Mueller, Mueller Everywhere And Not a Drop To Drink

Dial M For Mueller

April 18, 2019

“Oh my god.  This is terrible.  This is the end of my presidency.  I’m fucked.”
Donald J. Trump, an obviously innocent man, to Jeff Sessions
on learning of the appointment of Robert Mueller

There is an old saying in the world of jurisprudence often attributed to Abraham Lincoln – “He who represents himself has a fool for a client.”  I have allowed myself to update this old saw: He who represents Donald Chrump has a fool for a client and is himself a pathetic schmuck.

Fool or idiot? You make the call.

Under our system of justice – such as it is – everyone (your mileage may vary) is innocent until proven guilty and is entitled to legal representation.  Though it can be tempting, it is wrong to denigrate an attorney for defending even the most heinous perpetrator – Donald Chrump for example.  This is a tough job, but someone has to do it.  Besides, there are plenty of other reasons to heap scorn on lawyers. 

In 1770, a young lawyer by the name of John Adams defended eight British soldiers accused of murder during a riot in Boston on March 5, 1770.  That riot became known to some as the Boston Massacre, and that young lawyer became America’s second president.

I have no illusion that Donald Chrump knows better than to defend himself in a court of law.  He has certainly been trying non-stop to defend himself in the court of public opinion.  If Chrump had not blatantly and repeatedly shown himself to be guilty, he too would be considered innocent as of this moment.  According to the Mueller Report, the only reason Chrump is not already in jail is because a number of people around him refused to carry out his clearly illegal orders on numerous occasions.  Der Furor is fortunate to have his newest personal attorney posing as Attorney General of the United States.  Barr is clearly and exclusively protecting his boss, and as he has done in similar situations in the past, completely omitted any mention of damaging information that permeates the Mueller Report.

This Is Not Going Well For The Orange Poopstain

Chris Wallace of Fux News had this to say after Barr’s fake news conference, which was designed to mislead the public about when lay hidden within the Mueller report, “The Attorney General seemed almost to be acting as the counselor for the defense, the counselor for the president, rather than the attorney general, talking about his motives, his emotions.  Really, as I say, making a case for the president.”  This is an actual quote from one of the top newsmen on Chrump’s personal propaganda machine.

During his pre-emptive press event, Barr moaned that Poor Donald was not obstructing justice by firing Comey “because of the Russia thing” and instructing his lawyer to fire Mueller and threatening witnesses against him and attacking the investigation over and over and over on Twitter and elsewhere, he was just frustrated.  He was frustrated?  WTF.  We have been watching the TOTAL COLLUSION EXPRESS live, on national television and Twitter every f*%king day for over two years, riding roughshod over this country while the Colluder-in-chief whined and lied every minute about how innocent he was.  To paraphrase Marjorie Stoneman Douglas shooting survivor Emma Gonzales, we call bullshit!

It is interesting that the man who has said he has “one of the great memories of all time” (which he subsequently insisted he did not remember saying), provided 37 instances of “I do not recall”/“I do not remember”/"I have no independent recollection," etc., in his brief, one assumes lie-ridden written responses to Mueller’s questions.  I’m kidding, it is not interesting, it is pure unadulterated bullshit, as we have come to expect from one of the great sociopaths of all time.

Mueller has provided ample evidence – more of which is certain to come – to begin impeachment proceedings against a criminally ill-suited president with consistent malicious intent to obstruct justice. 

I. Mangrey recalculating. 

Thought For The Day

SPOILER ALERT: Bill Barr is Bogus

April 18, 2019

We recently learned that Chrump’s personal attorney general was even sleazier than we thought, a monumentally high or appallingly low bar, depending on your perspective.  Barr used the same exact language and technique to misrepresent the findings of another special investigation, then into the possible abduction of Manuel Noriega in Panama when Barr was head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in 1989.  This was shortly before Barr became George HW Bush’s Attorney General and provided the smoke screen for pardoning Republican’t convicted felons from the Iran-Contra criminal operation under Ronald Reagan.

As reported by Ryan Goodman, “Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Sound familiar? In March 2019, when Attorney General Barr was handed Robert Mueller’s final report, he wrote that he would “summarize the principal conclusions” of the special counsel’s report for the public.”
 

