The Odds & Sods spirit is evanescent. I don’t have it this week for a variety of reasons. Nothing serious but enough to make my week harder than need be. As I said in my Thanksgiving post, the holidays are hard for me. This too will pass.
I do, however, have a theme song despite my Saturday post ennui. Hold On was written by Trevor Rabin before he joined Yes. Jon Anderson and Chris Squire helped finish the song and received credit as co-writers. Some of the lyrics are pure Jon.
We have a companion song, Sam & Dave’s hit version of the Hayes/Porter tune:
That’s it for this terse version of Saturday Odds & Sods. The last word goes to the Marx Brothers. It may not be seasonal but it’s suitably silly on a day when comic relief is in order.
One of my odder hobbies was the focus of my attention last night, the 2019 British general election. The result was depressingly predictable: the Tories won again. They’ve been in power 67 of 101 years since the Liberals blew themselves up with the feud between Asquith and Lloyd George. They moved into third party status and Labour became the other big party. Neither the Lib Dems nor Labour had a good night.
A good night was had by Boris Johnson who ran a vague, substance free campaign with a specific simplistic slogan: “Get Brexit Done.” The result of Johnson’s English nationalism is likely to be a disunited kingdom: the Scottish National Party won big in their bailiwick as well. Hence the featured image of the Scottish Saltire and the Union Jack. If Brexit gets done, the SNP wants out of the union. Stay tuned.
Nobody does election coverage better than the BBC. Their set looked like a cross between a spaceship and a medieval castle. Their graphics are whimsically informative. And it’s always good to see our old pal the Swing-O-Meter, which began life as a low-tech spinning wheel thingamabob. It’s now haute high tech: green screen all the way. I prefer the 1964 model:
I also prefer the result in 1964 when Harold Wilson led Labour back to power after 13 years in the wilderness. Labour spends so much time in the wilderness that they must be expert campers. They’ve lost 4 straight elections and will spend a minimum of 14 years in the wilderness this time around.
Social media was full of Americans projecting our politics on the British election. It has no meaning for us given the core issues of the campaign: Brexit and the awfulness of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The real lesson of the election is this: do not run a candidate with negatives ranging anywhere from -40 to -61. Many Labourites knew they had a problem but a previous attempt to oust Corbyn failed miserably and they were stuck with him. The Tories are much better at defenestration. Chop.
The response of the Corbynistas to defeat was unintentionally hilarious. Like ideologues everywhere, they came up with a party line and stuck to it. They swore that their policies were popular, but Brexit did them in. There’s a kernel of truth in the Brexit part: they lost many Northern seats that were pro-remain. There’s a huge BUT coming, their dear leader had negatives ranging anywhere from -40 to -61.
Corbyn announced what he hopes will be a slow-motion exit from the Labour leadership. I’m not sure that he’ll be able to hang on that long. Stay tuned.
It was a relief to focus on the dysfunctional politics of another country for one night. I watched bits and pieces of the Judiciary committee’s mark-up hearing. I got a headache listening to Matt Gaetz who looks and sounds like the preppie villain in a slasher movie set on a college campus.
We’re cursed to live in interesting times. We don’t need to make them even more interesting by believing that the British election results will determine our own in 2020. Boris Johnson is terrible but he’s not Donald Trump terrible. Trump and congressional Republicans are the ones with high negatives.
In addition to high negatives, Trump has some other similarities to Jeremy Corbyn. Both men are surrounded by sycophants who tell them what they want to hear. They’re incurious and reject facts that displease them. Neither Corbyn nor Trump is capable of admitting error, that quality killed Labour’s chances in 2019. Self-image is important to both Trump and Corbyn: they don’t see themselves as the rest of the world sees them. The major difference is ideological. Corbyn believes in something whereas Trump only believes in himself. Believe me.
Finally, one thing I love about election nights, UK style is how late things go on. It’s impossible not to sound punchy at 4 AM. The Brits are good at muddling through, which is a good quality to emulate. It’s what I’m doing right now.
