Today's Quote

Lookin' at you, Mr Pence.

Fire And Fury

Of course I have to weigh in on this thing - because I don't know much about the book, or about the vignettes Mr Wolff writes about, so I must have a solid opinion about all of it. This is USAmerica, Inc - ya know. 

And it's the (I hope) pinnacle of the Era Of Style Over Substance; Ratings Over Reality, as embodied by 45* and his "administration".

It makes no difference to 45* what we're saying, as long as he's at the center of it.

Michelle Goldberg, WaPo:

One of the more alarming anecdotes in “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff’s incendiary new book about Donald Trump’s White House, involves the firing of James Comey, former director of the F.B.I. It’s not Trump’s motives that are scary; Wolff reports that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were “increasingly panicked” and “frenzied” about what Comey would find if he looked into the family finances, which is incriminating but unsurprising. The terrifying part is how, in Wolff’s telling, Trump sneaked around his aides, some of whom thought they’d contained him.

“For most of the day, almost no one would know that he had decided to take matters into his own hands,” Wolff writes. “In presidential annals, the firing of F.B.I. director James Comey may be the most consequential move ever made by a modern president acting entirely on his own.” Now imagine Trump taking the same approach toward ordering the bombing of North Korea.

-and-

According to Wolff, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Reince Priebus, the former chief of staff, called Trump an “idiot.” (So did the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, though he used an obscenity first.) Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, compares his boss’s intelligence to excrement. The national security adviser, H. R. McMaster, thinks he’s a “dope.” It has already been reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron,” which he has pointedly refused to deny.

And yet these people continue to either prop up or defend this sick travesty of a presidency. Wolff takes a few stabs at the motives of Trump insiders. Ivanka Trump apparently nurtured the ghastly dream of following her father into the presidency. Others, Wolff writes, told themselves that they could help protect America from the president they serve: The “mess that might do serious damage to the nation, and, by association, to your own brand, might be transcended if you were seen as the person, by dint of competence and professional behavior, taking control of it.”
That last bit - the part that says basically - "I'll save our democracy by usurping the power of the presidency".

It never fails - there's always some dick who thinks the way you help a democratic system is to cut back on the whole democracy thing.

Yeah But No

The Hill:

A firestorm over former chief strategist Stephen Bannon is consuming the White House with the new year only days old.

It comes even while the president’s latest controversial tweets are still reverberating and the stubborn cloud of investigations into collusion with Russia remains.

By the end of an extraordinary day of news on Wednesday, Bannon’s enemies within the GOP were glorying in his apparently final demise from the Trump inner circle. His loyalists were complaining that the White House was being too easily spooked and had overreacted.
Never forget that this is a Reality TV Show - a years-long effort at Brand Visibility.

Take a look at the script of any "Unscripted Reality Series" - or listen to the instructions and suggestions of the show's producers - and you're going to find a pattern of deliberate mischief. The players make more money if they start a fight - especially the women, cuz hey - it could get physical, and everybody loves a girl fight, and we might get to see some boobage, and that'll be good for at least a few days of good buzz.

Nobody watches the typical family next door as they take out the trash and bring in the groceries, so nobody's going to buy advertising on a show like that.

I'm thinking Mueller and Schiff and Warner (maybe even Burr) are keeping their eyes on the ball while the rest of us get to spend a day or two indulging ourselves in some good ol' fashioned celebrity voyeurism.

Pro Wrestling meets The Kardashians - it's The Infomercial Presidency.

Unfortunately, it's being used as cover by the Kremlin, and by some very shady characters in and around Capitol Hill.

The Big Score

MapLight:

U.S.-based multinational corporations that stand to benefit from a system that gives preferential treatment to foreign income have spent more than $82 million on lobbying in Washington since the beginning of the year.

The arithmetic:

Each YES vote in Congress cost these guys an average of $295,000. 

And the really big ones could realize a tax windfall in the billions of dollars over the next 10 years.

It's not a bad idea to look like a single-issue voter - telling every candidate you're most likely to vote for the ones who want to push back hard against Citizens United.

These people have to spend hours on the phone every day begging for money - and most of them say they hate it.

So at least put it at or near the top of your list of issues, and mention it every time you say anything about politics.

Citizen's United

Gerrymandering

Voter ID

Take your country back from the Rent-Seekers and their Coin-Operated Politicians.

driftglass Explains

Our Lonely War On Pronouns Has A New General

As you probably know, we here at the DGBG Productions (driftglass blog, The Professional Left Podcast, etc.) have been waging a long, lonely war against the promiscuous use "we", "us", "The American people", "The Congress", "Washington D.C." and any other language deployed by the media and by Republican politicians in the service of pretending that somehow everyone and all institutions are collectively and equally culpable for explicitly Republican cowardice, Republican barbarity, Republican racism and Republican sedition.

