the comments

Posted on October 17, 2016 by greg

Don’t read the comments. You hear that all the time when it comes to online activity. Do NOT read the comments. They’re poison, they’re radioactive, they’re a blight on humanity, they’re so completely malignant that you’ll lose your will to live. Don’t read the comments. Don’t even look in their direction. They’re seductive, the comments, and part you wants to read them. Don’t give in. Resist that temptation. Teach your children. The comments will pollute your soul, they’ll corrupt your heart. If you value your sanity, do not EVER read the fucking comments.

The comments are this generation’s Vietnam — a dark, dangerous jungle. Once you enter, you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. There’s no obvious path forward. There’s no clear way out. Visibility is limited, and you’re liable to be attacked at any moment, from any angle, for no apparent reason. You may be innocent when you go in, but you won’t be when you leave. IF you leave. If you don’t get completely sucked into the sunless vortex of comments. Because if there’s one true thing about the comments, it’s this: there’s always another comment waiting for you.

If you tell somebody you’re going to read the comments, this is what they’ll say: Good luck. Good luck? Are you kidding me, good luck? There’s no such thing as good luck in the comments. But people will say it, and they’ll mean it, even though they know it’s hopeless. Let me quote Michael Herr:

…and even though I meant it every time I said it, it was meaningless. It was like telling someone going out in a storm not to get any on him, it was the same as saying, “Gee, I hope you don’t get killed or wounded or see anything that drives you insane.”

Good luck. Never get out of the boat. Don’t read the comments. Sweet Jeebus of the Jungles, do not ever for any reason read the goddamn comments.

You know this. You already know this. You know this as well as you know anything. Do not read the comments. No lea los comentarios. Ne pas lire les commentaires. Inte läsa kommentarerna. Ná léamh na tuairimí. You know this in a dozen languages. Do NOT read the comments.

So why am I pointing out the obvious? This is why:

And this is why:

I’m saying this because Donald J. Trump, his campaign, and his supporters are the living embodiment of the comments.

a simple question from the audience

Posted on October 10, 2016 by greg

QUESTION: Knowing that educators assign viewing the presidential debates as students’ homework, do you feel you’re modeling appropriate and positive behavior for today’s youth?

CLINTON: It is very important for us to make clear to our children that our country really is great because we’re good.

TRUMP: I look at all of the things that I see and all of the potential that our country has, we have such tremendous potential, whether it’s in business and trade, where we’re doing so badly.

QUESTION: No, really, the question was about kids. In the course of this campaign, are you guys behaving in a way that will inspire kids?

CLINTON: I’ve spent my entire adult life working for children and mothers, And working families. My campaign slogan is ‘Stronger Together’ I’ll fight every day, from dawn to dusk, to make your lives better.

TRUMP: Okay, there was some locker room talk, but c’mon ISIS is chopping off heads and we have no borders, plus Bill Clinton was worse.

QUESTION: Please, listen to the question. Are you guys behaving in a way that you’d want kids to see? It’s a simple question.

CLINTON: Thank you for the question. I have a thirty-seven page policy paper on my website outlining the details of my child care policies. With footnotes. I want to reach out to every boy and girl, as well as every adult, and be the president of every American, whether they voted for me or not.

TRUMP: We gave, like, billions of dollars to Iran. Iran! A lousy deal. Disastrous. I will destroy ISIS, I can promise you that. I’ll hunt down every one of them and strangle them with a necktie. I make the best neckties. A good value. You could choke a bull with those neckties. The best neckties, believe me. A bull, you could choke, is what people tell me.

QUESTION: Okay, look, the question is really simple. Can you guys get through the next ninety minutes without being total dicks? Just the next ninety minutes.

CLINTON: This is an important question. On my website you can read my fourteen point approach to bullying. I think we can all agree that Donald has engaged in bullying behavior, which in my opinion, renders him unfit to hold the high office of President of the United States. He has insulted Muslims, racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, and, of course, women.

TRUMP: Heads, totally chopped off. Maybe a little bit of flesh still attached, but basically off. ISIS is doing that. We need respect for law and order. And a wall. And I’m not proud that I said some things that men say all the time in locker rooms, other men, not just me and to be honest, let’s face it, this is the real world and it is what it is. I never said I grabbed a woman by the pussy, only that I could if I wanted to because you can do that when you’re a star, and I’m a star, believe me, but I didn’t and never said I did, but I could. Also, we need strong borders. We don’t have borders. There are no borders.