The last word goes to the Kinks. It’s not a political song but it rocks. We all need to rock more.
Meet Flip. His cat guardian Maureen is one of Dr. A’s colleagues. As you can tell from the box, she’s Canadian.
This picture poses the eternal feline question: What’s better than a Christmas tree? A Christmas tree box. I stole that from Maureen’s Facebook feed. Thanks, hon.
“The sound of lies rings funny against the truth.”
Gary Louris, 1997.
When it’s cold, I think of the Jayhawks. They’re based in St. Paul, Minnesota and it doesn’t get much colder than that, y’all. It’s a cold, damp and dreary day in New Orleans but it’s comforting to know it’s colder elsewhere. Cold comfort but comfort, nonetheless.
You’re probably wondering where I’m going with this. It’s a frequent phenomenon with my writing. I like to start in one place zigzag about and end up where I started. It’s probably why I like the first segment of Rachel Maddow’s show so much. She does the same thing but at a higher level. I’m just a punster with a small megaphone.
I’ve had Sound Of Lies in my head for several days, but I was inspired to write by a tweet from Matthew Miller who is a Democratic lawyer/MSNBC contributor who was Eric Holder’s spokesman.
This is such a depressing read. The Trump/Johnson formula of lying shamelessly and counting on a right wing press to echo it while the mainstream fails to catch up is here to stay, and neither the left nor the press has figured out how to confront it. https://t.co/kQEl5S3qJR
The Big Lie is here to stay. Dealing with it seems to baffle the MSM who have a hard time calling a lie a lie. They are getting better at doing so, but the learning curve is particularly steep for the New York Times. It’s not called the Gray Lady for nothing. It’s always been a prim and proper paper. Gray Ladies prefer politer terms for the sort of bald-faced lying that’s in vogue in 2019.
I’m not naive. Politicians, even those I admire, have always lied; sometimes in a good cause, other times to save face. Politicians are human beings and people lie. I was a young political junkie when I heard Jimmy Carter claim that he would never tell a lie if elected president. It was simultaneously implausible and impossible. It helped sow the seeds of his defeat in 1980.
The difference between everyday lies and those told by Trump and his ilk is the degree and extent of their falsehoods. I realize President* Pennywise isn’t much of a reader but even he should know that parable of the boy who cried wolf. Like that boy, Trump has lied so relentlessly that it’s impossible to believe anything he says. Even some MAGA cultists admit that he lies but they don’t care. And I don’t care about them. Wooing them is one lost cause I’m unwilling to take on.
The only weapon against lies is the truth. It’s one reason I’m a bit of a scold when I see people on my side exaggerating and straying from the facts. I’ve stopped doing it on social media because it’s not worth the endless wrangling. A lie is a lie is a lie even if it’s told in a supposedly good cause,
Repeat after me: “The sound of lies rings funny against the truth.”
I bring the snark in my latest 13th Ward Rambler column at Bayou Brief. I write about the holidays, the LSU Tigers, Senator John Neely Kennedy, my Bayou Brief year in review, and Krewe du Vieux. I also bid a fond adieu to former Gambit editor Kevin Allman. Good luck in California, man.
Here’s an alternate version of Last Month Of The Year:
Merry Schiffmas. It’s time for some zany, kooky, and downright weird seasonal album covers. The abundance of kitsch is one of the things I like about Christmas.
Our first combination could be called Hung and the Hampster, which sounds like one of the worst bands ever assembled. It’s whatever the opposite of a super-band is called. A stupor band?
Our second pairing features young men doing weird stuff.
Finally, two artists you’ve actually heard of. It’s something of a cheat because they’re single covers but how could I pass on AC/DC and the Kinks?
I mentioned a top-secret party in an undisclosed location last Saturday. Now that it’s over, I can unbutton my lip: it was Krewe du Vieux’s annual fundraiser, the Brew Dieux. It raises money for both the mother krewe and for sub-krewes like Spank, We sold food and booze and had our annual sideshow game: the dirty weiner drop.
