…welp…I don’t know as something this predictable really counts as a confession but I confess I may not have entirely made use of my lack of DOT duties yesterday in ways Meg might have hoped…so…there may be a totally-proportionate-not-at-all-out-of-hand number of links between here & the comments but…perhaps unwisely…there’s another thing that’s been ticking me off that I figured I might mention first…despite the fact that there are clearly all kinds of more pressing things to be thinking about
…I don’t have a link to hand for this bit, I’m afraid but in a similar vein to the functionally embezzled funds referenced in that link I was listening to that Mueller She Wrote podcast again & they mentioned that prior to moving into whatever den of iniquity he purchased in DC the vaguely human-shaped thing piloted by the sentient intestinal parasite that is Steve Mnuchin stayed at (surprise…) one of his master’s kennels
…in the grand scheme of bullshit bills handed to the nation he supposedly leads by businesses he doesn’t even pretend not to be more invested in than the government he supposedly operates $33,000 is a drop in the ocean…but what made me consider it insufficiently petty to be a response to KC’s question yesterday is that naturally grimy wormtongue there got a better (read, more expensive) room…or suite…or whatever…which he paid for (supposedly & maybe even really) out of his own ever-so-deep pockets
…so…137 nights…$8,300/night…that would be…a little north of $1Million…like upwards of $100,000 north…throw in that measly $33,000 & you’re looking at getting on for $1.2Million…paid to the president’s benefit…in part by the taxpayer & according to the Treasury Department the rest personally by…the guy running the Treasury Department…who just so happens to be one of the beavers busily shoring up the dam behind which the world’s most famously cooked books are hiding
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/is-trump-above-the-law-supreme-court-case
…so…I’m gonna sling this up at this point & then tack stuff on the end after the fact because I’m running late again…but first…the law is an ass is most often attributed to Dickens but appeared in at least one play a fair bit before then…it was called “The Revenge of Honour” & came out in the 1650s…& despite what you’d think looking at Bill Barr it actually means ass in the sense of an obdurate donkey & not a prodigious butt bearing a striking resemblance to the owner’s face in a bizarre kind of symmetry
…so…four hours later…where was I?
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/blog/2020-05-04-coronavirus-news-n1199156
…yup…it’s still a shitstorm out there
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/06/coronavirus-update-us/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/new-normal-ex-fda-chief-warns-u-s-may-not-n1200146
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/05/04/treasury-coronavirus-debt-borrowing/
…so you might well ask, why would I be all bent out of shape about the crap up top that isn’t killing anybody?
…I mean…isn’t there other shit to be ranting about right now?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/04/joe-biden-tara-reade-senate-records-reject-request
Don’t Be Fooled by America’s Flattening Curve
…or this fucking doozy
…or just other more recently egregious shit cascading out of his sagging ass
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/can-trump-run-insurgent-2020-he-s-going-try-n1200161
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/05/will-americans-forgive-trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/05/03/congress-coronavirus-legal-liability/
…the judiciary hasn’t entirely choked itself to death
…hell, the world is watching, even
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/01/trump-china-biden-election/
…& it’s not like any of the shit with the courts is new or unexpected
Donald Trump Didn’t Want to Win – and Neither Did His Campaign
…but…damn it…it’s like some sort of shitty illusion…the fact that there’s so much worse shit going on all over the place…much of it involving the same shitty cast of defective human beings somehow benefiting to the detriment of literally fucking everybody…it can make it difficult to keep in perspective…or even in focus with the pervasive screen of obfuscatory bullshit being so assiduously maintained
…but god damn it…this shit alone…this relatively nickle-and-dime, penny-ante business as usual bullshit on. its. fucking. own…that should be enough to get him tossed out of office if not actually tossed in jumpsuit behind some Club Fed bars
…& the extent to which his use of the court system, much less the fucking judiciary itself, is laughable when you get down to the detail has surely…in a system that holds precedent nearly fucking sacred…got to be a solid enough guide to form that these bullshit tactics shouldn’t fucking work anymore
…even though, where the tax returns cases are concerned, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the 12th…for a set of arguments that should have been laughed out of the room…but are more or less guaranteed not to actually rule…much less finish out the appeals process…this side of the election
…so this shit about the political doctrine & all the questioning whether or not these issues are justiciable by the courts…is exactly that…it’s shit…it’s made of shit…& it’s full of more shit…it’s shit compounded…into layers…it is the very definition of a fucking shit sandwich
…65 pages to say that Congress can’t subpoena that shit & that they lack a valid legislative purpose to even ask for it
…or, to paraphrase…the law is meaningless & any morally & intellectually bankrupt asshole with a sufficient aggregate of lawyers & accountants can do pretty much whatever the fuck they like so long as they say they can afford to & keep the shell corporations moving fast enough to stay ahead of the game…particularly if they happen to be president but basically, meh…what would that part even mean at that point…it’d be more of a quaint notion than any kind of office resembling what we’ve known it in the past
…the underlying law is plenty fucking clear enough…the arguments against have neither merit nor grounds & given the extent to which he’s defending himself as an individual citizen by claiming powers that themselves demonstrate the disqualifying lack of understanding he possesses of the very office he is attempting to use as a bludgeon in his defense against accusations he knows (& in many cases has acknowledged publicly) that he is entirely guilty of, I’m not sure I even buy that they have fucking standing
…so trying to claim otherwise…even if you’re Jay Sekulow…is some next level bullshit…to the point where I’d almost get behind the clerk the papers were submitted to looking them over & just refusing to put them on the books on the grounds that they themselves would then be liable by proxy for wasting the court’s time engaging in a conspiracy to undermine the entire institution
…even brett-likes-fucking-beer couldn’t sign off this shit
…so…yeah…could be I’m moderately aggrieved about that…but I don’t expect anybody’s noticed
…fuck it…maybe I’ll go buy a Lamborghini
I’m not used to making it to work this early when RIP does the dot!
