A Mad Tea-Party
The phrase "lawyer up" is often used with scorn towards public figures we suspect are concealing misdeeds. Someone obtains the services of a lawyer, which supposedly means an attempt to avoid jail time. That's part of it in some instances, but a "good" lawyer, the kind sought out by a rich well-connected public "servant" like Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump's husband and White House Innovations Director (his real title) in the Trump administration, is someone who can use highly refined legalistic bullshit to keep his privileged client out of prison.
There's nothing wrong with getting the services of a lawyer, yet we live in an age when TV newspeople find it necessary to remind us that doing so doesn't mean one is guilty or innocent. It's a right. "If you don't have an attorney," the Miranda speech cops give to those they arrest goes, "one will be provided for you." Sometimes in America cops get too nervous and empty their guns into people before they can tell their victims about how they could've had a lawyer to talk to if they'd survived their encounter with the law. Jared Kushner, being a rich white prick, will never be shot by cops, and it's unlikely he'll ever do time behind bars, but he can look forward to weeks or months of scrutiny by the FBI, Congress, and the news media, all because he chose to marry the favorite daughter of Donald Trump.
President Trump every day demonstrates his lack of ability to do his job properly. He operates a mendacity machine that his subordinates must also use if they wish to retain their positions. When the Republican-led Senate health care bill (cooked up entirely in secret like a sorcerer's spell) was released to public revulsion, with its gouging cuts to Medicaid among other proposals antithetical to health, Trump and his minions claimed Medicaid wouldn't be affected. This blaring lie characterizes the daily nature of this administration, which can't even hold regularly televised live press conferences, preferring audio-only contentious meetings presided over increasingly by Sean Spicer's nasty deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Spicer seems to be crumbling. Whenever he's challenged, even by a teddy bear-like CNN reporter trying to clarify a point, Spicer's eyes look frozen, as if he has to soon make a life or death decision. He should decide to go to the Oval Office and tell Donald Trump to go fuck himself, record the incident with his phone, and broadcast it on YouTube and every other media outlet he can think of. He'd become, temporarily anyway, a hero. Interview offers would pile up, job offers from cable news stations would be available, Sean Spicer, Pundit.
Instead, he stays true to his boss, Trump, who would and probably someday will, in true Donald fashion, fuck Spicer over in a heartbeat.
Trump's Russia problem persists, but for me the hacking of the American election registers more as the kind of thing big states do to each other and more often to littler states. MSNBC, with its host of "former" CIA employees acting as pundits, looks more and more like an arm of the intelligence agencies, the very same organizations that fuck with other countries' democratic processes all the time. The long shadow of the "Russia thing," involving James Comey, Robert Mueller's investigation, hacking of the electoral process, Trump's aides (including Jared Kushner) getting close to Russian officials before the election and after, is less important to Americans worrying about politicians fucking with their health care than cable news would make it seem. Trump's Russia problem, created, in my view, by his own decisions in dealing with foreign moneylenders, that in turn caused by his inability to honor his debts (thus his six bankruptcies), is far less a suspenseful espionage epic and more like the story of a major dickhead with too much money, someone who never learned humility and now fights against learning that with all he can muster--the power of the presidency behind him, the power to take lives, as he does in the endless war on terror every day.
He's now seventy-one years old, out of shape, operating at the manic pace his much younger self was physically better able to handle, reportedly yelling at his wall of TV sets during news programs, exhibiting weird behavior, as in the following example:
During a press photo op in the Oval Office, Trump sat behind his desk talking on the phone with the Prime Minister of Ireland. He interrupted the flow of talk to let the PM know that there was an Irish reporter among the journalists in the room. He told the reporter to come over, an attractive blonde Irish woman in a tight dress. He told her, "You have a nice smile." The reporter later described the experience as "bizarre." Some people, having encountered a president, like JFK for instance, might say the experience was "thrilling," or "fascinating."
I'm reminded of the looks NATO nation leaders were giving each other when Trump spoke in Brussels. They looked like they were unfamiliar with the man's manner and prole speech patterns. Americans, however, are well aware of what a weird motherfucker he is. "Bizarre" is a nice way of putting it, but the Irish reporter pegged it well. Strange and unusual, indeed. That Trump has a well-established record of hitting on women adds to the incident's creepiness. He apparently doesn't understand that behaving like an inebriated guy in a bar after midnight isn't a seemly way for a president to act, especially with cameras and microphones present. This incident got analyzed on CNN this afternoon, hostess Brooke Baldwin interviewing for their reactions two young women, a Democratic activist and a Republican activist/frequent Trump apologist. They split on party lines, predictably, but the brunette Democrat couldn't conceal her understandable distaste for Trump's mild lechery, pointing out with several examples his offensive behavior towards women. The blonde Republican countered with Trump's many examples of calling out to men, even to a "male baby." He's an equal opportunity touchy-feely guy, so went her argument. Brooke Baldwin could have offered her own opinion, though, since she seems intelligent and self-assured, I suspect she probably thinks Trump is a creep and would never want to be alone with him.
