Category Archives: current events

in the box

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They’re still burying John McCain today. They’ve been burying him all week. I don’t know when he’ll actually get put in the ground. For that matter, I don’t know that putting him in the ground is part of the plan; he may be cremated, for all I know. But the thing is, he’s been dead for a week — for seven full days — and people are still gathering to pay their final respects (or, in the case of politicians like Pence, McConnell, and Ryan, to fake their final respects) to the man.

Comrade Trump, of course, isn’t there. He’s off somewhere else, tweeting angrily about what a great president he is, and how unfair it is that he’s being investigated, and how nobody can be trusted or believed except him.

But knowing that Trump is alive and tweeting while McCain is being buried, an obvious questions comes to mind. Some day it’ll be Comrade Trump’s day in the box. Who’ll come to his funeral? Who’ll give speeches praising him? Who’ll be his pall-bearers? Who’ll weep uncontrollably?

How many ordinary citizens will wait in line for hours to look at his casket?

the infuriating john mccain

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They’re calling John McCain the ‘last Republican’ and I suppose there’s some truth in that. I think it would be more accurate to say he was the pivot point between old school principled conservative Republicans and the new brand of batshit crazy racist grifters that dominate the modern Republican Party.

I mean, yes, he defended Barack Obama as a decent man…but he also picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. And yes, he made a highly theatrical vote that saved what remained of the Affordable Care Act…but let’s not forget that he repeatedly voted to involve the US in a variety of armed conflicts. And yes, he spoke out against the US policy of torture during the Bush II administration…but he also went all wobbly during the 1999 presidential campaign on the issue of the Confederate flag because it was politically expedient.

That seems to have been the problem with John McCain. His first impulse was to stand up for what he believed. But in politics, people are often given the opportunity to have second and third and fourth impulses…and when McCain had time to think about the implications of the politics of a situation, he all too often caved in and did what he thought was the best political move.

I didn’t always like John McCain. I didn’t always agree with him. And I didn’t always respect him — because some of the shit he pulled wasn’t deserving of respect. For example, I respected the John McCain that stood up for Obama. The John McCain who made Sarah Palin political viable–fuck that McCain in the neck.

But what made John McCain the ‘last Republican’ was that he was always capable of earning the respect of liberals like me, even when we thought he was wrong. He always held out the possibility and the hope that at the last moment he’d step up and act honorably. And he did exactly that often enough to be infuriating.

For me, the defining moment of McCain’s career was the Affordable Care Act vote. It wasn’t his actual vote that, to me, defined that moment. I mean, I’m glad he voted to save the ACA, but it was the way he did it that was classic McCain. He was the last person to vote, and he did it as theatrically as possible. He held his arm out straight for a long moment (and folks, that wasn’t easy for him — as a result of his torture in Vietnam, McCain’s shoulders were so fucked up that he couldn’t raise his arm high enough to comb his own hair), then gave a quick thumbs down. But even that wasn’t the actual defining moment. Immediately after giving the thumbs down, he turned and looked directly at Mitch McConnell — then turned and walked away.

I could respect that John McCain. I’m sorry that John McCain is dead. We need that John McCain.

could we please just go 20 minutes without a new scandal please

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Damn it, anyway. A guy sits down to write about David Pecker, the weasel-faced CEO and Chairman of American Media — which publishes every nasty-ass tabloid that can be found in America’s finest supermarket checkout aisles — and Pecker’s (alleged!) safe crammed to the gills (yes, that’s right, gills — Pecker’s safe has gills, just like the ‘Lake Erie Monster that Ripped a 38ft Sailboat in Two!’ whose photo appeared on the cover of Pecker’s Weekly World News) crammed to the damned gills, I say, with salacious dirt on Comrade Trump’s many (alleged!!) affairs with assorted porn stars, strippers, and goats of questionable heritage, and what happens?

Pecker and Trump

What happens is we hear the White House (allegedly!!!) blocked a bipartisan bill to protect elections from interference. Seriously. The president who was elected president because of Russian ratfucking decides to interfere with a bill to prevent interference in elections? Is this farce? No. Sadly, no. Which means I have to scrap my David Pecker blog idea to write about Comrade Trump (allegedly!!!!) openly rat-fucking the midterm elections…and then what happens?

