Golden Showergate

The news this morning is full of prostitutes, urine and Trump.

The story began making the rounds at Washington dinner parties late last summer: Donald Trump had been caught in a compromising sexual position by Russian intelligence agents during a business trip to Moscow. According to one version, told by a high-ranking Obama administration diplomat, Russian intelligence services, acting on Trump’s well-known obsession with sex, had arranged an evening for him with a bevy of hookers, with hidden cameras and microphones recording all the action. The jaw-dropping detail that topped the story? Trump had somehow engaged in “golden showers,” sex acts involving urine.

Now, the guy getting blackmailed by Russia says it's all a lie. And the country doing the blackmailing says it's all a lie. Of course, the intelligence report says otherwise, but it's become obvious that Donald Trump doesn't use intelligence.

I feel I should point out that there's nothing in the Constitution requiring a compromised president to step down: I mean, a man with principles would, but I think we've established pretty clearly that the GOP didn't elect one of those.

Think about it for a second: if Donald Trump steps down in the face of these golden shower allegations, his brand is dead. He's spent his entire life selling himself. Building up his name as a symbol of wealth and privilege. And if he just admits it's true, he just pisses all that away.

So Trump's going to try and brazen this out, which will just precipitate a constitutional crisis further down the road. Remember that Russia's goal for decades has been to damage the credibility of the United States, in order to increase their own. So now, whatever Russia has will be slowly leaked out, a little bit at a time, by a giggling Vladimir Putin.

What happens now? Well, if the President steps down before taking his oath of office, nothing says that the Vice President-elect gets to take over. By definition, the Vice President was not the person elected President. Ironically, Trump's beauty contest has a clearer plan of succession for a situation like this than the US Constitution.

If the winner, for any reason, cannot fulfill her duties as Miss Universe, the 1st runner-up takes over.

All this time, we thought Trump's weird orange skin was due to cheap bronzer, not to the fact that Russian prostitutes don't hydrate properly.

It's weird that the White House staff now has to study up on removing urine stains. But this whole thing has brought a new light to that infamous solid gold toilet that Trump has.

All this kind of explains that pissy look on Trump's face all the time. Do you think anybody ever be willing to shake Trump's hand from now on? I'm betting that sales of hand sanitizer in DC are going to go through the roof.

So, it's time to start a new birther theory: Donald Trump has always claimed to have been born in Queens. But it looks now like he might have been closer to Flushing.

McRussia

The 31st of January dawned cold but clear in Moscow in 1990. It had been two years since the Communist Party had given their permission to open the first McDonalds in the former Soviet Union. Located in Moscow's Pushkin Square, the largest McDonalds restaurant had 28 cash registers and seating capacity for around 700 people.

That capacity was quickly exceeded, as people stood in line for up to six hours for their first taste of Western fast food. The Moscow restaurant broke a record for first-day sales for any McDonalds in the world - they served 30,000 people that day alone.



They remain popular in Russia almost 25 years later: McDonalds controls 70% of the Russian fast-food market, and the flagship store in Pushkin Square still serves 20,000 people per day. Ironically, it wasn't the American headquarters of the McDonalds Corporation which had pushed the new branch of the franchise. It was the head of McDonalds Canada, George Cohen, who had opened the twelve-year-long negotiations with the Soviet Union.

But within 8 months of the first McDonalds restaurant opening, the Berlin Wall fell. And within two years, the Soviet Union was dissolved.

So the next time someone tries to tell you that Ronald Reagan toppled the USSR, you can tell them that, no, it was Ronald McDonald that killed the bear.

AN INK-THE-AQUARIUM SPECIAL EDITION: WHAT MAKES (O)CT(O)PUS LIVID !!!

(O) (O) MICHAEL JACKSON ON CNN (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) MICHAEL JACKSON ON MSNBC (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) ABC HAS MICHAEL JACKSON (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) CBS HAS MICHAEL JACKSON (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) BOUGHT A NEWSPAPER (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) JACKSON HERE (O) (O) (O) (O) JACKSON THERE (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) MICHAEL JACKSON EVERYWHERE (O) (O) (O) PLEASE! (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) ENOUGH ALREADY! (O) (O) (O) (O) NO MORE MICHAEL JACKSON NEWS !!!

RUSSIA UNSEEN: A PHOTO ESSAY

Photo Essay by Aleksey (Alexander) Petrosian

Here is another side of Russia rarely seen in our media - dingy, grim, and neglected.  It reminds us that Russia is still in many ways a poor nation burdened by its Soviet past and struggling to find a future.   Worth a look.   Click here.

RUSSIAN NEWSPAPER HARD HIT BY ASSASSINATIONS

Russia has devolved into one of the world's most dangerous nations for investigative journalism.  Many reporters have died, and there are no leads or prosecutions in any of the cases thus far. Here is a partial summary:

Yuri Shchekochikhin - died in July 2003.  Suspected cause of death: Ingestion of a radioactive substance.  As deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, Shchekochikhin was investigating corruption in Russia's FSB security service at the time of his death.

Paul Klebnikov - a U.S. citizen of Russian descent and editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine who was shot on a Moscow street in July 2004.

Anna Politkovskaya - shot dead as she entered her Moscow apartment in October 2006.

Ivan Safranov – fell to his death from his Moscow apartment building in March 2007. Although he had just returned from shopping with a bag of groceries in hand, Russian authorities ruled the death a suicide. He had been investigating sensitive arms sales days before his death.

Magomed Yevloyev - the owner of a Russian opposition Internet site was shot dead on August 31, 2008.

Stanislav Markelov - murdered on January 23, 2009, he was an investigative reporter with Novaya Gazeta.

Anastasia Baburova – an investigative reporter with Novaya Gazeta, she was murdered on January 23, 2009 alongside Stanislav Markelov.

This weekend, a crowd of protestors joined an estimated 250 mourners to commemorate the deaths of Marelov and Baburova.  Anti-war activist Anna Karetnikova, a friend of Anna Politkovskaya who was slain in 2006, blamed the double murders on orders from the Kremlin.

To date, four employees of Novaya Gazeta have been murdered: Shchekochikhin, Politkovskaya, Markelov, and Baburova.

Alexander Lebedev (a Russian billionaire and former KGB agent) and Mikhail Gorbachev (the last leader of the former Soviet Union) own a 49% stake in Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper hardest hit by these assassinations.  The employees own a 51% stake.  Lebedev writes a blog at alex-lebedev.livejournal.com.

Recently, Lebedev and Gorbachev joined forces to launch a new political party independent of the Kremlin. Called the Independent Democratic Party, it seeks legal and economic reform and the promotion of an independent media. Considering the Kremlin’s slide into oligarchy, Novaya Gazeta may represent the last outpost of free and independent journalism left in Russia.

In solidarity, I have added Novaya Gazeta (English version) to our list of news and information sources. According to the editors:

The killers have no fear because they know they will not be punished. But neither are their victims afraid, because when you defend others you cease to fear.