t Look Merkel In the Eye
If Twump were to have to form a government in exile wonder where it would be………
usa today:
Amid the chaos of President Trump and Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first meeting in the Oval Office on Friday, a request was made.
Photographers wondered if the world leaders would shake hands.
Merkel turned to Trump. “Do you want a handshake?” she asked.
Trump didn’t respond. (To be fair, it seemed loud in the room.)
And then Merkel made a face.
Awkward.
sturge, elba is nice this time of year
Trailmix favorite Alexandra Petri hit the jackpot. Some ignoramus at the WH sent her satire article out in the daily newsletter. Apparently they like headlines more than content:
Trump’s Budge Makes Perfect Sense
This government is a sham at this point. Just a bunch of rich businessmen grabbing whatever they want while they can. Pussies are the least of it! As long as donnie and the lowlifes keep treating government programs, including health care, as “products” we’re all in deep sh*t! If it isn’t in their self interests and doesn’t add to their bottom lines, the products will be cut from the inventory!
I’m embarrassed for my country to have such a pathetic excuse for a President. He has no clue how to conduct himself with foreign leaders unless their kissing his ass! So that means the only one he can communicate with is Putin.
Sturgeone: “Is DC burning? Is DC burning??” In a word, Yes! Where will he go? I hope he goes straight to hell!
On a lighter note…Celtic Thunder was on the Today Show. Any fans here? I still miss George 🙁 Damian has turned into a good looking young man. I remember him 10 years ago as that cute little boy singing Puppy Love!
Where is the media on emoluments, etc.? Congress, like Ivanker, seems complicit. Are there any real, investigative journalists left?
Did anyone bring a basket of shamrocks to Trump, as us tradition? Eh, he’d probably think they were bugged, anyway.
Why isn’t the media crawling up BananaNazi’s oriface to find the dirt on that crazy SOB?
Why weren’t they aware of Flynn’s ties with Russher?
Melanoma looks like Leona Helmsly
Ask yourself this question: when will the republicans start to think they will lose their election? That is the point when the con man goes down.
,,,
BB – Can the bubble-dwellers in Congress hear the peasants that they are supposed to represent getting angry?
BID – they knew! But anyone in the media who goes against orange hair get’s cut out of the loop and disinvited to interviews, events, etc.
Media outlets should wear that moniker like a badge of honor – and really go after the S.O.B., but the media environment has changed.
Lord what Edward R. Murrow would have done to Trump.
To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.
“Good night and good luck”
If that dooooosh, Chavetz, gives one more interview…the smile of a smarmy weasel. (Apologies to weasels.)
dv…”Lord what Edward R. Murrow would have done to Trump.” Here here! Sadly, they just don’t make them like that anymore. KO would do it but he doesn’t have the clout of a news organization behind him…probably for that very reason!
Mrs Jack and I finished half a bottle of Jameson, she has gone to bed and I am still sipping.
The bottle I bought has a new label, it may be for St Paddy’s day as it is very green. It has 2 hands clsp together in a hand shake with the knuckles tattooed “SINE METU” a google search finds it means ‘without fear” The philosophy one finds on a bottle of whisky……….
How ever it occurred to me,
A fine motto it is in such times as these. One may want to preface it with a “fuck you” But then again your mileage may vary.
Jack
As Dylan never did it
In a few seconds St Paddy’s day is over. A hymn for the occasion
Amazing Grace by the Dropkick Murphys. while I think it is one of the best versions of the song, much like Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” Different tastes have different opinions
Good night all
Jack
https://youtu.be/t4Af_TEN7Yc