By Jace, a Trail Mix Contributor
A bit longer than usual today, but worth every minute I think. A wonderful work by Grieg. As always enjoy the music and enjoy your day!
More Posts by Jace
User-Supported News Commentary Hosted by Craig Crawford
By Jace, a Trail Mix Contributor
A bit longer than usual today, but worth every minute I think. A wonderful work by Grieg. As always enjoy the music and enjoy your day!
More Posts by Jace
jace, forgive me for breaking the mood, but snl sings to the faithful
well, this for sure will elicit a tweet storm of major proportions from you-know-who unless his handlers have hidden his tweeter.
from ew at msn:
Beau Willimon, creator of Netflix’s political series House of Cards, countered Donald Trump’s Saturday Twitter rant with one of his own. Today’s tantrum is just the latest example of why @realDonaldTrump & @POTUS must be removed from @Twitter, Willimon began a 16-tweet argument.
[…tweets..]
Since the president holds a supreme and unique responsibility unlike any other user, Willimon wrote that Trump’s tweets have real and significant impact on the business of governance, world affairs and national security. He continued, President Trump has consistently made misleading claims, attacked the judiciary and threatened sovereign states, the press & public. His tweets recklessly bypass diplomatic channels without consultation from the State Department, [Intelligence Community] or the Pentagon.
[…tweets.]
Willimon then deemed Trump’s tweets to be a national security threat for broadcasting to foreign leaders his continuing impulsiveness, recklessness, delusion & ignorance about gov’t, as well as emboldening our enemies to take advantage of his flagrant shortcomings.
[…tweets.]
Pointing to Trump’s war on mainstream media, which escalated to shutting out specific journalists from a White House press briefing, Willimon added, Trump makes the argument for himself being a liability to the people with his behavior on this service.
[…tweets.]
Tweeting directly to Twitter’s official feed, Willimon pleaded, With your worldwide reach & impact on the media, you have a duty to steer clear of accounts facilitating nat’l security threats. @Twitter is amazing. It connects the world. That comes with its own responsibility: to do your part in protecting that world.
[…tweets.]
According to a national survey released by Quinnipiac University in January, 64 percent of Americans said they want Trump’s Twitter account deleted. In the past, POTUS used the platform to bash and discredit media outlets, target politicians and the judge who blocked his travel ban, and slamming Arnold Schwarzenegger and Celebrity Apprentice, among other things.
Hey guys (and gals)…. leaving for the wild northern parts of NH shortly. Rick will ski and as usual I’ll be hot tubbin’. Taking along the iPad so I’ll still be posting a bit.
Pogo… I’ll wave to everyone when we drive through Campton.
renee, enjoy the tubbin’. hope your ipad is steam and water proof.
here’s more fun tweeting from the entertainment world: huffpo’s The Horror! Stephen King Tweets Mock Tale Of Trump ‘Wiretap’
Horror meister Stephen King got into the spirit of Donald Trump’s baseless claims that Barack Obama wiretapped his phones by turning it into a funny horror story that fits into a few tweets.
First, he tweeted that the nefarious deed was carried out by none other than Obama himself “dressed in Con Ed” coveralls with Michelle Obama as a lookout. “SAD!” Obama also “stole the Strawberry ice cream out of the mess locker,” King tweeted.
But the real horror is that Obama never left the White House, King warns. He is IN THE CLOSET with SCISSORS!” tweeted the horror novelist.
But seriously, King also tweeted that the whole Trump “wiretap affair” reminded him of the movie “The Stupids.” It’s “embarrassing,” he wrote.
Jace
Thank you as always for bringing a little grace to our week in these turbulent political times.
jace, Jamie’s right about the grace you bring us each sunday. thanks and to atone for besmirching it right off the bat with snl, here’s something from a Finnish neighbor of your Norwegian guy to help bring back the calm:
The more than loathsome Roger Stone, who regularly appears on CNN as a Trump apologist, went on a Twitter rage rant last night. Bitch was his kindest term for the women he attacked who made sure that his thoughts on the subject were spread far and wide. I don’t know if the Cable channels pay these spokesclowns for camera time, but if so he probably just lost a steady income stream.
