It's Monday: Place Your Bets For the Week

Good Day World!

Welcome to my virtual betting site where no money is exchanged, just bragging rights for who comes the closest in their daily predictions.

Monday:

1) Trump is going to angrily tweet about Bob Woodward: 
     A) 100% B) 75% C) 25% 

2) Mike Pence was the writer of the explosive NY Times Op       Ed that described what was happening in the White House
    A) 100% B) 50% C) 10%

Tuesday

1) The contents of National Inquirer's secret vault will be              revealed by publisher David Pecker. In it, will be a load of      shit on Trump.
    A) 90% B) 60% C) 10%

2) Trump will go all day without tweeting.
    A) 70% B) 30% C 1%

Wednesday

1) Bob Mueller will announce another indictment related to         the Russian investigation.
    A) 60% B) 40% C) 20%

2) Trump will impose additional tariffs on China
     A) 75% B) 60% C) 35%

Thursday

1) House Republicans pursue a review on something that's         been reviewed and closed...the FISA process.
    A) 80% B) 65% C) 25%

2) Rudy Giuliani, Trump's buddy and lawyer, will make a             false claim about something.
    A) 100% B) 80% C) 50%

Friday

1) Trump will play golf.
     A) 100% B) 75% C) 50%

2) Jeff Sessions will defend himself against Trump's personal      attacks against him.
     A) 50% B) 25% C) 1%

No betting on the weekend. 

You can let me know how you scored in the comment section of this blog, or email me at richarddavestancliff@gmail 
Love to get your input!

Time for me to walk on down the road...

Cruising On Sunday: Take a Read

Good Day World!

Inhale...exhale..inhale...are you relaxing yet?

We're going to keep it chilly this Sunday with some light stories and comments from the far side.

Rally Around the Meme!

A young man with a very expressive face stood behind Trump during a recent rally in Montana and became a viral sensation.

How? Here's the video.

The young man, a senior in high school, said he was just reacting to some of Trump's comments. He, and his two friends, got kicked out for not clapping and not being enthusiastic enough. 

You know how game shows prep the audience before the cameras come on? There's signs that tell the audience when to applaud and when to laugh.

At Trump rallies the signs say "Go Ape Shit..." and "Laugh hysterically." Sometimes it's hard holding the vomit in, and people have to be escorted outside for fresh air.

No Shame: 72-year old Busboy

One of the more unusual stories I ran across was the one about the 72-year old busboy at a pancake house. It's the story of a man content to bus tables for 54 years. He owns a house, is married, and intends to keep working as long as he can.

The takeaway: the man is happy with his job. That may be hard for some of us to understand. I know it took me a while to really wrap my mind around it, but I get it now.

Aliens Among Us?

Guess what? NASA is studying an underwater volcano in Hawaii to learn more about alien life. Scientists think conditions are similar to what might exist on Saturn's moon, Enceladus. 

I think that's really a far out concept. My question is, when do we start planning trips to Enceladus? And, what about Mars?

No One Else Thought Of This...

We're all familiar with the famous painting the, "Mona Lisa." One time, or another, we've all seen images of the iconic oil painting.

Now, according to a doctor in Boston, the person in the painting was suffering from an illness, possibly a serious thyroid condition. I'm not sure why no one else in the last few hundred years noticed the woman's condition.

Either this doctor is blowing smoke out of his ass, or this claim made from looking at an oil painting, is a new way to diagnosis patients in the 21st century.

Time for me to walk on down the road...

It Was Great To Hear a Sane President Speak - Hopefully Trump Was Listening

Good Day World!

It's sad what 19 months of chaos will do to your memory. I almost forgot what it was like to hear a real statesman speak.

But, after listening to former president Barack Obama deliver a speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign yesterday, my memory was properly refreshed.

Here's a link to his speech.

It was uplifting to hear an American president defend democracy and government institutions like our Department of Justice and the FBI, which have been under attack since Trump slunk into office.

It was good to hear a president who gave a speech without insulting or attacking his critics. Listening to Obama's measured speech, and the determined passion he showed for all Americans - rich and poor, was a textbook example of what a real president should be espousing.

Obama exposed the fear tactics of Trump and minions and turned it into a call for equality and justice. And hope. As he carefully articulated words with more than four-letters, I was reminded of Trump's speech last night where he couldn't even pronounce the word, anonymous. Trump's lexicon seldom goes over four letters per word, and maybe forty words total in his stunted vocabulary.

I heard sincerity in his words when Obama urged the younger generation to get out and to vote. Obama's words unite. Trump's words insult and divide. 

Where we once had a president who paid strong attention to daily briefings, we now have a clown with an attention span of three minutes. If there's no photos or images for him to look at, that attention span becomes shorter. 

Not a very secure feeling.

