Paulietics

…and not in a good way!

US Attorney Preet Bharara was fired today by the Justice Department, under orders from Trump, after Bharara refused to submit his resignation yesterday at the request of Trump.

Well, you might say, incoming Presidents always put their own people into positions like this. What’s the fuss?

I’m glad you asked!

On Tuesday this week, in a case Bharara was pushing hard on, a court ordered a deposition in a case regarding Russian money laundering.

On Wednesday this week three ethics watchdog groups (Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility, Democracy 21, and the Campaign Legal Center) petitioned Bharara to launch an investigation into Trump’s ridiculously blatant and egregious violation of the Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution.

On Thursday, Trump tried to contact Bharara directly, in violation of every protocol known for separation of the Executive and Judicial branches. Bharara refused to take the call from the White House and had his staff call their staff to explain to them why this was totally inappropriate.

Back on February 16th Bharara’s office in New York City launched an investigation against Fox News, looking at allegations that executives at Fox violated SEC regulations and was involved in illegal phone hacking against female employees who were charging sexual misconduct  by Fox News executives. Bharara was overseeing that investigation.

On Thursday, some right-wing ranting lunatic went off on a jag about how it was time for Trump to “clean house” in the Justice Department. (Have none of these people ever read the Constitution that they’re so obsessed with “defending,” let alone actually tried to understand how it applies to them too?)

Hours later, forty-six United States attorneys general were ordered to tender their resignations.

Bharara refused. So today he was fired.

So, to recap a few of the high points:

1. Trump and his evil sycophants have belittled and discredited the US intelligence community
2. Refused to listen to them as they prefer to get their “intelligence” from Brietbart and Alex Jones and Infowars
3. Belittled and discredited the US press
4. Are now refusing to allow the press access to the White House and Administration officials

and when the heat gets to be too much from the multitude of scandals ranging from campaign financing violations to treason, they have fired the people who would be responsible for pressing charges against them.

There’s a word for those kinds of actions. There’s a term for the kind of “leaders” who decimate the Judicial Branch while running roughshod over the spineless Legislative Branch.

Those “leaders” are referred to as “dictators” in the history books. Their actions are referred to as a “coup.”

And if you think this is overreacting, you’ll be known as a “statistic.”

Did those stupid assholes blow up the world today? I guess not, someone probably would have mentioned it.

See how low the bar’s been set already? Let the daily routine step up a notch and beat you heavily about the head and shoulders for a while and you can’t even muster the energy to give a shit (for today, at least) about anything less dramatic than Global Thermonuclear Warfare.

Greetings, Dr. Falken. Would you like to play a game?

It hasn’t been lost on anyone that there are two distinct types of tweets being found on der Trumpencritter’s account.

On the one hand, we can get:

Calm. Reasonable. “Presidential.” Grammatically correct.

In other words, apparently written by an adult.

But most of the time:

Ranting. Psychotic. Delusional. Like it was written in crayon.

In other words, apparently written by the President of the United States.

I’m really, really hoping that the “adult” tweets are being done by an intern or White House staffer whose job it is to churn out the politically correct propaganda.

If both kinds of messages are actually from Trump, then he’s even more fucked up mentally than I had thought. Considering that I think he should be in a straight jacket somewhere, may God have mercy on our souls.

Last night I incorrectly referred to the new health care proposal as “GOPcare.” I apologize for the mistake.

It’s “TrumpCare.”

Surprisingly, the Trumpencritter doesn’t much like that. (This may have a tiny little bit to do with why I like it so much and will spread the word to call it that.) Jim Wright, Master Wordsmith and Common Sense Guru, said it so much better than I’ll ever be able to (and for the record, in case you’re having issues with reality and common sense, I didn’t write it, Jim Wright wrote it, I just shared it on FaceBook and can’t seem to find a URL that points straight to his post, okay?):

He doesn’t like it, doesn’t want his name on it.

Why?

