;)
The Commentariat -- January 7, 2018
Afternoon Update:
Jeremy Peters, et al., of the New York Times: "Isolated from his political allies and cut off from his financial patrons, Stephen K. Bannon ... issued a striking mea culpa on Sunday for comments he had made that were critical of the president's eldest son. Mr. Bannon, who is quoted in a new book calling Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russians in 2016 'treasonous,' tried to reverse his statements completely, saying that the younger Mr. Trump was 'both a patriot and a good man.' Mr. Bannon spoke out after five days of silence, a delay that he said he regretted. He said his reference to 'treason' had not been aimed at the president's son, but at another campaign official who attended the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Paul Manafort." Also, Stephen Miller got in a fight with Jake Tapper. ...
... A video of the interview is here. Mrs. McC: I haven't watched the Sunday showz in years. I might have to start watching "State of the Union" now.
*****
I thought Jeanne taught us a new word yesterday: "clunkweasel." But, even better, it turns out she coined a new word. In the vast universe of the Googles, this is the only place a "clunkweasel" has been spotted. It applies it to fellows like Lindsey Graham & Chuck Grassley. But oh so many others. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
Old Man Goes Camping with Bought-and-Paid-for "Friends." Michael Tackett of the New York Times: "President Trump again insisted on Saturday that he was not under investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian influence on the 2016 election, adding that 'there's been no collusion, there's been no crime.' 'Everything I've done is 100 percent proper,' Mr. Trump said during a news conference at Camp David, where he was asked about a New York Times report that he had pressed Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia inquiry. 'That is what I do, is I do things proper.'" Mrs. McC: Among the things you don't do "proper" is modifying verbs. In other news, Mitch wore jeans. ...
... Chas Danner of New York has a good rundown of the newsy items in Trump's impromptu presser. Mrs. McC: Also, Mitch wore jeans. ...
... "Trump Is Shocked ... Reporters Check Facts." Caroline Orr of Shareblue: "... many journalists have cautioned readers that [Michael] Wolff's credibility is not exactly rock solid. That's what journalists do -- at least most of them. At Fox News, however..., facts tend to be treated as optional. According to Politifact, 60 percent of the claims they fact-checked from Fox and Fox News have been rated 'Mostly False,' 'False,' or 'Pants on Fire.'... At Camp David, Trump [said,] 'What I really was heartened by ... was the fact that so many of the people that I talk about in terms of fake news actually came to the defense of this great administration, and even myself, because they know the author and they know he's a fraud,' Trump said. In Trump's eyes, journalists who stuck to the facts were coming to his defense. In reality, they were just doing their jobs. But when Fox News is your standard, sticking to the facts is anything but ordinary. Really, though, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Trump thinks everything is 'fake news' -- because on Fox, most of it is."
Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "In a White House marked by a string of high-level comings and goings, an extraordinary level of palace intrigue and a general sense of unpredictability, there remains but one constant. That is the disorder at the center.... The first week of the year was breathtaking for its shock value: a presidential tweetstorm of personal animus and policy provocation that overshadowed positive news about the economy.... Meanwhile, almost every news organization has reported about the private rages, the lack of focus, the indiscipline and the isolation that also define the style of the 45th president.... Trump continues to make himself the issue. The past week proved it once again, and Saturday's tweets added a startling exclamation point." ...
... Josh Marshall: "The most important thing to know about this debate [over Trump's mental health] is that it simply doesn't matter.... For public purposes, clinical diagnoses are only relevant as predictors of behavior. If the President has a cognitive deficiency or mental illness that might cause him to act in unpredictable or dangerous ways or simply be unable to do the job, we need to know. But My God, we do know!... All the diagnosis of a mental illness could tell us is that Trump might be prone to act in ways that we literally see him acting in every day: impulsive, erratic, driven by petty aggressions and paranoia, showing poor impulsive control, an inability to moderate self-destructive behavior. He is frequently either frighteningly out of touch with reality or sufficiently pathological in his lying that it is impossible to tell." ...
