Author: Burr Deming

• Max’s Dad listens to the reaction of a rare non-rally crowd to our beloved president and remembers sports boos from decades past.
   
• Dave Dubya describes his own reaction to my President’s reaction to the reaction of a non-MAGA-hat crowd to seeing his image: baseball booing.
   
• In The Borowitz Report, President Trump has an explanation. World Series fans wanted to lock him up in the White House for doing an excellent job.
   
• About that World Series:
   
  Tommy Christopher reports on how Nationals team member Sean Doolittle seems to have wanted to join his teammates on a celebratory trip to the White house to meet the President. Doolittle spent some time thinking over his own efforts and experiences and decided, “I just can’t do it.”
   
• Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged shows us a tweet from Pastor Robert Jeffress, “The effort to impeach President Trump is really an effort to impeach our own deeply held faith values”, then breaks the ethereal bubble with a penetrating question: When did extortion become a deeply held faith value?
   
• So now Republicans are reverting to Mulvaney-lite: that quid pro quo is, by definition, attaching eligibility requirements to assistance. It happens all the time in foreign aid. Totally legal and appropriate.
   
  Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit takes a moment to teach our conservative friends how extorting for political smears is not the same.

Continue reading “World Series Boos and Blues, God, Gaetz, Overconfidence, Balance”

• How many MAGA folks will turn violent if provoked by that with which they violently disagree? M. Bouffant at Web of Evil notes a pepper spray attack on some non-violent anti-Trump protestors (videos included), followed by the arrest of the attacker, and sees a sign of more violent things to come when Trump gets tossed.
   
• After 7 months or so, Margaret and Helen are finally back. YAY!
  Helen talks about Trump’s wall in Colorado right on the border with Mexico.
   
  Uh…
  HaHaHa. He was just joking, really he was.
   
  She suggests that something is seriously wrong with someone who ties himself and his administration into pretzel shaped knots because he can’t ever, ever be wrong, even about little mistakes that can’t possibly be m-m-m-mistakes. Because … Trump.
   
• Laurie Baron at The Moderate Voice explains to my President, I suspect with exaggerated care, the difference between impeachment and lynching.
   
• It’s all in the headline as Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post manages a bit of pity for those trying to defend Trump lies. Or maybe the lack of content after the sympathetic headline is the message. Symbolism can be hard.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony brings us Tom the Dancing Bug to explain the absurdity of current Trump defenses and why Trump still doesn’t seem worried.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors quotes my president on Rudy (“He looks for corruption wherever he goes”) and discerns a bit of irony.
   
• Let’s see. GOP Congressional Reps object because Impeachment Proceedings are following unfair procedures, including conducting investigatory hearings in private. The rules were established in 2015 by … uh … the Republican controlled Congress. News Corpse suggests a bit of hypocrisy as Trump Attorney General Barr conducts a baseless investigation of FBI investigators of 2016 Russia interference. Seems Barr’s Russia probe is being done entirely in secret.
   
• Green Eagle goes to the history books (which, for me, would largely be memory) to count Attorneys General in Republican and Democratic administrations and which retired with reputations intact and which did not.
   
• In MadMikesAmerica Michael John Scott likes Bernie Sanders. Might even support him. One drawback: Bernie’s reckless minions who helped serve up Trump. Michael didn’t exactly say Bernie Bros are jerks, so I suppose there may yet be peace in the valley.
   
• Frances Langum brings us a couple of lip-reading videos with Joe Biden as the subject, both videos hilarious. Other campaign targets are promised.
   
• Lots of retractions. So, okay, turns out Hillary didn’t say, or imply, that Tulsi is a Russian asset, but rather that she is being groomed by the GOP for a third party. The always insightful Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged, insightfully makes an insightful observation. Tulsi pretty much underscores the underlying under lying by making Trumpy talking points on, of all places, Fox. Okay, so maybe shes a groomee after all. Still I do kind of wish Hillary would start of new tradition that losing presidential candidates are best not heard or seen or thought about. Like …uh… Jill Stein. Did I mention insightful?
   
