Vid Of The Day

 

New from George Conway's "Anti-Psycho PAC."  He's making some good mischief.

The Ten Commandments Of House Republicans

 

The Ten Commandments of Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson and the House Republican MAGAt coup caucus, as provided by George Conway:

To be posted in all Members’ offices per order of the Speaker: 

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me, except thou shalt followeth thy Orange Jesus over any moral cliff. 

2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, unless thou shalt have purchaseth it on http://DonaldJTrump.com. 

3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, except when thou shalt attacketh Brandon or thy RINOs. 

4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy, unless thou attendeth a musical production in Denver. 

5. Honour thy father and thy mother, and burieth thy mother on thy father’s golf course. 

6. Thou shalt not kill, but thou shalt shooteth looters on sight, and puteth alligators in thy moat to keepeth out the Mexicans. 

7. Thou shalt not commit adultery, but if thou shalt do so with thy porn star, thou shalt payeth her off through an intermediary and falsifieth thy accounting records. 

8. Thou shalt not steal, unless thou needeth to steeleth one moreth than a certain number of popular votes or unless thou can hideth thy stollen documents at thy bathroom in thy resort. 

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness. LOL. 

10. Thou shalt not covet (but seeth nos. 2, 4, 7, and 8 aboveth).

Can we get an amen!?

(Photo:  Seven of the least "Christian" people you'll ever see, including "MAGA Mike" Johnson in the blue suit with his back facing the camera, praying on the House floor on October 25 / X)

QOTD -- No Deal

 

"I would tell him that he needs to own up to it and plead guilty and work out a deal with the government. One of the things that the Justice Department will consider doing in settling, in plea-bargaining political corruption cases, is to take a commitment from the defendant, an enforceable commitment from the defendant, not to hold public office again, to resign. [Vice President Spiro] Agnew had to resign as part of his nolo contendere plea in 1973.

"And so what I would say is, you need to work out the best deal possible, and you just have to say, you’re just gonna leave public life and pay a fine, and I’d do my best to keep him out of prison.

"He’s never going to agree with that. He’s not going to plead. But that would be his best move: I’ll leave the republic alone, and you leave me alone... "  -- never- Trump conservative lawyer George Conway, in a discussion with Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, providing unsolicited legal advice to the Malignant Loser.  If only the Malignant Loser would leave us alone!  But, as Conway rightly notes, it's not something the Malignant Loser, the narcissistic sociopath that he is, will do because everything he does is "perfect," plus he's smarter than all the lawyers!  So there will be trials, there will be verdicts and, hopefully, justice will be meted out.

QOTD: Cornered Animal

 

"Trump is basically a cornered animal. He's got all these legal proceedings bearing down on him. In addition, he is losing his touch and his connection to his public, because his act has become very tiresome. That explains why Trump is embracing the QAnon conspiracy. He's doing that because of his narcissism: He's feeling attacked, and for the first time in his life, he is facing real consequences for his actions. The DOJ and other investigations have caused Trump to suffer a narcissistic injury. He is a pathological narcissist, and by going to the QAnon people he is getting attention and his need for narcissistic fuel is being somewhat satisfied. That also explains why Trump would never criticize the QAnon conspiracy cult before. He likes people who like him. That is what really matters to him. 

Trump is in a downward psychological, emotional and physical spiral. His embrace of QAnon shows how extreme his deterioration is. But here is the problem for the rest of us: Donald Trump is not going to go away immediately. He is going to try to use the electoral process, and threats of violence, to regain power and influence."  (our emphasis) -- conservative attorney and pundit George Conway, in an interview with Chauncey Vega at Salon.com, explaining the Malignant Loser's embrace of the QAnon domestic violence cult and why he will turn his serious legal problems into fuel for violence by his cult following in the coming months and more. Conway's take on the Malignant Loser's situation and the fate of the Republican / Trumpist Party is worth a read.

The Believers And Their Golden Calf

There are two amusing pieces out, one a Twitter thread by Brian Tyler Cohen, the other an op/ ed by never Trumper George Conway (of course, the unfortunate husband of Kellyanne) on Trump and his supporters.  Take a few moments to go to the links and check out the full pieces if you can.

Here's a part of Cohen's thread, as if written by Mango Mussolini himself:

We won the Revolutionary War by taking the airports. We took the airports. And we had the biggest hurricanes, from the standpoint of wetness and water. So much wet. But that's what many people say. He's stuck in the basement. You have to wonder why. Person man woman camer

And they were spying on us. They admitted it. "Sir," they said-- and they were crying also. "We spied on you." The deep state I call it. And you get cancer just from standing near a windmill. And if you're a bird, forget it. Biden and AOC want to kill the birds. Check the manual.

Biden is confused but also an Antifa supersoldier who will turn your neighborhood into Portland. He is sleepy and diabolical and he didn't write that tweet. Ask him to take the test, he won't. The last five questions are impossible, the doctors fainted. Biden hates the suburbs.

Here's a small part of Conway's op/ed, as if written by a dead- end MAGA dolt:

I believe that if Biden is elected, there will be “no religion, no anything,” and he would confiscate all guns, “immediately and without notice.” He would “abolish” “our great,” “beautiful suburbs,” not to mention “the American way of life.” There would be “no windows, no nothing” in buildings.

