Well, that’s what I get for trying to take some time off. I was going to extend my sabbatical for another week, since Barbara is up in Seattle visiting her brother, and I’m well-stocked on hookers and blow – and then some Freeper has to post THIS :
Wow : Donald Trump Jr. Releases the Emails — and They Look a lot Like, Um, Collusion
Earlier today, here at Townhall and on Fox News, I said that more information needed to be gathered before anyone should declare the Donald Trump, Jr. story a bombshell or a dud. First and foremost, I argued, it would be very helpful to see the actual emails that preceded the now-infamous June meeting, which the New York Times claimed would demonstrate that the president’s son was well aware of the alleged source and nature of the promised anti-Clinton information (which never materialized) in advance.
The Times story was rooted in unnamed sources who characterized, but apparently did not produced, the messages in question. In order to determine if the documents were being mischaracterized, we should see them, I said. About an hour later, Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted the full four-page exchange, which Cortney relayed here. Trump Jr. cast his tweets as efforts at full transparency, but one can’t help but wonder if there was another pressing motive at play: He preempted the Times, which had the chain and was about to run with it. In any case, the content of these emails was, in my case, literally jaw-dropping.
Trump Jr’s associate alerted him to the supposed existence of highly sensitive information regarding wrongdoing tied to Mrs. Clinton, telling him that it would be furnished by a “Russian government attorney” who was representing “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump” (who now claims she wasn’t tied to the Kremlin). To which Trump Jr. replied, “if it’s what you say I love it.”
This couldn’t be much clearer: And these shifts look really bad, especially when you read the quote from March in which Trump Jr. flatly denies meeting with any Russian nationals in arranged meetings: .
And the comment from the Freeper who posted this heresy??
Pearls??? Where are my pearls??? I think I have the vapours…
5 posted on 7/11/2017, 4:57:22 PM by hal ogen (First Amendment or Reeducation camp?)
Well, if you don’t lay off the baked beans, that’s bound to happen.
To: hal ogen
I was going to post that but I’ve been on the floor after reading this…
Those were some pretty powerful vapours, for sure.
NOW Don Jr. is DONE for sure!
(cripes EVERY political campaign is “collusion” by this definition)
11 posted on 7/11/2017, 5:00:56 PM by bigbob (People say believe half of what you see son and none of what you hear – M. Gaye)
And of course, there’s the ever-popular “My next door neighbour is a murderer, so my being one isn’t a crime” trope :
To: righttackle44
Get back to me when they are through with Hillary’s collusion.
12 posted on 7/11/2017, 5:01:12 PM by jch10 (Laughing my Ossoff at the Democrats!)
Once in a while, a Freeper dares to swim against the flow :
To: righttackle44
Looks a lot like…honest journalism, er sumpthin’ close to this old geezer American!
8 posted on 7/11/2017, 4:59:40 PM by gunnyg (“A Constitution changed from Freedom, can never be restored; Liberty, once lost, is lost forever…)
What?? From those notorious commies over at Townhall? Say it ain’t so!
To: righttackle44
It IS a matter of credibility. It may not be against the law or policy, but we would condemn the same series of events if the Clintons or Barack the Pretender or Schumer, or any other of the leftist beasts did it.
9 posted on 7/11/2017, 4:59:59 PM by righttackle44 (Take scalps. Leave the bodies as a warning.)
Of course, upright Gawd-fearing Amurican Freepers have a succinct answer for this kind of namby-pamby stuff :
It was citywide election qualifying week here in New Orleans. I’m acquainted with three of the mayoral candidates but I’m undecided. It’s still early days in the race to replace Mitch Landrieu who is term limited and cannot run a fifth time to be Mayor. He’s a persistent bugger, y’all.
One person who talked about running was reality teevee star Sidney Torres aka the Trashanova. The Trashanova is a rich malaka who often wears a man bun, which is disqualifying as far as I’m concerned. Additionally, he’s too closely tied to former Mayor Nagin to have a chance to win. Torres declined to throw his man bun into the ring and the city heaved a collective sigh of relief. Ta-ta, Trashanova.
This week’s theme song is a three-headed beast, sort of like me before my first cup of coffee in the morning. We have two different songs titled Miles From Nowhere and one with a substantially similar title. I like to keep you on your toes.
After all the Tea for the Tillerson jokes, I thought it was high time to post a Cat Stevens song from the album with a substantially similar title. Substantially similar appears to be the two-word phrase of the day. Cat Stevens is followed (figuratively, not literally) by the Smithereens and Dwight Yoakam, which makes this a rather high mileage post.
Speaking of keeping you on your toes, we’re skipping the break and diving right in. Splash. Hopefully, it will be the deep, not shallow, end.
Your President* Speaks: It’s a long flight from DC to Paris so Trump had a chat with the press corps. He said some crazy shit about a transparent border wall. The “idea” is to see the “bags of drugs” flying over it or some such shit. That full quote is too long and rambling for this space but here are a couple of beauts annotated by yours truly:
So I was asked to go by the President [Macron], who I get along with very well, despite a lot of fake news. You know, I actually have a very good relationship with all of the people at the G20. And he called me, he said, would you come, it’s Bastille Day — 100 years since World War I. And I said, that’s big deal, 100 years since World War I. SO we’re going to go
The president* appears to think that Bastille Day is somehow connected to the Great War. It happened in 1789 and had something to with another famous event.
The other quote has the Insult Comedian sounding like his mentor Roy Cohn:
And I think what’s happening is, as usual, the Democrats have played their card too hard on the Russia thing, because people aren’t believing it. It’s a witch hunt and they understand that. When they say “treason” — you know what treason is? That’s Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving the atomic bomb, okay? But what about all the congressmen, where I see the woman sitting there surrounded by — in Congress.
Actually, Roy Cohn was a coherent motherfucker. That last sentence makes no sense whatsoever.
While we’re on the subject of the Darnold, there’s *another* excerpt from Joshua Green’s new Trump-Bannon book. It’s not as fun as the Bannon-Napoleon portrait one but it’s still swell. This excerpt is at Bloomberg News and discusses Trump’s time hosting The Apprentice. Fun fact: Trump was popular with minorities until the whole birther thing, which is when his ratings tanked. Sad.
Let’s move on to a segment about Trump’s longtime personal mouthpiece.
The Marc Kasowitz Blues:Pro Publica ran an eye-opening piece about Trump’s hard-drinking, foul-mouthed lawyer. One of the main points of the article by Justin Elliot and Jesse Eisinger is that Kasowitz will have a hard time obtaining a security clearance because of his drinking problem. I’m not sure how he can adequately defend the president* without one.