We made just south of $100 on this gross-n-grotty game. Winners received a trip to the Spank world of crap to win a crappy gift. I am not making this up.
I know that Adam Schiff is Jewish but Schiffmukkah sounds like a Republican slur. In dubbing this holiday season Schiffmas, I’m inspired by Fitzmas, which referenced the special prosecutor on the Scooter Libbey case. Fitzmas was something of a letdown because Karl Rove was not indicted in that Plame affair related case.
Adam Schiff deserves a season in his honor because he personifies a new generation of Democratic politicians. After the disastrous 1994 mid-term election, our pols became known as battle averse and overeager to compromise. Chairman Schiff is tough and steely. He refuses to take any shit from intelligence committee GOPers and those who want to call him to testify as a fact witness.
Schiff has become a hate object on the far right. There’s even a Schiff target on a gun nut web site. I’m neither posting it nor linking to it because I don’t want to encourage the lunatic fringe in their violent fantasies. I leave that to President* Pennywise.
I’m only going to watch part of today’s hearing. I have it streaming as I write this. Ranking member Collins is currently annoying the living shit out of me with his molassey drawl and nutty arguments. Perhaps he’s extra cranky because the Georgia Bulldogs were wiped out by my LSU Tigers last Saturday. Either way, Adam Schiff doesn’t give a shit. He and his colleagues have a job to do and they’re going to do it.
Finally, I’d almost forgotten how unintentionally hilarious Newt Gingrich is:
.@maddow shows that despite expressing outrage on Fox News over the proximity of Pres. Trump's impeachment to Christmas, Newt Gingrich had no problem filling the 1998 Christmas season with Pres. Clinton's impeachment.https://t.co/PL4QILAwwR
It’s Pearl Harbor Day. This Saturday might live in infamy for another reason: we’re attending a top-secret event in an undisclosed location this evening. I can’t tell you what it is but if you’re a member of a certain benign but bawdy organization, you know what I’m talking about. If not, you may be feeling thoroughly befuddled. So it goes.
Speaking of bombs, the 2019 British general election is heading into the homestretch. I haven’t written about it because it’s so depressing. The two big parties have terrible leaders neither of whom is fit to be Prime Minister but Corbyn is the lesser of two evils. Bozza the Bozo who currently holds the job has bad hair and an even worse slogan: “Get Brexit Done.” The pro-European Union Liberal Democrats shot themselves in the foot by declaring they could win the election when they currently have 20 seats. They’re still limping away from that absurd declaration. Making matters worse is that the Tories deserve to lose and there’s a good chance that they’ll win.
This week’s theme song was written and recorded by Mark James in 1968. His version bombed but Elvis Presley’s did not. It became the King’s’ biggest hit of the Sixties.
We have multiple versions of Suspicious Minds for your listening pleasure: Mark James, Elvis, Waylon Jennings & Jessi Colter, and a reggae version by the Heptones.
Now that you’re suspicious, let’s clear the air by jumping to the break.
It’s time for some musical foreshadowing. Tomorrow’s Odd & Sods theme song is a tune that Elvis Presley made famous as is Little Sister. It was written in 1961 by the killer songwriting team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman.
We have three rocking versions for your listening pleasure: Elvis, Ry Cooder, and Dwight Yoakam. You’ll be hearing from Dwight again tomorrow as well:
I haven’t been as wrapped up in the 2020 presidential campaign as I usually am by this stage. Instead, I’ve been following the twists and turns of the impeachment inquiry. It’s hard not to. The national house is on fire and the arsonist lives in the White House. I hate to give that stupid evil fucker the attention he wants but it’s imperative that his malefactions be exposed whatever happens in the Senate.
I thought I’d dip my toe back in the campaign pond by giving my impressions of the candidates in one word. It won’t be easy for a writer who dubbed his Bayou Brief column 13th Ward Rambler. I like words and word play but sometimes you gotta keep it short; unlike this introduction. If I miss anyone, too fucking bad. I’m including some of the dearly departed candidates for shits and giggles.
