It still feels like summer in New Orleans. I’ve been so focused on the Kavanaugh mess that I’ve been a local news slacker with one exception: last Monday, our local utility company, Entergy, blamed a cat for a major power outage. Della Street and Paul Drake are in the clear: I’m their alibi. This is proof positive that my town is weirder than your town. Neener, neener, neener.
What is it with the news cycle in the Trump era? Every Friday it blows up after I tuck this post in bed and kiss it good night. I have a few quick thoughts on today’s two big stories. First, the Rod Rosenstein story is a set-up, the Failing New York Times got played by Trumpers. Second, Chuck Grassley’s ultimatum to Christine Blasey Ford is egregious extortionate excrement.
What do these fuckers have in store next? A 21st Century Reichstag fire? This is the face of American fascism.
It’s time to tune out the jackboots and return to our regularly scheduled programming.
This week’s theme song was written by Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie for an album that you may have heard of: Rumours. The Chain is the only tune on that record credited to all five members of Fleetwood Mac Mach 9. We have two versions for your listening pleasure: the original studio track and a recent live version featuring new members, Neil Finn and Mike Campbell.
I’m not sure if jumping to the break constitutes breaking the chain but we’re going to do it anyway. Now that I think of it, it’s closer to yanking your chain. What’s a little chain yanking among friends?
Senate Republicans aren’t the only ones willing to do anything to secure a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court. Enter Ed Whelan who is a major player in the DC conservative legal establishment as well as a friend and associate of Federalist Society honcho Leonard Leo and a certain sleazy Supreme wannabe, Brett Kavanaugh.
Ed Whelan, a key player in DC’s conservative judicial establishment, posted a lengthy twitter thread in which he made a highly conjectural argument that the accusation against Brett Kavanaugh is actually a case of mistaken identification and that Prof. Blasey Ford’s alleged attacker was actually a classmate of Kavanaugh’s named Chris Garrett.
Garrett is now a middle school teacher in Georgia and had actually signed a letter which a number of Kavanaugh’s classmates sent to the Senate in July attesting to Kavanaugh’s character. Blasey Ford put out a statement tonight stating categorically that she knew both Kavanaugh and Garrett at the time and that there is no way she could have mistaken one for the other.
It’s worth stepping back and contemplating just how wild and reckless an action this was. There’s really no way for me to capture the zaniness of Whelan’s argument. You can read it here. Suffice it to say it’s far-fetched an makes the most serious of accusations based on the flimsiest of conjectures.
There are two key pieces of context that are critical to understand. Whelan didn’t just spin out some hypotheticals. He clearly pointed the finger at a man who is not a public figure in any way and argued that he was likely the one who attempted to rape Blasey Ford. At the end of his thread he drew back and said he didn’t know specifically what had happened that night … but it was clear what he meant and what he was saying. This is almost certainly libelous.
The other point is that Whelan is not some random on Twitter or an eccentric but little known activist. He is close friends with Kavanaugh and Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society, the group that chooses and then organizes the confirmation strategies for these nominees. Whelan is also close to Don McGahn, the White House Counsel who is formally in charge of shepherding Kavanaugh’s nomination through the Senate. Whelan is part of the very top handful of activists who play in this space.
I may be a lapsed lawyer but I know libel when I see it: a private citizen was dragged into the Kavanaugh mess and accused of committing a crime without a shred of proof. It’s called reckless disregard for the truth. Whelan’s defenders might say that there’s an Absence of Malice but Paul Newman and Sally Field beg to differ.
You didn’t think I could get through a Kavanaugh mess post without, uh, posting a movie poster, did you? That’s well-nigh imposterable…
It’s time for an early edition of Separated At Birth. Here’s the side-by-side picture Whelan used to “document” his mistaken identity/doppelgänger theory:
Kavanaugh is on the right, Garrett on the left. The two look like suburban preppies who plan to pledge to a frat when they go to college. Btw, Kavanaugh is a Deke (DKE) which is one of the rowdiest and most entitled fraternities around. That explains a great deal about him.
The biggest question about Doppelgängergate is what did Kavanaugh know and when did he know it? Wingnut twitter was buzzing for days over a “revelation” that would crack the Ford-Kavanaugh case. My belief is that it’s part of a co-ordinated strategy to save Kavanaugh’s worthless ass. Former GOP operative Steve Schmidt, who knows Whelan, does too:
Of a broader discreditation strategy. No one should presume that Kavanaugh had any knowledge of the premeditated strategy being executed on his behalf. However, if he did, it utterly and irrevocably disqualifies him as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. I hope
Thus spake a former Republican hack who has forsaken the party of Trump. Twitter giveth and twitter taketh away.
