;)
The Conversation -- September 18, 2023
Marshall Cohen, et al., of CNN: "A federal judge was skeptical Monday of former Trump-era Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark's efforts to move his Georgia election subversion case to federal court.... Clark wasn't present at the hearing, an absence that became especially notable after US District Judge Steve Jones said he would not accept a sworn statement from Clark as evidence in the case. The hearing ended after about three hours with no ruling from the judge, who seemed visibly frustrated and annoyed at times. At one point, his probing questions directed at one of Clark's attorneys led Trump attorney Steve Sadow, who was in the courtroom, to whisper, 'This is not good.'.... Even if his official job description didn't include most election litigation, those matters were in his lane because 'the president put it in his lane,' [his attorney] said.... [In December 2020,] Trump considered installing Clark as acting attorney general so he could send a letter to the state officials falsely claiming the Justice Department found widespread 'irregularities in the 2020 election.... Former Justice Department official Jody Hunt testified at the hearing and bolstered [Fani] Willis' case by saying that the person in Clark's role wouldn't have been involved in investigating election fraud. Hunt was head of the DOJ's Civil Division under Trump before Clark took over the role in an acting capacity in 2020." ~~~
~~~ Amy Gardner & Holly Bailey of the Washington Post: "As a Justice Department lawyer after the 2020 election, Jeffrey Clark drafted a letter to top Georgia officials declaring that the agency had reason to doubt the legitimacy of the state's election only after he was pressed to do so by ... Donald Trump, Clark's lawyer [Harry MacDougald] told a skeptical federal judge Monday.... U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones appeared wary of the claim, pressing MacDougald for evidence that Trump had directed Clark to act. MacDougald did not offer any and even appeared uncertain when Jones asked him whether Clark's draft letter was written after a meeting between him, Trump and several other senior Justice Department officials."
~~~ Marie: It may be that Trump's attorney Steve Sadow said "This is not good" because Clark's lawyer fingered Trump as the person who told Clark to lie to state officials.
Katherine Faulders, et al., of ABC News: Trump "aide Molly Michael told investigators that -- more than once -- she received requests or taskings from [Donald] Trump that were written on the back of notecards, and she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials -- with visible classification markings.... The notecards with classification markings were at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate when FBI agents
~~~ Marie: It's unclear? It's unclear? It's perfectly clear to everone who's ever been told to lie about something: Following news that investigators are about to interview you about "the boxes," "You don't know anything about the boxes" is a order not to reveal to the FBI what you know about the boxes. If the ABC News reporters really "aren't clear" about the meaning of Trump's remark, they should go see a mob movie, any mob movie.
Mostafa Salem, et al., of CNN: "Five Americans who have been imprisoned in Iran are expected to be released Monday, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said, as part of a wider deal with the United States that includes the unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian funds. The US government has designated all five Americans as being wrongfully detained. Speaking at a press conference which was shown on state-affiliated Press TV on Monday, foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said the release 'will hopefully be completed' alongside the other elements of the deal. The detainees are being transported to a Qatari jet, which is on standby in Iran to bring the five Americans to Doha, a source briefed on details of the matter told CNN on Monday afternoon local time." The story has been updated. ~~~
~~~Update: Michael Shear & Farnaz Fassihi of the New York Times: "Five Americans who had been imprisoned in Iran were allowed to leave the country on Monday, President Biden said, after two years of high-stakes negotiations in which the United States agreed to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue and dismiss federal charges against five Iranians accused of violating U.S. sanctions. The announcement that the Americans took off in a plane from Tehran just before 9 a.m. Eastern came as Mr. Biden and Ebrahim Raisi, Iran's president, were to attend the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting of world leaders in New York on Tuesday. The five Americans -- some of whom had been held for years in Evin Prison, one of the most notorious detention centers in Iran -- flew to Doha, the capital of Qatar, for a Cold War-style exchange with two of the five Iranians. Three others declined to return to Iran, according to U.S. officials. In a statement, Mr. Biden said that 'five innocent Americans who were imprisoned in Iran are finally coming home.'"
