Hillary

I know I'm not supposed to do this, but I have to let it out.

Could we maybe try to get her to lose the Dr Evil look?  Just sayin'.

I know.  I'm a bad man.  I'm a very bad man.

Bloody Bill Kristol's Trial Balloon

Bloomburg reports:

Two Republicans intimately familiar with Bill Kristol’s efforts to recruit an independent presidential candidate to challenge Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have told Bloomberg Politics that the person Kristol has in mind is David French -- whose name the editor of the Weekly Standard floated in the current issue of the magazine.

French is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to the website of National Review, where French is a staff writer, he is a constitutional lawyer, a recipient of the Bronze Star, and an author of several books who lives in Columbia, Tenn., with his wife Nancy and three children.

Reached in Israel late Tuesday afternoon, Kristol declined to comment on his efforts to induce French to run. The two Republicans confirmed that French is open to launching a bid, but that he has not made a final decision. One of the Republicans added that French has not lined up a vice-presidential running mate or significant financial support.

What The Donald Says

NYT has a "complete" list of the shittiness that is Donald Trump.

Some hi-lites (and these are his "friends"):

John Sununu

FORMER NEW HAMPSHIRE GOVERNOR

“couldn't get elected dog catcher”

“forgot to mention my phenomenal biz success rate”

“dummy”

Marc Thiessen

COLUMNIST AND FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR

“failed”

“never been able to make a comeback”

“a third rate talent”

“really dumb puppet”

Brent Bozell

PRESIDENT, MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER

“begging for money like a dog”

David Brooks

COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“is closing in on being the dumbest of them all”

“doesn’t have a clue”

“one of the dumbest of all pundits”

“he has no sense of the real world!”

“a clown”

“dummy!”

Caribou Barbie

So, Sarah Palin's at it again.

Former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin argued Thursday that Bill Nye is not actually a scientist.

“Bill Nye is as much a scientist as I am,” Palin said at an event in Washington, D.C., according to The Hill. “He’s a kids’ show actor; he’s not a scientist.”

Now, at first blush, I have to ask - does she really not know how to spell 'google' or what? Or is she just really sure that nobody in the audience is gonna check on anything, so she can Slap-Chop her way thru a few page-fuls of about 1500 randomly selected (and barely related words), knowing it doesn't fucking matter?

So I just have to wonder - no, seriously now - I do. She's not really all that dumb. There's something going on in whatever it is she's using as a brain, but it's like she's internalized the process of Deliberate Ignorance to the point where she's convinced herself that being stoopid is how 'being smart' works. And maybe it is, in her own special way - because she's got a following. She has a group of people who practically hang on her every word. And you don't build that kinda loyalty just being dumb - even tho' (obviously) it helps a lot if you can get the crowds to believe you're as stoopid as you think they are. Or something.  

It makes my head hurt.

Dots

Fun fact reminder: the American economy took a 12-14 Trillion-Dollar hit starting in 2008.  

And tax-payers had to borrow that much (paying interest, of course) from our buddies around the world, and that means - lemme see - about 13 Trillion plus about 2-and-a-half percent interest - gosh, it seems we might have a number that fairly closely resembles the horribleness of the $15 - 18 Trillion added to our national debt that "Conservatives" love to bitch about.

Or maybe it's purely coincidental.  I suck at math, and I'm often real wrong about a lotta things.  But my Spidey Sense tells me the guys who make billions off of Other People's Money aren't likely to become saintly and altruistic just because their shit hits somebody else's fan.  They'll do what they know how to do - which always comes down to making sure they're not the ones left holding the bag.

And oh yeah - I want Elizabeth Warren to stay where she is, doing exactly what she's doing for a good long time.  Dang - the mad crush on that woman continues unabated.

Colbert And The Dongald

I wanna stop being part of the problem, but I can't helping thinking that part of the solution is to make sure more and more people have to look at what a 3rd rate burlesque show the GOP has become.  And to remind the Repub voters that this is what they've been asking for all along.  Trump, Cruz, Rubio - these are their guys.

