The Commentariat -- December 17, 2018
Afternoon Update:
Scott Shane & Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times: "The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of activity on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its posts on Facebook, according to a report produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee.... Using Gmail accounts with American-sounding names, the Russians recruited and sometimes paid unwitting American activists of all races to stage rallies and spread content, but there was a disproportionate pursuit of African-Americans, it concludes.... The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers. The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, lacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us. On YouTube, the largest share of Russian material covered the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality...."
Katelyn Polantz & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "Two former business associates of former national security adviser Michael Flynn were charged with trying to influence American politicians to seek the extradition of a Turkish cleric, according to an indictment filed in the Eastern District of Virginia. Bijan Rafiekian, also known as Bijan Kian, and a Dutch-Turkish businessman Kamil Alptekin, who also uses the first name Ekim, were charged with conspiracy and acting as an agent of a foreign government. Alptekin was also charged with making four false statements in a May 2017 FBI interview.... US authorities said the goal of the lobbying project was to press for the extradition of the Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999.... The alleged plot, the Justice Department said in a news release, involved using a company founded by Kian and Flynn to 'delegitimize the Turkish citizen in the eyes of the American public and United States politicians' to pave the way for his extradition. US authorities allege that high-level members of Turkey's government approved financing for the gambit...." ...
... Marcy Wheeler: "While not explicitly stated, the reference to Mike Flynn throughout the indictment as Person A -- the only unindicted co-conspirator so identified -- makes it clear that the government believes that's what Flynn was doing, acting as an agent of Turkey. And the timeline for the conspiracy goes up to March 2017. One of Trump's top foreign policy advisors and, for almost a month, his National Security Advisor, was an agent of Turkey." Wheeler outlines why she thinks Mueller's prosecutors "were able to move towards sentencing without his testimony in court: because he may not need to give testimony in court. The government has secured other, more reliable witnesses for that testimony." ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Trump backers last week found their (latest) smoking gun in a supposedly vast law-enforcement conspiracy to take down President Trump: A judge asked for more information about Michael Flynn's guilty plea after Flynn's attorney implied his client had been tricked into lying.... Just two days later, the Flynn-as-innocent-dupe narrative suffered a major setback [with the indictment of Flynn's business partner].... The indictment ... implicates his own eponymous business in an illegal lobbying operation. The Flynn Intel Group is referred to as 'Company A' in the filing, and Flynn is referred to as 'Person A.'... In Flynn's plea, the government said his lies and omissions included 'falsely stating that [Flynn Intel Group] did not know whether or the extent to which the Republic of Turkey was involved in the Turkey project....' ... This isn't just about Flynn having lied about his contacts with Russia's ambassador; there is a pattern of behavior that suggests he wasn't just some heroic general who misspoke once or twice and has been railroaded. At the worst, it suggests someone who was doing quite a bit of double-dealing and saw the need to cover it up by lying repeatedly."
Jonathan Chait: "In an interview yesterday, George Stephanopoulos asked ... Rudy Giuliani if Roger Stone ever gave Trump a 'heads-up' about forthcoming WikiLeaks email publications. 'No, he didn't, no,' he replied. But then Giuliani ... softened his denial -- 'I don't believe so' -- before immediately transitioning into a conditional defense of the very charge he had been asked to deny: 'But again, if Roger Stone gave anybody a heads-up about WikiLeaks' leaks, that's not a crime.... One the -- the crime, this is why this thing is so weird, strange. The crime is conspiracy to hack; collusion is not a crime; it doesn't exist.' If you understand the facts and the law in this case, this much should be clear: Trump is almost certainly guilty of both collusion and a crime. And Giuliani's backpedalling defense reveals that he is no longer confident Trump's denials will hold.... Giuliani's comments seem to indicate that he knows that Trump did have a heads-up from Stone, but does not know if Mueller will be able to prove it. Hence his competing impulses to deny the accusation but to prepare a fallback defense in case that denial becomes inoperable.... Giuliani's defense has retreated right up to the line where it crosses into a confession of guilt."
