Oh y’all, this is *almost* sad.

No details yet on what he did but I’m sure it involved deal-making of some sort.  Hey, it’s out.  Mari catches it in the comment section.

Also back into custody, Lindsey Graham.

President Donald Trump took a swing at Sen. Lindsey Graham on Thursday in the aftermath of two Supreme Court decisions involving his closely held financial records, lamenting that the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman and close Trump ally was not doing enough to target the president’s political foes.

Graham better start indicting Obama or Trump’s gonna tell Lindsey’s secret.  I’ve got a strange feeling that Lindsey’s not coming back next year, and not by choice.

Well, Trump is still strongly considering pardoning Roger Stone before he has to report to jail on the 14th – that’s next Tuesday.  Rumor has it that he’ll wait until Sunday night to do it and hope nobody notices.

Apparently his friends, yes, both of them, are advising him not to do it.

“Barr has told Trump not to do it, and if he does there will be a mutiny at DOJ,” said a source briefed on the internal debates. People close to Trump fear he won’t listen. “You can’t underestimate how hard it is to get information through to him,” a Republican close to the White House said. “When you talk to him, he just talks at you. He doesn’t like to read memos, so there’s not really a way to get through to him. Everyone agrees.”

So here we have a president who is totally disassociated from the world and makes decisions based on the voices in his head. Or the silence. You never know about these things.

My bet is that he’s going to do it and claim that Stone is a victim.  Stone will then begin yapping and make things even worse than they are now.

Hey, there’s one other tidbit in this article that amused me.  People are wondering if Jared is going to leave his White House Post (he’s the Undersecretary of Accomplishing Diddle Squat) and lead the campaign.

“If I go to the campaign, Trump might not let me back into the White House,” Kushner told people, according to a person briefed on the conversation. “As of now, he intends to remain in his current role,” an administration official said.

Remember when I said Trump has two friends?  Make that one, and if Stone goes to prison, zero.

Get a load of this foot stomping …

And this was all in eight minutes.  Honey, I couldn’t take dictation that fast, much less type it.

Has anybody told him yet that the two white guys he put on the court voted against him?

But I have to agree with him that he’s done more in 3 1/2 years than any president in history – separated children from parents and locked them in cages, wasted a boatload of money on a wall he couldn’t finish, put two incompetents on the Supreme court, gave lifetime judicial appointments to young racists and libertarians, killed tens of thousands of people in a botched pandemic, appointed fools to his cabinet, used taxpayer dollars to enrich his friends, committed treason by ignoring bounties on the heads of United States soldiers, … lemme catch my breath here … created his own personal army of Bible thumping hillbillies with automatic weapons, … your turn.

And here’s how you know that:

Bless his heart, the Supremes ruled that he doesn’t get immunity from subpoenas from the New York prosecutor’s office.

We are still waiting to see if congress gets to see his tax returns.

Okey Dokey …

The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered split opinions in two cases over whether President Donald Trump can shield his tax records from investigators, handing a win to the Manhattan district attorney but rejecting parallel efforts by Democrats in the House of Representatives.

It just now occurred to me that the decision was 7 – 2 against Trump and the two judges he appointed voted against him.  I did a little dance when I figured that one out.

Lt. Col Alexander Vindman retired today after 21 years of exemplary military service.

His attorney says Vindman has endured a “campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation” spearheaded by Trump following his testimony in the impeachment probe last year.

It was about his promotion to Colonel.

Vindman was told that that there have been discussions within the Department of Defense about sending his name forward on a “list of one” or holding his name back until after the election to avoid impacting the promotions of other service members, the source said.

He testified that he believed he wouldn’t (edited to correct) be retaliated against for his testimony.  He was wrong. Even his twin brother was retaliated against.

Remember when that used to be wrong?

Okay, this may turn out to be my favorite story all year.

Remember when Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick said it would be some kind of damn honor for old people to up and die of the virus if it meant saving the economy?  And remember how Dan and Gov Greg Abbott decided to reopen Texas and now we’re the nation’s hot spot and all our ICUs are full so if you’re in a car wreck, take an aspirin and call the doctor in the morning.  Remember that?

And remember how Dan and Greg are saying we should open the schools for little children next month because, well damn, they don’t take up much space in the ICUs.  You could pack two or three of them in one room.

And remember how you didn’t hear a peep from them about the Texas Republican Party holding an in-person meeting in Houston next week because they didn’t want to piss off their base?

Well, sit back and grin, my friend.

The Republican Party of Texas is moving forward with its controversial in-person convention during the coronavirus pandemic — but elected officials including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will be giving their scheduled speeches virtually.

“All the elected officials are switching from a live, in-person speech to videos,” Kyle Whatley, the party’s executive director, said during a town hall livestreamed Tuesday night.

As our friend Anna the Geek told me at 11:00 last night when this news broke, “I keep thinking of the line ‘Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make’ from Shrek.”

So, the Republican Party of Texas came up with some story that is taller than it is wide about how Dan and Greg are doing as a sacrifice to help the convention go faster and get party business done. They said this will help to “get everybody in and out of there as safely as possible.”  They decided absolutely not to come up with a story about how this would help that.

Congratulating themselves on weaseling out of this death watch.

Thanks to Anna the Geek for being the first to let me know!

UPDATE:

Whole New UPDATE:

The Texas Republican Party on Tuesday rejected Mayor Sylvester Turner’s formal request to call off its in-person convention, putting the GOP on track to hold Houston’s largest indoor event since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

James Dickey, chairman of the Texas GOP, in a statement said the party has been “proactive in implementing safety measures” and had “extensive conversations” with Houston First, the public nonprofit that serves as the city’s convention arm and operates the George R. Brown Convention Center. The convention is set to take place there from July 16 to 18.

“With these precautions currently in place, the Republican Party of Texas intends to proceed with an in-person convention next week in Houston,” Dickey said.

The ball is in your court, Mr. Mayor.

And it’s settled.

And they can’t whine because not even their elected officials were willing to attend. Well, they can whine and most assuredly will whine. The best response is to call them losers.