Trump and Weisselberg

What happens is Allen Weisselberg, who’s been the CFO of the Trump Organization since 2000, and who has worked for Trump and Trump’s father since the 1970s, and who has (allegedly!!!!!) detailed information about Comrade Trump’s involvement in about a half million financial crimes (allegedly!!!!!!), has been given immunity from prosecution in exchange for “truthful testimony” in the Michael ‘Mickey the Snitch’ Cohen case. Which means I have to scrap my blog post on the Senate Election Security bill, so I can write about this Weisselberg character, whose name I have to double-check every damned time I write it.

And now I’m afraid to look at the damned news for fear something else will happen, some new TrumpScandal ™ will have developed in the last ten minutes. I’m afraid if I look at the news I’ll discover Comrade Trump has threatened to put Attorney Jeff Sessions over his knee and paddle him, or that some porn actress has an electron microscope image of Trump’s wee peanut, or that Trump has openly embraced some ridiculous white supremacist conspiracy theory that white farmers in South Africa are being murdered by….

GoddamMotherfuckSonofabitch.

Okay. Okay, I suppose this was bound to happen. Inevitable, I suppose. Okay then, I can scrap the Weisselberg blog idea and…and give up and just start drinking now.

sputtering bastards

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It didn’t take long, did it. For the Republican sputtering to begin, I mean.

Yesterday we witnessed an Olympic caliber exhibition of synchronized justice. Comrade Trump’s former campaign manager AND his personal attorney simultaneously became felons. It was certainly the most news-intensive 20 minutes of my long and semi-wicked life. It put me right on the cusp of news overload.

And the response from Republicans in Congress? Sputtering. “But but but neither of these cases has anything to do with Russia.” “But but but this has nothing to do with collusion.” “But but but but…”

These fucking guys, I declare. But hey, technically they’re right. They’re cowardly dissembling ethics-free sacks of horseshit, but technically they’re right. Manafort’s convictions aren’t directly related to Russia or Trump. And Cohen’s guilty plea has nothing whatsoever to do with illegal Russian meddling into the election.

Cohen’s plea is an altogether different sort of illegal meddling into the election. But hey, guess what. It’s still illegally meddling in the damned election. And Cohen, bless his criminal little heart, directly implicates Comrade Donald J. Trump as knowingly and willfully participating in that illegal election meddling.

There’s some shit Republicans can’t just sputter away.

Here’s the thing: Cohen’s guilty plea incriminates Trump in a conspiracy to influence the election that’s completely separate from the Russian conspiracy to influence the election. That’s TWO distinct criminal conspiracies to influence the election. Two. A Russian criminal conspiracy AND a domestic campaign criminal conspiracy. And since we already have a Special Counsel to investigate the Russian conspiracy, it only makes sense that we should appoint a completely separate Special Counsel to investigate the campaign conspiracy.

I doubt that will happen. Certainly not while Republicans control Congress. Certainly not while Republicans run the Department of Justice. They’re much too busy with all that sputtering.

ADDENDUM — As I was writing this, a friend asked me if I thought this might lead to articles of impeachment. And no, I don’t think it will. It should, but c’mon…we’re talking about Republicans in Congress, who have turned hypocrisy into pure performance art. Let’s consider some of the high crimes and misdemeanors Republicans considered impeachable when Barack Obama was POTUS.

— Republican Darrell Issa said it was an impeachable offense for Obama to offer an administration job to Joe Sestak to persuade Sestak to drop out of the PA Senate primary election.
— Republican Michael Burgess at a rally said Obama needed to be impeached in order to prevent him from “pushing his agenda”.
— Republican Jon Kyl said there might be ‘shenanigans’ involved in the Obama immigration policy that would be impeachable.
— Several Republicans suggested there was an impeachable cover-up in the Benghazi incident that somehow escaped discovery in the ten separate Republican investigations.
— Republican Tom Coburn said Obama was “perilously close” to committing high crimes and misdemeanors by allegedly ordering USCIS employees to “ignore background checks for immigrants” though there’s no indication Obama ever suggested such an order.
— Republican Blake Farenthold told a rally that Obama should be impeached over the conspiracy theories relating to his birth certificate.
— Republican Kerry Bentivolio said he’d like to write articles of impeachment based on the notion that the Obama administration had directed the IRS to target conservative groups.
— Republicans on the House Judiciary committee held a hearing on “The President’s Constitutional Duty to Faithfully Execute the Laws”, which they viewed as an attempt to begin justifying impeachment proceedings.
— Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature (and seriously, I’m not making this up) filed a measure asking Oklahoma members of Congress to impeach Obama (and also the Attorney General and the Secretary of Education) over the decision to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity.