• Julian Sanchez of Cato Institution is interviewed about 2020 election security in a posted podcast.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit briefly explains the how the crisis in higher education spreads to a similar crisis in military recruitment. Trump/Miller immigration policy makes both crises close to hopeless.
   
• In about 5 seconds, Scotties Toy Box explains what the issue of deficit spending is really about.
   
• driftglass briefly recites the story of how upstart Einstein with his weird theories was vindicated and ties it to media history of false equivalence. Balance at the expense of documented truth.
   
• The Journal of Improbable Research finds a documentary about ongoing research into talent and meritocracy. Apparently, luck has more to do with it than is generally acknowledged. One study provides mathematical proof that organizations would be more efficient if promotions were awarded randomly.

• nojo argues compellingly that, with the betrayal of America’s Kurdish allies, the damage to our country is not really long lasting. It is more likely permanent.
   
• Max’s Dad does not think Mr. Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds was a mistake. It was deliberate. The real motive is obvious.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz has a message for conservative evangelicals who proudly declare themselves to be pro-life. If you are not horrified, sick to your stomach, over the Trump-endorsed genocide that has begun against Kurdish families, you are not pro-life.
   
• Green Eagle suggests an unwitting partner in the Trump/Erdogan ethnic cleansing of our Kurdish allies.
   
• Tommy Christopher sometimes watches Fox News. He has to. It’s part of his job. On Monday he watched Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump defend the impulsive abandonment of Trump families to the tender mercies of Erdogan. She says it’s not a big deal because most Americans don’t even know who the Kurds are.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger tells us of one American who does know who the Kurds are. The wife of an American soldier writes a letter of hope, fear, and gratitude to Kurdish soldiers, for fighting bravely along with her husband. They were part of his safe return home to her and the family waiting anxiously for him.

Continue reading “Betrayal, Corruption, Trump by the Numbers, Diving, Melting”

 

From CBS News:

Firefighters let “very scared” little girl paint their nails after she was in a car crash

While on the scene of a car accident on Saturday, two Utah firefighters noticed a “very scared” young girl clutching bottles of nail polish. The pair offered to let the girl paint their nails to help calm her down — and left with much more than a new manicure.

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• nojo expresses the frustration of patriots, and does it more eloquently than anyone else, at the numbingly repetitive nature of Trump scandals and the lazy collaboration of the press.
   
• News Corpse reports as the current White House occupant heaps furious heaps of fury on Fox News for allowing some personalities to openly criticize him.
   
• Pretty much every US adult with even the dimmest awareness knows our President betrayed a vulnerable ally made up of fierce fighters who risked everything to help the US destroy a common enemy. Infidel753 reviews what happened with more knowledge and insight than ordinary mortals, and predicts with startling clarity the long term impact on our nation.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post has never liked my president. But he is especially angry as Mr. Trump leaps from election fraud and caging children all the way to abetting genocide.
   
• Michael John Scott of MadMikesAmerica goes around the world and through the ideological spectrum for reactions to President Trump’s nonsensical defense of his abandonment of our Kurdish allies to the tender mercies of Turkey: that Kurds were not part of the Normandy invasion.
   
• At The Moderate Voice James Gelvin points to an underreported aspect to the developing genocide enabled by Trump: a remarkable democratic experiment by the Kurds.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors relates the latest adventures of Senator Graham, angry as all hell about Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds to Turkey’s aggression … until we find out about his true feelings as expressed to someone he thought was an official in Turkey during a prank phone call. Interesting that the call was arranged by Russians with ties to Putin’s spy network.
   
• Scotties Toy Box tells us which refugees might be able somehow to make it over Trump’s wall, if it actually gets built.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony explains the weirdness of my President by channeling Rod Serling.
   
• At The Onion, Donald Trump has a plan to flee from government oppression.
   
• Tommy Christopher of Mediaite interviews Dan Abrams of … well … Mediaite to recount how two associates of Rudy Giuliani have been arrested after lunching with him. The Mediaite associates speculate on how he must be feeling right now.
   
