Trump Team Dangled Ambassadorships to Lure A-List Inauguration Singers

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Wednesday December 14, 2016 · 12:05 PM PST

2016/12/14 · 12:05

Let’s file this under are you f’ng kidding me!!!

Yes, this is a real story, although Boris Epshteyn, a Trump committee spokesman denies it.

www.thewrap.com/...

President-elect Donald Trump’s team is struggling so hard to book A-list performers for his inaugural festivities that it offered ambassadorships to at least two talent bookers if they could deliver marquee names, the bookers told TheWrap.

The bookers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they were approached by members of Trump’s Presidential Inaugural Committee in recent weeks with offers of cash or even plush diplomatic posts in exchange for locking in singers.

The first insider said he was “shocked” at the proposal: “Never in a million years have I heard something so crazy,” he said. “That was the moment I almost dropped the phone.”

Trump’s team has managed to enlist 16-year-old former “America’s Got Talent” star Jackie Evancho to sing. No mention of what fine country she'll be the ambassador to.

The article stated that most of the bookers were uncomfortable with the idea and turned Trump down. But hey, all is not lost…

Among those seen as more likely performers are Kid Rock and Ted Nugent, both of whom backed Trump’s presidential run. Garth Brooks raised speculation he might perform when he told TMZ he would be open to the idea, if asked, but on Tuesday, a person with knowledge of the situation scuttled the idea.

You can always count on Ted. Ambassador Ted, that is. What a joke.

Trump campaign vetting Chris Christie for VP: reports

miracle11

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Thursday June 30, 2016 · 10:58 AM PDT

2016/06/30 · 10:58

Sometimes dreams do come true…

The Donald Trump campaign is vetting New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) as a potential running mate for the presumptive presidential nominee, according to multiple reports.

Those with knowledge of the process told The New York Times on Thursday that Christie is among those being vetted as a possible vice presidential pick for Trump.

And an unnamed source told CNN the governor has received the official paperwork for the vetting process.

thehill.com/...

Christie has a 26% approval rating in New Jersey, not to mention the outcome of Bridgegate still pending. Yet Trump thinks this blowhard, big mouth asshole will help him reach the White House. In 2012, Christie fouled Romney’s quest for the presidency. In 2016, he’s at it again. Thanks Chris!

Weirdest presidential campaign ever! Hands down! You can’t make this up.

UPDATE: Mike Pence is also “in play.”

www.nbcnews.com/…

Boy, he can sure pick em.

This Is Why I Love Obama

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Thursday December 25, 2014 · 10:28 AM PST

2014/12/25 · 10:28

Obama had a cardinal rule: “...You don’t put stuff on your head if you’re president,” That’s politics 101. You never look good wearing something on your head."

Chief White House photographer Pete Souza posted a photo to Instagram today showing the president donning a tiara alongside a group of Girl Scouts from Tulsa, Oklahoma. The photo, from the annual White House Science Fair, was taken in May.

What a delightful, sweet picture. This is a man very secure within himself. Humble with a good sense of humor. This is a man who's made up his mind to enjoy his final years in office and not give a rat's ass what anyone thinks.

I love this comment from someone on Huffington Post:

Sometimes you see a photo and just know. This is a man with daughters. The kind of man who probably let his nails be polished and has had many a cup of imaginary tea, while in the company of teddy bears. I understand he plays basketball as well.

It's predictable what the ugly, joyless responses from the right wingers will be. But, I'm not going to give a rat's ass. Haters gonna hate.

WH Chef To Wed MSNBC Host; Obamas Will Attend

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Friday August 29, 2014 · 12:44 PM PDT

2014/08/29 · 12:44

Yeah, this is fluff, but I have a special affinity for MSNBC host Alex Wagner. She's both adorable and beautiful, but more importantly she's smart with an electric personality and is a strong liberal voice. Her fiance, Sam Kass, is not only the First Family's Chef, he's the senior policy advisor on nutrition and the executive director for Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative. Oh, and he was number 3 on The Hill's 50 Most Beautiful People 10th Anniversary list in 2013. He's known the Obamas since before his run for president and is adored by the entire family.

http://www.chicagomag.com/...

