The Commentariat -- Nov. 21, 2016
Guardian: "President Barack Obama has warned Donald Trump he won't be able to pursue many of his more controversial policies once he is in office. In his final international speech before he leaves the White House in January, Obama said he could not guarantee Trump would not try to implement controversial positions he took during campaign but he could guarantee 'reality will force him to adjust' how he approaches the issues. Speaking at the Apec meeting in Peru, Obama also said he did not intend to become his successor's constant critic -- but reserved the right to speak out if Trump or his policies breached certain 'values or ideals'." -- CW ...
... AFP: "The US president, Barack Obama, has urged greater efforts to end violence in war-torn Syria in brief talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as concern mounts over a ferocious regime bombing campaign in rebel-held parts of Aleppo. Obama made the comments to his Russian counterpart on Sunday on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Peru in what could be their last meeting before the US president leaves office in January. It was the first time they had met since the US presidential election and the shock victory of Donald Trump, who has pursued a far warmer relationship with Putin than Obama did." -- CW
Michael Schmidt & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump has turned the vital, but normally inscrutable, process of forming a government into a Trump-branded, made-for-television spectacle, parading his finalists for top administration positions this weekend before reporters and the world. The two days unfolded like a pageant, with the many would-be officials striding up the circular driveway at Trump National Golf Club here, meeting Mr. Trump below three glass chandeliers at the entrance and shaking hands while facing the cameras. To build suspense, Mr. Trump offered teasing hints about coming announcements. 'I think so,' he said about whether he would make any appointments on Sunday. 'I think so. It could very well happen.'... By the evening, however, Mr. Trump had announced no appointments, leaving reporters waiting on the cold, gusty day to speculate about Mr. Trump's brief comments." -- CW
The Selling of the Presidency, 2016 ff.
Ayesha Venkataraman, et al., of the New York Times: "In a telephone interview, Atul Chordia, one of the developers who met last week with Mr. Trump, played down the appointment as a 'two-minute' congratulatory conversation in which no business was transacted and no new projects were discussed. But newspapers in India reported it as a business meeting, illustrated with a photograph of the beaming real estate executives -- Atul Chordia, Sagar Chordia and Kalpesh Mehta -- flanking the future president, and indicated that the builders and Mr. Trump's organization are planning further collaborative real estate projects. Sagar Chordia confirmed to The New York Times on Saturday that this account of the meeting in New York -- which included discussions with the Trump family about possible additional real estate deals -- was accurate.... [Ethics lawyers] agreed the activities created the appearance that Mr. Trump and his business partners are using his status as a way to profit.... The Chordia family, which has close ties to Sharad Pawar, the chief of India's Nationalist Congress Party, is particularly enthusiastic in its embrace of Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump has made targeted appeals to Indian-Americans for financial support, holding a major fund-raising event in October in Edison, N.J., a city with a large number of Indian residents, where Mr. Trump called himself a 'a big fan of Hindu.'" -- CW ...
... Drew Harwell & Anu Narayanswamy of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump's company has been paid up to $10 million by the [Trump Towers Instalbul's] developers since 2014 to affix the Trump name atop the luxury complex, whose owner, one of Turkey's biggest oil and media conglomerates, has become an influential megaphone for the country's increasingly repressive regime. That, ethics advisers said, forces the Trump complex into an unprecedented nexus: as both a potential channel for dealmakers seeking to curry favor with the Trump White House and a potential target for attacks or security risks overseas.... Ethics experts ... are now warning of many others, found among a vast assortment of foreign business interests never before seen in past presidencies. At least 111 Trump companies have done business in 18 countries and territories across South America, Asia and the Middle East.... Some ... deals ... were launched as recently as Trump's campaign, including eight that appear tied to a potential hotel project in Saudi Arabia, the oil-rich Arab kingdom that Trump has said he 'would want to protect.' Trump has refused calls to sell or give his business interests to an independent manager or 'blind trust,' a long-held presidential tradition designed to combat conflicts of interest." -- CW ...
