The Ledes

Thursday, September 26, 2024

The New York Times:' live updates of Hurricane Helene developments today are here. “Hurricane Helene was barreling through the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday en route to Florida, where residents were bracing for extreme rain, destructive winds and deadly storm surge ahead of the storm’s expected landfall. The storm could intensify to a Category 4, if not higher, before making landfall late Thursday, and forecasters warned Helene’s anticipated large size could make its impacts felt across an extensive area. Areas as distant as Atlanta and the Appalachians are at risk for heavy rains.... Many forecast models show the storm making landfall late Thursday near Florida’s Big Bend Coast, a sparsely populated stretch....” ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post has forecasts for some cites in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina & Tennessee that are in or near the probable path of Helene. ~~~

     ~~~ This morning, an MSNBC weatherperson said Tallahassee (which is inland) would experience wind gusts of up to 120 m.p.h. and that the National Weather Service said expected 20-foot storm surges near the coast would be “unsurvivable.”

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The Ledes

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

The New York Times is live-updating developments in the progress of Hurricane Helene. “Helene continued to power north in the Caribbean Sea, strengthening into a hurricane Wednesday morning, on a path that forecasters expect will bring heavy amounts of rain to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and western Cuba before it begins to move toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.” ~~~

~~~ CNN: “Helene rapidly intensified into a hurricane Wednesday as it plows toward a Florida landfall as the strongest hurricane to hit the United States in over a year. The storm will also grow into a massive, sprawling monster as it continues to intensify, one that won’t just slam Florida, but also much of the Southeast.... Thousands of Florida residents have already been forced to evacuate and nearly the entire state is under alerts as the storm threatens to unleash flooding rainfall, damaging winds and life-threatening storm surge.... The hurricane unleashed its fury on parts of Mexico’s Yucátan Peninsula and Cuba Wednesday.“

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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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The Commentariat -- July 29, 2018

Late Morning Update:

Washington Post: "'I would be willing to "shut down" government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall!' Trump tweeted. 'Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!' Trump's threat raises the stakes ahead of a Sept. 30 government funding deadline, a political showdown before the November midterms that Republican congressional leaders had hoped to avoid."... This is a developing story.."

Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "In one of his first acts as President Trump's Veterans Affairs secretary, Robert Wilkie intends to reassign several high-ranking political appointees at the center of the agency's ongoing morale crisis and staffing exodus.... Wilkie, who will be sworn in Monday, wants to form his own leadership team..., and to ease lawmakers' continued concern that VA, historically a nonpartisan corner of the government, has become highly politicized. He discussed the proposed personnel moves with Trump in recent days aboard Air Force One, while en route to a veterans convention in Kansas City, Mo.... Announcements could come as soon as this week, pending approval from the White House Personnel Office." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Say what? A Trump cabinet member who wants to do a good job & actually drain Trump's swamp? This guy is not fitting in. Howevah, he has previously worked for Sens. Jesse Helms & Trent Lott, so I'm guessing he is not all bipartisany.

TMZ: "Donald Trump's [Hollywood] Walk of Fame star has been a lightning rod for violence, but it's going to ... stay put because cops and the group that manages the Walk of Fame don't want it 86'd.... As we reported, violence erupted Thursday night where protesters punched, kicked and otherwise abused their opponents. nd, the star has been destroyed twice ... most recently this week when a Trump foe went at it with a pickax."

*****

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: "A closely watched British parliamentary committee examining Russia' exploitation of social media to try to influence elections has called for sweeping new regulations on tech companies, and has accused Facebook of providing 'disingenuous answers' to some questions while avoiding others 'to the point of obstruction. A report from the House of Commons panel, which is investigating 'fake news' on the internet, cited Facebook's resistance to disclosing information as evidence of the need for more stringent rules to hold social media giants accountable for content.... The panel -- the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee -- collaborated with the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington, which on Friday announced that it would hold its own hearing in the coming week on foreign influence operations over social media." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... ** The Big Picture. Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post: "A wing of the Republican Party is preparing to double down and support the Russian autocracy, which it believes, mistakenly, is 'Christian.' While the Pentagon and parts of the bureaucracy -- the State Department, the FBI -- certainly understand the need to push back in Europe, the White House certainly does not... Authoritarian tactics, from pressure on the media to pressure on the courts, clearly appeal to the party's base. This matters because [Mariia] Butina is at most the tip of the iceberg, one of the sillier, more junior players in a broader game. Far more important are Russian oligarchs bearing bribes or Russian hackers probing vulnerabilities in our political system as well as our electrical grid. To push back against them, as well as their equivalents from the rest of the autocratic world, we will need not only to catch the odd agent but also to make our political funding systems more transparent, to write new laws banning shell companies and money laundering, and to end the manipulation of social media. It took more than a generation for Americans to reject the temptations of communist authoritarianism; it will take more than a generation before we have defeated kleptocratic authoritarianism too -- if we still can." (Also linked yesterday.)...

