The Watering Hole, Friday, March 31, 2017: Open Thread

Will March go out like a lamb? I don’t know, you tell me.

The Watering Hole, Thursday, March 30, 2017: Open Thread

What was that news story about that guy with the thing who was going to do something or other, or not? Remind me what it was below. Thanks.

The Watering Hole, Wednesday, March 29, 2017: Open Thread

I bet you know something I don’t know. Well, out with it. No sense in just one of us being ignorant. 🙂

The Watering Hole, Tuesday, March 28, 2017: Open Thread

Did you hear what happened yesterday? Good, because I didn’t. Tell us all about it.

The Watering Hole, Monday, March 27, 2017: Open Thread

So, what happened since yesterday? Tell us all about it.

The Weekend Watering Hole: Friday, March 24th, 2017: FAUX Pas

On Wednesday, March 22nd, TIME Magazine’s Washington Bureau Chief, Michael Shelton, interviewed FAUX president Donald trump. I give Shelton credit, he apparently did not laugh in the FAUX president’s face (which is the least I’d like to do to trump’s face on any given day at any given minute. But I digress.)  I have to feel sorry for poor Mr. Shelton, as there was no way that any human could possibly keep up with the gibberish uttered by the “Most Embarrassing Man In The World”(TM). ‘Sad.’

The following is an except from ‘President trump’s Interview With TIME on Truth and Falsehoods.’ If you’re not dizzy by the time you’ve finished reading it, you will be if you read the entire interview. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

FAUX POTUS: “Yeah well if you’d look at, in fact I’ll give you the front page story, and just today I heard, just a little while ago, that Devin Nunes had a news conference, did you hear about this, where they have a lot of information on tapping. Did you hear about that?”

SHELTON: “I have not, no.”

FAUX POTUS: “Now remember this. When I said wiretapping, it was in quotes. Because a wiretapping is, you know today it is different than wire tapping. It is just a good description. But wiretapping was in quotes. What I’m talking about is surveillance. And today, [House Intelligence Committee Chairman] Devin Nunes just had a news conference. Now probably got obliterated by what’s happened in London. But just had a news conference, and here it is one of those things. The other one, election, I said we are going to win, we won. And many other things. And I think this is going to be very interesting.”

SHELTON: “So you don’t feel like Comey’s testimony in any way takes away from the credibility of the tweets you put out, even with the quotes?”

FAUX POTUS: “No, I have, look. I have articles saying it happened. But you have to take a look at what they, they just went out at a news conference. Devin Nunes had a news conference. I mean I don’t know, I was unable to see it, because I am at meetings, but they just had a news conference talking about surveillance. Now again, it is in quotes. That means surveillance and various other things. And the New York Times had a front-page story, which they actually reduced, they took it, they took it the word wiretapping out of the title, but its first story in the front page of the paper was wiretapping. And a lot of information has just been learned, and a lot of information may be learned over the next coming period of time. We will see what happens. Look. I predicted a lot of things that took a little of bit of time. Here, headline, for the front page of the New York Times, “Wiretapped data used in inquiry of Trump aides.” That’s a headline. Now they then dropped that headline, I never saw this until this morning. They then dropped that headline, and they used another headline without the word wiretap, but they did mean wiretap. Wiretapped data used in inquiry. Then changed after that, they probably didn’t like it. And they changed the title. They took the wiretap word out.”

Almost the last thing the FAUX president said in the interview was this:

“Hey look, in the mean time, I guess, I can’t be doing so badly, because I’m president, and you’re not.”

So…I gather from all that Nunes held a news conference, and the NY Times took out “the wiretap word”, and voila! he’s magically vindicated. Oh, and also, too, he’s the president.  Badly.  So there!

Words fail me.

This is an early edition of the Weekend Watering Hole. Have at it.

