Of course occasionally I’d let you dance.

Let’s Dance – David Bowie

The Politics of Dancing – Reflex

Gonna Make You Sweat – C+C Music Factory

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.

President Richard Nixon says ‘I am not a crook’; Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England; Suez Canal opens; Congress holds first DC session; Sculptor Auguste Rodin dies; Film director Martin Scorsese born.

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

Marcus Garvey

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You know, I started Cody Johnston in Cartnoon because he used to be funny. Don’t believe me? Watch-

Fuller House

I mean it. Have you ever seen Fuller House? It is was always this bad (c’mon the theme song celebrates the fact that’s it’s utterly predictable in that three camera sitcom kind of way). The only break through character is Kimmy Gibbler (as memorable as Steve Urkle) and Dave Coulier totally disrespected my gal Alanis Morrisette in ways that are best settled at dawn- with pistols.

The best thing I can say about it is one of the Olsen Twins grew up to become The Scarlet Witch.

Tell me this isn’t funny-

Not any more. I’m going to start treating him like John Oliver and Samantha Bee.

Some News

Cody Johnston

Lügenpresse- Fake News in Nazi.

‘Press of lies’ is a pejorative political term used largely by German political movements for the printed press and the mass media at large, when it is believed not to have the quest for truth at the heart of its coverage. It can be considered synonymous with the term fake news.

The term Lügenpresse has been used intermittently since the 19th century in political polemics in Germany, by a wide range of groups and movements in a variety of debates and conflicts. Isolated uses can be traced back as far as the Vormärz period. The term gained traction in the March 1848 Revolution when Catholic circles employed it to attack the rising, hostile liberal press. In the Franco-German War (1870–71) and particularly World War I (1914–18) German intellectuals and journalists used the term to denounce what they believed was enemy war propaganda. The Evangelischer Pressedienst made its mission the fight against the “lying press” which it considered to be the “strongest weapon of the enemy”. After the war, German-speaking Marxists such as Karl Radek and Alexander Parvus vilified “the bourgeois lying press” as part of their class struggle rhetoric. The Nazis adopted the term for their propaganda against the Jewish, communist, and later the foreign press. During the protests of 1968, left-wing students disparaged the liberal-conservative Axel Springer publishing house, notably its flagship daily Bild, as a “lying press”.

Remind you of anything?

As always I don’t argue from authority. Replicate my results.

I want to make this crystal clear- I am probably on the record somewhere as saying I like and admire Michael Avenatti and if I had the resources he’d be my 4th choice for my personal attorney (Ok. The first one is a Republican and the most complete and total asshole it’s ever been my misfortune to meet. The second one I used to work for in my Club and his only problem is he thinks he’s the best lawyer in the world and he isn’t because he thinks he’s the best lawyer in the world. The third one I also know from my Club and the thing about him is while he’s not that good personally he knows every lawyer there is and doesn’t mind doing referrals.).

This is still the case. I regret nothing. The good. The bad. It’s all the same.

On the other hand if allegations about domestic violence are true I’d drop him quicker than Stephanie Clifford because I believe women when they report their experiences of abuse.

Only, in this instance, we have an acute absence of even a single woman. Avenatti’s ex and soon to be ex (c’mon, it’s California dude) both have publicly denied any irregularities in their relationships other than the normal ones that lead people to dissolve their marital contract (he leaves the seat up constantly and deliberately, she messes with the stuff in my man cave).

Does this remind you of another recent case of baseless accusation without a shred of evidence or even a victim?

Bob Mueller! Of course!

Then it won’t surprise you that Michael Avenatti believes the same pair of lying scam artists and con men behind that farrago of falsehood are also the source of the allegations agains him- Jacob Wohl, the 21 year old (born December 12, 1997) Alt-Right troll running a fake detective agency, Surefire Intelligence, out of his Mama’s basement, and Jack Burkman, the poor man’s Roger Stone wannabe.

