Cenk and John Iadarola give us the latest “police blotter” info involving the Gropenfuhrer, with Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the SDNY both coming down with their own sentencing guidelines for Trump fixer Michael Cohen (more here - and yeah, if "Individual 1" thinks he’s in the clear – heh)…
…and Farron Cousins dutifully reminds us that the debt/deficit is something Repugs only care about when Dems are in charge; good job by Cousins to draw a line here to CEOs and Dubya – long past time to do something about the demented, tiny-handed orange maniac in An Oval Office who let the debt get out of control again, but good luck doing that with the Repugs having built on their Senate majority…
…and once again, heckuva job for letting THAT happen, voters in North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri and Florida!...
…and Kyle K. tells us about Franklin Graham defending Trump (and by the way, Kyle, it’s not as if ABORTION is one of the things that Repugs are “down the line” about when it comes to their interpretation of religion – it’s the ONLY thing…and I think Kyle’ “cultural identity” theory is spot-on…NSFW I think)…
…and Hasan Piker gives us another “Breakdown” segment on the U.S. House NC-09 garbage, despite the Gropenfuhrer’s protestations (which, after all, is code for “whites only” of course…Tweety was on the proverbial ball on this issue, though, of course, since we’re talking about Tweety…and good job by incoming Speaker Pelosi here; funny that I’m not hearing any “corporate Dem” caterwauling about her lately, which, as far as I’m concerned, is a welcome respite)…
...and here is some seasonal stuff...
...and since it's December 8th - well, I think you know what comes next.
(And of course, not mentioned in the graphic is this.)
I don’t expect anybody to give a damn about my “hot takes” on anything, but since this is my dumb blog, I’m going to inflict them on you anyway :-).
I get incredibly fed up with Bill Maher whining about political correctness given all of the critical issues we face (and yes, I know he is definitely smart enough to know issue priority since he has said the environment is number one, and he couldn’t be more correct). But when I hear him going off on the PC stuff, I’m tempted to stick a butcher’s knife into the middle of my TV screen (after I unplug it, of course).
And then I come across this story…PETA can take the proverbial running jump at a rolling donut as far as I’m concerned for trying to be the “language police” (so I guess “flog the donkey” is RIGHT OUT, huh?).
And I also came across this – and yes, I know it’s the daughter of song composer Frank Loesser saying that now forced to defend “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” shouldn’t be played any more because of Bill Cosby, but I’m sorry; I still think it’s ridiculous to say that.
Update 12/9/18: OK, I messed this up, so I’ll try it again – it’s the radio stations that are using the Bill Cosby stuff as an excuse not to play the song, and Susan Loesser is now in a position where she’s forced to defend the song by her father. And yeah, I think that’s pretty damn ridiculous on the part of these radio stations – I’m not even going to dignify the possibility that Loesser the composer was seriously trying to encourage anything whatsoever to do with what Cosby did.
Yes, I definitely support #MeToo and the issue of treating women with respect shouldn’t be an issue because YOU SHOULD JUST KNOW TO DO THAT WITHOUT HAVING TO BE TOLD. But I just think we’ve gone way too far with trying to view the past through the often shrouded, fog-colored (and way too orange) prism of the present and we need to “turn this bus around,” you might say.
Now, as pertains to the pic above, John I. of TYT tells us about the latest Repug efforts to undercut legitimately elected Democrats, this time in Michigan (nothing against Cenk or John, but how many times does it need to be pointed out? Repugs don’t want to “govern.” They want to RULE! And they’re NOT INTERESTED in any dissent on that from ANYONE!)…
…also, Hasan Piker gives us what you could call a final-for-good postscript on GHWB (some of this was echoed by Jeremy Scahill, among others – I’m glad that we have this video as a counterpoint to the corporate media mythology about our 41st president…wish we had more of this when The Sainted Ronnie R passed, which is one of the reasons why I came up with this...NSFW)…
…and Robert Reich tells us just how much we need undocumented immigrants in this country, to say nothing of a path to citizenship that is actually sane for these folks who are trying, despite ridiculous odds, to do the right thing…
…and Farron Cousins talks with Scott Hardy of Top Class Actions dot com about lax food regulations making people sick (and so the food producers save about $12 mil, but it looks like we’re paying the price)…
Farron Cousins tells us here about the Repugs in Wisconsin and Michigan doing their best to totally screw over the incoming Democrats voted in to replace many of them, including our beloved commonwealth (and boy, are the last 30 seconds here important – more here)…
…and Kyle K. discusses Jake Tapper talking with Dem U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio about NAFTA 2.0 and hosing our workers (again – with the Gropenfuhrer incentivizing outsourcing, with 93K jobs lost – the Dems had damn well better make an issue of the jobs that disappeared under this lunatic…NSFW)…
…and Sam Seder and The Majority Report tell us that Canadian PM Justin Trudeau apparently found a way to get under the skin of our tiny-handed, demented lunatic preznit recently, referring to him as “Donald” (whatever works at this point)…
…and Mike Malloy tells us that Bruce Springsteen recently said that Trump is “deeply damaged at his core”…I have to think that Generalissimo Trump has provided The Boss with enough material for another recording, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t blame Springsteen at this point if he just wanted to step back and live his life with a minimum of distractions like this…
…and turning to the seasonal stuff, I think that gives us an excuse to hear The Boss in a holiday mood…
…and if you want to get utterly hammered over the holidays, please make sure you give the car keys to somebody sober.