... The Clean-up Crew

     ... (Defense 1) Conspiring with Russian Ops Is No Big Deal. John Bowden of The Hill: "Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Saturday downplayed renewed scrutiny over whether President Trump knew in advance about his son's meeting with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election, saying 'nobody's going to be surprised.' Issa was pressed by Fox News's Neil Cavuto.... 'You don't think this has any long-term impact?'...'He wouldn't be the first politician, or president for that matter, to maybe just misrepresent things?' [Cavuto asked]. 'Businessmen listen to almost everyone who might be helpful, and by the way, they make pragmatic decisions about how to make bad stories go away,' Issa replied." --safari ...

     ... (Defense 2) Cohen & Davis Doctored the Tape. Ellison Barber & Matt Leach of Fox "News": "... Rudy Giuliani tells Fox News two experts and retired FBI agents have analyzed the secretly recorded Trump-Cohen tape and believe it was 'played' with. 'Now that we've seen the full scope of [Michael] Cohen and Lanny Davis' deception, we don't trust anything,' Giuliani said.... According to Giuliani, analysts say the public audio is a 'tape of a tape,' and because of that, they are unable to determine if Cohen cut off the recording in the room, in real time, or altered and/or erased parts of it at a later date." Mrs. McC: This of course is a subset of the overarching defense of all things Trump: "Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening." Also, similar to Trump's claim that the "Access Hollywood" tape may be fake.


Maureen Dowd: "Trump's like a mobster, [Trump biographer Michael] D'Antonio said, in the sense that he 'does not believe that anyone is honest. He doesn't believe that your motivations have anything to do with right and wrong and public service. It's all about self-interest and a war of all against all. He's turning America into Mulberry Street in the '20s, where you meet your co-conspirators in the back of the candy store.'" Mrs. McC: The pathetic part: this will probably be DiJit's favorite MoDo column evah. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: My late husband, BTW, is yelling from the ether as he hears intelligent people taking to the airwaves & describing Giuliani as Trump's consigliere, which they pronounce "con-sig-lee-air-ee." It s/b more like "cone-seal-yair-ay."


Trump Family Values, Deleted. Nick Miroff, et al., of the Washington Post: "Compounding failures to record, classify and keep track of migrant parents and children pulled apart by President Trump's 'zero tolerance' border crackdown were at the core of what is now widely regarded as one of the biggest debacles of his presidency. The rapid implementation and sudden reversal of the policy whiplashed multiple federal agencies, forcing the activation of an HHS command center ordinarily used to handle hurricanes and other catastrophes. After his 30-day deadline to reunite [what the command center called] the 'deleted' families passed Thursday, U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw lambasted the government for its lack of preparation and coordination. 'There were three agencies, and each was like its own stovepipe. Each had its own boss, and they did not communicate,' Sabraw said Friday at a court hearing in San Diego.... The government did not view the families as a discrete group or devise a special plan to reunite them, until Sabraw ordered that it be done." ...

... So this is Trump's response to "one of the biggest debacles of his presidency": "Democrats, who want Open Borders and care little about Crime, are incompetent, but they have the Fake News Media almost totally on their side! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet Saturday

Now that a court has told Trump he can't block people from his Twitter feed, I see a lot of ordinary people are giving him grief on the feed. Please feel free to join them. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

Thomas Gibbons-Neff & Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "The Trump administration is urging American-backed Afghan troops to retreat from sparsely populated areas of the country, officials said, all but ensuring the Taliban will remain in control of vast stretches of the country. The approach is outlined in a previously undisclosed part of the war strategy that President Trump announced last year, according to three officials who described the documents to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity. It is meant to protect military forces from attacks at isolated and vulnerable outposts, and focuses on protecting cities such as Kabul, the capital, and other population centers. The withdrawal resembles strategies embraced by both the Bush and Obama administrations that have started and stuttered over the nearly 17-year war. It will effectively ensure that the Taliban and other insurgent groups will hold on to territory that they have already seized, leaving the government in Kabul to safeguard the capital and cities such as Kandahar, Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad."