In a sane world, this would doom the Kavanaugh nomination and he would withdraw in shame over the company he keeps. In the shameless Trump era, who the hell knows? It does, however, prove the accuracy of a meme I first posted on August 8th:
Remember when Senate Republicans were in disarray on the Kavanaugh nomination? That was so Monday. They’ve moved on to the lie, deny, and misdirect phase of the nomination process.
Last night Lawrence O’Donnell scorched Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch for their blatant hypocrisy:
A quick summary: Grassley and Hatch demanded that the FBI re-open its background check into Clarence Thomas to investigate Anita Hill’s charges. The Bush White House ordered the FBI to proceed. It took only a few days. The notion that checking out the credibility of Dr, Blasey’s story is “not the FBI’s thing” is another lie from a GOP ruthlessly determined to win at all costs. It’s what they do. Remember Merrick Garland.
A look at the facts behind the Thomas-Hill mess shows that Dr. Blasey is being treated worse than Anita Hill before she appeared before the Judiciary Committee. It would be hard to top the lurid questions of Hatch and former Senators Specter and Simpson. I would hope that current GOPers would at least be able to pronounce Long Dong Silver correctly. In 1991, Hatch referred to that porn performer alternately as Long Don or John Silver. I guess he was thinking of this dude:
There’s an interesting profile of Christine Blasey Ford in the Failing New York Times. She comes off as an impressive and accomplished woman. That is exactly why Senate Republicans are trying their damnedest to make it impossible for her to testify publicly. These are the same Senators behind the Merrick Garland mess, so their protestations of fairness and compassion ring hollow.
Senate GOPers do not want a FBI background checkup because they’re afraid Brett Kavanaugh will lie to the FBI, which is a crime; just ask Mike Flynn. Kavanaugh has already lied to the Senate, after all.
The mere fact that Dr. Blasey is willing to speak to the FBI enhances her credibility Besides, the only time people make up sexual assault allegations is when there’s something in it for them, and that’s still exceedingly rare. There’s nothing but heartache, humiliation, and harassment in this for Dr. Blasey.
Republican leaders didn’t want Ford to testify in a public hearing in the first place, and they still don’t. Her credible testimony, with or without additional witnesses or background investigations, is the one and only fatal threat to Kavanaugh’s nomination. As one very prominent Republican said Wednesday morning, “if she shows up and makes a credible showing, that will be very interesting and we’ll have to make a decision.”
I would hate to be in Christine Blasey Ford’s shoes right now. Her attorney’s request for the FBI to look into the Kavanaugh mess is not only reasonable, but is in line with the Hill precedent. Public testimony will be painful BUT if she folds her hand, Kavanaugh will be confirmed. It’s unclear that the Republicans have a backup plan if she agrees to Grassley’s extortionate terms. It’s up to her. I hope she calls their big bluff.
That concludes another post chock-full-o-old movie references. I had hoped to post an image of Laurel and Hardy cutting neckties but could not find one. This will have to do:
Substitute Orrin Hatch or Chuck Grassley for Ollie and you get the idea.
Here’s hoping the last laugh will be on Senate Republicans:
UPDATE: Team Blasey Ford has called the GOP’s bluff. The fluidity index, if there is such a thing, on this story remains high.
And…just another reminder that DJT’s cloddish, boorish, ignorant and embarrassing reactions to a significant natural disaster are a feature, not a bug. What anyone with a modest amount of, I don’t know, intelligence, maturity, empathy, whatever, finds appalling, MAGAs find appealing. The chronic, pathological lying, the gaslighting…the nomination of a total creep like Brett Kavanaugh (who’s clearly a liar and a scumbag, whether you think he’s also guilty of sexual assault or not)…it’s all baked in the (sheet) cake.
The midterm is a chance to reject the sort of cartoonish lunacy that considers an empty calorie summit with Kim Jong Un a great achievement…or to endorse it. What kind of country do we want?
Hopefully not one that wants a shitheel like Trump at the top…
Hurricane Florence has me thinking of North Carolina. When I heard a reference to Cape Fear on teevee, I knew what to select for this feature.