Once, a mere two years ago, America was a beacon of freedom to the world. Under Trump we've torn up international agreements and treaties, and are economically attacking our allies with extreme tariffs.

The central message that Obama wanted to deliver was straight forward; take your country back by VOTING in the midterms.

Time for me to walk on down the road...

Trump Keeps on Winning...in His Mind

Good Day World!

You may think that Trump is really getting into some deep shit (he calls it Deep State) lately and things looks bad for him. 

Just because a mystery senior member of the White House wrote an Op-Ed that the New York Times plastered all over it's front page describing Trump as unhinged, you might think he would be in retreat. Bad optics, and all.

But no.

In Trump's mind he's winning. With reality closing in on his troubled presidency he's lashing out like any twisted sociopathic-narcissist would.

In other words, he's attacking everyone. In the recent flood of revelations about Trump in the White House we see an emerging pattern. The bastard is crazy!

From Day One, when Trump instructed mealy-mouthed Sean Spicer to lie about his inaugural crowd Americans have been subjected to the worst presidency of modern times...awwww hell with it, in history!

Apparently people in Trump's administration have known all along what an amoral piece-of-shit he is, but have held their noses to further their careers. 

That is until tidbits of Trump's antics in the West House began leaking out within months of his administration. Now, like rats fleeing a sinking ship, we'll see more Trump staffers resign as his corruption turns into a constitutional crisis.

Trump is reported to have once said - in a book ghost-written by Tony Schwartz - that all publicity is good, and there is no bad publicity. The book's publisher however, Howard Kaminsky, said that Trump played no role in the actual writing of the book. You may have heard of it...The Art Of The Deal.

The point is, as long as Trump can dominate the news cycle it doesn't matter to him how he gets there.

I wonder if his views are changing with the specters of impeachment, and Amendment 25, lurking around the corners? 

Probably not. The egotist is his dominate side. As long as he has a core base to play to he'll continue to walk down Fifth Avenue naked...sure that no one can see that the emperor has no clothes on.

Time for me to walk on down the road....

Welcome to 'Crazytown' USA

Good Day World!

I hope you're ready for a tour of Crazytown, formerly called the White House. 

You should probably start with Bob Woodward's new book "FEAR."

"Woodward vividly quotes Priebus on the chaos of the White House’s decision making. “When you put a snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody. That’s what happens.” Dwight Garner, NY Times

And,

"John F. Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, is quoted as saying about the president, in a meeting, “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown.” 

After a stroll through Crazytown with Woodward, it's time to turn back the clock to August when Omarosa Manigault Newman, a white house advisor and only person of color in the West Wing, was fired.

Her response? Here's another tour of the White House for you, titled:

"Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House"

The first tour that started it all was Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" that came out in January.

"The president, while proposing the most radical departure from governing and policy norms in several generations," Wolff writes, "had few specific ideas about how to turn his themes and vitriol into policy, nor a team that could reasonably unite behind him."

After that quick tour let's take a step outside to the links on one of Trump's golf courses. 

Next May, a new book on Trump, titled "Commander In Cheat," written by famed sport writer Rick Reilly, is going to give readers another inside look at The Donald's lack of ethics that even extend to his golf game.

Time for me to walk on down the road...

Apocalypse Now: Republicans Set Fire To Rules To Confirm Kavanaugh

                                            Good Day World!

I watched with disgust as the Republicans trotted out a Trump Supreme Court appointee and went through the motions of a confirmation...unlike any other in our judicial history.

The Republican chairman (I won't even say the bastard's name) did his best dog-and-pony-show pretending like Kavanaugh's confirmation was going through a normal process - like Kavanaugh's predecessor's did (with the exception of Gorsuch, another Trump appointee).

The Republicans in the room claimed that the Democrats didn't need to see more than 90% of Kavanaugh's records. They expected the Dems to be happy with 7% of his track record in politics.

The Dems tried to shame Kavanaugh into suspending the hearing until they could read all the files on his past. They asked him to think how it would look in history if he came down on the wrong side. They asked him to reveal his records of he didn't have anything to hide.

Needless to say, it didn't work. The man has no shame. He's a Trump appointee and has already signed a loyalty oath to Trump. So he sat there like a middle-aged cherub and smiled a lot. Sometimes he even tried to look serious about the farce he was involved in.

Takeaways:

Trump is covering his ass so that when he gets impeached, and it goes to the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh will be his Get-Out-Of-Jail card.

A great example of a Republican-sponsored Kangaroo Court in the era of Trump. 

I think we're in a political version of Apocalypse Now, and the rules and norms in Washington DC are being set on fire so Trump can watch democracy burn. 

I'm reminded of the iconic movie and the following scene:

Jet's streaking across the sky spewing napalm into the jungle and on the beach...chaos in the skies...

Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that? 

Lance: What?

Kilgore: Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. 