Seth Meyers tells us about Generalissimo Trump’s recent performance at the G20 summit – again, I’m a little behind on some stuff because of the “dead Poppy Bush” thing going on…and “get me out of here,” huh? Just grab a change of clothes, suitcase of Russian money, hop a plane and take off for parts unknown, then – definitely works for me (not in love with the idea of “President Pence,” though, I hasten to add, since that’s a whole other version of crazy too)…
…and gee, maybe we ought to do something about this climate change thing, as John I. tells us…
…oh, and the Dow lost almost 800 points yesterday, and the other major market indices lost ground too (maybe “Tariff Man” should STFU…yeah, good luck with that I know…markets are closed today for Poppy Bush’s funeral)…
…and last Saturday was World AIDS Day (every December 1st), and my bad for forgetting that as I know I have in the past; here is a scene from “And The Band Played On” with Matthew Modine as Dr. Don Francis (and with all of the remembrances about Number 41 currently going on, I don’t think we should forget this either)…
Yep, nothing to see here all right – just Wisconsin Repugs trying to “burn it all down” after voters in that state told them to get out of the governor’s office (and actually, pretty much the state “lege” too despite the gerrymandering as noted here and here)…Rachel Maddow talks with Dem state senator Jon Erpenbach…and as noted here, it looks like the “party of Lincoln” is trying to do the same thing in Michigan…
Update 12/5/18: And yeah, this fits the profile too.
…and I know I’m a little late with this, but it looks like Temple Professor Marc Lamont Hill dared to advocate for the Palestinians, so OF COURSE he must be attacked, censured and fired from his job, right? God forbid ANYONE in our media communicates ANYTHING but lockstep fealty to Israel (so Hill saying he wanted to see a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” is a firing offense? Did I fall asleep and wake up in the Ministry of Love? John of TYT comments along with Michael Shure, Brooke Thomas, and Maytha Alhassen)…
…and speaking of suppressing free speech, Farron Cousins tells us here that federal workers aren’t allowed to say the “I” word when discussing our Treasonous, Tiny-Handed Orange Dictator (heh)…
…and CNN’s Poppy Harlow talks to Carmela Denno, whose family members lost their Youngstown GM jobs and who apparently knows other folks who will experience the same horrific loss, and just in time for the holidays of course…it would be easy for me to ridicule her for voting for Trump, and God only know why anyone would do that given his conduct in the 2016 campaign, but I’m sure she’s a well-meaning person and I hope things work out for the better somehow…if you elect Democrats, you at least have a shot of hanging on to what we once called a fairly secure middle class way of life…you have NO SHOT AT ALL if you support a Republican…
So, what are we to make of our 41st president, George H.W. Bush, when all is said and done?
I suppose, like a lot of people with a larger-than-life public profile, we remember the contradictions more than anything else (or at least I do anyway, for what that’s worth). He served our country bravely in World War II, and he also worked for years in government service as CIA head, U.N. ambassador and ambassador to China. Of course, he in all likelihood helped further his oil business in the process, but I have no knowledge of any illegality in doing so, and I’m not alleging that here (all this and more is here).
Much has been made of the fact that he was often a gracious man, which I think should be recalled also since that commodity is just about extinct any more in public life in particular (his letter to incoming president Bill Clinton in 1992 has been fondly recalled, even though that used to happen on a regular basis when presidencies, and parties, changed hands). He also had enough of a sense of humor to let comedian Dana Carvey do his riff impersonating him as Bush Sr. was leaving the White House.