DEMOCRATS:
Biden: Garrulous.
Sanders: Grouchy.
Warren: Brilliant.
Buttigieg: Unqualified.
Bloomberg: Plutocrat.
Booker: Warm.
Klobuchar: Smiley.
Steyer: Who?
Gabbard: Troll.
Castro: Impressive.
Patrick: Late.
Bennet: Eyebrows
Yang: Why?
Harris: Enigmatic.
Delaney: Bald.
O’Rourke: Gestural.
Williamson: Flaky.
Sestak: Huh?
Swalwell: Young.
Gillibrand: Blonde.
REPUBLICANS:
Trump: Asshole.
Weld: Patrician.
Walsh: Teabagger.
Sanford: Olé.
I realize that the columns are crooked but so is the Current Occupant. I did them manually without resort to a manual or a chap named Manuel:
I only watched bits and bobs of the Con Law seminar on the Hill yesterday. Watching Louie Gohmert Piles causes my blood pressure to spike and Gym Jordan gives me a headache, so I need to ration my exposure to them. I am, however, acquainted with the GOP’s witness, Jonathan Turley who, as far as I know, is not a Republican and didn’t vote for Trump in 2016. I was relieved to hear that.
Turley was for impeachment before he was against it. It was a repeat performance: He testified before the Judiciary committee during the Clinton impeachment inquiry as did Michael Gerhardt, I’m not sure why they missed Professor Karlan back then. Perhaps their premonitive powers told them she’d make a joke about a future president’s* then unborn child. The Barron flap was right up there with Barack Obama’s tan suit as a phony “scandal.” It was barren of genuine outrage, but everything is phony about the Trumps.
Back to Jonathan Turley. I knew him when he was a baby law professor at Tulane, and I was a student. He was among the friendlier and more approachable faculty members. I can’t say that I knew him well, but I socialized with him in groups because of the POPS program. When I was a 2L, Tulane Law instituted a community service requirement, that’s when Turley launched the Program for Older Prisoners.
The premise of POPS is that older prisoners have mellowed with age and are unlikely to commit crimes upon release. It’s pitched to conservative pols as a cost-saving measure and to liberals as a humanitarian policy. Law students were dispatched to prisons to interview candidates for the program, reports were prepared, and passed on to the authorities. It’s more involved than that but, as you’ll soon see, my personal experience with the process is limited.
I made two trips to Angola State Prison to meet with prisoner/candidates. I seem to have drawn the short end of the straw: both convicts were convicted rapists and pedophiles. One was a very muscular, heavily tattooed 65-year-old who was unrepentant about his perverted predilections. I asked him why he’d applied given his lack of remorse. He hadn’t a visitor in years and wanted someone to talk to. The other guy was a repentant perv, but a poor candidate for early release. Suffice it to say I didn’t recommend either of them. My skin crawls recalling the first guy whose name I’ve withheld to protect the guilty.
Turley was a surprisingly subtle choice for committee GOPers to make. His position is not that Trump is a good guy who should never be impeached but that Congress should wait for the courts to rule on the pending witness and document cases before proceeding. In the abstract, there’s some merit to this argument BUT given the Trump regime’s relentless stonewalling it’s a terrible idea in the real world. The reason for the expedited process is a genuine concern that Team Trump will stage an encore performance of 2016 in next year’s election. Two stolen 21st Century elections aren’t enough; they want to complete a trifecta in 2020.
Unlike the House Republicans who called him to testify, Jonathan Turley is neither a bad nor venal person but he’s wrong about the Trump impeachment inquiry. I would, however, be remiss if I didn’t link to Dana Milbank’s hilarious takedown of the Turley testimony in the WaPo. I can’t resist quoting Milbank quoting Turley:
“I get it: You are mad,” he testified. “The president is mad. My Democratic friends are mad. My Republican friends are mad. My wife is mad. My kids are mad. Even my dog seems mad — and Luna is a goldendoodle and they don’t get mad. So we’re all mad.”
