Well it was only 10 minutes and delivered without emotion, but we finally heard directly from Robert Mueller. The full video is at the end of the post.
It’s hard to sum up how he really feels, he did provide some cover for Barr and say he wasn’t going to speak to congress. Here’s what went down
Mueller walked on and said he wasn’t taking questions and hoped to never speak in public about this again.
Then he basically disgorged his opinion of his legal mandate and goals. He cleared up who he was responsible to (mostly the Acting Deputy Attorney General) and what his mandate was. He stressed he could ONLY investigate. In other words – Mueller’s opinion of his mandate could be summed up as – He had investigative authority, but no legal teeth. The president is un-Indictable, at least by him, merely because he’s president and that’s all there is to that.
So after again thanking his team Mueller sort of underscored what he thought was the most important things in his report. It would seem to have a disregard for the present circumstance. At best it could be called forward looking.
We’re Under Attack
He stressed that there was a coordinated and elaborate attack on our 2016 Election by Russia. Both the Kremlin and some kind of private entities were involved. Wikileaks was used to launder the information and get the Russians some deniability.
He said it was done with the aim of ‘influencing” opinions and ‘to damage a candidate.’ That candidate can only have been Hillary Clinton. He didn’t speak her name, but really, who else could it have been? He repeated the interference was ‘extensive’. It seems pretty clear we saw Putin’s hand here.
Then he went to his report and specified Volume 1, which is about the Russian efforts and whether Trump coordinated with them. It was inconclusive as to direct conspiracy, but maybe not because he didn’t think Trump had tried something. He would refer to the limits of his mandate, that you can’t charge a sitting president, was the governing philosophy of why no charges were filed.
Then he specified Volume 2, which dealt with Presidential Obstruction and obstruction of the Investigation. Again he referred to his mandate and said there was no Indicting the president under seal either. So Mueller’s view is hands were tied.
With confidence he said in so many words “It’s UnConstitutional” for the Special Counsel to Indict a sitting president. He alluded to Justice Department policy as the reason that he could do nothing about Obstruction as far as charges and Indictments. He again alluded to his limited mandate as the big reason there was no charging Trump.
More than anything else he spoke of how very limited his legal mandate really was.
Over and over Mueller deferred to his mandate about not being able to Indict rather than cleared the president. He said plainly he had ‘no confidence’ the president had NOT committed a crime.
Mueller made it very clear he could not clear the president. This is about the strongest thing he could say under his interpretation of his mandate. He seemed to be saying that anyone else would be looking at getting arrested over this and confirming the broken nature of our Justice System. He seemed more concerned about the coming election than anything President Trump may have done to this point, despite saying he was prosecutable outside of Office.
It seems Mueller really wanted us to be aware he NEVER had authority to indict the president. He stated policy and law as to why HE COULD NOT INDICT OR CHARGE THE PRESIDENT, NO MATTER WHAT HE FOUND.
One curious thing he said was that since there was no method to try the president legally while he was in office he had decided he simply couldn’t charge him based on that. The decision notably was NOT because he didn’t think Trump was guilty. In fact, he seemed to be saying he thought the law shielded the president from the consequences of illegal behavior more than anything else aside from the deep concern over the next election.
He then again thanked his staff and categorized his staff and investigation were ethical and professional.
He repeated that he wasn’t taking questions.
Mueller- He’s Not a Player; He’s The Official
In essence Mueller didn’t so much punt to congress. That’s because PLAYERS punt. Mueller has cast himself (or felt locked to the role) more as the referee or some other official. So like an NFL official what he did was turn on his mic, address the crowd, explain the penalty and handed the ball to congress.
Could you say that when he hands the congress the ball on Impeachment it’s on the GOP’s own 20 yard line. Mueller’s message between the lines seems to be “You’ll easily score a field goal if not a touchdown if you pursue these charges I laid out because if he wasn’t president he’d be a criminal. He may just leave the White House for the Big House.”
Mueller may be right on about the biggest issue now that all is said and done being keeping the next election clean of Russian (and all other) interference.
Well if today had started out quietly at the White House you can throw that right out the window. A tweet storm is brewing over the word that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will speak to the media from inside the Justice Department.
Gathering Storm of Unknown Nature
Rep Gerry Connolly of the House Foreign Affairs Committee was quick to suggest the location, from within the Barr Justice Department, casts a shadow all it’s own over what’s going to happen in just about 2 hours.
Will Mueller show himself as the “Man of Conscience” his reputation suggests, or will we get a Barr-like series of equivocations? Or is he just trying to get out what congress would ask him without having to actually appear? It’s unclear. The good news? We don’t have long to wait to find out. At 11 or so this morning, Mueller will either drop a major WMD of a Truth Bomb or throw in with Barr. There’s signs pointing to both possibilities.
The revelation the White House was given a ‘Heads Up’ on this is not a reassuring sign though. What the president thinks about what we’ll all hear will, almost surely, be revealed through a childish tweet storm no matter what Mueller says.
Its been a long time since the early days of the War of Necessity in Afghanistan. In New York City the smell of the destroyed towers still blew in toxic clouds to every corner of Manhattan at some point every day that dreary, angry fall. It’s a time no one really wants to be reminded of. We mark it solemnly and move on because it’s still painful. Sadly this president trades in pain. Especially when he co-opts the pain of 9-11, an incident he made money off and lied about from day one.
As an insulting and offensive reminder of 9-11 President Trump allowed early release for a hated Traitor whose name is forever tied to that day.
Thanks to Donald Trump, John Walker Lindh is a Free Man. The president didn’t stop it for reasons all his own.
It looks to many like he just wants to minimize Treason and insult the CIA.
The Tale of Johnny Taliban
Very soon after the 9-11 Attacks, we got real sickening surprise. Among the evil Taliban we found an American from California who just loved shooting at American soldiers with an AK-47. Somehow we took him alive. Maybe heroin had led him down a bad trail, you can see for yourself in the pictures he could have been drugged up, but it doesn’t really matter WHY he was shooting at Americans.
John Walker-Lindh was and is dangerous. He was then and he is now. Looking back to 2001 he was way too involved with the people who attacked America. He may have offered them some tips on how to fit in for all we know. As far as I’m concerned he may as well have been flying one of those planes
He took up arms against his country in very proactive way. Like shooting at people proactive, which is obviously really violent and extreme. We don’t know he didn’t manage to kill one of the Americans he was, lets face it, trying to kill!
Lindh was right there in it, he was captured on the 25th of November, 2001 just weeks into the war. To dispel any romance about him, he was on the run from US Forces for weeks and he surrendered when the rest of his unit gave up. So calling him a real follower seems fair.
He was down with al Qaeda. He MET Osama bin Laden! He was an enemy combatant. At just 20 years old he couldn’t even buy a beer. He was rightfully hated by Americans for his actions. And he’s still the same guy. Unrepentant and evil to the core.
People reacted emotionally to Lindh. Hatefully called “The American Taliban” or mockingly derided as “Johnny Taliban” he was scorned and would have been ripped apart by an angry mob anywhere in America.
A lot of people thought he should be shot on the pitcher’s mound of Yankee Stadium by an NYPD firing squad; and I would have bought a ticket. They would probably have been hard to get. He bought peoples anger right to the surface. I think it’s because he looked like any one of us if he cleaned himself up and could have done something sinister anywhere easily.
For better or worse, George W Bush’s Justice Department’s preferred image was that of a ‘kinder, gentler’ Department, maybe even just a little more for white people. So in the end they gave him just 20 years. It was an unpopular outcome. I considered it too light at the time. I still think it deserved no less than 25 to life. Or, hey, Death.
Trump;s Sick Johe-Now Lindh Walks Among Us
Thanks to President Trump, Now he walks among us. The 38 year old is a real threat to the American People and early parole just isn’t for people like him. I know I don’t sound too progressive here, but the Boston Bomber is going to die, why is Lindh walking free? Probably only cause he’s white. I’m a strict Constitutionalist on Treason. If it’s really treason you should really die.
But he’s walking around Free and I think he’s looking for a way to hurt people. Obviously, he needed all of that extra jail time of that too short sentence and more.
Enter the Commander-in-Cheat blowing off an easy call – asking he remain locked up. If Lindh were an of Arab descent would he have been silent? because to Trump this wasnt worth so much as a tweet. Its like he lacks all connection and sentiment for his the his home town of New York Lindh helped attack.
Trump Endorsing White Privilege
Let’s be honest; John Walker-Lindh owes his light sentence and his life to what amounts to White Privilege pure and simple. Does anyone think a fourth generation Pakistani-American would have gotten the same sentence? Or anyone but a white rich guy? White Privilege makes this release even more appealing to Trump.
Make no mistake the early release of John Walker-Lindh is tantamount to letting an aspiring Oklahoma City Bomber (at least) loose on the streets of America. He’s not ready for or deserving of freedom. He’s still a young man and he’s clearly had time to think up awful things to do to people he hates. I doubt he was reading the classics in prison. This guy’s a threat and should have gotten life. Or Death.
But John Walker-Lindh is a white guy whose family had some money. His more than decent lawyers got him charged with Providing comfort to the enemy and 20 years instead of Treason and Death. At the time it was seen to be a very brilliantly litigated legal coup by the defense. The sentence was considered by most extremely light in face of the facts we knew. Sold to the court as sort of an OCD Idiot who happened onto Islam, his lawyers did well. He’d walk free still a young man. I hated it.
It happened the way it did because there was an eagerness then to just want him to be misguided and maybe crazy rather than a guy who wanted with all his heart to kill Americans. It was done to make people feel like no sane American could ever do this willingly. It was saying that there wasn’t a terrorist lurking inside everyone waiting to come out. The guy was just another asshole. It made everyone a little less nervous.
We were wrong about all of that. Seems the only person who didn’t figure this out was ‘President’ Trump.
Nothing more than a letter to the parole would have been needed. Trump chose not to act.
Now President Trump is releasing Lindh early despite the charges of “Providing Support to the Taliban” being the sort of thing a self proclaimed ‘Law and Order’ president would rightly be expected to go hard on. But instead this accomplice to the murder of a CIA Agent will go free.
A recently captured in Lindh in 2001
He looked like a Chechen rebel and maybe had powder burns on his face. If captured with the Nazis doing the same thing in 1944 he would have been tried and hung.
Now and Then
After he was in jail in Afghanistan he still got into trouble again in a prison riot that cost the life of the very first American to die in Afghanistan, CIA agent ‘Johnny” Michael Spann. His daugter Alison Spann advocated strongly to his early release and I am inclined to agree.
Some prison recent prison documents in the form of his writings and a few statements show Lindh’s no more than an unrepentant fan of ISIS and a real jerk who might try something again. He probably should have served his time at GITMO considering these results. He’s learned nothing.
He’s as dumb as Trump and is now also his pawn.
Minimizing Teason and Insulting the CIA
So WHY the early parole? I see President Trump’s hand. He sees a chnce to both downplay Treason AND slap the intelligence Community in the face. Lindh was, after all, paty to the killing of a CIA Agent.
It’s wrong and it’s UnAmerican that he serves one minute less than the 20 years. I saw what he helped do in New York, I don’t like the guy. Still, hows hating America and admiring ISIS ‘Good Behavior” for a guy who is supposedly getting out early for being ‘rehabilitated?
Trump’s wrong as always to allow this to happen. He loves that its happening and maybe he’ll mention it. Walker IS white though, so maybe not.
The only people who had a ‘Good Day’ on 9-11 were soulless Rudy Ghouliani who kust loved being on TV, Lindh and Osama bin Laden for obvious reasons, and, no longer surprisingly, a lying, gloating Donald Trump. who spent the day lying and gloating and has amassed a heap of 9-11 lies since.
If you look at the people this president has pardoned or freed its a sad list of mostly true criminals, creeps and lately, military murderers (with the odd Kardashian-aided exception)
Its all to denigrate the office of president. I still believe thats his witting or unwitting Kremlin mission
I don’t feel like I’m alone viewing William Barr as a 2nd tier Lucas Movie Villain. He’s dishonest, dishonorable and belongs in a museum.
Today’s partisan hearing was a reflection of our bi-polar government. As senators coddled or cudgeled Barr based on party affiliation you gotta think the momentum is with the Democrats.
Sure, it’s the Senate where the GOP is in control, but this is certainly yet another cut in into the Orange flesh of the liar at 1600’s Administration.
When i tuned in it was Ernst, who gently asked about what the Russians may be up to, that friendly question from a Republican drew an evasive answer. It made him all the more unsympathetic when he was then rightly bashed by Blumenthal. Then he was coddled by Blackburn, bashed by Booker and so it went. Hirono was by far the heashest and rightly called Barr a liar.
When elaborating conspiracy theories and accepting praise from the right of course Barr looked like a victim. It was when the Democrats put the screws to him his spineless nature came right out.
Whenever questioned by a Democrat Barr’s voice was always a bit more affected if you ask me, with his regionalisms coming out. A “liars tell”?
On the topic of Foreign Adversaries who attacked our election Barr rarely seemed fully read in (this is the Attorney General mind you) and seemed to lack the competence to understand what happened or whats going on now.
Barr wasn’t good holding forth in the face of Corey Booker at all. The presidential hopeful questioned Barr’s honesty and barr had a hard time pitching any justifications. Bookers questions were damaging to the Attorney General, who SHOULD resign, but getting Barr to answer anything was always like nailing jello to a wall.
Tarheel GOP hater Tom Tillis shifted back into love-fest mode. The GOP senators had two points. It was a really gig investigation and the he, Barr, was totally justified to change (or at least obscure) its conclusions. Tillis offered a stiff defense of the way Barr has behaved as AG. He went with a numbers approach to make it as boring and obscure s possible because Math, in and of itself, really has no relation to whether something is a crime or not.
The GOP refrain was this is just a sour grapes second stab at the reputation of poor president Trump, king of victimhood.
Senator Kamala Harris asked Barr if he’d had anyone asking him to launch punitive investigations. Barr just couldn’t answer. He was more disrespectful to Harris than others. I’m not sure if it because shes running for president, a woman of color or both.
Barr chaffed a bit when he delivered up stock denials on methodology questions about his offices approach. He wouldn’t say much about what they do and less about what people think they do.
Barr tried to punt to Mueller but Harris had none of it. The next move by Barr was to try to shift responsibility to Rosenstein.
Barr didn’t distinguish himself in his knowledge of his own departments methods at all.