Pat
looking at some of the SNL stuff, I have to feel a bit sorry for them. It is hard to satirize the Trumpistas. Satire requires you take some thing stupid someone does and exaggerate it. It is hard to be more stupid than the Trumpistas right now.
So what is it, 6 weeks down 202 to go.
AAAAHHHHH
Maybe I had better put some whiskey in the coffee this morning
Jack
craig, you and your dad might be interested in this from this morning’s courier journal: Ali, Sanders legacies began on same day
March 6 is a special day for Kentucky—but no one seems to have noticed yet.
It’s a day for Kentucky to commemorate the tangled histories of its two biggest icons: Harland “Colonel” Sanders and Muhammad Ali. Because, although they probably never met, on March 6, 1964, they both cemented their legacies forever. It’s an astounding coincidence.
[compares background of and what happened on 3/6 to both and concludes]
At 73, he chose to cash out for a cool $2 million. As part of the deal, though, he had to give up his own name. That’s something he’d later regret: in the 1970s, when KFC began changing his recipe, he sued them for misusing his name and image. And they settled with him. However, now that he’s dead, KFC can do whatever they want with him—with his image and with his products. They control his legacy.
By contrast, Clay, who’d also conquered his field by then, was still getting denied his basic rights. By 22, he was a decorated Olympian eating bologna from a bag. So he made a choice then and there to seize control of his own legacy: with a little push from Elijah Muhammad, Clay rejected the birth name that he’d inherited from a dead white man. Let Colonel Sanders glamorize the Old South; Clay wanted no connection to it.
Instead, Clay chose to anchor his name and legacy—and not to some colorblind fantasy about class mobility, like the Colonel had, but to his own Blackness and his Muslim faith. “Black, confident, cocky,” he called it. “My name, not yours. My religion, not yours. My goals, my own. Get used to me.”
And we all know what happened next: he became the Greatest that ever lived.
He spoke out for the victims of America’s misdeeds: oppressed blacks, jailed dissidents, Vietnamese civilians, etc. In 2015, he denounced then-candidate Donald Trump for proposing the racist Muslim ban. It’s no surprise that when Ali died last summer, Muslims came from all over the world to mourn. After his funeral service at the KFC Yum Center, he was laid to rest in Cave Hill cemetery; buried on the opposite end of that cemetery is Colonel Sanders.
Both of them brought great joy to the world. That’s the best legacy of all.
cbs via msn: Video shows heated Oval Office meeting
President Donald Trump is extremely frustrated with his senior staff and communications team for allowing the firestorm surrounding Attorney General Jeff Sessions to steal his thunder in the wake of his address to Congress, sources tell CNN.
and politico’s coverage of his tantrum:
Trump fumes over Sessions’ recusal from Russia probe
The president vented to aides that he believed the attorney general’s recusal was handled poorly.
wapo: White House offers no evidence, seeks probe into claim of ‘politically motivated investigation’ during 2016 campaign
….
In a statement, White House press secretary Sean Spicer cited unknown “reports” of “potentially politically motivated investigations” during the campaign, calling them “troubling.”
“Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling,” Spicer said. “President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.”
“Neither the White House nor the president will comment further until such oversight is conducted,” he added.
Patd,
Not to worry. The music sets the mood. The comments set the table.??
What’s Trump worried about, there was no ‘thunder’ to steal in the wake of his address to congress.
As for Sessions he shouldn’t be recused he should be excused from any government position what so ever.
Some of you may have missed it but yesterday was a day of mass rallies across the US in support of Trump.
Minnesota was a hot bed of Trumpistas with 500 , Austin TX, 200, Indianapolis IN 30
In Miami they didn’t give any numbers but they all gathered on the outdoor court of a Cuban restaurant and sipped Cuban coffee. Now that is my idea of a proper protest rally.
