Is Music Political? Of course not, perish the thought. Get out on the dance floor and hook up!

I’m Afraid Of Americans – David Bowie

Grrr… “America”. There are 35 countries in “America”!

Liar – Henry Rollins

Is that a Trump tan?

American Idiot – Green Day

Had to rinse out the puke bucket today.

I may be drunk, but tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be ugly.

Zinke responds to ethics criticism by calling Democratic lawmaker a drunk
By BEN LEFEBVRE, Politico
11/30/2018

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Friday accused the House Natural Resources Committee’s top Democrat of “drunken” behavior and paying “hush money” after the Democrat called for the secretary to resign for his series of ethics scandals.

“It’s hard for him to think straight from the bottom of the bottle,” Zinke wrote on his official Interior Department Twitter account after Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) published an op-ed asking for Zinke’s resignation.

The remark, which in most eras would be considered a stunning breach of decorum for a sitting Cabinet member, is the latest in a string of comments by Zinke proclaiming his innocence or calling for investigations against his critics. He followed by making other unproven allegations against Grijalva, who is set to chair the Natural Resources Committee after Democrats take control of the chamber in January.

Grijalva responded in a statement: “The American people know who I’m here to serve, and they know in whose interests I’m acting. They don’t know the same about Secretary Zinke.”

He added on Twitter: “The allegations against Secretary Zinke are credible and serious. Instead of addressing the substantive issues raised in this morning’s op-ed, he’s resorting to personal attacks.”
…
Grijalva had pointed in his op-ed to the various ethical investigations into Zinke, including at least one that has been referred to the Justice Department. The Arizona Democrat promised his committee would continue investigating Zinke when the Democrats take power.

In his response to Grijalva, Zinke wrote: “This is coming from a man who used nearly $50,000 in tax dollars as hush money to cover up his drunken and hostile behavior. He should resign and pay back the taxpayer for the hush money and the tens of thousands of dollars he forced my department to spend investigating unfounded allegations.”
…
Then again, Zinke has been known to enjoy the occasional beer himself — last year, he tweeted a picture of himself settling a beef with Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Lisa Murkowski over a couple of Alaska brews.

Part of one investigation into Zinke also centers on his years-long plan to open a microbrewery in his hometown of Whitefish, Mont. Whitefish residents told POLITICO earlier this year Zinke was a regular sight at the Bulldog Saloon, the Spotted Bear Spirits distillery and The Lodge at Whitefish Lake for drinks. One resident told POLITICO: “I’ve seen him at breweries all the time. … I know he’s super into craft beer.“

Zinke at the time sent a text message to POLITICO about the investigation, saying, “At this point in my life, I am more interested in sampling hand crafted beers rather than making them.”
…
Meanwhile, at least one other Democrat took to Twitter on Friday morning to back up Grijalva’s call for Zinke’s resignation.

“Zinke has brought a culture of corruption and corporate favoritism to an agency tasked with caring for our public lands and resources,” New York Rep. Nydia Velázquez wrote. “The American people deserve better.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi added: “We couldn’t have a clearer contrast with the values-based leadership of @RepRaulGrijalva to protect the planet for our children than @SecretaryZinke’s toxic, special interest agenda.”

Zinke has maintained that the investigations into him have shown no proof of wrongdoing, although he remains under a considerable cloud and is one of several Cabinet members believed likely to leave the Trump administration in coming months.

In potentially the most damaging probe into his conduct, the Interior Department’s inspector general has been looking into Zinke’s ties to a land deal in Whitefish that also involves the chairman of Halliburton, a major oil services company whose business Interior regulates — as POLITICO first reported in June.

The deal involves a foundation that Zinke formed and, according to Montana government records, was part of until earlier this year. Zinke has said the filing that listed him as a foundation director in 2018 was the fault of his lawyer.

Another probe by the inspector general involves Interior’s handling of an American Indian casino project in Connecticut that was opposed by gambling giant MGM Resorts International.

Zinke had sought to skirt or alter department policies to justify his taxpayer-funded trips with his wife. Earlier it found that he had not properly disclosed ties to donor Bill Foley, whom he used a charter flight to visit last year while on official business. An earlier investigation into alleged political threats against Murkowski was deemed inconclusive after investigators said Zinke did not cooperate.

