The Trump Hiring Doctrine

by 10:15 pm. It has 86 Comments.

I think I have figured out the Trump hiring procedures. They go like this:

Q: Are you qualified for this position?

A: Not in any way, shape, or form, but I did stay in a Trump hotel.

Q: Do you have a large social media presence and an easily discoverable history of past racially and otherwise bigoted statements?

A: Of course.

Q: Do you read Gateway Pundit?

A: I’m a valued commenter.

Q: State the first commandment.

A: Trump is thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before the Donald.

EXCELLENT! You’re hired.

In other news:

A political appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services shared an image in 2017 that said “our forefathers would have hung” Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for treason, a CNN KFile review has found.

Ximena Barreto is a far-right political pundit who in December 2017 joined the Trump administration as deputy director of communications at the department.

Barreto was placed on leave by the department on Monday after the liberal watchdog Media Matters reported that Barreto called Islam “a cult” and pushed the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which alleged that Clinton was part of a child-sex ring based in part at a Washington, DC, pizza restaurant.

A subsequent KFile review of her Twitter account “RepublicanChick” found that Barreto also repeatedly used the hashtag #BanIslam and twice shared conspiracy theories about the death of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.

Barreto also shared a conspiracy theory that French President Emmanuel Macron was controlled by the Rothschild family and that Clinton and Obama were controlled by investor and Democratic mega-donor George Soros. Both the Rothschilds and Soros are frequent targets of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Our government is now just jampacked with every bottom feeder the internet can burp up. When Democrats get back in charge the denazification is going to take up the entire first term.





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It’s A God Damned Stunt is Why

by 6:09 pm. It has 135 Comments.

Donald Trump’s favorite rectal wart, Devin Nunes, is still playing games and doing everything he can to fuck with any investigation into Trump’s potential crimes:

The FBI has not been permitted to see the memo Rep. Devin Nunes and his staff wrote about alleged abuses by the intelligence community, The Daily Beast has learned.

“The FBI has requested to receive a copy of the memo in order to evaluate the information and take appropriate steps if necessary. To date, the request has been declined,” said Andrew Ames, a spokesperson for the FBI.

Reached for comment, Nunes’ spokesperson Jack Langer said, “The Daily Beast has become America’s foremost publication for regurgitating the Democrats’ talking points.”

Nunes, who heads the powerful House intelligence community, put together the four-page memo based on intelligence the FBI showed him and a few of his staff, as well as Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee. More than 150 members of the House have seen Nunes’ memo. Scores are calling for its release, while Democrats say it is “a misleading set of talking points attacking the FBI.”

I an not wait to see what dirt there is out there on Nunes, because I can’t think of any reason other than his own complicity for someone to go this all in for Trump.


I Wanna Get Freaky With You

by 4:23 pm. It has 271 Comments.

When we last discussed GOP Rep. Trent Franks, he was announcing his his retirement on 31 January for the following:

I have recently learned that the Ethics Committee is reviewing an inquiry regarding my discussion of surrogacy with two previous female subordinates, making each feel uncomfortable. I deeply regret that my discussion of this option and process in the workplace caused distress.

We are in an unusual moment in history – there is collective focus on a very important problem of justice and sexual impropriety. It is so important that we get this right for everyone, especially for victims.

But in the midst of this current cultural and media climate, I am deeply convinced I would be unable to complete a fair House Ethics investigation before distorted and sensationalized versions of this story would put me, my family, my staff, and my noble colleagues in the House of Representatives through hyperbolized public excoriation. Rather than allow a sensationalized trial by media damage those things I love most, this morning I notified House leadership that I will be leaving Congress as of January 31st, 2018. It is with the greatest sadness, that for the sake of the causes I deeply love, I must now step back from the battle I have spent over three decades fighting. I hope my resignation will remain distinct from the great gains we have made. My time in Congress serving my constituents, America and the Constitution is and will remain one of God’s greatest gift to me in life.

Today we learn his resignation is taking place immediately. Wonder why? Oh:

Arizona Rep. Trent Franks allegedly made unwanted advances toward female staffers in his office and retaliated against one who rebuffed him, according to House GOP sources with knowledge of a complaint against him.

The allegations, which reached Speaker Paul Ryan and top GOP leaders in recent days, led to Franks’ sudden resignation this week. Franks originally announced that he would resign on Jan. 31, 2018. But just hours after POLITICO inquired about the allegations, he sped up his resignation and left office Friday.

The sources said Franks approached two female staffers about acting as a potential surrogate for him and his wife, who has struggled with fertility issues for years. But the aides were concerned that Franks was asking to have sexual relations with them. It was not clear to the women whether he was asking about impregnating the women through sexual intercourse or in vitro fertilization. Franks opposes abortion rights as well as procedures that discard embryos.

