That thing about Harry and What’s-Her-Name

Even though I swore up and down I would never talk about Harry and what’s-her-name again (I’ve mentioned them a few times on Twitter), I guess that’ll be the first thing I do before I go off into more serious stuff in my revival of this blog.

Why? Because even here in the U.S., those two have been all over the place — and not in a good way. It started off as an insistent murmur in the last few years and at this point it’s a roar that you can’t help hearing, and it’s reached a crescendo since the Prince and Princess of Wales made a formal, elegant visit to the U.S. last week (one that was fascinating to the media here) to present some sort of award to someone, only to have the Duke and Duchess of Montecito try to upstage them by purchasing(?) an award from the Kennedy clan and attempting a glittering presentation of said award to themselves. The Montecitos’ stunt only seemed to succeed in two things: making the general public aware that they exist, and (2) making the general public wonder just how anyone can be so pathetic.

Another note in the crescendo is some sort of documentary the Montecitos produced for Netflix. I don’t have access to Netflix so can’t comment. But apparently it is about to cause the Montecitos a LOT of trouble with the Royals because…something. (Small update: I’ve now seen a clip from the documentary, I think. It’s of what’s-her-name making an exaggerated curtsy. All I could think while watching it was, “this woman is in her 40’s?”)

Some in the U.K., even in the media there, are terribly, terribly upset about what’s-her-name and Harry, and are talking about how it’s affecting the relationship between the two countries. I can assure you that it isn’t, at least not seriously. But it is getting extremely annoying as it is pushed in our faces more and more, with the wonky analysis that seems to come with it.

Before anyone shouts “RACISM!!!!” let me tell you this: I don’t see what’s-her-name as a black woman first and everything else second, simply because she seemed not to be mixed-race until it gave her an excuse to shout “RACISM!” in response to any criticism. (BTW lately there seems to be a shift from crying “RACISM” to crying “SEXISM” and railing on her podcast about being the “silenced woman.” Interesting, that.)

So what do I see her as? A malignant narcissist, an obsessed fan and a social climber (or at least a career climber). Those come in all colors.

I used to have a sister-in-law like that. The moment she married into the family she tried to separate my brother from the rest of us, and it just went downhill from there. During one visit she sat on a lawn chair alone in the back yard because she just couldn’t be in the house with her in-laws, (who I can say with some authority had done nothing to her).

Luckily the marriage only lasted 6 months…at which time she tried to lay claim to the house my brother had bought years prior to meeting her, and where she had refused to live because it was across the street from my parents’ house. She admitted somewhere along the way that she married only to have a baby (and a house). Of course she tried to claim pregnancy when the annulment papers came, but that was quickly disproven. So she ended the whole affair with no baby and no house.

I won’t go into that story any further, but let’s just look at what I’ve said and compare it to some of what’s-her-name’s actions. Maybe you’ll see what I am talking about.

First of all, what’s-her-name promptly separated Harry from his family and then started whining about how mean the family was (where have I seen this before?). A lot of her whines seem to be about titles, and a lot of her reported misbehavior and dissatisfaction seems to be about possessions — housing and jewelry and such — and how she’s been treated less royally than she feels she should be.

It all sounds a bit familiar; suffice it to say that I recognize what’s-her-name for what she is, and it ain’t the crusading do-gooder she’s pretending to be. Hell if that was all she wanted out of life, she could have done it far more effectively as a working member of the Royal Family.

Another moment that shone a light on her true nature: that time in an interview where she was apparently reminiscing about her life and announced loftily, “I’ve been a princess…” Uh..no dear you have not, unless you seriously want to call yourself “Princess Henry” — which I doubt.

More seriously, there was that time she wrote a letter about some kind of cause to a sitting U.S. Democratic Congresswoman, who — probably much to what’s-her-name’s consternation — turned around and publicly demanded to know who this person was who was signing herself “Duchess of Sussex” and what in the hell was said Congresswoman supposed to do with this letter? What a nightmare! Instead of fawning over what’s-her-name and giving WHN a photo op with a powerful person in the U.S. that could be splashed all over WHN’s blog or whatever other electronic thing she was using to promote herself at the moment, what’s-her-name got slapped in the face with this impertinent question about her own impertinence.

In short, that little caper didn’t go very well.