Zinke has done a series of interviews in recent weeks to declare his innocence.

“You know what they all say?” Zinke said of the investigations on Fox News on Thursday night. “Ryan Zinke follows all the rules, all the regulations, all the procedures. This is politically motivated. In Montana we call it b.s.”

During the same interview, he called for an investigation into the Western Values Project, a Montana-based conservation group that has criticized his policies and behavior. The group’s executive director. Chris Saeger, hit back Friday.

“It’s patently obvious the secretary is in a panic and is trying to deflect attention away from serious allegations and concerns about his conduct,” Saeger said. “He should refocus his attention on the pending investigations into his unethical conduct and repairing his record on public lands.”

White House officials and sources close to Zinke have said he is expected to leave his position around the end of the year, and POLITICO has reported that he has even reached out to energy companies about possible employment after Interior. Zinke has denied that, telling media outlets that he still enjoys Trump’s support.

Hah, hah, hah. Stupid Twitter fight, right?

Not so much.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke must resign. His multiple scandals show he’s unfit to serve.
by Raúl M. Grijalva, USA Today
Nov. 30, 2018

Ryan Zinke needs to resign immediately as Secretary of the Interior.

I take no pleasure in calling for this step, and I have resisted it even as questions have grown about Mr. Zinke’s ethical and managerial failings. Unfortunately, his conduct in office and President Donald Trump’s neglect in setting ethical standards for his own cabinet have made it unavoidable.

While the secretary continues to project confidence, questions have grown since the election about his future plans, and the White House reportedly fears that he would be unable to withstand scrutiny on Capitol Hill. Those fears are justified. Mr. Zinke has never even tried to offer an explanation for the sheer scope of his well-documented scandals.

This silence is insulting to the American people, and given the Nov. 6 election results it is unsustainable. Continuing in office as though nothing has changed only shows how little Mr. Zinke has learned over the past year and a half. He holds his job as a public trust, not as a stepping stone to his further personal ambitions. He has abused that trust and damaged the Interior Department in the process. The least he can do is step down and give his successor a chance to begin reversing that damage.

It’s worth recounting how far that abuse went on Republicans’ watch. As has been widely reported, an Interior Department inspector general investigation of Mr. Zinke — one of at least 17 publicly known formal probes of either him or his department since he took office — was recently referred to the Justice Department.The referral centers on a land development project called 95 Karrow in Mr. Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Mont., involving David Lesar, the chairman of oil contractor Halliburton; his son John; and a Montana property developer named Casey Malmquist. The proposal would increase the value of land controlled by Mr. Zinke’s family.
…
While a referral to Justice should not be taken lightly, the case against Mr. Zinke ultimately rests on much more fundamental grounds. Beyond his personal foibles, he has overseen the degradation of his department’s senior work force in the name of enforcing “loyalty” to himself and the Trump administration; announced his intention to cut thousands of permanent positions; prompted mass resignations from a nonpartisan National Park Service advisory board by refusing to meet with members; and tied his own employees and aides in knots to make himself and his wife more financially comfortable.

These are not the hallmarks of an effective leader. We would hardly look the other way at the mayor of a small town, let alone a cabinet secretary, who faced unending ethical questions, formal investigations and substantiated claims of attempted nepotism.
…
The American people need an Interior Department focused on addressing climate change, enhancing public recreation, protecting endangered species and upholding the sovereign rights of Native American communities. These are not matters of personal preference — they are enshrined in law and supported by voters. The department needs someone accountable at the helm who believes in this mission.

Mr. Zinke is not that person. Federal agencies cannot function without credible leadership, and he offers none. He needs to resign.

Not just Trump.

Republicans.

So I’m kind of on this nostalgia kick. Today I want to talk about Rules of Order.

Pretty odd way to start a music piece ek.

I have a plan.

Or a story, which is almost as good. And it’s topical too!

Back in the day when the recently deceased H.W. was Serial King President (get over it folks, he looks good only in comparison with some truly abysmal contemporaries including his son) he proposed a Constitutional Amendment to ban Flag Burning.

