Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

Even without seeing Robert Mueller's report, or knowing what prosecutors with the Southern District of New York have unearthed, or what congressional investigators will find, we already have witnessed the biggest political scandal in American history.

Historians tell Axios that the only two scandals that come close to Trump-Russia are Watergate, which led to President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974, and the Teapot Dome scandal of the early 1920s, in which oil barons bribed a corrupt aide to President Warren Harding for petroleum leases.

• Mueller has already delivered one of the biggest counterintelligence cases in U.S. history, author Garrett Graffpoints out — up there with Aldrich Ames (a former CIA officer convicted in 1994 of being a KGB double agent), or Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (executed in 1953 for spying for the Soviets).
• Watergate yielded more charges than Mueller has so far: A total of 69 people were charged in Watergate; 48 people and 20 corporations pleaded guilty. Mueller so far has indicted 27 people; seven have been convicted or pleaded guilty.
• But historians say that both Watergate and Teapot Dome were more limited because a foreign power wasn't a central player, and a much narrower band of potential offenses was under investigation.
• A fourth notable scandal, the Iran-Contra affair of the mid-1980s — in which arms were traded for hostages held by Iran, with the https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/iran.htm (money used) to fund rebels in Nicaragua — also involved a more limited range of issues.

The "biggest" realization might strike Trump supporters as overblown or plain wrong. But consider what we already know about actions of Trump and his associates:

Scandal 1: Trump secretly paid hush money to two mistresses on the eve of his presidential victory, and lied about it. His longtime personal lawyer is going to prison after carrying out the scheme on his behalf.

• The historical parallel: Bill Clinton was impeached (but acquitted by the Senate) for lying under oath about an affair with a White House intern.
• Clinton impeachment https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/articles122098.htm (Article 3), passed by the House, was obstruction of justice.
• Earlier presidents, or their friends, had also been known to pay off mistresses.

Scandal 2: During the presidential campaign, Trump confidantes continued negotiating for a tower in Moscow, potentially one of Trump's most lucrative deals ever. He hid this from the public and lied about it. His lawyer is going to prison for making false statements to Congress about the deal.

• The historical parallel: None.

Scandal 3: Russian officials had more than 100 contacts with Trump associates during the campaign and transition, including his son, his closest adviser, his lawyer, and his campaign manager. The Russians offered assistance in undermining Hillary Clinton. The FBI and other government authorities weren't alerted about this effort to subvert our election.

• The historical parallel: None.

Scandal 4: Michael Flynn was national security adviser at the same time U.S. intelligence officials believed he was compromised by the Kremlin. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts.

• The historical parallel: None.

Scandal 5: Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, and told NBC's Lester Holt it was at least in part because of the Russia investigation: "[T]his Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story."

• The historical parallel: In the "Saturday Night Massacre" of 1973, Nixon tried to stop the Watergate investigation by abolishing the office of Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox; and accepting the resignation of Attorney General Elliot Richardson, and firing Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, when they refused to fire Cox.

Scandal 6: Trump overruled the advice of his lawyers and intelligence experts, and granted his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a top-secret clearance. This so alarmed his White House chief of staff John Kelly that he recorded his opposition in a memo. Trump and his family repeatedly denied he had interfered.

• The historical parallel: None.

The big picture: Presidential historian Jon Meacham tells us that this "transcends scandal — it’s a national crisis in the sense of a period of elevated stakes, high passions, and possibly permanent consequences."

• "We’re in the midst of making history more than we are reflecting it."

Be smart: Trump himself might survive all of this — and even more. Republican voters seem basically unmoved by the mounting evidence.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

EAT YOUR CONSPIRACY
https://claytoonz.com/2019/03/07/eat-your-conspiracy/

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testified before the Democrat-controlled House Homeland Security Committee yesterday and insisted that the cages Customs and Border Protection (CBP) used to detain migrant and asylum-seeking kids aren’t really cages.

She told Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, “Sir, they are not cages, they are areas of the border facility that are carved out for the safety and protection of those who remain there while they’re being processed.”

Democrat Bonnie Watson Coleman asked Nielsen, “Does it differ from the cages you put your dogs in when you let them stay outside?” Nielsen answered, “Yes … it’s larger, it has facilities, it provides room to sit, to stand, to lay down…” Coleman interjected, “So does my dog’s cage.”

Nielsen kept arguing throughout the hearing that children who have been separated and lost under Trump’s dehumanizing immigration policies are not kept in cages…if we don’t call them cages.