Now before you start blaming the lying media for the low reported numbers remember these numbers are most likely from the rally organizers and Trumpistas sometimes can’t count too high.
What was interesting to me about yesterday, is that there were more trump people rushing out to spread the latest insider gossip to their favorite reporter than showed up at most of these rallies.
LOL
Jack
Potential politically motivated investigations during the election???
I can only assume that Spicer is referring to the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails. Right?
Jack,
I did miss those rallies. Sounds like they were about the same size as the inauguration crowd.
I guess all those 60 plus year old folks that were interviewed don’t need social security or Medicare. Good for them.
another good one from snl last night
Published on Mar 5, 2017
This is the story of the Republican who stood up to President Donald Trump.
ny times:
Mr. Trump’s demands for a congressional investigation were initially met with skepticism by lawmakers, including Republicans. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said he was “not sure what it is that he is talking about.”
“I’m not sure what the genesis of that statement was,” Mr. Rubio said.
Pressed to elaborate on “Meet the Press,” Mr. Rubio said, “I’m not going to be a part of a witch hunt, but I’m also not going to be a part of a cover-up.”
more from he who says he is “not going to be a part of a cover-up”
Published on Mar 5, 2017
Sen. Marco Rubio talks with CNN’s Jake Tapper about President Trump’s wiretap claims, the controversy around Attorney General Jeff Sessions and more during is appearance on CNN’s State of the Union.
Ah the grand and biggest of the biggest floater rallies – the best I heard on the radio this morning was “hundreds across the U. S. rallied for trump”.
Sure is great to have a “businessman” in the Oval Office running the country. Lots of progress in returning the U.S. to those great days of whites only and isolation.
Sadly, all 45* knows is monkey business.
Ya know
I’m surprised that one of the kids haven’t change Granpaws twitter account password.
Jack
Humm, ya know 3 am in New York, is 10 or 11 am in Moscow,
So does Trump really get up at 3 am just to tweet?
Jack
There is just something so wrong with this headline
Porsche Chases Ferrari With a Superfast Station Wagon
Aaaaaaaaaand, the Republicans have the ball on their own 6 1/2 yard line…..they’re going into a modified shotgun formation and those in the crowd are on the edges of their seats.
Talking about fast station wagons, back in the 70’s, crazy Dave painted his Chevy Vega a lime green, dropped a 350 V8 in it. Stepped on the gas and popped the spider gears in the rear end, after he did it 3 times he took a pickup rear end down to Eldon Edgecombe an old machinist who could create anything with a welder and a cutting torch. For $20 Eldon cut down the rear end so it fit under the Vega. Crazy Dave was ready to fly. The speed limit back then was 55 and that car idled at 60. It wasn’t long until Dave had outran the local highway patrol 3 times and was setting in a buddies shop sharing a beer and shooting the shit when a Deputy Sherriff we all knew(went to school with him, his name was Dave too) stopped in and pointed to the Vega. He said, “I don’t know who owns that car but if I was them I would either paint the thing or sell it. It is becoming a known vehicle” So Dave decided maybe his hotrod outlaw days were numbered and he sold it.
Jack
jack, looks like the “march 4 trump” folks had a little crowd enhancement help according to wapo:
The situation was further complicated when groups of self-described anarchists joined the crowd around 3 p.m., the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The anarchists were dressed in black and blocked traffic as they marched through downtown Berkeley, mingling with pro-Trump and anti-Trump demonstrators, according to the newspaper.
“These people just want to fight,” Nancy Chase, a Trump supporter, told the Chronicle. “They are anarchists in black, and it’s not what we are about. I just want to stand up for liberty.”
It is unclear whether the anarchists belonged to any one group. Activists aligned with “black bloc” groups had similarly wreaked havoc during protests in Washington during the inauguration, destroying property for the sake of upending order, The Washington Post reported in January.
These groups take “advantage of the legitimate protesters to destroy things and emphasize their anarchist roots,” David Gomez, a former senior FBI counterterrorism official in Seattle, told The Post.