... David Atkins in the Washington Monthly: "The President of the United States got up [Saturday] morning, watched Fox And Friends do a segment on his mental health, and used his Twitter thumbs to give the world a textbook example of the Dunning Kruger effect[.] (Jim Fallows explains the Dunning Kruger effect in an article linked below.) (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... David Frum of the Atlantic: "There's a key difference between film and reality, though: The Corleone family had the awareness and vigilance to exclude Fredo from power. The American political system did not do so well." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Another difference between the Fredo character & Trump is that Fredo made his assertion privately to his brother while Trump made his in writing for the world to see. ...
... AND Here Is How Actual, Like, Smart People Act. Jim Fallows of the Atlantic: "Here are three traits I would report from a long trail of meeting and interviewing people who by any reckoning are very intelligent. They all know it.... Virtually none of them (need to) say it.... They know what they don't know. This to me is the most consistent marker of real intelligence. The more acute someone's ability to perceive and assess, the more likely that person is to recognize his or her limits.... On the other hand, we have something known as the Dunning-Kruger effect: the more limited someone is in reality, the more talented the person imagines himself to be. Or, as David Dunning and Justin Kruger put it in the title of their original scientific-journal article, 'Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.'" ...
... Steve M. finds quite a few tweeters who were driven to writing Gilbert & Sullivan ditties in response to the Twit-in-Chief's defense of his gen-i-us. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: It's essential to remember that Trump is not only mentally unstable; he is also destabilizing the federal government & international relations:
Steven Erlanger of the New York Times: "Two things stand out about the foreign policy messages Mr. Trump has posted on Twitter since taking office: How far they veer from the traditional ways American presidents express themselves, let alone handle diplomacy. And how rarely Mr. Trump has followed through on his words. Indeed, nearly a year after he entered the White House, the rest of the world is trying to figure out whether Mr. Trump is more mouth than fist, more paper tiger than actual one.... There is an increasing sense that the credibility of the administration, and the presidency itself, is being eroded." ...
... AND Here at Home, Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker takes a look at many ways Trump has subverted -- or attempted to subvert -- the rule of law. One way is by not bothering to appoint officials to key posts but instead putting "acting" officials in place, thus skirting the confirmation process & relying on officials who report only to Trump's Cabinet members & Trump himself. "Trump's Presidency may look like a series of chaotic lurches. But there is, alas, madness to his method." Mrs. McC: And Toobin doesn't even mention the pardoning Joe Arpaio, when is a screaming emblem of Trump's disdain for the rule of law. As Mueller closes in on the Von Trump Family Stinkers & sundry members of the Von Trump Choir, we are likely to see that pardon pen run out of ink.
Jim Acosta of CNN: "More White House officials were involved in the effort to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself in the Russia investigation beyond counsel Don McGahn, a senior administration official said Friday. Among those who participated in calls between the White House and Justice Department were former chief of staff Reince Priebus and ex-press secretary Sean Spicer, the senior administration official said.... Earlier Friday, Spicer said on Good Morning America that he wasn't aware of the President's reported request that [White Housel counsel Don] McGahn urge Sessions to decide against recusal.... In one of the calls, Spicer said 'he (Sessions) doesn't need to recuse himself,' according to the official.... This official asked on one of the calls how Spicer, who is not an attorney, could reach such a conclusion.... 'It was just chaos,' the official said about the conversations with Sessions' team." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: It is impossible to believe three top White House officials -- counsel, chief-of-staff & press secretary -- just happened to call up Sessions of their own volition to urge him not to recuse. Trump did it with a hammer in the Oval Office. ...
