The Rosenstein Angle

It's as bad as it gets when the boss ducks responsibility for the decisions he makes - when the boss is POTUS, it's worse than as-bad-as-it-gets.

We have a "president" telling us that firing Comey was somebody else's idea, and he was only acting at the suggestion of a subordinate.

"It was Reinhard Heydrich's idea to kill all the Jews - I was just following the  recommendations of a trusted adviser."

And given what we've always known about 45*'s mastery at finding and exploiting the SmarmSpace, we have no reason to be surprised at this.  It's what he does.

Today's Tweet

This is Dick.
Dick is a Senator.
See Dick's photograph?
Dick knows the guy on the left is bad.
We're proud of Dick.
Go, Dick, go. pic.twitter.com/WXYqzqz8jJ

— marie (@pittsburghRN) May 11, 2017

Keith

People in seats of power know all of this. The first question is:  Will they act?

And the next question is: If they do, in whose interest will they act?

Send In The Pimp

She hits the main point - again - "You're looking at the wrong set of facts."

(Ignore what you see and listen to what I tell you you're seeing)

And also too - I guess this could be Kellyanne getting another chance. Or she's being thrown from the back of the wagon.  The Press Poodles will give her some air time, knowing people love to rip into her, which of course, relegates her to the status of a high-priced sacrificial lamb. It buys 45* a little more time. And if that's the case, then somebody at the White House knows things are even worse than before, and they're about to get even worser.

That George Will Piece

George Will, taking down 45*, in Salt Lake Tribune:

What is most alarming (and mortifying to the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated) is not that Trump has entered his eighth decade unscathed by even elementary knowledge about the nation's history. As this column has said before, the problem isn't that he does not know this or that, or that he does not know that he does not know this or that. Rather, the dangerous thing is that he does not know what it is to know something.

I mean, c'mon, it's George Will. Even though his relevancy went out the window along with his credibility back when he decided to hang in there with the home team and took to doing a little cheerleading for Bush43's idiotic tax cuts and Iraq etc, the guy can still turn a phrase:

His fathomless lack of interest in America's path to the present and his limitless gullibility leave him susceptible to being blown about by gusts of factoids that cling like lint to a disorderly mind.

The thing here, George - the thing that has to be repeated and remembered and repeated again until guys like you find the balls to step up and say it - you helped create the environment that produced "President" Donald Trump. And you're still part of the media machinery that goes on pimping the Both Sides bullshit; refusing to acknowledge that one side of our political system has gone completely off the fucking rails - and the suits in the executive suite are doing all that pimping because manufacturing melodrama is what brings in the ad revenue.

We have a fucked up Reality TV POTUS because we've allowed ourselves to be made into a fucked up nation of Reality TV junkies, who've been taught to ignore the line between News and Entertainment - and the line between Ideology and Partisanship - and the line between Real and Fake - and the line between Right and Wrong.

There is no honor in this shit anymore.

Family Planning With Teresa Manning

HuffPo:

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump has appointed Teresa Manning, an anti-abortion activist who has argued that “contraception doesn’t work,” to oversee a federal family planning program for low-income Americans.

Manning, a former lobbyist with the National Right to Life Committee and legislative analyst for the conservative Family Research Council, will serve as deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. The Office of Population Affairs administers the Title X program, which subsidizes contraception, Pap smears and other preventive health care services for 4 million low-income Americans, roughly half of whom are uninsured.

Manning has said she opposes federal family planning funding, and she has a long history of making false claims about birth control and women’s health.

There's still just three things I know for sure about the whole Abortion Issue:

1. Eggs ain't chickens

2. Caterpillars ain't butterflies

3. Ain't nothing goin' on in my daughter's uterus that's any of your goddamned business

So fuck the fuck off, motherfucker.

Keith

Watch this video on The Scene.

Keith

Scoring the first 100 days.

Watch this video on The Scene.

It Didn't Start Well

JAN. 21

“I made a speech. I looked out, the field was — it looked like a million, million and a half people.”

...and it gets worse

Epic Idea

Looks like you can pick any team, any number and any "name".

Go for it.

Example NFL:

http://www.nflshop.com/Denver_Broncos_Jerseys_Custom_Shop

Example MLB:

http://www.mlbshop.com/Chicago_Cubs_Customized_Jerseys

Today's Pix

Today's Tweet

Jason Chaffetz leaves D.C. for 3-4 weeks with a foot problem. Dodgin' the line of fire with foot problems must be a Republican thing.

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) April 27, 2017

Today's Quote

Lots more immediate than my usual quotes and chatterings.

“While the president has denied having invested in Russia, he has said little or nothing about Russian investment in his businesses and properties in the United States or elsewhere. This should concern all Americans and is yet another reason why his refusal to release his tax returns should be met with considerable skepticism and concern.”

--Adam Schiff, US Congress (D-CA28)

Sonny Perdue

Sonny Perdue is our new Sec'y of Agriculture (by a vote of 87-11).

Follow the Wikipedia link and read the bio, because I'm not gonna spend much time here bitchin' about his "commitment to the American farmer", which is code for "take good care of ADM and Monsanto, and the little guys will be plenty grateful for the crumbs".

What I dislike most is that a guy born 70 years ago, and named George Ervin Perdue III - a full-sized adult grown-ass man - is still called Sonny.

That's what I really don't love about The South.

Here's the Washington Post piece on it.

Management By Bromide

People in seats of power need to know stuff. And they need to have a much deeper understanding of the problems than most folks. Simplistic bullet-point pronouncements just ain't gonna cut it.

WaPo:

“In over half of American households, the single largest expense is child care, even exceeding the cost of housing.”
— Ivanka Trump, assistant to the president, in Berlin, April 25, 2017

Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, has said she wants to help craft a solution to a vexing problem for American families: the soaring cost of child care. In a forum in Berlin, speaking without notes, she made an interesting observation — that in “over half” of American households, the cost of child care exceeded the cost of housing.

Is this the case?

I'm willing to give her partial credit for getting it partially right, but she loses it all in the end (as usual) because I think the main reason Ms Trump says things like this is an effort to be the "kinder gentler" face of an administration that is appallingly uncaring and unthinking in practically everything it's doing.

And when you look just the tiniest bit past the facade, we're right back to "they don't know what the fuck they're doing".

But that's too simple too.

With 45* trying to bully his way thru everything in sight, Ivanka and Jared traipse about rounding off all the jagged edges and softening every harsh reality.

So there's Ivanka, trying to make it all OK with people - like she's smoothing it over after the drunk-n-abusive step dad goes on his daily rampage (thanks, driftglass).

So we have the standard Trump approach to everything - uncertainty. He wants to keep everybody guessing (he said as much during the campaign). It's his signature move. In confusion there is opportunity. So you make opportunity by creating confusion.

But it's even worse than having an enabling apologist working on you.  Keep one of Mike's Own Proverbs in mind:

Never forget that a smiling hyena will still eat your children