... They've Got Ethics! Ha Ha Ha. Jon Swaine & Alan Yuhas of the Guardian: "Donald Trump's most senior advisers said on Sunday that he would not illegally use the White House for personal profit, as concerns mounted that he was already mixing business interests and official duties. Trump's vice-president-elect and chief of staff moved to reassure the public even as it emerged that he had been meeting overseas business partners between interviews for cabinet roles and making corporate pitches to foreign diplomats. 'I think during the presidency there will be the proper separation,' [mike pence] told CBS's Face the Nation.... Pence spoke after the Economic Times reported that Trump met last week in Trump Tower with three business partners who are building Trump-branded apartments in India.... Trump's children Eric and Ivanka also met with at least one of the Indian partners, the New York Times reported. The meeting ... followed news that dozens of foreign diplomats attended a sales pitch last week at Trump's new hotel in downtown Washington DC. Ivanka Trump, who is an executive vice-president of the Trump Organization, also joined her father last week for a meeting at Trump Tower with Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan. Ivanka's jewelry company had previously advertised a $10,800 gold bracelet that she wore during a TV interview...." -- CW ...
... Patrick Temple-West of Politico: "Overhauling the government's ethics laws will be a top priority for ... Donald Trump in Congress next year..., Mike Pence said Sunday. Speaking on 'Face the Nation' on CBS, Pence declined to affirm that lobbyists will not serve in Trump's administration. Trump, who had campaigned on the notion that he would 'drain the swamp' in Washington, drew fire last week for initially including lobbyists on his transition team." -- CW (Also linked yesterday.)
Christina Coleburn of NBC News: "Incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Sunday on NBC's 'Meet The Press' that ... Donald Trump's team is not planning to create a Muslim registry, but would not rule anything out."
Patrick Temple-West: "... Donald Trump will prioritize repealing President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare law right 'out of the gate' once he takes office..., Mike Pence said Sunday." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Paul Krugman: "... we already know enough about his infrastructure plan to suggest, strongly, that it's basically fraudulent, that it would enrich a few well-connected people at taxpayers' expense while doing very little to cure our investment shortfall. Progressives should not associate themselves with this exercise in crony capitalism.... Cronyism and self-dealing are going to be the central theme of this administration -- in fact, Mr. Trump is already meeting with foreigners to promote his business interests. And people who value their own reputations should take care to avoid any kind of association with the scams ahead." ...
... CW: If Brad Plumer of Vox, Ronald Klain, & Krugman can uncover this con just by reading a few pages on Trump's Website, why the hell can't Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, et al.? They're not economists, but they have economists on staff. It's possible they're grifting Trump, with the aim to bait-and-switch him to an actual traditional, government-run infrastructure program. But I'm not sure they're that smart. Or maybe they know what Trump is up to & they're happy to go along. Schumer, in particular, is a friend of big banks/big investors, and Pelosi's husband Paul is one. So Maybe Democrats are conning us, too. Stay tuned. ...
... Here's Sanders on working with Trump on infrastructure. Here's Pelosi (in a post by Jonathan Chait titled "Charles Schumer and Nancy Pelosi Have a Plan to Make President Trump Popular). And here's Schumer. ...
... E.J. Dionne: "However attractive an old-fashioned let's-pass-good-stuff strategy might seem, the alarming signals emanating from Trump Tower require more than politics as usual. If Democrats do not issue very clear warnings and lay out very bright lines against the most odious and alarming aspects of Trumpism, they will be abdicating their central obligation as the party of opposition.... Before they even get to infrastructure, Democrats and all other friends of freedom must make clear that if Trump abandons the basic norms of our democracy, all the roads in the world won't pave over his transgressions." -- CW ...
