TWGB: Everything Looks Worse in Black and White

 

The image I went with for today's TrumpWorld Grab-Bag is a black and white rendition of the one-fingered salute his faithful crowd gave him his past Saturday as he gave more of his "American carnage" type of doom-saying with the obvious punchline of how only he could fix it. He's been dipping a little deeper into Qanon signifying lately, and I can only surmise it has a lot to do with their being a goddamn cult that worships him, that they will believe anything, and they are primed as hell for violence. If you are a legally-jeopardized twice-impeached one-term wonder with multiple indictments potentially coming your way and a very limited defense, and are also Donald Trump, insurrectionist, sure, what the hell: 

Threaten mass violence in case of indictments. 

But is it fascism? Oh hell. It isn't history repeating, but it's been rhyming for a while now, ok? If you are looking for exact parallels, hey, maybe that isn't the metric we want to be looking at. I will say that Qanon is obviously a derivative of Nazi (and earlier) anti-Semitic blood-libel though. And that actual demonization of the other creates a permission slip for doing any amount of horror to one's political enemies. Look at this:

Pastor Mark Burns, at Eric Trump and Michael Flynn’s event in Idaho: “I’m coming here to declare war on every demonic, demon-possessed Democrat that comes from the gates of Hell!” pic.twitter.com/URUcHo11V8

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) September 16, 2022

Trump has been using religion as a way to prove legitimacy and religionists (Christian Nationalists) have been using Trump to try and make their religious POV into law.  There are a number of evangelical "prophets" who insist God told them Trump never lost the 2020 election or is definitely coming into power again.   And you know who would have really hated this kind of thing--our founding fathers. This religious enthusiasm is too much. This dictating from the pulpit. This non-separation of church and state. 

A Little Ghoulish

From the First Lady’s twitter account, this appears to be the baby both of whose parents died shielding him from the El Paso shooter. The baby in question was discharged the day before and brought back for Trumps visit. Child is not id’d on @flotus account. But appears to... pic.twitter.com/17L6XQROMS

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 9, 2019

This child will not remember meeting the president, but has this picture to remember it by. This child will also not have memories of his parents. The kind of people who saw this baby's tragic story as a smiling photo opportunity--who would insist upon it, are not the kind of people I want to understand. I just want them the hell out of the White House.

Sarah Sanders Proudly Lies for Trump

Pressed repeatedly on her comments on FBI agents, Sarah Sanders tells @GStephanopoulos, "It was the heat of the moment, meaning that it wasn't a scripted talking point. I'm sorry that I wasn't a robot like the Democratic Party" was about Mueller probe. https://t.co/mOQZNKl1wy pic.twitter.com/y3xcNwVYHg

— ABC News (@ABC) April 19, 2019

I noted a little bit earlier that Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies for Trump and sounds more like him all of the time. The Mueller report revealed that Sarah Sanders lied and admitted she did when she said that she had received messages from people in the FBI who were happy about the firing of Director Jim Comey. Her answer to being pinned down on that was less than great: it was 100% accurate that she got some messages to that effect, but it couldn't be considered "countless".


Yeah. Because whether the messages were "countless", and not whether they were happening at all, was the issue. I direct to others who were paying attention:

This is No Way to Run a Country

"I want to serve": Federal workers gathered by the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to protest the government shutdown and express their fears about how it will hurt them. Furloughed employees will miss their paycheck if the shutdown isn't over by Friday https://t.co/VM3GdseHeh pic.twitter.com/S9l7CjNDyW

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 9, 2019

The many furloughed federal workers would love to be back at their jobs and earning their pay, but they are left to scramble, sorting out what bills can be paid now, what can be negotiated, what side gigs they can get cash from, and what kind of financing they can swing to tide them over--except for who knows how long? Or how much they will ultimately need to get them over this stupid government shutdown? And as for the employees declared "essential" who are working through this nonsense without pay, some, like the IRS personnel who have been called back to work to process tax season refunds, don't even have the wherewithal to fill their tanks, arrange for daycare for their kids, and get themselves to their jobs. (The header says "defy", which seems pretty much a misstatement. They can't. They have an actual hardship.) They aren't making big bucks. The same goes for food inspection-personnel--they are still providing the essential work, but it's barebones. The TSA is experiencing high sick calls, but again, this isn't deliberate planned work action, this is people having actual physical hardships provided by their lack of finance.

