;)
The Commentariat -- October 24, 2017
... Kristine Phillips & Freedom du Lac of the Washington Post: "Making her first public comments since she took the call from Trump last week -- on the same day her husband's remains were flown back to the United States -- [Myeshia] Johnson recalled that the president said her husband 'knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyways. And it made me cry. I was very angry at the tone of his voice, and how he said it.' She added: 'I didn't say anything. I just listened.' Trump on Monday disputed Johnson's account, characterizing his conversation with her as 'very respectful.' 'I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon). ...
... ** In Effect, Trump Called a Gold Star Widow a Liar. Amy Sorkin of the New Yorker: "There were no accompanying words of compassion [from Trump] for Johnson, who said that the call 'made me cry even worse.'... This is a steep escalation of Trump's claims that Representative Frederica Wilson, who was in a car with Johnson during the call, and said that the President had not been respectful, had 'totally fabricated' her account of it." ...
... Mrs Bea McCrabbie: Let me think, whom do I believe? The apolitical new widow of an American soldier KIA or a guy who tells a whopper -- in public -- an average of five times a day? That of course does not include the many fibs he surely tells off-the-record. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: The headline on Politico's story is "Trump spars with widow of slain soldier about condolence call." I'm no historian, but I'll bet a headline that reads "[President] spars with widow of slain soldier" is a first in American history. ...
...Spineless. Luke Barnes of ThinkProgress: "[A]s Trump attacked a grieving military widow, Congressional Republicans were completely silent online...Several Democrats blasted Trump for attacking a Gold Star widow." --safari...
... AND Andy Borotwitz "reports," "Calling himself 'unbelievably brave,' Donald Trump said on Monday that he is the only President in U.S. history with the courage to stand up to war widows." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Since Trump thinks all the liberal media put out is "fake news," we should quit labeling the Borowitz Report as satire & just accept it as another news source. If the right can treat its nutty conspiracy theories as news, why can't we? Comedians' "reports" are more truthy than are the "reports" of some right-wing outlets. ...
... Daniella Diaz of CNN: "Some senators are saying they didn't know the US had troops in Niger as questions swirl about the raid that killed four US servicemen there earlier this month.The Pentagon, however, said Monday it has kept Congress informed of the operation." Among those who said they didn't know were Lindsey Graham & Chuck Schumer.
... Michelle Goldberg makes the case that Democrats should publicly urge Trump's impeachment now. "... as the Harvard Law scholar Cass Sunstein, author of the recent book 'Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide,' told me, that doesn't mean Congress can impeach only a president who is caught breaking the law. 'Crime is neither necessary nor sufficient,' said Sunstein.... 'If the president went on vacation in Madagascar for six months, that's not a crime, but that's impeachable.'"
... Paul Krugman: John "Kelly has neither admitted error nor apologized. Instead, the White House declared that it's unpatriotic to criticize generals -- which, aside from being a deeply un-American position, is ludicrous given the many times Donald Trump has done just that. But we are living in the age of Trumpal infallibility: We are ruled by men who never admit error, never apologize and, crucially, never learn from their mistakes. Needless to say, men who think admitting error makes you look weak just keep making bigger mistakes; delusions of infallibility eventually lead to disaster, and one can only hope that the disasters ahead don't bring catastrophe for all of us.... Trumpal infallibility ... is a disease that infested the modern Republican Party long before Trump. And one of the areas where the symptoms are especially severe is monetary policy." Krugman discusses some zombie errors confederate economists can never admit.
Naomi Jagoda of the Hill: "President Trump on Monday tweeted that changes won't be made to 401(k) plans after reports that congressional Republicans were considering a major alteration to the retirement accounts in forthcoming tax-reform legislation." Mrs. McC: I would not count on taking this or any other Trump promise to the bank. (Also linked yesterday afternoon). ...
... Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Monday that he would oppose any effort to reduce the amount of pretax income that American workers can save in 401(k) retirement accounts, effectively killing an idea that Republicans were mulling as a way to help pay for a $1.5 trillion tax cut. The directive, issued via Twitter, underscored a growing fear among Republicans and business lobbyists that Mr. Trump's bully-pulpit whims could undermine the party's best chance to pass the most sweeping rewrite of the tax code in decades.... Mr. Trump 'can shift on a dime, and he has many unformed policy positions,' said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania. 'We have to worry about him shifting positions.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: The only "reform" bill Trump would not sign is one that had too few Tax-cuts-for-Trump provisions. Otherwise, Trump will sign any bill he can call a "win." If Republicans brought him a bill that abolished 401(k)s & confiscated all 401(k) funds which Americans had previously saved, Trump would sign it.
Best Way to Influence Trump: Appeal to His Greed. Eric Levitz: "In a perfect world, the American president would neither take foreign-policy advice from a casino magnate with ties to the Chinese government, nor give special preference to asylum-seekers who frequent his luxury properties. But sometimes, the next best option is, apparently, to have a president who does both.... The Wall Street Journal ... reports that casino tycoon Steve Wynn ... [who] owns multiple billion-dollar gambling properties in the Chinese region of Macau ... hand-delivered a letter to Trump that was written by the Chinese government. In the missive, Beijing urged the president to extradite Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman turned vocal critic of corruption in Xi Jinping's government. Guo fled China in 2014 and is currently seeking asylum in the United States.... During an Oval Office discussion of the Guo affair in June ... the president reportedly ... [told] his top advisers, 'We need to get this criminal [Guo] out of the country.' Those advisers eventually convinced Trump not to deport the Chinese dissident -- in part, by alerting the president to the fact that Guo was a member of his Mar-a-Lago club...."
** Ignoramus-in-Chief, Ctd. Matt Yglesias of Vox: "It's not exactly a news flash at this point that Donald Trump isn't very fluent on questions of public policy, but his interview over the weekend with Fox Business Channel's Maria Bartiromo is really a sobering reminder of the levels of ignorance and dishonesty that the country is dealing with. Bartiromo is an extraordinarily soft interviewer who doesn't ask Trump any difficult questions.... That makes the extent to which he manages to flub the interview all the more striking. He's simply incapable of discussing any topic at any length in anything remotely resembling an informed or coherent way. He says the Federal Reserve is 'important psychotically' and it's part of one of his better answers, since one can at least tell that he meant to say 'psychologically.'" Do read on. Trump is so ignorant, he's funny -- until you consider the consequences. Mrs. McC: I continue to think Trump is suffering from a form of dementia. President Reagan, who had Alzheimer's, didn't mess up like this. ...
... For Instance, There's This. Apocalypse Soon. Jeet Heer of the New Republic: "The fear that ... Donald Trump is returning the world to the nightmare years of the Cold War, when nuclear annihilation was an ever-looming threat, got more intense over the weekend with the news that the United States Air Force is preparing to put B-52 bombers on 24-hour alert for the first time since 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. According to the news site Defense One, the Air Force is anticipating an escalation in its deterrence duties as part of a general shift in America's nuclear posture, sparked by 'North Korea's rapidly advancing nuclear arsenal, President Trump's confrontational approach to Pyongyang, and Russia's increasingly potent and active armed forces.'... But the danger comes not just from Dr. Strangelove-style scenarios in which Trump lurches into the apocalypse, with his hapless military staff in tow. It also comes from a degradation of America's nuclear policy, caused by a combination of Pentagon hubris and Trump's punch-drunk diplomacy, which taken together would cause the other nations of the world to abandon diplomacy and put their faith in their own nuclear stockpiles. The longer-term danger isn't that Trump blows up the world, but that he pushes the international system towards a world with many more nukes in many more hands."
Andrew Desiderio of The Daily Beast: "When Congress sent President Donald Trump a bill in July that slapped new sanctions on Russia, the president signed the legislation reluctantly.... The administration has since blown past an October 1 deadline to implement the sanctions. Lawmakers are now searching for answers as to whether the president is even planning to follow the law.... But aside from procedural tactics, Congress is essentially powerless in compelling the executive branch to follow through on the law it forced them to sign." --safari
The Slime Always Floats on the Top of the Pond. Anita Kumar & Ben Weider of McClatchy News have a swell report on Steve Bannon's murky but lucrative ties to Middle Eastern interests. Among the names that figure into the report: Michael Flynn, Erik Prince and Robert Mercer. ...
