12 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. "NOBODY loves the vets like I love the vets. NOBODY!! BELIEVE ME!!  ~DJT

   

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   1. Shameful.

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2. Donald Trump now calls the health care bill passed by the House of Representatives "mean, mean, mean". It is reported by the AP that he wants the Senate bill to add more money to make it "more generous, more kind." So, why did Colorado Republicans Tipton, Buck and Lamborn vote for such a mean bill? And, why did Representative Coffman voice support for the original version of the House bill which, per President Trump, would have been even meaner?

   Representative Coffman ran under the assertion that he would "stand up to Trump". It appears that Mr. Trump is now standing up to Mr. Coffman.
    

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   1. Three "means." He must really mean it.

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   2. Drumpf gets his biggest thrills out of pushing his fawning toad-eaters* to debase themselves for no good reason other than for his own benefit, then publicly debasing them further by gleefully mocking their stupid and foolish willingness to be debased for bad cause.**

      (As a child, Trump no doubt collected gilded flys with their wings torn off . . . )

      * (fascinating etymology behind today's derivative "toady" — worth looking up!!!)

      ** (Chris Christie, Big Mac delivery boy and self-debaser  par excellence . . . Moderatus, if he had any rudimentary skill at anything beyond just his deep yearning to be one of the cool kids.)

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3. Credit where it's due. Coffman and Buck to Sessions: "Get bent." https://coloradopolitics.com/colorado-officials-give-cold-shoulder-sessions-request-let-federal-prosecutors-target-medical-marijuana-industry/

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4. WOTD

   The Russia Probe Is a Vast Lava Flow Moving Toward Trump

   Remember the timeline. Comey is fired on May 9th. Trump tells Lavrov he fired the “nutjob” and relieved the “pressure” on May 10th. Trump told Lester Holt on national TV on May 11th that he fired Comey because of Russia. It seems hard to figure to me that these didn’t play a big role in Rosenstein’s decision [to appoint Mueller]. It would be instructive and helpful to know what pushed Rosenstein over the line.

   But let’s look at that last graf from the Times. Mueller and his investigators believe that the payoff for Russia collusion would be found in money laundering channels. Me too! That makes perfect sense. What’s interesting here is what is that these investigators appear to be taking it as a given that there is money laundering by Trump associates. The question is whether it’s vanilla money laundering or part of election tampering collusion.

   …

   As I’ve noted a few times, I’ve crafted a Trump-specific version of the old Army adage: Few members of the Trump crew could survive first contact with real legal scrutiny. You can’t read up on these guys and not realize this. This paragraph doesn’t prove anything. But it certainly suggests to me what I would have expected, which is that investigators have quite quickly found illicit financial transactions (or prima facie evidence of the same) by those in Trump’s inner circle or those he hooked up with during the campaign. The question now is whether those transactions were part of collusion with Russia. Either way, they become a tool to break people with information about Trump and make them cooperate. Those are crimes either way.

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5. Oopsie?

   Lobbyist for Russian interests says he attended dinners hosted by Sessions

   Sessions testified under oath on Tuesday that he did not believe he had any contacts with lobbyists working for Russian interests over the course of Trump’s campaign. But Richard Burt, a former ambassador to Germany during the Reagan administration, who has represented Russian interests in Washington, told the Guardian that he could confirm previous media reports that stated he had contacts with Sessions at the time.

   Sessions, a former senator for Alabama who was chairman of the Trump campaign’s national security committee, reportedly invited Burt so that he could discuss issues of national security and foreign policy.

   When John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona who is a frequent critic of Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin, asked Sessions in a hearing this week before the Senate intelligence committee about whether the attorney general had ever had “any contacts with any representative, including any American lobbyist or agent of any Russian company” during the 2016 campaign, Sessions said he did not.

   “I don’t believe so,” Sessions said.

   Other outlets, including the New Yorker magazine and Reuters, also reported last year that Burt had contributed his views to Trump’s speech. When NPR interviewed Burt in May 2016 about the talk, he said he was “asked to provide a draft for that speech, and parts of that draft survived into the final [version]”.

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6. I wasn't familiar with today's opening quotation, . . . 

   . . . the new FOXnews motto????

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7. Looks like Mike Coffman is changing his stripes again (from the Colorado Independent):

   “Compromise has become a pejorative,” he said. “Compromise doesn’t mean giving up principles. What compromise is, is advancing your principles albeit at a slower pace.” Being an ideological purest is fine, he said, but it doesn’t go far in getting things done.

   Sounds pretty good, but it's not what he says, but how he votes that matters.

   Oh, I think I know the reason why:

   Coffman, who is up for reelection in 2018, said he plans to hold an in-person town hall in his suburban Denver district some time in August.

   I guess I shouldn't be so cynical, but with his track record, if his district were 100% women, I'll leave it to the reader to guess to what lengths he might go to identify with his constituency. 

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   1. There are some products out there to help with that, Mikey…

      

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8. Timestamp 10 PM Eastern time from USA Today:

   House Majority Whip Steve Scalise remained in critical condition Thursday evening after undergoing a second surgery to deal with internal injuries and a broken bone in his leg following the shootout at an Alexandria, Va., baseball field, the hospital said.

   "The Congressman will require additional operations, and will be in the hospital for some time." the Medstar Washington Hospital Center said in a statement, adding that Scalise has "improved in the last 24 hours."

   My understanding, from googling around is that they removed his spleen because he would not stop bleeding internally.

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