Good Morning fellow newsies. Welcome to March. Goodie is off on a business trip, so you’re stuck with me today.
If they funded the CDC
Recent ground-breaking research has demonstrated that the GOP members of congress are part of a newly divergent species, separate and distinct from homo sapiens. In honor of their most distinctive trait, they will be named homo invertebratus. Interestingly, this appears to be the first time in the recorded history of biology that a species has seen a devolution where the distinction is that the divergent species has entirely lost their spines. If you happen to be unlucky and encounter a specimen of homo invertebratus in the wild; please be careful. They are to be considered armed and dangerous as they have been observed using assault rifles in the place of backbones. There are some secondary characteristics that can be used to differentiate invertebratus from sapiens. invertebratus typically lack higher reasoning capability; tend toward mouth frothing, coprophagia and scatolia; exhibit extreme ammosexual attractions; and display a lemming-like adherence to politically suicidal policies.
On to today’s Smörgåsbord of good news. There was enough good news left over to do another full edition of GNR.
Who’s the worst person in the world this week?
Hint: Olbermann doesn’t have to make a comeback and sweat out an answer. It’s the same guy it’s been every week since June 15th, 2015. Rezident Orange showed up to speak a few words at Billy Graham’s coffin tour of The Capital. I wonder if old Billy was ‘a spinnin’ in his box at the idea of tRump invoking God on Billy’s behalf during his stroll by. Antebellum evangelicals enforced rabid hypocritical support of tRump must burn as bad as having Mueller personally paint turpentine on their tender “I speak for God” shitholes assholes taints.
Cindy McCain sounds off on Trump: ‘We don’t need more bullying, and I’m tired of it’ (WAPO paywall)
Cindy McCain held nothing back in her turn as guest host of “The View” on Wednesday, knocking President Trump for “bullying” and “nepotism,” and criticizing Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson for spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to redecorate his office.
Nobel committee investigating possibly fake Trump nomination for Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize awarding committee is investigating an allegedly fraudulent nomination of President Trump for the coveted international award, according to Wednesday reports.
"I can say that we have good reason to believe that [Trump’s nomination] is a fake," Nobel Institute Director Olav Njølstad told Norwegian broadcaster NRK, according to the BBC.
Mueller asking if Trump knew about hacked Democratic emails before release
Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is asking witnesses pointed questions about whether Donald Trump was aware that Democratic emails had been stolen before that was publicly known, and whether he was involved in their strategic release, according to multiple people familiar with the probe.
Mueller's investigators have asked witnesses whether Trump was aware of plans for WikiLeaks to publish the emails. They have also asked about the relationship between GOP operative Roger Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and why Trump took policy positions favorable to Russia.
CNN has a timeline of 80 times Trump talked about Putin
Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump consistently broke from political orthodoxy in his effusive praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
His glowing statements on Putin have become central in stoking the suspicion that he and his campaign were somehow connected to Russian interference in the election.
Since 2013 — when Trump’s Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow — Trump has at least nine times claimed to have spoken to, met, or made contact with Putin. But as the 2016 campaign wore on and his statements on Putin began to attract more scrutiny, Trump changed course, denying having ever met the Russian president.
Another One Gone. Another One Bites the Dust.
tRump is Hopeless. (They just write themselves). There was another little hicksup at the White House yesterday afternoon when Hope Hicks resigned as communications director. It’ll take her a while to train her replacement white liar, so she’s got another couple of weeks to start a new inappropriate relationship with a security risk. They’ll have to get yet another unqualified candidate to replace her, so we’ll see someone from Faux Noise moving over to take over as White House Lying Director.
Hicks departure leaves White House without Trump translator
White House communications director Hope Hicks said on Wednesday that she was planning to resign, leaving President Donald Trump without one of his longest-serving aides and strongest defenders — and resulting in yet another high-profile vacancy in the West Wing.
Yo, Kush. Things ain’t looking so good.
With all the pressure Jared is under, I think we can look forward to his father-in-law peeking out from under that mountain of cheeseburger wrappers on the 15th of this month and mumbling the words “You too, Jared?*”
Daddy-in-law can’t pardon this. New York Regulator Asks Deutsche Bank, Others About Kushner Loans
Reuters) - New York’s state banking regulator asked Deutsche Bank AG and two other lenders for information on their relationships with U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and his family’s real estate company, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) made the requests to Deutsche Bank, Signature Bank and New York Community Bank for information on loans and other financial arrangements including lines of credit and loan guarantees a week ago, the person said.
The regulator also asked for information related to other family members, the person said.
The rot from these loans is raising a bit of a stench. Kushner’s Business Got Loans After White House Meetings (NYTimes paywall)
Joshua Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, was advising Trump administration officials on infrastructure policy. During that period, he met on multiple occasions with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, said three people familiar with the meetings. Among other things, the two men discussed a possible White House job for Mr. Harris.
It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received last year. An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent the firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn.
That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Mr. Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael L. Corbat, according to people briefed on the meeting. The two men talked about financial and trade policy and did not discuss Mr. Kushner’s family business, one person said.
*His orange awfulness is too uneducated, incurious and lazy to bother with altering the original Latin.
Brad is bad (and not in a good way)
He’s been the 2020 campaign manager for a day and already, Trump’s New Campaign Head Linked To Company With Fraud Scandal Past: Report
Brad Parscale, President Donald Trump’s freshly appointed 2020 campaign manager, is reportedly connected to a sketchy company with ties to a felon who tried to bribe FBI agents posing as hedge fund managers, according to an Associated Press investigation.