Aaron Rupar of Public Notice: “Kristen Welker's whitewashing of [Donald] Trump began in the opening seconds of her debut as Chuck Todd's replacement on 'Meet the Press.' 'I sat down with the former president at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey -- his first network interview since leaving office,' she said, walking alongside Trump on his golf course, and omitting the real reason for his banishment: not that he left office, but that he incited a violent insurrection in an attempt not to leave. And Trump's return to NBC only got more problematic from there.... Instead of coming ready for a fight, Welker conducted herself as though she's Trump's therapist.... When she wasn't trying to get Trump in touch with his feelings, Welker was overwhelmed by his nonstop lying." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I continually come away from media coverage of Trump with the impression that people in the news business -- especially those in teevee "journalism" -- just don't give a flying fuck. It's their job to get ratings, not to serve as the Fourth Estate and mete out checks on bad behavior or bad practices of public officials. They think that "polite" and "personable" are better qualities than "confrontational" or "probing." And the so-called behind-the-scenes editors and producers are just as bad, if not worse. When a politician tells a big fat lie and the interviewer doesn't adequately push back, there should be flashing chryons on the screen calling out the lie. The Welker interview was pre-recorded, so there's no excuse for airing it without on-screen fact-checks.
~~~~~~~~~~
Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "House Republicans considered a new stopgap funding proposal on Sunday aimed at averting a government shutdown at the end of the month, but it was unlikely that the plan, which would slash spending for most federal agencies and resurrect tough Trump-era border initiatives, could break the deep impasse on Capitol Hill. The legislation presented to rank and file lawmakers in a conference call on Sunday night was the latest effort by House Republican leaders to find a way out of a daunting funding logjam that left their plans to consider annual spending bills in chaos last week and has put Congress on a path to a government closure on Oct. 1." MB: The message here is, "We need more time to jerk off; in the meantime, if you ask nicely, we might be willing to jerk around the country." These are not serious people.
Julie Tsirkin of NBC News: "Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has quietly changed the Senate's informal dress code to allow senators to wear whatever they want on the floor, a person with direct knowledge said. A notice went out to the Senate sergeant-at-arms and relevant staff members late Friday, and the change will go into effect starting Monday, the source said.... [Senate staff] are still required to wear business clothes under the old dress code. People other than senators who walk on to the Senate floor will also need to wear business attire, which for men means a jacket and a tie."
Trump confesses on-air again, and here he gets to the crux of his crime:
~~~ Jason Lange of Reuters: "... Donald Trump said he dismissed the views of his own lawyers in continuing to challenge his 2020 defeat because he did not respect them, saying in an interview aired on Sunday that he had made up his own mind that the election had been 'rigged' - a false claim that he continues to make.... 'It was my decision,' Trump told NBC's 'Meet the Press' program, that the election was 'rigged' against him, adding that he relied heavily upon his own 'instincts' in coming to that conclusion.... His comments on Sunday could undermine one of his possible legal defenses - that he relied on the advice of his lawyers in continuing to challenge his defeat." ~~~
~~~ But Trump did balk at confessing to his actions and inaction on January 6, 2021:
~~~ Michelle Price of the AP: Donald Trump "refused to say on NBC's 'Meet the Press' how he spent Jan. 6, 2021, once the insurrection began and whether he made phone calls as his supporters stormed the seat of American democracy. 'I'm not going to tell you. I'll tell people later at an appropriate time,' Trump told moderator Kristen Welker after she asked if he spent that afternoon watching the attack on television in a dining room at the White House.... In the interview, taped Thursday at Trump's golf club in New Jersey, Trump refused to say who he called as the violence unfolded. 'Why would I tell you that?' he said. Trump said in response to Welker's pressing him about his public silence during the violence that he had made 'beautiful statements' on the day of the attack.... Trump also said he was pleased to hear Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent remarks praising Trump.... 'Well, I like that he said that. Because that means what I'm saying is right,' Trump said on NBC." MB: IOW, the top enemy of the U.S. -- and of democracy and self-determination -- is the arbiter of rectitude. ~~~
~~~ You can read the full exchange in this transcript of the interview.