Then there was the time where she tried to insert herself into the grieving process after a school shooting and was told to go home, yet still managed to garner some positive publicity from the whole thing — the very result she wanted, but failed to accomplish, with some award the Kennedy family gives out. (Pro hint: many of the current Kennedys are downright useless; I’ve heard them referred to as “the best argument against royalty the U.S. has.” And there’s the lingering question about the Montecitos apparently buying their way into the award.)

On top of that are all the rumors that what’s-her-name was obsessed with Princess Diana and actually wanted to marry Harry’s older brother because that would make her Queen someday. This probably ties in with her obsession with calling herself a Princess when she is not in her own right. In addition, there’s the fact that most people in the U.S. have absolutely no idea what a duchess is, but they do know from Disney fairy-tales what a princess is. In other words, what’s-her-name is marketing herself.

And the latest item of exasperation is that apparently, eventually what’s-her-name will attempt to run for office in the U.S. If she does, she probably won’t get anywhere because Democrats are a bit less susceptible to the famous-in-other-fields than are the Republicans. But of course she does not see that. It’ll also be fun to see if she continues to style herself “Duchess of Sussex” while running (pro hint: that’s illegal for a U.S. citizen).

This brings me to the subject of self-delusion. As I said, what’s-her-name is not a princess in her own right. She is also not a major Hollywood star and never has been — yet for some reason many people in the U.K. seemed to think she was. I’m sure if we scratch the surface we’ll find a P.R. agent at work there, because the misapprehension was suspiciously widespread. I do recall seeing an avalanche of tweets about what’s-her-name’s wonderfulness around the time of the wedding, and I assumed that because I am old and gray I must have missed what’s-her-name’s status as a current cultural icon. But later I realized that I must have been reading a lot of bot-talk. Fact is, few people here in the U.S. knew anything about what’s-her-name at the time of the wedding, and they still don’t give a damn.

Also, apparently those Hollywood A-listers that she invited to her wedding (but who said later they’d never met her prior to the wedding), are shunning what’s-her-name and Harry out there in lovely Montecito. Hollywood is, after all, very hierarchical — kind of like the U.K.’s Royal Family. So much for her marriage transforming her career into that of a Hollywood superstar.

The painful reality is that what’s-her-name was and is a sort of D-list TV actor who probably saw that she was never going to get very far in her acting career and decided to take extreme measures to gain fame and influence. How better to do this than to present herself as a beleaguered Black person in the very white British Royal Family? And as she could nab one of her idol Diana’s sons in the process, so much the better. What a drama! Real-life reality TV every day of the week! Half of the U.S. and all of the U.K. closely watching her every move with worshipful respect — kind of like we did with Diana!

Before I go further, let me mention that what’s-her-name ain’t no Diana. Diana started off her public career in a massive lie born of centuries of cruel tradition, then found herself cheated on, then fell apart inside. But she never flagged in her concern for others and her good works, all of which came from a very big heart. That’s why she was loved. Yes her style and beauty were admired, but that wasn’t her entire substance — unlike with what’s-her-name for whom it is all window dressing with one selfish aim in mind.

So needless to say it’s not working, and an army of bots on Twitter isn’t going to make it work. Ultimately neither will shouting “racism” and/or “sexism” every time what’s-her-name does not get what she wants. Narcissists have a reality problem, and what’s-her-name has it in buckets. Anything that does not fit in with her fantasy is met with actor’s tears and a sort of emotional violence.

So what do I see in her future?

She and Harry will likely not be together forever. She’s the one who will walk, probably — sooner if Harry’s title, and by extension her own — is taken away (still questionable at this point); later if she just becomes bored or comes up with another scheme to become truly famous and adored. After that she will try to pretend to have political influence. She may do well in that career, as our media are obsessed with finding the least-qualified semi-famous people they can to become “commentators” whose job it is to appear on TV and mumble something every time something comes up, whether they have any expertise in it or not.

Then will come the book, which will flop. And then she will quietly disappear, probably living comfortably on hefty alimony, at which point we in the U.S. will breathe a relieved sigh of “‘bye Felicia.”

And I expect that one day in the distant future, one of her kids will write a book of their own.