Nick Turse of The Intercept: "Press accounts have suggested that the number of special operators on the front lines [in Africa] has been reduced, with the head of U.S. Special Operations forces in Africa directing his troops to take fewer risks. At the same time, a 'sweeping Pentagon review' of special ops missions on the continent may result in drastic cuts in the number of commandos operating there.... While the review was reportedly ordered this spring and troop reductions may be coming, there is no evidence yet of massive cuts, gradual reductions, or any downsizing whatsoever.... In 2006..., just 1 percent of all U.S. commandos deployed overseas were in Africa.... Today, more U.S. commandos are deployed to Africa than to any other region of the world except the Middle East." --safari

Government (In)action. Luke Barnes of ThinkProgress: "On Friday, President Donald Trump finally chaired a meeting of his National Security Council devoted explicitly to combating electoral interference in the United States. The meeting ... reportedly lasted less than an hour and ended with no new directives.... The State Department, meanwhile, was given $120 million to combat election meddling -- and has spent none of it. But current and former officials familiar with the Trump administration's response to electoral meddling told NBC News that in the White House there remains no coherent strategy, no single agency or person in charge.... Instead, over the course of barely an hour, those present mainly re-hashed activities that have already been undertaken." --safari

Allan Sloan of the Washington Post demonstrates how Trump's tax-and-spend policies favor Republican-leaning states over blue states. For some reason, Sloan does think this is an unintended result. He points out how these policies pit Americans against Americans. Mrs. McC: That's the idea, too, isn't it? (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Former USDA administrator Christopher Gibbs in the Sidney Daily News: "Let me be clear. I want to be supportive of the president and his policies.... But the president's trade war, now being supported by hush money to keep agriculture sedated, is a bridge too far for me.... Let me tell you a riddle. 'I slept with a billionaire because he said he loved me. I expected to make love, but in the morning I realized I was getting screwed. When I went to tell the world, I was offered cash to keep my mouth shut.' Who am I? No, I'm not a model or someone named Stormy. I'm the American farmer." --safari

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Trump said Friday that he plans to spends almost all of his time this fall campaigning for the most vulnerable Republican congressional candidates in the midterm elections, a strategy that would have him in many districts where endangered lawmakers in his own party regard him as a liability.... '"I'll go six or seven days a week when we're 60 days out...,'" Trump told Sean Hannity. Mrs. McC: This story has been up for about 24 hours, & I didn't bother to link it till it occurred to me what it means: Trump has zero interest in his day job, and he's not even going to show up for work for two months unless there's some ceremony or visiting dignitary (or dictator) where he can show off. And of course Trump's idea of "campaigning for ... congressional candidates" is to go out into the hinterlands, maybe introduce the candidates, then talk non-stop about himself for about an hour.

Javanka Is/Are Back. Maggie Haberman & Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "... as one staff member after another has disappointed him and has departed or been dispatched, Mr. Trump has retreated into the familiarity of his family -- his daughter, above all, and eventually, her husband. As Mr. Trump, cut off from dissenting voices and convinced of his own popularity, has become more emboldened, so have his daughter and son-in-law." Mrs. McC: Great, because what this country needs is a selfish, incompetent, know-nothing president* whose closest advisors are his know-nothing relatives. ...

... BUT Alice Ollstein of TPM notes, "The New York Times reported Saturday that President Donald Trump's relationship with his son-in-law Jared Kushner has deteriorated over the past few months, and that the president now routinely complains that 'Jared hasn't been so good for me' and that he could have had NFL star Tom Brady as a son-in-law instead." ...

... All the Best People, Ctd. Hiroko Tabuchi & Tryggvi Adalbjornsson of the New York Times: Peter C. Wright, "the lawyer nominated to run the Superfund toxic cleanup program, is steeped in the complexities of restoring polluted rivers and chemical dumps. He spent more than a decade on one of the nation's most extensive cleanups, one involving Dow Chemical's sprawling headquarters in Midland, Mich. But while he led Dow's legal strategy there, the chemical giant was accused by regulators, and in one case a Dow engineer, of submitting disputed data, misrepresenting scientific evidence and delaying cleanup, according to internal documents and court records as well as interviews with more than a dozen people involved in the project.... Wright was nominated in March by President Trump to be assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency overseeing the Superfund program.... He is already working at the agency in an advisory role as he awaits congressional approval.... He spent 19 years at Dow ... and once described himself in a court deposition as 'the company's dioxin lawyer.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Drain the swamp? Ha! Trump is filling it with toxic sludge. You might suspect he asks his staff to come up with the worst possible person for every job, then gives the country -- and in this case Mother Earth, too -- the finger. ...

