Cohen Confesses and Gaetz Gets Gelded While the Second Summit Super Sucks: A Roundup (Ferret/SC)
Yeah, I'm a little late this week. Your Friendly Neighborhood Shower Cap turned 40 a couple days back, so frankly, it's a miracle I sobered up long enough to even find my computer. Oh hell, and it's a long one tonight. Expect typos, is what I'm telling you.
(As usual, you can find this post on Cap's blog site. It'll make a bit more sense with all the links n’ shit: http://showercapblog.com/cohen-confesses-and-gaetz-gets-gelded-while-the-second-summit-super-sucks-a-roundup/)
Bad news for Roger Stone's pal Andrew Miller, as an appeals court ruled that Rugged Robert Mueller's investigation is totally constitutional, so Andy can expect a very constitutional boot up his ass any day now. You'll be plucking amendments out of your stool for days, fuck-o.
Princess Ivanka, whose life's work has consisted mainly of manufacturing cheap crap that nobody wants using daddy's money and stolen designs, has some thoughts on the dignity of work, SUCK IT, SHERROD BROWN. I didn't watch the whole interview, but I think she said something about rewarding the servants who bear her palanquin with extra-fancy specialty pet food, if only on holidays.
In the midst of this truly hectic week, I was delighted to return to the hotel one evening to find the most delectable schadenfreude bonbon on my pillow; Jacob Wohl, that poor man's James O'Keefe*, has been permanently banned from Twitter. Considering Jacob is famous solely for being a sycophantic dumbass on Twitter, this is pretty much the Useless MAGA Chump version of amputating Jimmy Page's hands.
Well, Michael Cohen finally debuted his highly anticipated cabaret act, “Torch Songs and Crimes the President Told me to Commit” before the House Oversight Committee, and the Q&A session that followed was, as the kids say, lit.
Yes, the Fascist Farthuffer's Former Fixer confirmed, under oath, what we learned months ago at his sentencing, namely that the President of the United States has committed honey bunches of crimes, and by the way here are the documents to prove it. The rest of the hearing featured the Democrats on the committee attempting to learn the full extent of those crimes while the Republicans acted like a single, hydra-headed, mob attorney, because now that they lack the power to cut rich people's taxes any further, their only remaining purpose is to facilitate the Trump Cabal's corruption.
But just to make my dutiful sacrifice to God of Bothsidesism, I do think Dems really missed a golden opportunity here, to like, ask Cohen to confirm some shocking detail with a quick, “Says who?” and then Mike would go, “Says me! And also this secret recording I took.”
I tell you what though, when Republicans send their Congressjags to the Oversight Committee, they're not sending their best. Or...dear God, what if they are? What if Clay Higgins, who honestly believes he tricked Cohen into revealing the existence of a secret cache of documents he'd hidden from an FBI raid, really is the brightest mind the GOP has to offer?
They seemed particularly incensed that Cohen was pursuing a book deal, which, they say, would only feed the scourge of reading.
But even as we struggle to learn the extent of the criminal conspiracy operating out of the White House, we must not lose track of the true victim here: Mark Meadows’ feelings. Rashida Tlaib called Mark out for the racism of the Sad Tokenism Theatre he attempted in trotting out Trump's One Black Friend to twirl for the cameras, and he quickly melted down into a puddle of quivering Well I Never self-righteous defensiveness.
Meadows would surely still be merrily shuttling from stop to stop on the Conservative Media Victimhood Circuit, clutching any and all available pearls till they were crushed to atoms, whining about the unjustness of the accusation, had not the inevitable video of his gleefully racist attack on President Obama surfaced in precisely the amount of time you figured it would, which is to say immediately.
Still, you must confess Meadows’ gambit permanently dispelled all questions of Trump's racism. As we all know, the handbook clearly states that for every one (1) black employee, you are entitled to baselessly call for any five (5) persons of color to be executed by the state for crimes they did not commit.
Other earth-shattering news from the Cohen hearing: Don Junior is dumb! Ok, maybe it's not news, but boy, if you're so fucking dumb that a dude who surrounds himself with weapons-grade idiots like Ben Carson and Rick Perry thinks you’re dumb...woo. That's I-need-Cliff-Notes-to-get-through-a-Larry-the-Cable-Guy-routine dumb.
Plus there's all sortsa fun new plot lines to follow now. Potential insurance fraud? Fine, throw it on the investigation pile! New witnesses to subpoena and depose, including a guy with the Sopranos-by-way-of-SpongeBob monicker “Matthew Calamari?” Why the fuck not? All I really want at this point is for a weary Elijah Cummings to turn to a colleague and remark, “We're gonna need a bigger Oversight Committee.”
