;)
The Commentariat -- October 8, 2018
... Forgot what day it was till I went to the Post Office. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
... Thanks to Bobby Lee & Akhilleus for IDing an appropriate song for the day.
Late Morning Update:
Isabel Dobrin of Politico: "... Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that he has no plans to fire deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein, who will accompany the president on his day trip to Orlando aboard Air Force One. 'I look forward to being with him. That'll be very nice,"'Trump said of Rosenstein. 'We're going to be talking. We'll be talking on the plane. I actually have a good relationship, other than there's been no collusion, folks, no collusion. But I have a very good relationship.' Asked directly if he has plans to fire Rosenstein, Trump said 'no, I don't.' He added later that he 'didn't know Rod before, but I've gotten to know him and I get along very well with him.'" Mrs. McC: Rosenstein probably reminds Trump every time they see each other about his great service to the country as a member of the Ken Starr team.
Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump said Monday that he expects a lot of Democratic voters to support Republican candidates in the upcoming midterms because of how the party's lawmakers handled sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.... Trump dismissed the allegations against Kavanaugh -- including that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when the two were in high school -- as 'a hoax that was set up by the Democrats.'"
Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Justin Wise of the Hill: "Former White House communications director Hope Hicks is joining Fox as its chief communications officer. The media company made the announcement on Monday, saying that Hicks will be based in Los Angeles." Mrs. McC: Great! I'm sure Hopey-Dopey will make Fox "News" even more fair and balanced. Trump probably insisted the Trump Media outlet hire Hicks.
*****
Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "A landmark report from the United Nations' scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has 'no documented historic precedent.' The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 -- a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.... The report was the first to be commissioned by world leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight global warming.... President Trump, who has mocked the science of human-caused climate change, has vowed to increase the burning of coal and said he intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement. And on Sunday in Brazil, the world's seventh-largest emitter of greenhouse gas, voters appeared on track to elect a new president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has said he also plans to withdraw from the accord." ...
... Kevin Sack & John Schwartz of the New York Times: "FEMA's public assistance program has provided at least $81 billion ... to state, territorial and local governments in response to disasters declared since 1992, according to a New York Times analysis.... But an examination of projects across the country's ever-expanding flood zones reveals that decisions to rebuild in place, often made seemingly in defiance of climate change [and at the whims of local officials], have at times left structures just as defenseless against the next storm.... Local officials desperate to restore normalcy to disoriented communities will get to decide how to spend those federal dollars -- choices made more consequential, and costly, as sea levels rise and Atlantic storms generate greater surge and rainfall because of climate change." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: It doesn't help that the majority of natural disasters seem to occur in the South, where "local official" means Mayor Joe Bob Know-Nuthin.
Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "... the GOP secured its greatest amount of political power and leverage since at least the Great Depression.... Assuming the court is more tilted toward the GOP going forward, that delivers the GOP the last vestige of power in Washington that had thus far eluded it. While justices are technically nonpartisan, experts say this is shaping up to be the first reliably conservative Supreme Court since at least the New Deal era more than 75 years ago. By some measures, the court was already more conservative than it was then.... Republicans control 33 out of 50 governor's seats.... The GOP also holds complete control of the governor's seat and the state legislature in 25 states (compared to eight for Democrats).... The GOP controlled 4,104 out of 7,383 state legislative seats as of July.... In Washington, the GOP's House majority currently includes 235 seats.... Republicans' narrow 51-49 Senate majority ... when ... combine[d] with the GOP's control of the House and the presidency, it gave the GOP unified control of policymaking in Washington for just the fourth Congress since the Great Depression." ...
... Josh Marshall: "We should now be looking at a very different 6 to 3 progressive majority in which Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are absent and Merrick Garland and another Justice are present. In little more than two years, the theft of the Garland seat and the tainted 2016 election have together forced a massive redirection of the jurisprudential course of the country. Mitch McConnell shows up again and again in the process, first as the key driver of the theft of the Garland seat and second as a significant player blocking a bipartisan response to Russian intervention in the election. His fingerprints cover both events.... I point this out merely to illustrate the dramatic and far-reaching consequences of rule-breaking, over a very short period of time, that will ramify out decades into the future." ...