... Natasha Bertrand of Business Insider interviewed Simona Mangiante, George Papadopoulos' fiancee. Shortly after the FBI arrested Papadopoulos, "Mangiante flew to Chicago to see Papadopoulos and was promptly served with a subpoena by a federal agent working for special counsel Robert Mueller. 'The interview [with agents working for Mueller] lasted about two hours, and they asked a lot of questions about Joseph Mifsud, Mangiante said, referring to the London-based professor who told Papadopoulos in April 2016 that the Russians had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton in the form of 'thousands of emails.'... Mangiante ... work[ed] for Mifsud -- from September through November of 2016 -- at the London Centre of International Law Practice." Bertrand goes on to describe what's publicly known about Mifsud. ...
... More Trump Family Troubles. David Cloud of the Los Angeles Times: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has recalled for questioning at least one participant in a controversial meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016, and is looking into President Trump's misleading claim that the discussion focused on adoption, rather than an offer to provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Some defense lawyers involved in the case view Mueller's latest push as a sign that investigators are focusing on possible obstruction of justice by Trump and several of his closest advisors for their statements about the politically sensitive meeting, rather than for collusion with the Russians. Investigators also are exploring the involvement of the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump, who did not attend the half-hour sit-down on June 9, 2016, but briefly spoke with two of the participants, a Russian lawyer and a Russian-born Washington lobbyist. Details of the encounter were not previously known." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Okay, that's three Trump kiddies (Junior, Eric & Ivanka) & one son-in-law who are now under investigation. Couldn't be more pleased. And who better to design the orange jumpsuits than Ivanka? Maybe a family crest? ...
... Brennan Weiss of Business Insider: "The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched a probe into Kushner Companies, the New York real-estate firm owned by the family of ... Jared Kushner, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. The investigation reportedly focuses on the company's use of the EB-5 visa program, which allows 10,000 immigrant visas each year in an effort to promote investment from foreign countries into less-developed regions or create jobs in the US." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Julia Manchester of the Hill: "A Breitbart editor blasted a tweet from President Trump attacking his former chief strategist and current Breitbart chairman Stephen Bannon.... 'This is outrageous even by POTUS standards,' Breitbart London editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam tweeted late Friday, responding to a tweet from Trump that went after 'Sloppy Steve Bannon.' In a tweet blasting a new tell-all book, Trump claimed that Bannon 'cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!'" ...
Cold as ICE. Mark Curnutte of the Cincinnati Enquirer: "Federal immigration officials said Friday they will proceed with the deportation of an Ohio man who is the sole provider and trained medical caregiver of a 6-year-old paraplegic boy. The Detroit office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a statement via email to The Cincinnati Enquirer, which profiled the boy, Ricky Solis, and had requested an update on the case on Wednesday. Yancarlos Mendez, 27, of Springdale has lived with the boy's mother, Sandra Mendoza, since 2014 and has become the only father Ricky has known. His birth father is no longer in Ricky's life after he had beaten and emotionally abused Mendoza." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
All the Best People, Ctd. Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "A former National Park Service official who improperly helped Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder cut down more than 130 trees to improve a river view at his Potomac, Md., estate has been chosen by the Trump administration to be one of the agency's highest-ranking leaders. According to an internal email circulated at the Department of the Interior, P. Daniel Smith will assume the agency's deputy director position on Monday.... [To help Snyder remove the trees,] Smith pressured lower-level officials to approve a deal that disregarded federal environmental laws, harmed the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park and left the agency vulnerable to charges of favoritism, according to an Inspector General report." ...
... Mrs. McC: We know from the early days of the transition that Trump was promising to be a horrible president, based solely on his first picks for high-level positions. It seems to me that his picks are purposely making a mockery of the government he is supposedly running. Of course, this particular in-your-face appointment is probably what Trump considers an apt response to all of the environmental roadblocks here & abroad (Scotland) that Trump has faced in building his golf resorts. Wealthy people, after all, should be free to do what they want, & if what they want leads to local environmental degradation, well, so what?