Josh Marshall: "Donald Trump won the presidency promising to defend the economic interests of ordinary people from the 'crooked' elite on Wall Street and in Washington. Whether or not he believes or believed that he has rapidly allied himself with the Paul Ryan privatizers who want to eviscerate the federal programs which are the bedrock of the American middle class. Social Security and Medicare are at the top of that list. If you look at the faces in the crowds at Trump's most poisonous speeches I guarantee that you that very few of those people thought they were voting to lose their Medicare.... "It is an issue where Democrats can score a win and in doing so they will empower the opposition to defeat the Trump GOP on other critical fronts." -- CW
** Charles Blow: "This may well be the beginning of the end: the early moments of a historical pivot point, when the slide of the republic into something untoward and unrecognizable still feels like a small collection of poor judgments and reversible decisions, rather than the forward edge of an enormous menace inching its way forward and grinding up that which we held dear and foolishly thought, as lovers do, would ever endure.... Hard-line Trumpism isn't softening; it's being cemented. Increasingly, as he picks his cabinet from among his fawning loyalists, it is becoming clear that by 'Make America Great Again,' he actually meant some version of 'Make America a White, Racist, Misogynistic Patriarchy Again.'" -- CW ...
... Here's a telling anecdote from Blow's column: "
In October, [Trump's pick for national security advisor Michael] Flynn tweeted: '“Follow Mike @Cernovich He has a terrific book, Gorilla Mindset. Well worth the read. @realDonaldTrump will win on 8 NOV!!!.' The New Yorker dubbed Mike Cernovich 'the meme mastermind of the alt-right' in a lengthy profile. The magazine pointed out: 'On his blog, Cernovich developed a theory of white-male identity politics: men were oppressed by feminism, and political correctness prevented the discussion of obvious truths, such as the criminal proclivities of certain ethnic groups.' ...
... Jill Jacobs &Daniel Sokatch in a Washington Post op-ed: "Over the past year, we have watched as Trump's campaign trafficked in blatant anti-Semitism alongside racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, ableism and Islamophobia. He has empowered white supremacists and provoked a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. Trying to conduct business as usual with the Trump administration could prevent us from joining with other threatened groups to protect our neighbors.... For many Jewish organizations, it will be tempting to 'move past' the disturbing policy goals and divisive rhetoric we heard during the campaign from Trump and his team and to engage in business as usual with the new administration.... Several congratulated Trump on his victory; some expressed their faith that he would make good on his victory speech promise to 'bind the wounds of division.'... But if we take the president-elect at his word [as expressed in his policy goals] -- and we must -- we can't afford business as usual. Now is the time for principled opposition, not accommodation." -- CW
Matthew Nussbaum of Politico: "Donald Trump will live in the White House, he said Sunday, ending speculation about whether he might opt to stay in New York City and reside in Trump Tower or at one of his other properties. His wife, Melania, and 10-year-old son, Barron, will likely join him after Barron finishes the school year this spring, Trump added. 'Yes, White House,' Trump told reporters when asked about where he will live, per a pool report. Asked about plans for Melania and Barron to move to Washington, Trump added: 'Very soon. After he's finished with school.'" ...
... Mallory Shelbourne of the Hill: "Melania Trump and her son, Barron, will not move to the White House after ... Donald Trump takes the oath of office, according to a report in the New York Post." CW: As Rockygirl predicted in yesterday's comments, "She & her son will remain ensconced in Trump Tower, emerging only when absolutely necessary." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Always Look on the Bright Side of Stats. Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Steve M. "Headline at Politico right now: 'Poll: Trump's popularity soars after election' 'Soars'" No, it didn't. What Politico calls "a dramatic uptick" is "mere parity, 46%-46%.... The Politico headline is right-wing clickbait -- and will probably become mainstream-media conventional wisdom." More accurate is the Pew Research headline: "Voters give Trump worse grades than they have for any winning candidate in recent decades." -- CW
Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are drawing up plans to take on the government bureaucracy they have long railed against, by eroding job protections and grinding down benefits that federal workers have received for a generation. Hiring freezes, an end to automatic raises, a green light to fire poor performers, a ban on union business on the government's dime and less generous pensions -- these are the contours of the blueprint emerging under Republican control of Washington in January.... Trump's election as an outsider promising to shake up a system he told voters is awash in 'waste, fraud and abuse' has conservatives optimistic that they could do now what Republicans have been unable to do in the 133 years since the civil service was created." -- CW
Jason Chaffetz Has a Clinton Conspiracy Theory, and He's Going to Prove It.