I suppose we should be grateful they never accused Obama of collusion with Kenya to influence the 2008 election. Although we’re talking about Republicans in Congress, so there’s still time for that.

very powerful and very stupid

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About four decades ago (I could be more precise, but does a year or two really matter here? I think not) the fourth Doctor Who, while on an unnamed jungle planet, was attempting to negotiate a treaty between…okay. Okay, wait. That was probably a tactical error, mentioning Doctor Who and a jungle planet. I suspect some folks will jump ship as soon as they hear ‘Doctor Who’. Which is a damned shame, since Doctor Who is (aside from being a cheesy science fiction television show with cheesy alien monsters) a font of wisdom and uncommon common sense.

But I’m going to ask you to bear with me a moment, because Doctor Who…okay. Okay, wait. I’ve a better idea. Let’s pretend I never mentioned Doctor Who at all. Instead, let’s pretend I said Doctor Martin Luther King. Everybody respects Doctor M.L. King. Much better. Right, here we go, then.

Who would you trust? The Fourth Doctor Martin Luther King…

About four decades ago the fourth Doctor Martin Luther King, while on an unnamed jungle planet, was trying to negotiate a peace treaty between two warring tribes (the Tesh and the Sevateem). He said this:

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views.

The truth of this is being played out on an almost hourly basis by Comrade Trump and his administration. Trump (although it staggers the very foundations of reality, he really is the actual President of These United States) is both very powerful AND very stupid. He’s being helped in this insidious crusade by a gutless cadre of complicit Republican toadies in Congress, and is often supported by a clueless news media that feels bound to report whatever Trump says, even when it’s a blatant fucking lie. And they usually report it without acknowledging the fact that it’s a blatant fucking lie.

There was a time, early in his administration, when I believed some facet of the Truth would catch up to Trump. At that point, in my innocence, I thought he’d resign in a huff rather than face the deeper embarrassment of getting tossed out. That way he could claim he left on his own terms, that he could have stayed in office if he really wanted to, and that he left because he had better things to do. “You didn’t dump me, I dumped you.” That sort of thing.

…or this guy?

I no longer think that’s likely. Oh, I still believe some aspect of the Truth will catch up to him. I still believe Comrade Trump will leave in disgrace. I just don’t think he’ll leave voluntarily. Or easily, or quietly, or with any dignity. I think he’ll wreak as much havoc as he can before he’s forced out the door. I think he’ll take hold of the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, refuse to let go, and will be screaming obscenities and threatening to burn the entire motherfucker down before he leaves.

Another thing the very powerful and the very stupid have in common: they refuse any responsibility for their actions. If something goes wrong — when something inevitably goes badly wrong — it’s always the fault of somebody else. The idea that they might be held answerable for their conduct fills them with bitterness and outrage.

Oh, and by the way, the title of that Dr. Who episode I mentioned earlier? The Face of Evil. Seriously. I’m not making that up. Also? In the very next episode, the Doctor speaks about “the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain.” Clever guy, that fourth Doctor Martin Luther King Who.

adding insult to the office

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If you read or listen to the news in the morning, it’s always distressing to wake up to the reality that Comrade Trump is still POTUS. But lawdy, some days are just more difficult than others. This is one of them.

Trump is rage-tweet-vomiting again. He began with a three-tweet rant quoting Tom Fitton of the right-wing group Judicial Watch:

The Strzok firing is as much about the Mueller operation as anything else. There would be no Mueller Special Councel to investigate so called collusion but for the machinations of Strzok & his colleagues at the top levels of the FBI. We know this guy was corrupt and had anti-Trump animus. Strzok and others at the FBI should be criminally investigated for the way the conducted this investigation. Instead, Mueller is pretending nothing went wrong. He used Strzok, he used the Clinton DNC Dossier…the whole thing should be shut down. The Strzok firing shows that the fundamental underpinnings of the investigation were corrupt. It should be shut down by the courts or by honest prosecutors.

It’s hard to even know where to start with this wall of bullshit. You need an abacus to keep track of all the errors and outright lies. Was Strzok instrumental in creating the Special Counsel investigation? Nope. Is there any indication that Strzok is corrupt? Nope. In fact, the Inspector General report clearly stated there’s no evidence that Strzok’s dislike of Trump influenced any investigative decisions.

In fact, the ONLY accurate information in all of that is this: Peter Strzok was fired from the FBI. And let’s face it, that was essentially a political act to punish a career law enforcement professional for the sin of thinking Comrade Trump is unfit to be the President of the United States.