Damn. I should have added Trump’s claim to be a “billionaire” to the list of petty yesterday. That’s always irritated me, since it’s easily disproven. Most of his assets are real estate, which have significant loans against them (nobody knows how much, but it’s safe to say the majority isn’t owned by Old Yeller), typically from overseas (read: Russian) lenders. So while his name might be on a billion dollars’ worth of property, he actually owns very little of it.
The thing that irritates me even more is the press calling him a “billionaire.” It’s just lazy reporting. Your job is to check that shit out before you print it.
…keep meaning to say…Old Yeller…if the cap fits & all that
…I take my hat off to you
I’m taking a Political Science class right now and one of the people who is very, very obviously a Republican posted a response to a classmate saying that he didn’t understand why Planned Parenthood needed government funding when they had assets of…can’t remember the exact number, but let’s say he said they had $80 million in assets. (That figure is super wrong but I can’t be arsed to find the exact one, because Googling “Planned Parenthood” is an SEO algorithm driven nightmare of misinformation until like the fifth page of results.)
I had to explain to him (without cursing, which is hard) that just because a business has assets doesn’t mean they actually have cash on hand. I explained that his house is an “asset”, but unless he sells it and liquidates that asset, he can’t use it to purchase something else, unless he takes out a loan against it. The guy didn’t respond to my response, because, again, it’s a college class and I imagine the guy didn’t just want to yell “fuck you” at me over and over, but I did get a pat on the back from the professor for using hard data and math to disprove him.
Oh, I have another one for the list of petty!
The fact that Donald Trump doesn’t want his tax returns released not because he thinks it will be revealed that he’s sufficiently compromised by foreign governments, namely Russia…but because his tax returns would reveal he’s not actually a billionaire and basically has no cash on hand.
…& yet he still characteristically cheaps out on the lawyer he expects to fight the case…at least nominally…who knows what the legal tab looks like if you pool them all his lawyers together & include optional extras like the AG or a Supreme Court Justice or two?
…nice work on the Planned Parenthood thing, though…journey of a thousand miles…baby steps…yadda yadda…but every little counts, I reckon
The lead image — the Democratic resolution list — leaves me furious, because the House Democrats took the L on this one.
Pelosi had almost the same amount of warning time as Trump that things had the potential to go bad. She had plenty of time to draw up authorization for emergency House operations — including hearings — and the votes to get it passed before the House shut down its DC operations.
She sat on her hands. And now they are doing almost nothing to control the narrative.
This is an area where Trump’s stonewalling would have put him in a bind. By refusing to supply witnesses, or ordering witnesses to lie, he would have only strengthened the hand of Democrats to publicize witnesses who told the truth. But putting his own people on camera would make his own screwups look worse and worse over time.
And in addition to expert testimony, the House could have provided a priceless official accounting of the human toll, with hearings focused on first responders, senior citizens, prisoners, small business owners, and all of the other real Americans affected by Trump’s fiasco.
Instead, we got this.
https://politics.theonion.com/nancy-pelosi-assures-democratic-reps-they-don-t-need-to-1843003799
preach, preach…
Let’s not allow this to fly under the radar:
DeVos issues final rules overhauling sexual assault polices
Meanwhile, in Washington.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-parties-walla-walla/281-3f983c32-3b6a-48f8-8ee0-bc6cff3881ec
Apparently people are treating The Vid like fucking chicken pox.
so the Rs want to reopen no matter how many people would die. seems the ‘decrease for 14 days’ guidelines were only for the eyes of those that worry. but those that worry and will stay home are mostly Ds, and those that will go out are mostly Rs. do they want to kill their voters?