And then this from College Humor:

John Oliver

" ... written in gold Sharpie, which is so quintessentially Trump: something that gives the passing appearance of wealth, but is actually just a cheap tool."

Donito Trumpelini Speaks

Today's Shitty-Trump-Thing is basically about the standard Trump tactic of listening for somebody to say almost anything even the tiniest bit critical of him, and using it as justification for a massive counterattack - not to answer the criticism, but to pump up his own image as a strong leader.  If this isn't the behavior of a despot (aka: school bus bully turned "politician"), please tell me what is.

And just in case you missed it, at about the 1:45 mark, when Trump is blathering on about how tough he'll be on ISIS, he actually slags the US military as it is now.  I understand that he means it to be a charge of incompetence against Obama, but he says basically that all of our current military leaders are crap: "... if we had a General MacArthur; if we had a General George Patton - I mean, they'd be gone before they had time to go over and check it out. OK? It's a ridiculous situation."  If I'm a general officer in any branch of uniformed service, I'd be voting for just about anybody but this guy.

But wait - Generals and Colonels are more than egotistical enough to think that if they put this guy in power, they could manipulate him so they could run the joint from their own desks.  Which is almost exactly what happened with GW Bush, and why the GOP wants another Empty Vessel POTUS - like Rubio or Jeb.

I really hope they're not thinking Trump isn't smart enough, and unscrupulous enough, to turn the federal government into one big bloody knife fight.

In the end though, I still think this is the next step in Trump trying to find his exit.  He's finally gotten around to taking a big runny shit on the US Military's head - let's see if anybody actually notices, but then let's take a long look at anybody who steps up to say, "Thanks for the hat, Mr Trump."

Today's Tweet

The Narcissus Borealis (thanks tengrain) ponies up and endorses Donito Trumpelini - and history rhymes again in the 2016 personification of Churchill's lament about "when tyrants embrace".

Palin: "self-made" Trump doesn't rely on Other People's Money. Trump co-wrote book saying his success built on OPM pic.twitter.com/X3SfP148tW

— Richard Hine (@richardhine) January 20, 2016

Still not gettin' my panties in a bunch over this one tho', because I'm still not convinced Trump really wants to be Prez.  He starts getting a little too close to winning something, he has to do something outrageous that pulls in a few more rubes while pushing the establishment a little farther away. 

The plan is to boost his brand, but always always always - sit on your ass collecting rent while somebody else does the work.

The wise ones tell us he got Palin's endorsement to prop him up in Iowa - but then she's a no-show at a Trump event the very next day?

This is "USAmerica Inc - Campaigning For Fun and Profit". Palin got the paycheck for the one night stand, but it doesn't look like she'll be joining the tour.  Or maybe she's just waiting for her own bus again.

Now take a look at what pops up from the GOP Establishment - "Movement Conservatism" -  about what they think of Trump voters:

(btw - watch Joy Reid's expression starting around the 1:30 mark)

And also too - Rick Wilson's prob'ly looking for clients, and so saying what he said in that clip is part of the blurb - it's his prospecting letter, going out to potential customers.

Everybody gets a chance to cash in when the carnival's in town.

Bowden's Trump

It's not a long piece, so I just grabbed the whole thing.

From Vanity Fair, by Mark Bowden:

Over a long weekend on assignment for Playboy Magazine, Mark Bowden found that behind the garish Trump façade lies only more ugliness. --MARK BOWDEN

I spent a long, awkward weekend with Donald Trump in November 1996, an experience I feel confident neither of us would like to repeat.

He was like one of those characters in an 18th-century comedy meant to embody a particular flavor of human folly. Trump struck me as adolescent, hilariously ostentatious, arbitrary, unkind, profane, dishonest, loudly opinionated, and consistently wrong. He remains the most vain man I have ever met. And he was trying to make a good impression. Who could have predicted that those very traits, now on prominent daily display, would turn him into the leading G.O.P. candidate for president of the United States?

