The #TreasonSummit went as expected.

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If you are still a trump supporter after that disgraceful performance in Finland today, I need to know why you have not been forcefully committed to an insane asylum. Folks in your own gang can't endorse his behavior today.

trump embarrassed his country, his family, his party, and himself....(I take that back, he has no shame, so he can't embarrass himself) today, and you have to wonder when it will all end. He stood next to a murderous dictator and trashed his own intelligence community and blamed his country as much as Russia for the attempts to undermine American democracy. (Good people on both sides.) I am now convinced that Putin and the Russians have some very damaging information on trump. Stunningly, when asked about it in the presser today, Putin did not deny it. With trump standing by his side, and Mrs. trump sitting across from him, Putin smiled and deflected the question. You just know that trump's heart was pounding in that moment, but Putin did not let him down and give up the goods. Not totally. He still needs him as his agent. 

I gotta tell you, I was never big on all this I word talk, but now, after today, I don't know.

"With #TreasonSummit now trending on Twitter, it’s probably a good time to revisit that whole “high crimes and misdemeanors” thing.

The calls for impeachment are coming from far and wide — even from some who are experts in fighting against treasonous  empires.

At this point, after seeing our president openly discredit American intelligence agencies in favor of sucking up to Vladimir Putin, impeachment as a consequence seems unfitting only in its disproportionate mildness. But since involuntary commitment seems to be off the table as a more immediate solution right now, we should talk about our options.

Under Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, a President can be impeached upon the “Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The House brings those formal charges against the president, and then the whole circus moves over to the Senate, which acts as the trier of fact. The Senate then hears evidence and makes the decision whether to convict and remove from office (by a two-thirds majority).

Fun as it would be to use treason as the vehicle to rid ourselves of the Donald, it probably won’t work. The treason statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2381, reads as follows:

“Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

Trump’s post-Putin presser was an absolute disgrace, but it probably doesn’t clearly rise to the level of levying war against the U.S. That’s fine, though. We’ve still got “high crimes and misdemeanors” and those will do just fine, as long as Congress can find their backbones.

The battle between the #MAGA army and those seeking to oust Trump tends to come in the form of “that behavior is bad, but it’s not an impeachable offense,” versus the Maxine Waters view that”impeachment is about whatever the Congress says it is.” Let’s elaborate a bit on what the Constitution actually meant by “high crimes and misdemeanors.”...

.......Since the 2016 election, the potential for Trump’s impeachment has come up many times, in response to Trump’s suppression of the press, his comments in Charlottesville, and his general, everyday, dismantling of our government and all that we hold dear as Americans. What we saw today, though, is next-level in terms of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”  The House already had the authority to begin impeachment proceedings; now, though, with Trump’s cozying up to Russia for all to see, it has no sound basis for dragging its feet any longer.

Whether our elected representatives will act, though, is far from certain.  As Bradley Moss put it:

“In truth, however, no one truly knows for certain what would happen in that context. The Clinton and Johnson impeachment proceedings were far more conventional in that regard. Furthermore, the threshold to successfully impeach and convict a sitting President is so high specifically to minimize frivolous charges. For President Trump to actually be removed from office, it would require significant desertions by members of his own party in the Senate.”

Those of us on impeachment watch will be hanging our hats on just those “significant desertions.” [Source]

trump is certainly giving the I word folks a lot to hang their hats on of late. 

*Pic from abcnews.go.com

Who do you believe?

President trump has now called James Comey a liar, and he has volunteered to testify under oath to refute what James Comey said while he was under oath.

The question now is which one of these two men do you believe.

The president?

"There’s a high bar to accusing someone of committing a “lie,” and we don’t do it lightly.

A lie isn’t just a false statement. It’s a false statement whose speaker knows it’s false. In these instances, the president — or his administration — have clear reason to know otherwise. Reporters are understandably cautious about using the word — some never do, because it requires speculating on what someone is thinking. The cases we call "lies" are ones where we think it's fair to make that call: Trump is saying something that contradicts clear and widely published information that we have reason to think he's seen. This list also includes bullshit: speech that is — in its academic definition — "unconnected to a concern with the truth.

trump's words: "The NSA and FBI tell Congress that Russia did not influence electoral process."

Lie: Trump posted the above tweet just hours after FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers began testifying about Russian interference in the 2016 election in favor of Trump. Comey testified that the FBI came to believe that Russia was using “active measures” to hurt the Clinton campaign and help the Trump campaign.

“They wanted to hurt our democracy, hurt her and help him,” Comey said. “Putin hated Secretary Clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was that he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much.”