John D. MacDonald was among the best hard-boiled crime fiction writers of his era. The book was originally titled The Executioners. It was renamed Cape Fear in Hollywood because that’s where the story’s climax takes place. It’s one of the few times that movie people improved upon a book title. Subsequent editions of The Executioners all bore the title Cape Fear.
One of the few movie remakes that’s worth a damn is Martin Scorsese’s 1991 version of the original 1962 Peck-Mitchum film. Here’s the poster for Marty’s movie:
I originally planned to write at length about the Kavanaugh mess but it’s still as fluid as hell. I’m not into trying to nail Jello to the wall, so let’s see what our idiot president* has been up to. (For some obscure reason a high school friend of mine nicknamed a classmate, Jellohead. It had nothing to do with Jello shots, which we had never heard of at that point. To paraphrase Brett Kavanaugh, “what happens at San Mateo High, stays at San Mateo High. That’s been a good thing for all of us.” Party on, Brett,)
That may have been a record-breaking parenthetical digression. I constantly outdo myself in that regard.
“If I did one mistake with Comey, I should have fired him before I got here. I should have fired him the day I won the primaries “I should have fired him right after the convention, say I don’t want that guy. Or at least fired him the first day on the job. I would have been better off firing him or putting out a statement that I don’t want him there when I get there.”
I know there’s a lot of competition for stupidest Trump comment ever, but he’s never claimed pre-election appointment powers before. Does he think Barack Obama would have listened to him? Perhaps he could borrow the Tardis from the Doctor and do some time traveling. Of course, now that the Doctor is a woman, he’d never ask a skirt. Delusional thy name is Donald.
Let’s move on to an inside the White House piece by Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair’s Hive. Sherman’s sources informed him that the “First Daughter” has urged daddy to “cut bait” and dump Kavanaugh. I had no idea that Ivanka was an angler. Maybe she should go fishing with former Veep Dick Cheney. It would be entertaining if Cheney’s line got tangled in Ivanka’s blond locks.
Here’s what Trumpberius is reported to have said about his lousy Supreme Court nominee:
“‘He’s a Bush guy, why would I put myself out there defending him?’”
A classic bit of Trump loyalty if I’ve ever seen one. He ignored advice from Senate GOPers to pick a nominee with less baggage so this is his screw-up.
The Buckpasser-in-Chief has come up with his story if the GOP loses the midterms bigly:
Even before the Kavanaugh crisis, Trump has been worried about Republicans’ declining fortunes, and he’s been finding ways to shift the blame. Trump told a friend in the Oval Office last week that it would be Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan’s fault if Republicans lost the House and the Senate, according to a person familiar with the conversation. “This is the election about Ryan and McConnell—it’s about those guys,” Trump said. Trump referred to his 2020 campaign as “the real election.” “It’s pure Trump. He has to come up with a way he’s not responsible if Republicans lose,” a former West Wing staffer said.
I’ve heard of shape-shifters but Trump is a blame-shifter. It’s a new one on me. It’s what happens when you live in a bubble.
I thought there was going to be a red wave. You mean the president* was lying about that? #sarcasm. His more gullible followers apparently believe the Insult Comedian’s red wave shtick and are as low energy as Jeb Bush about the midterms according to an internal RNC poll obtained by Bloomberg News.
Donald Trump is a past master at creating his own reality. To some extent, all presidents live in a bubble but this president* has always lived in one. The last word goes to Paul Simon:
I’m a bit late to the mushroom dick dance. I had other things to do yesterday so I missed out on most of the zany twitter responses to this quote from Stormy Daniels’ book:
“He knows he has an unusual penis,” Daniels writes. “It has a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool…
“I lay there, annoyed that I was getting fucked by a guy with Yeti pubes and a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart…
I guess a description of the First Dickhead’s dick was inevitable given the company he keeps. It’s also appropriately inappropriate that the Mario Kart character is named Toad. I’m not a gamer like my pal Dave Gladow so I had to google it along with “Yeti pubes.” Ugh. Stay classy, Stormy.
It’s hard to be witty when writing about the Insult Comedian’s not-so magical mushroom, but somehow my friend Chef James Cullen was able to pull it off:
Is your weenie a porcini? Or a button mushroom cap? Do they mock-y your shiitake, Does Enoki make them laugh? Is it chantrell that you can’t tell? Or Cremini that your packing It is not a portabello Because we’re told it is lacking… The morel of this story should be clear
While I wish I had written that shroom poem, it did not give me porcini envy.