Now the LAPD has arrested Avenatti on suspicion and one would hope they have a little more evidence than some Internet Rando’s Twit, then again this is the LAPD we’re talking about and other than the fictional Joe Friday and his partner Bill Gannon they don’t exactly have a sterling reputation for competence.

It remains to be seen how this works out but the Institutional Democrats celebrating Avenatti’s removal from the 2020 Primary field are not only premature, they should understand what draws people like me to consider supporting him.

He fights. You don’t.

Avenatti blames pro-Trump conspiracy theorist for arrest
By NATASHA KORECKI and DARREN SAMUELSOHN, Politico
11/15/2018

A day after he was arrested on domestic violence allegations, Stormy Daniels attorney and 2020 aspirant Michael Avenatti suggested on social media that pro-Trump activist Jacob Wohl was behind his legal ordeal.

“First Mueller and now me. When we are fully exonerated I am coming for you Jacob Wohl aka Surefire,” Avenatti tweeted.
…
Wohl, a former hedge fund manager and right-wing blogger, is a central figure in a widely dismissed plot accusing special counsel Robert Mueller of sexual misconduct. At a recent Northern Virginia news conference where he made the claims against Mueller, Wohl acknowledged his connection to a firm called Surefire Intelligence. That private intelligence firm’s Twitter account on Thursday tweeted a link to Avenatti’s arrest then declared: “Surefire Intelligence strikes again.”

Reached Thursday, a Wohl associate who partnered with him on the Mueller allegations, Jack Burkman, said he knew nothing of Avenatti’s allegation against Wohl and said he knew nothing of Avenatti’s arrest until he received media calls. “Must be a West Coast thing,” Burkman said.

Wohl could not be reached for comment.

Over Twitter, Wohl denied any involvement in Avenatti’s situation and said he considered Avenatti’s “I’m coming for you” language a threat and reported it to law enforcement.

“Michael Avenatti seems to believe that I am responsible for him raising his hand to a woman. I am not. Will he release the pictures of his battered victim?”

Avenatti was arrested Wednesday afternoon on the 10000 block of Santa Monica Boulevard and police say he was booked on suspicion of domestic violence.

Prosecutors will ultimately determine whether formal charges will be filed against Avenatti but they have not yet received his case for review, a Los Angeles District Attorney’s office spokesman said Thursday. Avenatti is due in court on Dec. 5, police said.

After his arrest, Avenatti’s ex-wife and his second wife, Lisa Storie-Avenatti, with whom he is in the midst of a divorce, released statements defending Avenatti, saying he had never demonstrated evidence of violence. Upon his release from jail, Avenatti told reporters he had never struck a woman and welcomed a full investigation, which he predicted would clear him.

Also Thursday, Avenatti’s most prominent client, Stephanie Clifford — better known by her porn name Stormy Daniels — released a statement saying that if the allegations against Avenatti were true she would seek other representation. But she urged that “we should all reserve judgment” until an investigation is completed.

Well Stephanie, I’d settle for a credible allegation but we don’t even have that yet.

There is a common term for this type of disinformation that TMC doesn’t like me to use on the Front Page because it’s not safe for work. I am loath to self censor but you can probably fill in the gaps if I tell you it rhymes with “Trucking” and starts with an ‘R’ like “Republican”. A more Internetty term is “SWATing” which designates the practice of making spurious complaints to the Police in order to generate raids and arrests of people you find disagreeable, the more violent, public, destructive, and embarrassing the better.

The Jury is still out.

My name is ROGER MURDOCK. I’m an Airline Pilot.

LISTEN, KID! I’ve been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I’m out there busting my buns every night! Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes!

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.

Dr. Sam Sheppard acquitted of murder in new trial; U.S. and U.S.S.R. form diplomatic ties; Second anthrax letter found sent to Capitol Hill; Actor William Holden dies; ‘Sound of Music’ hits Broadway.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. Billy Wilder

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Look, there is definitely a Left case to make against the European Union- it’s Institutions are Anti-Democratic, it’s regulatory bodies are Industry Captured and in a way that prevents local initiatives to mitigate negative effects (affects is pretending), it’s Financial Institutions are biased toward Hayekian Austerity. These are all very good points which might have led me to vote “Leave” in 2015.