Trump's tweet — and the video clip included with it — is a selective portion of the hearing where Nunes was asking Rogers if he had evidence Russia changed vote tallies in specific states.

Trump's words: “We got 306 because people came out and voted like they’ve never seen before so that’s the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan,” Trump said during a news conference on Feb. 16.

Lie: Trump actually won 304 electoral votes, because two electors refused to cast their vote for him when the Electoral College met.

Several former presidents have also received more electoral votes than Trump. George H. W. Bush won with 426 electoral votes in 1988. Bill Clinton won 370 votes in 1992 and 379 in 1996, and Barack Obama won with 365 votes in 2008.

When a reporter at the news conference called Trump out for spreading false information, the president said, "Well, I was just given that information. I don’t know. I was just given…We had a very big margin."

Trump's words: Trump tweeted on Sunday, "While on FAKE NEWS @CNN, Bernie Sanders was cut off for using the term fake news to describe the network. They said technical difficulties!"

Senator Sanders was on CNN's Erin Burnett Out Front on Feb. 10, discussing Trump's travel ban and controversy surrounding National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, among other topics.

Lie: During the interview, Burnett showed Sanders a clip of Trump responding to a reporter's question following news that Flynn called the Russian ambassador to the US before the inauguration to discuss previously-imposed sanctions. In the clip, Trump says he has "not seen the report."

Burnett then asked Sanders if it's a problem that the president did not know about the report, in which Sanders criticized Trump for dismissing negative news as "fake news."

CNN PR tweeted a transcript of the interview, which reads:

Burnett: "He says he knows nothing about it, hasn't seen any of these reports. Is that a problem?"

Sanders: "Well, I don't know, maybe he was watching CNN fake news, what do you think?"

Burnett: "You don't buy it?"

Sanders: "That was a joke."

Burnett: "I know it was a joke. I'm saying, you don't buy what he said, obviously?"

Right after Burnett acknowledged that Sanders was joking when he called CNN "fake news," the audio cut out and CNN went to a commercial break. When the show returned, Burnett picked up her interview where they left off and Sanders went on to say it's "not a joke" when "you have a president who attacks people in the media who make critical remarks of him — which is what their jobs is — as providing 'fake news.'"

rump's words: Trump again claimed there was widespread voter fraud during the November election, this time telling senators “thousands” of people were bussed in from Massachusetts to vote in New Hampshire.

Trump made the unsubstantiated claims in a closed-door meeting with 10 senators Thursday to discuss his Supreme Court nomination, Neil Gorsuch, Politico reported.

Trump blamed “thousands” of people who were “brought in on buses” from Massachusetts to vote illegally in New Hampshire during the meeting, which was also reported by the Associated Press.

Lie: Officials at New Hampshire’s secretary of state office, US Attorney’s Office, and Massachusetts’ attorney general’s office told BuzzFeed News there was no evidence to support the president’s claim.

“We have not seen any evidence of busloads of out-of-state voters coming across the border to vote in New Hampshire elections,” David Scanlan, deputy secretary of state for New Hampshire, said. Read more here.

rump's words: Trump tweeted at 6:57 a.m., "Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie), now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?"

At 8:17 a.m., Trump added, "Chris Cuomo, in this interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave 'service' in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!"

Blumenthal was interviewed on CNN Thursday morning, following his statement from the previous day, in which he said the president's nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Gorsuch, said Trump's recent attacks on the judiciary are "disheartening" and "demoralizing."

Lie: Cuomo asked that exact question. His question to Blumenthal was, "What is your response to the president of the United States, who says you should not be believed because you misrepresented your military record in the past?" [Source]

There is lots more where that came from, but I think you get the picture.

James Comey?

James Brien Comey Jr. (born December 14, 1960) is an American lawyer who served as the seventh Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from September 2013 until May 2017.^[2] Comey has been a registered Republican for most of his life, but is now independent.

Comey was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from January 2002 to December 2003, and subsequently the United States Deputy Attorney General from December 2003 to August 2005 in the administration of President George W. Bush. Comey appointed Patrick Fitzgerald to be the Special Counsel to head the grand jury investigation into the Plame affair after Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself.