QUESTION: You’re not answering the…listen, if you could just answer the question I asked.

CLINTON: You make a very good point. Listening is very important. I’ve spent my political career listening. Listening carefully. And I hear what people are saying. They’re saying they need to be safe at school, they need affordable health care, they need for the one percent to pay their fair share of taxes. I have incredibly detailed — painfully detailed — policy plans for each of those problems, and if you had fourteen hours to spare, I’d tell you all about them. I love policy.

TRUMP: Why aren’t you asking about her emails, which were…I don’t want to say this, but I think I’m going to say it…yes, I am going to say it…if I’m president I’ll appoint a prosecutor to look into every corner of her life until we find something to put her in prison, which is where she belongs because she said very nasty things about women, women her husband abused and she was very nasty. And her emails, she deleted thousands of them. She should release all those emails she deleted and go to jail for them. She says taxes, I’ll release my taxes, of course I will. Very soon, very soon, when the audit is done, nothing illegal there, that you can believe, I know more about taxes than the generals.

QUESTION: I…what the…what? I don’t…could you just…why…?

CLINTON: Aphasia, yes I understand. Aphasia is a fairly common medical condition. My plan to improve Obamacare — and specifically the sections dealing with men and women suffering from aphasia — is outlined in mind-numbing detail on my website. Donald wants to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a plan that allows insurance companies to exclude aphasia-sufferers.

TRUMP: Not true. Not true. We have plans. The best plans. Such good plans. Plans that will bigly improve life for people who have like that thing you’re talking about. Aphids. And we’ll get the Chinese to pay for it by making better deals. Obama’s deals are a disaster. A disaster. Trade deals, so bad. And the deficit. I can kill everybody in ISIS with a necktie.

QUESTION: …

CLINTON: Can I get you a glass of water? I got water for union workers supporting Doctor Martin Luther King in 1967. It was an experience that shaped my life and I’ve been getting water for people ever since. I’m proud to have fetched water for working men and women, especially those in coal country, who’ll have to be retrained for jobs in renewable energy fields. See my website for the plan.

TRUMP: A necktie, believe me. But yes, I apologize if anybody was offended by my totally innocent locker room talk. Men talk like that, though. African Americans live in inner city hellholes, but I can bring them jobs. Good jobs. Making neckties, maybe. Something. Why didn’t Hillary do that when she was a senator? She talked, but it was just words. No neckties. None. Disaster.

QUESTION: Can you maybe just say ONE nice thing about the other?

CLINTON: Donald’s children are okay, considering they’re basically feral greedheads who trophy hunt endangered species. On my website I have a thirty-two point policy for halting trophy hunting and its tragic consequences for species diversity.

TRUMP: Hillary never quits. She just won’t shut up.

QUESTION: Just kill me now.

CLINTON: End of life care is very important to me. I have a policy, you can see it on my website.

TRUMP: I have a necktie. Let me just…I’ll loan it to one of my boys, they’re terrific boys, so proud of them. It’s a Trump necktie, silk, made in Thailand. Terrific necktie, the best.

defending the wrong people

Posted on October 6, 2016 by greg

I have a Twitter account that I completely neglect. I have friends, though, who sporadically alert me to Interesting Stuff That Happens On Twitter. It didn’t take long for them to inform me that the Republican National Committee tweeted this:

Exclusive: Republicans Launch Willie Horton-Style Attack on Kaine

Kaine, of course, is Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine. But there are probably a lot of folks who aren’t familiar with the name Willie Horton. He was featured in a racist campaign advertisement used by George H.W. Bush against Democrat Michael Dukakis in the 1988 election. Here’s the original ad:

This is unquestionably one of the most notorious political attack ads in US election history It was the brainchild of Bush campaign manager, Lee Atwater, one of the most vile and venomous political ratfuckers of modern political history. That’s not an exaggeration. You want proof? Here’s something Atwater said in a 1981 interview:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger.'”

Atwater was a sort of evil genius. He gave a lot of serious, creative thought about ways to encode racism into political speech. He was an early adopter of ‘dog whistle’ campaigning, devising methods for emphasizing race that non-racists might not even hear. For example, Atwater shortened Horton’s given name, William — the name he went by — to Willie. Why? Because he thought Willie sounded more black. Atwater said this about the Horton ad:

“By the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.”

And hey, it worked. Bush won the election. At the end of his life, however, when he knew he was dying, Atwater apologized to Dukakis for the “naked cruelty” of the campaign he ran. A lot of people doubt the sincerity of that apology.

