Whistleblowing past the graveyard

From CBS News:

Washington — President Trump moved on Wednesday to stave off the most serious threat to his presidency yet, releasing a summary of a conversation with the president of Ukraine that’s at the center of an impeachment inquiry by House Democrats. In a series of public appearances, Mr. Trump argued the summary cleared him of wrongdoing, despite it showing he repeatedly urged the Ukrainian president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, his potential Democratic rival.

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Biden Their Time

From Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post:

It’s long past time that media outlets stop hyping the story line that former vice president Joe Biden did something untoward regarding Ukraine. Last week New York Times reporter Ken Vogel called Ukraine a “significant liability” for Biden and teased that “there is a story here.” Vogel added: “We’ve told some of it. There is more to be told. We are going to continue to sort of pull that back.”

In fact, there never was any “liability” whatsoever and the “more to be told” has turned out to be “nothing to be told.” When it came time to put the facts in print, Vogel reported: “As The New York Times reported this spring, no evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor’s dismissal. In fact, some of the vice president’s former associates said he never did anything to deter other efforts to go after the oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky.” Vogel omits mention that the spring report came under a misleading headline and that the admission there was no “there there” only came after paragraph upon paragraph suggesting Biden had some kind of problem.

At any rate, the jig is up, and it’s time for reporters without any proof to cease attempting to convert this into a Biden scandal.

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Oh say, did you see the BS from VP?

From DIETER KURTENBACH at The Mercury News:

INDIANAPOLIS — I wish I could have left too.

Reporters and columnists should be allowed to be sanctimonious about having to watch two bad NFL teams fail to execute for four quarters and an overtime.

…snip…

But Vice President Mike Pence has no problem with sanctimony. And it seems like his boss loved him leaving Sunday’s game early, too.

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Pact-Man

From New York Magazine:

Morongate (or, if you prefer, the Moron-Contra scandal) has left President Trump’s relationship with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson understandably tense. Axios reports that not only is Trump’s confidence in Tillerson “broken beyond repair,” the president is floating a succession plan to move CIA director Mike Pompeo into Tillerson’s job. There is, however, one catch.

Earlier this week, John Hudson reported that the firing of Tillerson would trigger the exodus of two other Trump cabinet officials. Hudson’s source, he wrote, “expressed confidence in Tillerson’s status due to a so-called ‘suicide pact’ forged between Defense Secretary James Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Tillerson, whereby all three cabinet secretaries vow to leave in the event that the president makes moves against one of them.”

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When Pigs Fly

From HIVE at Vanity Fair:

Way back in 2009, when fiscal austerity was still in vogue, Congressman Tom Price was among the most hawkish lawmakers on the issue of government spending. “This is just another example of fiscal irresponsibility run amok,” he cried on CNBC, denouncing the use of private jets by Congress. But at some point, the former orthopedist lost his way. Earlier this year, after he was nominated by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, reports emerged that Price had “traded more than $300,000 in shares of health-related companies over the past four years while sponsoring and advocating legislation that potentially could affect those companies’ stocks.”

…snip…

Yes, the good life seemed to go to Price’s head, and the gravy train hasn’t stopped since he joined the Trump administration. Earlier this week, we learned that Price had taken a page from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s playbook and decided to spend thousands of dollars in taxpayer money on private jets when commercial flights (or Amtrak, or a car) would have sufficed.

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Only Label They Need: Gonifs

From Money:

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had requested the use of a government jet for his European honeymoon with his wife Louise Linton earlier this year — a mode of travel that would have incurred $25,000 per hour of flight, according to estimates provided by the U.S. Air Force.

Mnuchin’s request, confirmed by the Treasury Department and first reported by ABC News on Wednesday , was later withdrawn but sparked an inquiry from the Department’s Inspector General.

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Stand by your man

So, I am sure that all you kids saw the abomination of a press conference today at Twitler Tower. There is plenty of consternation across the board for the asshole-in-chief, but I have noticed that there is a severe lack of condemnation for those who support him and those who were literally standing by him.

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The Art of the Grift

From the DAILY BEAST:

NEW YORK – Anthony Scaramucci, the newly appointed White House Communications Director, has the hair and wardrobe of a stock-photo businessman, a nickname too absurd to stick with anyone else (“the Mooch”), and a fortune made from hawking high-cost, low-performance investments to ordinary people who don’t need them.

His appointment Friday may have been a surprise to White House staff. But Scaramucci landing a high-profile Trump administration job is what what a sociologist might call “overdetermined.”

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