Oh, and I guess one part of Cohen's thug portfolio involved threatening Donnie Dotard's old colleges into keeping his grades secret? What a treasure trove those college records must be...my sources tell me he once submitted a five-page essay on how the lime green crayon is the best crayon because it's pretty even though it doesn't really taste like limes.
Before we move on from the Cohen Cavalcade of Cooperation and Corroboration, we should note that Mike has, rather unsurprisingly, been disbarred. Luckily, he'll soon have Florida Congresstwerp Matt Gaetz to keep him company! Gaetz seems to have been competing in some sort of “what the douchiest possible way to illegally intimidate a witness” contest, but at least he covered his tracks by posting his crime publicly on Twitter. I guess Matty figured he'd rather be a SCROTUS stooge than a lawyer. Heh. I bet that pays off for ya, kid. Donnie's notoriously loyal, after all. Just ask Mike Cohen.
Anyway, it sure feels good to be Democrat these days, doesn't it? Now that the rule of law is a partisan issue, you can't help strut a bit when you think about how your party isn't the one that's been reduced to a pack of docile enablers for an organized crime family. But hey, if you really wanna feel some swagger, lemme ask you this: what has more than 120 million thumbs and just got the first major piece of gun control legislation in a generation through the House? THIS PARTY.
Also, Matt Whitaker, who you may recall briefly guest-starred as Acting Attorney General after Jeff Sessions left the cast over creative differences, is under investigation by the House Judiciary Committee for possibly perjuring himself regarding his dirtbag boss’ justice-obsructin’ ways. Hey kids, while you've got him under oath, I'll bet those toilets weren't unusually “masculine,” either.
I see the Influence-Peddling Feeding Frenzy known as the Trump inaugural committee earned yet another subpoena this week. That's SDNY, and AGs from D.C. and New Jersey, if you're keeping track. This has been today's installment of Scandals That Are Bigger Than Anything That Happened During the Entire Obama Administration But Don't Even Merit Front Page Coverage in This Shitshow.
Looks like McRae Dowless is joining the less-exclusive-by-the-day Republican Shitweasels in Jail Society, facing charges for various acts of fuckery in his campaign to steal the North Carolina 9th for “Pastor” Mark Harris. Don't forget there's a new election coming up there, campers, and we've got a great candidate, Dan McCready, who could really use your help. Unless you want this cartoonish dipshit to win.
Only Nixon could go to China, and only Little Donnie Two-Scoops could go to Vietnam to be utterly, thoroughly, perfectly, cucked by a ten-cent autocratic thug like Kim Jong-un. For the second consecutive time.
That Kim, who rules over a kingdom of gravel and toenail clippings, can run laps around the supposed leader of the free world has every Washington and Lincoln on every 1 or 5 dollar bill in my wallet weeping tears of blood. I don't know what we expected, the Shart of the Deal walked in with the shittiest imaginable poker face, so desperate for a win that he walked back verification demands before even sitting down. Of course, it would all prove worth it when the summit got cut short early without one fucking thing getting accomplished.
And even though his groveling yielded nothing at all, even less than the empty promises of the last “summit,” Weehands McNodick wasn't quite done humiliating his nation. He lavished the murderous dictator with praise, even letting him off the hook for the death of American citizen Otto Warmbier, enraging Otto's grieving parents and causing the Statue of Liberty to resign her post in shame. Kim probably could have shown Donnie the cell where they tortured the poor kid to death, and he'd have gone on Hannity to praise the decor.
And then...THEN, and I swear I'm not making this up, Hairplug Himmler went and cancelled joint military exercises with South Korea anyway! Dude, he's just not that into you! You're never getting into Kim's silos, ok?
If Fat Q*Bert was looking for some sort of snickeringly on-the-nose visual metaphor for his clogged-toilet-overflowing-with-the-turds-of-failure week, he sure got it, in the form of the demolition of the sad, lonely, prototypes for the Big Dumb Wall That Will Never Ever Ever Get Built. A fitting monument to his reign.
Alas, we need to step back from pointing and laughing at President Used Enema Water's Spectacular Carnival of Failure to note that coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, whose blood type is black lung disease, has been confirmed as head of the EPA. While Wheeler is unlikely to replicate the zany, theatrical, grifts n’ crimez of his predecessor, he'll certainly make your air dirtier, and your drinking water more poisonous, and also he'll probably break into your kitchen to replace your Folgers Crystals with a dead, oil-soaked, pelican, just to see if you notice the difference.