Unpatriotic you see.

Unfortunately my Club has always skewed Right on the National level (Local too, truth be told) and they sent a Resolution out to the States to put us Four Square behind this initiative. So the Capo di Tutti (same guy I used Animal for) dutifully put it before the membership in our Representative Assembly.

Needless to say I was incredibly opposed, even my Republican DJ buddy thought it was a stupid idea. Me? I was thrown out of what we gently termed ‘Opening Exercises’ from the Sixth Grade on- “If you’re going to stand there and read Mr. Hornbeck, you can do it in the hall!”

Fine. Didn’t bother me a bit and as you know, I don’t really care about other people’s opinions of me. Did have to do some re-education when I got to High School, my Homeroom Teacher asked me to say the Pledge one day because she was pissed at my non-compliance. I ripped it off in about 5 seconds (of course omitting the “under God” part) and sat down.

Everyone else kind of stood and stared at me, but as I said- I don’t care about other people’s opinions.

She said, “I think you should see the Housemaster.”

After a nice chat where we discussed the history of the Pledge and the philosophical underpinnings of Atheism and Left politics in general he said, “Umm… you can be excused from Homeroom. Check in at the Library, I’ll inform your Teacher.”

Sure, whatever. After that they simply assumed I was there whether I was or not.

In retrospect I can sort of understand why my classmates thought I was cool. Normal rules did not apply to me. Not that I felt it at the time, I was just as alienated as any other teen and outside a few equally non-conformist friends (including my DJ buddy) I thought I was entirely despised and isolated. It’s still quite a shock to meet a classmate who recognizes me with glee, amazement, and awe which, while not frequent because of my solitary nature, is universal.

“They didn’t like me!… They never liked me!”

Evidently I was mistaken. I was envied and considered unapproachable. A Heather, who’d a thunk?

Back to Rules of Order. Always good to know, most organizations start off with Robert’s–

The manual was first published in 1876 by U.S. Army officer Henry Martyn Robert, who adapted the rules and practice of Congress to the needs of non-legislative societies. Ten subsequent editions have been published, including major revisions in 1915 and 1970.

Which they modify with By-Laws. My buddy and I kept a current copy of both handy and studied them regularly. When necessary or desirable we’d put forth minor changes that advantaged us which most of our opposition ignored. They seemed mostly harmless. Mostly. But this was straight Robert’s, we took turns Filibustering and politicking the floor. It was clear we were doomed, who would vote against The Flag!?

But the clock was ticking and the Bar was calling (it was a fun Club) and while we still had plenty of ammunition the opposition was kind of reduced to U.S.A.! U.S.A.! which was boring. At the critical moment I was recognized and said-

“Clearly this resolution requires more careful consideration than we can give it now. I move to table.”

My buddy popped up and said, “Second!”

Now the thing about a motion to table is that it proceeds directly to a vote with no debate (so does a motion to adjourn) so everyone was happy that they got a chance to vote and move on. My buddy and I knew this effectively killed the initiative (at least in our State) because National had set a deadline for response and the next convention of the body in Connecticut that had to approve it was after it expired.

We were not alone. It died a similar death in many other places and the Club never was able to fully endorse H.W.’s violation of the First Amendment. Good riddance you pandering, war mongering, torturing, spook.

But ek, how does this relate to music?

Have a bucket handy. At the time this was a real crowd pleaser-

God Bless the USA – Lee Greenwood

And people would all stand in the middle of the dance floor and hold hands and sway back and forth.

Yurp… sorry, told you to have a bucket.

I only had to hear it 20,000 times. 10,000 at DJ gigs and another 10,000 when one of the Capo di Tuttis decided it should be part of her Year End Video. Yeah, it takes that long to sync the background music (which we ripped off CD) to the Video Clips contributed by Club members.

Consider yourself lucky and don’t press play.

Another one I hated with a passion was this-

Coming to America – Neil Diamond

Ok, that bucket looks full. Number one- hydrate. Dry heaves can hurt you. Number two- I promise that the next one is better so you can dump it in the toilet and stick the bucket where you can’t smell the vomit.