If the deadbeat is right that someone or some people in the US government began tapping his phone(s) before he took office on January 20, 2017, application(s) containing sworn statements alleging one or more felonies connected to those phones must have been reviewed by a federal judge before that judge issued the wiretap warrants.
Which felonies are we talking about ? The possibilities are nearly endless.
1. Failures to register as russian agent(s), 2. espionage, 3. sabotaging US Foreign Policy (Logan Act) , 4. obstruction(s) of justice, 5. violation of the oath(s) of office, 6. accessory to felony(s), 7. misprision of felony(s), 8. perjuries, 9. tampering with federal elections, 10. taking bribes, 11. simony, 12. hacking email accounts, 13. violation of the emoluments section of the Constitution, 14. conspiracy to commit any of the above.
my apologies for length (and it’s only an excerpt) and language; but what can you do, it’s wonkette:
the trumpchurian candidate
President Trump, it seems, is very upset that President Obama did a “wire tapp” (sic) to him, that, apparently, he is just finding out about. (He might want to broaden his media diet.)
[….tweets here]
But what’s this about then? Let’s begin at the Beginning Place.
Oh hey, do you remember that weird story about the servers pinging back and forth from Trump Tower to Russia’s Alfa Bank?
We remember it clearly. It was Halloween, and we were sitting in the Wonkebago in a deserted RV park outside Salt Lake, and our heads were SCANNERS SPLODING from reading two stories in a row: one by David Corn at Mother Jones that first introduced The Dossier, and one by Franklin Foer at Slate about these two mysterious servers pinging each other — and each other only — back and forth from Moscow to Trump Tower.
Yes. We’re back to private email servers. Fucking AGAIN.
Within one hour, Eric Lichtblau of the august New York Times had cleared Donald Trump of all crimes past, present and future. Law enforcement had looked at the Alfa Bank server, he said, but had finally concluded it was probably spam. And that dossier? Law enforcement hadn’t found a single link between Russia and Trump or any of his associates.
Lichtblau’s reporting has not aged well. In fact, it has aged as badly as Trump adviser Alex Jones, who we recently learned is 43.
Whoops it turns out the FBI got a FISA warrant for the Trump Org and Alfa Bank and all ‘US persons’ emailing each other therein
So, Eric Lichtblau’s “law enforcement” source, who we surmised was FBI Director James Comey, may he rot in hell, may have been a tad premature! Or a little bit lie-y! Because at 10 p.m. the night before Election Day, the Rupert Murdoch-owned conservative rag “Heat Street” published a little bit of a scoopty about how, after being denied for a FISA warrant naming Donald Trump, the FBI had in October resubmitted a more narrowly drawn warrant, which was granted.
Nobody really saw the story; it was the night before Election Day, there was rather a lot of other stuff going on, and Heat Street, and its editor Louise Mensch, weren’t particularly known quantities as far as national security reporting. Mensch, 45, a former Conservative MP and ’90s party girl, had married Metallica’s manager and become a Big Hater Of Russia and Big Lover Of British And American Spies — and, apparently, they return the favor!
It would be two months before BBC and McClatchy were able to confirm Mensch’s reporting about the FISA warrant, which McClatchy wrote had been granted Oct. 15.
Mensch left Heat Street and posts crazy shit on her own blog, Patribotics.wordpress.com. We’ll come back to that.
It’s now four months later, and Breitbart is pissed. As goes Breitbart …
[….]
The “police state tactics” they are VERY GRRRR about are … the Department of Justice applying for and receiving a FISA warrant to monitor communications between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.
It’s almost as if investigating collusion between a hostile foreign power and a candidate for president of the United States to (hypothetically!) traffic in stolen information and use it to injure a second candidate for president of the United States is worse than actually colluding to do so!
[….]
In conclusion?
Haha, Scanners! No but really, in conclusion?
No, President Trump. The Department of Justice getting a FISA court to agree to let it look at your computer traffic with Alfa Bank, while you and every person you have ever met are doing weird Russia stuff, is not “a police state” “worse than Watergate.” It’s how a country of laws works.