... we have one of the biggest security breaches ever.... How did they migrate all of this classified information out of the system?... Somebody had to physically take that and put it on another system. Either upload it or on a thumb drive, retype. -- Rep. Jason Chaffetz (RTP-Utah) to Tucker Carlson, Nov. 15
Chaffetz ... shouldn't insinuate, through speculation about thumb drives, that the State Department engaged in the deliberate transfer of information from classified to unclassified systems. The extensive information released by the FBI on its investigation ... provides virtually no support for this assertion, made on a nationally televised interview.... Chaffetz believes the Clinton email case was 'one of the biggest security breaches ever.' That's a matter of opinion. (Let's recall that the State Department in 2000 lost a laptop containing highly sensitive information and discovered an eavesdropping device in one of its conference rooms, resulting in the expulsion of a Russian diplomat.) -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post
See also Patrick's commentary, below.
Joseph Goldstein of the New York Times: As the finale of a conference of the alt-right in Washington, D.C., this weekend, alt-right leader Richard Spencer "railed against Jews and, with a smile, quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the 'children of the sun,' a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of ... Donald J. Trump, were 'awakening to their own identity.' As he finished, several audience members had their arms outstretched in a Nazi salute. When Mr. Spencer, or perhaps another person standing near him at the front of the room -- it was not clear who -- shouted, 'Heil the people! Heil victory,' the room shouted it back. These are exultant times for the alt-right movement, which was little known until this year, when it embraced Mr. Trump's campaign and he appeared to embrace it back." -- CW
Alan Henry of Broadway World: "a Trump supporter interrupted the Saturday evening performance of Hamilton in Chicago. An audience member seated in the balcony allegedly shouted 'We won! You Lost! Get over it! F[u]ck you!' during the number 'Dear Theodosia.'" According to an audience member, "the initial disturbance began after the audience member was enraged by the line 'immigrants, we get the job done.' The majority of the audience cheered that specific line." The Trump supporter was reportedly intoxicated & scuffled with security staff as they removed him from the theater. -- CW
Terrence McCoy of the Washington Post: "At a time of continuing discussion over the role that hyperpartisan websites, fake news and social media play in the divided America of 2016, LibertyWritersNews illustrates how websites can use Facebook to tap into a surging ideology, quickly go from nothing to influencing millions of people and make big profits in the process. Six months ago, Wade and his business partner, Ben Goldman, were unemployed restaurant workers. Now they're at the helm of a website that gained 300,000 Facebook followers in October alone and say they are making so much money that they feel uncomfortable talking about it because they don't want people to start asking for loans." ...
... CW Note to Self: News Year's Resolution s/b "Start using Facebook."
Sapna Maheshwari of the New York Times: "Eric Tucker ... had just about 40 Twitter followers. But his recent tweet about paid protesters being bused to demonstrations against ... Donald J. Trump fueled a nationwide conspiracy theory -- one that Mr. Trump joined in promoting. Mr. Tucker's post was shared at least 16,000 times on Twitter and more than 350,000 times on Facebook. The problem is that Mr. Tucker got it wrong. There were no such buses packed with paid protesters. But that didn't matter. While some fake news is produced purposefully by teenagers in the Balkans or entrepreneurs in the United States seeking to make money from advertising, false information can also arise from misinformed social media posts by regular people that are seized on and spread through a hyperpartisan blogosphere. Here, The New York Times deconstructs how Mr. Tucker's now-deleted declaration on Twitter ... turned into a fake-news phenomenon." -- CW ...
... CW's Helpful Hint No. 5: If a friend or acquaintance sends you a clip or text of a sensational story that hasn't appeared in mainstream media accounts, it likely is a hoax.