Lee Atwater, with Strom Thurmond and Ronald Reagan.

Atwater died in 1991. This is 2016, and in 2016 the Republican National Committee is seemingly proud to return to the naked cruelty of Atwater and the Willie Horton style of campaigning. The RNC quickly deleted their tweet about running a Willie Horton ad. The ad is still out there, of course. And the message is still the same: associate your opponent with the ‘wrong people’ — but do it in a coded way that doesn’t appear hateful.

Here’s the anti-Kaine advert:

The ad concludes by stating: “Tim Kaine, he has a passion for defending the wrong people. America deserves better.”

I spent seven years as a criminal defense investigator, working to defend the ‘wrong’ people. I helped defend murderers, rapists, arsonists, armed robbers, gun traffickers, and child molesters. I helped defend them knowing that almost all of them were guilty. They weren’t always guilty of the crime they were charged with, but most of them were guilty of something — sometimes guilty of something not as bad, sometimes guilty of something even worse.

Some of you — maybe most of you — are asking the obvious question: how could you defend somebody you knew was guilty of a heinous crime? It’s a valid question. There’s an answer that I believe is valid, though not everybody agrees — and even those folks who agree with the answer in the abstract find it uncomfortable to accept in practice. I often found it uncomfortable too. Here’s the answer:

Sometimes the police make mistakes.

That’s it, basically. Sometimes the police arrest an innocent person. I like to believe that most often the police are truly certain they’ve arrested the right person — but sometimes they’re just flat-out wrong. And in order to protect the folks who are truly, factually innocent of the crime they’re charged with, it’s necessary to force the police and the prosecutor to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt every single time. Every single time. Even if the defendant is clearly, blatantly, obviously guilty, we have to hold the prosecution to a high standard of proof. Because if we don’t — if we fail to protect the legal rights of every person every single time — then it becomes easier for them to convict those who are truly innocent.

Tim Kaine defended accused murderers — defended guilty murderers. Nobody does that because they support murder. They do it because the believe in — and are willing to do ugly work to defend — the legitimacy of the Constitution of the United States. That may not be popular, but it’s patriotic.

When the Republican National Committee attacks Tim Kaine for defending accused criminals, they’re actually undermining the U.S. Constitution. They’re basically suggesting there are citizens who are the ‘wrong people’ and as such, they don’t deserve the same rights as ‘decent’ people.

Of course, they’ve been suggesting that for a long time. They suggest the wrong people shouldn’t be allowed to marry, they shouldn’t be allowed to adopt, they shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military or receive food assistance if they’re poor or be guaranteed safe working conditions or receive financial assistance if they’ve lost their job or become citizens of the United States.

They’ve become very good at suggesting stuff about gays and Muslims and women and poor folks and people of color. Because 2016 and you can’t say ‘nigger nigger nigger’ out loud anymore.

which, of course, he has every right to do

Posted on October 1, 2016 by greg

A friend of mine — well, not really a friend. An acquaintance, really. A guy I know only from brief discussions online or through email. Anyway, this guy tells me he’s disappointed and dejected about the election. He was an early Bernie or Buster, and vowed he’d never vote for Hillary Clinton. After she got the nomination, he moped for a while, then decided he’d vote for a third-party candidate — which, of course, he has every right to do.

He attached himself to Jill Stein. She was a progressive, he said, and she’d gain a LOT more supporters if only she was given a chance to be heard. Then, sadly, she was given a chance to be heard. He heard her praise the Brexit vote in England; she called it “a victory for those who believe in the right of self-determination.” Then, after she drew some flak from folks who pointed out the Brexit vote was driven in large measure by Islamophobia and racism, he heard Stein revise her opinion and speak out against it. He became disillusioned not just by her swift change of heart, but by her attempt to disguise the fact that she changed her mind. He became even more disillusioned when she appeared to stake out positions that were both pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine, depending on the audience she was addressing at the moment. Then she appeared to suggest that wi-fi might be hazardous to the physical health of children. And finally, she refused to release any of her tax records — which, of course, she has every right to do.

So, my disillusioned friend (acquaintance, whatever) decided to support Gary Johnson instead. Okay, he admitted Johnson wasn’t exactly a progressive, but he was a libertarian who believed in legalizing marijuana. My friend said if Johnson was given a chance to be heard, he’d gain a LOT more support from progressive Democrats. Then Johnson, sadly, was given a chance to be heard. And what did my friend hear? This: “Aleppo? What’s Aleppo?” That was bad, but probably forgivable. But failing to be able to name a single foreign leader he admired? Well, that’s pretty much inexcusable. I mean, Johnson has the absolute right to be ignorant of foreign leaders, but it’s not exactly a quality that inspires confidence, is it.