Nick Schwellenback of The Daily Beast: "In April 2018, Tracey Valerio, the top official in charge of 'all agency contracting' at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, resigned. Within months, she was recruited as a paid expert witness in a lawsuit to defend ICE's biggest contractor -- a large, private prison and immigrant detention company known as the GEO Group. The lawsuit charged Florida-based GEO with violating minimum wage laws by paying the same immigrants now being locked up in record numbers by the Trump administration as little as $1 a day for menial work such as cleaning toilets.... Valerio, the top ICE contracting official who became GEO's paid witness, not only went spinning through her agency's revolving door, she was accused of violating the law and an agency rule in the process.... Last year, as The Daily Beast first reported, Valerio's former boss Daniel Ragsdale left as ICE's deputy director to work as a GEO executive. In 2012, David Venturella -- formerly head of ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations -- joined GEO as an executive vice president...[and so on.]" --s
** Clive Irving in The Daily Beast: "Even if Russia didn't succeed in swinging the election to Trump (and we can't be sure that it didn't), [mitch mcconnell] blocking a protest [by Obama and Joe Biden] at that critical moment [before the election] on partisan grounds approaches 9/11 levels of dereliction, and you have to wonder if all of this had not been shrewdly anticipated in Putin's playbook, the fruit of long and careful study of Republican tactics.... Over several decades the Republicans have partly created and expertly exploited a broken system that regularly gives them a majority in the Electoral College.... Now it is McConnell who, more than any other Republican, is the supreme technician of the system, quietly loading the courts with judges who pass his smell test. If there is a model for the McConnell method, it is the apparatchiks of the Soviet machine.... It's a form of power that doesn't advertise its power, and McConnell thrives at it. There is no ethical foundation. It is barren of moral underpinnings. Sooner or later a president would arrive who was as barren. Trump is that, with bells on." --s
Joel Ebert of the Tennessean: "After roughly a quarter century in elected office, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander will retire. The former Republican governor, who has served in the Senate since first being elected in 2002, said Monday that he will not seek a fourth term in the upper chamber."
Andrew Wasley & Natalie Jones of the Guardian: "The Guardian's findings [of unethical chicken processing in the U.S.] have fuelled concerns that a post-Brexit trade deal with the US could see the UK flooded with chicken produced to lower welfare standards. This follows last year's transatlantic row over chlorinated chicken, which prompted political interventions in both countries. The records include hundreds of instances in which groups of chickens and turkeys were bludgeoned, suffocated, scalded, frozen or heated to death.... The USDA dictates rules for humane slaughter, but these only apply to 'livestock', which the US government considers separate from 'poultry'. There are 'good commercial practice' guidelines, but they are largely voluntary and not enforced. The USDA is not obliged to take any action against plants that violate these practices, other than writing up a report." --s
Juan Cole: "The decision of the Australian government of PM Scott Morrison to recognize 'West Jerusalem' as the capital of Israel but to hold off moving its embassy there until there is a peace settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might look on the face of it like a victory for Israel. It is quite the opposite, a sign of how even strong allies of Israel are increasingly constrained by rising Muslim powers.... Australia badly wants a free trade deal with its neighbor across the waters, Indonesia, which is the most populous Muslim country in the world, and where conservative Muslims are strong supporters of Palestinian rights.... That even an anti-immigrant, pro-Trump right winger like Scott Morrison felt he could not risk absolutely alienating Jakarta, and so was forced to craft a Jerusalem policy that satisfied no one but definitely disappointed the Likud, is a sign of the future." --s
Ammar Kalia, et al. of the Guardian: "The domination of Facebook by Italy's two populist political leaders, Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, is revealed in previously unseen data that shows how they exploited video and live broadcasts to bypass the mainstream media and foment discord during the country's general election. The data, reviewed by the Guardian, reveals how the leaders massively expanded their reach with inflammatory and visually arresting posts earlier this year, eclipsing their main rival, the centre-left former prime minister Matteo Renzi, on Facebook.... There is growing academic interest in the relationship between social media and populist movements on both the left and right. Facebook and Twitter have transformed western democracies, enabling politicians to bypass traditional gatekeepers and communicate directly with their base." --s
*****
This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.
** Craig Timberg & Tony Romm of the Washington Post: "A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia's disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters' interests to help elect President Trump -- and worked even harder to support him while in office. The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat. The bipartisan panel ... plans to release [the report] publicly along with another study later this week.... 'What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party -- and specifically Donald Trump,' the report says.... The Russians aimed particular energy at activating conservatives on issues such as gun rights and immigration, while sapping the political clout of left-leaning African American voters by undermining their faith in elections and spreading misleading information about how to vote." ...