A Nutty Day (A Song Parody)

I love Sir Paul McCartney, and I have nothing but the deepest admiration, awe, and respect for his musical genius and creativity, and I would never dare make a claim that I could do anything better than he when it came to music. But there is one rather small, almost insignificant complaint I have (other than the official lyrics of “Live and Let Die” where he sings “And if this ever-changing world in which we live in [sic],” which can easily be corrected by changing them to “And if this ever-changing world in which we’re livin’,” and nobody would know the difference), and it’s that some of his most beautiful melodies are also his most saddest songs. Take “She’s Leaving Home.” Such a beautiful tune, and yet such a sad, sad song. “Cried For No One,” is another one. I love that tune and yet it’s hard to feel happy when singing it. And the third one, the one below, “Another Day,” is another great tune with such a sad story. One of my personal goals in all these years of writing song parodies was to take one of those sad Paul McCartney songs and turn it into a happy melody we could have fun singing. I hope I succeeded. And I hope I don’t offend my musical idol, Sir Paul McCartney, without whom a great many bass players would not know how to play, and I wouldn’t have been able to write parodies of “Lady Madonna,” “I’ve Just Seen A Face,” “Revolution,” (I’m sure he helped John out here and there) “Too Many People,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Here, There, and Everywhere,” “The Night Before,” “Another Girl,” and the entire “Let It Be” album. Thank you, Sir Paul, and I hope you enjoy this one. Maybe you could sing it for us and give us an even happier tune to enjoy even more, even if it is true. 🙂

This is a typical day in the life of Donald J. Trump, so-called President Of The United States. Or as the acronym that’s most often used on the internet goes,

The Watering Hole, Monday, March 20th, 2017: Comey, You Owe Us

After FBI director James Comey wantonly helped to destroy Hillary Clinton’s chances to win the Presidential election, thereby saddling us with the madman trump and his anti-semitic, white supremacist cabal, Comey owes all of us, big time. Today he has his chance to start making up for his treacherous douchebaggery.

Adam Schiff (D-CA) of the House Intelligence Committee stated yesterday regarding trump’s various claims about Trump Tower being wiretapped:

“I hope that we can put an end to this wild goose chase… What the president said was just patently false. And the wrecking ball it has created has just banged into our British allies and our German allies and it’s continuing to grow in terms of damage and he needs to put an end to this.”

In addition, both Comey and James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, will be testifying today in a hearing on the Russia-trump connections. According to Bloomberg,

“Committee chairman Devin Nunes said Tuesday that he has also invited National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, former CIA director John Brennan, former acting attorney general Sally Yates and two executives from CrowdStrike Inc., a cybersecurity company, to the March 20 hearing.”

The Bloomberg article continues,

“The hearing will likely be the first in-depth public inquiry into allegations of connections between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government, as well as Russia’s efforts to influence the U.S. election…The House Intelligence panel’s top Democrat, Adam Schiff of California, told reporters Tuesday that Comey wasn’t forthcoming with information when the panel held a closed hearing last week.

“The first obstacle we met was the FBI director’s unwillingness to answer questions,” Schiff said.

Comey had better overcome that “unwillingness to answer questions” and start being more “forthcoming with information” today. He owes it to the entire country, which is now becoming unrecognizable as a civilized nation under the trump regime. If Comey has the least tiny bit of patriotism in him, then he MUST be truthful and share any and all information that he’s hiding.

As I’ve said before, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.” OUR country demands no less.

This is our Open Thread – talk about whatever you want, but also, please post any updates you hear/read about today’s hearings.

The Watering Hole, Saturday, March 18th, 2017

Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York who was fired by President Donald Trump last weekend, was so despised by Vladimir Putin’s Russia that he was banned from entering the country in 2013. According to The New York Times, Russia banned Bharara and 17 other Americans in retaliation for U.S. sanctions over human rights violations. The Russian government reportedly targeted Bharara because of his prosecution of Viktor Bout, a convicted arms dealer. Bharara, who is known for investigating officials regardless of political party, also prosecuted three Russian nationals for acting as spies in 2015. “The arrest of Evgeny Buryakov and the charges against him and his co-defendants make clear that – more than two decades after the presumptive end of the Cold War – Russian spies continue to seek to operate in our midst under cover of secrecy,” Bharara said at the time. Bharara was fired by the Trump administration on Saturday after he refused to comply with a request to resign. It was not immediately clear if Bharara was involved in any current investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Surprisingly, Bharara had been personally asked to stay on by Trump last November. Not surprisingly, he had been investigating Fox News at the time of his dismissal. Without directly saying so, Bharara hinted that he may have been investigating Trump, too. Before firing Bharara, Trump tried to call him to thank him for his service, but Bharara refused to take the call without the permission of his superiors. It would have been a breach of protocol for the president to call a US Attorney directly, and it would have been extremely awkward if Bharara was, in fact, investigating Trump. That said, if he did open a formal investigation, his successor could choose to continue that investigation, but they would probably do so at their own peril. Just ask former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates.

