You’ve seen Paul Drake the sink walker, here he is relaxing in the bathtub:
That’s a whole lotta white, y’all. It looks like an Osmonds concert with shower curtains.
Are you ready for PD’s brand new theme song? Little Feat get the last word.
First Draft
Liberal Politics, Media Criticism & General Mayhem
Tweet Of The Day: Scout Prime Edition
Our beloved colleague Scout Prime is on her way to YouTube comedy stardom:
I can’t wait for the second episode. I was worried that Della Street and Paul Drake might be jealous until I saw the kitty in the car in the car wash. Yikes.
A Somewhat Personal Opinion of The Trump Base
Somewhat personal because I agree with Adrastos and assume most of you feel the same. To use a metaphor in honor of the first black hole photo, they’re beyond the event horizon. To steal a line from Malcolm Tucker, they’re so dense, light bends around them.
They’re also arrogant. It starts at the very top, but William Barr’s testimony dripped with contempt…and then there’s the flat out refusal to comply with a clear law giving Congress authority to review tax records.
It’s the read meat — please the base by owning the libs.
But I still think it’s a bluff, and I still think it’s pretty much all they’ve got. They’re hiding something, and it’s likely awful (though the base won’t care because…beyond the event horizon)…
Without anything better, they’ll try to brazen it out, see if they can score points by portraying the Democrats as both weak AND monstrous socialist menace (consistency’s not a strong suit with the MAGASSes).
And part of me fears the Dems might fall into the trap. They’re complaining, but so far I haven’t seen much else. That’s not good.
I keep trying to imagine the shit-storm if the tables were somehow turned … difficult, given there’s really no Democratic Trump or rabid Fox Noise watching base … but, then again, it’s not like they were particularly civil to the legitimately elected and not-at-all-corrupt Obama administration.
But all that said, bluffs and cons are all Trump knows. And his core supporters? Hopeless suckers…
Pulp Fiction Thursday: Here’s Blood In Your Eye
I identify with this book title because I have allergy related bloodshot eyes. Note that the cover on the left was published under the Harlequin imprint. It’s obviously not a romance novel. Ain’t nothing romantic about bloody eyes.
Charles Blow On Political Folk Heroes
Donald Trump and Edwin Edwards in 1993. Photo via the Advocate.
The Op-Ed page of the Failing New York Times gets a lot of abuse. While some of it is deserved, everyone should remember that Paul Krugman, Michelle Goldberg, Jamelle Bouie, and Charles Blow dispense wit and wisdom in their NYT columns. My focus today is on the man with the swell name, Charles Blow. The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind…
Mr. Blow is from the Gret Stet of Louisiana. He was born and raised in Gibsland in Bienville Parish and graduated from Grambling State University. He occasionally writes about his mother who still resides in Louisiana. He done it again in one of his most original and insightful columns thus far: Trumpism Extols Its Folk Hero.
Mr. Blow posits that, among the suckers who have fallen hardest for the con, Donald Trump has morphed from mere mortal to a legendary figure, a folk hero. For those of us who are immune to his snake oily charm, he’s an anti-hero.
Mr. Blow uses his mother’s affection for, and support of, 4 term Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards as an example of how a political folk hero can mesmerize their fans:
My mother is a devout Democrat, but also one of the most socially conservative people I know. This is typical of our home state of Louisiana among black citizens — they can be as conservative as any Republican, but are also completely convinced, by dint of history and experience, that the Republican Party not only abides racists, it courts them, and therefore they would die rather than vote red.
My mother is so austere that she never drank or partied in any way, except for the one time she told me that she went to a nightclub and tried a drink. She didn’t much like the dingy space or the bitter beverage, so she swore them both off.
She abhorred the showy, deeming it vulgar, so every single article of clothing in her closet was white, black, brown or navy blue. Red? Yellow? Green? God forbid.
And she was unshakable in her sense of moral rectitude, viewing sins like lying, gambling and philandering as absolute corruptions of character.
And yet, through my time growing up there and going to college there, she took a devilish pride in enthusiastically supporting and voting for the four-term Democratic governor, Edwin Edwards, a cocksure, gambling womanizer who would end up in federal prison in 2002 for bribery and extortion.
On the surface, it doesn’t make sense that my mother, who thought herself a moralist, would find a champion in a flaunting immoralist, but she did as did many other Louisiana voters. And I believe this was possible because Edwards achieved something that few politicians achieve: He transcended the political, and on some level even the rules of the workaday world, and entered the astral league of folk heroes.