... Donie O'Sullivan & Kate Sullivan of CNN: "The Senate Intelligence Committee has been advised that social media companies might have provided the 'bare minimum' amount of data to aid the panel's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to a person familiar with a report commissioned by the committee. The committee hired an online intelligence firm to review data on Russian social media accounts that posed as American accounts. The data, much of which has not yet been made public, was provided to lawmakers by Facebook, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube. New Knowledge, the firm hired by the committee, tracks online disinformation. In its report to lawmakers, the firm said that the social media companies could have provided more valuable data to the committee and also could have presented it in a more accessible format. The firm advised lawmakers that there are likely more Russian accounts that the social media companies failed to identify, according to person familiar with the report." The New Knowledge report is separate from the Senate report covered the WashPo story linked above. ...
... ** Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. More Powerful Than a Russian Loco Motive. Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "The most powerful print publication in America might just be The National Enquirer. It functioned as a dirty-tricks shop for Donald J. Trump in 2016, which would have been the stuff of farce -- the ultimate tabloid backs the ultimate tabloid candidate -- if it hadn't accomplished its goal. The Enquirer's power was fueled by its covers. For the better part of the campaign season, Enquirer front pages blared sensational headlines about Mr. Trump's rivals from eye-level racks at supermarket checkout lanes across America.... The Enquirer's racks, under the current chief, David J. Pecker, were given over to the Trump campaign. This was a political gift even more valuable than the $150,000 that The Enquirer paid in a 'catch-and-kill' deal with the former Playboy model Karen McDougal for her story of an affair with Mr. Trump.... The Enquirer spread false stories about Hillary Clinton -- illnesses concealed, child prostitution, bribery, treason.... It refused to unlock its vault of Trump tips and stories as it promoted him as America's savior.... As the campaign wore on, The Enquirer's covers favored stories similar to those coursing through Infowars, Russian trolldom and, increasingly, your uncle's Facebook feed."
Rudy Implicates Trump Again. Daily Beast: "Rudy Giuliani claimed in an ABC interview that ... Donald Trump knew that his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was working on the Trump Tower Moscow deal 'all the way up to ... November of 2016.' Cohen ... told a federal judge that the discussions stopped in June 2016.... Giuliani [said,] 'according to the answer that he gave, it would have covered all the way up to ... November of 2016' apparently in reference to Trump's written answers to Robert Mueller's questions about potential Russian collusion in the election.... The President's personal lawyer, who also just said that President Trump would be interviewed in person by the Special Counsel's Office 'over his dead body,' made the statement during an interview with George Stephanopoulos on This Week ABC." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is remarkable. It's what happens to a client whose spokesperson-lawyer is over the hill. So now we know that Trump was working on a deal with Russia throughout the campaign. During this period, he publicly claimed numerous times he had "nothing to do with Russia." ...
... digby highlights "more of Rudy's trainwreck of an appearance[.]... It's very ironic that Trump now says Cohen was just a PR guy and a lousy lawyer. That might be true but if so, Giuliani proves that Trump is continuing the practice." ...
... AND A Noun, a Verb, and 9/11.
[Michael Cohen has] changed his story four or five times. -- Rudy Giuliani
So has the president. -- George Stephanopoulos
The president's not under oath. And the president tried to do the best he can to remember what happened back at a time when he was the busiest man in the world. And I can't -- I was with him most of that time, I can't remember a lot of the stuff that goes on there. But ... But boy, if it's -- same way, if I go under oath, then I really think about it and I really say -- you know, I can't remember that. I -- I was wrong about who was with me on September 11th. I always thought the Fire Commissioner was with me in the building we were trapped in. Turns out later, he tells me, I met you after. That happens when you're in the middle of difficult events; you know that from experiencing it. -- Rudy 9/11 Giuliani
New Rule. It's okay for the President* to lie to the American people when he's not under oath. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
** That Time a Black Man Arrested a Sitting President. Michael Rosenwald of the Washington Post: "In 1872, while president, [Ulysses S.] Grant was arrested at the corner of 13th and M streets in Washington. This was not a high crime, but it was -- at least theoretically speaking -- a misdemeanor. The man who led the North to victory in the Civil War was busted for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage. The story of his arrest -- confirmed a few years ago by Cathy L. Lanier, who was then the District's police chief -- was told in a remarkable but obviously forgotten story in the Sept. 27, 1908, edition of the Washington Evening Star under the headline: 'Only Policeman Who Ever Arrested a President.' That policeman was William H. West, a black man who had fought in the Civil War." ...