The last word goes to the Strawberry Alarm Clock, of all people:
I don’t know about you, but strawberries and mushrooms aren’t my idea of an ideal flavor profile. Of course, this tune comes from an album called Incense and Peppermints. That’s almost as disgusting as Stormy’s description of Trump’s game boy.
I’m on record as not being a heavy metal fan. BUT I’m a sucker for “longtime band member quits and writes a book” stories. A Guardian article about former Judas Priest co-lead guitarist KK Downing’s memoirs led me to select 1982’s Screaming For Vengeance as this week’s album cover. I guess that makes me a headbanger for a day. Ouch.
The cover is by the noted Canadian graphic artist Doug Johnson. It certainly makes me want to scream and perhaps even don some leather if it ever cools down:
Here’s a live version of the title track from the World Vengeance tour:
After a big laugh, the audience, musicians and performers all paraded across the street to the backyard of 7337. There, a jazz band shared the stage with a team of young women called Sydney Chatman and The Fly Girls, the youngest of whom wore an astronaut helmet and space suit. At the end of each set, they addressed the audience about Black women from different perspectives: as cosmic and universal (hence the space suit), as creative forces, as pillars of the community, and as warriors. The Fly Girls spoke about women living and past, including those who had been the victims of police violence. They said the names of Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Kendra James, and many others.
Things are universally terrible, but that never stopped anybody from singing. Read that, and realize it, and raise your damn voices.
Brett Kavanaugh’s formerly anonymous accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, has come forward. She’s a professor in the Social Work Department at California State University – Fullerton. Many interested in learning more about who Ford is have come across her students’ reviews on RateMyProfessors.com.
They’re … not good.
Overall, she scores 2.3 out of 5 (a failing grade if the roles were reversed). The reviews span from 2010 – 2014, which rules out students tampering with her reviews as part of the current Kavanaugh controversy.
[snip]
Editor’s Note: We apologize for the error, but we’ve since learned there are two Christine Fords working in clinical psychology in California and we wrote this report about the wrong Christine Ford. We regret not going to greater lengths to ensure this was indeed the same Christine Ford. Please do not share this article with anyone (and if you have, delete it/withdraw it); we are only leaving the page up so you can see this important update.
So this gets posted, picked up by a bunch of wingnut sites, and goes everywhere before the idiots realize that they’ve got the wrong person. And over something so dumb as RateMyProfessor reviews, which are about as reliable as Yelp reviews of a concert where somebody died on stage.
This isn’t even a smear job from someone in authority (though plenty of people treated as legit journalists cough*DRUDGE*cough picked this up), just a bad, dumb, clickwhoring stab from somebody who thought hey, I’ll get a piece of this roiling clusterfuck for my very own!
This is why women don’t come forward to accuse the powerful: There’s an army of bootlicks out there, ready to tear the accusers down. Not for power or money but because it’s fun to cackle and make a mess. They’re chaos-causing shitlords who don’t give a damn about the damage they create, and once unleashed will deny all responsibility for the trash fire they lit.
And this is why I keep beating the drum that national media who let these types of people into their parties and treat them like respected colleagues (“Matt Drudge Rules Our World“) have contributed to the very atmosphere they now deplore, where things like this happen and are corrected after the fact, like the strikethrough makes it better, like it’s just an honest mistake.
Kick has strict instructions to never say the words fat, fatty, fatso, Stay Puft, lardass, nor sing I Love It When You Call Me Big Poppa at any people at all, but she is free to do all those things in the presence of Slade, who looks like he ate a pillow these days as winter approaches:
Brock Long and fellow Trump dignity wraith Kirstjen Nielsen with Trump.
I was pleasantly surprised when Trump appointed Brock Long FEMA director. Long was a respected emergency management professional who was qualified for the job unlike, say, Michael Brown. Unfortunately, everyone and everything Trump touches turns to shit. It happened to the FEMA boss this weekend. And that is why Brock Long is malaka of the week.
In an interview with Long, Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked the FEMA administrator a “simple, factual question: Do you dispute this number of 3,000 hurricane-related deaths?”
“There’s several different studies out there that are all over the place when it comes to death,” Long replied, before noting: “The official stance of FEMA is, one, we don’t count deaths.”