No, Irony Isn't Dead. Adam Raymond of New York: "National Security Agency head Admiral Mike Rogers is retiring in the spring, he reportedly told staffers in a 'classified memo' Friday. The memo has since leaked to NPR and Politico, among others. It's a fitting end to Rogers's four-year tenure at the NSA, which was marked by high-profile intelligence leaks and his efforts to prevent them. Brought on in the aftermath of Edward Snowden's bombshell NSA leaks, Rogers was tasked with making sure nothing of the sort ever happened again. But he wasn't successful." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
John Wagner of the Washington Post: "President Trump may have killed his panel probing allegations of widespread voter fraud, but the controversy surrounding its mission appears destined to continue. Upon issuing an executive order last week terminating the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity -- which met only twice and faced a flood of lawsuits -- Trump said he had asked the Department of Homeland Security to take a look at the panels work and 'determine next courses of action.' Boosters of the commission, including its vice chairman and driving force, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), are pushing for the DHS to focus on using data that the department collects on citizenship to ferret out illegal voters on state voting rolls."
Max Greenwood of the Hill: "New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is coming out against President Trump's plan to expand offshore drilling in federal waters off the U.S. coast. 'Of course I oppose drilling off of New Hampshire's coastline,' Sununu, a Republican, said Saturday, according to The Associated Press. The Trump administration announced a plan on Thursday to drastically expand the federal waters in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans available for offshore oil and natural gas drilling." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is pretty great because, by one official measure, New Hampshire has only 13 miles of coastline.
Tim Arango of the New York Times: "... the growing divide between California and the Trump administration erupted this past week over a dizzying range of flash points.... What had been a rhetorical battle between a liberal state and a conservative administration is now a full-fledged fight. Just as Californians were enjoying their first days of legal pot smoking, the Trump administration moved to enforce federal laws against the drug. On the same day, the federal government said it would expand offshore oil drilling, which California's Senate leader called an assault on 'our pristine coastline.' When President Trump signed a law that would raise the tax bills of many Californians by restricting deductions, lawmakers in this state proposed a creative end-around -- essentially making state taxes charitable contributions, and fully deductible.... New laws that went into effect on Jan. 1 in California raised the minimum wage, allowed parents to withhold gender on birth certificates and strengthened what were already some of the toughest gun laws in the country by restricting ammunition sales and assault weapons, and barring school officials from carrying concealed weapons at work. Taken together, the measures are the surest signs yet of how California is setting itself apart from Washington -- and many parts of America, too."
Ruby Cramer of BuzzFeed: "One of the Democratic Party's biggest donors says she is reconsidering her support for the women in the U.S. Senate who called for Al Franken's resignation following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate touching. The San Francisco-based donor, Susie Tompkins Buell, 75, has given millions of dollars to Democratic causes since the 1990s. She is best known as a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton, but has also contributed for decades to Democratic women senators, hosting a regular spring fundraiser for the lawmakers in California called 'Women on the Road to the Senate.'... In two interviews this week, Buell described the push for Franken's departure as 'unfair,' 'cavalier,' and somewhat politically motivated -- 'a stampede,' 'like a rampage,' she said, speaking in stark terms about senators she has backed for years, naming [Kirsten] Gillibrand [D-N.Y.] in particular." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Katherine Stewart in a New York Times op-ed: "The Museum of the Bible, which sits a few blocks southwest of the United States Capitol..., is a safe space for Christian nationalists, and that is the key to understanding its political mission.... Ralph Drollinger, the founder and president of Capitol Ministries and one of the most politically influential pastors in America..., held a training conference for some 80 international associates at the museum on the topic of 'creating and sustaining discipleship ministries to political leaders.' Mr. Drollinger believes that social welfare programs 'have no basis in Scripture,' that Christians in government have an obligation to hire only Christians and that women should not be allowed to teach grown men.... Mr. Drollinger was an early, passionate supporter of Donald Trump's presidential candidacy.... The participants in his groups, however, aren't just anybody. They include Mike Pompeo...; Jeff Sessions...; Mike Pence; Betsy DeVos ...; and other senior officials in the Trump administration." The museum's founder is Steve Green of Hobby Lobby infamy. "Given the theologico-political goals of its founders and patrons, it isn't hard to see that the location of this museum was an act of symbolic and practical genius. If you're going to build a Christian nation, this is where you start."