These are just middle class, working class people, being called upon to serve for nothing more than their vested interest in their jobs (pension and benefits) and the pride they take in their careers. And they are hurting. And the jobs they do, often so well you would hardly know how vital they can be to our national security because of all the tragic potentialities they intercept, are strained.

It is a sin that Coast Guard employees are relying on food pantries while serving this country. It is a crisis when our air traffic safety may be at risk because we can't pay these people who keep us safe in the air. It is a crime when our justice system is threatened because our law enforcement resources at the FBI are being squandered through lack of use and money-starving. And it is beyond conscience that a government shutdown, supposedly over a crying need for border security (which is a bullshit crisis by any metric except the elastic inches of the white nationalists' hateful yardstick) now imperils actual national security in the estimation of the men and women who have headed departments related to national security and understand the principal issues involves most intimately.

This is no way--no way at all--for a country to be run, and that is because no person, no person at all, but Donald Trump, has been stupidly burdened with the responsibility of the executive office and all its powers, and the ability to fuck all of them up because he has no concept of their purpose and importance. And yet he could, quite easily, get all these wheels of state back in motion with the merest wave of his hand, freeing Senate Majority Reptile Leader Mitch McConnell to put a clean CR forward without the wall funding or any DACA or asylum shenanigans, just as had been passed before by both houses before Ann Coulter made him feel all funny about doing the right thing, as opposed to trying the alt-right thing.

He could actually show leadership by doing this thing, because it isn't actually a concession to resume the government without getting the "extra" funding for his wall--it's just the right thing to do. He could even frame it as being awfully big of him, giving up the wall funding to end a national crisis like this, and use the lack of wall funding as being on Democrats from that very day forward. The political framing to not see ending the shutdown as an L for him, or even making it about his resolve and heroism and shit, and calling it a "win", completely exist.

And all he has to do is ask himself--did you come here to run a country, or did you come here to run your mouth? Because I don't see what's going on right here, right now as running a country, and he wants to run his mouth about who did what.

How about having responsibility? Is this Trump anything at all? Because this shutdown is basically an abdication--it shows he isn't even trying to be shit, and his nonsense about security is bullshit while his inaction leaves us with so much potential for danger.

His poll numbers are taking a hit during this stand, and I really don't want to help his ass. But his doing the right thing, even if it makes him a little more popular, helps all of us.

Do the right thing, Trump. Just do the right thing. I might even find it in my greasy little heart to celebrate it.

(Or Mitch McConnell could....Nah, fuck him. he doesn't ever do the right thing, ever.)

(And not for nothing, although I know Secret Service are consummate professionals, I really would especially want them paid if they were personally protecting my personal ass. Just saying.)

Aaaannnd...He's Still Booming!

I think from a foreign policy standpoint, this is really not helpful--but then he gets almost too, too, entirely "Donald Trump" even for Twitter:

Trump's "button" is so bigger than Kim Jong Un's, the Fake News Awards will be Monday (next week? so soon?) at "5:00 o'clock" (has he forgotten how to tell time?) and p.s., also watch Fox News. Today was like a double LP of Trump's greatest Twitter hits.

This is not the behavior of a responsible adult, let alone a president. He is a danger to himself and others. And the GOP leadership supports him.

UPDATE: He deleted the Tweet about Sean Hannity, but probably because he's not supposed to be promoting television shows as president or something like that, and not from the shame of watching Hannity.

Welcoming 2018 With a Boom!

There is no greater sign that the President is back at work than his having a sustained Twitter rant (of the type I refer to as "going Boom!") that included kind of "negging" the Iranian people for "finally" acting against their government (because he has no idea what's going on there other than what he sees on Fox News, despite being, you know, POTUS), and slagging his predecessor's foreign policy, and also takes the time to mentally convict a top aid(e) of his political rival in the last election while calling his own Justice Department headed by his appointee "Deep State".

Because he's watching Fox and Friends, again, he feels good about the past year's accomplishments, like keeping planes in the sky with the power of (checking notes) strictness. And regulations. He doesn't like regulations, usually. He's back to calling North Korea's leader "Rocket Man" because this is obviously very mature.

Also he is still mad at journalists for not kissing his presumably orange peel-like bottom. And Democrats because they are Democrats.


In other words, 2018 is shaping up to be more of the same, only more so.

Can We Talk About Xmas FLOTUS?

