But The System Reminded You

Memorial Day!

REMEMBER THOSE WHO SACRIFICED ALL!

Weekend Humor

A priest, a doctor, and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, "What's with those guys? We must have been waiting for fifteen minutes!"
 
The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such inept golfers!"
 
The priest said, "Here comes the green-keeper. Let's have a word with him." 
 
He said, "Hello George, what's wrong with that group ahead of us? They're rather... slow, aren't they?" 
 
The green-keeper replied, "Oh, yes. That's a group of blind firemen. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime."
 
The group fell silent for a moment. 

The priest said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight." 
 
The doctor said, "Good idea. I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist colleague and see if there's anything he can do for them."
 
The engineer said, "Why can't they play at night?"


Everyone enjoy this holiday weekend!

Let's Really Make America Great Again (Here's How)

Innocent,but Still Guilty

While we were all watching Donald Trump's Shenanigans...Betty Shelby, the police officer who shot Terrence Crutcher last year ,while his hands were up was acquitted of Manslaughter charges...

Of course she used the excuse...The textbook excuse...I was afraid for my life of the scary and big black man..And a jury of nine whites and three blacks went along with it....

"The jury concluded that any officer put in that situation at that exact moment and regardless of the skin color, gender or size of the suspect, would have performed the same way, which is in accordance with their law enforcement training," wrote the foreman, who was not identified by name.
The foreman emphasized officer Betty Shelby's training throughout the three-page letter, which was made public through the court system "to placate the desire of various media members to interview members of the jury."

Betty Shelby had been charged with felony manslaughter in the September 16, 2016, death of Terrence Crutcher -- a shooting captured on video and seen across the nation. She was found not guilty on Wednesday of last week.

Could Taser have been used?

The jurors -- nine white and three black -- deliberated nine hours. They asked the judge to allow them to explain their thinking in open court but he said they could do that after court adjourned.
Agreement did not come easy, the foreperson wrote.

Some jurors "could never get comfortable" with saying Shelby was blameless in the death because it appeared she could have used a Taser in the moments before Crutcher reached into the vehicle, the letter said.I'm not comfortable with this!

"However, there was no evidence presented that her extensive training allowed such an option," the letter said. "The jury could not, beyond a reasonable doubt, conclude that she did anything outside of her duties and training as a police officer in that situation." BULLSHIT!!!

During cross-examination, Assistant Tulsa County District Attorney Kevin Gray asked Shelby why she didn't use her Taser.

Shelby said she believed her gun was an appropriate level of force. She said she "thought he [Crutcher] had a gun" because he repeatedly put his hands in and out of his pockets and reached inside of his car window. Shelby said she "didn't have time to pull out her Taser." Again..I call BULLSHIT!

The jury foreman's letter said the shooting was "unfortunate and tragic, but justifiable due to the actions of the suspect." And for the third time I call BULLSHIT!! When will they stop with this madness?

''Show me your hands''

The shooting happened after Crutcher's SUV was found stalled in the middle of the street. A witness called 911 and said a man was running away from the vehicle, warning it was going to blow up.

Officer Shelby testified she arrived on the scene and approached the vehicle and cleared it, not seeing anyone inside.

As she turned back to her patrol car, she saw Crutcher walking toward her, alternately putting his hands in his pockets and in the air, she said.

Crutcher did not comply with her commands to "show me your hands," she testified. She also said he was sweating heavily and smelled of PCP chemicals. I didn't know that you could smell PCP! 

Crutcher ignored orders from Shelby and another officer on the scene, Tyler Turnbough, according to Shelby's testimony. She testified that Crutcher put his hands on the SUV and moved to reach into the vehicle.

Her police training taught her that "if a suspect reaches their hands inside of a car, don't let them pull them out," she testified. There was blood smeared on the window...Showing the window was up and he could not have been reaching inside for anything!

At that point, Shelby fired her weapon and Turnbough fired his Taser, she testified. Crutcher, 40, was found to be unarmed after the shooting.

Back to work....

Officer Shelby will return to work with the Tulsa police effective Sunday, department spokeswoman Jeanne MacKenzie told CNN on Friday. She will be assigned a non-patrol position.

If she'd been convicted, Shelby could have been sentenced to between four years and life in prison in the death of Crutcher, a father of four girls.

The killing of Crutcher was one of a number of police shootings of unarmed black men across the United States in recent years that have heightened concerns about possible police misconduct.

BLACK LIVES STILL MATTER!

Then Think Again

BLACK LIVES STILL MATTER!

Are You Sleeping Better America?

I'M NOT!

Weekend Humor

In a long line of people waiting for a bank teller, one guy suddenly started massaging the back of the person in front of him.

Surprised, the man in front turned and snarled, "Just what the hell are you doing?"

"Well," said the guy, "You see, I'm a massage therapist and I could see that you were tense, so I had to massage your back. Sometimes I just can't help practicing my art!" 

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" the guy replied.

"I work for the IRS. Do you see me screwing the guy in front of me?"



EVERYBODY HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

Walk Off

Recently, a number of Statues that remember the old south...The Civil War....The Confederacy have been removed....For the most part this has been done with little fanfare or hue and cry, but in some places...Resistance to this has grown....A group of torch bearing folks recently surrounded one such Confederate statue and refused to allow it to be removed...

They screamed that they were ''Destroying our history" Really? I wonder if they realize ,the south lost the Civil War?

After hours of at times emotional debate, the Louisiana House voted Monday in favor of a bill aimed at protecting Confederate monuments across the state.