Only had to listen to that one 10,000 times since it was never a hit on the dance floor but it was that Capo di Tutti’s theme song. Did I mention we did about 5 second cuts on the Year End Videos and they lasted about 15 to 18 minutes, three songs?

Art.

But ek, you were Capo di Tutti , what was your theme song?

Revolution – The Beatles

A little overdriven on the audio for my taste but the right tempo and not just the cover of The Beatles (all White) for video.

I remember every moment of my inauguration, each Local had their own table(s) and I spoke about how I felt I could sit down at every one of them (which of course I could and did, I was Capo di Tutti, but I wanted to message “inclusive” and “welcoming”) and when the dance started my new Underboss (replacing the one who embezzeled thousands) grabbed me and threw me on the dance floor where we spun like dervishes.

Perfectly chaste mind you. She and her Local (largest in the State) kind of adopted me like a pet and after a while they often forgot I wasn’t one of them.

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.

Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama; Former communist official Sergei Kirov is assassinated in Leningrad; Beatlemania arrives in America; Actor and director Woody Allen is born.

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

Rex Stout

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The Masks of the Drama–

(T)he main characters in a dramatic work written in a list. Such lists are commonly employed in various forms of theater, and also on screen. Typically, off-stage characters are not considered part of the dramatis personæ.

In order to get this you need to understand that in most Classic Theater the Actors wore masks. It certainly makes replacement with an Understudy easier. Barefaced Theater is a relatively recent development.

Now that we’ve had a little History Trivia I’ve found this neat piece by Paul Waldman that has a handy checklist of the Players and their Lies.

Lies, lies and more lies: This is not how innocent people act
By Paul Waldman, Washington Post
November 30, 2018

There’s one thing we should all be able to agree on: If they were all innocent, they’d be telling the truth about what they did and didn’t do. That’s because the truth would exonerate them. What has happened instead is that one person after another, from the president on down, has lied about their actions, their contacts with Russia, and the decisions they made.

In short, they’re acting like the guiltiest bunch of people since Richard Nixon’s Committee to Reelect the President.

Sometimes a lie is a crime, but it’s always an indication that the person telling it has something they want to conceal. So let’s run down a list of those around Trump who have lied, dissembled, concealed, and misled about what they did with regard to Russia. To be clear, this will not include the many lies these people told about matters having to do with other topics:

Donald Trump: The president lies about just about everything, but in particular he has lied on matters related to Russia. The latest exposure of his dishonestly comes out of the plea agreement from his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who supplied evidence that the Trump Organization was actively pursuing a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow while Trump was running for president. Trump asserted yesterday in response to Cohen’s plea, “I mean, we were very open with it. We were thinking about building a building [in Russia].” In fact, throughout the campaign he claimed again and again that he had no business interests in Russia, saying things like “I don’t know Putin, have no business whatsoever with Russia, have nothing to do with Russia.”

To take just one other example, when it was revealed that Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner held a meeting in 2016 with a group of Russians they believed would supply them with damaging information on Hillary Clinton, President Trump personally dictated a misleading statement intended to deceive the public about what the meeting was actually about. Trump’s representatives, including lawyer Jay Sekulow and spokesperson Sarah Sanders, then issued denials that Trump wrote the statement. They later admitted that these denials were false and Trump had in fact dictated it.

Donald Trump Jr.: When the story of his meeting with the Russians first broke, Don Jr. claimed it was for the purpose of discussing adoptions of Russian children. This lie lasted one day — until emails were exposed showing him excitedly planning the meeting to acquire dirt on Clinton.

Michael Cohen: Trump’s former lawyer now admits that he lied to Congress about the Trump Organization’s efforts to secure a big Moscow real estate deal to conceal the fact that Trump’s financial dealings with Russia continued throughout the 2016 GOP presidential primaries.

Michael Flynn: Trump’s first national security adviser pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and agreed to cooperate with the Mueller investigation.

K.T. McFarland: McFarland initially told FBI agents she had never had a conversation with Flynn about his contacts with Kislyak and their discussion of sanctions on Russia. Later she “revised her statement,” saying she and Flynn did indeed talk about it.