I'm not entirely sure if the look she is going for is Christmas Angel Fierce or Japanese Horror Film Does Ghost of Christmas Past or Winter Without Christmas Until Aslan Returns or Cultist from a Sect that Baptizes But Holds People Down Just a Little Too Long or Fuck It White After Labor Day Bitchez or Welcome to Your Frosty Dystopian Hellscape, I Will Be Your Servitor or This Also Comes With a Hood But I'm Shy Around the Holidays or what, but I am just saying, FLOTUS is never scared of untraditional sleeves. Not ever. I feel like she should be accessorizing this outfit with a sword in one hand and mistletoe in the other. I like how the light fixture above her head is part halo and part "I just had a slightly medieval thought." Those bare branches all had a little color before she walked through. It's like a tribute to the concept that global warming will still have winters.

Melania, you are doing amazing, sweetie.

Confirmed

WASHINGTON, August 21, 2017 -- President Donald Trump looks directly into the solar eclipse. pic.twitter.com/UedUycAO4o

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) August 21, 2017

President Trump is the guy who, if you tell him not to do the thing, will then go and do the thing.

A TrumpWorld Grab-Bag Full of Interesting People

The G20 (or was it G19?) Summit in Hamburg has given us the first glimpse of President Trump's potential working relationship with respect to the guy many of us have been wondering about, Mr. Steal Your Election, Vladimir Putin. I'm just going to come out with it--it went as one would expect.  Mr. Trump has not ever unequivocally stated that he thought Russia was behind the hack of the DNC and the emails of Clinton associate John Podesta, and in fact, his Tweet just prior to meeting Putin conflated the two separate but important hacks to deride their importance:

Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2017

Notes: no one was talking about this because the US election happened in 2016 and the hacks are not actually relevant anymore, unless somehow, world leaders are curious about how everything in the US was so shambolic as to somehow result in a Trump presidency--alleging this is not a great look for POTUS. But John Podesta didn't run the DNC, and the CIA had nothing to do with that investigation, and also, the FBI didn't need the server to uncover the DNC hack because they already knew about it. So much wrong in one Tweet? Or--so much deliberate obfuscation when Trump's war to establish his legitimacy will never end because of the Russian asterisk?

But as to the actual meeting between Putin and Trump--the warm handshake and backslap instead of Trump's usual tug-o-war approach to manual greetings? The supposedly 30 minutes scheduled that became nearly 2 1/2 hours? The lack of note-taking and the letting Russia get out their message first: that Putin expressed that he had nothing to do with the hacks and Trump accepted that, getting right under the statement the WH and US State Department wanted to make about Trump "confronting" Russia with the allegations?

It's fucking dumb, and we have no reason at all to believe Trump really pressed an issue he is pathologically incapable of dealing with publicly. He still wants to have it both ways--deny Russia had bugger-all to do with anything, and blame the previous administration for not doing more. Why would that somehow change now that he's meeting his hero, who points out the mean reporters who insults him with the kind of menace only an autocrat-lover can really appreciate?

But what can I say that doesn't sound obvious to people who know my point of view? Trump's entourage think (publicly) that Trump handled himself brilliantly.  I'd respect them more if I had a sense their nonpublic thoughts were any different. Trump never seems able to act like his ass isn't owned by Putin. He wanted his foreign policy team to provide "deliverables" and had no foreign policy "asks" of his own set up. He ended up with a possible commitment to partner on cybersecurity with a nation that is trying to hack us on the regular.  Because if I'm mugged, I want to go fight crime with my mugger. It's insulting to any functioning intelligence, is what it is.

There's more grab-bag than just Trump's conduct at G20, though. The NYT just came out with a fascinating story about Donald Trump Jr. meeting with Paul Manafort and a Kremlin-backed lawyer.  This is crazy-interesting. For one thing, most folks know what Manafort was about. But the lawyer in question, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is interesting because of a thing called the Magnitsky Act, which targets human rights abusers. Russia has done considerable lobbying to try and effect US position on this. It's not Trump Jr's first connection with dodgy Russian business.  It just seems to go to show that weird Russian connections were a family affair. But keep in mind, Magnistsky is also about money-laundering.  I feel like this will come up in future Mueller-related proceedings, in which money-laundering and assorted business contacts could feature heavily.

All this is just to say that while Trump wants to "move on" and Putin wants to "move on" from the 2016 election interference, this is not likely to happen. They still have some stuff to answer for.