In August 2005, Comey left the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and became general counsel and senior vice president of Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Maryland.^[3] In 2010, he became general counsel at Bridgewater Associates, based in Westport, Connecticut. In early 2013, he left Bridgewater to become a Senior Research Scholar and Hertog Fellow on National Security Law at Columbia Law School. He served on the Board of Directors of HSBC Holdings until July 2013.^[4]

In September 2013, Comey was appointed Director of the FBI by President Barack Obama.^[5] In that capacity, he was responsible for overseeing the FBI's investigation of the Hillary Clinton email controversy. His role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, particularly with regard to his public communications, was highly controversial.^[6] His decisions have been regarded by a number of analysts, including Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, to have likely cost Clinton the election.... [Source]

 

I think we have read enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Malaysian Air again.

"When you think is peace and safety:
A sudden destruction.
Collective security for surety, ye-ah" ~Bob Marley~


I hear you brother Bob. It's crazy out here. Those poor souls on that Malaysia Airlines jet could not have thought that such an unspeakable tragedy could have hit that carrier twice in such a short span of time. And yet....




Anyway, it's looking more and more like those Russian backed separatists are to blame for this surface to air missile blowing that jet out of the sky in the Eastern Ukraine.




Mr. Putin and the boys might have some explaining to do. (Apparently there is audio of one of those separatists saying to one of their Russian handlers that they f****d up.) Not that this would bother the aforementioned Mr. Putin. The man, quite frankly, is insane.




There should be a black box (if the rebels haven't stolen it already) so unlike the case of that other tragic Malaysian flight, we should have some closure.




Finally, folks know that I chase racism with the best of them, but sometimes there are false alarms, and we should know how to recognize them when they manifest themselves.




Take for instance this case in Iowa:

"A star high school athlete in rural Marshalltown, Iowa has been suspended for three football games this fall because he posted a social media image of himself enthusiastically festooned from head to toe in white clothing during school spirit week. In the photo, he made the letter “W” with his hands — which in this case stands for white.

The student is Blair Van Staalduine, reports Des Moines NBC affiliate WHO-TV.The student’s parents say the the principal of Marshalltown High School called Van Staalduine a racist after concluding that his hand signal was a white pride symbol.

The parents have now responded to the suspension and the charge that their son is a racist by threatening to sue.

“We were appalled,” his mother, Cathy Van Staalduine, tol WHO-TV. “We were appalled and so was he. Absolutely. Because the furthest thing from Blair is being racist.”

The school colors at Marshalltown High appear to be red, white and blue. Van Staalduine wore white because school officials had asked members of his class to wear white during school spirit week festivities.

“The actual school chose the colors that each grade would be wearing,” Cathy Van Staalduine explained. “Juniors wore white. So Blair, of course, being active in the school, dressed from head to toe in white.”


She noted emphatically that the “W” sign was for the color her son was assigned.


“Blair says if they were wearing orange, they would have done an ‘O,’” she said.
The mad mother said she talked to the principal, and he managed to call her a racist to her face.

The Marshalltown High School principal is Aiddy Phomvisay, according to the Marshalltown Senior High School website.

The Van Staalduine family is now demanding that the principal quash the suspension and issue a public apology. Otherwise, they say, they will file a lawsuit to protect their son’s good name.

As for the actual image showing her son making a “W” sign, Cathy Van Staalduine said she is holding it close to the vest in the event that this incident actually ends up in court." [Source]

Looking...looking...looking....nope, no sign of the big R here. We need to move along.


The poor kid could have been a George W Bush fan for all we know.








 






  

Stealing a ring and kissing another.

This is Father's Day, and I hope that all of you out there who just happen to be sperm donors took the opportunity to reflect on your lives and what you could have done better.

And, if you are like this guy, you have some serious soul searching to do.

Anyway, this story with Putin and the Super Bowl ring is crazy.  Can you imagine if the owner of a sports franchise accused President Obama of stealing his ring?

Putin, as is to be expected, says that Kraft is lying, and that he [Kraft] gave it to him as a gift.

Kraft says that Putin basically strong armed him and took the bling.

"Kraft returned to the U.S. without his Super Bowl XXXIX ring, which, in 2005, he claimed he had given to Putin as a gift. Now Kraft has a new spin on the story.

Via the New York Post:

Kraft explained the incident happened while Sandy Weill and other business execs were in St. Petersburg. “I took out the ring and showed it to [Putin], and he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring,’ ” Kraft told the crowd at Carnegie Hall’s Medal of Excellence gala at the Waldorf-Astoria.“I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out.”

That’s right, Vladimir Putin pocketed the New England Patriots’ owner’s Super Bowl ring. Kraft told the crowd that he later received a call from the Bush White House strongly advising him to say he gave the ring as a gift in order to help with U.S.-Russian relations. So Kraft did just that, which I guess was what he figured was his……ahem…..Patriotic duty." [Source]

Honestly, I don't know who to believe. I have never been a Robert Kraft fan, but I can see Putin conveniently forgetting to give the ring back as well.