Ivanka Trump has untold knowledge of her father's behaviors with women. She's a dutiful daughter, claiming in a recent interview that she doesn't discuss politics much with her president dad. This seems very unlikely; how could she not? Yet, he also doesn't seem like the kind of person receptive to disagreeable (to him) ideas. Ivanka Trump was a registered Democrat as recently as last year. She couldn't vote for her father in the New York Primary. I suspect she also would agree with the blonde Republican nitwit interviewed by Baldwin today that Donald Trump calls out for attention women and men, and the occasional baby. He's a father, a grandfather, he's really very normal.
He also "lawyered up" in recent weeks, for his greatest fear, career-wise, is the Justice Department and Congress figuring out where the Trump money trail goes. I suspect it goes in the same direction of other rich men's wealth: away from taxes and social responsibility and towards global financial entanglements in the immoral universe of "too big to fail," just as the war on terror is too big to stop.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Hot Jumping Jupiter
I have no specific topic to write about this time, just impressions. I watched a show called Edge of the Universe, a three part program dealing with outer space issues. The first episode deals with the search for extrasolar planets. In 1995 a Swiss astronomer found the first one, a Jupiter-like gas giant orbiting the star 51 Pegasi. The discovery was startling enough, but the conditions of that star and its companion amazed astronomers. The planet orbits its star at a mere distance of four million miles. By comparison, our planet closest to the Sun, Mercury, is thirty-six million miles out and is one hot motherfucker of a planet. 51 Pegasi's planet is a ball of superheated gases and metals. Astronomers think the planet migrated inwards toward the star over time and is in the process of being evaporated.
Since the 1990s, hundreds of planets have been found, including gas giants much farther out from their parent stars, like Jupiter and Saturn. Earth-sized planets have been found, as well as "super-Earths," rocky planets like ours, but huge, reminding me of science fiction writer Jack Vance's novel, Big Planet, taking place on a huge terrestrial world.
In our galaxy are approximately 200 billion stars. The universe's profusion of galaxies multiplies this number exponentially. Astronomers, for the past two decades, have been finding scores of planets of many types, indicating the now obvious: there are trillions of planets, life is probably a common phenomenon, as are worlds of unimaginable hostility to life. Did God make all this? Did God throw the dice or invent the combinations that chance made infinite? I have no idea nor do I care. I point out what's real in the spacetime continuum we inhabit. The possibilities, oh they are endless. If you listen to early Genesis you'll hear Peter Gabriel sing, if you listen to later Genesis, you'll hear Phil Collins. Both eras of that band are worth listening to.
Someone once told me that my talk in conversations goes on tangents. I mention things that pop into my head that don't necessarily follow the topic. I do this because I'm a scatterbrain. I like Jackson Pollack's paintings because they look like organized arrangements of randomness. His artistry appeals to me, but a scatterbrained politician is not what I want running anything important. Think of Donald Trump's Twitter account as his canvas. He tweets something last month, something important, like saying James Comey better hope "there are no tapes of our conversations." This tweet caused Congress to ask Trump to release all "tapes," if any. Today, he tweeted that there are no "tapes." (I put "tapes" in quotation marks because we live in a digital era and reel to reel and cassette tapes are old-fashioned except in the lingo of middle-aged to old people).
The "tapes" tweet led to Comey taking action to cover his ass, knowing he would someday be asked under oath about his nine conversations with Trump. Comey, testifying, said he hoped there are tapes. This left Trump with no leverage regarding these alleged tapes. In fact, as has been proven today, he used the "tapes" tweet as a threat against Comey, an attempt, now proven lame, to put the scare into the former FBI director, a man who's now proven he's not intimidated by dickheads like Donald Trump whose idea of talking tough comes from movies.
Trump's admission today, in a tweet, that there are no tapes of his conversations with Comey, shows him to be a buffoon. He brought up the "tapes" idea in the first place, just as he manufactured the "wiretapping" of Trump Tower claim. Throw out to the news media an idea of being persecuted, let the news people and politicians chew on it, distract us from what's important, like health care legislation, infrastructure spending, the overreach of the military industrial complex, the endless war against multiple countries that America wages for profit, gun craziness, the poisoning of water supplies. The main thing for Trump is to distract his audience (us) from his own corruption. From the unethical business practices of his past, from his likely connections to rich Russian bastards he had to borrow money from because American investors have long regarded him as a bad risk. Trump went bankrupt six times. Yet, in spite of his horrible record with finances, he has lots of money, and his "brand" has, as Trump's son Eric puts it, "never done better."
Foreign dignitaries play golf at and get pampered at Trump's many resorts. This kind of disgusting exploitation of the dignity of the Executive Branch may some day be fully investigated. It's possible that the Special Investigator in the Russia Probe, Robert Mueller, is digging into enough piles of dirt on Trump that actual crimes will be exposed, and hey, here's an idea, prosecuted, with years of prison time for Trump and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and maybe Ivanka too and her husband Jared Kushner. I expect this to not happen. Rich people avoid jail like nobody's business.