Beyond the Beltway
Max Ehrenfreund of the Washington Post: "An officer was shot and killed just outside the San Antonio Police Department's headquarters around noon on Sunday. Chief William McManus said the officer, Detective Benjamin Marconi, had been 'targeted.' Detectives have not identified a motive and are working to identify the shooter...." -- CW
Way Beyond
Joanna Plucinska of Politico: "The U.K. government is deploying the Queen to reach out to ... Donald Trump and establish a good relationship with his administration after his inauguration. The Queen is expected to extend a formal invitation to Trump soon after he is sworn in as president on January 20, according to the Sunday Times." CW: Trump is hardly the first tinpot dictator Elizabeth has had to endure. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Sylvie Corbet of the Washington Post: "Former president Nicolas Sarkozy conceded defeat Sunday in the primary to choose the conservative nominee for next year's presidential election in France. With more than 3.2 million ballots counted from about 80 percent of polling stations, former prime minister François Fillon had 44 percent of the vote, former prime minister Alain Juppé had 28.1 and Sarkozy had 21.1 percent. The two candidates confirmed as winning the most votes advance to the Nov. 27 runoff." -- CW
Alison Smale of the New York Times: "Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, under siege domestically but widely seen as a pillar of Western liberalism, announced on Sunday that she will seek a fourth term next year." -- CW
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Reader Comments (15)
WaPo Fact Checker (Kessler) gives 3 Pinocchios to Rep Jason Chaffetz, for saying on TV that HRC's folks illegally used sneakernet to move classified material from classified systems to unclassified systems.
This article, and Chaffetz' comments, and the readers' comments attached to the article, demonstrate how ignorant people are of laws and practices associated with handling classified information. Chaffetz (and the whole "get Hillary" crowd) is able to make his political hay because neither the public nor the press has a clue about the merits of the case. He can make accusations confident that the actual texts of documents he says are classified will not be made public, unredacted, because either the FBI or the CIA reviewers say they are classified -- even when State Department reviewers say that they are not.
Chaffetz says that he will continue to go after HRC on this, because he is really concerned about a security breach, it wasn't about undermining public confidence in HRC for political purposes.
If that were true, and if he really believed that her staff moved classified from a classified system to an unclassified system via thumbdrive, he should be going after those (non-HRC) people, most of whom have already been deposed by a variety of investigators.
But he's not. He has to justify all that prior bullshit by continuing the bullshit, or it would be too obvious to the average Clinton-hater.
I am looking forward to Jan.21. Trump policies go into action!!
New meaning of the word chaos.
We are going to cancel and replace it with ?????
We are going to spend a load of money we don't have.
We are going to take actions we have no control over.
And on and on.
The NJ Star Ledger had an interesting editorial today. "We are all Muslims" They suggested that all Americans line up to register as Muslims. Of course only about 50% would do that but as a practical idea it could be interesting and gives an idea of the new chaos. What if millions of non-Muslims as protest got in line under the new order. A great example of what could be the new word 'Trumpwar". And note that mayors and police chiefs all over the country in 'sanctuary cities' have already stated they will not participate in rounding up immigrants.
With every new person named in President-elect P****grabber's administration, my heart sinks lower. The press has not learned a damn thing from any of this-- the reportage of the car company factory never having been up for grabs in the first place was dismal; he was portrayed mostly as saying that he had saved the factory...without the PS about the lie being told. The cabinet is one confederate/crazy person after another, and there's not anyone who knows anything monitoring this, reporting on this with accuracy, or informing the ignorant racist slob they have elected whether his priorities make any sense. And I agree with someone who said yesterday that it doesn't matter what he does, or his "best people" do on his behalf, his stupid, nasty followers will say it doesn't matter, since anything is better than Hillary. And after all, isn't anything that happens the result of having put a black guy in charge, with those he surrounded himself with, or feminazis? This is going to be, to quote the Racist-In-Chief, a disaster, truly.