News Lede
New York Times: "John W. Young, who walked on the moon, commanded the first space shuttle mission and became the first person to fly in space six times, died on Friday at his home in Houston. He was 87.... Mr. Young joined NASA in the early years of manned spaceflight and was still flying, at age 53, in the era of space shuttles. He was the only astronaut to fly in the Gemini, Apollo and shuttle programs. He was also chief of NASA's astronauts office for 13 years and a leading executive at the Johnson Space Center in Houston."
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Since we haven't heard from my old pal God for the longest time I wondered whether he had simply washed his hands of the whole mess and was spending all his time on Cloud 9 watching football and munching on Doritos–-a favorite pastime for him–––but this morning he emerged from a snow bank, cold and dripping wet, pleading with me to let him in before he caught his death.
Wow, God, I said, you need some fire and fury to warm those old bones of yours and a good hot cup of Starbucks French roast. He agreed, of course, but not before he let out what I would describe as a guttural yelp at the mention of the state of this nation. We discussed this state of play over said coffee and a sweet bun and he let me know that without his steady hand at the helm everything has gone to pot. He is remorseful, but said once retired, you stay retired. But, I asked, couldn't he do just a little bitty thing to make Donald go away? He looked at me long and hard and finally said––"You'll see." With that he got up, thanked me, was about to leave but turned around and said, "By the way, tell Marie the word "Clunkweasel" is one of my favorite words for those lunkheads––who do you think gave it to Jeanne? I pay visits to more than just you, you know."
The Mental State:
Nick Pachelli over on Esquire discusses the findings of professor Bandy Lee in the book: The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump
Coverage of the President usually opens with a cunning line that drags Donald Trump followed by scathing jabs that, at this point, feel like muscle memory. Ill-informed. Erratic. Self-destructive. Abusive. Bigoted. Paranoid. Insecure. Spiteful. They all serve to capture the singularity of this moment; a time when, yes, even President Challenges Own Secretary of State to IQ Test is a real-life headline. "The ‘stable genius’ isn’t even functioning as president"
..." —(boldface added for emphasis).
The Fourth Estate:.
What continually ticks me off about the MSM is how they still nice-Nelly what was actually said, just spotted this at the end of a David Nakamura/ Karen Tumulty piece in Washington Post An earlier version of this report said that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson denied calling President Trump "“a moron.”" He did not directly deny it.
Isn't it wonderful how the media is ever so careful to spare our tender sensibilities, they (ahem) skip the fucking adjective that Tillerson used.
The State of Conscience:
To my surprise, I find myself reading Jennifer Rubin more frequently, she's become rather the sharp observer of Trump's unfitness for office. I used to skip her Republicans-are-ever-so-wonderful columns, but somehow she's found religion: "The ‘stable genius’ isn’t even functioning as president"
The State of DisDress:
Saw a photo of casual Saturday at Camp David...worth a thousand words or more than a Tweet can say. A gathering of
ClunkWeasels & Cow-Tailers United! (Good one, Jeanne).
PD,
Not sure from whence came “clunkweasel” but it appears we must credit Jeanne with the creation of a very useful portmanteau word. And one usable in mixed company to boot. Thank you, Jeanne. And I’m sure every last clunkweasel in the Trump Gang of Traitors, liars, and thieves thanks you as well, and there are gobs of these god awful things sliming through the open sewer that is the Trumpy White House. That’s a passel of clunkweasels!
@Ak, I was thinking of something a little more alliterative, like, a clutch of clunkweasels. But I guess it's Jeanne's call.
MAG:
Me, too, on Rubin.
Just one caveat or expression of mild skepticism about her coat of new, more reasonable colors.