Back home in the tightly knit community of Hyde Park, he ran into Michelle Obama, whom he’d known around the neighborhood since he was in high school. Malia would soon be in his dad’s fifth-grade class at Lab; Barack was off in Washington, preparing for a presidential bid. Michelle was an overtaxed working mom, worrying about the girls’ getting good nutrition and staying healthy. Kass stepped into her kitchen, “went through the cupboards, and started doing his thing—vegetables and home cooking,” says Blue Hill chef Dan Barber, a friend and mentor to Kass. Sasha and Malia quickly fell in love with the big-brother figure.

Both attractive movers and shakers with big, bright careers, Vogue dubbed them 'Politics' It Couple of the Year.' http://www.vogue.com/...

Richard Wolff from MSNBC introduced the power couple.

It was Wolffe, also an MSNBC commentator, who introduced Kass to Wagner. After spotting Wagner at White House events, Kass pestered his friend to take him to the MSNBC after-party following the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Wolffe says he told Kass that he was aiming way over his head. “ ‘Forget it. Never going to happen,’ I kept telling him.”

And the rest is history. The wedding is Saturday in New York and President Obama and the First Lady will attend the nuptials.

I told you it was fluff. But sometimes a little fluff is fun. Riiight?

Renee Elmers NEEDS Her Paycheck

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Thursday October 03, 2013 · 4:45 PM PDT

2013/10/03 · 16:45

The hypocrisy of the Stupid Party brigade just rolls on and on.

Get a load of this:

As some North Carolina congressional lawmakers defer pay during the shutdown, GOP Rep. Renee Ellmers is refusing to do so -- and her remarks are drawing the attention of an advocacy group.
"The thing of it is, I need my paycheck. That is the bottom line," Ellmers told WTVD, the Raleigh ABC station Wednesday.

http://projects.newsobserver.com/...

Hear that, Renee Elmers NEEDS her paycheck! But more than 800,000 furloughed federal employees evidently do not. Even though 70 + congressional lawmakers are voluntarily NOT taking a salary during the partial government shutdown, including cuckoo bird Virginia Foxx, Renee just cannot make the sacrifice.

On a related note, Renee, a former nurse, is also married to a general surgeon. Yet, she is denying treatment for children with cancer. In Renee's defense, those children don't usually turn up on election day or write big checks. Besides, it's Harry Reid who wants to deny care to the kids.

And to make that point, on October 3 Eric Cantor staged a healthcare presser where Republicans, including Renee, wore lab coats and pleaded for Harry Reid fund the National Institute of Health.

Congresswoman Renee Ellmers, who publicly opposed shutting down the government over Obamacare in August, held back tears as she described the emotional toll on families denied care.
“If you’ve ever seen the look on a parents face when they’re told that their child has cancer and then you take their hope away, the moment that they know they can fight for it they will,” Ellmers said.

Republicans pilloried Majority Leader Harry Reid, a picture of whom was featured at Thursday’s press conference, for telling a CNN reporter the day before that he wouldn’t “pick and choose” which features of government to revive.

Ellmers urged Reid to “give hope back to these families.”

“I tell you Senator Reid, you will not sleep until that happens,” she said.

http://tv.msnbc.com/...

Harry Reid may not sleep at night, but I wonder how Renee Elmers lives with herself. Dissociative disorder or delusional? Does it really matter? At least the ACA will cover it.

Senator Cheney? Liz Cheney, That Is

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Sunday July 07, 2013 · 9:27 AM PDT

2013/07/07 · 09:27

Brace yourselves. Another Cheney is eying a seat in government.