It was later found that Barr’s summary of findings completely misrepresented the conclusions of the investigation.  According to Goodman, “When the OLC opinion was finally made public long after Barr left office, it was clear that Barr’s summary had failed to fully disclose the opinion’s principal conclusions. It is better to think of Barr’s summary as a redacted version of the full OLC opinion. That’s because the “summary” took the form of 13 pages of written testimony. The document was replete with quotations from court cases, legal citations, and the language of the OLC opinion itself. Despite its highly detailed analysis, this 13-page version omitted some of the most consequential and incendiary conclusions from the actual opinion. And there was evidently no justifiable reason for having withheld those parts from Congress or the public.”  Now we know exactly what to expect…in case we had any doubts.

Members of Mueller’s team, wrote their own summaries of their findings (meant to be shared with the public), summaries that Barr has kept hidden.  These prosecutors have reportedly said that they were uncomfortable with Barr’s original summary of principal conclusions, as it did not accurately portray what they found.  And that is putting it mildly.  Barr’s entire raison d’être as Chrump’s AG is to protect his boss from the facts.

Barring Anything Unusual

Today Barr will release his colorfully redacted, transparently partisan and deeply dishonest version of the almost two-year-long Mueller investigation.  Barr has already given his Orange Overlord a head start on access to what is coming.  This provides Team Chrump extra time to manufacture the obligatory lies that will help his credulous sheep understand what they are supposed to swallow schnook, whine and stinker.  Those of us in the reality-based community do not need any extra time to prepare the requisite contempt due Chrump's and Barr’s attempts to baffle us with their bullshit.  America will need a long, hot shower after being soiled by Barr's latest defecation.

This has been your Paying Attention Thought For The Day.

You're welcome.

What is your thought for the day?

Figuratively Flinging Feces

So It Goes

April 17, 2019

Bernie Sanders took on Fux News single-handedly in an hour-long town hall.  Turns out Bernie has a wider appeal than those Fuxheads might have wanted.  Bernie’s platform is extremely popular across America, as evidenced by everyone from Hillary Clinton and one Donald J. Chrump mimicking much of the Sanders agenda after seeing how popular it was early in the 2016 campaign.  The difference being, Sanders meant it, Clinton meant some fraction of it, and Chrump’s word is as valuable as used toilet paper.  As has been scientifically proven, he lies more often than he eats, golfs, tweets or breathes.  Chrump will say anything.  He will tell you 140 times, “I love Wikileaks” and then say, "I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing.”  He had me at ‘I know nothing,’ and then he lost me.

I. Mangrey reproaching.

The Full Mueller

Bill’s Amazing Technicolor Dream Redactions

April 15, 2019

It seems clear that Bill Barr, on his second stint as faux Attorney General, is looking to stop crime in its tracks.  However, not in the customary way.  Rather than stopping crime from occurring, Barr prefers to stop crime from actually being crime.  If there was anyone who thought Barr was going to be Attorney General of the United States, and not just another attorney for Donald Chrump, they were sadly mistaken and/or severely brain damaged.

One cannot help but wonder how much Barr is getting paid under the table by his Orange Overlord.  This one also wonders if Chrump pays more to speak for him or to shut up about him.  It is hard to imagine Barr settling for a measly $130K.  Barr is not just some semi-popular porn star; he is clearly a very high-end prostitute.  Like any successful prostitute, Barr had to strut his stuff in order to attract the right John…or Don in this case.  In lieu of flashing some leg, Barr penned an unsolicited 19-page diatribe insisting that the president (presumably only when he is a Republican't) cannot obstruct justice.  The good old “If the president does it then it is not illegal,” Nixon delusion/defense.

Barr's 19-page fantasy dwarfs the four-page misdirection he spit out while buying time for the Chrump team of legal lightweights to process the report Barr continues to hide from the American public.  For his part, Barr is racking his damaged brain trying to determine the best way to redact enough of Mueller's report to keep his new boss out of prison and America from reinstating our democracy.  Barr, in his usual role as apologist/protector of Republican’t presidents, decided to fall back on the Bush II color-coded terror alerts by redacting the Mueller Report in a variety of colors, presumably with circles and arrows on the back of each page explaining every obfuscation.

Barr’s next stab at the heart of America’s democracy…I mean, at rationalizing one of his predetermined outcomes, will be to prove that Chrump’s thoroughly and repeatedly disproven conspiracy theory of being spied on by the Obama administration really happened.

It’s all very taxing.