... Charles Pierce: "One of the things that often eludes people about Steve Bannon, still apparently a presidential* adviser and the only surviving heir to House Harkonnen, is the money. For example, without the Mercer fortune, he's stapling his Deep Thoughts about world politics to a lamp post in Washington Square. He's also cozied up to people like Erik Prince, the founder of the former Blackwater murder gang and -- Bannon hopes -- possible future U.S. Senator from Wyoming."
Natasha Bertrand of Business Insider: "Banker turned human-rights activist Bill Browder says his authorization to travel to the US using his British passport via an ESTA visa was revoked on the same day that Russian prosecutors issued an Interpol warrant for his arrest on charges of tax evasion and murder. Browder tweeted over the weekend that Russian President Vladimir Putin had managed, on the fifth attempt, to place him on the Interpol list after four previous rejections by the International Police Organization.... The same day the warrant was issued, Browder said, he was notified that his ESTA had been revoked. Browder gave up his US citizenship in 1998 and became a British citizen. ESTA, or the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, is an automated system that allows tourists from a Visa Waiver Program country to travel to the US for business or pleasure for 90 days or less..... He also said the Department of Homeland Security 'refused to provide any answers' when he initially asked last week why his ESTA had been revoked. 'They suggested I file a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request and wait for the answer, which can take as long as six months,' Browder said.... Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya detailed Browder's alleged misconduct in a memo that she brought with her to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner at Trump Tower last June. The document closely mirrored a memo written by the Russian prosecutor's office months earlier...." Mrs. McC: Why, you might think the whole Trump administration was still collaborating with the Russians. ...
... Too Hot to Handle? Dan Friedman of Mother Jones: "The Department of Homeland Security said Monday that it has restored the visa of Bill Browder, a prominent critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, who announced Sunday that the Trump administration had prevented him from traveling to the United States, drawing sharp criticism of the department.... Browder's visa status quickly drew concern from US lawmakers and prominent former government officials." ...
... Tom Hunter & Julia Ainsley of NBC News: "Tony Podesta and the Podesta Group are now the subjects of a federal investigation being led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, three sources with knowledge of the matter told NBC News. The probe of Podesta and his Democratic-leaning lobbying firm grew out of Mueller's inquiry into the finances of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, according to the sources. As special counsel, Mueller has been tasked with investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Manafort had organized a public relations campaign for a non-profit called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU). Podesta's company was one of many firms that worked on the campaign, which promoted Ukraine's image in the West.... Tony Podesta is the chairman of the Podesta Group and the brother of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign chairman. John Podesta is not currently affiliated with the Podesta Group and is not part of Mueller's investigation." (Also linked yesterday afternoon). ...
... Daisuke Wakabayashi & Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: "... as investigators in Washington examine the scope and reach of Russian interference in United States politics, the once-cozy relationship between RT and YouTube is drawing closer scrutiny. YouTube -- the world's most-visited video site, owned by one of the most powerful and influential corporations in America -- played a crucial role in helping build and expand RT, an organization that the American intelligence community has described as the Kremlin's 'principal international propaganda outlet' and a key player in Russia's information warfare operations around the world.... YouTube also provided RT with the kind of perks it reserved for big publishers, including custom backgrounds for its channel in the early days and a 'check mark' that designated RT as a verified news source. Until recently, RT was also among a select group of news organizations included in Google's 'preferred' news lineup, granting them access to guaranteed revenue from premium advertisers. Those advertisers, in effect, subsidized Russia's international propaganda arm. Google dropped RT from the preferred lineup last month."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "Larry Harmon, a software engineer who lives near Akron, Ohio..., sometimes he stays home on Election Day, on purpose.... It turned out that Mr. Harmon's occasional decisions not to vote had led election officials to strike his name from the voting rolls. On Nov. 8, the Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether the officials had gone too far in making the franchise a use-it-or-lose-it proposition.... The question for the justices is whether two federal laws allow Ohio to cull its voter rolls using notices prompted by the failure to vote. The laws prohibit states from removing people from voter rolls 'by reason of the person's failure to vote.' But they allow election officials who suspect that a voter has moved to send a confirmation notice." (Also linked yesterday afternoon).