Liz Cheney, 46, phoned Republican incumbent, Michael Enzi who was first elected to the Senate in 1996, to let him know she's thinking about challenging him in 2014.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

Ms. Cheney, 46, is showing up everywhere in the state, from chicken dinners to cattle growers’ meetings, sometimes with her parents in tow. She has made it clear that she wants to run for the Senate seat now held by Michael B. Enzi, a soft-spoken Republican and onetime fly-fishing partner of her father.

One problem, Enzi isn't ready to retire. And if Cheney decides to challenge him, it threatens to start a civil war among the state's Republican establishment.

It would bring about “the destruction of the Republican Party of Wyoming if she decides to run and he runs, too,” Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from the state, said in an interview last week. “It’s a disaster — a divisive, ugly situation — and all it does is open the door for the Democrats for 20 years.”

Dick and Lynne Cheney divide their time between McLean, Va., a home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and a house near Jackson Hole, Wyo. Liz, on the other hand, just recently moved to Wyoming from Virginia in the last year. And boy howdy is she ever eager to "to establish her Cowboy State credentials, peppering social media sites with photos of her children’s horse-riding competitions and descriptions of Wyoming as “God’s Country.”

Now, as beloved and admired as the Cheney's are (I'll give you a minute to stop gagging), the fine people of Wyoming think Senator Enzi has done a good job in Washington and deserves a third term.

“I know of no one who doesn’t want Mike Enzi to run for the Senate again,” said Douglas W. Chamberlain, a former Wyoming House speaker.

Also, because Enzi has just won a long-sought seat on the Finance Committee, he is especially excited to continue serving. But typical of a right wing nutter, Liz may criticize Enzi for being too willing to work with Democrats instead of pushing extreme conservative causes. Cheney has also called President Obama “the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office.”

The only reason Mr. Enzi would “be in any difficulty is if there’s a weird group of Republicans who think compromise is akin to communism,” said Mr. Simpson, who called Mr. Enzi and Ms. Cheney “both wonderful people” and, like many here, does not want to have to choose.

This is a story worth keeping an eye on, just for the popcorn factor alone.

Frank Rich Eviserates David Gregory

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Wednesday June 26, 2013 · 7:33 PM PDT

2013/06/26 · 19:33

Frank Rich, New York Magazine writer-at-large, talked with contributor Eric Benson about David Gregory's ridiculous question to Glenn Grenwald on Sunday's Meet The Press: "Why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?"

Rich's brutal commentary:

Is David Gregory a journalist? As a thought experiment, name one piece of news he has broken, one beat he’s covered with distinction, and any memorable interviews he’s conducted that were not with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin, or Chuck Schumer. Meet the Press has fallen behind CBS’s Face the Nation, much as Today has fallen to ABC’s Good Morning America, and my guess is that Gregory didn’t mean to sound like Joe McCarthy (with a splash of the oiliness of Roy Cohn) but was only playing the part to make some noise. In any case, his charge is preposterous. As a columnist who published Edward Snowden’s leaks, Greenwald was doing the job of a journalist — and the fact that he’s an “activist” journalist (i.e., an opinion journalist, like me and a zillion others) is irrelevant to that journalistic function.

Rich then went on to add:

If Gregory had integrity and guts, he would have added that the journalist Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, who published the other set of Snowden leaks (and arguably more important ones), aided and abetted a crime. But it’s easier for Gregory to go after Greenwald, a self-professed outsider who is not likely to attend the White House Correspondents' Dinner and works for a news organization based in London. Presumably if Gregory had been around 40 years ago, he also would have accused the Times of aiding and abetting the enemy when it published Daniel Ellsberg’s massive leak of the Pentagon Papers. In any case, Greenwald demolished Gregory on air and on Twitter (“Who needs the government to try to criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?”).

Now Gregory was widely derided for the hostile question, but Frank Rich, a national treasure, spared no punches, ending with this:

The new, incoming leadership of NBC News has a golden opportunity to revamp Sunday morning chat by making a change at Meet the Press. I propose that Gregory be full-time on Today, where he can speak truth to power by grilling Paula Deen.