Oh, I guess in the background, there’s some potentially mushroom-cloud-level brinkmanship going down between India and Pakistan? You can be forgiven for not noticing, with your windshield so thoroughly crusted over with domestic batshit. Anyway, if you're reading this on your laptop or phone in 2019, congrats, we survived! If you're experiencing this in a museum of Earth history on one of Jupiter's moons centuries from now, then YAY ME for writing some shit that survived the atomic holocaust! Suck it, Faulkner!
Hmmmm...maybe we should linger on the international page for a bit, since it looks like Benjamin Netanyahu has run into a spot of bother. Let's hope Bibi's on the cutting edge of a global trend here. All the hot, stylish, countries will be indicting corrupt chief executives this year...you wouldn't want to be left behind, would you?
And the Clowncar Full of Rectums known as CPAC convened for their annual Yelling and Lying and Rolling Around in Piles of Each Other's Shit party, presumably with the goal of putting to rest once and for all the myth that there are any sane Republicans left in America. I don't hate myself nearly enough to go through every single line of hateful drivel those loons spat out, but...short version, everybody took turns screaming at dead John McCain and then they served burgers with MyPillows for buns, because that's the only company that wingnuts aren't boycotting now.
The really horrifying thing to contemplate is the trajectory. What will CPAC look like in a decade, when the likes of Candace Owens and Seb Gorka are the ones writing the nostalgic editorials about the bygone civility of yesteryear? Who will speak? Richard Spencer? Hitler's Brain in a Jar? A Teddy Ruxpin doll playing tapes of old Laura Ingraham speeches, backwards, thereby summoning shit-belching demons who proceed to primary Louie Gohmert and Jim Jordan from the right?
Paul LePage weighed in on the debate about the Electoral College, praising it as a tool of institutional white supremacy. That HAPPENED, folks. If anybody ever tries to tell you racism is over, you just point them in the direction of the dude who was governor of a whole fuckin’ state, for two terms, arguing publicly and without shame that we can't just hand non-white folks the power to choose their own leaders.
Further evidence that we've achieved a truly Star-Trek-esque level of cultural harmony surfaced in the very statehouse in West Virginia, where the state GOP brought a poster-sized anti-Muslim hate meme, comparing Rep. Ilhan Omar to 9/11 terrorists, to a rally. Someone was actually injured in the resulting kerfuffle, but I'm told the incident's true victim was Mark Meadows.
It seems as though one of the fundamental truths of the universe is that Jared Kushner has no business with a high-level security clearance. Like, if a report from CERN announced that findings from the Large Hadron Collider prove that Jar-Jar shouldn't be allowed to handle classified intelligence, you'd go "makes sense” and move on with your day. Like, aside from the nepotism and the glaring lack of qualifications for any gig that necessitates access to such intelligence, the kid's two most prominent qualities are “super dumb” and “unusually blackmailable.”
But even after all the red flags, all the clearance form falsifications, the Marmalade Shartcannon overruled literally everyone, and decided that the national security of the United States of America had to take a back seat to his empty-headed son-in-law's ambitions, saying, “Look, Jared's not a bright kid, he needs all the help he can get. If he didn't have America's most closely-guarded secrets to sell to the Saudis, how do you expect him to get out from under all the stupid real estate deals he's made? We're talking about real money here, he can't hold a bake sale. Anyway, he doesn't know how to bake. Or even crack an egg, honestly.”
Even John Kelly fired off a memo opposing the move, as if to tell future law enforcement officials, “Look, y’all, I know I'm complicit in some shady-ass shit, and when the bill comes due, I'm totally fucked, but if you're wondering how the contents of the CIA's central servers wound up in Riyadh, I was on the record opposing this particular bit of treasonous idiocy.”
Gosh, President Crotchvoid sure has had a rough week, huh? Normally, for a world leader to see this much failure, they need to preside over a declining empire as it's sacked by goths. You know what would help him unwind? If the shiny new Democratic leadership of the House Ways and Means Committee finally got the ball rolling on uncovering those tax returns he's been guarding, so jealously and fearfully lo these many years. Hee hee. There's no golf course in the world so large that you won't see the walls closin’ in on you, Shart-Shart. Enjoy your weekend.
...and I'll enjoy mine. Like, when you turn 40, you get a little kid birthday again, right? A weeklong celebration where you have cake for dinner every night, only there's beer now too? That's my plan, anyways...
*OUCH, right?
= new reply since forum marked as read
Yes.
Excellent post, as always.
Great read, as usual!
So glad you're our Master Chronicler! Good stuff.
Enjoy your weekend!
And hope you had a great time! 40s are fun!
And happy 40th to mate.
It all gets better from here...