See Kellyanne. See Kellyanne Lie!

Actually, the cuts in Medicaid will be catastrophic for the exact people this program was intended for. Some people who will be impacted, children, nursing home residents, simply can't get jobs. Other people are already working, but don't make enough to afford to buy care out of pocket.

It's worse though--the CBO on the Senate Health care bill demonstrates that 22 million more people would be without health care--people now getting health care through their employer may also be affected. Premiums would rise at first, but then be brought down specifically because the sickest and poorest get opted out. (They don't necessarily choose to not be covered. They just prefer food, rent, and the light bill.)

This plan is a shambles and lying in favor of it is the act of a shambolic human. I don't know if she understands the consequences of the plan she is lying in favor of, but this bill threatens the lives of children who are on Medicaid, and those who have been born or acquire, through no possible fault of their own (unlike, maybe, those folks who willingly flirt with emphysema or black lung in the mines? Yes, Trumpcare will also block out the working class folks he claims to adore) pre-existing conditions that could bar them from obtaining health insurance.

Her alternative facts are leaving out a lot of vulnerable Americans. I don't think pointing this out will shame her, necessarily. But we could always do with a reminder of her utter lack of interest in truth over her personal career expedience.

Trump Went Boom Again

This is a snippet of the Twitter feed from Donald J. Trump, POTUS. In the mind of Donald J. Trump, Supergenius, a Democratic candidate for president working with her own party to win a democratic election is so on a par with a candidate for president of the US of any party working with a hostile government to undermine our democratic system of government. Democrats own Obamacare (which was by and large a Democrat idea--so, there's one!) and are OBSTRUCTIONISTS for wanting to keep their thing instead of having it thrown over for a very bad thing. The Russian hacking that Trump has gone out of his way to dismiss as a hoax is so a completely real and bad thing if he can somehow blame President Obama for it. "Colluded" and "obstructed" are words that Trump thinks might possibly be synonymous, even if they don't mean similar things, at all.

He does not seem to realize that Obama did try to do SOMETHING and in fact did do various things, but was OBSTRUCTED in part by Mitch McConnell. Obama did make the political calculation that making a unilateral instead of a bipartisan statement might cause more harm than good, and did so in the face of a great orange crybaby bellowing "Rigged!" into every hoot and holler he visited. And, since Obama has always been the kind of good-hearted soul who believes in America's vast capabilities despite ourselves, he, to use the coinage of a former president, "misunderestimated" us.

Trump also seems to think that collusion can only be proved by "tapes". I don't know how anyone ever could have been found guilty of anything before electronic recording devices existed, but while I'd like to give Thomas Edison his due, it remains that people have been found culpable on the basis of rather a lot of other kinds of evidence, like paper trails and financial records.

If Trump wants an apology for anything, it should be from all the ass-kissers in his life who ever let him get away with thinking he was more than middling-intelligent. And he is the one who is fucking up Obamacare, but even a fucked Obamacare might be better than what the GOP has in store.

And yes--I call this "going boom!" This series reminds me a lot of his fateful 3/4/2017 Tweetsplat that accused Obama of "tapping" him--which presaged his weird, and ultimately self-debunked claim that "tapes" might exist of his conversations with former FBI Director Jim Comey.  (He maintains now that he posed the existence of "tapes" to ensure the honesty of Comey's testimony--which sounds a lot like trying to lean on a witness, to me. But taking him at face value, if he feels his witness-tampering gambit worked, then it must be true that he tried to lean on Comey to end the investigation into Flynn, and then fired him for not doing just that. It's a "triple-klutz"--he just copped to three kinds of obstruction of justice.)

None of these are the Tweets of a sound mind or a smart individual. They are like a cry for help. But I have no sympathy either for him or people who find this nonsense moving. It's just bizarre and unbecoming the leader of a great nation.

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag May Have Been Taped

As was hinted, we actually are going to be (probably?) disappointed if we are looking for the "tapes" that Trump suggested might exist of conversations between himself and former FBI Director James Comey, because Trump Himself has Tweeted that what with all the things going on, he's fucked if he knows whether there's tapes.

I truly believe he is fucked if he knows and he's fucked if he doesn't, based on all available information, but that might just be me. (It isn't.)  The reason I say this is, if he did Tweet (OMFG--when was a presidency hinging on shit-Tweets?)that there were possibly tapes to try and warn Comey that whatever he said could be gainsaid by evidence, then that's sort of like a threat, isn't it? And apparently, Comey already anticipated his credibility was at issue, hence the memos. And if the threat to Comey was to keep him honest...um, we should believe his testimony? That seems like the logical thing, right?

