So, Trump’s fucking U.N. speech…

by 3:23 pm. It has 343 Comments.

I couldn’t bear to watch the speech live. Trump could read MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech and ruin it with his horrible snuffling and fake-tough-guy patois. Saw a couple of clips on Twitter. This one seems to be getting the most attention:

God, how embarrassing. Resorting to the transcript is just as cringe-inducing, but at least you’re spared the quivering jowls, rigid hair-helmet and bully-boy voice. Here are some morsels I found notable for one reason or another:

It is a profound honor to stand here in my home city, as a representative of the American people, to address the people of the world.

Standard boilerplate, but I will never recover from the deep sense of shame that washes over me every time I confront anew the fact that this buffoon represents my country. I’ll always feel it, even if President Gillibrand is followed by Presidents Kamala Harris, Ted Lieu, Joaquin Castro, et al, and the Republican Party atrophies like a vestigial tail, drops off and is forgotten by history. This shame is eternal.

Of course, the speech had elements of a campaign rally:

Fortunately, the United States has done very well since Election Day last November 8th. The stock market is at an all-time high — a record. Unemployment is at its lowest level in 16 years, and because of our regulatory and other reforms, we have more people working in the United States today than ever before. Companies are moving back, creating job growth the likes of which our country has not seen in a very long time. And it has just been announced that we will be spending almost $700 billion on our military and defense.

Mostly lies and distortions, except the last sentence. The crowing about the $700B in military spending stands in sharp contrast to the spectacle now playing out in Congress, where the GOP is attempting to gut healthcare for millions of people so they can funnel that money to the rich in the form of tax cuts.

There’s your healthcare and infrastructure, folks. If it’s not streaming into a fat cat’s pockets via tax cuts, it is being poured into the insatiable maw of a military machine that already consumes more than what the next eight top militarized nations spend combined. And guess who gets fat off those defense contracts?

But, moving on, Trump reminds us that America is great because it developed an indeterminate number of pillars:

It was in the same period, exactly 70 years ago, that the United States developed the Marshall Plan to help restore Europe. Those three beautiful pillars — they’re pillars of peace, sovereignty, security, and prosperity.

The White House speech team can’t count.

But enough about peace, prosperity, blah blah blah — who threatens us? “Radical Islamic terrorism,” Iran and North Korea. Not Russia! Though Trump does eventually mention the 1,600 lb. bear in the room:

I want to thank China and Russia for joining the vote to impose sanctions, along with all of the other members of the Security Council.

There was no mention of Russia’s flagrant interference in our democracy, of course. In light of that, this bit toward the end was unintentionally ironic:

The true question for the United Nations today, for people all over the world who hope for better lives for themselves and their children, is a basic one: Are we still patriots? Do we love our nations enough to protect their sovereignty and to take ownership of their futures?

Apparently not, if you’re a Republican, and you’ve grafted your husk of a party onto the weak, vain, unprincipled, incoherent and erratic clown who addressed the United Nations today. The rest of us will have to be the patriots.


The Stockely Verdict is In: Not Guilty

by 3:33 pm. It has 141 Comments.

The verdict in the trial of ex-St. Louis police officer Jason Stockely for the killing of Anthony Lamar Smith is in: not guilty.

ST. LOUIS • Former St. Louis police Officer Jason Stockley was found not guilty Friday of murdering a man while on duty.

St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson’s highly anticipated verdict found the white former St. Louis police officer not guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the December 2011 shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith, a black drug suspect, after a high-speed pursuit and crash.

Activists, with support from some of the city’s black clergy, had pledged disruptive protests ahead of Wilson’s verdict.

Wilson addressed such statements in his order: “A judge shall not be swayed by partisan interests, public clamor or fear of criticism.”

Immediately after the verdict was issued, protesters gathered downtown near Tucker Boulevard and Market Street. They congregated on a ramp to Interstate 64 off Clark Street, but were blocked by police from entering the highway. Protesters then headed to police headquarters.

