It Seems To Be Dissolving

WaPo:

(Paul Waldman - talking about the rolling cluster fuck that's been taken from the Trump "campaign" and installed as the Trump "administration" - taking some major shots, that somehow got past the editors at WaPo, because this piece would never have appeared in that paper just a few short months ago.)

Taken together, these reports paint a picture of a White House that is convinced that what it has is in large part a media problem. So creating a “war room” to craft and push out better spin seems to be the first item on the agenda. After that, they’re considering some kind of staff shakeup that would involve replacing some personnel with different people who would presumably do a better job.

But that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what is ailing this administration. It certainly has a media problem, but it isn’t because the administration hasn’t had the opportunity to get its side of the story out. Its side of the story is out — it’s just that it keeps being contradicted by the facts. If the White House is upset that journalists greet its latest spin with skepticism, that’s only because its lies have been so copious that no reporter can take what administration officials say at face value, and in every new controversy, there’s a strong chance they’re pushing out new lies, which will then inevitably be exposed.
--and--

And now we learn that this ignorant neophyte — who seems, like many rich white guys, to have a confidence utterly unwarranted by his actual abilities — thought he was a character in a Tom Clancy novel, when he’s actually a character right out of “Veep.” His suggestion to the Russians that they set up a secret communications channel in a Russian facility was so ludicrous that even the Russians were shocked.
I loved the part about Steve Bannon trying to spin this as the "vast right wing conspiracy" in reverse.

That's like saying it's inappropriate for the cops to conspire against a gang of car thieves.

Today's Today

What they teach us to think it is

Daylight again, following me to bed
I think about a hundred years ago, how my fathers bled
I think I see a valley, covered with bones in blue
All the brave soldiers that cannot get older 

Been askin' after you

Hear the past a callin', 

From Armageddon's side
When everyone's talkin' and no one is listenin', 

How can we decide?

Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground
Mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down

Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground
Mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down

 What it actually is

Today's Quote

“Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them.”

― Molly Ivins

Today's GIF

I keep thinking this is Trump in Europe and then Trump coming home to face the shit storm

Today's Tweet

@jonfavs pic.twitter.com/y8iw0ogfpV

— copyboy1 (@copyboy1) May 27, 2017

Maybe It's A Trend?

...but don't count on it.

Mike Gerson at WaPo last week:

To many observers on the left, the initial embrace of Seth Rich conspiracy theories by conservative media figures was merely a confirmation of the right’s deformed soul. But for those of us who remember that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity were once relatively mainstream Reaganites, their extended vacation in the fever swamps is even more disturbing. If once you knew better, the indictment is deeper.

The cruel exploitation of the memory of Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer who was shot dead last summer, was horrifying and clarifying. The Hannity right, without evidence, accused Rich rather than the Russians of leaking damaging DNC emails. In doing so, it has proved its willingness to credit anything — no matter how obviously deceptive or toxic — to defend President Trump and harm his opponents. Even if it means becoming a megaphone for Russian influence.

"To many observers on the left..."  

Wow - it's almost like the guy is catching onto his own bullshit. 

Almost.

I could be wrong - not that it doesn't happen pretty often of course - but I'd like to see a few examples of Mr Gerson's writing from the last 15-25 years showing he was in any way concerned about the degeneration he now laments when it was so very obvious to practically everyone who was paying any attention to anything other than monetizing the ignorance of the rubes and furthering his own ("conservative") agenda.

And I absolutely have no qualms about beating the drum some more when it comes to the simple fact that a shitload of people on "The Left" have been warning about this very thing for a very long time.

Maybe we're starting to see a bigger move to get the GOP back under control, and more in line with the Real Real America now that we pretty much know that the Phony-Baloney Real America these boneheads have been peddling for 30 years is exactly the poison we've been saying it is for those same 30 fucking years.

It continues:

But this failure of decency is also politically symbolic. Who is the politician who legitimized conspiracy thinking at the highest level? Who raised the possibility that Ted Cruz’s father might have been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Who hinted that Hillary Clinton might have been involved in the death of Vince Foster, or that unnamed liberals might have killed Justice Antonin Scalia? Who not only questioned President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, but raised the prospect of the murder of a Hawaiian state official in a coverup? “How amazing,” Trump tweeted in 2013, “the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.”