The rules don’t apply to the folk hero. People don’t measure them by the same tape. Behavior that people would never condone in their personal lives, they relish in the folk hero.
Sorry for that epic quote but it’s too well-constructed to cut. Charles’ writing does not blow. And unlike the president* he’s not a blowhard.
Mr. Blow goes on to apply the rules of folk heroism to the Insult Comedian. I agree with his analysis as it explains the irrational, cult-like devotion to Trump among his shrinking base. I disagree, however, with his conclusion:
Anti-Trump forces must stop operating as if they are doing battle with a liar; they are doing battle with what his supporters have fashioned into a legend. How does one fight a fiction, a fantasy? That’s the question. Its answer is the path to America’s salvation.
What we have to do is to ignore hardcore Trumpers who are no more than 25-30% of likely voters. Trying to convert them is a waste of time: they’re fantasists who believe what they want to believe, which is that the Kaiser of Chaos is making America great again. They’re low information voters, trying to convert one’s crazy uncle who watches Fox News is futile. Shorter Adrastos: Fuck them.
A reminder that the GOP lost the midterms by 9 points nationally. Democrats need to keep our base as well as disaffected suburban voters mobilized and ready for action in 2020. If we do that, Trump will lose. Repeat after me: Trump’s only path to victory is to destroy his opponent. Believe me.
Pondering Charles Blow’s name has given me an earworm. The last word goes to McKinley Morganfield:
Album Cover Art Wednesday: High On The Hog
Grim times call for comic relief hence this week’s selection. What’s funnier than a bunch of Southern hippies astride a hog nursing her piglets?
After the success of the Allman Brothers Band, the record labels beat the bushes for Southern rock bands. One of the groups that fell out of the tree was Black Oak Arkansas. They were self-described rednecks who were popular for a few years with their Southern-fried boogie sound.
1973’s High On The Hog was their biggest hit. It features the song Jim Dandy, which became the theme song for their grottily charismatic front man Jim Dandy Mangrum. It’s unclear who or what he was rescuing.
Here are the front and back covers of this gatefolded LP featuring the memorable porcine illustration by Joe Petango.
The quality of the interior gatefold picture isn’t great but you get to see BOA in the backwoods. Boy howdy.
I won’t subject you to the album itself but here’s BOA to the rescue live:
Tuesday Catblogging
It’s become clear to me that while you all are somewhat here for the cursing and cock jokes and thirst pictures of politicians, you also demand quality cat content. Here’s Ada, the prettiest kitty-witty in the entire universe:
A.
Who You Could Be
Jeffrey Toobin is an idiot, okay, and is rightly taking all kinds of .gif heat for this bullshit, but there’s something else at work here that overshadows the majority of the coverage of the Trump administration and the equally infuriating rehabbing of the Bush administration:
.@JeffreyToobin calls Trump “the great reputation killer.”
Kirstjen Nielsen “was a reasonably admired bureaucrat. For the rest of her life people will look at her and think, ‘Oh, that’s the woman who put children in cages.’” https://t.co/LSkSsWzjTF pic.twitter.com/rCKeMObkzZ
— Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) April 8, 2019
The sickness here is in Toobin’s ability to empathize and identify with Nielsen over the immigrant parents she ripped from their children. Nielsen is, after all, a pretty blond white lady, who appears at hearings and podiums dressed in a suit and nice shoes, who speaks in an even tone, so Toobin can see himself in her.
With very few wardrobe changes Jeffrey Toobin could be a nice capable bureaucrat who goes along to get along. Who spouts the party line for his boss and defends the indefensible and tries to make everyone believe that everything is fine. With very little effort — it doesn’t take a Trump to turn you, most people would do it for two quarters and a strawberry milkshake — he could be exactly where Nielsen is.
That should scare the shit out of him. The similarities between them should make him want to BRILLO HIS OWN SKIN OFF. And instead he’s casting her as some kind of innocent who’s been done wrong by an evil man and will now be unfairly punished. She deserves to be remembered for minimal competence at an office job!
If she’ll be remembered instead for her worst actions, what will Toobin be remembered for? If minimal competence at an office job and the ability to mouth complete sentences aren’t enough to buy you a spot in The Good Place, what on earth is? It’s a world gone mad.
A.
Nielsen Cancelled
Remember when important political developments rarely happened on the weekend? It wasn’t long ago but the Current Occupant must be the center of attention at all times. It’s exhausting, y’all.