~~~ Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Tom Boggioni of the Raw Story: "On Sunday [NBC News] used [an] interview with [Donald Trump] to introduce new 'Meet the Press,' host Kristen Welker> who took over for the much-maligned Chuck Todd. To some political observers, the new interview -- where Trump talked over his questioner and received little pushback -- was yet another debacle that led American Enterprise Institute scholar and Atlantic contributor Norman Ornstein to declare it was a huge error in judgement.... After viewing clips from the 'Meet the Press' interview, media critic Dan Froomkin complained, 'In these clips, Trump utters about 30 different lies, and there's zero pushback from Kristen Welker, who instead calls him "fired up" and "defiant" -- and "the president." This is, actually, worse than the CNN town hall in terms of normalizing a maniac.'... Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger added, 'Allowing Trump to lie on @MeetThePress and leaving "fact checking" to the website is not how we should be treating a man who launched an insurrection. It's 2023, we should have learned this lesson over 7 years. Ratings aren't worth our democracy.'" And so forth. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Welker's deference to Trump, who repeatedly talked over her, was sickening. After the interview, Welker ran a roundtable of milquetoasts who, IMO, went pretty easy on Trump, too.
Another Co-Conspirator Who Should Have STFU. Richard Fausset & Danny Hakim of the New York Times: Mark Meadows' voluntary testimony in federal court last month "may have given ammunition to Georgia prosecutors as they prepare to try him, [Donald] Trump and the 17 other defendants. Legal experts say that Mr. Meadows may have damaged his credibility while weakening his claim to immunity from state prosecution as a federal official, given his struggles to articulate how the actions ascribed to him in the indictment were part of his official duties rather than in service of the Trump campaign.... [In response to his testimony,] the prosecutor ... introduced into the record a December 2020 email that Mr. Meadows wrote to a Trump campaign staff member. In it, Mr. Meadows wrote, 'We just need to have someone coordinating the electors for the states.'... Every word of Mr. Meadows's testimony may now be used against him at trial.... In early September, U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones declined to move his case to federal court. Mr. Meadows has appealed."
Sam Rosenfeld & Daniel Scholzman in a New York Times op-ed: Recent action by Republican federal and state officeholders "depict a party that is preoccupied with antics that crash into the guardrails of American political life and conspicuously lacks a coherent, forward-looking vision for governing. A modern political party has devolved into a racket. The country needs a right-of-center party. But today, as the G.O.P. has lost a collective commitment to solving the nation's problems and become purposeless, the line separating party politics from political conspiracy has frayed. [Donald] Trump, in this way, is the product more than the author of that collective party failure.... The sheer array and specific identities of those indicted in the [Georgia election] case highlights how easily a conspiracist approach to political life, unconstrained by a party now incapable of policing boundaries or channeling passions into a larger purpose beyond raw hardball, can justify and compel illicit machinations.... Conspiracism has a long provenance on the American right.... So does a ruthlessly mercenary view of political parties."
Marie: If you think the purpose of governance is problem-solving, it's quite clear that the U.S. political system is dysfunctional. This is true for hard-to-solve issues like immigration policy and adherence to standards of equality and civil rights, but it's also true of aspects of governance that are entirely soluble. When I took 9th-grade civics, we learned that gerrymandering was a corrupt, anti-democratic practice. And gerrymandering wasn't a new abuse even then; it's as old as the Constitution. Congress could easily fix the problem on a federal level (if not on the state level) by outlawing gerrymandering of Congressional districts and establishing nonpartisan boards to establish districts after every Census. Sixty-five years later, gerrymander is worse than ever.