As the protests grew, Wells Fargo, Stifel and Nestle Purina PetCare sent their thousands of employees home for the day.

Here’s the entire 30 page ruling. I’d recommend starting on page 22 if you want a good understanding of Judge Wilson’s thinking. Here’s just one little bit.

Law enforcement and the National Guard are out in force, deploying before the verdict was read. Hopefully the peaceful protests and demonstrations won’t devolve into violence.

We’ll keep and eye out and post updates as appropriate.

Stay frosty!


Trump Triggered

by 1:52 pm. It has 67 Comments.

Twitler was extra-triggered on Twitter this morning, maybe because his angry white boy base is pissed off about the DACA thing. How mad are they? Here’s one drama llama ritually burning his MAGA hat — and likely leaving indelible scorch-marks on his mama’s glass patio tabletop:

His mom probably has the MAGAt out there right now chiseling globs of melted Chinese polyester off the table, but message sent! Via Raw Story, burning MAGA hats was a thing yesterday, and some hat torchers even had the good sense to use metal buckets to contain the conflagrations.

So what to do when you’re a narcissist demagogue who craves the adulation of racist shitheads the way a crackhead yearns for that next rock? Toss some big red hunks of hate to the base:

So many lies stuffed into five 140-character falsehood parcels. To partially unpack:

1. ESPN isn’t getting dumped, and its analyst, Jemele Hill, told the truth. Trump is a white supremacist who discriminated against minorities in business, publicly advocated lynching the innocent Central Park Five, rose to national prominence on the racist birther crusade, regularly retweets racist garbage from fellow white supremacists and can’t unequivocally condemn white supremacy. He’s a white supremacist. Period.

2. ISIL hasn’t been in existence for eight years, and opposition to it is led by people in the region, not Donald Trump. The people who deserve credit for its defeat are the Iraqis, Kurds, Syrians, etc., who have been fighting and dying there, not Donald Fucking Trump, but it’s hardly surprising that, as a white supremacist, he’d attempt to steal credit from the “wogs.”

3. No one from a travel ban country has killed an American on U.S. soil in four decades, and security experts say the ban has done fuck-all to make us safer and undermines efforts to combat terrorism by alienating allies.

4. Loser white supremacist terrorists are currently a greater threat to Americans than foreign jihadis, but Trump can’t stop opening his big fat yap and minimizing white supremacist terrorist violence. He did it again yesterday.

5. After claiming he didn’t want to denounce Nazis prematurely after Charlottesville, Trump threw caution to the wind and weighed in on this morning’s terror attack in London, earning a rebuke from Theresa May.

He’s probably said other idiotic things since I started typing this. Trump is a daily embarrassment. I try to stay optimistic about our ability to survive this presidency intact, but honestly, I’m not sure we do. The shame alone might prove fatal.


Heroes and Zeros (Open Thread)

by 8:55 pm. It has 191 Comments.

I’m watching Chris Hayes while waiting for Rachel Maddow’s interview with Hillary Clinton at 9 pm. Hayes is interviewing Michael Moore. I’m so fucking sick of Michael Moore.

Moore did some good work in the 80s and 90s. I used to be a fan. But he’s been as stale as a popcorn fart for decades.

Apparently Moore has a Broadway show now. I’d rather sit through “Cats” as performed by Alvin and the Motherfucking Chipmunks.

My husband is something of a Bernie Bro. He voted for Sanders in primary. He’s not stupid; he voted for Clinton in the general and shares my horror and disgust with Trump.

But he hopes Sanders runs again, and he argues with me when I call Sanders a self-aggrandizing phony. When I mentioned I wanted to watch Maddow’s interview with Clinton, he rolled his eyes and said she’s just peddling a book.

When I responded (somewhat bitterly!) that no one seemed to object to Sanders peddling HIS book, and gosh, isn’t it something that Beltway pundits aren’t telling Sanders to sit down and shut up, he said, “Fine! We can watch your hero!”

I replied, “Hillary Clinton isn’t my hero.” And then I said, “Wait. You know what? Yes, she is. She is my hero.”