"I took out the ring and showed it to [Putin], and he put it on and he goes, 'I can kill someone with this ring,'" Kraft told the crowd, according to the New York Post. "I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out."

A spokesman for Putin, however, told CNN on Sunday that the ring was definitely given as a gift.

"What Mr. Kraft is saying now is weird," Dmitry Peskov told CNN. "I was standing 20 centimeters away from him and Mr. Putin and saw and heard how Mr. Kraft gave this ring as a gift.

Peskov told CNN that the ring now is at the Kremlin's library."

Too bad the Patriots didn't have one of their secret video tape machines taping the exchange.

Finally, if the republican party ever wants to be relevant again they are going to have to stop kissing the ring of the likes of Glenn Beck.

He has weighed into the immigration reform battle and is comparing republicans politricksters who oppose immigration reform to civil rights leaders of old who battled injustice here in America.

Hmmm, Medgar Evers or Louis Gohmert. One was shot and lost his life while trying to make this a better country, one shoots off his mouth while making it worse.

"Beck has pledged to put his entire network behind these members (once again turning it into a public policy organization) and, on the program last night, called upon his viewers to rally in support of this effort, saying that if they don't, it will be like Saddam Hussein's slaughter of the Kurds. Comparing them to heroes like George Washington, Beck ended his monologue by comparing these anti-immigration Republicans to civil rights leaders by running a montage of images of Martin Luther King and other civil rights activists alongside the words "we shall not be moved"' [Source]

This country is in some serious trouble.

Condi, we need to talk.

While we enjoy the guts and athleticism of our swimmers in the Olympics, and we obsess over where the Breck Boy is sticking his johnson; the world, as we know it, is going to hell in a freaking hand basket.

Many of you poo pooed my recent post about my Condi jones, and you said that I was being flip about my desire to...well, swing an episode with her. But imagine if Mrs. Field had given me permission, and I had been allowed to...well, get to know her better.

Can you imagine the opportunity your humble field Negro would have had to influence world affairs? While pillow talking with Condi , for instance, I would have had an opportunity to give her my humble opinion about her boss and what a colossal fuck up he has been.

For instance, now that the Russians have destroyed the A-merry-can trained Georgian army, and pretty much pimp slapped that entire country, has it ever occurred to your boss that none of this would have happened if the neocons in his administration had kept their damn ambitions in check? While they were busy planning their grand scheme to conquer the Middle East, they forgot that a former *KGB(thanks ac.nerd) agent was leading an increasingly more powerful and proud mother Russia into a new century.

So now our military is tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, and all the frat boy can do is plead with Putin to pull back his troops. Too late, the red army is hell bent on putting an ass whopping on President Saakashvili's troops, and they will not stop until there is total humiliation, surrender, and regime change. You know Condi, kind of like what we did in Iraq. But field, this is different, this was a sovereign nation with a democratically elected leader. Really? But so was Iraq. And although their leader wasn't "democratically elected", quite a large segment of their population was fine with the job he was doing. Besides, I thought we went into Iraq to prevent them from attacking us with WMD's?

And didn't the Russians go into Georgia because the Georgians attacked one of their states (South Ossetia) which wanted to align themselves with Russia? Don't most of those people in that state consider themselves Russians? If that's the case, couldn't we argue, that Putin, in essence, was coming to the defense of his own people?

So what are we going to do now? The Russians have flexed their muscles, and all we can do is watch. Oh your boss, the frat boy, will make his usual pronouncements condemning what the Russians did; but so what? Putin will just continue doing what he has been doing for the past few days: shaking his dick at us, and giving us his ass to kiss. (Still think you can see into his soul now frat boy?) Putin might be a lot of things, but he isn't stupid.

And Condi, I hear that you yourself had a heated phone conversation with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, after he told you that the Georgian President must go. Then the Russian Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said this to our Ambassador: "I'd like to say straightaway that regime change is an American expression....We do not use such expression". See what a mess the frat boy put you in Condi? See how he tied your hand? You can't even do your job anymore. And to think you have a doctorate in this shit.

"Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century.. The Russian government must reverse the course it appears to be on and accept this peace agreement as a first step toward solving this conflict,..."

Yeah whatever frat boy. And somewhere down in a very hot place called hell, a man with a thick mustache and a funny beret is laughing his ass off.