The Bill, sponsored by Rep. Thomas Carmody, R-Shreveport, advanced with a vote of 65-31. The entire Legislative Black Caucus voted against it.

Carmody's bill bars local governments and municipalities from removing plaques and statues to military figures and events. The monuments could only be torn down following a vote by the public.

"My bill in its current posture is a perfect exercise of democracy. It allows for the people to have their input in the decision to remove military monuments from the public spaces in which they live," Carmody argued on the House floor.

Just recently, New Orleans tore down the first two of four Confederate monuments after a vote by the City Council.

Several Democrats - especially members of the black caucus - spoke out against the Carmody's bill, calling it "offensive."

For the Sake of Argument...I wonder if Germany has any monuments to Adolf Hitler? He's part of their history..

"In my city, the City of New Orleans, should we have a statue or memorial for someone who fought for my enslavement? Who fought for my disenfranchisement?" asked Rep. Gary Carter, D-New Orleans. "That's what you're saying, that those people ought to be honored and recognized?"

After the vote, all African American members walked off the House floor in protest.

The black caucus planned a news conference yesterday morning. The legislation now goes to the state Senate.

White House In Peril

 He fired FBI Director James Comey last week...Then had two Russian officials at the White House in a closed door meeting the NEXT DAY...and now it is alleged that he told them confidential information..

Seems like every week the barometer of crazy gets higher with this guy and it's only been little over 100 days...

I'm already exhausted...How about you?

The Trump White House is dealing with its second crisis in one week, now that President Trump has basically confirmed that he shared highly classified information with Russia.


As we move forward and the White House seeks to explain itself, here are three key takeaways.
1) The White House is treading water badly — and the problem is largely Donald Trump himself
Chaos has long reigned in the White House. And never has that been truer than in the past week.

President Trump badly mismanaged the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey and the explanations that followed. His spokespeople offered polar-opposite versions of both the motive (first it was Comey's handling of the Clinton investigation, then Trump admitted that the Russia probe was on his mind) and how the decision was made (first it was the Justice Department's call, then Trump said he had made up his mind to fire Comey regardless).

We see a strikingly similar script this week, with top national security aides saying Monday night that The Washington Post's reporting was wrong, and then Trump tacitly acknowledging it was accurate first thing Tuesday morning.

The common thread here is clear: No matter how much planning goes into the White House's actions and messaging — and I'm not really sure there's a ton of it, to be honest — President Trump is liable to blow it up at a moment's notice.

Get this, President Trump(God, I hate saying that!) is reportedly considering a staff shake-up to address the White House's current problems, but is a different cast of characters really going to be able to change things?

President Trump first got them into these messes by firing Comey in a questionable manner, and then, the very next day, sharing classified information with none other than Russia. He then compounded those mistakes by contradicting his own staff in both cases.

What really needs changing is President Trump's tendency to fly off the handle and then contradict his own staff, his own spokespeople. And the only staff that are going to be successful with him are the ones who can actually rein him in and convince him that he needs to listen to someone not named Donald Trump. I'm not sure those people exist.

"Who can check me boo?" comes to mind!

2) There is no good defense for what Trump did
Trump's defense of what he did Tuesday morning seemed to boil down to this: The president has broad authority to share such information.

And this is true. President Trump very likely didn't break the law. But this is also a red herring.
Even in the story Monday, The Washington Post's Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe acknowledged that President Trump probably didn't break any laws.

The reason this is a big deal to the intelligence community sources they spoke to is because it risks jeopardizing a key tool in the fight against the Islamic State by tipping Russia off to this information.

 By discussing a specific ISIS plot and the city in which it was detected, the officials say, it's quite possible Russia could surmise the source and methods used to collect that information.

In addition to aiding an adversarial foreign power like Russia and potentially jeopardizing a key source, it could also give other allies cold feet about working with the U.S. government, for fear that their identities won't be closely safeguarded by the president and his administration.


3.) The impeachment push will grow, almost definitely in vain
A couple of House Democrats have now called for Trump's impeachment — Reps. Maxine Waters (Calif.) and Al Green (Tex.) — and a number of others are talking openly about the possibility, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and the former front-runner for the Democratic National Committee chairmanship, Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.).
(CNN's K-File has the growing list Democrats who have invoked the i-word.)

Democratic leaders will certainly be wary of all this, given that Republicans paid a price in the late 1990s for their overzealous impeachment of Bill Clinton. And trying to impeach Trump while in the minority is almost definitely a fool's errand. But the big question here is whether they can hold off their base's growing demand for it.
A new survey from Democratic-leaning automated pollster Public Policy Polling released Tuesday, in fact, showed that 48 percent of registered voters in North Carolina support bringing impeachment proceedings against Trump, vs. 41 percent who opposed it. Three-fourths of Democrats (75 percent) were in favor.

As The Post's Philip Bump noted on Twitter, there is reason to believe these numbers overshoot actual support for impeachment — specifically the fact that the poll shows 12 percent of Trump voters support impeachment — but it's clear that there is a healthy amount of momentum behind impeachment on the left.

We saw during the Supreme Court debate what that pressure from the base can do. Democrats were essentially forced into a symbolic filibuster against Neil M. Gorsuch that they knew would just lead Republicans to nuke the filibuster for SCOTUS nominations. And now they don't have the filibuster for future, more consequential fights.

