Thursday
Dec282017
The Commentariat -- December 29, 2017
Sorry about the light entries today. Busy morning here in the frozen Northeast (1 degree & snowing in my neck of the woods). I'm adding some entries below; they're marked "NEW."
There was tremendous collusion on behalf of the Russians and the Democrats. -- Donald Trump, in an interview with New York Times reporters
Since Trump always accuses his enemies of doing what he has done, we can safely assume there was "tremendous collusion on behalf of the Russians and the Trumpies." -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie ...
... Michael Schmidt & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Trump said Thursday that he believes Robert S. Mueller III ... will treat him fairly, contradicting some members of his party who have waged a weekslong campaign to try to discredit Mr. Mueller and the continuing inquiry. During an impromptu 30-minute interview with The New York Times at his golf club in West Palm Beach, the president did not demand an end to the Russia investigations swirling around his administration, but insisted 16 times that there has been 'no collusion' discovered by the inquiry. 'It makes the country look very bad, and it puts the country in a very bad position,' Mr. Trump said of the investigation. 'So the sooner it's worked out, the better it is for the country.'" Read on. ...
... Here are excerpts, which are not too infuriating to read, because it's like reading what crazy Uncle Fred said at the family holiday dinner, only instead of having to listen to that lying, bloviating ass, you can skim the speeches & chuckle. ...
... NEW. Paul Waldman in the Washington Post: "As we've almost come to expect by now, when Trump speaks at length without a script, he skitters back and forth along the line that divides the comical from the terrifying, telling one obvious lie after another, making endless digressions that devolve into incomprehensible word salad, and generally sounding like someone with only the most tenuous grip on his faculties.... For someone who fancies himself a genius, he is almost completely lacking in any real guile. He doesn't play eight-dimensional chess. His lies are obvious and straightforward, clearly false at the moment they leave his lips. His strategies require no deconstruction or disentanglement to understand." ...
... NEW. Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monthly: "As is often the case with Trump, he feels the need to lie about Obama as a way to justify his own actions. 'I don't want to get into loyalty, but I will tell you that, I will say this: Holder protected President Obama. Totally protected him. When you look at the I.R.S. scandal, when you look at the guns for whatever, when you look at all of the tremendous, ah, real problems they had, not made-up problems like Russian collusion, these were real problems. When you look at the things that they did, and Holder protected the president.' At least one former U.S. Attorney felt the need to respond directly to that lie. 'The first time President Obama met with his US Attorneys, he told us, "I appointed you but you don't serve me. You serve the American people. And I expect you to act with independence & integrity." None of us ever forgot that." -- Joyce White Vance" ...
... Margaret Hartmann of New York recounts how Angela Merkel tried to school Trump on basic international political realities, and failed. Here's one incident: "... a senior German official told the Times of London that Trump also tried to pursue a bilateral trade deal with Germany. 'Ten times Trump asked [Merkel] if he could negotiate a trade deal with Germany. Every time she replied, "You can't do a trade deal with Germany, only the E.U.,"' the official said. 'On the eleventh refusal, Trump finally got the message, "Oh, we'll do a deal with Europe then."'"
Ken Starr Is Still a Subversive. David Kendall, in a Washington Post op-ed: "In his Dec. 24 Sunday Opinion commentary, former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr proposed a 'reset' of the Russia investigation in which Congress 'steps up' to establish a bipartisan investigative panel and the 'executive branch's approach' changes from criminal law enforcement to some kind of nebulous fact-finding. Despite its bland profession of respect for the probe, Starr's column was really just a subtler version of suddenly pervasive efforts by Trump apologists to undermine the investigation into Russian tampering with the 2016 election. The reasons given for Starr's reset are wholly specious[.]" A useful read & a good summary of the those wholly specious arguments. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: In fairness to Starr, he has nothing else to do but write op-eds since Baylor fired his ass for enabling members of the school's football team to violently assault women.
NEW. ... Donald Trump proved once again in a tweet Thursday that he doesn't seem to understand the difference between weather and climate. -- Pam Wright & Bob Henson of the Weather Channel
Dino Grandoni of the Washington Post: Trump shoots an Inhofe-style global warming tweet (from Palm Beach, Florida, where the temps are in the 70s) because he's completely ignorant of the fact that it's warmer than usual in the Southern Hemisphere right now & of the possibility that manmade global warming may cause "the jet stream encircling the Arctic to wobble southward." Mrs. McC (writing from a place where it's currently -7 degrees): Apparently the way to convince Trump of global warming is to ask him to step outside the Oval on a steaming hot day in August. Alas, like the jet stream, his conviction will wobble if there's a chilly night in September. ...