So here’s my friend — he sure as hell won’t vote for Trump and he’s pretty much lost faith in both third-party candidates, but he’s sworn he’ll never vote for Hillary. What to do? Now he’s talking about just staying home; not voting at all — which, of course, he has every right to do.

He has an absolute right to stay home, sit on his ass, and let other folks shoulder the responsibility for choosing who’s going to run These United States. He has an absolute right to see this election only in terms of himself. If he can’t vote for the perfect candidate, he has the absolute right to sit in a dark room and pout.

And why should he vote? I mean, he’s not gay — so really, what does it matter to him if a Trump administration fights to limit the civil rights of gay folks. And he’s white and middle class, so it won’t disrupt his lifestyle if a Trump administration makes life more difficult for poor black folks. He’s already got a Master’s degree, so if a Trump administration makes it harder for regular folks to go to college, it won’t affect him. And he CAN vote IF he wants to, so who cares if a Trump administration makes it harder for minority communities to vote? And hey, he lives in a red state, which means Trump is almost certain to win his state anyway — so his vote doesn’t really matter, right?

No. Wrong. Very wrong. It matters. Of course it matters. The popular vote may not determine who wins the presidency, but the popular vote matters in terms of authenticity and legitimacy. Even if Trump DOES win that state, the size of the victory matters. It matters whether the victory is by a large majority or by a slim margin.

It also matters in terms of respect. I don’t really care if my friend hates Hillary Clinton. I DO care if he fails to reject Donald Trump. If his reaction to a Trump victory in his town, in his county, in his state is a noncommittal shrug — then I lose respect for him. If he has a chance to voice his disapproval of Donald Trump and fails to do so — then I lose respect for him. Let me be clear: I think Trump is a popcorn fart; I don’t think he has any real chance of winning. But it’s not enough for him to lose; it’s important that he be soundly rejected by the American people.

If my friend/acquaintance/whatever goes to the polls and votes for Stein or Johnson — or even just writes in the name of Bernie Sanders — I’ll think he’s wasting his vote, but it won’t cause me to lose respect for him. But if he stays home and refuses to cast any vote at all, that makes him a narcissistic, self-centered prick.

Of course, he absolutely has the right to be a narcissistic, self-centered prick.

the black death, cheap pans, and trump

Posted on September 19, 2016 by greg

So last week Donald Trump promised to make a ‘big announcement’ about President Barack Obama’s…no, wait. First, we should probably talk about the social and economic upheaval that followed the Black Plague in the 14th century, because…no, wait. It might make more sense to explain the Dutch language spoken from about 1100-1500 CE is known as Middle Dutch. That’s only important because…no, wait.

Okay, let’s try that again. The Black Plague killed off a hefty chunk of the population of Europe, right? Right. One result of that was the loss of village merchants. Before the plague if you needed a pan, you’d walk into the village and buy a pan. No big deal, easy peasy lemon squeezy. But then the plague comes and your local pan dealer goes toes up, and suddenly there’s no place to buy a pan. And you need a pan, right? What are you going to do — cook your porridge in a boot?

Business opportunity! There was a surge of wandering pedlars who traveled from village to village in the Low Countries selling and repairing cheap wares: pots and pans, knives and scissors, cheap jugs and pitchers. These wares were known as hoken and the men who sold and repaired them were called hokesters. They not only sold and repaired pans, the best hokesters regaled their customers with news and gossip from other villages.

You need a pan? I got a pan. Such a pan, shiny, best ever, people tell me. People love my pans, I can tell you that.

But there were also shady hokesters. They were basically con men who charmed their customers, played on their vanity, fed into their prejudices, encouraged their desire to win a bargain through haggling, said whatever they needed to say in order to sell them some cheap-ass, shoddy hoken that soon needed to be repaired or replaced. These asshole hokesters effectively created a revolving market. They’d sell you a shiny cheap-ass pan that dented easily or broke because it was good for business. They could either charge you to repair it or sell you another cheap-ass pan, which would also break soon.

Over time, the population of Europe recovered from the Black Plague. Honest pedlars set up shops in town, and you could buy a damned pan without much fuss again. Only the shifty hokesters continued to travel the pan circuit. The Middle Dutch word hokester morphed into the modern term huckster.

