Archive for April 30, 2019

Rod In The Headlights

The mask has been removed from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and as it turns out, it doesn’t seem that he’s not all that committed to rule of law as his title may imply. Many details have come to light about how Rosenstein had to walk a political tightrope to mollify our petulant, man child CEO/Dictator, Donald Trump. And he even became angry at the press for treating Trump unfairly. Oh, boo-hoo! You’re supposed to uphold the law and instead you let Trump piss all over the constitution. As one ex-DOJ critic summarized, Rosenstein was weak. “He shouldn’t be talking to the president about an investigation into the president under any circumstances and he shouldn’t be giving him assurances about how that investigation will end and he especially shouldn’t be doing it at a time when he’s begging and pleading for his own job… The way to understand Rod is he’s weak, and he’s always been weak. He was weak at the beginning of this investigation when he signed off on the Comey firing and gave the president the excuse, despite––we now know, having read the Mueller report––that he knew why the president was firing Comey, that it was over the Russia investigation.”

We here at the Bucket noticed Mr. Rosenstein’s stone face demeanor at Bill Barr’s pre-Mueller report release con job party where the Republican obfuscator attempted Jedi mind-tricks on the American people. And we wondered to ourselves, is that Rod Rosenstein or a deer in the headlights? Many people have speculated about the thoughts running through his head as Barr misled the public. We think he was saying, “Oh oh…now everyone knows that I’m just a pro-Trump stooge.” We’re looking forward to your retirement, Mr. Rosenstein! We have no doubt you’ll get a comfy position at Fox News, a.k.a. the Republican Propaganda Network.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein bears a striking resemblance to a deer in the headlights especially during Bill Barr's deceptive press conference before the release of the Mueller report where he seems to be thinking "Oh oh...now everyone knows that I'm just a pro-Trump stooge."
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein bears a striking resemblance to a deer in the headlights especially during Bill Barr’s deceptive press conference before the release of the Mueller report where he seems to be thinking, “Oh oh…now everyone knows that I’m just a pro-Trump stooge.”

Handy Dandy Redaction Guide

The redacted version of the Mueller report has been released and boy is it a doozy. While Attorney General and Republican obfuscator Bill Barr has erroneously touted that the report ‘clears’ American CEO/Dictator Donald Trump of collusion and obstruction, just reading the unredacted portions paints a decisively different picture of what happened. And if the redacted report paints a damning picture of Trump can you imagine what the complete report says?

According to this article at Vox, 7.25% of the report has been redacted. After downloading and scanning through the report, we’ve come up with a handy dandy redaction guide to try and translate what the most common redaction phrase ‘Harm to Ongoing Matter'(HOM) means to the average American. The acronym appears repeatedly throughout the document, especially in Volume I dealing with the Russian conspiracy to sway the 2016 election toward Donald Trump and from what we can gather it translates to ‘Donald Trump is guilty as hell.” Why else was his initial reaction to the appointment of the special consul, “This is the end of my presidency. I’m f*cked.” Would an innocent man say that?

In Volume II of the report, Robert Mueller cited ten cases where obstruction of justice could be applied to Trump. Why did he not just come out and say he obstructed justice? According to the Department of Justice, you can’t indict a sitting president. So basically, Mueller set up the pins on a narrow lane and gave the Democrats a bowling ball the size of a beach ball so they could mow down our corrupt, megalomaniac leader. But, in true Democratic fashion, Democrat leaders are already talking about not pursuing impeachment and concentrating on the 2020 election. You know the Republicans wouldn’t hesitate to impeach if the situation was reversed. They did so with Bill Clinton twenty years ago on much lesser charges.

So lets briefly review the low-lights of the Republican party in the last 50 years: Nixon knows about the Watergate break-ins and attempts to cover them up, Gerald Ford pardons him; the Reagan administration sold arms for hostages in the Iran-Contra affair, G.H.W. Bush and Bill Barr issue pardons for those involved; Dubya and Dick Cheney knowingly deceive America about false WMDs in Iraq prompting an invasion which cost millions of lives, trillions of dollars and destabilizes the whole region and Democrats do nothing. Donald Trump obstructs justice and continuously pisses on the rule of law and Democrats are seriously considering doing nothing…again. In short: Republicans repeatedly screw the country and repeatedly get away with it. Is it any wonder this country is so botched up and people have no faith in our democratic institutions any more.