Mike Crapo of Idaho from the GOP side was a little less affectionate to Barr, but by no means beat him up.
Barr never raised himself to a Star Trek or Bond Villain level like his boss often does.
Any sympathy bought by Barr was immediately destroyed by the chummy conversation with Senator from Hell Ted Cruz; where Barr suddenly had full commend of methods ad could relate them in detail. Maybe its just that he sounds smart compared to Cruz?
Looking me like some sort of Texas whorehouse owner than any kind of a politician from this century Cruz was that guy we’ve all grown to hate. He still managed to stump Barr by mistake once.
Their conversation was a paranoid and unamerican trip down Kremlin Misinformation lane. I walked away wondering who pulls Cruz’s strings
Ending Round 1 Pat Leahy, Democrat of Vermont went back to questions of more relevance. Like one focused on Barr’s motives in releasing his strange 4 page letter last month. He also expressed concern and asked Barr to commit not to interfere to not interfere in any ongoing investigations. Barr was evasive and took 3 lame swipes at an answer. Leahy wasn’t too thrilled with him. It’s also not clear if Barr actually agreed NOT to interfere based on his own bizarre view of his role and powers.
Instead of just adjourning the Lindsay Graham opted for what amounted to a “Lightning Round” where it was a roulette wheel of Senators and questions
Barr was unsettled by some of this enough to start trying to dispel the idea that there were any “Underlying crimes”. He wasn’t making a lot of sense.
Then Dick Durbin of Illinois had some seriously unsettling questions about how Barr is mishandling the Trump Inaugural committee, which is mired in a multi million dollar scandal that’s looking criminal.
Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island essentially laced right in. The Democrat was slightly pre-heated and was frustrated with the way Barr was evading. He was more able to box in and nail down Barr. His line of questioning was about foreign money and Grand Jury material being suppressed. Barr came off confused. A terrible look for the Attorney General of the United States.
Klobuchar grilled Barr on whether the Mueller Report reviewed Trumps taxes, Barr claimed ignorance.
Quoting pages and passages Klobuchar tried to get some accountability from Barr. You cant get blood from a stone though, and he inartfully dodged any substantial answer.
In a final semi bombshell Klobuchar asked if the presidents conduct was consistent with his Oath of Office. Barr said it was his call that everything was cool.
Lightning Round continued with Blumenthal. He had specific questions in specific conversations that may haunt Barr later.
In general Barr spent a lot of time looking pretty damn bad. He was clueless on purpose to stonewall at times, but looking clueless just undermines the Justice Department he purports to run
Barrs most bizarre statement was putting words in Mueller’s mouth where he claimed Mueller was pretty much behind him and they barely disagree on anything. This seems ridiculous right off the bat. There’s a letter in the public record where Mueller outright questions the way Barr’s motives in mischarachterizing his report.
Lindsey Graham ended the session and promised to write a letter asking for any clarifications. GOP ass kissing was allowed in 5 second round of praise from some GOP member.
In a final petty gesture Barr described the angry letter from Mueller as ‘snitty’ and probably written by an underling. He held to the Republican line the presidents a victim in this. Forget about the idea that the president is a criminal, that’s his view of the system. That we have a designated criminal as a president,
We all knew that eventually proximity to Trump was going to cause Good Ol’ Gal Sarah Huckabee Sanders some problems. While I speculate one day the criminality she’s been part of will come back to haunt her I didn’t think she’d figure deeply into the Mueller Report, and she didn’t.
None the less, her talking out of both sides of her mouth was one of the first stories to ruminate through the headlines when the report, or what we’ve been allowed to see of it, dropped. Seems Sarah’s Christian values don’t include even the slightest guilt about lying unless there’s jail time involved.
And her lies werent to mitigate Trump’s insanity, she was burnishing it.
The Mueller Report showed her to be an Enabler rather than any of the authors of the Anonymous New York Times “White House Resistor” article, where the idea was to stick around at the expense to your own dignity just to keep Trump from blowing up the world.
When James Comey was fired for not dropping the Flynn Investigation Sarah had a series of May 2017 pressers (remember when we had pressers?) where she simply lied to the American People. Her repeated lie, which she’s since told some more lies about, was that her phone was ringing off the hook with grateful FBI Agents thanking her for Trump’s firing of Comey. I’m not sure why they thought she would want to hear it. I guess she took the (fictional) calls in between high 5-ing all the other FBI Agents she claimed stopped her to tell her how glad they were their boss had been fired amid a torrent of abusive comments about the Bureau itself.
When in front of Mueller Sarah actually told the truth. These were pure lies made up from whole cloth. Obviously she was parroting her boss.
Cries she be fired are now pretty universal. The Fox White House guy may even be on board with that one, he has to listen to the lies too, right? But this is how Trump likes it.
By the third week of April we’ve had 4 Pressers all year, in no regular order. This begs the question – what exactly does Sarah do these days?
Lets just say for a moment that we had a compromised president who just divides Americans. Throw in the fact Trump is a bad-hearted guy who has shown great Fealty to Putin. Put all this together and some uncomfortable facts sort of show up to beg an answer.
I still think Trump is some sort of spy with a codename from the Kremlin like ‘Agent Orange.’
First, in a world where Trump is Putin’s Pawn, which may in fact be THE REAL WORLD, the Mission of the Kremlin’s US Asset, Agent Orange, has gone better than anyone could have imagined.
Putin is a Super Criminal
At this point lets pretend we’ve reached the part of the movie where Putin says “you may as well know my plan, since you won’t live to tell anyone, anyway, Mister Bond.” and make some predictions on his next moves.
Putin’s shown pure mastery in manipulating the worlds media and governments. Shoving a rival nation down and to the right has been his signature move for about 10 years. Once the discourse becomes toxic and chaotic he seeds in just enough money to bring the worst political actors to prominence, like say the NRA, and allows them to spread his political poison and maybe self-destruct.
Behind the facelift it’s hard to auger what Putin is thinking. Doubtless he’s smart and he loves to spin the Roulette Wheel of chaos betting on Red all the way.
Will he continue to aptly outmaneuver and control the whole world for the foreseeable future? My prediction is – probably. Its something we should try to fight together.
Its comforting that he’s just one guy and just can’t keep it up forever. Best case scenario is he starts to focus more internally and improve Russia rather than continue foreign policy. We can only hope. He’s probably more likely to continue breaking legs to sell wheelchairs. He will shove the world down and to the Right every time.
Trope Time!
Ex KGB Agent Vladimir Putin is, in fact a Real Life Bond Villain. And not a one movie villain either. Trump’s the movie one Bad Guy who at the end is revealed to serve an even Bigger Bad Guy. We’re talking like 2 more movies of slowly sifting through henchmen to get to the ‘Big Bad” that is Vladimir Putin.
The movie Tropes for Putin Would be “The Man Behind the Man” and “The Big Bad” and for the Hell of it throw it “Star Trek Villain” for his campiness and claiming he’s emotionally moved by un-villian-like Ice Dancing ! The fact is that the world deserves a more impressive villain. As great as he is at manipulating us its crude and violent and his piano game is sub-par for a movie villain. Then again this is the real world and he’s pretty much running it, so we get the villain we deserve not the one we need.
Here he is butchering something along the lines of “Katrina Had a Little Lamb”. No Bond Villain has ever been this bad at an instrument.
We should probably be afraid. Because Hollywood didn’t write this and Putin isn’t a farcical character packing some kind of Golden Gun just waiting to be dispatched by one of Q’s gadgets with some pithy humor. He’s a real Super Criminal and has probably 20 to 30 years left to live. And, surrounded by his oligarch “Dragons” he will likely remain in power for most or all of it.
Real World Aside – Childless Putin seems to have no succession plan. That may save us down the road.
What Would a Movie Villain Do?
Let’s indulge ourselves in the possibilities!
One possibility is we’ve reached the point where the Kremlin’s best move, if Trump really is under their influence, would be do nothing. Putin’s enemy, the United States is destroying itself. Maybe just let it keep going for the time being. It’s a self feeding fire now anyway. We should acknowledge Putin might have lost the ability to do a whole lot to make things worse anyway. So he may just sit back and have a smoke.
But there’s another, more interesting and dangerous course of action Putin could take as well. One that assumes Putin is an addicted gambler at this point and isn’t ready to walk away from the tables yet. Maybe it would be fun for him to drop The Mueller Report on us. Or, even more likely, release some of his own dirt on Trump and blame it on the Democrats?
It’s a perfect gambit when you recall the Enemy here is the Truth and Reality. Assuming Putin has part or all of the Mueller Report, and lets face it he created some of the events in it, he could just drop it on us. This would forever call the report into question just because of the source. It would likely take a while for anyone to figure out who really dropped it, so there would be Partisan warfare in the US Government over it. Its obvious Trump’s first instinct will be to blame the Democrats before he ever suspects Putin would punk him….again.
Then, eventually, when it gets connected to the Kremlin the whole report really becomes suspect. In the end there’ll be more than one document claiming to be the “Real” Mueller Report. Expect a few fakes. The media will buy it every time. No matter which version you read there’ll be doubt in its very fiber.
It could put us into a destabilizing scenario where all outcomes benefit Putin. So maybe the real question is; “Can Putin NOT play a game he’s sure to win” or even “HOW will Putin play a game he can’t lose?”
It’s very possible he’s reached the moment where he releases a scat of frauds and lies on us to really muck things up.
It’s not like he has a track record of failure manipulating, well, all of us. Til Facebook and Twitter find a way to sniff out his bots and fake accounts (like say trying harder) we have the Putn in our phones and on our computers and thats a small victory for him right there.
Vladimir Putin is the most powerful and dangerous person alive. This knife fights not over but boy has the US ever taken a bunch of puncture wounds to the body!
Was it all just a dream? Did we just imagine the world was once a far more decent place where the guilty were caught and punished? Perhaps so but the dreams have darkened and the waking up consists of screaming in fear these days. How did we get here?
Apparently the flaws in our system have just been piling up in a quantum manner while our risk averse leaders have ignored problems or made them worse. Right now we’re dealing with the seemingly straight forward but actually completely inappropriate Barr Letter.
Whether Barr is allowed to draw conclusions or make decisions on prosecution in this matter is somewhat nebulous. It’s going to be the rest of Trump’s term to determine if any of the things that happened this weekend were legal. The Watergate and Whitewater Special PROSECUTORS had the latitude to draw conclusions and present sealed indictments right to the House Judiciary Committee. Why’s this time different?
Describing the piece of paper Barr gave the American people and the media as a letter is generous. The four page summary of Mueller’s work is more of a memo, but we’ll leave that alone.
It Was A Set Up
The media got played on this one. The Trump people know how to lie and they excelled on this occasion. Knowing that this day was coming they opted for the easiest con of all- Punk Us with a fake release of a non Mueller Report and let the media self-discredit.
The media went straight into Shiny Object mode like we’ve seen so many times and became hypnotized on the Memo/Letter as though it were a report. They had spent 2 years preparing for what seemed to be a timebomb of a story and the teams of pundits were sitting around with the most deadly thing of all; just a little bit of knowledge.
Rather than blast Attorney General Barr for making conclusions he possibly had no right to make they just reported on the letter like it was a bunch of conclusive facts. It’s almost like they set themselves up to fail. Why no one really started talking about the questionable nature of the letter/memo for a whole day is something we all need to wonder about.
The Mueller Report remains a mystery. We need to see it and soon. The American People paid for this report. Trusting it to Barr is UnAmerican.
No one has elected Barr into the Executive Branch, something Trump likes to point out about Mueller. He doesnt have the authority or the Integrity to be sole interpreter and Guardian of the Mueller Report.
Congress needs to act now to release the Mueller Report, more or less in full, in the next 30 days.
Well sooner or later it was going to come front and center in media coverage and this week it seems to have happened. Donald Trumps behavior both as a regular citizen and as president is a lot like the that of a Mob Boss in his personal leadership style. In some pretty obvious ways, Trump and his crew seem hung up on the first 2 Godfather movies while enjoying the success and popularity of the third film; which is mostly considered a contemptible mistake that never should have been made or ever be viewed.
First voiced by some when James Comey got canned in a bizarre, unprofessional way, including Comey himself, it’s now undeniable.
It’s as if Fredo were the Don in The Godfather movies. Most of the time Trump sounds like Fredo Corleone. Be it self-pitying whining or ranting about respect to taking a public beating for what amounts to, as Moe Greene would put it; “banging cocktail waitresses two at a time! No one at the tables could get a drink!”
There’s also no trace of any, shall we say ‘comparatively reassuring’ Michael Corleone-Like Traits. Trump lacks the capacity for a successful negotiation, or to even just run a crooked casino, without failing hugely.
If anything other than merely Fredo; perhaps Trump is Sonny, Fredo and Connie Corleone all rolled up into one. As dumb as Fredo, as angry as Sonny and as vain as Connie.
Like Fredo he’s incompetent and a spineless traitor who doesn’t understand the implications of his actions.
It’s all too accurate, It’s disturbing that Trump can’t speak like a chief executive, but its terrifying that he keeps talking like a mobster.
Driving all of it home, the president and his associates frequently use analogies from the movies in their personal speech and tweets, like when Roger Stone told someone to “Pull a Frank Pentangeli” as a way of telling him to lie to congress.
Dealing with Michael Cohen, in what might be judged to be Witness Intimidation or the way he went to the mattresses in an unneeded and deeply unpopular Government Shutdown, the truth was right out there staring us in the face.
Live on TV or documented on Twitter he’s called people rats and other mob-like stuff that makes him sound as brutal as he does dumb.
And it’s not as if the rest of them are any smarter. It seems that the internet has deemed that Don Jr is the most Fredo-like of all and he’s meme-king on that one. It’s not like he’s any dumber than Trump himself, but he fits in better I guess if you give Trump the distinction (and dignity) of Vito. I personally can’t. Vito Corleone the character was much smarter than BLOTUS Trump.
In the end it will likely be old-fashioned RICO Laws that will have Former President Trump, whenever that happens, and the rest of his Crime Family doing a stretch in some New York State Pen thanks to the Southern District of New York.
WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 23: Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump attend the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C Groundbreaking Ceremony at Old Post Office on July 23, 2014 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images)
Trump’s huffed and he’s puffed and seemingly blown the house down (and Shut the Government Down) over his incessant ranting about a wall at the Southern Border.
