Weaseling Away

Let me say first that I hope John McCain makes it thru this blood clot thing in good shape.

The guy's turned out to be quite the putz in numerous ways and I'd love to choke the shit out of him once in a while, but no, not really - get better, you phony old fuck.

CNN

(CNN)Sen. John McCain, 80, is recovering at his Arizona home following surgery on Friday to remove a blood clot above his left eye, according to his office. The clot was discovered during a routine physical last week, according to a statement.

Surgeons at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix "successfully removed the 5-cm blood clot during a minimally invasive craniotomy with an eyebrow incision," the statement said.
An eyebrow incision is not a big deal, explained CNN Chief Medical Correspondent and practicing neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta, but the bone was opened to gain access to the brain, Gupta explained on CNN's New Day Monday.

"It's a significant operation," he said, adding that general anesthesia was used and "there was obviously an abnormality that was concerning enough for him to go through this."


Meanwhile, wouldn't it be interesting if McCain were to spend quite a bit more time in Arizona than they were expecting - considering his absence (deliberate or otherwise) could torpedo Mitch McConnell's whole plan for the GOP's Fuck-If-I-Care bill?

And let's try to remember this:

It's Rainin' Shoes

And then this - from a hearing on June 14 this year:

Natalia Veselniskaya occupying some prime real estate
This shit does not happen by accident

This thing is very wide and very deep.  It's about money, and the power that money gets you.

Once you "free" yourself from all that boring plebeian morality - when you abandon what tethers you to the Impulse Control of a working knowledge of why you do the good things and why you don't do the bad things - you replace that morality with matters having solely to do with profit and loss.

These people have no soul and no honor.

Joining Up

For a good long time, Bloody Bill Kristol has been a big factor in getting us to the point where we'd actually be ready to elect somebody as venal and dangerously empty-headed as 45*.

Just look at some of the guys who have been the beneficiaries of his most ardent cheerleading: Ronnie Rayguns, Dan (Mr Potatoe-Head) Quayle, Bush43, and Alan-Fucking Keyes.

("They are going to cull the herd, so that instead of having billions, we'll only have hundreds of millions of human beings on the face of the planet."  -Alan Keyes, warning what's behind President Obama's gun control proposal)

William Kristol is not in the running for America's Favorite Librul.

But while he has much to atone for - and I'd rather share my toothbrush with a leper than give that asshole a pass - at least he continues to line up Conservatives to push back against the hostile takeover of the GOP.

Mona Charen in NRO:

One column cannot accommodate the list of things you must believe if you trust that Donald Trump is truly the victim of a baseless witch hunt. Consider this a mere stab.

1) That Donald Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner did nothing wrong by meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian offering dirt on Clinton. The emails requesting the meeting specifically mentioned a “Russian government attorney” and added that the requested meeting concerned “very high level and sensitive information” that “is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” That doesn’t prove a willingness to collude.

2)  That concern about Paul Manafort’s extensive links with Putin’s former puppet in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, including at least $12.7 million in payments, is, to quote Manafort’s words, “silly and nonsensical.”

3) That Jared Kushner’s attempt, during the transition, to secure a back channel with the Russian government using their secure communications equipment in the Russian embassy was not alarming/inexplicable.

-and-

14) That it’s unremarkable that presidential spokeswoman Sarah Sanders refuses to say whether Russia is an adversary, a friend, or a nation about whom we should be wary.

Coupla notes:

First, it's interesting to read the comments from people who still insist on trying to deflect everything with "Yeah, but Hillary".

Second, we still don't know that those commenters aren't trolls, or even that they're all real - some could just as easily be RuskieBots.

Daddy State 101

Peter Beinart, The Atlantic:

In Paris on Thursday, Donald Trump said, “A lot of people don’t know” that “France is America’s first and oldest ally.” That may be true. But commentators noted that when Trump uses the “a lot of people don’t know” formulation, it’s usually a sign that he didn’t know himself. 

It’s called projection. And Trump does it with remarkable frequency. You may have noticed that over the last few days, Trump and his allies have begun talking a lot about the Hillary Clinton campaign’s alleged collusion with the governments of Russia and Ukraine. On Wednesday morning, for instance, Trump tweeted a quote from the conservative Washington Times that claimed, “Democrats have willfully used Moscow disinformation to influence the presidential election against Donald Trump.”

Why is Trump suddenly interested in the Democratic Party’s ties to the Russian government? Perhaps because on Monday, The New York Times broke a blockbuster story about his campaign’s ties to the Russian government.
-and-

...Freud believed people project onto others impulses that they cannot accept as their own.
1) Every accusation is a confession

2) Every boast is an admission of inadequacy

3) Every warning is a threat - a statement of intent

Kafka's Jokes

McSweeney's Internet Tendencies:

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?” Alois asked again, more insistently.

“Knock knock.”

And so it went for years. It wasn’t until his deathbed Alois realized he was on the outside of the door.

-and-

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks, “Why the long face?”

“I was born into servitude, and when I die, my feet will be turned into glue,” replied the horse.

