Putin brags about faster, better, “invulnerable” nuclear missiles. He recently showed off his supersonic bombers flying from Russia to Venezuela. Talks about setting up bomber bases in the Carribbean.
Not a good time for a Russian traitor in the White House.
Not a good time for a Russian traitor in the White House.?
perfect time if you are the guy who put him there. looks like putie is on a roll what with winds of chaos he’s successfully sown in bringing about Brexit, the undermining of Merkel, establishing footholds in Ukraine and Syria… in addition to electing trump
.
Well, another day starts, again raining adding to the year’s total making the D.C. region a true swampland. Everything is so soggy that ditches which are normally dry except during a rain storm have been running creeks since July.
I am always listening to people wherever i roam. Returning from the depths of Virginia along the Potomac River, Chesapeake Bay and as far south as Newport News, I can say that it is a mix of upset about what SFB is doing. A few blame the Congress for not getting a deal done with the low intelligence freak, but cannot understand why he wants them to pay for a barrier instead of Mexico. Many are hurt by the farm products not selling to China. Some are thinking of going broke next year. It is important to consider that these farmers have had a tough time harvesting the soybeans because the fields are too wet to drive on. It is a combination of things hurting them.
Does any of the SFB country have regrets for voting for him? A few. Most are less than happy with what he is doing to them, but expect his expertise to make them great. What is interesting is how incorrect their “facts” are. At least they are open to listening to someone explain what are real facts vs SFB lies. Overall, the people I meet are good people wanting to do good and they work hard. I am always happy to be with them and listen to their lives.
XR, the WI & MN wins were good wins for those programs.  Frankly I barely watched either game – somehow bowl games between 7 win teams sitting at 2, 4 & 6 in their respective divisions in the ACC & Big 10 don’t excite me, and I’m a huge college football fan. But for MN & WI and the Big 10 West they were better days than for the ACC Coastal and B10W gets the bragging rights.Â
BB, SFB is apparently tweeting nonsense again – wall & immigration – based on as you aptly noted a total lack of underlying facts, or as we call them, lies.Â
pogo, what do you make of this curious filing
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/muellers-russia-probe-obtained-nude-selfie-from-indicted-russian-company
Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team reportedly obtained a “nude selfie” during the process of investigating whether Russia colluded with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.
An attorney for Concord Management and Consulting LLC, a Russian firm that has been in the crosshairs of the Mueller team for allegedly interfering in the election, made the odd claim in court filings on Thursday.
“Could the manner in which he collected a nude selfie really threaten the national security of the United States?” lawyer Eric Dubelier asked in a filing that supports a motion to compel discovery.
It remained unclear who was shown in the erotic photo or how it purportedly came into the possession of the special counsel.
The firm also lashed out against the Mueller investigation, calling it a “first-of-its-kind, make-believe case” and claimed the special counsel has been seeking to “completely obliterate any remaining rights of Concord to defend itself, and in typical fashion provides only completely misleading case authority for the remarkable proposition that he should be able to continue to whisper secrets to the Court.”
“Since the Special Counsel has already gotten away with this once as he notes in his Motion, this Opposition is likely fruitless, but object we must both for Concord and every other defendant to whom the Special Counsel believes the laws and rules of the United States no longer apply to his novel adventures,” the filing added.
Dubelier went on to suggest that Mueller was illegally keeping “millions of pages of non-classified discovery” records from the defense and operates with utmost secrecy that “is not how criminal cases proceed in the United States,” according to Law & Crime.
At one point in the filing, the lawyer representing the Russian firm also taunted the special counsel’s legal knowledge for citing two other cases as relevant to this case.
“A first-year law student would likely question how [one such case] helps the Special Counsel here,” Dubelier wrote.
“Next it looks as if the Special Counsel tossed in [the other such case], just to have a case from this Circuit,” he added. “It is reasonable to ask if he just threw a dart at the Federal Reporter.”
from huffpo on same subject:
[…]
Prosecutors have contended that Concord is controlled by Evgeny Prigozhin, a businessman close to Russian President Vladimir Putin with key ties to Russia’s military and political establishment.
I haven’t said much about this year’s movies, but two are out now that are leading in the Oscar race that are both political in some way with leaders (?) manipulated for the benefit of hangers on. The Favourite and Vice. Here is an excellent review on Reel Roy of both of them:
Patd, I’ll look at that filing while I watch some inconsequential bowl games today and will give a more learned response but at first glance it looks like what we generally respond to as a frivolous filing that would warrant sanctions in the form of a grant of attorneys fees incurred in responding.Â
“Nude selfie ” says it all
Salacious click bait to draw in suckers.
Jack
Trump Driving Golf Cart
Bang !
“No collision.”