--and--

A conspiratorial approach to politics is fully consistent with other forms of dehumanization — of migrants, refugees and “the other” more generally. Men and women are reduced to types and presented as threats. They also become props in an ideological drama. They are presented as representatives of a plot involving invasion and infiltration, rather than being viewed as individuals seeking opportunity or fleeing oppression and violence. This also involves callousness, cruelty and conspiracy thinking.

In Trump’s political world, this project of dehumanization is far along. The future of conservatism now depends on its capacity for revulsion. And it is not at all clear whether this capacity still exists.

You get to own some of this, Mr Gerson. Right along with your buddies, David Brooks and Bill Kristol and Hannity and Limbaugh and and and - either you said way too little or nothing at all, and you were fine with all of it until the lunacy started to threaten your little piece of the empire. 

Your little corner is under threat precisely because you let (ie: helped) the loonies go crazy - and that's always how it works, dummy: "The whole country's a buncha fucked up untrustworthy assholes except for you and me - and I now I'm not so sure about you."

Even if they aren't fully aware of it, a huge number of people can see that you're just looking for a little rehab - you're doing nothing but pretending you had nothing to do with "those freaks" because you need to put some distance between yourself and them so you have a shot at keeping up with the gravy train that you know is starting to pull away for you.

We know who you are and we can see what you're doing.

Tough Guy

Bill Mauldin drew one of the all-time definitive cartoons about how a real badass doesn't walk around trying to prove what a badass he is.

David Clarke is a Daddy State jagoff and exactly the opposite of who we should be holding up as an example.

WaPo:

“Look at this f‑‑‑ing guy’s uniform,” Charles Clymer wrote on Twitter. “You see all that s‑‑t pinned all over his dress uniform jacket? That’s not supposed to be there.”

His objection was that the decorations on Clarke’s uniform project “authority” — but that they themselves are meaningless. “Colin Powell once described a dress uniform as a soldier’s résumé,” he wrote. “You can tell what they’ve done by their ribbons and badges.” More ribbons and medals mean a lengthier résumé, in other words — which wasn’t the case with Clarke’s regalia.

Clymer’s tweets kicked up a whole separate dust storm of criticism and defense of the sheriff. Snopes compiled various views of Clarke’s attire, including critics and defenders.

Who's In Charge Here?

45*'s Grand Alienation Tour has made it pretty clear that almost every one of our old buddy countries is deciding Angela Merkel will be running the show from on out.  

And the US can fuck off until we come to our senses and put a grownup in the Oval Office again.

Hillary In Retrospect

Some interesting points made here.

"She was a horrible candidate". Maybe some of the perception regarding Hillary is due to our perception of how thoroughly horrible Trump is, and we're judging her relative to that. ie: "she was up against the worst person in the world and she lost, so she has to be the worst of everything ever..."

Plenty of "bad candidates" have been in office for some very long stretches of time.

New York Magazine:

Affection for her campaign staff is one reason Clinton claims she will not point fingers at her own team in assessing her loss. “I will never say anything other than positive things about my campaign,” she tells me in Chappaqua. “Because I love the people that led it, worked in it.”

Besides, she argues, “what I was doing was working. I would have won had I not been subjected to the unprecedented attacks by Comey and the Russians, aided and abetted by the suppression of the vote, particularly in Wisconsin.” She agrees that there are lessons to be learned from her campaign, just not the same ones her critics would cite. “Whoever comes next, this is not going to end. Republicans learned that if you suppress votes you win … So take me out of the equation as a candidate. You know, I’m not running for anything. Put me into the equation as somebody who has lived the lessons that people who care about this country should probably pay attention to.”
--and--

She was still in the ritualistic-process mode when she attended Trump’s inauguration. People close to her told me that she’d had doubts about being able to make it through without visibly losing control. “Oh,” says Clinton, “it was hard. It was really … difficult.” But “at the time, we hoped that there would be a different agenda for governing than there had been for running.”

