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.

On this date in 1963, President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Gov. John Connally is seriously wounded during a motorcade in Dallas. Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested. Lyndon B. Johnson becomes America’s 36th president.

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

Charles de Gaulle

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Journamalists, Pundits, and Bloggers are getting this all wrong.

Breaking news on the most significant legal scandal to hit this White House since the report that Donald Trump tried to fire Bob Mueller. This is truly a bombshell. President Donald trump tried to order the Justice Department to prosecute not one but two of his biggest adversaries, Hillary Clinton and James Comey. The story is that in the spring, Donald Trump told his White House counsel, Don McGahn, that he wanted the DOJ officials to explicitly prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey. So that right there is a potentially illegal act. And that is quite important, given that obstruction is still under investigation in this White House.

What happened next is also important. Don McGahn, according to this New York Times report, refused and then went on to try to show Donald Trump in detail why this was, potentially an impeachable bad idea. White House lawyers wrote this memo described in the Times saying if they went forward, the consequences would be damaging and, yes, would include, quote, possible impeachment. Now that right there is a big deal.

It is usually Donald Trump’s critics and adversaries who are talking about his potential impeachment. We don’t use the “I” word because it is an extreme constitutional remedy. According to the New York Times it was his own lawyers, his chief counsel, Don McGahn, saying, “Mr. President, if you do this, you could be impeached.” That’s not all. The Times reporting that Donald Trump would go on to continue to privately agitate for these investigations of Hillary Clinton, obviously his chief rival in politics, and James Comey, his former FBI director.

This news I want to be clear is a scale way beyond anything else we have seen in legal controversies with Donald Trump. And that’s saying something. …This is a report tonight for the first time that the President of the United States actively and explicitly tried to prosecute Hillary Clinton, a political opponent, and James Comey, the key witness in the obstruction probe. That request, if it happened, that order, if it was given, is blatantly unconstitutional.

(h/t Red Painter @ Crooks and Liars)

Obstruction of Justice?! Not at all. It’s an Abuse of Power. Allow me to explain.

While Trump’s attempt to pressure the Department of JustUs to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey is indeed heinous it’s not an Obstruction of Justice. There is no ongoing Judicial process. These are innocent people (well, legally) and what Trump was going to do was force the JustUs Department to charge them with invented criminal activity because they were his political opponents.

This is the exact equivalent of Richard Nixon attempting to use the IRS to punish his political enemies. Different Government Agency, same act and motivation.

Nixon also attempted to use the National Security apparatus (the Alphabet Agencies) to do the same thing and the only reason Trump hasn’t tried that is because they despise him as the Traitor he is.

But they’re all Government Agencies reporting directly to him. He can order them to do what he wants theoretically but some orders are illegal (violating Constitutional Rights for instance).

Since there is no ongoing Judicial process against Clinton or Comey Trump can hardly be charged with obstructing it. Instead he can rightly be charged with using his Supervisory Authority to direct the Full Power of the Federal Government against individuals that vex him, an activity that left unchecked could be directed at any random Twitter user who doesn’t follow or like him.

That is Abuse of Power.

Lest you think it not such a big deal let me remind you that it was the second Article of Impeachment against Richard Nixon (the first being Obstruction of Justice and the third being Contempt of Congress).

Trump Wanted to Order Justice Dept. to Prosecute Comey and Clinton
By Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman, The New York Times
Nov. 20, 2018

President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.

The encounter was one of the most blatant examples yet of how Mr. Trump views the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies. It took on additional significance in recent weeks when Mr. McGahn left the White House and Mr. Trump appointed a relatively inexperienced political loyalist, Matthew G. Whitaker, as the acting attorney general.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump read Mr. McGahn’s memo or whether he pursued the prosecutions further. But the president has continued to privately discuss the matter, including the possible appointment of a second special counsel to investigate both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Comey, according to two people who have spoken to Mr. Trump about the issue. He has also repeatedly expressed disappointment in the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, for failing to more aggressively investigate Mrs. Clinton, calling him weak, one of the people said.
…
Mr. Trump repeatedly pressed Justice Department officials about the status of Clinton-related investigations, including Mr. Whitaker when he was the chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversations. CNN first reported those discussions.