I. Mangrey reporting.                                               

                                                                                

Further Adventures in Sociopathy

Death By a Thousand (Budget) Cuts

April 13, 2019

After sending his soulless Education Secretary Ditsy DeVos to testify before Congress, Boss Chrump had to backtrack on yet another sociopathic move.  DeVos had to answer for a draconian slashing of the federal budget for Special Olympics.  Something for which there is no answer.  The uneducated, heartless Secretary, clearly bent on providing Republican’ts a lifetime supply of poorly educated voters, smiled and slimed her way through the House Appropriations subcommittee questioning to the horror of most of America.  The backlash was quick and effective, causing her very special boss to pretend he knew nothing about it, as he threw his loyal, if loony hatchet-lady into the deep end, outfitted with lead boots and a cement overcoat.  Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

Chrump takes a brief break from stupid tweeting to say something stupid out loud

The Orange Gas Cloud fumed, “I had no idea that I was slashing the budget for Special Olympics.  Someone must have had me sign it while I was busy golfing or watching the very important Fux and Friends.  Then I realized, hey I’m special, so maybe I shouldn’t take money away from special.  Or maybe Ditsy did this all on her own and never told me she was doing it.  Who can tell?  I’m pretty sure whatever it is, it’s not my job.”

The Chrump administration also wants to slash federal funding for literacy programs because Republican’ts believe the only things the federal government is good for are funding the military and cutting taxes for the richest fraction of a percent of Americans.  The most ignorant, incurious, uninformed presidents in American history explained, “I don’t know what the fuss is all about.  Reading is for losers anyway.  I never read a book in my life and I got elected president by the biggest landslide I’ve ever heard of.  I also had the biggest crowd ever watching me get sworn at…I mean in.  I proved that winning is better than reading.  So much winning.  So little reading.  I still don’t read anything, except my own tweets, which are very brilliant.  I am so proud of me for doing so much America great making.  I hear George Washington read stuff and wasn’t so smart.”  And the following is a reported actual quote during Chrump’s visit to Washington’s historic home at Mt. Vernon, “If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it.  You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”  If only our first president had found a way to be remembered.  If only our 45^th president can some day be forgotten.

One More Horrible Thing

On the heels of very strong and powerful denials by his administration that any serious thoughtwas given to shipping asylum seekers to so-called sanctuary cities, Chrump threw yet another bunch of just-following-orders underlings under the bus.  Several White House officials admitted that the idea of sending immigrants to cities that swore to protect anyone living within their borders from the Reckless-Racist-in-chief’s dream of internment camps or mass shootings of those looking to enter America for a better life, was brought up, but quickly discarded.  No sooner had the lies left their lips, did Chrump tweet:

Der Furor backed up his disgraceful tweet with a doubling down in front of cameras, “We will bring the illegals...to sanctuary city areas and let that particular area take care of it, whether it is a state or whatever it might be.  California is certainly always saying they want more people, and if they want more people in their sanctuary cities, we will give them more people.  We can give them an unlimited supply. And let's see if they are so happy.  They say they have open arms.  They always say they have open arms. Let's see if they have open arms.”

To be fair, Chrump does not see these refugees as people.  To Chrump they are vermin, animals, unwanted product (something the Chrump brand is exceedingly familiar with) to be foisted off in an act of revenge against anyone who dares defy his edicts.

This of course, is on the heels of Chrump telling Homeland Security officials to violate immigration law by shutting down the border, while promising that he would pardon them if they went to jail.

I. Mangrey reporting.  Oy.

Flotsam and Chrump

Fits and Pieces

April 9, 2019

As a mere mortal still clinging to a day job at least until I can extract a penny or two from my still nascent, and relatively secret and undisclosed blog, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with our Disaster-in-chief.  If he was mildly amusing at first blush (he was not; this was merely a literary device), Chrump has done nothing but fabricate an accelerating descent into a madness that makes King Lear look like the Dalai Lama.

Today’s offering comprises some quick, painful renderings of Der Furor’s latest malignancies, as he spirals further out of control in the face of myriad walls closing in on him.  Bill Barr’s fake summary of the Mueller report while provided some unwarranted merriment around the Orange Gas Cloud and a horrible gnashing of teeth from the reality-based community – both of which were very short lived as more fact-related information came to light.  The Democrats in the House are not seeming to back down on going after Chrump’s fake tax returns, to which they have a legal right.  Another lawsuit is pending at the hands of one of Chrump’s many sexual harassment/assault victims.  Chrump’s inaugural committee, who raised a record amount of money for an inauguration that no one bothered to attend or watch, is under investigation by federal prosecutors in New York.  Now there are numerous, incredibly credible reports of Chrump instructing various underlings to ignore laws, which might garner some unwanted attention for Dear Leader.  Other walls, too numerous to mention, also continue their hopefully inexorable push to squeeze the gargantuan amoeba that some call qresident.