Letter to a Cultist

Dear Trump-sucker:

You probably are not reading this because (1) you don’t read, (2) this is a center/left blog, and (3) you don’t identify yourself with the word “cultist.”  But that’s okay.  You are a cultist anyway.

Your cult is that of Trump.  You are the one sitting there yelling at an NBC news broadcast about Trump’s stupid sanctions that Trump is right to start a trade war with China and all these “snowflakes” whining about being hurt financially — well too bad.  “That’s temporary.”  Yep.  That’s what you said.  I heard you.

Never mind that what you said is not backed up by fact; it’s what you want to believe.  And here’s the kicker: you desperately want me to agree with you; otherwise you would not sit there screaming at a public television set and keep looking at me, begging, “Right?  Right?”

Not only that, but I know a lot about you because you voted for Trump.  I know who you are at your very base: you are a frightened bully.  You are also limited intellectually and vacant spiritually, even if you are waving a college degree in my face to prove otherwise and you attend church every Sunday without fail.

You support Trump because you see in him a kindred spirit, and also a sort of Superman who will fix all your problems for you.  You are likely a fan of reality TV shows and professional wrestling.  You consider yourself to be a guardian of patriotism, which to you is some vague combination of flag worship and a blurry photo of the Constitution (which you have never read), coupled with a 4th of July parade and cookout.  You probably also believe in witches, ghosts, conspiracy theories, Evangelical preachers, and whatnot.  You definitely think Russia is our friend.  You have chosen to believe that the world would be safer if we armed toddlers, and school kids would be safer if they were only nicer to other school kids who might shoot them.  (Abortion = BAAAAD; School shootings = the victims’ fault!  Guns are GOOD!)

And I know that if asked, you will tell me to my face that Fox News is the only news outlet that tells the truth.  (Never mind that they admit that they’re not even a news outlet.)  In short, you are a perfect sucker for Russian propaganda, and may have actually been identified as such on Facebook.

You are also a racist POS, pure and simple.

Yes, I know all of this about you.  And I know another thing: when this finally ends, you will be left completely on your own.  No one will want to come near you.  You will be labeled toxic.

How will you respond?  Denial.  Blame.  Anger.  Confusion and butthurt.  This is how bullies behave.

Your media will spend decades spinning conspiracy theories, trying to prove that Trump was innocent…but no matter.  No one will give a flying shit about you, and you will die alone.

Have fun in hell, darling.  Meantime, fuck off; I want to watch the news.

–the worstat

 

Really out loud

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As you have heard, last night the Senate voted down the umpteenth effort to kill off the ACA and several million Americans along with it.  People are celebrating, but I know they’ll just try it again, possibly as soon as next week.  McConnell and Ryan are acting as if their lives depend on it, after all; maybe someday we’ll find out why.

At this point it can’t be just a deep-seated hatred of Obama and his achievement that’s motivating them (although it is certainly one of Trump’s major motivations).  It has to be something more, and it has to be something to do with money; otherwise, why try repeatedly over a course of years — not to mention just the last several days — to push through a repeal with nothing but empty and dangerous nonsense to replace it?  Why all the secrecy?  Why induce senators to vote on something they haven’t even read?  Heck, just before the vote last night, which was minutes after the “replacement” was finally revealed, some senators said they were voting for it even though they hated it.

That.makes.no.fucking.sense unless there’s someone waving money at them, hard.  Or else, someone is threatening them.

But as I said we won’t find out what’s pushing this extreme behavior for a while, if ever.  Mensch has been chiming in with her fan-fic, crediting McCain and his buddy Graham with a sweet little patriotic conspiracy where they both voted to confirm Sessions and split their votes on the healthkill bill.  This was necessary so they wouldn’t blow their cover, and OF COURSE it’s top secret!

No.  Try again.  They are who they are — McCain is nothing if not unpredictable — and they did what they did.  I will never believe otherwise unless I hear it from their own mouths.

In the meantime, something far more illuminating has happened.  In fact there were four things:

(1) the Joint Chiefs of Staff has openly defied Trump on his new zero-tolerance policy for transgender soldiers/sailors.  It would appear that the generals are (to an extent) turning on Trump.  This is something I’ve never seen happen before in my several decades of life.