... Dear Bob Mueller, When you send FBI agents in to the White House to arrest Trump, please make sure the officer who cuffs him is a Black Muslim woman. And, for once, do alert the press. We all want to see that epic perp walk.
Erica Werner, et al., of the Washington Post: "The White House and a number of federal agencies have started advanced preparations for a partial government shutdown, as President Trump and congressional Democrats appear unlikely to resolve their fight over a border wall before some government funding lapses at week's end. GOP leaders are scrambling to find a short-term alternative that could stave off a shutdown, which would start on Dec. 22 absent a deal. But White House officials signaled to lawmakers Friday that they would probably not support a one- or two-week stopgap measure. Some congressional Republicans support such a 'continuing resolution,' but the White House rejection has dramatically increased the odds of a spending lapse." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Ben Kamisar of NBC News: "Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Sunday said ... Donald Trump is preventing a deal to avert a partial government shutdown because of a 'temper tantrum' over his demand for more funding to build a border wall. Appearing on NBC's 'Meet the Press' just five days before funding deadline to keep several key federal agencies open, Schumer, D-N.Y., said that he and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., are standing firm in their offers to Trump and that it's up to the president to come to the table." ...
... Dereliction of Duty. Julie Davis & Emily Cochrane of the New York Times: "... House Republican leaders are also confronting a more mundane and awkward problem: Their vanquished and retiring members are sick and tired of Washington and don't want to show up anymore to vote. Call it the revenge of the lame ducks. Many lawmakers, relegated to cubicles as incoming members take their offices, have been skipping votes in the weeks since House Republicans were swept from power in the midterm elections, and Republican leaders are unsure whether they will ever return.... While Mr. Trump insisted that he had the votes to push $5 billion in wall spending through the House, Republican leaders in the chamber are keenly aware that their rank-and-file members are in no mood to return to Washington days before Christmas to battle over his long-unfulfilled signature campaign promise.... Mr. Trump and top Republicans appear to have no definite plan to keep the doors open. In the absence of any road map, House leaders shuttered the chamber Thursday for a six-day weekend, putting lawmakers in standby mode and [tentatively] scheduling the next votes for Wednesday evening, two days before the shutdown deadline."
Reuters: "... Donald Trump has told his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan that Washington is working on extraditing a U.S.-based Muslim cleric [Fethullah Gulen] accused of orchestrating a failed Turkish coup in 2016, Turkey's foreign minister said on Sunday.... Trump said last month he was not considering extraditing the preacher[.]" --s (Also linked yesterday.)
He Is Not Amused. Michael Brice-Saddler of the Washington Post: "The day after a 'Saturday Night Live' sketch depicted what life might be like had Donald Trump never been elected [video embedded in yesterday's Commentariat], the president criticized what he called the show's 'one sided coverage' and suggested without any basis that it was defamation. 'A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live,' Trump wrote Sunday on Twitter. 'It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can't be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?'..." ...
... Mrs. McC: As we all know, He Trvmpvs wants to ditch the First Amendment, especially as it applies to criticism of He Trvmpvs. Never mind he swore an oath (see Rudy Giuliani's new rule) to uphold the Constitution. Trvmpvs also fails to understand that people are apt to ridicule, spurn & excoriate an asshole, particularly an asshole who does great damage to them, their friends & their country. In fact, he fails to understand reality, some of which parody ironically exposes. Rather than "test in courts," Trump would do well to take criticism to heart. As if he had one. A heart, that is. He's the Tinman, if the Tinman were fat, cruel, narcissistic & wholly unsympathetic.
The von Trump Family Grifters, Ctd. Legalized Corruption. Jeff Horwitz & Stephen Braun of the AP: "A real estate investment firm co-founded by President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, is betting big on the administration's Opportunity Zone tax breaks but isn't that interested in steering its investors to the poorest, most-downtrodden areas that the program seeks to revitalize. New York-based Cadre, in which Kushner still holds at least a $25 million passive stake, made it clear to potential investors in recent marketing materials that it doesn't plan to look for development deals in most of those zones because of their 'unfavorable growth prospects.'... Anthony Scaramucci ... is trying to raise as much as $3 billion for Opportunity Zone projects.... One measure of how much the zones overlap with developers' pre-existing interests is how much they overlap with their current holdings. An AP review of Kushner's holdings found that he holds stakes in 13 Opportunity Zone properties, all in locations deemed by the Urban Institute to be showing indications of rapid change or full-out gentrification.... Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, both helped push for the program and as a couple stand to benefit financially from it." --s (Also linked yesterday.)