I believe the news media would have “no ratings” and “will go down along with our great USA!” if the president loses — and that this would be bad even though the media is fake.

I believe it’s normal for the president to say “Yo Semites” and “Yo Seminites,” “Thigh Land,” “Minne-a-napolis,” “toe-tally-taria-tism,” “Thomas Jeffers” and “Ulyss-eus S. Grant.” I believe it’s Biden who’s cognitively impaired.

I believe the president “aced” a “very hard” impairment test, and that his “very surprised” doctors found this “unbelievable.” I believe it was “amazing” he remembered five words, such as “person, woman, man, camera, TV” — in correct order. I believe he took the SAT himself.

Sometimes you have to take a break and laugh, and these are two good places to start.

QOTD -- Distraction And Disgrace

"There should have been shame enough in orchestrating the acquittal of an impeached president who, in order to extort help for his reelection campaign, unlawfully withheld security aid to an ally. Shame enough in turning the Senate impeachment trial into a sham by refusing to hear a single live witness.

But it turns out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was just getting started.

"On Tuesday, he added to the disgrace by claiming that impeachment distracted officials from dealing with the coronavirus. Speaking to radio host (and Post columnist) Hugh Hewitt, McConnell said the virus 'came up while we were, you know, tied down in the impeachment trial. And I think it diverted the attention of the government, because everything, every day, was all about impeachment.' [snip]

"For Trump, it’s always about Trump and only Trump. If anything, it was McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans’ refusal to remove him, not the impeachment itself, that helped bring us to where we are today." -- George Conway, unfortunate spouse of Kellyanne, in today's Washington Post.  We left out the bulk of Conway's indictment of Moscow Mitch McConnell and the Gold- Plated Turd;  it's worth a read.

As we note in yesterday's Tweets of the Day, it only took about a day for the Gold- Plated Turd's grotesque ego to manifest itself and contradict Moscow Mitch's lame distraction gambit. D'oh!

QOTD: Barr's Protection Of Trump's Criminality

George Conway, the conservative attorney and unfortunate husband of White (Supremacist) House alternate facts generator Kellyanne, writes in an op-ed in the Washington Post this morning about Trump defense attorney and nominal Attorney General William "Low" Barr's eagerness to please his Dear Leader while undermining the rule of law. His misrepresentation of the findings of the Mueller report, his meddling in the Roger Stone sentencing recommendation, etc. are noted, but Conway continues:

"The most important thing Barr did for Trump, though, involved the arms-for-dirt-on-Biden Ukraine scandal — which should have prompted a full-blown criminal investigation with a special counsel. Any U.S. attorney’s office would fall over itself to investigate, for example, a state governor who, while running for reelection against a former mayor, so much as hinted to the mayor’s successor that, say, highway funds would be restricted unless the current mayor were to announce an inquiry into her predecessor’s alleged corruption.

But instead of investigating the Ukraine shakedown, Barr’s Justice Department immediately gave the president a clean bill of health. Saving Trump from that criminal investigation was more than what Roy Cohn ever did for any of his clients." (our emphasis)

The 2020 elections, which demagogue and autocrat Donald "Impeached Forever" Trump will try to corrupt, remain our hope for the removal of this dangerous cancer on our democracy. For Dems in the coming weeks and months, that means voting for the candidate you love, then voting for the one that's left, no matter what.

Tweet Of The Day -- Busy Busy

Lighter tweeting today as I try to keep track of all the president’s high crimes and misdemeanors, foreign policy fiascos, and dozens of additional sexual misconduct allegations.

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) October 9, 2019

(Here's a link to the report of the newest Trump sexual misconduct allegations from the recently published book "All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator.")

BONUS:  Also today --

[Trump] was asked whether abandoning the Kurds might damage U.S. efforts to forge future alliances, and he responded, “No, it won’t. Alliances are very easy.” He added that the Kurds “didn’t help us in the Second War War, they didn’t help us with Normandy.”

There. Are. No. Words.... Except "impeach and remove."

On The Trump-Ukraine Scandal

Beginning with a caveat:  we're under no illusion that the gutless, treason- abetting careerist Republicans in the Senate would ever take up articles of impeachment that the House might forward.  That being said, allowing an unstable, law- breaking buffoon to set precedents for future presidents, without accountability, is perhaps the worst possible outcome for our democracy.  It must be the duty of Democrats to memorialize the many ways this existential threat has abused his power and committed acts that deserve removal from office -- even though that removal may not take place until voters cast their ballots in November 2020.

In the meantime, here's what others are saying today.

George Conway and Neal Katyal:

So it appears that the president might have used his official powers — in particular, perhaps the threat of withholding a quarter-billion dollars in military aid — to leverage a foreign government into helping him defeat a potential political opponent in the United States.