With any luck, all of this well-deserved misery will finally take its toll on our petty tyrant in a very, very beautifully big way.

Sunday, with fake hair, four days later with fake smile

Anyway, here are a few things caught my painfully divided attention in recent days.

Item #1

We have learned that ghoulish Nazi Stephen Miller, who once said, on camera, “…our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see, as we begin to take further action, that the powers of the president to protect our country, are very substantial and will not be questioned,” is now (if not before) in charge of national security, and who knows what else.  Miller has convinced his disinterested boss to clear out any possible humanity, minimal though it has been, from the horde of haters “managing” immigration and homeland security.  The plan is to replace everyone with even more brutal, brutish ogres desperately trying to keep America as white as possible for as long as possible.  Miller, who once went on Face the Nation with a freshly sprayed-on “hair” line, is a power-crazed sociopath, and he and his qresident are precisely what this democracy and this country need protection from.  Between Miller and Kushner, they seem to have everything covered, vastly increasing the odds that we will all be dead or wishing we were very soon.

Item #2

Chrump said that the noise from "windmills" causes cancer.  Chrump has been obsessed with wind turbines ever since the Scottish government decided to put wind farm offshore in view of his disgraceful, failing golf course in Aberdeenshire.  If there is any sound that causes cancer, it is the interminable, horrendous screeching he excretes through his face sphincter.

Item #3

Chrump is destroying this nation on so many levels.  There are the flagrant, obvious ones that we cannot avoid observing, try though we might.  He also has created a fake executive branch, where many of the appointees that must typically face Senate approval before serving, are "acting" positions.  An acting secretary of, for example Blowing the President, can act like he - most likely an older white male - is in charge of Blowing the President without any vetting, skills or brain activity of any kind.  And besides, all of them are acting like ignorant assholes.

Item #4

Sam Patten is a GOP lobbyist who straw-purchased inauguration tickets for a Ukranian oligarch, and then lied to the Senate Intel Committee about it. Patten is now cooperating with authorities.  Oh, I almost forgot, Patten claimed that because of "computer trouble" he deleted his entire Gmail archive folder containing a reported 200,000 emails.  Hillary only had 30,000 missing emails, as I recall someone bellowing at us over and over and over.  More proof that Chrump has the best people.  Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 200,000 purposely deleted emails…

As the aforementioned walls continue to figuratively cut off the reluctant air heading for Chrump’s unworthy airways, the bloated buffoon is flailing about like hooked, poisonous puffer fish, unwelcome, but nonetheless desperately flopping around on the deck of a boat with no one else on board but a dead-drunk fisherman and a bone-dry engine.

And so to bed.

I. Mangrey retiring…for the night.

Thought For The Day

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhh!!!!

April 7, 2019

Nothing specific. Too much to choose from.  Luckily, I have been totally exonerated.

This has been your Paying Attention Thought For The Day.

You're welcome.

What is your thought for the day?

Many People May Be Paying Attention

Time Wounds All Heels

April 3, 2019

Some number of people – your faithful scribe in no way among them – had high hopes for Ivanka Chrump and Mr. Ivanka when first it was revealed that the Dyspeptic Duo would be taking on responsibilities in daddy’s White House.  Ivanka’s role was a mystery wrapped in a riddle, nestled within an enigma.  Jared’s responsibilities on the other hand were spelled out in shocking, if not ludicrous detail.

Now, the numbers are in – Ivanka has a 12% very favorable rating, Jared is at six percent.  In a desperate attempt to salvage some sliver of a reputation for something other than going belly up in real estate, Mr. Ivanka summoned up the courage to not only show his twit-ish face in public, but to do it on Fux News.  Incredibly brave, opening himself up to all those Nerf-ball questions.  I assume it was riveting.

Young Jared was initially tasked with brokering (which he clearly thought meant breaking) peace in the Middle East, ending the opioid crisis, reinventing the federal government, criminal justice reform, China relations, Mexico relations, Muslim relations, and changing his father-in-law’s diaper every two hours – otherwise Ivanka’s biggest fan gets very cranky, and you wouldn’t like him when he’s cranky. 