“The only thing that would come remotely close, the data that we would have, is the funeral benefits that we push forward.”
“[Trump] said Democrats did it to make him look bad,” “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd asked. “Do you believe any of these studies were done to make the President looked bad?”
“I don’t know know why the studies were done,” Long said.
The George Washington University study was done at the behest of Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello. The president* used to be a Rosello fan, but he’s now on Trumpy’s shit list.
Malaka Brocka also went on about spousal abuse on Meet the Press:
WATCH: FEMA Administrator Brock Long calls Puerto Rico studies “frustrating” #MTP@FEMA_Brock: “You might see more deaths indirectly as time goes on… Spousal abuse goes through the roof. You can’t blame spousal abuse after a disaster on anyone” pic.twitter.com/PcDGCiJyGd
He should consult with his big boss: he’s an expert on spousal abuse.
The Hurricane Maria flap isn’t the only controversy Long has on his plate. He seems to be channeling the spirit of Scott Pruitt, which is why he’s under investigation for using federal funds to pay for his personal travel expenses. Nice work if you can get it.
Donald Trump corrupts everything and everyone he touches. Brock Long is just the latest in a long line of Trump dignity wraiths. And that is why Brock Long is malaka of the week.
I was almost hesitant to write about the Kavanaugh mess because the situation is so fluid. It’s like confidently predicting where a tropical system will strike when it’s off the coast of West Africa. Those who are convinced that a judiciary committee vote will take place on Thursday *could* be right. As of this writing, delay is in the air. And delay is not Brett Kavanaugh’s friend.
I was relieved when Christine Blasey Ford came forward on Sunday. I had gotten tired of the Feinstein bashing. She was between a rock and a hard place: a constituent (her boss) had requested that her identity remain confidential and Team Feinstein was trying to honor their commitment to her. Politics *should* be about people and people’s wishes should be respected; otherwise we’re just as bad as the Republicans.
Ms. Ford’s desire to avoid the inevitable blood-letting is completely understandable as is her decision to come forward when the press was hot on her trail. There were no easy answers for Team Feinstein and I’m glad that Ms. Ford and her lawyer have praised them. Let’s leave those process-based recriminations to the Republicans and move on.
The GOP’s original strategy was to issue that preposterous “Brett didn’t rape me” letter and hope that Ms. Ford would not testify. Her attorney has now stated that she’s willing to do so. A note on the GOP letter: these are not Kavanaugh’s “classmates:” he went to an all-boys school.
As of this writing, it’s unclear what will happen with the judiciary committee. It’s politically dangerous for them to proceed without hearing Ms. Ford when even Kellyanne Conway thinks she “should not be ignored.” I’m inclined to believe that the temporary senior senator from Arizona will not Flake out on his pledge to withhold his committee vote without hearing Ms. Ford. He’s made some fine speeches in the past BUT this is the first time he’s promised to do something, so I’ll take him at his word. For now. I told you things were fluid.
Delay is the Democrats’ friend and Kavanaugh’s enemy. The heavy-handed attacks on Ford are politically perilous when regime change in the Senate is suddenly in play. I realize that hardcore Trumpers don’t care about alienating suburban women, but they should. The gender gap in the 2018 midterms will be something to behold. Politically, the Kavanaugh mess is win-win for Democrats. Cynical but true.
The Kavanaugh mess has revived memories of Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings, which were re-opened to hear Anita Hill. Kavanaugh is in a much worse position than Thomas whose hearings had gone well. Nobody accused Clarence Thomas of lying to the senate or of having a gambling problem. Kavanaugh’s baggage is like a steamer trunk that’s weighing him down. I haven’t even mentioned his time as Ken Starr’s designated leaker or as a political hack on W’s staff. In a rational world, his baggage would sink him but this is the Trump era where a president* obstructs justice in broad daylight then brags about it on twitter.
If, like Brett Kavanaugh, I were a betting man, I’d wager on Kavanaugh being confirmed by the senate. Right-wingers have been waiting a long time to replace a swing vote and secure a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. It could, however, be a phyrric victory that results in Republicans losing both houses of Congress. Defending Brett Kavanaugh on the stump will be just as unpleasant as these confirmation hearings.
Repeat after me: the situation is fluid. Anyone who tells you that they’re certain what will happen should be drug tested or polygraphed.
Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” sold more than 750,000 copies through its first day of release, the most for any title in Simon & Schuster history, according to the 94-year-old publisher.
The investigative book by the veteran Watergate reporter, who has written books about every administration dating back to President Nixon, was powered by excerpts published before the book’s public release Tuesday and President Trump’s public rejection of it. Trump called the book “a con on the public” consisting of quotes that are “made up frauds” designed to boost Democrats ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
Didn’t the media tell us Hillary was going to win the election, or that Trump colluded with Russia? WHY SHOULD WE BELIEVE THEM WHEN THEY LIE TO US ABOUT LEFTY BOOK SALES?
2 posted on 9/13/2018, 2:12:00 PM by CivilWarBrewing (Get off my back for my usage of CAPS, especially you snowflake males! MAN UP!)
GO FUCK YOURSELF.
To: EveningStar
Gee, the party of the “little” people…sure has a “lot” of money to burn.
11 posted on 9/13/2018, 2:26:24 PM by RckyRaCoCo (Please Pray For My Brother Ken)
Hmm – I’m living on Social Security, and even *I* can afford $18.
Anyway, back to the Tinfoil Brigade :
To: CivilWarBrewing
#2: “Unless George Soros bought them all.”
Yes, in a way. These books were bought by PACs, think tanks, etc. They will be handed out as freebies and swag at their “events”.
Anyone who has the slightest familiarity with publishing knows that these purchases were not driven by individual sales. Even the lib reviewers say the prose is stiff and wooden, dull, and almost unreadable.
18 posted on 9/13/2018, 2:35:46 PM by Governor Dinwiddie (“Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”)
Of course even in Freeperville, reality sometimes rears its ugly head :
To: CivilWarBrewing
It’s believable. Subscriptions and sales are off the hook in all categories for the left and trashing President Trump whether we like it or not. The left is a self sustaining entity and nothing the right says or does penetrates it. Hell..the President spends half his time responding to their garbage.
CNN, MSNBC, and all the news broadcasts on the alphabet channels are getting dismal ratings yet Woodward’s book sales are going through the roof? The leftist intellectuals read but not their electorate. Looks like mass buying to me. You’ll see copies of the book in Democrat headquarters and precinct offices around the country, and in the Dollar Tree and 99 Cent stores in time for Christmas!
I thought that 99 cent thing was supposed to happen by this week?
To: dowcaet
CNN and MSNBC combined beat FOX by at least a million every single night. Maddow regularly beats or ties Hannity. New York Times and Washington Post subscriptions are way up. Those are facts. FOX is a tiny bubble and half of the (FOX)content is anti-Trump drivel.
“When Trump visited the island territory last October, OFFICIALS told him in a briefing 16 PEOPLE had died from Maria.” The Washington Post. This was long AFTER the hurricane took place. Over many months it went to 64 PEOPLE. Then, like magic, “3000 PEOPLE KILLED.” They hired….
He’s a feral animal, of course, who can only see things in terms of how they affect him. You know this and so do I and I think so does he, not that it matters. I’m so tired of spending time in his psyche. Who cares if he’s crazy or evil or crazy-evil; three thousand still died.
And more will, and more. When this was all going down this week I thought of friends who died years after Katrina, after wars, after trauma. Kick and I drove home from a festival Saturday night listening to Springsteen’s concert in New Orleans in ’06, barely seven months after the storm:
And I thought of Ashley, who Adrastos wrote about this week, and Betty, and Morwen, and Greg, and all the people who died later, much later, because their lives got ripped to shreds and never quite got put back together, because everything that happens to you wears you down a little more, because it’s hard to tell when all the threads are woven together which one will unravel you when it’s pulled.
These things have long tails, have a half-life and you can’t just say the waters receded and then everything was all right again. More will die in Puerto Rico. More will die on the Carolina coast. More will die every day and the point isn’t how many, when. The point is we could have stopped it, and helped, and didn’t.
Government is, six days of the year, an actual job and not just cutting ribbons on new supermarkets and shit. I thought Trump was supposed to be this colossus. I thought he was this great legendary thing, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and overcome ordinary obstacles with his giant business penis or whatever the hell he was on about during the campaign.
“I alone can fix it” is a promise you’d best be prepared to make real, time comes.