Marc Kasowitz, President Trump’s personal attorney on the Russia case, threatened a stranger in a string of profanity-laden emails Wednesday night.
The man, a retired public relations professional in the western United States who asked not to be identified, read ProPublica’s story this week on Kasowitz and sent the lawyer an email with the subject line: “Resign Now.”
Kasowitz replied with series of angry messages sent between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern time. One read: “I’m on you now. You are fucking with me now Let’s see who you are Watch your back , bitch.”
In another email, Kasowitz wrote: “Call me. Don’t be afraid, you piece of shit. Stand up. If you don’t call, you’re just afraid.” And later: “I already know where you live, I’m on you. You might as well call me. You will see me. I promise. Bro.”
Kasowitz’s spokesman, Michael Sitrick, said Thursday he couldn’t immediately reach Kasowitz for comment.
ProPublica confirmed the man’s phone number matched his stated identity. Technical details in the emails, such as IP addresses and names of intermediate mail servers, also show the emails came from Kasowitz’s firm. In one email, Kasowitz gave the man a cell phone number that is not widely available. We confirmed Kasowitz uses that number.
The exchange began after the man saw our story featured last night on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC. We reported that Kasowitz is not seeking a security clearance even though the Russia case involves a significant amount of classified material.
Moral of the story: always think twice before hitting the send icon Also, isn’t Kasowitz a bit old to call someone bitch or bro? He’s 65. The AARP weeps.
It’s unclear if Trump congratulated or castigated Kasowitz for his mob lawyer outburst. It might be time to call in John Gotti’s lawyer Bruce Cutler seen below with his favorite client and a guy who looks like Paulie Walnuts’ unkempt cousin:
Bruce Cutler and John Gotti via the NY Daily News.
The Dapper Don in a turtleneck, not a tie? The fashion gods must have wept that day.
I’m sure Trump has met Cutler. I was disappointed not to find any pictures of them together when I asked first Siri and then Mr. Google. So it goes.
While we’re on the subject of the Trump-Russia scandal, next up is a “fake news” toon.
Cartoon Of The Week: I resisted the temptation to post Hokusai’s most famous painting, The Wave, as this week’s featured image. The Guardian’s Steve Bell, however, went for it in this cartoon about Trump Junior’s problems.
Holy shit storm, Batman.
It’s time to put New Yorkers and Muscovites in the rear view mirror and move on.
Warren Zevon’s Last Waltz: I’ve made a boatload of Zevon references recently so I reckoned I should share Jon Pareles’ classic 2003 profile of WZ as he faced death.
Since the story uses WZ’s last appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman as a backdrop, here’s that episode:
Enjoy every sandwich.
It’s time to sing the blues with a master of the form.
Saturday Classic: Albums featuring guest artists were the rage in the late Eighties and early Nineties. John Lee Hooker’s The Healer was one of the best of the bunch. It featured Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, Canned Heat, Los Lobos, George Thorogood, and Charlie Musselwhite. Enjoy.
That’s it for this week. I wrote more about politics than the average Saturday post, but I have Russia on my mind. I must be pining for cold weather. Our closing bat-meme features real life super villains Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Btw, Donny now claims that Vladdy was for Hillary in the late election. Oy, just oy.
Joyeux Quatorze Juillet is the correct way to say Happy Bastille Day even though the latter makes me want to storm a prison and free some prisoners. The French merely refer to it as La Fête Nationale and dispense with the greetings.
French President Macron is trying a new tactic with the Insult Comedian: treating him like a crazy uncle to be indulged instead of disdained. I have my doubts that it will work but at least Trump isn’t throwing verbal stink bombs at the French any more. He did, however comment on the French First Lady’s appearance. I expect his aides will argue that it’s age appropriate: Brigitte Macron is 25 years older than her 39-year-old husband.
Here’s one of Trump’s big quotes from his day with the Macrons:
“France is one of our oldest allies. A lot of people don’t know that, but it’s true.”
There was much mirth about this on social media today. Unfortunately, Trump isn’t the only one ignorant of this basic fact. Surely, I’m not the only one who remembers “freedom fries” and “cheese eating surrender monkeys.” Those were, of course, epithets hurled at the French after then President Chirac’s wise decision to stay out of the Iraq War.
I didn’t expect there to be a smoking gun in the Trump-Russia scandal. I certainly didn’t expect it to involve Trump Junior. I’ve always expected the Trumpers and their enablers in the Republican party to resort to the “everybody does it” defense. It’s what happens when past defenses are exposed as lies. Of course, nothing said by the Trump crime family and its lackeys is ever true. Nothing. No thing. Literally. Believe me.
The counterattacks are flying thick, fast, and unconvincing. They’re desperately trying to unearth past instances of a presidential campaign working with a HOSTILE foreign power. Good luck with that:
Moscow has, however, tried to meddle in previous American elections. The historian Michael R. Beschloss recounts in “The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963,” an account of the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Kennedy presidency, that the Soviet ambassador in Washington secretly reached out to both John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson, another Democratic presidential hopeful, during the 1960 campaign. The ambassador was rebuffed by both candidates.
Imagine that. Of course, Jack Kennedy had smart relatives involved in his campaign something the Insult Comedian is sorely lacking. Jared? Junior? Gimme a break.
Instead of listening to his lawyers and shutting his big bazoo, the idiot-in-chief has chimed in on the Tweeter Tube:
.@WashTimes states "Democrats have willfully used Moscow disinformation to influence the presidential election against Donald Trump."
Hey, he’s not citing Fox News in support. This is some daring “thinking” on Donald’s part.
As the Trump’s tower of lies implodes, it’s time for Republican office holders to stop defending him or give up their frequent invocations of their secular saint, Ronald Reagan. Here’s the deal: I never supported or voted for Reagan but never doubted his patriotism. The current Russian kleptocracy is the successor state to the Soviet Union. Does anyone seriously think that the man who called the USSR “the evil empire” would accept oppo from a lawyer linked to the Kremlin?
Reagan may have been the leader who incubated what Charlie Pierce calls the GOP’s “prion disease,” but he was an old-fashioned patriot whose favorite president was Franklin Roosevelt. The Republicans have done a good job in the last 30+ years of making Reagan their FDR. Neither FDR nor Reagan would have colluded with a hostile power to gain political advantage. They didn’t need to do so to win elections. Defending Trump’s perfidy means that the GOP *should* lose the right to invoke Saint Ronnie. Will they stop? Hell no, but their invocations ring hollower by the day.
The world has truly turned upside down when I praise Ronald Reagan. Trump is so horrible that he makes Reagan look good in contrast. So it goes.