We know that he’s terrified of failure or ever being perceived as having anything to do with failure (which is ironic given the number of complete failures he’s had in his career and the fact that the only reason he’s on in debtor’s prison is that the Russian oligarchs have propped him up to the tune of $500MM or more) so maybe he thinks this GOP plan might not be up his standards of success at any cost?

Gee willikers, why might he think that it’s going to fail?

Oh, because he’s going to make sure that it fails and leaves nothing to replace the ACA as it’s repealed, thus LITERALLY killing tens of thousands of Americans – all so he can call “neener, neener!” and “blame” the Democrats for creating something that worked, which he and Ryan and McConnell in turn deliberately sabotaged and fucked up.

This is my surprised face.

 

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Interesting, in a sick, perverted, like-you-can’t-look-away-from-watching-the-train-wreck-while-you’re-ON-THE-TRAIN sort of way. After years of hating Obamacare for hundreds of faults which didn’t actually exist but which were just more propaganda bullshit to freak out their simple-minded and gullible followers, it turns out that the Republicans are actually putting those exact, same horrors into GOPcare.

A prime example would be “death panels.” The GOP pranced about shouting “ooga booga!” at every chance, waving their hands in the air to ward off evil spirits, while warning everyone who would listen that Obamacare contained “death panels,” where doctors and nurses would review your case, decide if it was too expensive to keep you alive with the proper medical care, and then just kill you off if your particular prognosis didn’t past muster.

100% bullshit.

Whole cloth.

Smoke and mirrors.

Now we get to see the alternative that they’ve been ever so cleverly crafting for the last eight years. Now they’ll get to show us how they were right all along and everyone would be healthy, happy, and damn near immortal if we had only listened to them from the beginning.

They’re eliminating the mandatory requirement to have insurance, which could actually be helpful to some since the insurance we’ll have left cost a LOT more, be allowed to not accept you to begin with if you have a pre-existing condition, will not be required to cover those frivolous nonsense medical items like prescriptions and pregnancy, and will allow them to cancel you if you do something so audacious as to actually get sick.

This will result in literally millions of Americans going without insurance, either because they can’t afford it or can’t get it at any price.

This will result in literally millions of Americans getting ill because they won’t be able to afford routine checkups and any non-life threatening conditions. Which will in turn lead to more serious conditions for those millions of Americans, which will in turn lead to more preventable deaths from routine, treatable medical conditions.

These deaths will hit the poor and the minorities disproportionately, leaving the death rate high and rising among the lower economic levels of society, while the rich bastards (who can afford the best of everything and never even think about the cost) will stay healthy and get richer and richer and richer, feeding off of those who can least afford to be taken advantage of.

You see, now the GOP’s warnings are coming through. No matter what it takes, they’ll prove themselves to be correct!

There will be a GOP death panel!

It will consist of all GOP United States senators, all GOP members of the House of Representative, the deplorable-in-chief himself, his evil midget sidekicks.

There won’t be any doctors on the GOP death panel at all, unless you count Ben Carson as a doctor. It doesn’t matter what he used to do or be. Who would possibly consider Carson to be any sort of qualified medical professional at all these days?

The next time you’re highly contagious from something quite likely to be fatal and fatal, please go to a GOP Town Hall meeting. Let your Senator or Representative know exactly how badly they are fucking you over to make their rich masters even more rich, while putting you at the top of the Death Panel list because you don’t have a couple hundred thousand dollars to bribe them with donate to their “campaign.”

Please feel free to make yourself heard while coughing directly into their faces.

Repeatedly.

Then they can be on their own Death Panel watch list!

I used the term “Charlie Foxtrot” in semi-polite company the other day (the office, where I try to keep the outraged swearing to a minimum, or at least to save it up for when it’s really needed) and found several people who weren’t aware of the term.

For the record, in semi-polite company it’s difficult to explain without using the terms you were trying to avoid using. “Just Google it” works fine in the end.