... ** Garrett Epps of the Atlantic: "The long revolution of the civil-rights movement, and the social revolution of the 1960s and '70s, changed our national life, largely for the better. The changes came not from elites, but from ordinary Americans -- African Americans who refused to accept subordinate status; women who would no longer accept male domination; young people who rebelled at the killing in Vietnam.... During this part of our history, when ordinary citizens demanded change from their governments, the Supreme Court often stood ready to guarantee their right to do so.... As the turn of the century came and went, [the Court's] decisions still often pointed the way to a more perfect union.... [But the Republican] party made the Supreme Court a partisan issue." Read on. This is, as the headline declares, "a requiem for the Supreme Court." Mrs. McC: The prologue especially is precisely what I had been thinking. ...
... Mary Papenfuss of the Huffington Post: "... Donald Trump said Saturday he's 'a hundred percent' certain that Christine Blasey Ford named the wrong person when she said Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, he told reporters on Air Force One. He also called Kavanaugh, who was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice today after being confirmed in a 50-48 Senate vote, 'squeaky clean.' Beyond the sexual assault accusation, a number of his Yale classmates have said Kavanaugh lied under oath about his drinking habits.... Trump also insisted women were 'extremely happy' about Kavanaugh's confirmation because they're apparently relieved the men in their lives are less likely now to be accused of sexual assault. 'Women were outraged at what happened to Brett Kavanaugh,' he added, according to pool reports." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: As Ken W. pointed out yesterday, this is the same jerk who was 100 percent certain he saw A-rabs celebrating in Jersey on 9/11 & Barack Obama was born in Kenya. It's also the same guy who is 100 percent certain the women who accused him of sexual assault are gold-digging liars.
... Christal Hayes of USA Today: "Hours after his Supreme Court pick was sworn in Saturday..., Donald Trump said on Fox News that those who made up 'false' stories about Brett Kavanaugh should be penalized. Trump, talking with Fox News' Jeanine Pirro, said he hated watching the slew of sexual assault allegations grow against Kavanaugh and dubbed all the accusations 'fabrications' with 'not a bit of truth.' 'I think that they should be held liable,' Trump told Pirro. 'You can't go around and whether it's making up stories or making false statements about such an important position, you can't do that. You can destroy somebody's life.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The bitter partisan fury that engulfed Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation was the fiercest battle in a political war over the judiciary that has been steadily intensifying since the Senate rejected Judge Robert H. Bork in 1987. But an even greater conflagration may be coming.... Facing a Supreme Court controlled by five solidly conservative justices, liberals have already started to attack the legitimacy of the majority bloc and discussed ways to eventually undo its power without waiting for one of its members to retire or die. Some have gone as far as proposing -- if Democrats were to retake control of Congress and the White House in 2020 or after -- expanding the number of justices on the court to pack it with liberals or trying to impeach, remove and replace Justice Kavanaugh.... Today, the majority five on the Supreme Court are all movement conservatives -- Republican lawyers who came of age after an ideological backlash a generation ago to decades of liberal court rulings." ...
... Emily Atkin of the New Republic (Oct. 6): "A Morning Consult/Politico poll released Monday showed that 69 percent of Republican women favor [Brett Kavanaugh's] confirmation.... 'As Susan Collins just proved, it’s not enough to elect more women,' [Ethan Todras-Whitehill, founder of advocacy group SwingLeft, wrote on Friday. 'We have to elect more DEMOCRATIC women.'" ...
... Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: "You cannot say a party that embraces a deeply misogynistic president who bragged about sexually assaulting women and mocked and taunted a sex-crime victim; accepted a blatantly insufficient investigation of credible sex crimes against women in lieu of a serious one that the White House counsel knew would be disastrous; repeatedly insulted and dismissed sex-crime victims exercising their constitutional rights; has never put a single woman on the Judiciary Committee (and then blames its own female members for being too lazy); and whips up male resentment of female accusers is a party that respects women. Its members resent women. They scorn women.... The Republican Party no longer bothers to conceal its loathing of immigrants, its contempt for a free press, its disdain for the rule of law or its views on women. Indeed, these things now define a party that survives by inflaming white male resentment." ...
