Banana Republican Friday Reads
Posted: May 8, 2020 Filed under: COVID19, morning reads, tRump crimes against humanity 38 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Lessee … High unemployment rate (14.7%)…. check. Unchecked Pandemic clearly botched with high levels of death … check … Cronyism and Nepotism out the wazoo …. check. State News channel aiding and abetting all of it using propaganda … check. Focused hate on scientists and reliance on sham science, lava level hate for journalists, people of varying religions, ethnicities, and race … check … stacked judiciary … check ... Ugly ass thug who doesn’t speak coherently about anything but shouts a lot about people out to get him …check
Am I leaving anything out?
Well, feel free to add to the list. because I’m undoubtedly leaving out how quickly Trumpists, McConnell, and Barr have let our country slide into chaos so they can stack the courts and rewrite the Constitution into something it was never supposed to be. And all those links are fresh today. We continue our path to Banana Republic. No where is this clearer today than in the revival of crazy ass, lying General Flynn. The only thing that comes between him returning to the West Wing after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his associations with the Russians and breaking a slew of lobbying laws including being an unregistered foreign agent is one Judge. This is why Mitch McConnell is intent on getting rid of as many prudent, qualified judges on any federal court. Judges have stopped their coup a helluva lot more times than the opposition party.
From Reuters: “Skeptical judge could hold up Trump administration’s bid to clear Flynn, legal experts say”
The notoriously independent-minded federal judge who once said he was disgusted by the conduct of Michael Flynn could block the administration’s bid to drop criminal charges against the former adviser to President Donald Trump, legal experts said.
The Department of Justice on Thursday told U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington it wants to drop the case against Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, following a pressure campaign by the Republican president and his political allies.
While judges typically sign off on such motions, Sullivan could refuse and instead demand answers from the DOJ about who requested the sudden about-face, said Seth Waxman, a former federal prosecutor now at the law firm Dickinson Wright.
“If Judge Sullivan wanted to he could conduct an inquiry and start asking a lot of questions,” said Waxman.
Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who served as an adviser to Trump during the 2016 election campaign, had been seeking to withdraw his 2017 guilty plea in which he admitted to lying to the FBI about interactions with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks before Trump took office.
Flynn’s lawyers, both in court and in public, had argued that he was ambushed as part of a plot by biased investigators and that the case should be dismissed. Trump said in March that he was considering a pardon for Flynn.
The Justice Department said in a court filing on Thursday it is no longer persuaded that the FBI’s January 2017 interview with Flynn that led to the charges was conducted with a “legitimate investigative basis” and does not think Flynn’s statements were “material even if untrue.”
While the judge still has to rule on the submission, elated supporters of Flynn said there was no way Sullivan could force the department to prosecute if it did not want to. But the judge could stop Flynn from withdrawing his guilty plea and impose sentence. In that case, Trump could pardon Flynn.
And Trump wants him back in the West Wing! This is from the Daily Beast: “Team Trump Wants Flynn Back for 2020, Sees Him as Its ‘Nelson Mandela’”.
With the Justice Department announcing Thursday that it would drop the case against Michael Flynn, officials close to President Donald Trump are already gaming out ways to bring the former national security adviser back onto the national political stage.
Of the nine senior Trump administration officials, campaign staff, outside advisers, and longtime associates of the president reached on Thursday, all said that they wanted Flynn to assume some public-facing role in service of the president, including potentially as an official Trump surrogate as Election Day inches closer. One even compared the ex-general, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials, to one of history’s greatest human rights icons.
“Years ago when Nelson Mandela came to America after years of political persecution he was treated like a rock star by Americans,” John McLaughlin, one of President Trump’s chief pollsters, told The Daily Beast on Thursday evening. “Now after over three years of political persecution General Flynn is our rock star. A big difference is that he was persecuted in America.”
We’re due for another slaughter at the FBI now.
President Trump voiced uncertainty Friday over the future of his FBI director, Christopher A. Wray, a day after the Justice Department moved to throw out the guilty plea of the president’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.
The president’s comments in a phone interview with Fox News highlight the ongoing distrust between the White House and some senior law enforcement officials in the wake of a nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into the Russia’s 2016 election interference and the Trump campaign.
“It’s disappointing,” Trump said when asked about Wray’s role in the ongoing reviews of the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation. “Let’s see what happens with him. Look, the jury’s still out.”
Trump faulted the FBI director for “skirting” the debate surrounding the Russia investigation, although the agency and the Justice Department have insisted it has cooperated fully with officials reviewing the case.
And nothing says Kim Jong Il like dragging out elderly veterans during a pandemic that is likely to kill them if they get it just for a display of jingoism. On full display is his maskless face and Melania’s highly sculpted ass.
None of the secret service or the military guards–including the color guard–are wearing masks. Meanwhile, it looks like we may have another “hotspot”. It’s the damn West Wing which may actually give us all a break from Trumpist insanity.
I’m just hoping we can some how get rid of JarVanka for awhile. This is from WAPO: “I worked for Jared Kushner. Of course he says his covid-19 failure is a success. President Trump’s son-in-law always casts himself as the genius cleaning up someone else’s problems.”