In the bad old days, before the Pretender's ascension and the Bezos purchase of the Post, almost everything she wrote was fundamentally about Israel, Israel, right or wrong, and therefore to my mind not worth reading. That no longer seems to be the case.
Since I doubt she's tossed concern for Israel into her personal scrapheap, and since the Pretender is now Israel's loudest defender, I'm wondering if 1) she got whacked over the head by the Post editorial board or 2) she had a genuine change of heart and mind because it's obvious that despite the bluster and the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital (with an embassy move to come in some undetermined future), the Pretender's mindless support for the Israeli Right will likely do more harm than good to the country and its people.
What is a 'Fake Book'?
1. it's a figment of a delusional imagination.
2. it has no pages. (Or they're glued together).
3. it vanishes like a mirage when you try to pick it up?
4. it looks like a book, but it is actually a hamburger
.............with cheese, bacon & fries.
5. if you haven't read it, it doesn't exist.
6. if you don't read, it doesn't exist.
7. Must be kinda like those piles and piles of blank pages
that Trump displayed to the media showing what his tax returns purportedly are. Ohh! I get it.
Fake Returns.
A stable genius is someone who mucks out the horses' stalls in an excellent manner.
@MAG: No, no, It's like those piles and piles of blank pages that Trump displayed to the media showing all the regulations he axed. The great thing about Trump's fake books is that the pages are all recyclable. And you thought Trump wasn't an environmentalist.
Also, I have a hinged box in the shape of a book where I keep my small collection of remote controls. That would be a fake book. Trump might have a gold-leafed one otherwise just like mine.
I've seen graduation cakes in the shape of books. Fake, right?
If a book is written entirely by an unacknowledged ghostwriter, is it a fake book? We could ask Trump about that. I'm betting he pretends he has no idea what the question means.
As for fake books with an "s," the Trump Organization has plenty of them. So Trump knows from keeping fake books.
But I do like your "if a tree falls in a forest ..." inquiry. In the affirmative theory, pristine book-looking things still in their wrappings would be fake books. Would the person who buys an untouched book, opens the package & reads it then be the author? In that case, a book isn't a book till someone reads, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." That's taking reader response theory to a whole new level.
You raise so many questions, questions we would not have asked had Donald Trump never crossed our minds. So for that, we must all say, "Thanks, Donald!" Such an intellectually-stimulated fellow. He's, like, smart.
Well, at least we got some clarity on something -- from Victoria.
In addition, she has identified a career for Mr. Trump that matches his abilities.
...Yes, Virginia, there really are good news stories out there.
Valerie Strauss over on WAPO A school sought 50 men to stand in for absent fathers at ‘Breakfast with Dads’ — nearly 600 showed up
"stand up guys"
@BeaMcCrab: Trump's just not like, smart... he's like
really smart. And via Victoria, now I've refined my definition of
what exactly is meant by horse sense!
Does Victoria perchance allude to the president* as a muckraker?
Definition of muckraker: One who spreads real or alleged
scandal about another (usually for political advantage). Would
our president* do that?
@ Bea: "The great thing about Trump's fake books is that the pages are all recyclable. And you thought Trump wasn't an environmentalist."
Yeah, they're recyclable, but given Trump's never-ending contempt for non-loyalists (anyone pro-environment, apparently), he'd scatter all the papers in Alaska's pristine forests out the window of the Trump jumbo jet just because he's such a prick.
The whole extreme anti-environmentalism going on right now has me especially incensed, and has me asking myself more questions.
How come self-identified Republicans or "conservatives", never, ever stand up for the environment? Since when did protecting clean air and water become a hyper-partisan issue, where the entire population leaves it up to Democrats and, likely, some "independents" to push back, yell, protest and organize against the blatant rape of our environment for corporate profits? The entire health of America's natural environment rests squarely on the shoulders of the Democratic Party. All conservatives are wholly corrupt and would sell off our Sequoias for lumber wood to Home Depot for a few grand in campaign cash. For them, everything is dollar signs: Biggest trees = bigly money. Period.