Sharing classified information with Russia that risks jeopardizing a key tool in the fight against ISIS would seem to be a uniquely galvanizing event for the pro-impeachment crowd.
And the Lawfare blog recapped the legal case for it late Monday, pointing to the Presidential Oath of Office. This is a lot of info, but it's well worth a read:

If the President gave this information away through carelessness or neglect, he has arguably breached his oath of office. As Quinta and Ben have elaborated on in some detail, in taking the oath President Trump swore to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” to the best of his ability. It’s very hard to argue that carelessly giving away highly sensitive material to an adversary foreign power constitutes a faithful execution of the office of President.

Violating the oath of office does not require violating a criminal statute. If the President decided to write the nuclear codes on a sticky note on his desk and then took a photo of it and tweeted it, he would not technically have violated any criminal law — just as he hasn’t here. He has the constitutional authority to dictate that the safeguarding of nuclear materials shall be done through sticky notes in plain sight and tweeted, even the authority to declassify the codes outright. Yet, we would all understand this degree of negligence to be a gross violation of his oath of office.

Congress has alleged oath violations — albeit violations tied to criminal allegations or breaches of statutory obligations — all three times it has passed or considered seriously articles of impeachment against presidents: against Andrew Johnson (“unmindful of the high duties of his oath of office”), Richard Nixon (“contrary to his oath”), and Bill Clinton (“in violation of his constitutional oath”). Further, two of the three articles of impeachment against Nixon alleged no direct violation of the law. Instead, they concerned Nixon’s abuse of his power as President, which, like the President putting the nuclear codes on Twitter, is an offense that can only be committed by the President and has thus never been explicitly prohibited in criminal law.

There’s thus no reason why Congress couldn’t consider a grotesque violation of the President’s oath as a stand-alone basis for impeachment — a high crime and misdemeanor in and of itself. This is particularly plausible in a case like this, where the oath violation involves giving sensitive information to an adversary foreign power. That’s getting relatively close to the “treason” language in the impeachment clauses; it’s pretty easy to imagine a hybrid impeachment article alleging a violation of the oath in service of a hostile foreign power. So legally speaking, the matter could be very grave for Trump even though there is no criminal exposure.

It's not hard to imagine Democrats reading that and getting very enthused about impeachment.
bottom line...

Only Republicans can stop Trump!   It's up to the rest of us to see to it that they do!

And This Might Bury Him

 BREAKING NEWS!

President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo that Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The existence of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence an ongoing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of the memo to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey that Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.

Mr. Comey did not say anything to Mr. Trump about curtailing the investigation, only replying: “I agree he is a good guy.”

In a statement, the White House denied the version of events in the memo.

“While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” the statement said. “The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.”

In testimony to the Senate last week, the acting F.B.I. director, Andrew G. McCabe, said, “There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date.”

A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment.

Mr. Comey created similar memos — including some that are classified — about every phone call and meeting he had with the president, the two people said. It is unclear whether Mr. Comey told the Justice Department about the conversation or his memos.

Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey last week. Trump administration officials have provided multiple, conflicting accounts of the reasoning behind Mr. Comey’s dismissal. Mr. Trump said in a television interview that one of the reasons was because he believed “this Russia thing” was a “made-up story.”

The Feb. 14 meeting took place just a day after Mr. Flynn was forced out of his job after it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of phone conversations he had had with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Despite the conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey, the investigation of Mr. Flynn has proceeded. In Virginia, a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas in recent weeks for records related to Mr. Flynn. Part of the Flynn investigation is centered on his financial ties to Russia and Turkey.

Mr. Comey had been in the Oval Office that day with other senior national security officials for a terrorism threat briefing. When the meeting ended, Mr. Trump told those present — including Mr. Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — to leave the room except for Mr. Comey.

Alone in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Mr. Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates. 

Mr. Trump then turned the discussion to Mr. Flynn.

After writing up a memo that outlined the meeting, Mr. Comey shared it with senior F.B.I. officials. Mr. Comey and his aides perceived Mr. Trump’s comments as an effort to influence the investigation, but they decided that they would try to keep the conversation secret — even from the F.B.I. agents working on the Russia investigation — so the details of the conversation would not affect the investigation.

Mr. Comey was known among his closest advisers to document conversations that he believed would later be called into question, according to two former confidants, who said Mr. Comey was uncomfortable at times with his relationship with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Comey’s recollection has been bolstered in the past by F.B.I. notes. In 2007, he told Congress about a now-famous showdown with senior White House officials over the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. The White House disputed Mr. Comey’s account, but the F.B.I. director at the time, Robert S. Mueller III, kept notes that backed up Mr. Comey’s story.

The White House has repeatedly crossed lines that other administrations have been reluctant to cross when discussing politically charged criminal investigations. Mr. Trump has disparaged the ongoing F.B.I. investigation as a hoax and called for an investigation into his political rivals. His representatives have taken the unusual step of declaring no need for a special prosecutor to investigate the president’s associates.

The Oval Office meeting occurred a little more than two weeks after Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Comey to the White House for a lengthy, one-on-one dinner in the residence. At that dinner, on Jan. 27, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey at least two times for a pledge of loyalty — which Mr. Comey declined, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.

In a Twitter posting on Friday, Mr. Trump said that “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

After the meeting, Mr. Comey’s associates did not believe there was any way to corroborate Mr. Trump’s statements. But Mr. Trump’s suggestion last week that he was keeping tapes has made them wonder whether there are tapes that back up Mr. Comey’s account.

The Jan. 27 dinner came a day after White House officials learned that Mr. Flynn had been interviewed by F.B.I. agents about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak. On Jan. 26, Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates told the White House counsel about the interview, and said Mr. Flynn could be subject to blackmail by the Russians because they knew he had lied about the content of the calls.