Damn right we are! But nowhere in the Constitution does it state that a president shall not be impeached if people — or their dogs — are mad.
I’ll be doggone. Lawyers say the darndest things.
The last word goes to Aaron Neville and the Neville Brothers:
This Saturday is the 78th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It’s time to celebrate the most famous book and movie adaptation set before and during the attack. Even in a crowded field of war novels, James Jones’ book stood out. The movie was pretty darn good as well.
We’ve known of President* Pennywise’s fear and loathing of women forever. He’s been charged with sexual harassment, rape, and all around lechery for decades. His typical defense is either “I don’t know her” or “She’s not hot enough for me to hit on.”
Yeah, right. If he paid an after hours visit to Texas A&M, he might join the frat boys in some, uh, sheep dipping. He would, however, draw the line at dog fucking.
In less lecherous moments, Trump has gleefully insulted Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Cortez-Ocasio, and Marie Yovanovitch among others. He seems to take special relish in knifing women as he hides behind his twitter feed and temporary occupancy of the Oval Office. That’s why I call him the Insult Comedian.
One of the more recent examples of President* Pennywise’s gross public misogyny took place at a MAGA rally in Minneapolis:
It’s still hard to believe that he did that in public. It led the target of this vile abuse, Lisa Page, to break her silence and speak to Molly Jong-Fast:
For the nearly two years since her name first made the papers, she’s been publicly silent (she did have a closed-door interview with House members in July 2018). I asked her why she was willing to talk now. “Honestly, his demeaning fake orgasm was really the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she says. The president called out her name as he acted out an orgasm in front of thousands of people at a Minneapolis rally on Oct. 11.
That was the moment Page decided she had to speak up. “I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” she says. “It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back.”
The politics of personal destruction has been perfected by the Insult Comedian and Fox News. They don’t care how tangential someone is, if they’re not fulsome in their praise of the Male-Chauvinist-Pig-In-Chief they’re fair game, especially members of what used to be called “the fairer sex.” That was vaguely polite misogyny. Trump is never polite but always sexist in an egregiously hateful way.
We’ve been told over and over again by his apologists that none of this matters because he won the election. I don’t have to tell you how specious that argument is. It may be true of evangelicals who think he’s the “chosen one,” but women are abandoning the party of Trump in droves. Let the white boys defend the indefensible by dismissing the Insult Comedian’s vile antics as “locker room talk.”
Donald Trump is not only a sexist, he’s a pussy. He should grab himself.
Repeat after me: Donald Trump is a misogynist as well as a mentally ill racist criminal.
I’m working my way through the House Intelligence Committee’s report. It’s essentially a narrative history of what happened with Ukraine and why it matters. It’s more readable than the Mueller Report. It doesn’t hedge its bets and calls an Igor an Igor and a Lev a Lev.
Nevertheless, there remain unanswered questions, and our investigation must continue, even as we transmit our report to the Judiciary Committee. Given the proximate threat of further presidential attempts to solicit foreign interference in our next election, we cannot wait to make a referral until our efforts to obtain additional testimony and documents wind their way through the courts. The evidence of the President’s misconduct is overwhelming, and so too is the evidence of his obstruction of Congress. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a stronger or more complete case of obstruction than that demonstrated by the President since the inquiry began.
The damage the President has done to our relationship with a key strategic partner will be remedied over time, and Ukraine continues to enjoy strong bipartisan support in Congress. But the damage to our system of checks and balances, and to the balance of power within our three branches of government, will be long-lasting and potentially irrevocable if the President’s ability to stonewall Congress goes unchecked. Any future President will feel empowered to resist an investigation into their own wrongdoing, malfeasance, or corruption, and the result will be a nation at far greater risk of all three.