Hunter Strikes Back. Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "President Biden's son Hunter Biden filed a lawsuit Monday against the Internal Revenue Service, charging that when agents who were investigating him told Congress and news reporters about their concerns that the case was not being managed properly, they violated his privacy rights as a taxpayer.... Biden charges in the lawsuit that when two IRS agents went to Congress and news organizations complaining of alleged mishandling of the investigation by Justice Department officials, they disclosed information about the investigation, and about Biden's taxes, that the law aims to keep secret.... The disclosures included 'detailed allegations regarding the specific tax years under investigation, the amounts of deductions, the nature of those deductions, and allegations of liability regarding specific tax years and the amount thereof, that could only be known to them based on a review of the physical tax returns themselves,' the lawsuit contends." CNN's story is here.
Presidential Race 2024. Dean Obeidallah in a CNN opinion piece: Trump's gaffes and lapses "should raise questions about his fitness for office. For instance, "... at a September 8 rally in South Dakota..., [Trump] abruptly stopped mid-speech for 40 seconds as he awkwardly looked at the audience, his eyes darting around. Or his recent claim that President Biden was leading us into World War II. Then of course there's his grand delusion that he won the 2020 presidential election. ~~~
Seth Borenstein of the AP: "Yelling that the future and their lives depend on ending fossil fuels, tens of thousands of protesters [gathered in New York City] on Sunday [to] kick off a week where leaders will try once again to curb climate change primarily caused by coal, oil and natural gas. But protesters say it's not going to be enough. And they aimed their wrath directly at U.S. President Joe Biden urging him to stop approving new oil and gas projects, phase out current ones and declare a climate emergency with larger executive powers.... The March to End Fossil Fuels featured such politicians as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and actors Susan Sarandon, Ethan Hawke, Edward Norton, Kyra Sedgewick and Kevin Bacon. But the real action on Broadway was where protesters crowded the street, pleading for a better but not-so-hot future. It was the opening salvo to New York's Climate Week, where world leaders in business, politics and the arts gather to try to save the planet, highlighted by a new special United Nations summit Wednesday."
~~~~~~~~~~
Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post: "The American Library Association is facing a partisan firefight unlike anything in its almost 150-year history. The once-uncontroversial organization, which says it is the world's largest and oldest library association and which provides funding, training and tools to most of the country's 123,000 libraries, has become entangled in the education culture wars -- the raging debates over what and how to teach about race, sex and gender -- culminating in Tuesday's Senatorial name-check.... Politicians and parents on the right increasingly paint the association, known as the ALA, as a defender of pornographic literature for children -- tying their allegations into a broader conservative movement that asserts school libraries are filled with sexually explicit, inappropriate texts.... Over the summer, state libraries in Montana, Missouri and Texas announced that they were severing ties with the ALA, imperiling their libraries' access to funding and training."
California, a Nation Unto Itself. Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said on Sunday that he would sign a landmark climate bill that passed the state's legislature last week requiring major companies to publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, a move with national and global repercussions. The new law will require about 5,000 companies to report the amount of greenhouse gas pollution that is directly emitted by their operations and also the amount of indirect emissions from things like employee travel, waste disposal and supply chains."
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In yesterday's comments, P.D. Pepe asked me about my command performance at an IRS interrogation last Friday, and I replied with a recitation of the "interview." P.D. wrote back to say that she and her husband got a good laugh from my report.
Later in the day, my local PBS station ran a short segment featuring a local storyteller named Rebecca Rule, in which rule said, "Receiving a story is a gift to the teller."
That it is. So thank you for asking, P.D.
The following post is R rated, or at least PG13.
Melania's statement as First Lady: "Who gives a f**k about
Christmas stuff and decorations.....give me a f**king break! But I
have to do it, right?"
Melania on Sept. 14, 2023: "I am pleased to continue USA
Memorabilia's tradition of celebrating the season with A Red, White
and Blue Christmas. This year, I found myself looking to my love
for our great nation for inspiration. May everyone experience an
abundance of peace & love during the holiday season."