Jared Kushner: The presidential son-in-law omitted meetings he had with Russians from his security clearance forms requiring him to detail all recent contacts with foreign nationals. Kushner also claimed that he had no idea what the subject of the infamous Trump Tower meeting was, because he failed to read to the bottom of the email he had been forwarded where it said it was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

Paul Manafort: Earlier this week Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III charged that the former Trump campaign chairman broke their cooperation agreement by lying to investigators about multiple matters, including his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian associate of his believed to have ties to Russian intelligence.

Rudy Giuliani: The president’s TV lawyer falsely claimed that when Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner met with a group of Russians led by a Russian lawyer to get dirt on Clinton supplied by the Russian government, they didn’t even know the lawyer was Russian.

Jeff Sessions: During his confirmation process, the former attorney general claimed on three separate occasions under oath that he had no contact with any Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. This was false. In fact, he met with Ambassador Kislyak three times.

George Papadopoulos: The former Trump foreign policy adviser pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his efforts to acquire damaging information on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government through an intermediary.

Erik Prince: The founder of mercenary company Blackwater and brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Prince arranged a January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles with a prominent Russian businessman in an apparent attempt to create a back channel for communication between the Trump administration and Russia. But he testified under oath that the meeting with the Russian official was a chance encounter that happened over a beer. Mueller obtained evidence that this characterization was false, and Prince recently said he has cooperated with the special counsel’s inquiries. Prince also appears to have lied about a meeting he had with Donald Trump Jr. during the campaign.

Roger Stone: Donald Trump’s longtime friend and advisor claims that his uncanny knowledge during the campaign of what Wikileaks was about to reveal about Democrats came not because he was communicating with the group but because he was employing “posture, bluff, hype.”

Jerome Corsi: The conspiracy theorist claims that despite getting an instruction from Stone to communicate with Wikileaks leader Julian Assange — and despite sending Stone specific information about what Wikileaks was soon to release — he never actually communicated with the group directly or indirectly. Instead, he says he determined that they would soon release emails belonging to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta by brilliantly sleuthing through publicly available documents. Corsi also admits that he and Stone cooperated to concoct a “cover story” to explain Stone’s advance knowledge of the Podesta email dump.

For all we know, there may be more names added to this list by the time the full scope of the scandal is revealed. What we can say for sure is that Trump, his family members, his employees, and his associates are acting like they’re not just guilty, but spectacularly guilty. To think otherwise you’d have to be willfully blind.

Wherefore to Dover, sir?!

Because I would not see thy cruel nails
Pluck out his poor old eyes; nor thy fierce sister
In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs.
The sea, with such a storm as his bare head
In hell-black night endur’d, would have buoy’d up
And quench’d the steeled fires.

Yet, poor old heart, he holp the heavens to rain.
If wolves had at thy gate howl’d that stern time,
Thou shouldst have said, ‘Good porter, turn the key.’
All cruels else subscrib’d. But I shall see
The winged vengeance overtake such children.

See’t shalt thou never. Fellows, hold the chair.
Upon these eyes of thine I’ll set my foot.

Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly!
Where is thy lustre now? – Act III, Scene 7

First off, what is perjury? See that line in the teeny tiny type near the one where you’re supposed to sign a legal document (like a tax form or an insurance or loan application) that says, “I attest the above statements are true under penalty of law.”?

Yeah, well, people go to jail for that stuff. It’s called Fraud.

Likewise when you submit a written (or verbal) deposition in any criminal or civil legal proceeding including (but not limited to) statements to Courts, Federal Agencies (think SEC or IRS), and certain types of investigators. You can lie to Mall Rent-A-Cops and your local and State PD pretty much constantly (in most States) and while your prevarications can be used to impeach your credibility it’s not a crime in and of itself.

Not so FBI Agents and Federal Prosecutors including Special Counsels, also Senate and House Committee testimony, written and oral, whether sworn or not.

Now technically it’s not “Perjury”, it’s called making false statements or something like that, but it is its own special crime that carries jail time or a fine or both.

Yesterday that’s what Michael Cohen pled Guilty to.