His latest outrageous edict on banning all Muslims from entering the country comes as no surprise to me based on the man I met nearly 20 years ago. He has no coherent political philosophy, so comparisons with Fascist leaders miss the mark. He just reacts. Trump lives in a fantasy of perfection, with himself as its animating force.

Before I met him back in 1996, I felt bad for him. He’d had a rough 10 years. He had just turned 50 and wasn’t happy about it. He looked soft, from his growing jowls to the way his belt bit deeply into the spreading roll of his belly. As a businessman he had crashed and burned, rescued only by creditors who had to bail him out lest they be dragged down with him. His enterprises were being run by court-appointed managers, who had put him back on his financial feet mostly by investing heavily in Atlantic City, which was then on the rise.

He had insulated himself from failure with bluster. In public he was still The Donald—still rich, still working hard at being a symbol of excess. I was working on a profile of him for Playboy, which was his kind of magazine. He considered himself the magazine’s beau ideal, and was inordinately proud of having been featured on the magazine’s cover some years before. His then wife, Marla Maples, told him, sardonically, that he ought to buy the magazine: “You bought the Miss Universe Pageant; it’s right up your alley.” He must have figured it was a safe bet to agree to cooperate for my story. But well before I left him, we both knew he probably wouldn’t like the final product.

I was prepared to like him as I boarded his black 727 at La Guardia for the flight to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home—prepared to discover that his over-the-top public persona was a clever pose. That underneath was an ironic wit, an ordinary but clever guy. But no. With Trump, what you see is what you get. His behavior was cringe-worthy. He showed off the gilded interior of his plane—calling me over to inspect a Renoir on its walls, beckoning me to lean in closely to see . . . what? The luminosity of the brush strokes? The masterly use of color? No. The signature. “Worth $10 million,” he told me. Time after time the stories he told me didn’t check out, from Michael Jackson’s romantic weekend at Mar-a-Lago with his then wife Lisa Marie Presley (they stayed at opposite ends of the estate) to the rug in one bedroom he said was designed by Walt Disney when he was 18 (it wasn’t) to the strength of his marriage to Maples (they would split months later).

It was hard to watch the way he treated those around him, issuing peremptory orders—“Polish this, Tony. Today.” He met with the lady who selected his drapery for the Florida estate—“The best! The best! She’s a genius!”—who had selected a sampling of fabrics for him to choose from, all different shades of gold. He left the choice to her, saying only, “I want it really rich. Rich, rich, elegant, incredible.” Then, “Don’t disappoint me.” It was a pattern. Trump did not make decisions. He surrounded himself with “geniuses” and delegated. So long as you did not “disappoint” him—and it was never clear how to avoid doing so—you were gold.

What was clear was how fast and far one could fall from favor. The trip from “genius” to “idiot” was a flash. The former pilots who flew his plane were geniuses, until they made one too many bumpy landings and became “fucking idiots.” The gold carpeting selected in his absence for the locker rooms in the spa at Mar-a-Lago? “What kind of fucking idiot . . . ?” I watched as Trump strutted around the beautifully groomed clay tennis courts on his estate, managed by noted tennis pro Anthony Boulle. The courts had been prepped meticulously for a full day of scheduled matches. Trump took exception to the design of the spaces between courts. In particular, he didn’t like a small metal box—a pump and cooler for the water fountain alongside—which he thought looked ugly. He first questioned its placement, then crudely disparaged it, then kicked the box, which didn’t budge, and then stooped—red-faced and fuming—to tear it loose from its moorings, rupturing a water line and sending a geyser to soak the courts. Boulle looked horrified, a weekend of tennis abruptly drowned. Catching a glimpse of me watching, Trump grimaced.

“I guess that’ll have to be in your story,” he said.

“Pretty much,” I told him.