Jerry Nadler says that he’s not going to “take any shit” from committee GOPers. Let’s hope so. Some of the looniest members of the Republican caucus are on the Judiciary Committee. The first day sounds as dry as a bone so perhaps they’ll nod off. I’m not sure if Louie Gohmert Piles, Jim Jordan, and Matt Gaetz will understand all the big words used by the law professors. I’m skipping it. I’m not in the mood to watch them throw shit against the wall just to see how much of it sticks. Now if Larry Tribe were testifying, I’d be there.
The phone records are particularly interesting. What was the man who puts the cow in Moscow, Devin Nunes, doing on the phone with the conspirators?
A phone song is in order. The last word goes to the Kinks:
This week we have dogeared images via Discogs of a 1979 Spinners album. And what’s not to love about an album title that’s a pun on From Here To Eternity?
The front and back covers are hardcore sci-fi images by prolific illustrator Stephen Marchesi. That giant snake is stuff of nightmares.
Here’s the whole damn album via the YouTube playlist format:
The MSM is full of former Bushies trying to convince the public that President Beavis was a prince among men compared to the Current Occupant. While it’s true that Dubya had better table manners, it should not be forgotten that the Beavis-Duce administration was almost as fond of smear tactics as the Trump regime.
According to Team Bush-Cheney, those of us who opposed the Mess in Mesopotamia were soft on terrorism at best, traitors at worst. The difference between Bushies and Trumpers is that most of the time Dubya let others do the lying and smearing on his behalf. Genuine upper-class twits swells let the help do the dirty work for them: Poppy had Lee Atwater; Junior had Karl Rove. The Insult Comedian enjoys wallowing in the mud alongside Gym Jordan, Devin Nunes, and John Neely Kennedy. More about the latter next week at the Bayou Brief.
That brings us to two people the Bush administration gleefully smeared: the late Ambassador Joe Wilson and his then CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame. Scooter Libby was convicted of disclosing Plame’s identity: his sentence was commuted by Bush; Trump pardoned him in 2018. Karl Rove escaped indictment by the skin of his teeth; surviving to take up residence as a Fox News pundit. Robert Novak the right-wing columnist who published the story was not indicted either, but the man known as the Prince of Darkness finally went to hell in 2009. It’s unclear if he went there in a bucket:
“I feel personally for this whistleblower. I know what he’s going through,” says Plame. “His career is over. His world, it’s already been upended. I don’t think he’ll remain anonymous for long.”
The good news is that Valerie Plame survived the Bush smear campaign, moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and started a new chapter in her life. After a tough year in which her father and husband died, she’s landed on her feet again. She’s the subject of a flattering profile in the WaPo and is running as a Democrat for a House seat in New Mexico. This ad is a knockout:
The Plame-Wilson affair was such a cause celebre that a movie based on their respective memoirs was made in 2010, Fair Game. Naomi Watts and Sean Penn played the couple. It’s the rare case in which the real people were more attractive than the actors portraying them. It’s a good movie, check it out if you haven’t seen it.
There was also this song by The Decemberists:
The next time a Bush acolyte tries to tell you that their guy is a much better man than President* Pennywise, remember the smear campaign against Valerie Plame. Dubya just knows what fork to use and would have had the good sense to stay off social media. Otherwise, he set the table for the Insult Comedian’s smear tactics.
I couldn’t resist a rock and roll pun in the post title, so the last word goes to Peter Frampton:
I hope everyone had a festive and gluttonous Thanksgiving. We had a double header: first in Red Stick with the surviving outlaw, then in the evening with our friends Will and Jennifer. Will is the King Cake Baron of New Orleans. I just wanted to prove that I don’t hate *all* royals, certainly not those that may involve royal icing. I’m not sure if that joke made any sense but when did that ever stop me?
This week’s theme song was written in 1966 by Tom King and Chad Kelly in 1965 for their band, The Outsiders. It was a big hit, reaching #5 on the Billboard charts.
We have three versions of Time Won’t Let Me for your listening pleasure: The Outsiders original, a 1981 version by Iggy Pop, and a 1994 version recorded by The Smithereens for use in the movie Timecop.
Time for another timely tune; hopefully time *will* let me post it:
