Employment Opportunity

Posted by Akhilleus

JOB LISTING: Federal Government Posting: Attorney General of the United States. Apply White House.

REQUIREMENTS: Do what you're told. Step on minorities. Degrade women. Excoriate LGBTQ community. Find legal (or not) ways to screw people who won't vote for Republicans. Attack voting rights. Prosecute leakers. Vilify the media. Do what you're told. Cover president's ass at all times. Forget recusals, no matter what. Never investigate president. Ever. Take any and all legal bullets meant for White House. Never utter the word "Russian" except when ordering a drink. Never admit anything to Democrats in congress. Do what you're told.

EXPERIENCE: None required (see Secretary of Energy, State, Education, Housing and Urban Development, EPA, Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, etc.)

QUALIFICATIONS: Knowledge of law or the Constitution not needed. Primary qualification is unquestioning obedience and mindless loyalty to the Leader. He will provide any and all legal justifications needed to fulfill job requirements. Trust him. He knows all the best laws.

Additional: Pay no attention to the way the current AG is being treated. It's all fake news. If you qualify, you won't have to worry about being publicly humiliated, thrown under multiple buses, called names, lied about, or have your judgement and mental capacity challenged. That's a promise.

Salary: TBD--based on loyalty (with "small" kickback to president for re-election campaign fund and assorted "philanthropic" organizations, Donald J. Trump Foundation, eg.)

Perks: Dwell in the presence of greatness. Inside tips on hair coloring and the best self-tanning products.

In Jared's Defense

Yesterday we learned this:

Carly Sitrin of Vox: "Jared Kushner's lawyers say there's an innocent explanation for why his first security clearance application omitted his meetings with several Russians, including Sergey Kislyak and Natalia Veselnitskaya: A member of Kushner’s staff hit send on his form too early. But the thing is, there isn’t one 'send button' for this kind of security clearance form. There are 28.... Kushner filed his first SF-86 (a government document to amend his security clearance) in January and omitted any meetings with foreign government officials. In May, he submitted a revised security clearance form with more than 100 foreign names, including a meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but still did not include the meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya revealed in Donald Trump Jr.’s emails.... CBS News reported Friday that the Veselnitskaya meeting was later conveyed to the FBI and included in a third version of the form before July."

** UPDATE: . So here's another ridiculous excuse that Kushner's team of lawyers has actually proffered. Asawin Suebsaeng & Lachlan Markay of the Daily Beast: "According to a source familiar with the situation, speaking to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter, Kushner claims that he did not scan to the bottom of the email thread forwarded by his brother-in-law, therefore completely missing the part about 'Russia and its government.'... Kushner’s claim that he didn’t know precisely what was in the 'confidential' 'Russia' and 'Clinton' email sent to him sounds familiar, only because it’s the same explanation, or excuse, that Manafort has been shopping.”

Kushner has at least a couple of Washington's most able lawyers working for him. Yet the best these geniuses could come up with was, "My secretary accidentally hit 'send' 28 times." AND NOW, "I got the emails, but I didn't read them." OR "What Paul said."

So I thought I'd help them out with some less risible excuses for failing to name some of the 100+ foreign nationals with whom he met. Please add your own.

Geographical Confusion:

I didn't know he was a foreign national. I thought Canada was a state, right between Montana & Alaska.

Argentina is in South America, for Pete's sake. That's America was a capital "A." That's not foreign.

My mother-in-law is from the Czech Republic. I don't think of her as foreign. Why would I think of anyone else from around there as foreign?

My other mother-in-law is from Slovenia. I don't think of her as foreign. Why would I think of anyone else from around there as foreign?

We were in Scotland. When you're in Scotland, the Scottish people aren't foreign nationals. You are. Did you expect me to write down my own name?

Language Barrier:

His English was so good, I thought he was an American.

She didn't speak a word of English. I had no idea where she was from. I figured maybe Brighton Beach.

The Lousy Help:

My secretary couldn't spell his name. It seemed like a waste of time to include him on the form.

My secretary forgot to write it on my calendar.