Ouch. Gregory ought to be ashamed.

Note: It was short, so I printed Rich's whole answer. Every word was too rich to pass over.

There Is An Upside To All The Scandal-Mongering

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Tuesday May 14, 2013 · 5:27 PM PDT

2013/05/14 · 17:27

A post today by Greg Sargent actually put a positive slant on all the breaking scandals. Obama's Grand Bargain might now be dead in the water. And I for one could not be happier.

Liberals who are dreading the scandal-mania that is taking hold should note that it contains a potential upside: It could make a Grand Bargain that includes cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits even less likely than it already is. That’s because when scandal grips Washington, a president actually needs his core supporters more than ever to ward it off, making it harder to do anything that will alienate them. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

It's bad that Obama was willing to alienate his core supporters when all was going fairly well for him. Nevermind that cutting social security was bad politics and even worse policy. But hey, now he needs us. Needs us like he needed us during the 2012 election. So, we'll probably be his honey pies again while he rides out his Clintonesque times. For me, the shine has long rubbed off Obama. But I'd still rather have him as the president than a republican. The state of politics today is just plain bad for The People (oops that should be people, with a little p). Most politicians just care about The People (as in Very Special).

But the economy had some good news today. The CBO came out with their new budget projections.

The CBO estimates that the federal deficit this year will ring in at $642 billion. That's the smallest deficit since 2008, and about $200 billion less than previously projected, mostly owing to higher tax revenue, and bigger-than-expected payments to the Treasury department from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. http://www.usnews.com/...

Yet, even a darn good report full of shrinking spending and falling deficits can't and won't silence the Very Special People of the Beltway:

The Campaign to Fix the Debt, which marshals corporate resources to lobby for deficit reduction, said that "the rosier-than-expected near-term projections do not change the fact that rising health care costs, an aging population, Social Security’s looming insolvency, and ever-increasing interest payments will greatly expand the national debt as a share of the economy starting at the end of the current decade."
"Implementing a deficit-reduction plan now, instead of waiting until the deficit begins to grow again, will allow us to deal with these long-term challenges through smart reforms that are phased in gradually," it said.
http://thehill.com/...

These People don't give a flying fig about the debt. They, like Paul Ryan, just can't stand the thought of "310 million moochers sucking at the public tit." They want that public tit all to themselves. The issue isn't going away. It's just being delayed while all the scandals play out. The people got a reprieve. Temporarily.

Mark Sanford: Teh Stupid Burns

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Tuesday April 16, 2013 · 7:43 PM PDT

2013/04/16 · 19:43

This is just too hilarious not to share:

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford must appear in court two days after running for a vacant congressional seat to answer a complaint that he trespassed at his ex-wife's home, according to court documents acquired by The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The complaint says Jenny Sanford confronted Sanford leaving her Sullivans Island home on Feb. 3 by a rear door, using his cell phone for a flashlight. Her attorney filed the complaint the next day and Jenny Sanford confirmed Tuesday the documents are authentic.

Apparently, Jenny's just had it with Mark's annoying habit of entering her home without permission:

The complaint filed by Jenny Sanford's lawyer, Deena Smith McRackan, said that Mark Sanford has "entered into a pattern of entering onto plaintiff's property. Plaintiff has informed defendant on a number of occasions that this behavior is in violation of the court's order and has demanded that it not occur again."

As Mark has shown he does whatever he damn well pleases, but this time it's landed him in a little jam. To file a complaint against him right before an election, Jenny must have been pretty ticked. As she said, "I want him to sink or swim on his own. For the sake of my children I'm trying my best not to get in the way, but he makes things difficult for me when he does things like trespassing."

The article also goes on to say there was another complaint against him for not making the $5,000 yearly contribution toward one of their son's college education. "Jenny Sanford said Tuesday that the matter has been resolved but would not comment further."