And I realized it was true. It wasn’t true in 2007 and 2008, when I was all in for Obama and sick of the Clintons and the sarcastic enemy of PUMAs online. But damn if it isn’t true now. Funny how life has its twists and turns.

Anyhoo, the mister dozed off while Moore was droning on, and regardless, the goddamn remote is mine. Looking forward to watching a conversation between two women I greatly admire.

Open thread!


Actual Censorship

by 4:03 pm. It has 146 Comments.

You know how wingnuts are always meeping about their free speech rights being violated when a private company shitcans someone who reveals himself as a misogynist tool, homophobic prick or racist shithead? And we have to patiently explain yet again that the First Amendment protects people from government censorship, not marketplace fallout from spouting off?

Well, this happened today:

Huckabee-Sanders, a White House official, deems the (accurate!) anti-Trump comments of ESPN analyst Jemele Hill a “firing offense.” I’ll be over here waiting for the anti-political correctness mob to assemble. Right here in this retro phone booth.

Open thread!


Moving on?

by 10:01 am. It has 86 Comments.

Do you agree with Greg Sargent’s read here?

Maybe, but healthcare gains won’t be safe until the GOP is out of power.

In other news, is it just me, or is the shitgibbon’s tone weirdly euphoric?

Trump made similarly odd comments about Hurricane Harvey. He seems twisted enough to believe that BIG things happening on his watch, even BIG disasters, somehow reflect BIGLY on himself. What a fucking psycho. Fuck him, and fuck everyone who voted to put that lunatic in charge.

My family and I, along with millions on the west coast of Florida, are waiting to see what happens with the hurricane track. We’re in an “A” evacuation zone (the worst), so the potential for storm surge will be the deciding factor. There’s really no way to escape the hurricane-force winds if the current models hold true, but we don’t want to be stuck in a flood, so we (people, dogs and chickens) might go stay with relatives inland if it comes to that, even though the wind would be worse inland.

I’ll check in with y’all as I’m able. Open thread!


A Handful Of Quick DACA-Related Thoughts

by 4:15 pm. It has 90 Comments.

 

Others here have said what needs to be said about the Coward Trump and his DACA debacle.  I sign on to all of it.  Here’s my PGO addition:

1: To reinforce a point Charles Pierce made today: DACA folks are Americans. Full stop. They may not be citizens, but they are us; members of our society, our community.  They are not strangers.

Any attempt to frame them as aliens, or criminals — or as developmentally delayed moral agents who need (as John’s former elementary school teacher put it) being taught right from wrong — is both wrong and vile.

2: Task one is whatever we can do to “help” our Republican friends in Congress to fix the steaming pile of rodent droppings the leader of their party just dumped in their punchbowl

Task two, of course, is to teach every national Republican, no matter what goodness may reside in their hearts, bless their hearts, the lessons California GOPsters learned post Prop. 187.

To me that means that the first priority for any political action centers on voting.  I’m going to call my local town Democratic committee first, and see what I can do there to register folks.  Given that my town votes 2-1 D every election, with good turnout, I’m hoping they’re making the same connections they do every election with Ds who need help in New Hampshire.  If I get no joy there, I’ll contact folks directly in neighboring states.

After registration, it’s voter education and then turnout.  That’s it.  The unintended consequence of Trump’s reign of misrule is that a lot more people have become aware that politics does in fact matter where each of us live.  It’s incumbent on all of us to make sure that realization doesn’t go to waste.

Last: again, this isn’t an issue in my home town of Brookline, MA — but this is why we need Democrats running in every office, down to assistant dog catcher.  Neighbors seeking votes mobilize voters as no one else can; if we have people doing so for every office, that’s a big part of the battle right there.  So I’ll be doing what I can to tell those up the food chain in the party that we gotta do what the Republicans, to their tactical credit, have long understood to be vital.

That’s it.  My motto going forward: Get (Stay) Mad. Get (More Than) Even.

Over to y’all.

Caravaggio, Supper at Emmaus,  1601.