After you've taken all of this in...Think about this...If this was Former President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton...or hell, former President Bill Clinton...Republicans would be foaming at the mouth and demanding impeachment...They impeached Bill Clinton for a sexual indiscretion....This smacks of Treason and Obstruction of Justice and not a Republican is saying a word... Further more, Trump's dumb ass followers are trying to justify it...

I said that this testimony might bury Trump....I doubt it...

How Stupid Does He Think We Are?

So Let's Do it Again

Weekend Humor

At school Little Johnny was told by a classmate that most adults are hiding at least one dark secret, and that this makes it very easy to blackmail them by saying, "I know the whole truth."

Little Johnny decides to go home and try it out.

He goes home, and as he is greeted by his mother he says, "I know the whole truth."

His mother quickly hands him $20 and says, "Just don't tell your father."

Quite pleased, the boy waits for his father to get home from work, and greets him with, "I know the whole truth."

The father promptly hands him $40 and says, "Please don't say a word to your mother."

Very pleased, the boy is on his way to school the next day when he sees the mailman at his front door.

The boy greets him by saying, "I know the whole truth."

The mailman immediately drops the mail, opens his arms, and says, "Then come give your real father a big hug."

Everybody have a sexilicious weekend!

Comey,You're Fired

Let me start by saying....I was no fan of James Comey...I thought what he did in October of last year,re-opening Hillary Clinton's emails and possibly shifting the election in Donald Trump's favor, disgusting...I thought President Obama should have fired him then....

So yesterday,when President Donald Trump(God,I hate saying that!) fired him,I shed no tears..As my cousin stated..."They used him like a paper cup and everybody knows you don't keep paper cups.."

President Donald Trump weighed firing his FBI director for more than a week. When he finally pulled the trigger Tuesday afternoon, he didn't call James Comey. He sent his longtime private security guard to deliver the termination letter in a manila folder to FBI headquarters.

He had grown enraged by the Russia investigation, two advisers said, frustrated by his inability to control the mushrooming narrative around Russia. He repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldn’t disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said.

Trump's firing of the high-profile FBI director on the 110th day since taking office marked another sudden turn for an administration that has fired its acting attorney general, national security adviser and now its FBI director, who Trump had praised until recent weeks and even blew a kiss to during a January appearance.

The news stunned James Comey, who saw his dismissal on TV while speaking inside the FBI office in Los Angeles.

It startled all but the uppermost ring of White House advisers, who said grumbling about Comey hadn't dominated their own morning senior staff meetings.

Other top officials learned just before it happened and were unaware he was considering firing Comey. "Nobody really knew," one senior White House official said. "Our phones all buzzed and people said, What?" 

By ousting the FBI director investigating his campaign and associates, Trump may have added more fuel to the fire he is furiously trying to contain — and he was quickly criticized by a chorus of Republicans and Democrats as well. "The timing of this firing was very troubling," said Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican.


Donald Trump had grown angry with the Russia investigation — particularly James Comey admitting in front of the Senate that the FBI was investigating his campaign — and that the FBI director wouldn't support his claims that President Barack Obama had tapped his phones in Trump Tower.

Bipartisan criticism of James Comey had mounted since last summer after his lengthy statement outlining why he was closing the investigation into Clinton’s private email server.

But the fallout seemed to take the White House by surprise. Donald Trump made a round of calls around 5 p.m., asking for support from senators. White House officials believed it would be a "win-win" because Republicans and Democrats alike have problems with the FBI director, one person briefed on their deliberations said.

Instead, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told him he was making a big mistake — and Donald Trump seemed "taken aback," according to a person familiar with the call.

By Tuesday evening, the president was watching the coverage of his decision and frustrated no one was on TV defending him, a White House official said. He wanted surrogates out there beating the drum.

Instead, advisers were attacking each other for not realizing the gravity of the situation as events blew up. "How are you not defending your position for three solid hours on TV?" the White House aide said.

Two White House officials said there was little communications strategy in handling the firing, and that staffers were given talking points late Tuesday for hastily arranged media appearances. Aides soon circulated previous quotes from Schumer hitting James Comey. After Schumer called for a special prosecutor, the White House huddled in press secretary Sean Spicer's office to devise a strategy and sent "fresh faces" to TV, one White House official said.

By Tuesday night, aides were using TV appearances to spin the firing as a simple bureaucratic matter and call for an end to the investigation. "It's time to move on," Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy press secretary, said on Fox News.

In his letter dismissing Comey, Trump said the FBI director had given him three private assurances that he wasn't under investigation. The White House declined to say when those conversations happened — or why Comey would volunteer such information. It is not the first time Trump has publicly commented on an ongoing investigation — typically a no-no for presidents. He said earlier this month that Comey had done Clinton a favor by letting her off easy.

Trump received letters from Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, calling for Comey's dismissal, on Tuesday, a spokesman said. The president then decided to fire him based on the recommendations and moved quickly. The spokesman said Trump did not ask for the letters in advance, and that White House officials had no idea they were coming.
But several other people familiar with the events said Trump had talked about the firing for over a week, and the letters were written to give him rationale to fire Comey.

The decision marked a turnabout for Donald Trump. On the campaign trail, the candidate led chants of "Lock her up!" and praised Comey’s “guts” in October for reopening the probe into her email server.

He joked openly with Comey at the White House two days after the inauguration.
Trump, as one White House official noted, believed Comey was too soft on Clinton — not too unfair, as Rosenstein’s letter Tuesday indicated.