Do normal people actually telegraph that they are going to witness-tamper in the most personally damaging way, or is this just a Trump thing?

Anyhow, there is also the possibility that he's hedging on whether there are tapes or not because they exist somewhere maybe and don't back him up, which is a possibility that I find almost as frighteningly amusing as the still-probable pee tape.

But of course, that's not all I'm interested in talking about. One of the phenomenons that currently interest me is The Lawyering.   Pretty much everybody in the White House is going to have to, even if one of Trump's lawyers says they don't have to.  Look, even one of Trump's other lawyers, is lawyering up.  And yet another of Trump's lawyers about this Russia mess is...well, a right-wing hind-titterati shyster. He's usually a religious right whaambulance chaser.  It's kind of weird to see him representing a president, but here we are. But when Trump is down to relying on Jay freaking Sekulow, because other lawyers think he lies and doesn't pay bills, yeah, it's probably grab the wad from the mattress and consult professional counsel time.

But why the lawyering? Because the thing that Trump keeps insisting is a hoax keeps being real. Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson reiterated that in recent testimony to the House Russian hacking investigation. What is critical to know is that there do seem to be crucial failures in our system regarding whether we met transparency with the 2016 election. For one thing, even if there had been suspected fuckery as early as 2015, the FBI notified DNC late and off-handedly, by which point the DNC already knew there was an issue and wanted to do damage control because they were in the middle of an election thanks! There was some Trump-Tweeted mumblefuckery that hinted that the DNC did not present their servers to FBI--absolutely true.  But I believe there were reasons for that. They might not have believed that all FBI agents were going to handle that data responsibly because they were already in the process of being fucked with their own data.  And they really did not want more outlets for fuckery.

Understandable. Frankly--this is a kind of victim-blaming. Is it the DNC's fault that they had no script for an unprecedented breach?

Speaking of breaches--it looks like the Russian hacking efforts, just like Reality Winner leaked about, did impact voting offices.  Maybe votes were thrown out because the legitimate voters got thrown off of the rolls. This is why I've long despised voter ID laws--the idea that legitimate voters and citizens would be denied their franchise on fully bullshit reasons. But if some other country gets to say whose votes are legitimate?

That is deplorable. And if a POTUS was somehow decided based on so much hackery-fuckery?

That's not democracy, and reasonable people who were no supporters of Trump would be justified in wanting his ass out, somehow. Yes, I am one of those people and very biased. But with my own eyes I see where this election was screwed with. And I feel like it was stolen. But now that he's been sworn in, I feel like impeachment is the method, and his emoluments conflicts are more obvious than the Russian "collusion". But for the love of all that's holy, to get there--we gotta flip the House.


(Part of an ongoing series.)

How Do Demogogues See the World?

Through demogoggles! But what range--from "rule of law" to "deep state"--and all that had to change was which party was in the WH!


Addition: I don't know why anyone would act surprised, either.

I'm not even going to ask.

Pres. Trump sells Qatar $12 billion of U.S. weapons days after accusing it of funding terrorism: https://t.co/z26ZAKSODP pic.twitter.com/73ll6IzK91

— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 15, 2017

Sure. Whatever. President Trump hammers Qatar for funding terrorism, and then sells them weapons. Of course, he has also praised Qatar for fighting terrorism.  But then again, business is business, I guess.

(This is why things like having a functioning State Department, and the Emoluments Clause, matter.)

On The Job Learning

There is something a bit annoying about House Speaker Paul Ryan's claim regarding the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey with respects to the President requesting that Comey end the investigation into Michael Flynn. He said:

"Of course there needs to be a degree of independence between (the Justice Department), FBI and the White House, and a line of communications established," Ryan said during his news conference, which occurred at the same time as Comey was testifying across Capitol Hill before the Senate intelligence committee..

"The President's new at this. He's new to government. So, he probably wasn't steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses. He's just new to this."

Pushed further by CNN, Ryan said, "I'm not saying it's an acceptable excuse. It's just my observation."

"He's new at government, and so therefore I think that he -- he is learning as he goes," Ryan said.