[kneels] 

Kilgore: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. 

You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours.

When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of '

em, not one stinkin' dink body.

The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like...

[sniffing, pondering] 

Kilgore: victory!"

Time for me to walk on down the road...

A Day Without Trump

Good Day World!

Imagine, if you can, a day without Trump. 

A day without having to listen to lies spew from his vile little lips like venom.

A day when someone in our nation or abroad, isn't being insulted by Trump.

A day where immigrants are treated like human beings.

A day when our Justice Department and the FBI aren't being attacked by the leader of the land.

A day where Trump's tweets are silenced.

A day where Republican congressman can go without fear of angering Trump if they dare to criticize him or try to compromise with the Democrats.

A day where America isn't embarrassed when Trump attacks our allies and befriends a dictator somewhere on the planet.

A day without attacking the Russian investigation special counsel Robert Mueller.

A day where Trump doesn't get his marching orders from Fox News.

A day when the headline news doesn't have a story about Trump.

A day without springing nasty surprises like not giving Federal employees a raise to save money so he can use it on his WALL (that Mexico will never pay for).

A day without Trump bragging about what a good president he thinks he is.

A day where Trump's name is not even mentioned in coffee shops across the nation.

A day when we can pretend America's values are not under siege by our Liar-In-Chief.

Just imagine...a day without Trump.

Time for me to walk on down the road...

The Fix is In: Trump Hides Majority of Kavanaugh's Rulings

Good Day World!

Using his executive privilege to subvert a fair confirmation hearing for the next supreme court judge, is par for the course when it comes to Trump's corrupt approach to government.

To make sure that Kavanaugh's confirmed, Trump stopped the release of 100,000 pages of his time as a lawyer during the Bush Administration.

Stepping in at the last moment, just days before the hearings started, Trump elected to hide 100,000 pages of Kavanaugh's records from the American public. Not only is this move unprecedented in the history of presidential norms, it smells like a cover up.   

Enabling Trump's under-handed assault against the confirmation process is a collection of jellyfish that claim to be Republicans in congress. With their help, any chance of the proper scrutiny of Kavanaugh's records sunk into the swamp that Donny's made.

Most of the records withheld "reflect deliberations and candid advice concerning the selection and nomination of judicial candidates, the confidentiality of which us critical to any president's ability to carry out core constitutional executive function," wrote William A. Burck, a lawyer for former President Bush. 

According to senate Democrats this is the first time a sitting president has exerted executive privilege under the Presidential Records Act in order to prevent documents from going to Congress during a Supreme Court confirmation process.

Trump has proven to be a liar, a con man, and a cheat in nineteen short months of fouling the Oval Office. His criminal past is catching up with him. From the courts of New York City to the Federal Special Investigation into Trump's ties to Russian and campaign meddling, he faces a spectacular downfall.

Selecting a supreme court nominee and getting him confirmed at this point in time (when Trump is an un-indicted accomplice to his lawyers felony conviction for campaign fraud and violations), would be a travesty of justice the court may never be able to overcome.

For that reason alone, the confirmation process needs to stop until Trump's been cleared of a felony(s) in the ongoing New York investigation. 

To double down on that thought, everyone needs to see what the result of Mueller's investigation is before letting him stack our Supreme Court with minions beholden to himself.

The fix may be in, but the fat lady hasn't starting singing yet.

Time for me to walk on down the road...

Nation Honors McCain's Passing While Trump Played Golf

Good Day World!

When the nation mourned Sen.John McCain's death yesterday at the Washington National Cathedral, Trump was waddling around on his golf course in Loudon County, Virginia, looking for his ball in a bunker.

Between swings, he sulked and tweeted nasty accusations against his own Justice Department. For good measure, he even threatened Canada, assuring no cooperation on his re-do of NAFTA in the near future.

When the nation grieved, our Liar-In-Chief was busy cheating at golf with mulligans at every hole. No matter that he was playing alone. In his warped mind he's winning, regardless of the cost.

While the leading national figures in politics today honored McCain for his honesty, Trump rambled across the links with his little MAGA hat on in a world of his own. A world of feverish lies, and corruption.

While old political foes eulogized McCain, Trump's friends were flipping on him in court cases like fish-out-of-water. 

While past presidents spoke of McCain's patriotism, Trump is under fire for collusion with America's longtime enemy Russia, during the 2016 election.

When congressman from both sides of the aisle spoke about McCain they all agreed he put America before party. Trump has put himself above American values, and norms. His only allegiance is the one he has to himself.

As McCain's family spoke about what a good man he was, Trump's daughter and son-in-law were at his funeral instead of being at Trump's side - or riding along in a golf cart watching him play golf!

Pundits often note that Trump is on an island when it comes to most things he wants to do. 

Instead, I would venture to say he's on a golf course surrounded by his base who are chanting, "Lock her up!" and "Build that wall!"