... Sarah Kendzior, in the [Canadian] Globe & Mail: Brett Kavanaugh's "flaws are so many, his unfitness so obvious, that he achieved what is often said to be impossible in the Donald Trump era: He united Americans of different backgrounds and political persuasions in common cause. After Saturday's official Senate vote, naming him to the Supreme Court, we are united in common anguish. The confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh was, at heart, a referendum on the integrity of U.S. institutions and of the impunity of elites -- and the U.S. failed. Senators who purport to believe in rule of law vouched for a judge who sees himself as above it. Senators who purport to believe in democracy honoured a man who degrades it, and did so in deference to a man seemingly attempting to destroy it -- President Trump.... This is now Mr. Trump's Supreme Court of the United States, run on white male entitlement and alternative facts." ...
... A Couple of Republicans Kinda Catch on:
... Tom Nichols in the Atlantic: "Unlike Senator Susan Collins, who took pages upon pages of text on national television to tell us something we already knew, I will cut right to the chase: I am out of the Republican Party.... Small things sometimes matter, and Collins is among the smallest of things in the political world.... Her speech on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh convinced me that the Republican Party now exists for one reason, and one reason only: for the exercise of raw political power, and not even for ends I would otherwise applaud or even support.... She had clearly made up her mind weeks earlier, and she completely ignored Kavanaugh's volcanic and bizarre performance in front of the Senate.... But during the Kavanaugh dumpster fire, the performance of the Democratic Party -- with some honorable exceptions like Senators Chris Coons, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Amy Klobuchar -- was execrable.... The Republicans, however, have now eclipsed the Democrats as a threat to the rule of law and to the constitutional norms of American society.... Raw power, wielded so deftly by Senator Mitch McConnell, is exercised for its own sake, and by that I mean for the sake of fleecing gullible voters on hot-button social issues so that Republicans may stay in power." ...
... Sophia Nelson (also a Republican), in an NBC News opinion piece: "Collins' decision to vote to confirm Kavanaugh put a dispiriting exclamation point on something I've known for quite some time: The Republican party has turned its back on women.... Of course, we know that those 'rights,' [described in the Declaration of Independence] ... were only granted to white, Protestant men or white male landowners.... In short, white men -- by birthright -- were entitled to everything.... As I watched a parade of Republican women line up to cast their vote for a sitting federal judge credibly accused of drunkenly sexually assaulting multiple peers in his youth..., I saw women upholding male power and privilege.... Ultimately, the vote on Saturday was about preserving the status quo. It was about keeping women in our place.... They are a party run by white men, for white men, with the tacit support of a certain kind of white woman."
Mrs. McCrabbie: Sorry, I forgot the funnies yesterday, because nothing seems funny:
Hmm. Katie Benner of the New York Times: "Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and President Trump planned to travel to Florida together on Air Force One Monday morning, a week and a half after the two were scheduled to discuss remarks Mr. Rosenstein had made about the president's fitness for office and an offer to secretly tape conversations with him."
Jennifer Keil of the New York Post: "A sprawling mansion on the Upper East Side has been frozen as part of a hard-core battle between the US government and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.... US officials say Deripaska, an aluminium billionaire, is close both with Russian mob leaders and Russian president Vladimir Putin -- and that he is on the sanctions list because he is allegedly involved in murder, money-laundering, bribery and racketeering. Deripaska also had President Trump's ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort -- who has been convicted of crimes including money-laundering and who is cooperating with US special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe -- on his payroll for years."
Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "The disappearance and alleged killing last week of dissident Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi while he was visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul is only the latest challenge to a U.S.-Saudi relationship that both governments have diligently cultivated. The Trump administration has said little beyond expressing public concern over Khashoggi's fate, and the kingdom has sharply denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. In private, officials from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on down have been frustrated with the lack of a substantive response to direct high-level queries, according to administration officials. Confirmation that Khashoggi was killed -- as some senior Turkish officials have charged -- or even his disappearance at Saudi hands is likely to spark a new round of congressional pressure to reassess the relationship with Riyadh."