Paul Fahri of the Washington Post: "Megyn Kelly waded back into territory she vowed to leave behind on Monday, saying on her new NBC morning program that she complained about Bill O'Reilly while she was an anchor at Fox News but was ignored. In an extraordinary monologue, Kelly went after O'Reilly, her former bosses and colleagues, accusing the network of fostering a toxic culture for its female employees. 'O'Reilly's suggestion that no one ever complained about his behavior is false,' Kelly said during 'Megyn Kelly Today.' 'I know because I complained.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon). ...
... It's All About Bill. Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "'It's horrible what I went through, horrible what my family went through,' Bill O'Reilly said of the sexual harassment allegations that cost him his job at Fox News. Mr. O'Reilly spoke on the record to my colleagues Emily Steel and Michael S. Schmidt, addressing the latest reporting on a $32 million settlement he reached with a longtime network analyst." An audio tape of the conversation follows. (Also linked yesterday afternoon). ...
... Caroline Bankoff of New York: "At one point, O'Reilly claimed that previous reporting on his history of harassment had brought 'indescribable pain' to his children (in front of whom he allegedly beat his ex-wife), and then appeared to blame journalists for the death of his former colleague Eric Bolling's son.... In a statement to Steel, Bolling called O'Reilly's behavior 'beyond inappropriate[.]'... A couple of hours later, O'Reilly apologized[.]" Mrs. McC: Which makes O'Reilly something less of an ass than is Trump. (See Krugman's "Trumpian infallibility doctrine," linked above.) ...
...God drops the ball. Elizabeth Preza of RawStory: "Disgraced former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly added another figure to the cadre of people he holds responsible for his alleged sexual misconduct, telling listeners of the web series 'No Spin News' that he also blames God for how the events transpired. 'You know, am I mad at God? Yeah, I'm mad at him,' O'Reilly said, according to CNN. 'I wish I had more protection. I wish this stuff didn't happen. I can't explain it to you. Yeah, I'm mad at him.'" --safari
Bump Stock Who? Sam Stein of The Daily Beast: "Three weeks after the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, efforts to pass even scaled-down gun-control legislation have effectively stalled on Capitol Hill. Congressional aides and issue advocates say they see no viable path for passing even the most promising bill: an effort to ban the manufacturing and sale of bump stocks." --safari
Annals of "Journalism"? Ctd.
Blame it on these bitter political times.... The nasty back-and-forth with Frederica S. Wilson, a Democratic congresswoman who is close to the soldier's family, might have dissipated had she not repeatedly disparaged Mr. Trump's intentions on national television, failing to extend him the benefit of the doubt that previous presidents had received.... And Ms. Wilson, a flamboyant, cowboy-hat-wearing Democrat, is just the kind of critic that can push Mr. Trump's buttons. -- Michael Shear, in a New York Times report, October 21 ...
... Charles Pierce: "What Congresswoman Wilson did was repeat, apparently verbatim, what the president* said to the widow of a fallen U.S. soldier. As we have come to expect, the president* sank to the occasion quite abysmally.... This, of course, was a graphic illustration, as though we needed another, that the Republic is in the hands of madmen. You have to really strain those Both Sides muscles to hang this fiasco on Wilson.... I'm just going to assume that the editors at the Times who OK'd this nonsense were sockless drunk celebrating Babbling Day and let it go at that." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: When Shear described Wilson as the kind of person who could push Trump's buttons, he, no doubt purposely, omitted her two most important qualifications – she's a woman AND she's black. For the record, Shear & Peter Baker are the NYT's top disciples of the Church of Both Sides Do It.
Casey Hopkins of Mediaite: "Fox News has parted ways with Jerusalem-based correspondent John Huddy. The timing of this news coming out is sure to raise eyebrows as it has nearly immediately followed a shocking interview that his sister Juliet Huddy had with Megyn Kelly today. Ms. Huddy appeared on the Today show to discuss her settled sexual harassment allegations against former Fox News anchor, Bill O'Reilly, a story that has led to numerous accusations leveled by O'Reilly, Kelly's husband and Fox News. Not a pretty story by any stretch." Fox claimed it fired John Huddy because of a "physical altercation earlier this month."