Maybe there’s a case some parts of the Border need to be hardened, but we’re not really talking about that. Trump wants a HUGE and extensive concrete barrier (most of the time) along the entire border. While he’s occasionally made allowances for natural barriers, mostly he wants a huge wall. The whole “Beautiful Steel Slat” thing seems a dicey compromise Trump simply wont be able to abide by. So let’s disregard it for now.
As usual we hear more from Trump’s Hype-Men about the terms he’ll accept to end the Trump Government Shutdown than we get from Trump. It’s become an exercise in Ideology just reading into his Tweet-stream, which is the Diary of a Madman.
He’s not going to get his border wall from sea to shining sea for a bunch of reasons. One reason, however, really jumps out.
No one ever mentions the huge problem that’s staring anyone who looks at a map of the US-Mexico border right in the face.
So what’s my beef with a Border Wall?
The Walls Unfixable Problem
So whats the issue? These visual aids start to get it across
Mexico is STILL a short Boat ride Away
Even assuming the Wall ends up being what Trump promised – A Giant Solar Panel Encrusted slab of ‘beautiful’ concrete in the middle of the desert extending deep underground to prevent tunneling; it won’t help. Why? Because that still leaves an ocean to sail up north on both coasts.
It’s two big problems, or if you want to think in the simplest terms; the same problem twice. Specifically it’s thousands of miles of coastline that simply can’t be secured. What’s the answer to that? Mines?
Just look at all that ocean, on both coasts, much of it being in the somewhat naturally ‘protected’ (from ‘open ocean’ conditions) Gulf of Mexico. Quadrupling the size of the Coast Guard would seem the first thing we’d need to do for any kind of control. That sounds expensive because it is!
Boats will be the new main way people will enter. What are we gonna do when that happens? Piracy charges? We’d need to actually catch them first (fat chance). Forget about deploying the army at the border. This would probably require a Carrier Task force off both coasts to have any effect on the influx from the sea! In other words its impractical and very, very expensive.
We have ENORMOUS coastlines on BOTH oceans with Mexico. So the problem with the wall is NOT LADDERS, but BOATS. Or even rafts if you will, especially on the Gulf of Mexico where sailing is generally easier.
Boats are Plentiful and Easy to Make
Boats are probably the first ever form of human conveyance. They were first created at least 8,000 years ago. So making one is no big deal. Just look at some of the pictures of the Boat Exodus from Cuba in 1980 to see how loose the definition of “Boat” is.
Typical 1980 Cuban Mariel Boatlift raft
Most any boat from the lowliest skiff on up can sail the Atlantic or Pacific seaboards ( Or meander in the Gulf for awhile) and dare the Coast Guard to catch them. The Gulf of Mexico will encourage even the leakiest of tubs with enticingly (and often deceptively) easy sailing conditions.
The simplicity of just sailing to a piece of secluded coastline and disgorging people will be obvious. Lots of people will do it. That will mean there will be a whole lot of boats of every kind making this desperate journey at any given moment. The cost of naval interdiction is obviously far beyond that of just catching people on land at the border’s edge. It’s also obviously harder and more dangerous for all involved.
So there’s a pragmatic argument to be made that a Wall is tactically useless. If we build it and people take to the sea it will be an ongoing Human Tragedy of untold proportion. A lot of people will simply go to sea and never return or be heard from again. Others will die and wash up on the shores of California, Louisiana, Florida, the Carolinas and everywhere else. And the media will be there.
Tragedy will Inevitably Ensue
You won’t be able to get away from the pictures of crowded boats, loaded to an unsafe manner, covered with women and children. Some of these WILL sink and we may not be able to rescue everyone every time. Sooner or later some terrible image, like the iconic pictures of a drowned Syrian child washed up on a Turkish shore, will surface and the whole Wall concept will be exposed as the fraud it is. It’s Strategically Unsound and Tactically Flawed.
So the pictures will be horrific. We’ve seen some of the awful images of the unfortunates fleeing places like Syria across the (relatively calm) Mediterranean. Drowned children, poorly maintained boats drifting powerless with no country wanting to rescue them.
So the Wall would absolutely raise the cost of Border Enforcement. We will need dozens more fully crewed Coast Guard Cutters on each coast to even make a dent in what will be a conveyor belt of boats.
Refugees Fleeing Syria via the Mediterranean
A Wall won’t cover the oceans. Even the Atlantic Wall in France’s Normandy, was breached in a single day. Because you can’t really build a Wall at the water’s edge from Mexico to Canada.
Even the goddamned Love Boat stopped in Mexico! It’s an Un-Overcome-able flaw in any plan for a Wall.
Look for a new word along the lines of “Sea-Coyotes” to describe the people who will set these boats loose.
The Southern Border Wall is simply an inherently flawed concept. You can choose from any number of negative analogies to describe it. It’s bad out of the gate. Its doesn’t pass Logical Muster. Its falls apart under any analysis.
The best way it say it is “That stupid idea won’t work and will cause more problems than it solves”
Repercussions with the United Nations?
Whether or not the Wall would be in fact an Apartheid Wall is a topic for a future post. So will the humanitarian crisis at sea that will begin to occur if this Wall madness continues to any kind of fruition.
At some point we could be looking at getting sanctioned for being Inhumane to Refugees. There’s plenty of countries out there (Russia, Iran, China) that would love to hang that on us.
Remember that debate performance where Trump was wildly snorting and yelling? Okay, trick question, its most every time he talks in public. After that first debate though, even Carrie Fisher, who knew what she was talking about, said she was sure that Trump had been snorting drugs. Assessing it all with her usual “Takes one to know one” honesty.
While she guessed it was coke, and that still could’ve been in the mix, it was likely Adderall that had Trump speeding out based on new information.
Botching the Response to Dayton and El Paso Shootings in an Adderall Trance
Despite being an older post, this exploded organically from the bizarre way Trump acted after the El Paso and Dayton Massacres.
He flubbed the address to the nation by being in “Teleprompter Mode” aka “distant and semi incoherent”. Marked by mumbling, the only thing singled out for sympathy by Trump was the guns used, which were “never” to blame.
While things could have gone better in Dayton, they couldn’t have been worse when Trump got to El Paso. The only survivor who he met was an infant whose MAGA loving uncle bought needlessly back to the hospital to meet his hero despite how unseemly it looked. And it looked like THIS-
This is one horrifically bad picture. A leering Trump is in full campaign mode for a picture with an orphan his words helped create. Trump is all sorts of inappropriate, it looks outright bad.
It’s like he’s on drugs.
Other Accusations of Drug Abuse
Another person to add fuel to the fire on this one is a former Apprentice Production Assistant turned comic Noel Casler. His accusation? That Trump is semi-illiterate and the idea of reading the cue cards terrifies him. We’ve heard exactly this before from the SNL people who endured a walk on by Trump. So what’s Don’s coping method? Snorting a few rails of amphetamine, of course!
Casler’s pretty funny, but the Trump riff starts at about 3:30
Noel correctly points out that Trump’s doing a drug invented by the Nazi’s to make people meaner and hyperalert.
Adderall is Really Powerful and Damaging
After breezing over the wikipedia entry for Adderall I can tell you it absolutely IS considered a form of methamphetamine and is supposed to be used for people with ADHD, a concentration deficit. You may wanna steer clear of this even if its one of your options. It’s tricky stuff. It tends to get abused.
The really interesting parts were the effects of overdosing or just messing around with it the wrong way. Increased Apprehension? Sounds like Trump. Psychosis is in there too. We’ve seen like 3 psychotic breaks from reality from this president just this week on Twitter.
And as far as not being able to read? Too many people are saying it now. Maybe he can’t concentrate to read? It looks like a good bet right now.
Seeing as how it’s now well-known Hitler was also a huge fan of the methamphetamines (and Trump’s a huge fan of Hitler), it’s even more likely that Trump simply does a few blasts before a rally.
Thinking its likely he uses a different dosage when he’s reading off the teleprompter at other, usually official events (rather than rallies). Is he emotionless and monotone cause he’s so high or is it from withdrawal from the meth? In the teleprompter moments he’s just distant and emotionless. Hard to tell where his mind is a lot of the time when he’s doing inappropriate things, like treating a soldier like a butler throwing his coat at him at the National Cathedral when he arrived at the George HW Bush state funeral (where he was asked not to speak).
If he were high sometimes it sure would explain a lot.
Another interesting thing associated with abusing the stuff is it messes up your circulation. Especially the extremities. This brings to mind how it took about 5 minutes for Macron’s thumbprint on the back of Trump’s hand to go away. Remember that? It’s a good bet French Intel services told Macron to crush Trump’s bigly hand a little so they could see if this happened. And as you can see the media caught on right away (or got tipped off by the French) and got this great, revealing picture.
I’m guessing most foreign governments are operating under the assumption the presidents on drugs.
It’s just days until the much talked about Mid-Term Elections. All expectations are the president and the Republicans are going to take a beating and I don’t think they will let the results stand.
On election night we’ll see upsets. They will eventually be nullified by Trump who WILL make many false claims and possibly not seat the new congress.
In hotly contested races like the Florida and Georgia governor races rest assured voter suppression and outright racism will rear their ugly heads. Trump may try to nullify these elections as well. I just don’t see BLOTUS allowing Andrew Gillum to be Governor of Florida under any circumstances. Trumps far too much of a bigot AND he’s likely committed a slew of crimes there.
As I look ahead I see mostly darkness. This is not an invitation or a suggestion NOT to vote, definitely VOTE. It’s also not a claim at clairvoyance. Its just a couple of sort of likely worst cases.
The issue is that Trump is hateful of the will of the American People and will show that if put on the spot. Hot off an October with at least 1000 verifiable falsehoods and lies from the president it would be naive to think that a huge dose of bad news will elicit anything but a full-blown, divisive and extended meltdown from Trump.
Trump won’t suddenly change when it looks like the Democrats will back Mueller and maybe even make it impossible for him to remain president. He will lie and make delusional statements about millions of illegal votes and just act like he always does. Like a deranged idiot deprived of much-needed electro-shock therapy.
What Just Might Go Down
In the week after Election Night there will be a spate of lawsuits from loser on both sides. It also brings to mind the reality we will see one of the most cruel, destructive and damaging lame duck sessions when this current horrible congress finally all get on the same page and stick it to the American People. Sure, the Jeff Flakes of the world will pretend to feel bad about it, but as we’ve seen he only cares about having cover for what he does rather than doing whats right.
And if too many elections are settled in the GOP’s favor under a cloud you gotta ask yourself if people in New York and New Jersey would even consider allowing some disputed ultra-Trumpist having a hand in their fate. Californians also fit that bill.
And then we could see Secession here and there. One possibility is 3 to 5 regional republics with varying (if any) relationships with the Federal Governments Remnants. Another, further flung possibility would be 50 little fiefdoms. If this happens god help Mexico as the Texas Republic will likely declare war on them within 30 months of independence.
The idea of several regional republics really doesn’t seem so bad to be honest. Imagine the Red States in Flyover America forced to come to terms with their own bad governing ideas? Because a Republic of the Northeast would be pretty well set up to prosper without them. Though these states are believers in Federal Socialism, how much more money would New York and Massachussetts have if they didnt have to subsidize loser job deserts in other states? And Missouri forced to self finance? A humanitarian disaster could happen there.
The idea New York simply makes a bid to join Canada sounds crazy now. In fact most of this post would have been considered Science-Fiction 500 or 600 days ago. A whole bunch of mostly bad things have happened over that course of time though and America’s falling down and to the right.
The fact is if sufficiently bungled (and we have some great bunglers in power now) the Mid-Term could result in the break up of our Union. No matter what happens we’re sure to have an extra angry, extra dangerous Trump ruminating over the concept he could get a Comeuppance for the first time ever. He’s gotta be in deep fear of that. He has never had one and never come to terms with any mistakes or personal flaws he has.
Were he anyone else he would have been forced into a mental institution years ago. It took the accumulation of fame and ill-gotten cash to insulate the guy from reality,. This despite him being a self proclaimed news-junkie and self purported authority on Fairness.
While Putin will love this no matter how it happens, he really wont be happy til he gets 50 little fiefdoms. This would still include the possibility of a reunion of the old Confederacy or some kind of malevolent New Confederacy with the policies of 1980s South Africa.
I guess the most ironic thing about either scenario is it could truly make of Trump what he falsely said of Obama – he could end up being a president NOT born in the United States. How? Well for one thing should the nation splinter theres just NO WAY New York aligns with Trump.
While the original post on the evils of Sarah Huckabee Sanders is comprehensive; the way the national discourse has fallen off the table recently with a spate of violent attacks coming from the political right. The recent horrific Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre was front and center for a singularly bad day for America’s tas peyer paid designated liar, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
SHS sat most of the month out, but the October 29th presser was the first in 26 days as the Trump Administration continues to do business in closed rooms with locked doors in the dead of night.
Always evasive of soap and direct answers, Sarah Huckabee Sanders has probably reached felony level complicity in the Trump Criminal Enterprise.
Mostly we see her now when things are incredibly bad and White House comments are long overdue. For some reason this has no impact on the angry indignance with which Sarah goes about her infrequent pressers.
Shame is never gonna set in to these horrible pressers or the woman who runs them with Goebbels-like dissonance. We can stop expecting the administration to start to learn or to start leading. This is it folks. We have the most corrupt and incompetent Administration this side of Ancient Rome.
As always the presser started 25 minutes late, much like Mein Kampf recommends.
Looming over the October 29th presser was a spate of recent hate crimes most people who don’t watch Fox News more or less blame the president for inspiring.
The atmosphere was first charged by the 14 (and counting) devices mailed out by a Florida Trumpist nicknamed the #MAGABomber by Twitter based on his targets. Driving around in his home/ bomb factory / vanifesto he had managed to empty out the CNN building and credibly attempt to kill former presidents Clinton and Obama among many others.
just one window of #MAGABOMBER’s Anti-Left, Pro Trump ‘Vanifesto’
All the people and institutions targeted, like california rep Maxine Waters, CNN and Right Wing Whipping Boy George Soros, were frequent Trump targets.
Next an old school Nazi Anti Semite shot up a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed eleven innocent worshippers and wounded many others. The shooter made some social media posts that showed he was moved to action in part by the presidents xenophobic obsession and repeated rants regarding a group of immigrants apparently following the harvest north Trump’s classified as a Democratic Party Funded Immigrant Caravan designed to swing the midterm election. They’re currently about a thousand miles from the US Southern border. More on the so called caravan later.