Makes me wonder what ever happened to those Red and Green
Christmas decorations most of us think of at Christmas time.
I haven't been able to find the price of these, no doube, made in
China ornaments but I'm sure the magats will give up their grocery
money an snatch them up.
What do we think would happen if Jill Biden came up with a grift
like this? She would probably be impeached, and she's not even in
office.
https://news.yahoo.com/melania-trump-resurfaces-awkward-sales-
085348288.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=0_00
@ForrestMorris: Wow! I was really excited to learn I could buy a Melania Trump-designed Christmas ornament, though I couldn't find this year's ornament. Last year's ornament -- a brass six-sided star -- looks very much like an ornament I already have, though mine is larger, it's lighted and it cost less than half what the Star of Melanie does. Oh, perhaps I'll pass.
Update: Too many great choices. Now I've found out for a mere $85, I can get a "magical, glittery Trump snowflake round ball ornament [which] will be the center of attention on your tree this season. With stunning gold sparkle details on an intricate hand painted snowflake, this ornament features TRUMP front and center." (It has a picture of a golden snowflake on one side and says "TRUMP" on the other. Is this an admission that Donald is a snowflake? Anyway, the ornament is sold at the Trump store. If you wondering why I'm not linking these sites, it might be because I don't want to help the former guy and his absent missus make a nickel.
Was it Brian Williams who often referred to the "bright, shiny objects" that substituted for real news in the early Pretender years?
Whoever said it had it right. In the Pretender universe it's all bling.
But when bling and its distractions take the place of substance, we end up where we are: with a Paxon still in Texas office, an impeachment of a president with no charges, and no clear path to authorizing spending bills in the next two weeks.
I will be curious to see if, when those Social Security checks stop coming, that easily distracted 40 percent of the nation even notices that in their delusional world the rubber no longer hits the road.
A few days ago, D in Md linked a brief clip of Jacob Bronowski talking about the extreme danger of certainty on the part of authoritarians, specifically Nazis (Trump’s “good people”), the “assertion of dogma”, the go-along-with-us-or-else sort of mind set that has been ascendant on the right for decades now. Bronowski’s point is driven home by his standing on the killing ground of a death camp, a place where many of his relatives were murdered for not fitting in.
My thanks to D for this clip. Bronowski holds a place of honor in my own personal advancement in critical thinking. I still have my dog-eared copy of his book, written with historian Bruce Mazlish, “The Western Intellectual Tradition”, which I devoured as a teenager, getting my first entree into the thought processes of Erasmus, Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Bentham, Franklin, et al. This I followed up on with Bronowski’s “Ascent of Man”, a journey through the history of humankind. No brief précis of mine will suffice. It’s a masterpiece.
Which brings me to wonder where are our Jacob Bronowskis today, public intellectuals who can address issues and concerns of great import without resorting to jargon or pomposity? Where are our Emersons, our Jane Addamses, our Edward Saids? There are, of course, writers and thinkers out there whose efforts and work are notable, but the entire enterprise of the public intellectual seems undermined by the tsunami of stupidity in which the loudest and the most outrageous hold court.
Doing a search for contemporary public intellectuals, I ran across several lists that included people like the execrable Paul Wolfowitz and the war criminal Henry Kissinger, also a truly stupid list that crowned wankers like Ross Douthat and William Bennett as “intellectuals”.
Nope. Ideologically driven propagandists don’t make the cut, especially ones whose knowledge bases are either fact free or littered with fantasies of intellectual superiority, which brings us back to the discussion of Dunning-Kruger.
The sort of overconfidence, the idea that they know best that impels voters to put their trust in a charlatan and dangerous maniac like Trump has plenty of historical examples going back millennia, disasters that could easily have been avoided by paying attention to something other than gut feelings.