Beyond the Beltway
What happens when an 11-year-old Cub Scout asks a Colorado Republican state senator about her far-right votes on gun control? (a) He earns a merit badge in politics; (b) The den leader throws him out. Check the link to verify your answer, which I'm sure you got right. (Also linked yesterday.)
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Here's a video that tells the story of a severely wounded vet and his wife's struggle to have a child through IVF (congress had not passed payment for this expensive procedure––again an egregious slight that we do to our veterans). Patty Murray is once again the hero in this scenario.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/from-ivf-to-twins-a-wounded-vet-and-wife-lean-on-each-other
The interview with Trump and Maria B. is outstanding!––meaning it shows this demented man standing out in his own field of dreams spouting absolute nonsense. I think, too, there is serious impairment. When Reagan would falter or forget something, many times Nancy, standing by his side would couch him. This guy apparently has NOBODY–-they let him loose doing these interviews––-again I have never seen a president so ill served. The people around him must be as dotty as he.
Mrs. McCrabbie and PD: And don't forget, he forgot the soldiers name, probably one minute before he spoke to the widow. However the diagnosis will be difficult for someone who is a sloppy moron.
A few days ago I posted a piece by Josh Marshall mentioning that Trump is poison to our social fabric, and his fights with Gold Star families is revealing an even deeper social acidification of our national psyche that hadn't been so abhorrently egregious until now, to me at least.
I haven't seen any commentators go as far as this following thought, perhaps because it's too controversial or perhaps they just don't want to believe/put the idea out there. Just to clarify, I support all of our troops and greatly respect the necessary service they render to our country, while also retaining my right to criticize the military if need arises.
Trump's direct and sustained attacks on the Khans (*South Asian* [thanks sparrowhawk] Muslims) and now the Johnsons (African Americans, especially a widowed black woman) and the deafening silence of criticism from nearly the entire GOP, its base, and even elements of the military (i.e. John Kelly) is exposing a very dark and perverse hypocrisy in the heart of our nation.
We're told war brings us together as a nation, where we link arm to arm as one people. Soldiers KIA are especially symbolic as something to rally around, to hold up as the ultimate form of sacrifice to our great nation. Likewise, we're told the American public supports our troops, and I imagine that most soldiers serve each day convinced of this.
And yet, there seems to be a very significant portion of our society, overwhelmingly self-identifying as white, that allows their racist beliefs to bleed even into the supposedly sacrosanct institution of our military. The fact that Trump can openly criticize and politicize the death of a black American or Muslim American family with hardly any pushback from the right seems to be direct evidence that for this huge swath of our population, even for those serving under our flag and fighting to preserve our freedoms, African-American and Muslim-American (i.e. Captain Humayun Khan) military deaths are still worth 3/5 of a life in 2017 America, if they'll be so generous.
Not even making the ultimate sacrifice, being killed in duty, can remove the condescending stigmatization that confederates knowingly or subconsciously adhere to a soldier's skin color. Minorities in the military, watching this despicable feud unfold, have to know somewhere deep down that not even the uniform can elevate them to equal respect in our country.
Our current president* deep down knows this to be true, adheres to the idea, and uses it to cudgel his deemed inferiors for egotistical satisfaction, knowing that few if any of his supporters will speak out because they, too, share this worldview. The fantastical aura that we've woven into our discourse about the sacredness of the uniform and serving in the military appears to be just that, fantasy.
Khizr Khan is not a Middle Eastern Muslim, safari. His family is South Asian, born in Pakistan.
Seem like a perfect time to cut taxes...
http://beta.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-climate-gao-20171024-story.html
In Trumpland, no one has to pay for anything.
I've concluded the Repugnants' problem is geographic, maybe geometric. The live in Flatland.
The respect they tout for each person and his sacred rights apparently doesn't extend a molecule beyond each individual. In their view, each free spirit is isolated from the world and from on another, so despite all their talk of personal responsibility, they really believe the actions of each have no effect on anyone or anything else. That's the essence of Freedom absolute. No responsibility at all.
Of course, this geographic blindness applies only to white people.
Smoke 'em if you got 'em
In the Age of Trump, one must find one's pleasures as best one can. But even a moment of sublimity can be unexpectedly shot through with the evil (that's right, I'm saying it) of Trump.