Election 2018
Kansas. Idiocracy. Patrick Smith of ThinkProgress: "Trump rallies are rarely uneventful, and Saturday night's event in Topeka, Kansas was no exception. This time it was [Kris] Kobach -- the state's Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate -- who was responsible for some of the controversy. Kobach made the claim that tougher immigration policies, like the ones put in place since Trump took office, would have saved the lives of the roughly 3,000 people who perished in the 9/11 attacks.... Kobach also tied his anti-immigration sentiments to one of his favorite subjects: voter ID laws. Claiming that they 'created trust in our elections,' he suggested that a voter fraud epidemic is hurting the country. Kobach also claimed that Democrats are allowing it to happen, saying 'they don't care about U.S. citizens' votes being canceled out.' There is little to back up Kobach's claims." --s
Tennessee. Sarah Mervosh of the New York Times: "Taylor Swift, the pop music titan who has been notably apolitical in turbulent political times, broke her silence on Sunday and endorsed two Democratic candidates running for election in Tennessee. In a post on Instagram, Ms. Swift said she planned to vote for Phil Bredesen, who is competing in a tight Senate race against a Republican candidate backed by President Trump, and Representative Jim Cooper, an incumbent who represents the Nashville area.... She pledged support for L.G.B.T.Q. rights and racial and gender equality.... The singer is beloved by some white supremacists, who claim her as an Aryan goddess, and in 2017, her lawyers fought back against a blog post that portrayed her as a white supremacist figurehead." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Should we care what entertainers think? Not much. But the media care & are making a big deal of Swift's endorsements, so there you go.
Sam Levin & Carey Gillam of the Guardian: "In an historic verdict in August, a jury ruled that Monsanto had caused a man's terminal cancer and ordered the agrochemical corporation to pay $289m in damages. The extraordinary decision exposing the potential hazards of the world's most widely used herbicide, has paved the way for thousands of other cancer patients and families to seek justice and compensation in court.... Monsanto has filed an appeal, and a hearing is scheduled for Wednesday in San Francisco.... A snowballing series of courtroom challenges are now threatening the legacy and finances of the corporations -- and the future of a chemical that is ubiquitous around the globe." --s
Beyond the Beltway
Buh-Bye, First Amendment. Now You Can't Even Protest in Your Own Front Yard. Blake Montgomery of BuzzFeed News: "Police in Texas removed an anti-Republican political sign from a woman's yard Tuesday night last week, amid nationwide rancor over the Senate's vote on Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court. The poster, made by Marion Stanford of Hamilton, Texas, and placed in her yard, shows an elephant painted in red, white, and blue with stars, a well-known symbol of the Republican Party. The elephant is sticking its trunk up the skirt of a young blonde girl with pigtails crying for help. Beside the image is the slogan 'Your vote matters.'... 'Police told me to remove the sign or they would take it and would arrest me,' Stanford said. 'So I let them take the sign.' The city manager of Hamilton has denied that the police seized the sign, telling the newspaper that Stanford gave it away.... Stanford said [the poster was] ... a version of a Washington Post editorial cartoon [by Ann Telnaes, who drew the original cartoon in response to the Republican Party's support of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.... Telnaes ... responded ... on Twitter: 'Good thing I'm not cartooning in Texas.'" Both Stanford's sign & Telnaes' cartoon are pictured with the story. Thanks to Akhilleus for the lead.
Way Beyond
O Trumpo Brasileiro. Ernesto Londoño & Manuela Andreoni of the New York Times: "Brazilians on Sunday expressed their disgust with politics as usual and endorsed an iron-fist approach to fighting crime and corruption by giving the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro an ample lead in the first round of the presidential election. Mr. Bolsonaro stunned the political establishment by rising to the top of a crowded presidential field despite a long history of offensive remarks about women, black people and gay people. He also offered an emphatic defense of the country's old military dictatorship. The victory was all the more remarkable because Mr. Bolsonaro lacked the backing of a major party and campaigned on a shoestring budget, relying mainly on social media to build a base. As of mid-September, the Bolsonaro campaign reported having spent about $235,000, a small fraction of the $6.3 million Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers' Party disclosed having spent. Mr. Haddad, who also made the runoff, came in a distant second." ...