The bartender realized he would not be getting a tip.

Today's Pix

Today's Tweet

Enough irony to choke O Henry in his grave.

NEW: Veselnitskaya’s permission to be in US was expired when she met Trump Jr. https://t.co/hluCzO8k2c pic.twitter.com/SziVh46FXO

— Katie Zavadski (@katiezavadski) July 13, 2017

A New One For Me

This hasn't been on my radar at all, but I've heard it 2 or 3 times now in the last few days.

Consciousness of Guilt
Law and Legal Definition: Evidentiary rules allow a prosecutor to introduce testimony that tends to show that the defendant's actions prove he knew he was guilty (at least of something). This is sometimes referred to as “consciousness of guilt”.

Consciousness of Guilt Law and Legal Definition | USLegal, Inc.
https://definitions.uslegal.com/c/consciousness-of-guilt/

This Just In

Newly discovered surveillance video of Russians arriving for the meeting at Trump Tower last year.

Scary Shit

Rachel's whole show last night felt like I was stuck in the part of an old monster movie from the 50s where the 2 plucky teenagers are trying to tell the friendly local sheriff about seeing something really weird and dangerous, and holy crap why won't the grownups listen!?!

It's Not An Absolute

...but education counts for quite a bit.

Stanford - BA Public Policy
Rhodes Scholar
Oxford University - PhD Political Science

Dropped out of 2 colleges and a Vo-Tech school

1 college course (theology)

Dropped out after 2 semesters and a summer session

Like Dr Adler said: Your education often starts after your schooling is completed.

But when it's time to learn about something that's complex and weird and has 37 different angles and can't be shoehorned into a simple binary model - when you need to get the story from someone who's been thru some kinda program that isn't just OJT in the entertainment business - which of these people makes up the better, more logical choice?

A Deficit Of Honor

Jennifer Rubin at WaPo:

Out of its collective sense of victimhood came the GOP’s disdain for not just intellectuals but also intellectualism, science, Economics 101, history and constitutional fidelity. If the Trump children became slaves to money and to their father’s unbridled ego, then the GOP became slaves to its own demons and false narratives. A party that has to deny climate change and insist illegal immigrants are creating a crime wave — because that is what “conservatives” must believe, since liberals do not — is a party that will deny Trump’s complicity in gross misconduct. It’s a party as unfit to govern as Trump is unfit to occupy the White House. It’s not by accident that Trump chose to inhabit the party that has defined itself in opposition to reality and to any “external moral truth or ethical code.”

Seriously, kids - we can't make this little experiment in self-government work without a Republican Party that's reasonable, and capable of engaging in thoughtful fact-based conversation.

Paraphrasing Blue Gal's Facebook pal: Hyper-Criticism of the Democratic Party is like slagging a single parent who's struggling to raise 4 kids - it's a ginormous mess because the other parent is a fucking deadbeat.

This is politics, dummy. You're not gonna get everything you want every time.

Today's Tweet

Uncle Walt says...

"There is no such thing as an ex-Soviet intelligence officer"
V Putin, Dec 2015 pic.twitter.com/iGZOGCkKqs

— Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) July 14, 2017

The Podcast

Episode 397: Ted Cruz and the Billy Bass Healthcare Plan

The Professional Left

(go there and shop their Amazon link)

Worth Repeating

From way back in March - Alcee Hastings gettin' after 'em.

The take-away quote comes up at about 6:50.

"I don't have to be nice to nobody when you're bein' nasty to poor people"

Debate-Watcher's Tip: When Red Team Guy starts bitchin' about the Blue Team Guy's "tone", it means Red Team Guy knows he's losing so he has to tamp down on the visceral enthusiasm that the audience will pick up from Blue Team Guy's passion or outrage or whatever.

It's also about stalling - you need a little time to regroup so you can get back on offense.

The GOP has since come out with We-Don't-Fuckin'-Care 4.0, and let's be clear - there's not much that's changed because this is not about healthcare or coverage or looking out for people. They want their fucking Tax Cuts.

If you further weaken Da Gubmint by decreasing its revenues, people will feel the pain (of shitty roads and shitty water quality and poisoned food, and poverty creep, etc) and eventually, they'll agree to practically any level of Fuckery just on the remote prospect of relieving some of that pain.

And it makes no difference who gets fucked over, as long as enough people get fucked over enough - they have to make us tap out so we'll give the Plutocrats everything they want, including ownership - or at least control.

The National Privatization Festival has picked up some speed, and they need financing for their coming acquisition spree - have you priced a National Park lately?

These assholes are selling themselves as Reformers, but their motivation is no different from that of any other radicals who always ride in promising Bread-n-Freedom, and delivering neither.

But there's an extraordinarily shitty little twist.

"Government should be run more like a business" is cover; it's a dodge; it's nothing but chaff.

With the interjection of the Russians, we've put people in power who honestly believe Mobsters are justified in the way they operate because after all, the Mob is private enterprise patterned after the government.  

So why not take that next step?

"Government is like the Mafia - so let's be honest and run it that way".

And hey, relax - it ain't personal. It's just business.