Hopefully the Democrats will grow a spine, put justice first and impeach this lying, manipulative, con artist before he does further damage to the White House, the rule of law and the prestige of the United States. But then again, the Democrats have an uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

According to the handy dandy guide for reading the redactions of the Mueller report, the phrase 'Harm to Ongoing Matter' translates to 'Proof that Donald Trump is Guilty as Hell'.
According to the handy dandy guide for reading the redactions of the Mueller report, the phrase ‘Harm to Ongoing Matter’ translates to ‘Proof that Donald Trump is Guilty as Hell’.

Faux News Hypocrisy

The heavily redacted Mueller report is coming out today, so we’ll have more on that in future posts. But we saw this YouTube clip and we couldn’t believe how it hit things right on the head. We’ve always known that Fox News was just a propaganda outlet for the right wing, conservative christian Republicans. It was blatantly obvious during the Bush years and now with Trump in office they’re not even trying to hide it, although they do throw some flak out there, i.e. Shepard Smith, to show that they can be critical of Republicans. But when push comes to shove, they will always support the conservative Republican agenda and their nauseating sycophancy to the Trump presidency is proof.

We don’t usually post YouTube videos but this one is so damning of the right wing hypocrisy of the so called ‘journalists’ employed there that we feel we must link to it. For eight years, the personnel at Fox News, just like their right wing cohorts in Congress, vilified Barack Obama and treated him and his family like dirt every chance they got – and it’s all on display in this video. For example, the whiners complain that Obama golfed too much, but Trump is on track to golf on the taxpayer’s dime much more that Obama. And neither is close to Woodrow Wilson. Not only that, Trump supposedly cheats like hell. Anyway, watch the clip and try not to punch out your monitor.

Trump’s Troll

Wow! Attorney General Bill “Low” Barr is turning out to be quite a Republican troll isn’t he. This past week America’s CEO/Dictator’s personally picked obfuscator and Republican cover-up artist testified before Congress that the full Mueller report will be released within a week but with redactions. This flies in the face of public opinion since a full seventy-five percent of Americans want the full Mueller report released without redactions. And just for giggles, Low Barr alleged during the 2016 elections that the Trump campaign was spied on by federal officials in the Obama administration despite providing no evidence whatsoever.

So what can we conclude from his testimony? That America’s Attorney General is quite a trolling con artist and not as just and proper as his supporters claim he is. The Mueller report lasted 2 years and cost the taxpayers almost 5 million dollars. So you no what? Americans have a right to see every bit of that report. We paid for it, we get to see every sentence, every word and every period…NO REDACTIONS!!!

We here at the Bucket also noticed that the corpulent Attorney General bears a striking resemblance to portly, cartoon troublemaker Peter Griffin from the animated sitcom Family Guy. But don’t worry folks: Bill Barr is only trolling America for fun and profit – heh-heh-heh-heh.

Attorney General, Trump obfuscator and corpulent Republican troll, Bill Barr, bears a striking resemblance to portly, cartoon numbskull Peter Griffin from Family Guy and has even developed his own Griffin-esque catchphrase: “Heh-heh-heh-heh - I'm trolling America for fun and profit.”
Attorney General, Trump obfuscator and corpulent Republican troll, Bill Barr, bears a striking resemblance to portly, cartoon numbskull Peter Griffin from Family Guy and has even developed his own Griffin-esque catchphrase: “Heh-heh-heh-heh – I’m trolling America for fun and profit.”