WHAT AMERICANS AGAINST TRUMP CAN LEARN FROM THE FAILURES OF THE ISRAELI OPPOSITION:
"When the neediest of the majority make common cause with Nationalists, religious zealots, party hacks, and promoters of armed deterrence, protest votes can morph into political identities."
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-americans-against-trump-can-learn-from-the-failures-of-the-israeli-opposition?intcid=mod-latest
The ever more repulsive Jason Chaffetz is simply deploying the cheapest and most effective weapon of right-wing propaganda: fake news stories, the ones Mark Zuckerberg claims never make it onto Facebook, and which other, ostensibly progressive types, have been helping to invent.
I read a piece on the Daily Beast about fake news creation and dissemination that was frankly disturbing for a couple of reasons. One, the most obvious, for how easy it is to gull Confederates with the most outrageous lies (they'll believe anything as long as it confirms their most feverish hate dreams). Two, because the author of the piece, who, it seemed, began spreading false information potentially damaging to Clinton to test a theory, but then kept it up to the point where he actually began to do real damage and then kept at it. I mean, WTF.
Yes, some of these "scoops" were funny: "Hillary sold passport-making machines directly to ISIS. Obama won’t say the words 'Radical Islam' because it would break an Islamic Spell he thinks he is protected by...an exposé on the reason the Clintons were immune to prosecution. It was, I wrote on my website RealTrueNews.org, because they were sovereign citizens and therefore immune to the justice system."
But after a while, as his fake news stories were being pinged back and forth at the speed of light, collecting more and more views, he should haves stopped. But he didn't. And when his fake news (Hillary on the verge of death) was propped up by real world events (Clinton's bout with pneumonia), he was thrilled at his success. Wingers went wild and banged out ever more hateful pieces into the internet ether.
The point was (and is) that most of these people will believe anything, especially if it's picked up by the avatars of hatred and irrational demagoguery, such as Breitbart and Drudge. Okay, we get that. It's pretty much self-evident. But as part of our post-mortem of this just-past season from campaign hell, can we at least agree that helping the crazies along the path to hell can have the enormously deleterious outcome of dragging us along with them?
As I was reading this piece, I felt like I was watching "Bridge on the River Kwai" in which the British CO, played by Alec Guinness, decides to take on the near impossible task of building a railroad for the Japanese just to show them what good old English Know-How can do and realizes only too late that what he's really been doing has been helping the animals destroy the forces of civilization.
The Jason Chaffetz animals out there can make up their own lies without help from the left.
Fuck's sake.
Someone please tell me there is a cohort waiting in the wings to wake us up from this nightmare. Please.
Akhilleus,
Hate to make it so simple because vast complexities of the human mind that I don't (want to) understand are at their base, but for the Right belief always comes first; fractured facts, if any facts at all, follow.
That so many on the Right (Christian, Nazi or Muslim) are "religious," says it all. Naturally inclined to or not, they're trained to accept nonsense.
That the nonsense they believe makes them feel better about themselves (anointed, superior, smarter, more powerful, whatever) is the payment they receive for being nuts.
Russians know an authoritarian tyrant when they see one.
Who knows what it is, a sort of universal Stockholm Syndrome generated by nearly a century of harsh autocratic rule, or perhaps something in the Russian psyche that goes back to the days of the steel booted tsarist repression, whatever it is, Russians know an authoritarian douchebag when they see one and they see one in Comrade Trumpskyev.
Some years ago I spent a few months in the old Soviet Union as part of an official group from this country. The soviets were amused, but mostly peeved, that we, as a group, did not cede power to Someone in Charge, but made decisions the democratic way, by voting. this drove some of them to distraction. Journalists (some, anyway) I spoke with had nothing good to say about the First Amendment either, stating that it allowed any crackpot to say whatever they thought, which could cause nothing but unrest, and that state controlled media made for a more stable and smoothly functioning society.