How ‘bout the Trojan Horse affair? The Trojans got good advice from a number of sources: Laocoön, a priest, the seer Cassandra, even Helen of Troy herself. They all said ixnay on the orsehay. But noooo. “Bring that horse right on in!” Next scene, Heinrich Schliemann is digging up their bones 2,000 years later.
Napoleon’s invasion of Russia? Now that was a great idea. So here was a guy whose acumen and abilities brought all of Europe to heel, but then good ol’ hubris kicked in. Bonny refused to listen to officers who told him this was a bad idea. They got demoted. In their place he put lackeys and yes men (sounds kinda Trumpy, no?). There’s a famous (maybe THE most famous) information graphic chart that dramatically represents what an astounding catastrophe this invasion was, a masterpiece by the French civil engineer Charles Minard. Check it out.
Then there’s the Titanic, setting off with a cargo full of fantasies of its own invincibility. And the Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq. Nuff said there.
One of my favorite examples of bad decisions based on overconfidence rather than the right information is the New Coke debacle. In the run up to this business disaster, the Coke people did some polling (yup, polls: always bringers of unassailable truths). They asked 200,000 people if they liked the new drink. “Sure” was the consensus. “It’s good”. What they never asked was “But is it better?”
Ummm…
No one died in that disaster. But you can imagine Bush and Cheney as Coke executives. “I’m the Decider!” “New Coke! They’ll throw bouquets at us! We’ll conquer the soft drink market in a month!”
Right.
Those assholes manufactured the data they wanted in order to go to one of the most ill advised wars in history. And now we have Trump, (this the opposite of Bronowski’s idea, this is the descent of man) who doesn’t bother manufacturing fake data points to make it look real. He just makes shit up on the fly. Decisions based on fantasy.
It’s been said that overconfidence is more dangerous than incompetence. Okay. But what about overconfidence WITH incompetence? Trump in a nutshell.
That’s what the right is offering now. Certainty based on stupidity.
Bronowski would no doubt agree.
@Ken W: According to a law passed by Congress in 1996 (Section
1145), "Protection of Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds"
those checks and bank deposits will keep on coming on.
The magats won't be affected.
Too bad a Government shutdown doesn't stop checks from going
out to politicians who won't do anything about the shutdown.
Holy Star of Bethlehem, Batman! A Melanie Ornyment? Where do I send my kid’s college tuition money?
Forrest’s reminder of Melanie’s true feelings about Christmas decorations puts paid to the opportunistic Trump instinct. It doesn’t matter what you think of something or whether you believe in it or not. If you can shake down the rubes for a few bucks, just pretend your entire life revolves around that thing, whatever it is.
She must be running out of vodka. Five martinis before noon will do that.
@Ken Winkes: Forrest is right. These are mandatory payments and even Miss Margie can't stamp her little feet and stop them. And neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor Kevin's Spectacular Government Shutdown will shut down mail delivery or post office hours (any shorter than they are already). But better check to see if your nearest National Park is still open before you pack up the car.
Thanks Forrest and Marie.
Though part of my early morning brain knew better, guess I was just hoping.
More detail on shutdowns:
https://www.crfb.org/papers/government-shutdowns-qa-everything-you-should-know#whatservicesaffected
Andy Borowitz (satire)
"Criminals Flood Into Texas After Learning How Easy It Is to Get Acquitted
Thousands of hardened criminals poured into Texas over the weekend after learning how easy it is to secure an acquittal there.
Interstate freeways were reportedly backed up for miles as acquittal-seeking perpetrators sought to put down roots in soft-on-crime Texas."
APR
"Dark money: The backstory of Alabama’s redistricting defiance
The Alabama Legislature’s open defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Allen v. Milligan ordering the creation of a second majority-Black district baffled and infuriated the federal three-judge panel that initially ordered the state to redraw its 2021 congressional map.