In his conversation with Mr. McGahn, the president asked what stopped him from ordering the Justice Department to investigate Mr. Comey and Mrs. Clinton, the two people familiar with the conversation said. He did have the authority to ask the Justice Department to investigate, Mr. McGahn said, but warned that making such a request could create a series of problems.

Mr. McGahn promised to write a memo outlining the president’s authorities. In the days that followed, lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office wrote a several-page document in which they strongly cautioned Mr. Trump against asking the Justice Department to investigate anyone.

The lawyers laid out a series of consequences. For starters, Justice Department lawyers could refuse to follow Mr. Trump’s orders even before an investigation began, setting off another political firestorm.

If charges were brought, judges could dismiss them. And Congress, they added, could investigate the president’s role in a prosecution and begin impeachment proceedings.

Ultimately, the lawyers warned, Mr. Trump could be voted out of office if voters believed he had abused his power.
…
Mr. Trump stoked his enmity for Mrs. Clinton during the campaign, suggesting during a presidential debate that he would prosecute her if he was elected president. “If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation,” Mr. Trump said.

“It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Mrs. Clinton replied.

“Because you would be in jail,” Mr. Trump shot back.

During the presidential race, Mr. Whitaker, a former United States attorney, also said he would have indicted Mrs. Clinton, contradicting Mr. Comey’s highly unusual public announcement that he would recommend the Justice Department not charge her over her handling of classified information while secretary of state.

“When the facts and evidence show a criminal violation has been committed, the individuals involved should not dictate whether the case is prosecuted,” Mr. Whitaker wrote in an op-ed in USA Today in July 2016.

Whittaker? He deserves a place in History (and Hell) next to John Mitchell, Richard Kleindienst, and Robert Bork.

Except of course he was never Senate confirmed and his very appointment is an Obstruction of Justice.

Serious Dude.

Radicalization and Gaming: The New Culture Wars

Yeah. Same guy as Daria- Michael Saba.

Everything I write is about Politics. Even the Music Videos. You should know that by now.

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.

Thomas Edison says he’s invented the phonograph; Gap revealed on Nixon White House tape; Final victim dies in America’s anthrax scare; Jonathan Pollard arrested; ‘Anything Goes’ opens on Broadway.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

Voltaire

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My family informs me that they don’t much like my Turkey Loaf. As a matter of fact the exact quote was “It tastes like leftovers just before you pitch them in the garbage.”

As it turns out what they object to is the concept of Ground Turkey entirely.

These are the same people who thought “Kingsmen 2: The Golden Circle” was funny because it had Elton John in it.

Nevertheless, I persist. It’s Thankgiving on a stick. I think it’s ok the way it is, but I suppose you could deep fry it. – ek

Us Scandinavian Bachelor Chefs (h/t CompoundF) frequently find ourselves in the position of needing a last minute substitute for real food because planning ahead is not one of our strengths (if it were we probably wouldn’t be Bachelors anymore).

Here’s a recipe that is not too fussy and can be thrown together at the last minute and great expense as a cheap imitation of inferior quality.

You will need-

• Ground Turkey
• Dried Cranberries
• Onion (chopped coarse)
• Bread
• Butter
• Garlic Powder
• Bell’s Poultry Seasoning
• An Egg

• Dry Packaged Instant Turkey Gravy (more than you think)

Optional (of course the more you add the better it will taste)-

• Walnuts (chopped coarse)
• Canned Mushrooms (stems and pieces, chopped coarse)

The goal is simple, to create a reasonable taste facsimile of a Turkey dinner with stuffing and gravy without days of defrosting and hours of cooking time.  It is somewhat pricey as ground Turkey often costs as much as ground beef or more.

The primary problems to overcome are cohesion and dryness.  I’m going to recommend what seems like a lot of fat but Turkey is quite a lean meat.  I’ll be working with approximately 2 pounds of Turkey as a base (that’s how much the local Super Market puts in a package), you adjust the other ingredients for taste and volume.

The most labor intensive part of preparation is chopping the onion(s).  Depending on how strong the flavor (in decreasing order- yellow, red, sweet) you’ll want to prepare about half the volume of your meat.  If you use yellow and are sensitive to onions (I am) you may want to saute them a little to take some of the harshness out.