This apparently worried him, because on the flight home a day later he had a proposition.

“I’m looking for somebody to write my next book,” he told me.

I told him that I would not be interested.

“Why not?” he asked. “All my books become best-sellers.”

The import was clear. There was money in it for me. Trump remains the only person I have ever written about who tried to bribe me.

As I’ve watched his improbable political rise, it is clear that he hasn’t changed. The very things that made him so unappealing apparently now translate into wide popular support. Apart from the comical ego, the errors, and the self-serving bluster, what you get from Trump are commonplace ideas pronounced as received wisdom. Begin registering all Muslims in America? Round up the families of suspected terrorists? Ban all Muslims from entering the country? Carpet-bomb ISIS-held territories in Iraq (killing the 98-plus percent of civilians who are, in effect, being held hostage there by the terror group and turning a war against a tiny fraction of the world’s Muslims into a global religious crusade)? Using nuclear weapons? The ideas that pop into his head are the same ones that occur to any teenager angry about terror attacks. They appeal to anyone who can’t be bothered to think them through—can’t be bothered to ask not just the moral questions but the all-important practical one: Will doing this makes things better or worse? When you believe in your own genius, you don’t question your own flashes of inspiration.

I got a call from his office some days after my profile of him appeared in the May 1997 issue of Playboy. I had already heard how he’d blown his stack to Christie Hefner. I was traveling at the time, working on my book Black Hawk Down. The call came to me in a motel room in Colorado, from his trusty assistant, the late Norma Foerderer.

“Mr. Trump would like to talk to you,” she said.

I waited, sitting on the edge of the bed, bracing myself.

Foerderer came back on the line. She said:

“He’s too livid to speak.”

To The Theater

Democrats waiting for @tedcruz and @realDonaldTrump to start running attack ads against each other are like: pic.twitter.com/cHRg4bIrON

— MATTY ICE (@MattyIceAZ) December 11, 2015

He Doesn't Actually Say Anything

Trump: "I have to do what's right.  And what's right is this: We have a problem. It's a serious problem. It's gotta be solved.  And people that are Muslim; that are friends of mine are so happy that I brought it up."

I have to do what's right.  And what's right is this: We have a problem. 

Why is anybody pretending that's some kind of policy statement?

Today's Winner

Ripped from the blogosphere, the rawness of daily reality comes to life in the guise of Mock Paper Scissors:

The Death Of The Media, Bret Baier Edition

THE OTHER DUMB ONE has a mind like a steel trap… let’s be honest here: if video of dancing NJ Muslims existed, Fox would be playing it 24×7. The fact that they are NOT playing it 24×7 is pretty much proof that there is no documentary evidence that NJ Muslims ever danced in the streets.

But that’s not really the Death of the Media news. Let’s go to BRET BAIER’S response:

“The original statement is thousands and thousands of people in Jersey City celebrating. If you’re just going to get technical, that’s – I don’t know if that has been backed up. Yes, people were celebrating, in some number.”

If you’re going to get technical… that’s weasel speak for “I got nothing, but the boss doesn’t want us to concede.” A network news anchor just defended some BS with, if you’re going to get technical. Your job, Bret, is to get technical with everything, and that’s why YOU are today’s Death of the Media.

Tengrain nails it with: "If video of dancing Muslims existed, Fox would be playing it 24x7."

There were people in this country who celebrated JFK's assassination.  I'm not dismissing the probability that there was something shittily celebratory going on somewhere in USAmerica Inc, and I'm not condoning the shittiness, but politics makes for some pretty shitty behavior - let's try to remember at least that much if not much else in terms of details. 

And let's also try to remember that we all have the right to be asshole-ish enough to say "Yay"  at exactly the wrong time in response to exactly the wrong occurrence.

And one more little thing: We have video of the first plane crashing into the WTC, and while Jersey City ain't Manhattan, if there was any truth to the statement about thousands and thousands - or hundreds, or dozens, or handfuls - if any of that was anything more than Munchausen level bullshit, we'd have the fuckin' video.