A Very Grifter's Christmas. Kate Riga of TPM: "The White House has been pushing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to quit for weeks.... Zinke's counter-request? To host his Christmas party, graced by lobbyists and conservative bigwigs, before being booted. Per the Post, he donned a Santa hat and posed with a stuffed polar bear at the event." --s (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Julie Turkewitz of the New York Times: "When [Ryan] Zinke was forced to resign as interior secretary on Saturday, he joined a line of officials who have left the Trump administration under a cloud of ethics inquiries. But the investigations into Mr. Zinke's actions are likely to continue, according to Delaney Marsco, the ethics counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group. And if those inquiries turn out badly for him, Mr. Zinke still faces the threat of criminal penalties that could hobble his political future. 'It's not a Get Out of Jail Free card to just quit,' Ms. Marsco said. The most damaging could be a Justice Department examination of a real estate deal in Montana involving Mr. Zinke's family and a development group backed by David J. Lesar, the chairman of Halliburton, the giant energy services company. If the department finds that Mr. Zinke willfully used his official position to influence the deal and benefit himself, he could be prosecuted under a federal conflict of interest law and, if convicted, face a sentence of up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine for each violation. The attorney general has discretion over whether to bring the charges."
Share Article
Reader Comments (16)
Good comment in the Daily KOS by V. Lazlo:
First Trump made money from his campaign.
Then he made money from his inauguration.
Now he's making money from his presidency.
So he must already be thinking about how he can make a quick buck out of his impeachment.
@Bobby Lee: Yes, & before that Trump made money cheating on his taxes and cheating his tenants. Then he made money cheating every which way on his casino ventures. Then he made money laundering dirty Russian money. Then he made money on crooked licensing deals like Trump University.
Other than the money he made on The Apprentice (which itself was a joke based on the false premise that he was an artful dealmaker & great at firing people), I don't think he's made an honest dollar in his life. Donald Trump is the greatest scam artist of the 20th century AND the 21st century. That's his legacy.
Bea, by definition DiJiT can't be the greatest scam artist of the 20th or 21st century. If he were, we would not know that he was a scammer.
He's a failure at scamming -- because everyone can see his moves.
What he IS best at is persuading rubes that his cheap tricks are good for them. It still mystifies me how he can do that, his patter is so obviously nonsense. But it works on a non-trivial percentage of the U.S. electorate.
Found myself yelling at Mr. Noun/Verb/911 as he said the president is not under oath-- but then he IS a dementia patient so we should cut him some slack...(snark)
What, pray tell, does he think the Presidunce was doing up there in front of not that many folks, hand on bible, facing a Supreme Court justice?? We've got the Presidunce and the Nincompoop Squad speaking to us all-- must bleach ears soon. Or just respond to the idiocies with a Jim Nabors "Go-o-o-o-o-lee--"
@Patrick: This terrific piece by Chris Hedges might help your wondering how Trump's "cheap tricks" have been so successful. Hedges starts out talking about "THE CONFIDENCE MAN," a Melville story whose main character uses protean personas, flattery. and lies to gain the confidence of his fellow passengers to fleece them on a Mississippi River steamboat. Within this piece we see once again the skillful creation and illusion and the manipulation of the emotional responses to one of the biggest scam artists –-Trump–-with Barnum and his sinuous circus antics. Reading again how Trump deceived those that entered Trump U. should have been enough to disqualify this man to dip his soiled foot into the presidential waters.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/trump-the-quintessential-american/
Yippee-eye-kai-yay–– No, Tayyip, Trump says, he will NOT extradite the Muslim cleric, Gulen. Today–-Trump says he may–-what's it gonna be you bastard––what's it gonna be???
The scammer's success depends either on his cleverness, which as Patrick points out the Pretender does not possess, or the extent of the desperation his marks have to believe. Successful political scammers tend to prosper in what history considers desperate times. The Pretender's success suggests we are apparently living in one of them but the desperation some people feel is itself part of the scam. An entire generation of rightist propaganda, bashing government, feeding fear and resentment combined with the real demographic and economic changes that have occurred in the last fifty years prepared the ground for the Pretender to rise from the real swamp.