(2) Congress has passed a veto-proof extension (and, I think, a toughening) of the sanctions on Russia.  It’s on Trump’s desk right now, but it doesn’t matter.  It’s passed.  There is nothing he can do about it.  He probably doesn’t totally grasp that there’s nothing he can do about it, but he’s stuck with it.

Putin is already responding by throwing U.S. diplomats out of Russia; that’s fine because now there can be no more talk of the U.S. giving Russian compounds (on U.S. soil) back.  I predict Trump will try, anyway, simply because it’s within his control and he may see it as a way to save his considerable ass with Putin.  (No I don’t believe he’s actually done this already, but I may be wrong; if he has, he’s screwed either way.)

(3) More reps and senators are now talking openly about Trump and Russia on the floor of the House and Senate (and/or in the hallways) and refusing to be hushed.  It’s clear that what we’re hearing, they’re hearing — which means it isn’t “fake news” — and at least some of them are as fed up as we are.

(4) Lindsay Graham, for what he’s worth, is apparently cooking up a bill that will prevent Trump from dismissing Special Counsel Robert Mueller by shouting “you’re fired!” just like he used to on his TV show.  There has also been talk of a bill in the House that would prevent Trump from unilaterally starting a war, but I don’t know what happened with that.  Presidents were never supposed to be able to do that anyway; not that they haven’t — and that’s the problem, particularly with someone as desperate to cause a distraction as is Trump.

All in all it looks like the wheels are falling off, not only for Trump but for the entire Republican party.  I refuse to guess how much longer this is going to take.

I had predicted that things would start happening after June 30; it appears I wasn’t far wrong.  What’s happening now is that people are openly defying Trump and calling Congressional Republican leadership to task, and Congress itself defies Trump one day (the healthkill bill and the sanctions) and coddles him the next (money for the Mexican wall, which they previously said was dead — but it’s stupid enough where I’m sure they’ll go ahead with it anyway, magically pulling money out of their asses).

Next come actual indictments of people surrounding Trump.  There will be no impeachment; for all Congress’s recent bluster, they will not impeach Trump. As I said earlier, someone’s holding something over their heads, and whatever it is scares the hell out of them.

But some things are inevitable, and one inevitability here is that someone is going to jail for all of this, or at least part of it.  I have no idea when the actual legal action will start, but the latest rumor is “by the end of the summer.”  They just aren’t saying which summer.

 

How to spot fake tweets

By “fake” I mean “nonfactual” tweets.

The idea for this article came yesterday, when a lengthy tweet thread was posted by someone on Twitter who has long claimed to be
(1) some sort of religious consultant in the White House
(2) a victim of death and other threats, mostly coming from Steve Bannon but also coming from minions of Bannon who have recently been arrested (?? I haven’t heard of any arrests, have you?)
(3) a distant relative of Trump
(4) a cancer patient.

I’m neither here nor there on who this person claims to be, but I do have issues when they tweet stuff like this:

(1) Donald Jr. and Eric turned on their father last October
(2) Donald Jr. released his incriminating emails intentionally to bring his father down
(3) Ivanka is her father’s partner in crime and also “his lover,”
(4) a Rothschild is actually the reason for Putin and Trump being in power.

Okay, folks…now I get off the train.  Any time you mention “Rothschild” you lose me.  It’s been a hallmark of right and left-wing cranks for years: when all else fails, blame the Rothschilds.  I’m not saying they’re innocent, I just don’t know who the hell they are.  And unless one steps on my toe in an elevator, I don’t give a shit.  Power is, after all, given — not taken.  Trump is finding this out in real time, right in front of us, for all to see.

Ivanka’s relationship with her father is none of our business.  Nepotism is very much our business, but it is not the same thing as incest or whatever the hell the charges are.

As for Beavis and Butthead (Eric and Donald Jr.), there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that they have turned on their father, nor that they are bright enough to carry out any sort of plot.  No, the truth appears to be just this: Donald Jr. released the emails because he simply isn’t smart enough to realize that what they reveal is not only illegal, but possibly treasonous.  If it turns out otherwise, I’ll be the most shocked individual in the cosmos, and Donald Jr. will deserve a goddamn acting award for his performance as the village idiot.