Last year, more than 2,700 children were separated from their parents and detained by CBP with many parents deported without their children. Democrats and liberals are outraged. Trump supporters are also outraged over issues involving children, but not over any issues that actually exist. Like Trump’s call for a border wall, they’re crying about crises where there aren’t any.

If you watched any of the Conservative Political Action Conference, you would have heard the wingnuts scream about “infanticide” and the “culture of death,” which are their new talking points.

Speaking to CPAC, Mike Pence said, “With Democrats standing for late-term abortion and infanticide and a culture of death, I promise you this president, this party and this movement will always stand for the unborn.” You have probably seen similar rants on your tinfoil hat-wearing uncle’s Facebook page.

Senate Republicans failed to advance a bill last week called the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Basically, if it had become law, it would have forced doctors to “preserve the life and health” of a child born alive after an abortion attempt, regardless of the wishes of the parents.

Dr. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, told The New York Times that an infant being born alive after an attempted abortion is extremely rare. Dr. Kristyn Brandi, a board member of Physicians for Reproductive Health, told Vox that she’d never even heard of such a case. She said, “This is a part of the false narrative around this bill and abortion later in pregnancy.”

One of the ways this can occur is if a condition threatens the life of both the mother and the fetus, and labor must be induced in order to save the mother’s life. It’s unlikely the infant would survive, but this bill would have forced a doctor to attempt to revive the child or face up to five years in prison.

Immigrant children separated from their families, kept in cages, and lost in the system, Republicans don’t worry about that so much. Extremely rare cases of a child being born alive after an abortion attempt to save the mother’s life? Republicans are outraged. While they scream “infanticide,” nobody is killing the baby who was born alive. That’s just as big of a lie as claiming Democrats are eating babies.

According to a new book on Amazon’s best-seller list, Democrats are eating babies. Democrats, dingos, what’ the difference?

QAnon is this thing that started on the extreme fringes of the dark web in places like 4chan, and quickly spread to Youtube, Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook.

QAnon is a far-right conspiracy alleging a plot against Trump by the “deep state.” Q, who may be or several individuals, claims to be on the inside of the government and thousands of people believe this. Some of those people are Roseanne Barr, Alex Jones, and Jerome Corsi. Sean Hannity has even shared QAnon-related material on his Twitter account.

The book QAnon: An Invitation to the Great Awakening was supposedly written by 12 anonymous members of the group promoting the theory, and presents their ideas in what one customer review calls “a gentle way for uninformed ‘normies’ to find out what is really going on within the political class that have been ruling over us for decades.”

What are some of their ideas? The “deep state” involves President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Trump and Robert Mueller are actually working together and the Russiagate investigation is actually a ruse. Hillary Clinton is the leader of a Satanic cabal that feeds on the blood of children and profits off sex trafficking. And, Democrats eat babies. Yum. Those theories are almost as unbelievable as believing that Trump supporters read books.

It’s very easy to laugh at these people, and a lot of fun I might add. But, it’s dangerous to ignore them. One Q follower was arrested on terrorism charges after he drove an armored vehicle containing an AR-15, and blocking traffic on the Hoover Dam for 90 minutes. He was on a mission from Q to demand the Justice Department release the OIG report on the conduct of FBI agents during the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s server. The thing is, the OIG report had been released the day before, but he was demanding that they release the “real” one.

Members of the Q community have posted photos of Michael Avenatti’s office. Later, someone shared the picture of an as-of-yet unidentified man, appearing to be holding a cellphone in one hand, and a long, thin object in the other, standing in the street near the office, adding that a message “had been sent.” For what it’s worth, one of these nitwits posted a photo of what he/she thought was my house on a Facebook post. Shitweasels find that kind of stuff amusing.

In 2016, 4chan users spread a theory that Hillary Clinton was operating a child sex ring from the basement of Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor in Washington, DC. In December of that year, a North Carolina fucknut drove to the pizza parlor and fired three shots into Comet Ping Pong, fortunately without injuring anyone. He didn’t find any child sex slaves. He didn’t even find a basement. Do you know what was inside Comet Ping Pong’s pizza parlor? Pizza.

In 2015, a shooter went to an abortion clinic in Colorado Springs and killed three people because he believed the now debunked far-right videos that Planned Parenthood was selling dead-baby-body parts. And that conspiracy theory isn’t even on the fringe as several presidential candidates promoted the lie.

These people don’t care about children. They scream about abortion but they don’t care about a child after its alive. They sure don’t care about housing or feeding them. They definitely don’t care if Donald Trump throws them into cages. They would rather freak out about imagined issues than real ones because you don’t have to solve the fake ones. Plus, if it’s bullshit then you don’t have to know what you’re talking about.