And as far as I’m concerned, he was basically president for 12 years – I think he had a lot to do with keeping this country largely stable when it came to foreign and domestic matters during his own presidency as well as that of The Sainted Ronnie Reagan. I can recall a time in the 80s when hostages were seized by Iran/Hezbollah on a pretty regular basis, but that came to an end under Poppy Bush. I don’t know all the whys and wherefores on that and how exactly to apportion all of the blame, but I think credit should be handed out where it’s due. He also waged the first Iraq war efficiently, directed by generals who knew what they were doing. Of course, you could also say that the bungling of our ambassador to Iraq at that time, April Glaspie (in which she reportedly gave a green light to Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait) had a lot to do with the ensuing war (as well as the PR campaign that was basically waged by the Kuwaiti government to spur our involvement, including the utterly false claim that Iraqi soldiers were bayoneting babies in incubators taking babies out of incubators, exposing them to cold and letting them die - here).
And boy, do I remember how conservatives HATED Bush 41 for not going into Baghdad, but instead leaving after the Iraqi troops were removed from Kuwait, which was in accordance with the U.N. mandate. Of course, you hear ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on that now, given the ruinous consequences of his son’s version of the Iraq war years later (and when it comes to the first Iraq war, we should recall this and this from Jeremy Scahill).
Basically, when Bush 41 was in the White House, I didn’t have to worry about the future of the Republic like I (and the rest of us) have to do now (and he was spot-on in the pic above of course).
Well, that was all of the good stuff, more or less. The bad?
As Will Bunch noted here, 41 and his administration basically entrapped a drug dealer in DC named Keith Jackson for a photo-op showing crack cocaine, alleging that it was being sold within blocks of the White House. Bush Sr. also helped propel the careers of Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater, who both brought a whole other dimension to “the politics of personal destruction.” The two were instrumental in the 1988 presidential campaign of Bush vs. Dem Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, including the “Willie” Horton ad, claiming that Horton was furloughed by Dukakis and went on to rape a woman (of course, the furlough policy was instituted by Dukakis’ Republican predecessor and was similar to policies in other states including California where Reagan was once governor, but why quibble over details like that when blowing a racist dog whistle?). Basically, Sr. was losing according to some polls that summer and outsourced the dirty work to Ailes and Atwater, as Charlie Pierce recalled here.
To say that the utterly vile 1988 presidential campaign was a precursor to the everyday political attacks we experience every two years any more (having just concluded the latest round of interminable, hateful insanity) is as big an understatement as you can make. And oh yes, that year, we also saw Sr.’s “tough guy” faceoff with Dan Rather over Iran-Contra, with Sr. responding by criticizing Rather for once walking off the set (you could argue whether or not Rather handled that as he should have – it was cringe worthy on both sides – but the veep was not shy about plummeting to new depths, which kind of belied the patrician image we've held of him over time and will, I'm sure, be ever more etched into our corporate media mythology).
And you could also argue that the 1992 election was a gathering of forces that nobody could control completely, with conservatives blaming businessman Ross Perot for siphoning Republican votes and enabling Bill Clinton to win (and Republicans, true to form, responded with an 8-year hissy fit). I would say in response that the candidacy of “Uber Alles” Pat Buchanan had more to do with that than anything; Sr. saw the direction his party was going…I’m not sure he could have stopped it, but I don’t recall that he did much to slow it down either. There was also that business of Sr. looking at his watch during a presidential debate and not knowing how a supermarket scanner worked…of course, if Fox News had been on the air at the time, they would have alleged that both were cowardly liberal plots to discredit a war hero, and related Reddit posts would have been forwarded a few hundred thousand times, leading to a typical conservative vs. liberal screaming match with nothing much accomplished.
Oh, and speaking of Iran-Contra…on his way out the door, Bush Sr. pardoned all of his pals who might have been able to implicate him, as noted here (no pardon or commutation for Jackson, though, who ended up serving 10 years in prison). Number 41 also nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, who of course was confirmed despite the testimony of Prof. Anita Hill.
So yes, let’s give President George Herbert Walker Bush the accolades he deserves, but let’s not forget the foibles, missteps and other bad stuff either (including the episode noted in the clip below)…
...and I was actually OK with the "thousand points of light" thing, even though I guess, since we're talking about a Repug, it also meant undercutting federal agencies and services doing good work also since, as far as Repugs are concerned, gov't can't be good for anything – and you know of course the Gropenfuhrer made fun of what Bush said anyway...
Update 1: Somehow, there HAS to be good in a man who would inspire this.
Update 2: Quite on the other hand (here...h/t Karoli Kuns)...
…and speaking of our Treasonous, Tiny-Handed Orange Dictator, Chris Hayes commented on the recent Michael Cohen testimony, saying basically, that “the president was compromised – full stop” – hats off to Hayes for his “no BS” approach to this (speaking with Dem U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal also)…
…and Thom Hartmann talks with Dem U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley on the latter’s attempt to prevent price gouging in this country by the drug makers…
...and all the best to everyone observing the "celebration of lights" which began last night...