Now the immediate consequence of this is that Donny Boy Jr. is in intense legal jeopardy because he told exactly the same lies to the same people that Cohen did. The Prosecution rests your Honor.

What about Donny Boy? As you’ll recall just last week Donny Boy turned in his homework, the answers to the written questions that Mueller had sent him, and thought himself oh so clever that he had negotiated an open book test and limited the subject matter to the area he felt most comfortable answering. Art of the Deal baby.

At that he was late, requiring like 17 extensions. That red ‘F’ with the circle around it at the top of your paper? It means ‘Fail’, see me after class.

But the bigger failure is this, even with his advantages he probably got them all wrong anyway.

Among the more interesting theories I’ve heard is that Mueller knew early on that Manafort was effectively a spy for Team Trump and used him to spread his own misinformation that led Trump to believe that the lies he has told about his Conspiracy with Russia to Defraud the United States were holding and he could therefore repeat them without consequence. I kind of hope this is not true since it plays into the InfoWars Alt-Right Conspiracy Theory about Deep State sabotage (and believe me, I don’t like the Deep State any more than they do but our reasons are different and mine are proven historical facts) of Trump and his regime.

But it is highly likely, more so given the questionable ethics of Donny Boy’s Defense Team to run an espionage operation against the Special Counsel (which they have admitted), that Trump, delusional in his deceptions and cover stories he can barely keep straight (Stable Genius? Hah!), has told several LIES in his sworn Deposition.

Yeah, well, people go to jail for that stuff.

Sorry about the video, it has audio dropouts, isn’t synced very well, and has video glitches too, but it’s the best available. I got it from this piece on Raw Story which contains a partial transcript.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow explains how Trump’s written answers may have doomed him in impeachment trial
by Bob Brigham, Raw Story
29 Nov 2018 at 23:07 ET

At the end of “The Rachel Maddow Show” and start of “The Last Word” with Lawrence O’Donnell, the two MSNBC anchors spent over six minutes discussing “the worst Thursday in the history of the Trump presidency.”

“If the president turned in written answers that — that basically gave the same lies that Michael Cohen had previously been trying to get away with, [Robert] Mueller’s office knew at that time they were lies, then they make their decision they’re going to go ahead and put forward the evidence those are lies the president’s already made a submission,” Maddow speculated. “I mean, they’ve got him.”

“Yeah, so the clock may have started ticking tonight on — on a chapter in history which will end with the United States Senate having to decide in an impeachment trial, ‘is this perjury enough?’” O’Donnell noted.

“Because if there is a perjury here, if Donald Trump has put perjury in writing according to the special prosecutor’s analysis of the evidence based on what Michael Cohen has told him, if that is what the special prosecutor is going to report, a Democratic House of Representatives is going to have to move on impeachment if that happens,” O’Donnell explained.

“It’s also going to shine a very harsh light on the decision by president’s legal team that they would have him — they would negotiate to the ends of the earth to make sure that the president would only have to put his answers in writing rather than speaking them out loud in his usual word-cloud sort of way,” Maddow said.

“I mean, the president speaks so elliptically, that might have actually been a pretty good way out of perjury trap, because he never quite says anything declaratively,” she noted. “That’s the way he’s gotten out of lots of depositions and lots of legal proceedings in the past.”

“In this case, by insisting he would only give his answers in writing — if his answers are lies, they’ve got them in writing and there’s no wiggle room there,” Maddow noted.

“Yeah, and the president’s legal team thought they scored a huge victory by limiting the questioning to matters involving Russia,” O’Donnell added as Maddow laughed.

The Perjury Trap, such as it is (all you have to do is tell the truth instead of lying) is already sprung.

Trevor- you’re missing your meme. Gritty is an Antifa hero, not part of Trump’s cabal.

Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers’ Bizarre New Mascot, Is Antifa Now
Kelly Weill, Daily Beast
10.03.18

“Gritty,” the wild-eyed, Muppet-looking mascot of Philadelphia Flyers is an anti-fascist now, and there’s nothing you can do about it, anti-fascists say.

Last week, the Flyers introduced Gritty, a seven-foot-tall bearded entity in a hockey jersey, as their new mascot. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump visited the city to speak at a conference center, where protesters outside marched with pro-Gritty, anti-Trump flags.