I find an easy parallel to that rise in religious movements, specifically here in the United States in revivals that deliberately hearken to older times when the one true (whatever it was) religion held ascendency, that time before the Fall. Revivalists seek purity in the return to olden times, and preachers promise to deliver it.
The Pretender promised a return to the economy of the 1950's and 60's, a whiter nation, one that would instantly regain its declining international clout (we'll build a wall and Mexico will pay for it!), and provide more freebies (better and cheaper healthcare for everyone) at the same time.
In other words, heaven on earth.
No closer to explaining why so many fall for such arrant nonsense, I know, but such credulousness has a long history and seldom ends well for the believers.
When the Sioux and Cheyennes, whose times in the late 1800's were truly desperate, put their last hope in the Ghost Dance, it led to Wounded Knee.
.
And Then I Woke Up
This morning I awoke with a rather distinct Proustian experience. As Proust describes in the first volume of "In Search of Lost Time", rising up from a deep sleep, one can become momentarily, but pleasantly confused about one's location in time and space. "À la recherche" famously examines the quality of memory, and here Proust spends several wonderfully engaging pages investigating the psychological transmogrification of waking, that moment before complete consciousness is achieved, in which things can appear off, out of time and space, forcing one to reorder the senses and regain a sense of reality (he wonders about that as well, but that's a search of a different color).
It's not unlike walking outside when the combination of clouds and light simulate a completely different time of day. For instance, when I walk out my front door in the morning, I expect the light to be coming from behind me. Seeing the strongest light coming from the other direction, out of the west, it seems that late afternoon has descended at eight in the morning. Odd, but not at all unpleasant. Pretty cool, actually. Proust would understand.
And I bring this up because of another book I've just finished, called "The World Without Us", a fascinating thought experiment about what the world would be like and what would happen to the planet were humanity to disappear overnight.
Within two days, New York City subways start to flood. Seven days later, nuclear power plants begin to experience core breaches as emergency power supplies run out, stopping reactor cooling. Within 20 years, most buildings will be in partial states of collapse. By 500 years, urban areas will have been reclaimed by nature. The only things left of civilization will be things like plastic and aluminum from household appliances. Oh, and radioactive waste.
Thousands of years later, the pyramids, the Great Wall, and Mount Rushmore will still be around, but it will take tens of thousands of years before carbon levels have been cleaned and adjusted back to pre-human levels.
You get the idea.
While reading the book, I began to wonder what America (and the world) would be like without Republicans. SNL writers must have had a similar idea in their spoof of "It's a Wonderful Life", their premise, thinking about what it would be like if Trump had never been elected president.
But the changes in an America without Republicans would be much more dramatic, and long lasting.
Democracy would return. Gerrymandering would be scarce. Voter fraud scare tactics would disappear, barricades to democracy would fall. Sensible gun control legislation would pass within days.
Policies based on bigotry and racism would diminish dramatically. Public education could proceed without intrusion of religious zealots. Healthcare for all Americans would stand a much better chance of becoming a reality. The right to choose would not be under constant attack, the same for workers' rights, consumer rights, and useful and necessary regulation. Serious responses to climate change could begin in earnest. Corporations, without congress on a leash, would have to begin paying their fair share. The social compact could be restored and renewed.
Of course, this is not to say that Democrats are angels, but, as a party, it is not their official policy to use government solely as a tool for the rich and powerful and as a club with which to beat one's enemies. It's not a given that all of the above would be achieved, but at least this litany might provide a set of goals, if not readily or easily accomplished.
At this point, there is not even the value of having a second party to balance out the other.
So, a nation without Republicans. A lovely idea.
And then I woke up.
Ah well, there's always tomorrow morning. Perhaps I'll have a petite madeleine with my tea.
Merci, Marcel.
Ken,
"When the Sioux and Cheyennes, whose times in the late 1800's were truly desperate, put their last hope in the Ghost Dance, it led to Wounded Knee."
A chilling, if accurate conclusion.
The Orange Monster, in his ghostwritten glop of self-glorification, "The Art of the Squeal", makes the case that people want to be hoodwinked. I think there's something to that, but this observation should include the caveat "...at least those who are not too with it" Or desperate, or fearful, or just plain greedy.
Snake oil salesmen, even crude, inexpert ones like Fatty, benefit from those four essential human weaknesses, ignorance, desperation, fear, and greed. Their ability to prey on the frailty of other human beings is what put puts them squarely in the circle of crooks and other breeds of criminal malefactors.