... Tom Phillips of the Guardian: "Fernando Haddad, [Jair] Bolsonaro's opponent in the pivotal second-round vote on 28 October, has a mountain almost as high as Brazil's Pico da Neblina to climb if he is to scupper the right-wing populist's dramatic political ascent.... Just to draw level with Bolsonaro, Haddad would need virtually every single one of the voters who opted for the third and fourth-placed candidates, Ciro Gomes and Geraldo Alckmin, to switch to his side. 'The path for Haddad to close that gap looks almost impossible,' said Brian Winter, the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, describing Bolsonaro as a 'huge favourite' to win. 'If you simply add Bolsonaro plus two-thirds of Alckmin's [5m] votes, it's over.'" --s
Edward Wong & Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "In a stunning move that could set back the country's efforts to expand its global presence, the Chinese Communist Party announced late Sunday that the missing president of Interpol, Meng Hongwei, was under investigation on 'suspicion of violating the law' and was 'under the supervision' of an anticorruption watchdog tied to the party. The announcement that Mr. Meng, a Chinese national, was being detained was posted online by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party's watchdog against graft and political disloyalty, on Sunday night. A few hours later, Interpol said it had received Mr. Meng's resignation 'with immediate effect.'... The detention of Mr. Meng, 64, is an audacious step by the party, even by the standards of the increasingly authoritarian system under the leadership of President Xi Jinping."
Barbie Nadeau of the Daily Beast: "The face of 30-year-old Bulgarian investigative journalist Victoria Marinova had been beaten with such brutal force that the popular television journalist was not recognizable. Her semi-nude body was found in a remote area along the River Danube in Ruse, Bulgaria on Saturday, but it took hours to positively identify her. Initial reports in local Bulgarian media indicated that she had been raped, according to Interior Minister Mladen Marinov. She was also strangled and and suffocated. Her car keys, mobile phone, glasses and much of her clothing had been removed from the remote wooded area. Marinova is the fourth journalist to be killed in Europe in the last 14 months.... Bulgarian prosecutor Georgy Georgiev says investigators are now considering whether Marinova's efforts to expose corruption in Bulgaria were a motive in her murder."
News Lede
New York Times: "The 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was awarded on Monday to a pair of American economists, William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer for their work highlighting the importance of government policy in fostering sustainable economic growth. Mr. Nordhaus was honored for pioneering the assessment of the economic impact of climate change, including his advocacy for governments to tax carbon emissions. Mr. Romer was honored for his work on the role of policy in encouraging technological innovation.... The announcement of the award came on the same day that a United Nations panel on climate change released a report warning of dire consequences from climate change and urging governments to respond to the problem with greater urgency. The Nobel Prize committee said that its choice of laureates underscored the need for governments to cooperate."
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Reader Comments (29)
Brazilians who voted for would-be strongman Bolsonaro could be in for a surprise if this guy really is like Trump. He’s already got the misogyny, racism, and homophobia down, it seems, but those hoping for law and order may, like Americans, end up with lawlessness and disorder at the highest levels of government.
Be careful what you wish for. Too often (almost always) strongmen stand strong against everything but temptation. We can tell them all about it. Chapter and verse.
@Akhilleus: Yeah, I'm for law & order, too. Just not the kind that Bolsonaro, Trump, McConnell, Kavanaugh, et al., favor: the kind that applies only to privileged white men & that is designed to keep the rest of us as chattel or, at best, as useful peons.
When Paul Ryan said the country was made up of "makers and takers," he was right. He was just "confused" or "mixed up," as Orrin Hatch would say, about who was who. A case of mistaken identity, all right -- and one of grand proportions.
Wonder if the Bayer half of the the newly formed Monsanto-Bayer conglomerate is experiencing a little buyer's remorse, or if they saw this coming and had a Roundup specific hold-harmless clause in their purchasing agreement.
More likely Bayer and other corporate predators are relying on the likes of Kavanaugh to decide these cases, you know, corporate judicial lackeys who believe that anything is legal and just as long as it makes a buck.
The shape of things to come?
Read on Huffpost that Dr. Ford still can't go home and is experiencing nonstop death threats. The comments there were vile. These people are demented. Threatening someone doing her civic duty is what the repigs are all about, and their spokes"people" are still whipping up danger for her. I used to be upset by the hatred I have for Dolt45, but now it is epic proportions for all of them, and I no longer care.
It seems possible now for Dr. Ford and her family to emigrate to New Zealand. Usually NZ does not allow citizenship to people over 50. But now she could apply for political asylum: her life continues to be in danger. NZ may allow her to enter and apply for citizenship under this condition.
What a terrible thing to happen in these united states.
