Cody Johnston

Chances are you’re going to want to play that Harmonica.

Life is as depressing as hell.

Not so Jolly Old St. Robert III

From The Makers Of Empire

Be Best

A New Vagina For Christmas

Extra

Normalizing Surveilance

Shopping

Home For The Holidays

Not Christmas

I will kill the men in the iron suits and tear down their stone houses!

Not the movie you think it is. No, really.

Oh, you want news

All You Need Is Cash

Subtitulada en español.

The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and…

Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?

Exactly.

Does that mean it’s louder? Is it any louder?

Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

I don’t know.

Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Put it up to eleven.

Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

These go to eleven.

The directors of the firm hired to continue the credits after the other people had been sacked, with it to be known that they have just been sacked.

The credits have been completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.

Grr… The enablers are out in full force this morning. You can’t indict a sitting President. Unproven! It all hinges on intent, maybe he was just too dumb. No it doesn’t!

And this is on MSNBC.

Donald John Trump is guilty, guilty, guilty of Campaign Finance Fraud and Conspiracy to commit the same.

By Paul Waldman at WaPo–

Prosecutors explicitly state that Cohen coordinated with President Trump on hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal over his alleged affairs with them: “as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.” That’s Donald Trump.

We knew this already — and we knew that Trump lied about it, claiming not to know about the payments — but this says that prosecutors believe that Trump ordered Cohen to commit a crime.

Max Bergmann and Sam Berger at Daily Beast–

Mueller may still be only showing us part of his hand, but it’s a damn good hand. He has signalled to us he’s found collusion. He has shown us that the president is compromised. He has told us that he has gathered information important to his investigation about contacts with people in the Trump Organization, the campaign, the transition, and even the White House. That’s everyone Trump has been connected with since he started running. And given all the redacted information in his filings and all that he’s been told by cooperating witnesses, we can be confident that Mueller will show us even more.

Mueller is coming. And he is clearly coming for Trump. Not simply for obstructing justice but for conspiring with a hostile foreign power to win an election. This is a scandal unlike any America has ever seen.

From now on it will be our policy never to refer to Trump without the words “Unindicted Co-Conspirator”.

        Unindicted Co-Conspirator The Donald.
        Unindicted Co-Conspirator Donald
        Unindicted Co-Conspirator Trump
        Unindicted Co-Conspirator Donald Trump
        Unindicted Co-Conspirator Donald J. Trump
        Unindicted Co-Conspirator Donald John Trump

        Unindicted Co-Conspirator Donny Boy Sr.

Last night’s Rachel Maddow is required watching. She really encapsulated the meaning of each of the 3 reports released yesterday and how they all fit together.

Not as required but still worth a schadenfreud chuckle, Lawrence O’Donnell.

Meanwhile, in the Heartland, Flyover Country, more non-Political music.

That’s Just The Way It Is – Bruce Hornsby and the Range

Allentown – Billy Joel

Castle of Glass – Linkin Park

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

America enters World War Two; Former Beatle John Lennon is shot to death in New York.

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.

James Thurber

Continue reading

Trevor Noah made a trip to his home town, Soweto South Africa, to celebrate the 100th Birthday of Nelson Mandela. It’s one of the best pieces he’s ever done.

Unfortunately Comedy Central has changed the availability of clips for embedding on their website (basically not at all) but the whole thing can be viewed here.

I was able to get some clips off YouTube including him and his Gran and his interview with Usher-

Cribs

Usher

So after another 14 Hour flight Trevor was back in New York.

With Laryngitis.

Now I can totally sympathize, it’s one of the many things I hate about flying (acrophobia, which I have, not among them) because the air in the plane is so very dry and you’re strapped in an aluminum tube with everyone else’s germs. I’m frequently sick after a flight.

But it’s been a funny week with Trevor’s Correspondents taking a seat in the Power ‘U’ doing the heavy lifting while Trevor sits there grimacing and contributing the occasional Hawkings voice box comment via his iPhone.

Here’s some of it-

Day 1

Nude Mitch McConnell

Day 3

I could show you the Bill Gates interview with Ronny Chieng but I hate Bill Gates and it’s kind of gross. Notably absent from their YouTube postings is Dulcé Sloan, a Black Woman which I’m sure has nothing to do with it.

My interest in Brexit is totally agnostic (Left case remember). Leaving under the May deal is nothing but capitulation to all the things that are bad about further involvement in the EU with the additional benefit of giving up your veto power and a seat at the table. A Hard Brexit is likely to be just that- hard.

But the fight over it has the strictly transactional silver lining of making a Labour Government under Jeremy Corbyn (who despite reports to the contrary is unlikely to ship Jews off to Concentration Camps) a distinct probability.