The “everybody does it” defense is a feeble one. Nixon and his minions trotted it out during Watergate. It did not work.
I originally planned to play Irving Berlin’s Everybody’s Doing It Now at the end of the post until I ran into the tune below. It was the label on the record that clinched it: Carnival Records with a clown logo. The Trump crime family brought the circus to the White House. It took six months for some people to realize that they’d taken a giant dump in the Rose Garden. Some people do not have a good sense of smell but the stench is growing day-by-day.
I used to think of July as the dog days of summer when not much happened. Those days appear to be gone, doggone it, We’ve had another news-heavy weekend so I’m going to run several flags up the pole and salute them; some with a one-fingered salute. I may, however, let one of my handy colleagues above do the dirty work. It’s an all hands on deck moment for the Republic, after all.
No Polish Joke: The other day, I threatened to title a post Polish Joke when the Insult Comedian was delivering his triumph of the will rant in Warsaw. I did not. I didn’t want to revive shit like this:
Ethnic joke books like the one above were popular when I was a kid. It’s one reason I was concerned that Trump would start riffing on Polish jokes. He *is* the first Insult Comedian ever elected president*. Given the tone and nature of his speech, even the nastiest Polish joke would have been better than the mish-mash of white ethno-nationalist nonsense he delivered. The fingerprints of Stephens Miller and Bannon were all over the speech. Oh, goody.
Since there were two outstanding pieces about the No Polish Joke speech at the Atlantic, I’ll send you there for some serious analysis:
You Say Collusion, I Say Conspiracy: According to the NYT, the amoral nincompoops of Team Trump went fishing for derogatory material about Hillary Clinton in Russian waters. Trump Junior has told several different stories about this meeting. I, of course, do not believe any of them. Lying comes as naturally as breathing to this crowd.
I saw Junior referred to as the Fredo of the Trump crime family. I disagree, doggone it. They’re a family of Fredos. Only a Fredo would allow his daughter to sit in for him at a major international conference. Nepotism is in like Flynn as it were.
Vlad-n-Donny’s Love Fest: Team Trump spun the meeting as a win for their guy because he allegedly didn’t make any major gaffes. It appears to have been a triumph for the Russians. It was four liars in a room with two translators. I believe Russian liar Lavrov’s account of the meeting and not the weak tea poured by the Tillerson. The former’s statement comports more with Trump’s previous comments as well as these post-meeting tweets by Putin’s Pawn:
I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election. He vehemently denied it. I've already given my opinion…..
The whole “let by-gones be by-gones” theme struck by both Trump and Tillerson gave Putin the win, doggone it. The sound you hear is past Republican Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan rolling over in their graves. In fact, I believe Ike’s hardline Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was briefly reanimated then died of a heart attack upon learning of the Putin-Trump encounter…
The meeting also inspired one of Trump’s dizzier ideas:
Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..
I believe the Watergate conspirators would have called this a “modified, limited” walk back. They should try the Ron Ziegler method and call the original tweet “inoperative.” If only we could declare the entire Trump administration* inoperative and rewind the past 170 days. It seems like 170 years, y’all.
I wish they’d give us back the dog days of summer but since they won’t, I’ll give Marvin Fucking Gaye the last word, doggone it:
The Garden Of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.
The first week of July is when it really heats up in New Orleans. The air is thick and smacks you upside the head when you venture outside. The pace of life slows to a crawl and Oscar and Della can be found sprawled out on our wood floors hoping to cool themselves. Nice work if you can get it.
Later today, I’m going to the silliest annual event in New Orleans. It’s a non-violent running of the bulls thingamabob. The “bulls” are roller girls wielding soft paddles. I do not run. Dr. A and I hang out with our friend Cait and the child army of darkness whilst her husband Dave runs. We all sweat. It’s minosas and donuts for me, y’all. Perhaps I should take a Spank paddle to liven things up:
This week’s theme song is inspired by our Boschian theme. You may have noticed that Hieronymus Bosch’s prot0-surrealist TheGarden of Earthly Delights is the featured image. There will be more Bosching about later but I will never head to the mountains and drink Busch beer. You say Busch, I say Bosch. Let’s call the whole thing off. Stop me before I quote Ira Gershwin again.
Back to the theme song. It comes from XTC’s Oranges and Lemons album whose cover was featured of a Wednesday in 2014. That feature was sidelined this week but will return next Wednesay: bad scout’s honor. Welcome to the garden of earthly delights, y’all.
I have another Boschy song for your listening pleasure. It was written and recorded by that self-described “awful little man,” Graham Parker.
Now that we’ve listened to some late-Eighties alternative rock, you deserve a break today. OMG, I sound like Ronald Fucking McDonald. That simply will not do.
There’s so much news going on that it’s hard to prioritize. We all need to learn how to multi-task. The Russia scandal and health care are at the top of my list but Trump’s attack on the press, the election commission farce, and his delusional foreign policy *are* important too. It’s like a teevee drama with an A story and B story; only in this case we’re up to E and counting. So it goes.
Today’s focus is on the big story about Russia broken by the Wall Street Journal last week. It takes us back to the Nineties because it involves one of the creeps behind the so-called Arkansas project, Peter Smith. If the fucker were still alive, I’d demand he give me back my name.
In the midst of the 2016 campaign, a veteran GOP opposition researcher who said he had ties to ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn contacted hackers hoping to obtain emails that he believed Russian operatives had hacked from Hillary Clinton’s personal server, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Peter W. Smith reached out to computer security experts in the hopes of gaining access to the email trove and explicitly outlined his connection with Flynn in his recruiting emails, according to the report.
Smith was one of the dickheads who spent most of the Nineties in what Charlie Pierce calls “the pursuit of the President’s penis.” He was a close associate of David Bossie who, in turn, is a close associate of Steve Bannon. That’s right, there’s a B3 taint to the whole enterprise. Here’s Josh Marshall quoting a follow-up story:
As you may have heard, this evening The Wall Street Journalpublished a major follow-up to its story from Thursday which described the work of a GOP money man and oppo research guy, the late Peter W. Smith, who was trying to get hacked emails from Russia and held himself out to be in contact with disgraced Trump advisor Michael Flynn. On its face, the big new break in this follow-up story is a new document from Smith. The document is from what is described as a package of recruiting materials Smith was using to enlist cybersecurity talent in his operation. The document listed key officials in the Trump campaign. These were apparently people Smith claimed he was in touch with or working with, though precisely how or why they were mentioned is not entirely clear.