This is an open thread. Have fun.

Hump Day 3/8/17

Wow. Hooda thunk… all those folks who came here in the bottom of slave ships were nothing but illegal immigrants looking for a better life for themselves and their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren or God knows who of their prodigy that would finally be free of their illegal immigrant status.

Even now Bannon Trump is working on an executive order that declares all offspring of illegal immigrants to be illegal immigrants themselves. Preliminary drafts suggest Trump plans to get around the XIV Amendment by simply refusing to enforce any laws that grant such people citizenship status.

It is rumored that the executive order won’t be signed until after Trump hires 10,000 more ICE officers, as massive deportations will be pre-planned to coincide with the signing. Once the targeted individuals are out of the country, Trump plans on denying them reentry.

Unexpected opposition is expected to come from mob bosses, whose Mafioso roots trace back to Italians who immigrated “Without Papers“.

OPEN THREAD

Trump: Stephen Hawking Helped Clinton

Trump’s tweet, now deleted:

Steven Hawkings [sic] helped Hillary Clinton create time warp to set up FAKE Russian meetings. Never happened! Pathetic!

Sunday tRump Roast – 3/5/17

From our friend and fellow critter, Wayne: Donald Trump, TV Star.

Click on the link for a clever parody of Jesus Christ, Superstar. (note, lyrics NSFW)

Ah, and enjoy our OPEN THREAD.

 

 

The Watering Hole, Saturday, March 4th, 2017: Look Back and Laugh…and Sigh

We need to take a break from the horror that America has become under a dark, grim authoritarian regime that’s less than two months old, and look back at what – in now-stark contrast – were the halcyon days of Barack Obama, The Laughing President.

President Obama was always at ease with himself, so he was also (almost) always at ease with foreign leaders, celebrities, his fellow Democrats, former Presidents from both sides of the aisle, even the Pope, for heaven’s sake; and even, FFS, the PRESS, that “Enemy of the American People”:

Notice that German Chancellor Angela Merkel doesn’t mind President Obama touching her.

Jon Stewart and President Obama share a pose and a smile

President Obama heartily laughing with David Letterman

V.P. Joe Biden and President Obama perform synchronized laughing.

Patently genuine laugh between Hillary Clinton and President Obama

Hillary’s losing it, but Obama provides support

President Obama and former President Bill Clinton having a good time

“THERE ARE FOUR PRESIDENTS [laughing]!”

The President and The Pope

President Barack Obama’s mic drop at his final Nerd Prom

But the ease and warmth that he obviously shared with so many others pales in comparison with the almost-visible aura of the unmistakable ease, warmth, humor, respect and love that he shares with his wife Michelle:

Barack and Michelle, side by side, as a loving couple should be…

Date night out?

Now THAT’S “Class!”

I won’t sully this brief remembrance of better times with the name(s) or photo(s) of the current fake occupier of our White House. I hope that, as I did, you couldn’t help but smile in response to President Barack Obama’s infectious grin.

[…sigh…]

This is our Open Thread, a bit late – enjoy!

The Watering Hole, Hump Day, 3/1/17

Eighteen months ago, the No DaPL protests took the matter before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The Court convenes in the Peace Palace, and this author was fortunate enough to have visited it several years ago.

In a stunning ruling, the ICJ determined that not only was the United States of America violating the rights of the indigenous people, but that western Europeans have engaged in illegal wars of aggression  since the beginning of the 1500s.

Claims to north American by right of discovery are invalid, the Court explained, because there existed at the time an indigenous population whose rights to the land are superior to that of their illegal conquerors. Indeed, the only portion of the north American continent lawfully occupied by other than the original indigenous tribes is what is now called Manhattan. The ICJ found title to that land lawfully passed to to the Dutch in exchange for 60 guilders of trade goods.

The ICJ also found that claims to north America by right of conquest to be equally invalid, as a country that commits an illegal war of aggression cannot thereby obtain title to the land.

The international court’s ruling, though important, is largely symbolic. It lacks any means to enforce its ruling.

OPEN THREAD