Time for me to walk on down the road...

Giuliani Prepares Fake Report To Exonerate Trump

Good Day World!

In a desperation attempt to protect Trump against Mueller's eventual findings, his crazed lawyer, Rudy Giuliana, is making up a report refuting everything he thinks Mueller will bring up.

It's another case of alternate reality in the Trump era where "truth isn't truth" and lies are the coin of the realm. Mind you, Giuliana isn't exactly sure what Mueller is going to expose, but he's preparing preemptive strikes on what he suspects is going to be revealed.

The report - whether he shares it before Mueller's, or after - is really for Trump's minions. The mainstream media will greet it for what it is...pure bullshit! It's going to rival Alice in Wonderland...and will be dubbed Trump in the Swamp, even as Giuliani stands at street corners passing it out for free. 

This "report" is going to be about as credible as a stuffed crocodile terrorizing New York's infamous sewers. I suspect Trump's Q Anon followers will read it with a sense of satisfaction. They love conspiracies, and I'm sure Giuliani won't disappoint them.

So what's the real purpose of this report Rudy is bragging about?

Simply put, it's a distraction in the news cycle, and meat for his base. He knows damn well that facts will refute his feeble attempts at making up an alternate story for every charge Mueller will file against him.

It's all Rudy has left. Trump has been unhinged after a couple weeks of brutal revelations and everyone who is someone in his circle turning on him. "They Flipped," Trump told one reporter, sounding an awful lot like a mob boss. 

Throw in Trump's recent attitude problem with John McCain's death, and the flag incident that showed the world what a petty bastard he is, and the results are predictable. 

The most recent ABC poll shows Trump's approval rating sinking, and at the worst since he slunk into office in Putin's pocket, in January 2017.

Reality is catching up to the former reality star...expect a spectacular ending.

Time for me to walk on down the road...

Dictators, Friends, Family: A Guide To Trump's Warped World

Good Day World!

Just for shit and giggles, let's take a look at the world according to Trump.

Don't expect any insights. He's really just your run-of-the-mill egomaniac and sociopath that somehow got elected to lead the greatest nation on earth.

Let's hop into a boat and go out into The Swamp, formerly known as the White House, to look at some of Trump's cadre of societal castoffs and family during the last 19 months.

A Guide to Trump's Favorite Dictators

If anyone was left in the world wondering if Trump was Putin's puppet, the answer became clear after the Surrender Summit in Helsinki this year.Putin and Trump's bromance is the worst kept secret in the world.

How about that earth-shattering Summit in Singapore where Trump got worked over like a bitch by North Korea's dictator Kim? For a moment there, Trump's cult-followers were chanting about a Nobel Peace Prize because the world was now safe from any nuke threats from Rocket Man.

If you've been following that charade you know the US is back to square one with North Korea. Donny's take on the breakup is he still insists their warm friends.

A Guide To Trump Associates and Friends

Michael Cohen: Trump's one-time "Fixer" lawyer and buddy, pleaded guilty to campaign violations under Trump's direction in 2016. Has a treasure trove of Trump trash.

Allen Weisselberg: CFO of Trump Organization granted immunity for cooperating with NY authorities in investigation of Trump's campaign violations.

David Pecker: Trump cohort for over 20 years, and kingpin behind the National Enquirer and AMI, has been granted immunity in same felony case as Weisselberg, and turned over a vault of incriminating shit about Trump's past.

Michael Flynn: Trump's former National Security Adviser who pled guilty to lying to the FBI.

Paul Manafort: Former Trump Campaign manager, sentenced to eight felony counts (tax evasion, bank fraud), with another trial coming up in September.

George Papadopoulos: a one-time foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign has admitted to lying to the FBI and is awaiting his sentencing. One more thing, he just happens to be the real reason why the Trump/Russia investigation was launched.

Rick Gates: Trump associate and Manafort's business partner was charged with criminal conspiracy against the United States.

For the sake of space, I'll just list a portion of names from here on out...Pat Hannity, Paul Nunes, Kelly Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Lindsey Graham, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, David Duke, Rudy Giuliani, Richard Spencer, Steve Bannon, and a host of conspiracy groups (see Q Anon).

A Guide To Family

Ivanka Trump: the daughter Trump would have liked to date if she wasn't his daughter. Recently closed her businesses down because of continued investigations into forced labor products she was selling. 

Don Trump Jr.: a loudmouth just like his dad, he may find his cocky ass in jail alongside the old man. Think Trump Tower meeting and Bob Mueller.

Jared Kushner: Trump's craven son-in-law with connections to Israel's corrupt leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi princes. Currently being investigated for tenant abuses at his Westminster Apartments.

Melania and Baron Trump: Helpless bystanders to Donny's depredations against humanity.

Time for me to walk on down the road...