Sunday’s big news was the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. I would call her the latest Trump dignity wraith but she lost whatever dignity she once had by serving as Team Trump’s point person on immigration.
Nielsen leaves behind a legacy of shame. Caging babies, then lying about it was her modus operandi. Nielsen’s apologists claim that she restrained Trump from doing even worse, more extreme things but who gives a shit? The things she did were bad enough; some of which may have risen to the level of genocide. Things invariably get worse with each change in Trump regime policy and personnel, especially where immigration is concerned. Shit, meet fan.
President* Trump may be the man without a plan but White House aide Stephen Miller has one. And he’s carrying it out by engaging in a purge at DHS. Just what we needed: this crypto-Fascist in charge of our immigration system, and the Secret Service to boot.
Nielsen’s apologists tell us that she was a bureaucratic technocrat. So was Adolf Eichmann who was also adept at caging human beings. The “just following orders” defense didn’t work for him and it shouldn’t work for her.
Stephen Miller is in charge of the immigration system: Shit, meet fan.
IOKIYAR: Gret Stet Of Louisiana Edition
There was a ridiculous flap in Gret Stet politics last week. LSU head football coach Ed Orgeron spoke at a fundraiser for incumbent Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards. Our old pal Senator John Neely Kennedy went batshit crazy. We present his tantrum in two parts to capture its full lunacy. First, from an interview with the Zombie-Picayune:
“This is both-teeth-striped-down-to-the-marrow stupid,” Kennedy said in an interview with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Friday afternoon. “He should not be endorsing Democrats, Republicans, socialists, communists, Hindus…”
It’s the Advocate’s turn to give Neely’s tirade a platform:
“I don’t want to watch LSU football and have to wonder if the coach is a Democrat or Republican. I’m so angry at this,” U.S. Sen. John Kennedy said during a five-minute diatribe on Baton Rouge radio Friday morning – a day after Orgeron introduced Edwards during a breakfast fundraising event. “It is a horrible mistake to politicize LSU and LSU football. I’m stunned that the candidate would even entertain, much less accept, the endorsement.”
What, no cornpone wisdom? A sound bite without a single Neelyism? The real reason that Neely and other GOPers were so upset is that neither of their challengers, Congressman Ralph Abraham and Red Stick tycoon Eddie Rispone, has caught on with the voters. It increasingly looks as if 2015’s dark horse candidate will be a shoo-in for re-election as Gret Stet Governor even without David Vitter as a foil.
It’s time to circle back to the post title. Anyone shocked to learn that Gret Stet GOPers are hypocrites on the subject of LSU football and politics? I would hope not.
Former Tigers head coach Les Miles and former Governor Bobby Jindal were as thick as thieves. Miles attended PBJ’s re-election victory celebration in 2011 as well as a reception after a fundraiser. The Mad Hatter even plugged PBJ’s doomed run for president. I survived these events with my LSU football fandom intact even though my hatred for PBJ is pure; the disgraced politician, not the sammich.
I *almost* dignified the GOP’s “substantive” objections by detailing them but, since Coach O cleared his appearance with the university, I will not. Instead, I’ll remind everyone that: It’s Okay If You’re A Republican:
Today on Tommy T’s Obsesssion with the Freeperati – MestaMachine edition
Having horrible back/neck issues – so a blast from the past for you, since the never-ending Freepathon is back up and running. Hopefully I’ll be back next Monday.
********
Today’s Obsession is about an ex-Freeper – someone who was there for six long years.
Then, she got sick. Really sick. Is-she-ever-going-to-leave-the-hospital sick.
A good friend set up a Paypal donation account and freepmailed fellow Freepers with the info. Many helped. After several hospitalizations, Mestamachine put a link to the account in her FR profile info.
Alas, on Free Republic, only Jim Rob gets to rake in the ducats, and he pulled her login and posting privileges (not an outright zot, her profile still remains, like a disembodied spirit). That’ll teach her to need help.
Now she just lurks and fumes, continuing to watch long-time supporters get banned. Of course, the ranks of the purged include many not-completely-crazies who dared interject some sanity into the knee-jerkiness. Unfortunately for Jim Rob, many (if not most) of these zot-ees were heavy monetary contributors, leaving FR now composed of mostly crap-talkers who never kick in.
Now – why should you care that a known sociopath like Jim Rob turned on one of FR’s most devoted? Is this a “OMG! The sun goes down in the West!” kind of revelation? Glad you asked.
You should care because the FR grift goes a lot deeper than just the Freepathon bucks. A lot.