The most time consuming part is the bread.  Toast it a bit (hey, if you have enough time to stale it you most likely don’t need this recipe), smear generously with butter and shake quite a bit of garlic powder on top.  Cube.  You need about 3/4 of the volume of your meat (6 slices or a little more).  Crusty European breads work much better than Balloon breads because the goal (as with meat balls) is to lighten the texture of your finished dish.

Mixing–

I put the other ingredients in the bottom of the bowl with the meat on top but I don’t think it makes any difference.

A cup or more of Dried Cranberries (I like them), Onion, Garlic Toast (cubed), 6 Tbls Butter (chopped), Ground Turkey, 1 – 4 Tbls Bell’s Poultry Seasoning (the primary flavor is Sage in case you can’t find it), Salt, Pepper, more Garlic Powder, an Egg or 2 to bind.

Now is the time to add your optional ingredients, if using Mushrooms include the liquid too.  Mix gently, completely, and not too long with your fingers.  The important thing is not to over mix because the loaf will get gummy and dense.

Cooking–

I like loaf pans, others mound on a sheet.  Grease for clean release.  It leaks a bit so you’ll want a lip to catch the drip.  In any event at least an hour at 325 – 350 until the internal temperature reaches the recommended level for poultry or brown on the top and gray through the thickest part.

Rest 5 – 10 minutes while you prepare the gravy, slice and serve.

Thanksgiving on a stick.

“Oh the Humanity!”

Did you watch the whole episode? How could you possibly think this was a good idea?

Tossing a Bird That Does Not Fly Out of a Plane
by Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic
11/20/18

Here in Yellville this cold and rainy weekend, there are turkeys everywhere—turkey shirts and turkey costumes and turkey paraphernalia. There is a raffle giving away birds for Thanksgiving dinner. There’s a brisk trade in turkey legs, too, pulled out of a barrel smoker. At the bandstand, a judge announces the winner of the “Miss Drumsticks” contest, who gleams and sparkles in her pageant finery. “It’s Miss Drumsticks because they’re judging who has the best thighs,” an older woman explained to me, matter-of-fact.

But—and this is unusual, and much to the dismay and consternation of many locals—there are no live turkeys. None in a cage towed behind a pickup. None thrown from the courthouse roof. None pitched off the bandstand and picked up by screaming teenagers. And none dropped out of an airplane. That is what the Yellville Turkey Trot festival is famous and infamous for, you see: living, breathing, squawking birds getting lobbed out of a low-flying aircraft.

Turkeys, it seems worth mentioning, do not fly. Although the wild, dark-feathered ones you see in flocks on exurban roads are capable of fluttering up into and in between trees, the factory-farm-bred, white-feathered ones you eat on Thanksgiving are closer to the penguin side of the avian flying-ability spectrum. The birds can slow their descent by flapping wildly and catch the wind and glide, should they find themselves free-falling from 500 feet. But some die on impact, fleshy anvils with useless wings.

Once a year for the past seven decades, with just a few breaks, Yellville has had a dozen or so fowl demonstrate this gravitational reality. The Turkey Trot is a much-anticipated event for people with a lot of Ozark pride but without a lot of money, organizers and attendees explained—a transgressive event that locals love to love, love to hate, love to go to, and really love to talk about. “There’s a festival that goes on in Fayetteville that’s huge. They have booths there where you walk up and you just stop in your tracks and go, ‘Holy cow, that’s neat!’” Bob King, the owner of a local retreat property, told me. “We’re a small-town festival. It is important to people.”
…
As the lip-synch contest echoed and the quilting guild showed off its wares, some worried that the everything-else portion of the weekend would wither away, too. Local-business owners fretted that a vital source of income was gone—with some hoping that a plane foisting the birds would show up, cops and politicians and op-ed writers and vegan busybodies be damned. “We will have to see how the numbers end up,” said Keith Edmonds of the Chamber of Commerce, a note of resignation in his voice. Every time an aircraft passed overhead, little kids checked to see if a bird would come out.

Was it worth it, ending a town’s beloved annual event to save a few birds from a few moments of confused terror? Was it meaningful, given how many billions of birds raised for meat face a far more gruesome life and death? Would it stick, given the steeliness of the residents of this corner of the Ozarks and the devotion of Americans to their meat-eating and cold-weather traditions?