Trump sent Jared Kushner to Israel to talk peace with Benjamin Netanyahu, something akin to having Henry Kissinger meet with Heinrich Himmler to discuss how peace can be brought about by killing everyone of a certain race. Problem solved if the Palestinians just continue to accept that they're damned and would be better off walking into the Mediterranean Sea en masse. Jared Kushner, emissary of peace. A news anchor (sounding like an idiot) on MSNBC a few days ago wondered, right before going to commercials, if Kushner will be able to accomplish anything related to peace in the Middle East on this trip.
The answer is no.
Kushner a short while back made a phone call to Lockheed Martin's CEO which developed into the 110 billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Kushner is thus complicit in the mass murder of Yemeni civilians, but so is his father-in-law, and Barack Obama. They should all play golf together. In Hell.
I may have written above about 51 Pegasi's weird hot planet because it reminds me of the smallness of everything here. This is just one world out of trillions. The possibilities that exist in regard to intelligent life are unlimited. Worlds may exist with political situations that would make us shudder to think about, or maybe we would recognize situations we've experienced.
I had an idea for a story that involves super-powerful telescopes picking up images and transmissions from a distant planet going through a worldwide war. The transmissions get broadcast on our various media. We can just observe as the planet goes through hell in its war, but it becomes a very popular reality show here as we spend time contemplating the destruction of distant aliens annihilating themselves over questions of nationality, resources, religion, and race.
Here and now we have a reality show in Washington with a reality show host who has no moral center, someone any sane person wouldn't leave alone with their daughter. Yet, because he's the president, we're supposed to show respect, even though, like Richard Nixon, he really does look exactly like the crook that he is.
Vic Neptune
I have no specific topic to write about this time, just impressions. I watched a show called Edge of the Universe, a three part program dealing with outer space issues. The first episode deals with the search for extrasolar planets. In 1995 a Swiss astronomer found the first one, a Jupiter-like gas giant orbiting the star 51 Pegasi. The discovery was startling enough, but the conditions of that star and its companion amazed astronomers. The planet orbits its star at a mere distance of four million miles. By comparison, our planet closest to the Sun, Mercury, is thirty-six million miles out and is one hot motherfucker of a planet. 51 Pegasi's planet is a ball of superheated gases and metals. Astronomers think the planet migrated inwards toward the star over time and is in the process of being evaporated.
Since the 1990s, hundreds of planets have been found, including gas giants much farther out from their parent stars, like Jupiter and Saturn. Earth-sized planets have been found, as well as "super-Earths," rocky planets like ours, but huge, reminding me of science fiction writer Jack Vance's novel, Big Planet, taking place on a huge terrestrial world.
In our galaxy are approximately 200 billion stars. The universe's profusion of galaxies multiplies this number exponentially. Astronomers, for the past two decades, have been finding scores of planets of many types, indicating the now obvious: there are trillions of planets, life is probably a common phenomenon, as are worlds of unimaginable hostility to life. Did God make all this? Did God throw the dice or invent the combinations that chance made infinite? I have no idea nor do I care. I point out what's real in the spacetime continuum we inhabit. The possibilities, oh they are endless. If you listen to early Genesis you'll hear Peter Gabriel sing, if you listen to later Genesis, you'll hear Phil Collins. Both eras of that band are worth listening to.
Someone once told me that my talk in conversations goes on tangents. I mention things that pop into my head that don't necessarily follow the topic. I do this because I'm a scatterbrain. I like Jackson Pollack's paintings because they look like organized arrangements of randomness. His artistry appeals to me, but a scatterbrained politician is not what I want running anything important. Think of Donald Trump's Twitter account as his canvas. He tweets something last month, something important, like saying James Comey better hope "there are no tapes of our conversations." This tweet caused Congress to ask Trump to release all "tapes," if any. Today, he tweeted that there are no "tapes." (I put "tapes" in quotation marks because we live in a digital era and reel to reel and cassette tapes are old-fashioned except in the lingo of middle-aged to old people).
The "tapes" tweet led to Comey taking action to cover his ass, knowing he would someday be asked under oath about his nine conversations with Trump. Comey, testifying, said he hoped there are tapes. This left Trump with no leverage regarding these alleged tapes. In fact, as has been proven today, he used the "tapes" tweet as a threat against Comey, an attempt, now proven lame, to put the scare into the former FBI director, a man who's now proven he's not intimidated by dickheads like Donald Trump whose idea of talking tough comes from movies.
Trump's admission today, in a tweet, that there are no tapes of his conversations with Comey, shows him to be a buffoon. He brought up the "tapes" idea in the first place, just as he manufactured the "wiretapping" of Trump Tower claim. Throw out to the news media an idea of being persecuted, let the news people and politicians chew on it, distract us from what's important, like health care legislation, infrastructure spending, the overreach of the military industrial complex, the endless war against multiple countries that America wages for profit, gun craziness, the poisoning of water supplies. The main thing for Trump is to distract his audience (us) from his own corruption. From the unethical business practices of his past, from his likely connections to rich Russian bastards he had to borrow money from because American investors have long regarded him as a bad risk. Trump went bankrupt six times. Yet, in spite of his horrible record with finances, he has lots of money, and his "brand" has, as Trump's son Eric puts it, "never done better."