Officials identified in the document include Steve Bannon, now chief strategist for President Donald Trump; Kellyanne Conway, former campaign manager and now White House counselor; Sam Clovis, a policy adviser to the Trump campaign and now a senior adviser at the Agriculture Department; and retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who was a campaign adviser and briefly was national security adviser in the Trump administration.
Notice the name Kellyanne Conway. Her husband, George, was also neck-deep in the Arkansas Project shit: he served as offstage counsel to Paula Jones. Things keep circling back to the Nineties, y’all.
I’m not sure how the Peter Smith angle will play out. He’s done his final smear: he died shortly after speaking to the WSJ for their blockbuster story. If true, the story ties freelance shitbirds like Smith to the shitbirds who were at the center of the Trump campaign and now have offices in the West Wing. Btw, the WSJ story was partially based on the account of a British cyber security maven named Matt Tait who wrote about his dealings with Smith. The plot continues to thicken. Stay tuned.
In other Nineties throwback news, the president* tweeted a video of him taking down CNN, pro rassling-style. The source was a notorious Reddit bigot. You’ve all seen it but here we go:
The video was edited from an appearance Trump made at Wrestlemania XXIII. Who knew the wrestling malakas did the whole pretentious Roman numeral thing?
The mind reels at the notion of the president* tweeting a fake video of fake wrestling to attack what he likes to call fake news. This, however, is bait the MSM should NOT take. It’s part of Trump’s dominance and submission world view: if one takes the bait, one is playing in the Insult Comedian’s house. Just say no, y’all.
The wrangle over press pressings is another way Trump demeans the media as a way of asserting his alpha-malakatude. They should ignore it. Very little news has ever been made when the press secretary of the day spins the media on behalf of their boss. In fact, some of the best recent White House reporting has been done by the NYT’s Maggie Haberman who mostly works out of the New York office. She works her sources instead of attending Gum Spice and Huckabee’s awful spawn’s press briefings. It’s called reporting, y’all.
There’s a fresh outrage every day, so it’s hard to know how to deal with them. I like what Charles Blow said in the NYT this morning about the hijacking of the presidency by Trump and his wrecking crew. Here’s Blow on the blowhard:
Every now and then we are going to have to do this: Step back from the daily onslaughts of insanity emanating from Donald Trump’s parasitic presidency and remind ourselves of the obscenity of it all, registering its magnitude in its full, devastating truth.
There is something insidious and corrosive about trying to evaluate the severity of every offense, trying to give each an individual grade on the scale of absurdity. Trump himself is the offense. Everything that springs from him, every person who supports him, every staffer who shields him, every legislator who defends him, is an offense. Every partisan who uses him — against all he or she has ever claimed to champion — to advance a political agenda and, in so doing, places party over country, is an offense.
We must remind ourselves that Trump’s very presence in the White House defiles it and the institution of the presidency. Rather than rising to the honor of the office, Trump has lowered the office with his whiny, fragile, vindictive pettiness.
Everything about Trump is horrible: his policies and his persona. It’s the world we’ve been plunged into by his electoral college victory*, which is looking more suspect every day. He’s dragged us kicking and screaming back to the Nineties with his crazy rhetoric and WWE-style braggadocio. Everyone needs to exercise editorial control and decide which of his outrages merit attention and which should be allowed to shrivel and die in the shadows.
Donald J. Trump Verified account @realDonaldTrump 11m
I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..
Donald J. Trump Verified account @realDonaldTrump 5m 5 minutes ago
…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!
*******************************
This will not be good for him. I understand his frustration with Morning Joe, and they used to be his friends, so the way they treat him must hurt, but this is going to lead to a negative news cycle that he didn’t need. We were exposing CNN. Now CNN has something to report on and distract from.
I saw the first Tweet and thought it should be removed before he posted the second. Sure, the internet is forever, but when something is deleted it’s a tacit admission of a mistake. I was hoping someone would stop him.
The second one is worse. I just think this comes off badly and will give him a negative news cycle when the news was taking a beating from all their false reporting and O’Keefe’s tapes.
Ah – pinkbell – you are so wrong. The nutcases here in Freeperville think that this is the neatest thing since those darkies were gunned down on Danziger Bridge.
To: Pinkbell
LOL
2 posted on 6/29/2017, 8:12:27 AM by petitfour (APPEAL TO HEAVEN)
So there.
To: Pinkbell
I love it as do most real Americans. He doesn’t suffer fools lightly.
4 posted on 6/29/2017, 8:13:26 AM by Jim from C-Town (The government is rarely benevolent, often malevolent and never benign!)
From what I can see, he gives most of them cabinet positions.
To: Pinkbell
The next tweet:
“…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”
It’s great!
Go get ‘em DJT!
12 posted on 6/29/2017, 8:16:53 AM by BBB333 (The Power Of Trump Compels You!)
What a shocker.
To: Velveeta
President Trump Don’t stop tweeting ! Fair Game !!!!!
It just occurred to me that I haven’t suggested any theme songs for the Trump administration* for a few months. In April, I suggested the venerable 10cc tune I Wanna Rule The World as a foreign policy anthem. Today’s suggestion is more in the way of a personal theme song for the loathsome pig who won the electoral college in 2016: Warren Zevon’s Mr. Bad Example.
Before posting the song and lyrics, I’d like to take a slight detour into Your President* Speaks country. The Insult Comedian tweeted something this morning that was despicable even by his low standards. It’s a reminder of what a misogynist asshole he is:
I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..
Unlike Dipshit Donald, I don’t watch Morning Joe. He’s lying about that too. I consider plastic surgery jokes the lowest form of humor. I also don’t think that a man who looks like this in tennis shorts should be mocking anyone’s appearance:
Now that’s a scene out of a very white, very cheesy horror movie. I would ordinarily not make fun of anyone’s looks but sometimes one has to fight fire with fire. I wonder how Melania’s anti-cyber bullying thing is going? I believe in the old aphorism: charity begins at home. She should heed it.
Back to Trump’s Mika mockery. It’s not only vile and disgusting, his nickname for her isn’t very good. Psycho Joe ain’t bad but Low IQ Crazy Mika? Gimme a break. That would be stupid coming out of the mouth of a 5-year-old let alone a 70 year-old president* with a fat ass and a nutria atop his head. Btw, the Insult Comedian is an ironic nickname. I never said he was good at insulting people. Nevertheless, he persists.
One more thing about the war of tweets between Donald (I have a good brain) Trump and Ms. Brzezinski. It’s extra gross because her father died a month ago. Surely, Donald heard about Zbig’s death on cable news. He was rather well-known, after all. One might even call it Zbig news…
Now that I’ve horrified you with Donald’s Zbig ass, I’ll Mika up for it by circling back to the ostensible purpose of this post: Warren Zevon’s Mr. Bad Example. It’s a witty little ditty about a con man, which makes it a perfect signature song for a man who flim-flammed his way to the White House.