APR has now identified connections between Alabama officials who led the 2023 redistricting process — which disregarded the U.S. Supreme Court’s order — with far-right power broker Leonard Leo’s dark money network, described this past week by Politico as “a billion-dollar force that has helped remake the judiciary and overturn longstanding legal precedents on abortion, affirmative action and many other issues.”
APR’s reporting shows the extent to which Alabama’s calculation to defy the Supreme Court was made not simply by state legislators in Alabama but has been driven by nationally connected political operatives at the center of the well-documented right-wing effort to reshape the composition and jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and to overturn the remaining key protections established by the 1965 Voting Rights Act."
Melania says her brass and enameled Christmas ornaments are
made in the USA and each bears her personal signature etched in
brass. She must have been busy with all that etching.
And they can be yours for only $35.00 each. Probably plus shipping
and handling of $100.00, she doesn't get into that part of the grift.
And now accepting credit cards, just put your credit card number and
info here in this box......
The absolute last place I would divulge a credit card number is to one
of the trump family grifters
https://usamemorabilia.com/american-christmas-collection
I have spent the goodly part of this rainy day reading the transcript of the Kristen Weller/Trump interview. To wade through this wacky word salad has made my eyes burn and my fury at fever pitch. One could easily have made this a comedy sketch and perhaps someone will but since it isn't–––since it presented so badly (although I think Kristen thought she was doing a decent job) I despair. We let, once again, this sick, sorry ass fucker get away with murder in the first, second and third degree word wise. This weather corresponds to the drip. drip drip of the corruptive influence we seem not to be able to quell.
AK: I, too, discovered Bronowski and was charged with electricity reading his book "The Ascent of Man" although this was when I was in my thirties. If I had met him as you had in my teens I might have taken a few different paths but I was still green and in love and that world would have to wait until later.
Akhilleus, thank you so much for the YouTube discussion of the Charles Minard map of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. It was fascinating! I emailed the link to my family.
Steve M.
"a look at the interview transcript makes clear that Welker didn't regard it as her job to respond to Trump's lies and factual distortions in real time. What's maddening is that she seems to have been more focused on ticking off the questions in her binder than on the outrageous things Trump was saying."
Jesus, god! I never thought I’d pine for both-sides, don’t rock the boat Chuck Todd, but…wha’ happen here?
Didn’t NBC tout this Kristen Welker person as a tough, seasoned journalista? Yeah. Well seasoned and cooked to imperfection on the Trump grill. Maybe the Food Channel will give him his own show: the Apprentice Journalist on Fire.
But NBC did her no favors. He demands they come to him. To his Bedmonster Club (not a typo) where he cheats and bleats and fleeces like all get out. He’s a convicted rapist. A convicted con man, philanderer, serial liar, racist, and traitor. They should have said “Sorry, Fatty, you sit down in our studio or no go.”
But even then it probably wouldn’t have mattered. Trump is a hardened, lifetime bully who has almost never been challenged. His blatant “try to challenge me” lies, his constant talking over, his aggressive body language, all meant to intimidate and fend off serious questions about his criminality, have been honed over a lifetime of developing sleazy attack postures.
NBC was responsible for building up a Chapter 11 loser, cheap-ass crook, and narcissistic pretender as if he were a genius billionaire, and they still haven’t FIGURED IT OUT?!?!?
It’s journalistic malpractice on a galactic scale.
Kristin Walker might have been a decent journalist in 1980, but today? In the age of Call us on our Lies and We Will Kill You?
More media water carrying for an historic criminal.
And the crème de la creep? After talking over Welker for an hour, this Fat Fuck castigated her:”You keep interrupting me!!”
Jesus, god.
Judge Chutkan, go to work. Shut this prick up and put him in prison.
Wow, can't make this stuff up.
"Donald Trump Wishes Happy New Year To Jewish 'Sheep' And Warns Us To 'Make Better Choices Moving Forward'"
RAS,
Wow is right. If it hasn’t been clear before, this “mamzer” is one evil prick.
Francie,
Glad you found that video interesting. More on that topic tomorrow.