Foreign dignitaries play golf at and get pampered at Trump's many resorts. This kind of disgusting exploitation of the dignity of the Executive Branch may some day be fully investigated. It's possible that the Special Investigator in the Russia Probe, Robert Mueller, is digging into enough piles of dirt on Trump that actual crimes will be exposed, and hey, here's an idea, prosecuted, with years of prison time for Trump and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and maybe Ivanka too and her husband Jared Kushner. I expect this to not happen. Rich people avoid jail like nobody's business.
Trump sent Jared Kushner to Israel to talk peace with Benjamin Netanyahu, something akin to having Henry Kissinger meet with Heinrich Himmler to discuss how peace can be brought about by killing everyone of a certain race. Problem solved if the Palestinians just continue to accept that they're damned and would be better off walking into the Mediterranean Sea en masse. Jared Kushner, emissary of peace. A news anchor (sounding like an idiot) on MSNBC a few days ago wondered, right before going to commercials, if Kushner will be able to accomplish anything related to peace in the Middle East on this trip.
The answer is no.
Kushner a short while back made a phone call to Lockheed Martin's CEO which developed into the 110 billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Kushner is thus complicit in the mass murder of Yemeni civilians, but so is his father-in-law, and Barack Obama. They should all play golf together. In Hell.
I may have written above about 51 Pegasi's weird hot planet because it reminds me of the smallness of everything here. This is just one world out of trillions. The possibilities that exist in regard to intelligent life are unlimited. Worlds may exist with political situations that would make us shudder to think about, or maybe we would recognize situations we've experienced.
I had an idea for a story that involves super-powerful telescopes picking up images and transmissions from a distant planet going through a worldwide war. The transmissions get broadcast on our various media. We can just observe as the planet goes through hell in its war, but it becomes a very popular reality show here as we spend time contemplating the destruction of distant aliens annihilating themselves over questions of nationality, resources, religion, and race.
Here and now we have a reality show in Washington with a reality show host who has no moral center, someone any sane person wouldn't leave alone with their daughter. Yet, because he's the president, we're supposed to show respect, even though, like Richard Nixon, he really does look exactly like the crook that he is.
Vic Neptune
Friday, June 9, 2017
It's Quite Simple, Senator--the President is a Dick
Yesterday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, lied to journalists in a non-televised briefing session. Earlier, former FBI Director James Comey had testified under oath before Senators that he wrote down detailed accounts of conversations with President Trump after their meetings, doing this because he figured it was likely the president would lie about what they talked about.
Comey insisted that he had never taken notes to cover himself after meetings with Presidents Bush and Obama. Trump, though, presented something special: an untrustworthy man with no sense of the separation of powers. His demand of loyalty from Comey ignored the FBI Director's Constitutional Oath. To the Senators, Comey referenced the symbolic blindfold covering the eyes of Justice. As a major official in the Department of Justice, he wasn't supposed to move that blindfold to do the top person in the Executive Branch a favor; i.e. drop whatever FBI investigation there might be into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's undisclosed ties to Russia and to other countries like Turkey.
Trump, according to Comey, said, "I hope you'll drop the Michael Flynn investigation." Right-wingers, Trump apologists, Trump himself, Republican politicians on the committee questioning Comey, pundits, have seized on this word, "hope," saying it doesn't represent an order given by the president to Comey to do anything about the Flynn investigation. Comey has been chastised even by Democratic Senators, like Dianne Feinstein, for not standing up to Trump and giving the head of the Executive Branch a lecture about separation of powers and how it would've been unethical to drop the Flynn probe. Apparently, Feinstein and other critics using this line against Comey, have never met Donald Trump or seen him on television during the last three or four decades. Apparently, they're unaware of what an overbearing and godawful human being he is; how he's convinced of his own rightness at all times, how he falls into the category of Type A personalities that one tends to act agreeable around because he's such a horrible person that disagreeing with him makes for some very difficult minutes. Comey knew from Trump's use of the words "I hope that," that the leader of the free world was passing on his personal wish that the head of the investigations of federal crimes in the United States look away in regard to Flynn.
There's a thing built in to some people. It's called a bullshit detector. Comey used his bullshit detector whenever he met with Trump. He wasn't about to act like he was the president's personal servant, following orders as someone "loyal" would do. Comey told Trump he could be "honestly loyal." In other words, if Comey were to feel it was coming from honesty, he'd be loyal--anything else would mean a dishonest relationship with the president, something Trump is no doubt used to in his own personal and professional lives.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders (daughter of professional presidential candidate Mike Huckabee) told her lie in defense of Donald Trump; thus, she's out to prove her loyalty, not to the Constitution, but to an individual. She told her lie in a press conference setting unusual in that there were no TV cameras present. The setting itself, something we Americans can't see as with the typical press conference, betrays how much the architects of the Trump administration know they and their leader are full of shit. Why not let the press have their regular televised press conferences? Because the administration seeks to hide its activities, its unprofessionalism, its ship-of-state-with-perforated-hull nature. They must think they're succeeding, to some degree, even though the administration is damaged, and a majority of Americans can see the damage.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "I can definitively say the president is not a liar. It's frankly insulting that the question would be asked."