Mr Pogo,
The Gophers are a young team. Replacing the defensive co-ordinator 2/3 of the way through the season improved them by 30 pts per game. Barring a We are Marshall-type disaster, the team should be 10-3 or 11-2 next year. It’s time to take the Little Brown Jug back to the place where it started.Â
PatD, when you list all of Putin’s accomplishments (your first comment), it’s clear the man is a genius. I’ve long thought the world would have been so screwed if Hitler wasn’t insane, making so many fatal mistakes (especially by surrounding himself with a two-front war). Putin is a sane Hitler, and possibly far more dangerous.
BlueB, I have noticed in TV interviews and a few personal encounters, Trump supporters are getting more defensive, even almost insecure about their choice. A guy I talked to in a hardware store in Orlando said, “I’m a Trump guy. I don’t agree with everything he’s doing, but I’m a Trump guy.” A few months ago I’ll bet he left out that second sentence. Chink in the armor?
GPS co-founder pleads the 5th to Republican congressional committee questioning him about the Steele dossier, claims Mark Meadows committee would make McCarthy proud.Â
Meadows being head of the Freedom Caucus may be a bit nuts, but that has nothing to do with fear of prosecution if the joint Committees’ questions are answered truthfully.Â
XR, I’d like to see the Big 10 become relevant again. Hope MN does well. Of course Miami was singing a similar tune 9 games into last season – just before losing their last 3 last year and 9 of their last 16 starting with those 3. College football is fickle.Â
Patd, there are 3 filings relevant to the nude selfie issue. They are brief and not particularly revealing (presumably unlike the selfie).  Mueller’s team claims the material sought is classified top secret, doesn’t relate to the criminal charges in th matter and disclosure of how it was obtained would affect national security. Can’t say what the judge will do with the Motion to Compel that started this but smart money is on Mueller based on what I read.Â
The Mueller case filings are here.
 … beware – it’s got filings in all the cases.Â
jack, tend to agree with you as click bait; but on second tho’t could they be referring to the Hillary’s aide’s husband’s selfie? who knows, but it’s plausible that the Russians were involved in seeing to it that this salacious bit of fluff (which may have been “enabled into being” by them – aka kompromat) got more than it’s share of publicity in order to help the twit campaign.
question is on the click bait argument: why would concord want more attention drawn to them now?
pogo, thanks for getting that info. a treasure trove to be sure
Please lets not build up Russia to more than it is, This story about their one and only aircraft carrier and its 15 jets makes it clear Russia is a minor nuisance that has got as far as it has because nobody in the last 5 years has stood up to them. Either Trump or Obama. Sadly we created the Putin menace.
Jack
msn:
Nearly 60 percent of U.S. voters say President Trump should be either impeached and removed from office or formally censured according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill.
The poll shows that a majority of votes think some kind of action should be taken against Trump, though they are divided on how far lawmakers should go as Democrats prepare to take over the House majority.
Asked whether Trump should be impeached and removed from office for his actions, censured by Congress of whether Congress should take no action, 39 percent of respondents said that Trump should be impeached and removed from office.
Impeachment would require a majority vote by the House – a possibility with a Democratic majority, though leadership in the party have been cautious on the topic. Conviction in the Senate would require a two-thirds vote, something unlikely in a body that will have 53 Republicans.
Twenty percent said that lawmakers should vote to formally censure the president.
Forty-one percent of respondents said that Congress should take no action against the president, according to the survey of 1,473 registered voters.
The poll results come as Trump faces criminal investigations in both Washington and New York related to whether his campaign coordinated with Russian officials and actors to help sway the 2016 presidential election.
At the same time, federal prosecutors implicated Trump earlier this month in a separate case related to hush-money payments made to two women who say they had affairs with him.
In a memo recommending a prison sentence for Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, federal prosecutors said that Trump directed the payments to the two women to ward off a potential sex scandal as he sought the White House in 2016. Those payments, prosecutors argue, amounted to illegal contributions to the real estate mogul’s campaign.
U.S. voters are near-evenly divided on whether the hush-money payments warrant impeachment, according to the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll.
Forty-nine percent said they favor trying to impeach Trump over the allegations, while slightly more – 51 percent – said that doing so would return the country to 1998, when then-President Bill Clinton faced impeachment proceedings on two charges related to an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern.
“When it comes to going after the president on campaign violations, a narrow majority of voters said it would be a repeat of 1998 when President Clinton was acquitted over charges he lied about sexual affairs,” said Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll.
U.S. voters are also evenly split on whether they believe special counsel Robert Mueller has uncovered evidence that Trump campaign officials coordinated with Russians during the 2016 election. Thirty-nine percent said they believe he has, while another 39 percent say that he has not. Twenty-two percent said they don’t know whether such evidence has been discovered.
