Category: Uncategorized

• This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from The Baltimore Sun as Republicans try to shade their way through the Cohen testimony.
   
• At The Moderate Voice, Deborah Long tells of childhood cruelty with a gentle pet dog. The animal would fly into an aggressive rage when a mirror was placed in front of him. He didn’t know his enemy was an exact image of himself. As Republicans attack Michael Cohen, she suggests they are failing the mirror test. Ivan Pavlov model, perhaps.
   
• At The Onion, former assistant coach Congressman Jim Jordan spends the Cohen hearing demanding that Cohen accept responsibility for covering up the sexual abuse of Ohio State wrestlers.
   
• Andy Borowitz reports how Michael Cohen’s televised testimony left Kim Jong Un doubting whether Trump can be trusted.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz seems a bit impatient with diehard Trump supporters. He refuses to entertain a reality that doesn’t require anything objectively real.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post finds a thousand and one words to describe my President.
   
• driftglass listens to Mitch McConnell blame Democrats for election fraud committed by Republican Mark Harris in North Carolina and reacts with some skepticism. Okay, a lot.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit has a few suggestions on what to wear when Trump visits your town.
   
• News Corpse finds that Fox News obsession with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is getting creepy.
   
• Neil Bamforth at MadMikesAmerica takes a close compassionate look at assisted suicide.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, atheist Bruce is a former pastor and really knows his Bible. He suggests that if Jesus would appear in fundamentalist churches and repeat “Go sell all that you have and follow me” our churches would empty, and fast.
   
• Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes has been hit with cancer and a heart condition for the last couple of years. That gives him a personal perspective as he applies rational standards to a book looking at cancer through a lens of positive thinking.
   
• I remember decades ago watching a comedian complaining about how he was treated while flying. He told us he could not tell us the name of the airline, but “I can tell you it was an AMERICAN AIRLINE.” The audience cheered him. John Scalzi is bitter and blunt about his internet service provider. If you hate your internet service perhaps you can take comfort you have it better than some. In the movie Hustle & Flow a man explains in grueling detail what he does for a living. A prostitute reacts: I thought MY job sucked. Makes me ashamed for complaining about a few minutes outage. John’s horror story makes us grateful for what connection we have.
   
• Who needs the Oscars? Max’s Dad paid for a movie pass and really used it. Now he can give us his own 10 best movies of 2018, a few runners up, and some everyone else loves but he doesn’t even like a little.
   
• Infidel753 invites readers to let loose their travel fantasies. If you could take a trip anywhere in the world, where would you go, and why? By the way, I have replayed this exercise in pure creativity every week or so since Infidel linked to it.
   

 
From The Journal of Improbable Research:

“We talk ‘through’ our clothes, if we want [sic] or not.”

– say a research team from Queen Mary University of London, who have recently created ‘Smart Arse’ – a pair of ‘sensing trousers’ (that’s ‘sensing pants’ US) – which can reveal details of the ‘conversational engagement’ of the wearers.

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From Green Eagle:

So the nation was treated yesterday to nine hours of evidence that Donald Trump is nothing but a cheap, brazen criminal. But of course, sad to say, every sentient person in the country already knew that; there has never in our whole history been anyone more manifestly guilty that Trump. So will this further round of national humiliation and disgrace be the tipping point that we have waited so long for, the point at which we all understand how much we degrade and disgrace ourselves by allowing it to go on for another day?

Forget it. Regardless of how incontrovertible the signs of Trumps guilt are, the Republicans will go right on denying the truth until their dying days.

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From Dave Dubya:

This just in!

Wasn’t that great news we learned from the House Oversight Committee hearing?

No, not from Cohen. He’s liar. So what if he lied to protect Trump? After he admitted it, and expressed shame and remorse, the Republicans repeatedly reminded him he was a liar. They were righteously upset about Cohen the rat telling lies. I get angry just thinking about it, don’t you?

That’s all we needed to hear.

But that’s not the big news.

The big news is Republican Mark Meadows PROVED Birther Trump is not a racist!

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From Tommy Christopher:

Mark Meadows Furiously Accused Michael Cohen of Criminal Lying at Hearing. Meadows Was Lying.

In an uncomfortable plot twist, GOP Congressman Mark Meadows tried to accuse former Trump fixer Michael Cohen of lying on a disclosure form, but turned out to be lying himself.

During Wednesday morning’s House Oversight Committee hearing at which Cohen was testifying, the North Carolina Republican went into high dudgeon over Cohen’s failure to list certain contracts on a truth in testimony disclosure form.

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From Frances Langum:

Reimbursement for the Stormy Daniels hush money payment was signed by PRESIDENT Trump in 2017. BOOM.

Around here, we call him the “so-called president.” But it turns out Donald Trump, who claims he is “not involved” with his businesses now that he’s “president,” signed a check reimbursing Michael Cohen for hush money payments to the porn star he had sex with while his wife was recovering from childbirth.

I want to make sure all of those words are noted, carefully.

sex
porn star
hush money
wife
childbirth
signed
check
president.

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I recognize that some of you may doubt and attack me on my credibility. It is for this reason that I have incorporated into this opening statement documents that are irrefutable, and demonstrate that the information you will hear is accurate and truthful.

Download pdf

Or view in html format

Continue reading “Michael Cohen’s Opening Statement to Congress”

 
From Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson:

Stroebel does criticize the organization for hostility towards Hagedorn’s faith. And he has a point. For while Jordahl and Johnson claim the Realtors are not hostile to Hagedorn’s personal beliefs, consider that the criticisms directed at Hagedorn include no instance of allowing his faith to color his legal opinions as an Appeals Court Judge.

Instead, the criticisms of Hagedorn are strictly on two points: 1) Hagedorn stating on his blog before he became a judge that legalizing sodomy could lead to legalizing bestiality and incest, and 2) Hagedorn serving on the board of a Christian school that has standards of conduct that do not allow homosexual behavior by the staff.

In the case of the former, what may have been hyperbole may still bear out. What was once taboo is gaining more public acceptance including plural marriage, incest, and bestiality. Not that long ago, it was unthinkable that the courts would overrule state laws prohibiting gay marriage. Governor Jim Doyle even publicly criticized attempts to define marriage in the state constitution because he said the law would never be interpreted to allow same-sex marriages. Can we honestly say that courts, unmoored from its prior limits, will not someday overturn laws prohibiting the behaviors Hagedorn listed?

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From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

Now, the world has changed since 2017, and perhaps the Dims might find some of their vestigial spines and actually go on record with something like being opposed to climate change or being in favor of not killing their constituents via lack of healthcare. And of course, there are Dims like Manchin who are from so-called Energy States and representing their actual constituents means voting against the Green New Deal. I think it’s stupid, but it is true.

And of course there are some Senators deeply beholden to corporate interests, and some of ’em are running (and you know who I mean). Voting present gives them a way out.

Others are bolder:

“Other Democrats said they were eager to show their support for an idea that could differentiate the increasingly crowded Democratic primary field.
“I don’t know what [McConnell’s] intentions are exactly,” said Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). “But I’m in favor of it,” she said of the Green New Deal.”

This is a sword that can cut both ways, though.

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