... Here's How It Works. Sammy Roth of USA Today: "Even this week's cold weather is probably being caused at least in part by global warming, said Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan. The Arctic is warming much faster than most of the planet, leading to a dramatic decline in the amount of sea ice that covers the region each winter. That loss of ice has allowed more heat to transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere, causing a weakening of the polar vortex winds over the Arctic. Those winds usually 'insulate the rest of the Northern Hemisphere' from freezing Arctic temperatures, Overpeck said. But as the winds have weakened, it's gotten easier for freezing Arctic air to swoop further south, he said. 'That is due to the warming of the Arctic, which in turn is due to human emissions of greenhouse gases and primarily burning of fossil fuels,' Overpeck said in an interview." Mrs. McC: This isn't rocket science; it's climate science. But a person has to be able to grasp at least six concepts in succession to understand cause & effect, & Trump could not do that even if he tried, which he won't. (See Margaret Hartmann's post above, if you think I'm just being snide.)
Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: If you were wondering why Rex Tillerson decided to write an op-ed in the failing New York Times (linked yesterday) about how President Trump & the State Department were doing a great job handling the international relations stuff, no doubt the answer is that the Times gave Tillerson a heads-up on this feature story:
... ** Mark Landler of the New York Times: "Nearly a year into his presidency, Mr. Trump remains an erratic, idiosyncratic leader on the global stage, an insurgent who attacks allies the United States has nurtured since World War II and who can seem more at home with America's adversaries. His Twitter posts, delivered without warning or consultation, often make a mockery of his administration's policies and subvert the messages his emissaries are trying to deliver abroad. Mr. Trump has pulled out of trade and climate change agreements and denounced the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. He has broken with decades of American policy in the Middle East by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And he has taunted Kim Jong-un of North Korea as 'short and fat,' fanning fears of war on the peninsula. He has assiduously cultivated President Xi Jinping of China and avoided criticizing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia -- leaders of the two countries that his own national security strategy calls the greatest geopolitical threats to America. Above all, Mr. Trump has transformed the world's view of the United States from a reliable anchor of the liberal, rules-based international order into something more inward-looking and unpredictable. That is a seminal change from the role the country has played for 70 years, under presidents from both parties, and it has lasting implications for how other countries chart their futures."
Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "Romanian hackers took over two-thirds of the District's outdoor surveillance cameras just before President Trump's inauguration, according to a federal criminal complaint unsealed Thursday. The January attack affected 123 of the D.C. police department's 187 outdoor surveillance cameras, leaving them unable to record for several days. Two Romanians, whom law enforcement officials describe as part of a bigger extortionist hacking group, are being charged in D.C. federal court with fraud and computer crimes. 'This case was of the highest priority due to its impact on the Secret Service's protective mission and its potential effect on the security plan for the 2017 Presidential Inauguration,' Bill Miller, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu, said in a statement."
NEW. Daily Beast: "The remaining 16 members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS were told they were being fired Wednesday, via a FedExed letter from the White House. Six members resigned in June in protest of what they called the Trump administration’s inaction on the issue." Many are Obama appointees.
NEW. The Best Interns, Too. Martin Gould of the Daily Mail: "A former White House intern is coming under fire after flashing a known 'white power' sign during a photo-op with President Donald Trump. Jack Breuer ... is clearly bucking orders -- personally given by the president -- to give a thumbs-up in the picture that was taken in the White House in November. While the other hundred or so interns smile and follow Trump's command, Breuer ... stands stony-faced giving the 'OK' sign that has been linked with far-right groups. It is the same sign that white nationalist Richard Spencer gave on the steps of the Trump International Hotel on election night and that right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos posed with in front of the White House.... Breuer worked for Stephen Miller, the president's senior advisor for policy." Mrs. McC: Just a coincidence, I'm sure, that a white nationalist (Miller) hired a white-nationalist intern. I seldom link to Daily Mail stories, but they have pictorial proof on this.