Or that, conversely, the energetic and resolution opposition to explicitly Republican cowardice, Republican barbarity, Republican racism and Republican sedition is something that "we" are all in together. That, for example. stripping tens of millions of Americans of their health care in order to pay for tax cuts for plutocrats with something up with which "the American people" would not put.

No, no and no.

Because other than geographically, there is no such critter as "the American people".

And also too, "...but the Democrats didn't stop 'em..." is a close relative of Both-Siderism.

The sheriff who gets killed by the mob when he tries to defend his prisoner is not to blame for the lynching that follows.

A New Storm

...and new terminology we get to learn.

Great work, fossil fuel pimps - always excited to hear about some new horror that you guys convinced the rubes wasn't going to happen.

So thanks, and fuck you very much.

WaPa:

Unforgiving cold has punished the eastern United States for the past 10 days. But the most severe winter weather yet will assault the area Wednesday night into the weekend.

First, a monster ocean storm is taking shape, which pasted parts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina with rare ice and snow early Wednesday. By Thursday, the exploding storm will, in many ways, resemble a winter hurricane, battering easternmost New England with potentially damaging winds in addition to blinding snow. Blizzard warnings have been issued for the Virginia Tidewater region up the coast to eastern Maine, including Ocean City, Atlantic City, eastern Long Island, Boston and Portland.

“This rapidly intensifying East Coast storm will produce strong, damaging winds — possibly resulting in downed trees, power outages and coastal flooding,” the National Weather Service tweeted Wednesday.

[Watch: ‘Bomb cyclone’ moves toward east coast] 

Forecasters are expecting the storm to become a “bomb cyclone” because its pressure is predicted to fall so fast, an indicator of explosive strengthening. The storm could rank as the most intense over the waters east of New England in decades at this time of year.

Today's Pix

Click on a pic and start the show

  

Today's Tweet

If it was any less tragic, it wouldn't be funny.

Schiff- Knock, knock.

Nunes- Who's there?

Schiff- Rosenstein and the FBI.

Nunes- That's not funny.

Schiff- I'm not joking. pic.twitter.com/TLbwnMVLlO

— Red T Raccoon (@RedTRaccoon) January 3, 2018

 

Breakin' It Down

I'm not in full agreement with Blue Gal, but damn if she ain't real close.

At the very least, this is a good look at what might be called a Chicken-Or-The-Egg thing.  

Is the GOP like this because of Trump, or is Trump the obvious manifestation of what the GOP has been for at least the last coupla generations?



Blue Gal at Crooks & Liars:

It isn't Trumpism. It's the Republican Party. And it has been for far longer than Donald Trump has been running for President. 

The video above is from a year ago (July 2015). Alisyn Camerota asks a focus group of Trump and leaning toward Trump voters why they like him. Those of you who have watched any of these "average Trump voter" interviews know their trademarks:

"He speaks his mind, and says what I am already thinking."

"Illegal immigration is the number one issue on my mind."

"He'll make America great again."

The reason the news media interviewed these particular people is, they are registered Republican Primary voters.

They didn't just register to vote this year or fall off a truck into the Republican Party. They voted for Bush, twice. They voted for McCain/Palin. They voted for Romney. And they're tired of losing and being embarrassed by their votes, so embarrassed that they fell for a "Tea Party" rebranding just so they would not have to associate themselves with Bush.

And then the establishment had the nerve to suggest they vote for Bush's brother.

Donald Trump lies about a lot of things, but he is not lying when he says he received more Republican Primary votes than any other candidate in US history. That statistic is skewed by how many Republicans voted "Not Trump," but the fact that the race boiled down to Trump versus not-Trump is not helpful to the "Trumpism" argument. Republican voters selected Trump as their candidate, in state after state after state. 

The beltway news media is terrified that the Republican Party will be forever tarnished by this Trump candidacy. Why? Because Trump-as-Republican busts open their "both sides" myth, that "both sides" of the political spectrum are equally bad, equally wrong and right, equally to be blamed for the "mess" in Washington.
- and the money quote - 

Both-siderism protects the Beltway's need for an election horserace, as well as a "view from nowhere" in which the media is outside the race altogether and just an "observer" of "the process." But both-siderism picks a side: the side that is willing to lie repeatedly to win elections and policy points.

Here's A Pretty Good One

45* continues to punch down at every opportunity.

Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo:

If mercy is not only meeting but exceeding the requirements of justice — giving others not just their due but more — then cruelty is its opposite, exceeding even the privations of injustice: not only failing to give others their due but taking from them even more.