All this brings me to the point: beware of what you read on Twitter.  If the writer claims membership in any sort of “club” (you know, names that sound like Anti-Trump Team A or the Elite Force or other juvenile crap like that), speaks in jargon (whether real or invented), claims military status that others have questioned, does little on Twitter but talk about how bad other twitterers are, doxxes people, invents sensational rumors (see above) especially while claiming dubious status…they probably need professional help.  And you aren’t the one to help them.

Neither believe what they say, nor pay much attention to it.  Instead, pay attention to people widely known to have expertise in their fields (Preet Bahara comes to mind).  You will get a glimpse of the truth from these people.  You will not get it from someone claiming to be hiding out from antagonists in the White House, or claiming to know a lot of unnamed sources in the IC, or God knows what else.  All you’ll be doing is wasting your time with these people.  Tune out.

 

A few things I wish we’d get straight

I just saw another of those headlines: “Here’s why Hillary Clinton didn’t win the election!”  I’ve seen numerous articles on this subject, most slamming Clinton for running a bad campaign, or the Democrats for being out of touch, etc.

It’s bullshit, people.  Stop it.  Fact is, Clinton won big and would have won bigger if there hadn’t been so much tampering going on.

Also, it’s clear that the Trump campaign colluded (not a legal term, btw) with the Russians to get Trump elected (we’ve spent the past 3 days yammering about Donald Trump Jr., haven’t we?  and how about all the bombshells before that?), and some of this collusion involved the creation and promotion of fake news, as Trump loves to call it — although in his eternal projection state, he confuses “fake news” with legit news.  We’re talking about genuine fake news here — the right-wing kind.

In fact, it’s being surmised that the Russians would not have known where to target their fake news campaign without the help of the Trump campaign.  It’s easy to see proof of this: just observe Putin, who is obviously clueless on the subjects of U.S. government and society.

Yes, this collusion is illegal, immoral, treasonous, and from the looks of Trump, fattening.  BUT THE FACT REMAINS THAT HILLARY CLINTON WON THE FUCKING ELECTION.

Since the general election there have been several local/Congressional elections in which the Republicans apparently used their election-eating machine to retain seats that they otherwise would have lost.  Yet I am still seeing articles about the Democrats being out of touch, rather than articles examining just how it is that unpopular/unsuitable/unqualified/downright grotesque Republican candidates keep winning elections — never by a landslide — that they were projected to lose.  And why, why are there always stories about weird shit happening at the polls at those elections?

So that’s it.  I want to know why are we not dealing with two basic problems that led us into this debacle: a corrupt and useless Electoral College, and a vast Republican voting fraud/intimidation/disenfranchisement machine which far outstrips anything put together in decades past by Chicago’s first Mayor Daley (who did, via vote fraud, help get Kennedy elected; otherwise Watergate would have happened a decade earlier).

And I want to see some investigative journalism done about this.  Now.

Conduct Unbecoming

It’s a low moment when one realizes that the term “conduct unbecoming” technically does not apply to the president of the United States.  But there it is: it does not.

Currently the qualifications for the office are lower than those for local school-board members, I believe.  This accounts for much of the GOP field in the last two elections.  Many were nothing more than vanity candidates.

What concerns me is that the most obvious vanity candidate of them all was able to steal the office.  (NO, HE WAS NOT ELECTED.)  Now securely there, he is being held to no particular standards of conduct and execution of duties, simply because there aren’t any.

Things have come to a new low point now; this morning he was revealed on national television to have blackmailed two popular talk-show hosts.  Don’t get excited; nothing will happen to him.  Remember what I wrote in the previous post.

However, this came directly on the heels of yesterday’s revelation that…let’s see if I can get this straight…a Republican operative contacted Russian hackers for Clinton’s emails, somehow for or through Flynn.  This is huge, folks.  This indicates collusion.  The only choking point is determining Flynn’s exact role in the scheme.  Someone might also like to take a look at just how it was that the Republican operative in question died just days after revealing this story.  Yes, he was 81 years old, but still — that’s a big coincidence.

Meantime, remember Carter Page?  It’s been revealed that he spent much of April — roughly the last time we heard anything about him — talking to the FBI without a lawyer, which indicates that either he’s stupid (but we already guessed that), or he has flipped.  This revelation seemed to make various satellites in the Trump orbit rather shaky.  One of them suddenly did what he’d been resisting doing: he registered retroactively as a foreign agent.