• Green Eagle considers how Rudy’s buddies were apprehended at the airport, trying to leave the country before they could be arrested, and asks the most obvious question that would immediately occur to a skeptical mind.
   
• Jonathan Bernstein looks at history and current polling and suggests that the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is not a two person race.
   
• Frances Langum has a cool story to tell. The Federal Election Commission chair can’t do much of anything because Trump won’t appoint new members so a quorum is a mathmatical impossibility. She sometimes goes semi-public, refusing to comment on specific cases but quoting applicable law. This ticks off a Congressman who sends a threatening letter. What she does next is perfect.
   
• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson once explained his everlasting hostility toward President Trump. Now he never seems to miss an opportunity to prove himself wrong, even portraying a Republican Senator’s awkward refusal to answer a simple question about my President as heroically challenging the narrative. But sometimes integrity parallels contemporary conservativism: as when James blasts the NBA for surrendering free speech to Communist China.
   
• I sometimes hear from my brothers and sisters in Christ, in one form or another, some version of Pascal’s Wager. It has always struck me as fundamentally dishonest to attempt to gin up something that might pass for belief, not because you genuinely think it is true, but out of fear just in case. In a particularly vicious form of this rhetoric, Bruce Gerencser finds himself threatened by an angry evangelical who warns him that since he says bad things about God, God will get him. Don’t tug on Superman’s cape, so to speak, by saying you don’t believe in the planet Krypton.
   
• driftglass offers a brief overview of his use of Facebook.
   

Trailer for the new documentary, Liberty: Mother of Exiles

The poem by Emma Lazarus, the poem that was placed at the base of the Statue of Liberty is movingly, powerfully read by:

Big Freedia,
Wayne Brady,
Charo,
Jessica Chastain,
Andy Cohen,
Whoopi Goldberg,
Cyndi Lauper,
Monica Lewinsky,
Lizzo,
Courtney Love,
RuPaul,
Regina Spektor

• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post begins with a story, generally accepted as true, involving Winston Churchill relieving himself on Germany’s Siegfried Line as a show of disrespect toward Hitler. Jack goes on to suggest that Trump similarly shows disrespect toward everything that Makes America Great Already.
   
• In the deluge of Ukraine and China related Trump strong-arming revelations, the fount of wisdom known as Vixen Strangely asks us not to forget the sick fantasies my president talked over with aides about calculated cruelties toward desperate refuges.
   
• At the Ant Farmer’s Almanac, Lairbo tests the feasibility of President Trump’s plan for a moat along the southern border by interviewing alligators on their willingness to move.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger provides a two-second contrast, explaining the greatest difference, during the last 10 years, between two occupants of the Oval Office.
   
• Those were idealistic times. M. Bouffant at Web of Evil contrasts, with what we accept as normal today, a 1963 Action Comics meeting between Superman and JFK. Actually, I remember reading that very comic book when I was a kid. My young universe collapsed one Friday afternoon when the unthinkable came to pass. 

Continue reading “Treason, Cruelty, Snakes, Trump and Obama and JFK and Churchill”

 

The world sometimes seems to have too few heroes. America has one. He is a minor official in Ukraine.

Between the infamous telephone conversation between two presidents, and the congressional investigation into that conversation, Ukraine had two months to get dirt on Joe Biden. Why did they not even begin?

I know there are more polite ways to put this, but speaking plainly, my president called the head of another country and, while talking about maybe, perhaps, who knows, helping them to survive attacks by Russia, pressured them to manufacture dirt on his main political opponent.

I would like you to do us a favor though.

Congress had authorized $400 million in aid to Ukraine to help them in their struggle to maintain independence from Russia. Putin’s puppet ruler of Ukraine had been overthrown in a popular revolt just a few years ago, and Putin had annexed part of Ukraine shortly after.

Trump ordered those funds held up until he could talk with the newly elected leader of Ukraine. Ukrainian officials were made to understand why the vital assistance was being held up. Donald Trump wanted an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Years back, Hunter had worked for a company doing business in Ukraine.