In a macabre twist, a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor was among those killed. Thats where the United States is at just about 500 days into President Trump’s inept and criminal administration.
It was another new low for angry Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
The Trumpire Strikes Out
On to today’s Ministry of Information Dance of Dishonesty!
Sarah outright lied and claimed the president had won the popular vote with 63 million votes when he in fact lost by over 3 million votes. Shades of Spicer in the shrubs on that one!
It didn’t get much better. One positive, she managed to stop herself in the middle of starting to pick her nose. After that you could tell something was stuck in her simuses and adding to her overt irritation.
Trump had thrown out some horrible tweets about people who were MAGABomber targets to start the day and made then some off the cuff, stupid, uninformed statements and hard to swallow denials getting into his helicopter. So the clouds were well seeded.
Hemmed in by insensitive statements by her boss that sort of blamed the victims at the synagogue; Sarah didn’t bother to do much more than deny reality and say false things when confronted. No one was buying.
The idea the president felt the Synagogue lacked a Good Guy With A Gun and was asking for it hung in the air after Trump made off-hand observations that were first darkly un-American and second sort of dissed the victims with the implication they were reckless not having an armed guard and therefore sort of played a hand in their own deaths.
The shooter for the record, was super well armed. More well armed than my character in ‘Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Ghostlands‘ avatar. He had 2 pistols and an AK-47. He wounded 3 cops in a gunfight while massacring 11 American citizens and then held SWAT at bay for some time. So the idea an armed guard or anything short of a machine gun nest could have stopped the guy is laughable and plain old sick.
In her chrome-a-key green sure to be parodied dress Sarah sounded like the ambassador from a hostile and rude Star Trek race. The only solution for Gun Violence was hardening schools and places of worship. It’s just asking for it in Trump’s world if you do anything without armed security (or go around not packing heat).
On the #MAGABomber topic she just lied and pretended the idea that he supported Trump was a media fantasy despite the social media posts and threats going back months the MAGABomber had verifiably made.
Humility was in short supply when asked if she is simply lying or out of the loop and a back and forth with CNN’s pundits was answered with rudeness and dismissive comments as always.
Justifying Illegal Dictator Moves and Spreading Fear
The president has been lying and spreading fear with repeated assertions the migrants from Central America were ISIS concealing terrorists in the ranks. This is what motivated the Synagogue shooter, who kind of liked Trump, he just thought he was too muted in his anti-semitism.
This invited questions about Trump suspending or plain violating the Posse Comitatus Act, which pretty much forbids the president from using Federal Troops to enforce Domestic Policies within the United States. Sanders was simply evasive and made some false claims about the act not applying. To be clear to suspend Posse Comitatus the “caravan” as the right has dubbed it, has to be classified an Invading Force.
Maybe enough racist governors let him deploy their National Guard Units, but it’s really unclear what Trump would want the military to even do, open fire? As far as deploying the Army? Seems to be specifically prohibited. It would probably be met with great resistance by any officer forced to command such an expedition.
It’s an issue that should go away as soon as the midterms end. Trump really likes talking about this and the Fox News Feedback Loop makes sure he keeps seeing it though, so who knows?
And at the 23 minute mark Sarah declared she was out of time and stormed off.
Updated – I’m still pretty shocked I was wrong about this. A delay of even one more day probably would have killed all chance. It’s still hard to believe they didnt just find someone else. Here is the original post, which can still get shoved back into being more correct than it is right now
As I predicted the Kavanaugh Hearing was a complete disaster for Republicans. For starters, they pulled the plug on the much vaunted “Having a woman ask terrible questions for them” tactic when the relative reasonableness of the questioning worked fine for accuser, Dr Ford, and was never going to clear Kavanaugh.
So that was a 2-fer on predictions. It was a disaster and they couldn’t stick to their plan. Fair enough, no plan survives contact with the Enemy. The real measure of any strategic situation is how you handle a setback. The GOP just couldn’t.
Trump’s Gettysburg
Between a laugher of an insincere speech from Lindsey Graham, who seized control of the hearing (in a way that may not have been in order) by shouting like a man in the depths of an Ether Binge. It was a Trump-loving Social Suicide of sorts. He had good reason to panic. The Caveman was unfreezing right in front of the nation and the world on TV. He was becoming self aware and paranoid (revenge from the Clintons?).
The Q & A with Democratic Senators showed Kavanaugh was an anger driven egomaniac whose attitude was right in line with a would-be rapist became impossible. Graham called an audible with an outburst worthy of the Young and the Restless over the mistreatment of Kavanaugh over a woman they all claimed to believe to a degree.
UPDATE – Kavanaugh seems to have plain ol’ lied about having no connection to Yale and was, in fact, a ‘legacy’ enrollment. Also- Yale’s pretty much disowned him.
With questions about hedonism and drunkenness it at times sounded like an intervention. Certainly when Kavanaugh made a series of baffling statements about his drinking.
Attacking people who asked any question he disliked, he really sounded like a drunk in denial. Ranting he only drinks beer was a constant refrain as he challenged and abused the Democrats like an angry idiot with no sense of appropriateness. Imagine a guy this angry with a few (dozen) in him?
The preposterous calendar he should have burned shows his poor judgement. The easy to interpret slang for any former 80s teen shows Caveman Kavanaugh drank til he puked all the time and boasted to himself about sex.
Some sleazy quotes that makes you wonder if the Yearbook committee had any kind of adult supervision, paints a cave painting of a gross, pornographic obsessed alcoholic Kavanaugh sort of Rape-Walking his way through high school puking all the time from extreme drunkenness….from beer though!
Swearing he was sure he absolutely remembers everything no one could actually adhere to – that he’d never forgotten anything while drinking- was sort of a laugher as was Kavanaugh’s Drunk Uncle moments of shouting about how much he likes beer. I wouldn’t have faulted him for simply saying “No one who has ever drank can say they remember everything just due to pure human memory. My first beer was forty years ago.”
While that wouldn’t have been great, but it would have been true and relatable. More relatable than the priestly image of studious dignity Kavanaugh presented of himself when he was introduced by Trump as the nominee weeks ago. It woukd also have been far more believable than the ‘heavy drinker with a weak stomach who puts ketchup on spaghetti’ line he tried to tell Senator Whitehouse, who didnt bite and questioned Kavanaugh’s quoting him out of context or completely fictionally and then returned to drinking related questions.
He saved exceptionally high levels of disrespect for female Senators like Feinstein and Senator Amy Klobuchar. The Klobuchar exchange was so ugly that Caveman Kavanaugh apologized after one of the many breaks.
The idea Kavanaugh might be a rapist was left hanging in the air but now it had company. New questions about state of mind, whether a man who cries and screams over little basketball in front of the senate and the nation on live TV, has the intellect or attitude for the Supreme Court Bench.
His list of crazy grievances were a channeling of Trumpist Insanity that makes you wonder if arrogant Kavanaugh’s privileged world view isn’t too narrow-minded and intolerant to sit in judgement of anyone.
At the end of all things, after a nationally painful elevator pitch to a hapless Jeff Flake by two impassioned sexual assault victims just bought too much to the surface for Flake not to make me a prophet yet again by helping the Democrats punch in a running Touchdown in the form of a week’s delay for a FBI investigation (which the White House already seems to be trying to sabotage).
The vote to approve the Caveman for Supreme Court seemed a done deal until Flake’s moment of clarity bought the nation some time for the downfall to be complete and the flaming wreck of a man that is Kavanaugh to simply crash and explode behind a hill offscreen. It was as dramatic a moment as any we’ve seen under this whacked out administration.
It doesn’t matter how narrow the Investigation is, the punked polaroid pictures of a drunken Kavanaugh from all ages of his life have started to surface and a lot of them look very real. Then there’s the other accusers that the FBI apparently won’t talk to, who will be on TV telling their story.
On the employment front- while still on the DC Bench for the moment, he probably isn’t allowed on campus while Harvard mulls over whether they will let him continue to work there. So there’s something of a validation there. I’m pretty sure the DC Circuit job is an extremely endangered species in future Right Wing Satellite Radio host Brett Kavanaugh’s life.
UPDATE – One Job Lost Already
Slammed by Yale as Unfit, now our Unfrozen Cro-Mag buddy has also been FIRED from Harvard! Outcry form students was part of it. Technically he quit (while hugely in debt BTW). No one was going to take part 2 of his class and be subjected to even academic Judgement from serial drunk anger addict. There’s people looking for money back and credits for being subjected to the guy in the first place and they might get it. Presumably he’s gone for lack of integrity/ being a drunk/ being a danger to students. The DC Bench job will be gone in less than 12 months. I doubt hes ever allowed to see another case. Maybe he keeps his law license, but disbarment for a short period of time is looking likely. OR- he might still get jammed onto the SCOTUS bench, but it would be temporary. Captain Caveman will have about 6 weeks of safety before calls to impeach
Was this Hearing Trump’s Pickett’s Charge?
Historians might just call the stalled Kavanaugh Nomination the High WaterMark of this rebellion.
The Trumpian waters may have crested. For a moment a Rubber Stamp Justice on the Court seemed a sure thing, but then it exploded and now is a zombie at best. Kavanaugh will be surely fail to make the cut after any investigation. If the investigation looks terrible it’s likely Flake’s conscience comes back into play. After all, there are other terrible conservative judges who aren’t drunken assholes who would just get the gig.
I think the stipulations put on the Kavanaugh vote have doomed him, justifiably so, to not get on the Supreme Court. It may be remembered as the Picketts Charge of Trump’s Presidency. As I said, a high watermark that will not be reached again.
Like Robert E Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, Trump likely remains dangerous, but Historians may well point to the failure of this nomination, now i would say assured, as the moment things started going against him. He’s not winning anymore and he may mor be able to Un-Lose. Lee never really menaced the North with an invasion again. You could also analogize it to Stalingrad too I suppose as Trump is something of a Nazi.
I would be great if Saturday Night Live, returning tonight, brings back Horatio Sans as Drunk Uncle/ Kavanaugh for tonight’s 275th season premiere of SNL
UPDATE – well i was wrong on SNL but Matt Damon CRUSHED it as a raging, “water” swilling, ‘Bad Will Hunting’
Bob Woodward really dropped a potentially administration ending book on us today in the form of his inside history of the Trump Administration so far, “Fear.”
Here’s what the book tells us- President Trump is a serial liar who may not even know what reality is. He dwells in a state of criminal semi-insanity akin to End-Times Nixon.
Dim and distant, Trump’s allowed to amuse himself (in his very few work hours) on a few fictional policies that everyone tells him are great. He also manages to advance a couple of actual narrow-minded assertions (calling them ‘ideas’ seems wrong) here and there just because his “Governing by whacked out Tweet at 4 AM” style is so overwhelming there’s no way to contain him.
How crazy is ‘the president’ right now? Well he’s already tried to order another world leader whacked (Assad of Syria). That’s right, the president ordered a Mob Style “Hit” on Assad in a wild call to Defense Secretary Mattis. After telling Trump he was all over it Mattis simply hung up and ignored him. Stunningly this pays off as Trump never follows up or seems to have recalled what he ordered. So its Ad-hoc governing at its very worst right now.
If Woodward’s to be believed, and lets face it he SHOULD be, killing Assad and invading Syria would be the second time Trump’s ordered a country invaded and nothing has happened. (I’m assuming we’ve all heard of the half assed Dark Ages Warlord strategy that led to an ignored order to invade Venezuela).
Then there’s the knee -slapper about how back in January Trump’s lawyers pantomimed Trump’s clueless rage filled performance in a mock Robert Mueller interview for, of all people; the actual ROBERT MUELLER! This was their strategy? Sketch Improv couldn’t come up with anything more bizarre! Great crisis management there!
Other goodies in the book include just what “The Best People”; the Trump Cabinet; think of their boss. “Moron” was, unsurprisingly, in the mix. So was “Fucking Idiot” of course, and a bunch of references to pre-middle school behavior and intellect. And of course he regrets saying racism was evil in one of his many flubbed reactions to Charlottsville’s violent White Supremacist Riot last year.
It’s General Mattis who really skewers Trump, CBS puts it like this-
“Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reportedly told associates that Mr. Trump had the behavior and the understanding of “a fifth- or sixth-grader.” Current Chief of Staff John Kelly said in a meeting that Mr. Trump was an “idiot“.”
With a level of believability of Tillerson-ian proportions Kelly has denied he called the president an “Idiot”. Just another Trump Administration lie.
Kelly is a Quote Machine and should sing for a Punk Band! He also said; “He’s gone off the rails! We’re in Crazytown! I don’t even know why any of us are here! This is the worst job I’ve ever had!” (MY exclamation points, but like I’m wrong?)
Gary Cohn, a Cabinet level economic adviser (now gone on his own volition), saw a document on the president’s desk he simply judged too complex and inflammatory to allow Trump to see. He was probably right! Thinking on his feet he just grabbed it and tossed it “to protect the country” from the president’s reaction.
The book further tells us that one third of wife beater Rob Porter’s job was simply listening to a nonstop crazy rant all day. And then he had to try to de-fang the crazed unininformed ideas as “less then great.”
This is something we’ve also heard was a job Porter’s current punching bag Hope Hicks was stuck doing. The fact is listening to Trump on an angry destructive rant is also Ivanka and Kellyanne’s only real jobs. My guess is they just aren’t as good at getting yelled at and Trump’s an uncorked fire hydrant of Violent Stupidity they just can’t contain.
So now, according to what we glean from Woodward and (many) other sources, with the insulation stripped away by scandal and in Hicks case, apparently built up loathing, we’re all Trump’s Crazy Rant Beta Tester’s.
And the feelings are mutual. Trump openly disparages people in front of other staff. He apparently hates everyone around him and just verbally assaults people all day while tearing down their colleagues. Great for morale!
If the Trumpists are to be believed it’s all a pack of lies but Woodward sure captured Trump’s tone and spirit in the quotes and actions he details. I’m sure it’s mostly if not completely true.
An that’s maybe the craziest part of this book. No one credible doubts a word of it. Trumpist pawns point to the stock denials, but this books no hoax.
Its not even that different from what we heard in Fire and Fury months ago. In fact “What’s new?” might be the Trumpists best defense. They can point to years of reptilian behavior by their hero to back this one up.
The idea that Trump is a completely incompetent, erratic, rage-a-holic with no respect for his staff is not at all hard to believe. It would be the idea he ever showed courtesy or restraint that would actually be news at this point.