At FBI headquarters, one senior official said the bureau was essentially in lockdown, not answering calls flooding in and referring all questions to the Justice Department. "I got nothing for you. Sorry," said the official. "We were caught totally off guard. But we are not commenting in any kind of way, and referring calls to DOJ."

James Comey had flown on an FBI plane to Los Angeles for a "diversity and recruiting" event. Trump’s director of Oval Office operations, longtime security aide Keith Schiller, hand-delivered the dismissal letter to FBI headquarters.


By Tuesday evening, the shock that had spread throughout the ranks of current and former FBI officials was mixed with a growing sense of anger among the many Comey loyalists, and demands for answers as to why the director had been fired — and why now.

“We just have no idea why this happened. No idea,” said one recently retired top FBI official who worked closely with Comey on many high-profile investigations. “No one knew this was coming. Everyone is just shocked that this happened.” 

There was no immediate front-runner for the job, one White House official said. "If there's a list, I haven't seen it," said one senior White House official.

While shock dominated much of the FBI and the White House, the mood was more elated at Roger Stone's house in Florida. Several Stone allies and friends said Stone, who has been frequently mentioned in the investigation, encouraged the president to fire Comey in conversations in recent weeks.

On Twitter, Stone signaled praise for the move by posting an image of Trump from The Apprentice saying "You're fired."
Stone declined to comment Tuesday night but said he was enjoying a fine cigar.

You know these crooked bastards have got to slip up eventually.....

Stay tuned!

To Destroy a Country

Under Trump's New Tax Plan

France Got It Right

As of this writing, France has had it's election....Unlike the U.S. They did not elect "Trump in a skirt" or any form of Trump...They elected a liberal globalist candidate...


France on Sunday shrugged off the siren call of right-wing populism that enchanted voters in the United States and United Kingdom, rejecting anti-E.U. firebrand Marine Le Pen and choosing as its next president Emmanuel Macron, a centrist political neophyte who has pledged to revive both his struggling country and the flailing continent.

The result brought to a close a tumultuous and polarized campaign that defied prediction at nearly every turn, though not at the end. Pre-election polls had forecast a sizable Macron victory, and he appeared to have delivered, with projections issued after polls closed showing him with around 65 percent of the vote.
In a speech to the nation, Macron said the country had “Turned a new page in our long history. I want it to be a page of renewed hope and trust.”

The president-elect also reached out to Le Pen voters, saying he could understand their anger, while vowing to defend both France and Europe. “This is our civilization that’s at stake, our way of life,” he said.


Macron was expected to speak again later Sunday night in the grand courtyard of Paris’s Louvre Museum, where news of his win spawned raucous cheers among thousands of flag-waving Macron backers.
“I feel relieved,” said Valentin Coutouly, a 23-year-old student who described himself as “European to the core” and who was celebrating on a chilly May night. “I think we were all afraid that Le Pen could actually win. We realized in the end that it was possible.” 

 At her own gathering at a Paris restaurant, a downcast Le Pen conceded defeat, telling her demoralized supporters that the country had “chosen continuity” and said the election had drawn clear lines between “the patriots and the globalists.”


The outcome — the latest blow in 2017 for far-right movements that had seemed to be on the march last year — will soothe Europe’s anxious political establishment. Across the continent, mainstream politicians had feared that a Le Pen victory would throw in reverse decades of efforts to forge continental integration.
But the outcome instantly puts pressure on Macron to deliver on promises made to an unhappy French electorate, including reform of two institutions notoriously resistant to change: the European Union and the French bureaucracy.

At 39, the trim, blue-eyed and square-jawed Macron will become France’s youngest leader since Napoleon when he is inaugurated this weekend, and his election caps an astonishing rise.

With a background in investment banking and a turn as economy minister under a historically unpopular president, he may have seemed an ill fit for the anti-establishment anger coursing through Western politics.
But by bucking France’s traditional parties and launching his own movement – En Marche, or Onward -- Macron managed to cast himself as the outsider the country needs. And by unapologetically embracing the European Union, immigration and the multicultural tableau of modern France, he positioned himself as the optimistic and progressive antidote to the dark and reactionary vision of Le Pen’s National Front.

Le Pen, 48, has long sought to become the first far-right leader elected in Western Europe’s post-war history. Sunday’s vote frustrated those ambitions, but is unlikely to end them.
By winning around 35 percent of the vote, she nearly doubled the share won by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in the 2002 election, the only other time the National Front’s candidate has made it to the second round. The result seemed to cement the party’s long march from the political fringe to the center of the nation’s discontented political discourse, if not the pinnacle of its power.


Struggling with chronically high unemployment and recurrent terrorist attacks, France’s mood on the day of its presidential vote was reflected in the dark clouds and chilly spring rains that blanketed much of the country.

Nonetheless, the public voted at a rate that would be the envy of many Western democracies: From the chic neighborhoods of Paris to the struggling post-industrial towns of the French countryside, turnout nationwide was expected to reach 75 percent, down slightly from previous votes.
No matter whom French voters picked, the choice was bound to be historic.

The dominant two parties of France’s Fifth Republic were both eliminated in the first round. The center-left Socialists were decimated, brought low by the failure of current President Francois Hollandeto turn around the economy or to prevent a succession of mass-casualty terrorist attacks.

The center-right Republicans, meanwhile, missed what was once seen as a sure-fire bet at returning to power after their candidate, former prime minister Francois Fillon, was hobbled by a series of corruption allegations.
The two candidates who remained, Le Pen and Macron, both traced an outsider’s path as they sought residence at the Élysée Palace.