There is a "faint damning" there, isn't there? One could defend Trump by not taking Comey's testimony at face value, or dismiss it as being just one-side of the story. But Ryan does take Comey's testimony at face value, and follows it up with the "He doesn't know what he's doing" defense. It's hardly any kind of defense at all--he's new to politics, he just doesn't understand how not to be shady. But President Trump is a grown man who should have tried to understand these relationships and at least consider the propriety of what he was asking and what it would look like.

But Ryan's assessment isn't wrong--that's the annoying thing. It's been established that Trump has gaps in his knowledge of how things like foreign policy and domestic policy work. It's also not a new defense of him--not so long ago, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defended an apparent flip-flop on Trump's part by stating he was "learning the job".  This might account for rugged foreign policy moments like just this Friday, where, taking questions, Trump did express his commitment to NATO Article Five, which he did not do on his European trip, and also undermined his State Department's messaging on Qatar. (I really don't know what to make of an MSNBC report that Trump may not have known about the US Al Udeid Air Base. I just don't--it had to have come up in briefings, right?)

I think this makes me sore in part because we were hearing from pundits well into Obama's second term about the problems of "learning on the job" when it comes to the presidency. Of course, no one can be entirely expert at the world. It's really very big and complicated. But I do think that Obama had more to work with coming into office, and showed more attentiveness to the lessons.

Next week is National Apprenticeship Week, which will focus on companies filling jobs. I think maybe his administration should take a good tip from that push and work on filling their own crucial and vacant spaces. And Trump himself should take his own "WH apprenticeship" a bit more seriously.

Lordy Jim Comey

The amusement that gripped this hearing centered around how President Trump would respond to the testimony of elongated Boy Scout, former FBI Director Jim Comey. There was a threat made that he might live-Tweet this thing, which he mercifully did not, thus sparing the livers of pub-going politics-watchers who might have been fixing to make drinking games of Trump's assorted "go-to" defenses: "fake news", "Lying Jim Comey", "failing Senate Democrats" or whatever his busy thumbs wanted to brand on our eyeballs.  Somehow, POTUS' minders managed to  jingle keys or whatever they do to pacify his easily offended amour-propre and kept him above flinging his shit ex post Twitto.

Which is not to say Comey never landed a glove--he did.  He stopped short of saying there definitely was a case for obstruction of justice with Trump, but he laid it out nice and neat and implied that if there wasn't such a case when he was Director of the FBI, there sure was one now. He presented a view of his interactions with President-elect and President Trump that was suspicious of his motives based on multiple factors (Trump is not a truthful person and apparently had a pressing interest) which motivated him to keep notes. He understood that AG Sessions was potentially a compromised official, so he used his wherewithal to engineer a leak of his fully understandable note-taking (which is not classified, sensitive, or otherwise embargoed against being revealed by him as a private citizen to the best of my knowledge) to the press to prompt the appointment of a special counsel.

That is some adept stuff on his part, coming from a great understanding of the stakes and leverage of the various parties. And as a Clinton supporter, there is a part of me that wants to roar:

"Which would have been so blindingly great if you did all that before the election you long-ass galoot!"

And he didn't. Because despite putting his biggie-ole thumb on the scales prompted by Bill Clinton's tarmac escapade with Loretta Lynch(or, for all we know, attempt to just say howdy like folks do), Comey never said boo about the Russian hack into the DNC or the inquiry into whether the Trump Campaign was aware of it--even though this seemed obvious.

But that's Our Jim, isn't it? He is trying not to be partial. Emphasis on trying. I think he's trying to do the right thing, bless his heart. He isn't going to hang Trump by himself. But he very carefully lets on how it could be done.

I don't know where his "between opportunities" self goes from here. But based on his carefulness, he could go anywhere. And I surely hope his careful rigor hasn't somehow screwed himself. ("Hope", we learned just now, has a plethora of meanings. I don't think that plethora means what Trump supporters think it means.) Failing to be heroic at the first opportunity can backfire. But Comey deferred throwing himself on a grenade to deliver receipts. I respect his corner. It may prove more effective and more in line with our Constitution in the long run.

For me, the moment of truth was when he replied to idea of tapes of his interactions with Trump with something to the effect of "Lordy I hope there are". Which is as near to "Wish a mofo would" as a Boy Scout gets. I sensed that Trump's lying and weirdness made Comey mad, because Comey takes this seriously, and Trump doesn't. Comey seemed choked up talking about his FBI folks, like love was there. Trump doesn't have that.