A former staffer also alleged that Franks tried to persuade a female aide that they were in love by having her read an article that described how a person knows they’re in love with someone, the sources said. One woman believed she was the subject of retribution after rebuffing Franks. While she enjoyed access to the congressman before the incident, that access was revoked afterward, she told Republican leaders.

Life comes at you fast.


Warren’s Unforgivable Sin

by 8:32 pm. It has 240 Comments.

Betty Cracker covered this earlier, but two quick things about this Trump “Pocahontas” outburst.

1.) As my friend pointed out to me on FB, these fucking stooges in the WH chose to honor the Navajo code talkers in front of a large portrait of Andrew Jackson.

2.) It’s worth remembering what Senator Warren did to deserve this crap. Her major transgression, her big sin, this egregious breach of trust was… relying on what her family told her about her heritage and then passing it on to others. I know this is hard to believe, but this is how most people learned who they were and their family history- the oral tradition. There wasn’t always genealogy.com and DNA testing.

So she relied on what she was told growing up in Oklahoma, where probably everyone is somewhat Cherokee to some extent. That’s why they are calling her Pocahontas and the sophisticated race-baiters and bigots are calling her Fauxcahontas. That’s her fucking crime. And it is worth noting that to this date NO ONE has proven she is not some small part Cherokee, there’s just no paperork proving she is.

At any rate, I need to get something off my chest. This is me, my brother, and sisters, as children. I’m the gap toothed one on the far left.

A bunch of fine looking Kinder! For years, we have been telling people that we were mostly German. On my mothers side, there is a touch of Scottish. But mostly we were under the impression that we were pretty much full German. My father’s parent’s names were Vogel and Cole, and my mom’s side is Rudolph and Blaine (her father a German and my grandmother Scot from on parent). We can trace our family back to the Hessians. We’ve always thought we were almost completely German

But a year ago, my father did a DNA test, and it turns out we are a bunch of frauds and not nearly as German as we thought. In fact, my father is only about 30% German. It appears that Nordic blood courses through his veins, and we are as much Viking as we are German.

My entire life has been a fraud- an elaborate ruse, a lie.

That’s how fucking stupid this Pocahontas crap is, on top of being offensive to Native Americans.





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Hirsutes with your Parachute Flutes

by 4:54 pm. It has 272 Comments.

There’s a great long read in the NY Times by Caitlyn Dickerson today about how fake news rocked and roiled a small Idaho town, with Jihadwatch, Fox, Drudge, and the rest of the usual suspects whipping the town in to a damned frenzy about Syrian refugees and rape mobs (Brown is the local reporter):

“We have been made aware of a situation,” said the first speaker, an older man with a scraggly white beard who had hobbled up to the lectern. “An alleged assault of a minor child and we can’t get any information on it. Apparently, it’s been indicated that the perpetrators were foreign Muslim youth that conducted this — I guess it was a rape.” Brown recognized the man as Terry Edwards. About a year earlier, after The Times-News reported that Syrian refugees would very likely be resettled in Twin Falls, Edwards joined a movement to shut the resettlement program down. The group circulated a petition to put the proposal before voters. They failed to get enough signatures to force a referendum, but Brown was struck by how much support around town the movement attracted. In bars after work, he began to overhear conversations about the dangers of Islam. One night, he heard a man joke about dousing the entrance to the local mosque with pig’s blood.

After he finished watching the video, Brown called the police chief, Craig Kingsbury, to get more information about the case. Kingsbury said that he couldn’t discuss it and that the police reports were sealed because minors were involved. Brown made a couple phone calls: to the mayor and to his colleague at the paper who covers crime. He pieced together that 12 days earlier, three children had been discovered partly clothed inside a shared laundry room at the apartment complex where they lived. There were two boys, a 7-year-old and a 10-year-old, and a 5-year-old girl. The 7-year-old boy was accused of attempting some kind of sex act with the 5-year-old, and the 10-year-old had used a cellphone borrowed from his older brother to record it. The girl was American and, like most people in Twin Falls, white. The boys were refugees; Brown wasn’t sure from where. In his article about the meeting, Brown seems to anticipate that the police chief’s inability to elaborate was not going to sit well with the people whose testimony he had just watched.