WZ was a wordy bastard, so I’ll post the tune before the lyrics. First, the original studio version followed by my fave rave, which is live and acoustic.
I started as an altar boy working at the church
Learning all my holy moves, doing some research
Which led me to a cash box labeled “Children’s Fund” —
I’d leave the change and tuck the bills inside my cummerbund
I’m very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins
I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in
I’m proud to be a glutton and I don’t have time for sloth
I’m greedy and I’m angry and I don’t care who I cross
I’m Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt —
I like to have a good time and I don’t care who gets hurt
I’m Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me —
I’ll live to be a hundred and go down in infamy
Of course I went to law school and took a law degree
And counseled all my clients to plead insanity
Then worked in hair replacement swindling the bald
Where very few are chosen and fewer still are called
Then on to Monte Carlo to play chemin de fer
I threw away the fortune I made transplanting hair
I put my last few francs down on a prostitute
Who took me up to her room to perform the flag salute
Whereupon I stole her passport and her wig
And headed for the airport and the midnight flight, you dig?
Fourteen hours later I was down in Adelaide
Looking through the want ads sipping Fosters in the shade
I opened up an agency somewhere down the line
To hire aboriginals to work the opal mines
But I attached their wages and took a whopping cut
And whisked away their workman’s comp and pauperized the lot
I’m Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt —
I like to have a good time and I don’t care who gets hurt
I’m Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me —
I’ll live to be a hundred and go down in infamy
I bought a first class ticket on Malaysian Air
And landed in Sri Lanka none the worse for wear
I’m thinking of retiring from all my dirty deals
I’ll see you in the next life, wake me up for meals
A civil rights historical marker in Mississippi has been vandalized, obliterating information about black teenager Emmett Till, who was kidnapped and lynched in 1955.
The slaying galvanized the civil rights movement when Till’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, had an open-casket funeral in Chicago to show how her 14-year-old son had been brutalized while he was visiting the Mississippi Delta.
Allan Hammons, whose public relations firm made the marker, said Monday that someone scratched the marker with a blunt tool in May. During the past week, a tour group discovered vinyl panels had been peeled off the back of the metal marker in Money, Mississippi. The panels contained photos and words about Till.
“Who knows what motivates people to do this?” Hammons said, noting that traffic signs are common targets for vandals and shooters in rural areas. “Vandals have been around since the beginning of time.”
I know what motivates people to do such a thing: racism. Given the marker’s relative proximity to New Orleans, it could also be misdirected payback for the removal of the white supremacy monuments here. If that sounds like a stretch, they’re still sitting hillbilly shiva across from the former Jefferson Davis monument. They’re only here on the weekends but they’re still at it.
This is not the first time the Till marker has been vandalized but it’s the most sinister. Bullet holes can be written off as the work of drunken peckerwoods. This cannot. It took time, effort, and planning. It’s the work of sober peckerwoods with malicious intent.
The electoral college victory of president* Trump has ushered in an era of intolerance as well as the new gilded age I’ve written about before. It’s fitting: Jim Crow swept the South *during* the Gilded Age. Trump’s rhetoric about political correctness has given racists and xenophobic bigots a green light to do what they do best; hate.
Trump is too dim and self-absorbed to feel any regrets over the malign forces he has unleashed. Shallow thy name is Donald. I’d like to point out that D.W. Griffith *did* feel some regrets over the turmoil caused by The Birth of a Nation. It led to a second epic, Intolerance. It was too diffuse and arty to have the same impact but it showed that Griffith was human and capable of minimal growth. The Insult Comedian is not. But you knew that already.
Back to the notion of “erasing history.” I’m against it, but continue to believe that who or what we honor says a lot about who we are as a people. The Lee and Davis monuments were erected to honor white supremacy and a war that was waged to preserve human bondage. The Emmett Till marker was put up to honor a young man whose lynching helped inspire the Civil Rights movement.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: intent is everything. The Civil Rights movement is worthy of public celebration, white supremacy is not. It’s not the erasure of history to celebrate the positive whilst castigating the negative. I do not want anyone to forget slavery, segregation, and racial violence. I just don’t want them celebrated in the public green.
Yeah, I know, it’s a list of lies but the original Book of Lies is an infamous occultist manifesto of sorts by the satanist Aleister Crowley. Given that the current administration emits a strongly sulphurous aroma, it stuck me as appropriate.
It took a long time for the Gray Lady to finally stick the liar label on Trump but better late than never. There are 232 presidential* lies listed so I’ll post two per month for a total of twelve lies, not steps:
JAN. 21 “A reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine.” (Trump was on the cover 11 times and Nixon appeared 55 times.)
JAN. 25 “Now, the audience was the biggest ever. But this crowd was massive. Look how far back it goes. This crowd was massive.”(Official aerial photos show Obama’s 2009 inauguration was much more heavily attended.)
FEB. 3 “Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” (There is no evidence of paid protesters.)
FEB. 16 “We got 306 because people came out and voted like they’ve never seen before so that’s the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan.” (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all won bigger margins in the Electoral College.)
MARCH 4 “How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” (There’s no evidence of a wiretap.)
MARCH 29 “Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong. Now worse!” (It didn’t apologize.)
APRIL 12 “The secretary general and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism. I complained about that a long time ago and they made a change, and now they do fight terrorism.” (NATO has been engaged in counterterrorism efforts since the 1980s.)
APRIL 29 “We’re also getting NATO countries to finally step up and contribute their fair share. They’ve begun to increase their contributions by billions of dollars, but we are not going to be satisfied until everyone pays what they owe.” (The deal was struck in 2014.)
MAY 4 “Nobody cares about my tax return except for the reporters.” (Polls show most Americans do care.)
MAY 12 “When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?” (Clapper said he wouldn’t have been told of an investigation into collusion.)
JUNE 4 “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’” (The mayor was specifically talking about the enlarged police presence on the streets.)
JUNE 5 “The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.” (Trump signed this version of the travel ban, not the Justice Department.)
Good on the failing New York Times for publishing a list that poses the eternal question: Who are you going to believe, the Insult Comedian or your lyin’ eyes?
Remember when we had the odd slow news weekend? That’s become a rarity in the era of the Insult Comedian and the failed Republican Congress. The scandals and bad legislation keep flying at us like Russian malware attacks. Hence this recurring feature. I’m not planning to restrict First Draft Potpourri to just one day. I prefer to be like the Scarlet Pimpernel:
They seek him here, they seek him there.
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere, that damned elusive pimpernel.