I was not sure before going to the festival, and I was even less sure after it. But I knew this: This was not a Thanksgiving story about throwing a bird that does not fly out of an airplane. This was a Thanksgiving story about the human will to throw a bird that does not fly out of an airplane.
…
Ample documentary evidence recorded in the years since, as well as the testimonies of a number of townsfolk, indicate that this was and is pretty much what happens when you drop a turkey from hundreds of feet in the air. The panicked animals try to right themselves. Some catch a gust. Others do not. Some die when they hit the ground. Others survive with broken bones. Yet others are grievously injured when they are fought over by local kids. Some perish of apparent shock. A few, it is fair to note, are rattled, but physically unharmed.

“I was standing in the alley behind one of the buildings in town, and that plane came right overhead,” said Rose Hilliard, who attended last year’s festival to try to save some of the birds. “We’re all trying to chase it down and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, I can’t outrun 15 kids! There’s no way.’ They weren’t supposed to drop them over town. They were supposed to be across the river there, across the creek. But the pilots kind of think they can do no wrong and they’re proud of it.” The turkeys she encountered were heat-stressed and in shock and bruised, she told me. “It is not entertaining to watch a frightened animal trying to get away from a crowd of people. That’s— I don’t call it entertainment.”
…
Their very bodies are no less cruel than what humans do to those bodies. Turkeys, as you might remember from elementary school, are native to the Americas. Domestication occurred hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years ago. Right around when the Yellville Turkey Trot was getting started, in the 1940s, big agricultural companies began to breed domesticated turkeys intensively to obtain more meat from them, faster. The experiment was an astonishing success: The broad-breasted white, the bird that is most likely on your Thanksgiving table, went from a 15-pound bird in 1960 to a 30-pound bird today, and it grows to that weight far more quickly than nature intended.

These are Franken-creatures, like bulldogs or racehorses. They cannot reproduce naturally, and their body is incompatible with a healthy, long life. The birds, if not slaughtered, face grotesque problems with their skeleton, their heart, and their respiratory system, as their cartoonishly oversized breasts distend and stress their body. “They get these compound fractures and leg injuries—often these things can’t be fixed—because they grow so fast,” said Susie Coston, the national shelter director of Farm Sanctuary, a major farm-animal rescue organization. “They are just too big.”

Another strange thing about them: The birds suffer from compulsive insatiability. If you leave food out for them to eat at will, “they just never stop eating,” Coston told me. “I’ve never seen anything like it. They eat so much that they injure their intestinal tract.”

If you withhold food, as is necessary to keep them alive, she said, “they are always hungry.”

Falling from a plane might be a reprieve for a turkey.

You can read deeper for the whole “Evil Librul Bi-Coastal Elitists Ruining Good Clean ‘Murikan Fun” subtext which is so totally of a piece with all the other stories about how Evil Librul Bi-Coastal Elitists are ruining ‘Murika and that’s why we support Trump. “He gets us.” Which is why of course Democrats and Leftists lose elections say the “Centrists”.

Some branches of my Club used to hold “Rattlesnake Roundups” where you’d toss a bucket of snakes into a ring and charge people to stomp them. Very lucrative in certain areas.

I never saw the attraction.

But I eat meat and I make no apologies for it. I just don’t think it’s a necessary part of every meal and I’m just as happy with Vegetable Lo Mein or Rice and Beans as I am with a Beef Steak. My personal identity is not invested in it- whatever. Sheep Eyeballs? Yum!

And if you have some Levitican problems and think Ham cursed by Yahweh I guess you’ll not be wanting to try my Bacon Wrapped Scallops in Lobster Sauce.

Good. More for me.

I swear, I thought Turkeys could fly!

I sort of (but not really) hate pointing out that a substantial part of the U.S. population are what is politely called “low information” but I call ignorant.

Sending Troops to the border was a transparent appeal to Trump’s most racist bigoted base.

There are Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the Bureaus of Redundant Redundantcy) tripping over each other already. The additional Troops gave them a Medical checkup, put up some camps, strung some barbed wire, given a few Cops a Helicopter Thrill Ride…

And they’re going home.

Your Tax Dollars at work- $220,000,000.

Victory! The evil Caravan of Barbarians at the Gates of the Empire have been thwarted!