The adverb, "definitively," is the weird part of the sentence. It implies a conclusion reached "decisively and with authority," according to the dictionary. On the one hand, if we imagine a meeting held yesterday after Comey's testimony during which Trump's people concluded that it would be good to say that their boss isn't a liar, her statement is not a lie. On the other hand, declaring that Trump isn't a liar is a provable lie. He is so obviously a liar that the examples have occurred on a daily basis over the last several years. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Trump lied about this repeatedly; what's more, his mendacity was vicious, because he did it to undermine someone's credibility, putting their citizenship at question for political gain.
Trump lied about the size of the crowds in Washington during his inaugural ceremony, comparing them (my cock is bigger than yours) to Obama's crowd in 2009. Photos of the two events show markedly different crowd sizes, with Obama's noticeably larger. One should logically say, "Who gives a shit about such a ridiculous thing?" but Trump actually does care about this kind of bullshit. He even lies about the size of his hands, which, for a man of his overall girth and height, are smaller than you would expect.
Comey, it should be emphasized, appeared before the Senators and told his tale under oath. When Trump talks his shit he is never under oath. We have two people to consider: one of them, Comey, a government servant for many years whose emphasis in career has been law enforcement--someone not demonstrating in the past any tendency to lie for a living. The other is Donald Trump, a stinkier lying sack of shit it would be hard to imagine. That politicians and pundits of the right are even clinging to the absurd idea that Donald Trump is a paragon of truth-telling, shows the degree to which they've skated on easy ice in the past, convincing many Americans to fall for some of the greatest lies, like WMD in Iraq, the 2000 election, and the "greatness" of Ronald Reagan. Paul Ryan even said that Trump, being new to government, doesn't necessarily understand all the nuances. You mean, Ryan, that he doesn't get the idea that you don't demand loyalty from the FBI Director, that that's the kind of thing a third world dictator does?
Poor Donald, he just doesn't get it, goes the argument. He's learning. His cavalier attitude towards Comey's job in the Justice Department means only that he didn't understand the separation of powers. Why the hell didn't Comey point this out to him? Trump, innocent Donald Trump, just doesn't get all these government complications. He's like an ordinary man, the kind that didn't learn anything in 9th grade American history class. That ignorance is to be celebrated, not judged.
When Trump found out that he could, technically, fire James Comey, he did so in the form of a letter written by the Deputy Attorney General, who's the acting Attorney General since the actual Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has had to recuse himself from the Flynn probe, since Sessions himself has Russia ties, and has so far proven to be another albatross around Trump's wrinkled neck.
Trump didn't know that Comey had taken notes of their nine meetings. The President tweeted about "tapes" that may or may not exist, hoping to scare Comey, but Comey in his testimony said that he hopes there are "tapes." He has the air of a man who isn't bullshitting. "Tapes" would prove his point. Trump, if he has them, would never voluntarily release them because he knows, just as anyone with a bullshit detector knows, that Comey's words about their encounters ring true.
Trump can still be a liar even if it's been decided by hidden committee that he "definitively" is not. It looks more and more like the Trump administration, led by its truth-telling saint of a president, is really just a teetering business run by an incompetent businessman whose main talent is convincing vulnerable people to believe in him--before he fucks them, hard.
Vic Neptune
'
Yesterday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, lied to journalists in a non-televised briefing session. Earlier, former FBI Director James Comey had testified under oath before Senators that he wrote down detailed accounts of conversations with President Trump after their meetings, doing this because he figured it was likely the president would lie about what they talked about.
Comey insisted that he had never taken notes to cover himself after meetings with Presidents Bush and Obama. Trump, though, presented something special: an untrustworthy man with no sense of the separation of powers. His demand of loyalty from Comey ignored the FBI Director's Constitutional Oath. To the Senators, Comey referenced the symbolic blindfold covering the eyes of Justice. As a major official in the Department of Justice, he wasn't supposed to move that blindfold to do the top person in the Executive Branch a favor; i.e. drop whatever FBI investigation there might be into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's undisclosed ties to Russia and to other countries like Turkey.
Trump, according to Comey, said, "I hope you'll drop the Michael Flynn investigation." Right-wingers, Trump apologists, Trump himself, Republican politicians on the committee questioning Comey, pundits, have seized on this word, "hope," saying it doesn't represent an order given by the president to Comey to do anything about the Flynn investigation. Comey has been chastised even by Democratic Senators, like Dianne Feinstein, for not standing up to Trump and giving the head of the Executive Branch a lecture about separation of powers and how it would've been unethical to drop the Flynn probe. Apparently, Feinstein and other critics using this line against Comey, have never met Donald Trump or seen him on television during the last three or four decades. Apparently, they're unaware of what an overbearing and godawful human being he is; how he's convinced of his own rightness at all times, how he falls into the category of Type A personalities that one tends to act agreeable around because he's such a horrible person that disagreeing with him makes for some very difficult minutes. Comey knew from Trump's use of the words "I hope that," that the leader of the free world was passing on his personal wish that the head of the investigations of federal crimes in the United States look away in regard to Flynn.