This morning, a piece on NPR celebrated the 100th anniversary of one of the great moments in American music. This week in 1917, a 16 year old Jascha Heifetz made his Carnegie Hall debut. It was, by all accounts an astounding moment*. The commentator, attempting to describe the heights of Heifetz' abilities mentioned Schopenhauer's oft-quoted distinction between talent and genius. Talent is a marksman who can hit a target others can't reach. Genius is the marksman who hits a target others can't even see.
And then... I thought of Trump.
Christ.
Yesterday Marie pointed out, quite correctly, that it is unlikely that any headline anywhere in the history of this country touted the story of a president attacking a war widow. It's beyond thinkable. But these sorts of unthinkable, unfathomable events spew out of the obsidian Trumpish depths with the regularity of an atomic clock.
I wouldn't call his propensity for beastly, vile words and actions a sort of genius, but it's something we've never seen before from somewhere I'd prefer never to visit. Little king trumpy so routinely hits targets of depravity and malignity that no one else can see. At least no decent people. And certainly not any president. He makes Nixon look like a boy scout.
There is no genius to his meanness, but there is a surpassing degeneracy, a truly despicable sensibility that outpaces any national political figure in our history. This makes it even more disgusting that, as Safari mentions, neither his base nor the entirety of the GOP will stand up for decency in the face of quotidian depravity that has blackened the White House.
Okay, well, if you're not depressed now, you haven't been paying attention. That being said, listen, for a brief moment, to some true genius.
This is Heifetz playing one of those pieces that only the insanely great attempt. His technique is peerless, but often pure technical virtuosity can be a bit cold. It's Heifetz's warmth of tone that makes this the stuff of genius.
Take that Donaldo, you rotten piece of shit.
*Heifetz's Carnegie Hall debut was also the source of a famous musicians' joke (because we need all the jokes we can get with Trump around):
"Mischa Elman, the famous violinist, sits with Leopold Godowsky, the great pianist. After [Heifetz had played] five measures Elman is in shock and starts mopping his head. Hot in here, he whispers to Godowsky. Not for pianists, Godowsky whispers back.")
This little piggie went to market, these little piggies went to Puerto Rico...
So here's the problem. An island has been devastated by a hundred year hurricane. A month afterward, power has yet to be restored to 70% of the residents.
Do you:
A) hire a large, respected power company with experienced personnel and a great track record?
OR
B) hire a company from a tiny town in Montana with two full time employees only in business for two years, with no track record?
Well, naturally, it's B. Especially if the owner of the company is a buddy of Interior Department boss, Ryan Zinke, and lives in his hometown.
A $300 million contract. How you like them apples? The Trump Gravy Train is leaving the station. All aboard who want a piece of the action!
Seriously, how do you even look at a company with two employees and no experience doing this type of work? Clearly the goal is to curry favor with the cozy chiselers in the Trump administration, not to get power restored properly and professionally, as quickly as possible.
Yo, we're rebuilding the Brooklyn Bridge. Contract is for a billion dollars. Well shit, I have a buddy who owns a hammer and another with a tape measure. A long one! Sign right here.
This whole thing stinks to high heaven. But no one will squawk. Just imagine if this had been Obama and he handed a $300 million job to a couple of guys he shoots hoops with. Confederates would demand he be impeached before sundown. Fox weasels would be spitting on each other to get to the microphone first to denounce this transparent con job.
But it's par for the course in the Age of Trump. Where there's money to be siphoned off, there you'll find congeries of grifters with "Trump" tattooed on their asses.
You knew this would happen, right?
So, you may recall a few weeks ago, the newest member of the NRA Hall of Fame shot and killed 58 innocent people and wounded over 500 others. Wayne-o has his picture above his mantle.
Anyway, for a millisecond, the NRA lackeys in congress puked out a little pablum that could be interpreted, if you squinted your eyes and caught it in just the right light, as maybe, I dunno, possibly, could be, might be, we'll have to see....legislation that wouldn't actually control the sale of guns to every whacko with dreams of getting their picture over Wayne La Pierre's mantle, but might, possibly see its way clear to controlling the sale of bump stocks, those devices that allowed the murderer to turn semi-automatic rifles into pure machines of death, firing enormous numbers of rounds into fleeing bodies in just a few minutes.