“GRITTY SAY G.T.F.O. OF PHILLY” read one massive banner, which showed the hockey mascot waving an antifa flag and wearing a jersey with an anarchist symbol.

The banner had made the rounds on Twitter earlier in the week, after Philadelphia-based writer George Ciccariello-Maher tweeted a picture of it hanging in a Philly backyard, with two masked anti-fascists posing in front. Other Twitter users had previously attempted to co-opt the googly-eyed beard monster into leftist politics. A viral thread of Gritty photoshops depicts him dancing above pro-labor slogans and haunting Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.

“Gritty is a worker,” the socialist magazine Jacobin tweeted two days after Gritty’s launch. Someone made a Gritty parody account in which the mascot is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World.
…
The Gritty-as-antifa meme found its way offline on Tuesday when Trump visited Philly. Demonstrators marched behind the Antifa Gritty banner, some carrying homemade Gritty signs of their own.

“This town only has room for one orange asshole,” read one.

“Fuck Trump,” a hand-drawn Gritty announced on another.

The Liberation Project, a Philadelphia-based social justice group, said Gritty is inherently antifa.

“Gritty is a symbol of Philadelphia,” the group told The Daily Beast. “It’s not that he’s an anti-fascist character, it’s that he’s representative of the people, and the people of Philadelphia are grittily anti-fascist.”

Sure, Antifa Gritty is sort of a joke. He’s a corporate mascot for a moneyed sports league, adopted by activists whose work usually falls into the more sobering realm of countering the city’s record of police brutality and mass incarceration. But now that the left has recruited Gritty, Ciccariello-Maher says they’re not giving him back.

“Lots of people had been making these statements for a while,” he said, “and claiming Gritty as their own as a way to seize him away from the sports complex, to seize him away from the right wing and insist that he’s going to be a symbol of resistance. It’s really been astonishing.”

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.

Pink Floyd releases its best-selling album “The Wall”; Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Dick Clark are born; World Trade Organization’s meeting met by 40-thousand protesters.

I’m looking to no man walking this earth for approval of what I’m doing.

Shirley Chisholm

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The big deal for me about today’s Michael Cohen Guilty Plea is not that Cohen has a new co-operation agreement with Mueller, it was always safe to assume that anything the Southern District of New York knew was directly piped to the Russia inquiry.

No, it’s that the specific act he plead guilty to, lying to Congress about the end date of the Trump Tower Moscow property development plan, was echoed by Donny Jr. in front of the same committee.

So he’s guilty too.

Michael Cohen Admits Talks for Trump Over Moscow Tower Occurred Well Into Campaign
By Benjamin Weiser, Ben Protess, Maggie Haberman, and Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times
Nov. 29, 2018

Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, admitted in court on Thursday that he had engaged in negotiations to build a tower in Moscow for Mr. Trump well into the 2016 presidential campaign, far later than previously known.

Mr. Cohen said he discussed the status of the project with Mr. Trump on more than three occasions and briefed Mr. Trump’s family members about it. He also admitted he agreed to travel to Russia for meetings on the project.

The revelations, which came as Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the project, were a startling turn in the special counsel’s investigation of Mr. Trump and his inner circle. Mr. Trump is referred to as “Individual 1” in the court documents.

I’ll break in to say that we know this for a fact because while it’s not part of the official plea deal, Michael Cohen said so, out loud, in open Court, in his verbal allocution and it’s part of the Court Transcript.

Earlier this week, the special counsel’s office accused Mr. Trump’s onetime campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, of repeatedly lying to investigators in breach of his plea agreement. The new revelations also come a week after Mr. Trump’s lawyers provided Mr. Mueller with written responses to a set of questions.

After Mr. Cohen appeared in court on Thursday, Mr. Trump abruptly canceled a planned meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia while both leaders are in Argentina for a world economic summit meeting. The president said he called off the meeting because of Russia’s recent hostilities with Ukraine.

