First We Count the Money, and Then We Make the Appointment

Headline of the Day:

Six donors that Trump appointed to cabinet gave almost $12 million to back his campaign

Moscow on the Potomac

Come on, Bubba, didn't we know it all along? American intelligence sources have "high confidence" that Russia was interfering in our election to cripple Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump get to the White House.

Worse, American officials -- including, very likely, Mitch McConnell -- knew it, knew it in spades, and chose to stay quiet about it. James Comey at the FBI decided that inconsequential emails on Anthony Weiner's computer were far more earth-shaking than the subversion of our government by the Russians.

Trump knew it. When he invited the Russians to hack his Democratic opponent's email at that press conference on July 27th, he was projecting what he already knew was going on, because he can't resist bragging and wagging his dick. Ever.



Tell me that ain't treason.

BTW, Trump hasn't had another press conference since.

It's also come to light that the tiger they've bedded down with -- Vladimir Putin -- -- also hacked the National Republican Party and has their shit in his back pocket. High stakes blackmail, should prominent Republicans with embarrassing emails in their past choose at any time in the future to oppose Mr. Putin and his newest butt-buddy, Donald J. Trump, in their world conquest. (FBI Director James Comey, who had a Trump sign in his front yard [see below], was very recently saying that the Russian attempt to hack the Republican Party had been unsuccessful.)

When the CIA's secret conclusion came out yesterday about overt Russian shenanigans undertaken for Trump, the "Trump transition team" (Jared Kushner?) could not resist another big lie while also attacking the intelligence agencies:

“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the statement said. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’ ”

One of the Biggest Electoral College victories "in history"??? No, not even close. That's total bullshit. Trump took 306 electoral votes, to Hillary's 232. How does his number compare?

Dwight Eisenhower, both elections, 442 electoral votes, 457 electoral votes

Lyndon Johnson (1964), 486 electoral votes

Nixon's reelection (1972), 520 electoral votes

Reagan's first and second elections (1980 and 1984), 489 electoral votes, 525 electoral votes

It is way more than merely a good thing that Mr. Obama has ordered intelligence agencies to assemble a detailed report of “lessons learned” about the Russian hacking before he leaves office on Jan. 20 -- a comprehensive history of the Russian effort to undermine democracy ... so that the truth isn't somehow lost shortly following "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office...."

Cuisine a la Donald

You can't believe anything he says. He's a liar. He's a snake-oil salesman. He exaggerates and then claims he never said any of it.

Last night in Michigan, when another of his idol-worshipping crowds began chanting "Lock her up!" Trump responded, “That plays great before the election — now we don’t care, right?”

Riiiight!

Can't wait for him to cave to Paul Ryan on that great promise of his to protect Social Security and Medicare. A new study at Pennsylvania State University has just revealed that Trump did best (as compared to Romney's performance four years ago) in the counties with the highest drug, alcohol, and suicide mortality rates. In other words, the communities that love Trump the most, and invest the most naive trust in his lies, will suffer the most when his gang dismantles the safety net.

He flaunts his corruption (hat tip: JF) and dares anyone to object:

According to the latest Federal Election Commission filings, Trump directed close to $3 million in campaign funds towards Trump-owned properties between Oct. 20 and Nov. 28. Tag Air, Inc., the Trump-owned company that operates his personal jet, raked in $2,055,786 in travel expenses. A small galaxy of Trump-branded properties — various hotels, golf resorts, and restaurants — collected an additional $777,672.83.

I did not order this shit sandwich.

I was with a bunch of people who wanted to try out this new restaurant. They said it was the best; you could get the best food there, and we would really love it. Well, I'd heard it wasn't that great, and I said so, but they all said, no, no, it'll be great! You have to come! So we get to the restaurant and the head waiter, a fat orange guy with a comb-over, hands us menus, and there's prime rib and lobster and all kinds of other enticing dishes, and they're all really cheap! So we all order the prime rib.

Pretty soon the waiter comes back and sets our plates in front of us. And on each plate is a shit sandwich. Nothing else -- not even a pickle or a sprig of parsley. And this one guy in our party, the guy in the red baseball cap who wanted so badly to come to this restaurant, says, Hey, what's this? We ordered the prime rib? And the fat orange waiter just laughs and says, Oh, that's only available in the private dining room upstairs. Everybody else gets shit sandwiches.

