Just Make Shit Up

Now that Trump is playing the other side of his Unpredictability Game, the apologists have been widely deployed to explain that everything Mr Un-PC-I-Tell-It-Like-It-Is said during the Scampaign® was really just election-year rhetoric and metaphorical language - he didn't really mean any of it to be taken literally. C'mon.

Today's Pix

New Music (updated)

"listening to that song cuz it hurts just right" (Never Mind Your Bleeding Heart)

Regina Spektor:

A little artsy and the poetry is a tad obvious sometimes, but musicianship counts for an awful lot, plus I can hear Jennifer Warnes and Sara Bareilles, and that ain't bad at all - so I just want her to stay with it and keep gettin' better.

Here's a PlayList

The Marketplace Of Ideas

Meanwhile, over at Amazon:

What We're Up Against

The frame has been in place for a long time - everything's better with Tax Cuts.  So, of course, we can expect the same ol' shit.

Professional Left Podcast

And don't forget you can "donate" to the podcast just by doing some shopping thru the Amazon link on the Professional Left website.

(aka: using the Evil Empire's own money to defeat them - tilt head back; laugh maniacally)

Click here

Today's GIF

Something not quite right with this

On That NYT Chat With Trump

Here's the whole banana in case the pay wall at NYT jumps up in front of you.

It was good to hear Donald Trump “disavow and condemn” the white nationalism of some of his supporters, in a meeting Tuesday at The New York Times.

It was good to hear him acknowledge that climate change is linked to human activity, and that maybe waterboarding isn’t such a great idea after all. And speaking for the home team, it was good to hear him even call The New York Times a “great, great American jewel.”

It was, of course, hard to square all these statements with his record of spreading the birther lie about President Obama, calling climate change a “hoax,” promising he’d “bring back waterboarding” and describing The New York Times as “failing.”

But, hey, if President-elect Trump moderates his views, and then crystallizes those views in policies that, as he put it, “save our country,” we will commend him on growth in office. “I am awed by the job,” he said.

The problem is, as pleasant as it was to hear those remarks, it was alarming to confront how thinly thought through many of the president-elect’s stances actually are. Consider climate change. Mr. Trump said that he valued clean air and water, but that he hadn’t decided if combating climate change was worth the expense. “I have a totally open mind,” he said, making a virtue of not knowing the issue.

Or take torture. In the campaign, he stoutly defended waterboarding, which is contrary to American values and illegal under international law. Yet one conversation, with Gen. James Mattis, a candidate for defense secretary, may have changed his mind. General Mattis told Mr. Trump what experts have been saying for years: Torture doesn’t work. Mr. Trump said he was “impressed and surprised” by General Mattis’s assurance that, “Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I’ll do better.”

We would applaud any sensible change of position, however arrived at. Mr. Trump’s apparent flexibility, combined with his lack of depth on policy, might be grounds to hope he will steer a wiser course than the one plotted by his campaign. But so far he is surrounding himself with officials eager to enact only the most extreme positions. His flexibility would be their springboard.President Obama, who also spoke of bringing the country together, invited Republicans to join his administration. We have not yet seen Mr. Trump make any such effort to reach across party lines.

And in one area, Mr. Trump remained quite inflexible: He made clear he has no intention of selling his businesses and stepping decisively away from corrupting his presidency with an exponentially enhanced version of the self-dealing he accused Hillary Clinton of engaging in.

Ronald Reagan used to say that in dealing with the Soviet Union, the right approach was to “trust, but verify.” For now, that’s also the right approach to take with Mr. Trump. Except, regrettably, for the trust part.

I'm sure Trump likes to believe he's setting up a Team Of Rivals, and that'll be great because he's letting the scorpions in the bottle slug it out and he'll go with whatever idea the survivor can articulate. And that's perfect for Trump because he possesses a depth of understanding comparable to that of any randomly chosen 8th grader.

Thankful For Keith

The dirty secret of the 25th Amendment: VP and cabinet can declare Trump "unfit" and 3 weeks later he could be out pic.twitter.com/0k0DQ6Z1zX

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 24, 2016

Today's Today