There's a thing built in to some people. It's called a bullshit detector. Comey used his bullshit detector whenever he met with Trump. He wasn't about to act like he was the president's personal servant, following orders as someone "loyal" would do. Comey told Trump he could be "honestly loyal." In other words, if Comey were to feel it was coming from honesty, he'd be loyal--anything else would mean a dishonest relationship with the president, something Trump is no doubt used to in his own personal and professional lives.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders (daughter of professional presidential candidate Mike Huckabee) told her lie in defense of Donald Trump; thus, she's out to prove her loyalty, not to the Constitution, but to an individual. She told her lie in a press conference setting unusual in that there were no TV cameras present. The setting itself, something we Americans can't see as with the typical press conference, betrays how much the architects of the Trump administration know they and their leader are full of shit. Why not let the press have their regular televised press conferences? Because the administration seeks to hide its activities, its unprofessionalism, its ship-of-state-with-perforated-hull nature. They must think they're succeeding, to some degree, even though the administration is damaged, and a majority of Americans can see the damage.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "I can definitively say the president is not a liar. It's frankly insulting that the question would be asked."
The adverb, "definitively," is the weird part of the sentence. It implies a conclusion reached "decisively and with authority," according to the dictionary. On the one hand, if we imagine a meeting held yesterday after Comey's testimony during which Trump's people concluded that it would be good to say that their boss isn't a liar, her statement is not a lie. On the other hand, declaring that Trump isn't a liar is a provable lie. He is so obviously a liar that the examples have occurred on a daily basis over the last several years. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Trump lied about this repeatedly; what's more, his mendacity was vicious, because he did it to undermine someone's credibility, putting their citizenship at question for political gain.
Trump lied about the size of the crowds in Washington during his inaugural ceremony, comparing them (my cock is bigger than yours) to Obama's crowd in 2009. Photos of the two events show markedly different crowd sizes, with Obama's noticeably larger. One should logically say, "Who gives a shit about such a ridiculous thing?" but Trump actually does care about this kind of bullshit. He even lies about the size of his hands, which, for a man of his overall girth and height, are smaller than you would expect.
Comey, it should be emphasized, appeared before the Senators and told his tale under oath. When Trump talks his shit he is never under oath. We have two people to consider: one of them, Comey, a government servant for many years whose emphasis in career has been law enforcement--someone not demonstrating in the past any tendency to lie for a living. The other is Donald Trump, a stinkier lying sack of shit it would be hard to imagine. That politicians and pundits of the right are even clinging to the absurd idea that Donald Trump is a paragon of truth-telling, shows the degree to which they've skated on easy ice in the past, convincing many Americans to fall for some of the greatest lies, like WMD in Iraq, the 2000 election, and the "greatness" of Ronald Reagan. Paul Ryan even said that Trump, being new to government, doesn't necessarily understand all the nuances. You mean, Ryan, that he doesn't get the idea that you don't demand loyalty from the FBI Director, that that's the kind of thing a third world dictator does?
Poor Donald, he just doesn't get it, goes the argument. He's learning. His cavalier attitude towards Comey's job in the Justice Department means only that he didn't understand the separation of powers. Why the hell didn't Comey point this out to him? Trump, innocent Donald Trump, just doesn't get all these government complications. He's like an ordinary man, the kind that didn't learn anything in 9th grade American history class. That ignorance is to be celebrated, not judged.
When Trump found out that he could, technically, fire James Comey, he did so in the form of a letter written by the Deputy Attorney General, who's the acting Attorney General since the actual Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has had to recuse himself from the Flynn probe, since Sessions himself has Russia ties, and has so far proven to be another albatross around Trump's wrinkled neck.
Trump didn't know that Comey had taken notes of their nine meetings. The President tweeted about "tapes" that may or may not exist, hoping to scare Comey, but Comey in his testimony said that he hopes there are "tapes." He has the air of a man who isn't bullshitting. "Tapes" would prove his point. Trump, if he has them, would never voluntarily release them because he knows, just as anyone with a bullshit detector knows, that Comey's words about their encounters ring true.
Trump can still be a liar even if it's been decided by hidden committee that he "definitively" is not. It looks more and more like the Trump administration, led by its truth-telling saint of a president, is really just a teetering business run by an incompetent businessman whose main talent is convincing vulnerable people to believe in him--before he fucks them, hard.
Vic Neptune
'
Sunday, June 4, 2017
Red Paint Upsets More Than Blood
In 1979, Steve Martin released his third album, Comedy Is Not Pretty! It may seem quaint to young people used to getting their laughs from funny YouTube videos, but in the 1960s and 1970s, albums featuring comedians like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Bill Cosby (long before we knew unpleasant things about him), and Richard Pryor were common listening entertainment in American households. The second vinyl LP I ever owned was Bill Cosby's fifteenth comedy album, Fat Albert, released in 1973 and recorded the previous year at Harrah's hotel and casino in Reno, Nevada. I didn't own any Steve Martin albums, but I heard them. In 1979, prominent comedians on television, like Martin, stood out. Now, comedians and their profession are a main part of entertainment culture. They branch out into film acting, they do cable TV specials, their tweets get quoted, they host TV shows.