... All the Best People, Ctd. Robert O'Harrow of the Washington Post: "The White House has assumed control over hiring at a small federal agency that promotes economic growth in poor countries, installing political allies and loyalists in appointed jobs intended for development experts, according to documents and interviews. Until the Trump administration, only the chief executive and several other top officials of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) were selected by the White House.... But starting last year, the White House began naming political appointees to the lower-level positions.... In a statement to The Post, [Sen. Robert] Menendez [D-NJ] ... said..., 'Congress gave MCC special hiring authority so that it could operate with efficiency and effectiveness, not so that it could become a dumping ground for unqualified partisan loyalists and lackeys.'..."

Fake Official Reports. Dan Diamond of Politico: "While every administration puts its imprint on the executive branch and promotes ideas that advance its own agenda, this one has ventured several steps further -- from scrubbing links to climate change studies from an Environmental Protection Agency website to canceling an Interior Department study on coal mining risks and suppressing reports on water contamination and the dangers of formaldehyde. Inside the Health and Human Services policy research shop, staffers say the political pressures to tailor facts to fit Trump's message have been unprecedented.... [One] report suggesting that millions more people would get health coverage if Obamacare were rolled back -- a finding at odds with nearly every independent analysis -- was widely mocked and produced over the objections of career staff...." Another got a "false" rating from PolitiFact."

The "Mulvaney Discount." David Dayen of The Intercept: "There's a hot new trend in Donald Trump's Washington: the 'Mulvaney discount.' After pausing enforcement work when Acting Director Mick Mulvaney took over, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been on a relative tear.... But in at least three [civil settlements], CFPB has explicitly reduced the fine handed down against corporate offenders to a fraction of the initial amount.... 'A pattern is emerging of greater willingness [to discount fines] than we saw in bureau cases in the past,' said Christopher Peterson, former enforcement counsel of the CFPB during the Obama administration.... Peterson could only remember a couple of cases during the previous five years of the bureau's existence when fines were reduced. And in those rare cases, CFPB did so to maximize restitution to victims of fraud and abuse -- the smaller fine left more money for victims. Here, those victims are often being shortchanged." --safari (Also linked yesterday.)

The Literary Experience in the Age of Trump :

     ... One lady is surprised to see Spicer in a bookstore: "The books have spines; Sean does not."

Josh Barro of Business Insider: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren's recent remark that she is a 'capitalist to my bones' is being treated as some kind of news, even though it is consistent with the policies and rhetoric the liberal Massachusetts senator has espoused for her entire career. Warren's major policy project is to make markets work right for regular people. If you want to make markets work well, then obviously you are in favor of markets and capitalism.... Amusingly, one of the politicians in America who best understands the political appeal of this approach is Donald Trump.... But ... his definition of 'where markets have gone wrong' is centered around his personal self-interest.... [And] his public pronouncements are rarely followed up by policy action.... Warren is better positioned than almost any Democrat to point out Trump's hollow approach to fixing markets." Mrs. McC: Barro is (or was) a Republican.

"Capitalism is Awesome," Ctd. Michelle Conlin of Reuters: "Invitation Homes pitches itself as a singular landlord providing unprecedented ease and comfort for renters of its tens of thousands of single-family homes.... As a Blackstone vehicle, Invitation Homes led Wall Street's charge into the single-family-home rental business, snapping up houses at fire-sale prices. After its merger last November with Starwood Waypoint Homes, another private-equity-backed foray into the market, Invitation Homes became the largest landlord of single-family homes in the United States by number of rental units.... Critics of Wall Street's push into the rental market say ... Invitation Homes, like some of its Wall Street-backed peers, adheres to a business model that pressures it to lean hard on tenants to satisfy investors.... Industry critics say that to keep payments to bond investors rolling, companies like Invitation Homes must minimize maintenance costs and maximize rents and fees." A long piece filled with tenant horror stories. --safari (Also linked yesterday.)