So what happened to that tiny sliver of decency? Is it, like, going to actually be enacted into law?
Naaaaahh. Of COURSE not. You didn't really think it would, did you? Man, you really do have to stop smoking so much ganja. And that heroin? Give that shit a rest.
"Three weeks after the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, efforts to pass even scaled-down gun-control legislation have effectively stalled on Capitol Hill.
Congressional aides and issue advocates say they see no viable path for passing even the most promising bill: an effort to ban the manufacturing and sale of bump stocks, which were used by the Las Vegas shooter to essentially turn his semi-automatic weapons into fully automatics ones."
I can just see those Confederate legislative aides, all having a big communal sad. Crocodile tears like you read about, in public. Then...behind closed doors....PAH-TY! Break open the champagne! Lots more Americans can be killed now. En.Are.AY!!!! Forevah!
More anal cysts who need to be shown quarters in the ninth ring of hell.
All over this country, tiny businesses like the Zinke buddies' are holding FEMA and Interior contracts for zillions of dollars. Last week there was a story about an outfit that was going to build FEMA trailers for Houston people-- no one to talk to at their number. Fly-by-night doesn't describe it. So, heck yeah, let's redo the grid in PR one tiny wire at a time with two guys and a truck. Is there anything these cabinet thieves won't grift with/for? Nope--
Well, I did it again.
I read a piece by Our Miss Brooks. I didn't mean to, I clicked on the title of an op-ed, "How to engage a fanatic". It was a good enough title for me to bite. So I did. Now I need to see the dentist.
Without dragging it out past all endurance, Miss Brooks is having a sad about all the Trump hatred. He suggests that liberals learn to love the Trumpbots and smother them with kind hearts and coronets. Feel their pain, let them know that we too want things to be good but perhaps we can all get there by holding hands, singing Kumbaya, and looking out for them a little bit more than we normally do.
Okay, he doesn't actually say "liberals should do this" because he puts himself in the mix by saying that one of those nice Trumpbots harangued him a ballgame with epithets of the sort you don't typically hear at church bake sales. But here's my problem with that. He voted for Trump. And so did lots of other Confederates. They hated Hillary, they were sure that she was busy murdering decent Americans at a rate most serial killers could only envy. So they gave us Trump. And his minions.
But now, we're the ones who need to rein it in and be nice.
First, a little bit about being nice. No, it's not a terrible thing, and yes, screaming at each other doesn't do much to push the conversation into areas remotely resembling civility. But it's their hatred and animosity that got us here. Brooks lets us know that most of these people are just poor, misunderstood 'mericans. They only want to be loved.
Really, Davey? Me too. How 'bout we forget the peace, love, dove for the moment. Why didn't those protesters in Charlottesville show the Nazis a little love? I'm sure it would have been an instant success. By your own admission, these people are fanatics. FANATIC: "a person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion or politics." Engaging fanatics takes a bit more than holding hands and saying the Serenity Prayer.
Engagement for me means VOTING. I live and work with these people every day. No amount of engagement is going to change their minds that liberals are traitors who want to take their money and guns and hand them to mooching black people who will rape their daughters and piss on the American flag, to say nothing of absolutely ruining a good afternoon of professional football every fucking week.
Let me ask Miss Brooks why he has never asked Confederates to show liberals a little love? Why does he think they shouldn't have to try to "understand" us? They'd just as soon shoot us in the head and dance about our graves sporting MAGA caps made in China singing "Hallelujah".
No links. If you want to read it, you know where to find it. Expensive real estate on the NYTimes website and in the paper. Taken up by this idiot.
Maybe I'm overreacting. Whatchoo guys think?
Let the apes begin the chest thumping
Arizona Senator Jeff Flake announces that he will not run for re-election. This means that Flake, along with Tennessee senator, Bob Corker, will no longer be in the mix. There are so few on the dark side willing to tell the little king that he has no clothes. Now there will be two fewer. At least. And it's not as if either Corker or Flake were decent, moral supporters of democracy. They were dyed in the wool Confederates until even they couldn't take all the lying.