Left wing Pied Piper and right-wing operative Louise Mensch suddenly withdrew from Twitter this morning, claiming Trump is done (he is not) and because of that her work is done for the time being.  Those who have been following her for a long time claim that she has done this before.  I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that Mensch has been under pressure from various Twitterers for a few months now, one of them being Seth Abramson, about whom I still have serious questions — although I’d believe him before Mensch any day.  Another person she’s been tussling with is the highly credible Preet Bahara, with whom Mensch presumed to argue the legal point of whether a sealed indictment against a sitting president is possible.  I’d say she lost; at least, nothing has happened to prove her right and the attorney Bahara wrong.

It’s gotten particularly intense recently, with claims that she’s been doxxing people (doxxing basically means making private information very public; it’s not always illegal but it is always unethical).  Certainly she seems to spend more time lately issuing denials and threats of legal action than she does inventing conspiracy theories and making wild claims.  Her announced disappearance this morning comes just after the very latest charges of doxxing; there seems to be a new victim coming forward every few days.

So it seems stuff is going down, folks, in various arenas.  Unfortunately Trump is not one of the things tumbling down, and that brings me back to the point.

As I said, you probably need more qualifications to run for the local school board than you do for president, and once you obtain the office of president, you are under no particular obligation to your oath or to anything else (definitely not true of school-board members).  Trump has taken and is taking full advantage of that.

Because of that, I’m writing to my senators to ask them what they think of raising the standards for those who run for the office of president.  I know it’s the last thing we have to worry about right now, but think about it — it’s part of what got us here.  It’s an issue that needs to be addressed.

Because I can’t say it any better than this

The Rude Pundit

The level of disgust I feel right now, not only for Trump but for his cabinet, the GOP in general, and all devotees…well, I cannot express it any better than The Rude Pundit.

But I can say this: there’s a lot of speculation that Trump tweeted this shit on purpose, to distract from a bunch of GOP nonsense going on in the background (think the healthkill bill, which has died another temporary death, and/or some of the shit going on overseas).

The fact is, Trump is incapable of doing anything on purpose.  He operates on 100% pure reaction; he’s a combination of a toddler and a parrot and no more.  It’s clear that he’s not even acting as chief executive at this point; speculation gives that title to everyone from Kushner to Bannon to Mattis, to…on the far end of reality…Hatch (Pence is nowhere in the equation).  Whoever it is, they are working outside the Constitution and in spite of it.  We have, after all, the 25th Amendment, but for some reason that’s being ignored.  And here’s the reason: they’ve installed a pretend president (“I’m not a president but I play one on TV!”) so that they can get away with shit while he distracts everyone with his bottomless vapidity, immaturity, and general unfitness for the job.

I repeat: It doesn’t suit their needs or aims to get rid of him.  And so they won’t.

And so we are destined to keep having to put up with this massive charade that is ruining our reputation abroad and our stability at home.  It is said that Putin is through with Trump and is waiting for an opportunity to destroy him (I don’t believe it).  Trump, on the other hand, has convinced the Cabinet that it’s a good idea for him to meet with Putin.

If that doesn’t show you his true function, nothing will.  A smart man would stay a planet away from the toxic Putin if he could, but Trump doesn’t care how it looks.  To him it’s just business as usual; this whole president thing was nothing but a grifting scheme to start with.  He wants what he wants and he takes it.  That’s his entire grasp of the job right there: he’s got all the toys and a little shiny crown and he’s not sharing any of it; nyah, nyah, nyah.

He has a solid wall of protection while he refuses to do his job and tweets like an imbecile, fleeces his followers for “campaign funds” and meets with the asshole who underwrote all this, as if that were normal.  The GOP doesn’t care that somebody else is actually running the country — or rather, attempting to destroy it.  Why are they attempting to destroy it?  Remember the old slogan “carve up the Chinese melon?”  Yeah, that.

Trump is just there for show.  Whether or not he realizes this is another story; I don’t think he does; I think he is allowed follies like tweeting and incoherent speeches just to keep him thinking he has actual power.

The only thing that’s completely clear is that the rest of us have been thrown to the wolves.  At this point I have no idea who or what will save us.