I have been watching this Freepathon and watching the donations as they come in from people who can scarcely afford it apologizing that they can’t donate more than maybe $3.00 and it is heartbreaking, sad, and sickening.
How many of those who sent in $3.00 have the kind of bling shown in the pic of JimRob, a quarter inch wide, 18-20 inch long white and yellow gold rope chain…while THEY are deciding which prescriptions they can forgo because the copays are so high?He says Free Republic is beholden to no one, but that is a lie.
(…)
Jim Robinson drives a fully rigged, customized van that was, or will soon be, customized even further to accommodate his new disability, (and I don’t begrudge him that,) but to say that FR is beholden to no one when it is truly beholden to everyone whose hard work and many, many contributions paid for everything he has while trying to scare people into donating what they don’t have so he can have even more of what they don’t is disingenuous at best.
He takes in $340,000 per year just from FR. That does not include Social Security or any pension he might receive. That also does not include other entities running off FR’s servers which pay him for space.
He also employs Google Analytics which, unless it is the free version, costs a MINIMUM of $50,000 per year so he knows where anyone who visits FR comes from and goes, where they spend their money and how much, what other sites they visit and when 24/7. In other words, YOU pay to have yourself followed by a corporation that takes every single bit of your personal information and uses it to profit themselves, gives it over to fed.gov upon demand, and though Jim KNOWS this, he uses it anyway so HE knows who you are and where you’ve been, consequences be damned.
Anyone and everyone who has ever had personal dealings with Jim Robinson with very few exceptions has been shafted BY Jim Robinson in one way or another.And how does he repay Freeper loyalty? Well, unless you are a bonafide member of his CURRENT inner sanctum, you can expect not one iota of reciprocated loyalty from Mr. Robinson as he has proven time and again over many years.
Fuck “the government”.
He’s selling that data. To the GOP, to advertisers, probably to the Republican candidates that he mocks on a regular basis.
These dumb fucks are paying to get on mailing lists and have push ads on other sites target them.
Cunning stunt, no?
For a look at the harassment and banning of one of the oldest members of Free Republic, “Badjoe” (now deceased), please read this interesting inside look at how the pecking order (and I do mean “pecking”) and the moderator clique of Freeperville work.
It’s – enlightening.
See you people next Monday.
And Mestamachine – if you followed the links from your website here, and are reading this…
Sunday Catblogging: Look at These Two Dumb Butts
Spring has sprung in the neighborhood and there are birds everywhere so Thing One and Thing Two here are constantly tearing through the house going window to window to chase them from inside because they are the dumbest cats alive.
A.
Mitch Mitch Mitch, OUT OUT OUT
I wrote this back in 2016 and I’m still on that shit, as the kids say.
In fact, I’ll go one further: The entire Resistance ™ should focus much less on ousting Trump and throw its entire weight behind ruining Mitch McConnell’s existence into and through the afterlife.
Without Mitch, Trump couldn’t do jack dick.
Without Mitch and his pets in the howler monkey sanctuary we call the Senate, we wouldn’t have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. We’d have Merrick Garland and yeah, probably some borderline fascist but COME ON.
Get rid of this turtle fuck and a few of his circle-jerking fascist-curious Klan buddies and suddenly Trump’s a neutered dillhole yelling at the TV instead of all that plus an imminent threat to the Republic.
We are spending all of our time yelling at Bernie and Joe Biden and Mayor Pete and I’m not saying who they are, and the media biases inherent in raising them above Kamala and Professor Zero Fucks, should be irrelevant, but Mitch McConnell is the problem.
Defeat Trump and leave Mitch in place and you have Obama’s second term which, in case anyone has blocked it out, sucked second-hand donkey sack.
With Mitch around nothing gets solved. We should be throwing ourselves at him like White Walkers at the fucking Wall. Who’s running against him? WHO YOU GOT? We’ll take anybody. They’re problematic as shit and too conservative? OKAY, HERE’S SOME MONEY THEN.
And like this is nice but I want to see party money, celebrity money, dirty sexy money, not just spent on ads for another celebrity but on voter registration and ground volunteers and GOTV and like-minded issue-oriented efforts like LET’S HAVE A DEMOCRACY AGAIN and I KNOW THIS IS KENTUCKY BUT CAN WE PLEASE TAKE SOME OF THE GUNS and OUR ROADS AND BRIDGES ARE ALL FUCKED UP. I want this fight fought like it matters.