Frenchies? I guess that’s not too bad as ethnic slurs go. Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan stepped in a pile of guinea doo-doo by referring to “Dago Red” wine in an interview that consisted of slamming the Italian-American leader of his caucus, Nancy D’Alessandro Pelosi. Ryan subsequently apologized for using what he claimed was the local lingo in his part of Ohio. Attaboy, Timmy. I wonder if you’ve been called the other M word recently; Malaka. Probably not.
Many New Orleans eateries used to carry an item called the “wop salad.” I took the pulse of my community and found only one place in the metro area that still calls it that. It’s Rocky and Carlo’s in Chalmette. It’s in St. Bernard Parish which once had a councilman named Joey DiFatta. That’s apropos of nothing but I miss him. It’s doubtful that the Chalmatians feel the same way.
Let’s get back to Nancy Smash, she’s become the anti-pinup girl for GOP fundraisers and mad men. It’s no surprise: they’re particularly fond of slamming powerful women. I was, however, gobsmacked that some of the simpler folk on twitter think this is a new move. Wingnuts have always had a target or three in Congress: Ted Kennedy was their main whipping boy for many years. He was librul and came from a den of inquity/librul city, Boston. Nancy Smash, of course, represents San Francisco, but she remains at heart the daughter of former Baltimore Mayor Tommy D’Alessandro. She takes the best of machine politics and mashes it up with progressive positions on the issues. She has her critics, but I say bring it on, Berners. If you can get the votes, you win. That is if you know how to count votes. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
Speaking of vote counting, the drama over the Senate health care reform* bill is coming down to a head count. I’m neither as optimistic nor pessimistic as some pro-ACA observers. There are four GOPers who want a worse bill. I think they’re posturing: it’s what Ted Cruz and Aqua Buddha do. The so-called moderates are staging a “woe is me” pantomime but they tend to fold like a drunk with a pair of deuces. Besides, Chinless Mitch will not bring a bill to the floor that he doesn’t have 50 votes + Mike Pence. McConnell is a totally reprehensible human being but the fucker can count. There is, however, an outside possibility that he wants to lose the vote and blame it on the president*.
Time for an account of one of my favorite non-obscene LBJ stories. It involves a conversation he had with Hubert Humphrey when they served together in the Senate. LBJ looked at HHH and said: “The problem with you liberals Hubert is that you cain’t count. That’s why you cain’t get shit done. Learn to count.” The no-account HHH learned his lesson and applied it when he was lead Senator on the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
I’ve heard rumbling about Jane and Bernie Sanders’ financial dealings for quite some time. Nothing seemed to come of it until recently. It turns out the feds are looking into issues surrounding her tenure as President of Bennington College. I have no idea if there’s anything to it but they’ve lawyered up; hiring Dollar Bill Jefferson’s mouthpiece, Larry Cassidy who also defended Scooter Libby. He lost those cases but has a good reputation. Stay tuned.
The Insult Comedian continues to tweet like a demented moron. It’s annoying as hell but it’s proof positive that he doesn’t know anything about the first rule of holes: if you’re in one, stop digging. He’s also denounced former President Obama for using the word mean. The Darnold seems to think he owns the word. I wonder if he’s coming after Crowded House next?
That concludes this edition of First Draft Potpourri. I’ll be stirring the pot again some time soon. I am relentless.
Morning, all – let’s suit up, get into the iso chamber and start uncrating the latest from the Freeperati and their rectal vacuuming of Dear Leader.
You know – I keep waiting for them to snap and say “Dear Lord, the man’s a fucking fruitcake!”, but the Faithful Few (the current Freepathon ended last week, and the next one starts next week) are clinging tight like a bird on a moving car’s windshield wiper.
Observe – the Solar Sell!
Trump now says SOLAR will pay for the wall pv magazine USA ^ | 06/23/2017 | Frank Andorka
It’s clear once again that Trump doesn’t really understand how solar works. From his words, he appears to believe the mere production of energy will somehow generate revenue, ignoring the fact someone has to buy the energy it produces. He didn’t explain who would be dong that – was he planning to sell the power to Mexico? The poor residents of south Texas border towns? Who will be purchasing the electricity and at what price?
***********
Two things:
President Trump knows EXACTLY how solar works, which is why he is against it;
Um – he just said he was for it.
BUT
With the obstructionist Dems not letting him do ANYTHING,
he has to pay for the wall somehow to keep out the terrorists and illegals.
Of course, when in doubt, just stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that The Darnold isn’t full of shit as a Christmas turkey :
To: WombatKing
I know, let’s micromanage everything Trump does.
Actually, you go ahead.
I’ve got a life to live and the Wall is Trump’s job.
6 posted on 6/23/2017, 11:15:56 AM by SaxxonWoods (CNN IS ISIS.)
.
There’s the occasional Freeper who has that “friends with benefits” relationship with reality :
.
To: WombatKing
I wasn’t aware that anyone had made bulletproof solar collectors. I would expect much vandalism form those fenced out.
7 posted on 6/23/2017, 11:16:19 AM by mountainlion (Live well for those that did not make it back.)
.
Another Freeper flaunts his ignorance of how global economics work :
.
To: WombatKing
Better still…a 25% tax on all remittances to foreign countries.
4 posted on 6/23/2017, 11:14:04 AM by Gay State Conservative (Comey = The Swamp Fighting Back)
.
Like on the “American made” car you’re driving? Or your Carrier air conditioning unit?
Your toothpaste?
The screen you’re viewing Freeperville on?
The tires on your car?
The ink in your printer?
.
My god, you’re stupid.
.
When in doubt, double down on the idiocy :
.
To: WombatKing
Mexico is going to pay for the wall.
20 posted on 6/23/2017, 12:08:11 PM by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
.
Well – end of discussion, then.
.
Of course, when when all else fails (this thread had remarkably few replies), pretend that the gibbering moron is actually a 13-dimensional chess savant!
.
To: WombatKing
He’s backed them into a corner. They can admit that solar is a waste of money or get the wall. He’s using democrat math to get what he wants
This is shyster speak, not Trump talk. It yet again exposes him as the lyingest liar who ever lied. The second tweet is particularly weasely as it implies that he didn’t lie when he claimed to have Comey mix tapes. Wrong. I’m not sure what tunes would be on such a mix tape but here are three that work for me:
Imagine the late Warren Zevon’s reaction to the idea of president* Trump: “You’re shitting me, right?”
“They have phony witch hunts going against me,” Mr. Trump said nearly an hour into a speech that veered off script repeatedly. “All we do is win, win, win. We won last night.”