Shades of Joe Walsh? I suppose Republican voters will look past Mark's shenanigans in order to keep Elizabeth Colbert Busch out of Congress, but you really got to wonder why. The guy is a jerk. Pure and simple. Only out for himself.

Wonder what he was looking for?

Let's get Elizabeth Colbert Bush elected!

Michelle Malkin Copies Michelle Obama...Unsucessfully

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Monday February 25, 2013 · 10:58 PM PST

2013/02/25 · 22:58

Michelle Malkin was so inspired by Jimmy Fallon and Michelle Obama's "Evolution of Mom Dancing," that she dons a black First Lady wig, complete with The Bangs, and dances her lithe, little body to a frolicsome parody called "Evolution of Liberal Dancing." She's come up with some gut-busting titles like "Grab Your Wallet", "The Stimulus (Let it Rain)", The "Diggie" (Obama's Spending Sinkhole), and many many others that will make you split your sides (while you're leaning over the toilet wretching). And the music playing in the background is so...so... strange. Kind of foreign sounding; exotic. Mmm...

And her fans are very pleased, as you can imagine. The comment section on her blog is loaded up with gleeful praises and stunning wit:

"Funny! And you’re not killing any resemblance of class or dignity from the White House."

*Way to bring on Da Funk, Michelle; Priceless! ;)
*From clip #1, I can only say, while Rome burns, Flotus grinds hips with a second rate comedian, and here in Realville, where I live and nobody in DC seems to notice or care, P-BO is having his way with us, savage like, and when we do fight back, it will not be with whisles and urine!!!" Hokay.

"Much better rhythm than Moochell." Oh yes, no comparison.

And my personal favorite:

"Michelle M. could have done “Baby-Having-a-Late-Term-Abortion” Dance, but that probably wouldn’t be very funny. (Sorry, feeling a bit cynical these days…)" Honey, we're all feeling a little cynical these days. Maybe the weather...

Yes sir, those right wing nutters are natural comedians. I'm sure Michelle M will be getting an invite any day now from Conan...Jimmy...Jay...okay, Sean Hannity. You're a riot, Michelle. A real riot.

Nuns On The Bus - Nuns against Paul Ryan

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Wednesday June 13, 2012 · 5:26 PM PDT

2012/06/13 · 17:26

Al Sharpton from Politics Nation interviewed Sister Simone Campbell who is organizing a bus tour to draw attention to nuns’ work with the poor and to protest planned aid cuts.
In a spirited retort to the Vatican, a group of Roman Catholic nuns is planning a bus trip across nine states this month, stopping at homeless shelters, food pantries, schools and health care facilities run by nuns to highlight their work with the nation’s poor and disenfranchised.

The bus tour is a response to a blistering critique of American nuns released in April by the Vatican’s doctrinal office, which included the accusation that the nuns are outspoken on issues of social justice, but silent on other issues the church considers crucial: abortion and gay marriage

The sisters plan to use the tour also to protest cuts in programs for the poor and working families in the federal budget that was passed by the House of Representatives and proposed by Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who cited his Catholic faith to justify the cuts.

http://nunsonthebus.com

I believe Paul Ryan is one of the biggest threats to this country. As everyone knows, Mitt Romney has said he'll sign the Ryan budget into law if he's elected president. Nuns on a Bus is a great idea cooked up by some good hearted Sisters who know first hand of the poverty and suffering that goes on in this rich, mighty nation.

In New York's 26th congressional district special election, 2011, Kathy Hotchul proved that once people are informed of Ryan's cruel, heartless, sadistic plan they become scared. And rightly so! Not only is Ryan a threat to the very neediest among us, he's a threat to the middle class.

If every one can spread the word about Nuns on the Bus and/or contribute by visiting their website, it can only help to stop Paul Ryan.

http://nunsonthebus.com

I apologize if the subject has already been covered; I've been out of town for a few days. I checked Daily Kos and didn't see any recent diaries.

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