Happy Trails to Roy. Hope We Don't Meet Again. Alan Blinder of the New York Times: "Alabama officials on Thursday unhesitatingly pushed aside a legal challenge from Roy S. Moore and certified Doug Jones as the winner of this month's Senate election. The action, during a brief meeting at the State Capitol, was essentially the state's final step before the seating of the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Alabama in a quarter century. It was also a swift rejection, by some of the state's most powerful Republicans, of Mr. Moore's complaint that he was the victim of 'systematic voter fraud.' Mr. Jones's margin of victory was 21,924 votes, with more than 1.3 million ballots cast. The certification leaves Mr. Moore, 70, a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court whose campaign faltered partly because of allegations of sexual misconduct against teenage girls, with almost no avenues to derail Mr. Jones's ascension to the Senate. The election aftermath followed a familiar pattern for Mr. Moore, who in the past has been eager to declare victories and pronounce grievances -- but loathe to concede defeats." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Sadly, as Blinder reports, we may not have seen the backside of Moore's horse for the last time: "... there is already speculation in Montgomery that he might run for governor or attorney general next year."
Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Judd Legum of ThinkProgress: "Breitbart News is covering up its recent promotion of an openly white nationalist and anti-Semitic congressional candidate, Paul Nehlen. Meanwhile, Joel Pollak, the site's senior editor-a-large and frequent spokesman, is falsely claiming the site hasn't covered him in 'months.' In reality, Nehlen's public association with white nationalists dates back more than a year and was contemporaneous with Beitbart's relentless promotion of his primary challenge to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI). On December 18, just 10 days ago, Nehlen was a guest on a Breitbart radio show, Whatever It Takes with Curt Schilling. The interview was posted to Breitbart's account on SoundCloud but quietly removed in the last few days.... The interview occurred weeks after Nehlen began regularly using the phrase 'It's OK to be white,' which has been adopted as a motto of white supremacists, including former KKK grand wizard David Duke."
Beyond the Beltway
"Son of a Hanging Chad." Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: In response to Florida's nightmare 2000 presidential vote recount, Virginia "began writing a guidebook on how to handle [questionable ballots]. The latest edition includes pictographs of ballots marked in unconventional ways -- names crossed out, several boxes checked, 'My guy' scrawled over a candidate's name. Despite the best intentions to avoid a Florida-style snafu, that is where Virginia now finds itself, with lawyers fighting over how to interpret one questionable ballot. And at stake is possible control of the Legislature."
How to Get Free Tickets to a Colts Game. Justin Mack & Kaitlin Lange of the Indianapolis Star: "An Indiana lawmaker is filing legislation that would require the Indianapolis Colts to offer fans refunds if Colts players kneel during the national anthem at home games. Rep. Milo Smith, R-Columbus, said his bill would allow fans who feel disrespected by the kneeling to ask for a refund during the first quarter.... Smith is a social conservative who played a key role in advancing a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage onto the Indiana House floor in 2014. His son, who is gay, criticized his father for his vote at the time."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Shivering, snowbound cities are scrapping their outdoor New Year's Eve countdowns. Polar-bear plunges are being canceled because of fears of frostbite and hypothermia. Winter-hardened towns are gaping at their new lows: 32 degrees below zero in Watertown, N.Y. Minus 36 in International Falls, Minn. Record-breaking snowfalls have stranded older and disabled residents inside their homes for days. Cars are buried under mountains of snow, and lethally low temperatures are forcing cities across the Northeast and Midwest to open emergency 'warming centers' for homeless residents and people whose furnaces are no match for the cold. A mass of Arctic air now has much of the north half of the country wrapped in an icy bear hug, and meteorologists expect the single-digit temperatures to stick around for at least another week."
New York Times: "Rose Marie, who became a radio star as a toddler in the 1920s and a television star on the hit sitcom 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' in the 1960s -- and who continued performing into the 21st century -- died on Thursday in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was 94." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: If you were a young woman who watched "The Dick Van Dyke Show," Rose Marie's character Sally Rogers told you three things: (1) a woman could be smart, funny & successful, (2) but she'd still have to play a supporting role, & (3) she'd have to remain unmarried as ordinary men couldn't handle a woman who was a whole person. A mixed message, for sure.
Share Article
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.
Reader Comments (13)
"... he might run for governor or attorney general next year."
Of course Ol' Roy gonna run for something. He needs a reason to gull $ from them what got some to spend on fever dreams. He has no other visible means of support, without which the sheriff could arrest him and put him on a work farm. So he needs a "campaign," since his charitable foundation has been exposed as a source of income.