Of course, it quickly became clear from Trump’s speech that there would be no change in strategy. A look of disgust crosses Clinton’s face as she recalls it. “It was a really painful cry to his hard-core supporters that he wasn’t changing,” she says. “The ‘carnage’ in our country? It was a very disturbing moment. I caught Michelle Obama’s eye, like, What is going on here? I was sitting next to George and Laura Bush, and we have our political differences, but this was beyond any experience any of us had ever had.”

I ask her about the report that Bush had said of the speech, “That was some weird shit,” and her eyes light up. “Put it in your article,” she says. “They tried to walk back from it, but …” Did she hear it herself? I ask. She raises her eyebrows and grins.

--and--

The unusually prolonged pummeling is partly because Clinton’s Election Day loss was not just hers but the nation’s; her defeat this time left us not with an Obama presidency but with an out-of-control administration led by a man so inept — and so reviled — that even (some) Republicans are voicing concerns. The nation is grasping for a way to understand how we got here, and blaming Clinton wholly and neatly takes the heat off everyone else who contributed: from the critics who derided her supporters as empty-headed shills to those supporters who were cowed into secret Facebook groups; from the journalists who treated Trump as a ratings-pumping sideshow and Clinton as the suspiciously presumptive president to all of us who permitted cheerful stories about America’s progress on gender and race to blot out the real and lingering inequities in this country.

Privatization Scam

Sec'y Reich explains:

The Trump administration is planning to privatize public assets such as airports, bridges, and highway rest stops. Here's why it's a scam: pic.twitter.com/Jn5DlYqnAF

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) May 25, 2017

Today's Tweet

Trump keeps striking out. pic.twitter.com/jW0vthGov9

— Dave Weasel (@DaveWeasel) May 25, 2017

Signaling Hope

WaPo:

This year, federal courts have been litigating a steady stream of gerrymandering claims. And most of the electoral maps the courts have knocked down were drawn by Republicans.

That’s good news for Democrats: They have an opportunity in several states to draw more favorable congressional and state legislative maps ahead of 2018 elections. And every seat counts, given the 2020 Census is right around the corner, which brings with it the opportunity in many states to draw new district maps.

Some Republican legislatures are paying the price for capturing 21 chambers in the 2010 elections, the last time electoral maps were being drawn. Monday, North Carolina became the third GOP-controlled state legislature in a row to get its map-drawing skills declared illegal by the Supreme Court.

Keith

Nobody keeps score better than Olbermann. And while a lot of this is "just more smoke", when we really start piecing it all together, it's not unreasonable to conclude there's prob'ly something on fire.  At the very least, we can't deny the Probable Cause bit.

Today's Tweet

Follow the whole thread so you can be ready to rebut the inevitable rationalizations.

1/ This Gianforte assault story is one of those moments where the cultural collapse of the GOP into the Trump Troll Party is captured

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) May 25, 2017

The Big Heist

45* is all about the loopholes. And his approach is pretty simple: "I don't do anything your lawyers can't force my lawyers to try to talk me into doing."

He's spent his entire career (building whatever fortune he has) by reneging on his commitments and stiffing people for what he owes them.

Now he's in an office that's not very well constrained by law or regulation. The limits on the behavior of POTUS are mostly dependent on a tradition of self-restraint, which puts the emphasis on the honorability of the office holder.

It can't possibly come as news to find that "Honorability" is not the word likely to pop into anybody's mind when they hear the word "Trump".

Quinnipiac asked people what word first came to mind when they thought about Trump. https://t.co/ks0UauOs9O pic.twitter.com/HQ3bYWhD16

— Philip Bump (@pbump) May 10, 2017

And now we have even more evidence that nothing has changed with 45*.

The Atlantic:

Days before taking office, Donald Trump said his company would donate all profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury, part of an effort to avoid even the appearance of a conflict with the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

Now, however, the Trump Organization is telling Congress that determining exactly how much of its profits come from foreign governments is simply more trouble than it’s worth.

One more time, kids - this is not governance, this is a fucking robbery.