Deployed Inside the United States: The Military Waits for the Migrant Caravan
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Helene Cooper, The New York Times
Nov. 10, 2018

Instead of football with their families on this Veterans Day weekend, soldiers with the 19th Engineer Battalion, fresh from Fort Knox, Ky., were painstakingly webbing concertina wire on the banks of the Rio Grande, just beneath the McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge.

Nearby, troops from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State were making sure a sick call tent was properly set up next to their aid station. And a few miles away, Staff Sgt. Juan Mendoza was directing traffic as his engineer support company from Fort Bragg, N.C., unloaded military vehicles.

Come Thanksgiving, they most likely will still be here.

Two thousand miles away, at the Pentagon, officials privately derided the deployment as an expensive waste of time and resources, and a morale killer to boot.
…
In late October, the Department of Homeland Security sent a memo to the Pentagon with a series of formal requests for support in handling immigrants at the southern border, including the caravan on its way from Central America, according to two senior administration officials.

Among the requests, issued at the White House’s behest, were that troops deployed to the border be armed, prepared for direct contact with the migrants and ready to operate under rules for the use of force to be set by the Defense Department.

When Defense Department officials replied the same day, on Mr. Mattis’s orders, they rejected those requests and referred the Department of Homeland Security to the White House, the officials said. The Defense Department viewed the requests as inappropriate and legally treacherous, potentially setting up soldiers for violent encounters with migrants.
…
Defense Department officials said the tasks by the troops at the border were the best compromise that Mr. Mattis could reach. The Pentagon agreed to other requests for help, including sending supplies, setting up tents and providing transportation as needed.

“A wasteful deployment of overstretched Soldiers and Marines would be made much worse if they use force disproportional to the threat they face,” tweeted Martin Dempsey, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Troops at U.S.-Mexican border to start coming home
By WESLEY MORGAN, Politico
11/19/2018

The 5,800 troops who were rushed to the southwest border amid President Donald Trump’s pre-election warnings about a refugee caravan will start coming home as early as this week — just as some of those migrants are beginning to arrive.

Democrats and Republicans have criticized the deployment as a ploy by the president to use active-duty military forces as a prop to try to stem Republican losses in this month’s midterm elections.

The general overseeing the deployment told POLITICO on Monday that the first troops will start heading home in the coming days as some are already unneeded, having completed the missions for which they were sent. The returning service members include engineering and logistics units whose jobs included placing concertina wire and other barriers to limit access to ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border.
…
Buchanan confirmed previous reports that the military had rejected a request from the Department of Homeland Security for an armed force to back up Border Patrol agents in the event of a violent confrontation.

“That is a law enforcement task, and the secretary of Defense does not have the authority to approve that inside the homeland,” Buchanan said.
…
The troop deployment should start trailing off as engineer and other logistics troops wind down their mission of building base camps and fortifying ports of entry for the Border Patrol.

Army and Marine engineers have now emplaced about 75 percent of the obstacles they planned to, including concertina wire, shipping containers, and concrete barriers at ports of entry. “Once we get the rest of the obstacles built, we don’t need to keep all those engineers here. As soon as I’m done with a capability, what I intend to do is redeploy it,” Buchanan said. “I don’t want to keep these guys on just to keep them on.”

Logistics troops, too, will be among the first to head home. “I will probably ask to start redeploying some of our logistic capability,” Buchanan predicted. “Now that things are set down here, we don’t need as many troops to actually build base camps and things like that, because the base camps are built.”

Among the troops who will remain after construction engineers and logisticians start departing are helicopter pilots, planners, medical personnel, and smaller “quick response” teams of engineers who can help Border Patrol personnel shut down traffic at their ports of entry.

In contrast to the speed of the deployment in early November and the fanfare surrounding it, the withdrawal promises to be slower and quieter — but Buchanan expects it to be done before Christmas.

“That doesn’t mean it’s impossible,” he added. “But right now, this is a temporary mission, and we’re tasked to do it until the 15th of December.”

The futility is entirely predictable to anyone who knows anything at all. My real ire is reserved for those who knew this from the start but excused it.

Oh, Merry ek’smas.

Just because they’re animated doesn’t mean they’re funny.

Daria, Alienation, and the Limits of Irony

Except in that classically ironic way where the Protagonist has a fatal flaw which leads to their ultimate doom.

Funny guys those Greeks.