Oh, also, we almost forgot: You know how we have been REALLY MEAN to poor James Comey? According to Mensch, he’s every bit the “man of integrity” all those people kept claiming he was while we pooh poohed them and tore our own hair out, and his insistence on not signing on to the Intelligence Community’s conclusion on Russia hacking the election was because he wasn’t going to fuck up his case like a common Law & Order cop by looking at the intel until every i was crossed and t was dotted on his warrants. If that turns out to be the case, we will owe him a really nice fruit basket.
Posted last night on the previous thread :
Advice on Wiretap Warrants
For a federal government employee, agency, office, or department to lawfully tap the phone of a US citizen, a warrant for that tap must be obtained from an appropriate federal judge. To be granted, an application for a wiretap warrant must include the following information:
1. Reported Felony, Time, and Place
a. There must be a report by a witness of a felony that has been committed, is being committed, or shall be committed.
b. The application must include the exact place or the exact electronic communication account used by the suspect(s).
c. The felony must fall within the jurisdiction of the US, and the felony must be ‘current’, meaning the statute of limitations does not preclude prosecution.
2. The Witness
a. The witness cited in the application for warrant must be reliable, meaning (s)he has a track record of giving correct information in criminal cases.
b. The witness must have had the ability to learn of the felony, usually meaning that (s)he could have been in the vicinity at the time alleged.
c. The witness must be believable, meaning (s)he must include in the report enough relevant detail that a reasonable person might reasonably presume the witness told the truth.
If the application for a wiretap warrant does not meet all of these criteria in every point, the warrant cannot be granted.
– Xrepublican
This is at least the second time that Pussy Grabber has taken stories from rightwing sources and distorted those facts to support some news fantasy of his own
Greig and Moussorgsky wrote great music for the deadbeat’s junta. The Hall of the Mountain King and Night On Bald Mountain.
Grunge music is pretty trumpian too, or so I hear.
the day before the election daily kos ran a more in depth passage about the fisa warrant plus named names.
the blogger who published it said in way of introduction to the info: ….I thought this maybe merited some attention. The site itself is conservative, mostly full of crap, but the author is a reliable #NeverTrump type. Day late and dollar short. Make of it what you will.
xr, music-wise, every time I see rosie O’Bannon I hear the thumping of wagner’s valkeries
from rcp: Mukasey: “There Was Surveillance” Of Trump Tower, Not Necessarily Related To Election
Former Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey joins ABC’s Martha Raddatz on ‘This Week’ to discuss the wiretapping accusations made by President Trump on Twitter on Saturday morning: […]
“This is the difference between being correct and being right,” Mukasey said about Trump’s accusation of Obama. “I think the president was not correct certainly in saying that President Obama ordered a tap on a server in Trump Tower. However, I think he is right in that there was surveillance, and that it was conducted at the behest of the… Justice Department through the FISA court.”
President Obama’s Justice Department made two requests in June and October of 2016 to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. Because the first was denied, the second was narrower and focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of transmitting links to Russian banks.
“It means there were some basis to believe that somebody in Trump Tower may have been acting as an agent of the Russians, for whatever purpose, not necessarily the election, but for some purpose. And the FBI keeps track of people who act as agents of foreign governments,” he said. “They keep track of people who act as agents of the Chinese, the Russians, the Israelis, everybody.”
Transcript courtesy of ABC:
[….]
RADDATZ: And what do you base that on?
MUKASEY: I base that on news reports that you mentioned in the last spot. I also base it on kind of inadvertent blurting out by Adam Schiff that his committee wants to talk to the counterintelligence agents at the FBI who were involved in this. Now, what that means is this is part not of a criminal investigation, but of an intelligence gathering investigation.
The FBI has got two functions. They investigate crimes and they gather intelligence. They started gathering intelligence in ’08 based on guidelines that we put in place.
[….]
RADDATZ: Some of the evidence may have been gleaned from classified means. Is there any way to verify these claims in the press or Trump’s claims so the American people can really understand what’s going on here?