Lots of trashing of McConnell here and elsewhere of late and I'd like to add one more –-something that when it occurred cemented my pure disregard for this man who I realized was all about power and control and little else. It happened when Obama sought congressional approval for a missile strike in response to Syria's use of chemical weapons. The ever-treacherous shell bearing reptile , then Senate minority leader, refused to give his support and then publicly criticized Obama for having failed to take military action. This resulted, and still does, for that "red Line" business–– "It's all about Obama's ill gotten non-decision"––when it was McConnell's weasel works from the beginning.
Looks like some other countries have a populace that votes in these Trump-like leaders lately. It boggles the mind––their economy is suffering along with many of their people and yet–––paper bag over head time as the Brits are wont to say.
A couple nights ago I listened to an interview with an official from Hungary who was telling Amanpour that his country wanted only Christian, white Hungarians because they wanted to preserve their culture. He said this with a smile.
And yes, Taylor Swift (just sent this news to my American granddaughter who is besotted by Swift)––celebrities matter to many and as Marie says,––"there you go."
Now that the Supreme Court is just another functioning, obedient arm of the RNC, can we expect Confederates to back off a bit?
Hell no. Now that they, a definite minority party, have attained complete power, they want to stomp the other side into the dirt.
This morning I heard (much to my dismay), an interview on NPR with a piece of stinking driftwood named Marc Lotter, who was arrogant, insulting and presumptuous, all classic traits of winger mouthpieces.
This asshole was apparently a former "adviser" to the little dictator before signing on as little mikey pence's press secretary. Just a sidebar here. What do "advisers" to Trump do? "Kick this person. Insult that ethnic group. Grab this pussy. Break this law"? And how about Press Secretary to mike pence. Whoa. What did that entail? Denying that plans for an American theocracy are moving ahead just fine?
So this morning he's doing something that I mentioned yesterday, what's become a standard talking point among the incognoscenti on the right. Insist that Democrats and liberals play by the rules and act at all times with civility, while R's break every rule in the book and run amok as if they're brownshirts burning books and beating up protesters in 1933 Berlin.
Lotter was incensed--OUTRAGED--that women protesting the swearing in of Rape Boy Kavanaugh were saying curse words and yelling. Worse yet? They were yelling at POLICE OFFICERS!!!! Lock them up!
But let's forget all about Trump's rallies where he makes fun of sexual assault victims, instructs his drooling, screaming mob to "get rid of" protesters, and whips up the crowd with chants of locking up his opponent, where he points to the press and calls them enemies of the state as the frenzied crowd hurls threats of violence and death at them.
But, according to Lotter the "Democrat party" should be ashamed of itself for its impolite behavior. And not only that, but Trump will lead the Confederates to complete and total victory in the midterms because real 'mericans see how badly the Democrats acted toward that nice Kavanaugh boy.
Once again an NPR interviewer allows scumbags like Lotter to come on and lie, and say things like "Democrat Party".
You want to see this piece of shit knuckle under when a real interviewer gets him by the balls? Watch Nicole Wallace of MSNBC make him eat his words. These creeps are used to getting away with making unchallenged assertions and making shit up. Not here. She kicks his punk ass. Not David Greene, on NPR. He says "Gee, Marc, thanks so much for coming on--AGAIN. Nice having you here." Jesus, David, grow some balls.
But before signing off here, I want to point out something about Lotter and his ilk and the entire R propaganda apparatus. He was only little mikey's press secretary for eight months. Long enough for him to leave and open up his own propaganda shop. Upon leaving it was stated in at least one interview with a Trump apparatchik, that now "Marc can push the president's message hard from the outside".
Sure, that's not surprising. They all do it. But that's exactly the point. THEY ALL DO IT. Confederates are so well organized, so on point when it comes to their propaganda, to repeating and bolstering lies, attacking Democrats and demanding that they abide by rules that the Republican Party jettisoned years ago.
Democrats are still arguing about who lost the 2016 election. It's two years to the 2020 presidential election and we have no clue who might take a run at the dictator and his palace courtiers. Republicans have stayed on message about the Supreme Court, to the point of obsession. Democrats? I can't recall a single speech made by Hillary Clinton about the outrage of McConnell's connivance regarding Merrick Garland. Not one. Maybe she mentioned it in passing, but the Court and its makeup was not a major piece of the Democrats' message.
It was the single biggest selling point for Trump and the Party of Traitors.
Just sayin'. Confederates have it down. We act like we don't know which way to turn next. That--and the criminality of Republicans--is why we now live in a single party autocratic state.