Which brings us to Donald J. Trump.

The news media is constantly baffled by Trump’s willingness to say completely different things to different audiences, without any regard to consistency. They continue to view him as a person running for political office — but he’s not. He’s just a huckster selling his product. Everything he says and does is said and done to move a product — and Trump’s product is his name. Not Trump as a person; Trump as a product. Here’s what’s important to remember: a huckster says whatever he thinks will entice the customers in front of him right now to buy his product. He’s not interested in what he said to a different set of customers yesterday. It doesn’t matter. He’s already sold them a shiny cheap-ass pan, and he’s moved on. A huckster shifts his pitch to entice the customer at hand.

What, your pan broke? It happens, pans break. Pans break. They break, trust me. If you want, I can sell you a better pan.

Trump isn’t driven by ideology, or principle, or religion, or concern for the public, or any of the other motivations that drive politicians. He’s driven by the desire to move the product.

Is Trump a racist? Maybe, I don’t know. He may not give a shit about race. But he’ll play along with racists if he can sell them a shiny pan. Is he anti-Muslim? Maybe. Maybe he’s go no interest in religion at all. But if it helps him unload some cheap-ass scissors, he’ll say anti-Muslim shit all day long. Is he a patriot? Don’t know, but there’s product to be moved and if waving a flag will help move it, then he’ll be Betsy fucking Ross for a couple of hours.

Trump is a huckster, plain and simple. A huckster on a very big stage, but still a huckster. He’s selling shiny, cheap-ass pots and pans to chumps. There’s always somebody who’ll buy that shit.

trump-level derangement & gazoony rays

Posted on September 10, 2016 by greg

I haven’t written much lately about Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President of These United States, for the following reasons:

The tsunami of offensive, idiotic shit Trump says is just overwhelming; no human can keep up with it — not writers, not readers. It would take a damned cyborg to process the daily load of Trump bullshit.
The phrase Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President of These United States is troubling in itself. I recognize all those words individually, but they make no sense when arranged in that order.
C’mon, seriously, what is there to say about this guy?

But there are some Trump moments that are so entirely deranged that they bear repeating, if only as evidence that there’s a reason the term ‘deranged’ exists. Yesterday in Florida (of course, it had to be Florida), we saw two (2) such moments take place within minutes of each other. According to the New York Times, Trump said this:

“[W]hen Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water.”

Got that? If Iranian sailors in small craft approach a U.S. warship and make rude gestures, we should obliterate them. That’s deranged, of course, but it’s ‘normal’ derangement. I mean, it falls into the conventional range of crazy. What makes it deranged on a Trump scale is that moments later he said this about Hillary Clinton:

“She’s trigger happy.”

He wants to blow Iranian sailors out of the water for making rude gestures, but she’s trigger happy. This is the key to understanding Trump-level derangement. It creates a neural state in which a sentence spoken aloud exists independently, entirely devoid of any context or connection to the sentences that precede or follow it. Make a rude gesture and die. She is trigger-happy. To a ‘normal’ human, that would seem inconsistent. Not to Trump, though, because they’re two totally separate and completely unrelated sentences.

But that’s just ONE of the deranged Trump moments that took place in public yesterday in Florida. The other? Trump said Clinton:

“…is being so protected. She could walk into this arena right now and shoot somebody with 20,000 people watching, right smack in the middle of the heart, and she wouldn’t be prosecuted. Okay? That’s what’s happening.”

In case you were wondering what was happening, that’s it right there. Hillary Clinton can shoot somebody and not get prosecuted. That’s altogether different from what Trump said about himself back in January. He said:

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”

Again, to a ‘normal’ person, it would seem hypocritical to complain that one’s opponent could get away with shooting somebody after having bragged about personally being able to get away…wait. Wait just one fucking minute. What sort of person uses the capacity to get away with shooting another person as a metric for…well, for anything? I mean, Jeebus Caliber, what the fuck?

Trump emitting high-power Gazoony Rays

See, this is why I don’t write much about Trump. His level of derangement distorts all normal measures of derangement. Instead of being appalled by his bluster about being able to shoot somebody and not lose voters — which is REALLY APPALLING — you find yourself instead examining his hypocrisy about other folks being able to shoot…fuck me, I’m doing it again.

There’s only one possible explanation for this — only one explanation that makes any sense at all. Donald Trump must be emitting extremely powerful Mind-Distorting Gazoony Rays. There’s no other explanation.

corruption, probably, right?