Maybe DiJiT will make him an ambassador and solve his $ problems, but DiJiT really doesn't like to appoint folks who aren't rich. Gotta keep up appearances.
Just finished reading the excerpts from the Trump interview with one of the Michael S's and then read their piece in the NYT's. Well–––I detect a slight ache in my right temple which is the beginning of a major headache or maybe it's just the fact that it's bitter cold here and knowing that Trump is basking in golden warmth at the moment is enough to hurt my head.
The Michael who was asking the questions and commenting seemed to me more like a therapist than a NYT's journalist. Some will, I'm sure, criticize Michael for not pressing Trump harder or saying, "Hold on here, Mr. President, you sound very much like a dictator." But given the incoherent rambling of said president* it was clear that given free rein just reinforced our assessment of a man so in love with his illusions, so thin-skinned, so desperate to be seen as the most successful president ever, and so fearful he will be seen as a failure. So all Micheal had to do was feed the beast.
Leaving the golf course Schattergans, the following piece is about the deadly Kabul bombing in Afghanistan and how Isis and the Taliban are interconnected but separate. The interview (with video and transcript) between Hari Sreebivasan and Laurel Miller is the clearest and most concise I have come across:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-the-deadly-kabul-bombing-shows-about-isis-in-afghanistan
NYTimes headline:
"Trump Says Russia Inquiry Makes U.S. ‘Look Very Bad’"
Have to give the Pretender some credit. Dumb as he is, he got this one right.
We do look like idiots.
A better headline would be 'Trump Makes U.S. Look Very Bad'.
And a bit of advice from an old YakTraxer, check your wires every
time before going out. They have a tendency to unwind in old age,
a lot like the rest of us.
Patrick,
Ahh....you beat me to it.
Roy (the Molester) Moore is now looking for his next sinecure, a moocher his entire adult life, like Paul Ryan and so many other Confederate layabouts on the public dole.
How is it that so many Confederates who scream about the horrors of government scramble for government office and stay there for their entire lives? They don't really do anything. Not anything good, anyway. Moore, as a DA, spent most of his time lurking around malls trying to molest young girls. Then he latches on to the Supreme Court in Alabama where he breaks the law. Twice. And gets removed from his cushy job. Twice. The primary reasons for seeking a lifetime in some elected position or other, at least for such as Moore and Ryan, is to make sure they're well taken care of personally and to make sure others they deem insufficiently worthy, get nothing.
I'm sure there are enough fans of child molesters in Alabama that ol' Roy will grab on somewhere. How about he becomes mayor of Bordalama, AL, that fictional town brayed about by Moore in his demands to the AG that that awful Doug Jones (who actually HAS done something while in public office) not be allowed to take HIS (Moore's) god given senate sinecure. Bordalama is that made up place where thousands of demmycraps were bused in from other states. No wonder Trump loves this guy. They're both fantasists of the first order.
Hey, I bet he'd be great as sewer inspector general for Bordalama! He'll feel right at home sniffing around nasty places on the taxpayers dime.
A molester, a racist, a bigot, a loser, AND a moocher. Can't get more Confederate than that.
I had to laugh reading about a white supremacist being interviewed by Curt Schilling. Schilling, another moocher, who ripped off the state of Rhode Island for millions on a vanity business project that went belly up (Schilling got paid, his employees got nothing), has a thing for Nazis like Paul Nehlen.
A few years ago, as an ESPN announcer covering the Little League World Series (!), Schilling was suspended after posting a tweet that compared Muslims unfavorably with Nazis (in other words, worse than Hitler). He might not know shit about Islam, but he knows more than a little about Nazis. Schilling has been a Nazi devotee for many years and has amassed a serious collection of Nazi memorabilia, including weapons, uniforms, Nazi patches, swastikas, you name it. He's bragged about his collection before on social media. So I guess KKK Steve picked the right guy to interview a neo-Nazi.
Of course Schilling, blaming liberal media for the mischaracterization of himself as a Nazi lover because of his extensive collection, claims that he's simply a WWII buff.
Yeah. Okay.
Listen, I know a guy I run into now and then who is a real WWII buff. He can look at the silhouette of a tank and tell you whether it's Russian, British, American, or German, and he can tell you the combat range and weaponry. He knows Nazi battle insignias inside and out and can tell you the top speed and optimal flying distance of a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk. He can also name all the general staff officers present, on the Nazi side, at the Battle of the Bulge. But what he doesn't do is go out of his way to interview actual Nazis. There's a difference, Curt, you ignorant fuck.