The President is way past 25th Amendment Territory if the book is even partly true. People grabbing things off the presidents desk because it would set him off? So that, by extension means if you want to light his fuse you can just put something on his desk to piss him off. There’s a term for this; it’s “Easily led.” or “Easily Manipulated”. That’s highly disturbing even if the presidents first instincts weren’t violent and criminal, which of course they are.
If you saw today’s Brett Kavanaugh SCOTUS Approval hearings you know this congress wont do anything about it. Kavanaugh just scowled most of the day as the Republicans upbraided Democrats for asking that one million pages of documents from just Kavanaugh’s time as W Bush White House Counsel alone be released to be reviewed and considered. No Such Luck. Look for Kavanaugh to be shoehorned in with Pence casting the 51st vote. That’s how the most Corrupt Least Transparent White House in History does things. Like a bunch of highly incompetent, extremely angry criminals.
So that’s where we’re at. The Corner of “Oh No!” and “What The Fuck?”
One thing Trump said is true- the world is laughing at us, especially our so called leaders.
Last nights special election in Ohio if not for the Green Party’s whacked out candidate, Joe Manchik. I watched video of the guy and it was like an Un-Funny Seth Rogen Bit. He definitely owns a dry herb vaporizer and is the most stoned person currently on earth if you’ve seen him try to express himself. Useless as a politician, but probably an unwitting pawn of Putin. I say unwitting because I think Putin’s too professional to let this flake know anything. I mean- look at the guy! He claims to speak 19 languages including Esperanto and Sheet Music! COME ON! If you voted for this guy its time to think over your views. Did you see him at all? He’s nuts.
In an official campaign skype conference with some sort of ‘media’ in a supposed bid to be a congressman? ThisHAS to be Putin Punk-ing us!
Unwitting Kremlin asset Joe Manchik
The Ohio 12th Congressional, ruby-red for all but 4 years since 1935, is too close to call a full day out. The Republican guy, Balderson, ran as a Trumpist and even said some stupid stuff about the character of people from a part of his own district. One of the most disturbing Trump rallies yet was even in play to help Balderson out but he couldn’t put it away. He currently has a lead about 1,700 votes over my fellow Irish American Democrat, Danny O’Connor.
Quick cultural note- Dont look for O’Connor to back off on a recount. When Irish people get angry or lose in a competition we feel slighted in; we fight back, hard. The pipes havent played for Danny Boy O’Connor yet. He may still prevail.
The Green Party- Sketchy Spoilers
Unqualified Green Party weirdo flake and dab enthusiast Commie Joe Manchik picked up 1,127 votes
In a race separated so the few votes siphoned off by the Green Party are probably gonna end up determining what happens, really hurting the Left again. It’s a consistent pattern since they gave us George W Bush, the loser of the actual election and started to make this dangerous stuff look normal. It’s not normal. The Green candidate proves that in this election more than ever.
We Can’t allow these flakey likely traitors play spoiler anymore. I’ve rescued one Green already. He’s happy with The Working Families Party and doesn’t miss sketchy Jill Stein’s weird ideas.
The Green Party’s been looking sketch for some time. I think they’re probably as bad for America as the NRA.
To those still voting Green I say- What The Hell? This party has lost its way long ago and is most likely a Left Wing arm of Putin’s campaign to divide America. Please, you need to just stop blowing up elections and getting half assed semi illegitimate presidents elected by splitting the Left
To all on the political Left I urge you- vote Democrat in 2018 and we’ll run these fascists out of out government and impeach Trump
As evidence I have only the entirety of everything Jill Stein says, seemingly purposely divisive. She’s only hanging out with what we can call a pretty much admitted Kremlin spy, Flynn , at the infamous dinner where Flynn led the standing ovation, in his general’s uniform, for Putin.
Jill Stein is possibly a Russian asset and a traitor. It’s hard for me to believe anything else, really
Oh and seriously, don’t donate any money to these clowns. It’s basically like giving it to Putin. Another alternative Left party with some better ideas, like the Social Democrats or the Working Families Party, which seem much more authentic, will fill the void. They also play much nicer and work with the actual Democrats, pulling the whole party in a progressive direction. The Greens just want to pull us apart.
We don’t need these sketchy maybe traitors stirring the pot anymore. Personally I agree with the German Film Look Who’s Back in the assertion that were Hitler to somehow come back he’d like the Green Party right off the bat.
Corrupt and inept EPA Commissioner Scott Pruitt is finally a former Cabinet Member. It only took 14 probes Federal Probes steadily bearing fruit to end him. Here’s the original post as written just hours before penultimate Trump Survivor Pruitt went down! (Or in this case, had his resignation accepted)
We’ve heard a new tale about Scott Pruitt’s outright bizarre behavior at the EPA every week, or occasionally, a couple of times a day. The hits have literally kept coming. There’s no less than 14 Federal Corruption probes right now per CNN.
Today he was FINALLY canned with no real reason given aside from the media being blamed for reporting all his antics. He was called an excellent guy and with no apology the adventures of Baron Pruitt von Munchausen in DC came to an end.
But we can STILL wonder if he’s crazy, especially since, in Trump’s world, stocked with exactly NO friends, people keep returning. Watch for Pruitt to join Shadow Secretary of State Hannity soon in Trump’s Shadow Cabinet of Un-Approvable Security Clearance-proof deplorables. Probably as Shadow Attorney General.
Pruitt’s Craziness
A Cone of Silence, Pruitt’s weird assertions about him and god, a bullet proof desk and a bunch of high living scandals. Throw in some naked old fashioned corruption, like trying to get his wife a franchise from Chik-fil-a. Today it was crazy half baked idea to give him Jeff Sessions job as the nations Attorney General. It all adds up to non stop crazy!
Maybe we should stop and ask ourselves- are these the actions of a sane person? With a crazily bloated security staff and some petty love of driving around with the sirens on blowing lights in a too big motorcade like a Stalin Era Commissar? Going out to the best places every night to dine then retiring to sleep on a used Trump Hotel mattress in a plush but near free crash pad in DC he gets right from a lobbyist?
You dont have to be a rocket scientist to point at the moon and you dont need a psych degree to say Pruitt does a bunch of really crazy things!
I’m wondering if Pruitt maybe is just mentally ill. How is it now being discussed on CNN? It’s time for one of the people on the panels discussing him to include some kind of clinical psychiatrist. OCD maybe explains some. Schizophrenia maybe some more. I dont know.
Of course I’m not a doctor; but you dont have to be a rocket scientist to point at the moon and you dont need a psych degree to say Pruitt does a bunch of really crazy things! The proof is all over the place.
Think about the things we know are true alone. Even then, its too crazy! As far as speculation? I think he’s using that Cone of Silence to ‘talk to god’ because he thinks god’s talking back! And he possibly hears other voices too.
This is not the way a sane person, even a corrupt sane person, acts. It’s too off the wall (to use a clinical term).
Trump’s Rudolf Hess.
Wonder who will distinguish themselves now that Pruitt’s out of there? Ryan Zeinke is a walking human meltdown, maybe he rides that horse of his into some trouble next. Outside Betsy DeVos and Pence-y no one is more hated (well, maybe Elaine Chow for giving comfort to turtle boy mcconnell)
We’ve all seen enough by now to know that President Trump has an unhealthy fixation on the movie “Patton”. There’s plenty of articles by right wing people comparing Trump to Patton favorably and some of the more religious among them are buying in to Patton’s own belief in re-incarnation and, of course, imagining that it’s Trump. Trump himself seems to embrace Patton. He certainly mentions him regularly.
All I can say about the re-incarnation thing is- Patton saw himself only re-incarnated as a soldier and would have stayed in Vietnam every moment he could. He didn’t have to serve in the military, he was dyslexic, but he overcame it just so he could fight. So lets just forget about Trump being Patton reincarnated. Its preposterous.
The thing is Trump has a dangerous infatuation that will shape our futures. He is , in fact, president.
In Trump’s personal style dealing with the media and at his rallies we’ve seen him channel the angry, eccentric World War II generals profane and detailed threats, put downs and boasting as some of the main aspects of his public persona.
The big problems with this are that Donald Trump is not like George Patton at all and that the movie glosses over certain flaws while making others appear as virtues.
Even worse, certain coincidences I believe Trump regards as similarities between himself and Patton as portrayed in the movie are now re-enforcing his delusional belief that he is very much like George Patton. Both are meltdown prone and scream at staff and abuse subordinates, both talk their way into huge avoidable problems. But thats as far as the real similarities really go. These men, and the staff’s they yelled at, couldn’t be more different.
Trump’s surrounded by Yes Men and traitors who can’t event get a security clearance. Patton’s guys were crack combat officers. So Trump’s never getting back competent answers or a person with enough integrity to stand up against a bad idea. Patton was rooted in reality far more than Trump and if his fuel guy told him there was no fuel he’d scream a little, but he didn’t crucify the guy. Or scapegoat them. He understood there was simply no fuel. That’s a major difference.
This is a hard break with Trump’s uncontested bile and anger when he is actually told things he doesnt want to hear. Trump lives in his own reality, Patton was merely a romantic. There’s also the fact Trump would simply try to steal or blackmail someone into giving him what he wants. This wasn’t an option for Patton, who was more honorable than that anyway.
Of necessity, Patton’s guys were colonels and West Point grads who could absorb a military tantrum. Patton wasn’t spared bad news. SO there’s another major difference.
Another thing we all know about the president is he is a grandiose liar. He’s racked up many thousands outright falsehoods in just about 2 years in office and the tally keeps growing. In fact if you look at the numbers he’s lying more often than ever now. As far as Patton goes, Trump’s lying to himself. We already know Trump fancies himself smarter than a general, he told us so himself. It needs to be noted that Patton was not known to be a liar.
Here’s how a man mistakes a dramatic movie for reality; Trump is very simply ignorant of History and has very little actual knowledge about the actual Patton. In fact the only piece of information I’m absolutely sure Trump is aware of would be the Conspiracy Theories regarding Patton’s death (not in the movie). So to him this movie is 100% accurate and real. We know he never bothered reading up on it, come on!
Fantastic scenes where the salty general jumps out a window and cuts loose with his personal pistols against a couple of german bombers wrecking up his base are pure Hollywood but I’m sure this hasn’t occurred to Trump. He probably thinks Patton was an action hero AND a commanding officer.
The biggest thing my hypothesis has going for it is if you momentarily embrace it, it explains pretty much everything and holds up to scrutiny from numerous angles. Of course its not perfect, but indulge me and then draw your own conclusion— BECAUSE COMMENTS ARE ENABLED!! Please weigh in if you feel so inclined!
Patton- The Embellished Bio-Pic
Patton was pure Oscar Gold seldom paralleled. Winner of Academy Awards for Best Actor (George C Scott) Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay (Francis Ford Coppola) and Best Original Score (Jerry Goldsmith of Star Trek fame!).
The movie ‘Patton’ is a masterpiece of film making that starts with a very strong Francis Ford Coppola screenplay advised by none other than Patton contemporary and equal- General Omar Bradley himself. An inspired George C Scott gave a brilliant, authentic and career defining performance then blew off accepting his Best Actor Oscar to go to a hockey game, how cool is that? Throw in one of the best movie scores outside Star Wars to move it along from the great Jerry Goldsmith of Star Trek fame. The director was Franklin J Shaffner , fresh off “Planet of the Apes” success.
Why This Movie Is A Dangerous Influence on Trump
Trump’s fascination with Patton is a problem for a bunch of reasons. For one thing George Patton, despite his success, is a TERRIBLE role model for a politician or president. Brash and outspoken, his role in the war was minimized because of his personal antics.
While the movie makes much of this, the scenes where Patton goes on tirades around his staff and peers over the consequences of so many ill considered actions (sound familiar?) are captivating. George C Scott plays him as a figure who NEEDS to create obstacles for himself by self sabotaging because fate always turns the tables and suddenly the sabotage ends up benefiting him. Were Patton to have never stirred the pot he wouldn’t have had such great luck. Trump, as we have seen, loves to self sabotage. This could be part of why.
The obvious problem is Francis Ford Coppola is NOT writing reality and we may all be let down when fate DOESN’T turn the tables and everyone ends up screwed because of one of Trump’s crazy actions or tweets,etc. The poorly considered Korea Summit would be an example of self sabotage and then waiting for miracle. In reality the South Koreans don’t really want some kind of peace deal but the idea keeps lurching forward while Trump ignores reality. Patton was stubborn but nowhere near ignorant, he could reverse course if needed.
The real Patton was apparently had no political ambitions, which makes sense since despite a rough charm he had no diplomatic skill or real personal charisma. He needed the shock and awe of non stop profanity to drive home a point to fighting men in time of war though. The moment he spoke to anyone else he was always and only ever inappropriate. While this was (barely) forgivable for a mid 20th century war time general, it’s just awful for a 21st century president! Yet we have only seen Trump speak for longer and longer making one dangerous uninformed statement after the next while salting in hardcore racism with the boasting, threats and pure bullshit.
Patton was so awful a human being technical adviser General Omar Bradley quit the movie when he saw the script portrayed him and Patton as close friends. Bradley, its should be noted, was famously a nice guy. This means Patton was probably despicable, so he has that in common with Trump. Bradley seems to have regarded him as exactly the re-incarnated Dark Ages Warlord Patton fancied himself to be in his poetry. Being a horrible dick may be the only thing Trump and Patton truly have in common, but Patton of course had certain redeeming traits.
In his own time Patton was seen as an eccentric throwback. Basically he was little too crazy and liked war a little too much. He was the kind of soldier who needed to be sealed in case marked “Only Open in Case of War”. He chaffed at his bosses and generally was a pain in their asses.
Despite fighting the nazis like a boss, he seemed to go soft on them after the war. Unlike Trump he hated the Russians, but he probably would have conspired with them just to get World War 3, which he gets sacked for advocating for (along with the soft on ex-nazi’s thing). When Patton dies he was in a heap of trouble and had no command again.
The root of Trump’s many misconceptions is due to viewing the movie in a very simple manner. Its unlikely Trump ever took a single film class. The fact is Film Appreciation 101 might save the planet were Trump forced to take the course. If he had he would have realized the Ironic Duality of the plot.
Simply put the movie is all about introducing the open question of “Is Patton all that is Great and Gallant in the Military? Or is he all that is Wrong and Perverse about War and War Making?” The movie seems to suggest he is both at the same time.