Jared Kushner’s coronavirus response team, we learned this week, is fumbling because it’s largely staffed with inexperienced volunteers. Of course it is. It’s being run by one.
Kushner’s lack of experience and expertise has not been remedied in any way during his now three-plus years in the White House. After bungling many high-profile efforts to address various problems and often making them worse (see, Middle East, peace in), he keeps being handed more responsibilities with higher stakes. He has wasted taxpayer resources and endangered lives trying on policy roles usually reserved for the country’s top experts with the sophistication of a child playing dress-up, cavalierly discarding them when he can’t fit into them.
There have been no consequences. In any normal administration, an adviser with Kushner’s string of failures would be fired, but Kushner, like his father-in-law, keeps crediting himself with imaginary successes. Most recently, he declared the administration’s coronavirus response “a great success story,” a mind-boggling assertion that raises the question of what, if anything, Kushner thinks failure looks like. He has also continued to bash the actual experts, disputing their assessments and implying that they, not he, are the amateurs, and he is here to clean up their mess.
This is basically Kushner’s modus operandi, and it’s painfully familiar to me because he was my boss when I was the editor in chief of the New York Observer, which he had bought when he was 25. (I’ve written before about what he was like as a businessman.) One of the more memorable instances of this I witnessed was at a memorial service for a beloved longtime Observer staffer, Tyler Rush, who’d joined the paper well before Kushner bought it. When it came time for Kushner to say a few words, he launched into a supercilious monologue crediting himself with finally getting the paper published on time after what he described as chaos when he arrived. He also told an anecdote about Rush approaching him when he bought the paper to note that his staff was underpaid, which was true at the time, and true when I took the editor job years later. Kushner congratulated himself during the memorial for giving Rush and his production team the only raise that year because “unlike everyone else,” Rush hadn’t been lying to Kushner.
Let’s see if any of their religionist craziness or white wing nationalist views can protect them now. Having all of them sick would actually be a nice ending for the week and I say that fully knowing that it sounds harsh. But, what a better fate for the crew that has introduced us to living in a banana republic hell realm of their making.
An they can take their little dogs McConnell and Barr with them …
However, for the non Magrats in our country, be safe, be kind and gentle to yourself and others, and stay your asses home!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
NW Luna
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
From my Governor:
and my favorite retired General:
(Minor point. “Dispassionate” means fair, uninfluenced by emotion. I think you want some other word? Unfeeling, perhaps?)
I struggled with that. It sounds so Un Buddhist of me but decided maybe harsh?
I struggle with wishing ill of anyone as well, but in truth, this administration is killing people. If anything happens to Pence or Dump I’ll be unable to feel unhappy about it.
Can we call his ignoring the reality of the situation a mass murder? His ability to feel compassion, a sense of loss, any feeling except glee at the situation he’s created.
I know what you mean about feeling bad that you can’t even care about those criminals. Criminals should always be treated humanely. But these people are worse, in some deeper realm of hell. And then I start to think what it means about me that I can’t even care anymore.
All I meant re the word wasn’t a comment on all that. Only that it’s the wrong word for what you mean.
That’s good news that the judge can demand answers. I hope he does it!
Because if the Dump has to pardon the traitor, he cannot refuse to answer questions if Congress calls him to testify. You can’t plead the 5th if self-incrimination doesn’t apply to you.
Which is probably why the Dump hasn’t been pardoning any of his cronies.
Whereas this weaselly workaround accomplishes two things: no talking about the crimes committed since he *would* self-incriminate, and signals to all his other co-criminals that they’ll be taken care of, they just have to not blab.
Word is out that the Trump administration is going to start disavowing the death numbers because they interfere with the happy talk messaging about getting the economy up and running. I guess people are just too hesitant to get out again – those pesky facts are getting in the way. Watch for it, the death count will soon be called fake news.
Evidently the orders went out to the minions
first good news I’ve heard all day:
check this out…. Pence delivered empty boxes
ATL Journal Constitution reporting a second member of Pence’s staff is positive.
https://www.ajc.com/news/new-mike-pence-staffer-tests-positive-for-virus-days-after-trump-valet/tSj3Op809Ua8izlqUT3q8K/
Hahahahaha! Frankly, I have no qualms whatsoever about wishing Trump/Pence ill. I hope the whole lot of them in the White House get Covid-19.
Me too.
“Well can I carry them just for the cameras?”
Sums up their whole scam.
Apparently it’s not true, even though it would be typical Trump/Pence behavior.
There’s, like, all of about three drive-ins left. Maybe he doesn’t know that?
So the “independent” outfit calculates that the drug could save $4500 for people and society so somehow that justifies Gilead taking the money?
No.
No, that is not how ethics works. That isn’t even how mere humanity works.
They can charge their actual costs, $1. That’s all.
But quixote, you’re not thinking like a drug company! I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they decided to price it at the higher amount or more.
HAHAHAHAHAHA. Problem is, none of us will live to see that.
Wait. What? He said that *now*? Or is this something from 2 months ago?
“It’ll go away.”
Is it my imagination or is the Dump looking even pastier and puffier than usual?
[…] Sky Dancing presents… Banana Republicans! […]