And one more one more thing: There's a weird aspect about that piece that makes me think DumFux News is trying to give me the impression that they're trying to be all introspective and self-examining; that maybe they're trying to walk back some of the crazier shit.  What clues might that provide us as to the thinking of the apparatchiks there at the GOP Ministry of Misinformation?

Score Card

For those of you scoring at home - or even if you're all by yourself - somebody's gotta be trying to keep track of all the shitty things Trump has said or done - things that so many of the Press Poodles tell us will blow him up and scatter his remains to the four winds.  But then, somehow, he stays around because the "lefty librul lame-stream media" are unable to resist breaking away from any and all programming to make sure we all get to see Lil Donny doing whatever he does that will surely disgust all of us, while we are never quite disgusted enough to stop watching that crap which of course is why they keep showing us that crap.

Anyway, here's a (probably) partial list:

• outraged prisoners of war by doubting the heroism of Vietnam veteran John McCain, because he allowed himself to be captured
• he appeared to accuse Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly of asking him tough questions because she was menstruating
• accused Mexican immigrants to the US of being rapists
• claimed that a Black Lives Matter protester who was violently ejected from a rally deserved to be “roughed up”
• appeared to mock a New York Times journalist for his disability and then accused the journalist of “grandstanding” on that disability in his response
• falsely accused Muslim Americans of cheering on the 9/11 attackers
• agreed with suggestions that all such Muslims should have their names tracked on a database
• Trump’s Twitter account recirculated racially charged but falsified crime statistics from an actual Nazi sympathiser
• complained that many of these incidents were exaggerated by the political media, saying 70% of whom are “scum”

Google Is Our Friend

Bug brains on "the right" tried to make it a big deal when Obama decided it was time for Mt McKinley to revert to its original name - Denali.  They said it was just another typical dictater-y thing that politicians in far-away federal Washington were alla-time tryin' to pull on the real Americans out here in the blah blah fucking blah.

Guess what. 

So apparently, Obama was trying to get outa the way so the people who live in the state where the fucking thing exists can make up their own minds about it.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me to check it out - which is something I usually do - and maybe a lotta people who know how to think real thoughts knew this all along.  

Maybe I've kinda hit Wingnut Overload(?)  Dunno.

But maybe we really have reached that illusive if not mythical point of Peak Wingnut, and there's just not much capacity for such nonsense anymore.

A guy can hope.

Yeah, About That

My main contention about Politics In Public is that nothing is ever about what the pols are willing to tell us it's about.

So I'm wondering - the Repubs might be trying really really hard to make Benghazi about Hillary because they desperately need us not to be thinking of the obvious connection between The Bush Doctrine and what an even bigger total cluster fuck "The Arab World" has become since we started swinging the big USAmerica Inc dick around knockin' shit over late in 2001 - which, btw, every "liberal" tried to warn us was likely to happen, while every "conservative" kept telling us it couldn't possibly happen because after all, inside every stoopid mooslim is a clean-cut Methodist-wanna-be with a burning desire to open up a shoe store in Topeka and join the local JCs.

How often do we hafta make the same fucking mistake before we get with the fucking program here?

Another great tweet:

How @TheDemocrats have felt about the GOP for the last 30 years in one picture. #p2 pic.twitter.com/6YrfUmwpVn

— Jason Hitchcock (@JasonHitchcock) October 22, 2015

And one more thing - I've been watching the Benghazi Circus today, and I've been hearing HRC trying mightily not to end every sentence with "Silly Goose" or "Sonny" or "you scabrous fucking twat-waffle".