Ad Hominem. Ex uno disce omnes. People are quick to label it a fallacy but in many real life situations if you examine a person’s motivations and history you can discover their arguments are entirely specious and self serving. A trivial illustration- if you recommend the insights of Charles Murray (The Bell Curve) not only am I going to question your taste, I’m going to closely examine your future and past statements for other signs you’re a stone cold bigot.

Thus it is with Brexit, the fever dream of the farthest right Conservatives in England (though Steve Bannon makes them all look like Commies). Their reasons are not good reasons (Xenophobia and Racism mostly) and the ease with which they contended the transition could take place is demonstrably false.

That said I can understand Jeremy Corbyn’s reluctant support for “Remain”. Not only does “Leave” honestly represent his sentiments of 40 years or so (as I say, there is a strong Left case) it also reflects the views of almost 50% of Labour voters, some of whom are his most reliable core base.

What is clear now that wasn’t in 2015 (yes, I expect the hoots and jeers of the prescient crystal ball crowd) is that the Tories are utterly incapable of pulling it off. Their Party is riven between greed heads who want to stay and ultra-nationalists who are hell bent on closing the borders (sound familiar? Bueller? Buelller?).

This along with the inherent difficulties of extracting the British Economy from 60 years of European involvement and the general incompetence of Conservatives to do anything but make the lives of the poor and disenfranchised miserable (Ok. WW II. They didn’t screw that up bad enough to lose, though they lost their Empire in the process) means it’s impossible for Theresa May to negotiate a Brexit deal that satisfies her Parliament members.

The proximate problem is that there is no way to negotiate a satisfactory Customs Border between Northern Ireland and The Republic Of. The coalition partners she depends on to maintain her working majority, the Democratic Unionist Party, insist that there can be no border between Northern Ireland and Britain. The Republic of Ireland insists there can be no border between Ireland and the North.

Oh, and they’re going to stay in the EU thank you very much.

These positions are irreconcilable because the Republic of Ireland has veto power through the EU over any agreement and May’s Government can not survive without the DUP, not to mention half her caucus thinks she is insufficiently ardent in her defense of slavery Brexit because she initially opposed it.

Today at least 5 Cabinet members have resigned over her most recent proposal (the day isn’t over yet) and if she isn’t felled by a No Confidence vote in her own Party, she shall certainly be defeated in Parliament on the issue (Jeremy Corbyn and Labour have pledged unified dissent as has the Scottish National Party). She only has a 2 vote margin. If only the Tories who have already resigned their leadership positions put their money where their mouth is she will be forced to call a snap election that Labour will almost surely win.

So, good news… maybe.

I think it likely Corbyn, once installed as Prime Minister, will call for a confirmation vote and the EU will probably grant him the time to do that and, if it’s still relevant, re-negotiate the Brexit deal.

Then we can go back to the normal level of antagonism.

Britain Could Have No Brexit Deal and a New Prime Minister by the Time This Chaos Ends
By Joshua Keating, Slate
Nov 15, 2018

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Theresa May presented a draft agreement to her Cabinet, establishing the terms for Britain’s withdrawal, which is due to take place on March 29. After a contentious five-hour meeting, the Cabinet reluctantly approved the agreement, which still must be approved by Parliament. But today, two Cabinet ministers resigned over the agreement, including Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and several junior ministers. Current Environment Minister Michael Gove, the most prominent pro-Brexit voice remaining in the Cabinet, is thought to be in line to take Raab’s job, but according to the BBC, he will take it only if he can renegotiate the deal.

Pro-Brexit members of May’s Conservative Party as well as the opposition parties have been trashing the deal in Parliament today. Hard-line Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg has called for a vote of no confidence in May, as have up to a dozen other Tories. If 48 Conservative members of Parliament submit letters, it will trigger a vote.