Surely there is a major constituency of conservative hunters, fisher(wo)men, and nature lovers in general: how come they raise no rabble whatsoever when deregulation brings oil rigs into their forests, chemical residues into their lungs, or poisons wildlife with deadly chemicals in their streams? Surely some conservatives do push back, but I can't, off the top of my head, think of one time there was a serious campaign of conservative voters that made their environmental protection demands into a national media outlet.
Is it fear and loathing? Laziness? As long as it's NIMBY then fuck it?
In face of the all-out assault of the Pruitt Pollution Agency, and given the GOP domination of everything government, never before has the environmental cause seen such a sad, pathetic herd of fucking clunkweasels.
Safari:
A simple answer:
There is a mountain of short term profit to be made from deliberately degrading (a nice word for it) the environment and the resources it contains. If the environment is thought of as a bank, it's fair to call what the Pretender's administration is perpetrating bank robbery--by and for the police.
And whaddyaknow, Bannon nationally castrates himself before The Donald, for Junior! Ouch! At least it wasn't Eric?
Sure seems like the Breitbart Believers just had their old KKK leader willingly kneel down and grovel for $$$ with the Grand Wizard's tiny prick in his mouth. That's embarrassing.
@ Victoria: How about ...at an excellent manor??
@ Ken
I realize that short term pocket-stuffing is the ultimate priority of every GOP elected official or connected power player. But any true outdoors(wo)man worth their weight knows that a clean environment is necessary for the cycle of life (indicating long-term investment) that produces their giant bucks, turkeys, salmon or bass they love to hunt or fish. These people are also interested in the consumption of raw resources but on a much different scale, but they have to know that the ratfucking of their party puts their favorite hobbies in peril, or at least degrades its overall quality. That's the significant constituency that I can't understand: the conservative Americans who realize and feel the negative consequences of these terrible public policy decisions.
That's something they should/could stand up for, and yet their collective voices are as loud and those famous trees that get illegally felled in the forest when no one's watching...
Safari,
Double Yup.
If they ever really knew, conservatives have long forgotten what it means to conserve, its meaning overwhelmed by both the secular chorus of unthinking consumption that they have heard since birth and by the sectarian voodoo that the Lord will somehow provide....and keep providing for the many Christian conservatives who think of themselves as the center of a universe created solely for their needs and desires.
And the human race has never been too good at long-term thinking, has it? Conservatives portray it as a luxury available only to those ivory tower elites or tree-huggers they like to bash.
Plenty of gigging musicians have Fake Books. A Fake Book for them is a big book of lead sheets (rudimentary melody line with changes and lyrics). They’re especially useful at gigs like weddings where some drunk guy is apt to request “Lazybones” or some obscure Broadway song, or “Rockin’ Chair” (the Hoagy Carmichael song). Not all the musicians are apt to know much more than the basic tune and fake books help you to, well, fake it. Go into any music store and you’ll find rows of books all claiming to be the Best Fake Book Ever.
I even have a fake book with a couple of songs perfect for the little king: “I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)” and Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang”, “Well Don’t you know...” heh-heh.
Hey, I just remembered that I’ve got one for little mikey pence too. Another “on the lam” song: “Indiana Wants Me (Lord, I can’t go back there)”...”I’m getting tired of runnin, and now the law is comin’”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KNM5g2ARGyY
Let me get this straight. Bannon says he called someone 'treasonous' who represented Trump at the meeting. Two things. He just said that he used the word that Wulff said he used. Not fake. Then he said he didn't say Trump Jr. I'm confused. Bannon wasn't there. So how could he know who did what? Maybe he picked one he didn't like but what he actually said is the Trump team committed treason.
Sorry for trying to be logical.
Marvin,
Logic?? Nothing more fake!
You're fired!
Donnie.
Thank you Donnie. There is no greater honor than being fired by you.
How are the mighty fallen!