MUKASEY: The only way to verify, whether there was a — whether there was electronic surveillance is to disclose the warrant and to disclose the fruits of it. And that should not be done even in a political storm as hot as this one.
xr, I repeat what you repeated and what should be said each time anyone talks or whines about a wiretap:
If the application for a wiretap warrant does not meet all of these criteria in every point, the warrant cannot be granted.
lest we forget the gridiron club joked last night on this and other subjects. here’s sample from wapo:
In the everyone’s-fair-game spirit of the night, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) took aim at the head of her own party, saying that Trump couldn’t be there because he was just a little busy. After all, “Saturday is golf night,” she said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also “couldn’t be here,” she continued, nodding to Trump’s tweet Saturday morning claiming that the Obama administration had wiretapped Trump Tower. “But don’t worry, he can hear us loud and clear. And, according to Donald Trump, so can President Obama.”
Another laugh line from Ernst: “I actually earned some points with the White House tonight — on my salad I asked for Russian dressing. Jeff Sessions recommended it. He got the recipe from the Russian ambassador.”
While many lefties may assume that the spate of russian diplomat and putin crony deaths is just a matter of the rancher culling his herd, there may be another explanation. Late in the late campaign President Obama told the nation that russian intelligence had been caught, and that he would retaliate against Russian government. Many of us presumed at that time, I among them, that the President meant more and stiffer sanctions. What if we were wrong, and our sweet, bend-over-backwards-to-please-folks president issued licenses to CIA Black Ops to unplug a vast array of putin’s foreign intelligence leads ? At this point, I’d like to think that explains all the f.o.p.s suddenly dropping dead.
Thanks, Pat !
It’s nice to read that joni ernst is still castrating pigs.
Xrepublican,
What a comforting thought, that the reserved and scholarly Obama had authorized hits on Vlad’s agents. (Some of them, anyway.) To paraphrase Clint Eastwood’s character Bill Munny in Unforgiven: “They had it coming.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/01/27/russia-arrests-third-u-s-spy-in-cyber-treason-case.html?via=desktop&source=copyurl
Since the trump gangsters/putin gangsters scandal first broke, fsb colonel sergei mikhailov, chief of fbs cyber affairs, two other fbs officers, and the entire “investigation” unit for kaspersky have been disappeared for “questioning.” The head of the kaspersky “investigation” unit has been charged with treason.
One can only speculate as to whether putin is plucking out the American eyes that observe his doings, or if he is plucking out his own eyes. Maybe we fooled him into blinding himself. I hope. It would be a delightful retaliation for putin’s meddling in our election.
Xrep, those are possibilities.
But as you know I love conspiracy theories especially ones I create
Given the timing there is the possibility that somebody in Trumpista land was delivering the goods as payment for the help received. Only the CIA knows for sure. and if they do then they may have DT by the short and curlies and putting the squeeze on the family jewels. Let’s hope they are true patriots. It would certainly explain some of the stuff that’s been going on in the last few weeks. From Trumps panicked tweets yesterday to Flynn getting fired for lying to the Vice President. Nobody gets fired for lying to the VP, I mean really make up a better reason than that.
Jack
Well It looks like Comey wants the justice department to issue an official denial of the wire tapping issue.
Well that was certainly on my mind today, if they can obtain a wire tap then there may be something there.
As usual Trump didn’t think his bullshit through to the end. The story of his first 6 weeks, everything is half assed done.
Jack
A wire tap record leak by an anonymous source ,
The Trump White House
https://youtu.be/cT9A58ff-jo
Right, Jack.
And what if Navy Intel or Treasury was hacking the russkie banks looking for connections to naval contractors or Mexican/American drug cartels ? Would they inform the FBI or DoJ ? Maybe. Even if comey knew about Navy, Treasury, or CIA taps, he might just want sessions to assure quisling that this isn’t comey’s fault.
Yeah, the possibilities are endless. It’s sooooo entertaining to observe some of the worst people in America as they stare down into the void, and know that it’s just a matter of time. Doom looms. Cool. I love it !