Of the two, Macron had the more direct route. But his campaign still had to overcome all the usual challenges of a start-up, plus some extraordinary ones — including the publication online Friday night of thousands of hacked campaign documents in a cyber-attack that aroused suspicions of Russian meddling.
The outcome of Sunday’s vote will have profound implications not only for France’s 67 million citizens, but also for the future of Europe and for the political trajectory across the Western world.
After a pair of dramatic triumphs for the populist right in 2016 – with Brexit in the U.K., and Donald Trump in the U.S. – France’s vote was viewed as a test of whether the political mainstream could beat back a rising tide.

Many of Europe’s mainstream leaders -- both center-right and center-left – lined up to cheer Macron on after he punched his ticket to the second round in a vote last month. The endorsements were a break from protocol for presidents and prime ministers who normally stay out of each other’s domestic elections.
But they reflected the gravity of the choice that France faced. A victory by Le Pen was seen as a possible market-rattling death blow to decades of efforts to draw Europe more closely together, with the country’s new president expected to lead campaigns to take the country out of both the E.U. and the euro.
Former U.S. president Barack Obama had also endorsed Macron, and the young French politician often appeared to be trying to emulate the magic of Obama’s 2008 campaign with speeches that appealed to hope, change and unity -- while eliding many of the details of his policies.

The current White House occupant, Trump, was cagey about his choice, saying before the first round that Le Pen was “the strongest on borders and she's the strongest on what's been going on in France.” He predicted that she would do well, but stopped short of endorsing her.

After Macron’s victory, Trump tweeted congratulations shortly after 3 p.m. Washington time on “his big win today as the next President of France. I look very much forward to working with him!”

On the campaign trail this spring, Le Pen’s rhetoric had often echoed Trump’s, with vows to put “France first” and to defend “the forgotten France.” She also condemned globalist cosmopolitans – Macron chief among them -- who she said did not have the nation’s interests at heart.

But she had distanced herself from Trump since his inauguration, often declining to mention him by name, and analysts said her association with the unpopular American president may have hurt her among French voters.
Macron shares almost nothing with Trump except one key fact: Like the New York real estate tycoon, Macron became president of his country on his first run for elective office.


The son of doctors who was raised in the northern city of Amiens, Macron had to teach himself the basics of campaigning on the fly in the white-hot glare of a presidential race.
Vowing repeatedly during the campaign to borrow from both left and right, he will now have to learn how to govern a country without the backing of any of its traditional parties.
Instead, he has a movement that he built from scratch, and now faces the immediate challenge of getting En Marche allies elected to the National Assembly.
That vote, due next month, will determine whether Macron has the parliamentary support he needs to enact an agenda of sweeping economic reforms, many of which are likely to unsettle the country’s deeply entrenched labor unions.
Despite his victory, pre-election polls showed that most of Macron’s supporters saw themselves voting against Le Pen rather than for him.
That was reflected on the streets Sunday, with voters even in well-to-do and heavily pro-Macron neighborhoods of Paris saying they felt more resigned than excited.

“On the one hand you have a far-right party that will take us straight to disaster,” said Gilbert Cohen, a retired 82-year-old engineer who cast his ballot amid the vaulted ceilings of Paris’s 17th century Place des Vosges, a former royal residence that was also home to Victor Hugo. “On the other, you have the candidate who’s the only reasonable choice we have.” 

Cohen described Macron as “brilliant.” But, he said, the new boy wonder of French politics “can’t govern by himself.” 

Elsewhere in France, the mood was even more markedly downbeat. In Laon, a small and struggling city 90 miles north of Paris, many voters said they were so disillusioned by the choice that they would cast a blank ballot.

Others said their disenchantment had led them to Le Pen – and a hope that, despite the polls, she could still eke out a victory that would bring the radical break for France that they crave.

“We’ve had 50 years of rule from the left and the right,” said Francis Morel, a 54-year-old bread maker who cast his ballot for Le Pen. “Nothing has changed.” 

The mood was considerably more upbeat Sunday night at the Louvre, where Macron supporters gathered in what was once the seat of French kings for their candidate’s victory celebration.

Stéphanie Ninel, 31, a technician, said she had been at the Louvre since just after lunchtime, braving the chilly weather to snag a prime position in the crowd.

“I’ve been old enough to vote in three elections now,” she said. “But this is the first time I feel I’ve been able to vote for someone with actual conviction. He’s a new person, and he demands a new politics.”

Thank you France for doing what we should have done in the United States and what the British should have done in the Brexit Vote.

He Who Laughs Last

They are laughing....Look at them...All of them...White men, well off...Members of the House Of Represenatives...Republicans all!

Why are they laughing?

They just gutted the Affordable Care Act....also known as "Obamacare" and possibly doomed several hundred Americans or more to being without coverage...Among other things..

And they're laughing...

These Clowns Had the Nerve to have Beer delivered to the White House after they gutted the Affordable Care Act today...Take a good look at everyone laughing in this photo...When they come up for re-election...Let's take that laugh off of their faces..See if they want some brew then?

I mean who does this? Who celebrates throwing people off of health insurance coverage?

They and their loved ones are covered...They have the best health care plan....

To hell with you and me...

No one knows better than House Democrats how a contentious health care vote can exact a steep political price — losing control of the House in the first midterm election of an untested new president’s tenure for example.