So everybody's really pissed and bewildered. I'm pissed too, but I already knew I'd get a shit sandwich, and I said, See, I told you so. Shit sandwiches for everybody!

Knowing that everybody else got one too didn't make mine taste any better.

[Hattip Dick Sloop, who purloined it from the Democratic Underground]

White Working Class: You've Been Conned

Trump told us all during the campaign that he thought American wages were too high:



Now he's acting on that threat by nominating Andrew Puzder to head the Labor Department, a fast-food CEO who is an enemy of raising the minimum wage. Oh, he's all for lowering corporate and wealthy income taxes, but don't ask him for a raise if you work slinging burgers in one of his restaurants.

Puzder and his wife gave a total of $332,000 to get Trump elected.

There's "trickle-down" for you.

Trump Will Continue as a TV Entertainer

So the headline last night, lingering into this morning: "Donald Trump Will Continue Producing 'Celebrity Apprentice.' "

He has no respect for the presidency. He has no respect for the American people. Everything's a con game to him.

He's next going to con the public that he's not going to be involved in his businesses while in the presidency. He's already bragged that there can't be a conflict of interest for the president.

There will be conflicts of interest, plenty of them. He's going to enrich himself every which way from Sunday. The country be damned.

Dear EPA: Here's Your Exploding Cigar

Trump has selected Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma and beloved of the fossil fuel industry, to run the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt is pretty famous for being a climate change denier.

“During the campaign, Mr. Trump regularly threatened to dismantle the E.P.A. and roll back many of the gains made to reduce Americans’ exposures to industrial pollution, and with Pruitt, the president-elect would make good on those threats,” said Ken Cook, head of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington research and advocacy organization.

“It’s a safe assumption that Pruitt could be the most hostile E.P.A. administrator toward clean air and safe drinking water in history,” he added.

Mr. Pruitt is actually suing the agency he will head, suing over regulations aimed at forcing power plants to significantly reduce their emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution.

Another day, another assault on the public good.

Mammal of the Year

Donald Trump's neediness is embarrassing because it's so revealing of his insecurity. Did his mother not hug him as a child? Did his father not show him any affection?

A year ago when Time magazine picked Angela Merkel as its Person of the Year rather than Donald Trump, Trump tweeted, “I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite. They picked [the] person who is ruining Germany.”

A week later at one of his rallies in Mesa, Arizona, with thousands of the slavish worshipping at his feet, he couldn't resist scratching at that scab:

“I was on their cover four, five weeks ago. They should have picked me for the ‘Person of the Year,’ but they didn’t. No, they should have,” Trump said. “ … I said I’m never going to get it because I’m not establishment. But every panel that I saw on television when Time was — because, you know, it’s sort of cool, even though the magazine’s going down the tubes. No, it’s a cool thing. Most magazines are going down, in all fairness to them. It’s great, isn’t it? To watch these guys go down the tubes? Isn’t it great? I love it.”

Today, having been named Time's Man of the Year for 2016, Trump is presumably thrilled that the magazine is not going down the tubes but rather shooting for the stars because it's got Trump on its cover:

“It's a great honor,” the president-elect said on NBC's “Today” show on Wednesday morning. “It means a lot, especially me growing up reading Time magazine. And it's a very important magazine, and I've been lucky enough to be on the cover many times this year — and last year. But I consider this a very, very great honor.”

Since he launched his campaign for the presidency, Trump's been on the cover of many magazines. According to Jenna Johnson, "Trump keeps stacks of these magazines in his office and jokes that he doesn’t have time to read all of them because there are so many. He has said that he’s like a 'supermodel, except, like, times 10.' ”

Trump's obsessive preoccupation with himself and whether everybody is looking at him enough -- the tally on how many times his picture is on the cover of a magazine may be the least of it -- and the ample documentation that he does not or cannot govern his impulses -- all this suggests that he is possessed by delusions of personal greatness, which is compensating for a deep-seated feeling of worthlessness.

No matter how much you folks adore him, it will never fill the hole in his heart.

Marooned on Gullible's Island

Scalawag and Vagabond

So this happened last Sunday: A North Carolina man who read something on-line drove north to Washington, D.C., with three guns in his car (a Colt long rifle, a .38-caliber revolver and a shotgun. One early report said he also had an AR-15), found Connecticut Ave. and drove north until he got to 5037, the home of a pizza parlor named Comet Ping Pong.