The characters from the movie line up in Trump World roughly like this- Trump of course is Patton. Egotistical British General Montgomery , equally delusional and insane to only a slightly lesser degree, is ‘Crooked Hillary’. Patton’s very first aide in the movie who dies is BOTH original campaign managers AND Chris Christie (aside from the actual sorrow Patton felt,Trump we know is a stranger to empathy). Cod, his final aide is Kellyanne Conway and racist Steve Bannon. Omar Bradley and the US military are Paul Ryan and the Republicans. The German Military is Mueller and the FBI.
The movie opens with a ‘Patton Rally’. With a huge flag behind him he lays down tough, gruff and profanity laced violent rhetoric in clear terms. Everything is black and white, which is just fine because they’re preparing for war. It’s really freaky when you see the scene superimposed on a 21st century political rally.
The movie provides a composite of Patton’s actual speeches delivered brilliantly, using George Scott’s incredible speaking voice to draw us in as he gives it to his troops in a loud and dirty fashion. It’s very much a political looking arena and the first of many Academy Award Moments defying the viewer to look away.
When Patton begins to speak he’s commanding and profane. He tells his men their better than anyone their opponents, who are subhuman creeps. He boasts about their training and weapons and says they’re destined to win. He speaks of violence and glory. Again, perfect for a wartime general, TERRIBLE for a president, but of course its not very different from what Trump says at his rallys.
Trump holds out immigrants and muslims as an enemy and dehumanizes them almost s much as Patton dehumanized the Nazis extolling his troops to kill. Unlike Patton, there’s no hope. Patton is sure their going to win and win big. Maybe it wont be easy or fun, but it’s going to happen. Trump follows one false gloomy statement with another.
There are some traits both the Man in the Movie and Trump share. Then there’s a lot of fluke-ish coincidences where they seem to resemble each other but dont hold up.
One similarity between Trump and Movie Patton would be the portrayal of Patton as very much Bipolar, which is one of the dominant parts of Trump’s Borderline Personality Disorder. So what I’m saying is both were crazy. Patton, and Trump, also had certain traits of sociopaths and worse.
Patton was probably ‘Manic Depressive’ in terms of that time. Both were spotty students at prestigious schools (though Patton was afflicted with dyslexia, an actual learning disability he overcame, showing some discipline and personal character). Both are only functional when attacking. Both are insulated from their mistakes by great personal wealth. The bottom line is; “Both were crazy and self destructive”
Anti-Patton Cartoon from “Patton” (1970)
Both loved media coverage of and yet bristled at the scrutiny that invites. Both earned the distinction of “Suspected Huge Fan of the Nazis” from the media in their time.
Neither one feels that it’s fair to have their own words used against them, no matter how hypocritical.
Near the end of the movie Patton’s being questioned by the press as to why he won’t remove former Nazi’s from key positions. He answers with his own “Very Fine People” gaff- analogizing the nazis to the Republican and Democratic Parties in the United States. It was such a stupid thing to say you don’t actually feel that bad he let himself get set up. In fact it seemed like he knew they were setting him up and went with a defiant response out of pure bile. It destroys his post War career.
Neither guy can simply shut up for any length of time. While Trump uses tweets Patton would simply act in an outrageous manner (sound familiar?) til the press couldn’t look away.
Both seem to flirt with the idea of War for War’s sake (the Patton character admits this repeatedly). The recent whimsical attitude in meeting with North Korea in different capacities without any preparation fits well with the Patton in the movie, but it sure isn’t reflective of the real life guy.
“Fire and fury,” is a total Patton line. It’s not from the movie, but it would fit. Threatening people is one of Trump’s favorite things. Patton boasted all the time too. The difference of course is it’s APPROPRIATE for general to be boastful and threatening.
And Appropriateness is an area where Trump is really in need of improvement. Whacked out tweets, not putting his hand on his heart during the National Anthem, disparaging numerous Gold Star Families and worse are all in a days work for the offender in chief. Bolstered by his delusion he’s Patton or Patton-like at least, Trump is likely to continue and increase the boasts and threats.
A particularly dangerous sequence in the movie revolves around the German Siege of Bastogne. Loaded up with fuel and ammo and ready to kick the Nazi’s asses the weather intercedes and slows sops his relief attempt.
Angry and scream-y, Patton decides its time for some help from God and a little theater to motivate the troops. He summons the Division Chaplain and makes and demands a prayer good enough for god to intercede and stop the storm. The chaplain points out hes asking him to pray for a battle and therefore death on massive scale and it’s sort of messed up. Patton has no problem with the hypocrisy. Then he goes on a rant worthy of a Spartan king or a particularly extreme Roman general about how they’re going to be sustaining the attack no matter what. Patton admits to his aide he’s sort of acting. Its another Academy Award moment in the film.
A truly inspirational prayer, for those who care about such things, was written. The weather cleared fairly quickly thereafter and the Patton’s army set off on a historic campaign.
Of course what we all know today about Patton’s Weather Prayer is that a warm front moved in and the snow simply stopped. That doesn’t blunt the forceful nature of the scene where Patton excoriates a regimental chaplain, telling him to write a prayer “good enough” for God to bother listening. Its very much like Trump’s contempt for the Pope and religion in general. The “Two Corinthians” Fiasco shows Trump has no religious knowledge or convictions but has no problem with rank hypocrisy and is therefore a bit less moral than Patton.
This sequence of the movie is meant to show Patton’s Hubris and psychopathy in pursuit of battle and it’s a very dangerous thing to take it literally as surely Trump does. We can blame the Evangelical communities blind loyalty and excuse make-ing for Trump for this delusion gaining strength.
Another thing Trump and ‘Movie Patton’ have in common would be a total lack of understanding of whats called “Psychological Warfare”. In the film Patton is apparently baffled as to the importance of his mission leading up to D-Day- to be a weapon of mass distraction . Patton’s use as a decoy convinced Hitler to disregard an Actual Invasion and hold off forces that may well have turned the tide of the War itself , to await a Fictional Invasion that was never going to happen. It was key to pulling of the Allied Invasion of France.
Now consider Trump calling the Generals and the former president stupid repeatedly for broadcasting some details of their plan to destroy ISIS. He simply doesn’t understand the idea that you can cloud your opponents judgement to the point you can predict or even control his actions.
It’s too subtle for the movie character or Trump to grasp.
Both Trump and Patton have a deep disdain of giving out any government healthcare. Patton orders his hospital units not to admit Combat Fatigue (PTSD), which he considers cowardice.
This was so insane even to 1940’s medical personnel they simply ignore him. That of course boomerangs on Patton in his version of a “Hot Mic on the Bus” moment. Of course I am talking of the scene where Patton slaps a ‘cowardly’ soldier in a Field Hospital, disgusting everyone and showing his troops how little he cares about them despite the bravado.
In the heat of battle Patton visits a field hospital. At first he’s compassionate and deeply moved. Then he tirns hateful and insane. The General loses control of himself publicly and betrays his own bi-polar nature and complete lack of empathy during a brutal, sort of violent, screaming meltdown culminating with him repeatedly slapping a ‘cowardly’ soldier.
Lack of sleep and stress are surely in the mix when the real Patton freaked out like a true bi-polar. The sequence shows the dark side of Patton’s insanity. I dont think Trump will see it that way. His cruel approach to medicare and the Obamacare reforms shows he has no compassion, something the cinematic Patton develops. Trump surely wont (because Francis Ford Coppola is not writing reality).
Real life Patton slapped more than one soldier more than one time til they actually had to discipline him and remove him from command. It was just like the self inflicted wound we see Trump give himself all the time. Unlike Patton, he just never gets a humbling comeuppance where he returns slightly improved from time to time. Trump just keep making the same mistakes over and over.
Patton is benched and used as a decoy until after the D-Day Invasion, the battle he had waited all his life to fight in. He faces it like a pitcher caught doctoring a baseball and forced to miss a playoff start. In other words, with only a minimal thought of anyone else. Again Patton shows his view of war and command to be from the Dark Ages or perhaps early Renaissance at its most compassionate.
In his finest moments of triumph after receiving a new army to command, when prosecuting the war Patton is shown as petty and dismissive of his soldiers well-being and simply thinks of his Army as a whole. To Patton, when people get killed it’s like the Army itself is just trimming it’s fingernails. In other words; it’s a natural ongoing function of war. With Trump we can see the chaos in his personal staff and cabinet, burning people like Michael Cohen as needed.
Just as important as winning were the laurels and press adulation that came with it. When holding the spotlight Patton is grandiose in his actions while his words are always petty. Demonizing and denigrating his personal rivals, boasting of his the strength of his army. Its much like Trump with the exception of the part it’s actually appropriate for a general to have that attitude in time of war. Trump appropriating the George C Scott version of Patton in a political mode ISN’T appropriate at all, it worked well enough to get him ‘elected’ (we think). A crass and abusive screed of insults and violent rhetoric are the hallmark of every Trump Rally ever
Patton and Trump have contempt for the abilities (and probably even the racial abstraction) of the Russians, despite Trump’s open admiration for Putin. Patton moves himself firmly onto the hot seat in the early postwar moments by repeatedly insulting people, specifically members of the Russian military, the US President and that which would become NATO. Sound familiar ?
The movie closes with the disgraced Patton reflecting in how the Romans would celebrate a victory with a triumphant parade through Rome itself and a warning that all Glory is Fleeting. Cadet Bone Spurs insistence on a Bigly Military Parade is right in line with this.
Disturbing Conclusions and Thoughts-
We already have had our national policy shaped by this movie. As the documentary “All The President’s Movies” tells us, Nixon ordered major bombing offenses against Vietnam twice after watching the movie. And we all know that Trump loves Nixon so if he finds out that watch out!
It’s my theory that Trump see’s the story of Patton as that of an American who couldn’t lose cause he was an American and that he was an exceptional person who prospered BECAUSE he broke all rules and civility rather than IN SPITE OF THIS. I believe he sees his kooky Cabinet of Billionaire Ass kissers as equivalent to Patton’s highly trained and battle proven staff officers. This dangerous delusion was how Trump found a way to cast crazy ex-General Flynn in the role of Omar Bradley. Comparing Flynn to Bradley is so far from the truth it would be laughable of it weren’t absolute reality.
Based on his overtly displayed misunderstanding of the movie Trump shows he is dangerously militarily primitive and most comfortable with methods and ideas more commonly associated with the Nazi Germans than 20th century Americans.
Military deaths are way up under Trump I truly think he’s relaxed rules of engagement and demanded more missions in general. If you doubt it just consider the Green Berets lost in Niger. We still can’t get a reason that makes sense about why they were even on that doomed mission.
Patton is a terrible role model for even most soldiers as he was always succeeding at he expense of higher all around casualties. He declined peaceful solutions whenever possible. He was always one mistake from disaster but circumstance connived him a series of unlikely wins. As a role model for a president Patton is a disaster.
Like Trump, Patton’s glory should never eclipse the incompetence of his enemies. It requires some historical perspective to understand. Patton was set loose in western Europe with a veteran army and ample supplies. Even more decisive the Germans are mandated by Hitler ONLY to plan against Patton in an area where they expect the Invasion that never comes in Calais. Rather than ever accepting that they must fight Patton they become intimidated and willfully ignorant of the reality due to Hitler’s rapid mental decline from seriously insane to non functional maniac between about 1942 and early 1944. Patton directly benefits. Nothing analogous this is in play for Trump, His current foe, Mueller, is self-created but much more competent than Trump and no amount of freaking out is going to save Trump from that
Looking back at the 2016 campaign think of this as being roughly the same as Hillary not going to states she considered ‘safe’, like the vaunted Democratic “Blue Wall” of reliably Democratic states , each of which she then lost by less than an under-attended baseball game worth of people. We know Trump appreciates this misstep because its one of his favorite riffs to go on from the now “Trump 2020” rallies that are a veritable torchlight parade for the guy. “Kill Them All! Build That Wall!” however, is a lot less civilized than the behavior we see from people about to go to an actual war. Its belicose shit talking that serves just to help these cultists pay homage top their hero and are probably damaging the fabric of America.
Unlike Trump, Patton didn’t have a staff of soothsayers and guru’s off Fox News, Patton’s guys were highly competent top notch merit promoted staff officers with great expertise. Trumps rag tag group of advisers is anything BUT top notch or Highly Competent. They also have more turnover than Patton, which is amazing.
Another unavoidable conclusion from the movie is that current 21st century Americans are actually LESS civilized than Americans of the mid 20th century, 75 years ago, or at the very least the Americans of 1970 when the film is made. Being at war since 9-11 surely is somewhat to blame for this. This suggests that assertions about a cult of ignorance and a desire to literally turn back the clock to early post world war 2, before the integration of the military, by the Trumpists are very much real and accurate.
The movie ends before the freakish and controversial death of Patton in a car accident. The truth is the driver probably just messed up and plain old crashed. Patton lingered for a few days and was buried with his troops. Its long been imagined and even said that the General was killed by the CIA’s predecessor the OSS. This is sonething I’m sure Trump believes Patton was assassinated. I mean, there’s the whole issue where he’s afraid someone is going to poison him to back it up.
Mark Zuckerberg’s simulacra spoke to congress today. It was tasked with explaining how 80 million Facebook users data was misappropriated and weaponized to help elect Trump and other disturbing ends via use of Military Predictive Software on civilians. Aside from making everyone misty about Tom from MySpace he essentially came off like a prototype for Star Trek’s Mr Data.
Oh yeah and we might have seen the birth and documentation of some new form or War Crime against all of us with Facebook used as a carrier for nematode-like data-mining. Metamorphizing when activated by someone who wants to know what their Jedi name would be (or any number of other stupid quiz topics) it finds and weaponizes every little thing that Palantir wants to know.
One thing that came up in an ominous way, and something Zuckerberg lied about not knowing about, was a Tech Data Company using the Tolkien term Palantir as its name. So who the Fuck are these Palantir Technologies people?
Saruman using his Palantir in movie Fellowship of the Ring
Something of a “Cambridge Analytica” in its own right the company name is from the Lord of the Rings. The Palantir are several magical bowling bowl sized stone orbs that allow the holders to speak from distance provided they have the Right and the Will to use the them. If you’re not that worthy or willful you can be twisted and changed by using it to contact someone who has more power than you. In the books it’s the downfall of a one time good guy when he uses one to try to deal with the ultimate bad guy, Sauron. After a couple of conversations with Sauron the good guy, Saruman, is broken and becomes an agent of Evil. So they basically named themselves after a malignant form of communication that undermines ones individuality. So at least false advertising not a claim we can put against them, right?