Read the Health-kill Bill (this is not normal)

Here it is in all its secretive glory, written by a handful of white men in a locked room:

Republican Heathkill Bill

And oh, you may be hearing a lot about Trump not actually being able to produce tapes of his conversations with Comey.  This is because there are none — or at least, if there were, they were deleted long ago.

Trump’s threat of “tapes” was just that — a threat, a distraction.  He’s a schoolyard bully who never grew up; he just doesn’t grasp that as president, people take what he says seriously and demand proof.  And if the proof isn’t there, Trump can’t get it through his head that he could be in far more serious trouble than merely a trip to the principal’s office; witness tampering/intimidation is a BIG deal and obstruction of justice is even bigger.  When you’re the president, people have notoriously long memories about what you have said and they tend to want to make you live with it.  It is not enough to tweet “never mind,” as Trump did today.  To put it simply, if he were Hillary Clinton, he’d be impeached and in leg irons right now.  But he’s Trump, so he is held to a much lower standard.

Meantime the White House just held a blacked-out press briefing, or whatever it was (I wonder if they brought any shrubbery into the room?).  And Jared Kushner is in Israel, talking to someone about something, and refusing to be photographed (is he Amish now?).  This puts me in mind of the rumors that Rex Tillerson won’t make eye contact with anyone and won’t let anyone sit in a room with him, or something like that.  Or that Pence has issues with the presence of women that are severe enough to suggest he may be more comfortable working in certain portions of the Middle East.

As the saying goes, folks, This.Is.Not.Normal.  These people are seriously weird, and they are, as the late Alan Rickman’s Snape enunciated so carefully, Up.To.Something.

If I can find it, I have an article somewhere from a few years back, about the inner workings of the Bolshoi Ballet.  It will shock you how similar it is to so much that is going on in the U.S. government now.  This is what the Russian government looks like when it’s transplanted in the U.S., folks (yes, the Bolshoi and the Russian government are interconnected).  Not very pretty.  Let’s not only hope it dies, but work to kill it.

P.S. Mensch chimed in and claimed that Comey’s telephone was some sort of super-duper auto-recorder, like a black box in an airplane, and that COMEY has tapes and so does Trump.  Right.  Then why did Comey write memos, dear?  Enough with the distractions, it’s getting old and in this case in particular, you’re adding nothing to the conversation.  And oh yeah…you lost me at Cheney.

Ignore that leak behind the curtain

Twitter seems to have gotten ahead of itself today.  Everyone’s acting like something big has happened, but they are talking only about the aftermath and not mentioning what actually happened.  I’m guessing this is because nothing much has happened.

Yes, Rosenstein is probably going to recuse himself from the Russia investigation (probably to avoid a run-in with Trump when Trump orders the DOJ to fire Mueller?), and it’s said he’ll be replaced by someone who was actively supporting the deplorable Ted Cruz during the presidential campaign.  Whether this means she is Russia-free or not remains to be seen.  But is that the big event they’re all aftermath-tweeting about?  Doesn’t seem like it.

UPDATE: Seth Abramson just tweeted that Trump had tweeted an implicit threat to fire Rosenstein, and that this is felony witness tampering.  But Abramson also tweeted that no one but himself picked up on this, which leaves us back at square one.  (BTW, I have Trump blocked so I saw none of this.)

Since no one but Abramson picked up on this, we’re still wondering why Twitter is all excited, so…

The White House staff is reportedly lawyering up, and it’s been confirmed that even Trump’s lawyer has hired a lawyer for himself.   Is this starting to sound like a skit from Monty Python yet?  Yes, but it’s not big news.  The White House staff has sounded like a  skit from Monty Python since well before they were actually in the White House.

Steve Bannon is now said to be under investigation for obstruction of justice, as he’s been physically threatening White House staffers (??? how is this connected?).  Bannon can never be counted on to keep it classy, so no, this is not big news.  (Interesting tweet on this subject that has nothing to do with obstruction of justice, but a lot to do with plain old thuggery: Bannon physically threatening people)

One person called Trump “mobbed up” in a comment.  This dovetails with what someone else posted yesterday (or the day before), something to the effect that if Trump’s mob connections had been revealed before the election, perhaps we would not be in the crisis we’re in.  True.  But still…old news.