In remarks to reporters shortly after Mr. Cohen’s plea, Mr. Trump said his former fixer was once again lying in order to get a reduced sentence for the crimes he pleaded guilty to earlier this year. Under the earlier plea agreement, Mr. Cohen faced about four or five years in prison.
…
Mr. Cohen admitted that he had minimized Mr. Trump’s role in efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and gave the false impression to Congress that the negotiations had ended in January 2016, just before the Iowa caucuses.

In fact, Mr. Cohen admitted, the negotiations continued for at least another five months, until June, which was just after Mr. Trump had clinched the Republican nomination. Mr. Cohen also admitted that he agreed in early May to travel to Russia for meetings on the project and that he spoke to Mr. Trump about Mr. Trump, himself, making a trip, despite telling congressional investigators that he had not done so. The trips never happened.

Mr. Cohen concluded his statement in court by saying that he made the false statements to Congress out of “loyalty” to the president and so that he would not contradict Mr. Trump’s “political messaging.”
…
The special counsel identified Mr. Cohen’s false statements to Congress in testimony Mr. Cohen provided to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, which have been conducting their own, separate investigations into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

4 key takeaways from Michael Cohen’s new plea deal
By Aaron Blake, Washington Post
November 29, 2018

1. There are conspicuous mentions of Trump and his family

In written testimony to both the House and Senate intelligence committees last year, Cohen said the Trump Tower Moscow deal was abandoned in January 2016.

“By the end of January 2016, I determined that the proposal was not feasible for a variety of business reasons and should not be pursued further,” Cohen said.

The plea deal, though, says that not only did Cohen continue to pursue the project through June 2016, but also that he briefed Trump on it more than the three times he had originally claimed, and also that he briefed Trump’s family members.

“COHEN discussed the status and progress of the Moscow Project with Individual 1″ — a clear reference to Trump — “on more than the three occasions COHEN claimed to the Committee, and he briefed family members of Individual 1 within the Company about the project.” …

2. Putin’s spokesman appears to have helped cover this up

It has been reported that Cohen emailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press office in January 2016 seeking to grease the skids for the deal. But Cohen had said he never heard back.

Turns out, that was a lie. An assistant to Putin’s top spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, emailed him back, according to the plea deal, and then Cohen spoke with the assistant on the phone for 20 minutes.

But Cohen wasn’t the only one who lied about it. So, too, apparently, did Peskov. Here’s what Peskov said of the matter in August 2017: “ . . . Since, I repeat again, we do not react to such business topics — this is not our work — we left it unanswered.” …

3. This ties the Trump family’s efforts to the Russian government

As Cohen was planning to travel to Russia, his Russian associate Felix Sater relayed a message that Cohen might even get an audience with Putin or Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Sater told Cohen that Peskov “would like to invite you as his guest to the St. Petersburg Forum which is Russia’s Davos it’s June 16- 19. He wants to meet there with you and possibly introduce you to either [the President of Russia] or [the Prime Minister of Russia], as they are not sure if 1 or both will be there.”

So Cohen not only received a reply from Peskov’s office but also that office was making high-level arrangements for him — the lawyer and fixer for an American presidential candidate. …

4. The deal apparently died the day The Post broke a story about Russian hacking

The plea deal indicates that the last known discussion about the deal was “on or about June 14,” 2016, when Cohen told Sater that he was canceling plans to travel to Russia.

Why is that date significant? It happens to be the day The Washington Post broke a big story that Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee.

In other developments the Feds have raided the offices of Democratic Chicago Alderman and Finance Committee Chairman Ed Burke who has prepared the Trump Organization’s tax returns for the last 12 years AND Deutsche Bank’s Offices have been raided by over 170 German prosecutors, federal agents, police officers and tax authorities over Money Laundering charges. You’ll recall Deutsche Bank is the only Western Financial Institution that will lend to the Trump Organization anymore.

Not a good day, or week, for Team Trump.

Oh, pipes. There are at least 3 pipes leading directly from Donald John Trump to Russia- Manafort, Stone, and Cohen. Cohen has turned completely, Manafort is in the meat grinder, and Stone is in the barrel.

Collusion? There is no such crime. Conspiracy to defraud the United States? Treason?

You could go to jail for that.

Donny Boy Jr. and Jared should watch their backs.