I believe Comey. He doesn't have any reason to lie. Trump doesn't even need reasons, but likely has them.

Just Not Presidential

The above string of Tweets show the President right away using a terror event to justify his "Travel Ban", rail against "political correctness", and make a half-assed NRA point. He's not even being terribly original and, in slamming Mayor Sadiq Khan, he shows a lack of understanding and sensibility that is wholly inappropriate.  He will now, after having been a massive ass on social media, golf and think of how this tragedy can be used as a photo op.

He's an embarrassment.

Of Course Trump Wants to Exit the Paris Accord

President Trump revealed a small digital representation of the actual knowledge he even has about the state of the environment and the fucks he has to give about it, a Venn diagram of a perfect circle on the head of a pin.

Numerous people have weighed in, worldwide, about the ploddingly predictable announcement President Trump made today in a celebratory announcement that yes, the US would join Syria and Nicaragua in being out of the Paris Agreement. Trump has made an awful lot of noises about coal country and how he's bringing coal back. Right now, solar energy employs more people than coal, oil, and gas combined. Combined.  Talking up coal is like talking about building a bridge to the 19th century. And he's also talked a lot over the years about his belief that climate change is a hoax. Sadly, the only hoax about climate change is the hoax where people think climate change is a hoax. Ocean acidification, desertification of land, increased flooding, prolonged droughts, and storm severity have all measurably increased over an observed timeframe, and CO2 and the mechanisms that could be predicted from understanding of the greenhouse effect (understood since the 19th Century, come to think of it) have pretty much established to the minds of the majority of scientists that this is a real thing, and it's happening now. (Just Google "Strangely Blogged" and "Climate Sunday", and you'll see all kinds of examples.)

But Trump is a very special case. He is a Fox News low-info voter that somehow got into a job that requires a lot of information. And when he goes for additional data--he goes to Fox News' Kimberley Guilfoyle, not necessarily to science, to bolster his POV. And to the extent that he relied on any science at all--he got it wrong.

He's wrong on this in lots of ways. It's scientifically wrong. It's economically wrong (many business leaders oppose this decision). It's bad foreign policy (it weakens our ability to say we negotiate in good faith, and we aren't going to get another negotiation for a deal where we set our own targets, basically--what a dumb demonstration that Trump doesn't even know the agreement he is now rejecting). He's not even correct about the demographic he's supposedly appealing to--for one thing most Americans agree with staying in it. But he made the asinine statement that he makes decisions based on Pittsburgh, not Paris. Well, Pittsburgh PA went for Hillary Clinton, and Pittsburgh's mayor called BS on Trump's claim right away.

But or course, Trump has his supporters, who like this decision based on, basically, liberals not liking it? Or based on arguments so pathetically stupid you know they aren't about actual beliefs, but some weird tribal signifying.

Take Rick Santorum, my former Senator, a grandchild of a PA coal worker:

.@RickSantorum stuns CNN panel while mansplaining renewable energy: The Sun is not ‘reliable’ or ‘consistent’ https://t.co/4mRyP4XOt2 pic.twitter.com/09ScMLn0fA

— Raw Story (@RawStory) June 2, 2017

If the sun was actually unreliable, we'd have more problems than whether the freaking lights turned on at night (like, the original solar battery is plants that we eat to live so if the sun refused to shine?). But he's actually submitting the idea that clouds mean that solar is untenable. Clouds. As fellow Pennsylvanian Andrea McArdle sang in the role of Annie--the sun will come out, tomorrow. Leaping lizards, you guys.

Or take the delightful old "God will provide" stylings right here.  It's bad science and maybe even worse theology. Was it not written, "Do not tempt the Lord your God"? Putting the name of the Lord in your mouth to say he will clean up after you like a housemaid is a form of saying the Lord's name in vain. I'm agnostic and rusty, but my understanding of this passage is: He doesn't stop bullets or gravity for any one, and so He won't stop climate change if it comes through man's continued carelessness--and where in the world is the idea of earth stewardship and loving one's neighbor in this selfish false piety?  (Noted conservative pundit Erick Erickson is on the same trash tip. I suspect E.E. isn't totally stupid, but signifying--but what a waste! If your fellow human is starving, or their kids are dying of hunger and plague because of climate change--if people are drowned or displaced because of flooding, if they become adrift because their home was burned out in wildfires--I just don't know any interpretation of Christian doctrine where that isn't your business. )