These 4chan and QAnon people are unstable which seems to be a trait among Trump supporters…and Trump.

Trump is hate and he has a more than willing base that eats it up. For the rest of us, we have to live in a dangerous climate they’ve created.

Planned Parenthood is not selling the body parts of dead babies. Comet Ping Pong is not the base of a child-sex ring operated by Hillary Clinton. Democrats are not eating babies. Donald Trump is keeping children in cages. Which one are you more concerned with?

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted in “bad faith,” broke several laws and violated the constitutional underpinning of representative democracy when he added a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, a https://www.washingtonpost.com/judge-richard-seeborg-census-ruling/619ea378-903f-498d-afdc-e115b7b91bc8_note.html?questionId=86907994-145b-4124-b4d7-5fe1bd54ca14 (federal judge ruled Wednesday).

In finding a breach of the Constitution’s enumeration clause, which requires a census every 10 years to determine each state’s representation in Congress, the 126-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco went further than a similar decision on Jan. 15 http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/national/judge-jesse-furmans-opinion-in-the-census-case/3393/ (by Judge Jesse Furman in New York).

The Supreme Court has already agreed to review Furman’s narrower decision, with arguments set for April 23, but may now need to expand its inquiry to constitutional dimensions.

The Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.

The administration has been on the losing end of scores of court decisions involving immigration issues since President Trump took office. But the census case has taken on special significance because it strikes at the heart of the United States’ form of government and because of what Seeborg described as a “strong showing of bad faith” by a Cabinet secretary who, influenced in part by White House advisers, tried to conceal his motives.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Ah, CPAC.

The Conservative Political Action Conference.

It’s like Burning Man for Republicans, only instead of inclusion, self-expression, and cheerful nudity, there was conservative rage, xenophobia, and howling conspiracy.

Also, Donald Trump fucked a flag live on stage like some strange textile variation of a Tijuana donkey show.

No word yet on if Trump made the flag sign a nondisclosure agreement or if his lawyer had to pay the flag $140,000 to keep quiet.

But, I digress.

Trump spoke for more than two hours at CPAC.

I watched it live.

I tried to take notes.

Calling it a speech suggests there was structure and content and some sort of narrative theme.

There wasn’t any of that.

Instead it was a frenetic mash of unscripted, unhinged rambling lunacy, sometimes changing topics two or three times in the same sentence. Frankly, the aforementioned donkey hopped up on knockoff Mexican Viagra and cheap tequila probably would have had more coherency.

Eventually, I just gave up and poured a couple fingers of William Wolf into my dirty coffee mug and watched in increasing disbelief as Trump careening from a disjointed recap of his election to tariffs to something about when the wind stops blowing you’re out of “electric” then back to tariffs jumping to collusion with Russian witch hunts to Andy Jackson and Red Hats to Robert Mueller back to a comparison of inauguration crowd size to something about how R. Lee Ermey should have gotten the Academy Award for Full Metal Jacket but Hollywood is made up of liberals apparently to something about the color of his hair to “thirty-two big fat rallies” (don’t ask, heehaw heehaaaw!) to how he invented the 4th of July to … I don’t know, a partridge in a pear tree.

It’s taken me three days to work my way through the video and transcripts.

And the rest of that bottle.

...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Mr. Barr, however, will find that those “huge behemoths” will continue to dominate, because, in part, the administration’s chief antitrust enforcer is their champion. On top of granting tech platforms huge windfalls in his tax reform law, Mr. Trump appointed a friend of big tech, Makan Delrahim, to lead the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. Mr. Delrahim has consistently promoted the interests of the biggest tech companies.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Big_paul]

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Add a $1,500,000,000,000 tax cut (over 10 years) to the mix and guess what happens. This is just the beginning. Once our next recession hits, tax collections are going to drop through the floor. Poor people (ironically, mostly Trump voters) will get hit the hardest.

We are all going to pay for this recklessness.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Michael Cohen is suing the Trump Organization for "failure to meet its indemnification obligations" by not paying his legal fees.

"[T]he Trump Organization agreed to indemnify Mr. Cohen and to pay attorneys' fees and costs incurred by Mr. Cohen in connection with various matters arising from Mr. Cohen's work with and on behalf of the Organization and its principals, directors, and officers. These matters include multiple congressional hearings, Special Counsel Robert Mueller III's investigation, and others."

[See link for filing.]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]