May can then either fall on her sword and resign, or try to win the vote. Even if she survives, the breadth and vehemence of the opposition to her deal from both sides of the aisle today suggests she will have a tough fight getting it approved in Parliament, where her coalition has only a very narrow majority.

The 585-page document, the product of months of negotiations with EU leaders, resolves a number of key issues, including Britain’s financial obligations to the EU and the rights of EU citizens currently living in Britain and British citizens currently living elsewhere in Europe. A final trade agreement between Britain and the bloc would be negotiated during a 21-month transition period.

The most contentious issue in negotiations—surprisingly, given that it was barely discussed in the lead-up to the Brexit referendum in 2016—is the status of Northern Ireland. This is the only part of the United Kingdom that has a land border with the EU, meaning that goods crossing it would somehow need to be checked for EU standards and tariffs. Neither side wants to impose a hard border with customs checks, which, it is feared, could imperil the region’s hard-won peace. The EU has insisted on what’s been called a “backstop,” an agreement that will keep Northern Ireland in a single market for goods and customs union with the rest of Europe if the two sides can’t resolve the issue by 2020. Since this would essentially involve creating an economic border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K., it is anathema to British conservatives—and even more so to the Democratic Unionist Party, the right-wing Northern Irish party that May has depended on for her parliamentary majority since calling an ill-advised general election last year.

All this has created what’s been called the “trilemma.” Britain wants to leave the EU’s single market, avoid a hard border in Ireland, and keep the country economically united. “You can have two of those things, but you can’t have three of those things,” Amanda Sloat, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe, told me.
…
Even if May survives today’s leadership challenge and then defies the odds by getting her agreement approved by Parliament, the Irish trilemma isn’t going away, and no one seems to have a good idea of how to solve it. There are hopes that technological solutions could be put in place to track goods crossing the border without customs posts, but currently this tech, as one official recently put it, “is either untested or does not exist.” But at the very least, the backstop would buy May’s government some more time to figure out a solution.

If May is forced to resign by her own party now—or if Parliament rejects her deal, which could lead to her resignation and new general elections—then it’s anybody’s guess what happens next. There’s little time left to negotiate a new deal with Brussels, and EU leaders have indicated they have little interest in going back to the table. An emergency session of the 27 EU member states is likely to be held later this month to sign off on the current deal.

The prospect of an economically disastrous “no deal” Brexit is growing steadily. Speaking to Parliament last night, May gave a glimmer of hope to those hoping Brexit might still be avoided altogether, saying, “We can choose to leave with no deal, we can risk no Brexit at all, or we can choose to unite and support the best deal that can be negotiated,” May told the House of Commons.

Testis in uno falsus, in nullo fidem meretur.

Exhibit One being of course the Lester Holt interview shortly after the Comey firing.

This is not rocket science. Trump has admitted in public and on tape that he’s Obstructed Justice, which is illegal.

All this crap about how a meeting with Mueller is necessary to determine if he had “criminal intent” is just that- crap. He’s confessed with his own lips at least twice now. All the garbage about how Mueller needs additional evidence to get an indictment for Obstruction of Justice is just that- garbage.

The only reason Trump wasn’t Impeached and Convicted months ago is that our craven and cowardly Congressional representatives don’t have the political will to do it.

He is guilty, guilty, guilty and the seats in the Jury Box wouldn’t even have time to cool off before the verdict was in.

Trump can’t stop blurting out his desire to obstruct justice
By Paul Waldman, Washington Post
November 15, 2018

The president’s dismissal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and appointment of Matthew Whitaker to be acting attorney general — which was in large part, if not entirely, so that Whitaker could end or at least restrict Mueller’s investigation into the Russia scandal — is turning out to be a disaster. Whitaker’s appointment has produced a wave of embarrassing stories about the patent company he worked for that was shut down after allegations of fraud by the Federal Trade Commission. He’s even being mocked on late-night TV. Most importantly, Whitaker has now been hamstrung from fulfilling the purpose for which he was installed.