I thought you might be interested in what he has to say-

Labour could do a better Brexit deal. Give us the chance – or give the people another vote
by Jeremy Corbyn, The Guardian
Thu 6 Dec 2018

The botched Brexit deal that Theresa May has put to parliament this week is a monumental and damaging failure for our country. Instead of the sensible agreement the prime minister could have negotiated, it is a worst-of-all-worlds deal that works for nobody, whether they voted leave or remain.

Instead of taking back control, it gives up control. Instead of protecting jobs and living standards, it puts them at risk by failing to put in place the basis for frictionless trade. For two and a half years the Conservatives have been negotiating with themselves, rather than the European Union. The result has been a lockdown withdrawal agreement, which ties Britain either into extending the transition phase at unknown cost – or tips us into a lopsided backstop agreement from which there is no independent exit. As the legal advice the prime minister tried to prevent us from seeing this week spells out, the backstop would “endure indefinitely” without the say-so of the EU.

What that means in practice is that the wish list of the government’s “future partnership” agreement with the EU would remain just that, without the leverage to get a long-term and effective trade deal. Meanwhile, Britain would have no say in either its own customs arrangements or key market regulations. While workers’ rights would be allowed to fall behind, restrictions on state aid to industry would be locked in.

May claims this is just an insurance policy. But it’s now clear the backstop is at the heart of her deal. It would leave Britain with no say in a humiliating halfway house which we couldn’t leave without the EU’s permission. There is no precedent I am aware of for a British government signing up to an international treaty it cannot withdraw from without the agreement of other countries. It is clearly unacceptable.

The only reason the government has agreed such a convoluted package is to manage the warring factions of the Tory party. But it has failed. Instead it has united Conservative leavers and remainers, the DUP and every opposition party against it.

This dreadful deal must be defeated when it is put to the vote next week. We are working with MPs and parties across the House of Commons not only to ensure it is rejected, but also to prevent any possibility of a no-deal outcome.

But its defeat cannot be taken for granted. In an effort to drag Tory MPs back onside, May is claiming that defeat for her deal means no deal or no Brexit, because there is no viable alternative. That is false. Labour’s alternative plan would unlock the negotiations for our future relationship with the EU and allow us to move away from such a damaging backstop.

A new, comprehensive customs union with the EU, with a British say in future trade deals, would strengthen our manufacturing sector and give us a solid base for industrial renewal under the next Labour government, especially for our held-back communities. It would remove the threat of different parts of the UK being subject to separate regulations. And it would deal with the large majority of problems the backstop is designed to solve.

Second, a new and strong relationship with the single market that gives us frictionless trade, and the freedom to rebuild our economy and expand our public services – while setting migration policies to meet the needs of the economy, not fuelling xenophobia with phoney immigration targets or thresholds – makes far more sense than the prime minister’s dismal deal.

Lastly, we want to see guarantees that existing EU rights at work, environmental standards and consumer protections will become a benchmark to build on – not fall behind and undercut other countries at our people’s expense. These rights and protections, whether on chlorinated chicken or paid holidays, are what people actually want. But the government is determined to trade them away in a race to the bottom

Labour has very different priorities. Our alternative plan would ensure an open border in Ireland, provide security for investment, give our manufacturing sector a springboard for renewal, ensure we have the powers to rebuild our economy and public services and guarantee world-beating support for workers, consumers and our environment. We are absolutely committed to internationalist cooperation and anti-racist solidarity across Europe, in or out of the EU, and determined to ensure opportunities for students to study in other countries are protected.

Unlike the Norway-plus option now being canvassed among MPs, our plan would not leave Britain as an across-the-board rule-taker of EU regulations without a say. It’s a plan that can be negotiated with the EU, even at this late stage, with most of the building blocks already in place. The EU has shown it is prepared to renegotiate even more complex agreements than this, such as the Lisbon treaty. And ours is a plan I believe could command a majority in parliament and bring the country together.

The stakes could not be higher next week. If the prime minister’s deal is defeated, the government will have lost its majority on the most important issue facing the country and lost its ability to govern. The best outcome in those circumstances would be to let the country decide on the way ahead and the best team to lead it. That means a general election.

In the past, a defeat of such seriousness as May now faces would have meant an automatic election. But if under the current rules we cannot get an election, all options must be on the table. Those should include Labour’s alternative and, as our conference decided in September, the option of campaigning for a public vote to break the deadlock. Two years ago, people voted remain because they wanted an open, international relationship with Europe and a multicultural society. Many voted leave out of anger at the way the political class had left them behind, with crumbling infrastructure and low-paid, insecure jobs. Our job is to unite people with a plan that works for the whole country.

Given the decisions taken in parliament this week, it should now be easier to build support for an alternative plan to bring the country together. The government’s deal must not stand. In those circumstances parliament has shown it is ready to take control, and Labour will give the leadership the country needs.