We can spend the next year all of us having yelly angry high dudgeon about Bernie and Kamala and shit, or we can focus for once in our party’s lives and send this foreskin-headed hijo de Putin into retirement or indictment.
I’m not picky. It’s all fine so long as at the end of the day he’s gone.
A.
Not Everything Sucks
Some people are making newspapers for people in prison:
It was the publication of that essay that led to me walking through the office doors of The Marshall Project two months later—having finally won parole—to talk with their staff about my experiences. That conversation led to me joining their team and to the creation of News Inside—a collection of TMP’s award-winning journalism that relates directly to incarcerated lives. In the past month, we began distributing the pilot edition of this print publication to prisons and jails; to date it is circulating in 30 facilities in 19 states.
I wanted to share our rich articles with my information-poor former community, particularly those who believe study is a chance for redemption, who sacrifice sleep and risk a misbehavior report to pore over textbooks under shaded lamps after lights-out, who struggle to find resources to expand their minds.
A.
Saturday Odds & Sods: Don’t Get Me Started
My Brother Imitating Scherzo by Andre Kertesz
New Orleans is a city of extremes. We do everything in an outlandish fashion and that includes the weather. I’ve been bitching about the pollen and the need for rain for months, but when it finally rained, it was a deluge. There are times when moderation is a virtue but it’s hard to find in this town. Oh well, you know what they say: “April showers bring the flowers that bloom in May.”
Traffic cameras have been one of the main topics of conversation locally. Mayor Cantrell campaigned against them. She seems to have changed her mind as well as the rules governing them in school zones. The speed limit is 20 MPH but the city used to cut motorists some slack and didn’t issue tickets to folks within 5 MPH of the limit. They changed the rules without informing the public, which resulted in an angry debate on social media once the cat got out of the proverbial bag. Nobody likes paying $75 for going 3 MPH over the limit, after all. This debate beats the hell outta talking about murders, mayhem, and the price of Jazz Fest tickets. Btw, the band whose latest iteration I call Finnwood Mac is replacing the Stones at Jazz Fest.
This week’s theme song was written by Rodney Crowell for his 2005 album, The Outsider. Don’t Get Me Started is something I find myself saying frequently in the Trump era. Don’t get me started about Herman Cain on the Fed, y’all:
Now that we’ve shared a rockin’ rant, let’s jump to the break or is that break to the jump? I hope break dancing isn’t involved: I’m not flexible enough to spin about on the ground. I leave such gyrations to young Paul Drake and the dude in the Andre Kertesz photograph above.
The Man Without A Plan
The Insult Comedian continues to flail, wail, and fail. My favorite recent moment was his “threat” to close the border, which almost no one took seriously. The Trump base likes their guacamole and tequila as much as the rest of us. As always, Trump caved and issued a “one-year warning” instead. I somehow doubt that President Obrador aka Amlo was shaking in his boots. It was non-starter from the git-go.
It’s time for a reminder that Trump is the man without a plan. He wings it, improvises, and pulls stuff out of thin air. The only plan he has is to distract attention from evidence of his criminality.
An excellent example of Trump’s inability to plan ahead is the Mar-a-Lago mishigas. I suspect the Secret Service knew early on that it was an insecure location since anyone with an extra $200K can buy a membership and proximity to Trumpberius. The word seems to have spread in China that this is the way to get to Trump. A man with a plan would have had one to make the so-called Southern White House more secure. But who needs security when everyone loves you? #Sarcasm
My other favorite recent Trump gambit is his threat to nominate Herman Cain to the Fed. Isn’t Stephen Moore bad enough? A WaPo headline describes the Cain gambit as a plan but you know what I think about that. Trump is the man without plan.
Another area that Trump’s chronic inability to plan seems to be infected is his re-election campaign. Here’s a Gabriel Sherman quote from the Hive that has people buzzing:
The prospect of damaging Mueller revelations is particularly alarming to advisers who worry the president’s 2020 re-election campaign is in “disarray,” according to three Republicans close to the White House. “There’s no brain trust,” a former West Wing official said. Campaign manager Brad Parscale, a social-media consultant with no political experience prior to Trump’s 2016 campaign, is struggling to exert control over the operation and reverse Trump’s upside-down poll numbers with women voters, sources said. “The polling is very bad. They’re going to have a big problem with female voters,” a Republican who’s been briefed on the internal numbers said. According to a source, Parscale told Trump over the weekend of March 16 that he could improve his standing with women if he dialed back the tweeting. Trump responded with a tweetstorm the following day that included an attack on the late Senator John McCain and a retweet of a user who had promoted the QAnon conspiracy. “Brad went to him and Trump’s response was like 40 tweets,” the source said.