For those of you who might be in the dark, “Charlie” is the letter “C” in the military phonetic alphabet, while “Foxtrot” is the letter “F.” You know – alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, echo, foxtrot, golf, hotel, india…

The “C” in the term “Charlie Foxtrot” stands for “cluster.” It should come as no surprise to absolutely anyone that the “F” stands for “fuck.”

A “cluster fuck” is a graphic but generally accurate term for any situation in which EVERYTHING is going wrong and EVERYONE is to blame. It’s in a dimension of its own, so far above a simple, single fuck up by an individual or small group that it just had to have its own term to roll off the tongue.

“What a cluster fuck!” has been heard in many a military scenario.

And now, whole generations of Americans who had gotten comfy in semi-polite company are going to have to learn that term and how to deliver it in all of its graphic intensity and anger. Because it’s a perfect way to describe every single bit of the Trump Administration since Day One.

Even worse, we may soon be grateful to only be describing the Trump Administration as a total cluster fuck. It’s still a better term than “dictatorship” or “totalitarian regime.”

Let’s hope we never have to look back fondly on the days when the United States government was only a massive cluster fuck.

One thing that’s amazed me about the Trumpencritter’s campaign and Administration is how there is no bottom to how bat shit crazy he’ll get. There are apparently no limits to what he could or will do and still not lose any support from the sycophants and toadies that fill our Congress.

A year ago in Iowa he told a crowd of rabid supporters,

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

I figured outrageous nonsense like that would sink his campaign, but it just threw gas on the fire.

There were allegations of rape by a dozen or more women – and it meant nothing. There were allegations of a rape of a 13-year old girl – and it meant nothing. He admitted to going into the dressing room at the Miss Universe contest that he ran – and it meant nothing.

There were the infamous “grab them by the pussy” comments. Those weren’t allegations, those were actual recordings. The allegations were that it was just the tip of the iceberg, that the reality was far worse – and it meant nothing.

There were allegations that he owes the Russian oligarchs hundreds of millions of dollars – then he refused to release his tax returns. And no one in the GOP or in the voting booths stopped him.

On and on and on, and now the actions that he’s taken as President prove day after day that he’s only there to pay back and kiss the asses of the people who manipulated the system and cheated to put him there – Wall Street billionaires and the Russian intelligence system headed by Vladimir Putin.

Yesterday he started making the most outrageous accusations yet – all with zero-point-zero-zero evidence, of course. He’s now accusing President Obama of ordering wiretaps on his campaign and his personal calls during the campaign, serious charges which would make Watergate seem like a romp in the park.

Former members of the Obama administration, including members of the intelligence community and the Justice Department, have flat out denied the charges as delusional.

Better yet, now the head of the FBI, the same clown who followed Trump’s orders and released bullshit false reports about Hillary Clinton just a week before the election as part of the Russian campaign to manipulate the outcome, he has now asked the Justice Department to refuse to open the investigation that Trump is demanding.

In effect, the head of the FBI is publicly saying that the President of the United States is a liar and should be ignored by the Justice Department. Period. Dead stop.

From the GOP leadership in Congress?

<crickets>

So we’re still in free fall. We don’t know how bad it will have to get before we hit the bottom. We don’t know how outrageous and psychotic Trump’s lunatic ravings and accusations will have to get before Pence and Ryan pull out the 25th Amendment, or Congress grows a spine and starts impeachment.

But like being in free fall, we’re picking up speed and adding energy to the system. So when we find that point, it’s going to be bad.

Constitutional crisis bad.

Having the Congress telling the Justice Department to go arrest Trump and the White House staff and hoping that they do it bad.

Having the three branches of government all fighting with each other bad, with the press and the military trying to figure out what to do and who’s in charge bad.

While Putin laughs his ass off and the world economy collapses.

BAD.

A little bit of Twitter surfing today led me to this:

I’m a big fan of the Founding Fathers. They pulled off something that had never been done before, risking everything for an idea that was brand new on the planet. Not only that, but they managed to figure out a new and improved form of government that has stood up for over 200 years. The key was an incredibly strong yet flexible document which codified a structure of checks and balances – the Constitution.