<snip>
He toggled back and forth between telling farm-rich Iowa that he had fought for forgotten voters and lauding the wealth of Gary D. Cohn, his top economic adviser and a former executive at Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street giant that Mr. Trump derided in commercials in 2016.
“In those particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person — does that make sense?” he said of Mr. Cohn’s job and that of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, another immensely wealthy man whom Mr. Trump lauded as a “legendary Wall Street genius.”
“Brilliant business minds” are what the economy needs, he said.
Brilliant business minds like the Goldman Sachs guys who tanked the economy back in 2008? Or are you referring to yourself, Donald? All you are is a grifter, con man, and mountebank. I think it’s high time for a revival of the last word. It fits the Insult Comedian to a T.
One version of Lawyers, Guns, and Money is simply not enough, so WZ gets the last word:
Last week’s potpourri post smelled sweeter than jasmine so I thought I’d do it again. Actually, I hate potpourri: I had a distant relative who had it everywhere in her house even in the urn with her late husband’s ashes. I am not making this up. It made me sneeze: the potpourri, not the ashes. I do, however, like Jeopardy-style potpourri.
Eat Two, Brute? We begin with the Trumpers who are outraged about the Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar depicting the Insult Comedian as Caesar. I guess the protesters never studied Julius Caesar in high school or they’d know that the plotters are NOT the heroes of the piece. Besides, there was a production a few years back with an Obama-like Caesar, which ran without incident. Details are beyond people who say shit like this:
“People like me, I don’t even know if they’d let me in,” Ms. Pujol said outside the Delacorte Theater, the home of Shakespeare in the Park. “I am not far right. No one here is far right. We’re only accused of being far right because we love America.”
You could have bought a ticket, ya cheap bastid. Shakespeare did not have the Scalise shooting on his mind when either he, Christopher Marlowe, or Francis Bacon wrote the play. It was first staged in 1599, after all. Besides, if you were a film buff you’d know that James Mason was in his villain phase when he played Brutus in the 1953 film version. Btw, he looked almost as good in a skirt as Brando.
Is He Is Or Is He Ain’t? Team Trump is confused. Anyone surprised? Me neither. Trump’s new mouthpiece Jay Sekulow claims the president* is not under investigation as opposed to what a certain Insult Comedian with cotton candy piss hair tweeted out:
I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt
It’s more likely than not that Trump hired Sekulow because the wingnut lawyer makes frequent appearances on Fox News. He’s NOT a criminal defense lawyer. For all we know, Trump hired John Dowd because the latter wrote the report that got Pete Rose banned from baseball in 1989. Trump *is* a Yankees fan and the Big Red Machine swept them in the 1976 World Series.
Trump’s defense is going to be as entertaining as it is inept. He’ll inevitably pit them against one another, not listen to any of them, and refuse to pay. Fun times. Believe me.
Rumor Mill Blues: This is a weird one. The Hill is mentioning New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu as a Democratic “dark horse” for the 2020 presidential race. The Mayor has shown no interest in running to replace Trump, Pence, or Ryan. It’s hard to tell which one will be Oval One in 2020. The Gambit’s Kevin Allman has the details.
Speaking of the local alternative weekly, they quoted yours truly in their commentary on the Scalise shooting. Thanks, y’all.
Tweet Of The Weekend: There’s a weird cat related tweet going around. I’m uncertain if it’s meant literally or as satire:
What about white cats? I had one that-to my everlasting shame-I named Q-Tip. He was too dim as well as too sweet to plot against anything or anyone. Believe me.
Finally, a more uplifting message from the NYT’s Charles Blow:
Morning, good people – I’m not even going to touch on The Darnold’s Very Bad Week, since everyone else in blogtopia has that pretty well covered.
Instead – let’s look at a Freeper favourite – well, EX-favourite – who has dared to mention that The Darnold is long on promising and short on delivering.
Remember these pics? Ah – how they loved her. Jimbo’s about to bust a nut in this photograph of record :
“Etchings? Etchings?? I said, come up and see me ITCHING!”
Now?
She goes there.
And the Freeperati are livid!
Ann Coulter Unleashes on Trump for ‘Zero’ Progress on Border Wall Fox News Insider ^ | June 16, 2017
Ann Coulter was a big supporter of then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, but so far she’s been underwhelmed by the Trump presidency.
On Friday, Coulter unleashed a series of tweets, ripping Trump for his lack of progress on building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, addressing illegal immigration and halting the flow of Middle Eastern refugees into our country….
Ann has trouble seeing the big picture or she’s just bi-polar.
There will be no wall built if Trump is removed from office.
5 posted on 6/16/2017, 3:29:15 PM by Electric Graffiti (Obama voters killed America. Treat them accordingly.)
“Oh, we’re going to build a wall, don’t worry about it. We’re building the wall. We’re building the wall,” he said in an apparent aside from his prepared remarks. “In fact, it’s going to start soon. Way ahead of schedule. Way ahead of schedule. Way, way, way ahead of schedule. It’s going to start very soon.”
Uh huh.
Any day now.
To: 2ndDivisionVet
What is Ann’s problem? Did she think this was going to be easy? Did she think the swamp would be quick and easy to drain. Does she not realize this is “war” and the opening shots have just been fired?
I’m starting to think she may be just a silly girl…
Well, I do agree that he should be ignoring the courts and doing what the law clearly says he is allowed to do. We elected him BECAUSE he was going to break the china! Right now, he seems to be a very careful bull.
11 posted on 6/16/2017, 3:30:09 PM by An.American.Expatriate (Here’s my strategy on the War against Terrorism: We win, they lose. – with apologies to R.R.)
And we all know the end product of bulls…
To: 2ndDivisionVet
Lincoln and TR sure started their projects their first year in office or at least laid concrete plans to do so. She is right on target. This promise will rank up there with read my lips….. if he doesnt get it done. And the Dreamer amnesty and taking Australia’s refugee problem do not look good for the future at all.
Ann Coulter was pushing Mitt Romney to run again in 2016 as recently as 2014. How you go from Mitt Romney to Donald Trump in the same election cycle is beyond me.It’s probably beyond her, too.
20 posted on 6/16/2017, 3:34:10 PM by Alberta’s Child (“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” — President Trump, 6/1/2017)
In his speech to the Canberra press gallery’s Midwinter Ball, the Australian equivalent of the White House correspondents’ dinner, Turnbull says: “The Donald and I, we are winning and winning in the polls. We are winning so much, we are winning, we are winning like we have never won before. We are winning in the polls. We are, we are. Not the fake polls. Not the fake polls. They’re the ones we’re not winning in.
“We’re winning in the real polls.
