Keith

The timeline is telling - and with some luck, Mueller's Manhunters have all of this in hand.

Today's Tweet

Politics 101

When GOP controls government, you get fascism.
When DEMs control government, you get health insurance.

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) July 25, 2017

It Gets Worse

The Mooch - the guy 45* brings in to be this century's version of Nixon's Plumbers - one of the pros - yeah, that guy - he called Ryan Lizza more or less outa the blue, talked pure shit about Reince Preibus for 30 minutes or so, and then bitched because he'd meant for it to be off the record, but hadn't bothered to make that clear to Lizza.  Yeah - the guy's a real pro.

The New Yorker:

On Wednesday night, I received a phone call from Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director. He wasn’t happy. Earlier in the night, I’d tweeted, citing a “senior White House official,” that Scaramucci was having dinner at the White House with President Trump, the First Lady, Sean Hannity, and the former Fox News executive Bill Shine. It was an interesting group, and raised some questions. Was Trump getting strategic advice from Hannity? Was he considering hiring Shine? But Scaramucci had his own question—for me.

“Who leaked that to you?” he asked. I said I couldn’t give him that information. He responded by threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff. “What I’m going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we’ll start over,” he said. I laughed, not sure if he really believed that such a threat would convince a journalist to reveal a source. He continued to press me and complain about the staff he’s inherited in his new job. “I ask these guys not to leak anything and they can’t help themselves,” he said. “You’re an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country. So I’m asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.”

In Scaramucci’s view, the fact that word of the dinner had reached a reporter was evidence that his rivals in the West Wing, particularly Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, were plotting against him. While they have publicly maintained that there is no bad blood between them, Scaramucci and Priebus have been feuding for months. After the election, Trump asked Scaramucci to join his Administration, and Scaramucci sold his company, SkyBridge Capital, in anticipation of taking on a senior role. But Priebus didn’t want him in the White House, and successfully blocked him for being appointed to a job until last week, when Trump offered him the communications job over Priebus’s vehement objections. In response to Scaramucci’s appointment, Sean Spicer, an ally of Priebus’s, resigned his position as press secretary. And in an additional slight to Priebus, the White House’s official announcement of Scaramucci’s hiring noted that he would report directly to the President, rather than to the chief of staff.

Scaramucci’s first public appearance as communications director was a slick and conciliatory performance at the lectern in the White House briefing room last Friday. He suggested it was time for the White House to turn a page. But since then, he has become obsessed with leaks and threatened to fire staffers if he discovers that they have given unauthorized information to reporters. Michael Short, a White House press aide considered close to Priebus, resigned on Tuesday after Scaramucci publicly spoke about firing him. Meanwhile, several damaging stories about Scaramucci have appeared in the press, and he blamed Priebus for most of them. Now, he wanted to know whom I had been talking to about his dinner with the President. Scaramucci, who initiated the call, did not ask for the conversation to be off the record or on background.
Score Card
Fuck - 6
Cock - 3
Shit - 1

Overheard on the intertoobz: "The guy's a pinky ring with legs."

Remember Your Orwell

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

"As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead trying to kill me. They do not feel enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are only doing their duty, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil."

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

Today's Pix

Today's Tweet

I never knew what #Kushner sounded like. But he sounds better with #zebras pic.twitter.com/R3NGpBp8mz

— Chris Sampson (@TAPSTRIMEDIA) July 25, 2017

Trae Crowder

An important reminder: It doesn't matter why they're doing these shitty things. It matters that they are doing these shitty things.

The Old Is New Again

And suddenly, we've got Democrats acting all Democrat-ey and shit.

I'm just hoping we don't have to put up with a lot of self-righteous fart-breathing told-ya-so from the Purity Warriors who said they actually wanted 45* because what we really need is a lot of debilitating anxiety and pain so we'd wake up and blah blah blah - fuck that and fuck you.

Letting us in for all that anxiety and pain in order to force us to go along with your idea of good policy makes you no different from the Repubs or the Neo-Liberals who use the same tactics - the Repubs and Neo-Liberals you're always calling assholes.

But hey - it wasn't really your fault. Putin made you do it, right?

Sometimes, our reaction to trauma is what motivates us to change. That does not mean you get to manipulate us by deliberately instigating the trauma.

That's not Smart Politics. That's Terrorism.

This Slope Seems So Slippery

GOP base interviewing one of their prime candidates

These Kids Today

A little Facebook nonsense:

The tendency is to do a little bragging about the shit you pulled as a kid, because (I guess) it satisfies a fantasy that you were (and still are, maybe?) some kinda badass or whatever.

The main point of interest for me is that most of the people doing most of the bragging are the ones who spend lots of time on Facebook complaining about how fucked up everything is - blaming bad parenting and single moms, etc, for a general permissiveness they believe is at the root of all the rotten things all these rotten kids are doing.

And yes, I'm pointing out something that's ridiculously obvious - I ain't no genius, y'know.

So why is this not just as obvious to everybody else, particularly to the people playing these silly games on Facebook?

It is a wonderment.