And so on--bad science, conspiracy theory, and trash theology all thrown at a problem that has such a simple,  not even immoral accommodation required: Find a better way, and do that! And there are better ways, and we've found them, and they aren't prohibitively expensive, and the reasons not to do them are just...dumb. Trump is unknowlingly (or maybe even knowingly?) ready to trash the environment and the economy and world opinion of the US--for spite, I think. Sad! I don't know the remedy for the RW to unscrew themselves from this intellectual finger trap where they continue to deny climate change even as evidence mounts and the situation grows more dire, as if they just mean to save face for themselves and not allow the liberals to score one. Reasoning and scolding are both useless. Maybe more sinkholes need to open up at various golf clubs and resorts.

We Speak English Here?

That Tweet is probably not ok and definitely not English and it's pretty late on the East Coast and he might still have a travel hang-over. After all, he did need a cart to schlep around Saudi Arabia and Europe. I'm not saying I'm worried about him but maybe a little.  I resent his entire maladministration, but if it's too much, I am altogether supportive of his seeking self care and giving us all a break, really.


My own contribution to this social milestone is:

El jefe's negative press covfefe makes his thumbs too hefe to tweet. https://t.co/up05kxQcCH

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) May 31, 2017

My preferred medium has long been poetry.

UPDATE: And with that I've apparently forgotten that he just wants world leaders to hit him up on his personal cellie. Because here's a bloke with social media discipline and the ability to ensure his phone isn't being spoofed by a million haxxors. Or, the right few when his WH cybersecurity guys aren't on it.

UPDATE 2: This Tweet was stupid, but it made the entire Twitter a beautiful thing. (The Cuervo Gold. The fine Covfefe! Make the Twitter a wonderful...)

"And just before you serve it, you hit it with a dash of #Covfefe" pic.twitter.com/fm9CAF4Iyz

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) May 31, 2017

Moderator: Your word is #covfefe

Arvind: Use it in sentence

Moderator: Despite the constant negative press covfefe

Arvind: c-o-v-f-e-f-e pic.twitter.com/NNpAdoKG15

— Doug (@realDougWitt) May 31, 2017

maybe he's born with it
maybe it's #covfefe pic.twitter.com/MK0f3DcDLz

— Nana Manika (@olivia_vivienne) May 31, 2017

pic.twitter.com/uks8i6SBeb

— Danny Zuker (@DannyZuker) May 31, 2017

I love all you amazing bastards!

A Presidential Trip Abroad 3: NATO Friends, Right?

The discussion of President Trump's by-now-notorious handshakes will be a study for future scholars, if there are any. French President Emmanuel Macron is not an especially tall man, but he has apparently worked on his grip so as to discomfit the American President, at least whilst seated. (Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, tall and rather fit, has done the best at blocking Trump's peculiar use of what should be a friendly greeting as a dominance display.) You can tell by the straightened state of Trump's grin that he feels this grip in the central vicinity of his man-spread.

Well done, Macron! I have to say, this particular silver-back primate thing Trump does annoys me because it is so transparently a dominance thing. It is without subtlety or chill. It is all brittle manhood and schoolyard bully. Shake hands like an adult, Trump! So embarrassing. (Was he raised indoors by people?)

But this is just a symbol of his general world-stage awkwardness. He also muscled Montenegro PM Dusko Markovic out of his way, lumbering to the front of a photo line-up. (Was this political or just how Trump usually treats other people when there are cameras? One can scarcely answer.) He belabored a point that hasn't actually got any ground regarding US taxpayers somehow being out of pocket regarding NATO allies not quite paying quite what they should on defense spending (2% of GDP). But the language he uses is way inexact and our allies think he's a tool for bringing it up, actually.

Trump seems to be aware he isn't greatly loved (I would say Brussels underscored that for him) in Europe and he has his weird talk about trade (Globalization from say, the late 1980's to present, seems to have missed him, huh? What he knows about manufacturing I could shove in my navel and still have room for a blue whale.) that seems about vengeance rather than economic realities (probably because former President Obama had a better crowd than him. That Vienna-sausage-fingered struggle is apparently all too real.)

I found him embarrassing and ill-suited to the world stage. But keep in mind, this is Trump just doing diplomatic pose-downs in a controlled environment that doesn't encourage his discomfiture. He isn't taking the kinds of questions we have for him right here in the US. And as he keeps right on tripping, I know questions continue to pile up.