Way Beyond

Emily Schultheis of The Atlantic: "It is the final stretch of campaign season in Cambodia.... Yet somehow it still doesn't feel like a parliamentary election is happening on Sunday in this country of 16 million. In large part, that's because there are effectively no longer any independent news outlets left in Cambodia to cover it.... Cambodia is hardly the only country in Southeast Asia experiencing a crackdown on the free press. Never known as a bastion of journalistic freedom, the region has taken a sharply repressive turn, from the jailing of two Reuters journalists in Myanmar, to assaults from armies of online trolls in the Philippines, to the now-infamous Anti-Fake News Act in Malaysia, which imposed harsh penalties on anyone discovered to be spreading what the government deemed 'fake news.'"--safari

News Lede

Los Angeles Times: "Two young children and their great-grandmother are the latest victims of a massive and fast-moving wildfire in Shasta County[, California,] that officials acknowledged Saturday they were making little progress in controlling.... With the unyielding 100-plus degree temperatures and bone-dry vegetation, authorities said there was no end in sight to the fire and expressed particular alarm about its rapid expansion. Between Friday night and Saturday morning, the fire doubled in size. Despite the efforts of 3,400 firefighters aided by bulldozers and helicopters throughout Saturday , the blaze continued spreading toward residential areas west and south of downtown Redding. As of Sunday morning, the blaze had burned 89,000 acres and was only 5% contained, authorities said." At least five people have been killed in the fire. "Authorities are investigating 13 other missing persons cases connected to the fire."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (6)

Bret Stephens: The Rules for Beating Donald Trump: Makes some good points:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/opinion/donald-trump-2020.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-columnists

And I would add to his list the horrific immigration debacle concentrating on the immorality of its procedures rather than the immigration itself. The "Make America Great" aficionados are all for "keeping them out" but I would think the separation of children from their families plus the inability to connect them because they have become lost in the system would hit the heart a wee bit.

The video showing the nastiness of a Sean Spicer book signing is sickening. Wouldn't you know Mr. Easter Bunny himself would write a stupid book and try to whitewash his own lies throughout his day job as the fatuous fabricator. I was amused that behind the desk where Sean is sitting his books line up in the background with, of course, his puss on the covers––Typical, as some critic might say–-too piss elegant by half!

July 29, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

I heard Dolt say that he would be traveling six or seven days/week to campaign for his fellow dolts and that was my thought also-- it will probably be fine-- he doesn't do actual work anyhow. And yeah, all good for him. Smirking and smugness in arriving at a place filled with the horrible red-hatted ruralites, throw bombs at anything or anybody he doesn't like, pen up the press like cattle, incite riots and bloviate about himself endlessly-- it'll be like the fantasticest, never-seen-before rallies, all paid-for by US! What could be better?? Disgusting pig. Not meaning to insult pigs...

July 29, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterJeanne

Jesus and Hate

It's worthwhile working through the ties between Russian oligarchs connected to Putin, and Russian-NRA-religious right-Trump worker bee Maria Butina.

Butina, as a 28 year old up and comer in PutinWorld, developed a can't miss entrée into the desmesne of Confederate haters, gun knobbers, and anti-American, anti-Democratic wingers.

She set up a guns rights group in Putin's Russia in order to gain access to NRA insiders in the US. So here's the problem with that: Putin is not a fan. As someone who has no doubt been indoctrinated into the history of the Russian Revolution, and as a former KGB officer, Putin understands the dangers of allowing just any Boris and Natasha to own guns. Hunting rifles are okay in Russia, but handguns? Nyet. As in Nyet fucking way.

So how come Maria Butina's "guns rights" group was allowed to live? Get my point? Putin kills anyone who doesn't go along with his plans. If Butina's group was allowed to flourish, it was with his consent, and his sense of how she could play a role in his ratfucking of Trump's Amerika.

Okay. So now she comes to the US, backed by a billionaire Putin oligarch and she starts pole dancing her ideas to old white guy NRA gun knobbers. She invites them to Siberia to kill anything that moves. They love it. A cute Russian chick who hates gays and Mooslims and loves to shoot things. What's not to like?

Then there's the connection between Christianist haters and Putin-Russian haters. They all hate gay people. And Islam. So what better way to develop an ironclad contact between a culture formerly feared and despised by American conservative religious groups and Putin's new, faux Christian revival movement.

This revival movement is not much more than an attempt to use traditional religious whooop-de-doo to attack groups (gays and Muslims, for instance) hated and despised by both American and Russian Christianists. Bingo! Best Friends Forever!