As they hooted derisively at their Republican colleagues on Thursday after a narrow, party-line approval of legislation to roll back the Obama-era health care law, Democrats glimpsed the mirror image of their own politically disastrous health care experience.
They also saw a prime opportunity to avenge their ugly 2010 loss and possibly recapture the House majority.

“I think they are staring death in the face,” Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, said about the political prospects of dozens of House Republicans who were persuaded to back the bill by Republican leaders eager to deliver a legislative win. “They asked their vulnerable members to take an enormous gamble and risk on an act of faith that I guarantee will not pay off.”

Relieved Republicans celebrated on the House floor and at the White House and said they had been in danger of retaliation from their own conservative base if they had not delivered on the pledge to repeal the law they had been promising to strike from the books for seven years.

They say their candidates will have the experience and resources to fight off Democratic challengers.
But Democrats were confident many colleagues across the aisle would come to regret this vote, particularly in an election cycle where the president’s party is typically on the defensive and when Republicans will need to protect nearly two dozen districts carried by Hillary Clinton last year. Those districts alone, including some in places like California, Texas and Illinois, are almost enough to determine who runs the House.

“Republicans kicked a hornet’s nest, and it is not too soon to begin saying goodbye to some of my Republican colleagues from moderate districts, because this will cost them dearly,” said Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez, Democrat of Illinois.

The 2018 campaign is only now beginning, and the political climate is highly volatile. The outlook for the House bill in the Senate is uncertain, and it could be significantly rewritten. But Democrats believe that the potential ramifications of the House-passed measure — millions losing insurance coverage, a diminished array of benefits, no definite guarantee of coverage for those with pre-existing conditions — provide them with powerful ammunition against Republicans.

Democrats point out that Republicans will have to defend a reduction in federal help for people who have come to rely on it. That is a most unusual position for politicians since federal benefit programs are rarely scaled back once they are established — certainly not a program with the reach of the health care law.

“It is a pretty big mistake,” Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, said about the Republican bill. “They are taking something away.”


It wasn’t just Democrats who were complaining about retrenching on health benefits. In a statement that might well resurface in Democratic campaigns, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who is retiring, delivered a blistering critique of the bill, saying it has “potential to severely harm the health and lives of people in South Florida.”

“My constituents should not have to take a step backward in their ability to obtain treatment for any illness,” she said.

Ms. Ros-Lehtinen was among 20 Republicans who opposed the legislation, most of them in politically divided districts where they hoped their “no” vote might insulate them from any voter fury. But that might not be a successful strategy since it could alienate Republican supporters while failing to win over Democrats.

The fate of Democrats who opposed the Affordable Care Act is instructive and shows that bucking the party on a difficult vote doesn’t necessarily protect a lawmaker in the next election. Of 34 House Democrats who opposed the health law in 2010, half still lost their re-elections that November.
“Every Republican is going to have to carry the burden of this,” said Rep. Rick Larsen, Democrat of Washington.

House Democrats have struggled since losing the majority in 2010, failing to capitalize on opportunities to expand their numbers. There is no guarantee that they can take full advantage of these circumstances. But top Democrats point to one promising development: They say they are seeing new enthusiasm among possible candidates rather than having to search for contenders.

“We have too many wanting to run,” Mr. Hoyer said. “They are just coming out of the woodwork because they smell victory in the air and they are angry about what the Republicans are doing.”

Even as they saw the advantages, some Democrats were careful to say they would have preferred that the repeal bill had failed rather than provide them with a political upper hand.

“They will pay the political consequences, but it would be better if it didn’t pass,” said Rep. Kathy Castor, Democrat of Florida.

The similarity to past defining votes in the House was unmistakable. While Republicans cheered their win, Democrats, in a bit of precooked theater, chanted “na na na na, hey hey, goodbye” from the 1969 song to give voice to their view that multiple Republicans were goners after the vote.

The scene brought to mind the 1993 Clinton administration budget clash: Republicans chanted “Goodbye Marjorie” when Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, Democrat of Pennsylvania, cast the deciding vote.

She later lost her seat. In a 2009 climate vote pushed by House Democrats, Republicans offered the refrain “BTU” to remind Democrats of a 1993 energy vote that hurt their party.

This time, Democrats say they will have the last word. They believe that in delivering a win demanded by President Trump, House Republicans have opened the door to Democratic control of the House, a reversal that would put them in a position to challenge Mr. Trump in a way that would be impossible were they kept in the minority.

 Sooooooooooooooo..Take a good look at everyone laughing in this photo...When they come up for re-election...Let's take that laugh off of their faces..See if they want some brew then? He who laughs last....laughs best!

Weekend Humor

Three girls died and were brought to the gates of heaven. Upon entering the gate, they were halted by St. Peter and his obedient angel.

St. Peter asked the girls, "Before entering you must answer this simple question."

"Which is ...?", they replied in unison.

"Have you been a good girl ?", he asked the first girl.

"Oh yes", she said. "I was a virgin before I got married and was still virgin even after I got married."

"Very good", said St. Peter. "Angel, give this girl... the golden key."

"Have you been a good girl?", he asked the second girl.

"Oh, quite good", she said. "I was a virgin before I got married but was not after I got married."
"Very good", said St. Peter. "Angel, give this girl... the silver key."

"Have you been a good girl?", he asked the third girl.

"Oh no, not at all", she said. "I practically have sex with every guy I met before and after I got married. Anywhere, anytime."

"Very good", said St. Peter. "Angel, give this girl... my room key."


HAVE A SEXALICIOUS WEEKEND!

Betwixt A Tweet!

I don't know what President Trump's Iphone looks like..In other words..I don't know the model...but he is causing a stir on Capital Hill and not just from Democrats...but from his own Republican Party...

