I do not know about your neck of the woods, but we’re in for a dreary weekend in mine.  I can handle cold.  I can handle wet. But if you put them both together, I stay in my housecoat and fuzzy slippers all day drinking hot tea with whiskey in it.

So grab a blanket and read through the dreary.  Here’s Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson’s testimony to the House Committee.  Skip over the parts at the beginning where lawyers are rattling papers at each other.  Lawyers throw paper at each other much the same way that cavemen threw rocks at each other.

As Rachel Maddow said last night, “It reads like a spy novel.”

Thanks to Scott for the reminder!

Okay, here’s how you know that the Republican congressional candidate in Pennsylvania is gonna lose to the Democrat.

“The White House says that, despite the president’s tweet, he is not going to Pennsylvania Thursday to campaign for a congressional candidate there,” the AP reports.

“Now press secretary Sarah Sanders says the purpose of the visit is actually to promote Trump’s agenda, especially the Republican tax overhaul.”

This is also how you know that somebody leaked Trump the answers to the cognitive test at his physical.

This is the seat where pro-life congressman Tim Murphy urged his mistress to have an abortion.  He stepped down and now there’s a special election.  The Republicans are going all-out to win the seat and the Democrat in the race is only getting marginal support from outside groups like Daily Kos and End Citizens United.

I wonder when Trump is going to get tired of being corrected.

Outside doctors have reviewed Trump’s test results from his physical last week, and some have concluded that he has heart disease and is at risk for heart attack or stroke.  From the horse’s mouth, Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Research Institute on Trumps LDL cholesterol of 143:

“That’s a really high LDL,” Dr. Topol said. “We’re talking about a 70-plus-year-old man who is obese and doesn’t exercise. Just looking at the lab value, you would raise a big red flag. I would never use the words ‘excellent health.’ How you could take these indices and say excellent health? That is completely contraindicated.”

Dr. David Maron, the director of preventive cardiology at Stanford University’s medical school, was asked if Trump was indeed in “excellent  health”.  His answer?  “God, no.”

Trump is well known for eating like a 14 year old and drinking a dozen Diet Cokes a day.  He boasts about not drinking alcohol, but that hasn’t lowered his risk for heart attack in the slightest; in fact, he’s grossly overweight eating crap on a daily basis.  Talking about his obesity, Topol said,

“Here the issue is, does he have abdominal obesity? I don’t care what his height is. All you have to do is look at his abdomen. Abdominal obesity, that’s the machinery for inflammation for the heart.”

Sanja Gupta of CNN went further saying that the calcium in his blood indicates heart disease.  The Twittersphere erupted on that news.  Other doctors, though, dismiss Gupta’s claim as being overstated.  Apparently the cholesterol level is more indicative of the potential heart problem.

The scary part of this whole thing?  No, not his health; we all know he’s a heart attack looking for a place to happen.  It’s that a Navy doctor practicing at Walter Reed Medical Center and the White House physician has misrepresented the health report of the President of the United States, then gone on national television and talked about his “excellent health”, which anyone with functioning eyes in their head knows is false.  He ought to lose his medical license and be drummed out of the Navy.

Okay, word has leaked, oozed, or crawled out that the FBI is now investigating whether Russia funneled cash money to the NRA to help Trump.

It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

That’s almost too good to be true, y’all.  The NRA palling around with commies, and breaking the law.

… the NRA reported spending a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, including $30 million to support Trump – triple what the group devoted to backing Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. Most of that was money was spent by an arm of the NRA that is not required to disclose its donors.

And some folks say it’s actually closer to $70 million.

Personally, I think by the time this is over, we’re gonna have to build a new jail for all these guys.  Hell, I’ll do a fundraiser for it!

In what seems like a daily occurrence, there is a new Super PAC in Texas.

This one is called Our Conservative Texas Future.  It’s treasurer is guy named Cabell Hobbs, who lists an Austin PO Box as his address.  But, Cabell doesn’t live in Austin.  I’m not sure where he does live but it ain’t Austin.

Here’s the fun part.  This ain’t Ole Cabell’s first rodeo.

He’s tight with Ted Cruz.

“Effective, May 4, 2016, Senator Ted Cruz is no longer a candidate for President of the United States,” Cabell Hobbs, assistant treasurer of Cruz’s Senate campaign, wrote. “As of that date, his 2018 campaign for the United States Senate and his campaign committee Ted Cruz for Senate have been reactivated.”

He was involved with some sketchy political tactics in Alaska but claimed ignorance.

The group’s treasurer, Cabell Hobbs, declined to discuss the organization. “I just do the accounting and the FEC (Federal Election Commission) reports,” he told USA TODAY. “It’s just a policy of mine that I don’t speak to the press.”

He’s an officer of two corporations in Louisiana – “Fight for Louisiana” and “Clean Government for Louisiana.”

I quit looking after I found these but I’m pretty sure there’s more.  It sounds to me like if you have some money, Ole Cabell will take the bad press and the fall for you, and he doesn’t talk to newspapers, so you’re home free to wreck democracy any damn way you see fit.

These guys give me the creeps.

Thanks to Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen for the heads up.

Think of it as the Super Bowl of Insane Foreign Policy.

John Kelly told reporters that Trump’s statements on the wall during the campaign were “uninformed.”

Trump replied with “Who you callin’ uninformed, Dopey?”

I dunno.  If a wall has gaping holes in it, it isn’t exactly a wall – it’s more like … I dunno, playground equipment.

I’m not jumping on the He’s Uninformed bandwagon, but doesn’t Trump know there is “water” along the entire Texas, Mexico border.  The border is a river.

So anyway, these two guys are spatting over who gets to pretend to be president and that doesn’t do much for my confidence in anything going right for the next three years.

By the way, Trump says that Mexico will pay for the wall.  He tweets —

The Wall will be paid for, directly or indirectly, or through longer term reimbursement, by Mexico, which has a ridiculous $71 billion dollar trade surplus with the U.S.

Okay, so here’s the deal:  since Trump plowed under Michelle Obama’s White House garden …

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Mexico is the biggest exporter of fresh produce to the U.S. by far, responsible for nearly 70 percent of our vegetable imports and almost 40 percent of fruit imports.

And, to be honest, the rest of our fruit and vegetables grown here are being picked by undocumented workers.

So America just might as well hire Trump’s doctor, the guy who will keep you fit and trim on a fast food diet, because you ain’t getting no damn fruits and vegetables.  We have to buy a wall with gaping holes in it instead.