Just the thought of this guy working a Little League game..."Look over there, John, doesn't that good looking blond boy look splendid? Bet he'd look great wearing an Iron Cross!"
And not for nothin' but if KKK Steve and his band of white supremacists truly believe there's no problem with their outlet interviewing a guy who promotes a Nazi message, why did they pull that interview? Fucking hypocrites. If ABC or CNN pulled an interview they realized made them look bad, Breibart'd be all over them.
By the way, that tweet about Muslims being worse than Nazis? Schilling later admitted that that post was wrong. Oh, not the post itself. His admission was that he posted it on the wrong site.
He's also a classic winger victim, believing that he is being kept out of the Hall of Fame (being one of the Greatest of All Time) because he's a Republican. Sorry, Curt. Jim Bunning a yuuuuuuge Republican, is in the Hall, as are many other conservatives. But nice try.
Another Hee-roe of Right Wing 'Merica. Sieg Heil, asshole.
Last night I watched (again) the PBS documentary on Rachel Carson. A couple of things struck me. First, after Carson published "Silent Spring", she was roundly attacked by the chemical industry and their congressional pals. She eventually won out, but largely because the media gave her a fair shake and the president himself, after her book came out, ordered a congressional report on the many worrying issues she unearthed.
How would that go down today? First, the character assassination would be bloody and constant. Fox and Breitbart would paint her as an evil opponent of good ol' 'merican capitalism. The president* would tweet that her ideas couldn't be any good because "look at her!" The attacks would be relentless and idiots with zero qualifications would question her motives and her conclusions. It would be a bloodbath. Some Confederate jamoke would claim that he and his kids had a picnic in the midst of a DDT fog, sprayed over their backyard just to prove how safe it was (of course, it would be a lie), and unqualified hacks on Fox would be summoned from the ether to opine on how dangerous is was to let a woman tell us what to do.
Second, I thought about Kennedy's role in the ascension of environmentalism in the wake of Carson's groundbreaking work. Kennedy was no tree hugger and also no alarmist, but the conclusions painted by "Silent Spring" were enough for him to take it seriously. After conferring with his science advisor, a report was commissioned. Carson herself thought the report objective and well done, and a good start to addressing the problems of poisoning the environment.
Now think about today. First, the little king has no science advisor. He has no interest in it beyond whatever it can do for his wallet. His idea of science is what he hears on Fox and Friends, meaning ideologically motivated drivel and opportunistic scare mongering. The two cabinet positions most reliant on scientific backgrounds have been filled with an unqualified industry hack whose career has been dedicated to suffocating the department he now runs, and a complete moron who was picked to replace two serious, well respected scientists, one of whom won the Nobel Prize in Physics. This guy (Rick Perry) couldn't even win a prize on Dancing with the Stars.
Trumpy would be making jokes about the title, "It's spring, isn't it? I went outside at Mar a Lago. I heard a lot of noise. What is this broad talking about?"
And worst of all? We're moving back to unfettered destruction of the environment for stockholder profit margins and corporate greed.
Maybe a little DDT in his coffee would help. Hey, it might move Monsanto's stock price a little, that'd be something, right?
Of Logic and Vanilla Ice Cream
Trumpy and his co-conspirators trying to shiv the Mueller investigation are screaming that certain investigators from the FBI are not to be trusted because they something, something, something Democrats or Hillary.
Okay. So what they're suggesting is that professionals cannot act in a professional manner if they're in any way connected with Democrats, have voted for a Democrat, or given any money to a Democrat's campaign. I'm gonna go waaaay out on a limb and suggest that such thinking would obtain across the board for these jabronis, in other words, no one in government with Democratic leanings or who have emailed a friend an unflattering comment about the little king can be trusted to ever do the right thing or to at least act in an objective manner.
So what about reversing that thinking?
How is it that Democrats or government employees who lean Democratic can't be trusted to be objective but Republicans can? How is it, then, that we can place absolute faith and trust in government employees and officials who give money to Trump and vote for Louie Gohmert or support Paul Ryan? And we won't even mention all the Republicans who spent eight years trading pictures of Michelle Obama as a gorilla or images of the White House lawn as a watermelon patch. They can be trusted to be objective?