Sometimes it’s almost spooky how words written over two hundred years ago can look like they were written now. Like the quote from James Madison above.

For the clueless who don’t know Madison and think he doesn’t know anything about the Constitution because he disagrees with your ignorance-based beliefs – he’s one of the people who wrote it. I think that gives him a certain privileged opinion on what it means, what it’s for, and how it is intended to work.

One of the words Madison used above was new to me – “peculation.” Hey, we have the technology to solve that!

“The wrongful appropriation or embezzlement of shared or public property, usually by a person entrusted with the guardianship of that property.” Who does that remind us of?

It’s costing the US taxpayers what, $500,000+ PER DAY to have Trump’s family in his giant NYC phallic symbol instead of the White House with him? How much of that is going directly into Trump’s pocket since the Secret Service is forced to be leasing an entire floor of the building in order to do their job?

Trump has gone to his Florida resort four weekends in a row? Five? All on Air Force One – who pays for that? And just like in NYC, Trump stays at a resort he owns which forces the Secret Service and all of the staff to stay there, forcing the government to pay Trump’s company in order to do their job, as well as getting all of the billionaire sycophants to stay there (and pay, pay, pay!) when they come to kiss his ass and pretend to not despise him.

Pec – u – la – tion.

If the guy who wrote the Constitution thought that it was impeachable, what the hell are we waiting for?

I was never much of a fan of George W. Bush as President. I thought that he allowed himself to be manipulated by some of the evil fuckers he surrounded himself with, starting with Dick Cheney and working his way down the line of Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, and on through a whole string of shadow billionaires who used an illegal and unjustifiable war to profiteer like there was no tomorrow.

But in today’s climate, watching Dubya on Jimmy Kimmel’s show last night, he’s looking pretty good by comparison to the current regime. For the record, when Dubya starts calling you out for being an idiot in how you’re running ruining the country and attempting to intimidate the press, you know that you’re a pretty big fuckup.

Well, you should know. Ignorance is bliss, and the Trumpencritter is the most bliss-filled critter on the planet.

While we’re being distracted by the acts of treason and perjury by multiple Administration officials, let’s not be distracted from just how low the bar is being set for this President.

After five weeks of raving like a lunatic at every opportunity, barely speaking English, lying with every breath, and that all following months on the campaign trail where he was really disgusting (pussy grabbing, anyone?) and vile (dick size comparisons, anyone?), the Trumpencritter gave a speech two nights ago to a joint session of Congress.

He’s getting rave reviews. “He’s finally started acting Presidential,” seems to be a common theme.

So, he told the truth? No, he repeated all of the same total bullshit lies that he’s been spreading for months.

He “manned up” and took responsibility for all of the horrendous things he’s already done and apologized sincerely to those whose lives he’s tried to destroy? There aren’t enough psychotropic substances in the world to make that appear to be true.

He had a grand and glorious vision for the future with detailed plans and a clearly marked road forward? No, he stuck a military widow on parade for all of the feels, lied through his teeth about how successful the mission was on which he died, and refused to take any responsibility for a hideously fucked up mission that was done just so he could say that he had ordered a military strike. At least he didn’t try to shift the blame for that fuck up off onto our military leaders – he had already taken care of that earlier in the day.

He promised to not use hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars (at a country club he owns, thus lining his pockets) to go play golf after a twenty-hour work week? Yeah, about that – no.

In order to be praised as the next Cicero he managed to read woodenly from a teleprompter without going off onto an incomprehensible rant at the drop of a hat. He managed to neither drool on himself nor shit in his pants in front of an audience of half a billion or so.

Huzzah!!

One can only assume he did it because Putin and Bannon told him to. Perhaps the Dynamic Duo reminded him of whatever’s in that closet that they’re guarding and glancing at knowingly.