Posted on September 2, 2016 by greg

A couple of days ago I responded to a comment about the ‘rampant corruption’ of the Clinton Foundation. Basically I said “What corruption? Show me the corruption. Show me anything like actual evidence that there’s corruption.” Because, you know, there wasn’t any corruption.

Today I got this in my email:

If theres no corruption how come the new york Times is writing about the corruption.

I’m not sure why this person refused to capitalize New York but did capitalize Times, but let’s just ignore that. There was a link to this article by Eric Lichtblau: Emails Raise New Questions About Clinton Foundation Ties to State Dept. That sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it. I mean, questions are being raised! Questions! So I read the article, on account of I wanted to find out what those ominous questions were and why they were raised. You might want to read the article your ownself, just to reassure yourself that I am NOT MAKING THIS UP.

Are you ready for this: Okay, here we go. A guy named Douglas J. Band, who’d worked as an adviser to President Bill Clinton and was still working for him as part of the Clinton Foundation, sent an email to Huma Abedin asking for diplomatic passports for himself and two other aides to Bill Clinton. They’d all held diplomatic passports during their earlier tenure at the White House. Abedin responded that the issue would be ‘figured out’. This is how Eric Lichtblau characterized the exchange:

Mr. Band did not explain in the email exchange why he and the others needed the diplomatic passports, and Ms. Abedin did not ask.

A mystery! Surely if everything was above-board, Band would have explained exactly why he and his buddies needed those passports, right? And if Abedin wasn’t complicit in this conspiracy, she’d have asked why they needed those passports, right? So obviously something untoward, possibly sinister, and certainly majorly corrupt is taking place here, right? Right?

Nope.

Band and the other two wanted those diplomatic passports because ordinary citizens can’t get into North Korea without them. Wait…what? North Korea? Why would these people want to go to North Korea? Obviously something untoward, possibly sinister, and certainly majorly corrupt is taking place here, right? Right?

Still nope.

Bill Clinton was on his way to North Korea to secure the release of two American journalists — Euna Lee and Laura Ling — who’d been falsely imprisoned as spies. The two women had been held for more than five months, and had just been sentenced by a North Korean court to serve twelve years at hard labor. Band and the others wanted to go along on the diplomatic rescue mission. Which is why they asked for the diplomatic passports. And since the State Department knew this rescue mission was going to take place, Band didn’t need to explain why they wanted the passports, and Huma Abedin didn’t need to ask them why the passports were needed.

And guess what? Because nobody at the State Department could see any necessary reason for Band and the other two aides to accompany the former president, their request for diplomatic passports was denied. Which is why they’re not included in the photograph of two newly free journalists smiling and crying.

Got that? These guys asked for diplomatic passports in order to enter North Korea to help imprisoned journalists — and were denied. And how does the new york Times characterize this humanitarian request?

Emails Raise New Questions About Clinton Foundation Ties to State Dept.

New questions, my pale pink ass. There are NO questions at all to be raised about the Clinton Foundation or its ties to the State Department.

Here are some questions that should be raised: 1) Who the hell is Eric Lichtbrau? 2) How the hell is he employed as a journalist? And 3) What the fuck is wrong with the new york Times?

battle of fuckwits

Posted on August 31, 2016 by greg

Jeebus Caramba! Donald Trump is going to Mexico! That’s bizarre enough on its own, but wait…he’s going there to meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto. And if you’re wondering if this is the same President Enrique Peña Nieto who publicly compared Trump to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, the answer is yes.

Almost nobody in Mexico likes Trump. Almost nobody in Mexico likes President Enrique Peña Nieto. This is like mixing snot with pus. Nothing worthwhile can come of this. This meeting makes no sense in any rational universe. Maybe Enrique Peña Nieto thinks he can humiliate Trump, thereby finally making him popular among Mexicans…despite the fact that his invitation to Trump has made him even less popular. Or maybe Trump thinks he can humiliate Enrique Peña Nieto, thereby making him popular…among the people who already like him?

Donald J. Trump meets with Mexican President President Enrique Peña Nieto

Donald J. Trump meets with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto

Seriously, on the surface this move looks completely fucking insane for both parties. I have no idea why they’ve agreed to meet, President Enrique Peña Nieto must have been drunk when he issued the invitation. And Donald Trump — well, who the hell knows why he does anything. They’ll very likely both come off as…wait.

Wait just a minute. Is there…could it be possible…what if…?

What if they’ve both made themselves immune to iocaine powder?

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it's this or get a real job

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