The Great Giant of Alt-Right Political Ratfucking, KKK Steve, is crawling on his fat belly to a mentally disturbed imbecile (is there a more trenchant image of the essential fraudulence of winger Weltanschauung than this?) begging his forgiveness. The reason? Bannon is nothing without an umbilical cord to power and money. The military, Goldman Sachs, Hollywood, Breitbart, then Trump and the Mercers were all imperative support structures in propping up Bannon's most ghastly socio-political fantasies, in allowing him the wherewithal to propagate his scurrilous, nihilist, anti-Democratic, egotistical, pseudo-Leninist delusions of grandeur.
Let's do a little thought experiment. Let's take two of the most hated liberal boogeymen for the right. Let's see how many rich, powerful, connected oligarchs and machers supported them and the rise--and continued power--of their ideas.
Saul Alinsky and Martin Luther King.
Both are routinely trotted out by the right as evil icons representing the sort of America they loathe. An America in which the poor, the immigrants, the non-white, and the dispossessed have a voice. These are people they spit on. But how is it that without the sort of enormous advantages provided to such as Steve Bannon, both Alinsky and King still scare the bejesus out of wingers of all stripes? If they were the nothings Confederates claim them to be, why are they still waved around like golems to scare little wingers?
Bannon and his ideas, such as they are, and you can include Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Grassley and Trump and the whole kit and caboodle of 'em, would be nothing without the support of powerful friends with giant wads of money. This is why he is trying desperately now to mend fences, because he's nothing without his connections to money and power.
Do you think Dr. King, sitting in that jail in Birmingham, was desperately scheming as to how he could get back in the good graces of some Mercer-like font of cash? Saul Alinsky, shortly before his death, was asked, in a Playboy interview, about where he'd like to end up in the afterlife:
"ALINSKY: ... if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell.
PLAYBOY: Why?
ALINSKY: Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I've been with the have-nots. Over here, if you're a have-not, you're short of dough. If you're a have-not in hell, you're short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I'll start organizing the have-nots over there.
PLAYBOY: Why them?
ALINSKY: They're my kind of people."
(from Wikipedia)
Can you think of any current right-wing "leader" who would say such a thing?
You know why? Their ideas are shit. And they know it. The ideas of Alinsky and King scare the crap out of them because those ideas don't need money and connections to make them credible and influential and powerful.
Wingers love to compare themselves to the founders. You know what the difference is?
Wingers working at Heritage or Cato or any of the other well financed right-wing stink tanks are well taken care of. The Founders? If they lost, they'd all have been hung. Do you think Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, or Louie Gohmert or Paul Fucking Ryan or Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly would put their asses on the line for their ideas? Would Bannon? Would TRUMP?
You know the answer. This is why you see Bannon scraping his muzzy belly in the dirt in front of the little moron king, praying that Rebekah Mercer will toss him a few shekels.
Can you picture Saul Alinsky or Martin Luther King doing that?
Oh, and even better, the line about "how are the mighty fallen" comes from Samuel 1 (Kings 1 to Bannon, if he really knows), which is even more ironic considering that neither he nor the douchey little fraud he now must crawl to know jack about Judaism or Christianity, at least not their core messages.
Fuckers.
I rest my case.
Hahaha-- I guess I was inspired! PD says God gave me the "clunkweasel" remark-- my fellow Unitarian friends would be in awe; God doesn't figure much in my make-up... Thank you all for accolades-- I think I was desperate for some sort of descriptive noun for those horrible "people" running our government. And I agree: Jennifer Rubin has had a Damascus moment-- she clearly is sharply agin all of them. And thanks, AK-- I was going there with "fake book" being a tool of band members; I went to college with a whole bunch of people who fancied themselves jazz musicians, and they all had fake books. I think they had melodies and chord progressions to enlarge upon. I dunno from experience-- never tried jazz flute. In closing, I didn't know that about the Washington Redskins owner and the next guy planning to destroy another agency. If this were a novel, it would be panned as being too unbelievable to be real life...