That Zuckerberg was unaware of Palantir is sort of hard to believe considering it was the property of Pay-Pal Co-Founder, Facebook investor and Trump-Lovin’ MAGA Hat owner, Peter Thiel (Billionaire!). Now that I have some idea what they’re all about I would have denied it too.
Peter Thiel
Founded in 2004 seems they start out selling their services to the US Military to predict terrorist and insurgent behavior. Apparently they had enough success at this that by 2013 they manage to sell these same services to the Los Angeles Police Department to predict crime.
In a moment of true perception the The Guardian published an article that compared them to the Powerful but Flawed Pre-Crime Computers from the Philip K Dick science fiction tale “Minority Report”. The writer referenced the movie several times. Truth is the people from Palantir look good when they can identify crime hot spots, but they start playing god by unscrupulously re-selling the data to the highest bidder, or it seems, to any bidder.
A company so secretive that in 2013 they had no office, just something in Palo Alto called a SCIF. Consider it a situation room for aspiring Bond Villains as the Palantir people start to dive deeper and deeper into murky corners of our data footprints that speak to its algorithms.
It’s time to consider that people have been killed or thrown in jail by data and predictions from the Palantir people. Maybe they all deserved it. Certainly the jailed individuals had their day in court but the point is Palantir isn’t involved in small stakes operations. They will take money to make predictions that will then have a direct effect on things like where Military or Police resources get allocated. Thats a big deal.
So next Palantir is using methods gleaned from the occupation of Iraq and in West Coast US Law Enforcement to predict and shape behavior with a bunch of innocuous looking quizzes that you or your friends might be tempted to take on Facebook.
Trojan Horse doesnt begin to cover it (and has a tech connotation all its own anyway) but through a series of deceptive underhanded moves enabled by the allegedly naive Facebook people they decide they have enough to determine the outcome of an election. In it purely for the money they probably broke a bunch of laws in spirit as well as substance.
This being a mercantilist society the Palantir people did what the machine gun people did. They looked for new markets for their military product. Dressed up as the same sort of lucky break that improved all video games the moment the Cold War ends and frees tech minds from military tasks the Palantir people cynically dove in to any platform they could exploit.
Zuckerberg (or his Replicant)
So they turned to Facebook. Facebook was focused on all the wrong threats, like denial of service attacks and to their credit it seems theyve never fallen victim to one of consequence. Rather than a fake profile Trolling approach the Palantir people simply break in and take everything they want by exploiting ambiguities in the Facebook user agreement and vulnerabilities in the Facebook code. Since they were throwing Russian money at Zuckerberg with a snowshovel, possibly through shell corporations, he didn’t think too hard or look too deeply at what the Palantir people were doing. Now, if we’re to believe Mr Data, he’s sorry he was so naive.
Had Palantir acquired the information with binoculars through a window looking at your desk no cop would take “But the drapes were open” as an excuse for fraud and being a Peeping Tom. Thats the Gray Area in a nutshell. Since theres no Internet Law Enforcement Agency they just went ahead and did it. It’s probably going to end up being something illegal in the future, once our lawmakers learn to use smartphones!
Will they be stopped? If they are it wont be soon, and theres already lots of damage. The Palantir peoples model may not be perfect, theres a lot yet to be found out about them, but they had enough insight to be part of the 10 for 10 in Toss Up states record Trump had on election night.
The micro-targeting and emotional manipulation they unleashed on Facebook users may have been enough to change things. If it changed eve one state it made Trump President.
The people from Palantir are not unlike Saruman, the once good Wizard who abuses the eponymous magic Palantir in Lord of the Rings. They were able to put on a pleasing voice and seduce people into clicking away their data (and that of their friends). At the end of the final book Saruman meets his end at the hands of one of his henchmen after nearly destroying the once pristine homeland of the Hobbits, which he turned into a Middle Earth version of the Warsaw Ghetto.
The Real World Palantir Corporation may just be done in by congress for wrecking America and it’s still to be determined the level of damage they have done and what the Fuck they are up to now.
Is Trump the least popular president ever? A simple”No” doesn’t cover it anymore. Now we can only respond; “Depends how you measure it.”
Underwater Yet Still Sinking
Trump started out below 50% on day one, back at the “Biggest Inauguration in History” where the protest marches outdrew his swearing in by a HUGE margin. In fact the one year anniversary protest marches against trump also did better so far as turnout as any Trump event of any kind yet.
The fact is Trump has only flirted with 50% briefly and distantly. Trump trashes the people who are opposed or turned off by him just like he trashed the girl who would didn’t fuck him in High School. In other words- Suddenly its something you never wanted and no one would ever want? 2 minutes ago you thought she was hot.
This would probably be easier to accept if were more spectacular. Lets face it people NOT doing something can be hard to put a compelling picture up of. So the TV news doesn’t do cover it like they might if they had some juicy video.
The only poll that really has decades of history is Gallup. It may be flawed to a
In most ways our least popular ever president, Harry Truman.
degree, but it seemed to be about accurate on election day when votes were cast. FACT-Hillary got a lot more votes but lost due to our Arcane systems fatal Republican President Making Flaw known as The Electoral College.
The fact is- Gallup AND the Real Clear Politics Poll of Polls NEVER show the president at 50% or higher in popularity.
The Lowest For The Longest
If Trump’s NOT the lowest for the longest just give it time. Until now it was Harry S Truman holding the All Time Lowest Presidential Approval ratings.
Here’s some overview how that happened;
The beginning of Truman’s presidency is one of the worst days in presidential history as Franklin Delano Roosevelt has to die to cause it. Deep into a world war Americans were unfamiliar with their not so eloquent president. He made either President Bush seem very charismatic.
In Truman’s case dropping the atomic bombs on Japan starts him out looking like a brutal killer or a total wimp. Irony of ironies. Half America resents the dropping of the bombs, the other half think he should have dropped more. So his first decision just divides everyone.
For Truman dropping the Bomb and following FDR are just too much to absorb for most.
Politics and use of military force in Korea further divided the public on Truman. The Korean War was a problem simply because we couldn’t will it to an end in a few weeks. Its also a questionable war. Truman feuded with the Theater Commander MacArthur and MacArthur took it public. Plus we’re starting to come to terms with the Segregation issue at home.
Harry Truman never caught a break publicity wise.
If you dislike Trump the Bad News is despite this Truman keeps getting elected. The Good News? Trump will almost definitely NOT be able to replicate the level of personal engagement Truman gutted out in the extensive Whistle Stop Tour to get re-elected. It showed poise, control and determination. Truman just had more character than Trump.
Look at the gargantuan effort Truman put in-
The approximate route of Truman’s 1948 Whistle Stop Tour.
Truman gets by mostly on shoe leather, one of his re-election tours featured him doing whats been called whistle-stop tour. Basically he took a train to as many small towns as possible and formed a bond with enough average people to get around the bad polls and win. I don’t know if a Tweet or a series of tweets has the same effect.
The Numbers Now
Trump is sickening everyone by already campaigning for 2020 but he probably has to. The real question is how much of that is based on his craziness and need for approval? Like Hitler he seems to need to really kill it at a good rally to buoy his spirits
14 months in Trump is about 5% below what he had on Inauguration Day. 14 months below 50% has happened but below 46%? And constantly ‘bottoming out’ with dips into 30s?
It’s not as bad as ‘The Last Days of Bush” yet, but soon he will absolutely be the president who had the lowest approval for the longest time.
Real Clear Politics Aggregate Poll as of March 11, 2018
The Very Worst?
Again, Truman or George W Bush own the all time low approval, with low 20’s as the nation waited out the end of their careers. Viewed as term-limited lame ducks who pointlessly started wars of choice they were loathed at the end. That’s the big difference. They had been president for awhile and just wore out their welcome.
Trump’s White House Home Invasion is only 2 months into year 2.
How Could it Get Worse?
A war would probably be enough to drop Trump to very lowest ever, say in the mid teens approval wise sespite the apparent ‘staying power’ in the 30% range.
If the level of prosperity drops off or there’s trouble for any prolonged time with the Stock Market Trump’s number will tumble.
An irresponsibly done tax cut that was widely criticized only bought Trump a few weeks in the mid forties in approval.
The Mueller Probe could send Trump’s approval plummeting but not like screwing the pooch with a war or if he gets his Wall built.
The 30% core followers are members of Cult 45 and will not change their minds no matter how much proof Mueller comes up with. This may not be enough to save Trump from Impeachment and Jail, only another hacked election seems capable of stopping that.
Is This Historic Yet?
Yes. It’s too low for too long.
Trump definitely could rescue Harry Truman from “Least Popular President Ever”.
The slightest shifts in the situation in America or on the Korean Peninsula (or any number of other places) could devastate his approval ratings in mere hours.
By devastate we mean dip to say the mid to high twenties. And something like 70% disapproval. And it could go on for two or three years.
It’s not clear how he can govern at all with the increasing strain of NEVER having so much of America approve of him.
W Says Thanks
Already no longer the dumbest president ever, George W Bush must be relieved.
Trump’s approval rating is routinely in striking distance of the W Bush All Time Low of 31.9%. He Will Beat it sooner or later. Ditto for Trump’s proximity to Bush’s all time high DISAPPROVAL of 64.8% that same week in September 2008.
The big difference is George W Bush’s big fall comes as a lame duck playing out the string. Trump is only 14 months in.
When He’s Up it Temporary, when He’s Down it Stays
Probably the constant idiocy and fascist-like talk and tweets prevent trump from rising to 50% approval.
The problem is that the failure is now baked in. Trump looks foolish regularly. His ‘outreach’ to the other side politically is always a line in the sand. He can’t work towards a consensus. He has that 30% and if he does everything right and keeps quiet for a few days he sometimes rises close to 40 but that’s a hard ceiling.
With a lot more people disinterested in politics than in the past the disengagement of about 10% of everyone helps Trump a bit too.
Low to mid 30’s are probably going to be a fact of life for this president, for however long he lasts.
And just for score keeping – the most popular ever president is George H W Bush right after the Gulf War starts. Off the top of my head i think he makes it over 80% approval. He failed to be re-elected. So that makes his the hugest drop-off ever.
Like everyone else I’ve just had it with lying White Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the (at best) semi-weekly assault on civility and reality that are her White House Press Conferences.
The Terrible Reason She’s Out There in the First Place
I admit it, I feel like Trump sends her out there for a bunch of reasons all of which are best summed up by just calling her “really hard to take”.
It’s become something of a part time job trying to essentially Live-Blog her outrages. Throughout 2018 I had to keep updating this post due every few days due to Sarah’s steady pattern of Reaching New Lows.
These last few months its been a tough guess as to whether Sanders or Brad Pitt showers less! Forget soap dodging, that’s long in the past. Her hair is often matted down and greasy. She just looks unwashed! It may be petty, but like Trump’s orange body paint, it’s a choice and therefore fair game.
Sarah storms to the podium on whatever day sounding just like the overprotective wife of a violent alcoholic. Trump’s not mean and stupid, we just don’t know him the way she does! He’s not ignorant, he’s resolute. And he’s not a liar! He’s just an optimist and its offensive to her we don’t see it that way.
As winter slowly gave way to spring calls for Sarah to resign start to get discussed on cable news. Never knowing many facts, bluster and uncivil behavior were grinding on the media and the public.
In the wake the protracted, completely uninformed and briskly angry Stormy Daniels disaster the drumbeat for Sarah to resign was steady and driving. To be clear I mean specifically the Stormy Daniels disaster where Sarah seems to have just knowingly and repeatedly lied. She seemed completely out of the loop (or more likely part of the lie-crafting) and of course was openly angry at legitimate questions as to whether she was just, you know, lying.
And then quickly thereafter later the ghoulish Public Relations disaster of refusing to apologize for staffers gleefully but prematurely dancing on John McCain’s grave happens (there was never a real apology).
This time rather than out of the loop or “In On It” SHS seemed to be part of an Uncoordinated Refusal of Common Decency. She she focused on the fact the meeting details were leaked. So total fail for her there. The Hits keep comin’. Again people said it was past time for Sarah to go. She now they were adding that she has no integrity. It’s a fair assessment.
All that was just foreshadowing of how petty and stupid the response from the White House was when McCain DID actually pass in August. The death of McCain came as Pressers at the White House became a seriously endangered species.
Unifying speeches by Obama and George W Bush really cast the Dear Leader in a bad light. Ucomfortable and angry there was a long period where there were no press conferences at all.
But no one’s resigning or getting fired anymore in Trump World, at least not without a major series of scandals like Scott Pruitt. There’s been so much turnover SHS is needed just for a thin veneer of continuity. So Sarah will probably be out there for the duration of the administration. Shes just okay with lying and simply hates the press so shes good with it.
In the last days of July Huckabee-Sanders finally really lost the room addresing the White House Press Corps. At issue? She refused to push back on her boss Trump’s repeatedly calling the media “The Enemy of the People”, a leftover term from Stalinist times.
It would seem this was just a bridge too far for what was already a terrible relationship. Reporters, now openly disdainful, have galvanized against her. If she refuses a question or dodges and refuses to follow up the next reporter she called on mostly took up the cut off lines of questioning.
After Trump, I really dont see things looking so great for Sarah. Who would want her repp-ing their company or brand? She could maybe read Bible Verses for people who are in jail and deserve to hear it in her voice.
At the Treason Summit she’s at Trumps side in a few too many pictures to think that wont add to her already very possible and bigly dangerous legal problems. She’s just around a few too many times when a few too many weird lies got birthed. I think she’s got Mueller Issues in the not too distant future to be honest. So maybe she wont have any problems except just being a Federal Prisoner for furthering a plot against the United States. Why am I so sure her husband will PASS om conjugal visits (theres no way he will be allowed to bring cialis to jail!). Other Milestones – Faux Outrage, Denigrating the Media, a dash of Fascism and Outright Lies
The June 14, 2018 presser was a new low. After using the Bible as a justification to separate children from their parents at the southern border she went low and personal. She denigrated one reporter, CNN’s Jim Acosta, saying; “I realize it’s hard for you to understand…..even short sentences.” This drew some grumbling from the press and someone replied “That’s a cheap shot Sarah” Of course it was. So now personal insults have started to creep in to the ever more rare and ever shorter pressers.