Tom Fitton

But this is pretty much what you expect from Trump and Tom Fitton. Who IS this Fitton guy? He’s on the Board of Directors of Judicial Watch, which describes itself as a ‘watchdog’ group. You’d think, as a frequent FOX News analyst on judicial behavior and as a member of Judicial Watch, Fitton must be a lawyer. Or at least has a background in law. Or maybe some significant professional experience in law enforcement. Or a graduate degree in some area of criminal justice. Or even an undergrad degree in a related field. But no. Tom Fitton has a B.A. in English. Oh, and he was a talk radio host on a conservative station.

Fitton is probably best known for his ‘work’ on the Benghazi attack. He posited the theory that the attack was actually part of an Obama administration conspiracy. Obama, he claimed, wanted Libyan militants to kidnap Ambassador Stevens. That would allow Obama to do a prisoner swap — Stevens for terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman (the blind cleric convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing). It’s not clear why Obama would go to such elaborate lengths to free Abdel-Rahman, but it probably had something to do with him being a wily secret Muslim. Unfortunately, Stevens was accidentally killed during the assault, so the plot failed. In an interview, Fitton admitted there was no actual evidence to substantiate his claim — but he asserted that lack of evidence was, in itself, evidence of the Obama cover-up.

The sneering, volatile, cruel, self-centered, would-be tyrant who occupies the White House.

This is the sort of person Comrade Trump looks to for expertise and support. Every day Trump occupies the White House is an insult to the nation, every day he remains in office further degrades the presidency, every day he attacks the institutions of democracy is an offense against the men and women who work to protect it.

And every morning I wake up and read what new outrage Comrade Trump has committed is a gut-churning reminder that we can’t for a moment stop resisting.

putin’s pocket

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Had a buddy tell me “I can’t get interested in the Manafort trial, since it’s not about Trump.” I told him, “Dude, of course it’s about Trump.”

I sorta kinda lied to him. I mean, it IS about Trump since it’s about the Russians, and you can’t throw a ruble without hitting Comrade Trump. But it’s not directly about Trump. At this point in the trial, it’s as much about Vladimir Putin’s pockets — and who Putin has tucked away in those pockets — as anything else. Allow me to ‘splain, since Rick Gates has finished testifying. Just follow the numbers.

Rick Gates, who 1) worked for Paul Manafort for several years before 2) becoming Trump’s deputy campaign director, and who has 3) already pleaded guilty to a handful of felonies, testified that he helped Manafort, 4) who was Trump’s actual campaign director, 5) commit a buttload of felonies by 6) covering up Manafort’s numerous overseas bank accounts in which Manafort 7) hid and laundered the millions of dollars he earned by 8) helping get Putin-supported Viktor Yanukovych elected as president of Ukraine before 9) Yanukovych was run out of his country for 10) stealing hundreds of millions of dollars, after which 11) Yanukovych found asylum in Russia, where 12) he bought a house for US$52 million. Okay, that bit about Yanukovych buying a house really isn’t relevant to the case, but it shows what sort of company Manafort keeps.

Putin and Yanukovych

Gates also 13) helped Manafort illegally obtain 14) more than US$20 million dollars in bank loans by 15) falsely inflating his income and 16) failing to disclose debts, including so-called ‘loans’ totaling around $60 million from 17) Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who is usually described as 18) Putin’s favorite industrialist. Loans without a repayment date are 19) a common way of laundering money.

Putin and Deripaska

So what we have is Gates and Manafort siphoning off a lot of illicit coin from Russians. What does that have to do with Comrade Trump? Good question. Here’s the answer.

While Manafort was running the Trump campaign, some unidentified campaign aides pressured the Republican National Committee to make a change — the ONLY change the Trump campaign insisted on — to the official Republican Party platform. The change was to remove a call for the U.S. to provide arms to Ukraine in response to the Russia invasion, occupation, and annexation of the Crimea province. Why did the Trump folks want to make that change? The answer seems to be: because Putin wanted Crimea.

Gates and Manafort

So here’s the thing: Gates testified that he was in the pocket of Manafort, who was in the pockets of the Ukrainian Yanukovych and oligarch Deripaska, both of whom are in the pocket of Vladimir Putin. LOTS of evidence suggests that pocket is also occupied by Comrade Trump.

So, yeah. Dude, of course the Manafort trial is about Trump.

it’s rats all the way down

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Back in the 17th century, this dude named Samuel Butler wrote a — okay, wait. Trust me for a bit. This is actually going to relate to Comrade Donald J. Trump and his ex-buddy Michael Cohen. Honest, I wouldn’t lie to you. Not about this anyway.