There’s just way too much to the story to quote, so you really need to read it all, but this part stuck out:

That weekend, Brown was on his way to see a movie when he received a Facebook message from Jim Dalos Jr., a 52-year-old known to Twin Falls journalists and police as Scanner Man. Dalos is disabled; he works six hours a week as a dishwasher at a pizzeria but spends most of his time in his apartment, sitting in a reclining chair and drinking Diet Pepsi out of a 52-ounce plastic mug, voraciously consuming news. He reads the local paper, old issues of which litter his living-room floor, and keeps the television blaring — usually Fox News. He got his nickname because he constantly monitors an old police scanner, a gift he received as a teenager from his father, and often calls in tips to the media based on what he hears. He also happens to live at the apartment complex, Fawnbrook, where the laundry-room incident occurred.
Continue reading the main story

Dalos told Brown that he had seen the police around Fawnbrook and that the victim’s mother told him that the boys had been arrested. He also pointed Brown to a couple of Facebook groups that were created in response to the crime. Brown scrolled through them on his cellphone and saw links flying back and forth with articles that said that the little girl had been gang raped at knife point, that the perpetrators were Syrian refugees and that their fathers had celebrated with them afterward by giving them high fives. The stories also claimed that the City Council and the police department were conspiring to bury the crime.

There is your GOP base, and there is where the wingnut puke funnel starts- in a barcalounger by some soda guzzling moron who listens to nothing but Fox News and the scanner. Someone like him burps up some sort of racist conspiracy bullshit, and before you know it, like in this case, it’s a fucking headline at Drudge and the top story on Hannity.

America, fuck yeah.


Sunday Evening Open Thread: Nice Weekend for Some Protesting

by 5:13 pm. It has 141 Comments.

Since some of y’all were confused by yesterday’s post:

Even Insane Clown Posse couldn’t quite believe it.

“We’re the good guys here today,” Violent J, one half of the widely loathed face-painting “horrorcore” rap duo, told the fans, known as “Juggalos,” who had gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial. “We’re actually in the right this time!”

The Juggalos, so easy to make fun of, had a case: the feds were the real clowns. And for a surreal Washington afternoon, the colourful people of one of America’s most-mocked subcultures were being seen by powerful people as freedom fighters, weird makeup and all.

Profane freedom fighters, yes. Two of the Juggalos’ Saturday refrains of choice: “You f—ed up” and “F— that s—,” which they occasionally chanted in the direction of police helicopters, fingers extended skyward.

But this was the exception. They were so cheerful that some of them insisted on hugging journalists. And their favourite chant was a single upbeat word: “family.”

It was their response to the term the FBI insists describes them: gang…

Hundreds of Juggalos had assembled for the demonstration and march in protest of a curious six-year-old FBI decision to include the Juggalos in their official national gang list, alongside such indisputably dangerous entities as MS-13.

The gang classification, Juggalos said, had led employers to force them out of jobs, convinced judges to deny them custody of their kids, and subjected them to police harassment for their Insane Clown Posse tattoos. One Virginia woman, Jessica Bonometti, said she had been fired as a probation officer because of Facebook posts about the band…

Violent J and partner Shaggy 2 Dope cast the Juggalos as the defenders of Americans of all kinds, warning that the persecution of America’s “most hated people” would inevitably lead to the persecution of others. As usual, they railed against racism, homophobia and economic segregation…

Okay, the music (and the Faygo) aren’t to my taste, either. But neither is the Grateful Dead, and I wouldn’t want Deadheads classified as “gang members”, if only for Cole’s sake. And ICP’s heart is in the right place:

Meanwhile, same time same city…


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Oh, Cool, The Debt Ceiling Debacle and Now the Lunatics are Really in Charge

by 11:18 am. It has 153 Comments.

Having spent the first 200 days of his Presidency ruining the good name of the United States and fucking all of our allies, it looks like the goal of the third 100 days is to ruin the full faith and credit of the United States:

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said Tuesday that he is unlikely to support a “clean” measure to increase the nation’s debt limit.

Cole, like many other House Republicans, wants to include spending cuts or other language that would reduce government spending in any measure raising the government’s borrowing limit.

“Most Republicans want to do something to lower the trajectory of the debt,” Cole said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I mean, a clean debt ceiling hike is like having a credit card and saying ‘I’ve reached my limit, I’m just going to change the limit higher without changing any of my spending habits.'”

“That’s a tough sell to Republicans,” he added. “Democrats seem to be fine with that, but I think most of my colleagues aren’t.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has called for Congress to approve a clean hike to the debt ceiling, a position somewhat reluctantly joined by White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, a former House Republican who initially suggested it should be paired with spending cuts.

Democrats have warned that they will not accept spending cuts tied to the debt ceiling bill.

Since Democrats could filibuster a bill in the Senate, this gives the minority plenty of leverage in the upcoming fight.

Congress faces a Sept. 29 deadline for lifting the ceiling. If it does not, markets are likely to suffer and the government could shut down and risk defaulting on its debt.

This is going to require the Republicans to work with the Democrats because of wingnuts who are ready to blow shit up, but here is the catch. Even if they manage to pass a clean debt ceiling bill, what’s to say Trump doesn’t say “fuck it, let it burn?” He doesn’t care about governing, just keeping his tiny lunatic base happy. And he might just do it.