He entered the restaurant fully armed and caused panic for 45 minutes. He shot off the lock to a storage room door (according to one source; another report says he fired a shot into the floor to cow everybody). He was looking to rescue child sex slaves who were allegedly making money for Hillary Clinton.

When he didn't find the child sex slaves, Edgar Maddison Welch surrendered to D.C. police. He's alive. He had the good sense to surrender by walking backward out into the street with his hands in the air. He's white. He's gullible. In his own eyes he's Moses, looking to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt.

Did you not know that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were peddling child flesh for cash? Also indulging in a little Satanism on the side. It's #pizzagate, Baby! The fake "news" story that someone cobbled together out of "hints" in the Wilileaks-email-dump that went viral before the election, especially among the under-informed.

Outrage followed, mixed with over-the-top, life-or-death, armed-resistance-to-the-rescue fantasizing. Self-righteousness blazed forth. Take Alex Jones, for example -- a talk-show host and leader of the right-wing website Infowars:

“When I think about all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped, I have zero fear standing up against her,” Jones said in a YouTube video posted on Nov. 4. “Yeah, you heard me right. Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children. I just can’t hold back the truth anymore.”

We don't know yet where Edgar Maddison Welch, the 28-year-old resident of Salisbury, N.C., got his news, but some of his backstory has come out. According to the reporting of Marc Fisher, John Woodrow Cox and Peter Hermann:

Earlier this fall, in Salisbury, Edgar Maddison Welch saw some friends doing drugs and he started preaching at them, aggressively.

Danielle Tillman, 23, was the best friend of Welch’s girlfriend. She said she had just taken acid when Welch got upset, chanting Jesus’ name at her.

“He grabbed my hand and got in my face and was like, ‘Let the demons out of her,’ ” Tillman recalled. “It was super weird.”

Welch, known to friends as Maddison, had struck friends as a sweet young man who’d had trouble finding his way....

A few years ago, he told his hometown newspaper that through hiking, he had broken his addiction to the Internet.

But Welch had another habit. He was arrested several times on drug-possession charges and his name appeared on a forged prescription, according to police ­records. He was convicted of marijuana possession and public drinking and was sent to a ­substance-abuse program.

Friends say Welch, 28, in recent months grew far more outwardly religious. “He sees himself as someone who is a protector,” said his friend Charles Dobson, 28. “He is just a thrill-seeking guy.”

I'm not going to say that #pizzagate is a sign of the times, which heralds more to come. I'm not going to say that Trump Nation is now the Land of the Facts-Free. I'm not going to exaggerate the very real damage done to actual people by fact-free fantasies, especially in the #pizzagate case. (Get a load of the abuse the owner of Comet Ping Pong has endured; his neighboring businesses have also been threatened.)

What I am going to say is that the Trump administration is and has been a pass-through for facts-free rumors, poison-drops, rabble-rousing incitements. Forget the bilge that Trumplethinskin himself has tweeted for months and continues to tweet. Have you even looked at Breitbart, the creation of Trump's right-hand-man Steve Bannon?

More to the point of armed men seeking vigilante justice and Trump's part in creating that environment ... Do you know that Trump transition official Michael Flynn Jr., who is also close adviser to his father Michael Flynn Sr., whom Trump selected to serve as national security adviser, sent numerous posts on Twitter about the conspiracy theories of Pizzagate? Michael Senior has also been found to have an itchy Twitter finger. The Flynn boys are not that different from Edgar Maddison Welch. They just have a much bigger arsenal at their disposal.

Does nobody under the Trump influence have a shit-detector? (I exempt Mr. Trump from that question, since it's clear he's merely a manipulator and probably knows a hawk from a handsaw, and likes confusion.)

Why I'm Looking Forward to 2018

Over the past 20 midterm elections, going back to 1938, the out-party has won at least 24 seats a substantial 11 times.

--Stuart Rothenberg

How many seats in the U.S. House would Democrats need to win to take control away from Republicans in 2018?

24 (see above).

Of course, if Trumplethinskin proves to be The Second Coming, then all bets are off. Since he's already shown that his promises are mere bluffs, not to be taken seriously, perhaps his slavish followers won't care when the paint peels on Trump Nation.