The AP’s report, published Tuesday, found that Parscale sold his web development company, Giles-Parscale, in August for $9 million to CloudCommerce Inc., which is listed as a penny stock (traded apart from the major exchanges and at a very low price) and hasn’t been profitable “in nearly a decade.” After the acquisition, Parscale was appointed to CloudCommerce’s board of directors.
Roger the truth dodger.
Winner of the Zippy look-alike contest and failed court jester, Roger Stone has been telling fibs. If he told any of them to Mr. Three Sticks, he’s gonna have some ‘splaining to do. Natasha Bertrand wrote about it in The Atlantic, Roger Stone's Secret Messages with WikiLeaks
On March 17, 2017, WikiLeaks tweeted that it had never communicated with Roger Stone, a longtime confidante and informal adviser to President Donald Trump. In his interview with the House Intelligence Committee last September, Stone, who testified under oath, told lawmakers that he had communicated with WikiLeaks via an “intermediary,” whom he identified only as a “journalist.” He declined to reveal that person’s identity to the committee, he told reporters later.
Private Twitter messages obtained by The Atlantic show that Stone and WikiLeaks, a radical-transparency group, communicated directly on October 13, 2016—and that WikiLeaks sought to keep its channel to Stone open after Trump won the election. The existence of the secret correspondence marks yet another strange twist in the White House’s rapidly swelling Russia scandal. Stone and Trump have been friends for decades, which raises key questions about what the president knew about Stone’s interactions with Wikileaks during the campaign. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gun Control
Who’da thunk it? The folks at Dick’s aren’t actually dicks. [Like you thought I was mature enough to not make a dick joke]. In fact, it looks like Dick’s has balls. [Ok, I’ll stop now]
Dick's Sporting Goods Inc., one of the largest retailers of its kind in the United States, is taking new steps to curtail the sale of firearms, including ending sales of assault-style rifles and banning the sale of guns to people younger than 21, the company announced this morning.
"Based on what’s happened and looking at those kids and those parents, it moved us all unimaginably," company Chairman and CEO Edward Stack said today on "Good Morning America," referring to the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 14 students and three educators.
Walmart also announced some gun restrictions. Looks like they are Dick’s chasers. [Last one]
It’s March and we’re about two weeks away from the March for Our Lives. The kids are getting some organizational support. This is a chance for all of us to get out there and metaphorically pee all over the NRA’s parade. That’s the kind of pee tape I hope we all want to make.
Barely two weeks ago, the student survivors sat in a circle in the living room of one of their parents' homes, planning a trip to Tallahassee to meet with lawmakers and handling nitty-gritty matters like which media outlets to talk to.
Since then, major players and organizations — including Everytown, Giffords, Move On, Planned Parenthood, and the Women’s March LA — told BuzzFeed News they are helping the students with logistics, strategy, and planning for next month’s March for Our Lives rally and beyond. Much of the specific resources the groups are providing to the Parkland students remains unclear — as is the full list of supporting organizations — but there are broad outlines.
Here’s an action item regarding hotelplanner.com’s continuing support of the NRA. You can check to see if your alma mater uses their services and suggest they make a change to a company that isn’t busy sleeping with weapon mongers. Making the NRA into a financial disaster for corporate sponsorship is a great way to rub Wayne’s nose in it.
tRump isn’t just newly hopeless, he’s also clueless about what issues are important to that 35% who think he’s the bee’s knees. He just accused republicans of being afraid of the NRA. His base ought to have some real heartburn over that. And he also went on to one-up Obama by suggesting we take away guns before going through due process. I bet Wayne LaPierre has blood coming out of his wherever because of that. Things are getting wacky for those folks over at Nutjob Rifle Addictions.
President Donald Trump asked Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican who's worked on a bill to strengthen background checks for gun purchases, whether he left out a proposal to raise the gun purchasing age to 21 out of his measure because senators are "afraid of the NRA."
News from PA-18 and the Upcoming Special Election
The election is coming up in 12 days. Conor can still use your help. The dark money is pouring in to take over the TV box with a lot of less than honest (aka outright bald-faced lies) political attack ads.
I posted a somewhat controversial article about Saccone’s personal lack of honesty a couple of days ago. It could still use your support.
Another Kossack, Andrew F Cockburn, did some canvassing for Conor Lamb in the rural far south of the district. His article, Door knocking for Conor Lamb in Greene County, PA is here on DKOS and makes for a down in the weeds look at one of those heavily tRump communities we keep hearing about.
Manafort Is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, pleads not guilty; trial set for Sept. 17 right in the middle of the ramp up to the midterms. That just might encourage more incumbent (R)s to decide not to run for reelection. Unless he cops a plea before trial, the media coverage of Manafort being roasted over an open fire is worth a generic point or two democratic shift all by itself.
Quote of the Day
For today’s quote (required by my NNNE contract with GNR) here’s Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times on the GOP. Gee, it looks like they wanted to do all this before tRump blundered along.
When I look at the Republicans, I am tempted to dismiss them as the Treason Party. Seriously, were a band of traitors to concoct a series of positions deliberately designed to weaken America, they would be hard pressed to beat the current GOP dogma - hobble education, starve the government by slashing taxes to the rich, kneecap attempts to jumpstart the economy by fixating on debt, invite corporations to dominate political discourse, balkanize the population by demonizing minorities and immigrants and let favored religions dictate social policy. — Neil Steinberg from The Chicago Sun-Times, July 3rd, 2012 in Happy Fourth of July to the Treason Party
In honor of another rat deserting the ship. Now we can get back to thinking about Hope in the White House (and on a campaign poster) as being a good thing again.
Resist. Vote. Impeach. Imprison.
The after-effects from losing that battle with venereal disease back during Vietnam because of over-compensating for a minuscule penis.