Once again, Confederates flunk Logic 101. It can't be that only one side is trustworthy and everyone else is a deceitful conniver. That's illogical. We either have to say that (most) people can act as adults, in a professional manner, able to set aside ideological preferences, OR we have to find people who have no opinion one way or the other, and good luck with that.
One other possibility is that Confederates simply assume that, because their side is expected, at all times, to act in consort with the best interests of the party, and fuck the country, that Democrats must have the same character flaw and will behave accordingly.
It's a bit like Marie's suggestion that whenever Trumpy screams about someone eating all the vanilla ice cream, he's sure that must be the case because he's been hoarding as much vanilla ice cream as can be packed into White House freezers so he can fill his gob while watching Fox report on the strange lack of vanilla ice cream in the District.
Yesterday Margaret Sullivan Washinton Post wrote: Polls show Americans distrust the media. But talk to them, and it’s a very different story. ".Confusion abounds"
"As the media columnist for The Washington Post, I had long ago become used to hostile mail and phone calls from some readers, mostly those supporting Trump, and to trolling on social media... One reader, John Hanna, was perfectly civil, but told me by phone that he and his wife — both Washington-area physicians — had voted for Trump (whom he nevertheless called “a buffoon”) because of the candidate’s opposition to the “terribly biased” media, particularly the New York Times and The Washington Post. ”
Why are people confused? The problem with the fake news charges is that most everyone seems to have gotten journalism mixed up with commentary. They can't tell straight reporting from opionionated pieces. In defense of professional journalists, they are very careful and usually have legal vetting for critical issues...legit newspapers such as the NYTimes /WaPo, etc. generally have strict editorial guidelines and oversight, but commentary which often appears on the same pages, in close view from opinionated authors is viewed as equal 'media' stories by too many readers. Perhaps, such distinctions should be highlighted more. When an article by Maggie Haberman appears near a column by David Brooks, it appears many of those 'fake news' complainers cannot (or won't) separate the factual journalism from the in-my-view commentary.
And, since so many people apparently don't read much and prefer to receive their 'news' not from the-news-and-only-the-news channels, but cable ilk filled with self-righteous media stars like Hannity, Piro, Doozie*, etc...no wonder they're all confused.
I think Margaret Sullivan should have also defined more strongly the difference between what is straight journalistic reporting and REAL news...versus media stories offering Fake News with their own agendas.
*misspelled on purpose.
Akhilleus,
A comment on your comment.
Another (logical) reason R's flunk the logic test and what we should do about it:
Objective analysis (mine) would suggest Democrats, whose mentation, unlike that of the Other Party, habitually examines and determines what is real and what is not, doesn't shun science and is not afraid to ask and answer uncomfortable questions, should be the ONLY ones allowed to make decisions that affect anyone other than themselves.
The alternative is Gohmert, Gowdy and Benghazi.
Okay, one more, then I stop playing Monopoly.
Read the Waldman piece (linked above). This is some scary shit, kids.
In a short span (this in the truly weird interview the little king did with the Times), the word "collusion" is practically shouted 23 times.
Waldman has highlighted the word and it's clear that this guy is around the bend. He uses the word in every sentence, sometimes two or three times in the same sentence.
It looks a lot like:
Blah, blah, blah COLLUSION, blah, blah, COLLUSION. COLLUSION. COLLUSION. Blah, blah. COLLUSION.
COLLUSION, COLLUSION, blah, blah, blah, COLLUSION...
It's more than a little unnerving. This guy is the president (asterisk or not), with enormous powers, and he sounds like a doddering idiot.
Years ago, a skit on SNL caught the ears of the NBC censor. Someone used the word "penis". The censor sent a sternly worded warning about word choice to the SNL writers who promptly responded with a sketch the very next week that used the word "penis" about 50 times. It was hilarious.
THIS, is not hilarious. Collusion, collusion, collusion, something, something, collusion, collusion, collusion....sounds alarming. He's sounding like an insane person.
Good job Trumpy voters! Trump finally said a true thing. We do look very bad.
And frightening.
See that the Pretender and his hooligans have rescinded more Obama era regulations on fracking and deep-water drilling, because they say they're unneeded and overly burdensome on the oil and gas industry.
Whether we're a functioning democracy at this point or not, one thing is certain.
In Trumpland the planet sure as hell doesn't get a vote.
@Marie: Just now read your comments about Rose Marie: Perfect!!!!!