If Trump did that, it would be the ultimate impeachable act. Trump has already done more than enough to warrant impeachment and removal with his relentless attempts, on multiple fronts, to sabotage the counterintelligence and criminal investigation by then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and to conceal evidence of those attempts. [snip]

The current whistleblowing allegations, however, are even worse. Unlike the allegations of conspiracy with Russia before the 2016 election, these concern Trump’s actions as president, not as a private citizen, and his exercise of presidential powers over foreign policy with Ukraine. Moreover, with Russia, at least there was an attempt to get the facts through the Mueller investigation; here the White House is trying to shut down the entire inquiry from the start — depriving not just the American people, but even congressional intelligence committees, of necessary information.

It is high time for Congress to do its duty, in the manner the framers intended. Given how Trump seems ever bent on putting himself above the law, something like what might have happened between him and Ukraine — abusing presidential authority for personal benefit — was almost inevitable. Yet if that is what occurred, part of the responsibility lies with Congress, which has failed to act on the blatant obstruction that Mueller detailed months ago.

Leonard Pitts, Jr.:

It’s important to note the context here.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department launched an antitrust investigation of four automakers after they reached agreement with the state of California to maintain higher fuel-efficiency standards than the federal government requires. It can be no coincidence that Trump has long been at war with that state.

At roughly the same time, officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reportedly were threatened with termination for contradicting Trump’s claim — he tried to prove it by marking a map with a Sharpie — that Alabama was menaced by a killer storm.

Now here’s the acting DNI throwing his body between Trump and accountability. We are seeing the credibility of the federal government mangled in service to this guy’s fragile ego. How weak the guardrails of democracy turn out to be. Even this one — a government of, by and for the people is looking suspiciously like a government of, by and for Trump.

But where guardrails fail, things crash and fall apart. Something to remember as we wait out the long years until next November.

We were told our institutions would save us. They’ll be lucky if they can save themselves.

Molly Jong -Fast on the enablers of Trump rising to the defense:

Like with any crisis in Trumpworld, the Trump Mobius strip of propaganda rolled out a rapid and slightly insane response. Trump’s propagandists met yet another allegation of presidential malfeasance with a smorgasbord of obfuscation, confession, deflection, confusion, and unbridled hostility.

The morning after the whistleblower’s allegations came to light, the president’s favorite breakfast show cheerfully explained to its viewers that what looked like potential treason was in fact merely “the art of the deal.” Yes, possible corruption was actually just deal-making! Geraldo Rivera chimed in to call out the whistleblower for being “annoying, this is a punk, a punk who's snitching out the president's phone calls to a foreign leader”. Newt Gingrich volunteered an “executive powers” defense. Gingrich has himself been plagued by ethics scandals, so perhaps he’s the perfect person to defend such an ethically challenged president.  [snip]

But no one shills for the president quite like the members of his own party, and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley is always happy to go on Fox News and blame “another deep state attack” on whatever’s got the president into trouble this time. Likewise, Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn blamed the Democrats for the whistleblower, saying, "You will never see the attacks stopped. The left will not give up because they cannot even accept the fact that they lost." All of this is made sillier by the fact that none of these people know who the whistleblower is.

Finally, Oliver Bullough on the Biden non- scandal at the heart of the real scandal:

... [W]hen journalists seek the fire behind the smoke in the Biden-Ukraine tale, they often call to ask my opinion. Many are eager to flesh out what seems a satisfyingly simple conspiracy, but I have to tell them: It isn’t true. The timeline doesn’t work. The investigation into Burisma, Hunter Biden’s employer, had ground to a halt long before the prosecutor was sacked. A subsequent probe into the company’s owner was opened because of a request from Ukrainian legislators, not because of prosecutorial initiative. There is, in short, no there there; the bloggers are putting two and two together — and coming up with 22.

Jon Chait also debunks the Biden non- scandal story here.

(One of those "journalists" seeking the fire behind the smoke is the New York Effing Times' Rudy Giuliani whisperer Ken Vogel -- remember the timeline and take anything he has to report on this with a metric f*ckton of salt.  More on Vogel here. And, more so, here.)

QOTD II -- A Dark Underbelly That's Racist To The Core

“What the president is doing is we are tired—we’re sick and tired of many people in this country. Forget these four...They represent a dark underbelly in this country of people who are not respecting our troops, are not giving them the resources and respect that they deserve. They voted against the military aid.” -- utterly vile Trump lickspittle Kellyanne "Mouth of Sauron" Conway today on Fox "News," defending and deflecting from Trump's racist tirade against four Democratic Congresswomen.  "Dark underbelly"?  WTF.  That's how this particular dog whistler gaslights and projects that these Congresswomen are somehow un- American and "other."  By the way, the majority of Americans are sick and tired of you and that shitwhistle to whose ass your lips are attached.

"...Telling four non-white members of Congress — American citizens all, three natural-born — to “go back” to the “countries” they “originally came from”? That’s racist to the core." -- never- Trump Republican and Kellyanne's no doubt suffering husband George Conway discovering finally that Trump's a racist, today in the WaPo.  He should love his wife's latest comments.  Maybe his next op/ ed can be "I just found out Kellyanne Conway is a racist spokesperson."

BONUS: The Mouth of Sauron also just asked a reporter asking a question about Trump's racist tweets "What's your ethinicity?"