“You know, the online polls. They are so easy to win. I know that. Did you know that? I kind of know that. They are so easy to win. I have this Russian guy.
“Believe me it’s true, it’s true.”
That was tremendous, Malcolm. The US embassy in Canberra reacted correctly to this bit of minor satire by pooh-poohing it, but the Insult Comedian has yet to be heard from. He may compare Turnbull to Alec Baldwin and call him a LOSER. Trump loves fighting with our allies, after all.
This minor kerfuffle has given me a swell benign earworm. I’ll give Colin Hay and Men At Work the last word. It’s a tremendous tune. Believe me.
I hope Trump doesn’t try to force feed Turnbull a vegemite sammich when next they meet. Stay tuned.
Screen shot from the New York Times Comeypalooza video feed.
There was only one Republican in the hearing room who was concerned about Russian interference in the 2016 election: James Comey. That’s the appalling state of our politics right now. The Senators on that panel were unable to say, “Trump had nothing to do with it, but the Russians should mind their own business.” Comey called it an attack on America: He’s absolutely right. The selfishness that permeates the Republican party was out in the open today. It’s no shocker but it’s still not a pretty sight. Remember when the GOP were a party of flag waving anti-Soviet super patriots? Now they’re Putin’s pawns.
I’m no Comey fan but he gives good testimony. He even pointed out a few instances where Trump told the truth. That made Comey even more credible when he said that he wrote his contemporaneous memos out of concern that Trump would lie about their conversations. It was refreshing to hear Trump bluntly referred to as a liar, especially under oath. Comey may not have the best judgment but he’s not a liar.
The best Democratic questioners were Warner and Harris. I was relieved that none of the men on the committee rudely interrupted Ms. Harris as they did during the Rosenstein-Rogers-Coats hearing. I omitted Angus King because he’s an independent but the man gives good indignation. He should consider waxing his mustache to add some panache to the proceedings.
The worst Republicans were Johns Cornyn and McCain. Cornhole looks like the Senator from central casting; if they were casting idiot lickspittles, they got their man. It was Clinton email this, Clinton email that, which led Comey to state unequivocally that there was “no case.” I halfway expected Senator Cornhole to demand an appearance by Anthony Weiner…
Senator Walnuts was pitiful. He seemed confused as to what the subject of the hearing was. We expect them to pivot to HRC but he did it in a way that Comedy did not understand. I’m no doctor but McCain appears to be showing early signs of dementia. One would think that he would be the *other* Republican in the room to be outraged by Russian interference in 2016 but he was so out of it that it’s unclear what he thinks. Sad.
I was not one of those who expected a bombshell or knock-out punch this morning. Political and legal investigations are processes. It’s the accumulation of information and evidence that matters the most. These things take time to unfold even in the internet age. Patience is still called for. More likely than not, it will take a Democratic Congress to remove the president* from office via impeachment. I think, however, that a Pence led 25th Amendment legal coup is increasingly possible.
We can always count on the Insult Comedian to make things worse. He has three addictions: money, applause, and the tweeter tube. He’s incapable of resisting the temptation to showboat. Remember when he called Comey just that? It’s what Trump does: project his own fantasies and weaknesses on to others. Believe me.
I like to write my instant analysis posts before reading what others have to say. I think today’s hearing and Comey’s written statement advanced our knowledge of what’s going on. I would love to be a fly on the wall in the closed hearing this afternoon. Of course, McCain might pull out a fly swatter and chase me around the room. He’s that far gone. Believe me.
Samuel Johnson famously said that the last refuge of a scoundrel is patriotism. In 2017, the last refuge of a scoundrel is defending the indefensible: the integrity of Donald J. Trump. As Gertrude Stein would surely add, there is no there there.
They settled on henjin – a word more commonly used to describe an oddball or eccentric – having decided that the alternative, atama ga warui (stupid) was inappropriate for someone of Comey’s stature.
The outburst was the latest in a long line of comments, tweets and deviations from scripted speeches that interpreters in Tokyo concede have left them dumbfounded and struggling to retain their professional composure.
“It isn’t just his colloquialisms, but the demeaning way in which he talked about women, especially during the campaign, said Chikako Tsuruta, who regularly interprets broadcasts by US networks such as CNN, ABC and CBS.
The Japanese are exquisitely polite people except on their wilder teevee shows. I’m not surprised translating Jerkish poses problems for them.
The post title is, unlike the president*, no accident. It’s borrowed from the classic Sofia Coppola/Bill Murray film, which mostly takes place in a Tokyo hotel; not a Trump branded one, for that we can be thankful. The movie was released in 2003, so there’s no lonesome white man tweeting; for that we can be thankful.
Speaking of hotels, here’s an image that was projected on Trump’s DC joint last month:
I somehow missed that story but so much shit has hit the fan lately that I can’t always keep up. Better late than never.
Welcome back to the New Gilded Age where Jerkish is spoken. Leave your bribes at the front desk when you check in.
I’ll give 10cc the last word with a song as rudely politically incorrect as the Insult Comedian himself.
Fuck the implications should be the motto of the Trump administration*. The Insult Comedian is on his way to losing a Supreme Court case because he insists on calling a ban, a ban; thereby undercutting the DOJ’s argument that it’s “extreme vetting,” not a ban.
People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!
The punditocracy are still pondering the deeper meaning of this defiantly stupid behavior. There is NO deeper meaning. Trump is a childish moron who’s rebelling against the office he holds. With apologies to Tom Petty, that’s why he’s a rebel without a clue.It’s also why he couldn’t get any fancy Washington lawyers to represent him. Who wants a client who won’t listen and will, more likely than not, stiff you on his bill.
I know that Gorka and Conway don’t want us to take the presidential* tweeting literally. Their boss begs to differ and, as one of his enemies, I hope he keeps pitching tantrums on twitter. The next tweet is also a message to his staff:
The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out.
Your staff wants you to STFU too, Donald. I do not. I’m a fan of his hole digging. I am not, however, a fan of inciting hostilities between Qatar and its neighbors.
During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar – look!
He’s not only inciting conflict, he’s bragging about his role in fomenting it. This is where this shit stops being funny and becomes scary. He hasn’t a clue as to what he’s talking about. Of course, that’s his modus operandi. Does he even know that we have a substantial military presence in Qatar? It wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t.
Tomorrow is going to be a big day at Adrastos World HQ. It’s Comey Thursday *and* the British general election is the same day. The Tories have blown a big lead but I still doubt the voters want Corbyn as their PM. Besides, the UK polls have been wrong since the 1970’s. I wonder if Trump will insult the pollsters after the election…
That concludes this edition of Your President* Speaks.