You might object that I can’t know for sure that Trump appointed Whitaker so that he could go after Mueller. But let’s look at Trump’s own words. Wednesday, the president sat for an interview with the Daily Caller, a conservative website. In this remarkable excerpt, the interviewers ask him what his thinking is on a permanent replacement for Sessions, and after referencing a memo written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel affirming that Whitaker’s appointment as acting attorney general is permissible, Trump suddenly shifts — unprompted — to talking about the Russia investigation.

THE DAILY CALLER: Could you tell us where your thinking is currently on the attorney general position? I know you’re happy with Matthew Whitaker, do you have any names? Chris Christie —

TRUMP: Matthew Whitaker is a very respected man. He’s — and he’s, very importantly, he’s respected within DOJ. I heard he got a very good decision, I haven’t seen it. Kellyanne, did I hear that?

KELLYANNE CONWAY: 20 pages.

TRUMP: A 20-page?

THE DAILY CALLER: It just came out right before this, sir.

TRUMP: Well, I heard it was a very strong opinion. Uh, which is good. But [Whitaker] is just somebody that’s very respected.

I knew him only as he pertained, you know, as he was with Jeff Sessions. And, you know, look, as far as I’m concerned this is an investigation that should have never been brought. It should have never been had.

It’s something that should have never been brought. It’s an illegal investigation. And you know, it’s very interesting because when you talk about not Senate confirmed, well, Mueller’s not Senate confirmed.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly what happened when Trump was interviewed by Lester Holt of NBC News in May 2017 and he blurted out that he fired FBI director James B. Comey because of the Russia investigation. Like the Daily Caller interviewers, Holt didn’t mention Russia at all in his question; he asked Trump about a report that he had ordered Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to write about Comey (seemingly to offer justification for firing him), and inquired about whether Trump had already decided to fire Comey when he got that report. Trump then said, “But regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it. And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.”

Here we have two cases where Trump is asked questions about personnel moves at the Justice Department, and both times, without prompting, he makes it clear that he made the decision in order to quash the Russia investigation. He just can’t help himself.

The scenario Trump would have preferred for this whole thing would have been that the Whitaker appointment attracted little attention other than people saying, “Well, he seems like a capable fellow,” then Whitaker could either fire Mueller and shut down his investigation or find some other way to strangle it. But with Whitaker’s colorful past and his lengthy record of statements on TV criticizing the investigation before he joined the administration, everyone is now watching Whitaker closely, and if he moves against Mueller it will be considered a crisis.

Trump’s repeated insistence that the fact that Mueller wasn’t confirmed by the Senate somehow delegitimizes him may also be a tell that the confirmation issue is on his mind. When he does appoint a permanent attorney general, that person will be subjected to lengthy, detailed questioning about how he (and it will presumably be a man) plans to conduct himself with regard to Mueller — whether he has spoken to the president about the investigation, whether he believes there has been any misconduct on Mueller’s part, and so on. If he can’t answer those questions in a way that gives assurance of his objectivity, he might not get confirmed. Whitaker, on the other hand, has the benefit of not needing confirmation, so he won’t have to answer those questions.

But it may be too late. As each day passes, Mueller gets closer to reaching the end of his inquiries, and he has no doubt prepared for the moment when he’s fired by making sure the evidence he has gathered can either be passed to other prosecutors or made public in some form. According to CNN, Mueller has already begun writing his final report even as it looks like more indictments are coming.

It has been clear all along that Trump has desperately wanted to mount a frontal attack on Mueller, but he’s too impulsive to do it without telling everyone exactly what he’s up to, which then makes it harder to carry out his plan. He can’t even obstruct justice properly.

Back In Black (Flat Earth)

“I was told my tax dollars were going to murdering monkeys in space.”

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.

Sherman begins ‘March to the Sea’ in American Civil War; Zebulon Pike spots namesake mountaintop; Anti-Vietnam War protesters gather in DC; Joey Buttafuoco gets jail time; Actor Sam Waterston born.

Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free society.

Felix Frankfurter

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