Someone else tweeted jokingly that Pence is writing a draft of his first speech as president, although Pence seems destined to get no nearer the big chair in the oval office than he is right now.  Too many lies have spewed from his mouth, you see, and sometimes lies have consequences even if you claim to be all Christian and stuff.

So what’s going on?  I still don’t know, but the current excitement seems to have started late yesterday when the DOJ sent out a mysterious statement advising that U.S. citizens not believe any reports sourced to foreigners or unnamed foreigners.  Or something like that.  Um…okay.

Twitter erupted instantly, setting off an avalanche of jokes, but there were also many guesses as to what the cryptic statement meant.  Some guessed that Pence (see above) had leaked false information to WaPo, and this was the DOJ’s attempt to counteract it.  But WaPo is not foreign and neither, at last check, is Pence.

Lots of other guesses focused on the possibility that a foreign government has a “pee pee tape” and is about to…ahem…leak it.  That seems more likely.  But it’s now more than 12 hours since that weird communication from the DOJ, and nothing has happened.

Certainly Trump seems even more discombobulated than usual; apparently he spent the entire night tweeting (see Seth Abramson paragraph above).  In response to what Trump had tweeted, the often-hilarious pundit Tea Pain posted this:

Only believe Putin

Nice summary.  But I still don’t know why this is such a “fun Friday,” as one person called it.  No one has been arrested yet but a few dozen New York mobsters, and while Trump definitely has mob connections, no one has said anything about those arrests being associated with him.

Now when the arrests of Trump staffers and other politicians start, that will be fun.

 

 

Clueless in the Kremlin; Dumbass in D.C.

I actually thought this article was from The Onion when I first saw the headline. But no, it’s from NPR, an organization not noted for its sense of humor:

Putin Offers Political Asylum to Comey

Sorry if you just spit your coffee out all over your screen.  Yes, it’s true — Putin does not understand what he got himself into when he hooked up with the GOP and Trump.  In fact, it’s apparent that he has no knowledge of the U.S. at all.

I say this because Putin apparently does not realize that every time he opens his yap about a U.S. domestic matter, in jest or not, he incriminates himself (and Trump).  After all, why the hell should he care unless he has skin in the game?

To put it more succinctly: Putin, you’re an idiot — and not a very useful one at that — a greenhorn, and a joke.  You’ve been had.

Now on to some actual news: in celebration of Trump’s birthday yesterday (June 14).  Mueller let it slip that Trump himself is under investigation for obstruction of justice, something we had suspected for a while and that was kinda-sorta confirmed by Comey at the Senate hearing last week.

Happy Birthday, asshole!  But seriously, this is huge.

Trump, of course, is now blubbering all over Twitter about all these nasty people who are leaking lies (uh huh), and claiming that the fact that he’s being investigated for obstruction means that the Russia collusion stories are false, or at least not very important.  I know you are thinking you just entered the Twilight Zone; welcome to Trump’s brain.  No it does not appear to be working very well.

An ongoing thread of discussion over the past several days has been whether Trump would try to fire Mueller.  This leak or announcement, or whatever it was yesterday, makes it all but certain that he will.  But not so fast…

(1) There is some gray area here, but the basic fact seems to be that Mueller doesn’t really work for Trump; he works for the DOJ and Congress.  Congress has already indicated that if Trump fires Mueller, they’ll just re-hire him — and at that point there’ll be really nothing Trump can do about Mueller.  (Note to Trump’s puppet-master: Congress does not work for Trump.  Really.)

(2) Nixon also tried something like this, and it didn’t work out very well for him.

(3) And here’s the biggie: the rumors about Trump considering saying “you’re fired” to Mueller (just like on TV!) probably prompted Mueller to leak or announce (or whatever the hell it was) that Trump is being personally investigated.  Why?  Because Trump cannot fire someone who is known to be investigating him for a crime.  That is to say that even if Trump had the authority to fire Mueller to start with, he lost that option when it got out that Mueller is investigating him.

Doesn’t mean he won’t try anyway — he’s that stupid — but he can’t.  No, he does not and cannot recognize that fact, but let’s just say this: try it, Trump, and see where it gets you.

And with that, I leave Trump and Putin with this thought: welcome to reality.  Sucks, doesn’t it.