I’d call it a brainless trust, especially since Sherman goes on to state that Trump Junior and Slumlord Jared will really run the campaign. Another gift from the president* to the resistance. Thanks, Trumpy.
Here’s my oddball 2020 prediction. Not long ago, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld announced that he was challenging Trump for the GOP nomination. It got very little attention but Weld is just the sort of candidate they love in New Hampshire. Do I think he can win? No, but he could attract enough votes to make Trump tweet 40 times after the primary. Remember: Pat Buchanan got 37% of the vote against Poppy Bush in 1992. It’s true that Trump is Buchanan-like but they love protest candidates in the Granite state. And Weld is for legal weed. Party on, Bill.
Trump’s inability to plan is one reason I call him the Kaiser of Chaos. I’m unsure of the “oranges” of this problem but it may have something to do with a rebellion against his father’s grandfather’s homeland. Germans like to plan, y’all.
The last word (image?) goes to Michael F with his marvelous Trump as upper class twit of the year image from last week:
Friday Catblogging: That Friday Feeling
One week ago today, Dr. A posted these pictures side-by-side on social media. Are you ready for Della on the tower of terror and a sink walking PD? Good. You have no choice.
Cover-Up In Plain Sight
We’ve entered a new phase in the war of the Trump scandals. Previously, it was like a series of air strikes. This week, it’s akin to hand-to-hand, house-by-house combat: think the Red Army in Berlin at the end of World War II. House committees have issued subpoenas for the Mueller Report, Trump’s taxes, and financial records. The House has not only crossed “the red line” they’ve hurdled it like Evel Knievel in his heyday. That may sound overly dramatic but I don’t think I jumped the shark. Team Trump, however, may have done so.
You know the worm has turned when the previously tight-lipped members of Team Mueller talk to the media. Both the WaPo and Failing New York Times have published reports of their consternation over the 4 page epistle from Trump’s handpicked Attorney General. They’re outraged that 22 months of hard work has been reduced to spin by Bill Barr. Here’s the lede of the NYT piece:
Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.
The WaPo’s sources were less tentative but expressed the same frustration. It’s good to see that both papers have moved away from their initial acceptance of Barr’s “conclusions” but neither is willing to use the term cover-up. That’s what this is. It’s no less pernicious because it’s happening in plain sight. It’s worse.
Covering-up is what Bill Barr does. Beneath the owlish exterior and thick glasses, lurks a lawyer with extreme views on executive power. He’ll never be straightforward enough to quote Tricky Dick’s aphorism but he surely agrees with it:
This is not Bill Barr’s first cover-up rodeo. He was behind the mass Iran-Contra pardons issued in the waning days of Poppy Bush’s administration. It was so blatant that even former Nixon aide and conservative NYT columnist William Safire objected, calling Barr the “Cover-up General.” Safire, of course, moved on to the Clinton scandals and Barr returned to the private sector before emerging like a seedy Icarus to attempt to rescue the tawdry Trump regime.
Team Trump has vowed to fight against any and all encroachments on their executive powers. It will delay their day of reckoning but they’re more likely than not to lose court battles. Just wait until they claim that Trump’s tax forms and those of his nefarious web of LLCs are covered by executive privilege. That will get laughed out of any courtroom in the land.
The question that everyone should ask about the Mueller Report is a simple yet profound one. If it “totally exonerates” the Insult Comedian, why is he opposed to its release? To put it in terms that the president* would understand: no exoneration, no exoneration, no exoneration.
He’s Bluffing
Not exactly ground breaking news to anyone who regularly keeps up with things, but between his weird language spasm and what’s sure to be an upcoming Twitter bender, Trump is the ultimate anti-poker face (he’s also a compulsive liar, which is why when he says “no collusion,” that’s all the proof I need). About all that’s surprising is how readily people who should know better — ahem, librul media — insist on marching to his orders.
Sure, he’s got his minions who will stick with him to the bitter end…and sure, their numbers are large enough to be a concern…but the whole operation has been a con job from the beginning. Trump is…weak. His getting elected was due to odd rules, dumb luck, voter suppression, and, ironically, fake news, which blew the email non-scandal out of proportion while giving Trump a comparatively free pass.
He’ll keep playing the same game. After all, it worked in 2016 (though, ahem, it was a disaster in the midterms). But bluffs only work if your opponents let them…