Today's Etch-A-Sketch Moment

George Pataki, via Addicting Info

"What I said 38 seconds ago means nothing now - why do you insist on living in the past!?! This is what I'm saying right now because I need everything to mean something else. And I didn't even say what you say I said - I was misquoted and taken out of context and YouTube doesn't even exist as far as GOP voters are concerned (unless of course the title says 'Stupid Librul Totally Destroyed On Fox And Friends'), so I can say any nutty thing I wanna say because I can count on plenty of good Americans to think of nothing but their burning urgent need for instant gratification, and by the grace of God, FREEDOM!!! Am I right, America? USA! USA! USA!" 

Somebody hand that guy the Etch-A-Sketch.

There is no soul and no honor in way too much of the GOP.

And BTW, credit where credit is due - way to go, Chris

More Oliver

Best thing to think about right now (and why we desperately need guys like John Oliver): there's something like 450 days before the next election, which means babies will be born before November 2016 whose parents haven't even met yet.

Still Not Back Yet

But I had to put up this passing thought:

Lil Donny Trump gets lotsa left-handed love from the Repub gurus - at least he does from the consultants who show up on certain TV shows to give us the appearance of "balance" (which is really just the standard Both-Sides-Baloney), even tho' most of these people sound like they're auditioning for a slot on somebody's campaign staff rather than offering anything of substance for us to contemplate.

Anyway, the theme seems to be that whatever passes for GOP leadership these days is not thrilled to hear Trump say the ass-wipe things he's been saying about Mexico or Latinos or Immigration in general, but that hey, he brings up some things that the Republican Base wants us to talk about blah blah blah.

No, guys. Not really.  Cuz here's what that sounds like to normal people: "Last Sunday at dinner after church, little Billy said 'Fuck you, Grandma', and you know - bless his heart - at least he had the courage to say what was on his mind..."

Not every thought is worthy of expression - especially all the weird shit that comes straight outa your id.  Learn something; grow the fuck up; you're not 9 years old, and you're not the only one in the fucking room - at the very least try to pretend you have enough higher brain function to be allowed out in public.

Today's Term Coining

"Trumpkins"

A very special thanks to National Review (yeah, I know - seems a little weird coming from me, eh?)

“But he speaks his mind!” shout the Trumpkins. Indeed, he does, in a practically stream-of-consciousness fashion: His announcement speech was like Finnegans Wake as reimagined by an unlettered person with a short attention span. The value of speaking one’s mind depends heavily on the mind in question, and Trump’s is second-rate. “He’s the candidate who will take the fight to Hillary!” protest the Trumpkins. Maybe, maybe not: He is on record as a supporter of Herself, and he’s not on record as a presidential candidate, having not bothered to file the FEC paperwork making his candidacy official. “He’ll build a wall on the border and make the Mexicans pay for it!” Unlikely, but even if he did, half of illegal immigrants arrive not on the banks of the Rio Grande but in the airports. Trumpkins: “He’ll show the political elites who’s boss!” They already know, because they already own him: You don’t get into Trump’s game without being a creature of the ruling class. Neither casino licenses nor Manhattan building permits find their way into the hands of the unconnected, in this case the heir to — not the creator of — a New York City real-estate empire.

--and--

Trump may be made out of cookie dough — he has a lot more in common with Paris Hilton than with Henry Ford — but he plays an iron man on television, and a certain sort of man — forgive me for pointing this out — finds the theatrical preening of Trump’s alpha-male act erotically compelling. (Properly understood, The Apprentice and its ilk constitute a subgenre of pornography.) That is not entirely surprising: We live in an age of economic insecurity, and it is attractive to imagine having Trump’s wealth and confidence, even if neither of those rests on as sure a foundation as Trump would have us believe. It’s better to be the boss — to be the man who says, “You’re fired!” — than the man who has to go home emasculated and face his wife’s disappointment.

I would normally have to take the National Review calling Trump a blowhard phony and make the connection for myself regarding what they must be implying about anybody who believes what Trump is saying - but they've left very little room for doubt on that one this time.  So...thanks, guys - uhmm...I'll have to hold off thinking you might make a habit of it for now, but yeah - way to go.  I guess.