It strikes me now that these are some of the reasons that many Russians see a kindred spirit in Donaldavich, suspicion of civil rights and a love of control and authoritarianism, and conversely, perhaps, why he finds Russian society so appealing. The big boys snap their fingers and the little guys jump. That's just his meat.
Of course, for some of them, they might relish the idea that their guy (Putin) has his fingers firmly around the strings of his new American puppet and can make him jump whenever he wants. That's just THEIR meat.
Now, just imagine there was a Democrat who spent so much time fawning over Russia, and who was found to be an excellent choice for president by Russians who revel in authoritarian control. The Breitbart site would be glowing white hot like a star ready to go nova.
IOKIYT.
How it Happens
Pick up your smartphone and go to Google news.
See all the stories about Trump? Now look at the thumbnail pictures...this morning I counted five pictures of the Orange Headed Bigot posed in front of a big American flag.
This is how the normalization of a piece of shit asshole happens.
Reagan understood the importance and value of symbolism for covering up any inadequacies of policy command or intellect. Mike Deaver, his image apparatchik, always made sure the Gipper was draped in (old) glory and seen as a Colossus bestriding the Republic. Of course this is the same Mike Deaver who was sentenced to three years in prison for lying to congress. But don't worry, he never served a day. IOKIYAR.
Nonetheless, Trumpy doesn't need a Mike Deaver these days, he's got the MSM to do that job for him. Hagiographic pictures of the OHB aboud, those steely eyes looking off into the future for more civil rights to trample, those tiny hands looking for Mooslims to (try to) strangle, and that snarling lip curled in the sneer of cold command ready at the drop of a pair of panties to utter something obscene or stupid. Nonetheless, He is THE PRESIDENT!
Tune in tomorrow for more. And the next day, and the day after that, and...
Nancy; This is just a bad dream. For the nightmares we have to
wait until at least Jan 21st at 3:00 AM (the morning tweets). That is,
if his twitter account hasn't been closed. And he won't get much
sleep because he won't be in a gold plated bed and the bathroom
won't have a gold toilet and bidet, so there will be lots more time
to do nasty stuff.
Whoa...
You guys will never believe this...
Secret video taken outside Trump Tower of the lineup of potential candidates for cabinet posts in the von Clownstick Administration, all waiting to register with KKK Steve for their appointment with Fuckace himself.
Quite an impressive collection of wingnut talent, I must say. My guess is that the two guys at the end of the line will definitely get cushy jobs. Also the first guy they interview. He's a Trump kinda guy.
"Chewing gum in line––I hope you brought enough for everybody."
I wish, with all my heart, I could laugh at our REAL lineup as I just did at the blazing ones in the film. Sometimes I do–-when I can look at all this as history gone amuck––but then I realize that we are IN the middle of that muck and then...
PD; Do what I do every evening. Put on the Gloria Gayner, Donna
Summer, Weather Girls LPs, and of course Evonne Elliman. Does
that age me? After some wine and disco you'll forget all of this stuff,
until tomorrow, that is.
Chaffetz removes his head from the recesses of his ass just long enough to admire himself in the mirror. Otherwise he'd be ferociously bombarded by the vast voids in Trump's ethics. Who knows, his daughter might be able to look him in the eye again.
Now if the media would only remove their collective heads from their asses. I'll be anxiously waiting to hear the collective pop. Pretty sure though that there will have to be some more media butt hurt before that happens. I wish the media had the cojonnes to start some juicy speculation about what he's up to. Just sayin' "many people think he's out of the public eye because he's promising favors for business arrangements."
Charles Simic in today's NYRB:
"Once the new president settles in and brings the dregs of our society into his administration and they appoint other corrupt and worthless men and women to other positions in the government and start settling scores with their political and personal enemies and keeping their most rabid followers happy by deporting, persecuting or physically abusing some minority we won't need a crystal ball to know what is in store for us."
And I thought realitychex commenters were depressed! Seeing what Trump has chosen to date and knowing there are only 4000 more teaparty fanatics to be given positions one does tend to think that things will get much worse.