The three thousand people who died in Puerto Rico don’t care if Trump is to blame or not. If he saved them, they’d just be glad to be alive. And we had the capability to save them; this “well, FEMA just drops stuff off, derp derp derp” is horseshit. We can override laws and rules and regulations whenever we feel like it, and there are lots of people at, say, Mar-A-Lago and in Iraq who can attest to those things.
It’s amazing how Trump wants to violate every norm and rule when it’s time to put some money in his bank account, and how Republicans are all WHAT EVEN IS REGULAR ORDER when they want to put the personification of 6-month-old sour cream on the United States Supreme Court, but when there’s bottled water to be distributed in Puerto Rico it’s “well, somebody else was supposed to do this one thing and we were powerless to override that vague convention.” Like just send in the 82nd, you’ve already proved literally nobody is gonna fuck with you.
I mean, even if you grant that we have an imperial presidency and have since around 9/11/01: PUT IT TO USE ALREADY. Unless you just didn’t want to do that, in which case, fucking own it. Admit that you have power where you want to have it, so that we can assess, and make decisions, without somebody throwing a giant tantrum all day long about FAKE NEWS and DEMOCRAT PERFIDY and other shit that doesn’t matter one bit to three thousand dead.
Wayne Bevis, principal of Lindblom Math & Science Academy, said “Quantum Englewood” will help expose Englewood students to the arts in their own neighborhood.
“It’s great because it’s local so our students don’t have to travel anywhere but they can experience it within the school environment,” Bevis said.
Graves said more performances of “Quantum Englewood” may be announced in the near future.
Music Moves Chicago is an Old Town School of Folk Music program that provides a platform for local teachers to work with students in a variety of musical genres like hip-hop, poetry, African drums and more.
It’s been a crazy news week: the Woodward book, Hurricane Florence, exploding houses in Massachusetts, the Kavanaugh letter, and the Manafort flip. How far Paulie flips remains to be seen but, given his connection to the Former Soviet Union, his plea deal is *potentially* the Kremlingate kill shot. I’ve long thought Manafort was either placed on Team Trump by Russian intelligence or encouraged to sign up by them. Stay tuned.
This week’s theme song, Play It All Night Long was written by Warren Zevon for his 1980 album, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School. It has one of the greatest opening verses in rock history:
Grandpa pissed his pants again
He don’t give a damn
Brother Billy has both guns drawn
He ain’t been right since Vietnam
As well as a killer chorus:
“Sweet home Alabama”
Play that dead band’s song
Turn those speakers up full blast
Play it all night long
We have two versions for your listening pleasure. The original studio recording and a live solo version from Learning to Flinch with WZ on piano.
I’ve been doing fewer Your President* Speaks posts as the Trump administration slogs along. The stupid fucker wants us obsessing over his tweets and I prefer not to give him what he wants. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule and this is one of them. I woke up mad, now it’s time to get even.
I briefly considered using Rock Bottom instead of A New Low in the title. Unfortunately, there *is* no rock bottom for the Insult Comedian. He thinks he stoops to conquer when instead he shoots himself in the foot every time he pulls a stunt like this:
3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000…
…..This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!
It goes without saying that none of this is true. Fuck you, Donald.
It goes without saying that this is obscene. Fuck you, Donald.
It goes without saying that Trump thinks Hurricanes Maria and Florence are about him. Fuck you, Donald.
It goes without saying that he is desecrating the memory of those who died in Puerto Rico and those who might die as a result of Florence. Fuck you, Donald.
The real reason this president* never cared about the deaths of some 3,000 Puerto Ricans is that they were never going to vote for him. It’s a horrible thing to say about anyone but it’s true. Fuck you, Donald.
As someone who lived through Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood, I take this very seriously. When a major storm makes landfall, I feel twinges of PTSD and I was one of the lucky ones. You shouldn’t play politics with hurricanes. This is about human suffering, not about a ridiculous man who sits in the White House live tweeting Fox News. Fuck you, Donald.
Having said that, I disagree with those who think Trump should be thrown off twitter. I want to know what the enemy is up to. I believe in turning over rocks and exposing the evil underneath. Besides, the Insult Comedian keeps saying damaging things on twitter. Let the stupid fucker tweet to his heart’s content.
This tweet in response to Trump’s new low is perfect:
My father died in Puerto Rico between Irma and Maria.
He died alone, without power, without his medication.
Fuck this fucking fuck and everyone who voted for him and enables him. To disregard human life like this is the lowest of his lows. https://t.co/WTuT6fQXOD