One comedian, Kathy Griffin, is in a great deal of trouble for posting a photo of herself holding an obvious replica of President Trump's severed head, face all bloody with red stuff that Griffin, as part of her performance art piece, telegraphed beforehand (lamely and dulling the overall effect) to her social media audience as being fake.
The predictable outrage following this released picture, the facsimile of Trump's ugly visage blurred, just as the severed heads of ISIS victims are also obscured in American news, followed the usual pattern. Statements of shock, a nation affronted by an unthinkable act of grotesque mockery of the President of the United States, the same man who, around the time of Griffin's political statement, went to Saudi Arabia, a 110 billion dollar arms deal at the ready for a nation with a government that beheads convicted criminals in public.
If Griffin was thinking of the desert Kingdom's predilection for judiciary decapitation when she had the controversial and "outrageous" photo taken, I don't know. I do know she hates Donald Trump; that's obvious. She shares this emotion with (conservative estimate) 150 million Americans. I hate him, it's likely you also hate him. He's a hateful man. Nothing he says or does inspires my admiration. That Kathy Griffin, employed (and now fired) by CNN for their annual New Year's Eve countdowns from Times Square, chose to display a "severed President Trump head" means very little to my life. I understand that the Secret Service probably plans, if they haven't done so already, to have a talk with Griffin, but she's also been receiving a more than average number of death threats.
Another thing I understand is that mockery of political leaders is tolerated less in a state losing its grip on free speech, especially when aided, as in America, by corporate news media The student-organized anti-Nazi White Rose movement in wartime Germany was investigated and dealt with harshly, its leaders guillotined. Their main act against the state was anti-Hitler leaflet distribution.
While Trump has been "grotesquely and disgustingly" mocked by a comedian, Kathy Griffin's CNN colleague and cohost of the New Year's Eve show, Anderson Cooper, expressed his disgust for what Kathy did, saying enough anti-Griffin and anti-friendship things about her in a reaction tweet to guarantee him continued access to the monstrous pieces of shit, like Trump, who run the country. Fuck you, Anderson Cooper. You could've said, "I think Kathy went too far--her action disrespects the office of the Presidency, but her photo does point out the literally bloody irony of America's relationship with an oil dictatorship implicated, as President Trump himself has pointed out, in 9/11 and in the support of ISIS."
Rocker Ted Nugent, a right wing outspoken gun nut who avoided military service in Vietnam by spending the thirty days before his draft board hearing eating only junk food and drinking Pepsi, letting personal hygiene lapse to the point of pissing and shitting in his pants so that the military recruiters could easily detect his rankness--thus making him seem mentally and physically unfit--had his own run-in with the Secret Service after threatening President Obama's life during a radio interview. Nugent, since then, has been meek. He speaks of fellow draft dodger Donald Trump with reverence, because the President "respects the Constitution." He respects it so much that he wants to get the Supreme Court to consider the Muslim Ban, an important piece of the hate rhetoric that helped get him elected.
My point, I suppose, is that a comedian showing a fake red-painted head representing Donald Trump, is hardly the worst thing we have to worry about. Griffin, unlike Nugent, did not threaten Donald Trump's life. She used the head as a symbol of a bloody, disgusting, violent man currently running our country, a man lacking the sense to accept climate change as a reality, thus making him dangerous to all life on Earth, as well as the dangers stemming from his presidential prerogative of maiming and killing people in the Middle East and elsewhere, the job perk inherited from Obama who did the same thing. Why Ted Nugent doesn't admire Obama for sending drone strikes against American citizens in Yemen, for killing children there, for not closing Guantanamo Bay prison, for running an Orwellian national security state which he passed on to Trump, along with Obama's silence when Trump kills masses of Syrian and Iraqi civilians, is something only Nugent knows the answer to, but I think it involves the sentence, "I have no integrity."
Nugent's advantage over Griffin, in all this, is that he's a man. Yes, he got visited by the Secret Service. That, by the way, would make an excellent reality TV program I would love to watch. But the reaction to his radio broadcasted death threat against Obama made an ultimately insignificant ripple. Griffin's use of a prop, one hitting a nerve in Americans' fear centers about terrorism, added pictorially to the overreaction, which came also from Trump's family, some of whom just visited the Kingdom where heads get chopped off regularly.
Griffin's main problem, concept-wise, comes from her assumption that a dead Donald Trump would automatically make things better in America. It would make sense for her photo to have included, in the background, a sharply dressed Vice President Mike Pence, hand over his heart, ready to take over and push for a vicious reduction in women's reproductive rights. Pence is the flip side of a Donald Trump overthrow. The Left, such as it is in this country, is blind on this issue.
Pence, unlike Trump, is competently evil.