Trump and his allies have accused Mueller and his team of carrying out a “witch hunt” intended to bring down the real estate mogul, and have denied that any coordination took place between the campaign and Russia.
According to the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, voters are also divided on just how long the special counsel investigation should continue, with 31 percent saying that it should end immediately and 32 percent saying that it should continue indefinitely.
Despite that split, a majority of U.S. voters – 59 percent – said that the special counsel investigation is “hurting the country,” compared to 41 percent that said it is “helping” it, the poll found.
“The flurry of post-election Mueller activity has not changed the basic dynamic that while they want Mueller to finish his work the see the investigations as hurting the country,” Penn said.
The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll online survey of 1,473 registered voters was conducted from Dec. 24 to 26.
The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll. The Hill will be working with Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll throughout 2018.
Full poll results will be posted online later this week. The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.
Sorry here is the link to the story
If anyone gets inspired to write posts for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day I’d be happy to process them.
Pro-Death republicans Declare that Mercury is a Vegetable Again
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-epa-says-limits-on-mercury-emissions-from-coal-plants-not-necessary/ar-BBRxEb9?ocid=spartanntp
boss, you already have one scheduled for the 31st. did you change your mind about the necessity for a SOTU?
otherwise, the big question for the trail is
“What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” is a popular song written in 1947 by Frank Loesser. We used a Kamaka Concert Ukulele, Kala Jazz Tenor Ukulele (solo), Stevens Ukulele Bass and a Fender Stringmaster Hawaiian Steel Guitar (1955 D-8).
If the Russians wanted to get rid of SFB they could. Is the thought of the freak pence running the show keeping them from doing that, or is the orange idiot still producing enough to keep him in power?Â
Sick of rain. The annual deluge record is set and it’s about time to stop padding it with more water. Bad thought is if it was thirty degrees colder this could be a record setting snow fall. Current temperature is sixty degrees Fahrenheit.
Ms Bronc,
60F. Nice.
Are you still rehabbing your ark ?
What are we doing New Years Eve ?
The same thing we do every eve : try to take over the world !
XR – still working on her. The next fun thing is to R&R the toilets and sewage treatment system. Puts a tingle along the spine, eh? But, before that happens, at least two circuit breakers need to be replaced, which requires a bit of sunshine because all the power is off the boat and flashlights are almost adequate to illuminate the work area.
On Wisconsin….
New Year’s Eve. Taking LP to the airport for a 6 a.m. flight, going to work then going home at the end of the day to shelter in place away from drunk drivers. Same as almost every year.Â
Ms Bronc,
It sends more than a tingle down my spine, it sends a my gut into a barrel roll. For your hardihood, I salute you.Â
Mr Pogo,
Right you are. Amateur’s Night is damned dangerous.Â
Ms Cracker,
I love Wisconsin so much, I’d like Minnesota to annex it. As soon as the republicans have weakened the state so that it can’t resist, we’ll make our move. Then, we’ll seize the Dakotas and Iowa. After that, peace in our time.
With each new year comes the realization that whole chunks of the culture are passing me by completely. This year’s reminder came in the form of bands that are now eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (must have had first professionally release at least 25 years ago. I could only identify one of them:
Eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2019:
Weezer
Oasis
Wilco
Nickleback
Korn
Sleater-Kenny
Foo Fighters
a little encore – and with lyrics yet
the guardian: Â
Trump-Russia: Republican probe of alleged FBI bias ends ‘with a whimper’
Republicans have quietly and unceremoniously ended their congressional investigation of whether the FBI and Justice Department were biased in their handling of inquiries into Hillary Clinton’s emails and Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.
House judiciary chairman Robert Goodlatte and oversight chairman Trey Gowdy, who are retiring next week, sent a letter rather than a full report to the Justice Department and the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. It wraps up an inquiry that was conducted mostly behind closed doors but also in public as Republican lawmakers often criticised interview subjects later and suggested they were conspiring against Trump.
Democrats have blasted the GOP-led congressional inquiry, saying it was merely meant as a distraction from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Its termination comes less than a week before Republicans cede the House majority to Democrats.
Goodlatte and Gowdy say in their letter that they reviewed thousands of documents and conducted interviews that “revealed troubling facts which exacerbated our initial questions and concerns”. They call on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate further. A separate report issued this year by the Justice Department’s own internal watchdog found there was no evidence that the then FBI chief James Comey or the department were motivated by political bias toward either candidate.
Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the judiciary committee, and Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on the oversight panel, are expected to formally end the investigation when they take power in January. Nadler has called it “nonsense”.
California’s Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said on Friday evening that the Republican investigation was ending “not with a bang, but with a Friday, buried-in-the-holidays whimper, and one foot out the door”.