Sarah really made some news in mid June Sarah when she was asked to leave a Virginia eatery called called “The Red Hen”. It was because the staff and management wanted to use their First Amendment Rights to refuse to serve her on the grounds she’s a hateful lying bigot. Who could argue? Sarah did!
In a particularly delusional tweet where she bashed the small business on her government twitter (in itself questionable) and claimed “she tries to treat all with respect”. Yeah, right. Tell that to CNN’s Jim Acosta whose intelligence she derided rather than answer a question about Trumps insane and cruel policies on the US Southern Border!
Then we finally had a reporter lose their composure and demand Sanders answer a question about the incarceration of children separated from their parents by ICE over alleged immigration violations. Rather than respond Huckabee-Sanders simply accused the reporter of simply wanting more TV time and again refused to address the thrice asked question.
Of late the pressers are shorter and more infrequent than ever. In fact “We’re really tight in time” is the first thing Sarah Huckabee Sanders says when she finishes her scathing and untrue opening remarks (on the days she actually goes out there).
The presser we were graced with on August 15 was nothing more than hot garbage. Sarah announced they were revoking some peoples security clearances in what amounted to an Enemies List. The authoritarian nature of the decree was sort of overshadowed by the level of incompetence with which it was executed. Most of the people on the list didn’t have clearances to take away in the first place. She just looked stupid trying to defend that one.
When scolding down from her high horse she’s never shy about adding several pejoratives to any statement she might have a high “Insult IQ” and an inexhaustible reservoir of bile and faux disgust. “I think the question’s offensive” she often slurs in her Old Confederacy accent. This sounds even worse when she shifts blame to former President Obama for obvious reasons.
Sean Spicer at least had some shame. Not Huckabee- Sanders. Lying, gaslighting, moving the goal posts and good old Nazi “Them-ism” are favorite tactics.
Does anyone really think her brisk angry nature, her lack of civility and the ease with which she insults reporters aren’t the very reason she was given this job? Let’s be honest the SHS Presser is an assault on all senses.
Sometimes there’s a ‘Special Guest’ who totally doesn’t need to be there. Usually a deputy cabinet minister. On especially truthless days we get a letter written by a child who admires the president and whose ”going to meet the president”. No pictures ever emerge and no one seems to want to ask why these admiring children sound just like Trump himself. So her opening act is bullshit followed by pure lies.
As of early October when there was a presser it was openly combative with the rancor coming FROM the podium.
The flaming wreck of the Kavanaugh nomination led to a contentious presser just days after the president had savaged Kavanaugh sexul assault accuser in a way that was evocative of a caveman. Sarah Didn’t back down or show any mercy either. Could she finally have bottomed out?
typical SHS outfit that just enhances every bad thing
A Failure to Communicate
The pressers, when they do happen, are an open firehose of lies, gaslighting, scapegoating and verbal abuse.
No reason is ever given for why the Presser is always at least 15 minutes late (I think they got it from Mein Kampf) or why the Press Secretary is always “very pressed for time” when the press conference is her actual job.
Many pressers involve completely off topic special guests introduced by Sarah along with a mention of the fact there’s very little time. Of course this is an artificial deadline just to create chaos and complicate the job of the press.
If any given Presser features someone like a Mnuchin they will jump right in to a very abstract but lengthy story of some sort of prosperity scheme, usually enabled through taking things away from the poorest most vulnerable Americans. This is like watching the trailer for a movie that never should have been made. In other words, it lowers expectations.
Then Sarah herself re-takes the stage. Its difficult not just to go after her in the way her boss Trump goes after women, because someone that crass could have a field day. She would deserve it for enabling Trump. I don’t need to go there. Instead I’ll stick with the things she controls that make her horrible. Like lying.
You could easily see SHS in this exact outfit
Most days Sarah comes to the White House Press Room podium dressed like a villainess from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. There’s no telling which dysfunctional planet she’ll be dressed like on any given day but certainly we’ve seen Klingon and Romulan inspired outfits. Sometimes she likes a short leather skirt and Go-Go boots with off the shoulder flowing black garments inspired by ancient Greece, which is ironic as the Ancient Greeks had a democracy.
Other times she’s dressed like the Quaker Oats guy’s daughter or something. Another recurring look is something along the lines of Glen Close from Guardians of the Galaxy.
We all know Sara is right-handed based on her completely asymmetric eyebrow tweezing. She looks like 2 different people depending when she turns profile one way or the other. This probably helps keep people’s expectations low as she verbally assaults the White House Press Corps, belaboring a point like an angry grammar school
principal scolding the wild kids in the lunchroom. “Fake News” and “Enemy of the State” are terms we’ve all heard her use again and again.
So at the end of the day if Trump is held legally accountable for all his dickish acts and criminality; will Sarah Huckabee Sanders end up in jail too? It’s not impossible.
With Hope Hicks appearing sort of prison-bound and now long gone from the White House Communications office, what SHS says is more on HER that ever before. Hope Hicks is long gone. Until we hear different it’s a safe bet that the job of ginning up that days lies is Sanders gig now. Sure it still all comes from Trump, but he has some very real problems of his own. Ome things for sure, shes mastered mimicking Trumps tone and indignace.
Spinning Down With No Bottom in Sight
September 2018 started a whole new chapter in the Trump White House Implosion. In rapid succession esteemed journalist Robert Woodward dropped his book “Fear : Trump in the White House” on us. It was a blow by blow of the administrations criminal ineptitude and chronic dysfunction. Sarah swatted this down as lies by a journalist who was a known democratic operator. A total lie. Before the dust had settled the Mind Blowing Anonymous New York Times Op Ed from INSIDE the White House senior staff more or less confirmed everything Woodward had said. In something of a failed bid for revenge Sarah used her official White House Press Secretary Twitter account to try to harass the paper by printing the Times office number and urging people to call. And they did. To THANK the paper for exposing the corruption. She wasn’t getting that Trumpian reaction she could once count on.
It seems critics are her current audience. The Trumpists are still there loving her bullshit, but there’s a lot less of them. The majority of people are critical and sarcastic in their remarks and assessments of the SHS and her constant lies.
What kind of problems could SHS have? For starters she’s kind of slandered the 19 accusers who claim Trump sexually assaulted them. Yup, she said the words “They’re all lying.” She may have furthered some lies about Stormy Daniels aka Stephanie Clifford a few times in the couple of weeks.
And then there’s stuff much closer to Treason. Like when she knowingly deceives the American people on behalf of Trump.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders accepts a tax payer paid salary to deliver lies on behalf of a criminal. possibly treasonous president. I for one hope when all this shakes out and people get tossed in jail we get to see SHS showing off the newest Trump fashion jewelry – HANDCUFFS.
We all know Trump is lying. Can anyone doubt Huckabee-Sanders knows that too? How hard could it be to convict her right now of furthering a criminal enterprise? And how much deeper is the hole she’s digging herself into going to be now that she’s that much more responsible for what she says?
Then at least in October she had to pretend to like Kanye and we got this classic pic –
The 25 minute late 23 minute long October 29 presser, the first in 26 days, of course started off with SHS arbitrarily declaring they were really pressed for time.
What SHS served up, angrily mind you, was one long offensive blame-shifting mess. after a supporter of the President went on an anti press anti – Democratic Party package bomb spree that earned him earned the moniker ‘#MAGABomber and a massacre at a Pittsburgh Synagogue that seemed to find some root in the presidents endless race baiting comments, SHS falsely blamed the media for all of it in a series of self serving lies.
Deeply frustrated reporters got the usual word salad and of course the real victim, to Huckabee-Sanders, was her personal hero president Trump.
As Fall turned to winter the Administration and the Communications office had devolved into endless chaos. Insanity was starting to become normal.
In the November Midterm elections the GOP suffered pretty serious setbacks in the House of Representatives. In the run-up and aftermath Trump seemed in a Bi-Polar High. He was lying and acting out on an even more grandiose manner.
The Post Midterm presser featured Trump himself, seething and beyond combative. He scoffed at most of the questions, mostly turning them back on the reporters.
He saved most of his ire for Jim Acosta. In a detached meltdown Trump called him horrible and rude. He made a point of saying he was rude to Sarah too, which won Jim a place in my heart despite it being false. Then Acosta lost his White Press credential simply for asking Trump a question …. at a press conference.
It was only a day later Sarah released some obviously altered images and video to make it appear Acosta had grabbed aggressively for mic and roughed up a White House intern. It wasnt true at all and unaltered feeds of the presser exist everywhere. It was a simple Misinformation Campaign to satisfy her revenge driven boss, not that she minded. This might be the only slam dunk case of slander ever. Acosta should sue.
Early December saw Sarah slated to leave at the end of the year, no one was that bummed. She was rightly bombarded with ridicule for imagining out loud her legacy was Transparency. No White Press Secretary has lied more or longer than Sarah.
The middle of December saw a Sarah siting and the 14 minutes of blather was worse than usual and the timeframe made discerning much pretty impossible. Mike Flynn = Good Mike Cohen + Rat, and a mic drop. I don’t think she took a single follow up question.
Hopefully it’s her farewell appearance. Doesn’t seem like December will be a big month of transparency.
As the months have passed by the idea Sarah may just be exposing herself to serious legal jeopardy from the Mueller Probe seems more than just feasible. It’s an open question whether she’ll be cited or indicted in any aspects of the massive fast moving probe. The constant lying to the American People could just be a problem. Shes been around to help brew up some blatantly Orwellian lies. It doesn’t seem like she can just move on to some other non Trump Gig.
Winter & Spring 2019
With press conferences all but a thing of the past in 2019 we barely see Sarah in that setting. She’s more just a seconding voice for Trump’s fantasy of the moment.
The story last Thanksgiving was she was due to leave the White House “in the New Year.” We’ve now made it to April and she’s still there.
Could it be no one wants to hire her? Shes the face of dishonesty. We just weren’t aware of HOW dishonest til –
The Mueller Report – The Lies of Sister Sarah
We all knew that eventually proximity to Trump was going to cause her some problems. While I speculate one day the criminality she’s been part of will come back to haunt her I didn’t think she’d figure deeply into the Mueller Report, and she didn’t. None the less, her talking out of both sides of her mouth was one of the first stories to ruminate through the headlines. Seems Sarah’s christian values don’t include even the slightest guilt about lying unless there’s jailtime involved.
And her lies werent to mitigate Trump’s insanity, she was burnishing it.
The Mueller Report showed her to be an Enabler rather than any of the authors of the Anonymous New York Times “White House Resistor” article, where the idea was to stick around at the expense to your own dignity just to keep Trump from blowing up the world.
When James Comey was fired for not dropping the Flynn Investigation Sarah had a series of May 2017 pressers (remember when we had pressers?) where she simply lied to the American People. Her repeated lie, which she’s since told some more lies about, was that her phone was ringing off the hook with grateful FBI Agents thanking her for Trump’s firing of Comey. I’m not sure why they thought she would want to hear it. I guess she took the (fictional) calls in between high 5-ing all the other FBI Agents she claimed stopped her to tell her how glad they were their boss had been fired amid a torrent of abusive comments about the Bureau itself.
When in front of Mueller Sarah actually told the truth. These were pure lies made up from whole cloth. Obviously she was parroting her boss.
Cries she be fired are now pretty universal. The Fox White House guy may even be on board with that one, he has to listen to the lies too, right? But this is how Trump likes it.
By the third week of April we’ve had 4 Pressers all year, in no regular order. This begs the question – what exactly does Sarah do these days?
Celebrating his recent Total Victory in The War on Christmas, General Bone Spurs has ordered the nations military to parade around saluting him.
So far the parade sounds like a bad mashup of a Nazi Documentary meets HMS Pinafore in an avoidable AMTRAK style train wreck. Who needs crazy social experiments like Meals on Wheels when life can simply take on somewhat more phony dignity? Certainly feels like the part of Animal Farm where daily, coordinated displays of pride are substituted for things like food and time off to me.
So Comrade Napoleon-I mean Trump, will waste a ton of tax payer cash to stroke his ego and finally (in his mind) put to rest questions about him being a fuckin coward too scared to fight in Nam.
Look at the man and ask yourself “Did he handle losing his hair well? Better than say, someone I would actually trust with my money? Or my kids?” The answers no. I’m not sure I could so much as rent an apartment from a person with a hair helmet who chose to go out covered in orange body paint. Trump is a man so vain he couldn’t stand the thought of people NOT thinking he spent most of his time lying around in the sun while simultaneously pretending to be a work-a-holic with little time for pleasure. Yes America, you voted in a complete asshole. Probably. Unless it was Putin, who knows? Now he needs to see all his toys at once.
The parade could be even sillier than I’ve so far imagined. For instance, 500 tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue followed by 500 more Missiles all grinding the asphalt into a bunch of hellish slabs for our brave soldiers to stumble through while presumably Seig Heil-ing King Shit (who we already know will set up the reviewing stand in front of his stupid DC hotel).
Trump’s own petulance and lack of any sensitivity towards people will have to be planned around to avoid embarrassng gaffes. Some of the many many problems are easy to foresee. Top of my head? Ok, what of the gay and trans-gendered troops forced march around in this stupid step show? Will our bigot president allow it? Imagine his seething anger if he catches sight of anything that displeases him. He could easily explode in anger if-
there’s a large contingent of female Marines.
Or maybe a couple of transgendered Army Doctors.
Or should he spot one of the Gold Star Families he so despises.
Or if it rains.
Or if there’s a protest (there will be a protest).
Or worse.
And lets not forget that Trump will, as always, be grinding several axes when the parade goes down. Will he attack NFL players? Or be brooding over election results (it IS in November). Will he make a speech where he directly says that the Democrats are murderers and treasonous again? Rest assured the Divider-In-Chief will find a way to embarrass the military and all of the citizens with any brains.
We have a long, shameful path to walk before this proposed nightmare in November. With any luck someone at the Pentagon will remember its the 100th Anniversary of the End of World War I and provide some cover for this naked celebration of Trump. A tasteful WWI commemoration is a great way out of this mess. Sadly it would end up as a celebration of a Segregated Military and probably a full throated call to militarism in the hands of these jackasses.
time Trump sounds like Fredo Corleone. Be it self-pitying whining or ranting about respect to taking a public beating for what amounts to, as Moe Greene would put it; “banging cocktail waitresses two at a time! No one at the tables could get a drink!”
Recent 
Meals on Wheels when life can simply take on somewhat more phony dignity? Certainly feels like the part of Animal Farm where daily, coordinated displays of pride are substituted for things like food and time off to me.