Washington policymakers have a time-tested method for rolling out new ideas: float a trial balloon. Spread rumors of a policy change or selectively leak it to the press, then see how it plays and proceed only if it looks doable.

President Donald Trump has flipped that script...Or so it appears..

Big and startling ideas fly out of his mouth or from his Twitter feed.

Then the rest of his administration scrambles to catch up — and to figure out when his statements signal new presidential policies and when they're offhand remarks that mean little.

In the past week alone, Trump has suggested he's open to higher gas taxes, tweeted that a government shutdown could be a good thing and called North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un a "smart cookie" whom he'd be honored to meet under the right conditions.

Trump also invited Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte, with a troubling human rights record, to visit the White House and insisted the GOP health plan would provide coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, even though an ironclad guarantee is not reflected in the latest version of the legislation.

Such pronouncements sometimes force Trump's top policy advisers to try to adjust administration policy to sync with the president's remarks. His communications aides contort themselves to explain away inconsistencies in administration messages.

And blindsided GOP congressional leaders have to decide when to realign their positions and when to stay the course.

"It's a scramble drill in the White House every day, and certainly a scramble drill in Trump's mind every day," says Calvin Jillson, a presidential scholar at Southern Methodist University.

The frustration of Republican legislators was clear when Trump tweeted Tuesday that the government "needs a good shutdown" in September to fix the "mess," after Democrats prevailed on a number of spending issues in a bipartisan budget bill designed to keep the government open.

"I do wish somebody would take his iPhone away from him," said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.
"I wish he'd think twice before tweeting," seconded Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

House Speaker Paul Ryan wondered aloud: "How many times have I had this, 'Do you agree with the tweet this morning?'"

Ryan said he shared the president's aggravation with Democrats over the spending negotiations. But he also defended the budget deal, telling reporters it was an "important first step in the right direction."

On North Korea, Trump seemed to recognize the startling nature of his conciliatory comments about Kim in which he told CBS on Sunday that he would be "honored" to meet the leader if circumstances were right. The president labeled his own comments "breaking news."


White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer quickly stressed that Trump wouldn't meet with the North Korean leader unless he changed course and showed "signs of good faith."

Asked how Trump could be honored to meet with someone who's threatened to destroy the U.S., Spicer said that because Kim was a head of state, "there's a diplomatic piece to this."  Oh is that what it is?

Likewise, it fell to Spicer to tamp down expectations after Trump told Bloomberg in an interview that he would "certainly consider" generating more money for his big infrastructure plan by raising gasoline and diesel fuel taxes. The idea of raising taxes is a no-go zone for most Republican legislators.

Spicer said Trump was merely showing "respect" for an idea that had been raised by industry groups and "there was no endorsement of it or no support of it."

Trump's interviews sometimes make news to his own team.

When Trump promised an AP interviewer last month that he'd roll out his tax plan the following week, officials at the White House and Treasury Department, as well as Republicans on Capitol Hill, were caught off guard. The announcement sent aides scrambling to put together a one-sheet outline of a tax plan by the president's surprise deadline.

Trump's Twitter feed is an ongoing source of surprise, perhaps most notably his March accusation that President Barack Obama had him wiretapped during the presidential campaign. That triggered an all-out effort by aides to find ways to justify the claim.

Jillson allowed that sometimes Trump may appear to be winging it when his statements are planned, such as the president's phone conversation during the transition with the president of Taiwan. The call generated speculation that Trump had unthinkingly broken longstanding U.S. policy but appears to have been part of a calculated effort to throw China off-balance, Jillson said.

Trump's White House invitation to Duterte, whose record includes extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers and users, caught key players at the State Department unaware and left White House officials trying to explain why it would be a good idea.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus framed the president's invitation as part of an effort to counter the military threat of North Korea, adding that "it doesn't mean that human rights don't matter."

Jillson said that while administration officials may feel compelled to align the policies they're developing with Trump's latest statements, GOP members of Congress are becoming more discriminating about when they need to sync up with the president's pronouncements and when they can disregard them.

On the bipartisan budget deal, he said, congressional Republicans and Democrats "forgot about Trump for enough time to craft a deal, almost without reference to him, and got a win."
"They're learning to let this stuff wash off their backs and continue to try to think systematically," Jillson said.

So much spin....Admit it...This guy is in ,wayyyyy over his head...He has no idea what he is doing and he is an international embarrassment to America...

It's just that right now ,only a few brave souls will admit it!

A Word From Our Sponser

For All of The people who think I bash our President too much!

What I've Learned

1. I'm 59 years old...I'm not going to look like I did when I was 29 years old, but you have to try...

2.I didn't grow up saying I had to be anything....I was just in awe of all of the possibilities.

3.Fear of Death is a great motivator to eat right and exercise and get in shape.

4.I suppose I should have survivor's guilt...So many of my friends who began this journey with me are no longer here...but I don't...

5.Sometimes you can find beauty where nobody bothered to look!

6.I'm Not Ward Cleaver or Cliff Huxtable...but I think I've been a pretty good dad overall..

7.You need someone to look up to and someone to look up to you! That's called balance.

8.Parenting doesn't end when your kids grow up....If you're lucky!

9.A good marriage is all about intimacy, and getting to know each other as best as you can.

10.I have two voices in my head...One that says...You're going to be 60 next year...You're old...And another voice that says...Ahhh knock it off...Be glad you're still alive to worry about it! 

PEACE!

Gotta Love Mark Twain