We backed down when Bush tried to steal the election in 2000, we backed down when McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat. And now it seems like we're treading water while Trump is amassing a billion dollar war chest for 2020.
Ken,
Not the shape of things to come, the shape of things as they are right now. Mad King Donnie will hold a triumphalist party for his rape boy justice tonight and then it'll be Katie bar the door.
And when corporations realize that they can do whatever they want and not be blocked or punished by the Supreme Court, it'll be Katie burn the barn, 'cause those horses ain't never comin' back.
That Josh Marshall piece (linked above) about how, had Clinton won (no Russian interference/collusion), we would now likely have a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court makes me want to cry.
Akhilleus,
Yup. Had the same thought just as I posted it.
The corporate Repugs have been successfully gnawing at the foundations of our democracy since F. Roosevelt, going into overdrive with Reagan's election and accelerating ever since. Even those few who might believe they are on the side of the angels have, by their ignorant and thoughtless support of business interests, worked--to reach for another metaphor-- to drill the holes in the bottom of democracy's boat, which, as you say, is already foundering and close to sinking out of sight.
That the majority of the Repug faithful will sink along with the rest of us offers no satisfaction.
One other thought about Lotter's outrage at the "screaming" protesters.
He sounds as I imagine some bewigged flunky in the court of George III might have sounded when apprised of protests by those "ungrateful" colonials.
Were they pissed at being stepped on and treated worse than the red-headed stepchild?
Yes.
And what was the outcome?
I'm not exaggerating here. People are outraged at the perfidy of a party that has tied itself to lawbreaking and treason. What's wrong with that? "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..." and so forth.
Directed outrage is a necessary and inevitable reaction to autocratic, fascist powerplays perpetrated to keep a small minority in control and to spit in the face of millions of Americans.
Now if only we can keep those Americans pissed off and whipped up.
Oxymoron of the year: "Justice" Brett Kavanaugh.
Will Hope Hicks have to steam-press Sean Hannity's pants as part of her new job?
@Akhilleus: You pose a conundrum: Is it worse to have to steam-press Donald Trump's pants while he's wearing them or Sean Hannity's pants while he's wearing them? Anyhow, ewwww!
What's it going to take to make Democrats hopping mad? With regard to the comments above, I am fed up with the "reasonable" tone every Dem takes when in the public eye, particularly the congresspeople. The only angry passion seems to come from the young black women on all the panels of MSNBC shows and the steady hatred of Lawrence O'Donnell. Even Rachel, when she does her long, intricate stories, keeps it together so she keeps her job with the NBC nimrods. Maybe we need to hire Taylor Swift??
Too often I am so pissed and dismayed with the news of the day that I look elsewhere for distraction. Not too long ago I found myself watching a kind of Chuck-Norris-goes-to-Turkey tv series. Not that I've ever seen or watched anything with Chuck Norris! But, the acrobatic performances by the 19th Century policemen and miscreants in these later stages of the Ottoman Empire is awesome to behold. The characters are over the top, yet fascinating at the same time. Bad guys wear Johnny Depp-like eyeliner. (picking up a few tips here myself). The series on Netflix is "Filinta".
The bad characters are devious, murderous, thieving thugs whether they're dressed poorly or bespoke.
There's a secretive and subversive Brotherhood order behind a plot to over take over the government. It suddenly hit me in the more recent episodes the parallels to what is happening here...and in places like Bulgaria and Brazil. The Brotherhood is comprised of extremely wealthy and powerful men (of course) who operate behind the scenes and who stop at nothing to control politicians, bankers, industries, etc. Cabals are alive and doing financially well...then and today.
BTW my hours of Google searches have led me nowhere, but I'll bet Akhilleus will know the answer. There's a deadly, scissor-like weapon that is thrown with great skill at enemies. It's actually the size of a pair of scissors, with several often 'carried' in a special pocketed vest.
Well, back to the dismal news of the day.
Sometimes news gets personal. I checked, we once had dinner at the place where 20 were killed in limo accident.
@MAG: Just google 'scissors weapon - image results.' Hundreds
of pictures.