Right, so back in the 17th century, this dude named Samuel Butler wrote a mock heroic poem about the adventures of a knight-errant called Hudibras and his squire Ralpho. It was basically a British rip-off of Don Quixote. At one point in the poem Hudibras gets himself in trouble and winds up in the stocks. In order to get released, he promises to flagellate himself — which, of course, Hudibras really doesn’t want to do. So his squire tells him that breaking that promise is really sorta kinda holy. Almost saintly, in fact.

For breaking of an oath, and lying,
Is but a kind of self-denying;
A Saint-like virtue: and from hence
Some have broke oaths by Providence
Some, to the glory of the Lord,
Perjur’d themselves, and broke their word

Lying and perjury. That brings us to Trump and Cohen. Cohen has now claimed that Comrade Trump was aware of the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower before it occurred. You’ll remember this was the meeting at which Trump the Lesser, Manafort, Kushner, a few other folks, sat down with a Whitman’s Sampler of Russian agents in order to get ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton. This is Collusion 101. Fundamental collusion stuff.

When hard words, jealousies, and fears / Set folks together by the ears / And made them fight, like mad or drunk / For Dame Religion, as for punk

Trump the Elder, of course, denies it. Totally denies it. Denies the absolute hell out of it. This morning he tweeted (and Jeebus, how embarrassing is it to have a president whose main form of…aw, fuck it, never mind) the following:

I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr. Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam

This leads to the obvious question: “Is Comrade Trump lying?” Which leads to the obvious answer: “Ha ha ha what? Yeah, of course he is, this is Donald Fucking Trump, y’all.” Let’s pause for a brief moment and review the various accounts Trump has given of that meeting (not verbatim).

— Meeting? What meeting? There was no meeting.
— Oh, that meeting. Yeah, there was a meeting, but it was about adoption. Oh, and I didn’t know about it.
— Okay, okay, the meeting was about getting dirt on Crooked Hillary, but the Russians didn’t have any.
— Well, maybe they had some, but they didn’t offer it to us.
— Okay, yeah, they offered some dirt, but it wasn’t very good dirt. Did I mention I didn’t know about it?
— Well, okay, it was moderately good dirt, but we didn’t take it. And besides, I didn’t know about the meeting.
— Okay, we took it, but we didn’t use it.
— Okay, let’s say maybe we took it and maybe we used it, who can say? It was a long time ago and memories keep changing, and anyway, so what?

In other words, Comrade Trump has lied about this event like a thousand different times. We certainly have no reason to believe him now. But here’s the problem with dealing with Trump and anybody Trump has dealt with regularly: all of these fuckers lie. They lie all the time about anything at all. It’s as natural to them as water is to a goldfish. It’s the environment in which they live and function.

I’d like to believe Cohen is telling the truth about this — that Trump DID know about the meeting in advance. But Cohen, like Trump, is an inveterate liar and the thing about liars is that they lie. So who the hell knows?

Okay, back to Hudibras for half a moment. Here’s maybe the most famous line from the poem: “I smell a rat; Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate.”

I smell a rat. A lot of rats. I don’t know if Michael Cohen is telling the truth this time. I assume Trump is lying. It’s very possible they’re both lying. I mean, it’s possible Cohen has no idea whether or not Trump knew about the meeting, and he’s lying about it because he’s pissed at Trump and would like to drop him deeper in the shit. And it’s possible Trump did know about it and is lying because he’s a fucking liar. It’s also possible Trump didn’t know about it, because his campaign was run by crooks and amateurs so stupid they couldn’t pour piss out of a boot.

But I know this much. When it comes to Comrade Trump, I smell a rat. A whole nest of rats. It’s rats all the way down.

Editorial Note 1: That ‘I smell a rat’ line is usually attributed to Patrick Henry, speaking during the Constitutional Convention in 1776. But Butler wrote his poem a century before that took place. He owns the line. There’s some useless information for you.

Editorial Note 2: You probably know the turtle anecdote, but here it is in brief. William James gave a lecture on astronomy and the structure of the solar system. Afterwards, he’s accosted by an old woman, who claims the earth can’t revolve around the sun because the earth rests on the back of a giant turtle. “And what does that turtle stand on, madam?” “It stands on the back of a larger turtle.” “And pray, what does that turtle stand on?” “You’re a very clever man, Mr. James, but it’s turtles all the way down.”