Technical Difficulties:

Something went wrong with my phone while it was charging, & it deleted the meeting.

My pen ran out of ink.

I gave my notepad to a Breitbart reporter.

Auditory Problems:

They met me backstage at the convention. It was so noisy, I had no idea who they were.

I have an untreatable earwax problem. Also why I never served in the military.

Otherwise Occupied:

I was programming a new app for my iPhone.

I was texting my children. I'm a family-values guy.

I was texting my wife. She was having trouble with the girls at the factory in Bangladesh.

I was whispering in Donald's ear so he'd feel better & I missed what-all was going on.

The campaign was so hectic, I felt like I was in two places at one time. I wrote down the other place.

It Depends on What the Meaning of the Word "Meeting" Is:

It wasn't really a meeting. I sat there for only about 10 minutes. It was more a coffee break. Definitely not a meeting.

It wasn't my meeting. I popped my head in to somebody else's meeting, but I didn't know what was going on. (See also earwax.)

Miscellaneous:

She said she was a naturalized citizen. I believed her.

Eric told me she was a naturalized citizen. I believed him.

I forgot.

P.S. monoloco's contribution to yesterday's thread is hilarious.

The Machinations of the "War Room" Disinformation Campaign

This video with Joy Reid is a perfect example of Bannon's Putinesque disinformation campaign that was so hyped upon Trump's return from dancing with autocrats and sowing distrust with our allies. Trump's "War Room" to push back against the Russian probe was widely reported four days ago. Since then, we're seeing signs of its awakening. It offers a perfect, real-time study in the Art of Deception by some of the slyest artisans in the business.

The disinformation pipeline is clear: Dig up dirt in the corners of the internet, spread the filth among the bottom feeders, then use its rising "popularity" as proof it deserves attention by the MSM. Here, it's the Wall Street Journal's columnist and Trump propagandist Kimberely Strassel who tries to smokebomb viewers' thoughts re: Kushner by hyping an obscure Breitbart (Bannon) article claiming alleged false equivalencies from the Obama administration (thanks, Obama!).

Here, Joy Reid and the other guests push back on the disinformation and try to set the conversation back on track. But the Trumpers and GOP loyalists settling in to Fox & Friends are getting 5 Kimberely Strassels all chumming the waters with actual fake news. Since the administration can't be honest and claim the damaging stories are factually false, their master strategy is blatantly lie, obfuscate, and cry "Fake News" until the news cycle (hopefully) moves on....

...Trumpist Twitter Bots Awaken. Travis Gettys of RawStory: "A two-year-old report on 'Obama's secret outreach to Russia' hit the top spot on the conservative Drudge Report after hundreds of bot accounts flooded Twitter with links to the article.... The original Bloomberg report largely disappeared from Twitter after interest died down a few weeks after its publication, but it began recirculating over the weekend. Two posts appeared to have been shared directly from the Bloomberg site early Saturday morning and Sunday evening, but then a deluge of posts using the same phrasing and tags burst forth starting at 12:48 a.m. and continuing every two or three minutes for the next 11 hours. Many of those accounts, at least in the early hours of the social media push, display the distinctive traits of bots -- with highly unbalanced posting-to-followers ratios, inscrutable account names, few public interactions and almost no original content phrasing." --safari (Also linked yesterday)...

...The initial revealings of the War Room's "Alternative Facts" campaign bring to mind the Steve. M. post linked earlier by Marie about Steve Bannon's supposed "messaging savviness": "Bannon might not actually change what most Americans are talking about. What he's skilled at doing is changing what right-wingers are talking about. And maybe that's worth it to Trump, because he seems to believe he can save his presidency as long as 80+ percent of Republicans still support him without question."...

...Trump's administration and the GOP in general have moved so far right (just look at all the legislation they're proposing) that they seem incapable of messaging to the center or 'independents', let alone the scary lefty communists. Democrats don't even merit conversation (again, look at Congress). So the question remains: Can this obfuscation campaign endure for years on end, only messaging to the Loyalists who hold the keys to their reelection? Bannon, et al. are one trick ponies. Seems like we're going to find out. --safari