So why was there no investigation into Biden?
Continue reading “Why No Investigation into Biden? Thank a Hero in Ukraine”

• News Corpse reviews the lies and misrepresentations by my president, and those speaking on his behalf, about the Ukraine call: falsehoods followed by Mr. Trump’s eventual confession.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony runs a comic strip, then explains in a few paragraphs why every part applies to the Ukraine story.
   
• At The Moderate Voice, Joe Gandelman begins with fears by the whistleblower that Trump devotees in the White House were trying to lock down records to hide them. Turns out that fear was well-founded. Also turns out that cover up backfired.
   
• Green Eagle brings up an almost unnoticed aspect of the attempt to strong-arm Ukraine into manufacturing dirt on Biden. Trump wanted dirt on Ukraine itself. Green Eagle speculates about one bank shot financial reason.
   
• Tommy Christopher has us counting on our fingers as a Fox News personality insists that mainstream media lied about the Ukraine telephone summary. Reports told of multiple references to Joe Biden, but, says Catherine Herridge, there were not multiple references: only a handful, perhaps just three. Let’s see. I used to have multiple fingers. Now I have just a couple of handsful. Or handfuls, depending on whether you use the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
   
• Frances Langum watches Fox and walks us through the carefully nuanced reaction of Chris Wallace to the whistle.
   
• Now that Republicans accidentally sent their talking points to Democrats, now that we know in advance what conservatives are supposed to say, Jonathan Bernstein wonders why so many aren’t following the script. Is it the sound of Trump’s spell over Republicans breaking?
   
• Scotties Toy Box has a question for those of us who wonder about the reaction of Trump voters to possible impeachment.
   
• At The Onion, The New York Times offers to disclose the whistleblower identity to readers who subscribe in the next 24 hours.
   
• While briefly covering how the recently revealed Russian financial connection has endangered NRA IRS exemptions, tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors reveals a talent for exactitude in phraseology, as the NRA Tax Status Commits Suicide.
   
• Okay, Greta Thunberg provides the United Nations her angry denunciation of inadequate action on climate change, citing science and logic on what future generations will face. Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara carefully analyzes the evidence and offers his own scientific view that the 16-year-old is anti-human, ungrateful, and speaks with a voice of a monstrous evil. Not bad for a high school kid.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz watches Greta Thunberg stand alone before the gathering of nations. He sees proof of the power of One and suggests that each one of us has it.
   
• Jon Perr at PERRspectives notes the long, long lasting Obama economic boom after the Bush crash, and watches as, at long last, Trump is finally killing that recovery.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post discovers a reality show host, a business expert, who would be a much better president than our current occupant.
   
• In MadMikesAmerica Erin Nanasi explains why she believes in God.

 

From Infidel753:

Pelosi’s declaration of an impeachment inquiry is a good move both practically and politically. On the practical side, it will broaden the House Democrats’ legal powers to investigate Trump — which is why I’ve always supported it. On the political side, it should, at least for a while, take some of the pressure off of House Democrats to proceed to an actual impeachment.

For anyone not familiar with my objections to an impeachment, here’s a summary:

(a) Impeachment can’t remove Trump from office. Removal would take at least 20 Republican votes in the Senate, which isn’t going to happen because Senate Republicans are afraid to anger Trumpanzees whose votes they depend on for re-election.

(b) After “acquittal” by the Senate, Trump would bleat endlessly that he had been exonerated and that all the accusations against him had been exposed as fake news, a dastardly Democratic plot, etc. This would sound plausible to millions of swing voters who don’t pay close attention to politics. Thus an impeachment would probably make Trump’s re-election more likely.

(c) Impeachment would threaten our House majority. Many House Democrats represent purplish districts in which a vote to impeach would be a definite liability next year. Impeachment is generally unpopular with the voters — including with many Democrats and independents, not just Republicans.

It’s clearly (c) which has loomed largest in Pelosi’s resistance to impeachment. She’s been accused of doing the politically expedient thing rather than the right thing, but keeping that Senate majority is important. A lot of lives will be ruined or lost if Republicans recover full control of the government.

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