Don Quixote Trump

America’s CEO/Dictator Donald Trump and the Republicans have had an absolute conniption fit recently over the Green New Deal and it’s main proponent, freshman congressperson from New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). Last week Don Quixote Trump attacked windmills because…you know…noise from the evil windmills causes cancer and kills birds and stuff. He even did some windmill impersonations at one of his authoritarian ‘Nuremberg’ rallies last week. But let’s face it folks; the only birdies Trump cares about are the ones he’d wish he could get on the golf course because according to sources, he cheats a lot.

So why are the Republicans throwing hissy fits and temper tantrums over AOC and her bold environmental plan? Because the Republicans are lackeys for the fossil fuel industries: coal, oil, gas and mining. These corporations, who don’t give a rat’s patoot about the environment only want to continue their profitable ride on the gravy train. Their industries have been undisputed kings of the world since the late 19th century. They’ve got money and power and they’ll be damned if they’re going to lose their empire to clean renewable energy. That’s why the appointment of former fossil fuel industry lobbyist Andrew Wheeler as head of the EPA has been greeted so favorably by the smokestack and tailpipe suckers; he’s one of them. It’s like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. In short; the chickens(us) are doomed. Hence, all the attacks on AOC and the Green New Deal.

We have no doubt that the kingpins of pollution and environmental destruction will promote Trump as a noble capitalist on a quixotic quest to rid the world of these horrible, energy efficient, evil, killer windmills and their dastardly queen, AOC. It fits right in with the insane, right wing narrative that Trump is somehow making America great again. Perhaps a movie is forthcoming? We present below what that blockbuster may look like.

Don Quixote Trump: The fossil fuel companies send noble capitalist and stable genius Donald Trump on a quest to save their dying, inefficient industries. Trump, together with his EPA stooge Sancho Scienza (played by Andew Wheeler) and God (played by Mike Pence) battle the Evil Windmill Queen (played by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and try to destroy her vast, horrible, energy efficient windmill army. Rated R for Regressive.

Don Quixote Trump: The fossil fuel companies send noble capitalist and stable genius Donald Trump on a quest to save their dying, inefficient industries. Trump, together with his EPA stooge Sancho Scienza (played by Andrew Wheeler) and God (played by Mike Pence) battle the Evil Windmill Queen (played by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and try to destroy her vast, horrible, energy efficient windmill army. Rated R for Regressive.

The Indictment Score: Benghazi 0, Mueller 37

The fallout from the release of the Mueller report (or should we say, Bill Barr’s Cliff’s notes of the Mueller report) continues and more and more questions have arisen. The majority of Americans want the entire report released, not the redacted ‘yada, yada, yada’ version offered by Attorney General and Republican obfuscator Bill Barr. The ‘journalists’ at Fox News, a.k.a. the Republican Propaganda Network, have been screaming their heads off about how other ‘fake news’ media should be apologizing for their treatment of the president. And of course, America’s CEO/Dictator and petulant man child Donald Trump has been his usual obnoxious self, proclaiming that everyone who said that there was collusion, especially the MSM or the ‘enemy of the people’, be fired or worse. Furthermore, the fine, right wing propagandists at Fox are clamoring for retaliatory investigations directed at Trump’s enemies.

As usual, conservative Republicans have a very short memory. Did they forget already about the Benghazi hearings which lasted two years and produced zero indictments; the very definition of a witch hunt. And conservative Republicans never apologized once for their treatment of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama for that matter. Like we said on our previous post, the Mueller investigation was hardly a ‘witch hunt’ as it produced 37 indictments.  Because Barr has been so secretive about the report, of course the public is wondering what it really says, especially when even in Barr’s summary ‘fer idjits’  – “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” – , Trump clearly wasn’t exonerated on the charge of obstruction of justice, which was the most likely offense that would have resulted from the investigation anyway.

So, in a nutshell: Benghazi, 2 years – 0 indictments; Mueller investigation, 2 years – 37 indictments.

Republicans can STFU!!! 

The indictment scoreboard: Benghazi investigation - 0; Mueller 'witch hunt' investigation - 37.

The indictment scoreboard: Benghazi investigation – 0; Mueller ‘witch hunt’ investigation – 37.