Drizzling rainy and feeling gloomy this Wednesday afternoon on California’s north coast, a sad reminder of a winter season that just won’t go away.
Really does feel like it’s been raining years, maybe decades.
Sunshine yesterday and Monday now a seemingly-long-ago most-pleasant memory…

Supposedly, too, the same-exact sense of the T-Rump — a sadness that also won’t go away. And even worse, and even more depressing, no matter what the asshole-prick says/does, there’s no nothing. No hearty outcry, no ball-busting investigations — nothing.

Rule by ‘air quotes‘…

(Illustration: Donald Trump, ‘Basic Shapes,‘ by caricaturist/illustrator Chong Jit Leong, found here).

Relating to that exact-same idiot episode, earlier this afternoon, big T-Rump-toady, Devin Nunes, chairman of the House intelligence committee, was finally forced to bark: ‘“We don’t have any evidence that that took place…I don’t believe, just in the last week of time, the people we’ve talked to, I don’t believe there was an actual tap of Trump Tower.”‘
Yet more to the pie — also this afternoon, an ominous-cryptic note from Dianne Feinstein after meeting with FBI Director James Comey on the T-Rump shit, Russian connections with T-Rump and the campaign, and the lunacy wire tap: ‘“This briefing was all on sensitive matters and highly classified…It’s really not anything we can answer any questions about.”‘

Just distracting from the governance…

And in that near-shameful ‘tax returns’ fiasco by Rachel Maddow last night — a calculated fuck-up.
Best synopsis via vacuumslayer at Lawyers,Guns&Money this afternoon:

As soon as Rachel Maddow announced she had “Trump taxes” last night, I knew there would be a caveat.
“Trump” taxes didn’t mean Donald’s taxes, necessarily.
And it also didn’t mean recent tax papers.
Or a lot of tax papers.
So I braced myself for disappointment when she–after a 20 minute build up–revealed that she had two pages from a 2005 return.
But I obviously didn’t brace myself enough because it’s hard to put into words how angry I felt after the nothingburger reveal.
Because honestly it simply wasn’t news.
It would have been one thing if she had obtained enough records to paint a complete picture of Trump’s financial dealings; she didn’t.
She had two stinking pages from one stinking year.
A mountain of exonerating proof would have been news.
A mountain of incriminating proof would have been news.
This wasn’t.
This was the Capone’s Vault of taxes and honestly I’m kind of embarrassed for everyone even peripherally involved in the segment or anyone who actually got excited about it.
The worst part is that the “leak” so obviously came from a Trump surrogate or Trump himself.
It’s the perfect little nugget of good news for him — “See, he’s RICH! See, he pays taxes–A LOT OF THEM!”
And the precious admonition that they were illegally obtained and the sniffing about the low rate he payed was–honestly–a pretty good touch!
And, no, it doesn’t portend more “leaks.”
So put that out of your head now.
How will this play in Peoria? It will play like this: He’s a super-rich guy who payed a shitload of money in taxes.
Fantastic.

Only sarcasm keeps the mind from imploding…

The real horror is those T-Rump assholes most-likely played Maddow and company like chumps — due to Maddow plugging the show Tuesday afternoon, the White House released info before air time, undercutting whatever was there.
One must remember these are assholes who are up to their eyeballs in guile — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, who appeared on Maddow with the tax returns, and has covered the T-Rump for years, suggested: ‘“…Let me point out, it’s entirely possible that Donald sent this to me. Donald Trump has, over the years, leaked all sorts of things.”‘

An example from the T-Rump’s ‘most-glorious’ speech to Congress — CNN’s Sara Murray reported at the time: ‘‘“Basically they fed [them] things that they thought these anchors would like, that they thought would give them positive press coverage for the next few hours. A senior administration official admitted that it was a misdirection play.”‘

Maybe the rain has stopped for awhile, yet…