The putative link between glyphosate and cancer is weak enough to make the jury award outrageous:
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/abs/10.1289/ehp.7340
That said, I cannot get overly concerned if a rare cancer might have been induced. However, a much graver threat will likely be ignored. If all cancers remove a fifth of our populations, the extinction of honeybees will make the coming famine and mass migrations the real apocalypse.:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/18/1803880115
The original objections, first in Germany, to glyphosate and GMO crops (mostly as "Roundup-resistant") came not on the basis of human toxicity but on the way it disrupted non-industrial agriculture. This is so much worse.
MAG,
I would go with Forrest's advice. Sounds like some sort of Turkish version of ninja stars. I myself gave up my side job as a ninja some years ago. The hours were long and the pay not great. And the haberdashery left a lot to be desired. I mean I like black, but jeez, c'mon.
A quick search of 19th century scissor-like Turkish weapons is unhelpful but what it does reveal is our species' indefatigable creativity when it comes to fashioning objects that kill, maim, cut, slice, dice, and otherwise open-wide and subdivide other humans (apologies there to A.J. Lerner).
Nasty bad guys today, especially those who have weaseled their way into power and had much wealth handed to them, later bragging that they earned it all themselves, use digital weapons systems like Twitter. Not as efficient at slicing flesh, but just as damaging in their own way. And the end result is the same. Carve up your enemies and maintain power any way you can.
Maybe I'll rejoin my old ninja pals, now that I think of it. Gotta back in shape if I'm gonna be running up the sides of buildings and doing triple backflips while flinging pointy things at the bad guys.
@Forrest: Nope. I had Googled that first thing last week. Nothing there looked right. There's an Indian weapon called a Katar that is somewhat close in appearance, but still doesn't looks like what is used in the Turkish series.
Sign of the times? Having roof repairs done today by the same
company that originally did it years ago. At that time their crew
consisted of 8 latinos. Today the crew is all 30 year old caucasians.
I'm wondering if they went to Canada, returned to Mexico, or
wherever, got better jobs or what.
Forrest Morris: more and more, small businesses/services do not have the Latinos they used to hire-- they can't get workers. Workers can't get work permits. Some months ago there was a story out of MD-- couldn't get seafood processors. More and more stories of crops dying on vines-- no workers. Of course this never bothers the rich-- they buy what they want/need at any price...and people from Latin America can't come here temporarily to make money for their families. Vicious administration.
It's been said of Columbus that he set out not knowing where he was going and didn't know where he was when he got there.
It must have been an el nino year as he sailed through the heart of hurricane alley in September 1492.
For a musical thought of the day try Randy Newman's "Great Nations of Europe" to capture the day. Sorry, I don't know how to link it in here.
@ Forrest - to the MAGA crowd a roofing crew comprising 30 year old Caucasians is a “win.” The important questions, though, are whether they will stick around in a difficult, dangerous job and whether they will do as good a job as the experienced Latinos they replaced. My guess is that the answer to both questions will be “no.”
Bobby Lee,
Great choice of song. I prefer Newman's solo piano version (for some reason, the orchestration gives the song a more humorous, less biting, sardonic tone) which can be heard here.
And, as you suggest, it's not clear that Columbus knew where he was when he got there, but he brought with him some nifty gifts from the Great Nations of Europe:
"Columbus sailed for India,
Found Salvador instead,
He shook hands with some Indians there, soon they all were dead.
They got TB and typhoid and athlete's foot
Diphtheria and the flu,
'Scuse me - great nations coming through"
Makes you wonder how Trumpbots can call themselves the only real 'mericans. Native peoples were here for over 15,000 years before Columbus and his marauders showed up. If you think about Europeans 15,000 years ago, they were painting themselves blue, munching on berries, howling at the moon and throwing rocks at each other. Country music, Reagan, pickup trucks, and Sean Hannity were no closer than Pluto.
But never mind, great nations comin' through.
@MAG: I think the weapon you're talking about is a zulfiqar. See the version of it depicted on this Wikipedia page, but there are many variations on this. The zulfiqar has religious (Muslim) & cultural significance, so it's not surprising it would be featured in a Turkish teevee series.
I persisted.
Regarding Trump's proclivity to profess assessments of absolute certainty, don't forget the Central Park Five!
@Bea McCrab: Zulfiqar? Still nope! But thanks for trying. Will send you a screen shot image that I took of the actor with the weapon in hand - kind of blurry, sorry.