Donald Chrump, prior to getting cranky

Fortunately, Jared was not in charge of dealing with climate crisis.  Chrump is handling that one personally because he is a very stable genius and knows more about science than anyone who has ever lived…or so he says.  I am beginning to have my doubts.

Jared’s reality-TV-esque role would be critical to the function of the executive branch since Chrump would not have time for any of these important, president-y duties as he would be unable to take sufficient time away from soaking taxpayers for his endless golf outings, his extremely busy tweeting schedule, his even more demanding Fux News watching time, and of course, however many hours a day it takes to make him look so damn good, using only those two tiny little hands and what seems more and more to be a brain-dissolving array of chemicals.

Kushner lied repeatedly on his security clearance application, and was forced to change his responses over and over.  Like just about everyone in the Chrump administration, Jared had Russian Amnesia.  Russian Amnesia is like Russian Roulette, except it consists of claiming you do not remember having meetings with a ridiculous number of Russians, then gradually remembering them one by one until you have run out of Russians, while simultaneously shooting yourself in the face (The Cheney Selfie maneuver).  Ultimately, security experts – including Chrump’s Chief-of-staff Gen. John Kelly and White House Counsel Don McGahn (who both wrote memos to cover their filthy, unwiped asses) – determined that Jared was a significant security risk and should not have high level clearance, despite his position as most of the executive branch and a large part of the entire federal government.

Clearly Donny Dearest make a mistake not putting Jared in charge of getting rid of Obamacare.  Two days after announcing – to the surprise of every Republican’t – that he was going to have his Attorney General make Obamacare disappear, relieving millions of people (many of them Chrump fans) of their medical insurance, Der Furor was forced to backtrack by the few Republican’ts who realize that their very survival depends on not killing off their base.  Chrump now says he will wait until after the 2020 election to let us in on his super-secret, special, fanfuckingtastic, better-than-Nixon’s-1968-secret-plan-to-end-the-Vietnam-War-that-took-seven-years-and-failed-miserably-even-after-bombing-Cambodia replacement for Obamacare.  Anyone who believes for a nanosecond that Republican’ts, let alone Chrump, will ever waste a single second devising  a plan to insure all Americans, needs to have their mammal credentials revoked.

Where’s mammal?

I. Mangrey regurgitating. 

April Metamorphosis

Dead Man Writing

April 1, 2019...or is it?

Just stumbled across this posthumous rewrite of Franz Kafka’s classic, tale The Metamorphosis more than 100 years after the publication of the original.  Kafka was generally dark and disturbing, but could not hold a candle to the depressing and ominous reality brought to you by Donald Chrump.  Thought you might enjoy the opening paragraphs of Kafka’s latest gem...

One morning, as Donald Chrump was waking up from anxious dreams and Twitter-based nightmares, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. A casual observer would instantly recognize the improvement. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. Again, a considerable improvement from the doughy, gelatin-like mass that usually emerged from that part of his body. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, which now outnumbered the “hairs” on his head, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

With apologies to cockroaches everywhere

 




‘What’s happened to me,’ he thought. It was no dream. His disgusting room, an improper room for a borderline human being, who in no way deserved the office he held, and drastically less gold-encrusted than his previous abode, which as he was wont to tell people every chance he got, was not nearly the “dump” he claimed it to be, despite the stench of stale hair spray, toxic tanning dye and the smell of the man himself – a smell it would later take a regiment of HAZMAT enrobed experts to eradicate. Above the table, on which an collection of half-eaten and still untouched fast food items was spread out (Chrump was a voracious pig, with no sense of taste or class) hung the picture set in a pretty gilt frame. It was a picture of a group of very young women fleeing and desperately trying to cover themselves, clearly distraught that someone or something was invading their privacy. He still cherished that picture, that moment, those young bodies who so reminded him of his precious daughter, of whom he dreamt most nights and almost as many days. What frightened him most at this moment, gazing once again at the body he no longer recognized? If he continued to look like this, would his daughter ever submit to his wishes? Would other women ever let him get away with grabbing them, as he had done so many times when he looked somewhat more human?

While one cannot help but be drawn to Kafka’s new rewrite and possibly relish the thought of it coming true, it seems to me that it is not so much Chrump, but America that has awakened to a drastic, terrifying, seemingly fatal transformation, a metamorphosis from a flawed, mighty nation, to a giant cockroach that horrifies and threatens not just itself, but its friends and neighbors, especially all those Mexican countries (according to Fux News) Chrump wants to shut down. 

I. Mangrey reporting in the nude.  Also, your shoe’s untied.