President Trump’s comparison to Caesar in a brief 2017 run of Shakespeare’s famous play may thus have been too generous — merciful, even. Whatever virtues Trump and his administration are aiming for, mercy isn’t among them. Mercy, after all, is a quality of the strong; in his repeated attacks on those with the very least, Trump is most obviously weak.
The single ray of hope - although it's a strong one - is that I think I'm detecting more of a change in the behavior of the Press Poodles lately.

eg: John Harwood - not exactly the model of a Lefty Loonie - has been very critical of 45* the last coupla times I've seen him on MSNBC, which denotes a very different stance on his part. He's always been a down-the-line-just-the-facts-ma'am kinda reporter, but in the last week or so he's said a few things on air that seem to indicate he really understands the danger, and he's starting to throw off the Presumption Of Regularity bullshit and report to us just how fucked up 45* really is.

Today's Tweet

To this I cannot add

The president won't apologize to women so I did it for him. pic.twitter.com/Y4GGnWu4FU

— Liz Plank (@feministabulous) December 21, 2017

 

Deep Thought

Suicide Ideation is basically a group of cells plotting to kill all the others.

The Last Week Last Year

Get the book (link at the bottom)

Amy Siskind at Medium:

December 30, 2017 (Week 59)

In what was expected to be a quiet holiday week, Trump managed to generate a fair amount of controversy and concern. Along with his regime and some in the Republican Party, Trump continued to attack American institutions and Mueller. A NYT interview revealed Trump still does not understand, or choose to accept, the boundaries of his power in our democracy — and he continues to lie, irreverently. The issue of Trump’s mental health also resurfaced this week.

As Republicans and Trump’s White House prepare for the wrath of the American people in 2018 — the Resistance and even their own shrinking base — Trump seems cocooned from news and real information. The Mueller probe continues in earnest and is expanding its focus, just as Trump’s lawyer continue to assure him the investigation will soon conclude — setting the two on a collision course heading into 2018.
The first 7 of 104:

1. On Saturday, WAPO reported FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe plans to retire when he becomes eligible for his full pension in early March. McCabe has been a target of Republicans for more than a year.

2. Shortly after, Trump attacked McCabe, tweeting how can he “along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation…be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?”

3. Trump’s claims on both the source of the donation and it being made while McCabe was involved in the Clinton email investigation are false. Trump also tweeted, “McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits.”

4. Following his Twitter attacks on McCabe, Trump next attacked the FBI’s top lawyer, who in Week 58 is being reassigned by FBI director Christopher Wray: “Wow, “FBI lawyer James Baker reassigned,” according to @FoxNews.”

5. On Christmas Eve, Trump continued his attacks on McCabe, tweeting in addition to his other false claim about donations to McCabe’s wife, McCabe used “his FBI Official Email Account to promote her campaign.”

6. On Tuesday, Trump attacked the FBI and Clinton, this time related to the “bogus” and “pile of garbage” dossier, tweeting, “Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS.”

7. On Tuesday, Republican Rep. Francis Rooney called for a “purge” of the FBI, telling MSNBC the FBI leadership should get rid of “deep state” figures at work in the agency.

“The List” — weeks 1–52 of The Weekly List are coming out as a book! You can pre-order your copy by clicking here.

The Weekly List website is live! Find resources, videos and more.

Today's Tweet

John Dean is not given to overblown rhetoric

Nothing, absolutely NOTHING, is more important in 2018 than taking the US House from the GOP, and beginning the end of Trump’s horrific presidency. The well being of the nation depends on it. Don’t let a day pass without doing some act to help Democrats win control. STOP TRUMP!

— John Dean (@JohnWDean) January 1, 2018

 

Today's GIF

Back at it, people - and let's be careful out there.

Today's Quote

Yes - in a system of self-government - in a free society - you get to sit on your ass while everybody else does the work. And then you get to bitch about what a rotten system it's become.

But don't bring that shit to me. Not unless you're willing to take the chance that I'm about to (rhetorically of course) stomp you into a greasy stain on the rug with it.

Show up or shut up.

Today's Tweet

Chaffetz, Nunes - there's a bunch of 'em. And don't think there are no Dems included.  The fuckery is wide and deep.

#2018Prediction We will discover that Trump is usin’ hacked dirt from Putin against key members of his own party.

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) January 1, 2018

 

Today's Pix

Trying to start the year out in a good way - but I'll settle for this.

Let's Review

WaPo's got the goods:

Dave Barry:

There’s one thing we definitely remember happening in 2017: the “fidget spinner” fad. This was huge, and for a good reason: It was extremely stupid. In terms of mental stimulation, fidget-spinning makes nose-picking look like three-dimensional chess. You mindlessly spin the thing around and around, accomplishing nothing. It’s an idiotic, brain-cell-destroying waste of time.

So it was the perfect fad for 2017.