So what we have here is the fact that American Christians are more aligned with a Russian dictator, in order for both to stick it to gays and Muslims, than with the Constitutional heritage of the United States of America.

It's all about hate. Another reason they love them the Trump Monster.

July 29, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Jesus and Hate

It's worthwhile working through the ties between Russian oligarchs connected to Putin, and Russian-NRA-religious right-Trump worker bee Maria Butina.

Butina, as a 28 year old up and comer in PutinWorld, developed a can't miss entrée into the desmesne of Confederate haters, gun knobbers, and anti-American, anti-Democratic wingers.

She set up a guns rights group in Putin's Russia in order to gain access to NRA insiders in the US. So here's the problem with that: Putin is not a fan. As someone who has no doubt been indoctrinated into the history of the Russian Revolution, and as a former KGB officer, Putin understands the dangers of allowing just any Boris and Natasha to own guns. Hunting rifles are okay in Russia, but handguns? Nyet. As in Nyet fucking way.

So how come Maria Butina's "guns rights" group was allowed to live? Get my point? Putin kills anyone who doesn't go along with his plans. If Butina's group was allowed to flourish, it was with his consent, and his sense of how she could play a role in his ratfucking of Trump's Amerika.

Okay. So now she comes to the US, backed by a billionaire Putin oligarch and she starts pole dancing her ideas to old white guy NRA gun knobbers. She invites them to Siberia to kill anything that moves. They love it. A cute Russian chick who hates gays and Mooslims and loves to shoot things. What's not to like?

Then there's the connection between Christianist haters and Putin-Russian haters. They all hate gay people. And Islam. So what better way to develop an ironclad contact between a culture formerly feared and despised by American conservative religious groups and Putin's new, faux Christian revival movement.

This revival movement is not much more than an attempt to use traditional religious whooop-de-doo to attack groups (gays and Muslims, for instance) hated and despised by both American and Russian Christianists. Bingo! Best Friends Forever!

So what we have here is the fact that American Christians are more aligned with a Russian dictator, in order for both to stick it to gays and Muslims, than with the Constitutional heritage of the United States of America.

It's all about hate. Another reason they love them the Trump Monster.

July 29, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Update on a previous post.

The other day I ranted about the militarization of American sports.

It's a serious problem. Not because Americans reject the overt and ubiquitous presence of the military at sporting events, but because many seem completely okay with it.

Saturday morning, at a swim meet for my little man and his teammates and a number of other local teams, I was astounded to see that the event began with an ostentatious presentation of a color guard and the typical reverential singing of the national anthem.

At a fucking swim meet for pre-teens.

What.The.Fuck.

Are you kidding? Kids can't even jump into a pool without obeisance to the fucking Pentagon and Trump????

I lost it a bit and said something along those lines and I was told that I clearly didn't understand how things are done in Red States, the underpinning meaning was that I was not a real 'merican.

This is outrageous. The implication was that I didn't "support the troops", which is certainly not the case. I've had family members in the military and I completely honor their service.

But this is little kids at a pool being brainwashed into the idea that the military is the end-all and be-all of being an American, that they are the HE-ROES we need to support at all costs.

This is not right.

There are plenty of heroes in our society.

My dad had a heart condition, but he dragged himself out of bed every day for a decade after the first of many heart attacks to make sure his kids had food and clothing and a roof over our heads, and he did this until four days before he died. There were days when I picked him up, as a 15 year old, at the bottom of the stairs and carried him up because he couldn't make it on his own. Is that not heroic?

Are teachers and doctors and nurses and social workers not heroic?

Nope. Not according to today's right-wing Amerika. Teachers and anyone in a union are evil and in need of a good ass kicking. Only cops and firefighters and the military are he-roes.

But the military are the ones who are provided with required public reverence and obsequiousness at a goddam swim meet in Red State Amerika.

July 29, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

@AK: I meant to respond to you previously re: this military passion. Just want to say I agree with you completely. This information was in some respects new to me since the only sports/games I attend are my grandchildren's soccer and basketball and here in Ct. there was never the military hoopla you describe and if memory serves me correctly the myriad number of football and baseball games I attended played by my youngest son during his school years and university years––was void of such displays. Would be interesting to find out in what states this takes place. That old Star Spangled Banner opened some of these games I think.

July 29, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe
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