But look now for white supremacist, Mercer cadger, and pseudo-fake-o-winger-intellectual (yes, it's an oxymoron, accent on the 'moron'), KKK Steve Bannon, and his former boss/acolyte/ignorant wingnut puppet, Trumpado, to start banging on their chests, declaring that they have extirpated "villains" who sought to do them in and would not go along with their Nazi ideology. There will be that many fewer voices who seem to value truth, or at least give that impression. That means that many more lying, co-opted, fearful douchebags.
Look for miscreant malefactors Trump and Bannon to thump their flaccid chests in imitation of great apes. "WE DID IT, DONNIE!"
No, asshole, you didn't. You haven't done jack until your lies are taken as straightforward truth.
And, for a majority of Americans, that.....will never happen.
The apes can continue to groom each other and eat bugs off each other's fur.
And that's it for me today.
@AK: Well, shucks, honey, I bit the bullet and read Brooks after reading you. Do I think you overreached? Nah–-maybe just a smidgen but I think understandable given your propensity for smelling bull pocky dressed in such fine garb. I, myself, love the love fest feelings and would try and deal with it that way, even though I know from experience that often doesn't work which brought me up short reading this:
"They are lonely and sad, their fanaticism emerging from wounded pride, a felling of not being seen."
This may very well describe some of these kinds of people, but the ones I know do not fit this description. The problem here is the difference between dealing with a Rita or a Robby who think homosexuals are vile or think Jesus guides their every movement and told them to vote for Trump with the collective who march down the streets in a southern town with Nazi banners shouting their evil.
Our pal gemli weighed in–-here is his opening:
"The problem isn’t the individual obnoxious loudmouth at a ball game. It’s the 63 million of them who got together, conjured up a monster from their collective Id and sent him to the White House. Speaking kindly to people we disagree with is a fine idea, but the consequences of their collective stupidity is beyond our control."
Safari, I agree with you completely on the bigotry of the RWNJ that extends seamlessly to the military, even SF, even dead SF. Many of us here have been calling that what it is. It is so miserable to see this discrimination continuing. We hear infamous stories from the two World Wars, from Korea, Vietnam and on and on. Native American and African American soldiers sometimes in segregated units, coming "home" to the country they fought valiantly for, to the people they fought for, and treated like third class citizens. Thanks for your service, now, you can't come in here, go to this school, stay at this hotel, drink from this fountain, or vote. Racism in flashing neon signs! HRC was wrong, it is clearly more than half the voters, and they are despicable, not deplorable.
Many countries don't have the same obsessive, compulsory "respect" for (white) military that exists in the US, and oddly, they pay their soldiers more, offer better benefits and medical care. American soldiers in the recent exercises in northern Australia were shocked at the pay and conditions of their foreign comrades. This aspect has been discussed here before. Respect and responsibility for even white military in the US is very narrow and shallow.
AK, thanks for reading Brooks' column so I don't have to! What I want to know, Davey, is who is lecturing Dotard's cult members to engage with and understand the position of the not-crazy-fanatic-RWNJ? I hear crickets. They exhibit no responsibility to understand why nearly 66m people voted for HRC. FrightFart spends no column inches urging their readers to engage with Dems, and understand their views on climate, education, workplace safety, and why they don't hate gays, Mexicans, and refugees.
I won't accuse Con congresscritters of having complete disregard for those 66m voters because they have the same disregard for the nearly 63m who voted for dotty, as does he. Their concern horizon is their skin. When I read liberal commenters they are still saying we want better healthcare, education, wages, etc for all Americans. I rarely hear them say jettison the Cons, and let's have a better future for Dem voters. I often read the other side saying to hell with those blahs, coastal elites, smarty pants Dems, I won't pay for their healthcare, hurricane recovery, infrastructure, just mine.
The people who are really not being heard, who really have been left behind, are the people who voted for HRC. The Con voters have been conned again and are about to be kicked off the bus that Dem admins set them on with CHIP, the ACA, and various environmental, work and study programs, being pulled out from under them by the Conmen/women. Then they'll know "left behind".
Davey, it is very difficult to show kindness to someone while they are driving a car at you at high speed.