Vic Neptune
In 1979, Steve Martin released his third album, Comedy Is Not Pretty! It may seem quaint to young people used to getting their laughs from funny YouTube videos, but in the 1960s and 1970s, albums featuring comedians like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Bill Cosby (long before we knew unpleasant things about him), and Richard Pryor were common listening entertainment in American households. The second vinyl LP I ever owned was Bill Cosby's fifteenth comedy album, Fat Albert, released in 1973 and recorded the previous year at Harrah's hotel and casino in Reno, Nevada. I didn't own any Steve Martin albums, but I heard them. In 1979, prominent comedians on television, like Martin, stood out. Now, comedians and their profession are a main part of entertainment culture. They branch out into film acting, they do cable TV specials, their tweets get quoted, they host TV shows.
One comedian, Kathy Griffin, is in a great deal of trouble for posting a photo of herself holding an obvious replica of President Trump's severed head, face all bloody with red stuff that Griffin, as part of her performance art piece, telegraphed beforehand (lamely and dulling the overall effect) to her social media audience as being fake.
The predictable outrage following this released picture, the facsimile of Trump's ugly visage blurred, just as the severed heads of ISIS victims are also obscured in American news, followed the usual pattern. Statements of shock, a nation affronted by an unthinkable act of grotesque mockery of the President of the United States, the same man who, around the time of Griffin's political statement, went to Saudi Arabia, a 110 billion dollar arms deal at the ready for a nation with a government that beheads convicted criminals in public.
If Griffin was thinking of the desert Kingdom's predilection for judiciary decapitation when she had the controversial and "outrageous" photo taken, I don't know. I do know she hates Donald Trump; that's obvious. She shares this emotion with (conservative estimate) 150 million Americans. I hate him, it's likely you also hate him. He's a hateful man. Nothing he says or does inspires my admiration. That Kathy Griffin, employed (and now fired) by CNN for their annual New Year's Eve countdowns from Times Square, chose to display a "severed President Trump head" means very little to my life. I understand that the Secret Service probably plans, if they haven't done so already, to have a talk with Griffin, but she's also been receiving a more than average number of death threats.
Another thing I understand is that mockery of political leaders is tolerated less in a state losing its grip on free speech, especially when aided, as in America, by corporate news media The student-organized anti-Nazi White Rose movement in wartime Germany was investigated and dealt with harshly, its leaders guillotined. Their main act against the state was anti-Hitler leaflet distribution.
While Trump has been "grotesquely and disgustingly" mocked by a comedian, Kathy Griffin's CNN colleague and cohost of the New Year's Eve show, Anderson Cooper, expressed his disgust for what Kathy did, saying enough anti-Griffin and anti-friendship things about her in a reaction tweet to guarantee him continued access to the monstrous pieces of shit, like Trump, who run the country. Fuck you, Anderson Cooper. You could've said, "I think Kathy went too far--her action disrespects the office of the Presidency, but her photo does point out the literally bloody irony of America's relationship with an oil dictatorship implicated, as President Trump himself has pointed out, in 9/11 and in the support of ISIS."
Rocker Ted Nugent, a right wing outspoken gun nut who avoided military service in Vietnam by spending the thirty days before his draft board hearing eating only junk food and drinking Pepsi, letting personal hygiene lapse to the point of pissing and shitting in his pants so that the military recruiters could easily detect his rankness--thus making him seem mentally and physically unfit--had his own run-in with the Secret Service after threatening President Obama's life during a radio interview. Nugent, since then, has been meek. He speaks of fellow draft dodger Donald Trump with reverence, because the President "respects the Constitution." He respects it so much that he wants to get the Supreme Court to consider the Muslim Ban, an important piece of the hate rhetoric that helped get him elected.
My point, I suppose, is that a comedian showing a fake red-painted head representing Donald Trump, is hardly the worst thing we have to worry about. Griffin, unlike Nugent, did not threaten Donald Trump's life. She used the head as a symbol of a bloody, disgusting, violent man currently running our country, a man lacking the sense to accept climate change as a reality, thus making him dangerous to all life on Earth, as well as the dangers stemming from his presidential prerogative of maiming and killing people in the Middle East and elsewhere, the job perk inherited from Obama who did the same thing. Why Ted Nugent doesn't admire Obama for sending drone strikes against American citizens in Yemen, for killing children there, for not closing Guantanamo Bay prison, for running an Orwellian national security state which he passed on to Trump, along with Obama's silence when Trump kills masses of Syrian and Iraqi civilians, is something only Nugent knows the answer to, but I think it involves the sentence, "I have no integrity."
Nugent's advantage over Griffin, in all this, is that he's a man. Yes, he got visited by the Secret Service. That, by the way, would make an excellent reality TV program I would love to watch. But the reaction to his radio broadcasted death threat against Obama made an ultimately insignificant ripple. Griffin's use of a prop, one hitting a nerve in Americans' fear centers about terrorism, added pictorially to the overreaction, which came also from Trump's family, some of whom just visited the Kingdom where heads get chopped off regularly.
Griffin's main problem, concept-wise, comes from her assumption that a dead Donald Trump would automatically make things better in America. It would make sense for her photo to have included, in the background, a sharply dressed Vice President Mike Pence, hand over his heart, ready to take over and push for a vicious reduction in women's reproductive rights. Pence is the flip side of a Donald Trump overthrow. The Left, such as it is in this country, is blind on this issue.
Pence, unlike Trump, is competently evil.
Vic Neptune
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