You don't have to be all that good if your audience is dim, frantic, frightened, and grasping.
But your conclusion still stands. Those taken, stay took. For some, the victimization can be decisive.
Fatty's fatuous caviling about the SNL sketches that lampoon his stupidity, racism, and greed, and that of his nest of nescient grifters, points out, once again, his weak grasp of the world outside of Individual-1-Tower thought processes.
First, SNL is a COMEDY show. If you don't like it, don't watch (First Amendment and all that). Here's how Joe Bologna explains it to a labor boss (modeled on Jimmy Hoffa) who doesn't like being portrayed as a gangster goon on Bologna's comedy show (from the insanely funny "My Favorite Year"). "We're gonna keep doing the Boss Hijack sketch. Know why? It's funny. And in my business, you never cut funny."
By the way, don't miss the great Adolph Green, of Comden and Green fame, as the show's producer. He's a hoot.
Anyway, Trump needs the same lesson. They make fun of him because it's funny. And easy. AND he is an immense help in the creation of his own comic demise. His other complaint is that it's all "very unfair" and news and entertainment should be fair.
Was it fair when he took out a full page ad in a New York newspaper calling for black kids wrongly arrested in a terrible crime to be executed? Or was that just another way to wave the Trump flag around while at the same time sticking it to mooching blahs? Fairness for Fatty and fuck all the rest.
And not for nothin', but his party killed fairness, pardon my doctrine. Broadcast news used to at least have a process for fairness, but Saint Ronald of Raygun blew it to hell and gone. Freeeedom, doncha know?
So, sorry, little donnie, but as long as you are a chancre on the American gums, you will be laughed at, for the simpering, phony, dangerous jackass you are.
Smoke on your pipe and put that in.
I can imagine the emperor rising in the morning, grabbing his phone, and heading off to the royal library. Plopping himself on the porcelain throne he begins to enlighten the loyal base, dispensing more crap with his thumbs than from his arse.
Just a thought; when he finishes, does he wipe his thumbs too?
Bobby Lee,
Good one, but...ewwww....
@Bobby Lee: That's a good question. We'll have to start checking to see if there's any toilet paper stuck to his thumbs.
It's an absolute abandoning of responsibility that while the GOP runs the House and needs to come up with a way to avoid a Trump shutdown they go on a six day weekend, come back with two days left and that many lame ducks won't return at all.
It all spells shutdown into January.
@Bobby Lee
So you're predicting a final F U to the nation instead of a Merry Christmas! from the departing GOPs?
It would be just like 'em.
I'm frankly not so pleased about Mr. Flynn getting off Scott Free [sic] after all of his super shady dealings are coming to light. The guy had his hand in cookie jars all over the world and thought it was all hunky fucking dory. And he isn't (or wasn't) a total fucking moron who can just use the "who knew?" defense. He literally spent his entire adult life absorbed in representing the US government abroad, international relations, law, and supposedly patriotism.
He had better serve up one of Drumpf's spawns on a silver platter, or the Fatty McGee himself, to justify his ultra-lenient plea deal. Army General or not.
Who You Gonna Call?
So you need a lawyer. Someone halfway decent who will be able to steer you straight and not get you into more hot water than you're already parboiled in.
Your choices are:
A. Michael Cohen: former lawyer to self-proclaimed greatest deal-maker in the world who describes his personal wealth on par with that of Croesus.
B. Rudy Giuliani: former federal prosecutor, former mayor of New York, famed for his noun-verb-9/11 proclamations, current lawyer for the president* of the United States.
C. Your cousin Vinny, 40 years old, former student at Badda-Bing Skool of Law, who finally received his license to practice after failing seven attempts to pass the bar.
Here's your dime (or $1.25, or however the hell much it costs to make a phone call today). Who you gonna call?
"Yo, Vinny. You got a minute?"
Fatty wants to rip his lawyers? He'd have been better off with a paralegal or a second year law student. Instead, he picks jamokes and jabronis who either rat on his dirty deeds or go on national Tee-Vee to say things like "Well, sure, my client is innocent. I mean, I guess he is. Actually, you might think he's a rat bastard crook, but only if you look at it through, ya know, the eyes of some fuckin' law book..."
He needs Perry Mason. He hires Pari Mutuel. And he bet wrong.